Chapter 4: Chapter 3.5 Naval Academy: Term 2

Well the next three days I spent on the emergency procedures and I got scared. All the frigging things that could go wrong in space that I never realized. I became infatuated with preparedness. I ordered a top of the line skin suit. It was dark gray, fit over me like a spandex unisuit, had quick release gloves in the sleeve, it had a silklike lining with rip stop tech, two quick release repair patches, a clear pullover hood and a battery/oxygen cartridge that could heat the suit for 45 minutes and give 30 minutes of oxygen. The cartridge embedded in the suit at the base of the neck and was the size of a deck of cards. The new suit had a 30,000 hour warranty which sounded good. I planned to replace it every 3 years. The only issue I had was the difficulty changing the cartridge while wearing it.

I took to wearing the suit all the time under my cadet uniform with the exception of showering. Also I took to carrying a spare oxygen cartridge in my coverall uniform. Besides the slight bulge at the neck the skin suit was unnoticeable under my student uniform coveralls. The suit also emptied my savings and added a fair amount to my debt. Well the suit was much better than the suit I would be issued in the navy. That skin suit just reflected body heat and had the clear hood and gloves. You could survive about 3 minutes in it…hopefully long enough to get to emergency oxygen on the ship. That version of skin suit would have cost me 2,500. If I had to estimate the Corp that supplied the suits to the navy spent less than 500 manufacturing each one.

Running emergency scenarios became a hobby. A sick hobby as I cranked up the difficulty and died about 90% of the time, was maimed 9% of the time and won every once in a long while.

Well the party arrived and I went with Gwen, Nila and their friends. It was fun after I got some alcohol in me and I danced with Gwen, Nila and three other girls I didn’t know. After some time I was pulled into the hallway by Nila and into an alcove that had a maintenance terminal. We kissed and pressed our bodies together. I wasn’t following the time but we spent over an hour locked together. Then Nila broke apart and said tomorrow night we could get a room at hotel on the station.

I swore internally, I had less than 50 credits after putting down almost all of my funds as a deposit on my new skin suit. A luxury hotel room was about 70 credits and I wanted this to be special. I postponed the date for another day so I could make some credits for a fancy dinner and luxury hotel.

I was on cloud 9 walking back to my room. Now if I had been better at social cues I would have noticed the death stares I had received while dancing. And the small group that tracked us into the hallway and alcove. When the group of five male students struck I was caught completely off guard. I was bagged and pulled into a custodial bot room. The beating lasted so long I passed out with repeated threats to leave Nila alone ringing in my ear.

When I woke I found myself in pain. I wandered to an automated medical station. I had two broken ribs, had 29 contusions on my torso, a bleeding kidney that had clotted, and some other organ damage. The station alerted a human doctor and soon I was under their care.

It took 12 hours of treatment to get back on my feet and I use 'on my feet' loosely. I wandered into a security station to report the assault. The marine lieutenant took my statement and then we reviewed the video. The hallway video was empty…it showed no one during the time I was assaulted. He went to review the video of the room the party was in and found the time I left with Nila and 5 young men following us. He quickly brought up their identification and sighed.

He told me the guy leading the group was Asher Dyson. His family was well embedded in the station hierarchy. His grandfather was in charge of post academy assignments and a rear admiral. His parents were also in station administration. His two older brothers were on the station serving in security. So basically I was fucked. The lieutenant gave me a pitying look. I could report the incident but it would get suppressed if not completely altered or erased. He said I should drop my involvement with Nila. He also suggested I start training with the marines for self defense. There were a group of drill sergeants on station that trained the marines in rotation to the station from the planet. He was good friends with three of them, Abby Surgorov, Adam Jonas, and Buckie ‘Dent’. So the next day I went with the lieutenant and was introduced. The sergeants were more than willing to help me out after dinner every night, and they meant every night.

I cancelled my appointment with Nila with regrets and decided to end all my meals in the cafeteria. Vending machines would get expensive but my health was important. Hopefully these actions would appease Asher while I developed my personal defense.

Well I felt like I got beat up just as bad in my first combat lesson. The three drill instructors worked out for three hours every night after dinner. They explained they needed to be better than every marine who came up here for space marine training. Well we started with the basics, the painful basics.

Classes started again after the eight day break finished. I quickly passed the emergency procedures certifications. So I had my third period free a few days into the second term. I decided to apply this free time to quickly passing deep space scanning arrays. It took 11 days to complete that course.

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My only social interaction was with the three drill sergeants. I don't think I said a single word to any of my room mates in weeks. I had started getting meals in marine country. It wasn’t odd as many personal dinned at the nearest cafeteria. The food did seem more bland and heavier in protein.

The sergeants were encouraging and extremely tough on me. I learned my skin suit was assault marine grade. They wore battle armor over the skinsuit and their skinsuits had nanobot capsule to self seal leaks but otherwise it was the same. Well nano bots would have cost me another 4000 credits so not necessary yet. I would add that option when I got a new suit in three years.

One weird thing is the sergeants learned of my propensity to running emergency scenarios in VR. Soon we were running them together for ‘fun’. I learned a lot of out of the box thinking from the marines. They were shocked with my technical skills, so much so they said I must be cheating. Well together we could beat the no win scenarios about a third of the time which was ridiculous in their opinion. So we trained hand to hand to combat for three hours and then did two emergency scenarios. We rotated who got to program or choose the scenario each night. I took pleasure in designing the hardest programs.

I finally finished my Grade 1 Robot Diagnostics and Repair certifications 16 days into the term. My tracking software course was progressing. I only worked on the material in class as it was a lot of programming and diagnostics and was just time consuming. I also found sitting in class relaxing. I was able to tune out the android instructor and the other 13 students were quiet for the most part.

Twenty days into the term Buckie started me on knife training. They also set up a complete strength and conditioning program for me to do in the morning and a dietary tracker to make sure I was getting enough calories. My body already felt like a dogs chew toy every day and now I had to restart my conditioning which I had dropped figuring the combat training was enough. Wasn’t getting the crap beat out of me for three hours enough?

I extended my sleep time from five hours to six hours, as my body needed more recovery. I also started going back to the robot depot and working for Carissa. Now that I was a Grade 1 I could earn a little income as Carissa had an order from station administration that the scrap could not be sold to students, probably another move by Asher to make my life miserable. So reaching Grade 1 allowed me to buy scrap and was a nice fuck you to whoever instituted the new rule.

Halfway through the term I completed the programming course. I decided to continue with my study of FTL. Adam and Abby gave me a compliment as well. They said they wouldn’t mind getting into a bar fight with me. At least I assumed that was a compliment. Buckie also said I could carry a knife on me and not be in danger of cutting myself. My body was filling out and I think and I was done growing. I was 1.93 meters tall. One of the taller engineer students on the station and easily picked out in a crowd.

Gwen managed to corner me returning to my room from training with the sergeants one day. I told her I couldn’t associate with her anymore. Eventually she got me to crack and I told her about Asher and his family. If she tried to do anything it would just make things worse so I insisted she drop it. She thought for a bit and said at least she could make sure that asshole wouldn’t stain any of her friends, including Nila. That made me happy and I thanked her but said we couldn’t meet on the station again. I think she looked a little sad when I had added that.

The semester ended and I had finally passed my first certification for FTL drives. I was frankly shocked and extremely proud of myself as it required a 98% accuracy to pass. I had gained muscle and was 102 kilograms. My training plan from the marines had my target at 112 kilograms at 8% body fat, basically a marines body.

Well I still had my advisor meeting the first day of break but I had slipped in my class rank. I was now 17th. I was fine with that as I spent 7 hours a day doing conditioning, combat and emergency drill training. My three courses for my third term were Union Law and Fleet Law, Sensor calibration, and Life Support Adaptation. The law course was required unfortunately. Sensor calibration was going to be easy and I could finish it in 20 hours as it was just using devices I was familiar with to tune and check sensors. The life support adaption was tuning life support for individuals. Another cake course but was required to make Grade 2.

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