Nigh Invulnerable Pt. 01

All he wanted was a chance at a better life in the midst of a dystopian future...

Instead, he found himself in the present day; gifted with godlike powers that made him irresistible to women... and a threat to the wicked.

The year is 2261. Humanity has spread to the stars, thanks to the assistance of their alien allies. But this technological leg up comes at a price, and thousands of Earth's young men are recruited to fight in an interstellar war. Felix Dvoryanin answers the call, thanks in large part to the encouragement of his only female friend. After his DNA is fundamentally altered to make him the perfect super soldier, Felix is shipped to the front lines hundreds of light years from Earth where humans are being massacred in frightening numbers.

After the miraculous and incomprehensible end to a hopeless battle, Felix finds himself transported to an Earth two-hundred-and-fifty years in his past with his superpowers intact. Unable to ignore the suffering around him, Felix attempts to use his powers for good. What starts with random acts of kindness quickly blooms into feats which gain him international acclaim. But his stardom comes with a price, and he quickly attracts the attention of villainous entities who will stop at nothing to unlock the secret of his remarkable powers.

Nigh Invulnerable is the tale of a lonely man who, with the eventual help of several impossibly gorgeous companions, overcomes both the horrors of war and the bitterness of betrayal to become something greater than he could have ever imagined: a hero.

Author's note:

This novel is a work of science fiction adventure. It features plenty of violence and impolite language; not to mention an unusually spicy take on the superhero origin story. I've split this novel into five sections for publication here.

All sensuality (on page or otherwise) takes place between characters who are eighteen or older.

***

Copyright © 2023 Jake Lazarus

All rights reserved.

This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the author (except for the use of brief quotations in a review).

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, businesses, products, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

***

One

"Breaking news! A major victory was scored today by the Terran-Cygnian alliance in the war of Chalawanian aggression. General Deneb, of the Fourth Caste of Gloas, commander of the daring counter-offensive, issued a statement acknowledging praise from Earth Gov and declaring that this will be the first of many victories to come."

"Yeah right," Felix Dvoryanin muttered as he muted the vid-cast, caring little that the newsreader had five more gushing paragraphs prepared in praise of the long overdue victory.

"Hey!" a voice rang out from the back of the room. "I was watching that."

Felix turned toward the voice to spot a 'believer', as he called them. People for whom the war effort represented an opportunity for patriotism, rather than a nuisance. He shrugged and un-muted the vid-cast before seeking out a place to sit which was as far as possible from both the projector and the critic. He unwrapped his meal-pack without enthusiasm and began the ritualistic consumption of precisely four-hundred calories worth of homogenous goo. He made a conscious effort to keep his eyes down lest he once again notice the fact that several of his coworkers were apparently independently wealthy (as evidenced by their meals which contained obviously black-market items with exotic attributes such as shape or taste).

The eating portion of Felix's meal break was accomplished in less time that it took him to open the perma-seal pouch which had kept it, if not appealing, then at the very least safe for human consumption since it had been manufactured at least a decade prior. He wadded up the wrapper and set it aside so he could get some work done before his all-too-brief break ended. Donning his interface goggles and pulling on his input manacles, he pulled up the latest batch of exams from his Intro to Applied Mathematics class in hopes of figuring out how he might adapt his teachings so that he could, at least occasionally, convey what his mother had called kitchen-table math to his current crop of seventeen-year-olds.

A collective groan of frustration went through the room when the vid-cast was once again interrupted, this time fortunately not by Felix's doing. When he heard the nasally voice which replaced the nubile newsreader's, he gave tepid thanks that he had foregone the earpieces for his interface.

"All staff are required to attend a brief meeting to convey an organizational announcement beginning in three minutes. Please check your inbox for your specific meeting room. May God bless you all."

"Oh, great," Felix grumbled.

He pulled his goggles off and looked around to find the mood had dimmed markedly. He joined the queue of his coworkers leaving the break room and followed the unenthusiastic group down the hall, thinking to himself that they collectively looked not unlike a group of zombies. He had learned enough from too many similar meetings in his past to try to read anything into which group he found himself in, the administration having achieved complete mastery of the dark art of not tipping their hand to the proletariat.

Felix took a seat in the middle of the room and stewed in a sense of boredom as he awaited the meeting's commencement. After all, he reasoned, it made no sense to get any more work done until he knew exactly what type of meeting he was attending. One of the assistant administrators, a severely dressed woman roughly his age who looked like she lived on a bit more than the governmentally dictated ration of fourteen hundred calories per day, strode imperiously to the front of the room and waited for the group to give her their undivided attention.

"The board of education has recalibrated our budget and, as a result, it will be necessary to make some adjustments. These types of decisions are never easy, but we must all do our part for the greater good. A lot of consideration, and obviously prayer, went into these obviously challenging choices."

"Get on with it," Felix muttered quietly. "Just tell us which group we're in."

The man to his left, a history teacher old enough to be his grandfather, gave him a dirty look. Felix frowned in embarrassment before returning his attention to the functionary standing before them.

"... each of you will be expected to absorb your portion of the work from your less fortunate colleagues. Those of you teaching required classes should see a modest increase, likely not more than three or four extra students. As for the rest who are responsible for electives, the increase will be greater. We hope, however, that it will not be more than fifteen additional students per class. Please contact your supervisor if you have any questions or concerns, and may God bless you all."

"Electives..." Felix grumbled as he stood with the rest of the 'lucky' ones. "When did math become an elective?"

As he made his way from the meeting room and toward his classroom, he shook his head at how remarkably similar he sounded to his father. On his way, he noticed a handful of students who seemed to be complaining louder than usual and he wondered if their disquiet was caused by the notifications no doubt popping up in their goggles. As he turned the corner and headed into the more run-down wing of the school, his already dour mood found cause to dim even further. Standing in the doorway to his appointed classroom was Friar Volkov, another assistant administrator and the closest thing he had to a boss. His classroom was already filling with seventeen percent more students than had attended the same class the previous day, so Felix paused in the hallway and looked expectantly at the man who bore an uncanny resemblance to a bespectacled raccoon.

"Glad you could finally make it," the friar complained in his unsettlingly high-pitched voice.

"I just got out of the 'you didn't get fired... this time' meeting."

"I'd have expected a better attitude from you, considering the leniency we've shown."

Felix suppressed the urge to groan in frustration, opting instead to take a calming breath before saying, "Was there something I could help you with, Brother Volkov?"

"Yes," the friar responded with a triumphant smile on his face. "We've been getting reports you've been teaching forbidden subjects again."

"How in the heh... eck can math be forbidden?"

The friar's eyes widened at the near blasphemy, and he said nothing for several seconds. At length, he decided to address the remainder of Felix's words. "You have, according to several students, repeatedly referenced... shall we say... inappropriate individuals in relation to your teachings."

"Like who?"

The friar looked around furtively before looking back to Felix and whispering, "Newton? Turing? A whole menagerie of Greeks?"

"So?" Felix huffed. "They were some of the greatest mathematicians to ever live."

"But they were pederasts!" the friar hissed. "That's why there were excommunicated."

Felix was unable to hold in the frustrated groan on this occasion. "They weren't pederasts, as you well know. They were simply homosexual. And," he added, cutting off the friar's interruption, "they weren't part of my lesson. I was asked who invented various concepts and I answered truthfully. Even excommunication can't change the fact that they most certainly did invent the things they invented."

The friar's face turned quite purple, to the point where Felix was tempted to pull out his goggles to capture the sight for posterity, before he finally sputtered, "You are not to mention any excommunicated individuals again. For any reason."

"But what am I supposed to do if I'm asked who invented calculus? Lie?"

"You have your instructions, Gospodin Dvoryanin," the friar snapped before stalking off angrily.

"Pederasts," Felix muttered disbelievingly. "Methinks though doth protest too much, Brother Volkov."

He then turned to his classroom and, after sighing wearily, stepped into the overcrowded room to begin his ninth period instruction.

***

The remainder of Felix's day passed in a blur. Lessons were taught, quizzes were given, questions were answered... but he felt disconnected from the entire exercise. He could, quite literally, teach Intro to Applied Mathematics with his eyes closed. In fact, the temptation to do just that was sometimes almost overwhelming, due in large part to the frustration he felt stemming from the disturbingly high percentage of students who made it to their mid-teens still unable to do basic arithmetic.

He abandoned the thought exercise of improving his scores as the day wore on. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that, of the population comprised of (in addition to himself) students, parents, fellow teachers, and administrators; he was the only one interested in his students learning what he was trying to teach them. He felt as if the malaise that had gripped so many of his coworkers was a physical thing, like the malignant villains in his father's stash of old movies.

As he trudged from the enormous building where instruction was offered for the children between the ages of seven and seventeen from throughout the Khatanga Gulf region, he had the distinct impression that his nemesis was following close behind preparing to pounce. But rather than feeling anxious about this sensation, he felt regret. Why, he wondered bitterly, was he not one of the individuals called to the other room. It would have meant unemployment, which came with a whole new set of very real, and very significant, problems; but he would be able to stop beginning each day he stepped into the building he was now departing wondering if 'today' was the day.

He took his melancholy onto the tube, at least that was the reasoning his subconscious lamely offered in response to the wide berth he was given in the otherwise packed car. Felix knew better, of course. The famine of 2237 had had a devastating impact on both him and his family. Although his mother had fared far worse, he had suffered irreparable damage which left him with a permanent bloated appearance which was only exacerbated by a glandular issue that caused him to be perpetually a few dozen kilos overweight despite strict adherence to rationing guidelines. He was otherwise reasonably average even down to brown hair, beard and eyes. It was something that left him with crippling depression, a condition which only worsened when obviously hungry people looked at him like he had literally stolen their dinner. He felt the pull of his goggles offering him an escape from his reality, but he knew instinctively that the emptiness he felt would only be exacerbated by such a pitiful exercise.

Blissfully, the four-hundred-plus kilometer trip across the gulf and into the heart of the Taymyr Administrative District, part of the Chinese Confederation, was accomplished in less than an hour. Felix eschewed hiring an autonomous tuk-tuk in favor of walking and enjoying the balmy late February weather. He reached their tenement building thirty short minutes later. Fortunately, the wait for the lift was reasonably short since taking the stairs to the ninety-second floor was not an option.

As he entered the eighty-seven square meter apartment, he called out, "I'm home," but heard no response.

He wandered through the tiny space to discover every room empty save for the single bathroom, whose door was locked and obscured faint sounds of the water-less shower's whining drone. He stowed his bag in the hall closet and poured himself fifteen percent of his daily ration of two liters of water. He quickly zoned out, thanks in part to the low hum which was always present in their building. He did not even realize he had slipped into unconsciousness until he heard his father's loud belch as the latter entered the room.

"You're home early," the elder Dvoryanin barked in his typical gruff voice. "Thought you were going to dinner with The Leech."

"Don't call Ursula that," Felix complained. "And I am still going to dinner with her. She just texted and said something came up, so we're eating late."

"Your treat, no doubt."

Felix took a calming breath, something that was becoming an increasingly common occurrence in his life, and said, "Dad... can we not do this right now? I've had kind of a wretched day."

"Fine. But don't expect the matter to stay tabled forever. That woman is just using you, son."

"We're friends," Felix sighed. "There's nothing wrong with being friends with a woman."

"Friends pay half the time. Friends don't rope-a-dope you with offers of sex, or even dating exclusively. Friends don't use my son simply to foster a spirit of competition amongst the guys she's actually interested in hooking up with."

"What do you expect me to do, Dad? Look at me. It's not like I've got women lined up down the hall who are interested in me. It's Ursula, or nothing. So excuse me if I'd rather spent a couple nights a month with a beautiful woman instead of sitting here staring at the wall."

"I don't begrudge you the company, son. I just hate seeing you get treated like this. You deserve so much better."

"Whatever," Felix grumbled. "Listen... I've got to get going."

"Wait, son. I'm sorry. What were you going to tell me about your day?"

"Just that I didn't get laid off."

"I would have thought that would be a good thing."

Felix shook his head morosely and muttered, "Maybe. But I still got to enjoy the anxiety spike of wondering if I'm about to get laid off. Not to mention the fact that I have to work that much harder with the larger class load. Oh, and Friar Jackass has decided it's against the rules to admit that someone who was homosexual twenty-five centuries ago might have figured out the deal with triangles."

"Ignorant savages," his father muttered. "So, what? You gonna quit?"

"Hardly. What else would I do? I'm only credentialed to teach. And if I quit mid-term, I'd get blackballed throughout the country."

"Sounds like you need a new profession," his father observed unhelpfully.

"Tell me about it," Felix grumbled before getting up to go in search of some headache suppressants.

Two

"Hey!" a feminine voice called out too loudly, causing Felix's head to whip around toward the doorway to the restaurant. He quickly spotted his dinner guest hurrying through the crowded eatery and drawing not a few glares in the process.

Ursula Hansen was a woman Felix had originally met in primary school. They had been, if not great friends, then at least friendly during their school years. Ursula had been more than willing to trade ignoring a bit of light leering on Felix's part in return for letting him handle the bulk of her homework. It was a strategy which, even years later, he could not bring himself to regret. He had considered her to be, by a comfortable margin, the most magnificently beautiful woman, not only in his school, but throughout the world and all of humanity's colonies. She was nearly as tall as his one-hundred-eighty centimeters with long, startlingly white hair, alluringly pale blue eyes and a figure which had left humans of all sexual orientations slobbering in her wake. More precisely, it had been impossible for any living creature to lay eyes on her at her peek and have any thought other than, 'those are the most magnificent breasts in history'.

Graduation had caused them to grow apart as Felix had gone to university and Ursula had gone in search of her fortune. She had managed a brief stint in modeling, but that had quickly flamed out when her representatives caught wind of a job she had taken which had run afoul of the Morality Standards Commission. When the modeling money had dried up, she had continued the trend of trading on her looks by entering the service industry. The natural itinerant lifestyle of restaurant and hotel work perfectly suited her impulsive nature. Last Felix had heard, she was an assistant manager at a vodka distillery where she seemed to genuinely believe a proposal from the owner's son, with whom she had only had sporadic conversations to date, was imminent.

She dropped into the chair opposite him (pointedly failing to notice the way Felix's eyes drank in the spectacular jiggle which flowed across her generous body as a result) and huffed, "Hi."

"Good evening," he said formally.

"Are you pissed that I'm late?"

"Don't be silly," he deflected, adding in a deprecating wave of his hand which stood in stark opposition to his genuine irritation at the fact that she was, in fact, two hours later than the ninety minutes she had originally warned him she would be delayed.

"Great," she enthused, either not noticing his deception or not caring. "I have had the craziest day!" She glanced down at the menu laying on the table before adding, "And I'm starving!" Felix handed over his ration chit, which she snatched enthusiastically. "You're the best." She glanced momentarily down at the water sitting before him and he sat with bated breath to see if tonight would be the night that she would refuse to eat his meal (and hers) in front of him. Ultimately, the moment passed with neither saying a word until the waiter arrived.

After he had taken their (her) order, Felix said, "Crazy how? Are we talking crazy 'ha ha' or crazy 'uh oh'?"

"Huh?"

"Your day."

"Oh!" she replied as realization dawned on her face. "Actually, more like crazy awesome. Did you see the news?"

"I saw some news," he hedged. "Perhaps you could be more specific."

"We won this, like, major battle against the Chalawanians!"

"Ah," he replied evenly. "Yes, I did see that. So?"

"So?" she exclaimed. "Don't you think that's great? The tide is finally turning."

"I'm not sure one victory, especially one where they refuse to release any relevant details like casualties or what was actually achieved, counts as the tide turning."

"Don't be such a killjoy. I was reading this afternoon about the latest advancements in our Star Trooper program and it's amazing what they're doing these days."

"Thinking of joining up?" he chided.

She frowned at him and said, "You know its men only. Stupid patriarchy."

"I see. And you'd prefer the fairer sex also be allowed to volunteer for a program for which, not only does Earth-Gov refuse to release any casualty statistics, but literally none of the dozens of people we know who volunteered ever came home?"

She dismissed his point with a wave and said, "I'm sure they just settled on one of the newly liberated colonies. You know there aren't any birth restrictions there."

"Well, I certainly hope that's the case," he allowed at length before changing the subject. "How was your day otherwise?"

"Annoying," she sighed. "You remember Stefan?"

"The unmitigated piece of shit who keeps coming into the brewery and leering at your breasts?"

"He's not that bad. He can actually be quite charming once you get to know him."

"Indeed?"

"Yeah. He apparently owns a vacation home in St. Petersburg and is headed there week after next for holiday."

"Good for him. Hope his air conditioner is top of the line. I heard its consistently in the mid-forties there, even this time of year."

"Who cares about the heat when you've got a huge private pool, not to mention the ocean."

"Again, good for him. I take it you're annoyed that the powers that be elected to provide him with such bounty instead of someone more deserving such as yourself?"

"Not as such," she answered slowly. "It's just that we were talking about his holiday, and I made it super clear that I would love to go. I even pulled him into the breakroom and gave him a blowjob so there wouldn't be any misunderstanding about what I was willing to do on said holiday."

"Jesus, Ursula," Felix groaned.

"I know, right?" she growled. "What kind of colossal prick accepts a blowjob and waits until he busts a nut in my mouth to mention that he's already got a girlfriend."

"The nerve of some people."

She stared at him for a second before saying, "Are you making fun of me?"

"Who? Me?"

"You're such an asshole sometimes."

"At least I never accepted sexual favors and then reneged on the either spoken or unspoken quid pro quo."

She quirked an eyebrow at him before saying, "But I've never offered sexual favors to you." She paused for a long beat before adding, "Have I?"

"Would that have been such a bad thing?" he murmured.

"Seriously," she huffed loudly. "Have we ever had sex?"

He waited until she appeared ready to attack him with her fork before saying, "No. But that is easily remedied."

"I thought you were dating that chick from your work. The one with the limp."

"That lasted all of two dates. And you make it sound like she has a birth defect. She got trampled during the food riots of 2255 and is still waiting for her number to come up to get ligament replacement surgery."

"Did she put out?"

He shook his head and said, "You really do have a one-track mind. I thought it was guys who were supposed to think about sex constantly."

"I was just hoping, for your sake, that you got some before she kicked you to the curb."

"If you must know, it was I who told her that I didn't think we had a future."

She glared at him and said, "And the sex?" He sighed and shook his head, so she added, "Damn. Why not?"

"You know it's also up to her, right?"

"I'm sure she would have been down to fuck. You're not that bad looking."

"No," he mock-gushed. "Stop. You're making me blush with all the compliments."

"Seriously, Felix. How long has it been since you got laid?"

"I don't think I want to talk about this."

"Why not. I'd tell you."

"You already did tell me."

She groaned and said, "That was just a blowjob. That doesn't count. The last time I had sex was four days ago with..."

He held up his hands and said, "I don't want to know. And I certainly don't want to spend the rest of the night, not to mention every night after that, talking about how long it's been for me."

She shrugged and gave him a coquettish look before saying, "What if I brought it up because I wanted to help you reset the clock, as it were."

"Yeah, right."

"I'm being completely serious, Felix. I'm tired of all this bullshit. I'm thirty-four years old and I've got nothing to show for my life besides an endless string of meaningless hookups. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and I really feel like I'm ready to settle down."

He looked at her queerly for a moment before saying, "And?"

"Don't you see?" she replied excitedly. "It all fits. The new Star Trooper program comes with a ton of perks, including unlimited births and priority for emigration. And there's apparently a huge signing bonus. You could volunteer and, once you went through training, we could get married..."

"Married?"

"Of course," she replied brightly. "Then, once your term is up, we'd have our pick of the best real estate in the galaxy. You could sit back and collect a pension while we make a bunch of babies."

He stared at her for several moments before saying, "You're serious about this."

"Of course, I'm serious. It makes perfect sense. We're good friends so we know we'll get along great. And no more lack-a-nookie for you because I'll make it part of our wedding vows that I get you off at least once a day. We can even include provisions about how often I have to give up my ass if you'd like."

"How much of your company's product did you sample today?"

"I'm not drunk," she declared angrily. "In fact, I'll prove to you just how serious I am." She looked down at her now empty plate before standing and saying, "Take care of the check. I'm going to stop by the powder room and then we'll share a ride home."

"But you live over one-hundred..." his protest died on his lips as she sauntered away.

Despite his frustration with the preposterous conversation she had drawn him into, he still allowed himself a moment to appreciate her alluringly curved derriere as she departed. Despite gaining a few dozen kilograms since their school days, Ursula still turned nearly every head in the room thanks to her striking features and her endlessly voluptuous body.

Felix paid the bill, trying to ignore the shockingly high price tag considering only one person had eaten anything, before proceeding to the restaurant's entrance to await Ursula's appearance. The wait seemed interminable; especially considering that he estimated that at least ten minutes had elapsed before he thought to check his watch. Upon the seventh check of the aforementioned wrist-bound chronograph, he saw a notification indicating he had received a message from his erstwhile companion. He sighed and pulled it up, very much expecting that it would indicate that she had changed her mind and had either left via a side door long ago or was waiting for him to depart so she could search in earnest for more agreeable company.

He was quite stunned when he saw the actual message:

'Where the hell are you? You didn't ditch me, did you?'

'You told me to wait for you by the door...'

'I most certainly did not'

'Are you sure?'

'Do you want to argue with me about semantics or come out here and join me?'

Just as Felix began to type out a response, another message popped up:

'Did I mention I took my top off?'

The message was quickly followed by an image featuring what he could only assume was Ursula's right breast held up by her left hand. He nearly dropped his phone in his haste to send a reply:

'Where are you?'

'Third ATT on the right. The one with the shades drawn.'

He nearly bowled over an elderly couple as he lit out of the building like he had just robbed the place. He made his way to the line of automated tuk-tuks in seconds, only to come skidding to a stop as he wondered at the decorum involved with entering potentially occupied hire-vehicles. He ultimately decided on knocking on the side of the one he believed held Ursula.

"That'd better be you, Felix," Ursula's irritated voice came from within.

He ducked quickly behind the curtain to find her sitting with her arms folded over her (he could not fail to notice) covered breasts.

She quirked an eyebrow at his lingering gaze on her chest and said, "You keep me waiting for twenty minutes and still expect to get to play with the girls?"

He frowned and said, "I'm not sure I had any expectations at all. We're kind of in uncharted territory here."

"It seems pretty straightforward to me."

"Which part?" he muttered disconsolately. "The volunteering to be cannon fodder a hundred light years from here part?"

"No," she replied sultrily. She unbuttoned her blouse until her cleavage was on full display and he could see the upper portion of her bra's cups. "Do you want to touch them?"

"Yes," he gasped.

"Go ahead," she agreed as she finished unbuttoning her blouse and popped open the clasp on the front of her bra.

His hands caught her massive breasts as they spilled free, and he moaned audibly at their spectacular heft and softness.

"What's your pleasure, baby?" she murmured as she began rubbing the front of his trousers.

"Huh?" he stammered.

"Would you prefer I give you a blowjob, or would you rather tit fuck me?"

"Um..."

"You can't offend me, Felix. I'm fine either way. I just want to make you feel good."

"Then... um... tit fuck?"

"Good answer," she whispered as she slid to the floor and moved around to kneel between his widespread knees. She opened the front of his trousers and extracted his throbbing cock. She seemed to pause for a moment before shrugging and rising up on her knees to envelop his manhood in her titanic tits.

"Fuck," he hissed. "That feels amazing."

"Good," she replied warmly. "Don't worry about how long you last. This is just about getting you off."

"You're sure?"

"Fuck yes, I'm sure. In fact, I'll be at least mildly insulted if you don't explode all over me in a matter of minutes. After all, you've been staring at my tits for damn near two decades. I'll bet you've jerked off hundreds of times thinking about this very moment."

"You're not wrong," he grunted. "Holy shit, you're gorgeous."

"That's it," she whispered as she increased the tempo at which she was bouncing on her knees. "Give me all that spunk. Fucking cover me in it."

"Ursula," he groaned helplessly as he exploded between her tits and across her cheek.

She yelped in surprise and held up her palm to block further explosions of his seed from the tip of his pulsing member. But even with the added protection, he still managed to coat her breasts and neck in his essence thanks in large part to the fact that he could never remember having such a powerful orgasm.

When he was spent, he slumped back in the seat breathing heavily while Ursula pulled a wad of paper towels from her purse and began the cleanup effort. He belatedly started helping and she was soon reasonably presentable.

She slid onto the seat behind him and keyed in the address to her apartment before leaning over and kissing his cheek. "There... now isn't that better?"

"That was... incredible."

"Just imagine doing that every day... or multiple times a day. Better yet, imagine fucking me raw. Just think of that massive load filling my pussy day after day until you knock me up."

"Good Lord, woman," he sighed. "Where did all this come from? Not that I'm complaining."

"I just finally realized that the thing I've been looking for since high school has been right beneath my nose this whole time."

He sighed and said, "I don't know that I can commit to all this on such short notice."

"Nor would I expect you to," she replied after a moment's consideration. "But do think about it, Felix. In the meantime, perhaps next time we have dinner I could show you the kind of blowjob you could expect to use in place of a morning alarm once we're married."

Three

"Gospodin Dvoryanin?" an insistent voice called out.

Felix's subconscious studiously informed him that the plea for attention which had finally pierced the fog in which he seemed to almost exclusively reside in recent days was not the first attempt to get his attention. He shook his head slightly trying to clear his thoughts and glanced up to find several members of his class staring at him suspiciously.

"Yes?" he finally managed to stammer.

"I finished the exam," a young woman in the front row replied. "What should I do next?"

"Oh... um... just start going through chapter fourteen on your own."

"But we already finished chapter fourteen. You just tested us on it."

"I meant chapter fifteen," he snapped irritably.

Felix ignored the glare he received in response, choosing instead to let his gaze wander around the room while silently chastising himself for, once again, allowing his focus to drift while he was at work. It had become an increasingly problematic concern for him over the three weeks since Ursula had initially proposed her preposterous scheme. Where previously Felix had spoken to her, at most, a few times a month (and many of those conversations were little more than a handful of exchanged messages), they had spoken daily since the exceedingly memorable dinner which had concluded with the unforgettable scene inside the autonomous tuk-tuk. And, more often than not, those conversations spanned hours and featured many exchanged pictures and videos. Felix now had a library of enthusiastically offered nudes Ursula had sent him to go with the unforgettable memory of their date from the week prior during which she had conclusively proven her bona fides with respect to her mastery of various oral sex techniques.

On top of the tangible benefits directly tied to his libido, he had come to the realization that he could not deny the fact that the last few weeks had been more thoroughly enjoyable than the decade preceding them. He likened it to a person deaf from birth whose lottery number finally came up with the department of health when they were in their mid-twenties: the life to which they had become accustomed was one where they were only dimly aware of what was lacking but, upon at long last having heard the devastating magnificence of something akin to Dvořák's symphony From the New World, realizing with perfect clarity that life could never be anything but an empty meaningless shell if the newly discovered treasure was withdrawn.

It had taken quite some time for his skepticism regarding her fantastical suggestion to fade, but the truth of the matter was that it was something she had only brought up one additional time after she had first proposed it (and even that was a brief aside after she had posed for a picture with a mouthful of his pearly white cum before swallowing and assuring him that he could expect similar treatment even when she was nine-months pregnant). Their conversations had instead tended to focus more on their shared discontent with the lives they found themselves living. Neither had reached their majority afflicted by delusions of grandeur about what their future held, but they had somehow both managed to significantly undershoot even the modest expectations they had allowed themselves to foster.

That sense of deep dissatisfaction had begun to pervade his every waking hour like a virus. Even the slightest irritation triggered a mental spiral into a maelstrom of anger and resentment at the faceless 'they' who had conspired to make him unendingly miserable. He had previously managed, albeit barely, to convince himself that he was doing a service to society by teaching. But all that remained in his daily existence was the sense that he was wasting everyone's time, most especially his own, by continuing to pretend he was doing anything other than marking time as he waited his turn in the queue at the crematorium.

Felix was once again pulled from his musings by a voice calling out, "Gospodin Dvoryanin!" This time, it was not an overachieving student finishing a quiz early. It was instead the projector behind his desk into which his nemesis's unsettling visage had appeared. "Report to my office immediately."

A chorus of soft 'ooh's and 'ah's arose from the room, but the Friar had already cut the transmission without waiting for a response.

Felix opted to interpret 'immediately' as 'when this period ends', although the task of managing to make it through the remaining nine minutes was no easy feat considering each of his students was staring at him in amazement. After the bell finally sounded, he had to shoo several of them away to keep them from following him as he made his way through the maze of hallways which led to the executive suite. By the time he reached his destination, he could hear his superior's voice animatedly demanding to know his whereabouts. He sighed and stepped up to the doorway to await his fate.

"Where have you been?" Friar Volkov sniped sarcastically. "What took so long?"

"I wanted to conclude the evaluative event for the entire group of students lest the results be tarnished."

"Whatever. Close the door and take a seat."

Felix did as instructed and awaited his fate without emotion. The friar kept him waiting for several moments while he fiddled with his console. This gave Felix a moment to examine the fact that he felt no emotion about this interaction. He recognized the not-insignificant possibility that he was about to be laid off and was somewhat startled to realize he was completely ambivalent.

At length, the friar finished with his console and turned to face Felix with a sour expression. "I am to inform you that, effective twenty-two days ago, you have been placed on probation."

"What!" Felix exclaimed. "Why?"

"I already discussed this with you, Gospodin. You freely admitted to including proscribed content in your instruction. Surely you knew this conversation was coming."

"No... I didn't. We talked about that, as you said, over three weeks ago. I assumed, completely logically in my mind, that our discussion was the end of it."

"I'm afraid not. We cannot afford to play favorites and thus reprimands must be consistent."

Felix groaned and said, "What, exactly, does probation mean?"

"You will continue to perform your normal duties, of course. But you will be considered to be on probation for a period of six months. During this time, if there are any other... oversights... on your part, you will be released immediately."

"Is this specifically related to admitting that Sir Isaac Newton did, in fact, invent calculus, and other such historically undisputed facts?"

"Any oversight," the friar repeated slowly, and with a great deal of smugness.

"Great," Felix muttered almost to himself.

"There is also the matter of the cost of living pay increase which was announced two weeks ago. As I'm sure you recall, members of the staff on probation are not eligible for salary adjustment."

"You're rescinding my raise?" Felix boomed.

"Of course. As I indicated previously, I'm a bit surprised you had not already anticipated this course of action. Your employment contract quite clearly stipulates this would be the consequence of such reckless disregard for the curriculum."

"So... just to be clear... because I answered a few students' questions about mathematical breakthroughs that happened hundreds, or thousands, of years ago..."

"What those deviants did, or did not, discover is beside the point," the friar cut in.

Felix continued undeterred, "You're going to take away a raise I earned, and was awarded, before our last conversation even happened?"

The friar nodded triumphantly and said, "That's correct."

A litany of possible responses exploded in Felix's brain like the fireworks display at a New Year's celebration. However, since several of them would no doubt lead to his arrest under the same morality code which was being used as the justification for his probation, he ultimately decided to do something far simpler. He stood up, pulled out his board of education identi-card, and dismissively dropped it on the floor before walking from the friar's office and heading for the building's exit.

***

Felix could feel the insistent buzzing on his wrist announcing the receipt of a series of messages, but he ignored them as he waited patiently for the rather imposing gentleman with whom he was currently in negotiations to return.

Just as the wait threatened to become agonizing, Felix heard a deep voice call out, "This is going to take a little while. Feel free to hit the head if you need to."

"Oh... uh... thanks..." Felix stammered before digging out his goggles and dropping them over his eyes to see that Ursula had sent several replies to the selfie he had sent her prior to entering the office where he now sat. The first few messages were little more than punctuation and emojis, but the final one definitely got his attention. It was a picture of Ursula taken from ground level. In the background he could just barely see her chin above her rounded, and delightfully exposed, breasts. In the foreground he saw her gorgeous pussy, her index finger disappearing into her thick thatch of light-colored curls. The photo's caption read, 'next time I see you, you're filling this up'. He felt his manhood swell at the thought of being intimate with her.

His daydreaming was disrupted when he heard movement behind him. He managed to whip off the goggles and chuck them in his bag before the aforementioned leviathan returned and sat down heavily in the chair across the desk from Felix. The former fiddled with the tablet he carried for several more seconds before passing it over to the former.

"There's your enlistment contract. We can adjust the signing bonus as you requested, but only in return for a longer commitment."

"So, what's the minimum term?"

"One year. The signing bonus for that is forty thousand. You then get an extra twenty K for each year."

"So, one-hundred thousand for four years?" Felix asked despondently.

"That's about the size of it," the uniformed mountain of a man replied. "It's up to you, but if it were me, I'd go for the full nickel. The reality is that this war will likely be over in a matter of weeks. You might not even see any action before the armistice is signed. And there's no easier work in the galaxy than being in the peacetime military. Take it from me. You'll have plenty of free time. And, both service members and veterans enjoy relaxed birthing restrictions. So, you'll likely find plenty of ways to spend your free time, if you take my meaning."

"Indeed," Felix replied carefully. He felt his anxiety begin to rise as his mind began to conjure up all the different ways this could go very, very, wrong. But, through supreme force of will, he quieted those voices and said, "You know what? Let's fucking do this. Five years."

The recruiting officer grinned at him and said, "I thought that's what you'd say. Just sign at the bottom and we'll get things rolling."

Felix did so and felt as though a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. He had trouble wiping the goofy grin off his face as he went through the endless additional forms which all seemed to be a slightly modified clone of the initial enlistment contract. At last, he reached the end and handed the tablet back to the smiling giant across from him.

The recruiter took a few minutes to check the tablet before rising and saying, "Follow me."

Felix scrambled to collect his belongings before hurrying through an unmarked door at the rear of the cramped recruiting office. He was led down a nondescript hallway until reaching a room containing a bored looking older man sitting at a messy desk.

The recruiter gestured in the direction of the empty chair beside the desk before saying, "Star Trooper Conditioning."

"What level?"

"Five."

"So, what's all this mean, anyway?" Felix asked as he came to a stop beside the chair. "How does the Conditioning work?"

"Sit," the recruiter hissed.

"Not until I..." Felix began, but his objection was rather emphatically overruled in the form of the recruiter's fist slamming into his jaw with almost inhuman force.

Four

Felix awoke slowly to the internal cacophony of his senses competing with each other to report that a great many things had gone quite wrong. Initially, he believed that his most pressing issue was the persistent throbbing in his jaw where he had been struck. However, the pain was quickly pushed down the priority list when his attempt to rub his jaw revealed that his arms were bound. More prioritization changes followed rapidly as he first discovered that his legs were similarly restrained; then that he was strapped facedown with his ass in the air over what felt like a pommel horse; then that he was blindfolded. At least, he hoped he was blindfolded. Although the way his day was going, he would have been unsurprised to discover that his eyes had actually been removed with a dirty spoon.

Upon further reflection he realized glumly that his hearing might be his only remaining sense because the space where he was trapped contained a veritable bevy of noises, each more worrying than the last. Beeping and buzzing of all sorts came from all directions and it seemed that there were at least a dozen individuals in the room with him. But, as he thought to cry out for help, another poor bastard beat him to the punch and yelped in terror. The sound was immediately replaced by a rapid series of heavy metallic thuds, a fleshy thwack, and horrifying gurgle. Felix made a concerted effort to remain quiet following what he could only assume had been a swift beheading, but he could clearly hear the breathing of those around him speed up. It gave him some small measure of relief to know that he was not the only person who genuinely believed they were now at the head of the queue for the crematorium.

The series of rapid metallic thuds occurred several additional times over the following three hours, each time accompanied by a spike in adrenaline on Felix's part as he waited for death to come for him. On the fifth such occasion, another of his fellow captives shouted out in fear. As with the first such occurrence, the scream ended in what Felix could only imagine was the sound of a human being brutally, and instantly, relieved of the burden of life.

On top of the unending existential dread, Felix was also dealing with the fact that he had been strapped into a contraption which restrained him in a profoundly uncomfortable position. His initial concern that he had either been paralyzed, or had his limbs removed altogether, had been replaced by the agony of all of his limbs having been locked into a position which was just past the point of discomfort for the midway joint. He was also leaning forward so far that his head was significantly below his heart, causing a constant state of both nausea and headache.

Just when Felix had finally convinced himself that he was at peace and prepared for his inevitable demise, he heard the most terrifying sound since he had, as a teenager, been witness to a tragedy where the central computer which controlled the public transit had made a mistake and two trains travelling in excess of four-hundred kilometers-per-hour had collided just north of their apartment. In this instance, instead of the horrific crunch of metal and bodies, he heard something his mind could only compare to rhythmic nails on a chalkboard. The sensation it caused in his mind was not unlike what he imagined Chekov had endured on Ceti Alpha V.

It was only through supreme force of will that he did not cry out in abject terror. It seemed, however, that three of his fellow prisoners were of less stern stuff (or they were just over it and cared nothing for their fate). Felix nearly lost the contents of his stomach as the sound of those three being deliberately dispatched was added to the continuing mind worm of obviously purposeful nails on the chalkboard.

The barrage of sounds in the room came to a sudden halt, causing Felix's terror to spike even further. He could feel the sweat streaming down his face and soaking the blindfold. His muscles, screaming from being strained for so long, started twitching uncontrollably. The bile which had been building in his stomach since the ordeal began started trickling down to the back of his throat, making him gag.

Just as he feared he would be overwhelmed; a superheated claw gripped the back of his neck and he felt pressure which he was certain would be sufficient to crush his spine. The pressure quickly morphed into a stabbing pain, and he had the distinct impression that a dull rapier was being slowly shoved into his brain stem.

The torture went on for time uncounted, consistently worsening, until he finally, blissfully, succumbed and slipped into unconsciousness.

***

Felix awoke with a jolt, a sensation not unlike the feeling one gets upon waking from a dream where one was falling uncontrollably. It took him several minutes to calm his racing heart and take stock of his situation. With excruciating slowness, his senses began to report details about both his surroundings and the all-too-real dream which had woken him. He rolled from the bed he had woken in and landed lightly on the floor. A few halting steps took him to the bathroom where he saw to his morning ablutions, such as they were. But even as he stood there wondering why he had only managed a few centiliters of worryingly viscous urine; he was overcome by an all-consuming hunger.

He burst into the kitchen like a hoard of locust and began inhaling calories mindlessly. It was only when he had polished off what he realized in hindsight was more than a week's worth of food that he began to consider what he had done. Hunger had been his constant companion since birth; never having enough food and frequently having to settle for only one meal per day. In the nearly two decades since he had reached adulthood, he knew that his stomach had shrunk to the point where he could feel 'full' from a very modest amount of food. He was thus amazed by the mere fact that he had eaten so much without, for want of a more elegant phrase, going off like a gastrointestinal sprinkler.

Before he could consider further, he heard a whispered, "Felix?" from behind him. He whirled around to find his father staring at him in amazement.

"Good morning?" Felix managed to say after a pregnant pause.

"Where in hell have you been?"

Upon hearing the question, the memories of everything that had happened since he had last been in the apartment slammed into his consciousness like a runaway nuclear reaction. He looked up at his father in horror and said, "What day is it?"

"Sān... but you've been gone for..."

"Nine days," Felix finished with quiet intensity.

His father stared at him for several moments before finally saying, "Are you all right?"

"I'm... not sure."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Several responses were on the tip of Felix's tongue, but he ultimately decided brevity was the best strategy. "I enlisted."

"Bullshit."

"I'm serious."

"Why in the hell would you enlist? For that matter, why would they take you? You're thirty-five years old, for goodness' sake. Where have you really been."

"I enlisted in the Star Troopers," Felix replied simply.

His father's worried expression instantly morphed into one of abject terror. "Oh, no. Son... please tell me you're not serious."

"Why shouldn't I enlist. You know as well as I do that I've got shit going on. I hate my job, or at least I did until I quit."

"What on earth convinced you to do that?"

"They put me on probation for that bullshit from a few weeks ago. Which, conveniently for them, meant they didn't have to give me the raise they promised. Add to that the general soul-sucking-ness of doing a job you know damn well won't ever do a damn bit of good for anyone, especially me. I just got tired of knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would never mean anything to anyone, except maybe you. And that when I died, whether it was tomorrow or in a hundred years, it would mean less than zero to literally the entirety of the galaxy."

His father sighed wearily and said, "I know I haven't been there for you like I should have. But, ever since your mother died..."

Felix grumbled, "Damn it," before taking a deep breath and speaking up, "That wasn't a rebuke, Dad. You're amazing, and you always have been. I know Mom dying wrecked you, but you never let it get in the way of doing everything you could for me. My doing this isn't because of you... or because of mom. It's because of how I feel."

"And you think travelling billions of kilometers into space and shooting at aliens who would never think of coming here will make that better?"

"Of course not. This isn't about some misplaced desire to be a hero. Enlisting is just a means to an end. Once I get out..."

"If you get out..."

"Whatever. Being a veteran means better privileges across the board. Ursula and I..."

"Oh," his father huffed. "I get it now. She's the one who put this idea in your head."

"That's not how it is," Felix groaned.

"So, she didn't tell you that she'd shack up with you in return for enlisting? I can just imagine her filling your head with visions of all the lurid things she'd be willing to do; the whole passel of babies she'd gladly pop out."

"That's not exactly how she put it," Felix protested glumly while dedicating a good deal of mental energy to ignoring the fact that she had done precisely that.

"Is that so? In that case, why don't you see what she says when you tell her you've rethought the enlistment?"

"I can't do that?"

"Why the hell not? I don't care what she's dangled in front of you, you just say the words. Hell, I'll even message her myself if you won't."

"That's not what I meant," Felix snapped. "First off, I haven't told her yet that I actually went through with the enlistment. Secondly, it's too late to back out."

"What do you mean?" his father asked worriedly.

"Where do you think I've been for the last ten days? I went into the enlistment office, and everything seemed very normal and boring. Right up until the point where, after I signed all the papers, they knocked me out. I then spent the next Bog knows how long strapped face-down to a table, every minute growing more certain I was about to die, right up until the point where they drove what felt like one of those dinosaur claws we saw at the natural history museum into the base of my skull. When I woke up, I had the worst headache of my life and was trapped in a featureless room that was no bigger than two-meters cubed."

His father shook his head and muttered, "I've heard terrible things about the Conditioning they use for the so-called Star Trooper program. I wish like hell you'd talked to me about this first."

"I know. Hindsight twenty-twenty, and all that."

"So... what happened next?"

"Nothing.

"What's that supposed to mean? You were there for nine days."

"And for nine extremely long days, nothing at all happened. No light. No sound. No food or water."

"No water?" his father repeated in horror.

"I know. Humans shouldn't be able to live that long without water. I can't explain it. I was insanely thirsty. And hungry. For a while, those were both secondary to how desperate I was for a bathroom. But, and don't even think about asking me to explain this, the urge just kind of... went away after a while."

"So... what did you do?"

"Nothing, really. During the Conditioning I heard what was almost certainly several other candidates get dispatched for crying out. Whether it was a coincidence, or they were testing to see if we could control our fear..."

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer..." his father quoted.

"My thoughts exactly!" Felix replied excitedly. "Having experienced all that, I wasn't about to make a sound while I was incarcerated. Call it what you will... stubborn... willful... stupid; I decided that those bastards were never going to get a scream out of me. So, I just kind of thought about books, especially all the ones I tend to re-read frequently. It was almost as if I was re-reading them to myself."

"For nine days?"

"I also slept a lot. In any case, eventually I woke up and I was no longer in that... I guess you'd have to call it a cell. I was on a gurney in an infirmary. Once I came to, they told me I had a twenty-four-hour pass and turned me lose with my signing bonus while very pointedly refusing to answer any of my questions about what the hell they'd just put me through."

"You mean Ursula's signing bonus," his father retorted snippily.

"You're wrong about her, Dad."

"Am I?"

Felix stalked back to his room and returned quickly with a docu-pack. He handed it angrily to his father and said, "Here. That's one-hundred thousand credits. A gift, from a grateful Earth-Gov in return for my decision to volunteer to aid in their defense." He snatched a tablet off the table and began typing rapidly.

"What are you doing?" his father asked haltingly.

"Making a living will. Twenty-five thousand of that is yours regardless."

"I don't want your money son. Certainly not at this price."

"Too bad," Felix snapped. "If you want to give it away, then I guess that's your decision but I'm not taking it back. As for the rest, you're just holding it for me until my term's up. And, should something happen to me, I guess you get to decide what to do with it."

"Why are you doing this?"

"To prove to you that Ursula isn't in it for the money. She wants the same thing I do: relief from the oppressive hopelessness of life on this miserable rock, not to mention the loneliness."

His father hung his head in defeat and whispered, "I hope you know what you're doing, son."

"Me too, dad," Felix replied quietly. "Me too."

Five

"Felix!" Ursula exclaimed upon opening her door to find him standing there apprehensively.

"Hi," he replied with a smile that caused him to immediately feel as though it likely made him look like a psychopath.

"Where have you been?" she sobbed as she ushered him inside. "I thought you died... I meant... I thought you left without saying goodbye."

"No way," he replied as he waited until she chucked some dirty clothes on the floor to clear a space on her couch for him to join her. He took a seat next to her and added, "I certainly would have called sooner had I been able to."

"I'm just glad you came. And so proud of you for joining the cause." She paused for a long moment. "You did join, right?" After receiving a nod in reply, she glanced at the bag he held and added, "Is your uniform in there?"

"They didn't really give me one. I guess I'll get it when I report tomorrow."

"Only one night?" she asked with a somber expression.

"Yup. Then it's off to... somewhere. I'm not even certain if I'm headed off planet. They just said to come back to the place where they tried to torture me to death by noon tomorrow."

She glanced up at the wall behind him before saying, "That gives us fifteen hours to make sure you get a proper send off."

He grinned goofily and said, "Oh really? What'd you have in mind?"

"You know..." she drawled coquettishly. "Some groping. Quite a bit of sucking. A fair amount of tit-fucking. A bit of ass play. Lots of fucking. And a metric fuck-ton of your amazing cum filling my pussy."

"You're sure?" he asked hesitantly.

She flowed into his arms, eagerly offering up her lips. He moaned into their kiss as her tongue invaded his mouth to slick against his own. His breathing quickened even more when he felt her hands roaming over his body to find his throbbing hardness.

"Someone's excited," she murmured. "Perhaps we should go to the bedroom?"

He nodded dumbly and stood to follow her across the cramped, messy apartment. As she walked, she gave her hips an alluring swish which was made all the more obvious by the filmy sleep-shorts she wore paired with an oversized, long-sleeve shirt. She looked over her shoulder at him teasingly, as though questioning why he was hanging back so much.

He answered her unspoken question, "I just can't get over how gorgeous you are."

"Don't you want to see the rest?"

"Damn right I do," he stammered.

"Then take a seat," she murmured, gesturing to the bed. She sauntered into the closet, returning seconds later holding a small package featuring a picture of a model wearing something which looked both insubstantial and alluring. "I won't be a moment." She glanced at his obviously tented trousers and said, "Why don't you get more comfortable?"

Felix quickly shucked his shoes and socks before stalling out trying to decide if she meant for him to just, as she said, get comfortable; or if indeed she meant for him to remove all his clothing. He was not a person who actively sought nudity. Even in the privacy of his own room in the apartment he shared with his father, he was rarely without at least a shirt and pants. Even in the sweltering Siberian summers, he never wore shorts and rarely wore short sleeves. Ever since the incident in his teens which left him permanently disfigured, he had come to the conclusion that his appearance was something no one, including himself, wanted imposed upon them.

He was pulled from his reverie when he heard the door open, and he looked up to spot Ursula looking at him with a knowing smile on her face. She said, "I certainly don't want to make you uncomfortable babe, but your cum's never going to get in my pussy if you don't take at least some clothes off."

"Er," he stammered awkwardly.

"It's ok, babe," she sighed as she splayed herself out on the bed on her stomach. "We can go slow." She rolled over slowly and arched her back, thrusting her massive tits toward the ceiling. Her gaze found his and she winked before saying, "See anything you like."

She rolled over again and sighed in contentment as his hand slid along her thigh to find her rounded ass beneath the two-piece lingerie she wore. The sounds of her contentment grew even louder as he slipped his hand beneath the silk to grope her naked ass. He felt himself harden at the alluring sensation of her soft flesh and he crawled along the bed after her.

"That's more like it," she whispered as she rolled again.

His hand slid along her body to find her F-cup breast heaving against its silky prison. He felt her nipple harden beneath his palm as he massaged her. Just as he reached her chest, she tugged the fabric down to expose herself to him and he latched his lips onto her and pulled her nipple between his teeth. They continued like this for uncounted minutes; her writhing alluringly beneath him as he switched his attention from one titanic tit to the other.

He then felt her hand on his chest, pushing him firmly away. He stopped immediately, convinced he had done something wrong.

He stammered, "I'm sorry," but she merely chuckled and said, "Don't be silly, babe. You didn't do anything wrong. I just couldn't wait any longer to get that beautiful cock in my mouth."

He could make no reply as she opened his trousers and extracted his pulsing manhood. Her hand slipped between his legs to pull him closer, and she stuck her tongue out libidinously as his cock approached.

"Fuck," he hissed as the heat of her mouth enveloped him and her lips formed a seal around the head of his manhood. "That feels amazing."

She released him briefly and said, "Good." She pulled him closer to slide her tongue along the length of the underside of his shaft before adding, "You can keep playing with my tits if you like. I know you're obsessed with them."

"Maybe not obsessed."

"What would you call a condition where you can't stop staring at them over a period of two decades?" she taunted before lapping a dollop of precum from his tip. "Besides, I like that you're obsessed with them. And, from now on, you can do whatever you like to them. And I mean anything you want, babe."

He opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out was a groan of pleasure as she pulled him deep into her mouth once more. He took a moment to enjoy the rapturous sensation before resuming his attention on her breasts with one hand while he stroked her hair with the other. This seemed to please her, and she quickened her strokes. This response paled in comparison to her reaction when he slid his hand down her body and parted her feminine folds with his middle finger. His moans filled the room when she forced his cock into the entrance of her throat, taking him to the root.

"Bog! That feels incredible."

"So does that," she gasped as she released him momentarily.

As he watched her worship his manhood with her mouth, he felt a niggling at the edge of his consciousness. He was content to ignore such irrelevancies as 'thoughts' in the wake of such pleasure, but the sense that he was missing something would not go away. At length, he realized that it was merely the amazement that she was deepthroating him at all. Not that she was willing to perform such a service, but that he was endowed such that it could be offered in the first place. He had, in the past, tried not to think about his coupling gear in relation to his fellow male homo sapiens. In his mind, such considerations served no purpose. But as he thought about the anatomy of a woman's mouth and throat as it compared to, say, the breadth of his hand; he would not have thought he was possessed of sufficient length for the head of his cock to pass through the entrance to Ursula's throat unless her nose was buried in his pubic hair... which it was not. There was also the small matter of her thumb and middle finger not connecting when she wrapped her hand around his shaft.

Having discovered the source of the aforementioned niggling, he was able to set it aside and enjoy the genuinely magnificent experience of receiving what he was certain was the best blowjob in the history of the world. They continued like this for several moments and he knew her desire was cresting along with his own, as evidenced by creamy pleasure coating his fingers.

She pulled back with a gasp and said, "I can't keep going."

"That's fine honey," he gushed. "I wasn't trying to pressure you into anything."

"I meant," she replied breathlessly, "that I need you to fuck me."

"Ah," he huffed with a huge grin.

"Come on, babe," she pleaded. "Put that big cock in me."

He nodded excitedly as he struggled to kick his pants and boxers off. That task done, he positioned himself between her widespread thighs and gazed down at her soft, voluptuous body in amazement.

She beamed up at him and said, "Give it to me, Felix. Give it all to me."

She reached out to grip him by the root and pulled him to her entrance. He sank in without effort thanks to her surging wetness and groaned in pleasure at the feeling of her slick heat welcoming his intrusion.

"That's it," she whispered. "Just like that."

He rose up to his knees and began stroking into her staggeringly beautiful body; each thrust ending with a tremor of alluring jiggle traveling along her curves. He leaned down to take one of her nipples between his lips, sucking it eagerly as he quickened the movements of his hips.

"Just like that," came her soft encouragement.

He continued increasing his pace until her moans were filling the room and she was thrashing beneath him in ecstasy. Without warning, her orgasm exploded within her, and wetness surged from her core. He slowed his hips, swapping rapid, shallow thrusts for deliberately burying himself repeatedly deep within her as she rode wave after wave of bliss.

"Too much," she gasped as her pleasure crested.

He pulled back self-consciously, sighing at the loss of her heat.

She grinned and said, "I didn't mean 'we're done here', just that my pretty pussy needs a smoke break. How about you come fuck my tits for a minute?"

"Gladly," he grunted as he began climbing her body.

"Doesn't that feel nice?" she sighed as she wrapped her bountiful boobs around his pulsing penis.

"Fuck, yes, it does," he sighed as he thrust his cock deep into her cleavage.

She spit lewdly on the head of his manhood as it popped out from between her cavernous tits at the apex of his thrust, lubricating it nicely for its return journey. He continued like this for several moments until a loud groan escaped his lips.

"Ok, babe," Ursula whispered. "I think my pussy is good to go."

Felix swung his leg over her to kneel beside her on the bed and said, "How do you want me?"

"I want to be on my knees... and I want you to fuck me into oblivion."

"I will do my very best," he declared somberly.

She rolled over and pulled a few pillows toward her to lean on before wiggling her ass at him invitingly. He swung around to grip her ass boldly before sinking once more into the heaven that was her velvety embrace.

"Come on, babe. You know how I want it."

He pulled back slowly before ramming his hips forward to a grunt of appreciation from his lover. Within moments, the bed was slamming against the wall in time with their mindless fucking. Wordless grunts and moans filled the room from both lovers as their skin quickly slicked with sweat. Felix could hardly believe how wet she was, or the fact that he continued to hold off his own release.

Moments later, she cried out again as another orgasm ripped through her body. He felt her liquid pleasure bathing his thighs as she shuddered beneath him. He thrust into her a few more times, but she quickly lost the ability to hold herself up and fell forward onto the bed. He sank back onto his haunches, breathing heavily and, without conscious thought, began stroking his throbbing manhood.

"How have you not cum yet?" Ursula whispered in amazement.

"I have no idea," he grunted. "We can stop... if you...

"No!" she declared firmly. "Not yet. Um... come here."

She rolled over on her back with her head hanging off the bed and gestured for him to stand on the floor in front of her.

"Fuck my pretty throat, babe," she murmured. "That should get you nice and ready to fill my needy pussy with that hot load."

"You're incredible," he stammered as he stood before her and looked down at her voluptuous body.

"All for you," she whispered just before his cock slipped between her lips.

She was lying prone before him with her body on full display. As he looked down, he could see her throat change shape as she tugged him closer until he was buried. He reached forward to grip her tits, careful to keep his hips in place for fear of choking her. But every time he pulled back, she just pulled him right back into her throat's tight embrace.

After several moments, he groaned, "I'm close, honey."

Her hands left his thighs at once. As he pulled back, he heard her gasp, "I want you to cum inside me, Felix. Please..."

He scrambled around the bed and climbed between her thighs. A grunt of pleasure escaped his lips and her thighs locked around his hips and pulled him into her depths.

"Give it to me, babe. All of it," she pleaded.

Within seconds, he felt his pleasure begin to crest. He thrust his hips a final time before giving himself over to his baser instincts and exploding deep within her waiting womb. Countless eruptions of molten seed filled her depths, each one accompanied by a coo of contentment from Ursula and a hiss of amazed bliss from Felix. With each jolt from his loins, he felt as though he was pouring the core of his being, indeed his very soul, into the gorgeous woman staring up at him lovingly.

At length, his pleasure receded. As he made a move to pull back, she whimpered, "No. Stay right here. I don't want to lose a drop."

"But I'll crush you," he protested weakly, barely able to maintain consciousness after such a powerful release.

"I'll be fine" she replied confidently as he drifted off to sleep. "You're right where you belong."

Six

"Well look what the cat dragged in," the recruiting gorilla barked when Felix warily poked his head through the door of the recruiting center at two minutes before noon the following morning. "Guess I lose the bet."

"Pardon?" Felix asked slowly.

"Forget about it. Follow me, Meat."

The man got up and strode purposefully through the same door which had, eleven days prior, led to the torture chamber. Felix froze in the doorway, looking around warily. The leviathan looked back and chuckled evilly before saying, "Lighten up, snowflake."

"I'd rather not," Felix replied firmly.

"Suit yourself. But I'm required to inform you that if you don't submit to the antidote in," he paused to check his wrist-chrono before continuing, "sixty-one seconds, you'll die a horrible death. On a personal note, I'd really prefer to not clean up another mess after your insides liquify in," another check, "now fifty-two seconds."

Even at the moment he felt the spike boring into his brain stem during his last visit to the office, Felix had never felt such a surge of anxiety. He had zero reason to believe the obviously cruel man before him, but he somehow knew in his soul that the man spoke the truth. He sighed and followed the man to a (thankfully) different room behind the recruiting center where he was gestured into a nondescript chair. He kept his eyes on the recruiter, wary of additional foul play, and was thus unable to spot the creature responsible for once again stabbing at the base of his brain.

He started to scream in response to the agony of the attack only to realize the pain was gone as soon as it started. As he fell silent, he was rewarded (if indeed that was the word for it) with the guffaws of at least three human males. He glanced around to find a wiry man in nurse's scrubs holding an injector gun and another unremarkable looking man sitting a few meters away.

"Real nice," Felix grumbled.

"You should thank me," the gorilla said after the laughing subsided. "You were less than ten seconds from a gruesome death."

"Why?"

"Because of the serum added to the Conditioning cocktail designed to ensure no one gets to take advantage of Bog's greatest gift to man without paying full price."

"I meant," Felix hissed. "Why not just, I don't know, not give people a twenty-four-hour pass if you're worried about them running off. And, while we're at it, what the fuck is this Conditioning you're talking about?"

"Oh, you dumb bastard," the stranger in street clothes grunted.

"Didn't anyone ever teach you to read things before you sign them?" the nurse added cruelly.

"Besides," the recruiter chimed in. "There was an in-depth story on the Conditioning process on all the major vid-casts, like, a month ago. Our recruiting has been basically for shit ever since, even with a couple quote, unquote, victories against the monkeys."

"What in the hell are you talking about?" Felix asked helplessly.

"Man," the recruiter huffed as he sprang effortlessly to his feet. "Almost makes me miss the days of basic training. It would have been a hoot to watch your ignorant ass learn just how profoundly you fucked up... in so many ways. But, alas, as much as I'd like to watch your epiphany, brief as it would be, I don't want to see it enough to submit myself to the grinder again."

"No basic training?" Felix asked before he could think better of saying more.

"Some muckity muck at Earth-Gov did some big study and determined that the cost of sending a trooper through fifteen months of training required to actually turn them into an effective soldier only made a man twenty-four percent more likely to survive the first battle. And the odds apparently drop after that. So, the decision was made to put a quarter of the training budget into improving the Conditioning protocol. Once done, it was an easy decision to shelve the training altogether in favor of bringing troopers to the front lines more quickly." He grinned wickedly before adding, "Lucky you."

Felix looked at what he assumed was a fellow recent-civilian, and said, "Do you know what the fuck is going on?"

"I got volunteered for this duty, Gospodin. Our not-so-benevolent benefactors took exception to my decision to liberate a few shipments of foodstuffs meant for the pointy hats at the basilica. It was this or the gallows. At least here, I get a signing bonus so maybe my kids have a chance at a life after I'm gone."

"You're all talking like this is a death sentence," Felix wailed.

"Not at all," the recruiter boomed jubilantly. "Nearly sixteen percent of recruits survive their first battle, including non-combatants. And four percent of them make it to the end of their term."

"That's only sixty-four ten-thousandths!"

"Check out the big brain on Meat," the recruiter chortled before yanking Felix to his feet. "Come on, college boy. We'd best get you to your ship."

***

"Hey, Dvoryanin!" an inappropriately enthusiastic voice called out. "Shake a leg. You're going to miss chow."

"Who cares?" Felix grumbled into his pillow.

"The training vid said we should eat all the calories we can so we're in tip top shape," his bunkmate pointed out exuberantly before racing from their tiny quarters.

Felix had genuinely tried to not detest his over-enthusiastic fellow unfortunate. He had briefly engaged Oliver, as the very young man from the tropical paradise of the Argentine Protectorate called himself. Those few conversations had been enough to determine that, while they had gone through what was arguably the same Conditioning, Felix's experience had been vastly different. Oliver's recruiter had been very deliberate about the process, explaining each step and making certain all of the recruits were as comfortable as possible during the injection phase. As for the endless, torturous days that followed, he had spent that in a resort town near Tierra Del Fuego enjoying the company of, as he called them, very patriotic women.

Also notably absent from Oliver's recruitment was the dire prediction as to the odds of surviving to see the sunset on the day of their first battle, to say nothing of the end of their enlistment. In Oliver's mind, they were embarking on a great adventure, and he could genuinely not understand Felix's defeatist attitude.

Just as Felix really started to wallow in the overwhelming unfairness of his life, a claxon sounded throughout the trooper berthing area followed by a booming announcement, "Attention all Star Troopers! Report to deck sixteen for drop. Repeat. Report to deck sixteen for drop."

This announcement was quickly followed by the lights in their berth shutting off, leaving him in complete darkness. He also felt air blowing on his face... very cold air. It was immediately evident that their superiors were offering Felix and his fellow troopers a choice: enter the dropship or die on the star cruiser.

He sighed at the inevitability of his situation and walked from the compartment. He did not even have belongings to collect or a bag to grab as he had literally entered the ship with nothing but the clothes on his back. He followed the stream of alternately excited and terrified recruits down the ladders to the lowest deck. There, they were crammed into dropships which Felix saw no more of than he had of the shuttle he had taken to the cruiser. To his mind, he just went from one hallway to another. The only difference being that the new hall had handholds similar to what one would find on a subway. Thinking their apparent executioners would not bother installing such extravagancies were they not needed, Felix grabbed one and waited.

He was unsure what he had been expecting, but a sudden loss of gravity had apparently not made the list. He was instantly drop sick and very grateful he had skipped the last meal. That gratitude was soon replaced by misery as his fellow recruits started to reintroduce their recently consumed mid-day meal to the atmosphere.

The feeling of weight started to build slowly a few minutes later and Felix soon felt well enough to wipe some of the sick from his face. His reprieve was short-lived, however, as they quickly bypassed a single gravity as the dropship maneuvered. Within moments, he felt as though four of his mates had crawled on his back and he was genuinely amazed he was still able to stand.

Their journey ended with a loud thud which was quickly followed by a blast of superheated air and a deafening cacophony. Felix was pushed forward by a surge of humanity and soon found himself standing on an obviously alien world with two moons in the evening sky. He looked around to find the source of the noise was a battery of old-fashioned projectile weapons nearby firing in the direction of a red-hued body of water.

An enormous man with a scar running across his bare chest was walking amongst the recruits handing out what looked like balls a child would use for play. Felix hung back until he heard someone mutter something about 'poisonous atmosphere'. He managed to grab the second-to-last ball and figured out how to use it by the tried-and-true method of keeping his eyes open. He aped his comrades and crammed the ball into his mouth. It took up the entire space but quickly molded to fit his teeth and he was able, not without difficulty, to breathe through it.

The recruits were led along a series of bunkers a few hundred meters from the water, with between two and seven being directed to enter each. Felix and a dark-skinned recruit who looked ready to burst with excitement were sent into one close to the end of the line. Upon entering, he found that the structure was already occupied by several obvious veterans.

"Oh great," one of the sparingly dressed men griped. "Fresh meat."

"Excited to be here, sir!" Felix's companion barked. "Can't wait to do my part."

"Oh, you're a special one. Aren't you. Tell you what, hero boy, why don't you take first shift on point?"

"My pleasure," the obvious lunatic enthused before accepting the offered weapon and exiting the bunker to take his position in a nest above their heads which offered far better visibility than the twenty-centimeter-tall slit through which the remaining soldiers were intermittently peering.

"Lemme guess," the veteran growled as he turned to regard Felix. "You're also anxious to cover yourself in valor?"

"Hardly," Felix grumbled. "I just want to get this over with."

The man nodded and said, "Good answer." He picked up another weapon from a table and handed it to Felix before saying, "Take position next to the rest. Shoot anything that comes out of the water. Hope they run out of men before we run out of ammo."

"I don't suppose there was a tutorial on using this thing that the spectacular prick who recruited me just opted to withhold?" Felix murmured as he inspected the weapon.

"We should be so lucky. They're pretty simple. Point it at the thing who's trying to rip you into tiny pieces..."

"Or eat you," another veteran added.

"Or fuck you," a third offered with a chuckle.

"Whatever," the first snapped. "It's literally point and shoot. When it stops shooting, grab another one. If you run out, I suggest running outside and waving your arms above your head. Maybe you'll get lucky, and they'll shoot you rather than using you for entertainment."

"Just fucking great," Felix grumbled as he took his position.

Felix's first warning that the enemy had arrived was a whoop sounding from outside the bunker followed by a bright flash which seemed to come from the water. This in turn was followed by a bloodcurdling scream from the same place where the excited yelp had originated moments before.

"So much for going back home to Mary Jane Rottencrotch covered in medals," the man beside Felix muttered.

He noticed his mates did not fire, despite the fact that the enemy had clearly arrived. In fact, he realized that they were hardly moving a muscle. He could sense their fear, no small feat considering that he was quite certain they could hear him literally shaking in terror.

For want of a better strategy, he continued to watch the beach, which was covered in what looked like small blue rocks. As Felix stared at the waterline, he was amazed to realize he could see it with perfect clarity even though it was nearly a third of a kilometer distant. As he watched, what looked like a cross between an aborted Chihuahua and an orangutan emerged from the liquid. As it shook itself off, Felix spotted that it stood upright on two limbs while a third limb extended from its back holding a weapon.

"What the fuck is that?" he hissed.

The man beside him made no reply other than glaring at Felix in hatred. The relevancy of his question faded as the creature took aim and fired at an adjacent bunker. The weapon it held looked for all the world to be little more than a gnarled stick, but it emitted a visible beam as it was fired and Felix was certain he could hear the menace that beam contained. More screams followed and it quickly became obvious the bunkers would provide little in the way of protection. Felix looked around to find his mates eyeing each other fearfully.

A pregnant pause stretched between them until the man furthest from him snapped, "Fuck this," and stood quickly before scampering out of the bunker.

Everyone else leapt to follow and hurried outside as well. Felix, having been caught off guard, was still trying to collect his rifle when a series of beams filled his ears followed quickly by the agonized screams of his former comrades.

"Shit," Felix hissed as he sank back against the apparently useless stone barrier.

He felt himself beginning to hyperventilate as his mind filled with visions of his imminent death, but this was soon replaced by an eerie calm. He suddenly knew, with perfect clarity, how his wretched ancestors who had fought at the Siege of Toronto had felt. The certainty that he was about to die, and the grim determination to see to it that, if nothing else, his enemy would remember the day they crossed paths with a Dvoryanin.

He inspected his rifle one last time before surging to his feet and taking aim through the slit. The single creature on the beach now had several dozen companions, so Felix had his choice of targets. He studied the creatures for a moment, trying to decide where they were most vulnerable. He decided that it would be hard to go wrong with the eyes. He took aim and started to fire at the one he believed had murdered his comrades.

He was still shooting when the bunker he was in was hit by a hastily aimed artillery shell from several kilometers to the rear, and unceremoniously collapsed.

Seven

"Holy shit, dude!" the annoyingly exuberant man, who reminded Felix of a puppy, exclaimed as they climbed onto the drop ship. "That was amazing. We kicked their asses."

Felix shook his head rather than bursting the bubble of ignorance in which the man whose name he could not be bothered to remember resided. Felix was, in the parlance of the Star Troopers, a wily veteran. Assuming their drop ship did not get blasted out of the sky during the return journey to their cruiser, he would consider himself a member of the fraternity of survivors of at least four combat missions. He figured that distinction made him at least the equivalent to a sergeant in the parlance of earth-bound armies, if not a company grade officer.

It was impossible for him to calculate the losses which his side had sustained in the battles in which Felix had participated. This was due in large part to the fact that the humans fighting were rarely organized into anything resembling a military organization. It was almost always a group of individuals hastily assembled before the battle began and given a set of poorly defined objectives. This led to a situation which was the antithesis of what traditional armies sought. The concept of esprit de corps was wholly foreign to the Star Troopers. Felix had never once known the names of the men he fought beside. As a result, he suspected many of his comrades were just as disillusioned as he was. Each battle was something in which they were required to participate, rather than something they did for each other.

He had seemingly lucked out, after a fashion. After his horrific first battle, his following missions had differed fundamentally. Instead of the hopeless defensive battle against a technologically, and numerically, superior force which had been his introduction to interstellar warfare; he had been part of a trio of overwhelming victories against opponents who had been outgunned fifty-to-one.

That was not to say those battles had been without violence. As Felix's drop ship docked with the cruiser and he made his way toward the cubic the navy enlisted personnel called trooper country, he was grateful that the marginal degree of seniority he enjoyed was sufficient to put him at the head of the queue for the showers. He bypassed his berth in favor of instead making straight for the head, having weeks ago abandoned the last of his modesty.

He peeled off his blood-soaked uniform and crammed it down the oubliette before stepping beneath the frigid stream of water. As frequently happened in this situation, he remarked inwardly on how literally incredible it was that, not only was he not instantly incapacitated by being forced to shower in five-degree water, he no longer even considered it to be noteworthy.

He knew his newfound indifference to water temperature was just one of the changes he had undergone as a result of the Conditioning. Glancing unapologetically down at his naked body, it was not hard to see some of the other results. Where before he had been cursed with a body which even the most charitable soul would have called flabby, his body now contained no perceptible fat... anywhere. He had also grown by about a dozen centimeters. He would have theorized that the Conditioning reorganized his body's organic matter, exchanging fat for bone mass, were it not for the fact that he had also developed a legitimately preposterous musculature. His biceps were now larger than his thighs had been before. His chest was so swollen that he had an unsettling tendency to rip his undershirts. His six-pack abs were kept company by at least four additional abs, although he felt like he had spotted an additional pair at one point just above his now absurdly large penis.

He wrapped up his shower as the newer troopers started to file in and walked back to his berth without giving a thought to his nakedness. He heard several whispered comments, including one from a navy ensign who looked as though she would not have minded finding him alone in a dark corridor, but he ignored them all. Upon checking his wrist-chrono during the flight back to the cruiser, he had seen the notification he had been anticipating for nearly six weeks: a reply to his daily messages to Ursula. He knew FTL communication was spotty, often relying on ships to carry data across the light years before transmitting a bulk of messages ship-to-ship once they were in close proximity, so he had not been overly worried about the lack of response. But now that a reply had at last arrived, he felt like he could finally release a breath he had not been aware he had been holding.

Dogging the door to his berth behind him, he allowed his terminal to scan his iris before it begrudgingly admitted he was himself and popped up his inbox. He keyed the message from Ursula, sent five days prior, and hit play as he laid back on his bunk and allowed visions of their unforgettable night together to play out in his head.

***

"Star Trooper Dvoryanin. Report to deck six, radius fourteen. Immediately."

The message repeated four times before Felix moved a muscle. He had no concept of how long he had been lying motionless in his bunk. He could have been just as easily convinced that it had been mere minutes, or multiple days. He finally came to his senses, feeling not unlike how he had felt when he had been dug out of the rubble of the demolished bunker after his first battle, and threw on a uniform before heading for the lift.

As he rode up toward officer country, his mind began to wander again and quickly recalled the message he had somehow committed to memory, despite permanently deleting it after watching it only once.

'What are the odds you'd make it this long...'

The lift arrived at deck six, the highest Felix had ever been on this class of ship. He looked around somewhat warily before stepping from the lift. Earth-Gov cruisers were arranged a bit like an inverted skyscraper. The lower the deck number, the closer one drew to the bridge and the further one was from the reactor. The cubic on each deck was divided radially into as few, or as many, compartments as needed. He quickly found his destination and rapped his knuckles firmly against the frame of the closed portal.

It slid open noiselessly and he strode inside to find a lone human who was obviously a Star Trooper, based on his sheer mass and musculature. One side effect of the almost complete lack of military trappings amongst their branch of service was the absence of any type of official protocol. Felix felt like he should probably salute, but he quickly remembered that he had never seen anyone render, or receive, a salute since he enlisted.

He instead settled for coming to a halt a meter from the desk and saying, "I was instructed to report here?"

"Dvoryanin?" the seated man asked.

Felix could feel generations of cultural, and familial, programming pleading with him to bark, 'Yes Sir!', but he was again hampered by the lack of customs, so he settled for saying, "That's me."

"Glad you could make it. The Cygnians would have raised holy hell if I'd have told them that you bought the farm in the last drop."

"Me too, I guess. What's this about?"

"Lemme find that message," the man muttered as he began to fiddle with his terminal. "Have a seat."

Felix took the offered chair, not without difficulty since it had been made for a normally proportioned human. His eyes scanned across the cubic's décor and spotted a shelf containing a series of pictures taken in obviously alien terrains. Notably, the man seated before him was not the only human in more than one picture. Felix's gaze stopped at a picture taken near a body of water and featuring a rather attractive, and notably unclothed, woman.

'I happen to know the minimum signing bonus is forty thousand...

It was only after you left that I realized you only gave me twenty...'

"Here it is," the man before him finally announced.

"Here what is?" Felix muttered snippily. "And, while we're at it, who are you?"

"I'm Group Captain Mandrake. You're theoretical commanding officer."

"Right," Felix drawled. "Well... pleasure to meet you, I guess."

"Likewise," Mandrake replied without rancor. "Look, I get it. Really, I do. I've been in for nearly three years now and I still don't have the foggiest sodding idea what's going on. We all know the Cygnians are really running everything. We're just trying to keep from buying the farm."

'I checked with Earth-Gov...

they said you listed your father as your sole beneficiary...'

"Anyway," Mandrake said at length. "I'm pleased to inform you that you've been decorated. There's a name associated with the award, but I'll be damned if I can pronounce it. Suffice it to say its analogous to the royalty's Military Cross, or the bloody American's Silver Star."

"What for?" Felix asked suspiciously.

"It would seem that you managed to kill one of those damned Chalawanians during your," he consulted the screen before him, "my word... your first battle. Well done, chap. Killing one of those ornery bastards is no small feat."

Felix shook his head at the memory and said, "I was certain I was about to buy my farm right along with everyone else in my bunker who'd just finalized their land deals. I just wanted to take out as many of the fucking things as I could. I didn't even know I killed one, if I'm honest."

"Good show," Mandrake declared. "You'd be surprised how many troopers go to their reward without ever firing a shot."

'I can't believe you lied to me after all I did for you...'

"So, what's this mean, ultimately?"

"You don't get let out of your enlistment, if that's where you were headed with this. I've got a drawer full of these bloody things, and I'm still here."

"Can't blame a guy for trying," Felix offered.

"Indeed. You do, however, get a promotion to sergeant. That's effective today. It comes with a small increase in base pay, for all the good that'll do you."

'We're through unless you give me the money you owe me...'

"Joy," Felix deadpanned.

He then got to his feet and started to take his leave, but Mandrake said, "There's something else." Felix dropped heavily back into the chair and looked expectantly at his hypothetical superior.

"You've been, how did they put it, invited to volunteer for a... mission."

"Volunteer?" Felix asked incredulously. "I was under the impression that the Cygnians sent us anywhere that suited their fancy.

"Unquestionably," Mandrake agreed. He then added, "But this mission isn't typical," before falling silent.

"What am I missing?"

'And before you bring up the changes...

I could have gotten all this without your help...

I don't owe you anything...'

Mandrake sighed and read, "This mission has the potential to be extremely impactful for the war effort. It's also something which the Cygnians admit has a high degree of risk. And they apparently decided that that combination meant that they would have more success asking for volunteers amongst proven veterans."

"I'm not sure the human mind can comprehend what the Cygnians would consider a high degree of risk," Felix scoffed.

Mandrake was silent for several additional moments before he began speaking again, much quieter this time, "Look, old boy. There's no two ways about it. This is a suicide mission, pure and simple. That's why they're throwing such ridiculous bonuses at anyone who signs up, not to mention immediate discharge if you succeed."

"You think they're serious?"

"Who bloody cares if they're serious! Didn't you hear me? It's certain death, old boy. Those bastards would have known if I didn't pass this along to you, but you can't honestly be considering this. Why not be a smart lad and just say, 'no, thank you' and head back to your berth like a good trooper?"

'Stefan is taking me to his place in St. Petersburg tomorrow...'

Felix looked at Mandrake with steel in his gaze and said, "I'll do it."

Eight

A soft chime sounded in Felix's headset, informing him that the first phase of his journey was nearly at its conclusion. He ignored the sound, as he had ignored the dozen which proceeded it. His mission profile had specified that he make good use of this time in transit to study the layout of the enemy ship, both external and internal, but he was having a great deal of difficulty focusing his mind. Regardless of what techniques he attempted to employ, his thoughts continually returned to the same place: heretofore inconceivable levels of self-loathing.

He had always prided himself on being a generally logical man. When his mother died; his teenage mind had devised a litany which would help him drown out his grief with a celebration of her sacrifice. When he came to grips with the knowledge that the damage his body had suffered effectively excluded him from the possibility of finding a life partner; he had poured himself into his work and shut out thoughts to the contrary. But these prior acts of strategic self-deception had not prepared him to deal with life as a Star Trooper; where death was all but assured. Nor had his previous experience given him the tools to cope with the profound sense of anger he felt over the affair with Ursula.

That she had manipulated him into enlisting was evident, as was the fact that she had never cared a whit for him. He knew it was a damning indictment of her character (at least in his eyes), but he could not find it in himself to be surprised she would use sex as a tool to achieve her own ends. The one thing he could not untangle in his own mind was what her objective had been outside of the money. Even thinking the worst of her, he had trouble convincing himself that she would use all her feminine wiles to convince him to volunteer for what was, as near as makes no difference, a death sentence. Not for a paltry twenty-thousand credits, or even the forty thousand she might have thought she would collect. But the more he spiraled into the depths of depression over the issue, the more he was able to admit that, not only did he not really know anything about Ursula, he knew nothing about women in general. Perhaps, he had surmised, this was par for the course for the so-called gentler sex.

And his anger was far from reserved for his erstwhile lover. He was enraged at himself for having been so foolish. The fact that a woman who had shown nothing more than a passing interest in him over the course of decades suddenly started treating him like Bog's gift to women and he had accepted it with hardly a question was enough to send him into a mindless rage. He glanced sullenly over at the near bulkhead, which now featured several dozen impressions of a human fist, for a grim reminder of his mental state.

The chime sounded again, and he glanced up at the screen at the front of the cabin and frowned at the number he saw there:

'00:03:19:49'

Just over two-hundred minutes until he was no longer angry or depressed; or... anything. He felt strangely disconnected from his fate and a small part of him even tried to look forward to the experience. If nothing else, the minority of his thoughts argued, all his questions about the afterlife would soon be answered. He wasted no effort on the thought that he could potentially save countless star systems from the scourge of the purportedly evil Chalawanians. With respect to the war effort, if the preposterous exercise in which he had been ensnared could even be called such, he was, in every possible way, completely out of fucks to give.

The persistent warbling of the alarm pleading with him to prepare for his mission caused him to glance behind him at the kit he had been provided. It had been described to him as a space suit... and a means of zero-atmosphere propulsion... and armor... and a method for him carrying for more weapons and ammo than he could typically manage. The screen before him stated in no uncertain terms that he was expected to be fully suited up by T-minus sixty.

The mission profile required that he travel zero-point-five-one light years in the direction of the Chalawanian fleet. More impressively, since even a craft as small as his would be easily detectable by the enemy, he had also travelled a dozen years into the past shortly after his departure. The plan, as he understood it, was that his ship would be able to leverage the fact that his superiors knew precisely where the enemy flagship would be at a very specific moment in time. Interestingly, a moment which had occurred years before Felix had enlisted.

His objective was to:

Travel conventionally to a set of pre-determined coordinates near the Vega system; Trek through time roughly ten years into what was now his future; Exit his craft, which would arrive just behind the enemy flagship; Maneuver his suit to a pre-determined spot on the hull; Cut his way inside; Sneak through a few dozen meters of what he had been assured would be deserted corridors; Burst into the enemy commander's quarters; Kill or capture the aforementioned commander; Return to his ship; Escape!

Felix was reasonably confident he would be finding out for certain if Valhalla existed before he completed step five (unless of course he was very unlucky, and things went tits up sooner). His primary reason for pessimism, outside of the undeniable reality that Star Troopers in general had the life expectancy of a fruit fly, was a small detail he had noticed just before disembarking. His ship had been parked in the drop bay of the cruiser along with the normal assortment of shuttles and drop ships. He had noticed a series of what he recognized as Cygnian characters painted in noticeably large font on the hull. When Felix asked the significance of the decoration, a navy midshipman shrugged and said it translated to the number twenty-one-twelve. Seeing Felix's curiosity was unsatisfied, the midshipman had gone on to say that the Cygnians had started numbering the ships after the first fifty volunteers had failed to return.

When the countdown reached one-hundred minutes, Felix begrudgingly climbed from his acceleration couch and began the laborious process of donning the suit. He spent the following forty-nine long minutes cursing loud enough that he had no doubt sentients in the nearby star system would hear him despite a billion kilometers of vacuum between them. His ire was directed at the suit itself which, despite Felix having been told it had been custom built specifically for him, did not come close to fitting his swollen frame. He finally managed to seal himself in, gaining a newfound understanding of how it must feel to be a meal-pack in the process.

He was almost grateful for the lengthy process of kitting out. By the time he was sealed into his suit and had loaded up his weapons, the timer showed he had less than ten minutes until he felt the sweet embrace of oblivion. A spiteful part of him considered penning a message to Ursula in the hopes that she would be crippled by the guilt of what she had done. Two things held that impulse in check. The first was that he was nearly certain such a message would not phase her in the least. The second was that sending such a message was, quite literally, impossible. Not only was he dozens of light years from earth, but it was also more than a decade in real time before she concocted the scheme to exchange his bloody death for a paltry sum of credits.

His ship was completely automated, so Felix's only warning that things were about to get nuts was the clock slowly ticking down to zero. Just as when he travelled back in time, he had no sensation when the temporal displacement occurred. From his perspective, he simply transitioned instantly from completely empty space to profoundly not empty space. Thousands of ships suddenly surrounded him, many of which matched the craft in which he currently resided.

"You fucking dopes," Felix growled at the catastrophic foolishness of attempting the same purportedly sneak attack thousands of times at once. Even, he reasoned, if one accepted the logic of improving one's odds through greater numbers, any possible advantage was overwhelmingly negated by the complete loss of surprise.

The sky was filled with exploding ships which matched Felix's save for the conspicuous number painted on the hull. He flipped the switch on the console to give him manual control and yanked his ship into a steep bank, pulling away from the battle. Once he had put a few hundred kilometers between himself and the enemy flagship, he first tried to engage the time travel controls to move himself an hour into the past in an attempt to regain the element of surprise. He was, however, unsurprised when the controls did not respond.

"Can't have the cowardly humans bugging out just because of a little thing like certain death, can we?" he muttered.

His next step was to attempt to flee in a more traditional fashion, but after just a few seconds, a warning popped up on his screen which read, 'Autopilot engaged,' and he felt the craft bank again to head back toward the fray. He managed to disengage the autopilot, but it quickly became clear that he would not be permitted to move further from the battle. Just as with the other battles in which he had been forced to participate, he seemed to have little choice in whether he fought. He hoped that this left him some wiggle room in how he fought. He used his sensors to scan the enemy flagship and groaned in frustration when he spotted the hull practically crawling with soldiers in pressure suits.

"There goes the battle plan, you dumb fucks," Felix hissed to no one in particular.

His mind raced as he tried to think of anything which would, if not accomplish the mission objective, at least bloody the nose of the enemy. He found himself wishing it was a Cygnian cruiser before him as realization dawned that their purported allies were at least as malignant as the enemy in his viewscreen. The brief fantasy of the opportunity to take out the malignant high command responsible for his predicament caused an idea to bloom in Felix's head that was so far beyond fantastical, it qualified as laughable. His head spun as he considered the ramifications of the strategy borne out of a vid that had been ancient history in the time of his grandfather-with-more-greats-than-he-could-count.

He shook his head ruefully and said, "Einstein, you sick, twisted son of a bitch."

He started manipulating the board before him, very much surprised that the omnipresent autopilot did not override him. Within moments, he had the flight path set up and ready to execute. He rotated the ship so he was pointed directly at the center-point of the flagship, heedless of the fighters which his sensors said would be in firing range in mere seconds.

Felix spared a moment to think of his mother (who, if her beliefs held water, he would be meeting shortly) and his father (who he hoped could improve his lot in life with the small fortune he would collect upon Felix's demise). He then closed his visor and sighed wearily before triggering the three-second countdown.

"Admiral Holdo sends her regards," he muttered just as the clock reached zero and the whine of the reactor behind him reached a fever pitch.

The fact that he was several hundred kilometers from the flagship was ultimately irrelevant as Felix's ship shot forward at flank speed as he engaged the faster-than-light engines. The net result was that less than a second later, his ship exceeded the speed of light almost simultaneous to striking the flagship's energy shield. The resulting release of energy was more than sufficient to destroy every gram of matter for several thousand kilometers in every direction.