Maru: A SciFi Romance

Chapter 1

Maru

If there’s a better way to awaken than being nestled between the naked bodies of the half Pi’rell Darez twins, I’ve never thought it up. And I’m a clever lad. Sighing in contentment, I wriggle out from between their pillowy soft breasts with great reluctance, but if I don’t assemble for training my ball busting trainer Vyker will have me doing extra PT until I puke.

The guy has it in for me, I swear It’s not like I asked to be born into the Duracorp dynasty, but what I am supposed to do, NOT be rich? As if. That old adage that creds can buy anything but happiness? I don’t, because I’m not poor like the idiot who came up with it.

I’d prefer to be on Arc Royal, living it up with my wealthy friends and hangers on, hooking up with a different woman every night. But no, my parents decided that I should enter the Alliance Military. Oh, they’ve assure me that their connections will keep me out of active combat, but they want me to form connections and networks with the command structure that will last beyond my lifetime, ensuring a profitable future for Duracorp.

If my dad ever heard me say it out loud, he’d kill me, but a few times I’ve come to the conclusion that not only does Duracorp have enough money already, they might have TOO much money. Guess I’m not as good of a business man as he is, but it seems to me like we have a stranglehold on the market for starship amenities in the Alliance military. We don’t build the ships, or the weapons, or even come up with the plans for them. What we do is provide just about everything else. That blue carpet you walk on when you enter the first class section of a luxury liner heading to Glimner? That’s us. Or how about the zero g functional vacuum waste disposal units on each and every Alliance military vessel? Yes, you guessed it, that’s Duracorp too.

But a few times my dad has taken top brass on ‘business’ trips that seemed to involve a lot of playing portal golf and getting drunk, the end result of which is a renewed no bid contract for Duracorp. A couple of our competitors have gone out of business. Doesn’t seem right.

I check on the Darez twins, and they’re still out cold. No wonder, with the way they tackled that bottle of Odex blood ale by themselves. That stuff gives me heartburn, but a lot of younger Sapients seem to favor it. Give me a Terran whisky any day.

Don’t tell my dad that either.

The sonic shower gently ripples my skin with its pressure, too high pitch for most to hear. It feels great, but I’m a tight squeeze in this shower compartment. At over seven feet tall and a very husky three hundred and fifty pounds, I have no problem lugging around the heavy weaponry like the Punisher Blaster Gatling cannon. Vyker likes to make us do push ups but I can do thousands of those. I’ve always been a natural athlete, and if not for my father sending me to the Barakus academy I could have taken a lucrative BBL contract. He thought having a professional athlete in the family would diminish our public image. 

You’re probably getting the feeling that I do pretty much whatever my dad tells me to. In a way you’re right, but that’s leaving out all the times I’ve really pissed him off. Our relationship is complicated, I guess you could say.

I finish the shower and get dressed in my ATG—all purpose tactical gear, a fancy way of saying that I’m wearing dusky camo fatigues. I prefer tailored suits, but of course no one at the Alliance command cares about that.

Gently closing the door behind me, I leave the sister’s flat and head down to the street seventy stories below. Vander only has four layers of traffic, but I want to get a hover taxi on the lowest level. I was drinking last night and I don’t trust the nut jobs who handle the top tier not to make me sick with their driving.

Technically, I’m not supposed to leave the academy overnight. There are actually sensors in my bunk that will activate after lights out and check to see if the bed is occupied. What kind of fascist bull shit is that? Good thing that I’m so clever. My butler, Skeeve, sleeps in my bunk to keep the alarms from triggering. Well, I don’t know if he gets much sleep, because he’s also usually doing my homework. 

If you’re wondering why my fellow cadets don’t rat me out, that’s simple. Once a week I throw a bash at a hotel down town, and provide all the booze. A cheap solution, really.

The hover taxi lets me out a half mile from the Barakus Academy, just like usual. Then I jog up and nod to the MPs outside the gate as they raise it for me. These guys are at my parties, too.

Best of all, I’m the first one to arrive at roll call, even though I can tell it’s going to be a long day. I really didn’t get much sleep last night, but you know what they say about the sweeter rest. I had the sweeter rest times two.

Gradually the rest of trainees show up. Listol the Grolgath, kind of skinny and a bit of a complainer, but otherwise an all right guy. Then there’s Dylbek, a Shorcu who seems to know every dirty joke ever envisioned on any planet in the galaxy. And man, what a dog. I like chasing tail as much as the next guy, hell probably a whole lot more, but Dylbek just will not give it a rest. It’s like, yeah, you can make anything sound sexual, it’s not a talent, get over it.

Zaru the tragic soul is next. I bet you didn’t think Vakutans came in angsty. Well, prepare to meet Zaru. Yeah, his parents were sick and old when he ‘miraculously’ was conceived, and it’s pretty cool that he took care of them for so long, but fuck, try and smile once in a while. We’ve been trying to get him laid, but booze doesn’t loosen him up, it just makes him moody.

The rest of the crew show up. Good guys, I guess, but I have trouble remembering their names. I’ll admit that I resort to reading the nametags on their fatigues from time to time. I mean, I know who Rez is because he’s a big, lumbering bastard, but the rest I’m still working on.

Vyker comes striding up toward us, the drill Sergeant from the Abyss itself. The guy’s a living legend, a highly decorated war hero who wound up displaying an even greater acumen for training cadets. Or so I’m told. The guy’s just a jerk if you ask me, a sadist who takes pleasure in watching others suffer.

We line up for roll call, by height because that’s what Vyker wants. You might think that because he gets to snuggle up to his gorgeous wife every night he’d have mellowed out. But you’d be wrong. If anything, he people seem to think he’s grown even more bellicose and nasty.

After roll call, Vyker usually breaks down what we’ll be training on for the day. But this morning, he comes and stands in front of me, squinting in the dawn light.

“Maru, would you mind tell me what the hell you were doing off campus last evening?”

I look from my left to my right as if ascertaining that sarge is indeed talking to me, and then gape in astonishment.

“Off campus, sir? Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I slept like a log last night, you can check the sensor logs on my bunk.”

“It’s funny you should mention that—”

Vyker’s sneer fades into an expression of surprise as a loud, buzzing engine cuts him off. Riding an antique hover bike, his two piece coat flapping in the wind, sunlight glinting off his bald, wrinkled pate, comes my man Skeeve. He steers the bike with one seemingly frail hand, while the other holds up a silver platter with a dome engraved with the Duracorp crest.

Skeeve pulls up to a stop next to me, and dismounts the bike. He whisks the lid off the platter and offers it to me with  slight bow of his bent back.

“Cheese platter and Death beetle larvae, sir?”

“You’re ten minutes late, Skeeve.” I reach over and take a fat, juicy larvae off the platter and pop it into my mouth as Vyker gapes in astonishment. “And where’s my sparkling wine?”

Skeeve points at the sky, his face holding the same expression of dull disinterest it has held since my childhood.

“Right here, sir.”

Vyker and the platoon all stare up into the air as a hovercraft buzzes past overhead. It drops a drone, which flies down next to me. A metal arm extrudes, holding a chilled bottle of the sparkling beverage.

“Hmph. This had better be a good vintage, Skeeve.” I’m just about to take a sip when Vyker smacks the bottle out of my hand. I stare in shock as it bleeds out onto the dirt, broken glass glinting in the early morning light.

“That was uncalled for.”

“Maru, do you think you’re special?” Vyker looms over me, his nostrils flaring.

“Uh, yeah. Of course I think I’m special.”

The crew laughs, and that enrages Vyker further.

“You’re running twelve circuits of the grounds, Maru.”

“Twelve, sir?”

“Get your ass moving, and get that stupid butler off of the academy grounds. And no more cheese platters.”

“Wait a minute, now.” I start running, and Vyker is right behind me smacking me with his riding crop. “Can I still have beetle platters?”

“No, you can’t have beetle platters either. Shut your smart mouth and move it, move it, move it…”

As I run around the academy, wondering if I’m going to drop dead of a heart attack or get beaten to death by Vyker first, I hit upon a scheme. If I survive this, there are ways of securing off campus housing even for a first year cadet like me.

If I get engaged, I can live with my fiancé away from all those smelly oafs in my unit. Yes, this is a genius idea. I bet I can fast track a Companion contract with my familial connections and wealth.

Just so long as she knows that I’m too much man for one woman.