Free Bloodstar: Star Corpsman: Book One by Ian Douglas Page B

few more moments, and then she left to get me another drink—a zero-G floater this time. The trajectory had blasted me pretty heavily; was that why I suddenly wasn’t interested in sex? Anyway, I was pretty sure another trajectory was going to set me hard on my ass. The floater was milder, would be easier on my system, with a lower percentage of C 2 H 6 O and less of a kick.
    I looked across at Doob and Machine. They both were totally off planet—approaching the inevitable climax of their links in perfect time with the ménage up on the furry stage.
    Masha returned with my drink a moment later, then wandered off to check on her other customers. I looked past the writhing ménage on stage at the image of Earth suspended against the stars. Maybe a part of my inability to join in had to do with how unsettled I was feeling just then. Until recently, I’d thought I’d known exactly what I was and where I was going. If I didn’t make FMF, though, all of that was called into question.
    Oh, the next seven years would be spent in the Navy, there was no question about that; I couldn’t shout “I changed my mind!” and take back my signature on my re-up agreement. But holding sick call for service personnel and their dependents at some naval base Earthside, or maybe getting to work at an outpost off planet somewhere, holding sick call, running lab tests, performing medscans.
    The alert went off inside my skull.
    It started as a long, piercing, two-pitch whistle, like the old-fashioned boatswain’s whistles of the old-time surface Navy.
    “Attention, Clymer personnel,” a voice said in my head after the whistle died away. “Attention Clymer personnel. Now recall, recall, recall. All hands report back aboard ship immediately. This is an embarkation order. Repeat . . .”
    I gulped down the remaining half of my floater, hesitated, then put an extra-big tip on the table account for Masha. Across the table, Doob and Machine were blinking their eyes, looking around in a somewhat dazed manner. Recall alerts came through whether your channels were switched off, like mine, or even if they were fully engaged in other activities. I was suddenly delighted that I’d decided not to take the music’s genie up on her offer to take things further.
    Talk about rude interruptions!
    Somehow, they managed to pay their tabs, and we made our way out of the Earthview.
    A lot of other men and women were doing the same thing.

 
    Chapter Five
    W e embarked from Starport a few hours after our return to the Clymer .
    All three of us hit the sober-up in sick bay, a heavy dose of nanobots programmed to break down the ethanol and release oxygen into the blood. The effect is kind of like going from pleasant free-fall sensations to slamming face-first into the deck, but you’re thinking more clearly when the shock wears off, and there’s no hangover.
    Much of the conversation in the squad bay was centered on our precipitous recall. “Damn,” Doob said, shaking his head. “I was just about to make it with that genie, too!”
    “You do know it was all in your head, right?” I asked him.
    “What’s your point? You make it with FAB, that’s all in your head too.”
    I shrugged. He had a point. Sex was sex, whether you got it on with a virtual reality program downloaded into your brain’s sensory centers, or had an orgasm with flesh and blood. In fact, brain scans had pointed out three centuries ago that when it came to a cerebral download of a recorded event, to a remembered event, or to an actual event taking place in physical reality, the brain can’t tell the difference .
    The Clymer , with twelve hundred Marines of MRF-7 embarked on board, accelerated under Plottel Drive out-system at 1 full gravity, seeking the flat metric required by the astrogation department, where local space carried only a minimum curvature from gravity. Flat gravitometrics allowed us to switch on the Alcubierre Drive, which would let us cruise out-system faster than