Of course it wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew Kym was spending the upcoming weekend with her family, as they had a tradition started when she and...her brother were young, of going to a lake resort up north for a vacation with just ‘the family’. She had told me about it recently while I was kissing her goodnight, “Maybe next summer you can join us,” she’d whispered. I’d answered her with a resounding ‘plan on it, babe.’ As I drove off I become conscious of the fact it was the first time in my. ”“I joined the Terran Federation Navy at sixteen and spent two years at the Academy. My first posting was at Port Heracles, before I transferred to the Corvette Griffon,” Calara informed him, standing at attention, while listing off the achievements and citations of her fledgling career.“Besides,” Alyssa continued, once Calara had finished. “The Invictus has a lot of big guns. I don’t know anything about ship to ship combat, do you?”John paused, mulling this surprising turn of events over in. We would not be able to do that for you today.’ ‘Oh, no,’ I wailed, ‘Now we won’t be able to sit together!’ That was an unexpected complication. The agent did take pity on us, though, and allowed Sasha to check in with me instead of having to go to the end of the long line. Small consolation. We made our way to the gate. I held Sasha’s hand on our long walk through the terminal. My emotions flip-flopped between elation and dread. We sat down in the only two seats together in the crowded. One had been a fifty-four-year-old, overweight parking officer before the Company had delivered him the tech. Now, he was a fifty-five-year-old overweight test subject. Well, he was less overweight, anyway. One’s physique had not taken to the technology as some of the others had. It was combination of that and the fact that he rarely did any physical activity, simulated or otherwise.A few squares over, Subject Four – a lean African American woman in her early thirties – was standing in her.