highly advanced. I'm no good at it. I could outfly just a hippie, sure. But they have advantages in space."
"I think maybe I'd let you kill my brother." She smiled.
"Thank you."
The rotating space restaurant undimmed its lights and I could see her red, ketchupy tongue wiggling at me. The meal was a bit disgusting, but she made what remained of the planetary food supply worth eating.
"Tomorrow I'm going to call him again to advocate for his return to Earth," she said. "You can conference the call if you want. Just don't say anything."
That sounded like a good idea. I was curious, even though her brother was an idiot. I knew little about the Weird Aliens themselves. Maybe through Richard, her brother, I could learn something to help with test scores.
"I will, doll."
"Great."
The music had switched to smooth jazz. It didn't have the piano drop like I liked, but it was relaxing and turned me on. I hinted at her that I was feeling frisky, too. I told her I felt like a sexual warrior.
Just call me Samuel.
CHAPTER TWO
Old Kentucky
I broke free from formation to pick on a squad of weakling hippies at Alpha Niner Alpha. Captain shouted at me afterward. I imagined myself lancing her brother with my big ray, because I had already lost the mission by damaging my robotic copilot. The extra points I lost by going rogue were so worth it.
From the chewing out I got over the line it was pretty easy to detach myself.
"Just because it's a simulation doesn't mean you can go off on a twitch-kill spree. Samuel, are you paying attention? Your father's legacy of reducing the violence of the war is a legacy I expect you to uphold. . .!" He droned on and I didn't catch much of the rest of it. I couldn't stop thinking about killing Richard.
My mates and I were going to have a night-cap, with tons of Old Kentucky liquor. I was trying to impress them with the shooting spree. Maybe we'd all have something else to talk about besides my father.
Later that night, cleaning my dorm, a call from Arne came through the line.
"Have you thought about the conference call at all? I expect you to listen in on my brother and I discussing his conversion back to Human." This nagging was getting old.
I folded my flight jacket. "I'll be on the line. Why can't we just calm down over there?"
"Are you going to hang out with your flatmates tonight?" she asked.
How could I lie to her? I could picture her shiny, wet breasts pushed up against the shower door. I couldn't lie to someone I had such feelings for.
"No."
Well, I suppose it was too hard to lie to her after all.
"Good," she said with certainty. "I'll be dialing him with the supervision of the Captain at 2100."
"Okay, doll."
The flatmates and I shared the same domestic building, which was inhabited entirely by other pilots like us. If I wanted to go to the Space Restaurant, I could take the elevator to the dining hangar. If I needed to visit an old trainer across the globe: travel hangar. And for launching in times of war: battle hangar. There was a legend that my father stole one of the combat ships with my mom and blew a crater into the moon in the shape of his giant cock, but I've been to the moon and couldn't recognize anything. It was almost definitely a legend.
The ones who tried to tell me he tripped acid on Io were even worse. Apparently, psychedelics didn't immediately convert people back in the day. They must have gotten stronger since then.
If my dad tripped acid, then I was going to come out of the closet and join a gay circus on the dark side of Neptune.
I asked Taylor when I made it to his dorm if I could link my lines to his system. He asked why, and I told him to just wait for it. He tossed me the Old Kentucky liquor and said, "Yes, I can link your line."
I checked the liquor bottle's label:
" This whiskey was drawn out of the stomachs of homeless hippies who lost their lives to cadets on the way to the outer planetoids.
David Stuckler Sanjay Basu
Aiden James, Patrick Burdine