Flirtily

“It feels pretty good, actually, though I can think of a few things that could make it feel better.” You say, shifting yourself so that you’re sitting with your legs wide open and your crotch directed at her. “Can you?”

For a split second, she seems taken aback at your openness. Then she reasserts herself and licks her lips saucily. “I can sir, yes. My schedule might be a bit… tight but I’m sure we can fit a few of them in.” she says with delicious emphasis.

Running your hand across the right armrest, you bring up a holo-screen showing the count down to take off. Actually, it’s the countdown to the speech that will be made that will precede take off but as soon as the top brass of the admiralty and some of the OEG representatives have said their piece, you’ll be off. With an expert hand, you bring bring up ship schematics and statistics, killing the last few minutes before the speech by flicking through them and stealing occasional glances at {g_1}, whose sitting a little way in front of you.

Just as you’re calculating how fast you could go with only half an engine, the main display screen flashes to life and the speech begins. It’s immensely self congratulatory, citing all the hard work the OEG put into making this a reality, and takes almost half an hour to even get around to mention you and the other Captains. After that there’s even more back slapping and self congratulation before, finally, the moment arrives. The countdown begins. The engines flair to life. Five seconds left. You stare out into the void.

Three.

Two.

One.

And you’re off.

It takes an uneventful four and a half hours to reach the edge of the solar system, with all engines roaring at full speed. When you get out of range of the last planet, your ship’s engines will switch from propulsion to FTL transit and you’ll rocket away to the nearest unexplored star. That means around a week of downtime while the ship travels at speeds faster than the human brain can comfortably conceive of. You’ll have time to get used to commanding the ship, get to know your commanding staff and generally get a handle on things before you arrive.

As you finally pull away from your home system, you cast a glance at the rear view monitor back at Mars and Earth. So long old friends you think as the ship comes to a full stop and the warp drives begin to charge.

Glancing around, you can see {g_1} in here seat some metres away, flicking through long lists of figures on her holo-pad. When things are slow, neither you or her will have much to do. Everyone from the engineers to the co-pilots know what to do when things are going normally, because they’ve all trained almost as hard as you have for just as long. It’s when things stop being routine that you are really needed. When alien lifeforms are encountered, habitable planets found or malfunctions occur that you will have to start making hard decisions.

For now though, you can sit back and enjoy the view.