There is no time to waste, as 16 of my new pretty little toys are already playing wreck the house with my innards. I can feel my left thigh tingling from the nanomite concentration and I switch the metaspheres to my right pocket instead.

My cabin is a 5-minute walk away. I pass through corridors filled with marines going about. Even with 32% losses the Dreadnaught is bustling with activity, and that's because only one part of the personnel is combat troops.

Where the SFC is a reference mainly for the combat forces, the marines, yet other divisions exist inside the ship, including engineers, maintenance crews, navigators, and security forces.

It is easy to distinguish each division by its uniforms, but the contrast usually lies in the Genome to human ratios of which I am a clear exception.

It is uncommon for a Genome to be in the Spacedive marines, we die too easily to make a difference. Diving through space does not require a genius mind, or exceptional reflexes, only adequate preparation and a fair amount of luck.

Paradoxically, from all the other divisions, the sciences are the ones filled with the most Genomes, towering over everybody else, wearing unique appearances, topped with beautifully carved bodies, and armed with the sharpest minds. The security forces have quite a few, that I call bred brutes, and of course the sleazy higher-ranked officers.

From the perspective of the average personnel, however, seeing a Genome brings forth a little awe and respect or so I am led to believe by their reactions when they confront me.

It is what a Genome should be–a someone to look out for, admire, and adhere to, the peak of human nature, its best face, but not all hold the same feelings towards our kind high-ranking officers. Me included.

Thus I do not find it strange that almost all Spacedive marines who encounter me nod or salute in some form. Of the approximately one thousand SFC troops remaining, I am close to unique in this.

My cabin door hisses open after I input the passcode and undergo a facial scan. Dumping my metaspheres in a sealed container is a priority that I do not delay executing.

Next, I grab my day’s meal. A mealbar the size of my thumb, that tastes so stale I grimace while I chew it. The plastic wrapper has the image of a slick space cruiser sailing around a planet with the caption Taste the stars.

I’m probably tasting the dirt of a thousand meteorites when I gulp it down. I have been looking forward to the SFC main hub's slightly larger flavor selection.

Forcing my lungs to take a deep and slow breath, I lie in bed with my feet bent. I don’t fit comfortably in the standard beds the combat troops are issued with.

Mindlessly I turn the wrapper and read the nutrient info. The list is so long that the producer used short descriptions to fit everything neatly.

3000kcals/bar; Proteins, Carbs, Fats, Vitamins, Minerals, Body Rejuvenators, Mood Stabilizers…

I grab at another mealbar. Unfortunately for my tastebuds, I need two of these to maintain my strength.

The cabin around me is sparse, only equipped with a small desk, the bed I’m currently on, and a closet where my biosuit lies. All crumped in a 3sqm space. The overhead yellow light isn’t blinding, I have it tuned to a comfortable shade so I can stare at the ceiling and read through my optics without issue.

Which is exactly what I’m doing. I go through the reports of the assault, looking for names I am familiar with, damages, and the like.

It takes me a while to go through everything but I quite enjoy it. Numbers and reports are my bread and butter–two things I’ve never had the chance to taste, which makes the saying somewhat exotic.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

—-

A knock on my cabin door interrupts my studying. I was familiarizing myself with several new weapon designs found in the Helion Syndicate battleship. The company engineers didn’t delay uploading their findings to the mainframe, in their neatly organized servers, which I shouldn’t have access to, but I do, oh yes I do.

I lift myself to sit on the bed. Standing feels claustrophobic inside the cabin, especially since my head reaches uncomfortably close to the ceiling.

“Enter,” I say to the man I was expecting for some time now.

The door slides open to reveal Sergeant Tommy Plink, the first friend I made in the SFC.

“Yo Amon, you good, big man? Or did the little Helion men tickle your thighs as you stomped on them?” He says with a smile that I can't resist not to copy.

“Hah, says you whose luck may be even greater than an Overlord's gonorrhoeal glands,” I reply, mentioning maybe one of the ugliest parts of the ugliest species ever seen in the universe.

Tommy nearly chokes his laugh as he processes my words. I squint my eyes in disgust too. My banter got the better of me.

“Come, sit, how are you holding on?” I say motioning to the chair in front of my desk. I had been a little concerned but the fatality lists I had read through didn’t have his name on. But still, I worried.

“Well enough, well enough,” He replies and sits. His smile comes out a bit forced this time.

“Let me check on you then. Just to ensure everything is working fine,” I don’t have to move much to grab my tablet and tools for the job.

He extends one hand and I stick the white sensor patch connected by wires on his bare skin. My tablet starts running a systems check as it finds a connection, and I see a healthy amount of nanomites swimming lazily inside his veins.

“Good, good..” I mutter absentmindently but mostly I’m looking over the code of the recent data history. No recent injuries come up.

I pull the patch off him, having gone through the data and found nothing wrong, I move closer to check on the other bioaddons I had installed.

Since there was no way to implant a brainchip safely while operating in a crew cabin with no proper tools, I had to improvise a bit. I embedded a cheap version of a brainchip in his posterior neck muscles. This way it lost some potential functionalities but with the cheap materials I was working with it didn’t make much difference.

There was only one app running through it, his optics, with only one signal channel and no further capacity it was just right for the job–barely an upgrade from Lowtech but essential in keeping him alive.

Through the tablet, I run a server connection to his optics and when they sync, the system runs a diagnostics that comes out green. All is well. My one worry about a malware infection evaporates and I finally relax.

Tommy must have seen the worry leave my features because he exhales and slumps on the desk.

“Grab a drink later at the commons?” He says after a moment, he knows this was not a social call.

I have to go through the same process 23 more times. Other marines dully on the corridors near my cabin, waiting for their own checkup.

“Are you buying? I’m finding myself a bit low on credits…” I joke since we both know that isn’t the case.

“For you anytime, I hear there is a new Taste the Stars cocktail you’ll love.”

I groan.

—-

The 24th knock surprises me. I was about to fall asleep since the day-off after the assault ends in about 9 hours and the mandatory training would begin anew.

This time I stand to open the door myself.

A woman I have not seen before waits nervously at the entrance to my cabin but something familiar clicks, and I make a calculated guess.

“Gardenia, I didn’t expect you so soon,” I say and she frowns. We hadn’t taken our masks off before we parted ways.

“Sergeant Amon, you are especially easy to find.” She says, her brown eyes darting sideways in a way that reminds me of a scarred rodent.

“That I am, please enter,” I show her the desk chair and I sit back on the bed.

She looks thin and frail without her biosuit on, and her long brown hair is unkept but she strides in without hesitation.

The door hisses closed behind her and she looks apprehensively at me as she sits.

Sometimes I wonder if I would be as brave, entering a Genome’s cabin almost double her size. How desperate would I have to be?

“You have had many visitors, Sergeant. I had to wait a while,”

“I take it you considered my offer then,” I reply.

“I have. How d..do we start?” She asks nervously.

I explain to her my offering, the same one I have provided to every other marine knocking on my door with the same request.

She pays me back the credit I gave her by swiping the electronic card on my tablet and I start by taking a vial of her blood.

“First I’ll grow the nanomites on your blood so they can recognize you as the host body. It will take a few days until the number is sufficient to enter your bloodstream,” I explain as I work. I found that it eases the mind to understand the whole process.

“After that, they will multiply and sustain their own. They behave as parasites inside the host body by absorbing parts of the nutrients you ingest. You will find yourself hungrier during the acclimation period, which is a normal reaction. For a month you will double your meals to sustain a healthy level of nutrients for both you and the nanomites.” I say and she nods along with the instructions.

Now the second part. We switch places and she lies down on the bed in a supine position. I can tell she is nervous, she fidgets with her fingers, but I only need her head to lay completely still.

“I will grow your optics by taking a sample of your cornea and developing it together with the panel and miniprocessor. It will feel as natural as your own sight when I install them. Together with the controller chip, it will take about a week to finish.”

I am not sure how she imagined the process but she seems relieved after I finish collecting the samples. For any ordinary human, the upgrade from Lowtech must seem an extravagant affair. And I know why. I offer them the service at a fraction of the usual price. It would have been impossible for her to afford any of this.

Before she leaves she salutes crisply. The list of 24 become 25 and a loose plan I had been working on since I unwillingly joined the merc company comes a step closer to fruition.

—-

Sleep inside the cabin used to be a fleeting thing. It’s been a long while since then, more than a few years. I just remembered I must be turning 30 next week.

Now it is an easy thing, never mind that the Dreadnaught is speeding through space, building up momentum. We will be increasing speed for two weeks straight.

Post-light speeds are rightly uncomfortable to the eyes, so I’m glad my cabin is just a metal box that once felt like a cage but now is oddly comforting.

I doze off to the constant white noise of the ship.