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JOIN THE SPACE FORCE AND BECOME A STAR
Feel stuck in life? No forward direction? Trapped by a gravity you never asked for?
MAKE FRIENDS, SEE THE GALAXIES, SAVE YOUR PLANET.
-
Mateo Martínez, recruit number 206MM███, is excited to get back planet-side after two straight months in fake grav, bouncing from ship to station before finally arriving on Planet Z. There are only three camps that anyone knows about for potential pilots, and Fort Tereshkova is one of them. His Intergalactic Space Force recruiter told him he should feel lucky to join a privileged few, to even get the chance to try to be a pilot.
What he feels is impatient. He’s not the only one rushing when the hatch cracks open.
The first thing he notices when he steps onto sandy ground is that the uniforms aren’t warm. It's a disappointment -- Martínez expected the stiff fabric to at least keep the cold out, but the clothes were made for the fake atmos you find on superyachts or stations, not weather on a real planet. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have your feet pulled into the dirt.
The gravity is heavier than he’s used to back home. A g-force of .75 made ore so cheap to haul, the moon was already hollowed out by the time he was born, nothing left but deep core missions and misery and acid rain.
That’s ultimately what brought him here in the first place -- the Space Force recruiters loved planets like his and knew exactly how to sweeten the deal. He knew it was propaganda, but it was still a tempting offer: one year of training and four years of activity duty got you a lifetime stipend and a lot more access to travel than most Careers he could name, so long as you didn’t get killed. And Martínez, as a miner, had a lot of experience with not getting killed.
Besides, nothing could be worse than rotting away on a dying moon, watching his friends either manage to escape or worse: die of an explosion, or an accident, or an OD, or a fight. So he wasn’t worried when he signed the contract. But trudging through the freezing wasteland of Planet Z, his legs feeling like lead and his hands losing feeling, he feels the first tendril of trepidation.
-
618LJ████, Kim Minjun, isn’t very good at bootcamp. The gravity on Planet Z is too much, 12.25 m/s² and dragging him down. Everything smells. No one else is coughing, or even still puking after training, after the first few weeks. Except him.
He knew coming in this would be hard -- Fort Tereshkova is the one you want to be shipped to if you want to ever be a pilot -- but he didn’t think it would hurt this much. Smog and water rationing on Terra had been bad but this? His lungs are full of sand, his knees ache, he feels thirsty all the time. Each passing day, Kim feels more and more sure there’s been some kind of mistake. He took the same aptitude tests as everyone there, even the non-humans, but everyone else seems stronger, more competent. Better suited to whatever they’re being trained to do.
The only time he feels anything but anxious churn is when he treks out from camp into the gloam of the desert, moons glinting off the giant slices of volcanic glass and crystals that shoot up from the sand. The wind is peaceful. There's no light pollution but the base, so galaxies swirl above him, unfamiliar constellations winking down. Not that he’s much of an astronomer; that’s why he’s still in a bootcamp and not on a nice planet, one with oceans and universities and an officer school.
Kim tells himself at night that people come back. His mom came back, the Space Force gave her new legs for her troubles, a nice pension, enough to keep them off basic rations. She was a pilot. He’ll come back. He’ll eventually get to leave.
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TIRED OF BEING A WAGE SLAVE? SEE THE STARS AND GET PAID WHILE SERVING IN THE INTERGALACTIC SPACE FORCE.
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Martínez doesn’t make a lot of friends. It’s easier to keep to himself, anyway. No one likes him, but no one has a problem with him either. He’s helpful. He’ll take a shift of your chores if you ask but he doesn’t want to hang out. Instead of wasting time with homemade booze and gambling on the off days, he takes a hike.
Other than the Fort, there wasn’t much to see on Planet Z. There’s just not anywhere to go -- wander too far from camp and you’d die of exposure in a few days. The drill instructors think it’s funny to tell them they have free rein of the planet, as long as they don’t shirk their duties or miss curfew.
So Martínez goes exploring -- it’s more pleasant than marching, walking without his fellow recruits or any yelling. And he finds strange little hollows all over the planet, quartz crystals, jagged glass, and sand. Black sand, white sand, all kinds of sand. He finds it in his teeth.
It’s easy to access the base’s expansive library even miles outside of the base, despite the fact that off-planet comms were shit. His normal routine is to settle down in the shadow of a huge tower of glass and read for an hour on his tablet before having to go back to the barracks, the noise of everyone trying to get to sleep.
So he’s startled when someone breaks the silence, a surprised voice calling out.
“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t know anyone would be here. I didn’t know anyone knew about here, actually.” The other recruit gives him a pained smile and tugs at a lopsided, hand knit scarf around his neck. He has matching cropped black hair to Martínez, tan brown skin, but that was about it for similarities. He’s skinny, hasn’t managed to start building muscle yet. And there’s something about his face that’s inviting, the opposite of his own resting fuck-off expression. Probably baby fat.
Martínez doesn’t say anything. The guy is red-faced, out of breath and wheezing, so it takes him a while to ask, “What’re you reading?”
He narrows his eyes. He gets enough shit in his bunk for reading. Still, this guy looks ready to blow over in the wind. “Moby Dick.”
“That’s an old one,” he says. “Barely in Standard. Interesting choice.” When there’s nothing more forthcoming, he presses on and stammers out, “I’m, uh, Kim.” He starts to cough in between words. “Kim Minjoon.”
“I’ve seen you around,” Martínez says once Kim’s done with his coughing fit. He gruffly adds, “At the ET table.”
Kim frowns. He seems soft. “Scoff at your own risk. I know why they put me in the reject unit, but the non-Terran-based recruits are all really strong.”
Martínez has noticed this. He’s looking to make squad leader and since he isn’t making friends he needs a different strategy when they start playing war games. He can’t schmooze to save his life, Star Force commercials be damned.
“Do they like you?” Martínez flips off the backlight to his tablet, interested now. “Do they trust you?”
“Uh, I guess? Do you trust your own unit?” Kim sits down on the sand near him, pulling out his own tablet from one of the uniform’s many pockets and looking up at the sky. “Are you gonna tell me your name or beat me up or what?”
He laughs. It’s small and dry and he hasn’t heard it in a long time. “Martínez. You should see the medbay about your cough. That’s probably not helping your scores.”
Kim blushes and busies himself with his tablet, but eventually he says, “In our land tactics course…you’re too straightforward,” without looking at him. “Too blunt. Too willing to sacrifice. That’s why no one wants to work with you.”
Martínez thins his lips, but he thinks it’s probably true. Kim has no reason to lie, and he’s very, very good at the academic side of things. He has to be, to make up for everything else, to even get to Fort Tereshkova.
They don’t shake hands when Martínez leaves, but they nod at one another the next time they cross paths.
-
FAQ:
Q. Is fraternization allowed in the Space Force?
A. Fraternization between samed-ranked individuals is not only allowed, it’s encouraged -- nothing builds bonds between soldiers like a little fluid exchange.
However, there is absolutely NO fraternization allowed between soldiers of dissimilar ranks. That’s a no-no, and a BIG abuse of authority!
-
Martínez doesn’t think about Kim much after that. He’s focused on his exercise scores -- he’s not the best yet, but he’s up there. His shooting is weak, which is a bigger problem than just hindering him from making squad leader. But there’s only so much time they let them have on the range before other recruits need to take their place. He wishes he could bring a gun out to the sands.
But Kim keeps appearing every so often in Martínez’ crystal forest. He isn’t a nuisance, but he does expect small talk before they can fall into a companionable silence. It’s probably good for him to talk to another human being, anyway.
This evening Kim’s energy is nervous and it’s ruining his concentration. He’s still reading Moby Dick, the quintessential piece of Olde Literature about being a captain. That’s what his recruiter told him. His recruiter probably never read it. It’s tough to focus with Kim rattling around, his leg bouncing in the sand.
He finally looks over when he hears Kim take a large breath, like he’s steadying himself.
“Lemme suck you off,” is not what he expected Kim to say, he didn’t expect the glint in his eye under the moonlight to be quite so alluring.
He hadn’t thought much about Kim, their occasional meetings. Of course he’d noticed Kim’s improvements, and the fact that higher scores correlated with better social standing despite Kim’s insistence on remaining loyal to his non-human friends.
“What the fuck?” Martínez isn’t mad but he’s confused. Is he interested?
“I’m bored as hell, you’re hot, we’re here.” Kim shrugs, like it all makes sense. “You don’t have some kinda secret girlfriend right? Or, don’t tell me, you’re pining away for someone back home.” He says the last part with a sneer, less for the hypothetical partner and more to the idea of “back home.” Conceptually.
Martínez gets it, but he still barks out an automatic “Fuck off.” It seems like the safest bet.
Kim ignores him and presses on, batting his eyelashes and asking, “So…you into it?”
Is he?
“Uh, maybe not now.” Martínez doesn’t have a secret girlfriend and he doesn’t know why he hadn’t considered that people would fuck in bootcamp. Of course they would, hundreds of eighteen to twenty-five year olds hoping to make enough money to live til they’re 125 shoved into barracks 300 miles from the next town, which was also a Space Force base. What else is there to do?
Back home there weren’t enough people for him to spend that much caring about the kind of intricate sexual politics that populate the dramas. He’d lucked out -- had a girl for a while, didn’t die in a mine collapse, now he’s somewhere else. He wouldn’t die a virgin, which is more than a few of his peers managed.
“Okay, well, if you want a no strings attached blowjob, you know who to ask.” Kim says it like he’s offering to lend Martínez a shirt. Maybe it could be like that.
Kim asks, “Are you blushing?” and Martínez grumbles until he leaves him alone.
-
CHOICE, NOT CHANCE: MAKE SURE TO FLY ON YOUR OWN TERMS. JOIN THE SPACE FORCE.
-
It takes two more months of crawling on their belly in riot gear, in full spacesuits, in flightsuits, of shooting and fighting and sparring, before they’re finally deemed ready to move on to the next unit. Fewer people than Martínez expected failed. He doesn’t manage to warm up to many more people but he works hard enough to impress his instructors, the people who he thinks really matter. The lieutenants don’t like the kiss asses but he’s not obsequious -- wouldn’t know how to even start.
“You’re up, Martínez,” grunts his now former Drill Instructor, a man with permanent goggles and enormous muscles, which bulge as he crosses his arms. “You’re not gonna get to change personnel for the next three months.”
They pick recruits like picking teams in gym class. Plenty of obvious choices get nabbed first, so it’s a shock to everyone watching when he picks the Vespodia. The recruit laughs, mandibles clacking together, and Martínez also nabs the dreamy-eyed Venusian woman before he picks another human. She’s the strongest person on base, hands down; just because people find her third eye off-putting is no reason to leave her for someone else to snatch.
Kim isn’t his last choice but he’s nearer to the end than the middle. He seems unconcerned, but Martínez gets a few sharp glances from unit-mates still waiting to be picked. Everyone would end up in a squadron for the rest of their wargames unit; that didn’t mean they wouldn’t see this as a betrayal.
But Kim is already chatting with the enormous wasp, and he seems to be getting along with the other recruits he picked mostly based on scores. Even if Kim were deadweight physically, his presence as a personably liaison there would be worth it. Call him the personality hire.
Martínez knows it could be a mistake. Kim makes him feel off-kilter despite there having been no follow up propositions. He’s still not sure if he should have even turned him down.
When their team wins capture the flag, they get the night off from KP and a bottle of whiskey from Lieutenant Jones, which Martínez wasn’t expecting. He’s grateful, and not stupid enough to keep it to himself. It’s time to try and at least make acquaintances, so he leads his troops to the nooks he’s found in the crystal forest. They’re suitably impressed.
Kim proposes a toast, and Martínez notices the breadth of his shoulders, unbidden. Maybe it’s the rush of victory that makes his vision sharp. The other members of his new squad seem to like each other, lots of hands slapping shoulders and loud chatter, and a cheer goes up at the completion of his little speech, thanking their squad lead Mateo and his teammates for watching out for one another. It’s pat.
“You got your cough looked at,” he says, once the commotion of toasting has died down and everyone is talking and drinking.
“Turns out no one on Earth doesn’t have asthma, so the doctors didn’t flag it there,” he says. “It was an easy fix. Embarrassing, really.”
His eyes shine under the moons’ light, dark coloring again the same as his own, but the shape different. A distorted reflection or just two people who are dark haired and dark eyed and alone. He just knows Kim is alone, even after shaking off his previous loser status.
Kim sneaks up on him, leaning in and laughing as he says, “I see you looking.” His face is red with alcohol and his smile is tempting. Martínez isn’t sure this is worth it, fraternization is allowed but can bring so much mess. Worse than friends, even.
He reaches out anyway, squeezes Kim’s bare shoulder and feels the muscle there, same as his own. Hot-blooded, tan skin, growing muscle. He deserves a reward, right? They won.
“Have you done this before?” Kim whispers, and Martínez isn’t sure what he means -- what are they going to do? They can’t fuck properly in the middle of nothing in front of the rest of what Martínez hoped would be their squadron.
The confident press of Kim’s full lips is a surprise. They feel as soft as he’d let himself imagine.
Kim pulls away and smirks when he asks, “Did you kiss your girl back home like this?”
Martínez shakes his head no -- he had a girl once, but she left their moon on her eighteenth birthday and never once looked back. And she was right to.
He leans forward. He isn’t thinking of her when he slides his tongue into Kim’s mouth.
-
65% OF RECRUITS MAKE IT PAST BOOTCAMP. THAT’S BETTER ODDS THAN YOU HAVE OF MAKING IT TO 65 IF YOU STAY ON EARTH. JOIN THE SPACE FORCE.
-
After their fourth win, the Vespodia begins to hum and buzz, legs twitching like a cricket’s. It makes the hair at the back of Martínez’ neck stand up; the droning preternatural, like a song for the dead.
Kim starts to sing. It’s a Terran song, one that made its way all the way to his home moon, so he knows it’s an old one. It’s nice; he doesn’t know the words so he doesn’t join in the way the other human recruits do, the two other aliens clapping along anyway. It’s nice to watch them together, his squad.
Martínez figures that’s good, that he’s attached. Not too attached, but he cares for their success. He’s reflected by them so he wants them to be good, to be happy. To win. He doesn’t want to go back to his moon, and he doesn’t want to be eating dirt every night in the ground infantry, and so he has to be the best.
The song ends and there’s clapping and whooping, and Kim winks at him from where he’s leaning on a crystal spike. Martínez hasn’t decided if it would be good for the squad to know what they do in stolen moments. It might make them less wary of him -- they appreciate his leadership but not his terseness, and he lets Kim smooth it over more often than not. He’s not good at that, not yet.
-
Ten weeks into Martínez’ leadership, Kim starts to feel uneasy. They don’t win every exercise but they’re the top-ranked squad easily. Each person has a strength. He’s fast now, and good at stealth, but he’s not the best at any one thing. Still, he’d hoped he’d carved out a little place for himself in his squad leader’s esteem, or at least his libido.
“You let me die today,” Kim says. He’s sitting on a squat cube of crystal, his legs kicking and thumping against it. It’s annoying, which is of course why he’s doing it. “Again.”
“And we won,” Martínez replies. “Again.” He hands off the now standard bottle of whiskey -- Martínez thinks it’s from their lieutenant, which is cute -- and Kim makes sure their fingers brush when he takes it.
Martínez frowns at the space where their hands were. Kim should feel worse teasing him, but he doesn’t. It feels natural. Which is why he’s so perturbed by this change in tactics. He knows they’ve talked about this and he thought they were on the same page, writing the same strategies.
“But it does raise the question of whether or not you’d leave me out in space if a mission goes south.” The alcohol stings against his chapped lips, burns down his throat, and he takes a second draught before handing it back.
“It’s an exercise,” Martínez answers and Kim recites it with him, ending in unison.
“So I’ve heard. But why am I always the sacrificial lamb?”
Martínez keeps frowning. “Minjoon…”
“Oh, are we doing first names?” Kim gestures to the alcohol and snags it out of his hands for one last gulp before handing it off to another squadmate.
“What do you want from me?” Martínez asks, exasperated by being forced into a conversation.
“A little reassurance you’re not planning on cutting me loose?” Kim closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. It’s still nice to remind himself he can.
“Sometimes casualties happen.”
“You planned this one, Mateo.” Kim doesn’t like that, doesn’t like thinking of Martínez
“Sometimes it’s necessary to win. How many of theirs did we kill?”
“I’m not an enemy and you killed me!” Kim pinches his nose. “I just want you to try a little harder to be smarter. Sure, we won by sacrificing me and two others, but what happens the next day? You’re down three men. It’s not a good long-term solution."
“That would make sense if these were multi-day exercises, sure."
“I’m talking to a brick wall!" Kim says and throws up his hands.
“No, you're talking to the squad leader,” Martínez says, and Kim wants to shove him.
-
IT COULD BE YOU IN THIS COCKPIT. PLAY SPACEFORCE: VR FORCE 4 NOW, JOIN THE SPACE FORCE IRL LATER.
-
Kim is a mediocre ground troop but he’s an excellent pilot. Halfway through their year of hell is when they finally get behind the simulators -- wheat now separated from the chaff, the stragglers and quitters gone and the tension simmering with those left. The equilibrium that had come from 20 weeks of war games is shattered, and the squads are disassembled.
Not everyone who survived the first half of bootcamp makes it to pilot. Pilots cost the most to make, so they’re the most elite recruits. Kim slides easily into the middle ranks, but the bottom third gets shipped out for more war games and a better chance at dying on the ground with a higher rank for their trouble.
Kim lives for the simulators, signing up for as many practice slots as he can. This, he loves, the sterile and mechanical solace of the cockpit, just him and the stars he never saw from Earth. The first time he breaks atmo in a real bird is better than any birthday, any win, any sex he’s ever had. It’s amazing.
Martínez likes flying, but it’s a means to an end. He doesn’t want to be the first line of ships killed when facing…whatever it is they’re sent to kill. Kim can tell when they’re paired for sims exercises, pilot and gunner. Martínez takes the pilot’s seat without a glance to him and Kim lets him. They’ll swap anyhow.
Why he doesn’t tease him, he’s not sure yet. They left things unfinished. Martínez never asked for help but he didn’t reject it either, he let Kim write out notes and changes and critiques. He let him die more than a couple times, and even let him spend two days as a hostage.
Just exercises, he thinks as he shoots down another faceless enemy ship as Martínez flies too slow, just a little too hesitant. All that bravado is hard to hold on to in 360 space, when it’s just you and the glass keeping you alive. Kim shoots again, and again.
When they’re swapped, he can hear Martínez suck in a gasp as he spins, giving him a full view of the soft underbellies of their AI opponents. He shoots them one by one and Kim grins, blood rushing in his ears. They finish first, barely, and Martínez shies away from his sharp teeth, his hand over his shoulder.
-
When Kim is made squadron leader, he doesn’t pick Martínez. It takes a few weeks for them to speak again, terse and practical exchanges when needed. He stops going out into the sands, the purple night of Planet Z nowhere near as alluring as boundless outer space.
-
OUR GRADUATES FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHTS. SUPPORT THE TROOPS AND SALUTE YOUR SPACE FORCE.
-
Mateo Martínez wishes more than anything that his base command could fucking learn to use an inside voice on the comms. His cockpit is already screaming at him, proximity alarms to a hostile squadron of single and double manned ships headed toward him and his yacht.
Well, not his yacht. It’s the yacht that took him and his 11 troops out to this god-forsaken nebula where everyone keeps dying, and now the yacht appears to be sinking, impressive in the void of space. Escape birds are flying out double time and he’s barely landing a shot in the chaos. His squadron is doing their best but they’re easily outnumbered, and the five other squadrons are clearly getting outgunned.
“Pull back, pull back,” he finally shouts, hoping his squadron can hear him over the half-cocked orders being relayed from the sinking warship. A waste of fucking resources, and not the first one he’s seen.
There’s a blessed crackle in his ear signalling a new voice -- “This is the Captain of the Pequod, we’re coming in for a rescue run, over. I repeat --”
“Hear that, girls and boys?” he chirps out, and he gets about seven affirmatives, which is good. It’s good, he tells himself, it’s well above average in a skirmish like this, even though skirmish sounds like a little spat, not a total bloodbath.
His ship pings as it feels the gravitational pull of the huge ship. The Pequod is a superyacht, almost five hundred people on board made up of officers, grunts, and squadrons like his, twelve person teams to be deployed and killed and deployed and killed and deployed.
“This is Captain Martínez, asking for eight pickups,” he radios, and gets "Affirmative, Martínez, send us your coordinates and we’ll be there."
The superyacht should be lumbering but moves like a shark in water, like lava through rock. It’s fast and pulls him onboard with a gravitational beam that makes his stomach lurch. But all eight of them get scooped up by the enormous ship, and moved out of the live fighting zone they had been directed to in the first place.
It’s not really a win, but at least his squad didn’t need a new captain at the end of the day either.
-
Kim is relieved to be out of the hot spot they kept sending fighter squads to die in. He makes it a point to swing by every few weeks when he can -- he’s not sure who keeps killing them there but it’s worthless to defend and he’s sick of it.
“How many did you end up picking up?” his lieutenant colonel asks, third eye blinking at him placidly.
“We got about 36 people total, so we’re almost back to full personnel.”
“This is a twisted way to replace your lost troops, you know,” she says. “Not that I’m complaining about the rescue missions, just wouldn’t it be easier to drop them off at the nearest SF station?”
He shrugs. He doesn’t miss the dogfights but there’s certainly less scrutiny when you’re not on a bridge. “Probably. We’re still the least deadly vessel in this quadrant and that’s got to count for something, right?”
She laughs -- she’s known him a long time.
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LEAVE YOUR HOME PLANET. DIE SOMEWHERE FUN AND EXOTIC. JOIN THE SPACE FORCE.
-
Mateo Martínez thinks maybe he should try to make friends. It’s that thought that has gotten him through the long, echoey halls of the superyacht Pequod all the way to the bridge, where he knows he can see the captain and at least thank him for making sure he didn’t lose half his squad. He likes his squad; they’ve survived with him for over a year, a new record for all of them.
He’s thinking of how to be charming, or at least not off-putting, when he steps onto the bridge and realizes the man in charge of this 400 person ship is familiar. He doesn’t know what to say, that his new commander could be the same Kim Minjoon from bootcamp, his small-waisted, full-lipped lover and enemy. Rival, more accurately. That time feels so long ago, though it was only about five Terran years since he’d last seen him. However many promotions ago and he’s still trying to catch up.
The anger saps out of him when Kim turns, a third of his face now silver metal, a triangle from mid-forehead, over his right eye, and ending right below his cheek. Like a Phantom of the Opera mask, a stupid relic of Earth culture that exists mostly in references. His hair is still dark and spills over the fake eye, asymmetric bangs certainly not regulation.
A soft noise escapes him at the shock and Kim’s one human eye blinks. The gaze is sharp, and more than the round mirror of his right eye is a reflection of himself. The mask is smooth but follows the contours of his face, an elevated oval over his eye and a lens that’s also silver. The effect is eerie, makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Unnatural.
“Captain Martínez, 206MM███. My squadron will be joining your yacht on your next tour, so I thought I’d come introduce myself while we’re all situating ourselves, sir. I wanted to thank you very much for your pickup.”
Kim smiles, and it’s not the one he remembers. It’s lopsided now, closed-mouth. Martínez wants to pull on that bottom lip and that urge is unfamiliar.
“Martínez, fuck. I’m so glad you’re still alive.” He throws his arms open and Martínez lets himself be hugged. The proximity and heat feel unfamiliar, too, but they shouldn’t. He’s been here before.
“You’re bigger now.”
Kim laughs, still smiling. He looks older, which should be obvious but is somehow surprising. Martínez thinks he looks the same after five years and wonders if Kim would agree.
“You’re still short,” Kim says, bolder than ever.
“I didn’t mean vertically, ass,” he says without bite. Kim seems taller, but he’s also wearing MagBoots, thick soles meant to lock him to a station deck or his own control room’s floor. Standard for a captain of a rig this size, almost able to be its own space station. He remembers Kim preferring small vessels, that he was always willing to trade strength for speed.
Martínez wonders what changed.
“Quite a tone to take with your new captain.” Kim has two chrome teeth now, too, peeking out when he speaks. “But I think you’ll like your new home. We’re not too strict on the Pequod.”
Martínez nods. What more can he say, he thinks.
But Kim says, “Let’s get a drink. I’ll meet you at the bar on the 7th level at twenty-hundred hours?”
Martínez can do nothing but agree.
-
“Captain!” Kim calls out, stepping into the bar. He can tell it rankles -- they’re both captains, but Kim is several ranks higher. He’s Captain because he runs the ship, Martínez is Captain because his last squad leader was hit with a bought of space madness and flew straight into a sun in a battle six months ago with a reptiloid species who thinks the Intergalactic Alliance are encroaching on their agricultural colonies in a shared galaxy.
Kim only knows this because he bothers to read the paperwork, something that most off-worlder officers tend to skip. It makes for good reading in his usual booth in the bar, which was on the Pequod when he inherited it and will probably run for years after he’s dead.
He’s only a colonel because his two previous superiors were killed on ground missions. It feels less embarrassing than space madness but probably wasn’t -- he’d heard the grand admiral was eaten alive. At least the superior before those went down with her ship honorably, leaving Kim and a hundred others floating in escape pods for two months.
Martínez gives him a nod and looks him up and down as he slides into a stool at the bar, motioning at the seven foot Europan behind it. “The usual,” he says, “and whatever this guy wants, on my tab.”
He expects a token protest and gets it, laughs it off, doesn’t touch Martínez though his hand aches to do it. “Damn, it’s good to see you,” he says finally, and he means it emphatically. Martínez is both a relief to see alive, and still chiseled and gruff and attractive, dark brows and sad eyes and thin, frowning mouth.
“It was damn good to hear you on the comms a few days ago,” he says. Kim could kiss him.
He doesn’t.
Kim waves him off. “Please. It’s a regular rescue run we put into our refueling routes because it’s the easiest way to get new fighters.”
Martínez squints at him like he can’t tell if he’s kidding, and Kim isn’t going to let him know either way. Half-truths are the best way to get what he wants anyway, if what he wants can be had.
“Anyway, go ahead, I know you’re dying to ask,” Kim says with a grin, chrome teeth twinkling in the dim light. He thanks the bartender when he slides over an Old Fashioned for him, a lager for Martínez.
“Fine,” he says, more emotive than he’d ever been before. “What happened to your face? I thought you didn’t have to worry about that type of shit when you were a yacht officer.”
Kim laughs. It’s not the same one he had before; he hopes Martínez won’t hold it against him. “It’s not like they sent me here straight from Fort Tereshkova. I used to run a squadron too, Mateo.”
“So what happened?”
“Cockpit shattered on a bad landing,” he says, breezy. Inconsequential. His gunner died instantly. “But it was the damnedest thing. Turns out the Force loves a wounded soldier. It makes a great video, for one, all those robots fixing up your face to show how much the Space Force takes care of their soldiers. Then you get to be a battle-worn elder, all scarred up with wisdom, which means a promotion to boot.”
“I don’t know if seeing you would’ve made me join up any faster,” Martínez says and his laugh is less dry, more practiced than Kim remembers. “You feel pretty wise with all that metal in your face?”
He shakes his head. “Never.”
They talk, more than they did on Planet Z. It makes Martínez’ throat hurt a little, all this talking.
And he’s glad his current squad finally gave him an alcohol tolerance because Kim would’ve put him under the table a few years ago. He never liked the burn but has grown to appreciate the blur, the escape of it.
Kim is still sharp and evasive, but he’s still terse and an asshole. They’ve grown but maybe not as much as he thought. Or he’s regressing. “So is this all you ever wanted?”
“I could ask the same of you. Besides, I’m not the one who put in a transfer last year,” Kim replies, leaning an elbow against the bar.
Martínez frowns. “How did you even know that?”
Kim shrugs. “I’m a colonel, babe, I have access to a lot.”
“Well I guess this is me getting that transfer,” he says. Kim was never one to waste a fighter, so Martínez figures his yacht is a good one to attach himself to. He wants his fighters to at least die in a useful fight, not as a chess piece in an inscrutable game.
He can see Kim looking at him, the heat in his one eye. He can spot it now, that interest, even though it makes him feel uncomfortably scrutinized. He can’t imagine what Kim’s seeing. Dirt, probably. All he can see is Kim’s lush mouth.
“We should go to your quarters,” he says. Maybe he’s not so good with his alcohol.
Kim gives him a full on giggle, perhaps equally in his cups for the courage and inhibition.
“That’s prohibited, captain. Pretty much the only regulation about fraternization they even have.”
Martínez snorts. “I can’t believe you’re reading me the rulebook now.”
“It’s in the FAQ.” Kim says it very earnestly, with a very straight face ruined by the flush on his round cheeks.
Martínez can’t keep himself from grabbing the front of his uniform, the fabric much plusher than than the cheap shit they give the recruits. He yanks him closer, so he can feel the heat from his body, the very real physical form real under his hands.
“Captain, we can’t!” Kim hisses, lifting his hands like he’ll push Martínez out of the way, so instead he goes for the kiss like a predator goes for the throat.
His mouth is still full, soft, plush, a mouth Martínez has spent evenings imagining. They should have kissed more, he thinks, scraps of feelings and memories pinging in his head as his body heats up.
Kim feels almost pathetic with how easily he opens himself up for further attack, a wistful sigh swallowed by Martínez’ own throat and tongue. It’s easy to cleave him open, to explore his teeth, suck on his tongue until he whimpers.
He can’t help but relax into it, letting their arms rearrange themselves until it’s more of an embrace than a desperate clutch. When they pull away his eye is nothing but pupil, boring into Martínez’ as he stares up.
“This is wrong. This is literally rule number one.” Kim can feel himself stop caring as he says it. He thinks about sand, and glass, and the way blood tastes like metal.
“Fuck that,” Martínez says, “Who would even know? Who could care?”
Kim sighs. “I think they’re recording me.”
“What do you mean? For what?”
He points at his cybernetic. “Propaganda reels, mostly.”
Martínez says, “Well, we’re a success story. Shouldn’t that be a bonus?”
Kim seems to consider this seriously. Martínez can see him running his tongue along those silver teeth and he needs to feel them too, with his own tongue, needs to bite into the bottom lip, needs to feel the realness there, the blood in his heart. He can taste the sand in his own teeth.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Kim holds out his hand. Martínez takes it.
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M. MARTINEZ: JUST ANOTHER PROTECTOR OF THE UNIVERSE
MEET MEN JUST LIKE HIM IN THE SPACEFORCE: BECOME A RECRUIT TODAY