THE VROL TRILOGY (2 page)

Jennie stumbled a couple of meters over
to the bathroom mirror, wearing nothing but a pair of pink panties.
She sighed as she looked at herself and shook her head; after
showering she had to at least fix her hair and makeup before she
went to the spaceport. No time to hit the salon. She determined
that her nails were fine, even though she never really paid a lot
of attention to them.

Then, standing sideways, she admired
her figure up and down, wondering if her breasts would ever start
to sag. They were, to be precise, perfect, just as was her bulbous
posterior. She was fortunate, as most women who reached her level
of beauty did so via gen-mods - genetic modifications. She had no
such need, which was usually the case for degas - women of
Old-Earth South American lineage. In general, the only degas who
went through the gen-mod process were ones ashamed of their
heritage, and had their swarthy skin tone lightened and made more
like the bachos.

Jennie was not only proud of her
heritage, she flaunted it. Whenever she entered a room men (and
many women) stopped what they were doing just to watch her -
something of which she would never tire. The woman was beautiful in
every sense of the word - lustrous, black hair, not too tall and
not too short at 165 cm and 52 kg in weight (5'5" and 120 lbs. in
extinct standard measurements), lovely dark eyes, full, pouty lips
and just enough muscle tone to make her strong but retain her
femininity. The majority of female ground troops in the military
would go through gen-mods to make themselves hyper-muscular so they
could be on par with male troops, and while there were some guys
and gals who liked that kind of look, the majority maintained the
ideal that Jennie represented to the extreme.

Being an officer on a naval vessel she
would never see ground combat, so she didn't need to gen-mod for
strength. And besides that, she was stronger than anyone even
remotely close to her size. She even jumped into the boxing ring
with modded female soldiers for a couple of rounds every now and
then, almost always winning against the huge, oddly marked women
who sported the latest rage in body art - animated tattoos. These
designs were driven by what amounted to a sheet of nanobots that
functioned like a vid display under the epidermis layer of the
skin. This enabled them to perform preprogrammed tasks - everything
from a simple animation to playing a video to creating an
advertisement for a good or service. Prostitutes, who used them as
glow-in-the-dark call-outs for their clients, especially desired
these tattoos. However, Jennie had no desire to mark up her body,
even on a temporary basis. Her dark, radiant skin was in itself
naturally beautiful, and needed no such enhancements.

Slipping a standard-issue tank top over
her head, she let it fall gently into place onto her shoulders. At
her age she didn't need to wear a bra, although she did whenever in
uniform, per regulations. Even a tank top looked amazing on her,
and she would usually wear only that and some skimpy running shorts
when going to the gym for a workout - eliciting stares from
virtually everyone in her vicinity. She pulled her black, glossy
shoulder-length hair back and tied it off in a ponytail. Then,
calling out to her personal console, she requested music from a
predefined playlist.

She was a true fan of archaic pop/rock
music from the late 20th to mid-21st century, much to the
displeasure of anyone within earshot. To her, modern music was too
artificial and dull. Ever since entertainment was completely
generated by AI it had lost a certain edge. The slight
imperfections of ancient music made it perfect in her
mind.

Once the first song was on
she started going through her morning dental ritual. Her teeth were
pearly white and perfect, and she intended to keep them that way.
She had never required dental implants or even corrective braces,
and something she remembered her dentist telling her when she was
young was to
only floss the teeth you want
to keep
. It was meant to scare her, and it
did.

After she finished flossing and
brushing, she danced around her room as the music blared in the
background. She sang and envisioned the song's vid that she had
seen at least a hundred times. Just a short while later, satisfied
that she had crafted her simple, yet effective look, she pulled her
military dress whites out of her closet and set them down on her
bed. She had already packed her duffel for transit to the
Revolution, but as an officer she was always required to show up to
a new duty assignment in her ceremonial uniform.

Before dressing down, Jennie left her
room and went straight for the living area, sauntering along to her
music, which she had turned down just a tad. Her roommate was
already cooking a typical breakfast - jraxon eggs and
ham.

"Morning Becks!"

Jennie greeted her roommate, Becky
Branson, the same way every morning when she wasn't out on
deployment. Also military, Becky worked in the scientific division.
The woman wasn't stunning like Jennie - she was very plain, as was
her boyfriend Josh, who was also a total nerd- a skinny, tech-type
with poorly groomed hair and a tendency to snort whenever he
laughed. She always thought of Josh wearing glasses, which no one
wore anymore as no one was born with defective vision thanks to
prenatal gen-mods (which were restricted to vision, hearing
disfigurement and hereditary diseases). Of course, sunglasses were
worn, even though gen-mods could give anyone the ability to tint
their vision - but some people still liked to accessorize with
facial wear, or didn't have the time or money to go through the
enhancement process.

Jennie didn't mind Josh, or even
whenever he stayed over, but she found it annoying when he talked
to her because he never looked her in the eyes - he focused on her
breasts, which were hard to miss that morning as she bounced around
the living room, wearing nothing more than her underwear while
enjoying her music.

Her white tank top contrasted with her
copper-colored skin and would catch anyone's eye - involuntarily or
otherwise. Now, she wouldn't mind if he were someone like Ryder,
the officer she had been dating on and off for the past few weeks,
but Josh had a creepy, leering look about him. As was his luck, he
was good at hiding his stares from Becky, who loved him very much
and would have been devastated if she suspected that he harbored a
secret crush on the dega. Jennie knew they fit each other well, and
she was sure the two would get married one day - in a geeky
wedding, and probably in some sort of costume theme. Jennie wanted
to get married one day too, but not to a science geek - she wanted
somebody powerful, with connections - like Ryder Johnson, the man
with whom she had been sharing copious amounts of tequila the night
before.

Becky just smiled, but showed a touch
of sadness, knowing that her roommate and best friend would be
leaving in minutes for her new deployment. Even though she would be
back every two weeks, it was lonely without Jennie around. She
practically idolized her friend. While many women were jealous of
the lieutenant's looks, Becky looked beyond the surface and loved
her roommate for the person who she was, even though Jennie was
slightly shallow.

"So Josh, anything new in the geek
factory these days?" Jennie was being sarcastic, and Josh new it,
but it was her way of telling him not to look for headlights poking
out of her tank top. He averted his stare and mumbled back while
poking at his eggs.

"Naw, just doing nerdy things in a
nerdy way - you know us, always on the cutting edge."

"Josh has been trying to get into the
SSCC department, but they keep telling him to wait," said Becky,
with no small amount of disappointment in her voice. The SSCC
department was the latest and greatest in the military science
division, and Josh had been applying ever since it was created - so
far with zero success.

"Aw, keep trying, sweetie - you'll get
there," Jennie said with a smidgen of unexpected compassion. "I
can't wait until they put that stuff on a ship and we can get to
other planets - now THAT would be cool. As it is, my new ship was
built so whenever the Feds give the word the engineers can install
SSCC tech in space, without even docking planet-side."

Josh looked up briefly, eyes scanning
up and down her torso before he looked back down at his plate. It
wasn't that he wanted to look at her; it was that he couldn't help
it.

Jennie ignored Josh's stares and
imagined being able to go to neighboring star systems, but not on
one of the older deep-space vehicles, which were out for months at
a time. Almost everyone in the military wanted to see SSCC
technology installed on the entire fleet, and more than a few
wanted to return to the world of their ancestors - Earth. It had
taken Mankind 300 years to arrive at their world, but with SSCC
they could return in a matter of days.

"Jen sweetie, have some desa. You
probably won't eat for a while," Becky said as she handed her
friend a steaming plate of fried eggs and ham.

Jennie accepted the plate with a smile
and wolfed it down with no table manners. She was never one to eat
with any etiquette whatsoever - it was her one fault as a pretty
girl. She tried to use a bit of elegance when dining out, but
usually refrained from eating on dates, knowing that any rational
man would look at her with horror as she shoveled food down her
throat like a hungry quadrinium miner. To her, eating was a
required function, not something to be used to impress
people.

Josh didn't seem to mind the way she
ate - he wouldn't have minded watching her eat a live gerbil. Not
that he was into weird eating fetishes; it was just that Jennie was
good-looking enough to get away with virtually anything. To him,
she even made eating like a pig look sexy.

After finishing inhaling her breakfast she
popped over and kissed Becky on the cheek.

"Hey Becks, I gotta get dressed - new
duty assignment starts today! Woohoo!"

"Ok roomie. You go get 'em! And message
me about you and Ryder."

Becky knew that there was more than one
reason why Jennie was excited about her new assignment. Ryder was
also transferred to her ship, and he had told Jennie that his
father arranged for it - and being as his dad was a permanent
member of the Federal Security Council he almost always got what he
wanted.

Jennie smiled and wiggled
her brow, knowing her roommate loved salacious details about her
adventures with guys - Becky jokingly referring to Jennie's love
life as
Lifestyles of the Tan and
Stacked
. Jennie had dated a lot of very
attractive men, but had never accepted any proposals of any sort -
she was waiting for the big one, and she thought that maybe Ryder
would be the right guy.

"Yeah hun - I'll let you know. But
don't expect anything too descriptive. Not my style, got it?" She
grinned and then turned around and slapped Josh in the back of the
head.

"You take care of roomie, ok dork? Get
out of line and I'll have to kick your ass."

Josh didn't even bother looking at her
- he realized she was only half-kidding, but that meant that she
was also half-serious. Jennie left the living area going back to
her room, looking back and winking at Becky before she shut her
door to change.

Once she had put on her uniform, which
was a white jacket and slacks with orange stripe accents - her
world's colors - and a white Australian-style slouch hat, left side
pinned up in the classic bush style of centuries before (which was
actually done to allow a soldier to sling a rifle over his shoulder
without hitting the brim), she grabbed her duffel and used her
private door to the hallway, preferring not to go through a
tear-laden goodbye with Becky. She took the stairs down to the
first level (always taking stairs as it helped to keep her legs
toned) and hailed a cab once she was on the street. The
tubular-looking vehicle floated down and a door opened, beckoning
her to enter.

"BlueMil Spaceport, please. Entrance
Zeta," she stated, once she had taken her seat in the cab. The
automated transport then dutifully zipped up into the overhead
traffic and went straight to her requested destination. Then, after
a short shuttle of one hour she would dock with the Revolution,
starting the next phase of her career.

The Hub

In another location (if it could even
be called that), outside of the confines of space/time, a tall,
well-formed male figure moved throughout dimly lit chambers,
appearing to be interested with a defined panel of intangible light
that floated in the air in front of him. More like a
semi-transparent hologram, and about one meter wide by half a meter
in height, it enabled him to touch parts of the organic-looking
interface and enact processes, acquiring information on
demand.

The only other light in the
spacious room was from some half-melted candles sitting on an
ancient-looking oaken table, but they did nothing to illuminate
anything aside from the closest objects. The floating
infoscreen
, however,
caused an eerie glow upon the man's weathered, aged face. Waving
his left hand, he caused a beautiful bronze stream of glowing
particles to coalesce and take the form of a face in the
air.

"Watch, my friend. This must never
happen again," the old man said to the glowing visage.