Chapter 1
Miles Pupae by Bard Boy

Keith flicked off his immersion band and laid the headset to rest on his desk. He had caught up with the latest news: hunger riots in the Ümit Domed Colony in the Epsilon Eridani system, for which he cared little, and further advances for the Procumbents in the Delta Section of the Contested Zone. The Procumbents were always advancing somewhere. Though Keith fancied himself to be numb to the situation at this point, he nonetheless had removed his band with somewhat of a grim flourish, feeling it vibrate on the true wood desk he had requested to be specially transported for his office a decade before. Thirty-four pilots and crew lost in action on this latest occasion. And that was the last of the news announcement he heard.

Instead, Keith raised a hand to bat clear the imposition of the harsh main office lights – the computer dimming them first before shutting them off entirely – and allowed his eyes to adjust to the large viewing window that ringed the outer wall of his office. He rested his buttocks against the heft of the varnished wood, gazing out on the sight stretching almost impossibly far below him, yet in every direction. 1618 Holding – or, more properly, Groombridge 1618-2 – was not generally considered one of humanity's more beautiful colonies, but Keith prided himself on being grounded enough to consider the glory of viewing any planet from orbit to be beyond mortal compare. Down beneath the glare of the golden horizon, clusters of military installations were barely visible, and then only as silver-grey pinpricks. 1618 Holding could almost be any planet – a kibbutz world, or a series of bustling habitation domes – rather than the straightjacketed military ops hub that curved fuzzily, gracefully, through Keith's entire plane of vision below.

A flat tone filled the room, departing from perception as suddenly as it had erupted. Keith nodded to indicate his acceptance.

"Rear Admiral Savage," a disembodied voice announced, waiting for acknowledgement to continue.

"Speaking," Keith replied.

"Two new recruits on arrival lock four. D'Alessandro intends to move to holding next to medical bay alpha."

"Negative. Have them wait at lock four. I'll greet these personally, before the third arrives."

"Copy, sir. As you wish."

***

Never in his wildest dreams of aerobatics and red laser explosions could Thomas have imagined quite how boring ordinary space travel could be.

In all, the journey from Zachary's Spring had taken around a fortnight. There was the first leg of the journey to the main orbital spaceport at Epsilon Eridani, which took the best part of a day by shuttle, then the steady journey, system by system, from there to Groombridge 1618. A journey at sublight speed, out of the main gravity well of each star, in order to hyperlane jump between them, over and over again, until they reached their destination. At least the academy made sure he had a comfortable private cabin on the liner, but there was still only so much he could do to occupy himself from within a borrowed bedroom.

It was on perhaps his seventeenth cycle through the latest content from his subscription to Zero-G magazine on his immersion band that he concocted the plan to try to meet some of the people doing the really exciting bit and actually flying the liner, perhaps even get to watch them do it. He was a kid, and he was going to spacefighter academy, after all. Surely, they'd want to be nice to him and let him see the captain in action? It would beat all the tedious hanging around by himself.

That was on the third day. He got as far as smiling a nervous, wide-brown-eyed half-smile at one of the pursers, who immediately recognised him as the boy being sent to Aureus and had him seated at the dining table next to another. That wasn't the plan at all, but at least having another kid around might make passing the time until they arrived at the academy suck a little less.

Alas, when Thomas saw the boy he'd been paired with, his fluttering heart only sank further. The other new recruit had neatly styled jet-black hair, eyes so unnaturally green that it was unnerving, and skin that looked an unhealthy, languid colour in the ugly lighting of the liner. Not only that, he was well-dressed – more well-dressed than Thomas' trendy but comfortable clothes, at the very least – and Tom couldn't help but feel dismissive eyes roving over his body as the purser practically presented him to this other similarly-aged boy.

"Hm?" the other boy intoned, raising an eyebrow at the purser.

"I'll leave you two Aureus Academy boys to get to know each other better," the purser winked, before sliding efficiently on his heels and disappearing over the horizon – insofar as space liners can possess a horizon.

"Uh, hi," Thomas attempted, pulling the same half-smile he had managed a minute earlier for the purser, but engaging the opposite sections of his mouth.

"Hi," the other boy repeated, fixing Tom in his fiery jade gaze.

"My name's Thomas Vowles."

"Thomas Vowles," the other boy repeated. He had something of an accent, perceptible but not pronounced.

"You can call me Tom if you want."

"Onur," the other boy quipped back, evidently offering his own name in return. "Onur Yıldız. First name means honour. Last name means star."

"Nice to meet you," Tom said, managing a whole smile, and eventually offering something between a hand and a fist, not deciding quickly enough which of the two would be more appropriate.

"Thomas Vowles, you have a spot on the middle of your nose."

"Oh!" squeaked Thomas, feeling his cheeks glow and withdrawing his hand-fist to bring a finger to the bridge of his nose and confirm that he did indeed have a sore-feeling bump about halfway above his left nostril. "I… I guess it's cos I haven't got to wash in real water for a few days. I don't… I mean not normally – yet…"

"You don't what?" Onur asked.

"Um… get spots," Tom replied, his ears now burning as much as his cheeks, and his eyes fascinated by the spot on the floor between their two chairs.

"You have one there," Onur said.

"Yeah," Tom agreed.

"Do you like to play racing games?" asked Onur.

"Uh… I dunno," said Tom. "I guess."

"I have VR HoverKart XVII on my immersion band. The official Galactic Racing Formula game also."

"I never played those before," Thomas admitted. "Do you like muscle corvettes? My favourite is the Jaguar SC-1850, but I like the Tesla SolarBlade too. I'm not sure which I'd prefer to have out the two."

"Spacecraft should either be practical or good for racing," Onur replied with a shrug. "Which racer do you want to play first? Both have real physics."

"I guess we'll play GRF, then," Tom sighed.

And thus began ten days of Thomas Vowles being relentlessly beaten at every possible VR racing game, simulator, or experience by Onur Yıldız. Changing at 1618 Station for the final shuttle to Aureus brought Tom not only welcome release from the tedium and tension of the journey, but also from having to play with Onur anymore. Still, he wasn't all bad. They were around the same age – Onur a few months younger and yet to mark his twelfth birthday – and Onur's life in Ümit Dome seemed interesting, if rather different from what Thomas was used to. Mostly, Onur's life seemed to revolve around kart racing, which was why he'd been picked for Aureus Academy. Tom, on the other hand, was excited enough when he had his annual subscription to Zero-G renewed every birthday as a present, let alone when his dad could find the time and money to take them to an actual Zero-G event. And even then, he wasn't a participant – nay, a competitor – in his hobby in the way that Onur was. Not that Onur was particularly interested in asking many questions about Zachary's Spring or how Tom had come to be recruited.

It was something, at the very least, for Tom to arrive at Aureus alongside a sort-of friend. Especially when the first thing they were told on arrival was that Rear Admiral Savage himself would be along to greet them shortly.

***

"So," Keith grinned, looking over the two slightly bedraggled boys stood waiting rather restlessly in the arrival lock. Their long journey had left them looking rather unhealthy. "Who do we have here?"

"Recruit Thomas Vowles, sir," said Tom first, shivering slightly as the full force of the rear admiral's attention fell on him. "Zachary's Spring, Epsilon Eridani."

"Excellent. And you must be…?"

"Onur Yıldız, sir. Ümit Colony, Epsilon Eridani."

"Ümit Colony?" Keith replied, eyebrow raised with feigned interest. He knew more about these boys than they knew about themselves, after all; he had approved their recruitment. "So you are a Turkish speaker?"

"Yes, sir," Onur nodded.

"There may be another boy here that you can speak to, then," Keith said. He gestured towards the perimeter corridor for the boys to follow. "Come. I would shake hands, but you've yet to be decontaminated. You can come and wait in the doorway of one of the common rooms until the third new recruit gets here; he shouldn't be long now."

Onur followed first, without further comment, as Rear Admiral Savage strode away expecting the boys to follow. Thomas quietly tagged along behind.

"You know, Yıldız, I was just following the latest news from Ümit Habitat. Seems like some nasty rioting happening there at the moment. Do you know anything at all about it?"

Onur shrugged noncommittally. "All problems of the humanity will be solved when we at last defeat the Procumbents," he said.

Tom cringed internally. Onur spoke confidently, but Tom had become accustomed to some of the other boy's clumsier syntactic slip-ups over the past few days. He waited for Rear Admiral Savage to comment or correct it.

"Quite right, Yıldız," Keith snorted with satisfaction. "An excellent attitude for a young recruit to display. Keep it up."

Thomas watched on, not quite sure what to make of the entire situation, as Onur allowed himself a catlike contented smile. Tom bumped into the back of him, taken by surprise as the rear admiral led them through a door and halted without warning.

"Ah, Babajanow, just the recruit I was hoping to see," said Rear Admiral Savage jovially to a small, slight boy with monolid brown eyes, bowl-cut black hair, and fawny skin, glowing slightly pink on his high, rounded cheeks. The admiral turned back to his new recruits. "You boys wait here. Someone will be along to collect you when we are ready for you."

The two new boys and the small boy before them, sitting at a table with a plate of what looked like plain rice and chicken, exchanged quizzical looks. Onur decided to test the water first, assuming this must be the boy the admiral had referred to before.

"Merhaba," he offered.

"Salam," the small boy replied.

Tom noticed that Onur seemed slightly thrown, as if the other boy had said something unexpected. Nevertheless, Onur continued.

"Adın ne?"

"Menin adym Elman," the boy replied, flashing a little grin that showed off two large, square front teeth. "Sen näme?"

Again, Onur seemed thrown. He worked out how he should answer, though: "Adım Onur. Memnun oldum, Elman."

Now it was the other boy's turn to look confused. Tom had managed to work out they must've been exchanging names, and that the small boy in front of them was called Elman. But something about the conversation was slightly off, as if they were somehow talking past each other.

"Näme?" Elman squeaked in reply.

"Ne?" Onur returned.

"Men düşünemok," said Elman, shaking his head.

"Türk müsün?" Onur asked, furrowing his brow and tightening a cheek with incomprehension.

"Men Türkmen!" Elman replied with a happy squeak.

"Ohhh!" Onur replied with a renewed smile. "Anladım zaten! Ben Türküm, Ümit Yerleşimiliyim! Sen nerelisin?"

"Earth!" Elman giggled.

"O ha!" Onur gasped.

"What?" Thomas interjected, blinking twice. "Is he… He's from Earth?"

"'Course I am," Elman laughed, in perfect, American-sounding English. "I don't think people from Turkmenistan ever really got much chance to leave."

"That is so cool!" Tom gushed, almost bouncing on the spot. "What… what's it like? What's the sky like? What does the air feel like? And the… the rain!"

"Probably the same as all the experiences you get on the immersion band, I guess," Elman chuckled. "Except real, of course."

"Wow…" Tom grinned. "I don't think I ever met anyone from Earth before. Not a kid at least."

"I'm not that special," Elman shrugged, though he smiled all the same. "I came here when I was seven, so it's been a long time since I was there."

"How old are you now?" asked Tom.

"Ten," Elman replied. "I've been here, like, three years."

"You speak English very well," Onur interrupted, looking a little put out.

"Like I said, I've been here about three years," Elman said. "I couldn't speak any when I came here, but they taught me good right away."

Onur looked like he might reply, but an older boy, looking teenaged and imposing, chose that moment to enter the room from the opposite side and stride right over to Elman's table.

"Elman, how's it hanging?" the teenager crowed. "Are these our fresh recruits? What are their names?"

Tom watched carefully as Elman's demeanour seemed to drop, and he let out an almost silent sigh.

"This one is Onur, he's from Ümit Habitat," Elman said, a little robotically. "And this is…"

"My name's Tom," said Tom, hoping he was coming to the other boy's rescue. "I'm from Zachary's Spring, also in Epsilon Eridani."

"Great!" the teenager grinned. His jaw was muscular, his teeth were white and straight. He was tall; blue-eyed; sandy-haired. "I'm Aron. I'm sixteen. Just progressed to ensign. I guess you met Elman?"

"Yeah…" Tom answered. Somehow, he didn't feel he could look Aron in the face. Onur had gone very quiet too.

"Elman here is my favourite little rookie," said Aron. He gripped Elman by the shoulder as he did so, and neither Thomas nor Onur could miss how Elman grimaced and stiffened as Aron began something of a rough finger massage on the much smaller boy's clavicle. "I make sure he's well cared for, don't I, Elman?"

"Sure," Elman mumbled. Tom tried to look up to Onur for reassurance, but he was apparently far more interested in their feet. Elman was staring into what remained of his meal.

"Say, did you boys get seen by Babatunde yet?" asked Aron, standing as close as he could behind Elman and holding him by both shoulders now.

"Uh, not yet," Tom answered.

"He'll give you a real navy medical," Aron smirked. "Did you enjoy induction medical, Elman?"

Elman didn't answer straight away. The rosiness had dissipated from his cheeks. "We all got to do it, I guess," he eventually answered, as noncommittally as possible.

"Damn right," Aron laughed. "Say, newbies, why don't–"

Aron never got to finish, as at that moment, a very large, bald, muscular man in uniform with captain's epaulettes strode through the door next to which Thomas and Onur were standing.

"The third boy has now arrived," he said, through a noticeable West African accent. "You new recruits, come with me boys."

***

The boy waiting for them back at the arrival lock looked around Thomas and Onur's age, perhaps slightly smaller than Tom, who was himself slightly smaller than Onur. He had skin a lot like the chocolate milk that Tom's favourite cereal created, and an impressive amount of dense, curly hair, flecked with golds and browns, tied back into a bun behind his head. He seemed a little chubby, and Tom couldn't help feeling that this boy's puffed cheeks were kind of hamster-like, as he stood there fidgeting, waiting to be told what to do. Luckily for him, the big man leading Thomas and Onur marched at some pace and was soon pushing the three of them together.

"Recruit Jacob McDonough, age ten years and eight months, Tranquility Habitat, Luna?" the man barked. It seemed more a designation than a question.

"Yes, sir," the boy chirped, his brown eyes roving over the other two boys after looking the man addressing him somewhere in the chest.

"That's between Port Nectar and Los Cruzes, correct?"

"Yeah, my dad works fixing all the rides in The Pleasuredome when they break," Jacob answered, stifling a yawn. "I'm sorry. Travelling made me really tired, sir."

"There will be time for resting later," the man announced. He turned to stare at Thomas and Onur. "You must then be Recruit Onur Yıldız, age eleven years and nine months. Ümit Domed Habitat, Epsilon Eridani."

"Yes, sir," Onur answered quietly, with a nod of his head.

"And you! Recruit Thomas Vowles. Age twelve years and four months. Zachary's Spring Habitat, also Epsilon Eridani."

"Y-yes, sir," Tom stammered in response.

"Good," the man declared, snapping into an about turn and marching along the external corridor. "Follow me. Quickly!"

The boys hurried along behind as best they could. Thomas was surprised by the effort he had to put in to get his legs to keep up with this giant man.

"Sir," he panted nervously, curiosity getting the better of him. "Are you Babatunde, sir?"

The man stopped immediately in his tracks, spinning to glare at Tom sternly, and almost ending up with three boys bundling into his midriff.

"My name, to you, is Captain Ogunbiyi," the man instructed steadily and clearly. "I am Chief Medical Officer of Aureus Station and Aureus Academy."

"Oh…" said Thomas, feeling his ears burn and his head spin as he studied Captain Ogunbiyi's boots. "I'm really sorry, sir. An older boy told us–"

"My personal name is Babatunde, but you are not to use it."

"I… I really am very sorry, sir… A bigger boy – I think his name was Aron…"

"You will soon learn at this academy, Thomas Vowles, that there are things that boys – even older boys – might say to each other here, which they must never speak of to an adult. Do you understand?"

"Hm!" Thomas gulped, nodding his head slowly.

"Enough of this foolishness," Captain Ogunbiyi tsked. "We are wasting time. Follow me quickly now to the examination room. All of you. You have not yet been assessed and decontaminated."

The boys followed in hushed silence, motoring their little legs along behind the imposing Captain Ogunbiyi. As they walked, the man spoke again.

"Your personal belongings have been collected from the shuttles. They will be inspected for appropriateness, including reprogramming your immersion bands for our military systems, and placed in your new sleeping quarters once they have passed the test."

"I don't have an immersion band, sir," Jacob piped.

"You will be given a new navy-issue immersion band if you do not have one. No need to worry."

Captain Ogunbiyi continued his march, while Thomas and Onur looked first at each other, then at Jacob, with uncamouflaged, incredulous surprise.

"You don't have the immersion band at all?" Onur whispered to Jacob, almost disbelieving in the seriousness of his tone and expression.

Jacob shook his head.

"But what did you do to pass all the time travelling?" Tom asked, his own voice even quieter than Onur had managed. "You came all the way from Luna!"

"I read," Jacob shrugged. "I have a reading tablet that used to belong to my mom, and my granddad before her. It can download pretty much anything if you sign up to the public library."

"You just spent all that time reading?" Onur gasped loudly, breaking the shared commitment to whisper voices.

Jacob shrugged again and nodded his head.

"We have a reader," interjected Captain Ogunbiyi, his rising intonation indicating a calculated smirk even though he didn't turn to look at the boys in his tow. "No wonder the three of you scored so well on the intelligence tests."

With that, a door automatically lifted open ahead of the captain, and he led the boys into a large room filled with a sterile smell and several large and small pieces of variously identifiable equipment. The most obvious medical equipment was several examination tables, though there were various devices that were beyond the boys' ability to identify, and what seemed like a wet room area in one corner with suspiciously serpentine tubes and spray heads.

Once the boys had gathered behind him in the centre of the room, Captain Ogunbiyi wasted no more time to take a step back and, with an immensely disconcerting grin, bellow his first and most favourite order.

"STRIP!"

***

It took what felt like ten seconds for Thomas even to register the instruction, let alone for the panic to set in before he could even begin to contemplate following it. He looked desperately around at the other two boys, who equally appeared to be going through the same process. Captain Ogunbiyi seemed happy to ride the silence and inaction. He simply stood there watching, arms folded, tall, straight, and expectant.

The boys began fumbling half-heartedly at their clothes on around the same beat, after an interminable but relentless number of seconds had passed following Captain Ogunbiyi's order. It was their form-fitting travel jackets that came first, Tom unzipping his down the middle, while Onur's rather more fancy one separated seamlessly as soon as his fingers found the join. Jacob's cheap travel jacket didn't quite cling to him exactly, and its rather more old-fashioned and rudimentary zip made a perceptible sound as he pulled it down and removed the garment from his body.

From here, the boys followed slightly different tactical approaches. Thomas reached down to deal with his shoes and stockings, not wishing to bare any skin beyond his feet too quickly. Onur's rather formal, personalised travel shoes simply slipped off his feet as soon as he moved to remove them. Unlike Thomas and Onur's form-fitting, full-sleeved upper bodywear, Jacob was wearing a rudimentary short-sleeved white tee-shirt, which he elected to remove right away, revealing a honey-brown torso with large, brown nipples and a deep, innie bellybutton.

Given the choice of removing his upper or lower bodywear, Thomas went for the lesser evil of the upper clothing. His top stretched over and away from his head and arms as easily as it had previously clung to his figure, tousling the wavy crown of his brown hair as he removed it and, not knowing what else to do with it, dropped it to the floor. Onur had also followed suit, though was rather more pained about what to do with his clothing, finally electing to lean over and rest it on one of the medical tables. Jacob was busy with his shoes, the tip of his tongue gripped between the corners of his lips on one side as he concentrated on getting them off the way he wanted.

Captain Ogunbiyi allowed himself a smirk. The next hurdle for all three boys was their lower outerwear, and then their underwear. Onur wore fancy trousers that hung perfectly straight from his hips all the way down his legs while he was standing up, so he at least did not run the risk of accidentally taking down both layers in one, though the captain knew fondly from experience that the modern style of boys' underwear adhered so closely and comfortably to their bodies that it left nothing but the fine details to the imagination anyway. Thomas was wearing the more troublesome warm and comfortable style of puffy legwear that – unless it was cheap, which Thomas' clothes didn't seem to be – had a warm inner layer that form-fitted the legs down to the knee, and a thick, soft outer layer for comfort and modesty. Captain Ogunbiyi hoped the inner layer might bring down Thomas' underpants with it – not least because it would save all the usual pained anxiety about taking them down manually that almost every new recruit manifested – but on this occasion, it was not to be. Jacob was wearing more old-fashioned jeans, which came down without much complication. Only the final hurdle remained.

Thomas was shaking. He felt like he was going to be sick. Getting naked in front of other people was always the worst thing ever, and here he was having to do it in front of three virtual strangers, one of them a giant military adult! He wasn't super insecure about his genitals all the time – they were just a willy and balls after all – but the threat of being compared and contrasted with two slightly younger boys was horrifying. Tom knew he was a little small for his age, and he didn't mind playing up to it a little, being of the age when boys certainly begin to make big deals of those small differences. Being totally naked – totally exposed – alongside two other boys was utterly terrifying by comparison. Onur was a few months younger than Tom, but he was already taller, and Tom was more than a year older than Jacob but not all that much bigger. What if Onur had bigger, more developed bits than him? What if – the stars forbid – both Onur and Jacob did? Crumbs, and crap, and sugar, and other worse words. Babatunde was watching him. The other two boys were also thinking hard about going, their fingers poised over their pants. He'd just have to do it. If nothing else, at least he could say he was the bravest. Thomas clamped his eyes; his heart slammed visibly and painfully in his chest; his head swam…

"Good boy, Vowles," Captain Ogunbiyi's voice crackled across the room. "That's exactly how it is done. None of you have anything to fear."

Tom felt that the waistband of his underwear had reached his knees, and his slightly bent position left him feeling an uncomfortable cold breeze against his bumhole. He dropped the lime green undies, feeling them pool on top of his feet, and immediately slapped both hands against his private parts, stinging them a little in the process. Finally, only then, did Thomas Vowles find the courage to open first one, then two brown eyes, his mouth opening involuntarily to show off his large, slightly separated front teeth as he managed the squinting operation. Daring to look around, Tom saw that both the other boys were still slowly taking their undies down, and he snapped his head away, burning with embarrassment, at catching a glimpse of both their willies. Still, at least the brief snapshot currently burning itself onto his memory confirmed that he wasn't unusually small down there – not unless all three of them were.

"Kick off that clothing around your ankles and raise your hands to your heads," Captain Ogunbiyi growled. "There will be some few times when you must be bare around other recruits, and it is perfectly natural. You must build your confidence, courage, and resilience."

There was a silent but palpable shared groan between the three boys as their hands, being forced by the limits of their willpower all the way, slowly reached up to rest atop their heads. None of them dared look anywhere but straight ahead. None could stop their bodies from trembling.

"Jacob McDonough, remove that tie from your hair and throw it to the ground."

The boy did as he was told. Captain Ogunbiyi clicked his fingers. At first, it seemed it was in satisfaction. Then, an area of the floor near to where Tom was standing lit up in a yellow-edged square.

"Thomas Vowles, step a little to your right. Stand on the square please."

With a gulp, Tom did as he was told, shuffling along with his hands on his head, hoping his no-longer-privates weren't bouncing around too much as he moved and the other boys weren't looking, until he reached the middle of the area lit in a square. As soon as he did, the light stretched up around him, and he realised he couldn't really see the other boys – nor Captain Ogunbiyi – anymore.

"Your weight is normal for your age and size range," the captain announced. "Place your hands by your sides and stand up straight."

Unnerved, Thomas did exactly as he was told. The light around him intensified, and for a moment he felt himself almost boxed in by a cuboid of light.

"Your height is a small amount below average for your age, but it is very much within normal range," Captain Ogunbiyi announced. "Stay still for five, four, three, two, one…"

The light dropped back to being a little square on the floor, and Thomas found himself simply standing naked in the middle of a now rather dim-looking room, being stared at by two other naked boys and a very large man.

"Vowles, stand back where you were," Captain Ogunbiyi ordered. "Onur Yıldız, you come here now."

Tom retook his place, still feeling weird about being naked but suddenly less bothered after being told he was perfectly normal. He replaced his hands on his head, figuring that was what both of the other boys were still doing. Rather than watching Onur shuffle past him in silence, his attention was stolen by Jacob, whom for a moment he barely recognised. Rather than the boy with the bun and the hamster face he'd met a few minutes before, there was now some other child with rich, ringed hair flowing down to their shoulders, like some immaculate crown of feathers from back in the long, long ago.

Thomas was distracted again by another flash of light, and he realised Onur was probably undergoing the same measurements that had been taken from him. It was with no little panic that he realised that, looking from the outside, you could see almost perfectly through what he had assumed had been a wall of light around where he had been standing. Onur was simply standing there naked in the middle of the room. It was then with double, abject horror that Thomas then noticed one of the computer nodes was forming a complete, intimately detailed 3D holographic model of naked Onur, and saving to the database as it went along. The feeling of lightheaded sickness returned as the b-word Babatunde began counting down again to signify that Onur was about to finish. There was a naked model of them both on file with the academy! What if anyone else got hold of them? Or… well, presumably, the models of all the other however-many boys had passed through here before. Didn't Elman say they all had to go through it?

Jacob was up, and it was with glassy eyes and an unfocused mind that Thomas watched the 3D hologram of his new classmate's body add layer upon layer of new detail, knowing that the real boy was standing butt naked immediately to his right. He hadn't really had a clear picture of how spacefighter academy would be, but he knew for sure that this wasn't it.

***

"Standing in your places," Captain Ogunbiyi ordered, once Jacob's measurement and scan was complete. "You are each within normal ranges, but a close personal exam never goes amiss."

Thomas shuddered. He was stood in place, naked with his hands on his head, feeling miserable. At least, he hoped, once they'd gone through this, they could get on with enjoying Aureus like Elman.

Captain Ogunbiyi knelt before Thomas, using the tips of his index and middle fingers to direct the boy's head to look down in his direction.

"Good," the captain said. "No concerns about facial or skull structure" – he ran the entire flat of his large right hand over Thomas' torso, pinching one of his biceps once with the tips of his thumb and forefinger – "Body slightly weedy, but nothing we cannot soon change here with the right exercise. Small amount of baby fat around the stomach, nothing unusual. Pink nipples, average size, pointed by the cold and stimulation."

Tom let out a weak involuntary yelp. His entire body tensed and stiffened. Captain Ogunbiyi's fingers had suddenly leapt to his boy parts and withdrawn his foreskin fully in one swift movement, while more squeezed Tom's balls with the exact amount of pressure to keep him hovering on the border of discomfort and outright pain.

"Your initial genital growth has started. This means your puberty will be along sooner rather than later. This is good. Foreskin works smoothly and correctly. Natural resting position looks like a close fold around the end of the glans. No excess skin to speak of."

Thomas whinnied and dared to gaze down at what was happening to his boyhood. Rather than the tanned little snout he was used to seeing while his willy was soft like this, the hood had been completely withdrawn and was showing off his round, pinky-purple, shiny, sticky-looking end bit. He could feel the breeze in his pee hole from the way he was being squeezed, for Pete's sake! He could even smell his own weird, earthy, meaty willy smell, the kind that you only get from touching your fingers on the covered-up bits. It looked strange like this; soft and trying to shrink, the stem part all fat from the bunched up, reddened skin and a little, odd-coloured acorn head poking out.

"Does this get stiff by itself, and do you play with it?" Captain Ogunbiyi demanded.

"Uhh… Y-yeah… Sometimes… I s'pose…" Tom answered. The truth by now was almost every day, sometimes more than once (or twice) but he figured that, if he had to be honest (which he had little choice over in his current predicament), he could at least fudge the truth a little and pretend to be Thomas Vowles from a few months ago.

"That is okay. It is natural, as long as it is not obsessive or distracting from your other normal activities. I can tell from how smoothly this foreskin moves that you are an active, healthy boy. Does anything come out when you play with it?"

Tom, mortified by the knowledge that the captain was referring to semen – the possibility of his semen – could only shake his head no.

With that, Captain Ogunbiyi simply released Thomas' genitals and moved on to kneel before Onur instead.

"This way, Onur," Captain Ogunbiyi instructed, using his fingers to direct the boy's head in the same way he had to Tom, and leaving the scent from under Tom's foreskin dangerously close to Onur's lips and nose. He watched the boy's nose wrinkle and felt him try to pull away.

"Stand still!" he growled. Onur, shoulders drooping, relented.

"You are a little bit lanky, but that is your age," Ogunbiyi declared, again running a single flat hand all over the boy's body, feeling his way around the torso. "You are very lean and toned. This is good. Slightly protruding navel. One uneven rib. Small nipples, brown. Pointed by stimulation."

Onur shivered as he was pawed and strange details of his body were announced so matter-of-factly. This was not something he could remotely have imagined happening to him before. He was destined for the life of a champion racer, aside from the fact that his parents paid for he and his siblings to live in luxury, comfort, and – most notably – complete privacy.

A mewling sound reminiscent of a Bengal kitten informed Babatunde that he'd secured just the right grip on Onur's baby junk. Despite the boy's circumcision, he pulled Onur's skin taut too.

"Your genital growth has also started. You are about the same size as Thomas, though your penis is slightly different."

Thomas was aware. He'd noticed in his brief acknowledgements of the other boys' willies that Onur's was missing the skin over the end. He was conscious that some boys were like that, though he wasn't entirely sure why and had never seen it before – though he'd not particularly paid much attention to other boys' personal parts before.

"Circumcised," the captain announced.

"W-w-when I was s-seven," Onur whimpered. "M-my parents are not religious, it's only tradition a-and they wanted mine to look just like the penis of my dad and everyone else."

"So you didn't have a party then," Captain Ogunbiyi sniggered.

"No, sir," Onur said, barely raising a whisper, then gasping as the man readjusted his grip on the boy's genitals. "I went to the surgery that does the private sünnet."

"No matter, you are far from the only one like this here," Ogunbiyi smirked, regarding the small penis with its dry, spongy, grey-purple arrowhead, and the wrinkled, brown folds of skin cut down to beneath its ridge. "Does it get hard?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you sometimes play with it?"

"Yes, sir."

"In that case, it works." Babatunde looked Onur seriously in the eye. "Nothing comes out?"

The boy shook his head slowly, but only after his jaundiced-looking skin managed to turn a shade of violet and a nervous tremor vibrated his entire naked body.

Captain Ogunbiyi moved to Jacob without further interaction with Onur, who exhaled loudly as soon as his penis and testes were released. Babatunde quite deliberately went through the same motions with Jacob, positioning his head to watch what he was doing and declaring he had no concerns about his skull or face.

"You seem strong and fit enough, but this is more than just puppy fat," announced Captain Ogunbiyi, enjoying running his hand all over the youngest boy. "Slight coverage of upper body fat, especially around stomach. Big nipples. React to the cold more than the touch."

An involuntary shudder ran through the entirety of Jacob's body as he was manhandled. He grunted as the captain suddenly groped him in two unexpected places.

"Some body fat also on the buttocks and thighs," Babatunde rested both his hands on Jacob's hips, and poked and prodded his way inside with his thumbs. "Slight protrusion of body fat over the pubic bone and genital area. Nothing concerning. The boy is not overweight but could lose perhaps four or five kilos or replace it with muscle."

Jacob braced himself to feel foreign hands on his boy zone for the first time, but gasped as the touch was far gentler than he'd expected from witnessing what had happened to the other two boys.

"These testes have only just started descending and growing," Captain Ogunbiyi declared. He gently fondled Jacob's penis, teasing the foreskin into reverse very carefully. "Penis is seemingly yet to grow. Foreskin snouts some distance past the end of the glans and moves back beyond the urethra with some resistance."

Jacob felt a strange, slightly uncomfortable mix of pressure and release on the end of his pee-pee, and dared to watch as Captain Ogunbiyi slowly and gently revealed more of his purple-brown weenie-head. Before withdrawing his pooling and pinkening skin all the way past the ridge, which Jacob could feel getting weirdly tight and itchy as the skin bunched around it, the captain seemingly decided enough was enough, removing his fingers and letting it all snap back to Jacob's familiar little narrowing droopy trunk – albeit with the end now much pinker than usual and feeling oddly open.

"Does it get hard sometimes?"

Jacob shrugged. He felt himself blush a little, before nodding.

"Only sometimes," he squeaked.

"And do you play with it?"

"Uh… Sometimes I like to lie on it when it's stiff, I guess…"

"The time for your urges will come soon," Captain Ogunbiyi announced, then raised himself to his feet to once again tower over the three exposed boys.

"You are all very healthy. Luckily for you, nobody requires any internal examination. Usually, I would do it for all of you as a precaution, but it is already getting very late."

Babatunde paused and surveyed the boys. The customary sense of relief that came with the suspicion that the ordeal was nearly over had immediately become present amongst these recruits too.

"Finally, we must decontaminate you. Many boys have poor hygiene, and we do not want you to bring any bugs or diseases onto the station. Please go and stand in the shower area, and you will receive your new clothing when you are done. There is no room for any foolishness. There will be some times when you must wash alongside each other if you wish to be navy pilots."

The boys were in fact quite enthusiastic in moving over to the area with the tubes, hoses, and shower heads. Thomas caught himself almost feeling a sense of pride that he had at last made it through the induction medical, just like all the other recruits in the long line before him. He was stood in formation alongside Onur again, who was once more alongside Jacob. They saw Captain Ogunbiyi press a control screen and waited for the warm water to come, a rare luxury following the synthetic showers of the space liners.

What came first felt like a few puffy spurts of bubble bath splattering their hair and shoulders. Then, within a second, they were inundated with thick, creamy, heavy foam.

"This formula cleanses you of all known bacteria, parasites, and other impurities," Babatunde shouted over the squeals of the three boys. They were slipping around, bumping and falling into each other, trying to escape the flow of the foam but being inevitably weighed down and stuck together by it.

Pepper. Chilli powder. Hot sauce. All over their naked bodies, with the consistency of clotted cream you might use on a cake. The sensations engulfing the upper half of Thomas' body were burning, prickling, itching agony. He dared not open his eyes to see. He could barely breathe. Escape seemed impossible. He kept bumping into the two other boys, their bodies sticking together through their shared avalanching of foam.

"Wash yourselves, boys!" came Captain Ogunbiyi's voice, getting closer. "Else it will be done for you!"

Thomas felt something – someone – large and warm push up against him, alongside what he could only assume was still the wriggling form of Onur beside him. Short, ringed, furry body hair tickled against his buttocks through the foam – a leg? Then something hefty, and smooth, and… vascular, slapped heavily against his arm. Thomas' mind raced. He began to hyperventilate. The thing twitched.

"Calm yourselves and wash, recruits!" Captain Ogunbiyi bellowed from close range. "Enough foolishness. Clean yourselves. I must also decontaminate as I have examined you intimately."

Thomas heaved as if to vomit as the bulky thing twitched against his arm. The thought that he was touching – however inadvertently – an adult penis, was overwhelmingly disgusting, as was the relentless shower of thick foam slopping all over his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears and completely disorienting almost all his senses. Only touch remained, and that was the least reassuring, exhausted by skin-searing fire and the sensation of a huge, naked, overpowering adult man pressing against him.

"Vowles, wash!" came the order, as large hands rubbed foam over his shoulders, under his armpits, and then lifted his arms insistently to force him to begin rubbing the foul fluid all over himself. "Yıldız, wash!"

Growling and the squeaking of struggling feet on the ceramic floor strongly indicated that Onur was receiving the same treatment Tom just had, as the panicked boy nonetheless continued to follow orders and rub the burning all over himself. He thought he could hear Jacob sobbing.

"McDonough, come here!" Babatunde's voice. Something caused Onur to bump face first against Thomas. Their noses, willies, and knees briefly touched. Jacob was howling about something.

"Stop! It hurts! It hur-ur-urts!"

"We have to clean you, filthy boy! Do not be a baby!"

"Annngh! No-oh-oh! Don't wash me there! Don't wash me theh-heh-haaair!"

"Thomas! Onur! Make sure you are cleaning every part of your body! It is always more unpleasant for foolish boys!"

"My batty!" Jacob screamed. "Sto-aaargh! It's burning up my bah-at-ttteee!"

In the darkness and confusion and irresistible heat and fuzz of the decontamination shower, Thomas' numb spirit forced his fingers to reach for his foreskin. Five, four, three, two…

One.

Chapter 2
Havoc by Bard Boy

After the initial weirdness of the physical exam, and the endless tedium of the journey, Thomas felt he was settling into life at Aureus pretty well over the first few days. He found that they hadn't exactly done much; he received his uniform, claimed his bedroom, and they just had fairly normal classes. Like, normal school classes, except with only boys and not too many of them in each class, not to mention near-perfect classroom behaviour. At least that meant getting to know some of the other boys his age, though he couldn't yet place exactly how long each of them had been at Aureus, and what stage of fighter training they'd reached.

There were two main ways in which Tom's initial experience of Aureus differed from normal school, apart from those little things he'd noticed right away. First, they had way more PE. Like, two different PE sessions every day, with compulsory showers right after. Luckily, the showers were in stalls, and there weren't enough of them in each session to have to share, so getting a shower straight after exercising was actually a pleasant relief. And it was real exercise, too: each of the sessions seemed to focus on building strength and endurance. Even after only a few days, Tom was feeling fitter and stronger!

The second difference was that he was living there, all the time! The boys seemed to be arranged into pods based on age, so Thomas' room was on one side of the school area with Onur nearby, while Jacob's room was down a different hall on a different side of the school-like area, and other older and younger boys' pods seemed to be placed elsewhere around. Onur seemed to do some of his classes with Tom, and others not. Not that Tom particularly minded. He didn't dislike Onur, but it gave him a chance to speak to some of the other boys instead.

Most of the other boys of Thomas' age, in his classes and with their bedrooms located around his, seemed fairly cool. He'd spoken to Max a few times, and he was quiet but friendly. Tom saw him doing some impressive doodles on his own at a table in the common room on his first day, so used that as a conversation starter. Max seemed pretty approachable, given he was quiet and of relatively small stature for their age. Tom twigged that Max might be a few months younger than him, but he was in all the same classes as Tom, unlike Onur. Regardless, Max kind of counted as a new friend, even if they hadn't said much to each other. His full name was Maximilian Nausch, and he had closely cropped hair of a golden-brown, almost mousey colour, and pale blue eyes. Tom thought Max kind of had a resting frown face, which made him look worried a lot. Even Max's smile made him look embarrassed. Still, he could draw a great doodle.

There were other boys Tom got talking to in the following days, too. Umaru, Edson, Sameer… Freddie Brennan, of course. Freddie was a little older than Thomas; nearby bedroom, but not in every class with him. Freddie was funny, though. And he loved to talk a lot. If there was a rare occasion that someone was disrupting the class, it was Freddie. He was a broad boy with ginger hair and freckles across his nose. Even his face seemed to look cheeky without trying. It was round, framing narrow green eyes and ending in a small, boyish bumchin.

"Hey," Freddie had said the first time they met, "I'd tell you a penis joke, but I don't want to come off as cocky."

And naturally, Tom had laughed so much that he kept getting the giggles every time Freddie turned and wiggled his eyebrows at him in class.

"What did one butt cheek say to the other? Together we can stop this shit!"

Max later explained that Freddie had a hefty back catalogue of rude jokes for befriending newbies. Yet, he was also the only boy Tom had heard joke about the superiors.

"What does Savage have in common with Babatunde's undies? They're both full of piss and wind!"

Not that Thomas had seen much of the superiors. In fact, he hadn't seen them at all since he arrived. The only adults he'd seen were teachers, and even the older teens didn't seem to be around, be they older recruits or ensigns. Tom had asked the others when they'd do fighter training stuff, and they just shrugged. Apparently, they always allowed a few days for newbies to settle in before setting a challenge, whatever that meant.

It wasn't only Freddie who ticked off the teachers. Another boy Tom's age, also skinny and boyish but slightly taller than him, kept having to be told to take his hat off. Tom had no idea where the kid had got it from; all the clothing they had here was multiple changes of their uniform of comfortable, perfect-fit, soft blue shoes; form-fit blue leggings which puffed out to parachute style from above the knee to the waist for modesty, warmth, and comfort; form-fit soft blue undies in brief style; and a form-fit blue undershirt with optional form-fit blue jacket with the single silver line of the recruit rank on the left breast. There was certainly no old, dog-eared beanie hat amongst the uniform Tom had received.

"Legzdins, hat off, thank you."

Somehow, every day, this boy had it on again.

"Remove your hat, Legzdins. I'm sick of warning you."

Tom assumed it must be earning the kid debit points, but that never seemed to be the case.

"That is not part of the recruit's uniform, Legzdins. You know that."

All the time, he'd arrive for class wearing his old woollen beanie, with jets of straight, flaxen hair shooting free over his forehead and ears. Then, when inevitably told to remove it, he'd sigh, roll his big, brown eyes, purse his pink lips, and comply, choosing to sit on the hat instead. With this strange ritual, his unruly, light hair, large brown eyes, long, straight nose, and pale skin, he looked very pensive and serious all the time. Thomas was wary, and still hadn't spoken to this boy at all.

He also was avoiding another kid who made him feel uneasy. Takashi was a little older, and only in a couple of classes with Thomas. Still, he'd taken an interest in the new kids, and made a point of trying to talk to them, even as the tension between him and the other boys was palpable to the new arrivals. Takashi was a well-developed boy, muscular, stocky, with a hint of acne about his cheeks. It didn't seem he'd have much trouble pushing other boys around if he wanted, which instantly made Tom nervous around him, even if he seemed as if he was trying to befriend him. Taka was always sweet in class with the teachers, too. Onur didn't seem to have a problem with talking to him. Nor did Jacob, though all the younger boys seemed passive when Taka started talking to them.

"Hey, Elman; get me and Jacob a milkshake, yeah?"

"Get it yourself, Taka."

"Didn't I ask nicely? Be a good boy."

"I'm not your slave!"

"Guess not. Karanveer, you'll get us milkshakes, won't you?"

"If I have to…"

"See, not everyone's a little Ensign's pet."

Tom didn't really get Elman. He'd spoken to him a little more, and he seemed quite chirpy and friendly sometimes. Other times he could get pretty moody. And any time an older boy tried to get him to do anything he didn't want to do, he'd be very feisty about it. He and Jacob seemed to get on well, though.

It was Elman, in fact, who came to tell him at breakfast on the fifth morning after arriving at Aureus, that today was the day the new kids had their challenge.

"What is it, though?" Thomas asked.

"Don't ask me," Elman shrugged. "It'll be simulator stuff, probably. You have to be in the common room at 10:30 ready to begin."

"Oh, okay," Tom nodded. "Will you be there?"

"Nu-uh," said Elman, shaking his head. "I'm wayyy too advanced for you guys. It wouldn't be fair."

That smarted coming from a diminutive ten-year-old, but Thomas had to admit that it was probably true. Elman seemed to have been at the academy forever. Other kids talked about how he might end up as the youngest ensign of all time.

"Right," Thomas responded. "Common room at ten-thirty. Thanks, Elman."

"That's okay," he giggled. "Have fun!"

Elman turned to trot over to the counter and decide on his own breakfast, before turning his head back.

"Oh, and Tom…"

"What?"

"Make sure you don't lose!"

***

Thomas arrived at the common room at ten twenty-five. He was nervous, and he definitely didn't want to be late. He walked along from the bedroom area with Onur, who also seemed quieter and more uptight than usual. Jacob soon arrived alongside Karanveer. Max, Umaru, and Edson appeared together, too.

"I guess there's seven of us, then," Jacob said, chuckling nervously and fidgeting with his fingers.

"We're all the newest ones," Umaru replied. "Before you guys, me, Edson, and Karan got here together last."

"That was about one month ago," Edson added.

"Why are you here, then?" Onur asked, looking at Max.

"I arrived a couple of weeks before those guys," Max shrugged. "I'm still pretty new too."

"By yourself?" Tom asked, but the conversation was immediately cut off by the arrival of Rear Admiral Savage and Captain Ogunbiyi through the door leading out to the rest of the station.

"Good morning, recruits; good to see you all here," Savage smiled. He took a split-second to do a mental headcount. "Almost all of you."

"Who is missing?" Babatunde asked Savage quietly, but not so quiet the boys couldn't hear.

"Legzdins," Savage replied. Babatunde rolled his eyes.

"The Sniper!" Karanveer giggled.

"Quiet!" Babatunde interrupted, firmly but not maliciously.

There was the sound of the door from the school area sweeping open automatically. The boy in the beanie came quick marching into the room.

"Speak of the devil," Savage muttered under his breath, watching the boy arrive like an alley cat staring out a rival from beneath a rusty dumpster.

"Sorry, sir and sir," the boy said breathlessly.

"Kaspars Legzdins, you are late," Admiral Savage seethed with ominous authority. "That is one debit point. You will also hand over that hat, which is not recruit uniform, and that will be your second debit point."

"Sorry, sir," the boy said quietly, looking at his feet as he shuffled between them, removing and holding out his beloved beanie. Savage snatched it from his hand.

"Look me in the eye when I am talking to you, Legzdins!" Savage ordered. The boy looked up, flushing with humiliation at revealing the tears in his eyes. "You will receive a third debit point, as I have had it reported from your teachers that you persist in wearing this ridiculous headwear, despite their repeated warnings. You understand what happens when boys reach five debits, don't you, Legzdins?"

The boy's lips twitched as if he wanted to respond verbally, but he could only nod his head profusely in response.

"Very well. Now let us continue without further distractions."

Thomas watched the other boy, now hatless, as Savage began marching and expected the boys to follow. Hatless boy followed last of all, keeping a distance between himself and the other, now cowed, boys. His face burned up and his lower lip wobbled as his eyes still shone with unspent tears of upset and humiliation. Though Tom thought he was a little strange, he couldn't help feeling sorry for him.

"Hey," said Tom, hanging back to speak to the other boy as they walked. "I'm Thomas Vowles, I'm one of the new kids."

"Kaspars Legzdins," the other boy said quietly, through a wobbly voice.

"Pleased to meet you," Tom replied, offering his hand.

"You too," Kaspars replied, giving a quick, weak handshake. His palms were clammy.

"We are about to enter one of the training simulator banks," Savage announced.

"Exciting!" Tom couldn't help forgetting Kaspars as he beamed and clenched his fist.

"You will be sorted at random into pairs to participate in a battle royale against our AI Procumbents…"

"Yessss!" several of the boys celebrated.

"…And," Savage emphasised to restore full order and attention, "each other!"

Some of the boys looked around as if staking out the competition. Facing each other would be much trickier than just tangling with simulated Procumbents.

"The team with the best kills to deaths ratio wins," Savage grinned. "And the team with the worst record… well, they'll be receiving an incentive to put in a much-improved performance next time."

Edson, in particular, froze. Thomas could only assume he had been on the losing side in his one previous challenge, and whatever Savage had meant had not been pleasant.

"Captain Ogunbiyi, the randomiser, please," said Savage.

"Recruit Onur Yıldız," Babatunde called out first, reading from a display in the palm of his hand. Onur moved to where Savage gestured. "And Recruit Edson Hernández."

Edson looked at Onur, who grinned back at him. As he moved to stand next to his partner, Edson breathed a sigh of relief and crossed himself.

"Recruit Karanveer Singh," Babatunde continued, "and Recruit Umaru Turay."

The two paired up. Thomas looked around at his potential options. He hoped, for his own sake, he was with Max. And that Max was good.

"Recruit Maximilian Nausch," Babatunde announced. Max trotted to one side, awaiting his partner. Thomas caught his eye expectantly, and Max smiled back. "And Recruit Jacob McDonough!"

Jacob pumped his fist happily and stepped across to join Max. Thomas looked nervously at Kaspars. Kaspars was staring into space.

"That leaves us with Recruit Thomas Vowles paired with Recruit Kaspars Legzdins," Savage smirked. A shiver ran down Thomas's spine.

"Boys, you will enter through this door and find your correct numbered chamber from the order you were selected," Babatunde instructed. The boys filed through into the dark corridor beyond the two superiors in their pairs.

"Oh, and Nausch," Babatunde said, clapping Max on the shoulder as he passed. "You will come with me directly after for further examination of your condition."

Max nodded stiffly and slipped away from the medical officer as quickly as he could.

"What does he mean?" Jacob asked loudly.

"It's nothing!" Max hiss-whispered, blushing profusely enough for it to be visible in the gloom of the corridor between simulation chambers. He and Jacob had soon filed off into chamber number three. Thomas led the way for him and Kaspars to enter chamber four.

"Huh?" Thomas said, looking around the small, blank room. "What's this?"

All that was in the room was two bucket seats, each supporting a helmet that covered the ears and had a visor down to the bridge of the nose.

"Just pick a chair, noob," Kaspars sighed. "The simulation will kick in as soon as you have your helmet on properly."

"I wonder what we'll be piloting," Tom mused, a little excited giggle slipping his lips as he chose the leftmost seat and sat down, lifting the helmet and examining it.

"Well, it's not going to be a Phantom or a Zeke, is it?" Kaspars replied flatly. "They only need one pilot."

"Guess not," Tom replied, lifting the helmet to his head. It was just tight enough and heavy enough to be noticeably there, but not uncomfortably so. "What's a Zeke?"

"You know," Kaspars insisted, as if he was addressing an idiot. "A Tesla Type 0. A Zeke."

"Oh," said Thomas, buckling and tightening his helmet. "Why do they call them Zeke?"

"How the hell should I know?" Kaspars snapped. "They just do."

Suddenly, with both now in their helmets, Thomas could hear Kaspars being irritated with him as if the boy was speaking from inside his head in his high, annoyed tones.

"Whoa!" Tom squealed, as his chair bucked, and his field of vision suddenly filled with an unfamiliar star system. He felt as if he was suddenly belted tightly to the chair, and steering controls appeared from somewhere to fill his hands. He could see that he was in the pilot's chair of a ship. He heard and felt Kaspars' seat moving to position itself somewhere behind and above him.

"It's a Havoc, obviously," Kaspars declared from the middle of Tom's head. "They had us in teams in these for the last challenge. They handle the easiest and the two jobs mean they can pair us up."

"Uh… Kaspars…" Tom wavered.

"What now?" Kaspars snapped.

"Um, should, maybe you drive…?"

"We don't get to choose, Thomas! The noob always pilots."

"But… I…"

"You do know what to do, right?" Kaspars groaned.

"Yeah… but…"

"What, noob? C'mon! We're about to start!"

"I'm not very good!" Tom whined.

"Well, what were you recruited for?" Kaspars shot back. "Shit!"

Thomas was aware of a sudden wild swing and rotation of Kaspars' seat, followed by the sound of laser fire and a glorious ping! to indicate they'd racked up a kill.

"C'mon, Vowles! Throttle up! We're lucky that was just an AI Procumbent; if it was one of the other teams, we could already be a death down!"

"Crap!" said Thomas, going through the process he knew would fire the spacecraft up and screwing up his eyes. The feeling of thrust was unrelenting as they shot forward through open space.

"Steady the acceleration, we'll go into a spin!"

"Oh, man! Oh flip!" Tom spluttered, painstakingly forcing his body to fight the G-forces and take more steady command of the craft, though it took nearly half a minute to manage it properly. "Oh fuck!"

"That's the spirit!" Kaspars chuckled. "Wait! Bogie at two o'clock! Circle her round!"

Thomas did as his partner instructed, tonguing the corner of his upper lip as he gently began to turn the heavy fighter craft at speed. He heard and felt Kaspars picking out his target again, and soon enough there was another kill notification.

"Gotcha!" Kaspars squealed with delight, his voice high and musical. "That was one of the other teams, too!"

"I guess that's why they call you Sniper," Thomas smiled.

"Yeah," Kaspars mewled with pride.

Tom shivered with adrenaline. They were doing fine! He let the Havoc race forward through the vacuum, looking out for the next threat. All was quiet for a little while.

"Crap," Kaspars grunted. "You see that, dead ahead?"

"Yeah," Tom gulped. It was another McLaren Havoc, heading straight for them.

"Hit your front guns. I'll see how they like a missile."

"Okay," Tom responded. He was nervous still, but he felt gritty. They were in this together now, and there was no way he was getting punished in his first week if he could help it. He pressed down on his triggers. Trails of green fire shot angrily at the craft approaching them head-on.

"Locked on, and… fire!" Kaspars called out, apparently to himself more than anyone else.

The craft opposite immediately and skilfully rolled and weaved to dodge its way from the path of their fire. Whoever it was they were approaching, they were up for a dogfight.

"C'mon, Thomas! Get on them!"

Thomas wasn't sure what he should do. The opposing pilot seemed to act on instinct, as if the craft was an extension of himself. Keeping up with their movement was difficult; outmanoeuvring them appeared impossible.

"What? No!" Kaspars whined. He immediately got on the guns again. The other Havoc had managed, just, to jack-knife clear of their guided missile, sending it torpedoing off course in the fighter's wake before eliminating it with their rotating heavy guns. As soon as that was done, cracks of front gunfire from the other fighter rained down on Thomas and Kaspars, rocking their craft and setting off extremely annoying warning alarms.

"C'mon!" Tom howled, yanking at his yoke roughly, trying to do anything to steer them away from the other ship, now heading right above them. He pulled their fighter down and to his right, with acceleration. Within a fraction of a second, they were away. Kaspars grunted as he fired off another missile, only moments before another set of alarms kicked in. They were in a nose spin, and it was only getting faster and tighter! The force was so great that Tom was pinned to his seat, helpless to affect it in any way.

Amongst the alarms, there was a ping to indicate a kill, then, after a few more seconds of nauseating spinning and acceleration, a juddering crunch. Thomas, feeling very dizzy, opened his eyes to see they were stationary in a different region of the system.

"Huh…?" he sighed, swallowing down his breakfast for the second time that morning.

Rear Admiral Savage's voice crackled into the centre of their heads. He seemed to find something very amusing indeed.

"As one team has just found, there's a limit to the distance you can travel from the centre of this simulation. Out of bounds violations count as a death – a suicide, if you like – and every time one occurs, the field of play gets smaller in all three dimensions. Have fun, boys!"

"Ugh…" Thomas groaned, gulping again. "Sorry, Kaspars."

"That's okay," Kaspars replied. "It's just training, after all. And we got the kill on them."

"Lucky you're good at this," said Tom.

"Worry about that later," Kaspars said, sucking in air. "Procumbents at eight o'clock!"

***

By the time the challenge ended, Tom was exhausted and sweaty, not to mention very thirsty. It felt like they'd been at it for hours. They'd lost count of their kills and their deaths, but both were sure that the latter was smaller than the former. The last action was particularly frantic, with the field of play so heavily shrunken that there was no escape from AI enemies or the other teams. Tom had stopped worrying that he wasn't the best pilot, or even the least bad pilot out there. They were getting by, with a lot of help from Kaspars' ability as a gunner, and Tom felt like he was way better with the Havoc than when they'd started. He even managed to get the final kill, just as the challenge ended, smoking a long, reclining Procumbent fighter ship with the front guns as they zoomed at it head-on.

"Whoa!" Tom bolted, the sudden stillness and gloom in the empty room overwhelming as the simulation cut off.

"Well done, noob," Kaspars lilted, bopping Thomas on the back of the helmet. "You're not as shit as you thought."

"Your shooting is, like, awesome!" Thomas gushed, grinning ear-to-ear at Kaspars as he removed his helmet and stood up. "Thanks to you, we definitely had more kills than deaths; we can't possibly be last!"

"Hmm… I dunno," Kaspars hummed. "I think everyone probably thinks the same. I can't tell; we didn't do this challenge before."

They filtered out, first into the corridor, then the much brighter and more disorienting space outside where they'd been split into pairs, each team trying to read the body language of the others. Nobody wanted to come last. Edson looked pale at the thought, despite his naturally tanned complexion.

"Well, wasn't that decent, Captain Ogunbiyi?" Savage smiled. "Every team scored a positive ratio!"

"Not bad, even with the simulation set to beginner-level realism," Babatunde nodded.

Thomas' heart sank. If everyone had more kills than deaths, what if they had come last? Looking at the way Edson was shivering, he really, really didn't want to be punished for poor performance. Maybe, if he was punished, they'd see how much he improved during the session and go easy on him?

"At the top, it was incredibly tight," Savage continued. "One pair scored a ratio of 57 kills to 43 deaths. The other, 65 kills to 49 deaths."

"So, by a tenth of a percentage point, who are our winners?" Babatunde asked, nodding as if he already knew the answer. Tom imagined he probably did; nobody could work out there was a tenth in it so quickly. They'd have been watching the whole thing, after all. He wasn't really listening. He didn't think either team would be him and Kaspars.

"Our second-place pairing is Recruit Edson Hernández and Recruit Onur Yıldız," Savage announced. Onur stomped his foot in frustration at realising he was so close to winning. Edson looked rather happier at the news.

"Which means, our winners are…" Savage took a deep breath. "Legzdins and Vowles!"

Kaspars bounced and clenched his fists in victory. Thomas did a double take. He must have suicided them about six times! And yet… he was on the winning team?

"Five credit points to Vowles," Babatunde declared. "Legzdins, would you like five credit points, or the cancellation of your three debit points earned today?"

"Take away my debits please, sir," Kaspars replied, between little excited fist pumps.

"Bad luck to Hernández and Yıldız," said Savage. "You displayed some fine piloting for a first outing."

"Thank you, sir," Onur said, forcing a smile.

"Unfortunately, our bottom two placing pairs did not reach the same levels of piloting or gunning with equal consistency," Savage carried on. "Our third-place team, scored 55 kills to 46 deaths."

It wasn't lost on Tom that even the pair in third had died fewer times than them. Kaspars really had saved his first challenge, even if, come to think of it, Tom had nailed the winning kill at the end.

"The losing team," said Savage unpromisingly, "scored a disappointing 55 kills to 49 deaths."

Karanveer, Umaru, Jacob, and Max watched Rear Admiral Savage with wide eyes. None had faced punishment yet, but all except Jacob had heard the rumours of what sort of horrible forfeits it might entail. Given the stoniness in Savage's face, the losing pair was in for a gruelling few hours – or however long the superiors deigned to keep them.

"McDonough and Nausch, I would congratulate you on third place, but…" Savage paused and bored through their bodies with his glare. Jacob danced from foot to foot as if he was about to wet his pants, his bun of long, curly hair bobbing as he moved. "It was hardly a meritorious performance compared to some of your comrades here, despite your positive ratio."

It took more than a second for both Max and Jacob to realise they could breathe a sigh of relief.

"Singh and Turay, with me. Immediately."

"P-please, sir…" Karanveer began to plead, bursting into tears. He was cut off by Savage grabbing at his wrist.

"Don't make me drag you, boy!"

Umaru was about as pale as it is possible for a black boy to be. His eyes were wide and full as fishbowls.

"Turay, you too! March!"

Karanveer's increasingly hysterical sobs could be heard until Rear Admiral Savage marched the two losing recruits through the sliding doors separating out the sections of corridor. Umaru was sniffling as he followed obediently. Thomas was glad not to be getting punished, but it seemed creepy just how upset his two classmates were about it. Was it really that bad?

"I will escort you remaining boys back to your quarters," Captain Ogunbiyi said. "The remainder of your afternoon and evening is free. Pizza will be delivered to your bedrooms at dinnertime as a reward for your exertions today."

"Yesssss!"

"Nausch, remember that you will come with me for a while before returning to your room."

"Yes, sir."

Thomas bounced victoriously alongside Kaspars. They were the winning team!

"Getting five credits is so cool," Tom chuntered happily. "I wonder what the rewards are for boys who collect them up?"

"I think they're the kind of rewards that feel good only while they last," Kaspars replied cryptically.

Tom didn't really understand what Kaspars might mean by that, so he simply carried on as he was.

"You must be pleased to get rid of your debits, too," he said. "Though I might have taken the credits anyway and just tried not to get in trouble for a long time."

"Ha," Kaspars smiled. "You'll learn that isn't a good idea, just like I did today."

"Yeah," Tom considered as they entered the common room. "I don't think I wanna find out what punishment is like. Karan and Umaru were really upset about it."

"I will leave you boys here," declared Babatunde. "Nausch, come along. You may need some cleaning before I can properly look at you."

Max trudged away with Babatunde, and the common room exit closed and locked. Elman bounded across the room to the new arrivals.

"Hey," he smiled. "Well done, survivors!" He looked around the group. "Aw, I guess Karan was one of the losers?"

"Yeah," Edson sighed. "And Umaru."

"Ugh," Elman said. "That's rough."

"What's so bad about punishment anyway?" Jacob asked. "Do we get beat or…?"

"Hey, Thomas," Kaspars said, whispering into his ear. "Come back to my room and play games on our immersion bands? Winners only!"

"Sure," Tom smiled. He kind of wanted to wait for the answer about punishment but figured he could catch up on that sooner or later, or just ask Kaspars. They filed into the corridor heading towards their rooms. "You can call me Tom if you want."

"Okay," Kaspars said. "We can go to your room first, Tom, and pick up what you need."

***

Thomas found that Kaspars' room was very similar to his own. Almost identical, in fact, with the same sturdy, blocky furniture, and the same ample bed, larger than a single but smaller than a double. All that was different was Kaspars' idiosyncratic style of messiness. Kaspars also seemed to have sourced a couple of glowing, animated posters to begin decorating it with more than dirty uniform and bits of other scattered rubbish.

"Nice posters," Thomas observed.

"Yeah," Kaspars chuckled. "They go off at lights-out on school nights, or when I turn the lights off, else I'd never sleep."

"Is that your team?" Thomas asked. He gestured to a poster of a football team called Spartaks, alternating between a still of the squad together and animations of the team scoring goals.

"Yeah," Kaspars said. "Who's yours?"

"Oh, someone from Zachary's Spring," he replied. "You probably won't know them."

"Nope," Kaspars grinned, "but you probably don't know Spartaks from Nova Baltica either."

"I do now," Tom grinned in return.

"Cool," said Kaspars. He sat on his bed. "So…"

"We gonna play games?"

"Sure," Kaspars answered. "We are winners, after all."

"Yeah," Tom replied, a little confused at the delay. "We can play some more team games if you want."

"We did make a pretty good team today," Kaspars replied.

"Definitely!" Tom grinned.

"Well, you did okay, for a noob pilot," Kaspars continued, "but since we won by how many kills we got, I think maybe I was our best player."

"You sure were," Thomas smiled, broad enough to show his teeth, replete with a little gap between the larger top front two.

"So…" Kaspars took a deep breath. "You want to thank me in some way, right?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," Tom insisted earnestly. "Whatever I can do to help you out, right?"

"When a rookie helps out a newbie here…" started Kaspars. He seemed nervous, which caused Thomas to frown and ruffle his fine, golden-brown eyebrows. "There's kind of a rule. Because me and Max probably won't be on the next newbie challenge, cos we started, like two months ago now, and there'll be more newbies to come sooner or later, so we're kind of established kids now…"

"What are you talking about?" Tom laughed. "You're being weird, Kaspars."

Kaspars gulped and mumbled something.

"I didn't hear you," said Tom, smiling at the silliness of the situation. "Speak up."

"Suck my dick, Tom."

"You don't have to be like that," Tom snapped, taken aback at Kaspars' sudden rudeness.

"No," said Kaspars. "I mean it, like, literally. For real. You need to suck my dick!"

Thomas looked Kaspars up and down, chills spreading through his body. He'd got to like this odd, skinny, serious-looking kid over the past few hours, even with his messy blond hair looking so wild and uncared for, and his large, brown eyes that seemed to prefer to pick a wall and stare at it rather than engaging with the group. He'd thought they might even become good friends. Now it turned out that Kaspars was just some pervert who wanted to force his boy parts onto Thomas – or get hold of Thomas' boy parts. He felt a wave of betrayal. Annoyance. Anger!

"You were only being nice to me because you want me to be your boyfriend!" Thomas accused Kaspars. "Or… Not even that! Like, your slave, or something!"

"No, Tom, please," Kaspars pleaded. He seemed somewhere between embarrassed and frightened. "Let me explain. It's not like that."

"Why should I listen to you?" Tom demanded. "Perv!"

"Thomas, please listen to me," Kaspars implored. He fidgeted with nervous energy; played with his fingers. His eyes were watery again. Thomas dug his front teeth into his bottom lip with annoyance and glowered at him.

"I'm going back to my room," Tom said, though he stayed put, arms folded.

"There's rules here, between the boys," Kaspars explained. "If someone who's about to be a rookie wins with a noob, the noob has to suck his penis. If we don't do it and the other boys further along the recruit chain find out, some of the mean older ones will use that as an excuse to make us both do that to them."

"That…" Tom stuttered. "It's not… That can't be… real."

"Please, Tom," said Kaspars. "We have to."

"No!" Tom protested. "I don't do… that… sort of thing."

"Most people don't want to," Kaspars replied. "We just… well, have to, I guess."

"Why?!"

"I told you. The others. The rules."

"How would they even know?" Tom bargained. "Couldn't we just both say we did it?"

"Believe me," said Kaspars, "some of them would find out somehow, and then it would be even worse."

"But… but…" Thomas stood before Kaspars, flabbergasted. He lowered his head and his voice. "I don't want to put your willy in my mouth."

"Do you want us both to have Takashi's thing put in our mouths?" Kaspars asked quietly in return.

Tom shook his head. He didn't want to believe what Kaspars was saying, but then Taka did creep him out.

"Please, Kaspars… There must be some other thing we can do…"

"I promise I'll try to… you know… quickly," Kaspars whispered. "I hardly make any… stuff… at all, anyway, so it'll be as less icky as possible."

"W-what… what do we do?" Tom whispered, shoulders slumped in defeat. This definitely wasn't worth winning the challenge for. "I wish we never won. It's not fair."

"If it makes you feel better," Kaspars said croakily, "your piloting sucked so much at first that if you hadn't won with me, you'd probably have lost with any other partner, and punishments are way worse."

"How can they be?" asked Tom, standing around awkwardly, unable not to imagine what he was expected to be about to do.

"I've not been punished yet, but I heard some of what the other guys said," Kaspars answered. "And, it's kind of like this, but…"

"Like what?"

"Like…" Kaspars dropped his voice to the barest whisper again. "Sexual."

"It… it can't be…"

"It is. With the superiors. And they make you do it more than once."

"That's… That can't be allowed!" Thomas cried out. He tried and failed to stifle a little sob. "I wanna go home…"

"No, you wanna be a spacefighter pilot," said Kaspars. "If anyone leaves, Savage would make sure no other academy in the navy would ever take us again."

"It's wrong, though…" Thomas exhorted. "And… sick! Punishing boys with sex stuff!"

"I know it is," Kaspars cried, beating his brow with the heel of his hand. "I know, I know, I know. But if we go, we never get to be pilots. If we tell, nobody will believe us compared to all the top navy guys who run this place and graduated from it, and we'll definitely never get to be pilots. So we…"

Kaspars screwed his eyes shut. He seemed to be stifling the urge to start crying.

"We follow the rules…" Tom whispered.

"Because you want to be a spacefighter pilot," Kaspars said quietly, "and you've got the potential to do it. I guess they do all this to, sort of… toughen us up?"

Tom nodded.

"What if I'm not tough enough?" he said sadly. "No other academy would take me before, even though my dad tried to get them to give me a trial. Then Aureus invited me out of nowhere, and… I guess, this is the test…? Whether I can do all the nasty stuff to show how bad I want to be a pilot?"

"Don't give up," Kaspars said. "You got much better today, we won fair and square, and we can have, like, the funnest sleepover ever, once this is done. You get to choose all the games we play, we can keep playing all night until you get bored or tired, and you can even have some of my pizza if you like. Promise. We just have to do this first. Okay?"

"All right," Thomas sighed.

"Um… let's get started, I s'pose?" Kaspars said awkwardly. He took Thomas' wrist and pulled him in front of him. He pulled Tom's hand down and placed it awkwardly over his crotch. "You should, sort of, rub and squeeze it through my pants for a while; get it hard."

"Ugh…" Tom breathed. He could feel the bulges and shapes of Kaspars' private parts amongst the fabric beneath his hand. He closed his eyes, mostly to avoid his partner's eye contact, as he went about jumbling the flesh around under his paw as if he was mixing around lottery balls to pull out of a hat.

"Hm…" Kaspars breathed. "Uh… Yeah, that's doing it a little."

Tom continued miserably. He felt tiny; an inch tall; a non-person, like a slave; a dirty slave. He shuddered.

"Mffph. Okay."

Something definitely felt stiffer and lumpier under Thomas' hand.

"Time to, well… get naked, I guess," said Kaspars.

Thomas reached resignedly for the boy's waistband with his fingers.

"Wait, no!" Kaspars protested, pushing Tom's hands away.

"What?" Tom blinked, looking up into Kaspars' sheepish face.

"I mean you have to get naked."

"Huh?" Tom huffed. "Why? I'm already going to… do that thing, aren't I? Why do I have to strip off too?"

"Cocksuckers are always naked," Kaspars said, eyeing Thomas sympathetically. "That's the rules."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Tom fumed to himself. None of this was fair! He took a couple of steps back and, fighting every urge to stop himself, he began to take off his clothes before Kaspars. For his part, Kaspars put his hand into the front of his trousers and played with himself, trying to maintain his fleeting tween erection through this awkward forced gayness. Tom imagined that, just like him, Kaspars didn't have anything against boys who liked boys, he'd just never imagined having to do anything, well, like that with another boy. And with the superiors? Eww. Surely, no boy was into that?

Just as Tom was steeling himself to lower his underpants again (and he hoped this would not become a familiar feeling, despite having to draw on such courage twice in the same week), Kaspars helped out by pulling all of his own legwear down and out of the way. It must have been easier for him, being about to be the one needing his stuff out to be on the receiving end of the sucking.

"Oh!" said Kaspars, handling his entire package in his right palm, temporarily obscuring Tom's nemesis-to-be from view. "Grab the immersion bands, please?"

Thomas was beyond asking what for, and simply hopped awkwardly across the bedroom butt naked to retrieve their immersion bands from where they had been put on the desk. He dropped them down on the bed next to where Kaspars was standing, slapping his dick lightly back and forth to ensure it was at maximum stiffness.

"Thanks," Kaspars breathed, still seeming extremely sheepish about what was happening.

"So do I just…?" Thomas asked, gesturing at his intention to descend, and beginning to kneel in front of Kaspars. Kaspars nodded, his cheeks reddening. Soon Thomas felt the short, pointy baby hairs of his knees touch the soft, thin carpeting of Kaspars' bedroom floor; the same kind of carpeting that he had not yet felt against his bare knees in his own bedroom. He looked ahead, gulping as he came face-to-face with his task for the first time. Kaspars' erection bobbed, as it realised it was under observation. It was rather different from Tom's own, thicker by a small amount at the base but tapering a little narrower along the shaft and curling downwards to face its crosshair at Tom's lips almost on purpose. It seemed longer than Tom's, too. Perhaps ten centimetres [4 in] or more; perhaps longer than ten centimetres, but with ten centimetres between the base and the tip in a straight line without the curl. His balls also seemed slightly larger than Tom's, though they were drawn tightly against Kaspars' body and glowing red, thick skin wrinkles and a few little white wisps of hair visible from Tom's short distance away. Just over ten centimetres [4in] away, in fact; soon to be zero, if he could manage it…

Tom realised he'd been knelt there staring at Kaspars' dick and balls for too long. He could make out individual purple, blue, and green arteries on the pale skin. Kaspars, like him, had no hairs above the thing yet, though his pubis glistened in the light as if to suggest the beginnings of hairs were waiting for their moment, just as Tom was now. He took a deep breath, inhaling a kind of meaty, kind of sweet scent, which he took to be Kaspars' boner smell. That didn't seem too bad. There was also the kind of stinky sweat smell from between Kaspars' legs from the workout of the simulation, but it wasn't overpowering, and Tom very much hoped his mouth wouldn't be going that far back. That was balls, taint, and crack, after all, which thankfully wasn't part of the deal. Kaspars' cock twitched again, its pursed bobble of skin on the end looking rosy and needy. Thomas instinctively looked down for comparison to his own floppy little worm, which was trying to hide away entirely right now from the humiliation. He hoped Kaspars wouldn't be the kind of boy to judge.

"Come on," Kaspars breathed raspily, using two fingers to aim his long, thin, downward-angled penis more squarely at Thomas' clenched lips, retracting red, fluffy skin over a shiny, moist, engorged claret bishop head as he did, urethra tight, thin, and sly.

Tom leaned forward. He inhaled the rather richer boner smell now coming from the exposed part of his new friend's willy, trying not to focus on the fact that he was about to taste his new friend's boner flavour. He felt the end kiss stickily against his lips, so, in one, quick go – as if to minimise the duration of some great pain – he opened them up and clamped down around Kaspars' cock head, feeling and tasting it press fully against his tongue.

"Ohhhhhh!" Kaspars gasped. "Ooooh, that's good!"

Thomas felt pathetic again, like a dog's favourite table leg, and gagged at the thought of what he was doing. That only made his tongue play across the exposed glans more, flooding his mouth with rich, tart, sharp flavours. Thomas held his head in place with Kaspars' cock resting front and middle of his tongue and felt pitiful. He wasn't so much disgusted with himself as simply ashamed.

"You have to move back and forward," Kaspars instructed. Thomas was staring straight at the downy skin directly above the base of Kaspars' shaft, so he felt encouraging fingers through the hair on the sides of his head rather than seeing what Kaspars was doing. He sighed through his nose, drawing a satisfied gasp from Kaspars as his boyhood was tickled further, before complying and beginning to bob his head on the penis lying against his tongue. The smooth, thin skin felt odd slipping between his lips. The head of the penis almost reached the back of his throat, tickling him uncomfortably, though not enough to force a gag. His bottom lip kissed the middle part of those hot, red, wrinkly balls, feeling Kaspars' few tiny hairs tickle against his chin. At least like this, it tasted mostly of skin. Taking only the end part was a silly, beginners mistake, obviously: that was where all the strong flavours were.

"Mmm…" Kaspars sang as Tom steadily moved his head up and down over ten-plus centimetres[4 in] of twelve-year-old cock. "Ohhh, this feels so good, Tom."

Tom blinked. Part of him felt rotten again, but, on the other hand, it wasn't so bad. Sure, it didn't feel good for him, but he was getting used to the fact that it was only his friend's willy, after all. He wouldn't be volunteering to do it again, but he was reasonably satisfied that Kaspars was clean down there, and it was starting to feel more awkward than traumatic. Just as Tom was processing that thought, and simultaneously feeling embarrassed that he could feel a trail of spit about to dribble off the bottom of his chin, Kaspars made a little whinnying noise.

"Ugh! Okay, Tom… I said I'd… go fast."

Kaspars must have been close, and he chose to speed things up even further by grabbing hold of the carefully styled wavy top of Thomas' hair for purchase. Then, for lack of a better description in the poor smaller boy's mind, began shagging his mouth hard. Kaspars' date-size nuts slapped Thomas in the chin about ten times, all the while the bulb at the tip of the boy's pecker forced gulping sounds from Tom's throat. After that tenth thrust, Kaspars moaned loudly and pulled back, holding Thomas' head still in place. Tom felt a splatter of something enter his mouth and got a sweet foretaste, which, combined with the flavour of tween glans, surrendered to a tart and sour aftertaste, like sucking on a piece of chocolate with a mouthful of saltwater. Two other tiny drops followed onto Tom's tongue. As Kaspars pulled his drastically deflating wiener clear, dragging with it a clear, sticky strand of moisture between advancing foreskin and lips, Tom wasn't sure if the rules said he was supposed to swallow the load or not. At least the taste wasn't revolting, though it was causing his mouth to fill up with saliva.

"Yeah, you're supposed to swallow anything the rookie makes," Kaspars said, as if reading Tom's inertia. "Thanks, Tom. I mean, I guess. Like, it felt really good. In a practising-for-girls sort of way. I s'pose it always feels good for the guy being sucked, I mean, no matter who is doing the sucking. But I still should say thanks. I'll shut up now. It's kind of awkward anyway."

Tom swallowed, purging his mouth of Kaspars' semen and ignoring the boy's nervous babbling. He looked up just in time to see Kaspars' pulling the two immersion bands from where they had been resting around the top of his forehead.

"What did you do?" Thomas asked, still kneeling totally naked on the floor, pressing his thighs together to hide as much of his privates as possible – and avoid revealing he'd grown a semi.

"I recorded it on both our bands," Kaspars said. "Now, if any boneheads ask, we've got evidence."

"But I don't want other people to see it!" Thomas protested. "I had your penis in my mouth! I licked the whole thing and sucked and swallowed your sperms when they came!"

"It's okay, we can password protect them," Kaspars said. "That way, we can show we have the recording, but all anyone gets to see is the first still picture of you on your knees at the beginning and my dick by your lips."

"That's still really embarrassing," Tom said quietly. So is still being naked on my knees on the floor, he thought to himself.

"Tom, please don't feel bad," Kaspars said. "Literally everyone except the other noobs will know you had to do this, because they know the rules. Boys do things here. It's what happens. No girls here ever, you see. I don't think anybody judges."

"They might," Thomas grumped.

"Freddie has had to do the rules to recruits who've been around longer and some punishments, and everyone loves him."

"I s'pose…" Tom sighed.

"I hope we can still be friends," Kaspars said seriously. He patted the bed next to him, where he was perched with his legwear still bunched down around his shins, seemingly out of respect while Thomas remained naked. Thomas took him up on the offer and sat himself down, crossing his thighs to squash his boy parts out of view again, feeling chilly and more than a little vulnerable.

"You still have your pants down," Thomas observed. Kaspars ignored him.

"I don't have many friends here yet," Kaspars said, continuing his train of thought. "I find it weird too, and sometimes scary. I liked working with you today, Tom. You were kind to me after I thought I would get a punishment for sure from Sir."

"It's okay," Tom squeaked. "Like you said, I would've been in punishment right now if I didn't have you as a partner. I just wish I didn't have to suck your dick, though."

"Maybe I can do something for you to make up for it," Kaspars suggested, before quickly adding, "not blow jobs or any other mouth stuff. Like, practising for girls stuff or helping a bro out stuff. With hands or something like that."

"Maybe…" Tom replied, leaving the subject open but refusing to countenance pursuing it at that moment.

"So, we are friends?"

"Yeah," Tom smiled. "But not naked friends. We should put our clothes back on before this gets even weirder!"

"I like to keep it warm in here so I can hang out in just my undies," Kaspars admitted. "Don't tell anyone."

"That's cool," Tom said. "I won't tell. We can hang out like that now. My uniform is super sweaty from the simulation, and we already saw each other naked, so undies are an improvement."

"Yeah," Kaspars grinned. "Hey, you get to choose what games we play, too!"

"Yayyy!" Thomas cheered exaggeratedly, jumping back into his form-fitting briefs. "Let's play a fighting game so I can smack – you – downnn!"

"Go easy, mister," Kaspars chuckled. "I'm not as tough as you are!"

***

Kaspars and Thomas had been playing immersion games for hours. Pizza had come and gone (or rather, been scoffed), and they even were hungry enough to eat all the salad that the academy insisted on serving with it. They used their full allowance of fizzy drinks on a couple of visits to the cafeteria for supplies, the second time returning to Kaspars' bedroom with Max to rope him into a few hours of games before he got tired and went back to his own bed. It was certainly long past any reasonable bedtime when the two finally decided that they'd had enough of gaming for one night.

"Sleepover over," Thomas said, the breakout of a yawn just as he finished failing to hide the disappointment in his tone.

"Shame we can't have a real sleepover," Kaspars said. "Where we actually get to sleep at each other's places after partying all night."

"Yeah…" Tom agreed wistfully. "They're like… a kid takeover!"

"So cool," Kaspars agreed, before yawning widely and loudly enough that it made both him and Tom giggle.

"Did you think Max was kinda quiet tonight?" Tom asked.

"Max is always kinda quiet," Kaspars answered.

"Maybe it's to do with his secret illness that he has to see Captain Ogunbiyi about!"

Kaspars shrugged non-committally, though the slightest smirk twitched at the corners of his pink mouth.

"Wait, you started with Max, didn't you?" Thomas piped, grinning to himself as if he felt he was some master detective.

"I did," Kaspars nodded.

"So you did the – you know – exam with him, right?"

Kaspars nodded a second time.

"You must know what Max's problem is then!"

"I do," Kaspars admitted, "but, it's kind of personal. He was embarrassed that I saw Babatunde looking at it; I don't think I should tell anyone else."

"C'mon, pleeease?" Tom begged, batting the lashes of very tired brown eyes at Kaspars. "I like Max. He's our friend. I won't tell anyone."

"Okay," shrugged Kaspars. "But you probably won't believe me anyway."

"Course I will," Thomas smiled sweetly.

"The skin on the end of his peeper is too tight," Kaspars smirked.

Thomas burst into high-pitched laughter and had to cover his mouth in case the walls weren't quite as soundproof as they were supposed to be.

"That's not real!"

"It is, honest!" Kaspars said, suppressing his own giggles. "He got given some special cream and some stretches to do to try to make it able to pull back…"

"Ha, ha, ha!" Tom laughed, "Max has to play with his willy with cream on it because a doctor told him to! I am Max. I must fiddle wiz my special wiener for ze medical science!"

"For real," Kaspars sniggered, "or Babatunde is going to cut it off!"

"What?" Tom said, suddenly falling deadly serious and widening his exhausted eyes. "That's not funny. Max could get his entire dick cut off?"

"No, stupid," Kaspars laughed, only now at Thomas' face. "Babatunde is gonna cut off the skin if it stays too tight to pull back!"

"Oh."

"Yeah, you idiot! Hahaha, you thought Babatunde would cut Max's whole little worm off!"

"Well, he is pretty scary," Tom yawned. "I think he might cut kids' willies off."

"Yeah," Kaspars conceded. "Now I might get nightmares about it. Thanks."

"Well, I should go to bed," Tom said. "I'm really, really tired. Like, sleep standing up tired."

"Don't forget your clothes. It might not be so warm in your room, and it definitely won't be in the hall."

"Aw, crap," Thomas said, looking at the sprawling mess of identical clothes on the floor, his only identifiable on very close inspection for their subtle differences in size. "It'll take forever to find which ones are mine again."

"I'm really tired, too," Kaspars said. "I kinda just wanna go to bed."

"Sorry," Tom sighed.

"I guess, you could sleep here if you really wanted," Kaspars suggested tentatively. "Then we could fix it in the morning."

"You sure?" Tom said uncertainly.

"Totally sure," Kaspars said. "The bed is pretty big, and we aren't. We wouldn't even have to touch or anything. Sleepover, remember?"

"Sleepover," Thomas agreed, smiling, then immediately bringing the back of his hand to his mouth to cover off another large yawn. "I'm gonna sleep straight away."

"Race you," Kaspars replied, bouncing bottom-first onto his bed.

Thomas followed, snuggling in beneath the covers and leaving a respectful distance between himself and Kaspars. Given that Kaspars had the room heated to underpants and chill temperature, the bed was plenty warm enough that Tom wondered if he should shuffle further away from Kaspars, feeling even with a gap between them the level of heat coming off the other boy's body.

"Lights off," Kaspars yawned, and the room descended into pitch darkness with the lack of natural light, until a weak ambient glow flickered on in the far corners of the room to simulate a more natural night-time. "Y'know, Tom, that you can green-list other recruits for your bedroom, right, so they can come in any time?"

"Yeah," Tom answered weakly, feeling sleep rapidly coming to take him now his body was recumbent and his head resting on a pillow.

"I'm gonna green-list you, so we can hang out whenever. You do the same to me if you want."

"O…" Tom involuntarily smacked his lips. His head was very heavy. "Kay."

"Ar labu nakti, Tom."

…

"Tom…"

Kaspars breathing was shallow. His head rolled backwards, and he couldn't place exactly what he was going to say any longer. Within a few breaths, he was no longer there at all.

To Be Continued