He wasn’t sure if the American military still did sparring in basic. The Shil’vati certainly did.

“Hold still, damnit!”

He was doing better than expected. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised, given that him taking down one of the aliens was what brought him here in the first place. To be honest though, part of him still hadn’t fully believed he’d done it. He couldn’t remember it after all, and Shil’vati were big.

Skill certainly had a place in a fight, but someone who was twice your size was someone who was twice your size.

He ducked under an errant fist, stumbling slightly as the blow lightly skimmed the protective padding around his head. A human opponent might have been able to take advantage of that opening.

A Shil’vati? Not so much.

It wasn’t so much that the aliens were slow. They were pretty quick when they were in motion. It was their reaction time that was their real Achilles heel. Just a few microseconds slower than a human.

Not that he’d known that walking into the ring. He’d been shitting bricks after seeing two of the recruits that preceded him get into a no-holds brawl. It had been a veritable beat down that had left him wondering if he was about to go through the same.

This fight had been illuminating.

“Brotherfucker!” Freyxh winced as she saw that he was just out of reach once more. Sure, it was barely a few feet beyond the length of her arm, the sparring ring not allowing for more, but given the way her chest was heaving and how sluggish she’d become, he might as well have been on the other side of the planet.

To be honest, he was pretty sure his punches had done little more than irritate her. Exhaustion was what was doing the real damage. He figured a few more passes and she’d barely be able to keep her arms up any more. At which point he could pretty leisurely pummel her into submission.

He was getting ready to do just that when a buzzer rang out, causing both combatants to freeze in place.

“I’m calling it,” the DI said. “The human wins.”

“Wha- No, I can still….” Freyxh tried to say, only to go deathly silent as their trainer leveled a glare in her direction.

“Two laps around the training ground for talking back, recruit,” the DI grunted. “I’d make it five, but given your current state I might have to fill out an autopsy report before you were through, and I hate paperwork.”

It said a lot about the Shil’vati feminine ego - or perhaps just hers - that Freyxh still looked like she wanted to complain, but after a few seconds more she took off at a fairly sluggish jog, an audible growl of frustration coming from her lips as she passed.

“What are you waiting for, recruit?” the DI said, turning to Jason. “Vacate the ring.”

Jolted back into motion by the command, he did so, moving to join the small crowd of observers as the woman went back to supervising the other ongoing spars.

“I’m impressed,” Tarcil said from where he was holding an ice pack over his eye. “I had heard the rumors, but I had honestly thought them exaggerated.”

“Rumors?” Jason asked as he moved to apply a medi-patch to his side where a purple bruise was already starting to form.

The alien miracle drug would have it fixed up by the time they had to move on to drill practice; Shil’vati medical technology being part of the reason that the aliens could be so blasé about injuries sustained during training.

“Your fight with the Marine back on Earth,” Tarcil said. “One of the girls discovered it on her omni-pad and it has since made its way around the cadre.”

Jason frowned. He’d heard nothing of the sort. “How the fuck do you hear about this stuff? You talk to the others even less than I do.”

Hell, if Jason were to describe Tarcil in the terms of a human woman, he would have called him an ice queen. The guy treated the females in the cadre with a distance that bordered right on the edge of disdain. He had yet to figure out whether that was a Shil’vati male thing or a Tarcil thing.

The male in question just did that infuriating little smirk of his. “A gentleman has his ways.”

Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes. “How come you’ve got an ice pack anyway?” He pulled up his shirt and gestured to the pack on his abdomen. “Wouldn’t one of these work better?”

Tarcil lifted the ice pack to reveal a medi-patch underneath. “Numbs the pain while it works.”

“It hurts that bad?”

Tarcil glanced at him, eyes widening slightly before they reverted to the alien’s usual half-lidded sardonic stare. “It’s moments like these that remind me that for all we look alike, you are very much a woman in a man’s body.”

Jason chuckled as he sat down in the dirt. “You know, back on Earth saying something like that could be considered kind of offensive?”

Tarcil smiled as he, somewhat daintily, joined him in the dirt. “I can well imagine given that human men have a woman’s ego.”

Male ego, Jason translated. Male ego.

He was about to speak again when a loud thump heralded another person joining them in the dirt.

“What are you boys talking about?” Raisha grinned, her short black hair bouncing along with other parts of her as she gracelessly plopped down into the dirt next to them.

Though to be honest, Jason barely heard her. He was too focused on the fact that the woman had more blue patches than purple.

“Holy shit Raisha, did you go five rounds with Mike Tyson?” Jason asked as he tossed her the pack of medi-patches.

Which to his complete confusion, she disdained.

“These?” she asked, gesturing to the veritable patchwork of bruises and scratches. “Nothing. My sisters used to do way worse to me when we were play-fighting back on the farm.” She paused. “Who’s Mike Tyson, anyway? A great warrior?”

“Sure,” Jason said as he deliberately shoved the pack back into her hands. “The greatest.”

“…Was he hot?”

Despite himself, he chuckled. “Not really something I’ve thought about to be honest.”

“Really?” Raisha sounded disappointed as she, somewhat reluctantly, started applying patches to her arms. “I thought human guys…you know…with other guys….”

Jason deliberately ignored the way some of the other observers – and even Tarcil – leaned in. “A gross exaggeration. Yes, some men prefer the company of other men over women. Some men like the company of men and women. I am neither. I like women and only women.”

There was that one time at a university party…but he tried not to think about that.

“Aw,” Raisha groaned. “Don’t take this the wrong way, human, but you’re turning out to be a bit of a disappointment.”

“I’m…sorry?”

It was at that moment that the somewhat oblivious alien realized what she just said. “Not like that!” She threw her arms up. “I just mean just…ugh.”

In one swift motion she lifted her top, exposing two ripe watermelon sized breasts capped by surprisingly dainty dark blue nipples.

Jason stared. He couldn’t help himself. He was only human and he was surprised.

“See?” Raisha said, pointing triumphantly as her top fluttered back down to her stomach. “You’re clearly interested. Not like him.”

Tarcil was utterly unperturbed by the digit being pointed in his direction, just as he hadn’t been by being flashed by two particularly amazing breasts.

“Perhaps it’s less breasts in general and more your breasts that I’m unimpressed by,” the male said as he casually twisted open the cap of his canteen. “They are a bit on the small side after all.”

They most certainly were not, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell that by the way Raisha recoiled. By the look on her face, Jason was reasonably sure that the young woman had just been damaged more by those few words than she had been by getting pounded on in the ring a few minutes earlier.

“My breasts are fine,” she said somewhat unconvincingly.

Jason almost felt a little bad for her. Was that like the equivalent of being told you had a small dick?

“They’re great,” he said despite himself, still a little flushed from the impromptu show.

Raisha immediately perked up again.

“Alright recruits, get up and in formation.” The DI stomped over with the rest of the sparrers. “We’ve got drill practice on the oval in five.”

Jason thanked the stars for the fact that he didn’t have to continue this conversation.

--------------------

The uniform for a Shil’vati recruit was a simple thing. A mottled grey jumpsuit made of the same strange synthetic material that the aliens seemed to make all their clothes from. As it was intended for recruits, it had no unit designation or markings, simply a name written in Shil’vati script emblazoned across the lapel.

Given that it was summer on Horizon, many of the recruits had taken to unzipping and peeling off the top half of the jumpsuit in the dorm. At first, Jason had found it rather distracting, given that doing so meant a lot of them were thus wandering around in their exercise tops, which equated to a black tank-top or just a grey sports bra.

Now? Now he missed those days.

“This is your fault, you know?” Tarcil deadpanned from his bunk as another totally nude Shil’vati wandered past, practically shaking her bare purple ass as she did so. Not that the male paid her any attention at all.

It hadn’t taken long for Raisha to start wandering around in the buff - and from there the others had quickly caught on. Not all of them were doing it, but enough were. The worst thing was, Jason had only himself to blame. He couldn’t help it. He saw a great pair of breasts, he stared. It was like a sunset or a rainbow. You couldn’t just not look.

Jason looked up blearily from where he’d slammed his head into a pillow. Specifically Tarcil’s pillow, given that he was currently sitting on the effeminate male’s bunk. “You think I don’t know that?”

He deliberately tried not to dwell on how nice said pillow smelled. Like a spicy kind of lilac. Fuck, his life was already complicated enough without his only male friend smelling distractingly nice. Couldn’t the male aliens have the decency to be a bit more ‘manly’ if there were so damn few of them?

Damn aliens.

“I think you're still not wearing a top,” Tarcil said, his eyes aimed pointedly at his human friend’s bare torso.

“I think I’m still hot as hell,” Jason said, as he wiped a hand over said bare torso showing how it came away slick.

“You sure are,” a voice called out, proving that someone was listening in on their conversation. Which was par for the course really. Apparently a high temperature being a euphemism for attractiveness crossed the species divide too, which was a little factoid he’d just learned.

Jason glanced up to see who had spoken.

“Vieysha,” he deadpanned. “Or is it Vieyshi?”

“It’s Vieysha!” the woman in question shouted indignantly, even as her sister did the same from across the room.

The two lithe – by Shil’vati standards - twins hated being confused for each other. Which was why they each had a different color streak in their short spiky white hair. Pink for Vieysha and green for Vieyshi.

To be honest, it made them both look like punk rockers to Jason, which wasn’t too far from the truth of their personalities given that both of them were the ‘rebels’ of the twenty person cadre. Well, that and the golden studs they both had through their nipples.

Which, together with the hair, told Jason that the Shil’vati military was a lot more lenient when it came to personal effects than any human military would be. Of course, he’d sort of been able to guess that when he’d not been able to find a single word against fraternization in the Rules and Regulations handbook, beyond ‘don’t let it get in the way’ and ‘don’t do anything on duty.’ Not in so few words of course, but that had been his takeaway.

It was moments like that that reminded him that for all its similarities, the Shil’vati military wasn’t just an inverted version of a human military. It was an entirely alien culture… with entirely alien rights and wrongs.

“I should have known,” Jason grinned. “Vieyshi’s got the bigger breasts.”

“She does not.” Vieysha’s hands shot up to cover hers.

Just as Vieyshi practically preened. “I do?”

Jason had to resist the urge to roll his eyes as laughter rolled across the room.

It was almost too easy. As far as he could tell they were exactly the same - but like it even mattered? Breasts were breasts. Big or small didn’t matter one whit to him. You wouldn’t believe it by listening to the Shil’vati though. To listen to them go on about it, you’d think an inch one way or another was the difference between being a real woman or not.

As if he could even tell….

-----------------------

Jason was doing some soul searching.

It wasn’t like he was against sleeping with an alien. On Earth he might have been, but here? After two weeks of being surrounded by a veritable bounty of feminine flesh and not a moment of real privacy, he was just as pent up as they were. Some days it was all he could do not to grab the nearest cat caller and drag the delighted alien into the nearest lavatory for some seriously frantic fucking.

Something he knew for a fact many of them were hoping he would do. Apparently, Raisha had been speaking the truth. A number were quite disappointed that he had thus far failed to live up to humanity’s vaunted reputation for promiscuity. Not that it had stopped any of them from trying to tempt him.

To be honest, he didn’t know why he was still resisting. At first it was just obstinacy on his part. The alien conquerors had wanted something from him, and he’d withheld it more out of habit than any true opposition. Now though? He was horny and frustrated.

…Which he imagined wasn’t all that different from how any other recruit felt, human or otherwise.

The only exception seemed to be Tarcil, who Jason wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t a celibate monk, given how little heed he gave any of the females in their cadre.

“Are all Shil’vati males like you?” he asked between spoonfuls of vaguely purple paste.

“Kind of a vague question don’t you think?” Tarcil smiled. “Are all humans like you?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Knock it off, you know exactly what I mean.”

Tarcil’s smiled faded as he returned to his customary cool demeanor. “I assume this has something to do with how you’ve spent the last five minutes watching recruit Adrilla fellate a gorofruit? Something I can assure you she’s noticed given that the poor thing is probably touching her tonsils by now.”

Jason flushed, as he realized that was exactly what he was doing, and turned away before the woman in question ended up choking herself on the vaguely banana-shaped food item. He also wasn’t too sure if in Tarcil’s mind the ‘poor thing’ was Raisha or the fruit. Either could have been true for the quietly sarcastic male.

“Are all Shil’vati males so disinterested in females?”

Tarcil took a sip of his drink as he seemed to mull the question over. “Depends.”

“On what?”

He shrugged. “The individual, the culture and the circumstances. Some are more like me. Some are less. The thing you’ve got to realize is the females outnumber us eight to one and they know it. A family unit might have eight females to one male on average, but not all of them. Many have less. Some girls can go their whole lives without even touching a male, and all of them are keenly aware of that fact.”

Jason nodded to show he was following along.

“Showing interest in a girl can be…risky. You’re constantly surrounded by women. If you show one a little more attention than the others they usually take it to mean way more than you intended. They’ll start pushing for more and if you deny them, they’ll claim you were leading them on. Things can get ugly and it’s usually better just to avoid the whole thing entirely.”

The Shil’vati male sounded bored as he spoke. “Of course, that’s all a gross oversimplification. Everyone’s their own person. From what I’ve seen of your media, we still have a lot of things in common with humanity. One-night stands, affairs, prostitutes and the like. The long and short of it is that most of us guys tend to act a little distant to avoid creating misunderstandings or developing unwanted entanglements.”

“Sounds lonely.” Jason paused as he thought over what had just been said. “You think that’s what I’m doing? Giving off signals and making them think I’m interested?”

Tarcil scoffed. “You definitely are, but I doubt it’s made all that much of a difference. I’m pretty sure most of the girls here are just after a wild night with the exotic alien from the sex planet. Nothing you can do or have done would have changed how they’re acting.” He glanced over at the human sardonically. “Though going shirtless and the fact that you keep reacting to their...‘flirting’ probably isn’t helping.”

Jason ignored the comment about his world being the ‘sex planet.’ “So basically, they’re just after some fun?”

“Probably? Fuck the exotic alien. Get an opportunity to brag to their friends.” Tarcil returned to his food. “Some might be after more though. Who knows what goes on in the heads of females. Why?”

“Just thinking.” Jason said as he scooped up another spoonful of mush.