Chapter 6

The Delaga was back on station. Blackie Baluk stalked the bridge, sipping coffee. “Where in entropy is Leegates?”

“He’s with Sparks and Tesh in the CC,” Lt Glip replied.

“I’m headed there — you have the bridge.” Blackie stepped through the hatch.

Glip got on the comm, “Skipper’s coming!”

“Thanks, Boss,” Sparks replied. Turning to Lee, he asked, “What’s wrong?”

“You call that a logic circuit?” A diagram displayed on the screen in three dimensions.

“Yeah, it’s an incremental decimal NAND gate.”

“A WHAT? Computers think in binary!”

“Well, yeah, so we augmented the circuitry to translate...”

“And made them thirty-three times more complex ... Jeezus! Ever think of translating the data, afterwards?” Lee shook his head.

“This translates it in process!” Sparks ranted.

“Yeah, a thousand fucking times, instead of once! And what’s this incremental shit?”

“It’s designed to assess probability...”

“Why?”

“Ummm, to make it more efficient?” Sparks was tentative.

“Yeah, right! More like to try to tackle errors generated by cross-talk from this mess!” Lee, retorted derisively. He was still shaking his head sorrowfully when Blackie hit the hatch.

“What’s wrong?” Blackie asked.

“That’s the most unnecessarily complex mess I ever saw!” Lee ranted.

“Let’s get down to fabrication, and see what we can do with your stuff,” Sparks suggested.

Ten DPs later, Sparks looked up from the new monitors set up in the sensor area, “Throw the switch, Tesh.”

“Type two sensors are on, in parallel.”

The screens lit. “Calibrating,” Sparks chanted, wielding a screwdriver. “Holy shit!”

“What?” Blackie queried.

“Sensor resolution is two hundred and fifty percent!” Sparks whooped. “Enough to see that Imperial cruiser at two light-cents...”

“Imperial WHAT!” Blackie was out of his seat. The Delaga didn’t carry weaponry capable of dealing with a cruiser...

A cent later, the group gathered in CC. “Can they see us?” Rendec asked.

“Nope,” Sparks grinned. “We’re ‘way out of their sensor range.”

“Can we get out of the way without detection?”

“Absolutely, but they’ll just get past us...”

“Maybe not,” Lee interrupted. “Teela, want to bring our toy to CC?”

“Okay, Honey,” Teela replied on comm.

“What HAVE you two been doing besides setting new records for sexual athletics?” Blackie asked. Rango had moved out of Teela’s cabin; she couldn’t handle the exposure to the pair’s sexual romps.

“We were looking at new ideas in weaponry,” Lee replied.

Teela came through the hatch with a data pad and plugged it into the wall port. A picture lit the main screen. “Looks like a missile pod,” Blackie grunted, “What’s that?”

“It’s an independent guidance unit,” Lee replied. “The pod is small enough to not be picked up on sensors until well within its operating range, but until now, we couldn’t pack guidance computers with it. Now we can, without an appreciable increase in size. Suppose we leave one of these along the flight path of our friend here, with a proximity sensor?”

“Ooooooo, sweet!” Rendec crowed. “How long to manufacture?”

“We have a prototype...”

The Imperial Cruiser never knew what hit them. The Delaga launched a boat that laid the missile pod in a trajectory designed to cross its path; LT Glip’s calculations were so good that it drifted to well inside missile range — in fact, inside the envelope of the cruiser’s countermeasures. The on-board control system detected this and waited until the optimum moment, instead of firing as soon as a solution was available, and the cruiser took hits from three low-yield clean nukes on no notice. Rendec directed that the Delaga close cautiously with the apparently stricken vessel, and readied boarding parties for a compartment-by compartment fight, but the cruiser was shattered; only a few half-cooked survivors remained alive. Rendec got on the hyperwave to the Confederation, “I need an intel team and somebody to pick up POWs — we caught a cruiser with it’s pants down!”

The Confederation liaison went from skeptical to nonplussed as recorded images proved Rendec serious. “I’m sending a C3 vessel and a prison barge,” he responded, after checking with superiors, “and I’ve been authorized to release full tactical allowances for one hundred DPs to your accounts. Congratulations!”

Rendec grinned like a shark. “We’ve got a couple of new toys — keep your transfer pad open! I intend to collect those Armag bounties we talked about!”

“Give us some marks in the ‘wins’ column, and we’ll be glad to pay them,” the liaison grinned back.

“I’ll get back to you. Raiders out.” Rendec turned from the console and slapped Lee on the shoulder, “You’ve more than earned your keep! Got any more toys in mind? I want a dozen of those things on each of the assault boats!”

“I’ve a couple of other ideas ... It’d help if I had more resources.”

“You’ll get ‘em. Blackie, we need to set up a dummy corporation and make some claims to Dirt, or whatever it is Leegates calls his homeworld.”

“That’s ‘Earth’,” Lee grinned. “I’m gonna go celebrate.”

“By knocking another piece off Teela?” Rendec chuckled. “It’s a good thing I carried you as a consultant — if you were one of the troops, I might have to take notice...”

Lee got serious. “Think about what needs doing, then — I’d like being in boots, but I like Teela, too...” He turned away, and stepped through the hatch, leaving Rendec looking thoughtful.

“You’d probably have to make him an officer,” Blackie pointed out, “And you’d probably have to give him to me, despite his combat experience.”

“True, enough,” Rendec grunted. “Get Glip, we need his legal contacts.” The pair of them pulled in the lieutenant and went into closed-door session, making plans.

“Hey,” a soft voice sounded behind PSG Hroosh as he strode the companionway.

Hroosh looked around, cautiously, but he knew who it was ... Becky stood there, wearing nothing but a smile — and an impish, hot-eyed one at that! “Becky!”

“Want to play? I could use a little of Papa Hroosh...”

How did one so young contrive to look so sultry? Hroosh had a weakness for young stuff, and Becky was as young as it got — maybe younger! She’d started a pair of surprisingly robust titties in the past few weeks — Hroosh was SURE they’d been augmented, but the Medical Officer denied it vehemently — and a thin patch of red sprigs at her crotch. Hroosh ALMOST preferred her flat-chested and bald-pussied, but he was seriously hooked... “Baby, I don’t have a credit left to my name! You’ve sucked me dry!”

Becky merely smiled and her eyes flashed, and Hroosh realized the pun. She HAD sucked him dry, on a number of occasions in the past thirty DPs — but that was before the pair of them discovered that she could orgasm from anal sex! Hroosh had gone straight to Heaven, and his credit balance had shot to nearly zero, despite the fact that Becky offered him what was a cut rate for NORMAL sex with a woman twice her age! Hroosh was in serious lust, but he was ALSO broke... “Well, maybe I’ll put this one on account,” she simpered.

“I can’t right now, Hon, but I’d sure like to, later — I’m on watch. I’ll pass the word in First and Second, if you like...” Entropy, he hated to share, but...

“Okay,” Becky pouted. “Maybe Doramus is free...” Doramus had sampled both her mouth and her ass — but he made no bones of the fact that he wanted to be the one who took Becky’s cherry — and he was willing to drop a hefty credit balance to do it!

“Well, don’t give him THAT yet, Honey.” Hroosh was well aware of this, and had basically resigned himself to it. Besides, Dor was okay ... But Becky wasn’t QUITE ready yet; only she and the Med Officer knew EXACTLY how close she was — one look said the day was coming, but...

Actually, Becky had been worried that first few days on the Delaga; the troops had been wary of all four of the Earth women, and her in particular. Becky had blackmailed the Med Officer into accelerating things just a bit by offering him the one coin she had available — her anal cherry. The bots he injected pushed things forward about a year over ten days or so, and had the side-effect of making her insatiably horny. Slowly, one by one, a dozen troopers fell sway to her various charms; Becky, at this point, handled three to four ‘steadys’ a day, with a new customer knocking every day or so. New customers paid full rate, which was considerable considering her age and appetites, but she took it easy on regulars. Hroosh was a special case, though — he made her feel loved and wanted, and she’d have moved in with him if it were possible, despite the fact that she estimated his age to be three times hers (it was more like four... ).

Becky was the slowest of the four to catch on, largely because the troops had some sense of decency. Val let it out early that she enjoyed her group sex, and would give a group rate — that brought whole squads in like gangbusters. In the first 15 DPs, she had half the company, and a certain percentage of the Delaga’s crew. There were few complaints, either — Val had three holes, and while she preferred to use only two at a time, a half-dozen troops was a fun afternoon. Singleton sex was something she did, but less often and with more discernment in the way of partners — Rendec, for instance. Val went to him — not vice versa — every few DPs, apparently in an effort to weave a spell around him. Rendec wasn’t complaining — Val was one hot lay, and she was succeeding much more thoroughly than he ever let on. The challenge always seemed to be whether she could make him forget duty — and she succeeded more often than not.