Chapter 10

When I woke up the next morning, Thivkari was already gone. After taking care of my biological needs, I went to engineering to find her. Like the previous day, she was typing commands furiously. She slapped the enter key, then sat back, staring at the display. A few moments later, it displayed an error and she screamed in frustration, then leaned forward to resume typing.

“Have you eaten?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No matter what I do, the detailed diagnostics give me the same failure message. It fails because the Superlight is offline. Tell me why the Superlight is offline. ‘Diagnostics failed because the Superlight is offline.’ Curse the engineer that created this!”

I sighed. “How long have you been stuck?”

“Since yesterday. I was so happy when I found the detailed diagnostics menu.”

“Ok, you need to take a break.”

She shook her head emphatically. “No! I’m close!”

“No, you’re stuck because you’re too focused on the problem. I remember when there was a problem with the reactor, and Richard couldn’t figure it out. All day, he was working on it. I came up on the second day to find him playing games. I was so mad. The main reactor was offline, and he’s in here shooting zombies. He explained that when he got stuck on a problem, it was because he was too focused on it and he needed to let his mind relax so it could see the problem from other angles. A few hours later, he got the reactor back online. Take a break. Watch something, play a game, masturbate, whatever. Just let your mind relax and focus on something else. Come back in a few hours and see if it helps. Or,” I paused, “or work on a different problem.” I pointed at the pile of printed mines. “How am I going to carry those and the ammunition they require?”

She made an angry noise, then pushed her chair back. “Fine.” She glowered as I led her down to the galley for breakfast.

After eating, I grabbed my harvesting tools from the cargo hold and headed out to resume harvesting. “Remember,” I told her, “do something that occupies your mind with trivial stuff. Don’t just sit around thinking about the problem. You need to distract yourself with something else.” I hoped that Tsch’kal engineers were like human engineers in this regard. Thivkari shooed me out, and I headed for a nearby meadow that was full of edible grains.

Several hours later, the meadow was cut, and I had a ten kilo sack of grain. I headed back to the ship, dropping the sack of grain in the cargo hold. I was thirsty and covered in sweat and dust, much of which had combined to form a disgusting, thin layer of mud. Stopping in the galley to get a drink, I headed up to engineering to see how Thivkari was doing. The compartment was empty, but the fabricator was busy printing something, so I went back down to deck 2 for a shower. After cleaning the sweat and dirt off of myself, I dried off and wrapped a towel around my waist, then set out to find Thivkari. She was in our quarters.

It’s my fault, really. Based on the noises coming from our quarters, I could tell she was watching porn. As I got closer, I was able to make out more specific noises to identify the genre of porn she was watching. And that was when I realized that I’d fucked up. Entering the cabin, I saw Thivkari naked on the bed, slamming two fingers in her pussy while she shoved a finger from her other hand up her ass. On the screen, a brunette was tied up with rope while a blonde squatted over her face. “Lick my asshole, slut!” the blonde commanded, slapping the brunette’s pussy with a riding crop. “That’s not good enough! Fuck my asshole with your tongue!” This wasn’t from my porn collection. Which means it came from Martin’s collection that I had copied over. The collection that I kept putting off going through and classifying, like BDSM content. I mean, it’s really not that bad if you’re in to it, but I didn’t know what Martin had been in to. Would there be videos of guys getting topped by women, too? The lesbian BDSM porn was pretty hot, though. The blonde had nice tits that were framed by a leather corset. The brunette moaned as she tongue-fucked the blonde’s asshole. The blonde leaned down and spat on the brunette’s shaved pussy, then shoved her two middle fingers in and began vigorously fucking her. “Aw, yeah! You like that, slut? You like when I fuck you with my fingers? Maybe if you’re a good slut, I’ll let you have a cock!”