Chapter 5

They finally left Armstrong Space station at 15:00 hours.

The whole crew watched the Earth and Moon grow smaller from the bridge. The bridge had five seats at the consoles that surround the raised Captain’s chair and two chairs for guests set near the doors and above the short ramps to the consoles. The rest of the crew had each attached to a chair or sat in laps to witness them leaving Sol.

Pat was driving, and Darla and Beanie were at their stations as the navigator and the gunner. The ship also had space for a dedicated comms officer and a chief engineer, who normally had a second engineer who was the drive specialist and located in the engine room. Tale and Kola had seats in engineering as well but no one believed they would have a problem leaving the station.

Belli had claimed the engineer’s seat to keep tabs on the alarms and watch the readout. Que had sat in the comms station and they let her take over as the operator. Kola stood beside Belli and he kept an eye on the readouts with her. Tale had joined Que, and James and Aaron had the back seats with Dusty and Bindy in their laps.

Pat had released manual control back to the computer once they were well clear of the station and locked into the shipping lane that had been established for traffic going to Terra. The station had warned them that a freighter and a settlement ship carrying two hundred souls had left that morning.

A second settlement ship was supposed to have left the day before but it had been delayed due to failing a mechanical inspection three days before. It was expected that it would take another two weeks to get it up to specification for its trip.

Due to the delay, they had stopped bringing the settlers to the station. A lot of the fresh and food stores that the company had purchased weren’t loaded on the ship. So that was how Dusty had picked them up cheap and put them in her ship. She suspected that they would come in handy.

Striker-One was a relatively small ship with big engines. It could get up to speed a lot faster than the bigger ships ahead of it. Also, being smaller, it could micro-warp while in the system, a lot sooner. Striker-One never saw the other two ships because she had passed them while in micro-warp.

The big ships caused too much energy and radiation backwash in the system when they formed their worm-holes. If they were too close to a strong gravitational influence, then the worm-holes wouldn’t form. They had to fly to the edge of the established planetary plate and no closer to the sun than Mercury’s orbit before they could jump.

The bigger ships take about thirty days to arrive in the first of Tres’s Systems, Ono. It then takes them about ten days to traverse through the two systems due to the slower speed required for the micro jump and another twenty odd days to get to Terra.

The Striker’s crew learnt in the first day that the estimated twenty-five days this class of ship should take to make the trip to Ono could be reduced to eighteen days thanks to Lee’s improvements. They could slip through the system in four days and only would need two weeks to finish the journey.

This dropped more than two weeks off the journey. If they went around like other small ships, they could drop another week to ten days and take less than four weeks to complete the journey. This made the trip more than two weeks faster than the other Striker ships, and twice as fast as the big ships.

This was because the ship could get up to the warp speed for the longer space eating tunnels in just three days. Since they only needed half the speed of the bigger ships, this was even safer for them. Mass and speed were still relative.

Because the crew had loaded most of their stores into the cubes and they in turn only weighted as much as an empty container, they had very low mass for what they were rated to carry. Sean did warn them that if they picked up a lot of survivors, they would need to monitor how many they let loose in the ship without it unduly affecting their mass.

For the science-minded, trying to understand how the pocket spaces worked did their heads in. Sean had told them that the cube was an anchor and a door to the pocket space. He had no bloody idea how they worked either!

He did know the larger spaces were more stable if linked to a larger contained space in this reality, so that was why he used the cubes for the size of the space he had linked to them. Their magic boxes and backpacks were limited for this reason too. No more than six times the original dimensions was the key, he had said.

Belli and Beanie had drawn the first watch, so they stayed while the rest went back to the lounge to discuss what they were going to do for the eighteen days until they hit Ono space. Pat wanted to run at least two training sessions a day to get the untrained magic-savvy.

Chris said that since they had twelve in the crew, they could pair up and then they would only need to do two, two-hour watches each day. If an inexperienced crew received alarms, then they could call whoever was needed. The main crew would take over when they needed to jump.

Darla mentioned that this ship now had the longest range sensors she had ever encountered on a ship. They could pick up bits of junk in space as small as a tin can at an astonishing distance. She had also noticed that the shields were amazing and they deflected a lot of the space junk, like the can, without even trying. It would take something a lot bigger and travelling at a greater speed to even touch them.

They also determined cleaning and cooking rosters around those who had specific maintenance tasks that must be done and physical conditioning classes for everyone since Dusty considered it important for them all. This still left most of them with a lot of time to do whatever they wanted like, study magic and have sex. Dusty and James said they would hold magic classes as well, so the different disciplines each got covered.

Since James and Pat had scored dinner, they decided to investigate the cubes that had the food, which Sean had provided, to see what was in them. Pat was delighted they had food from home and since James had scored Nature as his new discipline, he was interested in what the produce from Harmony looked like; he was the cook in his family.

Dusty took Aaron, Bindy, Kola and Tale down to check out the new rides. Since Tale and Bindy had Earth skills, and Aaron and Bindy all had Physic skills, except Dusty, they all ended up in engineering. Kola and Dusty shared Energy as their primary skills, so they had hit it off the day before.

Dusty had read a lot of spells since she had had access to Lee’s spell book for nearly eighteen months. Some of the spells related to Earth skills that she had tried but wasn’t as effective doing before, now came easily to her and she happily shared them with the group. She wasn’t strong in Physic skills but she knew enough to get the group to do some basic spells in controlling water and air; she found this was easier too.

She taught them how to perform basic glamours and they all found that by being shapeshifter these were easy to effect. The group did agree that trying to shift or use glamours, so they looked like other crew members was poor-form, so it was banned unless they needed it on the job.

She happily taught Kola how to do some of her energy tricks and then how to form different energy shields. She got the others to try to form shields using air or water depending on which they found easier to manipulate. They were all surprised when James called Dusty and told her dinner was getting cold.

It was only then that they felt drained and hungry, so they happily blinked up to the dining room for dinner.

The next eighteen days passed fast for the crew of Striker-One.

While they all took time to kick back and relax, and quite a few of them gave the new pool table a work out, they all loved learning about magic. When James and Dusty combined magic with combat training, they had a hard time convincing the team to stop for rest and food, even the team that were supposedly crew.

The shooting range had become very popular. Dusty got those who had Energy training to help her build a force field in the hanger bay. James then got those with Physic skills to build air shields to form safe lanes and to slow the projectiles. They had learnt that if they used some crystals to anchor the corners of their shields, they stayed in place indefinitely.

For added safety, they used the replicator to make thick sheets of Ozlium and lined the five sides of the back of the range. With the energy shield and the air shields in place, their projectiles stayed inside the shooting range. While the Enforcers didn’t need as much practice, they wanted the rest of the crew to at least shoot something with accuracy that was within twenty-five metres of them.

While the spaceship crew were all military, they didn’t spend a lot of time shooting at things, so they were all rusty. They were all excited and eager to relearn these skills because they knew they were not going to be stuck on the ship while the Enforcers had all the fun. In turn, the Enforcers got ship maintenance lessons and flight training.

Dusty, James and Chris believed that the more cross-skilled the team was, the better their survival rate was. The team embraced this philosophy and had a go at every task asked of them. They all learnt that their magical enhancements assisted them with learning new skills. Learning quick magical fixes for time-consuming tasks didn’t hurt either. No one complained when Dusty added a ‘keep clean’ spell to the whole ship.

Even after only a week, the team had learnt each other’s weaknesses and strengths, and then they learnt how to compensate for or use them, to their advantage. Learning how to combine their magical gifts in two’s or three was one such method they employed to great effect. By the end of the eighteen days, they were a well-oiled team.

Kola wasn’t surprised that when they worked in the triads that he had predicted would form, that the four teams were amazing. He also enjoyed watching the dynamics of the crew change, as the singles got closer to their couple.

He was glad that he, Tale and Que had settled into their triad at the start of the journey. As each day passed, their mental bond seemed to get stronger and they trusted each other implicitly. They had even started to develop a psychic link. At the moment, it was mostly feeling strong emotions but he had heard the odd thought trickle through when the girls were thinking about him.

The sex was great too. They had tried every type of male to female combination and even done same-gender sex. As of yet, they hadn’t settled on a favourite. He was happy to be in whatever gender the girls desired, as he just loved being with both of them. Tale often chose the mix for the night and he and Que just went with it.

Tale had amazing stamina.

Chris had also picked up that when he and Darla worked with Beanie doing magic and combat training that they worked very well as a team.

As the first week passed, the sexual tension between the three had definitely increased. Chris was pleased to see Darla reacting to Beanie when he was with them. He took every opportunity to set them up to work together on a task. He had even teamed them up for watch duty. However, he was worried the sexual tension was affecting their ability to become a better team.

Chris went to check on Darla and Beanie. They were due to come off watch in half an hour and he had something planned for them. He hoped it didn’t blow up in his face but he felt it was time to make his move. He had seen the looks between Beanie and Darla.

He had learnt that Beanie was a bit of a character and he loved swapping gender at any time of the day and particularly when he was with Darla. He found Beanie just as sexy in either form. Beanie’s solid chest transformed into a large bust and he knew Darla like her girls to have big tits. He had no objection to size either way.

When Chris entered the bridge, he found Beanie lounging back in his chair with one long shapely leg propped against the edge of the console and the other slung over the arm of the chair. His suit was open and his hands were holding his impressive tits out for Darla to inspect.

Chris stepped into the shadow and grinned when he heard Beanie say, “So do you think I need to wear a bra? These girls are amazingly heavy and even though firmer than any tits this size I’ve ever felt, they do bounce a lot when I run.”

Darla’s eyes were glued to the thick brown nipples that were pointing at her. “Well, you should wear one when we exercise. The replicator has some excellent sports bra’s in it for us. I wear one all the time.”

“Can I see?” Beanie asked innocently.

Darla didn’t hesitate and opened her jumpsuit. She moved the sides out of the way to show Beanie the bra’s special features. “See, this gusset is elasticised so you can move but the bra has these cups that add support and reduces bounce. I can help you get fitted if you wish.”

Beanie dropped her leg off the console and leaned forward to look at the bra. Chris stifled a groan as he watched Beanie feeling up his wife’s tits as they continued to discuss the merits of the bra and the wearing of them. Darla’s tits were not as impressive but she had a nice rack that filled his hands and that he enjoyed sucking on.

When she pulled the bottom of the bra forward and let her tits loose so Beanie could see how much they dropped once unslung, Chris felt his cock get even harder. Darla lifted Beanies tits and weighed them in her hands to show him how they would look if he were wearing the correct bra. Beanie quite happily returned the favour.

Watching his two most favourite people feeling up each other’s tits only set Chris mind to what he was going to do. He could see they were both turning each other on and he doubted pushing them to the next step would be hard. He quietly slipped back out of the door.

He had a little bit of preparation to do first.

By the time breakfast was served, everyone on the ship knew that Beanie and the Smiths had become a triad.

Darla was starry-eyed, Beanie’s delighted grin was glued on and the self-satisfied look in Chris’s eyes told them all how he felt. None could miss the spring in his step or the way he carried himself with pride. He had achieved something he had desired and he was one seriously happy man.