Chapter 24

Month 145—January on St. Jeanne d’Arc

“I’M ADDICTED TO YOU,” I whispered in KC’s ear as I moved in and out of her welcoming pussy. “I was addicted to you before you ever got to Anouilh.”

“You didn’t even know me before I got here.” KC’s eyes closed and her pussy tightened on me as she came. I didn’t think she’d hear my response.

“I was watching you in your chatroom nearly six years ago,” I sighed as my own orgasm began to catch up with me. “I’m Papa Bear after all.”

“You’re ... Oh, God! Yes! Mmm.” KC panted through another orgasm and I erupted into her. “Yes! Oh, my Papa Bear. I love you.”

“I never wanted you to know I was just a fat geek.”

“Bullshit. Even the first time we came to film here, I thought you looked like a big Teddy bear. You’re a hunk now but I fell for Papa Bear a long time ago.”

“And now you want me for your baby’s papa?”

“Yeah. And more. I know I’m not your one and only, as if that was ever more than a fairy tale anyway. I don’t want to take you away from any of the other girls. When we got here, we all agreed it would only take a dozen guys to keep us all satisfied. Of course, that was back when there were only two hundred of us. Now there are over seven hundred on the island and another four hundred on Papillon, but there are a few more guys now, too. Guys are still few and far between, and I’m not going to hog one of them all for myself. But I want to be your girl. Your child’s mommy.” KC rubbed her cheek against my shoulder and kissed me.

“Ubie says we’ll have a good one. And we’ll make a world where he or she can grow up,” I said.

“We’re committed now.”

We lay together for a while, dozing in the afterglow.

“KC, it’s ready,” a soft voice said in the room.

“Really, Joan? Already?”

“I had a few cycles to spare this week.”

“Thank you! Come on, Teddy. I want to show you!”

“Show me what? What did Joan make for you?”

“A Christmas present. I told her what I wanted and she just said, ‘Okay.’ Come on! We need to jump to the flight deck.” I followed KC to the transporter from her room to the flight deck next to her Hawk. I stepped off the pad and looked at ... an Aston Martin DB5.

“I’m officially Pilot 007 now!” KC giggled. “This is my new Hawk.”

“I bet that really flies. Kind of breaks the illusion, though.”

“Teddy.” KC turned in my arms and dropped her chin to look me in the eye. “We’re porn stars, not idiots.” She pointed at the row of Hawks next to us. “We know these never leave the flight deck. They aren’t big enough to hold a hyperdrive, let alone the addition of an impulse engine. And weapons? Even in the big starships, people can feel a railgun discharge. These are our control stations. Outside, mine looks like an oversized version of James Bond’s Aston Martin. Inside, it’s exactly the same as the cockpit of the Hawk.”

“How will the players take it?”

“Joan is covering me with boarding footage. It will still look like I’m getting in my old Hawk. Instead, I’ll be riding around space in a hot, sporty little rod.”

“For my hot sporty girl,” I laughed. “I’m not sure I got that baby planted yet. Let’s go back to bed.”

Month 147—April on St. Jeanne d’Arc

“ATTENTION ALL HANDS,” Dakota said, her voice ringing throughout the ship. “Today we have a live fire exercise with a real target. We’ll do blank runs on the target for practice so everyone has a chance to dive at it and get range. Then we’ll do triad strafing runs with weapons live. Gunners, go to your stations. The ship you are firing on has no air in it, nor fuel aboard. We towed it out to the target zone. Finally, we’ll do one dive bomb run. We don’t expect the target to survive multiple railgun hits. The drill starts in fifteen minutes. Go tinkle and get your crew ready to play.”

“Go tinkle? I’ve never heard that command from a ship’s captain before,” Col. Thom said. “Thank you for inviting me to observe this exercise. I have to say, your bridge looks exactly like the simulator I toured a few months ago.”

“Two differences. This one continues outside the hatches into the rest of the ship. The simulator hatches didn’t open. And out here we operate at two-thirds Earth gravity,” I said.

“How are your ship defenses? You have a lot of space in here, but I don’t see a weapons station.”

“Not in the way you think of it. We really don’t have any armament on St. Jeanne. We have a shield generator based on the same principles as your interdiction field. It creates a bubble around the ship if we need it.”

“Why didn’t you use a combat shield? Or even a nav shield? I know those technologies have been available to you and things could get hairy out here.”

“Trade-offs. We really depend on looking benign. Powering up shields would light us up for everyone to see. Your ships see us because they know we are here. We’re counting on being in low visibility with no more power signature than it takes to maintain systems. If we light up the interdiction shield, it’s for one purpose only: Disruption of laser fire or other energy weapons. As you know, the interdiction field is opaque - unlike the nav shield or combat shield. If we have to light it up, it will be because someone already knows we’re here. We still depend on the Hummingbirds for defense against solid ordnance.”

“That’s putting a lot of faith in remaining invisible. I hope the dickheads can’t detect you,” Thom said.

“So far, your systems can only detect us by the IFF signal. I’m sure your systems are more advanced than the Swarm.” Dakota glanced around the bridge. Her crew was looking at her. She nodded. “Sound Battle Stations. It’s time to get this show on the road.”

The klaxon sounded and the Pussy Pirates went into action. The screens lit up 360 degrees around the saucer dome with a view that immediately explained the distance between the stations. Thom and I had observer chairs, though I had a VR helmet that kept me linked into Ubie and the Hawks. Thom discovered he could swivel and tilt the chair to see all the way around him and above him. And the view was as if we were looking down on Earth. He watched the Hawks deploy and saw the dummy light up, 50,000 kilometers below the ship.

“Is that an airplane?” he asked no one in particular.

“I managed to buy a derelict 747 and had it towed out here. It would start a bunch of conspiracy theories if we showed pictures of it out here!” I laughed.

“Alpha Flight, commence strafing run,” Dakota announced. The display highlighted the Alpha triad accelerating across the field. It looked too far away to strafe the target, being half the sky distant. Suddenly, it blinked out and reappeared near enough to begin firing on the ‘enemy.’ A readout pinned to the triad said, ‘10km.’ After ten seconds of firing on the derelict, the triad blinked out and flashed in behind where Thom and I were sitting. By this time, the second flight was shooting at the derelict. Pieces of the plane could be seen spinning away from it.

“Regroup and hold station,” Dakota commanded when the last flight had made its run. Her crew quickly tabulated and displayed results. She turned to us and raised an eyebrow at Thom. I pulled off my VR helmet and waited for his questions.

“I know I’m supposed to ask a question. I’ll start at the beginning, I suppose. Fifty-one ships, according to the readout, strafed that target in less than three minutes. Impressive. But I saw that they all accelerated for at least five minutes or more before they engaged FTL and flashed into shooting range. I’ve seen them and the Hummingbirds flash in and out of FTL without accelerating first. Why here?” he asked.