Chapter 9: Journeys End in Lovers’ Meeting

“Journeys end in lovers meeting,
Every wise man’s son doth know.”

- Feste, Twelfth Night, Act II, Scene III

When travelling faster than the speed of light, ships cannot communicate with each other, or anyone or anything else. Even when in convoy, at that speed each starship is really travelling in its own bubble – its own universe, its crew isolated and alone.

For T’klikrooz and T’kliktguul, the next couple of weeks were going to be incredibly lonely. Each was alone with its thoughts, more alone than it had ever been before. In retirement, there had been at least each other to converse with, and other AI units, and often individual Tuull. Classes of younglings would come through, to hear them tell stories and to ask questions about what it was like to be a working freighter. Historians would occasionally spend time on-board trying to recreate the days of the great Trading Clans, before the replicators put paid to their famous voyages. Once in awhile some group or other would rent one of them out as an orbiting banquet hall. Messenger drones would arrive and could be quizzed for the latest happenings in the galaxy. There were news reports and documentaries constantly available, constantly new, at all hours of the day.

Even before that, when they had been active-duty vessels of commerce, they’d always had at least a watch-keeping crew aboard. On their frequent interstellar voyages, they’d had a full crew complete with families, which meant younglings to play with and plenty of adults who appreciated a good game of something interesting.

But not right now. No Tuull were aboard, nor representatives of any other intelligent species from any planet anywhere – both ships had agreed to leave immediately and without crew. And due to the nature of FTL travel, they didn’t even have each other. And now each realized why it had been deemed unwise to send self-aware ships with personalities on solo voyages.

T’kliktguul had plenty of cycles to consider the emptiness of his world. The once-teeming corridors, the bridge, the crew quarters that once held complete T’klikt Clan households were empty. The crèche that once held dozens of younglings at a time now stood silent and still, with no screaming kits or laughing parents. The communications gear, though powered up, was just recording the static raised by the effect of FTL travel, with neither incoming nor outgoing communications.

What T’kliktguul would do just to hear a snore of a sleeping crewman or the sound of running water or the smell of cooking food, anything to prove that other intelligent beings still existed somewhere in the galaxy.

Callie woke to the sound of running water and the cheerful smell of brewing coffee. She rolled her head to see the dark hair and naked back of her gently-snoring friend Judy. As she got up, blinking the sleep from her eyes, she realized she too was nude. She grabbed a towel to cover herself from a pile placed atop an antique steamer trunk that sat at the foot of the bed.

This wasn’t her room in the student dorms. This was an apartment of some sort, and not a ground-floor unit. The sight out the bedroom window was a gorgeous view of the nation’s capital in the middle of a Saturday morning in late October, with the trees a riot of colours and the merest wisps of clouds slowly making their way across the Ottawa River.

Della turned around as Callie entered the kitchen. Callie did a double-take as she took in Della’s nude form. The older girl seemed completely unconcerned that Callie had a full view of her body. “Coffee?” Della offered.

“Um, thanks,” Callie replied, wondering where to look. Her eyes seemed to be attracted to Della’s nude form like a compass needle to North.

The coffee mug that Della handed her bore the regimental crest of the Royal 22e Régiment, the Van Doos. “Here. Creme is in the fridge, sugar’s over there on the counter.”

As Callie reached for the mug with a shaky hand, her towel dropped to the floor. She promptly tried to cover herself with a little “Eek!”

“Relax,” Della advised her. “We all saw everything each other’s got last night – saw, touched ... tasted...”

Just to be safe lest she drop the mug, Callie placed her left hand under it as well as grasping its handle with the right. She placed the mug on the counter next to the refrigerator and bent down to pick up the errant towel. For a second she contemplated how to handle the situation and decided to just drape it over her shoulder.

“Look,” Della added, “if you’re going to be in Bill’s prepack, you’re going to have to get used to little privacy and less modesty. We’re here for one reason above all else: to pop out babies, and that means we need to be constantly ready to boff like bunny rabbits. I haven’t worn panties under my skirts since Bill and I got together.”

The muffled sound of running water stopped and the bathroom door opened. William was just as nude as Della, indeed as he’d been all night long. Callie pretended to be completely cool about the whole situation but was aware she was fooling nobody. Her skin was giving off too deep a shade of fuchsia.

She added a double helping of creme and sugar to her coffee, and then took the mug of liquid sunshine toward the living room. She never quite got there, though, as she found herself staring through the bathroom doorway. William had already applied his deodorant and brushed his teeth while she’d been fixing her coffee and was now engaged in that necessary act of a gentleman’s morning ablutions, the facial shave. He didn’t use an electric razor or even a disposable, though. He was busy stropping an old-fashioned straight razor. His face was already covered in shaving creme applied from a cake of shaving soap using a badger-tail brush.

Della came alongside her and gently placed a comforting arm around Callie’s waist, looking lovingly at William as he went about his morning routine. Callie, not taking her eyes off him, whispered to Della, “He doesn’t ever use that on you, does he?”

“What, the strop? No, but I’m sure he would if I asked him to politely enough,” Della deadpanned. Callie wasn’t sure whether to take the girl seriously or not.

“We appear to be one person short from last night’s party,” William observed as he reached for a towel to wipe the last of the shaving creme from his chin.

“You’re finished? You’re not going to cut yourself now?” Callie asked in response.

Mystified, William nodded, showing her his closed straight razor and rather dramatically placing it on its position in the medicine cabinet.

Wordlessly, Callie walked to the bedroom, placing her coffee mug down on the breakfast bar on the way. She then went around to the far side of the mattress and leaned over, her B-cup breasts hanging pendulously, until her mouth was about ten centimetres from Judy’s ear. Callie then inhaled deeply.

“GOOD MORNING, VIETNAM!”

Judy woke up with a scream, sitting upright so fast she almost hit Callie’s head. Both Della and William were laughing and leaning on each other, lest they fall over. Judy looked around frantically, trying to hide her nudity under the bedsheets as she got up. Once she woke up enough to see what Della and Callie were wearing, however, she quickly stopped that nonsense.

“Time for a shower,” Callie advised the still-disoriented Judy. “Let’s go.”

“Newton’s first law of motion,” Judy replied, yawning widely, “states that a body at rest wants to stay at rest.”

Calie cocked an eyebrow. “So?”

“So, fuck off and let my body stay at rest.”

“Geddup.” She started to pull Judy out of bed using the sheets she was wrapped up in.

Judy was indignant. “I just spent all last night – wait, Thursday night – pulling an all-nighter for my engineering presentation Friday morning. What day is it? And then I get involved in a menage a quatre with you. I’m still tired.”

Callie was indignant. “You sat up all night on your fat ass in front of a computer screen sucking back coffee. I was up TWO nights with full pack and getting shot at and almost run over by a fucking TANK-”

William whispered to Della, “Were we that energetic last night that she’d think I was a tank?”

Della snickered.

“-and got bombed and artillery rained down on my head and -Did I say I got shot at?”

Judy nodded, subdued.

“And then did the fucking play and came back here and rutted like a whitetail buck in springtime and YOU ARE THE TIRED ONE?” She looked at Della. “By the way, that was my first time making love to another girl. Was I any good?”

Della nodded happily. “You learn very fast.”

Callie grabbed the still semi-somnolent girl by the shoulder and dragged her bodily off to the shower.

William nodded delightedly. “We’re going to like her.”

Della nodded in happy agreement.

Judy and Callie were sitting on either side of William at the breakfast bar while Della hustled through breakfast preparations. She clearly relished the role of “domestic goddess”. With her nude form sporting a slight paunch, she certainly looked the part of a fertility goddess.

“And what do you want for breakfast?” she asked William. Being the sponsor, of course William would go first. Everyone was aware that both thespians were still applying for the role of concubine, and the girls were determined to act the part.