Free Trader Mary's Dream
Copyright© 2005 by FozzieBare
Chapter 24: Finally. Together.
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 24: Finally. Together. - Captain Alex Donovan has a reason to hate pirates and slavers. He also has a hot ship under his command. Can he ever get enough payback to live up to his ship's name? If his new crew have anything to say about it, he will!
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Ma/ft Consensual Romantic Fiction Science Fiction
I felt myself pacing the decks as we got closer and closer to this mysterious Bastion place. Not just because of everything that had happened with Melissa, the girls, and the troubles we had gone through together. But in anticipation. Mary. What would she be like in person? I mean, I’d seen her in videos, holos, pictures. But what would she be like when she was actually in front of me? In my arms?
And would Melissa and Mary get along? I feared there would be fault points. Competing claims. That they weren’t “heart-sisters,” but were hoping to cut each other out to get at me. Not that I thought they would. I think I was afraid we had been too perfect. It didn’t seem like human nature.
I couldn’t stand that. I think if they started fighting, I’d want to lock myself away in Mary’s Dream and not come out until they fixed it somehow. It would hurt badly. REALLY badly.
Could we make this ridiculous relationship work? Where would we go? What would we do? Would I find myself treating them differently?
And that was before we were dealing with someone who was willing to initiate high-casualty attacks on some unknown whim, in pursuit of some nebulous goal. But what goal could countenance such tactics?
But my thoughts had a habit of drifting away. Imagining. Dreaming. That moment when we saw each other. Not just two of us meeting a third. But all three of us. In one place. At one time.
Could it live up to our dreams? Or be the end of our dream and start of a fresh nightmare?
The rational part of my mind knew that in her own way, Melissa was doing her own pacing.
She had told me more than once that she was afraid, usually when the worry had grown too loud for her to keep to herself.
That she was not the one who was there with them, but the one who was there because Mary was not.
She knew it wasn’t true. But the heart can contain so many fears. The head can say otherwise. The heart can accept that reassurance but go right back to that worry when the moment has passed.
Mary was probably going through the same thing in her own way on Bastion. She didn’t have the experiences that Melissa and I shared. Would she be afraid that Melissa had grown into that part of my heart that had been Mary’s, without ever meaning to or understanding what was happening?
We would have to spend a lot of time talking. Discovering all the ways we fit together. Not in bed, although I was a warm-blooded mammal. I was looking forward to that. But emotionally. Those empty spaces and moments that become filled in because the people you care for more than anything in the world are there with you.
It got worse when we reached the Gate that was barely used, for the final couple of days of the trip to Bastion.
The way Justinian explained it, the Gate had been built to support Bastion well before the Empire’s collapse. Unlike most Gate systems, which had maintenance sections, traffic control, and maybe a spaceport for transshipping cargo to other sectors, this one was completely automated. They had set up a dummy corporation to handle whatever maintenance was necessary. Once or twice, people wondered why there was a Gate “to nowhere” that no one used, or very rarely used, if that. Most came to the conclusion that it hid a black site, some kind of Federation research center or corporate research station.
That was why Bastion was days from the Gate. Even if someone somehow managed to brute-force the Gate’s Key, they still would have no idea where to go after coming out the other side. Bastion didn’t have to broadcast any signals or make its presence known except to those deliberately trying to find it. Anyone who got through would be searching for a needle they didn’t even know truly existed in a solar-system-sized haystack.
But knowing we were almost there, that we were in the same part of space as Mary and making our way toward her at a decent rate of speed, made the anticipation almost intolerable.
And apparently, it was starting to affect my judgment.
Crystal was a little cross with me when I ran a diagnostic on one of her subroutines for the fourth time in two days, mostly because I needed something, anything, to distract myself from the wondering and the nerves.
“Captain. The decision heuristics have not budged more than .0000001 in the last two years. Checking them four times in two days makes my sensors itch.”
She sounded annoyed.
“If you want, I can invent a fault for you to find. Maybe a starship repair version of twenty questions.”
I started to apologize.
“It’s not necessary, Captain. I ... understand. Well, as much as I’m programmed to understand. If it helps, I can tell you that Melissa has done an inventory of Heyanna’s cooking materials five times this week. You’re not the only one. But you are the one who has access to things that make me ME. So please. Relax. I can even prescribe tranquilizers if necessary.”
I gave a rueful chuckle.
“Sorry, Crystal. I just feel like I have to do SOMETHING or my brain will short-circuit before the end of a long trip, with so many unknowns at the end of it. And things that are known too. Maybe I should see what the girls are doing. Actually, how is their schoolwork going?”
Crystal’s voice came out amused, which was actually something coming from an AI. “They are currently three weeks ahead on their independent studies courses. You two aren’t the only ones with cabin fever. They are currently perusing advanced materials on improvised explosives and demolition methods.”
“Wait. Those two were getting advanced classes on making things go boom? Oh dear. This may not be a good thing.”
“Please tell me these are theory courses, and not ones that have hands-on practical labs.”
Crystal calmly answered, “I have restricted them from such exercises after I realized they were doing inventories on what materials were in our stores. I considered it a ship safety matter.”
She paused.
“Not that I don’t trust them, but no ship AI is comfortable with explosions inside itself.”
Of course Daniella and Erene would combat boredom and anticipation by trying to find opportunities to develop their mischief and mayhem skills. Like Crystal, I knew they wouldn’t do anything too bad, but I had a feeling that even a small successful explosion would not fill them with respect for the deadly power involved and why it should never be applied without due thought.
It would be more like, “That was cool. Is there anything ELSE we can blow up ... safely, of course!”
It was that pause between those two sentences that worried me.
Melissa had already needed to stop them from wondering whether they could rescue me from jail and get me back to them via commando raid. And by commandos, they meant the two of them.
Then there was the time they warned Raphael that if he ever got me in trouble again, they wouldn’t want to, but they’d have to blast him too.
I loved them dearly.
But their first reaction upon seeing an obstacle was not, “We can go around it.”
It was, “How much would it take to REMOVE said obstacle? Permanently, if possible.”
Then, finally, after about two full Galactic Standard days traveling on a steady course, Justinian requested that we kill the engines while he let Bastion know we were there.
I agreed, and then Justinian said something that really confused me.
“Thanks. I’ll signal you in a second.”
The power dimmed in Free Trader Mary’s Dream for a second.
“Justinian, what was that?”
I paused.
“Justinian?”
A small station lit up, no more than 10,000 kilometers from our current position.
About twelve seconds later, I received a message. From ... Justinian? Did Justinian just transmit himself to the station?
He sounded ... pained.
“Sorry, Alex. I had to come over here and disable the station’s security systems. The system is set to be VERY touchy about unidentified ships, and even identified ones unless one of the Twelve is disabling the systems. This one required my personal authorization from inside the system. I hate doing those transmissions. Nothing like the burst that sent me to meet you, of course, but that doesn’t make the sensation any less ... distracting.”
“Now that I’m inside, I can wake the local systems and send the proper challenge-response sequence. I also left a message behind at Kethrin. One of the Twelve will pick it up sooner or later and know that we survived.”
“Who?”
“Probably Tristan, once he finishes on Terra. Possibly Morgana.”
“And if neither of them gets it?”
“Then someone else will.”
I stared at the newly awakened station.
“You people have a very strange definition of mail.”
“It’s kind of like hand-delivered couriers, except the courier feels like he’s being torn apart and stitched back together when he travels. I really need to improve the method if we’re going to be part of the universe going forward.
“But that is part of the explanation I’ve been waiting to give until we were all together. Let’s just say that this was how I was able to reach you in time to warn you of the attack. I’m just glad I got there in the nick of time.”
I looked at the screen. Still two and a half hours until we reached Bastion, plus the time to dock. Maybe the explanation would keep me from worrying about meeting Mary again.
“Well, we have time if you want to explain. It sounds like magic.”
“I wish it was. You see, one of the late-stage corporate projects brought before the Empire came up with a way to digitize personalities. They would perform a full scan of a person, down to the lowest level you can imagine, and create a digital ‘copy’ of them.
“The original project was aimed at providing a human presence at long-term facilities, what they called institutional memory. The company thought it would be a cheap way to provide human judgment at projects that didn’t require an atmosphere, food, or drink.