Chapter 4: A quiet time, Shadows Deepen...

“The trip to Geghast”

Having vacuumed DEFENSTRATOR clean of anything useful, we prepared to depart. Before we did, we left a salvage beacon, to properly mark its location to salvage crews. One moment of levity came when Crystal was in the middle of a, well, I don’t want to say rant, only because I don’t think AI’s can be programmed to rant, but let’s say an extended diatribe on the pirate’s sloppiness. She had commented on the fact that the ship’s sensors could have theoretically picked up our Meson Driver charging, had it not been running at about half efficiency, due to lack of proper maintenance. She finished her rant (ok, I’ll call it what it was) with “I guess that you cannot expect pirates who didn’t know how to spell the name of their ship properly to take care of a ship properly.” That brought me to my Federation dictionary, and learned that yes, they HAD spelled it wrong. It was supposed to be DEFENESTRATOR.

I’m sure that if we had informed them of their obvious spelling mistake, they would have gladly let us go in gratitude for educating them properly. Oh well, they were dead, no sense crying over spilled blood. Yes, I know it’s spilled milk, but I didn’t see any milk on their bridge.

We still had a few days to make the jumpgate to Geghast, so, the girls decided that they couldn’t sit around all day while Crystal and I did all the work (Ok, while Crystal did most of the work, while I supervised). There was a discussion one afternoon where they decided a fair distribution of duties. I was not invited to the discussion.

However, the four of them fit right in. Some of it was make-work, after all Crystal and I had run the ship all by ourselves before recent events, but there’s a difference between “Adequately running a ship under usual conditions”, and “the way things are supposed to happen.” For example, Heyanna, Melissa’s “Nana” and caretaker, a plumpish small woman who I estimated to be in her mid 40’s, was aghast when she discovered that the galley hadn’t been properly used in months. After all, I was only cooking for myself, and it was easier to warm something out of storage then go to the trouble of cooking an entire meal. She spent a full eight hours scrubbing down every cooking surface and cataloging all the foodstuffs that we had on board. She then told me in no uncertain terms that she was going to put in a full order at Geghast Station when we arrived, and that we WOULD be having proper meals, three times a day, none of this “bachelor pad subsistence on coffee and sandwiches”. I could see where Melissa got some of the steel in her. I wouldn’t want to be on her bad side. Or any of their bad sides, mind you.

Erene and Daniella who were 16 and 14 respectively, started off very quiet, as they still were recovering from their captivity and what had been their expected fates. They acted very skittish around me, but as we made our trip to the jumpgate and they were able to recover some of their normal spirit, they bugged me endlessly about how everything on the ship worked. Finally, to prevent them from taking up all of my time with questions, I had Crystal design a teaching course on how ships like MARY’S DREAM worked, how to pilot it, its weapons, etcetera. By some unspoken agreement between them, Daniella focused on piloting and interstellar law, while Erene focused on becoming a mechanic, ship tactics, and how to best make other ships go boom. They were taking courses on astrogation, tactics, the whole nine yards. I thought that if we could combine them into one brain we’d have another Crystal on our hands.

As they got a bit more comfortable, they noticed Melissa’s teasing of me, and decided that it was a fun game that they too could play. We still didn’t have a shipboard uniform, or much for them to wear other then what Crystal could fabricate them and they always were complaining that the heavy smocks that Crystal had fabricated for them were itchy, so they decided to see how little they could wear around the ship without Heyanna or Melissa telling them to “Stop teasing the poor man, or you’re going to get EXACTLY what you deserve...” That would make them giggle and run off, only to try again later. Melissa would just shake her head. That didn’t stop her from teasing me either, so apparently teasing Alex was a game her whole family could play.

To try to burn off some of their excess energy, and I think at least in Melissa’s case, to keep them from “innocently” deciding to share our bed at night, we used Cargo Bay 3 as an impromptu obstacle course and command training for Erene and Daniella. We didn’t let them handle live weapons, of course, (something about not wanting to blow holes in ANOTHER ship) but they quickly started to enjoy running through the course, making their way through various obstacles and shooting holo targets (which I noted had a sometimes uncanny resemblance to certain of the slavers I had watched from DEFENSTRATOR’s footage. I approved.) It was almost to the point we had to keep them from spending all their free time in there. I wish I had Sarge around. I was rusty, and out of practice in physical combat (not being a skill you normally use on a free trader), and just for my own sake, I ran the course one night when the girls were still asleep. I fell short of their score by about 200 points. Sarge would love the girls, she knew how to be a drill sergeant, but that’s not what the girls needed right now, they needed a confidant and someone who could continually challenge them to achieve new goals. Something I had to think about, once things had settled down.

And Melissa? Well, she decided that there was no doubt that I was firmly in control of the ship, but I needed someone to help with all the scut work that goes with running a free trader. The Federation may run on credits for show, but I think what REALLY greases the gears of society is data slates and all the work that goes into telling everyone exactly what you’re doing. So, she commandeered the third bunk room for her work office, and made sure that the paperwork was up to date, that we had all the right permits and gear right at hand, and that none of the various moving parts of the ship needed maintenance, etcetera. I once tried to tell her that Crystal handled the maintenance schedule, but she just shook her head and said “No offense to Crystal, Alex, but it never hurts to have a real pair of eyes looking things over.”

That was her days. Her nights were our nights. By an unspoken agreement that I’m not sure that I really understood, we hadn’t progressed in our physical relationship other than cuddling together at night and support hugs whenever wanted or desired (which seemed to be a lot of the time, not that I minded at all), but we had one ritual that we shared every evening. She would wait for me to come to bed, no matter how late in the ship’s night it was, either reading a data slate or working at the computer near my cabin, but when I was ready to sleep, she would curl up against me, kiss my forehead and say “Sleep well, my knight.”

She had a couple evening nightmares herself, but when it seemed to be at the worst, she would curl up tighter against me, and that seemed to help her nightmares. It would take an impossibly strong person of any sex who wouldn’t have nightmares after what she went through.

It was the best of times, and I dreaded how it couldn’t last. There was still a part of me that figured that once we had resolved the situation with her family, that they would be able to move on, and leave me behind. I learned to not say that to Melissa however, depending on her mood that it would trigger her temper, or tears as she would believe I didn’t really want HER. That was the problem. I did want her. I wanted her more than she could ever believe. But I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that by law, if not by circumstance, I was her Lord and Master, and she was virtually my slave. I tried to rationalize it by saying that once we had removed the need for her Protection, she could then make a rational decision. I think the implied power I had over her via her circumstance was a problem. She didn’t want to make the first move, thinking that I was just helping her because I was a “good guy”, and I didn’t want to make the first move because then she would have to accept it no matter her views. Which just shows you how clueless I was about the decision she had made.

But I’ll tell you this. MARY’S DREAM felt a lot more ... alive with the four of them on my ship. And Melissa’s face the first thing I saw when I woke up was an added bonus.

When one is the only living creature within light years (for some of the longer runs), one tends to completely feel alone and lost. That’s usually when the nightmares would hit. Having Melissa in my arms seemed to help.

After jumping into the Geghast system and sending a long-range comm to Gegast System Control, I found that the wheels of bureaucracy had actually been spinning pretty well for once. There was already a message informing me that Federation control had viewed the footage already, and had judged the case obvious self-defense against pirates, and awarded a 20,000 credit bounty for the disabling of DEFENSTRATOR. Between that, the gems and goods from DEFENSTRATOR’S hold, and salvage teams bidding on the right to salvage the ship, I had made enough credits to go without taking a cargo for six full months. Maybe a year, if I was frugal. I always liked not having to take random cargoes just to make a living. I think House Donovan would have still supported me to a point, if I didn’t make a profit, but I liked the fact I was helping the family that took me in. And now, I had taken a family in, and was helping them. It felt good.

I told the girls that while it was unlikely I could let them spend time off the ship at Geghast Station. Unlike most free stations, Federation security are pretty insistent on knowing who was walking around one of their stations. I could leave them on the ship, but if they wanted to step out into the station proper, they would need to submit the proper paperwork, who they were, etcetera. It was UNLIKELY that telling the Federation that I had rescued Melissa and her family would get back to her father, but it wasn’t the same as impossible. Also, I really wanted to get the footage from DEFENSTRATOR, Melissa’s story, and all that had happened back to my House Council as quickly as possible.

It would take my report at least two days to be sent by Pulse to House Donovan’s private Pulse Receiver, and then another two days to get back any reply, even if they responded to the message instantly, which was unlikely despite the priority tag I had put on it. So, we were going to spend the better part of a week or more docked at Geghast. At least this gave us plenty of time to shop, and restock, and basically do all the things that you do when you don’t have a working ship to attend to.

Despite the fact the girls couldn’t run free on the station, not to mention the station’s shops, they figured that meant rather than go into a shop and try on the different outfits, that they would just get one of everything, and then figure out what fit them best. Oh, I’m not saying they went overboard, they kept their spending reasonable. But they would never lack clothing on MARY’S DREAM again. Or anywhere else, if I was to be fool enough to let them go. I reasoned that at least one good thing about their shopping spree was that all of them (Kayanna and Melissa included) would not be “forced” into running around the ship half-naked.

That was, of course, before Melissa, Erene and Daniella decided to let me in on some of the OTHER purchases they had made, from the Starlight’s Secret collection. I don’t know why those things cost so much, there certainly isn’t a lot of them there! They then put a fashion show on for me, judging how I liked the various outfits on how close to grabbing them and ravishing one or more of them right then and there. I put a stop to the show after the second round, because, well, they had pushed me a little bit too close to that particular edge with Melissa’s last outfit. I pled tiredness, and hurried off to the catcalls of “chicken!” and “We’re going to get you sooner or later!” from Erene. I think Daniella just threw her pillow at me.