Chapter 7: "Alex's Replacement". Seperation. Nightmares

We were lucky, usually Geghast Station was one of those stations that at any one moment, there could be ten or more ships docked looking for a cargo, leading to sometimes someone taking a run that would barely break even, just to get off the dock and stop paying docking fees, but this time there was a pretty decent run taking us to the Morely System, which was a single jumpgate away. Even with the days to get to the jump gate, and the couple days in system once we arrived, it was going to take just more than a week to run. Apparently, this was a regularly scheduled run, but the usual ship was late and they needed someone to get the 5,000 tons of Asturian Timber to Morely VI or they were facing time penalties.Apparently, our rep was good enough that once I presented our bona fides (records of past runs, certifications, etcetera), that we only had a cursory interview, and the pay was decent. I teased the women that I had to take this run, otherwise I’d have to sell the ship to pay for all their purchases. They teased me right back that if I stayed any longer, they’d set me up for another fashion show, this time with a locked door, so I couldn’t escape.

Erene and Daniella shared one bunkroom, and I fully expected them to turn it into a girly girls paradise. You know, with the holovid superstars, or perhaps some cheesecake shots of buff guys. Instead, they set it up almost in military style, with a desk and a computer for each of them on either side of the room. What hours they didn’t spend asleep, on the obstacle course, or training with Crystal, they spent cross-training each other. I didn’t want them to burn out on learning all the time and encouraged them to do things for fun. Erene gave me this cross-eyed look when I suggested this. “This is our fun, Captain Alex! Not only are we learning how to pilot a ship and how to protect ourselves if we ever do something like you’re doing, which seems awesome, but we use it as a game to actually try out these things in a simulator environment. We’ve gotten so competitive in our duels that we actually started funny little wagers on the competition, like who has to do clean up duty the next day.”

Well, I wasn’t going to restrain them. I thought about letting them take turns on a duty station at some point. Crystal can certainly handle most routine functions, but even the best AI requires human intervention in situations outside the normal routine. In most cases, I could tell Crystal what I wanted her to do, but even with manually keying in commands and reading system statuses at the same time as giving Crystal verbal commands, I could get information overload and miss a crucial detail. That’s why I preferred set piece battles when I took on pirates. They might have 5 people on duty on their bridge, where it was just me on mine. Which made it five times as likely that they would catch a mistake I made than that I would catch theirs. So, I preferred to make it short, sweet, and overwhelming before they could figure out what was going on.

Back in space, shipboard routine quickly reasserted itself, as Heyanna had made good on her threat to feed us three meals every day, whether we liked it or not. Not that we complained, mind you. I never caught her consulting Crystal’s memory banks to make her creations, but every ship-night was a different meal, and quite frankly, they were all delicious. In fact, they were so delicious that I mandated all of us to get at least some exercise to prevent us from gaining pounds. Daniella took mock-offense at this statement, and she said “Ooh ... are you calling us fat?”

As one of my House-adopted step-fathers (when I was adopted, I was placed in a Group Home run by several House families who wanted children but for whatever reason couldn’t have one, either due to business or physical reasons) told me... “When a woman uses that tone of voice and those words, she’s not looking for honesty, but they will get you even if they believe you when you say that they’re perfect. So, treat a question like that like you would an asteroid field. Step Lightly, and look two steps ahead, or you’re going to be spending time on the couch, or at least spending an hour or two apologizing.” His wife smacked him on the shoulder, telling him that he shouldn’t be corrupting the boy (me) and that more importantly he shouldn’t spill the secrets every man needs to learn on his own. He just raised his hands and laughed as if to say “See, she’s proving my point for me.”

So, thus forewarned, I said, “Nope. I just don’t want your obstacle course scores to go down because you’re tired after such great meals. Your scores have been levelling off lately.”

Daniella looked disappointed they weren’t going to play “Captain Alex digs a black hole with comments that have been purposefully misconstrued.” But Erene was still playful. “We’re still a hundred fifty points ahead of you!” she said with a grin and stuck her tongue out at me. Melissa and Heyanna were watching the two of them torment me and were laughing to themselves as I tried to extricate myself from a conversation that there was no way in hell I was going to get out of unless they let me.

Of course, Daniella saw Melissa laughing and decided that her big sister needed to get some attention out of this discussion. “Of course, the problem probably is that Melissa is keeping you up all night. Maybe we should ask Heyanna to double your portions Alex, so Melissa doesn’t wear you out all night.” That brought a delighted titter from Erene, a shake of the head from Heyanna, and a flushing gasped denial from Melissa. I think the girls knew that while we hadn’t been intimate from a physical standpoint, we didn’t sleep well unless we were both in the same bed. They got the reaction from her that they wanted to get from me.

Daniella and Erene both teamed up on their big sister unmercifully, teasing her about how she looked more tired when she woke up was than she had been going to bed. This continued, and I noticed that Melissa was starting to really get bothered by such comments, but she was trying to hide it, and the teenaged girls were having too much fun to read the warning signs that they were playing with anti-matter, and that there was going to be an explosion, soon, if I couldn’t interrupt the girls teasing. Unfortunately, before I could come up with a way to interject myself into the teasing, Erene ruptured that theoretical anti-matter container with a comment. “I don’t know, you must not think[C1] he’s not very good, I mean, I saw that “personal massager” you ordered from “Sex amongst the Stars”, sis. Are you going to call it “Alex’s Replacement”?

Melissa started crying for a couple seconds, and her sisters looked at each other shocked, as they realized that they had not only stepped over the line, they took a jumpgate over the line, and as they started to stammer an apology, Melissa burst into sobs and fled the galley, crying loudly. The girls started arguing with each other about whose fault it was, and I wanted to yell at both of them for tormenting Melissa like that, but I decided attempting to go after Melissa was more important. As I left, Heyanna was taking my place chastising the girls, telling them they weren’t too big to spank, and they shouldn’t say ONE MORE WORD, because they had said QUITE ENOUGH, thank you very much.

I went to our shared bunkroom, but it was empty. I didn’t know if she was just walking around the ship trying to get her emotions under control. “Crystal, where is Melissa?” I asked.

Crystal replied “Melissa Katain is in bunkroom G.” Bunkroom G was the last remaining unused bunkroom and had been used as a storage room for our package deliveries while we were on station. Why was she in there...

“Crystal, please open an audio channel to that bunkroom.”

“Captain, Melissa has requested not to be disturbed.”

I could use my Captain’s override to open the channel, but I didn’t want to abuse that power. Dammit, there was that Protector and Requestor thing again, in a different form. If I used Crystal to override her wishes, could she trust me to treat her as an equal in other things? I cursed the situation, but decided discretion was the best part of valor. “Crystal, record voice message for Melissa to hear when she’s ready.” Crystal issued her “record” chirp and I said “Hi Melissa, I’m sorry the girls teased you so much, I hope you’re ok. Just let me know how you’re doing. They didn’t mean to hurt you...” Honestly, what I really wanted to do was to hold her and kiss her tears away, but I couldn’t figure out how to tell her that.

I remember going to bed alone that night. It seemed a hell of a lot emptier than the first time Melissa had stepped inside my door. It still was the focus of my fantasies, as she knelt before me and asked me for Protection. But I wasn’t focusing on any fantasies of Melissa’s beauty. It was her presence that I missed more. That feeling of having someone in my arms to protect ME from my own nightmares.

The next day was more of the same. It was quite clear that the events of the dinner were acting like a pulsar-sized wedge in what had been a pleasant shipboard environment. Heyanna still tried to cook meals for us, but it wasn’t all five of us eating together and talking anymore. More often than not, one or more of us would skip a meal because we weren’t hungry or weren’t feeling well. Or at least that’s what we told Crystal when Heyanna summoned all of us to eat.

Melissa didn’t come back to our bed that next night either. She was still doing all the paperwork, but she was doing it from her new room. She found ways of avoiding me in the ship if possible. The girls were also affected, as they had none of the usual exuberance. They weren’t slacking on training, but they no longer ran the obstacle course with such energy, and after a couple meals where they couldn’t look me in the face and didn’t really respond to Heyanna and my attempts to start conversation, started to skip the meals more frequently themselves.

I tried to talk with Melissa, but she would find an excuse to cut the conversation short, and with each attempt I could feel the barrier between us thicken, and I was afraid it would grow to a point we could no longer break through.

That fourth night, I took more than an hour to fall asleep, still missing her warmth and presence, and I had just about resolved to override Melissa’s wishes and try some kind of confrontation just to get back to where we were when I fell asleep.

Falling asleep was a mistake.

It was that same damned nightmare again. Mary’s screams echoing through the vent system, but this time, it wasn’t just hers. I saw Melissa, splayed out next to Mary, and going through the same torture. And that voice from the nightmare was back, but he had new fears to feast on from my brain to torment me. “How many of them are you going to let down? How many of them are you going to watch break? Face it, Alex. You can’t save anyone. You can’t save Mary, and you can’t save Melissa, or Erene, or Daniella. You can’t even save yourself. You know why you have to watch them break? Because you’re broken yourself. You’re the cause of all their issues.”

I just remember screaming. And not stopping screaming. Usually, when I started to scream, that would be a sign that the nightmare would be over soon. It would almost be comforting. But here, there was no stopping. My body was jerking around like it was the neural shocker being plunged into ME instead of them. I wished it was me. I wished it was me who was left a barely alive peace of meat. Maybe if I was lucky, they’d shock me one too many times, and there would just be oblivion. An escape, an escape into nothing, where no one else would be hurt because of me...