Chapter 43

Third Mission, outbound aboard the FUP Deep Space Exploration vessel Glenndeavor, 2401 CE

As a recently married young man, I could see how it might be necessary to travel to some vacation spot offering many exciting tourist diversions to entice a newlywed couple, or group in our case, out of their marriage bed during their honeymoon. Otherwise, if the man's bride or brides were as amorous as mine, physical harm from love's long labors would not be lost on a person's body.

We did sleep in the time allotted for our honeymoon. But I must say, each of us got more sleep than I'd thought we would find. Of course, we began our honeymoon by sampling a portion-of-a-stick of Garrick Emerson's chew once we returned to our quarters. Call it part of our research into the properties of the concoction. When we combined our research and the expected honeymoon activities, along with at least two hours of Anika helping me pleasure our first wife and our mistress while wearing her diabolical Personal Pleasuring Device, it is no wonder we were in need of lots of hydrating, clean sheets, a long hot shower, and sleep.

As it happened, my first wife asked us a few questions as we returned to Section 15 from our wedding ceremony in the Captain's office. Once back in our suite, Juliet brought her laboratory investigative skills to use. She told us that based on the amount of chew I'd used during my initial exposure to the pharmaceutical effects found in the Golden Dragon stick, and using their body weight compared to my own, she planned to adjust the portions she would give to Anika and Beatrice along with the chew she would pop into her own mouth.

Back in our suite, we secured our weapons and then got out of our gear. Our Princess got a cold, dark-green bottle of what seemed to be champagne out of the refrigeration box on the left-bulkhead counter top. Juliet produced one of the distinctive black packs of Golden Dragon from a drawer in her locker as well as a zipped toolkit the size of a big, old-fashioned book. She took both to the desk and sat down in the articulated chair.

"Please open this, husband, " Juliet, one of the three most beautiful women aboard the Glenndeavor asked me as she handed me the pack of chew, "and give me one of the sticks, please ... Gosh, I love using that word when I talk to you, Jameson." She smiled up at me and batted her eyelashes. Then Juliet turned and opened the toolkit on the desktop.

I saw the inside-front cover held sampling tools and supplies. She took out a clear measuring stick, a small pad of sticky notes, and an old-fashioned scalpel from the left side of the kit. As I worked on the top of the Golden Dragon pack with my thumbnail, I could see that side of the kit also held a pouch holding small zip bags, what looked like an old-fashion dental probe, tweezers, several hemostats, snap-top sample containers, as well as a selection of small digital probes of various types. From the back pocket on the right side of the kit, Juliet slipped out a thin, gray-composite cutting board that was only slightly smaller than the kit cover.

I turned back the inner foil of the black packet of Golden Dragon and tapped out one of the square, finger-length sticks. Looking down at my palm and the foil-wrapped chew colored in equal lengths of gold, black, and red, I remembered sitting on the bench outside of Garrick's Electronics and Nav-Comm Maintenance and Repair Bay where I chewed my first, and up until now, my only taste of his product. That uninterrupted memory was so sharp and complete in my mind's eye that I could have just walked from that bench and into our suite moments ago.

Who needs videos, my paranoid ass-wipe chuckled from my lizard brain, when you got this stuff.

Juliet placed the small cutting board on the desk while finished opening the chew pack. I handed a foil-wrapped length of chew to my first wife and she put the stick on the cutting board. Then she looked back up at me and held out her hand for another. I tapped the end of the pack and the second foil-covered stick slipped out and dropped in the palm of her hand.

Beatrice stood to the left of my blonde bombshell and Anika walked up behind the articulated chair with the sweating glass bottle carried in both hands—it looked heavy to me.

"You said you chewed just a third of a stick?" Juliet asked as she got a flat digital scale that was a bit smaller than the cutting board, and only about 5 millimeters thick, out of another pocket on the right side of the toolkit. Placing it down on the desk near the cutting board, she used her finger to do a triple tap on the Start button located near the left edge on the bottom quarter of the device next to the elongated touch screen.

I saw the data screen come to life and green letters scrolled from the right to left spelling out Precision Laboratory Weighing Mode, then the round logo of the Federation Conference on Weights and Measures scrolled across the screen, followed by the words, Scale Calibrated and Ready. Along the bottom margin of the screen, I saw an atmospheric pressure reading, an ambient temperature reading, and a humidity reading, along with several control menu headers.

"The gold section," I finally replied, "definitely, I chewed a gold section's worth."

With the scale working, she put the stick in the center of the graduated bulls-eye on the square that was the load-receiving element and which took up the top three-quarters of the flat scale.

I turned from Juliet the scientist to the shelves behind me. I thumbed my commitment ring and wondered what else besides the champagne and water we might have that was cold to drink. I knew the physical demands I was facing would tax the hydration of my body. I didn't want Kiarianne Krychenkov too upset with me if she heard I got a cramp in a major muscle group while doing my husbandly duty. With a shrug, I started emptying the cargo pockets of my duty blues onto the shelves.

Only part of my mind listened in as, behind me, Anika and Bea asked Juliet questions about her planned methodology while I put my small hack kit with my other toolkits. From other pockets I then retrieved three wrapped concentrate bars; extra power packs for both the hand laser and the EMP gun; a folded down pair of pliers with multi-tools collapsed inside the handles and all held in a tough nylon sleeve; and finally my flask half-full of water mixed with one of the hydration powders Kiarianne told me was beneficial. I smirked and considered putting that near the bunk.

"My loving Mindy, I am wanting larger portion than that," I heard Anika saying. "That is to be for me, yes?"

"It is important we get an idea of the potency, Ani," Bea giggled, "so we don't toast our brain-bread. I wanna do all we can to assure we're allowed to put our boots on this Artifact thing the Captain told us about—that means bein' level-headed tomorrow. If our Milk Master here can keep up his end, a good eighteen hours of lovin' and fuckin' will just get us all sharpened up and relaxed for duty. Nothing like a great string of comes to restore ah girl—better than bailin' hay. Now—if the Siren would only call," she added in a wistful-sounding voice.

I patted down all my cargo pockets as I laughed along with Juliet and Anika. Trying to imagine what chew combined with a Siren Call might do to us, I turned back around. Juliet stood up and reached her hand over toward me with what was the entire gold section of the stick. She wiggled her eyebrows and looked into my eyes as I took the chew from her and just held it in my fingers.

"In this way, my darlings," Juliet said as she continued to hand out the colorfully wrapped sections of chew, "we will each experience a similar dosage. We certainly don't want to have completely metabolized our dosages while you're still highly stimulated, Nika. You'll get out that beastly sex toy you brought into our household, and who knows what kind of mayhem would ensue."

Juliet started giggling as I watched Anika and Bea peeled their portions of chew out of the black or black and red foil.

As Beatrice started chewing her piece with grinning gusto, my first wife, the giggling scientist, stepped over to me. She gave me a sweet little kiss before she took my foil-covered chew from me. Juliet removed the foil before slipping the partial stick of Garrick's product between my lips. I playfully nipped at her fingertips, feeling my affection and love for Juliet starting to flood my chest.

Oh, lucky man am I, I told my paranoid ass-wipe, who was grinning like the idiot he is down in my lizard brain.

"Be fearing not, my sweet Mindy—" Anika giggled around her chew as she turned her torso away from us and popped the cork stopper from the bottle with her thumbs. The missile shot off the cream-colored overhead before the payload of real cork plopped on the center of the bunk. "—however, I will be getting out my Jameson Juniors, but only after we each are making deep, compassionate love with our naughty husband and Milk Master.

"Truth told, I am wanting tenderness—" she told us with a beautiful smile, and then she put the cold bottle to her lips and took a big chug. "—Ahhh, yes—" she said around her chew after she swallowed and handed the bottle to Beatrice, "—before our wonderful moon of honey is descending into stormy sea of steaming lust. I have been making study of this amazing book, the Kama Sutra, which Kiarianne Krychenkov is telling me about. I promise we will all be getting necessary exercise since not attending PT this day."

We don't know how the champagne will affect the active ingredients, my inner geek warned me with a whine. How will this be any kind of test based on your first experiment? You didn't drink any alcohol.

I didn't pay any attention to that voice inside my head as I reached for the heavy green bottle. The condensation on the outside of the glass felt good against my skin as I gripped the concave bottom of the bottle with my left hand and the gold-foil-wrapped neck with my right.

While we chewed and took drinks of the incredible champagne being passed back and forth, I was instructed to set up my three video cameras around the bunk in C001 by our first wife. Anika put the cork back in the bottle and then put the bottle back in the cooling unit as I retrieved the case holding my video gear from the bottom shelf against the front bulkhead.

Opening the case on the bunk, I watched the women retire into the head. Each one of them grinned at me like they were a Ship's Cat in the All Alone legend. Getting out the first tripod, I figured I would be playing the part of the hapless crew member who would be babbling on to my mates, trying to convince them I had actually seen and even stroked, not just one, but three of the illusive, legendary beings.

At least I'm going to have video evidence, I smiled; not that any of my friends would ever be allowed to see the proof. My stupid grin would have to be all they would see and wonder about. While I worked, a shiver went down my spine under my duty blues and tee shirt—all my senses began to sparkle and sharpen as the wonderful chew began to work its magic on my system. As my ability to focus increased, I was able to place my cameras with the certain knowledge each perfectly framed angle would soon immortalize the utter beauty and charm of Juliet, Anika, and Beatrice for the ages.

At one point, I stopped and just stretched my arms up toward the overhead, rising up on my toes in my boots. I was so happy I'd been keeping up my daily stretches and forms, and now I was feeling the power in my muscles and sinews as I reached for the sky—so to speak. Getting back to work, I actually wanted to start attending PT on a daily basis again—perhaps once with a wad of chew in my mouth.

Oh, yes. I thought of taking on an opponent while masticating chew—maybe people two at once?

Why, I wondered as I fastened the gooseneck on the top of the padded headboard, will we need these videos? We're going to remember every moment of our love-making during our honeymoon for the rest of our lives.

That was when I knew I was going to have to watch how much chew I used as long as our supply lasted. While all the details of the compartment around me set themselves indelibly in my mind and memory, I realized the chew was placing me in what I began to understand was a sacred space. I was the witness to the marvel of reality all around me here in this compartment of our suite. I was one of an infinite sets of the eyes of the Almighty—I and I—as my Rastabuds had said when I was a kid; as Percy Garvey believed whole-heartedly because he allowed himself to experience and respect every sacred moment that unfolds around him—the sacred spark was in me and all about me!

Perhaps it's always been sacred, all of it; the Ship, the All Alone, star systems and planets, my mind wondered in awe, and I just forget that fact.

Just then, the hatchway to the head opened, and I experienced the utter joy at seeing three living angels walk out to stop just inside the compartment. They were each dressed in diaphanous gowns that came down to just below their upper thighs. I could easily see the sexy women were naked underneath. Juliet wore filmy, jade green. Anika's charms were displayed under a shimmering cloud of gauzy purple. Beatrice was regaled in a see-through gown of black mist and I was amazed at the slimness of her waist.

Three steps into the compartment and standing close together they each struck a pose. The only things distracting me from the classical tableau of the space nymphs were the three pairs of hard nipples tenting the material covering their torsos and the movement of their chewing cheeks and jaws. Their glittering eyes were full of love, mirth, and were also starting to smolder with desire.

"Be hurrying up," Anika said through her slightly opened lips, her left hand back near the coppery curls covering her ear, "a video of our pulchritude for posterity is permitted. Yes?"

"Your wish is my command," I said from my side of the huge bunk while swinging the tripod camera toward them. I touched the record icon as I captured all three magnificent women in the well-framed shot.

"You are finding just the right attitude to make a fine husband," Juliet said through her big smile as her right hand remained on the hip of her brief, transparent outfit.

"Yeah, MM..." Beatrice told me as she held her pose and continued chewing; I could see her eyes were hungry as she focused on the crotch of my duty blues from across the bunk. "Now shuck outta those coveralls an' display the steel of your blade—you got three fresh fields to plow!"

So much for your classy nymphs, my PAW laughed from down in my lizard brain. But now—it's time to record their expressions when you free Willy!

Ahead of Beatrice and me, through my data visor, I watched Anika walking along the passageway, holding Juliet's right hand as the two of them led the way. G4 Melvina Bimini was two steps behind them, but closer to the right bulkhead.

Each of my household was armored up. Even Juliet had her assault rifle over the right shoulder of her cushy, high-tech ballistic and beam vest. My Polka Fireball had the butt of her street sweeper against her right side; her arm pushed against it as she held the trigger assembly with her right hand and kept the barrel pointed up at the overhead. I heard Juliet laughing at something Anika said through the external audio pickups of my Kilo helmet.

Our neighbor was the only walk-along we'd been assigned by the Security Department's Movement Controller before we left our quarters. She'd quickly become quiet after we collected her and started off for the Barracks Block. Melvina didn't ask me about the grin that hadn't left my face under my visor, and she didn't enquire about what caused the women's glowing complexions before they'd deployed their data visors.

Melvina Bimini was wearing her new Kilo helmet and her holstered .40 caliber pistol on her right hip and her POC on her left. She didn't have a ballistic vest. None of us asked her about the rectangular device in the black padded pack that she did have strapped on her shoulders and that came down to her lower back. I knew it had to be some type of a comm unit, she was a member of the Communications Department, but without the padded panels of the pack unzipped to reveal what was inside, I wasn't going to make much of a guess.

My inner geek had been collating the known facts and trying to frame what the high tech load Melvina carried might be able to link with during our coming simulations. However, while part of me was constantly checking our surroundings and I saw Beatrice moving her Kilo helmet around as she continued to scan for any threat, I decided to contact her on our E Channel. With a few blinks, I engaged an override that would bring our guard channel online if we had incoming radio messages we needed to hear while we talked. Bea giggled with delight when I asked her how she was feeling.

All of us had just walked out of a lift car and were heading down a passageway toward the next lift which would take us to the closest Marine check point in the Barracks Block. We were early and not in a hurry. In my data visor I saw a green oblong on my tactical overlay coming up the passageway from our rear, there was a 16 in the center of the icon.

When I could hear the sound of clean tires on clean decking as a donk approached from behind, our neighbor turned her torso and looked back over her left shoulder. None of the rest of us did; we'd shown Juliet how to use more of the features in her Kilo system, so all four of us had our tactical displays on-screen and knew about the TD before it was audible.

"So, MM—" Bea's soft-sounding voice entered my right ear through my bud as I got a better grip on the trigger assembly of my Betzoule with my right hand. My left hand was holding the hand grip attached to the front rail under the side-by-side magazine tubes and the barrel that I had pointed at the overhead. "—you don't want to make the Service your career, do you? I mean, how can you be sure we'll all be stationed together for every deployment? And don't you want children at some point?"

The full TD moved past us on our left and headed up the passageway—more searchers heading to their assigned compartments.

"Sure I want kids," I told her as I glanced at my tactical display again while enjoying the flow of our conversation and the fact that Bea was asking about the future. "I once hoped for two or three, but now I guess I'm looking at five or six in our household—unless some of you don't want kids." I knew Juliet wanted a family, but I was embarrassed to admit I hadn't talked to Anika or Bea about what they wanted for the future.

"Are you kidding me," she asked as she looked behind us while still walking forward, "we all want kids—just not anytime soon."

"You know," I said, feeling a little rush at the idea of fucking for babies, "we've got some time before anything like that occurs. Let's see what happens after we return from this Mission, okay? But know this, my Green Thumb Princess, whatever I need to do to keep us together ... well ... yeah, you can be sure I'm going to do it."

I knew, with those words, I was thinking about the ring in the wooden box. I also admitted that deep inside I'd accepted the fact I'd need to read through everything, including all the fine print twice. I'd memorize all of the rules and regulations in the entire PDF that came with the offer from the Royal House of Piast. Reading all of the information would take some time, depending on everything else that was going on around us and the fact the Glenndeavor would be breaking out of warp and entering the first star system on our revised Order of Survey.

As I made another visual sweep of the passageway behind us, my paranoid ass-wipe was surprised at how easily I'd made the decision.

My inner geek just wondered when I'd decide it was the proper time to put on the ring—but certainly, not during this Mission. He was also eager to see what wild legalities I'd be faced with, both pro and con, once I knew all the possibilities inside and out. In the left side of my data visor I saw two more TD icons appear, both with 16s attached to the green oblongs and I thanked my lucky stars for such a fine tactical display.

A few moments later, coming down the passageway towards us on our left, I saw a TD2 full of crew members and I could see three Marines in different cubbyholes. Farther down the cream-colored corridor behind that TD I saw the second full donk approaching as expected.

"Beatrice Bernice, what do you want for your life?" I asked. For a moment I thought I'd connect with her though her brainstem, or what ever the mechanism was I'd discovered I could use. But then I decided I wanted to hear exactly what she said, not what she was feeling or possibly what she was thinking. I wanted to hear the words she'd use to describe where she wanted to end up—or at least part of the path she wanted to take to get there.

"Golly, MM," the voluptuous honey-blonde replied with a grin I could hear in her voice, "eventually, I want a nice house, with animals—definitely some of Arrbra's bees, and ladybugs, and a breeding pair of the cats, if I can swing that. And there will be barns with a lab so I can carry on her research as, you know, as a colleague; and a really big garden—and a passel of kids runnin' around—most of them not mine..."

"You think you could get your own Eridani-improved cats, bees, and bugs?" I asked her, impressed by the scope of her dreams. "You'd use the research angle to graphite the grooves?"

"I've, you know," she told me and looked behind us again, "talked to Arrbra about it some; so ... yes. She told me she'd be my mentor once I was ready to buckle down and study what I need to know to get my degree. Until now, well, all that extra book work didn't seem important. But now that I'm part of your household, I want to be able to contribute by doing something I love. You'd be surprised at the kind of credits the Feds are willing to grant research into the stuff Arrbra and her late husband started. That's why her Boys enlisted. After this Mission they all plan on setting up research projects of their own to expand the knowledge base. When Gig Shakespeare told me how much money he's already got lined up, I nearly pissed down my leg."

"So you want a farm?" I asked her, feeling my affection and love for Bea expanding in my chest. I glanced at the tactical display again; it only showed the green dots that were our crew moving along the outline of the passageway we traveled.

"It doesn't have to be a farm," she told me as we both continued to scan the passageway for any threats while we walked along, maintaining our situational awareness, "but somewhere neighbors aren't necessarily stopping by every time we turn around; yet close enough for a visit and so the kids can hike to their friends' places by the time they're seven or eight.

"But the thing is," said G3 Henderson, her no-nonsense military voice now coming out of my ear-bud, "with Anika being a real live princess from Nowe Gniezno, and being connected to all that miracle water—unless we finally locate on one of the planets in her home system, I don't see TECMA giving up on trying to sniff her out and snatch her any time soon.

"Not meanin' to sound paranoid;" she said, her voice going back to sounding normal, "but, MM, I think we really need more ammo now that we have cargo space, just because we can. Maybe later on, we could get some kind of heavy weapons with anti-air capabilities, as well as something to punch holes in armored vehicles at a good stand-off distance—just in case."

My PAW was standing up, cheering from my lizard brain. Beatrice was an advocate for our plan-for-all-scenarios mind set that some of my friends confused with deep-seated paranoia.

"Now that I think about it," she added, "once we settle down, we might want neighbors who are name-friends and are vets, too—with their own arsenals as well. But just because we got it, don't mean we'll need to use it and all. However, now that I'm gettin' regular Range time, I'm juicin' on it. That's something I'm not going to let get rusty ever again, even without my asshole brothers around to be handy 'gets. We'll probably need to invest in a reloading bunker in one of the out buildings or a sub-basement—you know, collect our spent brass and recycle."

I couldn't help myself—I started to laugh. Ahead of us, Melvina Bimini turned her Kilo-covered head and looked over her left shoulder at us. I looked over at Bea on my left.

"You've been thinking about this," I was finally able to say. "You continue to impress me, Beatrice Henderson. I also haven't had time to tell you that I liked the way you wielded that fancy strap-on when you took it over."

"Yeah," she giggled, back to her completely goofy self again, and bumped her right hip against my left even with our gear in the way, "It's a good thing it's so adjustable. Ani's rubbing off on me, I guess."

"From what I remember," I chuckled, my body much too satisfied to respond to my vivid, erotic memories, "you were the one rubbing off on her. But as a girl who escaped from your farm-world," I said to Bea, "and is out here in the All Alone enjoying yourself now, I'm sort of surprised you'd want to settle down out in the country at some point."

"Hey, we'll have vehicles, so you can take us out on dates to really fancy restaurants come Saturday nights, and then take us dancing," Beatrice informed me. "The reason I don't want the place to be a farm with, like, fields of crops, is that way we can up and go visit different places off planet whenever we want. We can always get people to watch the animals; we could even take the cats with us. But if we put crops in the ground in a big way, we really need to be there to harvest them so we could increase our good karma, not gain any bad karma."

I felt myself grin at her talk of good and bad karma in relationship to being there to harvest any big field crops we might be responsible for someday.

"If we happen to have our own spaceship," she added in a nonchalant-sounding voice, "traveling with little ones and cats won't be a problem, and we can handle our own security."

"Our own spaceship?" I asked, seeing the hatchway to the lift we wanted ahead on my tactical display and forgetting about good and bad karma, "how are we going to afford that luxury?" We still had a ways to walk.

"You're so funny sometimes, MM," Beatrice said with a giggle. "Smell the fresh-mown hay; our Ani is a truth-told princess of the House Piast, the rulers of two entire, frickin' star systems."

Leapin' gowno! my mind all but shouted while I almost stopped in my tracks.

My PAW looked daggers at my inner geek, wondering if Bea was correct before telling our brainiac, Talk about dereliction of duty. This better not be about you becoming more interested in pussy than searching out and examining the facts of our new situation, buddy.

"What are you talking about?" I finally asked Bea, turning my head to my left and focusing on Bea through my data visor. "Are you sure they control two systems?"

"Yep, two systems;" the constantly amazing Beatrice Bernice Henderson assured me while looking down at the deck for a moment through her data visor as if she replayed some memory before she said, "Ani and I talked about it. One of the worlds in the second system has been a problem, being raided off and on for, oh, over ten years. Ani's dad even called in Fed Marines to help at one time. And, the second system seems to be where the resistance in the civil war is located—but, yeah," she said with a nod of her Kilo helmet, "two systems. With everything else we've learned lately, it seems TECMA is at the bottom of all that, too."

I didn't say anything, my mind was racing. Why didn't I know this two systems intel already—is one of my reactions to Anika's super-duper pheromones when the Siren calls dulling my curiosity about anything other than possessing her the rest of the time?

"Gee willikers—" whispered the honey-blonde through my Kilo system as she walked along at my side. She looked at me through our data visors, "—you didn't know?"

All I could do was shrug the shoulders of my duty blues, knowing that wouldn't translate as I intended because of the cushy, high-tech vest I was wearing.

"You're gonna hafta turn in your geek ticket—" Bea giggled in a soft, loving voice in my ear, "—if you keep this up, MM."

"I targeted that all by myself," I told her trying to keep the snort out of my voice. "A month ago, I liked to think I was at the top of the geek evolutionary chain here on the Ship. Now, sometimes, I think I'm becoming ... I don't know—"