Chapter 41

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

I was wearing a pair of boxer shorts that were too big, and kept trying to slip off my hips.

I was exposed.

I hurried down the passageway that was empty of people. I was looking for my quarters, my clothes locker—and where I was supposed to go next, I had no clue.

I was certain an alarm was going to ring at any moment; the corridor would flood with people who belonged here, knew where they were heading, were completely dressed, and would pay no attention to me. As they crowded past me, they would mock my dislocation by not even acknowledging my existence.

Had I passed this section before? There was an intersection ahead—I could see it!

But each time I looked back down the passageway, after checking the next closed hatch for a number I might recognize or pushing sideways on its surface with the palms of my hands to try to open the barrier, the intersection was farther away.

I knew the Ship around me was getting bigger—my indistinct goal was fading further away. In the growing emptiness inside me, I fought back at the self-recrimination that I was lost and it was my fault for not following the rules correctly from the beginning—but what was right; which beginning?

I pushed on the next closed hatch.

I woke up on my back with Anika asleep atop my bare chest in her borrowed tee shirt, Bea's naked back and bottom against my right side. Juliet's silk-covered boobs smooshed against my left arm, her head on the edge of my shoulder and blonde hair covering the left side of my face.

I pondered extricating my arms and pulling Juliet and Bea closer to me while trying to find a way to encompass Anika's petite body as well, but I did not.

I closed my eyes and relaxed into my lizard brain. Our connections were warm, like the rest of my body and those of the three women I loved who were against my flesh, a pleasant, reassuring weight, and a feeling of being home.

All three were dreaming, but I was able to avoid engaging with their individual dreamscapes and just meld with their being, staying connected and feeling more than my own individuality. I was not alone; I was not empty.

However, the images and emotional hangover from my own dreams bothered me, like a low grade hunger in the pit of my stomach.

Getting my right arm free, holding my youngest wife to my chest and, Juliet's head slipping off my shoulder and along my rotating back, I managed to roll Anika over in place. Anika made a whimpering sound as I pulled my arm out from under her while keeping my weight off her torso with my left elbow down on the bunk between her and Bea. The warmth and scents under the blanket and sheet over my back almost caused me to worm my hips between Anika's bare thighs and ... I stopped thinking with that part of my body and slowly began to rise without disturbing the three sleepers.

It was early—just over two hours before I really needed to be up and getting ready for whatever the Morning Orders and Announcements might have me do if I didn't get a specific call from Lieutenant Shellbee with orders. I missed her and Gunny Krychenkov. What was I thinking? I missed Ashley and Kiarianne.

I was in C003 ready to do my stretches and then my forms in the cotton boxers I'd put on before going to sleep. Silk drawers were more comfortable, but I had a lot more cotton underwear and needed to start wearing more of those. The feeling of the Ship being a growing entity started to reassert itself in my mind, so I took a deep breath, slowly bent at my waist with my knees straight and put my hands flat on the deck beside my bare feet.

I came out of the zen-zone, sweat covering my body as I released my last form. The cotton briefs had worked up into the crack of my ass and stuck to my wet skin. I walked through the hatch into the doppelganger side of our expanded head, knowing one of four clean, sinful towels would be hanging from a hook once I reached out of the plex shower door, soaking wet, and feeling wonderful after washing in the joy of hot water.

Opening the plex panel, I stepped inside, my bare soles enjoying the warm, pebbled tiles under my feet as I tapped on the shower control panel for my favorite solo shower settings.

Dry, dressed in my duty-blues and ship's boots I was not wearing any of my accouterments required to meet regulations once I stepped outside my quarters for duty. With my new ID card hanging from the dummy cord around my neck, I sat in the articulated chair looking up at the wire-frame representation of the Glenndeavor in the holographic field floating above the bulkhead desk. That was the only illumination in C001 and the rest of the household slept on, a cute, softly snoring, big lump in the center of the bunk.

My go-everywhere, view-any-file, special password worked again. I'd been looking through the blueprints of the Barracks Block; what before was a redacted area representing the general location that the Marines' home turf occupied inside the Main Hull of the Ship. I'd been prepared for what it might contain, but my estimations were woefully inadequate compared to what I'd discovered.

There were easily enough barracks space, auxiliary support bays, and other facilities to house not one rifle company, but three! That was a whole fucking battalion. In addition, there was room for their associated supporting Air/Space Combat Element and Logistics Combat Element in the Barracks Block and Shuttle Bay as well.

Not only that, but the Marines aboard weren't a Rifle Company. Doing a little electronic snooping, I found out they were a Marine Special Operations Company. That explained why Major Luce was in command and not a Captain, much to the embarrassment of my inner geek who should have already pointed out that discrepancy. Moreover, I suspected that Luce's forces might actually be a reinforced company to better deal with whatever the Ship might encounter when we came upon the Artifact. No wonder the Glenndeavor had a flight of Starfighters aboard.

However, that information wasn't what had me agitated. While I was reflecting on the true size of the Barracks Block and why such a large military area in such a brand-new, huge, non-military Deep Space Exploration Ship existed, I'd absentmindedly tracked my cursor back out of the Glenndeavor's interior, and looked at the entire wire-frame structure. I selected the ship and did a right click.

All the ship's general specifications started to scroll down through the holo-field in a separate window.

That is how I discovered Glenndeavor class ships were actually designed to support a crew of 2,880 along with 275 officers of various ranks. And that didn't include the 1,200 sleepers that could be tucked away in the three stasis bays—or the 178 fee-paying researchers that could be housed in accommodations like I was sitting in—or any security contingent assigned to the Barracks Block; and that could be a frickin' battalion!

The annotations, as well as the construction and testing acceptance information at the end of the specifications were all signed by Fleet personnel; with not a single ExServ officer to be found on any of the lines.

With a weird feeling in my gut, my inner geek and paranoid ass-wipe agreed with me. The ExServ Glenndeavor class ships had to be prototypes for the next big Fleet planet-attack starships. That must be why the Brotherhood wanted to get their hands on her.

Part of the Federation bureaucracy was trying to tool-up for a big war without being completely obvious about their intentions.

After what we'd found aboard the Glenndeavor, and everything that had happened so far, it looked like they were going to get one sooner than they anticipated.

I'd been geeking around for close to an hour when I decided I'd had enough. I left the 3D Blueprint database up in the holographic field with the Ship's specifications window open. Juliet and Anika would want to see what I'd found and Beatrice would probably look the information over and then trackball to the Hydroponics Department. However, our Green Thumb Princess was always surprising me.

Standing at the end of the lockers and stretching, I used the hatch touch-screen controller to call up the Morning Orders and Announcements. Right at the top of the MOA, after Uniform of the Day and the present Security Level, neither of which had changed since yesterday and wouldn't for the foreseeable future, I saw the red-text header Duty Assignments. Under that, in descending order by rating, was my name, Juliet's name, Bea's name, and Anika's name; each one blinking for attention as I tapped on mine.

Yellow text telling me the system was Verifying Identity came on the screen. Not only did an ID scan bar appear, showing my ID stick just got pinged, but a gray thumb-print oval appeared in the center of the screen with red-text randomized Left Thumb blinking under the scan point. Gowno, I thought, now a terrorist will have to cut off both of my thumbs if they wanted to be certain to have what they needed to read my orders.

My inner geek couldn't tell me if the thumb-print scanner might have a DNA component the mechanism could absorb and test through the screen as well. Juliet might know. Then I wondered if the scanning capability of the unit was able to gather data from my Marine ID card that was now resting between my tee shirt and the inside of my coveralls without me having to swipe it in a card reader. As a code monkey, I absentmindedly thought, I should know these things.

With a shrug of my shoulders, I pressed the correct digit against the gray oval, a window with my duty assignments for the day appeared. I learned that both my regular duty assignment and my four-hour additional duty assignment would be providing security for crew members satisfying their additional-duty by searching compartments today. I would also help provide security for groups of unarmed crew members moving from point A to point B.

I walked over to the bulkhead desk where I'd seen Bea's data pad. I was going to download my assignment because my orders included the phrase, "supervising two other security personnel: SPI G3 Henderson, SPI G2 Blaugelt-Sitwell."

I'd let Beatrice, in her amazingly efficient, military persona tote my orders about. As I thumbed through menus on the pad and then fingered menus on the hatch controller to sync the units, I slightly turned my head to the right without taking my eyes off what I was doing.

"Hey! Sleeping beauties!" I yelled. "Time to get those fine asses up out of the rack and hit the deck!"

I was greeted by moans and movement under the covers as the pad beeped and my orders were downloaded. A copy of the orders was still displayed in a window on the touch screen against the side of the lockers near the hatchway threshold. Including my Kilo helmet, beam weapons, body armor, and mosquito sensor pod, at any time I was outside my quarters, I was to bring "issued assault rifle or shotgun if available with anti-armor rounds."

I immediately decided that I'd be carrying my Betzoule Model 2308 shotgun today. Both magazine cylinders under the barrel would be loaded with Anika's special spider-killer rounds, Convention legal or not. I wondered how many rounds she had brought along with her.

You mean, my PAW chuckled, how many BOXES.

"We've got our duty assignments for the day," I informed the women, "and you need to do your stretches and exercises before you each shower, check your MOA duty assignments for the day, and kit out.

"It seems that we are eating at the Enlisted Mess where three of us will meet our first four-hour shift of compartment searchers that we'll be escorting on their rounds as their security party. And," I told them as I thumbed closed the window holding my orders, "I have no idea what you'll be doing, Juliet."

A feather pillow hit me in the side of the head and wrapped around the back of my skull and face, smelling of wonderful women.

That's my girls.

Anika was up and scrolling though the specifications window and then started reading. She was wearing one of my small silk tee shirts and white cotton panties. I watched her absentmindedly slip off her commitment ring and her diamond wives' rings from her left hand and then take the chain holding her ID stick from around her head. As Anika opened the clasp and started threading the rings on the chain while she continued to read, back at our bunk, naked Bea pulled the blanket off of Juliet.

Our first wife, looking beautiful as she stretched before she got out of the bunk in her tee shirt and panties, was complaining that it was her morning to be taken into C003 where I was to have my way with her. She let us know we'd fallen behind our agreed upon one-on-one schedule and she intended to do something about getting the household back on our proper morning routine—starting right now.

Beatrice started getting the bunk straightened out and shipshape. When I didn't answer, Juliet walked up behind Anika and asked her what she was looking at so early in our day. Our Polka Fireball told our loving Mindy that there were things on the list she needed to see about the Glenndeavor and slipped the chain holding her rings and ID stick back over her copper curls. The grave-sounding nature of our Polka Fireball's voice was enough to bring our first wife to indicate with her hands that Nika should vacate the articulated chair.

Bea finished the bunk and started into C003. As Juliet scanned through the specifications from her seat, she asked Bea were she was going. Our nude, voluptuous honey-blonde said she planned on doing her stretches and forms before taking a shower, and then looking at the MOA for her assignment today. The Green Thumb Princess announced that whatever it was I'd found while sneaking through the Ship's networks hadn't killed her yet, so we could tell her what it was that I'd found after she was awake and clean.

I had looked through the rest of the MOA before rousing the women, and I'd discovered that under the present security level, as SPI agents, the three of us were to message the Security Department's Movement Controller—which was activated with Ship-wide lock down yesterday—10 minutes before we left our compartment heading to our assigned duty station. In addition, we were required to notify SDMC before leaving our quarters, or our duty station to go to the Enlisted Lounge to eat, and also when we left our duty station to return to our quarters.

Before being released to move throughout the Ship by a return message from the Movement Controller, we would receive an itinerary we were to follow, picking up other crew members wanting to go somewhere. We would serve as their security detail. The same applied whenever we departed our duty station or a Lounge, for any reason, because the crew already there and going our way would tag along as we picked up and dropped off other crew members.

Now you really are a crossing guard, my PAW laughed. Too bad you threw away what was left of the fancy, flashy vest you wore at the chew show.

Well, I thought, I guess I'm going to find out how comfortable it is to sit down with all my gear attached to my armored vest and try to eat with a shotgun between my knees.

"DIBS!" Bea's voice rang from the walkthrough as I watched Juliet and Anika doing their forms in their underwear on the carpet of C001. "I call the street sweeper today!" Bea obviously had read her orders on the MAO in C003. "My two hours in Hydroponics are cancelled, so I get the street sweeper with those shells. I could plow a field with those things, I bet."

It turned out that there was another shotgun in the Royal Yacht. It wasn't a street sweeper; this shotgun was a bullpup design with a double-box magazine that held 14 rounds.

Anika had at least two big boxes that I saw under a bottom shelf that held, as she translated the words, the improved performance slug with accelerated penetrator ammunition that blew the spider off the overhead yesterday. The writing on the side of the boxes was in Polish and I was afraid my data visor might deploy if I looked at the writing too long. I did see the number 700 stenciled among the words, and both boxes were large enough to hold four big ammo cans if there were 175 rounds in every can.

"I was making certain," Anika told us as she knelt down and pulled one of the big boxes out from between the two rows of fancy silver, crimson, and black shelving, "to be bringing plenty of ammunition. All of Federation knowing Nowe Gniezno is making best precision weapons and ammunition, as well as many other high quality manufactured devices, in all of known space. So I am having plenty of boxes of ammunition.

After our experience with the anti-grav boards yesterday, I'd agree to just about any claims my younger and royal wife made about her home world. However, until I met Anika, I had never heard of the planet Nowe Gniezno, and all I'd known about Neuholm's Planet, as her home world was incorrectly called by the majority of the Federation was the planet was the home of the legendary fountain of youth water, as well as the inspiration of so many Neuholm Boy and Neuholm Girl jokes that I felt my ears start to heat up under my Kilo helmet now that I thought about it.

"I am think the most important box is being—" Anika said in a nonchalant-sounding voice as she opened the top of the ammunition container and I saw there were metal ammo cans inside.

"—sexy, tight box you are always finding between my fine legs," she said with a snort and started giggling as she straightened up between the shelves. Focusing her twinkling, dark-blue eyes on mine, Nika told me, "I am not believing some of these FedEnglish words for sexy body parts. Our wonderful Beatrice," Anika said, putting her right hand on the shoulder of Bea's matte-black vest, "explained, using her naughty hands and fingers during bachelorette party, why pussy is sometimes called box."

My Princess laughed, nodding her Kilo helmet and announced, "Now I am understanding—it is so; where pubic bone drops down to my pussy lips is feeling like end of petite box. Truth-told; is cock box for you, my naughty husband!"

Anika and Juliet, wearing her own Kilo helmet and with her .40 pistol holstered on her belt along with her POC, giggled together about body part names. I knelt beside Beatrice and thumbed rounds into both tubes of my Betzoule while she loaded first one and then a second magazine to take along with her. My PAW thought I should ask if our Polka Fireball had an ammo pouch so I could take along another 14 rounds, but I surely hoped we didn't run into any spiders, let alone enough that I'd need to reload. I'd use my beam weapons if it came down to it.

By the time Bea and I were done loading shotgun rounds, Anika and Juliet were standing beside each other. With the visors of their Kilo helmets down, they were obviously busy working with the systems in their brain buckets.

"My first wife," Anika spoke up while Bea and I put the metal ammo can back into the larger box and then pushed it back under the shelf, "I am suggesting we are to set up our Kilo-comms to activate and monitor Channel C. Doing such will allow all to hear each other without need to raise voice—also being able to talk without any crew members overhearing if speaking in soft voice. Can blink on Mute Open Channel button when addressing charges or listeners can be setting limiting threshold of incoming signals so overly loud voices addressing crew members will not be startling through C. Yes?"

Part of her face behind the tint of her visor, our first wife nodded her head. Bea and I did as Anika suggested, ourselves, and then we headed out of the shuttle. Through C Channel we all heard Beatrice send out a group notice to the Security Department's Movement Controller as we headed back up to our suite so I could use the head and I decided to investigate the facilities on the Royal Yacht the next time I was aboard. Coming back out of our head, I was told we'd received our escort duty itinerary file and Bea downloaded it into her data pad. Just then, my Kilo let me know I'd received the same information as my visor deployed. I smiled, thinking about the POV shots my helmet cam must have provided as I used the toilet.

I left my visor down; Juliet and Anika had theirs down as well. Only Beatrice had her face exposed.

As the hatch opened and we exited our suite decked out for duty, Bea told us that she sent out emails to everyone on our commitment ceremony invitation list after she got dressed and checked the MOA. Our considerate honey-blonde told us she thanked everyone for sending their RSVPs, and then reminded them the ceremony was canceled due to security concerns. As each of us thanked her for being online with following up on the canceled ceremony, Bea's face beamed with pleasure and I was glad her visor wasn't down; I love the way her brown eyes light up whenever she smiles like that.

Approaching the crew lounge just down the passageway from our suite, Beatrice thumbed her data pad and studied the result.

"Stop," she told us. "We've already passed our first pick up."

Gowno! my paranoid ass-wipe gave off a belly-laugh from down in my lizard brain.

G4 Melvina Bimini!

As I watched through my tinted data visor, I felt like a crossing guard as each crew member departed the cargo lift one at a time and turned right, heading for the last junction before the Enlisted Mess.

Not including Juliet, we had nine crew members with us. Anika had taken the lead again, looking both ways as she walked out into the passageway. Near the center of the line, Bea walked out of the open hatchway beside Juliet. I waited until the last crew member left the lift car and then exited, checking our six. Ever since we picked up the last person on our itinerary heading to eat, Melvina Bimini had fallen behind the rest, now she walked along in front of me.

After reaching the second hatch on our itinerary, it became a somewhat peaceful walk. Chit-chat would end about twenty steps beyond the latest crew member's collection point. The four of us had our visors deployed and Anika, Bea, or I, as the people wearing the red SPI armbands and armed to the teeth, would only answer with 'affirmative', 'negative', or 'I'm not at liberty to discuss that.' Since we had our shotguns at the ready and kept looking around through our data visors as we walked along, everyone quickly figured out we were taking our security duties seriously.

None of them noticed that Anika slowed our progress as we approached each intersection. Bea and I both knew that she was giving her mosquitoes time to get around the corners ahead of us and was monitoring data feeds from their movement and infrared sensors on her heads-up display as well as the security feed from the sensors in the passageways around us. Bea and I both were monitoring her feeds as she'd ported them to us after our second pick up.

I think the three of us were using our walk to the Enlisted Mess as a training exercise. I found I was able to monitor my mosquitoes as well as Anika's on small overlays in the left section of my visor while part of me noticed Melvina's butt in her tinted duty blues through the center of my visor. That our trek for breakfast could become a live fire situation, with real spiders that we'd seen kill other people, only amped us up on adrenaline. I brought up my tactical threat screen and placed it on the left section of my GUI and merge all the mosquito feeds to the right, leaving the center of my visor clear.

So far we hadn't run into any other foot traffic in the passageways, which I found unsettling the closer we got to the Mess. There were several maintenance donks that passed us, each with two armed Marines or Security Department personnel aboard with the maintenance crew—work still needed to get done. Four Marine TD3s had passed us as well. It seemed the bucket seats were removed and they had two, three, or even four crew members hunkered down in each cubbyhole with an armored-up sky warrior in one of the front compartments and another riding back with the driver.

When the four of us had entered the Royal Yacht, Anika argued we should be on grav-boards since the spiders hadn't seemed to target us yesterday. Juliet could take one on to her other duties and find out just how cohesive it was to ride down the passageways a meter off the deck.

Beatrice reminded our Princess of our experience with the pain-in-the-ass, butter bar Marine Lieutenant from yesterday. She also wondered if appearing in a passageway on such startling gollygear might not cause some nervous Nelly to fire on us—be they a member of the Security Department or some Marine NoCAR.

Juliet said, as much as she'd love to check-out a board, it would cramp our style having to move at a walk so the crew members could keep up with us, and that would also be a distraction for the three of us. If we didn't have to provide security for a group of our unarmed crew mates, she told us with her green eyes twinkling; she would love to take Anika up on her offer.

Damn jolt junkies, my PAW complained to me as he relaxed down in my brainstem.

The last crew member joining our group asked, "So, were the three of you in on what happened yesterday? Did you see any action? Are those TOPS drones as nasty as I've heard?"

"Affirmative," Beatrice said from under her visor, sounding distracted as she looked back over her left shoulder at me while we walked along the passageway, none of our charges stringing out. "Affirmative, and affirmative," Death Dealer added in a sweet-sounding, golly-gee kind of voice as she looked back at the guy. "Now shut up. Dang, you wouldn't believe just how sensitive their sensors are; really."

A small text-header blinked Incoming Comm on my toolbar. I blinked on it and a yellow smiley face appeared in the right section of my visor with a winking right eye and Message from Death Dealer tagged below the animated icon. No wonder she could blast a TAWPs off the overhead with a single shot.

Ahead of me, Melvina Bimini was wearing the new Kilo helmet she'd finally announced she'd been issued two days ago. Her statement had shut up the questions from Anika, Juliet, and Bea. That, and we were approaching the hatchway of our second pick up. Somehow, Melvina Bimini was making her Kilo look like it weighed four or five kilos each time she turned her head. She also had the tendency to rest her right hand on the holster of the .40 pseudo-Glock belted on her duty blues. I wondered how well she scored the last time she was on the Firing Range.

I thought back to when we picked her up.

"Hello, how are you today, shall we be going?" was all I was able to ask Melvina as she stood in her opened hatchway for a moment, looking at us. I got the feeling she was taken aback because all of us had our visors deployed. As our neighbor came out of her quarters, Juliet stepped around me, reached out, and took G4 Bimini's left elbow, and I was sort of pushed out of the way.

"So," Juliet immediately asked our neighbor before she could answer my question and my first wife started Melvina walking down the passageway, still holding the elbow of her overalls, "now that you've had time to think about it—how are you feeling about your decision to spend the night and help my husband celebrate his bachelor party?"

"Well, I—" the red-head started to reply from under her Kilo helmet, her red ponytail swishing to her right as she turned her head to the left, looking at my wife walking along next to the bulkhead.

"... —Was I not being truth told," Anika wanted to know from our neighbor's other side as she stepped in front of me, claiming Melvina's attention before she could finish answering our first wife, "concern my naughty husband's abilities to be making you feeling wonderful as woman?"

I slowed down so I wouldn't step on the heels of Melvina's boots. Bea came up from behind my right side and got between our neighbor and Anika, putting her right arm around the back of our Princess while holding her shotgun in the tactical-gloved grip of her left hand between her and Melvina. Beatrice chuckled and leaned against Melvina as they walked along ahead of me. I saw the redhead's shoulders stiffen under her duty blues at the contact.

"From a couple things she told me," said Bea to our neighbor, "I know my friend, the lunch lady to you, I call her Claire Murphrees, I guess that's her name ... well, she gave you some adhesive attitude I gather. She's really sweet, once you get to know her. I hope you don't consider the two of you started off by stepping in ah cow-pie. Now—did our Jameson set your hay barn on fire and burn it down to the foundations, or what?"

As I slowed down, letting the four women get ahead of me, I knew I should listen in on their conversations so I'd have a better idea about how Melvina was feeling about what we'd done. With a blink, I muted C Channel so I didn't have to hear what was happening—telling myself, I need to concentrate on the task at hand.