After the unch, we really don't need everyone on the bridge constantly, so… “Am I clear to go check out the ship?”

  “Yeah, go for it,” Alice nods, “The shields are up, the cloak is on, we're soaring just fine. Brenna, Charlene, you may want to as well - I can watch the screens for now.”

  Brenna nods and signs, “I'll be back to relieve you in a few hours, then, so you can do the same.”

  Brenna, Charlene, and I head off the bridge, down the hallway, and to the crew quarters. I tap the pad by the door and it slides open silently, look in… and see plush carpeting, the same video screen walls, a couch, a small marble-countered kitchenette, a small table with two chairs, and four more doors. The room is decent sized… about fifteen by ten, maybe. I walk in and check the doors… one goes to a bathroom with a toilet, sink, mirror, and tub with jets, some cabinets (full of silky towels that seem very water-absorbent), plus a second door. I check that door, and it leads to a small bedroom with a closet, and another back to the main room. The bedsheets are some kind of silk-like material, the bed is a twin mattress, and the closet isn't very deep. The first of the other doors in the main room goes to a small kitchen with marble countertops, while the second goes to an office space (with an oak desk and a plush chair). This pce is clearly intended for a single person…

  …and it is miles better than my old apartment back on Earth.

  Brenna heads off to her room, but Charlene tags along on my self-guided tour. “Nice digs,” she begins, smiling at me after we’ve seen all the rooms, “I especially liked the bedroom…” she pauses, “...would you like to break in the bed?” she wiggles her eyebrows.

  Wow, Charlene and Alice are both quite aggressive… “as long as we don't break it.” I'm looking up slightly at Charlene into her brown eyes and cinnamon skin… the slightly clouded eyes are odd, but we all have them. Her strong nose and pointed chin go well with her raven hair up in tiny braids.

  Her long shes flutter nicely, and she licks her full lips before replying, “Wonderful…” at which point she promptly picks me up and tosses me on the bed… I hear a girly screech as I nd… oh, that's me… and Charlene looks a lot taller from down here. She starts stripping off her armor (she upgraded to Clearweave st level… it's transparent armor that goes over clothing, but darkens as needed to deal with sor radiation or ser fire), and I start doing the same for my mech suit and clothes.

  We finish at about the same time… and she is gorgeous. Her body is well-muscled, and I am eager to slide between those twin honeydew melons on her chest… oh, wait, I'll need to settle for sucking on those chocote taps… I follow the lines of her abs down to her slit, which is covered with bck hair, neatly trimmed… and is already open a bit. Her waist barely narrows at all, but those beautiful hips fre out nicely before narrowing down to her knees.

  “Ooh, those jugs…” I gnce up at my companion's face, and she's licking her lips again, “...mine…” she jumps on top of me, knocking me ft to the bed, and starts pawing my chest, sucking on the spouts

  …which, honestly, feels very good… hmm….

  She stops sucking long enough to shake her head, “Alice wasn't kidding when she said how sensitive you are…” and goes right back to it.

  “Right… ooh… I'm in a body… ahh, keep that up…” I find my hips are starting to gyrate, and she hasn't even touched me down there yet, “that I… yes… fantasized about doing… oh yes… not having….”

  My momentary lover takes her mouth off my taps, “You can still talk? I need to up my game.” She flips around and puts her knees down on either side of my head, and starts working my gear with her mouth.

  I return the favor, licking around her entry, teasing out her nub, grabbing her cheeks with my hands, and enjoying the feel of one of the few areas on her body that carries any fat. She has a musky scent, a salty fvor… no scars… and she has me screaming and shuddering very quickly.

  “Finish me off too, hmm?” I hear Charlene's voice… and I keep going.

  So does she, maddening well. She gets me off a second time. Then a third. THEN, finally, she arches her back, screams, and cmps down on my head.

  “There we go…” I can almost hear ‘you need practice’ in that pause… “...we'll need to do this again. What was that you said about a fantasy? You mentioned that once before….” she gets up only to y down next to me, wrapping hwr arms around me and just cuddling.

  I give a contented sigh as I hold her back and rey what I know, “As I understand it, Alice, Brett, and yourself all had mental images of yourselves as women… so when the reroll drawback required we all be female, you took on those images. I didn't have a ready image of myself as a woman… so whatever force is backing Ferdinand set me up using a different image pulled from my head, that of my fantasy girl from when I was a teenager.”

  “...and it's far more than appearances,” Charlene nods slowly, “hence why you go off so easily and often.”

  Which is a ray of sunshine in all of this, “as best as I can figure, yes.”

  Charlene looks at me for a while, “You're a straight man trapped in a woman's body, then?”

  I consider, drifting on a sea of afterglow, “Does that make me a lesbian?”

  “Nope,” she shakes her head, “it makes you a man.” She considers for a bit, “and I probably need to have a chat with Alice….”

  As Charlene trails off in thought, I probe a little, “What about?”

  “Oh…” the pretty woman pauses for a time, seemingly looking for the right words, “...she's been talking about you based on your body, not your inner self. I know how hurtful that can be.”

  “Oh, THAT is why I was feeling weird after a session with her…” oh, that was out loud.

  “Hmm… that's my read… I'm pretty sure she'll do better after I have a talk with her.” Charlene goes quiet, and we simply cuddle for a while in the light of the screens showing The Drift outside my quarters.

  Eventually Charlene gets up, “Well… no sense putting it off…” and starts getting cleaned up; the “Token Spell” cantrip makes self-cleaning trivial.

  Pity I don't have it.

  I get up and head to the tub, fill it with hot water, and get out my hygiene kit, scrubbing down and getting clean… and enjoying the water. No rush to get the cantrip, I think; this is rexing.

  Eventually I towel off, get dressed, and start going about the business of maintaining the ship… Amran is in near space… hmm. You know, I didn't ask Alice how long it would take… well, the ship's computer comes with an artificial personality upgrade by default, so it should be able to answer a pin-nguage query… “Computer, how long until we reach Amran?”

  A mechanical voice replies from hidden speakers, “At our current speed, we should reach our destination in thirteen days, sixteen hours, and fourteen minutes.”

  A little higher than average, but that's no big deal: It's not like we have a schedule to keep. Okay then, “Thank you.”

  The mechanical voice returns with, “You're welcome.”

  The days pass quickly enough. I build my clicker, take shifts watching on the bridge, do basic maintenance on the ship (both inside and out), and such. I spy Alice and Charlene coming out of Brenna's room smiling a few times… Alice or Charlene coming out of Charlene's or Alice's room very often (and often together). The ship's mess hall has certainly improved, and it turns out we have something of an entertainment library… which is exclusively full of shows from Earth that at least one of us has seen… a PARTIAL show, in the case of “Onward to the Past II” - it seems none of us ever actually saw the ending. I don't ask why we apparently have eight different entries from the “Muscle Mountains” series.

  Eventually, of course, it's time to exit the Drift, and we're all on the bridge for that. We bring the ship to a full stop, initiate the Drift Engine, and go through the normal rainbow and churning stomach effect. When it's done we're in high orbit around our target: Amran.

  As the Computers specialist, I have the comms. I hail them, “Amran control, this is the Wager, requesting clearance to nd.”

  I get an immediate response: “Ooh, more visitors? Did you bring any new games?”

  That gives me pause, “Not our cargo.”

  “Oh,” the line goes silent for a bit, “Well… new people are good. Just nd wherever, try not to break anything… but it won't matter if you do. The Ghost Forges will fix it.”

  “Thank you, control,” I shake my head as I cut the line. “You did hear that, right?”

  “It was a yes,” Brenna signs, “technically. Oh, and you forgot to turn off the cloak.”

  “I don't think they even noticed,” Charlene comments.

  “Down we go, then….” Alice shakes her head as she directs the ship to a suitable open space near Diastrega.

  We enter the atmosphere, a fairly standard (for inhabited worlds) mix of gasses at a normal pressure. After the fire of re-entry finishes, we pass clouds in a blue sky, looking down at a metal city full of flying cars and fshing lights in a disorganized mishmash of architectural styles.

  We nd in an open field full of some purple clover-like ground covering pnt next to a road, and once the engines are down, I summon my minion, dress her up in my mech suit (as opposed to my full-sized mech…), strap the environmental field colr on her arm, and take on weapon form, telepathically piloting my summon (yes, I get telepathy out of Spirit Bde… but only with my wielder). That done, we lock up the ship and head out, leaving it cloaked, the only obvious sign that it is there being the pnts crushed under the nding struts.

  We start walking to Diastrega, and all I can say is… the Vegas strip has nothing on this pce. There are lights, holograms, and animatronic signs everywhere, all of which have full audio. There's women (and men) of the night selling themselves on every sidewalk and corner. The amrantah themselves are also hugely variable. They're all basic bipeds in shape, sure. But they're ancient souls imprinted with an external personality and minimal memory locked into magitek bodies… and the Ghost Forges take care of not only all their mundane needs, but reshaping them as they desire within certain broad ranges. So some look like humans, some like elves, some like dwarves, some like humanoid dragons, some have more esoteric appearances. Some are male, some are female, some are neither, some are both… about all they have in common is that they're basically humanoid (two arms, two legs, a toso and a head), have an external metal shell of some shape, and bluish energy glowing slightly within their bodies. They don't stop the variety there, of course, as their clothing is a mishmash of styles from every corner of the gaxy too… mostly brightly colored, but there's a number of outfits that look like they're mimicking characters from some dark TV show. As to the buildings… this pce has no pn. There's a bordello next to a shoe shop, a gambling hall next to a grocery store, and a movie theater next to what looks like an apartment complex.

  I shake my head, and check the local infosphere, looking for jobs….