The Confederation, a group of independent worlds bonded together for mutual trade and defence, have a dirty little secret in how they make their trading ships - hijacking the souls of dead transgendered. Please follow one subject's rebirth into the Confederation.

Apologies in advance, this one's mostly setup. Thanks to Bailey Summers for test reading (but not editing - all mistakes are mine), sorry I couldn't implement all of your suggestions.

---

Crap. The car in front of my just stalled in the intersection, so here I am stuck behind it. Who stalls in the middle of the intersection? Starting off, sure, but nearly out the other side? I hear the deep honk of a truck off to my right, and turn in frustration at the driver in front of me in time to see the truck enter the intersection at full steam on a red light. I don't have time to verbalise the swear words running through my head before my world turns into one of complete pain, and I blank out.

I come to, and all I can see is white. At least I feel no pain, I must be on good drugs. I must be lying down if I've only just come to, but I can't tell if I'm lying down, sitting, or anything like that. In fact, I can't feel any part of my body. I try to blink, and I can't even do that. It's right then that I realise I'm not in hospital, but that I'm dead. Almost as soon as I come to that realisation, I feel a sort of presence in my head.

"Hello?" I ask.

"Ah good, you can communicate. Excellent". I don't actually hear those words, I sort of feel the concepts being conveyed, and mentally translate the concepts to those words.

"I suppose I'm dead?"

"Good, quick on the uptake too. Do you mind if I tell you what is going on, then ask some questions?"

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed - am I talking to God? I don't even know which questions I should be asking right now. Well, if I'm going to be told what is going on, that sounds like a good start.

"Seems fair enough, as long as you'll answer some of mine too." I respond.

"OK, well we have a project to build a living creature we need a soul for, and we're hoping you might volunteer for the project."

Oh dear, this sounds very mad-scientist. "Volunteer" sounds like they're at least going to ask first.

"So this isn't an afterlife then?" I ask.

"Well, technically it is after your life, but what we've done is caught your soul in a soul trap before you pass on. If either you or us decide this isn't going to work, we release you from the trap and you go on to whatever afterlife you would have gone to if we hadn't interfered. Do you know what a soul trap is?"

I don't even have to mentally verbalise as response, if that even makes sense, as the presence continues after clearly picking up on my confusion.

"The soul trap is a magical construct that catches souls passing on from nearby dimensions, and we have a sieve that grabs only those matching the rough outline of what we're after."

I'm feeling overwhelmed by this point, so the question I ask is not the one I really want to ask, but picking up on something in the last communication.

"Only from nearby dimensions? Not from your own?"

"Long story, but yes, you are correct." I get a feeling of frustration at that, like this person has been trying to solve that particular problem. I also get a clear flash that this person I'm communicating with is male.

OK, the curiosity is getting to me, I have to ask.

"So can you tell me about this project you want me for?"

"We're building living spaceships. Only a small fraction of the control is actually alive, the rest is conventional, but the engineered DNA needed for this project comes from dragons and demons, and if we let the living organism develop a soul as it starts to live, what we get isn't very desirable."

"So I get to be part of this thing before it is alive so it doesn't try to eat you?"

"Got it in one. Now, can I ask you some questions?"

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. Living spaceships? I guess the questions he wants to ask may give me additional information.

"Go ahead."

"You are familiar with automated devices?"

"Yes."

"Please think about what you are familiar with, and try and project it to me."

I think about cars, planes, the space shuttle, and computers.

"Ah good, you are familiar with the concept of programming. Can you think about that a bit more?"

I think about my work as a computer programmer.

"Excellent, now ho much do you know about magic?"

I respond pseudo-verbally this time.

"In my world, magic is basically the stuff of legend. I have played games that use magic in one form or another, I'm sure completely unrealistically, but I'm open to the concept."

I get a sense of annoyance that I don't know anything, and a sense of relief that I'm not what I translate as a holier-than-thou type that things magic is the work of the devil. Before I think about it I'm transmitting again.

"No, I don't think magic is inherently evil. Like anything else it's a tool, which is neutral by itself. It may enable evil to do evil, but it's still a tool."

I sense surprise.

"You read that from me?"

"Well, I get a very vague sense of your reaction to the information I'm projecting to you. I figured the rest out my myself."

"Good, average psychic potential, quick deductive skills. Part of the sieve process was to catch a soul that cared for the greater good?"

I thought about that. Yes, I had walked away from jobs that I thought were morally suspect, and when consulting to some government-owned companies in third world countries I had actively suggested paths that were for the good of the country rather than the individuals involved - something that I had got into trouble for a couple of times, but I also like to think garnered my a bit of respect.

"Once again, good to see. The sieve is usually close but not always right on, which is why we do these interviews." I hadn't realised I was projecting these thoughts until I received his response.

"What do you think of organised militaries?"

Well, I'd been in cadets when in school for my required sporting activity, and always had a healthy respect for the military defending us and our way of life, even if I decided my mathematical education and love of computers wasn't going to get me anywhere useful in a military carer.

"Good. Now, onto something a bit more personal - in your life you were a female trapped in a male body?"

Well, to have something that personal that I hid from everyone my adult life just casually stated like that did cause me some surprise. Oh, I can recall as far back as when I was three years old trying to figure out why a girl like me had boy bits, but I could never convince anyone that I was both serious and not just "going through a phase". By my mid-teens I was all big bones and lean muscle, and hair sprouting everywhere. By the time I found about about hormones it was all to late, I'd never pass as female, so I had resigned myself to a life pretending to me something I physically was but knew I never really was. My discomfort at leading a "male" life was another major reason why I hadn't gone any further with the military.

"Ah, surprise and shock based on social conditioning. Would it be a problem if I said a condition of this was that you would become female?"

"Not at all! That would be fantastic!"

"Good, good. Now, there is one last delicate question. If you were to become a fully functional human female, would you have problem having sex with a man you were working for?"

Oh, right. He wants me as a sex toy. As soon as I had formulated this thought, I felt humour.

"No, let me explain. Part of the process of keeping you sane as a living ship is to create a human extension of yourself inside your new ship self. That way you can still interact with others as a human. Part of the process of preventing dragon and demon instincts from taking over is for you to take a male human partner, who is technically the captain of the ship because some territories of the confederation don't trust living ships. It helps the bonding process and the suppression of unwanted tendencies if you are in a happy sexual relationship."

"Do I get to pick this captain?"

"To some extent, yes. There is a pool of qualified applicants, you select from them until you find someone you like. It has to be a happy sexual relationship for it to work, so we don't want to force you to be with someone you'd be unhappy to be with. So, do you think you could live with this?"

"Yes, I think so."

A feel a smirk come back at me.

"We don't have a lot of time because we can't keep you awake like this without at least a brain for a while, but I really need something a bit more definite than 'I think so'".

"One more question, if I may." I feel assent. "Is there any way of getting back to where I was before I died?"

"Not that we know of. We have no idea what dimension you came from, and no method of travelling between dimensions. You might be able to look into other dimensions, but the odds of finding the right one are so low as to be unfeasible, as you'd have to stumble across the right dimension in a galaxy close enough to your place of origin for you to recognise. You could search for millennia and not even get close, or worse, get close and never realise it."

"So that's basically a no." I think for a bit - there's not really much else to do, and I don't think I'm ready for the afterlife. Being able to be what I always felt I was inside is too great an attraction to pas up. "Yes, OK, I'm in. What do you need me to do?"

"Think about your ideal female image, the one you'd like to be, and we'll put you back to sleep. Try to keep this image even when you dream that you're not human."

"OK."

I felt the presence withdraw, and so I thought about whom I'd like to be. I had been six foot two inches, and I didn't want to be short, but I didn't want to be so tall for a female it stuck out. Near five foot nine would be right, I thought. Rich, chestnut brown hair framing an oval face with just a hint of a heart-shaped chin, green eyes, athletic but curvy body, the waist narrow but not unreasonably so, hairless except for eyebrows, eyelashes, and my aforementioned head of hair, and an average C cup bust. I held this image and my awareness drifted off.

I was dreaming then, strange dreams of flying with leathery wings, of fighting tooth and claw, of using sex to corrupt well-meaning males, of pulling myself along the ground and up walls at high speed with my tentacles, of eating people far smaller than myself while nesting my clutch of eggs, and other strange things. I tried to focus not just on staying my ideal image, but also on my sense of me both as an individual and as a human.

Then I woke up. I was in the dark in some kind of liquid, and I tried to swim to the surface. I realised straight away that I was actually lying in some kind of bathtub, and all I needed to do was sit up. My lungs were full of fluid, and when my head broke the surface I coughed and retched up the liquid into whatever it was I had been lying in. When the spasms died down I realised I could feel my breasts moving on my chest, and a fantastic feeling of relief swept through me, realising my body finally matched my mind and soul.

Once my lungs were clear, I felt around myself a bit and noticed what I could only describe as an umbilical cord going from my belly button into a hole on the side of the bathtub I was in. After a few clear deep breaths this fell away. I noticed the air was humid, and started to worry about the darkness. I reached around and felt something skin-like completely surrounding me, with hard supporting struts running through it. It wasn't so much a bathtub as an elongated sphere I was in, with liquid up to the halfway mark. I felt upwards and felt something hard, without the skin-like covering. I also felt an odd pressure in a location I just couldn't put my finger on. Feeling around, I found the edges of the skin-like area and the beginning of the hard area. I could feel a seam through the middle of the hard area.

I found I was mentally calculating the exact size and dimensions of the area I was in, although in some units I was unfamiliar with. Even with the irregular shape, volumes and areas popped into my head almost as soon as I wondered. I thought about some complex maths problems, and the answers become immediately obvious. I was performing complicated mathematical operations at a prodigious rate, even if this didn't help me get out of here.

I pushed on the hard area again, and once again I felt the odd pressure in a place I couldn't locate. I remembered the comment about a "living ship", and realised that probably the body I was noticing as my own was probably only part of my new body, but the only one I could mentally cope with, being the only one I had experience to directly relate to. Thinking about this, I concentrated on the area where I felt the pressure, and tried to flex it in some way. My efforts were rewarded when the hard thing parted like a lift door, and light spilled in. I reached up and pulled myself out, finding it surprisingly easy to do so.

I found myself in a room with the hatch in the middle of the floor, with a bed on one wall I designated "left", a bookshelf on the opposite wall, a door without any obvious handle or opening mechanism with lots of scribbling over the top in front of me. Turning around I found a toilet-like thing along the "back" wall. I was still dripping wet, so I grabbed a towel off the bed and dried myself off, revelling in the sensations of my new body.

I clearly wasn't in my imagined body, although my new body was close. The most obvious difference was that my new breasts were huge, I estimated a DD cup, being firm high and round. My waist was a bit narrower and my hips a bit more flared. My hair colour looked about right, although still being wet was still a bit dark. Feeling my face I was pretty sure I now had the classic "perfect oval" face, the jaw wasn't quite how I had imagined myself. Without having a mirror to check, I suspected my new body a teenage boy's sexual fantasy version of how I had desired myself to look. I now had a type of "look at me, aren't I gorgeous" body that was very flattering but not quite the "good-looking girl next door" image I had been looking forward to.

Once dry, I looked at the bookshelf. The spines of the books all had the same kind of scribbling on it as appeared over the door, clearly what passed for writing here. The books on the top shelf seemed thinnest, with quite thick volumes at the bottom, so I picked a book at random from the top shelf and opened it. It was clearly a children's book of some kind. I found it interesting that there were books but no computer.

I noted I was still naked, and looked around for something to cover myself with. The bed sheet looked to be some kind of fitted sheet, so I went with wrapping the wet towel around myself, tying it off over my generous breasts.

I flicked through the children's books, finding the simplest started on the left. It looked like sentences ran left to right, like English but unlike Arabic, so I worked through them to understand the language. Some of the books had a speaker stuck on the side, so I was able to understand how to pronounce the language as well. I'm sure I would have an unusual accent, but the important think was that I could understand and be understood.

I won't bore you with the details, but it appeared my memory was now exceptional. I learned the basics of the language very quickly, and found that the writing above the door translated to "Read all the material, then open the door."

The second shelf was a modified encyclopaedia. I say "modified", because there was no history or geography in it. The science was interesting, they were obviously a bit more advanced than us but not by much. Nanotech was common. Magic was altogether different, and it was quite enlightening.

Magic could only be performed by living things. According to science, one couldn't travel faster than light, but magic allowed one to rotate through other dimensions in ways impossible to describe, teleporting faster than light, in a process generally known as "spinning". The problem was that except for the most advanced, human mages couldn't teleport interstellar distances with safety with any weight much beyond themselves. This had initially been solved with banks of bacteria genetically engineered to be magically active to act as giant batteries, which allowed them to travel between solar systems with cargo. However mages could only teleport somewhere they had been, or were currently visualising magically, so trade was restricted between only a few worlds discovered by accident, then mages would take apprentice mages along to learn the routes.

The breakthrough came with nanotech allowing neural links between mages and computers, granting the computational power to allow spins to unknown locations. However, they needed to be placed in sealed containers so as not to die on arrival in most locations - spinning directly onto the surface of a planet was a sure-fire recipe for missing by a few meters and ending up embedded in rock. Most of these looked like the cabin of an old-time airship, kept aloft by gravity-cancelling magic, with directional fans to manoeuvre with.

I could see it wasn't far to go from a mage neural linked to a computer with a battery of magical bacteria all the way through to living spaceships. Presumably this was the source of my new-found mathematical and memory ability, I was probably half computer in some fashion.

Since demons and dragons had been mentioned in the interview, and in my dreams too, I found the sections on them interesting. Among other things, dragons fly by magic, and have a maximum speed determined only by how much pain they are prepared to suffer from friction with the air. I could see how this ability would be useful as Demons have an amazing ability to sustain damage and regenerate, and also to adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in. These could both be useful in hazardous environments.

The other information from the encyclopaedia was interesting but mainly a duplicate of information I already knew of from Earth, even if I didn't know exactly how it all worked. It was useful to be able to discover the terms and conventions of this language and culture.

The third and final shelf was information on living ships, including how each individual part worked and the theory behind all of it. My guess is understanding was the key to controlling my new body, not that I had figured out how to feel any of it yet beyond the hatch.

I had assumed that living ships would be easily damaged, mentally comparing squishy people to hardened tanks, but that was by no means the case. Living ships may have living cells to control magic, but a nanotech swarm permeates all the living tissue. The combination of nanites and magically active cells allows structures that don't exist in nature to be designed and grown, such as skeletons made of diamond. The diamond skeleton is completely redundant, and has holes permeating it for the living tissue and nanites to reach through. If a section is cracked through shear force, the diamond in the area is pulled apart almost atom by atom, the crack reached, and the skeleton rebuilt. As there is redundant reinforcement everywhere, a short-term break while the diamond is "reset" isn't normally an issue. There's also an exoskeleton of layered diamond plates and carbon fibre composites for armour, although it is covered by a thin layer of living tissue to both act as a bumper bar and also better sense and direct magical energy. This layer regenerates incredibly quickly by design and the infusion of magic energy into the demonic cells, but even with that is discarded either by shedding in damage conditions or normally by reabsorbing to internal nutrient pools, to then be used in the next round of material creation.

However, the computer systems on board are conventional, if somewhat more advanced than Earth standards through miniaturisation, with redundant couplings to the living cells that my soul was bound to. As my human body could move independently through my soul being split and residing in it and the ship, even if the ship was cut in half, I would be able to control systems in both halves until I ran out of energy. Interestingly the human body was created in the "focus chamber", with the core neural and computer systems, and it the body was destroyed the fragment of my soul that animated the body would automatically return to the chamber where a new body could be grown - or maybe even have a new body already waiting for me.

It seemed my soul couldn't be stretched over to great a distance, and if my human body got to far from my ship body, the soul would "snap back" and the human body would fall dead, apparently of a brain seizure. My ease at getting out of the chamber was explained when I saw that although the body was patterned after human norms, this body too had diamond bones and magically-enhanced cells with nanites, stronger than normal and able to regenerate.

The construction process was to put together a framework and a pre-established focus chamber in a huge chamber of raw nutrients and conventional components, and let the system grow according to plan, supervised by the computer controlled nanite swarm from the focus chamber over a two year period.

After reading all this I stopped and thought. I'd basically been reading for three days straight, and hadn't had to go to the loo or eat or drink anything. Thinking about this I realised I was thirsty, if only from water loss from breathing, but was quite capable of going longer. I decided I should be prepared, and drank some water from the fold-out cleaning basin above the loo.

Right, now to get out of here, still clad in my by now dry towel. I knew the procedure now, and walked up the door, placed my palm flat within a few millimetres of the door, and said "Open" in the local language.

"Got One!" shouted a nearby male voice. I turned to look, and there was a fairly average looking man dressed in some kind of military uniform. Equivalent to Sergeant from the information I had read. Tall, dark fair, fantastic blue eyes, gorgeous to look at. A thought percolated at the back of my head that on first seeing him I had thought he was average, but now he clearly wasn't. Probably hormones kicking in, and I idly wondered if that was why I hadn't had any human contact until now.

I looked closer and saw he wasn't actually wearing regulation uniform. He had the hot-weather shirt on with standard insignia, sure, but something resembling tight bicycle pants underneath with no footwear certainly wasn't, but I wasn't complaining too much as it gave me a good view of the not inconsiderable size of his package.

"Hello there, little lady." he said, smiling generously at me.

"Umm ... hello." I responded, tentatively. I was having some very odd feelings percolating up from the region of my stomach.

"You know you don't actually need that towel." he said, and I couldn't help but noticing that his package was starting to firm up.

"If it's all right with you I think I'll keep it on for the moment." I said, tearing my eyes away from this hunk of a man to look around. I was in some kind of long hallway, with doors on both sides spaced about the width of my room apart, with men about every ten doors. Apart from the one closest to me, all were sitting in chairs, and the one addressing me was standing next to his chair.

"Look, don't be shy, I'll show you there's nothing to worry about." he said, and started to unbutton his shirt. I stared, mesmerised, as he stepped around me and into the room I had just stepped out of, all the while he was still in the process of taking off his shirt.

He discarded his shirt on the floor, and motioned me inside.

"Come on, let's talk in here with a bit of privacy."

I was entranced. He looked so good. At the back of my mind, the thought was running through my head that people grow up with their hormones and learn how to handle them, but I had none of that experience and wasn't coping with female sexual urges.

I found myself back in my room, the door sliding shut behind us, now no-one was near it. My nice cosy little room seemed so much smaller with someone else in it. I looked up into his eyes, and before I knew it his hands were around my waist, and then we were kissing.

The kiss felt fantastic, and I reached up to put my arms around him, revelling in the feeling of his hard muscles. He took this as his cue for one hand to wander south and start a gentle massage of my butt. We rubbed close together, and the towel started to become loose. I didn't care, the sensations I was feeling sweeping my body were just too intense. More rubbing and kissing followed, and the towel fell away. The sensation of our chests rubbing together was fantastic, and I could feel his turgid member trapped between us, still in his skin-tight shorts. His hand not engaged in caressing my butt slid down his shorts on one side, and the head of his penis broke free. That hand returned, higher this time, and started stroking the outside of my breast. I moaned, staring deeply into his eyes, sucking on his tongue.

He clearly judged me ready and gently pushed me back to a sitting position on the bed with one had, while the other shrugged off his pants. I was sitting there with his giant trouser snake staring at me in the face. I reached up to touch him with one hand, while I leaned forward slightly to kiss it.

He broke my intent by leaning forward himself, gently pushing me back and rotating me so I was lying on the bed. He knelt down, now above my as I was lying on the bed.

"Do you want it?" he asked. So much for "talking" in private!

Yes, I wanted him, more than anything. I had dreamed of being taken as a woman for so long, now the reality was right here above me I was unable to put my desire into words. I nodded as I spread my legs and reached up for him, pulling him down towards me. He swung his other leg across so he was now kneeling between my legs, with his hands resting on either side of me.

He gently lowered himself so the tip of his penis was rubbing my inner thigh, and his hard chest just lightly rubbing my rather prominent nipples.

"I need to hear the words." The grin on his face was so big it almost threatened to split his head open. He was enjoying teasing me, the bastard!

"Yes, take me." I managed to moan out.

He lifted his torso up so I had a clear view down between the valley of my cleavage to his engorged dick, and with my head propped slightly by the pillow I could just make out it nudging my outer lips. My need to be penetrated was so intense it was almost painful.

"Please." I pleaded.

The grin on his face changed from the look of a tease to the look of someone knowing they are about to enjoy themselves very much. He started to push in, I was so wet and so willing there was almost no resistance. Unfamiliar nerves cried out in pleasure as I felt every vein rub against my insides. He was going so slow! I could feel a slight tickling on my thighs, and realised I could feel his pubic hairs against my skin. A moment later I felt his balls against my thighs, and he was in all the way.

I looked up into his face, and his look was one of concentration. I recognised the look as one I had worn a few times, he was trying hard not to enjoy it so much he came to early. I reached up and pulled his head down to me, and initiated another long kiss, with him unmoving deep inside me.

He then started to move out slowly, and the pleasure I felt from down below was amazing. His next thrust in was slightly faster, and I was into a massive mind-blowing orgasm by the time he was pulling out again.

I would say I "lost track of time", but my computer half was intensely aware of every passing second. I certainly lost focus. I had come three times before he stopped kissing me and moved his head down to lick around my breasts. I had another by the time he started sucking on the breasts themselves, and I think if I was capable of it I would have passed out when he placed his mouth over my left nipple and sucked while flicking the nipple with his tongue, and simultaneously rubbing the right nipple with his hand.

I had another orgasm after that, and realised I was starting to become a bit too sensitive. I needed him to finish.

"Please, come inside me." He looked up from his attention to my chest, smiled, nodded, and leveraged himself back up. He started pounding into me. He'd been this fast before, always varying the speed, but never for this long. He'd done a masterful job of holding off and seeing to my pleasure, so I wanted to help him get over the line. His legs started losing their rhythm, and I knew he was close. His face screwed up in an expression that almost looked like pain, then he jammed himself up as far as he could inside me, and held it there.

I didn't know if I would or not, but I felt him. I felt the spurt inside me, I felt his penis spasm inside me, and the feeling set me off into one last unexpected orgasm. I felt four distinct spurts, and then he collapsed on top of me. I hugged him hard.

"Thank you." I said, and I really meant it. Now I knew how it felt, and it was fantastic, far better than it ever was when my body was male. Of course, when I was male I couldn't actually orgasm without imagining I was the woman, which is quite difficult when so aware of the contrast between what I wanted to feel and what I was actually feeling, so my experience is probably not typical.

I found myself lightly crying. After so long pretending to be someone I wasn't, pretending to be male to fit into society's expectations, and so I could have children even if I never felt them growing inside me as I so desired, I could feel the helpless frustration of years lifting off me.

He noticed me crying.

"Are you OK?"

"I'm fine. Positively brilliant." I smiled back at him. "Thank you so much."

He was starting to soften inside me. I squeezed bit to savour the feeling, but unfortunately this caused him to pop out.

We lay there for a while, cuddling, but after a little bit I realised he was nervous about something.

"What's wrong?"

He jerked as though I'd poked him with a hot iron.

"I can't say." he responded. "Look, you need to stay here, but I have to go."

He quickly disengaged, and started to clean himself up.

"Why?" I asked, disappointed.

"Sorry, I can't say. Please don't ask any more questions."

I wanted to ask more questions, but I also wanted to do whatever my lover wanted me to do. The last thought seemed a bit odd, and while I was thinking about it, he finished cleaning himself up, dressed in his two items of clothing, and left. Once he was gone I decided to clean myself up. While I was doing so I felt some kind of mechanical movement, like I was in a truck starting to move or similar. I quickly finished up and wrapped the towel around myself again.

After a bit of movement, there was an abrupt stopping sensation. The door opened up, with an apparent small closet past it. Written on the wall was "Please enter naked and stand still."

OK, so I took the towel off, and entered the cubicle. Some kind of green laser lights flashed over me, and I realised I was being measured. The text on the wall changed to "Please wait." I recalled some information from the encyclopaedia, the wall was probably covered with nanobots that were grey on one side, and a colour on the other, and could flip over to change the appearance of the paint on the wall.

Soon a section of the wall slid out revealing what looked to be a drawer, with a small amount of clothing inside. White bra, panties, and blouse, with a dark red uniform jacket and wide-pleated skirt of the same colour coming to just above the knee, with matching flats. The pleated skirt looked a bit out of place to me, but I knew it was the style here for ease of movement. I knew that red uniforms were reserved for non-citizens acting in a role with the Confederation. I had learned from my third row of books that those like myself having souls with no association with, nor memories of the Confederation in which I now lived, wore red uniforms. Once in a ship, I'd owe the Confederation the cost of the ship, and once worked off I could become a full citizen.

Each solar system within the Confederation had its own rules, but the Confederation controlled trade between systems. It was effectively a merchant navy, plying trade between systems at set rates. Sure, there were some independent operators, mainly working in niche markets or under the control of an individual system, but the Confederation provided a base level of service to all members. Those who are citizens who made up most of the staff wear dark blue uniforms. There was also a police division responsible for enforcing the laws who wore dark green uniforms, and a diplomatic division that wore uniforms of a deep purple.

I put my new clothes on, since that was my obvious course of action. Once dressed, the left hand side of the closet pivoted open, and I turned to look.

There was a man in a dark green uniform, handsome enough, and although older, possibly better looking than my lover without a name. I didn't feel the same need that I felt before, and at that point my previous suspicions were confirmed. My erotic interlude had been an exercise with two purposes, first to make sure that I was comfortable in my new body, and second to take the edge of my need. I idly wondered what would have happened if I had failed the test in some way.

I had been expecting a blue uniform, not green, but I didn't really know what was going on yet. The rank indicated was that of Commodore, the rank above Captain.

"Miss, what is your handle?"

A "handle" was a one or two syllable word used as shortened form of one's name, to be used in situations either casual or time-critical. The documentation had warned me to select one.

"Kim, sir." I had selected it as a contraction of Kimberley, a name I had always liked. It had the added bonus, as far as I could tell, of not being a common syllable in the "Basic" language I was now speaking, so I'd probably get away with it, not conflicting with anyone with more seniority.

"Right, Kim, follow me."

We walked through a series of corridors, filled mainly with blue uniformed folk, eventually coming to a lift. We went inside, he pressed a sequence of buttons which I knew also checked fingerprints and DNA, and the lift started down.

"So, Kim, are you going to give me a head job?" he asked. Although said with all seriousness and a tone of command, I had a feeling he was testing me.

"Not unless it involves an extra rank, sir." I smiled back.

"Ah, but you don't know what rank you were going to start at, do you?". The right side of has face had just the hint of a grin.

"I assumed sub-Lieutenant after basic training while my ship was being built, and Lieutenant after that, as per the regulations, sir."

"Quoting rules at me, Kim?"

"Only letting you know I wasn't bargaining from a position of ignorance, sir." I gave a crooked smile, letting him know I was teasing rather than genuinely trying to validate my position.

"Right, well, we're ..." as our lift stopped moving, "here." The door slid open, and we quickly marched through another series of corridors. I saw a few green uniformed staff with no other colours, and assumed we had moved to a military area of whatever complex I was in. We stopped at a coded door, and he placed his palm in a reader, and the door opened, revealing what appeared to be a conference room.

My eyes were drawn to the first purple uniform I had seen, a woman sitting at the head of the table. We had entered via the other end. There were three dressed in blue on the right, and four in green on the left. She motioned to me to sit down at the chair opposite her, at the end of the table closest to the door I had just entered via. As I sat down, smoothing my new skirt as I did so, my escort sat down with the other greens on the left of the table. The woman in the purple diplomatic uniform looked with a questioning look at my escort, who nodded back. Clearly the incident in the lift had been a test.

"Good", she said to my escort, then turned to me. "Miss, you are aware most people in your position become members of the trading fleet?"

"Yes, ma'am." I said, wondering where this was going.

"Would you have a problem if you were instead a military ship?"

"No, ma'am." As I said it, I did wonder. The section detailing buying your way out of debt and into citizenship assumed I was going to be a trading ship.

"Any questions?" I got the feeling she was sizing me up.

"Just two. The obvious one - why?"

"And the other one?"

"The regulations I've read assume that I pay my way out of debt as a trading ship." One of the blue uniformed members was nodding at this, so I ploughed on. "I would like to know the payment schedule as a military ship."

"We'll get that to you as soon as possible. As to the other question, well, that has to remain classified for the moment. Suffice it to say we have a credible long-term threat." She looked around the room. "Any objections?"

No-one said anything, so she continued.

"You'll go with Lieutenant Garz," she nodded at one of the blue unformed females, who inclined her head to me, "and go through standard basic training. After that you'll be sent to the military training. To save time, we'll start building you at the same time, Commodore Tunz," she nodded at the officer who had guided me down here "will act as design co-ordinator."

Again, she looked around the room, and seeing no objections said "Dismissed."

Just what had I been drafted into? That I wasn't being introduced to anyone was starting to concern me - it said that either they were in an awful rush for some reason, or "need-to-know" was ingrained in the culture, which didn't sound right for a trading confederation.

Anyway, I followed Lieutenant Garz, and I went through another series of corridors and a "lift" that went sideways, then through another set of corridors, and then into what looked like office space. There I had to sign a "foreign induction form", which had in it pretty what I expected, saying I was agreeing to the laws and regulations of the Confederation as a member of the services, acknowledging my debt, and that I could not apply to become a citizen until my debt was paid off. I was to gain the rank of "Specialist Recruit", to be reviewed after completing basic training.

I was then assigned a barracks, and I felt a sensation of movement, coming not from my body as I thought of it, but something else. I realised my "focus chamber" was being moved. I was given an ID badge and rank marking to put on my shoulders. We then went to get one more uniform, two "combat outfits", which consisted of running shoes, shorts, and a halter top with built-in sports bra. I did ask about that, and apparently everything is custom made to fit me.

While this was going on, I tried to also focus on my other half, and try to feel around that part of me. I could sort of feel the tunnel that bit of me was on, but I'm not sure how I was doing so.

Lieutenant Garz led me into what appeared to be a barracks of some kind. On my right, six double bunks were pressed up against and perpendicular to the wall, with scattered folding chairs up against the left wall. Three young women in similar red uniforms to myself were sitting together about halfway down. At the end was an open entrance to what appeared to be a toilet and shower block.

"You've brought us some fresh meat?" said one of the young women, while eyeing me up. I noticed her and another were far more generously endowed in the chest department than I was, to the point of being Jessica Rabbit-like caricatures of erotica movie starlets.

"Whoo hoo! Another norm!" whooped the third, looking very pleased with herself.

"I'll leave you four to get acquainted, then." said Lieutenant Garz. "Kim here is the last joining your little group." With that she left and closed the door behind her.

"I'm Pif," said the more normally built one with medium length black hair and steel-grey eyes, "and the two vixens here are Jet", indicating a strawberry-blonde with deep blue eyes and breasts that could only belong on a port starlet, " and Kart.", indicating a mocha-skinned beauty with dark curly hair, deep brown eyes, and similarly oversized breasts to Jet.

"Norm?" I asked.

"You and I wanted to be normal, so ended up looking this hot. They wanted to be this hot, and ended up smoking."

"Right, so we wanted to be normal, thus the tag. Not common, I take it?"

"You two are the only ones out of the twelve we know of." said Jet.

"Right. Succubus DNA?" I asked.

"Smart girl." said Kart, clearly not pleased by the state of affairs.

"Just in case you've spotted something we haven't, why did you come to that conclusion?" asked Jet.

"Well, they are fairly open they use draconic DNA for flight and demonic DNA for regeneration", I started, "and succubi are the best regenerators who don't rage out on massive damage, focusing on using magic to 'fight or flight' instead, which would require a cool head. They don't want their ride to lose it's cool and go all aggro on them."

A subtle nod went around the other three present.

"Anything else?" Jet asked.

"Well, they're guys and all guys are perverts, so that was probably their excuse." Smiles from Jet and Pif, and a slightly sickened look from Kart. "Well, we know they want us to partner up with someone. Demons are naturally chaotic and destructive, but they bow to group organisation from a strong individual. Most demons fight to establish dominance, but..."

Kart jumped in "succubi establish dominance through sex." Again, she didn't seem very happy about this.

"Yes, and also through observation of others fighting. They're much more cautious, since they don't have much physical protection, and can feel a lot of pain even if they regenerate it almost immediately." I add.

"They want their captains to bonk us into submission." Pif said, somewhat excitedly. "Much more fun for everyone than fighting!" I must say the idea did cause a not unpleasant tingling in my stomach's vicinity.

"Can I put my stuff anywhere?" I asked, since I still had my clothing under my arm.

"Sure, knock yourself out." Jet responded. I looked over at the bunks, beside each bunk at the wall were two lockers, and all but three of them were open. I picked a bunk with two open lockers, and started hanging my clothes up in one of the lockers.

"What are we doing now?" I asked.

"Ship design!" shouted Pif.

"You mean our new bodies?" I asked.

"That's the one." Jet responded.

"Not to sound dense, but where are the plans?" I asked.

"Ah, that explains it. Not plugged in yet?" Kart asked.

My confused expression must have given me away.

"Brain box still in transit?" Kart continued. I realised she must be referring to the other half of my body.

"Yes." I nodded, feeling my other half still moving.

"Right, well, the three of us are plugged into a node that has all the plans."

"Shall we hang off until Kim can join us?" Jet asked Kart. "Saves doubling up?"

"Well, what are we going to do in the meantime?" Kart asked back, but from the look on her face she had a pretty good idea.

"What about a shower?" Jet asked. Jet and Kart were now pretty much ignoring Pif and myself.

"Sure, but I have trouble cleaning my back, can you hep me?" Kart returned, and I had no doubt from the body language it was going to be a bit more than that.

"Love to, but only if you do me!" Jet had placed particular emphasis on the "do".

Pif shook her head in mock exaggeration. "You two!"

"Hey, not our fault if you're a stick in the mud." Kart retorted, as she was grabbing a towel. She seemed the happiest I'd seen her so far.

"Those two are incorrigible." Pif said, turning to me.

"Their ideal woman is bi-sexual and a nymphomaniac?" I asked, the pieces falling together.

"You're not?" Pif asked, looking at me curiously.

"I might be bi-sexual, I haven't really given it a lot of thought. I certainly jumped the bones of the first guy I came across, but that was more self-discovery than anything else. I don't feel any urges in that direction now, at least. You?"

Pif's answer was grabbing me in a hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she gushed. "I was starting to wonder if something was wrong with me."

"You're the same?" I asked.

"Yes! Sex is intriguing and I can't say I'm not very interested, but I don't feel like I have to be doing it all the time like all the others." Pif said.

"Others?" I asked, giving her a last squeeze and letting her go.

"Yes, there were four others, they left two days ago. Apparently there was another group of four before them, but they left just before I got here."

"Right, which gels with this place having twelve beds and me being the last of the group. Maybe they expected us to all be here together?"

"Possibly. I expect transsexuals with military experience aren't as common as they had hoped."

"You're probably right there, Pif." I thought for a moment. "Can I ask a question?"

An impish grin crossed her face. "You just did!"

"Har har. No, if this is really a different dimension, how come so much is in common, like clothing?"

She looked at me like I was an idiot, then comprehension flitted across her face.

"You're from a world without magic?"

"Yes. Is that unusual?"

"Well, you're the first I met. To answer your question - dreams somehow cross dimensions. If something is popular enough in one dimension, the idea leaks across to the dreams of those in other dimensions. No-one sane has figured out how to cross the dimensions while alive, although demons do it regularly, no-one considers them sane."

That stunned me, it was big and not something I had prepared for. Pif kept going.

"Some mages are better at it than others, and can actually communicate at an individual level with specific communication, not just group to group large scale concepts. However, it does mean if something is big in one dimension, these in other dimensions become aware of it and tend to copy the trend, even with local variations."

"That explains a lot." I said.

A very loud moan interrupted my thoughts from the shower area, prompting a smirk from Pif.

"Sounds like someone's having fun." she said. "We kind of got side-tracked before." she continued.

I blushed, figuring out where she was going with this. She suddenly looked mortified.

"No, no! I'm not asking you to go to do that with me!" she got out hurriedly. "It's just that ... when we need to go looking for captains ... will you go with me?"

"Sure!" I said, thinking about her concerns. I had no idea what the process really entailed, but the idea of double dating seemed like a good one, especially if ship-women that didn't want to jump the first guy they came across were rare, I didn't want to suffer date-rape because some guy expected me to be easy.

"Girlfriends, right?" she asked, with a big grin.

"Purely platonic, which of course means we need to share all the juicy details" I said, with a grin just as large. We shared a hug, and just before it got awkward, I felt my other self settling into place.

"I think I'm here, if you know what I mean." I said.

"Did you memorise all those network protocols?" Pif asked. I nodded back.

"Well, it can get a bit weird." she added.

I held my hand up in a stopping motion as I felt something connect to the external wall of my focus chamber. I could feel a network connection, and with my IT background was quickly doing the local equivalent of pinging the server it was connected to. I then fumbled around a bit until I got the connection protocol right to access the files on the server. There was a lot of text, a base plan, and three modified plans, labelled "Jet", "Kart", and "Pif". I made a copy of the default and labelled it "Kim".

"Started already?" Pif asked.

"Not really, just copied the default."

"You need a bit of time to digest it all?" she asked.

"Thanks for understanding." I nodded, then sat down on one of the chairs and tried to get through it all.

Most living ships follow a standard pattern, although the size varies. The majority is a triangular wedge at the front, which is the cargo area. Along the two sides lie a rotating wall that opens - consider a circle with a square inside it, then extend it to make a rod, with a sixth of each end being full, and the middle two thirds having only the top and bottom of the bits between the circle and edge of the square filled in. That gives you a large opening, rotate 90 degrees and its closed. In larger models this was repeated a number of times end-to-end down each side of the ship, which each rod able to open independently.

Ships would then land normally in water and then front up to "docks", triangular indentations, rotate the door rods, match levels either by controlling the water level, raising or lowering the docks, or on low-tech worlds, attaching to rings under the water and pulling down. With levels matched, loading vehicles can drive straight on and off.

Aft of the main cargo level is the living spaces for crew and passengers, normally over a number of levels. The bridge is usually in the centre of this area, protected by as much space as possible from any asteroid impacts or similar. The entire cargo area at the front likewise acts as a buffer. Also in this area are two energy reservoirs, globes of magically engineered bacteria. Only one is necessary for normal operation, but the second is there for redundancy. Behind that are two paddles, looking a bit like two table-tennis paddles, mounted vertically side-by-side. These are used to create part of the motivating field for movement, similar to what a dragon does between its wings.

The designs for us warships was similar, with the differences at the rear. The external difference was most obvious, just in front of the rear paddles was an oval wing-like construct that wrapped around the rear of the living section. The front cargo section was identical to normal, which would help for docking and similar, but the rear living section was externally shaped somewhat like a reflection of the front, being more pointed than the typical roundness. This rear point was what the oval wing was wrapped around, touching the top and bottom of that section. The notes indicated that each side of the wing acted like a pair of paddles in its own right, and so the motivating force could be three times that of a typical ship as a result.

Internally, instead of two energy reserves there were now four. Two were in the typical position on either side just behind the cargo/living area transition, while the other two were at the rear of the pointy bit, with the wings wrapper around for protection.

Typically heavy magical conduits went from the energy reserves to the paddles, and lighter conduits to the various external surfaces to help push away small objects, and perform minor magic such as bonding for docking and cleaning. In our case, these conduits existed, but also heavier conduits went to portals on the leading and trailing edges of the wings, and the edges of the door-like rods that opened to the cargo areas. It seemed that these were there to allow us to throw large amounts of magical energy at our opponents.

Size-wise we were also at the smaller end of the scale, but out energy reserves were architected at the top end of the range, as if for much larger ships.

I looked at the plans of the others. Jet had placed a double-size stateroom just in front of the bridge, with her focus chamber underneath. Kart and Pif had two staterooms just behind the bridge, linked by a wall that could retract downwards. Kart had her focus chamber underneath the one on the right, while Pif had placed hers under the one on the left.

Looking closer at Jet's design, I noted she had a spa pool in the corner of her double-sized stateroom, and the access panel to her focus chamber was through it. I commended her skills in misdirection.

Otherwise things looked pretty similar and not much had been changed between them. All had four levels in the living area, with staterooms on the top two floors and barracks-style accommodation in the bottom two floors.

By the time I had completed my assessment and looked up and around again Jet and Kart were back, smiling like the cat that just got the canary, back in uniform but with slightly wet hair.

"Back amongst us?" Jet asked.

"Yes. Wow." I said. "A lot of information to take in."

I paused for a bit.

"Nice idea with the spa pool, Jet."

Pif rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. Like that hasn't been done before?"

"How do you know? Is there some other source of information?" I was curious.

"Well, no, but it's so obvious someone else must have done it before."

"Have you been told we're the first warships?" I asked, and they all nodded, although Kart was a bit hesitant.

"So who's to say anyone has needed to think like this before?" I asked.

"Ha! Told you so!" Jet looked triumphant.

"But if you're going to hide it, why do it in your room?" I asked. This took Jet aback.

"I mean, we need access to that room when? When our human body gets killed and we need a replacement, right? Hopefully that'll never happen."

"Yes," Pif said, "but the notes says it's best to keep the focus chamber and the bridge central and together, and the captain's room close as well."

"So why not put the focus chamber right next to the bridge, and have it open up somewhere inconspicuous in the level above?" I asked.

Everyone seemed to perk up at this.

"We'd want to put it in a slightly different place for each of us, maybe something like this."

To try and look like I wasn't favouring anyone I split their design choices, placing a double stateroom with wall that slid down to the level below in front of the bridge, then a corridor behind the bridge with the focus chamber on the other side, opening up into a small area in the level above, with a shower to wash off the gunk and a small drawer to keep clothes and a towel in. A hidden door from there led into a corridor.

"Having the alcove means you don't need the clothing you normally keep in your stateroom, which is the obvious reason why usually it opens into your stateroom."

"Sneaky!" Kart seemed to like it. "How'd you come up with an idea like that so fast?"

"I used to work in security."

"What, military police?" Pif asked.

"No civilian, as a computer security type, but we had to worry about the physical security of computers as well."

The other sets about making similar modifications. Pif had hers exit half-way between levels in a stair well, Jet had hers exit into a corridor like me, and Kart had hers exit into the floor of the shower in another stateroom, with a hidden compartment for her clothing.

"I'll just try and keep people out of that room," she explained, "and hope I don't have to use it when someone is in there."

I also pointed out that by having corridors and other open areas around our focus chambers, and heavy armour around them, that any explosion would likely dissipate down the open corridors before effectively compromising our chambers.

"Does anyone have long term plans beyond this war, or whatever we're currently facing?" I asked next.

"How long term are you talking?" Jet asked.

"Well, some rough calculations shows that it takes nearly 200 years for a standard cargo ship to pay herself off." I said, "but we're combat ships, so it's likely we're going to cost more per unit of cargo we can carry than normal."

"So we could be in debt forever." Kart said, somewhat morosely.

"Likely we'll pay off faster during the difficulties, whatever they are." Pif said.

"But we'll need to differentiate ourselves after that." said Jet. "What's a good starting point?"

"Medical services." Kart piped up. We all looked at her, interested. "As I see it, with our enhanced senses and energy capacity, we should be able to spin at least three times further than anyone else. Speed counts in medical disasters, to get in as quickly as possible to start helping people."

"Right, so what do we have to do to differentiate?" Jet asked.

"Increase low-level magical conduits to the barracks areas to use as hospitals." Kart responded.

"Put in more walls and air-locks for separation if something is airborne." Pif added.

While they were talking I was busy modifying my design, and making notes as a template for the others to apply as well.

"Nice work Kim," said Kart, "but you also need to add more sensory conduits to aid in diagnosis."

I did that, and Kart nodded her approval.

"I take it you have some medical experience?" I asked Kart.

"That was all I was allowed to do as a mage." she responded, sadly.

"You were a mage slave?" Pif asked.

Kart nodded. "In the world I came from, all people with black skin were slaves. Those who were mages were only allowed to practice medicine, nothing else."

"And you don't want to become a slave again?" Pif asked, gently.

Kart nodded and burst into tears, and we all quickly joined her in a group hug.

"I was so happy when I found everyone was treated the same here, regardless of race." she sniffed, "only to have it all come crashing down with the financial situation and when it was obvious I was going to have to be subservient to a captain."

"Yeh, right." said Jet. "A pretty woman like you should be able to wrap any man around her finger. You may have to do what he says, but if you control his mind, he's only going to order you to do things you want to do."

We were all a bit close together, but Pif and I nodded our agreements.

"You really think so?" Kart asked.

"Sure!" Jet said. "Haven't you seen how easy it is for a pretty young thing to get a guy to do just about anything with some casual flirting?"

This provoked a new round of tears. "But I don't know how!" she howled.

"Hey, we were all physically male not that long ago." Jet said. "You think any of us know how? We just have to observe other women and copy. Should be easier with our new memories."

"In this together?" Pif asked, winking sideways at me.

"Absolutely!" I chimed in.

"For one and all!" Jet intoned, with a smile on her face.

"Thanks." Kart blubbered, the sobbing stopping.

After we all calmed down, Jet piped up again.

"Any other ideas?"

"Diplomacy." I said, and got some quizzical looks.

"Look, we know this is a trade confederation, and that confed has a diplomatic arm used to broker treaties between groups having trouble getting along, right?" That got nods from all around.

"Well, we're armed which gives us some defensive credibility, as Kart pointed out we're likely to be the fastest to get anywhere. These are good arguments for using us for diplomatic missions, but we need a bit of pomp to seal the deal. Any ideas?"

Pif made the obvious suggestion that all staterooms on the top floor be double-sized. Jet suggested a few large, private meeting rooms, so that two teams from different groups could have their own meetings separate from the main meeting room, so three meeting rooms seemed right. Kart suggested turning airlocks from the cargo/living transition area into diamond-windowed lifts to take delegates up and down with a view and without having to take the stairs. We toyed with having a garden somewhere, but couldn't manage to find the space. The closest we could come up with was to have one wall on the primary meeting room be a holographic wall, so it could look like a garden scene.

While they were coming up with ideas, and I was making notes on how to implement them, I was also looking at the magical conduits. With the extra sources and huge number of extra emitters, even just on the large-scale level for weapons, the conduit network had become just too interconnected, and I was worried about surges from combat strikes causing problems, so I put in a network of cut-outs, to act as both surge protectors and to guide differing flow levels.

Kart also suggested a gym, so we all put one in at the front of the third level with a view out over the cargo area, taking out a bit of the barracks. Since the barracks were mostly intact, just segmented, our various changes had reduced maximum occupancy by only a third, even with the top level having only a quarter occupancy with the double size staterooms and the meeting rooms. Cargo space hadn't been changed. I then suggested rather that double-size staterooms we have three-bedroom apartments like you find in some upscale hotels, because that way diplomats could take the master bedroom and assistants could take the smaller rooms. That would also help if we ever had to transport families for any time. Jet liked the idea, and also changed her captain's room on the second deck to be the same, suggesting that the two smaller bedrooms could be studies or private spaces for her and her captain, while normally sharing the master bedroom. It also made the place we were going to spend our lives a lot more home-like. We all liked this idea, and all made the replacements, even if it meant a little more lost space.

We all agreed our changes were a reasonable compromise, as long as the lead designer we'd have to get all changes approved by agreed with us.

Then we went into the minutiae, working out all the subtle little details from routing of plumbing in top areas though to having independent air, water, and food recyclers for the air-lockable barracks areas. By the time we had everything nailed down to our satisfaction, nine hours had gone past.

"Done?" Jet asked.

"All done!" I agreed. I'd taken on the responsibility of making most of the changes as I had an "eye for detail", which I had wondered more than once if it just meant everyone else was lazy. I knew that wasn't really the case, with my background I just tended to order things automatically that when questioned became obvious it was for redundancy reasons.

"Happy?" Jet asked the other two.

"Yes!" from Kart and "Certainly!" from Pif.

"OK, a shower is in order for everyone." Jet said, looking pointedly at Pif and myself.

"All right, all right." Pif mumbled good-naturedly. We all stripped down to our underwear, grabbed more underwear and towels, and headed for the showers. It was what I had been expecting from our ship designs of the barracks areas, with a corridor with what appeared to be frosted glass separating out the shower heads on one side of the corridor, and hooks to hang clothes and towels on an the opposite wall. Each frosted glass separator had a gap of nearly nine inches at the bottom, and coming to the height of around six feet, much taller than any of us. Beside each shower head was a liquid soap dispenser on one side, and a combination shampoo/conditioner on the other.

Like the others, I stripped of completely. It seemed we were all going into individual shower cubicles, which was fine by me. Soaping myself up was an interesting experience, and I discovered just how sensitive not just my nipples were, but the whole breast and even a lot of the skin near them, and most of my inner thighs as well.

I heard a chuckle, which I identified as Kart's.

"One big erogenous zone, huh?" asked Jet.

I blushed, realising I'd let out a small moan.

"Two, actually." I responded, not letting them get to me. "Chest and thighs."

"You figured out the head detaches?" Pif asked.

For a moment I thought she meant my head, before realising she meant the shower head. I hadn't, but reaching for it, it came away leaving a tube behind that seemed far to small for the amount of flow coming out. It was far to intense on my chest, but dialling the pressure down did feel pretty good just about everywhere on my new sensitive skin. Too good, in fact, so I quickly finished up before giving them any more ammunition to tease me with.

"I'm clean!" Jet declared.

"Then come here, hot stuff!" Kart exclaimed. I was drying off by this point, and say Jet clearly as she stepped around the partition. It was amazing her massive breasts stood that high on her chest without any support. Succubus trick, I was sure of it.

Pif and I exchanged martyred sighs, then broke out in a case of the giggles as we finished getting dressed and went out to the main area.

"Sorry if I embarrassed you in there." I said to Pif once we were out of casual earshot.

"No harm, no foul. I spent longer my first time in there." She had a wicked grin on her face. I couldn't let her get away with thinking I was a prude.

"Ah, but you don't know how long I took the first time when I'd just got out of the tank!"

"Really? I was strangely numb at the time."

Oh no, I didn't want her thinking I was a sex fiend!

"Well, only kind of, it was more a self-exploration than anything erotic." I confessed.

"A bit embarrassed then, are we?" Pif seemed to be enjoying herself.

"You aren't with those two getting it on in there?"

"Well, maybe a bit." A caught a hint of the same embarrassment.

"You tease! You're just hassling me because they did it to you!"

"Busted!" she laughed. "Although it was easier when I first got here, the other group of four engaged in almost constant group sex. No-one noticed me experimenting in the shower."

We chatted about not much until the other two finally revealed themselves. Shortly afterwards, Lieutenant Garz walked in through the door.

"Right, ladies! Combat drill in five, change to sports uniform and meet at the gym."

As she left I quickly changed, but struck up a conversation while doing so.

"So, they're obviously watching and probably recording everything we do."

"What!" was the shocked reaction from Kart.

"C'mon, the timing? She turns up just after you two have made yourselves respectable, just after a shower, just after we've spent nine hours brainstorming?"

"It's just a coincidence." Jet jumped in.

"Unlikely," Pif jumped in to my defence, "they're putting how much of their time and money into us? Of course they're monitoring us to make sure we don't try and kill each other or anything." I'm glad she said it, it was almost exactly what I had been thinking too.

Kart suddenly looked a lot more nervous.

"Lighten up!" I said. "Look, they said I was the last, right?" She nodded. "And the previous lot basically had a continuous orgy, right?" Again she nodded. "So if it was a problem, they would have found someone else and not told all of us I was going to be the last."

Kart visibly relaxed.

"C'mon girls, gotta go!" said Jet, bounding out of the room. Pif and I hastily followed, with Kart bringing up the rear. I wiggled my behind a bit more than I really needed to, then tuned on her with a smile plastered from ear to ear.

"Good view?" I asked, quickly turning back around and giggling "Sprung!" to Pif.

Combat was interesting. There were two instructors there, a man and a woman both in the green military uniforms. They were careful to make us practice on each other, because we were fairly close to indestructible. As the first timer I learnt that we still felt pain, and quite a lot at that.

After three hours of that - in my old body I would have been exhausted after five minutes - it was another shower and a visit to the mess hall. We all drank a lot, primarily juice, and ate very little.

After that we had a visit from the "lead designer", who never gave his name, and got all our changes approved. With the reduction in number of fittings, but increase in quality we wanted, the cost overall only went up to two percent, and didn't really attract much of his attention. My suggested changes for the energy distribution were a comparatively huge additional six percent, and we got a lot more arguments from him about that. Kart wavered and nearly decided to give up on that change, but the three of us stuck to our guns, and he grudgingly agreed it was a very good design for load-shedding and redundancy. I think he was put out that we had designed it rather than him.

After he vanished it was mage school. Apparently not only were we transsexuals with military experience, we were transsexual mages with military experience. Some souls are naturally better at channelling magic, and apparently that as one of the selection criteria.

This was one area where Kart, having previous training, just blew all over the rest of us. I seemed to have a knack for sensing, Kart was really good at life magic but that may have just been prior training, Pif was clearly better than the rest of us at raw energy work, like producing flame out of nothing, and Jet seemed to have something going for physical objects, which of course she demonstrated producing a dildo out of thin air. For the only one of us never to have known magic before, I thought I was doing pretty well even if I couldn't do much beyond figuring out exactly what everyone else was doing - that and levitating pens.

Interestingly, our instructor, one Mage Hok, said it was likely our natural aptitudes came from our dragon DNA. Dragons had different colours which reflected their primary affinity. Red was life, and he was convinced Kart was red aspected. Although the base colour of a ship could be changed at any time to any dark-ish colour, the highlights always stayed the same bright colour. The base colour was changed to reflect the ship's current assignment, so for us it would be a deep green. Apparently guessing the colour that would eventually show up as highlights on a ship's external skin was something of a game between the mages. Pif was likely blue aspected and good at working with energy, and Jet likely green aspected and good with physical objects. He was reserving judgement on me until I actually got good at something, which resulted in my acting in a most unladylike fashion and sticking my tongue out at him, which elicited much laughter from all present.

"Mage Hok, why is it a guessing game as to a dragon's DNA aspect?" I asked as the others were leaving.

"Out of respect from dragons, who are mightily cantankerous if you annoy them, we don't take DNA from any living lines of dragons. Instead we pull them from bones of dragons on dead worlds."

"So because you take the DNA samples from bones you don't know the original colour?" I ask.

"Yes."

"So why don't you just use the same samples for multiple ships?" I asked.

"Curious, aren't you? I wonder if that has something to do with your better sensing." he seemed to muse to himself. I cleared my throat and he jumped as if he was off in his own little world, which he probably was.

"Oh, I'm sorry my dear. Well, dragons are mystical creatures, and we've found in the past that using the same donor for multiple ships at the same time leads to some undesirable effects."

"Such as?" I prompt him.

"Oh, mental closeness, followed by an inability to separate thoughts. Usually one of the pair goes insane. We do screening now to make sure nothing like that happens again. Most unfortunate, demons are much easier. We only have five succubii lines for all ship creation, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't. I don't even know how many of these facilities there are." I responded.

"Don't you? Oh well, two officially, three in reality. This one is something of an open secret for experimentation." He looked at his PDA. "Oops, sorry must run. Nice chatting!" and he was off. I got the distinct impression he realised he'd said something he shouldn't and was running off before I could ask further questions.

The server we had been using was disconnected as I walked back to our barracks. When I got there Lieutenant Garz was there.

"Right, grab your clothing everyone, we'll clean the soiled stuff later, we're moving out."

"Where are we going?" Pif voiced the question we were all eager to ask.

"Ship lay-down, where we put your focus chamber in the tank and start seeding growth of your new bodies."

Actually, we got to a docking facility to find giant tanks in place. I felt my other-self being moved, and could feel my friends focus chambers being moved as well. Inside the cargo ship were four giant tanks, and soon our focus chambers were rolled in. Tentacles from the roof moved each focus chamber into one of the tanks, and I saw communication fibres snake in from the edges of the tank to ports on my focus chamber. Once connected, I could feel a smaller server built into the edge of the tank, with just my own schematics inside. I could feel the nanites start to spread out to begin construction.

We lifted off, and I discovered we were in a temperate part of the globe we were on. Two days and twelve spins later, we found ourselves on what appeared to be a volcanic island in the middle of a great ocean on a planet I estimated was around two hundred light years from our starting point, apparently called "Vechog". Our tanks were rolled out into the ocean a few kilometres apart, fastened to the sea floor by cable, then our human selves were dropped off on the island along with our Lieutenant.

The next few months were a study in boring. Sure, we learnt lots about military procedures, tactics, martial arts, small arms combat, and so forth. What was interesting is that all ship-to-ship combat we studied from history was all over two thousand years ago, nothing seemed to have happened recently.

After three months our tanks had been expanded four times, by adding rails and pumping in more solution, and spaces were starting to appear in our new ship bodies. At this time we sat all our exams to be promoted to officers, which were almost a formality with our enhanced minds. I say "almost" because I was only doing OK in magic studies. Generically I was good, only a tiny bit behind average, but I hadn't specialised with a strength in any one area like the others. I continued to maintain an ability to sense better than the others, but this had become mainly an issue of range.

We were no longer Specialist Recruits, but Midshipmen instead.

This was now also the time to pick ship names, which would also act as surnames for us. We were encouraged to pick something "culturally significant" from our old world, although this was more to cut down the risk of clashes.

I named myself "Harpagornis", after the giant predatory bird from New Zealand that hunted its prey in forests rather than soaring or scavenging like most other birds its size, with a three metre wingspan.

So here I am, Kim Harpagornis.