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.

This time we get a variety of action, and the bad guys hinted at last time are revealed.

---

Some changes were coming that made us all nervous.

Shortly after arriving we'd met the other eight in our team, who had arrived before us. It had been too late for them to make the diplomatic and redundancy changes we had sorted for ourselves, but they did manage to get the medical adjustments to a lesser degree. This differentiation had been the odd source of tension.

Now we were allowed to "meet" the others on the island. Teams had been flown in to help with the fit-out of our ship bodies as the spaces expanded. We were to anonymously join these teams, and this was to be treated as something of a test, to see how long we could go without getting singled out as the actual human arm of the ship. We could communicate with team members as our "ship" selves through computer links and speaker disks, and were advised to try to speak in a different voice to maintain our cover.

Also, a number of officers who had been selected as our potential captains were being given special combat and tactics training. We had been given photos of all twenty four of them, double our number. We were expected to fraternise with them in in the officers club, and make our selection of our captain, provided he agreed. They were not told our identities, but knew we would be there. The rest of the installation teams acted as our cover.

This was all starting to get a little close for comfort, especially Kart who had never quite got over her fear of being a slave.

We had special dispensation as part of the test to wear the green uniforms of the military instead of our usual red of non-citizens, and the first few visits to the officers club I found quite enlightening, seeing how everyone reacted and interacted.

Jet and Kart turned out to be a bit boy-crazy, so Pif and I often ended up drinking or eating together. One night we turned up together in little black dresses and high heels instead of our normal uniforms.

"Two prospects, your five o'clock!" Pif hissed at me.

"Good evening ladies, mind if we join you?" asked a voice from behind me.

I turned to have a look as Pif said "Sure!"

Before I knew it, Pif and I had been moved back into the booth with a scrumptious looking man blocking both of our exits to the main floor. Even better, both were on the approved list of potential captains.

"Hi, I'm Tag and this is Dirk" said the man opposite me, sitting next to Pif.

"I'm Pif, and this is Kim", Pif said, introducing us.

"So, you ladies come here often?" Tag asked.

Pif and I just looked at each other and giggled and the corniness of the line. I suppose at least they were trying.

"Where else are we going to get something approximating decent food around here?" I asked.

"Have you eaten yet?" Dirk asked.

"Not yet." Pif responded. We only needed to eat about once every two days, although we did tend to consume a lot of high-sugar drinks such as fruit juice.

"You got your eye on anything you'd like?" I asked Dirk, sitting next to me, as innocently as I could.

[[You tease!]] Pif messaged me through our ship-to-ship communications network.

[[Shut up, I'm working the room! :-)]] I responded.

[[More likely your cleavage! :-)]] she retorted.

"Umm, the steak looks good." he dialled up something on the table's computer. I ordered a chicken salad, and Pif ordered a small soup. I didn't catch what Tag ordered.

The standard getting-to-know you conversation ensued, although I nearly lost it at one point.

"Must be tough with the prospective ships on the prowl, huh?" asked Tag at one point.

"Exactly what do you mean?" asked Pif, a hint of danger in her voice.

"Well, we all know there are ships looking for captains around here. I mean, look at those two" he indicated Jet and Kart working the bar, "it's pretty obvious who they are."

"Actually, I think it's great." I jumped in, getting the attention of everyone at the table. "Guys who only have one thing on their minds go after the huge breasts, and we don't really want to meet their type anyway. It leaves the good guys to us normal girls."

"You're not exactly normal," said Tag, redeeming himself, "you're both gorgeous, but you don't have that take-me-now look that those ship girls have."

[[Score! How are we going to embarrass them by telling them who we are?]] By her words and the smirk on her face, Pif was looking forwards to this.

[[We don't. At least not yet, it'd be nice to have a normal relationship where they're not looking to "captain" us.]]

[[Good point. But you owe me!.]]

[[I'll always owe you, Pif.]]

"Anyway," said Pif, "I think that enough on those types of people for a while. Hey, have you guys covered what the Yeerap did at the Battle of Gethys?"

So off we went into a military discussion. By the end of the evening, I was leaning more towards Tag than Dirk.

[[Hey, would mind if I swapped with you? I like Tag more than Dirk.]]

[[That'd be great, I was thinking Dirk was more my kind of man than Tag.]]

"Excuse us, we need to visit the ladies." I said.

As they moved to let us out, I heard Tag mumble "Always in pairs."

It hadn't been that long when we came back, I sat beside Tag and Pif beside Dirk. I leaned in towards Tag.

"We always go in pairs so we have someone to have a lesbian fling with, " I whispered in his ear, "why do you really think it takes us so long?"

I timed it badly, he didn't snort his drink out his nose.

"What was that?" Dirk asked.

"I'm not repeating it!" Pif said, apparently stuck between being mortified and breaking up with laughter. We'd figured out some time ago the reason our senses were so good at multi-tasking was all the actual thinking was done by our real brains back in our focus chambers, freeing up grey matter in our human bodies for other functions, such as for senses and motor skills.

"Probably safer not to repeat it, no." Tag recovered.

"C'mon let's get out of here." Dirk suggested, so we all ended up leaving to go for a walk along the boardwalk foreshore.

"Why don't we go on the sand?" Tag suggested.

"Heels?" I asked.

"Take them off, then!" Dirk said.

"But then we'll get sand in our stockings!" Pif interjected.

"Take them off too!" Dirk said.

"I think they're trying to get us to strip!" I said in an overly fake soft voice to Pif.

"Sshh! They'll think you're drunk!" Pif replied. We looked at each other and started giggling.

"Women!" Dirk said.

"I supposed we need to make it up to them." I said.

"I guess I'll live with a bit of sand." Pif said.

"So we both pulled off our heels. I took the opportunity to lean on Tag.

"Thanks!" I said, giving him a quick peck on the cheek.

We went for a walk, but not much else happened. We joked around a bit more. Eventually they offered to walk us back to our places. We were no longer in barracks, but the tiny units that low-ranking officers get. Our units were in the same building, with mine on the second floor and Pif's on the third.

We walked up the stairs together, Pif and Dirk in the lead, and Tag and I peeled off at the second floor, saying our good-byes. We approached my door.

"Umm - I had a really good time tonight". Tag started, a bit nervously.

"Thank you, I enjoyed myself too. Shall we do it again sometime?" I asked.

"That'd be great!" he said, a little too enthusiastically. "Same time, same place tomorrow night?" He was eager as a puppy dog.

"I'd like that." I said. The moment stretched and I opened my door. I waited a bit, hoping he'd get up the courage to kiss me. He didn't seem to be getting the message, so I gave him a peck on the cheek and went inside, closing the door.

Men! I couldn't have made it more obvious that I wanted him to kiss me. I pulled off my heels and my now ruined stockings with a mounting sense of frustration. A quick bit of magic over the sink extracted all the sand and then fixed the stockings.

[[So, get a kiss?]] Pif messaged me.

[[No, the idiot. I had to give him a peck on the cheek.]]

[[Well, Dirk is a really great kisser.]]

[[Just a kisser?]]

[[Well, he went for a bit of a breast grope. I'm not having that on a first date!]]

[[You liked it though, didn't you?]]

[[You know me too well!]]

[[I did get a date for tomorrow night.]]

[[Do tell! Anywhere exotic?]]

[[In this dump? Not likely! Same time same place tomorrow night.]]

[[Dirk's taking me for a secluded picnic tomorrow night.]]

[[You mean he's after some nookie. :-)]]

[[Well, yes, but if he's gentleman he might get more than he bargained for. Did I tell you he's a *really* good kisser?]]

[[I think you did.]]

[[Well, I think I need some relief. See you in the morning?]]

[[Sounds like a plan. Yes, see you then.]]

I knew exactly what she meant by some "relief", I had a yearning down below. I stripped naked, conjured up two small vibrators, and set about massaging myself, imagining it was Tag ravishing my body. After feeling much better, I took a shower to clean off, grabbed a nighty, and lay down in bed.

Now, we don't really need sleep as humans do anymore, but to maintain the cover it was useful. Normal humans have two hemispheres to their brains, and unlike humans some mammals can have one hemisphere sleep at a time. We ships had eight neural loci in our hybrid neural/computer brains, one for each corner of the focus cube, which could both concentrate on different tasks and sleep independently. Without the physical stresses each only needed an hour and a half of sleep a day. Instinctually we slept our brains in four shifts of two loci each, overall taking around six hours during which we were three quarters aware.

During this down time I mentally reviewed every piece of information I could get my hands on from the local network. It was getting a little boring, the next supply ship was due tomorrow, and that would freshen things up with the latest news dump from around the galaxy. I understood Pif did much the same. Jet was apparently working on some supplemental income already by writing erotic horror stories, and I didn't have much idea what Kart did.

All twelve of us got up at 5am for magic lessons, before joining the other workers in the officer's mess at 7:30 for a quick bite to eat before grabbing a boat to work for the day. The scuttlebutt was that they had figured out who the ship was, a stacked blonde named Mar who didn't join the rest of us for breakfast. I happened to know it was because she was a late sleeper and grabbed cereal in her room before running out the door, but it seems the local lad who was convinced he was the god's gift to women had finally noticed she wasn't eating, and assumed that means she was the ship.

I was moved to a new section, and to further muddy the waters I sent a message as myself the ship to the supervisor about a mistake me as the human supposedly had made. I actually just hadn't got to that bit yet, but I'm sure it further threw those trying to guess my identity off the trail. All this cloak and dagger stuff was an interesting diversion, as I'm sure it was intended to be.

That night Tag took me to one of the new movies that had come in on the supply ship that day. I had a hard time empathising with the female lead as she was a bit of a ditz, but it was entertaining. We held hands through the movie but that was it. We continued to hold hands as he walked me back to my place.

This time when I opened the door, I tilted my head so my cheek was towards him, closed my eyes slightly, and he took the hint and gave me a chaste kiss on the cheek. I think he was really starting to fall for me, and was so worried about messing it up he wasn't relaxing at the critical moment. Well, at least I got something. The conjured vibrators got another workout.

Much later Pif told me at length abut her picnic date with Dirk. There had been a lot of kissing, but had stopped rather suddenly when Dirk had rolled such that his very firm member was pushed into Pif's thigh. He was so embarrassed about the whole thing not much happened after that. We both agreed we were falling for our respective guys.

The next night at the door I tilted my head again, but at the last moment I twisted my head back so he got me on the lips. I quickly snaked by arms around the back of his neck and gave him a slow kiss. His arms reflexively closed around my back, and I snuggled into him.

"Mmm, this is nice." I whispered, and we kissed some more. Soon I realised he was firming up nicely, and then he realised I could feel him firming up.

"Sorry!" He said, jerking away like I'd given him an electric shock.

"What's to be sorry for? You like me, I like you, what's the problem?" I had managed to keep one arm around him, and he was too much of a gentleman to break the hold.

"I don't want to force you into something you don't want."

"So how about we agree no hands below the waist until we both agree otherwise?"

"That's OK with you?" he asked, almost incredulous.

"Look, Tag, I really like you, and I want to know if we can take this further. We have to try to find out." I gave a slight tug to pull him back towards me, and I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Is that OK? I don't want to go too fast, but I don't want to stop either."

"You're really something, Kim." he said in admiration. "Start in the officers club again tomorrow from 7?"

"Only if you give me another kiss." I winked back at him.

"I can live with those terms." he said, with a smile that melted me.

We broke for air and the night a few minutes later. By unspoken agreement I smiled and closed the door. Yes, the conjured vibrators got another workout.

This went on for another month. Some of my fellow ships had started to pair off, and once someone had agreed to be their captain they had to revert to the red uniforms.

Tag and I were getting along really well. We had agreed to allow touching of the butt, which was nice to massage and be massaged when kissing, but we hadn't gone further than that. On the odd occasion in his room (which was large with his better rank), we had shed our tops, although I retained by bra, and kissed and cuddled on the bed while watching shows on the screen.

A month had gone by when Pif had some news for me late one evening.

[[Dirk has accepted!!!> she sent me.

[[What, accepted that as a mere male that you can boss him around?]] I responded in our typical banter, although I was dying to know what she actually meant.

[[No, you fool! He's agreed to be my captain.]]

[[Congratulations! That's wonderful!]]

[[And we've celebrated with some more fun. He did me up the butt for the first time.]]

Pif and Dirk had been going at it like bunnies for two weeks now, and had been "heavy petting" for some time prior. I was happy for them.

[[What was it like?]]

[[When are you going to ask that hunky Tag to be your captain? C'mon, you're the last one now!]]

[[No dodging the question! So how was it?]]

She gave me a detailed description of the nights performance, and in return I had to tell her about Tag tracing his fingers around my upper body, and how much I wanted him.

I had to face up that I needed to ask Tag, but I just didn't know how to do it.

Next morning around 10 I got a message from command.

[[Kim Harpagornis is required to report to Command room 3-5-67C at 0900 tomorrow to discuss captaincy.]]

Oh dear, now I was in trouble. Presumably this was going to be the "hurry up and commit" talk. Although I was really looking forward to being committed to Tag, I had this niggling fear that he wasn't going to take the deception so well, which is why I hadn't broached the subject. I was enjoying just being in his company and being a normal woman as long as I could.

I had another meeting with Tag that night, and he seemed really subdued. After dinner he invited me up to his room straight away, indicating he had something he wanted to talk about with me in private.

"What's up, honey?" I asked, expressing my concern.

"Well, you know how I'm here to study tactics right?"

"Yes."

"That's not all I'm here for."

"Go on."

"I volunteered to be a ship's captain."

"I had figured that out, you know."

He looked at me with an expression of shock.

"The timing was pretty obvious." I explained.

"Anyway, there were twenty four of us for twelve ships, the new fast scouts you've been working on." "Fast Scout" was the cover story for us. "Eleven of them have now picked captains."

"So you think it's fairly likely that you're not going to get the gig?" I asked.

"That's what I thought." he said. This sent off alarm bells in my head. "I'd been wanting to be a captain since before I knew what it really meant. It's been a life-long dream of mine."

"That was the another reason for thinking you wanting to be a captain, you haven't exactly been subtle about that."

"But I've grown very fond of you, and it was reconciling to not being a captain if I could be with you." Admitting this was obviously pretty rough for him, so I rubbed him on the leg.

"You don't know how happy am I to hear you say that." I said.

"But that brings me to the problem. I've been ordered to report tomorrow morning to command about my position. I've talked with the other guys, and none of them have been called."

I had sinking feeling, as I now knew exactly where this was going. Of course I knew I was being watched, and of course any of the other girls would have said I was going steady with Tag. I'd taken too long and they were going to force the issue in the morning. Could I bring myself to tell him before then?

"Dirk seemed to think I had probably been selected by one of the ships."

Of course, Dirk would. He knew Pif and I were close, we knew Tag and I were an item, and he now knew Pif was a ship. It wouldn't take a great leap on hearing Tag was the only one being invited for him to figure out that I must be the last remaining ship. Thankfully he kept his mouth shut about why.

The look that passed over my face must have lead him to think I'd jumped to the same conclusion he had.

"Kim, I need to know before I do something foolish. Do you love me?"

We'd never actually said the words to each other.

"Yes, Tag, I love you. Do you love me?"

"I do."

"Say the words."

"I love you, Kim Harpagornis." Ship names were all secret at present, so there was no reason for me to keep my last name from him.

I hugged him and cried at the same time.

"This brings me to my next problem." he said. I looked up quizzically. "It'd be a black mark against my service record to volunteer as a captain and then pull out when asked unless I had a good reason."

Oh no, what was he planning? He was fumbling in his pocket for something.

"Kim, would you do me the honour of being my wife?" he said, going down on bended knee while pulling out the ring and showing it to me,

I was crying and giggling at the same time. This was not one of the things I had expected.

"I need to know something first, Tag." I said through the tears. "Are you asking me because you love me, or asking me to avoid a bad service record?"

He visibly blanched. I don't think he'd realise just how it came out.

"I love you, Kim. This is just the thing that gave me a kick in the arse to make me do the right thing."

I nodded at him, and he slipped the ring, a thin gold one with a clearly visible but not overly large emerald on it.

"To match your beautiful eyes, diamonds are so passe." he said, and I laughed even through the tears, hugging him close to me.

"Thank you so much. I love you, Tag."

"I love you too, Kim."

"Just so I get this right, you're prepared to give up your dreams for me?"

"Small price, baby. It took these orders to make me realise this."

It was now or never.

"Tag, there's something I need to tell you. I'll understand if you want to take the ring back."

Now his face was full of concern. More than that, he was mortified.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I know the name of the last ship."

"But that's classified! How'd you find out?" He's smarter than that! He should have figured it out just from the comment! I suppose he's a bit too emotional to think clearly. OK, time to hit him over the head.

"It's Harpagornis." I said, looking him dead in the eyes.

"But that's..." he started, trailing off in wonder.

"That's right honey. I'm the last ship."

He was so cute, stunned for words like that.

"You can have me and your dreams, although it might be a very long engagement." Rules were that a ship couldn't get married until she had paid herself off. He finally managed to collect himself.

"You're serious?"

"One hundred percent. I know how important this is to you, I wouldn't mess you around."

"But this is fantastic!" he looked lost for words again.

"DId Dirk tell you Pif was a ship, and he's agreed to become her captain?" This brought a reaction out of him.

"The little so-and-so! No he didn't. We all knew someone had been selected, but not who."

"He must have realised if he let the cat out of the bag the penny would drop about me. I'll have to thank him for that."

"So you and Pif are both ships? I would never have guessed, you're both so normal."

"You know in first training Pif and I were both called 'norms' because we didn't look or act like overstuffed horny porn stars."

That got the first laugh out of him so far. This was going well.

"Tag, I have something just as important to ask you. Tag Hargel, will you be my captain?"

"You know the regulations, right?" he smirked at me.

"You mean the 'must keep your underwear clean' one, or the 'must determine if you are sexually compatible before committing to a captain/ship relationship' one?"

"I think you know what I mean."

"I think I do. Come here and kiss me."

The kiss was slow, languid, and deep, full of intense emotion as we gave ourselves to each other. After some time we broke for air.

"I take it the agreement is off?" he said, referring to our no-touching-certain-areas policy.

I stood up, kicked off my heels as I removed my jacket. The blouse came off next, as I shucked my skirt. I was left standing in just my bra, suspenders, stockings, and knickers.

"Touch me anywhere." I confirmed. "But first you have to take some clothing off."

I sat back down on the edge of the bed as he stripped himself off in nothing flat. Soon he was completely naked, and we lay on the bed together, kissing and cuddling. Hand were roaming all over. He really did have a nice stomach.

I had heard from the others that the first time a guy tends to come inside you too fast, but the cure for that was to make it not his first time. So when I could feel his hardness pushing against my panties, I told him to lie back as I got up. I turned my back and took off my bra while winking at him over my shoulder. I tossed the bra over his head as I turned back around, so he got a full view of my breasts. I sunk to my knees and kissed his cock, then came up a bit and wrapped my breasts around his cock, while straining my head down to lick the tip.

He moaned appreciatively, but the friction on my sensitive breasts was a bit much, I'd need some lubricant to try it properly. I freed my breasts and bent down further to take his member fully into my mouth. I reached behind him with a free hand, and pulled on his back. He got the message and came up to a sitting position. I looked up into his eyes as I sucked and licked on his cock, with one hand assisting and occasionally gently tickling his balls, while the other hand massaged one of my nipples in full view of him.

I pulled back my body a bit so he could see what I was doing - my free hand moved south from the nipple, down to my panties which they pushed down to my knees, although I had to bend a bit and momentarily broke eye contact. Now he could get a full view past my breasts, obstructed only by his cock as I gazed up at him, while I started playing with my nether regions. By the time my hand got there I was already soaked.

After my hand was there for a bit it had sufficient lubrication so I swapped hands, using my lubrication as my hand wanked his lower cock while my tongue paid attention to his upper cock.

"Kim ... please ... I'm not going to last ... " he managed to get out. I couldn't easily talk with him in my mouth, but I continued to gaze into his eyes, made it obvious I was pumping myself harder down below, and nodded at him, before turning my mouth into a vacuum with a writhing tongue massaging him.

"Not ..." was all he managed to get out before he blew his load into my mouth. I swallowed as it came, savouring the combination of salty and sweet flavours. I kept gently licking his dick as he deflated, and made sure I had swallowed everything before coming up to kiss him.

"Thanks." I said, breaking the kiss.

"Thanks!?!" he said in amazement. "I should be thanking you! That was amazing!"

"Well, maybe you can show me how much you appreciate me until you're ready to go again." I said, and rolled over so I was now lying on my back on the bed.

He got the hint and started lavishing attention on my neck, licking around my ear but thankfully not in it. He moved down to my upper chest above my breasts, then shifted focus below them. He came back up and lavished some attention on the nipples, and I had my first orgasm of the evening. As I was spasmming his hand entered by wetness. This was really good and I never wanted it to stop. Soon his head left my breasts and wandered downwards, paying attention to my ticklish belly-button. Then he was lapping at my wetness, with one hand reached up to play with my nipples, alternating between them. I had my second orgasm then, and it went on for a while.

"I'm ready." he announced.

"I'm more than ready." I responded, grabbing his arms and pulling him up. I could feel his hardness nestling against my entrance.

"Am I your first?" he asked. What a bloody stupid question to ask at a time like this!

"The first I've loved." I responded truthfully.

"No, I mean, are you a virgin?"

"Not after the number of times I've played with myself thinking about you." I said, seeing the shocked expression on his face and taking advantage to shove my hips up so he slid inside me.

"You're a bad girl, Kim." she smirked.

"Shut up and have you way with me before I change my mind." I said, easing myself back down while keeping him inside me.

Well, he was fantastic. His penis was a little shorter than average, but it was wide, with prominent veins, and he felt absolutely divine siding in and out of me. He gently took a nipple in his mouth and rolled it with his tongue while having his teeth lightly on it without actually biting, and my third orgasm rolled through me for the evening.

By the time he eventually came again, I'd had a further two orgasms, and I came with him to make it six total. He collapsed on top of me, utterly spent.

He woke up a few hours later, and we went around again. Afterwards I asked the question again."

"Tag honey, will you be my captain?"

"Of course, I'd have to have rocks in my head to say no."

I quickly filed with command that I, Kim Harpagornis had asked Tag Hargel to be my captain and he had agreed. Hopefully that would make the nine o'clock meeting go faster. I also sent a message to Pif.

[[Hi Pif! Tag said yes. Remind me to thank your hunk for not tipping him off.]]

[[Yay! So, how many times have you done it so far? And can he get you over the line?]]

I actually started with the story about how he'd thought some nameless ship was grabbing him, and how he proposed to me as a result. She thought he was sweet but "gormless". We then had a great conversation about what and how we'd done with our respective boyfriends.

At 6:30, while we were having another round, a message came back that my special dispensation to wear green uniforms had been rescinded, and I still had the meeting at 9. Afterwards I asked Tag.

"Tag, I've got a problem."

"Yes, you've drained me dry and I can't get it up."

"No seriously, I filed that you accepted being my captain. They've rescinded my dispensation to wear a green uniform, and all my red ones are back in my unit."

He figured out the problem, looking at my green uniform on the floor.

"That's going to be fun, watching you walk back to your room in only underwear and a blouse." he smirked at me.

"What, and let everyone else get a look at your fiancé in the near-nude?"

"Err ... well ... what do you want me to do about it?"

"Go to my room and get e a change of clothes!"

"But it's not keyed for me!"

"Trust me, it'll open for you." I'd set up a channel some time ago so I could operate the room system from my ship communications system. After a long day it was nice to walk into the room and have the room at the right temperature and the shower already steaming for me. Opening the door was trivial.

Soon enough he was out and back with a change of uniform.

"No underwear?" I asked, arching and eyebrow.

"Oh, umm..." he seemed lost.

"That's OK, it just means I have to go back there for a shower. Such a disappointment that I can't have a shower here with you, while I spread soap all over myself and slide up against you."

His eyes lit up. "I could come back with you."

"Yeh, right. Have you seen the size of my unit? I can't lift both arms at the same time in that shower without smacking my elbows. Two people in that shoe-box?"

He looked crestfallen.

"Don't worry, once it's official I'm sure we'll be able to move in together." That certainly perked him up.

I dressed hurriedly, and almost flew back to my room for a shower and a complete change of clothing. The charade now over, there was no need to go for breakfast, but I thought I owed it to everyone.

[[Pif, I'm going to breakfast in the red uniform.]]

[[Showing off to the masses?]]

[[Something like that. Come join me and I'll show you the ring!]]

Pif actually got there first, and when I sat down to join her, both of us in our red uniforms, you could have heard a pin drop in the mess. After the conversation resumed I picked up lots of "Them? I would never have guessed!"

Pif loved the ring, and was quite chuffed we had passed so well for so long.

I fronted up to my work unit before they caught the boat out, apologised for stringing them all along, and went to my 9am meeting, which turned out to be a formality in paper-work, although I think the Commodore was miffed he didn't get to read us the riot act for making him wait so long. After that Tag and I took a supply craft out to my ship body, and we both helped out as best we could.

Later that day I was notified of promotion tests. That night Tag and I moved to our new unit, only slightly bigger than his old one, and we engaged in a bit of slippery debauchery in the shower. The next morning I sat the tests, and did well in all of them, even the magic one. Within an hour of leaving I received notification of my promotion to Sub-Lieutenant. Tag received his notification, and with some help from me in cramming, he passed them and was promoted from Commander to Captain.

Things proceeded apace, and soon my ship body had finished growing, just the fit-out to complete and some settling in to do. The other had expressed their expected colours, but I had expressed silver highlights, which wasn't on record, at least that anyone was admitting to. I even discovered what Pif had been hinting at but not actually telling me, that succubi DNA included an anus that self-lubricated once something was in it. The second time I learnt it hurt if a finger didn't go in first to trigger the lubrication. I had wondered why none of this was documented anywhere, we seemed to have manuals for everything else.

At one point, Tag looked over how much I was going to owe and whistled.

"Glad it's not me that has to pay that back!"

"You sure? We can't get married until it is paid off, regulations and all that."

He looked a little alarmed.

"No, I meant.... Oh crap, my foot's stuck in my mouth, isn't it?"

"Well, maybe if you put that talented mouth of yours to use somewhere else...."

We had talked a couple of times and he said he really did want to marry me, no matter how long it took. We'd taken some holos, me always in civilian clothes, and shipped them back to his family. Apparently his mother's brother had been a captain, but had been killed when his ship went psycho, and so the family weren't to keen on "ships in the family", as Tag put it.

Six months after we were first dumped in the ocean, we were ready to leave. Yes, the process usually took two years for full-sized cargo ships, but we were smaller and they'd used a more expensive process to get us ready sooner. Not that we had any choice about the timeframe nor about them placing the additional costs on the amount we owed.

Tag and I, and all the other captain/ship pairs, had moved onto their staterooms on their respective ships. First up we acted as submarines, wandering around a few hundred metres under water at around three hundred kilometres per hour. If we could survive that pressure, space would be easy, and it was a lot easier to recover from if something went wrong.

Next came the space trials.

It felt glorious to break atmosphere, and zip around without friction getting in the way. I picked up an incoming spin.

"Command from Harpagornis, incoming spin at Alpha-Delta-Three-Four-Seven, please advise." I was still the best at sensing, so it had been agreed that I would call sensor events.

"Group Alpha from Command, be advised incoming is unscheduled."

"Command from Harpagornis, incoming bogey is not one of ours, boxy metallic non-living, large magical discharge." I relayed, bringing up all the information I could on screen for Tag and sharing across microwave tight beam with my fellow ships.

"Group Alpha from Command, be advised this is not a drill. Exercise extreme caution and keep your distance."

"Command from Group Alpha, acknowledged." said Kal Rembler, captain of the Jenner and flight leader.

I picked up the edges of something.

"Group Alpha from Harpagornis, bogey is transmitting something on tight beam to the Jenner." I couldn't pick up the data, but I could pick up the fluctuations that told me there was a transmission.

I felt a magical build-up over on the Jenner, like what I expected from weapons test fire, and then it was gone except for some flaming debris.

"Command from Harpagornis, Jenner appeared to self-destruct after receiving tight-beam communication from bogey." I was scared shitless, but tried to stay calm and ignore the swearing and questions from nearby channels to command.

"Get us down, Kim" yelled Tag. "Enough water should block the microwave." I had started rapid shifts to penetrate the atmosphere as soon as he had the first part of the command out.

"Group Alpha from Command, descend with all speed to the ocean and submerge."

By the time that command had come in, all except one ship had already started to descend, then that ship disappeared in a flash as well. I'd had enough sensory input on it to figure out what happened.

"Group Alpha from Harpagornis, bogey appears to be transmitting some kind of self-destruct signal to us. Those with safety interlocks, disconnect all conduits except those for movement."

I didn't hold out a lot of hope, that was only four of us. I received the transmission next.

"Group Alpha, Command, from Harpagornis. Be advised I have received the signal. Some part of my focus chamber I can't control is attempting to get energy from the reserves to the emitters to enact a self-destruct."

"How bad is it, Kim?" asked an ashen faced Tag.

"I think we'll be fine, but I don't know about the others."

As I said it another of my ship mates blew up.

[[Kim, I just got the same code, but I'm managing it.]] Pif messaged me.

I was trying to isolate what the thing was that was doing this to me. I managed to isolate a small nexus of computer chips near the communications specialist chips. While I was doing this we lost two more ships.

"You trust me, Tag?" I asked.

"With my life." he responded.

"Group Alpha from Harpagornis, I'm about to fry chips in sector Gulf-Xray-Tango-two-seven-three."

I did so, and it hurt like hell in my head, but the push to self-destruct vanished.

"Group Alpha from Harpagornis, chips fried, feeling better, reactivating interlocks."

I physically crossed fingers, giving Tag a somewhat weak smile, and reactivate the conduits.

"Group Alpha from Harpagornis, I'm fine."

"Harpagornis from Command, take out that ship! Group Alpha from Command, sound off if you believe you're safe."

"Command from Retrack, believed safe." Phew, Pif was safe!

"Command from Garyal, believed safe, had received self-destruct." That was Jet.

"Permission to fire?" I asked Tag.

"Fire away!" he ordered.

I had been powering towards the interloper, as fast as I could go, and tried to launch an energy blast at it. By the time it got there there wasn't much left past a minor static shock.

"Minor damage, range too great."

"Keep firing as long as it doesn't slow us down."

"Yes, sir."

Next I tried a focused beam, regulated on the frequency they had been transmitting at, hoping to damage the antenna they were transmitting with. That seemed to get some reaction, although it wasn't in time to save another ship from going up.

"May have overloaded their transmitter, sir."

"Good work, keep at it."

A mighty blast went straight past me and impacted on the foreign ship. Pif, with her much better command of energy than me, had managed to get better range. Large chunks of the forward section of the boxy ship were clearly charred and sparking. Then it vanished.

[[Bogey spun!]] I yelled over the local ship to ship channels.

"Command from Harpagornis, bogey has spun out."

"Harpagornis from Command, did you get a fix?"

After doing a bit of number crunching, I shook my head at Tag.

"Command from Harpagornis, got good readings but they don't make sense. Readings indicate it spun to the same place it left."

"Group Alpha from Command, return to your cages." That was interesting, it was a different voice.

I took stock of the ships around me, it was just our posse of four.

[[Anyone else make it?]] I asked.

[[Red made it behind the planet, and I think to the ocean from there.]] Kart responded. Red was movement aspected and she could make it all the way to four percent of light-speed in space. [[Apart from that I think it's just us.]]

[[Well, that's just peachy.]] Jet said. [[Someone did an inside job on us. What the hell were those chips supposed to be there for?]]

"Back to cage as commanded, captain?" I asked Tag.

"Yes, ship." he responded. "And stand down from combat."

"That's wasn't fun." I muttered. "And an inside job, too."

"The self destruct chips?" Tag asked.

"You know about them?" I asked, suddenly not very happy.

"Sure, they're kind of an open secret. No-one supposed to know, but everyone does."

"As someone who would have died, and you along with me, if I hadn't had a non-standard interlock sequence installed, I'd like to know everything." My voice had gone a bit cold.

"Well, I know because of my uncle." Oh right, sore point all around. "Occasionally ships go bonkers, it's pretty rare. However, when they do they're too powerful for just anyone to stop. So self-destruct chips are installed in focus chambers for the protection of everyone else."

"And just anyone can trigger these?"

"Oh no, each focus chamber has parts from all three soul collection facilities. Each focus chamber has individual codes, and all three codes from all three facilities must be entered to blow a ship. Normally codes for rogue ships are spread by the standard info-burst method." That's usually used for news and so forth, every ship entering a system swaps their news with the local news server, and anything with an original timestamp older than a three months is removed from the "active" list. This way news is spread around the Confederation.

"So the enemy we've been put together to fight has just destroyed seven out of twelve ships by using our own highly secured codes, after apparently breaking into three different highly secure facilities?

"That's about it, yes."

"Actually it's worse than that." I realised.

"What?"

"They only sent me one set of codes. That meant they knew which ship had which focus chamber. Most of the ships are externally identical except for the markings..."

".. which no-one knew until two weeks ago." Tag finished the thought for me.

"Right, so we have insiders in the secure facilities and here on this planet."

"We need to bring the others up to speed on this." I said. "Permission to notify the three in flight with us?"

Just then I got an info burst from Jet.

"Granted." said Tag.

"Too late, Garyal just transmitted the same conclusions." I said.

"Then we have a lot to talk about when we get back."

We sat there in silence most of the way back, lost in our own thoughts.

Before too long, all ten survivors were together in a meeting room, along with the Commodore.

"So, to summarise, someone obtained your codes from all three secure locations, and knew which code to use on which target, so they've got secure data from here as well?" the Commodore asked.

"Yes sir, but there's more to it than that." Fix Quatar, Jet's captain said. "As I understand it, the ships identities have been heavily suppressed throughout, am I correct?"

The commodore nodded.

"So even if someone had access to all the ships here and could recognise them, how did they associate the exact focus chamber with the one ship with novel markings?"

"I see your point. At the original facility they were identified by DNA signature and frame number only. Any temporary names given were not supposed to be recorded."

"And that information was never referenced here?" Fix asked.

"That's correct."

"But it would have been easy for a worker to pick up a DNA sample of any of the ships here." I interjected. "So if a worker had access to all the ships, they could provide DNA and descriptions, which would be enough for someone with DNA and frame numbers to match up."

"There are boat logs, we should be able to find if anyone has been to all ships during fit-out." said Red, the sole surviving ship not of our original group.

The Commodore hit an intercom, "Get me the complete boat logs for the last seven months."

"That's a lot to get through, sir." said Neg Fnark, Kart's captain.

"True, but we don't want to tip our hand, and I'm sure the ladies here can get through the information quick smart."

Indeed we could. While I was scanning through the month of logs I was looking at, I asked another question.

"Sir, I've been reviewing my sensor logs from their spin, and it's very odd."

"Can you define 'odd', Sub-Lieutenant?"

"Yes sir. It looked like they were spinning to their current location, but the corrections for the curvature of space-time were massively off, even for long scale spins."

"Do you think it was some kind of self destruct?"

"No sir, I saw the same kind of signatures when they spun in."

"Any ideas, then?" I got the impression he was getting a bit frustrated with me.

"Only a conjecture sir, and I have nothing to back it up."

"Out with it then!"

"Sir, I think they may have been travellers from a parallel dimension."

"Kim, this is no time for stupid jokes!" Pif hissed at me.

"No, no, do go on. I want to hear this." said the Commodore, and I felt I had his complete undivided attention for the moment.

"Well sir, when we spin over large distances we need to make allowances for the curvature of space-time. They seemed not to be spinning in space at all, but making ridiculously large compensations for the curvature of space-time. One of the leading theories about parallel dimensions is that they only thing separating is from them is that their space-time is curved differently to ours. I know it sounds completely wacky, sir, but I can't come up with a better explanation."

All eyes were on me, and I shrank into my chair.

"Sir," Pif started, "we were originally told we were being brought together to combat a 'credible threat', but never told what that was. Are you in a position to enlighten us? It may help to refine our theories." She was looking sideways at me, and I had no idea if she was supporting me or not.

"This goes no further than this room without explicit authority from me, understood?" he said, looking around the room getting nods from everyone before proceeding.

"I assume you are all aware some mages can communicate between dimensions in dreams?" I got a sick feeling at this point, that I'd been right and we were in over our heads.

"Well, they get sort of 'pen-pals', and one from another dimension recently warned one of ours that his dimension had declared living ships an abomination against the divine, and that they had the capacity to travel between worlds."

He looked around for effect.

"So, young lady, your guess is probably dead on. Do you think you can figure out how to trace them back and spin to that location?"

"I can try, sir."

"Good, that leaves us with one more problem. You all destroyed your fail-safe chips, correct?"

"No sir, I didn't." said Red. "I managed to get behind the planet and then into the ocean before they sent a signal to me."

"Well, the problem is that the fail-safe has fail-safes. There are some emergency nanites that will start to take your neural cortex apart if they don't get a signal from those chips at least once a day. Normally the signal is sent every hour, so you have around twenty one hours before ... before things start to get unpleasant."

"Do you have a plan to neutralise the problem?" Kart asked.

"No, Sub-Lieutenant, I was hoping as the medical expert you could come up with one."

"Actually, I might have a solution," I said. "rather than finding and isolating these nanites, is there any way we can fake the signal to reset them?"

"You'd need the original codes."

"I certainly have mine burned into my brain, how about you three?" Nods came from all around.

As it turned out I needed help from Katz, but we we eventually figured out what needed to be done. We also figured out how to spot the nanites reacting to the code, and slowly eliminate them from our systems. Katz and I gave instructions to the other two on how to keep us alive.

Meanwhile, the other three were reviewing the logs. No-one had visited all twelve of us, but two people had visited six each. Further investigation showed that those two people had arrived on the same supply ship, worked for a week visiting six ships each, and left on the next supply ship.

Fix Quatar started asking questions while us ships were quietly swapping ways to stay alive. "So, what from here? Do we try spinning to the other dimension? Do we try and go after this person who took samples from our ships?"

The Commodore took over.

"OK, I know it's getting late at night, but I want all ships except Tarnakdoe up near where that ship spun out. Tarnakdoe is staying behind because she's still vulnerable to her codes. If the others survive the next two days unscathed, we can call for her codes and then repeat the process, purging her of the suspect chips and nanites as well, but until then it's too much of a risk to send her out."

"Harpagornis, as the one with the best logs of the event will attempt the spin to the parallel dimension. Spin in, gather as much information as you can as quickly as possible, and spin back. If you're not back in five minutes, we'll assume you're lost. The other three, fan out, and destroy anything that spins back that's not the Harpagornis. Take a marine platoon each in case it comes to that."

He looked around to judge reactions.

"Any comments?" I think we all saw it was the correct course of action, so there were no comments, apart from Tag's clarification quest after a moment.

"Confirming we are not to carry a marine platoon, sir?"

"That's correct. Risk, you understand." Meaning he thought it was a long shot and didn't want to lose too many marines if I stuffed up.

"Understood, sir."

"Dismissed, and good hunting."

So we found ourselves back up in space again.

"Talk about a baptism by fire." Tag commented to me.

"You had to say that before we spin into the unknown, didn't you?" I asked, slightly peeved. "I don't even know if I can get us back, and that's assuming we arrive in one piece!"

"Hey baby, it's OK." he said, reaching forward from his bridge position to stroke me lightly on the back of the hair. "It's a grand adventure, and if we die it's likely to be so quick as to not be horrible."

I snorted. "When did you become the adrenaline junky?"

His mood turned pensive. "When I'm trying to cover for my worry about if we have a future."

I turned and hugged him. "Whatever, we're in this together, right?"

"Absolutely. But I may have to fine you for inappropriate displays on the bridge." Fines? The bane of my existence!

"But there's no-one here to display too!" I moaned.

He chuckled. "I guess you'll just have to make it up to me later." He waved his hand signal for me to broadcast the message.

"Harpagornis spinning in three ... two ... one ... Spin!"

And I spun. My first spin I initiated, and it was inter-dimensional instead of a typical space jump.

"Bogey off the starboard bow!" I screamed, bringing it on screen. From the damage it looked to be the one the Retrack had fired on before, bless Pif.

"Fire!" yelled Tag, so I fired, a magically enhanced gamma ray burst from the left wing and a directed electromagnetic pulse from the right wing. Many sparks leapt from it.

"Disable or destroy?" I asked.

"Fire again to disable!" he ordered.

This time I shot magically enhanced lightning from both wings, letting it play over the opposing ship for a bit.

"I think it's done, sir." I smiled at Tag, but looking around nearby space and seeing a few more of the boxy ships, decided we had better get out of here.

"Permission to try and drag the disabled vessel back with us?" I asked.

"You think we can do it?" Tag asked.

"Wouldn't have suggested it otherwise." I responded.

"OK, go for it."

I manoeuvred myself so I was right on top of it, extended some tentacles to surround it.

"Spinning on your mark, sir." I said, finishing what I hoped were the return calculations.

"Spinning in three ... two ... one ... Spin!"

And I spun for the second time. There was a slight lurch, I think I failed to compensate correctly for the weight distribution of the other ship, and we were there, surrounded by our friends.

"Harpagornis to Control, returned with captured ship that attacked us before."

"Control to Group Hunter, dock and board with prejudice."

I retracted my tentacles and backed off slightly as the other three converged, the tentacles from between the rotating rods to the cargo space stretching to the disabled ship, and opening up internally as a tube for the marines to slide through. A bit of manipulation of apparent gravity and they basically slid in. The tentacles sealed against the outside, and the first marine down used a cutting tool to open the damaged armour, then signalled to the others to slide down and smash through.

It seemed I had done my job a bit too well, there was no atmosphere inside. From reports coming back a few dead bodies were littered around.

"Permission to go aboard, sir?" I asked. Captains generally couldn't leave the ship in dangerous circumstances, although it was at their discretion. Ship's human bodies were easily replaced, so we tended to go with full comms gear and relay back a video feed.

"I'd be the last one in, sir." I said at his pause.

"Go ahead, Sub-Lieutenant."

I suited up quickly, keeping a spare suit near one of the airlocks that led to a retracted tentacle near the bridge. I cycled through the airlock, and rather than sliding down the tentacle, stood at the leading edge as it extended.

[[Found something.]] came from Jet. I printed the text up on the bottom of the video feed I was displaying to Tag.

[[Be right with you.]] Pif responded.

[[OK, one of the old-style mage rigs, I think.]] Pif added on arrival.

[[Actually, I meant the wall.]] Jet responded.

[[What is it?]] Kart asked.

[[Yes, enquiring minds want to know!]] I added.

"You always chat like a bunch of schoolgirls?" Tag asked, since I was copying our texts to his screen.

"Only when there are icky boys listening in." I vocalised. "Did you want me to dress up like a school-girl later tonight?"

[[Well, that certainly changes things.]] said Kart.

[[Nearly there!]] I added, homing in on their position, passing a few marines and saluting them as I went.

As I walked in I saw the others looking past me, and two marines sweeping the area. Turning I saw what was on the wall of the room I had just entered. Hurriedly painted on the wall and still wet in our text, and not the strange text that seemed native to these people, was the following:

"We fight for all souls to be free. Those of you bonded to ships, our fight lies not with you, but those who have already damned your souls. Once they have performed the bonding ritual, your soul will never again move on in death. We mourn this, the end of your soul's progress, as it is lost to the void when your current existence ends."

"OK, religious nut-job alert." I said in the line-of-sight radio, which Tag also got through the video relay.

"Well, at least we have a better idea of why they want to bring low the Confederation." Tag said.

"What if they're right?" Kart asked in horror.

"Even if they are right, it's apparently too late for us, so why worry about it?" Jet responded.

"Remember, many religions persecute the enemy with made-up ideology." Pif brought up. "They know our technology is superior and they want to defeat our us for some reason. What better way that to scare us off using our primary advantage?"

"OK ladies, excursion is over." said the marine lieutenant. "Nothing here alive, no NNBC threats apart from their drive system which appears benign, so we can drop this hunk of crud on a beach somewhere at look at it at our leisure. Now it's time to bug out."

NNBC stands for Nanite, Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, basically weapons of mass destruction.

"Yes, sir!" I responded, clipped off a smart salute, and started back to my ship.

[[No point antagonising the locals.]] I sent to the other three ships, but didn't display that for Tag.

[[Fair point.]] Pif responded, and did likewise.

"Officer suck up" Tag added, laughing as he said it.

"There's only one officer I suck up, sir." I vocalised in the bridge. "Maybe I can demonstrate later."

"You be sure to do that, Sub-Lieutenant." he said, smirking.

Jet and Kart grumbled a bit, wanting to have a bit more of a look around, although Kart made it very clear it was because Neg Fnark, her captain, was asking lots of questions.

The marine lieutenant reported back to command, who ordered us to hold position while the Tarnakdoe was sent out to us. Once with us, Tag and I were ordered to hold position and fire on any more craft appearing, while everyone else escorted the ship down.

Red Tarnakdoe had the yellow aspect of movement, so she was best at telekinetically manipulating the other ship, and Pif as the energy specialist bled off re-entry energy. Once down the others all offloaded their marines. Pif and Dirk in the Retrack and Kart and Neg in the Zewhy were sent back up with an extra four officers each to act as officers of the watch. The plan was to have two ships always in guard position, two ships docked ready to take on marines and launch, leaving one extra for transition.

Once the Retrack and Zewhy were up on watch, Tag and I were sent down to pick up four officers as well, then we rejoined the monitoring position. Once everything was settled Tag and I retired for the night. We didn't do much more than kiss and cuddle after a day of such revelations, but it was nice to have him spooned up against my back with an arm around me. Meanwhile I was also chatting to the officers on watch through a speaker on the bridge, with two of them on my bridge at any one time.

Jet Garyal and Red Tarnakdoe kept on eye on the logs coming out from the analysis of the captured ship, and sent us summaries of the information gathered. Basically they seemed more advanced technologically, but less advanced magically - or at least they didn't use anywhere near as much magic in their ships, probably because they weren't living. Magic seemed to be used only for artificial gravity and inertial dampers impregnated into plates on the floor, and then a mage for actual spins. For power they had some kind of fusion power source, which in turn drove the primary thrusters out the back by accelerating the fusion products to near light speed. No-one wanted to be behind those engines when they powered up!

Kart had idly wondered about nanite threats. Although the ship had been cleared, one would have thought there'd be some nanites somewhere on a ship more technologically advanced than us. Upon investigation, it seemed that without magic cut-outs as we had, their method of preventing grey-goo accidents was that their nanites cut out when the primary power source went off-line.

Data was dumped off their computer core, although it took quite a while to get a working interface, and it was eventually decided to dump their ship into the sun. We shuttled around a bit so that the Retrack and Tarnakdoe were free to run it to the sun, and temporarily the other three of us were all in guard position with marines on board in case something should happen.

After that we settled into a routine, and I was ground-side with Pif when another ship burst into our space, in the same position as before. It was quickly disabled, and this time the marines got on board while there were still some living on the other side. Unfortunately we lost a few to flying nanite swarms that disassembled the marines before the ship's power core was blown. Nasty stuff.

We'd managed to figure out the rudiments of their language, and I'd also figured out that the inter-dimensional spin program they were using was tuned to that particular bit of space they were spinning through. I estimated it'd take them a month of calculations to spin through somewhere else.

I shared this information with the team, and the Commodore thought that they probably had more than one set of calculations and they were spinning through somewhere else as well, but only had that one set on that ship in case it got captured, so we wouldn't know their other points. His basis for thinking this was the suspected agents who had transferred off-world using our ships, so were presumably meeting up somewhere else.

We didn't really get anything out of the few survivors. I was sure a few of the ones who had been isolated were tortured, but the main groups were treated well. I found out why later in another meeting.

I wasn't actually there, Tag and I were with Jet and Fix standing guard, but we were linked in by encrypted tight-beam microwave, even with a two second round trip delay.

"OK, come to order." barked the Commodore.

"I don't think we're going to get anything useful from them, but one thing has turned up - it seems they've attempted to invade a few different cultures to spread their religion, but they've never had one follow them back. I think we have the key to this as well."

He paused, obviously for effect.

"One of their officers, separated from the others, has been coerced into revealing that they were taught the secrets of dimensional travel by a dragon around what we believe to be three hundred of our years ago. It was a silver dragon."

A fair number of eyes went to the screen Tag and I were visible on.

"This may explain why the Harpagornis was able to calculate the spin so much faster than anyone else was able to. We suspect the 'aspect' of silver dragons is inter-dimensional travel. We still don't know why we have no records of any silver dragons, nor why Kim has DNA from one."

"We want you to deliver a warning to these people to back off. We suspect if we let them know we can strike back, they'll leave us along and go find easier targets. We have recovered a number of escape capsules from their ship. We want you to return most of their crew to them, with a warning that we'll leave them alone if they leave us alone."

"Sir, isn't that just going to push the problem to another group of innocents?" asked Dirk.

"Maybe, but we've been at peace for centuries. We just don't have the infrastructure to fight a prolonged battle, and frankly, the Admiralty is concerned that the Confederation might fracture, those not being attacked not wanting to devote additional resources for a war until it's on their doorstep and too late."

That was a sobering thought.

"We have a recording for you to play on the local airwaves when dropping them off, here's our translation."

Some text flashed up on the screen.

"You have sent spies to infiltrate us. You have carried out pre-emptive strikes killing our citizens. We have defended ourselves against your aggression into our territory, and we have followed you back. As a gesture of good faith we return your crews to you. Leave us alone, and we will leave you alone."

"We're hoping that will be enough to scare them off. As far as we know no-one has ever managed to follow them back. Now, Kim, do you think you can get our entire strike force across?"

"Yes, sir. I should even be able to pre-compute return spins for two or three locations each." I responded.

"Good. Give everyone two escape points, one a common one for us all to spin out from, and scattered ones so if we need to break off we can spin back from different points."

"Sir, " said Leck Yral, Red's captain, "if they're paranoid religious nut-jobs, isn't there a fair chance they'll shoot their own crews down, either thinking it's a trick or they have been religiously contaminated?"

"Probably. Kim, how close can you get us to the surface?"

"If we spin from the corresponding location, it's probably safe from around twenty kilometres up. Atmosphere we can deal with even if it'll be very rough, but even cloud could be disastrous."

"That'll have to do. We've got six escape capsules, so we'll load up one each and keep the last one here for future actions. We spin in, fan out and get as close to the surface as possible, dump the pods, start the broadcast only after dumping them, then get out to the spread-out return spin points. If it takes them a month to calculate one set, it might give them pause if we escape from five different locations this soon."

He paused to look around the room.

"Any comments?"

None came.

"Right, we're go for six hours. Dismissed!"

We shut down our video link, and I got to work calculating spins. Only when I was trying to pre-calculate such that others could use it did I realise how tough it really was. Without realising it before, my neural pathways were guiding my computer calculating chips in ways I hadn't realised. I'd only done enough for five return vectors when everyone else joined us in our suddenly crowded section of space.

The information was dense enough we needed to do tentacle data exchanges, radio just didn't have the bandwidth. However, I did give everyone all five return vectors, so if one area had a giant warship on top of it or something they could pick a different point.

The Commodore had actually come up on the Tarnakdoe, and transferred over to us.

"Commodore on the bridge!" I announced from attention as he came in.

"As you were." he stated. The bridge looked fuller than it ever had before, with all four of our temporary officers, myself and Tag, and the Commodore. The officers had all been tasked with data collection while we were in enemy space.

"Good to have you on board, sir." said Tag.

"If I had to pick a ship, and the Admiralty did want me to come on this one, I'd pick the one most likely to get back if it all goes pear-shaped. Sub-Lieutenant, how long could would it take you to plot a return course from any point we happened to be at?"

"From my extremely limited experience, about three to four seconds, sir." I replied.

"That's about a month better than anyone else I know." he said.

"Right you are, sir." I said back, trying to maintain a straight face.

"Return Group from Flag, descend to atmosphere." the Commodore announced. "Sub-Lieutenant Kim, lay in a course to your designated spin point and relay."

"Aye, sir." I also flashed up in a corner of the main screen the spin point, our position, and the intended path.

Soon we were in position, all fanned out in a circle, facing outwards.

"Return Group from Flag, synchronisation from Harpagornis, spin in thirty seconds. Follow plan and silence until broadcasting message."

"Return Group from Harpagornis, hold position." I announced, making last corrections for everyone's exact position and orientation and passing them across.

"Spin in three ... two ... one ... Spin!" I announced, and we were through.

We were now in silence, not passing messages to each other. I dove forward and towards the ground, tearing down at nine times the speed of sound. Much faster and I'd have trouble with wind opening the cargo bay to let them out. I opened two rear doors on opposing side at the same time to even the airflow, and chucked out the escape pod with a tentacle. As soon as the tentacle was back inside, I slammed the opening rods shut and lifted for space, starting to play the message.

"We're being fired on by an orbital platform!" yelled one of the officers. I had already spotted it, and was bringing up avoidance vectors on screen.

"Missiles!" I shouted.

"Point defence!" yelled Tag. I started firing small bursts at the oncoming missiles to disable them. Easy at this range, but it would get a lot hairier as we got closer.

"What's the closest you can get to them and keep this up?" Tag asked.

"About thirty kilometres." I answered.

"Calculate a spin from there?"

"Can do, and in time."

"Play chicken, ship." he ordered.

So I changed my course to head straight for the orbital platform. I broke atmosphere and accelerated to the maximum speed I could manage, about one percent of light speed. Dragon flight is interesting, you don't accelerate through reaction, it's more like pulling on the space/time fabric of the universe. The best analogy would be swimming - you tend to drift in the direction you were last going if you don't provide power, but you can quickly speed up to a maximum and slow down again by applying power.

At this speed I was four seconds from impact. I felt a wrenching pain in the left wing, then we spun.

"Tactical, status?" ordered Tag.

"Back in our dimension, spun at twenty-five kilometres or point zero five two of a second before impact, sir."

"Probably having a brown trouser day. Err, sir." Tag said, catching himself with the Commodore lurking behind him.

"Any sign they reacted?" the Commodore asked.

"They had been launching two missiles per second until we sped up, then they jumped to eight, sir." the tactical officer stated.

"And they fired an X-ray laser at us right at the end, which is why I'm in great pain, missing a chunk of my left wing, and why we spun five kilometers late." I said, breaching protocol by talking out of turn, but glaring at the tactical officer for not noticing we'd been hit and I'd lost two of the emitters.

"You OK?" Tag asked, suddenly concerned.

"I'm still space-worthy. Not letting you down that easily, sir." I replied.

"Comms, how are the others?" the Commodore asked.

"Retrack, Zewhy, and Tarnakdoe are back," said the comms officer, "Garyal not present, sir."

Jet! What had happened to her?

Then Jet appeared.

"Garyal returned, sir." said the comms officer.

"At Zewhy's spin point, and with fore structural damage." I added.

[[Jet! What happened?]] Actually that was Kart as she was closest to Jet. Speed of light does make a difference at the rates we communicate.

[[Tangled with an orbital platform blocking my path. Shot down all the missiles, but they scored with an X-ray laser. Big hole in the front cargo bay, hurts a bitch.]]

[[You too?]] I asked. [[I lost a chunk of my left wing.]]

[[They were damn fast to react given the lack of notice we gave them.]] Pif noted.

[[At least we all got out.]] Jet responded.

[[I cheated, I played chicken and recalculated a spin a twentieth of a second from impact.]] I sent back.

[[Ho ho, and with the Commodore on board!]] Jet sent.

[[Captain's orders, that's my defence.]] I responded.

Well, after the metaphorical dust settled, we figured out some interesting things. The missiles started firing the instant there was clear line of sight to us from two of the orbital platforms, plus a fraction of a second for speed of light delay. One had visibility throughout the whole operation, and when firing commenced one that didn't have line of sight because the planet was in the way started indirect missile launches.

From this we deduced the initial firing was some kind of automated system. We suspect because we spun inside the atmosphere with line of sight to only one platform that defeated some of their checks. The increased rate of fire started from different platforms at different times, so we suspected that increased firing rate was when humans took control.

Stationary weapons platforms were something of a foreign concept to the Confederation. Space combat in general wasn't common, and when it did occur it was ship-to-ship or with ground-based planetary defences. Possibly with living ship technology, if you're going to get something up there it may as well be spin-capable. The closest they had was a couple of zero-g manufacturing facilities at LaGrange points in various systems.

Jet and I got fixed back up fairly quickly, since the pattern of our ships had already been established, we just got dumped in a nutrient tank and let regeneration and the nanites do their job. The wing was re-grown in 12 hours, although it didn't feel quite right for flying for another day or so after that. Jet took about a day to heal up, but had no residual effects after that.

Digging through the captured ship turned up a gold mine in an unexpected location - one of the rooms had a corpse in it with a PDA with an electronic encyclopaedia loaded. Eventually that ship was towed to the sun as well, but the PDA proved interesting. It seems their spin technology, being mage-based, was incapable of handling vessels over a size limit not dissimilar to our own size - and we, while not small, were certainly not even medium by Confederation standards.

It also seemed they were not native to that dimension. Some demonic horde known simply as "The Foe" had been wiping them out in some other dimension, and a silver dragon known only as "Kalrissa" had taught them how to escape before their dimension was completely overrun. Reading between the lines, the demons had attacked living ships first due to the greater magical energy, so living ships can been on the outer when their religion renamed itself "The Faithful" and "returned to core family values" after the shift, which we read as "completely re-invented to suit our needs after escaping something horrific."

As Pif summed it up "They've been scared witless and are bullying others to try and overcome how scared they are."

We maintained a "heightened state of readiness", but not much happened after that.

Based on a trick Kart had heard of while in his first life, we swapped very small samples of living cells between the five of us, and used it to create psionic links to communicate telepathically. It was somewhat like the messaging we had been using, but you could feel emotion over it, couldn't be jammed or intercepted, and seemed to be instant rather than be limited by the speed of light. After telling Tag of what we had done, he volunteered a small bit of muscle from his upper arm, and I found I could communicate mentally with him as well, although I had to initiate it and it wasn't as clear as with the others.

I remembered all the SF shows I watched in my previous life, and was intrigued with the idea of teleportation. I started experimenting with an empty cargo canister while station keeping. Basically I calculated a spin but excluded everything except the thing I wanted to send from the field. After a couple of nasty accidents, I had it down safely, but could only cast outwards, I couldn't get things back.

I tried showing it to my fellow ships, but they could only "cast", as we began calling it, a few kilometres, while I seemed to be able to do it from around the range of lunar orbit. It was still a very neat trick, and saved us all some time getting to command after landing in water.

After the combat the Commodore put us ships all in for recommendations for promotions, and this was approved a week later. We all passed the required tests, so the five of us were now Lieutenants. We had a girl's night out on the "town", such that it was, to celebrate.

After two months with nothing happening, dangerous duty loading were removed from our payments. Only one or two ships were up at any one time, and none on hot-standby with marines ready to jump at a moments notice. The money coming in was now only just keeping up with the interest on our repayments, which wasn't making any of us happy. The employee pay we received as lieutenants got paid into an account we could use as spending money, or transfer to the ship loan, but the amounts involved were almost inconsequential next to the size of the ship loan. Still, given I didn't want to go backwards, and I could get Tag to pay for just about anything I needed that I couldn't conjure myself, most of my salary went on the ship loan as well. Conjuring clothes saved a lot of money, given I was something of a clothes horse, as were all the others, come to think of it.

Some mage boffins turned up to study the "casting" I was doing. Once I found out it paid, I made sure the other four ships got roped in as well for "comparative purposes" and to see what could be rolled out to the fleet. Being a trade confederation, all they were thinking about was easier cargo off-loads. I sought out the marine lieutenant, and talked to him about combat insertions using it. The problem with combat insertions was that the target area had to be free of solids, but he was interested as the marines were bored too, and we had a lot of fun trying out some manoeuvres.

Tag and I still had fantastic sex, but it wasn't as urgent or as frequent. We had settled into a mode where we knew we had all the time in the world to be with each other, and were loving just being together and doing things together.

It was something of a relief when Jet, Fix, Tag, and I were summoned to command one day.

"Right, something is finally happening. The Admiralty has got off their collective behinds and wants to change some things. Fix, you're going to be taking charge here soon. I've received approval for you to sit your Commodore's exams, although unfortunately it's an acting position only. As soon as you pass, I'm out of here."

I knew Fix was actually the only captain in the group who had arrived here with the rank of Captain, Tag and the others had been Commanders on arrival, so him getting the promotion made sense.

"Tag, the Harpagornis has been ordered to shuttle me to Rigel Three once Fix takes over here, and apparently the boffins have more tests for you two to try and discover more about silver dragons."

"Jet, because your captain is going up a rank, you'll have the opportunity to sit your Lieutenant-Commander exams. Outside training, a ship isn't supposed to be more than three ranks below her captain, preferably one or two, but you haven't been with us long enough for that."

"Kim, everyone's interested in you as the only one to calculate inter-dimensional spins in anything close to real-time, you have no been declared a strategic asset. You get to sit exams for a rank increase as well."

"Sorry Tag, nothing for you."

"It's good, sir. My sister has a house on Rigel Four, I might be able to catch up while we are there."

"Right, dismissed!"

We all shuffled out into the hall. Jet and I took one look at each other, squealed, and gave each other a giant hug.

"The others will be so jealous!" Jet said excitedly.

"Hey, don't we get any of this action? Fix asked.

Jet and I winked at each other, grabbed our captains, and pulled them into a four-way hug.

"Man, that's better!" Tag exclaimed.

"Dinner to celebrate?" I asked.

"Time to dress up!" Jet squealed.

"Think we can get the boys here into something decent?" I asked.

"Hey, we're right here!" Fix said.

"And loving it by the location your blood's pooling." I winked at him.

"Hey, steady on!" Tag said.

"Two hours? Officer's mess?"Jet asked.

"We'll make it!" I said, pulling Tag off. It was going to be close to get back my ship in time, but we can cast back to be here in no time.

<<Hey, Jet!>> I thought at her when I was showering.

<<Wazzup?>>

<<I'm planning on wearing stockings and suspenders. What say you do the same and we give our men our panties halfway through dinner?>>

<<For sure! Wow, are they going to be squirming!>>

<<And hopefully get us squirming later, but yes.>> I smiled back at her. This was so much better with emotional context.

Dinner was nice, both looked very studly in their tuxedos. The men got only slightly drunk, even though they were putting a lot away. Not that Jet or I could actually get drunk, given our thinking was all done back in our ship bodies and our nanites took care of the rest.

Just before dessert came out, Jet and I got up and went to the ladies room without saying anything, only winking at our respective partners.

"They're going to love this!" Jet said, as we fixed our makeup and pulled off our panties, putting them in our purses.

We walked back together to the table.

"Better, girls?" asked Tag.

"Oh, much better." i said. "I feel so much freer."

Jet giggled.

"What are you two up to?" Fix asked.

"Oh, nothing" we responded in stereo, pulling out our undies and placing them in our captain's suit jacket pockets.

"Is that what I think it is?" Fix asked.

"Why don't you find out?" Jet asked.

I didn't expect him to, but he actually put his hand down to Jet's thigh. She had a dress with a huge slit in the side, whereas I had gone for something tight over the bodice and loose and flowing over the legs. She spread her legs slightly and he actually slid his hand over her leg and down to her crotch.

"Wow!" he mumbled.

Tag looked at me, and I just looked back at him. We communicated enough, paraphrased it was "You too?" and "Yes, my idea." He grinned.

I leaned over towards him so I could whisper in his ear.

"There's a reason this dress is so loose and flowing, I could sit on your lap and likely no-one would notice what we were doing."

Jet had clearly overhead that. Well, if I hadn't intended her to, I would have used the mental link with Tag.

<<You didn't tell me that!>>

<<I thought it was obvious! We have no accommodation here any more, we need to get back to our ship bodies to get to bed, so if you don't want it to be obvious you have to hide it somehow!>>

<<You're a bad girl!>> she thought playfully.

<<Why, thank you!>> I responded, equally as playfully. <<From you I'll take that as a compliment!>>

My only answer was the sense of uproarious laughter.

We had desert, and the entendres were flying thick and fast. Afterwards Jet and Fix went straight to one of the boats, but I suggested a walk in one of the parks to Tag. Even though the accommodation blocks averaged four stories high, they put parks between them so the view out the window would be trees rather than another building.

"Honey, exactly what are you planning?" he asked as we neared the park.

"We're going to find somewhere you can sit so that I can sit on your lap."

"But there are so many apartments! Anyone could see us."

"Even if they do see us, and I don't doubt some will, they're only going to see us necking. We're not in uniform and we're off duty, so it'd be hard to ping us for 'conduct unbecoming'."

"I'm really not sure this is a good idea."

"Your secondary brain seems fairly sure." I glanced down at the not insignificant bulge in his pants.

"Here we go." I said, motioning to a small tree stump. The wood looked old and soft, the tree had probably been cut down after dying.

He held both my hands as he sat down, unwilling to let me go. I flowed as I sat down, straddling him, my dress concealing everything.

"Umm, honey, I have a problem." He was still zipped up.

"Oh, poor baby." I said, leaning forward to lick his neck as I playfully ran my fingernails, only just within regulation length, up and down his sides under his jacket, which he had unbuttoned as we left the officer's mess.

"Please." he pleaded.

I sort of fluffed my skirt at the front with one hand so I could get the other underneath the skirt, and undid the velcro-like fastenings that all clothes here used. I fished inside, pulling his underwear down just enough for his cock to spring out.

"Mmm, looks like I found something tasty!" I gushed.

Keeping the hand down their for guidance, I rocked up and forwards, then back down, impaling myself on his dick. Due to the angle he couldn't get full penetration, but it was certainly far enough in to provide me with more than adequate stimulation.

I withdraw the hand, bringing both up behind his neck.

"You are so wet!" he said.

"You think I haven't been looking forward to this as well?" I asked.

He started to move.

"Uh uh! Slowly, this time. Try to pretend you're not in me." I gave him a slow kiss, putting as much emotion into it as a could. I brought up the psychic link between us to the lowest level, and let my love for him flow across it. I felt a sense of wonder from the other side.

The dress I had on was a halter neck with an open back, so he was free to run his hands up and down my back. We continued to kiss, and slowly but surely we started the tiniest of movements down below.

After a bit one of his hands moved to the side of my breast where it joined the ribcage, he knew that drove me crazy, mainly with desire for more touching. I slapped the hand away.

"No, honey, we don't want anyone to think we're doing anything inappropriate!" I winked at him.

The torrent of emotion coming from him was almost getting confusing, the love, the lust, the wonder, and the fear of getting caught spicing up the whole event. I caught a slightly analytical side coming through.

"No honey, no maths to stave yourself off. Come for me."

He looked deep in my eyes, and I felt an element of tension add to the mix.

<<Yes, I'm close too, come for me.>> I sent directly into his mind. His hips arched up, pushing his lovely cock all the way into me for the first time that evening, and that sent me over the edge even as I felt his seed start to pump into me. I made sure to let him feel the emotion of the orgasm he had triggered in me, and my love for him.

We'd learnt early on that sharing the emotions was fine, but trying to share the actual sensations stuffed things right up. It reminded me too much of my past life, and he didn't like the feelings of submissive penetration.

We just sat there, feeling our love pour between us as he emptied himself into me. Eventually we both came down from orgasmic high, and shortly after that he slipped out of me. I pouted, triggering a gentle laugh from him. I reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved my panties, and deftly snuck them back under my dress, doing my best to dry us both off. I made a show of pulling my hand back out, and having a good sniff.

<<Heavenly.>> I sent, before shoving them back in his jacket pocket, and standing up in a whirl away from him.

"Oops, did I forget to tuck you in?" I asked impishly.

I'd never seen him turn so red so fast before, as he slipped himself back inside and fastened his pants back up. If you looked closely you could see the area around the fly was slightly damp.

"Someone could have seen us!" he hissed.

"Unlikely, your backs to that block and there's no clear line of sight to the others. I was careful, you know."

His face softened. "I can't stay angry with you."

"You were never angry, just embarrassed." I said, then not wanting to seem like I was rubbing in our telepathy, added "We know each other to well."

"Just about right, I think." he said, taking me in another kiss.

"How about we get back to our quarters?" I asked.

"Where's the nearest boat?"

"There's a small remote controlled one that's been on the beach just over there for the last two minutes."

"You're too good."

"For you? I try to think of everything."

We just snuggled when we got back. It was more than enough.

---

For your information:

Ship	Captain	Colour	Speciality
Kim Harpagornis	Tag Hargel	Silver	Unknown
Pif Retrack	Dirk Lunga	Blue	Energy
Jet Garyal	Fix Quatar	Green	Physical
Kart Zewhy	Neg Fnark	Red	Life
Red Tarnakdoe	Leck Yral	Yellow	Movement