I’m getting a welcome signal. Someone wants me to come visit them.

There’s a little HAM Digital receiver in the flight deck. I picked it up in a truck stop, with a wink and a nod, for $100 bucks, ten years ago. It’s about the size of a lunch box, with a four foot antenna cluttering up the deck. I’ve got a pretty heft load on the antenna, so it’s strong enough to pick up from inside the ship. There’s no jack for an antenna on the surface hull, and it would get melted into vapor on re-entry in any case.

No voice, just text, it’s little screen is blinking. I’ve run through someone’s signal, 198 light years into deep space.

“Come to Logan’s Fun,” says the message. Coordinates and a date. The date is 25 years, three months and five days ago. There’s also a picture of a little girl, captioned, “Kasey Logan, ‘Five, but I’m almost six.’” She has a missing tooth, mousy brown hair blue eyes, and she’s 31 now.

Why would I want a HAM radio? Coms are done with quantum entanglement, instant. Radio waves travel at the speed of light. Pretty useless for an intergalactic traveler.

But not for a smuggler.

They—we—call them dark stations. Deep space stations, off the grid and covered in stealth technology. Most of them are run by crazy anti-government Libertarians, who spend a lot of money to keep themselves out of the purview of the SOI. They have no net presence, don’t advertise, and—like the fight clubs of classic literature—no one talks about them. Not with people who don’t know about them already.

Twenty five light years away is a week’s trip. In another twenty five years their signal with hit the main shipping routes, and they’ll have to move. Unless I’m intercepting an old signal and they’ve moved already.

“Clearly,” I say aloud, (I’ve been talking to myself more, getting used to my voice), “I can’t spend the fuel.” I’m smuggling guns, there aren’t a lot of legit gas stations out here.

That’s not the reason. I have more than enough fuel, and illicit stations sell fuel too.

I always drop by the dark stations. I brought cash to barter with. And father expects at least one crate to go mysteriously missing on a run like this. The guys running these stations are nuts for the shit I’m selling. It’s so far off the records we don’t even talk about it, but when I make a run there’s an extra (off manifest) crate in the hold, and it sells for twice as much.

It sells for three times as much, but as long as we’re fudging the books, there’s no reason Eleven has to be straight too.

And you can buy anything on a dark station. Drugs? Sure, drugs that you can’t get anywhere else. Drugs that’ll take a week off your memory and a year off your life. Contraband? See: above re: illegal guns. There’s shot-on-sight level stealth tech Printing mods for stuff you could never find, even on corners of the deep web. Women? Don’t even get me started on the women. Dark stations cater to real weirdos. You can find women with holes, in their holes.

But with recent… developments? I pull the antenna and let it snap back, dejected. I can talk to Susan and Dr. Jordan, but I haven’t talked to a man yet.

I’m safe with women, at a distance, but now? The way my fantasies are lately, I’m not sure what I would do. Jump someones bones, or throw up in fear.

~

The most popular porn searches for women are: lesbian, threesome, anal, and orgy. I’ve been in some orgies, it’s not really a fantasy of mine. But I’m watching them more now. A lot more.

Bonobo monkeys are some of the closes to us, genetically and socially. And they fuck like a teenage fantasy. Assuming teens fantasize about humans who fuck like bonobo monkeys. Before missionary and monogamy, human women were into more “come one, come all” relationships. That’s what the moans are for, if you believe the sociologists. Women make noise to tell all the guys in the area that the shop is open for business.

Maybe that’s why I don’t moan. I’m trying to moan more though. I don’t know why.

I still don’t know how I feel about sucking dick, but for some reason, I know how I feel about sucking more than one. Good is how I feel about that. Alternating between one and another, hands an lips and hands. And riding and sucking. Yeah, I feel like I could totally take a couple of dicks.

I’m laying in bed, wearing the heels again. Sometimes I masturbate without them, sometimes I do it with heels and tights. Tonight it’s heels, and I’m sitting on a pillow on the bunk, straddling it, leaning back and using my favorite three fingers. My right hand holds the rail of the top bunk. I’m on the pillow, because now being on top is a loose fantasy.

The tighter fantasy is being on bottom. Wrapping my legs around someones head. When I do that, I can’t imagine getting plowed. Having my pussy filled with dick, as I lay on my back is way too far for me to go.

But riding? Being in control of some guys cock? Somehow that feels safe.

While I jack off (I have to find another term now, I guess), in my mind I’m riding a rod. In my head I can feel it. Bending over every couple of seconds, I brush my lips over the pillow, and imagine I’m feeling the skin around his dick. Then I lean back and clutch the tip of one of the heels and imagine I’m riding him cowboy.

I’ve experimented with fingers in my pussy. At first it was a 50/50 spit between pleasure and pain. Now it’s about 65/35. It’s best when I just rest the pad of my index finger against the entrance to my hole, and then let the rest of my finger run over my clit. The first time I did that I came within seconds.

I have to take a second to put a finger in my mouth. Now I’ve got two dicks, one to ride and one to suck. I’m sure it’s a terrible substitute, but I don’t have anything better right now.

Then my brain wants more, and I lay my chest on the bed, and stick my ass up into the air. My right hand is tearing up my clit, a finger almost in to the first knuckle. And then my left hand goes to the other hole.

It shocks me, to be honest. I’m not at all sure what I’m doing. And I don’t stick anything inside. But now I’ve got a fingernail running over the outside of my butthole. It tweaks all of the little ridges (turns out Gen-Bs have those too) and hangs on them occasionally.

That’s another guy out there. Another dick ready to fill me up. Oh god, I’m close and it’s gonna be big.

His head is making a little exploration of my butthole. I use the pad of my finger, feels more like a pecker.

Doing that I feel like a little barrier inside me has been broken, and oblivious to the pain, I jam my finger straight into my pussy.

I don’t move much at all, but in my head I’m almost knocked over. My imaginary guy is behind me now, I’m no longer on top. He’s fucking me doggy style like a… Don’t think about it Eleven. Just imagine him drilling you. I want that to be a real dick, and I want it pounding me so hard my head crushes the mattress until my neck aches.

And I come right then and there, with a finger as deep inside me as I can get it.

I kick the heels off, and fall asleep, still idly fingering the ring of my anus.

~

I’m brought out of a dream I don’t remember by the shriek of the fire alarm. Over the klaxon is a female voice calmly telling me that the med-bay is a fucking inferno right now.

I have to find the fire panel to get it under control. It’s nice that the fire panel is in the corridor next to the med-bay, because yes, it’s very on fire.

The hatch slammed shut when the panel found no life signs inside, but I have to authorize fire measures before it’ll stop all of the burning. It’s regulation on some of the older ships, I don’t know why.

I stab the button, and in less than a second there’s no more oxygen in the med-bay, and no more fire too.

Through the port I can see the gen tank is has blown to smithereens, blackened the wall and the ceiling, and covered the floor in little bits of razor sharp glass.

I lay my head against the bulkhead and feel the adrenaline drain out of my body. I want to cry. I blame that on my adrenal gland, and not my crazy thymus. My muscles are trembling, even my diaphragm as I take shaky breaths. I think a little bit is that I’ve never had an emergency with these muscles before.

I open the hatch and look at the damage. Dammit, I can’t go in there naked and barefoot.

I go to the bunk house, and print a nice solid pair of boots, and some comfy socks. I have to wait thirty minutes while they come in, and in the meantime I go to the con and start running emergency checks. This takes twenty five minutes to go over, while I wonder just how fucked I am. Obviously AAA doesn’t tow out here.

But I can’t think of anything that the med bay could have running through it. It’ not like there’s any hydraulic that goes through there. The electric didn’t short out anywhere, so that’s not a problem.

Then the computer generates the check sheet and I see that I’m motherfucked.

The fire has managed to hit some kind of chemical… thing… and that got in to the water filtration system. I don’t have any idea what it is, because all the sheet says is “compromised.”

That’s a big problem. If the system doesn’t know what it is, it can’t filter it out. And if it can’t filter it out, it shuts down for my safety. Now all the water I have left is what’s in the potable tank.

I put my head in my hands for a second feel myself start to cry, and then stop. Something inside me decides that crying isn’t worth it. I’m pretty sure I’ll cry later. Not now.

I run my hands through my hair for a bit. The last of the adrenaline is gone, and I’m feeling the part of the come down where you just want to get to work.

I go to put on the boots.

~

The work boots have printed. I slip the socks on and they feel okay on my feet. Then I stand and slip my feet into the boots, heels style. It’s a second before I realize I have to lace them, and then I sit on the bed, and bend at the waist. I feel like I’ve lost something, and that feels… something. Definitely not good. I would know if it felt good. I keep reminding my self that it doesn’t.

The camera in the bay is fried, but the data it sent to the brain isn’t. From the con, I watch the nurse-bot carefully screw with some of the tanks. Sabotage.

I step into the med-bay and hear the glass crunch under my boots. Every cannister is blown to ribbons, the nurse is shrapnel in the wall, there’s bits of blackened plastic everywhere. It looks like the liquid I was breathing all that time was flammable. Makes sense. It must have been mostly oxygen. From there some of the disposables and antiseptics caught fire and that spread all over the place.

I forgot about the drain in the floor. The med-bay was designed so you could mop up a lot of… fluids. From bodies. That’s where it got compromised. Who knows what’s in the sewer tank. Now I’m glad I won’t be drinking it.

There’s a closet with some work gloves, and I put them on. A trash can trundles in, and I put everything it can’t lift up inside it. Boots on, socks on, gloves on, the rest naked. I don’t have the energy for that to turn me on right now.

The trashcan has a sweeper, and I tell it to start picking up the glass.

I’m definitely not a mechanic, but enough mechanics make DIY videos on the net, and Bertha is old enough that there are a lot of videos. I figure out where the water tank is and how to get to it. Print some overalls, and prepare to get really dirty.

It takes the better part of two hours, while I remove pieces of corridor, then the pieces behind those pieces. Then the pieces behind those pieces. When I get to the tank I can see the little light up error panel with the helpful word “ERROR” on it, and a code. I look up on the net, and it tells me…jack shit. All the code means is the kind of diagnostic equipment I need. A DX-Series 7. There’s nothing like that on the manifest, but I go through the storage lockers anyway. There’s a bunch of cables, an old tablet, and a single ladies shoe (size 16 1/2).

Guess I’m going to the dark station.