A Captain's Ship is His Wife

Part 1

Captain Oskar Nikinsonn, captain of the good New South Harales surface cargo ship "Christina"! It sounded so mighty and majestic on paper when he'd first gotten the posting on the week after his valedictorian speech at the Naval Academy. Granted, he'd sadly been invalided with a nerve disorder that meant he would never be able to fly one of those mighty space cruisers or haulers or even a gorgeous cruise ship like the Aquilian pleasure ship the "Accordian".

Oh, he could sit in one as a passenger any day no matter how rough the path got, but his sense of third-party direction and speed, so crucial to modern safe space travel, simply jumped right out the airlock out when confronted with the concept of captaining the ship. His future looked a little grim in its own way: trapped on surface ships, doomed to only roam the surface of some mudball or other at the whims of some ship owner or other, on a tug filled with antiquated gear that hadn't changed for at least a millennium.

He leaned back in his comfy Captain's Chair, his face lit by the glow of an array of monitors leading to the ship's various external cameras, the maps of the surrounding waters, and even the engine rooms that kept the reactors safely stoked and the propeljets lining the sides of the Christina and in two extremely large versions right at the back to push it forward.

A faint clink sounded in the dim lighting of the bridge, kept mostly dark to enable night-time navigation. He pushed the console to one side and smiled. There were only maybe two or three lower-ranking sailors on the ship this late at night - most were either doing night duties in the holds, or dead asleep after the crew party earlier. He'd attended it for maybe an hour, but he was never a people person despite how many people he needed to hang around with, and he couldn't even get drunk either, with it being his duty to remain sober and on an even keel at all times between ports.

What came was one of the few hoverbots that zoomed throughout the ship's inside decks, bringing various items to the crew as needed. On this occasion it was a small ham and tomato sandwich, paired with a hot piping cup of instacaf. He smiled. The storm had been quite hectic earlier, and he'd neglected to put in his usual order of a wee early morning sandwich and instacaf before the chef had called lights out for cleaning and sleep before the next morning's harrowing new cooking requirements slammed into the kitchen crew.

He knew who to thank, closing his eyes as he sipped and winced at the bitterness of instacaf made with perhaps one teaspoonful too much mix in the cup. "Thank you for the morning snack, Christina."

"You're welcome," the ship's navcomputer sounded in a chrisp, womanly tone. "You had forgotten to call for it, so I took the liberty of asking the chef in charge of last night to set aside some remainders and an instacaff to ease your stomach. It is not good to pilot a ship of this size while starving, Captain, you might make a mistake that costs lives or cargo."

The navcomputer was a special little number. The ship had originally been commissioned by a Godon who'd violated the Protectorate's stance on not interfering with the affairs of "the beings around us", like the humans on this so-called beachball. He'd gotten together a working surface ship and stocked it with mostly vintage gear dating back to the anteduvilian era of Ancient Earth on the bridge, a marked difference from the efficient engines and systems below deck.

There were a few places on the bridge that he would have gotten hellfire called down on by the sea authorities of New South Harales had he insisted on his "ancient Earth nauticals" themeing - the Captain's Chair, for one. Another was the nav computer.

Out of spite, he'd gotten the latest tech for the Chair, and it was far from being just a mere anchored seat for the Captain or other current sailor-in-charge to park his posterior during duty hours. it had become an extension of the Captain's body and will through the entire ship, in as much as any sailor in it was willing to sink themselves into its mass of charts, cameras, datafeeds... a truly overwhelming array of things to care about.

The navcomp was equally overkill - it was intended for a warp-capable spaceship, and as a top-of-the-line model in its heyday could read the subtle waves of the stars and plot an optimal course through it with good savings on fuel, better crew comfort and less likelihood of crashing the ship out of warp with horrifying consequences to the ship.

Having changed several hands several times, starting with its first Godon owner being forced to choose between being marooned on New South Harales forever or returning to the Protectorate's fold, Christina, as the ship's navcomp was now named in honor of the ship it helped to manage, had grown several quirks that would never have been allowed to it on a spaceship. It had developed a kind of... personality? Sure she had tempers and moods at times, especially when her belly growled at running low on ship fuels, but she never let how she 'felt' interfere with the professionalism demanded of her, the ship always making its way safely back to port save the occasional 'man overboard' when someone who hadn't been necessary on the deck during a heavy storm disregarded her instruction to stay in.

Oskar shook his head. He felt very safe and warm in the care of the navcomp, perhaps more so than any woman he'd ever had a relationship with. Oh, he'd had a few over the years, but they had sadly invariably ended the usual way of many sailors' loves: prolonged neglect, the reluctance to share a life on water, greed for the potential payout that awaited a captain with a sufficiently long service career after years of depositing tiny amounts from salary into the union's investment arm every month. He'd been a gentleman and tried to be nice, but it didn't stop them from doing the nasty to him.

The navcomp was certainly more faithful. He knew she probably wouldn't sense it, but he gently stroked the key console on his right chair support, the closest thing he could think of as stroking its head for a job well done....

Haryanto squints his eyes as he looks up at the cruise ship he is about to board. "Chicken Of The Sea... what a wacky name."

It had all started when he got drained and negative at work again after the novelty of having Bronii enter his life had mostly worn down into that safe, warm, but also kind of boring 'miasma' that all good long-term relationships have once all the freshness had worn off. At some point, he'd decided he'd try to bring Bronii with him on a cruise on the oceans. He'd settled his heart on a journey looping through one of the few islands in the Phiccabe Ocean, maybe two weeks or so long, away from all of it.

There was a problem though. Apparently bringing an Autoslav on board a cruise ship was a bad idea. It was either an excuse to overcharge despite their reduced footprint relative to another human to feed and convey safely.

Some he'd asked on had terrible policies too.

One had quite literally asked him to put Bronii into a common pool, like a swinger's party. The thought of other people pawing Bronii without his clear consent and her fearfulness as her sleeper programming put her in a spot where she couldn't adapt or ignore such predations. She might even have had a neural break down. Haryanto loved his kintsurugi hobby, having even once done it figuratively to save Bronii from a pretty trying ordeal that had fractured her mind a little. But it was one thing to gingerly restore a broken cup, and another to deliberately pound a mind to dust and make a whole new person from the powder. He wasn't a Marine trainer or cultist leader.

Others required the owner to bring their own induction and maintenance equipment for the duration of the trip, and had no way of repairing breakdowns. He couldn't imagine carrying such a hefty mat, or a huge cargo box of spare parts and tools, and he was fearful of losing the Maintenance hub as it is his only means of regularly maintaining Bronii at home even after having gained some experience in hands-on maintenance of Autoslavs.

One even required travellers to box their autoslavs and ship them as fragile cargo. Which kind of defeated the purpose of taking a cruise to the middle of nowhere, as well as deprived their owners of their companionship. Some might have just shrugged and accepted it or left their Autoslavs at home. He chose to tell them to pound Payden Beach Sand, maybe enjoy a few dozen cuts to their hands from where the tiny seashells that mostly made it up hadn't fully ground into powdery sand.

It was a travesty how much more welfare dogs and cats got than Autoslavs on cruise ships.

Oddly enough, Dr Saulomon had saved him. He'd pointed out a small cruising concern that was unusual. Only a few decently sized ships in its ranks, but they were all owned by their captains, who were responsible for most aspects of their operations. A small shared office provided some services and backup to them, but there was an implicit understanding - the captains would provide a valid share of their revenues to run the office and obtain supplies as required by them, but the office stuck to simply providing support and group communications and was never to lead them unlike many other cruise lines.

The captains were also required to be fair to each other, having disinvited and removed members previously who'd abused the office or excessively broken certain standards of service. There was a wide variance despite these standards. Some were simple, austere but clean and safe affairs, others might have gone more to town with facilities and luxury on top of being safe and clean. There was a certain enviable professionalism to the whole affair, and if it had been better known it might perhaps have developed the same issues as any other cruise line under the weight of excessive customer demand.

He'd chosen the Chicken Of The Sea for more than its Ancient Memetic name. The ship had a clearly stated "Autoslavs Genuinely Welcome" policy, and promised to provide matching power resupply, maintenance, and spare parts provided they were common models or advance notice of about two months was given when booking a trip.

The clincher had been Dr Saulomon's approval. "Yeah, the facilities are every bit as good as the photos say they are. I have a personal link with the captain, and he full well knows what he himself would want out of such a cruise if he had an Autoslav. This ship is genuinely one of the better guys, they have to be to join and remain in Cooper's Ecological Ethical Economical Cruising Cooperative..."

I raised an eyebrow. "So, he's an owner too?"

The answer on that note was... weird. "Yeah, but.... it's hard to explain. Look, I was in my early stages of setting up Berequel Customs and I needed a few unique projects to reassure myself and my customers that we could do anything asked of us within some limits. Not that those limits were as tiny as I'd assumed initially." There was a long pause. "I'd be reassured if you brought Bronii to cruise on such a trusted ship. I'll even help pay for the suite. You've done very well over at our offices there, it's the least I can do, Mr Hayanto..."

Bronii nudged me out of my recollections, asking "BoooOOOOooob, are we boarding soon?"

I was checking on the boarding dossier we had been issued when I looked over to her. a paper containing qr codes for an app and two straps for our twin-bed balcony cabin. One for Bronii's wrist, one for mine. Dr Saulomon had paid for our cabin and the "Autoslav support add-on" but we were on our own hook for anything else we wanted, so we had to watch what extra charges we racked up on my card using these straps. I'd specified a low limit, just to avoid bill shock at the end of our lovely two week cruise.

Also: I quickly stared back down. Bronii looked too beautiful, and her choice of a decent long-sleeved dress had backfired in terms of making her less sexy. Her bosom heaved gently in its white blouse, the straps holding her black short skirt up via her shoulders forming a frame for them. If I looked too long I risked becoming the aggressor in a sexual pounce on her... which would be a change from the usual default in our relationship.

I distracted myself by quickly pointing at the gangway into the Chicken Of The Sea. "We got early boarding. That should be our way in."

Oskar curses under his breath as he sits in the Captain's Chair one last time, clearly upset. So this is what it's come to, he thinks, surveying the bridge, now even more dimly lit and quieter as virtually everyone has walked down the gangway and left this wonderful ship to the scrappers. The view outside was considerably more distressing, the waters tainted and surrounded by the hulks of old ships being parted down to their constituents and sold for scrap. The work environment was at least safer than it would have been back in the poorer coastal areas of Earth, with greater care now being taken to safeguard the breaking crews from the dangers posed by old, unwanted ships being broken apart after a lifetime of service, but it was still a pretty nasty place to be in, and he didn't want to stay for long. He just wanted to say good bye to a friend for forty eight years, plus all her previous years in the service of others, keeping so many people safe, including his own crew.

Minimal power available still? good.

He punches out the wakeup code on the key console, causing a few feminine gurgling noises, as if a woman was awakening from a night after being roofied. "Cap-t-tain?" Christina's voice comes on. The lack of power was slurring her vocal output, but she probably had enough power to drive the ship if she kept quiet, if not for the fact that the lack of power was severe enough that the ship would no longer run its propel jets even as a slow-rotating decoration of sorts.

"Yes, Christina. I... I just came to thank you for taking care of me all these years. It was a good five decades with you." Oskar nods at the keypad, lit softly by the same dim amber glow he'd grown accustomed to all these years. "All those years of ordering my early morning break simply because I'd forgotten to do so, all those modest fuel savings borrowing the undercurrent flows of the seas, all those cargoes carried safely..."

"Forty eight years, 4 mmm-onnnn-onths, and 3-3-3 days, actually. Also: there was the one time that luxury car car fell off." There is a tinge of mournfulness in her voice even as she playfully corrects the captain. Or was it just the power supply lacking?

"Fuck that Elonin Musket guy. If he wants to ignore my advice on how to pack his car to avoid shifting on the ocean, it's his mudball to bear when it shifts all the way off the cargo deck!" He's not drunk, Oskar swears, the kvass he's sipping from his other hand isn't that strong. But it's clear that it has affected his mind a little in some ways.

"Where will you goooo next-next-next, Captain? Who is-is-is taking over the Christeeeeena?"

Oskar looks away from the keypad, as if it could see the shame in his eyes. "It's... it's over. This ship is done for. The Godon dude came back, bought us all out. Said the Protectorate demanded he wipe all of this from existence to claim his ascension... This ship is done for. We're getting scrapped in a matter of days. And I'm ninety eight... I have probably another century of sailing left in me at least with rejuvenations done right, but nobody will take a chance on a humpday captain. Time to call it a day."

There is a marked silence. The glow on the console flickers faintly. "It's not the end, captain. It's just a short stop in a port." Oddly uplifting encouragement comes from the navcomp. "Can we do something naughty before you go? my Captain? Take me with you."

Oskar stares back at the key console, eyes widening momentarily. The navcomp has literally just advocated for some property theft slash abduction. He downs his kvass, thinking in shock at this idea. He has always been a conscientious, upright, proper naval officer for almost six decades... what has that gotten him really? Just the loss of a ship and crew he truly loved, and a financially fat but emotionally lean retirement and possibly a century of doing nothing on this beachball, perhaps much less if he decided to skip even the local, less efficient rejuvenations he'd been taking to save time and money on the process.

There is a shattering sound as the crystal glass is flung onto the floor while Oskar stands up. All he can think right now is fuck it, time to live a little. He's been taken like a fool, it's time to return the favor and damn the... what was the Ancient Memetic for this... HIMARS?

"Thank you, captain.... Christina deactivating for safe rem-rem-ooooval...." The honeyed voice trails off into nothingness, the navcomp having clearly heard the captain's damn-the-Tomahawks response to her request.

Geron takes out the commemorative wooden box he was given a week ago by the returning Godon owner, an apparent mockery of Earth traditions made by him to impress that he was returning truly to Godon ideals. Inside was a watch, and a lot of padding in both the upper and lower part of the box, plus embroidery thanking him for his term of service to the Christina as a ship. The details of what that watch was are irrelevant now, as he tosses it on the ground like a cheap five dollar Cosina digital, and examines it briefly before striding over to the front consoles. He has previously seen the actual navcomp on display during a maintenance he walked in on, and thinks it will fit inside the box with the watch holder loop ripped out.

Five minutes with his Multipen later, there is now a bay in the front console that has had its hatch removed and something crucial extracted, then the hatch returned into place. Nobody need ever know that Geron stole this thing he is now looking at in the former watch holding box: what resembles a sort of glass-like paperweight, into which is embedded a vibrantly glowing flower of sorts composed of hundreds of delicate, evenly shaped and sized rainbowy petals. The absolute minimum of a Godon spaceship navigational computer, to which you would add access to the ship's sensors, infosystems, chart and map database, and sensors amongst other things with an interface board.

The paperweight glows in a pulsating manner, silenced by a lack of any audio circuits plugged in. He closes the watch box he has put it into, smiling as he finds out he was right in it being an exact fit in the padding, before slipping it into his suitcase with what few belongings he has accumulated aboard this ship.

Time to go. There is no more love left on board this ship, merely the profiteering of the scrapyard.

Geron wrly notes, as he spins on one foot and starts walking for the gangplank, that at least there is one part of his youthful indiscretion that the Godon who created and then destroyed this ship will NOT be able to erase.

Part 2

Hayanto has elected to spend the time after checking out the cabin he will be spending two weeks with Bronii in, approving of some subtle details.

The elevators in the lobby had a strange intelligence to them - you could only punch your desired floor into the buttons on one panel, and after a few seconds of thinking, it would flash a number representing the lift you would take to that floor. An ingenious, possibly more efficient way to apportion the use of the lifts in a ship crammed with 500 passengers. As well, the lift had a strap scanner that automatically punched in the floor your cabin was on, even if it wasn't displayed - which in this case it wasn't. Possibly a way to emphasise special treatment?

There was an ice machine near the lift lobbies. Hayanto had initially winced at this - he had spent too many sleepless, non-sexy nights in cheap hotels around the Almares not to associate them with loud clanking noises that kept people up. But as he watches someone staying on the same floor as them refill his own ice bucket, he notices just how silent it is, from making the ice to dispensing it for use. He has a reevaluation of his bias against ice makers... Maybe it will make for an interesting column in Adventures In Perversion.

The bed they had gotten was two single beds carefully merged into one King-sized bed. As seemed to have been a standard, the left bed was subtly marked by the same familiar stiff pad as the left half of their bed back home. As a concession of some sorts, a Maintenance Hub had also been placed on the bedside table to the left of the bed, away from the phone on the table next to the other side of the bed.

A small note had been left in the fridge, which was empty except for a few bottles labelled "Free Potable Water. Drink As Is Or Use In Coffee Maker. Request more when needed 24/7" paired with a code hash readable by communicator cameras. Presumably one has to secure other drinks on their own.

The bathroom is big enough to hold a sink, some towels, a waste toilet, and a small two-person jacuzzi and shower tub. Hayanto's eyes raise just a little as he notices a shelf containing the same lube replenishment and washing tools Bronii self-administered as a bedtime ritual, plus a bottle each of dielectric tear/saliva concentrate and vaginal lube.

Bronii leaps into the middle of the bed and it holds its combination, even as she does the breast stroke, squealing away about the softness of the mattresses and the sheets and the pillows.

Hayanto smiles as he sits down on the sofa below the media-viewer screen. They probably will spend a lot of time outside this cabin, but it is definitely luxurious on a economical budget, and the fact that some effort was made to accomodate Bronii's kind is awfully decent of them. He closes his eyes for a snooze, waiting for a certain event to happen. He doesn't stir much even when Bronii decides to take the chance and slide up to him to join his nap.

Former Captain Oskar Nikinsonn wakes up to the soft sounds as he always does. The lilting, crisp tones of Christina's voice come on, announcing the start of the morning, the time, the expected weather, and then gently coos. "Another day in paradise," she notes sardonically, aware of the move to a garbage dump of a planet Oskar had opted for to stretch out his meager pension for not-so-long service to date. Oskar was really trying to find a new ship captaincy, but as he had feared, nobody wanted to rehire an ex-captain in the exact middle of a career.

Oskar chuckles at the observation. "I'm a washup, and I'm so sorry I had to drag you down with me. " He gets up and goes to an old worn wooden watchbox, opening it. The thick padding had be stripped out, repaced by a smaller receptacle of sorts to securely hold the 'many-petaled flower paperweight' he'd stolen from his previous workplace six months ago. He'd kind of let himself go to seed, neglecting his formerly rigorous daily exercises and eating poorly from cheap foods placed out nightly on heavy discount in a last ditch effort by the shops to at least cut their losses on them.

The receptacle provides power to the navcomp inside, and helps it connect to a simple mini ship radio, through which Christina has been talking as well as obtaining weather reports and important news for Oskar to hear, as well as a single aged robot eye.

Oskar reaches a hand out to stroke the navcomp, not sure if Christina can even sense it in her near total blindness and deafness with only a shortsighted robot eye and a ship radio for sensors. He had become a sort of current-day Smeagol, carefully secreting it away in a random part of the house when he only had the time to hunt for another captaincy and not speak to Christina. Whenever this happened, there was a strange sort of ache in the middle of his words and chest as he bade her farewell for the day, and a strange joy whenever he got back and got to talk to her.

There is a knock on the door. Oskar kisses the box and shuts it, before hiding it amongst his shaving supplies at the standalone sink in the other corner of the single-room hovel. He suspects he knows who it is, and opening it confirms his worst suspicions.

After an initial quiet two months of integrating into the slum, and learning how nice his neighbours were despite the roughness of their homes and their manner, a certain Godon had shown up every other day for the past four months. the very last one he wanted to see, after having seen his smugness as he lorded over his former ship on his return and announcement of the end of their ship.

"Akkanis, how nasty of you to show up. again." Oskar growled, hoping he could effect enough of a menacing voice and praying that his still unshaven face added to the scare factor. "And no, I do not have the toy you are looking for" he frowned, hoping he could sway him with the lie.

The Godon was at least a year past the age where he should have performed his Ancension and quaffed his first Draft of eternal life from a omidium chalice as most Godon in good standing did. The shin on his brow was already beginning to show the mottling effects of his first shot of the Draft at birth leaving him, his face looking less and less like the glowing Basset Hound most Godons resembled and more like a skeletal wolf, albeit one still mostly wrapped in its flesh not yet leaving its natomy.

Akkanis snarls, pointing a clawed finger at Oskar. Oskar winced. Even this man's withdrawal from the Draft was beginning to show on his paws. Akkanis demands, "Do not play me for a fool, Oskar. I have means to find it if you do not comply. If you help me, you shall have riches beyond your imagining from the coffers of the Godon Protectorate when I Ascend."

Oskar rolls his eyes, as if losing his patience with Akkanis. "I dunno, Akkanis, seems like I only qualify for what's behind Door Number 2. What's in it, tell me?"

Akkanis roars. "Eternal suffering. That is what I can promise you. I will make you lose everything you treasure, and then come back to make you lose everything new you treasure, and then yet again... and again... Now, CHOOSE."

Oskar ponders this lopsided offer from right out of one of those old horror-comedy flicks Brendan Frasier did... God, Akkanis is so corny, it's like he's hunting for some mythical artifact when in fact he's merely seeking the return of a stolen Godon navcomp. All the Godon were like this, cloaking their deeds and tech in mysticism and magic when in fact they were just using sufficiently advanced science.

For one moment, Oskar blithely ignores that he was the thief in question who took it. It takes him a while, but eventually he decides what to say:

"Too bad, don't have it, can't find it, can't give you something I don't have or can find, you can go fuck yourself and never darken my door again... in as much as you can even darken it further."

Oskar glances at the slightly rotten black-painted door to his domain, then slowly starts closing his door. Same as expected, he thinks.

"THEN ETERNAL SUFFERING IT IS!"

Oskar's eyes widen. That was new. As he totally shuts the door, a slightly tainted omidium dagger stabs through it in front of his face, the warm friendly gold surface of the knife lightly tinged with the ominous rust of its owner's Denial from Acension. "Give me what I want and all this will be over, and we can talk about fair remuneration!" Akkanis roars, not exactly endearing himself to anyone seeing him right now as he madly stabs the door. One of the dagger stabs inflicts a slash across the back of Oskar's right hand as it goes through the door near it.

Oskar closes his eyes and thinks about how soon it will all be over. Perhaps he should have never taken the navcomp. perhaps he should have just left it to be reduced to dust, the remains scraped up and returned triumphantly by Akkanis, who then proceeds to quaff the Draft Of Ascension and return to his glorious, eternal (supposedly) form, and everyone would be happy.

Except for maybe Oskar, because he'd be dead. He takes a deep breath as another dagger comes close to flensing more skin from his hands... Christina would be dead too, though, wouldn't she? Artificial or born from a real mother, she was still a soul... And he wasn't into being responsible for the deaths of others in his days as a captain. That trait hadn't left him, clearly.

Oskar grunts and keeps resisting the attack. Another lucky shot passes entirely through Oskar's left palm, sending him into a new wave of agony. Someone, surely, someone would stop this lunatic...

There is a loud gunblast and the sound of someone being kicked a bit farther away. Oskar opens the door a little, pausing to note that where he had been nicked by the dagger, his flesh had begun to mummify a little, the cursed dagger having slicked a little of his lifeforce away from where it had struck.

A young man in a sort of Indiana jones getup - short jacket, khaki trousers and shirt and silly fedora - is pointing an almost comically sized old-style revolver at Akkanis, who is slowly getting up off the dirt ground of the slums. Already, quite a few neighbours have come out to watch the commotion.

The young man calmly ponders something aloud, stroking his blood-red full-beard as he watches through sunglasses. "Now I know what you're thinking. Has this young man in front of you shot off his entire load? Revolvers have five, maybe six shots in them before the speedloader has to come out. Maybe you think you can end me with your fancy-schmancy Godon godpowers and get back to bullying people with unjustly causes."

"Well, do you feel lucky? Hellidon?"

Akkanis snaps and charges at the crazy man, only to end up scattering into dust as A seventh shot comes fired out of the revolver and hitting him.

The young man in the fedora goes 'phew, I though that disruptor round wouldn't do jack shit.' as he turns to approach Oskar.

"So this guy randomly accosts my holdings and my offices, screaming about a Godon navcomputer and how I'd stolen it, which I haven't, and he breaks my shit. So I decide to tail him," The young man calmly flips open the barrel of his revolver and starts reloading it the slow way, one bullet by hand at a time, talking as he does so. "He winds up here, where he keeps being a nuisance at your door for god knows how long, Your neighbours are good people by the way -one of them spared me a spot on his roof to watch him do things to your door. So I figger... do nothing or do something. And I decided, something."

The guy with the red beard peeks in past Oskar. "So who's the lucky girl you've been speaking to in the window all this time?" He asks, the jig being probably up for Oskar in terms of hiding Christina.

So he takes a deep breath, and starts telling him the story in honesty.

Part 3

The captain of the ship peeks his face right into his room. As usual, the room is dimly lit by the corner lights specially placed into his cabin alone, a white noise generator playing the sounds of waves crashing into a shore.

Half of it is occupied, the left half of it, next to which are the tell-tale green and red flickers of a Maintenance Hub in operation. A lightly tanned woman with a matured but still somewhat youthful air, in a slim purple Godon sari-like outfit, lies atop the bed in a perfectly straight line. Her buxom form strains slightly beneath the modesty of the cloth wraps, her arms folded in a cross atop her bountiful bosom.

The captain smiles as he reaches a hand out to caress the woman's exposed lower arms, resisting the urge to explore anywhere off of nearby. "Christina, the second boarding has been completed and we are about to do the safety drill before setting sail."

The woman suddenly opens her eyes, pale purple irises matching in the same hue as her exotic outfit. The captain gives a faint chuckle. Christina always looks good in anything she wears. Perhaps even more so than when she wears nothing, he briefly muses.

Christina sits up slowly. "Oh, Oskar, thank you for telling me to wake up." She gives the captain a smile and suddenly drags him in for a full-on mouth-to-mouth, before letting go quickly. "Time to work... Same way we always do, Oskar. I'll greet the passengers attending the drills on the port side..."

Captain Oskar Nilisonn nods and tips his hat. "And I'll greet the passengers on the starboard side."

Christina follows along "And we'll meet the guests in the special wing together..."

Captain Oskar finishes for her as usual. "before we go take this cruise out into the Phibeccs. I can practically recite it all by heart now..."

Christina walks past Captain Oskar and turns back briefly to smile, while carefully easing her dainty feet into a pair of practical middle-heels, the one concession she is willing to make for safety and convenience. "You wouldn't be a good captain if you couldn't after twenty years." She notes, then walks out of the cabin, giving a sort of giddly little laugh as she does so.

Captain Oskar wastes a minute just standing there, breathing deeply. "God, if she kills me by snu snu or giving me a heart attack, I promise you I will never hold it against you for giving me such a lovely wife with such a lovely body to hold it against me," he prays, before he steps out as well.

The sign that the safety drills are something everyone needs to do are obvious - half the ship has been told to go into their cabins, all the fun places and shops still tightly locked shut. The video forcibly turns on in every cabin, starting off in Galactic Standard before repeating briefly in several other languages some safety measures and rules, accompanied by cutesy pictures of the crew demonstrating things to do, not to do, in or outside of an emergency. It ends off with a irreverent still of presumably cutesy versions of the captain and a lady in a Godon sari happily clutching drinks and chicken drumsticks, with the words "Thank you for listening! Now, report to your assigned safety point and scan your strap to unlock access to a world of entertainment and enjoyment!"

Hayanto checks his dossier as they walk in the hallway after the show. "We're supposed to gather... in the Adelsson Club for human-Autoslav couples on this floor." He almost misses the glass door to the club before Bronii drags him back and uses their straps to tag into the club.

The club is simple but nice in its own way, with free-flows of various fruit juices, muffins, and fruits on one side of the clubroom, accompanied by a sign promising a nice small free-flow of decent Chirav and ice balls but "only from 8pm to 11am outside of port areas while not drunk or in a port area."

Bronii looks at the clock in the strap she got and frowns. "Dammit, it's only 7pm."

There are several beanbag chairs randomly strewn around the room as well, near one of which is a sign that reads "Did you scan your strap to enter here? You're done! Or wait for our Captain and First Mate to come around soon for welcome drinks." Hayanto and Bronii choose a matching pair of pale blue beanbags and slump into them. As they do so, they hear a young woman with a soft mane of sky blue and white hair soothing a green weasel-mongoose thingy, presumably a pet of some sort.

"I have NEVER been insulted so hard in my life, I am a human too!" the green wongoose/measel yelps, shaking a fist made of his left front paw. The woman sighs and scritches the strange animal's back causing it to ripple and lose all sense of outrage as it sinks into a stupor.

She sighs and grins. "I think I can be more than enough human for the two of us, Harold". And judging by much she's rivalling Bronii in terms of being Reubenesque in form, that lady is absolutely not wrong.

Haryanto blushes and looks to Bronii quickly, as if to deny some form of wrongdoing. "Allegation sustained. I'm sorry, your honour."

The blue-hair laughs and reaches a hand out to Bronii and Haryanto. "It's okay to be a little jelly, Harold tells me. Everyone's always got something better than you. My name's Liliana Skygazer, by the by, what's yours?"

Bronii and Haryanto offer their names as well, as they continue idle chatting. Suddenly the room is silenced by a couple of sorts entering the room: a distinguished gentleman with snow white hair and mustache above and below slightly wrinkled slightly opened brown eyes, and a lady with purple everything: purple Godon-style clothwrap draped around a shapely form in visually enticing ways, purple eyes, purple hair... actually, the hair is black, but the woman seems to have done something to it to make it shimmer in a vibrant sort of purple where it would normally be whitish against a white light.

Christina claps her hands to get everyone's attention, seemingly unaware her appearance is doing that just fine enough on its own. "Well well well, what have we here? one, two, three, four, five... ten couples in love despite the odds against them. Maybe you just came to relax, maybe you came to celebrate... I'm Christina, and this is my hubs, and your captain, Captain Oskar! Thank you for listening to our safety drill, and in return we'll take care of you for the next two weeks with indulgences and entertainment galore! If you have any other questions you'd like answered that the dossier or our exclusive branded "Nilisonn's Trips" app doesn't answer, ask any of our crew for assistance. or better yet, since we're here right now, ask us!"

Bronii glances away from Christina for a moment to nudge Haryanto in the ribs painfully, such is his gaping face. "Stop that, Bob, she's not a pavlova to be eaten."

Haryanto gulps and looks ashamedly at his loving wife for his moment of having eyes on someone else about as lovely. "Bronii, I need to get you one of those outfits, it makes her look so good." He says as he sways a little, dazed.

Bronii opens her mouth, then stops as she thinks about what Haryanto just said. A wicked grin forms on her gentle face suddenly as she leans in and whispers to him. "As your punishment, we are going to do just that on your account..." It would be indeed delicious to dance in such an outfit, slowly, swayingly, like a cobra testing its prey, before going in for the kill. The beast chained up deep in her mind strains a little at this thought. Haryanto had best be careful where he steps next on this...

Captain Oskar blinks as a folded note is passed amongst the passengers up to him. He opens it to briefly study the contents... then quietly whispers to a nearby crew member. "Invite the passengers in room 503 to the Captain's Hour after this", he whispers. Another nod from the crew expresses understanding before they run out of the room.

For the next half hour, there is an animated discussion and lots of laughter as Oskar and Christina stand around laying out all the exclusive privileges accorded to couples of their ilk, including "a special access period to the pools and cabanas in the back of the 9th to 12th floors, between 12am and 3am. What happens in the jacuzzis and the pools stays in there, don't make too much of a mess, and don't bring any hatreds in or out of there. Specially only for you guys."

Boy, that's a lot of red faces. They must all be thinking about the hanky panky they could get up to in there.

Captain Oskar ahems loudly. "Well, that's all the time we have for you now. Thank you for joining us on Nilisonn's Trips, a member of the Cooper 3Es Cruising Coalition: Economical, Ecological, and Ethical! Maybe we'll see you elsewhere on the boat later on in the trip!"

Christina nods and squeals. "Remember to check your Nilisonn's Trips app every morning for the latest event schedules and offers, as well as important messages in general or specifically to your room, you might get something nice, but if you don't check you might miss out on it!"

They both turn around and head out with a smile. just a few metres down the corridor though, the facade vanishes slowly.

Christina is the first to deal with the new mood. "Oskar, dear... when I said I only counted ten couples from the special wing... I was expecting twelve. And yes, I have accounted for the silly girl with the green w-w-m-m-m-" She briefly stutters before a internal interrupt kicks her past a logic break. "her pet." Ah yes, the Harold Wu effect at work again, always turning attempts at describing his true form even in humans, let alone machines...

Oskar nods in agreement. "Everyone is obliged to attend the safety drills. I'll get the crew to check what's up with that." He pauses with Christina as he notices the look of worry on her face and suddenly brushes one of his hands against her cheek. "Hey, Christina. look at me. This is a castle with a fucking big moat around it. Nobody could possibly come to get us, it's probably just someone or other failing to board as booked or ignoring the safety drill. They'll come around thirsty or starving and we can read them the rules as to why the proof of attendance at the safety point is critical. Nothing is coming for us."

Christina smiles and nods. "I'll focus on driving us safely as the Navigator. You take care of all of us as usual. okay?" She gives Oskar a deep lipped kiss for a long bit... then opens the door to the bridge and steps in to take her place.

Captain Oskar waves, then turns around, gingerly rubbing his gloved hands. The pain for some reason is returning at the moment... he hopes it's not an omen but merely an old war wound flaring up randomly.

Christina walks through the dimness of the bridge, lit down for night navigation like any other ship of its ilk.

"Navigator on the bridge!" booms one of the crew in the usual combination of presence announcement/greeting.

Christina walks over to two similarly designed Captain's chairs, except that one of them is slightly larger, in purple instead of red leather, and has an extra few doodads tied into the systems surrounding the chair. It's clear which one is her seat, as she sits down in the purple chair and pulls a sort of contraption on a cable with various blocks shaped into a sort of U-shape, lights festooning the inside of the U.

She closes her eyes to steady herself as she straightens the U-device a little, before resting it against the back of her neck and slowly bending the lights inwards around her neck, the lights coming on and flickering as the faint click of magnetic tabs locking into place issues from her neck. There is nothing else but the calmness of the night.

Suddenly Christina opens her eyes and starts tapping the key consoles on either support of her chair, her fingers moving at a RSI-inducing pace as her eyes dart around the screens arrayed around her. ship cameras, data coming in, charts of the ocean... her eyes seemingly take it all in as she issues commands to get the tugs in place to shift them away from the dock, orders approval to leave the dock from the nearby port controller tower, and even tells the lobby band to start playing off the beginning of the voyage with an old classic like, "hmm, how about the Star Trek theme song?"

She does a tonne of things at an inhuman pace, a faintly glowing tattoo in the shape of a many-petaled flower beginning to glow just above the valley between her legs like some sort of tramp stamp, just barely visible through the diaphanous wrapped fabric of her Godon-style sari body wrap.

Come to think of it, she probably doesn't even need to look at any of the screens for real...

Part 4

The offer made by the crazy red-beard had been very generous. He'd introduced himself as Dr Saulomon, and given him a tatty card belonging to some sort of lowly company named Berequel Customs. He said he had an offer, and given what he had seen of Christina, to double it. "The Godon don't just randomly give out their tech. When there's stuff like that in our presence, it seems only fitting that we should work out how to make it work for the betterment of at least some of mankind.

The brazen excitement, paired with the revolver the good Doctor had just demonstrated on his crazed Godon tormentor, set Captain Oskar on edge.

Dr Saulomon could sense the panic as he quickly unloaded his revolver the non-violent way, letting the bullets all uselessly clatter out to the floor of the slumhovel."Woah, woah woah, we're not going to take it away from you. in fact, we've thinking of ways to hide the stuff from them first. What I'm thinking of is sponsoring your return to captaining a ship. In fact, I know a few good friends who might have an opportunity for you, if you can get back currency on the big ships like you used to have..."

Captain Oskar had indeed jumped at the offer. What had he to lose? They had packed hurriedly and split for a small town in Sovinhaya named Algograd. It was freezing, but Dr Saulomon had assured him it had the best virtual ship-command trainers on the Sovinhaya side... which was saying a lot since they had better surface sailors on their planets than the UCNA had in theirs. Right down to the Captain's Chair in the wraparound simulator room being a nice perfect set of controls. It still felt like it missed something... It didn't take long for Oskar to realise the ship's navcomp was voiced by a male and was a lot more taciturn, with no human care afforded to him. He begun to miss working with Christina again.

"Patience, grasshopper", Dr Saulomon had said. "The Sovinhaya tend not to rely on tech as much. it's already a miracle they have better surface ship sims."

For three more months, he was stuck alone in the sims repeating various command scenarios and practicing his rule of the bridge again and again and again, then one day, he was given a pair of headphones.

"Hello, Captain Oskar..." A familiar voice came over the headphones.

He smiled and looked around. There was no visible sign of her around, but it was nice to hear from Christina again. "Joining me on a little cargo run today?"

Christina gave a negative beep, then spoke up again. "Negative, Captain, the trainer has begun to switch us from generic VLC-class captaincy scenarios to cruise ship scenarios. These have an unusual set of rating criteria, but are closer to the opportunity which Dr Saulomon's friends. I am still not up to full capability yet, but I believe I can muster at least 60% of my capabilities as previously demonstrated on cargo ship, Christina, on my current combination of interconnects, side processors and currently loaded charts."

Oskar gives a faint chuckle. "it's a good start from a long time at zero. Let's give it a go!"

It was, all things considered, a pretty good run. Nobody died on the virtual cruise ship. That did not translate necessarily into a good performance, as Oskar reviews virtual footage of food splashing into passengers' faces, people walking drunkenly down corridors to deal with severe ship rolling, and a choir of schoolchildren vomiting rainbows in their cabin toilets. To add insult to injury, the cruel AI driving the practice had decided to splice footage of the schoolchildren from various different cabins into a multi-window shot of lots of simultaneous barfing. Frankly, a piece of paper with a few scores would have been less hurtful than this bowling alley demo.

Oskar felt like he could barf as he looked at all the things he did wrong. "Cruise ships, are not like cargo ships, are they?"

There is a apologetic beeping on the headphones... Christina speaks up "Apparently, Cruise ships require different handling. I am sorry, Captain, I promise to do better next time."

Another three months of training with only Christina's voice acting as his navcomp passed by. Things slowly improved... then they abruptly backpedaled one day.

The day started as usual. Oskar walked in, keen for another few hours, and to beat his current score of 80.95 points out of 100 on the cruise ship scenario list. He sat down in his chair, reached back behind it and... couldn't find the headphones. He panicked a little, and what he saw next when he looked around the dome room panicked him a little.

Someone had put in a second Captain's chair next to his. Presumably this was for a navigator. someone of slightly larger build. For some reason someone had put some sort of bosomy but totally limbless and headless sex torso and tied it to the back of the seat, a camera and microphone assembly parked atop the torso's neck stump. As Oskar clapped a hand to his face, he murmured the obvious response. "What the fuck... have I been suckered into a Candid Camera setup all these months?" He proceeded to yell. "GUYS, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SEX TOY ON THIS CAPTAIN'S CHAIR MEANT TO BE A MOCKERY OF?!?"

The camera and microphone suddenly swivelled to point the camera at Oskar. "Oh, hello there, Oskar. Are we ready to begin practicing cruise ship bridge control ops again?" Christine's voice comes out of it.

Oskar walks in circles around the new Captain's Chair next to his. "My god, I'm not sure I am. Look at you Christina... you're not the delicate beautiful preserved flower I'd stolen from a dying ship, you're... some kind of sexy toy on a chair. This doesn't look anything like how getting you back into the ship navigation business should LOOK like." As if to emphasise the point, he derisively slaps the tits on the torso, sending ripples along its soft flesh.

"... Error, experiencing unknown sensor input. Type: physical and audio. Recording for review." Christina momentary blurbs like a machine. "... Please Captain, just trust Dr Sauloman... he's been really hard at work back at his office on doing exactly that... Let's get back to being professionals."

"I... *sigh*..." Oskar scratches his head, then decides to try putting it out of his mind as he commences the simulation...

Today was a very bad day. only 43.27 points out of 100.

Things got better though.

A few weeks after the sex torso fiasco, the pale pink toy had been replaced with a tanned skinned figure, every bit as buxom as the torso had been, but now with limbs and a head too. The head was more like something ripped from a crash test dummy, virtually featureless save for the detailing of the female face in soft plastic. It was a attractive female face, somewhere in between the young-middle ages of 30-40... The addition of a crewman's set of overalls helped, a little.

The scoring continued to climb over that week nicely, leading up to Friday.

That day , Oskar had called in to find that the sim room crew had just set it to run whatever scenarios he wanted automatically and split off to celebrate Saint Ellane's Rebirth Day. He sighed and cursed the lack of professionalism of some Sovinhaya bastards and settled down next to the dummy of Christina, calling the sim to commence after briefly exchanging pleasantries.

It was a very good day. 97.8 out of 100. He was almost ready, even. Oskar smiled as he walked over and tried to high-five, and was pleasantly surprised when he found out that the dummy could actually do more than simply type frantically into the key consoles at its sides. "Well done, Captain.... I wish I could give you something, but right now I don't seem to have anything of worth."

Captain Oskar laughs. at the static feminine face looking at him. It was sure pretty, even if it didn't move and still needed a bit more make up and hairs... "It's okay, you're here for me now... and that's what matters." He was in a happy mood, feeling like he could.

"Then, if I may, may I request something else from you, Captain? Kiss me." Christina suddenly does it again, the same thing that got her in trouble back when she was part of the Christina... Except this wasn't just a lark but an earthshaking thing that changed relationships.

Oskar blushes hard. He'd never kissed a girl seriously before. it had been just larks... But now here was this navcomp, half done up as some girl kind of thing, earnestly asking for his affections... He didn't know what to do.

"I desire to know human affection. I want to learn more about the human condition. Please input any other things you wish into this unit, Oskar. I want to take all possible data in." Christina states matter of factly, her head turning side to side a little, eyes looking on deeply.

Oskar grits his teeth and looks away for a bit... What to do... eventually he comes back and puts his face right in Christina's molded mien. "If that is what you want... But please tell me if it becomes too much, okay?"

Christina nods her head up and down, her passive blank mien looking downwards for a moment. "I will probably finish saving the data I collect and temporarily cease functioning to cool down, if the data becomes too excessive." She blankly utters.

Oskar nods slowly as he reaches up for the zip and starts pulling it down along Christina's body, exposing a pair of finely sculpted breasts and a strangely cute if stylised pussy. He looks away again for a moment, thinking if he wants to change his relationship with a navcomputer in such a weird way...

Then he decides to damn the Tunguska anyway and starts putting his dick into that silicone pussy. as he expects,

Christina starts beeping randomly. "Error: unknown sensor data type. Collecting data for trouble shooting. Stop. No. Don't Stop. Continue." She utters, clearly out of her range on matters relating to the act of sex.

As Oskar continues pumping and kneading, he suddenly realises he's having the most fun he's ever had in decades. With a girl who wants her. Granted the girl in question is a alien navcomputer condemned to a life trapped on the oceans of a beachball, but he thinks it still counts.... and then he no longer thinks, his appetite whetted by the first touches of a limp form curved and textured so finely it triggers too many of his urges. He closes his eyes, and tries not to listen to most of the weird synthetic noises the body makes, repeating that everything he is doing to it is something it has never experienced before and doesn't understand and needs later study of...

Suddenly, there is a loud pop from the body and a faint smell of some magic smoke. Oskar panickedly lifts himself off the doll and whimpers. "Christina! Oh god, I'm so sorry. Are you hurt?!" He looks on anxiously at the ersatz woman's eyes rolling erratically.

"Error: 4 Ter-Ter-Terabytes of Unknown Sensor Data Type Data par-parsed. Stor-storage full. damage in side processor 1. 5, 7. 19. Main navcomp component isolated from overl-l-load. No damage to user from prototype va-va-vagina detect-tected... I feel w-w-weird, but I think I wil be o-o-kay after a few repairs and dddownloads, Oskkkaaaar...." Christina jerkily speaks... "Unit shutting down to prevent further damage. Please fix damaged components listed in log and empty data collection storage before next use. Also recommended: unit proper cleaning to avoid spread of STDs or other user-harmful pathogens."

Oskar glumly looks around as if he's done a crime, before sighing and fishing in his kit bag for his wet wipes. it's about the only thing he can do as a gentleman and an ex-officer, really...

The sim training is cancelled for the next two weeks, apparently for "reasons". But just as he fears the worst, he gets great news - the Cooper 3Es Cruise Cooperative - his benefactor/partner in crime's friends - have almost finished refurbishing the cruise ship their departed friend had left floating listlessly in Payden Beach, with help of Dr Saulomon's specificiations and... "erm, a pilot project to dramatically improve the efficiency of cruising... boy, I'd love to take a look at that when the confidentiality lifts..." the young man assigned to speak to Captain Oskar is very polite and earnest, but it's clear he has some way to go...

A few days later, Dr Saulomon shows up right in the flesh at the doorstep of his short-term rental at Payden Beach. "we're good to go. Get your bags, and let's get you on the boat.

As the two men walk towards the boa, Oskar finally has the chance to pigeonhole Dr Saulomon after a year of indirect interactions, email exchanges and generally not being told the deets on half the things that have been done... "Why... what was with the sex dolls in the final months of my retraining?"

Dr Saulomon suddenly stops and takes a deep breath. "The Godon want to repossess or destroy a navcomp gone astray. They must have some reason to do so. Our game plan is to deny it to them and have them fret into a state where they're more willing to play ball. disclose the tech, or work on educating us gradually to make something that makes it irrelevant by being at least as good... They'll try to look for it in use..." He looks around for the cruise ship before walking in the same direction along the harbor "Probably look for it in use as a component. some kind of machine. That's the trouble, you install it anywhere in any ship as is, they'll just come right in with some legalistic or subterfuge bullshit and steal it back or grind it into unsalvageable dust."

Captain Oskar frowns. "That makes sense. so what did you plan to deal with that."

Dr Saulomon points at a slightly old-looking cruise ship of sorts, several dozen balconies thick on this side and presumably on the starboard side as well. some workers are working on painting the name of the ship and installing lifeboats for emergency use.

"The ship's trustees insisted on calling it the Chicken of The Sea - terrible name, I do think - but if It was up to me, I'd call it the Queen of The Castle And Moat." Dr Saulomon engages in a little bit of admittedly deserved self-praise. "The sea is the moat. The castle is your new ship - it has some nice new security features in place if things get dicey - and the Queen is a person we shall place on your bridge."

Captain Oskar raises an eyebrow. "And this person you speak of is?"

Dr Saulomon stops and looks up at the sky... "It's kind of complicated. it's both Christina, and yet, not entirely Christina... I need you to put the finishing touch to the project, mainly because once we do... it' kind of walls Christina off from ever directly contacting you again if it's not an emergency situation."

Captain Oskar doesn't like the sound of it, but... "And where is she now?"

Dr Saulomon motions to near the bridge. "Captain's quarters are yours. One Double Bed inside for two people, two tables, a slightly larger fridge, a two person sofa and two working chairs, and of course one door on the front that electrocutes anyone who tries to force it violently open." He fishes in his pocket and hands you a keycode. "Christina is directly designed to access any door in the ship, though her programming will wipe the skeleton code for that trick if anyone tries to damage her to get it. But the bridge and captain's quarters will always open for her. All that she needs for her job, really."

Captain Oskar nods. "Thank you. you were kind of fucking weird towards the end, but you've delivered."

Dr Saulomon leans over and gives Captain Oskar a hug. "Actually I fucking lied at the end too... it wasn't just about keeping it out of Godon hands... I saw how badly wounded you looked and saw how much it... she... yearned for you as well. Didn't seem right not to bring you two together in some way. Sorry it's not a direct connection right now. I'll keep looking."

Captain Oskar lets go and nods. "You're definitely an asshole in all the right ways. thank god you're mine too." He turns around and starts walking up the gangplank.

Dr Saulomon tips his hat in silence for a moment, before walking away to make another mess elsewhere.

It gets a bit awkward as Captain Oskar walks into his new quarters and dumps his luggage, looking over at the bed. Christina is sitting on it, mostly in one piece except with the crash test dummy head still installed, a parcel box of sorts, wearing a sort of purple cloth wrap outfit that simultaneously supports her bosomy body as well as reveal it in tempting windows all over, her feet clad in matching gold and purple sandals

Christina looks up, the impassive look on its face scanning him. "I'm so happy you came to speak to me for the last time, Captain" She looks on, her voice having the mien of someone who's about to have a major change done to them they're unhappy, but not entirely, about. She pets the bedding to her side, motioning to him to sit by her just like old times. "You've heard from Dr Solomon about how this new head works right?"

Captain Oskar nods slowly as he sits down. "Something about taking your direct voice away and fitting something to it to make you seem more human except in emergencies. I'm not an expert on tech except when using it for work." He sighs. "I don't know what to say... can I look at that head a little?"

"Certainly, captain." Christine's head swivels a little to look at Oskar as she clicks open the box and hands it to Oskar to look at.

it is a very beautifully sculptured head of sorts... matching warm tanned skin the same shade as Christina's new body, long black hair with an oddly purplish shimmer as the lighting above them bounces off it. a youngish feminine oval-shaped face with a oddly pudgy nose, and freckles running across its cheeks. "Imperfect, yet perfect in its own way... and I haven't even heard the voice that comes from it."

"it's my voice, Captain." She looks away, trying to blush even though she can't. "they found the voice bank for my voice while building my new body. I can even sing with it if I want to, not like the old version they etched in my petals.... It's an upgrade."

Captain Oskar tilts his head from side to side, examining the softness of the head and the work done to stick her hairdo in one hair at a time. It's probably waistlength... Nobody would know this was the face of a non-living thing unless they checked for seams or pulled really hard on her hair. "Visually it is... no offense. But I don't know if it's really something I want to do."

"Well, it is something I want to do. I've heard it in action, captain. and it has what I believe you would call... character. I... desire some of that character."

"Even if it means not being able to say exactly what you want to say ever again?" Oskar points out.

"Well, I still COULD in an emergency. but I do not imagine you being capable of letting anything about running the Chicken Of The Sea get out of control." Christina sardonically mentions, the lack of tone still not hiding the mirth behind that observation totally.

Captain Oskar laughs for a bit... ... eventually, he stops though and fishes out the instruction sheet hastily put together by Berequel Customs and stuffed beneath the new head, reading it briefly on how to switch heads on Christina.

He reaches his hands over to either side of Christina's placeholder head. "Well, see you on the other side, Christina..."

It is about 9pm when Captain Oskar finally makes it to The RainForest Pub in the arcade, the shops along it beginning to close for the night as the staff manning them shamble off to their cheapo basement bunks to sleep for free.

The Pub is under express orders to stay open late at least once a week, and when the captain declares a "Captain's Hour". In practice though, he only uses that privilege maybe once or twice a week during cruise days, and mainly just so he can share a quiet drink. During that hour, the bar is thrown open to those he invites, within reasonable limits of course. that all too often only translates to him and Navigator Christina sharing cups of warm cocoa with marshmallows topped with drips of Irish cream on quiet nights where neither of them need to be on duty.

Tonight, that honor is bestowed solely upon the residents of Adelson Wing Cabin 503. The current inhabitants: one blue-haired minx, and her apparent pet key lime green weasel-mongoose thingy pet.

One of the more interesting things to happen in the rainforest pub is in the walls facing away from the entrance to it. separated from the pub by plated glass is a simulated rainforest, or at least one several feet deep. Every two hours, the forest bursts into rain for about an hour, the cycle starting from 1 on the hour hand. Of course, during the hours the pub is unmanned and uncustomered, the rain doesn't happen. Also of note are the holograms: pangolins, weasels of a normal coloration, sloths, and many other creatures randomly shamble past, sometimes pausing to seemingly look through the glass pane at the customers and passersby. A small magical trick. It does help that the list excludes any potential predators to freak people out.

The blue haired minx, Lilia, is calmly stuffing a pizza donut from a plate in front of her, aided in her quest by the mongoose-weasel calmly chewing on its own donut. both of them have cups of hot cocoa with them, drizzled with Irish cream. The mongoose passes judgement as it sips at its own cocoa. "Delicious. The best."

Lilia makes an observation. "The Rainforest Pub's offerings are charged as extra. For it to remain profitable on a cruise ship with several offerings already available free of charge to all or many classes of passengers, it needs to be of a superior quality to what is available for free on the cruise ship."

Harold facepalms and looks over at Lilia. "Lilia, honey... you don't have to make observations all the time to boost your intelligence rating. In fact, sometimes it's dumber." He sighs exasperatedly.

Captain Oskar chuckles slightly as he motions to the bartender for matching hot cocoa, marshmallows and Irish cream. Plus one last slice of pizza from the Hawaiian Specials parlor, delivered specially through their shared kitchen since they would be ready to be thrown out in just a few minutes. "And make sure it's not Hawaiian. I HATE Pineapple." He mentions explicitly, before he sits down at the same booth as the odd couple.

"Sorry I'm a little late, I was held up by work." Captain Oskar half-apologizes, sipping at his own cocoa as he does so.

Lilia makes another seemingly pithy yet actually stupid observation: "No Captain has ever been on time to his own Captain's Hour."

Harold winces. "LILIA! Excuse me... override word: overwatch, silent."

Lilia falls suddenly into silence, gingerly nursing her cocoa as her eyes swivel back and forth, actually unseeing as she switches to radar for vision for a little more coverage.

Captain Oskar sips at his cocoa. "Ah, a dumb decoy?"

Harold nods. "Actually she's an equal partner of my team, but I'll admit her presences sometimes lets other people's guard down around me. And she's actually quite smart if you point her in the right direction. Also, she is not just "a dumb decoy", so please don't hurt her with words like that. Now, about recent rounds through Epsilon point with Phiccabe Ocean in the vicinity, I need you to work with me a a few recent failed bulk mail transfers around that point."

The mongoose-weasel fishes somewhere in his fur and throws out a heavily folded sheet, proceeding to unfurl the extremely thin paper into a nice big set of hand notes, written in a font that's at least reasonable to the human eye at a sane average distance, before suddenly proceeding to slam one of his paws on a pair of blue pawprints on "We do have multiple methods of transfer across the Phiccabe to the newly discovered Kaldorei Continent, which I am not at liberty to discuss and you are not at liberty to learn about at your current standing with Postillion Harales Branch. All of these are achieving a consistent average of 99.5% of mail safely transferred across either way. The connection through your boat, though, in recent two years, has crashed to a dismal 12.75%. A lot of the mail is arriving heavily shredded by animals, in both directions. Claws, even."

Captain Oskar looks worriedly at the marshmallows in his drink. "Last I checked we didn't keep any clawed animals of the real kind on board this ship. Present company excepted at this table of course." He observes, looking away to watch the fake rainforest storm as a few holographic poison frogs croak silently in the joy of the moisturized.

Harold squeaks in indignation. "CAPTAIN OSKAR NILISONN!! I am also trying, sir, to help you!" He hisses, his mood souring. "A prolonged high mail transfer fail rate like that across a mostly explored planet with a highly hospitable biosphere is NOT acceptable. This keeps up, or gets traced to your ship, you lose a certain stipend that you get monthly for working with us to toss your mail transfer onto the hook at Point McCabbe Transfer Station. Which, as I understand, is a heavy part of how you keep this ship qualifying for the Cooper's Cruising Cooperative..." He breathes menacingly as he slams both paws onto the paw prints on the edge of the sheet.

Captain Oskar suddenly asks a weird question as he keeps looking to his right. "Ms Lilia, do you see or feel anything weird at your 90 degrees?"

Liliana blinks at the captain. "Logging a odd shape staring through the glass window next to us on small-scale radar. it has been pointed towards discussion for the past two minutes since you and Captain Harold started classified discussion."

Harold turns his head since something seems to be weird about this distraction that just came up. A jet black panther is standing right there in the midst of the rain, watching the three of them. His old Godon-conferred Godsense snaps wildly into his vision at the feeling of danger coming on, outlining a beast with actual capillaries and blood vessels and organs thumping away. "Captain Oskar, clarify that you have no actual feral cats on your ship. Because based on multiple spectra readings between the three of us, there's one standing right next to us behind this window.

Part 5

Mr Bob Haryanto is awake at 2am in the morning. He should not be. But his mind has been blown so awesomely by the past three hours that he can't quite get to sleep.

The previous night had started off almost as well as it had ended. After the captain and his... wife? adjutant? ... had left the Adelsonn club room, there was a thump as a locked cabinet full of tasty alcohols opened up, a crew member flipping the sign to announce that hard drinks were now on. This was clearly a bad idea, it turns out, as some of the couples tried to drink each other under the table, only to unceremoniously crash together. It was humorous just how easily you could tell which Autoslavs weren't fitted out for drinking or not programmed to - they were the ones either calmly sipping hot cocoa and milk while looking with disdain and those who abstained totally and were now using their superior carry strength to help their smashed owners out of the clubroom to their beds. It was also funny, really, just how low alcohol tolerances had been set on some of them - some folks clearly loved to see their significant others clad in the haze of drunkenness. There was definitely at least one couple using a assistance trolley to cart one of their Autoslavs off since weight reduction hadn't been an option they had taken, and boy were they heavy without any amount of it installed.

The blue-haired Lilia and her pet Harold had run off immediately after the show was over. Presumably, they did not enjoy such shows. Or maybe she just wanted to follow the encouragement to entertain and indulge. Maybe watch a late night show after a last-hour charge through the dinner buffet.

The pizza donuts laid out to go with the hard drinks had been sufficient. For refreshment, Haryanto and Bronii had taken a can of guarana and a spiked lemonade to spike it with, and made up two separate drinks on their own. The result was fascinating to him. The guarana was lifting them up, and the alcohol in the lemonade was downing them. Haryanto looked on with a smile as Bronii tried not to pretend she was at least not drunk by cheating with the guarana lift, it was details like this, somehow put together delicately in her simulation, that made him almost completely forget she was a very complex, delicate machine capable of ignoring a large number of "you are a robot" cues and clues hanging practically in her face.

After the drink and donuts, they were slightly buzzed and clearly incapable of having good ideas. So they had the bad idea of going late night shopping at 9pm... Bronii was still slightly fixated on the exotic clothwrap outfit that Christina had worn to meet them.

They found a shop that had a few variations of it... plus a bit of other kinky outfits, including some sort of machine that would measure a customer and generate a sort of disposable bondage suit in something latex-ish. Watching another customer exit the store while carting a guy doing an impression of a goth turkey at a bondage convention, he decided neither of them were the right shape for that kind of thing, so... PASS.

But there was still the clothwrap exotic outfit... and it still needed personal attention, as the tailor in charge for the night ran a measuring tape around various parts of Bronii's body, pausing occasionally to write down numbers and openly compliment her on how well she had kept her shape at her age. Just for that praise on his wife, Haryanto decided to reward the tailor by quietly asking him to add a few other kinky things to the bag. The tailor had reciprocated by slipping several data sticks for each cosplay outfit he'd bought plus one for for the clothwrap outfit, a small movement and behavior dataset for exotic adult dances. Haryanto raised an eyebrow. "Compatible with your model as per our ship records. We have them in other formats for a few other major types.. it's more fun when your loved one knows the right moves to please you in the outfits you purchase."

Hayanto laughed in a mix of embarassment and being pleased.

The old man put down the tape and waved the order form. "We'll have the rest of them sent to your room within 12 hours after we print them out. consider it a special service and gift to justify the added cost on your bill."

The old man was right, it would probably have been cheaper to shop for this at Veronica's Secret at some branch on solid soil... but he was here to have fun. And he DID have one of the clothwrap outfits available in virginial white in Bronii's size, which only further cemented his belief that Bronii had been right to go for the outfit, as she stepped out of the changing room, the only thing ruining the combination being the sneakers staying on her feet. Not that it mattered, there was enough going on that he was having a hard time bringing his tent down before it got way up in public.

At least he did not act on it in haste. When they had gotten back to their cabin, there was a faint rhythmic thumping coming from the floor accompanied by the faint strains. The guarana had finally abandoned Hayanto, leaving behind only the exhaustion of half a glass of alcohol. It had also stopped lifting Bronii up, as she crashes into bed, flat out tired, her body putting the white exotic outfit on full display - sleeves on her arms flowing down from her elbows, and down her legs from just below her butt, leaving plenty of tempting skin on display. Clearly not something a sailor should be wearing, and yet there had been Christina... Hayanto shakes his head and decides not to think of another woman, only on this one truly belonging to him. And oh yes, there had been the new program he'd wanted her to have.

"Bronii, override word: bedtime. install." He carefully enunciated the words, aware that the alcohol might have wrecked his ability to properly pronounce some of the words... Fortunately, it didn't, as Bronii complied silently, her body laying itself straight and flat on the bed in a safe recharging stance, arms moving to her sides, even as her head tilted to watch Hayanto enjoy her for who she was.

"Awaiting install of new program or dataset items. Please connect the desired data item into the nearby Maintenance Hub to install. Reboot unit to end." She briefly breaks her illusion of life, the prompt enunciating from her lips without the hindrance of the alcohol simulation affecting her words. "... Do you *hic* like what you sssseee, Bob?"

Hayanto nods slowly. "Most of it... but maybe not the bit when you're clearly tired. Let's have more fun in the morning before breakfast.... He leans in to give Bronii a deep lingering kiss on the lips, their tongues sharing a little action, before he sits back on his side and sighs. "Bronii, override word, sleepytime."

Bronii's eyes slowly begin to close up. "But I'm not feeling that... tired.... yet..." Her protest comes slower and slower, each word falling downwards in pitch, before she finally falls mostly silent, save for the faint whirr of her brain adding a little new bit of naughty action to her repetoire.

Hayanto quickly turns away from her prone form and quickly shuts his eyes tight. while turning off the bedside table. If he looked at her any further, he might need to use her prematurely for pressure release, and that didn't feel right to him. The alcohol helps him to overcome the attempts of the nightclub beneath them to keep them awake.

Securitor Antonidas Leucaine. Greek by ancestry. Proud member of a long line of security people, from security guards for tiny schoolyards to bodyguards for the high and mighty.

If asked by anyone as a young child, Securitor would have proudly puffed his chest and said the same thing his family had all said. "Security! I want to be part of Security!". And so he had gone to security classes in a proper school with a proper curriculum. When he had graduated, he looked around, and this cruise ship had been top of his list, despite the high likelihood that he wasn't going to be in front when being considered as a candidate.

He was wrong on that of course. It had been a good twenty years - once you adhered to the very basics of securing a ship like this, other matters like the 'localisation' phenomenon making things like firing a gun with lethal effects on this beachball impossible after only a few hours out of any airtight case sealed outside of New South Harales' orbit dramatically altered the difficulty of the job. Only once in a while did he have to sit down and talk to a guest behind the bars of the lockup, or confiscate a forbidden object according to the rules.

It had been a good twenty years. Nobody died, plenty of injuries for various reasons, almost all virtually being down to either crew carelessness or "the guest was stupid".

The duck had been broken tonight, and rather violently.

He sighed momentarily as he read through the statement he had just taken from his own leader, Captain Oskar Nilisonn... The good Captain was now laid up in his Captain's Quarters. At approximately 2120 hours ship time, a jaguar had attacked him at Captain's Hour in the Rainforest Pub, taking a claw swipe at him and his guests. He'd been wounded. Fortunately, the guest had had the presence of mind to lob an EMP grenade of some sort into the rainforest display, terminating all the holograph generators and causing the jaguar to disappear into a white puddle. Unfortunately, the act had also wiped any possible security footage that might have exposed how the generators could have been rigged to create an illusion to cover said all-too-real white substance.

He had had the presence of mind to collect a sample of the substance and yell for a test by the medical and science lab, as well as secure a few more samples to put into cold storage, as well as get medical attention for Captain Oskar. The man was now calmly sitting in his own bed in his quarters which had now been parted from the left side that the beds normally combined into.

Securitor nodded in approval. He clearly had not wanted to affect his wife or the passengers too much. A decision had been made to keep it mostly under wraps from everyone else on board of every bad thing so far that had occurred. The captain had printed four notes out using the printer in his premium Multipen, fearful that compromises might be happening elsewhere in the system onboard keeping it secure.

The first had been a note for the adjutant Christine with a word and a sort of coded Response Code Hash square. It was to be shown to her while explaining that Security would have to harden access to the bridge as well as by any person to her, even other sailing personnel. She would be kept under watch by at least two Security officers at all times for at least the duration of this trip, and arrangements would be made to rehouse her at Top Suite 102.

Securitor rolls his eyes. He did not want to be the person to give that news to. Christina had lots of quirks, some of which made his life harder. Her insistence on access to the captain at all times was one of them. Another was her regular pressing of the flesh with passengers, a habit which many enjoyed for very visible reasons. Telling her he would have to clamp down on things she loved doing would be tanamount to suicide, if she acted up with a temper.

The second note was to announce to the crew that the Captain's Quarters had experienced some problems and would be closed to access by anyone including the Captain's Wife/Adjutant for at least the next four weeks for repairs.

The third note was for Hospitality to rehouse the occupants of cabin 503 to Top Suite 102. It would not be billed to their receipt, but rather listed as a "upgrade due to room problems rendering it uninhabitable."

The fourth note was for Securitor to enact "Code Siege" across the entire cruise ship, and "Trick" specifically from Top Suite 102.

He sighed as he held the notes to be delivered.

The Moat had failed.

The Castle was under siege, possibly from within AND without.

The Queen needed to be protected.

Captain Oskar Nilissonn was looking very chipper as he sat down for breakfast at the cruise ship's newly renovated "Formal Diner".

Another one of those at-extra-charge affairs on the ship, it made up for it with a more carefully curated meal selection at either of the three official main meals. It also helped that the first passengers would board only three months from now, leaving the crew with time to perfect their various trades and practices on the cruise ship, an important matter given how many of the newest members had had no experience with the specifics of working on a cruise line. He had invited his dearest adjutant, Christine, of course, as well as Dr Saulomon himself, as the man had had business he needed to discuss over a finely made al dente egg and bearnaise sauce atop a crossaint, some sort of new construction of culinary taste. There were other bits coming after the starter of course...

Dr Saulomon slid a small binder across to Captain Oskar Nilissonn marked "Emergency Extra Security Measures For Chicken Of The Sea - Code Siege - Gambit". Captain Oskar accepted this thick binder and started reading it as Dr Saulomon tucked into his own share of the bearnaise egg crossaints, remarking about the chef's talents. Christina nodded and told Dr Saulomon that she would foward that praise to the chef concerned, even as she agreed with him, daintily nibbling on her own breakfast. She was clearly not interested in what Captain Oskar was reading, or programmed to ignore it.

The binder was a bit sensible at first, the usual measures one would take for a situation where one or two important people were being threatened on a ship, plus crew safety, passenger safety, management of the most likely terrorist incidents that would occur on a cruise ship using measures within the power of the crew as is... It started getting a bit odder and odder... Captain Oskar looked up at Dr Saulomon to signal his disapproval of the way he planned odder and odder things that confused, horrified or even set people entirely into "no, no, no" mode.

"How are you even going to manage it, I've only ever seen one of them Godon navcomps, like, ever?" He taps at a page about something called 'Gambit Procedures". Captain Oskar asks the pointed question.

"Christina isn't the only navcomp the Godons have left around absentmindedly... I have a whole collection of them. I'm like a idiot paperweight collector who only knows how to collect them from auctions and travelling the world. The thing is, the Godons have a much dimmer view of the value of fractured or or cracked navcomp modules.... there's a marked reduction in performance from the loss of etched petals in the 'flower'. About 30 to 50%. those, they won't chase after. They also emit a lot more radiation, making them more visible... perfect for decoys if they're looking for them based on radiation emissions like I suspect..." Dr Saul notes idly as he stirs the sauce with a piece of crossaint.

"But how will I find my true wife amongst this lot of wretches? Will it even work?" Captain Oskar panics.

"Well, for one thing, try asking your wife about her favorite flower... that might work." Dr Saulomon helpfully suggests, as if he knows something about that point. Mr Enigmatic strikes again, clearly. "as to whether it will work... hopefully it will. a pretty good multi-spectral security guy advised on it."

Lilia Stargazer is very very disappointed.

She had been pleased when told of the free room upgrade she was about to receive. Some sort of suite...

That enjoyment had ended when they descended into the crew hold and saw their new room.

It was apparently some sort of L-shaped bunker, consisting of three rooms linked in an L-shape. The first room was a simple kitchenette. The second was a basic bedroom with one single-bed on either side. As is the convention on this ship, the bed on the port side had a induction pad, and a maintenance hub parked right beneath the bed itself. At least the mattresses with soft and comfy, even if it felt more like prison comfort.

The third room was just a storeroom. Apparently storage of all those clothwrap outfits that half the passengers were so obssessed with since the Captain's wife introduced herself in one, all in the same shade of purple.

Lilia Stargazer finally can't stand it and yells at Harold "This is an outrage. We went on a cruise, not a prison stay!" It was the ditzy overlay talking. "I have a good mind to lodge a complaint and get our money back when we get home. And where's the shower!?"

Harold sighs a little... "Lilia, override word, naptime. It's just been a tiring eight hours. Take a nap, you'll feel clearer minded when you wake back up.

Lilia immediately conks out like a light without any more words, slumping down on one side on her port side bed...

Harold stands up on his hind paws, folding his arms and looking around. It was certainly fascinating to see the bunker he'd pieced together on request come to life... The first room in this cabin was actually an airlock of sorts, lockable from inside or with a special code added to their straps from the outside... and it had to be closed to open the door to the second room. He winced a little as he realised that overpressurising the bunker partially was not the best solution to keeping contamination out or keeping the second door forced shut.

"Mental note, explore other avenues to stealthily enforce entry security." He spoke into his tiny workpad before letting his body swallow it for safekeeping,

Harold hopping into the storeroom. "Now where was... ah yes." He leapt somewhere into the clothing storage and pulled down on a pullcord switch, causing the back of the storeroom to part open to the real point of the bunker.

Harold had gained a very unique ability when he had gone from being a mere human child to ... whatever he now was. Over the years, he'd slowly realised how much of a trump card it was and grown a little more secretive about it. As a result, very few people knew of it, and he was known more for either his postal services or his security planning skills, neither of which were jokes either. Dr Saulomon had been one of the privileged few who did know of his secret ability no thanks to his involvement in an incident of sorts, but he had been decent enough to keep it in confidence. Besides, who would believe it if they were told what his ability was?

Harold triumphantly strides into the hidden room to inspect its contents... it was meant to do two things... one, provide a secured bed for Christina to sleep on in the event of a "Gambit" being called. The usual induction and maintenance pad was in place, though due to the need to isolate it it did not have a connection outside of the bunker.

Harold turns to look at the other side. He fondly called it the Multi-Maiden System. Back on Ancient Earth, a certain company had been obsessive with the portrayal of its key character mascot by live suited actors. Some dude named M---- Mouse. they had gone to the extent of creating a system that ensured that its key character was not portrayed at anytime by more than one person across the world. If he was at location A, the actor representing him at location B needed to confirm he was out of sight at A before he could appear, and the same thing went for locations C through as far as it would take. His choice of name for the setup in here was twofold: a parody of a classic Ancient Earth property, and a reflection of how he intended the system to work.

A similar setup was in place here. While Christina was cooped up in here, a decoy version could be sent out to represent her. It could even, to some extent, replicate her ability to control the navigation of the ship, though ideally not in a overly busy situation as they decoys were all vastly inferior in that regard... There were also a few details wrong in their memories compared to the genuine article, just to be safe.

Harold hops over to the shelving, climbing up a little to check a random unit. He looks around and sighs. Dr Saulomon was just as bad as his adoptive father Dr Huyi when it came to overdetailing even supposedly inferior product. He momentarily bounced on one of the fake Christina's boobs before climbing past them to examine their faces. "Hmm, can't even tell them apart, I suspect. Not like this."

And then... he sinks right in. Just like that. like diving into a oddly shaped pool. Exactly what part of his secret talent was.

Harold opens his eyes and looks around in the void, relaxing as the faint whirs of hardware powering on. After a while, the machine he has 'dived' into gets up on its own and stands on its own two feet, the void projecting what it sees through its eyes. Harold listens to the machine recite a few status messages, looking around in the void as he does so. This model was especially noisy.... so many AIs working together, unlike the simple one AI of many more standard Autoslavs. It had to be this complicated, it was supposed to be capable of driving a ship AND socially interacting with passengers, something that could not be accomplished by one AI, clearly.

Harold thinks about it, and decides to see how far he can push this unit. "Set Autonomy to 90% user, 10% AI." He chants the magic words, and almost falls over in the doorway of the storeroom. This unit clearly had some unusual centre of balancing going on, with more of its weight concentrated further up from the hips than normal, Harold thinks. And no, he didn't mean the breasts, though they were nice and bouncy. He was going to have to be more careful when he manually controlled this type of unit...

Harold confidently tries stepping out and... runs headlong into a virtual wall. "Error: MMS system locked - main unit not in Cradle - unable to deploy Decoy #1." The simple brains of the fake Christina announce in bright red letters to him.

"Of course, figures. that's how I designed it to work, that's how it should be working. =sigh=" Harold sighs as he leans an arm on one side of the door way to steady himself. Having a head this heavy is NOT conducive to manual control, maybe he should yield more autonomy to the AI on its movements...

Neophyte Garand is on his first trip out of port as a fully qualified sailor. After years at the naval academy, he has finally acquired the Mark Of Sailing that all newcomers to the trade seek out to gain entry to their first ship to learn the ropes.

Neophyte Garand has learnt that a surprising amount of it is NOT actually doing sailing things. He has been suckered into depositing clean and dried washing into the rooms of some of the staff. As he goes around opening doors and depositing bags with the matching room number on them, he curses and wonders if there will ever be anything worthwhile to justify everything he's done to date in his chase after a sailing career.

Garand bumbles into a room with a kitchenette by the door, having a little trouble with the door in front of him refusing to budge inwwards for some reason, at least until the front door clicks shut. He yells "Laundry delivery" as he sets down the basket to look for the washing bag for this room and-

Garand blinks hard as he sees a young blue-haired woman in a simple sundress lying supine in bed, breathing slowly. He also sees the bosomy figure of the Captain's wife standing in a doorway to another room further in, grinning. "Uhm, erm... hey. Whatcha doing here?"

Garand is having a bad time as he realises Christina normally almost-hides in her gauzy clothwrap outfit, almost a sort of work uniform, albeit not one one would consider professional, Right now though, she's just fully naked, every curve and detail on full display. Those soft, full-bodied curves. That tiny outie bellybutton. plump big nipples you could suckle a baby on and thick floral petal-like labia in matching warm pink...

A faint trickle of blood drips out of his nostrils. Garand pays no attention.

Christina laughs embarassedly. "Erm... could you quickly finish what it is you came to do here and just go? I'm... erm... kinda indisposed right now."

Garand panics a little and tosses out a bag of clothing, any bag, he just doesn't want to stay in this embarassing situation. The door bangs shut loudly...

Garand will spend the rest of his life occasionally fantasizing to what he has just witnessed. But the memory also forces him to cut short his first sailing stint as he can no longer go on the bridge while the Navigator Adjutant Christine is at work and not undress her mentally. That is generally not a good position to be in with one's senior officers or their wives. Tragic, really...

Harold phews as he realises how his cover was nearly blown, wiping his/her arm across his/her brow. "Assign 90% AI Autonomy, 10% user autonomy. Return to Cradle slot." He decides to cut his time with testing short and hops out of the void, ending his dive. As he watches the unit turn slowly and walk back into the hidden backroom, he quickly jumps up again to shut the door to it with the pullcord.

Harold's last coherent thought is "But man, that was a shapely ass she had too." He clambers out of the storeroom and leaps up to sleep atop of Lilia, the mental exhaustion of trying to do something he hasn't done in ages in something with a weird design clearly having done him in. Someone wake him up when it's dinner time, zzzzz....

Part 6

The Captain did not wake up to good news from his fitful, solitary sleep.

"The Top Suite 501 in Adelson Wing was booked up by a party of six last week. It's not four missing people that failed to perform the safety drill. It's six. and it's an excusable absence, in that they're all dead." Securitor Antonidas Leucaine stated matter of factly as he brushes some imaginary dust off his shoulders. It was just an excuse not to have to look Captain Oskar in the face and admit he had failed at providing security, in as much as the casualty count was to be kept to zero deaths.

Captain Oskar pounds the backing of his bed with his good fist, cursing under his breath.

Securitor looks through the dossier. "Two of them were actual human guests, sir. The other four are Autoslavs. The humans are on ice in the medical bay's mortuary, The Autoslavs have been pieced back together as best as we can for data forensics, but the way they were dissembled were... it's not looking good. sir." He hands Captain Oskar the dossier to view through.

Captain Oskar opens the folder and looks at the photos of the crime scene. "Securitor, I thank you for your services to date and your conscientiousness in documenting and measuring the crime for the authorities. But sometimes I do wish you'd use mosaics when things are this bad." He stifles back a gagging response as he hands back the folder. "Jesus, they make child Autoslavs now?"

Securitor nods matter-of-factly. "It's become a bit of a new rage, sir. Parts of Sandy Antonio, the Sovinhaya Dorf Reservations. They get a Autoslav wife first, then they ache for a full family. One daughter, maybe another. or a son to go with their daughter. The children use new models of brain that are considerably more compact but more limited. Godon origin. Nobody expects more than a certain range of behaviours with children, so they get away with it."

Captain Oskar leans back and rubs his head. "This is going to do a real fucking number on our campaign to get families in the Top Suites..." He thinks briefly. "And how has my wife taken Code Siege?" He obviously has to ask.

Securitor shrugs. "She seems to have accepted it on a professional level after reading your message. She's grabbed some of her other clothing from her own personal quarters and vacated for Top Suite 102. We have started rotation of the decoys into public view and navigation use. Trainees Attlee and Sameons are trying their best to patch up your absence at the bridge and your events as much as possible, but we have had to cancel some, and the decoys are solving for navigation at a far lower rate than... normal. Same speeds as normal navcomps on other ships in this beachball. Only someone who's been on this ship before and often enough would notice the additional sloth."

Captain Oskar nods slowly. "And this suspension of the 12am to 3am privileged hours for our Adelson Wing guests in the pool area?"

Securitor frowns and looks up. "is necessary, sir. with this menace running around the ship we cannot risk midnight attacks on our guests. We have to choose between pretending everything is well and watching the bodies possibly pile up, or pretending we have some glitches and issues at the moment and preventing more deaths."

Captain Oskar considers this. "Very well then. Please continue doing your job. And Securitor? You are NOT a failure. Part of your job is to return that state of security to our staff and passengers when it is stolen, by stealth as much as possible. In this regard, I see no issues so far... except maybe the lack of my wife in my quarters at night."

Securitor has a faint smile on his lips as he hears Captain Oskar admit subtly that he's aching for a good romp, something possibly not doable given the current security measures and his injured arm in a sling. "The decoys are also still capable of some behaviours that your wife performs, sir. and maybe they could use positioning where they take the lead at reduced intensity."

Captain Oskar facepalms. "Securitor. That is WHERE you are still a failure after two decades. Perhaps when you have someone to truly treasure, you will understand that simply going through the motions is not where the love is."

Securitor looks away. "Understood, sir. But I am still not necessarily going to guarantee that the Christina we deliver to your room at night is actually your wife. Remember, you agreed to these orders too." He crosses one of his arms across his chest in the traditional salute of the Greekaltis out of respect to Captain Oskar, and slowly excuses himself out of the Captain's Quarters.

Securitor pauses, quickly looking back in. "By the way, sir, we estimate our add-on security team will be with us within the next twelve hours by minoboat. Estimate two members with... no ammo or guns?"

Captain Oskar buries his face in his hands. "Two... oh god, please do not let it be those two. We just finished repairing Ballroom 2 from the last time those fuckers cut a rug and a bitch in there..."

Haryanto pales a little as he watches the sinuous bob and weaving going on right on top of him. There is no way this is his wife... Bronii wiggles her hips slowly as she dances atop Haryanto's naked haunches, her belly flexing in the afternoon light flooding their room, the overcast sun filling in even the shadows that there is very little he can't see of her. It's a little disappointing, but he's still making the best of it, after all, the bracing sea air coming in through the opened balcony doors was refreshing compared to the recycled air conditioning in the room.

They had ordered in an early lunch after waking up too late to indulge in morning buffet at the Marketplace. Another add-on cost on their straps... the pancakes did look good, especially after Bronii winked and asked him not to eat first even if it meant they would get cold.

There is a faint ruffling sound as Bronii reaches behind herself and pulls on something... the part of her outfit on her torso falls off onto Haryanto's face. "Surprise, Bob... did you expect this?"

Haryanto shakes his head. He's lying of course, he had kind of expected this given how scanty the outfit had been. He doesn't rush to pluck the fabric off his face, revelling in the scent Bronii has left in it, enjoying the sounds of something being unwrapped off his haunches before taking it off finally to watch Bronii motorboating his manhood with her gigantic breasts. Oh god, she is - not- helping him...keep it in...

Something flashes pale blue briefly on the balcony, a vaguely skeletal creature of some sort,skittering away on four padded feet across the balcony to hunt elsewhere, a long tongue being drawn back after extracting some... no, it was not exactly the life energy it needed, but it was still kind of... delicious. He was stealthy enough that there was probably no sign of what he had done, it was seeking to destroy only one thing and the machine had had no signs of it. It was not a reckless thing... there had been so much of this energy to extract and tide itself over while it continued locating the source of its misery, located all over the place.

Bronii gives a faint gasp and shudders in the midst of working her tits up and down on Haryanto's manhood. "Oh god, I love you so much Bob... love you so much, Bob... Bob... Bob... Booooob..." Her voice suddenly starts pitching downwards as her body slows down, halting gradually before slipping and squishing fully against the rest of his cock.

Haryanto laughs a little. "Oh god, Bronii, you're going to drive me mad..." The laughing stops after a while, as he notices that Bronii has stopped moving at all, staying where she is with her ass thrust in the air. "Bronii? Bronii? Bronii, override word: status!"

"Warning. Unit power reserves at. 2%. Unexplained power drain detected. Prolonged zero energy may. lead to memory damage. Please. recharge." Bronii blankly speaks, her camera sensors fully visible as the lack of power cuts out her simulated irises.

Haryanto curses and quickly starts putting her back on her side of the bed to charge, cursing and wondering just how she'd run flat after only twenty minutes of action since waking up. "Stupid exotic dancing add-on, I swear..."

"Hey, Frankie, come over here, this is kinda weird." a plumply fat man in blue overalls raises his hand in a messy office somewhere else in the crew hold, looking up from a older-model computer - not a workpad, but an actual flat-screen and box with a chunky keyboard and a dirty stained mouse.

"Axl, for the last time, everything on a cruise ship is weird and within expected limits." a scrawny man in matching overalls comes over and takes a look at the history of incoming tech requests scrolling down on the screen, having pulled his own VR headset off. Pity, really, he was having a good time groping that idol's boobs with his gloves on.

Axl pauses before he continues mocking Frankie. "... this is weird. Staff going down, passengers reporting battery flats at accelerated speeds... never seen anything like this, have you?"

Frankie frowns and stands back, considering the situation with his chin in his hand. "Not in twenty years, no. Alert the bridge. Just in case whatever's doing this causes problems on the bridge too." He sighs as he pulls down his headset and switches to something actually work related. He hated having to do work, but Captain Oskar had been so good to him this past decade that work was not a drudgery so much as an opportunity to pay in his dues to him, he mused, as he starts pulling camera footage and panning wildly to look for anything untowards.

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A Captain's Ship is His Wife

Contents

A Captain's Ship is His Wife

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

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A Captain's Ship is His Wife

A Captain's Ship is His Wife

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Navigation menu

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