I stifled a yawn as I checked the timer on the little panel at the end of the Re/Gen pod. Normally I'd be in bed with Sarah for another two hours at least, but I wanted to be present when the captain was finished processing. And like I figured, there was just seconds left on the countdown before it was over and the capsule unsealed.

Rebecca's eyes fluttered open after the door rotated clear, then she pulled herself up to a sitting position while I moved to stand next to her.

She stretched her arms and flexed her shoulders as she greeted me, "Good morning Amanda."

"Good morning Rebecca," I responded as I held out her necklace in one hand and a nightshirt in the other.

Like last time she took the necklace first and slipped it on over her head. Then she got to her feet and stepped into the sandals she'd left next to the pod last night.

I was left holding her nightshirt as I watched, and my eyebrows crept up slightly. I finally commented, "You're looking a little different this morning boss."

Last time I watched her emerge from the healing pod she was both younger and skinnier than I was used to seeing her. That was less than thirty days ago, after she was wounded when Lebeau tried to blow up the ship. This morning she didn't look any younger, but there were some other obvious differences.

The most noticeable one from my perspective was her height. She'd grown a couple inches, from the five-foot-eight she'd been since I first met her to about five-ten. Compared to my petite five-foot-two it almost felt like she towered over me, and looking up at her inspired some excited flutters in my tummy.

Another source of happy feelings in me was her muscles. The definition and tone she lost when her body was reset after the bomb incident had been restored last night. Now her figure was strong, lithe, and athletic looking. That was tempered by the curve of her hips, behind, and bust. She wasn't some skinny eighteen-year-old anymore, now she had some healthy weight on her to compliment the muscles and height.

And needless to say, she was once again in perfect health and without any trace of the recent wounds to her hip and side. Her fair skin was completely unblemished, the only marks on her were the freckles scattered across her cheeks, arms, and chest. Her dark fiery red hair was still longer than she used to wear it, and actually I couldn't help wondering if it got even longer last night. It hung down almost six inches past her shoulders this morning.

"After nearly three decades I figured it was finally time to try some of those enhancements Jenny's been talking about," the captain explained while I was still admiring her impressive figure.

I smiled and teased, "Still no fluffy tail though I see."

She laughed, "No tail, sorry."

Her tone and expression became more serious and maybe a bit anxious as she asked, "What do you think? Do I look ok?"

"You look amazing," I stated emphatically. "You always looked strong and beautiful, but now... Wow."

There was a hint of a blush on her cheeks as she smiled, then finally reached out and took the nightshirt from me.

As she slipped it on she admitted, "I was tempted to go even taller, maybe up to a full six feet? But I didn't want to have to buy a whole new wardrobe. As it is some of my things will probably look a bit small on me. Maybe I'll think about that again next time we're at Rolandan-2 and we can get cheap made-to-measure clothes."

The mental image of an even taller, stronger Rebecca sent me into a happy little daydream for a few moments. The idea of our tall strong confident amazonian captain taking charge of me left me a little weak in the knees while my heart rate spiked.

Eventually I snapped myself out of that little fantasy and commented, "I was surprised that you wanted to use Jenny's pod last night, instead of letting me treat your injuries the normal way. You weren't that badly wounded that this was the only option. I thought you didn't like getting your age reset?"

She shrugged as the two of us started walking aft towards the lift in engineering, "Getting reset to eighteen is annoying when I've lasted a year or two and actually started to look older. This time around it's only been twenty-something days, so it's not really a big deal."

She added, "It's crossed my mind more than once in the past, to just use the pod every six months whether I need it or not? Just get used to being eighteen forever, so I don't have to worry about that disappointment anymore."

"What stopped you?" I asked as we rode the lift up to the main deck.

Rebecca grimaced, "Losing the muscle mass and being too skinny. It usually takes me six to nine months to get back to the fitness level I like, and by that time I'd started to mature. So I didn't want to lose the age or the fitness."

I pointed out, "Looks like Jenny can do that for you as part of the process now. The fitness part anyways. Are you happy with the outcome?"

"So far," she replied with a smile. She helped herself to some coffee from the autochef as she admitted, "I feel foolish now that I never bothered asking before what those mods and enhancements could do. Now that I know I can come out of the pod looking like this, I'm not going to be so upset about needing to use it."

I gave her a worried look and asked, "I hope that doesn't mean you're going to start taking more risks?"

That made her grimace again, "Probably not any more than I do now? I've given up on the idea of ever having a mature body. And having access to a 'self-contained hospital that can cure damn near anything' means I sometimes get complacent, or reckless. Or sometimes I just screw up."

Rebecca slipped into her seat and had a sip of coffee, then reminded me "I told you Jenny's saved my life over a dozen times, right? In twenty-nine years. I think the longest I've gone without getting seriously injured was three years. In all that time, the oldest I've managed to get was twenty-one, before resetting back to eighteen again."

I got myself a coffee as well, then joined her at the table. I frowned as I commented, "That's not very reassuring boss."

"Sorry Amanda," she gave me a sad smile. "Bad habits I suppose."

"You need to be more careful Rebecca," I stated after a sip of my own hot drink. "You've got two girlfriends who love you, three crew who depend on you, and four friends who'd dearly miss you if anything happened."

I could tell she was thrown by my numbers for a moment, but it didn't take long for her to figure out who the fourth friend was.

"Tamsin, of course," she nodded. "You're right, I'll try and be more careful."

"Good," I stated. Then I added with a teasing smile, "I don't want to have to be the one to tell the population of Vysalis-4 that something happened to their princess."

Rebecca groaned as she rolled her eyes, "Why'd you have to bring that up? I almost managed to forget about that mess."

"Sorry boss," I replied as I tried to suppress a grin. "Maybe that's your chance to grow up though? Retire from this risky career as a frontier ship captain and settle back into a life of luxury as the queen of your own planet."

The boss scowled, "Not a chance. The Demeter is my home, I'm not giving it up for anything. And I wouldn't leave you or Sarah or Jenny behind either. Anyways I like being an independent freighter pilot. I like the freedom. If I feel like I need a little luxury I'll arrange us all some shore leave at that place on Rolandan-2 again."

That put a happy smile on my face, but after a few seconds it faded as I got more serious. "I know Gwen said she wasn't going to try and force you to go with her, but I can't believe she's prepared to return home empty-handed. Not after coming all this way to find you. And you saw how excited she was to meet you yesterday."

"Yeah I know," Rebecca sighed. She drained her coffee then shrugged, "I'm sure we'll hear from her again soon. Today maybe. If I can't convince her that I'm not the princess, I'll try and make her understand that princess or not I'm not going back to the Imperium with her."

"Your argument might carry more weight if you weren't wearing the royal signet ring as a pendant," Jenny commented as she joined us in the mess.

The purple fringe in her hair let us know this was her android body, operating in drone mode. And where Rebecca and I were just wearing nightshirts, she was fully dressed in her typical slacks and blouse combination.

Rebecca mumbled something in response to that, before adding "Good morning Jenny. Thanks for the upgrade last night."

The AI smiled, "You're quite welcome captain. I hope you're pleased with the result?"

"So far so good," the boss replied as she got to her feet.

She got herself a second cup of coffee then sat back down at the table and said, "As for the princess stuff, I'll just keep telling Gwen and her people 'no' until they get the message."

I finished my coffee then sighed, "That's not even our biggest problem right now, is it? Even with Lebeau dead, whoever he was working for might still be after us. They have to know we intercepted that shipment from Fuminja Epsilon right? That's what Lebeau was looking for yesterday."

"Yeah," the boss sighed as well. "Lebeau was a middle-man. And based on the information we found in the Hammersmith's secret orders, this might go all the way to the top of the local government here."

Jenny commented, "I took the liberty yesterday of accessing Mr. Lebeau's private terminal, along with a dozen datapads he left scattered about his home and office. I'm happy to report that his skill at information security was about on par with his charm and eloquence dealing with people."

Both Rebecca and I suppressed a smile at the AI's comment. The captain asked, "So what did you find? Anything useful?"

"I found quite a bit," Jenny responded. "Relevant to our current conversation, Mr. Lebeau was under threat of death for having lost control of the courier ship he hired. He was under orders to either retrieve or destroy the intercepted cargo. It seems his bosses' primary concern wasn't about retrieving the drugs and datacrystal, they're more concerned with keeping what they're doing secret."

"Was he supposed to kill us?" I asked. "Is that part of the whole 'keep it secret' thing?"

Our AI hesitated, "There wasn't anything specifically about killing us, but based on the context I'd say if they knew we examined the contents of the hidden compartments or reviewed the datacrystal, they would want us dead."

The captain frowned, "I think the best bet is to somehow convince them we don't know anything about the hidden compartments then. Say after Lebeau tried to blow us up we opened the other shipment and the only thing we found worth stealing was three crates of booze. Then we dumped the rest overboard since it was worthless."

I asked with a grimace, "How do we convince them of that, when we're not sure who they are? I have a feeling if it comes down to a confrontation we'll already be in deep trouble. Considering we might be talking about the guys who run this whole planet."

"As near as I can tell nobody else has accessed Mr. Lebeau's computers yet," Jenny stated. "Perhaps I could plant a report along those lines? I could make it seem like Lebeau filed it before our encounter yesterday turned fatal."

Rebecca looked thoughtful as she considered that, "Four of his men survived, if questioned they won't know anything about Lebeau filing that report. On the other hand, I don't know that anyone would bother questioning them if they already had their answers..."

After a few more seconds of deliberation she nodded, "Ok Jenny, let's try your idea. We can assume someone's going to be informed of Lebeau's tragic death sometime soon, and they'll want to dig up more information. With luck they'll be satisfied with that. They probably don't care enough about Lebeau personally to want revenge for his death, it's just a matter of finding a replacement and getting their operation back on track."

"Done," the AI stated a second later. "I've created the report and timestamped it to two minutes prior to the start of hostilities yesterday. I planted the report on the datapad that Mr. Lebeau had on his body when he died, and transmitted a copy to the computer system at his headquarters."

My eyebrows crept upwards as I commented, "That was fast. How'd you do all that from here?"

Jenny explained, "As I mentioned on our first visit to this world, their global wireless information network is not terribly secure. Nor are Mr. Lebeau's computers. His datapad is in a storage facility along with his remains but it's still connected to the network and therefore accessible. Same with the other datapads and the computer at his office."

"What else can you access?" I asked with my head tilted in curiosity. "Or don't I want to know?"

"On this world? Almost anything," she replied with a confident smile.

Rebecca drained her second coffee then stood up and commented, "Just don't get us in any more trouble than we've already got. I'm going to get dressed, then maybe you can fix us some breakfast Amanda? We'll see about getting our other girlfriend out of bed too, so we can all get started on our day."

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