JessicaRae

Hello one and all! Welcome back to the ride. Thanks for all of the advice on the last chapter. I still haven't made a firm decision on which way I'll go, but I will absolutely keep all of it in mind when the time comes. I do want to make a quick shoutout to my incredible patrons! This story has had its ups and downs, but you lot have stuck with me and it is very appreciated. I've been able to make some purchases and pay bills that I may not have been able to were it not for you all. So thank you all. Thanks to my readers on Scribble Hub as well! You all convinced me that I actually can be an author and have given me the encouragement I need to keep going. You all are Amazing!

Want more Slipspace? There is a slowly growing collection of art and additional content over on my Patreon!

Though I wish I could say otherwise, I drank more alcohol that night than I ever had in one sitting before. The fancy liver in my belly kept me from being entirely trashed like I likely should have been, but even it couldn’t entirely prevent the headache that pounded in my head the morning after. The screaming of my alarm at o’five-hundred ship time brought me from blissful sleep to painful consciousness pretty quickly. That didn’t mean I was happy about it. Were there one to hit, I might have tried to smash the alarm clock, much like I’d seen characters do in some of the older shows and movies I watched. My alarm was inside of my head though, and I couldn’t very well smash it without injuring myself.

The bed was empty, save for me, so I figured that Echo must have already gotten up. She almost immediately proved that to be true when she walked back into the stateroom with a steaming mug of something in both hands. Part of me was almost disgusted by how awake and alert she appeared.

“Here, I figured you would need this after last night. It’s a dose of hangover cure mixed in with some chai. Not as bad as it smells, promise.” The incredible woman that was allowing me to call her my girlfriend held out the mug of nectar and I took it greedily, though the heat kept me from glugging the whole thing down immediately. The liquid stung in my mouth, both from the temperature and the sharp smack of acidic citrus that threatened to turn my face inside out. It woke me up, that was sure.

I thanked Echo for her wonderful gift with a tired kiss and turned away to start getting dressed. Despite some of the more… adventurous things I’d done with my girlfriend in the previous weeks, I was still a bit bashful about my body. A lifetime of dysphoria had left me with some unfortunate attitudes towards my body and though the new one was amazing, old habits were proving hard to break.

Echo understood though and was more than willing to respect my privacy for the moment. I did have to take a moment when it struck me how easily I’d dressed. Just a few weeks ago, I had still struggled somewhat to pull things into place without pinching myself or otherwise end up with things out of sorts. It almost made me laugh despite the headache that was threatening to split my skull open. It made me glad that I hadn’t gone too extreme in the chest area. If my tits were any bigger than they already were, it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get to this point.

The Celeste Institute had been a miracle for me, really. The girl staring back at me from the mirror was everything I had ever dreamed of. Sure, I wasn’t a supermodel or anything like that, but I didn’t want to be. I was simply me. Nothing more, nothing less. Of course, my close-fit jumpsuit looking damn fine on me was nice too. I ran a hand up from my hip up my side, caressing the gentle curve where my waist tapered in. Yeah, I was very happy with that.

“You’d best stop looking like such a snack Addy, or we are both going to be late for work.” My girlfriend’s saucy tone sent shivers down my spine. If not for the headache still pounding away, I might have been tempted to respond in kind. Instead, my reply was little more than an amused grunt.

“Aye aye, Captain.” I finally managed. “This whole cruise was supposed to be a test for you, afterall. Best not get bad marks on it.”

Our arrival at Luyten’s Star was thankfully not delayed at all and we were quickly routed by traffic control to the temporarily defunct slipspace gate. The ring itself was fully intact, but the tethered reactor assembly had been disassembled, with bits and pieces of its containment structure organized neatly nearby. The head engineer over the project, a gentleman by the name of Lemuel, was thrilled to see us as one might expect. He was happy to finally have the final piece of the trillion credit puzzle he’d been tasked with.

Moving that piece into place proved to really be a hell of a task, though. The reactor’s previous core had already been removed and taken to a recycling plant, but the new one proved to be a chore to get into place. Like the galaxy’s largest scale heart transplant, the new core had to be gently shepherded through the construction zone with the utmost care, lest something damage the delicate new component.

I was a good pilot with a lot of hard-earned confidence in my abilities, but the task really pushed the limits of both my capabilities and those of my opposite, another Erickson pilot that had been taken from the docks at Illume. I’d been through many obstacle courses, both in simulation and in practice, but few of them could even approach the highly technical maneuvers that the two of us had to perfectly coordinate on to get the giant piece of machinery from the cargo bay and into its new home. There were dozens of work bees flying around with us and literal tons worth of equipment floating in space to work around, everything moving like a demented ballet.

It was a full day of work to finish, with myself and the other pilot taking frequent breaks to rest and plan our next maneuver. The level of concentration required for the task was exhausting, so the breaks were very much needed. When the spotters gave the all clear signal at long last, there was no stopping the deep sigh of relief that erupted from my lungs. I was drenched in sweat, the jumpsuit I had been admiring just that morning now smelling less than fresh.

Running on fumes, I set the little tug I’d been stuffed into back onto the deck of the Ratatosk’s cargo bay. The hatch hissed open as the atmosphere inside the craft equalized with the larger ship’s environment and I crawled out, my joints rejoicing in their newfound freedom from the cramped cockpit. Morik, the cargomaster for the ship, was already over by the other tug with a couple of crew members tying it down. I had no idea where the other pilot was, he’d landed a couple minutes before I did and disappeared the moment he’d finished post flight checks, according to Morik. I hoped I’d be able to find him later to have a drink after a job well done, but I supposed that I’d settle for a good nap back in my quarters.

I stuck around the bay for a bit, helping the crew get everything cleaned up and secured again. To my relief, there wasn’t a terrible lot of work to do and Morik thanked me for the help before telling me politely to get out of his domain.

By that point, my flight suit was getting uncomfortably damp from my exertions and I decided to go clean myself and change into a fresh suit before doing anything else. Shrugging off the top half of the suit, I tied the sleeves around my waist, exposing my sweat stained undershirt. The ship's interior was much cooler than the inside of my suit was and the relief was palpable.

With the corridors basically empty, I was able to lengthen my stride and make my way forward towards crew quarters in quick time. I stepped into the stateroom Echo and I were sharing. It seemed that the current captain had predicted my actions, since she was waiting for me inside.

“Took you longer than I thought it would to get back here.” There was no accusation or heat in her voice, merely curiosity.

My boots were already coming off my feet by the time I responded. Exhaustion and the ickiness of the grime drove me to vacate the work clothes as soon as the door slid closed. “I stuck around a bit to help Morik with cleanup.” I stretched my arms out. “I’ll gladly take hugs though?” I was grinning as I said it and laughed when Echo raised an eyebrow at me.

“I think not! Take a shower first and then I’ll think about it.”

Taking (playful) offense to that, I stood and approached the other woman with mischievous hands. “But starlight! I need love to keep me going!”

Already beginning to giggle, Echo tried to push me away. “Nuh-uh! Not while you’re all sweaty!”

Things devolved quickly into a tickle fight after that. I really hoped that there weren’t any other crew nearby too, for Echo had managed to get her wiggling fingers to a highly ticklish spot on the backside of my thigh. The squeal I let out was perfectly feminine in a highly euphoric way, but was also embarrassingly loud.

Having reduced myself to a blushing mess, I extricated myself from the surprisingly strong arms of my girlfriend to try and regain some semblance of dignity. I did manage to escape, but my self-control was a bit more of a chore to reign in, especially with Echo laughing at all of the shades or red I was turning. “Don’t you have work to do?” I asked her and then added a somewhat indignant: “Work that doesn’t involve torturing me, preferably?”

My girlfriend let out a few more giggles before responding stutteringly with “Stars! Y-you should see yourself in a mirror right now! Oh I am definitely capping that…” More giggling. I hated being ignored and found myself pouting, which made the other girl laugh even harder.

Only after my embarrassment had grown to nearly uncomfortable levels did the youngest Erickson abet in her mirth at my condition. She did finally help me off of the floor where we’d fallen in the midst of the tickle fight. “You’re right though, I do need to head up. Lucky you, you’ve got the rest of the day off. I shouldn’t be long though. Just need to get us set on course back to a gate so we can go home.”

The PA pinged and the voice of my girlfriend’s father came over the speakers. “Captain to the bridge.”

Echo sighed. “Well, I guess that’s my cue. I’d best get going.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I think I’m going to take my shower and then lie down for a bit. Maybe take a nap. Either that or I’ll go down to the mess for food.”

“Alright, hun,” said my partner. “Just let me know what you end up doing. I don’t want to accidentally wake you up if you do take a nap.”

Again I nodded. I really appreciated the consideration. Good at my job as I was, the level of concentration pushing and dragging a gate core around heavily occupied space had taken a lot out of me. Modified as it was, my body could have kept going, but no amount of augmentation to my frame could stop the fatigue I was feeling in my mind.

“Just don’t go off and get into trouble, alright?” My response was tired, but carried all of my love for the woman in front of me. I never thought I’d be able to find someone to be with, it was a big galaxy after all. And yet, Callisto Erickson had come into my life as if by fate and now I couldn’t imagine life without her. It was just as her mother had told me. Sometimes what you really needed was just to appreciate what you had in the moment and leave the past in its place. I had the rest of my life to reflect on what was, but I only had this moment to live in.

“Me?” came my girlfriend’s response. “Trouble? Nah, If I’m going to do that, I’ll make sure you’re there for it first. Sound good to you?”

It was all I could do to grin and look back at the girl. Yeah, this was where I wanted to be. Who cared if it was where I deserved to be or if whatever ambiguous fate existed had it in the plan for me to be here, I was the one living it, and I was going to enjoy it; because this new life was worth being happy with.