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Designated Wench The klaxons howled. The baying din of the dying animal that the ship had become and the deck plates beneath their feet bucked and twisted with each impact until it felt like there would never be solidity under their boot soles again. The three men felt themselves tossed and slammed into the ship's deck and they reflexively clutched against it grasping for something solid in a fluid world of unpredictable movement; it felt like it would never end but it did eventually. With a final screeching of metal on metal the Lancaster shuddered once more and was still. The biggest of the men gingerly felt around in the spark lit darkness; the main power must have failed when the last salvo tore into the unprotected hull of the ship after the defensive shields had failed. He reached against his forehead and felt hot sticky blood flowing across his face and then felt the wetness of its touch where it began gathering and soaked into his uniform collar. There wasn't much pain but he could tell that it was his blood and not one of his shipmates. He must have hit his head against something when he was knocked off of his feet during the death throes of the Lancaster and if that is all it was then he had gotten lucky so far. The acrid stench of the burning circuitry and the sparking and sputter of dying systems were everywhere that they looked. He felt hands slip under his armpits and hoist him to his feet. The smaller men on either side looked up at him. He wouldn't have thought that even together that the two smaller men would have been able to lift him so quickly but they had. "Which way?" one of them shouted to him through the din. He shook his head to try to clear the fog that was there from the impact away a bit. "It's one deck down still, starboard side, frame section 22." "Are you sure it's still there?" the other man shouted as they started slowly picking their way past a torn smoking bulkhead that had partially collapsed in their path. "No reason for it not to be," the big man shouted back. "The bridge is gone and the captain with it. Most of the people who were slated to use it were up there with him when he died." "It better be there," the first man, a thin greasy looking fellow, said to him as he wiggled past the collapsed bulkhead. "That's all I'm saying. Cause we won't have time to make it to another pod. If it isn't there, then you've killed us all." The next hatchway refused to open. They strained against it for a moment but it remained sealed tight and immovable. The big man was about to trip the manual override when the smaller fat kid grabbed his arm and frantically pointed at the barely functioning panel flashing bright red. The big man exhaled in frustration and abandoned his efforts to open the hatch. The panel said that there was hard vacuum on the other side; probably from a hull breach. "We'll use the maintenance shaft," the big man said. "As long as we can bypass that breech we can still get there in time." The other two men nodded wearily and they backtracked as quickly as they could until they found the nearest access point. Even the maintenance shaft wasn't as useful as they hoped it would be though. On the way down to the next deck they had to detour around another collapsed bulkhead. This one had collapsed inward and had sealed off the lower levels from them. It was too large a blockage for them to crawl through and the three men were reduced to shifting the rubble and picking their way through the wreckage until they could clear enough of it away to pass out of the shaft and back onto the main deck again. The ship shuddered again as another salvo fired by its killer struck the hull somewhere further aft of the three men. The electrical systems still functioning around them were smothered in darkness and wouldn't respond when they tried to initiate a localized system reboot. The choking cloud of smoke from the damage around them was already growing thicker by the moment; it was already making it harder for them to breathe. The three men paused long enough to tear strips from their uniforms and wrap them around their mouths and noses. It wouldn't cut the steadily increasing smoke very much or the rapidly worsening CO2 levels, but it was better than the nothing they had right now. The big man paused at one of the crumbling junctions before they started out again. They needed to get their bearings. Normally any one of them could navigate their way around the ship almost without thinking about it, but in the aftermath of the attack up was down and familiar sights were few and far between. One of the I.D. plates on the maintenance hatch said this was deck five. He checked for more information but the part of the plate that detailed whether it was port or starboard was twisted and unreadable. The only good news was that they were finally on the right deck. Except for the damage and a few dead that they tried to ignore as they clambered past the men's torn remains, there was almost no one other than them on this deck. That was probably because this deck was just above deck six where the majority of the escape pods were situated. Most of the crew, the ones that were still in any condition to do so, would be heading there; it would be a nightmare of confusion not only down there, but where ever the smaller escape pods that were located throughout the rest of ship still remained operational. That's why they were heading in this direction; there was at least one way off the ship that wouldn't be nearly swamped with desperate man trying to escape. The round pressure door loomed out of the smoke ahead of them. There was still some sparking from the systems here and the hot, burnt electrical smell hung heavy in the air as they made their way towards it. The big man sighed in relief when he saw the hatch. It was just like it did when he had done his regular maintenance check on the systems only a few days ago. The panel that controlled the pressure door still glowed with steady amber light that pierced through the smoky haze that was gradually enveloping them and driving out any breathable atmosphere. The big man hurriedly punched in his maintenance code and was relieved to hear the pressure hiss as it unlocked and slowly rolled open. He had been half afraid that the system had just enough juice to power the panel and if the hatch was opened then it would fail leaving them with a half open door and no way to launch. |Or that the ship's computer may have locked out all but command level codes in expectation of being boarded by the attacking ship. "We're in," the big man shouted through his rag mask and ducked into the entranceway before it even finished opening. The other two men darted in after him. He hit the re-pressure sequence and heard the door rumble back shut and then felt the change in atmosphere as it cycled the contaminated air that they brought in with them into the filter system. The air in the hard dock module only had the hint of smoke to flavor it for a moment and then it was whisked away and only the familiar taste of the ship's atmosphere remained. The Lancaster shuddered again from some further injury and the shuttle lurched with it. The hard dock hatch indicator flashed green behind them; now that it was resealed the inner door could be opened. The big man punched in his secondary access and felt the tension that had gripped him fall away as the system gave them no trouble and the entrance to the shuttle itself slid open. After the uncertainty that they had felt swamping them emotionally just making it this far, that fact that once they had gotten here at all and were through to the shuttle in only a couple of seconds was anticlimactic. The three men filed into the main access corridor of the launch, their footsteps clanking hollowly on the deck plating. "Get the inner hatch secured," the big man shouted over his shoulder to the men behind him. "I'm going forward to start up the ignition sequence." "You sure you know how to do that?" one of the men shouted after him. "I'm sure," he shouted back. The little ship was cramped, but not as cramped as one of the other escape vessels would be right now. This was the captain's launch and at need be it could accommodate him, the command crew and as many others as they could squeeze in as well. Since it doubled as his personal shuttle it was bigger and better equipped than a run of the mill escape pod and more maneuverable than any of the main crew shuttles launching from the deck below them. The big man strode down the narrow corridor past the cramped cabins that composed the layout of the ship until he reached and entered the command capsule and then he stopped short. The systems were already online. A figure in one of the seats spun around and looked at him. "You're not the captain," he said. "You look like a tech." "Captain's dead," the big man growled. "So is everyone else that was on the bridge with him. We need to get out of here now," he said moving toward the helm. "You can't and we're not," the short slim man said to him. The big man looked quickly over the data display. Whoever the man was, he was telling the truth. For whatever reason the compact man had chosen to do so, the launch could not be initiated now. There in clear detail easily seen from where the big man stood was a countdown timer slowly diminishing its number under a glowing red launch delay notice. He swore and glared at the man seated in the navigator's position. They wouldn't be able to leave right now, not while the delayed launch protocol was counting down. "Then you need to override that right now so we can get away from here or we're all dead," he said. "Who's this?" he heard one of his companions say as he came in behind him. "Why aren't we under way? This ships going to break apart any minute and take us with it if we don't get underway right now." "He's the captain's steward," the big man said identifying the piping on man's uniform sleeve. "He's set a delayed launch and he says we can't abort it." "Why would you do that?" the man shouted frantically. "Where's the override?" he added as he tried to elbow his way past the big man and the captain's steward. "Don't be an idiot!" the steward hissed at the man. "Just shut up, sit tight and if you do that. We might just live to make it out of here." A shrill warning indicator went off. The steward quickly reached over and pressed a rapid sequence of buttons to silence it. "Get your friend strapped down and keep him calm or we're all buggered," the steward said. Even though he was a steward he had, it seemed, a natural air of command authority in his voice. The big man didn't like the implications of that, but he'd go along with the man's orders for the moment. It wasn't like it wasn't something that he couldn't take care of later. There just had to be a later first. "Anybody else with you?" he asked. "Just his partner," the big man answered. "He's monitoring the re-seal of the hard dock while we get things sorted up here." "Get him up here and get him strapped in too then," the steward snapped back over his shoulder. The big man went back to the airlock and told the fat kid to come up front. "What's the problem?" he asked he asked when he saw him come aft. "Why haven't the engines started? Why aren't we launching?" "No problem, just a complication," the big man answered. "The captain's steward was already aboard." "That'll mean tighter rations for us won't it," the fat kid said. "No it won't," the big guy said contemptuously. "Now go forward and strap yourself in." Once he had made certain that there wasn't any reason for him to remain standing by at the hard dock, the big man made his way back to the small navigation console located in the front of the launch. "Here it comes," the steward said just as he re-entered the command capsule. He pointed out into the velvet black of space they could see at the far end of the launch rail tube. The Lancaster had been spinning in a slow uncontrolled way ever since the enemy had knocked out propulsion and then destroyed the bridge. As the dead mass of what remained of the main body of the ship rotated they could see where bits of debris that had been flung away from the hull had radiated out and was forming a halo around the main superstructure. The enemy ship that had been slowly cruising around them ever since they had reduced the Lancaster to nothing more threatening than a target to be torn apart at their leisure moved out of sight briefly. The steward was pointing out the view screen to the debris cloud. Among the shattered bits of the ship they could see the small escape pods starting to move away. The ship shuddered as the tremor from an escape shuttles launching below them radiated through the frame of the dying starship. "Watch," the steward commanded them. "What's about to happen gentleman is why we won't launch now," he said grimly. Fresh fire from the enemy ship's weapons systems lanced across the darkness of the void and raked the small ships fanning out from the Lancaster. The weapons sliced easily through the thin defenseless hulls of first the deploying shuttles and then targeting and destroying the smaller pods with a ruthless thoroughness. "Jesus!" the fat kid exclaimed as the carnage unfolded in front of them. "He ain't here kid," the big man said. "So keep quiet like the man said." "When the alarm went off a minute ago, that was this ship detecting an active sensor scan," they heard the steward say in a hushed voice. "The captain told me that they often do that just after they destroy a ship. They identify and hunt down any source of human life signs. The cloak I engaged when I initiated protocol 227 should keep them looking away from us, but only if we are as still as we can be. The more we move around the higher our metabolism climbs. When that happens the cloak can't hide it and the easier we are to target so shut up and try to calm down as much as you can." "How do you know this?" the big man whispered to him. "I'm the captain's steward," he said. "This is my battle station. When we made contact, the captain told me to get up here and be ready to initiate protocol 227 the moment that I was sure it was needed." "So you weren't even gonna wait were you," the thin greasy guy said accusingly. "You were going to light the torch as soon as you could and leave everyone behind weren't you?" "If I was going to do that, then protocol 227 is the last thing I'd have done," the annoyed steward responded. "But now that it is initiated, not only are we hidden and apparently lifeless, we are not going to be able to leave the main hulk of the ship until after they finish out there." The weapons fire was becoming less and less intense outside. Most of the escape craft had already been destroyed in the first few minutes and after a few moments more of scanning and hunting down stragglers they watched as the enemy vessel began to move slowly away. As soon as its sensor sweeps no longer registered against the launch, the four men felt a lurching sensation and then a sense of movement. "That's the launch brakes releasing," the steward whispered. The protocol uses the natural conditions of whatever has happened to the Lancaster to make it look like this pod is empty and has been cast free rather than launched." With each random spin along the axis of the dead ship's rotation pattern, the launch brakes released a little more. If he had been watching on long range scans the big man was pretty sure he would have written it off as exactly what it appeared to be; an empty pod slowly being spun out of its launch rail by physics rather than by intent. During the second full rotation of the Lancaster after the enemy ship left, the sound of ship to ship emitters began crackling over the communications system. The sound of them powering up broke the silence in the command section of the launch. "Fools," the steward said. "They should have stayed dark." Along with the hesitant amount of radio traffic between what surviving craft there were, now there was also some hint of movement that was not directed by physics. Small engine burns were briefly visible as some of the smaller pods maneuvered to join together. "Why don't we go out to them?" the greasy man said. "We might be able to take a few of them on with us here." For the second time in just a few moments, the big man shook his head in exasperation at the man. He was going to be a problem after all and he needed to take care of him sooner rather than later. "We'll do no such thing," the steward said firmly. It seemed that all of the survivors that had made it off of the ship and had evaded the deliberate massacre of those that had escaped before them were starting to assemble in the debris cloud just off of the lower starboard of the hull. From the radio traffic whoever was taking the lead wanted volunteers to re-board the Lancaster and salvage what they could before they set off. "Why don't we let them know we're here?" the fat kid whispered. "This boat is better than anything they have out there now." "It is," the big man agreed. "And we're going to stay shut up like the man said and keep it that way." The four men watched silently as their craft, still lodged on its launch rail in the dead Lancaster, rotated into a position from which they could observe what was happening themselves rather than relying on passive use of the few still working sensors scattered around the wrecked ship's hull. "We've stopped moving," the big man whispered. "The moment their transmitters went active, the system halted our own launch," the steward said. "It'll resume soon enough though." The big man already suspected when the steward spoke why that would be so, but if he wasn't feeling inclined to volunteer any more information then he wouldn't say anything to the other two men either. The cluster of escape pods in the debris field slowly grew in size. They were small and if their beacons were off they were hard to track. If they had been a civilian starship there wouldn't have even been this many who would have survived; those models started shrieking here we are the moment they launched. A couple of pods had docked with the ship and they seemed to be occupied salvaging what few things of value they could find. Shortly after they returned to the group of surviving pods the four men huddled in the launch could see a couple of the distant survivors exit and start moving around the small cluster of escape pods in EV suits. "They're trying to rig a raft," the steward said. "They all had to kill their momentum when the enemy started targeting them. Now the only way for them to get it back is for them all to execute a simultaneous burn to get them moving in the right direction and then kill it after they reach cruising velocity." "I still say we should let them know we're here," the greasy man said. "Letting dead men know you're around won't help them and it'll only hurt us," the steward said pointing at the image they had hacked from the lateral sensor array. The four men fixated on the image that the remaining operative ships sensors relayed to them and gaped in insipient horror at what they saw displayed there. The enemy ship had left and as soon as it had gotten to the edge of its own sensor range it had gone apparently gone dark and waited. When the stellar winds carried them back close enough to detect the burst of radio traffic from the survivors, they had quietly looped wide around and were now approaching the wrecked starship from the opposite direction. The surviving escape craft had limited scan abilities and for them the first indication that any of their survivors had that their nemesis had returned was a blistering hail of energy weapons discharging directly into the center of the clustered escape pods. The greasy man and the fat kid both curled up and whimpered in shock at the ruthless execution of every remaining one of their shipmates, but neither the big man and the captain's steward flinched. This time the enemy ship loitered in the area. They took their time hunting through the wreckage. The big man nearly bit his tongue in half to keep from crying out in fear when the enemy scans touched the half exposed bow of the launch. After the second scan washed over them they felt the launch brakes loosen and the nose of the launch shift forward a few meters along the rail. The hands directing the second scan noticed the difference and they were subjected to an immediate longer scan afterward. They could see one of the weapons blisters shift and they knew that they were locking onto them and tracking them in anticipation of the order to fire being given. Each time the little craft lurched forward the big man felt his nerves screaming as they awaited the flash from the weapons targeting them, but that order never came. The hulk of the Lancaster rotated and the launch gradually exited in slips and rough starts and still there was no flash. It seemed to the big man that the enemy ship was buying the appearance that the delayed launch protocol was weaving for them to see. The launch had moved almost the entirety of its forward section out of the launch tube before the enemy ship secured from its offensive posture, fired up its star drive and departed the orbital graveyard that had been created from the remains of the ship and its crew. Two more slow rotations by the wreck of the Lancaster after they left and the launch tumbled free from the launch rail and began to drift in a slight orbit around the dead ship. The hulls protested when they briefly touched producing a nerve shattering screeching of metal on metal that was followed by the faint sound of some of the maneuvering thrusters firing just enough to begin pushing them away and out into the debris field. They had to sedate the fat kid after they had started to shift forward during the last rotation after the remaining pods were destroyed. The muted warning that there was a weapons lock on them had driven him into a near frenzy to escape and if he had succeeded the enemy would have known that there was someone in here and opened fire. He was starting to lose control over himself and had started to make a dash for the control console. The big man knocked him away from it and had to stuff a rag torn from his uniform into his mouth and then held him still while the weapons blisters were targeted them. The fat kid wasn't handling it very well before that happened and by the time they were halfway through the second rotation it was obvious that, even with his advantage of size and strength and position that he was going to soon lose control over him soon. The greasy man put him under with a sedative from the med kit and then the two of them manhandled his limp heavy form to one of the stasis booths tucked away alongside the narrow access corridor that ran the length of the ship. This had been a shuttle designed to carry at least twenty to thirty crew, but you couldn't tell that from the inside of the little ship. They bypassed the first room that contained a six unit stasis chamber and made their way to a smaller four chamber room located toward the center of the launch. As they loaded the unconscious fat kid into the clear domed plastisteel, the big man easily lashed him into position and mounted the harness that was supposed to monitor and maintain whoever was in there. The big man booted up the system and ran a quick diagnostic. "Good," he said when it finished a few moments later. "Everything looks nominal. Nice to get some kind of a break in all of this mess." "What are you going to do with him?" the thin greasy man asked. "I'm putting him under for now," the big man said. "We can't have him freaking out like that right now and that sedative you hit him with won't keep him still for long." The big man finished strapping the fat kid into position. "Give me a hand with this wiring," he said reaching for the control harness at the base of the boy's stasis tube. The thin greasy looking man reached down and handed the wiring harness up to where the big man could grab it. "What's this asshole's name anyway?" the big man asked as he continued to wire the fat kid's body into the booth. "That's Sam," the greasy man answered. "We worked together on torpedo blister three. I'm Marshall." "That would explain why the two of you were on that deck then when I ran into you," the big man said. "The torpedo loading conveyer from the magazine was inoperable," Marshall said defensively. Our gun captain sent us and a few others to put together an ammunition relay with portable grav lifts so we could stay in the fight." The big man laced the connections onto the cranial harness and once they were in place he lightly slapped Sam across the face. "You're a really stupid fuck. You know that Sam?" he said. "You lost control of yourself and now you're nothing but a popsicle and you won't be any damn good to us like you are." "We need to get out of here," Marshall said, "before they come back again." "We need to, but we're not going to," the big man said. "The counter on that lockout is going to keep running for a lot longer before it expires and we have full system control again." The big man finished wiring Sam into the stasis booth and lowered the clear plastisteel dome. The bluish light of an active pod lit up the room with a brightness that made both men wince and close their eyes momentarily. "So who are you? When Sam and I found you under that bulkhead, it looked like you were already on your way here." "I'm Dmitri," the big man answered, "I'm a stasis tech in auxiliary control three. When the bridge was taken out we tried to keep the fight going, but we lost almost all of our key systems right away. A few minutes after the bridge was destroyed, the commander there ordered us to abandon ship; the ship was dead already and only a fool would think otherwise. I was supposed to go to launch station four, but there was no way in hell that I was going to try to shoehorn myself into one of those shuttles down on deck six when I knew this one would have the fewest people heading for it. Guess that was a better call than I thought it would be." "How could you be sure this one was a better call?" Marshall asked him as he watched as Dmitri started entering data into the stasis control computer. "Because I'm the stasis tech for this launch and half the stasis systems on every other boat that's blown to hell out there right now. I know which ones had the highest priority and which ones are nothing more than glorified freezers and once the captain bought it; I was going to be on this one whatever it took to get here." Dmitri made a last few entries on the control panel and the blue light dimmed as the system went into low power mode. "That should keep him under until that delay launch program is over," he said. "What if they come back?" Marshall asked unaware that he had turned his head toward the direction of the monitor in the command cockpit where they had watched the slaughter of the rest of the crew. "Won't they detect the increased power signature from the stasis system being active?" "Not in low power mode," Dmitri replied. "It won't generate enough of a signal to make it past that energy dampening cloak that's running around the ship now." "And what then?" Marshall asked. "That's what we need to talk about with the man up front," Dmitri answered. "We have to get ourselves squared away as quick as we can or we won't last much longer than those poor bastards that just got blown away." "Why don't we just let him make that call?" Marshall asked. "He's the captain's steward and right now he seems to know what he's doing." "I'm sure he does," Dmitri answered. "And as soon as this launch protocol runs its course, he's going to fire up the engine and lay in a course for the nearest outpost and if nothing stops us we may even get there." "And what's the problem with that?" Marshall asked. "It sounds like we have a better chance to make it out of here just letting him do precisely that to me." "The problem is that at max speed it's still going to take us months to get there and there's no guarantee that ship won't come back and catch us or we won't run into another one just like it later on. Either way we need to get up front now that your buddy is put down for the night and find out just how deep in the shit that we really are." Dmitri toggled the standby mode for the rest of the system and gestured to Marshall to move out of the way so the two of them could head back to the command cockpit in the front of the ship. The steward looked up from the display when the two men came back. While they were twisting their way into the small cramped seats that crowded the cabin without seeming to increase the available space he asked them how it went with the fat kid. "We got him in one of the tubes and he's under for now. He can sit tight until we have a reason to thaw him out," Dmitri answered. The steward nodded his head in acknowledgement. "Best we can do I suppose," he said. "So now we have to see about the rest of us," he added. Dmitri nodded to him while Marshall just kept silent. "We have a breather here, so we need to get ourselves organized for when protocol 227 has run its course and we need to do whatever we're going to do." "I'm Nate," the steward said. Dmitri identified himself and was followed by Marshall doing the same thing. When Nate asked about Sam, Dmitri relayed what Marshall had told him about how the two men had come to run across Dmitri while the Lancaster was dying. "So we got a steward, a stasis tech and a pair of torpedo men," Nate said. "I guess we'll have to do what we can then." "We don't have much of a choice do we?" Dmitri said. "No we don't," Nate replied. Nate looked over to Marshall. He was still a little twitchy. He hadn't handled seeing what the enemy ship had done to their shipmates as badly as his fellow torpedo man Sam had, but he was still shaken by it. "Marshall," he said, "It's going to be a while until we can get underway. Why don't you go back to the galley and dig us up something to eat. When you get back we can map out what we're going to do and it won't hurt any of us to get some food in our bellies while we hash that out." There was a warning from the navigation panel, Nate the steward turned his attention to the readouts and then acknowledged one of the computer's queries's before shutting it down and putting the system back into standby mode. "So what are we going to do with Sam now that we have some time to think rather than react?" Dmitri asked Nate. "You're the stasis tech," he answered, "what do you think we should do with him?" "I don't think we should bother taking him out," Dmitri said. "This ship is cramped enough without having to deal with him freaking out until we get him calmed down. That and with him under we'll have less of a drain on the rations and oxygen reserves and not to mention a lot less strain on the CO2 scrubbers as well." Nate nodded in agreement with Dmitri's assessment. "There's a lot more to it than just him," he said grimly. "As far out as we are the only way we're going to make it back to friendly space is if we rotate in and out of stasis. We're going to have to stretch those supplies as far as we can." "I figured as much. How far out are we?" Dmitri asked just as Marshall came back into the room with a tray holding three ration packs that he had found in the galley and quickly heated. He maneuvered his way between the two seated men and once he sat down himself, he extended the tray to them so that they could take one of the compact containers. "Hope you guys like chicken stew," he said peeling open his own ration pack. "Those were right on top of the first ration box that I found in there, so I just went with that." Both of the men mumbled that it was fine and attacked the warmed package of food he had given them. Now that the stress from barely escaping both the destruction of the Lancaster and the massacre had passed them by; all three of the men were ravenously hungry. Dmitri ate his slowly. Ration packs were never as good as the makers advertised they would be and these were no exceptions to that rule, but damned if Dmitri didn't think that it was the most wonderful thing he had ever put his tongue to at that moment. Being able to still taste when he should be floating aimlessly in space like the rest of the crew it seemed had given his sense of taste a perspective that the rest of him was just grasping. Between mouthfuls, Dmitri asked Nate what their next move should be when full system's control was restored to them. The steward chewed his food thoughtfully before he answered him. He swallowed and then said carefully. "I think that depends. We need to head to the nearest human outpost, but no matter which one we aim for it's going to take time." "How much time do you think we're looking at?" Dmitri asked. Nate exhaled slowly. "We were pretty far out when they hit us. This was an extended scouting mission and we're well beyond fleet controlled space. I think the nearest outpost we have a reasonable chance to reach would be Copernicus station." "I don't even know where we are," Dmitri said, "but I don't think that will be a short trip will it?" "No," Nate said, "Navi-com says that it's going to be at least six months minimum for us to reach Copernicus station. And that's if we don't cross paths with whoever it was that torched the Lancaster." "Shit!" Dmitri swore. "I was afraid it was going to be something like that. Isn't there any place closer for us to go to?" "No," Nate answered, "not with what we have available on this launch. We're lucky it can go as fast as it can go or we might have been looking at a couple of years like those poor bastards were facing." When he made that point, Nate had twitched his head in the direction of the monitor where they could see where the debris and bodies from the destroyed escape pods were slowly drifting by. One of the bodies was close enough for Dmitri to see the frozen rictus that the man's face had been locked into as he was expelled into vacuum. The frozen blood froth clung to his lips like he had been drinking something red and fizzy when he died instead of experiencing the agony of the gasses in his ruptured lungs expanding too quickly. "We won't be able to do that," Marshall interjected. "We can't live for months cooped up in here. Sure there's a lot of supplies back there, but I don't think that there's enough for us last that long." "We won't have to," Nate said. "We're going to rotate in and out of stasis during the trip back. We'll take one week shifts, one man per shift that way we spread out the rations and other supplies as much as we can." "What about the contact report?" Mitchell said. "They had to have gotten it by now. They're going to send someone after us and when they get here we'll be picked up. There's no way we're going to have to spend months on this bucket at sub light." "Maybe that will happen?" Dmitri said evenly. "Maybe the contact report got through and there are already ships on their way here now. Maybe we'll get picked up soon." Marshall looked relieved to hear Dmitri say that, but looking at Nate while he said the words he knew that what he suspected was probably correct. "But we also have to look at the fact that the bridge was destroyed so fast that I don't even think that they got a signal out at all. I don't think anyone is looking for us yet. And they won't even consider doing it until we are listed as overdue. I think that we need to proceed like we're on our own and that's the best thing we have going for us right now." Dmitri could tell that Marshall didn't like hearing that one bit and he could also tell that his assessment matched what Nate already thought and hadn't mentioned. One of the frozen corpses outside bumped against the hull of the launch with a subdued thump. Marshall jumped slightly at the sound and Nate reached over to turn off the monitor for the time being. They didn't really need it on at the moment and even using passive scan there was still an increased risk that the enemy would come back and still detect even that low level of activity despite the cloak. "The truth is I don't think we're getting picked up, not that way anyway," Dmitri said. "Think about it, Marshall. If they know enough to even program an evasion pattern like this one, then they already know that there is very little chance of anyone being alive for them to rescue and a good chance that whoever gets sent on that mission will get ambushed in turn when they arrive." Marshall looked sick as the implications of what Dmitri was saying sunk in. "How long until we can try to get a signal to them ourselves?" Dmitri asked Nate. Nate shook his head in disgust. "At least a month," he said, "and that will be the extreme range that we can send an encrypted burst transmission from. We'll have to repeat that each time we rotate out of stasis; whoever is going to be on watch for that week will have to do that every time, until we get a response." Nate leaned over and put his elbows on his knees with his hands clasped between them. "Best case scenario is that they get it right away and we get picked up in a month or so, worst case is they never hear it at all. I'm thinking we'll probably fall somewhere between those two outcomes. I'm thinking after a month our odds of making contact rises each week and we probably won't have to spend the full six months it will take to make it as far as Copernicus station. "It'll be a lot easier on us all if Sam could be in this rotation you know," Nate said. "That would put a lot less of a strain on the rest of us. He rotated around in his chair to face Dmitri. "Do you think it's possible that we can take him out later on when we're clear and calm him down or is he too far gone and we should we just leave him where he is until we get to a safe harbor?" "I don't think we can thaw him out," Dmitri said, "he's too nuts the way he is for us to handle." "He wasn't nuts," Nate said. "The poor bastard just couldn't handle it is all. You're probably right that we should leave him where he is until we get to Copernicus. They'll be better able to help him cope with this than we are." "Letting them deal with him sounds like the right call to me," Dmitri said. "But that's not the only option we have." "What does that mean?" Marshall asked. "You're not thinking of chunking him out an airlock are you?" "Absolutely not," Dmitri replied just as forcefully. He looked at the two men crammed into the small command module with him and then said quietly, "I'm thinking he should be the DW." Nate leaned back in his chair and pressed his fingers together. "That may do the trick," he said, "But he can't be the DW the whole way, you know that has consequences of its own if we did that." "What the hell is a DW?" Marshall said obviously confused. Nate looked at Dmitri. "You're the stasis tech," he said, "you should lay it out for him." "He's not going to like it at first," Dmitri said matter of factly. "Better that it's out in the open then and we get this over with. We have more pressing concerns to deal with," Nate answered. He reached over Marshall and pointed back down the central passageway to where they had placed Sam in stasis. "Come with me," he said. As the both of them got to their feet and started to head down the corridor he glanced back at Nate before they left. "So how long before we can get underway?" Dmitri asked. "Another ninety minutes or so," the steward said. "The course is already laid in and as soon as the countdown timer hits zero; providing it doesn't need to go into standby again for some reason, the engines will fire after that and the auto-helm will start us on our way." "Do we have to stay on auto-nav or do we have control after the protocol runs its course?" "We should be fine once the engines fire," the steward said. "Full navigation control is returned when the protocol terminates. You fill him in on what you have to and I'll keep things in motion up here." Dmitri nodded and motioned for Marshall to follow him back to the stasis chamber that they had left Sam in. Their boots clicked hollowly on the magnetic plates as they walked back and the sound echoed off the walls. Dmitri hit the door release and the two of them squeezed into the four tube stasis chamber. When Marshall was inside the room Dmitri reached out and placed his palm on one of the inactive stasis pods. "You know what this really is?" he asked. "It's a stasis pod," Marshall answered, not seeing more than the obvious. "So what, it'll keep us alive and if we're lucky we won't be in there that long." Dmitri smiled. He expected that most of the members of the Lancaster's crew would know at least that much about this equipment. To be honest he was a little surprised that the captain's steward knew what he was referring to when he suggested that Sam the torpedo man be the DW for the trip; but then he was someone who worked in close proximity to the captain and he had probably picked up quite a lot of little details like that as a matter of course "Oh it's a stasis pod all right," Dmitri said, "but it's also a little more than that. This particular model is a conversion pod." "I never heard of no conversion pod, what the hell does that do?" Marshall retorted. "Every one of those escape pods that were destroyed had one, every escape shuttle has two, this launch has four," he answered gesturing around them. "You know we use stasis pods in rescue situations like this, but conversion pods are something else altogether. They're more than a last ditch method of preserving the survivor's lives until they can be rescued. It may double as a stasis pod, but it's really supposed to help you stay alive if the only place you can make landfall on is impossible for you to survive on without it." Dmitri jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the computer bank. "The program in there has a complete map of the human genome and it's tied into the environmental sensors of the launch. No matter what the place we make planet fall on is like we'll be fine. It'll scan what's around us and then all we need to do is to let the computer make whatever adjustments it needs to make to our physiology. We'll come out of the tube adjusted for that environment and we can walk right out the door onto the planet's surface just as easy as if you were walking out of your family's house back on Earth." "And how does that do us any good when we're not planet side?" Marshall asked. "You both already said that we'll be going to Copernicus, not ending up stuck on an unknown planet with no way off of it." "Look, supplies really aren't that much of our problem," Dmitri said. "This launch was outfitted to take care of twenty to thirty people long enough for them to be rescued or guarantee their survival some other way. You saw what was in the galley stores right?" Marshall nodded. "Well there's another cargo level that has even more packed away that we haven't even accessed yet. For the four of us here, we have more than enough gear and supplies for almost eight times our number. Even in the event we don't get picked up and we have to find a place and set down, we'll be fine." Dmitri looked Marshall firmly in the eyes. "Our real problem is what happens in between now and however many months it takes before we get picked up." "So what does that mean?" Marshall asked, "And why did you have to drag me back here to tell me this. You could have done that up front." "No I couldn't," Dmitri said. "I had to show you this and I couldn't do that up front." Dmitri reached for the interface and then he accessed the computer so that he could demonstrate what he needed to say when he started laying it out for Marshall. The program booted quickly and Marshall turned his head to look at the systems display as it illuminated on the bulkhead. "DW stands for designated wench. All that is basically is another survival tool for guys in a situation like ours," he said, his fingers moving rapidly over the keyboard. The clicking of the keys being struck gave a rapid fire background to the words as he spoke. "Command figured out a long time ago that one of the problems that survivors have is the length of time it takes for them to be picked up or reach safe haven. Most of the crew is supposed to go into stasis right away to minimize how resources are expended and that gives you the best chance to get to where you're going. The problem is that still leaves one or two guys who aren't in stasis. And they can't go into stasis because someone needs to be available to make corrections and deal with unforeseen issues, there's no way around it. Someone is always on watch." Marshall nodded. That last part he understood completely, but Dmitri could tell that he didn't grasp what he had already said. Honestly at the moment he couldn't tell if the man was just a little dim or he was just too exhausted mentally to process what he was hearing right now. "The problem is no matter how much you like the guy that you're paired with, for a watch like this it doesn't take long until you're at each other's throats. So the issue isn't so much keeping you alive it's making sure that you and everyone else you're with will still be sane when you get there or get picked up." "That's where the designated wench program comes in," Dmitri said finishing up the last command line and then placing the keypad back in its nook. Marshall looked up to the display where there was now a wire frame image of Sam rotating around. As he watched the simulation took effect and Marshall watched silently while the image of the young fat kid started to contract and reshapes itself before his eyes. "Like I told you before, every escape module has at least one conversion capable stasis tube. On an escape pod that module wouldn't see any use like this unless the pod lands someplace where there is a need for it. But for an escape launch as big as this one, it's pretty certain that someone is going to be alone for a long time before it gets picked up or makes planet fall." "So to deal with that set of issues, Command developed the DW protocol. What happens when that is initiated is a crew member who isn't vital to the mission is picked to be the designated wench when most of the crew goes into stasis. The tube converts the person inside to their female equivalent or some other variation and then their conscious mind is blocked off so they aren't aware of what's happening when they are revived." Dmitri twitched his chin in Sam's direction, Marshall's eyes followed from the displayed wire form image to the unconscious man in the stasis tube. "When she comes out of the tube her mission will be to use her body to reduce the stress level of the crew on watch. When they get bored with her or her maximum time limit is reached, she goes back into stasis and she is converted back to the man she was." "What happens then?" Marshall asked. His voice had taken on a harder edge while Dmitri was speaking. Dmitri shut the program down. The lights dimmed as the system powered down. Dmitri motioned for Marshall to follow him. "I've shown you all I can back here for now," he said, "Come back to the command module and we'll bring you up to speed on the rest of it." Marshall didn't say anything while Dmitri led the way back to the front of the ship. The big man wedged himself into his seat and waited for Marshall to do the same. "Did you fill him in?" Nate asked once the two of them were seated. "Just finishing up now," Dmitri said. "How much time do we have left? "A little under seventy minutes," Nate said. "I thought you would take longer than you did back there," he said reprovingly. "What happens then?" Marshall repeated not looking happy that Dmitri had put off answering him so far. "What happens when one DW completes her tour is that when she goes back under, then the next crew member in the rotation becomes the designated wench," Dmitri said matter of factly. Marshall's eyes had narrowed when Dmitri was explained the process back in the chamber. When he finished speaking, Dmitri could see that his hands were already reflexively clenching and unclenching in anger as they walked back to the front of the launch. "You bastards are going to do that to me aren't you?" he said in a rising dangerous tone. "You're both planning to strap me in one of those tubes and then screw me like a Parker street whore when I come out of it as little more than some brainless walking fuck toy!" Dmitri leaned forward in his seat; he was cramped where he was but not enough to throw him off balance in case he needed to deal with whatever it was that Marshall chose to do in the next few seconds. "I don't know about Nate here, but I certainly intend to do exactly that," he said calmly." Marshall's jaw tightened and Dmitri knew that he was a micron away from the man rushing the both of them. As he started to throw himself out of the chair at the two of them he suddenly was thrown down against the padding of the chair itself. "Bastards!" Marshall shouted across the small cabin at the two men. "A little slow with that grav plating weren't you?" Dmitri said watching Marshall struggle against the increased gravity holding him in place. "It was quick enough," Nate said. "Now why don't you see what you can do to defuse him in the next couple of seconds before we have to hit him with a sedative as well?" Dmitri nodded to Nate stood up and stepped to the edge of where the increased gravity was shimmering visibly. Marshall was straining against the gravity well to reach him and failing to move. Each failed effort fueled his rage at the two men and they could see his muscles straining with effort. "Marshall," he said as calmly as he could, "Sam will probably be the DW first, like we were talking about. It still depends on what course of action all of us decide on in the next few minutes," Marshall was still glaring and spitting abuse at the two of them while Dmitri talked though. "But even if we decided against Sam being the first DW you are still going to spend part of your time as a DW during this trip. You're going be sweet and eager and ever so much fun to spend time with. The both of us are going to take turns using every inch of you for our own pleasure while we're on watch and you won't care what we do to you while you are the woman we're going to make you into. If Marshall could have moved Dmitri was certain that both of their brains would already be decorating the bulkheads. He was mad enough by now over what they were telling him that it had to be just about all that he was thinking about. He was absolutely livid at the idea that the two of them were calmly planning on doing that to him right in front of him and that is just how Dmitri wanted him to be right this moment. "We'll pass the time enjoying drilling every hole that we have a notion to drill and then when we're done we'll put you back in stasis. You won't have any memory of what you did while you were the DW, but when you come out of the tube for your watch you get to return the favor." Marshall's eye's flickered to focus on Dmitri. He stopped straining so much against the gravity bonds that kept him immobile. "That's right Marshall," Dmitri said to him as calmly as he could. "You don't stay the designated wench for good. Everyone has to take turns. And as much as I'm going to enjoy the pleasure of your company when your better half steps out of that tube, it doesn't change the fact that I'll also be spending a few turns being the designated wench. And when I am, I know you will be spending just as much of your time on watch ramming your dick in every hole that I have as well and I'm okay with that." Marshall had stopped struggling when Dmitri had said that. His eyes cast over to Nate as if to ask him too? Nate nodded that it was so and said to him. "That's how it works, Marshall. Everyone, unless they have a critical position like the captain or a doctor spends part of the trip on her back telling the man who's on watch how much she loves it when he fucks her. No exceptions." Marshall had ceased screaming curses at them when Dmitri had stated so calmly that he would be a DW for a portion of the trip as well and when Nate admitted that both of them were going to spend some part of the journey spreading their legs for him he ceased struggling altogether. "I'm glad that you don't want to kill us anymore," Dmitri said. "But I'm thinking that it has more to do with us admitting that we will be spending as much time in the doggy position as you will be, that has more to do with it than anything else." Dmitri watched Marshall processing that admission from them. He could have disbelieved them entirely and for all they know he might still reject that what they were telling him was indeed the truth; but the admission had thrown him off from his rage and for the moment he was still obviously working it out in his mind. "Everybody?" he asked slowly. The gravity binding made his effort to speak a little strained, but both of them could tell that he was trying to come to grips with the idea. "Yup, everybody," Dmitri answered. "You see Command figured out that if the crew that survived were forced to stay awake to carry out the watch had someone other than who they were paired with, it eased crew tensions and reduced conflict. And having a means of sexual release dropped that margin for conflict even further. Every time there is a new wench in the rotation, it means a new face for the guys who are up and each one has her own little quirks that make her interesting." "It's standing orders from Fleet," Nate said. "No different than taking a shot in the arm when you mustered in." "Except this time we're going to all be taking a shot in the puss," Dmitri quipped. The casual way the two men were taking how they would have to do the same duty when it was their turn to do so worked to calm Marshall down. Both men could see him backing away from the anger that had driven him when they told him what he would be required to do when he was the DW. "Why don't you drop that gravity a bit, Nate?" Dmitri said. "I don't think that Marshall is as inclined to take a poke at us anymore. At least not the way we are now anyway," he insinuated miming a thrust with his groin. Nate adjusted the gravity. There was an immediate change in Marshall's expression. He took a few deep breaths, the gravity press had made that hard for him as well and now that it was off of him he took advantage of being able to breathe without effort. "So the DW is a real woman then not just an altered man?" he asked. Both of them nodded their heads in the affirmative. "The program that oversees the conversion tubes taps into the genetic code and stimulates what is required to make any changes needed," Dmitri said. "So what happens if I'm the DW and one of you gets me pregnant? Am I stuck like that?" Marshall asked. "If you are a full female and you get pregnant then you are going to remain a pregnant female," Dmitri said. "That's the other purpose of the conversion tube. It's for if your group gets marooned. It's so that even if you are never rescued that you have a fighting chance for a future. In that case then everyone in the group spends equal time on both sides of the gender fence until the population is big enough that you don't need to do that anymore. That's how most of the early colonies got started way back when and it's still the failsafe we have now. But that won't happen while we're in flight." "Why not?" Marshall asked cautiously. "Because once we ground there is a need for that to happen, while we're in flight all that does is add to the number of drains on the ship's resources and we don't need that. So no, it's not possible for you to get knocked up when you're the DW," Dmitri said. "You calm now?" he asked Marshall. When the man indicated that he was and from what the two of them could tell he was speaking the truth, Dmitri suggested to Nate that they could release him and asked him how much time remained for them until the launch controls were available now. Nate looked them over and said that they had a little under an hour now. Dmitri cocked his head a moment and made some calculations. When he was finished he looked at both of them and said that now that they had this out of the way that they needed to agree on a plan of action. The other two men nodded in agreement and Dmitri breathed a little easier that this problem was past. "So how do we work this then?" Marshall asked. The torpedo man may not be angry over his upcoming stint as a DW anymore, but even after knowing that all of them would be spending some of their time that way he was still apprehensive about it. "We each spend a week on watch," Nate said. "In about four weeks the first thing whoever is on watch needs to do is send off that burst transmission. You spend a week up as yourself on watch; you spend three weeks as DW and three weeks in the tubes converting back. That way none of us gets ground down by only being awake for a duty tour." "And what about being the DW?" Marshall asked. "How is that going to work?" "The DW, whoever that is, is going to cycle through all three of the others, mainly because it takes time to reconvert each time, you want to know the detail's ask Dmitri," Nate answered. "You're going to include Sam in this?" Marshall asked. "He's a little too nuts to do this right now I think and waking up with bigger tits than he had and a twat might be more than he could deal with." "Sam will be fine when she comes out of the tube," Dmitri said. "She won't remember anything she does when she's like that. Nobody does. That's the point of it. And when she is Sam again the next time you see him and you aren't sporting your own twat and a matching set of tits, he won't be bugshit crazy anymore. She may not be aware of it at the time, but being the DW will back her down mentally from the breakdown he just had." Marshall looked back to the corridor to where Sam lay silent in the tube and then he looked back at Dmitri. "Why don't we just make Sam the DW for the whole trip and us three take watch like you're saying? That would probably be easier and use up a lot less power too." "That would be easier," Nate agreed, "except for the complications when they convert her back when we get picked up." "What complications are you talking about?" Marshall asked. "He's talking about the fact that if we did that, when we finally did get picked up and she got converted back to Sam, she would still be certain that she was a woman even if she now had her dick back," Dmitri said. Marshall looked at them both in disbelief. "That's right," Nate said, "I asked the captain about that when it came up one time, he told me that doing what you suggest creates an artificial transgender dysphasia in those that had that happen. The only way to make it right in that case is to convert them back. That's why the DW is rotated deliberately." Marshall looked like he didn't like what he heard and he probably didn't. "I'll tell you what," Dmitri said. "I know that you're not that enthused over this whole thing so I'll tell you what I'll let you do. I'll let you pick what I'm going to look like when it's your turn to fuck me. I'll let you design every detail of what I'll look like when it's my turn to be the designated wench." Marshall's ears perked up and he looked over in Dmitri's direction. "What do you mean?" "Just what I said," he replied. "I'll let you design exactly how I'll look when I step out of the tube and I'll even let you program any specific traits that you want her to have. When I step out of that tube and you have me all to yourself. I can be your perfect dream girl and all that rot." Marshall's eyes bugged out a little at the thought and he quickly licked and then pursed his lips as he mulled it over. "You'd really do that?" he asked. "You'd just let me do something like that without any hesitation?" "Why should I care?" Dmitri said. "I'm not going to remember anything but getting into a tube and when I get out I'll have you two hot pieces of ass to look forward to." Dmitri stood up. "How much time do we have now Nate?" Nate looked over the instruments again. "About forty-five minutes or so now." Dmitri looked around the capsule and leaned against the open hatchway leading to the central passage. "Plenty of time then," he said. "You give us a holler if the clock runs out before we get back. This will probably take a while since he doesn't know what he's doing." Nate dipped his head in acknowledgement and went back to monitoring the incoming data and waiting for the countdown to finish and then release control of the ship to them. "Come on," he said to Marshall, "might as well get this out of the way while we have some time for it." Dmitri walked away and the two men could hear his lightly clanking footsteps receding as he walked toward the stasis chamber where Sam was being kept. Marshall looked at him and then glanced over at Nate who was still watching the instruments. "Don't wait for me to say anything," Nate said, "I'm not the one who's at the other end of that passage letting you redesign him yet." He resumed ignoring Marshall and heard him rise from the chair and then the faint clank of his magnetic boots as he stepped down the corridor after Demitri. When Marshall entered into the cramped room, Dmitri pulled the keyboard interface out and activated it. As the blank default image floated into position the heads up display activated so that they could see every detail. A few more keystrokes and the design interface was ready for him to use. Marshall stood behind him watching the wire frame presentation of a human female slowly rotating in the air waiting for just waiting for Marshall to begin to narrow the design parameters. Marshall stepped forward and Dmitri obliged him by getting out of the way. He stepped back and gave him all the room he might need; with the display twisting overhead the way it was doing there was little reason to hang over the man's shoulder. Dmitri leaned against the tube opposite of where Sam was hibernating and waited to see just what it was that added up to a sexual bombshell in Marshall's viewpoint. At first he looked like he was going to plow straight in. The first few changes came in a rapid fire order then he hesitated and stopped. Dmitri leaned forward and quickly saw what the problem was. The profusion of menu choices was overwhelming him and after exhausting the easiest options he didn't know what to do next. He hovered over the control board doing nothing and after a moment he looked back to Demitri. "I'm not sure I can do this the way I want to do this," he said after a minute. "Of course you can," Dmitri said waving him out of the seat. "The interface is designed to be simple. You don't need to be a stasis programmer for this any more than you need to be a computer programmer to make up a game character." Dmitri sat down and saved the file, something Marshall had not bothered to do. "I'll tell you what," he said in a friendly tone. "How about you watch me set up Sam over there first and that way you can get your feet wet without making any mistakes. How does that strike you?" That settled him down and when Dmitri pointed out that he didn't need to let it intimidate him because it was designed for people like him he relaxed even more. Dmitri wasn't trying to soften the impact of the project; this interface really had been designed to be used by casual users like him. Command didn't want to take the chance that no stasis tech may be available to set this sequence up in the event it was needed. The goal was for whoever ended up using it to have the person they were working on come out the other end of the conversion process the way that the user wanted her to be. When Dmitri explained it that way it didn't take long for him to realize that it was little different than detailing an avatar to anonymously cruise the net and it fact it used many of the same parameters. Dmitri pulled up Sam. Since he was already in the system his image was displayed as he was rather than as a wireframe outline. "Now we're going to keep Sam's time as the DW pretty simple, because for him its therapy and he doesn't know about it like we do." "I'm not sure how I feel about that still," Marshall said. "What you don't remember didn't happen," Dmitri responded and highlighted a section of the command interface. "Here's where we start," he said changing the sex from male to female. The image blurred while the computer processed the projected changes based on his genetic sample. Both of them watched as Sam's image resolved itself into a familiar looking female. Like Sam she was overweight, in fact she seemed to be even more so because she was a few inches shorter than him. "Now you might think sticking with natural form is a mistake, especially when you see it turn out like this," he said. "Don't underestimate the value of letting the program do the work for you." He hit the projected expenditure counter and Marshall watched as the weight melted off of the woman like it was steam. "What did you do?" he asked. "I didn't do anything," Dmitri answered. "When you get converted the program uses your own body to fuel the change. You're basically burning up the old you to make the new you." "How is that even possible when you're in stasis?" Marshall asked. "Because conversion mode is not stasis, not quite. You're slowed down in the same way but there is still metabolic activity going on. Conversion works with that depending on how you set the parameters. It's all just energy anyway. It can be shunted and stored and drawn from the ship's power system. It can't be destroyed but it can be moved around." Dmitri turned back to the image of Sam. "Well that took a lot off of her, but she still has a ways to go before we'll want to put a bomb in that barrel of hers." Same wasn't as overweight as she was but she was still a healthy girl. Dmitri suggested starting with something simple and lightened her natural hair color a few shade until it was a strawberry blonde. Then he lengthened it until it draped over her body like a silken robe. He closed out that menu and then showed Marshall how he could adjust the style. Her face was lovely enough but Dmitri told him that it would be better to make more small changes to burn more energy this way than just instructing the computer to eliminate it outright. She had blue eyes already, but Dmitri adjusted them to a cornflower blue and gave her big doe-like eyes as well. He drew out long dark lashes over the eyes and then turned to Marshall to see what he thought. "It looks like I'm playing Sims XXI," he said. "You practically are," Dmitri said. "That is the most commonly known interface so they copied a lot of the features for this program. Dmitri then made a few specific adjustments; heightened libido and sensitivity were easy to cover. He made certain that Marshall understood that for this task, having them cranked up to eleven was desirable, but for a long term change it was to be avoided like the plague. "You might think a nymphomaniac is great in theory, but I don't think any one of use could handle her for more than a day." "I'll bet I could," Marshall started to brag. "The hell you couldn't," Dmitri answered. "A week's pay says that you put her back in the tube in less than a day." With money on the table Marshall didn't seem as confident and backed off. "I can be your little nympho lover boy," Dmitri said in a mocking high falsetto. "Crank me up and come to mama!" "Screw you," Marshall retorted. "As soon as I'm ready I will sweet cheeks," Dmitri answered and turned back to the task of adjusting Sam. The rest of what they did were tiny details for the most part, adding an inch or two here, reducing and shaping other areas and finally Dmitri thought that he was ready for the most important bit. He saved the changes and then triggered the estimation. She shrank even more as the cumulative weight of all of the tiny changes were added up and when it was through the woman displayed had hardly any excess weight at all. "All that gone from just a few small changes," Marshall said as he watched the image shift. "So do we save her and get her started or what?" "Oh hell no," Dmitri said. "You do that and when she steps out of that tube her mind will break into so many pieces that they'll never put it back right." Dmitri pointed to a submenu that he pulled up. She needs the mental block enabled. Without that she will wake up with her whole mind and in her perspective she will have changed in a nanosecond into a girl and she'll be just as bugshit crazy as he was when we iced him." Dmitri enabled it and called up the default directory in its place. "Never convert someone without a block in place, especially in our situation," he said to Marshall in as serious a tone as he could muster. "If you sent me through conversion, even with me knowing that I'm in the rotation as the designated wench, I'd still have about the same reaction. It's just one of those mental fracture points that they warn us to stay away from, so just don't do it." The selection of a default personality and character traits went speedily and when Dmitri did his final save he turned to Marshall and asked him if he thought that he could finish him up now. Marshall nodded and said he thought that he could. "Alright then, I'll just show you how we link to the tube and start the program and that way you can set it up when you need to do so." "How long will it take?" Marshall asked. "The conversion? About a month or so is average. You might be able to shave a week off if you really need it but it's not worth the risk. You try to rush it through and it burns more of you up to make the new you. Really throws the parameters out of joint so don't try to do that." Dmitri called up Sam's before image and placed it side by side with his female doppelganger. A quick tap of the keys and the image of Sam's torn and smoke stained uniform vanished leaving him as naked as she was. "Damn," Dmitri said. "I'm going to have to adjust his male side too. The bastards practically already a woman the way he is. How the hell is he going to do anything for little ol' us with that tiny lil thang," Dmitri leaned back in his chair and spoke in a mock southern accent. "Well I declare this just won't do. When it's our turn he's just such a pencil dick we won't even know he's in there." Dmitri laughed at his own wit and Marshall couldn't help himself and found that he was snickering about it too after a few laughs. Dmitri moved the image of the woman until it was superimposed over the man. "It's that simple," he said. "After that all you do is you hit the initiate program button and that's all there is to do. Think you can handle it?" Marshall nodded that he could and Dmitri moved to get up out of the seat. "Hang on a minute," he said suddenly. "I should probably close out Sam while I'm here and pull me up for you." While Dmitri closed the program he asked Marshall to check the readout for Sam. Once he said he was in position Dmitri initiated the conversion and asked if he saw how they changed. Marshall said that he did. He asked if he was going to be alright. "Don't worry about her, she'll be fine," he said. "She's going to be spending the rest of this trip with her legs spread, keeping all of us happy and sane. Hell when he gets his dick back he won't even be the fatass he is now. That's a waste of ship's power to restore him like that. The computer will probably just default to putting him back together with a baseline weight when he's finished being the DW," Dmitri said. "Now why don't you sit down and work up how you want me to look when it's my turn?" After he had watched Dmitri go through everything with Sam, Marshall relaxed. He booted up the saved file and once it was ready it only took him a few minutes to look over just what it was that he could do and get started. He began by darkening the woman's skin pigment until she was extremely dark and very African in hue. Then he molded her hair until it stretched and tumbled down her soft skin in a long and silky tumble. An ebony waterfall that splashed and played over the woman's firm ample breasts. From the specifications that he watched Marshall choose, Dmitri was going to end up being much taller as a woman than what he would prefer a woman to be if he was the one doing the choosing. "That's not going to burn as much energy making me that tall," he said. "You'll have to make up for it in other ways; remember, I've got a lot of mass for you to convert." Another difference was that usually Dmitri didn't care for women with facial features as broad as the ones that Marshall seemed to prefer from what he was doing, but he had to admit when he was done that the woman would be a striking beauty anywhere she went. It's a good thing she wouldn't be going very far from here. Dmitri thought. Marshall was slowing down and taking much longer to make his choices now. From the way he was agonizing over the last few little details that he was focusing on it meant in Dmitri's opinion that he would soon be finished. He leaned over his shoulder again to get a better view of the woman now displayed in the slowly rotating 3-D image in front of them. "You're sure that you won't remember anything that you do when you're like this?" he asked again. "The only way I will remember anything when I'm like this is if she wasn't mentally compartmented. But that is the default setting so no I won't remember anything that I do when I'm her. She won't be anything more than what you see here." "And she'll do whatever I want her to do without hesitation?" "Yes, she will, otherwise she would be a source of stress and not a relief from it," Dmitri answered. "How long will it take for her to be ready?" Marshall asked looking over digital representation of what he wanted Dmitri to look like when he spread her legs for him. "I told you. About a month. The same amount of time it will take for me to doll you up when I decide how you need to look like when it's my turn to fuck you," Dmitri said. "It won't matter either way. When you wake up you'll see her and after that it won't matter how long it took. You're going to sleep through it all anyway so don't worry how long it takes." Marshall make a last few decisions that he had been wavering over and when he was done, Dmitri showed him how to save his selections and talked him through how to link it with the tube so that the genome program could carry out his instructions. When he was sure that the torpedo man had it down he closed the program and shunted the system back into a standby loop. "One other thing," he said as they started to leave the room. "Don't run more than one conversion at a time, the power spike would probably be detected and we don't want that. And make sure that when she needs to go back into the tube that she eats double rations for at least a week. She's going to need the mass to convert herself back." The two of them moved toward the front of the ship. Their shoes clacking hollowly on the deck and the sound of it echoed down the passage around them. Nate looked up at them as the two of them filed into the little room. "How'd it go then?" he asked. "My tits are going to bounce like a pair of rubber balls when he gets the notion to fuck me in zero-G," Dmitri said. "She looks like she's going to be fun though. It makes me almost wish I was going to remember it." Nate laughed and muttered that could be arranged if he really wanted it and then told them that the controls had unlocked while they were in the back and now the ship was free to get out of here. "I guess the only thing left is to settle our rotation then," Nate said. "We get that hammered out and all that remains is to set the course and start the watch." "So who goes first then?" Marshall asked. Now that he had redesigned what Dmitri was going to be like when it was his turn to be the DW, he was much more eager for them to be underway. "Well it's not going to be you Marshall," said Nate, "besides if you were first then you would still have a long wait for Dmitri here to come out the way you want her to. No, I think it should be Dmitri first." 'Why me?" asked Dmitri, he thought he had an idea why, but he wanted to hear it from Nate's lips. "Well that's pretty simple," he said. "You're a stasis tech, I'm a captain's steward and the only other two that we have to take the slot right now are both torpedo men and one of them is currently out of his mind." Nate indicated the system's board that monitored the active stasis pods. Only one light was shining against the dark plastic that made up the board. A lonely glow that marked out that Sam was currently the only one in the thirty tubes the ship carried. "No insult to torpedo men," he said, "but if there is any problem with this I'd feel a whole lot more confident in our chance of success if the only qualified person who can actually troubleshoot the damned system is awake and monitoring it when we start out instead of just another one of the popsicles. How about you?" he said speaking to Marshall. "Makes sense to me," Marshall agreed. "Torpedo launchers and munitions I can handle, this...not so much. All him taking first watch means is that the next time I wake up it means it's playtime for us both." "After work sailor," Nate said to him in a tone more serious than joking. "And the DW isn't out of the tube for longer than two cycles if you can help it. That ATS effect is cumulative and it creeps up fast if you're not careful. None of us want this to be permanent." "Aye, aye sir," Marshall said in a deadpan tone. "So who's next on the watch and who's the first DW then?" Nate drew a deck of cards out of one of his pockets and held them out to Marshall to cut the deck. "We'll draw for it. High card has third watch and low card takes second. I think we all can agree that Sam needs to be the first DW. That way when he takes second rotation fourth watch, he'll have enough self control again to handle it." "Sounds like a good enough plan to me," Marshall said and reached for a card. After he drew one, Nate shuffled and cut the deck again before drawing one of his own. They turned them over at the same time. Nate had a deuce of hearts while Marshall held the jack of clubs. Looks like you get third watch then," Nate said taking back his cards and stuffing them back in his pocket. He called them both over and ran through the main systems that they needed to pay attention to once he had locked their course into the auto-nav. Once both of them had it down they decided that since Marshall would have to brief Sam that none of them should mention the DW protocol to him since whoever told him about it would be alone and he was just as likely to take it as negatively as Marshall had at first; possibly even more so since he would be freshly changed back after each of them had a turn with her already. Dmitri then went over the emergency protocols that they needed to know when it came to anything to do with the stasis system. He paid particular attention to the quick revival system and the emergency access program. As he put it, if there was something happening that was really serious they needed to be able to wake him up real quick if he was in the freezer or wake him up even quicker when he was the DW. "You don't want to turn to your fuck puppet and find out that she can't fix whatever is boned because she's still too focused on your bone to do any damned good," he told them. They filed back into the hall and one at a time crammed into the cramped stasis chamber. He told them both to strip down to their skivvies and backed up to get out of their way while they did so. When Marshall asked why they hadn't done that with Sam, Dmitri pointed out that getting Sam under was an emergency and this was not. The two of them were soon down to the bare minimum. Dmitri indicated the panels that opened for them to stow their gear while they would be under. After both of them had complied he told them to climb into the foam cradle that would support them while they were under and wait for him to hook them up. Once they were out of his way he came back into the room and got started. While the two of them watched him Dmitri started wiring Nate into the monitor harness and told both him and Marshall to pay attention. Most spacers were at least familiar with the procedure, but Dmitri didn't want to take chances that either of them would mess things up; particularly if he was on ice when they did. As Dmitri turned his attention to the head harness he thought to himself that he was actually surprised that Nate actually was a man. When he first saw him sitting in the command capsule when the three of them boarded the launch his first inclination was thinking that the captain had appointed a booty call as his steward and just had her voice adjusted so no one would figure out she wasn't just another guy. But he wasn't a girl after all, at least for the moment she wasn't anyway. Dmitri made the final adjustments in the head harness and then went over how you linked it in to the network with both men. "Night night sexy," he said in a jovial mocking tone as he dropped the canopy of clear plastisteel to initiate the stasis program. They both saw Nate mouth fuck you to him. Dmitri couldn't help but laugh and thrust at him with his hips so that Nate understood that the next time they were awake at the same time that is exactly what they would be doing. Marshall laughed at the sight, he couldn't help it and only stopped when Dmitri finished wiring him in and told him that she would be doing the exact same thing when she woke up as well. "I guess we all will," Marshall said, "and the only one that doesn't know she's going to be doing it will be him," he said tossing his head to where Sam was suspended in the tube beside him. "Stop moving," Dmitri chided him while he finished linking him to the network as well. "And when you wake up I promise you'll be seeing that dream girl of yours right away." Dmitri watched the clear bubble of the conversion tube descend and lock into place. The blue light that indicated an active stasis tube in operation flickered and lurched into steady brightness indicating that he was also in hibernation and would remain so until he was roused. Dmitri accessed the design that Marshall had worked up and looked at it as she slowly rotated in front of him. There were a few changes that he wanted to make before he initiated the program. Unlike Marshall it didn't take him as long to make the adjustments that he had in mind. He saved the file and linked it to Marshall's tube. He watched the data stream as the linkages were made. When the last connection was verified as having stable integrity he paused before he initiated the conversion program. He watched as the holographic image of the African goddess that Marshall had worked up hover over his unconscious face. Beside him the clock counter began to spin up as the computer estimated total time until completion. Dmitri chose a mid-range conversion period from the options that the program offered. She would be ready for him in just over seven weeks from now. He was in no real hurry now that he had all of his wenches safely in their tubes and his own plans for them about to be implemented. He looked down on Marshall from the other side of the clear plastisteel dome. His reflection looked back at him and he saw that his eyes were bright with triumph. He lay his hand on the cool surface of the dome and whispered "You won't have to wait that long to see your dream girl after all little girl. It turns out you'll be ready in just a few weeks, and just to make it more interesting I think that when you wake up you should be in planet fall mode and not standard," he said as he made a quick adjustment and locked in the conversion. Once he verified that it was underway he turned away from her and moved over to Nate's frozen form. He switched the design program away from the changes that were now running with Marshall and superimposed the matrix template over Nate's control subroutine. A few more quick keystrokes and he was able to input what he wanted from his implanted chip. He found and pulled up the design schema that he had set aside from his private file. Since this one was one that he had already worked out before it didn't take him nearly as long as Marshall had taken in making his choices. He knew how the use the program and he had already selected what it was that he wanted. He had made a few minor adjustments at the last moment before he initiated the steward's conversion but they didn't take long and he smiled again as he watched her image superimposed over Nate's face like the other one had over Marshall's. Her clock display started spiraling down as well as well until it had locked in the time he indicated it should be finished by. He set a delay in the program initiation for it to begin as soon as Marshall's had ended. Each of these programs was set to run sequentially now and there would be little for him to do unless there was some kind of problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dmitri walked into the stasis conversion chamber, his footsteps echoing in the silent room as he did. It was time for his regular check on how his girls were doing. Once the launch's engines fired he had only run them as long as he needed to so he would be able to get them up to their maximum speed and get their heading set. Once that was locked in the engines shut off and the auto nav used the maneuvering thrusters afterward to make most course corrections. Dmitri was fine with that happening. A low profile is what he wanted. Even if it made the trip longer in his opinion it was safer. Right now they were cruising along with no detectible engine activity and a minimal power signature and nothing more that might indicate that they weren't just another piece of stellar debris. The engine had restarted only half a dozen times since he had put the others into stasis and then it was mostly to make a course correction the thrusters couldn't compensate for or to keep their speed constant when it dropped below what they needed. The first week had passed without incident as did the second. By the middle of the third week Dmitri was finding that he was spending more and more time drifting into the conversion chamber like he was doing right now. There hadn't been much to see during the first week of stasis. There never was and there was only the hint of change during the second week, but the third week is where the action was as far as Dmitri was concerned. Watching Sam as her body shifted into its female configuration was a source of endless fascination for him. He knew what to expect intellectually but that was all his experience with this process was. When he was training as a stasis tech, they had of course gone over this thoroughly, but all that was really shown to them was filmed images. None of them had seen an actual conversion, let alone initiated one. And that was how it would remain for most of them unless they found themselves in a similar position as Dmitri. He turned, like he always did when he entered, to the cocoon where Sam was held motionless in her tube. She had been in conversion longer than any of them had been in stasis and by the beginning of the week her changes were already starting to manifest. The funny thing was that if Marshall had not been so distracted by the thought of making his African goddess real, he might have noticed that Dmitri had started Sam's conversion even before anyone else had gotten into the tubes. When he was demonstrating the program for Marshall it was just a show for his benefit; a recap of what had already been instructed. When Dmitri had put her under he hadn't just put her under, he had instructed the genome program to begin conversion to her natural female mode and to make it more satisfying he had done it right in front of his own shipmate. Behind the transparent dome, her eyes were half open and had already changed from green to cornflower blue. Her hair had already begun to shift into what would be a thick mass of strawberry blonde tresses. She had lost over four inches in height and already her breasts were pushing out the material of her shirt top. She would need a lot more time before she was ready, but she would still be out long before either one of the other two women would be. "You're going to be very lovely," he said to her. "And when we make planet fall you'll stay that way until I use the tube to make you into some other wench. Someone that more suits my own tastes I think." Dmitri activated her holographic display and stepped back to watch his three new women slowly spinning in the digital world. Only one of them was having her flesh below sculpted into her new image; but the other two were already set and primed to go. He looked over Sam's increasingly lovelier face and decided that by the end of the week that he could risk starting Marshall's conversion sequence a few days early. Out of habit he checked all of the readouts and once he was satisfied that everything was as it ought to be he set a forwarding notice from the conversion chamber computer to alert the Conn and and to alert him in his cabin to any changes. He turned around and sealed the door behind him. There was something else he needed to do now that this part of his plan was done. He might have deviated from the plan that the three of them had decided on, but he was still on watch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dmitri broke the seal on one of the bottles of liquor that the captain had stowed as part of his personal allowance. It was good booze; much better than Dmitri could have afforded on his own salary. He had good reason to celebrate now he thought. Earlier he finished checking the progress of the conversion of the three women in his harem. Just thinking about what he had seen there still left him in the throes of a surprising case of the jitters only four hours later. When he was looking everything over he found that he was having a hard time keeping his emotions in check afterward. From what he had seen on the display, today was definitely going to be the day. It was about time as well. Dmitri had been alone with only his thoughts to keep him company for just over a month now. The last week of her conversion, he had found himself drifting into the conversion chamber more and more often and then, once he was there, he found himself just spent his time sitting there talking to the silent woman in the tube. At first it was just a list of what his plans were for her when she emerged, but as the solitude of the watch took its toll, the tone of his conversations started to shift gradually. Dmitri had experienced a severe panic attack when a low power shutdown was initiated during one of his visits a few days ago. Seeing everything around him dim into emergency standby mode and then flicker to the lowest levels had sent him rushing to the interface to find out what was going on. As his trembling fingers danced over the interface the main idea animating his fear was that something had gone terribly wrong with the process and that he wouldn't be able to correct it; but it turned out not to be the case The engine sequence had fired for a high power demand evasive course correction. Something had touched the far edge of the launch's passive scanners and it had boosted to emergency power to move out of the path of whatever it was and then shut down and started a random course pattern that continued for hours before the auto-nav judged it safe for the engines to come on again long enough to resume course. Once it powered down the conversion clock resumed and it seemed as though there had been no interruption at all. The hissing of the maneuvering thrusters was the only sound that he heard after that. The sound of the launch doing its best to appear as a random piece of junk was his only companion and it kept him awake but it was over now. He had been truly relieved to feel the shudder of the engines as they ignited and began to propelling the launch away from the evasive course that it had held to while it was playing possum. All in all they really were not that far from the drifting junkyard that was all that remained of the Epsilon class cruiser Lancaster. It would take them at least another two or three weeks before they would possibly cross over in to human held space and then even more time would pass until they got to where they were headed. He had walked forward after checking the chamber and he had looked through the programs that were in play in the nav-com and any that were waiting in standby mode. Every since the others had gone under he had kept a lookout for anything unusual, but so far it seemed that there was nothing that he needed to worry about. Dmitri had been nursing an underlying worry that Nate had been playing his own game at the same time as Dmitri's was playing out. But he had been playing it straight it seemed and there was no indication that there was anything improper in any of the systems as the weeks passed. Not that he hadn't made some changes as soon as he was safely alone. In fact the first thing that he did once the launch was away from the debris field was to alter the course Nate had set away from Copernicus station and to the angle their flight path to somewhere else in human controlled space. What he had in mind was someplace out of the way; somewhere where he stood a better chance of finding a little place to set down and start enjoying his little harem and the rest of his life in peace. "The universe is a big place," he said to himself, "there might not be a good chance to find what I'm looking for but I'm going to take it and once we're dirtside no one will ever find us unless we want them to," the other thing he had done was disable the auto transmitter for the emergency beacon. There wasn't much of a chance of the enemy detecting the covert signal, but he didn't want anyone knowing they were here at all. Even after just over four weeks to himself, he couldn't believe that he had actually pulled it off. He'd been dreaming of a chance like this for years. Ever since he was ordered to remain in the ranks past his enlistment date, when Fleet had initiated that damned mandatory retention program in their effort to preserve force levels in the face of losses inflicted by the needle like enemy ships. At first he had sucked it up. He wasn't the only one affected and there was a need after all. It wasn't until later that he had gotten fed up with how they demanded loyalty from him, but rarely seemed to extend it back to him that he started to question why he accepted it at all. He had started playing out scenarios in his mind of just how he could get away if the chance presented itself. Some of his ideas were pure foolishness, but others though became firm possibilities. The thing is that he hadn't expected that any of those ideas would ever be more than just an idle desire. Having the chance to not only break himself free when the chance dropped into his lap and do so in the degree of style he currently enjoyed was the wildest of chances, yet now here he was; finally a free man. He took a deep drink of the captain's whiskey and then capped the bottle. "Here's to all you worthless sons of bitches," he said raising the glass in the direction of the empty command capsule. "You all go on, fight your damned war. I hope you win it, but whatever comes of it, I've had enough," Dmitri finished off the glass and lurched out of the chair to take the bottle and the glass back to his cabin and put them somewhere safe. The truth is that until now he had been certain that he would be dead long before the fighting wound down and he had resented it more strongly with each moment how the powers that be had twisted things to keep him in the fight long after he should have been let go. He could feel the bite of the whiskey in his veins, but he wasn't drunk. Far from it. He had a nice pleasant glow in his belly from the liquor and in just a few hours he could look forward to the first of his wenches being available for him to enjoy as well. Life was going to be good from now on as far as he could see and that was just the start of what he deserved he reckoned. As he put the bottle in the drawer and closed it he was struck by the thought that with all the wenches that he was going to have at his disposal now that he couldn't really think of them as designated wenches anymore since they now all filled that role. He could however, think of himself as the designated driver and he laughed when he thought about how that, in just a few hours, Sam the torpedo woman would be experiencing what it felt like to receive a torpedo instead of launching one of her own. The thought made him smile in anticipation and he left the Conn to get a couple hours of sleep in the cabin. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The subdued buzzing of the alarm letting him know that Sam was finally ready woke him. He was more tired by all that had happened than he was aware of and it took him a moment for his weary mind to snap out of the fog of sleep and comprehend what was happening. He felt like he had just lain down on the bunk and the next thing he was aware of was a buzzing that jolted him out of his dozing state. He punched the button firmly and the sound ceased. He rose up from the bunk and stretched himself out for a moment. Some of the small bones in his back popped and he sighed in relief from it. Solo watch for a week at a time was a rough prospect and he had endured it for four times that number of days now. But his time alone was over now and the understanding that it was made his hands shake in anticipation as he got himself ready to leave his cabin. He walked down the corridor and paused a moment at the open hatch. He couldn't say why he did that but it felt necessary to him to do so. Once he had collected himself he stepped into the chamber. The other two girls were still in hibernation and now it was clear as he entered, that Marshall's program was running at full capacity. It had kicked in a few days ago, just as he had intended it to and already her skin had begun to take on a slightly darker hue that would eventually deepen to the ebony of its final form. Soon he would be able to see other changes manifest; like when her breasts would begin pushing out from the tangle of wiring that connected her to the computer directing her development. He looked at her projected avatar and wondered when her lips would thicken and move into the lovely shape Marshall had chosen for her. Would it occur during her second or her third week he wondered. As he looked over her lovely projected face floating over Marshall's own, Dmitri was seized by a mental image of what she would look like gazing up adoringly at him as she eagerly took him in her mouth. Now that he saw her actually moving into her future form, he found he was really looking forward to her doing that often for the entire remaining trip. She was going to have to wait though; Dmitri had another girl to attend to right now. He turned to the tube that held Sam. The intensity of the blue indicating an active tube was more subdued now. A few of the red lights that for the last few weeks had indicated an ongoing conversion had either shut off or had changed to green. As much as he wanted to pop her canopy right away he was still enough of a professional to restrain himself. The first thing he did was to double check the program to confirm that there was nothing remaining for the tube to do with her. The board showed her as all clear physically. Dmitri checked the mental template and was pleased to see that Sam had been successfully compartmented and the only personality that should animate the woman behind the clear plastisteel would be that of the DW program. He initiated the revival sequence, restored the interface to its storage area and turned to watch her revival. The woman in the tube's breathing began to quicken. While she was in stasis she was still and to all appearances dead, but as the computer accelerated the revival he could see her shift from the cold, still form of a sleeping woman to rapidly change into one who was about to wake into her new place in the world. Her skin reddened as the blood began increasing from its almost undetectable rate to a normal circulation pattern. It pumped through her capillaries underneath her soft pale skin and her flesh took on the pinkish hue of a living woman and not a statue. As she took a deep breath he could see the shape of her breasts moving beneath the tattered cloth of her dirty uniform. Sam had been a fairly big kid; a fat recruit on his first posting that, in Dmitri's opinion had probably barely made it through training at all before being assigned to the Lancaster's crew. When he was choosing her new specifications, Dmitri had wanted something more petite. She now stood barely five foot one inch tall. Like all of his wenches, she had long hair. As her eyes fluttered open, Dmitri already had a few ideas for how she was going to wear it in the near future to please him. He raised the tube; she barely reacted to the faint hissing sound of the canopy being unsealed. He ignored her for the moment and reached in to start disconnecting the harness that hung almost as loosely on her as her tattered uniform did now. It was a lot easier to disconnect her than it was to hook her up and inside of a couple of minutes the way was clear for her to step easily out of the stasis tube and onto the deck of the conversion chamber. Her blue eyes were accented with extremely long natural lashes. They framed her eyes and gave them an innocent look that also managed to hint at the inherent sexiness lurking behind those clear blue orbs just waiting to be called into being now that they were moving and no longer still. She blinked in confusion as he helped her step free from the chamber and almost lost her balance. That was not surprising to Dmitri; hibernation of over a week usually resulted in some loss of coordination and was to be expected. He caught her easily as she fell and felt himself stiffen as she pressed the firm breasts she now possessed against his arm as he kept her on her feet. As soon as she was clear, Dmitri triggered the sequence that would close the tube until he required it again. "Who...Who am I?" she asked him hesitantly. Dmitri had spent more than a bit of time thinking of what he would call the girls who now made up his harem while he had been implementing his plan to ensure what he needed to do to get away was done. He had been a little disappointed that he had only gotten two other crewmen to follow him to the captain's launch when the Lancaster was dying. Finding the steward Nate already on board had been a surprise that was both a mixture of pleasure and dread at the time. But she was safely in her tube now waiting for her turn under the conversion programs direction. She wouldn't be a threat if she ever was and soon enough he reckoned he would be having this same conversation with her when she awoke, so it didn't matter in the end. "Your name is Lena," he said to her. "You're supposed to help me now that you're awake." "That's right," she said. "I'm here to help you," she repeated. "While you're helping me you need to follow my directions. Do you understand?" he asked her. "Of course," she said. "I'm supposed to do what you tell me to do." Her mind was clearing now and the computer implanted persona seemed to be integrating with her consciousness fairly quickly. "Lena, I need you to take those torn up clothes you're wearing off and go dispose of them. When you finish that come to the watch cabin right away and I'll give you your next assignment." "Okay," she chirped and started stripping off the torn oversized uniform. She stepped out of it and then started easing down the men's underwear that hung baggy around her curves. She dropped the clothing into a pile and when she stood there naked he watched riveted with pleasure as she bent over and wadded the clothing up into a ball. Dmitri allowed her to exit first and pointed her down the hall. He watched her lovely ass sway as she slowly walked away from him. When she turned and entered the reclaimation chamber he turned to go to his cabin. As he walked into the small room he replayed in his mind, the sight of her making her way down to the far side of the corridor. She moved with an inherent sexuality as she walked and even from behind he could see that lovely gap she possessed between the inside of her thighs as she moved. If he hadn't already been erect from the moment she pressed against him in the conversion chamber that sight would have done so by itself. As he entered the cabin he could feel his pants being forced against the underside of his erection and he savored the thought of what was going to happen when she returned. He had spent the better part of a week looking forward to this moment and he intended to make the most of it now that it was here. Lena had little trouble finding the cabin once she finished dropping the ruined uniform in the recycler to be reclaimed and repurposed for later. Dmitri had left the door open and he was waiting for her on the bunk with his clothing half stripped off in anticipation. When she stepped naked into his room, he felt a rush of satisfaction over how she just stepped into the room and stood there naked and innocent. One of the things that the DW program ensured was that she would be as obedient as she was now. For the time being she was still following the programmed guidelines that the conversion process had implanted into her to obey; but that was not what he was going to be relying on to keep her the way he wanted her to be over the long term. As he watched her standing there he could see the first flush of her primary programming start to manifest as she saw his half naked form lying on the bunk. Her nipples hardened and through the faint thatch of her pubic hair he could see her labia moisten. Her breathing was starting to increase to a faint panting as she felt her flesh respond to the implanted directives in her mind. This was the part that Dmitri had been looking forward to over the last week. She was ready to be imprinted by him. Each DW was programmed to bond sexually to the crew member on watch from the moment that they emerged from the conversion tube, but she wouldn't be imprinted properly on him until he bedded her. Once he had done that Dmitri would be able to truly relax around her. Part of the obedience lock that the computer fashioned when it sectioned Sam's consciousness away depended on Lena's software being imprinted on him as the user. After she was imprinted that software would take full effect and there would be little chance of Sam awakening. Until he chose to do so this woman was only Lena and would remain so until Dmitri allowed Sam to return. She would be dedicated within the parameters that Dmitri was about to set and that was supposed to ensure that the crewman on watch enjoyed maximum relief and minimal confrontation during the DW's tour of duty. The fact that he had no intention of allowing Sam to return wasn't important to him; what was important was that she would be completely loyal to him and the idea that she could refuse him in any way would be such a foreign concept that she just would not grasp it at all. Dmitri stood up and ordered her to lie down on the bunk. She smiled and slipped past him to hurriedly comply with him. She gracefully lay down and stretched out on the bunk and waited for him to speak to him again. He smiled at her and she reflexively smiled back at him. He told her to spread her legs for him. She did so without hesitation and just lay there waiting still for him. Seeing her part her thighs for him on nothing more than his command was more than worth the wait of the last month. Dmitri took a moment to admire what the program had done to improve her while she was under its direction. Her breasts were full and taut only shifting to each side of her chest slightly now that she was on her back. They were the size and shape of soft pears and he was hungry to taste them. His gaze shifted down her slim waist to the generous curve of her hips until he was looked down where her light pink, virgin womanhood waiting for him between her open inviting legs. The program had maximized her body attractiveness so that the gentle curve of her hips moved succulently into the flat tight waist before curving up to her torso. That had been another thing that he had done right in front of Marshall. The natural female default for Sam in only the faintest way resembled the little sexpot on the bed waiting for him and when he had seen the initial projection of what she would be he had wasted no time in making the proper adjustments to her. When she had finished arranging herself on the bunk she lay there waiting for him to enter her; now that she was in position he could see the programming already boosting her hormonal levels so that she would be as receptive as possible when he imprinted her. Her lips opened and closed as her breathing quickened and her ankles began to flex against the padding of the bunk itself. Dmitri loosened his own trousers and stepped out of them. He leaned over her and lowered his body closer to her so that he could feel her squirming body undulating against him. When he had set her response level he had dialed her up to maximum in every level that he could access. As he felt her silky thighs move against him he wanted to slowly fit his straining flesh into her; but as his tip passed between her outer labia she suddenly bucked her hips up to meet him. She gasped when she did so; a sharp high intake of breath that marked her transition from a girl to a woman who welcomed him inside of her He hovered over her, only a couple of inches of his own flesh buried inside of her. She was flexing her pelvis upward to him trying to make him sink deeper inside of her. Dmitri hadn't broken her hymen yet, but it was only a twitch away. He balanced himself over her enjoying the feeling of her slick flesh surrounding his own. "You want me," he told her. "I want you," she echoed back to him. Her voice became more breathy and thick with lust for him. As she spoke the words back at him he could feel her become wetter around him as her desire heightened. "Show me how much you want me. Prove to me that nothing matters more to you than me." She groaned in desire as he ordered her to demonstrate her devotion to him. He felt her arms reach up for him to drag him down close to her; her fingers fluttered across his back teasing and demanding at the same time. Her legs began moving up and down against him, pulling at him; inviting him move deeper inside of her and insisting that he do so. He thrust deeper and felt her virginity break as he sank into her. She moaned again and he saw her eyes roll up into their sockets. She was in the deepest phase of imprinting now. What he said to her in the next few moments would direct her from this moment until she went back into the tubes again. Once he was fully enveloped by her he felt her draw him even closer to her; her hips were pinioning against him until he could feel his penis moving up and down inside of her when he was thrust deepest inside of her. The opening of her cervix shuddered as his head pressed into it and moved around it; he felt her throbbing clitoris hot and greedy pressed to his groin. She ground against him and easily climaxed against him moments later. Dmitri groaned as her vagina clamped down around him. Her legs tightened against him and he felt her hot lips begin pressing furious kisses on him while she mashed her breasts firmly against his chest. Even though she was on the bottom her body slithered eagerly against him as she obeyed his command. It was just as he had hoped it would be when he was setting her parameters and he let out a long groan of satisfaction. "I'm your girl now," she whispered breathily, unprovoked by him as she rocked in time to his slowly increasing thrusting inside of her. "Only yours," She cooed contentedly as she rocked her hips against him. "What kind of girl am I?" she asked him in a question that trailed off into a long moan of satisfaction. "You're my own little slut," Dmitri grunted back at her. "You're such a slut for me. You're loud and you're horny and all you want is for me to be inside of you whenever I care to be." Lena let out a loud wailing moan and he could feel her undulation against him explode into frenzy as he sank into her. She enthusiastically ground against him and he could feel her squeezing him deep inside her in time with his increasing tempo. "You want to make me happy and doing what I tell you to do is what makes me happy. Making me happy makes you happy," he grunted as he strained against her. "Oh yes!!! Make me happy!!! Make me happpy!" she wailed in her high breathy voice between more kisses that left his chest wet from her saliva. Another long moan echoed off the walls in the tiny cabin. She was climaxing again and with each plateau she climbed to, her voice rose higher until it collapsed into a near constant warbling that nearly deafened him as she redoubled her efforts to please him while he sank into her again and again. "You're only happy when you make me happy and doing what I tell you to do will make you happy. It is all you want to do." He told her to finish locking in her personality. "Yes, yes, yes," she loudly agreed. "Tell me what to do. I need you to tell me what to do!" "You need to fuck me just like this from now on, whenever I tell you to," he told her. "And when you do it you need to scream until you're limp," he ordered her. Dmitri was gratified that she responded to his words instantly. She began bucking even more furiously against him and as she did so he felt the rush of his balls emptying into her. When she felt his seed spreading warm and hot inside of her deepest hollow, he felt that trigger another frantic orgasm from her that left her lunging against him, her body demanding more as her voice rose and fell in constant shrieks that left him wondering when she found time to breath to fuel them. Dmitri liked it when they screamed like that and she didn't disappoint him. She bucked against him until he could no longer remain inside of her and then she sprawled wide legged and exhausted from her efforts. He rolled off of her onto one side of the narrow bunk and felt her curl herself against him almost immediately; her hand reaching reached for his slick cock and start stroking it slowly to encourage it to rise again. She may have thrown herself against him with complete abandon and was momentarily exhausted, but he hadn't told her to stop yet and she wanted to make him happy. It had been a long time since Dmitri's last liberty and as a result he hadn't lasted very long with Lena this time, especially given her tailor made enthusiasm, but that didn't matter. He had plenty more saved up to give her when he recouped his strength and the important thing was that now she was locked and imprinted onto him. As long as she was remained this Lena she would be exactly what he wanted her to be. He lay there and felt his little slut stroking him and was absolutely sure that this had been the right thing for him to do. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- When Dmitri had been first training as a stasis tech, the material they were discussing had inevitably led to conversion tubes and the various ways that they were used by the fleet. One of the questions that someone else in his group asked had stuck out to him at the time. It was just after they had introduced them to the specifics of the designated wench program. Before they had even begun the class all of them had been required to sign a form acknowledging that what they were about to be told would have to remain secret in all circumstances except for the ones that it was intended for. This additional precaution was in effect a reminder. They were already well aware that discussing the sensitive nature of the equipment they were training to use would incur the most severe penalties if they were to divulge any of those secrets. There was curiosity of course about why such a warning was issued and all it did at the time was to arouse their interest in the topic. Most of his class had been stunned into shock at the revelation that in the event of an emergency all of them would spend part of the trip as wenches themselves. Most of them had reacted with silence, unsure of the truth of it, some had reacted with anger as Marshall had and had to be darted with sedatives. A few had no outward reaction at all and just looked thoughtful while the others dealt with it. Once the class had been settled down and they had seen the video's of the process using several examples shift from male to female and back again in several variation; Dmitri could honestly say that for him the sight had quickly become an exercise in erotic sensation and from the look on some of his class mates he could tell that he was not alone in sharing that feeling. The main point about initiating a designated wench for a situation like the one he was in now was mostly about minimizing the time any crew member spent in that state to avoid complications when they were shifted back. The most pressing question, the one that had garnered his attention was how you knew when someone who was a designated wench had been kept too long as one. How would you be able to tell that she had gone over the tipping point for good without converting her back to male. There didn't seem to be a real consensus on that he found. Each person who had been converted it seemed had an individual limit that they had to reach before it would become apparent. They had shown the documented examples that they had in response to that question. Then there followed detailed descriptions of what they should watch out for and holo-images of when it was clear that tipping point had been crossed. They ended the section driving home the point that it was something to be avoided except in one specific circumstance and stressed that once the internal boundary between male and female was crossed that it would be irreversible. That wasn't what was on Dmitri's mind when he thought of this and fit what he knew into his present situation. The thing about that question was when they was said that once you see it happening you would have no problem recognizing it once it was in front of you. Dmitri had filed that information away and not really thought about it until he had begun to consider how he could escape before the decisions of those higher than him got him killed. But now that Lena was active it became a more practical consideration. He had to make certain that once they had made planet fall, that none of his women would ever consider going back to the way that they were before he had adjusted them as he wanted them to be. He needed them to all to cross that breach and bind themselves willingly as his women for good and to do so he intended to keep Lena active and around him as long as it took for that to happen. The whole reason for the minimal rotation time was to keep a fully female persona from developing mentally after all. If he kept Lena on the original schedule they had decided on she would have been a woman for less than a week and wouldn't have looked at it as more than a dream if he remembered it ever, but that was before he had modified what they were going to do. Now that the plan had changed there were some things he needed to know. Specifically how she would slip over the line mentally. After he was certain that she was permanently, enthusiastically determined to remain the woman he made her into; then he would know how long it took and could estimate how long it would take for the others to join her in that condition. He was only supposed to keep her out of stasis for two ship cycles. But then he was supposed to be coming out of the tubes a week before Lena woke for his second watch as well. Each of the others were supposed to do the same and by the time she was slated to be converted back she was supposed to only have been female for about eight days in total. Two weeks was the threshold limit and three weeks was supposed to be deep in the red zone. Dmitri was interested in finding out for sure. He instead enjoyed her attentions constantly for almost every waking moment for the first two days after he had brought her out of her tube. She for her part was always enthusiastic and willing and eager for his attentions. By the end of the first full day after he imprinted her she had given herself to him so many times that if he were to count how many it would have been numbered in double digits already. If he hadn't been without a woman for months already he would have had some difficulty keeping up with the demands of how her sexual desires chained them both to the bed in the watch cabin. He had decided to go ahead and satisfy his curiosity about how long it would take for her to become fully female mentally midway between rounds late during the second night. He had wanted a drink and had told her to fetch his bottle and a glass for him from the drawer he had placed them in. As he watched her roll languorously off of the small bed and then slowly strut over to the drawer he questioned why he should even put her back now that he had her. And when she bent over for him because she knew that he liked for her to display herself for him like that he decided that he wanted to find out. Watching her slightly gaping vaginal lips coated with a dribble of his semen shining on them as she stood up again and walked back to him had made him decide that she had no business going back in the tube in the morning. Her showing off her natural sexy gait in a completely unconscious fashion with the bottle firmly grasped in her hands as he watched their mingled fluids slowly slide down the inside of both of her thighs and dribble toward her knees did more to excite him over the prospect than anything else. The thought of keeping her like this and seeing how she would change mentally excited him so much that he had ended up putting the bottle aside for the time being while he bent her over the bed and took her again. Once Dmitri had decided that he was going through with it he did put her back in the tube for a day and a half. She needed to be reset for what he had in mind and for that she would need to be re-imprinted. Besides, after he had slaked his lust with her he didn't want to leave her entirely in a nymphomaniac state. It had been like being raped by a cyclone once she got going and while he did appreciate how completely she embraced what he wanted her to be he needed to tone her down now that he decided that she was going to be active over the long term. Once she came out of the tube a second time he did enjoy imprinting her as much as he had the first time. He had also made another adjustment as well. He had set her in planet fall mode as he had done for Marshall. The second time that Lena lost her virginity she had also been thoroughly impregnated as well. Knowing that was going to happen when he lay down with her turned out to be such a thrill for him that he resolved to do it to each of his girls when he revived them. Besides once they were on the surface it would be best if they began to expand their new colony as rapidly as possible. Once he had her as he wanted her to be, they slowed down their sexual coupling to two or three times a day at first, then later to once or twice a day. Dmitri decided that she should fill a traditional woman's role in his opinion so as to reinforce what he wanted her to become mentally as he waited for her to tip over the edge in a way that he would recognize. When she was not demonstrating her devotion to him sexually he kept her busy cleaning the ship and preparing his meals. If there was a task that had even the remotest mental connotation as female it was Lena's responsibility to perform while he tended to the few tasks that needed his attention to keep the ship on course and running properly. He had taken her to bed so quickly when she first awakened and kept her there until she went back in the tube for further modifications that it was nearly the end of that first week before he had noticed that he had neglected to have her go to the recyc and have another uniform that was better suited for how she was now made up. It had been an easy thing for him to overlook. She had spent so much of her time tending to his carnal needs and serving him afterward that the sight of her always being naked seemed to be the most proper condition for her to him. When he finally realized that he had overlooked dressing her he spent the day watching her busy herself as she went about performing her tasks completely, blissfully naked. While he did he questioned the need for him to have her dress at all. She was not doing anything that required her to wear clothing for protection. She wouldn't need anything like that until they landed and if he really wanted her to wear something he could have it made up. Clothing for a woman like her was nothing more than decoration anyway and when he wanted her decorated he would do it; until then he was going to enjoy the sight of her this way. After the end of the second week it became such a natural thing for him to see that he decided that he needn't bother telling her to wear anything at all when she wasn't showing off for him. While they were on the ship he reasoned, she and the other girls in his harem had no real need for clothing of any kind. Expending energy to create something for them to wear in everyday situations was a waste of ship's power he decided, so he resolved to keep them all like that until he needed them to be otherwise. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Having Lena bustling around the ship in her ultra feminine way over the next couple of weeks took a lot of the edge off of Dmitri's time on watch the during the second month. With her to keep him occupied he felt a noticeable change in himself as he passed the time while the launch passed further away from the wreck of the Lancaster. He had always been a domineering man in his relationships. Part of that was the legacy of the military training that he had been strictly indoctrinated with as a recruit and later as he rose in rank himself. His own father had been very domineering at home and there was no question from anyone that his word was law within his walls. The few relationships that he had with civilian women had tended to sputter and die against his own demanding nature. The kind of women that he tended to want them to be inevitably seemed to result in them rebelling against what he wanted and ending the relationship. But with Lena being the way he though she should be from the beginning he thought that he finally had found what he was looking for when he, in his opinion, wasted his time with women who didn't know how to be women. He was coming to like her exactly as she was more and more and he wanted her to stay that way. Another thing that was different about the second month was he felt less need to go to the conversion chamber as he had before he had taken her from stasis. That didn't mean that he didn't visit. He was eager to see how Marshall was developing as she slowly was made over to suit his intentions. By the end of the first week, when he was taking Lena from the tube the second time her skin had noticeably darkened to a deep brown and her lips had begun to thicken as well. Her half open eyes had darkened from a light hazel to a dark chocolate brown that stood out against the whites of her eyes. When he made his second routine check a week after that her body and noticeably thinned and her hips had swelled to a welcoming bowl that just looking at made Dmitri look forward to the night that he would imprint her as well. Her large nipples were pushing against the thin material of her shirt but there was not yet any appreciable breast growth behind them. A look at her shorts showed that they were mostly empty at this point as well. He looked at her in the tube and he thought about what he would do differently with her when she was ready. The possibilities aroused him just thinking about it and he went to find Lena. The computer would notify him when she was ready and with Len to occupy him until then it was less of an urgency in his opinion just how long it would take for the chamber to alert him that her alteration was complete and it was time for Nate's to begin. He considered that when Marshall was complete, whatever he decided to call her, that he would keep both her and Lena active at the same time for a few days. They would have to accept that he was the only man and all of them were equally beneath him once they were all on the planet he selected for them anyway. There was going to be a change in the dynamic of course when that happened. Right now Lena was fixated solely on him as she should be. But once there was another woman present she would have to be adjusted. The only catfights that he wished to see would be for his enjoyment and they would not be allowed to disturb him. They would all have to accept their place with as little fuss as possible. As he considered the dynamics of having the both of them awake he also had to consider what having all three out at one time would be like as well. There was the pleasurable angle of that thought, specifically the ways that he could occupy his time with some of the more interesting possibilities that would open up for him, but as he considered it he decided against it for the time being. Having them all out at once might satisfy one appetite, but it would be too much of a strain on the resources they would need once he had gotten them all too where they were going to safely. He decided that it really didn't matter if they were awake at the same time right away. Once they were grounded he would still have access to the conversion tubes and he could make what adjustments he needed to make to their behavior then. Dmitri left the conversion chamber and went looking for Lena. She was busy in the galley while he checked on the stasis tubes and Marshall's rate of conversion. He stood in the hatchway and watched her naked back as she worked with the emergency rations that made up the bulk of the ship's food supply. There wasn't much that you could do with them but there was something. Sometimes when he had nothing that required his attention and there was nothing that he wanted to do he would watch her as she worked. Watching Lena as she attended to her woman's work naked had always been one of his fantasies. But now that it was just how she always was that particular fantasy had begun to lose a little of the luster it had now that he could enjoy it to the full. Right now there was another fantasy that he wanted to satisfy. He coughed to get her attention and once she turned around he handed her a uniform coat and told her to put it on and go to the command capsule up front. She had a moment of confusion on her pretty face when he told her to do that. He had stressed to her after he had imprinted her that she was not to go into any area of the ship that belonged to men. But once he told her that it would be alright as long as he was with her the confusion vanished. It amused him to watch her marvel over the feel of the cloth of the coat and while she did like the texture of it she also firmly declared that she was a woman and a woman ought not to wear clothing. Clothing was for men and she wasn't a man. Her saying that was a bit of a surprise to Dmitri. It wasn't anything specific that he had instructed her when he imprinted her the second time. He noted it as a possible expression of her approaching her tipping point and escorted her into the command capsule. She looked at the lights of the readouts with as little comprehension of what they might mean as a pet might have. Now that he had her here he told her that she should never come here unless she was accompanied by him. She readily agreed and asked what he wanted to do now that they were here. He told her what he wanted her to do and took a great deal of pleasure from bending her over the command chair while she wore the captain's coat. Hammering into her as she gripped the foam backrest and listening to her cries echoing around the little room as he did so was just what he wanted from her. Listening to her as she screamed that she was really the captain and she was his bitch was just as much of a turn on as he thought it was going to be. After it was done his only real regret was that she wasn't originally the captain after all. Dmitri started allowing her to wear some clothing after that. Mostly the most feminine items and very little of those. When she started to object again he told her it was alright for her to wear it as long as it was just decoration for his pleasure and she accepted that with no more dissent. After having her strut around naked for weeks the problem with having that particular fantasy realized was that once you had it all the time it wasn't long until it lost its allure. He didn't want to get bored with her too soon either, but as she began to show from her developing pregnancy he looked for creative ways to amuse himself with her now that she was not just a little fuck toy. He had told Marshall before he had hit him with the hypo that when she was converted that she would get pregnant, but that was only partially true. He had deliberately omitted that while the ship was in flight the computer would not allow any of the designated wenches to end up like that unless it was overridden. It was a threat to ship's resources and wouldn't be allowed to happen. Once the ship detected that they had achieved planet fall and secondary protocols were in effect then it would be something to consider. When he had re-converted Lena he had bypassed that protocol and set that option for all of his girls. Lena it seemed was blissfully unaware of what it meant for her now that her belly was starting to round out. Dmitri decided that it time for her to go out of rotation for a while and put her back into stasis at the end of the week. He looked at her in the stasis tube after she went back under. He was now ten weeks into the trip and human space wasn't that far away from them according to what the navi-com told him. Lena had been a woman now for six of those weeks and had a bare hint of a rounding belly to prove it. It had been an enjoyable interlude for him, having her around the way she had become. And from some of the things she said and did, Dmitri was fairly sure that she was well on her way to her personal tipping point into permanent womanhood. Marshall however had already finished her conversion almost three weeks ago. After three weeks of seeing her completed form inert in the stasis tube, he decided that it was finally time for him to see just what Marshall's lips looked like around his cock as she eagerly swallowed his seed with every gulp. She was long past ready to be revived and when she had finished her processing, Nate's conversion program had initiated. The system had shifted focus with seamless precision. As expected, Nate's conversion was progressing nicely, albeit much more slowly. Her Eurasian features were fully developed now. So much so that he could no longer see any trace of her former face in them at all. Her skin had taken the deep golden shade of an oriental woman and he was looking forward to seeing how wide her eyes really were when he took her for the first time after the conversion was finished with her. He initiated the revival sequence for Marshall and watched as she also passed through the stages of emerging consciousness as Lena had. With two women available now he had been giving this more than a bit of thought as to how he was going to manage them now. The course that he had re-plotted to take them back to human controlled space would take just over another three months to reach. After that it was still a matter of weeks before he would locate a suitable planet for them to ground on. With the ship on auto nav and only needing his attention for minor matters he had plenty of opportunity to spend that time any way he liked and after the last few years cooped up on the Lancaster he had any number of ways in mind to spend that time now that he had suitable companionship for it. He had eventually decided that it would be best if he could rotate through the wenches every few weeks and in that way they would keep him entertained while the ship crawled at sub light through human space. Fortunately for them once they were back within those borders a lot more options for finding a suitable grounding point opened up once they were deep enough in. When Marshall stepped her delicate foot out of the tube he could tell that she was going to be just as much fun for him to imprint as Lena was. But he had no intention to call her by that name. When she stood there with her breasts pushing her shirt high enough to leave her midriff bare and asked what her name was, Dmitri told her she was Simone. She smiled and said in her syrupy sweet voice that she liked her name. When he took her he made sure to imprint on her that she wanted to have babies almost as much as she wanted to be a good sexy submissive woman for him. The discomfort that Lena had experienced early on in her pregnancy had made him decide that he was going to short circuit it by making Simone crave being that way. Lena was already having a similar modification entered into her mindset now that she was back in stasis. All the while as he was imprinting Simone she was begging him to impregnate her and when he came in her and informed her that now she was pregnant her reaction made him feel like he was riding a bull from how vigorously she was bucking from the subsequent orgasm. Simone easily settled into how he had imprinted her to be. Dmitri found out that quickly that he did like the look of her as she sucked on him almost as much as he liked how her tongue felt slithering over his cock. Since it was one of the things that he made certain to highlight in her conversion program and reinforce when he was inside her it was certain that she was going to enjoy being on her knees in front of him as often as possible. It was probably a good call on his part when he did that he realized after he had had her for a week. Marshall had designed her to be almost as tall as he was. That may have been Marshall's preference but Dmitri usually he liked his women more petite in stature. He would change her eventually to more fully conform to his tastes, but for once having a woman who was not his usual choice was a refreshing change for him. He didn't want to spend too much power on her just yet though. He probably would tweak the conversion program to reduce her size gradually each time she went under. That way she would be how he wanted her to be by the time that he put her into stasis just before they landed. He liked the contrast of his skin against her darker flesh. It made an exotic change for him after Lena. The darkness of her nipples against the sweetness of her full breasts was also a nightly delight for him. He found that he was enjoying having her even more than he expected to and was surprised that he hadn't considered being with a woman who looked like her before. He kept her active for six weeks as well. If it was possible she seemed to be developing an even more feminine persona than Lena had. But it may have been that right from the start that he had made her dress in the sexiest lingerie right from the beginning. While he did greatly enjoy her eagerly swallowing him as he sat in the command chair. It had become one of his frequent pleasures in fact, especially when she would take her time afterward and hold him in her mouth after she swallowed until he was ready to have her repeat the view. He did need to put her back in the tube though at the end of her time awake. As her belly began to show a hint of its rise she started to become a bit annoying with how she was cooing to it when she wasn't attending to him. The one thing that he hadn't counted on was that after six weeks or so that he needed a break from her. When he put her back into her booth and watched the tube seal turn blue, he looked over at the finished doll face of Nate in her stasis tube and decided to put off breaking in another woman right away. It wasn't that he had changed his mind about wanting to have her; it was that when he did imprint her he wanted to be ready to fully enjoy every delectable inch of her before she started swelling like the other wenches already had begun doing. He had also been considering the timing of it as well. When they finally grounded he was going to have two women almost halfway or better through their pregnancy. He didn't need to have all three of them in the same stage. One of them had to be fit enough to attend to all of the woman's work that caring for the six of them would entail. And that way they could take turns when Nate was finally too big to take care of her own tasks as well. So when Simone went under he didn't wake up the beautiful Eurasian girl that Nate had become; he woke up Lena instead. While the launch plodded its way through the outer reaches of human space life aboard it fell into an easy comfortable pattern for Dmitri and his wenches. He would spend three weeks with Lena and then a week by himself before rousing Simone for another three weeks. Before he had cycled through them three more times he was absolutely certain that if he had missed either of their tipping points that it had already long since passed for both of them. By the time that they passed their original destination Copernicus station, and continued onward the three of them had been in space for just over six months. There were a few tense moments for Dmitri, but somehow the launch managed to evade anyone who might suspect that the little craft was passing within their scanning range. The flight path Dmitri had programmed had kept them off of the main space lanes and made them less likely to be detected by either human ships or those belonging to the race that had destroyed the Lancaster so easily, but it didn't make for a swift trip by doing so. According to the nav, when the launch had been underway a little over seven months, Dmitri felt relaxed enough to cease worrying that someone would stumble over them by accident. Copernicus station now lay just aft of them and they were slowly moving deeper into human held space. According to the onboard star charts, there was a cluster of planets in the next system and according to what he had been able to match from the sensor readouts there wasn't that much there to attract either race. But even with that readout arguing against heading there he thought he had detected something that had gone overlooked for some reason. On the edge of one of the planets was a small moon that looked to him like it had been misidentified. If what he saw in the data banks was true then here was one possibility that he thought likely, but it would take them several more weeks for him to reach it. He took another week to enjoy Lena's company before putting her under. There trip was almost over and it was finally time for him to imprint Nate. He'd been looking forward to this part of the trip almost as much as he had been to taking Lena when she first emerged from stasis, but he thought that somehow this last wench would be much more fitting somehow. He called the woman that Nate had become Delia when she asked who she was. She proved to be an exciting and enthusiastic companion who was utterly inventive when it came to experimenting. Of all his girls, this one was easily the most exciting when it came to pleasuring him. It seemed at times that she thought of little but easing his burden as they approached the outer edge of the star system they were going to ground in. Dmitri had thought before that Lena was his favorite among the three wenches but soon after waking Delia he was seriously considering whether he had missed an opportunity by delaying his chance to sample what she was capable of. Perhaps it was him thinking of who she had been before, of her closeness to the captain, but for some reason there was nothing that he liked more with this wench than tying her up, turning off the gravity plating in the cabin and riding her in zero G while she struggled to untie herself. Denying her the means to touch him while he had full access to every part of her was more satisfying to him than he had anticipated it would be when he thought of it. It wasn't that she was uncooperative; in fact as far as he was concerned she was well worth the wait in his opinion. But when he had her finally he decided that he wouldn't keep her out as long as he had with the other two wenches. She was like a treat that he kept for special occasions and he didn't want to take her out of her box for very long. Part of the reason for that was that he didn't want to tire of her too soon. The other reason was that now that they were approaching what appeared to be a habitable planet he was having to spend more time at the Conn than he had before on this trip. Like the others, he kept her in his cabin once she was out of her tube. For some reason though he liked keeping her confined in the little room waiting on him to arrive so that she could service him at his leisure. He didn't leave any chores for her to do as he had with Lena and Simone. As sweet and innocent as she looked in her face sometimes he could swear that those big expressive eyes of hers turned hard and dark when they thought he wasn't looking and as the time to put her back in her tube approached he decided that he was going to instruct the conversion chamber to reset her back and wipe her memory. During the last occasion when he let her out of the watch cabin the planet was only two weeks away. He had first released her from stasis nearly three weeks ago, but unlike her sister wenches she had only spent a double hand span of days actually conscious of what was happening outside of the cabin walls. It was probably ironic that of them all she was the one that he was considering actually rotated in for only a day or two and then she would find herself returned to stasis. She was loving, attentive and inventive once she was out of the tube though and he decided against it. She was, in short, everything that a designated wench was supposed to be and yet Dmitri felt completely ill at ease around her. Maybe it was his fault; she was, after all his design. Maybe when he was putting her together, something that looked right in the holo display just couldn't be properly presented when it was in the flesh. Either way, it didn't matter. After taking her out of the cabin for her last day he decided to scrap her image when he put her under. Once the ship was grounded he was going to redesign her from the toes up. The only thing that wasn't going to be affected was her womb which was already more than busy enough since he had imprinted her the first time. All he had to do was to have her slip into stasis for now and it would be over soon after they grounded; but before he did that he wanted another taste of her while she looked the way she did. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dmitri was curious what was keeping Delia. He had put her into stasis a couple of weeks ago and had revived her only yesterday. Whatever it was during her last stasis confinement that he had changed it seemed had done the trick with her. Whatever it was about her that put him on edge just wasn't there when he woke her for one final romp just before he put her aside until after they had grounded. He was thinking this time that there may not be any reason to redesign her after all, but with her not being where he expected her to be he was thinking that maybe he should have maintained a firmer hand with her as well. Maybe it was his fault after all. Perhaps he shouldn't have allowed her template as much independence as he did this time; but with the launch approaching the planet that he had identified as the most likely candidate he felt he needed all of his girls to be a little more on their toes and a little less inclined to deliberately trip and land on the ground with their legs spread. Besides it wouldn't hurt to see what she was up too. She wasn't in the refresher like he thought. After he had imprinted her this last time and enjoyed how eager that she was for his attention he had told her to go clean herself up and see what she could do with preparing some rations for them both. Maybe she had cleaned herself up as he had told her to do, but she wasn't in the small hygiene refresher or in the cramped little galley. That didn't leave that many places that she could be at and now that he had eliminated the most obvious he didn't like that she was behaving out of character like this. He might have to put her back in the tube and dial her down a bit mentally; just until they were more established planet side. He fished one of the sedatives out of the med kit just in case he might need it. Maybe he was being paranoid, what with their final destination almost able to be seen without instruments and having his wench misbehaving like this, but that didn't calm the feeling that something was out of place and he couldn't quite fit the pieces together enough to get a clear picture of what was going on. The cramped cockpit of the command module was where she was. As he approached he could hear the sound of her accessing the systems and that was something that she most definitely should not have even considered doing. Dmitri stepped into the module and asked her what she was doing in a pleasant, conversational tone. He had already shed the protective cap from the hypo and it was ready for him to use if he needed to use it on her. Delia turned around. She was sitting in the same station that she had sat in when she was Nate. "You surprised me," She said in her high pitched breathy voice. "Well I wasn't trying to sneak up on you or anything," Dmitri said. "I was just curious where you were. I didn't expect to find you up here though." "Oh you walking in here so quiet and stealthy like you did isn't what surprised me," she said. "Well then what did then?" he asked her. Delia's fingers twitched on the control panel and Dmitri felt the crushing weight of at least four G's hammer him to the deck plates. The hypo rolled out of his nerveless fingers and rolled over to rest under one of the chairs against the bulkhead. Delia watched him impassively as he struggled and failed to overcome the weight crushing him to the floor. "Maybe that is a little much," he heard her say. "I need you immobile for the time being, but I don't need you squashed into a paste," He felt the pressure dial back a little but not enough for him to do anything with. He was held as firmly by the gravity field as he would have been if he were locked in a block of ice. "What surprised me, Dmitri, was that when I woke up I found myself like this," she said indicating her lovely body with a sweeping hand movement. I wasn't expecting to have these beautiful tits and I wasn't expecting to have you attempt to imprint me as soon as you got me out of stasis. I was expecting that no more than a week had passed and the next time I saw a designated wench I thought it would be Sam and not me," Her slender fingers danced easily over the command interface and he watched from the floor as the forward monitor activated. The course trajectory was displayed in a corner as a transparent overlay and the distant form of the planet that they were heading to was just able to be seen by the ship's sensors. "Waking up and finding myself as the designated wench right away was surprising, Dmitri," she said. "Finding out that it's been over six months since I went under and not only are we not at Copernicus Station, but you deliberately passed it by when you altered our course was more than that. Just like you deliberately never sent the distress call either. That was more than surprising. That was infuriating." Delia stood up from the seat and walked over to where she could lean over him but not be affected by the grav field. She retrieved the hypo from where it had rolled away to and spun it slowly between her fingertips as he struggled to raise his eyes and keep her in sight. She walked back over to the seat and pulled up the planet that he was heading them to. "Is this what you had in mind Dmitri?" she asked. Dmitri wouldn't have answered her even if he could have at the moment. "Let me tell you what you had in mind, just so that we're clear," she said in a harder tone of voice. The hardness was somehow enhanced rather than detracted by the sexy kitten tone she spoke in. It didn't sound playful at all, it sounded more like what he imagined the voice of a hunting cougar would sound like when it had its prey brought to bay. "You were thinking of finding yourself a little hideaway on this nice little planetoid. You were thinking that with three others all shaped by the designated wench protocol that you could set yourself up as the founder of a new colony. If you ever were found later you'd just say that you ended up here and couldn't get off or contact anyone. You'd have your entire little collection of harem girls and you'd take your time knocking them up over and over while you hoped that the universe would never find you. I had a look at Sam and Marshall on the way back after I cleaned up the first time that you woke me. Both of them are already showing from what I could see and even though I haven't run the scan I presume that I'm already pregnant as well aren't I?" She looked down at the man chained to the deck by gravity. He couldn't move, but that wouldn't have changed anything if he could have. She didn't expect him to answer when he was like this anyway. She reached out and activated another set of controls and from the floor he could just see that she was activating the comm. system. "Pegasus forward, this is mission Beta 67 stroke 4," she said. "Beta 67/4 you are overdue. Authenticate Mike seven seven Alpha Kilo and explain yourself," a harsh voice immediately crackled through the speakers in response. "Unexpected complications due to mutiny, Pegasus forward. I authenticate Sierra four three Whiskey. Send a retrieval skiff. I am activating my beacon now. I'll explain further when I debrief." "Acknowledged Beta 67/4. Skiff is outbound." She turned her attention back down to him. "That planet you are headed to is one of our many intelligence operations you colossal idiot," she told him. "I'm sure that when you got within range you started looking for planets or moons that were just out of environmental tolerance level in some way; something that would make them less likely for us to choose to set a colony on. Planets like this one," She said gesturing at the image on the screen. "The problem with your plan is that Fleet Intelligence uses these types of places for some of our more clandestine operations. I really doubt you would have even reached the surface before you were intercepted even with the unique nature of this ship in your favor." Dmitri blanched inside although with his face strained by the pull of the gravity plating he couldn't really show it. He had never considered that possibility when he was narrowing down his choices before he selected this one to go to. She stood up and carefully walked around him avoiding the heavy gravity surrounding him. "Don't go anywhere," she called back to him over her shoulder. "We have a couple of things to take care of before the interceptor skiff gets here." Dmitri heard her footsteps, tiny and sharp in her heels against the deck plates receding away and then after a few minutes he heard her coming back. She was out of his field of vision until she moved around him and started settling her well padded bottom into the seat. She was holding a small pistol. Dmitri couldn't see how he had missed finding something like that and he didn't recognize what kind it was. She pointed it toward him. "Let's stop wasting the ship's power shall we?" she said as she killed the gravity holding him down and fired. He felt the gravity fall away bare seconds before he felt the impact and the effect of whatever was in the dart wash through him. As it did as he was stripped of all motor control and was just as helpless as when the grav plating held him down. The deck may no longer be holding him fast but he was just as incapable of moving. "That's better," she crooned. "Mustn't waste power you know. We aren't safely back yet." She stood up and walked toward him. With no need to avoid the activated grav plating it was a much shorter traverse for her and when she reached him she simply stepped over his prone unmoving body. Dmitri felt the absolute numbness that whatever it was she had shot him with sweeping more completely over him with every beat of his heart. And unlike when the grav plating held him now he was incapable of speaking as well. He heard a clanking from the corridor and heard her approaching him. There was movement behind him and he felt a pair of cold metal plates lock onto his body. One adhered to the skin near the center of his shoulders and the other just where his spine met his pelvis. "This should make things so much easier," he heard her say. There was a humming as the devices activated and he could see the floor gradually receding from him. She must have gotten an anti-gravity stretcher from the medical cabin. He felt her hand tugging on the lower handle and saw the deck began to move under him. She easily guided him down the corridor although she did deliberately allow his head to bump against the bulkheads a few times. He heard the sound of a hatch opening and then felt her dragging and somewhat guiding him into the room. The blue lights from Lena's and Simone's active stasis tubes blended with the dim overhead lighting. She was taking him into the conversion chamber he realized. With the help of the AG stretcher she easily lifted him vertical and wedged him into an empty tube with his backside facing her. He felt her disengage one of the AG stretchers and shift it around to somewhere in front of him, and then he felt her do the same with the other one. The close view he had of the tube's interior rotated away until he was facing the center of the room itself. Delia began strapping him into the harness. Dmitri's fear over the rapid turn of fortune for him was steadily growing and if it hadn't been for the drug coursing through his veins he was certain that the veins in his neck would be visibly throbbing in time with his increased heart rate. She lowered the cranial harness over his head and he could hear her making the last few connections. Once she was finished she sat in the interface seat and slid it over until she was looking up at him. "It doesn't bother me that you made me into this woman," she said to him. "It doesn't bother me that you made me the worst kind of fucktoy that could be dreamed up when it comes to selecting a woman in designated wench protocol. It doesn't even bother me that you deliberately got me pregnant. None of those things really matter Dmitri." "What does bother me is what you have done in addition to those things. Let me make it clear to you just what that is. I wasn't the captain's steward, that was just my cover; I was his Minder," she said to him in a voice so cold that he could feel the blood freezing in his veins from the chill. A Minder his brain screamed at him! One of the most dangerous covert agents that fleet intelligence employed and he had crossed one of them in the worst possible way. "The captain may be in charge of the ship, but I was in charge of the mission. Fleet intelligence deliberately sacrificed the Lancaster so that we could gather scans and gauge exactly what the enemies cruisers are capable of. Whenever they destroy one of our ships they send an EMP bomb that goes off shortly after they leave. It wipes all the tactical data that we might be able to recover. So I was sent to encode the data from the attack on my biomatrix. This ship was outfitted to survive an attack and return me with that data intact. If you had sent the message like I told you to do; even if you had even just done what we agreed before putting us all in stasis you would be a hero right now. We wouldn't have been in space longer than a couple of weeks." "As it is your actions have put us all at a severe disadvantage for months longer than we can afford to lose. You are a deserter and a traitor and I promise you that your punishment is just beginning," She stood up and leaned close to him so that he could smell the sweetness of her breath while she said that in her soft lilting voice. "I'm sure you are ignorant as to why I didn't have my mind compartmented and it's probably going to make you a little crazy once you stop shrieking inside over how fucked you are so let me enlighten you so you truly understand the depth of the shit you are in." "The thing is, a Minder, like me will never have their mind boxed away like that. The conversion tube computer detected my implanted data chip and never attempted to touch my mind. There is no sexual conflict for me or any other Minder; all of us have been on both sides of the gender fence so many times looking at so many different faces in the mirror; that it literally doesn't matter to us. This..." she waved her hands across her luscious body like she was revealing something, "this literally is no different to me than changing my clothes. Actually I was looking forward to my time as the DW if it was necessary to be in space that long. Watching the way all of you act when you think that I'm some brainless portable hole is enlightening on so many levels to me. You can always tell who a person really is when they have total control over someone else." "You, for example, could have been a hero," she said coldly to him. "Instead you'll serve as an example. But don't think that you're going to be killed my dear Dmitri," she said to him. "Oh no, your tour of duty as a warning is only just beginning." She activated the conversion control and searched through the files until she found the template that he had used in forming her. She called up the image and projected it so that the holographic image slowly spun between them. "You didn't just work this up while you were between DW's," She said. This is something that you took a lot of time with. "You've had this one in the launch tube for a while now haven't you? I'll bet you spent at least a couple of years fine tuning all the details and even with that you probably couldn't help tweaking a couple of more things before you loaded it into my tube program." She struck a sexy wanton pose in front of him. "It would be a shame to let such a magnificently, elegant piece of ass go to waste don't you think?" she asked him in her innocent voice and then as he watched she dropped her sexy pose and began linking the program to his own stasis tube. "And since it would be such a shame to deprive our child of a full healthy development; I'll have to make certain that when we arrive at Pegasus Forward that they transplant the embryo from my womb into yours right away. I'll be too busy with my next assignment to have such an inconvenient interruption foisted onto me and you will be more than ready to handle the job much sooner than you think." She reached for the activation panel and hesitated. Her cold face turned back to him and fixed his eyes with her icy stare. "One more thing you should know," she said. "It really doesn't take almost a month to convert between genders. It can be done in a matter of hours if it needs to be done quickly. It's just incredibly painful for the person being converted that way. As a stasis tech you know how conversion works for the most part, but you don't have any idea of what it is that I'm talking about." "You see, for a fast conversion, like the one you're about to experience, your cells are literally going to be dissolved and replaced at the same time and the amount of energy your body will expend during a forced conversion is going to be astronomical. Even in near stasis you're going to feel yourself being torn apart and you're going to remember that pain for the rest of your very long life." "You aren't going to be have your mind compartmented either," she said menacingly. "When you come to in a few hours, after you finish screaming from the pain, you will be completely aware of every difference between how you are now and what you made yourself into when it's finished." "Then, after the surgeons complete the transplant that is, that's when the fun will begin," she said brightly. "First, I'm going to ensure that every single marine stationed at Pegasus Forward knows that you jeopardized a vital mission and that they have free reign to gang rape the shit out of you as long as you are on this base. Then if I can arrange it, and I think I probably can; I'll have you shipped to every single base in the quadrant where they can do the exact same thing to you. In ancient navies they had a similar punishment they used. They called it being flogged around the fleet. What I have in mind for you is not quite the same thing, but its close enough. And in view of what you have done I think it's only appropriate that we revive that venerable old tradition in this form." She activated the program initiation and Dmitri watched as the plastisteel canopy dropped down into place and locked. "Congratulations Delia," he heard her muffled voice dimly say through the canopy just before he lost consciousness. "You've just become the Designated Wench for the whole damned fleet!"