Chapter 9
The four humans and the Killhound arrived at the gym the next morning to find Rachael already there. She was wearing a bright yellow one piece swimsuit that left very little to the imagination, and she was drawing eyes like bees to honey from the gym's male early birds, not to mention a couple of the women as well. This wasn't hard to understand either. At a hundred-fifty-eight centimeters tall, with well rounded B-cup breasts, a narrow waist and curvaceous hips and backside, who wouldn't find her attractive? Add in the high cut hips and wide open cross laced sides of her one piece swimsuit, its plunging heart-shaped neckline with barely there shoulder straps, and the ecstatic way she moved, and it seemed as if she'd been purposely designed to attract attention.
She had joined Janice's early morning dance aerobics group, and seemed to be having a lot of fun. Janice spotted them at the same time, and waved them over to join in. Karl demurred, but the girls joined in, giggling and smiling.
Karl took over another empty room and began his own warm-up routine. It began with a light jog around the room's circumference to get the blood flowing. Then as he was completing his final circuit, he leapt up and caught a pull-up and inversion bar and ran through several variations to warm up his upper body. Then he worked his way through several sets of hanging crunches, and finally settled to the mats for a stretching routine that would've had most men cringing in sympathetic pain.
He emerged just in time to catch the end of Janice's class, and had to catch his breath. Natasha's tousled sweat slicked body drew his eyes like iron filings to a magnet. Her endorphin generated euphoric glow and post exercise flush was doing strange things to him. Vixi was the first one to spot him, and when she saw the look in his eyes, she followed the line of his gaze right to Natasha. Her eyes flicked back and forth between them and a knowing slightly envious smile appeared on her face. Then her eyes went to Lisa and the envy disappeared, replaced by a glowingly happy tender smile. It was clear she was in love.
Mike appeared a few minutes later and they all began making the rounds of the weight machines. Janice and Michael provided a little coaching to Vixi and Lisa when it was needed. Then they moved to one of the exercise rooms for more intensive martial arts training.
Karl Michael and Natasha divided their time between teaching various moves and transitions, and sparring. The idea was to make sure the two women knew and understood the purposes and mechanics of the various moves, and when and how to use them. This went on for more than two hours.
Afterward, they all went to lunch. This time it was a far more relaxing affair than their previous get togethers, the sexual tension wasn't there, and everybody was more relaxed. Rachael fit in as if she'd always been a part of their little group. It helped she'd made it clear early on she wasn't interested in sharing someone else's man, no matter how attractive he might be.
After lunch, Rachel left them to go back to her place, Lisa Vixi and bona headed back to the ship, while Mike and Janice led Karl and Natasha to several exercise equipment outlets on the station. They found what they needed easily and made arrangements to have it delivered and set up. Their final stop was the swim spa dealer Mike had mentioned the day before.
There Natasha found several that would serve her purposes admirably. One even had a slightly more powerful force shield that would not only provide a field for the holo-projections, but would also channel any water splashed out back into the pool. The model they settled on at last was a meter longer than the original, the swim channel was twenty centimeters deeper, it had an onboard memory with more than ten thousand prerecorded holo backgrounds, and had room for at least as many more, depending on the complexity. Some of them were even interactive! What finally decided them was, this one was actually in stock and ready to be delivered. Better yet, as far as Natasha was concerned, it was also the one with the splashproof force screen for the holo-curtain.
By the time they got back to the Czarina, there were already a half dozen crates waiting in the gym and a pair of setup techs waiting to begin work. Natasha showed them where she wanted each piece and they set to work. By the time they'd finished, the rest of the equipment had arrived, including a pair of the articulated exercise bikes Karl liked so much, along with the spa.
Although it was larger and deeper, the spa installation was relatively quick and painless. This was because of the way the original had been installed. It had been a kit designed for universal use in spacecraft, which meant only a little of the subfloor had to be removed to accommodate the new installation. The grav system was another easy installation, and the heavier mats went right over it, only needing to be cut to fit exactly.
When everything was finished several hours later, Natasha was pleased with the result. The gym deck had a little less free space, but the workout options had more than doubled, and she thought the new swim spa would be perfect. The best thing was, the spa's seating was fully convertible. It could be set up for up to four lounge seats, any one of which could be converted to a bench arrangement that could accommodate up to three people, each with its own massaging jets and separate bubble controls. Built into the poolside next to each lounger, was a deep storage compartment, each capable of being set independently to operate as a drink cooler. There would be plenty of room for Natasha's collection of waterproof sex toys and accompanying lubricants etc, while still allowing her to have cold drinks, up to and including full sized wine or champagne bottles on hand! Even better, an additional pair of loungers could be set up in built in brackets in the swim channel with plenty of room to get around, although these seats wouldn't have the jets or bubble controls. The swim channel was longer and deeper and the current setting could be set to automatic or manual. On second thought, the best thing was the holo curtain! New fantasies were already boiling up in Natasha's imagination.
During the gym deck upgrade, Karl and Lisa with Vixi's help, had begun some of the other upgrade projects. The class three heavy pulse lasers and their ball turrets for the missile defense system were easy to come by, since these were commonly used in point defense batteries on personal vessels. With the machining tools in the Czarina's workshop, the ball turrets and related servos were easy to modify to fit. Since the Czarina's sensors had already been upgraded by Natasha's parents, there wouldn't be any issues there. The only problem would be finding an appropriate targeting and control computer for the lasers. There was nothing that would serve the purpose adequately available on the station, and they'd looked. Their only alternative would be to adapt one built for another purpose. There were plenty of personal computer dealers and many of those designs would work with the proper programming and a few additional parts. They decided they would have to look into that later. The hard part would be finding the correct targeting programs. None of them were programmers with sufficient skill to write what they needed from scratch.
The maneuvering thrusters were another matter altogether. As Karl had surmised, the pirate ship had been sent to salvage. Better yet, its thrusters were higher quality, more powerful units than they'd expected, and in pretty good condition too. With a few hours cleanup and adjustment, they were ready for installation and went right in. With those in place, the Czarina would be a far harder target to hit in the future.
The engine upgrades were similarly easy. Once again, the pirate vessel had most of what was needed, causing Lisa to comment, "Sometimes you just gotta love those pirates. True these guys were smelly animals, but they knew how to hotrod a ship! Plus, they were bigger and heavier than Czarina and pushing a lot more power through their system. Their stuff was built to handle the load and probably came out of some poor bastard's racing yacht. So much the better for us! I checked too, none of this stuff showed up as stolen, so the original owners probably just disappeared one day, never to be seen again. Anyway, now it'll help us pay the bastards back."
"Now that's what I call karma!" Karl agreed laughingly, "Best of all, this stuff looks like it'll be direct drop in replacements. NO custom fitting required. I like it when the job's easy."
Once the gym was finished, Natasha joined their work. When she learned the source of the parts they were using, she had to fight to keep back the laughter. "I hope you properly sanitized this stuff! I remember the smell on the outside of Karl's armor when he came off that ship! Can you say ripe?" Karl could only nod vigorous agreement.
They got so entangled in what they were doing, they worked right through dinner time, only stopping when Bona reminded them they should probably eat something. Just as they got back to the kitchen, the ship was rocked by what felt like thruster emissions. Natasha immediately activated the exterior sensors, and they all saw a small racing type yacht accelerating hard away from the station, completely disregarding all the safety regulations and nearly cutting off an incoming passenger liner. Karl spotted something and asked Natasha to turn up the vid resolution. The yacht was firing its defensive lasers on the liner, and apparently aiming for the Bridge viewports! They watched in horror as several black burn traceries scored the area, throwing off glittering red-orange sparks. Fortunately, none seemed to have found their marks. There were no telltale plumes of escaping air that would've made any hull breaches highly visible. Then the little ship was out of weapons range and racing out-system at full power.
A moment later, Karl's com chimed. It was Rachael. Fearing the worst, he answered. Rachael sounded out of breath and more than a little panicked. "I saw him! I was walking into the bar and I saw him walking out. I left in a hurry to find a safe place to call you. Apparently I left just in time! A bomb went off like less than a minute later! The place was packed! They won't let me in, but I think there must be hundreds of people hurt and killed in there. I've been trying to get security to listen to me, but noone will! Even the G-Pol boss just blew me off. That was about ten minutes ago. I just calmed down enough to remember to call you guys. What should I do?"
