Editor's note: this story contains scenes of non-consensual or reluctant sex.
*****
When travelling between stars, every gram of matter costs, even using the jump drive. Even on a heavy-haul freighter like the
Hippo
that lumbers along at a dilation of twelve, making months into years, the energy required to jump a spec of dust to almost the speed of light is phenomenal. Were it not an insurance requirement that all freighters have a crew of it least two humans and at least one multipurpose android, for general inspection and maintenance as well as backup in the case of catastrophic failure of the automatic systems (although it had never been established what such scenarios might be), the
Hippo
would have crossed between the stars just as efficiently and unencumbered by expensive life support systems.
On the other hand, I did get to call myself 'captain', and I didn't mind being alone for months at a time. In fact, I would have preferred to be completely alone. The living quarters consisted of the flight control room, the engineering workshop, the medbay, two bedrooms, a shared kitchen and a shared bathroom, all arranged in a ring about ten metres across and rotating to establish artificial gravity - something that was startlingly apparent in the connecting corridor that looped all the way around.
Steve, the engineer, kept to himself, mostly. I'm not unattracted to men, but I have standards, and I wasn't desperate enough to lower them for Steve. Nor was I oblivious to the fact that he had reconfigured the android as a gynoid (always an option), with sexual function too. What he did with it in the privacy of his room I had no wish to know.
They say space is empty, but that's not really true. It's comparatively true, but there's radiation across the spectrum, cosmic rays, planetoids so cold and dark they can only be seen as silhouettes. The field created by the jump drive protects the ship from most of that, and so well indeed that the odds of a micrometeorite penetrating the field and damaging the ship or its contents is considered negligible - but that was little consolation to me as I lay bleeding to death in my room, sirens screaming in my ears, alarm lights all at panic-red.
I have a vague memory of Steve shaking me, and of the gynoid carrying me. Another of lying on the bed in the medbay, Steve shouting at the medical AI. Another of him promising he would fix me. I knew it was impossible. We were months away from help. The damage to my body too severe - ironic given the size of the rock that had punched through my spine and left pulmonary artery.
And that should have been that, except it wasn't. I woke up one day about a month later, feeling not quite myself. I was lying naked on the bed in the medbay, no sign of the damage to my chest, no scars or anything. There was no sign of Steve either, but I knew somehow he was in his bedroom. There was also, at the back of mind, nagging at my attention, a long list of things that needed doing, the sort of routine maintenance and inspection tasks either I or, more usually the gynoid, would have attended to.
I checked the ship's computer. Some of the tasks were three weeks overdue. Clearly there was a problem with the gynoid too. Maybe Steve had worn her out with too much sex. Maybe the meteorite had damaged her too.
Choosing not to wake Steve, I hopped out of bed and made for my room, surprised at how strong I was feeling. There was no muscle atrophy after weeks without movement, and no difficulty breathing, no paralysis. I'd been fixed up well. And were my breasts bigger than before? I certainly didn't remember my nipples sticking out quite like that.
I paused outside my room. Getting dressed and examining my body were low on my list of priorities. Continuing on to the flight control room, I took my seat in the captain's chair and immersed myself in diagnostics checks, remote inspection of the ship and its cargo, updating the ship's log. There was pleasure in gradually ticking things off the list. From time to time I considered going to get dressed, but it really didn't feel urgent enough to distract me from other duties.
But my breasts were definitely bigger, and my nipples jutted out as if I were aroused. Maybe they were just cold, though I didn't feel particularly cold. Had Steve persuaded the medical AI to give me bigger breasts while fixing my spine and chest? It seemed unlikely, despite the clear evidence before me. They looked natural enough, and I had to admit they were sexy, but the idea of Steve manipulating my body was more than a little creepy.
Finally, the major items all crossed off the list and a weight off my mind, I decided to address the minor items too, starting with a thorough sanitisation of the medbay, followed by cleaning and restocking the bathroom. These were tasks the gynoid would normally do, and I didn't enjoy cleaning the filters of weeks of accumulated man-hair, but the pleasure of ticking things off the list made it worthwhile.
