Sixth Sun

Gina and I took the maintenance ladder down to deck three. She pointed to a door on the right side in the hallway.

"That one's yours by the way. Three oh two. Quarters are generally not locked, but you can lock it from the door console if you like. I'd help you move in, but Bettina probably isn't done fabricating the rest of your clothes yet."

The end of the hallway on this deck ended in a heavy door covered in a myriad of safety notices. Gina tapped on the control panel and the door slid sideways into the wall with a low grinding sound.

We stepped into an office that overlooked the mining area. The entire far wall was a top to bottom window, scratched and dusty from decades of abuse. The mining bay that it looked into stretched all the way from deck two down to deck four. Level with this deck, three large slabs of rock, easily ten feet high and twice as wide, laid on heavy duty conveyors that slowly inched them forward. The miners were drilling and cutting away at them with tools that hung all the way from the top of the deck above. They also had platforms at that level so that miners could work at a slab from the top. The deck below was dedicated to gravel and debris collection, with an area to the side where they kept the precious metals.

Right in front of me, at the middle conveyor, Lana was working with two other miners. They were drilling rock away from a gold vein easily as thick as my leg. The end of it had a chain slung around it and one of the miners clipped the end of it away with hydraulic shears. The crane that the chain was attached to dropped it off at the end of the room with the other good stuff while the miners continued freeing another two feet of gold from the rock. Gina pressed a button by one of the consoles and a red light flashed briefly out of my sight. It must have been mounted on the wall above the window. Some of the miners looked our way, but the ones who were operating machinery didn't.

Lana waved and walked to the side where the office and the bay were connected by a thick door. You really only realize how good sound isolation in any place is when someone opens a door. We were exposed to an infernal cacophony of grinding and banging noises for the seconds it took Lana to cross the threshold between there and here. Lana wore thick ear muffs, a respirator mask and safety goggles. Her hair was covered by what can only be described as an extra long shower cap. The rest of her was covered by a pair of heavy boots and a thick but skin tight body suit. She put the ear muffs, goggles and respirator on a desk. I just then realized I could have been looking at her sister the entire time without noticing the difference, given how much she was covered up.

"Hey there," Lana beamed at us. "Getting a tour of the place?"

Gina snorted. "More like an apology tour."

Lana motioned with her hand for Gina to go on, but it turned out this was where her assistance ended. "Go on, it's your mess."

I cleared my throat. "Well, I wanted to say that I shouldn't have said anything when Lindsay brought up the topic of.. well.. you know.. "

Lana motioned with her hand for me to go on.

I inhaled deeply. "I slept with Hideko and when the inquisition starts looking for who it was, she's going to breathe into a paper bag for a week."

Lana looked at Gina. "And this is your idea?"

She just shrugged. "If you can't keep a secret, just tell everyone."

She flicked her chin in my direction. "Aaand.. do we have to put him out the airlock?"

"I think we landed ourselves some actual boy scout." Gina said shaking her head. "Anyway, I'll talk to the doc and the bridge and then at least this mess will be behind us." She looked at her communicator. "I got to relieve Aamina." She scrolled a bit. "Bettina says you can pick up basic clothing in fifteen minutes. Can I leave him with you, Lana?"

"Sure thing."

"Thanks, Gina, for everything." I said, to which she only gave a dismissive wave as she left.

Lana pointed to the least beat up chair in the office. "Have a seat. Water?" She pointed to a fridge in the corner.

"Sure, thanks." I responded waiting for her to hand me a bottle before I sat down.

Lana took a chair that must have been here for a century and turned its back towards me before sitting down, leaning her chest against the backrest. I wasn't sure if she intended to let the chair squeeze her cleavage up, but here I was having another moment of rapture. At least I didn't let it show too much this time.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry." She said with a smile, leaned back and crossed her arms over the back rest of the chair, hiding her assets.

I could have sworn I had been real smooth. How long had I been staring? "Don't be. It's just.. " I gestured in her general direction. I decided that honesty was the theme of the day. "You're just so damn perfect. If you don't mind me saying."

She put her chin on her forearms and looked at me with mischief in her eyes. "Why thank you. I don't mind you saying."

"But as I said, I just got here and I have to take some time to catch a breath. I don't want to rush into things."

"You did rush into our poor little nurse really fast." Came the response that I had teed up for her.

I held up my hands. "I will only take half the blame for that, the doctor practically pushed her onto me."

"The doctor is a smart woman. She also loves her little student more than most mothers love their children. And most importantly she can do basic math."

I wasn't following. "I'm not sure I follow."

"This boat has twenty five crew. The captain, doc and Gina probably won't touch you, because they're actual professionals who care about that sort of stuff. Hand full of lesbians. That leaves somewhere between fifteen to twenty women who would somehow try to get into your pants."

"Does that include present company?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Of course. Once in a lifetime opportunity." She stuck out her tongue. "Doc probably assumed we're dropping everything to get you back to earth. That trip is roughly two weeks." I nodded along. It was starting to make sense. "Even if you were the most promiscuous guy in the universe, which we're all hoping you are by the way." She raised a questioning eyebrow at me, to which I gave a noncommittal shrug. "Even if you're all that, you're not getting in bed with a dozen and a half horny sailors in that time. So of course she'll push her into your arms. It's not like the little thing was going to elbow herself into bed with you once the feeding frenzy starts."

I took a sip of water. "Feeding frenzy doesn't sound like something I would want to be in the middle of."

She pushed her chin a little forward. "Isn't this the sort of thing wet dreams are made of? I mean, you got a ship full of hot women willing to drop their knickers for you. No attachments, no expectations."

"Yeah, I've been kindly asked to not be a bitch about it." I responded with a laugh.

"Gina?" She raised another questioning eyebrow.

"Captain. But it's fine, I sort of decided that I got over it." I admitted. "Still haven't figured out where to start."

"Would you like my help?" She rose to sit up to her full height and flashed another one of those damned smiles at me. "I'd love to help."

"I appreciate the offer. What would you suggest?" At this stage I was open for anything.

She motioned over to her workplace. "I am sort of busy, but I'd be happy to think things through and we could get together when I'm on break. Should be another three hours and then I get a few hours off before we have to finish the rock. Will you be alright until then?"

"Of course, I got some amount of settling in to do. I really didn't have time to think about anything myself."

"We'll figure something out. It's gonna be fun." She got up and walked back to the desk with her protective gear. "Will you pick me up in three hours?"

"Does that count as a date?" I made no effort to hide the fact I was checking her out while she was putting her stuff back on. It wasn't like I had been successful in hiding that at any point.

"Of course it does." she said, still smiling.

I checked my communicator for the time. "I'll see you in three hours."

She shoved her hair into its cover before putting on her mask. "Can't wait!" And with that she was out through the door, giving me a little finger wave and a few seconds of deafening cacophony as she crossed the threshold.

And there I stood, wondering what was happening to me. Who knows at this point? I navigated my way back down to engineering, for the first time since I arrived going anywhere by myself. If there was a real danger of being dragged into a maintenance hatch, this was probably it. I did make it to the elevator without being accosted. Considering the majority of the crew was trying to set a new record for the amount of space rock destroyed per hour, I considered the chance low, but not zero.

Bettina was visibly happy to see me. "Hey, trainee." She was wearing a grimy tank top and cargo pants and was busy working on a contraption that looked like it had been new when I was at the academy. "Do you know your way around a Gralmark fourteen filter system?". I gave it a once over. "The latest one I've seen was a Gralmark eight. This doesn't seem all that different though. The dirty stuff still goes in this way?" I pointed at where I was reasonably sure the dirty stuff was to go in.

"Yeah, pretty much. I'll leave this for you then. It's not a priority item, but I'd like it done within the week." She winked at me. "I'll put you on fabricator duty for now. It normally isn't much, but we've had an uptick in orders." She held out a datapad.

I took it and gave the order list a quick look. I groaned. "I take it you don't have a lot of lingerie orders most weekdays?"

"Can't say we do. I usually deliver orders to their rooms while we mine and they pick stuff up while we zook. So, if you wouldn't mind getting these done, room numbers are on the orders." She grabbed a tool box and turned to leave. "Your stuff is in the trolley, you can get that squared away when you feel like it." She said before the elevator door closed.

Engineering was responsible for operating the fabricator on any ship, so I had done my fair share of minding them. The interface wasn't all that different from what I had been used to. The crew picked items from a catalog of what the fabricator could build and then it went to work. It was a rather boring assignment and the current queue would take a few hours to finish, so I had a look at my stuff. Bettina had gone with a two-of-everything approach. Sneakers, track suits, pajamas, cargo pants, sweaters, a fist full of wife beaters and t shirts, with a stack of underwear and socks to round it all off. A small bag contained basic toiletries, like a toothbrush, toothpaste and an unmarked bottle of shower gel, that had "manly man smell for manly men" written on it with a marker. It smelled vaguely musky with a hint of honey. Finishing off the ensemble were a pair of flip flops, a bathrobe and a stack of towels.

I grabbed a large canvas bag from the shelf and squared my new wardrobe away as neatly as possible. I also went to my shuttle and grabbed my jump suit from the small compartment it had spent the last few hundred years in. It was vacuum sealed, so I assumed it would be in good condition. My first delivery may as well have been my own, so I called the elevator and went to deck three to see what my bunk was like. When I opened the door, I immediately found out what it wasn't.

Vacant.

Aamina was lying on her belly on the top bunk and was reading something on a datapad. She looked up from the pad and flashed me a coquettish smile.

"Erm, honey, I'm home?" Was the best I could come up with.

"Nobody told you that you have a bunkmate?" she asked, but it was more a statement than a question.

"I'm sure Gina thought about telling me and decided not to." I sighed. "She does like to wind people up, does she?"

"Only the easy marks." Came the reassuring response, smile unbroken.

The room was tiny. A small sink and mirror on my left hand side, next to it the bunk bed with the aforementioned navigator on top. A desk was filling up the entire space of the far wall, with a large screen hanging above it. The last wall across from the bed consisted only of storage drawers and lockers, bottom to top.

"So, how does this work?" I pleaded for guidance.

"I would suggest you use the drawers on the left, I cleared them out for you."

"We're not going to address the elephant in the room?"

She looked at me for a moment, then shuffled a small bit closer to the edge of the bed and looked down and around the room, as if to look for an elephant. "What elephant?".

I was starting to think that 'shit eating grin' was the default mode of operation for everyone but the nurse on this ship and that people tried to avoid situations in which it wouldn't be appropriate at all cost.

"I've been to unisex toilets, even unisex changing rooms. Unisex bunks is pushing it a little, don't you think?"

"Lucas, this is the only free bed on the ship."

"Oh"

"Yeah. Like I said, I cleared out the drawers on the left."

"Thanks." Was all I could say and I started pulling out my clothes and stacked them into the large clothing drawers. I was done in moments, on account of not really being burdened by an abundance of worldly possessions. "So, how will this work? We should probably set some ground rules about privacy, getting dressed and all that." I took off my uniform jacket, threw it on the bottom bed and started undoing my shirt cuffs to get a little bit more comfortable.

Aamina sat up, dangling her legs off the edge of the bed. "First thing is that I would prefer if you didn't put your things on my bed."

I looked down at the vacant bed that she certainly was not in at this moment. "Sorry, with you being up there, I thought you were bunking up top."

"Lucas, nobody bunks in the top bed when they have the choice." She shimmied a few inches forward. "You are probably correct, we do need to establish a base line for certain things. That's why I'm sitting here without any underwear."

I slowly tilted my head to the side. "Come again?"

"I'm really trying to come once for starters. But if you're up for it, I'm happy to come again."

"I..." This wasn't happening. "I am sorry. Please tell me how we got to this point in plain English." I looked up to her expectantly.

She started slowly unraveling her Hijab. "It's rather easy. You're either going to shag this entire boat or you won't. Given that you did Hideko before your feet even touched the ground, I say you will shag this entire boat. I'm on this boat and we'll get to it sooner or later." She waved me closer with two fingers and I obliged, taking a step closer looking straight up at her as she leaned forward. "So I'm going to ask you, Lucas Shaw, do you want to keep things awkward with your roommate or will you take the plunge?" She shook out her hair, which fell down to her small breasts in shiny, black waves.

I took her in, her small feet, the slender but fit legs, the tight pencil skirt, slightly crinkled from lying on the bed. She still wore the jacket to her uniform, but had taken off her tie some time between earlier and now. Her full and sensual lips were curled up in a smirk, her hazelnut eyes focused on mine. "I have a date lined up with Lana in a few hours."

She raised her perfect eyebrows. "I'm not trying to be your girlfriend." She put a hand on my cheek. "I just need to get off. Some good, clean fun." She looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds and then back to me. "Actually, some good, not so clean fun would be good."

I put my hand over the one touching my cheek. "Is this going to be the same thing with everyone here?"

She snorted. "No. I believe I am exceptionally forward compared to the rest of the crew. My hand is also forced by you standing at the edge of my bed and trying very hard not to check out my cooch."

At least I had an excuse. "Your skirt seems way too tight for that."

She grabbed the edge of the bed with both hands and effortlessly pushed herself up to hover an inch or two over the mattress. "Zip's in the back."

I had to admit as far as excuses go, this one hadn't been doing a lot. I ran my hands around her waist and pulled down the zipper without breaking eye contact with her. I took my time shimmying the skirt towards me, exploring her tight behind. As the hem of her skirt was half way down I surprised her by pulling the zipper shut again, cinching it half way down her thighs, acting like a belt keeping her legs together.

"Hey, what are you..."

I had grabbed her by her calves, tilting her backward while she tried maintaining balance by wiggling her feet and holding on to the edge of the bed.

"Mind your head."

The bed wasn't too narrow, but she still would have to rest her head against the wall. She quickly grabbed a pillow and threw it behind her neck before finally losing the fight against gravity and her impromptu restraints.

I looked at the sight straight ahead of me. I smelled a hint of lavender. I was willing to bet a razor had been right here less than an hour ago. Her sheer lips were slightly damp and gorgeous, fully covering her sex on account of her legs being tightly squeezed together. Her pucker looked rather small and cute but I had other things on my mind. I rolled my tongue around in my mouth to get it covered with saliva. I placed a wet, whole mouth kiss on her cheek and started dragging my tongue up the back of her leg. I got to her hamstrings and started digging in between the muscles with the tip of my tongue. If your partner is ticklish here, it's really difficult to explain to the surgeon how you got your nose broken, but I was lucky and she reacted with audible delight. I lightly brushed a fingertip over her lips before repeating the same thing on her other cheek. Then I blew on her moist lips while massaging her bottom.

"Hnnnnggg... Just do me, please." She was getting antsy. I kept blowing fresh air against her sex.

"One condition." I looked past her legs into her hazelnut eyes. "I get the bottom bunk."

"This is blackmail." She protested.

"I'm pretty sure this is extortion." I slowly stroked her lips with my thumb.

"Just do me. Please, I beg you."

I guess I am a sucker for politeness. I slowly inserted my index and middle finger into her dripping sex, prompting another delightful moan. I carefully explored her insides to find the telltale sponginess of her g spot. After a moment of circling it, I sucked on my thumb to get it properly wet and brought it down on her button. I watched the muscles from her bum to toe work while I was stroking her. Everything was in motion in the rhythm of my fingers and thumb circling in opposing directions. I had to hook a foot under the chair at the desk to pull it closer without letting go of her sex. I stepped on the chair and used my left hand to push her feet towards the wall. Because of the skirt limiting her range of motion, bending her legs further back lifted her ass off the bed. Standing on the chair let me look straight down at her glistening folds, my fingers still working in and out. I hungrily started devouring her puffy lips, immediately prompting her to wrap her arms around her legs to keep herself in that position.

She was breathing hard after just a few minutes of this treatment. One of her hands grabbed me by the hair and tried to guide me further up, but without seeing anything, didn't work as well as she had hoped.

"Please, I'm so close."

Not to let the lady wait, I stopped working on her lips and went straight for her clitoris. I formed a circle around it with my tongue and rolled it left and right for a few seconds until she came. In her best "person touching a live wire" impression, her legs stiffened up and her hand painfully pulled on my hair for a few seconds before she remembered what she was doing and let go. Her breathing slowed down. I took my time unzipping her skirt and pulled it off while I let her unfold her legs again, offering me the first real look at her pussy. She was gorgeous. She looked at me still in a daze. I started covering her mons with little kisses until her breathing had returned to normal. She put a finger under my chin and made me look at her.