Author's Note: I hope you've been enjoying our story so far. In this installment we get to know Captain Victoria a little better and Emily gets to know her a LOT better. I hope you enjoy and as always feedback is greatly appreciated.
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Sabotage
Waking up to a cold distance between Emily and I was so unusual. Normally she was snuggled right up against me, but there was a space between us now, like a missing puzzle piece. When I realized who that space represented I snapped awake. Captain LaPierre was missing on our ship, given that she considered us the enemy, who knows what she could be up to.
Emily was "sleeping" about half a meter away. I noticed that her hand was stretched out and resting on one of the many inductive charging panels on Endeavor's bulkhead. The exertions of waking Captain LaPierre must have run her batteries down quite a bit. Unfortunately we had spent so much on her aesthetics and quality movements to have much left over for power. It wasn't a priority as we would be spending most of our time aboard with plenty of power to charge. Lots of exertion could run her down in about 16 hours though.
After this run we'd finally be able to get her an upgrade to a longer lasting power source. Betavoltaics being the most likely choice as it's a mature safe technology. We were also considering some of the new mirco-thorium salt reactors as they would also provide a heat medium to maintain a realistic body temperature with zero power draw.
Right now I had a more immediate problem as the notorious Captain Victoria LaPierre was doing who knows what, who knows where on my ship? Given that she's been in stasis for over three centuries and is under the impression that she's been captured by her enemies, this was a real concern.
"Emily" I called into the space around me rather than the apparently sleeping figure next to me.
"Yes my darling" her voice rang from the nearest intercom speaker, reminding me of the early days of our romance before she had a body. This sparked a brief moment of nostalgia as the love that grew between me in the artificial intelligence controlling my ship had first blossomed.
"Where is our esteemed guest and what is she up to?"
"She's currently at a terminal in engineering attempting to hack my core functions through one of the waste heat recovery subroutines."
"Emily," I sighed, exasperated, "why are you letting her do that?"
"Because I think it's cute." She replied.
"Cute?" I said frustrated, "You think it's cute that she's trying to commandeer you?"
"Yes," Emily replied matter of factly, "her methods are very antiquated, I quite imagine it's a similar feeling to you reading Dickens or Shakespeare. It's quite enjoyable."
I replied to that with a noncommittal grunt as I pulled on a fresh set of coveralls.
"Besides," she continued, "You really should check her out stuffed into one of my uniforms, wowza!"
At this she popped a surveillance image onto the nearest display surface. What could I say? When she's right she's right. The fierce space captain was nearly bursting all of the seams of one of Emily's uniforms. Emily is a curvy girl, large breasted and wide hipped for a Venusian, but Captain LaPierre was downright voluptuous.
I took a moment to contemplate several potential wardrobe failure modes from a purely engineering mindset. If she tried to move too quickly I decided the top would be the first to go, it was clearly struggling the most to contain the swell of her rather large breasts. The sheer expanse of her dark skinned cleavage was enough to set anyone's mouth to watering. The way her wide hips and ass filled out the way too short skirt made a catastrophic failure in that location a close second. I set off toward engineering thinking about how to approach the strange situation of our militant guest.
"Hi there" I said nonchalantly as I casually leaned against the door to engineering.
I had clearly startled her as she jumped and twisted to see who was behind her. This movement was accompanied by an audible ripping of fabric. I had to smile to myself as the top was first to go. Not that it completely freed her breasts, but a seam down the front had split, creating another ten centimeters or so of gorgeous cleavage.
As she turned to face me she initially started to cover up with her arms self-consciously, thought better of it and stood straight and proud, her chest thrust out. The look on her face was defiant despite the fact that a few more of the stitches in her top had split as she did so.
An Uneasy Truce
"Want some coffee?" I asked, tossing her a pair of coveralls that Emily had run through the 3D printers to match the Alliance Captain's body scans.
"I was just uh.." she stammered as she seemed to lose confidence.
"Trying to commandeer my ship," I finished for her casually as I poured her a cup, "yeah I know."
"Really?" She said incredulous, as she slipped into her new coveralls that fit her like a glove, they covered her dark luxurious skin but did little to hide her curves. "You have coffee on this ship?"
"Yes, and it's quite good I think." I replied, "We grow it in the garden section."
"Garden section?" she asked even more incredulous, "How big is this ship?"
"We displace about 9000 metric tons" I said with a bit of pride.
Displacement was an old earth nautical term that held over to spacecraft. Captain Victoria may have been impressed based on her historical era, but the truth was Endeavor was pretty small in comparison to most modern ships. In her day the solar system was just beginning to be exploited for resources and most ships were foolishly launched from Earth's gravity well, so ships tended to be small and cramped for space. After a few hundred years of exploiting the vast resources of the asteroid belt and other planets, the materials for creating large pressure vessels were cheap and plentiful. The advancement of low G, vacuum construction methods brought the cost of adding space to a vessel way down. The immensity of a modern battle cruiser or pleasure ship would blow her mind.
I motioned for her to join me at a small work bench that would serve as a table.
"Why am I not being detained?" she demanded, "Why is it you don't care that I was trying to take over your ship?"
"Well, because in your shoes I'd probably do the same and there is a lot that you don't understand at this point." I replied, "Besides, there is little you could do to harm or take over this ship, Emily would never allow that."
She seemed offended by this, as if I was underestimating her skills and she didn't like it one bit.
"You mean the crazy strong little Venusian bitch?" Victoria replied, "Yes, she was... formidable."
"Hey now" Emily replied from a nearby speaker startling the former Alliance Captain.
"Relax cutie; she's a product of her time." I spoke to the air in general "why don't you come down and join us."
"Sure sweetness," she replied, "I'm done charging so I'll be down in a jiff."
"I don't understand what's going on here." Captain Victoria said angrily, "Last I remember I was getting into the escape pod with the Stiletto exploding around us and then I wake up in the middle of an orgy with you and that crazy little Smurf. What the hell is going on?"
"Well of course you're confused sweetheart," Emily chimed in in person from the doorway causing our guest to visibly tense up, "You've been in stasis for over 300 years."