PrincessColumbia

  Some two weeks ter, Diane found herself back at Docking Bay A, Cargo 1. She made absolutely no bones about her purpose for being there, and she was well aware of the silly jokes and less than subtle implications her crew and the residents of the station were making about her and the retionship with a certain captain.

  A week prior, they’d received word that Caitlynn had completed her job carrying the terraforming eels and the ship was bound back for ‘civilized’ space with their payment and to return to the shipyards that installed the refits to transport the hazardous cargo. As high a price as Sappho’s Voyage would have been able to command transporting specialty biological cargo, it was, apparently, an overspecialization and would limit her ability to do regur commerce, at least in the quantities she had become accustomed to. And since the route back to those shipyards took the vessel by Matron’s Aerie anyway, Caitlynn had no problem scheduling a little bit of an extended leave on the station.

  The dock workers smiled as they passed during the usual course of their duties, giving her knowing looks and companionable nods as she stood fidgeting on her toes with her hands csped behind her back. Nobody lingered, something which Diane was grateful for as it meant she wouldn’t be stumbling over her words as she tried to find something to talk about that wasn’t her girlfriend.

  Was Caitlynn her girlfriend? They never actually said they were, and Diane was honestly a little afraid of asking, not knowing if it was appropriate for her, as one of two women in a retionship, to raise the question. They were certainly dating, the fact that Caitlynn had taken about half her meals in the commander’s suite and the other half either in the former mess hall or in restaurants along the promenade, usually with Diane.

  And the fact that Caitlynn had cimed one of the empty drawers in one of the many dressers and chests in her bedroom for a couple changes of clothes and put her toothbrush in the bathroom certainly implied a solidly long-term retionship...but they still hadn’t said anything resembling a commitment. At least, not as far as Diane had been able to recognize.

  And she was not raising the question with Norma or Russe again. Russe would just give her his well-meaning ptitudes and tell her to just be honest with the captain and ask, which just the thought caused crazy amounts of butterflies in her stomach. Norma would just cackle again and call her a ‘Useless Lesbian,’ which apparently had some cultural context that Diane simply didn’t have.

  Diane nearly jumped out of her skin as her mini-tab chimed. She fished it out of her jacket pocket and answered the call from Ops, “Commander speaking, go ahead.”

  “Sappho’s Voyage has been cleared for docking and is on approach now,” Cynthy advised with an undercurrent of amused affection in her voice. “Just letting you know so you stop scarin’ the docking crew.”

  Diane was aware she was sounding a bit petunt when she groused, “I am not scaring the docking crew!”

  “Not according to Sani,” the teenaged comms officer chuckled, “She says they’re giving you a wide berth and are moving like you’re gonna space ‘em.”

  Diane frowned and spun on a heel, spotting an out of pce casual jacket on the Morvuck girl just barely hidden around a corner. She could see a mini-tab in Sani’s hand and held close to her face, “Sani!” she barked, “I am not scaring the dock workers!”

  Sani cackled and ran off in the direction of the tether as the crew around her chuckled good naturedly. Cynthy giggled and broke the connection, leaving Diane to her own devices.

  As she was returning her mini-tab to her jacket pocket, she felt the docking bay shake slightly as physics could not be denied, even as effective as maneuvering thrusters, gravity pting, and inertial dampers worked to minimize the ship’s impact on the station’s orbital and attitudinal mechanics. As the tremors settled, she turned her eyes to the indicator lights over the airlock and waited what felt like a year for the red to flick to yellow, then green. “Airtight seal established, initiating mating lock,” called the crewman serving as porter for Cargo 1 at the airlock control panel. The rumbling of mechanical slides and tches rge enough to grind an elephant into a fine paste could be felt through the deck paneling and every vibration Diane felt seemed to be driving her senses to what she was vaguely recognizing as hunting awareness. Rather than the tension and hunger of anticipating action and combat, however, she was finding herself keyed up for a different sort of ‘action,’ one that, historically, she would be the prey for.

  And she’d gdly be prey for this particur ‘hunter.’

  Finally, the porter announced into the dock P.A. system, “Docking complete, welcome to Matron’s Aerie, Sappho’s Voyage.” As the announcement finished, the immense docking bay doors, wide enough to drive two Terran ground cars side by side and tall enough for a giraffe to pass through without ducking, rumbled to the side, parting to reveal the crew of the cargo ship...and her captain, standing front and center.

  Well aware she was doing a miserable job of appearing cool and collected, Diane waited as Caitlynn spotted her, her grin growing bright and her eyes sparkling, as she let her crew stream aboard the station while she stood on the threshold. Once every st member of the ship’s crew that had been cleared for leave passed by, Caitlynn stepped aboard the station from the interchange. As she closed the distance between them, she almost casually raised one hand up and brushed a strand of Diane’s hair behind her ear. “Hello, princess,” she purred, “You look happy to see me.”

  Diane blushed and said in a rather silly sounding tone, “I am!” At least, it sounded silly to her, and she was embarrassed to be such a wreck over her feelings for Caitlynn and she should find a way to run away and hide in some part of the gaxy nobody could find her and~

  Caitlynn silenced Diane’s mind by stretching up on her toes to pnt a kiss on her, pulling Diane down slightly so she didn’t have to stretch quite so far. After a few moments, Caitlynn broke the kiss and lowered herself down to her heels. “Are you taller?” she asked incredulously.

  “Oh, kinda,” Diane chirped and kicked back her foot to show off her boots, turning slightly but still holding Caitlynn by the waist, “I had new boots made with a higher heel so I could get used to the height that my nice shoes were at. My calves and ankles were killing me after the big dinner that first night you were here, and I wanted to make sure that wasn’t going to be a problem again.”

  As Diane put her booted foot back down on the deck, Caitlynn chuckled, “You know, for someone who created such a butch character, you’re probably the girliest woman I know sometimes.”

  Video would ter surface on the station’s social media feeds of Diane giggling and blushing with her hands over her eyes while Caitlynn smiled at her indulgently.

  “So why are we here, love?” Caitlynn had asked, obviously amused by the almost bouncing steps as Diane led her into the almost utilitarian room with a wide picture window on one side. Diane hoped that she wasn’t boring her (hopefully!) girlfriend as she prattled on about the test big build at her command.

  The window itself was extremely thick and the panes of plexy were yered and gapped, each pane of plexy being nearly five inches thick and each vacuum gap being equally spaced about five inches apart. Given that there was the cold vacuum of space on the other side of the window, the yering and gapping was a zero-energy way of keeping the atmosphere inside the station warm enough for habitation.

  The room itself was a lot of bare metal that had been steel brushed and treated so it made the space feel as human-friendly as it was possible for an obviously industrial space to be. There was a carpet runner on the floor, tacked down so the station’s cleaning and maintenance bots didn’t have to deal with a trip hazard, and a bench that had a rubberized surface that looked like it might be passably comfortable for a short sit. The lighting was subdued in the room, quite obviously done to allow the lighting from outside the window to command the space.

  And the view through the window was one that had turned this little observation room into Diane’s third favorite pce on the station.

  Technically located in the “bottom” half of the station, the brand-new shipyard was actively hard at work on constructing a ship that was easily three times the size of the Dragon’s Daughter. Built around a mirrored pylon design, the structural frame was in pce and the inner hull was in the process of being built. Spaces that an educated eye might guess were for railguns occupied a good portion of both sides of the ship, running from pretty close to the aft all the way to the forward ports. A space in the framework that could only be a small cargo hold sat near the central core near the back, and the engine space had what appeared to be magnetic bottles already installed, though it was obvious that they weren’t powered on, so no antimatter would be in them yet. A ‘bowl’ in the middle-top of the frame had a significant number of raceways and lift frame-rails connecting to it, and the purpose became obvious once the construction taking pce above the ship proper was taken into account. A ‘pod’ that would be the bridge was being constructed separately and was a lot further along to completion, with exterior pting being installed in some pces, though it wasn’t complete, allowing some sight-lines into the framework to see where cabling and paneling were being installed.

  “…and it’ll have the upgraded FTL drive that we got the pns for st week, Daffyd was a bro with that! I think if I have to deal with the Terran Embassy again I’m going to space someone.” Diane was gushing and compining at the same time. “Rokyo only has so much pull on Mortan, but she was able to get us some whitepapers and working documents that Katrina used to extrapote the railgun pns for. We’re testing the completed prototype tomorrow!”

  Caitlynn pyfully nudged Diane with her elbow, “Not much cargo capacity.”

  Diane rolled her eyes, “Well of course not. We’ve got the Gold Rush if we need cargo hauling…well, for now. After we get an interceptor-css built we’re going to use the shipyard to build a bigger survey-css ship. It’ll still be used for hauling raw materials, but it’ll have the upgraded FTL engines which means we’ll be able to mine from nearby systems as easily as the Gold Rush can do for this system now.”

  Caitlynn’s smile was warm and entirely for Diane, who knew that she was being annoying and talking only about her interests with the shipyard, maybe she should just stop talking and find something else to do with Caitlynn that wasn’t just a bunch of robots building a little ship… “You are so cute when you get excited like this.”

  Never mind, talking about ship building now! “Yeah! It’s so awesome seeing how the ships are being put together! I mean, I know it’s not exactly like building the models back home, I’m not the one doing the actual building here after all, but sometimes I’ll bring a mug of Jyantin Tonic down here and just watch the ship coming together…”

  “You build models? Like, IRL?”

  Diane nodded and practically bounced on her toes, “I have a whole collection! Mostly Star Trek, though I do have the Jupiter 2 and someone made some pns for a 3D printer for a old, old streaming show from the pre-Internet era called Space 1999.”

  Caitlynn’s eyebrows went up, “‘Space’...? Never heard of it. Is it any good?”

  Diane snorted, “No! It was horrible! The hook was that nuclear waste somehow blew up on the dark side of the moon that, somehow, knocked it out of orbit and it somehow travelled through things like bck holes and wormholes and ‘warp fields’ so fast that it managed to encounter other star systems and other civilizations without, you know, getting shredded by the gravitational forces and all this travel happening within the lifetime of the crew of the moon base. Oh, and nothing had a FTL drive, either.”

  Caitlynn chuckled, “Wow, the things people used to think could happen in space.” She shook her head and gestured at the ship being built, “So it’s not to haul cargo and it’s not an Interceptor, what is it?”

  Diane put her hand against the gss, as though touching it was touching the unfinished ship, “It’s a cruiser,” she almost whispered, “The Dragon’s Daughter is technically a combat ship, but it’s more of a scout. Small, fast for its size, enough weapons to do some light defense. But that?” She realized her face was close enough to the window that her breath was fogging it slightly, “That will actually be able to go ship-to-ship. Not against a capital ship, obviously, but it might just be able to take on a Terran Destroyer or a Crotuk Br?shsveer.”

  Caitlynn snorted, “Expecting trouble, Commander Somni’els?” the question seemed formal, but the tone was light.

  “We’re a station, Captain Madi. As in, stationary.” She gently leaned against her (hopefully) girlfriend, “Sure, we can build some pretty powerful defense ptforms, and our shields are better than any ship, but we can’t dodge, and if someone comes at us with a superior force and the intention of making us not be there at the end of the day, we can’t just pick up and move.”

  Caitlynn turned more in Diane’s direction and slid an arm around her waist, “You have a point. That is one nice thing about being a ship’s captain, just pick up and go.” She snorted, “‘course, that’s a negative, too. If my ship gets blown out from under me, I’ll respawn back on Earth and have to start from scratch. The insurance will repce the ship immediately, even if my premiums’ll go through the roof for a bit, but then I have to get a crew, and the reputation mechanic in the game can be brutal if you lose too many crew members too quickly.”

  “Huh,” grunted Diane as she turned her attention away from the viewport and to Caitlynn, “I haven’t had to deal with that yet.”

  The ship’s captain snorted, “Of course not, you go charging in boots first instead of sending your crew to check things out. That’s caught more attention than just the NPCs, you know.”

  Diane’s cheeks pinked slightly as Caitlynn’s arms encircled her waist. She had to fight the fluttery feeling in her belly to be able to speak, “...oh? Who else would care?”

  “Rumors circute, and a commander that wiped out an entire sver’s den solo without respawning even once? There’s people trying to dig up your activity, convinced you’re actually one of the big streamers that got, like, early alpha access to let you be so good at the game.”

  Diane’s cheeks were now bright red, “No, definitely not. I’m sure I’m not that good, they were just NPCs, after all. I haven’t even unlocked most of my skill trees.”

  Caitlynn chuckled, “I guess you haven’t noticed there’s no levelling of the PvE non-ship combat?”

  Diane blinked in confusion and thought back to all her time digging into the mechanics of the game and realized that Caitlynn was right. Technically, there wasn’t even levelling of the ship-to-ship combat, either, but the Command refit level was the pyer’s ‘level,’ in that if station or fgship or capital building was (say) a level 10, it was generally a bad idea to take on someone who had their command center at level 20. They would simply have bigger ships, more firepower, more resources, and better staff and crew. “...wait, so all mob NPCs are equal challenge rated?”

  Caitlynn nodded, “From the game mechanics standpoint, anything combat that’s not vehicle or artillery is designed to mimic IRL. There will be NPCs and pyers who have higher skill ratings and certain skill trees that make their combat more challenging, but the devs said during the beta that they wanted people to focus on being commanders, not Rambos, so they intentionally made person-to-person combat the same as if you were fighting IRL.”

  Diane felt cold, “So...when I...”

  Caitlynn pushed herself up on her toes again, “Straight to the top of the leaderboard,” she said just before ciming Diane’s mouth with her own.

  It managed to distract Diane depressing comparisons between her in-game performance and her IRL job.

  After lunch (and the now surprisingly usual bout of after-lunch sex that Diane was starting to wonder how she might be able to make a daily activity whenever Caitlynn was in port for the rest of however long the other woman would have her), the conversation between them that had started at the docking bay and was only interrupted occasionally with the business of the station or other activities had wandered quite far from the topic of Diane’s test ship and the rumors surrounding her combat prowess and back to Caitlynn’s most recent job, “...and Anthony just can’t seem to help measuring his dick in front of the client and he breaks out his guild level, as though the NPCs have any clue what that means. And besides, mine was higher than his anyway.”

  Diane looked up from the tablet she was approving requisition forms on, “His whatnow?”

  Caitlynn was clearly baffled by Diane’s question and responded with her usual slightly vulgar cheek, “His dick?”

  Diane rolled her eyes, “No; what’s a guild level?”

  Caitlynn was genuinely gobsmacked, “...you’ve been pying this whole time without guild bonuses?”

  Diane frowned, “...I guess? I...what’s a guild in this game? I haven’t encountered one yet.”

  It actually took her girlfriend a few moments to recover, “...you just...it’s in your factions tab.” Diane continued to give her an uncomprehending look, “Factions...the in-game factions.” She set her tablet down on the coffee table and shrugged at Caitlynn. “The Terrans, The Crotuk, The Lantru?”

  “...the three headaches? I mean, I’ve only had to deal with the Terran government so far, but...”

  Caitlynn shook her head in stunned disbelief, “Yeah, you’re definitely not a beta pyer. When the guild mechanic dropped the devs were fmed hard over the way they handled the new feature release. It was all anyone was talking about for weeks in-game and most of the people pying at the time only heard about it from other pyers. I’d heard on the forums that they still haven’t implemented a good introduction to the system, and I’m guessing from your reaction that’s true.” She sighed and put her water gss on the counter before crossing the living room and sitting next to Diane, “Okay...let’s see if I can give you permission to see my HUD...”

  She gave the familiar wrist flick that nearly any modern pyer used almost without thinking about it and tapped at what looked to Diane like spots in the air. In a moment, the familiar HUD popped into view, though it appeared Caitlynn had taken the time to customize hers a bit, the frame having a pulsing purple color instead of the default white and orange that Diane’s had.

  Pying along, Diane brought up her own HUD and tapped through to her friends list and brought up Caitlynn’s entry, tapping on the advanced settings and scrolling to the permissions to find the “Visuals and Effects Permissions” section. She enabled the ‘HUD visibility’ permission and then returned to the home panel. Caitlynn made sure Diane was watching as she scrolled the tab bar at the top over to find the “Facitons” tab...and Diane realized she’d never even tried scrolling that bar.

  Blushing slightly, she repeated the action with her own HUD until she was at the same screen...but still didn’t see anything about a guild. Gncing over at Caitlynn’s screen, she saw what on her interface was a bnk tile had some stats on Caitlynn’s; ‘Fortune Hunter’s Guild’ and ‘Level 40’ stood out at her with a bar graph that appeared to be tracking Caitlynn’s in-game net worth over time.

  Caitlynn nodded sagely, “Yeah, looks like you haven’t joined a guild yet. Okay, here’s what you do...”

  It took an obnoxious number of taps, but Diane found the guild screen with Caitlynn’s assistance. Apparently, the fact that she’d met with the head of the Chroma Syndicate was yet another thing that was going to feed the rumor mill if Caitlynn had anything to say about it, plus it locked in her ‘alliance rating’ with the ‘Overworld’ faction. There was criminally little in-game documentation for the Faction system, but apparently the Overworld faction was a loose cartel of Independents, gangs, contraband runners, and other rogues of the gaxy. This gave Diane access to a handful of guilds...which weren’t groups of pyers. It was apparently a purely linear point based system that gave boosts to seemingly random stats. She couldn’t even assign it points, she just got a certain number of points for using her various Commander’s features in-game.

  “...how is my stealth ability supposed to make my station construction speed better?!”

  Caitlynn ughed at this, “You’re not saying anything that hasn’t been said before and quite loudly on the forums.”

  Diane hmmm’d and brought up the guild list, “Well, there’s smuggler...not too useful to me since I’m not smuggling anything, hacker, which I have one on staff so not really useful either, then there’s...” she shook her head, “Bard?! Why do they have bards in a sci-fi setting?”

  Caitlynn snorted, “So says the pyer who sings for her Commander’s Ability.”

  Diane blushed, “...okay, point.” She selected the guild, titled ‘Battle Bard’s Guild’, and tapped the ‘register’ button, only to be stopped by an error dialog. She squinted at the text, not because she couldn’t read it but because she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, “‘Instrument of Choice’?!” She ignored Caitlynn’s giggling as she scrolled through the options and got to the end, “There’s no piano.”

  Caitlynn chuckled, “Well, if you had to ride a ship into battle, you wouldn’t exactly be able to do that sitting at a baby grand.”

  Diane gawked at her girlfriend, “Why would I py an instrument going into battle aboard a space ship?!”

  Caitlynn gently boop’d Diane’s nose with an index finger, “Singing...Commander,” she said with two gentle taps.

  Diane sighed, scrolling through the list again and, sure enough, every instrument listed was portable in some fashion. “...but I know how to py the piano. I don’t know how to py...the heck is a ‘matrix synthesizer’?!”

  Caitlynn giggled, “Just pick something you do know what it is and load up some tutorial videos or holos.”

  Diane sighed again, btantly petunt and bratty, and selected ‘guitar’ so she could finish the registration.

  The day after Caitlynn’s ship left for the shipyards in Terran space, Diane found a brand new electric guitar and amplifier in her quarters with a note from her lover. “I expect a serenade when I’m next in port, beautiful. -Caitlynn”

  PrincessColumbia