“Yeah,” Caph agreed. “I couldn’t believe you were still here this morning.”
“Someone help me find my phone. I’ll call Graymard and give him the happy news.”
The twins bolted, naked, out the door to comply.
Emi couldn’t help it, she giggled. Then she looked at Aaron.
“They’re cute.”
She couldn’t read his mood as he turned to her, and didn’t want to try right then. “Yeah,” he agreed. “They’re something else.” They brought her phone. She pulled on her clothes and followed the scent of coffee to the galley.
Graymard was happily surprised to hear from her. It turned out it was just a little after eight in the morning. “Well, that is good news.
They’re the most experienced crew we’re sending out. I’ll take care of contacting the other crews for you.” She stepped away from the men, out of the galley and into the common room, and dropped her voice. “Yeah, well, tell the assholes on the Kendall Kant and Braynow Gaston that they need to quit fucking around. The jerks on those two boats were laughing about these guys.”
His voice hardened. “Oh, were they?”
“Yeah. They were treating them like a joke.”
“Well, they are an unconventional crew, but that’s certainly no reason for the others to¯”
“It’s exactly why the others pick on them. I would be willing to bet all the demerits they’ve wracked up would be a result of being egged into something by a bunch of jerks.” Graymard was silent for a moment. Emi suspected she’d hit the nail on the head. “I’ll talk to them,” he assured her. “Now then, we need you all back here for crew pairing and paperwork. Preferably this morning.”
Her gut twisted as reality hit home. She was really doing this. “As far as I know, I’m sticking with these guys. But…” She trailed off, not wanting to say it.
She didn’t have to. “You will all get a final chance at the end of training to back out. Of course, you can always back out before then.” Relief. “Okay. Like I said, I don’t foresee any problems.” She hoped they wouldn’t back out.
Oh, God, what if they did?
“Understood. I’ll see you all here within the next two hours. The receptionist will direct you. Have fun, Emi.” Emi knew her heart had slipped as surely as the men’s had. The worry that they might reject her after all this was said and done gnawed at her. Could she take that? For the first time in ten years, it felt like she had a family again.
Forcing that down, she returned to the galley to eat.
The twins were good cooks. She felt absolutely spoiled, and they refused to let her help with clean-up. The men dressed, now in crew uniforms, and she realized she was still in her clothes from the day before. “We have to go by my place later so I can get my stuff.” Ford eyed her. “We don’t have any ladies’ clothes. Caph’s pants should fit you, they’ll be long on you. We can roll the legs up and find you a belt. Aaron’s shirts will easily fit you.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Unless you want to wear one of my shirts and torture us all day with how snug it’d be on you.” She grinned. “I wouldn’t want to be cruel. I can save those for when we’re here in the ship.”
The men laughed, and she followed them to the crew quarters to change.
“Think we’ll pass the other two crews when we go?” she asked as she stepped into Caph’s pants. Yes, they were big, but her shape was different than the guys and there was no way she’d fit into Aaron or Ford’s pants. “I’d love to flip them a bird. Assholes.” She looked up at her men. “This is so surreal. In a good way.” Ford rolled the cuffs up for her and handed her one of his belts.
“They look good on you, kiddo.”
Aaron handed her one of his shirts, a short-sleeved, collared pullover with the ship’s crest and name embroidered on the left chest.
“They’ll probably get you set up with uniforms today. They like us to do training as a matched set. Doesn’t matter here on the ship, but we try to follow as many rules as we can.” Her shoes didn’t exactly go with the ensemble, but the pants were so long they mostly hid them. Caph brought her a new toothbrush and hairbrush from storage. She brushed out her hair, pulling it back. As she did she noticed Aaron’s fleeting frown.
“What?”
He shrugged. “I think it’s prettier when you wear it down.” She’d pulled out her hair clip the night before during their poker game and wore it loose.
“Really?”
He nodded. “You’ll need to wear it up for some of the training, but…” He shrugged again.
She unclipped it, and all three men smiled. “Better?” she asked.
They nodded.
“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s get the paperwork over with so we can have some fun.”
Emi knew from the personnel files that none of the men were empaths, natural or trained, so she didn’t have to carefully shield her thoughts or emotions from them. Good thing too, because she was nervous as hell. The morning had slipped past her, flying at light speed, it seemed. They all filled out forms¯paperwork, an old holdover term from when people actually used paper¯on electronic hand-helds they would use throughout training. When it came time to sync their chips they were led into a room with two dozen large reclining chairs.
A technician showed them to their seats and walked to a console as Graymard entered. They hadn’t seen much of him during the day.
“This won’t hurt, Emi. You won’t even know anything’s happened.”
“What exactly does it do?”
“It syncs you all together. It also lowers a few settings and allows for more freedom of interaction during intimacy.”
“That’s a polite way of saying we can get rough if I’m willing?” she asked.
Ford snickered. “Damn, girl. You’re gonna wear us out.” Graymard, however, nodded. “Exactly. It’s an intelligent chip and can sense if no really means yes or no, so to speak. It also allows you to home in on each other while aboard the ship, and to a certain extent over limited distances when you’re off-ship. You’re synced to the ship so you can find your way back when you leave it. This is all limited to within the crew, and to the ship. The only time you trigger outside tracking capabilities is if you enable the distress beacon or the ship is severely damaged or destroyed, which would activate the automatic alarm.”
He continued. “As the men already know, it also means none of you can willingly or voluntarily engage in intimate encounters with anyone outside of your matched crew. In the unlikely case something happens and one of you is forced, it will sense that and not activate. It is tuned to your biorhythms, as well as those of your crewmates, and it will prevent voluntary straying.” Emi smiled. “Absolutely?”
He nodded. “Without question.”
“Just out of curiosity, how does the chip ensure that?”
“Well, it has a corrective pulse. The first warning pulse, if you can call it that, isn’t uncomfortable. It’s more like a mental tapping reminding the person to stop. If their activity continues, the discomfort continues and increases.”
“What if someone didn’t stop?”
He frowned. “Well, theoretically it could potentially kill someone by damaging their brain stem if they didn’t stop their activity and the pulses continued for an extended period of time, but there’s never been a recorded case of that. It’s not possible. It would hurt too much.”
She froze. “How do you know it won’t misfire?”
“It can’t. Only voluntary violation will trigger it. There is no way for it to malfunction, because it self-polices. Any abnormalities and it shuts off and notifies the ship, us, and you as medical officer that there’s a problem. It has multiple fail-safes. We’ve used this model for three decades without problem. We have taken every precaution.