Volume 3: Gamma-12, Chapter 3.38

Pretty much how we talked about it between the two of us, the plan moving forward with the rest of the team was about the same, with a few more details sprinkled in. Mission command approved of Eve’s spore idea while everyone else would be setting up sensors and looking the old-fashioned way; it wasn’t as dauting as searching around an entire planet, but there were still over 10,000 passengers on board, and we only had a cycle before we’d be moving on.

The Radiance

was on standby ready to intercept for any emergencies, but they set up a few stealth vessels just outside the system that were all geared up for a few different scenarios. For now, we were still investigating, so we’d have to see how Gamma-12 would react once confronted; despite my efforts to alleviate Eve’s concerns, that part was actually quite nerve wracking.

There really was no way to sugar coat it; Gamma-12 could destroy the station whenever she wanted, and there was nothing we could do to stop her. Still, I was doing my best to show mission command that Eve and I were a productive team; everything I did now was all for her and our future together.

Of all the stations the Predazoan could’ve chosen,

Leisure-53

was definitely one of the nicest; it went full on into the tropical paradise theme, with pure white sand beaches taking up the entire core, crystal clear water, with black wood and red leaf cabanas, there wasn’t any grass on this station, and everyone just wore swimsuits all day. There were even extra lights around the celestial ceiling to make it all seem brighter to the point Eve and I wore sunglasses.

“Do you think Gamma-12 chose this station because it’s so…peaceful? Relaxing and chill? I swear it’s like the Caribbean in space or something.” I reasoned, lounging in a recliner in my form-fitting future-tech swim trunks.

Eve beside me in an unbelievably sexy black and purple bikini took another sip of her fruity drink and shrugged, “I couldn’t tell you Adam, every Predazoan has a different drive and a different goal—a different idea of perfection. Maybe a peaceful life is what Gamma-12 would find perfect, or perhaps these simple-minded vacationers are the perfect victims for her to consume, who’s to say?”

“How far have you spread your spores now?”

Eve waved her drink around, “Nearly the whole station; I told you it would only take a couple hours.”

“And nothing yet?”

Eve shook her head, “Nothing at all, just a bunch of regular alien cells so far.”

I sighed, “It’s crazy you can have these spores all over in the air we breathe—in our lungs even, yet you can’t see past Predazoan camouflage.” I turned to her, “As an Alpha, shouldn’t you be able to see through Gamma camouflage at least?”

Eve chuckled at that, “The one thing equal amongst all Predazoans was our camouflage, after all you can’t improve upon what’s already perfect.”

“Right, but weren’t the Beta and Gamma generations made weaker on purpose so they could be more easily controlled or something?”

Again, Eve just shrugged, “You’ll have to take those questions up with our creators, darling.” She turned to me and pulled down her sunglasses and smiled, “You look delicious in that swimsuit, by the way.”

I just scoffed, “Please, have you seen

yourself

? I’m doing everything in my power to hold myself back from jumping you right now.”

Eve’s smile turned dangerous, “And who told you to hold back?”

***

After the first day, Eve had her invisible spores all over the station, the agents had their sensors in place, and the team had established perimeters where they could watch high-traffic areas for anything unusual. My role as always was to handle Eve, and it seemed like I was in a trusted position once again as they left us to investigate however we wanted by ourselves—and that order came all the way from mission command even. Of course, there wasn’t much more we could do to help the investigation Eve’s spores couldn’t do themselves, so we set to wait and relax and hope Gamma-12 would make some kind of mistake to drop her camouflage at some point. I still found it wild how the Predazoan was surely breathing in the spores and everything, yet the camouflage was so perfect she would just seem like a regular alien. I asked Eve if there would be other ways to find her out, like maybe taking blood samples or something, but Eve said the only way she could totally break through the camouflage would be if she started half-dissecting people, pulling apart blood and flesh and bone to see how the person would react. Obviously, that wouldn’t be something we could do on a super-secret special clandestine mission.

The second day came and went with little progress, but we decided to have more frequent meetings to confirm what all was going on and to check in just in case Gamma-12 started hunting people down. We didn’t think it would be possible for Gamma-12 to discover our real identities with our perfect covers in place, but still, people were ordered to remain in larger groups and check in with rotating passwords once more same as on Entana. Of course, me being with Eve we didn’t need to worry about that, but still hearing the danger level increased to the point we needed passwords again made me more than a little anxious.

On the third day while relaxing—

working diligently

on the investigation, we found out Kurgg and Nadresh were on

Leisure-53

as well, so we decided to meet up for lunch along with another couple they’d befriended recently; we met at some cabana restaurant that reminded me of Benihana with android chefs frying exotic meats right in front of you. I was wearing my swim trunks with some skull and crossbones Hawaiian shirt, while Eve was wearing her bikini and a purple beach shawl. Kurgg was just wearing some open floral pattern shirt—didn’t think he needed swim trunks or anything. Nadresh was wearing a red bikini and a black shawl, gorgeous as always and twice as mismatched with her slug husband as ever, I’d come to find the unusual pairing quite cute.

Kurgg gestured to the other couple at the table, “Adam, Eve, these are our new friends, Nyla and Tremaan.” He introduced.

Nyla was a beautiful revoran who looked maybe just a little younger than Tillia, appearing quite girly—like college age maybe, with long, silky black hair with little red antenna, violet eyes, deep red skin with those maroon accents, with a supermodel body same as all revorans. Tremaan was a large, blue, muscular alien that seemed mostly mammalian with dark purple quills on his head and some spiky looking scales along his forearms. Nyla wore a black bikini and an open white shirt, while Tremaan just had on some swim trunks.

“Pleasure to meet you!” Nyla said, all bubbly like a classic revoran.

“Good to meet ya.” Tremaan said rather stiffly.

“Likewise.” I offered brightly as we all sat down, “I’m Adam, and this is my wife, Eve.”

“The newlyweds.” Kurgg said, wiggling his eyestalks up and down.

Nadresh rolled her eyes but smiled, “Oh Kurgg.”

Eve trilled a little giggle, “It’s true, we got the Glorva Corp honeymoon treatment and everything.”

Nyla looked dazzled as she opened her mouth wide, “Omigosh, really?” She turned to glare at Tremaan, “Maybe if

someone

got off his ass and proposed already, we could get the same treatment.”

Tremaan nodded along, “Right right…” He sighed.

Kurgg clapped his hands together, “So, why don’t you regale us with your adventures since our last meeting?”

Eve and I exchanged awkward smiles, wondering how much of

Hedonsim-36

we should reveal since we knew Kurgg and Nadresh weren’t about that life at all. In the end we decided to keep things vague and tell them about the novelty of the station and how quite a few of our coworkers were still upset and wanted to file a grievance over the whole thing.

Nadresh nodded along, “I should think so, I heard you’re basically

drugged

the entire time you’re there.”

“Boy you aren’t kidding.” I confirmed.

Eve held my hand in hers, “It wasn’t

all

bad though; with his inhibitions lowered I was able to convince Adam to do some things he would normally be much more…

hesitant

to consider.”

Nadresh held up her hand, conceding the point, “So long as you two had fun and feel you’ve grown closer together, that’s really all that matters.”

Eve and I exchanged a look, and she blushed a little before turning away, “Yeah, I’d say we definitely grew closer.”

From there we told them about a few more stations we visited and the fun we had, then of course we came to the biggest adventure we had to share, the War-Sim tournament. We had everyone on the edge of their seats as we told the story, passing it back and forth between Eve and myself to fill in all the details, and I swear half the time it looked like no one believed us, but when we continued on anyways it all circled back so they had no choice but to believe us. By the end the whole table was looking at us like we were superstars.

“That sounds

sooo

fun, Eve you must be like wicked talented to do all that.” Nyla gushed.

Eve waved it off, “Oh no, I just had a good team.”

“Sounds like you were

carrying

the team.” Kurgg chuckled.

I smiled at that, “Oh yeah, we wouldn’t have won without Eve, that’s for sure.”

A little after that our android chef arrived and started serving us fresh alien meats, cutting them up and tossing them to us I swear just like Benihana, it was all great fun. Of course, Eve and I grew playful and flirty as usual even in front of the audience, stealing each other’s food or feeding each other, once we even Lady and the Tramped some long green tentacle together, and everyone at the table laughed.

“My gosh, you two really are cute together.” Nyla gushed, then gestured between us, “So really, how did you meet?”

We told her the story same as always, with Eve adding her sprinkling of embellishments here and there to make it all more fun and romantic, until it was time to talk about our first date; she never embellished that and said how perfect it all was. Then she finished up the story with our fake dating, fake engagement and fake marriage.

Nyla giggled to herself as she leaned into Tremaan, “Adam thought you would do something horrible to him, and now you’re

married

? What a funny story.”

Eve looked into my eyes with that adoration that made me feel so safe and loved, “Life is just funny that way.”

I leaned forward to give her a kiss, then heard a honking snuffling sound from Kurgg.

“Every time—

every

time

I hear it, it always just gets to me. Oh my…” He started sobbing again, and Nadresh just sighed as she patted his back to console him.

We went back to the story of how Kurgg and Nadresh met and their wedding and early marriage, turns out there was actually a bit of work to get the hard-working Kurgg and the spoiled rich-girl Nadresh on track. Then we moved to Nyla and Tremaan’s story.

Nyla sighed, “Oh what’s to tell? Nothing fun or exciting like your stories; we’re attending the same university, ended up taking theoretical physics together as a blow-off class—”

I nearly choked on my drink, “That’s a

blow-off

class?”

Nyla waved it off, “Since it’s all theoretical that means so are all the grades—and existence and reality and basically everything. There isn’t a single sane theoretical physics professor in the entire Empire, so no matter where you go it’s an easy credit. Anyways I started copying Tremaan’s work since he sat right in front of me and eventually the teacher called us out and…” She turned to Tremaan, “Remember what you said?”

He nodded, “Must’ve been parallel realities had our answers line up perfectly.”

Nyla smiled brilliantly, “So we both got an A for the class—crazy professor bought it, and from there, I don’t know, I guess we just started hanging out? And then my parents said they’d pay for a trip when I wanted a break between terms, so—”

I waved to quickly stop her story, “Wait, how long are breaks between terms?”

Nyla looked a little confused, “What do you mean? Once a term ends you can take as long as you want before you start the next one.”

Eve placed her hand on mine, “Adam still hasn’t fully adjusted to living in the Empire. Back on Earth they’re used to living on a much shorter timeframe.”

Nyla looked like she finally understood, “Ah, right.” She shrugged, “Yeah, so Tremaan and I figured we’d take a 10-cycle vacation before we head back to finish our degrees.”

Talk then moved from relationships to careers and work, with Eve needing to do some creative storytelling to fill in the details about her fake college life. After another hour of fellowship, we all wound down with a couple drinks and then decided to call it quits.

Kurgg…stood up? I guess he got up more, but having no legs he was just up already, and then Nadresh joined him.

“We’ll have to do this again soon dears, send us your itineraries, I’d love to meet up again at the next available station.” Nadresh insisted as she gave us both hugs.

“We will.” Eve said, seeming like she really was fond of the pair—hopefully making real connections with others.

We waved them off together as Nyla and Tremaan turned toward us, Nyla with her communicator out, “So we should definitely meet up again soon, this was a total blast!” She said excitedly.

Eve smiled brightly and pulled out her own communicator, always eager to make new friends and exchange contact info on the vacation stations, “Absolutely.”

Nyla touched the comms together, then after a confirmation chiming sound she snapped it shut and turned to Eve with a cheery smile, “That is of course if you don’t destroy the station with all your spores first, right sister?”