Volume 5: Gamma-20, Chapter 5.32

Our first stop was the robot bar of course, our rowdy group refusing to stop at just a couple drinks—except Durgo, he sipped a single drink through his face-mask in the corner as he worked on his tablet, and I couldn’t help but notice he was filling out the reports on how our teammates died.

Grim work, but I wasn’t surprised the stick-in-the-mud refused to join in with the festivities.

As for everyone else, I’d been drinking with them for over a cycle now, but I’d never seen them let loose like this before. Lummy straight-up flashed me, growing bold after several drinks and no small amount of encouragement from Reim, showing off her absolutely

massive

cow-tits—each over twice as big as my head, with gorgeous pale smooth skin, framed on the outer-edge by black, coarse fur. The goth minotaur girl was incredibly sexy, and I knew I’d want Eve to transform into a similar form next time we were together.

Holy shit, was I really that whipped? I saw another girl’s impressive boobs, and I immediately thought of Eve—of my Evie shapeshifting into a new form I could play with rather than ever get involved with another woman. I didn’t know if that was whipped, but it was pretty obvious at this point I was so totally obsessed with Eve; even when she wasn’t around, I was still controlled and bewitched by her.

Zemman got quite rowdy himself and kept trying to wrestle Num—which was funny considering their size differences, but the short imphonite man held his own surprisingly well against the muscular grendall.

I didn’t know Saba as well since she hadn’t been one of my roommates, but she seemed to want to change that quickly; she asked me and Willa a million questions about our various missions and where we came from. She was incredibly friendly and bubbly to the point it almost reminded me of Tillia, and the more inebriated she became, the more she would rapid-fire those questions at us until her words slurred so badly it all started to sound like gibberish.

Willa opened up more than ever before and seemed to grow weirdly affectionate with people—a side I hadn’t expected to see from the large, amazonian soldier woman. Every time she was talking to someone she had to put her hands on them, as though to keep them in place for the conversation; a hand on the shoulder, arm around their back, and eventually she just started hugging people.

When Willa and Num were both well and drunk, they started making out on the bar, and the size difference between them was hilarious since Willa was almost four feet taller than Num, thick and curvy, while he was just a squat little guy. Everyone cheered at the sight.

Zyno was the same as he always was when he got drunk, ranting on and on about some nonsense thing with his research or some nerdy interest of his, but there was a new number to his repertoire now; crying about how much he missed Yun.

Seriously, he actually started

crying

once, gaining sympathy from all the drunk females around him.

I would say I was definitely a good level of drunk a few hours in, but there was something I’d been meaning to do since I’d come aboard

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.

“Dudes, dudes, fuck this, let’s move the party to the nox-lounge.” I insisted.

“Oh shit yeah, I didn’t know you partied like that!” Lummy giggled, nearly falling into me, trying to crush me with her enormous breasts.

Reim pulled me away, saving me from the drunk titty monster, “You sure? Things will definitely mellow out there.” She said.

I nodded along, “I could absolutely use some mellow right now.”

Following my plan, Reim led us out to our next destination. The nox-lounge looked like some futuristic, cyberpunk hookah bar, with a huge pipe bolted into the ground around some couches and pillows.

Lummy, Reim, and Zyno all seemed to be fighting to sit by me, making me feel like the popular kid amongst aliens, and they all ended up just sprawling over and around me. Everyone collapsed on the pillows encircling the main pipe, grabbing up the separate tube-pipes then—enough for each of us.

“Hang on I gotta turn it on.” Reim said, sliding forward on the ground.

Lummy spanked Reim’s unprotected butt, “Hurry up!”

Reim yelped, but complied and pressed some switch and activated the nox-pipe so it started humming and poured out shimmering smoke from the top.

“Let it warm up a little first.” Zyno told everyone.

I looked over at him, “Holy shit, I didn’t know you did this too.”

Zyno shrugged, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” He gestured to himself with his pipe, “I’m a very complex individual.” He slurred.

I looked around then and noticed everyone joined in with the party except Durgo who must’ve escaped at some point, but once again I wasn’t surprised. And obviously Gadow and Fierra weren’t there—probably off fucking like crazy now they had some alone time.

Once the nox-pipe was properly warmed up, we all started puffing out the fun little shimmering smoke clouds as the goofy calm washed over us, and for the first time in a long time I could finally feel my stress melting off me.

“Damn dudes, I should’ve done this ages ago.” I wheezed.

“You could’ve asked man; we used to do this all the time.” Zemman confirmed.

“Why’d you stop?” Zyno asked.

Reim shrugged, “Worried if we were all goofed up we’d be more vulnerable to whatever was attacking and killing people.”

“Yeah, that’s a good reason.” I nodded along.

I didn’t know how long we’d have this hard-fought peace, didn’t know how long

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would be safe when just outside in the vacuum of space the void gate was slowly collapsing into a singularity. But it was a blessing I couldn’t bring myself to worry over it then, and for just one evening I forgot about my problems with the few surviving friends I had left.

We talked well into the night, giggling and sharing stories that all seemed like nonsense honestly, but it was exactly the kind of peace we all needed.

I just hoped it would last.

***

We all ended up falling asleep in the nox-lounge and were woken up by the

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crewmembers’ comm alarms going off as Gadow was wondering why no one had come down for breakfast yet.

As a collective we gathered ourselves and made our way to the cafeteria, feeling groggy and dull, no one saying much as people tried to reorient themselves after the wild night.

I was used to the feeling of a hangover, but the residual effects of the nox was like a weird reality check; we spent all last night high and feeling wildly floaty, so now the effects had worn off it felt like my body was made of lead—heavy and almost stuck to the ground.

Zyno walked beside me, rubbing his eyes blearily, “Morning, you sleep okay?”

I waved him off, “Yeah slept like the dead. Feeling it now though.”

“Tell me about it.” Reim nodded, walking on my other side, holding her eyes shut as though she couldn’t stand the light, “I normally don’t indulge that much.”

Lummy on the other side of Reim just shrugged, “I think we needed it honestly, finally the chance to unwind and fully relax after all the shit we’ve had to deal with.”

Saba sighed, walking a little behind us, “Yeah, but now we’re paying for it.” She grumbled, sounding far from bubbly now.

Our group made it to the cafeteria to find Gadow, Fierra and Durgo having breakfast together, and while Durgo looked grumpy as always, it was obvious Gadow and Fierra were in a better mood than I’ve ever seen them.

I grabbed some coffee from the drink synthesizer (tasted like mud but woke me up fine) and then a plate of some alien eggs and sausages, then sat down at the table opposite the happy couple.

“Nice night?” I asked.

Gadow and Fierra exchanged a look—and I swear the two could talk telepathically, then turned back to me.

“I think we all needed the break.” Gadow gestured towards me with his steaming mug, “And you all, enjoy yourselves?”

Zyno piled into the table next to me, then Reim pushed in, then Lummy—then everyone else so I ended at the far side of the table.

“We definitely needed the break too, boss.” Zemman confirmed.

Gadow nodded along, “Good.” He said, looking pleased, then turned serious, “Because we really need to buckle down from here on out; remember, if there’s any hope of getting out of the Derrion System with all our cargo, we must fix the warp reactor

before

the void singularity forms.”

“And what’s the plan for if the warp gate collapses, what do we do then?” Zyno asked.

Gadow sighed, “We’ll have to abandon ship, focus on escaping the system on the shuttle at that point.”

“And no one’s worried at all you’ll have enough time to fix the shuttle’s G-drive like that? What if we run out of time and the shuttle still isn’t fixed; we’re totally dead then, right?” I reasoned.

“What’re you suggesting?” Lummy asked.

I shrugged, “Shouldn’t we split our attention between the warp reactor and the emergency shuttle just to maximize our survival chances?”

Fierra shook her head, “I understand your concern Adam, but don’t you think it’s best to focus

all

our efforts on the warp reactor, rather than limit ourselves and what we can do to fix it by splitting the teams apart on multiple projects? After all, we’re very short on hands at this point; we need everyone working on the warp reactor if there’s hope to fix it.” She explained.

It still made me nervous, the idea we’d only start working on an escape plan once that was the only option left, but I guess I could see their reasoning; if the warp gate was only going to remain stable for another cycle or so, it would make sense to put 100% of our attention on the project to use all the time available to the fullest, rather than say only giving it 50% focus that would take the project twice as long to complete.

“Alright, I’ve got it. But just promise me if the warp gate breaks down into a singularity, we won’t be having the discussion on splitting your attention between the warp reactor and the emergency shuttle at that point.” I insisted.

Gadow smiled then, and I could see for once he didn’t seem so weary, “Don’t worry Adam, we might work until the last minute to complete our contract, but we aren’t suicidal.” He assured me.

“Speak for yourself; if we lose the profits from this 20-year tour, I might very well get suicidal over it.” Num joked darkly, and the others laughed, but I could see the idea of wasting the last 20 years would be devastating for all of them.

It wasn’t just losing the last 20 years of work and losing the money either, it would also probably lead to them being blacklisted by the company—even though the catastrophe clearly wasn’t their fault. The

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crew knew the deep space mining companies didn’t play around with their precious cargo and would probably

hope

the crew would half-kill themselves working to get the ship out of the system; the way they told it, the company valued profits even over the lives of the crew.

Same for the Lord Generals, the mission was always more important than people.

We finished breakfast and decided to double-back and clean up for the day before we all got to work on repairing the warp reactor, and for the first time in quite a while, people were free to have private showers again.

I was following along behind the group when Durgo caught me and held me back by putting a hand on my shoulder.

“Agent Adam, once again, need I remind you our mission priority is the security of the cargo as well?” He insisted.

I glowered at him, “Are you fucking serious, you’re going to say this now after everything we’ve lost—after

everyone

we lost?”

Durgo shook his head slowly, “That’s exactly

why

we need to complete the mission; would you rather all the casualties be meaningless?”

I rolled my eyes, “Why can’t saving the

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crew be the mission? So long as we save some of them, that would mean the mission was a success.”

Durgo hissed into his voice modulator, “You damn well know that isn’t the mission no matter how you might wish things were different; we have our orders, see to it you follow them.”

I crossed my arms and threw him such a harsh glare I was hoping he would catch on fire, “And why the hell are you bringing this up now of all times?”

“Because we’re at a critical point where time is vital—a dwindling resource, and I don’t want you to sit there arguing with their captain trying to convince him he should abandon the cargo and focus his attention on evacuating the system.” He snapped.

I couldn’t help but scoff at the man, “You know, after fighting for our lives together, watching our comrades die, I’d hoped your attitude would’ve changed somewhat—that you might’ve given me a break and show some fucking humanity for once.”

Durgo pointed at me, “You’re the only one with humanity here—the only human in the entire Empire; never forget what a privilege that is and take your responsibilities seriously.”

I stood up straight and rigid, once again reminded who the enemy was in all this—the Empire who shackled me and Eve and forced us to carry out their missions. It didn’t matter what kind of danger I faced or what sacrifices I had to make; I would always just be a tool for them to use and abuse.

“Is there anything else you need from me, commander?” I asked, my voice dripping with venom.

Durgo lowered his hand and then nodded once, “That’ll be all, Agent Adam, dismissed.”