Sixth Sun Ch. 04

Gina and I took the maintenance ladder down to deck three. She pointed to a door on the right side in the hallway.

"That one's yours by the way. Three oh two. Quarters are generally not locked, but you can lock it from the door console if you like. I'd help you move in, but Bettina probably isn't done fabricating the rest of your clothes yet."

The end of the hallway on this deck ended in a heavy door covered in a myriad of safety notices. Gina tapped on the control panel and the door slid sideways into the wall with a low grinding sound.

We stepped into an office that overlooked the mining area. The entire far wall was a top to bottom window, scratched and dusty from decades of abuse. The mining bay that it looked into stretched all the way from deck two down to deck four. Level with this deck, three large slabs of rock, easily ten feet high and twice as wide, laid on heavy duty conveyors that slowly inched them forward. The miners were drilling and cutting away at them with tools that hung all the way from the top of the deck above. They also had platforms at that level so that miners could work at a slab from the top. The deck below was dedicated to gravel and debris collection, with an area to the side where they kept the precious metals.

Right in front of me, at the middle conveyor, Lana was working with two other miners. They were drilling rock away from a gold vein easily as thick as my leg. The end of it had a chain slung around it and one of the miners clipped the end of it away with hydraulic shears. The crane that the chain was attached to dropped it off at the end of the room with the other good stuff while the miners continued freeing another two feet of gold from the rock. Gina pressed a button by one of the consoles and a red light flashed briefly out of my sight. It must have been mounted on the wall above the window. Some of the miners looked our way, but the ones who were operating machinery didn't.

Lana waved and walked to the side where the office and the bay were connected by a thick door. You really only realize how good sound isolation in any place is when someone opens a door. We were exposed to an infernal cacophony of grinding and banging noises for the seconds it took Lana to cross the threshold between there and here. Lana wore thick ear muffs, a respirator mask and safety goggles. Her hair was covered by what can only be described as an extra long shower cap. The rest of her was covered by a pair of heavy boots and a thick but skin tight body suit. She put the ear muffs, goggles and respirator on a desk. I just then realized I could have been looking at her sister the entire time without noticing the difference, given how much she was covered up.

"Hey there," Lana beamed at us. "Getting a tour of the place?"

Gina snorted. "More like an apology tour."

Lana motioned with her hand for Gina to go on, but it turned out this was where her assistance ended. "Go on, it's your mess."

I cleared my throat. "Well, I wanted to say that I shouldn't have said anything when Lindsay brought up the topic of.. well.. you know.. "

Lana motioned with her hand for me to go on.

I inhaled deeply. "I slept with Hideko and when the inquisition starts looking for who it was, she's going to breathe into a paper bag for a week."

Lana looked at Gina. "And this is your idea?"

She just shrugged. "If you can't keep a secret, just tell everyone."

She flicked her chin in my direction. "Aaand.. do we have to put him out the airlock?"

"I think we landed ourselves some actual boy scout." Gina said shaking her head. "Anyway, I'll talk to the doc and the bridge and then at least this mess will be behind us." She looked at her communicator. "I got to relieve Aamina." She scrolled a bit. "Bettina says you can pick up basic clothing in fifteen minutes. Can I leave him with you, Lana?"

"Sure thing."

"Thanks, Gina, for everything." I said, to which she only gave a dismissive wave as she left.

Lana pointed to the least beat up chair in the office. "Have a seat. Water?" She pointed to a fridge in the corner.

"Sure, thanks." I responded waiting for her to hand me a bottle before I sat down.

Lana took a chair that must have been here for a century and turned its back towards me before sitting down, leaning her chest against the backrest. I wasn't sure if she intended to let the chair squeeze her cleavage up, but here I was having another moment of rapture. At least I didn't let it show too much this time.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry." She said with a smile, leaned back and crossed her arms over the back rest of the chair, hiding her assets.

I could have sworn I had been real smooth. How long had I been staring? "Don't be. It's just.. " I gestured in her general direction. I decided that honesty was the theme of the day. "You're just so damn perfect. If you don't mind me saying."

She put her chin on her forearms and looked at me with mischief in her eyes. "Why thank you. I don't mind you saying."

"But as I said, I just got here and I have to take some time to catch a breath. I don't want to rush into things."

"You did rush into our poor little nurse really fast." Came the response that I had teed up for her.

I held up my hands. "I will only take half the blame for that, the doctor practically pushed her onto me."

"The doctor is a smart woman. She also loves her little student more than most mothers love their children. And most importantly she can do basic math."

I wasn't following. "I'm not sure I follow."

"This boat has twenty five crew. The captain, doc and Gina probably won't touch you, because they're actual professionals who care about that sort of stuff. Hand full of lesbians. That leaves somewhere between fifteen to twenty women who would somehow try to get into your pants."

"Does that include present company?" I couldn't help but ask.

"Of course. Once in a lifetime opportunity." She stuck out her tongue. "Doc probably assumed we're dropping everything to get you back to earth. That trip is roughly two weeks." I nodded along. It was starting to make sense. "Even if you were the most promiscuous guy in the universe, which we're all hoping you are by the way." She raised a questioning eyebrow at me, to which I gave a noncommittal shrug. "Even if you're all that, you're not getting in bed with a dozen and a half horny sailors in that time. So of course she'll push her into your arms. It's not like the little thing was going to elbow herself into bed with you once the feeding frenzy starts."

I took a sip of water. "Feeding frenzy doesn't sound like something I would want to be in the middle of."

She pushed her chin a little forward. "Isn't this the sort of thing wet dreams are made of? I mean, you got a ship full of hot women willing to drop their knickers for you. No attachments, no expectations."

"Yeah, I've been kindly asked to not be a bitch about it." I responded with a laugh.

"Gina?" She raised another questioning eyebrow.

"Captain. But it's fine, I sort of decided that I got over it." I admitted. "Still haven't figured out where to start."

"Would you like my help?" She rose to sit up to her full height and flashed another one of those damned smiles at me. "I'd love to help."

"I appreciate the offer. What would you suggest?" At this stage I was open for anything.

She motioned over to her workplace. "I am sort of busy, but I'd be happy to think things through and we could get together when I'm on break. Should be another three hours and then I get a few hours off before we have to finish the rock. Will you be alright until then?"

"Of course, I got some amount of settling in to do. I really didn't have time to think about anything myself."

"We'll figure something out. It's gonna be fun." She got up and walked back to the desk with her protective gear. "Will you pick me up in three hours?"

"Does that count as a date?" I made no effort to hide the fact I was checking her out while she was putting her stuff back on. It wasn't like I had been successful in hiding that at any point.

"Of course it does." she said, still smiling.

I checked my communicator for the time. "I'll see you in three hours."

She shoved her hair into its cover before putting on her mask. "Can't wait!" And with that she was out through the door, giving me a little finger wave and a few seconds of deafening cacophony as she crossed the threshold.

And there I stood, wondering what was happening to me. Who knows at this point? I navigated my way back down to engineering, for the first time since I arrived going anywhere by myself. If there was a real danger of being dragged into a maintenance hatch, this was probably it. I did make it to the elevator without being accosted. Considering the majority of the crew was trying to set a new record for the amount of space rock destroyed per hour, I considered the chance low, but not zero.

Bettina was visibly happy to see me. "Hey, trainee." She was wearing a grimy tank top and cargo pants and was busy working on a contraption that looked like it had been new when I was at the academy. "Do you know your way around a Gralmark fourteen filter system?". I gave it a once over. "The latest one I've seen was a Gralmark eight. This doesn't seem all that different though. The dirty stuff still goes in this way?" I pointed at where I was reasonably sure the dirty stuff was to go in.

"Yeah, pretty much. I'll leave this for you then. It's not a priority item, but I'd like it done within the week." She winked at me. "I'll put you on fabricator duty for now. It normally isn't much, but we've had an uptick in orders." She held out a datapad.

I took it and gave the order list a quick look. I groaned. "I take it you don't have a lot of lingerie orders most weekdays?"

"Can't say we do. I usually deliver orders to their rooms while we mine and they pick stuff up while we zook. So, if you wouldn't mind getting these done, room numbers are on the orders." She grabbed a tool box and turned to leave. "Your stuff is in the trolley, you can get that squared away when you feel like it." She said before the elevator door closed.

Engineering was responsible for operating the fabricator on any ship, so I had done my fair share of minding them. The interface wasn't all that different from what I had been used to. The crew picked items from a catalog of what the fabricator could build and then it went to work. It was a rather boring assignment and the current queue would take a few hours to finish, so I had a look at my stuff. Bettina had gone with a two-of-everything approach. Sneakers, track suits, pajamas, cargo pants, sweaters, a fist full of wife beaters and t shirts, with a stack of underwear and socks to round it all off. A small bag contained basic toiletries, like a toothbrush, toothpaste and an unmarked bottle of shower gel, that had "manly man smell for manly men" written on it with a marker. It smelled vaguely musky with a hint of honey. Finishing off the ensemble were a pair of flip flops, a bathrobe and a stack of towels.

I grabbed a large canvas bag from the shelf and squared my new wardrobe away as neatly as possible. I also went to my shuttle and grabbed my jump suit from the small compartment it had spent the last few hundred years in. It was vacuum sealed, so I assumed it would be in good condition. My first delivery may as well have been my own, so I called the elevator and went to deck three to see what my bunk was like. When I opened the door, I immediately found out what it wasn't.

Vacant.

Aamina was lying on her belly on the top bunk and was reading something on a datapad. She looked up from the pad and flashed me a coquettish smile.

"Erm, honey, I'm home?" Was the best I could come up with.

"Nobody told you that you have a bunkmate?" she asked, but it was more a statement than a question.

"I'm sure Gina thought about telling me and decided not to." I sighed. "She does like to wind people up, does she?"

"Only the easy marks." Came the reassuring response, smile unbroken.

The room was tiny. A small sink and mirror on my left hand side, next to it the bunk bed with the aforementioned navigator on top. A desk was filling up the entire space of the far wall, with a large screen hanging above it. The last wall across from the bed consisted only of storage drawers and lockers, bottom to top.

"So, how does this work?" I pleaded for guidance.

"I would suggest you use the drawers on the left, I cleared them out for you."

"We're not going to address the elephant in the room?"

She looked at me for a moment, then shuffled a small bit closer to the edge of the bed and looked down and around the room, as if to look for an elephant. "What elephant?".

I was starting to think that 'shit eating grin' was the default mode of operation for everyone but the nurse on this ship and that people tried to avoid situations in which it wouldn't be appropriate at all cost.

"I've been to unisex toilets, even unisex changing rooms. Unisex bunks is pushing it a little, don't you think?"

"Lucas, this is the only free bed on the ship."

"Oh"

"Yeah. Like I said, I cleared out the drawers on the left."

"Thanks." Was all I could say and I started pulling out my clothes and stacked them into the large clothing drawers. I was done in moments, on account of not really being burdened by an abundance of worldly possessions. "So, how will this work? We should probably set some ground rules about privacy, getting dressed and all that." I took off my uniform jacket, threw it on the bottom bed and started undoing my shirt cuffs to get a little bit more comfortable.

Aamina sat up, dangling her legs off the edge of the bed. "First thing is that I would prefer if you didn't put your things on my bed."

I looked down at the vacant bed that she certainly was not in at this moment. "Sorry, with you being up there, I thought you were bunking up top."

"Lucas, nobody bunks in the top bed when they have the choice." She shimmied a few inches forward. "You are probably correct, we do need to establish a base line for certain things. That's why I'm sitting here without any underwear."

I slowly tilted my head to the side. "Come again?"

"I'm really trying to come once for starters. But if you're up for it, I'm happy to come again."

"I..." This wasn't happening. "I am sorry. Please tell me how we got to this point in plain English." I looked up to her expectantly.

She started slowly unraveling her Hijab. "It's rather easy. You're either going to shag this entire boat or you won't. Given that you did Hideko before your feet even touched the ground, I say you will shag this entire boat. I'm on this boat and we'll get to it sooner or later." She waved me closer with two fingers and I obliged, taking a step closer looking straight up at her as she leaned forward. "So I'm going to ask you, Lucas Shaw, do you want to keep things awkward with your roommate or will you take the plunge?" She shook out her hair, which fell down to her small breasts in shiny, black waves.

I took her in, her small feet, the slender but fit legs, the tight pencil skirt, slightly crinkled from lying on the bed. She still wore the jacket to her uniform, but had taken off her tie some time between earlier and now. Her full and sensual lips were curled up in a smirk, her hazelnut eyes focused on mine. "I have a date lined up with Lana in a few hours."

She raised her perfect eyebrows. "I'm not trying to be your girlfriend." She put a hand on my cheek. "I just need to get off. Some good, clean fun." She looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds and then back to me. "Actually, some good, not so clean fun would be good."

I put my hand over the one touching my cheek. "Is this going to be the same thing with everyone here?"

She snorted. "No. I believe I am exceptionally forward compared to the rest of the crew. My hand is also forced by you standing at the edge of my bed and trying very hard not to check out my cooch."

At least I had an excuse. "Your skirt seems way too tight for that."

She grabbed the edge of the bed with both hands and effortlessly pushed herself up to hover an inch or two over the mattress. "Zip's in the back."

I had to admit as far as excuses go, this one hadn't been doing a lot. I ran my hands around her waist and pulled down the zipper without breaking eye contact with her. I took my time shimmying the skirt towards me, exploring her tight behind. As the hem of her skirt was half way down I surprised her by pulling the zipper shut again, cinching it half way down her thighs, acting like a belt keeping her legs together.

"Hey, what are you..."

I had grabbed her by her calves, tilting her backward while she tried maintaining balance by wiggling her feet and holding on to the edge of the bed.

"Mind your head."

The bed wasn't too narrow, but she still would have to rest her head against the wall. She quickly grabbed a pillow and threw it behind her neck before finally losing the fight against gravity and her impromptu restraints.

I looked at the sight straight ahead of me. I smelled a hint of lavender. I was willing to bet a razor had been right here less than an hour ago. Her sheer lips were slightly damp and gorgeous, fully covering her sex on account of her legs being tightly squeezed together. Her pucker looked rather small and cute but I had other things on my mind. I rolled my tongue around in my mouth to get it covered with saliva. I placed a wet, whole mouth kiss on her cheek and started dragging my tongue up the back of her leg. I got to her hamstrings and started digging in between the muscles with the tip of my tongue. If your partner is ticklish here, it's really difficult to explain to the surgeon how you got your nose broken, but I was lucky and she reacted with audible delight. I lightly brushed a fingertip over her lips before repeating the same thing on her other cheek. Then I blew on her moist lips while massaging her bottom.

"Hnnnnggg... Just do me, please." She was getting antsy. I kept blowing fresh air against her sex.

"One condition." I looked past her legs into her hazelnut eyes. "I get the bottom bunk."

"This is blackmail." She protested.

"I'm pretty sure this is extortion." I slowly stroked her lips with my thumb.

"Just do me. Please, I beg you."

I guess I am a sucker for politeness. I slowly inserted my index and middle finger into her dripping sex, prompting another delightful moan. I carefully explored her insides to find the telltale sponginess of her g spot. After a moment of circling it, I sucked on my thumb to get it properly wet and brought it down on her button. I watched the muscles from her bum to toe work while I was stroking her. Everything was in motion in the rhythm of my fingers and thumb circling in opposing directions. I had to hook a foot under the chair at the desk to pull it closer without letting go of her sex. I stepped on the chair and used my left hand to push her feet towards the wall. Because of the skirt limiting her range of motion, bending her legs further back lifted her ass off the bed. Standing on the chair let me look straight down at her glistening folds, my fingers still working in and out. I hungrily started devouring her puffy lips, immediately prompting her to wrap her arms around her legs to keep herself in that position.

She was breathing hard after just a few minutes of this treatment. One of her hands grabbed me by the hair and tried to guide me further up, but without seeing anything, didn't work as well as she had hoped.

"Please, I'm so close."

Not to let the lady wait, I stopped working on her lips and went straight for her clitoris. I formed a circle around it with my tongue and rolled it left and right for a few seconds until she came. In her best "person touching a live wire" impression, her legs stiffened up and her hand painfully pulled on my hair for a few seconds before she remembered what she was doing and let go. Her breathing slowed down. I took my time unzipping her skirt and pulled it off while I let her unfold her legs again, offering me the first real look at her pussy. She was gorgeous. She looked at me still in a daze. I started covering her mons with little kisses until her breathing had returned to normal. She put a finger under my chin and made me look at her.

"Gina told me I should believe the whole boy scout act. I didn't." She closed her eyes like someone trying to remember the taste of their last ice cream. "I should have."

"I didn't know the boy scouts give out an extortion badge." I put a few more kisses on her lower belly before I stepped off the chair and started washing my face in the sink.

I dried my hands on a towel when she sat up. "My knees are weak, help me down?"

I put my hands on her hips and carefully lifted her off the edge and put her on her feet.

She cupped my face in her hands and pulled me down for a quick, almost chaste kiss before putting her hands on my chest. "A word of warning, Lucas." She looked me in the eyes, worry flashing across her face. "If you ever shave that beard off, me and the other girls will find you and break your fingers so you can never again shave yourself." She held that expression easily for five seconds before she broke.

I lightly slapped her on the ass. "Put some pants on, you floozy."

She did no such thing and turned around to quickly take off the rest of her uniform. "I'm rather ready for a shower. Care to join me? I'm afraid there hasn't been a mens' shower on this ship in over a century." She took her bathrobe from its hook on the wall.

"I'm afraid I'm still on the clock. Some other time." I responded with some regret.

"Some other time." She pulled her bathrobe closed and turned around to me. "Don't be a smelly bunkmate." She grabbed a towel and her toiletries bag and went out the door.

Asking myself for the eighteenth time today what happened, I got out of my shirt and tie and changed it for a grey t-shirt and made my way back down to engineering. With the fabricator busy producing small item orders, I was busy making deliveries for maybe two hours until the queue was cleared. I did my best to not pay too much attention to the lingerie and toys on order, though I did try to remind myself of the names on the order sheet. At least none of the women I knew by name had made any orders, so I could keep up the mystery for the moment.

Bettina came back maybe thirty minutes before I was supposed to pick up Lana.

"Hey, boss." I casually saluted with two fingers, which she returned just as casually.

"Hey, trainee, how's it going?"

"Deliveries are done and I worked my way through the manual revision for the fabricator. Could you cert me for it?"

She sort of overplayed her double take. "You really don't need to be certed for anything. It's not like you'll be job hunting with your updated qualifications."

I crossed my arms, but did my best not to appear standoffish. "Maybe I'm a bit old fashioned, but I learned this stuff and I won't let it go to waste." I handed her the datapad with my credentials. "If today is an indicator, I might just need something to keep me grounded."

She took the pad and stared right through it for a moment. "You know what," she started logging in to update my records. "Now that you say that, my dad could have maybe used a job. Certainly didn't do him any good not having one." She handed the pad back to me.

- Fabricator Management - Maintenance and Associated Duties - Certification Update -

"Don't push me though, trainee. If you want me to do Zhukov drive certifications for the next two weeks with you, you're going to have an unfortunate accident." She pointed at her workbench and I understood that there was a large wrench there that deserved special attention.

"No worries, I'll just try to be useful. That being said, any chance I could be relieved?" I asked with a sheepish grin.

"Sure, why not? It's not like you have working hours." She pointed to her terminal. "When you want to feel useful and I'm not here, work requests are on the terminal. You technically have more working experience than me. I'm not telling you not to touch Andersson panels or any of the other stuff they simply didn't have back then, you already know that." I nodded along. "It's my job and I can do it, but I'm happy for the help. To be blunt, I think the captain sent you here so you have a reason to be busy when you want to." She leaned across a tool cart that was standing between us. "The people on this ship are good people. But they will devolve into horny teenagers for the next two weeks. So if you need to get away from them, you're needed down here."

"No horny teenagers in engineering?"

"Nah. You're my direct report. That would be a tremendous ethics violation. Regardless, I'm fine watching from the sidelines." She gestured to me to follow her to the fabricator. "That being said, I might have something here to make things easier for you." She brought up a set of schematics. "Fertimax six hundred series."

I looked over the short description. "What's this, some sort of semen distribution device?"

"Pretty much. Sample goes into the chamber, empty cartridges take in a tiny fraction of the sample, ready for insertion. Anyone can do that at home. Just saying, you don't have to get hot and heavy with everyone here." She chuckled. "I almost said anyone, but that ship has passed already."

I checked the materials in the fabricator. "May I?"

"A man of action. I like it. You're assembling it though."

"Sure, I assemble insemination machines all the time." I pressed a few buttons and the fabricator whirred to life, starting to assemble the individual components.

- Part 1 of 97 - Building - 3% - Please clear ejection area -

"So, where are you off to now, trainee?"

I looked at the clock, I was cutting it close. "I kind of have a date with Lana. Strategy. Stuff." I shrugged.

"Strategy?"

"Yeah, I kind of agreed to the whole pussy catapult thing." I made a throwing motion to underscore the point.

"I'll give you a bit of a heads up, Lucas." She pulled herself up to sit on her workbench. "Lana has never half-assed a single thing in her life I would wager. You're not 'kind of having a date'," she underscored herself making some air quotes, "you're about to get laid to within an inch of your physical limits. You also didn't 'kind of agree to the pussy catapult thing'," again with the air quotes, "You have probably signed up to an elaborate fifteen step plan to get every person on this boat laid and knocked up." She motioned against a the wall as if she was drawing a diagram on a whiteboard. "But Lana is the right person for both jobs, so, lucky you, I guess."

I started staring into space.

"Oh come on, it's not so bad. You woke up three hundred years in the future, found out humanity is doomed, slept with a crewmember," I held up index and middle finger. "My apologies, slept with two crew members, found out you're the likely savior of humanity and got certified on twenty eighth century fabricator technology." She shrugged. "Sounds like any other Wednesday to me."

"I'm going to need to see your personal logs for last Wednesday, Ensign Jarno." I laughed.

"No shot. Now scram, before I find an excuse to keep you here after all."

So I scrammed. I took a quick detour to my room to get freshened up. Aamina was snoring lightly in the top bunk. The pillow of the bottom bed had a note on it.

"Don't let it get to your head. A."

Her hand was hanging off the edge of the bed and I gave it a little kiss. With my face and hands washed and wearing a fresh t-shirt, I went on to the mining office. As I entered through the heavy door, I was greeted by the next best thing to my actual date. Lindsay looked up from a datapad, with a mug in her hand and took off her glasses. "Hey there! Fancy seeing you here."

"Hey there. I'm here to pick up Lana."

She pointed to the window to the mining area. "She should be done any moment now" She got up and looked through the window, taking a long sip from her mug. I joined her. Lana was busy digging into the rock with a pneumatic hammer.

"So, you all seem to be pretty busy."

"Sure are."

"This is all fascinating. I've never been on a mining ship. How does this work?"

"Well, you see the entrance chute over there by the green light? The external crane cuts a ten by twenty foot slab out of the asteroid and pulls it into on of those lanes, right?"

"Right."

"Then they go through the overhead converter over there and afterwards through the inverse fluctuator on the other end."

"Fascinating." Lana's ass was undulating on account of the vibrations of the pneumatic hammer.

"You would have noticed that there is no such thing as an overhead converter or an inverse fluctuator if you weren't staring at my sister's undulating ass."

Fuck. "Fuck."

"You alright?" She put her mug down and stuck her hands in her pockets, looking back out to the mining bay.

"You know.." I pulled one hand out of my pockets and made a forward throwing motion while staring at her sister's ass.

"Pussy catapult?"

"Pussy catapult."

"Such a rough lot you have."

"It's a lot of responsibility. Emotional minefield."

"Also tiring, I imagine."

"Very. I'm fortunate I'm in good shape. It was between me and chief engineer Gonzales to do the trip. He would be dead by now. Very happy, but also very dead."

"I don't think you'll have much time for working out in the near future."

"Not if your sister has something to say about that."

"She definitely wants to be involved."

"You ok with me running off with your sister?"

"She saw you first."

"I distinctly remember you both being at the meeting at the same time."

Lana was climbing over the slab to get a better angle of attack on some of the minerals. We both slightly turned our heads to the side.

"Who do you think lifted you out of the shuttle?"

"So, if they had called you, you'd have dibs on me?"

"Possibly."

"And so, she's not sharing?"

"Didn't ask. We're both getting knocked up if we can, and we're not going to have sister cousins."

"That's fair. But Lindsay, is that going to be a problem?"

Lana shifted over again and we tilted our heads the other way.

"I won't lie, stings a bit. But I'm my sister's best friend and she's mine, so I'm not going to fuss about it. That being said..." She let that hang in the air for a moment. "If you knew anyone on a certain spaceship who would like to get to know a girl they can look up to."

Lana split her feet wide to cover a big hole in the slab and started drilling in that position. Lindsay just laughed at me, while I lost my train of thought for a moment.

"What do you need me for? Not that I wouldn't know a few who would love to have you carry them to bed."

"I'm just a miner, Lucas."

"Look, I don't know who or what you think you are, but the only thing standing between you and half the crew of my ship licking every square inch of you, is that you need to let their wives in on the action."

She turned away from the spectacle that was her sister and looked at me.

"You really mean that?"

"I'm not a fan of rating women on their appearance, but you're both tens, Lindsay. I will have to bodily restrain people when they come off the boat not to propose to you while their wives are standing next to them."

"So, you'll make some introductions?"

"Yes, I promise."

She squeezed my shoulder with one hand, which is all she needed to say.

Lana was moving back down the slab, grabbing a different tool while the hammer was suspended in mid-air by the rigging. She was cutting off an arm thick vein of gold she had excavated. The cutting saw made her entire body vibrate again, causing us both to fall silent for a good minute.

"So, Lindsay, since we got that out of the way, could I ask you to do me a favor?"

"Sure can."

"You wouldn't be able to come up with a clever cover story to get her out of there so I can kidnap her for a while?"

"Absolutely no problem, Engineer Shaw."

She sauntered over to the door and casually hit the emergency off switch. All the tools hanging from the ceiling suddenly fell silent, so did the conveyors and whatever else was making noise in the place. Everybody looked at her to see what the trouble was, as she kicked open the door and stood on the threshold between the office and the bay.

"LANA!" She shouted in a volume that would probably still work if the machines were still on.

"YEAH?" came the response, equally, way too loud.

"GOLDEN BOY IS HERE, SAYS HE WANTS TO FUCK!"

This was not happening. Everybody on the mining deck started laughing.

"SORRY! DIDN'T HEAR YOU!"

Oh fuck me.

"GOLDEN BOY WANTS TO FUCK!" She thrust out her pelvis a few times emphasis. Some heavy tool was dropped somewhere. Everyone but me had a great time.

"Take over for me, will you?" Lindsay took the three steps down in one hop, grabbed her sister's saw and put her face mask on.

"TURNING ON!" Lana shouted, coming up to the observation window. Everyone held up a hand to indicate they were ready and Lana released the emergency switch. Everything slowly started rumbling again.

I was still at the window, staring out at Lindsay, officially the bane of my existence, taking her sister's spot.

"Hey," Lana said, pulling back her face mask and losing the hair cover. "Lindsay told me you were here."

"Yeah, sorry for the cloak and dagger, I actually asked her to make up something clever so I could pick you up."

"Oh yeah, she's clever like that. I'm sure nobody noticed."

She stood next to me, looking out with her hands in her pockets, just like her sister had. "I mean, you just have to play it close to the chest." She continued. "You know, the gossip in this place, it's really vicious."

"I'll be honest, I don't think I'll have the bandwidth to even care about the gossip. You know them better than I do, you can deal with that."

"Look at you, delegating. This is going to be great. I actually have some ideas and a plan, but we'll get to that." She pulled off the rest of her gear and threw it into a locker. "I need a shower. Care to join me?"

+++++++++++++++++

Thank you for reading!

The first three chapters had been sitting there for a while waiting for me to start publishing them, so future installments likely will take a bit longer.

Again, thank you so very much for your comments and ratings, it is still quite surreal to receive such great feedback.

In the next chapter we're up for a few surprises and it's a blast to write so far, so I hope I will get it done shortly.