Mavron slept on the floor in the corner, he was after all awoken from his sleep prior to their escape. Foster was too, but the gel on her body, her nakedness, and everyone else’s . . . she couldn’t. She needed a soft bed, her bed and it was waiting for her, once Dr. Kostelecky gave the OK to leave.
“Why. Is. This. Necessary?” Chevallier moaned miserably.
“We’ve all traveled to an off-world alien place for a long period of time,” Foster said. “Ain’t no telling what we might have picked up.”
“What about the rest of the crew? Didn’t Rivera and Williams at one point leave the ship?”
“That planet was scanned by our probes beforehand and given the green light. The other planets, however, we still haven’t gotten all the data back from the probes. Hell, none of our probes made it all the way out to the Undine world.”
It was also the primary reason the whole crew kept their distance from them once Dr. Kostelecky revealed they had to enter decontamination as per protocols. Nobody wanted to be trapped in there in the nude while they smeared decontamination gel all over their parts.
“I don’t recall UNE ships having a chamber like this,” Chevallier said.
Foster looked at the walls of the chamber, they resembled open showering rooms. “That’s because they never left Sol, it wasn’t necessary.”
Nereid became uninterested in Pierce’s silence as he concentrated on not getting hard in the situation. The more he concentrated, thinking about the body parts he shouldn’t have seen, the less successful he was. She skirted over to Foster and Chevallier, her head moved up and down gazing at their bodies in a fascinated manner. “It’s amazing how much your bodies resemble the Poniga,” Nereid said.
Foster kept her face to the ceiling, she had seen enough bare breasts for the mission thanks to the female Undine and Poniga aboard Marduk’s ship, thankfully that experience had been balanced out by the bare chests the males had rocked.
Nereid shifted her sights to Chevallier and her feminine, fit, military body. “Can you please, like, not do that?” Chevallier said to Nereid.
Foster grinned. “What’s wrong, MC? Don’t like the gender and species change McDowell went through?”
“This is his daughter if anything. It’s not really him.”
“She’s got part of his memories.”
Nereid began to stare at the tattoo of a Hammerhead shark on Chevallier’s lower back. Chevallier cringed as the girl from the ocean world continued to look in awe, like a child, watching flowers for the first time. “And apparently, she doesn’t know what naked humans look like.”
“So, kiddo, you got a name?” Foster said to Nereid.
“I am a Nereid.”
“I get that, but isn’t that just a title?”
“It’s what they’ve called me. Individual names for Nereid have been lost in the generations that passed.”
“Nereid, it is then, unless you want an actual name,” Foster said.
“Please,” Tolukei groaned from the opposite end of the chamber. “I am trying to meditate.”
Tolukei sat in his own personal space furthest away from everyone. Like the rest, he kept his naked body facing the wall as he sat cross-legged on the floor, his cybernetic augmented arms were at his sides as he tried to meditate. Tolukei’s voice drew Nereid toward him, she looked at his posture and sat next to him, still innocent and oblivious to the sexual tension and resistance everyone had.
“Meditation?” Nereid asked Tolukei.
“It is for my psionic mind,” he said. “Continual meditation sharpens it like a Hashmedai warrior sharpens their plasma swords.”
“Can you teach me?”
To their surprise, Tolukei agreed. He explained to her breathing techniques, how to focus, how to clear one’s mind, how to sit, and the works. It was a relief to the humans, it kept Nereid’s inquiring mind away from them as the two sat cross-legged next to each other. Their form and breathing were almost in perfect harmony.
ESRS CARL SAGAN, Captain’s office
Interstellar space, entering Sirius A system
May 22, 2050, 12:36 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Foster guzzled down the last steaming hot drops of her coffee. She finished reading holo pad reports of what transpired on the Carl Sagan during her absence. Williams handled the situation well, all things considered, she had zero regrets about leaving him alone to visit the surface of the planet. Speaking of Williams, him and Rivera entered her office from the stairwell connecting it to the bridge. They approached Foster as she sat comfortably at her desk and placed her holo pad on it to give the two her undivided attention.
“How was de-con?” Williams snickered with a grin.
Foster winced. “Let’s not talk about that.”
“You’ll be happy to know EVE is working perfectly fine,” Rivera said as she flicked a report from her holo pad at Foster. “Whoever had gained access didn’t copy everything, and I question if they’ll be able to use what they copied correctly, they’re going to need some high-end hardware to keep her active.”
“That ship has FTL and energy weapons,” Williams said. “I’m sure they got that covered.”
“So, what’s our next move?” Rivera asked Foster.
“Chief, how soon could we have the mind shield reprogrammed to block Marduk?”
“Radiance didn’t exactly give us state of the art mind shields. Give me, like, six hours?
“You got five.”
Rivera grimaced in response to her new task as she updated the schedule on her holo pad. “Uh, OK . . .”
Williams crossed his arms and faced Foster. “We’re going after him, aren’t we?”
Foster gave no verbal reply. She tilted her head as her eyes locked onto the stars beyond the window in her office. She fixed in on the largest star in visual range, the white dwarf Sirius B.
“With all due respect, Captain, perhaps we should consider walking away?” Rivera said. “Architect, Marduk, asshole, whatever you want to call him. This is his domain, his territory. Earth told us not to colonize systems where spacefaring species have control over it, we’re not conquerors after all.”
“No, we’re not, but Marduk has already made up his mind,” Foster said. “He’s gonna attack Earth and no matter what, we can’t let that happen. He’s also enslaved the populations of this system, including the Poniga, descendants of humans. Like it or not this is our fight now, we’s gots to take him down. Talking is gettin’ us nowhere with him.”
“And if he’s out of the picture, nobody would officially have control of the system,” Williams said.
“And the Undine and Poniga will be free to make their own choices,” Foster added.
Rivera put her data pad away and proceeded to the staircase. “Well then, I guess I got more work to do.”
Foster left her desk and followed the two up onto the main bridge above. She was about to take her seat in the captain’s chair when both Pierce and Nereid entered. Nereid wore off-duty crew person uniform, which from what Foster was told was a mission itself to get her into. Wearing clothing was something that brought her a lot of discomfort, so she had originally insisted on the old ragged and soaking wet robe from her world. One she probably would have walked around with barely tied up since she protested repeatedly it irritated and dried her skin too much. Which would also explain why she clearly wasn’t wearing a bra either and possibly any other undergarments, compromises that had to be made to get her to wear the outfit.