Doctor doctor, let me give you some news,
I got a baby on the way for you,
Last night I sealed the deal,
I got a baby on the way….for you!
"Doctor, you'll be happy to know that I inseminated your test subject last night." My manner of speaking was going in a weird direction lately due to conversations with Aeren.
"Really?" she answered, possibly surprised that I was able to woo another woman into my bed so quickly. "Aeren? Was she receptive?"
What did that mean? My spunk when up there and she received it alright. She didn’t want to let a single drop get away.
"What I meant to ask," Vanilla clarified. "Was she agreeable to a potential pregnancy?"
"Yes, she was," I answered. "Looks like the three of us all had the same idea."
"Sort of," the doctor chuckled. "Her and I had the same idea, maybe. You likely had no interest in producing offspring. Your focus was the primal pleasure that you'd attain from a sexual relationship with the attractive, albeit alien woman."
"I'll have you know that my women receive great pleasure as well," I told her as I stepped within arm's reach. She didn't move back in response to my advance, but I could see concern in her body language. "You could become one of those women, you know."
"Not anytime soon," she replied with a shake of her head that sent her three-tone hair into an unbelievable shock-dampening display. "I have too much work to do."
"I can squeeze it on your break," I said with an ornery smile.
"Ha ha, Kash. I mean captain, of course. Let us keep our relationship professional at this point. We both have enough on our shoulders right now."
"Are you trying to seduce yet another woman?" Honeysuckle asked as she padded by the medical doorway in her bare feet. She didn't wait for a response before heading downstairs, probably to perform system checks that were part of her duties as the ship’s mechanic.
I dropped the subject with the doctor and continued on my rounds. Those that I didn't meet in the hallway or control room or cargo hold, I buzzed their doors. Everyone seemed to be in surprisingly good spirits.
"When outside?" Gako asked when I stepped through the open door of the forward cargo hold. Sage's cage, which used to be Teddy's cage, was repurposed to hold dragon food. Some of it was more than a little stinky.
"You were just outside," I responded.
"And we enjoyed ourselves," Dawynda told me. "Right up until the point when we were shot by your kind."
"Those guys were not my kind," I told her. "And you never would have been shot at if you hadn't eaten those pigs."
"How were we to know those were bad pigs?" the big female dragon asked.
"Not bad pigs," Gako corrected her with a lick of his lips. I knew already that he had found them delicious.
"What is the word?" Dawynda asked me. “A bad thing that you can’t have?
"Taboo?"
"Is that a real word?" she asked. "I have never heard it before."
"That is because to you top-of-the-food-chain dragons, there is no taboo. But things are different now."
"Very different," Gako grumbled.
The conversation continued like that for a while. In the end we didn't really accomplish much. They promised not to do things that they knew ahead of time would cause us trouble. They could make no such guarantee regarding things that they didn't understand. I promised to land on another planet as soon as possible, but implied that it could be at least a week before that happened. And together we would work on making their onboard experience more pleasant.
Dawynda in particular had grown fond of her visits upstairs, but she was discouraged by the reactions of the rest of the crew. Noticing that Aeren and Mixi were adorned in clothing that closely matched the others brought up an important question. Were the dragons officially part of our team or just a temporary project?
We discussed what it meant to be members of our crew. They needed to have a job, even if it was small. Security would be the obvious choice, but that would only be of value in places where we weren't afraid to expose them. Those locations were extremely rare at this point.
Gako suggested that they could push the cargo cubes around to help Cinnamon at her job. Considering how organized the cargo officer was, they probably would hurt more than help. I had no intention of allowing the huge beasts in the control room. That didn't leave much for them to do except clean up after themselves.
I told them that I would announce to the team that the dragons were willing to assist in any way possible. Perhaps retrieving tools and such for Honeysuckle. Crate pushing for Cinnamon. Catching fresh food where permitted. In return they would become real crew members. I explained to them that collars would be made for their necks to reflect their new status. Embedded in each would be a beacon and a communicator to help us avoid issues like the one we just had on Teegarden Dimo-First.
I then went to the control room for my shift and chatted with Cinnamon and Vanilla while I was there. It wasn't much longer before I heard a disturbance nearby. I rushed around the corner and into the galley where the voices were coming from. There sat a very stubborn Dawynda at the far end of the table on the floor where there was no stool. Strawberry had her back against the food processor, still in shock at finding a dragon in our dining area.
"Captain," Dawynda said, calling me by my title for the first time. "I need to be taught how to use the food processors."
"They are not eating in here with us!" my fiery redheaded lover exclaimed.
"Teddy eats in
