Chapter 6: 6. Introductions

"Ok," Piper said as she looked me up and down. "Coveralls aren't going to work with you."

I felt my cheeks go bright red as I remembered I was naked. I quickly scrambled to sit up, with my thighs pressed together and my arms folded across my chest. It was an amazing sensation, and despite my embarrassment I was smiling wide. And I could feel my tail swishing back and forth behind me.

"At least these should work," the captain added as she held out a small pair of slip-on shoes.

"Thanks," I replied as I accepted the shoes.

She waited till I had them on my feet, then said "Come on. We'll get back up to the main deck then I'll find something else you can wear."

Without waiting for my response she turned and started heading aft. I hurried after her, wearing nothing but a pair of loose slip-on shoes.

I couldn't easily keep myself covered as we walked and after only a few steps I gave up trying. There were a number of distracting jiggling sensations that held my attention until we stopped at the lift in engineering.

As we rode the lift up to the main deck I realized the chief engineer was standing next to me, and I couldn't help notice how Lieutenant Holloway seemed to be checking me out. The blonde's eyes flicked up and down over me more than once, including my ears and tail.

The other thing that suddenly stood out to me was the lieutenant was once again three or four inches taller than me. And compared to Piper I almost felt tiny. I'd stood eye to eye with the young captain before, now she was at least half a foot taller than me.

From the lift we followed the captain into the mess area, where she left us waiting as she headed forward. I assumed the crew cabins were in that direction since I hadn't seen them in the aft part of the vessel.

While we waited, Lieutenant Holloway asked "You picked that?"

"Yeah," my cheeks were still bright red as I nodded. "And you picked that?"

The lieutenant immediately blushed as well but nodded, "Yeah. In my defence it was this or finish slowly dying of plasma burns."

I still felt like I was in a bit of a happy daze about getting a perfect body, but my former patient's words pulled me down a little closer to reality again.

"I'm sorry," I responded with a sigh. "And I know this is probably really awkward, but I feel like I should ask again about pronouns? Have you made a decision, or...?"

The engineer nodded, "Yeah, actually I thought about it while you were processing. I'm going with she/her for now. It fits, right?"

A moment later she added, "Oh and we should do introductions too. I've decided to go with the name Sarah. Sarah Holloway."

My eyebrows crept upwards in surprise as I found myself staring at her again. I recalled Piper said something about the AI helping the lieutenant to adjust, and the captain said she'd talk with my ship-mate as well, but I still didn't expect the engineer to adapt so quickly.

Then I realized she was waiting for me to respond and I blushed slightly as I replied, "Uh, nice to meet you Sarah? I'm Amanda. Amanda Voss."

Fortunately Piper returned before I could make things any more akward. Instead of the coveralls she was holding a small bundle of black fabric, which she held out for me.

"It's the best I could find."

It turned out to be a large nightshirt. It was soft and comfortable, but I was almost lost in it. The hem came down to just above my knees, and my tail stuck out the back. It finally hit me, I didn't even think about what sort of trouble I'd have finding clothes.

"Thank you," I told our host.

She then gestured to the table "Have a seat. The three of us need to talk."

Sarah and I sat down next to each other, and Piper took a seat across from us. She addressed me first, "If I heard right, you're calling yourself Amanda?"

"Yes ma'am," I replied. "Amanda Voss."

Piper nodded once then continued, "Sarah and I have already had some time to go over these things but we need to do it with you as well. I know you're from the Imperium, but I don't go anywhere near there. If you're looking to get back home, I can drop you off at a port where you can probably find passage into Imperium space."

I gulped, "And if I'm not looking to get back there?"

"Well," Piper said slowly, "Then we can talk about what skills you have that might be useful here."

I glanced at Sarah, but the engineer was looking down, focused on a lock of her long blonde hair as she quietly twirled it between her fingers.

My attention returned to Piper and told her, "I'm rated as a field medic and an emergency medical technician, I have three years of med-school and nearly two years active duty."

After a slight hesitation I added, "You might not need a medic, considering you have that healing pod in your cargo hold. I'm not trained as a navigator but I scored better on astro-navigation than I did on medicine. I'm a quick study and I'm willing to learn."

Our host responded, "You're right, the healing pod means I don't need a doctor or a hospital. It doesn't leave the hold though, so if I get hurt off-ship I still have to get back here and get myself into it. There's been more than one occasion where I could have used a field medic. But I don't need one full-time, so if we can find something else for you that'd be better."

I gestured at the cooking unit behind Piper and added, "It's been a few years, but I also know how to cook. Nobody had auto-chefs back on my home-world, we all learned how to do it the hard way."

"Good to know," the young captain said.

Sarah suddenly grinned and suggested, "With those ears and the tail she could be the ship's mascot. Maybe having a pet fox on board is good luck?"

My eyes went wide and my cheeks turned bright red as I stared at her.

Piper cleared her throat, she looked a little embarrassed at the idea as well.

"Getting back on track," she said in an attempt to defuse the awkwardness, "We'll figure something out. A skilled engineer is someone I can definitely use, and Sarah has already agreed to stay on with me."

As much as that made sense it still surprised me. She was a career Navy man as far as I knew.

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I glanced at Sarah and asked, "Really?"

The attractive blonde shrugged, "The Navy won't take either of us back. You know that right? Even if there was some way of convincing them who we are? They'd probably want to dissect and study us to figure out how we ended up like this."

"We don't have to convince them," I pointed out. "They gave us all identity implants when we signed up."

Piper shook her head, "Gone. Anything you had with you when you went into the healing pod was purged. That's a whole new body, built from scratch."

"Oh," I grimaced. "Right."

A moment later our host got to her feet and said, "I'm going back to work for a while. I'll leave you two to talk it over."

She disappeared through the forward bulkhead, and my attention returned to my ship-mate.

"Are you doing ok?" I asked quietly. "I'm not really trained in this sort of thing but um, I do have some experience with gender troubles..."

Sarah's blush grew a bit brighter and she started playing with her long hair again.

She shrugged, "I'm managing. Jenny helped. We talked, put some things in perspective. And like I said before, the other option was dying so this seemed like the best choice. I'd rather be a living girl than a dead guy. And hey? After fifty-eight years as a guy, now I get to see what it's like on the other side of the fence."

I had to admit she seemed fairly pragmatic about her situation. I had a bunch of questions about how the AI helped her but before I could respond she spoke up again with a question for me.

"So I understand you wanted this? I did it because there wasn't any other choice, but you seemed pretty eager to get into that thing even knowing up front what it was going to do to you."

"Yeah," I grimaced, then sighed. "I'm trans. If I'd been born on a world with better medical technology and better social support, I'd have been able to transition a lot younger. I joined the Navy to get me off-world, and as soon as my term was up I was hoping to get to a core planet with top-of-the-line medical tech. And I was hoping my life savings would be enough to pay for my transition."

Sarah frowned, "Damn. I'm sorry Amanda. I don't really know anything about that stuff, but I can imagine it's been rough for you."

"Thanks." I shrugged slightly and added, "It is what it is. And this? This is more than I could have ever dared hope for. Honestly it hasn't even sunk in yet that this is real, that this is really me."

Her grin was back, "I get that. It took about five hours for me to get past the 'holy shit this is real' phase."

I blushed, "Good name for it. This is something I've wanted for as long as I can remember, so it might take me more than a few hours to get over the euphoria."

"Fair enough," she responded. "Back to the subject of life and death, thank you for saving mine. Near as I can tell you actually saved me twice? You kept me alive after the plasma conduit ruptured, and after the ship was wrecked you got me into a life-pod and off the Hammersmith. I owe you."

I shrugged and mumbled, "It's my job."

She shook her head, "While you were in the capsule Piper took me back into the lifepod to have a look at it? The good news is that was the one right next to engineering, I had my personal emergency gear stashed in it. I also grabbed your med-kit, it's on a table in the lounge there. Anyways while I was in the life-pod I checked the status panel. We were in there more than two and a half days. You kept me alive all that time, and Piper said you had a dislocated shoulder and a concussion. Seriously, I owe you."

Despite her words I still didn't think it was that remarkable. It's what I was trained for.

In an attempt to get the conversation away from me and my supposed heroics, I had another question for her from what she'd said earlier. "Who's Jenny? Do you mean the AI in the healing tube?"

She nodded, "Yeah. From Re/Gen? Gen, Jenny? I had a pretty interesting conversation with her. She's trapped in that pod, but if I can integrate the pod's computer core with the ship's data bus we'll be able to interact with her without getting into the pod."

I frowned, "Why would you want to do that? AIs are dangerous, giving her the run of the ship sounds like a recipe for disaster."

"They're no more dangerous than humans," Sarah replied as she rolled her eyes. "The idea that they're inherently dangerous is just Imperium propaganda. Anyways I wouldn't do it without Piper's say-so. As for why I'd want to, Jenny's core is actually more advanced than the ship's. She'd be able to assist the ship's computer, speed up processing, that sort of thing."

It didn't surprise me to hear the ship's computer wasn't great. "Speaking of the ship, do you think it's actually space-worthy? It seems pretty old and run down."

"That's your professional opinion is it?" Sarah asked with a grin.

I shrugged, "The Hammersmith's around eighty years old and this ship seems a lot older. I spent a year on the ISS Hippocrates, now that was a modern ship."

My ship-mate's grin faded, "The Hammersmith was old but she was a good ship. And she had a good crew. Piper said there's some anti-shipping mines floating around out here, left-overs from a local war a few hundred years back. From the condition of the wreck she figures that's what happened to the Hammersmith."

"Anyways," she continued, "The Demeter is old but Piper let me have a look at the engines. She's in good shape. Her interior's a bit messy and there's some wear and tear, but she's a capable little ship. She was designed as a tug or salvage vessel, which means her power-plant and engines are seriously overpowered for a ship this size. She's got a beefy set of tractor-repulser beams too. That all means this little boat could probably tow a ship the size of the Hammersmith. Her jump drive is theoretically capable of reaching Jump-2, but Piper said she doesn't normally go above Jump-0 for her regular freight runs."

"Regular freight runs? At Jump-0?" I frowned. "That sounds like a pretty boring routine."

Sarah shrugged, "More boring than the last two hundred and fifty days spreading 'goodwill'?"

"Good point," I grimaced. The goodwill mission was probably more interesting for the captain and the other folks stationed on the bridge, but for me and most of the crew it was incredibly dull.

"Anyways, this ship's original function was a tug and a salvar. Much as I hate seeing the Hammersmith as salvage, Piper's up in the cockpit figuring out whether or not she can make some money by hauling some of it with us."

That left me with some more uncomfortable feelings. "I was only on the ship for less than a year, you were there a lot longer right? That was your home, and you had friends on board..."

Sarah sighed, "Yeah. I was her chief engineer for five years, I knew about half the crew. I'll raise a glass and say some words for them in private. And if we were in Imperium space, the Navy would have their own salvage vessels picking over the wreck and hauling off whatever could be reused. The rest would be scrapped, melted down, recycled."

"Ok," I said quietly. "I guess I have a lot to learn about being crew on a merchant ship. Assuming Piper decides to take me on."

"She will," Sarah stated confidently.