"Yaaaah!" Lorkis flailed his arms and then clamped both upper hands over his mouth. Both of Nishara’s hearts pounded and she almost dropped her controller. She glanced at him and back to her screen in time to find a new notification pop up above the mini-map: Grishnag obliterated Lorkis.

Everyone else laughed or snickered. Lorkis’s face turned a few shades darker.

"Sorry. That startled me."

"I wasn’t close enough to see it," Kolya said. "What happened?"

"Grishnag drove head-on into my car. My body torpedoed through the windshield, flew over her car, and hit the ground head-first."

"Ouch." Kolya chuckled.

"They’re heading for a warehouse a bit north of you," Donovan said.

"Thanks."

Nishara’s spectator view switched to Kolya’s screen as she headed north. A moment later the opposing team’s vehicles came into visual range with each player’s name hovering above them.

"They’re almost at the drop." Donovan rubbed his hands together.

Kolya plowed through the wire fence around the warehouse, stopped, jumped out, and selected her sniper rifle from the weapons menu. She zoomed in on the three remaining women running toward the warehouse’s huge open door.

A scruffy man carrying a knife bolted around the building’s corner, knocked Cora’s avatar off her feet, and ran toward the vehicles they’d parked nearby.

"What?" Cora stared at her screen. "I just got mugged!"

Everyone laughed.

"He stole nine thousand dollars!" Cora gaped at her screen and finally burst out laughing. "The mugger just drove off in my car!"

"Don’t worry about it." Kolya centered her scope on Cora’s head. A quick tap on the mouse button blew the character’s head off. Cora twitched.

"Gah!"

Kolya smirked and shifted her aim to a pallet of red metal barrels directly behind Grishnag and Zilaka. Both of them turned to run into the warehouse, but Kolya popped a round into one of the barrels. The explosion cooked off the rest and the resulting flames engulfed both characters.

"Uh-oh!" Grishnag staggered away from the flames, but her health dropped to zero and her avatar collapsed into a charred heap. Grish snorted, shrugged, and placed her controller on the table.

Zilaka began firing wildly. Syala gasped and slumped forward, bracing her arms on the table.

"Well, I’m dead." She chuckled and then made a farting sound with her lips. "Guess it’s all up to you, Kolya."

"I’ll see what I can do, then." Kolya lined up another shot and punched a round through Zilaka’s receding back.

"Eep!" Zilaka blinked a few times, shook her head, and laughed. "Well, it’s all over."

Kolya grinned and ran toward the warehouse.

"Yep, not bad at all." Dylan laughed softly. "You pick things up fast."

Kolya grinned as she reached the mission objective and ran back to her car.

"So, what’re we doing for round two?"

***

"This one’s gonna be intense." Dylan grinned. "One team on motorcycles has to deliver a package to the destination while the other team, in fully-armed helicopters, tries to kill them."

"Sounds kinda one-sided." Kolya rubbed her hands together. "Not that I’d have a problem with it if I’m on the helicopter team."

"In the first round, you are, but then the teams swap out for the next round."

Grishnag readied up her character and watched the new guys from the corner of her eye. She’d played this game mode fairly often during the past few months, and the sheer chaos it always turned into never ceased to amuse her.

Dylan and Nishara stared intently at their screens. Cora had stepped out to talk with the science team and run a visual inspection on various ship’s systems. She could keep an eye on everything with her wireless link, but she liked to double-check the settings visually. Their other wives had wandered off to take care of a variety of other tasks, planning to come back later and switch out with Grish and the others if the game was still on. That left Kolya, Donovan, and Lorkis on the opposing team.

The young mekharan held his controller in his upper hands and drummed his lower ones on the table. "I would never have guessed such an outdated game would be so much fun. My people have the latest in full-immersion simulations as entertainment, but nothing like this. I might have to look into the copyrights and whatnot, and see if there’s a way to convert this game into a full sim."

"That ought to be interesting." Dylan chuckled. "Especially the parts where you can pick up hookers."

"Oh, I’ve already done my share of that." Lorkis glanced up, blushed again, and shrugged. "In the simulations I mentioned. Not in real life. Been trying to get the real thing without renting a ‘consort,’ but I’ve had no luck with that."

"Well, if you ever get tired of waiting, a significant number of my people have found employment as sex workers." Grishnag shrugged. "Well, a lot of us have what you might call ‘mainstream’ careers, but do the sex-worker thing as a hobby just because the average zorai libido easily outpaces that of most teenagers."

Dylan nodded emphatically. "I can personally attest to that."

Donovan glanced at him and arched an eyebrow. "Speaking of which, I’ve been wondering how you can even keep up with six wives, especially when one of them is a zorai. Even with those teenage hormones at full-throttle, I’m amazed you can even walk by morning."

"Well, they tend to each other’s needs, as well. It’s a group effort." Dylan grinned. "Plus, I got a prescription for ‘boosters’ a while back, so I can blow several wads in a row and keep on going."

"I gotta get me some of those." Donovan winked at Kolya.

"My species isn’t ruled by teenage hormones as much as humans are, but they do have an effect on us." Lorkis took a few slow breaths and made a visible effort at focusing on his monitor. "Much more of this and I’ll need to retreat to my quarters for some ‘self-maintenance.’"

"Right, back to a whole different kind of action." Kolya laughed softly, leaned over, and nudged Donovan’s shoulder. "You might want to ready up your character."

"Oh!" Donovan pushed a button. "Sorry."

Grish chuckled and turned back to her own screen. The match started and she raised an eyebrow at the dozen clowns carrying baseball bats roaming around the three motorcycles parked in front of her character.

Interesting addition. She approached the nearest bike and four of the clowns charged her. Uh-oh.

Over at the other table, Donovan let out a startled grunt. "Why are there clowns?"

Dylan snickered and Donovan started jabbing buttons in a panic.

"And why are they beating me up?"

"They’re just obstacles. You have to fight them off and get into the helicopter."

Grishnag blasted the nearest clowns with an assault shotgun and climbed onto her motorcycle. A yellow line appeared in her mini-map, showing her the route to the destination four miles away. In the background, Dylan and Nishara mounted their own bikes.

"Okay, I’ve cleared the road for you." Kolya giggled. "Who gets to fly the chopper?"

"Guess I’ll give it a try." Donovan waited for her and Lorkis to get in. "Alright. Um, I have no idea how this works, so …" He started pressing buttons gingerly.

Grish got her bike up to speed and passed by the helicopter just as it rose slowly into the air. It immediately turned sideways and scraped across the highway. Grishnag burst out laughing.

"Uh." Donovan panicked again and started jabbing buttons at random. Kolya slumped over the table and laughed so hard she could barely speak.

"Jesus. Christ. Donovan."

"Oh, um … uh … oh, no." The helicopter rolled upside-down. "Uh, fuck me." The helicopter exploded and killed everyone onboard.

Grishnag laughed even harder as she raced away from the carnage.

An NPC motorcycle shot out from the right and collided with her, sending her flying off her bike. She had just enough time to gasp before she tumbled back toward the pavement and a car slammed into her from behind, sending her cartwheeling into the oncoming lane. She landed on top of a freight truck, bounced across it, fell off the end, and died on impact with another car directly behind the truck. She collapsed into another laughing fit and was dizzy by the time it subsided.

"Moments like these are what make the game worth playing." Dylan smirked -- then he released a high-pitched squeal. A notification of his character’s death popped up on Grishnag’s screen. "I just drove straight into a tree!"

"Bunch of big damn heroes." Kolya giggled and shook her head. Dylan laughed.

"Ain’t we just?"

***

"Okay," Donovan said after his character respawned, "let’s try this again."

Dylan glanced over at their table and found him, Kolya, and Lorkis still trying to regain their composure. Dylan turned back to his screen as Grish caught up with him and Nishara.

"At least we all respawned in our own choppers," Kolya said, pausing to wipe tears from her good eye.

"Without clowns, too." Donovan tossed her a lopsided grin. "That thing with the clowns is too fucked-up for me."

"Clown phobia?"

"Eh, I dunno if it’s a full-on phobia, but clowns have always made my skin crawl." Donovan sucked in another breath and cringed as he flicked the joysticks on his controller. "Augh, I almost flew into an electrical tower!"

"I think I’m getting the hang of this. I’m catching up with ’em."

"Better split up, then, so she doesn’t take us all out with one shot." Grishnag blushed and laughed softly. "I think one embarrassing moment per game is enough for me."

"Hah!" Dylan tried not to laugh himself sick as he remembered the sight of Grish’s character bouncing off one vehicle after another. "For me, life in general is one embarrassing moment after another. Well, it was, before we all met, anyway."

"Hopefully you’re having fewer of those, these days, and have replaced them with frequent orgasms." Grish winked and aimed an air-smooch at him.

"Oh, definitely." He flicked his right hand down to quickly adjust the front of his pants in case his teenage hormones combined with the boosters and the image her comment put in his mind triggered an insta-boner.

Nishara glanced at him, fired off a smoldering smirk, and uncoiled just enough to slide the end of her tail slowly up his leg.

Uh-oh.

Nish eased her tail onto his lap and rubbed the tip over his zipper.

Oh, boy. He grinned and tugged on his collar. Probably should sneak away for a quick hump, anyway, before dinner. Thanks to the boosters, he needed to blast off at least a half-dozen times every day to avoid unpleasant side-effects, and the last time had been before the passengers boarded this morning. He began making plans to slip away with Nishara and Grishnag at the first opportunity.

He stroked Nish’s tail and glanced back up to his screen -- just in time to find a crowd of NPC pedestrians directly in front of him. He gasped as his bike slammed into them, knocking them aside like bowling pins, and then plowed into the building behind them. His character shot off the bike, slammed face-first into the wall, and crumpled to the sidewalk. The motorcycle bounced off the wall, flew over the pedestrians as the survivors picked themselves up, landed in the street, and scraped along the pavement.

The whoosh of a rocket firing nearby caught his attention and he sighed.

"Well … goodbye, cruel world."

The rocket zipped down from the top of his screen and drilled a truck as it swerved around Dylan’s bike. The blast launched the bike straight back to him, and it exploded in his face. Nearby NPCs screamed in terror and ran for cover as his corpse spun into the air and tumbled back down.

"Gotcha!" Kolya giggled.

At the left edge of his screen, an NPC wearing overalls and no shirt bolted in front of an old truck, yelling in a thick hillbilly accent, "Fuuuuuuuck me!" The truck thumped the hillbilly into an intersection, where Nishara’s character ran over him as she tried to escape Kolya’s chopper.

Everyone howled with laughter. Lorkis slumped over, propped his forehead on one hand, and tried to take a breath.

"This is the most -- hoooooaaaaaap!"

Dylan respawned just in time to watch Lorkis’s helicopter plow into a clump of cars and trucks. Its rotor shredded several bystanders before the chopper exploded and set off a chain-reaction of detonating vehicles.

Nishara’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. "Eeeeeeep!"

The blast from an exploding septic truck knocked her sideways and set her character on fire.

"Oh, no, I’m burning!" She stared at the screen and giggled. "Please tell me there’s a river nearby."

Her character died and flopped off the motorcycle.

"Never mind."

"Whoa!" Grish snort-laughed. "I got hit by a flaming tire from one of the cars that just blew up."

"You’ll need to double back and pick up the package," Nishara said once she’d caught her breath. "I dropped it when I died so anticlimactically, and I reappeared too far away to grab it."

"And it’s right in the middle of all those burning cars."

Another whoosh came from the speakers, followed by another explosion. She shrugged as Kolya’s chopper soared over her character’s charred corpse.

"Well, I guess that’s not a problem anymore."

"Wooooo!" Kolya let out another burst of laughter. "Where has this game been all my life?"

***

"As first dates go, that was unique." Donovan grinned as they stepped into the hub connecting the passenger quarters. All six of them had taken a break for dinner before Zilaka, Syala, and Ayastal swapped places with Dylan’s team. Kolya’s team and the new arrivals had continued on for several more hours before they’d had enough.

"It sure was." For all sorts of reasons. Before that explosion had uglified her all those years ago, Kolya hadn’t been interested enough in dating to bother trying it, and afterward, no one else had given her a chance. Until now, at least.

He’s got to be up to something, she told herself again, but what if he isn’t?

She turned and reached out to open her door. In the corner of her eye, Donovan cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.

"No goodnight kiss?"

She froze. Her pulse ramped up a notch as she faced him again. "Uh, well …" She motioned at the left half of her face. "You actually want to kiss this?"

"Why not?" He shook his head, walked up to her, and slipped his arms around her waist. "Like I said during lunch, I think you’re awesome, and fun, and beautiful. I’m actually hoping to go a lot farther than just a kiss, but I’ll settle for that. For now, at least."

Okay, so, maybe he’s a little off. Scar fetishist, maybe. Everything else about him seems just about right. And he seems to be a genuinely nice guy. And we’ve just been having so much fun together. I’m actually glad he insisted on tagging along.

She took a step toward him and tried to keep her breathing steady.

He leaned closer, still smiling, and pulled her toward him. His breath caressed her mouth. Almost on their own, her arms slipped around him and she leaned forward, and their lips met. Her heart pounded and the whole world seemed to fade away. Full awareness returned only when they parted.

This is happening too fast. She sucked in a few deep breaths and clamped her hands onto his shoulders until she was sure she wouldn’t topple over. But you may never meet someone like him again, so shut your sass-hole.

"Before we go any farther," Donovan said softly, "I have to ask … are you on birth control? I didn’t think to take any suppressors before we left."

"N -- never expected I’d need it." She reached over to the comm panel beside her door and fumbled with the buttons. "Uh, Cora?"

"What can I do for you?"

"I don’t want to impose, but would the medical bay be able to synthesize a birth control treatment for me? And some suppressors for Donovan?"

"I had a feeling you might be needing some. Sure, it shouldn’t be a problem. Just go to the med-bay and get yourselves scanned, and I can synthesize anything you need."

Yes! Kolya took another breath. "Thanks. We’re on our way."

She glanced at Donovan in time to catch him doing a fist-pump. She grinned, slipped her hand into his, and led him through the corridors. Cora’s voice came from one of the comm panels along the wall after they’d passed through several hatches.

"The med-bay is the second door on your right."

"Thanks." Kolya stepped through and found herself in a large room with a dozen beds lining the wall on the left and an operating table, diagnostic bed, and an assortment of other equipment along the right. The walls had the same synthetic wood paneling as the rest of the ship. "Hmm. I should also be scanned for STDs and whatnot, just to show that I’m clean. I am, but I shouldn’t expect Donny to just take my word for it."

"It’s okay, I trust you, but if you’re getting scanned for STDs, then I’ll do the same."

"Not a problem at all." Cora had an audible smile in her voice.

"I hope I’m not being a bother." Kolya smiled.

"Not at all. I’m linked wirelessly with the ship’s systems and can perform multiple tasks at once without working up a sweat, metaphorically speaking. For instance, I’m currently monitoring the reactors, jump engines, conventional thrusters, communications, and life support, making minute adjustments where they’re needed, making periodic course corrections, scanning for nearby ships and debris to avoid collisions, and -- most important of all -- having mind-blowing sex with my husband and wives."

"Atta girl!" Kolya giggled.

Donovan whistled and then deadpanned, "I hope all that banging doesn’t knock the ship off course."

Kolya barked out a deafening laugh, snorted, and laughed again.

"No need to worry. I already have safeguards on the navigation system to correct any thruster misfires that might happen if I come too hard."

Kolya had just managed to catch her breath, but now she broke into another giggling fit and had to slump against the nearest bed.

The consoles beside the diagnostic bed lit up.

"If you’ll lay down and remain still, the scan will only take a few minutes. It’s not necessary to remove your clothes, but you can if you want to."

Donovan fired another lascivious grin at Kolya. "I’ll show you mine if you show me yours."

"I, uh -- well, I’m …"

"I’m hoping to see it all anyway. Why not get a head start?" His smile shifted into overdrive and he pulled his shirt off. Kolya froze and stared at him as he kicked his shoes off, unbuckled and unzipped his pants slowly, and let them fall to the floor.

She tried to say something witty. What came out of her mouth was, "Huhhhhh …"

Donovan’s grin broadened even more. He tugged his socks off, tossed them aside, and then pulled his briefs down.

The breath caught in Kolya’s throat. She stared for a few more seconds before shaking herself out of it. Oh, right, gotta show him mine now. She turned her back, pulled her shirt off, and fumbled with the fastening on her pants. Her hands trembled and she had to try four times before she managed to take them off. She took several ragged breaths and pointed a thumb at the clasp on her bra.

"Could you, uh …?"

"Sure." He unhooked the bra. She paused and then slipped it off. She let it fall to the floor, drew in a few more breaths, and pulled her panties off. Finally, she removed her socks and stood there, crossing her arms over her chest.

Oh, that’s brilliant. I’ve taken my clothes off in front of him, and now I’m trying to hide my goods.

"Huh." Donovan brushed his fingers over her right ass cheek and she shivered. "Interesting. This row of puncture wounds looks different from your other scars."

"Yeah, I got those a couple of years ago. Everything else is from farther back than that."

"So, what happened to your ass?"

"Pitchfork."

He burst out laughing. "Seriously?"

"Yep."

"That must be a hell of a story."

She shrugged. "I’ll tell you that one later. Don’t want this to get derailed." She finally managed to drop her arms and turn to face him. He still had that brilliant smile and was already at half-mast.

"You’re in really good shape. Work out a lot?"

"Not in a gym. I was a lot more slender before the accident. Once I started traveling, I found myself getting a lot of exercise. Hiking, climbing, jogging, that sort of thing. Running like hell, a few times. I guess it’s buffed me up a little."

"I like it." He nodded at the bed. "It’ll take a few minutes for the contraceptives to take hold. I’m not sure I can wait much longer."

She grinned and stretched out on the bed. "Better get on with it, then."

"Scan beginning," Cora said.

A ring-shaped apparatus detached from the wall at the head of the bed and traveled along a track in the ceiling, moving slowly from her head to her feet. Kolya kept still and the minutes dragged by. Probably only two or three, but it seemed much longer. Finally, the ring returned to the wall and Cora spoke again.

"Scan complete. Synthesizing contraceptives. Also, you’re free of diseases and in excellent general health, though your heart rate is elevated."

"Can’t imagine why," Kolya said under her breath, and flashed a saucy grin at Donovan. She sat up, hopped off the bed, and waved a hand at it. "It’s all yours."

He took her place and waited.

"Scan beginning. Kolya, the medication will take a few more minutes to finish, and then you can find it in the dispenser at the far end of the room." In the corner, beside one of the consoles, a hard-light display appeared above a slot. "It’s a fast-acting nanotech compound in a skin patch. Just peel the cover off and place it over your lower abdomen. Then give it ten to fifteen minutes to take effect."

"Sounds good. Thanks."

"Then we’ll have to put our clothes back on just to walk back to one of our rooms and get undressed again." Donovan heaved an exaggerated sigh.

"If you can’t wait that long," Cora said, "feel free to do it right here. I’ll switch off the comm panel so you’ll have privacy."

Kolya’s pulse revved up again. Donovan beamed.

"That just made my entire night."

Kolya tried once again to rein herself in. "Mine, too." She let her gaze slide over every centimeter of his smooth skin while the scan continued.

Oh. Yeah.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5: Almost There