-chapter 53, Phanon-
It was just another day, in space. I already scanned every planet in the vicinity for the others, found nothing, as usual. The ship was cruising through space on autopilot. Kitty was tending to her garden, And Zari, Zari was relaxing by the pool in this gorgeous two piece black bikini. And I was watching her like a weirdo questioning myself over and over why I didn't want to cheat on Kitty when I was just going to leave her the moment Phoebe showed up anyway? We weren't even married she was basically just my girlfriend. Not even that really since I never intended to marry her she was more just a friend, with amazing, curvy benefits, surely there was nothing wrong with Zari being such a friend as well?
"What are you looking at?" Kitty asked as she snuck up behind me.
"I thought you were in your garden?" I nervously replied.
"I wanted to check on you since you're usually done scanning planets by now. I was thinking maybe we could head back to our room and have some fun. I can see Zari in there, I know you're horny, and I'm right here and willing to take care of you." Kitty said.
"Beep." The ships computer went. "Incoming message."
"Who the heck is messaging us, we're in the middle of nowhere." I said.
"Maybe it's that narobian prince with my money he was supposed to send me two weeks ago." Kitty said.
"Eheheh, I doubt that, let's go check this out anyway." I replied.
I headed over to the bridge, she followed me there. Surprisingly the message was from that blonde I saw in my dream a while back, which I had now come to realize, apparently wasn't a dream.
"I need your help, they're after me." She said.
"The hell? You're not supposed to be real." I replied.
"What do you mean Cj? Who is she?" Kitty asked.
"I honestly don't know, she never gave me a name." I said.
"Just let me on board, please, I gotta destroy this ship before they track it." She said.
"Ok, fine, but you have a lot of explaining to do." I said as I pressed the button to beam her aboard.
"Thankyou." She replied as she promptly set her small ship to self-destruct, it exploded a few seconds after she arrived.
We both went to see her in the cargo bay.
"Ok, like I said you have some explaining to do, who are you?" I asked.
"786564."
"That's a number." I said.
"I'm a clone. Clone 786564." She replied.
"A clone of who, some random blonde chick?" I asked.
"I was created by the Phanon corporation to be as appealing to your species as possible." She replied. "They sent me to mate with you so they could have a child with your DNA so they could study it."
"You had sex with her?" Kitty asked.
"Not willingly." I replied. "So you're pregnant?"
"No, they took the baby out of me after I was pregnant for just a month, then they put him in a tank to watch it develop." She replied. "He opened his eyes for the first time just a week ago and they're going to run several tests on him and then they're going to kill him. They already tried to kill me, I escaped, and now, here I am."
"So you want me to help you rescue our son which I've personally never met, never even knew about until now, and never even wanted to have with you in the first place?" I said.
"YOU HAD A CHILD WITH HER?!" Kitty angrily exclaimed.
"Kitty, I was unconscious, I thought it was all a freaking dream until now. I don't even remember having sex with her." I explained.
"That means then, that you raped my boyfriend." Kitty realized.
"That might be stretching it a bit." I said.
"No, I saw that U.S.C sexual conduct video five times, she raped you." Kitty insisted.
"Quit calling it that." I said.
"Can I kill her?" Kitty asked.
"No, she was just following orders, Phanon is the real target here." I said.
"Then let's mess them up." Kitty replied.
"I don't know how." I said. "Where would we even begin to look? And this ship isn't built for combat. We get a single class 3 fighter on our ass we're screwed. Never mind that a corporation with that kind of capability probably has fleets of them."
"I can help you with their location." 786564 said.
"Look, you're obviously pretty courageous if you managed to escape from them on your own, but listen, we're on our own mission out here, maybe when we get our group back together we'll help you, but right now, we're kind of short staffed. You can stay here if you want, we have empty rooms but.
"Our son." She said.
"There's not a damned thing we can do." I said.
"But they said you're immortal." She said.
"I can live forever, what bullets will do to me has never been tested before and it's not something I want to find out." I replied. "And for the record it wouldn't pass to our son anyway, so your Phanon Corporation is wasting its time, he's just going to grow old and die, like you while my group and I stay the same.
"No, that's not true." She said. "While I was pregnant they found digital cells in my blood as well as his."
"So you're saying I made you immortal too?" I asked.
"Then why didn't, Aranea? I guess it must not have progressed enough by then." I thought out loud.
"That's why they want to kill me and your son, otherwise they would just wipe my memory and send me out to the next target.
"And they can get away with killing you and other clones?" I asked.
"Yes, I'm legally not human nor an independent life form. They payed for my creation and therefore have the right to terminate me at any time." She replied.
"Well that's a bunch of crap." I said. "Why don't you stay here, just pick an empty bedroom on deck 3, 4 or 5.
"We have to save our son." She said.
"Why didn't you save him during your escape?" I asked.
"I didn't have the time." She replied.
I stared at the floor for a moment, unsure of what to do, it had been nearly 40 years since I had seen combat, I still had an arsenal onboard the ship, as well as all the weapons stored in the digivice, but without Phoebe we were way undermanned for this kind of mission.
"The way I see things, you should just be thankful you got away and call it quits. I don't really want an entire megacorporation trying to blow me out of the sky when I'm still looking for my baby girl. Am I am really, not in the mood to be a father again, especially for a child I'm technically not responsible for. Lady I don't even know you, your name is a freaking number." I said.
"We'll let you stay until we have to stop for supplies again, and then you're on your own." Kitty added.
"Kitty, be nice, she made one hell of an escape to get here." I said.
"BEEP! Incoming message." The ships computer went.
"How many girls raped you?" Kitty asked.
"Shut up and stop calling it that." I replied. "Show her to a room I'll see what this is about."
"Ok." Kitty replied.
-A few minutes later-
" Good afternoon this is agent Michael Waters from the Phanon corporation, we have reason to believe one of our escaped test subjects may have tried to contact you. " The message played as a small transport ship, think space cargovan, hovered outside the cockpit glass.
"Why would that be?" I replied.
"Said subject accessed your information from our database." "Michael Waters" replied.
"Information which happened to include our exact location in space?" I replied.
"I am not at liberty to discuss specific details, do you have her or not?" "Michael Waters" replied, despite the obvious.
"Yeah we have her, what's this she's saying about you all at Phanon wanting to murder her?" I replied, not seeing any point in stalling.
"The subject may be experiencing psychotic hallucinations as side-effects of the tests being performed on her." "Michael Waters" explained from his script.
"MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM ACTIVATED." The computer said as the frontal missile defense turret deployed, it was basically like a CIWS system, a small 2500 Kilowatt plasmatic gattling gun fast enough to shoot down missiles. Standard protection for ships of this class, but pretty useless against anything larger than, a small transport. It simply wasn't powerful enough to penetrate the shields of a few class 3 fighters or anything larger. You'd think laser gattlings wouldn't make any sense, but actually with the heat the plasma shots generate, it's faster and lighter to have multiple barrels than one large, well thermally insulated one. The enemy of laser weapons is heat, I could actually set these things to run at 3500 kilowatts if I wanted to overclock them, and enable them to damage class 3s, but then there'd be a risk of melting the barrels, and once that happens, the entire weapon could spontaneously explode. The U.S.C standard code for these is 2535-10PG. Though the U.S.C itself doesn't actually use these too often, they prefer 3045-10PGs, something that can put more of a dent in fighters.
Anyway, the turret turned towards the transport which attempted to outmaneuver it, which was a mistake because it wouldn't have fired if he stayed in front of the bridge, he made it a fair distance away but the turret opened fire and after just a few seconds the poorly shielded ship exploded in the distance. All the aiming is done by computer and it's accurate enough to shoot missiles out of the air, which was really it's intended purpose, but it doesn't know the difference between incoming missiles and smaller ships which don't transmit a specific signal at a specific frequency. It also won't fire at angles that could possibly hit the ship, though it will point at the target and wait until it has a more favorable angle. It could be controlled completely manually, or you could select targets manually, but unless the ai was blinded it was generally a bad idea. That said it still had to be activated manually.
"Blondie must have found the remote command center." I muttered.
There were controls for the turret up here in the bridge as well as a second auxiliary station near the center of the ship in case the bridge was compromised. Which was a high possibility during a pirate attack.
"So what was the message about?" Kitty asked as she entered the bridge.
"You didn't lock her in the room did you?" I asked.
"I was supposed to?" Kitty replied.
"Go get her she's in the Turret control room." I said.
"So that's what that explosion was." She said as she walked out.
"Yeah that's what that explosion was." I mockingly replied.
-a few minutes later-
"Why did Mr. Waters have to die?" I asked.
"He worked for Phanon, he was after me. And he was just another clone, so who cares?" 786564 replied.
"You realize they're tracking us and have reason to come after us now?" I said.
"I can keep them from tracking you." 786564 replied.
"Really?" I replied.
"I know where all their trackers are, I put them in myself." 786564 replied.
"Son of a bitch." I said.
"What are we going to do?" Kitty asked.
"Get her to remove all the trackers, we'll go into hyperspace, ditch Phanon." I said.
"Ok." Kitty replied.
"You should have just let me kill her." Kitty said once our current problem left the room.
"If it wasn't for the fact that Phanon could be here with a fleet of fighters any minute, I'd let you." I said. "Once we come out of hyperspace, we're kicking her ass off at the first service station we come across."
"You better." Kitty said.
"Why don't you follow her and make sure she doesn't plant a bomb or something?" I asked.
"Oh right ok." Kitty agreed.
I headed back down to the pool room to check on Zari.
"Hey something is going on." I said as she layed there, relaxing, listening to music.
"What's going on?" She asked.
"Some random blonde showed up, claimed she had a child with me, murdered a Phanon agent, and now I'm pretty sure Phanon is after us. "
"As in the cloning and bioweapons manufacturing company?" Zari asked.
"You've heard of them?" I asked.
"The Zelusian army occasionally deals with them. I've listened to some of their crazier proposals." Zari said.
"How much of a threat are they?" I asked.
"Well if you pissed them off that much they might send mercenaries after us." Zari replied.
"So who's this blonde chick?" Zari asked.
"Um, her name is some kind of number I forgot already." I replied.
"Oh she's a clone then?" Zari asked.
"Yeah, she keeps saying Phanon wants to murder her." I replied. "And our son apparently, but I don't even remember sleeping with her, so why should I care."
"Oh, I get it now, they probably sent her to mate with you a while back so they could study the resulting child." Zari said. "Does Kitty know?"
"Yeah, something like that, and yes she knows, but she's more pissed at her than me, I don't even remember the damned sex." I said.
"They have been known to resort to rape if the target is uncooperative." Zari said.
"It wasn't rape, dammit not you too." I replied.
"Did you consent?" Zari asked.
"No." I replied.
"Then it was rape." Zari replied.
"Do you have to call it that. that sounds, way worse than it actually is." I replied.
"Yeah, well anyway, that's why we never dealt with them very often, not the nicest company." Zari continued. "They have more clones than actual employees, and they abuse their clones to no end. They kill hundreds of them a month, often using them to test dangerous live munitions and things or other jobs they feel are too dangerous for an actual person, per se. If they weren't using clones they'd be considered genocidal maniacs and there's at least half a dozen government agencies trying to put laws in place make them stop."
"It'll be allright, we've both seen worse before." Zari said.
"I hope so, we're really not in much of a position to be fighting." I said.
"So what's Kitty up to?" Zari asked.
"She's following the blonde around, making sure she doesn't plant a bomb or something while she's supposed to be removing the bugs she planted months ago that allow Phanon to track us."
"Not a good time for some fun is it?" Zari asked.
"Considering Phanon could arrive with a fleet of fighters any minute, no." I replied.
"Besides, I can't cheat on Kitty, it's strange you know? I don't have the same feelings for her as I do for Phoebe, but she deserves better than that." I said.
"We can keep secrets from Kitty." Zari replied.
"Yeah I know, but, Phoebe will use them as ammo as soon as she comes back and they start fighting again." I said.
"Still holding out for her huh?" Zari asked.
"I have too, you know that, I have to believe that one day we'll see our son and daughter again."
"What about your son with this clone?" She asked.
"If I never seen him, he doesn't exist. Screw that noise I'm tired of being forced into things. I mean yeah, Phoebe basically did the same thing to me almost, but I loved her, I can't even so much as remember this chick's name. I was basically forced to marry Aranea and it worked out ok, but I'm not going to be a father again just cause some asshat corporation decided my DNA was valuable. No more marriages, no more kids, this is all going to be tough enough to explain to Phoebe as is." I replied.
"Well, if you ever get tired of Kitty before we find Phoebe you know where my room is." Zari said with a wink.
"All too well." I said before walking away. " You might want to get changed."
"What you don't like it?" Zari asked.
"No, I love it, but Phanon doesn't deserve to see you looking that good. They might decide to clone you."
She laughed as I left the room, feeling like I had to get out of there before I could no longer resist her charms, and also somewhat concerned that Kitty might have messed up again.
I found them on deck 5, going through our bedroom. Surprisingly, Kitty was competently watching over her. She was pulling little, button sized devices out of areas we never would have thought to look, such as behind the dresser and inside the wall trim in the hallway.
"How many more are left?" I asked.
"3, just three." She said.
"Ok, I'm going to go prepare the ship to go into hyperspace." I replied. "As soon as she's done I want her locked in her room."
"With pleasure." Kitty agreed.
"Oh come on really? " She complained.
"You can't be trusted." I replied before I walked away.
I headed to the bridge, and set the ship to hyperspace jump back into familiar U.S.C space, and then waited quietly while the jump drive was charging up. The entire ship shook violently as it entered hyperspace through a self-generated rift, which we were in for about ten seconds before we ended up on the other side, right outside a familiar service station, which was good because then we could be rid of her more quickly, and also because hyperspace jumps use up a hell of a lot of fuel rods.
As is protocol, I immediately requested docking permission from them, permission was granted, which is normal unless the station is full or the ship ends up on some sort of blacklist, codes were then transmitted from the station to the autopilot system which allowed it to start taxing the ship into port. These stations weren't just a place to get more fuel, they were also entire floating cities. Some were larger than others. This one was called Paxton 2, after the original terrestrial settlement located on the nearby planet. A fairly common occurrence.
The ship found its way into port, walkways and docking clamps were extended and then we were safe to leave the ship and enter the station without needing any space suits or anything. While docked, the ships water supply was also replenished and batteries were recharged.
Most stations are built with very similar layouts, the walkway attached to your ship will converge with other walkways, and at the end of the main walkway some type of fuel vendor is always the first thing you will see, where you can order more fuel rods and have them carted directly onto your ship, or if you have a smaller ship to its respective hanger bay. Around that there's usually a few fast food type restaurants which vary wildly by location, most of which will be native to whatever planet is nearby, but there are some interplanetary chains. Further away from the entry point there will be assorted shops, hotels, and slightly fancier restaurants, and at the farthest point you start getting into the fanciest restaurants,5 star hotels, and high end shops. The residential and industrial districts are usually on a separate level and are rarely seen by anyone but the residents, with some stations going so far as to make them off limits to outsiders. Depending on the station, there could be a variety of means of transport from personal cars or hovercraft, to trains, to powered walkways, or various combinations of systems.
Before we even entered the station, Kitty, Zari, and I got together to discuss what to do with our recent problem.
"We have to ditch her here, somehow." I said.
"That could be hard without making a scene." Zari said.
"I got it." I said. "We'll take her to a restaurant and then we'll all leave without paying."
"That's just mean." Zari said.
"Well she can follow us wherever we go, we have to find somewhere to scrape her off." I replied. "And that would give us enough time to get the fuel delivered to the ship so we could get out of here."
"Why are you so eager to get rid of her?" Zari asked.
"She murdered a Phanon agent and pissed them off, she's nothing but trouble. So unless you want to get dragged into a war with Phanon, it's probably wise to just leave her here." I said.
"One second thought, I'll take her, you two go pretend to do your own thing, that way it's less suspicious when I say I have to go to the bathroom or something." I said.
"You'll take her alone?" Zari said.
"Yeah, what, nothing wrong with trying to get to know the mother of my supposed child." I said. "Allright let's do this."
-about forty minutes later-
"So this is like a date?" She asked as I sat across from her at the table of one of the fancier restaurants we could find.
"How do you know what that is?" I asked.
"Cerebral implants, every clone gets a basic set of knowledge, in addition to whatever we need to fulfill our tasks." She replied. "Look thanks for taking me in, I know this is a lot, but, you're really the only one I know outside of Phanon, and even if we can't save our son, I'm just."
"Enough! You murdered one of their agents, we can't just let you go around trying to drag us into a war with Phanon. I'm sorry, but, I have to use the restroom." I interrupted.
"Don't do it, please, I won't murder anyone again, I promise. I have nowhere to go." She replied.
"I'm sorry, but, Kitty will probably rearrange my face if I walk out of here with you." I said. "You're lucky we're leaving you alive, we'll just leave it at that. Here's some money for the tab, DO NOT FOLLOW ME OUT."
She started to cry, I just left before anyone could see my face. It wasn't easy, but I had other things to think about. I met Kitty and Zari outside and we returned to our ship together, and basically got the hell out of there. Hoping we would never see her again. Too tight on funds to simply jump back into Zelusian space, we headed in a different direction to search for Phoebe and the others.
-Later, on the bridge-
"Thank god we got rid of her." I said.
"I barely knew her , but it seemed like she was nothing but trouble." Zari agreed. "Anyway, did you see the news there? There's some kind of mind control waves going around, infecting entire planets, but they can't find the source."
"Ok that's a thing?" I asked.
"Well the zelusian army has been trying to develop mind control weapons for some time, but I haven't heard anything about them being used, or stolen, or even functional." Zari explained.
"Do you think it could be Phoebe?" Zari asked.
"No, she hated controlling people's minds." I said. "Plus she doesn't have that kind of power."
"Maybe Phanon made a new toy?" I asked.
"In U.S.C space?" Zari asked.
"Well who else would they test it on?" I asked.
"Phanon doesn't even work on stuff like that." Zari replied. "They're strictly cloning and bio-genetics."
"I hope we don't get hit." Kitty said.
"It only seems to be targeting planets." Zari said. "Not ships in flight."
"I'm going to go take a nap, following her around made me tired." Kitty said.
"Ok you go do that." I replied.
"You should come with me." Kitty insisted.
"I'm not tired." I replied. "Then again it's going to be a few hours before we're in an area that hasn't already been looked through."
"Yeah" She replied.
"Or do you want to have some fun in the pool?" I asked.
"No!" She cringed. "Never again."
"I will never understand what you have against water, but ok." I replied.
"Don't you ever take a shower?" Zari asked.
"Nope she just goes into the digivice and it instantly cleans her, but since she learned how to digivolve she learned she could clean herself instantly that way too." I replied.
"Well it works." Kitty replied.
"Thankfully." I replied. "Or else we would be forcing you to take a shower."
"You mean you would try." Kitty said.
"Nah I think between Zari and I we could probably force you in there." I replied.
"Nuh-uh." Kitty replied.
"I'm starting to wonder what lilithmon would look like in a bikini." I said.
"Never going to happen." Kitty replied.
"Oh come on, you don't even have to get in the water." I said.
"It makes me sick just looking at it." Kitty replied.
"Oh really?" I replied.
"Yes, so if you don't mind, I'm going to go take a nap now, you can join me if you want, or you could stay out here and fool around with Zari." She said.
"Wait what?" I asked.
"You heard me, you can fool around with her if you want, just remember that I'm here too." Kitty said.
"You want to change into your bikini again?" I asked Zari.
"Go with her you weirdo." Zari said. "Maybe some other time."
"Why? What you got going on?" I asked.
"Nothing, I just wasn't ready for it." Zari said.
"Can he come by my room tonight?" Zari asked Kitty.
"If he isn't asleep yeah." Kitty replied.
"Ok, come by then." Zari said before kissing me.
"Ok." I replied as I started to follow Kitty back to our room.
"Are you sure you're ok with that?" I asked her.
"Maybe Phoebe won't want you if you sleep around a lot." Kitty said. "Then you can be mine."
"That's a weird way to go about that, but, yeah I guess that would be true." I replied. "Though I think she's smart enough to see right through that and she probably won't care as long as I stop when we find her again she's understanding like that, and she knows she can trust me."
"Well then maybe I won't let you see Zari tonight." I said.
"But you already agreed that I would." I replied.
"RRRRR" She cutely growled.
"Oh relax Kitty, why don't you digivolve and get your clothes off, right now I just want to fuck my little black-winged angel." I said.
She replied with a gasp before we started to make out.
And so the fun began.
I didn't make it to Zari's that night, but I saw her relaxing by the pool once again the next day, and I went for it.
"Admiral Linerman you're under arrest for, being an enemy admiral." I said.
"What? But you're not even with the U.S.C anymore." She replied.
"It's a citizen's arrest." I replied.
"Now we have to make sure you aren't carrying any weapons." I said as I proceeded to unhook her bikini top.
"Oh it's this kind of arrest." Zari realized.
"What you thought I was being serious?" I asked as her top fell to the floor.
"Almost except you're being so terrible at this I could stop you at any time." Zari replied.
"Yeah well, you're family now, you're safe here. And this is cause I couldn't make it last night and I apologize." I replied before we started to make out.
"Why couldn't you make it?" She asked.
"Kitty wore me out, I fell asleep." I replied.
"Oh, ok." She replied.
"Like I said I'm sorry." I replied.
"It's fine as long as you're here now." She said.
"Allright, now we have to continue my inspection." I said as I stuck my face between her breasts.
Then I very thoroughly inspected her for weapons.
-meanwhile-
Phoebe was busy tracking us and on her way to Zelusian space. Where she witnessed a transport ship get intercepted by Zari's old battlegroup. Zari's name was in the thoughts of many of the crew and quickly came up on her computer. So the fleet very quickly had her full attention, where she discovered what Zari had been up too, where she went and what ship we had. Though without knowing we had jumped back into U.S.C space, she had a long way to go.
Saphira was about to enter space as well, onboard a prototype spaceship constructed by the Atlantis-like society she discovered, along with a team of scientist. They were an interesting race of sapient jellyfish-like people with partially transparent skin whose craft was constructed like a giant fish tank. This worked out fine for Saphira, but would've been death for anyone else. They all figured she was from space so it would only be right for her to accompany them. They also believed that all planets were aquatic like theirs, they had no concept of different bodies of water such as oceans or lakes, so they were in for a surprise.
IceLeomon was enjoying being king, and not much else really, he was happy just staying where he was, and the civilization he found wasn't particularly interested in space travel anyway.
Henry went from going after slavers to going after sex traffickers, to occupy his time while some scouts of his tried to get a lead on where Phoebe and I were. The U.S.C were still secretly backing him and he was making quite a name for himself, a lot of Black Sun Pirates wanted him dead. A lot of ex-slaves saw him as a sort of messiah. Through the U.S.C he eventually found out about my career as a captain, and what planet I had retired to, but not where I went after that. Like me he found absolutely nothing on Phoebe.
Unfortunately, we weren't done with 48932 or whatever her number was yet, she used her charms and "natural" talents to seduce some random guy and steal his ship, and was now seeking us out using a single tracking chip she "forgot" to mention.
With a smaller, much faster ship, basically an obsolete, demilitarized two-seat space fighter, like many small civilian ships, she caught up with us a few days later and snuck on board when we were all asleep, removing the tracking chip for good to ensure Phanon wouldn't ruin her plans, which she hadn't fully thought out yet.
As the days went on I had many lovemaking experiences with both Zari and Kitty, things got really wild then things kind of burned out and we went back to just being friends and hanging out except Kitty and I still shared a room and she was occasionally possessive of me, when she wanted to be or whenever she felt I was spending too much time with Zari. Looking for something other than sex to pass the time, we started to watch a lot of intergalactic tv, then Zari thought we were all being too lazy and developed an exercise routine. I could have let my pokémon out, but the thing is they weren't made immortal like the rest of us were, every minute I let them out they would age slightly, which would eventually lead to their deaths as we had no access to revives or pokémon centers that could reset their age, as a result, they don't even remember this entire adventure. Phoebe didn't even have her pokémon with her as she left them on the bus prior to our encounter with the portal machine. We'd have to time travel just to get her pokémon back.
Anyway, Zari and I couldn't get Kitty to go anywhere near the pool, so that's where we would go if I wanted to be alone with her for a while. If Phoebe was there it would have been paradise. Even with two amazing babes to keep me company, my heart still longed for her. I didn't really feel that guilty, because I was halfway assuming she'd have sexual partners of her own, and I was more than willing to forgive her if she was willing to forgive me. And if not, that was fine too, getting closure was the most important thing. Then I could move on, then I could commit to marrying Kitty or Zari, or both, if that was a possibility.