Preparing for someone new

It’d been a further five days. The satellite repairs had gone about as smoothly as they possibly could, much to the delight of the odd little puffball birds that had requested the work; with another signature added to the list the crew of the Solar Ascent were making a good showing of humanity’s first mission. Dustin’s misgivings over the battle had settled to a degree as well - he was still prone to bleak moments and spent a chunk of each day staring into the void or trying to practice meditation in hydroponics at Meli’s suggestion - but at least it wasn’t directly impinging on his life with the two women as much. With these thoughts in mind, he stepped out of his bunk room to find the other two partway through breakfast at the long meeting room table.

“Sorry we didn’t wake you captain, but we worked up a bit of an appetite this morning and I needed food” Rye commented, popping another forkful into her mouth. Dustin glanced at the pair of them, noting the damp hair and Meli’s slightly embarrassed ear twitch and smiled. “Glad to see you two are spending some, ahem, quality time together.” That caused the Rabyth to half **** on her breakfast and Meli to cover her mouth to hid a chuckle. Deciding to press his luck, Dustin gestured at Meli’s smaller plate and added “You’ve not got much breakfast love, have you eaten already?” The Velca’s cheeks flushed as he leaned down to kiss her before stepping around the table and repeating the process with Rye. “Seriously though, if you two are having fun I’m glad. I know I’ve not been the best of company recently.” He raised a hand to stifle any reply, ordering his own food from the automat before sitting down at the end of the table between the two women.

“We’ve already gone over this. We all spend time together, and try and spend time with each other separately. Rye’s in heat at the moment still, so I am under no illusions that the two of you spending a night together is going to end any other way.” He paused at that, reflected a moment, then added “to be honest, neither do my nights with either of you. It’s hard to be worried about big philosophical debates with either of you lying next to me.” Rye set her fork down and completely deadpan added “or on top of you, if I recall, captain?” Now it was Dustin’s turn to blush, the woman’s remark reminding him of her rather forthright answer to him explaining his worries to her when they’d had a night alone together.

Meli smiled at her lovers before coughing to get their attention. “While observing interspecies flirtation is fantastic for both my mood, the likelihood of our having a fun afternoon in the ambassador’s quarters - and just plain interesting for my research… We do have a matter to discuss.” Dustin and Rye both turned their eyes to the Velca woman, Dustin trying to cover his embarrassment with professionalism and largely failing. “Right, chief science officer. And that would be…?” Meli sighed, tapping her tablet and bringing up another of the holograms of which she seemed to be so fond during briefings.

“Putting it bluntly, Captain, in around forty-eight Sol hours we will be reaching Feliax space. From there, it’ll be a little under twelve hours to reach their home world - they have quite a closely clustered set of systems, at least jumping in from this direction. We need to do some preparations for our arrival.” Dustin nodded at her words, gesturing for her to continue. “There are a few matters to discuss here. First of all, what we are looking for in our new comms officer. While normally this would be purely your choice captain, I expect that as whoever we select will require their participation in our relationship as part of their agreement to come aboard you will wish for myself and our chief engineer to have our own input. Secondly, I need to instruct you on a few oddities of Feliax culture. And Rye, there’s some engineering matters we will need to attend to on the flight in. I think you’ll probably enjoy what we’ll need to do there. Finally, we need to decide if we are planning our next stopping point before or after we get our new recruit.”

With that, Meli fell silent, glancing at Dustin for input. “Is there a reason for choosing our next destination without our new companion?” he asked, and Rye interjected before Meli had a chance. “Yup. It’ll set her place in the hierarchy, right Meli?” The other woman sighed before nodding and replying. “As Rye states, it’ll be one way that we will indicate to her that she is third in our relationship with you; that’s important for a bunch of reasons I’ll discuss with you when we go over Feliax customs, but there are other factors for making a choice sooner rather than later. It’ll allow us to get underway immediately - Feliax don’t like having ambassadorial ships in orbit of their home planet for longer than is necessary - as well as some probable personal reasons for our recruit. However, she will have a great deal of insight into other species and so that might make for a better decision.”

Dustin mused on the rather cryptic information for a moment then nodded. “To be honest, I’m happier with us choosing and getting underway. It’ll let us see how our new comms chief is going to handle unexpected situations, and I’d rather that during a moment of peace than one of panic. So, the order of business today then - what do we want from our new crew mate, then we’ll cover what Rye needs to work on as she can get on with that while I’m getting my briefing on Feliax culture, and then we’ll discuss our next destination after this over dinner. Any issues with that?” The two women shook their heads, and Meli adjusted the hologram from a planet to a vaguely humanoid outline.

“So, Rye, your input?” She asked, gesturing at the figurine. The bunny girl stared at the ceiling for a moment before glancing back down. “Red fur. I’ve noticed that humans only seem to have a few natural fur - sorry, hair - colours. I’ve got what they call blonde sorted out, you’ve got dark hair, we don’t have anyone with red hair.” Meli nodded, before adding “for my part, I’d prefer her to be around our height. It’d be nice for us all to be able to see eye to eye.” The hologram shrank slightly, and Dustin blinked at that; he’d been expecting a series of mission critical requests from his officers - not what sounded like dating app search requests.

Seeing his confused look, Rye shrugged. “Dusty, they’ll be Feliax. That means a few basics - she’ll be female because of culture, Meli will explain that later. She’ll be really, really good at her job - because they all are amazing communicators. It’s how they’ve still got a seat on the council after all this time. And as far as mission critical stuff goes, all we want is someone that doesn’t overlap too much in their other skills with mine and Meli’s areas, which Meli already knows from our files. So what’s more important to us is that she fits in with the three of us the best.” Dustin started to reply with a query before the bunny girl interrupted him. “She’s going to be fucking you Dusty, because you’re the ambassador and the captain. She’ll want to fuck us, because she’s a Feliax. And you’re committed to this making everyone happy thing and we” - and here she waved at Meli and herself before continuing - “love you for it. But that means we need to find someone that we want to fuck as much as she wants to fuck us.” Dustin nodded at that, before giving Rye an arch look. “You love me, huh?” That earned him a playful punch on the arm from a suddenly beet-coloured bunny girl and another giggle from Meli.