When you're in command of a fast courier your time is not always interesting.

Granted, command is something of a misnomer since there is no crew and the extra space inside the life support system is only there for up to two critical passengers who, if aboard, travel in nanite-managed biostasis, so I couldn't have one of my concubines travelling with me.

Assuming, of course, that I had any, any more. I've been on this assignment for over 2 years and haven't gotten within a month's travel of home. Both of my women should have given birth long ago and I wondered what was happening to my family.

Realize that, for me, those two years feels like less than two months, actually, since I spent most of my flight time in biostasis to increase the endurance of the life support system. The main AI manages the ship for me and awakens me when the jump through hyper is done. There is enough redundancy in the ship that I'm not going to be required unless something that the AI can't handle comes up.

So I am not so much a commander as a set of hands and eyes that can fix things when they break, even if the ship usually goes where I tell it to.

A fast courier does carry two weapons, a mine and a missile, both of which require the ship to deliver them closely. A fast courier's drive systems-- both N-space and HyperSpace-- have been modified by human beings and given capabilities the Confederacy had never consider useful.

My ship can pop in and out of hyper with a level of precision and timing only now making it into more main-stream vessels. I can drop into normal space for less than 20 milliseconds, enough to drop a mine or fire the missile... and stand a chance to make it out before a Sa'arm ship can react.

It got drummed into us, though, that these are only for self-defense, since the cargo-- usually information-- we carry is far more potent a weapon against the Sa'arm.

Even hauling physical mail-- usually as a set of replicator patterns-- is considered a critical part of the war effort. We carry the stuff that can't be easily carried over the hypercomms or would otherwise clog the bandwidth there.

As if human innovations hadn't expanded the bandwidth of the interstellar links to a great degree, there were still plenty of jobs for us couriers to handle.

This could be a very lonely job, but, sleeping through most of it keeps me from moping during the time I spent in transit.

I've spent a lot of time bouncing my way further and further away from the Colony world I had been assigned to, a colony with a bizarre name of Reck. I have no idea who coughed up the name for the system and thought that meeting that person in a dark alley while suitably armed.

All the same I was not all that eager to go "home" given what passed for our Governor. What I wanted to do was move my family to Demeter.

I was awakened on break-out of hyper in Earthat.

This was a first for me-- I had not been within 10 light years of Earth since I had been extracted almost three years before. As a courier I wondered what job I was here for.

Linking in with the AI-- not many of us humans were willing to get upgraded interfaces with the computers, but this job really required me to be tied closely to the ship-board systems-- we made our way into the system now known as Earthat.

Huh? You're more used to the subvocalized communicator? Well, due to the work I would have to do if awakened in deep space, I have been augmented with sensory overrides which provide for a level of virtual reality that is far beyond the efforts made pre-Contact, even if all it does is amplify reality. Having my eyes upgraded with built-in sensors and displays makes it a lot easier to have the various computers present training and recognition data to me.

Some of the side effects included a "gestalt" where the senses of my ship felt like my own skin. Being able to sense E-M radiation directly on my skin provided some interesting sensations.

One reason we tend to sleep in hyperspace is because the texture we feel is... well... pleasant. Not even the AIs can explain why this is.

Due to the small size of my fast courier, I was able to safely drop into the system near the moon. Entering hyper my small footprint meant that I could jump from closer to either a planetary body or a star than any other hyper-capable ship.

Considering that I knew my itinerary for this jump had not included Earth, I figured that we'd been diverted by a hypercomm signal.

My courier, with me providing the "body english", nosed up to the command ship of the Earthat Flottilla.

Disengaging from the ship left me back to being merely human and a bit empty. Arrival has always been a let-down.

I'd gotten my orders through the link, as had my ship. As my ship became dependent upon power delivered from the ship I'd docked with, I was disconnecting myself from the various support gear and peeling off the pressure suit I wore at all times while in flight. A quick run of the cleansing nanos over my skin had me fresh enough in my gray Fleet Auxilliary uniform to not worry about offending anyone down-wind of me.

I saluted the Officer who came to meet me. She returned the salute, and spoke up, saying "Leftenant MacGregor, if you will follow me, Admiral Whyte wants to talk to you."

"Certainly, Lieutenant, though there's nothing I know of that would be of interest to an Admiral, and, considering the kind of ship I fly, I do not see what would motivate one to talk to me."

This woman gave me a smile-- a kind of sad smile-- and told me "Well, that's for her to tell you. I am just your escort, here."

I nodded and shut the fuck up as I followed her through the ship, being deposited in an outer office. Lieutenant von Reiser shook my hand and left me with the receptionist behind the desk.

"Ah, Lieutenant MacGregor, I am Admiral Whyte's secretary, James. She'll be out in a few minutes."

I nodded and took a seat and just had my implants monitor the electronic environment present in the anteroom. There were some portals I could have linked in to, but, without express consent, doing so was considered a faux pas. I did consult my internal processors to keep track of the time.

Admiral Sarah Whyte was certainly far more prompt than any Doctors I had ever gone to, down on Earth, before my extraction. It was less than two minutes when her office door opened and a very pissed-off looking Marine General walked out with an equally tall woman with Admiral's rank tabs. He looked around and spotted me as I had jumped to attention and saluted. At least one of the reflexes implanted during Basic Training still worked and both the General and Admiral returned my salute before the angry Marine stalked out.

Admiral Whyte smiled at me... with the same sad look as the Lieutenant who had escorted me had. I got waved into her office and bid to sit on her couch. She sat at the other end.

"Lieutenant, I have some bad news to impart, a job I would prefer not to have."

I nodded, "Yes, ma'am?"

She sighed. "Somehow, some idiot did not see fit to notify you over a year ago that your home colony world self-destructed."

There is no doubt that this woman did not like to be the bearer of bad news, but, then, in hindsight, I suspected a lot of the other places I had touched didn't have people with the balls this woman had to handle the tough jobs. My own reaction-- it might have been over a year for her, but for me it was less than two months-- was one of staring at her. I gasped out "What happened to my family?"

She shook her head. "Killed in a bombing by Governor while he was trying to suppress the efforts to have him recalled. Both of your concubines as well as your four children were killed because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The world seemed to get distant... and I fell back on the things that could stabilize me, the comfort of the network and AIs that I was used to communing with. In order to do this, I activated my implants and connected up to the network available on this ship and started to sift through the information available about my "home" colony.

When communing via my implants I have learned to disengage most of my emotions and this helped to mute the shock of learning how horrible Governor Richards had actually been. The knowledge of how he had gotten through CAP testing was a shock as well, but there were notes on how to avoid repeating both the mistake of giving someone like that a high score as well as assigning someone like that to the governorship of a colony world.

Being connected provided me with just enough distance from the swirl of my emotions to cushion the realization that I had lost everything I had excepting my work.

And, sometimes, it being able to bury myself in my work that had kept me sane, even before I had volunteered for Confederacy service.

I dropped my level of participation in the computer network enough to pay attention to Admiral Whyte who looked concerned. "Sorry, Admiral, I jumped onto the network to catch up on the details. I've also learned to lean on my ability to tie into the 'net to handle emotional stresses. It'll take me some time for me to fully absorb this, emotionally, since I'm not sure where to go from here. My going back out on another courier run is probably contraindicated."

She nodded, saying "Well, you are due for some down-time, if not over-due. We'd also like to have all of your implants upgraded to the latest spec and re-run your psych once you feel you are back to normal."

I nodded. "What is my next step, ma'am?"

She sighed and sat back. "If I was totally cold-blooded, I'd do as the AIs tell me, by telling you to collect a new stable of concubines in order get more children started by you. Given some of the issues we've had with extractions down there, the Civil Service has been driving the collection of 'extras', women volunteering to let us find them a Confederacy volunteer."

I nodded, like a bobble head doll, to let her know I understood her conflict. "Yes, I can see how the AIs would think that a human relationship may seem fungible, but this is not my idea of having fun."

She continued, adding "We've got an R and R site in the South Pacific that you can spend some time on. Again, the Civil Service has been handling the... uhhh... comfort needs of those in service. I understand the needs but I am not always comfortable with how they deal with them... and the Tribune I talk to about this is not pleased with the necessity, either. At the same time, this is the way some girls are finding themselves a way off the planet... and some of the women, oddly enough, like the situation." She shook her head.

I smiled at her "If it weren't for that fact that there are multiple examples of each exception to every proposed principle of human personality, we humans wouldn't be useful to the Confederacy."

"Oh?" she asked.

I laughed. "It really doesn't take all kinds of people, we simply have all kinds."

My host managed a smirk before continuing on with "Yes, but first we get you to medical for a check up, upgrade of your internal processors and a CAP re-screen." She stood up, a signal that this interview was over. "Check with the ship net to find the med bay, all right?"

I nodded as I stood. She shook my hand and let me to the door.

On my way out I spied a Commander wearing a Fleet Auxilliary uniform like mine, looking completely confused over why she was there. It looked like someone else was in for some bad news.

In medical the tech looked me over and checked his screens to see the work order before he finally spoke to me "I see you'll be under for three hours, Lieutenant. Are there any other edits you'd like to add to the ones I've got here?"

I linked in and read the work order directly. It was as Admiral Whyte had told me and even included the subliminal CAP re-screening. I thought about my body, something I didn't pay as much attention to. I saw no point in any further changes to my body so I shook my head.

"OK, into the tube with you, then..."

Waking up wasn't much of an event. I tested the links and they worked as flawlessly as before and then discovered something I hadn't expected in the system: my new CAP score of 7.7. Going from a 6.5 to an 7.7 was, to my eye, unexpected. When I asked the tech about it I was referred to the on-call doctor.

"Well, Lieutenant, it seems to be a combination of your service... and your ability to link in with the AIs. Add to this that your 7.7 is an average between your high and low phases. We can now screen for both while in a med tube. On your best days you would score an 8.4, you see. When you were originally screened you were having a bad day, hence your 6.5 score, then."

I nodded.

"The AIs have already told me that your... talents... at interfacing have given you a bonus of an extra concubine slot, as long as you let them choose her for you."

I linked back in and dug. Yeah, I understood what they wanted.

A little lesson for y'all, here. It may not make sense to you immediately, but it will. When you have time to thing about this will be much clearer to you.

Let's talk about talents versus skills.

Almost anyone can learn a skill. Anyone can enhance the skills they have. Skills are something learnable.

A talent, however, seems to be something that is in-born. Either you have it or you don't. If you have a talent for something, you can hone skills to bring it to full flower.

Of people able to interface with the network I was one of just a couple of hundred who had talents that made it so natural to do so that it was seamless and this talent made the skills necessary that much easier to accumulate. Many people could accumulate a reasonable level of skill but my talent allowed me to jump beyond such acquired skills.

Just like some pilots are born, not made. Or artists are born, not made, since no one can really teach how to see things.

So the AIs wanted to encourage this trait in the human genome.

One of the women in the "extras" pool had already been allocated to me, sight unseen.

Shocked?

When I dropped out of a tight linkage, yes, I was shocked. That the nanites were told to get busy in her body triggering a drop of two eggs was startling. That she had been both assigned to me and been transferred to my temporary quarters was even more so.

All right, so, for me, it had been over two months since I had been with a woman. I got to my quarters. Part of me was more than merely eager.

Do not ask me how it happened. All I recall is that she was insatiable... and so was I.

Penny and I, the next morning, cuddled and spent time talking. Her 6.4 would not have gotten her off the earth so she took a chance at being collected as an "extra", expecting to be given to someone. It turned out we were more compatible than I had expected.

Within 12 hours of meeting each other, both of her eggs were fertilized and had each found a patch of uterus to attach to... and, topping it off, had both split into twins. I told her she was going to have quadruplets, two sets of twins, a pair of girls and a pair of boys. Her look of incredulity softened as I explained how I could know.

Her head on my shoulder, she asked "What's next?"

I chuckled. "Well, I'm keeping you."

She answered, her voice light, "No shit, hon! So, how many women do I need to share you with?"

Her look of comfort didn't change as I told her "Four more, but, with a group so large, maybe one of them should be male."

Penny's head settled again and her hand toyed with my chest hair for a minute or so before she answered "I dunno. I'm not sure I want another man around."

"Oh?" I asked, "Do you prefer women?"

She nodded "I used to. I think the damned nanites had something to do with stirring me up yesterday, but, even so, I like you. The thought of any other men leaves me cold."

It was my turn to nod. "All right, so maybe we need to pick 'em together."

"Yes, but we need at least one, if not two, women who are mostly het, just to keep your brains fucked out. I have no problem having your babies but I will also want help in raising them."

I nodded as we cuddled and she faded out.

While she slept on my shoulder I linked back in to find an AI that wanted to talk to me about Penny, asking what I wanted done via the med section for her. She sure did not need much help in body shape but I did want her able to communicate like I could.

The next day included popping Penny into a med tube for augmentation, and, at my request, a subliminal CAP re-screening.

Getting Penny back with a 6.7 CAP was not much of a surprise but the AIs apparently wanted her to carry the children to term, so she wasn't being forced to put off having children for two years.

Between us we were looking for six people to "staff" our shared harem. Her preferences for women had her pick two women who were, for the most part, lesbians, with little to no interest in a man.

Penny's pair, Lee and Loni, expressed a preference for artificial insemination, which was not ruled out.

My part of the harem had a pair of young women I got from the "extra" pool... and they were, as we found, bisexual. Bobbi and Melinda had no problem with me, either, and ended up with the job of getting a condom full of my spend into first Lee and then Loni.

Balancing my pair of teens was an older woman of forty-- though you would not know it after she went through enhancement and augmentation-- who brought three children with her and another woman of thirty who, when she was allowed to bring her twin girls, ecstatic to not have to go home to her husband. Both Cheryl and Toni got comfortable with the situation as we were transferred to a kilopod transport.

Before leaving Earthat, I got my new orders.

Well, my days as a fast courier were over, I was expected to settle down and make as many children as I could.

I was to encourage my children to be good at linking to the AIs and other systems on the colony world. The ability to link in has, by now, become a critical talent. And no level of skill can top a talent for the work.

That was the good news.

The bad news?

I had to do all of this while holding down the job of Governor.