Chapter 23
The hum of the measurement drone died away. Looking up from his datapad, the requisitions officer peered over, tapped the drone, and sighed. “Are you sucking in?”
“Yeah, sorry,” laughed Estelle, letting the top of her stomach relax out another inch or two. “Old habit.”
“Well, unless you plan to spend a lot less time as stuffed as a holiday space-turkey, I’d recommend you let me get a more realistic reading.”
“Maybe I should’ve eaten a big meal before coming in here, for better effect.”
The officer typed at his pad. “I was unaware there were still hours in the day when you haven’t recently eaten a big meal.”
“Are you this crabby with everyone who comes in, or only superior officers?”
“Your whole crew is constantly outgrowing whatever the tailoring AI and I can come up with. We don’t have much fabric left.” His demeanor faltered. “And you’ve made me late for lunch.”
This was something Estelle could sympathize with. “There was some work to do in stellar cartography. Anomalies up ahead, apparently. And…I got kind of a slow start this morning.” So had Lucine, some of whose honeyed lipstick was still on Estelle’s neck.
“I know. So. 56 units at the waist. Out to 63 where it…broadens. And that’s without lunch in it, I understand. About how much do you weigh now, captain?”
“Oh, I haven’t touched the bio-pak since three hundred. But that was months ago and we’re probably well beyond that. I’m trying not to think about numbers for a while.”
She looked well beyond it in the mirror. The mass of her belly had taken over her frame. Each thigh was now as thick as her waist had once been, but her legs looked almost slender beneath her stomach’s girth. Her breasts, stuffed into a long-outgrown bra and each bigger than her head, could only rest atop its upper swell. Unlike so many others aboard, whose weight had given them hips or butts or hourglass figures, Estelle stored almost everything out front.
“58 units at the bust,” the officer continued, kneeling. “I can get you the new brassiere by tomorrow, but for the full uniform…you may want to prepare yourself for something that shows a little more skin.”
“Do what you can. Doesn’t have to be perfect. Just something I can squeeze into for ceremonies and such. The robe’s been comfy enough for the rest.”
“And how long will the robe last, at this rate?”
She set her hands on her hips and pushed her gut at his face. “Just give me the swimsuit I came in for. And then go eat your lunch.”
Wrapped in her new swimsuit, Estelle rode the turbolift to the lido deck. The fabric shortage had made for a fairly skimpy string two-piece, but it was surprisingly supportive and much comfier than the metal one the courtesans had put her in. The bottoms were her favorite shade of blue, though their front was generally concealed beneath the roll of her belly.
Her communicator bleeped. She had to dig it out from her cleavage. “Go ahead.”
“Captain,” said Starling, “you wished to be notified when we entered the flux anomaly.”
She’d forgotten that. “Any signs of trouble?”
“I do not detect any forces that would endanger the ship’s systems or hull integrity. But the dimensional barriers in this region are weak and we may experience minor temporal fluctuations as a result.”
“Acknowledged. I’ll be poolside.”
A groan and an echoing belch welcomed her to the lido deck. She found her away-team at the pool, stretched out in lounge chairs or drifting in the shallow end, surrounded by plates and clutching bloated stomachs. They had started without her.
“You started without me,” she gasped.
“Relax, captain,” said Maura, peering over her sunglasses. “There’s—huck—plenty left. And if you don’t get enough, we’ll find a way to make it up to you.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a promise.” Maura rolled over on her towel and reached for her drink. Her plump backside, clad only in a thong, flattened out with a mesmerizing ripple.
Estelle tried a lounge chair, but the sound it made beneath her weight wasn’t encouraging. “I think this might be the first time I’ve seen you two without your armor,” she mused, stepping into the pool.
Zora sat up. “It, uh, doesn’t fit anymore.” It wasn’t difficult to see why. Her posterior flowed across the slats of the chair and over the edge on both sides and her stomach bunched up into three thick rolls on her lap. She didn’t seem at all ashamed, though, and gratefully accepted another tupo-berry margarita from the service arm.
Another arm stretched out and resumed rubbing lotion along Maura’s back. Her wings, though folded, seemed somehow thicker, too, or perhaps shorter. Either way, it began to explain why Estelle wasn’t seeing the mercenaries take to the air as often.
Lucine, however, seemed to be spending more time in the air than usual. She tended to levitate down the longer corridors rather than walk and preferred to float up from chairs rather than stand. Estelle joined her at a bench in the shallow end. Much of Lucine’s body above water still looked remarkably slim, save for a fuller face. Everything below the water, though, had expanded considerably. Her bottom half splayed across the bench and when she rose to grab another salty snack she revealed her enormous, quaggy thighs. Even squashed together they were twice the width of her shoulders. Several of the glowing gems had been buried beneath flesh.
Straya lay on a chair, letting her suit’s abdominal compartment hang open in the humid, artificially tropical air. She sported a sizable belly of her own, but it seemed to have grown sideways rather than simply forward, until she was almost more lovehandle than stomach. Every component of her suit had been replaced one piece at a time. Even the helmet had been rebuilt to accommodate her second chin.
She was clearly enjoying the glow after a sizable meal—the earlier groaning had been hers—and was loosening her pelvic components to relieve more pressure. Csilla sat beside her, providing an attentive belly rub. The princess had still managed to resist the ship’s temptations. Her belly looked a little less toned and her bosom sagged with just a bit more fullness, but beside the rest of them she looked almost malnourished. She was, however, sipping at a rather tall milkshake.
Io floated past Estelle on a raft. Io’s humanoid features had grown—especially her pillowy upper arms and a genuinely ponderous chin-roll—but it was her tentacles that seemed to have thickened the most. Her midsection had a much greater circumference. And Estelle couldn’t be certain, but Io seemed to have grown taller.
A service arm brought Estelle a tray and puttered off to help Zora paint her toenails. She slowly drank off a warp-fuel cocktail, relaxed back, and watched Lucine telekinetically towel herself off. The communicator bleeped again. “Go ahead,” she sighed, setting the empty glass aside.
“Captain,” said Starling, “you wished to be notified when we entered the flux anomaly.”
“Yeah, you—” She looked down. Her glass was full again. Even the solar-panel umbrella she’d pulled out was back. “Temporal fluctuations. Right. Got it.”
She took a long sip from the cocktail. When she’d put it down, there was a second, untouched tray of continuum-shifted cheesecake beside the first. They were identical in every way, though mirrored.
Twice as much continuum-shifted cheesecake. “I could get used to this,” she murmured, loosening her swimsuit bottoms in anticipation.
“What the hell?” cried Csilla. Estelle glanced around; the princess was now on the far side of the pool, toweling off her thigh. Lucine found herself seated in a chair with her hands on Straya’s gut.
Io thrashed about in the pool. Her raft had vanished. It reappeared a moment later in place of the service arm, spilling Maura’s nail polish.
“Minor temporal fluctuations,” Estelle grumbled. She had just been about to take her first bite of the cheesecake, but tapped on her communicator instead. “Captain to bridge. Starling, how long—” There was a flash of purplish green light, a faint tittering noise, and then she froze.