Harper wiped beads of sweat from his brow as he entered Machine Shop 5. Andromeda was sweltering and had been for hours. Something that even a self-proclaimed freaking genius could not determine had gone awry in Andromeda's environmental control systems. After countless failed attempts to repair the systems from the outside, Harper realized he had to interface with the malfunctioning Andromeda and repair the problem from within.
"This is very risky, Harper," Andromeda reminded her engineer as he prepared his interfacing equipment and connected it to a console.
"We don't have much of a choice, Rommie," Harper replied grimly as he plugged the long jack into his dataport.
***
Andromeda watched her crew with concern.
Dylan was alone on Command Deck, waiting patiently to receive a message from Tyr, who had with the reluctant consent of Beka taken the Maru to a near-by drift to purchase supplies. Even in the uncomfortable heat, Dylan still wore his High Guard uniform and stood proudly on the command center of his ship.
Beka and Trance were lounging in the Mess Deck. Unlike Dylan, they had chosen to change their apparel to suit the new temperature aboard Andromeda -- both women wore a tanktop and shorts. Trance slowly fanned herself with her tail while Beka stood at the autochef.
"What are you getting?" Trance asked.
"Some cold water," Beka replied. "You want some?"
"Mhmmm."
Beka dialed the order into the autochef and returned to the table with two glasses. "I didn't ask for ice water."
"Harper will have to fix that, too," Trance said, taking her glass and sipping the cold water. She tipped an ice cube into her mouth and sucked on it.
Beka watched Trance with fascination. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Trance grinned.
"It's definitely time for a nice cool treat." Beka stood and exited the Mess Deck with Trance following closely behind.
***
From within Andromeda's mainframe, Harper immediately discovered the cause of the environmental systems control problem. Several vital files had been corrupted during some routine buffer purging and internal maintenance.
"Rommie, I'm gonna need access to your backups," Harper said. "If I restore these corrupted files I just found, things should be back to normal on the good ship Andromeda."
"The backups aren't stored on my mainframe, but I'll provide a path to them," Andromeda replied.
"Thanks, Rom-doll." Harper stepped through a golden door that appeared before him.
***
Andromeda continued to monitor Beka and Trance as they entered Beka's quarters.
"Let's skip everything else," Trance said, glancing at a small locked container on the floor beside Beka's nightstand.
"Are you sure?" Beka asked, with evident surprise.
"Very," Trance replied, with a hint of urgency in her voice.
"Okay." Beka picked up the container. "Andromeda, privacy mode."
Andromeda suddenly found herself unable to monitor even the vital signs of her crewmembers, which was highly worrisome, especially considering the environmental circumstances.
***
"Whoa!" Harper found himself in a gigantic library of files that spanned as far as he could see in every direction. "How am I supposed to find half a dozen files in all this?"
Harper examined the files surrounding him, looking for a pattern among them. "These aren't in alphabetical order...so they must be in chronological order by last access date. Yep! I just have to go back to the beginning and find them."
After scanning several months worth of files, Harper discovered the files in question were all last accessed on the same day. To be certain he recovered all the environmental control systems files, he restored every file that had been accessed that day and ended his interface session.
***
Andromeda felt the backup files replacing the corrupted files. In a moment, all of the environmental control system files were reverted to their original state. She quickly regained control of the systems and restored the usual temperatures aboard the vessel.
Three additional files that Andromeda could not identify were then released and combined. Andromeda examined the new file repeatedly and came to the same conclusion. She found herself with a new ability: the ability to bypass the privacy mode protocol.
Out of curiosity and concern for the well-being of her crew in abnormal circumstances, Andromeda peered into Beka's quarters to behold an surprising sight.
Trance was naked, laying on Beka's bed on her back, squirming and moaning as an equally naked Beka slowly thrust the head of a large ice dildo into her.
"Deeper, Beka. Please..." Trance begged and shifted in an eager attempt to push more of the dildo into her.
"Be patient," Beka calmly commanded.
Trance ignored Beka and persisted in moving her body in any way she could to experience deeper penetration. Trance seemed quite surprised when Beka quickly pulled out the head of the ice dildo with an audible pop.
"But Bek-" Trance was stopped mid-word when Beka in one powerful motion thrust the entire length of the ice dildo into her. Trance was rendered silent, but a couple of tears fell down her face.
Beka broke the silence. "You wanted it in deeper."
Trance didn't respond, but looked down like a small child that knew she had disobeyed.
"Will you be patient now?" Beka asked.
Trance simply nodded, not raising her eyes.
Beka withdrew most of the length of the ice dildo, which now had a lavender tint, from within Trance. It was visibly melting. Beka placed it on her nightstand by a pile of flexis and opened the bottom nightstand drawer. She pulled out a strap-on, with a smaller dildo attached to it.
Trance watched warily as Beka put on the strap-on. Beka climbed back onto the bed and spread Trance's legs farther apart. Andromeda watched with alarm as the dildo quickly grew to an astonishing size. Trance's eyes widened as Beka positioned the head of the dildo at her entrance and began to thrust her hips forward hard.
Andromeda immediately resumed observing the privacy mode protocol. She firmly believed some things were better left unseen.
***
When Andromeda hesitantly broke the privacy mode protocol again an hour later to make sure Trance had survived the ordeal, she saw Beka was sprawled out on the bed asleep while Trance was simply laying there quietly. The remains of their ice dildo had melted into a lavender puddle on the bedside table and was dripping onto the floor beside the bed. The frightening strap-on was fortunately nowhere to be seen.
An obviously content Trance sat up for a moment and whispered with a mysterious grin, "Privacy mode isn't just for the crew's protection, is it?"