Joah Maroon 1

new ships.  Though my job was security for the company merchant ship, I eventually became a jack of all trades just by paying attention.  After seventeen months the owner named me first officer when the woman that previously held the position called it quits.  It ruffled a few feathers among the more experienced members of the crew at the time.
The Chargreuse visited more than a dozen trading posts regularly.  Mister Sunderin made his decisions based on current supply and demand situations.  But he didn't like to take chances with his four other ships.  Steady routes of three to six stops were designed for each crew.  Numbers were crunched every few months to see if adjustments could be made to be more profitable.
So, I didn't get a choice of where to take this brand-new Class-E cargo ship.  Plith mapped it out for me.  In a way that was good.  I didn't have to worry about making those decisions anytime soon.  My new role as captain had plenty of responsibility already.  I planned to take mastering it very seriously.
"Approach instructions just came in," Lin told me from her Navigations station to my left.  I was seated in the pilot's seat instead of the raised captain's chair in the center of the control room.  Directly behind me was Nancy and the communications post.  Though each seat and set of touch displays had assigned functions, most tasks could be handled from any of the stations.  With that in mind we tended to sit in the same chairs regardless of what we had going on at the time.
"Estimated twelve hours until docking at Andromedas Glow," Lin informed me.  "That's a weird name for a space station, isn't it?"
"Probably a poor translation from the alien language," I replied.
My sexy Asian wife was well trained in interstellar navigation, system communications and even piloting.  With her medical training back on Earth, she decided to pick up enough courses to pass for the ship's doctor as well.  Her expansive skill set was the biggest reason why we could get by without the need of additional crew mates.
Nancy's primary field was systems.  Extracting and analyzing data from the ship's computer.  She was also fully trained in communications, which didn't seem like a difficult job to me.  And she picked up enough basic navigation knowledge to get by should something happen to Lin.
As captain, I was supposed to know how to do everything.  At least that was how it should be according to my military training.  Instead, I completely ignored the skills that my two wives already possessed in spades.  I focused more on piloting and mechanics, as well as decision making as the leader of the crew.  That came the most natural to me, though.  I had developed my leadership qualities while escaping the islands of the Thesphilians.
We had all the bases covered with just the three of us, but our experience was extremely limited.  Oxeonn management insisted that we have a fourth.  That was where the android came in.
Portia was the AIRE unit’s name.  A fitting one, I thought.  Mister Sunderin, knowing my tastes very well, selected a curvaceous female version of the commercial work unit.  Modern technology actually made it difficult to tell her apart from a real woman to the naked eye.  To combat that, my wives decided to dress her in bland clothing that covered her entire synthetic body and had bold metallic ornaments.  Just so I wouldn't forget that she wasn't a real woman.
Portia followed instructions incredibly well but tended to ask for permission to speak quite regularly.  She was designed to have a hefty role among the crew of any ship that brought her aboard.  Her programming had her capable of handling any position.  Her robotic body made her even stronger than me, which I tried not to think about.
"May I assist in analysis of the approach path?" Portia asked in a voice much too sweet for her kind.  Only her tone remained unemotional like standard androids.  Her voice synthesizer was one of the features that I was permitted to select.  It had a soft elegance to it that helped balance out her otherwise stoic nature.
"No, you may not," Nancy answered firmly.  She had discovered early on that there was no need to raise her voice toward the android since she would accept what she was told every single time.  But my first wife was often bold in her manner, especially in dealing with the robot.
Our fourth crew member was seated directly behind Lin at what was typically considered the systems station.  The last two remaining chairs in the control room, one on each side, were vacant.  I had stopped calling this room the bridge a long time ago due to the reluctance of the Chargreuse's crew to adapt the term.  Now on my own boat, I was thinking of going back to it.  Both Lin and Nancy understood the reference.
The cramped chamber for controlling the ship looked nothing like a Federation starship from the old sci-fi shows.  It didn't resemble the space shuttle either.  The closest thing that I could relate it to would be a crowded rented office of a startup company.  There were no windows or main screen on the front wall.  Just our monitors which could display pretty much anything we wanted.
"Something is wrong," Lin alerted me in a voice that didn't sound too panicked.  She was confused more than concerned.
"May I assist you in researching the problem?" Portia’s voice chimed in.  It was a regular occurrence since we first accepted her onboard.
"No thanks," Lin answered without offense.  When I asked what the problem was, she explained.  "Navigation won't let go of the Nav-hole that we just came through to enter the Andromedas system.  It keeps giving me course corrections to go back to our entry point before continuing toward the station."
"Are we still headed the right way?" I wanted to