John woke up refreshed and feeling like he won the lotto. He had a nice bath st night, and managed to crawl into his bed before he colpsed. His body was up for a lot more than before, but that was too mentally exhausting for him, dealing with a battle, then some bureaucrat.

  He carefully got out of bed, and did some stretching, squats and pushups. He was careful with his back this time, and only had a dull ache by the time he was done. He had a new lease on a mostly healthy body, so he wasn't going to squander it by letting it degrade again.

  After a quick shower, he realized he didn't have any clean clothing. Wrapped in a towel, he went over to the armoire in his room and to his surprise, it had no clothing in it. Well not clothing he recognized anyways. There were tex suits and a bunch of ropes, hand cuffs and other things that he did not recognize. There was even an assortment of rubber dicks! He carefully put them back and closed the doors to the unit.

  I...I don't even know what to think of that. What in the hell kind of world did I get teleported to, to have stuff like that in my bedroom.

  He sat down on a chair, wondering where the undry was when he remembered Katrina telling him he could buy stuff on that Link thingy.

  He tapped it and it expanded into a holographic menu with a bunch of options. From there it was actually pretty simple, just tapping shop, then clothing, men's clothing, and type he wanted. Everything was already his size according to the text on the menu, receiving that information from the Link when he started his search.

  He thought for a moment. He needed a suit, he needed something comfortable to fly in, and he needed something to exercise in, as he didn't like doing that in his boxers.

  Most of the fashion he saw was fairly normal surprisingly, though there were some definitely weird taste too, like a tie nearly 5 inches wide, or some highly fmboyant colours on oddly cut office clothing.

  He choose a few of the suits, dark grey, bck and tan, a few different looking dress shirts, normal sized ties, and some bck dressy shoes. He added a few hoodies and sweat pants for flying, and a mix of tank tops and shorts for working out. Add some socks and underwear and the whole ensemble costed him around 15000 of these Gactic Standard Credits (GSC), most of the cost was in the value of the suits.

  A man needed a good suit, and if you had a few of them, you could mix and match parts to change your outfits.

  He hit buy, and the screen said his delivery would arrive at his ships cargo hold within 30 minutes or it was free. All he could wonder was how?

  "Well, better make my way there, wherever there is. I do have more ship to explore." He said to himself and wandered back out of his room, his forgotten underwear and pants still on the floor where he left them.

  He found his way back to the galley first, and made himself a coffee, a bit of fear in his eyes as he took a sip. Luckily, this time it actually tasted really good. He wandered further back into the ship, finding a gym, more offices, some storage, then the hanger.

  The hanger was gigantic, a rge open area that extended most of the length of the ship. The door John came out of was the start of a gangway, spanning the whole length of the hanger near the ceiling. Several narrow staircases led down to the hanger floor from the gangway, evenly spaced out along the span. There was little to be seen as he had no fighters or pilots right now.

  It took a bit of time, but he made it across the gangway without issue. He wasn't even winded from the exertion. When he entered the doorway, the was a short hallway with a few doors, plus a rger one at the end. The first door he found had 'Armoury' above it.

  He walked in, and looked around in shock. It looked almost like every gun convention he had ever went to. There were stacks of weapons, some in boxes, others in racks, a few on dispy on the back wall.

  "Holy crap. That's a lot of guns." He said to himself, walking through the room. He picked up a weapon that looked kind of like a shotgun off the wall and inspected it. It looked and felt simir to his old M4 Benelli, though it had a digital dispy with the number fifty on it. He couldn't figure out how it was loaded or what types of rounds it had at first, then saw a catch on the grip. He pressed it and the grip released and the counter went to zero.

  "Hun, it has a mag that acts like a grip as well. I don't see any ammunition though." He said while looking at the underside of the grip-mag. It appeared to just be a bunch of paper thin wafers, most covered by a thin yer of metal. He reattached the mag to the gun and the counter read fifty again. He pced it back on the shelf. He checked a few other weapons, and they were all simir, with a digital readout dispying what he assumed was ammo count remaining, and the mags with weird ammo inside them.

  On a whim, he grabbed a pistol and shoulder holster for it off the wall, and a couple spare mags. When he was younger, he always had a concealed weapon on him, and with the dangers of these worlds, he would feel better being armed than not. The teeth of the Zerg that tore out his throat still fresh in his mind.

  He moved to the room adjacent to the armoury, called 'Vehicle Storage' and once again was surprised to see what was here. The room was rger than the armoury, with several vehicles and small spacecraft lined up along the walls. There was a rge lift in the center that looked like it was used to move these vehicles in and out of the storage area. Along the backwall were towering suits between ten and fifteen feet tall, humanoid in shape, armed with what appeared to be a variety of weapons.

  "Whoa. What are all these?"

  John walked around an took a look at everything. The vehicles all looked to be almost like armoured APCs, some even had small turrets on top. The spacecraft were all small, but had rge engines on the back, looking like they were built for speed. There was no colour co-ordination to any of these, some were bck, others grey like the metal on the ship, and other were bright shades of red, green and even pink.

  On the back wall, those suits of armour were mainly bck and dark grey, some with blood red highlights to make them seem more intimidating. John took a few minutes to admire them all, but left without investigating them further. He didn't want another incident like back on the Vulture when he fell off. Better body or not, he didn't want to get rescued by anyone if he could help it.

  The next room back was in fact an elevator, so he skipped it, and moved further, finding the st room on this level.

  "Engineering?" John said, reading the tempte of the rger, reinforced doors. Entering, he had a hard time describing what he was looking at, as the humming sound was much louder in here, disturbing his thoughts.

  It was like he was looking at a scene out of Star Trek, with three rge cylindrical devices extending vertically in the open room, continuing up and downwards through a hole in the floor and ceiling. A simple guardrail prevented anyone from falling accidently downwards. The devices appeared to be a transparent gss, a substance moving through them that looked like a blue va mp to him.

  As he stepped further into the room he could see in computer stations covering the walls. Two wings to the sides of the room held other, smaller va mp like devices, though they were on their sides, one of which seemed to be generating the humming sound he heard throughout the ship. It fshed occasionally, the white light hurting his eyes.

  "Yeah I am not staying in here, I'll hire someone to look this all over or something. Not like I know what to do with it."

  John left, and went down the elevator. It brought him out, not at the hanger like he thought, but to a vast, nearly empty room. He got out of the lift and looked around. It appeared the room ran nearly the length of the whole ship, with only a few pilrs along the way for structural support from what he could see. A conveyer belt ran the length of the room as well.

  At the end of the belt near where he came out of the elevator, was an odd looking machine, with the rge conveyer belt on one side and a smaller one on the other. In big, bold red letters on the front of it was written 'ACME Scrap Processor'.

  "Is this the cargo hold? Why would it need a scrap processor?" John was confused and almost left the room before he remembered that he was supposed to have a delivery here.

  Checking his Link, he saw there were two messages. One from the Station Cargo Master stating his order had arrived and just needed to be accepted. The other from Lieutenant Eligan, instructing him to meet her in an hour at the end of the dock he was located at. Accepting the order was as simple as hitting a 'Y', and he sent confirmation to Katrina that he would be there.

  A bay door he did not notice before opened up and a crate came through, following the conveyer belt. It did not go all the way to the machine, but instead a second belt popped up out of the floor and moved the crate to the side of the elevator and stopped.

  John walked over to it and opened it up. Inside were several bags with the clothing he had ordered in them. He took the bags out and the lid closed on its own and the belt fired up again, taking the crate outside the ship.

  "Now that is handy. Time to get dressed and go out. I wonder what else I am going to learn from her? Hopefully some direction on what I need to be- "He paused and looked down at his nearly naked body "...Shit have I been walking around in a towel this whole time?"

  John took a bit to get ready, but he looked good in his opinion. Tan bzer with a white shirt partially unbuttoned, bck pants and shoes. With his hair tidied up, his wife would have called him a silver fox, and tried to sneak in a quicky before they even went out. He had his pistol strapped to his shoulder incase anything happened. He didn't know what the rules were here, but he figured the lieutenant would correct him if something was wrong. She was packing both a pistol and a sword on her flight suit the other day, so he didn't see anything wrong with being armed now. (A/N - I forgot to add that in her description st chapter.)

  He left his ship, making his way to the end of the dock, but paused for a moment when he saw what was waiting for him.

  Katrina was standing there turned slightly away from him, reading something on her Link. She was wearing a tight fitting open back halter top bck dress that went just below her knees, the front straps crossed around her neck, showing off a generous amount of cleavage. He was wrong yesterday, she was definitely closer to an 'E' Cup. Her violet hair was combed out had a silky smooth look to it, still just off the top of her shoulders, and she had a set of stilettos on that further increased her height, pushing her ass out to be even more appealing.

  The only thing off about her whole ensemble was at her waist, where a sword with a silver hilt was strapped, the sheath in a violet scabbard like her hair and the belt was silver.

  Her red eyes looked up at him when she saw him coming and she smiled. "Good Afternoon John. You are looking much better today."

  "Yes, a good nights sleep helped. Though I must say, I wasn't expecting to be accompanied by such a radiant beauty such as yourself today. I almost feel underdressed." He said. He truly thought she was coming in an uniform. He was happy he wasn't just in his towel now, or the same red shirt as yesterday.

  He came up next to her and he could smell a faint smell of perfume over the smells of the ship hanger, subtle but enough to cut through the other smells this station seemed to emit.

  Drat, I didn't think of cologne. Oh well, next time.

  She blushed a bit, thinking she was caught. "Well, we have much to discuss, so I thought it would be better if I didn't wear a uniform to keep the atmosphere rexed."

  He nodded and offered his arm to the dy. "Shall we make our way to where ever the dy wishes to go?"

  She linked her arm with his, and leaned in a bit. "Of course. We have a booking at a nice establishment. We have a private room where we can have a nice meal and go over your situation. I may also have a offer you might find appealing."

  With that the pair of them left the hanger and into the station proper.

  The station wasn't like anything John had expected, though he wasn't sure what to expect. The corridor she led him down was fairly rge, a conveyer belt that looked to handle rge cargo in the center of the walkway.

  Once they got out of that section, it opened up further to a rger corridor, this one with people walking around. It appeared to be the central corridor of the outer ring if he was to make a guess, running left and right of the corridor he just came out of as far as he could tell. Shops and business lined the edges of the hall, and went up for three stories. There were bridges, stairs and lifts scattered along both sides, providing access to other areas of the station.

  Smaller conveyer belts ran along the center of the corridor again, this time ferrying people around. They stood on one of these and started to move further in to the throng of people.

  "This is The Atrium, the central commercial district of the Third Ring. You will find a mixture of people here, though mainly those who are regur space travelers. From merchants to military, mercenaries to IDS. Even nobility will come through, though most stay in the innermost rings with the the increased security measures there." She said to him, as if giving him a guided tour, which she pretty much was.

  The assortment of people mixing together was like even more varied than some of the more progressive metropolitan areas back on Earth, with people of every colour, race, and size you could imagine. There were also beast folk, though lesser in numbers than humans, reminding John of his time in Meritoni back in The Great Cleric world.

  Their clothing was as varied as the people were. Some were obviously well off like Katrina, others were poor, the majority fell somewhere in between. Many people were dressed up even beyond what she was wearing so John didn't feel quite as awkward as he did earlier.

  One thing did tickle the back of his mind a little bit though. It wasn't obvious at first, but as they traveled down the conveyer belt it began to stick out like a sore thumb.

  "Why are their so few men?"