Cowboys and Aliens Ch. 46

There was now an official bridge at the front of the ship on the second level. It had all the standard stations... navigation, communications, sensors, engineering, weapons, etc. There were three seats in the centre of the bridge. The central seat was for whoever was in command, the seat on the right was for whoever was second in command, the third seat was for guests. There was a console in front of the seats, which made them look like another station, but it just showed them what was on the other station displays.

Except for the navigation station, all the other stations faced the exterior wall, with a console in front of them and the displays built into the wall. Each station was wide enough that two people could work at each station. The area in front of the command console was for holographic projections and video calls. The area behind the bridge was the ready room for meetings and debriefing.

Each ship had an AI version of Cricket, so the AI actually communicated with the individual stations to relieve some management of the commanding officer, especially during intense situations. Although as close as Cricket was with Mark, it was even more efficient because he didn't even need to speak. She could just read his thoughts. Even though the AI was a fork of Cricket, the AI would take on their own unique appearance and name.

As everyone made their way to the senior officer quarters, which was above the bridge. They found it was like the royal quarters on the Poseidon, with rooms surrounding a common central area. The rooms were like the apartment style rooms elsewhere on the ship, but were slightly larger, with a common room and three bedrooms, a larger desk nook and a washroom with a shower. The common area in the middle of all the rooms was just like the parks in the apartment complexes, complete with its own communal eating area.

It was perfect for Mark and his entourage, as everyone claimed their rooms, with Cricket reconfiguring one bedroom into a nursery.

To expedite the movement of security, they had added a small third gate to the bottom of the central orb on the hyperspace gates. This gate was for security ships only and could only fit shuttles or fighters, anything bigger had to use the normal gates. The pilots could radio the security gate and set the destination, then the shuttles could just line up and go through one after the other as long as they had ships with security IDs.

The plan was for the Sentinel to use the hyperspace gate to get close and then travel the rest of the way to Virgohn and deploy the drone droppers. Then meet with the government tomorrow and determine a plan of action, which as of now was more or less the Ardent plan.

The gate should arrive near Virgohn early tomorrow morning and then shuttles could start arriving directly from other planets, using the Sentinel as a base of operations.

The Commander from the Earth Space Station suggested taking at least some basic personnel to get started, so he allocated half a dozen medivacs and a few securivacs.

Once the shuttles were onboard, the Sentinel started approaching the gate. The group played senior officers and went and sat on the bridge. Mark, Rayven and Annabelle sat in the three main chairs, then everyone else sat at the other consoles, but since all the chairs swivelled, they were all facing forward and watching the gate draw closer.

Mark was holding Joseph, explaining what it was they were going doing to the baby.

It was unnerving once you got close enough to the utter blackness of the hyperspace gate you could no longer see any light or stars, then suddenly streaks of light appeared as they travelled through to the other gate, then 42 seconds later the streaks of light turned back into stars.

The gate's current position did not afford them any spectacular views of the planet though, as they were still too far away, but with Cricket commanding the Sentinel, the FTL was engaged and a couple of minutes later they were in orbit above a planet that was very Earth-like, just arranged differently.

Mark, playing the part of Commander, ordered, "Deploy the drone droppers, Garedon first, then the rest of the planet."

Everyone sat there wondering if they needed to do anything at the stations they were sitting at, but Cricket just popped up her hologram, saluted and said, "Aye, aye, sir!"

With nothing left to do on the bridge, they went for a tour of the ship, fortunately there was a moving sidewalk that went around the park. They eventually ran into the other personnel from the camp ship and shuttles after they had claimed their own quarters and were just touring the new ship themselves.

Mark gave them a summary of the plan for tomorrow, and eventually everyone went to bed.

Mark woke up early the next morning, grabbed a cup of coffee from the bar in the common area and went down to the bridge, where he went through his daily reports, sure there was a desk in their room, but it wasn't a separate room and he didn't want to wake anyone.

After going through the reports, Cricket gave him a briefing on Virgohn. The gate had arrived during the night, and they had already deployed over 10 million drones above Garedon, so they could scan everywhere there was any population. Cricket also confirmed that she could detect the infected via the drones, so the glow option was possible.

The drone droppers had then begun deploying drones over the rest of the planet, even though they hadn't asked at this point in time. Mark figured it would be inevitable if the virus was as bad for everyone else as it was for Garedon, surely the media would pick up on what they were doing and other governments would come asking. If they didn't, oh well, they could easily recall the drones to the drone droppers and turned back into raw matter with a simple command.

Mark then asked, "What time is it where Governor Ardala is?"

Cricket said, "I'm not exactly sure, I don't have any data on the time system on this planet or where their time zones are. I can tell that it is early morning there already based on the day/night transition."

Satisfied with that answer, he ordered, "Contact Governor Ardala."

A few seconds later, a naked Ardala was sitting down in front of the camera. Not sure if she knew she had just flashed him, Mark apologized, "My apologies Governor, we don't have any reference for time on this planet yet, I appear to have just awoken you."

She smiled, "Yes, you did wake me, my King. It is good to hear from you. I take it that big ship that started orbiting our planet last night is yours?" She then realized that her breasts were still visible to Mark as she used her hands to cover her nipples as her face and upper chest showed a red blush.

"Yes, we arrived last night to gather some information about your planet and to begin the scanning process."

Ardala gave a lustful look, "And you stayed up on that ship? I could have arranged something far more comfortable for accommodations," as she got up from her chair, exposing the rest of her naked body, including her shaved pussy with a trimmed V landing strip as she retrieved a robe, covered herself and sat back down.

"Thanks, the ship is fairly comfortable though, but I may take you up on that offer later. So when should we come down to meet with you?"

"This is the second full day of government, they schedule us to assemble at the parliamentary building at 10:00, just so you know... it's only 7:00 right now!"

"Sorry for waking you up! Now that I have a time reference, I can plan accordingly. I was just going by where the sun was shining on the planet. I will plan to be down to the surface before the government convenes."

"See you soon, my King!" She said as she rose from her seat, her robe falling open, permitting Mark another passing glance at her large breasts and well-manicured pussy.

The call then disconnected, "Cricket, now you have a time reference, setup a clock for Garedon."

"Actually, the clock would be for Acadia, which is the capital city of Garedon. If they are anything like Earth, Garedon is large enough that it could easily span 3 or 4 time zones."

"But don't we usually name the clocks based on where the senate chamber is for the planet?"

"Yes, so in that case, the name should be Virgohn."

"Touché! Let's go with that for now, we'll see how much interest the rest of the planet has in joining the Federation. If multiple countries want to join, we may need to pick some other location for the senate chamber, although Garedon appears to be the largest country on the planet."

Mark hadn't seen Annabelle standing in the entrance to the bridge, until she said, "Wow, she's got a pretty impressive body!"

Mark jumped as he thought, "We really need to make the doors play a whoosh sound or something!"

Cricket just laughed.

As his wife sauntered toward the command chairs, she asked, "So how long do you have to wait before heading down there?"

"She said the government was assembling at 10:00, so I think we should give them another two-and-a-half hours before we head down there. That still puts us there, more than half an hour before they meet."

Annabelle smiled, "You handled yourself well, considering she was purposely flashing her body at you."

Mark said, "I thought she was doing it purposely, but I wasn't sure."

Annabelle giggled, "Guys are so oblivious," as she pulled her nightshirt up over her head, revealing her naked body and milk laden breasts.

Mark looked her over as she approached the command chair, "Here's some practice! What is my body language telling you right now?"

Mark played along with her game as he feigned thinking for a few seconds. Then with a look of realization he looked at her and said, "You want to play cards? Chess? Wait! I know! You're hungry?"

Annabelle shook her head and laughed as she straddled his lap and planted a passionate kiss on him as she was undoing his pants, "It means put your cock in my pussy and fuck me!"

As the kiss broke, Mark said, "Oh," as he grabbed her firm ass cheeks.

Annabelle stood up for a second to remove Mark's pants and then returned to straddling his lap. It was a good thing the command chairs were extra big.

As she stroked his cock against her abdomen with her hands, Mark kneaded her butt cheeks, spreading them wide before slipping a finger into her ass. Causing her to wiggle closer, allowing him to suckle her milk laden breasts.

Annabelle moaned as he teased one nipple and then the other, all the while lubricating his cock with her pussy juices.

As her hips undulated, she positioned the head at her slit and in one swift move impaled herself down onto it.

"Mmm, I needed this! Cum for me, then go fuck the Governor. Hey, maybe bring her up here so I can have fun with her too!" She said with a big grin as she slowly fucked herself up and down on his cock, while Mark was enjoying the sweet milk from her very full breasts.

Rayven then came onto the bridge wearing her nightshirt, "So this is where you went! By the way, Liyana has little Joe."

She watched the couple fuck for a minute, then asked, "May I join in?"

Annabelle leaned closer to Mark as she gave Rayven a nod.

Rayven's cock was already hard as she slipped into Annabelle's pussy, alongside Mark's cock. The feeling of being double penetrated and stretched, soon had Annabelle cumming and the friction created by the two cocks sliding along each other soon had Mark and Rayven soon had both of them erupting deep into the Queen.

Ra'ki had witnessed their climaxes as she said, "I'm on clean-up duty," as she got down on her knees in front of one of the other command chairs.

Annabelle slowly extracted herself off both cocks, using her hand to cup her mound as she moved to the command chair in front of Ra'ki. Then sitting down and splaying her legs wide, allowing Ra'ki unrestricted access to her leaking slit.

After a couple of good deep licks to catch most of the escaping cum, Ra'ki curled up her hand and slipped it inside Annabelle's well-fucked hole. Then pumped her hand in and out, creating a frothy mess as her fist extracted the remaining cum. Annabelle was in an almost non-stop orgasm until she finally begged for Ra'ki to stop.

After recovering from their orgasms, they went back up to their room, had a shower and then joined the rest of their gang for some breakfast. The breakfast conversation was primarily about what everyone was going to do to help with the medical situation on the planet.

Annabelle didn't want to go down to the planet with Joseph until the contagion was more controlled, and everyone said she had her hands full with little Joe to do much, anyway. So more or less, whoever wasn't going to the surface was going to coordinate shuttle dispatch and possibly medical arrivals, since they were also now thinking of using the 2,000 medibeds on the Sentinel and using the 50 passenger shuttle busses to get people up there. Then leave the medivacs and securivacs to take care of the smaller towns.

The other part of the conversation was about the new Sentinel and the way they designed it. Everyone loved the layout, with its own little communities and each community having its own recreation and eating facilities, then the huge central recreation and retail area. Plus, it no longer docked with Defenders, had its own bridge, school, etc. Liyana suggested the name CityShip.

Mark liked that and told Cricket the ship's classification was now CityShip. Eventually each CityShip would get named an actual city name, but this ship was going to Derek so they were just going to call it CityShip for now. Breakfast wrapped up when Cricket notified Mark that the first shuttles had come through the gate and would soon land in bay P1.

Mark informed the rest of the gang that shuttles had arrived, so Annabelle took little Joe out of Liyana's hands as they cleaned up and went down to Portside Bay 1 to meet the new arrivals.

It was only two crews of two, but the crews from the other shuttles had also made their way to the landing bay to greet the new arrivals.

Once everyone was present, he made a little speech to outline what the plan was, especially since he hadn't really talked to the crews that had come with them yet, "Thanks for coming, we're not sure yet what's required of us, but the planet Virgohn is currently amid a viral pandemic. So far only the country of Garedon has requested to join the Federation, so that's where we will concentrate our efforts, although I expect other countries may request our help once they see what we can do.

As yet, we don't have a widespread cure for their virus, but it is easily treatable in the medibeds. Garedon currently has a dozen beds Sebastian had sold them, but I'm almost thinking we use the 50 person shuttle busses and bring people from the cities up here to treat them faster and leave the medivacs and securivacs to take care of the smaller towns and villages.

I think we can probably get this under control fairly quickly, at least for Garedon, but it could take some long hours to accomplish that. To aid in the detection and control, I've already deployed security drones across the country and have actually started deploying them across the rest of the planet. Their initial role, since we can detect the infected with the drones, will just be to mark the infected. They have already instructed the people to keep a certain distance between each other to limit the spread, but I think if we make the infected people glow green, everyone else will just give them a wide berth. Our priority is green, but that's not to say if an emergency shows up, don't help them. Most people with the virus don't even know they have it, so taking a medibed out of service for an hour or two to deal with an emergency may happen.

Also, since Garedon is looking to join the Federation, I'm going to insist they set up outreach centres in all the small towns and hubs in the cities. Their economy is on the brink of collapse and many people have lost everything; the outreach centres will at least make sure they have food and water, plus it will improve their transportation infrastructure, not to mention having medibeds in every town once they're online.

I'm just on my way down to the surface to meet with the recently elected government of Garedon and hopefully develop a plan. In the meantime, find yourselves some quarters and just relax. The CityShip is a new classification of ship and differs from anything you've ever been on before, so there's lots to explore."

As the crews scattered, the ones that had already chosen quarters led the new arrivals to the quarters they had settled, so they had more people to share the meal chores and socialize with. Everyone liked that the living quarters lined up with the landing bays.

For the initial meeting with Ardala and the government, it was only going to be Mark, Liyana and Gyges that would go in Maren's shuttle. Liyana went up to her room and grabbed her AFNN camera kit and her holocube, while the rest of them made their way to the landing bay where their shuttle was.

It didn't take long before they were skimming across the surface toward the coastline and the city called Acadia, the capital of Garedon. Acadia was an enormous city, with a population near 15 million. The city spanned many kilometres inland along both sides of the river. With many shipyards and shipping docks, it looked very much like an Earth city, complete with the pollution.

It was quite easy to find the government buildings by following the big river. About 10 kilometres inland, past several very large suspension bridges that would put the Golden Gate Bridge to shame, the river split into two slightly smaller rivers, albeit still over a couple of kilometres wide each, but at the split were several government buildings.

Mark then guessed that the slightly smaller building was likely more of a municipal government building, whereas the larger building was probably the federal government building.

There was a cordoned off area in front of the larger building with two guys with red batons that appeared to be directing the shuttle to land in the fenced off area. So Maren landed where they were indicating.

There was quite a large crowd of people gathered near the designated landing zone, and they still weren't sure if this was totally on the up and up. Many of the people appeared to be carrying signs, so they could be potential protesters despite that they appeared to be trying to keep space around each other.

Sure, the government had supposedly won the election by a landslide and they centred their platform solely on joining the Federation, but surely they had to have a backup plan in case joining the Federation didn't work out? It is also impossible for everyone to have voted for them, so there could be some extremists out there and, of course, there are always traditionalists that fear change.

Plus, not knowing how things worked in Garedon, they could have a very flawed electoral system that is prone to corruption and abuse by allowing people to vote without proper identification.

There were a lot of unanswered questions, but knowing the answer before he even asked, Mark made sure everyone was wearing their belts. Then Gyges exited first, followed by Mark and Liyana. Maren stayed on the shuttle.