Gliese Chronicles - Sakcore Explored Ch. 02

"Yeah, I guess so. But you did your part too. I didn't know you were a crack shot with a stun rifle."

Cela laughed. "More of a lucky shot at the right time. But thanks for giving me credit for at least that. Jason impressed me with his first aid skill when he treated you."

Kira smiled broadly. "He just wanted to see my boobs. Typical man, they'll pay attention to any woman if there's a chance to see her without clothes on."

"Kira, I saw the expression on his face. He was really concerned for you, seeing your breasts wasn't even a consideration in his mind. I think all of us have to appreciate how much he cares for all of us. I certainly think I'm one hell of a lucky woman to be married to him."

"I think you are too. Sorry, I guess I was being a little flippant. Now, let's see if we can get all of this data put together so we can demonstrate how the AP and PAP system works. That should impress him even more—you know he likes intelligent women."

They spent the next three hours making a model of the system, then ran correlations between the data sets. Then they scaled the images of the smaller APs up to the intermediate and larger species, assuming their internal structure would be the same. They made scaled drawings of each species and overlaid the average lengths of the AP vaginal canal, phallus lengths used, and openings of the chambers onto them. When they were finished, Cela was amazed as the basic statistics showed the relationships were statistically significant—the two of them had figured it out. Two intelligent, attractive women, working together had puzzled it out.

Meanwhile, Hianne and Jason were on the savannah using following the work plan.

Hianne was driving the ACV while Jason kept watch as they headed to the location of the previous day. They hadn't seen but a few small APs as they approached the location where Kira was attacked the previous day. She slowed the ACV, found the dead AP, and stopped to inspect the area. The Buoyant Dragon was gone, though the vegetation showed where it had been lying. The AP carcass didn't seem to have been touched, so they moved towards the area where the AP herd had taken shelter under the large tree. The vegetation around the tree was trampled and they didn't find evidence of predation. Apparently the APs had reached a safe zone below the outspread branches of the tree in time. They stopped, checked the skies, then got out, taking a tape measure to get a series of distances from the base of the tree to the outermost tips of the branches, then they took the diameter of the tree itself.

They were now about five kilometers from the ship and they elected to go to a small elevated area about one kilometer away they judged to be about twenty meters above the level plain of the savannah. With Tridor and the sun behind them and looked for activity on the plain. They scanned with their optics for almost ten minutes without seeing sign of movement.

Hianne looked at Jason, "Do you think we have caught the APs just as they were leaving on migration? Maybe they come here to mate, then move to another place to lay their eggs."

"That's entirely possible. We may have to go up in the ship and see if we can find them. We won't be here long enough to know what their annual cycle is like. You don't want to stay here for an entire cycle do you?" he laughed.

The question set Hianne to thinking. Did she?

Hianne looked at him, thinking she wouldn't mind if things were a little different between them. The day before she was unsure about what to do. She was really excited by what they were finding, but her libido was making it difficult to be pleased with only robot sex. During past missions, a combination of human and robot sex had always worked for her. Now, three months had passed without male human companionship and it was proving difficult. She missed having human sex far more than she thought she would—of course, she knew what it was to be with Jason. It wasn't like she didn't know what she was missing. She almost wished she hadn't signed up for this mission.

"Jason to be truthful, I would like to spend more time here. We have found some really interesting things so far and we haven't gotten to all of the major biomes yet. But I won't make it, at least I won't be happy if I try it."

"I don't understand. You've always been good on long missions. What's so different this time? We have enough food and water supplies to last more than a standard year. Our ship is slightly used. I got it for a good price, and Robb has been able to make upgrades to it with new parts we purchased before we left. Our contract is good for two years if we choose to extend it. We even have time to go back to Ettera for a few weeks and then return and still have enough time to do a more complete survey of the moon."

"What's different is I can't have you. Robb just isn't meeting all of my needs. I hate to be the one that pulls the plug on remaining longer, but I know I'll just get increasingly frustrated and it won't serve any of us if that happens. This mission is a career builder, we all know that. It was one of the reasons all of us elected to take this mission when we won the bid."

She watched the expression on Jason's face as it changed. "Hianne, thank you for being truthful with me. I didn't know that was how you felt. I know we have history and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. You know I love it when you wrap those beautiful legs around me until you get close, and your lips are heavenly."

She smiled, "Thank you for telling me. I'll add it to my fantasy."

"You know Cela and I didn't want you to be in this situation. We both enjoy your company and we value your expertise and friendship. This mission has been as successful as it has because you're on it. I especially like having you along as I've always felt you're special. I hope you've noticed it wasn't just for sex in the past, but also for your wonderful personality and the affection you show me."

Hianne felt a little guilty. She knew Cela didn't want her to be unhappy. As much as she hated to admit it, Cela had really tried hard to make sure her needs would be taken care of—insisting Robb be on the mission. What Cela didn't understand was she was one of those women who actually needed a real man to fulfill her emotional needs. Much had been made of the value added when sexually functioning male robots were introduced—it would solve female companionship needs on long missions. For most it did exactly that, but not for her and a few others. That was why the custom had developed for long-duration missions with largely female crews. She could have it if she didn't talk about it—kiss but don't tell.

"Is that why you gave me the peck on the cheek last night?"

"It was a thank you for taking my hand. You receive as good as what you give."

"I wish now I had given more," she said with a demure smile as she looked down and away from him, then looked up into those wonderful eyes. The eyes that slayed her, melted her, from the very first time she saw them. She shouldn't have looked at him that way as now she was paying the price as a warming tingle suffused her body. All it would take was...

She pushed her lips onto his as he pulled her close. It had been so long since she had tasted lips so sweet and having them come to her with such passion added to her enjoyment as his hand came to rest on her behind.

She was surprised and looked at him, "We can't do this, I know it's enough to make me stay longer, but I don't feel comfortable knowing Cela doesn't approve."

Then he whispered into her ear words she never expected to hear and her heart went into her throat.

"She said that?"

He nodded as he reached over and unbuttoned the first button of her shirt, then the second, then opened it slightly to kiss her chest and neck. Horny was not the word to describe the throbbing heat that appeared as her clothing left her. She fumbled to remove his clothes in haste. Forty minutes later she slowly sat up from the back bench seat of the ACV with a smile as broad as the plain surrounding them. She wasn't normally vocal at the end, but this time she was happy no one was close enough to hear her either time. My god, she thought—two times!

When Hianne turned her head, she froze. Not five meters away was a single, green-colored eye with a yellow-gold vertical iris looking at her. It was perched atop a tape-like brown body coming up from the ground. She stared at it as it stared at her unblinking from within a large hooded brow that shaded it from the bright sunlight.

"Jason! Jason! Look at that," she hissed, as she pointed slowly, feeling helpless completely naked, her bra clutched in her hands.

She watched as Jason slowly turned towards the creature. His movement must have been enough as the creature quickly slipped down and when she looked over the side of the ACV she saw only a burrow in the ground into which it had disappeared. She could only wonder what it thought of two bipedal creatures entangled together—that was if it had been watching for any length of time.

"How good a look did you get?"

"Just a few seconds. I don't know how long it was watching us."

"You should write down the details right away so you don't forget them," he suggested.

She looked at him in disbelief, "I'm completely naked."

He gave her an amused look as he handed the tablet to her, his limp cock hanging down, "I really hadn't noticed."

"Oh, you more than noticed," she laughed, "I'm good for a few days now after what you did to me."

"You mean what we did together," he replied, acknowledging she'd been very engaged.

They both sat down with their tablets and entered the observation, then compared their notes to see what each of them had observed. Of course, each of them had noted different details, so between the two of them they had a better description than what they would have had alone. He told her since she was the first to see it, she had to give it a name. She had made more work for herself, but as she dressed she was pleased with herself—she was damn satisfied in more ways than one.

Hianne appreciated how good-natured and caring Cela was more than ever. She wasn't sure why Cela had changed her mind, but didn't care. Jason had held nothing back, giving her his full measure and she had asked for a lot. Cela would never know and that was as it should be. It was between Jason and her, this time with Cela's tacit blessing.

She added a name to the end of her description—Green-eyed Gawker. When she showed it to Jason he gave a laugh and offered her a big kiss. Hianne wasn't expecting the kiss, but she very much enjoyed it—feeling what they had just shared was more than just sex.

"How are you going to explain that name?"

"Easy, it looked at me as I looked at it, no one needs to know I was stark naked at the time. Only the two of us will ever know."

"Indeed we will," as he took her hand and kissed it. It made her feel special.

Cela glanced at the clock and wondered how the savannah work was going. She hoped they had collected more observations of the APs and Buoyant Dragons to supplement what few observations she had so far. She wondered how Hianne and Jason were doing as Kira and she finished their analysis and a summary presentation of the results. It was no more than three minutes later when Hianne and Jason returned with the ACV. It was a few minutes before they had secured it in the landing bay and came into the lab.

"Well, did you find the APs or the Buoyant Dragons?" Cela asked.

"No, not a sign of either of them in groups. We did see a few stray smaller APs. But Hianne did find a new animal in the savannah. I got a look at it before it disappeared into its hole in the ground. We waited around for a while to see if it would come out, but it didn't appear again," Jason offered with a smile.

"So, did you get any pictures of it?" Cela asked hopefully.

Hianne's face changed expression, "Afraid not. It appeared and disappeared so quickly and we didn't have the camera close to hand at the time."

"Don't you always have the camera around your neck or next to you?" Kira asked.

Aaahh, usually...but, well...I didn't have it close at the time," Hianne replied looking a little uncomfortable.

"Okay, so what did it look like?" Cela asked.

"It had one large green and yellow eye, a brown body, and was at least a meter long, maybe 350 cm in diameter. I think it was kind of scaly, but we didn't really get a good enough look to know for sure."

"What were you doing at the time?" Kira asked, with a knowing smile.

There was a pause and a glance between them. "We went up onto a small mound to get a better view of the plain and were looking around," Jason replied quickly. "We wrote up our notes right away so we have a fairly good description of the animal. Hianne named it a Green-eyed Gawker as she thinks it was watching us as we were occupied doing other things."

"So you didn't see any APs?" Cela asked, wondering why Hianne was wearing such a huge smile.

"No, none. We thought we would come back to the ship and take her up to see if we could see any herd activity. We think maybe they have left on migration and the Buoyant Dragons may be following them. At least that's the best hypothesis we could come up with."

"That sounds plausible. So, when should we take off?"

"We still have three hours of daylight left and I think we can cover enough area in about half that time to tell us something. I don't see a reason not to come back here for the night. We still have a few things to do here I think," Hianne replied.

"Okay, it will take about half an hour to secure the ship for takeoff, so start stowing any open containers. We won't be doing anything but slow flying but it doesn't make sense to be sloppy," Cela suggested.

"We can have Robb fly the ship at five hundred meters while the rest of us look out the ports for signs of animal activity. The APs shouldn't have been able to travel too far given their rate of movement since we saw them yesterday. But it would be nice to get an estimate of how many there are. I'll grid the area and we can fly a pattern to get a count," Jason proffered.

"Good, we have a plan. Let's get to it," Kira said with enthusiasm she hadn't expected.

Thirty-five minutes later they lifted off with the small thrusters, reached altitude, and started to cover their search pattern. Cela was with Jason on the portside window just aft of the cockpit while Hianne and Kira took the starboard side. It was ten minutes later when Hianne called out to Robb to bank to starboard after she had spotted a small herd of APs. Robb brought the ship to a hover while they used the ship's cameras to get a closer view of what was below.

"Look at the trail they're using. These animals have used this same route for who knows how long," Jason said, as they watched a thin line of APs following one another across the savannah, sometimes two or three animals thick, at other times up to six as they coursed around an obstacle in their path.

"We had no idea they did this. We couldn't see this track from the ground. Good thing we decided to look from up here," Kira said with glee in her voice.

Cela noticed another pattern in the landscape. There were numerous clusters of trees with pools of water within them—more penis gardens. They came here to breed. It had to be the reason there were so many. From the air they could see the species mixed, though they tended to remain together in smaller species groups. She noticed after a few minutes the species moving at different speeds dependent upon their stride. That seemed reasonable enough. Then she noticed a slight glimmer of light reflecting from behind the herd of animals. She was just about to say something when Hianne spoke.

"I think a flock of dragons is following behind them."

Using the camera joystick, Cela turned the camera to a point behind the traveling herd and within a few seconds they could see the dim, stretched out shadows of the dragons on the ground. There were at least ten of them, though it was difficult to pick them out as their clear wings allowed them to blend into the landscape. It was interesting as the shadows were very dim, not casting a harsh shadow as a solid object would have. She pressed the record button to activate the camera so she would have documentation for later study.

After half an hour they agreed they had documented what they were after and Kira called out to Robb in the pilot's seat to return them to the landing site. Fifteen minutes later they landed as the sun was setting. The view of Tridor in the fading light was magnificent as they landed. It dominated the western edge of the sky, with the star appearing farther away due to distance.

All of them were in high spirits as they sat together in the large lounge eating a snack recounting what they had seen. Hianne seemed especially happy with the day, saying finding the gawker was unexpected and said she hoped during the last two days at this location they could find it again. They turned off the interior lights and watched the stars as the dim crescent of Tridor faded from view, slowly exposing more stars.

Cela was sitting next to Jason and felt his hand come to take hers as they all sat together quietly. His touch reassured her, reminding her that in a short while they would be in bed together for the night. It was something she looked forward to, being held close, feeling him behind her, or in front of her, as she chose. After a few minutes Kira and Hianne bade them goodnight as they headed for their rooms looking as content as she had ever seen them. They were good together—they all knew it.

Robb had apparently retreated to his own space to recharge after securing the ship for the night. She hadn't heard Hianne ask him to join her later. Kira, well, she just didn't know if she was back to normal yet, though she said Robb told her he would remove the bandage the following day as she didn't need it any longer. One thing about Kira, she didn't complain about much of anything. She was definitely a strong woman, and Cela admired her for her grit.

The next morning dawned gray, with low-hanging clouds, and sheets of rain—the first rain they had experienced in almost three weeks at this location. Jason and Robb were busy pulling maintenance on the ACV in the hangar bay and the three women were sitting at the galley table having a warm drink when Hianne looked up while stirring the contents of her cup.

"You know, we haven't taken any time off since we arrived here. Why don't we use this opportunity to just sit back and have a girls' time out. You know—relax, do our nails and hair, whatever we want."

"That's a great idea. You know we haven't really done that," Kira said with enthusiasm.

"Okay by me," Cela replied knowing it would do all of them good. Kind of like a spa day and it sounded very relaxing and long overdue.

"I'll go tell Jason what we plan on doing so he won't come into the shower and dressing room while we're in there."

"Okay, we'll get our stuff and meet you there," Kira said as she stood with a broad smile.

Jason just nodded with a smile when she told him. "Have a good time, I'll take the time to get some reading done I've not gotten to, so I'll be in the lounge as long as you're not going to use it."

She gave him a peck on the cheek, went to retrieve her bath soaps and other goodies from their room, and went to the shower room with its attached dressing area. The ship Jason had purchased was designed for a crew of twenty, so it had amenities scaled for that many people. He had modified it before the mission for eight people, so there was still a lot of room with spare quarters and a small recreation space where they could work out. Jason used it almost daily. Cela on the other hand, used it but three of four times a week after finding her walking surveys were enough to keep her in shape. She thought it worked the same for Hianne and Kira as they all had some alone time to exercise.