Lifeboat

Not surprisingly, Hanshin's was the most sought-after assignment. The Terra Corps grew them rough and ready. There weren't a lot of people who wanted the cushy Gaia 5 assignment. They had crossed the stars in search of a challenge.

So, Brond, like his father, was hoping they would get Hanshin's. He knew they had a good chance, given his father's credentials. Brond was also hoping that they would be stationed somewhere with his friend, Tenz. He and Tenz had been best friends since the first day of the voyage. Tenz's bio-Mom, Leesa, had also been the best mother figure Brond could hope for over the years. She was asoil specialist, so add that on to her partner, Jax's water specialization, and Brond figured the two family units would make a great staff for a research station on Hanshin's. Still, he knew the chances were slim.

At last, he heard the sound of footsteps and excited voices in the corridor. He waited patiently, but his heart leapt as he saw his father's smiling face appear. Enod, met him at the door and gave a nod of his head toward their quarters.

"Come on in," Brond said.

They went in and sat down in the dining area.

"So?" said Brond.

"The good news, we got Hanshin's," Enod said, his voice clearly excited.

"That's awesome!" said Brond.

Yet, he saw the look on his father's face.

"But, we didn't get paired with Tenz's family." said Brond, inferring the conclusion.

"No, we didn't get paired with Tenz's family."

"Okay, okay, no problem," said Brond. "I knew it was a longshot. How's it going to work then, are we in a big unit?"

"No, not a big one," said Enod. "Small outpost. Just us and one other family."

"Uh huh. And which one?"

A sense of dread was growing in the pit of Brond's stomach.

"So," said Enod, hesitantly. "T'Laine Onwald is a water and microbe specialist. There's a river delta on the Eastern side of the large sea. Command thought that would be a perfect place for her to monitor fresh and salt water, or whatever the primary mineral is. It is also a great place to start my climate work.

"Uh huh," said Brond. "But, she's bound to Mikhael, and he's a construction engineer. We won't be doing much major construction at a research outpost."

"No, we won't," said Enod, measuring his words. "However, Mikhael and T'Laine have opted to terminate the contract so Mikhael can go to Gaia 5 and T'Laine can take another assignment. Brond, T'Laine and I have a long history. Truth be told, we'll quite likely be signing a cohabit contract."

"Well, great," said Brond. "She taught me a lot in my hydro and bio classes. Smart as they come, really. And, admittedly, she's pretty enough."

"Yes, yes she is," said Enod.

"Who else then?" asked Brond. "You are weather, T'Laine is water. I'm nano, electronics, and power specialist, so that makes me fire. We need Earth. Who else are they sending down with us. We'll need a soil specialist for research and plant development."

"Yes, yes we will."

Brond's eyes grew slowly wider in realization.

"No." he said.

"Brond, she's grown up a lot."

"No!" said Brond even louder.

"Really, Brond. She passed her agronomy certs at the top of your class. She's already Master, she's the best choice."

"Dad, no fucking way. I am not getting stuck at the edge of a distant sea, on an uninhabited planet, with L'Gia Onwald! I won't do it!"

"Brond," Enod said calmly. "The initial assignment is only three years. We'll have several outposts within three hours flying distance, so it's not like you'll be entirely isolated."

"Three years!" screamed Brond. "Three years having to look at that face every day?"

"Of all the faces you might have to look at, I wouldn't think L'Gia's would be a burden."

"Dad, you have no idea of the evil that lies behind those green eyes."

"I was worried about this," said Enod. "I understand your feelings, but the fact is you are both adults now. People change."

"Not that much!" protested Brond. "You can't go from the devil incarnate to anything remotely human in a couple of years."

Enod took a deep breath.

"Brond, this is a prime assignment. Good for me, good for T'Laine, and especially good for you. All of this stuff you've been studying? You get to start using it down there, doing real things. With what you'll be learning on the ground, you could be a guild master by the time you're thirty. So, before you chuck it away because of a childhood rivalry, I'm going to give you a day to think it over. If you still want to scrap it by this time tomorrow, we'll talk. But here's the reality; I'm taking this assignment, regardless. I'd love to have you with me, but you're a full adult now. If you don't take this, there's a good chance you'll be supervising construction bots on Gaia 5. Not a bad thing, but you'll be subordinate to people like Mikhael. You might learn a lot, but you won't get any major responsibilities for quite some time."

***

Brond and Tenz sat floating in the zero grav section of the air system. It had been their favorite place to chill since they were kids.

"L'Gia fucking Onwald!" said Brond. "Out of six thousand potential corps members, I get the biggest bitch of the group."

His history with the girl wasn't good. At 12, L'Gia had been the popular kid in their age group. From old earth to the colonies, some things never changed. L'Gia had gathered a cadre of other popular kids around her and decided that Brond would be the one she would pick on. Of course, the instructors had caught wind of it and shut most of it down. But, create rules and someone will always find a way around them. Their feud had gone on for almost four years.

One thing that had changed from old earth, at least in the Terra Corps, was that boys could hit girls, and vice-versa. L'Gia and Brond's enmity had ended in a knock-down, drag-out brawl of epic proportions that left Brond missing two teeth and L'Gia with a broken wrist. They'd been dragged apart, snarling. Brond had been given extreme disciplinary measures and L'Gia had been transferred to the education unit on the other colony ship, 'to create a more productive learning environment for everyone'.

Tenz listened patiently to Brond's protestations and they recalled some of L'Gia's most heinous pranks, like putting Brond's best old-earth football jersey in the shredder, or programming nanobots to clip the word 'Idiot' in the hair on the back of his head.

"You've gotta remember that you weren't an angel either," said Tenz. "Putting dye in her sports bra? She was called blue-tits for a year. The shipwide ball debacle. Do you want me to go on?"

"Those were all retaliations," said Brond. "She struck the first blow, and it all escalated from there."

"What was the first blow, anyway?" asked Tenz.

Brond thought for a bit, and then chuckled. "I almost didn't remember. That crush thing with Kereen."

Tenz laughed. "Oh, yeah, that's right. But, seriously, dude. Here's the reality. Your post is a small station, but it is still a station. You are going to be station master, in charge of bots, tech, construction, and maintenance. Nineteen years-old, and station master. Yes, you have to deal with L'Gia, but the fact is, you'll all be so busy it won't be like you'll have time to annoy each other for the first six months anyway."

"Yeah, good point," agreed Brond, reluctantly.

"And...you'll have a smoking hot stepmom."

Brond grinned at that. T'Laine was, indeed, easy on the eyes.

"Yeah, I guess that won't suck," Brond agreed.

***

The star for Hanshin's was the first along the route, so the crews for their planet would be dropping out of the convoy while the rest of the fleet would carry on to M System. As they passed their star, one cruiser and one barge peeled off on a trajectory toward their planet.

It was all-hands, all the time in preparation. Their station was assigned one shuttle capable of extra-atmosphere flight, packed inside were two air sleds for planetary travel and exploration. Further, there were three cargo pods full of raw materials, bots, and supplies which would drop independently and autonomously maneuver to drop spots near their site. Rather than arrive with pre-fabricated equipment, the strategy was to conserve space and arrive with raw plastics and metals that would be used by their construction bots to build the things they needed. The bots would also leverage existing resources in the local environment, so a building might be made with adobe bricks made of local mud and straw, but reinforced with micro-plastic fibers and flash heated for strength.

Today was final inspection. The four new station mates were to meet at their shuttle, then do one final pass through their cargo pods.

T'Laine arrived at the shuttle and was pleased to find it was just Enod there. Before entering the shuttle, she zipped down her flight suit to about navel-height, letting the gap reveal the lacy bra below.

"Good day, Dr. Stigsen," she said in a sultry voice as she entered.

"Oh, he... hello," said Enod, seeing it was her.

He stood and crossed to meet her.

Tracking the path of his eyes, she knew he'd noticed what she'd wanted him to notice.

"Is that undergarment regulation?" asked Enod in a semi-officious voice.

"Chron, no," said T'Laine. "Neither is what I'm wearing below, or not wearing to be more specific."

"You are a wicked woman," said Enod. "Insisting that we wait until we're planetside before consummating anything, then teasing me like this."

"I know," agreed T'Laine. "But I feel more like a wicked girl. Ever since I went for rejuve, I can't believe how randy I've gotten.

"I know exactly what you mean," said Enod. "No matter how many times I go through rejuve, I'm always surprised by the shifts that hormones cause in the brain. I tell myself I'm a rational, mature man who has seen more than five generations pass, but as soon as those nanobots get to work, I'm suddenly an adolescent again. The only things I notice around me are tits, the only thing I think about is sex, and don't even mention the erections."

"Oh, I'll mention them," said T'Laine. "So, Dr. Stigsen, aren't you going to kiss me?

"I suppose I am."

Enod pulled her in for a kiss. One hand wrapped around the back of her neck and the other one naturally found its way to caressing her breast. The extra access afforded by the open jumpsuit certainly didn't impede 'forward progress'.

She lifted her hand to place over the one on her breast.

"You're a little forward there, aren't you?" she said with a smile. "I don't know a lot of teenage boys who go for the grab so quick.

"My body might be eighteen biologically, but my mind knows far too much."

"Ooh, I like that," whispered T'Laine. "I'm going to wreck you when I get you in bed."

"It will take us a while to make it to the bed," said Enod.

They might have gone even further, but they heard the sound of voices arguing outside the shuttle.

"Of course, I checked the parts manifest against the physical inventory," said Brond. "That's standard protocol and the checklist shows that I did it."

"I was just making conversation," said L'Gia.

"No, you were checking up on me before you'd even looked at your tablet," said Brond. "Making conversation is, 'Hello, how was your night?' or 'Just two days until planetfall'."

"Very well, how was your night?" asked L'Gia.

"Too late for that," said Brond.

T'Laine appeared, flight suite rezipped all business-like.

"Good morning, station mates," she said. "Enod and I were talking and we thought that Brond and I could do the triple check on the cargo pods and L'Gia could join Enod for the final systems check on the shuttle. Come along, Brond."

***

The cargo pods were sealed and the work was done via remote microbots inside the containers. Since Brond was done with his inspection of the weather components in Pod 2, he was currently doing his best not to inspect T'Laine, his future stepmother, as she kept her eyes firmly fixed on the tablet showing her own scan results.

There was something about T'Laine that nobody could quite describe. She was beautiful, yes, but there was more about her; a sensuousness, a lilt to her voice that made her linger in one's mind. There was long-standing secret tradition of the boys aboard each Colony ship nominating a 'ship-milf' and T'Laine had been either the winner or runner up for five years, winning the past three.

She had certainly been the subject of many of Brond's private fantasies over the years, and he knew that she would certainly feel very sticky if she had any idea how much seed he had spilled over her at the end of his countless stroke sessions.

Not that he was exclusive in his fantasies, of course. There were other mature women on board, and certainly his share of classmate crushes who also had been the subjects of his fantasies, but T'Laine was definitely a featured performer.

And that...was what was occupying his mind as he observed her finishing her tests. Even in her flight suit, her ample assets were evident beneath. Plus, her front zipper was accidentally down a few notches and it was clear that the bra she was wearing wasn't the regulation lycra/sports bra. Her cleavage was a chasm that any boy or man would gladly fall into.

The bra was indeed, not regulation.

T'Laine was a very good multitasker and she was well aware of Brond's gaze. She was a woman, after all, and was long-accustomed to sidelong glances. She was fine with that, so long as it was discreet, but also had no problem calling young men, or older men out if they crossed any lines. Plus, with the surge of hormones in her system from the rejuve jolt, she was getting a youthful, perverse rush from the attention.

She chose to stay focused on the task at hand. Brond had been doing good work in preparation for the mission, so if he needed a little eye-nutrition, who was she to deny him? Her zipper had started out down for Enod, but as she and Brond worked, it occurred to her that a few notches down might be a nice little treat for her tall future stepson. No harm there, she reckoned.

"Attention all crew," came the commander's voice over the shipwide system. "Attention all personnel, we have detected unusual frequencies across a narrow range of the communications spectrum. We are attempting to ascertain the source, and determine whether it denotes sentience or naturally occurring phenomena. Until we do, we are placing all systems and staff on a Level B Alert. I repeat, a Level B alert."

"Level B," said T'Laine, looking to Brond with concern. "That's a bit abrupt. Straight past D and C with no sequence."

"You're right," said Brond. "Time to get to the shuttle."

Their endless drills that every Terra Corps member knew by heart kicked in. T'laine and Brond quickly stowed their tablets in their packs and started toward the shuttle hold when hyper alarm sounded.

"Coffins!" yelled Brond.

"Yes!" replied T'Laine, already on the run.

'Coffins', emergency escape lifepods, had gotten their nicknames from two distinguishing characteristics. One, was their shape. Approximately two and half meters long, a meter wide and a meter deep, they looked very much like a traditional coffin...and were in fact used for funerals in space. The other reality was that very few of them were ever used in crises, and in those that were, the survival rate was around five percent. So, once you entered one, a realist might say that you really had entered coffin, based on the odds.

They were designed for one person, but could accommodate two people in emergencies (though inadvisable).

Both Brond and T'Laine started immediately for the nearest bulkhead at a full sprint. There was one escape pod near to them, another one was five meters further along the wall.

The ship shook and in that slowed time one feels in crisis situations, they exchanged a panicked glance. One of them might not be able to reach the second lifepod if this impact meant what they suspected.

The sound of metal ripping pierced the air.

"You take it!" cried T'Laine!"

"No!" cried Brond.

T'Laine lost her breath as Brond wrapped his arms around her and lifted her easily in his arms. In that same motion, he leapt with her into the escape pod.

As soon as they hit the back cushion the pod instantly sealed. The padding filled with compression gel and expanded rapidly around their two bodies, wedging them together in an ad hoc embrace. The central idea behind the lifepods was to eject as fast as was possible while not crushing those inside. The explosive thrusters instantly kicked in and rapidly reached a sustained acceleration of 9 Gs. Both of them lost consciousness within a few seconds. The acceleration dwindled once they were clear of danger, but it would be a little while before they were awake again.

***

The shuttle bay of the cruiser was an interesting configuration because you couldn't really see much of the shuttles. Each shuttle was already locked in its own launch tube and only the rear hatch was visible.

Enod was continually surprised and pleased with L'Gia. Counter to Brond's claims, she was a poised, serious, charming, and quite lovely young woman.

Yes, Enod had taught her in his climatology classes when she was 12, but back then she had been a skinny, gangly girl who had just shot up and was a full head taller than every boy in class. Her feud with Brond had started by then, but she had always been on her best behavior in his class.

She was gangly no more. Although she had seemed tall then, she had stopped growing upward at around the 1.65 meter mark and had filled in the bits that had yet to catch up. 'Nubile' was certainly a proper term.

She was so much like her mother. Where T'Laine had auburn hair, L'Gia's was more red, but the resemblance was striking. For that reason, Enod appreciated the daughter because she gave him a glimpse of the mother with whom he was looking very forward to partnering with.

Enod also had the odd experience of evaluating L'Gia as a potential mate for his son.

Like Enod had been in his youth, Brond had been slow in developing the right emotional maturity for dealing with girls. Smart as a Callerian, yes, and able to master any science or skill easily, but Brond was just now developing the emotional tools to deal with girls. With that view, Enod sincerely hoped the two youths would be able to set aside their past differences. He could just tell that they would both be able to teach each other more than a few things. He was inappropriately contemplating such possibilities when she caught his gaze.

"Secondary inspection completed on the propulsion systems," said L'Gia. All systems optimal."

She had caught him mid 'contemplation' and was surprised that he didn't answer.

"Dr. Stigsen, do you not agree?"

"What?" stammered Enod, trying to seem casually distracted with his own work. "Oh, yes, I concur. Propulsion systems optimal."

"Is everything all right, Dr. Stigsen?"

"Yes, yes. Sorry, my mind's just preoccupied with too many details of the mission. And please, L'Gia, call me Enod. We're coworkers now. I'm not your instructor any more."

"I know," said L'Gia blushing. "Old habits, I guess. Besides, I like calling you Doctor."

She did indeed. Just as the boys had their ship-milf competition, the girls had their own private message boards and a ship-dilf contest. Around five years ago, it had been decided that Dr. Stigsen would be left out of the running. Her friend Kereen had put it best by saying, "Oh, Dr. Stig is just a given. We all want him, let's give the other dads a chance."

It was true, not only was Enod Stigsen handsome and magnetic, he was also the whole package: Veteran of two wars, decorated as both a battle surgeon and combat officer, and intelligent in seemly every subject. Then, of course, were the rumors of his tantric expertise. Last, he was possessed of a low sexy, rumbling voice that seemed to actually vibrate in a girl's body. She still remembered the time he'd told her 'nice work' in class, using that strong, growling whisper of his. Such fantasies that voice had unknowingly planted in her mind. There were few girls who hadn't fantasized about contracting, or something, with Dr. Stig.