Parasite

He suspected it had to do with who was supposed to fix it. The engineering group assigned to maintain his lab equipment were Theta females. All Al needed to do was call. A tech would immediately fix it, and Al would tip her, you know what I mean. The maintenance engineering group, unfortunately, were all male Thetas. Therefore reduced to the primitive method of rubbing a piece of cloth over his head, his hair remained damp. It would take too long to dry completely, and he would be late for his appointment with the Captain.

He announced his presence at Captain Russell's hatch using the squawk box next to it. The hatch swished open, and the Captain stood facing him in the middle of the room. Captain Amy Russell was, of course, a theta female. She was almost as tall as Al, beautiful wearing the hair of her head in the classical Theta way. It was in a sort of bun on the top of her head. Her features were beautiful, with a long neck leading to her naked breasts, slightly larger than most theta females, smooth cones sticking straight out of her chest topped with large nipple towers surrounded by pink areola. Her hourglass figure sported what they called casual wear on Delta Theta. Imagine the loin cloth described earlier, only the front just long enough to hide her pussy and backless.

"Evening Mr. Cooper. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice," she said, formally juxtaposed to her casual look.

"Sure, Captain," he replied, using her title to match her formality.

"The Org contacted me. They are demanding that I take you to the Copernicus luxury complex for a vacation?" she said, turning the last word up to indicate a question.

"Sorry, I don't know anything about that," Al replied.

"Here, I'll show you," and she pulled up the message on her communicator and showed it to him.

"Yeah, that's what it seems to say," he replied.

"Well, you've got to call Gluck and get this changed. We don't have time to take any vacations," she spat out.

Captain Russell was a top-notch Captain and, more importantly, a skilled merchant. She made a fortune for the owners, herself, and the crew. Each crew member got a percentage of the cargo profits, so the more one hauled, the richer one got. The contract with the Org helped, even though sometimes they had to trot off to some backwater pest hole and do whatever the hell it was Cooper did.

The monthly payment of credits for the operating expenses made a clear profit on every haul. The engines made them fast so they could transport the more costly perishables like pergens, a fruit popular with the reptilian colonies but smelled like rotting corpses to humans. Unpleasant, a very perishable, high-risk cargo, but because of that risk, highly profitable. Gluck was Cooper's boss and the one demanding this diversion.

"I can try, I guess," Al replied.

Turning to the hologram platform, he pulled out his handheld communicator and made a few taps with his fingers. This activated the voice recognition passcode, and the hologram screen presented the easily recognizable 3D visage of his boss, Gluck, on the Enterprise. Well, that was about as close as any human could come to speaking what his name was in his native tongue. His name contained an odd click whistle that was impossible for the human throat to duplicate because it required the creation of three different pitches simultaneously. No human can sing a cord.

"Operative 1st class, Albert Cooper, number 125777 Theta Region," Al said.

This was for the benefit of Gluck's equipment for security purposes. He could see his boss's flaps move. The Amphili-muscoid race that Gluck belonged to was a mix somewhere between salamanders, slugs, and slime mold. Al always shuddered when he saw one, but it wasn't that he didn't like Gluck, just that his look was so different. Maybe if you squinted real hard, you could imagine the flaps to be similar to lips, except they were located on what visually would seem to be his forehead and were, in fact, his genitals.

There was a slight delay, and then the sound came through. It wasn't a delay in the transmission. Warped in, and for all intents and purposes, instantaneous it was that the species his boss belonged to preceded all speech segmentations with an introduction in the supersonic level to most species. It was like messages in the past, sent using a word to indicate the end of a segment of speech, like stop or over. In this case, it started rather than ended the speech segment. Like many things in the universe, there just wasn't a precedent from his species.

"Albert Cooper, how are you?" Gluck asked, the translation device adding nuance and emotion to the translation.

"Quite well, thank you, and you, Doctor?" he replied formally.

"Quite well also," replied Gluck.

"I have Captain Russell here, and she is questioning why we are being pulled from service to go on vacation?" Al explained.

"It is simple. You have not had a Rest and Rehabilitation Period," he said, reverting to the official name for it, "for over two years. Regulations state you must have one yearly. Therefore, you will take an R and R immediately. Reservations are awaiting you, and the entire crew, at the Copernicus luxury complex, all expenses paid."

"But that will cut our month's profits," protested the Captain.

"We will pay a stipend of the cost of operations for the two weeks in addition to the monthly rental," Gluck said.

"But what about the profits?" she said, stiffening in preparation for her usual negotiating.

"Well, we could simply commandeer the ship according to our contractual agreements, and you can get neither," Gluck said flatly.

Out negotiated, which didn't happen often, Captain Russell said, "All right, we will proceed immediately there."

"Thank you, Captain. Albert, is there anything else?" Gluck inquired.

"Nothing, Sir, thank you," Al replied.

"Enjoy yourself, Albert Cooper," Gluck said, ending the transmission with what the translator translated as a laugh.

The Captain looked disappointed but wasn't. The Intrepid's officers and crew could all use a break. The extra would provide a profit, much less than she could make, but she hadn't had any Lacertian Nectar for some time.

"We will head there tomorrow after unloading our current cargo," she said, turning to Al and putting her arms around his neck. "And now for a little vacation for me," she cooed, drawing him into a kiss.

"Your hair is wet," she mused. Looking at the duty screen, she laughed, "Oh, you stood the Watch with Mindy. Now I get it. She is such a slut."

She drew him into another kiss and excitedly tossed her attire away.

"Come here," she said, excitedly leading him to her sleeping apparatus. Within seconds she was on her back, impaled by his cock, squirming and squealing. Having been warmed up by Mindy, his current began flowing quickly, and Captain Russell was soon churning on Al's dick in ecstasy.

Al's rule of only three ejaculations for the other females didn't apply to the Captain. Five of his orgasms later, she was still begging for more. At this point, between Mindy, four others he had serviced, and the Captain, they had drained his balls and most of his abdominal storage sacks, but he had a bit more left in him. Two more orgasms later and now empty, Al arose. A certain nice satisfied glow always encompassed him when drained completely. The Captain lay half-conscious on the apparatus, mumbling unintelligibly. He left her with legs splayed indecently, panting. With the gravity on, the sheet that covered the sleeping apparatus was soaked in cum and squirt.

Al smiled, kissed her forehead, and said, "Good night Captain."

With that, he left, again naked, returning to his cabin and smiling at each giggling female he met on the way.

>>>>>

Al opened his eyes, tingling at the breathtaking view of the beautiful calm blue-green ocean, the pearl-white sand, and the spectacular colors as the smaller of this solar system's two suns followed the other one beyond the horizon. They painted the puffy clouds in an otherworldly pallet of color. The large sun is called Tess, and the smaller one is Yom, after two mythical heroes in the native sentient life forms culture. The colors diffused slightly by the usual clouds as Tess, already having slid behind the horizon, backlit the clouds as Yom energized the particles in the air with an entirely different light spectrum. Impossible to describe this was beauty beyond reason.

It wasn't long before the planet began to experience deep darkness, and artificial lights began to flicker on as this world prepared for its night as it had done from time immemorial. This planet's diurnal period was a little longer than the Federation day of twenty-four hours, and it would be an hour before the six moons would begin their race across the sky, bringing feeble relief from the darkness. Tess rose and fell from one horizon, following a path from one compass point to the other almost directly overhead at this near equatorial latitude. Yom followed a path very low on the horizon in an arc that kept it near the horizon at this latitude. At the poles, they reversed, with Yom following approximately the same path as Tess at the equator. Yom, although smaller, the heat was enough to temper the cold, so the poles of this planet were relatively warm, and although there was ice and snow at certain times and in certain altitudes, it was temperate. On the other hand, the equatorial area was not uncomfortably hot because Tess was not a large Sun. Therefore with effective marketing, the planet became a vacation delight.

Al turned as the last shafts of light from Yom diffused into darkness and headed to The Villa. It was a magnificent, ornate building of the Recopa tradition. It was large and spacious and sat on an outcropping of rock at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The introduction of weather control a thousand generations ago eliminated destructive weather patterns, so The Villa, over one hundred generations old, had survived beautifully.

Having been uninterested in the Sunset, he found Captain Russell drinking Lacertian Nectar, a potent drink from a plant in the Gamma Quadrant. From the looks of her dilated eyes and very contented look, it would seem the Captain had been there a while. A male Theta with her also seemed quite contented sucking on the nipple of her left breast. Upon seeing Al, Captain Russell smiled, nodded, and returned to her sitting dream.

Al had little interest in Lacertian Nectar. It was not that he was one of those prohibition types, but that product was very potent to humans. He didn't want the groggy feeling for two days. Al was a science geek, a term he had discovered in perusing some ancient twentieth-century texts he had read once. The definition given of a geek was someone who worked at something for eight or ten hours for their boss only to go home and do the same thing at home as a hobby. Or maybe it was a meme, a thing meant to be funny. He couldn't be sure it was from an ancient text. It did seem to fit him pretty well. He often preferred to read some article or report than to service the bevy of beautiful females he had access to with but a word. He, like most geeks, could not relax well on a vacation. Reflexively he pulled his communication device from his belt and held it in the palm of his hand. He said his code password and the hologram display sprang to life, identical except in size to the full-sized model in his lab. He scrolled through the various messages that were routine. There were reports from different sectors, new scientific findings, requests from other Org officers for information, or a myriad of things that were everyday normal. Unfortunately, because of his personality, vacations did not sit well with Al. He had only been on it for three days and was already becoming bored.

Luckily there were two levels at this resort. He and the officers were in the luxury part, and the rest of the crew was in the less expensive part. It was nice but not like the luxury accommodations. He figured this would be how it was, surmising Gluck would cheap out on the crew. Nonetheless, the less expensive part was great shore leave and free. This was lucky because he didn't have to be pestered by the entire female Theta crew segment. He enjoyed fucking and did a great job on the officers over the last three days, but even sex, great sex, and copious quantities of sex can get boring.

Shaking his head, he sighed, closing out his communication session. On a whim, he logged on again and ordered the Titan to go to its closest predetermined landing location. A Titan is a mobile, usually unpiloted laboratory on each Federation Planet. It was a scientific wonder in that it monitored the entire planet's health. It autopsied every corpse and made regular trips covering the planet's surface sampling and evaluating the health situation of the world. It completed a comprehensive survey every one hundred Federation days. Although it had no crew, the assigned FCDPC officer could get access to it, so under the pretext of making a routine inspection, Al interrupted its latest survey. He did not inspect Titans unless there was a problem and only if he was the only one in the area. There were employees of the Org who were assigned to check on each Titan every one thousand Federation days or so. He just was bored and wanted to have something to do.

Climbing into his rented speeder, he programmed the location and sat back, listening to music. In only about twenty minutes, he climbed out of the speeder and looked up at the enormous lab. It was like The Villa, only about ten times bigger. He knew it exceeded one hundred meters high and was fifty meters square. It was jam-packed with equipment for all sorts of purposes. It sniffed the air and sampled the water, vegetation, wildlife, and sentient life forms reporting on its findings daily. These were all stored in the massive information complex at the Capitol in the Ganem System. There were five class M1 planet-sized artificial satellites that orbited around each other whose entire purpose was to collect information and store it on the health of the Empire. There was one for each of the Empire's five known Galaxies.

A code word unlocked the massive complex, and he entered the life-form areas. Since the equipment inside did not require life support and, in fact, worked better and longer in a vacuum, most of the complex did not automatically have life support in the operation. Sensing his presence, the lab initiated it in the pre-designated life form areas. With a coded command, he could have acquired life support in all areas, but since there was no real need for him to be there in the first place, he thought that not to be the most prudent of ideas.

A couple of hours of activity began to satiate his boredom, and his prodigious capacity to focus and concentrate his mental energies on situations and problems sapped a small portion of his pent-up energy. It was just enough to relax and calm him, returning him to a more relaxed state. Suddenly, he was interrupted by an event on his display but no warning claxon. The planet was in the midst of a meteor shower, although upon a closer look, that didn't seem to fit the data. Although the meteors came in fast and hot, they changed direction in the atmosphere several times, and trajectories flattened out a few hundred meters from the ground, much more in line with a landing than a crashing meteor. It puzzled him that the planetary defense alarms had not gone off, but then again, he was sitting in the most sophisticated technology available. He was the FCDPC officer, and planetary defense was not his area of expertise, so he just filed it in the back of the formidable computer that was his mind.

After a couple more hours, he had become satisfied and called it quits stepping into the moonlight. The eerie flickering light of the six strange moons streaking across the sky looked like a military flight formation. They each had essentially one highly reflective side, and the other side had almost no ability to reflect light. Because each spun at different rates, their reflective and non-reflective sides were out of sync. This coupled with the two suns of widely differing light spectra caused a truly spectacular but eerie flickering. For those not used to it, the effect was like a strobe light and could easily disorient those unused to it. He programmed the speeder, glad he didn't have to drive it manually.

The first thing he noticed was the lack of light at The Villa. It was late, and many life forms would be asleep, but, in reality, this place never really slept. A word to the speeder slowed its approach. Al, from long experience, had learned not to rush blindly into the unknown. The speeder's braking was so gentle that it was impossible to tell when it began and when the speeder stopped. The stop light indicator finally went on, allowing the hatch to open. Taking a look around, Al saw no one. There were no external lights, but he could see a few interior ones.

Carefully Al circled the building, trying to get the odd look in the windows. At the back of the house, he found an open door into the kitchen. Unarmed, Al peeked through the door, eyeballing as much of the room as possible. Satisfied that there was nothing aggressive in sight anyway, he inched forward. Just before he penetrated the plane of the door, the hair on the back of his head stood on end, and at the last possible second, he jumped back.

The thing swung through the door, landing at his feet. It was akin to an arachnid spider or a gningila's fout out of water. It had tentacles or maybe legs. Its body, if indeed that was the body, was about the size of Al's palm, and there was a tail with an ugly-looking end akin to a scorpion's stinger or an alcthron's dulap. Expecting to land on Al, the creature was stunned by the drop and seemed dazed. It quivered a little and made some feeble-looking movements that indicated it might be trying to get up on its eight or ten legs. Reaching into his pants pocket, Al retrieved a containment force field generator, placed it next to the creature, and watched as it activated. A slight multicolored shimmer encompassed the thing, and a light on one end of the thumb-sized field generator announced that it was working. Safe now, Al squatted down to look this new creature over. To his surprise, it spoke. Well, it made a noise, but his handheld mini-translation device indicated it had received a communication.

"Activate," he said.

The instrument indicated that it did not have the software. This was a magnificent device. Small, about the size of a small communication device, it hung on Al's belt wherever he went. It was small and couldn't hold all languages, but its programming could identify a language and download the necessary software needed for communication from the ship's main computers. So sophisticated was the instrument it interpreted, the nuance in tone, inflection, and even body language. It could even indicate lies and deception.

After downloading the digital information necessary, Al instructed the device to re-translate the communication. The epitaph he heard was not very nice. This ugly bug was cussing at him. Curbing his temptation to squash the vile little beast under his foot, he directed the obvious question to the bug.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" Al asked.

A particularly vile string of cussing came from the creature, followed by death threats.

"Look, whatever you are, knock it off," Al commanded angrily.

The creature stopped.

"I repeat. Who are you, and what are you doing here?" Al repeated in tones that left no question of his seriousness.

The raised foot poised to stomp on the creature didn't hurt either.

"You look like an Earthman," the filthy-mouthed bug said using the ancient designation of Sol prime, "Or maybe an Omi. Ahhh, humanoids all look alike to me," he said, making a noise that translated as laughter.