Planetrise and Moonfall Ch. 01

The new F4s are 'bits'-less again, grown from scratch in tanks and used purely for terraforming duties on slightly inhospitable planets and moons. But the surviving F3s after the war were in incredible demand by the generals and their captains that now rule every despotic planet in the galaxy, as concubines. Whether they were male or female, they were well accustomed to carving out a comfortable existence in the leisure-pleasure industry. I would hardly call their existence 'life', but then I'm prejudiced.

One of the F3s was my unsuspecting father's second wife, who he married before anyone outside the Rebel hierarchy even knew of their existence. It was an F3 hybrid assassin that killed him while he slept. Then she tried to destroy me, the last known surviving member of my family, until she met her own destiny under the full depth of my trusty battleblade.

They wear so well these hybrids, too. The damn war's been over for nearly 20 years now and I am growing grey round the edges in middle-life, but Lil still looks fresh out of the tank.

Very soon I was no longer the centre of attention as the bombard of space debris begins to register on the hull and the rest of the crew have their work cut out preventing us venting all our air.

It was considered suicide even entering a twin-sun system with only three layers of living vegipolymer skin and a fairly rudimentary antigrav generator in the form of dark matter. Entering a triple-sun system at all was beyond the possibilities of any sane spaceman, which is why the secrets at the heart of this system had remained hidden for so long. The cumbersome Rebel cruisers that chased Imperial guerrillas into their hideaways had at least nine hulls and were internally micropodded to boot, so they might have had a chance, but then they would have to know or guess that the rewards were worth the risk. Now, the old mobile-infantry-naval-troopship-Imperials, that I was accustomed to flying, were simply triple-hulled, and our current vessel was the only one in the orbit parking lot that Lil had found which fitted the bill, with a zulon willing to mindmeld with the scum it believed I had become, so we could at least make steerageway.

I say 'willing to mindmeld', but this was not strictly true.

There are a lot of alien life-forms out there in space, as you know. They are as numerous as there are planets, but 99.9% of alien life is single-celled and red, blue or green and invariably deadly poisonous to human touch.

The zulons are just about the most advanced alien form we know and each member of their species is a fluid collection of cells that hold loosely together as a colony within which the individual parts grow and divide and die and are reborn, so an individual colony never actually dies. They have collective thoughts and memories that make each specialised brain cell more powerful than a million human brains. They send out spores that set up new colonies of cells within the fabric of the ship, interacting with the controls, even attaching to ourselves, and controlling the growing of cultures for the living polymer skin layers and all linked to the main zulon form, usually found spread out on the ceiling of the upper deck, away from the grav and poop decks where they could be crushed by human feet. They are symbiotic with us, feeding on the detritus exuded from our bodies, which is why we smell so nice even though we don't have enough water to wash regularly. The clean our waste water, using what minerals they need and storing the water for human use, putting whatever minerals we need to make the water taste better and good for our health. Also they provide the atmosphere that we breath as a byproduct of their own bodily functions, which they can easily and automatically adapt to different species. They have evolved themselves to be the opposite of ourselves thriving on the poisons that would poison of suffocate us, whilst supply us with our basic needs; the ultimate symbiotic relationship. They communicate with us telepathically as they do with their own kind and with any zulon-steered craft they wish to in the galaxy, instantaneous, distance no object. How do they they do that, you ask? By folding space through wormholes through which we could travel.

The spacecraft we use are carbon-based, fully-formed vessels, grown just as planet surface plants are, but more like seed pods, with tough outer shells, often with multiple outer layers for maximum protection of their precious contents. The zulons control the growing of them in space orbits. The zulon are able to reproduce internal pods for a wide range of different tasks, as well as external pods which can be sent out for surveying. The zulons are creatures of space, they do not live on moons or planets; the few cells they embed in our brains only survive onworld because they are protected by our bodies.

Without the Zulons we would have no interstellar flight, it is they that control the jumps and hold the intergalactic fabric of human civilisation together, and long ago they helped the Empire spread to every corner of our galaxy, the Milky Way. When humans first discovered them thousands of years ago, they were initially enslaved by my Imperial ancestors, and the zulons were simply too civilised, too respectful of life in whatever form it comes, to resist with violence. If they wanted to, they could simply deprive us of air and suffocate us within a matter of minutes, but I don't think that possibility would even occur to them. I had my own zulon once, when I was a pilot, it was an intense relationship and we would have died for each other, and ultimately Pymon sacrificed her life for me and I have been alone ever since. Our onboard interstellar flight computer and me: well, we are not close, Mylon and I, not really close at all.

The presence of human civilisation has only progressed to become a truly interstellar phonomemnon because of this human/zulon relationship. It is in the form of symbiosis personified, humans developed the technique of growing and grafting additional hulls in vegetable form, which have become our space vessels, protecting human and zulons alike from the killing space outside. The earth-based herbal kingdom we were always used to is a lower form of life which lacks the repair and regenerative properties of the animal kingdom of which humanity is part.

The biotechnicians long ago formulated the living vegetable polymer that can be fed through the cell structure to strengthen and repair the normal wear and tear damage from space. The zulons steer and control the ships through hyperspace, and provide the air we breathe; the humans grow the vegifood that keep us alive and living vegpolymer used to keep the vessel intact; the zulons recycle the nutrients to the vegiprops and process any gaseous waste to feed to the vegpulse engines which the humans developed at the start of Earthexodus, nearly eight thousand years ago. And finally the zulons' capacity for telepathy keeps the galaxy colonies and vessels in continuous instantaneous contact.

I remember when I was a pilot cadet at the Imperial Academy. They had an orbiting exhibition of the early atomic space vessels: dirty, smelly, dangerous, disease-ridden metal tubes full of vermin, which took generations to get from system to system. The Atomic Age, sometimes called the Steel Age, is ancient history. And it takes a great deal of effort by the Academy Museum to keep the resident Academy zulon from cleaning up the exhibit!

The zulon in our craft is called Mylon. Pilot-masters like myself were trained from infancy to meld with these fantastic creatures and build a lifelong bond. They never forget their collective memories and when I melded with this one a few short weeks ago there was no hiding from it who and what I was. My old zulon, Pynom, that I bonded with almost from birth, has long been dead. She was destroyed more than twenty years ago in the turning years of the long war, but the lingering echoes of our relationship survive in every zulon colony that she ever communicated with and I was recognised and tentatively accepted, although I am still on probation with any zulon I interact with. Humans with imperial connections suffer from the sins of their forefathers. Fortunately, it appeared, I had few sins of my own account, which avoided immediate rejection and inevitable surrender to what nowadays masquerades as the authorities. Stealing an interstellar vessel is impossible and buying or using such a vessel for nefarious activities is never easy, Mylon would never demean herself to admit as much to me but I suspect the relationship with her previous owner, an abusive local planetary general, was tenuous at best and must have been worse than whatever malevolence she had towards me.

While negotiating this intense rockstorm, steerage is pointless, the crew work the deflectors and guide the sightless Mylon to where hull repairs were required. So I wasn't really needed and while inactively waiting for moonrise, my attention inevitably strays back to Lil, looking very fetching in her sinuous manipulation of aligning the dark matter which was contained in our gravdeck, which creates anti gravity at both poles which Lil fed through the various veg engines around the hull, deflecting the more dangerous metallic rocks which threatened the integrity of the hull.

Dark matter is tricky stuff, if released from the magnetic field plus the tough and flexible living cellulose tissue which surrounds and channels it, this whole vessel would be crushed to a size of a hydrogen molecule.

Lil stands leaning over the console and the enticing firm roundness and inviting crease of her backside is like a magnet to my aching gaze. She senses my attention and sharply turns her hooded head in my direction. My gaze shifts as quickly as I can manage from her arse to her eyes, defiant to stare out her expected spirited challenge, but her fiery glance is only a momentary flash and, with a hint of a smile on her fully pouting ruby lips, she turns her lovely head back to her task in hand, which is saving the vessel from being crushed by multiple collisions.

Guiltily and, although on one level it was perfectly natural for me to love this beautiful woman with every fibre of my being, you don't yet know on how many other levels the very thought of it was wrong. Such were the thoughts on my part.

I turn to look instead at Selene, where at least some progress in physical relationship was possible. Relieved of rock-prodding duties, she was busy in the galley to my right, preparing hot drinks before we space jump for the last time. She also notices me glance in her direction and she blesses me with a beautiful warm smile, her even white teeth prominent against her startanned face. She has a broad head, a frank and open face with low brow and deeply slanted eyes under black brows, wide nose and full mouth, which I could imagine would open wide enough to please more than one man at a time. Her jet black hair is cropped close at the top and sides in the current style of star travellers. She is short and full figured, her large rounded breasts swaying in time with the movements of the ship, yet full ripe enough to defy the ever present tugging of the gravdeck. Although she is more than half my age, between late teens and early twenties, she had granted me her favours on several occasions, in between servicing the captain and mate who had first call on her services and had a tendency to indulge in tag-teaming. However, my upbringing was such to put me off simultaneous sexual sharing and she was the first and so far only girl to receive my attentions following my long incarceration. You could say that this adorable girl was my one true taste of freedom on this vessel, on what looked likely to be my last voyage.

***

It was almost a month earlier when I caught up with Kevlin at Magellan Prime, using the Republican State's onetime travel ticket from the Pen-Planet. Kevlin, Skeech and Selene then transported me in their little space skiff to where Lil had found the vessel we needed to steal on a parking orbit on a pleasure world. Although Lilian could have melded with the zulon, she was crewed to work the vegpulse engines, so it was left to me to persuade the zulon in the vessel that I was a slightly more suitable pilot than his current jockey, a planetary warlord with a favoured execution method of forcing radiation-hot atomic fuel rods from primitive worlds into his latest victim's rectum.

Once Mylon the zulon and I had negotiated a reluctant truce between us, we took off away to a hideaway where we prepared the ship for this trip. As you know, once a vessel has been full grown you can't simply graft on another hull, but given a little time and someone with a biotech Ph.D you can change the characteristics of the hull to cope with a hot multiple-sun system, and this is where Lil came into her own. But while she worked her biomagic, the rest of the crew could relax and, after 20 years of hard labour, I was more than ready for some R'n'R.

I remember when Selene was doing the same as she was doing now, preparing food for the next meal, when I visited the open galley to refresh my cup with cool lo-grav joosale. The Skip and mate were offship planetside somewhere sourcing essential supplies and Lil was busy on the poop deck with filling the biotanks, so we were alone on the main deck in the tiny galley with me standing in front of her. As she poured my drink from the jug she playfully ran her hand over my smooth scalp as she rubbed herself up me as she stretched.

'Are you this all over?' she enquired softly, her thick accent telling me that Standard was likely not her native tongue, 'it very cool, no?'

'Y-yes', I stuttered, after 20 years inside the Pen it was difficult to be touched and rubbed without it being synonymous with pain, but I got myself sufficiently together to reply, 'I'm smooth all over.'

Well, she did give me goose bumps so I was not quite that smooth. And this early in our acquaintance I guessed she was inclined to be easy with her favours, I was too wary to actually touch her myself. She had only just grown out of being a kid and I was well into my fifth terrandecade, in fact closer to starting my sixth. She spun round back to her galley blade and chopboard and at the same time pressed her ample rounded buttocks into my groin, moving up and down slowly and deliberately as she rhythmically sliced orange bean pods ready for the nanowave cooker. My groin twitched and responded automatically and in doing so pressed into the groove between her downy buttocks.

'Mmmm, are you a grower or jus' get hard?' she breathed.

'A bit of both, I guess,' I ventured, 'it's been such a long time, I'm not sure if I even remember.'

'Well, maybe you ready for 'nother refresher, uhh?'

I put down my joosale cup and used both hands to explore her very own cups through her flimsy blouse, her nipples growing exponentially between my fingers and thumbs, the rise and fall of her breasts in time with the shortening and quickening of her breathing. Although her hair was cropped short on top and down to her ears, she had left wispy curls of downy hair around the nape of her neck and I teased her neck with my lips and tongue while working her nipples, my nose buried in dark bristly hair. The zulons have lived with us long enough to know when they are not wanted and that is particularly applicable during mating, so for the first time I could smell the natural scent of her warm hair in my nostrils. It was sweet and heady and quite simply lovely.

My tongue flicked at the nape and around the sides of her neck and I drew an ear lobe between my lips where I could taste her fresh salty sweat for the first time on my tongue and it was so good. I lightly nibbled at her skin, lifting and releasing it again, nuzzling and nipping, taking my time sucking and licking in sheer pleasure at her willing body, as she delightfully pressed her back and buttocks into my torso. She had one hand pressing my head into her neck and the other clutching at one of my arse cheeks. I tore one of my hands away from a glorious breast long enough to run an index finger down the zapzip at the front of her blouse and the garment slickly parted allowing me to access directly both of her delightful orbs and I enthusiastically but gently rubbed each stiffened bare nipple between index finger and thumb.

My licking/nipping travailed her shoulder and into the enticing hollow of her armpits, my excited nostrils revelling in the new experience of the zingy pungency of her delicious natural musk. While still behind her, my right hand cupped her breast and lifted the nipple and enormous brown areola to my beckoning mouth. Gently I licked her nipple and sucked at her wrinkling pimply areola, while my other hand descended to her short skirt's zapzip, which responded without resistance at the lightest touch, dropping away to the floor. Clearly women's fashions had not changed as much since my youth as I had feared. I released my own clothing and my hugely engorged member was liberated from its woven cell and I pushed it down between her legs from behind, my blood-filled cockhood pressing against her moist and engorged cunt lips.

If I was surprised at my old blood engorged best friend's length and ramrod stiffness after a couple of decades of complete sexual dormancy, clearly Selene was even more impressed, although all she said was simply: 'Wow! Where you been all my life?!'

I felt any reply unnecessary, but she had certainly given me the confidence to proceed with boldness. I moved a wetted finger to her pudendum, briefly toying with her anus and then moved through her delightful folds of flesh to the top and began to caress her clit and felt its engorgement under my attention peeping from its shy retreat in the folds of her clitoral hood. Meanwhile, one of Selene's hands squeezed, somewhat less than gently, my left buttock, while the finger and thumb of her right hand rather more delicately eased back and forth the pre-cum lubricated prepuce over the head of my throbbing cock.

I remoistened a finger and slipped it into her vagina, where I found my oral lubrication unnecessary, her juices flowing from her like only a ripe young woman's cunt can.

'I want you now,' I breathed softly, with an urgent degree of pleading, in her ear.

'I want you too,' she replied, turning her head and moving her lips to meet mine, raising her left hand from my bum to the back of my head drawing my lips to her eager mouth, while her right hand, with thumb pointing towards my body, tugged my foreskin up and down my shaft with an unaccustomed savagery, although it would have been churlish to imply any criticism of the gesture, when my main thought was of deep-felt gratitude. My fingers, more than one now, worked up and down her inner labia and around her clit.

She said 'But I still sore down there from ... last night,' and she sharply bit my lower lip, forcing me to open my eyes. She looked up into them, a trusting yet vulnerable young woman. We stood stock still for a moment staring into each other's eyes, gently rubbing our noses together. 'I sore vagine,' she continued, 'but you so welcome my butt.'

She looked so sweet, beautiful, round faced and big eyes, like a pet eager to please a new master. I was only half way through replying 'Perf...' before her mouth devoured my tongue and, while somehow maintaining lip contact, she swung her body round and, holding my right hand in her left, we walked towards the opening leading to the lower deck.

For the planetbound, the concept of gravdecks is strange and a little frightening at first. The gravity comes from the extraordinary pull of dark matter, finely adjusted to suit the home planet of the vessel's crew or passengers. So when you change decks, the ceiling of the lower deck becomes the floor to which you fall to. So there are no stairs, just an opening, on the edge of which you stand with half your feet poking over. Then, keeping your feet in place, you topple head first towards the opening; if you are tall, like me, you may just bend your knees to make sure you don't hit your head on the other side of the opening, the momentum of your fall carrying you against the gravity pull of the ceiling on the lower deck and you end up standing upside down with your toes on the new deck and your heels hanging in space. You can either fall back on your heels and head back to the main deck, or walk forward onto the 'ceiling' of the lower deck towards the quarters. What appears to be the deck ceiling is actually the floor. It is fun seeing first timers trying to do what is simply the everyday normal life of spacemen.