Planetrise and Moonfall Ch. 02-03

The rebels used the F1s, who were grown in tanks as a mixture of human and vegetation tissue so they emerged already fitted with individual space armour, and were eminently expendable. So the new tactics were to launch them in space around an Imperial vessel and use hand-held guns and missiles to destroy rather than capture enemy vessels. Taking officers prisoners for negotiating ransom payments suddenly became an outdated tactic and Imperial craft were being torn apart without being able to put up any semblance of defence or attack. It was a very worrying turn of events for the ruling classes and the Imperial Navy.

That night was when I first met Genene and led me to fall in love with a woman for the first time.

Genene was old for a prostitute, quite old enough to be my mother, with hints of steel grey in her wispy ginger hair, but despite that, she was stunningly beautiful and I soon become obsessed with her. She was my first love and what I learned from her had guided me to this present momentous crossroad in my life.

Before we actually met, I fell headlong into her room, I was certainly pushed through the door by my cadet crew mates, but I had little control in governing my own balance by then. With everyone stranded onworld, it had been a busy night for all the good time girls and us cadets had been hitting joosale all night and I had also been downing shot after shot of distillate for the past hour before leaving the last bar. As far as I was concerned I was just with the rest of my shipmates, I hardly knew what else was going on around me.

I had been drinking fairly heavily all evening, partly due to worry about the safety of my home world and because I felt so lonely away from my family and friends, having looked forward to seeing them all through the semester. Meanwhile, my shipmates had decided that I was their target to lose his virginity, something that I had been tricked into revealing while distracted by alcohol.

Genene was sitting on the bed when I was pushed through the door and fell on the floor at her exquisite feet. She stood as soon as I appeared, and towered above me, in her high heels and much flesh on display due to her scarcity of clothing, designed to highlight and emphasise her barely hidden assets.

'Get up!' She ordered me in such a commanding voice, something that had been drummed into us Cadets for almost a solid terranyear, that somehow I forced myself to get up and stand to attention. I'm pretty sure I was swaying as I stood, so drunk that I found it hard to stand upright and correct my balance, only the force of her insistence seemed to maintain me in an upright position.

'Do you know what you want from me tonight, young man?' She asked, her eyebrows raised in question. 'You have a wide range of appetising options open to a promising young man such as yourself.'

'No,' I hesitated, 'I have no idea what I am even doing here, Ma'am. I'm a married man and shouldn't be alone here with you, in truth.'

'Married already? And you being so young and beautiful. Let your youth and marital status not be a barrier to maintain your practice in the marital arts during your long absence from your wife, honey. I suppose I have nothing to teach you in the full night of my time that your fellow cadets have bought and paid for. That, in itself is not unusual. When you boys club together your resources to sponsor one among your number with a whole night, it is usually to deflower a Virgin and, delightful though that might be for me, I declare that I do not come cheap. Oh, boys pay by the hour all the time, and return to my hot bed over and over again, once they get the taste, but a whole night, paid by a whip around among all the other cadets, is usually confined to one inexperienced in lovemaking, singled out to join the association of the rest of manhood. Perhaps I will be the one to learn a thing or two during our night of lovemaking from a newly married man?'

'Alas, you will learn nought; I am a virgin, Ma'am, and unwilling to lose my present status until ready to do so with my promised bride. And, I truly wish to remain faithful to my young wife.'

She smiled. A very beautiful smile that was both soulful and amused by my pompous declaration. 'Ah, an arranged marriage, why do you Dukes and Barons persist in interfering in such unnatural practices for alliances' sake, creating a generation of unhappy parents and unhappy children who will go on to make the very same mistake in their turn?'

'True, my marriage is one of alliance, arranged by our fathers, the rulers of our respective worlds. It is my duty to serve my family.'

'Can you be faithful to a woman you do not love or you have an unnatural unconsummated relationship with, or did she defend her honour tooth and nail, or even, is she simply too ugly to you to receive your natural intentions?'

'Well, she is beautiful, bright, intelligent and was at least prepared, rather than willing, to attend to the duty that her father insisted on. The wealth of my family in comparison, and the help we are prepared to give them to make their agricultural world more productive, less wasteful and will ultimately enrich her father, the Baron, which enabled the alliance to be secured. She is but a child bride and on my world she would not be considered ready to take on the mantle of maturity, usually so soon followed by motherhood, until she is eighteen terranyears at the earliest and, I believe, as she has been kept isolated and uneducated thus far, she may not achieve her full maturity until beyond eighteen and even twenty.'

'And you are prepared to wait and hold your carnal desires until you believe your new wife is ready for her destiny of procreation?'

'When WE believe, Ma'am; we are a partnership my wife and I, one that I hope will last our lifetimes. In the meantime, she is undergoing education, starting in the basics of learning for the first time in her life, and I am here learning things about flying and war that has me fully occupied, with no thought therefore of carnal intimacy.'

'Please call me Genene, my mother was Ma'am, and I am uncomfortable being addressed thus. And what do I call you, young Cadet?'

'Ivan.'

She held out her slim, long fingered hand, I took it gently and shook it lightly. When I released her hand, she maintained her hold onto mine, and continued smiling.

'Ah, Ivan it is a pleasure to meet such a gentle giant who appears to be a gentleman wise beyond your years, you are so rare a breed nowadays. I am sure you are more a giver than a taker and you treat everyone with respect, even those that work for you. Am I right, yes?'

'I try to make comfortable those who have no choice but to respond positively to tasks I assign them. I prefer to ask with a smile and thank them before and after for their service. Ultimately, I am aware that the duty of my position is to serve my people, and they in turn serve me. Master and servant means nothing other than we each have our respective roles to play. Decision making may be my destiny, but I am not so arrogant to accept the fact that those I give orders to are often better placed to advise than simply carry out tasks in a manner which might be counter to what is appropriate. Few of them could do well what I have to do in service to my people and I would find it impossible to do well just the once what they do every day in service to me and my world. I count my wife in terms of the service we must do for each other and therefore treating each other with respect gives us both the impetus, desire even, to do what we want and needs to be done with a sense of purpose and enjoy the rewards that our willing efforts bring.'

She continued to hold my hand, so I gently renewed my light grip on hers that I had previously released. Respect was being exchanged. This was not about money for services but between us a gentle bond of respect was building, in which she, the professional courtesan relaxed her sexuality display and in so doing appeared even more beautiful than ever.

'Interesting and intriguing, young Cadet Ivan. Very much so, my dear ... what is your noble title, pray?'

'Cadet Ensign Ivan Merciant while I am here in service, Genene, and while at home the Honourable Ivan Merciant, ducal heir to Duke Jolyon —'

'Jolyon Merciant of the Como system?'

'Aye, you have heard of him?'

She nodded. 'I have.'

'We are an old house,' I understood how she might have heard of us, many worlds benefited from our trade and influence. 'I am the Duke's eldest child and only son. Only of us two survived full term, myself and my sister Shonola. My mother had problems falling pregnant and holding on to them for a full term after my sister and I were born, so they decided not to try any longer and settled for us. I had a happy childhood.'

'And no half-brothers or sisters in the ducal brood?'

'Yes a sister by recent adoption, the husband of my mother's sister, my aunt, died a few years back so my father took in his sister-in-law and adopted my cousin so she became my sister.'

'So, how did your shipmates find out that you, a married man, is still a virgin?'

'I don't remember saying so, but as they carried me here to your door, it was the subject on every lip. My brain sobered up pretty quickly, but my body is still as drunk as I can be and yet still stand. I am used to the ale and wine native to my world, but distillates were never encouraged in my household.'

I was swaying even wider from the perpendicular and my legs started to shake from the effort of standing.

'Sit here next to me,' she said, smiling, patting the area of bed next to where she now sat, 'I doubt I would get a full grown man your size onto the bed if you were to give way and fall. I might have to leave you all night where you lay.'

'I get the impression that you are stronger than you look.'

'Ha! You are probably right, a mother defending her cubs can be pretty fierce and forceful. Although I don't have any cubs. From time to time, though, I have been known to adopt a cub while they reside in this nest of vultures that is the Imperial Naval Academy. Perhaps in the near future I will adopt, protect and love another worthy boy of my acquaintance. Is it possible that you would be one to fit that bill, the son of another?'

I shuffled over, concentrating all the time on my balance and sat down heavily next to her.

'Another Merciant?'

'Cadet Ensign Jolyon was a beautiful man, both inside and out. I see a lot of him in you, now that you have owned to me your heritage. Different, yes, but much the same. More dangerous I think.'

'Who?' I asked, my mind still a whirlpool of thoughts about my loyal, loving, faithful father, being a past lover of this beautiful woman, 'is the most dangerous?'

'You, my sweet man, dangerous to my heart, anyway. I survived your father, who wasn't prepared to take me home as a concubine. You are of the same mould, and likely to remain loyal to your wife once you take her into your heart as your own. And a poor girl's heart can only be broken and mended once before it weakens and shrivels like a dessicated fruit.'

"I don't want to break any hearts. I don't want to break yours or mine."

"No-one willingly goes into a relationship wishing for a broken heart at the end of it," she said, "but living without love can also shrivel a heart. Loneliness can hurt your spirit, make you less a man and more a beast. You may be married on paper, but you say that she is but a child, willing to obey but in your eyes not really ready to enter the pain and worry of adulthood yet. She may respect you, and you clearly respect her by what you say, but can there be romantic love without sexual intimacy? How long have you been married?"

"Just over a year."

"And you have been here a month or two less than a year?"

"Yes, we were married for barely a terranquarter before I departed."

"And you have missed your home world vacation this year due to the rebel action —"

"That has not been confirmed, Genentech, the reason given is —"

"A supernova, I know, I sleep with generals and admirals without ever actually sleeping with them, Ivan. They talk, they all talk, so you cannot pull the wool over my eyes. Besides, that supernova happened millions of years ago, while the Rebel sacking of Angeles Four and the Barbandos System, with the annihilation of the Fourteenth Fleet of the Imperial Galactic Navy on Barbandos Prime, with not a single survivor to tell what exactly happened, occurred in just the last six weeks."

"Oh."

"Don't worry, I am not a rebel spy, my dear Ivan. Nobles, as part of the gentlemanly old order, happily pay generously for their pleasures, while the new order of rebels, should they succeed, will simply take pleasure where they will, that is the nature of rebellion. That would be disastrous for me, as the nobility is my natural trawling ground. The people will notice little change should the rebellion succeed, except that during the changeover there will be destruction and interruption of trade and consumables, possibly some starvation and deprivation, but eventually the new order will become the old order within a generation and things will return to normal for the next millennia or maybe even another seven of them."

"So, you are saying, in these troubled times, we should live for today and compromise the promises of fealty that I have already made to my wife?"

"Promises to a child, a child by your own admission, who is happy to continue being fully occupied catching up with eight or nine terranyears of missed education in the next three, while in a state of no desire for sexual activity, waiting patiently for you to return at a time when you are both comfortable to consummate the terms of your marriage contract. She is a child, several terranyears or so your junior, I guess, she is definitely not you, a large and muscular young man at the height of his physical powers, whose body is training to be honed to the optimum in strength, endurance, explosive action and intelligent use of strategy and leadership. You need the release of sex, even better, the love of a good woman, who will teach you to extract the maximum gratification in your sexual achievements, most of which comes from the selfless and complete sexual satisfaction of a loving partner, one who is equally striving to give the greater amount of pleasure to the boy come man who captures her heart and desire. You, my dear Ivan need this, and your stock in everything else you do, be it military, the joy of interstellar flight or the comfortable comradeship of your peers, and confidence in dealing with your betters, will be improved out of all recognition, by regular sexual satisfaction and ... love."

"For a woman of, shall we say, certain personal services, your oratory skills seem to be highly developed." I grinned to deflect any implied judgement of her profession.

"You will find, my dear sweet Ivan, that as you grow into a man and you eventually claim your bride exclusively for your own, you will be equipped and satisfied to make a perfectly satisfactory match. And you will come to your life partner without any encumbrances of an elderly concubine who would feel desperately out of place in such a situation with a young and eager wife desperate to have babies to spare for not only your succession but to spread your family's influence in tying into as many other families of note within your growing sphere of influence as she can bear."

"You say I need this, but I say, my beautiful Genene, that I am so tired right now that couldn't even manage to masturbate tonight, let alone try and make my first attempt at something that is supposed to come naturally. But, I am conscious that you have been paid for the night and that you should therefore tell my friends when they collect me in the morning that I got them their money's worth."

"Maybe I will bank your friends' money as a credit for you in future and take tonight as a welcome and unexpected holiday. Come, let us undress and I will wash you clean in the shower. Phew! You have drunk so much that stale joosale and undiluted distillate is erupting from your pores. It is all right for you sailors who are used to your self-cleaning pods and body-repair vegi-smocks, but planetside we still have to shower with soap and hot water like the primitive planet-slugs have always done before us, and put our clothes through a dry renovator to refresh them ready to wear again. So come on, we'll both disrobe and I will bathe and relax you ready to sleep. I promise not to tackle you unfairly in the shower, or at least I will try and resist you as long as I can."

I do remember the shower, how she soaped me all over and held me up with a surprising degree of strength and well-practiced technique. She did pull rather skilfully on my eagerly responding member into what I remember was a disappointingly early ejaculation and then sucked me back to hardness again after blow drying my clean body, and urging me into helping her to get every intimate part of her delicious body thoroughly washed and rub-dried into pink freshness. From there she helped me back to her bed where I felt I slept an unbroken sleep, wrapped contentedly in Genene's comfortably accommodating arms.

Planetfall

Chapter 3

Cadet Academy

Imperial date 7933 E

The next day, when I reached the showers at my cadet dormitory, my friends who gleefully stripped me of my clean clothes and dragged me into the showers, were stunned into shock and marvelled at the shredded finger nail scratches on my back, the hickies littering my neck, shoulders, thighs and nipples, and the lipstick marks up and down every inch of my penis, fast made me the most respected ex-virgin in the cadet school unwritten record.

Now I remember nothing from the point I fell asleep in Genene's bed until we were woken in the morning by my fellow officer cadets. But I do clearly remember both that I was washed more thoroughly than a mother washes a newborn and that when Genene got me to wash every single delightful part of her body, her beautiful face, including her lips, were made clean of every speck of painted enhancements.

I checked up the records held on this Genene Probyn. She came from solid stock, born 7892 E to a civil servant on her home world, a mining planet. Her grandfather was a mining union official, managed to obtain a union-sponsored scholarship for his son who showed promise, sending him off world to become an accountant. Genene's father returned to his home world and married a girl, who lived in the same street of tenements as he lived and they had a large family. He worked as an accountant in the planet's mining company until he retired, when the local 3DNewscast noted that they had won a luxury retirement home on a distant system in a lottery that they couldn't remember entering and were now in happy retirement.

Genene was a bright child and had also won a scholarship to college on Conrad Quarto where she was recorded as studying law, passing her bar examination on another world, Archangel Prime some five terranyears later. As a Noble and home world security officer on Como Prime, I had high-level security clearance and able to access criminal records and found that she had two misdemeanour convictions on Conrad for prostitution and sued the potentate on Archangel Prime almost immediately after passing the bar exam with flying colours, for damages for assault, which was settled out of court. Coincidentally, the retirement home her parents won twenty years later was on a moon around Archangel Tertio.

Genene disappeared from the records for several years until applying for residency close to the Navel Academy, registering as a practising lawyer and passing the bar exam here with a record high score. She practiced alone, rather than join a big firm, as most barristers did, and cherry-picked cases, usually defending people in the entertainment business who were mistreated by customers or cheated by their employers; she had such a high success rate than more commonly they were settled out of court. I was impressed by this woman and, wanted to get to know her better, perhaps as a friend or an ally.