The Hierarchy of Now and Forever Ch. 04

The Excalibur soared through tier three of the Space Opera Field at several times the speed of light - but, even at such impossible speeds, the vast gulf between the SOL system and her nearest neighbor of Alpha Centuri was not something that could be simply blinked away. It was theoretically possible to get there nearly instantly, if one was willing to dive deeper and deeper and deeper into the SOF, where ideas and concepts became more broken down by the curious properties of the otherworldly universe that existed beneath realspace. The only problem was the further into the SOF one got, the less reliable and predictable technology, then biology, then physics itself got.

So, yes, it was possible to reach Alpha Centauri in a second of flight in the depths of the tenth or eleventh tier of the SOF. But no one aboard the ship would survive that second - neurons would fire improperly, digestive acids would eat more fiercely than was possible, gravity would do what it would, and even the most dependable of technologies like doors or floors would become prone to radical malfunctions that broke the bounds of possibility.

Thus, the Excalibur remained in what one might call the shallows of the SOF, and the crew did as crew had done across countless billions of starships over untold millennia of galactic civilizations: They maintained machines. They practiced on simulators. They discussed gossip. And, in the case of Captain John Tangent, they dealt with the consequences of having an alien take up resident inside of his brain as a symbiotic telepathic passenger.

"From our scans, the esper abilities that Pixie is capable of utilizing are coming from your own underdeveloped Xavier-Eisenhart psi nodules in your prefrontal cortex," Dr. Darling said, turning to face John as he buttoned up his uniform after the exams were done. "As you know, human esper abilities only emerged with exposure to the SOF in the 21^st century - what was mistaken as a series of unusual brain cancers was, in fact, the creation of the psi nodes in the percentage of your species that had gone into interstellar space. This process propagated throughout the Earth across the 21^st and into the 22^nd century as your paradimensional travel experiments led to massive space mobilization and exploration."

"They covered this in the historical tapes," John said, finishing his last button, while Pixie cavorted behind Dr. Darling. The lithe alieness was, currently, holding up a pair of pink fingers behind the chrome doctor's head, giving the Omnidrone a pair of bunny ears. "But my esper talent was nill. Are my XE Nodes...engorging? Should I be worrying about headaches? Hallucinations. More than the one I already have." He smirked, slightly, as Pixie scowled at him.

"That's the remarkable thing. Your body is producing esper radiation at the level of a high category psionicist - on par with Subject K or the Mandeville Triplets - but without any signs of engorgement of your nodes."

"Not those nodes at least," Pixie said, then giggled. "Dick."

"Quite," John said.

Dr. Darling nodded. "We are beginning to work on a holoprojection psionic rig that will allow your partner to, ahem, be visible and audible to other people."

"Oooh!" Pixie brightened.

"That combined with her telekinesis might as well make her a part of the normal crew," Dr. Darling said.

"Save that I get to ride the Captain's dick without guilt," Pixies said, slipping around Dr. Darling to sit on the biobed next to John. "Isn't that right?"

"I don't know, Kat didn't seem particularly guilty," John said.

"Hmm?" Dr. Darling asked. "Ah, I presume she's said something."

"The only member of the crew that can, ahem, have intimate relations," John said.

"That's one way to say ride your shortarm like a bucking bronko!" Pixie said, giggling more as her antennas flicked up playfully. "Oh, or to suck your schlong down my eager little throat and-"

"Under the United Nations code of ethics, that's technically true. Though, there is a certain measure of wiggle room," Dr. Darling said, dryly. "The SOF has an odd effect on probability - and there has been no less than thirty five different situations in the UNN's history where a Captain had needed to have intimate relations with a member of his crew to resolve a dire situation, backed up by tribunal inquiries and scientific examination."

"Of course," John said, his voice growing drier. "I will still endeavor to not abuse my position as Captain."

"Of course, John," Dr. Darling said, smiling slightly.

"Now," John said, hopping off the biobed. "I have some of my duties to perform."

"And I get to help!" Pixie said, putting a pink thumb against her flat chest, her diaphanous gown fluttering only an inch or so beneath her taut rump. "Well, okay, I won't help you, like, read your crew's minds. Ethics and all that."

"Of course," John and Dr. Darling said at the same time.

"Jinx!" Pixie shouted into the amused silence.

***

The Excalibur emerged from the SOF and into realspace at the edge of the trinary system of Alpha Centauri and for a moment, John simply reveled in the view. The nearest neighbor to humanity had never been settled - three stars, one of which being a deadly flare star like Proxima Centauri - had not made for the kind of environments where life could grow, flourish and expand. The worlds were wealthy with minerals, yes, but the sheer distance and the tectonically unstable nature of many of them had made mining less tempting than had been expected.

To be frank, the SOL system had had enough resources for ten thousand thousand years of constant growth without anyone running out of materials. The only thing that had drawn humans to the stars had been learning and livable land - and without much of either in Alpha Centauri, the human race had turned their sights outwards...and unknowingly been drawn into the war with the Zemturga Totality. Thus, the system had been left to a few backwater outposts which had been abandoned after the war had hotted up, then came to its catastrophic end.

"Scanning the system, sir," Shey said, her voice soft. John stepped over to her console, his own voice quiet.

"And yes, please, do check for what we discussed," he said.

"It's not likely..." Shey said, but thumbed in some additional parameters.

As she had mentioned before they left SOL, before the excitement of the sudden emergence of Pixie, Shey had a theory about her people and their extinction - a possibility of hope. She had explained it to John on the trip to Alpha Centauri.

Not, of course, at first

.

He had come to her room with Pixie bouncing along, and when the door opened, Shey had stood before the door, completely nude. Her masker was around her neck, dangling against her blue breasts, her nipples hard as rocks as she stood there, her eyes gleaming slightly. "John," she whispered. "I need...more than words."

John nodded, gently. He stepped into the room, taking hold of her masker, and then tugged it off her shoulders, throwing it away. The hazy heat of pheromones had swept through his nostrils and, within a second, his loins had burned with a raw, fiery heat. His hands grabbed onto her ass, squeezing, fierce, rough. Shey bit her lip, ducking her head forward, her nose flaring as she buried her face against his neck, taking in his scent. John had been nothing but instinct then. His cock ground against his clothing, desperate to escape. The only thing they had kept him from ripping it off had been Pixie's quiet, purring voice in his ear.

"Here. Let me help with that."

Telekinesis had undone the buttons, yanked down the pants. His cock had slapped against Shey's muscular belly as her hands went to his hips and her voice, musical and hypnotic, had whispered in his ear.

"I want you to fucking destroy me, Captain. I want you to obliterate me. Be rough." Her hand took his hand, guiding it to her throat. "Be rough. I need it. I need the pain and the pleasure of this sacred act. My...people's grief...we express it this way. It is our ritual." She licked her lips as John, through titanic willpower, forced himself to stay perfectly still.

"Okay," he whispered, his voice husky. "A-Anything more?"

"My safe word is Gallifran." She licked her lips. "I trust Pixie to restrain you, should you not hear."

"You got it!" Pixie said, but John had no idea if Shey had heard her. Instead, he growled. Her words, her scent, had awakened in him a burning fierceness and it had been enhanced - accelerant tossed onto the burning pyre by her words. Gasoline and dynamite, burning and exploding and burst within him as his hands grabbed onto her long red hair, yanking her close and kissing her. He kissed so fierce, so hard, so passionately that his tooth cut open her lip. Bright blue blood dripped down her lip as she moaned lustfully.

"Captain, please, you've lost control..." she moaned, her voice full of yes yes yes. "Stop!"

He pushed her down onto the bed. His hands grabbed onto her wrists, shoving them above her head as she squirmed and snapped her thighs open wide. Her sex was wanting and needy as she arched her back. Pixie moved around to kneel before her head - an invisible, Cheshire cat grin flickering across her pink features.

"Is it just me, or are the Sensorian grief rituals deeply pervy?" she crooned.

John ignored her - and ignored Shey's desperate moans. "Don't, Captain! Don't claim my blue body, don't plunge your virile human cock into my needy cunt. Ah. Don't ravage me. Please!" She moaned, her breathy voice growing more and more desperate as his cock ground against her sex - and his hands slid to her shoulders, pinning her down harder. John thrust into her. Hard. His balls clapped against her blue ass, leaving a darkened flush on her sky blue skin. The bed rocked beneath her as she raked her fingernails along her back, any pretense of not wanting this torn aside by the way her cock took him. "Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!" She moaned. "Ah! Fucking obliterate me! Yes! Ah! Fucking ruin my cunt for any other men, Captain! Yes! Ah, fuck your Senseruian whore. Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!"

John...obliged. His hips jackhammered into her with feral need, his balls slapping against her ass with a meaty plap plap plap as his dick stretched her like he'd never stretched her before. Pixie knelt back on her haunches, licking her lips slowly as she slid her finger along her nubile pussy, her voice soft.

"Okay. I think maybe I should try this in the future," she crooned. "Fuck her good, John. Slam her. Slam her pussy. Yes..." She panted, her finger finding her clit - rubbing in fierce, fierce little circles. She moaned and bucked her hips as Shey's spine curved into a sharp arch and she came around John's dick with the hard clench of a woman having just...an absolutely shattering orgasm. She gasped and panted, her eyes half closed, her jaw hanging open as John threw his head back, growling.

His balls tightened.

His seed overflowed.

And he felt himself going slack, his head spinning as he panted heavily. His seed pumped into her once, twice, three more times...and then he dropped to the side, sliding out of her. He gasped heavily as he laid on his back, while Shey sprawled on the bed, her body gleaming with sweat and spunk in equal measures.

"Goddess and Stars..." She whispered, her breasts rising and falling as she panted. "I needed that."

John closed his eyes, his arm sliding around her shoulders, drawing her in close. She splayed against him, palm caressing his chest, her face burying against his neck. She murmured against him. "Mmm, thank you John."

"I...ah...normally am ready for round three, five and six after, ah, a hit of pheromones that hard," he said, a bit dizzily.

"My apologies," Shey said, quietly. "My pheromone emissions are lower than normal due to my grief." She sniffed, then buried her face against his neck. She started to shudder gently, and John held her even tighter, caressing her back slowly as she clung to him like he was a life raft in a storm tossed sea. Her nose sniffled and she whimpered as tears flowed down her cheeks. Softly, John whispered.

"Shh. Shh. It's okay. It's okay. We're all feeling it..." He said, sliding on his side, to look into her face. She buried her face against his chest, but slowly, her sobbing faded and she was able to breathe, to speak again. She whispered her first words against his chest, still sounding faintly muffled.

"T-There is hope. There has to be."

John nodded. "Tell me about it."

Shey sighed, then squirmed. "This isn't the first time the Sensurians have been in deadly peril, as a species. We knew that our status as rebels would make us thrice the danger to the Zemturga. So, many vaults were prepared - each with a secret sniffer signal that could be detected by a starship within the same solar system. If we were to find those vaults, then the Sensurian people could be reborn." She sighed, quietly. "But...I was not a captain when they were made. I wasn't given any of their secret coordinates. And if my home system has been obliterated, then any clue was obliterated with them."

John nodded, slowly. "So, in short, we have to find hidden vaults, then use our genetic science to turn the samples into Sensurians, to bring your species back from extinction?"

"Yes," she whispered.

John chuckled. His finger found her chin, lifting her head up, so that he could peer down into her eyes. "My Shey," he murmured. "I swear to you, as the flagship of the New Interstellar Alliance, the Excalibur will find a way to bring the Sensurians back from extinction." He kissed her forehead gently. "And not just because you fuck like a maniac too."

She chuckled. "I'm not the one who fucks like a maniac, my captain...roll onto your back. While my body is too exhausted for another round...I will fight off sleep to suck your fine, Captainly dick."

"Oooh, yay!" Pixie said, grinning brightly, her antennas perking right up.

Thus, the Excalibur had been programmed to seek out the sniffer signals when they arrived in any system. Shey and John watched the scanners as they waited, Shey chewing on her knuckle. No result came back. She sighed, her antenna's drooping. John squeezed her shoulder, gently, his voice soft. "Don't worry," he said, softly. "We'll find them out there."

She gave him a thin smile, then...professional, she sat up and started to read off the signals that the scanners were bringing back. "Everything is as the prior UNN expeditions to Alpha Centauri have found it - save...this." She tapped a single emission smear. "This is an exhaust plume. There's a starship out there."

"I mean, we expected that," Trianna said, scoffing. "A signal brought us here in the first place."

"I kinda wish they had explained more of what was going on over the radio," Albert muttered as he tapped his fingers against his console.

"Captain!" Shey said. "The ship is on approach - they're in Tier Three!"

"Yellow Alert," John said, then hurried to his command chair. He settled in, strapped himself down, and lifted his chin as the alien ship appeared before his. It was long and slender, with a conic central hull and a pair of massive containment tanks at the base that looked like they were matter/antimatter storage units for a fearsomely powerful singularity engine. A nimbus of strange...fronds seemed to emerge from the dorsal aft of the ship - a profusion of hair like extrusions that interlocked and swept out in a big bushy thatch. The front tip of the tapered shaft of the main body had a thin glowing line along the pointed tip, which flared with energies that swept over the Excalibur.

"We're being scanned, Captain," Shey said.

"They're accessing our data files, linguistics," Eugene said, tapping at his console.

"This is an unknown alien configuration, sir," Tianna exclaimed. "This is first contact."

"No one warm up any weapons," John said. "We-"

"They're hailing us!"

"Put it on," John said, nodding to Shey. Her fingers flew across her console.

The light flickered and then on the screen appeared an alien that was...grotesque. It was hard to exactly place on what about it that made John's skin crawl, as it was so...simple looking that it should have been at least endearing from some perspectives. But while it was simple in shape...it was unsettling in detail: It had a round body, about the size of pair of humans standing side by side. It had a pair of large, incredibly human-like eyes, sitting to either side of a human pair of lips that curved upwards into a nearly perfect arc - a too perfect arc. Its skin was jaundiced yellow, and John could see the texture of it...the awful, fleshy texture of it.

"Greetings, Captain," the huge round thing said, lips opening and closing in a too smooth motion. "I am the Trade Master of this Voyulon Merchant Ship. How may I...assist you...today." A tongue darted along those lips as they returned into its unsettling arc.

"Uh," John said, then sat up a bit more. "We've never heard of the Voyulon before."

"That is because we do not trade in...active warzones...Captain," the Voyulon said, his voice melodious and not quite right for his shape. "As the Zemturga unfortunately succeeded in their conquest of this region of space, we find ourselves able to once more ply our wares." That big, big smile again. "Are you interested in purchasing anything from the Voyulon Merchant Fleet at this time, Captain?"

John frowned. "What do you take in trade? We don't have much in the way of resources..."

They had left most of them behind at the starbase, as part of their mining and processing operations.

"Oh, no, Captain. We do not take anything as crude as your solid resources. We Voyulon only with to trade in dimensionally backed Nonlocal Sentient Fornication Wealth."

"You can't be serious," Albert whispered. Those large, large eyes swung around to transfix Albert with their enigmatic look.

"We are quite serious, Helm Officer," the Voyulon said, quietly. "The mental energies released by a sentient when they engage in acts of..." He paused, and that big tongue of his came out, flicking along his lips. "...sexual activity...is highly valued in the universe to beings of particular technological sophistication. We Voyulon do not care overly much about the wherewithal of the NSFW that you provide us with - we only care that we have it. And in exchange, we can offer to you highly advanced technologies and secrets only we are aware of."

John frowned. "Would you tell us what it is you actually want from us?"

"Oh." The Voyulon blinked slowly, then smiled once more. "If you wish to know the secrets behind our enigmatic origins, and the entirety of our long term, possibly nefarious plans across the galaxy, then that will be yours for the low, low price of...six million NSFWs."

John crossed his arms over his chest. "We're going to need more evidence that you're of any value before we become...interstellar hustlers." He frowned as he leaned back in his seat - but the Voyulon's smile remained as fixed and unchanging as it usually was. It seemed as undisturbed as a boulder by rain.

"Fortunately, Captain, you have already mated with several aliens aboard this ship, including an unknown psychic variation of a species we have not met in several thousand years," the Voyulon said. That made John sit up.

"You know of Pixie's race?" he asked.

"Yes, Captain. The origins of her species can be yours for the measly price of one hundred thousand NSFW." The Voyulon's expression hadn't changed. Somehow, it felt as if it was looking smug. "But, of course, we must first present you the ability to trade." Those huge, oddly detailed eyes swung slightly to the left, peering at an empty corner of the bridge. A shimmer of golden light flashed there, and when the light had faded, a sleek black obelisk with a faintly yonic shape. It flashed, glowed, and a sudden pressure inside of John's head made itself known. Albert's hand went to his own temple, as did Trina and Shey. Each of them groaned as a pinkish orb flowed from their foreheads, then whipped towards the obelisk. The pink orbs splashed into the midnight black material, beading and then fading like water dappling onto sand.