Wild Space Pt. 02

Outside, the light pollution and smog was too thick for the stars to shine. For as long as Jules could remember, he had never seen the sun, the moon, or the stars.

They still left the window open, letting the artificial light coming in and the noise from the street. They lit a few scented candles to drive off the ozone smelling, burnt flavor of the air and the accumulated waste. Centralia was green and pristine the closer one got to the big cities, but out here it was all prefab metal and plastic housing, recycled food, and the smell of generation upon generation living in neglect. Hood rats, was the popular nickname. Some hated it and some wore it with pride. Jules just knew he wanted out.

Still, it was the only home he had ever known. The neighborhood and its people may have been rough, but they were honest except when they stole, and only stole to eat, and took care of one another except when they fought, and they never fought for very long. Let the drama and intrigues be wasted upon the rich. It was not fun living this far out from the prosperous districts, where the military and the nobility held sway, but it was probably a lot easier.

"I got us something to eat," A voice murmured in his ear.

Jules nearly jumped out of his skin, as he was naked, and so was the other man. He had been so relaxed, abed, and the other man's body enveloping his so fully and sweetly that he had nearly forgotten he wasn't alone with his thoughts.

He shifted and felt some of the warmth leave his back and ass, causing his bedmate, Esmond, to murmur unhappily. They only had a few hours left. It was their last night together, for so long that neither of them wanted to contemplate it.

Jules had been with Esmond since they were old enough to realize they could be more than friends. Both men were barely 19 years old. People tended to be scrawny and underfed where they lived, but each of them was naturally skinny, with hard angles to their hips and shoulders and faces. Esmond was a beautiful blond man, with honey colored eyes that turned sleepy whenever he was horny. Jules had much the same build, but was darker in complexion, with longer black hair. In the dark, his eyes could hardly be seen, even when he turned over to face his lover, as he was doing now.

"I'm not in the mood for recycled," Jules said, and immediately regretted it. He was being pampered, and should have been appreciative. But who was ever in the mood for recycled food?

"It's not. It's not replicated, either. It's fresh." Excited, Esmond sat up, and half turned on the bed, rooting around next to it, exposing the curves of his narrow back and hips.

"Fresh?" Jules scooted up on the bed himself.

"Yes! You know the girl Pilara whose cousin works for the lord?" Esmond didn't wait for an answer. "The cousin filched it for her, who gave it to me..."

He had his hands cupped around something. When he opened them, Jules could hardly believe it.

The fruit was small, about half the size of his fist. Its hard rind was vibrant and yellow. It was pebbly, oblong in shape, and the men had never seen one outside of a history text.

"It must have cost you a fortune," Jules said.

"Don't worry about it. It's for our last night. I wanted it to be special," Esmond told him.

"It has been." Jules said quietly. He didn't want his lover to worry. But it was impossible, for either of them, to not contemplate what lay ahead.

"When do you...ship out, I guess they call it?" Nervously, Esmond was picking at the lemon, trying to peel it, but his fingernails had been bitten to nubs.

"I have to be on the parade ground at six...sorry, 0600 tomorrow morning." Jules tried to grin. "Got to start thinking in Navy terms, I guess."

"You, a Capital Navy man...I still can't believe it." Smiling back, Esmond gave up the ghost on the fruit. "I can't peel this thing, sorry. I didn't even think about that."

"Don't worry about it," He took the lemon and leaning over the other man, placed it back in its spot at the side of the bed. "I didn't come here for fruit."

There was an opening if either of them ever heard it. Eagerly, they went to work.

Jules laid back, one leg under him awkwardly, but he didn't want to interrupt the other man's rhythm. Esmond was on his knees, crouched over, mouth full of cock, his own genitals hanging as he went to work. Jules's hands drifted from the back of his lover's blond head, down his neck and beck, cupping his ass briefly before finding Esmond's slightly hard cock. Working it roughly in his hands, he milked it back and forth even as the other man's silken mouth glided along his shaft.

For a few minutes, the only sounds besides the street noise leaking in was an occasional soft mouthy pop as the blowjob continued, and a muffled groan of pleasure from both men.

Esmond had a way of using his mouth that constantly drove Jules to the end, tiptoeing him along it but never taking the plunge. A combination of hand and mouth with a subtle twist at the end of the stroke. When he could take no more, Jules pulled the other man off of him by the back of his neck, gently but insistently.

"My turn?" Esmond asked.

"Nope. On your back." Jules said hurriedly.

His command was swiftly obeyed. Jules drank in the sight before him, working his throbbing cock to full stiffness as he did. Esmond had a narrow pelvis, chiseled abdominal muscles, and narrow shoulders, a slight form. Expert that he was, Esmond already had a pillow under his hips and was opening his legs to receive him.

Jules was only to happy to comply. He mounted the other man, who eagerly ran his hands up and down his lover's arms and chest. He pulled himself up on Jules's shoulders to whisper in his ear:

"I want you in me. I want you to fuck me."

Their lips met and Esmond held his love with all for limbs as their bodies began to rock in unison. Their breathing fell into sync, staring deep into one another's eyes as they thrust and met.

The pair was so lost in the moment that neither of them quite realized that their climaxes were approaching until a soft explosion of cum lapped out of Esmond's cock onto their bellies. Spurred on, Jules drove himself deeper and faster, until their voices joined in a sustained cry of delight that crescendoed and finally hit a plateau.

For long minutes each man could only smile and hold one another, their bodies occasionally rocked with an aftershock of the forceful orgasms. Finally, Jules began to withdraw.

"No, don't...I don't know when I will feel this again." Esmond said. Instead, the men attempted to twist onto their sides, laughed when they realized that they would have to change positions and disengaged, loathe as they were to. Soon, they were settled again.

"You will feel it again." Jules said bluntly and abruptly after a few minutes of dozing. "This isn't a forever thing."

"None of the Capital officers I know of ever came back," Esmond sad sadly. "Who can blame them? Who would want to come back to this?"

"I would come back for this," Jules touched his lover's chest insistently. "And when I do we'll leave this place. I'll be a military man then."

The other man didn't reply. They had had this conversation many times before, for what felt like forever, as Jules underwent the long enlistment process. Neither wanted to have it again, especially on their last night together.

"You'll be able to contact us when?" Esmond wanted to know.

"The first day, but then not again for months, unless I'm lucky. You'll be with my family?" Jules said.

"Yes. I'm the one staying up to get your call."

"You won't worry too much?"

"You know I can't promise that." Esmond paused. "Jules, are you ready for this?"

He didn't know.

************

He had been tired that first night, from the long shuttle journey to the planet Bulwark. The call to his family and Esmond has been sweet but too brief. His new home was strange and alien to his eyes. Coming from such an urban planet, albeit rundown, Bulwark's wide open plains and cold was a shock to Jules. It made him yearn for home even more. At least the meager accommodations were better than his own, back on Centralia. Being born on the capital planet was a source of constant fascination for his fellow trainees. They assumed he was a lord or at least nobility or an officer's son, but when he had told them about his home and neighborhood, they'd been gobsmacked. Life was supposed to be better the closer one got to Centralia. That someone could be from there and profess to be poor was inconceivable to the majority of the farm boys and colonists going through training.

The first day, they had been marched to their barracks by a weary looking petty officer, an old woman with gray hair that was out of regulation. Jules wondered how she got away with it. She hadn't had them march in any kind of formation, just told them to form ranks of five and try their best. She had made sure they had gotten bedding and selected somewhere to sleep.

"I'm here to make sure you all survive the night. Feel free to explore, if you've got the energy. You won't tomorrow night. I guarantee it." With that, she left them.

There were a few minutes of silence, and then occasional whispers broke out. Creaking of bed springs, ruffling of covers. It wasn't long before Jules had a visitor of his own.

"I think that old bag is right," A woman's voice said. It was too dark, and he couldn't see her. "Mind if I join you?"

"Climb aboard," Jules said, having to project some enthusiasm. He had been with women before, but strongly preferred men. Actually, what he really wanted was Esmond, but that was impossible. It did not seem prudent to refuse. Who knows when he would get another chance?

She was as skinny as he, which helped, but still soft in all the wonderful places a woman was soft: hips, stomach, bum, and breasts. Her limbs were gawky, she was all elbows and knees and she couldn't have been any older than him, but in the dark, it was impossible to tell. She had short, brittle dirty blond hair and a lazy eye, but he liked their brown color and her smile.

"You're not one of these farm girls?" Jules asked her, brushing a hand down her side, from ribs to hip.

"No," She said with a shiver. She wriggled closer to him. "I'm Harra. Farm planet born but I was a city girl. Its rare, but it happens."

He could tell from the way she spoke that she was educated. His fingers found her nipple, roughly and suddenly twisting the little nubbin of flesh. She gasped.

"Why'd you join up?" Jules wanted to know. And despite the matter at hand, he found he truly did.

Her fingers were splayed over his stomach, and as she recovered from the sudden pinch, the pain entirely welcome. She kneaded the hard flesh there before brushing her long fingered hand against his pubic hair, which had grown in scratchy and prickly over the last few days.

"It was either that or get married off." Her hands were cold but the sensation of simply being touched by another, to lay there finally and to rest after being cooped up on a shuttle, was too good to pass up. She encircled the root of his cock with a pair of fingers, tugged gently but insistently. "How about you?"

"Like you, it was either enlist or find something to steal. Someone to rub. Not many honest jobs to be had." Jules said. "And I won't work the land for one of those noble bastards."

"The land isn't so bad." Tarra's hand was soft as he pumped his hard cock. "Neither is this. You're such a handsome boy. Pretty, even. Are you ready?"

From there on out, words did not seem to be needed. They each had a need and had found one another in this strangest of places and circumstances. Neither knew what tomorrow would bring; all the more reason to make the most of tonight.

Harra pulled the covers off of him, straddling his skinny legs and bending over to take him into her mouth. She had admirable passion for the job but was a trifle inexpert at it. Jules propped himself up on an elbow to watch her go to work, and was treated to the sight of her bobbing blonde head accompanying the warm sensation of her tongue, lips, and the scintillating brush of teeth. Unused to the long hair, Jules enjoyed playing with it for a long minute, until he finally gathered it in one hand to roughly guide her.

She accepted the new change of rhythm with a soft grunt, settling herself into it. Taking advantage of the change of pace and the pause, she whispered a question to him, one which was reluctantly affirmed. Harra swung her long legs around until his head was between her ankles, knees, then her thighs.

The supple skin enveloped his ears as the woman wriggled herself closer, then resumed her work on his hard cock. Dutifully, Jules kissed her crease, which was already slick to the taste. He inhaled the warm, heady scent of the woman's exposed sex, and plunged his tongue deep into her.

Harra responded by crying out so forcefully that she had to discontinue the blowjob they were both enjoying. She pumped him, head between his legs, panting slightly.

"S-sorry...it's just been so long. Did I move too hard for you?"

Her hips and legs had nearly bucked off of him, and she was still shivering. He spoke up softly.

"No. Do you want me to keep going?"

"Just go slow."

That was fine with Jules. Her mouth had already been raising a sweet pressure in his groin, and he wanted this to last. He resumed flicking his tongue over her, craning his neck upwards and wishing he had better than a thin Navy pillow to support him. Still, Jules kept at it, sliding his tongue purposefully along her parted fold, lingering at their summit in hopes of stimulating her clit.

Jules was glad that he had had to shave before reporting in. His mouth, chin, and cheeks were soon soaked with Harra's juices. She began grinding her hips against his face, taking in his tongue deeper and harder as her orgasm built.

Her sucking became sloppier and sloppier the closer she got to her climax. Harra surrendered to to the constant attention her pussy was receiving, her thighs clenched around his head as she writhed and bucked her hips. Her mouth, full of cock, made a strange warbling noise as she came until she thought to remove him. Jules was no expert at eating pussy but he had no choice, he couldn't have escaped if he'd wanted. He rode out the orgasm.

"I just need a minute...I'm sorry..." Harra apologized again, breathing heavily, legs still quivering.

"On your back," Jules said, and slowly, shakily, the woman obeyed, both of them shifting around on the rickety mattress. When they were settled, her arms slipped around his neck and he felt her skinny knees digging into his ribs as she angled herself best to receive him.

Jules entered her, and found her surprisingly tight, thick in the walls of her vagina, and sighed as his cock settled into the lush curve of her dripping cunt. She also sighed, which became a hiss as the pair found a rhythm, hips rocking back and forth to meet one another. He trapped her hands in his, fingers entwining, and held her wrists down hard against the thin mattress. Her mouth blindly groped for his in the dark. Jules met her kiss, and started to pull away to wipe his lips and chin clean.

"No, don't. I want to taste my cum on your mouth," Harra explained briefly.

They locked mouths, and he felt both the sweet pressure of her legs around his ribs and her innermost rings of muscle delectably squeezing his dick as he pumped in and out of her. He had only been fucking her for a few minutes, but had been so long deprived that he was exploding before he quite knew it. He spasmed in a sudden jerk, knees thumping hard against the bed springs just beneath the thin mattress.

"We should sleep," She said immediately. "Help me up."

She really meant "get off" but Jules didn't mind. He did so and laid on his side. As he did so, he was aware of several couplings going on in the beds around him. It seemed that everyone had the same idea.

Tarra left without a word except for "thanks" and barely a backwards glance. He was grateful. Some women were ruled by their emotions, in Jules's reasonably experienced opinion with them. He was glad that she was just going for a ride and nothing else.

He stretched his lanky form out on the thin mattress and sighed happily. If this was what Capital Navy boot camp was like, he could get used to this.

It wasn't anything like that, but to be fair, he had no idea if anyone could conceive of what military training actually was.

********

The entire 16 hours that followed were the worst that Jules could ever remember. Almost as bad as fighting in the food lines back home, his little sister dying, the unending grind of poverty, leaving Esmond behind.

The 90 newly christened members of the Capital Systems Navy were awoken by the thumping of a forearm length piece of wood onto the bottom of an old fashioned metal trash receptacle. Hunched over the rapidly crumpling metal was a huge ape of a man, six and a half feet tall, pale skinned, with short blond hair, and blue eyes set far back in his head. His cream colored Naval uniform was stretched around his frame, and his name read "Brill." Much later, Jules would joke that Petty Officer Brill looked like one of their storage lockers that got angry one day, put on a uniform, and started throwing recruits around. Not in his presence, of course. To do so would be tantamount to a death sentence, as all of the young enlisted men and women were about to find out.

"UP! UUUUUP!" The man thundered at the top of his lungs, his great deep voice echoing throughout the large room, impossible to ignore, getting cut off every other syllable with the ear shattering metal and wooden din he was creating. "UUUUUUUUUUUP!"

At the sound a half dozen other men and women charged into the large room like a pack of sharks in the midst of a feeding frenzy. All of them, Brill include, had distinctive cream uniforms, and carried rattling chained batons. They came in a rush of flesh and sound, spurring the recruits out of their beds. One slow young man was upended, mattress and bed frame and all, onto the cold hard floor. Jules gasped at the audible smack of flesh. But he was soon overwhelmed.

"Front leaning rest!" A hovering face in a cream uniform yelled at him. That's all they were, strange figures that brought sound and fury, men and women with one face and voice.

Jules didn't know what "front leaning rest" was. He didn't know what any of this was. Awkwardly, his body moved, a kind of dip at the knees as he resisted the urge to cover his ears but obey the order.

"What is your problem?!" The face demanded to know. "Why aren't you following instructions? Do you think you're too goddamn smart for the Capital Navy?"

Flashes in his mind, like an explosion, accompanied by images: the nonstop parade of men his mother brought home. The numbing dread that came when he saw his mom and her man of the week drinking heavily. Pain was right around the corner. Voices raised, echoing throughout the neighborhood, soon the fists would be raised...

A blow on his thigh from the chained batons made him grunt, but he needed it, dragging him away from the inside of his mind, from a place so dark and remote but easily and often visited and dwelled upon that he wouldn't have ever left. He hit the floor.

"Get on the deck! NO! Tips of your toes, flats of your hands. Like them." The voice had lowered half a decibel so it could be more easily understood. "Quick! Do it. Stay there."

The sound was always present, but the hovering face moved on. The recruit next to him was trying desperately to crawl under his bunk. The hovering face cackled in delight and dragged the squealing boy out.

"I like a fighter! GET IN THE FRONT LEANING REST-" The voice ground on and on.

Jules chanced a quick look around. All around him, the six uniformed men and women were pairing off or individually directing recruits to get into position, all the while the seventh one, Brill, thundered repeatedly on the trash receptacle with one of his chained batons, punctuating every other word that was shouted with a blast of clanging wood on metal. To his right, a few bunks down, a girl was panicking, flailing her arms and legs as a cream uniformed face held her in a bear hug, talking to her in a low voice. After a bit of that, the girl got onto the deck in the front leaning rest. Elsewhere, a boy was breaking down as three faces yelled at him from every angle, faces inches away from his own. The boy was breathing hard, chest heaving, and crying and fighting to keep his composure. Eventually, the faces moved on and let him get into position.