Scouts

by Nobilis Reed

  “Will Valka have a turn?” I asked between gasping breaths.

  “Yes,” said Shirley. “Even if you take us the whole way, she will have a turn.”

  The relief of that one nagging thought was all I needed. All the pent-up desire from watching my mentors fucking the ship across the stars crystallized in my spine and shot down into my cock. My throat locked, my balls clenched, and I sent thick strands of cum onto the floor between us. Again, the ship throbbed and whined, but even in my erotic haze I could tell that it lasted only a few seconds. I felt a strange prickling sensation on my skin that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t uncomfortable. I fell backwards, all the tension draining from my body.

  “Not bad,” said Masters, from behind me. “You’re about ten percent over baseline, Challers; you’re going to make a fine Scout.”

  Shirley helped me to my feet, handed me a towel, and turned towards Masters. “Was that enough to get us there?”

  Masters shook his head. “Not quite. Still about point-two parsecs to go.”

  Shirley nodded to Valka. “Your turn.”

  I wiped myself down and switched places with Valka, while Shirley took Masters’s place.

  He let Valka take off her own clothes, watching with a calm, welcoming smile. “Just relax. Bring us in, Valka. Bring us home.”

  He sat down where Shirley had been and leaned back comfortably. I wanted to ask him if he needed to be there, but Shirley seemed to be handling the job of monitoring the ship during the jump. The look in Valka’s eyes told me everything; she was embarrassed, she was afraid, but she was determined not to foul up our chances of being accepted by the Scouts.

  She knelt down where I had been and ran her hands slowly up and down her body. I couldn’t help making comparisons. Her breasts weren’t as big as Shirley’s, nor her hips as generous, but her smooth skin shone. Her fingers toyed with her pink nipples, making them stand up from the curve of her breast like little pyramids. She pinched them lightly, and twirled them between her fingertips. I imagined what it would be like to kiss them, to suck them—what they would feel like under my fingers.

  As her hands moved down, my gaze followed them to the triangle of bushy hair. It grew thick enough to conceal all but a vague outline of her sex. I heard her breathing change as she massaged the area, pushing and pulling at her lips. When I looked up, our eyes met, and all thought of watching what her hands were doing disappeared. The need in her eyes drew me in.

  “You’re beautiful,” I whispered, more on instinct than anything else.

  A quick smile flitted across her mouth, followed by a gasp of pleasure. I could feel my cock rising again, responding to the erotic vision before me, but I felt no great need to deal with it. My eyes could not leave hers.

  Her orgasm built slowly. Her jaw twitched, opening slightly as she drew in each escalating breath. I could hear wet sounds coming from her fingers. The gasps turned to whimpers, and the whimpers to cries. When she closed her eyes and let her head fall back, my eyes shifted to her hands. Both were jammed between her wide-spread thighs, slowly rubbing her sex.

  “Challers,” she moaned. “Oh, Challers . . .”

  I knew I wasn’t allowed to touch her. I glanced at Masters long enough to see that his cock wasn’t responding to the display much, if at all. I hoped I never became so jaded.

  Masters leaned over to whisper close. “Tell her to imagine you.”

  “I’m here, Val. I’m with you. Imagine my hands on your body.” I fought down a stammer. What was I supposed to say? I glanced over at Masters.

  He gave me a smile and a wink, and mouthed the word more.

  “Imagine me between your legs. I’m, ah, kissing you. Kissing your breasts.”

  She gasped, a small shudder passing through her body. I felt a thrumming sound, too low to hear, in the air, in the ship. She was close.

  “Kissing your, um . . .”

  “Sex,” whispered Masters.

  “Kissing your sex.”

  Sweat broke out on her body, and her face and breasts flushed. “Oh, Challers!”

  Her thighs squeezed shut around her hand and the engines roared to life. The ship pulsed so hard it nearly shook me from my seat, the sound drowning out Valka’s quiet cries. The sound and vibration seemed to go on forever.

  When it finally stopped, Shirley was whooping and slapping the seat next to her with her open palm. “Almost four hundred percent over baseline, Valka! That’s incredible! If you perform that well under operating conditions, you’ll be able to go to the Norma arm and back!”

  Masters helped Valka to her feet, took her shoulders, and shook her gently, a broad grin splitting his face. Valka looked stunned. She took Shirley’s offered towel and dabbed at her moist body. Then her eyes met mine, and she smiled. “We did it.”

  I nodded. “We did it.”

  She pulled me into a hug and squeezed so tight I thought she’d crush me. My cock poked her side and she pulled away, blushing.

  Shirley clapped her hands. “Okay, cadets. Clean yourselves up. You’ll find a fresher just aft of the bridge. Put your towels in the recycler when you’re done. Remember, no orgasms. Masters, bring us in.”

  Valka went to the fresher. The tiny room was cramped with a shower, toilet, and sink. She climbed into the tiny shower cubicle, making room for me in front of the vanity. “Can you believe it? We’re really doing it!”

  I smiled, trying not to let the insecurities that brewed in my head escape into my voice. “It’s incredible. Powering a starship, just with an orgasm.”

  “I know, and soon, it will be us!”

  I took a tube from a small shelf near the sink and idly rolled it in my hand. Would it be? We had assumed that we would stay together, but Shirley’s comment about what happens to Scout couples after they’ve been together too long implied that they would separate. What would happen then?

  Valka finished her shower, and I switched places with her, enjoying the closeness of the tiny bathroom and trying not to get turned on. I welcomed the spray of cold water and let it calm my overactive hormones.

  She took a towel from a rack near the hatch and dried herself. “I wonder if they’ll let us have a ship like this.”

  “There’s got to be a lot of training first.” I turned off the water and followed her, drying myself as I went.

  We put our towels in the recycler, as we had been instructed, and stepped out into the main passageway stark naked.

  Shirley met us dressed in her plain white clothes. She handed us small bundles of fabric. “These are your new uniforms. The black color identifies you as cadets; you’ll get whites once you’ve graduated to full Scout status.”

  They turned out to be thin, stretchy shorts and tops that left little to the imagination. The fabric clung closely to Valka’s body, making the shape of her nipples and pussy lips clearly visible.

  “This is it?” I said, pulling them on. “This doesn’t seem like much more than underwear.” My cock was outlined so clearly you could see every ridge and vein. “I might as well be naked.”

  “That’s part of your training, cadet.” She crossed past me, patting my butt on the way. “Go on up to the bridge. Headquarters should be coming into view.”

  Valka and I watched from the bridge, huddled behind the control chair. Scout headquarters turned out to be a station totally unlike my home. Instead of a globe of a hundred meters or so, a ring a kilometer in diameter grew before us. Its main structure, a ribbon of green and blue, gleamed in the light of an orange star. The only word that could even come close to expressing my feelings at that moment was “Wow.”

  Masters made a minor course adjustment. “Ten thousand people, an entirely self-sufficient community. We grow our own food, manufacture our own parts and supplies.”

  “And that’s allowed?”

  “We’re the Scouts,” said Masters. “Those rules don’t apply to us. No mandated trade routes, no manufacturing prohibitions. This way, we never have Merchant ships docking at
the headquarters. No Merchants, no Pirates; no Pirates, no Fleet. We’re part of the galaxy, but apart from it. They need us more than we need them, and we like it that way.”

  Growing up, the Scouts had been agents of mystery, ghostly ships that would appear, hang mysteriously in the sky for a day or so transmitting and receiving data, and then vanish again. This revelation served only to enhance their cachet. Separate from the Merchants? Separate from the Fleet?

  “So your kids don’t get recruited by the Fleet or the Merchants.”

  “That’s right.”

  The metal walls of a small docking bay enveloped us, close around the ship. I heard and felt lock-downs clunk into place on the hull. Green indicator lights on the console flipped over to yellow, and Masters stood up and nodded to us. “Cadets, welcome to Scout headquarters.”

  Chapter Four

  The belly hatch connected to a short access tube, which in turn came out into the center of a circular gallery. A woman met us there, dressed in a sarong of red and blue. She smiled broadly as we filed out and arranged ourselves.

  Shirley provided introductions. “Cadets, this is Academy Director Anna Kal. We’ll be reporting to her during your academy training.”

  “We? You mean, you’re staying with us?”

  The director nodded. “The Scouts operate on a close apprenticeship system. Since Shirley and Masters are the ones who located and recruited you, they have the first opportunity to be your teachers. If that doesn’t work out for some reason, we’ll find you someone else to learn from until you earn your full status.”

  Valka was bouncing on her toes. “What are we waiting for?”

  Director Kal gave Valka a nod of appreciation. “Indeed. If you’ll follow me, we’ll start with a tour of the academy.”

  The academy consisted of a few docking bays on the outer rim of the station and a couple of levels on the side of the main ring. There were classrooms, a dormitory, a gymnasium, a few simulator tanks, and a large data processing center. Here and there we came across groups of people, just two Scouts and two cadets, or sometimes just one of each.

  The five of us had a meal in the cafeteria. I’m not sure whether it was breakfast or lunch, but I hadn’t eaten since leaving Stakroya and I was starved. I couldn’t believe the variety of foods available there. There were the usual hydroponics, of course, but in addition, there was bread, cheese, milk, butter, and eggs cooked any way we liked.

  I heaped my tray until Shirley laughed and stopped me from taking a second piece of cake. “Okay, hold on, cadet. We’re not fattening you up for the slaughter here.”

  “Do you always eat this well?”

  “On the ship, things are more controlled, but here at headquarters we like to enjoy our luxuries. You’ll probably gain some weight in basic training, but we’ll make sure it’s mostly muscle, in your case.”

  At the end of the buffet line, she put a couple of foil-wrapped squares on my tray.

  “What are these?”

  “You’ll see. Have them after you’ve eaten everything else.”

  It was something called chocolate. It was wonderful, smooth and just sweet enough, with an aftertaste that was bitter rather than metallic or chemical.

  Valka liked it too. She liked it a lot, judging from the noises she made.

  After seeing the facilities, we entered a large display hall showing some of the accomplishments of the Scout Service in its long history. Images of star systems mapped by the Scouts hung from the walls. There were hundreds of them. In the center of the room, display cases held artifacts and other memorabilia from notable Scout missions. Each one had a holographic display where the Scouts involved described the circumstances and details of their discovery. In every case, the couple was a man and a woman, dressed in simple white uniforms, and always with affection and respect for each other in their eyes. I followed Valka from display to display as she listened to every single one.

  The tour wound up at the entrance to an auditorium big enough for maybe three hundred people. Shirley took me aside. “This is the big moment. Challers, I want to know if you have any second thoughts, any reason you might not want to join us. If you think that this life isn’t for you, then you need to speak up now. If there’s a problem, we’ll fly you right back home to Stakroya Station. This is a big step; if you decide to stay, we’ll be asking you to pledge yourself—heart, mind, and body—to the Service.”

  I struggled with my misgivings. I felt vulnerable and scared, sitting there in underwear that wasn’t even mine. How long would it be before Valka and I would be allowed to have a ship together? I didn’t want to seem impatient, but that was what we had come all this way for, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just to escape the Merchants and the Fleet, but to be together. With all their hopeful faces turned in my direction, I just couldn’t say it. How ungrateful would that be? They had saved me from the Fleet, saved me from being carried off bodily to become one of those huge, muscle-bound monsters. I felt a black pit opening in my stomach. I couldn’t go back. It would be too humiliating. People would think I couldn’t take it. People would think I had failed.

  “I’m worried,” I said. “I want to be with Valka. Are we going to be able to stay together?”

  Shirley smiled and nodded. “Your relationship with Valka is one of the reasons we chose you. Of course you want to be with her. Your capacity for love is one of the things that will make you a capable Scout. The Service respects that. You’ll be training here together. Once you’ve become full Scouts, though, you’ll need to be strong. Your first cruise will be on a different ship than hers. Most of the time, you’ll be apart. But there’s a lot of play in the schedules for those cruises, and there will be opportunities for you to be together. After that, things will get better.”

  I took a deep breath. I knew Valka wanted this. Her reactions to the museum confirmed it, and if she wanted it, then I wanted it. Going home would mean leaving her here.

  “Yes. Okay, I’ll do it.”

  The pit in my stomach yawned wider. I swallowed it back down, and tried to pretend that I knew I had made the right decision. Shirley brought me into the auditorium. All together, everyone I had seen on the tour would fit in it with room to spare. It felt empty with just the five of us.

  The director stood us up. We repeated an oath that sounded as old as the ages, and she congratulated us.

  We were Scouts.

  The rest of the day we spent getting settled in. First, there was a medical workup. It was much more thorough than anything I had experienced at Stakroya Station. In addition to taking blood, a cheek scrape, and poking and prodding just about every part of my body, there were measurements of every sort. Bicep circumference, thigh circumference, chest, abdomen, and waist measurements. They reviewed the medical records from the station hospital and we filled in a few gaps from my own memory. When that was all done, they put an implant in my palm that would activate the academy facilities for me. It would allow me to use the mess hall, information terminals, everything.

  After that, we got our personal supplies and uniforms, and were shown to our rooms.

  They were bigger than the dormitory cubes back on Stakroya Station. The space was about five meters square, with a big round pad in the center about three meters in diameter. I knelt down and touched it.

  “This is just like the chamber in the ship,” I said.

  Shirley smiled and stepped inside. “You’re observant. I can see already that we made the right choice in picking you.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Go ahead, lie down. It’s for sleeping, too.”

  I did. It felt soft without being bouncy or yielding. “Comfortable,” I said.

  She lay down next to me, folding her arms behind her head. “If you want a pillow or a prop under your knees, you can program it to provide that.”

  “Eh. We never had that kind of thing on Stakroya. A pillow is just another thing to wash.” I rolled onto my side, facing her. “Where’s, ah, your room?”

  “Right here.”
She shook her head in amusement. “You really are sharp, you know that? Catching onto these things so fast and with the tact to phrase them without making accusations.” She rolled up to a kneeling position and took my hand. “Challers, you’re going to learn a lot of things while you’re here at the academy, but one of the most important is going to be sexual discipline. Ultimately, sex is what we do, what we are here for, and we need to make it work for us, not the other way around. You’re young, and you have a powerful sex drive. It’s going to take some effort on your part to learn to control it. I’m here to help you with that.”

  I sat up. “And who says I need your help? I grew up on a station where an evening’s privacy has to be requested a month in advance and paid for with a week’s wages. I know how to control my urges.”

  “You know how to suppress them,” she said. “I’m going to show you how to harness them, how to hold back without suffocating them, and then let loose without restraint.” She put her hand on my cheek. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to traumatize you. I went through this once myself; I know how scary it all can be.” She leaned back onto her arms. “I remember when I was in your place. I was rescued, like you were, from a station that was overpop, and not just by two. We were up by eleven. Our life support really was overburdened. The captain was calling for passing Merchant ships to come take his excess.

  “Who did you get picked with?”

  She smiled and looked up at the ceiling. “His name is Robert. He had silky blond hair that felt amazing to touch.” Her tongue briefly licked the corner of her mouth.

  “Do you still see him?”

  “Oh, sure, whenever our paths cross. I have a flag set to tell me when there’s a possibility of a meeting. We leave mail for each other all the time. In fact, chances are good that he’ll be on-station two or three times while we’re in training. Would you like to meet him?”