"Not for months now." I plunged down and felt his shaft bend a little as it slid deep inside my colon, rubbing abrasively against my inner walls, but this time the pain was mild enough that I could feel a bit of pleasure from the intrusion. I spread my arms down on either side of him to brace myself as I bounced up and down on him, both of us starting to moan in pleasure. Then he came to climax. I felt a spurt of something hot and sticky flood my bowels and he let out a scream of delight.
That was when the tent flap, swung open and a militiaman pushed his way in brandishing a pistol. Caught off guard, I clenched the mattress with both hands. I heard a popping sound and a hiss of escaping air coming from near my right hand. I turned to glare at this intruder angrily.
"Oh, sorry," said the militia, an ursine whom I suspected had worked for one of the Protectors' Guilds. "I heard the scream and assumed something was wrong. Not the first time I made that mistake this week. Wait…" Then he finally seemed to recognize me and glanced around to my prosthetic hand which was still clamped around a torn piece of the mattress. "Aren't you the one who discovered the sterility gene?"
"If you mean Argentum then yes, I am." I withdrew my hand as the mattress sank lower and lower to the floor. "And I think you owe Maximus here a new air mattress." I showed him the cybernetic appendage, with pieces of plastic still stuck in the joints.
"Oh, sorry sir. I just thought I'd heard that you were a, a, um…"
"Neuter," I supplied. I then lifted myself off Maximus, letting his dick flop out, and lifted my kilt to show him my cum-stained derriere. "But that doesn't mean I lack fun holes."
"Right, right. I'll go get a replacement mattress right away. Would you like anything else? Some lube perhaps?"
"Forget it; you killed the mood." I waved him away and he left. I then flopped down on the still deflating mattress next to Maximus, pushing it all the way down to the hard cave floor.
Maximus turned to me and began to speak again. "You ever consider getting a bioprinted hand to replace that thing?" he asked, gesturing towards my prosthesis.
I held the hand up, looked at it, rotated the wrist, and opened and closed the fingers multiple times, getting the timing wrong and causing my index and thumb to collide on several of those attempts. "It would take over a month for my nerves to grow into a biological transplant," I finally said. "And even more time to relearn how to use it. I may not have full control over this thing yet, but it's better than lugging around a completely numb and useless thing on the end of my arm."
"Well, what about sex organs? Have you considered getting a vagina, or a penis?" He felt under my skirt and rubbed the featureless surface of my crotch.
"You wouldn't mind a penis?" I asked him. "Even if I wanted to use it from time to time?"
"Well, we wouldn't be able to have kids anyways, so why should it matter? I'm not too sure about having a cock up my butt from time to time, but maybe we could try something like that. I saw what looked like some prosthetic plastic penises in one of the sex aid product booths they have set up out there."
Ah, yes. The sex shops had popped up shortly after the first few tents. Apparently some of the capitalists out there in the rest of the asteroid had figured that a group of people who had just become fertile would be screwing one another a lot. From what I'd seen, they did indeed have a lot of business. It was at that moment that the bear who had barged in before chose to rap on the tent flap.
Both of us got up and unzipped the flap to see him. He was holding a small inflatable mattress like he had promised. Maximus took it and moved back to set it up. Now that the guard had a good look at his face, he said. "Aren't you that clone of the guy who runs the SPPS?"
"Yes, his name is Maximus, and we knew one another at work," I told him curtly. "Now why don't you go down to one of the sex booths and pick up some lube and one of those fake dicks?"
"Uh, right," he said, a bit flustered. "What size were you thinking?"
"Small!" was Max's response, with a bit of fear in his voice.
"As if I'd get a miniscule cock," I said in reply. Then turning back to the bear outside, I said, "Medium."
"Right, then. I'll go get those." The militiaman turned around and left, still looking a bit flustered.
I closed the flap again and went back to my boyfriend, now laying out the new mattress and attaching the pump to start inflating. He looked at me and smiled a bit, not showing as many teeth as his father's scary grins. "You realize that he'll tell all his friends at the booze tents that their prophet was seduced by the enemy's son?"
I lay down on my belly and flicked my tail playfully at him. "So shall I get the story straight when he comes back and tell him that I seduced you?"
Chapter 17
The day of the launch had arrived. Denal's team had removed five different charges from various points along the superstructure of our primary colony ship and hidden them in a warehouse maintained by Clan Marquez. The habitat modules, like giant crates, were attached to the superstructure, and pressurized access tubes were set up so that people could float from module to module without exposing themselves to vacuum. As we prepared to set off, I stood on the bridge of the massive freighter and watched as people filed into the ship and spread throughout its cargo holds. Others chose to board the numerous smaller ships that would also be making the journey. They took off one by one. So many out there, all willing to come simply because I had offered to give them children. Who would have thought?
Harvey was flying his own ship. Denal and Olga were on board our old vessel, carrying two habitat modules on tow cables. I had been offered the captain's cabin on board the freighter and had been advised to take it so as to not seem ungrateful. Since it seemed like a waste of space for just one person, though, I would share it with Maximus, who now hid among the crowd currently gathered on the bridge.
Once our mothership, as I suppose you could call it, was fully loaded and ready to depart, I was apparently expected to give some kind of speech, judging by the camera minidrones that suddenly began to circle around me. I've seen the video; it was not particularly flattering compared to some of my other streamed appearances. I just stood there for three minutes, looking nervous, until I worked up the courage to say something.
"Today, we set out to build a new life for ourselves. We go not only to colonize a new planetoid but also to build the foundation of a new future for all parahumanity." To be honest, I was starting to grasp at straws at that point. "We will build a society where parahumans are not dependent on the whims of petty wannabe tyrants to reproduce."
I looked around. Everyone was still staring at me like they were expecting more. "That's it. What do you expect? I'm a scientist, not a politician."
That last sentence was greeted by a chorus of laughter and applause. I hadn't really intended to make a joke, but that seemed to be how it was being received. Freaking anarchists.
I went over to my seat in the captain's chair and strapped myself down. The others either found seats or went to their cabins to strap themselves down in their provided crash couches. I noticed Maximus heading up to the crew quarters.
Well over ten minutes later, the docking clamps let loose and the thrusters started up, moving us slowly away from Vesta. It took more than an hour after that before we were far enough away to start up the fusion torch drive. Then I felt the familiar rush of acceleration as we went into burn. At that point I decided it was time to head back to my cabin. I let myself loose and grabbed onto the ladder that had just sprung out of the floor, letting myself down to the "floor" that was a wall just a couple hours ago. I climbed down until I got to the crew deck and got off. They were oriented so that acceleration would act like gravity. My cabin was all the way down at the end of a hallway. I was able to simply walk down. Maximus was already there.
"You have any trouble finding the place?" I asked him as I sat down next to him.
"One of the self-appointed security guys tried to tell me I was in the wrong section," Maximus started. "But then
one of the other crew told him that I was your boy toy or something. He let me go right away."
I groaned as I leaned back, "I'll need to talk to the crew about a lot of things. Like not holding up launch an extra fifteen minutes crowding the bridge just so they can hear me make a speech I wasn't expecting to make."
"It's weird, isn't it, this treatment like you're some kind of revolutionary leader when all you did was rediscover a gene?" He leaned back to match my eye level. "I've been reading some more of the Discourses and on the specific government that they primarily talk about."
"Really now. Why don't you tell me about it?"
"Well, it's about Rome, which was a republic for almost five hundred years before they elected a dictator named Julius Caesar, who turned it into an empire that conquered most of Europe and northern Africa and reigned for another four hundred years before it split…"
***
We were about a week out when the first signs of trouble appeared. A news report from Vesta stated that a warehouse at the spaceport had exploded. Jakob Griggs was blaming "Reproducers" or whatever the current term they were using for our "movement" was. I called a meeting with the captains of the various ships of the fleet via secure laser-line communications.
An entire wall of my cabin was composed of a massive LCD monitor. I set it to display the images of every other influential person in our improvised fleet. My own image would be transmitted via a tiny camera embedded just above the monitor for everyone else to see.
I addressed Denal specifically: "I think it's time you told everyone what you found."
Denal shrugged and looked to Olga nervously, as if waiting for her approval. She nodded. He turned back to the camera and let out a long breath before speaking. "A few days before we left, I found cutting charges attached to various points along the superstructure of our freighter. I removed them and left them in one of the warehouses at the dock." He slumped forward in his seat. "I honestly expected them to find those things long ago."
Objections and complaints erupted from the other captains: "Why did you keep this secret?!" "What did you think was going to happen?!" "That was the signal damn it!"
"Wait, what was that?" I called out at the last statement. I noticed that one of the captains, a weasel or something, had disappeared, leaving a blank screen with just the words "signal lost" in the place of his image. "Where did he go?"
"Oh shit!" Harvey exclaimed. "The Defiant just broke laser-line contact and jettisoned their habitat modules."
I opened an intercom to the bridge crew. "Send me a feed of the sensor read-outs to my monitor."
In seconds, the images of the other captains were replaced with a radar map with labeled dots indicating the ships of the fleet and other nearby objects. One dot, labeled "Defiant," was racing towards the freighter.
"Give me all readouts! I was a prospector, you know. Direct deep penetrating radar and radiation sensors at the Defiant!"
As I watched the display, fuzzy clouds of different colors and densities, indicating types and intensities of radiation, appeared around the ships of the fleet. Most of the ships had a faint cloud of red for infrared tinted with some gamma green if their reactors had faulty containment. A window opened, showing the mass profile of the Defiant. It was a fairly standard, medium-sized transport, though the hull around the cargo bay was unusually dense; that was typically the lightest armored part of a ship, given how there were rarely any living organisms transported in those compartments.
I didn't have long to wonder about that unusual design before the reason became apparent, and violently. A pair of panels on the front of the cargo compartment flew off and a couple of very fast-moving green dots shot out. The nuclear missiles locked onto a pair of ships that lay between us and the Defiant. One ship managed to shoot down the missile after it. The other was not so lucky. There was a multicolored burst on the radiation scanners, and the ship was simply gone.
"Get a message off to the rest of the fleet!" I ordered.
"We can't!" was the strained reply. "There's too much interference from the radiation!"
"Damn, damn, damn!" I said to myself. We had minimal weapons and no way to signal the other ships to fire upon the aggressor.
But slowly, the others seemed to get the idea. They poured their point-defense weapons onto the Defiant.
Unfortunately, it seemed to do nothing. They were apparently much better armored than the pirate we had seen off Ceres.
One ship, Denal and Olga's, even launched a missile. I did not know they had installed a missile launcher, but I was a bit relieved, until their missile flew past the Defiant while that ship fired its own missiles at our freighter. Were they working for Jakob too?
But then the missile fired by Olga and Denal arced between the Defiant and its own missiles. There was a flash, and when the scanners were clear again, the Defiant's fore was partially melted and scarred as if by a barrage of lasers, and its missiles were tumbling out of control.
"What the hell was that?!" I shouted.
"I think it was an x-ray laser warhead," said one of the bridge crew. "They're often used to intercept missiles, but they're expensive. Where would they get one of those?"
We didn't have much time to speculate, as the Defiant began to accelerate straight forward, on an impact course with us.
"Move us out of the way! Shoot them down! Do something!" I commanded.
The ship bucked to one side as the thrusters kicked in and then pushed me down into the flight couch as the fusion torch went full throttle. On the screen, I watched as our coilguns loosed volley after volley of slugs into them. But still the mutinous vessel careened onward. Ten kilometers, seven kilometers, four kilometers, two kilometers, half a kilometer…
And then it went straight past us. The cameras and coilguns rotated to follow the Defiant, but before they could do anything more, it exploded. Debris flew outwards from the blast, but our coilguns knocked the larger chunks out of our way.
"What," I gasped, "was that?!"
"The lasers must have taken out their sensors," suggested someone on the bridge. "Not sure why they blew up, though. I didn't think we hit them that hard."
"Suicide attackers," I said. What had Jakob offered them to inspire such loyalty? What did he have that would be any good to them when they were dead? Clones? Assurance of their genetic immortality? We would have to do something about that.
As we passed out of the radiation cloud, the scanners began to pick up the rest of the fleet. What I saw stunned me: There was a dogfight going on at the far side of the formation. Or rather, three ships were firing upon a fourth that was trying to weave between their shots. I grabbed at the icon for the ship being pursued, and an information tag came up.
It was Denal and Olga's ship.
I spoke into the intercom again. "Do we have communications back?"
"Half of the radio frequencies are clear again. Do you wish to speak to someone?"
"Yes. Message to all ships: This is Argentum; cease fire immediately! I repeat: Cease fire!"
The message had been out for less than a minute before the bridge crew came calling back. "Receiving response."
"Let's hear it."
"Not all the traitors are dead. You may have missed it, but this one launched a nuke in your direction."
"Send response: I did see the laser warhead that destroyed the Defiant's nukes and blinded them so that their attempt at ramming failed. Stand down. We will handle this."
Grudgingly, the three aggressor ships broke off their pursuit. I radioed Denal and Olga to ascertain their well-being.
"Hey, Silver, the hull was a little pitted but I don't think we sustained any major damage." Denal's voice said over the radio channel. I let out a small sigh of relief.
But then I heard some faint chattering coming over the band, like someone else on his ship was speaking to him. "What? Are you sure? Oh no. Oh no. Get someone out there to check for survivors! Oh, sorry, this is still on. One of our exterior habitat modules
was ruptured."
I swear I could hear the joints in my cyborg hand start to crack.
Chapter 18
Two months had passed since the incident with the Defiant. We had continued despite our losses and were now in orbit over our prize, 2 Pallas. It hung below us, a cratered orb so like the one our group had fled so recently, two in my and Denal's case. But since it lacked the sprawling surface factories and spaceports that covered the surfaces of Ceres and Vesta, the only detectable signs of habitation here were the skeletal remains of abandoned mining camps. The survey probes indicated that the planetoid's carbonaceous resources were largely untouched, but the life-giving ice had largely been mined out. We ended up picking a spot far from most of the mining sites, low in metals, but we could send ships to gather them. The plans for the settlement were drawn up, landing sequences were organized, and then they just stood there.
I looked around the bridge from my chair in the center of the room. Everyone was staring at me. Maximus Griggs leaned over and whispered in my ear. "They're waiting hon."
I waved him away and stared directly at the center of the main viewscreen. "Go ahead," I told the fleet. "You all know the plan. You can begin landing."
The mining ships that could actually land on the surface of an asteroid without a docking cradle began firing retro-rockets to bring their habitat modules down to Pallas. There they would detach and drill anchors into the surface. Once the craft had lifted off again, people in the habitats would start stringing up crawl tubes between the modules. As more modules were brought down to the surface, the settlement would be laid down in a spiral pattern, with each habitat connected to its immediate neighbors in the same "arm" and adjacent ones. A bit of a hassle to move from one end of the colony to another, but it would do until we'd excavated a cave underground.
"Finally, it's all over," I said as I slumped down in my chair. "Just asteroid mining from now on. I can handle that."
"I wouldn't be too sure about that," the cat by my side told me. "There's so much that needs to be done. We are, after all, building a whole civilization out here."
The Pride of Parahumans Page 13