Putting the fear of being lost aside, she carried on until the jungle started to hum like it was alive. Instinctively, she knew she was close to the bees’ new home. Lowering a large vine so that she could see better, Connie gasped at what she saw.
A manmade object was lying on the ground like a felled redwood tree, and even the massive latticework of plants climbing over it didn’t camouflage its shape. Painted on it was a distinctive marking, one that Sophi would immediately recognize: a large red rectangle, with a yellow star in the upper left corner, a crescent ring of four smaller stars below it, and in the lower right corner, a yellow hammer and sickle.
Whistling softly, Connie shook her head in amazement. They beat us here.
The painted emblem was the flag for the new Russian-Chinese Alliance. Part of the ship’s fuselage was split lengthwise, like an overcooked baked potato, and in this rupture, a mass of bees was going in and out.
Nervous with excitement, Connie started the long ride back to the colony to alert the captain and crew.
*
Libby was lying on her bunk, watching her learning visor. She had never been interested in boys, but now, for some reason, they seemed very interesting. Maybe it was because she had never seen an actual boy before, or maybe it was because they looked different. Well, they looked similar to girls in a lot of ways, but it was in the areas they weren’t the same that seemed more interesting.
Like their voices. They were deeper, and they had hair that grew on their face. How weird, she thought. And they didn’t have breasts but instead were flat-chested. Then there was that thing called a penis that hung down between their legs. What a funny name, she thought, and she wondered why they had one and she didn’t. Also, that wrinkled sack below the penis called a scrotum, with testicles in it. She giggled when she heard those names as well.
She ran her hand down between her legs and felt her own body. She tried to imagine what all those weird-named parts would feel like if she had them. With a shudder at the thought, she felt glad that she didn’t have them.
She spent several hours learning about boys, and then she saw one kiss a girl. It sent an electrical charge through her body, and she felt excited as she replayed it over again in her learning visor. She knew instinctively that it must feel different to kiss a boy. She had kissed her mom and Mimi, and that hadn’t made her excited. This was a strange new feeling that had come over her, and she didn’t understand it. She could ask Mimi about it, but the more she thought about doing that, the shyer she felt, almost like she wanted to keep it a secret.
Feeling confused, Libby decided to have a shower. Now that they had gravity, the crew had normal-functioning showers and didn’t have to use the pods anymore. Taking her clothes off, Libby stepped in and let the solar-heated stream of recycled water run down over her body like a warm, protective blanket. Still tingling with the thought of the boy’s kiss, she imagined what it would feel like to hold his hands and have his arms wrapped around her. The steam of the shower hung heavy in the air and made her thoughts seem even more real. Reaching out, she pretended to pull the boy’s face to hers and puckered her lips like she had seen done in the visor.
With a shock, she heard Connie’s voice. “Are you in there, Libby?”
In sudden panic, Libby dropped her hands and pretended to be washing her body. With her heart beating furiously, she tried to sound calm. “Yes, I’m in here, Mimi.”
Connie was exhausted from the day’s travels, but wanted to get cleaned up before breaking the incredible news. She was about to get into the shower stall beside Libby’s when she noticed the young woman’s pile of removed clothes. Small, dark stains could be found on her undergarments: blood.
Libby finished showering and wrapped herself in a robe, holding her dirty clothes under one arm.
“Well, I have good news,” said Connie.
“What is it?”
“In good time, honey,” Connie replied. “But first, I think you have some news to tell me. Come on, out with it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Libby said defensively.
“Very well. In time you will tell me,” said Connie. “Till then, I’m going to shower. After, let’s get the captain and crew to the Great Hall. I have an announcement to make.”
Twenty minutes later, the entire crew was seated in the Great Hall. Kriss was standing at the front of the room, mildly irritated that her chief science officer wouldn’t even brief her on what the emergency meeting was about. Trusting her instincts, Kriss didn’t question the urgency she heard in Connie’s voice and allowed the meeting.
The room was electric with excitement. It must be something important, everyone thought, and no one wanted to miss the announcement. Tapping the mic with her finger, Kriss said, “Okay, ladies, pipe down. Connie has something she wants to say.”
The captain traded places with Connie, who brought the mic down to mouth level. “Thank you all for coming here tonight. I have made a remarkable discovery today. I have found our lost honeybees and their hive.”
Someone shouted, “That’s all?”
Another voice said, “You called us here for this?”
“Silence!” barked Smitty.
Connie continued undeterred. “As I was saying, I found the beehive, and what’s remarkable about the hive is that it’s located in a spaceship.”
Immediately everyone went quiet. Suddenly what she had to say was important.
Clearing her throat, she said, “All section commanders and the captain should now meet in private to discuss the details.”
That final statement was like a match on the hot embers of a campfire doused in gasoline. Everyone started shouting at once, demanding that Connie tell them more.
But instead she headed towards Kriss’s office in Command.
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Libby didn’t understand what was wrong. She felt like she was sick or something, and this was the third time. It frightened her.
At first she had noticed the hair; it was blond like on her head, but it seemed coarser and didn’t grow as long. It was curly and grew in a small patch between her legs, so blond that at first she didn’t notice it, until one day, the shower water darkened it enough to be seen. Then the same type of hair began to grow under her arms, and with it, an odor. Now when Libby got hot and sweaty, her shirt would get wet stains under the sleeves and embarrass her.
Her breasts were getting bigger, but she actually liked that. She wanted breasts like Mimi. She was tired of being the most flat-chested female in the colony. But, three times in a row now, her breasts had gotten sore, especially her nipples, and just the movement of her shirt while she walked hurt them.
What really frightened her was that each time her breasts felt swollen and sore, she had bled. The first time was three months ago, and she had only spotted a little. The second time there was more blood, and her stomach hurt as well. This time it was different; there was a lot of blood, and it didn’t stop the first day but continued for two days, bleeding right through her pants. When she got up from breakfast, she just happened to look down and saw a light bloody outline. Hurriedly looking to see if anyone noticed, she wiped her chair clean with a napkin and hid the evidence in a pocket of her pants. Running back to her quarters, she had an emergency shower and washed her soiled clothes. She then lay down on her bunk, put a towel between her legs, and stayed in bed all day.
This same scenario played out two more times before Connie finally caught on. She noticed that the length of time between these mystery illnesses always was about the same number of days.
Connie sat down and explained to Libby what was happening to her body, assuring her that it was completely normal. In fact, she praised Libby, and told her she was very proud of her. “You are now a woman in every way,” said Connie.
“Oh, Mimi, I thought I was dying, and I was so scared,” cri
ed Libby.
With time, Libby became more content with her growing body and more curious about the opposite sex. Boys were exciting and mysterious. She watched them in her learning visor, and asked Mimi many questions. Connie was really not the one to ask about the curiosities of sex, but she tried to act like she spoke from an archive of personal knowledge. In reality, all her knowledge was from books. The person Libby should have asked wasn’t present—Leea would have gotten a wicked pleasure in answering Libby’s innocent questions.
It was because of this isolation that Libby started to come of age in a tender way. The new hormones began to change her physical body as she developed into a beautiful young woman, but inside, something else was changing. No one could see it, but she felt it, and it was a hunger. Not for food, but rather for something more, something she felt deep down between her legs. When she put her hand down there, it felt good. She didn’t know why, but it did. There is a beautiful innocence when someone first discovers this about themselves. Many religions try to make it out to be some sort of evil, when in reality it is the first step towards self-fulfillment.
Libby didn’t know what it was, but it felt good and she did it every day. She wanted to tell Mimi but she was scared; she was afraid Mimi would tease her, or even worse, tell her to stop.
When she touched herself, she always pressed on the outside of her body above the opening to her vagina. This area would swell up, and if she teased it just right, a jolt of excitement would spread through her pelvis and down the backs of her legs. It was all she could do not to cry out when this happened. When she was outside, alone and far away from the colony, she wouldn’t try to hide her excitement; she was loud and would cry out in pleasure. But sometimes, at night when she was asleep in her quarters with Mimi, she would awaken and pleasure herself. If Mimi moved in her sleep or stopped snoring, Libby would stop, afraid she had been caught. Mimi didn’t sleep very well, so sometimes this would go on for hours, and Libby would be exhausted before she finally got her secret release.
One day Libby went back to where she had first seen that strange black plant, but she couldn’t find it. Disappointed, she sat down, the suns warming her face. Their combined heat felt good on her skin, and after a while she felt hot. Unbuttoning her blouse, she exposed both breasts. She didn’t have a bra on because she didn’t like how they felt. Without realizing it, she was rubbing her left nipple. It felt amazingly good. Tracing the tingling feeling down her chest, she reached down and gently ran her fingertips over her belly. Gingerly, she pressed against the fabric of her pants, and started to rub up and down. As she rubbed, she pushed harder, and the harder she pushed, the better it felt.
Moaning softly, she pulled her pants down, just enough to slide her hand inside. She was too shy to pull them all the way down, even though she was hidden by the planet’s jungled canopy. Her fingertip played its familiar pattern until she slipped it lower, dancing lightly over the entrance to the opening below. Unexpectedly, it slipped in. She gasped in delight at this new sensation.
As she explored herself tenderly, she glanced up and saw something strange. Withdrawing her finger, she reached up under a leaf and pulled the dark object towards her. Its stalk was thin and flexible, and when she released it, the mysterious plant sprung away from her. It had an unusual shape, about the length of her hand, smooth and round on the end. It looked like a cattail that grew around Earth’s ponds, but it also looked like something else she had seen in her learning visor.
The texture was so smooth that it almost felt like human skin. Pulling it down, she rubbed the plant on her stomach, then pushed it a little lower to her folds, moving it back and forth like she had with her hand. A shiver of excitement went down her back. She pushed it a little lower and it started to go in. The pressure scared her at first, but it felt good, so she gently pushed it in a little more. Trying to control her excitement, she relaxed and applied more pressure until it was all the way in. She moved it a little and it was weird; she felt like she was peeing. Relieved when she realized she wasn’t, she noted that the plant looked wet as she pushed it back in. It felt good coming all the way out and then all the way back in, and she started to do it over and over.
The feeling she got on the outside began to build on the inside, but it felt deeper and stronger. When it broke, she moaned louder than she had ever moaned before. When she moaned, the plant felt like it stiffened and moved inside of her, and Libby gasped in pleasure. But when she stopped moving, she couldn’t feel the plant moving. Was she imagining things?
As she withdrew the plant, she felt water run out of her. Was she peeing now? Reaching down, she was surprised to instead feel something thick in texture and slippery to the touch.
It was then that she heard a cracking sound. In a frenzy, she pulled her pants up and buttoned her shirt. Wiping the substance on the back of her pants, she jumped up to see who was coming.
Chapter Eighty
The door closed slowly. It was heavy, and as it seated itself into the recessed frame of the hull, the ship became completely dark. It once again sat in silence, but this time stripped of its contents and its last living occupants, the bees.
After Connie had shocked the colony with her discovery, Captain Kriss had ordered a thorough dismantling of the spacecraft. Anything and everything deemed useful for the colony’s survival was removed and hauled back to base camp. The crew had hacked a trail out of the jungle to get to the ship. It was about ten feet wide and packed hard by everyone’s feet.
The first obstacle to overcome was building this human highway; the second obstacle was the removal of the bee colony. Spice and her crew from the garden were tasked with removing the honeybees, but first Merc and her crew had to cut a door into the hull.
This wasn’t an easy job; the original hatch fabricated on Earth was under the ship and pinned to the ground. They had the option of rolling the ship like a giant cylinder and attempting to open the hatch, or digging a basement-type entrance to gain access. The first option could damage the ship and its contents even more. The second option involved guesswork as to where the hatch might be, and if they were lucky and guessed right, they still would have to lower everything into the excavated hole below the ship, then hoist it back up to ground level.
This would have been awfully time-consuming, and not very efficient, so a third option was devised to cut a hole and make a new entrance. After a heated debate between the commanders, a hole was punctured into the hull. Merc had luckily chosen an area that did minimal damage to the ship and its contents.
Captain Kriss wanted to search the ship for its crew or their remains, but Spice insisted on removing the bees first. Pissing off several hundred thousand bees in a confined area wasn’t wise, she insisted. Connie agreed, and their combined influence convinced Kriss to follow this sound advice.
The process was slow. The women wore full beekeeper gear and had to smoke the bees out. Not only did this smoke work on the bees as expected, but it also worked on the crew. The smoke-filled ship soon became inaccessible for Spice and her squad. The ship had only one entrance, so as the smoke hung heavy, the crew was forced to flee like the bees themselves.
Connie saved the day by suggesting Merc build a giant vacuum that could suck the bees out. This method solved two problems. First, it caught the bees and allowed them to be transported back to the garden and reintroduced into new hives Engineering had made. It also avoided smoking the crew like beef jerky.
But this took more time, which made Kriss furious. Not only was removing the mature bees a monumental task, but the massive labyrinth of honeycomb and capped brood had to be transported into the new hives. It was so expansive that some of the ship’s passageways were completely sealed off.
But, four long days later, the job was completed and the ship was deemed safe. Kriss and the section commanders prowled the confines of the ship to discover its secrets. Connie immediately went in search of Command and
attempted to gain access into its main computer. Unfortunately, she read neither Russian nor Chinese, so she sought out Sophi’s help. Eventually, they got the backup battery power hooked up and were able to bring the main computer to life, gaining access to its stored data.
Sophi furiously typed on a keyboard and soundlessly moved her lips as she read the screen. Several minutes later, she translated what she read so that Connie could understand. Kriss walked in as Sophi began to speak.
“The ship’s logs indicate that this ship was launched approximately three months prior to ours, and that another ship was supposed to launch after, about the same time as ours. Apparently, this one had no crew; it is a ghost ship only filled with cargo to be used by the crew on the second ship. It was supposed to orbit Alpha-64 until the second ship arrived, but according to the data I see here, the scientists miscalculated the proper orbit and our planet’s gravity pulled it down. It’s a miracle the ship survived reentry and didn’t burn up.”
“I guess the Russian-Chinese Alliance tried to beat us here in typical Cold War fashion,” said Kriss.
“Yes, and just like the race to the moon, they beat us here,” Connie said excitedly.
“Captain, the ship has one last entry transmitted to its log from Earth,” said Sophi. In a hushed tone, she added, “It’s a video log.”
All eyes were on the monitor as Sophi clicked on the video log. The file opened, and a face that none of them had ever seen before popped onto the screen. It was a woman with blond, shoulder-length hair parted on one side and tucked behind her ear. She spoke rapidly in Russian and was obviously in great distress. Her face was sweaty, and as she spoke, her hands were animated. She spoke for about ten minutes, then gasped a final breath of air, placing her hand over her mouth in horror. Exhaling, she spoke one last phrase and was gone.
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