J.W. McKenna
Slave Planet
Chapter 1
Pure oxygen, mixed with stimulants, hissed into the cocoon surrounding Capt. Kathryn Dyson. The dark-haired woman didn’t move at first, “sleeping the sleep of the dead,” as space boomers called it. Finally, her eyes fluttered. She stirred, her tee-shirt shifting over her breasts. She opened her eyes and looked around, confused, groggy.
Awareness returned slowly. Her eyes opened wide, then narrowed as she focused on the panel near her right hand. Green. Good, she thought. It’s not an emergency. The cocoon was designed to wake her if something had gone wrong during the long flight. A green board told her that she had been awakened on time.
Kate hit the switch, venting the oxygen and allowing it to be replaced by ordinary air. Another switch caused the cocoon’s lid to hiss open. She spent a few minutes getting her bearings, then struggled with her straps to free herself. As she sat up, she smiled wryly at the paper panties that remained bunched by her left hand. Cryosleep required many long months motionless while the ship hurled through empty space. NASA, in its wisdom, decided that cloth panties might cause yeast infections during the long slumber. Paper panties that breathed were the official sleepwear, which most women grudgingly accepted.
Kate, however, didn’t buy it. Rather than wear the damn things, she preferred to “go bare.” Since she was captain, she would be the last to sleep and the first to awaken. It was her right to wear what she wanted—or to wear nothing at all.
She tossed the panties into the trash recycler and paused to look over her sleeping crew. The four remaining cocoons were reading green. Good. She didn’t really trust these damn things any more than she trusted a soda machine to give her correct change. She walked the line, checking the faces of each of her crew. All were women, dressed in tee-shirts and those silly panties, their long legs partially obscured by the darkened cocoons. They would be awakened soon. In the meantime, there was time to check out the ship and their journey.
Kate half-floated, half-padded barefoot to her quarters, cogniscent of the low gravity. On long trips like this, the gravity field was kept weak until they approached their destination. There was no need to waste energy. Now, just days away from the unexplored system, the gravity field would strengthen until their “land legs” returned in time for exploration—if the opportunity presented itself. A big if.
She took a quick shower. A space shower was quite the experience for those not familiar with the procedure. Water was a premium on board, so showers consisted of a blast of droplets to wet the body, followed by a scrubbing down with a special soap, then another blast to rinse. A fan sucked the mixture away. Kate never quite got used to it and she had been an astronaut for twelve years.
Walking naked from the shower, she relished these few minutes alone. A long space voyage was an exercise in forced civility with one’s crewmates. NASA selected the crew, and Kate didn’t find their personalities fit in all cases—but they were all professionals and would make this trip successful. They had to.
Kate paused, standing there in the nude, thinking about Brian and the last time they made love, so many months ago. Her nipples hardened in the processed air. Kate unselfconsciously touched her breasts, pretending it was Brian’s hands stroking her. Her mind easily recalled the evening, as it was just a few nights ago as far as she was concerned. Cryosleep has a way of compacting time.
She smiled and let her fingers drift down to brush her smooth mound below her navel. She felt a little naughty... Here she was, captain of NASA’s most expensive ship built to date and she was seriously thinking of…well, no, she wouldn’t. Would she?
She should get dressed, she told herself. Many things to do. Her mind betrayed her, bringing up the image of Brian next to her in bed, his hard muscles a contrast to her soft curves. He was hard somewhere else as well, she remembered. Brian had been deliciously unabashed, encouraging her gaze upon him. If anything, it made him harder. His cock was a very nice shape—thick and veiny with a bulbous head that could make her salivate.
Kate remembered leaning down to kiss it, knowing that these sights, these actions, would have to last her for nearly two years—longer for him. His smell enveloped her, a musky, sexy, piquant scent that caused the lips of her wet slit to part in anticipation. As her mind wandered back to that day, so did her fingers now, down past her bare mons, letting them dance along her sensitive cleft. She could feel herself getting wet. Kate eased down onto the closed toilet seat.
Brian had thrown his head back as she took him into her mouth that night and now Kate threw her own head back against the bulkhead and closed her eyes as her fingers traced a gentle track along her moist cleft. Already her clit poked out of its tender prison. She had sucked Brian’s sweet cock, enjoying the sensation, the musky smell of him, until he whimpered and touched her head. “Wait,” he had breathed, “I want to be in you.”
Kate had laid back on their bed, relishing the way Brian had crawled over her like some sort of beast, his hardness swinging like a club underneath him. She spread her legs for him, welcoming him. She had been so wet, her cunt gaped. Her fingers, remembering, opened her cleft now and rubbed the little pearl inside.
OK, she told herself, maybe starship captains do masturbate after cryosleep.
Brian had placed the tip of his cock at her hot core, then paused, looking down on her. “When you’re in space,” he said softly, “remember this moment.” Then he pressed himself into her, slowly, making her feel every inch. He slid in smoothly, so familiar, so much a part of her. This time it did not feel like the love-making of “old married folks,” sixteen years into their relationship. They were literally star-crossed lovers who would soon be torn asunder. The orgasm that had rocked her was made sweeter and sadder because it would be the last one they would share for a long time. Of course, it wasn’t. They had made love twice more during the night, like teenagers discovering sex for the first time.
Kate let the pad of her finger stroke the wet clit, dipping in for the slippery fluid. She remembered Brian taking her in front, from behind and again on their sides. She concentrated on the image of his cock thrusting into her again and again as she rubbed herself, faster and faster. In minutes, it gave her the climax she so desperately needed. “Oh god!” she shouted in the tiny bathroom. “Oh my god!”
She sagged back against the bulkhead. I wonder if this makes me a member of the million-mile club? She laughed at herself. “Oh, Captain Dyson, you wicked, wicked woman.” Her voice sounded hollow in the silent ship. She was glad no one could hear. “OK, back to work.”
As she shrugged on her pink bikini panties—non-regulation, of course—and the blue NASA coveralls, she reflected on how much this trip meant to her and to Earth. The U.S.S. Letanya carried the first all-female crew sent out to further the exploration of the Andromeda galaxy. Since 2053—the year faster-than-light drive had been invented—men had had the privilege of jetting around space, getting the glory, while women were reduced to mere back-up roles. In the twenty-two years since that first flight, only eleven women had been included on trips. It was time to let a woman captain an exploration, America demanded.
But why stop there? Lobbying by women’s organizations and Congress finally convinced NASA that an all-female crew could be a public relations boon. It was decided the latest warp-drive ship, the Letanya, would be manned—er, womanned?—by an all-female crew. Capt. Kathyrn Dyson, the eldest and most experienced at 38, would lead the mission, along with four of the top female astronauts and scientists NASA had to offer.