"Astronauts and Amazons" (closed)

"Astronauts and Amazons"

(closed to EroticLiteracy)​

The Planetside Lounge had once been Rita's most favorite place on Earth. Well, on Earth was highly inaccurate as the lounge was on the International Spacecraft Assembly Station 440 miles above the surface of the planet. Every day, Doctor Rita Carter had come here to sit for an hour or so in one of the many deep, plush chairs. Before the tall, thick windows that looked out upon Earth below, she would drink an espresso, eat an energy bar and whatever fruity treat had recently been harvested from Hydroponics, and watch Earth do a slow roll, compliments of the artificial gravity inducing spin of the ring shaped station.

Then, she was up and off to Stasis Prep where she would spend her day putting settlers bound for Jupiter's 6th moon into what some not so lovingly called the dead beds. Over several weeks, Rita assisted each of the 224 Europans into their cryogenic pod, hooking up IVs and monitoring devices. And just before administering the drugs that would put them under, Rita would tell each of them that she envied them for the adventure they were about to undertake.

That had been a crock, of course. Rita had had absolutely no interest in going to Europa. She loved the view of Earth from Planetside, but she despised just about everything else about being up here on the ISAS. She couldn't even imagine an 8 year long transit to a distant moon spent in stasis, followed by a lifetime of 13% gravity and radiation so intense that if it were to penetrate Europa Station's shielding it would kill everyone inside in less than 20 hours.

Hell, the only reason she'd taken the Cryogenic Tech position on the ISAS was the money. After 6 years in orbit, Rita could pay off the mortgage on the family ranch outside Fairplay, Colorado, and still have enough left over to establish a free clinic in town. She'd spend the rest of her life giving flu shots, telling school children to Say ah, and making house calls to her elderly neighbors; in between riding horses, hiking the Rockies, fucking men younger than she who were impressed with her having been in space, and then looking up into that space at night sky, at that little bright dot called ISAS, and thanking God that she was no longer up there.

But, as was her luck sometimes, that wasn't to be...



"I know you all have questions," Rita said to the 14 people sitting before her, "and I'm going to do my best to answer those that I can."

She was back in the Planetside again, but this time with the overhead lights set to near full illumination and the draperies closed, hiding the windows and the view of Earth beyond them. This configuration of the compartment had often been used for seminars, training, and other group functions in which the gently rolling planet would have been a distraction.

"My name is Doctor Rita Carter," she continued. "Some of you may remember me as one of the Cryogenic Technicians who helped you into stasis for your transit to Europa. Those of you who don't remember me, well, you will. One of the after effects of long term cryogenic stasis is temporary memory loss. But rest assured, everything will come back to you, in the hours and days to come. In fact, you'll probably remember things that later you will wish you could have forgotten forever."

She smiled and chuckled, but all she got as a response from her still mostly numbed audience was stares and a couple of weak smiles. One of the 9 women raised her hand slowly, grimacing a bit at the pain of her sore muscles. She, like the others, was still suffering from the physical after effects of reanimation. Awakening from the coma-like state of cryogenic stasis wasn't like hopping out of your bed back home after a long, restful night's sleep. It took time -- between 6-9 hours -- for the cocktail of drugs flowing through the IV to reactivate internal organs and begin the rehabilitation of atrophied limbs. Under normal circumstances, it would take 6-9 days for most people to feel like their old normal pre-stasis selves again. In fact, Rita had brought each of the settlers here one at a time in wheel chairs, then helped each into a comfortable chair before returning to Stasis Prep for the next. Oh, they were all capable of standing and walking, but the transit from the stasis compartments to Planetside would have been impossible for most at this point.

Unfortunately, these were not normal circumstances.

"Are we there yet?" the woman asked with a voice so soft Rita almost didn't hear her. She added meekly, "Europa?"

Rita hesitated a moment, drawing and exhaling a deep breath that was meant to calm her. Should have pumped some of those drugs into my own veins, she thought. She had been practicing what she was going to say to the settlers once she had them assembled here, and still she had no idea how to do this. The doctor told herself, Rip the bandage off quick. Get it over with.

"So, good news and bad news," she said, quickly going on, "The good news first. You -- we! -- are in no danger. Please keep that in mind as I go on, because, well, the bad news is, well, it's shocking."

Rita searched for the words to begin with but couldn't find them. She looked to the tablet she clutched in her hands and saw the notes she'd compiled to answer the questions that she knew might possibly arise. She decided to use the notes as an outline, like when she'd studied Public Speaking back in 7th grade.

"The Europa Bound never left for Europa," she began. She glanced up, then down again. "The ship is still docked at the International Spaceship Assembly Station."

Rita hesitated a moment, then looked up to those before her for a long moment. She got some curious or confused expressions but little more. Despite being able to fully hear and understand what Rita was telling them, the settlers were still a bit too doped up to be able to react with fear, anger, dismay, or any of the other emotions a normal person might experience. She looked to her notes again, then continued.

"By established procedure, you all were put into cryogenic stasis six weeks before the scheduled departure of the Europa Bound," Rita went on, looking to her notes again. "This was done to enable the medical staff, me included, to monitor your response to stasis and perform any..."

She let the thought fade away, her mind already shifting to the really bad news that was the reason the settlers were still here.

"Between your entry into stasis and the ship's departure, a final shuttle was to bring some vital supplies. This shuttle didn't arrive." She stared at her notes for a moment more, then looked up at the others. Rita's eyes were glazed over, threatening her cheeks with a flow of tears. "There, there was a war. An exchange of, of nuclear missiles. ICBMs."

Despite their muted emotions, Rita could see some fear welling up in the faces of some of those before her. She looked down to her notes again, seeing a single tear splash onto the plastic of the tablet. She cleared her throat, set the tablet aside, and went on without it.

"I don't know who started it, the war, but, it doesn't really matter, does it? It's estimated that almost 500 detonations occurred. The United States. England and Europe. China and Russia, Pakistan and India. Even Australia. Korea and Japan were hit hard, so, who knows, it might have begun there. I don't really know."

"They're all dead," a man said calmly to Rita. When she didn't respond, he continued in a soft voice, "That many nukes. The radiation..."

"The presumption is that no one survived," Rita continued after the man's thought faded. "We lost contact with NASA almost immediately. ISAS Command established informal contact with some Europa Bound enthusiasts on the ground, but, soon enough they went quiet, too. We monitored the radiation levels for the first couple of months, but..."

She looked away, feeling more tears welling. She turned to retrieve her tablet, not because she needed it but because she wanted to wipe her eyes inconspicuously.

"Where's everyone?" a woman asked. When Rita's reaction showed that she didn't understand, the woman clarified, "There's only 15 of us. Where's everyone else?"

"We're all that's left," Rita answered after a moment. "The transit to Europa was to have taken 8 years, but in the case of an accident that forced abandoning the transit and attempting a return to Earth, the cryogenic system had been designed to keep all 224 of you in stasis for as much as 30 years."

"Where's everyone?" the woman repeated, more pointedly this time as her own eyes began to glaze over. She said knowingly, "They're dead, too. Aren't they?"

"How long were we in stasis," someone asked. The group was finally beginning to show a little life as they both regained some of their control over their emotions and the reasons for becoming emotional arose. Someone asked, "What are you hiding? What aren't you telling us?"

"You've been in stasis for 552 years," Rita said over the top of the rising voices. When the room fell silent once more, she continued, "You entered stasis in 2187. It is now 2739. 14 November 2739, to be more precise."

There were mixed emotions to the revelation, but then the question arose again, "Where's everyone else? Where are the rest of the people who went into stasis?"

Suddenly, many of the 14 were asking about friends, family, and acquaintances by name, wanting to know whether they were dead or waiting to be reanimated or what. Rita tried to politely wave the group to silence, but the emotions were finally awake and exploding forth from many of those before her. She raised a hand to her mouth, forming her fingers, and let loose with a shrill whistle that echoed off the walls of the Planetside and brought silence once again.

"We here are all that's left," she said after a moment. "I'm sorry. The cryogenic system simply hadn't been designed for what was asked of it. There were 224 of you on the ship, plus 48 crew on the station. I don't have all the details about what happened to the station crew. I was put into stasis 101 days after the war. Me and 4 other Cryogenic Techs. They wanted someone familiar with the system and the situation on Earth to be here to help you all when you were reanimated."

"They're all dead?" someone asked through emotional sobs. "How? Why them?"

"A priority was assigned to those in stasis," Rita began, tapping an icon on her tablet to bring up a Directive that had been written after she'd entered stasis. "In the case that the system couldn't support all of us, certain beds were deenergized and their resources diverted to the other dead beds."

Rita grimaced immediately upon her unfortunate use of the term. There was a bit of an unhappy grumble amongst the still living, but she ignored it and continued as she paraphrased the Directive. "The Europa Bound's AI was programmed to reanimate one of the 5 Cryo Techs for the purpose of reanimating the survivors under one of three circumstances. If contact was made with an official at either NASA or ISAS's ground station, a person with the authorization codes necessary to give commands to the AI or a Command crew member, who would then be reanimated."

"Did someone contact us?" someone asked hopefully.

"Or," Rita continued after shaking her head no, "the AI determined that the remaining number of survivors could be reanimated to live aboard the ship and or the station using the available resources--"

"Can we live here?" yet another hopeful voice asked.

"No," Rita answered. "Although we have power, CO2 scrubbing, and some other vital systems on the station, both Hydroponics compartments were compromised, as were three storage compartments that contained most of our food and four of the eight tanks holding the station's water. The ship has a working Hydroponics System, but--"

"We have nothing to grow, or not enough of it," a man knowingly finished for Rita. When she nodded confirmation, he asked, "So, what was the third reason for the AI to get us all out of bed?"

For the first time since she'd been reanimated, Rita smiled. She tapped at her tablet, and as the lights began to dim to their normal minimal illumination, the drapes behind her began pulling aside. Beyond the glass, Earth made her presence known. Although the Europans had seen the planet from other viewing points, they'd never seen her like this. The sun was out of sight to the left at about 110 degrees relative, which left most of the globe below in shadow. In contrast to the pre-war period, when the lights of hundreds of cities could be seen on every continent but the southernmost one, the night time portion of Earth was bathed in post-apocalyptic darkness. Rita gave them all a moment to appreciate the view and contemplate the changes, then turned to look at their barely visible faces.

"We're going home," she said. Rita could see just enough of them in the dark to recognize several different reactions. "The third reason for waking us was that radiation levels on the planet had returned to the point that it was safe for us to return."

"We're going down there?" a woman asked with obvious concern in her voice. "Isn't everything dead?"

"The AI says no," Rita answered. "While we were all in stasis, the AI has been monitoring conditions on the planet. Plant life has flourished. The AI says some animals with a lower Trophic level position should have--"

"Trophic what?" someone cut in.

"Trophic level," Rita repeated. "Animals lower on the food chain. Primary consumers. Herbivores. There may even be some secondary consumers. Carnivores."

"But no humans," someone said, a statement, not a question.

Rita didn't immediately respond but eventually answered, "No. Not a chance. The nukes. The radiation. Anything higher on the food chain than, maybe, insects or some fish, maybe some reptile or amphibian species. There's the possibility that some smaller mammals survived, but--"

"Birds?"

"Maybe, I don't honestly know," Rita answered. By now some of the 15 had risen and moved up to the glass to look down upon the planet. Other than the fact that there were no lights to be seen, you would never have known that there had been a nuclear apocalypse down there. "The AI can't tell us anything about what may or may not have survived. It can only tell us that there are no indications of humans civilization. No electricity. No radio signals."

"No help spelled out on a beach with logs or stones," someone quipped. There was an actually chuckle amongst the Europans, which made Rita smile again. Someone asked, "But, we're going down there, right? It's safe now?"

"The AI says so," Rita answered. There was a bit of excitement rising in the group. But as she scanned the faces lit up a bit more by the sunlight reflecting off Earth's daylight side, she could also see some apprehension there as well. "The AI searched for areas with safe radiation levels and a return of adequate plant life, which would also indicate the likelihood of lower Trophic level animal life. It found 7 of these zones, all in the southern hemisphere. But because of orbital patterns, time restrictions, and other factors that the AI tried to explain but I didn't understand, we can only safely reach one of them with one of the station's escape shuttles."

"Which one?" someone asked excitedly. "Where are we going?"

There was an short exchange between some of the Europans who were excited about what Rita was explaining and some others who were skeptical about the concept of returning to a radiated planet. But when Rita reminded them that staying up here meant certain death, and one of the male Europans agreed with her, adding his two cents about the return, the group went relatively quiet once more.

"Where are we going to settle?" one of the woman asked. She reminded them, "We're settlers. Let's go settle something."

There was some laughter and some snarky comments both.

"Right there," Rita said, stepping over to the glass and pointing down to the planet. "Just coming into the daylight."

As they watched, the continent of South America began to reveal itself in the approaching sunlight. And it seemed from the reaction of the more hopeful Europans that the place Rita was indicating was a welcome deduction. She watched in silence as the continent continued to light up, then smiled.

"The Amazon."

Somewhere deep in his still activating consciousness, Marlon Riggs had known there was something wrong within the first couple of hours of having been reanimated. When he'd been put into stasis in 2187, there had been three technicians present as he was put in the dead bed. Coming out, there had only been one. And for the first couple of hours -- more or less, his brain couldn't really understand -- he'd only seen one other Europan, when in 2187 there had been a queue of them waiting to follow him into cryo.

Then there was the Planetside Lounge. Although most of the settlers had been escorted directly from the ramjet shuttles to the Europa Bound for processing, Riggs had had friends aboard ISAS who snuck him onto the station for a quick tour. So he'd been in the viewing area and looked down on the Earth in all its pre-nuclear holocaust beauty once before. When the doctor who eventually introduced herself as Rita Clark delivered him into the Planetside Lounge and helped him out of the wheel chair and into a comfortable seat, he knew he was still on the station despite the view of Earth being obstructed by a pulled curtain.

Riggs knew there was something horribly wrong, and he was disappointed needless to say. And yet, he simply sat there quietly, staring at the curtains, his doped up mind unwilling to engage in anything more intense than being happy that he was no longer in a dead bed.

"I know you all have questions," the good doctor began, "and I'm going to do my best to answer those that I can."

Riggs listened to what Clark had to say and, when they spoke up, listened to the others as well. He was initially apathetic about not already being at or still being on approach to Europa, but that was only because of the drugs still flowing through his system. His disappointment would show itself soon enough.

He had spent his entire life preparing for Europa: his education had been math and science centered; he'd participated in a dozen different NASA sponsored programs from Space Rangers when he was just 6 years old to the astronaut program at 26 years old after he'd gotten his Bachelors Degree, two Masters Degrees, and was working on his second PhD. At 32, he had already made a trip to the still operating International Space Station and helped design and deliver to the ISAS some of the hydroponics systems that would be feeding the settlers on Europa. He'd been accepted to the crew manifest of Europa Bound before the mission had even been fully approved.

And here he was, still sitting on a space station in orbit of fucking Earth.

"They're all dead," he said after Doctor Clark explained about the nuclear war that had occurred on the planet below them. When she just stared at him, Riggs added, "That many nukes. The radiation..."

He let the thought fade. It didn't take a genius to know that every man, woman, and child, every dog and cat, every horse and cow, every lion and gazelle on Earth was likely dead. He'd never actually studied the theories of post-atomic situations, but he knew enough to know that even in a small war, the jet stream would eventually deliver radioactive dust and debris to just about every square mile of the planet. Even the Artic and Antarctic wouldn't be spared, some models had predicted. And while 500 bombs was only a fraction of the estimated high total of 15,000 bombs operational worldwide after the tensions of the mid-21st century, that surely had been enough to kill everything more complex in biology than a bug or worm.

"The presumption is that no one survived," the doctor confirmed. She went on to explain about how ISAS had lost contact with Earth. About the time Riggs's emotions were coming into full consciousness, the conversation shifted to the fate of the apparently deceased Europans. His eyes glazed over, and -- though he'd already done it once before -- he looked around again for Lois. She wasn't here.

"We're all that's left," Doctor Clark stated.

Lois wasn't here. And she apparently never would be. Riggs's head dropped, and he felt the tears fall onto his arms. He'd spent his entire life consumed by his desire to be one of the very few who ever came to live on an alien planet, so much so that he'd never made a true connection with a woman until the Europa Bound program. Lois had been a member of the Command Staff, and they'd fallen in love almost at first sight. They'd had a whirlwind romance, married, and signed the contract papers to commit to having a child of their own once on the Planet as well as carrying two more comprised of the DNAs of others, thereby expanding the gene pool of Europa's human population.

And now she was gone.

Riggs was so overwhelmed by his grief that he almost didn't hear the good Doctor's explanation of how long they'd been up here. 552 years? It was simply incredible. 2739? Amazing.

After the conversation continued about the demise of the others and the reasons behind it, Riggs cut in with, "Can we live here?"

"No," Rita answered. She went on to explain why, turning to the conversation about his area of expertise, Hydroponics.

Riggs cut in, already knowing the issue. "We have nothing to grow, or not enough of it."

When Clark confirmed Riggs's suspicion, he asked, "So, what was the third reason for the AI to get us all out of bed?"

The doctor dimmed the lights and opened the shades. And there was Earth, looking no different than it had looked the last time Riggs had looked down on it from Planetside. Except ... yeah ... no lights. It took a moment to realize that he was looking at Africa. There should have been lit cities in southern and eastern Africa, even a couple in the Congo and along the coast of the southern Atlantic. But instead, there was nothing but darkness.

"We're going home," Doctor Clark said, explaining that the ISAS's artificial intelligence had awoken them to return to Earth.

Someone asked excitedly. "Where are we going?"

After a moment, Clark pointed to the left of the globe below. "The Amazon."

Riggs listened to the reaction. There was excitement and reservation both. Some obviously saw this as a great adventure, both similar to and very different from the one they had been expecting on Europa. Others thought the survivors should try for a more civilized area, perhaps one of the cities of the northern hemisphere or, at the least Cape Town in South Africa or maybe one of the Australian cities. But Clark went on to explain that all those cities had their issues: either they'd been nuked, were not yet safe in regards to radiation and/or a return of livable conditions, or they simply could not be reached from here via the shuttles.

No, it was obvious that it was the Amazon or nothing.

"What if we don't want to go down," one of the other men asked. "You said the station wouldn't support all of us, but ... will it support some of us?"

A back and forth began about the topic, and when it turned to food production, Riggs got involved. He told them he could survey the hydroponics system's capabilities, but that there was far more than just food to consider. Ultimately, with obvious concern from the good doctor, the survivors agreed to table the conversation until each had had a full medical work up, had had a full meal, and had had a real night's sleep to fathom their unexpected situation.



Riggs slept soundly for 14 hours, waking to find himself still flat on his back in the rack of one of the station's long dead crew members. He smiled and gently shook his head at the sight of a poster of Miss February 2184 taped to the overhead between a water supply pipe and an filtered air duct.

He rolled out of the bed, stiffer and sorer than when he'd been reanimated after more than five centuries. He showered, shaved, donned a pair of overalls that were a bit too big for him, and made his way down the main passage to the Mess Hall where some of the others were assembled.

"Helen's dead," one of the other men told him in almost a whisper. Riggs assumed he was talking about one of the settlers with whom he'd been familiar, but the man clarified in an even softer whisper, "The redhead with the big tits from yesterday. The Doc says there was something wrong with her heart after the stasis. They found her last night, just laying there in her bed."

Fifteen, down to fourteen, Riggs thought to himself. Then he thought of it another way, rounding up, 17% of the human population of Earth, dead overnight.

That might have meant more if it hadn't been for the war that had left them where they were now. Between eating dinner and laying down for sleep last night, Riggs had used the computer in his new quarters to review the nuclear apocalypse. A billion people had died as a direct result of the ICBMs raining down on cities in those first hours. In a flash -- or hundreds of them, anyway -- 14% of the worlds population had been incinerated. Another 25-35% were estimated to have died by the end of the day from burns, radiation poisoning, and other injuries. After that, the station's artificial intelligence could only hypothesize as there had been no more contact with anyone on the planet. But the A.I. determined that there had been a daily death toll in the six figures for some time, reducing in rate only because there were so fewer people to die each passing day.



Riggs worked with some of the others for the next two days surveying what the station and ship had to offer for anyone who might want to remain in orbit. The news was disheartening: Riggs could rig up one of the hydroponics systems to produce enough food for four people living on a minimally acceptable diet, but one of the survivors who knew it well said that the oxygen/carbon dioxide scrubbing system might not support four people long term.

In the end, only three people wanted to take their chances here. The rest would board the two operational escape shuttles, filled with anything and everything that might be of use that wasn't desperately needed by the trio staying behind, and they'd shoot for the landing zone indicated by the station's AI as the safest place to land.

An analysis of the history of the area and current images told them that the rain forest there had been clear cut in the late 1990s to make way for a massive million acre cattle ranch; that after the war of 2187, it had likely returned to native grasses and shrubs; and that periodically it had suffered enough naturally caused fire to keep the forest from reclaiming all of it. There was a strip of relatively open land two miles across and twenty miles long, surrounded by light forest ten times that acreage, into which they needed to land the free falling shuttles.

It was going to be tight, but the escape shuttles had been built for this kind of navigation. Of course, they'd been built almost 600 years ago. But, who was counting?

Rita had spent nearly a full day reanimating settlers, then another 6 hours performing their basic medical checks. She was so exhausted that by the time she made it to her quarters that she laid down on the bed still fully clothed and mimicked a settler in a dead bed, laying there coma-like for 10 straight hours. She only awoke when one of the female survivors, Allie -- who had been a nurse on Earth but hadn't officially with the Medical Staff of the Europa Bound -- came to her room to tell her that a woman named Helen had died.

Rita went to the woman's borrowed quarters, performed a couple of quick tests, then asked Allie to give her a moment. When she was alone, Rita checked the drawers nearby and found exactly what the tests had left her suspecting: the woman had downed a bottle of pain relievers that she'd apparently lifted from the MedBay the day before. At least she went peacefully, Rita thought. She couldn't know Helen's real reasons for committing suicide, but hell, the reasons to choose from were many.

She had Allie pass the word that Helen had died of complications from long term stasis, then passed out wrist band monitors and told everyone how the bands would alert them to things such as blood pressure, heart beat, and more. The story frightened a couple of the settlers a bit, but Rita thought it caused less concern than letting the others known that one of their own had chosen suicide to Earth.

While the settlers worked on a variety of projects over the next two days, Rita concentrated on monitoring the settlers' health and on reviewing the information the AI was providing about their intended landing location. Hours of study and research only seemed to confirm what the AI had to say: the probabilities of a safe landing were high, the probabilities of the landing zone being radiation safe were high, the probabilities of the area being able to support the settlers was high, and so on.

As hard as Rita looked, she couldn't find any reason for them not to go down to Earth. Not that she was looking for a reason! Rita was anxious and apprehensive about what the settlers had in mind, of course. Who wouldn't be? But it was the right thing to do. Actually, it was the only thing to do. They couldn't all stay up here, after all.



"Six ... five ... four ... three..." the AI's voice sounded over the speakers in Rita's helmet. Even though it wasn't necessary and, honestly, provided little safety or security for either reentry or landing, Rita had insisted that each of the settlers wear a full pressure suit for the drop. She closed her eyes and grasped the hand holds flanking her as the AI continued, "...two ... one ... launch."

There was a sudden jolt, and the definite feeling of dropping away from the station. Blood rushed to Rita's head, disorienting her for a moment. There was the sound of rockets firing, and the shuttle began twisting and banking. Then, once the shuttle was on course for Brazil, Rita suddenly realized that for the first time since she'd initially come to the ISAS, she was feeling Zero G. It was an odd sensation, and it was suddenly causing a flood of other memories, some of them related to the mission up here, some of them absolutely not.

She began to remember things about her family, her education, her neighborhood, and even her first true love. But the reminiscing was short lived. There was another sudden jolt of the shuttle, then another, then a roar as the craft entered Earth's atmosphere. Outside the pie plate sized portals, the dark of space were suddenly replaced with the red and yellow flames of reentry. Rita closed her eyes tightly, sure that at any moment the shuttle was going to begin breaking apart and burn up, reaching the Amazon as little more than charred fragments.

Then, just as suddenly as the reentry mayhem had begun, it ended. The retros fired occasionally but were quickly exhausted of fuel, and the rest of the ride was simply a computer guided glide to the surface. Beyond the charred windows, with her eyes again open, Rita could see the blue of the South American sky, then the blur of the thick cloud cover. A new sound pummeled the craft, and when Rita recognized it as rain she almost began to cry. How long had it been since she'd felt the cool rains of spring or fall upon her face?

Again her reminiscing was interrupted when an alarm sounded. It didn't occur to Rita to ask the shuttle's AI what the issue was: her mind was again imagining the various ways in which the shuttle could be destroyed and her almost 6 century old body finally killed. The vessel banked, attempting to alter its course for unknown reasons, then attempted to gain altitude.

And then, there was nothing...



When she came to, Rita was in deep pain. She tried to move, but sharp jabs in her arm and leg both stilled her for a long moment. She listened for the others but heard nothing from them. She finally forced herself to unbuckle from her seat and rise. The shuttle had settled to the port side and forward, perhaps 15 degrees each, but she managed to rise to her feet. She looked about herself, finding 2 of the 4 settlers who had descended with her and panicked. The seat of one had come loose from its fittings, sending the settler forward into a bulkhead. His body was twisted in an unnatural way and the face shield of his helmet was filled with blood. The seat of the 2nd had maintained its place, but unfortunately another object hadn't. A chunk of bloodied metal protruded from the settler's chest.

When she turned to look for the others, Rita got another horrific shock. The shuttle was entirely opened to the jungle surrounding it, the entire back half of the shuttle absent as were the other 2 settlers. She struggled over the tilted deck, tripping at the jagged hull's edge to fall out onto the rain forest's floor. She got to her feet again and shed her suit, crying out in pain as she did so. Once she was down to her coveralls, Rita understood the problem: she had a compound fracture of her right ulna; and a piece of metal tube had penetrated her thigh and was protruding an inch or so from its front and reach, very near to her great saphenous vein. The lack of spurting blood told her that she was actually quite lucky and wouldn't bleed out before she could fix her ailments.

Allie, where are you when I need you? she thought, suddenly dreading her decision that the former nurse should descend to the Amazon on the other shuttle. Although the AI had programmed it so, there was no guarantee that the shuttles would both land on the targeted strip of land. And by the looks of the deep forest surrounding the crash sight, this one had certainly missed the target by at least several miles, if not far more.

Rita searched the debris and miraculously found a first aid box just a few steps away. She retrieved it and found a crate to sit upon. She opened it and attempted to shed her coveralls to get clear access to her wounds, but then realized that her work would have to wait a bit. A sound caught Rita's attention, and she looked up to a sight that she would have bet her life she'd never see.

Human beings...

And they hadn't come down from the ISAS with her and the other...

They were from here!

But...

That was impossible, wasn't it?

As she stared wide eyed at them, trying to convince herself that this wasn't possible, Rita became light headed. And without realizing it had happened, she slumped back upon the crate, unconscious from blood loss and shock.

Riggs's situation on the second escape shuttle was going to be both very similar to and very much different than Rita Clark's on the first. This craft, too, suffered some sort of navigation error and slammed into the rain forest they'd been programmed to avoid. Through the little porthole window to his left, Riggs watched the shuttle's wing get ripped away, the force causing the craft to begin a slow flat spin to port. A moment later, the front end of the shuttle was ripped away by another strike, which only accelerated the spin. Then a final strike -- this one with the ground -- sent the fuselage of the craft rolling like a log down a hill.

The botany and hydroponics expert could only hold on tight and hope his belts remained secure as the shuttle rolled over and over and over again before finally slowing and coming to a stop upside down. Riggs's head was spinning for a while, but he finally got his clarity back. He loosed his helmet and let it fall to the roof, then looked left and right to find that the primary passenger/cargo section of the craft had held together, though the tail had joined the nose as being somewhere else.

"Call out," Riggs ordered, working his buckle in an attempt to get free. He could hear some of his fellow settlers moaning or crying or even screaming. He repeated loudly, "Call out! Who's still with me?"

His buckle finally snapped loose, and holding tight to one side, Riggs swung downward to hang for a moment before losing his grip and falling to the roof. He was shocked to find that he had no injuries and didn't even feel pained any where through his body. Had he seriously just survived one of the most fatality-prone accidents known to man without a scratch, or was the adrenaline surging through him simply covering for something he'd discover soon enough?

Riggs struggled through the dislodged freight and debris to the nearest of his fellow settlers. He found a piece of debris lodged in the person's upper chest and blood filling the face screen of the helmet. He moved to another body that was also beyond help with just a cursory glance, but then found one moving frantically. He helped remove the helmet to find Allie, who had been acting as Doctor Clark's nurse on the station.

"Help me," she begged, her eyes full of tears. "Please."

"I'm gonna get you out of here, don't worry," he said as he moved himself into a position below her. "Are you hurt? Does anything hurt, anything obvious?"

She only shook her head no.

Riggs worked Allie's belt and as it snapped loose she essentially rolled to her right to land in his arms. He helped her to the shuttle's roof, looked her suit over for breaches that might have indicated foreign objects, then pointed her toward one of the open ends of the craft.

"Go out there, Allie, right?"

She nodded, and Riggs clarified what he wanted her to do as he loosed the suit gloves and a fitting that would aid her in shedding the protective layer, "Go outside and get this suit off. Check yourself for injuries. I'm going to check on the others. Got it? Are you okay to do this alone? Allie...?"

She nodded again and began to stumble her way outside. Riggs helped her make the first couple of steps, then turned to check on the others only to find one more dead and one missing. He went outside and shed his own suit, looked back to find Allie slowly getting out of hers, then looked about himself.

They had come to rest in a bit of a clearing but beyond that in every direction was thick, tall rain forest. From what he remembered about the landing zone's topography, they had to be at least 5 miles from their intended destination, maybe even more. Thinking about the good doctor and her cohorts, Riggs mused optimistically, Well, they couldn't be any worse off than this. He was so wrong, though he couldn't know it.

"I'm going to check you for injuries," Riggs told Allie after returning to where she was sitting on a rotting log. "Don't be offended. I'm not copping a feel."

She tried to laugh but only grimaced in pain. Riggs carefully check her limbs for mobility, then unzipped her coveralls and pulled them off her shoulders. She seemed fine, though she told him she hurt all over.

"Impact damage," he told her. "Think of it as a very bad case of whiplash, but ... all over your body."

She asked about the others, and Riggs could only shake his head softly. "Someone's missing, though. Don't know who. Thrown from the crash. I'm gonna go look. You okay here alone for a moment."

Allie confirmed she was, and Riggs went off to follow the trail of destruction caused by the crash. He was amazed with what he found. There was debris and freight -- some of it recognizable, some of it anonymous -- scattered as far as the eye could see, which in the forest was sometimes only a couple of feet. Riggs fought through the thick foliage at times, the jungle's canopy blocking out much of the light; and then would suddenly he would step out into a small open area that was lit well from above.

After a couple of minutes, Riggs came across a large chunk of the tail section. He looked around for the missing settler, and finding nothing went on. After ten or fifteen minutes -- which felt like an hour or two -- he decided to give up on the search for the missing Europan. The likelihood of finding the missing settler alive after all this damage was small, and Riggs knew he should instead get back to Allie -- who he knew was alive -- and make sure that she was okay.

Then Riggs flinched at a sound that was very near to him. His heart began racing as he realized that something was moving in the foliage. Then, more movement to his left, then right, then above! The jungle was coming alive with activity, but he couldn't see what was out there. He realized that his heart was pounding hard and fast, and all Riggs wanted was to get the fuck out of here and back to the relatively open space that the rolling fuselage had created.

Then, just as suddenly as the forest had come alive, it once again went silent. A moment later, he felt a sharp pain in his ass. He yelped and turned, expecting to find some giant mutated bug from science fiction stinging him, but instead found nothing. He twisted to look at his ass, finding and pulling out a dart. A dart! A dart, as in made by a ... as in made by ... made by a ... a ... a human...!

(OOC: For the life of me, I could not find a picture that fit the context, so I went with what follows.)

His name was Lazo, but his people called him the Marshall. He was the leader of their army called the Department, which was currently comprised of six 8-12 man teams of warriors called Squads. Lazo had no idea from where these terms had come. He knew nothing about the U.S. Marshall who had flown to Brazil in 2187 in search of an American white collar criminal; who had played a key role in assisting the villagers of Maraba survive the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust; who -- despite being from a far off land and having to learn the language of the others while they also learned his -- had risen to become their official leader, their Marshall; and whose badge had been passed down through the generations as a symbol of authority within the Tribe.

What Lazo did know was that for the last six months, he had worn that ancient badge and commanded the Department. He had gained possession of it the same way those before him had, through a combination of democracy and force. His predecessor had shown weakness and failed his people, leading his Patrol into an ambush in which two men had been killed and a third taken hostage by a neighboring tribe. Three incursions into the other tribe's territory -- attempts to retrieve their missing man -- had all failed, costing yet four more lives.

After they'd finally found the missing man crucified to a gigantic tree with his gonads and penis missing, Lazo had challenged the Marshall for his badge. A 9-6 vote by the Council -- the well respected and eldest members within the tribe -- had given Lazo the permission to compete for the position. But it had been his strength, cunning, and skill with a knife that had won him the badge.

Since then, Lazo had been testing the other tribe's defenses, looking for a weakness. The Council had brought him before them three times to explain why he was yet to avenge the seven lost lives. Lazo had explained to them that he wasn't interested in a life for a life. He was going to utterly destroy their tribe: kill their warriors, burn down their village, and take their remaining population hostage. And this population would be the greatest and most significant victory the tribe had ever achieved because it consisted entirely of breeders: the tribe, which called itself the Amazons, was females, from warriors to farmers to hunters to healers to -- of course -- their leader.

The morning before, Lazo had left his village with the Primary -- the Patrol under his direct supervision -- and had been venturing along the Little River toward the frontier border with the Amazons when they saw something unusual in the sky, something that seemed as if to be on fire. If it had been cutting a path through the sky across their view, from one side to the other, Lazo would have immediately thought it to be a meteor. By the time he'd decided that it was one, though, it proved him to be wrong by changing direction! Meteors didn't change direction.

But spaceship and airplanes did! Lazo had never seen either, of course, but he had been raised with the tales of how men had once flown through the air in gigantic bird-like machines and even reached and stood upon the surface of the moon. Panic began to rise through his normally fearless warriors as the object continued to head toward them. But then it passed right over their heads, spreading the panic to the horses: some tossed their riders, and some of those ran off into the jungle.

The roar of the overhead passing was replaced a moment later with the horrific mayhem of the spaceship striking the trees, then the ground. The ground shook, and a moment later a cloud of dirt and dust rose up above the forest canopy.

"Look!" one of the Primaries called, pointing to the sky in the direction from which the spaceship had come. "Another one!"

They watched as yet another object fell from the sky. This one hit the ground miles before the other, deep within the territory of the Amazons. Lazo ordered four of his men to get to the other sight, then report back here. Then he wheeled his horse toward the crash. They followed one path, then another, before coming upon the destruction of the spaceship's arrival. Large trees had been snapped as if little more than twigs, a swath of ground had been stripped bare of its ground cover and shrubs, and debris from the spaceship was scattered in every direction.

And there were bodies: one, then two. The Patrol came across a large section of the spaceship ... and a woman, sitting on a container. She stared at them with an expression of what looked like shock. She was hurt, seriously so it seemed. Blood spilled from an arm and leg. Then, she slumped back and spilled off toward the ground.

Lazo ordered his Patrol to look for others, then rode his horse up close to the woman and dismounted. His Lieutenant, Neto, joined him to move the woman onto a bed roll, untied and spread across an open piece of forest floor.

"She will die," Neto said quietly, examining the object piercing her bleeding thigh.

"She will not die," Lazo stressed. "You will not allow her to die."

Neto was the Patrol's Medicine Man, and he went quickly to work on the woman's injuries. He reset the broken arm bone, a task for which he was thankful the woman was unconscious. As Lazo bandaged that wound, Neto pulled the tube from her leg and bandaged that injury as well. He sent a third Primary into the foliage to look for a specific medicinal plant. The others split into two groups, one setting a perimeter to watch for Amazons while the other began pillaging the debris for items of worth.

There wasn't really much that looked of immediate value, but the Primary and other Patrols would return in the days to come to strip the sight of just about anything that could be carried away, on foot or on horse.

When the man returned with the plant, Neto stripped off the bark and stuffed it into the now semi conscious woman's mouth. She grimaced, which didn't surprise him: Feelgood bark was one of the nastiest, most bitter things you would ever put in your mouth. But it would numb her pain considerably after she'd regained consciousness.

When she regained consciousness, Rita found herself staring up at two of the scariest looking men she'd ever seen. Their faces were covered in an artistic and somewhat ominous combination of ink tattooing and scarification; their hair was long and wild, with portions worn in braids or dreadlocks; and their clothes were a combination of natural and manmade cloths, furs, and leathers. They reminded Rita of the characters from one of those post-apocalyptic movies, which would make sense later when she had time to contemplate the concept.

One of them spoke to her in a language she didn't recognize but which might have been Portuguese or a Creole pidgin version of it.

"I don't understand," she said in English, her only fluent language. "Who are you? How can you be here?"

She stared at them for a moment, then stated very firmly, "You can't be here."


When the man awoke, he found himself staring at 6 scantily clad women standing before him with an assortment of weapons, from daggers to swords to polearms to bows to blowguns, all of which had been constructed from items taken from nature or from the debris of the now-ancient nuclear holocaust. He was bound spread eagle between four poles that themselves were bound into a square frame. It was leaning back slightly, supported from behind by yet two more poles with their lower ends stuck in the dirt of the rain forest floor.

And he was naked.

One of the women approached and spoke to him in one, then another Indigenous language. She switched to Spanish, then Portuguese, then Common, which was a combination of each of the previous languages.

"You understand me?" she asked in English. His response told him that this was his language. She stepped up close to him, grasped and gently kneaded his balls, and asked, "You can make babies?"

(OOC: If my description of the Amazon's clothes are inaccurate, let me know. I'll change it.)

"I don't understand," the woman said in English. "Who are you? How can you be here?"

Lazo didn't understand the question. He might have interpreted the female's question as her way of asking why he was so close to Amazon territory if he had thought she was an Amazon. But she wasn't, so why shouldn't he be there. After all, no one had ever told the survivors of the holocaust that they couldn't have survived.

"You can't be here," she continued.

Lazo chuckled. He responded as if an Amazon had been making the statement, telling her, "Of course, I can. I am the Marshall."

He stood and gestured one of his Primaries over, telling him in Common to begin construction of a stretcher. He asked Neto is he thought the woman could survive transport back to the village, to which he got a shrug as an answer. Then he looked back down to the woman and, stating Tribal law, declared with a very formal tone, "I am Marshall Lazo, and per Statute, pending the Council's determination otherwise, I claim you as my personal property."


Unfucking believable, Riggs thought to himself as his mind cleared and he began to recognize his situation. He was obviously a captive of these women. But ... who the hell were these women? According to Doctor Clark and the station's artificial intelligence, there shouldn't have been any living humans down here.

And yet here they were, and here he was ... naked!

One of the women moved closer. Riggs couldn't help but let his eyes wander up and down her body. All of the women were scantily dressed, which didn't surprise Riggs really: the Amazon rainforest was one of the hottest, most constantly humid places on the planet, so a lack of clothing would probably become the norm for anyone living here for more than a few days. But the others were wearing clothes that seemed functional: tight fitting tops and bottoms that held their womanly features in place or concealed them comfortably while also allowing for full movement.

The woman stepping up to him, though, wore a ... well ... Riggs had no idea what it was. It reminded him of the sexy but absolutely impractical bikini-costumes worn by curvy models in online Gentlemen Magazines or on the stages of strip clubs or in the 3D holographic projection machines that had become popular with the home porn enthusiasts about the time Riggs was going through puberty.

It seemed to be made of interwoven strips of thin leather, decorated with what looked like small coins attached via drilled holes and ringed wire. It began at a thong that wrapped around her neck, reached down to cover her nipples and the outer portion of her breasts -- leaving the lower curves of her bosom exposed to view -- then curled around to crisscross at the small of her back before coming back around to narrow over and hide her pubic area. Although he couldn't see it, Riggs assumed that a thong reached up between her ass cheeks to finally attack at the small of her back.

Riggs couldn't help but wonder if it was more ceremonial or class-determining, because he had no doubt what so ever that if she decided to go for a jog, her tits would be out and bouncing about like one of those women in the Natural Exercise Infomercials to which he learned to masturbate so many years ago.

Despite -- or maybe because of -- the fact that he was trussed up naked, he could feel his cock feeling with blood. He willed it to remain at ease, but it didn't: soon enough, he felt it raise up away the flesh of his thigh.

The woman spoke to him in a language he'd never before heard, then in the more familiar -- yet still unknown -- Spanish and Portuguese. He comprehended her next language enough to understand the words, though the question made no sense without more context. Then she shocked him by grasping his gonads and asking in very understandable English, "You understand me...? You can make babies?"

In an instant, Riggs's cock was stiff as a rod and pointing directly at the warrior woman. He didn't understand what the fuck was going on, but common sense told him he should just do as told, answer questions asked of him, and whatever these armed women demanded of him.

"I'm fertile, if that's what you're asking," he told her. Her reaction left Riggs wondering whether she'd understood, so he clarified, "I have fathered children. I have made babies."

(OOC: I like the way you colorize the dialogue, so I'm going to do the same.)

Rita didn't understand exactly what I am the Marshall had to do with being alive on Earth. But of course, she was looking at the current situation from the point of view of someone who never imagined human life had survived down here. Fallout bunkers with the capability of supporting human populations for years or decades had been spoken of since the Cold War of the mid 20th century, of course, but Rita doubted that this man was from one of those for 2 reasons: 1st, it hadn't been a few years or a few decades but had been 552; and, well, look at him! This man and his cohorts didn't look like they'd ridden out a nuclear war in a high tech fallout shelter that most likely had had government or big business backing.

Then he blew her away with, "I am Marshall Lazo, and per Statute, pending the Council's determination otherwise, I claim you as my personal property."

"What? What does that mean?" she asked, the panic beginning to rise in her voice. She didn't know what was going to happen in the next seconds and minutes, but she certainly wasn't going to allow herself to be claimed by a reject from Mad Max 12: Deadly Road. As what ever came next occurred, she declared with a bit of anger and fear both, "I'm Doctor Rita Clark of the International Spacecraft Assembly Station! I am a citizen of the United States of America. You can't simply claim me as, as what, property? As a slave?"


"I'm fertile, if that's what you're asking," the man said.

The woman rolling his balls in her hand gave him a confused expression. She understood his language fine enough, but it took a moment to put all the words into a sentence that she understood.

"I have fathered children. I have made babies."

The second half of his declaration was more easily understood. Her response was a simple, "Good."

She looked down to find the man's cock fully hardened and aimed eagerly at her. She smiled, satisfied: she was sure this stranger could perform under pressure, providing his seed to her breeders when called upon to do so. If he hadn't been able to get it up, he was of no use to the Amazons and would simply be killed.

She turned away and gestured to the others. Four of them moved to the frame he was tied to, moved it to loose it from the forked poles that were holding it in place, and lowered it back until the man's body contacted the ground, none to gently. The fifth woman walked forward, lifted her deer hide skirt to pull loose a knotted thong strap on hip, then stepped forward to straddle the man's groin.

"This is Kiera," the ball fondling woman told him as the other woman dropped to her knees, grasped the stranger's cock, and put it in place to enter her. "You make baby with Kiera, and you keep your manhood. You not..."

The woman pulled a knife from a sheath on her hip and made a quick cutting gesture through the air. She smiled to the man wickedly, finishing, "I am Sharra. Queen of the Amazons."

Lazo ignored the woman as she pitched her fit ... for a bit. He asked her to be quiet, then growled it at her in a demand. It did little to slow down her mouth. Lazo gave Neto a knowing look. The Patrol's medicine man pulled a glass vial of clean liquid from a fur bag wrapped around his waste like a 20th century fanny pack, removed its cap, and -- while Lazo moved to the woman to restrain her, pulled her head by her hair. As she objected to the manhandling, Neto poured a couple of ounces of the fluid right into her open mouth. Then, they just released her and let her continue her fit ... for about a minute, at which time she toppled over, unconscious.

"You need to mix that stuff differently," Lazo said, "So that we have a faster way to quiet people."

"We do have a faster way," Neto responded. "Your fist ... or a big rock."


Riggs was a bit torn about this woman suddenly ending her fondling of his balls. He'd had no idea what the hell was going on here, but fuck that had felt good! Then, he quickly came to realize what was happening to him: she intended one of her warrior babes to mount him ... to fuck him, right here on the forest floor ... essentially, raping him before the eyes of her female friends.

"This is Kiera," the ball fondling woman told him

Suddenly, his cock was in the second woman's hands and she was working the head of his dick against her wet lips.

"Cheap date," he murmured. The woman, this Kiera, just stared at him without response as she continued to work his cock at her too tight hole. He clarified, "I didn't have to buy you dinner. Cheap date."

She obviously had no idea what he was chatting about, but soon Riggs's humorous banter was the last thing on his mind. Kiera's pussy opened up to him, and his cock began sliding inside the delicious warmth and wetness of her womanhood. His head tilted back and his eyes closed as he drew a deep breath of delight. 552 years, he thought. Like losing my virginity all over again.

That last thought was a bit truer than he would have imagined. Kiera had worked her tightness down around Riggs's shaft until their bodies came together, then raised and lowered herself upon him only twice before he released a deep groan of satisfaction. His brain swam in ecstasy as he exploded, his cock leaping fiercely within the Amazon, again and again and again, filling her with his seed. His heart pounded fiercely, his body tensed, his arms pulled at the thongs so hard that the square frame threatened to snap.

Eventually, the euphoria he was feeling waned and allowed Riggs's disoriented mind to sense more than his long lost pleasure. He opened his eyes to find Kiera already standing over him, dealing with her clothing again. He tried to speak but his breathing was labored. He looked to the other woman for a moment, then the other Amazons.

"I can stay the night," he murmured as he laid his head back again into the forest floor. He continued his 22nd century dating humor, "You know ... unless you expect your husband home."

What the fuck is with these chicks? he thought to himself, using a descriptor that seemed to return to the lexicon every couple of decades for reasons no one remembered anymore. Riggs glanced up to see them jumping back into action. He hadn't really thought about it until now because hell, it wasn't like there hadn't been a lot on his mind already, but the first woman to have fondled his manhood had called herself the Queen of the Amazons. He remembered from school the varying stories of the Amazons, and an Amazon character called, oh, something superhero like, was always appearing every few years-- Wonder Woman, he remembered suddenly. And Wonder Woman had been an Amazon.

The whole thing was making Riggs's head swim, helped along by the fact that his body was still reacting to the joy of his first orgasm in over five and half centuries. What they hell were they going to do with him now? Was he their prisoner? Was he their slave? Was he their sex slave? Too bad, so sad, he thought to himself as the Amazons went about their business. I could think of worst ways to spend the remainder of my life.

Rita could see that her combination of demands and pleas weren't getting her anywhere. Her next course of action was to simply scream as loud as she could. Maybe the two still missing settlers would hear her, or maybe there were more unexpected humans who had survived the un-survivable nuclear holocaust who would rush to her aid.

But that thought faded as one man pulled her head back and the other poured the contents of a small bottle into her gaping mouth. Rita tried to close her mouth, to prevent the assault, but was unable to. A bitter taste filled her mouth, and even though she was able to spit some of the fluid out after the pair had released their hold on her, she almost immediately began to feel her brain swimming in disorientation.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she hollered at them, spitting again. "What was that? What did you...?"

Rita's vision blurred, her tongue began to feel like a large stone, and then...

Nothing.


Sharra was torn about this particular warrior mounting the stranger's cock. Kiera was one of her most valuable warriors, so the idea of losing her services as such for the two or three months of down time at the end of a pregnancy would be difficult. But Sharra had needed to test the man's ability to provide the only thing the Tribe needed from him, his ability to impregnate an Amazon under other than typical voluntary circumstances. Why transport this man all the way back to the village if he couldn't serve. Best to just cut his throat here and now and leave his body for the forest critters.

Another consideration, of course, was the backlog of Warrior Spirits waiting to be reincarnated. The Amazon believed that the souls of warriors lost in battle could only be reborn to the Tribe through the offspring of Blood Warriors, Amazons who had taken life in battle. Over the 8 years of Sharra's rule, twice as many warriors had been killed in battle than there had been babies born to Blood Warriors. Kiera was currently in heat, so the convenience of having her and this stranger in this place at this same seemed to be a blessing from the Goddess.

Sharra's attention shifted between the facial expressions of the two breeders. It had been months since Kiera had bred last, and her face was filled with pain at the intrusion of the man's larger than average manhood into her obviously too tight womanhood. Just as her body tensed up to the stranger's cock slipping inside her, the stranger's chest swelled and he moaned aloud from obvious delight.

The Queen of the Amazons watched as the two bodies began moving opposite one another and wondered what it must feel like. At 24 years of age, with no desire to be straddled with the limitations of child birth, Sharra was yet to straddle a male's groin and feel his cock inside her. The act had been described to her, of course. And she'd watched breeding often. And the Amazons and other females who had fulfilled her sexual needs over the years with mouths and fingers had given her a taste of the sensation with fingers inserted deep inside her womanhood. So the concept of the feeling wasn't entirely unimaginable to Sharra.

But to imagine wasn't the same as to experience. Sharra knew that there were times -- periods of her Moon Stage -- when it was safe for her to have a male fill her with his seed without the fear of conceiving a child. And yet still, she'd shied away from intercourse. Sharra was fearful that the Goddess would be so anxious to see the Queen of the Amazons birth a lost Warrior Spirit that Sharra's Moon Stage wouldn't mean much.

The male suddenly stiffened and groaned loud and long, delivering his seed to Kiera's garden. The two breeders had only been going at it for a few seconds, which made Sharra laugh. She looked between Kiera and the other Amazons and -- in Common Tongue, which the male may or may not have been able to figure out -- mused, "He was eager to keep his balls it seems."

They laughed together, making more comical and derogatory comments about the man and his eagerness to perform. Sharra made a gesture, and even as the man's last salvos of seed were still filling Kiera, two of the Amazons were disassembling the frame with the simple tugs of a dozen or so slip knots. Kiera lifted off the man carefully, her pussy sore from the intercourse despite its shortness. She refastened her dangling underwear, then turned to look at Sharra and nodded her head in a simple bow.

"May the Goddess permit me to carry a Warrior's Spirit, my Queen," she said.

"May the Goddess bless you with such an honor, Blood Warrior," Sharra responded, repeating the respectful bow.

As the exchange between the 2 was taking place, the other 4 Amazons were busy preparing the male for transport. While 2 of them pointed razor sharp spear points at his chest, the other 2 trussed his hands before him and attached two lead ropes. They slipped his boots onto his bare feet, but his tee shirt, socks, and underwear were stuffed into his coveralls, which one of the Amazons stuffed away in a pelt bag that she then tossed over her shoulder. They helped him to his feet and separated, such that there was one before him and one behind him, ten feet separating each from him.

"Keep silent," Sharra told them man after pulling her blade from her off her hip again. Without looking from his eyes, she pointed the knife toward his groin and finished, "Keep cock."

She waited to see if he understood the threat, then looked about to her Amazons. One hurried away toward a trail opening in the thick forest, and after waiting for her scout to get far enough ahead to check the trail, Sharra fell in behind her. One Amazon holding a lead fell in behind Sharra, jerking the male behind her, while the other securing him followed behind him. The last two took up the rear, with one watching the male and the other watching the forest.

It was a long walk back to the village.

"Be careful with her," Lazo told the two men assembling a stretcher. He looked to Neto, telling him, "Stay with her, and watch her wounds."

"Yes, Marshall," the Medicine Man reassured him.

Ten minutes later -- with the exception of a pair of Patrolmen who remained hidden nearby to watch over the crash sight -- the Patrol was heading back toward Maraba. Lazo would send men back as soon as possible to pillage the sight of anything that even remotely looked valuable.

Their destination wasn't the Maraba of the 22nd century, of course, which had once sat in the lowlands on the shores of the Tocantins River 50 miles to the northeast. That city of over 150,000 people had seen devastating anarchy after the nuclear holocaust of 2187, with many of its people fleeing into the surrounding Amazon Forest of the Para District; and what had remained of its population had been slowly killed off by the radiative fallout and radically changing climate caused by the blackening of the sky by the dust and debris of hundred of nuclear detonations.

The Maraba of the 27th century was a village of 360 people in the Serra Peladas, or Naked Mountains. During the last quarter of the 21st century, Serra Peladas had been the sight of one of the world's largest gold and ore mines. Although it had been mostly open pit mining, there had been one minor network of shafts dug deep into the mountain. It was there in the late 21st century that a doomsday cult had built a massive complex of underground shelters. And it was in these shelters that the Founders of the Maraba tribe, led by the first Marshall, had begun a culture that had survived the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust.

Lazo didn't know all of the ancient history, but at some point those in the shelter had had to come to the surface. There had been a lot of sickness in those first days, but as the years passed the strong survived. The land outside the mine was settled and developed, and what animal life had managed to survived the apocalypse -- mice, guinea pigs, some birds, and even some goats -- was domesticated and became a key part of the Tribe's diet.

It would take them the rest of this day and most of the next to get back to Maraba. After a couple of hours, just as the sun was falling behind the forested mountains to their right, the woman in the stretcher being carried by a tag team of warriors finally regained consciousness. She woke up to find her mouth gagged, something upon which Lazo had insisted despite Neto's resistance.

"Make camp," the Marshall demanded, knowing that with the woman awake, it would be better to go ahead and take some time to talk to her. "Set a watch."

The others set to the task while Lazo carefully took Rita in his arms and carried her over to lean against a downed log. Once she was settled, he warned her to be silent if she wanted the gag to stay off, then removed it from around her head.


Riggs didn't hear the leader's comment about his cock's quick fire, but he heard the other women laughing afterward and had a good idea what that was all about. Even though he wasn't thinking it right now, later Riggs would recall the first orgasm he'd ever enjoyed as a teenager, when Amy Carlson had reached up under his gym shorts, grasped his cock, and after just a few seconds of manipulation caused him to fill his jock strap with cum.

The woman straddling him dismounted and spoke with her Queen as the other women set about preparing him for transport. Soon, Riggs found himself tromping down a rain forest trail wearing nothing but his boots. He asked several times for his clothes but got nothing from them but silence. His cock flopped uncomfortably back and forth, slapping his thighs; and his balls were soon feeling a bit chafed, not just from the rubbing against his legs but from the dried bodily fluids that had coated his jewels during the quick fuck.

"No more!" he said after maybe half a mile. He stopped short, the rope leading forward from him to one of the Amazons pulling tight. He jerked back at it when she urged him forward, demanding, "At least give me my fucking underwear. Jesus, I feel like I've been wearing sand paper for the past half a millennia."

He looked to the Queen and begged, "Please, c'mon. Just give me my underwear. I'm not asking for a lot."

The sun was falling and the sky to the west was red when Rita roused again. She found a piece of cloth wrapped around her head, cutting between her jaws, containing yet another cloth stuffed into her mouth. She fought against them with her tongue and tried to scream, but virtually no sound came out. She realized that she was being carried in a stretcher and then tried to wriggle out of it, only to find that she was both strapped in with ropes over her chest, belly, groin, and legs, with the rope curled around her ankles for good measure.

She heard the lead man speak to others that she couldn't see as the two men carrying the stretcher moved her away from the trail into a slight clearing amidst the forest. The boss came to her, loosing her bindings (except for the ones around her wrists) and lifting her from the stretcher to move her over to lean against a log. He warned her to be silent, then after she nodded, he removed the gag.

"Who are you people?" she asked quietly, the desperation obvious in her voice. "They said there'd be no one here. They said no one had lived. That it was impossible. How can you be here, I don't understand."


"No more!"

With the exception of the forward scout, who would be 50 to 100 yards ahead of them, Sharra had been leading the Amazons and their prisoner. She turned to find the man tugging at the leads restraining him at a safe distance from the two warriors in charge of him. They pulled at their own ends of the line, restraining him but also causing him to grimace in pain as the way the ropes were knotted caused them to tighten around his gut.

"At least give me my fucking underwear. Jesus, I feel like I've been wearing sand paper for the past half a millennia."

Sharra back tracked until she was standing near the man's lead guard.

He looked to her and begged, "Please, c'mon. Just give me my underwear. I'm not asking for a lot."

Sharra studied him for a moment, restraining the smirk that wanted to show itself. She had never intended to march him naked all the way back to the village. She just wanted him to know how bad things could be if he gave them a hard time. She looked to the Amazon carrying his things in a pack on her back and nodded. All of the Amazons closed in on the man, spears and daggers pointed his way, as the woman with his clothing untied him and dropped his clothes onto the trail at his feet.

Sharra asked him a question in Common, and although it was practically English, she repeated the question in his language, "What is your name? What is your tribe?"

OOC: We are putting this on hold while we work on another role play.