"Unexpected": A New Earth Adventure (closed)

[Alice2015]

"Unexpected"
A New Earth Adventure​

Carmen Briggs was one of only four Crew who'd been reanimated from stasis for the first phase of deceleration as the transport ship Rykon II began its day's long approach of New Earth. In truth, it didn't even take that many people to slow the ship from FTLS, but protocol dictated that in addition to an Electronics Tech, a Mechanics Tech, and a Science Officer -- Carmen -- there had to be a Command Officer up and about overseeing it all.

She'd always despised the thinking that the real workers couldn't possibly do their job without someone from Command looking over their shoulders. Of course, Carmen's real problem was with who the Command Officer was, not really what he was doing or wasn't doing while the other three who were up and around were working hard.

Carmen had been in line for the First Officer's position for this, the first colonization trek to New Earth. And she'd thought she had the job locked up, for a number of reasons. Despite being just 26 actual years of age, not including the 600+ years of cryostasis she'd just endured during the flight, she had 6 advanced degrees in Space Science related fields. She was the most highly educated person, male or female, aboard Rykon II, having received her first Bachelor's degree at the age of 13.

Second, she'd practically singlehandedly designed the Mark III Energy Conservation Module, now (or at least 600 years ago) being installed in every FTLS spacecraft under construction either in orbit of Earth or Titan. Without the M3ECM, the Rykon Series ships could never have achieved the speed-to-fuel ratios necessary to reach New Earth.

Carmen was herself responsible for Humans reaching a distant planet on which their species likely could survive and thrive. Well, okay, others had built the ship that surrounded her refrigerator sized component, so, maybe they deserved some credit, too.

But even more than all of that, Carmen had had an in that she didn't think anyone else had. She was sleeping with the Commander of Rykon II, Valerie Kim, if you could call it sleeping. The two of them had been involved in a steamy relationship for nearly three years prior to the transport's launch, and Carmen had thought that what she did for Valerie in the bedroom, along with all that she did in other parts of the ship, would most certainly land her the highly prestigious position of First Officer of the first trek of human beings to a distant, habitable planet.

But oh no...

The position ended up going to an officer with a cock! Oh, sure, the man had qualifications that rivaled Carmen's, true. And he had participated in a total of four FTLS test flights of this vessel and its predecessor, Rykon I. But what pissed Carmen off the most was that Valerie had ceased sleeping with her a few months before the selection of Officer Positions, and the rumor was that she'd begun sleeping with a cock that was going to be in the Command staff above Carmen.

She didn't know for certain that the current First Officer was that man, but it all seemed to fall into place. Carmen didn't have a problem with me, fuck no. She liked cock as much as she liked pussy. It was just that, honestly, she'd never really liked having sex with the Commander. Other women, sure, but Valerie had been, oh, how would one put it, not sexually attractive to Carmen. Valerie had, indeed, been trying to eat her way into the Number Two spot.

Oh well, life is life and shit happens. What was important to remember was that Carmen was a key member of the first mission to colonize a distant planet. Oh sure, everyone back in Sol One who'd ever known here was long dead, so it wasn't like her family and friends would be whoop, whoop whoopin' it up when they got the news of Rykon II's successful arrival at New Earth.

And, as luck would have it, there wouldn't be anything to celebrate anyway...

As she was walking aft toward BioScience Lab 4, there was a shutter in the deck just barely enough for Carmen to feel. She stopped in place, using ears, eyes, and feet as well in an effort to sense whether or not there was an issue. And then the alarm went off.

She turned and raced for the bow of the vessel as the AI began announcing an array of warning alerts, all directly or indirectly connected to the ship having just struck something in space. There was a violent shaking, and Carmen crashed into a bulkhead as she was taking a corner.

"Abandon ship, abandon ship," the AI announced, shocking Carmen.

The ship's automated systems were capable of dictating that order, which meant that the First Officer, who she knew was on the bridge, had been the one to give that order and have the AI spread the word through the ship.

There were only 4 reanimated Crew up and about now, but the abandon ship order would begin the process of bringing all of the crew, 84 souls, back to life. The colonial settlers, though...

As she leaned against the bulkhead, panicking as the AI continued to bark out warnings and orders, Carmen realized that more than 1,000 people were likely to die in the minutes or possibly hours to come, without ever knowing what had happened to them.

She forced herself to move again, heading quickly for the Forward Escape Pod Bay. She arrived in time to find the Mechanics Tech already getting into his Zero-G suit. Carmen asked in panic, "Where're the others?"

"Yanni's dead!" the man said. "There was a hull breach on Six-Forward! I saw it. I saw him! Sucked right out before my eyes! Fuck!"

As he was explaining that the First Officer was on his way here now, Carmen stripped quickly out of her casual working clothes until she was wearing nothing but a tube top style bra and a pair of what had once been called boy shorts. She stepped into the Zero-G Suit Applicator, reaching her arms out to her sides and parting her feet to shoulder width.

"Apply suit," she commanded, knowing that the ship's AI heard all.

The machine that looked like something out of a 21st century horror movie moved forward and envelope her body from the neck down. There was a dizzying array of sounds and movements, and Carmen cried out because of the inherent but unavoidable pain caused as metal, composite, and biological parts and pieces were almost glue to her form.

When the machine released its grip on her and withdrew, and Carmen took a minute to fight through the lingering pain, she turned for the wall rack that was essentially a small armory and picked out a handheld pulse weapon.

"What're you taking that for?" the Mech Tech asked after completing his suit procedure, too.

"We don't know anything about this planet," she told him, checking the weapon for charge. "And we don't know why out ship is being ripped apart. Sorry, but I'm a better safe than sor--"

There was another jolt of the ship, and Carmen was barely able to hold her stance. The First Officer shot into the room and saw the other two donning their pressure helmets, in case this compartment suffered a breach as well. He proceeded to be fitted for his suit and, with obvious professional and personal emotion in his voice, told them that the Crew Quarters had suffered a massive hull breach and pressure loss.

"We might be all that's left," he told them. Once he was in his suit, they headed for an Emergency escape pot in the adjacent compartment. "We'll all board one so that we--"

That was all the farther the First Officer got before the inside of the Mech Tech's helmet went red and a fraction of a second later the blood now pulsing from his opened carotid began spraying out into the compartment's now lowering pressure.

As third man fell to the deck, Carmen pointed to the bulkhead, saying, "Micro breach! Maybe a meteorite, or a piece of debris from the ship itself."

They hurried into an escape pod, and the First Officer activated it. With an explosion of disengaging ports, the vessel that had been made for 6 but carried only the two of them shot away from the dying ship...

<<<<< +++ >>>>>​

Carmen didn't know how long she'd been unconscious, but when she came back to life, she found the hatch to the escape pod open and, Oh God...! It's New Earth. She unbuckled from her seat and very unsteadily crawled out of the pod to stand on a planet that wasn't the one on which she been borned.

I'm here, she thought, amazed. Un-fucking-believable, I'm here.

Looking around, Carmen would have sworn they were in the rain forests of New Guyana, where she'd done her Ground Survival Training: tall trees, thick undergrowth, a ground mist caused by high humidity; after she activated her external speakers, she smiled at the sound of bugs, birds, and other creatures.

The theorists back on Earth had been right, she thought, tearing up with excitement and relief. There IS life here. There had been a great deal of conflict between those who'd been studying New Earth as to whether the readings they'd been getting from the planet indicated biological life or some natural non-biological process that only mimicked life. Now, they knew. Or, at least, Carmen knew.

Oh, and so did her First Officer. She looked around herself, searching for the man who'd come down with her and, presumably, opened the pod's door. She found him, with his helmet off as he took in their surroundings. Carmen approached, caught his eye, and smile from behind her helmet's shield.

"Well, you're not dead yet, so," she quipped before reaching to her own helmet and clicking it loose. She removed it, holding her breath, then released the air in her lungs and tentatively refilled them again. She smiled after a moment, then said with a smile, "Amazing."

 

[PJ6u]

John Hargin walked onto the bridge of the Rykon II, still stiff from being reanimated from cryostasis. He hated the reanimation process, and it took him longer than other crew members to get the chill shaken out of his muscles.

Good morning John, the AI greeted him.

“Hey Skippy, what’s the deal with the reanimation?” John had a pet name for the AI that ran the ship, and had allowed the Ai to address him informally. Neither Captain Kim, nor the Science Officer, Carmen, knew he had given the AI some personality. He was sure if they ever found out, there would be hell to pay, well more hell than he was dealing with at the present time.

Standard deceleration John. It’s almost time to get busy.

“Awesome”, John rubbed his hand together in anticipation. “Get the next three warmed up, you know the drill. I’m going to make coffee.” He started to turn away, to leave the bridge.

You know, Carmen is on the wake up rotation for Science. I know how much she enjoys your company. Did the AI’s voice actually mimic glee?

“You Skippy, are an asshole.”

You allowed me to reprogram interaction with you into this style. Your fault, not mine.

John gave the AI the finger as he left the bridge for the galley.

John really did enjoy working with Carmen. She was smart, sexy, and intuitive, but seemed to have something against him. He didn’t know what, just that she didn’t like him. He wasn't a scientist, and didn’t have the technical degrees that she had, but he had combat experience, and had been commanding troops in combat while she had been earning degrees, and inventing the M3ECM. Maybe when Val wakes up, he should talk with her about Carmen, find out if she has any insight.

John and the Captain, Valerie Kim, had always been close, despite their career paths diverging. She has been the pilot of the drop ship that he served on as a lieutenant in the mobile infantry. Later, they had been the only two single officers attending the Command College. Naturally they had hooked up, to keep the other officers and their spouses from trying to hook them up with anyone else. When Val called him and asked him to be her First Officer on the first colonization mission from Earth, he jumped at the opportunity. They both agreed that despite their mutual attraction to each other, it was duty first and always. Once the colony was established, then, maybe. And they had been true to that agreement.

John was about to fetch a coffee when he felt a shudder in the deck.

John we have multiple tears in the hull, micro meteorites. More inbound.. John felt the hits as he entered the bridge. He took in the damage and Skippy’s assessment of the incoming.

“Abandon ship, Skippy, initiate protocol, authorization code on my voice identification”

Voice identified. Get gone, this ship is going to break apart. Lighting up the forward escape pod bay

John left the bridge at double time. They might have five minutes. He entered the forward escape pod bay. Carmen was there, already in her pressure suit along with the Mech Tech. “Good girl”, he thought as he punched the code and waited for his pressure suit to apply.

"We might be all that's left," he told them. Once he was in his suit, they headed for an emergency escape pot in the adjacent compartment. "We'll all board one so that we--"

That was all the farther John got before the inside of the Mech Tech's helmet went red and a fraction of a second later the blood now pulsing from his opened carotid began spraying out into the compartment's now lowering pressure.

As a third man fell to the deck, Carmen pointed to the bulkhead, saying, "Micro breach! Maybe a meteorite, or a piece of debris from the ship itself."

They hurried into an escape pod, and John activated it. With an explosion of disengaging ports, the vessel that had been made for six but carried only the two of them shot away from the dying ship...

<<<<< +++ >>>>>​

John had done a lot of controlled descending from the sky in his military career, but nothing quite like hurtling onto an unexplored planet from space.

He sat forward, crossing his arms over his chest. He tried to yell something to Carmen, but the noise of entering an atmosphere was too great for any real communication. So he did the next best thing he could to help her, he kicked her seat’s crash cushion to hopefully keep her from hitting her head on anything. Then his world went dark.

He opened his eyes, Carmen was wrapped in hard crash cushion foam. The green lights on the side of her pressure helmet were lit, so she was breathing, no injuries. “Good”, he thought and pulled the foam off of her. He didn’t want her to blame him for something else. He checked the atmo scan on the door frame, earth equal all around. Time to secure their site. He opened the overhead weapon locker, removed one of the Mk14 carbines, locked and chambered a needle pack, and opened the hatch.

John was amazed, looking around at the lush world they had literally fallen onto, not only by the planet, but by the fact that they had made it.

He heard movement behind him from the pod as Carmen emerged from the escape pod and walked up to him.

"Well, you're not dead yet, so," she quipped before reaching to her own helmet and clicking it loose. She removed it, holding her breath, then released the air in her lungs and tentatively refilled them again. She smiled after a moment, then said with a smile, "Amazing."

“The planet or the fact that I’m still alive”, he returned her smile, genuine warmth behind the simple gesture. He looked her over, noting some blood on the side of her head.

"Carmen, is that your blood?"

 

[Alice2015]

To Carmen's comment of amazement, John responded, “The planet or the fact that I’m still alive?”

"Both," she said without hesitation. "You know, they said we'd be dead in seconds if they'd gotten it wrong, so, good news I guess."

Carmen had always been amazed by the gap in the scientific knowledge of late-23rd century Earth. After the discovery of the planet that would come be called New Earth, scientists had been able to show that the planet possessed many Earthlike qualities: similar gravity, atmospheric pressure, temperature, magnetic fields, captured solar energy, and more.

They'd discovered that the oceans were filled with algae, the land with plant life, and almost certainly both sea and land with animal life. Exo-planetary biologists estimated that there could be bugs (78%), fish and amphibians (63%), reptiles and/or pseudo-dinosaurs (45%), birds (33%), and last but certainly not least mammals (14%). Some even said there could be intelligent life, though, the percentages of that dropped significantly, from a high for a Homo habilis-like being of 8% to a low for a Homo sapiens-like creature of .02%.

And yet with all that knowledge and ability to gain more, they still hadn't been able to tell the crew and passengers of the Rykon II whether or not they could take off their helmets upon landing on the surface and not have their lungs seize up from some killer pollen or their brain fry from a 110 degree fever due to a virus or bacteria that took maybe a few more minutes, hours, or days to kill'em dead.

"Carmen, is that your blood?"

The science officer had been marveling at her surroundings and hadn't ever realized she was bleeding. She reached up to her her temple and came away with bloody fingers. She hadn't felt pain, either before or during touching her skull, and for a moment she thought maybe it was the Mech Tech's blood from when the micro-meteorite burst his head. But she'd already had her helmet on, and this blood was on her scalp.

"It's nothing," she said, but that didn't stop John from coming over to inspect the wound and tend to it. "Really, it's nothing!"

But it wasn't nothing, of course, particularly on a planet that might have a billion microscopic creatures that could infect a wound and, yes, kill'em dead. As he tended to her with the Med Kit taken from the escape pod, Carmen found herself studying the man. It occurred to her that already they'd spent more time together on this planet than they had on the transport in the past 600 years.

She was thankful for him fixing her up, and she tilted her head this way and that and took the anti-biotics he forced upon her and generally was a good patient during the ten or fifteen Earth minutes that it took them to finish. And yet, the entire time she was thinking to herself, Valerie, you gave up my mouth for this man's cock? Really?

Of course, Carmen didn't know for certain that the pair had been a pair, and it was doubtful that she'd ever learn the truth from John. And besides, it didn't matter anymore now, did it? Fuck it! Forget it! It's done and gone and over with! Move on!

"What's that?" she asked with a soft voice as the former First Officer was closing up the kit. When he looked her way, Carmen pointed off over the canopy to the east, to a skinny pillar of smoke rising almost straight up into the still, windless sky. "Could be one of the escape pods. I don't know if the maneuvering fuel would cause that much smoke, though. Could be a portion of the ship. Got hot on atmospheric entry, started a fire."

She shrugged, then noting that the sun was falling toward the western horizon, just as Sol did back at Earth, she asked, "Do we go check it out, likely in the dark, or do we make camp here and go in the morning?"

Then, smirking and ending with a bit of scornful tone, she reminded the First Officer, "You're the boss."

 

[PJ6u]

"What's that?" she asked with a soft voice as the former First Officer was closing up the kit. When he looked her way, Carmen pointed off over the canopy to the east, to a skinny pillar of smoke rising almost straight up into the still, windless sky. "Could be one of the escape pods. I don't know if the maneuvering fuel would cause that much smoke, though. Could be a portion of the ship. Got hot on atmospheric entry, started a fire."

She shrugged, then noting that the sun was falling toward the western horizon, just as Sol did back at Earth, she asked, "Do we go check it out, likely in the dark, or do we make camp here and go in the morning?"

Then, smirking and ending with a bit of scornful tone, she reminded the First Officer, "You're the boss."

“Yeah, I guess I am”, John replied distracted by the plume of smoke. He stared for two long seconds, then his demeanor changed. “Back into the pod, now.” His tone brooked no question to the order he gave.

Carmen was shocked, and her face was a mask of anger, and what else, fear, disgust? John read her expression in an instant.

“Now. Right fucking now. We can discuss how butt hurt you are about me in the pod.” John used his old mobile infantry (MI) tone with her, his combat command voice. She moved, and damn did her ass wiggle when she moved like that. Focus Johnny boy, command now, ass later, he thought.

He climbed into the pod behind her, careful to not stare at her shapely ass (really really damn difficult considering the pod size), and sealed and locked the pod door behind him. She turned, sat and opened her mouth to, he was sure, take offense to him being in command. He held up a hand, forestalling her, which, to his surprise, stopped her from talking.

“Just a second. I’ll explain, then you can cry, moan, and bitch at me to your heart’s content. But you aren’t going to go bat shit crazy woman outside of this pod and attract unwanted attention.” He locked eyes with her, damn those beautiful eyes. But he had her attention, so he plunged in.

“First, you admitted that I’m in charge, your words were ‘I’m the boss’, so don’t start taking issue with me commanding.” He paused, waiting for her to say something. She remained quiet, yet he knew that she was building a head of steam.

“Second, that smoke isn’t from a crash site, it’s from a campfire. So that means there is intelligent life on this planet. They have discovered fire, which makes them hunters, or hunter-gatherers, and most likely move in some tribe or family group. Long story short, they are armed and outnumber us, and they are the home team.”

“Third, and my last point. You have been busting my balls since I showed up to the Rykon II. I have no idea why so we are going to settle whatever issue you have with me right now. There is no way we can survive on a hostile planet without trust.”

He sat back on a pod seat. “The floor is yours.”

 

[Alice2015]

“Back into the pod, now. Now. Right fucking now.

Carmen didn't like the tone John was taking with her, but she knew that tone and despite despising the fact, he was in fact her superior officer. She sat quietly, though fuming, while he spilled out his theory about the planet having an indigenous, intelligent species.

He sat back and told her, “The floor is yours.”

For a moment, Carmen simply stared at him in silence. Then she laughed, short but sharp. She countered with a doubtful tone, "Two one hundredths of a percent.
Zero point zero two percent! The chances of a Homo sapiens-like species on this planet, max. They were the first to have the knowledge of making and maintaining fire. Homo erectus, maybe. Still being discussed by the egg heads who think that shit is important."

As soon as she said it, Carmen suddenly realized why maybe that sort of anthropological information might actually have some value now. She'd never liked anthropology or archaeology. She'd always known that her future was in the future, not the past.

"Homo erectus drops it to, oh who knows and who cares," Carmen said laughing. "It's not a campfire. It's debris. Or lightning. Or sun on a smooth rock, setting the..."

She ceased her reach for an explanation as she saw in John's face a very serious expression. He believed that pillar of smoke to be man caused, and while the odds of that were outrageous, Carmen wasn't going to continue to argue with him about it.

She laid back into her pod seat, thankful that the landing orientation had left it in a relatively level and comfortable position. "I'm tired and I'm going to sleep. Tell me if any little green aliens come a'knockin' on the door. I'd like to ask them if they've invented the Smore yet."

 

[PJ6u]

John was fuming, she just decided that she knew it all. He sat there, enjoying the view of her trying to get comfortable in the pod seat.

Then he smiled, and evil little smile. Those pod seats were just like the pilot couches in the MI dropships. They folded down, and they folded up, if you knew how to operate the seat. How many degrees did she have?

He toed the seat control returning her couch to the full and upright position so quickly it rattled Carmen just a tad.

"This conversation isn't over. I'll grant you that campfire may be nothing, you're a smart woman, and though my gut tells me otherwise, I'm willing to trust your head on this point. But you will tell me what the fuck is your problem with me. It's talk now, or you will wake up strapped to that crash couch six ways to sunday, and I'll force you to talk."

To be fair, tying her down to a crash couch seemed like a really good idea...

 

[Alice2015]

"You fucked your way into my job, dick shit!" Carmen blurted out before she'd even realized she was speaking. Her stomach rolled over at the thought of the hell that this was going to bring her. But she'd already put it out there, so she went on, "I was in line for the First Officer's position until you started shoving your cock into Valerie's tight little hole. Yeah! Tight little hole! I know all about our former Captain's pussy as I was partaking of it before you were."

Carmen realized that she was absolutely shaking to the core, though she didn't know whether it was from anger at John for stealing Valerie away from her or for revealing to this man who she barely knew that she'd once had a sexual relationship with the Commander of the Rykon II.

In a calmer voice Carmen went on, "I would have been the first non-Line Officer to hold the position of Number Two in the history of the Interstellar Colonization Project. The first! Do you know how significant that would have been for people who weren't from the military? The ICP is supposed to be a civilian operation, and yet the men and women flying the transports and research vessels-- The research ships, fuck! Even the deep space research ships that are crewed almost exclusively by people like me, scientists for Christ's fuck sake, even those ships are commanded by fucks like you, just because you know which end of a gun is the dangerous end!"

She was still wearing her sidearm, and she whipped it out of its holster, gave it an Old West twirl that one of the guys back on Titan Station had taught her, and pointed it directly at John's forehead. She held it there a moment, then tossed it onto the deck, knowing that it couldn't discharge or be harmed by the action.

Carmen reclined her chair again in a huff and turned her face away from her superior in an effort to hide the glistening sheen that had begun to form over her eyes. She mumbled softly, "Leave me the fuck alone. Or kill me now. I don't care."

 

[PJ6u]

John sat there for a minute, working the math in his head. “Carry the two,” he muttered. Carmen moved her shoulder a bit, trying not to turn over and slap him for his muttering.

“So here’s the deal, to set the record straight. Believe me or not, I give a shit less. Here goes. Val, you mind if I call her Val as well, since I’ve known her for what 15 years now? I was a new lieutenant in the MI, she was the pilot of the dropship my platoon rode. She’d drop us, then drop into atmo and come and pick us up, guns blazing, like a fucking avenging angel of death.” John was taking a trip down memory lane, and his eyes started glazing a bit.

“You remember the big dust-up around Alpha Centauri II? About 13 years ago? You had just got your first degree I think. Anyway, she dropped us smack in the middle of a shit storm, came in, pulled us out. She told me she never thought twice about going down to get us. One of three platoons to make it out of that place. We were tight then, no sex, just…” John paused, collecting more thoughts. “Her crew, my platoon, we were all tight after that, matter of fact 30 of those colonists that just vaporized up there, that was a good portion of that group. Val got them on the mission to give them a fresh start. She was like that, always trying to find a way to help. Not that you noticed, right? Too busy, what, eating your way to a promotion?” John was having trouble, he started to choke up a bit. Come on Johnny, now’s not the time to lose your shit.

“So we got transferred to different assignments, always keeping pace with each other. Ended up at command college together. Only two single folk there, so we ended up sleeping together. It started as something to relieve stress, and” he shrugged. “After that, she went off to the Rykon Project, and I ended up in a dead end staff job. She called me a year before departure, offered me the First Officer job. I was thrilled and told her I couldn’t take it, being a ground forces guy and all. She told me to fuck that and get my ass over. You know how she always gets her way most of the time?” John chuckled, enjoying the memory of a woman and friend, gone forever from his life.

“I took the job on the condition that we weren’t a couple. I told her it was bad enough that she was putting a ground force officer in a space slot; last thing I wanted to do was upset whatever team thing she had going on. So for the record, I didn’t touch her. Not when I showed up, not when the crew got a long weekend. Never. Damn near killed me, but I didn’t touch her.”

He took a deep breath, and told himself to drive on, out it out there. "As for your chances of getting First Officer, it was never going to happen. You can tell yourself you had a shot, that sleeping with Val was just the ticket. But at the end of the day, if Val would have put you in that position, they would have shit canned her and you, and you would both be back on Earth, dead, having lived a miserable fucking life. She didn't want that for you, she wanted you out here, on the ship you designed and built, where your heart really was."

John stood, stooping in the pod. “The heat controls for your couch are there,” his hand touched the control pad right next to her breasts. “That also works the couch density and shit. I need to take a walk, get my head clear.”

He shuffled over to the hatch, and turned. “Look, I’m sorry Val didn’t choose you. We both lost something up there, and no amount of anger is going to bring it back. Be mad at me, just don’t be mad at Val.”

He opened the hatch and slipped into the darkness of the night, silent as a ghost.

 

[Alice2015]

Carmen lay there listening to John's bull shit in silence, thankful when he finally stood and slipped out of the pod. After a couple minutes, with the pod door open, she began to feel the cold of the recently arrived nightfall. Her suit was designed to preserve 98.5 % of the body heat that she would normally lose from her neck down.
Unfortunately, the human head, which is typically only 10% of the human body's surface area, loses almost 75% of that heat lost by that person's body.

She tapped an icon on the panel John had pointed out, and a moment later a fluctuating wave of energy, not unlike the cordless battery chargers first invented in the early 21st century, began interacting with Carmen's suit, causing it to become a sort of body hugging electric blanket.

Within a minute, she was nice and toasty and her mind was clear to think of other things. Unfortunately, the first thought to fill her mind was that John's bull wasn't shit. He was right, of course. She was never going to be chosen as First Officer, and not just because she'd been chowing down on the ship Commander's pussy. ICP simply hadn't been willing to put a non-Command officer in a position of command.

Plus, as John so eloquently pointed out, Rykon II needed her in the Science Labs, not on the Flight Deck. Putting her at the front of the ship would have deprived the project's day to day operations of one of the greatest minds in the program, and wasn't just Carmen patting herself on the back. She was the best at what she did, despite her youth. And that best that she did had not been commanding a space craft or managing its personnel.

Once her suit's Plane Battery Film was fully charged and could keep her at a healthy, safe temperature for several hours to come, Carmen made her way out of the pod. She let her eyes accustom to the darkness, then found John standing a few dozen yards away, looking up at the night sky.

No human being had ever seen the Heavens from New Earth, of course, but Carmen knew this sky as well as she knew the one she used to see from her parents' home near Mount Hood, in the US's State of Oregon. Using astronomical mapping technology, the Planetarium at Titan Station had been able to create what the Heavens above New Earth would look like during any hour of any day of any year.

Carmen had never been an astrology type of person, of course, but she'd still created constellations in her own imaginations of the computer-simulated stars, nebulas, and galaxies and given them names. She was looking upwards searching for the Stallion, the Arch, and the Sequoia when she flinched at what felt like a sting to her neck from a very big ass bee.

"Fuck!" she called out as she instinctive slapped a hand at what she expected to be a squishable insect. But it wasn't that at all, not she fully understood exactly what it was. It seemed to be a hard piece of wood or metal, and it seemed to have feathers, too. Carmen called to John, "Hey! Something bit me, stuck me! It's in my neck. It's..."

Carmen's brain rolled within her skull, and disoriented she held her hands out wide to better balance herself. She looked off to where John had been standing, just in time to see him fall awkwardly to the ground. She blinked her eyes as she everything before her began to roll about...

...and down she went, too.

<<<<< +++ >>>>>​

It was daylight again when Carmen returned to consciousness. Her head was still spinning, and she was laying on what felt like a reed mat. She was cold, and as she struggled to sit up she realized that she was stark naked. It took a while for her senses to fully return to her, but when they did she found herself inside a dome shaped, mud and reed structure that looked very much like it came straight out of a National Geographic Magazine story about some ancient African tribe.

Holy fuck, Carmen thought to herself as she looked around what was obviously someone's home. John was right. The fucker was right.

She took a moment to look at each one of the obviously manufactured items in the, what, hut? The mat beneath her had been weaved out of reeds and a natural fiber twine. There was a squarish shaped clay stove about two foot cubed, upon which was a carved rock bowl and in which a thick stew like liquid was boiling. Dangling in the air over the stove and below a hole in the ceiling for the escape of smoke were strips of meat that Carmen was certain was eel, though it could also have been skinned snake, too.

She saw nothing else in here. That nothing else that she saw included her own clothes. She stood to look around for them or for anything she could don to hide her nudity but found nothing. No, no that wasn't true. As she moved closer to the reed and twine door, which was open, causing her to slink along the mud wall, Carmen found what she'd initially thought was a rug or sleeping pad but turned out to be a grass skirt. There was virtually nothing to it, and after tying it around her waist, Carmen was pretty sure than it was showing more of her sexy lower half than it was hiding.

Poking her head outside, Carmen's eyes grew large and her mouth fell open at the sight of something far more advanced than Homo habilis, Homo erectus, or early, pre-historic Homo sapiens. What was even more astonishing was that these alien creatures didn't look alien at all. They appeared human in every way!

The first five aliens she spied were all females. They were all dressed rather scantily and each a bit differently from the next. If she'd been thinking more clearly and had not been so overwhelmed at what she was seeing, Carmen might have realized that their wardrobes were actually rather fitting for the hot, humid rain forest in which they were now standing. But her mind wasn't in an anthropological surveying sort of mode.

Carmen covered her still bared breasts with partially clenched fists and tentatively stepped out of the hut a step or two. The five women continued to just stare at her in silence, with expressions that had Carmen wondering if they were contemplating an appropriate method of death for her execution as an alien intruder.

Looking around, Carmen found many others staring at her as well: women, men, children, all frozen in place with anxious expressions, as if they expected her to begin dancing a jig or perhaps use her alien laser eyes and cut them all in half.

When she realized that many of the women and young girls in the village were just as bare chested as she was and not hiding themselves, Carmen slowly lowered her hands to her side and stood a bit taller. Each of the five women before took a moment to survey her bared bosom, but none seemed to be eying her tits hungrily, either as something erotic to grope and suckle or something delicious to slice off and sear over a fire.

She took another step outward to get a better look about herself. To one side on a drying rack made of bound limbs were long cut plants that reminded her of maize or sugar cane, drying in the sun. On the other side smoke from a flameless but still hot fire rose to dry skinned and gutted lizards skewered on the end of sharpened sticks.

These creatures were the highest form of life Carmen had seen yet on New Earth yet, save for the pseudo-Humans staring her down. She looked to the five again, all women, and all armed. Looking out upon the village, she quickly realized that each and every one of the aliens carrying a weapon of any type was female.

Over the next hours and days as she got an even better survey of the village, Carmen would come to realize that the males were little more than laborers under the direction of the women. The mystery of this planet and its unlikely population was only to going to become more mysterious as Carmen realized it was a matriarchal society in which men had only two purposes: work and breed.

But she wouldn't come to that conclusion for a while as her mind was set on one thing and one thing only: John. Carmen glanced around again, then took a couple of tentative steps to the left to look past the wall of women before her.

There he was!

John was in a large cage made of four inch thick poles bound by thick woven ropes. Sharp wooden spikes poked into it from the four walls and top, making it impossible for someone to even consider pulling or biting or cutting at the bindings in an attempt to escape.

"John!" she called, waiting for a response before calling again louder, "John! John! Are you okay? John! Speak to me! Tell me you're okay!"

Carmen suddenly realized that there was a murmur spreading through the villagers, and the five warrior-like women before her were whispering amongst themselves. Their words were too soft for her to make out, but there was something about them that was curious to Carmen.

The female in the middle of the five warriors or hunters or whatever they were began moving closer. Carmen looked her over from head to toe. She was slim and very fit. She was also the most scantily dressed of the five. Around her waist and covering her groin but then barely covering her tight, muscular ass (something Carmen wouldn't see until the first time the woman turned her back to her, of course) she wore a roughly cut, roughly sewn animal pelt that almost had the shape of a pair of boy shorts, only it had no elastic or stretchy cloth to fit tight to her delicious curves. Each of her breasts were barely hidden behind a sort of sash-like width of leather that was adorned with roundish items layered almost plate mail style.
Carmen would learn later that these were the scales of a large, dangerous, and vicious lizard that lived here in the jungle, and that this female wore them as a reminder to her people that she'd killed one such beast singlehandedly.

When less than four feet separated Carmen from the female, the latter began a slow, leaning left, leaning right, looking up and down ogle of the former. Again, Carmen found herself wondering whether she was being sized up for the cooking pot or maybe just a grave dug in the depths of the rainforest.

The woman reached a hand out slowly and made a swirling gesture that Carmen understood without question. She turned slowly, keeping her eye on the women for as long as she could, then swung her head around to watch her from the other side until she'd completer her 360 degree spin.

Then, as if all of this hadn't been shocking enough already, the female before her opened her mouth and spoke, causing Carmen's eyes to widen and her mouth to fall open. "You hear, know language I say?"

Carmen simply stared at the woman for a long moment, then finally managed, "Yes. Yes! I know your language. Your language is my language. We speak the same language."

There was another buzz about the village as the aliens of New Earth heard Carmen's words. The woman asked, "Who you?"

"My name is Carmen," she said with building excitement. "Carmen Briggs. I am a Science Officer on the, I mean, I was a Science Officer on the Interstellar Colonial Transport, Rykon II"

The woman didn't seem to be registering what Carmen was telling her. She launched into a further explanation of the project to bring humans here to New Earth but only got thirty seconds or so into it when a thought struck her.

"Who are you?" she asked. "What is your name, and, more importantly, how do you come to be on this planet."

Carmen had been coming to a conclusion as she looked and listened and deduced from what she was seeing and asked the big questions, "You're Human, aren't you?"

She hesitated, then continued, "You are from Earth? Yes?"

"My name Inama," the woman said, pronouncing it ee-NAW-muh. Then she answered the second question the only way she could by sweeping a hand to indicate the village that surrounded them and said, "I from here."

"Yes, I, I kind of guessed that, but, your ancestors, your parents," Carmen prodded again. "Your mother, your father, their mothers and fathers. They came from Earth, yes? You are Human. Human Beings, from the planet Earth."

Inama only stared a moment, then swept her hand again and said, "Mother from here."

Carmen wasn't getting anywhere with this line of questioning, so she decided she needed to address an equally important question. She looked past Inama to the cage on the other side of the village and asked, "Is my friend okay? My I go to him? I need to see that he is okay."

The other woman hesitated a moment but then stepped back and aside. Carmen moved slow at first, but was nearly running by the time she'd crossed the open communal center of the roughly round shaped village and got to the cage. John was out cold, and try as she might Carmen couldn't get the cage open.

Behind her, Inama hollered to another armed woman who was standing near Carmen. This additional warrior women opened the cage, and Carmen hurried inside and felt for a pulse. She found one and found that John was breathing well also. She tried to revive him but failed.

She called out to Inama who had been following slowly behind her, "Why is he unconscious. What did you do to him? Did you drug him. Those were darts you hit us with, yes?"

Carmen reached to her neck and found a large swollen bump where the missile had sunk into her flesh, delivering its contents to her blood. She made further inquiries of Inama, but got nothing in return other than the woman's request that she come out of the cage.

"I'm not coming out until I know he's okay and wakes up," Carmen insisted. She asked yet again why John was still asleep, pointing out, "I'm 60, 70 pounds lighter than him. I woke up. He should have, too."

"Give more male," Inama said. When Carmen asked why, Inama shocked her with, "Wild male dangerous. Must put sleep. Might must kill."

Carmen's eyes widened in shock. "What? You're not killing him!"

Inama shrugged. She pulled a knife from her hip, made a gesture before her groin that looked as if she was taking hold of an appendage there, then swept the knife in a motion before that Carmen understood even before the woman said, "Cut off. Make not dangerous."

"No, for Christ's sake! You're not castrating my friend."

Again Inama shrugged. Then she had the gate closed with Carmen inside the catch and said, "Make talk later."

 

[PJ6u]

John started stirring, with a dull headache. A headache like after party, hangover and lots of sex party kind of headache. So when he cracked his eyes open to a shapely, naked, blonde backside snuggled up against him, and a rather large hard-on, he at first thought he had been partying.

Then he noticed the cage bars, and tried to figure out who the blonde form was snuggling against him. The curves looked familiar, and that ass looked like one he was familiar with. It floated in the back of his head as he slowly lifted his head, making sure the headache didn't get stronger.

Well, there's the fucking campfire and the smoke, and where the hell was.....CARMEN. He took another look at the naked form. Yup, that was Carmen, and small lump on the back of her neck parted her hair a bit.

He heard something fall into the cage, and stuck his head up to look around. Huts, campfires, topless women, I mean a LOT of topless women, oppressive humidity, and a naked little kid staring at him through the cage. John stared back at the kid and noticed a leaf wrapped package in the cage near the bars. Ignoring his nakedness, he crawled over to the package, unwrapped it and noticed some kind of cooked or charred meat maybe, some kind of cut-up yellow stuff and three round things that might be oranges or some kind of fruit.

"Thanks kid', he croaked out. "Water?" He said the last word and made the ASL sign for water unconsciously. The kid, surprising him, smiled, gave him a slight wave and ran off.

He took the food back and sat next to Carmen's form. And nudged her gently by placing a hand on her hip curve and moved her gently back and forth.

"Hey Carmen, are you ok?"

 

[Alice2015]

Carmen had tried to stay awake as long as she could, waiting for John to wake up as well. But the tranquilizer they'd pumped him with at least twice was doing its job overtime.

As she waited for him to regain consciousness, she'd watched the activities around her with great interest. Suddenly, she wished she'd taken more Anthropology classes in college. On the surface, they seemed to very much be a primitive tribe of human beings. Human beings, definitely, as the one who'd identified herself as Inama was definitely speaking a broken form of English.

Carmen had heard others speaking, too, and she thought she caught hints of German, French, Spanish, and something Eastern European or Slavic, maybe Russian. She even thought she heard some Chinese, though she didn't know Mandarin from Cantonese any more than she knew the names of the two creepy looking beetles that had been crawling back and forth through the cage.

One thing she had noticed, though, was that whenever one of these other languages was spoken, English was always present and dominant. So, however they came to speak what they spoke and from whomever they initially learned their languages, the greater influence of all was English, which was fortunate as it was the only language other than four computer and machine languages that Carmen could speak, read, write, and/or program.

The tribe did what Carmen presumed were tribal things. She saw, for example, dead animals brought in from the jungle to be skinned, gutted, cut up in a variety of appropriate ways, and either roasted over a flame, dried over a smoky fire, or put down into vats of liquid, which Carmen would one day learn was a cross between pickling and salting.

She saw all sorts of plant products brought in to be turned into food, clothing, rope, sleeping and sitting mats, furniture, weapons, and more. Nothing seemed to go to waste, either. Any plant material not used for a primary purpose went onto a compost pile, one of the many fires, or any of a number locations that to Carmen looked like temporary holding locations for a future use of the material.

She witnesses a great many other things taking place, and while she didn't quite understand all of it, one things became very clear to her by the time she could no longer keep her eyes open and slumped over to sleep:

The women were in charge, and the men ranged in status from respected subordinates to outright slaves. One man Carmen had seen pass by several times, lugging building poles like those of which this cage were built, had binding on his ankles that gave him just enough range of step to walk but certainly not enough to run, and a metal ring around his neck was linked at the backside to a 6 foot long pole which one of the armed females clutched as she barked out orders at him.

Oh, this treatment wasn't uniform amongst the males, of course. In fact, Carmen had only seen some sort of restraint or another on three of the two dozen or so males ranging for pubescent to old age. But it was obvious that the 50 some odd females Carmen saw at one point or another during her three hours of study were the rulers of this little community.

<<<<< +++ >>>>>​

Carmen didn't know she'd fallen asleep until she felt a hand jostling her and a voice asking, "Hey Carmen, are you ok?"

She roused, quickly tried to assess her situation, and as soon as she saw her naked First Officer sitting on the ground before her sat up, using her clenched thighs to hide her lower womanly features and her crossed arms to do the same with the top.

"Fuck, John!" she blurted out, forgetting any sense of protocol or chain of command. She looked around herself, verified that it hadn't all been a dream, and told him, "You're not gonna believe this shit! These people, there humans! From Earth. From Earth?"

She let her eyes drop down his body, but like her he was doing a good job as hiding his privates from her and the natives. She was suddenly reminded of what Inama had said. She leaned in close, looked around for eavesdroppers, then whispered, "They want to castrate you! Yeah! Snip! I don't know how long you've been conscious or how much you've seen, but the bitches rule this place!"

 

[PJ6u]

"They want to castrate you! Yeah! Snip! I don't know how long you've been conscious or how much you've seen, but the bitches rule this place!"

Carmen whispered to him as he slowly looked around, taking in the camp and tribe that had captured them. As he reviewed the camp and the people, he remembered a quote from one of his mentors:

Surprise may only exist in the mind of the commander

He schooled his face to passive calm, and noted the food packet on the cage floor.

“Carmen, from now on, just nod or shake your head slightly. Your reactions from here on out will help get our official pecking order setup. I’m gonna give you my quick thoughts with some options. Understand?”

Small nod. Good.

“I am foremost pleased that your desire for me to retain my cock attached and in working order matches my own.”

Small snicker Humor good.

“Women are in charge?”

Small nod

“From now on, you are the public leader of us. So they show up, you stand between me and them. In their eyes I have to work for you.”

Small nod

“I suspect the castration is to keep the strong men weak, and they keep the weak men to breed. Make sense to you?”

Head roll, make then?

“Ok, just my theory. You have to act like a princess, like a spoiled brat who has been put out. Treat them like you treated me since I’ve been on crew. Can you do that?”

Small nod and an evil grin. Hmmm, this should be interesting.

“You want your top back?”

Small nod and her eyes lit up.

“Here’s the deal. Demand it back. Act like the princess. When the chief bitch doesn’t give in get so mad that you talk through me to her. That shows her that in your eyes she’s lower than a man. That will upset the apple cart here.”

Small shake of her head and she made a scissor motion with her hand.

“Yeah, I may end up dickless with that move, but no guts no glory. How much do you want to walk around with your hands on your tits?”

Small nod and an eye roll

“I have to serve you food. I serve, back away. You eat first, give me your leftovers. You eat whatever they give us, even if it’s rat shit. Then you give me your leftovers. You can ask for more if you want to look merciful to me. Cool?”

Small nod and same evil grin. Well this should be real fucking fun.

“I’m your strong warrior breeder man to give you strong girl warrior babies or some shit like that. That’s why you won’t let them snip me. That’s your job and your decision only.”

Small nod and same evil grin. Holy fuck I’m creating a monster. What am I doing?

“Lastly, and optional, you want to drive that last point home, then at some point push me down and mount me.” At this she shot me a nasty look. “If you want them to believe the story you have to commit to the role Carmen.”

 

[Alice2015]

Carmen sat an listened to her superior's ingenious plan to possibly save their lives and most certainly save his cock. She tried not to smile, not because she wanted to spare John her joy at being commanded to dominate him but more because she feared the alien-humans might see the humor in her face and draw conclusions that weren't in their best interest.

He neared the end of his instructions, telling her, “...at some point push me down and mount me. If you want them to believe the story you have to commit to the role Carmen--”

She wasn't sure whether or not he was done speaking, but the sudden, hard slap across his face that sounded across the village and stung the fuck out of her palm and fingers most certainly brought his orders to an end.

"Don't you speak to me like that, Cockie!" Carmen bellowed at him, once again slapping his way but not entirely connecting with him as he was instinctively better prepared. She stood up in her full nakedness, the grass skirt having come untied and accidentally discarded while she slept. She hovered over him and raised a hand, threatening to strike him again but only doing a couple of pump and fakes. "Eyes down, you fuck!"

She continued to hover with an arm raised until, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a pair of the hidden-bosom warrior women hurrying toward the cage. Backing away, then turning fully away from him, she looked out upon the village and, as she'd hoped, found much of the population looking toward the newcomers.

Of course, the only face she was really wanting to see was that of Inama, and a moment later she caught sight of the warrior emerging from the gathering crowd. Carmen walked as close to the edge of the cage as she could without getting one of the sharpened spikes through her torso.

"You! Inama!," she called to the woman. "I need to speak to you."

The armed woman made her way casually over the cage, and when she stopped just out of reach of the gate, Carmen demanded to have her clothes returned to her. When Inama showed no response at all, Carmen pointed a hand back toward John while continuing to look the warrior woman in the eyes and explained, "In my culture, a superior woman bearing her breasts to an inferior male is an invitation to breeding or intercourse for the purposes of pleasure."

Inama still showed no signs of responding at all. Carmen bellowed at her, "You're confusing my buck, bitch!"

Carmen had no idea whether or not that last word had any meaning in Inama's culture, but the continued lack of a response tended to make her think it didn't. The warrior finally glanced past Carmen to the male in the cage, then looked to her female captive and challenged the validity of Carmen's statements, "You not show you Mistress of male when first go him. You no act you control."

She repeated her slicing testicles gesture again as she added, "When say we tame male, not show control--"

Carmen was trying to recall her exact words and actions when she first came to the cage so that she sounded legitimate when she in turn challenged, "You wanted to castrate my buck, to tame my breeder. Do you have any idea how valuable this buck is? Do you have any idea how many strong, powerful, intelligent warrior girls he'd fathered during the time I've owned him?"

Inama's eyes shifted back and forth between the two captives for a long moment until Carmen once again demanded her clothes. Inama told her, "Clothes burned.
Both clothes burned. No good have. No good wear."

"Well, fuck," Carmen murmured. She looked back over her shoulder at John, finding him playing the part he'd written by cowering in the corner. She glanced toward his hidden groin, smirked, and said softly, "Well, someone's balls are gonna cold tonight, aren't they?"

She looked back to Inama, or more specifically her very scanty, very revealing clothing. It didn't look entirely practical to Carmen, and she couldn't help but wonder whether or not it was more ceremonial. She looked to one of the other women who was still dressed scantily but was far more covered than Inama.

"Give me something like that," Carmen said, her extended finger waggling at the woman's clothing. "Top, bottoms, sandals, the whole bitch."

"Hunter wear all cloth," Inama responded, finally using the tribe's word for the women Carmen had been calling warriors in her own head. "You not Hunter--"

Carmen cut the woman off with a fierce tone, "Then give me a fucking weapon, and I'll show you who the real warrior is!"

Inama didn't react other than to simply stare at Carmen, but there was a murmur through the hunters as well as some of the other nearby and attentive villagers. The one Carmen had pointed to chuckled, then said something that sounded more German than English. After a moment, Inama pulled the stone blade from her belt, moved to, and unlocked the cage, gesturing Carmen out, then locked the door behind her once more.

"Rigga say you take her cloth," she said pointing her knife to the other hunter, "You keep cloth."

Carmen wasn't entirely sure what Inama meant, until the one named Rigga pulled the knife from her side and Inama tossed her blade to stick in the ground before Carmen's feet. The recently arrived female human's stomach turned over painfully as she suddenly realized that Inama intended them to fight to the death over an amount of clothes so scanty and revealing that she would feel self conscious wearing them at a family beach outing.

She took two steps to the left away from the knife, keeping an eye on Rigga, who was slowly transitioning into a fighting position. Without looking away, Carmen said, "Where I come from, we don't waste valuable warriors over such trivial things as who gets to wear what."

Inama considered Carmen's words, then spoke to Rigga in that German-English mix. The other hunter looked disappointed but then tossed the knife aside and, with a loud, animalistic screech, charged and slammed into Carmen.

Luckily for the Science Officer, she'd been forced to take self defense courses as a young girl and teen by a mother who'd been raped twice in her life and didn't want to see the same happen to her only daughter. Carmen stepped aside just enough to prevent avoid Rigga's full momentum, took a hold of the woman at one arm and shoulder and attempted to flip her to the ground.

The move would have worked, probably, if Rigga hadn't spent her entire life practicing and perfecting her own hand to hand combat skills. The pair of them flew to the ground together, and the battle was on. Fists were throws, elbows and knees, too; the dust of the packed dirt began filling the air, so much so that at times it was hard to tell which female was winning and which one was losing.

Carmen rolled away free at one point and got to her feet, only to be hit by the charging woman again. They slammed into the outside wall of a hut and went clean through the reed and mud construction. The mayhem continued inside without anyone really being able to see much at all.

And all the while that this was happening, the villagers were cheering and hooting and whistling, with words from half a dozen languages adding to the raucous reaction. The wall on the opposite side of the door from the new hole bowed outward as one or both women hit it, and much of the pole and reed roof suddenly collapsed downward upon the combatants.

For the first time there was the clear, unambiguous sound of a fist hitting a face, followed by another strike a few seconds later. Those two were followed by four more quick punches of someone who was most definitely getting their face beat in.

And then there was silence, both within the destroyed hut and without. No one moved from where they stood, not even Inama, who despite not having moved from where she stood outside the cage, had had an unobstructed view of the entire battle because of the respect shown to her by the others, who consciously stayed out of her line of sight.

After a bit, Inama looked back to the cage, to the male inside, to see what his reaction to all this way. She finally walked over closer to the hut...

...just as an unsteady but victorious Carmen emerged, carrying the defeated woman's cloth in her bloodied hands. Without even questioning whether or not she was free to do so, Carmen headed back to the cage and, when getting there, order the Hunter to open it. The armed woman looked to Inama, got a nod, then unlocked and swung the door open.

"Dress me, Cockie," she ordered John, throwing Rigga's loin cloth at him while keeping and beginning to don the top half of the primitive outfit herself. She turned back to find Inama moving slowly her way, now wearing a bit of an impressed smile for the first time. "My buck will need something to hide his cock. In my culture, just as with my pussy showing, a man's swinging cock is an invitation for free breeding, and I won't have have any of you bitches touching my man without proper compensation."

One of the Hunters nearby leaned to another and tried but failed to sound out proper compensation. Carmen smiled, and explained, "If you want my Cockie's seed, you will give me something of value, just as your girl gave me her clothes."

As if on cue, an extremely teetering and bloodied faced Rigga emerged from the hut. A pair of topless women rushed to her to tend to her wounds, but she cursed at them, turned and disappeared slowly into the crowd.

Inama stepped up close to Carmen and studied her for a moment before seeming to accept the new woman's victory with a simply stated, "You Hunter."

She looked past Carmen to John, called to someone to find him a loin cloth of his own, then asked the new Hunter, "Want bindings for ... Cock-hee?"

"Cockie," Carmen corrected, almost laughing aloud at the leader's acceptance of the word she'd just made up. Carmen looked back to John, then for no reason at all slapped him on the head before telling Inama, "No, he knows better that to disobey me. But, I need food, for me and for him. He is not good to me as a buck if he is weak."

"Cockie stay in cage night time," Inama instructed, and though Carmen tried to talk her out of it, the leader of the New Earth tribe insisted, even gesturing two Hunters over to ensure he remained where he was. She asked the new woman on the planet, "What name?"

"My name is Carmen," the interstellar officer responded. Carmen looked over her shoulder, then back. "I call him John. It means good boy, which he usually is."

Inama pointed to a tiny hut, telling Carmen she could live there. But the Science Officer quickly said, "No, no, that won't work. Cockies live where their Mistresses do, so that they can serve them all hours of the day, when they are needed. If John stays in the cage, I stay in the cage."

Inama considered the challenge for a long moment, then said, "Your John buck stay hut with you. But come out without Carmen--"

Her knife had been returned to her, and now Inama made the now familiar castration gesture for the third time. Carmen laughed, slapped John yet again for no reason, and said, "He wouldn't dare come outside without me. One of your horny women might want to get a freebie."

Inama obviously didn't understand her meaning, but Carmen let it go. She gestured John to his feet, whispering head bowed just in case it didn't occur to him, and off to their new quarters they went.

 

[PJ6u]

"Don't you speak to me like that, Cockie! Eyes down, you fuck!"

Carmen had slapped him, more of a surprise than painful for him and he went with his cue. Well fuck, he thought, she’s a natural bitch princess. He watched the interplay with Inama and Rigga, silently cheered for Carmen, and waited.

Head down, Carmen whispered, then she started walking away. No shit head fucking down. He followed her, his cock still attached and swinging in full view of the rest of the village. That’s right bitches, the buck still has his junk. While they were no longer in the fire, they still might be in the frying pan. He needed to make some time to coach Carmen a bit, and trade thoughts later. In this position John also had the unique ability to admire Carmen’s scantily covered posterior. Maybe this wouldn’t be all that bad.

They walked into the hut, and Carmen turned to face him, he held up his hand right in front of his chest, shielding it from any onlookers, thumbs up, good job. Her eyes twinkled happiness at him. Then he held up a finger, wait. He received a confused look.

John turned and “closed” the “door” to the hut by pulling the hanging skin adjacent to the door frame over the open door frame and attaching it to the other side. He walked back to her side, close enough to feel heat radiating from her, and her breath still panting a bit. Whispering,

“Oscar winning performance, Carmen. Not sure that Rigga is going to let this go, so future plans to make her happy in some way again.”

"We keep the skin on the door, that forces them to announce themselves. maybe?"

 

[Alice2015]

“Oscar winning performance, Carmen," John whispered to her once they were safely hidden inside their new home.

"I'd like to thank the members of the Academy," she said with that evil smirk that he'd been seeing a lot lately.

(The irony of his and her comments about the motion picture industry's award organization was that it had ceased to exist more than a century before they left Titan Station, which meant that by now it had been dead and gone for over 700 years. But like A day that will live in infamy and remember the Alamo, some sayings were eternal.)

"Not sure that Rigga is going to let this go," he continued, adding, "so future plans to make her happy in some way again.”

"I'll approach Inama to see if there is protocol for such situations," Carmen said, reaching up to examine the swelling and cuts she, too, had received during the fight. "I'm sure this isn't the first time two hunters have faced each other down, though, maybe not about such a skimpy little outfit."

It was ironic that dressed as she was now with so little cloth enclosing her bosom and so little animal hide barely hiding her lower female features, that Carmen would feel so much more exposed than she had in her second skin Zero-G Suit which had actually shown off her curved even more than that in which she was dressed now.

The difference between the two was obvious, though. The ZGS when combined with her helmet and boots covered Carmen's body entirely. These primitive jungle clothes hid her only barely more than a bikini one might have found on Earth in the 20th or 21st centuries, and despite her delicious body, Carmen had never been one to wear such scanty, sexy clothes.

And with the exception of when he'd awoken to find her sleeping naked beside her and when she'd taken on Rigga while still stark naked, John had certainly never seen her like that and never would again, she swore. He was her superior officer, after all, or at least he had been on the Rykon II. And even if he hadn't been, they weren't and never would be lovers down here on New Earth.

Would they?

"We keep the skin on the door," John told her about his step to give her some privacy, "That forces them to announce themselves. maybe?"

As if to prove him wrong, the flap was thrown back and another of the Hunters who had initially confronted Carmen peeked in to locate both strangers, then stepped inside, followed by an older man and a child who looked to be about 8 years old.

The man was carrying a wooden bucket with a skin liner that allowed it to hold a couple gallons of clean water and, over his shoulder, a towel that appeared to be made of a cotton like plant fiber. He set the bucket down near the cold fire, then with a very respectful bow offered the towel out to Carmen, who took it without hesitation.

"Thank you," she said with a smile and a polite nod.

The hunter woman, though, struck the man with the flat edge of her spear before looking to Carmen and growling, "No do that."

"What, thank him?" Carmen asked, unsure. When the Hunter ordered the man out, Carmen asked, "I thanked him, he did nothing, but you hit him? Why didn't you hit me instead?"

The woman stared harshly at Carmen and growled, "I still might."

The boy, who John had seen earlier at the cage, set a platter of food down on a stool made of limbs bound together by fiber rope. He looked up to Carmen, smiled about as wide as his lips would allow, and told her softly, "Pretty Hunter."

"Get out," the woman demanded, and giggling the boy fled as the spear swept through the air, though, not with enough speed or even intent to strike him. The woman glared at Carmen who was glaring back at her, beat a fist once between against her sternum between firm, fist- sized tits, and said, "Treya."

Carmen repeated the name and was then told by the woman that Inama had assigned her to be available to the newest Hunter from sunup to sundown, to teach her about her new home, her new community, her new people, and whatever else about which she needed to know.

"Sunup to sundown?" Carmen asked curiously. "And what about from sundown to sunup?"

"You not leave hut when dark or punish," Treya stated flatly.

"Huh, and what just what kind of punishment would that be?" Carmen asked. "You gonna have Rigga beat me up again?"

Treya responded by laying her hand on the hilt of her rock knife and pointing the tip of her spear at John. She stated with all seriousness, "We cut off, make not dangerous. Make not ... cockie?"

She didn't mean to do it, but Carmen laughed at Treya's last word. She looked to John to see what he reaction was, then raised a hand quickly as if to back hand him and demanded, "Make me a plate of food, buck!"

The treatment seemed to satisfy Treya, and after Carmen promised they would not be going outside during the dark, the Hunter turned to leave. But she stopped at the opening, grasped the hide door, and ripped it and its wood rod right out of the wall. She left, leaving the hut open to anyone who might walk by and wish to look inside.

Carmen just stood there for a moment before looking to John and in jest asking, "Wanna go out for a walk under the stars tonight, Cockie?"

She laughed, sat, and delved into the meal with John. They were being watched, and to be honest it was rarely very inconspicuously. Carmen would look to the open door occasionally and find Hunters, other females, and very often small children of both genders either at the door looking in or out farther in the village, trying to observe the newcomers but seeing very little because of the darkness within the windowless hut which only had two openings, the door and the smoke hole in the roof.

Without letting their watchers know, Carmen and John spent the hours talking about all they'd seen, heard, and otherwise learned. Night fell, but not before they'd had several visits from the villagers who brought them things, each time including Treya as an escort. They were brought animal hide blankets, cloth pillows filled with a soft material that smelled of roses, a cornucopia of strange but mostly delicious food items, and other things they might need to be comfortable.

They also finally brought John the loin cloth Carmen had demanded hours earlier and had continued to demand every hour so after that. And after complaining that even with the fire now burning in the clay oven, it was cold. The hide door Treya had removed was replaced.

Then they brought Carmen bindings. She was told they were for securing her breeder for the night, not just to prevent him from running but to prevent one of the other women from sneaking him away for sex, as Treya explained by reaching to her own groin and making a forward thrusting gesture with her hips.

Carmen found the security devices interesting and studied them for a few minutes while her buck used a bone needle and thread Inama had provided to sew shut a serious cut on the back of her shoulder. Finally, Carmen was sure of what the believed and told John of her conclusion.

"These people, they're from Earth, or Titan, whichever and doesn't matter," she began in barely more than a whisper, "but here's the trick, they left Earth after us but arrived here before us."

Carmen tossed the binding to John and told him to look at it closely. It wasn't made of some simple form of steel that these primitives could have forged with the technology she'd seen thus far, she told him. "Not only that, but look on the inside of the clasp. See that little mark, looks like a scythe? It's not, actually.
It's actually the upper case letter "G". It's just worn for decades, possibly centuries of wear."

She let John study it in the low light, then went on, "That's a manufacturers mark for Greiger Corps. I know it. They make all sorts of clamps, locks, other shit. John, that came from Earth, just as these people did. Or, just as their ancestors did."

Carmen started explaining about how when they'd left Titan Station, the Interstellar Colonization Project had been experimenting with an update of Carmen's Energy Conservation Module. Some of what she was telling him, John already knew. But there were also key and small details he didn't, so she just barreled ahead without worrying about him getting bored with a rehash of old news.

"They thought that if they could simply find a way to power it without blowing the shit out of it every time they surpassed FTL-4, they might be able to reach speeds never even imagined."

Her face lit up with absolute joy as she said, "John, they did it. They fucking did it!"

She got up and went to the door to peek out, and as she suspected found a pair of Hunters standing near the fire burning in a center pit, watching her hut. She returned and began again in barely more than a whisper, "It took us over 600 years to get here, John. The first 200 years of that was acceleration alone. The next 240 we were cruising, and it wasn't until just 5 years ago that we really put the brakes on so that we could perform the planet captures here in the New Earth system to finally bring us to approach speed, not that that did us any good, of course."

Carmen snatched up the binding and waggled it in front of her as though it might be the replacement for her M3ECM. "If what I think happened happened, and they broke the Krimpen Barrier and solved the overflow problems, these people could have--"

She hesitated, then chuckled with excitement. She held her arms out to show the wash of goose flesh that had flooded over her. "John, the ancestors to those people out there, they could have arrived here as little as 80 years after leaving Titan Station or Earth of Mars III or wherever the originated. Maybe even sooner. It's possible, though, kind of unlikely, that they could have made the trip from our system to this one ... in under 6 years."

She finally went silent, smiling at him with joy.

 

[PJ6u]

John was awash with conflicting emotions over the past day and evening hours.

"This all started with your math, and your work Carmen." and with that leaned close and pecked her on the cheek. "Good job Blondie. Though I wonder if they finally figured out that Einstein worm hole process perhaps?" He shrugged, looking back into her eyes. "Their ship or craft is somewhere, either in orbit or down here on the surface. If they got here, there's a possibility that maybe we can find a way to get back up there, maybe get the AI back on line....".

His eyes looked at her with hope.

 

[Alice2015]

"Perhaps," she responded with a bit of doubt in her voice. She considered his thought for a moment, then asked with some obvious confusion, "But, well, what about them?"

She nodded her head toward the door of the hut as if there was some other them to consider. Carmen clarified, "They're so primitive. Their dress, their speech patterns, their command of the language or lack thereof. The way they live is, well, I hated Anthropology in college and I'll admit that I only took the three courses required for my first PhD, but c'm'on, they don't really come across like the descendants of spacefarers of a time even more advanced than our own."

Carmen stood and moved to the door to peek out at the Hunters. Looking back and talking very softly, she went on, "I think something happened to them. I mean to their ancestors. Perhaps their ship disintegrated like ours did. Perhaps there's a debris field up there that they didn't see any more than we did. Maybe some of them, more that from Rykon II, made it down here. Survived. Bred. Became what we see out there."

Again Carmen nodded her head toward the out of doors, then went back over to sit near the fire by John. "But something happened to them down here, obviously. They lost their technology. They lost their advanced culture. Something happened to them. I just can't figure it out."

She laid back onto the bed that one of the servant males had made for her. It was a thick layer of soft grasses encased inside an equally soft yet strong outer casing of long reeds, essentially making a mattress. Atop it was a sheet made out of that same very fine, cotton like thread that her brassiere was made out of.

Carmen lifted her head to look over at John's bed and, as she had the first time she'd look at it, grimaced. They'd provided him with a flat mat of weaved reeds intended to prevent him from having to sleep on the ground and a blanket that was made of the same material but of a thinner gauge of reed that had also been beaten to be more pliable. The blanket would drape over his body a bit, but Carmen knew there was no way it was going to keep him warm through the night.

"Aw, fuck," she murmured to herself as she sat up, rolled to face her bed, and threw the covers back. "You can sleep with me, John."

She checked his reaction, then justified, "Your my servant. My slave almost. And a breeding buck, a Cockie as well. I can claim that you sleep with me to keep me warm at night and, if I have a burning need, to satisfy my sexual needs as well."

Carmen stuck a finger at him and said in a hard, serious tone, "But the very first time you try anything, I have only to say the word to Inama, and snip!"

She made a scissors cutting gesture meant to imply yet another method of turning him into a eunuch. "I'm tired, I fucking hurt--"

Carmen reached up to her face for the umpteenth time, gently feeling the obvious swelling of her left eye, which would be black and blew tomorrow, and the right side of her bottom lip, which had been split open and would like make eating, smiling, and talking difficult for the better part of ten or fifteen days.

"Join me now or later, whatever," she told him, "Just, keep your fucking hands to yourself."

Carmen slipped under the surprisingly comfortable, thin, but still warm sheet and rolled away from John. She feared she would lay here for hours, contemplating the very odd course that her life had taken. Ironically, she was out like a light in less than a minute.

 

[PJ6u]

John watched Carmen, lay down, turn away from him, and fall asleep. She’d had a rough day, that’s for sure. They both had, but she had stepped way outside of her comfort zone as a scientist, and it took a toll on her. Given the woman centric dynamic here, it was going to be challenging to find ways to shoulder some of this load, so she could “science”. That was her sweet spot, not wrestling with other women for basic needs.

John started working out some strands on his sleeping mat, absently while he thought. So the clothing scraps still remain from their original colonist load, maybe the back-up containers are still around somewhere, or in a debris field around the planet. He thought, staring into the fire, making a long, braided reed cord from his sleeping mat.

It’s like these adults are just kids. Could it be that easy? Carmen didn’t do human interaction or anthropology well, not her strong suit. John had some background in group dynamics as part of his command training. But this was way out of both of their league.

So, we have managed to change their status quo, some of them, like Rigga, aren’t going to like the change, so immediate issue is watch for the counter attack. If this was a playground, and someone took a favorite toy, that kid would come back at some point to even the score. Carmen was fixated on the why and how of this tribe, so John had to focus on the now of their situation. So first order of business, prepare to defend the counter attack, and try and work on the positive of this dynamic with Carmen. Second, weapons. He wanted to get back to their pod and restock, but right now anything is better than nothing. Then, make friends here, improve their collective power base. Lots of friends. What can they trade or do to improve their standing with these women? John, snickered, maybe he could slut around and mollify some of these women into accepting Carmen, there could be worse jobs.

He stood up, his new reed cord in hand and tied one end off on the door frame opposite Carmen’s sleeping pallet. He strung it low, like a trip wire across the doorway, securing the other end closer to them, then kept playing the line out. He laid down, next to Carmen, who murmured something when he sat on the mattress.

Cool your jets Blondie, this is your safe space.

He then tied the end of the cord to his big toe. It was the best alarm he could rig, given the technology. He turned over, ass to ass with Carmen, and closed his eyes. Oh yeah, she’s not going to stay blonde…..

 

[Alice2015]

Considering how beat up she was from the encounter with Rigga and the pain she was feeling in her face, her torso, her legs, her everything (including her crotch where the little bitch had kneed Carmen at one point), it was surprising that Carmen managed to sleep all the way to sunrise. A shaft of light from some ungodly direction struck her directly in the eyes as its end point passed across the grass mat covered floor and over her left eye.

Grimacing, she contemplated rising but then stopped. There was an arm laying over her body, over her rib cage, reaching from behind her to her front, where the hand of said arm was unconsciously cupped over one of her tits. Carmen couldn't help but smile, nearly giggling in fact. John's front side was pressed her her backside in a spooning position, and after ever so gently shifting her buttocks back just a hair, she confirmed without a doubt that the object pressing against one of her firm, athletic cheeks was indeed her Cockie's cock.

Carmen was wondering how to get out of this predicament without embarrassing John, then thought to herself Why the fuck should I not want to embarrass him. This'll be fun! But before she got her chance to even decide on an action or early morning comment about his early morning wood, her First Officer murmured something in his sleep that sounded like the unconscious effect of a dream and rolled away from her to his back.

Carefully and quietly, Carmen looked back over her shoulder, to find two interesting sights.

The first was what she expected, the tenting of the simple pseudo-cotton blanket high over the John's groin, reminding her of how impressive she'd been with seeing his bared cock the afternoon before. She knew she shouldn't be finding humor in this situation. There were so many serious topics on which her mind should be resting, but, c'm'on, her boss's cock, some 7 or 8 or 9 inches long she couldn't be certain having hot seen it stiff yet, was now hard as a rock and lifting their bedding three inches above his rock hard abs.

The second interesting sight was, well, just hard to explain. The young boy from the day before was at the end of the bed, crouched down and balancing on the flats of his bare feet, tying the together the big toes of John's exposed feet with a very thin thong binding. She couldn't know, obviously, that her own superior-inferior had weaved the line together himself while watching her slumber the night before and then strung across the doorway to alert them to the very sort of intrusion that the young boy had pulled off without incident.

Carmen whispered ever so quietly, "What are you doing?"

The boy only smiled and continued to every so slowly weave the binding, trying not to tickle the man's feet.

She went on, still barely audible to the lad, "What is your name? Do you understand me?"

He nodded his head. After a moment he said simply, "Boy."

"I know you are a boy," she continued whispering. "What is you name?"

Surprising her her, he repeated, "Boy."

"Your name is boy?" When he nodded, Carmen thought for a moment, then looked at what he was continuing to do, and told him firmly, "From now on your name is Teigh."

"She pronounced it tie, like what she was doing to John's digits, but in her mind she spelled it like a favorite uncle she'd had when she was a little girl, 620+ years ago. She asked, "Do you like the name Teigh?"

He hesitated, then smiled and nodded. Carmen looked to John's face and read his expression, body language, and soft murmurs as a sign that he was sleeping but likely very close to waking. The erection had faded a bit, but even softening, the thin bit of single bedding still mounded between his crotch and his belly.

"Do I look bad?" she asked Teigh after she looked back to him and realized that even as fingers were still busy at John's feet, his gaze was surveying her beaten and battered face. When the boy nodded his head, Carmen smiled. She recalled a line from an old movie she'd watched onboard Rykon II during one of her periods of reanimated maintenance duty and said with a wink, "You should have seen the other guy."

Teigh smiled, though to be honest, Carmen doubted he understood what she meant. She flinched suddenly as the hide flap at the doorway opened with a whoosh. Treya shot Carmen a harsh look, then did the same for the boy, who in a flash had already started for the door and shot by her like a mouse fleeing an awoken cat. Yet, Carmen couldn't help but notice, once outside the boy fled giggling in joy.

"Get up," Treya told Carmen, stepping aside as another male servant respectfully passed by her to deliver a tray filled with an array of food and drink. Before she left, she finished her commands with, "Go work."

 

[PJ6u]

John heard Treya's voice through his muddled half wake dozing.

"Get up," "Go work."

Without opening his eyes, he whispered "First task is to make a fucking door. Is that annoying bitch gone?"

He didn't feel the bindings woven through his toes....yet.

 

[Alice2015]

Carmen heard and then saw John milling behind her, followed by him groaning, "First task is to make a fucking door. Is that annoying bitch gone?"

She chuckled as she went to sit by the food, intentionally sitting with her back to the door to hide the tray. In case someone else entered, she didn't want them seeing that she was preparing some breakfast for John, as opposed to the reverse which seemed to be the way of the world here.

Suddenly, John was waggling his legs around and throwing the blanket away in an attempt to see why his feet wouldn't part. She said casually, "Oh, that boy who seems to have taken a shine to us, or to you maybe, he paid us a visit this morning. Brought a rope for that, though, I'm not quite sure why the fuck."

Carmen handed out toward John a small morsel of breakfast. It looked like a small, palm-sized tortilla on which she'd spread a thick red jam that had softened berries that were almost raisin-like but a bright yellow. She'd already touched each of the bits of the food to her tongue while John was trying to figure out what the fuck was happening at his feet, and she'd found them all to be sweet, tart, or both.

"You'll like this, John," she said just as polite and friendly as she might to someone she liked in the mess hall of the Rykon II. She'd had some time to think about their situation the night before, and she'd decided that she needed to stop thinking of John as the man who'd been fucking her lover and who'd stolen her promotion and start thinking of him as just what he was, her compatriot in a very strange and potentially life threatening situation. She tasted the fluid in a round wooden mug that looked similar to a coconut shell, winced, then said with surprise, "Coffee. Well, not really, but Jesus, John, it's close. I wonder if it's caffeinated. Wouldn't that be fucking fantastic?"

 

[PJ6u]

John was trying to get the woven cord from betwixt his toes. "Oh, that boy who seems to have taken a shine to us, or to you maybe, he paid us a visit this morning. Brought a rope for that, though, I'm not quite sure why the fuck."

John started to patiently unweave his toes. "You'll like this, John," and looked up, to find Carmen offering him.....breakfast. She took a sip from the mug she offered. "Coffee. Well, not really, but Jesus, John, it's close. I wonder if it's caffeinated. Wouldn't that be fucking fantastic?"

He stared at her, dumbfounded for two long seconds. The angle, which didn't leave much of anything to his imagination, and her offer to him of food really did surprise him. He accepted the mug and the bread, or tortilla with stuff on it.

"Thanks Blondie" he whispered. He nibbled the bread and jam (?), it wasn't bad.

"Yeah that kid did this because, well he' a kid. And he seems to have the run of the camp. Also he knows some sign language. One more item to add to the WTF list for this place."

John sipped the coffee and tilted his head, Carmen sat close to him, their knees touching. Was that dark hair she had...Stop it Johnny boy, think now.

"This tastes almost like chicory coffee,wonder if they grow a local variant here."

Carmen shrugged at him, her mouth actively chewing.

John smiles at her, looked her over, "Blondie you look like shit. What does the other guy look like?" She almost spit out her food as she started to laugh.

"Treya is a pushy bitch, any thoughts on how to knock her down a peg or two? Need to find a way to get her to stop walking in here whenever she wants." John took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully.

 

[Alice2015]

"I named him Teigh," Carmen said about the boy as the two of them ate at the unusual but very delicious breakfast. She explained why with a chuckle, then agreed with his assessment about having just one more WTF element to this world, its people, and its culture.

"Blondie you look like shit," John said after giving Carmen's face a good once over survey.

She tossed a blueberry looking fruit at him, hitting him square in the forehead, then snapped at him, "Stop calling me blondie, and I'll stop calling you Cockie."

He asked about what she thought Rigga might look like, and Carmen dropped her eyes. "I've never done that before. Beat up on someone like that. Not a man. Not a woman. I took self defense as a child, reluctantly. I guess, I guess it just kicked in. By the time she got me, Rigga, by the time she got me into that hut and things were falling down around us, I dunno. Something just went wild in me. I could have stopped. I could have commanded her to stay down, to stop resisting. I didn't. I just hit her. Again and again and again until she stopped moving."

Carmen could very well have killed the Hunter if she'd had more momentum and power behind her punches. As it was, she'd more or less simply knocked the other woman into a deep sense of disorientation, and Rigga had eventually just collapsed to the hut's floor and tried to cover her face up as the beating went on. She'd be fine in a few days, though, like Carmen, the bruises and cuts would take possibly months to heel.

"Treya is a pushy bitch," John said, pointing out the obvious. "Any thoughts on how to knock her down a peg or two?"

"She reminds me of my Aunt Minnie," Carmen said laughing. She delved into an explanation of how her mother's very much older sister had always been a mean old crag whose picture could have been put in the dictionary right of the word bitch. "But once I reached adult age, well, once I reached 13 anyway, and I felt as thought I could fight back, verbally I mean, throwing her criticisms and profanity back at her without fearing a spanking from my mother, suddenly we had something in common and almost overnight we were best buds. Leave Treya to me, John. I'll have her under control soon enough."

As if on cue, while they were discussing the door situation, the tall Hunter threw the flap open again. She looked between both of them and commanded, "Go work now."

She asked Carmen in her broken English if John needed restraints, to which Carmen looked to her buck and asked, "Do you think you need restraints, Cockie?"

She'd just promised not to use that word anymore, but later when they were alone she would tell him she'd only meant when they were alone. She told Treya that her John would be a good boy, and the pair of them made their way out into the village once more.

They would still continue to get glances often throughout the day, not that Carmen would have expected differently. Inama was dealing with some situation on the far side of the open circular space around which the 20 or so huts were arranged. (They would learn that this area with a large fire pit in the center was literally just called the circle.)

The leader of the tribe was chastising a younger female over something while an older, naked male stood nearby, his head and upper torso slumped so far forward Carmen thought he might fall over at any moment. Carmen chanced asking Treya, "What's going on there?"

The Hunter studied the conversation, then glanced over Carmen, then John. She looked directly a the First Officer's groin, then back to Carmen as she said, "Not have permission use male. Male belong other woman. She say who fuck, who don't."

Carmen couldn't prevent the laugh from coming out at the first use of the F-bomb by one of these people. She'd actually begun to believe such profanity didn't exist here. But then, Treya hadn't used it as profanity but as a description of a sexual act.

"So, it is against the rules for a woman, a female to use another female's buck to fuck without permission?" she asked, getting a soft, less than enthusiastic nod. "So, I don't have to worry about one of you--"

"We not fuck Carmen buck without Carmen say fuck," Treya cut her off without a growl.

Carmen wanted to know what the punishment was and was tempted to ask when suddenly two Hunters grasped the offending female by the arms and hauled her to a rack that Carmen had previously thought was for stretching and drying pelts. They lashed the hands of the girl, who looked to be barely the legal age for sex back in the civilized world of Old Earth, to the cross pole and began untying and stripping her clothes away from her smallish, fit body.

As the villagers began to take more notice and gather around, Inama announced the committed sin and the punishment. Carmen had noticed another woman who was obviously involved and had concluded that the male who'd been doing the fucking (who was now in the cage in which Carmen and John had spent the night) belonged to her.

Suddenly, the violated woman reared back and slapped the shit out of the younger woman's bared titties. They and her entire upper body jiggled back and forth a moment as she screamed out in a mix of agony and embarrassment. Carmen's mouth simply dropped open in shock. A second slap from the other direction came, then the older woman walked around behind the younger one and repeated the brutal treatment of the girl's ass cheeks.

Carmen turned slowly to look to John, not wanting Treya to understand the horror rushing through her brain. Another slap caught her attention and she looked back to find yet another woman repeating the punishment. She asked Treya who the second woman was and got a rather hard to understand explanation that the second woman was the next breeder who was supposed to accept the now jailed male's seed.

Making some more inquiries, the two newcomers would learn that Inama chose which female breeders would take which male buck's seed in and effort to create a more diversely genetic community. Carmen couldn't help but turn and look to John with a wide smile and a wink.

"Things are looking up for you, Cockie," she whispered. "You're the new flavor of the months, Captain."

 

[PJ6u]

John watched the whole judgement and punishment of fucking out of turn play out before them. He was fascinated, not by cruelty, but, like Carmen, at how this whole system had developed over time. As the punishment ended, Carmen has whispered to him, "Things are looking up for you, Cockie, you're the new flavor of the months, Captain."

He glanced around while she whispered to him, then replied, "Really, you gonna let Inama tell you who I can sleep with?"

He felt a tug on his fingers and a giggle. It was the kid, what did Carmen call him? Teigh?

"Hey Teigh," John favored the little rug rat with a smile, and squatted down to play with the boy. Apparently, John playing with Teigh had attracted the attention of some of the nearby breeder women.