Chapter 38

The next day, they were back in orbit around Earth and they invited the visitors to hang out on Atlantis until they had some leads on their home world.

They landed at the spaceport, which was quite an eye opener for any visitor, as you don’t just see massive triple port facilities with each section more than a kilometre long.

They had made some changes to the port facility. Since they no longer had enormous ships coming down to the spaceport, they had set up a couple of private enterprises on the north end of the spaceport. One was the Space Tours business, and a couple of moving companies with cargo ships had set up shop there.

Mark and Athena just watched their guests, as it was like watching kids in a candy store. Their eyes were wide, and the lift system and the scenery fascinated them.

Then when they got to the city, it was all about architecture, the aquatic rings and just the relaxed way of life that everyone seemed to have.

From the way they were looking at everything, Mark got wondering about how advanced their civilization really was, but then guessed it was probably more like the rest of Earth, since Atlantis was a technological oddity on the planet.

The rest of the day, the guests wandered around the city. They went to the museum, the zoo and numerous other attractions, eventually returning to the city centre parks and joining everyone else sitting or wading in the fountains.

Samira caught up with them in the late afternoon and then sat down and interviewed Cordero and Shanda.

The rest of the afternoon they just relaxed until they got hungry and then went to try one of the new restaurants that had opened up.

After supper, many went to the stadium to catch the Acropolis versus Ampheres match, while Mark and Annabelle went to the ranch to ride their horses.

Cordero asked if he could go to the game, and Shanda asked if she could go to the ranch, so everyone went their separate ways for the evening.

The trip to the ranch took about 30 centons and Shanda got to see some more of the island. She was a country girl at heart and grew up on a farm on Magellan before moving to the city to go to university. Contrary to what everyone thought, she and Cordero were strictly coworkers, as Cordero had a family back on Magellan.

When they arrived at the ranch, everyone was just finishing supper at the cookhouse, so they went and picked over some leftovers and introduced Shanda to everyone.

After the introductions and they cleaned the supper up, they continued out to the pasture.

Joe had decided to just leave the horses in the pastures since there wasn’t any dangerous wildlife and the weather was fairly stable temperature wise. Plus, each pasture had a shelter, and they had fenced off a few more pastures so they could rotate them and allow the grass to regrow. It turned out that the horses also liked the beanbag type pillows the centaurs preferred, so there was one of those in each shelter in each pasture, so that saved having to spread hay around for bedding.

Dany and Candy joined Mark and Annabelle on their evening ride, with Shanda riding on Candy.

Unfortunately, it was too late in the day to start the ride up to the Meteor Plateau. So they were following everyone’s favourite trail, which went toward Mount Cleito and led to a beautiful waterfall that eventually ran into the Evenor River. That was going to be the go-to trail as it was only a couple hours up there and was very scenic. From that elevation you could even see Acropolis from there, well the palace and taller buildings, anyway.

Just like last time, Buck gave Dany a good fucking, which Shanda watched with a gleam in her eyes. Candy went to inspect the filly’s pussy and seeing the freshly fucked pussy leaking a bit of cum, she pushed her fist into Dany’s pussy and pulled it out covered in Buck’s cum. She then took a lick and offered Dany a lick as well. Then returned to fisting the filly.

Shanda was quietly rubbing herself while watching the scene in front of her as Dany moved beside Candy, so they could both fist each other.

Annabelle brought Shanda out of her reverie when she asked, “Do you need a hand?,” as Annabelle curled her hand into a fist and smiled at Shanda.

Shanda looked at Mark, then smiled and said, “Yes please!” as she stood up and started removing her clothes, Annabelle followed suit and settled beside Shanda on a blanket they had set out.

Annabelle then realized that while Shanda was wet, there wasn’t enough lube for her entire hand. Annabelle got up and walked over to Candy, who then smiled as she withdrew her hand and Annabelle shoved her fist into Dany’s cum filled hole.

She then went back to Shanda and started rubbing cum onto and into Shanda’s pussy.

It didn’t take long before Annabelle had worked her entire hand into Shanda and was gently fisting her hairless slit, while Shanda was moaning at the sensation.

The way Annabelle was sitting, Shanda was returning the favour by slowly moving her fist in and out of Annabelle’s pussy ... her hand mimicking Annabelle’s movements.

Mark felt left out, so Dany gave him a nod and pointed for him to come fuck Candy. Mark quickly stripped off and moved behind Candy and slipped his hard cock into her wet slit. He felt the tingling almost as soon as he was balls deep in the filly, and soon he was pumping in and out to her moans.

Annabelle, Shanda and Candy were soon approaching orgasm, so Dany readied herself. When Mark started to cum, he pulled out a bit and Dany took over pumping Mark’s cock to get every drop of cum into her friend’s pussy. Then once he finished, she licked his cock clean.

Eventually everyone waded into the crystal clear water and washed themselves off before beginning the trek back to the ranch.

They called for a lift as soon as they got the horses brushed down and back into the pasture. As the lift descended to pick them up, they gave everyone kisses and hugs and 30 centons later they were back at the palace.

When they arrived it was already late and the game had been over for a while, although that didn’t stop everyone from giving them an excited summary of what apparently was an incredible back-and-forth game that Acropolis won.

Because of the late centar, Annabelle suggested that they stay in two rooms in the residence, since there were many empty rooms on the main level.

Mark woke up at his usual time, along with the sun, and extracted himself from between Rayven and Annabelle. Took care of his morning ablutions, then went up to his office to get his morning coffee and look through the daily reports.

As soon as he sat down, Cricket notified him that during the night, one of the new sensor beacons detected a habitable planet. It was the one she predicted had the greatest chance of success, since it was the closest one to the area that we found them and it lined up with their direction of drift.

Not wanting to get hopes up, and end up travelling from one side of the universe to the other, he messaged the Explorer from Earth, since they were the closest, and sent them off toward the new find. They would reach it in roughly three days.

With no other attention worthy items in the reports, he took his coffee and wandered out to the balcony to check up on the breakfast club.

As if on cue, Beth flipped the covers off, exposing her nude teen body to Mark’s eyes. She came to the window and looked to the balcony outside his office. Once she saw him, she did some wake up stretches in front of her window. It was nice to watch a nubile young teenager doing nude exercises ... it gets the blood pumping!

After her stretches, she sat down and used her fingers to masturbate for a bit. Then she got up and, from her bedside table, she pulled out a fairly large dildo with a suction cup on the base. She stuck it to the window and fucked herself with it.

Shanda snuck up behind Mark and saw what he was watching and then commented, “Wow, that’s a pretty big cock for such a little girl!”

Mark explained who Beth was, and that she did this for him almost every morning he was in the city.

When Beth finally came, she waved and blew Mark a kiss, as Mark returned the gesture. Then she wandered off for her morning shower.

As usual, Mark had a raging hard-on after watching her, so he went for his morning shower at the same time Beth did.

Shanda followed Mark to the bathhouse, and as they both got undressed, Shanda saw his erection as he was turning on the shower, “Let me take care of that for you!”

She joined him under the shower and made sure his cock was clean and hard. When she was satisfied, she stood up, turned around, bent over and positioned Mark’s cock at her slit.

Mark grabbed her hips and slid into her warm depths.

Shanda was no stranger to large cocks, and he slid in easily. Which is probably why Annabelle had no problem fisting her last night?

Once Mark was seated inside, she straightened up and brought Mark’s hands around to play with her breasts as he fucked her.

After a couple of centons of fucking under the shower, Rayven and Annabelle had shown up with their morning coffees. They disabled the outer force field, grabbed some balcony chairs, and sat down to watch the show.

Now that they had an audience, Shanda got a bit more vocal and was soon cumming on Mark’s cock. Mark felt the tingling sensation as his cock grew more, making Shanda cum even harder as the head of his cock pressed against her cervix. After that, it only took a few strokes before Mark began squirting his cum deep into the ebony beauty.

As their orgasms subsided and Mark extracted his cock, a flood of cum flowed out of her pussy and down the drain.

They cleaned themselves up and exited the shower, as Annabelle guided Shanda back into a lounge chair and used her tongue and fingers to extract the rest of Mark’s cum from her pussy.

Rayven was rubbing her cock under her robe and watching Annabelle and Shanda when Solara came upstairs. As she started her shower, she asked Rayven if her pussy could help with her problem.

Rayven joined Solara under the shower, using the same position as Mark and Shanda used, and it didn’t take long before both were cumming.

Once everyone had finished their showers and gotten dressed, they went downstairs where Cordero, Liyana, Gyges, Laruun and Marta were sitting around and drinking their morning beverages. Once their drinks were gone and the cups put in the recycler, they left the residence in search of breakfast at the meal pavilion.

It was during breakfast that Mark informed everyone that the sensor beacons had detected a potentially habitable planet in the area that was closest to where Shanda and Cordero were found. He then said not to get their hopes up, until it could be verified and that he had sent the closest ship, but it would take them a few days to reach that system.

Cordero said, “I can handle a few more days here, Atlantis is like being on vacation. True, my family is probably worried about me, but the prospect of returning home means we’ll likely be debriefed and quarantined for days. Partially because of the accident, but also because we’ve interacted with other species.”

Shanda then smiled, “I have full faith that they will find our home and I hope when they bring us back, that our planet considers joining the Federation! If they don’t want to join the Federation, can I join the Federation?”

Mark smiled, “I hope they consider joining the Federation also, but even if they don’t, we will establish an embassy there, so that people can choose for themselves whether they want to stay on Magellan or emigrate to a federated planet.”

The first evening they went and saw a movie followed by a sports bar, and the second night was a soccer match featuring Acropolis against Autokthon. Unfortunately, Autokthon was one of the weaker teams, so the game wasn’t nearly as exciting as the game the other night.

As the game finished, Mark reminded them that sometime tomorrow the ship should reach that system.

The next morning, as Mark had just finished going through his morning reports, he received a message from Captain Kôté of the Explorer they sent to investigate. The message included a bunch of pictures of the planet and, since they detected no other space traffic, they had taken a cloaked shuttle down to get some closer views of some cities and the more unique buildings on the daytime side of the planet.

Mark thanked them, told them to keep monitoring and to stay cloaked until he could verify if this was Magellan or not.

Mark just relaxed on a lounge chair drinking his coffee and Cordero soon joined him on the balcony with his coffee. Mark showed him the images they had sent him, and Cordero immediately confirmed it was Magellan. He pointed out one building that looked like a castle, and said it was the government building in Aspona, the capital city where they lived.

As everyone else eventually made their way out to the balcony, they showed the images to all, and Shanda reiterated pretty much exactly what Cordero had said moments before.

Mark notified Captain Kôté that the planet was, in fact, Magellan and he gave them the go-ahead to reveal themselves, make contact and inform them they had rescued Cordero and Shanda, they were both in good health and that they would be delivered home in a few days.

Mark then informed Commander Topos that they had found Magellan and that they would come up after breakfast to take them home.

Liyana notified Samira, who came for a quick interview with the visitors, and Mark, before they departed for Magellan.

Everyone ate breakfast and the only people coming with Mark on this trip were Rayven, Liyana and Athena. Liyana had felt guilty that she hadn’t been there when Athos joined, because her primary duty was as an ambassador and Gyges felt Athena didn’t really get to go on a mission since it was pretty much just a retrieval.

As they boarded the Poseidon, now docked with a Sentinel, Mark got a call from Captain Kôté, “Sir, we’ve revealed ourselves and made contact like you requested. They asked if we could provide video evidence that they are OK.”

“That’s an odd request, unless they either think we’re bluffing or holding their people for ransom. Can you contact them and patch the call through to the Poseidon?”

“We’ll try! They’re pretty stirred up about something.”

Mark assembled everyone in the boardroom and a couple of minutes later there were two people on the other end of the call, one was Captain Kôté and the other was from Magellan.

Cordero and Shanda recognized the man immediately, and Cordero greeted him, “Director Rosen, nice to see you, sir!”

“Cordero! Shanda! It’s good to see you both! We had been told you were killed!”

“Who told you that?”

“Right when you disappeared, another ship appeared in the same vicinity. They said your ship collided with one of theirs and that it destroyed both ships. If we didn’t find some way to compensate them for losing 1,000 men plus the ship, that they were going to treat it as an act of war and attack!”

Mark then interjected, “Director Rosen, my name is Mark Phoenix, King of the Atlantean Federation. Do you have an image of the people that made that threat?”

The director pulled up a tablet with a picture of the Empire leader they had let survive the attack at Athos.

“Sir, those guys call themselves ‘The Empire’ and they frequently cause issues, they like to bully and use intimidation tactics; if they don’t get what they want ... they won’t hesitate to attack, especially if they think they have the upper hand. They are bluffing, as you can see!” Mark said as he gestured toward Shanda and Cordero.

He then continued, “Captain Kôté is in orbit around your planet now. They will remain there and be on the lookout for the Empire. We are bringing your people and your ship back to you. We should arrive in three days.”

“I look forward to meeting you and seeing the return of our people. What do we do if they show up before you get here?”

“Well, I can’t see him forgetting what happened the last time he tried to attack a Federation ship, so if he sees one of our ships, I would hope he’s smart enough to turn back!”

Mark then looked at the Captain, “Captain Kôté, you saw the report of what we did on Athos, correct?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Well, if they show up, tell them that Magellan is under the protection of the Atlantean Federation. Then do something similar to what we did at Athos, using cloaked fighters. Try not to engage them in battle, unless they fire first, then it’s open season!”

“Yes sir, anything else, sir?”

“That’s all for now, we’ll see you in three days. Be safe!”

The call then ended and Mark gave the Commander the OK to get underway.

Three days later, the Poseidon was approaching Magellan. It was another very Earth-like looking planet with 6 distinct land masses all surrounded by oceans.

Captain Kôté contacted them immediately, “There are some ships hiding in the asteroid belt, we’re just monitoring them.”

Commander Topos redirected the Poseidon to where Captain Kôté was. Sure enough, hiding amongst an asteroid belt between Magellan and the next planet was a dozen Empire ships drifting around in the belt without exiting.

They contacted Magellan and said they were there to be compensated for the destruction of their ship and losing 1,000 men. It was an open broadcast, so the Atlantean ships could link into it, so suddenly the leader was looking at the Director and Mark.

Mark smiled and waved, “Hi again, remember me?”

“What are you doing here, we found this planet, it’s ours!”

The Director said angrily, “It is not yours! Besides, you lied to us! These friendly people from the Atlantean Federation have returned our people and our ship completely unharmed, so if you lost a ship, that’s your problem!”

Mark thought, “Cricket, cloak and deploy all the drones and surround each ship with at least 10 and put the rest between them and the planet.”

The leader scowled when his bluff was called, “So, is this planet going to join your pathetic Federation too?”

Mark shook his head, “I have no idea, we just got here and have discussed nothing yet, but that is a possibility I plan to discuss.”

“So you’re going to defend this planet, when they aren’t even part of your Federation?”

“Of course! The Federation will always defend those that can’t defend themselves. I’m not sure if Magellan can defend itself or not, but since I don’t see any other ships here, I’m just assuming they can’t.”

“You pathetic dreamers, you only have two ships today, we have you outnumbered! Surrender!”

“Are you really that stupid? Don’t you remember what happened on Athos, we only had 3 ships there? By the way, how did your superiors react, when you were the only ship that returned from that epic failure?”

The leader was visibly angry, but was trying hard to keep control. Finally, another Empire guy came onto the call. “My apologies for my brother in arms. After his failure at Athos, he was offering this planet to appease our lords.”

The Director was just watching everything that was happening, but wisely staying out of the conversation, even though Mark could tell he really wanted to say something.

“I’m sorry, but just because a planet has no defence against attacks from space, that doesn’t give you the right to just come in and subjugate them by force!”

“It gives us every right! If they cannot defend their planet, then they are weak and because we are technologically superior and strong ... we should rule them!”

Mark just shook his head in disbelief, then held up one hand, “So let me see if I understand ... you find a planet, you attack it for no reason and, if they can’t fight back or you beat them ... you declare yourselves their rulers and subjugate them. Is that the way it works?”