Chapter 1: The Job

~~ Delta - Oct/02 - (Earth - April/2095) ~~

Hi, my name is Trixy Walsh.

My life changed the day my girlfriend Barbara Florez showed me the website for a job on the planet Harmony in the Delta Pavonis Star System.

The place had been in the news often in the last couple of months since the starship Fortune came back from its maiden voyage a year earlier than expected. They even had natives on board, who were working as crew. It was like, WOW!

I have a Masters in Biology specialising in Herpetology and one in Palaeontology. I specialise in tracing the evolution of reptiles. I’m twenty-four, have recently graduated and am desperately looking for a job where I can use my credentials. I had scored a part-time job at the Brisbane Zoo four years before, and it was a godsend as far as my studies went, but it’s not long term.

My flatmate, Barb, is into birds and anything else that flies. She has been my best friend and roommate for the last two years. She has also completed a Masters in Biology specialising in Ornithology, and she is a year older than I am.

Oh, by the way, I’m tall, really tall at 198cm (6’6”). I tend to tower over many of my friends, and it is incredible how many guys don’t like going around with chicks that look down on them literally as well as figuratively.

I have reddish-nutmeg coloured hair that is dead straight and goes all the way to my bum. It’s a lot of hair, and I’ve thought of getting it cut, but I just haven’t bothered. I’m also not willowy, as I weigh in at 110kg, but it’s not fat, except for the boobs. Mum says for my size and shape I have great tits, but she’s got bigger.

My eyes are green/grey. Mum says they are my grandfather’s eyes, and she calls them storm-eyes. If a bloke sees me from a distance, they think hot chick, until they walk over to meet me and realise just how tall I am. I’m even taller than most of the lads who play in our local basketball league.

The laugh is that I hate basketball. Cricket is my game. Not to skite but I was bloody good at it too. I even played for the State of Queensland for two years until I did my shoulder. It was the first time the Queensland Fire’s had an unbeaten record for many years. I miss playing cricket.

Barb, my friend, is more petite compared to me. She rocks in at 182cm, just missing the six-foot mark. Like me, she too has trouble finding suitable boyfriends. The fact that chicks outnumber the blokes these days doesn’t help us much either.

Barb has hair the colour of light honey and long, loopy curls that trail halfway down her back. She has boobs nearly big as mine but isn’t as wide in the hips or as muscular. She could be considered willowy with her slim build and tiny waist except for the tits.

Her eyes are brown with gold flecks that blaze when she is really pissed-off. Her skin colour like mine would be considered a milky shade of coffee. Somewhere in our heritages are Aboriginal ancestors.

We don’t consider ourselves Aboriginal, as we didn’t grow up in that culture. Nor do we consider ourselves Irish, English or Welsh, which both of us have in our DNA somewhere as well. We call ourselves, ‘Liquorice Allsorts’.

I wouldn’t call either of us drop-dead gorgeous, but I think we hold our own in the pretty enough to ogle at category, especially if we wear a bikini. Personally, I think Barb leaves me for dead.

She is the outgoing one, and I’m the quiet one.

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When Barb found the website, we both decided to apply.

We had nothing to lose. So far, the forty-odd applications we had sent out had, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ replies if the recipients bothered to answer at all. Considering I had passed my degrees with high honours and completed my Masters for both, I didn’t think I’d have much trouble getting a job.

But a lot of the grant money for our fields of expertise has dried up because it has been directed at space travel for the last twenty to thirty years. There has been a decided push to get some of the population to move.

Unless you get in with UNSEC (United Nation Space Exploration Collaboration), or hopefully you get picked as a scientist for the new colony on Harmony for the Anzac Block, there wasn’t much going for us.

We were still on their consideration lists. Unfortunately, this didn’t pay the bills. We both had a mountain of debt, and the job ad said they would pay off our study debts if we signed up for a minimum two-year contract. We would be debt-free. Money aside, just the thought of studying and living on another planet had us both excited.

We both received emails saying we had reached the shortlist and they had liked our vids. However, the Starship Fortune came back, and we didn’t get on it. We heard that the group picked would be going to the new settlement on Utopia. They were mostly looking for teachers and trade specialists. Barb and I weren’t ready to teach yet, we wanted to explore our disciplines first.

The Fortune had ended up in orbit around the planet Utopia after a malfunction of the ship. The crew couldn’t claim it for Earth because it was occupied by people from our myths and legends. We’d have called them fray, pixies, dwarfs and faeries to name a few, but that’s not what they call themselves.

The people of Earth had been invited by the wizards that owned Harmony, Utopia’s sister planet, to settle on the unoccupied continents on its northern hemisphere. The two worlds were in the same orbit around Delta Pavonis’s sun, one hundred and eighty degrees from each other.

We were beginning to think we had been forgotten when the emails came. They said that if we wanted the jobs, we would be shipping out on the next flight and we had four weeks to get our shit together.

I’m not sure who was more excited, Barb or me. We jumped around our tiny flat hugging each other, screaming and crying like mad scientists who had just proven the Earth circles the sun.

The grouchy old shit next door, bashed on the wall telling us to, “Shut the fuck up.” We both gave him the bird through the wall, and both agreed we wouldn’t miss the miserable old fart, at all.

We both had to ring home and tell our families.

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We settled down and devoured the literature that we had been sent.

It said that we would initially be sent to the Moon, where we would catch our ride to Delta. The trip would take about two weeks or twelve Utopian or Harmony days.

We had learnt that their day was about twenty-five Earth hours long. They had a six-day week, five weeks to a month and twelve months to their year. The month and days of the week were named the same, but they didn’t have Saturdays.

Their orbital year was about ten Earth days longer than an Earth year. Their calendar was about six months out of sync with ours, and it would seem to jump forward by a month every three years to the people on Earth.

The average working week was forty hours, and at least every sixth day was a mandatory day off if you didn’t have a break sooner. Many of the people had adopted either a four-day week of ten hours of work with two days off, or they worked four shorter days and a half-day.

We wouldn’t argue about the six weeks holidays a year either. We both decided that we could live with this and read on. They had a list of pay rates and an explanation of their monetary system. We soon worked out their dollar would buy about the same as fifty of ours on Earth.

This seemed a little extreme, but when we read the prices for goods and services, we understood. They didn’t have inflation, the values were pre-set, and that was that. This had created a lot of stimulating discussions on Earth by the money people.

“Oh my, look at them honeys, Trix,” Barb said. She was watching a vid of the current set-up of the domes and town area of the twin cities called Rubyvale and Opal City. This was our possible destination according to the manifest.

“Are those lingers small, or are those guys’ really over two metres tall?” I asked, looking at the spunky guys on screen as I did some mental calculations to work out their heights.

Barb peered at the screen, “Nope, they are standard lingers.” She giggled, “Those two hunks seem to have just as much trouble getting out of them, as we do. Oh my, look at the tush on that one. He’s wearing those skimpy shorts, and you can see the curve of his sexy butt cheeks when he bends over.”

Don’t worry, I was looking. He turned around and smiled at someone just off-screen, and we both watched him walk out of the shot and sighed.

“Oh, a girl has just got to love those shorts. I’ll kill anyone who gets in the way of me getting on that ship if that’s the eye-candy I can look forward to,” Barb said.

I wasn’t displeased by the eye-candy either; those guys were really tall. The spunk in the little blue shorts who got out of the linger had certainly gotten me wet. I hoped he had an unmarried brother or even better if he was the single one.

Barbs hand slipped up my leg and under my short nightie. I wasn’t surprised that she found me wet. She giggled. “Sweetie has all that tall, hunky male flesh turned you on?”

I spread my legs and let her fingers explore. We had been lovers off and on for the last year. When you can’t find a guy to satisfy you, you take what you can get. Barb had some right tongue action, and we occasionally found pleasure in each other.

I wasn’t in love with her, and I don’t think she loved me in the forever sort of love either, but we both had fun scratching the others itch when the mood took us. Nor were we exclusive, well Barb wasn’t, I just couldn’t find anyone else I was even remotely interested in.

I wasn’t sure if she was just less picky or just needed to be fucked more often than I did. Her fingers probed deeper and started moving in me. She leant forward, pulled the strap of the thin nightie off my shoulder and licked my stiff nipple.

I reached for hers. I rubbed a nipple with my palm and then plucked it between my fingers as I gently squeezed the flesh. Barb groaned on my tit, pulled her wheelie-chair closer and spread her legs for me. I found her as wet as I was and had little trouble working two fingers into her.

“I bet that guy has a big cock, going by the package in the front of those delicious shorts,” I said to her. She clamped her cunnie on my fingers and sucked my tit harder. She hummed out an ‘uh-huh,’ around my flesh, then sucked it harder, as she flicked my nipple with her tongue.

She removed her face from my breast to reach up to find my lips coming down on hers. We locked lips and explored each other’s mouths licking inside each other’s mouths and letting our tongues duel. Our fingers became more insistent as we fucked each other with them and rubbed each other’s clit with our thumbs.

Our other hands were happy to knead the firm round breasts and nipples they found. Barb slipped her butt further forward on the seat so I could penetrate her deeper, so I reciprocated. We were starting to really get off on the finger-fuck.