Chapter 14: Ice

-- Phil - 2061 --

Ant and I were surprised when we got new orders.

Our Boss wanted us to go get an asteroid. We had been picked to go with two others to go fetch it. Our team would get a temporary Electrician and Science Officer while we were away. Anne would Captain the crew.

We weren’t real happy with this mission, as we didn’t like our crew being split. We would have preferred to take our girls, but the Boss had said the other two people were required to operate the specialised equipment to bolt the Rih Drives on the asteroid and make sure it stayed intact for the trip. The Moonbase was nearly finished, and they need it.

The American Company footing the bill wanted us to pilot the craft. This surprised us because we considered piloting our shuttle as a secondary job. Our Boss had grinned and said that we both currently held the record for the highest number of hours logged as pilots in the actual seat.

Our formidable record of not having lost a ship and even getting ours to land on Ionic Drives on the Moon when the Rih Drive failed and then by fixing the Rih Drive unaided also put us at the top of the list of competent spacers.

Ant said that the crew had helped and that we couldn’t have done it without them. We were actually embarrassed by the trip he spoke of because we had also had a full load of dignitaries aboard.

We had whinged about the engine when we got back from the previous trip, and maintenance said they had replaced the parts I told them to. The idiots had put our parts on one of the other Shuttles. It wasn’t until we reversed thrust to slow that Ant and I began to suspect we had a problem.

We had been at the helm when both of us had to rub our ears, as the ear studs were hot. We had gotten into orbit around the moon when we both decided the drive had a problem that couldn’t be ignored. We shut it down and managed to get the shuttle down to the Moon.

I’d ordered extra parts as I was planning to do the other drive on this trip. It took us two hours to get it fixed, and we even let the dignitaries go for a walk with Anne and Chi chaperoning them. They thought it had been arranged as a surprise and were delighted, so it kept them out of our hair.

The boss then told us that the new ship we would be flying could only support a four-man crew for the six-week trip. It also had four, new generation Rih Drive and one of the people joining us was the only person currently trained in its maintenance.

We weren’t happy about being split up, but we all knew that we had little choice in the matter. A lot of politics was at play, and our Government wanted us to take the job. The simple fact that the American’s had requested us boys was enough reason for our governments to want us to go.

It was a feather in the Australian and New Zealand’s Space Forces’ caps that their boys were the best. A surprising number of Australians and New Zealanders had voluntarily joined UNSEC, whereas a lot of other Countries had to be coerced to provide people, wasn’t lost on the International Communities or UNSEC.

Our Countries had committed a lot of resources to the space race. They had committed ten times the number of dollars per head of population than any other Nation. Important people were starting to take notice that it was paying off.

We even had our Science people helping the Chinese with the perfection of the Rih Drives and the Germans with their GE storage cells. Ant’s and my contributions hadn’t gone unnoticed. I even had a patent on the filtration systems in my name, and Ant was receiving nice little bonuses for his patents on his genetic modifications of his plants.

As an interesting side note, both of our countries promoted the WARS format of education. It has been adopted after the virus had rocked the world. We concentrated on Writing, Arithmetic, Reading and Science.

While our schools taught the other disciplines, these four were the foundation, and our generation of Astronauts and scientists had grown up in this system of education.

It was starting to pay off, and our countries were prospering.

Ant and I were introduced to our new crew.

Ant and I were not happy. The pair of us would be spending six or possibly seven weeks with two women who looked like they should be on a Playboy magazine cover. Both were tall, being around 181cm and 184cm respectively. Xavia was the taller than her friend, Qual.

Xavia was Afro-American with a fair share of Caucasian mixed in. She had milk chocolate skin and black eyes. Her black hair was cut short to her shoulders and was straight. Her boobs had to be at least a ‘DD’ cup, and she wore support that didn’t help a bloke shift his eyes in a hurry.

Qual was a different skin tone from Xavia, and she said that she had American Indian in her heritage. She also had similar eyes in colour, and we wondered if they were related like us. Qual was also black of hair, and I reckoned that her boobs were larger than her sister’s was.

Both girls were superbly fit, and Ant and I couldn’t help but admire them. That was part of the problem. Up until now, we hadn’t had any problems staying faithful. The small detail that both girls had also taken a shine to us hadn’t been missed by us. We both knew things would go astray real fast if we let our guards down.

I was particularly worried, as I had married Anne. To this point, I hadn’t actually considered a second wife and Anne didn’t give me any indication that she had either. Anne had even been making noises about us starting a family. I was due to get my next tab, and we had thought about not doing it.

When the two new girls were introduced to the current ladies in our lives, it was instant dislike. Both Anne and Loral considered them a threat, and for the first time ever they both voiced their disapproval about this trip.

However, short of an incapacitating injury, we were not getting out of it. We spent two weeks going over the new shuttle. Both of us boys were surprised how cramped the living quarters were. It didn’t even have proper bunk rooms. Our shuttles were mansions in comparison.

As two of us would always be on duty, it had a couch that folded out into a double bed when required and a single drop down bed mounted over it if the people who were to sleep, didn’t wish to share the couch bed. We each had a locker for individual use, but otherwise, personal space was very limited.

It had one open shower that included the new sonic system installed. A combo-washer-dryer and the loo were in the same cubical. We were told to conserve water showers to two minutes and every three days, or the filtration system would work too hard, and they only had limited spare cartridges for it.

I added a few extra, special parts onto the list, as I had no intention of the water going bad or us only showering every third day. We were also encouraged to restrict the washing of our clothes in water for the same reason.

We did at least have the new gravitational compensators installed. The Americans assured us they had made a lot of improvements since they had put them to use on the Moon. They had even installed the same ones in Alpha-One. They would replace the ones in the older Domes once the primary base was finished.

We were kept busy as we learned the new systems and got to know our new crew. Ant and I even convinced the Yanks that we needed to do a couple of mods, and while they weren’t happy with us messing with the ship, our Boss gave us the go ahead. It meant a couple of late nights after the girls had gone home, but Ant, and I considered it worth it.

Anne and Loral both screwed us to exhaustion the night before we left for their medicals and pre-flight meeting. We made sure we got our new contraceptive tags at the final medical before we left.

Ant said that we probably should have gotten them sooner.

The first week was long, slow and full of tension.

Xavia and Qual were deliberately driving us boys’ nuts. They had the hots for us and took to wearing not a hell of a lot in the shuttle. They would touch and rub up against us in ways that were designed to rile us up and leave then leave us hard and throbbing.

As we suspected, except when not sleeping, eating or using the ablutions, we ended up haunting the helm or the pressurised cargo area, to get some distance from the girls. The cargo area provided us with a little space for working out and privacy.

We also climbed up and used the small single bunk for sleep. There wasn’t enough room for two, and we could at least get the sleep we needed undisturbed. The girls weren’t too happy about it, but we insisted.

Things fell apart for us on the eighth day.

-- Ant --

Loral and Anne weren’t too happy when Phil and I got an unexpected assignment.

We were told that we had been picked to go get an asteroid. It was a six to seven week trip if all went to plan. It was an honour to be selected, but it was a long time to be away from the girls.

The Yanks had sent the ship to our base in Oz for final checks, and so Phil and I could get some training on it before we left. Phil and I went over that ship with a fine tooth comb. It pissed the Yanks off, especially when we found they hadn’t made some of our modifications and insisted on fixing them before we left.

Some of their engineers argued that it was the best-designed craft that they had put together, but then they didn’t fly the bloody things, and we did. The fact was Phil had spent years learning how they were built and fixing them in space. When Phil pointed out some of the design flaws we had long since designed out, they had to relent and let us fix them.

The Yanks said if it blew up, they wouldn’t take any responsibilities for it since we tampered with it. What a cop out. We wanted to inspect the new drives that we were to bolt onto the asteroid, but they were packed in tight, and they wouldn’t let us at them. This worried Phil and me, but we had to let it go.

Xavia and Qual were two hot chicks and Phil and I both knew going without sex for six or more weeks, if anything went wrong, was going to be a battle. As we suspected, the first week was torture, as the girls didn’t seem to want to go without either and encouraged us to help scratch their itch.

On day eight, we had a problem with one of the two aft Rih Drives. It kept Phil and Qual busy for the better part of a six-hour shift. They had to get it fixed for the return journey, and it had conked out a few hours before we were due to change over to the fore drivers to slow down.

The ship coasted on the one drive for the extra distance, and I had to use the Ionic Drives to keep us on course when the Rih started playing up. This ship wasn’t designed to run on one except in an emergency, and it tended to push us off course.

Phil said the engines weren’t aligned correctly, so we had to keep manually adjusting the course using the Ionic Drives when the damn computer couldn’t seem to do it. We determined it would add an additional day to the trip for our trouble.

Phil and Qual took over the helm for a couple of hours to let me get a couple of hours sleep since I had been covering their shift and hadn’t slept the shift before. I was exhausted from wrestling with the ship and made the mistake of flaking out on the couch.

I woke to find my cock in a mouth that was doing very pleasant things to me. My desire for relief overtook my better judgement, and I let Xavia suck and fondle me. She had a nice way of licking and sucking that had my hips thrusting my cock into her mouth for her trouble.

When Xavia climbed over me and mounted me, I gave in and let her have her way. She was tight and wet and had a nice way of pulling on my cock with her cunnie muscles. Since I’d given in, I had no objection to sucking on her tits to help her get her fix if it got me mine.

Her tits were bigger than Loral’s were. Her thick nipples were lovely to suck, and she seemed to get off with me playing with her tits. Xavia rode me hard, and I helped. I liked her noises as she climaxed on me. I rolled her over and fucked her hard until she came again for me, and I was finally able to orgasm myself.

The relief of getting my rocks off had been mind-blowing. I got that recharged feeling I had been aiming for that seemed to fill me with energy. It was a strange effect and Phil, and I had found every so often, we just needed to have it.

Even though we cleaned up before taking over the helm, Phil and Qual knew that Xavia and I had been fucking each other. I gave Phil an apologetic look, and Phil had just sighed. I wasn’t surprised to hear Phil and Qual fucking each other half an hour later.

Us boys knew that we had been using our unique talents and requiring sexual relief afterwards was a given. We didn’t know why exactly or what the energy was, but we had long suspected it had to do with the earring. Phil liked to call it our magic.

We had taken up a form of Aikido not long after we joined UNSEC. We found the training that we received had improved our unique abilities. We were both physically faster, and the mental exercises seemed to have boosted our ability to solve problems quicker.

In the past, we had discussed many times how and why we were capable of doing some things better than other people could, and some things that others couldn’t do at all. Neither of us considered ourselves psychic. However, we both tended to know when something was wrong with the ship or if the other people with us were in danger.

When we felt danger and reacted, like when I shut down the drive, we often managed to stop something bad from happening. We had long since stopped worrying about the how, and just went with our instincts. They hadn’t let us down so far.

Me, turning the primary drive off was a good example. Qual had asked me what I was doing, but I had simply smiled and said that Phil would know what’s wrong. Phil wasn’t surprised to find there was a problem when I called him to go look.

Xavia, like Qual, couldn’t see how we could have known. As far as they were concerned, all readouts were within parameters, and the drive was fine. We couldn’t explain it. We just did it as a natural part of who we were.

When Phil pulled apart one section and informed me that he would have to do the same mod that we had done on our ship, I wasn’t surprised. We explained to the girls that we had sent in reports of the part failing and how to fix it, but apparently, the people designing the new drive must not have got it, or they didn’t understand the significance.

My mechanical skills had also improved over the years, as Phil had trained me. Phil, in turn, helped me with my plants as he always seemed to know if the nutrient mix wasn’t correct or if they needed more light. We were a formidable duo, even without the rest of our team.

We were amazed that we had lasted more than a week without getting a recharge. We had both know for several years that regular sex seemed to help us function better and we didn’t need as much sleep as other people did.

I knew that Xavia and Qual found many of the things that we did, appeared illogical to them. They seemed to find the way Phil and I worked together was uncanny with our ability to know what one of us required of the other without a word being spoken.

After we had screwed the girls the first time, we fucked them on every break if the girls were willing. Neither of us boys kidded ourselves that we were in love with the girls, it was just a matter of need on our part.

We hoped Anne and Loral didn’t get too pissed at us, but we suspected they knew it had been inevitable before we left Earth. I suspected in Loral’s case, in particular, she had worked out the effect she had on me was twofold, and the intensity of the sex we had was always greater if I’d been using my abilities.

In the weeks that followed, the girls noticed the difference in us after we started screwing them. They were used to wearing their men out, but we seemed to be the ones who were energised after sex, and it was they, who were sleeping a lot more.

They also noticed that we were not fawning over them either. We didn’t touch them or kiss them unless we were on the bed and in a break time. The girls couldn’t complain about the quality of the sex that they getting but all affection stopped once we got off the bed.

To say they were confused would be an understatement. If either of the girls stated that they didn’t feel like sex, then we rolled over and went to sleep. We never pressured them, but we didn’t say no if sex was offered.

It took the girls a couple of weeks to work out that we had no emotional attachment to them. We often talked about Anne and Loral. If the girls got pissed at us, it didn’t bother us too much, as we knew were using them as much as they were using us. Our hearts belonged elsewhere.

The fact that they had forced us guys to have sex with them wasn’t lost on either of the girls. It just hadn’t achieved the outcome they expected. We took what was offered when it was.

We only initiated the sex on the bed, and we always asked if the girls if they were interested first on the rare occasions that the girls didn’t offer first. We would have preferred to have Loral and Anne with us but the powers to be hadn’t agreed, so we lived with what we had.

Outside of the bed, we treated the girls the same as we had from day one.

-- Phil --

Week three was the crucial week.

This was when the girls did their thing. The plan was to bolt four specially designed Rih Drives and their control and fuel supplies to the asteroid. The scientists had worked out its central mass and the best places to attach the drives.

The asteroid that they had picked looked a lot like a big bell-shaped mushroom that had just started to open. It had a solid rock head, and the ice that we wanted was mostly protected by the cap. It was 1.2km long, and the bell section at its widest was 800m.

If we screwed up the landing of it and it hit the Moon too hard, or we lost control, and it hit Earth, it could be catastrophic. The trip back was going to be tougher than the trip out.

The drives were designed to rotate into any position above ten degrees from the horizontal plane. They were mounted a lot like Ionic Drives. The plan was to drive the asteroid similarly, to how we drove the ship. Any ejector that was created by using the drives would assist with its propulsion.

We had to attach the drives in a specific order to mitigate any unwanted side effects caused by our drilling. The asteroid was rotating slowly around its central axis from its head to the end of the solid stem. This also worked in our favour, as it would be easier to steer it into its new orbit and hopefully land it on the North Pole of the Moon.

I landed the shuttle close to the first point of attachment. It was a tricky manoeuvre, and I was sweating by the time we were down. We had moved the points of attachment slightly from the original plan. Once we were able to scan the asteroid up close and get better density readings and the outline of the asteroid we decided they had to be relocated.

Ant was to stay with the ship while we three cleared the site and drilled the bolt holes. The drives and their power source required a relatively small area to mount them. Even so, working in zero-g wasn’t a lot of fun, and it took us three days to get the first drive mounted.