Chapter 5: Per Ardua ad Astra

Hope cried as she looked at herself in the mirror. She was wearing her new black Navy uniform. A uniform. The last time she’d seen Daddy he’d been wearing his uniform, a green Army uniform, but still a uniform. She was crying for Daddy. The pain wasn’t as bad as it had once been, but she still hurt. She was proud of her success, but like so many things her emotions were mixed.

She’d scored 6.6 and the whole family had held a big party to congratulate her. That first day she’d been in a daze, coming to terms with the success she’d worked so long and so hard for. She was a sponsor! She’d volunteered for the Navy of course and had started training the next day.

She hadn’t thought it through properly; she should have, but she hadn’t. She’d been concentrating so much on getting her CAP score up to 6.5 that she hadn’t thought enough about the immediate aftermath. She arranged to meet Signifer Wei during a break in training to talk about finding a pair of concubines.

“You have four dependents, Private?”

“Yes sir. Twin babies, a five-year-old and my brother who’s ten, almost eleven.”

Signifer Wei was Chinese as his name indicated and he looked serious. “That is a problem for us. With four dependents you will need an experienced mother to look after them when you are away.”

“Yes, sir,” Hope agreed, she’d had the same thought.

“Unfortunately, I do not have any experienced mothers available. They get selected almost as soon as they arrive in the pool. Mostly I have fourteen-year-olds with some training in school and a little experience at home.”

“I would prefer a mother with real experience, sir,” Hope explained. “I don’t think an inexperienced teenager could cope with my four on her own while I’m away on deployment with my male concubine.”

“My thoughts also. We do have a few older women, but I could not recommend any of them to you. They aren’t suitable as mothers, which is why they’re still in the pool. The good news is that we have plenty of suitable young men who will become excellent fathers with experience.”

“What can I do, sir?” Hope asked worriedly.

“What are you doing at the moment, Private?”

“I’m staying with my old family, sir. Jun-Hee lets us stay in her pod for the moment and her concubines can look after my children while I’m off training. I’d prefer not to move out until I have my new family set up.”

“For the moment that will have to continue. I’ll circulate your request to the other towns to see if they have anyone suitable for you. At least that will give you a wider pool to draw from.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Cycling back to Jun-Hee’s pod Hope could appreciate Signifer Wei’s problem. Most new sponsors were fourteen with no children. They could easily be satisfied with a pair of equally new fourteen-year-old concubines and all three of them could learn childcare as they went along. She remembered the woman she’d met on her first day here on Waller. Natalie didn’t have much experience, but she wouldn’t have needed it for nine months, then she could learn gradually as her baby grew, the way most new mothers did. Hope’s concubines would have to deal with four children of various ages right from the start. A very different situation.

Lorna, the brothel madame from Arundel township, connected her video-conference link. Seeing her face appear, Centurion Mark Robertson started their meeting. “You have a problem, Lorna?”

“I’ve got two problems, Mark. Two women who are really unhappy. I want to move them out of the brothel into something else. I’m afraid one or both of them will suicide if I don’t.”

“Are they pregnant?”

“Yes, they’re both expecting. Their original sponsor saw to that in transit, but he dumped them almost as soon as he arrived and got himself a couple of newly minted fourteen-year-olds instead.”

“How old are they? Are they experienced mothers?” Mark knew that mothers with experience were a lot easier to place.

“Twenty-two and thirty-six. The younger one hasn’t had kids yet. The older one has a seventeen-year-old son back on Earth and a fifteen-year-old daughter who was extracted about a year ago, so she’s got the experience. Despite that, they will probably be difficult to place: they’re conservative Christians, they’re lesbians and they really want to stay together. If a sponsor won’t accept them both, then they’ll always turn him down. That’s happened a couple of times already with the older one. If I could place them singly then I wouldn’t have had to come to you.”

The rewards of promotion, Mark thought, other people handled the easy cases and passed the difficult ones up the line.

“Lesbians and conservative Christians!” Mark said, surprised. “That’s not a likely combination.”

“I think that’s why they’re here,” Lorna explained. “They couldn’t see a future for themselves back on Earth. Whatever they did, they’d have to leave their families if they wanted to stay together. Given the threat of the Swarm they joined us instead. The thing is that they think they’ve made a huge mistake. The brothel goes against both their sexuality and their religion. Even if you can’t place them with a sponsor, it would be better if you could move them to different work.”

“How far along are they with their pregnancies?”

“Not far enough to justify me pulling them off brothel work, I’m afraid,” Lorna said.

“OK, I’ll let you put them onto other work: childcare, gardening or whatever. They’re pregnant by a sponsor, so we don’t want them to suicide. They may have to stay in the brothel accommodation though; all my other barracks are single-sex male and I’m certainly not putting two women there.”

“I can see that, Mark, but the other girls won’t like it. It will look like these two are getting special treatment.”

“They are getting special treatment, aren’t they?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Then you’ll just have to deal with the fallout.” Lorna didn’t look happy with that, but it was her job to keep the ‘working girls’ happy.

“What are their names?” Mark asked.

“Judith and Sarah.”

Judith and Sarah came into the interview room. Hope smiled at them, “Would you like something to drink?” she asked.

Signifer Wei had suggested these two women to Hope. She could tell at a glance that they had been concubines, their former sponsor had given them the common male-fantasy look – all legs, breasts and blonde. Some sponsors had no imagination.

“How much did the signifer tell you about me?” Hope asked them.

Judith, the younger of the two replied, “He said you needed an experienced mother to look after your four children and that you would take both of us together.”

“That’s right. I have four dependents, so I need an experienced mother right now, not in nine months time. Since you two want to stay together I’ll take both of you; four children of mixed ages is probably too much for one person to look after. I’d rather have you both happy together than separated and miserable.”

“Won’t that use up both your concubine slots?” Judith asked. “You don’t have a seven or better do you?”

“No I don’t. Signifer Wei has a surplus of young male concubines and he has agreed to let me have a supernumerary man. That will round out my family and take one of the spare men off his hands,” Hope explained.

“What is the man like? Can we meet him?” Judith was taking the lead, while Sarah stayed silent, her hands in her lap.

“I haven’t picked him yet. I want to pick a mother first, so the AI can suggest someone compatible with myself and with my other concubines. If I do take you both then I’ll tell the AI to pick a few men who will got along with you two for me to look at.”

Sarah looked worried at that. “Will we have to do test drives with him?”

“No,” Hope reassured her. “I’m heterosexual so that side of things will be between him and me. You will both have to have children of course, but that will only be once every eighteen months or so. If you want to say no to him then you can.”

“You don’t mind us ... being together?” Judith asked hesitantly.

“Not at all. I was a concubine myself for a year and my sponsor was lesbian. She had her girlfriend from Earth and a bisexual woman in her family, so I’m used to it. That may be one of the reasons Signifer Wei suggested you both to me; I’m already used to two women together.”

“If you took us on, would you want to keep us looking like this?” Judith gestured at her over-large breasts. They were hidden behind her dowdy concubine smock, but their size was obvious.

“Do you want to change your looks?” Hope confirmed.

“Yes please. We both want to look like we did before, not like this.”

“AI, show their original appearance please,” Hope ordered.

The two holograms were real women, less perfect than their current male-fantasy inspired bodies. Sarah looked her age, mid-thirties, and showed the pooched belly and somewhat deflated breasts of a mother with two children. She was dark brunette, not blonde. Judith was blonde and in her early twenties. Short and a little chubby, definitely not like her current slim, long-legged look.

“I don’t see any problems reverting your appearance,” Hope said. “Or with making any minor changes you want done.”

The AI interrupted, “Both unattached concubines Sarah and Judith are pregnant. Some changes will have to be delayed until after they have given birth. Other changes can be implemented immediately upon approval by a sponsor.”

“As long as we know the change is coming we can wait,” Judith confirmed. Sarah just nodded.

Hope had a question for the AI. “I have two new babies to feed, AI. Can you induce early lactation in pregnant women?”

“Yes, that is possible. The process occurs naturally and it is possible to speed it up.”

Good. Currently Isabel acted as wet-nurse while Hope was in training, but she wouldn’t be available once Hope moved out into her own accommodation.

“One more thing,” Hope said. “Lorna would like you both to help her by working some hours in the brothel kindergarten in Arundel. All the women she has there are either inexperienced or bad mothers; she said you two did a good job looking after the children. You’ll have to do some community work anyway and I’m happy for you to carry on working there.”

“We can do that,” Judith said, while Sarah nodded. “We get on well with the kids there. As long as it’s just in the kindergarten, not...”

“Just the kindergarten,” Hope reassured them. “Do you have any other questions?”

The two women looked at each other. “Are you Christian?” Judith asked.

“Yes,” Hope answered. The question wasn’t unexpected. Signifer Wei had asked it earlier when he’d explained the situation to Hope.

The two women looked at each other again and nodded. “We accept, Hope. We’ll both become your concubines so we can stay together.”

Navy training was a bit like school and a bit different Hope decided. The different parts were military: how to salute, who to salute, when to salute. The same parts were ordinary lessons: English, Mathematics, History, Biology and the rest. She was only fifteen and she still had lots of things to learn. The best thing was the simulators the training base had for the various stations on a typical warship. She could run the engines, fire missiles, read a sensor display and more. It was almost the real thing, very close anyway. The one she liked most was operating the mock-up of a battlecruiser turret. You could actually see the target being hit, which you couldn’t do with a missile launcher. That was the best part, seeing the Sa’arm die. Even if it was only a sim, she could enjoy that. How much better it would be when she was doing it for real!

Most evenings, after training had finished for the day, she could return to her family and see her children: Mercy, Precious, Bobo and Solomon. She’d been allocated one of the larger apartments, over half way up the building. That gave them a nice view from the balcony, though it could be windy that high. Judith and Sarah had settled in nicely and were doing well with the children. They were obviously much happier not having to work in the brothel any more. Bobo preferred Hope as his mother, but was happy enough with his two extra mothers. Solomon was glad to be away from his rival, Ram, so he’d settled down a lot. It helped that he got on well with Joseph, Hope’s fourteen-year-old male concubine.

Joseph had led a peripatetic life. Born in Nigeria, his parents had moved to England to increase their chances of being extracted; there were many more extractions from England than from Nigeria. After the Earth First party won the election and started to turn racist, the family had moved across the Irish Sea to Dublin. His father was a Doctor and his mother a trained Nurse, so it wasn’t difficult for them to find work. The Confederacy had extracted him with his family and he had been on Waller for three years. Joseph was quiet and unassertive, much more of a follower than a leader. His father had wanted more of a go-getting ambitious son, so Joseph decided to try his luck away from his dad. For Hope he was almost ideal. Definitely heterosexual and far too polite to force himself on either Judith or Sarah. He lacked experience with children, but he was learning fast. He learned fast in bed as well, which Hope very much enjoyed. She had liked sleeping with Steve while in Jun-Hee’s family, but she’d had to share him with Isabel and Laxmi. Now she had Joseph all to herself!

She had asked the AI to remind her and of course it did. Just as well, since she had forgotten. She sent a good luck message to Khadija for her first CAP test. A few days later she got the reply. Khadija had scored 5.3 and Mohammed, her guardian, had taken her on as a concubine. Hope was glad that Khadija was settled with a Muslim sponsor as she had wanted.

Hope enjoyed the passing out parade at the end of her training, it was fun. Marching in unison made her feel the camaraderie with her fellow trainees. The spit and polish (without any real spit these days) before the parade wasn’t so good, far too tedious and nowhere near as much fun as the marching. Still, one thing Hope had learned was that most grown-up things included boring bits as well as interesting bits. Not sex though. Sex didn’t have many boring bits, or perhaps she was too busy enjoying herself to notice?

After three months basic training Hope had a promotion to Private First Class and a happy family – apart from when Mercy or Precious was teething, which could get noisy. Despite being a sponsor and having finished training, Hope still had some learning to do. The Navy kept her in school for two days a week and assigned her to the dockyard for three days. Navy school wasn’t the concubine school she’d been in before since it had Naval officers as teachers and young sponsors as pupils. The subjects were mostly the same, but with a Naval emphasis. They’d disguised trigonometry as ‘Celestial Navigation’ and history classes included some of the Naval battles fought against the Swarm: what went right and what went wrong.

The dockyard work was better than the simulators in the Training School because it was on real ships. Newly constructed ships, or repaired old ships, needed someone to press all the buttons to make sure everything was properly connected and worked as expected. The AI guided them through testing the many combinations. The team was mostly young recruits like Hope, with a leavening of veterans having a rest between battles. The AI locked out the weapons systems of course; firing lasers or missiles in the dockyard was not a good idea. Those would be tested on the firing ranges by the ship’s crew during shakedown and acceptance after the dockyard handed the ship over. Hope was still frustrated at not being more directly in combat against the Swarm, but she was getting closer. These were real ships in space, not simulators on the ground. It gave her a better feel for what things would be like when she was crewing a ship for real. Maybe next year she’d be able to go out on a mission?

Judith and Sarah were much happier in Hope’s family than they had been at the brothel. However they still had some questions that she couldn’t answer, so she put them in contact with Reverend Tony, or more formally Signifer Tony Grifman, who had been a minister back on Earth and broadcast services every Sunday. Their talks with him were very helpful. Concubines had babies, many babies, and he reminded them that the Bible said, “Go forth and multiply.” Concubines had to do some things they didn’t like, but in Ephesians the Bible told slaves to obey their masters as they would obey Jesus and obeying Jesus could not be wrong. Reverend Tony even pointed out that lust was sinful for everyone, heterosexual or homosexual, but love was very different from lust. Hope wasn’t sure about some of his theology – it was very different from what Pastor had preached back in Africa – but she kept quiet because his advice definitely helped Judith and Sarah become better reconciled with their situation.

Three months after Hope finished training, Judith and Sarah had their babies a week apart. Not quite twins, but with the same father and almost the same birthday they were as good as. Judith had a girl, Abigail, while Sarah had a boy, Aaron. With four babies in the apartment, things could get busy at feeding time. Two more babies meant that Bobo decided he was really grown up at six years old, almost as grown up as Solomon. Hope got a week’s leave for the births; much more rewarding than the boring work in the dockyard. She looked forward to her sixteenth birthday in five months time. Perhaps they would assign her to a berth on a ship that would actually leave the dockyard?

The scout ship arrived at the edge of the target system. They were almost on the plane of the ecliptic, so the primary hid a part of it. Captain Newbound waited two hours to see if anything unusual showed on the passive scans. There wasn’t anything so he ordered a move to the system zenith to get a better view of the entire ecliptic, still keeping a safe distance outside the system’s hyper-limit in case they needed to make a quick getaway. A scout didn’t get close to anything until sure it was safe to approach.

This system had a potentially habitable planet. It had been scouted before and was on the list for possible future colonisation. Being suitable for humans meant it was also suitable for the Swarm, so scouts visited the system regularly to make sure that the aliens hadn’t settled. After six more hours watching there was still no sign of any intruders, so the captain ordered a move to the next system on their list. Not very surprising since all the systems they were scouting during this mission were on the opposite side of Waller from the nearest Sa’arm occupied systems, but they still needed checking in case the Swarm had sneaked in.

Once the FTL drive kicked in the Captain sent the scan section off duty to get some rest. Hope stretched her back and stood up. She’d spent her eight hour shift checking her instruments with no excitement at all. At least she’d have some excitement with Joseph once she got back to their quarters. Paradoxically, Joseph was doing what she’d wanted to do: he was a medical assistant on board the scout. With his parents’ medical background he was a round peg to fit into a round hole.

Most of the crew were young and inexperienced like Hope, even some of the officers. There were a few experienced NCOs and officers, including Captain Newbound, to guide the newer crewmembers. Hope suspected that was why their orders took them away from the Swarm, many of the crew needed more experience of service in space before confronting the enemy directly. She was sixteen now, one year older and with an increased CAP of 6.8. As Jun-Hee had told her, the older she got the closer she would be to fighting the Swarm directly. The wait was frustrating, but she put her energy into learning her job and getting ready to fight. At least this scout was an improvement on training simulators and dockyard work. She wasn’t where she wanted to be yet, but she was getting closer.

Next was an F-class star with no habitable planets. This system hadn’t been scouted before, so their approach was even more cautious. Captain Newbound took a full twelve hours to check before moving closer. With no habitable planets the only possible use for this system was resource mining. The scout ship had a small laser and a spectrometer for mineral analysis. They fired the laser at any interesting looking asteroid, throwing up a cloud of vaporized rock for the spectrometer to analyse for interesting minerals. A couple of asteroids had a higher than expected proportion of Yttrium, so the AI noted them in its database. Maybe a small mining operation here might be useful in future?