Chapter 1

The date was June twentieth in the year 2348. I was sitting in the pilot’s seat of the Intrepid III, a cargo ship bound for the lunar mining colony. My job was to deliver the supplies that they needed to keep the place running and producing the mineral deposits that the company had discovered.

It was supposed to be just a routine mission, one I had made at least a dozen times before. The company usually sent one of these resupply ships up every month and I was one of four pilots the company had on the payroll to do it.

The final countdown had begun and I checked my seat harness one last time to make sure it was plenty tight. Launching was always a rough ride and I didn’t want to bounce around too much. Finally, I could feel the vibrations as the big booster rockets ignited and I drew a deep breath...

It took about three minutes to get out of Earth’s atmosphere where the ride smoothed out. Once I had jettisoned the booster engines, things settled and quieted considerably. Another minute and I was officially in space. I was able to put a little slack in the seat harness although I kept it on, just comfortably loose.

After contacting the base and giving them a status update, I settled in my seat for the twelve-hour flight to Lunar Base Apollo, named for the first mission to the moon. We had come a long way in technology since that fateful day in July 1969 when the first humans from Earth landed on the moon.

Back then, it took three days one way to go to the moon using the liquid-fuel technology of the times. But now with nuclear propulsion and better, stronger, and considerably lighter materials in our rockets, we have cut the time down to twelve hours one way.

I would spend another twelve hours on the moon while they unloaded my ship and prepared it for its return trip and then twelve more hours and I would be home again – a thirty-six-hour round trip if everything went smoothly. If.

But this wasn’t going to be a smooth trip. And it would shoot the hell out of that thirty-six-hour timeline.

I had just passed the ring of garbage that surrounded the Earth, the ring of space junk – old satellites that had outlived their usefulness, discarded rocket motors, bits and pieces of broken spacecraft that had accrued from years of launches – and had pointed the nose of my ship toward my target.

However, a couple hours into my flight, a radio call came from base warning me that there had been a pretty good-sized solar flare and that I should expect some “turbulence”, for lack of a better word.

Of course, it isn’t really turbulence because there is no air up in space, but it was going to be bumpy nonetheless. I replied to their broadcast and then cinched my harness down again. I went over my controls and settings quickly while I waited for the flare to hit me.

I had just completed a check of all the settings when I saw it out the window of my ship. Then suddenly I felt a tremendous jolt and everything went black.

When I awoke, I found myself laying in a field of the strangest flowers I had ever seen. They were about a foot high with blue sawtooth-edged leaves at the base and a single almost neon green stalk leading to what looked like a small sunflower, but with pink fur instead of leaves around the center seedpod!

I looked around and saw my ship, or more to the point, what was left of my ship. Which wasn’t much; I must have crash landed pretty damn hard to reduce my ship to the pile of rubble that I was looking at now.

As I looked at my ship, I suddenly realized that the face shield of my helmet was missing! It had shattered when something struck it (or when I struck something, I really didn’t know which).

But yet I was alive, I was breathing, and without any apparent difficulty. The air smelled a little different than I was used to, but that was partly because of the perfume of the strange flowers I was surrounded by. All in all not unpleasant, just different.

I tried to stand to go back to survey the damage to my ship and salvage what I could, but when I stood I got dizzy and fell back on my ass with a thud. So I crawled back to my ship which took a bit of time – I had been thrown about fifty feet or so by the time I came to a stop and I wasn’t moving very fast at the moment!

When I got back to what was left of my ship, I looked at the twisted and burned metal wires and rubble. There was no way I was going anywhere in this. I was stranded, marooned on an unknown planet with no idea where I was or how far away home was.

Not that it would have mattered, I couldn’t have gotten home if I had known! All I could hope was that somehow they knew where I was and would send a rescue craft for me.

I flipped into survival mode and began looking for supplies I would need to keep myself going if and when that day came. I had a loaded craft that was intended for the moon base but now would serve to keep me going instead, that was fortunate.

The back end of the ship was intact enough to make a decent shelter, although I had no idea what the temperature or climatic extremes I would have to face here on Planet X. I looked over the controls of the capsule and something very odd caught my eye. The ship’s flight clock read 06/21/2348! I had only been out for a few hours! It was the very next day!

I had to sit down again at this revelation. I had traveled God only knows how far across space to an unknown planet and done it in less time than it takes to go to the moon!

After the shock of my rapid deviation and crash had worn off, I set about taking stock of my supplies and making an inventory of whatever might be of use here. The one thing I hoped to find was something I could use as a weapon against whatever beasts may be found on this planet. We weren’t in the habit of carrying weapons, I was strictly a commercial cargo driver. So I was looking for a sharply pointed somethingorother I could use to defend myself.

The other problem I had was fire. While I had something I could light a fire with, finding something to burn was going to be difficult. I had cardboard and paper from the boxes and packaging, but I couldn’t find any firewood anywhere. The pallets we used were plastic and there were no trees as far as the eye could see. So fire would be a hard sell. I hoped it didn’t get too cold at night here!

I was busily moving things around and getting myself organized; I didn’t hear anything but my own efforts to move boxes and my voice as I talked to myself. So when I stood up to stretch my back, I was completely unprepared for what I saw. Figures ... dark, humanoid-looking figures standing in the distance ... and they had seen me!

Still, without a weapon, I had no way of defending myself against this group of whatever they were. All I could do was go out to face them and see what would happen next. They might be friendly or fierce, I had no way of knowing. The only thing I did know was that whatever the outcome, it would happen fast – they were already getting closer!

I went out to face my fate and wait for these strange beings. I couldn’t really call them aliens since I was, in fact, the alien here. They approached closer, but were still far enough away that I couldn’t make them out very clearly when they suddenly stopped. A single one of them proceeded to come closer. The creature appeared smaller in stature to me (of little comfort considering the number of them behind it!)

As the creature neared, I saw that it wore something akin to the long hooded overcoats women wore back home years ago. This creature had the hood up and I couldn’t see any features until it got very close. It stopped a short distance as if caught by surprise. It stood there for a moment like it was trying to grasp what I was. Then it was my turn to gasp in surprise. The creature pulled its hood off – it was a woman!

And not just a woman, but a very beautiful woman. I estimated her age at probably twenty or twenty-one Earth years old, around five foot six inches tall, with long beautiful black hair down to her very sexy ass, a set of tits that made my mouth water and the most beautiful ice-blue eyes I’d ever seen. She had full sensuous lips that begged to be kissed and long, lean wrap-around-your-waist-and-die-happy legs. She was stunning and a match for any Earth woman I’d seen in person or in my dreams!

“Are you ... a man?” the woman said. If I hadn’t been so completely bewildered at seeing a woman in front of me, the question would have been hilarious. But as it was I so shocked, I couldn’t even nod my head yes at first!

“Are you a man?” she repeated.

“You can speak English?” I asked her, totally blown away at this turn of events.

“Yes. Now my question,” she said, getting impatient with me.

“Yes. Yes, I am a man. My name is Adam Jennings,” I said.

“I thought so, I have seen pictures of men. I am ... L’natria,” she said.

“Pictures of men?” I asked. What a strange way of putting it!

“Yes. Do you not know where you are, Adam of Jennings?” she asked amazed.

“No, I don’t. And it’s just Adam Jennings,” I said.

She looked behind me and saw the wreckage of my ship. She knew I was not from here. “This is the planet Shatabhisha Galli and you are on the Plains of Honnika, not too far from the City of Kupolinis where we live. Come, Queen Aurquan will want to see you,” she said.

So with little choice, I left the scene of my crash and everything that I had salvaged and followed L’natria. As we walked towards the rest of the group, L’natria tried to tell me about this strange planet.

“L’natria, you asked me if I was a man. What did you mean?” I asked.