Chapter 1

When Sylvia Summers arrived at the automated outpost, she could instantly see the problems that lay ahead of her. The machines looked shot. Drones designed to complete tasks stuck with their tasks, despite being nowhere near their station. Storage facilities, while functional, were leaking. She could see a couple sparks here and there. “I really fucked up badly, didn’t I?” was all she could think.

Here on the colonial planet of Cwmbran (of course the planet had to be colonized by the Welsh, she muttered), Sylvia was on a special assignment from Omni-Tron and the Federation. The outposts ringing Colwyn Llyn were not functioning properly. She needed to fly reconnaissance, and examine and repair the outposts. Investigate possible cases of sabotage if necessary. A simple enough assignment.

Then she got to the planet, and was dismayed. Colwyn Llyn was not some bay like it was on Earth but an inland sea the size of China. There were quite a few villages surrounding the sea, but little in the way of landmasses in it save a relatively small island in the northwest called Aewyr Lelog. And there were dozens of outposts to contend with.

This was going to be a long mission.

Of course, Sylvia hadn’t anyone to blame but herself. Not two weeks before, the Federation caught her in what others would consider a compromised position involving the flora on Planet Z95. Normally, her actions would have resulted in a dismissal and possibly jail time, but Sylvia was one of the best pilots out there. So they decided to send her to this backwater colonial planet to “clear her head.” Even if her curiosity and desire got the better of her, any subsequent actions would likely have minimal impact to operations.

Besides, as far as Omni-Tron knew, Sylvia was not the type to fuck robots.

It wasn’t until about the third outpost when she got extremely bored.

The process was rather simple: Fly her scouting ship, which also contained repair equipment, to each outpost, running diagnostics while in the air. Once landed, identify the problematic equipment and fix either manually or automatically with the help of repair drones. Sometimes she had to get her hands dirty to fix something the drones didn’t have the means to do. Then, run a full diagnostic, repeating the process again if there were further problems until everything gave a green light. If she was lucky, it would take no more than the entire day to complete. Most of the time, she was there a few days.

As it soon became evident, there was no sabotage at all, but corporate incompetence of the highest order. Omni-Tron “scored” Cwmbran in a trade deal that also included what was now one of its most productive mining planets. It had barely shown any interest in the planet, as early observations found very little evidence of the resources they specialized in. They plopped their observer outposts around Colwyn Llyn in less than a week, a quarter of the time it usually took for a resource exploration mission to set up, at the lowest possible cost. Every possible corner had been cut, as Sylvia saw: Bad electrical connections, faulty drone subroutines to minimize programming, necessary equipment being idle since installation. In some cases, the outpost was sending probes and drones in the opposite direction.

It was an exercise in tedium. Every day, Sylvia would wake, eat from supplies she got from villagers she traded with, then spend several hours working on an outpost, cursing whenever some obvious mistake showed up and needed fixing. Then, she’d sleep in her bunk, only to get up the next morning and repeat the process.

Technically, she was to work six days a week on this, but she was given no deadline, nor was her time being tracked. Her only major provision was that she was to stay on the planet until she finished (which could take a few months, at least) or until she received a recall order. Sylvia rightly suspected Omni-Tron wanted to keep her occupied until they could smooth over her “incident.”

With no real company – the drones she worked with had very limited functions outside their parameters, and she wasn’t allowed to bring anyone with her on this trip – most nights ended with her frustratingly fingering herself or using a toy or two she brought, thinking about all her prior partners. Orgasm wasn’t a guarantee, since she was usually tired.

On her day off sometime later, after a resupply and trade at a village a couple kilometers from shore, she went to the pub to chat with the locals. One of her questions: Why wasn’t there anyone near Colwyn Llyn?

The male villagers merely pointed out that Omni-Tron, who owned Cwmbran, didn’t really want people exploring that area until they could confirm what resources were in the sea. They weren’t against villagers visiting or swimming, but they wanted contact kept to a minimum.

Villagers had to go through ridiculous bureaucratic processes just to even fish, and when the yields weren’t particularly great, they decided to leave the sea alone. They were aware of some sentient, discerning aliens living underwater. But after initial contact, they kind of left each other alone, since there was little to gain from interaction.

However, the women in the village, seeing her, decided to corral her over and gossip. They asked why she was on the planet. Explaining what happened on Z95 to them after much cajoling, they merely laughed. Seeing Sylvia as someone they could relate to from the vast reaches of space, they started sharing their own sexual escapades, both human and not.

Sylvia was stunned at first: Colonists acting all pervy like it was nothing? That’s unusual. They were usually either uptight or extremely political. Still, she was grateful to finally find some comfort among these girls, seeing them as libertine as she was. She shared a few more tales of her own, including her first experience with her tutor Mr. Taylor as well as visiting her beloved Xilo’s homeworld, with lusty laughs and blushing all around.

Finally, one of them asked Sylvia, “Have you taken a swim in the sea?”

Sylvia responded, “Umm, no. Haven’t felt a need to. Why do you ask?”

The women sat there, stunned. Then they all said in hushed tones, “You have to take a swim while you’re here! It’s amazing!” They all giggled. “Best experience you’ll have. The water’s great!”

Sylvia was suspicious. Swimming in the sea? The last couple outposts, she had seen nobody taking a swim in Colwyn Llyn. Though she never spoke with the villagers until now, it seemed off. In any case, they were implying something “fun,” but it felt like a trap. “What do you mean? None of you brought this up before. Why now?” Her voice took the sternness it had with the men.

“Oh we just thought...” said Erin, one of the women close to her age. “We just thought you already did. It’s kind of our secret bond here. We don’t talk about it, we just ... know.” She paused. “It’s why we can talk to you like this.”

“And you won’t say what it is?”

“It’s a surprise!” Cerys, one of the younger ones, said. “ ... Besides, we don’t want the men to know, or they’ll lock us up in our houses!” They all laughed.

Sylvia smirked. “Now, I want to believe you ... but how do I know you’re not tricking me and sending me someplace dangerous because you fear I’m gonna take away your men?”

“Because we wouldn’t be talking to you if you were a threat,” said Tegan, one of the more middle-aged women. “And I mean, the way you talk to us and how you approached our men ... I don’t think you want a human guy in your life!” Everyone lost it at that point.

Sylvia joined in on the hysterical laughter. “You got me there,” she said with a coy smile.

A few days later, Sylvia woke with a start. Her dreams had gotten more sexual in recent days, even before she met the villagers. She noticed her pussy dripping on more than one occasion, and was frustrated that she couldn’t quite get off the way she wanted. Sometimes she was able to cum quickly, but sometimes her frustrations overwhelmed her, making it hard to relax. Either way, these orgasms felt ... meh. Granted, she wasn’t looking for something mind-shattering, but still: They were unsatisfying.

Then again, she didn’t even have time to really think about it: Her alarm indicated she had to get up. She hoped to finish the outpost in the morning so that she could get to the next outpost before the end of the day.

A couple hours later, all the repairs were essentially done. The outpost, with the shore in reach, wasn’t spic and span shiny. But it functioned as originally intended, and that was all that mattered.

“Command, Ms. Summers?” The lead repair drone requested.

“Confirm status of the generators and communications array,” she responded matter-of-factly.

“Power generation at 98% optimal level. Communications array has a direct line to OMSAT-3 at GEO point 76 by 23.”

“And the main CPU?”

“Fully booted, no runtimes currently active.”

Sylvia nodded. Her job was done here. Then she turned to face the sea. Consequently, she remembered that her pussy still ached, despite her best efforts to focus on her work, no thanks to her suit pressing hard against it. She then thought about what the girls had said at the village. Playing back that entire conversation in her head only heightened her arousal even more, giving off some further discomfort...

She could just ignore it, go back to work, and play with herself later. But she was given a lot of latitude with this mission, because it wasn’t really one. The last time her need was this strong was two years ago, when she abstained from sex for a few weeks. Sylvia could afford to fuck around.

“Request to start diagnostic for outpost 1-45d, Ms. Summers,” the drone said.

“Request denied,” Sylvia said.

“Command?”

Sylvia felt a little hesitance before another pang of desire came from her crotch. “Power down outpost 1-45d.”

“Powering down outpost 1-45d.” The two witnessed the system go quiet, leaving only the wind sweeping through the grass.

Sylvia then gave her next command: “Return to ship, shut off communicators. Enter standby mode until further notice.”

“Objection,” the drone said, “While command is possible to execute, such an action completely severs communication, which is outside Omni-Tron standard operating procedure.”

The thought of breaking rules gave Sylvia a bit of a thrill. But she also knew this drone would persist, and had a clever trick. She asked, “Has Omni-Tron fully followed rules and SOP in regards to this mission?”

“Confirming ... No it has not. Several breaches evident on Omni-Tron’s side via communication.” The company hadn’t spoken to her since she arrived.

“Then are we operating outside of SOP and policy, correct?”

“Yes, though mission remains uncompromised.”

“It will remain so with this order.”

The drone processed this. “Understood. Submit time for standby mode.”

“What’s the maximum time?”

“72 hours.”

Sylvia gave it some thought. Her grin turned a little mischievous. “Set to 72 hours or by my command, whichever comes first.” If she really wanted to, she had the override that would ignore the time limit, but she wasn’t sure she needed it. Still, a little extra time wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

“Standby and silence mode set. Any further commands?”

“None.” Sylvia said with a smile and a bit of excitement. “Execute.”

“Returning to ship to enter standby mode with full silence.” The drone turned and moved toward the ship with the rest of the drones. “Good day, Ms. Summers.”

Sylvia waited a few minutes, knowing standby mode took a little bit of time to complete for these drones. Once she stood around long enough – certain that they were off and that Omni-Tron now had no way of tracking her – she turned and walked toward Colwyn Llyn.

It was time for a swim.

Colwyn Llyn, by Earth standards, was already enough of an anomaly. The size of the inland sea surpassed the Black and Mediterranean Seas combined, almost doubling them. But that wasn’t the only strange feature. For one: It was, by all accounts, fresh water, with salinity far below the threshold. There were various minerals in the water itself, but nothing you wouldn’t see in mineral water sold in the colonies or outposts. Still, the very principle of that made things interesting.

The other distinct feature of Colwyn Llyn was its temperature. At the surface, the temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius. This would’ve indicated a presence of a massive hot spring. But probe and outpost readings found that not to be the case: Temperatures underwater maxed out around 50 degrees, well within human levels of tolerance. This suggested some form of thermal radiation effect, but initial studies were inconclusive. Even if there was some utility to glean from this, Cwmbran was so far away from even a minor trade route that Omni-Tron felt any expense on the planet wouldn’t be worth it.

Of course, none of this mattered to Sylvia when she arrived at the beach. All she knew was that it was hot at the shore – an effect of such warm water nearby – and she felt hot on the inside.

Sylvia’s mission outfit was a specialized skintight catsuit. Designed partly by Juli, a friend from her Academy days and occasional partner-in-crime for more salacious fun, it utilized cultures from a special plant from Bahar 2 to create a morphic fit at the cellular level. It felt like a second skin, the way it pressed against her flesh. She regularly adjusted the thickness of the “fabric” for various purposes, but she avoided the lowest setting to avoid too much attention. It was for the best anyway: Her preferred outfit for solo missions – a nanomachine-produced strapless bra and C-string that she could manifest and disintegrate at will, plus ankle-strap heels – wouldn’t have worked in such a “hands-on” situation.

The suit served its purpose well. However, it became an issue on two grounds: It didn’t absorb and dissipate sweat all that well, and the close bond of the “fabric” only made her inevitable moments of arousal more prominent. When Sylvia woke up that morning, she was determined to finish the outpost and move on. But every leg and thigh movement brushed against her pussy, making it sopping wet by the time she finished. There were moments as she walked toward the shore where she just wanted to rip off her suit, lay on the ground, and let her fingers do the talking. That she could control herself for as long as she did was a testament to her restraint.

Now that Sylvia was on the beach, she didn’t need the suit. Her local tracker confirmed no humans within a kilometer of where she was, so she could do what she wanted. She could be herself; the same self that put her on this planet in the first place.

Sylvia pulled down the zipper to the bottom, eliciting a moan as the warm air brushed against her skin. She slowly peeled off her suit, imagining she was a banana revealing her delicious fruit, or a stripper putting on a coy act. Her arousal deepened. While she honestly would have preferred that nobody saw her like this today, the thrill of being caught, of being watched, made her body hot to the touch.

Pulling away her suit, letting her glistening pussy taste the morning sun and comfortably warm air, dirty thoughts flooded her mind. In doing so, she considered how her life could’ve been different. Sure, she loved her career. Flying throughout the galaxy, tinkering with ships big and small, seeing the stars her mother could never have reached. None of this she would’ve traded for anything. But there’s always been part of her that desired something ... naughtier. Even now, despite understanding what her mother had put her through, she sometimes wistfully thought of following in her footsteps. More than once, she would pass by an alien strip club, sex club, or brothel, and the temptation would rise up to just stop, turn, walk in there, and “apply” for a job. Not for the pay, not for the glamor. No, what she wanted from it was far more raw and instinctual: A desire to become something she wasn’t ... but wanted to be. Those thoughts surged for a moment, then dissipated as she returned to reality, feeling slightly more aroused for the effort. Much like she was now as she took off of the last bit of her suit.

Sylvia smiled. She enjoyed this state, much as she tried to conceal it. Perhaps she was turning out like her mother in some ways after all.

Finally naked, Sylvia stepped onto the warm red sand and began walking toward the shore. She hadn’t come to love the beach until she joined the Academy, on the part of her mother cloistering her. The beaches on most Omni-Tron planets were often timid affairs, and those that weren’t usually shut down quickly. She had heard rumors of wild beaches on some planets, particularly where aliens had greater jurisdiction. But even so, it had never been the biggest priority for her when it came to leisure time or vacations.

Still, it was nice being here, not only because she was extremely horny. All alone, completely naked – no jewelry, no accessories, no equipment, no communications, nothing – and not a single human soul as far as the eye could see. It was just Sylvia taking a fun little swim ... her and her dirty thoughts.

When Sylvia’s feet touched the water, she felt a pleasant shock that gave her goosebumps all over her bare flesh. She knew the water would be warm, but this was like stepping into a bath, or a mild hot spring. After adjusting for this fact, she went in further, enjoying the hot water as more of her body went underneath. It was a slow but relaxing process.

Eventually, the waves graced her engorged pussy, mixing her juices with the lake. The moan she uttered was one of complete joy. Sylvia hadn’t touched herself even once that day, so the feeling of something else feeling her up was more satisfying. She allowed the gentle waves to caress the folds of her vulva and tip of her clit – shuddering just a little each time – before continuing onward.

As the water massaged her breasts, Sylvia stopped walking and began swimming, submerging herself slowly before resurfacing. The liquid felt different, unlike the couple hot springs she’s been in. She couldn’t tell if it felt thicker or not, but it definitely seemed like it was caressing her, fondling her in certain ways. At the very least she enjoyed it. She could see why the girls in the village were so into this.

Sylvia swam out a considerable distance. While she was no athlete – her curves were something she took great care managing, and that meant not exercising too much – she still could swim a decent expanse from shore and not be worried about not making it back. She stopped at a spot and just relaxed her movements. Soon enough, she felt she would just fool around, going underwater while fingering herself, getting herself off with relative ease. She was in the right state of mind for it, and hadn’t felt this relaxed since she had arrived at Cwmbran. The mood was perfect. Sylvia smiled as she drifted away, both physically and mentally.

About 20 feet below, a creature observed.

Stirred from 12 feet deep by an unknown figure swimming at the surface of the water, the creature followed, trying to determine its intent. Utilizing the sands in a unique manner, it drilled across the sea floor, making sure the alien it was observing stayed within range.

While of limited intelligence, the creature could make rational decisions on key matters, such as what to do with this figure. However, it first had to identify the alien. The creature lacked any ocular sense, instead relying on bioelectric currents to track living beings. This became difficult when the being is in constant motion.

Eventually, the figure above stopped, and the creature performed a full assessment. It was what its master called a “human,” which had only two genders (unusual). Judging by the way the bioelectric current flowed through the body, it determined it was one of the “female” genders. By reading where the currents ended, it didn’t recognize this particular female, which presented some concern.

However, after a time, the creature assessed the female not to be a complete threat, and understood it probably sought processing, like other females of its kind before it. Still, there were some discrepancies that didn’t seem right. For one, the female provided a clear picture of the bioelectricity its body produced, which was unusual. There are usually some coverings on the being that partially obscure this, though they were removed during processing.

Secondly, the bioelectric activity this particular female produced was extremely high ... even higher than some of the others induced during processing. It had no understanding of the alien’s biology, and those levels weren’t something it was used to. It feared that messing with this particular alien would be an issue.

Still, there were rules to this, and it relied on them. They hadn’t failed it so far. Properly handling this female wouldn’t take too much effort if the creature trusted the process. And so it approached the alien ... albeit with caution.