Chapter 1

“Your re-test is now complete. Please exit through the door of the testing chamber and proceed to the waiting area. You will find a kiosk that will display your name. Your new CAP score card will be ready momentarily.”

“New.” That was a significant word for Collin as he walked nervously toward the waiting area.

Would his NEW score be enough?

He glanced at his watch, noting his re-test had taken more than the sixty minutes he expected. Was that a good sign?

This was the third time he had taken the CAP test. “Third-time’s a charm,” he thought, letting himself hope just a little.

He spotted his name on one of the kiosks with a white card on the pedestal below. He hesitated for a moment and then picked up the card. Deep breath.

6.9

“Shit”, he said as his hopes were dashed.

“Is there a problem, Collin McIntyre?” the disembodied voice of the testing center AI asked.

“Other than not being a seven or higher?” he asked sarcastically. “No, no problem. Fuck.”

“Collin McIntyre, you have improved you score 0.3 points in your last two tests. For a citizen no longer experiencing the rapid post-puberty changes and advancements, or participating in significant turmoil, this is a remarkable feat. I notice you have declined to volunteer for Confederacy service after each of your tests. Could you explain why?”

Collin sighed. It was hard to hold his anger against a machine. He had held a long conversation with the testing center AI after his first test, making certain he understood the rules and commitments if he volunteered.

“I need to take four people with me. If I can’t raise my score one more stinking decimal point, I won’t go. I’ve made a promise that we will all go, together. They’re counting on me.”

The AI was quiet for a moment. “Your sub-scores for loyalty are truly impressive, but it appears that you are loyal to people, not institutions or ideas.”

“I’m a scientist, or at least training to be one. I can’t be loyal to an idea that may be proven fallacious. Institutions are defined by the people they are comprised of, and that can change too easily. Being loyal to an institution is what leads to mob mentality.”

“Unfortunately,” the AI responded, “the CAP test looks for the ability to be loyal to the Confederacy, among many other things. Perhaps you should consider these areas before your next birthday and possible re-test.”

Collin shrugged. It’s not like he would stop trying. “I’ll give that some consideration,” he muttered as he headed for the door.

He moved on autopilot, walking from the testing center to the metro station, waiting for the train to take him closer to town, then exiting at his stop. His guilty conscience gained weight as he got closer to home.

Cyndi met him just inside the door to the condo, naked as she had taken to being at home, with a look of love and adoration that melted his heart. His sense of failure nearly overwhelmed him at the sight of expectation in her green eyes. His scowl brought a momentary frown to the face. Without needing to share a word, she understood.

She dropped to her knees as he stepped away from the door. Collin scarcely noticed when she reached past him and pushed it closed. A solid thump was followed by the snap of the deadbolt as Cyndi’s hands grasped his belt buckle and pulled him closer even as her fingers undid the clasp and worked quickly to drop his pants and free his cock.

One would think that a naked Asian girl with piercing green eyes right out of a wet-dream pulling your dick out with small, soft hands would send all of the blood in your brain surging to its smaller cousin, and usually, it would. Today was not usual, however.

Cyndi’s tongue snaked out and licked the underside of his cock as she bobbed forward and wrapped her warm, moist lips around the glans before sucking oh-so gently. She was rewarded with the stiffening she sought, and Collin tried to put the disappointment of the morning behind him; to be the man Cyndi believed him to be.

The fact that this gorgeous, intelligent, sexy woman had chosen him was what he needed to focus on, even if it was only for minutes or hours until the others came home.

Cyndi was an excellent fellatrix. She had once told him that there were times, she nearly came just from pleasing him with her mouth. Collin hadn’t really believed her until Sarah confirmed it to him. Sarah, their third unless anyone paid attention to history and learned he was the third person to join the two best friends in bed, loved to get fucked hard, but was more of an enthusiastically ambivalent cock sucker. She would willingly take him in her mouth, especially if he was well coated with Cyndi’s sexy secretions, but seldom finished him there. She thought oral was more of an interlude or prelude to the main event.

Cyndi’s tongue curled around the underside of his cock again, reminding him of where his attention should be. She looked up at him, a smile in her eyes, and held him with just the head of his cock inside her lips. He watched her cheeks indent slightly as she sucked and slowly leaned into him. His cock eventually touched the back of her throat, and he felt the sensation of her swallowing, forcing her gullet to constrict around him, all the time looking up in adoration.

It was too much stimulation, and Collin threw his head back as his balls tightened and he started to cum down her throat. Cyndi’s eyes closed, and he could feel her smile around his cock as she pressed her nose against his skin, forcing his twitching dick deeper.

Collin stroked her head and brushed his fingers across her cheek as she pulled back, swirling her tongue around him and coaxing the last drop from his prick while ensuring he remained rigid. He popped free of her lips, and she stood quickly, grabbing his hand and leading him to the couch where she bent over. She shifted her grip from his hand to his prick as she spread her feet and guided him into her. She might not have cum from giving him head, but the moisture on her thighs told him it was close.

Her warm, wet sheath was tight but pliant as he pushed into her. He grabbed her slim waist and pulled her back against him until her ass was pressed tightly to his thighs. She gave the slightest of wiggles, and then shuddered as her orgasm hit. They had been together long enough that Collin knew this was only the beginning of her pleasure. He adjusted his own feet, pulled his hips back until his dick almost popped free, and then rammed it forward as Cyndi shuddered again.

Collin fell into a rhythm and felt the shudder of Cyndi’s ongoing orgasm every third or fourth thrust. Sarah had told him their girlfriend was a firecracker in the sack, before they had gotten to that point in their weird relationship, but now Collin understood what that really meant. Cyndi seldom had the earth-shattering orgasms other women, including Sarah had. She did however seem to be able to cum forever. One crazy weekend, he and Sarah had tied up their little submissive girlfriend and put her through nearly an hour of her strange continuous orgasm. The girl had trouble standing from sore stomach muscles for two days, but insisted she loved every minute of it.

With the blowjob start, Collin knew he could keep his pace for a fair amount of time, but also knew this was a ‘get your head out of your ass’ fuck from her. Cyndi was naturally submissive but did not have any tolerance for self-pity. The fact she had inserted her be-jeweled butt plug served as a good reminder for him. She promised him her ass, but not until they had been extracted, along with Sarah, Anne, and Lilu. Sarah and Cyndi had set the rules the first time they all slept together. Sarah refused to leave her older sister behind, and Cyndi felt the same way about her mother. They had agreed to be his concubines, but insisted he work hard to raise his score enough that they could all go. It had been an optimistic plan. The tenth of a point increase a year ago, lifting him from 6.6 to 6.7 had told them it was possible. Rising to 6.9 this year made it feel achievable. He just needed to keep with his and the girls’ program.

Collin pulled back fully, grabbed Cyndi and flipped her over, arching her back over the arm of the couch. He pushed into her, lifting her lithe legs to rest her ankles on his shoulders while holding her hips on the armrest and fucking into her. He knew this was not the most comfortable position for her, but also knew part of her wanted him to not care about her pleasure. He thrust, as his fingers moved to grip her thighs. The constriction of her vaginal muscles, combined with the unnatural bend of her body provided more stimulation. She squeezed her eyes shut, either in pleasure or pain, and he thrust again savagely. She shuddered, more than before, and he knew what was coming. She seldom had ‘normal’ orgasms, but when she did, they were doozies. If he wanted to get off a second time, he needed to be quick about it.

Thinking about their belief in him, and their love for him was enough to make him refocus his efforts.

He thrust and thrust again as he watched her stomach muscles tense. She twisted on the couch and one hand reached to pull her small brown nipples, and he knew she was close. His hand slipped down as he felt his own balls tightening. With a flick of his wrist, he lightly spanked her pussy, pulsing her clit as his balls boiled into her. She thrashed on the couch, crying out soundlessly as the spasms of her orgasm overcame her. She pushed him back, forcing his dick from her and being rewarded with a spurt of hot cum across the small strip of black hair above her pussy.

Collin breathed deeply as she continued to thrash. One foot fell from his shoulder, splaying her pussy wide, as a storm of shudders rippled across her tight stomach. Collin smiled at her and then spanked her pussy lightly once more, sending her over the edge once again.

Collin stepped back, freeing one foot from his pants and waiting for Cyndi to come down. Experience told him any additional stimulation would send her into another paroxysm of bliss. The smile on her face was almost as rewarding as the two orgasms.

He let her come to her senses before stepping in front of the couch. She smiled up at him before hurrying to her knees and taking him in her mouth again, this time to lick him clean rather than arouse him again.

“Thank you, master,” she said once her task was finished.

“Thank you, pet,” Collin responded. He wasn’t any happier about his re-test, but he had a renewed perspective on why he needed to redouble his efforts. Cyndi was only part of the reward awaiting him. He pulled his pants back up and buckled his belt before glancing at the clock.

“I need to head to the dojo and then campus for my colloquium,” he said. The dojo had been part of their plan to make him more physical and aggressive. Aikido twice a week combined with an evening shooting at a local gun club were now part of his regular routine. The fact that he was still able to make sufficient progress on his doctorate while keeping two girlfriends interested and entertained still amazed him.

“Sarah has a late shift,” Cyndi informed him. “Lilu will have dinner ready when you get home. Anne is working a case but should be home for dinner.”

Cyndi was updating him on the household, letting him know who should be where, when. It was all part of their plan. If he had scored a decimal higher, they would have all gone out. While he was not a volunteer yet, they knew a pick-up was possible. With his current score, Cyndi was letting him know when everyone would be home.

Collin nodded and went to the closet and grabbed his bag. His Gi was there, clean and neatly folded by either Cyndi or Sarah. The leather satchel for his tablet and papers was there as well. He collected his things and gave Cyndi a quick kiss before heading out the door.

The walk to the dojo helped him regain some focus. The class honed his attention even more while working his body as well. He was showered and pleasantly tired by the time he settled into the conference room on campus and pulled out the papers the class had submitted at the end of the prior session. He was not officially the instructor of the course since it was a colloquium of grad students and full professors. He was the senior member of the grad students, and his advisor expected him to read and critique the other student’s papers. He also pulled notes from the collected papers to set up the discussion for each following week.

Last class, they had been discussing biological adaptations and wandered into a discussion of what sort of adaptation could have been responsible for the rise of the Sa’arm. In the nearly five years since humankind had learned of the alien Confederacy and the threat of the Sa’arm, Collin had given little thought to the biological origins of the threatening species. When they had first been announced, he was mid-way through college, and more interested in getting laid and graduating. He refused to abandon his education when he first took his CAP test and scored well enough to volunteer. Then, he met two fascinating women, and if he was honest with himself, he wanted them to go with him before committing to a life as possible cannon fodder.

Since then, he had learned both more and less, than one would expect. The Confederacy was obviously scared of not just the Sa’arm, but also of mankind. Their pathological pacifism could be understood in a rational sense but made no sense from a biological adaptation perspective. Each species in the Confederacy had to develop, survive, and evolve to be able to combat predators in their own environments. They then rose to a state of spacefaring capability. It seemed that they all developed some sort of artificial intelligence capabilities to interact with other species, and at some point, concluded that violence was so abhorrent that it was better to go extinct than to kill another sentient being. The chances of one species overcoming their biological drives, let alone hundreds of species, was nearly inconceivable.

That had been the starting point of the colloquium’s meeting two weeks ago. The three-hour discussion, and sometimes debate, had led to the conclusion that the AIs had likely been peacemakers and negotiators amongst races that could still compete for resources when they first emerged on the interstellar playing field. Since AIs were believed to be much more malleable in thought, without the overriding drives of biology, the group had concluded that the AIs were the binding agent of the Confederacy, and it was their non-violent programming that slowly leached away the competitive drive of the member species. Combined with a post-scarcity economy from replication technology, even competition through trade was virtually eliminated.

Once the academics reached that conclusion, their focus had shifted to the Sa’arm and what could possibly explain their expansive behavior. Of course, data on the Sa’arm was as scarce as details on the Confederacy races, at least when it came to biological details. Certainly, there were rumors and some news stories filtering down from on high, but there was very little in terms of facts for the group to discuss. There were no biological samples on Earth that could be analyzed. There were no captives that could be examined. There was some imagery of individual Sa’arm, but no synopsis of their reproductive habits, nothing about their base biology, and just very little overall to go on.

Collin pulled out his tablet and began sketching the opening questions for today’s session. One, Sa’arm appear to be omnivores, ingesting any organic matter for sustenance. What can we determine about their biology based on this fact? Two, Sa’arm react collectively to individual stimuli, so how do they communicate, and what environment would give rise to such a communication mechanism? Three, the Confederacy indicates the Sa’arm have greatly inferior technology, but are great imitators, requiring extreme care being given to not allow advanced tech to be captured by the Sa’arm. There were earthborn biological examples of species using other species tools or habitats, but not gaining knowledge like the Sa’arm did. How could such thinking evolve? Four, the Sa’arm consume all resources on a planet and then expand to other systems, much like a plague of locust, a virus, or bacterium. What would be a biological imperative driving such behavior to evolve and how could they sustain themselves as a species on their home world?

Collin paused and read his last question again. A plague, which the Sa’arm were for the galaxy, would burn itself out when it could not find suitable hosts to spread. The Sa’arm don’t appear to be imaginative thinkers, since they don’t create, only copy. How could they make the jump to another system before consuming all the resources of their home world?

“They had to be engineered,” Collin said excitedly.

“What are you talking about?” Professor Reading asked. The professor was his faculty and dissertation advisor. This was technically his symposium.

Collin looked around realizing everyone had arrived while he was thinking. Rather than deferring, Collin jumped in with both feet.

“The Sa’arm had to be an engineered species. There is no biological evolutionary path to give them the species traits they reportedly demonstrate.” He jumped up and went to one of the antique chalkboards in the conference room and scribbled quickly.

“If H1 is their world of origin, and they were the dominant species, they would have expanded until they consumed all of their resources, and then died off, just like a virus that kills too quickly.” He drew a one in a circle by that point.

“They may have evolved to use tools, but they have shown no tendencies to create, so how did they first achieve space travel? Given their rate of expansion, from what the Confederacy has shared anyway, they would have consumed their biosphere before they could create much of anything beyond stone age tooling.”

“Maybe they rose up after some other local species collapsed,” Carrie Haddington said. “They mimic and copy technology, so maybe that’s how they got off planet.

“Do we have any proof a civilization can reach spaceflight, then die off, but leave sufficient resources for another, younger civilization to rise?” Professor Reading asked.

“There are stories from conversations with some AIs that it’s not uncommon for races to reach spaceflight and then die back,” one student said. “Isn’t it a jump to assume there would not be sufficient resources for a second civilization to rise?”

The debate was fully engaged by the time a fourth person spoke up. The three-hour session flew by, papers forgotten as they applied all their critical thinking to how a species as the Sa’arm were described could possibly start expanding across the galaxy. Unfortunately, it was mostly speculation unsupported by solid facts.

“So,” Professor Reading said at the end of the discussion, “We can see what is an improbable species, but we know it exists. For the next session, each of you needs to write a paper, supported by terrestrial biological facts, on how one of this species’ traits could have evolved. Explain what environmental conditions would elicit such an evolutionary change in a population. At least one of you should address what might have triggered a punctuated equilibrium type event to trigger rapid branching speciation. Collin, you, and only you, may assume your original premise that the Sa’arm were forcibly evolved or engineered. Your task will be to extrapolate what the engineers were trying to accomplish given what we know about the Sa’arm. Since we have a break next week, I will expect complete papers the week after, supporting your individual thesis.”

As everyone headed out of the room, Collin moved around the room photographing notes on the chalkboards with his tablet’s camera. He had recorded the session, as was his practice, and wondered how much clean-up he would need to do on the transcript.

Collin thought about what, besides war, a creator species would be contemplating when creating such a voracious species as the Sa’arm. The idea kept his mind occupied for the walk across campus and then five blocks through the city to home.

He was surprised to see Anne in the lobby, collecting the day’s mail, as he entered the condo building.

“Hey there, you’re home early,” Collin said with a smile. Anne had a beautiful face. She had strong cheekbones and a delicate nose with full, red lips. Her hair was blonde, almost always worn just long enough to be easily swept over her left ear. Her eyes were a beautiful blue but held no humor or warmth.

Anne nodded. “We solved a case and called it a day. Bosses are happy, cops are happy, insurance company is happy, so why not take all that happiness home and have a drink?” Anne was an investigator for the Fire Department. She worked on lots of different types of cases, from safety inspections to arson investigations, but was passionate about arson. After being severely burned saving Sarah from her father’s pyromania, Collin could understand her hatred for fire starters. Collin had talked to her enough to know some of the scars she carried were not just on her skin.

They rode up the elevator together, knowing each other well enough to not engage in idle chit-chat. Anne would tell you when she had something to say and assumed you would give her the same courtesy. People thought she was abrupt or even unpleasant. Collin knew her to be thoughtful and considerate. She just didn’t feel the need to unburden herself of those thoughts.

Collin unlocked and opened the door, expecting Cyndi to be waiting. Instead, he saw Lilu in the kitchen, wearing only her apron. When they had all moved into Lilu’s condo, they had acted as roommates and friends. The three-bedroom place was just large enough for the five of them, since Cyndi, Sarah, and Collin shared the master bedroom, at Lilu’s insistence.

Over the course of the first six months of cohabitation, Cyndi had slowly convinced Sarah that if they were going to be Collin’s concubines, they needed to get ready for that life. The first time Lilu saw her daughter naked, kneeling at the door waiting for Collin, she had asked why. Once she heard the answer, she simply nodded and took off her own skirt and blouse. She did not rush to the door and kneel when Collin came in, but she was not ashamed of her body. She was as petite as her daughter, with just a few more curves, and a much fuller bush. She refused to sleep with him until they were extracted but did not look down on her daughter’s activities. Collin knew Lilu would be the perfect mother whenever they ended up on a colony.