Chapter 588

Deep Space – The Alien Mother Ship

... When the engineer had the armored cover hinged back, he crawled inside the shroud and sent the lift down for the Captain. After he had the lift raise him to the opening, the Captain peered inside the shroud to see the engineer on his hands and knees. “But we will have to crawl through that,” he griped.

“If we have a leak, it is always in the absolute worst place it could happen.” The Engineer didn’t bother to say that he seldom did any crawling, but his crew certainly had to on occasion.

“Sir, please pull the hatch closed and seal it fully,” the Engineer respectfully told the Captain.

“I do not see the use...” the Captain began.

“Sorry, Sir, but the airlock will not open unless the armor is sealed,” the Engineer replied as he fought to keep the exasperation from showing in his voice. Since the Engineer had to lead, and there certainly wasn’t enough room to pass, the Captain had little choice but to close and secure the hatch himself.

Finally, he had the hatch sealed properly and turned to crawl in the Engineer’s wake. Somehow, the Captain had thought that it was only a matter of going through one airlock and opening another hatch in the armor, and they would be in the Paladin area. Wrong. To make matters worse, his belt light did little good when it was just pointing under him as they crawled on their hands and knees. However, the Engineer’s light, attached to his headgear, worked perfectly to light his way in the confined space.

Crawling on one’s hands and knees was not the Captain’s forte, and consequently, the Engineer had drawn well ahead as they made their way through the cramped passageway. “Are we not there yet?” the Captain snarled exasperatedly as he finally caught up to the Engineer who was waiting for him at what at first glance seemed to be a wall, but he would soon learn that it was a ninety-degree turn in the pipe armor – straight up.

At the Captain’s string of obscenities, “Remember the schematic, Sir, the Flight Deck takes up decks 31 through 40 in aft section 13 Left (interpreted) because the Paladins’ launch machinery needs a lot of room to operate. We will have to climb through eight decks to reach the intersection.”

“But why did we not bring the lift with us?” the Captain whined as he eyed the ladder that seemed to go up forever.

“It is far too big to bring inside the shroud, Sir. Besides, it is only eight decks,” he returned, reasonably. If there could be anything reasonable about climbing eight decks, the Captain thought.

To the Captain, they seemed to have been climbing forever, with barely enough room to squeeze between the pipes and the curved, now-vertical wall of the armored shroud – the same thing they had been doing, but now they were climbing instead of crawling. The Captain, out of breath, stopped as he braced his feet against the rungs of the ladder to relieve some of the pain in his shoulders. Stopping was a mistake because the Engineer looked back down at him, which meant the light shown down the ladder illuminating not only the Captain, but it also gave a view of just how far up they were. Panic, and then vertigo, struck. Frantically, the Captain grabbed the ladder and hung on with everything he had.

“Sir, do not turn loose,” the Engineer cautioned, unnecessarily. “Just hang on and look up at me.”

The Captain stood frozen as he clung to the built-in ladder while his mind screamed that he was going to die.

“We are almost there,” the Engineer lied. “Just focus on me and keep climbing. No hurry, just one rung after the other. At least there is not any oil – or worse – spraying out of a leak to make the climbing more interesting,” he said all-too-brightly as far as the Captain was concerned.

With him trying to focus on only one thing, the Captain resumed his climb. If I ever get to the top of this ladder, I am going to kill that wimpy little son-of-a-bitch. (Interpreted). Even that thought was interrupted when the Captain remembered that his weapon was not charged and the Engineer was a department head, so he could go armed if he wished. Apparently, he wished, because the Captain had seen a small weapon tucked into the folds of the Engineer’s utility uniform. That just made the Captain madder, which probably helped get his mind off the drop, and in the end, helped him with the climb. Arms and legs trembling from fatigue, he climbed on, now so tired that his anger had temporarily abated.

An eternity later, the shroud turned back to the horizontal, and the Captain was back on his – now sore – knees again.

At least their passing through the airlock between sections was of no consequence. But they had to crawl much farther than the Captain had ever thought he could before now. They passed two access hatches, but the Engineer mumbled something about his (the Captain) not wanting to use those. When he demanded to know why they had to keep crawling, the Engineer reminded him how high they had to climb to get where they were now.

“There is a ladder down, but it is in the open.” Meaning that the ladder was on a wall and not inside a shroud. When the Captain realized what the Engineer meant, he almost pissed on himself.

Finally, the shroud made a turn and the Engineer opened a hatch. The ladder down was only a couple of times their height as they stepped into an auxiliary pump room.

A moment later, they turned a corner and were face to face with a startled Paladin pilot. “Take me to your Commander,” the Captain snarled out.

The Prison Planet

After their little impromptu nap, the four ate a light meal and fed the animals, but it wasn’t long before the trying day took its toll on them all, and they were in bed for the night – minus sex of any definition.

Morales awakened to a crashing sound from the kitchen. Sitting up, he yawned and looked that way only to see three women seemingly frozen in place as they stared back at him.

“I’m sorry,” Christine gushed as she stood with two pans in her hands. From the expression on her face, she had been the one to make the racket.

“How do you feel, Baby?” Jasmine asked, concern in her voice as the three hurried toward him.

“Great,” he returned as he came to his feet to stretch.

“You look great,” she said as she glanced down at the bulge in his shorts.

“I’m sorry I woke you,” Christine said as she took her turn to hug her husband good morning. “I picked up one pan, and the other fell off the shelf. When I tried to grab it, I dropped the pan I had and they landed together, making the absolute most noise possible. Clumsy,” she admonished herself.

“Oh, bullshit, Woman. It’s bound to be way past daylight, anyway. Past time for me to be up. Why didn’t you guys wake me?”

“‘Wake you?’ You almost died yesterday,” Ashley returned as a frown creased her pretty forehead.

“And I would have been dead had it not been for you three. By the way, Baby,” he said as he pulled Jasmine to him, that was some great shooting. And all of you took care of me and kept me from trying to walk back to the cave. We all know that walk would have finished me. According to what Ship told me, any movement with that broadhead where it was, and I would have died. I’m alive because of my wives, and I want you to know that I’ll never forget it.

“Not only do I have three beautiful women for wives, but you make up a perfect team in everything you do. I don’t know why I’m so lucky. And Jas...”

“Yeah, Sweetheart?”

“I didn’t have a clue that ass was in the tree until you shot him out of where he was hiding. How in the hell did you see him?”

“I ... I think it was Lobo. For some reason, I saw him look in that direction and sort of hesitate. When I looked that way, the guy rose up a little bit and fired his crossbow. Darn it. I was a second slow or I would have nailed his ass before he got the shot off.”

“Hell, that was beautiful shooting. I didn’t see him until he was falling with all that snow and crap falling with him. I should have been paying more attention,” he griped. “I know better. Since I was in front of you, had I been watching, I might have seen him in time.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Jasmine ground out. “He wasn’t supposed to be there. He should have been a long way from here. The General said that the AI that was watching over the locators, somehow didn’t advise anyone that one of the locators wasn’t working. As cold as it was, most all of the locators/prisoners were stationary because the prisoners stayed inside, particularly at that time of the morning. All four of us were watching for animals, both on the ground and as with that snow leopard you and Jeff killed, in the trees. None of us was looking for a man concealed in a Ghillie suit in a blind twenty feet off the ground. I just happened to see him as he moved, even then, only because Lobo must have sensed something and looked in that direction.”

“Still,” Morales said, “that was some pretty damn good shooting, and Jeff told me that the troops were very impressed, especially after they saw the video, and that goes for Jeff and the General, too. I’m damn proud of all three of you. I’m alive because of my wives. I just wish that I could tell more people about it. Unfortunately, there’s no one to tell here on 2214.”

The women fussed over him trying to help him dress, until, “Ladies,” he said, chuckling, “I’m fine. Ship healed me – completely. Now I need to go pee.”

They still wouldn’t let him go out by himself. Rather, all three women took their rifles down and went with him.

Back inside, Christine brought him the shake that Ship had said he was to drink this morning.

The wolves were lying in their favorite place when Morales walked over and knelt between them. After putting a hand on each head, he told the wolves how much he appreciated what they had done. Both whined and licked his face.

With breakfast over, the women were still treating him as if he were an invalid, despite how many times he tried to convince them that he was in perfect health. Finally, he grabbed Jasmine, threw her on the bed and dragged her pants and panties off.

“Wait, Baby. Maybe we should put sex off until tomorrow...”

Ignoring her, he began a slow licking of her pussy, which gradually caused her resistance to fade away. With an intake of breath, she exclaimed, “Oh, crap, that feels so gooodddd...” The word turned into a wail as her first orgasm took away coherent thought.

By the time he had left a load in each of them, they had finally stopped treating him as if he were an invalid.

Morales, his women and the wolves had eaten breakfast, the chickens had been fed and the four were sitting around drinking a final cup of coffee when the noise started – lots of noise. The girls looked startled and Morales frowned, but Jasmine just sat back and chuckled as she remembered what Jeff had said. Maybe we won’t have to ask after all, she thought as she heard a sound that she had heard on Earth, of course, as well as on other planets – the sound of snowmobiles, and maybe something else that she could not identify so easily.

“Snowmobiles,” they all said as they started for the door.