Prelude

Mike looked out one of the viewing plates down at the Earth below. New Hilo orbited above the beautiful Hawaiian Islands. It was a way station for space travel. Airships, designed to travel through the dense atmosphere of Earth rose up from Hawaii and docked, transferred their cargo to the deep space ships which would travel to the Martian colonies or the mining companies in the Asteroid belt. Those great ships, not designed to enter the heavy atmosphere of Earth, would trade their cargo with the sleek craft designed to travel through the heavy atmosphere with its friction and take the mined ore down to the surface for processing. Half of New Hilo was the spaceport for the Western Federation's spaceships. There were always plenty of sailors wandering around the station, looking for available girls. There was quite a traffic in girls, locals and tourists, coming up from Hawaii for a couple days to see if they could meet a guy, for fun or sometimes for more.

Mike sold time shares to the tourists. He hated the job since he was a trained ship's master and only wanted to run the ships to and from the colonies. But the colony corporations all wanted former military pilots now. In an effort to still run ships he had signed on with Universal Time Shares. At least he got to run the yahoos out to the time shares once in a while. The rest of the time he was a sweet-talking liar, um, salesman. He would give them the old line about time shares on Mars, the colonies, New Hilo and New Aberdeen which orbited above Scotland, also held in place by the gravity drive.

He hated the job because he knew the economics of the industry. It was a scam. It would be cheaper to just pay for a vacation every year rather than buy the shares. For some people it just seemed easier to come up with a monthly payment than one big one every year. It was a Ponzi scheme, sort of like the Government retirement program the socialists had put in. You had to keep getting new fools to pay into it or it would collapse of its own weight. Mike shrugged; at least it was a living, as he wandered off to work.

He was scheduled to show several families the transport ship which would take them out to the 'paradise' on Mars. Imagine living on another planet. The adventure of a lifetime for your kids. Then bring them back in two weeks if they purchased the time share. This time would be just a half hour journey out a hundred miles and back, to see a view of Earth from 'deep space.' The parents were in the last few minutes of the required safety briefing. There were about 10 kids; funny, all girls Mike noted. He opened the pressure doors and the girls all trooped in. It was funny to watch as the girls walked in and almost tripped. The station maintained Earth standard gravity while the ship was held at .8 of Earth's surface gravity. Mike shook his head and followed. He told the girls to find seats, which they did noisily.

Out the view port, Mike saw the skin of the station begin to glow; alarms went off in the ship. The station was continuing to glow in more and more places. Suddenly, a wall section of the station failed and the internal atmosphere blew out through the molten metal and into space. Mike could see bodies, furniture, anything not strapped down blown into the void of space. He knew that the station had automated pressure walls which would have closed so that a failure in any one area wouldn't kill the whole station. At the same time, the ship's pressure door closed automatically because of the pressure drop in the station, the emergency explosive bolts fired sending the ship off away from New Hilo. Another section of the station failed. Wondering what the hell was happening; Mike sprinted down the main corridor to the flight deck. He hopped into the nav chair and engaged the engine to back away from the sudden chaos that was New Hilo.

Mike saw one of the military cruisers lifting away from New Hilo. Its skin glowed in three places before suddenly blowing up. It was still close to the station when it blew up. It caused another cruiser still attached to the station to blow up. The power of the explosions knocked the gravity drive out of commision and the whole structure out of kilter. It wobbled wildly, and without the gravity drive holding it in place, began careening down into a fast decaying orbit. It was lucky that in the vacuum of space the explosions couldn't be transmitted like it would on Earth but there were still thousands of small pieces being blown out into the surrounding space and any one of them could cause a serious problem. Mike thought it best not to just be sitting still near the place where so much bad was happening and followed the station but in a higher orbit. In just minutes Mike watched it disappear. He turned on the tracking camera and watched it descend faster and faster as the orbit got shorter. The girls had followed him down the main corridor and were crowded into the flight deck avidly watching the screens

He followed the station on the main screen above his station. By the time they were over Africa, it began to hit the upper atmosphere. That in turn slowed it significantly and dropped it into the thicker air below. Like a giant meteor it began to glow and pieces began to fall off it like a sparkler, glowing bits burning up in the atmosphere. The station had never been designed for reentry. Forty miles up the whole station, along with the remaining attached ships, came apart like a bomb.

He heard a scream behind him, causing him to turn around and remember the girls in his ship. He had been mesmerized watching with horror. One of the older girls realized what she was watching and had cried out, "They're dead."

Mike switched off the screen. What should he do? The radio was full of chatter. He turned to the emergency channel 121.5. The Federation was under attack. All ships were warned to move away from Earth and not to try to enter the atmosphere.

That settled that. Mike turned on the auto navigator and put in the coordinates of the company's main base on Mars. On autopilot, the ship began boosting, their speed gathering faster and faster as they climbed away from the gravity of Earth and began to accelerate out into the solar system.

A Ship of Girls

As they moved out away from Earth, Mike looked back to the crowded flight deck. He had nine young women on the ship. They was plenty of room since their parents were about to join the ship when the whole thing blew up, literally. Space ships tended to be quite roomy. Unlike air ships or water ships, there is no drag in space. Mass matters and most of the interior was lightweight composites. Empty space for people has no mass so there was plenty of room and cabins were large and roomy. The exception was the flight deck in the prow, kept small so that two or even one person could run the ship

He scanned their faces and saw the fear. The ship was moving now, picking up speed on course to Mars. They were well away from any chance of being seen from Earth, at least by potential weapons and moving in a weird elliptical orbit to get on course for Mars, currently on the other side of the sun. There was little danger.

Mike kept the radio receivers turned towards Earth. The news started coming in; disjointed, episodic, overblown. But even so, Mike realized that the shit had hit the fan. The Chinese Confederation, which over the last 50 years had managed to fashion Pan-Asia, from Siberia to Australia, under its political control, had finally decided that control of space shouldn't be the monopoly of the Western Federation. News from China was blaming the West because the Confederation had been forced into the confrontation. So far nothing on Earth had been hit except a few Space Watch stations, mostly in remote areas or mountain tops. Neither side wanted to start destroying cities. The Chinese population was concentrated in the cities. They would lose billions. Of course, they had the billions to lose. But would the dynasty survive the murder of billions?

The West founded on the twin pillars of Greek Humanistic Rationalism and Semitic Mysticism believed that Human life was paramount and would do almost anything to prevent such slaughter. On Earth, it was a strategic stalemate, neither side ready for suicide.

Mike assessed the situation. He made sure the auto navigation computer was working well. First, he checked his passenger roster. By age he was able to eliminate the parents. That left nine names ages seventeen to twelve. He turned his chair to the nine girls. "Ladies, if you would accompany me to the galley and game room." The galley also served as the entertainment and game room.

They followed him down the passageway and sat haphazardly around in the largest area in the ship. "Ladies. I presume you have all guessed what happened."

One girl, now sitting next to the one who screamed, asked, "Are they really dead?"

"It is possible someone got out on a smaller ship like we did. But the rest of the station came apart and exploded on reentry," Mike said.

There were several gasps followed by tears. He had no idea what to do now. One girl said, "I told you so," which brought more tears.

Mike stood up, "Ladies. Ladies." Trying to get their attention. "We're on our way to Mars."

"MARS?!?"

"Excuse me, but someone was shooting and that seemed best to get out of the danger area." he said defensively. "We have cabins for transport of people all the way to Titan. There is plenty of food and power. Hopefully, this whole thing will blow over soon and we'll get home. From the radio it appears that the confrontation was limited to space. There were no attacks on cities on Earth. Maybe cooler heads will prevail. But for now we can't reenter Earth's orbit without risking getting shot at. Until then, this is a ship at space. I'm the Captain and you'll do what I tell you to do. I hate to sound harsh but that is what needs to happen. I don't want to toss any of you out the door. It a long drift back to Earth."

There was a stunned silence. Mike knew he was hitting them hard but he couldn't handle the ship and nine squalling girls. "April," he asked for the oldest girl on the roster. A cute girl stood. "I am appointing you in charge of the girls. If there are problems you are the girls' representative. Come to me. Ladies, April is my representative. If she tells you to do something, it is the same as me telling you, do it."

"How long do we have to do this?" one blonde asked.

"The short answer is until I say differently. But we should be at Mars in two weeks." Mike turned and looked at the readout in the wall which monitored the ship's instruments, "Two weeks and two days, to be exact."

"April, please get the girls together and decide who wants to bunk with who. Each cabin has two big beds and there are plenty of cabins. I'd suggest two girls to a cabin. Also we need to get some volunteers for galley duty. Work out a schedule for preparation and clean up every day."

"Ladies, let's treat this like a camping vacation. Sure we'll all have to work but it can be a fun change. That's all." Mike said. He realized he had glossed over the fact that these girls had all just lost parents but he couldn't run the ship with nine grieving girls. Sometimes you had to get on with life, you just didn't have a choice and this was one of those times. The dead were dead; the living had to somehow go on living.

There was silence as the girls tried to process things that most teenagers have no preparation to process; death of parents, mayhem, being on their own, life and death responsibility. Mike went over to the galley, getting the machines up and running. He heard a gradual rising of voices as the girls began to all talk at once. He hoped April had experience handling groups.

He turned on the automated processing machines in the galley. They began the warming operations and to prepare the cleaning and recycling equipment. The galley was designed to tourist standards and was well stocked, especially for a partial complement, no passengers with just the crew. When transporting passengers there would normally be eight crew and up to forty passengers.

One of the central problems of science in the last century was there were two theories of physics; relativity that worked for planetary size objects as proven in every experimental instance and predicted things like black holes which were then found to exist and quantum mechanics which explained physics at the molecular level, and had also been proven in every instance predicting many phenomena at the atomic level. But no one had found a way to connect these two theories. They were both proven to be true but were also contradictory.

String theory was an attempt at unification. A further extension of string theory using one more dimension, eleven dimensions total, was M theory, called variously Magic theory or Matrix theory that mathematically, at least, unified both theories into one. There were a couple weird things about magic theory. One, it allowed, no, predicted an infinite number of Universes. Two, it predicted that gravity was a fundamental matrix and could be manipulated, i.e. 'grabbed.' That was experimentally proven early in the 21st Century. When Einstein theorized that gravity was a space time curvature it was this matrix he had predicted. From there it was just engineering. The modern spaceship's engines grabbed gravity at the matrix and used it to propel the ship. The closer to a large body the greater the boost because the matrix was stronger. Most ships accelerated while close to a planet then easily 'soared' to their destination. Once there, the process was reversed. The other advantage of the drive is that the same engine could be used to manipulate the matrix and 'manufacture' gravity maintaining a constant internal gravity. Inside the ship gravity was maintained at a constant .95 of Earth's gravity even if the ship was boosting at many multiples of Earth's gravity.

Mike was walking down the central passageway when he heard, "Uh, Captain."

He turned to see April walking to catch him. "Yes?" Mike was impressed with what he saw, a beautiful young woman with blonde almost white hair, a flawless face, and even under her clothes a fantastic body.

"Some of the girls are asking about clothes. Are there clothes on the ship? They only have what they are wearing," she said.

Mike coughed, "Uh no. Damn, I mean..."

April laughed, "I've heard worse."

"Yes, I suppose. April, there aren't any clothes or even fabric to make clothes. The girls will have a couple choices. Wear the same clothes till we get to Mars or wear nothing while doing laundry, or a third choice, we could just have a nudist ship," Mike said. Many of the ships he had been on when he was working his way up to Master were nudist. The absolute control of temperature, no sunlight, no weather made clothes unnecessary.

"Nudist?" she said blushing a little.

"Up to the girls. But the ship actually has a clothes free routine. Temperature is raised a couple degrees, humidity is lowered a little. It is quite comfortable." The lustful part of Mike's mind was saying, 'Yeah, get her naked.'

"Why does it have a nudist whatever?" she asked.

He shoved that last thought aside as his command mind kicked in to do what was best for the ship and crew. "Well, it is pretty normal for ships in space. What do we really need clothes for, there is no weather, no harmful sunlight. Most tourist ships don't have the routine but they also bring lots of clothes along. Up to you guys. I'll probably be nude while I clean clothes since this is it for me as well," he said pointing to his shirt and shorts. He pointed to the floor, "See, even the decks are soft for bare feet."

April felt the floor and noted it was soft, not like carpet but did it did yield sort of like hard rubber. Mike started away when April grabbed his arm. "Uh, one other thing. I knew you said we should bunk together, but there are plenty of cabins and the girls would really prefer being one to a cabin ... Is there any reason why we can't?"

Mike wondered why. He figured it would be easier having a roommate, cleaning etc. But these girls were all teenagers as well and he knew how prickly teenagers are about bodies and masturbation. If they wanted it that way he couldn't think of anything wrong.

"Nope, if they want to clean their own space by themselves, fine."

"Thank you, Captain," April said as Mike went back to the flight deck.

The Captain's cabin was off the flight deck in the front of the ship. This gave Mike his own area for the most part. Mike set up the ships routine and had it sent out to the view screens throughout the ship by the computer.

0700Z Lights up
0800Z Breakfast
1200Z Lunch
1800Z Dinner
2200Z Lights down

The entertainment computers will be on between 0700 and 2200Z. All games will be available during the same period.

It wasn't long before April appeared. "Captain, what's Z? Nobody knows."

Mike laughed, "It's Zulu time. Out in space everyone uses Zulu time as a standard day. It is the time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. I'll send out an explanation and set all the ships clocks. By the way, that means right now is 2200Z. But I know that no one has eaten. So, we'll extend today for an hour so everyone can get some food before bedtime."

April looked a little confused but Mike knew that the crew would come around.

"Come on. I'll help you guys learn how to use the galley." Most of the girls were in the galley/entertainment area. "How about some food?" Mike announced as he came in. That instantly brought some lightness to the atmosphere. As all the girls gathered around, Mike showed them how the galley computers worked. The touch screens showed the available food. A few touches and you walked down to the end of the line and out popped the food all heated and ready. Trash and dirty dishes went into the recycler, where the dishes and forks etc were processed for reuse, and waste was flushed out of the ship; uneaten food.

Dinner helped make things feel familiar and the noise rose as the girls started talking and a few laughing. Mike took this as a good sign. He wondered how he would have handled this situation as a teen.

After dinner, Mike retired to the flight deck and started the program for night operations. He checked all of the sensors and nothing was near the ship. The program began the lights down sequence. He heard the girls hustling to get to their cabins. Then silence. They all seemed to be adjusting to the incredible change in their lives. Maybe it just hadn't sunk in yet. Mike went into his cabin and went to sleep.

Like all Ship's Masters he slept lightly and woke easily. He crawled out of bed about fifteen minutes before lights up. The ship had adjusted to the new routine and the room was quite comfortable without clothes. He cleaned up and went into the flight deck and started running all the routine programs to make sure everything was within parameter.

He watched as the lights slowly came up in the ship. Pretty soon he heard stirring. He had the main door to the rest of the ship open and was able to see the first girls out. They wandered down to the galley which was not yet operating. It would start serving at 0800Z just as if had been programmed.

Several girls wandered back to their rooms. Pretty soon April came in, "Captain?"

"Yes," he said turning in his chair.

April's eyes flashed open wide and a blush rose on her cheeks. She had noticed he was nude. She like all the other girls was dressed in her one outfit. "Some of the girls wondered why the Galley isn't operating."

"It is programmed to come on at eight hundred Zulu, just like the schedule says. To tell you the truth, April, it could be open longer but if the girls spend this whole trip eating, they'll be too fat to get off the ship. They need to exercise, and before breakfast is a good time. We have a full complement of machines."

April had seen them, "Okay, I'll tell them mornings are for exercise."

"April, tell them any time is a good time for exercise. Look, I really don't have any way to keep all the girls busy. If they sit around doing nothing, things will get ugly. Maybe you can come up with things to keep them busy, like competitions. Maybe they could have toning competitions, firming up the legs or something that girls would like to do. And the games too, card tournaments or monopoly tournaments. Divide the girls into teams and have different competitions where the girls could earn points for their teams. The busier we can keep them the better and happier we all will be." Mike could see April processing the thoughts. She glanced once more at his nakedness and blushed before heading down the corridor to her room. He went back to checking all the systems.

A few minutes before eight, Mike went down to the galley. All the girls were waiting. He noted that all of the girls noticed his lack of clothes many blushing but nothing was said, except very quietly to each other. April came in last. She was dressed only in her panties, the old fashioned thong kind, like her grandmother might have worn. Nervously, April played with them. Mike figured the panties were her attempt to support his policy without going farther than she was comfortable. He winked at her which brought a blush. Exactly at eight, the galley monitors came awake. All the girls looked his way.

"I'd let the younger go first, because they get tail end the rest of the time," he said. The older girls laughed knowing what he said was true. There was a burst of talking as they sorted out who was younger than whom but it only took a few minutes for nine girls to get through a galley designed to feed over a hundred and all of the girls went through the line and got their food from the processors. Mike was last, ordering eggs, toast and Italian sausage. None of this croissants and coffee continental breakfast crap for him. He wanted good solid food for breakfast.

He sat down at a table and April sat with him. He noted the rest of the girls watching this 'head' table. "Why don't you invite Lucy and Abigail to join us?" he said. They were the two other oldest girls at seventeen and sixteen. April nodded and smiled, probably glad to have company. She waved at two girls who picked up their tray and sat down at the table. The girls introduced themselves.

"I've dumped a lot of stuff on April. I'd appreciate it if you guys could help her out," Mike said between bites. Both girls nodded. "Thanks. After breakfast why don't you guys talk about what I suggested to April? She'll give you the details and you three can come up with ideas, because frankly, I don't have any good ones."

The conversation quickly changed to what was Mars like and what is space travel like. Mike did his best to answer the questions. After breakfast he retired back to the flight deck. He did notice the next time he saw Abigail and Lucy in the main corridor; they were also dressed in just panties. By lunch, that had become the standard dress. This made sense. The girls would be able to wash them at night and they would be dry by the next morning and they covered enough the girls probably felt comfortable.

But Mike had never served on a Co-ed ship before. He hadn't expected it but he found himself noticing all of the feminine skin. His initial thought that the girls were too young to attract him quickly changed; but it was too late now. It would be an admission of lechery if he said they had to stay dressed. Plus, it would be a pain to try and keep one set of clothes clean the whole trip. He resigned himself to keeping a firm hold on his wandering eye and libido.

He'd decided to be just like a priest. Of course, we all know how successful that has been.

Later that first afternoon, Mike wandered back to the galley area. Most of the girls were huddled around a few of the terminals. Cheers and groans. He saw April look up and waved her over. "What's up?"

"Teams, as soon as I mentioned it the younger girls all wanted to take on the older girls at monopoly. So we divided into two teams, 4 and 5 girls.

"Emily joined us three and we took on the younger girls." April pointed out Emily who was fooling around with several of the younger girls by the terminals. "I was the second out, after Abigail. I didn't know how to play. But I've been watching. The younger girls gang up and cheat and help each other. We'll get them next time," she said.

He laughed, "I don't know how to play either but I think the whole point is like business, there is no cheating, there is just staying in business."

"Captain, is there anything important we can do. A lot of the girls feel like we should be helping."

"Tell them thanks, but the ship is designed to run automated, except things like cleaning up the cabins and the galley. The best thing they can do is keep busy so they don't get bored," he said. "By the way, the terminals in the cabins all access the library of book and films, including the new shows. So if they have a favorite they can watch them."

"Cool. I'll tell them when we have a break," she said. Her eyes wandered down to his loins.

"April, would it be better if I wore shorts too?"

"No, sir," she said a little too eagerly. "I mean, some of us are kind of talking about maybe we should go all the way too."

Mike nodded and headed back up to the flight deck happy that the girls seemed to be settling in and keeping busy.

Dinner was a noisy affair with several of the younger girls letting him know how they had smashed the older girls three straight times at Monopoly. April, Abigail, Emily, and Lucy were scheming how to get their revenge.

After dinner Mike checked the plot to Mars again. Since they were staying in the plane of the planets, there was always a chance of running into something. Not a big chance, but even a small rock traveling at those speeds would make it a very bad day. He used the onboard radar to scan ahead. Nothing. He set the scanner to periodically do a full scan while maintaining a constant scan along their projected track and set off the emergency alert if it detected anything.

They were still boosting away from Earth although the decreasing gravity made the boost less efficient. The computer predicted one more hour of boost before it would shut down and they would coast.

Mike went aft to do his daily workout routine. He drew a crowd, which made him self-conscious as he went from machine to machine, first weights then cardio on the bike and rowing machine. Having worked up a good sweat he went to his cabin and showered. One nice thing about the ship is that the recycling of water was so efficient they wound up with more water at the end of the flight than they had at the beginning. Just the water added to the air from breathing had to be removed and added to the water in the tank. Mike felt the hot water run and run taking some of the soreness from the workout from his muscles. He dried off and settled in bed.

Switching on the terminal he started watching an old movie, one in 2D. These new terminals simulated 3D even on the old movies. But the 3D lost a lot if you moved around; it was best straight on to the terminal unlike the newer movies. His terminal also tracked usage of all the shipboard terminals.

He expanded that and watched as the girls mostly went to their own cabins. As he might expect they did a lot of switching as they scanned the catalog. Then one by one they found the adult catalog. Soon most of the girls were watching movies from the adult catalog. He smiled, 'Damn that was fast, ' he thought. He wasn't surprised. That's what he would have been doing. Mike saw the April, Abigail and Lucy had all found the adult movies and shows. He began to picture the girls all laying in their bunks, their panties hanging in the bath drying, their legs spread and hands buried in their pussies. It caused his cock to rise. His hand found it.

He was enjoying the feeling when he saw a red light above his door. Someone was entering the flight deck. That caused his cock to recede as he bounced up to look on the view screen. It was April and he wondered what she was doing. She hesitated, seemed about ready to leave, then took another step, hesitated again. She worried her fingers for a moment, then seemed to reach a decision and boldly stepped over to his door. Mike was ready and opened the door right after she pressed the button.

April jumped.

Mike hid the smile and asked, "What can I do for you?"

"Can I come in? Just for a minute." she asked.

"Um, I guess," he said and walked to the small table in the room. Mike was surprised to see that April had joined him and had left off her panties. She had a nicely trimmed bush. He sat and motioned to April who sat as well.

"Okay," Mike said.

"You know how you said that maybe it would be better if we bunked together, to avoid being lonely?" Mike nodded. April smiled, "Well, I was in my room and I really thought company would be nice."

"Why didn't you get one of the girls? You could easily bunk together," Mike suggested.

April sort of coughed, "Well, I wasn't really missing a girl,"

That's that, Mike thought. She's made it plain she wanted a man. Now what should he do? It wasn't a worry about age like it might have been a hundred years earlier. When the federation was forming there were laws from every country that disagreed. Several principles were applied to harmonize the laws of the different countries. First, maximum personal liberty was the primary goal. Rational application was used and last the laws had to be effective and necessary for public safety.