Chapter 3: Month 75 - Building a Family

"I will protect you from all around you" - Phil Collins

That night when I got back to our quarters, Hannah greeted me at the hatch, completely naked and smelling, well, ready. Okay, this is good, but she generally only does that when she's in trouble and wants to get out of it, or when she wants a favor. And, I don't think she's in trouble.

"Hi, honey, you're looking good today!"

She gave me a really good full-contact hug and kissed my neck. "I've talked it over with the girls. We need an Affirmation Ceremony so that Monique knows she is home and safe. Then I want her to spend the night in bed with you and each of us in turn. She will watch while you do whatever you want with the three of us. The fourth night will be her turn, and by then she'll know you won't be cruel to her."

"I dunno about that. I had to talk with Tina today about her job, and somehow we ended up talking about that first time we had anal sex and Hector asked about her tattoo. Didn't that count as cruel?"

"I remember that! And, I remember why you did it, so I don't have a problem with it. I also remember you deciding that you shouldn't play favorites, and making the rest of us do anal sex, too. That I had a problem with."

"Well, I'm supposed to be getting Monique pregnant, and anal sex isn't going to help there, so hopefully we won't have to go through that again. Sure, if you think it will help we can do your ceremony. It's not like I don't enjoy it! Have you told the other girls yet?"

"No, I have to talk you into it first."

"Absolutely right, and that's why you greeted me this way. Your nefarious plan is approved, but I want her to hear from me that it's approved. I'm supposed to be the one that's in charge, here."

"Yes, of course, Master! And, I guess that as long as you are already thinking about it we may as well do it right." She said that last with an ugly face like maybe she had found half of a cockroach in her salad.

Whatever you say, honey. So, we let go of each other and she led me into the family room where LaRhonda, Joannie, and Monique all stood, stark naked, waiting for us. I like this place.

I walked up to LaRhonda, hugged and kissed her, and said "I love you". She smiled and said "I know", and kissed me back. Then I did the same thing to Joannie, and she gave the same response. Last I stepped over in front of Monique, took her hands, and looked her in her eyes.

"There are two ways of looking at this family that you have just joined. One is..." and I changed my voice to be as deep as I could " ... I am your owner. You will obey me." Then I changed my voice back to normal, pointed my thumb over my shoulder at Hannah, and said "The other way is that Hannah was my wife before we got picked up, and I still do whatever she tells me to do, just like I did back on Earth."

"Right now, she wants to do something she calls the Affirmation Ceremony. She got it from another concubine when we were first picked up and having trouble with the change in our relationship. I think that they got it from a porno movie, but it fits our situation, and she tried it. It seemed to help her, and whenever we start to lose our way here she makes us all do it again. Please remember that this was her idea. I'm just the guy who benefits."

Then I turned back to Hannah. "Okay, honey, it's your show."

Hannah had been so happy with this Affirmation Ceremony that she pushed it on other concubines who were having trouble. When I started climbing the ranks, I had a lot of recent pickups working for me, and many of them had the same home-life problems that we had gone through. It was just easier for me to tell them "Send your head girl to see Hannah, with orders to do WHATEVER THE FUCK SHE SAYS TO DO." Some did, some didn't, but it worked for a lot of the ones who tried it, and they in turn passed it on. There are a lot of us out here who have seen this, and I'll certainly swear by it. Hannah and I can't claim to have started it, but I'm probably the most senior of the men who benefited from it.

Hannah pulled me over to my easy chair -we're not sposta call it a La-Z-Boy because that's a brand name and their factory never saw this one or even got paid for it- and pushed me down in it, then pushed the lever to make it go back. Yeah, I know, but ever since I got my first command -it floated on water- I've had a manual easy chair in my quarters. I can adjust it myself; I don't need no stinking AI to adjust my own damn chair.

Then, when I was laying back, she climbed on top of me. Remember, she was nude but I was still in my shipboard uniform coveralls. I did have an erection, of course, and it was pretty obvious. Those coveralls may be rated for space, but they aren't armored. I had a tent you could hold a church service under.

Hannah rubbed her crotch on mine for a few seconds -if I had been nude it would have put me inside her- while I fondled her, then stopped and held her head above mine, her glorious hair covering both of our faces. She spoke clearly and loud enough for the other three to hear her.

"When you married me, you promised to love and protect me, and I promised to love and obey you. You always kept your promises. I always loved you, but I didn't always obey you. Then, when you volunteered to serve the Confederacy and asked me to go with you, I stopped being your wife and became your concubine, your property. You own me; I belong to you. My body is yours to use in any way you wish."

"You didn't change. You still love and protect me. I lost my ability to disobey you. I lost the requirement to love you. I gained the requirements to serve and please you, and to give you as many children as I can. I choose to continue loving you, and I will always serve and please you, and give you children as long as you want me to."

"Tonight, I am going to please you with my mouth, to demonstrate that I will serve and pleasure you whether you give me pleasure or not, because it is my purpose to serve and please you. After that, I am going to please you with my ass, to demonstrate that I will pleasure you even when you give me pain, because it is my purpose to serve and please you. Last, I am going to please you with my pussy, to give you an opportunity to pleasure me, if you wish, while I pleasure you, because itismypurposetoserveandpleaseyou. You aren't supposed to get me pregnant again until I've had six months off." Then she kissed me and got up.

LaRhonda was next. She climbed on board and rubbed herself on my crotch, then started on her own version. Her hair doesn't hang down, though.

"When you volunteered to serve the Confederacy and asked me to go with you, I became your concubine, your property. You own me; I belong to you. My body is yours to use in any way you wish. I promised to serve and please you, and to give you as many children as I can. There is no requirement to love you. I choose to love you, and I will serve and please you and give you children as long as you want me to."

"Tonight is Hannah's night. Tomorrow night, I am going to please you with my mouth, to demonstrate that I will serve and pleasure you whether you give me pleasure or not, because it is my purpose to serve and please you. After that, I am going to please you with my ass, to demonstrate that I will pleasure you even when you give me pain, because it is my purpose to serve and please you. Last, I am going to please you with my pussy, to give you an opportunity to pleasure me, if you wish, while I pleasure you, because itismypurposetoserveandpleaseyou. You aren't supposed to get me pregnant again until I've had six months off, either." Then she kissed me and got up, too.

Then it was Joannie's turn to try to rub herself off on my coveralls. Irreverent as always, Joannie won't ever get Hannah's speech right no matter what Hannah threatens her with. Her hair also isn't long enough to cover our faces; she likes looking like a sex-addict pixie.

"If you're still alive after all that, I get to try to kill you with sex. I am yours, and I always will be. Whatever you want me to do I will do. Whatever you want me to be I will be. You are the only man I have ever wanted to belong to. Unless you give me different orders, when you come home that third night I will be kneeling in front of the hatch, naked. I am not going to suck your dick in public. I am going to stay still with my mouth open while you fuck my throat as hard as you want in front of whoever wants to watch. You aren't getting in our home until you cum in my mouth, but if you also want to spray my face and tits for the audience that's fine, whatever you want to do with me. I'm your personal slut, and I take your cock whenever, wherever, and however you want me to take it."

"After dinner, you are going to waste a whole bunch of your baby-makers in my ass, and I'm going to enjoy that just as much as you are because you told the medics to make me enjoy anal sex. Then, when we go to bed, you are going to get me pregnant. The AIs say they can make sure I am fertile and will conceive that night as long as you do your part of the job, so don't fuck that up. And when my tits fill with milk you are going to play with them every day and nurse until they are empty until the baby is weaned and they dry up again." I don't think it's possible to get harder.

Joannie also gave me a quick kiss, but instead of climbing off she scooted down until she could also give the tent over my crotch a long wet kiss, too.

After Joannie was out of the way, Hannah led Monique over and helped her climb on top of me, with both legs outside of mine so that her crotch was open, then pushed her down until we would have been joined if I wasn't STILL wearing my coveralls, dammit, and told her to rub on me for a bit. She was shaking, but she did as she was told, and I started to get to know her body while she did it. When Hannah got tired of that, she pushed Monique over until her long black hair was covering our faces, and Hannah did the "Repeat after me" thing with her:

"My name was Monique Delacroix. It is now Monique Williams. When I was homeless you gave me a home. When I was going to be killed you saved my life. When I had medical problems you ordered them corrected. When you accepted me I became your concubine, your property. You own me; I belong to you. My body is yours to use in any way that gives you pleasure. I hereby promise to serve and please you, and to give you as many children as I can."

"Tonight and the next two nights your first three concubines will show me how to please you. The fourth night I will show you what I have learned. I will please you with my mouth, to demonstrate that I will serve and pleasure you whether you give me pleasure or not, because it is my purpose to serve and please you. After that, I will please you with my ass, to demonstrate that I will pleasure you even when you give me pain, because it is my purpose to serve and please you. Last, I will please you with my pussy, to give you an opportunity to pleasure me, if you wish, while I pleasure you, because itismypurposetoserveandpleaseyou. I will get pregnant when you want me to get pregnant." Last, Hannah told her to kiss me, and I pulled her mouth to mine.

When we were done Hannah tried to pull her off me, but she had stopped shaking so I held her in place after she had sat up again. "I used to have four concubines. Do you know what happened to the one I lost?"

"No sir, except that the Civil Service officer who brought me here said that she used to be one of your concubines. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes. When I was picked up four years ago, I took my wife and three young women with me. They all are welcome to stay with me as long as they want. Understand that the Confederacy doesn't much trust us humans. Some of us are apparently okay, but the only way we can get most of us off Earth is as slaves. It's part of the deal. You promise to obey someone who can go, and you become their slave. We call you concubines because that sounds better, but I prefer to speak truth."

"Understand that slavery is a necessary evil here, not a good thing to be celebrated. Throughout most of the Diaspora, and certainly in my home and in every home I have authority over, all slaves will be re-tested at least once a year to see if they meet the requirements to become free. If that happens, you will no longer belong to me. You will not be allowed to return to Earth, but you can go anywhere in the Diaspora and take any job you are suited for."

"The only exceptions are the edge cases you see anywhere humans are, because we're an ornery sort and cannot ever follow the rules. In our case, Hannah refuses to take the test."

Hannah interrupted me: "If I passed it, they would send me somewhere else. I'm not Tom's wife any more, I'm his concubine. I'm sleeping with Tom, and that's that."

"Joannie and LaRhonda keep getting closer..." a little white lie, neither was going to pass the CAP test until pigs grew wings " ... and two weeks ago my fourth concubine passed hers. She is no longer my little Cuban slut Tina, she is Signifer Tina Hernandez, a junior officer in the Civil Service. I told her I was having trouble sleeping without her and asked her to find me a replacement. You're it. For our part, we will give you the best home we can. For your part, please try to get along with all of us, plus the children. We aren't always right, but it's a safe assumption that if Hannah says something I will back her up. If she's wrong that's between me and her."

"Anyway, you are a beautiful woman and any man would be happy to find you in his bed. I certainly will be. We'll go slow until you feel comfortable, but you will have an active sex life here, you will have children, and you will obey any order I or Hannah give you. If it's possible for you to find safety and happiness in there somewhere, we will do our best to help you get there."

I stopped fondling her ass and slapped it gently. "Okay, enough background and serious stuff. It's time for dinner." I helped her get up, then turned to Hannah (who was still standing beside us) and roared "WOMAN, FEED ME!"

She bobbed her head a couple of times and hunched over. "Yes, Master, yes. Feed Master, yes." in her best Marty Feldman in "Young Doctor Frankenstein" imitation. We both loved that movie.

Most of that night was great, but the anal sex was just as gross as it always is. I wouldn't have insisted on it, but Hannah set it up and it was going to happen so I dealt with it. I made her do the cleanup afterwards, though. Yuck.

Regular sex with Hannah, putting it where God told us to put it, on the other hand, is always wonderful. Do you know what a Kegel exercise is? I don't either, not really. It always looks to me like Hannah is just playing with a dildo. I like to watch, though, and I like the results a lot. When we got picked up and she found out that after two children her pussy wasn't as good as some others I could name, she found out about these exercises and had the AIs tell her when she was doing it right.

It's not just having the muscles, the med tubes could give her that; it's the control, how to use the muscles, that needs those exercises. I noticed the change within weeks. I want some of that, and I want it every night. And, when I found out why her snatch had become so good, I made her teach the other girls how to do it, too. And had the AIs monitor their exercises so they couldn't cheat.

How did I put it to Jimmy M'beku that one time after he asked how Hannah was so tight only two weeks after dropping a baby? "This fool ain't fucking no loose bitches, dawg"! He just laughed. He can do "poor white trash" a lot better than I can do "pimp hood nigga". It didn't stop him from sending Linda to Hannah for lessons on "how to tighten up that cunt, ho", though.

I spent a lot of time with manning lists and spreadsheets. How many people we needed to call a ship "fully manned", and how many it really needed to fight at full efficiency. All of our ships were overmanned, from the Patricians all the way up to Harpy and Kestrel. Much of that was redundancy; any job that needed doing had three bodies to cover it around the clock, plus an extra in case someone got sick / injured / wounded / killed.

However, we also had a lot of unnecessary bodies, people doing jobs for no better reason than because we had people doing those jobs on Earth's wet-navy ships before the Confederacy showed up. Remembering that the AIs could, and would if asked, do just about everything needed to run the ship was difficult. I liked to keep our smaller ships in mind to help keep me on track when I thought about this.

The Couriers and the Stagecoaches only had one crewman on board, the 'Captain', and he was only there for two reasons: The AIs needed a Confederacy citizen to make decisions like where to go next, and the ships had weapons that only a citizen could use. If the ship was simply delivering a box of widgets to someplace well-enough known that no crew were required to make the trip, then the voyage wouldn't be done by a ship, it would be done by a message drone or torpedo.

The Couriers were used when real-time decisions might be required during the trip, as in "Take this message to the Admiral commanding the Beerat system. He's on his way there now but he could be anywhere between here and there." In such a case, the ship's navigation console needed to be able to make decisions about where to go next every time the ship came out of hyperspace, based upon the info available at this system.

Those decisions required a Captain. We were pretty sure that this was a political requirement enforced by the Confederacy. After all, the ship's AI made far more complicated decisions every time we asked it to do a readiness check on the port missile launcher. There was no real reason the AI couldn't make its own decisions about what system to go to next, unless it was programmed to require a Confederacy citizen to make some decisions like this.

Anyway, the only significant differences between these one-man ships and our warships were size and weapons, which in turn implied that the warships didn't need all those people either. Since all of our ships were staffed to the official manning levels before we left, just about all of them were grossly overmanned by any reasonable measure, and that meant that when we got where we were going we would have some 'extra' people available to do other things.

LaRhonda was my 'token black'. I was a white boy raised on the outskirts of a white neighborhood in a mostly white suburb of a large city in the old south. The nearest black families when I was a kid were in several sharecropper shacks down in the valley. One of them had a girl a few years younger than me who was absolutely gorgeous, but I never got to know her very well. I never had any real social contact with blacks until I got to college.

My mother had filled my head with shit about blacks, and I took a long time learning how to separate the truth from the prejudice. Niggers stink, that's a good example. Well, actually, Mom, we all do when we've been working hard. Yes, if someone walks up behind you in the gym, you can tell from the aroma whether they are black or white, but to say that blacks stink is to imply that whites don't and that's not true. You can tell the difference, yes, but a black guy's BO isn't any more offensive than a white guy's BO. Unless you are just looking for excuses, of course. In that case, Mom, yes, you're right. Niggers stink.

Between college and the service, I'd lost most of the prejudices I was raised with. There's no meaningful difference between a hardworking honest black guy and the hardworking honest white guy next to him, just like there's not much difference between poor white trash and poor black trash. I still despise dishonesty, but I don't call that a prejudice. That's more of a learned value. And that crosses all ethnic boundaries anyway.

When I got picked up at Little Creek Mall and I got to choose three more companions after Hannah, I asked the first three young ladies with strollers that I came up to, and all three agreed to come with me. The fact that some of the choices weren't White Anglo-Saxon Protestants didn't even occur to me. I did kinda wonder about their husbands or boyfriends, though, if volunteering to be a stranger's slave was a step up.

LaRhonda had been heavyset when we got picked up. Maybe it was a temporary side-effect of pregnancy, maybe she was working on being a Sumo wrestler, but she had a really big ass and that stoop you often see in black chicks, where they can't stand up straight. Maybe they get taught from birth to bend over and stick their ass out. LaRhonda didn't need help sticking her ass out; it was going to stick out no matter what she did. I didn't care, I had been assured that they would all look like supermodels in a week if I wanted.

I didn't want to share a bed with someone who looked like they were starving, though, like Tina. A little bit of padding is good. Personally, I'd rather do Oprah Winfrey than Tyra Banks. Granted, from what I could see on TV they were both insufferable bitches, but just on looks I'd take Oprah. And then gag her for a month or so, until she'd learned to shut the fuck up!

LaRhonda hadn't needed much training to be a concubine. She and Joannie had been long-term hookers. Professional girlfriends, if you want. As is common around Navy ports, they would hook up with guys who needed girls, and in return for being taken care of they took care of their men. When the guys went out to sea and stopped paying their way, they would go get new boyfriends. Eventually, if they were lucky, they'd find a guy who would marry them and they'd be set for life, along with all the rugrats they'd popped out along the way.

I made them a better offer for long-term security than they had, and they took me on as their latest boyfriend. It was purely mercenary -on both sides- at first, but we learned to love each other. I took better care of them than they were used to, and their children were all healthy, happy, and safe.

I also believed in foreplay, so LaRhonda thought I was better in bed, too. Yes, the med tubes improved me, too. I had an inch or so added and made it a little thicker, but a lot of sex is in your mind. I was willing to try to please her in bed, and she liked that.

She already knew how to please men, and I liked that. We were still in the Mall when I told Hannah that LaRhonda was going to teach her how to give head. And, she knew how to squeeze down so that both anal and vaginal sex was good. She made them both fun, too. She wanted me to be happy with her, and I was.

Time with LaRhonda was always good. After I had the med tubes straighten her back, lift her tits some and melt off half of her ass, she was just about perfect. She and Hannah were the only ones I could really sleep with. After I fattened Tina and Joannie up some they weren't too bad, but they both tossed too much in their sleep for me to get any good rest. Hannah and LaRhonda both slept when they closed their eyes, and that meant that I could get my rocks off, roll over, spoon behind them, grab a big fat tittie, and sleep soundly as long as I had time for.

Is this a good time to talk about racism in the Diaspora? Throughout the "Western Civilization" part, we have done everything we could to stomp that out. We are all out here to do a job, and what color your skin is makes no difference at all next to whether I can trust you or not. Hell, you can change your skin color if you want. Or, if your sponsor wants, if you're a concubine.

We still have elitism causing trouble -I think we'd all be better off if that Chandler guy in DECO got his ass beat once a week by whoever is handy- and chauvinism is alive and well (would you want your daughter to marry a Marine?), but racism is nothing more than a bad memory that we are forgetting as fast as we can.

I have how many children now? I guess that depends upon how you count Tina's brood. I had adopted Hector when we got picked up, since she was just a concubine, but that was cancelled now, wasn't it? Was Hector my son or not? He was in my mind, so I guess if he thought so too, he was. Count him. With little George, Tina had three more since, so four for her. LaRhonda brought three and had given me another two more since, for five. Joannie brought two, and had two more with me for four. Hannah had given me two children back on Earth, and another three since. That's eighteen, my God. There wouldn't be any more for awhile. Since Hannah and LaRhonda had just dropped, none of them were pregnant.

Of course, they aren't all really mine. Shirley, for example, came compliments of Jimmy M'beku, back on the Exeter. A couple of years ago someone in Central Command with no fucking sense at all had convinced the Council that we should regularize the service's ranks. Us ship-commanders who were one step below "Admiral" would no longer have "Captain" as a rank; we would be "Colonels".

Jimmy hadn't taken it any better than I had. So, when he got his formal personnel action letter informing him that he was no longer a "Captain"; he was now a "Colonel", I sent Hannah to him for the night as a consolation prize and she came back pregnant. So, I guess Jimmy could claim Shirley (Joannie suggested that name, since Jimmy would always reply to 'surely <this>' or 'surely <that>' with "Of course <that>, and don't call me Shirley") as his, but no, she's my daughter. I know I have some of my own out there, too.

Anyway, about a third of our kids are mixed race. My and LaRhonda's two, Joannie's Johnny, Tina's Hector and Hannah's little Shirley each had one white and one black parent. None of them seemed to care or even notice, which meant that we were doing something right. Now, the Chinese colonies are continuing their racism, but the rest of the Diaspora left that racism shit on Earth, buried in the dirt next to the dog shit where it belongs.

Some of our passengers were honest-to-God immigrants, people who had been doing various jobs in Sol system until they decided it was time for a new neighborhood, or whatever. Some were sent by their supervisors, some asked to go with us, and some I shanghaied from their previous work places with my "Reassign as needed for the war effort" authority as a system commander, after checking with the CNO to make sure he would back me up.

A few of our passengers were specific requests filled by TEG, like a field anthropologist (that was the label they assigned when I said I wanted someone who went into the jungle to study aborigines, in case we had to deal directly with the Beer) and an industrial process efficiency expert (I told them I wanted someone who had experience adjusting factory output levels, because we probably couldn't afford any mistakes in our industrialization effort). I never did get anyone I could call an "urban planner", though. What I did get were several engineers and a couple middle-managers from Sol's immense industrialization effort.

The vast majority of our passengers, however, were recent pickups who had volunteered for the Navy but did not have any training or enhancements; they were to get that during their transport. Hmmm. Well, training, yes, we can do that, but the Explorers aren't going to be able to do much enhancement for that many people.

I was wrong about that, I was told. The Explorers each had two med tubes, and they were perfectly capable of doing everything needed to start enhancement, as long as the enhance-ee was willing to let the nanites make the changes gradually. Done this way, we only needed the recruit to be in the med tubes for half an hour to get the nanites programmed and injected. They would fix liver problems, add an inch of cock, straighten out scoliosis, whatever, over the next few weeks, and meanwhile we could run everyone else through the tubes, too.

The numbers still didn't look good, though, so we turned one of the apartments in each of our passenger pods into a med station with two tubes. That gave each Explorer a total of fourteen tubes, and that was more than enough to keep ahead of demand, since our passengers trickled in as we built our fleet. It also let us use the Explorers as emergency field hospitals if needed.

Always try to be doing two or three things at once; it makes you two or three times more effective than people who only do one thing at a time. Okay, that didn't come out right. Don't try to do two or three things at once; that leads to none of them getting done right. Try to do one thing that accomplishes two or three goals for you. The Explorers weren't warships and never would be. However, they were free and we were turning them into marginal passenger ferries and acceptable mobile factories and field hospitals as well as the exploration ships they were excellent at and the freighters they were lousy at.