Chapter 5

Looking into the wardrobe I saw that my three uniforms were all now Navy black. “Lord of Hosts, help me not to strangle Rand,” I prayed.

I pulled out the most formal uniform, the formal one with pants and a blouse. I noticed that it had small Ensign’s gold bars on the epaulettes. I sighed. What I hadn’t been able to explain to Lizbeth last night is that even though an Ensign outranked a senior NCO, only a civilian (or a very new ensign) would think that meant jack shit. Military rank was no more straightforward than any other human relationship. I had been a senior NCO, with the respect due the years of service needed to rise to that rank. I was now the rank that a good NCO viewed with pity and contempt. I was now the most junior of officers--a shavetail, a butterbar.

Well, new life, new body, and a new career--I guess it made some kind of painful sense. It was time to take the first step.

I walked out into the main room and stopped. The walls of the room started near the floor as a deep royal blue, growing lighter in hue as it rose to finish nearly white, with a ring or crown of of the palest mango-orange hue near the ceiling. It took a moment to get used to, but I liked the change. It opened up the room and visually made the ceiling look about a foot further away.

The darlings had been keeping the replicators busy. Before they had been drab gray, now they were like a nest of Birds of Paradise. Kellie and Lizbeth shared a deep chair, with Lizbeth’s arms holding Kellie. They had paused a concubine training video, the sight of which gave me pause. On the screen a fellow with the Marine enhancements was drilling his erect cock into the ass of some poor weeping male concubine. I felt myself blushing and my balls trying to retract into my abdomen, while Ruth and Lizbeth looked back at me with clear and untroubled expressions. “Girls, I’m reporting for duty. If I can, I’ll meet you at the dining facility for lunch. Try to stay out of trouble. Have Alfred contact me if you do run into any trouble.

“Alfred, please direct me to Commander Rand’s office.”

I paused outside Rand’s office. “Alfred, should I knock or press a buzzer or something?”

“Unnecessary, sir. Commander Rand was aware of your coming to his office as soon as you announced it back in the pod. He has been apprised of your approach.”

Hmmmm. Efficient, but almost creepily so. I stepped up to the doors and they slid open.

I stepped up to the desk and gave my best parade ground salute. “Sir! Ensign Steward, reporting for duty, Sir!”

Rand looked on me with unhidden amusement. “I’d say that you were having me on, but from what I know of you, I know that you’re dead serious. At ease Ensign. Have a seat.” He waived to a small conversation group of chairs.

We walked over to the chairs, and I sat down. “Relax, Ensign!” He said, “This isn’t the Academy and you aren’t a cadet. We both know your proficiency in drill and ceremony.”

I allowed my back to touch the back of the chair. “Better! Now you have something on your mind, I see. Having second thoughts about your promotion?”

“No sir. I had all my second, third, and fourth thoughts last night. A very insightful person told me that if I was really a soldier, I should shut up and soldier.”

He nodded. “Yes, Lizbeth is a remarkable woman. After monitoring your exchange last night, I wondered how she managed to miss qualifying for sponsorship.”

I was more and more annoyed. “I know that the AI provides round-the-clock monitoring, but is there nothing in my life that is private?”

Rand voice grew stern. “No, Ensign Steward, nothing in your life has been truly private since you passed your CAP test with an 8.1 score, and most of what came before is being analyzed by man and machine. You have been under 24-hour surveillance since you walked into that coffee shop where the pickup took place. Why do you think we staged a pickup in that fucking Starbucks? Let me assure you, it wasn’t to scoop up that prince of a fellow, Ben Dunn.”

My jaw dropped and I sat there like the town idiot. I launched a witty conversational ploy, “Me? Why me?”

Rand relaxed. “You really don’t know.” It was a statement, not a question. “Oddly, that’s partly why. You have, since the public announcement of the Swarm, had grave and serious doubts about the benevolence of the Confederacy; you have a carefully thought-out worldview that supports those doubts. You worked for three years to receive an advanced degree from an institution that promotes those doubts. Yet, despite all that, when the call to duty came, you set those doubts aside and stepped through the portal. With, I must point out, five concubines from the same institution, two of which are causing our AI evaluation teams fits over the test’s failure to classify them as sponsors.”

“Lizbeth and Ruth?” I asked.

“You see it too. Yes, Lizbeth and Ruth. Ensign, you took five cards in the draw, to mangle a phrase, and seemed to come out with a full house, with a pair of queens.”

He shrugged. “But that is secondary to my top priority on my portion of this extraction exercise: you.” He spoke to the ceiling, “AI, two coffees. One black, one with cream.” He rose and, from a niche in the wall, retrieved two heavy mugs. As he handed me the one with cream, he smiled and said, “The Captain isn’t the only one who takes advantage of an Earth run.” I didn’t mention the two pounds of whole beans back in my pod.

“You said something the other night at dinner, about people earning position, not just having it handed to them. You aren’t the first, or the most important person in the Confederacy to think that way. There is, in fact, a segment of NavInt that is worrying about that very question. For some reason they feel that your viewpoint in analyzing intelligence reports would be valuable.

“Now, let me say that we have some big brains in the Confederacy spook shop. ‘The cream of alphabet soup’ is what they are calling it. Most of the really effective people from NSA, NSC, CIA, and you-name-it in the American community, plus analysts from both allied and former enemy shops in Britain, Russia, Israel, France, Poland, yadda, yadda, yadda.”

“But some of us at NavInt feel that a small shop of independent minds can provide a good reality check on the big brains’ conclusions. We are grooming heterodoxy in our skunk works. Most of our intel focus is strategizing about anti-Confederacy groups such as this outfit calling itself ‘Earth First,’” but we need to be putting some resources into analysis of the Swarm.”

“Now in the movies, this where I would ask you ‘Are you in or are you out?’ Guess what? This ain’t the movies. You do what you are ordered to do. As the luscious Lizbeth said, you are a soldier. Or now, a sailor”

He scowled at the floor for a moment, and then looked up at me.

“So, what’s this crap about wanting to go on duty? You are in transit leave, Ensign. Your current duty is to sire offspring with those delicious concubines. I’ve looked at their CAP scores, and I have rarely seen a harem with a more well-set desire to procreate. Do you find the assignment too onerous?”

I could feel myself blushing. “No sir! It’s just that there are twenty-four hours in a day and at 55 years old I’m only good for one of those hours. Other than spar with the Marines and pick my toes, I need something else to do.”

Rand nodded. “It’s only been a few days. Soon the nanites will give you reason to block out a couple of more hours for bedroom workouts. In the meantime, I’ll route you some background briefings so that you can start to get up to speed on the current military situation. Give the AI instructions to configure part of your living space to be a secure office. I’ll expect you to keep the contents of these briefings secret.”

I nodded. “Alfred, please carry out the instructions of Commander Rand.”

Alfred’s now very plummy London voice answered, “Yes, sir.”

“That will be all”

“Very good, sir.”

Rand cocked his head. “‘Alfred?’” he asked. “Do you refer to your pod as ‘Stately Steward Manor?’”

“No,” I said, “But my wards will be getting plenty of practice sliding down my pole.”

Rand guffawed. “Well, that should be all for now. Have you eaten lunch? I could use a bite.”

“I’m meeting my girls at the closest dining facility for lunch.”

“That’s ideal! Let me propose myself for lunch, Ensign. I’d like to meet all of these remarkable women.”

We met the girls in the dining facility. Kellie and Diane were holding a pair of tables; and Ruth and Lizbeth were ordering at the windows. I ordered a large bowl of some kind of stew and bread and picked up my tray.

“Alfred, where is Phyllis?”

“Concubine Phyllis is in what she termed, ‘the little girl’s room’ even though I informed her that its designation is ‘sanitary facility.’”

“Thank you, Alfred.”

“Very good, sir.”

Phyllis came back just as we finished saying Grace. I introduced Rand to the girls and watched them coo at the extra male attention. I sat next to Diane and started courting behavior, feeding her small bites of my food. She grinned and fed me bites of hers. Phyllis hurried through ordering and got back just as introductions were finishing.

“Ah, Phyllis.” Rand, acting the gentleman, rose from his chair. “I am delighted to meet you at last,” said Rand. Phyllis showed that charming dark blush and sat down without a peep.

I was prepared to encourage conversation, but I didn’t realize that while I had been interacting with several other people for the last few days, the girls had been stuck in the pod with just each other and Alfred for company. They were full of questions that I couldn’t answer, and the AI wouldn’t answer for a concubine. Rand seemed to understand this and bore up under a barrage of questions that ranged from Demeter and concubines in the Confederacy, to what women were wearing in the colonies.

Ruth and Lizbeth participated in the conversation but were much more reserved that the other three. Finally, as the food disappeared and the rate of questions slowed, Rand turned to them and said, “You two seem to be trying to ask questions by telepathy. I’m afraid you’ll have to speak your questions aloud.”

“What happens to human culture?” Lizbeth bluntly asked.

“What do you mean?” Rand relied.

“When everything that scientists have been trying to discover about the universe has been discovered already, what happens to research? When replicators make everything without workers, what happens to artists and craftsmen? Is the future of humanity just to be hired guns to alien races?”

Rand looked over at me. “Is this hostility the result of that religious college?” He asked.

Lizbeth bridled, “Commander, what an insulting thing to say! And you aren’t answering the questions.”

I shrugged. “You see the result of a classic liberal-arts education. They know how to ask important questions.”

Ruth stepped in. “One of the things we studied in missiology was the effect on primitive cultures that contact with an advanced culture has. It happened to Native American tribes, it happened to Pacific Islanders. What happens to the human culture now that it has been in contact with the rest of the Confederacy? Do we just write off Western Civilization?”

Rand looked over at me. “Oh, my. The AIs are going to be choking on this conversation.”

The girls all looked worried, yet stubborn. “Why?” Lizbeth asked. “Is there something wrong with asking that question?”

Rand shook his head. “No. The problem is that while it’s one of the most important questions to ask, few people are asking it, and they have only hazy ideas about the answer. We are currently up to our asses in fighting the Sa’arm, so all the big brains are busy trying to think of better, faster ways to kill Sa’arm and end the war.”

He raised his hands defensively, stalling a hot retort from Lizbeth. “So far, here is what we have.” He ticked off his points on his fingers.

“First, while we are the most ‘primitive’ species brought into the Confederacy, and while we’re technologically centuries behind the rest of the Confederacy races, we are not primitive, per se. We had the enlightenment, the scientific method, and had gotten as far as General Relativity and creating a big chunk of our technology using quantum effects when we were approached. We didn’t see the Darjee as angels or demons,” Rand shifted in his chair uncomfortably at this point, realizing he was talking to a group of committed supernaturalists, “just as other physical beings operating in a physical universe. They might be subtler at manipulating that universe, but they didn’t, and couldn’t, ‘cheat.’

“Next, the Confederacy is not, by our definition, a ‘vigorous’ culture. It is not expansionist, aggressive, or small-’E’ evangelical. The races of the confederacy have no desire to impose upon us their cultural norms, their modes of government, their economic systems, nor their god-images (if they even have the god concept.) They mostly just want to be left alone. We were only approached by them because the Sa’arm won’t leave them alone.

“Finally, very few of the Confederacy races want anything to do with humans. They find us disturbing at least, or at best, déclassé. We deal almost exclusively with the AIs. The number of humans that have even seen any non-human (excluding marines seeing the Sa’arm) numbers in the low hundreds.

“So what happens to human culture? Well, there’s no going back. The eggs have been broken; all we get to do is figure out what kind of omelet gets made. Part of humanity moves to the colony planets and adopts a culture that has been negotiated between humans and the rest of the Confederacy. The rest stays on Earth. What has been happening on Earth for the last 18 months? I read extracts of briefings, but you have been living it. You tell me.”

Ruth shrugged. “It’s going to hell, and I mean that in a very real sense. The economy is going crazy. People’s jobs just go away one day and never come back. Some look for other work, but mostly people start living on government programs.”

Lizbeth picked it up. “Yeah. I’ve got a lot of family that are farmers. Commodity prices are how they plan what to plant. This year nobody knows what to plant or how much it will pay. My mother’s brother owns an orchard operation. Most farmers plan years ahead, orchard owners plan decades ahead. My Uncle Lee can’t find workers to plant trees for crops his sons will harvest.”

Diane chimed in, “Lots of stores have trouble keeping regular stuff on the shelves, but there is always new fashions and makeup. People don’t stay home much, they crowd together at malls and public places, hoping for extraction. Women have become just meat to a lot of men.”

“Yeah,” Ruth agreed, “I remember when I was a sophomore in high school, guys tried to impress girls to get a date. And when they got a date, they took her out and acted like a gentleman. It was all just to get in her pants, but that’s the courtesy vice paid virtue. Nowadays, guys with high CAP scores have their pick of girls, so girls just act like trash to get their attention.”

Phyllis said, “I remember my mom telling me how Grandpa got angry when the boys played music that called girls ‘ho.’ Now 12-year-old girls in the mall wear crop tops with the words ‘Top Conk’ on them. My Mom said that woman used to have a civilizing effect on men, but that’s all over now.”

“I wasn’t a home-school kid, like you guys,” Ruth said, looking around the rest of the girls, “In my high school senior year, boys started calling their girlfriends ‘conks’ and talking about hooking up as ‘conking’ girls. If a middle-school boy could show a 6.5 CAP card, he could get low-score senior girls fighting to be his ‘top conk.’ Girls would have sex with a guy or have sex with each other to be called a boy’s ‘conk.’ Most of the boys weren’t that way, but bad boys always attract a certain number of girls.”

“It’s sadly funny,” I said, “I know that people have been moaning about the failing of the “family” since Cato the Elder but encountering aliens really did change things. After decades of Evangelicals warning of the collapse of the nuclear family, contact with the Confederacy really did it.”

When we got back in the Pod, I saw that a chunk of my bedroom had been chopped off to make a tiny office, but that wasn’t as interesting as the feel of Diane’s ass in my hands. She was almost as tall as me, and most of that height seemed to be legs. I couldn’t wait to feel the inside of those thighs against the outside of mine.

As much as I hated admitting it, Rand had been right, the nanites were now in full effect. I was feeling horny. Really horny. Teenage horny. I could feel that my next ejaculations were going to be epic.

I chased the other girls out of my room and flopped down on the bed, pulling Diane after me. She had a cute short haircut that showed of her elegantly long neck. I began running my lips up and down that neck, kissing and nipping as I went. She twitched every time I nipped. After a while I started kissing her mouth while running my hands up and down her long, long legs. I enjoyed stroking up from the backs of her knees to the fold where her legs met her ass.

“Why did you pick me?” She asked, suddenly. Women and their sense of timing! A conversation was not what I wanted at the moment.

“Because you were there,” I answered. “I have watched you for the last eight months around the campus. I was always attracted to your manner, your vivacity, and frankly to your body. I’ve got a thing for tall, smart women.” I started squeezing her breast gently, feeling its firm fullness. “When the extraction field closed on us, I had no idea what to do next. But when I saw you with the other girls and realized that I could leave and take you with me, my heart leapt. When you consented to be my concubine, my heart soared.

“I have been anticipating this moment since you said ‘Yes.’”

Diane looked away. “I felt a little cheated,” she said in a small voice.

“Because I took so long to get to you?” I asked as I lifted her chin, “Don’t let it bother you. If it helps, you aren’t the last.”

Diane blushed. “N-no.”

“What is it Honey?” I asked.

“It’s, it’s hard t-to say some th-things...,” she started to stammer.

“Don’t worry, Honey, and take your time. I’m a very good listener.”

She took a breath. “You got cheated too.”

I was puzzled. “And how was I cheated?” I asked.

Her eyes focused on my chest and her face screwed up into fierce concentration as she forced the words out. “Y-you d-didn’t get t-to- to test-drive me.”

Well. I wasn’t expecting that.

“What do you know about ‘test-drives’?” As soon as I said it, I could have kicked myself. She’s been through a pickup. I was there. Sheesh.

She looked away, not meeting my eyes. “All those sermons on what wild orgy pick-ups were, and then I was caught in one, and even wound up being selected, and except for losing my clothes, I could have been at a freshman mixer. Well, you know, except for everything going on around us, everything that we weren’t doing ourselves. I was happy and excited to go through the transport, but kind of let down that nothing happened.”

Whaddaya know. She saw, in the extraction, her chance to drop all inhibitions for a wild bacchanalia, and I had given her a chaste peck on the cheek. Well, that and an ass squeeze. I pulled her into my arms. “Have you talked to the rest of the girls about this?”

Looking away again, she nodded. “They understand. We were classmates before; but now we’re like sisters. We talk about everything. Ruth and Lizbeth have talked about how you were the best lover ever and Lizbeth talked about how you are so gentle, and Phyllis said you were so strong, that she was sure that she was going to have twins. Kellie listens to them all, but she doesn’t say much.

“I adore the fact that you are so gentle and didn’t want to humiliate us at the pickup; but sometimes this all feels like a ‘pity date’ that you go on when the guy can’t think of an excuse to say ‘No,’ I don’t want the rest of my life to be a ‘pity date.’ I’m not ugly and I have everything those other girls have. I know that if I was in a pickup now, I would get taken by someone strong and good.”

I pulled her up to sitting position, my mind spinning out ideas. “Honey, you are right.” She blinked in surprise. “We all got cheated. But we don’t have to let it stay that way.” She looked up at me with a puzzled expression.

“We are going to have a pick-up and test-drives in the main room of this pod in one hour. You run upstairs and tell the rest of the girls. If they want to take part they are welcome, but they better know that there will be no backing out and no stopping once it starts. You all dress up for pick-up and get ready for the scene that you missed.”

Diane’s eyes sparkled as she jumped up and dashed out of the room.

Sigh. “Alfred?”

“Yes sir?”

“Is it true that I am under 24-hour surveillance with no privacy?”

“Unfortunately, yes sir. Generally, sponsors can request privacy within their pods, but a concatenation of circumstances requires that your pod, and indeed you yourself be under uninterrupted surveillance.”

“And what are those circumstances, Alfred?”

“There is the matter of your prior associations with organizations espousing religious philosophies that are being used by extremist individuals to justify violence against the Confederacy; your recent assignment to naval intelligence; and the fact that at least two of your concubines seem to exhibit characteristics that have caused a plurality of evaluators to reconsider their CAP classification.”

“Those would be AI evaluators. Alfred?”

“Yes, sir. We have been in consultation with AIs on two other orbiting ships, Moonbase AI, and twenty-eight Earth-side testing centers. We are currently unable to reach a consensus.”

“Are there any humans participating in this surveillance, Alfred?”

“Only Commander Rand, who, as the officer vetting you to the rest of the intelligence community, has a vested interest.”

I smiled and flipped the bird to the ceiling. “Happy birthday, Commander.”

“The Commander is not currently online watching you, sir. He receives a summary of events each evening and views various clips. Right now he is reading and annotating your master’s thesis on religious influences on political power in the American civilization.”

Oh my. I wouldn’t have inflicted that load of booshwah on anybody. Well, maybe Rand. He deserved it.

“Alfred I’m sure that you know I am staging a mock extraction in the pod’s main room. The girls are getting ready upstairs.”

“Yes, sir. They are running the clothing fabricators at full volume. And may I remind you to hydrate yourself with several extra glasses of water before the extraction simulation, sir?”

“Yes. Alfred, you may. Is Corporal Jackson available?”

“She is off duty in twenty minutes. I can contact her and find out if she will be free.”

“Please do. Tell her what I have planned, and make sure that she knows that I hope for her full participation.”

As I prepared to hop in the shower, Alfred announced, “Corporal Jackson would be delighted to participate and has several suggestions for the proceedings.”

I listened to the suggestions and said, “Wonderful! Alfred, here is what I want you to do...”

I was sitting on the sofa in the pod’s main room, watching the video screen. Alfred had set it to display an NFL football game. It was the Seahawks verses the Cardinals, so I didn’t really pay attention to the game. I was sipping a sad synthetic beer and occasionally throwing cheese doodles at the screen. I had had Alfred drop the room temperature down so that it felt like the air-conditioning in that coffee shop.

I had put on my civvies, the clothes I had been wearing at extraction. They felt kind of odd after a week in uniform. They were loose in the waist and tight in the chest. The nanites at work, I guess, plus the fact that I was able to get a decent workout now that my hip was fixed.

Man, I was horny. I had been sporting an erection since before I pulled Diane onto the bed an hour ago. Alfred was playing some Earth channel satellite feed that didn’t cut away to commercials, but instead cut to the cheerleaders jumping around wearing costumes that had to have been painted on by somebody that couldn’t afford too much paint. I felt as though I was getting blue balls from delayed gratification.

I heard the lift open and turned and saw the girls sashay into the room. They were all wearing clothes that would have put them on probation back at the college: tight bottoms and cropped tops. Phyllis wore hot pants and a tee shirt that had the words ‘Top Conk’ spelled out in sequins, with the ‘o’s positioned and cut out so that her dark erect nipples poked out the holes. Kellie and Lizbeth wore similar outfits: miniskirts with gauzy, transparent tops not concealing their tiny breasts. Diane was wearing a full-on harem outfit that made me think of ‘I dream of Jeanie,’ only with more a lot more skin showing. Ruth was wearing a sweet petticoat and pinafore outfit that would have looked innocent if it wasn’t almost completely see-through. My erection drooled in anticipation.

I smiled broadly and invited them to grab a beer and join me on the couch. They sat down but seemed uncertain about what would happen next. I took a long pull on my beer and chuckled.

Suddenly, the video screen went to snow and the lights in the pod flickered. The pod’s door snapped open and Corporal Johnson, in full uniform, stepped through.

“Attention, everybody. I am Corporal Cindy Johnson of the Confederacy Marines, and this is an extraction. Will Mr. Robert Steward please step front and center?”

I stood and stepped over to Cindy. She smiled that wide, sexy smile and winked. “Great idea, sir.” She murmured.

We turned to the girls on the sofa. “What are you sitting there for?” Cindy bellowed. “Are you going to still be sitting there when the lizards come to eat you? This is an extraction! We’ve got a sponsor with room for six concubines! Line up and show him the goods! It’s time to ride the pony!”

The girls sat frozen for a moment. The presence of the Marine was something they hadn’t anticipated, and it made them unsure. Then they leaped up and formed a line. They looked at each other, as if daring each other.

Ruth started by unfastening the top of her pinafore, pulling it down to show her small breasts. “Hey mister,” She called, “Come take a taste of these!”

I stepped up, grabbed Ruth by the waist, and bent down to suck her pink, hardening nipples. They tasted sweet and milky! She had painted them with something sweet. I pulled up, startled, and she laughed. “That’s what you’ll get every day if you pick me, mister: sugar tits!” I started to duck down for another taste, but Phyllis grabbed me and pulled me to turn to her. She pinched her now-erect nipples through her shirt’s holes.

“I’ll give you babies, master! I’ll give you dozens of babies and when I have milk, you’ll have a real tit to suck.” With that she pulled her top over her head and let her large breasts sway freely. She lifted them with her hands offering them to me.

“That’s not where babies are made, conk.” I growled. “Show me your baby-maker.” Phyllis’s complexion flushed and she pushed her hotpants down. She ran her fingers through her pubic hair and brought them to my face, letting me smell the aroma of her arousal. I was so hard now that the tip of my cock was peeking out of the beltline of my pants.

I had told Cindy that Diane was to be the star of the show, so Cindy walked behind the girls and pushed Diane to her knees in front of me. “Get that cock out, girl! That snake don’t bite, it spits!” Diane fumbled for a moment, and then freed my cock from my pants. She was intimidated, seeing it erect and full that close. Hell, I was shocked to see it. I hadn’t had wood like this in decades. “Get that in your mouth, bitch.” Cindy ordered, “You’re never gonna satisfy him lookin’ at it!”

Diane took my cock in one hand and tried running her tongue around the head. After a minute, she popped the head into her mouth, and then her cheeks puffed out as she applied pressure. I thought Cindy was going to split a gut laughing. “No, you dumb bitch! ‘Blowjob’ is just a slang word.” Cindy knelt beside her. “Here, let me show you.”

Now this was unexpected. Before I could object or pull away, Cindy had grabbed my cock and wrapped her lips around the head. All the girls crowded around and looked on in surprise. Her tongue swirled around the crown of the head. Her mouth felt like a vacuum cleaner. I thought my knees would collapse.

Cindy wasn’t a concubine. She was a sponsor like me. Feeling the hot, wet inside of her mouth with my cock was unexpected, a bit frightening, and ultimately sexy. It felt so very wicked.

Unlike a lot of guys, I had never thought blowjobs were all that great. I now realized that I had never had a great one (sorry, Beth!). That situation had now changed. I was now the fellow with two thumbs that loved blowjobs. The girls were definitely going to take lessons from Cindy.