Chapter 1

The dark-haired Hispanic woman on the screen nursed a newborn baby. She looked down at the child as it suckled on a dusky nipple, the woman’s eyes wide with love and wonder. The child, my third child and my first boy, greedily sucked for several more minutes, and then slowed. His eyes fluttered shut and after a few minutes he stopped nursing. Another young woman, a slim redhead, gently lifted the child from the wet-nurse’s arms. Then Phyllis looked up at the camera mischievously and Kellie’s head took the place of the baby in her lap. Kellie started nursing and the Phyllis’ eyes glazed over in pleasure. Quietly, almost below the level that could be heard from the recording, Phyllis softly moaned.

I looked down at the small screen and felt a lump in my throat. I missed being home more that any time that I could remember. Back when I was a non-commissioned officer in the US Army, I had always been sorry to leave behind my late wife Beth, but now I had multiple wives (well, concubines) and three (now four) children. “And,” I thought to myself, “I’m trapped in a drifting tin can uncountable miles away.”

Eight months earlier:

“Sir,” came Alfred’s plummy British accent.

I pulled my head from between my concubine’s Diane’s legs. “Yes, Alfred?”

“You have a message from Commodore Roff, Naval Intelligence, Persephone.” Diane grabbed my head and tried to pull it back to her sweet pussy, but duty, literally, had called.

“You know, Alfred, if you hadn’t assured me that my 24-hour surveillance ended upon our landing on Demeter, I would feel very suspicious. What’s the message?”

“The commodore sends his complements and asks you to report to the naval base Persephone, as soon as possible.”

Hmmm. When a flag-rank officer tells you to report, ‘At your convenience,’ it means right away. When they say, ‘As soon as possible,’ it means, “Why aren’t you here yet?”

Reporting in person to Commodore Roff meant transporting up to the in-system Styx-class shuttle, ‘Ozzie,’ traveling for two days, and then transporting to Poseidon Base. I looked around the pods for whom to take with me for the week that the travel and briefing (if that’s what it was) would take. I generally don’t mind the alone time, but these days, because of my now 20-year-old body, I was nearly constantly horny. If I didn’t sink my dick in something twice a day, I got twitchy; I didn’t want to be twitchy meeting my new commander, and I generally avoided sticking my dick in random concubines.

However: Yoo Jin had her hands full with her concubine Kellie acting up, plus interviewing additional concubine candidates for her and Ruth from the local Civil Service hostel (read whorehouse); Paula was busy soaking up the sight of her daughter Amethyst (who we all called ‘Amy’) racing through physical therapy as she learned to walk; Kyle was being the handyman and adding improvements to the clan’s property as fast as he could con or cajole building materials from the cute girl who dispatched for the community’s large-scale replicator; Phyllis was developing a case of ‘Nesting Syndrome’ as it became more and more apparent that she was well and truly pregnant; Diane had had enough of space travel and confinement on ships, thank you. So, even though it meant that Ruth would be playing hooky from concubine selection, she came with me.

Ruth, too, was in the first trimester of pregnancy, but we wouldn’t be gone for more than a week, and Confederacy shielding was so effective that any radiation exposure would be like living in a high-altitude city back on Earth. Besides, I just couldn’t get enough of Ruth. She was the first love of my new life.

Alfred followed me on my jaunt (so to speak), providing an interface to the AIs that I encountered along the way, and kept me aware of the events back home. When we arrived on Persephone, it was after office hours, so I checked Ruth and me into the guest officer’s accommodations and we fell into bed. I spent about an hour gazing with love at the first signs of her growing belly, alternating with long bouts of sex.

The next morning, Alfred gave me turn-by-turn directions (with no glowing stripes on the floor, thank you.) As I entered the door marked ‘Commodore Roff’, I was confronted by a spectacular blonde rating sitting at a desk in the outer office. “Ensign Steward?” She chirped.

“Guilty as charged,” I answered.

She sniffed at my attempt at wit. “Commodore Roff will see you right away. Please step through to his private office.”

I entered an office dominated by a large projection of the gas giant Poseidon filling a two-story-high wall. I was just going to give it a glance, but the view was overwhelming. It was as if the room was open to space, with no barrier and no protection. I stared, frozen for a minute, noticing the shadow of one of Poseidon’s moons crawling across the clouds of a storm cell. Behind me a man cleared his throat and I jumped and turned.

“Sir, Ensign Steward reporting as ordered.”

The Commodore stood behind a large, bare desk. “At ease, ensign. At ease.”

Commodore Roff, the S2 for 3rd Marine Expeditionary, looked around twenty-two years old. But I knew that he was a year older than my 55 years, and had, in the U.S. Navy, a decade more time in service. And from a quick review of his service record (thanks, Alfred), I learned that he had spent some time at the ‘pointy end’ as a SEAL.

He gestured to the display, “I know how arresting the view is. It’s a video feed from a one of Poseidon’s natural satellites. I keep this feed on almost all the time. It’s a reminder.”

“A reminder of what, sir?” I asked.

He snorted, “It’s different each day. How big the universe is; how much we’ve got to accomplish in the little time we have; how the universe doesn’t give a good goddamn about any of our plans and dreams. Take your pick.” He sat down and waved me to a chair.

The Commodore proceeded to give me The Speech. It’s The Speech that every commander gives to a subordinate entering the chain of command. It has several standard parts: the Greeting, the “My Door is Always Open,” the “I Tolerate No Bullshit” promise. I’m not being cynical. The Speech was as much a part of my military life as Reveille and Retreat.

Roff surprised me a couple of times, though. He mentioned Commander Rand’s idea of a Skunk Works. “It’s a Good Idea, but I don’t know if Rand has the gumption to pull it off. Let me say though that I don’t tolerate any lines of reporting outside my official channels. You report to me, ensign, clear?”

Against my expectations, I began to like Roff. I felt like he might be an ‘honest spook.’ “Yes sir, Commodore. I have no problems coloring inside the lines.”

As Roff finished The Speech, he smiled warmly. “Rand’s gag of commissioning you as an ensign gave me a smile, but as I’ve reviewed your service records, I’ve come to believe that you deserve the rank of full Lieutenant.” With a shift of his eyes, Roff’s smile grew dangerous. “I needed a pretext for the promotion, though, and I think I’ve found one.” The smile grew shark-like.

I sighed. “Would that pretext involve a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?”

Roff chuckled. “Well, Rand was right about you. You didn’t just fall off the turnip wagon. Let me give you the quick brief; you’ll spend the next two months or so getting full rundowns on the mission, the ship, and the crew.” He pointed and I turned to the huge display screen that now showed star systems in three dimensions, as though the display extended into the wall behind it. Little labels popped up over each star. When I saw Earth’at, I realized that I was looking at what was deemed the backwater edge of Confederacy space; the edge that was encountering the Sa’arm. The far right of the display was an orange arc, like the film of a soap bubble. Within the arc, I saw names of Confederacy systems that had fallen to the Sa’arm.

“Intelligence has been devoting its full resources, struggling to find any kind of advantage over the Sa’arm: communications, political analysis, threat assessment; and it’s like trying to climb a glass wall. There’s practically nothing to hold onto. They come on full guns until they are stopped.” He rocked on his feet and blew out his cheeks. “But what is happening outside our globe of information is a mystery.”

The dots in the display seemed to recede. I realized that the scale of the display was now enormous. The Sa’arm front, intense orange where it contacted Confederacy systems, faded into near invisibility where it covered the spin-wise bulk of our galactic arm.

“The Dickheads don’t mine in space and will eventually exhaust the resources on the planets they currently occupy. They must expand or die. The Sa’arm won’t be able to expand indefinitely outward to the galactic edge. They’ll run out of stars. They can’t hop from our spiral arm to the next; in between the arms, the stars are too sparse. Life flourishes in the spiral arms. The only way that they can expand is through Confederacy space.”

“And if that’s the case, then stopping them here becomes a key to stopping them forever. The wave of Sa’arm that have expanded inward can’t double-back and reach us, because those worlds they would use as steppingstones have been stripped. We have only to deal with the wave front of expansion on this side. The expansion is a hollow shell.”

The screen zoomed back our little section of Confederacy space. The Commodore looked up at me with furrows creasing his oddly smooth forehead. “But here’s what’s giving me sleepless nights.”

The display played out a short animation with the orange Sa’arm front expanding along the spiral arm as a spheric section. As it hit the Confederacy systems, that orange section became brighter and slowed, and then halted.

But the portion of the sphere that was not in contact with the Confederacy continued expanding along the spin-wise edge of the spiral arm, so that the bright section became a small dimple in an advancing orange bulge. The bulge grew past the stalled front and overwhelmed it.

Shit. That little animation clip was going to give me nightmares for years. I asked, “Have you ever read a short story called, “Leiningen versus the Ants?” I asked.

Roff smiled. “No, I hated High School English; but I saw “The Naked Jungle” when I was a kid, and I nearly pissed myself, I was so scared. But I remember that Charlton Heston won.”

Roff’s voice grew brisk. “What I have been proposing is a series of scouting missions along here,” he waved a finger; in the display this caused a highlight to appear on a toroid along the galactic arm, “Northwest” of where the current Sa’arm front was now. “We don’t know what’s happening out there. In Rumsfieldian terms, it’s an ‘unknown unknown.’ I want to know.”

He waved his hand and the star map zoomed dizzyingly to Poseidon’at, and from there to set of slips in the Navy shipyard. The display focused on one out of a line of dozens of identical ships.

“The idea is to take a K’treel exploration ship, make it extremely stealthy, and go out and perform a sweep of these systems. There and back again. Easy-peasy. And you get promoted to Lieutenant!”

I rubbed my jaw. “How many ships are you tasking to this effort?”

His smile again grew dangerous. “Oh, I have all the K’treel ships I could ask for. They were built millennia ago by a race called the Tuull. Their AIs are among the oldest known sentients humans have ever encountered. K’treels turn out to be kind of useless for warships, but great for trade and exploration. They’re built to operate for years away from yard support. We’re fitting one of them with one missile tube, but no big guns. Lots of cargo room. Comes complete with its own shuttle. What more could a super-spy want?” He chuckled.

“I’m not biting. How many ships?”

His chuckle became a quiet laugh. “Oh, as many as I can scrounge up crews for. Like everything else in this damned war, the bottleneck is manpower. Your first mission is the test case. Once your reports of success come back, that will validate the project and I can snag as many crews as I need.”

“Right now, you’re on the first crew of the good ship George Vancouver.”

“What’s the catch? I’m not running this clambake, am I?”

He shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no. I know you’ve commanded platoons in combat, but running a ship takes a different set of operational management skills. You’ll go as the Intel officer.”

“Who is in charge?”

“I’ve got a Captain that came in on the same pickup ship as you - just the man I need. He used to skipper a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack sub back in the Bad Old Days. He’s got experience at commanding a crew on missions that take them away from overall command structures.”

“Now, I know that you arrived in-system only a few weeks ago.” The shark-y look had faded away. Now he seemed to be a favorite uncle. “Get back to Demeter, screw those concubines, set up your household. In a less than six months you will be heading out on a damn long cruise.”

“Ensign Steward?”

“Yes, Alfred?” Ruth and I were on the ‘Ozzie’ on our way home. Since we were stuck in space for a couple of days, we had been trying out some Kama Sutra-esque moves with the room gravity set to one-sixth G. Zero-G sex is almost more trouble than it’s worth, but with one Lunar gravity, I could march around the room with Ruth impaled on my cock. I was, as the man said, a goddam sexual Tyrannosaurus. I highly recommend it.

“I am sorry to bring bad news, Sir, but I will be unable to accompany you during your upcoming cruise.”

“Alfred! How could there be a problem? It’s not like you take up space or need accommodations.”

“Unfortunately, Sir, that is not true. I do need accommodations. I must be able to run in the “workspace” of the AI of whatever ship or station to which you are assigned. The Tuull AI of the K’Treel to which you have been assigned is, I have been informed ... incompatible with my operation.”

“Richard, we need to talk.”

It was the morning after my return from Roff’s office. Ruth and Yoo Jin stood in front of me. I swallowed the bite of breakfast I was chewing and tried my best to look innocent and attentive. Ruth and Yoo Jin were, after all, not concubines, but sponsors themselves.

“Yes, Dears, talk about what?”

“Diane.”

“And what about Diane? Is anything going wrong with her application for Demeter citizenship?”

“Nothing like that,” Ruth said, “It’s that she feels neglected.”

I did a quick mental review. I had not missed any nights with her, except for Navy travel, since we arrived on Demeter. “Help me here. In what way have I been neglecting her?”

Yoo Jin sighed at my male denseness. “We didn’t say that you’ve been neglecting her; we said that she feels neglected.”

Ruth continued, “You may not realize it, but Diane is rather shy and has a hard time opening up enough to just ask for what she wants.”

I rubbed my forehead. I remembered that it was Diane, stammering and barely audible, that asked for the simulated “pick-up” orgy that first week on board ship.

“What would you two recommend that I do to help her feel less neglected and more appreciated and loved?”

The two girls exchanged a smug look and Yoo Jin said, “Just grab her and make her do something out of the ordinary, something that you don’t do with any of us.”

“Nothing too weird,” said Ruth, “No whips or chains, just your arms and hands.”

Yoo Jin looked thoughtful. “She really seemed to get off on having people watch her.”

Two days later I met Captain LeCroix, my new commander. I remembered his face from Captain Clarke’s dining table when Rand had told me that I was now in the Navy. He was the oddest combination of a hard-charging Navy attack sub commander, trapped in the body of a bookish dweeb. Looking at him I expected him to be pushing up a pair of round horn-rim spectacles; listening to him I expected him to be chomping on an unlit cigar stub.

We met at a barbeque he threw for crew newly assigned to the ‘George Vancouver.’ We were asked to bring our concubines, and I asked for and got permission to bring my whole clan.

The barbecue was held at a park in Celeus Township. At first glance, I thought that the surprisingly large group was going to be a repeat of the crowd I saw at in the extraction room of the ‘Northern Lights.’ But this crowd had settled into their roles as sponsors and concubines. There was talk, but not the nervous near-hysteric chatter of that newly extracted crowd. Rather it was the bright conversation of a community that shared a common identity. There were naked women (and the occasional naked man), but the atmosphere was more family.

As fragrant smoke rose over the crowd, I saw there were more children, lots more children, racing around and through the legs of the adults; but when children bumped into an adult, they were quick to say, “Excuse me,” before racing off. Unlike all the picnics I have ever been to, there were no fat people, no old people, no halt or lame. I noticed while the concubines wore flamboyantly colorful clothing (or occasionally no clothing at all), most of the sponsors wore uniforms. This crystalized an impression I had that Confederacy sponsors (at least Navy sponsors on Demeter) rarely appeared in mufti.

The girls started pitching in and helping set up tables for food. Kyle stepped over to a group stoking the fires for the barbecue pits and lent a hand. Amy, as usual, started running at top speed around the perimeter of the park. Paula tried to keep an eye on her, but eventually realized that it was a lost cause. Besides, there really wasn’t anything to worry about. The Confederacy was the most pro-family outfit that I had ever encountered. Every child was precious; and every adult was parental. I had, during the last month, seen a grownup offer a strange child an ice cream and another grownup turn a misbehaving child’s bottom up for a public spanking. Such behavior back on Earth would have had police involvement.

With the vastly reduced population density and the commonality of purpose, the population of Demeter was more like a vast, extended family than the collection of random people that you would encounter in even a small town back on earth. The concept of ‘Stranger Danger’ just didn’t apply. And with the AIs on watch, parents could locate a wayward child in seconds. The picnic was more like a southern family reunion. And, like a redneck family reunion, it seemed to be a great place to meet women. Every woman there was a knockout. I saw occasional couples wandering towards the tree line, only to see them return, red-faced and flushed thirty or so minutes later.