Message-ID: <39666asstr$1039227002@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: X-Original-Path: not-for-mail From: simon_48@hotmail.com (Simon Wagstaff III) X-Original-Message-ID: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Dec 2002 22:12:03 GMT X-ASSTR-Original-Date: 6 Dec 2002 14:12:03 -0800 Subject: {ASSM} HURTLING PLANETS CHAPTER 3 a new-wave space opera by Simon Wagstaff III SF,sex,violence Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 21:10:02 -0500 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: RuiJorge, hecate, gill-bates HURTLING PLANETS A NEW-WAVE SPACE OPERA by SIMON WAGSTAFF III EPISODE III In a dark basement, two men hunch over an alien device. Captain Dennis plays a hunch. They hunt their game upon flying steeds. Captain Harleigh is reluctant to bathe. They approach the dark sun. Koko is extremely compliant. The black fleet cruises endlessly in the dark. Worlds collide in fiery ruin. IN A DARK BASEMENT, TWO MEN HUNCH OVER AN ALIEN DEVICE. As before, they grimly work over human-built components which supply power to the alien machine and modulate the results. Over their heads hangs a glowing yellow sphere. Images come and go hurriedly and kaleidoscopically in the sphere. The bearded man mutters distractedly, "What's different today? Does that woman have to be naked for the frequencies to align? We're getting nothing." The tall man paces, dodging the faintly crackling sphere. "Solar radiation? Time of day? Time. Orbits, Doc. We were looking at a ship in orbit. The ceiling was curved over the angel's head! It was a ship! I was so busy looking at her, ah, at her that I didn't look at the room behind her. We're locked on to one spot in space, and our target's orbited out of it." "Shit," mutters the one addressed as 'Doc.' "Lucky they didn't detect us. Probably the ladies locker room on an Alliance destroyer." "I'm an idiot," gasps the tall, thin man, running a hand through his dark hair. "That gorgeous little butt was bouncing on a sleeping pad. Alliance ships still use balloon mattresses. That was officer country on HMS HAMMER. And that means . . . Holy God! That was Captain Harleigh we peeked at. What a beauty! Lucky she couldn't see us." Doc was beginning to react. "She jumped a mile. I think she saw something. So if we can get this beam focussed and wait -" The tall man nodded. "They'll orbit right into range. If you can modulate it to carry a message, if someone's there . . " "Someone not playing with herself, I hope." Doc began to twist dials back to position. CAPTAIN DENNIS PLAYS A HUNCH. REACHER is en route to the least likely of three positions picked by the computer as being destinations of an out-of-control space gig. This is where a ship would go if it was brought under control within three days of the escape. If the ship has gone to the other positions, Ensign Koko Powter, known to be the only astrogator on the gig, is dead. Or worse. Dennis prays to some undefined god of space that the girl will be there, broadcasting a mayday. Third Chair Ames has located a gas planet within range of the area, suitable for refueling REACHER. The gig AMATEUR, meant to be carried inside a starship, can only be refueled by a starship. REACHER is pushing her fuel reserves in an effort to gain back time lost when HAMMER was unable to send a chase ship. Dennis wonders how the delicious Harleigh is handling her dilemma. The stalemate at Diva is a career-maker, just as his Ceres coup would make him a sure bet for admiral in a few years. He wished he had Joan Harleigh here for about thirty minutes. The sandy-haired beauty was very good at relieving stress for her male classmates (and if rumour was true, a select few of the females too). He curses himself silently for lusting after Joan while he waits to find out how far into Hell Koko Powter has journeyed. First Officer Czerny has her scans running full out. "Captain, we should be seeing some trails by now. Three hours to intercept point; no sign of the gig." She is short and wide. No beauty, but efficient. She and Ames have a thing going. Dennis looks around the tiny command room, claustrophobic for once. He feels a horrible sense of doom. Something is going to happen. Something bad. "Bad," echoes Ames unconsciously. "We'd have seen the trails or found spin-storms. They didn't come this way; they didn't make the turnover." Warren is watching Dennis closely. Guessing something of the captain's mental state, he says decisively, "Captain. I'm launching a detector buoy. It will hang around this area for ten days, then drive back to Ceres base. If AMATEUR arrives here, it will call us. I say we head for the second rendezvous point." Dennis groans. Powter is probably dead. He feels a pang of responsibilty and guilt. That happy child! Taken by scum. Maybe he will be able to kill someone for this in the end. His big hands flex. Dennis can be a dangerous man. He has killed three men with those hands. He shivers. Something bad is coming. He feels it. THEY HUNT THEIR GAME UPON FLYING STEEDS. Above the smooth green hills they ride, urging their horselike mounts over treetops and down into valleys as the creature scrambles to escape. Orvon Rattray has taken the lead, and his long face is flushed with the chase. He directs his steed with quick flicks of mental power, shoving trees aside as he approaches them. Rorvik Wanson is close behind, and others follow him, their clothes like fire and banners in the sky. Rattray stoops upon the prey like a falcon, his mindwhip curling out at the fleeing man's brain. The desperate creature grabs a stone and strikes his own head as the whip burns his cortex. In a spasm he falls over a precipice, gone before Rattray or Wanson can retrieve him. They walk out on solid air and inspect the shattered corpse. "Oh well," Orvon tries to be flip, "There are plenty more where he came from." "A strong one," agrees Rorvik. "Hope he bred widely. Sport's been poor lately." The rest come sailing up expectantly. "I missed him," calls Rattray, standing in the air. "Sorry. We'll hunt again soon." The nobles sitting their steeds in the air make various sounds of disgust. By now, they would all have been mindwhipping the victim and enjoying his screams. With various suggestions to Orvon they begin to disperse. Orvon rides dejectedly back to his castle and calls his finest maids, who begin to disrobe and posture. Orvon takes out his frustrations on a particularly fine brunette, tall and elegant. He fucks her brutally with his cock and his mindwhip, shattering her with bursts of pleasure while slapping her face back and forth. When he finally comes, the woman is unable to speak. The whites of her eyes are red. Orvon motions to his other women, who begin pleasuring him. The brunette dies in her sleep that night, never speaking another word, her brain full of hemorrhages. Orvon smiles sleepily. Soon the predicted spacecraft would land and its unsuspecting crew be mindwhipped carefully into willing, eager slaves. A whole world could be his soon. He sleeps as a slave woman carefully rubs his cock, her mind empty except for his orders. CAPTAIN HARLEIGH IS RELUCTANT TO BATHE. She expects any second to see a greenish-yellow globe appear, filled with snickering gremlins aiming cameras. She chain-smokes, pacing before the mirror again. "So, you neurotic bitch. You really think someone's using high-security stuff to watch you dress?" She takes a drag, then answers herself. "Yes, I do, and here's why. One," she ticks off the points with her fingers, "No power detected. Two, it was real. Real noise, real light? Three, " she drags again, "I don't know what Three is. But I know I'm worth looking at. Could some fool have used his boss's scope to gawk? And given a big secret away?" She folds her long legs, sits on the bed. Her lips give the smokestick an experience to remember. She thinks of a hot bath, of her fingers on the button again. Rub a dub in the tub. God, she's horny. And now masturbation is out of the question. She absently begins to rub her cunt through her uniform pants. After a moment sweat begins to form on her brow. She shudders, withdraws her hand. Her crotch is wet. She undoes a few buttons on her uniform shirt, heaves a ragged sigh. Her lips kiss the smokestick for a long moment, then toss it away, spent andashen. It will be a long night, alone and wakeful. Joan turns out the lights. After a moment she sobs once, almost silently. THEY APPROACH THE DARK SUN. Curiously none of the space pirates aboard the converted starship BLACK CROSS seem able to summon up their willpower and turn the ship aside. Captain Mister Jones is hiding in his cabin with one of the less scrawny whores. Verna Colter shakes with fear, muttering about the thing in the dark ahead. Charlie Soaper runs the bridge, but spends most of his time staring at his screens. The screens are mostly tiny flatscreens or solid repeaters, crude beside the ones used by REACHER or HAMMER, but big enough to show the swirling protostar, glowing in the dead night of space, orbited by an asteroid. The totally circular orbit of the asteroid shows it to have been towed into place with hyperdrive anchors. A hot spot shows on its cold surface: a base. The pirates know they are going to that base. They know they are going there to die miserably. Yet they never discuss turning aside, each facing his end with stoicism, as one does who learns of a long-feared fatal disease. Here, they each seem to feel privately, is my just punishment. They can all feel what only Sabor Grundy and a few before him have been able to sense: the black and terrible hate of the mind in the dark sun. KOKO IS EXTREMELY COMPLIANT. She smiles goofily at all four men, and giggles when they grope her. She is always happy to fuck or suck now, and her orgasms are like flashbulbs of pleasure on her face and breasts. In the cabin, James is lost in some private world as he fucks her slowly. She orgasms again as he takes her from behind, muttering women's names under his breath as he stares at her ass. Her head bowed, her mind blown, her ass high, Koko Powter is any adolescent's sex fantasy come to life. She drools, coming again and again in chain orgasms, sparking near-epileptic convulsions in her drug-burned pleasure centers. "You like this," James tells her, and instant obedience fills her brain with agreement; this is great! "My dick is a foot long and as thick as my arm," she feels it swell hugely and gasps, "and you're coming and coming," she screams, lightbulbs detonating as she blacks out from sheer pleasure, not hearing the next command. James blinks, then realizes he has fucked her unconscious. He comes so hard he sees spots. After a minute, he rises, checks Koko's pulse and smiles, then wipes himself and begins to dress. Koko stirs as he puts on his pants; her hips quiver in post-orgasmic memory. Her eyes rove, light on James; instantly the goofy grin returns. She puts a hand on her crotch and moans. "No more, baby, I'm empty," James smirks. "Wow, what a hot mama you are. Robbie said you'd be disinhibited but this is unbelievable. Wonder if you were this hot when you were smart?" He strolls out and closes the door. Ensign Koko Powter sags upon the bed, the stupid grin dropped like a mask. Worth a little brain damage for orgasms like that, she thinks. Almost worth fucking creeps like these. She shudders. James is the nice one. Robbie is the one who doped her back on BEGINNER, the one who gave her the mind-burning drug encef, the one who treats her in the most sadistic way. She is afraid Robbie suspects that she is more in control than she lets on. A starship officer does not hallucinate. Nor are they susceptible to hypnosis or ordinary suggestion. Powter always hated Mind Control 250 at the Academy; being hypnotized by a master psychologist who made you forget how to urinate or see your food as disgusting was irritating and humiliating. Worse yet, if you couldn't break the compulsion, you were kicked out after having it removed. She had preferred 251, in which a fatherly hypnotist and a sisterly psychologist had helped her design her own compulsions and mental tricks. Thank God for mental tricks, thinks Powter. They are saving her sanity, if not her ass. She seems to be operating out of the left side of her damaged brain, through circuits undamaged by the encef's pursuit of high-traffic neuron centers. Her mind is full of voices, urging her to comply with the suggestions, to fake it, conceal her control. Enjoy being fucked, urges the voice of sisterly psychologist Colonel Brant. Stay in control of your private thoughts. She lies easily when they ask her about her ability to pilot the ship. She goes all to pieces under direct confrontation or direction from one of these aggressive males; they seem to push irresistable buttons in her female hindbrain. She feels like worshipping and serving them, even though they annoy her. She feels like a battered wife, one with multiple orgasms and a deep desire to do murder. She also thinks she has a yeast infection; her asshole is stinging from Robbie's intrusions and she hopes it isn't yeast there, too. Luckily her mouth and lips aren't infected. Yet. Powter has no sense of time now, and her attention span is in ruins. Has it been very long since James left? Is another man on the way? She couldn't resist coming; they were so commanding and masculine. If she waits, one of them will be along to fuck her and make her come in colors - and good old Doctor Ripley's voice orders her sharply, "Get up. Duty!" from a forgotten post-hypnotic session. Koko staggers up from the bed. Her coordination is off and her hands are stiff. I'm BRAIN-DAMAGED, another voice wails in her head. I'm ruined. She pulls her shirt on over her head with appalling clumsiness. Then I'll just be ruined, she thinks, and try to do my duty. Maybe Captain Dennis will keep me as a mascot even if I'm a moron. The thought of being Dennis' pet gives her a buzz and gets her to the door but as she staggers into the corridor she sees Robbie ambling her way. "Hey slut, back on yer back," he snaps happily, enjoying the look of confusion in her eyes. She smiles uncertainly, head buzzing. "M'hungry," she slurs, startled by the drunken sound of her voice. "Kitchen," she adds, padding towards him. He peers at her, shakes his head, turns away. "You're for dessert then, bitch," he calls after her with a snicker, leering at her perfect ass as she staggers along, dressed in only a t-shirt. There is a sound of running water from the galley, then a clatter of pans. Koko has cooked in the galley twice before; most of the menu is soup or dehydrated mixes. She mixes a pan of beefy concentrate with dehydrated potato flakes, making a thick gruel. The smell is appetizing although the gruel resembles cowshit more than cow, and when she wanders into the control room eating from a bowl there is a general migration to the kitchen. The men fill plates from the pan on the stove and return, chuckling over Koko's sweet ass and long legs as she gobbles her food single-mindedly. They cheerfully argue over who will have her next and how long before the automatic pilot will take them to Kobold. Robbie declares that he will fight anyone who keeps him from having Koko next. Amid laughter he drags her away, slapping her buttocks in time to a filthy song. She is blushing and grinning, and goes happily. In the cabin he pushes her down and strips off her shirt, pinching her nipples in a cruel way. "You like that," he winks. "It feels good, you want more." She repeats his words without much conviction. He slaps her, repeats himself. "You LIKE having your nipples pinched," he says with great conviction. "Beg me to pinch them." Koko looks up at him with big empty brainless eyes. "I like having my nipples pinched," she says with total candor. "But, well . . " Robbie slaps her again. "Say it, bitch!" he orders. He drops his pants. Robbie has a short cock, which is now hanging limp. "Sometimes," Koko enunciates, trying to keep the slur out of her voice, "a girl wants a little more. Flowers and a kiss, THEN pinch my nipples hard. Drugs and sex are ok, but like, where's the romance?" Her breasts bounce softly, inviting caresses. Robbie seems to be listening to some inner voice. He backs away, then mutters something and runs out of the door. Halfway to the bathroom, he kneels and begins puking. Powter pushes past him and sees Asian-featured Kim through the open bathroom door, puking as he squats upon the toilet. James is there too, on his knees puking into the shower stall as he rapidly soils his pants. Powter steps into the galley and finds the lean dark crewman staring at the remains of the gruel, holding a bottle of dish machine soap in one hand as he holds the other hand to his cramping stomach. "You started this fight," she tells him in a drunken voice. "You could have had my parole." Her dimpled knee comes up, and his eyes are drawn helplessly to the pink flash of her cunt as her leg kicks. Her bare foot connects with his cheek, breaking his neck. One down. Powter leans over him, stares into his horrified, dying eyes. "And you used poison first, too." Robbie hears his mates groaning and farting in the bathroom. He rolls over, tries to stand, fails. He has shit in his pants. He is puking and afraid. The cramps are horrible. There is a curse, a muffled scream. The groaning increases, then stops. He rolls over and tries to rise, to see something. He sees Her Majesty's Starfleet Ensign Karen Powter, stark naked and covered with blood, puke and shit, her eyes tight and hard, coming towards him with a small dull kitchen knife. She is the last thing he will ever see. THE BLACK FLEET CRUISES ENDLESSLY IN THE DARK. Dead ships crewed by the living dead, they travel in normal space at huge accelerations. They leave no hypertrails, no spin-storms. They have been alive too long. Rakkar Gandat stands on the bridge of his dark ship, staring at the dark. Four stars are visible and all are small, for they travel the dead space between galactic arms. Rakkar thinks nothing, feels nothing. His mind is a blank, a stagnant pool in which the fish of mentation float belly up. From time to time a ripple passes over the surface, but no thoughts rise in answer. He is a dead man, still walking slowly. Out of habit, he inspects a control panel, as he has inspected it every day for a thousand years. All the dials are at the positions they always hold; the blue light of the autopilot a steady flame. There is one change: a large disk is glowing red. Rakkar pauses an extra moment, forces his eyes back to the disk. A question forms in the rotten meat of his head, then slides away. Habit reasserts itself, and he stalks away, eyes fixed and glassy. He visits the engine room as he always does, taps a blue fingernail against the glassy stuff of the power chamber. Anda sits her watch at a console, staring at the wall instead of her dials. In Rakkar's ruined mind it dimly registers that a red disk glows on Anda's console too. It means nothing. But as his watch ends, after he has showered and gone to his bed, the red disk returns to his mind. His arm reaches across the bed, gathers Anda to him. She hugs him tightly, silently. They take comfort in the contact, lying silently together. Rakkar wishes dimly that he could remember who she was. Unheeded, the red disk warns that an ancient horror is about to be released. WORLDS COLLIDE IN FIERY RUIN. A dead planet, travelling at nearly lightspeed, strikes the military planet of Kett in a colossal explosion. Kett is a desert world, devoid of water or life except for the inhabitants of the domed base and shipyard. One tiny ship escapes the ruin, dodging huge chunks of exploding rock, and vanishes into hyperdrive, outdistancing a small planet sent to chase it. The small, balding man smiles grimly andsadly. "That's two," he says in a dead voice. "Now they know. Now they'll begin to fear." He pats the woman's picture. "I hope they make me kill them all," he says to the picture. His tiny ship saws through space, followed by a thousand hurtling planets. Captain Dennis collapses. Inhuman creatures consider action. In a dark basement, a woman is spied upon. The dark fleet cruises endlessly, with no destination. Pirates land at a secret base. Captain Harleigh smokes in the dark. She owns the ship now. Nothing can turn a runaway planet. HURTLING PLANETS A NEW-WAVE SPACE OPERA END OF PART III ------- ASSM Moderation System Notice-------- This post has been reformatted by the ASSM Moderation Team due to inadequate formatting. -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderator: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}| |Archive at Hosted by | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+