Erotica Home

Rarity Yes, this is a sort of rip-off, eventually and in part, of the third Alien film. Big furry deal. And yes, I realise that it's juvenile and puerile and all those other words ending in -ile. Again, big deal. This isn't Significant, it's for the Fun Of It. If you want politically and sociologically correct fantasy, write it yourself. i'm not katharine kerr. /ignore all! Anyway... why "Rarity"? I just liked the way they got the name "Fury" from "Fiorina". I: Modification Turant had been on his way out to Sthelanar to fix a nanocomputer which belonged to one of the Syndaine Separatist colonies. There were twenty-two technicians, most of them Railers, doing clandestine Genetic Engineering research; one of them had accidentally deleted all of the files on their server, and Turant, who had been passing by on his way to Triple-S, had decided to drop in and pay a visit. Easy money... ...or so he thought, until after he'd done the work, when he realised that as Separatists, they weren't part of the NoSanNoOs Dominion, and had no hard currency, no CCI; in fact, they had no access to financial exchange systems at all. "Look, it doesn't have to be in ComonCurensy Isotope, you know," Dava said. She was his contact; about seventeen years old, a typical Syndainin Railer, with the delicate build, long, droopy rabbit's ears almost hidden in an extensive fluffy black coif and improbably large, dark eyes consisting almost entirely of pupil. She looked like a manga character. "We do a handy line in biomods. The usual, internal maintenance, arterial cleaners - and of course, you know that it doesn't register as Illegal on the NoSanNoOs's scanners; it's too small - and then, if you're after something a bit more... uh..." He glanced up at her. She was smiling coyly. "Yes?" "Body alterations. In-place - our nanoproducers alter your DNA while making changes in existing cell structures. There's thousands of applications, correcting congenital faults and such, but the largest market we've found so far -" "- as far as a bunch of bankrupt Secessionists can be said to have a market - " " - is in cosmetic surgery. People who think that their, ah, noses are too big, or too small, or in the wrong place." Turant rubbed his nose. "Well, I've always been rather fond of my nose. It appears to be in the right spot, and I've never found fault with it's size before..." Dava was giving him a sly smile. "You don't really think I was talking about your nose, do you?" "You're kidding!" Turant said later, on a tour of the Secessionists' facilities. They looked more like untidy bedrooms than laboratories, with all kinds of shoddy-looking gear spread out on mattresses resting on the floors. Dava smiled (and Turant remembered reading something about how Railers found everything amusing, to some degree), and said, "Not at all. Being hidden away here on Sthelanar, most of our contact with the outside world is with travellers; loners for the most. Much like yourself. Ever since the last Edict, with the lifting of restrictions on travel, we see a couple of dozen single people through here every month." Turant thought about this for a moment and then asked, "Do you ever ask them what religion they follow?" "No... does it matter?" Turant waved non-commitally to indicate that the point he was making was a minor one. "There's a new faith that's sprung up in the past three or so years; they call themselves Anthonites, after some pre-Millennium writer. They preach that it's wrong to have sexual intercourse with anyone." Her eyes widened. "Sounds like a good plan for a self-destructive religion... I mean, no children, no new followers..." Turant shook his head. "They don't have any prescription against impregnation - it's all done in vitro. And, to answer your next question, no, it doesn't get frustrating. I once worked with a crew of six, all of them Anthonites; apparently, they've made a science - or a religion - or both - out of masturbation." "What are you getting at?" Turant gestured vaguely, and said, "Well, their chief complaint - at least, the males' chief complaint -is that their equipment is never big enough." She smirked. I've never met a guy who didn't think that... hmm. It's possible, although I didn't notice anything particularly unusual about any of our clients. Mind you, I didn't offer to sleep with any of them..." Turant drew the corners of his mouth down in an exaggerated pout. She grinned. Later, they chatted over drinks as they discussed the terms of payment. "So, basically, what you're offering in exchange for my services, is to make my dick bigger." She tilted her head to one side, smiling (Turant was beginning to think that he could get quite attached to that smile) and nodded. "Along with all our other metabolic stabilisers, life extension treatments and such. In fact, we can also offer a built-in nanograv communicator, with a range of seventy-five light-years. That, I am sure is on the NoSanNoOs Interdict list, but... well, if you don't tell them, we won't." Turant nodded, impressed. "It's a deal." They touched wrists to seal the agreement. "I've never understood that gesture," she admitted as they stood. "It's usually done as a form of currency exchange,' Turant replied, showing her the metallic button set in his wrist. `This is a CCI meter. It has my current bank balance stored in it." She regarded it with polite disinterest. "Uh-huh." The procedure was less involved than he had expected. Jano, one of the Railer Techs, had given him a plastic spoon with some pink syrup on it, and he had swallowed it. The syrup felt extremely cold as it went down -Turant wasn't sure that it had gone down - it felt as if it had stuck in his throat just below the collarbone. The uncomfortable feeling faded after a few minutes. He had hung around for a few hours afterward, making sure that the server was back up; he ran some optimisation routines for them, and since the Railers seemed to think that their business was concluded, he left for the ExPort. Some bad news was awaiting him; an accident - an almost unheard-of occurrence in the NoSanNoOs Dominion -had interrupted the regular NoSanNoOs flights, and the next available ship - a Coldstore Freighter - wouldn't be arriving for another three months. He hung around the ExPort for six hours, trying in vain to get some information out of the sullen Parkry working there, but even sizeable bribes couldn't change the situation. He was about to head back for the Railers' colony when he was struck by an overwhelming pang of hunger. The ExPort's mechanical restaurant provided a bowl of variegated proteins, carbohydrates, trace elements and fixatives that tasted almost like food; in his condition, Turant wasn't fussy. He bolted the mushy stuff, pausing only to sip distilled water from a tube. After almost forty minutes of continuous eating, Turant still felt some hunger; rubbing his bloated stomach, he wondered where it was all going. He glanced out of the windows at the glaring grey-white sky of Sthelanar; it was impossible to tell if it was morning or evening. He felt very tired; considering the alternative - which was to sleep on the seats in the ExPort lounge -he decided to call the Railers and ask them if they could provide him with a place to sleep for a few hours. They were more than happy to agree. Dava met him at the entrance. He staggered in, three-quarters asleep, and let her guide him to an unoccupied mattress. He fell like a collapsing building and was fast asleep in less than half a minute. II: Adaption He awoke, and consulting his internal watch, found that he'd been asleep for three days. He was acutely aware of, firstly, a desperate need to urinate and secondly, a particularly foul taste in his mouth; he scrambled to his feet and located the recycling system, which, by necessity, adjoined the toilets. As he rushed into the tiny enclosure, he spotted Dava, who waved to him genially. He gave her as polite a smile as he could manage under the circumstances and waved back. The toilet was a standard design all throughout the Human colonies in the NoSanNoOs Dominion. He yanked his antique denims down around his ankles and hit the contact on the side of his underpants, which obligingly folded back. He felt an ache inside, somewhere underneath his stomach, but one that was not associated with the pain caused by his distended bladder. His penis didn't seem any different, until he touched it to point it at the funnel. It seemed harder, somehow; less flexible. It looked the same as it always had; it bent as far as usual when he tried to move it and slightly more effort was required to pull back the foreskin than he had previously noticed. It all seemed vaguely disappointing, but as only three days had passed, he didn't expect any miracles just yet. Examining his mouth in the screen, he saw that his teeth were coated with some sort of clear slimy substance. He washed his mouth out with the blue-tinted Sthelanic water and felt much better. He found the Railer's dining room; Jano and a tall Human were half-way through their meal. At Jano's invitation, Turant joined them. "So, what do you think of your modification?" Jano asked, coming as close to a suggestive leer that Turant had ever seen a Railer get. "Well, to be honest, it doesn't look any different." The Standard raised an index finger, and asked, "But that's not in the erect state, I assume? Yes?" Turant blushed. "Well, yes, but I -" Jano half-stood and gestured to someone behind Turant; Dava joined them. Jano signalled to her using some sort of Railer hand-signs; she grinned and took Turant by the hand, leading him to a sparsely-furnished apartment: a terminal, a clothes-basket full of faded black denim, and a mattress. There was an extremely old laminated poster on the wall of a young man with an almost Raileresque shock of dark hair, holding a guitar. The word Cure was written across the bottom of the poster in curly yellow letters. It meant nothing to him. Dava seized him by the shoulders and pushed him back onto the mattress, which was almost half a metre thick and surprisingly resilient. It felt like a soft plastic envelope filled with some sort of sentient gel which pushed back at whatever was lying on it. Dava lay down next to him, firmly pushed him over to lie flat and undid the front of his pants. She lifted up his top until his chest was exposed and placed the palm of her hand over his heart. With her other hand clasping his penis, she gently alternated squeezing and pressing against his chest, which had an unusually arousing reaction. As he lay back, eyes closed, she gently massaged him; within moments his erection was pointing towards the ceiling. "Watch this," she said. He glanced down, and saw to his surprise that it was growing beyond its customary size with each subtle movement of her hands. It swelled, the veins pulsing along its length, becoming thicker and longer with each passing moment. His eyes grew wide as she used both hands, the end of the shaft poking out almost ten centimetres beyond where her fingers clutched him. He estimated that, if extended down his leg, the head would reach down past his knees. It was at least as thick as his wrist. "Oh..." he breathed. She lovingly ran her clasped hands up the entire length, from the base nestled in his pubic hair all the way up to the head, which was as large as her clenched fist. She released it, and it swayed up towards his belly. His attention was riveted on the head, which hung over his chest; it looked exactly like the end of his own penis, except approximately three or four times as big. He reached out hesitantly and touched it, pressing his fingers into the veins which stood out along the underside. Some of them were almost the size of his little finger; he felt his hot blood coursing in them. He glanced at Dava, who was regarding him with bemused detachment. He delicately raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a significant expression, and she smiled broadly, closing her eyes and rocking back and forth on the mattress in her mirth. "Here..." she directed his hand underneath her skirt and around the edges of her underpants. She allowed his hand to slide down the softly-tufted furrow, feeling the moisture there, she then slid his index finger into her. It barely fit; it wasn't that she was resisting him... "Railers differ significantly from the Human Standard, which is partly why we're in isolation here on Sthelanar. I dare say you could find a Standard female who could accommodate your, er, endowment... but I'm afraid you won't be able to try it out on me." She released his hand, and disappointed, he carefully slid it from inside her. On an impulse, she bent down and kissed him lightly on the lips. III: Transport "We may have a solution to your problem," Jano said to Turant as he returned to the dining room, his erection pressing uncomfortably against the front of his pants as it detumesced. "I'm sorry, my...?" Turant mumbled with embarrassment, thinking that he was referring to what Dava had said about finding a suitable companion. "There's a dump nearby, confiscated starships from this part of the Galaxy, some of them experimental models. About two years ago the Bythian guard on the compound was withdrawn, and they've never returned. Some of our clients have found adequate transport there, although I don't know if there's anything left that works. There's a damaged NAPAISub in charge there that can tell you about the ships, although if you even hint that you're going to take one, it won't tell you anything." Turant nodded distractedly. "Uh-huh..." "I'll come out there with you, if you'd like." Turant looked up with a start. "Oh? Uh? Oh, um, thank you..." About half an hour's walk from the Railer's base, the dump was a wide, roughly circular expanse of concrete slabs, mounted on soft earth; most of them tilted at one angle or another, giving the whole area a decidedly patchwork look. The ships had been left out in the open, and many of them had obviously suffered for it, displaying streaks of red, green and yellow corrosion depending on their composition. One ship appeared to have been built out of something organic; little remained apart from an imposing set of grey ribs. At the centre of the dump was a grey oblong box, about the size of a trolley-car. Jano and Turant walked up to it through the spread-out wreckage. There was a holo display mounted on the side of the box; it activated when they were about ten metres away, showing a rotating wire-frame sphere with spines projecting from the cardinal points. One corner of the box which adjoined the side with the display mounted on it was crumpled in, as if the thing had been dropped on that corner. When they were standing next to the box, the wire-frame filled in, showing a smooth, slowly turning white sphere, with geometric black and red markings. This was the NAPAISub, a subsidiary part of NAPAI, the artificial intelligence that controlled the NoSanNoOs Dominion. It spoke, in flat, mechanical tones: "Railer. Human." Turant waved jauntily, the motion self-consciously slowing to an embarrassed stop as he realised that the machine couldn't see him. Jano spoke slowly, "Display locations and status of ships in this compound capable of faster-than-light travel." The display cleared; an empty circle appeared. Jano paused, and then asked, "How many ships in this compound are capable of faster-than-light travel?" Another pause; "None." Jano sighed, and muttered, "Okay, we'll take this slowly: How many ships in this compound are capable of flight between planets?" "Fourteen." Just over a dozen blue points of light sprang into being within the circle. "Right. How many of those ships can support human life for up to one year?" All except one of the lights faded; the single remaining point represented a ship directly behind them. They turned to look. It was a cylinder, about ten metres long and two in diameter, dull grey, with no markings apart from the standard NoSanNoOs hatch indicators. The last half-metre at one end tapered slightly. Jano spoke to the machine. "Documentation?" The NAPAISub paused, as if suspicious, and then very slowly, replied, "On-board system." As they walked over to check it out, Jano asked, "You don't mind risking your life in something like an experimental spacecraft? I mean, it may not even have been designed by humans... you're quite welcome to stay with us until the regular flights are back in operation... " "No, I recognise this... it's an old Copperla Sub-Orbital Ore Scout. Most likely, the reason it's in this compound is the "self- explanatory" documentation... that sounds suspiciously like an artificial intelligence. If it can support life for up to a year, it'll get me to Triple-S at least." Jano was slightly surprised; "You'd be willing to spend a year, alone, in a ship that size?" Turant smiled, and patted his portable nanocomputer. "I'd find things to do." Jano smiled. "You're an Anthonite, aren't you?" "EX-Anthonite. Although no-one seems willing to... I mean, ah... oh, never mind." The ship was even less prepossessing inside than out; two-thirds of its bulk was taken up with engine, which looked like a cheap copy of the NoSanNoOs impeller but four times larger. The life-support was minimal. They found a yellowed set of printed notes lying on the shelf that edged the front viewport; the ship moved at sub-light speeds, using the impeller to accelerate to about seventy-five percent of lightspeed. The unique feature of this ship was equipment which generated a field which slowed chemical reactions, in particular those concerned with living tissue and consciousness. "Hm! A suspended-animation field." Turant said, impressed. Jano read further; "It was given to the ship's developers by the Sthelane." Seeing Turant's quizzical expression, he explained: "The original inhabitants of this planet. It's said that they predated even the NoSanNoOs, and that they often spent centuries working on abstruse mathematical problems with no more practical application than, say, a more efficient can-opener." A complex series of internally-applied impeller fields kept the interior at what appeared to be normal gravity conditions during the trip which, while appearing to take up to four years in real time, seemed only of a few days duration to the occupants. "It's sort of a large chunk out of your life, twelve months... but it's not that far to Triple-S, nine months' journey at sublight speed, if that." Turant agreed. There was an awkward pause, in which Jano seemed to be on the verge of asking Turant something potentially embarrassing; the moment passed, and instead, he slapped the palm of his hand against Turant's, wished him a safe journey and left. IV: Journey The cabin of the ship contained a single couch, furnished in slightly dusty black leather and set about a metre back from the viewport; a tiny food reconstitution device, linked to a similarly downscaled waste recycler and a holo display mounted, for some reason, on the ceiling. Turant sat down in the couch, and a series of loud mechanical clunks sounded from somewhere behind him, in the engine section. He automatically turned to try and see what was going on; when he faced forward again, there was a hologram being displayed before him. His breath stopped momentarily; below a standard ship's status and instrumentation display, it was a girl, translucent blue ice, life-size, her long hair drifting around her as if in a slow- motion breeze. She sat, stretching her legs out to one side, resting her illusory weight on one hand; and then she smiled. Turant shivered; somewhere deep inside, he knew that the expression had been generated for that singular purpose, but nonetheless, it stirred him deeply. She spoke: "Hi. I'm the ship's documentation system." He was dumbfounded for a moment, staring slack-jawed at the apparition. Stuttering, he found his voice. "Um, hi, uh, right, uh... my name's Turant. Ah. Er, what's yours?" She threw her head back, cobwebby translucent tresses blowing about her head like a halo, and smiled, as if fully aware of the effect she had on him. "I've never needed a name. This craft has only made one flight, from the other side of Sthelanar, around the sun and back here. It was grounded here almost twelve years ago." Here, her smile faded somewhat, and her gaze dropped to the deck sadly. "The only companionship I've had in all that time is the NAPAISub, and it's conversational skills are limited, to say the least." The hologram glanced up at him with a fierce longing in her expression. "If you don't think I'm imposing on you... I'd really like to talk to you." Quietly: "I've been very lonely." Turant just stared at her, not knowing how best to express the fact that he'd chat with her for ever if she wanted him to; she grinned and added, "From this ship's original designation, I suppose you could call me Soos." "Ah - `Soos'?" "Sub Orbital Ore Scout. Although I've never actually been Ore- scouting." There was a pause of about thirty seconds, after which Turant managed, "I'm sorry if I seem rather surprised, but Artificial Intelligences- I take it you are an AI?" She nodded affirmation. "Uh, well, AIs are illegal. They have been for more than a hundred and sixty years." She smiled and waggled her eyebrows humorously. "I suppose that makes me a criminal." Turant laughed. While Turant relaxed in the acceleration couch, Soos activated the ship's main systems and lifted it from the compound. "Given the ordinary mass-power ratio of a starship, this one is drastically overpowered... it was originally designed as a private escape ship for government officials on Copperla." The ship yawed through 180 degrees while accelerating upward. "A coalition of developers on Copperla borrowed it when they were approached by an agent claiming to be a representative of the Sthelane, wanting to test a number of new systems in a starship." "All this would have been completely against the NoSanNoOs Interdict against rival space travel development..." "Of course. The agent for the Sthelane was indiscreet, was picked up by the Bythians, and the coalition was dissolved. I ended up here, on Sthelanar, where the development was being done." Turant absorbed this, then asked, "Did any of this have anything to do with a group of Railers?" The blue-ice figure shook her head, strands of holographic hair drifting about her. "No. There were six Humans - none of them Railers - two Weygen, two Tendeysharhi, four Kaelen and the agent, whose derivation I never learned." Outside, the sky was darkening from the now almost familiar Sthelanic white, to grey, and then to black as they left the atmosphere. Soos, looking somewhat downcast, continued; "I was a last-minute addition... the original design called for a dumb computer to handle the shield, monitor the life-support field and navigate, but the Tendeysharhi said, in so many words, `while we're being illegal, let's be very illegal'..." "They're like that." The tiny craft moved up, out of the orbit of Sthelanar and then off at an angle, moving out of the plane of the ecliptic. It began to accelerate, and as it did so, a very faint glow spread out from the front, gradually extending almost three kilometres forward and assuming the shape of a lance. "It's a logarithmic impeller field," Soos explained. "Anything coming directly towards us will be shunted out of the way. We'll be travelling at about 232 thousand kilometres per second when we hit our stride, and we don't want to run into anything while going that fast." Turant lay back in the couch, resisted an impulse to twiddle his thumbs and watched what he could see through the front port. About five minutes into the flight, Soos rotated the ship so that the port was facing backwards. "I'm sorry, but as we increase speed, the frequency of light coming in through the port will shift upwards into the ultra-violet, so unless you want a suntan to beat all suntans, I'll leave the ship oriented this way." Turant waved genially, and realised that he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable in the presence of this machine; he didn't know whether to regard it as a starship hostess, a pilot or as a person. He looked back at the hologram, which had faded slightly during the manoeuvres and no longer seemed to be watching him. It still moved slowly, as if under water; it then brightened and resumed its previous animation, smiling at him warmly. "Before I can begin the first phase of our acceleration, I have to activate several impeller fields. The first will be a zero-vector field with a subatomic resolution; this will slow your metabolism down to the point where time will seem to pass very quickly. I will add other impeller fields to counter the external drives as they come on line." A barely-perceptible hum started somewhere behind him, and he felt as if he had been immersed in honey. The feeling faded after a few moments, then returned even stronger; he felt dizzy, and in sudden panic tried to rise from the seat, only to find that his body wouldn't obey him. He tried to inhale; nothing. He tried to raise his hand, and it obeyed, but sluggishly, as if he were a character in an animation being run at half-speed. The hum behind him raised in tone to a harsh electronic burr, then settled down to almost-inaudibility. The enmired-in-honey feeling diminished somewhat, yet persisted; he looked up at Soos' hologram, which was moving too fast for him to follow. She looked exactly like a video on fast-forward. The status display was flashing, changing with similar incomprehensibility. Soos' hologram suddenly slowed down to match his inhibited biological processes. The surrounding air in the cabin had taken on a foggy, blurred look; Turant supposed that it was a side-effect of the field. "I'm running this display at one-five-hundredth speed," she said. `Are you experiencing any discomfort?' He inhaled, to speak; it was like breathing water. "No, but this is very strange. I can't really see this becoming a viable alternative to the NoSanNoOs' faster-than-light drive." She looked saddened. "It's true. I've tuned the fields as precisely as I can, but you're still experiencing discomfort." Turant frowned. "I wouldn't say that... it just takes some getting used to. I expect that some people might enjoy it." She smiled, and shook her head. "That's nice of you to say, but I expect that this craft will remain unique." V: In-Flight Entertainment Turant had picked up his nanocomputer with a view to getting some work done on the trip; however, after pressing the keys, he couldn't lift his fingers fast enough to prevent the `key repeat' feature from repeating thousands of times, even when he disabled the function completely. Apparently, the impeller fields were keyed to act on organic matter only. After spending ten (subjective) minutes fiddling with it, he gave up. He put the machine down at his feet and sighed. He noticed that Soos had been staring attentively at him. She sighed plaintively, "What's wrong?" "Oh, nothing... I don't suppose you have a KetherNet feed? There's some reading I'd like to catch up on..." She lowered her eyes sadly. "I don't have any net access..." she looked up and gave him a small smile, "but I have been programmed for other varieties of entertainment." The lascivious look she gave him was unmistakeable. "I hate to be the one to point this out, but aren't you a... um, a hologram?" She reached out a translucent finger and stroked his face. "Yes. But you can still watch..." Twenty frustrating minutes later, her image lost its translucency, becoming for an instant an intricate frame made of rounded tubes of blue light. She turned to look through the front port of the ship; the foggy effect of the zero-vector field suddenly intensified to the point that he felt that he had become a block of marble. The ship shuddered, and as he lost consciousness, he was viciously jolted back into his seat, as if they had run into something... VI: Landing He awoke to the feeling of an icy-cold wind biting into his face. He shivered and looked around. All of the instrumentation was blank; Soos had vanished. There was nothing to see through the front viewport; when he turned around in his seat, he was mildly surprised to see that the rear half of the ship had been torn away. He was obviously no longer in open space; the ship had crashed on a planet. It was night-time outside; he staggered to his feet and got out of what was left of the ship to evaluate the extent of the damage. Most of the ship's engines were embedded in a stony rise, some five hundred metres away; it looked as if the ship had fallen backwards into the hill, and the cabin section had broken off and tumbled to where it was when he awoke. The impeller fields would have kept him secure in his seat until the power had been cut off. He could see the scars of the cabin's passage in the sparse grey vegetation. He felt as if every muscle in his body had been stretched to breaking point and then a little further; there was a particularly sharp pain is his testicles. "Not surprising... I probably have the worst case of blue balls in this part of the Dominion..." he muttered, stumbling back to the seat. He found his nanocomputer, miraculously unharmed; he then made his way towards the wreckage of the engine section. Soos, or the ship's computers, would have been located close to the power supply, which would have been as close as possible to the exact centre of the ship. He found the main lead which had run from the holo display at the front of the ship, back to the computer; it was still live. He found a spare nanojack in his kit, attached it to the end of the lead, let it set into place and then plugged it into his nanocomputer's I/O port. After a few seconds, Soos had worked out what he'd done and downloaded her component routines into his nanocomputer. She tried to get the 'puter's display to generate a one-thirds size image, but his machine didn't have the processing power. She had to settle for voice interaction. "It sounds lame, I know... but, I'm sorry. We ran into someone. I'm sorry." "Someone, or something?" The speaker clicked a few times, and then continued, "Someone. Just before we hit it, I saw that it was moving at about thirty percent of lightspeed, exactly opposing vector to us. We didn't actually hit them, but they were also using a wide-spread logarithmic impeller field, and theirs bounced off ours. I repeat, I'm sorry. The probability of this happening is so remote, I had discounted it." Turant set the nanocomputer down at the base of a squat grey tree, and sat down heavily beside it, grunting from the messages of pain being sent by his back-muscles. "So. Where are we?" More clicks. "From our last position, I'd say we were on the second planet in the system Riortrina 229, somewhere between Triple-S and Binkley." "Any inhabitants?" "None that I'm aware of, although you might like to try and get some of the ship's navigation systems running again, and check the nanograv communicator." Turant suddenly remembered the nanograv system which the Railers had installed in him on Sthelanar. He checked through the documentation they'd given him, stored on his nanocomputer. It was like accessing externally-fitted effectors, which he'd had experience with previously; a process similar to re-learning the use of a damaged limb except in this case he was learning the use of a limb he'd never had. It took some doing, but after about five minutes of concentration he could access the controls, and was hearing sub-space static as he tuned across unused frequencies. At one point, he heard what sounded like a navigation/alignment signal, similar to those used to keep power transmission satellites in position above their receiver-dishes. It was fairly close by - about fifty kilometres in the direction of the small, pink-tinged rising sun. He hefted the nanocomputer and set off. "Is something wrong?" Soos asked, four hours later. "Your breathing patterns sound irregular." Turant carefully placed the nano'puter against the side of a dead tree stump and collapsed to the ground. "I didn't know that fifty kilometres was this far! I've never had to walk further than... than, um..." "I know what you mean." he shielded his eyes and peered off into the morning sun. "I would have thought that I could see the tower by now..." Soos electronically cleared her throat. "By my estimation, you've only come about eight kilometres." Turant sat down and then slumped over to lie on his back. "Ahh, I'm not going to make it. I think I'll just lie here for a while." He lay there, aspiring heavily. "Is it my imagination, or is that sun -Riortrina - a funny shape? It looks lop-sided..." "It is. There is a companion body made of neutronium, in close orbit at right angles to the plane of the ecliptic. It pulls the sun out to one side." She paused, and then suggested in a slightly quieter tone: "Turant? May I make a suggestion?" He tried to lever himself up on one arm, failed and fell back. "Of course..." "If you would care to activate your link to the nanocomputer, I can access the communicator that the Railers built into you, try all the frequencies and see if anyone's there." Turant rolled over to the machine, groped blindly about for a moment, located the console and touched the ONLINE key. He felt a slight tingle, and heard faint static, buzzes and whistles. He thought into the interface, : Soos, why didn't you think of this before I'd walked all this way?: She replied, her voice mixing with the static. : Quite frankly, you needed the exercise. Wait a minute - I'm getting a response... it's the monitoring system for the power satellite. I'm asking it to alert one of the sentients... there'll be someone for you to talk to in a minute.: :Human?: :There are nine humans on this planet... they're running a clandestine factory, making -something. it's not going to tell me.: Before Turant had a chance to speak with them, they had flown out in a battered-looking eight-seater AV to pick him up; three heavily-cloaked figures, wrapped in voluminous dark-grey. They wore black gloves, and their faces were concealed by dust-filter masks, all fanglike vertical grids and blank, anonymous eye-pieces; all in all, a very foreboding image. Two of them remained in the AV while the other stepped down, gesturing to Turant. He rolled over, got to his feet, picked up Soos and cautiously approached. The figure stepped back warily; he paused, and the sentient climbed back into the AV, sitting up front with the driver but facing back. He didn't see anything that looked overtly like a weapon, but he sensed that they were armed. Slowly, he climbed over the side; settling down into the resilient suspension-seat, he realised abruptly that if they were running an illegal factory, they wouldn't be terribly pleased to see him. They conversed with muttered expressions in a language Turant didn't know; surreptitiously, he thought into the nanograv link, asked, :Can you understand what they're saying?: :I'm afraid not. If they will oblige us and keep talking, I can begin to construct a tentative vocabulary, but should I warn you, languages aren't my strong point.: :Mine either...: he replied glumly. The figure facing him sat back in the seat, gripping the arm-rests, examining him with its head to one side. It reached up, pulled the hood back, revealing a stiffened brush of dark gold hair; unlatching the mask and pulling it aside revealed a breathtakingly beautiful face... large blue eyes, rimmed with long, black lashes, a pert nose and full lips paused on the edge of a smile. "My name is Kaey." she said, with a tantalising trace of some unplaceable accent. "Welcome to Rarity." VII: Sisters Turant sat on the arm of the couch and slid back to lie down, one leg draped over the end, his other leg resting comfortably on the floor. Kaey grabbed a sling-chair, which was attached to the ceiling by a magnetic ball-support, dragged it over to a spot about two metres from the head-end of the couch and sat in it. She was still dressed in the robes, which engulfed her almost completely. He regarded her; three tiny patches of pale pink in a sea of grey, with a waving crest of honeyed gold above; she appeared to be somewhere between the ages of sixteen and twenty-six. She regarded him; a serious-looking young man dressed in casual black denims, almost a uniform among the galaxy's human drifters. He smiled up at her hopefully, and began: "My computer tells me that you're running an illegal factory here." She smiled warmly at this, and countered: "Our scanners tell us that you have an illegal biological communications device woven into your cerebral cortex." He raised his eyebrows, thought this over, and then made as if to stand up. "Well, I wouldn't want to get anyone in trouble... it's been nice meeting you, I'll just walk back to my ship..." Kaey laughed and pushed him back, her palm flat against his chest. "Silly! We have so few guests here; you are more than welcome. Well, when I say `few'... you are, in fact, the first person we've seen since this project was started, twelve years ago." Turant was surprised. "You've been here, by yourselves, for twelve years ?" She shrugged. "We were born here. Our teachers taught us what we had to know about the equipment, and then left. This is a NoSanNoOs outpost, and quite legal." Turant's eyes narrowed. "I suppose I shouldn't be telling you this, although none of us were instructed to keep it a secret... the Dominion foresaw the need for a back-up to their regular TCI production, and this was a pilot test site for other, similar installations. We don't know if the project has been successful or not... in fact, we were beginning to think that we'd been forgotten." She got up out of the sling-chair and found a bottle, half-filled with some dark-red liquid. She squeezed the top open and drank from it, sat down next to Turant on the couch and passed it to him. He drank gratefully, the fizzy fluid burning the back of his throat. "Ah, thanks. Well, the Dominion has been in a bit of a mess, lately... there has been a lot of talk about breakdowns in self- repairing systems, the usual stuff about resurgence of the Moridani, secessions left, right and centre... there's quite a bit of prejudice against humans, as we're seen to be the cause of all the disruption." Kaey looked disgusted. "Short memories... `Administrative Error', my arse!" Turant was appropriately silent. No human would ever forget the time when the NoSanNoOs Dominion's power was ranged against Humanity, when the Bythians had attacked Earth and humans were hunted like criminals. Turant took another sip of the drink and passed it back to Kaey, who lowered her eyes as she took it. "I'm sorry," she murmured, referring to the custom which had arisen of tactfully avoiding any mention of Earth's destruction. Just then, the other two females entered, dressed as Kaey was. The first saw Turant and stopped dead; the second bumped into her and they both drew back. Turant heard whispers of their personal language darting between them. The first pushed her cowl back and unlatched her mask, revealing features strikingly similar to Kaey's. The longer Turant stared at her, the more he was convinced... "Yes, we're clones." the girl said, approaching to take the bottle from Kaey. Her sister removed her mask and fetched a sling-chair. Turant looked uneasily from one to the next... almost identical, excepting minor differences in hair-style, they seemed to be communicating silently, sharing sideways glances and surreptitious smiles. He found himself unconsciously inching back on the couch, until he found himself pressed up against Kaey. With a start, he turned to apologise; when he turned back, they were all openly grinning at each other. There were nine of them in all, the other six off delivering a quota of TCI to the primary storehouse on Triple-S, and not expected back for another two months. One of the sisters, whose hair was styled into a Railer-esque wave, introduced herself as Teneil and invited him to see the TCI factory... VIII: Tour The Sisters' residence, built around the TCI production facility, was a huge structure fabricated primarily of dark grey stone, set into the side of a squat mountain which had the power-satellite receiver disk at the peak. It resembled some medieval Keep, and was obviously intended for occupancy of more than nine. "This was going to be a Human colony at one stage," Teneil said, as she steered the AV up towards the dish, "but the NoSanNoOs placed it off-limits when the project was begun." They circled it at a safe distance and landed next to the smooth, blank curve of a chemical tank. "This," pointing to the tank, "absorbs rainwater, and carbon dioxide is taken in through those vents. The centre of that tower is held in place by powerful impeller fields, and contains nanotech producers made of neutronium. They take water, atmospheric gases and a few other bits and pieces; powered by microwaves beamed from above, they squeeze it into TCI which comes out there." Turant blinked. "Simple, when you know how." Teneil smiled and put her arm around his shoulders, hugging him companionably. The communicator mounted in the dash of the AV pinged; she touched a contact and listened. "Kaey and Sinan are taking the other AV out to haul back the remains of your ship. Is there anything they should watch out for?" "No... although it isn't really necessary; the only useful parts are the impellers and the computer. If they don't want to waste any time dissecting the ship, it may be easier simply to tow the whole thing back." More talk; then Teneil scowled. "They want you to go with them..." Turant smiled easily and fixed his attention on her. "I don't think that's necessary," he said warmly. She returned his smile, spoke into the communicator briefly and turned it off. Sitting down behind the AV controls, she tapped a series of commands into the autopilot and engaged it. The AV began a slow circle of the dish about two hundred metres off the ground and maintained this course while Teneil climbed over the seats to snuggle down next to Turant. Rarity's climate was a temperate one (currently); the air was cool, and the slightly pinkish sunlight warmed them as they embraced. "This is wonderful..." Teneil offered, "I've never had the chance to, ah, speak with anyone apart from my sisters. Speaking to them isn't really like speaking at all, because we all know, to a degree, what the others are thinking. You've probably noticed that the way we talk is a little hard for an outsider to understand." Turant raised his eyebrows. "I thought it was another language." She sighed and hugged him closer. "You're so different... I'm sorry, I've probably assumed a lot about you - I'm afraid that I don't have a great deal of experience in relationships, at least, not in relationships with males... is there any sort of protocol I should be observing before we make love?" Turant cleared his throat and tugged at his collar self-consciously. "Ah, none that spring to mind, immediately... um, I'm sure I can, ah, allow for your, your lack of experience in, uh, interfacing..." as his words trailed off into embarrassed silence, they sat there, staring into each others' eyes for that single moment when both know exactly what is going to happen, but neither can decide who is going to go first. Teneil broke the spell by reaching out to stroke the line of his jaw with her slim index finger. He observed that her nails were long, pale, and bare; they had never been painted, as was the fashion amongst Human males and females in the NoSanNoOs Dominion. She slipped her hand behind his head, pulled him close and brushed her lips across his, tantalising him with the alien, spicy scent of her breath. He was suddenly acutely aware of how much her clothing hid from view; the robes, which seemed to be in several layers, were very loose and revealed practically nothing of her form. Almost as if she were reading his mind, she sat back with a smile and pressed a contact underneath the cloth, mounted on her left shoulder. A hairline seam appeared there, darted diagonally down her front and looped around behind. The outer layer of the robe appeared to be unravelling into a strip about five centimetres wide, loosely wound around her body. Underneath this layer was a second, of slightly lighter material, which was unwinding in a similar fashion, although it was wound from upper-right to lower-left; this mode of holding together clothing showed a frighteningly casual disregard for the Dominion's laws against nanotechnology. She sat forward a few centimetres and allowed the material to slip from her shoulders, revealing an appealing expanse of creamy, flawless skin. Her breasts were proportionate to a girl of her slim build, with almost non-existent nipples; she shrugged her way out of the remnants of her robe, covered her breasts with one arm and placed her other hand on his shoulder, her attention fixed on him. She shifted onto one leg, kneeling over him, then sitting in his lap with her knees hugging his hips. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him to her, pressing his face into her collarbone, relieving her desperate need for physical contact with someone who didn't look exactly as she did. He linked hands behind her, in the small of her back, pressing her warm body to his; almost without realising, their bodies were slowly moving against each other, the soft curve of her behind pressing into his lap, rubbing against the growing bulge in the front of his pants. He slipped one hand down her back, spread his fingers over her behind, forcing her towards him. She reached back, held his wrist and pushed his hand further down, his fingers following the contour of her rear, his index finger probing the divide of her buttocks. She sat up slightly to allow him better access, and his questing finger slipped underneath and found the entrance it had been seeking. She arched her back, pressing her breasts to his face, and he took the opportunity to kiss them while his fingers explored the limits of her moistened sex. He suddenly remembered his modification, and realised that if he wasn't to hurt her, he'd have to employ a bit of strategy. He grasped her upper arms and gently pushed her away from him, reassuring her puzzled expression with a smile. He directed her to turn around; she did so, and he pushed her forward over the back of the AV's front seat, her feet to either side of him, her behind pointing in the air. He slid forward off the seat to kneel on the floor, bringing his face level with her perineum; grasping her hips with his hands, he tentatively touched his tongue to her, just below where the lips joined. She responded with a gasp, arching her back again and presenting herself to him; he slid further forward and concentrated on pleasing her in this fashion. He knew that if he could focus his attention on her sufficiently, his erection might subside to the point where he could enter her, if only briefly. He worked at it enthusiastically, holding her down, one hand grasping her hip, the fingers of the other hand spreading her lips to allow his tongue to reach inside. He combined a slow, longitudinal motion with careful pressure of his fingers, occasionally darting his tongue up to the pink bud that nestled between the folds. He slid one finger into her, pressing it forward to lie flat along the front of the inside of her vagina, rolling it back and forth over the slightly raised ridge inside, causing her to moan hoarsely. He withdrew his finger, replaced it with his index and middle finger; she didn't complain, even when he spread them apart and pulled them out slowly. He repeated this a few times, and then carefully probed with three fingers bunched together. She pushed back against his hand enthusiastically; feeling between his legs with his free hand, he judged the moment right. He sat up slightly, undid his denims and underpants, lifted the end of his member up and held it to her wetness, sliding the head back and forth along the line of the slit. She reached underneath, parted the lips and grasped him, carefully guiding him into her. Holding her hips, he slowly dragged her back onto him until he was completely inside her. They huddled there, motionless for a moment; she made to withdraw, but he held on, crouched over her, whispering "Wait..." He could feel his erection slowly swelling within, felt her lips tighten around the base, squeezing him; with a slight, side-to-side rocking movement of his hips, he worked himself further into her. She reached behind, placed her hands over his to firmly hold her hips, desperately pushing back against him. His penis was growing uncomfortably larger, and he made a movement as if to withdraw, but Teneil pushed until she had forced him back into the seat and was sitting in his lap. She half-stood until almost all of his shaft had slid out, holding the swollen head inside her; she bore down on it and then raised herself again, tugging at him. She paused for a moment and then slowly sank back, gasping as she felt him penetrate deeper. Turant shifted as his erection continued to grow; it had finally reached the point where she could not easily encompass it. Teneil reduced her movements to the point where the last few centimetres were slipping in and out between her lips, which stretched reluctantly around the almost-wrist-sized shaft. His erection continued to expand until it was no longer possible to enter, at which point Teneil sat down next to him, her thighs clamped together in frustration. Turant regarded her apologetically. "It's a modification I was given on Sthelanar, in lieu of payment for some work I did there... I'm beginning to wish I'd never agreed to it." Noting her expression, he nodded, and added, "Yeah, well, it seemed like a reasonable idea at the time." Teneil smiled, a crooked little grin of resignation, and grasped his penis in her fist, squeezing it, watching it get even bigger. She half-stood in the back of the circling AV, then paused, as if in thought. She smiled, and reached over to deactivate the autopilot. I think I'll need some help with this," she said, climbing into the driver's seat. IX: Bed, Teneil Teneil conducted him to the sleep-area, a large, low-ceilinged room at the head of a long corridor, evidently the first of a number of similar rooms intended to accommodate (in part) the population which had never eventuated. The single window which took up the entire westerly side of the room afforded a view of the setting sun. When Turant turned back from the bare and unremarkable horizon she was sitting on the end of the bed, which occupied about a quarter of the room. He approached, examining it with curiousity. It resembled a single, undetailed block with rounded edges, translucent blue in colour, about seventy centimetres thick. He touched it; warm, slick as if from a thin coating of oil; soft, resilient, almost like skin... He glanced up sharply. Teneil smiled back at him. "It's made of millions of integrated nanotech cells. Solar powered," - she slapped the surface which rippled and formed a ridge at right angles to the line of her legs. He drew back involuntarily. She rolled over on her stomach, the robes falling back to expose her legs to mid-thigh. The surface of the bed raised itself up underneath her like a wave, running from the top down towards Turant's end, lifting her and depositing her closer to him. She turned around to flash a sultry look at him, raising herself up on her elbows. Cautiously, he sat on the end of the bed, which firmed underneath him, pushing back in a decidedly peculiar way. She rolled over, sat up, reached out and embraced him. While she fastened her mouth to his, she drew him closer, throwing one arm around his neck, then pushing him back to lie flat on the bed. Deftly, she stripped his clothes away to expose his semi-erection. She bent down and licked, coating the head and part of the shaft with her saliva; as it began to grow again, she kneeled and slowly lowered herself onto him, cautiously moving her hips from side to side as he sank into her. Holding her breath, she tentatively crouched lower until she was seated squarely in his lap, at which point she exhaled with relief. "I knew I could do it!" she whispered, bringing her knees together slightly and squeezing him. :Turant?: It was Soos. :Gods below, not now!: He heard a chuckle over the link. :I've been looking through the documentation that the Railers left, and I'm sure there's a few things you would like to know about your modification...: :Such as?: :...such as, seeing as they had so much trouble with erections being too big to make regular intercourse possible, they introduced regulatory valves in the venal feed to the -: :You mean I can control the size? How?: Another chuckle. :Virtually speaking, there are more consoles `behind' the one that controls the nanograv communicator. If you concentrate, you can feel them with your right hand...: Soos was right; he could feel ghostly sensations, control-spaces set into a panel. His fingers twitched as he imagined his hand searching over the spaces; he felt one and somehow, innately, knew that it controlled his basal metabolic rate. He searched half the panel before he found the one that he wanted, a T-bar control set in a vertical slot. he imagined himself pulling back on it and almost immediately felt a lessening of the constriction on his penis, as it deflated slightly. Teneil glanced down at him, eyes wide; he smiled back and grasped her hips, tugging her forward, thrusting into her. She closed her eyes, gasped and flexed her knees, lifting slightly before dropping down on him again. He placed his hands underneath her thighs, stroking the curve of her behind as she raised herself on her knees again. She lay flat against his body, her breasts pressed to his chest, hands clutching his shoulders. Her brilliant blue eyes glittered through her lashes at him as she slowly lifted her hindquarters and then dropped onto him. Detumesced as it was, his penis still felt constricted as he entered her, but the motion was at least possible. Still enfolding him, she leaned back and lifted her right leg over his body, turning around and pushing back between his legs. He sat up, thrusting her forward onto her hands and knees and then settling down into a slow, sensuous motion, the underside of his penis sliding up against the inner wall of her vagina, rubbing haltingly against her g-spot and bringing her to orgasm within seconds. He remained hard against her as she trembled and moaned, teetering on the brink of a second orgasm; sliding the imaginary T-bar forward to sixty percent strength inflated the head of his erection, and pressing harder into her, he pushed her over the edge. She writhed desperately, almost throwing herself back onto his shaft, grabbing at his hands, holding them against her breasts, squeezing them with what must have been painful intensity. It was then that he discovered that he couldn't bring himself to orgasm without expanding fully, which would have injured her. X: Bed, Soos Later Turant sat at one end of the bed, Teneil's robe draped over his stomach, idly stroking her golden hair. She had one hand under the robe, squeezing the base of his still-hard erection, slowly rubbing back and forth, her thumb pressing into the underside. Occasionally she'd find a rhythm that connected with something in his rewired nervous system and he'd moan softly; then it would pass, and he'd feel hornier than before but no closer to climax. He felt no better when Kaey and Sinan joined them on the bed and all three of them concentrated on him, rubbing subtly-scented oils along the shaft, kissing him, gently squeezing his testicles, three pairs of hands in unison massaging him. Soos had finished reading the documentation; she assured him that the problem was entirely psychological, but understood how a desire to avoid injuring his partners might inhibit climax. There was a subliminal hum that Turant had come to associate with Soos' concentrated processing, then she said, :One moment; I'm going to establish a link with the bed.: :With the bed?: Soos replied over the house system so that everyone could hear: "With the nanomachines that go to make up the bed. Individually, they're not too bright, but there's several thousand million of them, and networked, they've got a lot of capacity. More than enough to hold my consciousness." Turant and the girls got up off the bed which rippled and then was still. Briefly, a fractal pattern swept over the surface in relief, tiny ridges running back and forth; abruptly, it bulged out in several different directions at once, like a balloon being squeezed in a giant fist. The shape relaxed, bulged out in different directions, contracted into a flattened dome and then slowly resumed its rectangular mattress form. Turant frowned. Then a feminine outline formed in the middle of the bed. It was the blue-ice shape that Soos had manifested aboard the Copperla Ore Scout ship, half-submerged in the mattress. The shape floated to the surface, looking as if it was fixed to the bed with a translucent elastic sheet, small breasts poking up as the legs subsided briefly, the arms detaching themselves and waving bonelessly for a few seconds before assuming a more human form, fingers clutching at the air. Turant came closer and held one hand; Soos gripped back, the hold briefly painful. The lips moved; words coming from the house system: "I'm sorry - the holographic rendering routines don't readily lend themselves to adaption." The shape leaned forward and sat up, legs hidden inside the mattress' form as if she was sitting in a wading-pool. She looked down, smiled and the rest of her body was extruded from the bed. Retaining its original size and shape, the mattress formed air-filled cells to make up for the loss in mass; Soos sat on top, her legs slightly spread, weight resting on her hands, the lascivious look back in force. Turant looked around at the girls, who grinned back at him; Sinan pushed him onto the bed, where he knelt between Soos' legs, his erection jutting up at an unrestrained forty-five degree angle. She lay down and arched her back as he slid inside, the head of his penis coming up to a point between her breasts. Her shape moved backwards along the bed, squeezing his shaft as she slid out from around him, then back. The friction between his skin and the nanomachine-cells that made up her body was slightly uncomfortable; Soos's arm extended almost two metres, picked up a bottle of massage oil, held it up to her lips; she drank. A tube appeared behind her mouth, conducting the fluid down her throat and into her abdomen where it flowed around the end of his penis. Teneil and Kaey got onto the bed on either side of Soos, while Sinan kneeled behind him, arms around his waist, all five of them slowly moving back and forth, Soos squeezing him even when he pushed the imaginary T-bar full forward and his erection grew almost to the size of his arm. He became aware of a pressure just below his bladder, growing to an uncomfortable degree along with the spreading warmth in the pit of his stomach and the sensation of being drawn, inevitably, toward orgasm. He barely had time to wonder what the Railers had done to the old cycle of excitation, climax and release before it was upon him; a series of contractions that gripped him from his perineum up to his chest, clonic, almost painful spasms that forced his penis up. Inside, there was a sensation of movement in two directions, of liquid being forced down, then up and out; he saw a spurt of white inside Soos' transparent body, spreading around the fist-sized head of his penis, then another contraction, more fluid; then another, and another, and another... Soos drew back slightly, exposing fifteen centimetres of pulsing manhood tightly clutched in swollen blue-glass lips; she massaged back and forth, causing another series of contractions, a second copious flow of fluid into her. Shuddering, Turant thrust into her as far as possible, his balls slapping against her behind where it merged with the mattress, experiencing a third climax. As a puddle of warm semen spread out beneath them and ran onto the floor, Soos began a series of constricting motions, tight rings of nanomachine- cells starting around the base of his penis and squeezing upward, milking him repeatedly, forcing blood into the already-engorged form, causing a drop in blood pressure and making him faint. When he awoke about ten minutes later, he was being held securely between Soos' glittering glass body and Sinan, whose thighs were pressed against his. The others were sitting on the bed, waiting for him to regain consciousness; as he realised what had happened, he sighed, "Another design fault that the Railers should be made aware of." Soos smiled, and stretched her body. "You know, I wonder why I didn't think of this before. It has potential." Kaey murmured her assent, sitting up and then straddling Soos' leg. The transparent blue foot shifted shape, becoming more rounded, the toes merging into a rounded, conical lump. Kaey smiled and lay down along the length of the leg, her eyes sensually half-lidded, giving voice to a tiny gasp as the altered foot worked back and forth between her thighs... Turant smiled and hugged Soos. He could hardly wait until the rest of the Sisters got back...

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