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From: simon_48@hotmail.com (Simon Wagstaff III)
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NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 Dec 2002 22:07:37 GMT
Subject: {ASSM} HURTLING PLANETS a new-wave space opera part1
Date: Tue,  3 Dec 2002 20:10:01 -0500
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HURTLING PLANETS
A NEW-WAVE SPACE OPERA by Simon Wagstaff III
PART I


	A lightless planetoid orbits a dark sun. The Black Fleet cruises
endlessly, towards no destination. Captain Dennis writhes on his
darkened sleeping pad. A young girl sobs in the dark. Inhuman
creatures meet in conclave under harsh violet floodlights. Captain
Harleigh strips before her mirror, admiring her smooth body. A
thousand planets are at risk.

 

	A LIGHTLESS PLANETOID ORBITS A DARK SUN. The protosun is a huge ball
of slush, bigger than a superjovian planet but smaller than a true
sun. It glows coldly now; in a few hundred thousand years it may catch
fire and burn. On the planetoid crouches a dark but functional base.
The ten men and ten women who live in these cheerless surroundings in
conditions of uneasy truce have pledged their lives to guard the
secret hidden in the dead sun below. They have no return ship, no way
to leave the lightless world called 4BWA. They do not know the secret,
or why they are needed. They will die, every man and woman, of old age
before the next twenty volunteers arrive.
	Sabor Grundy plays another endless game of chess. Marka smiles fondly
at his round face as he sits at a functional and worn table. At least
they were nearly compatible, unlike some of the default couples on
this rock. She had been with a man named Sherman before, a man who had
taken advantage of her. Marka, like several other volunteers, is a
processed murderer. Her brain has been reconditioned so that she is
nearly incapable of refusing any polite request, and will follow
without question any strong command from a person in authority. To
Marka, raised in a strict household, a person in authority equates
neatly with a lover or roommate; thus she is a completely submissive
lover. Still attractive in her forties, she had been used badly by the
sneering Sherman until Sabor and two friends had beaten him badly,
telling him that a society so small had no room for pimps. Sherman was
locked in the airlock for nine hours while the nineteen decided
whether to open the outer door and kill him or not; in the end Marka
had told them coldly that she had consented to brain surgery as an
alternative to death, that she had killed her co-worker just as the
trial indicated and felt she deserved punishment. "I just want someone
else to punish me," she said dully. "Not him anymore." Sherman had
been released and the episode forgotten. Sabor had been shocked,
taking her under his wing and trying to restore some of her
self-esteem. All he had really done was impress her with his authority
and commanding presence. Finally Sabor had realized that her obedient,
open-mouthed  attention to his lectures was caused by her attachment
to him; he had moved her into his quarters and protected her ever
since. He is a considerate lover, seldom ordering her but asking her
to do as she wishes. Marka giggles. Two-thirds of his conversation is
about economics or political theory or chess. But she likes him
anyway.
	Sabor toys with a pawn, his thoughts light-years away. He has long
forgotten the politics of his native world and the rebellion which led
to his conviction. He is after bigger game now in the thickets of his
mind, the questions that he has pondered since his arrival here. The
implications of this base are staggering. What organization ran this
place? Who had built it? How long had legions of aging watchmen
whirled around it? What was it, down there? He can feel it now, detect
it as it moves slightly inside the great ball of gases and slush they
orbit. He feels as though it is looking at him, detecting his
thoughts. Cold fear rips up his spine. He is going to die out here,
never knowing, while IT reads his dying thoughts. Marka is hovering
around him, too timid to ask whatever it is she wants. Poor woman.
"Yes, Marka?" He looks up kindly, turning the pawn in his blunt
fingers.
	She kneels, smiling. "Forgive me, Sabor. I know you are working on
your chess. But it has been . . . too long." She slips her shoulders
free of her dress. It falls to her waist, releasing her heavy breasts.
"You told me to tell you when I begin to feel . . . dark inside. So
many things I will never do again, so many people lost to me. But you
are here." She places her neat little hand upon his crotch. Sabor's
cock comes instantly erect at her touch. He curses himself inwardly.
Sabor had always liked fiery women, the kind who had to be courted and
cozened. Marka's submissiveness is a flaw, the result of her
operation, and he feels funny when he takes advantage of her. He feels
like a king, like the master of a slave, and he hates himself for
being aroused. With a growl he scoops her up, nuzzles her breasts as
she giggles, and drops her upon the big bed. He strips and begins
kissing her mouth, neck and breasts indiscriminately as he strokes her
smooth skin and caresses her clitoris. She is already wet and squirms
as he works his long thick cock into her. With slow, smooth strokes he
begins to please her, murmuring into her suggestible ears that she is
beautiful, lovely, safe, happy, that she deserves her pleasure, that
there is always more when she wants it. She closes her eyes and begins
to moan, her hands splayed across his hairy chest. Sabor pumps slowly,
enjoying the tightness of her cunt. She is really a sweet girl, he
thinks. Over his shoulder he feels the cold gaze of the thing in the
dark star above.

	THE BLACK FLEET CRUISES ENDLESSLY, TOWARDS NO SET DESTINATION. There
are twelve destroyers, each half as huge as a moon. They move without
hyperdrive, travelling in real space but above lightspeed. They are
controlled by automatic machinery as they rip through space at
accelerations impossible for flesh and blood. Yet flesh and blood
exist under these conditions. Men and women stalk the corridors of the
black ships, less than fifty to each ship. Their skins are a dead
gray, their eyes are glazed and seem fixed in their sockets. Their
hair is frosted with the gray of their skins, and their nails are blue
on each cold hand. They seem a ship of the dead, falling endlessly
through the dark and cold of the gaps between stars. An outside
observer, watching carefully over months, might see the position of
the entire fleet change slightly from time to time, and, extending an
invisible line ahead, note that the changes had resulted in them
avoiding bright stars in favor of the deeps of space.
	Rakkar Gandat, supreme commander of the black fleet, sits
indifferently in his quarters. The drugs which have preserved him
alive through high acceleration and the passage of endless years have
made him nearly a zombie. He is tall, thin, dark. His face is like
leather, full of creases. His cold dry fingers touch buttons on his
desk with moronic care. When a light comes on, he croaks words that
have ceased to mean anything to him, a phrase meaning roughly that his
watch has ended for another calendar day. He sits patiently for
several minutes, then rises dully and removes his clothes, several of
which are fastened improperly. He paces into the shower-stall and
braces himself while a spray of water, stinging in the high gravity,
rinses his body. He stands for a minute while warm air dries him, then
steps through the connecting door to his small bedroom. Anda is
waiting in his bed, naked. As always. Rakkar lies beside his wife.
Their breathing slows, then hers quickens. Her hand reaches for
Rakkar's crotch, strokes the flaccid penis, then withdraws. It has
been many years since Rakkar has showed interest. The black fleet
cruises endlessly, crewed by the living dead.

	CAPTAIN DENNIS WRITHES on his darkened sleeping pad. His dreams are
nightmares. He sees again the past day's confrontation with the crew
of the Alliance starship BEGINNER on the surface of the disputed
colony world Ceres, sees the capture of BEGINNER spoiled by the escape
of four Alliance crew in BEGINNER's captain's gig. The escape was the
fault of Ensign Koko Powter, a sweet and vivacious girl who lacked the
experience to control a bad situation. Powter is beyond reprimand, as
the escapees have taken her along. Her smiling face haunts Dennis'
dreams. Her enthusiasm and willingness to be led had caught Dennis'
attention from the start; he had itched to give her . . . certain
orders to see how willingly she would have followed them. He had had
to bend over backwards not to show favoritism for the little brown
girl. If he'd shown some favoritism just once, and sent a wiser, older
ensign . . .
	Dennis thrashes on his pad. He sees the smile dashed from Powter's
face as faceless men rip her clothes. Her fat little braids bob as she
is pushed to the ground. Would her nipples be brown? Pink? Did she
shave her armpits? Dennis'  big hands fist in his sleep as he aches to
grab . . . what? The rapists? or the girl? He opens his eyes and
groans. "Time check please," he grunts.
	"22:18:08," chirps a voice. Dennis rubs his eyes. Terrible things
await if he closes them. The captain of Her Majesty's Starship REACHER
must be in command of himself, he thinks. I must sleep, even if I have
to see my mistakes in front of me. His eyes close again; he sleeps by
sheer willpower. Koko Powter, stripped of her clothes and part of her
skin, dances on a dissecting table under bright pitiless light along
with Josep Ormond, killed when Dennis sent him as a messenger two
years ago, Dragomir Slivovitz, killed by an exploding airlock during a
space battle, and others who had died because of Dennis'  orders. With
tears running down his cheeks, ignoring the dancing dead, Dennis
writhes on his dark and sweat-slick sleeping pad.

	A YOUNG GIRL SOBS IN THE DARK. Koko Powter is locked in the only
closet on the tiny space-gig AMATEUR. Her clothes are torn, though not
in the places where Captain Dennis is helplessly visualizing them. Her
braids have long since fallen apart. Something hard and knobby is
digging into her back, and there isn't room to stand up straight. The
four men who placed her there had commented upon their good luck in
securing such a tender young girl. Between fits of hysterical crying,
she relives the error which got her into this mess.
	REACHER had made planetfall on the colony world of Ceres, thinking to
replenish their supplies. They had discovered that this flourishing
Empire colony considered itself to be oppressed viciously by its
Empire governor, and that it was on the brink of civil war and open
rebellion. Captain Dennis had in some way discovered that the governor
was in fact an Alliance sympathizer using his position to oppress the
people as a means of gaining a world for the rebel Alliance. He had
taken command and placed Lord Beanton, a likable elderly diplomat on
his way home to retire, in charge of the whole world. Beanton had
stopped the rebellion by sheer force of personality, allowing
REACHER's marines to arrest and detain the crew of the Alliance ship
BEGINNER. Powter had been detailed to take a group of four crew into
BEGINNER to remove personal articles and medicines. She had failed to
recognize the inhaler one carried as a powerful hallucinogen, or that
he had quietly sprayed it under her nose. Koko guessed she shared
equal responsibility for the escape with whoever had forgotten to
deactivate the gig's engine. That person was likely still safe aboard
REACHER and not likely to pay as high a price as Koko. She began to
sob again, there in the dark, thinking of Captain Dennis and his broad
shoulders and kind blank face.

	INHUMAN CREATURES MEET IN CONCLAVE UNDER HARSH VIOLET FLOODLIGHTS.
They are the Dree, dwellers on a different plane of existence. They do
not breathe our air, eat our foods, or lust after our women. They pass
through space without ships. Stretch as we might, we cannot touch
them. Their minds conceive reality in alien ways; they see a different
order in the universe. But humanity is their concern today.
	They harm nothing, one contributed. They make interesting patterns on
the water-worlds they seek out. We allow plants to grow unmolested;
why not these?
	Plants do not grow from world to world, another asserted. These are a
disease, one which spreads. Let us stop it here.
	Your concerns are unreal, a third told them. These beings do not
exist in our realm. Let us forget them, and turn our thoughts instead
to (an untranslatable concept).
	It is well, replied the second. I shall forego interference for now.
It gestured, and a huge dry planet nearby crumbled into chunks.
	For now, it repeated, topaz eyes gleaming.

	CAPTAIN HARLEIGH STRIPS BEFORE HER MIRROR, ADMIRING HER SMOOTH BODY.
Her long hands roam over her smooth flesh, caressing and tweaking the
dark nipples. She whirls around, slapping her hands to her buttocks,
and looks back over her shoulders. Her back is an athlete's and her
buttocks, each bearing a red hand-print, are the stuff of dreams.
	"Girl, if you don't get some action soon you'll be dragging that
engineering assistant into the storeroom." Joanna thinks out loud. She
thinks approvingly of Ensign Stoker's wide back and thick legs. The
captain of a starship is not allowed to fraternize with crew, she
scolded herself. I don't want to fraternize, she corrects herself. I
just want to FUCK. Is that so much to ask?
	Harleigh paces, breasts bobbing. She lights a smokestick as she
passes her desk. Puffing, she accosts herself in the mirror.
	"Now, me proud beauty, heh heh." She shakes a short-nailed finger at
the sandy-haired woman staring back at her. "How are we going to
settle this mess?" She tosses her head, admiring the way her thick
hair settles around her long-jawed face. "The Alliance has taken the
world we're supposed to be re-supplying. We're facing four destroyers
with our one cruiser. REACHER's sent us a distress call; please chase
down a fleeing gig for us. We can't spare even a fighter for that;
we're on the firing line ourselves." She cups her breasts and winks.
Damn, I'm fine, she thinks. And not a man on this ship with enough
rank to do anything about it. She tries to think about her command,
the starship HAMMER, the lovely planet Diva below. But in the end her
thoughts turn back to the young ensign and his strong arms. Crushing
out the smokestick with her strong fingers, she tosses it away and
reaches to her sex, begins to manipulate her clitoris. As her eyes
drift closed, she is aware of what a splendid spectacle she presents.
She begins to hum with pleasure, bouncing her trim little butt on the
dark sleeping pad.

	A THOUSAND PLANETS ARE AT RISK. One small ship rides through space in
low hyperdrive. At the command desk sits a short, balding man. He is
alone on the little ship. Days will pass before he reaches the first
inhabited star system. Below him rides a fleet of hundreds of dead
planets, each equipped with a huge hyperdrive system. They are like
irresistible missiles, capable of destroying a world or a star; once
launched they can only be stopped by their own hyperdrive motors,
which are controlled by the small man in his small ship. He reads
constantly, watching his screens and listening to ancient music tapes.
Taped to his console is a flat printout of a picture of a young woman,
not especially attractive.


	On a lost planet, a mystic points to the sky. Two men hunch over a
hastily-built device in a darkened basement. A naked girl is held down
and injected with powerful drugs. Captain Dennis feels a sense of
impending doom. One ship containing renegades discovers a terrible
secret. Captain Harleigh can barely control herself. The first world
dies.

HURTLING PLANETS 
A NEW-WAVE SPACE OPERA
END OF PART I

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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