Loren Guthrie looked out the view port of the explorer ship, Infinite Destiny, taking in the unfamiliar star-field before her view. Sitting in her command chair she smiled and sipped from her favourite mug and glanced at the quiet monitors set before and beside her while she settled more comfortably into her seat to wait and patted the arm of her chair affectionately. Her ship was her only companion and had been her home for the past three years. She had purchased the state of the art craft when she graduated top of her class from the Gaian Lyceum. The ship and obtaining the necessary licences to run it had nearly drained the whole of her considerable inheritance from her parents.
The solitude of her life did not bother her, she had essentially been alone since both her parents perished in the Solun Encounter when she had been only four years old. Well provided for she was taken into social care where she had been discovered to be a child prodigy, she had hyper accelerated through all of her studies and finished her university studies, gaining four advanced science degrees simultaneously, at the tender age of 18. Three years of further study, and more importantly intensive training at the Lyceum and Loren was ready for her career in the outer reaches of space.
Upon graduating she had been offered an immediate Captain's commission in EarthCorps' home fleet, a similar rank and position in Research in the Corps' Science division, as well as several civilian offers from private development companies. None of these appealed, Loren had always had her eye and her heart firmly set on exploration so she bought Infinite Destiny and worked exploration contracts with the government and private ventures.
In Gaian culture space exploration had been the sole preserve of private citizen explorer/traders for the past 200 years. They had learned the hard way in their early days of spacefaring that the first few alien species they encountered responded adversely and aggressively to large armadas or heavily armed vessels showing up in their domains. A few wars and accidental disasters had meant a short period of withdrawal back to the confines of their own solar system and concentration on defence, control and protection of the home system. But the ever pressing need for new sources of natural resources and trade eventually lead to a re-examination of that policy. Through hit and miss they found that sending out small explorer craft to map new areas of space was less threatening and more accepted by any stray aliens encountered. When resources were found in uninhabited areas the explorers would be followed by extraction teams. If new species were encountered and they were spacefaring, there were varied reactions; curiosity, friendliness and setting up trade links were the positive ones, the negative, well those were dangerous, often violent, messy or sometimes just plain mysterious and that's why explorers made the money they did, risk and danger paid.
The sector Loren was currently exploring would definitely fall in the dangerous and mysterious bracket. The first explorer had been this way over 150 years before, one of his preliminary data drones had made it back to the home system 40 years later but he never returned. The data had indicated evidence for high concentrations of a number of highly prized minerals and four more explorers had followed the first hoping to confirm the data and locations of the finds. All four had never been heard from again, the last having disappeared 50 years ago. Loren was determined to succeed where they had failed.
Loren's piercing blue eyes continued to lazily scan the viewport as she finished her drink. The monitors stayed blank and she decided it was a good time to head into the fitness chamber. Before entering the small space she stripped down to her sports bra and boy shorts style undergarments leaving them in the alcove shelf beside the door. She stepped into the 4 metre square space and moved to the centre. "Treadmill set one."
The floor beneath her began to move slowly and she walked against the movement. Her petite 5 foot 4 inch frame was well proportioned starting and thanks to her devotion to her well rounded exercise regime her muscles were well toned without being hard or exaggerated. Here belly retained a pleasant softness despite her muscles. Her waistline was perfectly proportioned not exaggeratedly narrowing between her ample hips and her generously sized breasts. The young woman was proud of her body and worked hard to maintain it. "Treadmill set two."
The floor began to move faster and Loren picked up the pace to match. Five minutes later she increased the pace again and incrementally until she was in a full out run before gradually slowing down at the end of a good half hour run followed by her upper body exercises. After a vibe shower followed by a change to fresh clothes she returned to the main compartment two hours later.
Loren whiled away her evening listening to music and reading in her command chair intermittently checking on the progress of the six long range probes she had scattered out nearly 2 months ago to various points including two possibly viable solar systems before she retired to her bunk to the rear of the command level. The blank monitors were not a concern at the moment, it was still early days, she knew from past experience she could be here several months before the robes found anything that would cause her to follow up by moving closer to that area of the sector. She just needed to sit back and wait.
Three weeks later Loren was wakened from a deep sleep by the sharp sound of her alert claxon. Scrambling groggily from her bunk she stumbled over to the command chair immediately focusing on the stream of data beginning to flash across the monitors. Processing the information her growing excitement brought her fully awake as she reviewed and double checked the data.
The data was coming from the sixth of her probes, the five others having completed their sweeps without results, but pouring over the flood of details now she knew she'd hit the jackpot. That was until the data stream quite suddenly stopped. For several hours she frantically worked to reconfigure the probes protocols to re-initiate connection all to no avail, the probe was gone. Loren knew that any number of space phenomena could be the cause of the probes failure, but there was something so sudden so complete to the probes termination it gave her an uneasy feeling. Two days of reviewing the data and what it could mean if it was confirmed had her deciding to ignore the strange feeling and set her ships' course toward the far solar system from which the data originated.
Several weeks later the Infinite Destiny entered the edge of the solar system in which the probe had disappeared. Loren was frustrated as her sensors seemed to be malfunctioning requiring continuous recalibration and shorting out before any data could be acquired. Loren's unease increased as she was to an extent flying blind. After 37 hours of frantic work she tumbled onto her bunk and fell into an exhausted sleep.
The original data from the probe indicated the largest mineral deposits were on the fourth planet orbiting around the twin stars at the centre of the system so her course was set to that destination. There had been no indication in any of the data to indicate the system was inhabited by advanced species but the fourth and sixth planets had indicated life supporting ecosystems. The young Gaian was about to discover the indications had been wrong.
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The room was large and well -lit from multiple points along the walls and across the ceiling. Banks of sensors and monitors covered one wall, interspersed with trays containing a variety of odd shaped instruments all made from an amber coloured metal. In the middle of the room was a large table of the same metal set at a 45 degree angle to the floor. On that table lay an unconscious Loren Guthrie, she was completely naked and held to the table by an unseen force. Here arms rested comfortably by her side but her legs were splayed wide and slightly bent at the knees. Her pelvis was set over a rounded bump in the table tilting it upward to better expose her pussy. This exposure was further assisted by the multiple amber clamps attached to the inner and outer labia pulling them out and wide and attaching to two straps wrapped around her thighs. The woman slumbered on oblivious to her situation. Moving around the room were three large creatures monitoring the screens and selecting instruments before moving toward the prone woman but stopping short of the table.
The creatures were about five foot tall, bipedal but insectoid in appearance with two sets of arms giving them six limbs in total, almost a cross between an ant and a preying mantis. They walked on two sets of three powerful equal length toes/claws and their legs held two knee joints articulated in opposite directions. Above the second joint they had powerful muscular thighs leading up to a ribbed abdomen then a plated and muscled mid torso at the side of which sprouted the first set of arms, longer than those connected to the shoulders and considerably more muscular. The chest looked like an ancient armoured breast plate topped by rounded shoulders leading to the second, shorter set of arms. All four upper limbs ended in three long claw like but articulated fingers one of which worked like an opposable thumb. A short thin but sinewy neck ended in an oval skull topped by two long fluid antennae approximately three and half feet long. Their large eyes were almond shaped and set wide apart almost on opposite sides of the skull with nearly transparent eyelids that blinked sporadically. Their faces tapered to a narrow rounded point at the end of which was their mouth opening. This mouth had no lips and no teeth but two sets of pincer shapes one set hard like claws and the inner set soft and feathery. Below their hips/abdomen their bodies continued in a wide serrated and armoured tail that folded backward and moved up and down but was rigid to side movements. This tail ended in two large stingers that moved together like pincers.
The different parts of their bodies were coloured in varying shades of tan and beige, the shadings delineated between what appeared to be softer or harder parts of their bodies. The darkest shading of a deep brown colour formed a narrow triangle from the apex of their thighs, up their bellies ending just short of level with their first set of arms. The creatures appeared not to wear anything remotely like clothes, at least not for the purposes of covering themselves. Instead they wore an assortment of collars, cuffs, bracelets and belts made from an assortment of different materials, some more like jewellery than material garments.
