What It Takes Ch 01

Dear Reader: This is part 1 of a 4 part story. All four parts are written and will be posted sequentially. This is not one of my "normal" genres (check out my lesbian, shemale, and incest stories). I am not sure if I am cut out for non-human stories, but I wanted a change of pace in my writing. Let me know what you think. If you readers think I have a knack for this kind of thing, I may return to this genre in the future.

Chapter 1: In Space, No One Cares If You Moan

The pressure locks activated on the door closing behind me, momentarily creating a loud whooshing sound that drowned out the quiet conversation ahead of me. The two other flight-crew members, Captain Tara Fine and First-Mate Hilaria Bosun, heard the hiss of the lock and turned up to look at me from their breakfasts. They nodded politely and turned back to their conversation. Despite the fact that there was, technically, a traditional merchant-marine hierarchy aboard the CTA Marie, we didn't stand on ceremony. I rarely called Tara "Captain" and never saluted. After all, the entire crew consisted of just three women, only one of whom was usually awake at any given time. Plus, we were nearly 24 months into our 36-month journey, if we'd ever had any inclination to pretend we were Navy, that notion had long since passed.

"Good morning, Luna," Tara said brusquely, "Did you check the tank levels?"

"Shit," I said instantly, wincing. It was probably good that we didn't have military accountability, "No." I had told myself as soon as I woke up that I needed to walk down to the freight level and check the computer system. Somehow, in the walk from my quarters, the notion had completely slipped my mind. And I should stress that this was no minor detail. The tanks, or more specifically their contents, was the entire reason for our mission. The three of us, Tara, Hilaria, and I, were employees of Celestial Transport Associates and we were hauling nearly a million tons of crushed carbon crystals from Loem-7 back to Earth. The crystals, formed by the peculiar pressures and gases in the center of Loem-7, were an excellent, clean source of energy. Our shipment could meet the needs of most of Earth's interstellar commercial fleet for the next three years. Only, however, if all of the crushed crystals remained in their tanks. The crystals themselves were exceptionally tiny, like grains of sand. The tanks we hauled them in were ancient. The CTA Marie had been commissioned nearly sixty years earlier. Two missions before, one of the tanks had corroded to the point that nearly 1/10th of the shipment had bled out into space before repairs could be made. Basically the entire profit margin was lost. The only reason that a third member of the crew (me) had been added for this trip was to ensure that the same disaster did not strike twice. But, as far as anyone knew now, the situation was even worse.

"Please go check it now," Hilaria said, annoyed. I felt my cheeks get red and I very nearly said something back. It wasn't that she was wrong. She had every reason to be annoyed with me. But...it still made me upset. But the more I thought about it, I realized I was not angry at Hilaria (despite the fact that she was a short-tempered taskmaster), but with myself. I bit my tongue. Instead, as it usually did, my frustration turned back inwards.

"Yeah, I'll go right away," I said in a broken voice. I felt embarrassed that I had messed something up again. The entire trip, my maiden voyage, had been a series of disasters. On the first day aboard, I'd accidentally opened the EVA doors. I would have de-pressurized the entire ship if it weren't for the fact that Hilaria had closed several redundant systems. During the trip out to Loem-7 I had broken three computers and accidentally allowed nearly 400 pounds of food spoil. It seemed like anytime I did anything, I screwed it up.

"Oh Luna," Tara said after I'd turned and opened the door once again. I stopped and looked over my shoulder at the captain.

"Yes?" I asked.

"Why don't you swing by Dr. Alton's room and see if she would like to join us? It is so rare that all four of us are awake at the same time. It might be nice for all of us to have breakfast together." I nodded and stepped out of the room.

Dr. Janice Alton was not, technically, a member of the crew. She didn't even work for CTA. But, in a lot of ways, she was much more important to the bottom line than I was. In order to make good on the losses incurred when the tank had ruptured on the previous mission, CTA had retrofitted several of the older crew quarters on the ship (the crew used to be 60 members, before automation and cryosleep had dropped us down to three). The company had rented these quarters out to some research institute. That institute had given Dr. Alton a grant to go with us, out to Loem-7. There, while we were waiting for the mechanical miners to load up our carbon crystals, Dr. Alton had collected several dozen important alien specimens. These creatures were housed in the old crew quarters and would be turned over for research once we returned to Earth. Dr. Alton had explained to me that all of the creatures that she had collected were well known and harmless to humans. But none of them had ever been successfully returned to Earth.

That was, essentially, all I knew about Dr. Alton and her mission to Loem-7. Even if I'd had any interest in her research (which, in all honesty, I didn't) I hadn't had much opportunity to talk to her about it. As Dr. Loem had not been a part of the crew, she had been allowed to enter cryogenic sleep (cryosleep) just a couple of days into the first leg of our trip. She'd slept the entire way out to Loem-7. She was going to be awake the entire trip home so that she could care for the various alien creatures that she'd captured.

The actual CTA star crew had each cryoslept 2/3 of the outbound trip, each of us awake, alone, for around 6-months at a time and then alternating. The ship basically ran itself between Earth and Loem-7. One person simply had to stay awake to make sure that nothing was going wrong and to make daily communication transmissions. I'd drawn the middle third of both journeys. In fact, that day was only the fourth day of my 6-month hitch in charge after I'd relieved Tara.

Tara had not yet gone into cryosleep, despite the fact that I'd relieved her. In addition, we'd also woken Hilaria. The fact that we were all awake was not normal, although in this case it was not expected. It was not that something was wrong. The fact was, this was a planned all-hands situation, one we'd been anticipating since the mission began. The CTA Marie did not have the capacity to go all the way from Earth to Loem-7 and back on a single tank of fuel. And, despite the fact that we now had an almost limitless supply of carbon crystals on board, they were unrefined and unusable. So we had to make a quick stop at some moon owned by CTA to refuel (and collect some new food for the stuff that I'd destroyed). It was an unmanned station that was periodically re-supplied, so we'd have to do all the work ourselves. So we were all awake.

I was thinking over my upcoming role in the resupply mission as I made my way towards the tanks. Initially, I had been assigned to climb the outside of the CTA Marie to attach the supply hose to the fuel tanks. But Tara had informed me a few days earlier that that would no longer be the case, Hilaria would be doing it. Tara said that it was because she needed me to go to the far side of the re-supply compound to collect food, which I suppose was true. But I could tell by the way she said it the real reason: she didn't trust me. She knew I would fuck it up and we'd somehow run out of fuel long before we reached the Solar System. Now I was brooding over my embarrassment and thinking over my new task, over and over again, so that I could avoid making any mistakes.

As I was visualizing my glorified snack run, I briefly walked across the bridge. It was the only way to get from the mess hall to the tank monitoring room. The bridge was also the only room on the ship that had a window. It was a large, transparent dome that faced out towards the vastness of space. I caught a glimpse of the stars out of the corner of my eye and I turned and raised my head to look out. I hadn't really planned to stop and gape. But it was a natural reaction, something I did every time I walked through the bridge. My thoughts regarding the resupply mission quickly flitted from my mind as the extreme beauty and vastness enveloped me.

For the briefest of moments, I remembered why I had agreed to fly on this mission in the first place. Why it had always been my dream to do what I was doing now. The splendor and immensity of space overwhelmed me, humbled me, and, strangely, made me feel powerful. It was that sense of power, a power that could only come from leaving the planet of my birth, of my species birth, and heading off into the stars, that had brought me here. From the first time that I'd looked into space as a little girl, I'd known that someday I was going to be a part of the universe in a way that most people could only dream of.

But as I was looking at the star, I tripped slightly over a power cable that was strung across the floor. I let out a high-pitched noise as I stumbled forward, almost smacking face first into a control panel. I somehow managed to catch my balance and, thankfully, didn't injure myself. At least, I didn't injure my body. My spirit, already battered, did not recover. My eyes didn't return to the dome above me. I kept my eyes down, focusing on my feet. The illusion of power was gone.

I had always known, I guess, that I didn't really have any business being in space. I'd never been particularly athletic or dexterous. I wasn't particularly good with science and I was not what anyone would call brave. I looked at Tara and Hilaria and I saw former naval officers with compact muscles and steely resolve. I knew that I was nothing like them. I was inexperienced and soft. Anyone looking at me could tell I was soft. Despite the fact that I was fully grown, I was only 5'1 and 110 pounds. I mean Hilaria was short as well, but she was a fireplug. My body was waifish, delicate. And I exuded naiveté with my long blonde hair put up in pigtails, my large white teeth, my pixie nose, and my dimples. I looked more like a high school cheerleader than a 23-year-old star fleet member.

But I hadn't really realized how badly I had deluded myself until I was actually in space. Ever since I was a little girl I had just worked with such single-minded focus on getting here, getting to space, somehow, that I'd never even really thought about failure. If people told me it was a bad idea, I didn't so much shake it off as fail to hear it at all. And so, despite the fact that I was too small (and uncoordinated really) for active naval service, I had studied for the Merchant Marine. I'd memorized everything and anything that could possibly be on all my tests. I'd gotten perfect academic score on everything (which had just barely made up for my near-failures in physical requirements) and I had accepted a job at a second-rate freighter company like CTA, one that was only in business because of a centuries-old monopoly on the carbon crystal trade.

Now, with just one year remaining on my maiden voyage, I had come to terms with something. I hadn't even really told myself yet, though I'd been rolling it around in my mind for a long time, even during cryosleep. As I stumbled my way through the bridge, I allowed my mind to think it consciously for the first time: this was going to be my last mission as well as my first. I guess I was a little bit surprised that this wasn't just an idea, I wasn't considering anything. It was already a conviction. Just twenty-four months into living my dream...and it was already dead.

I wasn't just the embarrassment of doing everything wrong and the fact that I never got any better at anything. That was bad. But my problems were far worse. I could handle a bruised ego. No. The real problem was that I was a danger to myself and others. I had threatened our food supplies. I'd nearly depressurized the ship. Hell, no one knew it but me, but I had nearly jettisoned the escape pod when I was trying to lock the door to the mess hall. I would not live through a second mission, and I might kill my crew mates as well. My pride was not worth my life. It was definitely not worth someone else's life.

I guess I should've been angry or...something. If I had told myself at the outset of my mission that I would have ever even considered quitting...I wouldn't have believed it. I would have been convinced that I would have doubled down, worked harder, gotten smarter, and got the job done. That's what I'd done in school when things went wrong. But I'd already done that here. I'd already tried it a dozen times. I'd fallen, rallied, and fallen again. And again. And again. The whole time I'd been shielding my conscious mind from a growing realization. I'd protected myself from the horrible knowledge, but I couldn't do it anymore. The truth was, I was not cut out for space. The only thing I felt was disappointment. Disappointment, not because I had quit, but because there was no other choice but to quit.

As I stepped through the door leading out towards the tanks, I felt my eyes prickling. I didn't look up at the dome, but I could feel the void around me. The immensity of space gave me no power. It was empty and lonely. Not for the first time, I would have to read the freight monitors through my tears.

* * * * *

I am not sure how much later it was when I stumbled my way back into the mess room. It might've been an hour, it might've been twenty minutes. My head felt like it was swimming, my eyes were unfocused. I don't know if I'd even really been trying to walk back to the mess hall. I'd just sort of been wandering, bumping into the walls without noticing. I'd just happened to make it back. Tara and Hilaria were still sitting at the table, drinking coffee.

"Christ, took you long enough," Hilaria said, and then glanced quickly at her watch. I didn't acknowledge her. I didn't even really hear it.

"Did you check the tanks?" Tara asked, ignoring Hilaria's rude tone. This penetrated my mind and I nodded slowly.

"Yeah, they were normal," I said, my voice sounding mechanical.

"You look like you've seen a ghost or something," Hilaria said sharply, and then with slightly more compassion or at least pity, "Is everything okay?" The question hung in the air for a long while. It didn't really register in my mind. In fact, I felt totally numb. Tara and Hilaria looked at me strangely, but I couldn't have responded if I'd tried. Finally, after a long pause, Tara broke the silence.

"Did you find Dr. Alton?" she asked, "Is she coming to breakfast?"

Dr. Alton's name cut through the fog surrounding me. I felt my eyes return to focus. I realized for the first time that I was standing in the mess hall and I was being questioned by my superior officers. I swallowed deeply and shrugged my shoulders, trying to get my thoughts in order. It was Dr. Alton, after all, who had scrambled my thoughts. Scrambled them so badly that even the idea of quitting my job was no longer first and foremost in my mind.

"Well?" Tara asked, tilting her head to the side and crossing her arms in front of her breasts.

"You will never believe what I just saw," I managed to say, my voice croaking out, sounding foreign. I swallowed again, the saliva feeling thick, choking, in my throat. Once again, silence hung in the room. Now Hilaria crossed her arms in front of her body as well and tapped her foot on the floor.

"Well?" she asked now, "What?" I laughed a little as the question rattled through my mind. How could I even begin to explain to these two women, strangers essentially, what I had just seen?

I'd gone to the tank monitors and checked them. Incidentally, I had been telling Tara the truth, the cargo was fine. I'd stopped there for a few minutes to allow myself a little time to cry (it was a nice, isolated spot near the bottom of the ship). Eventually, I got myself together enough to get back to work. I had almost started walking back to the mess hall to give Tara my report, when I remembered Dr. Alton. I'd nearly fucked up again. I shook my head, trying to clear out the fog and get myself to focus. Then I made my way towards the renovated quarters.

I didn't spend a lot of time on that part of the ship, it was sort of out of the way and on a totally different level from the bridge, the mess hall, and my private quarters. In fact, I hadn't been there since I'd done my initial walk-through of the entire ship right before we left Earth's orbit. Still, I knew exactly where Dr. Alton's room was located and rushed to get her before the others completed their breakfasts.

As I stepped off of the elevator onto Dr. Alton's floor, I instantly became aware that the area had...changed since the last time I was there. It wasn't that anything was out of place or that it looked any different, the first thing I noticed was the smell. Whereas this floor, like all other floors on the ship, had once smelled vaguely antiseptic with undertones of machine grease, it was now filled with a strange, overpowering animalistic smell. Loem-7 was a planet dominated by large, bizarre swamps. The aliens that lived on the planet, and now on my ship, were in some ways similar to swamp creatures on earth, like alligators and frogs and mosquitos. They smelled like stagnant water and decay. None of them were particularly intelligent or, to my mind, very interesting. I placed my hand over my nose as I began to walk down the hallway.

The old crew quarters, where the aliens were now housed, looked a little bit like a maximum security prison. I was walking down a narrow, mesh-metal hallway with locked doors on either side of me. The doors were made of solid titanium and had no windows. The only evidence that there were aliens in most of the rooms was the smell (which got thicker the deeper I walked down the hall) and the miscellaneous noises made by the aliens. I heard chirping, whirring, buzzing, and groaning coming from all of the rooms on either side of me. Well, I guess I sort of heard those noises. It is hard to put a familiar word to the totally unfamiliar noises that were quickly surrounding me. The completely...alien (for lack of a better word) nature of sounds and smells surrounding me was a little bit jarring.

For a brief moment, I had an image of all of the doors being accidentally opened at once and the monstrous creatures from space stampeding into the hallway to kill me. If I was going to die on this trip, that would probably be the way it would go. That was my luck. I hunched up my shoulders and walked more quickly down the hallway.

Dr. Alton stayed in the last room on the right side of the hallway. It was, by far, the largest room on this floor. It used to be the room where the Third Officer slept. But the CTA Marie no longer had a third officer so Dr. Alton used it (for what it is worth, Tara slept in the Captains quarters, Hilaria slept in the Chief Officer's quarters and I slept in the Deck Cadet quarters, all on the main level of the ship).

As I reached the end of the hallway, I turned quickly towards Dr. Alton's door, raising my hand to knock. I was a little surprised to find that the door was open and I was looking directly into Dr. Alton's room. I saw her about six feet in front of me and I was about to ask her if she cared to join us for breakfast, when something made me stop.

Dr. Alton was standing next to her bunk, sort of facing perpendicular to the door so that I was looking at her from the side. She hadn't noticed that I was there. I was struck, as I always was, by how beautiful Dr. Alton was. Somehow, when I'd heard that we were going to be taking along an alien researcher who wanted to dig around for swamp creatures, I had been expecting a chubby, overgrown boy who'd just crawled out of his mother's basement. I had been more than a little surprised when I was first introduced to Dr. Alton. She was somewhat tall, around 5'9 and very slim. She had incredibly long, midnight black hair that she kept in a somewhat loose ponytail down her back. She had large almond eyes, and smooth olive skin. Her body looked toned, probably from her outdoor excursions to find mysterious creatures. She had a flat stomach, toned buttocks, and long, lithe legs. The only thing that did not fit her svelte body structure, were her exceptionally large breasts. Those were very apparent now as I looked at her in profile.