A New Beginning

I want to record this now before time causes me to forget the details. So, while it is still fresh in my mind, I, Antoinette Marie, first officer of the Spaceship James Cook, begin this account of what happened. At least this is how I remember it.

The first thing I should mention is that from the moment I arrived at my duty station on the bridge, I did everything by the book. I followed standard procedure mainly for reasons of safety but also because this is what I was trained to do in emergencies. But by then it didn't make much difference; we only had a few minutes left before we lost half of our crew.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. At the time, all I knew was that Captain Butler woke me from a beautiful, wet dream; he didn't elaborate upon the damage to the spaceship when he woke me up.

There I was swimming with a bronze athlete of a man in a small lagoon of a tropical island in the middle of the South Pacific. Lush vegetation surrounded the pond while a picturesque golden sunset bathed our bodies. The cool water caressed my pubic mound as he slowly removed my bikini bottom. He smiled wickedly, untied the strings of my top and stroked my left nipple. Ecstasy surged through my flesh; my skin tingled. I was getting ready to take his swim trunks off for some great sex . . .

"Toni, wake up. We got trouble." Butler touched my shoulder and shook it.

Captain Butler is a great captain, one of the best I've ever served under, but there ought to be a law which prevents your commanding officer from waking you up if you're about to have sex in your dreams.

I groggily leaned up on my elbows. The sheet fell to my waist exposing my naked breasts. I didn't bother covering myself. But he'd seen me naked before. The last time was just a couple of hours earlier.

"It better be serious," I said glancing at my alarm clock. "I just got to sleep a couple of hours ago. Unless of course you just want to make love with me again. But if that's the case then you're breaking your own rule of no sex while on duty."

"It is serious. We lost the communication antennae with MC3."

"So what? You woke me up just to tell me that. Use the backup . . ."

"Toni, we've lost all communications. Remember that electrical storm we've been monitoring between Jupiter and its satellites, Io, Ganymede and Europa?"

What he said didn't fully register; sleep still had my brain wrapped in a fog. It wasn't only that, the first lightening bolt that struck our ship earlier still had some influence over my thoughts. It hadn't done any damage. It only put everyone on pins and needles for a few minutes. I remember thinking when he woke me up that the lightening hadn't caused any damage then so why should anyone be concerned with it now.

"What about the storm? What did you wake me for? I'm going back to sleep." I turned over, covering my head with a pillow.

"A second bolt of lightening shot out from Jupiter and hit our long range antennae," Butler continued. "I sent a team outside to make repairs but another bolt of lightening hit them. It killed two and two more are seriously burned. I called all six of them back in immediately." He touched my bare shoulder again and then slid his hand to the nape of my neck, gently massaging it.

I moaned softly. Thoughts of the fuck session we had just a few hours earlier swirled through my mind.

Butler could mold me like putty with just a loving word or gentle touch. All he had to do was hint that he wanted to make love and I would submit to his hedonistic demands. We were lovers once . . . a long time ago, during college. But we lost contact with each other while attending different graduate schools. We didn't hook up again until just before the trip to Jupiter and Europa began.

We were a colony of settlers sent to build and colonize a space station to orbit above Europa. There was originally supposed to be 160 men and women assigned to go. But the day before we launched, one of the construction laborers working on the moon's surface was killed when a steel girder fell on him and crushed him to death. I guess you could say that his death was a bad omen.

But more importantly, Europa's surface is covered with ice and just below that ice is water, lots of water. Good old fashion H2O. Something that is in short supply on every space colony and something every space colony desperately needs.

In preparation for our mission, in the twelve years preceding our launch, seven unmanned spacecraft had been sent to Jupiter and Europa, gathering information and preparing for our arrival. Of those seven, two abruptly stopped sending back information, the first one just as it approached Jupiter and the other soon after it put itself in orbit around Europa.

But the other five satellites that were sent provided enough information to help the powers that be of the United Earth Space Agency to make the appropriate decision for our trip. That was UNESA's dream.

Our mission was to build an observatory space station above Europa. Then at least one third of the junior officers from each section, one third of the living section's crew members and about half of the laborers were scheduled to remain with the space station and study the satellite's surface close up.

It was hoped that those we left behind could provide more information about Europa and find a landing site so that future explorations could land on the surface, build a colony and begin collecting the water for further transport to the other colonies situated around the solar system.

In fact, eight days before everything went berserk we received a deep space radio and TV transmission from Moon Station Copernicus Three that Spaceship Resolution was beginning to load up supplies for its trip out here.

I hope they make it.

Base MC3 thus put us on notice. From then on we were on a fixed schedule and our clock was counting down. We had to have everything ready for when the Resolution arrived. But we weren't worried.

We knew that it would take another nine or ten months to fill its cargo hold with everything to build a colony on Europa. Next it would take another two or three months to load provisions for the colonists, most of whom will be construction laborers. Then God only know how long before Resolution launches.

That was UNESA's plan.

A few days after we received UNESA's announcement, Butler ordered our chief navigation officer to use the telescopic camera attached to the outside of the James Cook to begin studying Europa's surface. Connie and her assistants were to collect data so that they could chart a course to set us in orbit around the satellite in order to get the best pictures of the surface and find the best place to build a colony there.

When they began collecting data we were still five days away from parking ourselves in orbit around the satellite. Jupiter loomed large in our "sky," as did Io, Europa and Ganymede. All three Galilean satellites were passing each other in conjunction and at perihelion with Jupiter.

Anyway, multi-colored lightening bolts were shooting out of Jupiter and between the three moons, giving us a beautiful light show. One even hit the James Cook the day before but it didn't cause any damage. I guess you could call that another bad omen.

Our recreation officer televised the show over channel six of our onboard television. Louis is the program director for stations two, four and six. Station eight is reserved for UNESA, when they want to broadcast something to us. But no one watches it. In fact, the only TV that I know of that ever tuned into channel eight is on the lower flight deck; UNESA's orders.

But everyone was excited. There was something to watch instead of old movie reruns, stale situation comedies, unrealistic crime dramas and stereotype westerns. Also, now we were finally going to get to work, to do something other than sit around, read, play cards, play video games, watch television or do whatever kept us from becoming totally board to tears.

We had been traveling through space for a little over one and a half years. Actually 11 days shy of one year and seven months from blastoff from above MC3 in January 2147.

Since 2025, when mankind decided to colonize space, a total of six colonies have been built on the Moon and Mars, one space station orbiting around Venus and two more circling around the sun -- all of them in serious need of water, especially Space Station Venus One.

The only space station -- actually space city because of its size -- that didn't need water was Nuda Earth, in orbit around Earth. At least everyone who didn't live there claimed it didn't need water.

It was supposed to be an observatory but it eventually evolved into kind of a weigh station for businessmen, tourists and others traveling to different space stations. Then it soon turned into a vacation resort with an Olympic size pool -- the only space station to have a pool. I guess that's why everyone said it didn't need water.

Its official name is Nova Earth -- it was the first space colony built. But soon after the pool was added 89.5% of the people living there voted to allow anyone living there or visiting there to go completely nude. Their argument was that one did not need clothing living in a climate controlled environment. Then a retired professor of Latin language studies moved there and renamed it. Its unofficial name has been Nuda Earth ever since.

I've visited there twice with Chantelle Dawn. My lesbian lover and I immediately fell in love with it while vacation there. On our first visit we just went naked like some of the inhabitants; most have their bodies painted with scenes from nature, still life or of pictures of loved ones. We didn't want our bodies painted. Then we found out that the nontoxic paint wears off after a few days. On our second visit there we both had our bodies painted with scenes from nature.

Clothing optional living has attracted wide attention and the space station has grown in size to become the largest space station to date. They're still adding to its size.

Nuda Earth even has its own mayor, city council, laws and ordinances and a long waiting list of people who want to live there. I guess a lot of people like to go naked.

"Are you getting up Toni?" he asked.

"Butler do you realize that this is the second time you've awakened me from a deep sleep in the last twenty-four hours?" I still had the pillow over my head.

"Yeah, but I need you to take over my watch on the bridge for about an hour."

My thoughts were labored; I was still groggy with sleep and not thinking clearly. "Get someone else. I've only had a couple of hours sleep within the last two days and I have to go on duty again in a couple of hours."

I had the watch at twenty-four hundred hours. The only thing I was thinking about was getting some sleep before I went on duty. Exhaustion filled my soul; I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before.

Someone had broken into the cafeteria and vandalized a couple of the food lockers. It wasn't anything serious but security had to be called. Chantelle, our security chief, reported it to Captain Butler but he was on duty on the bridge without a backup so he sent me to look into it. I was up from about zero two hundred till zero four hundred and then up again at zero six hundred for my six hour watch on the bridge.

I didn't get to lay back down for some much needed rest until almost fourteen hundred. Then no sooner had I laid down when Butler came into my cabin; he wanted to make love. He was due to go on watch at eighteen hundred but wanted to fuck me before doing so. We made love twice and then he ate my pussy. It left me totally exhausted but completely satisfied. After, it felt like I had just fallen to sleep when Captain Butler interrupted a great dream.

I know what you're thinking and you're right. Having your own private living quarters onboard an overcrowded spaceship makes it easy to have as much sex as you want, especially if you've got nothing else to do. So for the past year and seven months the four of us with a private cabin have had a lot of sex, with each other and with other members of the crew.

I'm sure the other 139 crew members had sex too; there were sixteen prostitutes onboard. But I don't think it was as easy for them as it was for us. Every one of them shared their living quarters with at least one other person for officers and junior officers, three other persons for ship's crew, while construction laborers had from four to six people to a cabin.

I don't believe any of these quarters were bisexual. If there were any cabins that were mixed male and female I never knew about it. I didn't visit them all. In fact, I rarely made it into the rear section of the ship, where the construction laborers slept. Not that I'm insensitive or didn't care about them. It's just that I rarely had a need to go back there. The only thing there was their sleeping quarters.

Captain Butler showed me my cabin right after he selected me as his first officer.

"Your berth is on the second floor of the living section, right next to the elevator to the belly of the James Cook. Mine is on the other side of the elevator and your friend Chantelle's berth is right next to yours."

Butler paused to get my reaction. But my attention was riveted on the view before me through the shuttle window. We were approaching the James Cook and her entourage docked 350 kilometers above the moon's surface. The mission I was about to embark on was also upper most in my mind.

Not only was I about to be a part of the first manned mission beyond the planet Mars but in the window before me was the largest and most luxurious spaceship ever assembled to date. I was in awe.

The living section looked like a huge can of vegetables, the middle of which was rotating. The James Cook was perched on one end of the lip of the can looking much like a giant dragonfly. On the other end was the tail section, the laborer's sleeping section. It looked like smaller can of vegetables only it wasn't rotating. Also connected to the other end was an immense boxcar-like cargo hold. Even the James Cook's engines were titanic, extending past the end of the living section and beyond the laborer's sleeping quarters.

We weren't due to leave for Jupiter for another six weeks; crews were still loading supplies that we would need for the trip. But the captain wanted to give me a tour of the newly built spaceship and show me my living quarters.

"Why doesn't the laborer's sleeping section rotate?" I asked him absentmindedly. My attention was still focused on the James Cook and the launch pad from which all spaceships have launched from for the past 110 years.

"Money," is all he said. Then he continued, "The three of us and the ship's doctor are the only ones to have a private berth."

"Thanks, but as the second in command and Chantelle as chief of security, don't we rate such a cabin?"

"Yes you do. After I show you your berth I thought I'd introduce you to the bridge and lower flight deck."

A metallic female voice broke in on our conversation, "The shuttle will be docking in five minutes. Please remain seated with your seat belts buckled until the go ahead green light comes on."

I turned to face him. "I'm really not interested in seeing any of that at this time. You can show me that later. Right now . . ."

"Are you sure you don't want to see the James Cook's flight decks?" Butler interrupted me. "Everything is state-of-the art technology. Unlike other long voyage spaceships, the upper and lower flight decks are separated by an airlock and can operate independently of each other."

"I read a brochure about all the new innovations that the James Cook has before I contacted you about a position onboard. I hope we can keep that airlock open. If not it will make going from the bridge to the lower flight deck a lot more difficult."

"Yes we will; it's mainly there for emergencies. The lower flight deck is three times the size of any flight deck I've ever seen and it has a center navigation table that is as large as a ping pong table."

I didn't want to discuss the James Cook's flight decks. I wanted to inspect the living section. "Right now I just want to see the cafeteria, the gymnasium, the hair salon, the laundry and the other living accommodations. That's where I'll be doing most of my living for the next several years."

Butler continued, "The lower flight deck has TV view of the entire universe but the bridge has three large windows that wrap around the nose of the ship, three smaller ones below these and three smaller ones above them. Together the nine windows give anyone on the bridge a 2600 port to starboard view of everything and about a 2100 view of anything from just below the front of the ship to just above the ship."

I did my best to control my annoyance with his insistence that I inspect the bridge first, "You can show me the flight deck after I look over the living quarters."

"OK, OK you win. We have two movie theaters, three TV lounges and five games rooms in the living section. All designed to give everyone onboard some respite from boredom and the laborers relief from weightlessness."

"I guess UNESA wants to make sure we are all healthy, happy campers," I answered him sarcastically but glad that he had seen to do it my way.

"We don't have an Olympic size pool or any hot tubs, just a half dozen saunas." It was his turn to be sarcastic; he knew why I volunteered for the mission. Then teasingly, "You sure you don't want to see the ship first?"

"Butler!" I whispered forcefully; I didn't want the shuttle pilot to hear me. "Yes, I want to see the James Cook. I've been told that no other long range spaceship can compare with her. But before I see her I want to see what the accommodations are like where I'll be living."

"If you insist my love."

I glanced skeptically at him. He only called me his love when he wanted to have sex. We hadn't had made love since we were at college together. I didn't want to go down that road, at least not right now.

"Besides, don't you think it'll be easier to check out the rest of the living section first since we won't have to change shoes?" I was still wearing my service boots; my Velcro shoes were in my hip pocket.

He raised his leg. "I never take my ballerina slippers off. They're so comfortable; I wear them whether I'm walking around in the artificial gravity of the living section or the weightlessness of the bridge and tail section."

The same metallic female voice again intruded in on our conversation, "The shuttle will be docking in two minutes. Please remain seated with your seat belts buckled until the go ahead green light comes on."

"I hate it when someone refers to Velcro shoes as ballerina slippers."

Butler ignored my comment and asked, "After you see the living section, which will you want to inspect first, the tail section or the bridge?"

"Isn't the tail section just the construction crew's sleeping quarters? There isn't anything else there to see is there?"

He pointed toward the window of the shuttle, "No, as you can see the rear part of the ship is just several long interconnected dormitories connected to the end of the living section. The only convenience the tail section has is ice and water dispensing refrigerators located throughout the structure."

I looked up to where he was pointing. I'd inspected construction crew's sleeping quarters before; you've seen one and you've seen them all. "Then let's dispense with visiting that section for now. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to look it over later. After I've seen the living quarters you can show me the bridge and lower flight deck."

***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

I turned back towards Butler and rubbed my eyes open. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, just watching me. I don't know how long he had been sitting there after he entered my quarters and before he woke me up. Once, after we made love, he told me that he liked to watch me sleep. He said that he liked to watch my chest rise and fall as I breathed. I believed he just like to look at my naked C-cup tits.