First up I would strongly suggest that if you haven't read the earlier chapters please do so before reading this one, it will explain a lot of things...
Now, enjoy. BB1212
*****
"So Josh," a very relieved Rickson said later that night at The Dustings, "what made you look into the vote to disband the military?"
I considered my reply for a moment. Both he and Androger had generously lent me their research assistants and had given me the level of trust that I had requested. What that meant was because they had respected the confidentiality of my investigation they also had no idea of what was coming when I went into the assembly. This ended up working well for Rickson, because he had obviously been just as surprised as the others when I dropped my bombshell, so there was never any suggestion that he had been in on it and had betrayed his fellow council members. I owed Rickson, but I also didn't want to give away my main source of information.
"There are places," I replied, "where people feel comfortable talking about delicate things when really they shouldn't."
"Such as?" Rickson asked.
"Usually somewhere that you are familiar with, and where it is restricted to private members," I replied.
"For example?"
"For example, let's say you regularly attend a gym."
"I do." Rickson looked interested.
"OK, so you can talk freely at the gym because there are just fellow members of the assembly there, right?"
"Yes," he said, sounding like he was trying to humour me.
"But that's wrong," I continued, "at the gym there are also support staff, you know, trainers, workout programmers, cleaners, desk staff and so on aren't there?"
"But they all have been thoroughly screened by security," Rickson protested.
"True," I replied, "but that only means they are unlikely to be spies. What if someone heard you talk about a huge contract that was going to be awarded to a particular company? What if that someone had a partner who worked at a competitor and happened to mention it?"
"So you are saying that someone working at the gym gave you the information. But why would they? They don't even know you?" Sometimes Rickson was far too obviously a politician.
"That's not what I am saying at all," I replied, "I'm saying that there are ears everywhere, and that somewhere, someone said something they shouldn't have in front of someone else, who then felt the need to pass the message on. It could have been anyone... even... Infannzin, that's your name isn't it?" Infannzin had been topping up our wine as we talked, and she jumped nervously when I spoke to her.
"Um, yes sir, it is," she replied nervously.
"What were just talking about dear?" Rickson asked.
"I don't know Mr President," she replied, "I wasn't listening."
"See," Rickson said as she walked away, "the staff here is trained not to listen in to our conversations. I'll have to look into the gym though..."
Only a few hours later, as Infannzin and I lay next to each other panting from exertion she punched me lightly on the arm.
"You could have cost me my job," she admonished, but I just grinned.
"No," I said, "I just made sure that you would be the last one he suspected."
I reached for a perfect breast, and she smiled.
The 17th of February 2078 was declared the first Mayflower Day, a holiday celebration commemorating our return which is still observed today more than four hundred years later. For me it started a seventeen year tradition when Bira and Sandy joined Tish and Tash and came to me for what would become an annual all night orgy, and Bira and Sandy's only sexual contact outside their intimate foursome. Strangely enough it was Sandy who seemed to enjoy her once a year fuck more than Bira, but both of them spoke eagerly about the approaching event each year.
I had a lot of juggling to do over the next few months. I secured Hinchlet as the initial home of the Intergalactic Navy, and we immediately started recruiting. Because of the huge level of publicity surrounding us we were very successful, and within six months we had our initial years target number of five thousand. Included in this was a group of sixty five Mayflower survivors and eight hundred and forty two members with previous military experience, so at least we didn't have to start totally from scratch.
We ordered two hundred of the mark two Stellars, which were to be an upgraded version of the ones I qualified on. They had updated drives which were pretty much the same as the ones on the Mayflower, and they were set up to carry weapons, even though we hadn't yet developed any they we would be able to use. The first fifty of the new Stellars were delivered seven months after the order, so before that happened we took of the old ones out from their retirement and installed the drives that had been salvaged from the Mayflower in them to give us something to train in. Another special feature of the new aircraft was a manual override option. By operating a single physical lever we could fly the craft manually and even if our enemies were able to remotely access our computers they couldn't disable our ship or take over the controls. What we didn't have a solution for was us being frozen, although I did install a micro movement joystick control on my personal craft, which was one of the old and updated ones. For purely sentimental reasons I chose the one that Birra and I had taken around the world all those years ago.
I took part in the negotiations to buy the island the Mayflower crew had been marooned on, I had to supply evidence at the treason trials, (which was worthwhile because all of those charged were convicted), I had to appear on countless episodes of Androger's show, talking about everything from the Mayflower voyage, our rescue, the recruiting drive and I even did a show on how to survive sex with a YW by ensuring you had spectacular staying power and you always made sure the girl came first. For a couple of years after that one I received regular messages of thanks from women and a few desperate pleas for help from men.
Sex was regular, and even though Keisha had moved in with me she encouraged me to 'play the field', and insisted on hearing all about it each time I had sex with another woman. After she heard the story she would then try to outdo whatever it was that we had done. The agreement, of course, worked both ways and she often came to me with her own tales of carnal experimentation.
On the scientific front we had four main projects on the go. I had one team working on weapons development, and they had groups focusing on projectile weapons, light technology, sound technology and matter manipulation. Another team was working on developing a technology to detect energy weapons, because although the collection and destruction of these was proceeding according to plan I suspected that there would be some people who wanted to hide them when the final call was made. We were all painfully aware that the Eriguons had effectively removed the only defensive weapons that we had when they banned our energy weapons, and we were hoping the weapons research could fill the sudden gap. Another team was working on telepathy. We knew that mind communication was used by the YW's, the Eriguons and obviously many other races, and we really needed to catch up somehow. The last main scientific project we were running was the development of the next generation of intergalactic aircraft. I was still expecting the YW's to turn up looking for revenge and not only did we have nothing to fight them with, we also had nothing to fight them from and we certainly didn't want the battlefield to be Earth.
I found that my new role mostly involved juggling people, personalities and egos. By this stage money was not the major motivator any more on Earth, so a lot of the staff were in it for the glory and prestige. Sure, we had quite a lot who were there because they believed that the job was critical to the survival of the species, but they were normally not the ones who caused me problems. When you couple the egos with the famously eccentric thinking of gifted scientists throughout the course of history then it was always going to be an interesting job for me to make any of this work. When I was asked by Rickson how we were going I would always tell him that it was a lot like herding cats.
As an example, one of our major breakthroughs came by accident one day when I was in the weapons development area helping to inspire Mortiguan, who was one of the development team leaders. Mortiguan, who was better known as 'Lab Rat', was one of the more unusual personalities on my team. She had taken the body pigmentation craze to an extreme level by choosing a body pigmentation that was based on the darkest and most matt black colour available. On our shade scale she had managed to achieve a number ninety nine, which was darker than any natural skin shade, and the only reason that she wasn't a hundred was to leave room in case someone found a way to make and even darker colour in the future. Adding just short cropped matt black hair to this package she was a lot like the old stealth aircraft, but on legs. Her legs were pretty darn nice too, and on this particular day I was enjoying the view of them as I stroked my cock in and out of her totally matt black pussy from behind. With her total body pigmentation she wasn't even pink on the inside. But the thing that was really unusual about Lab Rat was that she got her best inspiration when she was sexually aroused, and she would often be on the verge of a breakthrough and would be hunting for a sexual partner to get 'over the line' as it were. She had the 'Lab Rat' nickname not just because she was a dedicated scientist, and she definitely was that, but also because she loved to have oral sex with females, and there were a lot of scientific labias that had helped her with her progress so far.
But Lab Rat liked a good fucking too, and I certainly had no objection when she asked me to help out.
"Fuck, that's good Josh," Lab Rat gasped as I buried myself deep inside her again.
"Yeah," I agreed, "so what's the status now?"
It was really strange, but when we were fucking for inspiration she had to talk work or nothing would happen. It had put me off a bit the first couple of times, but I got used to it.
"The aiming," she gasped as her ass bucked on the edge of the desk I had bent her over. Her squirming was obviously rubbing her swollen clit on the desk surface giving her extra stimulation.
"Yeah? Does that mean the weapon works?" I asked, suddenly very interested.
