The Making Of A Survey Service Captain
By Gary L.M. Martin
[Note: This Science Fiction story is an
intense character study
with occasional sex scenes.]
Cherry
Taylor was in his quarters when the holocall came in.
"Cherry!" he said.
He had lost touch with Cherry over the years, since she had gotten married to Bill, (whoever Bill was). He had logged into her World Government wedding registry and gifted the bride with some energy credits to offset harm done to the environment from the wedding, and that was last he heard from Cherry for some time.
But now her face, and only her face, was on his personal holoscreen.
"Mike, there you are!" said Cherry, and her smile still melted his heart. "I understand the
Relentless
is coming to Starbase Four."
"Yes, we'll be there in a few hours," said Taylor.
"I'm there too," said Cherry, with a sparkle in her eye.
"You are?" Taylor smiled. The
Relentless
was returning from a mission well done on Sheppard's Planet. Taylor had received a commendation for his work, and a little bird told him that Andrea would not be a Commander for much longer. And now, right after seeing Andrea, he was going to see Cherry!
Tisson Crae
indeed.
"Let's get together," said Taylor impulsively. It would be great to see Cherry again, after all these years. "How about tomorrow?"
Cherry shook her head. "By tomorrow I'll be gone."
"Gone?" said Taylor.
"On the
Kady Rock
," said Cherry.
"As Captain?" said Taylor.
"No. As a passenger," said Cherry. "It has to be tonight. You see, tonight is my last night in the Survey Service. Mike... this will probably be our last chance to see each other."
Taylor frowned, but nodded. "Of course, Cherry."
********
Taylor had
screaned
that something was wrong with Cherry, but his ability didn't prepare him for what he saw waiting for him in the Jupiter Lounge on Starbase Four that night.
He saw Cherry, giving him a worried smile... but then Taylor gazed downwards, and saw that attached to Cherry's head was... someone else's body.
The body of a pregnant woman. A very pregnant woman.
Taylor hugged her gingerly, trying to hide his emotions as he bit his lips.
"You looked surprised. I should have told you," said Cherry, as they sat down.
You should really have
. Suddenly Taylor understood why her transmission had been tightly focused on her face.
"How, ah, long are you-"
"I just entered the fifth month," said Cherry. She smiled nervously. "It's strange for me too."
"You and, ah... Bill must be very happy," said Taylor.
"Bill?" Cherry's eyebrows went up. "Bill and I divorced after two years of marriage."
After only two years? Fuck!
This was the man who came between him and Cherry! And Taylor didn't even know.
"So...."
"My second husband, Olaf," Cherry smiled. "This will be our first."
"Congratulations," said Taylor. He didn't know what else to say. He felt numb.
"I'm mustering out of the service tomorrow," said Cherry. "Really, I should have left two weeks ago, but I've been lingering here, waiting for... you."
"Me?" said Taylor.
"It's been years since we've seen each other or even talked," said Cherry. "I'm about to spend the rest of my life as a civilian, Mike. When I heard the
Relentless
was coming back, I extended things so I could see you... one last time."
Taylor nodded. And so they talked. Olaf was a landscape painter who Cherry had met while on leave on Earth, during a vacation in Denmark. Cherry was going to live in Denmark with a landscape painter named Olaf on a small island off the coast of Denmark. No matter how many times he repeated it to himself, he still had trouble believing it.
As Taylor talked with Cherry over dinner, he found his feelings changing. At first he had been repulsed by the idea of seeing his former lover while she was carrying another man's child inside of her. But it was still Cherry. Her beautiful dark, half-Chinese eyes stared at him longingly. Her even darker, wavy, silky hair was cut a bit shorter nowadays, but somehow it made her look even more attractive. When he looked at her thin red lips, all he could think about was how he had once kissed them, over and over.
Gradually Taylor's repugnance changed into something else: attraction. Even the idea of making love to Cherry when she was so heavily pregnant turned him on. Her breasts were bigger than they had ever been. And her belly... suddenly the image of him making love to her filled his mind. The idea of him thrusting into her, while her belly rocked back and forth. The idea of taking the place of her husband, Olaf, whoever the fuck Olaf was, and making Cherry his, one last time, even while Olaf's prized baby gestated inside her belly.
The thought excited him badly. He found himself getting aroused just thinking about it. He decided he had to have her.
"No! This would be the worst thing we've ever done!" said Morality. "We've fucked married women. But we've never fucked a married woman who's heavily pregnant, one who was once our best friend!"
"I don't care," said Lust. "I have to have her."
"Think about what you're about to do!" Morality pleaded.
Taylor thought about what he was about to do. And then suddenly he
screaned
her, and realized that
Cherry wanted it too
. To his surprise, he
screaned
that she had had other men. A lot of men. A World Government Ambassador... to somewhere. A gunnery officer she met at a Starbase gathering. A physicist she met at a conference. Even one of the Captains she had served under. Taylor couldn't precisely
screan
when all these events had occurred, but he sensed that at least some of them had happened after she had gotten married to Olaf.
Cherry, the shy girl he had fell in love with at the Academy, had become a very sexually active woman. Taylor once again
screaned
her, this time more intensively. There it was again. She wanted him.
Cherry had had all kinds of men in her life, bureaucrats, businessmen, ambassadors, even other Survey Service officers. But she had never had sex with a living legend, and that is what Mike had become after they had left the Academy. That's why she had extended the date of her departure from the Survey Service, and that's why she was sitting in front of him right now.
But as he looked into her eyes he sensed the final piece of it. Cherry wanted him, but she also wanted him to do all the work. She wanted to be seduced by him. She wanted plausible deniability for her own conscience, so she could tell herself that the deed she was about to do was more at Taylor's urging than her own.
And so at that moment, Taylor nodded to himself and agreed to do very thing he repeatedly refuses to do with Andrea Farber just days earlier. There were only three women he ever loved in his life, or possibly four, depending on how they were counted. Jennifer Hale was a dead squid in the year 500,000,000; Pam refused to see or speak to him; the other Pam had gone back to the year 1,000,000,000, never to return... and then there was Cherry. This was to be his last chance to be with a woman he loved, and Taylor had no qualms about taking her.
"So Natasha turned out to be a Russian spy," said Cherry. "Whoever would have known?"
"I regret having to shoot her," said Taylor. "But it was her life, or Andrea's."
"Did you see a lot of Andrea on Sheppard's Planet, Mike?" Cherry asked, ever so casually.
"So this is it," said Taylor's Lust. "A few more minutes of dinner, and we'll never see each other again.
"I guess so," said Cherry's Lust.
"And then you will board the Kady Rock and go back to earth and spend the rest of your life with O-Laugh," said Taylor's Lust. He put his hands on Cherry's Lust's shoulders and started to rub them. "And for the rest of your life, you'll have sex with one man, and only one man, O-Laugh. Are you prepared for that, Cherry?"