The names, characters, places and events in this story are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. All characters are over the age of 18. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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"Activate view screen," Captain Alpheus Ewing ordered the Communications Officer of the Starship Convolvulus. Immediately, the plastisteel walls of the bridge seemed to vanish to be replaced with a 4D view of deep space. The Communications Officer, a heavy-set but super efficient woman, adjusted the perspective and a beautiful blue planet appeared in the front of the starship's bridge.
"That is Mantua. As you can see, it is a water world with little land mass -- two sub-continents and thousands of islands of varying sizes together with archipelagoes, mostly scattered around the equator. It also has two small polar ice-caps but that is it for land," he explained. "It is the only planet in this system apart from a few rocky dwarf planets and asteroids."
The sun emerged from behind the planet's shoulder and the Communications Officer immediately dimmed the screen.
"It closely orbits a main K-sequence orange dwarf star and the planet mostly has a pleasantly tropical temperature."
"Why have you summoned us here, sir?" a voice asked. "I understand we're going down there?"
Captain Ewing swiveled his command chair and looked at the two people standing next to him. The speaker was Half-Captain Skyann Yomova, who was one of the senior planetary contact team crew. Captain Ewing respected her skills but did not much like her. However he was professional enough that he did not let his dislike affect their working relationship. She had a capacity for hard work and expected her team to work equally hard. However, she had a resting bitch face which, he thought, revealed her true personality. That said, she was a good looking woman with blond hair neatly tied back, generous lips, perfect teeth and big blue eyes. Her figure was knock-out, perfectly proportioned with full breasts, a trim waist, curvaceous hips and long, toned legs beneath her uniform jumpsuit. She was the product of the superior genetics that family money can buy.
Next to her stood Quarter-Captain Jason Colfax, one of her junior officers. He towered over his superior and looked like the jock he was with big shoulders and an athletic build. All the same, while he was no genius and would never reach the top of the Navy, he was not stupid and was a good man on the team. Even so, he knew that Skyann disliked him and had requested that he be transferred to another contact team.
"We are here, Half-Captain Yomova, because of Mantua's location. It is just off mid point between New Cincinnati and Tatianus Prime and if we can use it as a refueling base, it will cut over five parsecs from the journey."
Colfax whistled. "Worth it, sir," he said.
"Exactly. However, the planet is inhabited by a regressed colony -- one of those the Terran Tetrarchy lost sight of centuries ago during some upheaval or other -- and before establishing a base we need to know what impact it will have on the natives if they stumble across an advanced civilization on their world. Or if we do later decide to make contact with them."
"Where will we be building this refueling base, sir?" Skyann asked.
"It is proposed to be a floating base on the far side of the ocean, well away from any occupied land, so the likelihood of them coming across it by chance within the next few centuries is very remote. But firstly we do need to determine how accidental contact might affect their society.
"So I am sending a few survey teams to go down and discretely mingle with the local populace and find out more about them. Of course, we have used our sensor array to make a broad-brush sweep so go to your rooms and review the preliminary findings and then report back here at 28:75 to be ready for the shuttle craft."
"Yes, sir," they said, snapping off salutes.
Colfax followed his Half-Captain to the elevators and descended to the crew's living quarters. As he walked behind her along the corridor, watching her buttocks flex and move beneath the loose silvery jumpsuit, he wondered what she would be like stripped naked before him. He had not forgiven her for that last annual appraisal and wished he could get his own back. He put those thoughts aside as he entered his stateroom, the door panel closing behind him with a swoosh, and logged onto his computer terminal. Within minutes, he was absorbing the data already learned.
Captain Ewing was probably right about it being an old colony lost in space. The Terran Tetrarchy had expanded and contracted many times over the last few millennia due to economic collapse or civil wars caused by one faction or another. Many major planets had sent out colonies but, over time, data had been lost or destroyed and now nobody knew how far along the spiral arm humanity's reach had spread. Now the Tetrarchy was expanding outwards again and coming across a number of forgotten worlds.
It seemed Mantua had sunk to an Earthly equivalent of the Iron Age. As far as could be seen, one of the sub-continents, where he and Half-Captain Skyann were to be assigned, was dominated by an expanding nation to the north and various city-states and tribes to the south. Yet the aspect that really excited him was that throughout this sub-continent, it seemed that society was dominated by men with women taking a strictly subservient role. The nearby islands at least shared a similar culture.
He carried on scanning the information but could do nothing about the erection bulging in his jumpsuit. If he was teamed up with Bitch-Face in a world of subservient females then he was going to relish this assignment very much. He cautioned himself not to overdo things down there, it was only going to be temporary and he would have to work with her afterwards, but he was going to make sure he enjoyed himself.
On board high resolution cameras and shielded drones sent planetside had caught snapshots and short movies of life on the surface. Colfax looked at the people and saw that they mostly had almost apricot-colored skin and dark hair. But it was the glimpse of their costumes that excited him. To say that the women's clothing was revealing was an understatement. He wondered how prim and proper Bitch-Face would like that. He grinned to himself as he read on about what had been discovered so far about the natives' culture and technology.
It seemed as though native life had evolved to the level of armored fish and cephalopods in the seas and giant tree-ferns, similar to those of Earth's Carboniferous era, on land. The original colonists had also brought modified Earthly animals and plants with them when they settled Mantua. When the colony lost contact with the rest of humanity, for some reason their culture had quickly regressed to the Iron Age but now was gradually redeveloping.
When he was finished, he reported to the medical bay in order to be modified so that he would fit in on this world. Stripping off until his muscular form was completely naked, he lay still in the full body med-tube while the doctor, old Doc Rousseau, and one of the med-droids adjusted the settings. The machine depilated him, zapping all his follicles from below his neck then perma-dyed his skin, turning it into the deep apricot-tan of the locals and darkening his hair. He next felt a sharp stab in his deltoid muscle.
"Boosting your immunity -- the ubicillin provides immunity against nearly all microbes and viruses," the medic informed him as he swung down out of the tube.
"It's those it doesn't work against that worry me," Colfax said with a smile.
The two men laughed. But then came a short but agonizing pain in his ear that felt as if his brain was being drilled into as his universal translator was programmed with the local language. After finishing with the medical wing, he called into the stores where the droid server gave him newly made clothes and equipment. He changed into the clothes he would be wearing planetside and was pleased with what he wore as it would be suitable for the semi-tropical environment. He pulled on a pair of baggy pajama-style pants in dark green and heavy sandals. Over his pants was a loose short-sleeved tunic which fell mid-thigh. It was a russet brown and embroidered with abstract patterns. A soft conical Liberty cap completed his outfit.
