Nothing Comes Free on Earth

Disclaimer: This story contains elements of 'dubcon' or dubious consent that might fall into a full-on 'noncon' range. If that's not your thing, turn back now.

*****

"Come on, damn it! They're going to catch us at this rate!" the rose-haired space pilot snarled at the dashboard of her craft before grasping at the controls and overriding her ornery automated copilot. Their lackadaisical approach to the dire situation that both of them were in – regardless of whether or not an unfeeling machine intelligence could process 'imminent danger to existence,' or if it even cared that both of them were about to perish in the vacuum of space – was about prove fatal.

"Ms. Esperanza, I assure you that I have set the ideal course for the nearest planet of refuge – per your instructions. We will arrive there in approximately fifteen minutes and– "

"If we're not there in five, the only bits of us that will make it will be atmospheric dust!" Elia bit back at the voice emanating omnipresently into the cabin that was only otherwise occupied with flashing red lights and the mechanical complaints of a propulsion system failing rapidly. ".. and, in case we both die screaming in the next thirty seconds, I want you to know that I loathe that you've always called me 'Ms. Esperanza' – like, are we supposed to be comrades or–!"

The feisty space captain was rudely interrupted by another violent explosion that sent the entire craft onto its side. As the entire bridge of the ship quaked, Elia reached up and grasped onto the headrest of her cockpit seat to steady herself as the lightweight cruiser automatically returned to the preset orientation. She huffed with frustration and slid her skin-tight morphsuit-clad ass into the aging upholstery. With a flick and a couple of presses, she brought up the rear-facing camera and glared at the pursuit vehicles that were presently trying their damndest to make it so she wouldn't be making it to her next birthday.

"I thought they wanted to capture me, not fucking murder me! I only wanted to borrow it for a while.." Elia bemoaned at the screen – and most definitely not to the A.I. who had been more of an irritant than a helping hand in this thirty light-year high-speed chase across the cosmos until pulling out of slipspace in some backwater galaxy in a last-ditch effort to lose those who would mean to kill her.

"Ms. Esperanza– "

"It's 'Elia', you irritating little– "

".. I would recommend that you disengage from my autopilot mode and attempt to lose them by navigating across the nearby planet's surface. There is a high likelihood of extricating yourself from the pursuers with this Class-B light craft, which should be able to maneuver within the planet's atmosphere more efficiently than the Class-D ships you are intending to avoid."

The cocky pilot pursed her lips, leaned back in the creaking command chair of the outdated spacecraft, and considered the course of action offered by the ship's onboard A.I.

"Not bad, I suppose.. Y– yeah, let's do that. You're.. you're good for something, after all.." Elia acknowledged as she brought a hand up to the top of the control stick and gave it a pat – though she wasn't certain the ship was aware of this next-best-thing to a pat on the back. She had little time to consider the ramifications of a machine's capacity for interpreting touch, however, because the planet's iridescent blue surface was rapidly approaching.

Even with only one fully-functional engine, the welterweight craft sliced like butter through the atmospheres of pressure that anchored the planet into its rotation. She watched as the temperature gauge on the readout in front of her climb higher and higher before normalizing just as the puffy, vaporous collections of water molecules parted in front of her and gave way to a picturesque sight of a sprawling blue gem of an ocean.

"So, there's life on this planet. That's a start. Maybe I can just hide out here for a while.." Elia thought aloud as she yanked back the control sticks to cut the ship's plummet toward the water's surface. With a stomp on the afterburner, the space-travel equivalent of a sports sedan juddered for a moment before shooting off across the surface of the ocean beneath it. The outstretching landscape of endless blue horizons, if only for a moment, brought Elia to forget that she was being pursued by violent, vengeful, and plainly pissed off individuals who would soon be hot on her tail again. With a pivot of the rubber-texture control stick to the port side, the craft yawed over and the outstretched tip of the stabilization wing dipped into the surface of the water. Behind her, a jet wash wake of white-capped waves flared up off of the previously unbroken surface before relaxing down well after the jet-propelled spacecraft had roared past.

"You think I lost them yet?" Elia queried the ship's computer.

"I am not detecting any nearby signs of life, but I would recommend a persistence in this course for at least several thousand miles," the A.I. chimed back.

"Got'cha. You know, if we live through this, I think our partnership is going to be that much stronger."

"I searched for your query term 'partnership' and found this definition– "

"Stop, stop," Elia responded in riposte. The ship had, apparently, not been equipped to answer anything quite so distinctly human. Considering she was the one hinting at companionship with a bargain bin ship A.I., Elia wasn't gutted over omitted feature.

Feeling the relief of an evasion well executed, Elia eased her white-knuckled grip from the controls and allowed her back to relax in the pilot's seat. She cocked the craft back off of it's maverick-esque wing-dipping yaw and steered the aircraft into a bank towards the growing landmass in the distance. Carving the ship over the water toward the beach, Elia watched the landscape below the Class-B space cruiser flip from a deep blue to a vibrant, lush green.

"Land-ho.." Elia condescended, wriggling her finger back and forth in the air in a celebration. Easing back on the controls, Elia careened the craft up into the cloud layer and began tapping away at gizmos and switches on the heads-up display. An untrained eye would've interpreted her prompt selections on the holographic interface as random, Elia knew. Thankfully, as a space ace, only some of her inputs were random. All the same, she managed to engage the terrain-scanning recon protocol in hopes of gathering crucial data on this foreign celestial body.

Skating at high-velocity through the thermosphere of the primitive planet yielded a wealth of reconnaissance data for the refugee star pilot. It was a tip of her trade to make sure you know as much as possible about any foreign planet before setting landing gear on it. Without a decently well-rounded picture of what kind of environment she would be immersing herself into, there would be higher chance for encountering compromising variables.

Unfortunately, the planet she was currently soaring across was riddled with those compromising variables.

"Simple combustion engines.. primitive infrastructure.. carbon-based emissions.." Elia listed off the potential complications that could complicate her temporary stopover as a space-faring refugee on this rock.

"It is likely that you will experience difficulties blending in effectively in this solar system. They have yet to advance beyond a Gungnir-class civilization," bonged the informational dossier that the ship's A.I. would regurgitate on cue when arriving at a foreign planet.

"Great. Take over the autopilot and touch me down somewhere with the highest probability for finding shelter," instructed Elia, already lamenting the tribulations she would surely encounter down there on the surface. She reached down to the side of the seat and pushed back on the knurled knob that prompted the chair to recline automatically. Sufficiently comfortable, Elia kicked her feet up onto some inconsequential menagerie of bells and whistles – it's not like she needed to know what all of them do, anyway – and reclined in the command deck seat that fit her shapely backside like a glove at this point, many years into their service together.

"Wake me when we get there," Elia began before pausing to deliver a sardonic punch to her order, "buddy." That out of the way, she reached back behind her voluminous head of pastel pink hair, linked her fingers, and closed her eyes while relaxing into them.

"Aye-aye, Ms. Espe– " the ship A.I. stopped short. Elia opened one eye inquisitively for a moment to wait for the logical, calculating conclusion to her robotic companion's response. None came. Most starship captains – especially ones flying solo, like Captain Elia Esperanza did – exchanged their A.I. infrastructure every seventy-thousand light years of travel. The only time you ever heard about 'rogue A.I.' committing some kind of atrocity aboard luxury cruise liners or orbiting research facilities were when the artificial sentience was given too much human sensory input. Naturally, all of the personality the construct would absorb over time engendered a sentience decidedly less than artificial.

Elia opted to not tread that possibility yet by shutting her eyes once again and drifting off to sleep.

***

"We have arrived, captain," trilled the lifeless voice of the ship. Elia felt thankful for the helpful, considerate interstellar companion that she had with her. Not only did it give her a wake-up call, it did it microseconds before sending a spine-shattering quake up the bow of the craft as the autopilot dug landing gear into terrestrial soil.

"Fuck! Y– yeah, thanks.." Elia said as her rude awakening subsided, tapering off from the rumble into a humming vibration of crippled engine systems, ".. dick."

"Upon thorough analysis of the infrastructure, terrain, layout, population density, and sampling from the local intranet spiderwebbed throughout this municipality, I have determined that this would statistically be the most likely place for you to find shelter," droned the ship. Elia tuned out the computer-generated voice about halfway into its diatribe and was preparing to disembark the craft. With a gentle 'woosh' of air as the door slid out of the threshold, she strode into the cramped, closet-sized airlock that led out of the rear bay doors to the ship.

"Send me out – wait, you'd tell me if the planet didn't have breathable air, right?" Elia hesitated before having the ship A.I. execute her command to depressurize the chamber and allow her off of the craft.

"That is in my programming, captain," responded the disembodied voice with a tinny chirp.

Elia nodded, which seemed to trigger the all-seeing construct to carry out her instruction. With a room-filling cloud of gaseous mist, the shoulder-to-wall gym locker of a room backed off on the pressure valve, securing safe passage into the relatively unknown landscape. The bright daylight slipped through the widening crack of the exterior bisected hatch, temporarily blinding the unprepared extraterrestrial. With as much confidence as she could muster up, Elia catwalked out from the retractable gangplank that had extended out to ferry her down to the planet's surface. This part always got her heart racing a bit. There was no telling what kind of wonderful, wacky, organic creations that the cosmos would generate on any given planet in any given galaxy. The beauty of the universe was boundless, and as Elia crunched down into the blades of grass just off of the walkway, she was eager to soak in the sights.

"Is that a fucking space alien!? Holy fuck, she's fucking hot, too. Just like in the comics. Maybe she's here to repopulate her species – I'm sure I could help the slut out with that shit.."

Unfortunately, her welcome to this planet wasn't quite as spectacular. She would've opted for a more governmental greeting, complete with weapons aimed at her, over whatever that was. Just to the side, uncomfortably close to the 'space alien,' stood a lanky, scrawny looking beanpole of a boy who was unabashedly ogling her curvaceous chest. Something about his stare unsettled her, but her getup was form-fitting to say the least, so she did her best to shrug it off and begin her spiel.

"Greetings. I am not from your planet. I am here seeking refuge fr– "

Admittedly, Elia had gone through this rigmarole many times before. As a seasoned spacetraveler and starfighter, she often found herself crash-landed on strange worlds with strange occupants. The routine beseechment had grown dry. She delivered it with this glassy, unfixed stare with her feet together and her hands at her side. Unassuming, non-threatening, and as unintimidating as can be was the best approach she could take. That's why she didn't notice her one-man welcoming party reaching up to cop a feel of her immense rack. Her focus pared down from some spot on the horizon and zeroed-in on the fingers sinking into her jumpsuit to heft one of her monster mammaries

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Elia snapped, swatting away the hand groping her. Her assaulter, meanwhile, appeared to be utterly unphased.

"So, you're not from this planet, huh?" choked the boy. Elia looked down at him flatly for a moment, and couldn't help but notice how the pair of them were a picture of opposites. Her skin, fair and smooth, where his was pock-marked with blemishes and the scars those blemishes left behind. In contrast to the undyed pink of Elia's mane, the native boy's hair was a drab hue of brown that appeared to borrow it's pigmentation from the soil the ship had landed on. Misplaced as it was, his stare, however – still latched on her buxom, well-endowed chest – was icy blue to match hers.

"N– no, I'm not. I was being pursued by a group of bounty hunters seeking to apprehend or eliminate me, and – " this time, the whelp sunk his fingers right around the same squishy breast closest to him. While Elia recoiled in sheer horror at his moxie, the teen copped a five-finger feel of the taut chest ornament of the first 'space alien' he ever had the pleasure of encountering.

"Listen here, you little punk," Elia growled, whipping a hand past her thigh and unholstering the blaster pistol secured there. She nestled to business end of the phaser in between the beady eyes of her accosting molester.

"W– wait, wait! Wait! You can stay here, you can stay here! My folks are out of town, and the house is all to me– I mean, the maids still visit daily and Arrondo is in his quarters, but –!" the snivelling brat fired off in rapid succession, bargaining with the suddenly intimidating interstellar visitor so she didn't hollow out the gap between his eyebrows.

"Oh, well, alright then," Elia responded. She stowed the laserarm back in her hip holster and crossed her arms under her bust. Her elbows cramming her tits closer together didn't do anything but encourage more staring, but she looked past it – after all, this kid was going to give her a place to sleep. "Can you show me inside?"

The pimple-speckled dweeb turned tail without a word and began marching across the lawn. It was only after Elia began after him that she came to realize that she had touched down in what appeared to be the grounds behind what a Gungnir-class civilization would commonly referred to as a 'McMansion,' for reasons beyond her understanding of the context. She smirked at the coincidence – she had studied about this subset of human life-forms existing a dichotomous relationship between the fortunate and the less fortunate. Her understanding of the environment would dictate that the barely-legal boy she was following up into the estate house was subject to nearly all of the privileges afforded by society. Suffice it to say that he's probably a real shit head.

After crossing up the back lawn and onto the lido area bordering a crystalline blue pool of water, Elia and the yet-unnamed boy arrived at the rear doors of the house. She followed him through them and crossed under the cavernous, vaulted ceilings of the house foyer.

"M– my bedroom is just up here and around the corner, if you'll follow me.." piped up boy in front of her.

Elia nodded, knowing full well he couldn't tell. Might as well keep the little jerk guessing, she mused. With a soft 'swish' as her thick, morphsuited thighs slid across one another as she strode, she shadowed the boy while he trudged up the winding staircase and onto the second floor landing. At the top of the stairs, he paused and shook his head as if remembering something he forgot. She watched as he looked back over his shoulder and extended an arm to point down the hall.

"It's down there, last door on the left. I'll be right behind you."

Elia narrowed her gaze at the boy, unsure of why she was to walk ahead of him. Reassured by the fact that she could reduce any hostiles to molten dust with her sidearm, she nodded and walked past the boy to the door he indicated. After passing him by, she heard the footfalls of his own pace behind her. It was at that moment she realized that the only reason he would want to trail her and not the other way around was for the fact that her nanofiber bodysuit came in two pieces: one leotard-esque top that covered her chest, arms, and threaded between her thighs to cover her more sensitive regions, then another set of thigh-high leggings that only came up to half-way. With the upper suit wedged between her lush ass like a g-string, the reason he wanted to follow her was obvious. Her entire, voluptuous ass was on display.

This kid had an unending supply of cheekiness, and she was ashamed that she had fallen for it. She was supposed to be the daring space-faring adventurer, here, not being led around by the nose by some snot-nosed brat so he could get an eyeful of her ass.

Once again, she opted to ignore it and enter the kid's bedroom, as instructed. Soon after her, the door shut as he entered his domain behind Elia. There, she plopped down into a musty beanbag chair and watched as the boy providing her a roof for the evening relaxed onto his bed.

"What's your name?" she queried.

"Chad," replied the boy who was idly picking at one of the white-heads on his face that had seen enough damage already. She pitied Chad from five years from now.

"Thank you for letting me sleep here, Chad. You're.. kind," she offered by way of thanking her gracious host, but struggled to get the 'kind' part out, remembering that his hands had already been on her.

"Yeah, well, nothing is for free here on Earth, b– bitch."

Elia arched her eyebrows at Chad. His voice trembled when he squeaked out that threat. She knew he had to have been saving that one.

"'Nothing is for free,' Chad?" Elia repeated, crossing her arms indignantly

"Yeah. If you're 'gonna stay here, you have to give me something in return," retorted the bold little twit. He returned her gesture with a cross-armed, fixed state of his own. He seemed to gain confidence in his ultimatum after mewling out more of it.

Elia knew Chad had no idea about the interstellar treatises in place to protect the indigenous people of civilizations below Mjolnir. Chad couldn't have possibly known about the A.I. superintelligences that kept close watch over Gungnir-class civilizations like his, controlled by the ruling government body of a galactic unity of the major cosmic superpowers. He definitely didn't know that if she had put a hole through his head, Elia would've been before an interplanetary tribunal before the tip of her blaster cooled off. He had no idea about the power he held over her, being a foreign invader. She sucked up her indignation and spoke with a steely expression on her face.

"What kind of 'something,' Chad?"

"I 'wanna see your pussy– you have a pussy, right?"

"Ex-fucking-scuse me?" Elia clapped back, with an instinct to draw her blaster crossing her mind.