"Finish up what you're doing, Fleming. Descent Prep starts in T minus two-forty." Flight's voice came over the station's public address system, echoing around the long circular outer corridor.
"How does he...ooo, fuck yes, nnhh...always know? ...oh yes. Fuuuck!" Fleming's voice rose with a squeal of delight as Jonah pushed hard into her sweet cunt, pulling his own body taut on the grab straps to maximise his thrusting fuck into her. If he didn't use the straps, her delicious little body would tumble away in the low gee from the station's slow spin.
Fleming and Jonah were in what the Vonnegut's crew colloquially called the Fuck Lounge. Originally designed as the station's gym, the crew had over time found a better use for the benches, presses, and the weight pulley systems. One of the Elecs rigged a red lamp over the entry door, connected to an interlock, and generally privacy was respected.
Except when Flight once again proved his fucking annoying omniscience, knowing most of what the crew got up to. Still, long missions needed high morale, and this was the longest mission so far.
"Fuucck, yes," Fleming urged, her legs wrapped around Jonah's waist, her hands gripping the firm moons of his bare ass, as he pumped into her tight little body. She reached up to grip his hair, pulling his lips onto hers, swiftly fucking her tongue into his mouth with the same rhythm his cock made into her.
"Mmmm, fuuu, fuu...cck."
With another high squeal of pleasure, Fleming shuddered and came, Jonah's quick thrusts taking her up over the edge where she could no longer catch her breath. She gasped, and gripped Jonah tight as another ripple of pleasure throbbed through her. Fleming fell back against the couch, a sheen of sweat on her pale skin.
"Oh sweet fuck, I'm going to miss this. Miss you."
Fleming traced her fingers down Jonah's cheek and over his lips, before wrapping her arms around him, burying her head in his shoulder. "Will you still want me when I get back?"
"Fleming, you're only going down there a month. Stop worrying. I'll be here." Jonah held her tight. "Although that Mandy, in Comms, she's..."
"Don't you fucking dare. Stop teasing me, you bastard." Fleming hugged him tighter, and clenched her pussy around his cock. "Betcha Mandy can't do this."
And Fleming proceeded to do what Mandy couldn't do. Several minutes later, Jonah was a puddle of flesh in Fleming's fierce embrace, feeling quite pleased that Fleming could do what Mandy couldn't.
* * * *
"Stand still, girl, or I'll draw blood." Ballard's voice was affectionate, as she calmed Fleming, settling her into the Descent Prep.
They'd run the routine many times in training, to get the sequence perfect, but this time was real. The Descent crew had tweaked and fussed with the hardware, tested the interlinks a hundred times until Flight and Comms stopped moaning; and Soft was finalising the programming load for Athena, the HAL14000 QMR computer on-board the Descent capsule.
Fleming was going down, finally.
She stood naked on a vac platform, her eyes looking inwards as she ran through the flight sequences in her mind, one more time.
Ballard admired the delicate body in front of her, delighting in Fleming's small breasts, her boyish hips. She was tiny, barely five foot, weight being the last thing a descent pilot ever needed. But there was no doubting the fire in the young woman's belly, the decade and half of intense training in her reflexes, her no-nonsense analytical mind. Fleming was no baby girl, and the whole mission knew it. No-one doubted why she was the chosen one.
"Do it," said Fleming.
Ballard took the clippers in her hand, turned the sucker pump on, and carefully slid the shears up, over and through Fleming's hair. Her black hair fell away, quickly sucked into the vacuum systems, revealing Fleming's smooth shaven skull. Once the clippers had done their job, Ballard applied a foam lather to Fleming's head, and ran a fine blade over her skin, removing every last touch of hair.
"Arms up," Ballard said, and repeated the smooth shave in Fleming's armpits.
"Face me, legs apart."
Fleming turned on the platform and rested her hands on Ballard's shoulders, as the other woman crouched before her. Ballard gently stretched the lips of Fleming's sex tight, gliding the blade to remove any last remaining hair from her outer lips and the softest place at the top of Fleming's thighs.
Ballard noticed a tiny silver trace of cum down Fleming's leg, and ran her finger down it.
"That's nice," she whispered. "You and Jonah, that's sweet."
Fleming squeezed the older woman's shoulders in response, her fingers safer than words, safer than tears.
Ballard cupped the younger woman's cunt in the palm of her hand, feeling the warm flesh like a small bird, holding Fleming's core while she efficiently shaved smooth the landing strip at the base of the pilot's belly.
This last intimacy done, the two women stayed in a silent communion for a long, uncounted moment; Ballard's hand cupping Fleming's sex, Fleming lightly touching her doctor's shoulders with her fingers.
Both knew Fleming might never come back.
"OK honey, first thermal layer, let's do this."
Their training kicked back in. T minus one-twenty.
The intense cold of Titan's atmosphere meant that heat retention and heat preservation were essential. The Descent mission required the smallest possible human payload, and it was vital that every joule of heat be retained to keep the pilot and the electronics alive. Fleming was the human payload, and the Descent capsule was the metal and plastic womb that would protect her from Titan's air temperature of 94 Kelvin, about − 180 °C.
"The cold of Hell, if Hell was a cold place," as Flight liked to put it.
"Fucking cold," said Fleming, as she got on with it, unafraid.
The first thermal layer, slicked against Fleming's flesh with a light thermal grease, was a thin gold polymer suit, a second skin, sheathing her body completely. Cleverly designed to breathe like her pores breathed, Fleming shone bright gold. Then, layer on layer, she was covered with the best materials science could conjure: silver and titanium foils, trapped air and heat exchange fluids, the finest fur from pure bred Siberian sable, woven polymers and spiders' silk fibres; until Fleming stood like a tiny knight in high-tech armour, ready to fight a hundred dragons.
Ballard fitted the individually sculpted urine and faeces tubes to Fleming's body. The waste management systems were never elegant, but the home truths of space travel in a confined space. The station had the luxury of Clarke toilets and the cold infinity of space for final waste disposal; but the waste management technology in the Descent capsule was not much more advanced than the ancient Apollo systems, two hundred years before.
"Shit and be done with it," said Fleming, knowing her meals for the next month would be designed for maximum absorption, minimum waste. Taste would be optional.
In fact, Descent showed a direct design legacy from those first Earth return capsules, with their triple parachutes and their curved ablative shields. The major difference, though, was the inclusion of two never-fail rocket ignition systems. Fleming would soar in from the sky, the capsule's speed made sensible by the furnace of entry and the huge parachutes; she'd blow away the shields and chutes, and fly the fucker in on the descent rocket motor, affectionately known as Grumman, just as Armstrong did to the Moon.
A month later, two Titan cycles, the ground exploration complete, Fleming would fire the ascent engine, and of course it would work, the legacy of Aldrin's pen. No-one on the station thought too much about it not working. Madness lay waiting, thinking that.
T minus thirty.
Fleming was strapped into Descent, the final systems checks all completed.
"Hello, Fleming," said Athena, her voice tones calm and modulated, constantly checked by the Quadruple Moral Redundancy algorithms. Artificial Intelligence had entered a whole new level of development after the Discovery mission back in 2001, with the catastrophic failure of its HAL 9000 computer system. QMR worked. Athena almost thought like a human being. Almost.
"Hi, Athena, are you ready for this?"
"Of course I am, Fleming. It's what I was designed for."
It's what I was born for,
thought Fleming. "Let's do this."
* * * *
"Hello, Descent. Flight. We're standing by. Over."
"Roger. Descent is undocked."
"Roger. Time counting. How does it look, Fleming?"
"Descent has wings. Let's do this!"
The Descent capsule fell away from the dock, its parting movement slow and gentle, the laws of celestial physics eternal and predictable.
Inside the capsule, Fleming planned to keep her human voice contact with Flight as long as she could. Even though the computers could fly the machines better than any human, the mission Psyches knew that humanity was vital, the familiar sound of a human voice essential. Fleming and Flight would part their fingers ever so slowly, lingering their touch as long as they possibly could.
