By the time she got back to the hotel, Cherry didn't have much time for sleep, it was already tomorrow. She took some Regenerons of various colors before joining her shipmates for breakfast.
There was general agreement that they had all had an enjoyable evening. Cherry felt a bit strange that she was somehow uncomfortable discussing the particulars of her 'party' with Natalie and Velasy. Instead, her shipmates gave her a good-natured hard time for getting back so late, noting that it must have been 'one hell of a party' and other suggestive remarks.
And though it was all good-natured and fun, and everybody was smiling and laughing throughout, Cherry still felt a bit odd.
"Fuck off!" Tor said happily, when Cherry brought up her appointment with Xexx. The others chuckled, and Heb clarified.
"Ah, I think what Tor meant to say Cherry was, that's really terrific, well done. We'll add shipping agent to your long list of job titles aboard E16!"
"Thanks Skip. I guess we shouldn't count our chickens just yet, I've never done anything like this before and I didn't exactly discuss any particulars with Xexx last night." She was ready to laugh again if somebody chimed in with another suggestive remark here, but she was grateful when there was none.
"You're absolutely right Cherry, but don't worry, I'll tag along with you. I'm sure everything will be fine," Heb said, kindly.
And it was fine. As is turned out, Heb's presence wasn't really necessary. The deal Xexx had to offer was lucrative enough without the need for any negotiation.
Over dinner that night they made their plans to check out the next morning.
"Just damn lucky, I guess," Heb was saying, explaining the job to Tor and Fem. "Not that we weren't due some damn luck!" he went on, to the general agreement of the others.
"So, Cherry's Holdarian friend, when he heard about our cancelled cargo contract -- and more importantly what our cargo was -- remembered a diplomatic cable he'd read from their embassy on Matryll that said the Matrylla are literally crying out for as much composium as they can get their hands on and as a gesture of friendship to Cherry, and by association to her friend Velasy -- with whom he has some business dealings I gather -- he was willing to waive the usual finders fees and whatnot and set up the contract for us for free. So, because our original outbound contractor has formally condemned the cargo and written off the loss, we're gonna pocket the full value of the composium!"
"Holy shit Skip, that's awesome!" Tor said, and Cherry could see his mind spending his share of such a significant score already. Fem, however, seemed to her less enthusiastic and Cherry had an idea why.
"Skip, did you say Matryll? The Matrylla are looking for composium?" he asked. Heb pursed his lips and nodded. Tor cocked his head.
"So what's the deal with the Matrylla? Never heard of them."
It was Fem who took the job of explaining the problem for Tor, in the same way Xexx and Heb had for Cherry at their earlier meeting.
"The Matrylla are a matriarchal society -- like totally matriarchal. That might not even be the right word even. It's not just that the women are in charge, the males of the species are not on the same level cognitively as the females and they generally don't deal with males of other species either. As far as I know, the few diplomatic relations they have with other races are always conducted exclusively through females. They've been known to get pretty shooty with any ships that come their way with male crews about."
"Shooty?" Tor asked, looking at Heb now, "I don't like the sound of that Skip."
"Don't worry guys," Heb replied, "Xexx understood the problem when he thought of giving us the contract," he went on, and nodded at Cherry, "and he came up with a plan based on Cherry. It will hardly surprise you to learn that it seems she made quite the impression on him."
Cherry smiled but felt herself blush as Fem and Tor now also looked at her, both still confused.
"So," Tor asked finally, "what's the plan?"
"Well," Heb said grandly, getting out of his chair, standing behind Cherry and putting his hands on her shoulders, "crew of the Cargo Freighter Emperor 16, meet your new Skipper!"
*
The plan was simple enough really. For the duration of their time in space controlled by the Matrylla, they would essentially pretend that E16 was Cherry's ship and that Heb, Tor and Fem worked for her. Xexx had made it clear that the Matrylla would tolerate male crew aboard a ship, as long as the ship's Captain was female.
Obviously, it was genuinely dangerous. The Matrylla were well known for getting annoyed at seemingly innocuous perceived sleights or faux pas and giving expression to their annoyance by completely destroying whoever annoyed them.
Nevertheless, Cherry was incredibly excited by it.
Ever since she had first started taking her space readiness courses, the dream she had longed for was to have a ship of her own. To take command. She understood this wasn't the real thing, but in the circumstances, after only a few weeks in space, it was as good as she was going to get for a long time.
There were some practical changes that had to be made. For example, Fem had to alter the ship's universal transponder signal, which included information about ships' Captains, and Xexx had used his diplomatic connections to temporarily change the name filed under Captain on E16's entry in the Interstellar Cargo and Freight Registry from Heb's to Cherry's, just in case the Matrylla got nosey.
Cherry had suggested, only half-playfully, that they go the whole hog and that she and Heb should switch quarters. Heb told her not to get ahead of herself.
It was a four day journey from Crem to Matryll. This gave Cherry some time both to research what she would need to know about the Matrylla to pull their planned subterfuge, while also putting what she had learned into practice.
She learned much in those four days.
Fem had been right when he said matriarchy was the wrong word for Matryllan society. There were distinct biological differences between the female and males of the species that caused that word -- implying perhaps an unjustified dominance of one sex over another based on social norms -- as a misnomer in the case of the Matrylla.
In appearance at least, the two Matryllan sexes were about as different as most other species: the male had a penis, the female a vagina and breasts. Both had skin of a deep crimson color, with hair and eyes generally in various shades of green for females and white for males.
Their brains, however, were very different. Males were more or less incapable of advanced cognition of any kind and as far as Matryllan history recorded, always had been thus. The Matrylla had tried various scientific and social experiments over the centuries but all had shown clearly that the males of the species simply didn't have anything like the neurological capacity of the females and couldn't be induced to develop it.
As such, Matryllan society had women in all positions of power, authority and leadership. Formal education was generally only open to women, with males of the species put through vocational and technical training commensurate with their cognitive abilities to allow them to act essentially as a worker-bee type class in Matryllan society.
Many who visited Matryll -- and only females of any other species are recorded as having visited -- found the relationship between the sexes uncomfortable to witness, with some suggesting Matryllan women treated males cruelly. Others noted that it was difficult, or even unfair, to make such judgements about the Matrylla given their unique biology.
When Cherry start to delve into Matryllan social norms -- so that she might better put on a show pleasing to their hosts during their interactions -- she had to check multiple sources to make sure what she found was true such was its strangeness.
The accepted understanding was that Matryllan society had a very liberal attitude to sex and sexuality, even by the generally liberal attitude that pervaded in most galactic cultures at that time.
For example, on Matryll, a person wouldn't think anything odd if they walked through a hotel restaurant and came across two Matryllan women being orally pleasured by two males and another being fucked from behind, whereas if this had happened in, say, the hotel E16's crew had recently stayed in on Crem, people would definitely have thought it odd, to say the least.
Sex and sexuality pervaded Matyllan culture completely, at all levels, and sex was as common a sight in public as it was in private.
Indeed, Cherry discovered that one of the most high-profile positions males could achieve in Matryllan society was that of what they termed Jolhan. These were essentially 'studs', revered and rewarded both for their ability to produce strong, healthy offspring and, just as importantly, for their capabilities in the realm of delivering sexual pleasure to their female partners.
The concept of monogamy was completely alien to the Matrylla. An average female could expect to have many hundreds if not thousands of sexual partners in her lifetime and the higher echelons of Matryllan society often maintained harems of up to dozens of Jolhan for their personal use and that of their family, friends and entourages.
Cherry was just finishing a particularly vivid passage describing this when Tor knocked on her door.
"Hey Cherry, how's the research going?"
"Ah...," she hesitated, not sure where to start, "Good. This is definitely going to be... interesting."
"Well alright then, always better that way," Tor said, looking a little puzzled at her coy reply, "Come on, you can fill us in, Skip wants us all in the galley to go over the plan."
It didn't take Cherry long to get across the gist of what she had learned. When she had finished, Tor laughed aloud.
