Obligatory intro - All characters are over the age of 18. Any non-human characters should also be considered above the age of 18.
Spelling and vocabulary is British English.
This is a sci-fi story first of all, with some non-consent themes at times. This is stronger at the beginning of the story, as this is a story about a young lady learning about her sexuality, and learning to take control at times.
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There she was. The "Storming Heaven". A class Omega starcruiser. And my ticket out of this proverbial cul-de-sac of a planet.
I was part of the immense crowd who had come out to see the ship. Sure, we had other spaceships come and go. We weren't entirely backwater. But this ship was special. It was a class Omega. That meant it was faster than light. Supposedly there were only 17 class Omega ships in the universe, all made by a singular mad scientist with alien technology we humans couldn't hope to replicate.
Why only 17 ships? I told you he was mad. At least make it an even 20. And since three of those were confirmed destroyed, and another two apparently missing, we were looking at one of the twelve wonders of the universe. No surprise half the colony had come to see it.
The other half of the population? In the temple praying against the ship, which they believed went against the wills of the 4 gods.
And where was my family right then? In the temple. My father, leading the service of prayer. In the congregation, the unknown (to me) man my parents had arranged me to marry next month.
Eighteen. A woman now, or so I was told. Old enough to follow their traditions of marriage and babies. Not knowing the face of the man I'll spend my life with until we meet at the wedding altar. Giving my life to raising his children, ideally 4. Or perhaps like my parents - 8.
But that was not the future I dream of. As I said, that ship was my ticket out of this life. It didn't matter that the ship was ugly on the outside, with a mismatch of white and gold panels over a metallic frame. To me, she was gorgeous because of the freedom she represented.
As I expected, there was already a line outside the ship.
Space etiquette went as follows - Every time a ship landed in a spaceport city, people would queue up. And the ship's first mate, or sometimes the captain themselves, would walk the line, interview and hire any new crew they needed. A normal ship might get a line of twenty people. Five might get chosen. A good ship might have a hundred people lining up for those five or six jobs.
This queue probably stretched 2 kilometres. Eight hundred people or more. I didn't care. I'd wait for my chance to join the crew.
The woman in front of me passed on whispers, and I passed them on to the people already queueing behind me. Apparently, they only needed one new crewmember. Someone small, to fit in narrow engineering spaces. Someone who was smart but also good with their hands.
And each time the next tidbit of information came past, more people dropped out. The taller ones first. Then the muscular ones. Then the ones who just couldn't handle waiting in a queue for hours without food or restroom breaks. Soon 2km became 1km. And as night fell on the queue and the temperature dropped, that reduced to 500 metres. And by morning, there were only about a hundred of us left.
That's when I finally saw the first-officer. He was a rough looking man, looking fifty but probably only thirty-five. A man who'd lived a hard life. Scars ran across his bare arms. His gruff voice was only saying one or two words. "Stay" or "Go".
The woman in front of me, the one who whispered information to me and chatted with me in the darkness of night, was told "go" the moment the man laid eyes on her.
"But you haven't even heard my skills yet!" she begged, but the man had already moved on to me.
He looked me up and down carefully. I don't know what he was seeing. Was it my long hair? My traditional clothing? Was he (like so many men, even married temple leaders) drawn to my large chest, the breasts trying to escape their traditional constraints as much as me?
"Stay"
And then he walked on, telling the young man behind me to stay, and the older woman behind him to go.
When the man returned from the walk, only about thirty of us remained. 30, from a queue of nearly 900.
This time a different man came out to see us. He was small, even smaller than me. At first I could only see he was a bit different. It wasn't till he got closer that I saw why. The man had four arms!
"What are your skills?" He asked in a tired but friendly way. I was number 25 and he was probably feeling bored of these questions.
"I can cook and clean. I can fix things. I usually repair my family's boiler. I can milk a cow and..."
"And that's enough" he interrupted me. "How's your eyesight?"
"Perfect," I replied. I didn't know for sure, I'd never been tested. But I wasn't going to tell that to him.
He gave a "hmmm" noise and walked on.
When he'd finished the line, walked slowly back. He touched me gently on the shoulder. As he walked, I watched him gently touch three others.
"If I touched your shoulder - stay. If I didn't, you may go."
Now 30 was five.
I had done better than over 800 people. Now, I only had to be better than 4 others.
The four-armed man returned, this time with a tablet for recording notes.
"Name? Age? Occupation? Studies? Experience?"
"I'm Jenna Gravitas Reeds. I'm 18. I'm...I'm a farm help at the family farm. I don't have any experience on spaceships, or any kind of transport for that matter."
The small, four-armed man seemed disappointed at that answer.
"But I can learn!" I quickly added "And I've got a really good memory."
That picked up the man's attention again. "Prove it. Tell me about the men and women I just turned away."
I thought back for only a moment. "First, man, in late 30s, long beard wearing a blue shirt. Left handed. Second, a lady, in her early 20s, blonde hair, green eyes. Slight limp...third was a woman....fourth was...seventh.....Sixteenth, another man, in his late 20s..."
"That's enough," the man finally said. "You've proved your point. And you can clean?"
"And cook." I replied with a grateful smile.
The man walked away again, to the only person behind me in our remaining queue of 5.
Then, unexpectedly, he came back to me.
"This life isn't for everyone" he told me firmly. "It's not just the travelling, rarely returning to the same planet. It's the lifestyle. The freedom of a starship is...different from the lifestyle you've grown up with. Are you really, really sure this is what you want?"
I thought, but only for a moment. "If I stay, my destiny is marriage to a man I don't know, giving up on my education to raise our children, and to live and die within 30km of where I was born. I won't accept that. I want to travel. I want to learn. I want to experience life, and the whole universe. My world is too big for just one man, four babies and a farm."
"Fine. Be careful what you wish for" he said. And then he was gone. Back onto the ship.
We waited probably another hour. All the time, I started looking away, or hiding my face from the onlookers who had failed to make the final list and were now watching us 'survivors' with envy. I started to fear someone would have told my parents, or my older siblings. Sure, I was legally an adult and able to make my own life choices. Officially. But in this rural, religious nowhere planet, legal rights take a step back from parental choice. If any of my family arrived, they'd pull me out the line and force me back home. Probably to keep me locked up for the month until my enforced wedding ceremony. There was no way I was having that.
That was why it had to be this ship. This faster than light ship. Because once it left, they'd have no way to call it back. No ship able to chase them down. I'd be free the moment it lifted out the atmosphere.
Finally, the First Officer came out again. The first two, he just pointed at, and pointed away. They'd come this close, only to lose now. And then, he re-ordered the remaining three of us. This pretty girl with blonde hair, looking about twenty two, was first in the line. Then me. Then this other guy, looking eighteen-or-so, like me.
The First Officer walked into the ship, escorting the blond haired woman with him. The boy behind me just stood in silence, waiting.
"Hello there, boys and girls." The voice was sing-song, like you might speak to a child. "Good luck in your audition."
The voice came from behind us, and we turned around to see the speaker.
The 'person' was much taller than me. As tall as the First Officer. Their hairless skin was smooth, but pink like a ripening strawberry. Their clothes were red and skin-tight. And from behind them, a hairless pink tail, like a snake searching for prey. Their face seemed to shift and morph as I watched, transitioning from masculine to feminine and back again as if they couldn't choose which they wanted to be. Their body too, shifting from hyper masculine, with large muscles, to hyper feminine, with tight, slim limbs and huge breasts, and back again.
A ZenZes. An alien.
I'd never been this close to one before. And this one just walked past me and the boy, entering the spaceship.
Just as they reached the doorway, they blew 2 kisses, one to each of us. And then they were gone.
About five seconds later the blonde, pretty girl ran out the spaceship crying, running into the crowd of onlookers.
The First Officer's head poked out, and looked at me. "You're next. Inside now."
I followed him, and caught my first glimpse of the inside of the ship I dreamed of calling home.
It was a Frankenstein's monster of a spaceship. It looked like twelve different ships, not all human, had been pushed together and then squeezed and warped. Some parts were spotlessly white, looking so clean you could eat food off it. And next to it would be a rusty panel of metal so cheap and thin even chickens could peck through it. And next to that would be a panel of a strange alien substance that looked almost wet, yet also dry and brittle, depending on the light. And beside that? A panel that looked like a blue gas, but behaved like a solid, bearing our weight as we walked on it. As I said, a patchwork, Frankenstein's monster of a ship.
The ship's internal dimensions were about the same, the corridor twisting at odd angles or splitting in two for seemingly no reason, to join together again 5 metres later.
We reached an open door. The First Officer pointed me inside. He didn't close the door behind us.
Inside the room was a woman, sitting at a desk. The desk looked wooden, and old. Maybe even a true relic from Earth. She was in her early thirties, wearing an eye-patch over her right eye, and a white top with ruffled sleeves. She stood up as I entered, and I saw her skin-tight leather trousers.
