Contract

Author's Note:

This continues to be written and published a few paragraphs at a time over several days on Bluesky. Posts there are limited to 300 characters.

*

Arkady Buran did not like space. Born and raised beneath a binary star, he had dreamed of exploring new worlds and studying the ancient civilisations who had left traces of their existence on dozens of worlds. The very moment he could, he left Buran behind and set out for Earth...

... and regretted it almost immediately. Zero gravity did not agree with Arkady, the infinite void terrified him, and women, for the most part, were out of reach. On Buran, women were prized for their fertility and admired for their promiscuity, but not so in space.

Women were rare in space, and that rarity made them precious. Only the wealthy could afford a woman, and Arkady was not wealthy. Three decades of careful research and fighting for grants had earned him his reputation as a leading exoarchaeologist, but had not made him rich. He had had opportunities, of course, and had made the most of them. Arkady was not one to turn down the pleasures of the fairer sex. He had even, on occasion, slaked his thirst with the pretty boys, whose sluttish enthusiasm certainly made up for anatomical differences.

But Arkady still hated space, and had reached an age where he no longer felt compelled to chase after every lead. Ninety-nine percent of the time, alien tech turned out to be either non-alien or non-technological. And most of the one percent was ultimately uninteresting.

What had persuaded him this time was the promise of a wife, contracted for a year. Shared with four other men, frustratingly, but a woman was a woman and to be married at all would add to his reputation. Through a game of chance, he had won the privilege of being the first to consummate the marriage, and was disappointed in the end that the Pendragon had been prepared to set out so quickly. He had caught only a glimpse of his young bride as she prepared for sleep.

Breasts. If nothing else, she'd had lovely breasts. That was the one thing he really missed with the pretty boys. Arkady loved the weight of breasts in his hands. He loved sucking on one huge, swollen nipple, then the other. He dreamed of her breasts as he hurtled through space, and was perhaps happy to be unconscious because waking was hell. Coughing, choking, his bare skin slippery with some slimy gel, disorientated by lack of gravity, he squirmed and even squealed like a frightened infant.

Made no less embarrassing by having this inelegant display witnessed by a woman. A very attractive woman, despite her cybernetic enhancements, but her gaze was ice cold. "Arkady Buran," she said. "The Pendragon is entering the Cub planetary system. Please follow me."

*

While the Pendragon's navigator had the unenviable task of providing the bedraggled new awakee with a printed coverall and escorting him to the wheel for a refreshing shower, the captain was in the tail end of the starship talking to the engineer. "Only eight?"

"We're lucky we got any," Lyn Murray said. "Eight is a good number."

"Can we jump with eight?" Lorna demanded.

"We can jump with none," the engineer pointed out. "Eight gives us a chance of ending up where we aim at."

Lorna growled with irritation. "How much of a chance?"

"A pretty good one," Lyn said with a negligent shrug. "Provided you get us away from Cub."

"Away? How far away?"

"About where we came in."

"You said the same thing when we had all thirty-two cuties."

"I said the same thing when I thought we had thirty-two cuties - with bad and worsening variance. Now we have only eight but in perfect alignment."

"And if we had all thirty-two now in perfect alignment?"

"Then we might even survive jumping here, though it would be a desperate move."

"Well, see what you can do. I want a full set."

"Aye, Captain," Lyn said with a soft snort of disapproval - not, Lorna understood, of herself, but of the whole mission.

*

Shula Mistral da Terra was on the bridge and trying not to be so anxious that one of her husbands was now awake, and soon the rest would be too. She was grateful to have had a week to herself, a chance to prepare and adjust. A week to get to know the Pendragon and its crew. For such a large starship to have only a crew of four was unusual in itself. For three of the crew to be women her mother's age was almost unheard of, and the sole man on the crew being a femme-presenting ex sex worker was almost unthinkable.

But Ahsan performed his various duties quietly and with competence. He cleaned and checked cabins and corridors, and prepared food and drink, and helped out sometimes with Captain Therese on the bridge, sometimes with Vesta Kane on the shielding and sensors, sometimes with the engineer, Lyn Murray.

Not used to being on her own, Shula often followed him around, helping when she could. Ahsan didn't seem to mind her company, and Shula was glad of the distraction. And perhaps, too, it was more than distraction. Ahsan's ambisexual nature fascinated her and provoked a guilty desire.

For years, Shula had guarded her virginity, keeping men at a distance and denying the colonies' pressure to put her womb to good use. Being coerced into a marriage had been a bitter defeat; finding a man she might actually like, only to be contracted to others, was a deeply cruel twist of fate.

"There," Ahsan said. "You can make out details now."

That was the other thing Shula had filled her days with: refamiliarising herself with all her research data on Apollo in preparation for the fly-by. Vesta Kane had set the Pendragon on a path to slingshot around Apollo and in over the rings towards Cub. The manoeuvre would allow about two hours of quality data collection, and Ahsan had the ship's sensors tuned and ready.

The blue-white, half-moon ball filled the display, but lacked yet the crisp detail that had been captured by the cartography probe. "A breathable atmosphere," Ahsan confirmed. "A little on the cool side, but the surface temperature is above zero in the equatorial regions. Plenty of water."

All of which was true and trivially obvious to Shula from the sensor data scrolling at the side of the display. It was the atmospheric currents that interested her, for it was the wind that carried heat and moisture to all four corners of the potentially habitable world. It was the trace elements in the atmosphere that let her estimate the severity of volcanic activity, and a whole combination of different sensor measurements that suggested that yes, there was life on Apollo, though probably only some form of vegetation.

There was nothing to suggest civilisation. No radio signals beyond the naturally occurring noise of the atmosphere itself.

With every passing second the Pendragon moved closer to the moon and more details could be made out. The edges of continents. The contours of mountain ranges.

"Is that Apollo?"

The sudden intrusion of a masculine voice was like ice being injected into Shula's nervous system. She turned to see Professor Arkady Buran, awoken from sleep, freshly showered, deathly pale and scowling furiously.

Vesta Kane followed him onto the bridge and settled into her chair at the navigation station. "Any problems?" she asked.

"None," Ahsan replied.

"Trajectory deviating by six arcsecs," Vesta noted. The inevitable influence of Cub's phenomenal magnetic field. She adjusted course to compensate.

Shula grabbed instinctively at a handhold as the ship moved. She had become accustomed to these frequent nudges, but the first time had been a shock, the ship moving around her in a disorientating way.

The professor gave a startled cry and flailed his arms in a panic as he found himself drifting leftwards mid-air - until Ahsan caught him by the sleeve and anchored him. "Damn it," he shouted at Vesta. "Warn us before doing that!"

Vesta returned his glare with a look of cold disapproval. "Perhaps you need a refresher course on deep space procedures? It is your responsibility to ensure that you and your possessions are secured at all times against accelerations up to one-tenth g."

He turned to look at Shula, perhaps to seek support against Vesta, but his anger cooled as a possessive hunger flared within his eyes. Shula tensed in response, discovering she was less prepared for this moment than she had thought.

Professor Arkady Buran was old enough to be her father. She had read his research publications, had even seen him present at seminars, but none of that made it easier to face him in person, not when he looked at her like that.

No more than an afterthought, he turned to thank Ahsan for steadying him -

His eyes widened in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

Ahsan's expression was one of careful indifference, but Shula sensed amusement behind it. "I joined the Pendragon's crew," he said. "It's a pleasure to see you again, Professor."

It was clear to Shula that the professor did not share this pleasure. His cheeks flushed with embarrassment as he glanced at her and then hurriedly away again.

Shula turned her back to him, ostensibly to watch the display but mainly to conceal her emotions. "A man must be treated with delicacy," Ahsan had told her. "You must praise him for his virility, for his performance, and especially for the size of his cock."

All of this, of course, was entirely divorced from Shula's experience with men. She'd never had sex before, and had never sought out pornographic media. She had of course seen and read less explicit sexual scenes in passionate romances, but her life was not currently one such. To Shula, her husbands were either complete strangers or men she respected within the formality of her research work and life. She hadn't been able to imagine them as the shallow, sexually driven men of Ahsan's experience. But the professor...

Yes. The distinguished professor, Husband Number One, Arkady Buran, had fucked Ahsan - who no doubt looked like a very sexy woman when he wanted to - and Shula now had a very clear image in her head of him chasing skirts in Station Eight's dirtiest corners.

Men have needs. She'd heard that said often enough, but until now she had been unable to reconcile this dual image of men as respectable professionals during the day and lecherous creatures at night. And it was the latter that had permitted her to join this mission in the end.

It was easy to despise them, easy to hate them, but that path led only to misery. "Sex can be a lot of fun," Ahsan had said. "But ask yourself: What precisely is it you want from these men? Why did you agree to this marriage contract?"

"It was the only way to be here," she said immediately.

"But why did you want to come here?"

"Because this is mine! My research! My discovery! I should be here."

"You are here now. Is that enough?"

She'd wanted to scream at him. "No. I want to be here as a researcher, not a breeding machine!"

Ahsan had held up his hands for peace, to try to calm her. "Then that is what you must insist on. Let them use you however they will in the bedroom, but on the strict condition they treat you as a respected equal outside the bedroom."

He was right too. What mattered to her more than anything was to be recognised as a researcher with every right to be on the Pendragon. If she could gain that, she would willingly surrender in other ways.

"Sometimes men want to be sweet and romantic, sometimes they just want rough, hard sex. Some like it quiet and sensual, some want to hear you scream filth. Some will tie you up and spank you, some will beg for you to wield the whip. Treat it as an adventure." The more he told her, the more Shula felt overwhelmed by it all. It was like dipping one's toe into a new research topic and discovering a whole library's worth of books written on the subject just to get started.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. "A very dirty adventure," Ahsan continued. "I mean that literally. Cum gets everywhere. In you, on you, in your hair, on the sheets. And in zero-g, it's worse. Keep the fan on during sex and change the filter every day."

Somehow everything was worse in zero-g. Thankfully there was a shower in the wheel, which made the regular exercise there feel worth it, but the toilet in her room was a device that seemed to try to suck her bum-first out into space.

Shula stared at Apollo on the display, letting her contempt for her husband the professor fade. "Are those lines?" she asked, pointing.

The cartography probe, the source of the data Shula had used in her research, had studied the Wolf system in subsets of the radio, optical and gamma bands, but the Pendragon's sensors covered the full optical range and wider into the ultraviolet and infrared. Shula and Ahsan had worked together to overlay these in a false-colour image of Apollo, which was shown on the display. This was a well established technique for searching for near-surface structures and potential sites of archaeological interest.

"For certain," the professor said, joining her in front of the display. "Can we orbit here and take a closer look?"

"I suggest you conclude your other business first," Vesta said, "and we'll see how much fuel is left then."

"Yes. Of course."

Shula, irritated by his muscling in on her study of the moon, reached a decision. "Arkady," she said deliberately. "You don't look well. Why don't you go have a rest. I'll let you know immediately if there's any sign of technology." The message she was sending was two-fold: This was her research, not his; and marriage made them equals by law. Her heart hammered in her chest as she waited, with studied indifference, for his response.

He stared at her. She sensed his astonishment in every fibre of her being, but refused to react to it. Instead she continued to examine the faint lines and discolourations that suggested intelligent life had once thrived on Apollo.

"Perhaps you're right, Shula," he said. "You can tell me all about it later." Adding, pointedly, "When we're alone."

*

To hear the young woman call him Arkady as if she had a right to such casual familiarity was a shock, but also in a way a reminder that he would soon be between her thighs, her bare breasts would be in his hands, and that he would be the first of her husbands to claim her this way.

Her rather blunt dismissal of him from the study of Apollo upset him, however. Not that he had any great interest in the archaeology of dead civilisations - his field was exoarchaeology and there was a far greater prize awaiting him - but he was twice her age and widely respected!

She had spoken to him as, in truth, he would have spoken to her. Shula, however, was a mere student. She had not earned the right to treat him that way. He would speak with her in private. He would do more than speak with her. He would make sure she knew exactly what her role was on the mission.

"Ahsan," Vesta Kane said. "Help Professor Buran back to his quarters. It's the -"

"I know the way," he said sharply, and exited the bridge. Between the zero gravity and the chemical hangover from the suspended animation, he did not feel well at all. Sleep, if he could manage it, would do him good.

There was someone in the galley as Arkady passed. A tall, familiar figure with a military aspect. "Ah, Captain Therese," he said. "Why was I the only one woken? How soon for the others?" Not, of course, that he would mind having more time alone with Shula, but preparations were needed.

The captain sipped from a flask as she observed him. "We are a small crew, and reanimation is a delicate procedure, best dedicated to one person at a time. We'll revive the others once we're past Apollo."

Arkady nodded and turned to go. "Professor Buran," she said. "I'm unhappy with the way Shula Mistral da Terra was coerced into a marriage contract."

"No one was coerced, Captain Therese. The advertisement was open. Shula applied of her own free will."

"Nevertheless, I am obligated to remind you that it is in my power as a retired officer of the UoI to annul the contract if I find any evidence of coercion. Further, if the contract is annulled, I will be obligated by the research council contract to return Shula to Station Eight without delay."

Arkady understood well her threat, but it was double-edged too. "Be sure that Shula understands that she has duties under the contract."

"I have spoken with Shula already. I have emphasised in particular that contraception should be used while in deep space. Should she become pregnant, I will again need to return her to Station Eight without delay."

Arkady scowled at her. That was an obscure clause in the marriage contract and one easily overlooked. But perhaps if the mission wrapped up early, there would be an opportunity back at Station Eight to impregnate Shula. He would certainly enjoy that.

His cabin was not a spacious one, and the bed was more like a web to hold him still than a refuge. Sleep did not come easily, but it did come, and his last thought before succumbing to unconsciousness was that paying for pretty boys like Ahsan was a lot less trouble than marriage.