Vesta Kane was not happy, and for once her biggest problem was not having a bunch of entitled men to babysit, it was the bastard of a gas giant that sat there looking all sweet and innocent while pumping out streams of invisible plasma. The Pendragon was built for harsh environments, but Cub was a whole new level of dangerous. Almost as soon as they passed inside Apollo's orbit, the radiation sensors started setting alarms off, and now the alarms were a constant chorus.
Vesta silenced them with a growl of irritation. "Are you still here?" she asked.
"I guess it's time," Shula said, staring at the pale crescent of Apollo on the display.
"Best get it over with - unless you care to share where the hell it is I'm supposed to be aiming for."
"I'm sorry. I'm specifically forbidden to say anything until Dariel is awake."
"Well, maybe go do that. Captain's on her way there already. Looks like the professor is still fast asleep anyway."
Marriage contracts, in Vesta's opinion, were absurd, and for all the complications of her cybernetic implants, she was glad to have escaped the politics of breeding. She had no wish to be Shula and have to deal with men and their procreational needs. Especially not now when the Pendragon was flying into a storm of relativistic ions. "I'll send him your way if he comes looking."
With a heavy sigh, Shula turned and made her way out.
Ahsan was busy repurposing the sensors, pointing them at Cub and its rings. "I'll do that," Vesta said. "I need you to recheck all the internals. What we've seen so far is nothing compared to what's coming."
"Yes, Vesta," he said, and followed after Shula. For a second or two, Vesta allowed herself to admire him. A man he might be, but it was easy to forget. She chuckled as she remembered the professor's embarrassment on recognising Ahsan.
The Space Academy had been Vesta's path to freedom. She had even accepted being turned into a sexy mascot for the Academy to recruit young men, and had used it often as an excuse to avoid romantic interests. "I'm not allowed to date anyone," she had said to hundreds of eager young men, and that was both technically true and a convenient lie. Vesta may not have done more than reward a few deserving cadets with a kiss, but her few female friendships had been far from platonic.
It had been a good life and she had made it to Lieutenant despite a culture that viewed women as too precious to be risked in battle. But there were women in the service, and some did succeed in making it to captain and above. Such as Lorna Therese, who effectively sacrificed her military career by heroically rescuing the Manasa from a fiery end. The same Manasa that had emerged into real space far from where it should have, and smashed into Vesta's ship, the Hammer.
The Hammer had been in a high orbit about Colony Elpis, one of the oldest and largest outposts of humanity in the UoI. Had the Manasa been allowed to impact, many more lives would have been lost. There was no question Lorna had acted appropriately. But politics were politics, and orders were orders, and both Lorna and Lyn had been discharged from service. The Hammer, meanwhile, was damaged beyond repair, and Vesta herself was snatched from the brink of death.
The titanium married to her flesh was a constant reminder of that awful day - and what an odd coincidence it was that Ahsan too had been there, orphaned by that same catastrophe.
*
Dariel Elpis, born and raised on Colony Elpis, was not there that day. As a young researcher in the field of stellar cartography at the Institute of Space Exploration on Elpis, he had made a name for himself using gamma-band interferometry for mid-range analysis of mass density. But he was not on Elpis to witness the Manasa's fall and rescue. He had worked hard to win the funding for a new generation of probes, and was en route to Station Eight to head up the new Cartography Commission.
That funding eventually dried up, but by that point Dariel had formed his own research group at Station Eight's newly established university, and had won fresh funding to do analysis of the hundreds of newly mapped star systems.
If there was one major downside to pursuing a career in space, it was the scarcity of women. On Elpis he could have found a wife and had many children, or enjoyed casual sex with many partners, or indeed both. On Station Eight, he envied those men with the wealth to parade a wife or two, and consoled himself with the knowledge that one day he would return to Elpis and enjoy the pleasures of womanly flesh again.
When a young woman from Colony Mistral asked him for a research position, he had been quite happy to indulge her. He had, naturally enough, hoped she might be inclined to indulge him as well, but Shula had proved to be uninterested in men. It was Shula's face he saw now when, chilled to the core, he opened his eyes. For a good long minute, he had no idea where he was, or why he was naked and covered in clear, slippery gel, but then memories quickly reasserted themselves.
"Where are we?" he demanded, aware that Shula had already tried to tell him but he hadn't processed what she said.
"Coming in over the rings. Here, put this on." She handed him a thin coverall. "I'll take you to the shower."
He hesitated, however, amused by her blushing awkwardness. As if she had never seen a naked man before. For that matter, it was a long time since he had last been naked with a woman, and his cock had certainly recovered from the suspended animation. "Who else is awake?" he asked, making no effort to hide his stirring excitement. Shula had signed the marriage contract and that made them husband and wife for a year. There was no need for modesty between them.
"Just Arkady," Shula said. "We planned to wake the others now, but the radiation is worse than expected. Captain Therese said to wait and see if we survive the next few hours."
Dariel's arousal was lost abruptly and a wave of fatigue swept through him. Shivering from the cold air, he snatched up the coverall and dressed quickly. "A shower sounds good. Let the others sleep."
Shula nodded and led the way. She manoeuvred in the zero gravity with an ease and precision he struggled to match. "How long have you been awake?"
"A few days."
"And Arkady?"
"A few hours."
"Then you and he haven't..."
"No."
"Pity."
Dariel chuckled. Even if it had been his turn to claim his bride, he doubted his flesh had the strength for it. Climbing down into the wheel with its rotation-induced artificial gravity was an effort that left him exhausted. Only the promise of the shower kept him going. "Have you told them anything?" he asked her.
"You ordered me not to."
"Yes," he said wearily. "But we're here now. Go see whether we came for nothing."
*
Thinking about it, even talking about it, was very different from seeing it with her own eyes. Bad enough seeing Dariel naked, but to have him staring at her with his cock erect... was deeply confusing.
Dariel had been her research supervisor for three years, almost a father figure, teaching her and guiding her. He was who had made it possible to escape Colony Mistral and pursue an independent life, valued for her mind instead of her womb.
Shula had not been unaware of his interest in her as a woman. She had known before coming to Station Eight that unmarried women in space attracted a lot of male attention, and of a very different kind from what she got in the Colony. But Dariel had not pressed his attention and Shula had not encouraged it. And now she was contracted in marriage to him for a year. One day very soon his hard cock would be thrusting into her, and the uncomfortable thought stirred a tickling arousal.
Later. She would confront the truth of that embarrassing desire later. Her husbands had decided between them that Arkady, not Dariel, would claim her first. Shula would be giving her virginity to a man she hardly knew, something she was nervous about, not excited.
Later for that too. Taking a deep breath, Shula entered the bridge. Vesta Kane was at the navigation station, looking as anxious as her titanium-threaded cheeks would allow. Captain Therese was at Ahsan's station, studying the streams of sensor data. And Arkady was there, looking much recovered, though he had slept three hours at most. "How is Dariel?" he asked.
"Well," she said. "He's in the shower."
Captain Therese pressed a com button. "Dariel," she said. "The wheel will spin down in two minutes. Ahsan will show you to your quarters. I suggest you strap in and get some rest."
Arkady winked suggestively at Shula. "Maybe this is a good time for -"
"I'm sorry, Professor, that will have to wait. Shula, do you have coordinates?"
Shula joined the captain at Ahsan's station and showed her the analysis program she had set running earlier. "If you know what to look for... there it is! And we should be able to see it." She looked up at the main display as it zoomed in on one of Cub's pale zones with its ammonia ice clouds. "It's easier to see at night, but you can just see it." In the middle of the display was a dot with an intermittent flicker of green.
"Thank you, Shula," Captain Therese said. "We'll take it from here. You'd better get back to quarters."
As abruptly as that, it was time. Time for Shula to confront the consequences of her choices. She had signed the marriage contract, knowing what it would entail, knowing that she was choosing to surrender a core part of herself just to be where she needed to be. At Cub. Now. In pursuit of a green-flickering dot.
Shula had spotted it two years before while using the cartography probe data to study Cub and Apollo. At first she had dismissed it as an iron-rich rock caught in a decaying orbit about the gas giant, but the orbit did not decay. After searching through months of the probe's data, Shula found six clear sightings of what had to be the same strange rock. The orbit was the same and, most improbably, the rock's powerful magnetic field had the same period of six hours and fourteen minutes as the planet's metallic hydrogen core.
