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  • Personal Space Ch. 03: Contact

Personal Space Ch. 03: Contact

123

Notice: There is sex but it plays second fiddle to the story. I hope you will enjoy both.

----

"We use lids on this ship," I told the Professor a little too sharply, who apparently had the tea maker figured out. It was unlikely to happen on a space station but if the artificial gravity should die, I didn't want badly contained tea shorting out my circuits. Client or not, the lid rule was strictly enforced.

I came to lean over Lisa's shoulder. "How are we looking?" She pointed at the holographic screens.

"We've got power. Lots of it, too. This thing uses up more than our boat when she's idling."

Nodding, I leafed through the data. "My ship is a 'he', thankyou," I mumbled. Lisa looked unimpressed.

Thomas came to join us, lid and all. He too saw that everything seemed to be in order, except that we couldn't test the array inside the hangar because of its strongly magnetic effect. Most things here were made from polymers but the area of effect was large enough to potentially disrupt electric currents nearby.

It only occurred to me now that once I had activated the sensor, radio contact would be out of the question. With the interference from both the entity and this new artificial satellite, the only contact we would have was visual.

"Oh," went the Professor when he saw me write the issue down for next meeting. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"We've had worse," I told him smugly. "Most cargo isn't made to do the haulers a favor. If it were an easy job, we would quickly be out of work. Speaking of which, we're ready to test this thing now. That was due tomorrow, right?"

He gave a nod and sipped his tea. "Indeed."

-----

I pointed at the kitchen. "So if a fire starts right there, it would basically cut the station in half and if the fuel storage goes, that will send it into a spin, making it impossible to perform emergency docking." I popped out my knife and began cutting a jackfruit into my meal. Whatever they tried with the proteins to make them more appetizing, nothing beat actual food to break the cardboard flavor.

Lisa looked in the direction of my gestures, but otherwise seemed quite disinterested. That was alright, I was about to explain why this was important. "You see..."

I was cut off by someone joining the table sans invitation. A young looking fellow, with generous blonde locks and piercing blue eyes. "Please excuse me. Captain Lisa? I hope I'm not interrupting?"

I blinked and looked across the table at Lisa, but she didn't miss a beat. "Not at all. This is James, my public relations manager. You just missed Raph the demolitions expert." I wiped my hand on my shirt and held it out to him.

He shook it hesitatingly. "...Adam. Pleasure to meet you. I was contacted by the crew aboard the station, telling me about a job on your ship? From what I hear, a few others are being considered, but I thought I'd come and talk to you personally. You see, I would really like to help."

-"Really, Adam? Why is that?" Lisa did the talking while turned to my food.

-"Actually, I'm just really excited to do a real spacewalk. I've done plenty of simulations and I've become very good at it, my captain says. But I've never done it for real, so I was hoping to join your crew for this mission. It's supposed to be a pretty routine job, right?" The kid stared wide-eyed and hopeful at both of us. The poor bastard was all kinds of misinformed.

-"Sure, why not." Lisa kicked me under the table when I interrupted. "What? Don't you remember your first walk, Lisa? We all had to learn sometime, right? Now's a good a time as any for young Adam here." I added, "Captain."

I was in charge, so ultimately it was my decision and Lisa knew that all too well so she didn't protest further.

In truth, I had picked up on the kid's Martian accent he was trying to hide, and figured he had it hard enough already. I got lucky and got to accumulate experience early on, but it wasn't so easy for him, coming from a planet where the political system, in essence a twisted sociological experiment, had failed. He could use the boost.

-"Tomorrow twenty-one hundred is when our side of the station turns towards the sun so that's when we'll be in the hangar bay. And Adam?"

I could tell he could hardly contain his excitement, but managed to stay calm. A good sign. "...Yes?"

-"If you're on time, you're late."

-"O- of course."

He left us to our breakfast, and an animated discussion about allowing newbies into our crew.

-----

There are many ways to pilot a spaceship. Several of them efficient, most of them suicidal, and they weren't mutually exclusive. Every job asks for a different approach, sometimes using maneuvering thrusters to position yourself into place, sometimes to angle your main engines toward the danger and full throttle out of there.

Pushing larger objects is an especially difficult endeavor: The trick is to find its center of mass; If you miss it, you might push the load into a spin, making it impossible to approach the object without denting it, yourself, or both. Latching onto things that are spinning is every pilot's last thing to learn.

It was often said that the cosmos' new currency was speed, but who ever came up with that, was no pilot. The real hero was acceleration. Any leaf blower could reach the speed of light given enough time, say, a million years; but only a decent Hauling class like mine could make it economically acceptable. Especially with a full cargo bay, inertia was your biggest enemy.

Most colleagues like to fly with full dampening, so that they don't get jostled around in their seats when maneuvering tight corners. I on the other hand, prefer to use all my senses, including balance so that I can feel the slightest acceleration and the hum of the engines under my ass. It did tend to make passengers motion sick, though.

I had my hands on the stick when I heard the hatch open and recognized Lisa long before she made it to the Bridge. She paused a moment when she saw me in my seat with the ship fully powered down. "Mental preparation?" I nodded.

"I spoke to the board," she said as she installed herself on my lap without needing an invitation. "I'll be in radio contact with you when you fly out. And there will be a shuttle on stand-by in case I need to come get you myself."

It was a comforting thought to have my guardian angel nearby on this mission, without having to worry about her own safety while tinkering with a universe-wise anomaly. In a sense, it was like someone speaking for you at the gates of heaven, especially since good intentions don't always bring good results.

I hugged her close, I couldn't find any other way to tell her all this. And that's when Adam came in. I heard him climb into the ship, but didn't care much.

"Oh," he stammered. "I'm sorry Captain, I didn't know you were..."

-"Don't worry about it," Lisa said, and stood. "Get suited up, we're taking off."

Simulations or no, I could tell he wasn't used to space suits. He kept trying to turn his head, which wasn't possible with this model, so every time he bumped his face into the glass comically. "Turn your head shoulders and all," I reminded him, but he would forget instantly.

These suits were the most expensive thing on the ship, but no model is much more than a glorified one-man spaceship. They are clunky and can feel like you're wrapped up in a mattress. "If you feel claustrophobic, make a fist and punch something." He didn't believe it until he tried it.

-"We're approaching mission point," Lisa confirmed the screens.

-"Ready for decompression and zero-g when you are."

-"Decompressing."

A light came on and we heard the outside noises dull until only each other's voices on the intercom remained. I bumped Adam. "Hey. Kid."

He turned towards me, in slow motion as if he was supposed to do that. I nearly laughed.

"In this crew, we look out for each other, understand?"

-"Yes, Sir."

-"This is not a relay we're about to install. We're taking a sensor array out for a test spin, before taking it to scan that anomaly out there. The scientists didn't feel like you needed to know that, but I do. You alright with that?"

He nodded awkwardly inside his helmet. "I figured as much."

-"Bright kid. Well then, if you're ready, I'm killing gravity."

We latched our safety lines and a flick of a switch later, we were floating freely. In absolute quiet, the door began to open.

If you are afraid of heights you might be familiar with the feeling of being drawn towards a depth, as if part of you wants to fall in. It's actually a panic reaction, your mind playing tricks on you, so you would back off to a safe distance. Evolution at work.

Now imagine that depth all around you, open and gaping, with your own brain feeding you the illusion that you are being sucked in.

The net result is usually a rollercoaster ride between blind panic and extreme euphoria. It takes practice to even that out, but agoraphobia is always there, creeping up on you as soon as you let the void draw your attention. Dreamers, like me, are usually the first to feel the effects.

Adam was a first-timer and it showed. He was holding up, but he had that technique of latching on with one hook, advancing over the side of the ship, latching on with the second, and then going back to retrieve the first. Experienced space walkers have one hook in each hand, clawing their way over the surface.

"Take your time," I told him, waiting for both my new crew mate and the cargo lift to eject the device. Lisa informed us that she was suited up and on her way. She actually made it simultaneously with Adam.

"We've been through this," I told them both before commencing. "Let's write the book."

It took a good half hour to prep the array, most of it just to unbolt it from the ship and ready the thrusters meant to push everything into place. Lisa climbed into the lift and brought up the data screen, monitoring everything closely while I secured myself onto the array and steered it, ever so slowly, away from the Theseus. He did look magnificent out here in space.

The intercom clicked. "I'm having trouble triangulating your position, James. The tracking system can't see through the magnetic interference."

-"Patch me through?" My HUD flicked on. The graph was chaotic, telling me that the system saw the sensor array as a constantly changing shape, screaming its presence to everything around it. It made me wonder how welcoming the entity would be to it.

I minimized the window with a twitch of my finger. "Have the computer calculate an average over time and work with that, Lisa. We'll tune the algorithm later aboard the station."

-"You're sure you want to work with that margin of error?"

-"Now is a good time to find out."

-"Understood. You're nearing target location."

Pretending that our ship was the entity, we put the device in a circular orbit. I was halfway through the activation procedure, when the radio clicked on, and off again. The only speech that came through was a stammer. It was then that I realized that we hadn't heard from Adam in a while.

I scolded myself for not paying more attention to him. Time by yourself to think is exactly what you want to avoid, perhaps we should have given him something to do.

"So Adam. Which ship did you say you flew in on?"

Silence. Another click, then silence again. I pulled my line taut with my hand so I could stand up straight and look up at my ship hovering at a distance overhead. I spotted him, clinging to the hull. I couldn't tell but I knew he was shaking.

"Hey Adam. Are you hearing me buddy? If you are, I really need you to tell me something. ...Lisa?"

-"On my way." I saw her tiny form make her way over, and cover his body with her own. I turned back to the job at hand while hearing her talk to him.

"Adam. Hi there. It's me, Lisa. I'm here with you, Adam, but I really need you to turn your radio on, and leave it on, okay? So we can chat."

I couldn't tell how he was responding to it, but I certainly felt put at ease, with her voice in my ear. Even while focusing on the wiring of the sensor's battery, I could have sworn she was right next to me, protecting me from any danger out here in the emptiness.

When she asked him to tell her his name, he finally responded.

"Glad to have you with us, Adam," I said.

-"You and me, we're going to move to the cargo lift, okay? How's that?"

-"I c-... I can't," the boy said desperately.

-"Yes you can Adam, you got here from the airlock, you can make it to the lift. I'll come with you, and we'll go together. And we'll look out for each other so that we get back inside safely, alright?"

He stopped responding again. I cursed in my helmet. I was ready to start up the array, but the magnetic interference would surely affect my intercom. I didn't really have time for this. A different approach, then.

"Hey Adam," I interrupted impudently. "Lisa is not really a captain, you know."

Silence.

-"Sh- She's not?"

I grinned. "Nah. I am. This ship you're hugging so tightly? It's mine. Lisa is my co-pilot. I hired her. Hey Adam. Ask me why I hired her."

-"Why did you... hire her?"

-"Cause she's the best in the field, Adam. The best in the universe and I should know, I've seen most of it. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her and if you still want to be here in, say..." I checked my battery. "Two hours, I suggest you trust her like I do."

Lisa took it from there, and luckily he was a bit more responsive this time. He was probably clever enough to call my 'most of the universe' bluff but at least I managed to distract him. Now, it was time to concentrate on the job, lest I would end up like him.

-----

I didn't slam the door, but I felt like it. I had tried to be calm, explaining why I didn't regret taking the boy along, even though I knew he could be a liability. But Lisa wasn't buying it, and pointed out to me that I wasn't the one who cleaned out his space suit afterward.

The human factor in a job is one that I often forget. I feel like the job comes first, and a crew should function around it. That includes training newcomers, or having doubts about the captain's decisions. Perhaps I should have given it a few seconds of thought before telling Lisa to keep her comments to herself, though. I knew that would come around and bite me in the ass.

With no other place to run to, I made my way towards my ship. I knew it was typical behavior, but I couldn't help but think about how the Theseus never questioned orders, just carried them out to the best of its capabilities. Perhaps I should just marry my ship and take off on a honeymoon. Steel and polymers were so much easier to handle than humans and their emotions.

I sighed, painfully aware of the ridiculousness of the idea, and slumped down on the couch in the living area. It didn't leave much room, but I had insisted on it being there. In fact, most of the interior of the ship were things I put there.

In a sense, it reflected who I was. I stared at the ceiling, wires running diagonally across it. I got the feeling that my ship breaking down slowly, was only part of a larger piece of me that was dying, leaving a lonely, bitter man behind.

But, like with me, Lisa's presence was noticeable inside the ship. Her tea maker that took a while to get used to, and her part of the sleeping area, much cleaner and better organized than mine. I couldn't help but wonder what she saw in me, the space trucker who insisted on a militaristic hierarchy, even in a relationship. Perhaps that last bit was the real mistake.

Letting her go seemed like the perfect solution, if I knew what I would do without her. What a joke. To even be considering this was a failure to see the humor in it. In just a few days I'd be on the front line of human evolution and here I was dreaming I could ever do it without her. Even now, I was a mess without her.

I knew what I had to do, then. It had been half an hour, perhaps she would have cooled down some too, though looking back, she wasn't nearly as upset as I was to begin with.

I sighed deeply and dragged my heavy limbs off the couch. To come crawling back like this, it just wasn't my style. I hadn't exactly had much practice at it. I didn't even do my usual power slide down the ladder, taking my sweet time.

"Hey there, Handsome." As my foot touched the floor of the hangar bay, a voice spoke up very close to my ear. I jumped violently, banging my knee into the ladder sports. Lisa began laughing and didn't stop, while I clawed at my heart and the nearest support.

She was inside our vessel long before I was, waiting for me on that same couch. I came and set next to her, and that's what we did for the next 20 minutes.

After flying together for almost a year, we had gotten comfortable not talking, which I found very valuable. If nothing else, it allowed me to collect my thoughts before speaking. But now there was something in the room with us.

The fact that she had come for me showed that she too was tired of us fighting. The whole thing seemed so superfluous now and we would probably need to talk it over later, but right now, it seemed like a good time to kiss and make up.

I put my hand on her leg, causally, like I had done plenty of times before. She didn't respond, even when I began stroking her thigh.

This was supposed to be her day off, so she had traded her one-piece outfit for something more casual, with loosely fitting pants and a tank top. Although I preferred her work gear, she did look stunning in it.

"You're an ass, you know." I blinked as I was pulled from my thoughts, my hand high on her thigh already. I nodded a little. "You're stubborn," she continued, pushing her leg towards me some. "Arrogant." My hand reached her crotch and she joined in, undoing the front of her pants, revealing her black panties, contrasting with her skin.

"You never listen." She pushed my hand in place and I squeezed, her whole body jerking in response. "You're a bastard and I need you to fuck me now," she growled, looking me dead in the eye.

She didn't have to tell me twice. I was on her in seconds, tearing her clothes from her. She tried to put me inside her but I was having none of it, I wanted her naked like the day she was born. My own clothes, I didn't care about so much: I tossed my shirt to the side while she opened my pants, and that sufficed.

She stroked my penis, encouraging me towards her own sex. "Fuck me," she hissed. "You son of a bitch. Do it." She was so angry then, as she wrapped her legs around me and pulled me in.

When I slammed in, her expression changed to one of shock, and a feeling of victory washed over me. Suddenly, she looked vulnerable, my little Lisa assaulted by her captain. By me.

I pinned her down, one hand on her throat and the other holding her leg up, as I pounded into her. I was saying things that didn't register, calling her names and telling her how beautiful she looked.

The pain of her nails in my shoulders egged me on, to hold her down on the sofa, my feet pushing off from the arm rest to shove into her as deeply and forcefully as I could. Her eyes were wide and she was gasping for air. I took my hand off her neck and grabbed a fistful of her hair, instead.

I came to lay fully on top of her now, clawing at her while I slammed home. She didn't give me much room to move, arms and legs wrapped around me tightly. She gripped me like a vice and gasped in my ear. "Yes... yes! F- Fuck me, James. F- Ah!"

Clutching on to me painfully, she orgasmed with a breathy grunt. My victory was now complete, as I shoved my body into her while she convulsed beneath me.

I didn't notice her bite my shoulder until she let go and the blood resumed flowing painfully. That was going to leave a mark. "Stop- Stop!" She pushed at me, holding me in place, hips jerking to get away from the oversensitive contact. I continued teasing her.

123
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