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Message-ID: <41307asstr$1047870606@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: simon_48@hotmail.com (Simon Wagstaff III)
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NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 Mar 2003 18:04:08 GMT
Subject: {ASSM} HURTLING PLANETS Ch 4 a new-wave space opera by Simon Wagstaff III 
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 22:10:06 -0500
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
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Captain Dennis collapses. Inhuman creatures consider action. In a dark
basement, a woman is spied upon. The dark fleet cruises endlessly,
with no destination. Pirates land at a secret base. Captain Harleigh
smokes in the dark. She owns the ship now. Nothing can turn a runaway
planet.

	HURTLING PLANETS
	A NEW-WAVE SPACE OPERA by Simon Wagstaff III
	PART IV

	CAPTAIN DENNIS COLLAPSES. His nerves are buzzing as he falls upon his
sleeping pad. He kicks his shoes across the room and stretches, then
rubs his eyes. Rubbing doesn't help: Ensign Powter's horribly
mutilated skull grins at him no matter where  he looks. Oh damn, oh
damn, he wails inside the privacy of his head. Dennis, you
shit-for-brains, you've really done it now. This is one I won't get
over.
	Let's be logical, he tells himself desperately. You had a lust thing
going about Powter. Koko. She never encouraged you. You feel guilty
because you wanted to fuck her, which is insane. She would have LET me
fuck her, his mind replies. She smiled for me, let me see how much she
enjoyed following orders. I wanted her. I let her go into danger
because I was afraid of showing my feelings. And it would have been
all right. There's no discipline shortage on this ship; she could have
been my obvious pet as well as my open sex partner and the worst that
would have happened would have been the Admiral kidding me about it.
	I'm shit, he tells himself, grinding his palms into his eyes. I've
killed a beautiful girl, who could have been my friend, and taken away
a long useful life that she could have had. Visions of Koko in her
forties, a starship captain, well up to torment him. He sees the
children she might have birthed.
	Captain Dennis writhes on his dark, sweat-slick sleeping pad. He
begins to sob like a child as REACHER cruises through space to the
third rendezvous point, near the edge of the galactic arm where the
stars are few and the endless dark is always beckoning.

	INHUMAN CREATURES CONSIDER ACTION. Under harsh violet floodlights the
Dree converse. As before, humanity is their subject. Their bodies
alter from moment to moment. Their minds are like complicated
machines.
	One raises a claw, or limb. Do you see what they are doing now, he
asks. They have come too close. It will be freed again.
	They have not freed it yet, replied a calmer Dree. They will suffer
the most if they do. And it may not come to pass.
	Besides, utters the third, it cannot harm us. We will evade its
notice, as before.
	We will observe, then, the first replies. We will wait again. But I
will act alone if I must.
	They may be gone soon, says the calm voice. Have you seen this, he
asks, showing his compatriots an exploded planet still smoking.
	They have not seen, and inspect it closely.
	They may be gone soon, concurs the first. Its topaz eyes gleam at the
thought.

	IN A DARK BASEMENT, A WOMAN IS SPIED UPON. The two men have had to
cut their power and huddle under a table as someone tries the door
above. Now they have the device running again, and the dim image of a
woman sitting with long legs drawn up as she smokes is becoming
clearer in the green sphere. Doc gingerly advances a knob and the
picture jumps into sharp focus as the sphere becomes larger. The tall
man ducks away from the crackling thing, peering at the smoking woman.
She is staring off to the side, obviously half-asleep.
	"Lord," whispers the tall man, "She's gorgeous!" He leans closer, jaw
hanging. "Even clothed."
	Doc whispers back, "I'm more impressed by her huge starship than her
huge bazongas right now. Why can't I make this thing send?"
	The dozing woman is more visible now, lit by green-yellow light.
Suddenly her eyes widen and she focusses on the two men. She clicks a
control in her left hand, then springs to her feet. "Identify
yourself," she barks, peering straight at them.
	"If only she could hear us  - " begins Doc, hands poised over the
controls.
	The woman in the globe raps out, "I can hear you just fine, mister.
Now who the hell are you?"
	Someone tries the door above them, then begins kicking it furiously.
It begins to splinter as angry voices interrogate each other. Doc and
the tall man stare eye to eye. "It's a two-way connection," begins Doc
as the tall man simultaneously says, "It's open straight through!"
	As the door bursts open and armed guards hurry down the stairs, the
tall man leaps upon the table and dives directly at the green sphere,
tucking up his knees and rolling like a gymnast. He vanishes with an
awful pop and scream; arcs jump from the equipment and the sphere
vanishes with a bang. A piece of the tall man's shoe hits the wall and
lies smoking on the floor. The guards gape and search, waving away the
stench of burnt hair and fabric. They cuff Doc and march him away,
volleying questions. Doc is near tears.
	"Richard, you ass," he mourns. "Always ready to die for a pretty
face."

	THE DARK FLEET CRUISES ENDLESSLY, WITH NO DESTINATION. Rakkar Gandat
stands by the console, staring at the red disk. It is past the time
when he usually leaves this spot. His schedule will be off all day
long if he doesn't move. Instead, he struggles with his dead thoughts.
The disk has a meaning. He struggles to imagine anything that still
has meaning. His brain is stiff with disuse, but a red light comes on
somewhere in his mind. He stumbles away, turning the wrong way and
entering a room he hasn't seen in years. A skeleton leers drunkenly at
him from the console there. Before the dead thing, a red light blinks.
	Rakkar Gandat backs away, a dim horror growing in his drug-numbed
mind. Danger! The red disk is danger, the worst kind. He cannot
imagine danger. He begins to turn away, to go back to his routine. He
stands still, rooted to the spot. His face works, then his mouth opens
and croaks a word: "Red?"
	"Red alert," he croaks in his strange language.through a dry throat.
Then louder, "RED ALERT!" A soft chime answers his words; the ship has
been waiting for a reply.
	The ship slows in its flight as automatic machinery considers. Then a
bell begins to ring, and green fog drifts from the ventilators. After
a few breaths, Rakkar Gandat falls like a tree, stiffly and all at
once. All over the dark ship, grey men and women collapse. The green
fog drifts low and covers their inert bodies. The dark ship falls
through space. The rest of the dark fleet cruises endlessly through
the dark, no destination apparent, leaving Rakkar Gandat's
decelerating command ship behind as they vanish into the eternal
night.
	A red light blinks on the panel.


	PIRATES LAND AT A SECRET BASE. The pirate ship BLACK CROSS sits on
the landing pad on the asteroid circling the dark protosun. There are
two ships there already. Both have been damaged by explosions. Several
more piles of junk may have once been ships. The base is dark, but the
detectors say it is alive and warm inside. The pirates are being
crushed under the heavy weight of the attention of some gigantic
being. They feel its eyes day and night, and know it has them tightly
gripped.
	Charlie Soaper is the captain now. Mister Jones has killed himself
with a drug overdose. Several more have suicided; they are the lucky
ones. They were strong, and died as themselves. The rest are being
driven mad with horror as they come closer to the dark sun. Verna sits
and dreams. Benny sits beside her, stroking her head and murmuring
"Come back, baby. Don't go. Give her back. Verna. Verna. Come on
baby."
	Charlie knows that the base is important, that it means something. He
is unaware that most of the thoughts in his head were put there, but
his nasty selfishness still drives him. He thinks of the treasure
certainly awaiting in this base, of secrets and power. He stares at
his console and his screens, hating himself. Finally he rises and
heads for the airlock and the spacesuits. He steps around Verna and
Benny the Martian, walks down the corridor and pauses by Scratch and
Melda. They are fucking slowly in the center of the corridor; just as
they have been for twelve hours. At first Scratch had calmly and
insanely muttered that he owned her and everything else, and he was
going to fuck until time stopped, and Melda had agreed with everything
he said, rapturously squealing with each slow pump of his cock. Now
their faces are completely insane, and her breathing is a steady whine
of orgasms. Charlie can feel the thing in the sun gloating. They seem
to be fucking slower and slower; Charlie wonders if they will starve
before they die of pleasure - or is it pain by now?
	Charlie Soaper dons his suit and steps out of BLACK CROSS. Behind him
others, given the same idea, are clumsily suiting. Tears run down
their faces as they prepare to meet the horror which is drawing them
along. The sky is black; there are no stars out here.
	Sabor Grundy is a bundle of nerves. He can't explain the tension he
feels. His dreams are full of absurd fantasies: pirate ships from old
Earth flying the Jolly Roger, a huge octopus whose tentacles reach out
to the galactic arms, a bald skinny woman giving enthusiastic head to
a gargoyle. He awakens to his familiar cell on the secret base on
asteroid 4BWA.. His tension has upset Marka, who flutters around
trying to cheer him. He has finally been reduced to ordering Marka to
empty her mind, forget her troubles and think of absolutely nothing
while she sucks his cock. Marka's devotion, suggestibility and
enthusiasm combine to produce an immensely pleasurable sensation;
Sabor knows that this is best for poor Marka, to relax and serve. He
is almost meditating himself, floating above his aging body. He loses
himself in the sensation, almost able to ignore the foul stare of the
thing in the sun. The thing that is watching the pirates. The pirates
who have landed outside the base. Who are trying the airlock right
now. This is real, not a dream. He is seeing with the thing's vision.
There is a ship here, capable of return. Sabor's body is completely
limp except for his rigid cock, being slowly slurped by Marka's full
lips. He seems to float above the bed, enjoying the curve of her back
and her dark hair flowing as she bobs and bobs her head, completely
lost herself.
	Sabor is seeing through the eyes of the thing in the sun, and he
doesn't like what he sees. It is an octopus at the same time that it
is a hideously deformed man, and it is like nothing he can conceive.
It is evil and ancient, and it gloats over his pleasure, and that of
the slowly frying brains of the slowly fucking pirates. It reaches out
to the pirate ship, horribly pinching out the lives of the remaining
pirates, then the ones outside, all but one, the one on the doorstep
at the airlock. Mental snickers echo in Sabor's mind. Marka begins to
suck with new purpose as the thing enters her mind; Sabor finds his
body farther and farther away and unreachable. He is a bare mind now,
pounding against a glass wall, unable to re-enter his own body. He can
see all eighteen of his fellow volunteers, all locked in sexual
embraces, all wrapped in horror. The thing reaches out, snuffs out the
volunteers one by one. They vanish in puffs of agony; the thing seems
to grow with each new death. It reaches out for Marka -
	Sabor screams silently. A person he has sworn to protect is going to
die, a helpless woman, dependent upon him. The expiation of all his
murders. The octopus-horror in the sun leers at him, staying its hand
for a moment as it enjoys his horror.
	It seems no bigger than Sabor as it leers, so he reaches out and
grabs it. His body is still on the bed, coming in Marka's mouth. She
moans as semen squirts from her lips and rolls down her heavy breasts.
The thing roars reaches to snuff her life out -
	-and Sabor reaches as it just did and restores her to life before her
heart can skip a beat, and his body is too far away still so he
reaches again without his hands and crushes the thing in the sun -
	- crushing his own life out as he comes and comes into Marka's
lovingly sucking mouth. Then I'll die, he thinks, worth it to kill
this thing, I don't love Marka but NO ONE WILL EVER HURT HER! I have
SWORN THIS!
	The thing SCREAMS! It tries to kill Sabor, who obligingly dies,
taking it down into death with him. It drags him back up to life again
with it, but Sabor has seen death now and knows the way. He is immense
now, and it is a tiny squid. It squeals as he crushes its head. He
dies fighting it, knowing it is dead and they die together.
	Marka suddenly snaps fully awake. She is dripping with semen and
knows that she has pleased Sabor intensely. She shakes him; he rolls
helplessly. What a man, she thinks with a shiver. She enjoys the feel
of his jiz running down her breasts. She hopes he will awaken soon and
fuck her in turn. She rubs it on her nipples, grinning wickedly. She
can feel his affection beaming at her like sunshine on her back.
	Charlie Soaper stands outside the airlock, his muscles locked
tightly. His air is running out and he cannot move. He has begged and
screamed for long minutes for someone to help him; now he is merely
whimpering.
	The thing in the dark sun moves uneasily, reaching its hands up
towards the station. Marka, it whispers. I can't reach you. I can't
reach ME. In the deeps of the protosun, Sabor swims, yearning towards
his body and his woman. She feels his attention like sunlight on her
back.

	CAPTAIN HARLEIGH SMOKES IN THE DARK. She dozes on her sleeping pad,
head rolling back then snapping upright again. She needs a shower. She
needs sleep. She needs to come. Her dreams are full of penises,
jabbing at her and withdrawing. She is angry and embarassed, and her
panties are soaking wet. The smokesticks are the only thing keeping
her awake; the last one was a dopestick for variety. Probably going to
put me to sleep, she thinks muzzily, jerking her head upright. The
room is full of an eerie green light.
	She finds herself looking down on two men looking up at her through a
greenish-yellow sphere which is slowly appearing through the outer
bulkhead of the ship. She hears whispers.
	Joan Harleigh leaps to her feet, snapping the remote control to
record everything that happens. It was real, she thinks. Thank the
gods.
	"Identify yourselves," she barks in her best command voice. The men
start and stare at each other. "If only she could hear us -" one
begins.
	"I can hear you just fine, Mister. Now who the hell are you?" She is
about to call a general alert, but remembers how suddenly they
vanished before. In the globe there is sudden movement; the men whirl,
stare behind them and confer rapidly. The tall one leaps up and dives
into the sphere. There is a nasty-sounding crackle and a yell and the
sphere is gone; the tall man is stretched upon the floor of Harleigh's
cabin. His clothes are scorched; he kicks his feet frantically,
ejecting his burning shoes. He sits up and clutches his toes. His hair
is frizzled and his eyebrows are half gone. Joan towers over him,
shoves him off balance, then lifts him and throws him on the sleeping
pad. She leaps on him and pins his arms with her knees, grabbing his
hair and pulling his head back. He sighs, relaxes.
	"Are you the captain?" he asks. "You're Harleigh, right? Not the
Alliance, the cabin's not right. I've got information from Diva.
Locations, key points. We can break the stalemate if you have the
firepower." His shoe lies smoking quietly against the wall, smelling
like a burnt animal.
	"How did you get here?" Joan is in command."What was that thing?
You've come from the planetary surface by teleport! That's
impossible."
	"The Alliance converted Dr. Salzman's archaeology dig into a prison
camp, and dumped every important prisoner they could find there. Doc
Van Cott saw that one of the things they dug up was some sort of
solid-state device, and we began sneaking in at night trying to
activate it. We were hoping for a subspace beam, or even old-fashioned
radio waves. One message out would have been enough, if you'd heard
it. But I can give you chapter and verse on the planetary defenses."
His frizzled hair is all over his forehead.
	Joan is weak from relief. The man beneath her is a friend; the
surveillance is over. She can break the stalemate. She can bathe! She
can even...
	"Say, something smells nice," remarks the tall man. Joan blushes
furiously. Her sweaty crotch is an inch from the man's face! and she
still has him pinned down. And -
	"Hey! Why were you peeking at me?" She makes no move to let him up;
she knows her scent is having an effect. His face is relaxing and his
eyes . . . are big and blue, and full of worship.
	"I could say I'm sorry, but I'd be lying," he breathes. "It was
totally random. We threw a switch and there you were. You drove me
nuts. I couldn't stop looking." He draws a deep breath through his
nose, smiles. "I had to take a cold shower. Twice."
	Joan rises to her feet. Her shirt hits the wall a second later. The
newcomer sits up and gapes. Joan's breasts sit high on her chest, and
her nipples are tight. Her trousers slide to the ground. Her bush is
barely covered by little white panties, sopping wet. "Look all you
want," she growls. "But strip while you're doing it. Oh, never mind."
She rips her panties apart, throwing them to the floor.
	Captain Harleigh places one foot on the sleeping pad, leaving the
other on the floor. Grabbing the back of his head, she forces the
man's face into her crotch. He moans and runs his tongue right up her
vagina, then slurps and begins to lick her clitoris. "Good," she
approves. "Very good. Now, THAT'S what I call an intruder." Her hand
tightens on the back of his head, forcing his face closer. He makes
happy sounds, then begins flicking his tongue-tip rapidly across her
clit. Joan begins to see double. His hands find her breasts, flicking
the erect nipples, then move to caress her back and down to her ass.
When his hands stop stroking her smooth buttocks and begin to squeeze
the muscles beneath, Joan realizes that she is no longer in command of
the situation. She balances on his tongue for a moment, then her
breath comes out: whoof! She comes so hard she digs her nails into his
scalp. After a moment, she releases him and staggers back, then sits
beside him on the pad.
	He smiles at her, juices on his lips. "I'm afraid I came in my pants
when you came in my mouth. You're the most beautiful woman I've ever
seen, and after two months of the camp Doc was starting to look good."
	Joan drags him into the shower, still growling. They soap each other
and he is hard again in a few minutes. Joan kneels in the tiny shower
stall and blows him, glorying in the feel of his cock in her mouth and
the glow of his face. It's fun being a knockout, she thinks. Half the
fun of sex is the look in their eyes when I strip. I could do this all
night. Her face flushes. She IS going to do this all night. Why stop?
The man makes a cooing sound and squirts a tremendous load in her
mouth. Joan slurps, then swallows. He moans, and another huge squirt
follows. His cock is about five inches long. Joan decides his cock and
her mouth are an exact match. She swallows again and slurps
luxuriously; his knees buckle as he comes in a series of short quick
squirts which outrun Joan's ability to swallow and ooze from the
corner of her mouth.
	Joan looks up at him. He was staring at her in awe. I'm brilliant,
she thinks. I'm a starship captain. I'm naked, soaking wet and
gorgeous, and I'm on my knees before this man, with his jiz oozing
down my face. But he's going to be kneeling before me in a minute or
two. She smiles broadly, semen on her generous lips. "Who the hell are
you, anyway? Not that I don't consider this an introduction."
	He looks startled. "I thought - but you're not familiar with Diva.
Captain, I am Richard Bonforte, planetary president of Diva." His face
is classical; like a young Abe Lincoln. His cock jiggles as he bows
slightly. "It has been a GREAT pleasure to meet you."

	SHE OWNS THE SHIP NOW. Koko Powter is alone on the gig, unless you
count the dead. Her mind a blur of shouting voices, she wanders naked,
leaving bloody footprints. "Report, Powter!" A disembodied voice
drives her. "Do you control the ship? Answer me!" She finds herself in
the tiny command room, forces her eyes to focus on the dials. A scream
escapes her throat; the fuel is almost gone! She slaps the cutoff;
begins to call up the astrogator's screen. No stars are visible at
first, then a tiny cluster shows at the bottom of the display. The
double star next door to Ceres shows plainly. Koko swears.
	Her mind wanders as it has been doing ever since she was dosed with
the mindwiping drug Encef. In her fantasy, she has become the sex
slave she was intended to be by her kidnappers; a sexy submissive
moron, and Captain Dennis has moved her into his cabin. She poses
seductively, sees Dennis' big arms flex - and the voice of Colonel
Brant roars at her out of the past: "Report, Powter! DO YOU CONTROL
THE SHIP?"
	Koko starts awake. "I control the ship," she blurts aloud. "I have
the controls; they're all dead. But I'm falling apart."
	Doctor Ripley's voice tells her crisply: "This is a Class One
Emergency, Powter. Full Alert." Powerful post-hypnotic suggestions
snap Koko into a what should have been singleminded concentration, but
ends up as a dreamy attention. "You are in command now," she tells
herself. "Don't drift away." Her hands are at the controls; the gig
slows and turns. Braking fields cancel the velocity; in seconds the
ship is sitting quietly dead in space, then blasting back towards the
Ceres system. She absently calculates that it would take four years to
reach; in two hours her fuel will be exhausted and she will have only
her momentum to take her back. She returns in her mind to Dennis'
cabin; she is naked on his sleeping pad and he reaches for her and
says, "Into the autodoc with you, Powter. You need medical attention."
	She feels his arm around her shoulder as she staggers upship and
falls into the autodoc's coffin. Anesthetic gas dissolves her worries
as the lid closes.
	AMATEUR falls through space as Koko lies unconscious. Medical
programs analyze her body and begin treating her cuts, bruises and
venereal diseases. The remnants of the Encef are flushed from her
system and the tiny autodoc begins a diagnosis of her damaged brain.
As she sleeps, the hyperdrive runs out of fuel. Slowing, it falls back
into normal space and begins the long fall back to Ceres. Two dead men
lie in the bathroom, leaking fluids. Another is dead in the galley,
without a mark, and a fourth is spread about the corridor, his head
nearly severed by dozens of short knife cuts. Crewed by the dead and
captained by the damaged, the gig falls endlessly.

	NOTHING CAN TURN A RUNAWAY PLANET. The small man in his small ship
surveys a shining star in his screens. Several planets orbit the sun
Benka; the fourth is called Jillian and is inhabited by a million
people. They are down there now, going about their business, unaware
that the small man has launched one of his hyperdriven dead planets
directly into their path. In twelve hours they will be horribly dead,
exploded along with their world, women, children and animals destroyed
without mercy.
	"I want them all dead," he says to the picture taped to his console.
"But I'll give them the choice." His face is like a corpse's in the
dim light of his bridge. He stares intently at his target. Presently
the transmissions from the world below become filled with horror as
the oncoming collision is detected. He watches the whole thing,
sending a small asteroid to smash a ship which comes too close to him,
then sets his controls and moves into hyperdrive again, followed by a
thousand obedient worlds, each carrying a hyperdrive controlled by his
console.


	He stares in horror from the center of the dark sun. Alien creatures
observe in dismay. REACHER hangs dead in dark space. He is alive again
after centuries of death. Captain Harleigh is reluctant to leave her
cabin. She dreams of a strong man. A moon explodes.

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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