by T. J. Land
“We will enter the planet’s orbit,” he said. “We will undergo a lengthy process of risk assessment. We will learn everything we can without setting one foot on her. And if I judge the data we have collected to be sufficient, and if that data indicates the danger is minimal, I will authorise an exploratory mission.”
Antoine jumped back into his lap and cradled his face with his hands. Switching to English, the language that—so long ago now—he had learned specifically so the two of them would have a second tongue in common, he said, “Thank you, Captain. You’ll not regret this.”
“Get off,” the captain moaned, feeling his cock thicken under Antoine’s pert rear.
Placing one chaste kiss on his cheek, Antoine whispered, “I’d like to celebrate.”
“In what fashion, pray?”
“How about we go back to your quarters and finish off your brandy? Then I’ll read Lysistrata to you while you fuck your fist. Sound good?”
It did. Antoine’s Greek was the auditory equivalent of bathing in warm honey. With reluctance, the captain cleared his throat. “My quarters are occupied at the moment. Very occupied.”
Antoine rolled his eyes. “Of course they are. We’ll use mine then, mon bien-aimé.”
As Antoine took his hand and pulled him away from the bridge, the captain looked out through the porthole once more, at their new hope, shining in an ocean of stars.
The Captain’s Encounter
Chapter One
The captain’s bed wasn’t big enough for an orgy, not that Rick was much of an authority on orgy-related logistics.
This was only the third time they had come together like this. But he couldn’t help but feel that he’d have been able to get into it a whole lot more if Zachary’s giant elbows didn’t dig into his gut, and Thomas’s gangly antelope legs didn’t sprawl over his knees. That shit was distracting. And he was already plenty distracted by the pervading sense of Holy Mary, I’m sleeping with the captain that still hadn’t worn off, even after several months of doing exactly that.
“Oh, that’s perfect,” the captain moaned as Rick struggled to fit all of his cock into his mouth. It would have been challenging enough even if Rick’s concentration hadn’t been split two ways; while he was busy trying to repress his gag reflex, his arm was outstretched giving Thomas a handjob.
Admittedly, they’d have had even more difficulty getting down to business in Rick’s or Thomas’s quarters, both of which were filthy pigsties that stank of old socks, or Zachery’s, which didn’t even have a bed. Being a bona fide weirdo, their engineer slept in a hammock. At least the captain’s room was tidy. That said, Rick still thought they would have been better served doing this in the cargo hold or the mess hall, provided they could have pushed something heavy in front of the doors.
“Hey, easy, little man. Slower, yeah?” said Thomas, shooting Rick a grin.
A cute grin. A cute, friendly, gorgeous grin. And there was the real reason Rick was so on edge when he should have been having the time of his life, surrounded by three sexy men he liked. He’d already been sleeping with the captain for weeks when Thomas and Zachary entered the picture. He hadn’t been alone with either of them yet. They were his friends, sure—or at least, Thomas seemed to like him, and Zachary didn’t hate his guts. The thing was, Rick had never anticipated jumping into bed with them, and apparently, he was enough of a prude that getting naked with people he hadn’t taken out for dinner was an issue.
Of course, the fact that they were going to attempt a landing on an alien planet in the next few hours might also have contributed to his stress levels.
“Hey, Rick, you better not make him come before I do,” said Zachary, whose cock was buried in the captain’s ass.
“Please feel free to ignore him, Ricardo,” said the captain, winking at Rick as his back arched. Damn if that wasn’t all the motivation Rick needed. He redoubled his efforts, and a moment later the captain’s cock slid down his throat like it had been made for it.
Multitasking was a bitch, and he almost forgot about Thomas, until he moaned and came in Rick’s hand, which had been moving on autopilot. He must have done a decent job, because a second after the captain peaked—a moment before Zachary, and all over Rick’s face—Thomas clambered over to kiss him gratefully.
“My turn,” Thomas told him and took hold of his cock.
On the whole, Rick reflected, there were worse problems to have than wanting to know if all three of your sexy fuckbuddies wanted to go steady.
Chapter Two
Of all the planet’s inhabitants, most of whom were ocean-dwelling invertebrates and only a few inches long, there was only one who took notice of The Prayer’s entry into the planet’s atmosphere.
He had been sitting in his cave, discussing current events with the pictures he had drawn on the rock walls. These events consisted of the weather, the last meal he had eaten, and a new strain of moss growing in the dank corner where he slept. The distant sound of a spaceship descending was the most interesting thing that had happened in years, and he was about to tell his pictures about it, before reminding himself that they couldn’t hear him.
He was proud of himself for remembering that. He often didn’t.
Emerging from his cave, he spotted the vessel some miles away, setting down by the shoreline. He knew what it was, though it had been centuries since he had seen anything like it. Excitement and fear overcame him, and he slunk back down into the dark and curled up on the cave floor.
What if it isn’t real?
Well, he told himself, so what if it wasn’t? What was there to be lost by believing that it was? At the very least, it would be a distraction from the crushing tedium.
If it was real…
What if they are hostile? What if they see me as a threat and exterminate me?
Would that be such a bad way to go, all things considered? Certainly, it would be a more impressive death than slamming his cranium into the rock wall until he succumbed to a brain hemorrhage, a notion with which he had been toying for the last decade or so. Murdered by alien interlopers while making first contact—that would make him a martyr to the cause of scientific inquiry. His name would go down in his planet’s history… Except it wouldn’t, he reminded himself, because there was no one else left alive to learn about his planet’s history.
The aliens might care to learn about it. They might be explorers, not conquerors.
How to be sure, though? He would have to study them from a safe distance.
Having made this decision, he emerged from the cave once more. Several bipeds had come from the vessel and were milling about in front of it, expressions of wonder on their faces. Their bodies were awkward and clumsy, and their equipment laughably primitive. Two of them were carrying weapons that wouldn’t have passed muster as children’s toys among his own people.
It was with particular fascination that he observed the one he assumed to be their leader. This singular creature was clearly the oldest, and it moved and spoke with a commanding air. It also smelt strongly of sex. In fact, when he sniffed again, picking up their scents despite the considerable distance separating him from the vessel, he observed that three members of the pack seemed to be mated to the leader.
They don’t appear hostile. Perhaps they are explorers. Perhaps…perhaps they will want to be friends.
Unseen by any of his guests, he continued to watch.
✩✩✩
Thomas tilted his head back and closed his eyes in bliss.
A breeze. An honest-to-God, one hundred percent authentic breeze. And ground, real ground underneath his feet. And the sky, miles upon miles of perfect duck-egg blue. It was so beautiful he wanted to sob.
The captain had them assembled outside The Prayer, which had entered the planet’s atmosphere ten minutes ago and made a soft landing on a sandy beach. He drew their attention with a whistle; most of them, like Thomas, were still bowled over by how big the sky was and the novelty of standing on something that wasn’t
metal.
“All right, everyone,” the captain said, “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you all of protocol…”
He didn’t. Before landing, they’d sat through a two-hour lecture on the proper procedure for ensuring the safety of the crew and the surrounding environment during first-time landings on unknown terra. There had been diagrams and pie charts and a test.
“…but just so we’re clear; if I see anyone touching anything you haven’t been authorized to touch, or diverting from our route, or attempting to re-board the ship without going through the appropriate sterilization procedures, I will have you marooned.”
“Yes, sir,” they replied in one voice.
Zachary stuck up his hand and waved it around. “Hey, captain, what if we need to go to the bathroom?”
Thomas hoped it spoke more to the general air of excitement than to the overall maturity level of his crewmates that it got a few snickers. Not from the captain, of course, who replied, “You should have gone before we disembarked, Mister Halberstam. But if you must, Antoine assures me that the atmosphere is sufficiently Earth-like to permit temporary removal of your suit. Just try not to hit anything that looks as though it might object.”
After spending the last two months in orbit, collecting data and assessing risk, they’d learned the planet’s ocean and southern ice sheet covered eighty-six percent of her surface, and that her two irregularly shaped moons exerted a weaker pull on her tides than the moon did on Earth’s. While there were things swimming in the ocean, none of them displayed any signs of intelligence. Antoine, naturally, had given his own lecture on “the definitional challenges posed by such categories as ‘intelligent’,” which, so far as Thomas could ascertain, boiled down to: “Don’t screw with shit, because the shit you’re screwing with may be smarter than it looks.” As far as the land was concerned, they hadn’t spotted anything big enough to be a threat, inferring a lack of large carnivores from the lack of large herbivorous herds.
Regardless, the captain had told Thomas and Irene to bring the laser rifles, the two of them being the only trained marksmen in the crew. When he’d first signed on, Thomas’s official job title had been “security officer.” Although, like most of them, he’d ended up doing whatever needed to be done. The one other weapon they’d brought with them was Antoine’s stun gun; he never left the ship without it. It was strapped to his suit somewhere in the vicinity of his waist, though Thomas couldn’t see it underneath all the other gear he had on. Their first officer was carrying more equipment than the rest of them put together, including hundreds of test tubes so he could collect samples. Even laden down, he’d been skipping around like a kid at Disneyworld ever since they’d disembarked.
“Look at him,” Zachery said, coming to stand next to Thomas. “You know he’s going to find some freaky alien dog and bring it back to the ship to be our new pet.”
“I’m excited too. Always loved exploring new places. Back home, I used to be a birder,” Thomas volunteered.
Zachery blinked. “A what, now?”
Thomas felt himself blush. He didn’t know all that much about Zachery Halberstam. He’d barely spoken to the guy in four years—not deliberately, but they worked in different parts of the ship, and he’d never thought they had a lot in common. Since the captain had dragged them all into bed with him, they’d started having these strange, stilted conversations. Thomas thought they were becoming friends.
“A birder. Bird-watching? It’s a hobby where you go looking for different types of birds, and if you see one you haven’t seen before, you tick it off the list.”
“Sounds weird.”
“It’s a lot cooler than I’m making it out to be. There’s ten thousand species on Earth, and no single human being alive has ever seen all of them. I was pretty good at spotting…”
Thomas trailed off. It had occurred to him that Zachery wasn’t from Earth; he’d been born on Mars. Had he ever seen a bird? Did he think Thomas was being an asshat, showing off about the fact that he’d been born on the most ecologically diverse planet in the solar system?
Before Thomas could figure out what to say next, Antoine passed by, clattering as he walked, eyes locked on the ground in search of specimens. He made a funny sight, with his weird, skinny body loping through the grass like a stick insect hunting for its dinner.
Zachery nudged Thomas. “Is it just me, or is he whistling?”
“Think so. I heard that he’s got a doctorate in astrobiology. This planet’s like cocaine for him.”
Zachery chuckled, and Thomas found that he liked the scruffy dark stubble that covered the lower half of his face. That he could see Zachery’s face at all was thanks to Antoine, who had spent the last two months examining the planet’s atmosphere. He’d determined that it was safe for them to disembark with only their lightweight breathing equipment, which consisted of a strip of plastic going from their nose to the suit. The suit itself was a lot less bulky than he’d feared; as the captain had said, the planet was so Earth-like they could make do with form-fitting Kevlar and a ton of protective cream. Even the suits weren’t strictly necessary, but the captain wasn’t taking any chances.
They’d planned a straight route from the beach to a small mountain one mile away. It looked easy enough. The terrain was flat, and while there were trees—fat trunks, skinny branches, not unlike baobabs—they didn’t clump together very much. They’d be in sight of the ship the whole time, so the guys they’d left to guard it could come to their rescue if need be. The other reason the captain had picked this route was that it would take them past a small lake Antoine had said might be a watering hole for any hither-to unnoticed wildlife.
As they started walking, Thomas couldn’t help but notice that the captain cut a fine figure in his suit. It clung to him, showing off the sleek lines of his muscles and his long, powerful legs. Then Thomas saw Zachery following his gaze and smirking.
“Don’t give me that look, Halberstam. You’re just as dopey as I am where he’s concerned.”
“At least I’m less fucking obvious about it.”
“You’re not, man. You’re really not.”
The ground they were walking on was covered in a grey, grainy soil and dotted with shrub-like plants, and the footprints they left on it were shallow, the planet’s gravity being slightly lower than Earth’s. Thomas glanced up again at the sky, across which a few white clouds were drifting, and he smiled.
“Wow, someone’s cute when he’s happy,” Zachery teased him.
They’d been walking for half an hour when the captain called for a halt. Antoine had found something that looked like a beehive attached to one of the fat trees, except it was purple and covered in a white foam. As he sketched it and took samples, the rest of them shared water and wandered around. The novelty of fresh air and open space put everyone in a good mood, including the captain, who was leaning over Antoine’s shoulder watching him work. Weird to see them getting along like that. Not for the first time, Thomas wondered if there was something going on there that he couldn’t quite make out.
Thomas was considering taking his suit off and doing some sunbathing—never thought he’d get to say that again—when he felt someone tugging at his elbow.
“Hey, man?” said Rick. “You got a minute?”
The kid had a furtive expression, shoulders hunched, eyes flickering this way and that. Confused, Thomas shrugged. “What’s up?”
“You think we could talk? Alone, I mean?”
“Uh…sure. No problem.”
He allowed Rick to lead him a little distance from the group, toward one of the trees, careful to watch where he stepped, not wanting to put a foot wrong and squish a bug. Antoine would lose his shit. When they reached the tree, Rick led him around to the other side until the trunk was effectively concealing them from the others.
“Whaddya want, shrimp?” Thomas asked, folding his arms.
Thomas had never known what to make of their youngest crewmate. Sure, Rick was a kid and a
brat and everything Thomas was sure he’d been at that age. (Jesus, I’m thirty now, he thought. Ugh.) But there was something off about him, a sharp, cynical edge that stuck out sometimes and made him seem decades older. He came from a good family, but he never spoke about them or anyone he’d known back home.
Rick shifted from foot to foot. “Um…okay, don’t be mad, all right?”
“What are you…”
Thomas’s eyes widened as Rick stepped forward and pressed a clumsy peck against his lips. It lasted a few seconds, and then Rick jumped back, as if he expected Thomas to slug him.
“Okay. That was all kinds of bizarre,” said Thomas.
Seeing Rick’s crestfallen look, he hastily added, “Not in a bad way! Good weird. You…”
“I was straight,” Rick blurted out. “I mean, I thought I was straight. I haven’t…don’t be an asshole, but I haven’t had a lot of sex. I’ve had one real girlfriend in my whole life. And…”
He quit babbling and took a deep breath. “The captain is the only guy I’ve ever fucked, or wanted to. After the first time I was with him, I…for a while, I wasn’t certain if I was into guys as well as girls, or if I was still straight and the captain was my one exception. I never thought about dudes at all until him.”
Thinking he knew where this was going, and a touch pissed about it, Thomas said, “You want a control experiment to make sure? I’m not going to be one of your variables, man.”
“No! No, I don’t want that. That wasn’t what I meant. I’m bi. I’m okay with it now; that’s not what I’m worried about. Screw it. I’m messing this up. What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t know I’d like it at first. Hell, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing that first time. But it turned out to be great, and then you and Zachery came along, and you were great too. When we were all together, all four of us, it blew my mind. I want to do it again. I want to do it better next time.”
“Better?”
Rick looked at his feet. “All three of you guys…you know a lot more than I do. I never even got the hang of hetero sex, and now there’s all this…other stuff.”
