Carol Has a Thing for Bobby
by
Bill Kieffer
The generation ships are still out there. Not just because they are slower than light and time does funny things at that speed, but because there are winding, twisted expansive of space where FTL becomes a liability. In order to fulfill manifest destiny, and preserve so many cultures from Aesop’s Planet, new generation ships are still being launched. Maybe twice a decade; sometimes more.
Distance makes them feel alone. The Void was a mean hungry place that ate brave souls and fools alike. The Void was also a canvas to paint dreams upon in starlight and contrails. The dark between offered death and life to those that sought it. As it still does today.
This is the story of Carol Lion-457 and Robert Lion-612, aboard Bradbury’s Veldt, a Generation ship on its last leg to the Promised Land of Wild Veldt.
Carol’s naked, tawny body moved, crouched down, silently. She advanced only four feet in an hour. The breeze lifted her scent away from the herd of bison. Movement was dictated by the change of wind. The herd outliers obligingly wandered closer. Carol had six arrows. She needed to pick a target she could fell with her limited supply.
Of all the hunters on the ship in her age group, Carol was the most adept with the bow and only passing fair with the knife. Natural selection, her father said, had given her useful hawk-like eyes. Carol would have preferred some of that mystical genetic tampering so that she could read without squinting. As she was a designated breeder/hunter for the new world, she supposedly wouldn’t need to read. She argued that her knife skills would improve with better eye sight but even the blind could skin a gazelle or a warthog.
The genetic tampers were being hoarded for landfall. There was no telling what adjustments might be needed once they got to Wild Veldt in order to survive and thrive.
Not that being part of the Settler/Hunting Caste meant that she was entitled to change herself. But what it did entitle her to was hours on the Hunting Deck. Genegineering might make a perfect hunter, but it would never make a perfect society. There would be things to hunt on Wild Veldt, even if they had to stock the world themselves with wild clones. Elephants, deer, gazelle, bison, and hundreds of other saved “stock” in digital, frozen embryo state could be cloned over and over again until the ship ran of power.
Even the Castes and Crew were backed up. Unlike the animals, the Antro Sapiens still had to learn the jobs and place in society in real time as they grew and learned in order to master flexibility, people were not cloned.
Therefor choosing the weakest member was difficult, perhaps much harder than it would have been in the wild. The one elderly doe she chose could be in the field in seven different locations in different iterations. Those hunters who came to the conclusion that every genetic twin was an equally valid target, lost points with the council. The task was to make the best possible choice from one’s own observations. This not only thinned the herd properly, ensuring its survival, but also earned your respect from the council. Or so she’d been told.
She let her arrow fly.
The doe looked right at her and her left eye socket swallowed the arrow almost hole. It stood still for a moment, on its right hind leg twitching as if it were trying to run away all by its lonesome self. Then it fell over with a spasm as another arrow clumsily hit it in the back of the head.
The herd broke and ran, causing Robert to stand and whoop so as not to be trampled. That would be an embarrassing death for a Lion in any incarnation. Carol met him at “their” kill. She watched him trot over and thought about his civilized cut of mane, the tight muscles under his supple, tawny hide, the blunt fingers, and smooth hot projection of flesh barely hidden in his khaki uniform shorts.
She found his broken arrow and smiled as she tossed it to him. Thank goodness the males of her tribe were not expected to hunt. He was so cute, staring at the arrow, trying to figure out why it had broken instead of penetrating the skull. Up until that moment, he had probably thought that he had brought down the kill with his attack. Well, at least he tried to hunt, Carol gave him that.
“We should get this into refrigeration right away,” Bobby announced, trying to take charge in his ‘modern’ way.
Carol placed her head on the chest of the herbivore and, checking for a heartbeat, she thanked it for its giving its life to them, for providing meat to their fire, and it’s hide for their tents. “We have some time for that, my fisherboy. Hours yet. Let us have sex outdoors,” she demanded playfully. “Unless you forgot that magic device?”
“Didn’t forgot,” Bobby smiled and closed his eyes in a blush of sorts. He pulled out a small rectangular thing that fit into his artistic looking hand easily. “This will tell me where we are in your rhythm and if there’s a risk of pregnancy, we can use a condom.”
Carol smiled in return. It was Bobby’s access to things like this medical device and condoms that had first made her chase him. Although she knew he was more than competent in his profession and well respected in his class, he seemed so helplessly cute in her world. And, if they made it to the Promised Land safely…
…and if Wild Veldt didn’t need much tending…
…and if he chose to leave the ship and come live with her planetside… well, of course, he would need her something fierce and she liked that in a male.
They stepped closer, he pausing so as not to step on the kill and she pulled him towards her, knowing the meat was beyond pain. The device brushed on his stomach. Its field made her fur stand on end an inch on either side of it. She nibbled his lips gently and ran her hand through a rich, clean mane that only a crewman could maintain. Would maintain. She felt her need for this man tighten her chest and moisten her loins. “Wait,” he laughed and pleaded. “This will take a minute. Less than a minute.”
Their fur and his mane rippled with some minor static electricity that only she noticed. He was too busy staring into his magic tinder and flit box. “You are not close to your fertile period. You must have just have your… what’s wrong?”
The biosphere was silent of background noises. She placed her fingers over his small mouth. The only sound she heard was his breathing and the forgotten background noises of the massive ship’s mechanical parts.
Bobby knew these sounds better than she. Something was stressing something somewhere. His eyes darted for the nearest lifepod even as she saw the whiff of fear in his eyes.
Suddenly, the air squeezed her ankles and swept from her mouth. The ground threw her up with a great geyser of dirt and steel. Their kill fell into the hole and then was spit out aflame. Bobby grabbed her. His life belt covering him in a thin nimbus of safety and this he placed between Carol and the geyser of superheated gasses.
Carol passed out once the heat carbonized the meat and muscle of her legs. The pod barely cycled the superheated air out before her right lung collapsed. Bobby kept as much of her as alive as possible, while watching the Launch button sputter and pop. He heard clamps opening and closing. Later, he would tell Carol that it was like listening to the spinning of a revolver in a game of Russian Roulette. Would the pod launch? Would it stay obediently at its bay? Would it try to launch with one or more clamps still engage?
Then he would explain how the game was played and that guns did not have clamps or a bay.
Bobby fell asleep, exhausted by the anti-climax of escaping certain death to a slow, uncertain death.
Carol opened her eyes, surprised for a moment that she even had eyelids to open. She’d awoken to darkness, but there were small bright lights in the room to assure here that the accident/disaster/event (whatever it was) hadn’t left her blind. Not candles. Little crew lights. Tell-tales, Bobby would have called them. A harsh sterile smell permuted the air.
She was no longer on the Lion Village Deck, obviously. From that, she deduced that she’d been injured enough to require Crew assistance. She tried not to probe the memory of it just yet. She’d been with Bobby. He’d been protected by his devices so if she had survived, logic dictated that he had also.
She counted her limbs. They were weak but whole. Soft tubes entered her body in weird places. She passed out twice, probing the areas were actual pain and the memory of pain became confused. She stifled the urge to tear out the wires and to stalk the corridors as if she were in enemy territory. She’d only embarrass herself. She needed healing and rest; one would begat the other.
“You are awake.” The room announced softly in the Southern Heartland tongue she grew up in. Female voice. “It is night cycle on your native deck. You have awakened thrice for an extended period of time. Do you recall those events?”
“Not really,” she answered. The weak voice frightened her. It did not sound like her at all. The air had turned to fire; she supposed that having any voice at all was a godsend.
“Your voice is improving,” the room sounded pleased. “We removed the tracheal tube on your last conscious period. What is your current pain level from 1 to 10, ten being the worst pain you have ever felt?”
Carol remembered being burned alive. She supposed that would have to be the worst pain ever, but it had been so short. Barely more than an instant before blackness claimed her. “Seven?” she asked the room as if were a better judge of these things.
“I have alerted the doctor and your family.”
“What about Bobby?”
The room hummed, with wise humor. There was a soft beep from on of the devices near her arm. She felt a strange warmth. Vaguely, she wondered if she had peed on her own arm. “Robert Lion-612 has a steady feed of your data streamed to his wrist-top. Were he awake, I’m sure he’d have been here for your extubation.”
Carol wasn’t sure what that meant. Extubation. It sounded like a coming of age rite. The warmth spread through her and she thought about Bobby’s penis. It’s golden sheath rolling down and the pale pinkness of it. The boys in the village, they had fiery red members with a cluster of white bumps at the base. Spikes, they called them, but the seemed little more than short bristles. She knew because they showed them for her. And she read books.
Carol wanted none of that. She’d had Bobby in her twice before. She loved the smoothness and the slickness of him, but hated the membrane he used to cover his shaft. To prevent unwanted complications, he said. Pregnancies, he meant. She knew the rules. She understood them. She agreed with them. But the flesh yearned for more.
The warmth swallowed her as it reached her ears and her mouth.
The noises of the hospital room and it’s sterile smells vanished into a dream of amber plains and a wind that tickled her nose with the smell of her lover.
She awoke to find Bobby sitting at her bedside. He was in his crew uniform, a brown jumpsuit with black piping and glyphs that probably meant something to other crewmen. His mane was cut even more severely than yesterday… or when ever the incident was. He watched her looking at him as if they were estranged friends meeting at a wake of a mutual friend. Her heart went out to him, even as her body reminded her that it was still healing.
“What happened?” She asked, disappointed at his long face. She’d expected him to be happy.
He sighed before smiling, which left only a trace of the heaviness in his eyes. “Some large FTL tried jumping ahead, best the debris field. The gravimetric wake fouled our own systems and caused a inertia compensator to blow. One the FTL engines were sheered off its mooring and scraped up the outer hole.”
Carol understood enough of what he had said, but I hadn’t been what she’d meant to ask. It was typical Bobby to misconstrue her question and avoid awkward feelings. “Are we OK?”
“The ship is fine,” He said, madly misconstruing her questions. She was too exhausted to get upset. She was used to running down prey. Weak as she felt, she knew she could still outlast him, so she let him babble. “It’s not like we need the FTL systems, so having less mass means braking will be easier when we reach the planet. We lost a lot of coolant and water though, are we need that. The other ship, they probably got hot harder than us. They came out of hyperspace two AU in front of us… they look dead… but… everyone’s on edge.”
“Bobby,” Carol said firmly despite her throat advising other wise. “How are we? Me and you. I can see your face and you’re… I don’t know… are you mad at me for inviting you to hunt… I don’t know…”
Bobby’s eyes went wide and he practically leapt to her side. He stroked her face. “No, no” he reassured her. “It’s just that the last time I saw you, you were…” He asked the room something in Crew and the room filled in his missing words in her tongue: Carrion Feast. “I… I was afraid that you’d be made at me for not saving you.”
“Since when is it the male’s job to save the hunter? But you did save me, Bobby, you did. And my pain is only a three now.”
The room thanked her for that information.
She tried to take his hand, to reassure him in return, but she found that they wouldn’t move for her.
“You’re restrained until the nerves fully grow back or we get these tubes out of you.” Bobby said, running his hands down her left arm. Most of her responded to the touch but her palm and her digits felt very numb. Her fingers felt large and fat, as if she’d be stung. “You were hurt very, very badly. You might have to relearn to…” He swallowed his words. “Anyway… you’re very lucky. We lost people in the accident.” He stressed the word accident, as if he were in the habit of reassuring her that it was an accident.
No, not her, she decided. Other people. Future colonists and possibly other crew.
Carol was a hunter, a warrior. “They think it might have been an attack?”
Bobby smiled, embarrassed. "Who can rule that out? Some seeded planets had hundreds of years of development behind them. New Veldt would be valuable real estate for any culture ready to launch a colonist ship. “They are on the path for New Veldt. If they get there first, they’d have a better claim. Or, more likely they don’t even know we exist. We will catch up with them in a few months as they brake… or even a few weeks if their maneuvering thrusters don’t come on. But their passage though the rocks have set a thousand micro-corrections into motions. We can’t watch them the way the war hawks would like.” Bobby seemed to be relieved to get that off his chest. “But I don’t want you to worry about that.”
Carol smiled, such concerns seemed a million miles away. “Is the room still drugging me?”
The room answered yes, even as Bobby tried to explain that her treatment still wasn’t complete. “I don’t mind. I dreamed you where inside of me. Warming me, healing me, licking me… will you do that for me?” She floated on a cloud. Bobby, embarrassed try to say something, but his words seemed so far away. Her hidden folds of flesh blossomed as he exploded within her, sending soothing ripples through her body. Those ripples rocked her to sleep even has Bobby’s wordless voice droned on in a warmed lullaby.
When Carol woke up again, Bobby was back in civilian clothing. He smiled at her and she smiled back. She felt good, she told him and the room. The room told her that a crisis counselor was in route and she looked curiously at her crewman lover. These were words that she understood, just not put together in that way.
“Do you remember when I told you this morning that we lost people?” Bobby put a golden hand on her furry shoulder. Maybe it was the angle, but, his hand seemed smaller. “We lost all the other Lions on the Hunting Deck. And a great deal of the livestock.”
Carol knew them all. Their faces flashed in front of her and their names a moment later. They’d wandered in deeper so as to give Bobby and Carol some alone time. Six Lionesses that would never see New Veldt. The potential genetic diversity would be impacted, she realized, as an afterthought. She wasn’t surprised, she realized. She was lucky to have survived. Had she’d been with anyone else, they’d have slashed her throat in the lifepod as a mercy.
Of course, had she been with anyone else, they would not have made it to the lifepod.
Carol sighed and tried to move her arms, again in an urge to console her poor male. She was still restrained. She stamped out the urge to struggle. Crew were notoriously skittish to heavy emotional displays. Then she made the connection to what a crisis counselor must be. “There’s always risk when hunting. Even in a controlled environment like the Hunting Deck. I will miss and mourn my friends, but I don’t need to speak with your shaman, if that’s what you are suggesting.”
“Protocol,” Bobby said in equal parts of discomfort, assurance, and concern. “Besides you were injured very badly. We had to employ ship-science to heal you.” Carol looked about the room, at all the tell-tale lights and indicators and wondered if Bobby thought she was still drugged to the point of stupidity. Then to her surprise, she realized how much sharper her vision was. She gasped as her tongue probed her teeth in a quick count. She had all her teeth!
“You got them to genegineer me?” A spike of happiness rushed through her, despite the horrified look on his face.
“No,” Bobby stroked her cheek. “No. We can’t use the tampers… they are too precious. Not even to save a breeding colonist.” He blinked and seemed to consider his next words very carefully. “But we were able to use the Vat and reconstruct you… to heal you by rebuilding your body based on your genes. You know how genes work, right?”
Carol nodded, not at all insulted. She was an avid and curious book reader, however, most of the other hunters of her tribe would not care to know such things. It wasn’t as important as weapons, traps, and fighting skills. “Blueprints.”
“So, your body was built to specs found in the… the gadget I had.”
“You cloned my body?”
“No, we tricked your body into regenerating itself. The skull and spine were untouched, Carol, but your limbs and a lot of your organs are only a few weeks old. Even your eyes had to be regrown. We didn’t Pharm you. We didn’t sew you together. You are what God’s blueprints, meant for you to be. We just added water and lots of proteins.”
Carol nodded, understanding the gist of this little speech. Still she noted that there was something he was not saying. He was preparing her for bad news like she was some prissy male or crewman. “OK, if god meant my eyes to be good, why’d they go bad?”
Bobby, relieved again that had asked about her eyes. “They’ve been looking into this. They think when you were in vitro… in your mother’s womb. Possibly not enough vitamins or trace minerals,” Bobby made a face. “Of course, you may have had an illness in your childhood to weaken your eye muscles. But it’s obvious something happened while you were a developing fetus.”
Carol was suddenly very uncomfortable with all this science talk. She felt almost superstitious about it and she felt more trapped than ever, tied down like this. She latched on to another subject. “Where’s my mother? My family? You said we lost people.” She hated that she sounded so frightened and she decided to blame the medication on this if he said anything.
“Your family is fine.” Bobby squeezed her left hand. It continued to feel numb, but she was sure she squeezed back. “They just find the medical smell and the blinking lights to be very upsetting. Plus, they had a very hard time seeing you like this.” Bobby looked away and seemed to speak to her numb hand. “They mourned you like you were dead the whole time you were in the Vat, healing.”
“When we marry, they will really mourn.” Carol said and she was surprised to see Bobby’s face collapse. She was not certain that he was crying happy tears. “Bobby?”
Just then a female crewman poked her head into the room. Carol saw that she was a some sort of feline with black stripes on her orange cheeks and a white fuzzy chin. She wore the same brown uniform as Bobby often did, only with red and white piping.
“Lieutenant ?” she asked Bobby in the crewman’s tongue with only a quick glance at Carol for an introduction. “I’m Dr. Jane. Is he ready for me, yet?”
Carol blinked, translating and re-translating the doctor’s words in her mind.
Carol understood suddenly all too well why she’d been restrained for her healing. Because Bobby’s science had turned her male and they didn’t want her to touch herself. Her rage and frustration gave them another reason. She roared with rage, insane at hearing the masculine bellow tear itself from her throat. Dr. Jane asked Bobby to leave the room, which helped. She simply could not cry like a little boy in front of her boyfriend.
Only, was he still her boyfriend?
Dr. Jane began to talk to her but it took several days for Carol to really start to listen.
Carol stared at her penis. It seemed to roll on its own accord. She was repulsed to feel these sensations. She wondered how Bobby ever got any of his important work done. He recommended tight cup briefs over a text message. He did not come to visit as often as she would have liked.
Dr. Jane touched the penis in a very clinical manner, without asking. Carol, after all, wasn’t about to touch it. “You’re well enough that you no longer need a catheter,” the doctor chided. “You must care for your self, especially since you are being returned to your deck.”
Many emotions passed through Carol’s head. “I don’t want this thing. I want it off of me.” Her voice had grown deeper and her body thicker.
“Now, Carol,” Dr. Jane said as she simply pulled down the shaft and swabbed the thick red member with a sterilized cleaner. Carol gasped as the thing was no longer the numb roll of flesh it had been a few days ago. Carol knocked her hand away. “We discussed this. This is your genetic code. Our only recourse under normal ship conditions would be surgical. Gender reassignment surgery would not make you a viable reproductive colonist. This form can make babies. So, you’re going to stay male and service any and all females you can poke your penis in.”
Dr. Jane finished cleaning her penis. “Now,” she said annoyed, “Do you need me to wipe your ass, too?”
The relationship between Carol and her counselor had started out a bit rocky and it had go downhill from there. “No,” she said bitterly. “That part hasn’t changed much.”
But it had. As a male, her tail was thicker and her anus seemed to ride up with it, above her butt cheeks. Her tawny balls and penis, couldn’t decide if they wanted to ride behind her under her tail or in front of her, where Bobby’s package had always rested, sitting or standing.
“Why isn’t my…stuff the same as Bobby’s?”, she asked. “I have those stupid spikes and my penis looks all angry and red. And Bobby’s has a head on his.”
Dr. Jane had to break off her anger before she could answer. “The crew is genetically altered to be more… interchangeable. So, even though Bobby’s a Lion, he could have sex with most of the Breeds on-board. As crew, the more homogeneity the better.” Dr Jane smiled, a shadow of embarrassment. “Not that we all have to have sex with each other. Now, your people, the colonists – you are what we will all revert into without gengineering for two or three generations. You are all the results of natural selection. The only thing we alter is a small portion of the brain that keeps everyone straight doing development.”
“Straight?”
Dr Jane waved her had dismissively. “We make you all breeders.”
“What else is there?” Carol was at least distracted from thinking about the meat between her legs. This seemed one of the secret things Crew hid from the Colonists. She was riveted.
For her part, Dr. Jane seemed to realize that they were near the end of the travels. Soon, now of this would matter. “Oh, there a variety. Girls who like girls. Boys who like boys. Boys that want to be treated like girls. Which is why you shouldn’t push Robert away. He’s a boy that likes everyone.”
Carol looked at Dr. Jane appalled.
“I don’t mean to say that he’s a slut or anything. He loves you… vagina or no vagina.”
Carol was very confused. “Didn’t you make me… a Breeder?”
“You love him,” Dr. Jane said seriously, “I wouldn’t be a party to any decision that changed that. Provided that you were willing to become a sperm donor.”
Shocked and a little confused, Carol agreed with a short nod of her head.
Carol itched everywhere. The nerves had regrown everywhere but her fingertips. It was an effort not to scratch herself, especially in her crotch with its will full flesh. The male body hair was thicker than she was used to and the mane was the worst of it. Parts of it were three feet long and Dr. Jane had refused to trim it for her.
“The males in your culture do not cut their headfur. You can keep combing it or grow dreadlocks.” Dr Jane said firmly. “Or invent shears.”
So much of Carol’s face still looked like the old phenotypical female (as Dr, Jane referred to her old body) Carol. In large part, this was because her skull hadn’t changed its shape. Her cheeks were thicker because her mouth and neck muscles were at least 50% thicker, but the lush orange mane hid it. Her fingers and feet were larger and thicker, too. These were grown to male standards in the Vat.
In a mirror, Carol thought she made for the strongest looking male she’d ever seem. The fiercest, certainly. Not an ounce of fat on her, for Carol’s lifetime of exercise and hunting still had a say in her body. Every scar was gone. Those she missed, for she had earned them.
She would just have to earn new ones, she decided.
And, typical warrior that she was, she had decided to face what frightened her the most, first.
Now standing over the scar of the Hunting deck, the artificial breeze blowing her mane, Carol wondered at how vain she’d become. Appearance had never been too important to her. Was that a male trait? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she was horribly preoccupied with her new body. Some day, she’d get used to it. She’d get used to the new roles she’d have to play.
Someday, she’d use the right pronouns when thinking about herself.
Or, just the new ones.
Dr. Jane had insisted that all pronouns were equally valid, that the right pronouns was whatever she chose. Yet, what did that crewman know? She didn’t live in the real world.
“Thought the girl with penis, staring up at a cracked blue sky with painted-on clouds.” Carol chided herself aloud. “It doesn’t even seem to turn any more.”
“It’s not a really high priority, Carol.” Bobby said, stepping out from behind a blind. “Three years and you’ll be underneath a real blue sky.”
“Maybe,” Carol allowed. “If the other ship doesn’t beat us to Wild Veldt, first. If the planet is what the drones say it is. If. If. If.” She sighed. “Sorry, I’m a little bitter. My family threw me out. They didn’t want another mouth to feed. Like I can’t hunt for myself.”
“I’m sorry, Carol.” Bobby approached her but she shrank back.
Carol could even feel her balls sliding away from him. She had no idea what that meant, but it made her feel guilty. “It’s not your fault, Bobby. You don’t have to apologize.”
“An expression of sympathy. Empathy.” Bobby stressed. "I am not sorry that I saved you. I’m sorry, that I can’t
“Can’t what? Turn me back into a girl? Let me die?” She glared at him, challenging his to deny it.
“That I can’t save Us.”
Carol closed her eyes and looked away, not opening them until she was sure that he wasn’t moving around. “I’m a male. I know that doesn’t seem so bad to you… you’ve been a male all your life… and a crewman… you laugh at our quaint gender roles and rules, I know. But I’m going to be a colonist and those roles mean something. Dr. Jane says they are hard wired into my brain… one of the few things the Vat didn’t have to grow back.”
Bobby’s gave a gentle laugh. “That’s right, except for pain killers, your brain was untouched.”
She glared at him. He was in his brown uniform, but it was no longer so spotless or wrinkle free. Then her heart melted a little when she realized that the look she’d first seen in his eyes was mostly exhaustion. “What do you mean?”
“Your brain might be awash in male hormones right now, but you are still you. You are exactly the same person that came in here a month ago. Maybe a little traumatized, but the same.”
Carol looked at Bobby. “The whole time I was in the Vat.” She spoke slowly and tried not to sound whiny, “I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were inside of me, smooth and clean. Hot against my belly and that the moment you came inside me, I’d know. I imagined shuddering with you as you poured yourself inside on me.”
“I’ve been inside you, Carol.”
“But always with a prophylactic,” she complained. “I don’t like those.”
“I can be inside you again.”
Carol’s face twisted in an awkward expression of confusion and disgust. Before Bobby could say another word, an alarm went off, echoing across the vast Hunting Deck. Bobby nearly jumped a meter into the air, even as Carol’s organized mind kicked. Every person on the ship, even the colonists, understood what the different twelve alarms meant. This was one she’d thought she’d never hear.
The ship was under attack.
Bobby grabbed her thick hand in his, pulling her to the same lifepod they’d weathered the accident in. It was disguised, although she’d known where it was. Everyone knew where the life pods were. Despite being frightened that she might see another breach, Carol was overly aware of the unwelcome genitals bouncing around between her legs as she ran. She cursed herself for not wearing the tight underwear Bobby had given her.
“The other ship… we sent probes and tried hailing them.” Bobby explained as they ran. “They seemed dead in the water.”
They door opened and they crawled inside. The instrument panel closest to the door was seared and melted, making Carol realize again the hellfire that Bobby had carried her through. Bobby closed the door to the tight compartment. Dim lights came on and a circuit began to sputter and spark.
Carol watched it and felt her maleness try to hide up inside her. She remembered Bobby telling her about the failing launch button. She looked at him with wide eyes. He nodded.
“Don’t touch it.”
The clamps began to rhythmically open and close. Carol grabbed Bobby, their first embrace since she’d left the Vat as a male. Their first embrace with her new arms and hands. Her genitals decided not to hide within her as his musk was pulled into her lungs. He was tired and unwashed, stressed. His scent was stronger than he normally let it go.
“Lifepods aren’t a priority?”
Bobby shook his head. “The journey is on its last leg, but the ship is on its last legs, too.” He whispered, although there was no one to hear him but her. “We had to concentrate on rebuilding the shields and navigating with a thousand micro-course corrections.” Bobby now embraced her back. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t allowed to tell you. We lost a few engineers, too.”
“We were so close,” she swore bitterly. “Generations.”
She was frightened and angry. When the ship shuddered beneath her, she felt the first waver of artificial gravity pass through her. It wasn’t like the last time, it felt like being in a elevator to another deck. The clamps complained for a moment and seemed to grind something before returning to their steady beat. Now she could feel the pulsing thru the floor, and a new sensation, a hardness between her anus and her scrotum. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she pressed her groin into his.
The pressures of new, untested nerves sent signals to her brain. Cloth. Heat. He was soft, unprepared. Her penis was awakening. The touch was loud, the friction bright, and she wasn’t even very hard yet. The tube of flesh projecting from her body began to fill with a maddening laziness. Her lungs began to pump air into her body, as if that would speed up the process.
Bobby was oblivious as he checked displays. Pod would not, could not speak. He found a data pad and confirmed his worries. He told her that shields were down to 50% on this side of the side. That the enemy, the same set of species in a similar ship, advanced one to five generations from their era, seemed to only have three corsairs attacking them. Unless there were other, hidden ships pushing an asteroid at them, they’d be fine.
Carol could ignore the clamps thumping, but Bobby’s tense, frightened voice, even as he tried to make sense of things could not be ignored, nor could the demands of the new phallic thing growing from her loins. She kissed Bobby’s muzzle so hard, she could taste his blood before he could jerk his head back.
She pulled his clothes off him, but the outfit and Bobby resisted. “We’re going to die,” she whispered fiercely and she instead worked at his fly. Bobby surrendered to the moment, and dropped the data pad, letting it clatter to the floor.
Their groins ground together and then their searching members found the hot tubes of flesh each other now possessed. They pushed together length-wise, they held each other and let their maleness explore each other. Bobby pushed Carol’s chest up with one hand while pushing down on her ass with the other.
Carol watched him carefully, yet she could barely think. Sensations she was used to inside of her body felt so strange, as if the penis was both of her body and not of her body. Bobby bit the end off a little tube he pulled from a pocket and turned the tube around in his mouth, letting a few drops of gel bubble onto his finger tips.
His thumb massaged his finger tips of his furless, padless palm as his left hand squeezed left buttcheek encouragingly. Then those slick fingers wrapped themselves along the parallel shafts. Carol gasped, even though the fingers were gentle at first. Dr. Jane’s hygiene lessons had not included this bit of fun.
Carol stayed up on her arms, watching Bobby’s round, crew eyes watching her. Then the fingers tightened and he pumped down with more force. He matched the rhythm of the failing clamps and Carol cried out in surprisingly deep roars of pleasure. She fought to keep her body from bucking, that would disrupt his rhythm. It took all that her divided attention could muster in order to let him work her flesh.
The male, she realized, almost always set the pace. So, the woman of the village had told her. So, too, had Bobby performed to expectations.
Bobby’s hand moved from her ass to his mouth, where the little tube supplied more gel. Bobby returned to her butt and a slick, hot finger probed beneath her tail. He touched the hairless button and slowly spread a light coat of lube around her sphincter. A rush of panic and a shudder of ill-ease spiked her throat, but her tail did not slam downward.
His finger penetrated her. Something seemed to pop inside of her. He was inside of her! She thought that would never happen again, yet she was conflicted. This part felt wrong, but at the same time, she felt her penis pulse forward.
Her claws extended and ripped into Bobby’s uniform as he yowled in protest. She flipped him over and rudely pulled the fabric and circuitry apart. He whimpered eagerly… perhaps. She wasn’t sure, she didn’t care. She needed to control something! And this – her body told her was something that she could control.
She pulled his tail up roughly, without any real resistance. She found used his own fluids on his hole and her fleshy red thing with her other hand. She wasn’t very experienced, but she had years of bawdy tales to fall back on.
She knifed herself inside of Bobby.
The first inch was hard, but suddenly the resistance collapsed and she was able to pump into him. The clamps became competition of sorts. She fucked Bobby to its awful rhythm.
Then the clamps simply released and fell silent as the lifepod fell away from the ship.
They slapped to the floor as boosters ignited. Carol, half mad with lust, opened her mouth wide and gripped Bobby’s neck in her huge teeth. Her boyfriend gasped and tried to hold as still as possible as the tiny spikes near the base of her shaft but into his asshole. She chewed him from both ends, aware of the taste and scent of his blood. His whimpering excited her more than anything previously.
Carol had no idea how large her jaws and teeth were, nor did she understand the impulse that slowly caused her to squeeze Bobby’s throat like that. Still, she was rewarded for her efforts when Bobby’s smooth pink staff stood hard and tall from his loins.
The G-force pushed them down together, the artificial gravity unable to fully compensate. An invisible hand squeezed her scrotum. Her body was squeezed roughly and she exploded into Bobby. He shuddered with release a second or two later as her right hand barely closed about his own eager member.
The rockets cut off and the artificial gravity went away also. Bobby’s squirming body knocked them away from the floor.
They floated together, spent. Carol began licking the scratches and prick points of blood from Bobby’s neck and shoulders. The coppery taste warmed and thrilled her softly. She drowsy, exhausted, and happy was ready to die now. Her breath came in huge bellows, the taste of him in her mouth. The scent of him in her newly broad nostrils. Yet, it took a few seconds for her to think about him, to separate him from herself.
He was softly laughing and crying as they bounced gently in zero G. He pushed away from her, patting her hand away gently when she tried to pull him back. “Please, lets not do that when we’ve a limited oxygen supply.” He gasped and composed himself as he anchored himself to the pilot seat. “I think we’ve established that you’re the Top.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, not feeling very sorry. She supposed she might if they survived this little adventure. The afterglow her lady parts had given her had been warming, spreading throughout her body. Now, as a male, that energy seemed inverted, as if she were cooling now. The energy seemed to flow out of her body, causing her to dissolve in the air. Although, that might have been the zero gravity. “I just didn’t want to die without…” Her mind felt dull and she couldn’t think of a better turn of phrase. “I just needed to fuck you and fuck you hard before I died.”
Bobby sniffled as he belted himself in the pilot seat. “Well, I can’t say I wasn’t above hoping we 'd get past that awkward second first time. I just never thought I need an accident report filled out afterwards.”
Carol kept her mouth shut. She didn’t know what she was supposed to say after sodmizing her boyfriend in a deathtrap. Did he want an apology for fucking him so hard or for not fucking him sooner?
He looked back and smiled. His wet, tearing eyes shining like not too distant stars. He waved her forward. She used a few hand holds and came up behind him, She was an excellent swimmer and the bouncing flesh between her legs hadn’t changed that much.
Except that she was more self-conscious about her body.
“I’ve moved us within the shadow of the loose FTL engine.” Bobby said, trying to assert control like a good “modern” male crewman. Carol was not only too tired to argue, but she had to admit that they needed a crewman more as she looked out into space through windows Bobby revealed with a flip of a switch or two. Her left hand felt her shrinking loins, unconsciously. She and the flesh felt unreal against a black void.
Arcs of brightlight leapt between fighter ships, illuminating the ships and part of the great hull of Bradbury’s Veldt. The arcology designed sections created weird shadows in the flashes. “The other ships concentrated fire on the Crew section,” Bob supplied helpfully. “I think they need restocking of Colonists. Or maybe they are trying to discourage us from making a ‘supply run’ on their ship.”
Carol looked at Bobby in surprise. “Surely, we wouldn’t resort to pirating from another ship.”
Bobby smiled and gave her a direct eye-contact. Taking control of the lifepod seemed to have rejuvenated him, despite the blood still dripping from his neck. Suddenly, he was more than a cute and exotic example of manhood. In his world, she suddenly realized, he had more than his share of strengths. “No. But we would salvage a dead or dying ship. The Bradbury is on its last legs and that near miss did not help. Even hulled and open to vacuum, that other ship would have genetic tampers and water that we could use to better our odds.” He fussed with a control with responded sluggishly. “And, we are obligated to rescue any survivors we find, even if that puts a strain on our system.”
She kissed his head, just below the hairline of his short mane. She tasted blood and sweat. Her basic lifepod training began to assert herself. “Let me get the first aid kit.” She rummaged in the back of the pod, enjoying the weightlessness a little yet grateful at the same time that she hadn’t eaten much. There were two kits, one empty with scorch marks and the other full and untouched.
“Thanks,” he answered, his eyes shuttling between his readings and the porthole. “Looks like there’s only one raider left. By the Christos, he’s fast. Shots are going wild. Our guys have chased him away from the Bradbury. Complete opposite direction from his own ship.”
Carol thought that was odd, but she knew warriors. They would not let the lone survivor back home, not if that meant crossing close to Bradury’s Veldt.
She began wiping Bobby’s wounds clean as he stayed focus on the two sources of information. Despite the fact that she already penetrated him and worked his flesh roughly, this small act of care-giving made her feel manly.
This introspection made her look forward, quite literally and figuratively. The black canvas of space was an inviting place for deep thinking.
And fear.
Three pinpricks of sparks danced across the shadows and darkness. She’d have dropped the cleaning gauze if they’d been gravity to take it from her hand. “Ships, up ahead.”
Bobby glanced to the shadow of the huge FTL engine that had nearly killed them a few weeks ago. “No, that’s just the FTL engine bay that broke off. We’ve put robo-tugs on it. You probably saw them making a course correction.”
Carol took a deep breath. “I thought we didn’t need that.” She found herself as angry at the inanimate engine for her injuries and transformation as she was with the new ship.
“We don’t,” Bobby said, turning back to watch the real action. “But on the off-off-off chance New Veldt needs to be terraformed, FTL engines can be converted to that end.”
“I want to be a fighter pilot,” Carol said. Her own world had not seem very welcoming of late.
Bobby smiled wickedly and she say that in his reflection. “You got my vote. I’ve always liked a man in uniform.”
Both pleased and uneasy with his answer, she formulated a reply. Before she could answer, she saw more glittering sparks. “Bobby, seriously, I see ships.”
Bobby gave a serious look. “You do have better eyes than me. But it could just be sparks from asteroids hitting together.” He started hitting his datapad in cryptic ways with a bald finger. “Sensors are blocked by the FTL engine. Let’s see… there, FTL computer and systems online. Camera system coming online… forward view, extreme magnification. Augmenting with false coloring.”
“Shit,” they both said in unison.
On the datapad, they could see a dozen small fighter craft, weaving their way around the larger pieces of space debris. This was twice the compliment that Bradbury’s Veldt could muster.
“They’re sneaking in through the sensor shadow from the FTL drive,” Bobby cursed. "The remaining ship is just distracting the Bradury from the incoming.
“Can’t we warn them?” Carol growled, surprised that Crew “magic” had its limits. Despite what she’d been through, she still didn’t quite believe science couldn’t solve everything.
Bobby shook his head, no. “We lost communications years ago. They rigged up old style radio broadcast so the ship, the scouts and the fighters could communicate with each other. The lifepods were never upgraded.”
Carol hissed and then roared in frustration. Bobby didn’t even blink at this. His training kept him focused.
“I’m in the FTL controls,” Bobby said tightly, “but I can’t access any radio transmissions here. If they upgraded the nacelle, it must be a stand alone.”
Bobby was a good Crewmen, she saw, but he was not the warrior that she was. Becoming a male would not change that. Her mind took in the FTL device, a long thick spear pointing towards the enemy and her oncoming minions. “Bobby, can you control the FTL engine.”
“Yes,” he said absently, playing with figures and numbers across his pad. “But it has no weapons.”
“It’s pointed right at the enemy fleet and their mother ship.”
“But it has no weapons,” Bobby snapped back, annoyed at having to repeat himself with so much as stake.
“How long to restart the FTL engines?”
“Seconds,” Bobby said. “It’s easier to leave them on standby and the fuel is collected as we cross slip fractures and… Carol, I know you want to help, but I’m trying to build a radio so we can warn the Bradbury.”
Carol kept her cool. Bobby was male, he was allowed to get a little emotion. Poor things could only focus on one thing at time. “Look, that FTL engine got us into this mess.” She said gently but firmly, :I think it should get us out of this mess."
Bobby turned to snap at her, but then the logic of what she said began to sink into his head.
“Thrust your spear into its center mass,” Carol repeated her mother’s favorite hunting lesson in Southern Heartland and then in Crew Standard, “Thrust your spear into its heart!”
“The robotugs could never…” Then he stopped and smiled viciously. “I love you, Carol!” he cried out as he turned back to the control panel and pulled another data pad. He pulled up the blue screen with six blocks of white numbers. “Carol, I need you to take this & use the tugs to bring the nacelle this orientation.”
Carol blinked at him. “I don’t know how to do that.”
“Sorry, I forgot.” Bobby made some quick calculation on the fly. “Here, when the numbers approach zero, hit the red button next to that number. Don’t worry about the last two numbers. They are for tumble and relative distance to the Bradbury.”
Carol nodded and took the pad. In the back of mind, she was pleased that Bobby had forgotten that she was something of “savage.” If they survived this, she was going to show him her gratitude. “I love you, too” she told the shaved back of his head.
“Then every scratch and claw mark was worth it,” he said lightly. “There we go, engine check good. Batteries at 75%, Fuel almost at ignition temperature. Ready to go in twenty seconds. How are those numbers?”
“Three numbers at near zero. Now four.”
“Good,” Bobby said, “Release and return those tugs, we might need them later.”
Carol nodded. Right after she’d hit the red button for each tug, three buttons had appeared for each. Release was an option. She selected that and two more optioned appeared. She selected Return and then the Engage button when that appeared. That task completed, Carol took a deep breath and suddenly felt as if she had inhaled a wet sock. “Are we good with air?” she asked casually. She was, after all, ready to die for her people.
But still…
“No, we’re good,” Bobby assured her. “That’s just stress smell in a small pod. Maybe a trace of the gasses from the accident.”
Carol wasn’t sure she believed him, but she admired his stoicism. “We’re ready to fire?”
“Yes,” Bobby said, “I’m just writing a quick log entry about what we did and why.” He took her padd and pulled up another screen. The approaching ships were on it in the false colors that made them stand out against the void. “The book says I should try to communicate with them first. But if I let them know that I am here, they won’t be any reason for them to mass together like this.”
“I have read no such book,” Carol said simply.
Bobby smiled. “The plot’s all laid in, I should let you hit the launch button.”
Carol looked at the pad. There was no telling who piloted those ships. There was no telling which species was coming out to meet them armed. No telling what societies or what religion they represented. She knew them only as desperate and reckless people who had their sites on her home. She wanted to kill everyone of them and strip the meat off their bones with her teeth.
“No,” Carol told him, “This is your kill. Finish them.”
Bobby nodded with a tight smile, showing that he understood her display of respect. “Launch,” he said without further ado.
Carol meant to ask if they were too close, but instantly-- it was too late.
A hole full of rainbows and madness opened up in front of them and then the FTL engine was gone.
It took more than a day for the crew to realize what happened and to find the lifepod with scout units looking over the hull for damage.
The lifepod had been thrown back at the Bradbury’s Veldt with enough force that the little thing was wedged firmly onto the hull amidst sensor struts. A crew had to be dispatched to cut Bobby and Carol out of it. The artificial gravity had kicked in at the sudden movement and their injuries were minor.
In fact, Carol had practiced being a top repeatedly, keeping a careful eye on the oxygen levels. She tried letting Bobby into her, but it did not feel right. Certainly, not the way it used to be.
And if the medics wondered at the cuts and bruising around Bobby’s neck, they said nothing.
The cone of disruption from FTL’s hyper-wake was hardly more than a mile wide at it’s base. Nothing in stellar distances. Still, every engine, gravity generator, and computer system in real space that intersected with that cone was effected adversely. Half the enemy fighters exploded within 30 seconds of the juxtaposition event. Several enemy pilots were turned to jelly executing evasive maneuvers. The rest surrendered as their own mother ship broke apart behind them in a series of explosions.
The arcology of the other generation ship (The Correct, they later learned) had been of a module design and the FTL engine had plowed right through the middle. Most decks broke up into module like units with only a few breaking up. Mayday messages filled the broadcast frequencies; but not as many as expected.
The Correct had practically been a ghost ship. She’d had lost most of their colonists long before attempting to flee to Wild Veldt. Their own Promised Land had turned out to be a bust. The remaining Colonists and some sympathetic Crew mutinied. They had no patience for Terra-forming and had leapt blindly for the next, closest system. The navigator obviously hadn’t had enough experience reading starcharts and gravimetric avoidance maps. Flying FTL through the debris fields was no different than flying through a planet; you aren’t going to hit anything; but its going to hurt any way.
Bobby and Carol became celebrities. Her parents even recognized as family, if only as a blood relative and that helped a little. The Crew accepted her with only mild unease and even let her take some fighter lessons. Lessons, they all hoped, would prove unneeded.
Dr. Jane came to them the day after the first salvage and rescue operation to the Correct. She walked into Carol’s hut on the Lion Village deck and then ducked out almost immediately. The Tiger’s tail and ears spoke of sudden embarrassment.
Carol’s gruff voice called out, “What is it?”
Bobby tittered a bit as Dr. Jane composed herself. From the doorway, “The captain said to tell you that the Correct’s supplies of genetic tampers are now available for us. In light of your actions, he is allowing you use the tampers to restore your sex–”
“No! I’m good!” she panted from inside the darkened hut.
Dr. Jane hesitated and wished desperately that the Savage Decks were allowed com terminals at the very least. “Are you sure?”
She heard nothing but the slapping flesh and heavy synchronized, yet desperate, gasps for breaths that meant they hadn’t quite finished yet.
Suddenly, there was a choking sound that continued for almost too long that stopped with a roar from Carol, hearty and satisfied. Bobby whimpered and tried to catch his breath. Dr. Jane refused to look into the hut, for technically neither one was her patient any longer.
“Are you sure?” She asked again when she thought they’d be able to answer her.
“No, I’ll good,” Carol replied in a normal voice that carried. “Thank the Captain for thinking of me… and could you ask if we could try Bobby as a female for a awhile? It was his killing shot, after all.”
“-wha–?”
“Nothing, Bobby,” Carol said in a whisper. “Go back to sleep.”
By then, Dr. Jane was already tip-toeing away.