Space Force

Time is a strange beast.  Before I knew it, it was the morning of the launch.  Training dragged by, but suddenly, there was no more training.  I stood in my flight suit trying to squelch the nerves that seemed to come from nowhere.  Orin and Stephanie went over a checklist with each of the teams.  There were now nine teams.

The ship originally had fifteen living pods. As the launch date neared, astrobiologists demanded that there be more survival gear as well as instruments to study the planet once we arrived. Six of the pods were redesigned for storing those items.

I looked over at Jake Hunter, now an E-5 and my husband. We had secretly wed last month during a short leave. Orin was my best man and the one who advised me not to tell anyone of our plans to wed. He let me know that it would probably delay my participation in the program while those in charge decided that it would have no bearing.

All of us would be awake during the launch and the transition to hyperspace. Once we passed Jupiter, the others would enter a state of hibernation. Jake and I would remain active and check on systems for about two months. At that point, we would awaken another team, and we would go into hibernation. Each team would have one period of taking care of the ship.

I looked at Jake again. He looked up and caught my eye. He smiled. His enthusiasm for the mission never wavered, and I was excited with him.

“Launch plus 2 hours. Sinclair personnel proceed to the launch vehicle.”

The teams lined up to walk to places. Jake and I were first, followed by Sheila Drake and Skip O’Healy, Cameron Timmons and Gregg Johns, Russel Paige and Eileen Toward, Arlo Gibson and Joe Garcia, Martin Gill and Alex Johnson, Eric Red and Adam Lee, Jordan Vo and Michelle Thomas, and finally Steve Lopez and Austin Starr. Our seats were in that order as well. I was in charge of launch and landing while Skip was in charge of the expedition once we landed.

Once we were seated and plugged into the telemetry systems, we still had an hour before launch. I had plenty to do as did Jake, checklists of system checks had to confirm the systems monitored by the computers.

I noticed that Skip was holding Sheila’s hand. Skip confessed to me that she had been driving him up the wall with her ‘sexy attitude.’ When I pushed him to explain that, he said it was the way she walked and the way she talked. She was super strong and super smart, so she didn’t need him for most things, and that made him want her sexually all the more. What pushed him over is when she was called away without his knowledge, and she was gone for three hours and seventeen minutes. He went bat shit stupid inventing scenarios of what had happened. I was able to find out where she was eventually, and I escorted him to the entrance and was there when he saw her.

I heard him tell her how she filled his mind every minute and how he had imagined that she must be dead and that’s why she wasn’t returning his texts. And then he told her that he had a hardon that started the first day he saw her and has never subsided. Honestly, I was worried about her response.

She simply said, “As an Enlisted, I wasn’t allowed to say how I felt, but I feel the same.” She took his hand and added, “Let’s go screw.” The two of them disappeared for a few hours.

Now we sat in the Sinclair, nine rows of two seats, data screens in front of each of us, spewing more information than we could digest.

“I read go for launch,” stated Jake. “All systems respond green on my board.”

“Mine as well,” I told him. I switched mikes. “Cap com, Sinclair is green for launch.”

The response came. “Sinclair, we are at T minus 10 minutes, we are 'go' for launch for all divisions. Switching to internal control in 15 seconds. Please advise when you show autonomy.”

I glanced up at the display board above my head. The two left lights glowed red. From behind me, I heard, “Five, four, three, two, one, autonomy.” The lights clicked green.

“Houston, we are green,” I happily announced into the mike. “Self-guidance program on auto-pause, set to initiate sequence in three, two, one. Guidance system on-line. Atmospheric engines at 80 percent. Station locks disengaged.”

The altitude computer began announcing. “Five feet, ten feet, twenty feet, fifty feet…”

Everything was automatic now unless we had a system failure. We continued to climb. I reached over and grabbed Jake’s hand. G forces were beginning to push back on us as we gained velocity and altitude. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to hold his hand. He shifted his hand and was holding mine. With a much stronger grip, he held it through the point of maximum dynamic pressure and up into space. Our trip did not include an orbit of the Earth; we were immediately on our way.

The navigation system immediately locked onto Barnard’s Star and adjusted our heading for the calculated nineteen-month journey. Our speed increased rapidly and within an hour, we were ready to perform a hyperspace insertion. I double-checked the computer data as did my colleagues. Minor vibrations passed through the ship, and the darkness of space changed to a deep purple hue. We were now traveling faster than light. The velocity of the ship would continue to increase. I unbuckled and stood up slowly. Fifty percent gravity is strange to walk around in. The others read my signal and got up to move to their hibernation pods. Once inside, the person activated the pod. It sealed and changed the atmosphere to induce the hibernation sequence. Soon, all other team members were asleep. Jake followed behind me to verify that all systems were functioning at peak performance.

As Jake completed the last checklist, he turned to me. “Time to get out of these flight suits and into some comfortable paper space pants.” He laughed. Neither of us liked the paper shorts and t-shirts, but we were aware of the cameras. “I’d go nude if I could get away with it.”

“You’d end up with your willie caught in a mechanical rice picker,” I told him.

“More likely a USB port.”

I gave him the look I always gave him when he degraded himself like that. His size was the perfect size for me because it was the size God gave the man of my dreams.

“If the cameras weren’t rolling,” I reminded him. “I’d get naked, too.” We knew that there was no communication available back to Earth. No one had mastered sending a communication to Earth while in hyperspace. However, the ship was still recording us, and someone down the line would be watching them as well as listening to them.

By the time each of us had done a post-launch checklist, I was hungry and tired. I didn’t see Jake; I assumed he was in the aft storage compartment. We were supposed to verify that everything was OK back there on the first day and weekly unless something was retrieved from that area. It was the only place on the ship that had no artificial gravity option. I had already shut off the gravity in all the living pods except ours. The area with launch and landing seating and controls would also be shut off.

At the juncture between the work/eating area and the main control room, I disengaged the gravity and closed the bulkhead. If Jake were hiding up there, I’d hear from him momentarily. But all remained quiet. I moved aft. The door separating the storage room was closed about fifty percent. He was in there. Lollygagging is what I called it. I stepped in and immediately felt a queasiness as my feet were no longer pulled to the floor. I pushed myself in and spotted him.

Jake was floating near the cold weather gear without a stitch of clothing on him. He giggled upon seeing me, a true giggle. “It took you long enough,” he said.

I scanned the room and made a plan. I left my clothes by the door, and as I removed them, I heard his catcall. He tossed a small bottle toward me. “Here’s some lube.”

“You had a special bottle made?”

“Exactly. It’s for weightless fucking.” He giggled again.

“Computer.”

The computer beeped in response.

“Lighting at zero in the control room, fifty percent in the workroom, twenty percent in the storage room.”

“Light adjustment completed.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I registered an increase in Jake’s stress level. He pretended to like being controlled, but the truth was that he always preferred knowing what was happening.”

I remained silent as I lubed my dick and pushed myself toward the rungs I spotted earlier. I could barely see, but I was able to lock my foot into one of the rungs. The anticipation of what I was about to do made my cock stiffen. I angled myself forward with my foot still attached to the wall. I didn’t want to end up with a broken foot should Jake begin to thrash and knock me around.

I reached out and grabbed Jake by the shin and flipped him so he faced what would have been the floor.

“What the fuck? Jason, what are you doing?”

With both hands, I pulled him toward me. His legs were bent down, and his ass was perfectly aimed for me. I grabbed his waist, aimed my cock, and with one swift motion, plunged my dick all the way into him. That surprised me, but he had lubed his ass, so I stretched him wide and entered him to the hilt.

“Fuck, man, that hurts!” Then in the next instant, “Oh, fuck yeah, that’s the spot!”

In the weightlessness of the room, I was able to pull and push him. His ass was tight and warm on my cock. I wanted to scream out that it felt fucking awesome, but I remained silent.

“What the hell are you doing, man? That feels so good.”

The angle of my penetration was different from previous encounters, and I felt as though I would come at any moment. I held on, though. Jake tried to flip himself over, but I held on and slammed my cock into his ass even harder.

I knew I wouldn’t last much longer. I wanted to turn him over and spray my cum above him and watch it hang in the air, but I also did not want to clean up what I was certain would be a huge mess.

Jake began to call out my name. “Jason. Jason. Give me your dick. I love you, Jason. Fuck me hard. Seed me. I want your babies inside me, Jason.”

I came. I came hard.

“Jason, oh baby, I can feel you come in me. Oh, fuck how I love you.”

“Language, lover boy.” I flipped him over.

“Yeah? Well, fuckity fuckity fuck, how I love you.”

“You’re such a poet,” I told him. “Now, hold those babies inside you. If you don’t you’re cleaning up the mess.”

Even in the dim light, I saw him smile. “Fuckin’ A.”

That evening, we ate our MRAs and looked out the window of our pod. The strange color of hyperspace was mesmerizing, and when I looked into Jake’s eyes, the mix of colors was beautiful. He was beautiful; both inside and out. Our weeks in charge of the ship were spent going over our work list, trying to enjoy our meals, making love, sometimes a gentle, slow fuck, and sometimes wild and frenetic. And each evening, before our sleep cycle, we would gaze together out the window, and I would realize how blessed I was that he was chosen to be my partner.

It didn’t take long before it was our turn for hibernation. We promised one another we’d dream only of us. Before the pods closed, I heard, “Jason, you are a blessing to me. I love you so much that words fail me.” Then my pod clicked shut, and I fell asleep.

Author’s note:

The further adventures of Jason and Jake are being formulated now. I need to flesh some things out before putting them on ‘paper’. I’m wondering whether to tell the next part of their story from Jake’s viewpoint. Let me know what you think in the comments.

I have a few other stories that are trying to escape my fingers before I write chapter 8.