CollisionWithParadise (7 page)

Azaes appeared physically fit, his taught muscular chest and abdomen revealed through the open dark purple robe he always wore as he stood with excellent posture in front of a pyramid-like structure that glinted like pure amethyst. The rest of him remained below the angle of the camera. Azaes looked mature yet youthful, with minimal wrinkles except a few around his eyes, which suggested that he did smile occasionally. And his dimpled chin was rather intriguing.

Zac piped in, “Genevieve, that’s your fifth yawn in five minutes. You’ve been up for over nineteen hours. I suggest you have a brief sleep to recharge. Don’t forget, you have a full ship’s tour, scientific analyses, calculations and telemetry and mission review tomorrow.”

She nodded. “Right, Zac. Good idea. I’ll be
jacking
tonight.” She quickly added, feeling the need to defend her decision, “I get a better sleep that way.”

“Okay,” Zac replied unquestioning. She’d been
jacking
to sleep in non-hibe for close to a year now. It was more comfortable than her bunk bed, she reasoned as she made her way to the bathroom, and she found a great reassurance in knowing what she was going to dream about.

Catching the eerie view, Genevieve stopped briefly in the forward lounge on her way aft to her hibe room. As she wandered past the comfortable chairs and tables, she thought the whole idea of a lounge kind of moot, considering she’d always be its only occupant. She swept her gaze around the empty lounge and settled it on the large view ports, whose view of the brilliant blue gossamer of the Pleiades reflection nebula had distracted her in the first place.

“Douse the lights, Zac,” she instructed, crossing to one of the ports. Instantly the lounge darkened and her view of wisps of blue cloud intensified. It was spectacular. The open star cluster was already visible from Earth, thanks in part to its nebulosity, caused by the chance encounter between the cluster and a molecular cloud drifting through it at a speed of 11 km/second. Since Zac had penetrated the thirteen-light year-wide nebula two hibes earlier, they’d passed alternatively between velvet blackness and brilliant blue light scattered by the carbon dust of the gas/dust clouds, depending on whether they were on the reflected side of a particular aspect of the huge nebula or its occultation side.

She never tired of the view. It was so foreign that it appeared almost unreal, and so unlike what she’d seen on the earlier leg of the trip
—
millions of stars embedded in the deep velvet of infinite space. She vividly recalled awakening from the hibe that had taken them into the cloud and seeing it from the inside for the first time. It had sent her hyperventilating with terrified exhilaration, cringing with horrified delight. Its terrible beauty had been for a brief moment more than she could handle, more than she could comprehend. And she remembered actively avoiding any rooms with portholes for the rest of her non-hibe time.

Vapours of colour swirled around them like an eerie yet fanciful dance, as though the ship was drifting mindlessly inside a huge spider’s web. She took in several deep breaths to keep from gasping at the enormity of it all. If there was a God, this was assuredly His retreat, she thought with sudden solemnity. It was too vast and incomprehensible to be a home to anyone else, much less any human. But there probably was no God, she decided. At least not a warm-hearted one. How could such a God have created such a cold and amorally complex universe? One that had taken her husband and her sweet child and given her nothing in return… except longing.

Her gaze strayed to the far right of the view port, where she could already make out her destination, Eos, with its magnificent multicoloured rings, whose ice crystals and carbon impurities glowed in the starlight and reflected light of the nebula. Most planetary rings were formed by dust flying off a moon or its disintegration from the planet’s own tidal gravity or the bombardment of meteoroids. There were certainly enough meteoroids in this system, she thought, agreeing with most astronomers back home that this was indeed how the rings had formed on Eos. The planet’s ring particles had been estimated to range from microscopic dust to barnyard sized boulders. Definitely to be avoided at all costs, she thought with a frown, then smiled to herself. Zac would take care of that.

She leaned forward and pressed her face against the transparent bio-film viewport, returning her gaze to the icy fire in space and listening to the quiet hum of Zac’s operating systems. This really was the last frontier. Virtually every part of Earth’s surface was either used as a resource by industry or tourism, or inhabited. There remained no wilderness. Even its vast oceans were being mined and farmed for their resources. Only the universe remained, where you could hear your own breathing and contemplate how small and insignificant you were. There was something fearfully exhilarating about recognizing a universe so vast and strange that it could never be conquered or defined by the hubris of humankind.

And it didn’t matter that she was utterly alone, hundreds of light years from home and travelling to a potentially hostile planet. She found a strange humbling comfort in knowing that here, she and her lonely life was insignificant. That her discomfort with people, her isolation in a party crowd, her awkward conversations with old friends, and her yearnings for something she wasn’t likely to find also didn’t matter. None of it mattered because she didn’t matter. She was part of something far larger and far more significant.

“Thanks for the light show, Zac,” Genevieve said quietly and left the lounge.

Chapter Five

Genevieve stepped into her personal hibe room, in the nursery where all the other crew members slept in the bliss of extended hibernation. Sometimes, usually right after coming out of a wonderful
jack
session in hibe, she envied their uninterrupted sleep. They had no cares, no worries, no reality to deal with, only wonderful dreams to orchestrate and experience in enhanced sensuality. But after a day in non-hibe, Genevieve enjoyed the edgy sharpness of reality, striding with fluid movements through real air that sent the hairs all over her body standing on end, feeling the hard resistant textures of objects in her sensitized hands, like coming out of one dream and entering another. Then after three days of working, sweating, eating, drinking and laughing with Zac, she returned to hibe with mixed feelings.

A part of her felt like she was betraying a sense of purpose by returning to hibe. She accomplished something significant during non-hibe, more than merely providing the ship with energy. But the rest of her yearned madly to go back, and she would feel the need to return shake inside her. Even now, her body trembled in anticipation of
jacking
for a single night.

These short one-night
jacks
during non-hibe were more like a power nap, a wet daydream. More intense, with no time for foreplay. Zac usually launched her directly into a sexual episode once she achieved REM.

Genevieve shut the hatch to the hibe room and walked the soft floor to her
jack
suit, lying where she’d left it on the floor. It was attached to the wall via a long tether like an umbilical chord. All the
jack
suits were attached to Zac, except for the portable
jacks
, which served as full vac environmental suits reserved for emergencies. The portable
jacks
still communicated with the ship via quantum waves, but they weren’t reportedly as capable of achieving as sensual a ride as the permanent
jack
suits in the nursery.

Genevieve pulled the flexible suit over her legs, then pushed her arms through the sleeves. Once in, she secured the front.

“I’m ready, Zac,” she said. “My body’s ready too.” She smiled.

“It’s your largest organ, you know,” Zac reminded her.

“What?” she asked, glancing down at her breasts. Was Zac trying out a new dirty joke?

“The skin.”

She barked a laugh. “Yes, Zac.” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling as she struggled with the fasteners. She felt the sizzling tickle of the nano-sensors and anticipated returning to sleep with mounting excitement. “I know.”

“What’s your pleasure, Genevieve? What do you want to dream about tonight?”

“Same as always, Zac.” Genevieve sighed, thinking it odd that Zac kept asking her when her answer was always the same. “Of Dan, of course. Your normal version of our hottest night in Tahiti.” When they’d first courted. It was her usual choice for a single night of dreaming. Intense, fast and still incredibly good for Zac’s power systems. Did it bother her that her fantasy of Dan was more her own fabrication than the man himself? God damn it, why was she suddenly thinking that now?

“Are you sure?”

Zac sounded disappointed, she thought as she closed the face plate, completely enclosing herself in the
jack
suit’s self-contained environmental system. Zac must have considered her the most unimaginative human in the universe. He had stopped making suggestions, but had obviously not stopped thinking of the myriad of possibilities she was passing up.

“You can choose anything, including the impossible,” Zac usually began, hoping to lure her into trying something new. “You can be anything and do it with anything. Think of the possibilities, Genevieve. What about a ménage a trois?” to which she’d firmly replied, “No.” “Okay, what about doing it in space with an alien?” She’d laughed, “No.” “Then what about being the passionate Pasiphaë, Queen of Crete, your beloved bull humping you with that huge dong.”
“No!”

Thinking of Zac’s disappointment and the bizarre choices of the other crew members, she relented. “Okay, Zac. You can try something a little different, but keep it with Dan. And no animals!”

She felt herself lift off the floor as Zac reduced the gravity field and she began to free-float. She took in a deep breath then exhaled slowly, already succumbing to the gentle hypnotic suggestions of two billion nano-sensors on her naked flesh. She felt a brief surge of excitement as she contemplated the reason for the negative G design of her hibe room—to accommodate the wild contortions and jerking movements she made while in the state of sexual excitement. Then, with a sigh, she felt her eyelids grow heavy and her mind wander.

Dan was so deliciously predictable. She’d practically choreographed his every move, and delighted in the anticipation of them. She knew she was disappointing Zac with her reruns. But why spoil a good thing? Once you’d discovered Nirvana, why would you abandon it for uncertainty?

Being a veteran
jack
dreamer, Genevieve knew she was dreaming when she saw Dan’s naked body striding toward her on the deserted beach, wet skin shining under a moonlit sky. He had the body of an athlete, firmly but not overly muscled, hairless and darkly tanned chest chiseled with perfect pectoral muscles and erect nipples. Dan
had a handsome, boyish face, belied only by a network of lines that radiated from his warm eyes. His smile stored enough wattage to light up a city. And his dick was pointing right at her.

When he saw where she was looking, his smile turned into a feral grin and he jerked his body forward a few times in an unmistakable gesture.

She glanced from his erect penis to the mischievous expression on his face and giggled like a giddy schoolgirl. With a last coy glance at him, she dashed into the cool surf for him to give chase. The ocean tugged her legs into a slow motion dance. He
laughed and caught up to her with a tackle that made her squeal and sent them both toppling into the water. Then he pulled her up in his strong arms and passionately kissed her, tongue sliding deliciously in and probing with the promise of another “tongue” in another “mouth”.

He bit her lip, hard, drawing out blood and a jag of pain. He was rougher with her this time, and she felt something between thrill and brief horror at the thought of beasts and the unexpected. Dan was usually a gentle and patient lover, drawing out her erotic agony for as long as he could before entering her and letting her come. He was being uncharacteristically exuberant now and she found herself exulting in it.

Her belly ached with a feverish desire that flamed up into her face and she clamped her eyes shut. Scorched, and mouths still connected in a wet embrace, she clawed his arms in a wild frenzy of passion. Her pelvis muscles pulsed with anticipation and she slid her hands down to his rump, pulling his hot flesh up against her. His penis pummeled her, frantically looking for a way inside, then found it. She gasped as he thrust hard and deep, lifting her off her feet. He jerked her up and down like a doll, rough and insistent. She howled at the raw ecstasy of pain that surged through her and realized that she was experiencing something new and exhilarating.

They grunted in unison with each bold thrust, sending waves of throbbing pain that boiled up until the tide of coming pulsed out of her and released a shuddering, excruciatingly satisfied scream. Dan growled and ejaculated then stumbled back, pulling her with him. He fell back into the water with his butt, taking her with him and they rolled in the surf and moaned in a haze of spent love and kissing. How he’d taken her!

But he wasn’t finished! Still inside her, his penis firmed in pulsing waves and he rolled on top of her in the surf. She tasted salt and coughed up the ocean she was inhaling. Dan’s cock swelled into something bigger than it had ever felt before and thrust vigorously, like the beating surf. It pierced like a molten lance to the centre of her, pounded into a place long forgotten, and coaxed out a primal beat that ached for release. Somewhere in the back of her mind she sensed that she was drowning but she didn’t care. Because
—
Oh, God! She felt her own seismic waves of come welling up and pounding her, mauling her breasts and worming her out of the surf along the burning sand.