Here it is, 2549.76, and they still haven’t prevented
the common cold. I’d been sneezing non-stop for hours.
It wouldn’t be so bad but at every sneeze MIHA, or Mia
as I disaffectionately call it, would demand a ‘check’
of my carbon based life-form unit.
Machine Intelligence Health Assessor. BULLSHIT! I think
that the person who programmed this P.O.S (short in the
jargon for, you guessed it, Piece of Shit.) had no
liking for the human species at all.
I’m James Taylor, or Taylor, James as Mia likes to call
me. I’m a Senior Mechanical Repair Technician, or
commonly known ‘Mech Tech’ in the thirty-ninth Space
Fleet. My being all that I can be, meant years in space
repairing ancient beat up tubs the old fashioned way,
with muscle and sweat. Yeah, we have the VR bots and
goggles, but I don’t care for that new stuff.
The Virtual Reality goggles tend to give me a real
headache. The vision control specialist has never been
able to get me a pair that will work right. I shun them
due to the pain; I feel it just isn’t worth it. I’ll
use them only if I have to. Life in space meant
traveling on a tub for an entire mission, so getting in
for a ‘refit’ on the goggles was not likely to happen
for about two more years.
We’re on the exploration and survey ship SF5595. Since
VR has become so commonplace nowadays, it seems that
techs like me have all retired to greener pastures. I’m
forty-five years old, single, and hate VR. I’m the only
male Mech Tech on board.
There are two officers who are male, and the rest of
the ships crew is women. Our Captain is Linda James.
First officer is Thelma Stewart. John, the one officer
I like, is Chief Science Officer. Thom is the Chief
Med. Officer. He’s all right, but I think his VR sex
partner is male, so I tend to stay away from Thom while
off duty.
There are three other Mech Techs, like me who keep this
tub afloat. There are also four bridge crew who fly the
tub. So, most of the crew are women, all believers in
the VR Gods of love and work. You see, sex with a real
human partner has gone the way of McDonalds Big Macs.
The VR can give a person any type of sex they would
want or need. Include the ‘machine’ portion and the
choices with it, well; I’ve never been really surprised
about the VR machines taking over as much as they have.
Since they tap into the cerebral cortex directly
through a scan plug, VR can sense and ‘know’ what you
desire in an instant. Allegedly it makes for a
‘perfect’ lover.
Me, I prefer to have sex the old-fashioned way, down
and dirty. One on one. Problem is, nobody on this tub
likes it that way. Matter of fact, I have only had two
partners in sex that way. My first was in High School,
and her parents found out and shipped her off to Class
Seven.
That’s where sexually ‘active’ people were sent to be
‘fixed’. No person in his or her right mind would
actually have ‘real’ sex now. Babies came from tubes
and ‘samples’ and sex was with the VR and its toys. It
made it so much ‘neater’ and ‘fulfilling’ that way.
Again, BULLSHIT!
My second partner was a gal on an old tug. We’d ‘been’
with each other quite a few times. She really got off
on doing it the old-fashioned way. I didn’t mind that
she ‘used’ me; since that’s the only way I like to do
it anyway. So, you can understand when I say that for
me real sex was far removed from my daily life.
I’m the ‘monk’ of SF5595. Oh sure, I do on occasion
masturbate, but right at orgasm Mia starts questioning
and wanting to ‘assess my condition’ usually declaring
a medical emergency. Not the best of ways to end a
satisfying time. I’ve figured out ways to circumvent
Mia, but it’s a pain in the ass to do.
My maintenance team had been chosen for me before this
trip ever started and since they were all women, I’m
constantly reminded about my monk status. They tease me
and sometimes, off duty of course, they flash the old
perv. I don’t mind too much since I can get relief on
my own, but it is a rather mean thing to do to a
shipmate.
The one thing that keeps me in the service is the fact
that I have been saving up for years and right now I am
only a little bit away from full retirement. I have
well over the amount of credits to give me a generous
and lovely time on a remote planet on a remote island,
and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to find a woman who
will like sex the way I do. Then it will be a happy
life for me while I’m young enough to enjoy it. This
trip will put me into ‘retirement city’ and I’m going
to be a very wealthy and happy individual at that time.
Since most of ‘our’ work is now done via the VR and
Bots, I am truly the dinosaur of the space age, but my
skills are needed time to time and I have the
reputation of being able to ‘fix’ almost anything with
nothing. Hence I’m filling a niche most of the time.
We just dropped off cargo at the mining camp on Nevus
Seven, and we’re on route to the edge of the known
galaxy to investigate some newly found planets and
asteroids. After that, we’re due to pick up some cargo
at Tomar Two. Traveling much faster now since we have
less mass on board, it won’t take too long for us to
reach our destination.
John and I had to go out and do an extra-vehicular
inspection, part of our routine maintenance schedule. I
was suited up while John and Thom were having some
words about the medical implant on John’s arm. It had
been bothering him quite a bit. I had just clamped and
sealed my helmet in place when the whole ship
shuddered. There was a brilliant flash of light and I
suddenly found myself free floating in space.
It took a moment to get my bearings and see what had
happened. I could see that John and Thom were floating
outwards away from the ship. I jetted over to them and
saw that there was nothing to be done for them. My COM
link wasn’t working, so I didn’t know what was going on
onboard ship.
I tethered John’s and Thom’s remains to my work line,
and jetted back to the ship. It was tough going, but I
was able to maneuver to the lower rear airlock and re-
board. As soon as the airlock cleared I had women all
over me; questions firing right and left. The Captain
quieted them down and started her grilling.
“What the hell happened?”
“I think we were hulled by a meteor Ma’am. The Science
and Med officers are dead Ma’am. They were pulled out
with unsealed suits when the rock got us. They never
had a chance. John was worried about his implant and
Thom was checking it out when it happened.”
I watched her as I gave my report and saw that my
statements shook her up pretty badly. She paused,
gathering herself, and then the command ‘self’ of her
took over.
“I need a complete serviceability and safety check as
soon as you can manage it Tech.”
“Yes Ma’am. I’ll go right out and do the over scan of
the hull since I’m suited up.”
“No. You’ll stay inside and use the VR bots. I can’t
take the chance of losing my senior Mech Tech on a walk
outside right now. Have your crew do the scan with the
bots. You get unsuited and do the assessment. I need to
know what we are up against ASAP.”
‘Yes Ma’am!”
I really didn’t get her at times. She could be
‘overbearing’, but she did have the command of the
ship, and her first duty was to the ship and crew, so I
grudgingly started to get unsuited and indicated two of
my crewmembers to get the bots. The third assisted me
in getting my suit off.
“What happened out there? How did they die?”
“We weren’t ‘out there’ as you put it. We were in the
airlock; there was a brilliant flash of light, and the
next thing I knew I was swimming in space. John and
Thom didn’t have their head gear on since they were
checking out John’s arm.”
“The ‘roid hit the airlock?”
“As far as I know, yes. We’ll need to be cautious when
we get into that area to inspect it from inside as
there could be leakage. The bots will let us see the
damage on the outside, but we will probably need the VR
systems check for the inside first.”
‘Jim, are you O.K.?”
“Yeah Theresa, I’m O.K. Just a little shook up. I had
just sealed when the rock hit. It doesn’t get any
closer than that. I’m going to miss John though. I
really liked him. I know that losing Thom will hurt us
too.”
“What about Thom? You know he kinda had a thing for
you. You knew that didn’t you?”
“No, but I knew he liked the male VR partner. I just
didn’t like being around him. I’m not bi or Hom, so it
would never have been a ‘relationship’ like he wanted
anyway.”
“Why don’t you like the VR? You could be having normal
sex all the time if you would just relax and use it. I
use it and look how well-adjusted I am.”
“We’ve had this talk before Theresa, you know about my
headaches and the head plug. Besides, there’s nothing
like flesh to flesh, skin to skin, believe me.”
“UGH! That sounds so gross! I’ll stick to the VR and
the Bots. They can work on the cerebral plug too you
know.”
“Yeah, like I want them poking around my central cortex
like that.”
My inspection of the ship was not to bring any kind of
good news. The ‘roid’ had slammed into us at an
unbelievable angle. I could see that the odds of it
hitting us like that were astronomical, probably around
a trillion to one or so. This didn’t bode well for us.
Our VR main trunk had been severed with a huge chunk
totally gone; the secondary backup was parted too. It
appeared to be repairable though. Our life systems were
spared, but the control functions to the engine room
from the bridge were shot. On board was enough fiber
optic cable and trunk line to fix the controls but not
the VR mains. We’d have to rob some existing systems,
but not too much.
I wasn’t too worried about the VR systems, since I
rarely used them and they were secondary to the
operations of life support and ship control, but the
Captain and crew around me were more than a little bit
upset. I didn’t see why all the concern for the VR
system as it was mostly for controlling Bots.
“We can’t use the bots to inspect the hull?”
“No Ma’am, we can’t. The VR system is out and the local
system needs the mainline trunk to operate. The odds of
an accident like this were so far out there the fleet
engineers never thought that it could happen.”
“I’ll need a volunteer for an extravehicular
inspection.”
“Ma’am, with all due respect, I’m the only one
qualified to go out and make that inspection.”
I had known that this would happen. That’s why I had
wanted to get back out there and see for myself the
damage to our ship from the outside. I was the only one
left with the experience and training to go out in a
suit.
“The rules are clear on this Mech Tech Taylor. It
requires two people to do the inspection, an officer
and a Mech Tech. Since you’re the only one qualified,
other than me, I’ll go with you. We’ll suit up in ten
minutes and do the inspection together.”
Our First Officer, Thelma, was agitated and finally
overcame her need of command respect to interject her
thoughts.
“Ma’am, you can’t go out, you’re the Captain and you
can’t put yourself in ‘the line of fire’ so to speak.”
Thelma was right, but the Captain was the only other
qualified person on board. To take someone new to space
walking, without the right training, would be suicidal.
There are just too many things that could go wrong
outside.
Many times people got claustrophobic or worse, space
sick, in the suits. The cleaning system could handle so
much, but at a certain point, well, bile is not a
pleasant smell in the suit. It also plugs up the works
and causes the system to go into maintenance mode,
which could shut down life support. A very unpleasant
and untimely death soon follows.
We did our inspection, the Captain and I, and she was
impressed with the damage control we’d done, as well as
my skill at traveling around a ship in flight ‘at
speed’. I had a lot of practice on the outside of ships
in flight. That’s why I’m so confident in going
extravehicular during flight at speed.
Getting back inside, the Captain was quiet as we
changed out into ship dress. Standing next to her with
her in her bodysuit I noticed for the first time that
her trim body was nicely proportioned. I started to get
an erection seeing her breasts outlined with hard
nipples sticking out like they were. Airlocks are
notorious for their coolness.
Ship dress was normally baggy overall suits. They hid a
person’s body well enough to make it difficult to know
if they were male or female. In most cases anyway. I
think that the designers had done that on purpose to
cut down problems on board in the pre-VR days, and it
had just stuck with the fleet since then.
“Well, how bad is it? I need to know as soon possible
so I can contact Fleet and get some parts and help on
the way, Taylor.”
“Well, I don’t think you’re going to contact Fleet
anytime soon Captain. The VR main trunk also carried
our commlink to off ship. We’re in flight with no
communications, and no controls other than safeties. It
will be at least three days before I can get controls
back on line, and that will be with everyone working
’round the clock.”
“DAYS? We don’t have days; our window on drop from
light speed is in about seven hours. If we’re not
dropping out at that point we’ll be in unexplored
space. Can you imagine, our safeties controlling us in
unknown space at speed? I need you to get us under
light speed in less than seven hours.”
“Captain that won’t be possible. We need to have retro-
boost on cancellation of flight speed and with the
mainline trunk down, well…”
“I don’t care Mech Tech Taylor; get this tub under
light speed ASAP, UNDERSTOOD? In the mean time I think
we need to send a message drone back. Hopefully someone
will hone in on the beacon and get our message.”
This is where my crew and I work hard and produce an
outright miracle in a novel or on the video. However,
miracles didn’t follow our story and we were far into
unknown space by the time we were able to get any
control back.
I still didn’t have enough to drop from light speed, so
for all practical purposes we were in an irretrievable
position. We’d gone so far into the unmapped and
unknown zone that we’d never be found.
The Captain was not happy with the news when informed
by Thelma, but there was no helping it. When the
Captain saw me next it was twenty hours later, at
dinner. I was eating my ‘cream of steak and eggs’,
almost falling asleep sitting there trying to eat, when
she walked up to my table.
“What’s your prognosis? How long until we have any
controls at all, that will do us any good? We can’t
continue to trust the safeties for too long. They’ve
been known to fail.”
“I don’t know Captain. We’ve nothing to repair the main
trunk with as far as VR goes, and the secondary is
butchered up pretty bad. With any luck at all I’ll be
able to borrow some trunk from the damaged rear pods
and use that to effect basic control utilizing the
secondaries. It will be non-VR manual only though.”
“What do you mean ‘borrow’ from the pods? You can’t
borrow from other systems on this ship. Everything is
set for utmost efficiency as designed. To borrow is to
screw up the efficiency.”
“Yes, we can Captain. I can borrow from three of the
rear pods because the rock destroyed their seal. All
plant life in them is dead and there is no need to have
good trunk going to waste at this point in time. We
still have nine pods. We are only missing the three aft
pods.”
Pods, as you might have guessed, is where our gardens
were. They recycled the water and air for the ship, and
produced our food base for survival. While losing three
pods wasn’t ideal, we could survive for a long time, a
very long time especially since we were now two
crewmembers short.
There were ten of us left, and nine pods. Each pod was
capable of sustaining life for four people for about
ten years. After that, we needed to be close to a
planet that could support us. Original design and crew
complement had set a one pod per crew member guideline
for safety.
Later, just before crashing in my bunk for a shortened
but much needed sleep cycle, I went to the observatory
to watch the stars streak by. I was usually alone at
that time of cycle but now I had company, lots of
company.
“Hi Tech Taylor, mind if we join you?”
My whole maintenance crew plus the First Officer was
there. This was unusual but considering the
circumstances, understandable. We all had a need to
‘see’ where we were going. We were seeing this strange
new part of the universe, where no one had been before.
“Not at all. Quite a view isn’t it Ma’am?”
I was always respectful of officers, since they could
make your life hell if you weren’t. Thelma had never
given me any reason to doubt that she would be any
different from the Captain. Cold and aloof, she was
quiet on station, and I never saw her at any other
time. She wasn’t a ‘cold fish’, but she wasn’t exactly
a warm and outgoing person either.
“Yes, I guess you would say that. I find it disturbing
and not just a little bit frightening. We are about to
be officially ‘lost’ in a moment and that’s something I
don’t like to contemplate at all.”
“Yes, I can see what you mean Ma’am. It can be a scary
place. I’ve been here before though, so it doesn’t
bother me too much.”
“You’ve been here before? I thought this was unexplored
space?”
“Not here, but in this situation, I’ve been in this
situation before. Sorry Ma’am. I didn’t mean to let you
think I’d been in this sector before. Nobody has been
here before, ever.”
“In this kind of situation? You’ve been in a severely
damaged ship out of control, just like this?”
“Yes Ma’am. I was on the Minx Six explorer.”
I heard the gasps and felt the tension run through the
room. You see, the Minx Six had been the second ship I
served on and things on its maiden voyage had gone very
bad. Two of four of our engines were taken out and in
the ensuing mess we lost our whole command team. I
ended up being the highest-ranking person on board with
a crew of fifty.
It was caused by another ‘roid too. It had careened
through our command deck straight into the engine room
and engineering section. It had taken some time to get
things into a livable shape. We’d almost bought it
several times, but each time my maintenance crew and I
had been able to come up with a save.
The Captain had died in my arms. There was nothing I
could do. Nothing at all. I had liked the Captain and
his death was hard on me. He understood my motives in
being in the Fleet. I was like a son to him. A son he
never had. I grieved like a son for him too.
The years since that dark time had been good ones, for
the most part. There had been changes to ship design
and command structures since then. Yet whenever the
Minx Six Explorer was mentioned people would shudder.
Some of the deaths had been very slow and painful. When
we were rescued the rescuers were sure that all on
board were lost.
Finding us alive surprised them. After all, we’d been
drifting in space for about six months by that time.
I’d managed to keep everyone’s spirits up all the while
stealing, modifying, and flat out re-engineering ships
systems to keep us alive.
I’d been given commendations and offered officer’s
bars. I turned them all down. I just wanted to be a
Mech Tech that was all. My decision had caused some
hardship and hard feeling towards me in the years
since, but I was not officer material, I knew it, even
if those above me didn’t.
Nobody on this ship knew that I had been on the Minx,
until now. This was going to make things uncomfortable
for me. Some people had gotten ideas about my serving
on that ship back then and I didn’t want to live it all
over again. I still had nightmares about those fateful
days.
I was soon left alone on the ob deck. I watched the
stars and thought back over my life. This was it, I was
certain of it. There wasn’t going to be a ‘save’ on
this one. We’d already gone past the fail safe return
point, whether the Captain and First officer knew it or
not. We didn’t have enough fuel to get back now.
The next days were full of hard work and quite a bit of
cussing on my part. We eventually regained control of
the ship. The Captain left us in light speed, seeing
that there were no planets or systems nearby on the
sensors.
We couldn’t spare the energy to slow down without
having some sort of way to replenish fuel. Turning
around was out of the question as well, since we’d
traveled far enough that the closest inhabited planet
was beyond our reach too.
Her objective was to find the next planet and drop out
and search for fuel and other items we’d need. We’d
continue to explore as our orders stated. I guess she
thought by keeping us busy we wouldn’t fret about being
lost on a one-way trip.
The VR system was totaled. The women took that very
hard. I didn’t understand why at first until about two
weeks after the incident with the rock. I was in an
access tube checking over the engines. My youngest and
actually best Mech Tech, Jennifer, was helping.
It was hot and somewhat uncomfortable work. Being close
to the engines at any time was not fun. Now however,
with the added pressure to keep them in top shape, it
was real bad.
Jennifer was in her skintight body suit, her overalls
being way too hot to work in where we were. I was in my
body suit also. They were like, well, remember spandex?
From way back in the nineteen hundreds? That’s a body
suit. The material is thinner and more resilient now,
but the stretchiness and body conforming ability was
similar.
Jennifer was a well-endowed young lady. As she was
working around me I couldn’t help but notice her
nipples sticking out and the shape of her beautiful
shaved mound. (Yes, that tight and that stretchy) I
caught her looking at my body a few times too. She was
nervous as hell and not able to concentrate at all on
the job, which was very unusual for her.
I heard the clang of a wrench bounding off the Drive
framework, and then Jennifer started cussing. I was
able to grab the wayward wrench before it careened into
an place we couldn’t get to. It wasn’t good to have
loose things floating around in this area.
“God damn it. Fucking wrench. I can’t seem to hold onto
anything anymore. My hands are just shit. Fuck I hate
this.”
“Take it easy Jennifer. It’s not that bad. We’re just
about done and I have the wrench, no harm done. Scope a
chill.”
“Oh sure, you can sit there and work so calmly. Mr.
Monk… fucking maintenance monk Taylor, the VR hater.
You fuck.”
Her anger towards me caught me by surprise.
“Whoa… what the hell’s gotten into you? I’ve never
heard you say that kind of shit about me before. What’d
I do to you anyway?”
Her face took on an apologetic countenance. I could see
she hadn’t meant what she’d blurted out so suddenly.