14
An hour later and the Beauregard had her air cover, a high atmosphere drone with an exceptional high-definition camera. The first pictures showed the Earth Ark making steady progress to its insertion point for orbit around Bellus. Clement got his team moving quickly, prepping the shuttle in case it was needed, and to his surprise, Ensign Telco was readying another vehicle.
“What is that?” he asked of Telco, pointing to a large structure the ensign was building out of what looked like empty missile casings.
“A pontoon boat,” said Telco.
“A what?”
“It’s a boat that sort of glides over the water. We have them all over on Metairie,” he said.
“Where did you get it?”
Telco puffed out his chest a bit. “I made it, sir.”
“You . . . made it. Out of what?”
“Everything was on board, sir. I remembered from reading the manifest before we arrived in-system. I used spare missile casings for pontoons, used weapons crates to build the carriage, and Mr. Nobli supplied me with a spare pylon motor from the LEAP drive stores for the engine. I thought it could come in handy in case we went planet-side,” he finished.
“That it could,” said Clement. “How long until you can have it in the water?”
“Any time, sir. She’s ready now.”
“Capacity?”
Telco looked at his creation. “I can configure her for six, sir, if you want to include weapons and provisions.”
“I do, Ensign. Keep her undercover for now, at least until the Ark ship makes her first pass. We might have use for her to get upriver after that.”
“Will do, sir. And sir, she’ll have a much lower heat profile than the shuttle, sir. Almost negligible.”
Clement smiled at the ensign’s youthful enthusiasm. “Carry on, Ensign,” he said as Yan came up to him. They started walking back to the Beauregard together.
“You’re not thinking of actually using that thing, are you?” she asked.
“It’s an option, Commander. I do want to get upriver and see those settlements.”
“Before or after the Ark ship passes?”
“After,” Clement said, looking up to the twilight sky. “How much time do we have?”
“Mika says about two and a half hours.”
“Let’s get her battened down, and call back our drone.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied.
A look of concern crossed his face then, and he did his best to hide it from Yan.
The crew waited in the cargo hold for the Ark ship to pass. It was tense, and very quiet. Yan held up a finger to indicate the Ark would be right on top of them now. Every light, every system that could be shut down, was. Nobli had estimated that with the brush covering the Beauregard and the passing hours since she had gone cold that there was only a ten percent chance she’d be detected from space. But that surely wasn’t the Ark ship’s only means of detecting enemies, especially if she was a war ship.
Ten minutes after the Ark ship passed over their position, Clement ordered Telco to deploy his pontoon boat. Then he gathered with his command crew.
“We’re going upriver to check out those settlements. It’s about fifteen kilometers from here. How fast can your new boat go without creating a ruckus?” he said to Telco.
“At a safe speed of say, twenty klicks an hour, probably get there in about forty-five to fifty minutes,” he said.
“Go fire her up,” said Clement, nodding toward the boat. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”
Yan stepped up. “So who else gets to go on your little expedition?” she asked.
“Logically, you should stay behind and run the camp, but I know you want to go and frankly I could use your expertise. Mika and Ivan, I’ll take you as well, since you both have some, uh, directional expertise.”
“In other words, so we don’t get lost,” said Mika, teasing.
Clement smiled and nodded. “And lastly I want a field medic, so Lieutenant Pomeroy is in.” He looked to his engineer.
“Oh, great,” said Nobli sarcastically. “Just what I always wanted. My own command.”
“Look, you’re the best I have at organization. I want you to keep everybody busy setting up camp, establishing work shifts, and all of that. And keep the lights on minimum, just in case,”
“Aye, sir,” said Nobli, ever reluctant.
“Since this planet is tidal-locked to the star, it should never get either too light or too dark. Planets may pass between Bellus and the Trinity star from time to time. Remember this system has very tight orbits. Use that to your advantage, work at random times, keep energy expenditures to a minimum. Plan for that Ark to pass every . . . ” he looked to Mika.
“Thirty-three minutes,” she finished.
Clement nodded. “And no damn campfires,” he said.
“Aye, sir,” came Nobli’s reply. Clement waved his crew toward the pontoon boat, then held back for a second.
“And Nobli, if they find you, if you’ve got incoming enemies, get the ship out of here. Even all the way back to Kemmerine if you have to. Understood?”
Nobli nodded reluctantly. “Understood, sir.”
With that Clement made for the boat, where the crew had assembled and Ensign Telco had the engine rumbling quietly. He got on and helped push off into the gentle running waters of the river, the engine humming as they accelerated toward the settlement camp, and the unknown.
Thirty minutes in and five kilometers from the settlement Clement ordered Telco to slow the boat down. They’d seen precious little in the way of fauna, but Telco did spot some very terrestrial-looking river fish along the way. There was little in the way of insect life, with the banks of the river mostly inhabited by a mixture of tall grasses in green, purple and yellow. There were occasional breaks in the grass canopy but what glimpses they got of the river lowlands showed a mostly empty landscape of open meadows or stands of tropical-looking trees. Three klicks from the site of the settlement Clement ordered the boat to the shore and they started hiking inland. Mika peeled away her uniform jacket and tied it around her waist.
“God, fresh, humid, moist air again. I’d forgotten what a luxury it was,” she said.
“It’s beautiful here,” agreed her husband as he walked up and put his arm around her.
“Let’s stay focused,” Clement said to the group. “Our objective is to observe these people and see what their function is, and identify if they’re even human. We’ll split up into pairs, spread ourselves out, and observe. Make for the settlement from three different directions, and stay in touch via your ear coms.” Clement held his up so they could see it and then placed it in his ear.
Clement stayed the central course toward the settlement with Yan, while Mika and Ivan went to the right, with Telco and Pomeroy flanking left.
“It is beautiful here,” Yan said as they made their way across the flat, grassy ground together in the dappled sunlight of Bellus. It was like pictures of the autumn season on the core planets that he had seen in school, only here, it had that golden-red glow all the time.
“Let’s not get distracted,” said Clement.
She responded by taking his hand as they walked. “Don’t you ever enjoy a moment of peace and quiet?”
“Not when I’m exploring an unknown world filled with unknown people for the first time,” he retorted, but he didn’t pull his hand away. “For all we know they could think humans are delicious.”
“Well, if you eat the right parts, I suppose that they are.”
He shook his head in frustration at her. “You make my job very difficult, Yan,” he said. She just smiled as they walked.
Presently they found themselves on softer ground. There were tall stalks of plant life ahead of them that had seemingly arranged themselves in a rough but orderly way. Clement stopped and kicked at the ground. It showed signs of having been recently turned.
“This is a crop field,” he said, pushing his way through the plant stalks.
“How can you be sure?” asked Yan.
“I grew up on an agrarian planet, remember?”
He grabbed one of the stalks and pulled it toward him. It looked familiar. He ripped open a husk and it revealed the treasure inside. He showed it to Yan.
“This is corn,” she said. “A hybrid I don’t recognize, but undoubtedly corn.”
Clement tapped his earpiece and got on his com. “We’ve found crops,” he said. “Looks like an Earth-type corn. I’m afraid we have to assume that these camps were either from an earlier colonization, or from a military operation of some kind. Raise your awareness, and make sure your sidearms are loaded.” The others all reported the same type of findings back, with crops like pumpkin, cabbage, and cauliflower. This definitely seemed like an Earth-seeded colony.
When Clement emerged from the cornfield, he made his way to Yan, who was staring at an amber glow of light a few hundred yards in the distance. “Yan, what are you—”
“Shhh—” she said, finger to her mouth. “Listen.” She took him by the hand again.
In the distance, Clement could hear what amounted to the gentle splashing of water, and something else. The sound of what appeared to be a woman’s voice.
She was singing.
They crawled to within about ten meters of what was clearly a water pond, hiding themselves in the tall grass. An amber glow came from the water, some form of bioluminescence it seemed, which lit up the pond around its edges. The singing was louder here, a lilting, content, and even evocative high sound. It was almost like the voice was in a state of harmony with the bioluminescent life-forms. They glowed brighter and warmer with each rising of her song.
Clement and Yan cleared some of the grass, to get a glimpse of what was making such a beautiful noise.
“There,” Yan pointed. Across the small pond a creature was standing in the water, halfway immersed in the amber glow. It had long gray or white hair, a skin tone that matched the amber of the water, and it was playing as it sang, gently splashing the water. Then it turned to face them, looking around as if it had heard a noise.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were staring at a woman, a humanoid woman. Two rounded and very feminine breasts danced buoyantly in the light as she resumed her playing and singing. Her rib cage was positioned exactly as a human woman’s would be. She had two long arms, two legs, shoulders, and even a belly button. Her pubis was covered in the same fine white hair as was on her head. She frolicked in the water, diving in and then popping back up, swimming back and forth from side to side.
“Do you think—” started Clement, whispering, before Yan covered his mouth with her hand.
The creature stopped for a moment, looking in their direction as if it heard something again. They both hid, trying not to be detected. After a moment, the singing and splashing of the water resumed again. Clement looked to Yan and then leaned in to whisper in her ear, even quieter than before.
“That’s a woman,” he said. And she was, a beautiful, youthful, and very human-looking woman. Yan just nodded as he pulled back and they resumed observing her.
She played for a few more minutes and then decided to lie down on a sandy beach on the far side of the pond. They watched as she ran her hands through her long, wet hair, then she settled back on her elbows. After a few minutes of this, she lay down completely flat. They watched as a hand slid down her body, to her pubis, and she began a gentle rubbing of the area.
“No!” whispered Yan. This time Clement covered her mouth. They watched her together, the two of them moving closer together with each passing second, as the woman slowly pleasured herself, reaching her climax within a few short minutes.
As she lay basking in the afterglow, a new rustling came from the tall grass. A male emerged, the same amber skin, the same white-colored hair. She rose and greeted him with a passionate kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck. After a moment of kissing and rising passion, they ran into the pond to play together, hand in hand. “Well,” whispered Yan, “They do make them handsome here on this world.”
“You mean they make them hung,” he whispered back. Yan smiled playfully at Clement, then reached out to him.
“No need for embarrassment,” she said. She slid closer to him, and he looked at her. She was beautiful, and what was going on in the pond was epically romantic. They continued to watch together as the couple engaged in flagrant and unabashed lovemaking, with her straddling him as he entered her, holding her just above the water line of the pond, her hands on his shoulders.
Several minutes passed as the couple engaged in a rousing session of sex play, including multiple positions and vigorous exertion on both their parts. When the moment of climax came they embraced each other, then slowly slid back into the water together. The amber glitter of the bioluminescence in the pool seemed drawn to them and they slowly rolled together in the afterglow.
“It’s bliss,” whispered Yan, holding Clement as close as he would let her. After a few more minutes of kissing, the couple left the pond together, hand in hand, chattering in a peculiar language as they walked off into the distance.
Clement looked to Yan and she leaned in and kissed him hard before he could stop her, and frankly, he didn’t want to. He was aroused to the point of wanting to just let go with her, but he stopped himself.
“Not an option, Commander,” he said. “You know that.”
She blew out a hard breath of frustration and rolled onto her back, looking up at the stars. “Now I understand why you drink,” she said. He was about to respond when they were both surprised by the flushed faces of Ivan Massif and Mika Ori looking down on them.
“Did you see that?” exclaimed Mika in a whispered voice. Both Clement and Yan scrambled to their feet. Mika and Ivan both had the warm glow of sex about them. They had clearly experienced the same inspiration as the couple and had acted on it. Who was he kidding? They always acted on it.
“We did,” answered Clement, running his free hand through his hair. “Obviously.”
“I see you two were inspired by the . . . display,” commented Yan as she tidied up her tunic.
“How could you not be?” said Mika, smiling from ear to ear. “Weren’t you?”
Clement shook his head. “Command protocol, and all that,” he said.
“I can’t believe you let that get in the way,” teased Mika.
“As if you two need any excuse,” said Clement, looking around, hoping to change the subject. “Where are Telco and Pomeroy?”
“Busy, if they were watching,” joked Mika.
“I doubt that. Pomeroy prefers women,” Clement said, then hit his com to call them. There was no answer for several minutes until Pomeroy came on, quite breathlessly.
“We’ll be with you . . . in a few minutes,” she said, then cut the line.
“Apparently she’s had a change of heart,” said Yan impishly. Clement just looked perplexed. When the two finally appeared they both looked as though they’d had a hot and heavy encounter. Clement ordered Telco to raise the ship and get a report, and he walked off to do so, while the rest of them interrogated Pomeroy.
“Um, that’s not . . . like you, typically, is it?” started Clement.
“No, it’s not,” agreed Pomeroy. “I’ve played with Telco before, but with another woman present. I do have a theory though. That bioluminescent organism, it appeared to have an effect on our randy couple, and on me,” she said. “I mean, I’m not normally attracted to men, but I couldn’t keep my hands off Telco. Permission to take a sample, sir?”
“Of?” replied Clement, smirking.
Pomeroy sighed. “The bioluminescence, of course,” she said.
“Granted,” replied Clement. Pomeroy stormed off to the pond.
At Telco’s return he reported back that everything was normal at the ship. This gave Clement free reign to explore further.
“So what do we do next?” asked Yan. Clement nodded as Pomeroy returned with her water samples.
“We go on,” he said. “And follow our randy friends to their home.”
“And then?” asked Yan. Clement shrugged his shoulders, looking around at his crew of intrepid explorers.
“We make contact.”