(Admiral’s Suite, BNS Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi,
Amazon System)
I awakened to a lovely sight: Slave-Captain Ara Virstina moaning
softly as she rode slowly on my cock, doing her best to keep her voice down as
she fucked herself with my morning wood. While I had originally intended to
break her of some of the conditioning she’d been subjected to as a slave for so
many years, I had a change of heart when she and her daughter, the Senator,
made me promise to let them have a ‘reunion’ when I next got back to Dimiya.
Seems they’d been sharing stories about me with each other. Oh well, who was I
to complain, after all the things I’d done in this game?
Reaching up, I gripped the Captain by her hips, causing her
to open her eyes in surprise, just before I slammed her down hard. “Such a
naughty little slave-captain you are, Ara. Perhaps I should find a way to
punish you?”
Captain Virstina moaned louder now, not bothering to keep
her voice down. “Whatever you wish, Master. I am just happy to serve you, as
always!” Even as I held her hips down against mine, I could feel her grinding
back and forth quite nicely. Whoever had trained her had done an excellent job.
Groaning pleasurably, I said, “Well, then I think I will
punish you by having you report on the condition of the ship and the group,
while I enjoy myself. If you mess up, then I’ll be adding new punishments. So
do a good job, or I’ll be forced to get creative.”
“Aahhh! Oh, yes Master! Th-the fleet has finished gathering
with the last of the new additions being added in the last six hours. The – ah!
— Knight class Destroyers look to be very capable, M-master! They’ve been
through f-field trials and are ready for action. The fu-uuull order of battle
for First Group has the Ama-no-Murakumo,
two Reapers, six Knights, eight Assassins, sixteen Gunboats, the carrier Pandora’s Box, and the heavy logistics
freighter Davenport. We-eee also have
the First Group of the Black Star Marines and the Nova Eden-class Colony ship Starborn
which will follow us once we secure the other side of the Gateway.”
I smiled as she tried to keep things together, despite me
becoming more active in this morning play. The ‘order of battle’ she described
was the ‘standard’ for the Black Star fleet, but the Second and Third groups
didn’t really bother with that as much. The Second Group was the Dimiya defense
group, protecting our holdings in Dimiya and performing jobs in that sector.
The Third Group was more geared towards support rather than offense or defense,
and was typically going to be in rear areas. Neither of them needed the power
that First Group had. Fourth and Fifth groups, though, were the ones that would
be directly going into harm’s way more often than not, and they needed the
boost. “Very good, my pet. I trust your people have made the best use of the
last couple months?”
“Oooh! Yes, Master! They are aaaah-ll ready to go. Everything
is ready for diving to check the Nineteenth Gate Address. We haaave calculated
according to the texts left behind by the aliens which brought the Nuevo Edoans
to their world, and we believe that o-one of the gates is nearby, like how the
Desolace, Aquarian, and Nania systems were all relatively close, all being in
Confederate space.”
I nodded as I moved to change positions, rolling over so
that I was on top of the knelfi woman now. “Well done, Captain. You and your
crew have worked hard to get ready for venturing through the Gateway. Now, take
your reward!”
“OH! THANK YOU, MASTER!”
(Main Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi,
Amazon System)
I looked over the bridge crew, who were all smiles as they
saw me enter alongside the Slave-Captain. No doubt the rumor mill had already
let it be known that the Captain had spent the night in my quarters. Well, it
was the truth, and I saw no reason to deny or be ashamed of it. It wasn’t like
I didn’t have the reputation for doing that, and more, by now.
I turned my attention to the screens, seeing the fleet
assembled. We’d chosen the Amazon system to launch our first expedition from
because we could control access to the system easier than we could, say,
Desolace or other worlds with Gateways. Even the pirates stopped trying their
luck in getting the planet full of potential slaves, since the Amazon planet
was still rich with Greenwave nanites (current estimates had it being another
fifty years before colonization efforts could begin). This was important, not
just for keeping the Gate address secret as long as possible, but also for not
rattling our neighbors more than was needed.
The problem, of course, was that the Black Star Navy now had
battleships and real carriers that weren’t war prizes. This was something that
made people nervous when I had them parked places they did business. Which is
why as soon as the Ama-no-Murakumo
had finished construction, I had it ship out for the Gateway as soon as possible.
It wouldn’t do to leave it hanging in the public eye and making people nervous.
The other two battleships in the Fleet were the BSN Gugnir in Fourth Group, based at
Madrigal Base, and the BSN Banshee’s Wail,
in Fifth Group, based at Nuevo Edo. This made the Banshee’s Wail the only one of the battleships that were in more or
less constant view of the public. But Captain Windrunner was smart enough to
keep the Fifth group from just sitting in orbit like a threat. They were
officially there to help protect the planet and Black Star property if the
X’thari returned. Unofficially, she was using Nuevo Edo as a staging point as
the Assassins from Fifth Group were scouting the nearby systems.
As Slave-Captain Virstina had said, the First Group had
grown considerably. Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi
was the center of the group, naturally. Of course, many of First Group’s ships
were old hands, but there were several newcomers. Shinokage was one of two Reapers in the Group now, with the Shifrat Almawt (a name that meant
Death’s Blade) as the second. Six Knight class Destroyers were added to the
formation, and I had unilaterally declared that they would be named Lancelot, Galahad, Bedivere, Kay,
Gawain, and Tristan, after some
of the Knights of the Round Table. The blooded Assasins Shadowdancer, Simo Hayha,
Wisteria, and Artemis were joined by the newcomers Spitfire, Whirlwind, Zephyr, and Reliant. Our little swarm of gunboats had risen to sixteen, and
the Vicious Return had been shifted
into the Marines, while the new carrier Pandora’s
Box and the Oregon Trail class
heavy freighter Davenport rounded out
the ships in our group. The Vicious
Return may have gone to the Marines, but Ghost Squadron was now stationed
on Pandora’s Box, along with the new
Red Guardian, Silver Sentinel, Gold, and Black Dragon Squadrons.
The First Group of the Black Star Marine Corps was going to
be joining us on this venture, just in case we found some X’thari we needed to
educate on their new place in the world, or anyone else we needed to make the
kind of subtle diplomatic approach that only Marines offered you. BSMS Thunderfury led the way, of course, but
now she was joined by the BSMS Vicious
Return and her new Firelord Squadron. The three Crow class Assault Ships (Threnody, Deliverance, and Wrathgate)
added to the Marine group’s firepower, both in space and on the ground, giving
the Marines some powerful options. I’ve never once heard about Marines
complaining about having more options on the battlefield that weren’t ‘field
expedient’ patch jobs that were the product of pure desperation and insanity.
Of course, the final piece of the puzzle for our new
expedition was the Nova Eden class
colony ship that the Empress had gifted us with as payment for our part in the
Civil War. We’d named it the Starborn,
not only because it was easier to say than a complex alphanumerical serial
number, but also because colonies often took the name of the colony ship that
founded them. A Black Star colony being known as Starborn sounded like a nice fit. The Starborn would wait until we cleared the system of hazards before
transferring through. There was no way I was risking that ship on the unknown.
Some would probably wonder why I needed a colony ship, if I
had things like the Nightforge in
Third Group. Well, to be honest, I could make a colony on a world without it.
But the Nova Eden ships were designed
to be a one-stop shop for setting up a colony overnight. The colony ship itself
would form the basis of the colony, essentially landing shelter, defense,
communications, manufacturing, food production, and all the other essentials on
the face of a world that may or may not be capable of supporting the kind of
life found in Known Space. While the capabilities of the facilities were
limited, especially when taking into account the potential growth of the new
colony, when trade and new settlers beyond the five thousand souls in stasis
arrived, it was perfect for providing a secure site where the newborn colony
could manufacture their own infrastructure.
Actually, the Nova
Eden series were quite a bit smaller and more streamlined than the original
colony ships, which would actually separate into sections in orbit, with each
section doing a (hopefully) controlled descent to the colony location. The
newer ships were only the size of a superdreadnought, instead of the far larger
generation ships that were originally launched. Not needing to deal with the
life support concerns of the five thousand colonists save for a small support
crew made the whole effort far more streamlined, allowing the colony ship to
actually land on the surface, which greatly reduced the potential problems in
getting all those resources and people down to the surface.
I took a breath, and said, “Sensors, are we alone?”
The sensor officer nodded his head. “Aye, Admiral. No ships
on sensors not belonging to Black Star. All satellites and probes not belonging
to Black Star have been destroyed or commandeered, according to their origin.
Last tachyon pulse of the system was twenty minutes ago, and showed we were all
clear.”
I took a breath. “Communications, put me fleet wide.” When
the communications officer nodded that we were live, I looked into the camera,
and said, “Men, women, and others of the Black Star Fleet, this is the Admiral
speaking. We are gathered here on the precipice of history once again. Since
the fires of Jagloth, Black Star has been pushing forward, always on the
cutting edge.”
“It was no government entity that recovered the address for
Nuevo Edo. It was Black Star. It was not an empire which helped Nuevo Edo fight
off their ancient foes, and help them stand on their feet again, fighting
alongside our forces with no less courage than we showed as we defended their
world from the X’thari threat. It was Black Star. It was no Confederate or
Terran Marine force that captured the first intact X’thari carrier class
vessel. It was Black Star.”
“Once more, we are poised on the brink of history. We have
functioned as mercenaries and businessmen as the case may be, hiding in the
shadow of larger governments. Now, we are a power that is too large for
governments to simply ignore, but too powerful for them to easily take down.
Already, we have had to fend off attacks from the rich and the powerful who
thought that they could pressure us and take what was not theirs simply because
their methods had always worked before. We repulsed them emphatically, and now
we have made many people nervous as all hell.”
“Some of you may be wondering why we would push the
boundaries again and again. Why should we be the ones to explore, when it is
nice and safe living in someone else’s shadow, letting others do the hard and
dangerous work of venturing into the unknown? I will tell you why! For over a
hundred years, we have known about the Gateways. In that time, only a handful
of people have ever tried flying through addresses that were not on the Valoys
Tablet found in the Ihm Imperium that gave us the first sixteen addresses in
Known Space. The only ones who tried were those so desperate or insane that
they tried dialing random addresses, and the overwhelming majority were never
heard from again. And then Black Star came along. We found the seventeenth address,
and with it, Nuevo Edo. There, we found an address book, containing many, many
more addresses.”
“So why hasn’t anyone gone visiting to these addresses?
Because it is the unknown. We know that there must be a Gateway with the X’thari
homeworld on the other side, but we have no way of knowing where it may be. And
that is only considering the X’thari, and not any other threats or hazards that
may be out there. After all, a group of aliens was responsible for droping the
Nuevo Edoans where they landed.”
“That is why we have gathered here, in order to make
history. We have a fleet unlike any that has been assembled before, one capable
of defending itself at need, and fighting off a superior foe. We have some of
the best people in the galaxy in our fleet, blooded in battle with the Usurper
Emperor and the X’thari. We will do what others dare not, for we are Black Star!”
“And should the forces be too great for us, and we are forced
to flee away from the Gateway? We believe the gate we are dialing is a little
over a month’s travel from Nuevo Edo with conventional FTL drives. So even if
the worst should happen, I will not throw you needlessly into the fire. We may get
battered, but we will not be broken. We may get pushed back, but we will not be
defeated. We are Black Star, and we lead the way where others dare not tred!”
“This is Admiral Mollen to all ships, prepare for Gate
travel!”
Previous Chapter Table of Contents Next Chapter
Be sure to read my published works!
Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37
Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071VPRNDB
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-stuart-grosse/1128941349?ean=2940161995297
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0774T354X
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rules-free-vrmmo-life-omnibus-i-stuart-grosse/1128953195?ean=2940162052081
Book I - Game Start https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071LT5WGL
Omnibus I - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077X2KR7Y
City of Champions Online (Superhero GameLit):
Issue I - Origin Stories https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075SHXQS1
Lewd Dungeon (Dungeon Core GameLit):
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB34DHF
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FBPF6HR
The Kalipshae Affair (A First Contact Short Story): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0739V6R6T
No comments:
Post a Comment