Chapter 5

Four days after Ramina showed me the changes she had made to the ships, Yuka arrived with the just completed remodeled Phaunos. He also brought the top brass from the Karkallian Navy who wanted to thank me personally for helping uncover the plot against the government, for helping to capture the conspirators on Toolondo, and for all the new ideas. They were surprised that I had come up with so many new ideas.

Yuka’s work was exceptional. From the outside, the Phaunos looked like nothing more than a huge, slow, lightly armed freighter. It was huge for a freighter, but was hardly slow, and was heavily armed. Somehow, he even got a flight of twenty-four fighters aboard, albeit the older model of fighter--the same model the government was phasing out that were aboard my two corvettes. I was sure that, by the time we finished tinkering with the fighters, they would be much better than they were now.

Ramina had authorized Yuka to buy the fighters for me for what the government would get for scrap--less what it would cost them to remove all the systems in the fighter. In other words, I got them for nearly nothing.

The Phaunos even had a full android crew, android pilots for the fighters, android flight crews, android flight mechanics, a company of two hundred fifty android marines, and several weapons lockers filled with everything from handheld energy weapons to more torpedoes. There was even room for some of our new ballistic weapons.

I spent a full day touring the Phaunos, looking at everything. When I found the captain’s cabin, I knew this would be my home while in space if I had company. The cabin was easily five times the size of the one aboard the Cornucopia. Even the shower was bigger, big enough for seven or eight people. I laughed mentally, figuring that Tiyya would quickly fill it.

Aside from weapons systems, propulsion systems, and other equipment, each deck of the ship was wide open and could be filled with cargo containers or timber. I could even put both corvettes and the Cornucopia on one deck with enough room left for all the cargo shuttles.

The next day, I loaded both ships with enough high-tech items to make the Terran government giddy, and still had room for hoverboards and other high-tech toys and equipment to sell to the public. Tiyya, Marile, and Penola were excited when they got home from school.

We had dinner aboard the Phaunos. Marile’s family, Penola’s family, and Tiyya’s family joined us for dinner. They were amazed at the space inside the cargo holds. The space where we ate dinner would be holding the Cornucopia on the trip to earth. Even after loading all the cargo, I had enough space left aboard the Phaunos to hold my original ship for the return trip. After dinner, there were a lot of emotional farewells.

Once the families were gone, the Cornucopia flew aboard. With everything ready, we pulled slowly away from our berth, eventually making our way out of the star system. I stood with the girls, watching the monitors as Toolondo grew smaller and smaller. Toolondo is a unique planet. Currently in the throes of an ice age, snow, ice, and glaciers cover most of the planet’s landforms that are more than twenty degrees north or south of the equator.

While the glaciers still leave plenty of open space available to settle, there is only one real settlement on the planet. There are several mining colonies populated by slaves, androids, and possibly a human supervisor, but the city of Toolondo is the home of everyone on the planet who isn’t mining, the only city allowed on the planet under the treaty between the two governments. With a population of only 30,000, half Karkallian and half Gorokian, it’s still one of the wealthiest cities in the Karkallian Confederacy and has the highest per capita income.

There are as many private estates just outside of the city as there are single-family houses in the city. Much of the allure of the city is a tropical, equatorial paradise without the usual crush of people. A few minutes in any direction in a shuttle takes you to unspoiled beaches, virgin forests, lush, green meadows, pristine lakes, and majestic, soaring mountains. The rest of the allure is single-family dwellings. In Karkallian cities, as well as Terran cities, most of the population lives in underground complexes that can house upwards of ten thousand families. There are, however, usually a few estates belonging to the wealthy that are far outside the city and well away from fertile farmland.

Aside from thousands of mines scattered across the planet, nothing else is harming the environment. Many of the mines require digging through up to a mile of ice to reach the planet’s surface and the wealth of ores hidden there.

As we passed each planet and moon on our way to begin our jump, I released a cloaked probe. Cloaked probes and slave collars were among the technologies I could buy now. The probe was far enough from the planet that it wouldn’t interfere with traffic on the other two planets in this system that were being used commercially for mining and for offworld manufacturing in an airless or nearly airless environment. I planned to leave a string of cloaked probes along the path I usually took to escape the gravitational field of the solar system to start my jump.

Even though I had a lot of firepower, I didn’t want to be surprised by a pirate ship. The ambush while executing the convicts had shaken me deeply, enough to buy the most advanced sensor units available. The Dubanian sensors are actually the best, and I bought a baker’s dozen of them. We mounted three each on the Cornucopia, the Phaunos, and on each of the two corvettes.

I was told that using three spread out as far apart as possible gave a better read using Doppler Effect scanning. Karkallians call it the Kerrhatz Effect, but Terrans call it the Doppler Effect. I also bought one each of the Karkallian and the Gorokian units, so the androids and AIs could play with them and the extra Dubanian sensor on the jump home, wondering if they could incorporate all three technologies to improve those, too.

I was impressed when the return trip only took five days since the new jump drives were even stronger now. Grinning, Ramina explained that my androids didn’t want to give away all of our secrets. They had made a couple of minor adjustments to the main engines and to the jump drives before we left Toolondo.

As soon as we exited the jump, I sent a message to my mother. I needed current Terran clothing for the three girls, so I sent their sizes and a hologram of all three girls together--clothed. I warned that I could be there in four hours, or might not be there until tomorrow, depending on how the sale of my cargo went.

My second message went to my government contact letting him know I would be arriving at Mir-11 within the hour with a huge cargo of high-tech goodies.

My third message was to Warner, warning him that I was inbound and due within the hour.

After that, I reviewed the messages waiting for me. I had to laugh at the enthusiastic requests from the androids I left on my planets asking for more androids, more cargo shuttles, and more tools to harvest or mine things their scans had discovered. I was surprised at some of the things they found in their scans, and the scans were barely a quarter of the way finished. The message from the agriculture planet suggested that I haul the waiting load of timber to Terra Ceti to sell, and then return to pick up whatever I needed for Karkalla.

Terra Ceti was the least populated of the Terran planets, yet it was a crossroads of sorts. Most big trade and manufacturing companies had a presence in the solar system. There were more manufacturing facilities in this system than any other.

I usually stopped at Mir-11 because the government purchased all or most of my cargo right off the ship and all the usual suspects were there to greet me when I arrived. The customs agent did a cursory examination of the cargo, knowing ahead of time that all or most of it was for the government. I directed him to decks eleven and twelve where the goods I planned to sell to the public were stored. Meanwhile, the government was already unloading their goodies. They loved the new sensor units, the cloaked probes, the slave collars, and the five thousand Karkallian androids they asked me to buy for them, although I don’t think they expected me to be able to afford all five thousand at once.

For jobs like mining, agriculture, and other menial tasks, Terran androids are as good as any and are only half the price of Karkallian androids. For many shipbuilding tasks, as well as other technical tasks that require judgment, the Karkallian androids are much faster and more efficient.

I made sure to register the 597 female slaves. I already had their biometric data on a chip for the customs agent. Since a large portion of my cargo was the androids that walked off the ship, I was ready to leave for Terra Ceti three hours after sending the message to my family.

Before I left, though, I gave Warner a special order, asking that he finish it within the week if possible.

While I sent another message to my family, my AIs were sending messages to dealers and buyers, and orders to suppliers. Half an hour later, I was docking at the Tomkit spaceport far above Terra Ceti. Six ships were already there waiting for me. Seconds after we completed tethering to our assigned berth, all six ships requested permission to dock with us.

Ramina coordinated with the four AIs and opened the appropriate cargo doors for each ship to enter. Androids supervised as four of the ships began loading the high-tech consumer goods from decks eleven and twelve and two ships began unloading their cargo on deck six. By the time the first four ships were loaded, and I paid for the goods being delivered, four more ships were waiting to dock.

Meanwhile, the other two ships unloaded the tools and equipment I had ordered and paid for, partially filling deck six. As other ships arrived, Ramina directed them to the correct deck to unload their cargo, and the well-choreographed dance of ships arriving, loading, or unloading, and leaving, continued for the better part of three hours. Had I been supervising everything it would have taken the better part of a day to accomplish what the androids and AIs did in three hours--and I probably would have screwed something up in the process.

The girls were mesmerized as they watched on the monitors. None of them had seen anything like it before. They had seen the cargo unloaded at Mir-11 but hadn’t seen the simultaneous loading and unloading of cargo by multiple ships.

When we finally finished selling everything and had the goods I ordered loaded, I could feel the girls’ excitement level jump exponentially as we pulled away from our berth, knowing that our next destination was Terra Centauri to meet my family. Half an hour later, after leaving the Phaunos in a geosynchronous orbit above my parents’ home, I settled our shuttle on the back lawn. The profusion of smaller personal shuttles already parked here let me know that the rest of my extended family was already waiting for us.

“You ready?” I asked the girls. They all nodded, but I saw the nervousness in their eyes. I had already assured them that my family would love them. The guys would love them because they were all beautiful. The women would love them because they have been after me for years to settle down, marry, and add to the burgeoning population.

I warned the girls that the women would inundate them with personal questions. “We know,” Tiyya replied with a grin. “You were saved many of those questions on Toolondo because your androids answered them for me,” she giggled.

As we exited the shuttle, the back door of the house flew open and people poured out to meet us. It looked like an ant nest erupting to meet a threat. Mouths gaped when they saw the girls wearing only their normal short sarong. Then the two groups collided, and the girls were swept up into hugs by my female relatives. The male relatives settled for a quick kiss on the cheek and a long ogle of their bare breasts.

“Three?” my mother mouthed to me. I replied silently, holding up four fingers and made a “maybe” motion by wavering my hand, and then motioned five.

By the time dinner was over, the important points had been covered. My male relatives were all extremely jealous, especially when Tiyya replied nonchalantly to my sister’s jibe that the poor girls must have to draw straws to see who got my attention each night. “Not at all, Marc is able to please each of us and a friend or two each night.”

This morning, the blissful, well-sated looks on their faces proved at least part of Tiyya’s assertion last night. After breakfast and finishing their chores at their own homes, the women returned to hear more while the men went about their daily farm chores.

I took my sister and two sisters-in-law aside. “I have work for your husbands that will pay far more than they make now. The downside is the Karkallian women. Most Karkallians allow their spouses to fool around with anyone they want to, and the women seem to be inordinately horny. The good news is that there are no worries about pregnancy or disease.

“If a man is wearing a wedding band, the women won’t approach him. The band signifies that the couple has a closed relationship. Once a Karkallian wedding band is put on, only the person who put it on can remove it. Of course, the women will gladly join both of you if you prefer. I know you’d enjoy that, Felicia, but don’t know enough about you two,” I said to my sisters-in-law.

“Why would you tell us, and not your brothers?” Dan’s wife Wendy asked.

“Because he considers you family, sisters just like me,” Felicia replied for me.

“And if we choose not to accept your offer,” Larissa asked.

“Then I don’t make the offer,” I replied. “I’m making this offer to make your lives better, not to bring discord to your marriage,” I explained. I also warned them about the 597 slaves I had aboard the Cornucopia.

“Can I borrow a couple for Nathan and me to play with tonight?” my sister asked.

“That would let us know how our husbands are going to react,” Larissa said thoughtfully, although I saw a look of personal interest cross her face.

“These girls are all so young. I thought you said they were convicted of helping their husbands,” Felicia said after quickly reviewing several pages of thumbnails of the slaves.

“The youngest of them is twenty-nine Karkallian years old. The oldest is eighty-nine. Multiply that times 1.2 to get the Terran equivalent,” I explained.

“But...” Wendy started to protest.

“ ... they barely look sixteen,” Larissa finished the thought.

“They have amazing medical technology there. You saw that being shot twice didn’t even leave a scar on me, and you see how much younger I look now than before my last trip,” I reminded them. I wasn’t quite ready to reveal the existence of nanites, although, if they had sex with one of the girls tonight, the nanites would be passed on to them.

“Would that technology be available to us?” Felicia asked in a very sultry voice as she pressed herself against me suggestively. Feeling her pressed against me brought back a flood of old memories--good memories. Felicia was a year older than me. When we were both old enough to know better but too young to care, we were each other’s first sex partner.

Even before that, we liked each other a lot more than just a brother/sister relationship. Felicia was smart and had a wicked sense of humor, yet cared about others and was always helping someone out with a problem if she could, even if she barely knew the person. She was the shoulder a lot of other girls at school cried on when their own relationships broke up. Felicia was the model I used for the personalities of Ramina and my other three original female androids; although I was careful to make sure none of them looked like her.

I have no idea what Felicia saw in me. Still, our feelings for each other multiplied when we started having sex, and it continued for two years. I was devastated when she started dating other guys, even though I knew it had to happen and understood.

We still hung out together, but physical closeness and occasional touches replaced the torrid sex we had shared before. In some ways, the lack of sex brought us even closer together. For the next four years, there were only few times when neither of us was dating someone else, and we made the most of those times. Those times, our sex was more tender and loving than before, reflecting the change in our feelings for each other. Since she met Nathan twelve years ago, emotional hugs, and knowing smiles are the most we’ve shared.

“If you and Nathan give a couple of the girls a good workout tonight, you’ll probably feel better in the morning than you have for a while. You’ll also find that your appetite increases dramatically,” I commented, hoping that I didn’t give away too much with that statement.

“You know that I always feel great the morning after getting my ashes hauled,” Felicia purred as she pressed her voluptuous body against me again. I could tell from the surprised looks from Larissa and Wendy that they weren’t aware of our previous relationship. I knew that she told Nathan because he had watched us like a hawk for the first three or four years.

“Yes, Marc and I were intimate when we were young,” she told our stunned sisters-in-law. “Since I started dating Nathan, however, the most we’ve shared are hugs; and yes, Nathan knows. I told him about it when he proposed,” she told the girls. “As you can tell by the fact that I never shared it during our private gossip sessions, it’s not something I want anyone else to know about. As far as I know, you two and Nathan are the only other people who know,” she added. Both women made a zipping motion across their lips.

“Why would I feel better than usual, and want to eat more?” Felicia asked when she turned back to me.

“I’m afraid that’s all I’m ready to say right now, but I’ll tell you soon,” I promised. She nodded her understanding. She knew I wouldn’t keep something important from her without good reason.

When Wendy and Larissa tried to get me to tell, Felicia again came to my aid. “Marc has a good reason not to tell us yet, and bugging him won’t do anything but upset him,” she warned.

I had one of my androids stay with Felicia. If they wanted access to the slaves, he could do it. My three fiancées were yakking excitedly with the rest of my female family members. Walking up behind them, I kissed each of the three girls. “I have to make the rounds of the mines and Planet Alpha,” I reminded them. I told the government yesterday to call it Planet Alpha (for agriculture) for now when they pressed me for a name. I named the other planets after other Greek letters, Beta through Tau. They needed the name because the planets were in the area they released the star charts for and they needed a name to show that the planet was already claimed.

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The announcement of six new potentially habitable planets and hundreds of newly discovered solar systems created a huge amount of excitement on every Terran planet. The government didn’t mind a bit when I asked them to keep my name out of it. It would be at least four more years before any of the planets were available for colonization. The government had to do their due diligence--extensive testing and data recording. They also had to check the flora and fauna to be sure nothing would kill the first humans who went there.

I already knew the answer to that but didn’t tell them. They’d want to know how I had such detailed data on the planets, and I wasn’t ready to divulge that information yet. The star chart had listed as “restricted and quarantined” three apparently habitable planets out beyond the ones about which I told the government.

The government had already built inter-system gates for all the six systems with habitable planets. Once the first jump drives were complete, they would use those to deliver the gates to the five most distant systems. That they still hadn’t completed the first jump drives shows how slow they operate compared to the Karkallian government. The sixth system was close enough that a ship had already arrived using hyperspace and had set up a gate.