In The Hangar Bay, Prepping The Fighters...

Stardate 13131:042;

I was only a few months out of the academy, working in the lower hangar bays with the star fighters, when there was a call on my neural interface from Captain Jeremiah Archer. (Yes, one of THOSE 'Archer's.)

:Yes, Captain?: I said with thought alone, not even pausing in picking up a hydro-spanner.

:Get the Fighters ready to scramble, we've just picked up the signature of one of the pirate ships twenty degrees off the ventral bow.: he shot back over his own neural connection. Like many flag officers Jeremiah had a direct neural up-link to allow more smooth control of the ship in a fight.

:Understood.: I declared, even as Lieutenant-Commander Ursula Domai barked out, "We have a scramble ready order people! These birds have to be good to go in five minutes or less!"

We were ready on time, though Red-Seven had to be grounded due to an unsolvable fluctuation in it's dorsal phaser's targeting matrix.

I went off shift shortly thereafter and didn't know anything was wrong until the next day.

Stardate 13131:042;

I was back in my quarters, and back in Skylar's arms; with certain parts of him in me if you know what I mean. We were doing one of our slow, tantric, mind-meld/uplink/holo-porn screws. Meanwhile Na-kura and Val'mok slammed their hips together just a few feet away like they were trying to kill each other, just like almost every night since they came on board. Honestly, while months ago their enthusiasm had been exciting, these days it just seemed kind of banal. I mean sure, they tried different positions sometimes, but that was all. It was always this aggressive bump and grind with nothing but hard and fast till they both had cum then roll over and sleep. If they were human I would have said they were stuck in a rut. My searches on Klingon mating practices however indicated that this sort of behavior was considered a sign of abnormally-intense sexual/emotional compatibility: especially the part where they were both comfortable falling asleep together afterward. At the time though I was just kind of wishing they would get it over with for the night so that Skylar and I could enjoy our micro-vacation on Orion.

Orion has a unique position in the Empire: it is the one and only planet where slavery is legal, and that only for the natives. One of the founding precepts of the Imperium is that slavery is an abomination before the gods and all the races; a principle which was put to it's ultimate test when the Empire discovered the Orions. EVERYONE on Orion was a ****, everyone. No one quite understands how but to the Orions being a **** comes as naturally a breathing, they like it, they NEED it. To become one of the very rare Orions who can be a master is TERRIFYING to average Orions: the loneliness, the uncertainty, the need to CONSTANTLY evaluate your decisions and plan more than a few hours ahead: just thinking about it will send them into fits. Even the masters were slaves in a sense, bound to the orders set down by their predecessors and the unbreakable precepts of the Orion's religion.

Debate raged in the senate for five galactic standard years. There were breaches of decorum where senators attacked each other with their shoes over weather the Orions should be exterminated as an affront before the gods and sanity. In the end the Vulcans gave the answer: IDIC. Orion was admitted to the Empire. On that one world, and only for the natives, slavery was legal. A eugenics program was instituted to promote and promulgate the traits which led to 'masters' among the population.

AND it became a huge tourist destination. The desire to have someone slavishly devoted to fulfilling your needs is deeply ingrained in many races, a primitive holdover from infancy that some people never outgrow, and most people never fully outgrow. Almost every adult Orion, who under the restructured laws of their world is only sort of a ****, more like something between an indentured servant and serf, creates a 'holo-double' every year, and are well compensated for doing it. These holographic representations of their personality and mannerisms during that year are altered and repackaged by holo-tour studios and become "Orion **** Palace: Apoliton" or "Lucid Dreaming Studio's: Orion Village First Contact" etc holo-novels. Like most humans I find the idea of a race of people who not only want to be slaves but literally panic at the very idea of having to think for themselves repulsive. Yet, at the same time, there is something perversely intriguing about having someone who if I told them to kill themselves just so I could watch them die, they would only ask what sort of method I wanted them to use... Now, actually doing that is grounds for a psych revaluation, even in a holo-program. Skylar and I weren't going to do anything that sick though, just have a nice slow fuck while being hand fed 'dinner' by a couple of nude green skinned young women. (All the taste, none of the calories!)

Na-kura and Val'mok finally went to sleep, and we enjoyed vividly hallucinating a twenty one course meal of dainty little forkfuls of assorted delicacies from across the empire while I played his skin flute with my velveteen sheath like a virtuoso. Finaly, unable to eat another bite, I had two of the Orion girls stick a vibrator in our asses and we both climaxed, the waves of pleasure crashing back and forth in a crescendo I never wanted to end.

Yet, end it did, as it always must. He pulled his wilting willow rod out of me, switching positions so we spooned. I put a fluid absorption pad on my crotch and we fell asleep together till the intercom woke us once more, our dreams fleeting phantom things neither could later recall...