Starchaser
By SpectreOfHell
It was a going away party. There were words to be said, things to be done. Some things to be undone, if possible. The next day, they would be gone, and only God, if He existed, knew when, or even if, they would ever return.
Captain Marco Kensington woke slowly. Very slowly. The computer monitoring his vitals was careful. Precise amounts of stimulants were being fed into him at calculated intervals. He rose from the nothingness of suspended animation into a fog of barely conceivable reality. They had warned him about the sensation of dislocation. He had experienced it before in the trials, but those had been days, sometimes weeks in the state they called hypersleep. This time, eleven years would have passed. If nothing had gone wrong. If the hull had not been breached, if radiation had not damaged the computer despite the thick shielding, if no one at the ESA had goofed the math and put them off target. Marco would wake, he would rise from his chilly coffin, he would exercise and eat and be tested by the computer to make sure he retained cognitive function, and then he would go to the command module. He would open the shutters. He would gaze out upon a new world and a new sun.
Maybe. He wasn’t confident anymore. They said he would not dream, but memories tugged at him. Events that could not have happened. Which was real? Making love to his best friend’s wife on the eve of departure or the fantasy that he was an astronaut, the commander of the first ever interstellar mission? Perhaps both. The hypersleep was real, he was fairly sure of that. The rest, though… maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe he was psychotic. It had happened before.
Esmeralda. She had a beautiful name. A beautiful soul. His fingers tingled with the memory of touching her face. Soft skin on her cheeks, the slight ridge of a scar on her forehead, pliant lips, heat from her neck. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” he had told her.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” she had agreed. But he had. How could he not? Eleven years would pass before he woke again. She would be in her late forties. The barely noticeable silver strands in her hair would have multiplied. Soft skin would be showing signs of wrinkles. Her eyes would still sparkle like
the stars, though. Her laughter would still lift his soul. Her lips would still taste like ambrosia.
The kiss was unexpected. A sudden lunge, her hands pulling at his shirt, rising on her toes to match his height, her lips crashing into his. The scent of her had filled his nostrils, hints of sandalwood and hairspray and the menthol cigarettes her husband smoked. She pulled away, eyes blazing, nostrils flaring, watching him fearfully. Afraid of the fire she had ignited. Wanting it to burn them both to ashes.
Had it been real? Or fantasy? Could his imagination create the taste of her? The salty flavor of sweat on her chest, the fragrant powder on her nipples, the musky tang from between her legs… those had to be real. Through the mists of awakening he could see it as if he had been an observer outside his own body. She sat on the desk of the office they had invaded for privacy. Her dress was rumpled and pushed up around her waist. Black nylons, sheer enough to show how pale her skin was, tugged down to mid-thigh. Enough for him to get his head between pantyhose and her crotch. Her hands in his hair, twisting, pulling, evincing her need for his tongue in her nethers. The drumbeat of her heels on his shoulder blades. The soft moaning of her voice in the air. Her climax, so powerful, filling his mouth with thick fluids that gushed from inside her. Thighs squeezing his head, closing his ears to the sounds of the world around them.
He could still see the fire in her eyes as he stood up between her legs. The disbelief on her face mixed with wanton desire. He understood in that moment how much they had lost. How they had squandered themselves on other people. He thinking her shyness meant she was uninterested, and her thinking his aloofness was less self-defense than it was unattraction. Her nose, she had said, was too large for her face, yet he had always thought it to be a centerpiece of her unique beauty. Her skin so pale that even mild sunlight would turn it red. Him with his awkwardness, more at home with technology than he was with other people.
Oh! How she had inspired him to be better! To socialize, to empathize, to understand and grow into the leader required of him. Enough to be at the helm of the Starchaser. Captain of a ship that would sail the vacant seas between suns. When all he wanted was to bask in the radiance of her gaze. Her smile was the only accolade that truly mattered.
Entering her body had been the highest honor. Feeling her tightness around him, the heat of her, the realness of her soft body. That was reality. This could not be. This cold and sterile box in which he lay. The filtered air, the smell of plastic, the absence of gravity. Nothing to hold him down, and everything to pull him back across the lightyears, back into her embrace. The exquisite sensation of her body, her moist depths, looking at her face as she peaked, as orgasm united them. As he filled her body with his seed.
Air blew across his face. The door sealing him inside was opening. He smelled patchouli and sandalwood. He tasted the bitterness of her tears. The lingering flavor of her juices. He felt the soft heat of her kisses tingling his lips. It was slipping away. He grasped for it, but it was gone. He was awake.
Marco sat up slowly, the motion sending him floating up slightly from the bedding beneath him before restraints caught him and held him fast. A small touch released the clasps. He drifted free of the hypersleep capsule. Along the walls of the module, the rest of the crew was being awakened. But he was first. He alone had that honor. The taste of ashes weighted his tongue.
He followed the carefully regimented routine designed to bring his body back to full capacity. Nutrients went into his stomach, he answered the questions the computer posed. As the lids of the other capsules began to open, Captain Kensington pushed his way out of the module.
The memory had left him horny. And bitter. And sad. He touched the access control next to the door leading into the command module. The door opened. A moment later, another touch had the thick protective shutters lifting away from the ship’s only viewport. Sunlight bathed him. Slightly too blue to be home. And there, the shadow of a planet still distant. A new world.
He wasn’t sure how long he floated there, staring through the port. His mind wandered. Was this real? The metal walls felt real. The cushions of the command chair felt real. The light on his skin was real enough. So why did he still taste her? Why did he continue to smell her? Air wafted across his face from the ventilation. He smelled sandalwood. A lingering holdover, an errant memory, something he was reluctant to release into oblivion.
There was a touch at his shoulder. “Marco,” she said.
They had warned him about this. Extended periods in hypersleep could affect memory. Certain events might become hazy, others brought into sharp definition. He had forgotten something. Knowing he had forgotten it revived the memory.
“Lieutenant Sanders has developed shingles,” the mission control specialist had told him, handing him the notice of last minute revision to the crew manifest. Lieutenant Sanders, male, twenty-six years old, almost irreplaceable.
Marco rotated to face her. He had known who it would be. The memory of that last night on Earth, the moment of passion with her, it had floated up from the depths of his long sleep to remind him. Nothing had been lost.
“Esmeralda,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. To draw her to him. It was against the rules, and perhaps it was unwise. He was the commander, she was the replacement geologist, unranked, sacrificing so much for the mission. For him. They kissed, and the heat of an alien sun joined the heat of two lost souls colliding, joining, finally at peace.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/7z7ibi/starchaser_mf_rom_cons_scifi