Hunting The Storm Ch. 01

"Sounds alright to me. They're hot. All of them," John said, smiling.

"They're also programmed," Gregor pointed out. He shifted uncomfortably, as even the conversation was making him horny. He never would have noticed if he'd just been Captain, but now he was back to being Gregor too.

"What happens if you don't have sex?" John asked,

Gregor frowned and shrugged. "I don't know. It hasn't happened."

"Shit, brother." John shook his head. "At least Bump kept you happy. It could've been worse."

"That's not a joking matter," Gregor replied quickly. "Look, how about we keep them occupied, keep coming up with jobs for them to do and see how they react?"

"Alright, but if they start acting up then you're gonna have to consider letting them do what they want," he said, and Gregor knew he was right. He just didn't like the idea of them all being little better than sex dolls, fucking with no free will.

True to his word, John kept feeding suggestions to Gregor as the day went on, so between the two of them they managed to keep everyone busy and active right up to dinner. He suspected from the recognisable flushes that Pilot and Cook had sneaked away individually to release their own tensions, but Gunner and Guarder seemed to be coping away. Unfortunately Gregor was in a state of constant arousal and would have fucked anything at all.

At dinner he managed to sit at the head of the table and with John on one side and Thugly on the other it stopped any of the girls from playing footsie with him, a fairly common occurence back on the Bolt-On.

"They're kinda snappy," John pointed out quietly near the end of the dinner. Spark looked a little unhappy as if she felt the responses to her questions were a little too aggressive from the twins, and Flams looked terrified, frequently jumping in his seat, no doubt from probing hands or feet.

"Yeah, I can see that," Gregor nearly snarled back at him. "I guess that makes me too," he added a moment later.

"You're gonna have to let them have some fun," John told him, keeping his expression serious. "It's unavoidable, brother. Can you imagine this twenty four hours later?"

Gregor couldn't imagine his balls would last another twenty four minutes without exploding, let alone twenty four hours. He nodded. "I'll have a word with them."

"Do it now."

Gregor swallowed and asked if the rest of them wouldn't mind, could he have a word with Pilot, Cook, Gunner and Guarder in his quarters. A sudden raft of smiles broke out at what the ladies took to be an invitation to the Captains bedroom, and they scampered off, leaving him standing at the table.

As soon as they were out of earshot he spoke quietly to the four crew members. "You guys all know about the programming." Spark, Flams and John nodded, while Thugly looked a little confused.

"Well, I've been keeping them busy so they can't go all nympho, but it's having an adverse reaction, so I'm going to let them be them, and do what they want to do. If you get propositioned, and I'm sure you all will, feel free to just say no if it's something you don't want to do. They won't be offended, and they'll just seek someone else to play with."

"Aren't you suffering the same way too?" Flams asked. Spark looked down at his trousers, seeing the obvious bulge there.

"Yes, but I know why I'm like this," Gregor explained. "They don't. Best I can explain it, it's like sitting reading a book, or dancing to music or playing sport of some sort. There's no inhibition when it comes to sex for any of them, so if you want to engage, feel free. If not, please don't be too startled when you walk in the kitchen and Cook is going at it with her rolling pin."

"That big fucking rolling pin?" John asked, his jaw wide open.

"Yeah," Gregor replied. "She uses it as a dildo."

At that his cock twitched in his trousers, and Gregor groaned. John laughed while Thugly looked around to see what was funny. Spark pointed to his trousers.

"Go get that seen about. Before it goes off and takes someone's eye out," she smirked. Gregor cocked an eyebrow at her, knowing he shouldn't, but she pointed him towards his cabin. "Go."

Gregor grinned and waddled off to his quarters. As he opened the door, he stopped, seeing Gunner bent over his bed, her face buried in Cooks pussy, while Guarder sat astride her face. The three of them were all moaning, obviously unable to wait for their Captain. Meanwhile Pilot sat on the sofa behind the door, her trousers pulled down, fingering her sopping wet pussy.

He closed the door. "Who wants some cum?"

As he frantically unfastened his trousers and freed his straining erection he knew it would be seconds before he orgasmed. The three girls whipped off the bed and darted to their knees in front of him. Cook, being a little more greedy than the twins immediately took him in her mouth and sucked as hard as she could.

"Fuck!" he blurted as he came, filling her mouth with spurt after spurt, seven or eight heavy loads.

"You better share that," Gunner told her firmly.

Cook nodded with his cock still in his mouth and the corners of her lips twitched up in a smile.

"Me too," Guarder added, her fingers buried between her legs.

As he watched, panting like mad, Cook sucked the last of his cum from his cock and then released him with a wet slurping noise. Gregor took a step back as Cook turned and kissed Gunner, then Guarder, sharing his creamy cum with the twins.

"Yummy," Guarder was the first to say, one hand rubbing her tummy.

"I'll get some later," Pilot smirked from the sofa.

"That's a deal," Gregor agreed, then cleared his throat. "Right, ladies, before you get too carried away I need to talk to you all."

Their expressions turned serious and Guarded even stopped fiddling with herself. Pilot didn't, but that didn't surprise him in the slightest.

"Obviously we're on a different ship now, with some new crew, and while we're very relaxed about sex, they're not used to how we all behave," he said slowly. "Now, I have no objection to any of you fucking anyone on this ship, but don't harass any of them about it, and only play when the work is done, okay?"

"Yes Captain," Gunner and Guarder replied immediately.

Cook pouted but nodded, and Pilot merely smiled.

"Is that an agreement, Pilot?"

"Of course, Captain," she replied, a smutty grin on her face.. "I was just wondering what it would be like to fuck you and your brother at the same time."

"Oh, I want to do that," Cook blurted immediately.

"Yeah, I'm not fucking anyone at the same time as my brother," Gregor replied. Four frowns appeared on their faces.

"Why not?" Pilot asked a moment later.

"I think he's shy about it, because we're brothers," he lied quickly. "So don't any of you suggest it to him, okay?" They all nodded, and he felt a pang of guilt, knowiing they were programmed to be this horny and wanton. He was too, but at least he knew why he was like this. While he wondered what was worse, the twins dragged Cook back onto his bed and picked up where they left off.

"Who do you think will be first, Captain?" Pilot asked a moment later as he wandered over to take a seat beside her.

"First what?"

"First to fuck one of the new crew?"

He shrugged an smiled. "I would've guessed Cook, but I think the twins have their eyes on the big guy."

She shook her head and picked up her trousers. "I'm going to go put your brother through his paces. See how he compares against my favourite cock in the Galaxy."

Gregor chuckled, feeling absolutely no jealousy whatsoever thanks to his programming, although he did smack her hard on the ass as she headed for the door. "Have fun."

"Oh, I'm sure I will, Captain."

Gregor glanced over to the bed, seeing Cook lying there breathing hard, her legs splayed while the twins lay beside her, their faces buried in each others pussies.

The alarm sounded throughout the ship and Gregor leapt to his feet and pulled his trousers up. "Fuck," he said, yanking the door open and heading for the cockpit. Pilot was in front of him and he heard his brother, John, behind him.

"Report," he told the AI system.

"Distress beacon ahead," the automated voice replied. "Ship is the Basciluss. Distress call states ship has lost life support and crew is in urgent need of assistance."

"How long has it been broadcasting?" Gregor demanded quickly as he and Pilot slid into their chairs.

"Call has been broadcasting for eleven hours, six minutes and forty seconds."

"Set a course, Pilot," Gregor said. He turned to his brother. "Assemble a boarding party, John. You, me, Gunner, Thugly. And Spark too."

John nodded and pressed a button on the command console to ask a question of the ships AI. "What can you tell us about the Basciluss?"

"The Basciluss is a Cort-class Freighter registered to Universal Freight Shipping Conglomerate. It is normally manned by a crew of eight. It has twin cargo holds on port and starboard and is equipped with two emergency escape pods, located at the rear of the ship."

"Have the escape pods been used?" Gregor asked the AI.

"I can answer that once we are in scanner range, Captain," the AI said.

"How long until we get there, Pilot?"

"Six minutes, Captain," she said, her fingers moving like a blur on the console in front of her. Captain saw from his own screen that the ship had accelerated rapidly in the direction of the Basciluss.

"Okay. John, let's go. Pilot, you have the ship."

"Thankyou, Captain," she said, nodding stiffly.

Gregor followed John out the cockpit but was stopped by his brother as soon as the door shut.

"Universal Freight Shipping Congolomerate is a subsidiary corporation owned by Storm Industries," John said quietly. "In other words, that is one of Argon Storm's ships."

Gregor frowned as he considered this. Bump, as he still thought of him, was rich and involved in many legal and illegal activities. John's briefing last night had been pretty thorough on that front. If this was one of his ships then they had to investigate, and for more than was readily apparent to his old crew too.

The five of them suited up, slipping oxygen helmets over their armoured suits and grabbed their weapons. Gregor smiled as he saw Thugly pick up two laser-repeaters and put them in holsters either side of his belt, add some kind of heavy plasma gun to a sling on his back and then pick up a gun similar to Guarders Ship Clearance weapon. Gregor wondered if he could fit his hand in the end of the barrel.

Spark was dressed in a black pressure suit and matching helmet that had been painted with all manner of stripes, triangles and sharp edges, and he saw she carried a toolbox in one hand and a laser-pistol in another.

"No life signs aboard, Captain," Pilot reported over the intercom. "Docking in thirty seconds."

Gregor nodded and led the boarding party down to the lower cargo bay, where they waited until Pilot reported a hard seal and then they entered the airlock, closing it behind them before they opened the outer door.

Thugly stepped forward to the pressure sealed door on the other ship and gripped the round handle in both hands.

"Watch this," John said. Gregor knew from experience that it was easier to cut your way through the hatch, or use power tools to rotate it and break the seal, the difference in pressure between the two hulls being the problem.

Thugly's massive muscles flexed, his grip on the handles looking tight enough to crush steel and as Gregor watched, the big man manually turned the handles and hauled the door open.

Gregor could see the big man panting as he completed a Herculean feat of strength. "Well done, big man."

Thugly nodded, then shrugged. "I'm good with sticky doors," he rumbled.

Gunner was first through the door, her weapons out and swinging from side to side as she checked the small corridor at the rear of the ship, followed by Gregor with Thugly right on his shoulder. Spark came next, with John bringing up the rear of the small party.

They reached a half-shut door at the end of the corridor and Gregor peeked around the gap. He could see the engineering console ahead, connected to the main reactor which appeared to be offline. This was obviously the main area of the ship that everything else connected to. He turned back to his small group.

"Me and Gunner go left. John, you and Thugly check the right. Spark, can you have a look at the engineering console, see if you can tell us anything about the ship?" Four nodding heads looked back at him, so he pulled the door open and slipped through. To their left was the entrance to an unused escape pod and then a set of doors to the port side cargo bay.

Gregor had a glance inside, seeing rows of transport cases. He crouched, his laser-rifle pointed towards the front of the ship and Gunner slipped past him, moving quickly as she cleared the cargo bay.

"Port cargo bay secure," she reported a moment later.

"Same over here," John radioed.

"Setting up a feed from the console to Flams for a diagnostic," Spark said. Gregor heard her grunt a little then she said, "Flams, you should be getting data now."

"I got it," Flams reported.

"Let's move forward," Gregor ordered the boarding party. They met on the other side of the ships reactor and moved into the crew area, splitting off into pairs again and leaving Spark to guard the door to the bridge. Gregor and Gunner searched two crew cabins but found no-one there. John and Thugly reported the same, so with Thugly leading this time, they entered the bridge.

The room that controlled the ship was quite large and had seven chairs in it, with dedicated positions for command, pilot and co-pilot, weapons, shields, comms and life support. In six of the seven chairs were the bodies of the crew, each of them in pressure suits, but their oxygen had obviously run out some time ago as they were all dead.

Gregor inspected each of the bodies, reading the name tags as he went. Captain, a male, approximately thirty years old, blonde hair. Pilot, another male in his early twenties, dark hair. Cook, a short female female with red hair and pierced nose.

A chill ran through him as he continued checking the corpses. Gunner, a strong female with blonde hair. Guarder, a tall brunette woman, and lastly, Bump.

"No fucking way," he muttered as he stared at the face inside the helmet. A cold chill ran down his spine.

"Captain, these guys all have the same names as us," Gunner said quickly.

"Get us a manifest of the cargo please, Gunner. You too Thugly," Gregor said without looking up. As soon as they were outside, John closed the door.

"Do you see this, John?" Gregor asked as he stood over the body of Bump. The corpse looked identical to the Bump they knew back on the Bolt-On, right down to the humped back and penguin-like nose.

"Fuck me sideways," Spark muttered as she peered inside his helmet. "I saw him back on the other ship. This must be his twin."

"Or a clone?" John suggested quietly.

"What?"

"A clone," John said, moving closer to inspect the corpse. "I've heard a few rumours that there are a few cloning facilities on some of the grubbier space ports around Saturns rings."

"Any way we can find out?" Gregor asked.

John shrugged, clueless where to start. "We should get their AMACS devices off their arms and get them back to Flams for him to investigate. Spark, can you do that?"

She nodded. "No problem."

Gregor felt like his mind was reeling, shocked at seeing another Bump, but also shocked as he realised that this crew was probably brainwashed too, and could easily have identical programming to him and his crew. "That could be me lying there," he murmured.

"I know," John replied. "But it's not. You're not that guy any more, remember."

"Yeah."

While Spark got to work on the AMACS devices, Gregor and John began a thorough inspection of the crew quarters, picking up cargo manifests and shipping records for previous trips. They worked methodically through the ship, searching for separate quarters for Bump. Gregor knew if they were all programmed the same then Bump would have his bunk somewhere else.

They found it in the port-side escape pod. A bed, chair and a set of twin consoles filled the small pod and while Gregor checked the bed and storage lockers, John searched for hidden data stored away in secret.

Gregor found all manner of disgusting pornographic books, his loathing for Bump as a persona deepening, and he was glad to get out of there after John found a box full of data discs.

"This is what we're after," John nodded. "I'll get this back up to my cabin."

"Okay," Gregor nodded, heading for the cargo bays to see what their current cargo was. He found Gunner in the half-empty port bay.

"Where's all the cargo gone?"

"Thugly and I are transferring it aboard, Captain," she explained. "There's crates of unbranded medical supplies, drugs mostly. Starboard side has more of the same, as well as several crates of Scandium Ore."

"You're kidding?" Gregor said. "Scandium Ore? How much?"

"One hundred and sixty kilos, Captain."

"Shit," Gregor murmured. Scandium Ore was a rare metal that was used in electrical reactors used to power nearly every ship in the system, along with most military weapons too. It worth quite a bit more than it's weight in gold. On the open market fifty kilos would get you a luxury cruise ship, a top-notch crew and enough fuel, supplies and booze to live like a king for a decade.

"That's a high value cargo," he said, frowning. "And these guys just happened to suffer a catastrophic failure to their life support systems?"

"It appears so, Captain," Gunner nodded.

"Does that sound more than a little suspicious to you?"

"More than a little, Captain," she nodded. Gunner was quite formal when it was working time, just like her sister.

"Okay," Gregor nodded. "Let's get the cargo loaded and then we'll see about getting out of here."

"Yes, Captain." Gunner turned, grabbed two of the cases and began to head towards the Super-Sizen.

"Scandium Ore," Gregor muttered as he grabbed a box himself. "That's a valuable cargo to put on a ship with one cannon."

It took them an hour to transfer the cargo into the lower hold of the Super-Sizen, filling half the big space, and while John and Spark retrived anything that might yield data, Gregor considered dragging the corpses into the port escape pod and triggered it to eject ten minutes after they departed, but he opted to leave them on the ship that they'd lived in.

After they took off and resumed their original course, Gregor sat with John in his cabin discussing what they'd found.

"So if that was a programmed crew, just like mine, then we can assume that there's likely to be plenty more like us?" Gregor said, looking very unhappy.

"Yeah. The question is why did the life-support system suddenly fuck up. Why didn't they escape into one of the pods? Why did they just stay there and die like drugged-up puppies?"

"And why the identical Bump?" Gregor added. "More to the point, how do we know that the Bump aboard our ship was actually Argon Storm? If there's clones of him kicking around, then how do we know the real one is dead?"

"I don't know, brother," John replied. "I thought that we'd killed Argon Storm back on the Bolt-On, but this puts a whole new spin on it."

"Okay, put that aside for the minute," Gregor suggested. "What do you know about the real identities of my crew?"

"Honestly, nothing. I'd been concentrating on finding you, but I had no idea who you were with. Since everyone came on board though I've asked each of them to report for a scan in the medical bay. Now we've got full physical workups, DNA, DNE and DNF data, and once we reach somewhere civilised I'll get Flams to run the info against the Colonies Missing Persons database."