Hunting The Storm Ch. 01

"Think that'll yield any results?"

"Should do," John nodded. "The tricky bit is finding out where their own original data is stored,. We got yours from an old backup archive and it was more good luck than anything else that we found it. Nineteen complete data discs for nineteen individuals, all Captains, and the rest were corrupted."

"Nineteen Captains?" Gregor blurted. "That means..."

"There's at least nineteen different crews out there," his brother finished. "Yep, and that's probably just the tip of the meteorite."

"Fuck."

"So we head to this bunker somewhere on Old Earth and see what we can find," John continued. "If there's data there, then we might be able to match it to some of your crew."

"Here's hoping," Gregor nodded. "Okay, what about the cargo?"

"Well, there's always people looking to buy meds or Scandium Ore and there's the black market too, so we can shift the cargo with little difficulty, assuming we take the usual precautions."

"Usual precautions?"

John laughed. "Lots of firepower and a healthy dose of suspicion usually does the trick."

Gregor smiled. "You've changed, brother. You're not that pale little kid I remember."

"Nope. Now I'm a pale adult, but I know a bit more about the world."

"More than I do by the sounds of it," Gregor added.

"Which reminds me," John said quickly. "Talking of pale skin, your Pilot chick grabbed me before the alarm sounded and told me she was gonna... well.... you know."

Gregor smiled. "Yeah, I know. She told me she was going to."

"That doesn't bother you? You guys are sleeping in the same bed," he pointed out.

"It's not like that, John," Gregor tried to explain. "I know it's the programming, but I'm totally liberated about all that stuff. I don't feel jealous, threatened or possessive. Any of the girls can fuck whoever they want, the same as I can. There's no drama about it."

"I thought you two had a thing," John explained.

Gregor laughed suddenly. "Keep this to yourself, John, but Pilot announced yesterday that she wanted to have a threesome with me and you, but I said no."

"That's pretty hardcore," John said, his eyes wide. "I'm glad you said no."

"Well, here's the thing," Gregor explained. "The Captain part of me wouldn't balk at doing that, wouldn't see it as a big deal, but the Gregor part of me finds it a bit... weird. I couldn't explain that to the girls though, because they don't know about the programming."

"I see. That makes sense. So what did you tell them?"

"That you were a bit insecure about getting your cock out in front of your big brother," Gregor grinned.

"Insecure?" John laughed. "Thanks for that, fucker."

"I couldn't tell them what was really going on, could I?" Gregor protested, a broad smile still on his face.

"No, I suppose not," John sighed. "And I'm quite happy to leave Pilot all to you."

"Don't worry about it," Gregor shrugged. "You should go a couple of rounds with Cook though. She'll rock your world. Dirty isn't the word for it."

"She's a little beauty," John nodded. "Mind you, so are the twins."

"I know," Gregor smiled. "They get competitive with each other though, so don't ask them to both give you a handjob at the same time. I swear they nearly ripped my cock off."

John shook his head. "Sometimes when you talk about this stuff and I see these gorgeous women you had all to yourself I can't help but wonder if you'd have been happier left where you were."

"As nothing more than a procreating zombie?" Gregor replied. "No, you turning up is the best thing that's happened to me. It's hard, but it's the right thing, know what I mean?"

John nodded. "I do, bro. It's good to have you back."

"You too, John," Gregor smiled. "Right, I'm shattered. What's the local time?"

"About four hours into third watch. On Old Earth they'd call that two hundred hours. Weird, huh?"

"Lot of weird shit in this solar system, John," Gregor laughed.

"Ain't that the truth," John smiled.

As his brother left the room, Gregor slipped off his clothes and had a quick shower. It had been a hell of a long day. They'd moved almost the entire contents of the ship around, started foolng around in bed, and then the alarm had sounded and they'd spent several hours aboard the Basciluss. He felt physically and mentally exhausted, and quickly fell asleep.

Gregor awoke smiling, because an imminent orgasm and Pilot's mouth around his cock often made a great start to any day. Ten minutes, one orgasm and a tongued clean-up later, Gregor figured it was time to get dressed and organised for the day ahead.

He pulled on his trousers, boots and weapon belt, shrugged a tunic on and left Pilot snoozing in his bed. The main deck was quiet, and he popped into the cockpit to check on their progress towards Old Earth. Twenty six more hours at maximum speed and they'd be there, in orbit around the fabled planet that was the birthplace of humanity. Gregor felt a little twitch of nervous excitement at finally seeing the legendary planet.

He returned to the main deck and wandered past the kitchen area, seeing no-one there, so he headed aft, looking for either Spark or Flams to see if there had been any progress on the AMACS or anything else they'd found on the freighter.

The technical bay where Flams worked and slept had two doors, and both had signs stuck on them. "Do Not Enter. Work In Progress."

Gregor put his ear to the door and could hear the pounding deep pulse of some kind of hardcore mechanical music booming inside the small room. Figuring Flams must be working he turned towards the Engineering room and opened the door.

His eyes widened as he saw Cook grinning at him. She was sitting astride Spark's face as the enginner lay on the floor, her face bured in Cook's pussy. Cook was butt-naked, not an unusual sight, and was busy pulling on her own nipples.

"Morning, Captain," Cook said cheerfully, giving him a big smile. A high pitched squeal sounded from Spark and she scrambled out from under Cook, darting around a panel out of sight.

"What's up with her?" Cook laughed. "She's not even naked, and she was doing a great job."

Gregor chuckled. "Some people are a little private about their sexual tastes and habits, Cook," he said gently.

She shrugged. "Well, I'm not one of them. Want to join us?"

"I'm fine for now. Pilot did a great job of waking me up earlier," he winked. "You guys have fun. Breakfast in an hour?"

"Sure thing, Captain," Cook nodded, her hand slipping down to play with her insatiably hungry pussy.

Gregor tore his eyes away and left the engineering room, closing the door as he went. Cook was a sexual monster, much more hardcore in her tastes than the rest of them. She'd been fisted several times by the twins, once by both of them at the same time, and she regularly asked for spankings and took bets she could fit large objects in her pussy or ass. Only a few days ago Gregor had watched as the twins had double-teamed her with strapons and she'd grinned and asked for more.

"Poor Spark," he said, unable to hide the grin from his face. "She doesn't know what she's let herself in for."

He sorted himself out with a cup of hot cha and took a seat at the dining table, where the twins joined him a few minutes later.

"Have a good night, you two?" The two redheads nodded at him, a slight hint of a smile on their lips.

Gregor smiled, glancing towards their cabin door, expecting to see the bulk of Thugly appearing any moment.

"The big guy in there?" he asked.

They both looked at each other and burst out laughing. "Don't be ridiculous, Captain" Gunner told him.

"I know, right?" Guarder said, a broad grin on her face.

"Who then?" Gregor asked, more than a little confused.

"There's no-one in our cabin, Captain," Guarder told him.

"No, that's not why we're laughing," Gunner explained. "Haven't you figured it out yet?"

Gregor knew he looked confused. "Explain it to me."

"Thugly," Gunner prompted.

"Very loyal to your brother," Guarder added, then winked slowly.

"Really?" Gregor said quickly and they both nodded. He had no idea his brother was into guys. The twins chuckled at the surprise on his face, but as he sipped at his hot cha, he recalled the conversation last night. They'd talked about the women of his crew, but at no point had John said anything specific about wanting to fuck them. In fact, he'd put off sleeping with Pilot by saying he thought that her and Gregor had a thing, and he'd complimented the twins and Cook too, but hadn't expressed any desire to fuck them.

"Fucking hell," Gregor muttered a moment later. "That's a surprise."

"Why is it a surprise, Captain?" Gunner asked, her expression curious.

"Oh, I didn't think Thugly would be my brothers type," he improvised.

"You think he'd be more into a guy like you, Captain?" Guarder nodded. "You are pretty hot, you know."

Gregor shrugged. "It's all genetics and plenty exercise, ladies."

"I love exercise," Gunner said with a wicked chuckle, echoed by Guarder.

"So where's Cook?"

"She'll be here in a bit," Gregor said, finishing his hot cha. "She's getting something serviced in Engineering, I think." Gregor even managed to keep a straight face as he left the table.

Gregor returned to his cabin, finding Pilot dressed and about to join them for breakfast. "Thanks for this morning," he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

"The pleasure's all mine," she smiled. "Well, ours I guess."

"Well, I enjoyed."

"You usually do," she said. "Anything happening?"

Gregor shook his head. "I'm bored. We've got twenty six hours before we reach Old Earth Orbit, and everythings under control."

Pilot cocked an eyebrow. "Much as I hate to sound like Cook, but how about an orgy then, Captain?"

"Well, apparently my brother and Thugly are a bit of an item, or so the twins just told me."

"Really? That's hot," Pilot said, licking her lips a moment later. "Think they'd be up for joining us?"

"Can't see it," Gregor said quickly. "I don't think the twins don't have much to do so they'd probably be up for it. Oh, I found Cook getting eaten this morning by Spark."

"Lucky Cook. Spark's cute."

"Yeah. Cook should be free, but Spark might be a bit reluctant," he added. "When I found them Spark took off and hid. She was a bit shy about it."

Pilot laughed. "We'll soon cure her of that. What about Flams? He looks like he needs his world well and truly rocked."

"Help yourself," Gregor said, remembering the door signs. "You might need to wait until he's done working though. Apparently he goes into a kind of trance state when he's doing loads of coding stuff."

"Three new cocks to play with on this ship, one's out of bounds because he's working and the other two are into each other?" Pilot said a moment later. "Fate is being cruel."

"Hey, at least you've been getting mine since you got on board," he pointed out. "Cook and the Twins only got a load of cum last night and that's been it."

"Poor girls," she mocked. "All this talk's getting me wet. Want to stay here and fuck or have some breakfast first?"

"Breakfast. Come on."

After breakfast, Thugly, Gunner and Guarder went back up to the rear lounge to finish work on the gun emplacements from the Bolt-On, and John asked for a word with Gregor. When they entered Johns Cabin, Spark was waiting there, looking more than a little uncomfortable.

"Spark's found some interesting data on the ships engineering logs."

"Yeah," she said quietly. "The escape pods were all jammed by one of the crew, but I don't know which one yet. Then that same crew member manually removed key components of the life support system and vented nearly all their oxygen supplies into space. It shouldn't have been possible, so whoever did it obviously knew the system inside out."

"Which suggests the Bump clone, right?" John said. "Wrong."

Spark looked up and caught Gregor's eye. "Flams has let me know that one of the crew on the ship had a load of data-faults on their AMACS and he thinks that their mind-wipe may not have worked correctly. As a result they may have been confused, mentally unstable, and that ties in with what I got off the engineering logs."

"You think that one of the crew did this because their mind rebelled against their programming?" Gregor said quietly.

"Sounds likely, brother," John said, nodding his head. "Flams and Spark concur."

"Why not Bump, or whoever he was?" Gregor asked.

"Because his was the only AMACS I marked. I didn't put names on the others." Spark shrugged. "Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," he smiled, drawing an immediate blush from the punky mechanic. "I got another question about the code on the AMACS. Does it match the code on our devices too? Are they mentally clones of us?"

"I asked Flams that earlier, and that's what he's working on today," John said. "Basically, it looks like there's a male and female version of the code for each role on the ship. Twelve profiles, if you will. Your Captain persona is one of the twelve."

"Fuck," Gregor muttered. "So for the last three years I've not even been unique. Just a fucking factory programme rolled out to fuck knows how many copies?"

John had never been a fan of sugar-coating bad news. "Pretty much, brother. The good news is that you've got your other memories back so at least you know who you are. As for the rest of your friends, they're walking talking programmes."

"And maybe clones too?" Gregor asked sadly.

"Potentially," John nodded.

"Oh fuck, I feel awful," Spark blurted. "I just thought Cook was...."

"Hot? Horny? Up for it?" Gregor asked quickly. "She's all those things. Having sex and fooling around makes the five of us happy, so don't worry about it, okay?"

"What's this?" John asked, grinning as he looked at Spark's and her rosy cheeks. "Did you and Cook get it on last night?"

"Hey, don't you talk, brother," Gregor said quickly. "From what I hear you've been keeping a few things quiet too."

"You heard, did you?" John's expression was carefully neutral. Gregor thought of it as his 'Poker-face'.

"I heard." Gregor shrugged.

"Not bothered about it, brother?"

"Why would I be?"

"I just wanted to keep things on the down-low," Spark muttered.

Gregor rolled his eyes. "John. I'm glad you've got someone who makes you happy, and I don't care if it's a bloke or a chick. As long as you're happy, bro. Spark, if you want to fuck Cook, then go for it. She's a horny little slut and her pussy tasts fucking amazing, so you get in there anytime you want. Same goes for Gunner or Guarder or Pilot. Or me for that matter, although I don't have a pussy to taste, so I should probably point that out."

The pair of them chuckled and Gregor relaxed enough to join in a moment later.

"Have we got that cleared away now?" he asked a moment later, a casually disarming smile on his face.

"I guess so," Spark replied, still blushing a little. John nodded slowly.

"Right, what's the plans for today?"

John spoke first. "I'm going through the data from the freighter from last night, and Spark and Flams are doing the same on the hardware and software we took off it."

Gregor nodded. "Gunner, Guarder and Thugly are upstairs finishing turning the upper lounge into a gun emplacement, and then I imagine they're going to set up a gym too, so that'll keep them busy for most of today."

"That just leaves Pilot, Cook and yourself," John pointed out.

"Well, I think I'll encourage Cook and Pilot to go have some downtime for a few hours between meals, and I'm gonna give you a hand, brother."

"Feel free to pop back to engineering or tech to catch up with me or Flams anytime," Spark added. "We'll be getting data out all day too."

"Will do," Gregor nodded.

The day passed quickly, and between John, Gregor, Spark and Flams they were starting to compile quite a bit of information on not just the freighter, but what it had in common with the Bolt-On and it's crew.

They also managed to trace back several months to when the freighter made a drop-off on the moon circling Old Earth, now a tourist resort for history buffs with several small colonies on it.

They had the manifest showing which port, dock and gate number the freighter had loaded at, and considering it a great opportunity to see if they could track anyone who might remember the crew, Gregor popped out to ask Pilot to change course to Old Earths Moon. He found Cook and Pilot going at it on the desk in his cabin, and because he still had his programming in him, it resulted in him butt-fucking Cook while Pilot rammed four fingers in and out her pussy. As soon as he finished up, Pilot headed for the cockpit and Gregor headed back the First Mates Cabin, leaving Cook lying in a puddle of sweat and cum, grinning like a maniac.

A visit to Flams that afternoon produced a rather disturbing revelation that Gregor and John decided to keep to themselves. They'd gone to ask about the box of data disks they'd retrieved from the freighter, and Flams had explained that he hadn't got near them yet, so the brothers took them back to John's cabin and began to examine them.

They contained hundreds of hours of pornographic movies, hidden camera footage of the crew of the freighter indulging themselves in every vice they wanted to, all captured in spectacular detail. There was footage from inside every bedroom, shower, bathroom, crew room and nothing that could be considered sexual was left out.

Gregor realised immediately that the Bump on the Bolt-On had no doubt been doing the same thing to them and knowing that pornography was a lucrative market, especially for private collectors, he lurched to Johns toilet, where he vomited.

"I already knew about it," John admitted when he came back. "That's how I knew you were alive, brother. Because someone sent me a clip."

"Who?"

John rolled his eyes. "Someone I went to school with. They recognised you and sent the clip through asking if it was you. I said it wasn't and that you were off at uni, not starring in some porn movie on a ship somewhere." He shrugged. "If they hadn't done it, I wouldn't have found you."

"I can't believe I'm a fucking porn star."

"It's private collector, black-market stuff. It's not available for common consumption, so you probably won't be recognised anywhere," John explained.

"And that's how you knew it was Argon Storm?"

"There were a lot of steps between there, but yeah."

The other startling revelation of the day came from Flams. He'd managed to crack a section of the controls within the AMACS, and had discovered that their metabolic rate was manipulated to a constant high level, and their sex drives were often triggered by the devices in their arms.

"I don't know what triggers it, but it sends pulses into your body that the body and brain interpret as raging horniness," Flams explained quietly.

"So you know how but not why?" Gregor asked.

"Basically, yeah." The little guy shrugged. "I'll get it though. So we're gonna be at Old Earth tomorrow then?"

Gregor nodded. "Yeah, maybe for a day or two. Anything you need?"

John rolled his eyes, while Flams handed him a datapad with quite an extensive list on it.

"What is all this stuff?"

Flams waved a hand around the Technical Bay, full of consoles, data readers and input devices. "It's improvements for this. I need some of it to help crack your programming too. It's advanced stuff they're using."

Gregor handed it back to him. "Can you prioritise it for me. What we're likely to find, how important it is, stuff like that. If we can get it we will, but I need to know what matters and what doesn't. Okay?"

"Of course, man," Flams said, nodding. "You might want to check with Spark too. She's got a few lists of her own."

"Will do."

As soon as word got around that they'd be trying to do some trading at Old Earths Moon then lists began to appear from the various members of the crew. Thugly asked for a range of strange chemical supplements to help him add more muscle to his already massive body, while Gunner and Guarder requested armour and armament upgrades for themselves and the ship. Pilot asked for a selection of new outfits, and Cook handed them two lists. One was the supplies and equipment she wanted for the galley and food stores, while the other contained a list of toys and accessories for her favourite hobby.