Skimmer

Written by Lorn Skye

© 2022

Chapter One
It Begins

Skim - to move or glide lightly over or along (a surface, as of water)

I was sitting in my ship, coasting along on the ride back home. It had been a reasonably productive day, having been able to capture and harness an obsolete Russian satellite that was beginning the have a deteriorating orbit. I had filed my claim and was awaiting notification of its acceptance from the orbital safety committee.

In the meantime, I just had time to kill as I coasted back to my home base on the moon. I had completed my slingshot action a few hours ago, but even with optimal speed, it still took some time to make the trip home.

I thought about the things I would need to do when I got home. The solar panels from the satellite were probably salvageable and I could use the extra boost in power since a stray meteor had damaged my solar array a few weeks back. The other electronics would go through recycling, and if there was any life left in the battery, it would be added to my battery bank that was buried in the ground deep below the lunar surface.

Of course, I could always hope for thruster fuel and compressed gas, but those were rare, especially in satellites that were in degrading orbits.

Just then, a ping let me know that I had a message. I was pleased to see that it was from the OSC granting my claim and paying the recovery fee for the satellite. One less hazard in the heavens had a value and they were happy to pay the few of us who were willing to live out here and do this job.

As I scanned the computers, I realized I had reached the half way point in my journey. While it still took about a full earth day to cross the distance between earth orbit and the moon, it was a far cry from the primitive ships and the three days it had taken the astronauts of Apollo 11.

Making sure all systems were green, I turned the ship 180 degree and set the ion thruster to start slowing us down so that we were at the correct speed when we hit lunar orbit.

Ion drives had made space flight possible. They essentially used electricity and a raw mineral ore that was abundant on the moon. While you still needed a launch system to get off the surface, the ion drives made the trip back and forth to earth orbit economically feasible. My little skimmer ship could even survive an earth re-entry, though it would be incredibly uncomfortable and a water landing was the only way to ensure you survived.

After ensuring everything was set, I knew I had about six hours to sleep, and as I had learned, sleeping when you could always paid dividends. So I leaned back in my seat, inflated my pillow and settled in until my alarm awoke me.

My little abode on the moon was marked by the array of mismatched solar panels that tracked the sun as it crossed our sky and reflected back to us from the earth. We were in the middle of a lunar night, which lasts for almost 30 earth days, which made seeing even the solar collectors from altitude difficult, though they were angled to pick up reflected light from the earth as much as possible.

The fact that it was the middle of the lunar night was the reason I was out skimming. If it were a solar day, I’d be busy working the greenhouse, the ore mining station, or just maintaining the station. We Lunars took advantage of the solar day and tended to rest and hope everything worked during the long solar nights when it got really cold outside.

A small red blinking light indicated my landing skid, and I used this plus a sat nav transmitter beacon to guide the ship in. Mostly the computer did the work, I was just here in case something screwy happened that the computer wasn't programmed to handle, like an asteroid strike, or other human interference.

But today's landing went smoothly, and after donning my helmet, I activated the pumps to retain as much of the air in the cockpit as possible. When we were as near vacuum as possible, I popped the hatch and climbed out, dragging the satellite that I had snared over to the airlock. I would need to break it down into parts before I could decide what I was keeping, what I would recycle, and what I was willing to sell.

Once the satellite was in the airlock, I secured my ship and shut down my guidance beacon. Then I headed inside for the job of salvaging the parts from my capture.

It had been a good harvest, and the additional solar panels were already generating power from the reflected earth-light and promised to significantly boost power production come the next day cycle. But I was back in my ship today because I had been tracking an asteroid. While it was near the outer limits of my range, I thought that with full thruster tanks and my ion drive, I could harvest the asteroid and the valuable minerals that it might contain. I also had a sneaking suspicion that based on its trajectory it was at least partly a comet, which meant it possibly contained gases and water, both of which were invaluable to Lunars.

It would take me two days to snag this rock, setting up and slingshot around the moon and hoping that with my ion drive and thruster I could maneuver the rock into a slingshot back toward the moon. I'd run the simulator a few hundred times, varying the weight and composition of the rock and the solar location, and I was successful around sixty percent of the time.

So after clearing lunar orbit and setting my intercept course, I settled in for a nap, knowing that worrying about a deep space death wouldn't do any good at all now.

You see, a deep space death is what we called the death that followed running out of air when you had missed your gravity slingshot and wound up in deep space. While an ion drive could run for weeks and would eventually bring you back, most ships would run out of air long before that happened.

So if I miss-calculated and the meteoroid was too big or too heavy, I could say sayonara to my home base and the very valuable land grant I had from the UN. While a lot of land grants had been sold by the UN, most went unclaimed and unsurprisingly, I had no neighbors for miles around. I had even been able to buy a few of the adjoining tracts, making my home base one of the largest settlements on Luna.

But for today it was rest and sleep and let the ship do her job to get me to the rock.

Three days later, I was hyped to be back in my ship and headed home. I had a large rocky comet strapped into the hold and despite having to take a walk to get it secured, I was about to be a very rich man. See, air and water are rare on the moon.

While they do exist and we could extract them to some degree from the ore that we mined, loses from air locks and filtration system inefficiencies meant there was always a need for more water and air. Even carbon dioxide was lovely since we could pump it into the algae tanks where it would quickly be converted to oxygen. Nitrogen gas went into tanks as fertilizer as well, and surplus nitrogen was used for thrusters.

My only worry now was could I slow down enough to catch a lunar orbit where I could spend a day or two slowing down enough to land. But if I could pull it off, it would be worth burning every last bit of fuel in the thrusters and every bit of air I had used on the walk.

But worrying about it now wouldn't help. All I could do was point the ship the correct way and set the ion drive on max and hope she held together despite the heavy load.

It did take two loops around the moon with the ion drive running full bore to get my momentum down to a range where I thought I could hit my skid strip and manage to hold the ship on the surface.

One of the reasons I had picked my land grant was the presence of a lot of loose dirt over the majority of the land. While prospectors wanted the rocky areas in hopes of finding rare minerals, I knew I wanted to be a skimmer and make my living flying ships. So having a good skid strip for landing ships was key for me. A good strip with plenty of dirt helped to slow down the ship without needing reverse thrusters.

Just as I was lining up my landing, there was a large flash on the horizon, and a quick survey of where I was and the direction of the flash suggested that it came from the main landing strip for Lunar Base, the largest habitation and the main UN settlement.

I quickly turned on the scanner to all frequencies, something I rarely did since I only needed to occasionally communicate with OSC and even rarer still to talk to Lunar control. However, I wasn't expecting the complete and total radio silence that greeted me when I turned on the scanner.

Normally, if there is any kind of emergency here on Luna, everyone pitches in. When the asteroid had hit my compound a few weeks back, I had more visitors than ever before, people checking to see if I needed a hand, if I had an air leak, and so forth.

So a big blast like I had seen just over the horizon should have brought a lot of radio chatter instead of the silence that I was hearing.

Unfortunately I was headed the wrong direction and I didn't have the luxury of changing course with the heavy load I was towing. All I could do is try to get down and unloaded, refuel and then see if there was anything for me to do.

With one last adjustment to the controls, I was headed into the skid pad, ion engine still blasting away trying to slow us down as much as possible. I just hoped that I didn't bounce with the extra load. Hitting too hard and bouncing was a real danger, and you could end up in orbit again spiraling out of control.

I said a prayer to the Creator despite the fact that I wasn't really religious, and held tight, ready to fire the maneuvering thrusters if they were needed. The computer counted down the meters until we landed, and despite a small bump, we held it down.

Once I was sure the ship was on the ground and staying, I fired all the thrusters to try and slow us further. We were coming in fast and I hoped we didn't have to use the safety cables that ringed the end of the skid plate.

We were getting ever closer to the safety cables but I thought we were going to avoid them when the thruster tank ran dry. Without the additional slowing effect of the thrusters, I knew we were going into the cables, so I braced myself for the impact and prayed that nothing ruptured.

When the shaking and sounds of the steel cables stretching finally came to a stop, a seeming eternity later, it appeared I had survived. Even more importantly, my ship had survived and my trusty cable system had once again saved the day.

With a few deep breaths and a thankful prayer to whatever deity might be listening, I pumped the air out of the cockpit, popped the canopy, and climbed out. I needed to get the comet into my processor and while gravity on the moon was certainly lower than back on Mother Earth, mass was still mass.

I grabbed a hand cart and with a lot of elbow grease and sweat, I eventually got it out of the hold and onto the ground. Once there, it was fairly easy to roll it into the shaft that led to the processor with the hand cart.

That was the other reason I had picked this land grant, the presence of a lunar pit. Other than my landing strip and my ship parked on it, a casual observer might not notice that I had a whole habitat underground here. That would be because the entrance to my home was a naturally occurring lunar pit, the result of a small meteor hitting a lava tube causing the ceiling to collapse. I could jump down into the lava tube and walk over to the entrance of my habitat which was then buried even deeper in the lunar surface.

Now I had the job of untangling my ship from the safety cabling. I grabbed the winch cable and set about pulling the ship slowly back toward the open area I used for launches. To launch the ship, we used a combination of a bounce from suddenly deploying the landing skids, the thrusters, and the ion engine at full blast.

So it wasn't hard to take off, just landings tended to be tricky!

Once I got the ship untangled and free of the safety cables, I needed to re-stretch them and ensure that they were there to catch me the next time. Just like today, my little cable net system had saved my ass in the past and I had a feeling I would need it again in the future.

Finally, I had everything situated and I was exhausted. The physical labor, even in low gravity, was wearing out my weakened low gravity adapted muscles.

But despite being tired, I knew I needed to check what had happened with the bright flash I had seen from the location of Lunar Base. So taking a last look around the yard and double checking that everything was in its place, I started to head inside, stepping into the airlock and hitting the cycle button.

Once inside, I stripped off my suit and sent the waste water to the recycler in the greenhouse, toweling off the last remnants of moisture and slipping on a clean jumpsuit. I headed over to the communication center and turned on the scanner and logged onto the Internet to see what the news channels had to say.

Interestingly, there was a lack of any communication from Lunar Base, to the point that people were starting to wonder if they were having problems with their communications. I posted the video feed from my ship showing the bright flare just over the horizon on my approach and that caused quite a stir and a few of the closest settlers decided they would head over to scout out the situation.

Meanwhile, I headed over to the greenhouse to ensure it was running smoothly and that the robots in charge of tending the plants hadn't gotten themselves tangled in the drip hoses or the cords that ran along the walls. While I ran a neat ship, things did happen and I had been away for four days on this last trip to capture the comet.

Things appeared to be running well in the greenhouse. The algae tanks were bubbling nicely and would need to be harvested soon. While algae might not seem tasty, it was protein that would keep you alive and provided the valuable service of turning waste gas into oxygen and other useful nutrients. It also was an important step in filtering waste water.

But I also had beds of fruits and vegetables that grew under low voltage LED lights. While the lights wouldn't cause the plants to fruit, it would keep them alive until the next day cycle where they would produce fruit. I also checked the grains and bean plants which were doing as well as to be expected. Reflected earth light was barely enough to keep them going and even with mirrors to concentrate the light, the plants struggled during the 348 hour long nights we experienced on the lunar surface.

I then climbed up to check the double layer sapphire laminate ceiling to ensure there were no cracks or damage. While the clear covering was as tough as the cockpit canopy of my ship, it was still weaker than the steel and concrete dome in which I lived that was buried under at least eight feet of lunar rock and soil. So regular checking of the thin layer was a safety routine for anyone who had a greenhouse on the lunar surface.

It was while I was doing my inspection that I first noticed the blinking light indicating a ship in a strange lunar orbit. I kept an eye on the light trying to fix its path in my mind as I finished my inspection, so when it disappeared beyond the horizon, I had a pretty good idea of when and where it should next appear, so I had the home system set a reminder for me and I went to grab some food and check on the processor and how it was coming on the comet.

A good processor was worth its weight in gold, and they were priced to reflect that. In fact, my processor was more expensive than my land grant, my ship, and the cost of all my dwellings. Only the cost of hauling everything up here from earth had been more expensive, but a generous grant from the UN to the first five hundred settlers had covered that cost.

Now you might ask why an intelligent, reasonably good looking guy in his early twenties would voluntarily agree to go live with a bunch of grizzly men in a very hostile environment. If you did ask, I’d probably growl at you and tell you to mind your own business, but the truth of the matter was that at the time I felt like I had few other options.

I had been engaged to be married and my parents had taken my fiancé out for dinner while I was finishing up my exams. When they didn't show up, I got worried about them and starting calling around, only to have the state police knock on my door to tell me they had been killed.

Apparently my fiancé had lost control of the car after being clipped by a car whose driver was drunk and had crossed the center line. They had gone off the side of a cliff and crashed in the ravine far below.

Their deaths had been instant he told me.

I spent a few weeks laying around and bemoaning my life, but I finally pulled it together and got them all cremated and dealt with the few extended family we had and our friends. It was actually one of my college buddies who first mentioned the UN land grants to me. It sounded interesting and that had started me on my path. Between that and my studies in astrophysics and engineering, I was an ideal candidate and was quickly approved. And the next thing I knew, I was on my way to the moon.

One of my first projects had been to integrate my processor and my mining operation. I had enough solar panels that energy wasn't really an issue, but burning through components was a worry.

However, I had been able to show that working in the cold of outer space during the lunar night dramatically reduced wear on the processor so I did most of my mining during the nights, and most of my gardening during the days. Skimming was done whenever I identified an object I thought I could capture, regardless of the season. There was a reward for dead satellites and debris, a minimum payment per kilo and more for functional components.

When I got down to the processor, it was working away on my comet. Already, the ice had been melted into components of water and gasses, helping to further cool the computer core. Oxygen was released into the atmosphere or stored in tanks buried far underground, while Carbon dioxide and nitrogen we're pumped into the algae tanks. Trace gasses were separated and stored as well.

Solid components were scanned and added to the ore processing. Meteors were a good source of elements and heavy metals that weren't abundant on the moon. If I was lucky, I'd find some trace minerals and rare earth metals that would make for a good profit. I could tell from the preliminary scans that while the mineral content was low, I had found a large cache of water and oxygen, enough to last me for a few years at least. And the trace minerals and rare earth metals looked quite promising!

There was even one skimmer up here who had found a meteor that was mostly gold, almost two hundred pounds. He had promptly flown his ship into the ocean and retired a rich man. We even had a term for it now, ‘Splashing In’ we called it.

Once I was sure that everything was running smoothly and started to head back up the access ladder, I heard my reminder alarm going off. Climbing a bit quicker, I headed up to my office and trained my telescope on the horizon to see if the ship appeared where I thought it would.

I grabbed the telescope and swung it slowly around, opening the field of view as wide as possible to scan the horizon and in a few moments I located the blinking red distress signal of the ship. This hadn't been present before, but I wasn't surprised as the strange orbit of the ship suggested that it had barely managed take-off and was doomed to crash back into the surface eventually, just how long though was the question!

I made a couple of fixes on it and plugged them into my sat nav computer to see if it could calculate its orbit with any precision and an intercept. Of course, I didn’t know how much it weighed or much about it at this point, but it was so close I could probably lasso it and tug it home safely.

And while the rewards for satellites were good, the rewards for spaceships were quite lucrative. And turning on your distress beacon meant you were willing to pay them, or at a minimum, to forfeit your ship. Even a broken ship was worth a small fortune out here!

I tossed on my suit and headed over to the comms panel, surprised to see that there was still no info from Lunar Base nor from the first team that had set out to check on it. I figured I would swing by there on my way to lasso the ship if I could, just to get a bird’s eye view of what was going on there.

Figuring I would only be gone a few hours, I didn't do a hard shut down, but I did put things into standby before cycling through the airlock and out to my ship. I climbed in and was happy to see my sat nav had already plotted an intercept that gave me plenty of leeway to get up and on course.

So, running through my pre-flight check twice, and doing a quick system check, I made sure the ship was in good shape after my haul and safety cable encounter. When everything checked out green, I hit the power and with a burst of kinetic energy, I bounced and hit the thrusters. A few seconds later the ion drive kicked in and I started making my way to rendezvous with the distressed ship.

Now you might be wondering why I hadn't tried to reach them by radio, but that would have been the worst thing in the world I could have done, alerting everyone else in the solar system that there was a ship to salvage. No, I’d keep quiet until I was sure that I could get the ship, then I would contact them and see what was happening. It wasn't like I could do anything for them until then anyway.

So I settled down and tried to relax while the ship did its job and carried me on the intercept course. It would take about four hours to get into position. In the meantime, I busied myself with trying to catch sight of what was happening with some of the other settlements and I hoped that I’d see Lunar Base.

When you live on the moon and the quickest way to get anywhere was to pop up into a low orbit, it is hard to hide things from your neighbors. So we all took an interest in what we were doing. In fact, more than just being nosy, it was actually important for our safety. If I were to have a breach of my atmospheric containment system, I’d need help from several of my neighbors to help me recover and get back on my feet. You can’t permanently plug a leak single handedly.

As I flew around, everything seemed fairly normal. There were just a few of us outliers on the surface. Most Lunars stuck close to Lunar Base since things like water and power were more reliable there. Not everyone could afford their own setup like I had and they needed to rely on the resources of Lunar Base to keep things running.

Just as I was coming up on Lunar Base, my sat nav beeped its proximity warning. So instead of being able to check out the base and what caused the bright flash I had seen earlier, I turned my attention outward to the other ship.

A quick visual inspection of the ship showed no obvious damage to the ship. There were no gashes or dents in the hull, and no signs of gasses escaping. However, there was also no sign of power.

Only the blinking distress beacon was operational.

I couldn’t see the cockpit from where I was, the ship was rotated away from me at the current moment, but I had a good line of sight to the universal attachment point on the underside of the ship. I had a clear shot at it, and with the odd rotation of the ship, I might not have another clear shot for quite a while.

Of course, not letting someone know that you were getting ready to lasso their ship was considered bad form, and might even be considered piracy. There was also some risk to my ship if they felt the sudden tug when I pulled the line taut and decided to fire the thrusters.

So I activated the comm unit and manned the lasso gun and started talking while I lined up the shot.

“Distressed ship in Lunar Orbit, brace yourself, I have a clear shot to hook you for a tug. I repeat, Distressed ship in Lunar Orbit, brace yourself. I have a clear shot to hook you for a tug.”

Without waiting for a reply, I let the ship to rotate into the perfect alignment, and then fired the cable, watching it zip through space in a most unnatural straight line and right into the UAP. With a satisfying thud, I felt it attach and then activated the servos that began slowly tensing the line between our ship.

I had to watch the rotation carefully and I tried to time the thrusters so that I had to fire them as little as possible to get the ship to stop its death spiral and into a towing position behind my ship.

It was a harrowing few minutes, and it took more thruster fire than I anticipated, but I finally got the ship into position behind mine, and then set course for the surface. I had never been able to get a view into the other ship to see if there were any survivors, and so far there was no evidence of activity from the ship.

Only the blinking red distress beacon indicated that there was any life left in the ship at all.

The odd orbit the ship had been in also meant I hadn’t passed back over Lunar Base. I would get one glance at it as I lined up for landing, but it would have to be a quick glance as I needed to make a sharp turn to get lined up with my skid pad, and then play out the line so that the ship I was towing didn’t eat my ship when we landed.

Unlike the asteroid where I had time to put several lines around it and secure it to my hold, I only had one line to secure the distressed ship, so I needed to drag it behind me as I slid in for my landing.

As I crested the horizon and Lunar Base came into few, I was suddenly nauseous. Where there used to be a thriving base with about fifty colonists, there was now a large hole in the ground and the ground was clearly scorched from the large explosion that had destroyed all those lives and all that work.

I was so stunned by the sight, that I was actually late firing the thrusters for the turn, and had to waste some precious fuel just to get back on course.

I didn’t have time to think about it much for the next several minutes as I was too busy trying to play out the line and then set a small gas charge down the line to attach to the other ship.

Finally I ignited the gas charge which pushed the ship away from mine and pulled the cable tight. Then I put my ship down and prayed that the gas charge fired correctly, keeping the towed ship in touch with the ground while friction slowed it to a stop before it plowed into the back of my ship.

Out in orbit, there isn’t sound. Space is very quiet. The air pressure in the capsule makes noise, and the metal of the ship as it heats and cools makes noise that is transmitted through the air in the cockpit, but unless you are physically connected, sound doesn’t transmit through a vacuum.

So despite the fact that I’ve been living here on Luna for several years now, I still expect to hear movie sound effects when I see a big ship sliding towards me.

The silence was freaking me out, then, as I watched the ship come closer and closer to my ship. I knew it was a bit bigger than my ship from the mass of it and how hard my thrusters had to work to change its course, but seeing it up close like this, bearing down on my ship, I realized just how big it was.

And then I did hear a sound, a single metallic ping. And then the ship I was towing came to a stop, with just that slight tap. One millimeter more and I’d have a hull breach that I would have to deal with. But I was alive and on the surface.

Chapter Two
Three Little Lambs

I hopped out of my ship, knowing that I might not have much time, forgoing my usual post landing routine to ensure the ship was reading for its next takeoff. I had already sealed up my suit so when everything quit moving, I started moving.

Doing a quick visual inspection of the ship, I could see no obvious damage. There was no obvious leakage of the internal atmosphere and no clear hull breach.

I quickly found the power port and ran a cable from my ship to their ship, giving me access to their communications system. I heard the life support unit kick on when the power came online, suggesting it had been off for some period of time, never a good sign. But at least it indicated that there wasn’t a loss of atmospheric pressure which would have disabled the system.

I then climbed up the ship and tried to peer in the cockpit, hoping to see inside the ship to see what I might be dealing with. In the best case, I could pop the cockpit and enter the ship that way, but worst case I would have to erect a temporary airlock and try to enter the ship that way.

When I looked in the cockpit, I could see three bodies, in their suits, all in the hold portion of the ship. They had their helmets on, but they weren’t moving. I tried to hail them on the comms unit, but just like in orbit, I received no answer.

I was surprised though that this ship had a small airlock, so I quickly checked to see if it was working. That appeared to be the case, and now that I had power to the life support systems, I decided to enter that way. There was a chance of me getting locked in if they were trying to capture me, but my gut said to go for it.

I grabbed my dart pistol and stepped into the airlock, hitting the quick cycle and keeping my EVA suit sealed the entire time. I watched carefully for any signs of life, but there was no movement and the ship was still running on emergency protocol indicating the batteries were nearly completely drained.

In a few minutes the inner door opened, and I stepped into the hold and quickly over to the closest body. It was a woman, as I could see from the face plate, and she was breathing, but appearing unconscious. Her suit life support was working, so I quickly moved to the next person.

Ascertaining that all three were alive but unconscious, I suspected they had been drugged. I also noticed that they were chained to their seats. I needed to get them out of the ship and into my settlement where the life support was more stable.

I saw a toolbox in the cockpit with a standard plasma metal cutter, needed for making hull repairs. It was too much tool for the job, but it made quick work of the shackles and soon all three women were laying in the airlock, essentially laying on top of each other with me standing over them. I cycled through the lock, hoping their suits were intact, though they appeared to be maintaining pressure inside the ship.

Then I had to carry all three of them across to my airlock. Once again, we cycled through and when the inner door opened, I finally felt I could pop my helmet.

I pulled all three into the hallway and let the airlock door close. It was then that I popped the helmets on the three women, hoping that they didn’t have some horrible contagious disease.

We had heard about the ongoing wars on the planet surface. How the State of Islam had developed biologic weapons and were using them to kill the infidels. This had led the western powers to nuke several of their large cities and threaten to attack again if another biologic attack was released. Even Russia and China had been drawn into the conflict, having been attacked and participated in the counter strikes. Still, the State of Islam controlled large swaths of territory including most of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and most of the southern Asian continent.

They also continued to use suicide bombers and I wondered if that was what had happened at Lunar Base. We had never had an issue with terrorist attacks here on the Lunar surface since we would have at least a day or two notice that a ship with hostile intent was inbound. But perhaps someone had found a way to sneak by the security on the planet surface.

I quickly patted down the three women and found no weapons and no evidence of recent scars indicating implanted explosives. I then tried to run a quick diagnostic on one of them with the simple first aid diagnostic computer that I had for emergencies. It didn’t show any signs of infection or other metabolic abnormality that I was equipped to handle.

I finally gave up and hauled them down to the main living quarters, arranging them on a foam pad on the floor and covering them with a blanket after getting their flight suits removed. I then set the computer to alarm if there was any significant movement in the room.

I grabbed a bite to eat and took care of the necessities before I headed outside to see about cleaning up the mess that was currently sitting on my landing strip. At a minimum I needed to get my ship ready to go again.

The alarm blaring alerted me that my guests were awake, or at least they were moving. I hit the silence button and asked the computer to show me a visual of the room with the three women. They were all sitting up, looking confused and disoriented. They had a right to be, they had been asleep for about twenty-four hours since I had first seen their ship orbiting the planet. Whatever drug they had been given had certainly been powerful. But then the women did something very unusual. In a near panic, they quickly covered their eyes and started tearing the sheet to make blindfolds that they all proceeded to wear. Why would someone, waking up in a strange place, voluntarily blind themselves?

Once they had successfully blindfolded themselves, they huddled together and began to whisper to each other. While I could see what was happening, I didn't have microphones that were sensitive enough to pick up their conversation.

I made sure that I had my side arm, and then I headed down to the room where I had left the women. I wasn't sure how they were going to react, but they sure weren't acting like I might expect folks who had just been rescued from certain death to react.

When I opened the door, I was greeted by the sight of three women suddenly turning toward me, kneeling, and pressing their faces to the floor.

I should probably take a moment to describe the three women, as they were all quite attractive. All three were around five foot, four inches tall and they all had shades of wavy brown hair that fell to their mid back. To say that they were attractive would have been an understatement, as all three of them would have been quite noticeable in a crowd. Certainly, the three of them together were quite striking.

“Can one of you tell me what is going on and why you were drifting in a ship in lunar orbit locked in the hold?” I asked.

I noticed that all three women were shivering, and I heard what I thought was a sob before the woman in the middle seemed to gather herself.

“Sir, we were captured and kidnapped by terrorists from the State of Islam. We’ve been dosed with a new drug they have developed that makes a woman imprint on the first man that she sees. He then becomes her Master. We were brought here to Lunar Base to be sold to the man who is to be our Master.”

“Well, I guess that won't be happening now, as Lunar Base is a burnt-out crater. It looks like there was a big explosion there earlier today which is when I noticed your ship.”

The woman on the left who had been crying had now become very still and quit crying. The other two were still clearly very tense and nervous.

“So how did you come to be in that ship drifting in orbit?” I asked

This time the woman on the left spoke up. “Master, we were sedated for transport to you. We don't remember anything after being dosed with the drug and then waking up here.”

I was taken aback at being addressed as Master. I had heard about some of the horrors that the State of Islam was capable of committing, but slavery and the development of some kind of mind control drug was news to me.

“Can you tell me anything else about this drug you were given?”

“Master, we can only tell you what we learned from the other women and the guards that were in the prison with us. We did see the results, though, and one of our former cell mates went from fighting the guards all the time to completely docile and devoted to one of the visitors. One of the guards told us later that she had been dosed and sold to him. This is how the State is now raising money for their wars.”

I shook my head at the depravity of it all. I had lost my sister in an attack by the State when I was just a teenager. I had tried to enlist after that, but based on my scores, they wanted me to fly drones. I did that for a while, earning a reputation as a real master at maneuvering the small planes and hitting targets no one else seemed to be able to hit. But after a few years and the death of my family, I had taken my flying skills into space and Lunar Base.

With the money from the settlement of my parent’s estate and a good lawyer suing the other driver, a rich playboy out for a joyride, I had been able to set myself up nicely on the moon. And while Lunar Base had a few women who were happy to be your friend for a bit, I hadn't had much in the way of female companionship for the last couple of years.

Now faced with three women kneeling in front of me, I hated to admit the lustful thoughts that were running through my head. My mother had raised me to be a gentleman despite the general collapse of societal norms back on earth, and even more so out here in the settlements, but this was a terrible temptation.

I hated the State, and I hated what they had done to these women, but I hadn't done it. I was just in a position to benefit from it. I wondered if they bonded to me if they could be taken away from me. Would the State send someone after me? Did they think they had all died in the explosion that wiped out Lunar Base?

All these thoughts were running through my head and I was in a terrible turmoil when I was broken out of my reverie.

“Master, are you still there?” The woman on the left asked.

“Yes, I am still here, I'm just trying to decide what to do!” I answered rather abruptly. As I spoke, I saw all three women cringe at the tone of my voice and I immediately regretted it. I wondered how badly they had been treated while they had been in the captivity of the State. While I was certain that they hadn't been badly physically injured, the State wouldn't have wanted to hurt their investment, but that didn't mean that pain hadn't been inflicted upon them. I suspected it had been, repeatedly.

“So why are you blindfolded?” I asked.

Complete silence settled in the room and I would have sworn that the three women quit breathing. Then I realized what I had asked and its implications. They had assumed I was upset with them for covering their eyes, when I was just curious why they had done so, trying to understand their baseline conditioning.

Then the woman on the left suddenly reached up and ripped off her blindfold, staring at me in the face. I watched the tenseness and strain on her face disappear and her entire body relax, and she sagged to the floor in a perfect kneeling position, a loud pleasurable sigh escaping her lips.

“No one move!” I exclaimed, panicked that the other two would do the same, but my order could not prevent the other two women from sobbing and shaking, realizing what had happened to their colleague.

I walked over and touched the woman on the left.

“What is your name?” I asked quietly.

“You may call me whatever you like,” she answered her voice changing from one of formality to one of a seductive purr that instantly made my pants uncomfortable despite the awkwardness of the situation.

“What were you called before today,” I clarified.

“I was called Mary, Master, but you can call me whatever you like,” she replied, again in that seductive tone. Her body undulated sensuously as she spoke although she kept her face pressed firmly to the ground in a perfect kneeling posture.

Meanwhile her two colleagues were trying their very best to be small, quiet, and invisible. Their sobs had stopped but if fear was palpable, it would be as thick as pea soup in the air.

“I like the name Mary, so why don't you keep that name.”

“Oh, thank you, Master! Thank you!” She exclaimed crawling over and kissing my feet.

“So, when did you know that I was your Master?” I asked, trying to figure out if the visual aspect was really how the drug worked.

“Master, I thought it was you when I heard your voice, but as soon as I saw you, I knew for sure that you were the only man for me, my true reason for being,” she replied. The earnestness in her voice was unmistakable and a little scary, like one of those cultists. In fact, if they were using this drug on their own people, it would explain a lot of the behavior we had seen in some of their soldiers.

“Come with me Mary,” I said and started to leave the room.

“Wait!” sobbed the woman in the middle, and then she froze, realizing that she had drawn attention to herself.

I paused at the door, almost afraid to turn back and look in case it required looking at my face to activate the bonding.

“Yes?”

“What are you planning to do with us?”

“I wasn't planning on doing anything with you, or to you, or anything else. I will call on the intercom before coming back in here so you can cover your eyes.”

I turned to Mary. “Mary, you are forbidden from coming into this room without warning the occupants and making sure they are blindfolded.”

“Yes, Master,” she replied.

“Sir, please don't hurt Mary,” the girl on the end who had done nothing but cry, sobbed out before breaking down in tears again.

I just shook my head and wondered if I was hallucinating from spending too much time alone. I lifted Mary to her feet since she started following me out of the room by crawling. I then closed and locked the door, setting a different code for the door from the rest of the habitat.

Over the next several hours, I learned quite a bit and everyone seemed to settle down.

Mary was an only child who had gone to Africa to search for her missing parents. It was while she was there that she had been captured. One of her guides had sold her out to The State and led her into an ambush, misleading her into believing that she was going to meet someone who might have information about her parents.

I had asked why a single young woman who was as beautiful as she was thought that it was safe to go into Africa without a full brigade of soldiers. And when I say she was a beautiful young woman, I truly meant it. She was the tallest of the three women at almost five feet six inches, thin and willowy with long wavy dirty blonde hair that hung down to the middle of her back, rivaling the best of the European models. She told me she had even been offered some modeling jobs.

She replied that she was trained in martial arts and was a member of NATO Special Force. She had thought that she would be able to handle herself in the wilds of Africa. And while she had been wrong, she told me that she was now very happy that she had been wrong as it was how she came to meet me.

Mary was also able to tell me a little about the other two women who were currently in my habitat.

Karen was the oldest of the three and had been their leader in the compound. She was from southern Italy, with dark hair and a dark complexion, but had come to the United States when The State started carrying out attacks across the Mediterranean from Libya. It was on a trip home to visit her dying mother that she had been taken. She was almost thirty and had been a sort of mother to the group.

The last girl was Xina, the youngest and smallest of the girls, with brunette hair that depending on the light could look brown or dark red. She had been sailing with her family from Perth to Christmas Island when hijackers had taken the family. They had fought bravely, killing all but two of the hijackers, but those two had killed all of her family eventually and taken her hostage when she had run out of ammunition.

After talking to Mary and learning more about her and how she came to end up in my lunar habitat, or at least the bits and pieces she could tell me, I turned my attention to the attack on Lunar Base. I started trying to message the other settlers and soon found that those of us that were far enough away from Lunar Base seemed fine but those that lived closer weren't responding to calls and a flyover showed extensive damage to all the habitats around the base and the base itself was gone, just a big black hole in the ground.

I posted that I had found a drifting ship in orbit, but it was empty and I was claiming it for salvage. I needed to make the claim and if someone had done a fly over, I was certain they had already seen the ship. I got a few good-natured grumbles that I had all the luck and I must have made a deal with the devil to have the luck that I did. Mostly folks left me alone so long as I helped them out when they needed it.

A few of the settlers were out on a rescue mission, looking to see if there were any survivors near Lunar Base hunkered down in their safety shelters, but most of us were realistic enough to know that we had been hit by a terrorist attack and a lot of good people had died.

I made sure that I didn't say anything about the three women that were on the ship and told folks I would join in as soon as I had either ship in functioning condition again. I also offered to ferry any serious injuries earth-side since I still had a few launch credits with Space Command.

Once I had done my due diligence with my co-settlers on Lunar surface, I turned my attention to the two girls in the main living area. I turned on the cameras and saw that they had settled down in a corner of the room with some blankets and pillows. They were currently holding each other and talking softly. They still hadn't taken off their blindfolds, but at least they weren't kneeling on the floor any longer.

I panned the camera around the room just to see if I could tell what they had been doing. The room, though, looked completely untouched.

The sound of the camera servos must have alerted them to the fact that I was watching them, because by the time the camera panned back over to where they had been huddled, they were again kneeling on the floor, their head touching the floor, their bodies oriented toward the door.

Mary joined me as I watched them, rubbing up against me, purring, or making a sound as close to purring as humanly possible.

“They used to beat us if we weren't kneeling when they entered the room,” she said as she watched them.

“Are you going to beat them?” she asked.

I was absolutely stunned and rendered speechless. If I didn't know she was one of the women who just a few moments ago had been one of the women who was beaten, I still would have been amazed at the tone of her voice. It sounded as if she thought I should beat them!

“How often were you beaten?” I asked Mary as she leaned against me and watched the other two women on the camera.

“Almost every day, Master,” she replied. “No matter how hard I tried to behave, they always seemed to find some fault with me. Even if I behaved better than all the other women in the compound, they would pull me out and whip me with a crop until I screamed.”

I wondered about the dynamics that would lead a group of men to pick one woman to beat regularly when she absolutely floored me with her next statement.

“That was why I removed my blindfold,” she said. “I didn't want to be beaten anymore.”

Then she looked at me with the most adoring expression. “You aren't going to beat me anymore, are you?”

I put my arm around her and held her close. I wondered if her conditioning had made it such that she required a regular beating to learn how to change her behavior. Or had her personality been so subjugated that she was willing to do anything in order to avoid the pain and uncertainty of another day in captivity.

And then I wondered if I could beat her even if it was necessary to change her behavior. I'd be more likely to stick her in a life pod and send her back to earth than to actually beat her, I thought to myself. Perhaps if her life depended on it, I could beat her, but even then, it would be a moral dilemma!

“No, Mary, I am not going to beat you. I'm not going to beat any of you.” I assured her.

Mary molded herself even closer to me at that point.

“Yes, Master,” she whispered, “I'll do anything you ask of me so that you never need to punish me.”

My brain again went crazy with the possibilities of that statement. I had visions of her dropping to her knees and sucking me, taking my length in into her throat and urging me to throat fuck her. I had never been able to turn lose my inner demons, even as liberated as my fiancé had been. But the temptation with Mary was proving to be extreme. A woman who was completely obedient and who had been conditioned to avoid beatings! It was too good to be true and I wondered when it would all come crashing down around me.

I gave Mary a hug and then gently led her to the bed, telling her that she needed to get her sleep I made sure she was tucked safely into the bed and turned off the light as I closed the door and left the room.

I checked on the two women who were still in the main living area by way of the video camera. I didn't set it to pan for motion, but fortunately they were in my field of vision when I turned on the camera. They had cuddled together and were fast asleep in the corner furthest from the door. They had even moved some of the furniture to provide a shield so that they could have a few seconds to arrange themselves when someone entered the room.

That was a preview of Skimmer. To read the rest purchase the book.

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