Reality of the Beast

Written for my own amusement

We had all watched the movies, read the stories, viewed the mad art of aliens sexually abusing humans, but when we humans finally contacted our first race they were not blood thirsty cannibals wanting us all dead, they didn’t think themselves our betters and they certainly did not want to capture our women to enslave, breed or eat. Though they did have rather impressive fleets they were mainly for trade with other races, their few true fighting ships meant to battle the pirates and other obnoxious groups ‘out there.’

In fact they had no idea we even existed, our limited radio emissions before we turned away from analog and went digital then vanishing all together as our planet went mainly hard wired being seen as yet another race machines had replaced. They hadn’t thought of using digital, having gone directly from analog to laser transmissions and saw digital as only machine language. So we wandered into their main system, having accidently bypassed all their colonies and broke out of null space just light hours from their home planet.

To say that they were surprised was an understatement, to say that they were frightened would be an over statement. The full truth is that the first ship to make contact was a trade ship of all things and that was when we had our first sight of the Fanass.

They were feline based, housecat feline with every possible coloration you have ever seen in housecat’s, including furless. So the First Officer invited them into the conference room (only an idiot of a Captain ever made first contact, you could die real fast that way) where the first contact team waited. This was our first contact with an alien race, it was their seventh or eighth so they knew more than we how things needed to go. You know, 1,2,3? Not gonna happen. Out came hardcopy maps of the local system, out came higher mathematics texts, real printed books with photographic pictures of items both in one piece and exploded views. Everyone got started. Meanwhile we found a stable orbit around the home planets third moon and most everyone did their best to keep up with this new language, star travel is seriously boring after all.

Weeks passed before real progress was made, even then conversation was limited still they managed to make it known that not only did they want to trade, they wanted to be the only ship we traded with. It seems that the Fanass were very good traders, thank God our Captain wasn’t an idiot. He agreed to trade, with the entire planet. Still they would get first look at anything we were interested in trading so out came the ‘standard first contact trade package.’

It turned out that Faness loved butterscotch, I mean really loved it. So we slowly made a list of the items Faness liked and the ones that they did not (Tobacco, Jalapenos, anything with soy in it and chocolate were marked off the list.) When our first contact team had mastered the trade tongue well enough we made contact with the major planetary governments and to our stunned surprise things went well. That was until I happened to save one of the aliens lives while visiting their ship.

You see I’m the second navigator, pretty useless while in orbit during first contact though we had gotten to the point where our crews were visiting each others ships. I was roped into transferring a crate of instant butterscotch pudding (just add one cup of water per package and chill) to the trade ship when one of their officers suffered a heart attack. Can you believe that a star going race did NOT require everyone to know first aid? So I did what I could and by the time that their Doctor arrived he was able to take over, since due to the size of both our ships it could take as long as five minutes to get from one point to another and the Doctor had been asleep, had I not acted quickly the ill officer would have been brain dead.

While they took the officer (turned out to be their Main Engineer) to whatever they used for sick bay I returned to my task. A few days later the First Officer told me that I had a visitor, it turned out to be the Engineers wife, a pretty woman with greying fur she must originally have been a wonderful silver-grey. She thanked me for saving her husbands life, was surprised to find such a young woman in my position and expressed interest in my tiny compartments decoration.

Look people, I don’t care what your favorite science fiction show is/was/will be. On long space voyages you give everyone their own space, no matter how small. If not your crew will soon start shrinking as first one trouble maker, a snorer, an neat freak and slob go out the airlock. True my closet at home where I grew up was almost as large as this cabin, exactly two people could fit comfortably if one sat on the bed and the other the single chair, she had the chair.

We chatted a bit longer, I agreed that it was lonely in space without a lover or lifemate but I hadn’t found another woman on this ship that clicked with me, I did have a lot of friends though of both sexes. She was surprised that we kept cats as pets, I admitted to her that we had cats, dogs, fish, lizards and you name it that people kept as pets. I showed her a picture of Sandy, the calico cat I had as a pet before I was selected for this mission and admitted that I missed her, but she had died of Feline Leukemia just weeks before we left orbit. I even dragged up an ancient videofile on how to care for cats as pets for her, which she watched with apparent delight.

We had a good time I guess and I slipped her an unopened pound of hard butterscotch candies for her and her husband that I had purchased in the crew exchange then escorted her back to where a shuttle was always waiting, said goodbye and watched her leave. That was the last of it I thought, I mean I hadn’t saved a King’s life right?

We remained in the system for about a year, the initial contact traders ship was named LAST CHANCE we learned after a while, traders lived in communities aboard their ships and this community had been having a really bad time over the last two generations, we were their saviors we discovered. Then as all things our time to visit came to an end, we had unloaded all the trade goods that we had brought with us that they wanted, had coordinates to their other colonies and Last Chance had a lifetime contract with Earth that would allow them to prosper. Meanwhile the entire alien population seemed sorry to see us go.

I was sitting at my station double checking the navigators math while the last ships cleared our area so we could navigate far enough to phase when the Captain came up behind me. “Sanderson” he said in a stern tone, “There is a package in your cabin. Deal with it.”

I stood as quickly as I could lock my system, turned and saluted, Captain Fletcher was a stickler for the book. “Yes Sir.” I answered, beginning to depart.

“Sanderson?”

“Yes Sir?” I asked, confused.

He grimaced as he always did when something had occurred that he had no control to change. “This package is not returnable and you are not the only one to have one. So deal with it.”

So I hurried to my little cabin, stepped in and found myself facing a butt, a butt with a tail. A pretty butt though. “Ah-hem” I said, wondering who was in my quarters.

She turned around, the prettiest calico feline I had ever seen except that she was only maybe three inches shorter than I and the only thing that she had on was a leather collar. It turned out that she was my present for saving the Engineers life, a present from his wife and daughters.

“Hello Mistress, I was cleaning” she explained in pretty good English, her eyes lowered. “My name it is Rith but you may change if you wish. I am pet yours for life. You may do anything you wish with or to me.

It turned out that the Faness as a race had found humans intensely desirable, Rith for example had won a private beauty/intelligence contest run by the Engineer’s family to become my property. Not only had she chosen to do this freely, she was absolutely ecstatic that she had won.

So no, the aliens didn’t want to take our women for their own use, they wanted us to take them, both male and female, for our own use. Absolutely nothing had prepared us for this and that was what had my Captain upset.

Me? Lets just say that the second nine months in Null space were a lot more fun than the first nine months. Thank God that the Fanass live about as long as we do and are immune to Earth’s feline leukemia, by the time we arrived on Earth I couldn’t stand seeing her die.