Chapter 1: Milk and Need in Zero-G
The Hail Mary was silent. Not the silence of peace, but the silence of a tomb that hadn’t quite finished sealing itself. The only sounds were the perpetual, low hum of the engines—a sound Ryland Grace’s brain had long ago filtered into nothing—and the ragged, wet sound of his own crying.
He was in his sleeping compartment, a coffin-shaped niche lined with soft fabric.He was naked. The ship’s climate control kept the air at a steady, bland 72 degrees, but his skin was fever-hot. He lay on his stomach, his hips pistoning in a slow, desperate rhythm against the rumpled mattress. The fabric was soaked beneath him, a combination of sweat, slick, and the thin, bluish milk that leaked steadily from his chest.
“Fuck,” he sobbed into the mattress, his voice muffled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
His left hand was tangled in his own perpetually messy brown hair, yanking in time with his thrusts. His right hand was between his legs, two fingers stuffed deep inside his cunt, curled and searching.It wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough.The stretch was pathetic. He was sopping wet, his swollen clit jutting out, throbbing with a pulse that echoed in his teeth. He rubbed the heel of his palm against it, a rough, frantic friction.He’d done everything right. He’d figured out the astrophage.He’d saved the world, the whole fucking species. He’d sent the data back, a cosmic message in a bottle that said, “Here, assholes, now don’t die.” And their response? Radio silence, then a terse, celebratory broadcast declaring Earth saved, thanking the brave, lost crew of the Hail Mary. He wasn’t a hero coming home.He was a monument.A story. A thing too awkward and complicated to bring back into the atmosphere.He was a leftover.
A fresh wave of aching loneliness crested, and he shoved his fingers in deeper, fucking himself harder.His breath hitched. He imagined, like he always did, a body behind him.A weight. Broad hands grabbing his hips, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.A hot, rough voice growling in his ear.
Such a good girl. Taking it so well. Gonna fill you up.
He came with a broken, strangled shout, his body seizing. It was a sharp, unsatisfying peak, a neurological spasm that left him feeling emptier than before. His cunt fluttered around his fingers, and milk sprayed from his nipples in short, weak arcs, coating the mattress and his own stomach. The aftermath was immediate: a crushing, hollow shame. He went limp, collapsing fully into the wet spot, his tears starting anew. “Pathetic,” he whispered to the empty ship. “You’re so fucking pathetic, Grace. Nobel Prize in Biology, Galactically Acclaimed Savior, dies masturbating in his own filth. Perfect.”
He rolled onto his back, staring at the dull gray ceiling. His chest, with its soft, large breasts, rose and fell.His stomach was a mess.He didn’t move to clean it. What was the point?Rocky didn’t care. Rocky was wonderful, the best friend he’d ever had—the only real friend he’d ever had—but Rocky was a five-foot-tall, rocky-skinned, blind Eridian who communicated in musical clicks and whistles. The concept of human sexuality, let alone omega heat cycles, was as alien to him as astrophage was to Earth.
Ryland had been too weird.Back on Earth, before all this. Pretty, yeah, okay, people had said he looked like that one actor, the goofy one, but his mouth always moved faster than his brain. A pretty face couldn’t cover up the social panic, the way he’d launch into a monologue about tidal forces if someone just asked him how his day was. Alphas had glanced his way, intrigued by the scent, but had been repelled by the incessant, nervous nerd-talk. Betas found him endearing, in a little-brother sort of way.He’d never been courted.Never been claimed. Never been bent over and knotted, filled until he couldn’t walk, bred.He’d wanted pups. Wanted it with a visceral, biological ache that felt like dying. He wanted small hands grabbing his fingers, wanted to nurse a tiny, squalling life, wanted to be called ‘Mama’ in a lisping little voice.That dream was deader than the silent Earth behind him. Deader than the stars outside.So here he was. Thirty-something, immortal thanks to Eridian medical tech, floating in a metal can with an alien best friend, his body a traitorous factory of hormones and milk with no outlet.No purpose. He was a science experiment in sustained, horny misery.
The soft shush of the compartment door sliding open didn’t even startle him.A series of precise, musical clicks and whistles filled the small space. A moment later, the translation program filtered it through the speaker.“Friend Ryland.You are in your sleeping area. Your circadian rhythm suggests wakefulness.Are you malfunctioning?”
Ryland didn’t look over. He just stared at the ceiling, one hand listlessly cupping a breast, feeling the warm milk seep between his fingers.“Hey, Rocky.Not malfunctioning.Just… being human. It’s a messy process.”
Rocky clattered into the room, his six legs moving with a delicate, careful grace.He was cautious not to bump into anything. He stopped near the bed, his carapace a comforting, stony grey.“Your vocal register indicates distress. Your hormone levels are elevated. Adrenaline, cortisol, oxytocin, and… several complex reproductive compounds are at 287% of baseline. This is consistent with your ‘heat’ cycle, but the ancillary stress markers are new.You are sad.”
Ryland let out a wet, snotty laugh. “Yeah, Rocky.I’m sad.I’m sad and horny. It’s a terrible combo.”
“Horny is a desire for sexual intercourse. Sad is an emotional state of distress.The correlation is not in my databases.” Rocky’s speaker voice was flat, literal. “I have completed maintenance on the long-range scanners. The data is interesting.”
“Yeah?” Ryland wasn’t interested. He was tracing the lines of his own abdomen, imagining a different shape to it, a round, full curve.
“Yes. I was performing a routine sweep of sector Theta-Seven.A gas giant with seventeen moons. One moon, designated Theta-Seven-Six, is not a moon.”
Ryland blinked.“Not a moon.Okay. A… a captured asteroid?”
“No.It is emitting a low-level, coordinated electromagnetic signature. And a faint, but definite, biological lifesign.Non-plant.Animal. Possibly complex.”
That got Ryland’s attention. He pushed himself up on his elbows, wincing at the sticky pull of his skin on the fabric.
“Life? Out here? In the middle of nothing?”
“Correct. The signature is weak.Fading, perhaps.Or shielded. It is the only non-Eridian, non-human, non-astro-phage life signature detected in this galactic quadrant.” Rocky turned his body toward Ryland.“You are the expert on biology.I am the expert on machinery. This is biology. You are… less sad when you have a puzzle.”
Ryland’s heart, which had been a sluggish, pained thing in his chest, gave a single, hard thump. Life.New life.A puzzle.Something that wasn’t his own miserable, leaking body. He looked down at himself, at the mess, the evidence of his despair. The loneliness was still there, a vast, cold ocean inside him.But Rocky had just thrown him a line.
He took a shaky breath.“A biological signature?What… what kind? Can we get more data?”
“We can adjust course. The Hail Mary’s engines are at 12% efficiency, but a slow burn would bring us within detailed sensor range in approximately fourteen of your days.” Rocky paused.“Your hormone levels are decreasing.Curiosity is a human dopamine trigger. This is good.”
A small, genuine smile touched Ryland’s lips for the first time in days. “You’re a good friend, Rocky.You know that?”
“I am an adequate friend. You are a good friend.We are friends.” Rocky stated.“You should cleanse yourself. The organic compounds you are secreting are attracting microbial growth on the mattress fabric. It is unsanitary.”
Ryland snorted, a weak, watery sound.“Yeah. Okay.” He swung his legs off the bed, his body feeling heavy and used. He stood, milk still dripping in slow, lazy drops from his nipples onto the floor.He didn’t cover himself. Rocky didn’t have eyes, and the ship’s cameras were off.There was no one to see.
But as he shuffled toward the sanitizer, a new thought, fragile and dangerous, took root.A lifesign.Out there. In all the vast, uncaring black, something else was alive. It probably wasn’t a handsome alpha with strong hands and a deep voice. It probably wasn’t anything that could call him a good girl, or fill his womb, or cure the ache.But it was something.
“Set the course, Rocky,” he said, his voice firmer than it had been in months. “Let’s go take a look.”
“Course adjusted, Friend Ryland,” Rocky replied, already clicking and whirring his way back to the control deck. “Destination: Theta-Seven-Six. Perhaps the biology will be fascinating.”
Ryland stepped under the sanitizer spray, the cool vapor scrubbing the sweat and milk and slick from his skin.He still felt hollow. He still felt desperate.The phantom voice in his head still whispered about knots and claiming.
But now, underneath it all, a spark.Faint as a distant star. The spark of a teacher with a new question, a scientist with a new mystery.It wasn’t love. It wasn’t a mate.
But for now, it was enough to make him stop crying.