Chapter 7: First Steps on Erid
The airlock of the Eridian transfer shuttle opened with a sigh that was instantly drowned by sound—a chorus of high, melodious whistles and complex, layered clicks that echoed across the jagged, violet plain.Ryland flinched, his hand tightening in Simon’s grip. Before them, hundreds of Eridians stood in orderly rows, their chitinous shells gleaming like obsidian under the system’s pale sun. Their limbs clicked in unison, producing a haunting welcome song that the translator in Ryland’s helmet rendered as a series of harmonious, literal statements: “We greet the improbable ones.Your arrival is a node of statistical fascination. Harmony is increased by your presence.”
Simon’s voice crackled over the private comms.“Statistically fascinating. I’ll take it.”
They stepped onto the ground. It was spongy, bioluminescent moss crunching under their boots with a sound like popping gel capsules. The air was thick, pressurized to a comfortable level for the Eridians but visibly moving the fabric of their suits. A juvenile, smaller and with a shell the color of amethyst, broke from the crowd. It skittered forward, one delicate claw extended.It tapped twice on the reinforced polymer covering Ryland’s forearm.
Tap-tap.Ryland held still. The juvenile recoiled, emitted a surprised, fluting trill, and skittered back to its group. A ripple of similar chirps moved through the assembly.Laughter, Rocky had explained once.It was laughter.
“Your suits confuse their audio-location,” Rocky said, clicking from just behind them. He moved forward, a familiar and comforting shape amidst the alien throng.“They perceive you as partially silent. It is… amusing to them.”
“We’re a comedy act,” Simon said, a dry grin in his voice.
Rocky’s mate—Strina, a name that was actually a series of cascading harmonics the humans could not hope to reproduce—approached. She was larger than Rocky, her carapace adorned with iridescent patterns that shifted from cobalt to deep violet as she moved. She bowed, a formal dip of her entire body, and her clicks were slower, more resonant. The translator spoke with a soft, female-coded voice in their helmets.“Your biome is prepared.It is within the designated enclosure. The parameters match your biological necessity logs.We will provide supply blocks daily at the perimeter airlock. Your access to the greater Eridian surface is, for your safety, restricted. This is not containment.It is preservation.”
“Thank you,” Ryland said, the words feeling utterly inadequate. “For everything.”
Strina emitted a soft, wobbling tone—affection. “You are Rocky’s friend.Therefore, you are a node of my harmony. Come.”
The walk was long, the Eridian sky shifting through shades of twilight as they approached a massive, shimmering energy barrier. It stretched upwards into the haze, curving away to the horizon in both directions. It hummed, a low sub-bass note felt in the teeth more than heard.
“The enclosure’s diameter is approximately 2,200 of your kilometers,” Rocky provided, his claws clicking on the crystalline ground. “Adequate for roaming.”
The barrier parted for Strina, a silent tear in the fabric of light.They stepped through.And the world changed.
The dead, crystalline vibrancy of Erid was replaced by a gentle, golden sunlight—artificial, but perfectly calibrated. The air that filled Ryland’s lungs when Simon helped him unseal his helmet was clean, sweet, and rich with oxygen.It smelled of damp soil and growing things.Before them stretched land. Real, honest-to-god land. Rolling hills covered in a soft, taupe grass-like moss rose towards distant, misty mountains. A forest of strange, willow-like trees with silver leaves bordered a lake so clear it mirrored the faux sky perfectly. The ground underfoot was dark, rich, workable earth.
And nestled against a rising cliff face, built from a pale, warm stone, was a house.Small, sturdy, with a sloping roof and a real chimney.
Ryland’s breath hitched.His vision blurred. All the years of metal walls, of recycled air, of desperate loneliness and world-saving terror, crashed over him and receded, leaving him bare and trembling on this new, quiet shore.A sob tore from his throat.
Simon was there, his own helmet discarded, his arms wrapping around Ryland, pulling him tight against the hard plates of his own suit. Simon’s face was wet too, pressed into Ryland’s messy hair.
“Home,” Simon whispered, the word a vow, a prayer, a solid, tangible thing.
Ryland nodded, unable to speak. He turned his face and kissed Simon, a desperate, grateful mess of a kiss that tasted of salt and hope.
His omega biology, that deep, aching core of him that had yearned for nest, for safety, for purpose, surged up like a geyser. His cunt, already slick around the custom plug Simon had locked into him before their final disembarkation, clenched hard. A fresh trickle of milk soaked the inner lining of his suit. He ground himself shamelessly against Simon’s thigh, a low whine building in his throat.
“Alpha,” he breathed against Simon’s lips, his voice ragged.“Please.I want… I need to christen it. Our home.”
Simon’s dark eyes, still shadowed by old horrors but now lit with a fierce, quiet joy, burned into his.He laughed, a raw, happy sound. “Yeah.Okay. Yeah.”
He scooped Ryland up, bridal-style, making him yelp.Carrying him past the threshold of the house was a ceremony in itself. The interior was spartan but warm.The main room held soft furnishings made of a dense, springy moss.A fireplace. A kitchen area with a water recycler and a heater for the supply blocks. A hallway led to a single bedroom, where a large, mound-like bed of the same moss occupied the center, covered with woven blankets of some iridescent Eridian fiber.Simon laid him down on the bed. His hands were steady but quick, peeling Ryland out of the environment suit, then his soft underclothes.The cool air of the house kissed Ryland’s feverish skin. He was laid bare, legs spread, the polished metal base of the plug gleaming against his flushed folds.
Simon stood over him, stripping his own suit with efficient, predatory grace. His cock was already fully hard, jutting thick and angry-red from his body. He knelt on the bed, his hands running up Ryland’s trembling thighs.
“Look at you,” Simon murmured, his thumb tracing the metal.“My good girl, all ready for me in our new house. Been holding my seed all this way just to keep you full.”
He twisted the plug. Ryland cried out, back arching.With a wet, obscene pop, Simon pulled it free. A gush of thick, white cum—hours old now—spilled out onto the dark moss bedding, the smell of sex and possession blooming in the room.Simon tossed the plug aside. He leaned down, not kissing him, just watching his face as he positioned the head of his cock at Ryland’s drooling entrance.“This is ours,” Simon said, and it wasn’t gentle. It was a declaration.He pushed inside, a hard, unyielding invasion that stole Ryland’s breath.
The stretch was perfect, devastating, a blissful ache of reclamation. Ryland’s legs hooked around Simon’s waist, pulling him deeper. Simon didn’t wait, didn’t tease. He set a brutal, pounding pace from the first stroke, each drive of his hips slamming Ryland deeper into the soft bedding. The bedframe, sturdy Eridian stone, didn’t even creak.
“Gonna fuck you on our bed, good girl,” Simon growled, his voice rough with effort and emotion.“Gonna make this place smell like us. Like me filling you up.”
Ryland could only moan, his head thrashing. His tits bounced with every thrust, aching, and a fine spray of milk jetted from his nipples with a particularly deep plunge, painting their chests with sticky streaks. It was raw, primal, a physical baptism.“Alpha!Simon, fuck, please!” Ryland babbled. “Breed me here, fill me up in our new home! Want your pups growing in me here!”
The crude words, the desperate need, snapped something in Simon. His rhythm faltered, his thrusts turning animalistic and erratic. He leaned down, biting at Ryland’s throat, his knot already beginning to swell at the base, a familiar, wonderful pressure.
“That’s it, take it,” Simon rasped.“Take my fucking knot.Take every drop. I’ll plant them so deep in you, sweetheart. Right here.”
The knot caught, seated itself inside Ryland’s clutching cunt with a final, intense pressure.Locked. Simon drove in as deep as he could go and held there, his body rigid. A guttural groan was torn from him as he came, his cock pulsing, pumping wave after wave of hot, fresh seed directly into Ryland’s eager womb. Ryland screamed, his own orgasm tearing through him, his internal muscles fluttering around Simon’s spurting length, milking him dry.
They collapsed together, a tangled, sweating, spent heap. Simon rolled them to their sides, still tied, his arms locked around Ryland, nuzzling into the sweaty junction of his neck and shoulder. The only sounds were their ragged breathing and the faint, alien hum of the biome outside.
In the days and weeks that followed, a rhythm established itself. Supply blocks of concentrated nutrients were delivered each morning to the airlock.The water from the lake was, as promised, pristine and drinkable.They began gardening. Using seed banks from the Hail Mary’s archives, they planted a small plot. Earth tomatoes, potatoes, carrots. The Eridian soil, energized by some strange radiation or microbial life, made things grow at an absurd, thrilling speed.Seedlings became sturdy plants in a week. Ryland would kneel in the dirt, his hands black with soil, watching a green tendril curl towards the artificial sun, and feel a peace so profound it hurt.
Rocky visited often, sometimes with Strina, sometimes alone. He would click contentedly as Ryland showed him the progress of the tomatoes, or as Simon explained the concept of “pickles” they were attempting to make in a jar. Rocky’s friends—other Eridians with unpronounceable harmonic names—would sometimes accompany him, staying cautiously at the edge of the energy barrier, observing the humans with polite, clicking curiosity.
Strina was endlessly kind, her presence a calm, harmonic balm. She brought them cleverly designed tools, blankets that adjusted to body temperature, and once, a small, six-legged creature like a glass lizard that she assured them was an excellent pest-controller for the garden. They named it Sparkle.
Simon slept through the night now. No more waking in a cold sweat, hands clawing at phantom chains. The ghosts of the blood ocean were still there, in the scar tissue, in the way he always positioned himself between Ryland and any door, but they were fading, outshone by the present. He spent his days building—a proper porch, a chicken coop for future plans, reinforcing the house—his hands more often calloused from labor than clenched in fear.
Ryland bloomed. He let his omega nature guide him, building a true nest in their bedroom with soft blankets and their mingled scents. He cooked, he gardened, he sat for hours with Rocky explaining stellar nucleation, his words flowing without the old undercurrent of lonely anxiety. His body, free from suppression and filled regularly with his alpha’s claim, felt more his own than ever. The constant, low-grade need was met, satisfied, and stoked again in a cycle of pleasurable fulfillment.
One evening, after a day of fishing in the lake, they lay naked on a blanket by the water’s edge. Simon’s hand rested on Ryland’s bare stomach, tracing idle circles.“We should think about it, you know,” Simon said softly. “About trying for real. Not just me filling you up for fun.”
Ryland’s heart swelled.He covered Simon’s hand with his own. “You mean…?”
“A baby.Yeah.” Simon looked at him, his dark eyes serious. “I wanna see you round with our kid. I wanna see you nurse them right here.” He squeezed Ryland’s breast gently, making him gasp. “I wanna build a crib.”
Tears, happy ones, welled in Ryland’s eyes.He nodded.“Yes.Okay. Yes.”
Simon kissed him, a slow, deep promise of a kiss.It deepened, lazily at first, then with gathering heat. Soon, Ryland was on his back again, the cool grass beneath him, Simon settling between his thighs. There was no frantic urgency this time, just a slow, practiced joining, a leisurely rocking under the alien stars as they began the intentional, beautiful work of making a family.
The Hail Mary sat in geo-sync orbit, a dormant metal beetle. The urge to go back up, to explore the strange cosmos, was still there, a faint itch in the back of their minds. But for now, they were content to let the universe wait. They had land, and sky, and a home.They had peace.They had each other.
They had time.