The Fallback Plan: Conundrum

By Ken Haramiru

Continuing from Book 1... Tensions continue escalating between the Agamemnon's AIs and the rapidly expanding (in more ways than one) human crew. Meanwhile, Kara's investigation is aided by some of the other crewmembers, and Kara's suspicions that the ship is far older than expected, turn out to be spot-on. But what's the ship's real plan? Find out inside. Book 2 contains Episodes 15-24.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken Haramiru
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215487600

Ken Haramiru

Ken Haramiru lives in a large city on America's west coast. He's gainfully employed at a large, faceless corporation, and owns several adorable pets.He's written science fiction off and on since his teens, but either couldn't finish stories due to writer's block, or they were fan fiction and thus unpublishable. One day not very long ago, he got frustrated with a block and just wrote a sex scene to move the plot along. After blinking in disbelief, he discovered that was the only way he could absolutely, always get through a writer's block.After a while of conflict, he came to an uneasy truce with himself: he primarily writes erotica, but the more traditional author in him demands that his stories also have a plot beyond the sex.

Book preview

Day 10 Evening, Noriko's Awakening

(Episode 15)

Even comatose, Noriko was beautiful. Her features and genetics were predominantly Japanese, but she was mixed with just about everything else for the remaining 40% of her genetic makeup. The result was a lithe, agile woman with a quick mind and a full medical doctorate. As impressive as Noriko's qualifications were though, Kara was slightly more qualified to load her consciousness into her body. While Noriko had gone to school for years to become a doctor, the synaptic transfer hardware Kara was attaching to her head was more digital than medical. It looked more like a tiara than anything else.

The tiara's indicators lit up green as they confirmed a solid connection with the blank clone brain, and Kara looked carefully for any flickering which might indicate a poor-quality connection.

Ready to start reloading on your mark, Smiley stated.

Mark, Kara said. She watched a few displays, nodded to herself, and stood up. Now we wait an hour.

That's it? Susan asked incredulously.

Kara shrugged. You were expecting something different? Screaming, perhaps? Flailing limbs? Lightning? The body's kept in a coma until the load process is finished. No drama is a good thing. Now, I need to feed Laura here, she said caressing her relatively-flat midriff, and then myself. Meet me in the mess hall in 15?

One uneventful meal later, the two living crew members stood in the incubator bay, looking down on Noriko as she opened her eyes for the first time since Earth.

Are we there yet? she asked with a smile.

How long were you waiting to use that one? Kara asked.

Noriko smirked and said, Something over a century, I guess. But you wouldn't know it from how tired I feel.

She sleepily sat up, her nude body moving slowly but deliberately. Then she frowned in puzzlement as she looked from Susan to Kara. Susan was ready to deliver at any time, and Kara was swollen with the first nutrient injection of her latest pregnancy.

Waitaminit. They said we wouldn’t dream in storage, but here we are anyway?

Nightmare reality, not a dream, Susan snorted as she ran her hands along her huge belly.

The doctor leveled her head at Susan's swollen belly and said, Bullshit. I'm supposed to be in one of the first batches, and you've had the time to get not just knocked up, but spend eight or nine months to get that pregnant? Definitely a dream.

She experimentally lowered her feet to the floor, then reached out and touched Susan‘s swollen belly. The first officer yelped and jumped back in surprise.

No fair! It’s my sexy dream, so I'm supposed to be the pregnant one, Noriko whined. At least let me feel your belly as a consolation prize.

Kara worriedly looked from the incubator's display to the green blinking lights on Noriko's tiara. Everything indicated that the doctor's consciousness had transferred correctly.

Susan growled, Not sexy, and not a fucking dream. You're a doctor, and you're going to have to deliver this fucking thing for me. Don’t worry about your consolation prize - the ship's computer will knock you up with your own soon enough.

Noriko's face turned beet red. Ok, is this some kind of weird transfer hallucination? Am I still in the tube?

Kara shook her head. Nope.

Kara gave an abbreviated version of the events to date while offering Noriko one of her comfy bathrobes to cover up with. The doctor sat back down on a couch near the incubators and said, This is a lot to process.

Susan winced. You’re telling me? This fucking kid is about to kick my bladder in.

Noriko suddenly became quite professional. May I inspect you, then? As a doctor, I promise. I haven’t ever seen a natural pregnancy, and if I’m going to have to assist in your delivery, I need to start getting data right away.

Susan snapped, Fine, but just so you're aware, there's nothing natural about this pregnancy. Inspect me if you want, though. Natural or not, you need to be as far from a fuck-up as possible when I have to birth this thing.

Kara said, Med Bay's the best place for you to do the exam. And she's gonna go into labor any minute now anyway.

The three made their way to the med bay, and Kara helped Susan haul her immensely pregnant self up on the examination table, where she removed her skirt and panties. Noriko pulled up Susan's shirt to see her belly, her fingers trembling as she did so.

The doctor's eyes went wide as Susan's baby moved underneath her touch. The first officer glared at her and asked, Is a digital examination really necessary? You have scanners.

Noriko‘s face reddened again, and she requested projection of the nano swarm's telemetry data. Kara's increasingly-practiced eye noticed that the baby was in a textbook birthing position, her skull precisely centered over Susan‘s cervix.

Wow, Noriko said.

I’m sure glad you’re fucking impressed. You're welcome to have this thing yourself, you know.

Susan shifted uncomfortably in her chair, the baby's skull laying pressure on her cervix already. She sighed. Computer, since we have everyone here, can we just get it over with? Go ahead and induce me. Minimal pain though, and that’s an order. I'd prefer no pain though, or to be unconscious.

Noriko smiled excitedly as she watched Susan‘s stomach tense up immediately with her first contraction, starting a hormonal loop between her cervix and the muscles designed to push the baby through it.

The computer refused to render Susan unconscious, but it did drop her pain impulse enough that she barely felt it over the next half hour as she went through early labor and Noriko monitored her dilation progress.

I've been looking forward to this part of a colony world, Noriko confided in Kara at one point between contractions.

The pods just make everything so mechanical, even inhuman. One of the reasons I volunteered for this colony was that I’ve always wanted to have my own babies. I'm a Reformed Judeo-Islamic Pentecostal, so that's really important to me.

Kara raised her eyebrows. That was the same religion that had caused Andy Martinez to sabotage the pods in the first place. But beyond that, to her, it sounded like someone being breathlessly excited that she was allowed to churn her own butter. Kara didn't see an attraction at all.

Susan was groaning at this point, the ship's pain reduction losing traction as the baby's head began to open her up. And then when the baby's head began descending, she screamed.

Get it out, cut it out, I don’t want to push it through, Susan whimpered.

Kara squeezed her hand, which was all that she could do for her. Noriko, meanwhile, was observing as the baby started to make its way down her birth canal.

It’s OK to push now, Noriko told her.

Push? Fuck, no! Cut it out! I’m not gonna push! Susan yelled.

The ship's computer voice cut in. Pushing is an automatic part of the birth experience, Susan. If you don’t do it actively, your body will still do it without you - but it will prolong the birth considerably. Unless you want this phase to continue for much longer than it has to, you must start pushing.

Susan clenched her teeth and screamed, pouring her entire being's considerable stock of rage into it. Once that scream finished, she moved to words - cursing the computer mostly, but also Noriko and Kara. Noriko watched giddily as the baby's head moved further, now fully enveloped in the first officer's birth canal.

Susan took her hands and shoved down on the top of her belly, trying to hasten things along regardless of whether it hurt the baby or not.

The droid said nothing, simply grabbed her wrists and held them to her sides. Noriko tried to be encouraging, but at this point, Susan was simply throwing every curse word she could think of at everyone in the room.

Kara suspected that the ship's computer had started speeding things up, because Susan‘s eyes went wide as one final, gigantic contraction propelled the baby down her vagina and into Noriko‘s waiting hands.

Noriko offered the baby to Susan, but she grimaced and made a dismissive gesture. So she held the baby in her arms, but Kara pushed open her bathrobe and put the baby up against Noriko's bare skin. The doctor grinned nervously as the baby nestled up against her. She barely noticed as Smiley cut the umbilical cord, then the two medics walked the baby to the incubator bay. Smiley stayed behind with Susan.

The first officer was angry and humiliated by her first birth, and as the two women left, she felt intensely glad that the other two women weren't there to see her. Going through this loss of bodily autonomy, having her genitals on display during the birth, and the unavoidable lack of composure as she pushed the baby out, was beneath her dignity as a senior officer. She asked Smiley for something to clean herself with, and as she dabbed at her thighs, she let out a curse as she realized that there were now two giant milk spots seeping through her uniform top. She sat up and located the lower half of her uniform, but then another contraction suddenly hit. Fuck, am I having twins?

Smiley just walked up and tugged gently on her umbilical cord, and a wet bloody mass squished its way out of her vagina onto the table.

No, just your afterbirth.

Susan threw her hands up in frustration, grabbing the lower half of her uniform and staggering her way out of the med bay. She was nude from the waist down, but she was pissed off enough not to care about the spectacle she made

Report back for your next impregnation soon, please, reminded the ship's computer.

Susan slammed the door to her quarters, vowing that this was ending as soon as possible.

In the incubator bay, Noriko and Kara were connecting Joan to the life support system Noriko had previously occupied. As the nutrients flooded into the clone's body, Kara turned to Noriko and asked, A sexy dream, huh?

Noriko reddened again, but not quite so much as she had in front of the first officer. "Well, I feel a little bit shameful about this, but natural pregnancy is actually one of my kinks. It’s not something you can really do on Earth without being considered weird, but it's still normal to have kids the old way on colony worlds. I've been into the idea of doing this since I was a little girl.