Londinium

By Cole Braddock

An impossible planet. And the impossible mission to contact another version of the Rovell Electorate Cruiser Boston. A different version than before. Hopefully a better one.
Then Stephanie meets her doppelganger from that other space, and he’s pure beefcake.
The sixth book of the erotic voyages of the Rovell Electorate Cruiser Boston.
Their mission: Explore the realm known as Haunted Space, seeking new worlds, new civilizations, and new people to get naked and sweaty with.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knotted Road Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215215470

Book preview

1

Personal Log SM: 656 EF 05-15. We have stayed over at Londinium, after Commander Wakeman was able to come up with a communications relay that should span the various dimensional portals that make up these shards of worlds all mashed together. Wires, as he had surmised, running for about a kilometer to a secondary base unit transmitter.

We’re going to try to contact other versions of Boston one at a time, understanding that the ship where I was trapped was a twisted version of our reality. One where the Rovell Electorate was seeking weapons and technology that they might use to conquer all their neighbors, rather than finding all the lost colonies and trying to bring them up to the modern era.

It is strange, walking between worlds. Weather literally changes at a discontinuity, where I have stood in warm, dry conditions and watched snow falling less than three yards away, already a foot deep and growing by the hour, yet cut off as with a blade between us.

I am looking forward to finding the truth of this world.

Commander Stephanie Machesky opened her Technical Appliance and confirmed her location. Her team had driven a set of sensor posts into the ground, then mapped against them to confirm where she was.

The surface of Londinium, though she still wasn’t sure if she was Alice, fallen down that damned rabbit hole.

This shard they had taken to calling Prime, then numbering others as they were able to identify more pieces. The science of how Londinium came to be still made no sense to anyone, unless you considered that angry gods might have just reached into the universe and scrambled all sorts of places together.

They had landed and camped at a spot where Enzo Wakeman had identified a thing that he called a salient, but to Stephanie, it looked like a cock, rigidly erect, pointing to the rising son like a much better alarm clock than a rooster. Around it, they had identified four other worlds, as well as drawing rough lines in the dirt at the edges of the discontinuities that separated them.

Lead Marine Hege bint Mee'ha al-d'Aramitz was in charge of security, but had shuttled down a much larger team than had originally teleported to the surface.

Before everything had gone wrong that first time, and put them on that other version of Boston. The one where all the interesting things happened behind closed doors.

World Two had all the snow. World Three seemed to be raining, every time they had approached the boundary. Five was something of a desert on the far side, so they were going to carry a transmitter over to Four in the morning and see if they could contact another version of Boston, up there in orbit of an entirely different planet.

But first, a hand rapped quietly at the rigid side of her electro-inflatable tent. Stephanie put her Technical Appliance away and stood. The interior was rather spartan. An inflatable mattress on a double cot frame. Deployable desk and campaign chair. Cooler with various aluminum cans of beverages, all known to be safe when you might not trust the water on the surface of a strange planet.

Stephanie was in her usual uniform, with an extra jacket hung on a peg by the hatch, in case they needed to visit the snow or rain. She smiled and opened the hatch.

Lieutenant Odin Steiger stood there, nervously waiting. Like her, he had the extra jacket against weather, open for now, with his Engineering Technical Appliance hung on his hip.

Steiger was in charge of the communications relays they were going to use in the morning, having designed and built the equipment to spool the wire, then shield it against the discontinuity.

Tonight, as the sun was setting behind him, Steiger had a look like a truant schoolboy called to the headmaster’s office.

It’s not that bad, she informed him with a warm grin. Come in.

Stephanie stepped back and pointed to the hook.

Hang your gear there, she ordered lightly as Steiger entered her domain nervously.

She moved to the campaign chair, then thought better of it and set on the edge of the bed, pointing him into the chair instead.

Steiger settled like a mouse hearing cats.

It’s not like you haven’t done this before, Lieutenant, she reminded him. With me, even.

Yes, ma’am, he nodded. Just never off the ship. And I’m worried about something happening to my gear tomorrow.

It will be fine, Stephanie said. You’ll be fine. The mission will be easy enough. Tonight, though, you need to relax.

He nodded.

And I have a great big bed if you’d like. Or whatever else, though I’m not sure how sturdy the campaign chair is, she grinned at him.

You’d be amazed, sir, he said, smiling at some unspoken memory.

Stephanie, she said simply. I’m Stephanie. You’re Odin. And we’re going to fool around. Now, how would you like to?

Crew roster. First Explorer meant that she was in charge of crew morale, and that meant making sure that everyone had regular sexual encounters with other crew. And that nobody spent too much time within a single gender of partner, regardless of their own preferences.

Stephanie knew of a dozen or so who were entirely at one end of the spectrum, either hetero or homo in their sexual expression, but everybody—EVERYBODY—had to explore at least ten percent officially.

Regardless of how drunk or whatever they needed to get to do it. After all, if all you can see is the top of someone’s