Tales from the cold darkness of space: 02 Glykon the sexy sex-god

“Hey, it’s me again, just checking in. Are you sure you don’t want to join our religion? We have a whole lot of rites involving fertility going on and snake worshiping is fun, just ask the Hittites.” The God-king Glykon spoke to me in my dreams again. My dream was suddenly filled with images of fertility rites, dozens of members of the church of Glykon striping off their holy togas. I realized many of the people in the images were the priests and priestesses currently on board my ship. I thought if everyone was having the same dreams of the supernatural sex snake.

I woke in my Stateroom, covered in sweat. At least this time in was just sweat, I had been able to check on its pen without my clothes coming off or anything involving fertility happening to me, unlike last time.

All the members of the crew were likely getting the same dream message I did. I shook my head in annoyance. Based on my last few months experience the crew would be quitting in terror the nano-second we reached the next high port. Again.

We had three days till we were out of Jump. God-king or no, I couldn’t wait for that giant snake and its pen to be out of my hold and the hell off my ship. I don’t know if it had some kind of Psionic Capabilities or if it gave off a toxin or could hypnotize people. It clearly had some kind of mojo that messed with people. Most of its priestesses were visibly pregnant so worshipping it was not enough to make the dreams stop.

The profits were some of the best I ever made but at what cost? For the last four months, in every star port we had stopped at, countless women had become pregnant with twins. In every case, the woman was pregnant with one male and one female fetus. It didn’t matter if the woman was Human, Vargr, or K’Kree.

The local Baroness had put a price on the high Priestess and that snake’s head last month. Rumor had it the Baroness and her daughter, the sub sector Admiral of the area we had passed through three months ago, were both pregnant. Given that the Baroness wife had died two years ago and the Admiral was betrothed to some noble who was currently two sectors away, the snake had clearly somehow worked its mojo on them. Instead of acting like it was some type of miracle, the sub sector government was treating it as an act of terrorism.

The Torgon Union had paid us well to take members of the Church of Glykon on a pilgrimage to a holy site on the far end of the worlds controlled by the Orange Republic. I had been advised it was the hostility between these two political bodies that they couldn’t provide transport themselves. Given that the Orange Republic was a matriarchy with less than one one hundredth of one percent of the population was male, I was really starting to think there might be ulterior motives to the Torgon Union sponsorship of this pilgrimage.

Yes, one more crew to hire and three more stops to make before I could finally be rid of that snake I wondered as I stepped out of my cabin into the common area. I watched in silent horror as the rest of the crew and members of the church sat naked around a circle they had ritually painted on the floor, chanting in what I assumed was ancient Hittite. The navigator was rhythmically beating bongo drums while our Vargr engineer danced lewdly in the circle.

All she was wearing was flour, it just covered her head to toe, the white dust drifting behind her as she danced. She had been hired four stops back, which I realized was one or two stops too many given the nature of my cargo. I really wish that avatars of fertility deities came with Hazmat certs, it would have helped so much these last few months.

“Yeah, I definitely need a new crew.” I wondered out loud to myself. I couldn’t let what happened to my first crew happen again. The Uplifted Dolphins, Vargr and Humans had all started intermating or at least tried too.

I checked the begin charts. There was a Human mining colony two parsecs away. I could drop this crew and likely pick up another without too many questions there. At this point how much worse could things get, I just needed to get to that mining colony.

To be continued…