The Erotic Exoplanet

Chapter 1: Arrival

The *thunk* of a small space rock on the ship's hull jolted Ashley from her sleep.

Groggy, she shook her head around to wake herself up and checked the dashboard. No significant damage to the ship thankfully enough, only a minor scratch.

"Zephyr," she spoke to the ship's AI, "how much longer until our destination?"

"Destination: Exoplanet 19165-NE." The computer began to calculate. "Remaining Earth-relative travel time: 8 days, 3 hours, 44 minutes."

"Shit..." Ashley sighed, "Well, that's not exactly a long time, so that's okay. Report."

"All Zephyr systems functioning at 100% capacity. Current location: Coris Dual-Star System, adjacent unrecorded exoplanet."

"Interesting..." Ashley looked out through the window. The Zephyr drifted past a large planetoid, yellowish in color. It seemed somewhat similar to earth with whatever land she could see beneath the pale clouds of its atmosphere. The place was well lit by the system's two suns, one a bright yellow similar to Earth's very own, and the other a pale green, slightly smaller.

Ashley groaned as she stood up, still tired from her nap, and set the ship to autopilot as she retired to the cabin for food.

She had been out in space for God knows how long. It had been a a month or two by this point; keeping track of time was difficult out in the aether of space. Her mission from the NDSEA — the National Deep Space Exploration Administration — had been to venture out solo to a recently discovered earth-like exoplanet out in the depths of deep space, in search of a habitable planet for humanity to inhabit in the far future. She was to explore the planet, determine if its conditions were safe for human life, and to report back.

She sighed as she made herself breakfast and sat on a curved couch, watching the stars through a skylight. She missed the Earth and her friends back home. She remembered how excited she had been to be selected for this mission, being one of the youngest applicants to do so at only 20 years old. Traveling through the stars had been her dream ever since she was a little girl, exploring distant planets and floating through zero-gravity in a spaceship of her own.

She hadn't known it would be so...boring.

She got up for the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, noticing her curly Afro of black hair was slightly messy from how she'd been sleeping. She restyled it as she brushed her teeth and washed her dark-skinned face, fully woken up by this point.

As she turned to prepare for a shower, the ship suddenly began to groan and quake, and she nearly fell to the floor.

"The fuck..?" She ran back to the cockpit as the Zephyr's alarm blared.

"Warning! Course disrupted! Gravitational anomaly detected! Autopilot system compromised!"

Ashley buckled up and attempted to right the ship manually. "Zephyr! Reroute all power to main thrusters!"

"Rerouting...rerou — Error! Main engines compromised. Main thrusters offline. Backup thrusters offline. Zephyr systems compromised. Crash-landing imminent."

Flames began to form around the ship as it plummeted into the atmosphere of the planetoid she had been drifting by. Ashley struggled in vain, but it was no use. The ship continued to descend uncontrollably towards the ground.

Desperate, Ashley pulled up as high as she could, slowly bringing the ship to a glide as best she could. All she could do now was brace herself for impact as the ship crashed hard into the ground below.

~

"...one...us..."

Ashley woke up with a jolt, immediately looking around for the origin of the voice.