FSE

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This one gets into a bit more of the juicy bits, at least as far as dialog goes. Still, I'm enjoying it so far. I guess it's a little bit easier to do with more outline and drafting in place, although all of the individual lines of detail were still just cobbled together from more or less the same thing the previous stories have; improvisation.

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"Wait, what? There's no way that could be right, Mirie." Amina grimaced at the doctor with her brown and white tail between her legs. "Surely there's got to be someone else more qualified than me? I'm just a navigational helmsman."

"Unless you're hiding more loboths somewhere that I don't know about, then yes; it's completely true. You are the highest ranking officer remaining, and subsequently now in command."

The distressed wolf continued to pace around the cleaned up, but still packed medical lab, doubting the validity of her words. "Look lieutenant, there may have been a dozen others above you before yesterday, but now they're either confirmed dead or missing and presumed dead. I've already shown you the names and numbers. Either step up or I'll be forced to assign the position to the next highest loboth."

"But, I don't know what to do. I've never had to lead anyone like this before. What are we going to do now that the Exodus is wrecked?"

"I would assume the same thing as if our landing wasn't made such a mess of," Mirie replied from behind her desk cluttered with medical reports and personnel files. She picked up one of the plastic and glass display tablets and started to read. "Establish colony for the security and growth of our race, ensuring we have a strong future in the galaxy. Sounds fairly straightforward to me."

"Do we even know how many are left? Is it possible to do that anymore?"

Mirie shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know exactly. Not counting the couple of loboths who honestly aren't going to make it, I'd estimate somewhere around 25 to 40. So long as there's food, shelter, and the ability to breed, things could work out I suppose."

"Then should we call for a full crew meeting in the cargo hanger to find out whose left?"

"Everyone? No. They're probably all busy taking care of things and it might be a bad idea to interrupt them all." The doctor leaned back in thought for a moment. "Just get the couple of other higher up crewmen to get numbers and call for a smaller meeting. That'd be less intrusive."

"Oh, well, then the sooner we get this done the better right? Let's have them show up in the cargo bay in a couple of hours. I- I need a little time to think over this first too."

Amina could not relax for a minute. The pile of fur left around the crate she'd been sitting and wait on from her overly coarse nervous rubbing and clawing was rather impressive for someone not shedding a seasonal coat. Nobody else bothered her as she sat in the corner of the warehouse for more than two hours, lost in anxious thought. Other than crates, boxes, and construction equipment, there really wasn't anyone there to interrupt her.

In fact, when Mirie came in with the other remaining officers she had to call over for Amina to come join her own meeting, and even that took a bit of shouting. Upon rushing over to join her, she was surprisingly greeted by only two other loboths.

"Well Amina, if you wanted to give up being the leader these are the only other two remaining that aren't crippled or otherwise in no position to give orders," Mirie turned to look at the wolf in just a pair of teal overalls, then over to the other with more of a friendly, yet kind of zoned-out look about her.

"I'm not going to do your new job," Caryn, the oddly dressed wolf responded. "I've got too many other things to worry about. Nobody else is going to be able to handle the colony's food and plants as well as me."

"Hi, I'm Wrena," the second loboth reached out to give Amina a hug, tail wagging away behind her. "I don't know if I'd be able to do any better as the leader than you, but I'm still here to help however I can."

Amina looked over both of them and sighed. "This really isn't all that's left, is it?" she thought. "I guess all of you already know what's going on, and why I called you here. We need to come up with some kind of a solution and plan for the mission now."

"As far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed. The ship made it to Elysium and here we are. This is a waste of time," Caryn shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. "Fewer colonists just means less mouths to feed and more work for the time being. We should be outside digging and building, not talking."

"I'm just an engineer, so I don't really know too much about plants and food, but I think talking and planning can help. Especially since not all of us are here anymore." Wrena scratched the back of her head, staring down at the floor in apology to those who didn't make it. "How many of us are left anyway?"

"Thirty four," Mirie answered. "However five of them are either in critical condition or are probably not going to survive. But, there's worse news."

Amina perked her ears up and crooked her head. "Worse? How can this get any worse?"

Mirie laughed. "Oh there's plenty of things that could go wrong, on top of what's already happened. But what I'm referring to is the severe imbalance of the remaining colonists' genders."

"Imbalance? What do you mean?" Amina replied.

"How many males have you seen around here recently?"

The three of them paused a moment to think, and the lieutenant was the first to answer. "Now that you mention it, I don't think I've seen any. I mean anyone walking around at least."

"And that's exactly what I'm talking about. After sending what was left of my staff out to round up numbers and these two, it turns out there's only one left."

"One!? Is the colony even still possible with only one?" Amina retorted in shock at the incredible disparity of numbers.

"If there's anything that botany and agriculture have taught me, it's that you can still make things work even with wild imbalances like that," Caryn brushed aside the bewilderment that filled the others. "We'll be fine, as long as nothing happens to that loboth."

Wrena on the other hand, didn't quite take the news so well. She grabbed onto the doctor's arm with both paws and gave her quite the look of surprise. "But, but, won't there be problems with our pups then if they've all got the same father? I thought that we weren't supposed to breed with loboths so closely related to each other?"

"Technically, no; it's not ideal. But those problems you're thinking of don't usually occur for many generations and only if the male and female are very closely related." Mirie could not get the girl to let go her arm, no matter how much she tried to politely shake her off. "Like brothers and sisters."

"Well, shouldn't we start having pups sooner rather than later?" Wrena did some quick calculations in head, allowing the poor doctor to get herself free from the worried wolf's clutches. "Twenty eight times three to six on average... means about eighty to one hundred seventy a year. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have a feeling that the most we all can handle is going to be ten to fifteen litters each. And even that's pretty extreme."

"There's more important things to worry about than growth projections, Wrena. What good is having all of those pups going to do us if we've got no housing, no supplies and materials, and no food?" Caryn's arms remained across her chest, being fairly confident in her own statement. "Just let the doctor and Amina worry about those things. I'm sure that you've got architectural layout and city planning to do. Aren't those more important to everyone, including the pups, than just breeding like animals?"

"Well, I guess so, but they can be done while carrying a litter. The first thing we should do is get as many of us impregnated as possible, so the colony can start growing rapidly."

Mirie interrupted the desperate girl almost as quickly as the rate she planned to expand the colony. "No. That's not going to work Wrena. Who's going to handle all of the births, if we're all set to deliver at the same time? Not to mention there's no loboth alive who could reasonably breed with that many women that quickly."

"Uh, speaking of that loboth," Amina raised a fingered paw to speak up before the two of them could continue with their arguement. "Who exactly is he? Shouldn't we talk to him and explain the situation to him before just expecting him to father so many pups that quickly?"

"Yeah, it seems rude to just talk about the guy behind his back and expect him to do something like this without even knowing his name," Caryn added.

Mirie turned her head to look towards the far end of the cargo bay, over where all of the digging and lifting construction equipment was. "Actually, he's probably over there. I think his name was Rhael, and he's some kind of machine operator. I'll go get him, since he now seems to be a rather important figure all of a sudden."

The doctor started to walk off to the opposite side of the room, leaving the other three women to stand and wait next to the large metal containers. "Rhael huh? I hope he's a cute guy." Wrena rubbed her paws together and started to wag her tail excited in anticipation.

"It's not like that's going to matter too much Wrena. We all have to spend time with him whether he's good looking or not," Caryn chuckled, eliciting a smile from Amina as well. "Just a minute ago you sounded as if you were about to jump atop some guy you've never met before, just to get yourself breed."

"S- so! I can dream, can't I?" Wrena pouted. "Just because the situation isn't ideal doesn't mean I can't try to make it more enjoyable for myself."

"I just hope he doesn't have too much of a problem accepting what he's going to have to do. And that everyone else doesn't have problems either," Amina replied. "It might take some time to separate the notion of love from sex."

Before either of them could respond, Mirie and the mystery wolf himself walked up to join in. "Hey, this is Rhael. I haven't explained anything to him yet," Mirie introduced the new member to the small meeting.

While Amina and Caryn gave him their names like normal loboths, a certain other one felt it necessary to run up and give him a rather tight hug. Uncomfortable would probably begin to describe the wolf's thoughts and feelings as he was intimately groped from behind.

"I- It's nice to meet you too... Wrena." Rhael tried to return the overly affectionate greeting, but it was just entirely too awkward for him to put his paws where she had hers, especially with all those eyes on him. "So what's going on? And why do I get the feeling there's something going on that involves me?"

"Well, you're partially right about that. We were discussing things about you actually," Amina spoke up. "It's just that we thought it might be better to include you in on it, since it involves you."

"Oh? And what might that be? I'm not in trouble or anything am I?"

Wrena nodded her head, but Rhael didn't notice the joke she was trying to make. "No, no, but I thought it might be better to explain things to you first and not just leave you completely in the dark," Amina responded.

"Basically, the situation is that you're the only surviving male," Mirie continued and tapped Wrena on the shoulder to try and get the two of them separated. "And since this is a colony ship, I think you know the rest."

Rhael paused for a minute while the other loboth let go of him, thinking. Finally he sighed and spoke. "No one else made it...? You're telling me that I have to do that for everyone? I was under the impression that I'd only have to father five or six different litters, but now this? How many women are there?"

Amina stuttered out the answer reluctantly. "About twenty eight."

"Twenty eight!?" Rhael groaned and covered his face with his paw.

"What's wrong? Have trouble getting it up or something?" Caryn joked. "I'm sure the doc's got something to help with that if you do."

Rhael snapped back quickly, not letting them question his wolfhood. "No! I don't have any problems! That's not the point. It's just that when something you like doing becomes a job, it loses any entertainment it once had. If I've got to be with a different woman every night, and not out of choice, then it's no different from having to drive the digger or operate the crane."

"Well, in any event that's what's going on. It seemed like the right thing to do, letting you know too," Mirie replied. "I'm sure everyone will agree that simply milking you and artificial impregnation is a bit undignified. So, once everything gets settled down a bit, I'll draw up an optimal schedule."

"A schedule... It's starting to sound like less of a pleasurable activity and more of work already," Rhael thought, although his face was telling the story his mouth wasn't. "Great. And how soon is this going to start?"

"If things go well, a couple of weeks probably," the doctor answered.

Wrena sighed at the mention of a date so far from what she hoped. "I wanted to go first though. Can you put me on the top?"

"We'll worry about that later. I've still got other things to worry about first."

"Don't think things are hard for just you Rhael," Caryn spoke up. "For one, you should be glad that you're even alive to do this. There's twenty nine other males and about twenty six females who don't have a choice either way."

"It's honestly not that much more work either, and every single person who signed up for this knew it was part of the mission in the first place," Amina added.

"Yeah, and you're not the one who has to go around carrying all those pups for months either," Wrena joined in on the belittlement as well. "Or birth them, or feed them, or anything. All you have to do is a few minutes of work for each of us. But that doesn't mean you can't still make it fun or anything," she giggled.

Mirie patted the poor wolf on the back, in an effort to console his trivial problems. "Sorry to break it to you like this, but I guess it's better than finding out at the last minute when you get called into the med lab and I tell you to breed someone. Who knows, maybe in a couple of weeks the prospect of all of this might actually seem a bit better."

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Are things really that bad for poor ol' Rhael? Maybe, maybe not. Is this a situation that you'd care to be in? I'd like to know just for the amusement of it. Or other thoughts and comments would be good too.