by Rebecca York
“I suppose you are going to tell me.”
“Yeah. When Danalon was first colonized, some of the settlers saw the new planet as an opportunity to separate themselves from Confederation rule and form their own society. Not long after they landed, they stole some of the supplies earmarked for getting the city established and disappeared into the swamps east of the city. The Feds tried to round them up, but there were too many places to hide, and the government decided not to expend resources on the effort. Their descendants still live there, and they bring various goods downriver to the city when they want to trade for things they can’t make. They sell animal pelts. Exotic foods and plants. But not all of them love their primitive existence. From time to time, some of the swamp rats jump ship and join the general population.”
“I am supposed to be one of them?”
“I’m thinking your mother escaped from a bad relationship and brought her daughter to the city because she didn’t want you falling into the same life she was forced to live. That would explain why you don’t have any kind of standard education.”
She felt a surge of admiration for his cunning. “You are good at making up stories.”
He acknowledged the observation with a twisted smile and continued, “She got both of you into the system shortly after she arrived. That explains why you weren’t registered at birth, then had your information updated every five years.”
“Okay.”
“You can use the name we picked—Amber. But you need a last name.” He looked thoughtful. “How about Tradeau?”
“Why that?”
“It’s fairly common in that population. I think it wouldn’t draw any special attention to you.”
Again, she agreed because she must bow to his superior knowledge of this society.
“We can set a course for the station.”
She followed him to the control room where he took the driver’s chair and she resumed the secondary position, although she had no idea how to fly the craft.
“How long will it take to get there?” she asked.
“Only a couple of hours. I was already heading in the general direction of Danalon.”
“And I’m going there dressed like this?” she asked.
He glanced at her and pursed his lips. “You look a little rough. But that’s probably okay.”
She studied her clothing. “You’re saying women on the space station dress like men?”
“Some do. Others like to look feminine. But if you look like that, it should help keep the guys from bothering you—I hope,” he added under his breath. His gaze turned inward. “We should do more to make you unattractive. Too bad your breasts aren’t smaller.”
“Why should they be smaller?”
“A lot of guys are turned on by big boobs.”
“Boobs?”
“Breasts.”
She filed that information away.
“Too bad you don’t have a bra.”
“Which is?”
“A garment that supports a woman’s breasts and keeps them from jiggling.”
When she saw him staring at her chest, she pressed her hands against her breasts.
“Don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s suggestive.”
“I was thinking we could wrap a long strip of cloth, around the top of me several times. That would—keep them from— jiggling.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“You would have to help me.”
“Kahlad.”
“Why did that make you curse?”
“I’d like to avoid touching you?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m trying not to have sex with you,” he snapped.
“I would like it if you did.” Before she could change her mind, she unbuttoned the shirt and pushed the sides away, then cupped her breasts, holding them toward him.
“Slat. You can’t just do stuff like that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not appropriate.”
“No one will see us. No one will know.”
“I’ll know.”
“That feeling I had before is coming back. Maybe it’s from not taking the drug.” She gave him a direct look. “Would you do what you did to me before? Or maybe you can, you know, do it the intercourse way.”
###
Max cursed again. Did she know how provocative she was being? Or was this just an innocent reaction to how her body was feeling? Was it the drug, or was she attracted to him?
All sorts of images ran through his head. He could cut the power to the engines, and drift in space for a while, doing whatever he wanted with a very beautiful and very willing woman. Not just whatever he wanted. She was making it clear that she wanted it too.
He started thinking about the purpose of smuggling a beauty into Danalon. If it was to use her as a sex slave, then the buyer would want her to be a virgin. And if she was not a virgin, that would lower her value for her first buyer.
Maybe he’d be doing her a favor if he took her virginity. Or was that logical? It would make the buyer angry, but what good would I do her? Maybe the buyer would even think she’d done it on purpose. Which she would have.
All that was a great rationalization. And he couldn’t stop more hot thoughts from racing through his mind. He could stand up, lead her down the companionway to his cabin, and pull the lever that allowed him to widen the bed. Then there’d be plenty of room to have a good time together.
His cock was hard as that metal lever now. His mouth was as dry as a sand dune.
He could sweep her into his arms, bring his mouth down on hers, and kiss her with all the lusty abandon that he craved.
He pictured his hands on her breasts, on the curve of her butt, inside the slick folds of her sex, everywhere that would be arousing to both. He knew exactly how good it would feel to have her channel sheathing his aching cock. The images and the sensations he was generating were so vivid that he had to grab the arm of the chair to keep himself from standing up and pulling her body against his.
But even as temptation tore at his resolve, he struggled to cool himself down. Too bad that on a spaceship there wasn’t any equivalent of a cold shower.
But he could imagine stepping naked into the air lock, pressing his body against the outer door, feeling the cold of space seep into his skin, his blood.
That helped.
“We are not going to do anything that I will regret later,” he said, punching out the words.
He watched her tongue sweep across her lips. An invitation? Or a sign of nerves?
“You need to control your sexual impulses,” he said, hearing the thickness in his own voice.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what civilized people do. Did your father fek your mother on the dining room table?” he asked, deliberately putting it in the crudest possible terms.
“He probably didn’t fek her at all.”
“As far as I can see, he must have done it once.”
She kept her gaze fixed on his face, and she must have read the determination in his eyes.
“We’re going to practice being civilized now.”
“How?”
“By getting you dressed.”
He led her back to one of the storage compartments where he found a spool of fabric that he could cut into pieces for wiping machinery. Cutting off a strip, he handed it to her. “Go into the head and do that thing you suggested. I mean bind your breasts. And have your shirt on when you come back.”
She nodded and closed the door behind her.
While she was gone, he rummaged through his clothing and found an old pair of pants that he’d been saving for dirty jobs around the ship. He cut off the bottoms of the legs and found a piece of rope she could use as a belt. When she came back, he handed them to her.
“Put these on over the shorts.”
Again, she complied, and he surveyed the effect. She was scruffy, better covered, and her breasts were not so prom
inent.
She gave him a long look. “Do I pass your inspection?”
“Basically.”
“How long until we get to the space station?”
“Not soon enough,” he growled.
Another thought occurred to him, and he tapped his knuckle against his lips. “We should try to fix another thing, he said.”
“What?”
“Your speech.”
“You said it was standard.”
“Not quite. You don’t use contractions.”
She waited for him to explain.
“I say I’m going to do something.”
“You say I am. Or I say they can’t. And you say they cannot.”
“I was taught that way.”
“I realize that. But if you could use contractions, it would make you blend in better.”
She considered that.
“Try saying, I can’t come to the door right now.”
“I can’t come to the door right now,” she repeated in a tentative voice.
“That’s better.”
“I . . . am used to the other way. It will be hard to remember.”
“I understand, but try to keep it in mind.”
She nodded slowly.
“Try another sentence.”
“Like what?”
“You think of something by yourself.”
She dragged in a breath and let it out. “I’m learning a new way of talking.”
“Good.”
“I am, I mean I’m trying to get it right.”
“You’re a smart woman. Eventually it will come more naturally.”
Chapter Five
Before the station was in view, Max sent a message. “This is The Golden Fleece, on vector 1037. Permission to land.”
A message came back quickly. “Captain Maxwell Cassidy?”
“Yes.”
“Show yourself.”
He switched the big screen to video and saw a guy dressed like a refugee from a desert wasteland sitting at the console. The guy wore a barely-there muscle shirt, showing off impressive tats on both arms. His hair was buzz-cut short, and he sported a ring in his bottom lip and one on the left side of his nose.
Beside him, Max saw Amber blink as she stared at the scruffy representative of authority on the SS Freedom.
He flicked his gaze back to the screen.
“Cassidy,” the man said.
“Yeah.”
“Hold your position.” The screen blanked out, and Amber looked at Max. “You know him?”
“Yeah. He’s an ex-trooper named Fish.”
The man clicked back into view. “How long is your estimated stay?”
“No more than twenty-four hours.”
“What is the purpose of your stay?”
“Picking up supplies.”
Fish consulted a computer to his left.
Max stayed where he was until the guy looked up and said, “You are cleared for docking at bay twenty-five.”
“Thanks.”
As Max powered up again, Amber asked, “Isn’t that a lot of . . . regulations for an outlaw station?”
“They have to be careful about who they let in. There have been a couple of stealth attacks by the Feds—innocent-looking ships docking who turned out to hold armed boarding parties.”
He steered the ship to bay twenty-five, completed the docking maneuver and cut the engines. Next, he connected his fuel cells to the chargers the station provided.
“We just walk off?” Amber asked.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about what else to do that will make you less attractive?”
“Give me beauty bumps?”
He shuddered. “Not quite that bad. Come back to the galley where I can work.”
At the table, he pointed to a chair. “Sit.”
“And what?”
“I could cut your hair.”
“No,” was her instant answer.
“Why do you care?”
“It is . . . I mean it’s the one thing that made me normal on Naxion.”
“Okay. Let’s try some other stuff.” He got out the makeup kit he sometimes used when he was going into what might be hostile territory. Studying her, he said, we can do something about your nose.”
She looked alarmed. “Cut it off?”
“No. Make it a little bigger.”
He pulled out a tube of facial putty and squeezed some of it into his hand, then mashed it into a paste. Before applying it to her nose, he added tint that looked like it would match her skin color. Proceeding carefully, he built up the sides, then the tip, so that it was not so small and delicate looking. She closed her eyes as he worked, and he admired her long, dark lashes, but he was also aware of the way her soft skin felt under his fingertips. It was hard to stay focused on the task as stroked her, and he saw from the faint quiver of her lips that she was reacting to him as well. He wanted to stop touching her. No, that was a lie. He wanted to keep touching her, and not just her face. Instead he doggedly kept to the task at hand. There was one more change that could make a big difference. He added some water to the putty, thinning it out, then applied it to the edges of her full lips, narrowing them so that they were much less enticing.
When he finished, he stepped back and inspected his work.
Her eyes blinked open. “How does it look?”
“Pretty effective,” he answered, trying for objectivity. “It’s good but it doesn’t go overboard.”
“Let me see.”
He handed her a mirror, and she gasped as she took in her own image. “I look . . . different.”
“Yeah.”
“You said I am attractive woman. You changed that, didn’t you?”
“Well, you are still good-looking, but I toned it down.”
She dropped her gaze to her feet. “I can’t go out there barefoot.”
“No.” He returned to his cabin and got a pair of sandals that a long-ago bedmate had left.
When he handed them over, she asked, “Who do these belong to?”
“A woman who once forgot them here.”
“She left barefoot?”
“No, she had another pair of shoes.”
“She was your lover?”
“Briefly.”
“Why briefly?”
“My life isn’t set up for permanent relationships.”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice, and he wondered if she’d been thinking she could persuade him otherwise.
“Stay close to me,” he said as he checked the charge in his beamer, then slipped it into a belt holster.
“Men here carry weapons?”
“Yeah.” And a lot of women, too. But he wasn’t going to give her a beamer she had never used before—or any weapon for that matter.
“Try not to act like you just kicked slat off your heels,” he said as he stepped to the air lock.
“What?”
“Just got off the farm.”
“Oh.”
He opened the lock, and they stepped out into a featureless metal corridor, much like what was on the Golden Fleece. It led to a wider corridor with numbered doors indicating docking stations. At the end was an exit. He ushered her through, and suddenly everything changed as they emerged between a Copa bar and a shashlik house in the main trading hall.
He looked back to mark the location as he heard Amber drag in a quick breath. He glanced into her wide eyes and tried to take in the scene from her perspective. He didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but it probably wasn’t this. He supposed it could be compared to a market plaza in a rural village on one of the planets except that there was a ceiling high above the stall. The lower floor and a balcony were filled with colorful stalls selling everything from Danalon herbal medicines and Palamar farm tools and minerals to Farlian jewelry, and surplus Confederation weaponry. Other entrepreneurs cut hair, did beauty treatments, piercings, tats and tarot card readings. Interspersed with the goods and services were food stalls offering selections from a
round the nearby planets.
The visual collage was overlaid with aromas—unwashed bodies. Exotic perfume. Cooking smells. It all came to them in a babble of voices of shopkeepers and would-be customers wandering through the aisles, looking for a bargain or just something unusual to take home.
He saw many of the sellers eyeing him and Amber as they walked along the aisles—evaluating them as potential customers—or easy marks. Some called out, offering good deals.
“Special for you.”
“On sale now.”
“You’ll be sorry if you don’t stop.”
He ignored the come-ons and hustled Amber through the crowded aisles. They were almost to the other side of the trading hall when he realized she had stopped short in front of a dress shop called Ilina’s, which was packed with brightly colored feminine wearing apparel.
“Those are . . . beautiful,” she murmured as she reached out to touch a silky scarf. And so soft.”
“Maybe we can stop back later. We need to finish our business here.”
They had entered at one of the most crowded sections of the great hall. At the other side the crush was thinner because there were more restaurants and bars than stands, and Max steered Amber in that direction.
###
On one of the metal balconies above the main floor, two men leaned casually on the railing, drinks in hand as they scanned the crowd. Both wore standard attire favored by the lower class of station dwellers—in other words mismatched pants and shirts. One had close-cropped blond hair. The other had dark hair tied at the back of his neck. Neither looked like they were doing anything besides idling time away, in fact they had picked up a temporary assignment the day before. Because they knew all the people who frequented the station, they were watching for visitors.
“Down there,” the blond one gestured with a tip of his head.
The guy with the long dark hair followed his companion’s direction and saw a man and woman making their way through the aisles.
After a moment, he scoffed. “Naw. She’s not pretty enough.”
“You think somebody’s just going to parade a Naxion beauty through here like she was a prize pony?”
“Okay,” the other man conceded as he watched the couple.
The guy who had pointed out the visitors was named Kado. His partner was Lomax. They were regulars on the Freedom Station and did various jobs—legal or illegal—for anybody willing to pay them.
