Christopher Nuttall - Democracy's Light

“Fine,” Sasha agreed. “We’ll deal with that now.”

She led them away from the dealer’s berth. “That was interesting,” she said. Charlie suspected that she had privately enjoyed the haggling. “Now, we’ll go get the packages and then find the hotel. And then… we’ll get to work.”

Senior Supervisor Andy Gillingham allowed himself a smile as he disembarked from the shuttle at the main spaceport and looked around with interest. It was his first leave, but one he felt he had definitely earned after being promoted to replace the last Senior Supervisor. Thinking of the idiot whose orders he had had to obey, even when they led to outright disaster, made his blood boil, but at least he could enjoy a little gloating. The former supervisor, locked up after a disaster with the superdreadnaught construction program, didn’t have anything like that luxury. Gillingham had taken his job and had done it so well that he had been offered promotion already.

He smiled again as he wandered into the spaceport. The old supervisor had been appointed by the Clan’s Manger and hadn’t known much about shipyards; indeed, it was a miracle he hadn’t stepped out of the airlock without a spacesuit before he was removed. He’d known just enough to think he knew it all, which had meant that he had made mistakes, including some that Gillingham had tried to talk him out of making. There were some supervisors who were content to take their pay and stay out of the way, but no, his former one had insisted on having his own way. After Admiral Wilhelm had taken over, thank God, that sort of incompetence had been seriously punished.

And Gillingham himself had benefited. The removal of the Thousand Families meant that he had incredible room to realise his dreams, as long as he stayed loyal and competent. He’d already rammed through an entire series of improvements to the shipyards, ensuring that there were fewer accidents and work went smoother, while proposing other greater changes that would expand the entire production line. If the Admiral agreed to make the investments, and Gillingham saw no reason why he shouldn’t, the shipyard would become far more productive. Indeed, it might see Gillingham himself promoted to manager!

He found a small bar and walked inside, looking around for interesting company. Nothing caught his eye until he saw inside one of the small cubicles at the rear of the bar, where a girl was sitting, nursing a drink as if she had been there for a while. She smiled at him and he was hooked, feeling as if he was being pulled over to sit opposite her, smiling back into her face. She had a hauntingly pretty oriental face, with a smile that revealed perfect teeth, and long dark hair that seemed to shine like the inky darkness of space. He could see the tops of her breasts in her outfit, but her hair fell down, covering them.

“Ah… hello,” he said, cursing himself for a fool. He’d wanted to be the charmer, the seducer, but somehow it hadn’t come out quite right and he sounded like an idiot. It always happened when he tried to talk to pretty girls. He either managed to convince them that he was a drooling idiot, or that he was only interested in their bodies, or he got as far as telling them where he worked and they lost interest, if they’d ever had interest. A whole series of chat-up lines rose to the forefront of his mind and he, somehow, refrained from actually saying them. “Hello?”

She smiled at him as if she understood him perfectly. “Hello to you too,” she said. It sounded like an invitation to bed and he felt his body quiver. “Are you new here too?”

“No, I work at the shipyards,” Gillingham said, before he could stop himself. She was going to be bored, he just knew, as he started to talk, but somehow she kept listening to him. “And yourself?”

“I just got in on a freighter and I have to wait here for another one,” she said. She held out a hand. “My name is Sandra, by the way.”

Gillingham took her hand and, somehow, worked up the nerve to kiss it. It felt warm and wonderfully soft under his lips. “Charmed,” he said. “My name is Andy.”

She laughed warmly. “Pleased to meet you, Andy,” she said. “Are you going to keep me company for a while?”

It felt as if they chatted for hours. He spoke about everything and, for once, he didn’t feel like a gibbering idiot. Perhaps it was the soft brown eyes that rested on his, or perhaps it was the fact she asked intelligent questions, but somehow he couldn’t hold anything back. He could just feel the sexual tension rising and falling, but somehow he was enjoying her company too much to make a move, even though he wanted her desperately. His eyes kept dropping to the rise and fall of her breasts, pure white against the darkness of her hair, and yet, somehow she didn’t leave him alone.

“I think they’re going to want us to leave soon,” she said, finally. Gillingham glanced at his timepiece. Had it really been four hours since he’d met Sandra? “Would you like to come with me for a nightcap?”

Gillingham couldn’t have refused her even if he’d been due back on the shipyard. She took his hand and led him towards the stairs, up towards a bedroom. It occurred to him to wonder what she might have been doing with a bedroom where she met him, but somehow the moment the thought occurred to him she brought him to her and kissed him. For a moment, he was too surprised to react… and then he kissed her back, hard.

The universe seemed to dissolve in a wave of lust. His hands fell down towards her breasts, stroking them and tearing at her shirt, ripping it away from her chest and revealing her perfect figure. One hand reached down to her trousers and pushed them down, while the other pulled her closer to him. Her hands were undoing his clothes with a calm precision, even as she pulled him towards the bed and pushed him down on it. She reached inside his pants and touched his penis… and the universe went away on a tidal wave of pleasure.

“My, talk about a wild animal,” Charlie said, as he entered the room. Sandra’s shirt was ripped and torn, exposing her breasts for all to see. She was pulling up her trousers, but even they were damaged by the sheer passion that the drugs had unleashed. “I guess he really did want you after all.”

Sandra glared at him, completely unbothered by her near-nakedness. “I expected the drug to kick in well before I got too exposed,” she said, looking down at the unconscious form of Andy Gillingham. The drug she’d painted on her lips before she waited to see who would walk into her trap should have borne him away on a tidal wave of pleasure. When he awoke properly, he would remember nothing more than a brief pleasant encounter with a girl. “I didn’t mind sucking and fucking him for the cause, of course, but…”

“Of course,” Sasha agreed. She winked at Charlie as Sandra discarded the remainder of her outfit and pulled on a black dressing gown. She had seduced others for Imperial Intelligence before during her long career. Gillingham hadn’t had the slightest idea of what was going to hit him. “Now, before this gets any more exciting, let’s find out what your lover knows, shall we?”

“How does it feel to be back here?”

Jason Cordova scowled at him. Even wearing a more subdued outfit, rather than his traditionally outrageous mixture of bright colours and flamboyant design, he looked intimidating. He might have hoped, Tiberius suspected, that the absence of his normal outfit would put any watchers off the scent, but there was no mistaking him for a harmless man. Something, long ago, had burned most of the human weaknesses out of Jason Cordova and it showed.