Keesha was out for fun. Her shift had ended twenty minutes ago, and now she was in the right mood to go wild. In the light gravity of New Kopje, one of the biggest cities on colonial Mars, she carried herself effortlessly. The thin atmosphere, which got thicker every year, gave her a breathtaking view of the stars.
Then she saw something else that took her breath away.
A young man stood under a disused air vent. He was short, but he stood up straight, and he was dressed to please. A shadowy vest half-covered his hard chest, and a black kilt with purple accents reached down to his knees. His legs were shaped by muscles, and powerful Achilles tendons stood out above his heels. Slits in his kilt gave tantalizing hints of the skin underneath.
The boy's even reddish brown skin stood out against the rust-and-silver city. His oily black hair fell past his shoulders, matching the thin black collar that pressed tightly around his neck with a shining metal D-ring in the front. An unmistakably masculine chin peeked out from between his locks, and confident blue eyes met hers. One of his eyebrows cocked up seductively.
"Hello, lady," he said, in the sharp, high accent of the ice-cap people. "You look like you're trying to see through these clothes. You can have what's underneath, you know... for a price."
Keesha's heart thumped fast and light. "How much?"
"Twenty-eight fedcoins."
Keesha tried to hide her surprise. She had expected more. She fished inside one of her pouches, feeling her pocket change, and her smile returned. "Twenty-eight. I'm taking you home, boy."
She tossed him the money, and he snatched it out of the air with one hand. That instant, she grabbed him off his feet- he would have been light even on Earth- and carried him down the street to her apartment.
Inside, she wasted no time in tossing him onto her cot, where his vest flew open, flashing the condoms strapped to the inside. Where his skin had been covered before, Keesha saw core muscles braided like licorice. She licked her lips.
"Want to feel?" asked the boy. "I'm not shy."
She prowled up to him, pulling away her own clothes, and squeezed his stomach, grinning as his muscled body resisted her. Her hands traveled down, and she seized his kilt. One swift movement pulled the thing away, exposing a cock that was long, slender, and widest at the tip- just how Keesha like them. Her fingers launched themselves at his cock, and she felt impossibly warm skin throbbing with life.
Without asking, she ripped one of the condoms from the inside of his vest, opened it and pulled it over his cock, encasing it in shiny black. She ran her fingers over the bulb of his head, and he let out a low, smooth groan. His nipples jerked as his breath caught.
She crawled over him, her big body covering his small frame, and lowered herself onto him. Warm rubber brushed against her walls, and round hardness filled her. She seized her cot, which was bolted to the floor, then pushed up and rammed herself back down on the boy, feeling the force rushing into her.
She kept up her speed, delighting in the boy's grunts as sweat started to glisten in the grooves on his chest. The energy between her legs got more acute, and her whole body curled with tension. She gripped the floor straps and hunched over the boy. Her teeth clenched and her toes curled. Her thighs squeezed him. Finally, she made a noise she had never made before as she emptied her lust on him, spraying slick juices onto his hips, his legs and his chest.
She straightened up for a moment, panting, not sated but not yet ready for more. While her chest heaved, she lay down next to the boy and stroked his chin.
"You like it?" said the boy.
"I love it," she said. "And we're not done." Her eyes wandered down his dripping body, and she noticed the word 'native' tattooed onto his hip. "You're a long way from home, aren't you?" she added.
The boy smirked. "I still have that much of an accent, do I? Ya. Guilty as charged."
"What's an ice cap boy doing up here in the city?"
"It's a long story."
"Go for it, boy."
* * *
My name is Victor. My family and I used to live around the southern cap. A hundred and ten years ago, they were paid to leave the Canada First Nation reservation where they lived and settle on the Martian frontier. Back then, you had to wear a gas mask just to breathe. But now it's terraformed enough that you can breathe like normal, even on the poles. We farmed liliciate, the main ingredient in cancer pills, and we made good business. The air and soil weren't the best, but the land was free.
One afternoon, I stood on the front porch, looking out over the mess of fuzzy light blue fungus that surrounded the house. We were in for a good harvest, but I was hard-pressed to be happy about that. I had just had another shouting match with my mother.
"This is no argument," she had said. "You marry that Arianas girl, or you inherit nothing."
I didn't like either of those options. I had never met Arianas, and she was a long way away, in a farm where they grow questionable things. But for me, a boy who had never gone to college, no inheritance meant no future.
I heard the front door click open, then quietly shut, and my big brother Sid sat down beside me. He doesn't look like I do. He's adopted, not that Mom and Dad loved him any less. He had a wide frame, with big, thick Earth legs. When he folded his arms, you couldn't see any of his stomach. His blond hair was straight for the first few inches, with just enough curl so that it swept at the tips. He had a broad face with tanned white skin, and a ruff of grey hairs covered his chin.
"Victor?" he said. "What is it? Shut the front door, is this about marriage again?"
'Shut the front door' was Sid's idea of a curse. When we were children, we always left the front door open, and Dad would get angry about it a lot. He would say, "Shut the front door, air is getting in," or "Shut the front door, we're going to have company," and "Shut the front door, do you boys never learn?" Now Sid used that every time he was surprised.
"It's true," I told him. "I don't know who I want to marry. But probably not Arianas."
"Probably?"
I stood up, exasperated. "How should I know? I never got a chance to meet her. And how come you don't have to marry?"
"I don't know." The way Sid was, I could not tell if he was keeping the truth from me, or if he really did not know.
I shook my head and said, "I'm going to the store."
"Are you sure that's smart? Dad just went there a month ago. We should be well-fixed until harvesting season."
"Ya, except Dad forgot to buy air valves. I'll do them a favor." I turned away from him. "And I need to leave the house for a while."
I jumped up onto the roof of the farmhouse- I was always proud that I could do that- and walked over the flat metal roof to the vehicle shed on the other side. I found the pedal car, which was little more than a bedframe with four big, fat tires on the corner. I mounted it, pulling on my sandstorm goggles. The pedal car had compressed air jets for building up speed, but I did not bother with them. I sat in the front seat, behind the bumper we had welded onto the front, and put my feet on the pedals. I pushed too hard, raising a cocktail of red dust behind me, then my tires got traction, and I started off to the general store. The farm vanished behind me.
I rode, alone and completely unarmed, a little black dot along the dusty red wasteland. A vertical wedge of dirt floated in the air behind me.
An hour into my trip, I saw a black shape, like a long, thin, rounded chevron. It floated about fifty feet above the ground, mighty air jets keeping it off the ground. It came at me from the west, then drew alongside me. I pulled away, hoping they would leave me alone, but they did not. Finally, fear set in. I hit the air jets and soared off for the general store. I suppose I was hoping that I could reach it in the next few minutes, but I may as well have been hoping to meet the governor at a bus stop. The chevron ship landed in front of me, and I used the retro-jets to stop myself. I dismounted the pedal car, shielding my eyes against the late-morning sun.
A door popped open in the side of the ariship, and a man in a parka jumped out, sliding on the dusty ground, raising a pink pall. "You!" he said to me, "This is the Justice Corps. We need you in here, quickly!"
"Who are you?" I called back.
"It doesn't matter! Come on, get over here!"
"No." I never listened to people before learning their names.
I stood still instead of running like I should have, and the suited man looked disappointed, then frightened. Suddenly, he pulled back into the cockpit, and three women jumped out, running after me. Finally, I thought to get going, but it was no use. An electric generator throbbed, and an electromagnet powered up, yanking the pedal car backwards, taking me with it. The car flipped over, and I fell off, tumbling painfully to a stop, sharp sand grinding my skin. When I could see again, there was a pair of boots in front of me. I looked up. A woman in grey camouflage stared back down at me, smirking while she held a pistol pointed at the sky. Her blond curls peaked out from beneath a pitch-black crush cap. The two women at her sides were dressed in Earth-tone leather lined with fur, and their hair hid beneath cowboy hats.
The leader reached down, grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and lifted me off the ground, holding me at arm's length. My feet kicked uselessly at the air, and I clawed at her hand, all with no success.
The leader stared down her arm like it was the barrel of a gun. She licked her lips. "This one is a find," she said. "Pack up. We're taking off."
The other women walked around me, eyeing me while I hung helpless in the air.
"Come on," said the leader, "my arm is getting tired."
She did not feel tired to me. She was crushing my windpipe, and I was losing my strength. Just as I started to panic, my arms were yanked behind me, then fused together with a clasp of metal on metal. The woman dropped me, and I fell on my face, arms trapped behind my back.
Strong hands pulled me out of the dust, and I coughed and blinked against the cloud on my face. I knew I was being carried into the ship, then I lost track of everything.
When I came to, I was unbound, in a room with one dim light. The floor was thin metal, dominated by a chest-high table that looked wide enough to serve dozens at a dinner. A thin counter protruded from the wall next to me, surrounded by cabinets stocked with cooking implements.
I shivered with cold and looked down at myself. My chest was bare, except for two tight straps that ran diagonally from my shoulders, crossing just above my stomach. Instead of my cotton underwear and jeans, I had some sort of elastic panties on. I had pants, too, but the crotch had been cut away, so my cock bulge was out in the open. My shoes were gone too.
I spent half a minute looking at my outfit, feeling all over myself. "This is not good," I said.
"Oh, no? You look good to me."
I whipped around. In a corner, a short man stood in a long-sleeved mauve shirt with a zipper running all the way down the front. Jungle-camouflage pants covered his legs, with pockets full of something, and hardy boots covered his feet, tied with a complicated knot. I noticed that his arms and legs were both clean-shaven. He had short red hair that flowed down the top half of his head, and a few facial hairs ran down his jawline. He looked around twenty-six, maybe twenty-eight, which would make him five years older than I. He stepped up to me and folded his arms, looking me up and down. Just by his smile, I could tell that he liked what he saw.
I searched for a good greeting. I debated between 'hello' and 'who are you?' when he broke the silence.
"Is this your first time here?" he asked, in a lowland accent.
"Ya," I said. "But where is 'here?'"
He gave a little chuckle that I didn't like. "'Here' is wherever the captain feels like. This is an airship."
"I know, but what kind of airship? Bandits? It's a strange kind of bandit that will attack a man who's not carrying anything. I even forgot to bring money for the general store. Were they after me?"
