Stowaway

Based on a prompt by Hypoxia in the Forum: "Tell of one or more stowaways, any genders, and who/how they must fuck to avoid being tossed overboard. The SciFi variant involves human-alien sex, of course."

*****

His cold eyes regarded me as if I were vermin. "Bad enough that you're a stowaway," he said, his voice as fierce as ice. "But you haven't had the required shots, boosters or training. You're a danger to this ship and crew, and I'd be within my rights to jettison you from the airlock with a distress beacon and twenty-four hours of air."

There's space and then there's space. The thought of having nothing but a spacesuit between me and the void filled me with terror.

"Indeed," he continued, "were we still in Earth jurisdiction, I'd have no choice, but as of five minutes ago we are in interplanetary space."

Which meant we were out of Earth's gravity well. I sighed with relief. I'd escaped my home planet - for now anyway.

Lieutenant Granger scowled, telling me quite clearly by his expression that he was considering jettisoning me without any protection from certain death. "I can offer you a choice," he said. "The airlock - or indentured service."

My spirits bumped up a little. He was actually offering to let me stay onboard. And indentured service wasn't so bad, not so long as it wasn't -

"Category X."

Shit. Brothel duty. He was offering me a choice between near-certain death in cold space followed by certain imprisonment, possibly for life, and selling my body for uncertain profit.

Um.

So much for the great adventure I'd hoped for. If I'd wanted to sell my body, I could have done that on Earth. Of course, if I returned to Earth, my fate would probably be the same. Everyone knew the brothels recruited from the prisons.

I sighed. "For how long?"

"Until you've paid off the costs you've incurred."

"Fine," I muttered. "Just so long as I never see Earth again."

*

My first stop was the clinic - not so much for my sake as the crew's. In their eyes I was practically a plague carrier, even if they'd all been immunised against whatever I might be carrying. That I was severely bruised from the high-G departure from Earth was a minor concern.

Dr Dale was a sweet but professional woman who smiled kindly as she drew a fearful amount of blood from me in a myriad of test tubes. "First time in space?" she asked, though she knew the answer. "Ever done sex work before?"

Yes, it was my first time in space. No, this would be my first time doing sex work. In fact, it was almost my first time having sex. I'd always found social encounters and relationships to be difficult.

"Female, I assume?"

An easy assumption to make, given my appearance, but no. "Non-binary."

She raised an eyebrow, but said only, "Orientation?"

I shrugged. "Pan."

She made a note in my record, then studied the results of the blood tests. "Okay... I'll give you the standard set now, at no cost, but there's a range of optionals that you really should consider."

"What does the standard set do?"

"Mainly radiation resistance, along with an immune system boost and general detox. It will take a day or two to settle down, and you'll probably feel some nausea in the meantime." She administered this while talking, a hypospray shot against my arm. "It'll clear up those bruises too."

"And the optionals?"

"Mood enhancers. Advanced repairers. Body adjustments. Implants and prosthetics. I'll send you a list once the analysis is complete."

"Expensive?"

"Varies - but well worth the investment, I'm told."

Mood enhancers were banned on Earth, not that you couldn't get them. The ultimate performance drug. They could wreck your life by turning you into a sex addict - though being a sex addict would, I imagined, make life as a ship's whore more endurable.

"Thank you, Dr Dale," I said, and was led away by Lieutenant Granger to learn the myriad of safety protocols that I, and any space worker, was required to know by heart.

Between that and the cocktail in my blood, my head was spinning wearily by the time I was taken to the cabin that would be my home in the following months.

*

The

Kythera

was an interplanetary vessel shaped like three giant, interlocking bicycle wheels rotating around a central cigar-tube, carrying mainly freight but also about a thousand crew and passengers. Its perpetual flight path took it between Earth and Saturn, occasionally passing by Mars and Jupiter, or at one of the larger mines in the Belt. The thrust from the starship's sublight drive meant that the apparent gravity wasn't quite vertical, giving the unshakable impression that the corridors and cabins were built on a slope.

I spent a whole day in my cabin, feeling too sick to eat or do anything much. I was almost sure I was dying, a bad reaction to whatever the doctor gave me.

But the next day I woke up feeling better than ever, my bruises gone, illness gone, and with a huge appetite. I found a nearby canteen and gorged myself on what to me were delicacies. I might be a ship's whore, but I was more certain than ever that I had made the right decision - to leave Earth, that is.

A cheerful young someone of ambiguous gender sat opposite me. "Hi, I'm Toni," they said. "Your tutor in matters of pleasure."

"Sam," I said, indicating myself. "So you're..."

"The

Kythera

's one and only ship's whore, yes - until you came along."

I couldn't tell if they were upset about me being there. "Is there a lot of work for us?"

"Enough to share, don't worry, and plenty who will find your femininity more to their taste. You really need to show off your assets - but don't worry, the ship's store has everything you'll need. I'll show you later."

Toni wolfed down a bowl of scrambled eggs. Their make-up was subtle, their clothing both casual and provocative. By their playful glances at me, they seemed to be inviting me to make a move on them.

"The doctor sent me a list of optionals," I said.

They nodded. "You'll want the mood enhancers and the repairers. Anything else can wait."

I nodded, having decided as much myself. I really didn't like the idea of enhancers, but the thought of fucking random strangers without them...

*

Dr Dale administered two hyposprays. I waited to see how my mood would change, but sensed nothing. The doctor laughed. "They'll take a few days to stabilise, but you should feel something. Pinch your nipples. That's the trigger."

I gave them a tentative pinch, and the rush of pleasure through me was electric. I bit my lip to stop from swearing as a surge of heat within had me pressing my thighs together. "Oh. Wow."

"I want to fuck you," the doctor said.

"Okay," I said, agreeing without thought.

"I'd say it's working. Yes?"

I stared at her in confusion. Did she want me or not? Either way, I wanted her. "Oh, fuck," I said. "How long does this last?" It was supposed to be temporary, but maybe that was a lie.

"Until you will it to stop. Just concentrate on calming your mind and body."

Which was easier said than done. It took a few minutes, and it physically hurt to sit still when I needed so badly to be touched, but at last the awful craving dissipated. I sighed with relief. "I'd hate to be that horny all the time. No wonder these are banned on Earth."

Dr Dale shuddered. "The permanent enhancers are banned everywhere. Even these temporary ones are restricted to Category X."

"I feel so privileged..."

*

The problem I discovered very quickly was not the sex. The sex itself was easy. One pinch of my nipples and all my nervousness and doubts evaporated. I waited until my first client was literally at my door, and in the space of ten seconds went from borderline panic to a state of almost demented lust.

The elderly crewman who entered my cabin wasn't there to chat or flirt or anything, he was just after some relief. He fed his cock to me, fucking my mouth until I choked on him, unable to escape because his fingers were coiled tightly in my hair, holding my head firmly in position.

I didn't mind that at all, although my obvious lack of skill was embarrassing.

Throwing me onto all fours, he drove into me from behind, and was soon pounding into me, fast and deep, each impact making my whole body surge forwards. I could feel I was wet. I could hear it. He wasn't small either, and I felt deliciously stretched by him. I'd had sex before, but it had been nothing like this.

With a grunt of pleasure he came, spilling his seed into me as I tried to bring myself to a climax by fucking myself with his hard, pulsing cock.

But he was done, and quickly getting dressed, and suddenly I was alone and still desperately horny, and after making myself come three times with my fingers I acknowledged the futility of it and forced myself to calm down through sheer mental effort.

And that's when it really hit me. The awfulness of what had just happened. I had made myself a slave to an uncaring stranger's sexual perversion. A sex object. A thing to be fucked. I could still feel him in me. My thighs were wet with his cum. The taste of him was in my mouth.

I ran to the shower in tears and let the hot rain cleanse my outside, but it was a long time before I felt calm enough to sleep, or brave enough to venture from my cabin.

*

Self-loathing gradually gave way to resignation. You can only cry yourself to sleep for so long before fatigue sets in. Resignation in turn gave way to uncaring addiction, the easiest cure for depression being after all a quick pinch of the nipples. Far better to be crazy-horny than to be crippled by self-hatred.

Toni watched my progression through misery to devil-may-care with understanding and compassion. "You need to learn to control it," they said, "or you'll burn out before we even reach Mars."

"How though?" I demanded. "My horniness scale goes from zero to a hundred without anything in between."

They laughed. "Well, it will if you keep pinching your nipples. Try turning it up with your mind."

How that was supposed to work I had no idea, and for days I tried and failed, perhaps because I didn't want to succeed. There's something very seductive about just letting go, punching the mind and body into overdrive.

But one day it just clicked, almost as if the dial had had that setting from the start - and maybe it did. A low-level horniness that, left unguarded, could either fall away to nothing or accelerate to insanity.

It's like riding a bike. Once you learn not to fall, you wonder how you ever did.

*

After the wild emotional highs and lows of those early days, it was a relief to discover an equilibrium, and with it a sense of control, albeit tenuous. That my body was constantly aroused - in a way that I could almost (but not quite) ignore was both blessing and curse.

A curse because I could never find peace. Not only was my body an itch in need of scratching, but I was forever losing myself in erotic fantasies involving the people around me. If I got too lost in these imaginings, my hands might drift to my breasts, my fingers teasing my oh-so-sensitive nipples... and perhaps pinch them, just hard enough to turn the itch into a demanding fire.

A blessing because sexual arousal flicks a switch in the mind that turns disgust into desire. Flicking the switch makes the horrific erotic. It turns the smell of unwashed genitals into a fragrant feast. It makes a stranger's ass into something you can plunge your tongue into. It makes being tied up and whipped into an intoxicating pleasure.

It makes being a ship's whore into a profession that's not only endurable but actually enjoyable. Which was good, because I was going to have to do a lot of fucking just to repay the costs incurred just by being aboard the

Kythera

- and that was nothing compared to costs of the optionals. I was severely in debt.

But the optionals were worth it. The mood enhancer gave me the mental stamina for sex work, and the repairers gave me the physical stamina. No matter how rough the sex or how sharp the whips, the nanites in my blood healed my abused flesh, leaving not even a scar.

And in a way it was all worth it, because I got to see Mars. We swung by close enough that the red planet appeared much the same size as the Moon from Earth. A series of shuttles docked with us as we flew past, exchanging passengers and cargo, and then we were alone again, the crescent of Mars diminishing until it was lost amongst the stars.

Toni and I watched it from the canteen where we met daily for lunch. "Why do you hate Earth so much?" they asked. "All the Earthers I've met talk about it like it's a paradise."

"Maybe it is for them." I didn't really want to talk about the class struggle, how my father was worked to death by an uncaring industry, or how a broken welfare system denied my mother the operation she needed. I certainly didn't want to talk about my brother's suicide, but I had other reasons too. "All my life, society has forced me into a box labelled 'Woman', telling me that I have to look a certain way, act a certain way, talk a certain way... That my duty is to get married and make babies and spend my life looking after them."

"Ugh," Toni said sympathetically.

I shrugged. "Looking like a woman is the easy part. I can do that, though it does feel very fake to me. But the rest I've struggled with all my life. The idea of being someone's stay-at-home wife just makes me want to run for my life."

"All the way into Space..."

You had to look closely to catch glimpses of the asteroids in the Belt. The only one that stood out for me was Vesta, its surface brightly lit by the mines. Again there was a brief shuttle docking, but Vesta dwindled quickly to a pinprick of light.

Beyond it, the Sun was shrinking by the day, something that never failed to astonish me. One of the few constants in my life, growing visibly smaller day by day. By the time we shot past Paris Station in the Jupiter Trojans, the Sun was a tiny disc of light, still fiercely bright but difficult to really think of as anything other than a star - called 'Sol' by Toni and the other spacers.

That was the midpoint of our journey, and for the next six weeks there was nothing to see except stars in every direction.

*

As I settled into my new life, my cabin reflected it. I bought pot plants and sun-lights; a large framed print of the Algoran mountains, the two moons bright and full above the dawn-lit peaks; and a chest, of course. ("Every sailor needs a chest," Toni said, the first time they took me shopping.)

The chest filled up steadily over the weeks, with a wide range of make-up; clothes, naturally, from elegant silk lingerie to faux-leather dominatrix via schoolgirl and starship officer; an honestly embarrassing variety of chains, whips, dildos, vibrators, - and so on.

Pride of my collection was the shoes. There are strict regulations in space regarding footwear, but that hadn't stopped someone designing a range of gorgeous high-heeled platform stilettos, complete with steel caps and sole magnets. Far too bloody awkward for any normal person to wear, and I may have been the only person on the ship who did, but I rather liked them and they certainly drew attention.

"Dr Dale asked if she could be my hundredth," I told Toni, somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn. "What's that all about?"

Toni laughed. "Once you've done ninety-nine, you get to drop the 'Trainee' from your title. You get to call yourself a professional. It's tradition to choose someone special to be your hundredth."

Someone special? There wasn't anyone special in my life, just a few regulars, and Toni. Dr Dale wasn't a regular, or even a client, just someone who did weekly scans of my body to ensure all the nanotechnology in my blood was performing correctly.

"I guess the nice doctor likes you..."

"Maybe."

"Have you done zero-G, yet? I bet she'd like that."

I hadn't, in fact. I'd been in the zero-G recreation area a few times for space training, but I hadn't been there yet for sex. "How do you do it?"

"Well, you could watch the thousand or so zero-G porn films in the ship's library, or you could just ask the good doctor to show you..."

*

It was an odd conflict of feelings. On the one hand I was a little horrified that I had sold myself for sex one short of a hundred times in the span of ten weeks. On the other, I was oddly proud to have mastered this profession that had been forced upon me. Doing my hundredth felt like I was not only accepting this unwanted fate but actively embracing it.

But really, it was when I agreed to the optionals that I set my fate. Even if I magically paid off my debts before Saturn, I was doomed to a perpetual, mild-yet-insistent craving for sex and a seeming indifference to who provided it. Was it so bad if I got paid for it?

At my regular checkup with Dr Dale, I asked, "So, do you still want to fuck me?"

She blushed brightly, and nodded. "If you want to too."

I'd given it plenty of thought. "I'd like my hundredth to be you. Maybe you could show me how to do it in zero-G?"

She smiled tentatively. "I can do that. I wonder..."

"Yes?"

"Can I give you a gift? It's for me really, but you might find it useful too."

No one had given me gift in years, apart from Toni buying me my first dildo (which they'd then ordered me to suck to prove that I could, so I'm not sure that counts). "Ah, what?"

"It's one of the optionals. The chameleon. Lets you change your skin colour at will."

I raised an eyebrow. "Why? I mean, that costs more than I made the whole trip so far."

"I'm paying, remember. And it's because I have a thing for blue-skinned girls." She blushed again.

"Ohh..." That was a new one on me. I was long past being shocked by people's fetishes, though. "So, are we talking primary, or something lighter?"

The doctor laughed, clearly relieved. "I'll let you decide."

Five minutes later I left her clinic with a fresh injection of nanites diffusing through my flesh.

*

The chameleon optional requires you focus on a colour and, importantly, keep that colour in your mind - which is hard to do when you're distracted by having sex. The change in skin colour is slow, however, so it's not like the mood enhancer where a quick pinch of the nipples punches you into overdrive.

It can also be used to turn the body into a canvas, but that takes years of practice. I had only one day to get ready for the doctor. I opted for sky blue, and the effect (eventually) was startling. I looked like a creature out of an ancient fantasy.

My natural blonde hair was not affected, of course, and my lips, areolae and nipples all needed to be darker... but that was easily solved with some primary blue hair dye and some carefully applied lipstick.

I dressed in black and gold for contrast, amused at how much effort I was putting into this, almost like it was a date rather than a sexual transaction. I was under no illusion that this would lead to a romantic relationship, but I wanted to surrender to the possibility, if only for a while. I hoped there would be lots of kissing.

Some of my clients were women. I liked that. Some of my clients liked to kiss. I didn't like that - it felt artificial, unnecessary and intrusive. But still, I hoped Dr Dale would want to.

I looked at myself in the mirror, a barely recognisable figure, a blue-skinned alien far from home, out amongst the stars. "Sam Jones," I said to my reflection. "Ship's Whore, comma, Professional."

*

I received a few whistles of appreciation as I made my way round the great bicycle wheel to the elevator, and then up to the weightless heart of the cigar. Clearly Dr Dale wasn't the only fan of blue skin. The doctor herself was waiting for me as I stepped out, her eyes surveying me with blended awe and desire. She too had put effort into her appearance; I had never seen her wear make-up before. "Wow," she breathed.