The First of the Stoners
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 5: Docking Maneuvers
Science Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 5: Docking Maneuvers - For readers of the Greenies Universe, this is where it all began. In 2135, nineteen-year-old Nathan Stoner is offered something no vermin has seen in generations: a real job. The catch? It's on Mars. Follow the first wave of colonists as they leave Earth behind and build the foundations of the society that will one day shape the entire Greenies timeline.
Caution: This Science Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Consensual Fiction Science Fiction
Interplanetary space, inner Sol System
July 9, 2135
The roach pit was louder than usual, the sound bouncing off the bulkheads and settling into a steady, satisfied roar. They were serving pizza tonight. People leaned in closer to their trays, talked with their mouths full, laughed a little louder than they meant to. The machines were working nonstop, sliding out respectable sized individual slices that steamed faintly under the lights.
Nate and Darla sat across from each other at one of the long tables, knees nearly touching. They had both gone for pepperoni and sausage, the heartiest of the three choices, the one nobody ever argued about. Nate picked up his slice and watched the cheese stretch just a little before it gave up and snapped free of the plate. The pepperoni looked almost (but not quite) like real meat—greasy at the edges, curled just enough to suggest heat—and the sausage was a little chewy, but what the fuck? This wasn’t the Waldorf fuckin’ Astoria. He bit in and chewed slowly, savoring it.
“This is really good shit,” he said, because it deserved to be said out loud.
Darla snorted. “Fuckin’ A it is.”
He nodded, mouth still full. “School roach pit pizza was the best thing they had back then, but this still kicks its ass.”
“That’s because school kitchens are fuckin’ crimes against humanity,” she said. “AgriCorp actually wants us alive and healthy when we get there. Return on fuckin’ investment.”
Nate took another bite and leaned back slightly, chewing. Pizza was a WestHem dish. Everyone knew that. Invented in New York City, WestHem, back in the twentieth century. EastHem claimed it came from some shithole part of their half of the world, but they lied about everything. That was just a fact. Fascists, the lot of them. Bent on destroying the WestHem way of life. They’d drilled that into them in school until it settled in deep, right alongside basic math and hygiene vids. Everyone said WestHem should have disarmed them after they helped defeat the Asian Powers in World War III, but the fuckin’ Pacifists had been in charge then. Everyone also knew the Pacifists were the worst and should never be elected again. And, so far, they hadn’t, though they ran in every election from school board to the WestHem Executive Council itself.
He took a sip of his soda and let the fizz burn pleasantly on his tongue. Soda, like beer, was something he was acquiring a taste for. Vermin on Earth didn’t get soda. It was considered a luxury and you needed actual dollars instead of welfare credits to buy it. But now he was employed and had real dollars. And soda was good. Much better than the artificial juices found at the welfare mart. Nate vowed he would never drink fake juice again if it didn’t have some fuckin’ vodka in it.
Around them, people ate. Some alone, some in clusters. A few pairs sat a little closer than they needed to, heads angled together, voices lower than the rest of the room. Nate noticed it without really thinking about it, the way you noticed weather. He didn’t try to connect dots. Darla did that enough for both of them.
Darla wiped her fingers on a napkin and glanced at him. “You good?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Just ... this is good shit. All of it.”
She smiled faintly and went back to her slice. Her knee brushed his under the table, light and accidental, and didn’t move away right away. Nate felt the contact register in his body before his mind had anything to say about it. Warmth. Awareness. Nothing he needed a name for.
The contact under the table made him think about what had happened between them the night before.
It wasn’t a long trip for the memory to take. The thought had been hovering near the front of his mind all day, waiting for the smallest excuse to step forward. They’d been together since Darla got back from her morning assessment session, sitting, talking, wandering the common areas like it was the most natural thing in the world. They ate lunch together. They smoked some AgriCorp brown together after lunch. And still, neither of them had said a single word about what had happened in that freezing ass maintenance corridor.
Darla had been her normal self—bubbly, a little flirty, quick to laugh. If anything, she seemed lighter today. Happier. Maybe she’d done well on her assessment. That would put someone in a good mood, wouldn’t it?
Nate still remembered how it had felt with uncomfortable clarity. The weight of her body against his. The way she’d held him like she meant it. The pressure of her mouth, her breath warm on his neck. Her teeth nipping at his flesh. Her hands on his ass, firm and unapologetic, pulling him in closer instead of letting him hover like he didn’t belong there.
The memory stirred something physical immediately. He shifted slightly on the bench and focused on chewing, forcing his attention back onto the pizza. He could feel the early stages of his missile being fueled for possible launch. The silo doors weren’t opening yet, but they were getting dangerously close.
He told himself to think about literally anything else. He didn’t get a chance though.
Darla tilted her head, studying him over the rim of her slice. Her expression softened, amusement mixing with something more curious.
“Thinking about last night?” she asked quietly.
He swallowed, wiped his fingers on a napkin, and didn’t bother pretending he didn’t know what she meant.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“You’re not feeling guilty or some kinda shit like that, are you?” she asked.
“Maybe a little?” he replied hesitantly.
“Don’t squeam on it, Nate,” she told him. “We had fun. Or at least I did. How about you?”
He could not deny that what they had done last night fell under the heading of ‘fun’. “I had a lot of fun,” he said. “I’ve ... never done that before. Not like that anyway.”
“That was just a taste, Nate,” she said. “The real thing blows that the fuck away.”
Nate had a hard time even imagining something that felt better than dry humping a soft female body while she kissed and bit his neck. But he kept this thought to himself. “I can see that fucking is not as gross as they make us think,” he said. “But still ... you grew up like I did. You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I know how it is. They teach us that sex is fuckin’ disgusting. No one does it except to make a baby. And if you hear your fuckin’ parents making a bunch of noise in their bedroom at night, they’re just fighting or playing some kind of game or some shit like that. Because why would they want to do something that’s gross if they’re not trying to have a fuckin’ kid? And when you do something with someone before that ... they make us feel like we’re fucking up our whole life. I felt like that the first time I realized I actually liked fucking my old man. And he liked fucking me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s pretty much how it is. They really fucked with our minds, didn’t they?”
“Fuckin’ A,” she said. “But let me ask you a simple fuckin’ question. What harm could come from what you and I did last night? Other than to our reputations if someone caught us?”
He thought for a moment and realized he had no answer. Both of them had their reproductive blocks active. Both of them had been tested for STDs multiple times. Everyone on the ship had been tested multiple times, including the crew. Even if Darla was letting every missile in the dorm dock in her sacred silo—and he was absolutely certain she was not—nothing would happen. It was a disease free environment. And what they had done was not illegal. Even if they fucked it wasn’t illegal. It wasn’t even against ship regulations as far as he could tell. So ... what was the harm?
“Nothing,” he finally told her.
“Exactly,” she said. “It’s a fuckin’ guilt-trip reflex. Nothing else.”
Nate shook his head slowly, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “That’s some deep shit,” he said.
Darla grinned, unbothered. “Good weed will do that to you. Your fuckin’ brain can wander around without tripping over shit.”
He laughed, quiet and genuine, and took another bite of pizza. They ate for a minute without talking, the noise of the roach pit filling the space where words didn’t need to go. Grease, salt, warmth. Normal things.
Darla finished her slice and wiped her fingers, then looked at him sideways, casual like she wasn’t lining anything up.
“I’ve got more laundry to do tonight,” she said. “Probably around double-oh-thirty. Supply room’s usually pretty fuckin’ dead then.”
She smiled at him—the same one. Not big. Not teasing. Just ... there. Warm. A hint of teasing. A hint of challenge.
Guilt tried to push up in his head, all reflex and habit, but he caught it and stomped it flat with a steel-toed combat boot before it could get any traction. He swallowed, felt the decision settle, solid and quiet.
“You know,” he said, keeping his voice easy, “I think I’ve got some laundry that needs to be done too. Maybe I’ll meet you there. If you’re down with it.”
Her smile widened just enough to be unmistakable.
“I’m down with it,” she said. “A little company would be nice.”
Nate lay on his back in his bunk, hands folded on his stomach, staring up at the ceiling. The dorm lights were down to their night setting, everything washed in dim amber. The air hummed softly, the ship—still coasting through interplanetary space at 55 kilometers per second—doing whatever it did when people were supposed to be asleep.
He checked his clinker again.
00:20.
Midnight had come and gone. The minutes after it felt louder somehow, every one of them tapping on the inside of his skull. Anticipation burned under his skin, hot and restless. Every time guilt or doubt tried to muscle its way up—every reflexive this is wrong—desire kicked the shit out of it and sent it scurrying back to wherever it lived. He didn’t even have to argue with himself anymore. His body had already taken a side.
He’d been half hard all night just thinking about it.
Maybe she’d let him touch her tits. The thought alone made his stomach tighten. Maybe she’d do him like Kay-Rin had on the rooftops. At the very least, he’d get to kiss her again. Darla was an amazing kisser. Way better than Kay-Rin. There was no comparison, really.
He checked the time again.
00:25.
That was it. He couldn’t lie there another minute.
Nate swung his legs over the side of the bunk and sat up, careful not to make the frame creak. He left his clinker where it was. Nobody was going to steal it while he was gone. What the fuck would they do with it anyway? It was a useless brick unless his fingerprint woke it up.
He slipped on his mocks, the soles whisper-quiet against the deck, and reached under his bunk for his laundry bag. The fabric felt familiar in his hand, reassuring in a stupid way. An excuse. A reason.
He stood for a moment, listening.
The dorm was quiet in the way of people who had finally given up and gone to sleep. A few soft snores. Someone shifting and muttering to themselves. A suspicious rhythmic squeak that was probably someone performing his own maintenance in his bunk. No footsteps. No voices.
Good.
Nate climbed down the ladder to the deck. He eased into the aisle and started walking, keeping his pace easy, unhurried. There was no point in looking like he was sneaking. People did laundry at weird hours all the time. Insomnia. Boredom. Habit. No waiting. Nobody cared.
His heart still thumped hard in his chest as he headed toward the supply room, the weight of what he was about to do pressing pleasantly and terribly against him with every step.
He stepped into the supply room and let the doors slide shut behind him with their soft hydraulic sigh. The space was lit bright and even, the kind of light that made everything look clean whether it was or not. He walked past the linen shelves without slowing, past the single camera mounted above the checkout terminal, its lens aimed squarely at the scan pad and nowhere else.
He kept going, all the way to the back where the rapid-clean machines were lined up along the bulkhead.
Two of them were running, status bands pulsing gently as they worked. He didn’t give that a second thought. People did laundry at odd hours. It meant nothing. It was, in fact, the excuse he and Darla would be using for being here.
Darla wasn’t here yet. He sat down on the bench and waited. That’s what he got for showing up early. He could wait. That was okay though. Vermin were good at waiting.
Unless she wasn’t coming at all.
That thought hit him harder than he expected. A sudden, hollow drop in his chest. Maybe she’d decided this was wrong. Maybe the guilt had caught up to her after all. The thought made no sense—he was early, she wasn’t late—but the thought didn’t care about logic. It sat there anyway, ugly and insistent.
Aboard the Green Horizon, there was no way for vermin on the UE-deck to talk electronically. No texting. No quick vids. The ship’s network simply didn’t allow it. Face to face was the only option. If someone didn’t show, there was no way to ask why. No way to check. You just ... didn’t know.
He shifted his weight, set his laundry bag down by his feet, and told himself not to be stupid. She wasn’t late. He was just early. That was all.
The thought didn’t listen.
By the time he’d half convinced himself that she wasn’t coming—that she’d changed her mind and would probably never want to see him again—he heard the door open.
He couldn’t see the doorway from where he stood, but he heard gentle footsteps on the deck. Unhurried. Familiar.
Then Darla stepped into the room.
She came fully into the light, the door sliding shut behind her. She was wearing her usual red shorts and mocks, and an AgriCorp Green Horizon shirt again—this one in matching red. A static holographic image of the ship shimmered just below her breasts, the light shifting subtly as she moved. Nate noticed it immediately. Not the logo. The placement. She had really nice tits.
She smiled when she saw him and started walking closer, easy and confident, like she’d never for a second considered not showing up.
Then her eyes flicked past him.
She slowed and looked toward two running machines.
Her smile faded. She stopped and looked back at Nate. “Is that your laundry?”
“No,” he said. “I just got here.”
She stared at the machines for another second. Her jaw tightened.
“Well that’s fucked up.”
Nate frowned. “What?”
She didn’t answer. She just gestured with her head. “Come here.”
They walked together toward the far end of the room, past the last machine, to the access panel set low into the bulkhead. Darla crouched and reached for the latch. She didn’t yank at it—just tested it carefully, like someone who already knew the answer.
It didn’t move.
“Locked,” she said.
Nate registered the word, but his brain lagged behind it. He was standing close enough now that the hologram on her shirt cast faint colored light across his hands. His eyes kept drifting to the curve of her chest, to the way the fabric pulled when she moved. He found himself wondering—briefly, vividly—how her tits would feel in his hands.
Then the word locked caught up.
“Maybe maintenance finally showed up and locked it?” he said.
She looked up at him like he’d just suggested the ship might be haunted. The look lasted a beat. Then she smiled again, softer this time. “You’re so fuckin’ pussy,” she said.
He blinked. “What?”
She straightened a little and tilted her head. “Nate. I’m thinking that door is locked from the inside. Remember that it can do that?”
That landed.
His stomach dropped a notch. “You mean someone is in there...”
“Fucking,” she said flatly, irritation edging her voice. She leaned back against the bulkhead and crossed her arms. “Jesus Christ. Maybe we should organize an appointment system.”
Nate stared at the access panel, his brain catching up in uneven steps.
“They’re ... right there,” he said quietly. “Like. A few feet away.”
Darla gave him a look. “Yeah. That’s usually how this works.”
He shook his head, still trying to process it. The idea that two people were fucking just on the other side of a thin bulkhead—close enough to hear a change in breathing if things went quiet enough—felt unreal. Too close. Too casual.
“Do you know who it is?” he asked.
She snorted. “Of course I don’t fucking know. That’s the whole point.” She glanced at the panel again, then back toward the room. “And we need to fuck off from here like yesterday. We do not want to be standing around when they come out, and they sure as shit don’t want to be seen. That’s awkward for everybody.”
That sank in, bringing with it a sharp stab of disappointment. The night he’d been wound tight around just ... deflated.
“So what do we do?” he asked. “Come back later?”
Darla shook her head immediately. “It doesn’t work like that.” She lowered her voice, even though they were alone. “If you get up from your bunk and come down to the supply room more than once in the same night, people will notice. Then they start to talk.”
He frowned. “I thought you said the girls already talk about this.”
“We do,” she said. “But it stays fuckin’ theoretical. Places. Possibilities. Rumors. Nobody wants to know for sure. The minute it gets specific, it gets ugly. It’s fun to ponder. But they’ll turn on you like a pack of fuckin’ wolves if you’re actually caught.”
Nate let out a quiet breath. “There are a lot of weird rules to this game,” he said. “Is there, like, a rules document or some shit like that on the welfare net somewhere?”
She barked a short laugh despite herself. “Yeah. Volume fuckin’ zero. Written in fuckin’ Zimbabwean.” She reached down, grabbed her laundry bag, and nodded toward his. “Come on. Grab your shit. Let’s get out of here.”
He did, slinging the bag over his shoulder and following her toward the door, the disappointment still sitting heavy in his chest—but threaded now with something else. Awareness. Understanding. The sense that he’d just learned another unspoken rule, whether he liked it or not.
Darla didn’t linger. She turned and headed back through the linen room, and Nate fell in beside her without thinking about it, their footsteps soft against the deck. The shelves slid past in orderly rows, the checkout terminal glowing patiently under its lone camera, everything looking exactly the way it always did.
As they walked, she leaned in. “There’s another place,” she said.
He glanced at her. “Another place?”
“Yeah. I’ve heard about it.”
“Where?”
“The roach pit.”
He stopped short for half a step before catching himself and continuing. “Are you serious?”
She kept walking, expression neutral. “Dead serious.”
“That’s where people fuckin’ gather,” he said. “Anyone can walk in there at any time. Snacks. Soda. Supply machines. Just to sit down away from everyone else.”
“All true,” she said. “But at this hour, there are long stretches where nobody does. I’ve been watching.”
That didn’t help his nerves. “Even if it’s empty, the whole fuckin’ place is covered in cameras. You know that. Security, AI—the whole deal.”
She shot him a sideways look. “That’s not entirely true.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His hesitation must have shown because she slowed just a little.
“Trust me,” she said quietly. “If anyone’s in there, we abort mission. No questions. We walk out like we were just grabbing some water. But if it’s empty...”
She let the sentence hang.
Nate exhaled slowly. His pulse was already climbing again, anticipation and nerves tangling together. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
She smiled, brief and satisfied, and pushed through the door.
They exited through their separate doors and took their laundry back to their bunks. They then met at a cross aisle intersection. They stepped back into the main dorm aisle and started down it together, moving unhurriedly, not sneaking, not rushing. Just two people walking where they had every right to walk—which, technically, they did.
The roach pit was empty.
The lights were down to their night setting—dimmed, but still bright enough to see what you needed to see clearly. No hum of conversation, no clatter of trays, no footsteps echoing off the bulkheads. Just the low, ever-present sound of machinery and ventilation. The doors slid shut behind them with a soft hiss. They walked further into the room, checking every corner.
“No one here at all,” Darla said, smiling.
Nate didn’t return it. He stood there and took it in, a knot tightening in his chest.
This looked like a bad idea in progress.
Vermin were good at spotting cameras. You learned to be. You learned where they were, what angles they covered, where the blind wedges were—if there were any. It was a basic survival skill in their world. Nate’s eyes moved automatically, cataloging.
Six.
Two mounted high on the back wall, angled toward the entrance. One covering the food dispensers. Two watching the vending machines. One wide angle job monitoring the tables where people usually ate. Clean coverage. Overlapping fields.
He shifted his weight. “This doesn’t look like a good place,” he said. “There are cameras everywhere.”
“I know,” Darla replied calmly. “But take a better look.”
He frowned, but he did. He let his eyes slow down, stopped counting devices and started thinking about what they actually saw. Lines of sight. Angles. Obstructions.
He scanned the room again. And then he saw it.
The back right corner—away from the vending area, away from the serving stations. There was a long desk there, bolted to the deck, tucked up against the bulkhead. Nate had noticed it before during his wanderings. It wasn’t for anything useful. No terminals for access or control. Just a bank of screens mounted into the surface, always on.
All those screens showed was AgriCorp propaganda. Corporate philosophy. Statistics and projections and smiling models overlaid with slogans about efficiency, sustainability, and shared purpose. The empire telling anyone who cared to stand there how great it was.
Not many people cared to stand there.
The desk was positioned just so—deep enough, wide enough—that someone standing behind it would not be seen from the doorway. Someone would have to come a good five meters inside before the bulkhead no longer obstructed the view. That meant that if you were standing there, doing whatever you were doing, and you heard the door open, you would have a good five to ten seconds to compose yourselves.
Not much time, but better than zero. But the cameras...
Nate felt it click.
None of them were pointed at that corner.
Not because they were broken. Not because they were hidden. Just because whoever set it up hadn’t bothered to add a camera to a place no one ever hung out by.
He looked back at Darla.
She was watching his face, waiting for the moment it landed.
“A blind spot,” he said. “Out of camera coverage completely and no one can see it from the fuckin’ door. They have to walk all the way in first.”
She smiled. Not a friendly smile. A sexy smile. The smile she’d shown the night before when she asked him to keep her warm.
“You’re a smart motherfucker, motherfucker,” she told him.
He gave her a smile in return. He didn’t know if it was coming across as a sexy smile, but that’s what he was shooting for.
Darla got the message. “Come on,” she told him. “I have this weird urge to go check out the AgriCorp corporate philosophy all of a sudden.”
They strolled casually over to the corner. The closed doors that separated the roach pit from the dorm slipped out of view, giving them that five seconds or so of warning time if someone should enter. The coverage of the cameras ceased to be an issue. Nate looked around for any other camera he might have missed. There were none. Yes, the possibility of a hidden camera existed, but he didn’t worry about that. Cameras in public spaces, as a general rule, were kept visible. The deterrent effect was useless with hidden cameras and deterrence is what the cameras were all about. There would be no point in hiding one.
The desk itself was about a hundred and forty centimeters tall and about three meters long. It was built into the deck with a solid piece of black, polished carbon fiber making up the bottom support. There was a single opening against the corner of the room that led to the area behind the desk. Darla led him behind the desk.
“Kiss me, Nate,” she said the moment they were back there. “Just a quick kiss to start. If I don’t put my lips on yours in the next two seconds, I’m going to fuckin’ explode.”
He turned to her. Their bodies came together. Their lips met. It was a soft kiss. Teasing. Gentle. Just a warmup. Before he could put his arms around her and pull her close, she broke the kiss and stepped backward.
“That was a good kiss,” she said. “But before we do anything else, we need to go over the plan.”
“The plan?” he asked. Were they going to map out what they were going to do? If so, was she taking requests? Because his hands really wanted to touch those tits. And not just through her shirt.
But that was not what she had in mind.
“The plan of what we do if we’re interrupted,” she said. “We’ll have about five fuckin’ seconds to compose ourselves if that door opens. No matter what we’re doing, we need to both be standin’ here, side by side, checking out how great fuckin’ AgriCorp is on the screens.”
“Won’t it seem weird if we’re doing that at zero-thirty fuckin’ hours?”
“Maybe, but they won’t say anything,” she said. “As long as we’re not plowin’ each other when they spot us, we ain’t doing nothing wrong. Just a couple of insomniacs hangin’ out and seeing if there’s anything interesting on the bullshit screens. Odd maybe. But not mind-blowing odd.”
“That makes sense,” he said slowly, though he wasn’t convinced it did. But Darla seemed to know what she was doing.
“I’m really revved up right now, motherfucker,” she whispered to him. “Having to sneak makes it better, doesn’t it?”
Nate had never had a sexual experience where he didn’t have to sneak so he had no basis for comparison. But it did make it very exciting. The nervousness about someone walking in on them was definitely a factor. “Yeah,” he said. “I think it does.”
She stepped into his arms, putting hers around his waist and pulling his body against her. His arms went around her back. Once again he felt the muscles of her back, felt the ridge of her vending machine bra beneath.
“Let’s kiss some more,” she whispered. “Let’s do it a lot.”
He didn’t have a chance to answer. Her lips came together with his again. A moment later, he was lost. They put their tongues in each other’s mouths and swirled them together. She was such a good kisser. It wasn’t gentle kissing. It was hot, passionate kissing. His missile stiffened to full blown launch status in a matter of seconds. She felt it and pushed herself a little more firmly against him, creating a delicious friction.
“Put your hands on me,” she told him between kisses. “Touch me. Anywhere you want.”
Nate’s hands were already moving, drawn like magnets to the place he’d been staring at since she walked in—the soft swell pressed right against his chest. He slid his palms under the hem of her AgriCorp Green Horizon shirt, fingers brushing warm bare skin just above the waistband of her shorts. No hesitation now. Just need.
The fabric bunched up as he pushed higher, knuckles grazing the lower border of her bra. Darla shifted to give him room, arching just enough to make it easy. His fingertips found the smooth curve beneath, then slipped under the elastic edge. Synthetic cotton gave way to skin—hot, soft, impossibly real. He cupped her fully, the weight of her tit settling into his palm like it belonged there. Her nipple was already hard, a tight little peak that dragged across his thumb as he squeezed gently.
Darla let out a low, throaty moan—quiet, but it vibrated straight through him. “Fuck yes,” she breathed against his mouth. “Just like that.”
The sound lit him up. His cock jerked hard against her thigh, straining. She felt it, of course—she always seemed to know exactly where he was at—and her hand dropped between them without preamble. Fingers curled around the thick outline through his shorts, squeezing with practiced confidence. Not tentative. Not curious. Just firm, knowing pressure that made his knees want to give out.