Chapter 1

I came out of the CAP Testing Center flying high! I’d just enlisted when they broke the news about the Swarm and they made a deal with the military not to poach active duty troops singly, but rather call them up by unit, if and when. This was partially in order to maintain order and discipline, because if you found out that asshole Lieutenant was really a four point two you wouldn’t want to work for him. As a result, I had to wait until I was discharged to take my CAP test. Today was the day, though, and I’d justified my faith in myself fully, collecting a seven point two. I’d done my service time as an enlisted ground-pounder, but the AI’s recommendation was officer country with a specialty in astrogation or fire control on the command track. To say I was happy was an understatement!

I decided to get a celebratory drink and maybe a little clubbing, so I stopped off at a dance club I only knew of by reputation and bellied up to the bar. It was VERY early -- only late afternoon -- but even though it was Sunday the DJ had the crowd moving and there were a lot of women out there, because the club had a reputation for being a hot place for pickups. I got a bottled brew and a mug and turned around to stand with my back to the bar and take in the scenery.

Since I now had a drawing account, so to speak, I enjoyed myself looking at this one and that one and thinking, ‘Her. No, her! That one, maybe. I wonder if those tits make her good motherhood material?’ I was looking forward to chattel ownership of four women and it was a good feeling -- no, actually, it was TREMENDOUS!

The guy who came up on my right looked pretty dour -- a real sourpuss. He got a beer and started scanning the room, but seemed as unhappy about the display as I was pleased with it. I noticed, though, that he wasn’t looking at the women as much as he was the men, so I thought maybe he was gay ... I ignored him and went back to checking out all of those delectable women who I now had a chance to own...

He must have made a sound or something -- I don’t know what prompted me to look back at him, but when I did, he was glaring at me. I looked back, a little surprised -- after all, I’d done nothing to him! But he snarled at me and reached behind him and I knew before I saw it that he had a gun in his waistband. I was already moving as he cleared his jacket; I hit him backhand with the mug I was holding as hard as I could! The bartender yelled “Hey!” but I pointed to the gun on the floor with the remains of the shattered glass mug and said, “See that? Call the cops!”

For the next hour or so I was hip deep in bouncers and then cops. An ambulance came for the guy, and they strapped him to a gurney and he woke up and cursed me. “You self-satisfied sonofabitch!” he rasped, “Checking out all the women you can get with your fancy CAP card, weren’t you? You fuckers with the high scores are all alike! Next time, I’ll be a little faster and you’ll be dead!”

I was nonplussed -- but the cop wasn’t. “Shit!” the cop grunted, “You were BORN stupid, weren’t you, Buddy? Attempted murder, assault, communicating a threat, and knowingly attacking a person with a Citizen-class CAP score!” He turned to me and said, “Did he identify himself as an Earth First sympathizer, Mr., uh, Harshman?”

“No, but he was looking for targets,” I replied. “I’m fresh out of the military and I did time in Iraq before we discovered that we had bigger problems and left them to stew in their own juices. He had that smell to him -- that suicide bomber stench. He was here to kill someone and I was handy.”

The cop looked at his new, high-tech data link and said, “It says here that this one’s wife and daughter accepted positions as concubines a month and a half ago -- against his wishes.”

“Sluts!” my erstwhile assailant ranted, “Whores! They all fall on their backs and open their legs for the likes of YOU!”

The cop eyed him. “Do you understand your Miranda rights?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the whacko ranted.

“Did you attempt to murder this man?”

“What’s it to you?” My attacker ranted. “What are YOU gonna do when he’s gone with YOUR women? You bet your ass I did! He thinks he’s entitled...”

“So do I,” the cop replied. “So do a lot of other people. Even those of us who aren’t going anywhere know that if there’s going to be a human race it’ll be because of him and those like him.” He sighed and said, “Did you get that?”

A voice from the data link replied, “Yeah. The Confederacy Consulate has requested that we deal with the threat expeditiously. Since we have a recorded confession, there’s no requirement to waste further resources -- the paperwork is enough of a pain in the ass.”

The cop nodded. One of the two medics standing by produced a small needle and a data pad and the cop signed the pad, then said, “Inject him, toss him off the gurney, call the morgue and go on back to the station.” The medic nodded, injected my assailant in the neck and he and his partner rolled the body off the gurney. I think the guy was dead before he hit the floor. “You don’t need to wave a CAP card to get into trouble -- how long have you had yours?”

“Probably less than six hours,” I admitted.

“Try not to be so obvious. You’re allowed concealed carry of firearms and to kill in self-defense, but it would be better if you didn’t attract attention.” He nodded at the door with his head. “Hit the bricks.”

I got the Hell out of there.

It wasn’t over -- Hell, it wasn’t STARTED! In retrospect, I think it was partly my military bearing and the situational awareness that comes from being in combat. Part of it, I’m told, is because I have piercing brown eyes. And part of it was the knowledge that for the first time in my life I knew that I was ALLOWED to be a predator!

I went to the nearest gun shop, because I felt suddenly naked. The proprietor was happy to sell me a gun, but he suggested that I go to the nearby shooting club’s range and try out a few first. I went over his inventory of nine millimeter automatics and picked out two that looked easily maintained and asked his opinion, then settled on a Ruger. He agreed to repurchase it at only a slight loss if I decided I didn’t like it within a week. There was no seven day waiting period, no background check -- he just looked at my CAP card and sold me a weapon. I walked out with it, five boxes of ammo, a cleaning kit, shooting glasses, hearing protection and a shoulder holster. I went straight to the club, paid a somewhat expensive membership fee (but got a discount due to the score on my CAP card), and spent the next two hours sighting in the weapon and learning its idiosyncrasies. As it turned out, there weren’t any serious issues. I bought some more ammo at the club, having expended all of my original supply, and went looking for dinner.

I picked the restaurant for its salad bar more than anything else. It was probably just before prime time when I arrived, so the crowd was beginning to surge and there was a short wait. I sat in the bar and watched people come in from the hot, bright day over the top of that salad bar -- it was high summer and the sun wouldn’t go down until well after eight -- while I waited for a booth.

There was all kinds of stuff coming in through the door, but, strangely, one chick caught my eye. She was husky at least -- maybe more than that -- and wearing a bright yellow strapless sundress that draped to just above her knees. I think what caught my eye was her adjusting the top of it just after she came through the door with the sun at her back. Guys do that -- anything that suggests that you might get a glimpse of titty and BAM! -- the eyeballs start tracking! There was a certain amount of light penetration from the bright glare behind her and it confirmed the fact that she had a belly on her, if nothing else. This chick wasn’t a fashion plate -- she was stocky and thick-legged but she had some curvature to her, here and there. She was with another, older woman, a guy about her age, and a guy who looked old enough to be her father. As I sat watching, she turned her back to me while speaking to the younger male and I discovered that sweat, apparently, had caused the sundress to stick to her back, revealing her ass in considerable detail. It was sized to match the rest of her but maybe a bit more compact than it could have been -- it was big, but not a bubble butt. If she was wearing panties, it certainly wasn’t apparent from the way the fabric glued itself to her, outlining her ass in detail!

Now this chick was never going to be a swimsuit model, you know? Objectively, she was Grade ‘B’ or maybe ‘C’ -- and could easily slip beyond that. But for some strange reason, she captured my attention...

She had it. I can’t tell you what it was to this day, but she was sexy. It happens -- you look at what should be a thoroughly unappetizing girl and something about her gets your attention. Maybe it’s obvious, like the set of her boobs -- and maybe it isn’t. Maybe she snorts when she laughs. Who knows? SOMETHING puts her on your top ten list despite obvious flaws that would cause you to never consider her. And usually, you just look and that’s it, because she’s going her way and you’re going yours. But I had a piece of plastic with embedded computer chips in my pocket that could make her make a U-turn and I sat there, watching her, considering the idea.

Things had changed. Four years before, if you showed undue attention to a strange woman, you were stalking her and she could get all shrill about it. Touching was an absolute no-no. But the Swarm changed all that -- courts started deciding that if a woman put her assets on display, it was okay to look and depending on how far she went, even touch -- and women kept baring it anyway, because advertizing was important to their survival. So I could sit there, staring at her like a hungry wolf -- and I did.

Now, there was female flesh visible all over the room -- breasts, thighs, bellies, asses -- almost every female in the place was showing whatever she thought was her best feature. Tattoos had come and gone, and there was an industry involved in removing them using Confederacy technology for those for whom a tattoo was a mistake. The latest thing was a blouse with a strip across the breasts that went from opaque to translucent to transparent at the touch of a button -- or cycled back and forth over ten seconds or so. The first skirts of the same stuff were just coming out...

... But I was ogling a chick who was dressed fairly modestly by comparison. Go figure.

My little beeper went off and I got up and headed out to the hostess to get myself seated -- and made a point of eyeballing the babe in yellow. This time it was more about ‘Why?’ as I had no idea what it was about her that captured my attention. She had olive skin and brown hair and she looked like she was fairly upbeat -- smiling, not looking too serious -- a happy chick. Eh, so what? That yellow dress still hugged her ass like saran wrap and I didn’t see any panty line, but it hadn’t gotten any smaller ... She seemed to have plenty of breast to keep the dress up, but they weren’t huge. The hostess was getting impatient, so I reluctantly let her lead me off, figuring that she would seat them clear across the restaurant.