Chapter 1

Meela was riding Qi with her head thrown back and her hands pinning his shoulders to the bed. She was moaning loudly, while making a wet mess that dripped between his balls. Her hair was flying in every direction as she drove herself on top of him. She was giving herself a helluva ride.

Lying underneath, Qi was unimpressed. He didn't believe her act was for him any more and he held her hips loosely only to keep her from hurting his cock with a misaligned thrust. It wouldn't be the first time. When Meela let her wild self loose, Qi knew to hold on for a chaotic ride of female sexual lust.

She was lovely enough with full breasts that swung freely as she ground her crotch against his pubic bone. "Oh, baby!" she kept murmuring, failing to realize that Qi wasn't moving along with her. He was watching her use him as a masturbation device and he was fairly certain that it wasn't the first time. Despite his erection, he felt like an observer to their act.

Qi wasn't angry; he was confounded. So what if their coupling was a relationship of convenience; she used him and he used her. In the darker corners of the world, this was normal fucking. He had left the Shadowlands behind, yet they seemed to follow him to the most intimate of places. Qi had thought everyone had to be focused on themselves in order to survive in the Shadowlands but in the real world, people could be more loving or altruistic, or, a little less self-centered. The good people in the reclaimed areas of Old Earth didn't seem much different than those of his birthplace in the Shadowlands. They were just softer.

Meela's moaning shifted another note up the scale.

As of 05:00, about seven hours from now, he would be on his way off-planet for another contract gig. He expected to return in nine months but Meela didn't seem interested. Her disinterest left him free to make alternate plans if something happened to emerge. Maybe Old Earth had little to offer him after all.

He was raised with the belief that true freedom meant having to answer only to himself. Qi had spent years trying to gain this core element of his nightly dreams. The slum dog had escaped the hellhole of the Shadowlands, the un-recovered lands that surrounded the reclaimed urban areas on the habitable continents of Earth. He didn't beg anymore; he no longer smuggled drugs either. The begging and the drugs themselves didn't bother his conscience and never had. His having to pass back most of the coin he earned to this "uncle" or that "uncle" was the great resentment e he endured.

He still got in fights but they were only in bars and back rooms nowadays. His street fighting was part of his past even though he carried a few scars as remembrances.

Her fingernails dug into his shoulders. She wanted to fuck for the sake of an orgasm from a trustworthy source, Qi decided. Meela always said the right things in awkward moments, but he had been suspicious of her motives for some weeks. After he viewed a clip from a popular chick 'zine, Qi learned that a reliable cock with little other involvement was a desirable accoutrement for an up and coming woman these days. No matter how irritable or fragile his control of his anger might be, Qi was always dependable in bed.

He let out an involuntary groan as she shifted her hips to take longer strokes again. There was no use crying over what wasn't there. In the end she wanted one last fuck and that fit his agenda, too. Anyone who didn't get laid the night before blasting off was a loser, Qi reminded himself.

He grabbed her hips more tightly.

"Oh yeah, lover, I'm almost there," she said between clenched teeth. "Oh yeah! Harder, you bastard!" Then she squealed and slammed hard against his legs. After the show, she usually collapsed in an unresponsive heap. Fearing the worst, Qi quickly flipped her over and began thrusting quickly before she told him to stop.

She made whimpers of complaint but he was not going to be deterred. If she used him to get her rocks off, then he had permission to do the same. While he consciously smiled as she used him, Meela looked a bit annoyed and refused to look up while Qi was on top. One would think that the afterglow of an orgasm would last a few minutes but she wasn't built that way. Qi didn't pretend to understand her. He let the sensation well up behind his balls and with a small sigh, shot a burst of seed into his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend.

A few minutes later Meela popped out of the bathroom fully clothed. "Since you have to get up super early and I don't, I'll say goodbye now. Have a safe trip."

She gave him a kiss on the forehead as he lay sprawled in bed and then disappeared out of the room. The front door closed gently behind her.

Qi scratched his black hair and then sat up on his elbows. The room was bathed in a weak pinkish glow from the light overhead. There were no decorations on the wall and the sheets were a bit worn. His home was a typical month-to-month rental in a large metropolitan area. He was used to the high density, thin walls, bland furniture and no traces left behind. At least the patch where he had punched the hole in the wall was now invisible.

"I gotta get a real life," he said as he lurched towards the bathroom, almost tripping over his travel sack. All he owned was in one small bag. The exclamation point was not lost on him as he pondered life standing over the toilet, waiting for the pee to rise. He wasn't complaining really; after all, he had a real toilet for pissing.

At 06:00 Qi was standing with his travel bag waiting to board the strato-flight to the first platform. After putting up with generations of space junk, Earth had finally organized its' near orbit space and purged the area of millions of pieces of debris. Nowadays, all commerce was controlled by a series of platforms that spiraled out from the far stratosphere to halfway out to the moon.

After the first seven or eight trips, the ascent lost most of its appeal for Qi. There was nothing to see out the window except for growing darkness. When the g-forces pressed, someone would always barf and the kids would always cry. Qi slipped the simple filters into his nostrils and drew a deep breath to activate them. They were the best two credits that he had spent in a long time. He tried to nap.

At the disembarkation platform, Qi was diverted by his employer ID from the main concourse and its teeming mob of travelers. His contract with Tagway-Shinar Corporation gave him passage to a side corridor, which he had never noticed before. Normally, Qi would have avoided any contact with an inter-galactic corporation like TSC, but they had come to him rather than having him bid on one of their contracts. Their requesting him meant that his credentials were rising in the marketplace. Qi admitted to himself for the tenth or eleventh time, he was flattered.

The money was decent and the contract length was nine months including travel time, a term he considered reasonable. The money at least overrode his distaste for these huge conglomerates and this first perk was a pleasant surprise.

Qi arrived at the desk, which signaled the end of the long corridor. There was carpeting underneath his feet, comfortable chairs off to the side, and well-dressed, smiling attendants to take his ticket. The entire scene looked antiseptically corporate yet Qi wasn't complaining after previous trips where the higher up the platforms one went, the surlier the service became.

"Welcome Mr. Roaniki, it's a pleasure to welcome you," the woman behind the counter said. Her teeth were perfect. "We will have a prep table ready in just a few minutes. If you will take a seat, someone will arrive momentarily to escort you. Have a pleasant trip Mr. Roaniki."

"Thank you," Qi said, turning away. Something about the woman rubbed him the wrong way and he trusted his instincts. She did seem a bit plastic to him as if she had been through one too many cosmetic surgeries. He decided she was probably the look that the corporate executives enjoyed, which meant an automatic rejection in his book. He was an independent contractor with an emphasis on the word independent. She was probably a corporate fuck puppet.

Although they looked nothing alike, the woman reminded him of Meela. Other thoughts tumbled through his head like his resolve to start a real life. A real life meant one in which he had friends, a lover who actually wanted to be his friend, and maybe something of worth besides the clothes on his back. While he was proud of being self-sufficient, being independent just plain sucked sometimes. Dreams had a peculiar way of bleeding into human reality. He wasn't complaining although he realized that he was relying on sentiment far too much of late.