Page 4 of All or Nothing
I needed close physical contact. I was going to do one of the worst things a citizen of Billieu could do…I was going to hire a sex worker. I might just spend the hour cuddling them, but that was plenty deviant all on its own.
This is why I was heading to Quellor Station: this particular rotting hulk of space trash had a reputation for catering towards billieuan clientèle, offering extremely discreet accommodations and certified clean workers. Not just of sexually transmitted infections, but ofallillnesses. Given Billieu’s tragic history with disease, it was a necessary precaution to regulate physical contact so tightly—you never knew when a hug or a kiss would lead to the next Drowning Flu, after all—but it made for a miserable and touch-starved populace.
I was snapped from my brooding by another alarm, this one from my shuttle’s AI informing me we were on approach to Quellor so that I could strap in and prepare myself. The AI would handle the docking and clearance with the station’s systems while I got myself ready.
I headed to my quarters, where my private decontamination stall was located, to get sterilized and don my PPE. I didn’t particularly like the tight glass container and the astringent mist it filled with, but I did like how much safer I felt after I’d done it. Right outside the stall was the PPE dispenser, allowing me to don my mask, gloves, booties, and safety goggles as soon as I was sterilized. The faint odor of the mask and the papery scrape of the booties against the magsteel floors was a comfort, taking the edge off my nerves as it hit me that I was really doing this, I was really going to Quellor to try and slake my desire for touch with a stranger.
I made it back to the control console, limbs trembling and my tail wound tight around my leg to try and soothe my nerves. I strapped into the captain’s chair and accepted the docking bay the station AI had assigned to my ship.
I took several deep breaths and tried to calm myself. I could still change my mind once I got there and head home, I reasoned. No one knew I was doing this but me, and if I turned tail then so what? But it didn’t make sense to come all this way and not at least check it out.
AS I STEPPEDfrom my private shuttle onto the filthy docks of Quellor Station—intensely grateful for the layers of protection covering me—I was struck by a glaring flaw in my plan: I had no idea where to find what I was looking for. Were there actual establishments I was meant to pick up a companion from? Did I need to make a reservation? What sorts of processes and decorum was I meant to observe? A wash of panic flowed through me as I realized just how many things I didn’t know, how much could go wrong.
Would I be alright searching the station’s nexus access point for this information? Sex work was generally legal now but was it legal here? Was it only legal sometimes? Would I get picked up just for running that search on Quellor’s access hub because I was billieuan? Would my government be able to track that search and use it to arrest me? My hands were getting uncomfortably sweaty in my gloves.
I spun on my paper- clad heel, ready to retreat and call this trip a bust when I heard a snippet of conversation flit past me.
“…bay 13, I think. Real fresh cargo, untouched.”
Their companion whistled low, barking a laugh. “You ever have pussy that fresh, Gart?”
“Pfft, hell no. With this ugly mug I’m lucky to get any at all…” the two males slipped out of my hearing range, and I found myself compelled to go to docking bay 13. Perhaps it was nothing, but then again, perhaps it was a lead I wouldn’t need to incriminate myself to get. Worst case scenario, it was nothing I was interested in and I would go on my way.
Before I could think too much about what I was doing I scrambled over to the information desk for a map. I was tragically far from docking bay 13, I discovered, but if I shelled out for station transports I’d make it there in five minutes, give or take.
What’s the rush, really?I found myself thinking.You’re just going down there to take a peek. More to satisfy curiosity than anything.I took several deep breaths to try and fortify myself, my tail still wound soothingly around my leg. But I couldn’t ignore the way my heart was pounding, the way something I couldn’t name was tugging at me deep in my belly. As if something big was about to happen.
CHAPTER THREE
Crazy Orcs Make the Best Friends
JOSS
I DECIDEDthat if the jellomen didn’t kill me, Uraka would be able to handle the job nicely. My muscles were weak and rubbery from what felt like hours of lessons on basic self-defense. I appreciated what Uraka was doing for me, truly, but also I definitely hated her and would gladly have ripped her smug face clean off her skull.
“Come on, Joss! Really come for me, put some spirit into it!” she called, bouncing easily on the balls of her feet. I was so tired, and so sweaty, and seeing her there looking fresh and spry and oh-so-dry had me wanting to weep.
“I don’t know how much more spirit is left in my body,” I wheezed, hating the whine I heard in my own voice. “I’m not as strong as you,” I admitted quietly, almost without meaning to. Like many bigger girls, I tried my best to love my body, to appreciate it and fill myself with confidence, but a lifetime of being told I was lazy, weak, gluttonous, and pathetic because of my weight was hard to drop. And whenever my confidence faltered, whenever I felt vulnerable or too visible…well, that old insecurity would hit me like a freight train. And seeing how weak and ineffectual I was next to Uraka on top of this being a stressful and scary ass situation…well, it was definitely rearing its ugly head. All I seemed to be able to think was that I’d never be able to do this.
But Uraka just snorted. “Strength is nothing, little one. What is strength worth if you don’t know how to use it? Stop thinking about what you cannot do and focus on what youcan. This is what I have been trying to teach you!”
I wanted to believe her, I really did, but my emotions were just running too high, and to my eternal shame I found tears pricking at my eyes. My can-do attitude had finally run out, it seemed. “But what if I can’t do anything?” I asked softly, my gaze falling to the dirty floor. I mean, look at my track record: I couldn’t finish my degree, couldn’t land a partner, couldn’t lose the weight, couldn’t figure out what I wanted for a career, couldn’t even keep my damn cactus alive (RIP Prickly Pete). Uraka meant well, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she only thought so highly of me because she didn’t reallyknowme.
Uraka’s three eyes softened, the third in the middle closing. “You have been told this before, that you can’t do things?”
I nodded, sniffling pathetically. Uraka abandoned her fighting stance and crossed the space we’d cleared to grip my shoulders in her huge calloused hands. “Many people have told me this as well. ‘Uraka, you are too dainty the join the vanguard’, ‘Uraka, your tusks are much too small to hope to rip out a veshtun’s throat’, ‘Uraka, that knife will never be able to pierce my tough hide’…” Okay, so this orc lady might have been a little more insane than I first realized. But I couldn’t deny that the hands on my arms were comforting. “It makes it all the sweeter when you prove them wrong and do all the things they said that you could not, and more.
“You are doing well for your first lesson, I promise you. But what I do not teach you now I may not be able to teach you later, yes? I am going as hard as I can because I do not know how much time we have. So tell me: can you find more spirit for me? Can you find that spirit foryou?”
Goddamn, this crazy orc was going to make me cry. Dr. Jackson would love Uraka, I decided. I straightened my shoulders and wiped away the lone tear falling from my eye, nodding. She was right; I didn’t know how much time we had, so we had to make it count. Self-pity time was over.
By now the other three sleeping women were awake, and while the felican, whose name was Djelani, was watching us closely—especially Uraka, I thought, and if I wasn’t mistaken Uraka was flexing and showing offjusta little under Djelani’s appreciative green gaze—I was the only person interested in Uraka’s hasty self-defense lessons.
The small figure with a tail was named Wren, and she looked so much like the Pokémon Mew that it had me wondering if maybe the guys over at Gamefreak had somehow gotten a photo of one of her people. The only thing that was missing was that Wren couldn’t float, and wasn’t psychic…maybe. I hadn’t been able to figure out where the hell she’d been talking out of yet, since she didn’t seem to have a mouth. At least, not one where I’d expect it. The last woman and the only other human in the group was Ghena. She was strikingly gorgeous, with large doe-like eyes, full pouting lips, high razor-sharp cheekbones, and a lithe, delicate frame. Perfectly mussed auburn hair and a light dusting of freckles all over her tawny skin completed the picture, and if it weren’t for our situation I’d’ve probably been a little jealous of her.
But what did prettiness have to do with where we were going, wherever the hell that might be? We weren’t on Earth anymore, and might never be ever again. It hit me all at one, like I’d been dunked into an icy tank of water: I wasfree.
Not literally, obviously, but in terms of the insecurities that I’d been struggling with my whole life, in terms of the judgment of others that had tricked me into thinking that there was something wrong with me and my body just because it tended toward squishiness…Iwasfree. I stood up straighter, realizing that this was what Dr. Jackson had been trying to get me to see when she’d said that my body wasn’t good or bad, it justwas.And even if I wasn’t as strong as Uraka, I was still strong enough to keep up with her. I’d been the first one to wake up, and whatever they’d used to knock me out wasn’t hitting me as hard as it was Djelani, Wren, and Ghena—and wasn’t that agoodthing?
