For altariel1. Anna Grant/Soolin, and a shuttle on its way to or from Earth.

Contract Work

Written by Calle Dybedahl

The space liner Shameless Slacker had been on its way to Earth for two weeks, and Soolin was getting desperate. It had seemed like such an easy job when she accepted it, and now it seemed like she'd fail. The shuttle taking the passengers down from the starship to the planet's surface would leave in only a few hours, and if she hadn't found and killed her target before it touched down... Well, paying back the advance on her fee would be the least of her problems.

She'd been sitting at the corner table at Zavrok's Dive that she used as her office when the guy showed up.

"I hear you kill people for money," he'd said.

"Only when I don't care," she'd said, trying her best to sound as tough as she wanted to be. "When I do care I kill people for free."

"Very funny," he'd said. "There's going to be a woman on a space cruiser leaving for Earth tomorrow. I don't want her to reach the destination. I'll pay standard union rates, plus tickets for the cruise."

It had been a slow month, so she agreed. He paid the usual 25% in advance and placed the rest in escrow with her bank. Her B-class ticket for the cruise would be waiting for her at the gate, he said.

"It'll increase my chances quite substantially if you tell me how to find her," she'd said.

His constant smile had faded a bit, and for a few moments he'd looked embarrassed. "She's about your age. A Federation agent," he'd said. "Steel blue eyes, fairly light brown hair. Shouldn't be too hard to find, she's the only one on the ship with that combination of colours and age."

She'd agreed with him, and he'd left. She'd told Zavrok that she'd be gone for a few weeks, and then she'd gone home to prepare. A quick light brown hair dye job, a steel blue iris overlay good for a few weeks and she didn't look much like herself. Not that she had any particular reason for a disguise, but it paid to be cautious. You never knew who you might meet. She'd gone to bed early, looking forward to a quickly finished job followed by a long, lazy cruise.

Except it had turned out that nobody on the ship had the combination of colours and age that she was looking for. So here she was, in the ship's bar, all packed and ready to leave, with a very large Adrenaline and Soma in front of her and her suitcase by her feet.

She lifted her glass. "Cheers," she said to nobody in particular. "Life sucks."

Anna sighed. It had seemed like such a simple and straightforward assignment when she took it on.

"Are you sure you want it?" her boss had said. "It'll take you away from that surly guy you're seeing for over a month."

Of course she'd been sure. It was a prestige job, the covert killing of a known assassin. Not a particularly well known one, but still. It'd look good on her record. Experience in the field, and all that. And from her file it didn't look like it'd be very hard to find her. Light blonde hair and ice-blue eyes weren't common. She left her office cubicle early, to pick up her assigned equipment and her D-class tickets for the cruise. On an impulse, she also asked for and got a basic disguise kit. For the practice, she said. At home in front of the mirror, she decided to go for light blonde hair and ice-blue eyes. If nothing else, it'd remind her of what she was looking for. She got up bright and early the following morning, was at the check-in desk at the moment the opened for business and installed herself in her closet-size cabin at the earliest possible time. She wanted to get the killing over with, so she could enjoy a paid vacation at government expense.

Except that she was the only one on the ship with light blonde hair and ice-blue eyes.

She'd spent the entire trip looking the other passengers over, time after time. Some of them were quite reclusive, and some wore wigs. But none of them, she was now sure, had that particular combination of hair and eye colour. She'd have to return to the office a failure. An expensive failure. She might never get another chance. Ever.

With only minutes to go before the shuttle left the ship, she packed her few things and left her cabin. She needed something to soothe her nerves, and she needed it badly.

So here she sat, in the bar, with a large glass if Liquid Oblivion in front of her. She lifted the glass carefully. It tasted like awful and had been known to explode.

"Cheers," the woman at the table next to her said. "Life sucks."

"Sure does," Anna replied. "Cheers."

Soolin looked up in surprise when she got a response to her drinking salute. The response came from the table next to hers. The woman there had hair with almost exactly the same colour as Soolin's natural one. She was quite good-looking, in a butch sort of way.

"Why don't you come over here and tell me in great detail exactly how it sucks," she said.

The butch blonde seemed to think it over for a few moments, and then she kicked her suitcase so it slid over to Soolin's table.

"Don't mind if I do," she said, and sat down on the chair next to Soolin.

"Barkeep," Soolin said. "A pitcher of Adrenaline and Soma, please."

"Splendid idea," the butch blonde said. "A pitcher of Liquid Oblivion too, please."

In spite of herself, Soolin was impressed. Liquid Oblivion was not a drink for cowards, and getting an entire pitcher of it at once was gutsy bordering on foolhardy. More than one old spacer had lost fingers to that drink.

"You take your drinking seriously, I see," Soolin said.

Anna let her gaze travel slowly from the cute brunette's quite ample chest down to her hips. The figure-hugging pastel blue jumpsuit she was wearing revealed enough to make her interested, and hid enough to make her want to get it off real quick.

"I take everything I do seriously," she drawled.

"Oh really?" the brunette said. "And what is it that you do, usually?"

Her eyes were fixed somewhere around Anna's cleavage. In an attempt to look nice and unthreatening, Anna had chosen a pair of tight black pants and a billowy red blouse with as generous a cleavage as her bust allowed. That it might also work well in a sleazy bar context was something that she honestly hadn't thought about. At the time. She certainly was thinking about it now.

"I'm in business," she said, since nothing better sprung to mind.

"And is your business going well?"

"No," she said. "It's been a bust, actually. So I could really do with something to improve my mood."

The barkeep arrived and carefully put two pitchers on the table, one full of an opaque green liquid and one full of a slightly smoking black one.

"I hear that if you mix those two they make a powerful aphrodisiac," the brunette said.

"Really?" Anna said. She took a glass and filled it half full of green liquid, then topped it up with the black. For some reason, the result was opalescent blue.

"Care to try that theory?" she said.

The brunette took the glass. Her hand remained on Anna's just a bit too long for it to be unintentional.

"Sure," she said. She drank deeply from the glass, leaving it half empty. She offered the glass to Anna. "You?"

Anna took the glass and emptied it. The drink tasted like mint and the smoke left by a certain type of plastic explosive. It hit her stomach like a ton of bricks, and she thought she could actually feel it move into her bloodstream. Her nipples stiffened, making visible points under her blouse. She grew hot and cold all over, and she was rapidly getting all warm and wet in the groinal region. She found it next to impossible to keep her eyes from the brunette's curvy body.

The brunette grabbed her by the blouse and pulled her closer. She was quite a bit stronger than she looked.

"Ok," she said. "It worked. Let's fuck. Now."

"Sure," the blonde said, and closed the last little distance that remained between their lips. Their tongues fought, neither of them entirely willing to let the other one in. Soolin loosened her grip on the blonde's blouse, moved her hand up a bit and pinched the blonde's nipple. When she yelped at the sudden pain, Soolin forced her tongue forward and into her mouth.

No battle is so unimportant that it's not worth a cheat. It was one of the few things she remembered her mother teaching her. Since her hand was already on the blonde's breast, she took the opportunity to squeeze it and enjoy it's firm softness and its warmth. She felt a sudden draft along her front as the zipper of her jumpsuit was pulled down.

A bell rung. "Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please," a droning voice scratched out through the PA system. "Would passengers in class D with cabin numbers between 110 and 130, and passengers in class B with cabin numbers between 30 and 50 please make their way to the shuttle embarkation area at this time. Thank you for your cooperation."

They separated. "Shit, that's me," they said in chorus.

They looked at each other.

"On the shuttle, in the ladies room, as soon as possible after takeoff," Soolin said.

"Right," the blonde said. "See you there."

They grabbed their baggage and made their way towards the embarkation area.

They let the Class B passengers board first, of course. For once Soolin didn't find it to be an advantage. She sat in her seat, fretting and trying to rub her thighs together enough to get some release but not so much that people could see.

It didn't work. For either purpose, she suspected. She waited with great impatience while the shuttle filled up, undocked from the cruise ship and got under way.

Only an hour left until they were on Earth.

Only a minute or less until she was due to meet a certain someone in the ladies room. Or, rather, ladies cupboard. She got up from her seat, excused herself to the people she had to squeeze past to get out and hurried towards the back of the shuttle. Finding the "occupied" sign lit, she knocked urgently on the door.

"It's me, let me in!" she stage-whispered.

Immediately, the door opened and a surprisingly strong arm pulled her in. Before she quite knew what was happening, her jumpsuit had been opened and pulled down around her waist, leaving her upper body bare and her arms quite efficiently trapped. A mouth clamped on to her own, and a warm and skilled hand found its way down her panties, bringing a wonderful promise of relief. She eagerly played along with the kissing, and made no noticeable effort to free her hands. For the moment, she was quite satisfied to be the more passive party.

"I love your tits," the blonde, who still hadn't told Soolin her name, said. "Let's see what you look like further down, shall we?"

Soolin expected her to pull her jumpsuit even further down. Instead, she grabbed hold on each side of the zipper and pulled, ripping it open all the way down to her crotch.

"Ooh," she said. "Look at that pretty... blonde...?"

Her voice trailed off into silence as she reached the end of the sentence. She looked up at Soolin with surprise.

"You're not brunette!" she said. "You're blonde! You're the assassin I'm here to kill!"

Soolin wished fervently that she'd worked harder at getting her hands free from the jumpsuit, and even more than that she wished that she would orgasm before she was killed. A thought suddenly struck her.

"You're the Fed agent!" she exclaimed. "I'm here to kill you."

The Fed woman smiled evilly at her. "Well, it seems that my mission is going rather better than yours," she said. As if to prove her superior position, she slowly pushed a finger inside Soolin's vulva. Soolin moaned.

"You," she said, and just then the Fed put her thumb down on Soolin's clitoris and she had to start the sentence all over again a little later.

"You can't kill me," she said. It felt like a Herculanean feat of self control.

"And why is that?" the Fed said.

"Because if you do, who's going to get you off?"

Her hand stopped. Soolin tried her best to move her hips, to compensate. It went pretty well. She could see the conflicting feelings of duty and frustration pass across the Fed's face. Eventually, frustration won.

"You'd better be really, really good with that tongue of yours," she said. "Because this failure is going to cost me dearly. They may even marry me off to some aristocrat as punishment."

Soolin smiled. "Trust me," she said. "I'm good at what I do."

They tried very hard no to look at each other for the few minutes that was left of the trip after they came out of the ladies room, and Soolin decided to try to forget the entire incident. It was more than embarrassing. That she'd let herself be fooled by a bleach job! And she'd failed her mission. Going back to Space City was out of the question. She'd have to run far and fast and hide in the deepest hole she could find. If she was really lucky, she might find someone with a ship of her -- or his, she wasn't that picky -- own, and maybe a secret base on a little-known planet somewhere.

She grabbed her suitcase from the overhead locker and filed out of the shuttle together with the rest of the B class passengers. She sighed. There was no use dreaming.

She'd never be that lucky.

Contract Work

Contract Work

Written by Calle Dybedahl

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