Free Collateral Damage by K.S. Augustin

Chapter One
    Meyal dialled down the illumination in her quarters, until only the blue from the control console highlighted the naked curves of her body. She leant back in her bed, angled so she was lying on a half-incline, her torso erect, her nipples hard and thrusting forward.
    “Okay,” she whispered. “You’ve carried me to my quarters and placed me on my bunk. You’re now standing above me. Then what?”
    “Then,” Waryd’s silky voice said, “I lean forward and tease your mouth with my tongue.”
    “Mmmmm.” Meyal’s own tongue darted out of her mouth, duelling in the air.
    “I cup those delicious breasts of yours in my chilled hands. You can feel them, can’t you? Cold and arousing against your hot flesh. I—”
    “Hold on a sec.” Meyal snapped into sitting position. “You couldn’t possibly have done that yet.”
    “And why not?” Waryd’s voice was irritated.
    “Because you haven’t taken off my top!”
    “Meyal—”
    But Meyal was adamant. “If this session is going to have any effect at all, Waryd, we’re going to have to do it right.”
    “So I have to take your top off?”
    “Yes,” she nodded. “And
then
you may rub some ice solution over your hands before touching me. Remember, according to your words, you were
carrying
me to my quarters. That means your hands would have been warm. And you can’t go for the bare breasts without even taking off an item of clothing.”
    Waryd’s heavy sigh whooshed through the speakers. “You’re not making this easy.”
    “It helps if everything’s accurate. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way I’m wired.”
    There was a heavy pause.
    “We’re not going to get off tonight, are we?” he asked.
    Meyal grimaced. “No. I’m sorry.” She relaxed against the bed’s firm mattress. “I don’t think so.”
    “Hmmmm. Well, I’d better sign off then. Catch you tomorrow.”
    “Yeah, sure. Bye.”
    Silence filled the small cabin.
    “Waryd?” Meyal called softly.
    There was no response.
    Meyal sighed. She knew it was her fault. She was the one who had called an end to their sex session. But part of her wished that Waryd had stayed on, just to talk, if nothing else. But, as he’d told her dozens of times before, they couldn’t be caught “just talking” for any length of time, not by either of their employers, especially when they were supposed to pretend that the other didn’t exist.
    Unable to go back to sleep, Meyal rose and dressed, casually pulling on a pair of loose trousers and top before leaving her quarters.
    The curved corridor outside her cabin was tinged blue with night-time lighting. Unmindful of the chill metal flooring, she padded silently along the passage, past the two cabins for visitors – both empty, almost from the time she arrived – and entered the Analysis Room.
    The colours here were more welcoming. Red, orange and green polygons from the double row of monitors in front of her threw warmer reflections against the dull alloy walls. With a smile on her face, Meyal slipped into her seat and checked the programs that had been running for the past few hours.
    The XeGeTech probes had been deployed in the new configuration she specified, the nine of them forming a three by three “super-probe” that was slowly scanning the surface of Falcin V, a giant rocky planet circling a star in the Beta Tucanae system. This was in contrast to the strategy that XeGeTech’s main rival, ExoSystems, was taking (or so Waryd told her), widely scattering their own probes across the planet in the hope of picking up a big find.
    Personally, Meyal thought that the XeGeTech tactic was more sound and, by the analyses that were blinking on the rightmost monitor, she was right. In the past four months alone, the super-probe had picked up enough erbium and neodymium to repay almost half of the company’s investment in the far-off chunk of alien rock.
    She spun back through the timeline, noting the concentrations of other metals and