A Pleasure to a Prequel

Don't you love a happy ending. It was coming to the end of my one month stay in Brazfix. I was initially very nervous about coming to this place because the local laws were viewed as very dangerous and perhaps it would be easy for an Imperial like me to get in trouble here. I wasn't in the service any more so I would be coming to this place completely as a private person with no government backing. The last five Imperials who had come to this planet had all been executed before they could get off again for the simple alleged 'crime' of fighting. Because of that no one in the company wanted to come here. However, the corporation I worked for made an agreement with the local government that I could not be tried by their legal system there and if I broke any laws then the case would be adjudicated by magistrates of the Empire not local judges. That wasn't to say I couldn't get in trouble on this funny planet most Imperials were disdainful of going to if I murdered someone in cold blood without that person having the chance to fight back but if they tried to execute me for not obeying some obscure local custom that I'd have no idea even existed like not wearing pajamas to bed or some other such nonsense then hopefully I had nothing to worry about.

The bottom line was that someone had to go. Brazfix was the capital city of the world Blelm which was inside Imperial Domain. They weren't part of the Empire but their world existed in the Empire's space. There was a huge tourist area on the planet and a lot of other races went there to enjoy themselves but that was far away from Brazfix where I would be staying. Citizens of Blelm had legal access to travel through the Empire so I had actually met some of these kinds of people before when I was deployed on Ilna. There were lots of goods being sold to Blelm and the planet did a huge business exporting. However, all of the business was done at the Imperial outposts in space. None of it was ever conducted on the planet itself so there was a bottleneck. The company wanted to put an end to that bottleneck.

I got briefed on the rules the company wanted me to follow before I arrived. I had to keep my fists to myself. Don't piss anyone off. If I saw someone breaking the law then I had to let local law enforcement handle it and not get involved. If someone insulted me or my honor I had to, grimace, not hurt them. I had to just ignore it instead of beating them to a bloody pulp or snapping their neck. The only way I could punch anyone was if that person hit me first and it was self defense. Also, I couldn't trash talk any of the local nobles cause even if one of them hit me first I wouldn't be allowed to hit back.

I really thought this fucking planet would be the worst place in the galaxy. Boy was I wrong.

Initially when I arrived at Brazfix I thought that the reason I had been sent here was because I was the only low level employee the company could bully into making go with the threat of losing my job or a beating if I didn't. That actually might be true but once I was in Brazfix I didn't care. There were huge opportunities for me to make money here. Sure I was making money for the company as well but the way my employment contract was written and the addendum I signed that covered my activities here I was able to bank huge sums and I didn't even really hardly have to do anything except show up so that the locals would see we respected them and their culture enough to have a guy physically there.

I would make.03 percent on every deal done on this planet. That might not sound like a lot. It didn't to me at first. It's not even one percent. It's not even a tenth of a percent. But the very first contract that I oversaw for the company down here was for 800 million cred. That meant that all I had to do was show up and smile and I was paid 240,000 cred. Of course no amount of money is worth it if my life is on the line but my salary before was 21,000 a year and I made ten times that in one night and all I had to do was physically show up.

The big thing that really caused me to have to physically be there on the planet instead of doing business in space was some local custom. Normally when a big business transaction was going to be agreed to, the heads of the two companies would meet and each side would provide prostitutes to the other side to suck off or fuck the representatives of the other side. That was necessary according to them but there was a HUGE problem with this. In the Empire prostitution was illegal. There was no way my company was ever going to agree to provide prostitutes or allow me as their representative on the planet to engage in self gratification with a prostitute. We're Imperials and this is not done. That wasn't even scratching the surface of the immense incompatibilities between their culture and ours. Thankfully there was a compromise. When I came to officially conclude these many many business deals that had all been agreed to ahead of time my real job was to watch a sex show at the ceremony to sign the official contract. I had to watch and pretend to get turned on (which kind of wasn't difficult and I wasn't even pretending most of the time). Then on top of that sales people were lining up to offer so many goods for export or asking to buy some such important thing through our company since I was there and could personally handle the transaction. The sales people who were women offered to give me blowjobs or complementary sex if I would help them and the sales people who were men brought a female assistant along for that. Of course as a good Imperial I didn't not engage in that but I did drop the standard line of agreeing to watch a sex show to get the contract signed.

Business was booming. I lost count of how many huge hundred million cred deals I finalized. It was difficult to wrap my head around actually. I mean I thought of this place as so small and insignificant compared to the Empire. It was only one world after all and they didn't even have a navy. They had to rely totally on the Empire for protection. They were nothing. And to any CEO of a huge company the kinds of deals I was doing probably also looked like nothing. These weren't massive vigintillion cred deals like what might happen in the Empire. Compared to those my little 100 million cred deal was like rubbing two rusty shields together. But thinking that way meant I was missing the trees for the forest. Doing business in Brazfix really changed my perspective. So what if I wasn't doing a deal for a centillion creds. All the GDP of entire sectors of an entire planet's economy was flowing through my bank accounts. Blelm compared to the Empire was nothing but one hundred and thirty five billion citizens of Blelm outnumbered singular me by a long way. I didn't have to do the biggest deals in the entire Empire. I was doing the biggest deal on the planet Blelm and it was making me richer than I could ever dream of being.

And besides being so super happy about all the money I really hoped I'd live long enough to spend it all since it was also really fun doing business here. One night I was watching three sex shows at the same time and then the performers lost track of who was supposed to be fucking who as part of what deal and they all started fucking each other with even a girl coming over to us in the audience to find a guy to stuff a cock into her. Things do not go down this way in the Empire but as to the facts I was not complaining. I was going to be rich.

But all good things have to come to an end. I had figured out after the first afternoon working there the great potential and I made great use of my time for that entire month I was there. Deals, deals, deals. Money, money, money. Sex show after sex show. But now it was over. I had only two days left and all of that would be just waiting for a ship to take me back up to the Imperial station on a further out orbit. From there an Imperial cruiser would take me back home. I would not be going back to my tiny dumpy apartment. I had so much money I could buy my own island. And because I had earned it in Brazfix on the planet Blelm it was all tax free. Goodbye old life and hello new life.

Actually, there might be one more opportunity to make just a bit more, perhaps even two. That imperial cruiser would be in orbit for nine days. When I originally booked my travel I assumed I'd be wanting to get off of this planet where you got death just for punching someone as fast as possible but now I was thinking that I wasn't really in a rush. I could hang out in the huge penthouse the company was paying for a few more days and continue to enjoy all the hospitality offered to me at the company's expense. And my boss wouldn't be upset with me either if I was able to book another deal. With the huge amounts of money I already earned for them I don't think they would complain even if I just slacked off.

Besides prostitution you know something that was legal in Brazfix but illegal in the Empire? Gambling. Oh these poor dumb people. I'm a bit of a card player so when some big wig locals called me to show me the casino I said to sign me up for that.

So now might be a good time to mention something. Gambling in the Empire was illegal but there were a lot of gambling like activities that when on in the service. If two soldiers had a disagreement you couldn't have one of them killing the other. That would reduce the fighting strength of the unit. So during disagreements in my unit we played cards and the winner was right while the loser was in the wrong and got lashed. It was as simple as that. But maybe you think that was unfair because with cards it was random. Not so. Cards is like any skill. There is unpredictability in it but your skill in how you play, your strategy, ability to manage resources, and ability to think ahead will determine if you turn that to your advantage or if you can't. It was the same on the field of battle. A skilled soldier can turn even bad luck and certain defeat into a victory. I'd shown that when I completed that mission to rescue that Ilna girl.

Oh, and casinos in Brazfix were not like what you might be picturing from old documentaries or fictional programs. There weren't guys in tuxedos saying they wanted a martini. Instead the casino was like a nightclub and both men and women were dressed like they were looking to hook up. Men had their shirts open in the front so they could show off their manly hairy chests and women were dressed with so little clothes that it really didn't leave much to the imagination. But what do you expect in a place like Brazfix where public nudity wasn't exactly a big deal except in certain upscale areas and couples (or more often prostitutes with clients) fucked in the streets in front of everyone. The people of Brazfix had such a strange duality to them where everything was far to the extreme of one side or the other and nothing bland in the middle. They either had to be super up tight about something or just not care about it at all. There was no middle ground with these people.

Steal a one cred soda: death penalty on Blelm whereas in the Empire you'd only get fined the one cred which would then be given to the original owner. Problem solved because obviously you wanted to buy it anyway. Just pay the money. You didn't even get lashes.

Man slaps his wife across the face: nothing happened on Blelm whereas in the Empire you'd get fifty lashes for that. You do not put your hands on an unarmed woman. It is not done. Get busted beating your wife for a second time and they will brand your face, likely burning you blind in at least one eye in the process. It would not happen a third time unless you wanted to have your head cut off next. And that's just for slapping a woman. Not even the Emperor would dare do it. No way. Absolutely NO FUCKING WAY!

I get kind of pissed off even just thinking about it. If I happened to see one of these local assholes harm a woman here I probably wouldn't be able to contain myself and I'd rip out his vertebra and then beat his bitch ass to death with it.

So anyway the first hour I was there at the casino I didn't gamble. I was too busy watching the dancing girls as they would come out in their various costumes and then in rhythm to the music would slowly take their clothes off. This kind of work along with prostitution was illegal in the Empire too. The locals had a separate word for this kind of dancer other than just calling her a dancer but I didn't catch it with their funny pronunciation.

Oh, ladies, you are all so hot. Sex was starting to melt my brain after so many shows and me not getting any pussy for over a month now. Oh and there was this one special girl who made my eyes almost pop out of my head. She was the best one, at least for me. Everything about her from her perfectly formed body to there playful yet confident attitude was turning my dials all the way up. She was my favorite and I felt empty in side when she had to leave. Come back. I'll pay the creds. Please come back. Let me watch for a little longer.

The next girl came out and she did her dance. She was extremely attractive but not as much as the other girl in my humble opinion. However she might be about to change my mind because she came over to me and she was dancing so close to where I was sitting that I could reach out and just put my palm right there on her ass. Oh it was so tempting. I wanted to touch her and not just with my hands. But then a part of my brain had noticed that the super liberal with sex Blelm assholes were able to keep their hands to themselves. Was I, an Imperial, less than them? No. So I kept my hands to myself as a good Imperial but just for my own record in my head I did in fact want to touch her.

"Brandon, another beer. Come on. One more." my host was saying.

I felt a bit dizzy already so I only sipped the drink offered to me. Wow this place was so great. If I could open up something like this in the Imperial Capital then I'd be made for life. Then again, perhaps the mob already had something like this and they'd whack me if I tried to be competition for them. But not here. In Brazfix, the place with all of the alleged draconian laws, this was all legal and I could enjoy. I mean, sure, you hear that this place is dangerous because everyone got the death penalty but once I got here the locals informed me that it was simply not true. Sure they didn't have prisons but there were other ways short of death. They did have death and it was common for criminals to get death as their punishment but there was also community service, fines, probation, and finally something called 'compulsory marriage', whatever that was. They had to have that kind of stuff because it was illegal to give a woman the death penalty in Brazfix. A woman would have to be either a drug dealer (thus killed on the spot by police with no need for arrest) or be shooting at the cops to get killed. If she was actually put in cuffs and brought to court then she already knew she had her life. Same with minors or the mentally incompetent.

Anyway, I was having a great time and not only was the entertainment top level but the food was as well. I went to the roulette table and I lost a few hundred. I just laughed it off while the couple next to me started fucking right there next to the table. I shrugged it off because this was the umpteenth time I'd seen sex in public in this city. I also was unconcerned about losing money. I had so much money now it was no big deal. I went to the craps table and I won a couple of hundred back. Lucky me, I thought to myself while some girl was getting lucky with another girl who was getting her pussy licked.

Yeah, I know, I shouldn't look. Girls with girls was illegal in the Empire but in that moment I was wondering why it would need to be cause it sure looked like both girls were totally fine with it. The only thing that was weird was the girl doing the licking had a collar and was on a leash. I figured it was cosplay. There were lots of people with collars here. Seemed like a fad.

Then I went to the card table. Oh, they had poker. These poor dumb people. So I should clarify. Gambling is illegal in the Empire as you should know. But poker played without gambling attached to it was not illegal. In the service I had distinguished myself as a very good card player and I was part of a poker team. If you watched a poker tournament broadcast you might have seen me playing and slaughtering the other guys like they were basic. Of course in the Empire playing for entertainment was as high as you could go with poker. But not here where gambling was legal. Oh, and if you think playing for money changed things for me I guess you'd be a bit right but only in that it made the game easier to win. The pressure I felt playing over lashings or life and death or competing and representing my unit was so much bigger than just losing a hundred cred here or a hundred there. Plus I was a foreigner, likely the first Imperial any of these people playing me on Blelm had ever seen in person. They didn't know me. They didn't know my culture. They didn't know how to tell if I was bluffing or not.

So yeah, the small stakes table was not going to contain me and I quickly found myself moved up to the big boys and girls. Oh, and might I add that I loved the waitress bringing me my snack order while not wearing anything except a collar around her neck, a camisole and NOTHING else. Nice bush. Oh, and I had to look at her ass when she turned to walk back to the bar. So sexy. Oh, man how much I wanted to fuck her. She might well have had the sexiest ass I had ever seen. Let me take her on a date. I'll be a gentleman. Maybe she'll like me. Oh, she was so hot. Oh, damn and she was turning to the side and her tits were just so ... oh. My mortal flesh pines for her touch. Celestial Empress give me release.

But anyway, back to the game. Hundreds weren't cutting it anymore. We were betting hundred thousands. And was I winning? Yeah, I was raking it in. What cards I had only counted for about 1% of the chance if I would take the pot or not. The rest was up to me. Sure, I did pass up some pots because you can't take every single one without suspicion but when I decided I wanted a pot it was mine.

I spent a long time at the card table. It was starting to get to be morning and I had made so much money that I really didn't care if I won this next hand or not. I looked at my cards and yawned. I sipped some coffee the effeminate male server in a collar brought to me. The other four guys at the table were just watching now and it was down to me and this switcher kind of guy that everyone treated as very important. I wasn't sure if he was originally a man who had started becoming a woman or a woman who had started becoming a man but he was somewhere in between that process. He was wearing a suit but it was shiny stones and glitter. But he was more like a man than a woman so I was thinking about him as a he and nobody told me any different. Definitely in the Empire we would say he no longer qualified as a real man and so we shouldn't call him a he anymore but this was not the Empire and people here were a lot more tolerant apparently. What was that old ancient saying? When in Rome. I wonder what kind of people were on planet Rome. It must be in the Republic because there was no planet Rome in the Empire.

I pretended to peek at my cards again but I actually didn't lift them up enough to see them. I remembered what they were. The guy playing cards against me was out of cash to raise me so that should be the end of this hand. This might be my last hand. I was going to have a good sleep when I got home. Yes indeed, a good sleep. According to the rules they played under here I could brute force a win even if I didn't have the cards for the win just by going all in and the guy not having enough cash to match. But no, I waited for him to voluntarily throw in the towel.