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The invitation arrived in Kat’s Starbase 16 quarters wrapped around the napkin accompanying her replicated cumin lamb and noodles. It was a slim strip of bamboo paper like any other napkin band, embossed with a simple symbol the size of Kat’s thumbnail: a plain circle with two X’s for eyes and a single dot for a mouth.
It didn’t need explanatory text. If you knew about Anonyparty, you knew the logo.
* * *
As a cadet, she’d heard whispers of the party, usually outrageous, implausible, unprovable rumors no one could fully believe but everyone secretly wanted to be true. All the alcohol is illegally imported. Everyone has to be naked, all the time, yes, even admirals, and there are definitely admirals there. You drop your delta in a bowl, and you have to have sex with whoever picks it up. You remember that cadet who had to drop out suddenly? I heard he’s now someone’s private boytoy on Risa.
But no one she knew had ever been to a party like this, or if they had, they’d never discussed it. Anonyparty, if it had ever truly existed in the first place, drifted from rumor into urban legend.
The next time Kat heard about it, she was a few days past Admiral. The Buran was getting upgrades in Earth spacedock while Gabriel attended her promotion ceremony, and the two of them were entangled in the same sleeping bag under the stars.
“Of course it’s real. I’ve been,” Gabriel said.
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not, I swear.”
“So it’s all true? Nudity, sex slaves, all of it?”
“I guess I must have been doing it wrong, because I didn’t walk out of there with a sex slave. Besides, who needs one when you come running when I call?”
Kat shoved Gabriel’s shoulder, which only made him laugh harder. “Asshole,” Kat said. “I’d get up to kick your butt if I wasn’t so comfortable.”
“You know, as a former Anonyparty guest, I’m allowed to invite you to the next one. I might not be able to make it, but you should go without me. See what life is like where no one cares you’re an all-powerful admiral.”
“Are you mocking a superior officer?”
“Me? Never. I am teasing a superior officer I am sleeping with, which is totally different.” Gabriel drew her in closer, snuggled her against his chest. “Look, if you want to go, here–” He whispered a string of numbers into her ear. “Memorize that. Send an encoded message with my name in it. If they let you in, you’ll know. And let me know how it goes.”
* * *
She knew Gabriel hadn’t been joking, but it still took her five months and three glasses of whiskey to send a message to the numbers. If somehow they led to someone high above her who could punish her for showing interest in this particular extracurricular activity, then fine; she needed a break from her duties anyway.
Two weeks later, a coded message arrived: shore leave on Starbase 16 approved for six weeks from now, authorization AP37. She hadn’t requested time away, but Starfleet Command’s central calendar already showed her travel booked, right down to starship and assigned quarters.
Still, even with the surprise shore leave, even with the suspicious authorization code, even with Gabriel’s “you’ll know” ringing in her head, she traveled to Starbase 16 with trepidation. The worst that could happen, probably, was that she’d have an unscheduled vacation, and if she had to, she could always spend that time in the spa getting a massage and a Bolian seaweed scrub.
Instead, she was in her quarters grabbing an early dinner and considering an equally early bedtime, and she’d almost tossed the napkin ring back in the replicator for recycling before noticing what it said.
ANONYPARTY 37. Storage bay Gamma-12 at 2100. No uniforms. No ranks. No shop talk. No regrets.
How whoever ran this party had managed to hack the replicators to include the invitation was an interesting question, but one Kat decided to put aside in favor of dinner. After all, she’d need her stamina.
* * *
She’d brought simple party clothes, just in case: a black tunic, black leggings, a pair of black boots with heels saucy enough to turn heads but not enough that she couldn’t dance in them. She slipped her delta into her pocket, reluctant to leave it behind even if she knew no one would be wearing them at the party – whether because they were in the rumored fishbowl or people were simply obeying the anonymity rule, she supposed she’d find out soon enough.
The storage bay door wouldn’t open to a palm print or voice access, which she’d hissed at it as quietly as she could after checking three times to make sure no one was around to overhear. But pressing the invitation against the scanner worked: the X eyes glowed green, the doors slid open, and Kat found herself on the outskirts of a dance floor.
The storage bay had been transformed. Bots bearing blue and purple gels spun overhead, illuminating a thick crowd of people dancing to something new and electronic, or at least new enough that Kat didn’t recognize it. A few shirtless people aside, everyone in the room was clothed: another rumor shot down.
Above the dance floor, smaller clusters of people gathered on the catwalk surrounding the storage bay. A bot bearing a white pin spot was focused on a DJ setup, where a woman with a cloud of frizzy blonde hair, head bobbing to the music, was sliding her fingers along a large PADD controlling the mix. She looked a little like the Academy’s senior engineering professor, but it was impossible to tell from this far away – and even if it had been her, Kat still hadn’t decided whether it would be better or worse to run into people she knew at the party.
Regardless, she was going to need a drink. She pushed through the dancers to the bar in the nearest corner.
“Whiskey sour,” Kat yelled to the bartender, who thankfully was doling out more familiar drinks alongside the illegally imported kanar and Romulan ale Academy gossip had promised her long ago.
“Whiskey?” sniffed the man beside her. “You look like a lass who enjoys something more sophisticated. A proper single malt instead of whatever swill they call ‘whiskey’ outside of Scotland.”
He had a strong Scottish accent, dark hair, and exactly the sort of problematic gleam in his eye that suggested he was far more trouble than he was worth. Gabriel had that same gleam, dammit. But he was light-years away, and this young man – and he was young, though to Kat’s eyes, clearly old enough to be out of the Academy – was leaning on the bar next to her, attempting a level of small talk no man of any age had ever pulled off successfully.
“What makes you think you have any idea what I enjoy?” Kat said.
The man paused, stared at his own glass for a moment, then collected himself enough to respond. “I meant you look like a lass who knows her own worth. Someone who’s been round the galaxy enough to know what’s best in life.”
“Nice recovery,” Kat said, peering up at the top shelf of the bar. “I’ll take a Macallan 18, neat, if you’re buying.”
“See, I knew you had good taste.” He nodded to the bartender. “Name’s –”
“No. No names. Didn’t it say that on the invitation?”
“Aye, so it did. You’d think I’d remember that. Then I suppose I’ll call you ...” He stared at her face, her clothes, furrowed his brow. “Macallen Girl.”
“Macallen Woman,” Kat said, sipping the Scotch. Caramel, dried fruit, a hint of sherry. And not that there was anything wrong with a whiskey sour, but this was better.
“Aye, fair enough. Call me ‘Scotty,’” said the man. “You here alone, Macallen Woman?”
“What would you do if I were?”
He scratched his head. “I suppose I’m meant to ask you to dance. But I’ll let you in on a secret: I can’t dance. Not a single wee step.”
God, the way he cocked his head, the half-smile as he sheepishly admitted his lack of rhythm – Kat knew Gabriel hadn’t tapped her for Anonyparty as a way to get her laid, but he surely should have known she’d find a candidate. This was probably his idea of a gift to her if he couldn’t be there to fuck her himself.
The thing was, he wasn’t wrong. Scotty, whoever he was, sure seemed like a gift.
“Is there somewhere quiet we could get to know each other?” Kat asked.
“Aye, there is,” Scotty said. “Follow me.”
The dividing line between dance floor and bar crowd was virtually nonexistent, and Kat nearly lost Scotty immediately. But he stopped a few steps in and stretched his hand out to her, pulling her through the partyers to a far corner of the storage bay blocked off by a shimmering black containment field. He tapped on a tricorder, and the field parted long enough for Kat to join him on the other side.
The DJ’s thumping music and the partygoers’ chatter died down to a muffled bass rumble. Here there was normal lighting and careful towers of storage crates that probably belonged elsewhere in the bay but had been moved aside to create the dance floor. Scotty stopped in front of a crate taller than he was, whispered to the crate’s lock, and a door slid open.
“Welcome to my workshop,” he said. “Pe– ... Management hired me for some custom work. Want to see?”
The crate might as well have been every engineering student dorm room Kat had ever visited. Workbenches and boxes strewn with multicolored cable spaghetti; four separate monitors along with a circuit board haphazardly wired into a tricorder; coffee cups that should have been returned to a replicator days ago; a thin camping mattress with a crumpled blue blanket and a flat pillow beneath one of the benches.
“I’m normally much tidier than this,” he said. “You know how it goes: the high muckety-mucks set a deadline, then move it up, then ask you for more besides.”
“I’m not here for an inspection,” Kat said.
“Aye, good. In that case, here’s the invitation prototype. I wanted to make it the proper old-fashioned way, with pixelbots and adaptive encryption, but deadlines are deadlines, had to cut a few corners –”
Was she really going to have to do this? True, she’d had to be direct with some of her engineering classmates, too, and maybe she’d misread the signals. But her goal for tonight was to let loose, and learning the intricacies of how her invitation had arrived as a standard napkin ring instead of a folded origami crane wasn’t on her to-do list.
She stood firm and tall and set her face to Humorless Admiral. Remarkably, even with Scotty having no idea who she was, he picked up on the cue and set the prototype back on the bench, not quite coming to attention but realigning himself, shoulders back, feet slightly apart.
“You said you’re not here for an inspection, Macallen Woman. Why do I get the wee inkling that you are?”
“I’m not, I promise. I’m just not here for an in-depth engineering review.”
“Aye, I do get a touch carried away with my work,” he acknowledged, a sheepish smile on his face. “So I suppose when you asked if there was a quiet place we could get to know each other ...” he began, stepping closer to her.
“Right,” Kat said, closing the distance between them and sliding an arm around Scotty’s neck. “What I meant was, ‘where can we go for a nice fuck?’”
“Och, lassie,” he said, “you should have led with that.”
* * *
They slid the mattress out from under the workbench. “I don’t care who’s on top,” Kat said, “but we aren’t coming out of this with a concussion.”
Scotty sat beside her on the floor, unzipping his boots, then helping Kat do the same with hers. He cupped her face with his hand, kissing her far more gently than she was expecting, and she drew him down beside her, his shirt bunching beneath her fingertips as she pulled him closer. More. She was going to need more, faster, sooner, and she bent into his touch as his fingers slid from the nape of her neck, trailing frustratingly light across her clavicle, then pushing apart her dress’ neckline to circle a nipple.
Kat moaned. Scotty was hardening against her, and she reached for his waistband, inching down the hidden zip, relishing each twitch as her fingertips grazed the head of his cock.
“No need to ... ah ... rush,” he gasped. “Unless you’re in – ah a hurry–”
Kat smiled, withdrew, wriggled out of her tunic and leggings, and stretched full-body, arms above her head. Beside her, Scotty’s face was flushed, his breath heavy, his cock straining outside his trousers. There was nothing quite like being able to take charge: setting the pace she wanted, bringing her partner as close to the brink as she liked, seeing them desire her so deeply they’d do anything to keep going.
“I’m not in a hurry,” Kat said, “but I am ready.”
“Are ye, though?” he replied. He slipped two fingers between Kat’s legs, and she arched into them. “See, I think we could wait a bit longer.”
A finger inched its way inside her, curving deep, then sliding back out to gently rub up and down her clit. Kat’s belly tensed, and she dug her fingers into his bicep. Scotty moved slowly, steadily, leaning down to kiss Kat while he stroked her. His tongue was cool and sweet and tasted like Scotch, and much as she was enjoying kissing him, he drew his mouth down along her throat and over her chest and when he settled on a nipple, his tongue sucking in time with his fingers, Kat cried out so loudly she suddenly feared someone outside the storage container would realize what was going on.
Then she remembered she was at Anonyparty, and it was loud, and they were very surely not the only two or three or more people fucking in a quiet corner, and she whispered in Scotty’s ear, “Now.”
She pulled him back up for another kiss as he slid inside her and began to move. Neither of them would need much time, but they had hours more of this party to go if they wanted another round. Maybe she’d even take him out for a dance step or two just to see whether he was as bad as he claimed he was, then bring him back to the container again.
He gathered speed, thrusting harder, one hand on her breast, the other buried deep in her hair. Kat pushed him deeper inside, gasping for breath as he moved. This. This was why she was here tonight. Not the semi-anonymous sex she hadn’t engaged in for decades so much as letting go, letting the silly rumors and unsubstantiated promises of Anonyparty fade out; letting the reality of a night of pure freedom fade in.
She shifted beneath Scotty to adjust her angle. She was so close now. “Faster,” she said. “Faster,” and at last she felt herself come apart, her body humming and glowing while Scotty himself shuddered to a halt a few minutes later.
He lay above her, breathing hard, his eyes closed. He was sweaty and beautiful and Kat could hardly believe her previous plans had been “early bedtime,” when this had been awaiting her instead.
Eventually, he rolled off of her and replicated two glasses of water, passing her one while he lay back down beside her.
“I do like a lass who knows what she wants,” he said. “Though I felt a wee bit like I should be calling you ‘sir’.”
“Under no circumstances should you be calling me that, at least not right now.”
“I just thought ... well, I had quite a nice time just now –”
Kat sipped her water. “So did I.”
“I’ve still got a couple of days before I ship out on the Stardiver. So if by chance I see you in the corridor ...”
“Look, we can play this one of two ways,” Kat said. “You can assume I am a superior officer, which is a reasonable assumption given my age relative to yours, but which is still just an idle theory. Or we could spend the rest of this party naked here on your floor and see how things go. Your call.”
“Right, let me show you one last prototype,” Scotty said. “This one vibrates.”
* * *
A convenient side effect of having spent the party with the man who’d hacked the replicators was that transporter hacking had been a hobby of Scotty’s since he’d been old enough to reach the controls, and the site-to-site transport he’d rigged into his storage container meant Kat had spent the rest of the night sleeping in her proper and much more comfortable bed.
She was in a cheerful enough mood that morning to visit the Starbase mess hall for breakfast instead of taking two cups of black coffee and a forgotten half of a granola bar in her quarters. The coffee was mandatory for any breakfast, but the eggs Benedict were a treat to be savored at a table with a view of the Horsehead Nebula.
She’d gotten in three forkfuls of egg and two pages of daily briefing she was supposed to be ignoring when another tray clattered onto her table, with a whirlwind of dirty blonde hair suddenly whizzing to a stop in the chair opposite her.
“This seat looked free,” the woman said, “and the loaded waffles are surprisingly heavy. Well, maybe not if you consider that they’re called ‘loaded,’ but that’s supposed to be a figure of speech. Also, it’s not every day I get to have breakfast with an admiral.”
“Commander Pelia, isn’t it? I think I had introductory engineering with you at the Academy.”
“A B+. Pretty good for a psychiatrist. Sir.” She carved off a slice of waffle with bacon and whipped cream, dredged it in syrup, and shoved it into her mouth.
A whisper from last night: a DJ, head bouncing to the beat, a cloud of hair covering her face. A professor Kat hadn’t spoken with in thirty years suddenly dropping in for breakfast when there were empty tables surrounding them.
“Pelia,” Kat said, leaning in close and speaking as quietly as she could, “is there any chance you were at a party last night?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Me, obviously.”
“Just you?”
“Who else would it be?”
“You can’t be too careful.” Another massive forkful of waffle. “Look, if I’d been at a party last night, you couldn’t prove anything other than I was having a wonderful time.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything!” Kat hissed. “I just think I saw you last night!”
“Oh, you probably did. I know I saw you. I approved your invitation. And I hope you enjoyed yourself, Admiral. Even if ...”
She was not having this conversation. She was not. And yet. “Even if ...?”
“I’m thousands of years old. I’m not going to judge you for a one-night stand,” Pelia said through a mouthful of bacon. “I’m going to judge you for having it with Montgomery Scott.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s a very nice young man, one of my best students. Terrible grades, but grades aren’t everything. He’s a genius with a transporter and an engine room, and, I assume, with the ladies, eh? Eh?”
“I didn’t – I had no – ”
“He’s not ready for women like us. Sure, you’re still a baby compared to me, but he’s the kind of man who probably still thinks he can get you into bed by showing you a replicator hack, you know? You and I, we’re too sophisticated to fall for that kind of thing.”
“Right. Yes. Of course,” Kat said, swallowing at least three separate replies.
“Anyway,” Pelia said, fork sweeping the last chunk of waffle through her syrup lake, “I’m glad you had a good time at the party. Come next year, eh? Bring that nice Captain Lorca. You should see him with the martini luge. A real champion.”
Kat wasn’t sure how long it took for her mouth to fully close after Pelia left, but her coffee had gone cold.
* * *
She booked herself spa appointments for her last day of shore leave, and returned to her quarters to catch up on messages. There was one in particular she knew she had to send.
“Dear Gabriel,” she began, “you asked for a report. Well, here it is ...”