(Note #1: All comments and constructive criticisms are welcome and appreciated.

Note #2: Those of you wishing for a quick story to wank to will want to look elsewhere. Although chapter 7, chapters 9 to 12 and chapter 16 of this story featured the characters fooling around, and this one features images of exotic dancing, nobody will be getting their freak on in this chapter. If you want to skip ahead, the sexual shenanigans will commence again in the next chapter.

Note #3: Thanks to my friend Claire for her insights into exotic dancing.

Note #4: The first two illustrations in this chapter are by Faith Desky. The third is by the Pretty Perchance AI Art Generator. The other four are by Steve Rayner.

Note #5: And finally, thanks to volunteer Literotica editor TheNyxianLily for her help with editing and the general shape of this chapter.)

The doors opened and Janite quickly stepped off the stage. An instant later, the pounding opening percussion of “One Sweet Ride” rang out.

Calley strode onto the stage. She thought about how her three friends walked when on their way to a club. Since she’d started accompanying them, Calley had adopted their manner of walking. She was glad to have had a few weeks to get used to the high heeled shoes Daznee had bought her. At first, the spacer had been unsteady on them, but now walking and dancing in them had become second nature to her. She took long strides as she made her way down to the front of the elongated stage. She had a spotlight aimed at her so she couldn’t see much of anything and she forced herself not to squint too much. Squinting, she reasoned, wouldn’t look good.

She heard a male voice shout out “Hey, it’s a Gynapsi!” from somewhere to her right, followed by some laughter. She couldn’t see the crowd so had no idea who had said that. There’d be no point in looking in the direction of the heckler so she didn’t. Ignore it, she told herself. Don’t let that guy rattle you. Do your moves and everything’ll be fine. He can’t get at you anyway. You’re up here and he’s down there somewhere. She’d spotted a couple of burley bouncers patrolling the floor when she’d entered the club so she doubted anyone would interfere with her dance.

She passed the metal pole in the stage’s centre and continued her pace. She made it to the front of the stage, being careful as she approached it since, with the lights in her face, she easily could have overshot it and tumbled off the edge. Once she was there, she stopped and struck a sexy pose. She cocked her hips and stuck her right fist at her side, bending her arm to do so. She ran her left hand through her hair as she closed her eyes, took a deep breath and angled her head up. Even though she couldn’t have seen the crowd even if her eyes were open, she could feel all the eyes looking at her. Well, she decided, give ‘em something to look at!

She turned around and opened her eyes. Facing away from the lights, she could see better. She could make out some of the patrons at the periphery of her vision, but paid them no heed. She strode back towards the doors leading off the stage, making sure to keep to the beat of her song. But she also made sure to put some extra wiggle in her ass. After cycles of hating it, she’d finally come to accept that there was nothing wrong with it. And indeed, if there had been, chances are the crowd would have let her know. But there were no jeers or comments from the crowd. She was putting her behind on display and it seemed the audience was okay with it. Her high-heeled shoes, she realized, were no doubt making it look good.

When she approached the pole again, she put on a quick burst of speed and extended her left arm. She grabbed the pole and jumped up, using her momentum to spin herself around the pole. She bent her legs while doing so and managed a full spin around the pole before her knees hit the stage and stopped her rotation. There was a part in the song when the music stopped cold before restarting. She wanted her spin to end just at that moment, but had mistimed it. She was standing straight up on her knees when the pause was about to happen. Almost without thinking, she looked behind her with a mischievous smile on her face and gave her right buttock a slap. Making up for the spin ending too early, the slap happened at the exact right moment and its sound echoed in the room during the moment of silence.

From somewhere to her right, she heard someone exclaim “Yeah!” With her body facing the back of the room, she knew the shout hadn’t come from her friends because they were sitting on the club’s other side. So this was a stranger who’d liked what she’d done. The thought gave her confidence. She put her other hand on the pole and leaned forward a little. She straightened her legs and slowly let her ass rise to the level of her hands as she continued to bend forward. She ended up with her legs straight and her waist bent so that her torso was at a right angle to her legs. If her ass hadn’t been prominently displayed before, it certainly was now.

Okay Calley, what’s next? she asked herself as she stayed bent over for a moment. She was swaying her butt to the beat of the song and decided she needed to let the back room have a good look at it too. So without straightening up, she moved sideways to her left and kept her body bent over. Her posterior moved along the edge of the semi-circle like an old-timey chronometer hand making its way to the top of the hour. She reached the point where her head was facing the front of the room and her ass its back. She straightened her body up and stood, then moved forward and pressed her chest into the pole while leaning into it slightly. She stood there a moment as the song ended a verse and was about to launch into its chorus.

They’ve all had a good look at your pants, Calley, she told herself. It’s time for you to get your tits involved tonight. With that thought, she launched herself around the pole toward the front of the stage as the chorus started up. She moved to the beat and shook her shoulders back and forth, drawing attention to her chest. She didn’t have particularly big breasts, but enough of her friends had spoken of them with admiration that she felt comfortable showing her bust off now. Even Alezanna had spoken of it with envy, after all. So she shook her chest as she reached to her navel and untucked her blouse’s bottom from her pants.

She reached the front of the stage and stood with her feet apart. She undid the bottom button of her blouse before she turned around and once again headed back the way she came. She was still shaking her torso so that the patrons in the back could see what the ones in the front had seen. When she reached the pole, she popped another button at the bottom of her blouse. Now her navel was exposed. She kept going towards the doors leading to the backstage area. When she reached them, she popped the next button on her blouse. Now she only had two to go. She still had a lot of song left, so she resolved to keep these last two buttons clasped for the time being.

She spun around quickly, plastering her back to the doors and pressing her palms onto them. With her eyes closed, her head turned to the side and the spotlight on her, she wanted to look like the light was pressing her onto the doors. It made for a nice image, and she lingered there a moment to make sure everyone had a good look at her.

She then leaned forward, making it look like she was struggling against whatever force was keeping her pinned to the doors. Unfortunately, as she did so, she felt both of her top’s last closed buttons pop open. Her blouse was now hanging off her shoulders and her entire chest was on display. She hadn’t meant to expose it when her song wasn’t even a quarter over. Now she only had her pants and underwear left to remove and almost seven minutes of song to do it in.

She leaned her back against the doors for an instant as she continued the pantomime of her struggle. Well, they’re out now, you klutz, she told herself. Better make ‘em look good. And remember what Yutag said: make it look like this was the plan all along.

She decided it was time to get moving again, so with an exaggerated show of faux effort, she managed to pry herself off the doors. Now standing free again, she slipped her blouse completely off and threw it contemptuously to the side. A small utility robot rolled up to take it as Calley strode forward with her head held high.

With only so much stage to work with, Calley began to slow her movements while still holding to the beat of the music. Rather than keeping to the middle of the stage, she went from its right to left sides as she advanced. Some of the dancers preceding her had spoken of aiming their performance at a particular section of the audience. Calley was determined that the entire room was going to feel like she’d aimed her dance at them. After all, she was competing for the votes of everyone in the place.

That’s right everyone, she silently thought, get a good look. These are the tits gravity forgot about. It hadn’t been her intention to expose herself so early in her routine, but she embraced her situation. Her nipples had hardened as she enjoyed the thought of all the eyes staring at her chest. In the last sub-cycle, her lovers had, through words and action, praised her body and now she was confident enough to share it with others. She was filled with pride and excitement at what she was doing. Mix had advised her to ignore the audience and just wrap herself up in the music, but Mix was wrong, Calley felt. The medtech was reveling in the attention she was receiving. No one would look away from her, she decided. These next seven minutes were hers, and by the Gods, she was going to make sure none of these men ever forgot her!

As she continued to move her body to the beat of the song, her mind went to Yutag and her advice. Yutag, so brimming with sass and bravado. Of course she was, Calley realized. She was a Kutalan and in wonderful shape. People from high-gravity worlds like her didn’t usually look as good as she did. When they went to a lower-gravity environment than they were used to, their bodies, no longer straining against the stronger pull, got flabby. But not Yutag’s. She’d refused to let her body get so out-of-shape. It must have been a real struggle to keep herself fit, Calley thought. But she’d done it. No wonder she was so proud of what she looked like. She had worked harder at it than probably anyone she encountered. So of course, when challenged, Yutag had been eager to show her body was just as good as any other woman’s.

But Calley’s struggle hadn’t been against gravity. It had been against negative thinking. The prejudice of others, and its effects on her own self-image. People put her down, but nobody did it as much as she herself had. Well, those days were over, she decided. She’d no longer doubt herself or run herself down. She realized she was no longer Calley, she was CALLEY, by the Gods! She was beautiful, she was sexy, she had the best pair of tits in this entire sector and she was gonna win tonight’s dance prize, dammit!

The lights aimed at her as she made her way up the stage prevented her from seeing most of the crowd. At first, she didn’t look down because she didn’t want to look like she was shy. But when she approached the sides of the stage, she saw there were men sitting close to it. She looked them in the eyes each time and gave them a big smile. She knew she had nothing to be shy about. They wanted to look at her and she wanted to be looked at. None could look away from her. They looked either charmed or mesmerized, and she was fine with both reactions. Since arriving in the Rangxu system, she’d learned how to flirt and that’s all this was. Not with spoken innuendo and flattery, but with something more basic, more primal. And she was sure she was good at it. The men whose eye she caught sure seemed to think so.

This rush of confidence led her to a decision that went against all the advice she’d received on her way to the Sapphire House. “One Sweet Ride” was midway through it’s third verse and there was still another four to go. The first of the song’s two extended solos by the group’s electric strings virtuoso was coming up. Calley had a lot of time left in her routine, so losing more of her clothes so early would be a bad idea. But she did it anyway.

Having reached the front of the stage again, she shimmied to the song’s beat for a moment before bending her knees as her hands went to her ankles. She slowly straightened up as her arms travelled up the side of her straightening legs. She kept her eyes closed as she did so, slowly twisting her head to look like feeling herself up was exciting her. Which it was, but not as much as she was letting the audience think. Her hands reached her hips and then travelled up her stomach. She reached her breasts and let her hands glide over them as she came to caress her neck. And then she opened her eyes again and gave the crowd another smile. Another pause in the song was coming up before it launched into its chorus. This one, she decided, she’d time better than the last one.

She reached down to her pants’ button and undid it. She lowered the zipper. The song hit its pause again and Calley jumped up as she pushed the pants down. They were loose enough, once the top passed her thighs, that they dropped to the stage as she landed just as the song launched into its chorus again. She stepped out of the crumpled pants and picked them up. She held the garment over her head like a trophy. And then she turned around and swung it over her head as she held its bottom with her left hand raised high. She marched back to the back end of the stage, feigning throwing her pants into the crowd a few times. The look on her face seemed to ask “Isn’t this great? Don’t you want me to throw these?” The men she saw seemed all to agree that it was and they did.

She didn’t actually throw her pants, as she wasn’t exactly sure what would happen to them if she did. Instead, as she approached the stage doors, she threw her pants at them. The same utility robot that had grabbed her blouse rolled forward and took them away as well. Calley turned around again. The song’s first strings solo started. It was a screeching, raw bundle of notes and she knew how she wanted to handle them. She fell forward and stopped her fall with her arms. She had her torso about a half-meter above the stage and raised her behind to the same level. On her hands and knees, she started crawling forward, making sure her ass was moving to and fro as she did so.

She wasn’t smiling at the crowd anymore. Now she made herself look angry, hungry, threatening. She moved her head from side to side as she moved sinuously. She’d moved like this a little on the bed she shared with Sal and Alezanna a few times, and was grateful for the practice. Now she was sure she was moving like she wanted to. She couldn’t see the men nearest the stage now, but she was still confident that her crawling was having the desired effect. She wasn’t a supplicant woman. She was a fierce predator on the prowl.

Or at least, she was until she reached the pole midway up the stage. When she reached it, she paused, looking at it as if seeing it for the first time. She then crawled beside it and rubbed her right side against it as a domesticated feline might. She heard a few laughs from the crowd as she left the pole. The nervous Calley of a cycle ago would have thought the laughter was a bad sign, one of ridicule. But she now was convinced the laughs had been of approval. They were laughing at the gag, not at her. As if to prove she was right, she also heard some “woo-hoo” exclamations here and there as she resumed her slow, sensuous crawl. She looked ahead to gauge the distance she had left and measure it against how long until the solo ended and the next verse began.

She was still about two meters away from where she wanted to be when the solo ended. Calley made up the distance in an instant by rolling forward, flipping her body over her shoulders and landing with her knees bent. She pushed her head and shoulders up as she straightened her legs and ended up standing straight again. The underwear she was wearing didn’t cover any part of her asscheeks and she was fine with showing them off. The back of the house had had a nice, good long look at them during her crawl and now it was time for the patrons up front to get an eyeful. But she didn’t want to crawl back the way she came. She’d already done the crawl and it was time for something new.

She headed back to the pole, keeping to the beat. She wasn’t striding or marching this time. Now, she lifted each leg higher before bringing it down. She made sure her shoe was hitting the stage in time to the music. The higher steps were preventing her from covering the distance as fast as she previously had, but that was fine with her. “One Sweet Ride” was a long song and she was making her routine up as she was going along. And enjoying herself immensely as she did it.

She extended her left arm again to grab the pole but dropped her body low as she did so. This had the effect of extending her left leg as she bent her right. She wanted to really give her legs a good stretch as she had thought of some poses she could strike later on in her routine that would really show off her flexibility. But they would have to wait. The moves she had in mind were the biggest show-stoppers she could think of. She knew dancing for a few minutes after pulling them off would be bad showmanship. If she wanted to end her performance on a high note, she’d have to keep the big moves in reserve. 

She doubted any of the other dancers on tonight would (or even could) get themselves in the positions she had in mind. The thought of these flashy poses gave her great confidence, which made her smile with her eyes closed again as the entire room got a good look at her. This was a woman without guilt or shame at her exhibitionism. She didn’t have a trace of modesty or shyness. She was happy to show off her charms. Whether you preferred breasts, legs, buttocks or some other body part, Calley wasn’t afraid to exhibit it for you. The look on her face was the look of a woman enjoying herself to the fullest. It wasn’t the look of a woman lost in passion but caught in a moment of joy instead.

She switched the position of her legs, bending the left and stretching out the right, before rising again and heading to the doors leading backstage. She was skipping along and doing a few twirls as she closed the distance. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since she’d lost her pants, but it seemed like a while. The solo, another verse and chorus. What was left to the song? She quickly ran it through her mind as she continued to dance to it. A verse, the chorus, another verse, the chorus again. Then another electric strings solo before the final verse and a slowed-down chorus to finish. The inventory done, Calley quickly put together a plan of action. First things first; lose the underwear.

She was now less than a quarter-meter away from the doors. She quickly asked herself if it would be better to face the crowd when she stripped away the last of her clothes, or to face away. She decided on the latter. She turned her head to look behind her while keeping her breasts facing the doors. She stood still for a moment, letting the crowd wonder what she’d do next. Then she began to move her behind a little to the song’s beat. A little at first, then more and more. And then, she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her garment and started to push it down.

She took her time pulling the underwear down, but they were still off her in about ten seconds. As she was bending over to grab them, she wondered if she should have prolonged the removal. She remembered Yutag telling her the point of strip-tease was the tease. But Calley resigned herself to the fact that teasing just wasn’t in her nature. She was too eager to please. In this case, maybe too eager for her own good. But if the crowd minded, it sure wasn’t letting her know.

She turned around and once again held what she’d just been wearing above her head and spun it. She walked down the length of the stage in wide steps. Her vulva was uncovered now, so she had to walk in a way to show it off. It was unlike any gait she’d ever attempted. Neither men nor women usually walked in a way that showed off their crotch, after all. But that’s what Calley was trying to do now, and trying to do it while moving along to the beat of her chosen song. Her confidence wavered a little as she wasn’t sure she was doing it right. It was a very strange way to walk, she decided. But she managed to reach the front of the stage and if anybody thought she was walking funny, they were keeping it to themselves.

She turned around and threw her underwear back the way she’d come. She wasn’t really sure how far they went, as she lost sight of them after they passed the pole. The robot that fetched discarded clothes would have to travel a bit further this time out, she thought. But now it was just her, the lights, the music and her body. Her privates were the newest part of her on display, so she decided to show them off. She walked away from the edge of the stage and bent down with her legs still straight to touch her shoes. Her legs were apart as she did this, giving the front of the house a good, long look at the entrance to her vagina. Calley wasn’t sure if this was what the crowd wanted to see. It wasn’t her favourite part of a woman’s anatomy. But she’d decided she was going to show off all she had to show, and this was part of it.

She walked down to the pole and then faced the right side of the room. Again, she bent over to touch her shoes with her straightened legs apart. The left side of the room was treated to the same view of her the front had seen. Then she straightened up, moved to the other side of the stage and repeated the process, this time for the right side of the room. Then she got moving again, walking midway to the doors at the back end of the stage before giving the crowd there the same view the rest of the room had seen.

One verse and the accompanying chorus left before the solo. Okay Calley, she told herself, time to start pulling out the big moves.

She didn’t make her way to the doors this time. She turned back towards the pole and ran towards it. She was no longer concerned about keeping to the beat of the song as she ran as fast as her high-heeled shoes allowed her. When she was close to the pole, she leapt up so that her body was perpendicular to it. She caught the pole with her right hand and quickly moved her left hand to it as well. She was holding herself in a straight horizontal position about a meter above the stage with her stomach against the pole. Her head was facing the front of the stage and once she had steadied herself, she looked to the front of the room and gave the patrons a dazzling smile. She was making it look easy. It was a move she’d often done cycles ago when serving on a cruise ship. Of course, back then, it was part of an evacuation drill. But it worked just as well here.

Her mother had once told Calley that the Gynapsi had a casual relationship with gravity. The truth wasn’t that far off. Her people had spent centuries living on wandering spaceships. Spaceships whose gravity generators hadn’t always been working perfectly. And a great many Gynapsi had been required to squeeze themselves into tight spaces to access damaged systems aboard those same ships. By necessity, Calley’s people had developed great flexibility and balance. Those that had settled on planets since the great migrations had lost some of it. But Calley, born and raised a spacer from a long line of them, had retained all of it.

Holding herself at a right angle to the pole was easy for her, but there was no way she was going to do that for two straight minutes. The crowd would grow bored with her. So she opened her legs and spread them wide. She made sure her left leg didn’t touch the stage, as she didn’t want the patrons to think she was resting her weight on it. Instead, she kept it at a forty-five degree angle to her body and her right leg the same, but upwards. She had a passing thought that the back of the room was getting a damn good look at her pussy tonight. It almost made her laugh.

The verse had passed and now the song was in its last chorus before the strings solo. Calley moved her right hand down the pole and then her left up it. This moved her body forward and she concentrated on keeping herself in a horizontal position. She closed her legs as her crotch passed the point of the pole. Her hands were past her hips and she struggled to maintain her position. The pole was midway between her vulva and her knees. She raised her right leg up so that she could move it to the side of the pole. And then she hooked it around the pole so that her knee was bent around it. So positioned, she gradually released the tension on her arms so that her right leg supported more and more of her weight. To make sure the crowd knew what she was doing, she moved her torso down and her head towards the stage. She hooked her left leg around the pole as well and ended up hanging upside down with the pole against her back and buttcrack with her head about twenty centimetres above the stage.

She’d closed her eyes in concentration as she’d performed this series of movements. Now she opened them again and threw her arms wide in a flourish. The crowd erupted in applause and cheers. She beamed as she drank in the adoration. The song was now starting its final strings solo. Calley let the music carry the moment for a few more seconds and then, without releasing her legs, folded herself up so her hands could grab the pole again. with her grip on it secure, she twisted her torso so that it was almost at a right angle to the pole. She wrapped her right arm around the pole and made sure she had a strong grip on it. She also gripped it tightly with her left hand. And then she released her legs’ grip on the pole.

She almost lost her balance as her legs, hips and stomach all moved away from the pole. She grimaced as she steadied the bottom half of her body. (Well, you could call it the top half of her body as she was still upside down). With her position steady, she returned a beatific smile to her face and spread her legs apart as far as they would go. With her Gynapsi flexibility, that turned out to be pretty far. By the time her legs stopped being spread, they were each positioned away from her at nearly right angles. This time, the crowd did not wait for a flourish. The patrons cheered and applauded of their own volition, and with great exuberance. Calley, meanwhile, thanked the malfunctioning gravity compensators of the Maximillian, a transport she’d served on early in her time as a solo spacer. She’d had to remove a crewmember’s tumour while bracing herself in this position above him.

Calley was surprised how long the cheering went on. She had to hold her position until it faded, and her steadiness no doubt impressed the crowd, so it kept the cheering going longer. By the time it died down, the solo was almost over. Calley had a little less than a minute left in her routine before she’d have to leave the stage and let another woman take her place. But Calley wasn’t quite ready to leave just yet.

She twisted her body around and put her feet back on the stage. She stood up and shook her arms and each of her legs in turn. It wasn’t as necessary for her as the audience might have thought, but she wanted to take a little time to prepare for her final trick. She stood still for a moment, then looked to her left and then to her right. She had something else planned, and she was letting the audience know it. She could feel them all in the darkness, their eyes trained on her, their spirits craving… what? What did she have in store for them?

Standing upright, she reached out her right arm and grabbed the pole. As good as her balance might normally be, this next trick would require her being anchored to something, and the pole was just what she needed. Had she been in bare feet, she might have tried what she did next without holding on to anything. But in high heels, she didn’t dare risk it. Not when there were two thousand star credits on the line.

She shifted her weight to her left leg as she began to raise her right one. She kept the right one straight as her foot slowly travelled in an arc ahead of her. It reached the level of her hips and still Calley raised her leg higher and higher in front of her. Her foot reached the level of her navel, then her breasts, then her shoulders. Even over the music playing, she could hear gasps and intakes of breath coming from the audience. And still she raised her leg to a higher angle. It was almost standing straight up when she hooked her left arm over her head to grab her right leg and hold it in place.

She held it there a moment before the crowd erupted in applause once again. She could have held the pose until the applause died down but her song’s last verse was ending and she was running out of time. As the final chorus of “One Sweet Ride” began, Calley returned to a standing position and turned around to face the other side of the room. She repeated her pose, this time holding the pole with her left arm and raising her left leg to a level above her head. Just in case anybody thought she could only perform the trick with one leg and not the other.

After that, all that was left to do was to take a victory lap, which is exactly what Calley did. She ran to the front of the stage to raise her arms and urge the crowd to cheer her, and it did. She ran down to the stage’s other end, her arms outstretched and her hands waving the whole way. She reached the doors as her song ended. She saw the utility robot holding her clothes neatly folded up. She reached down to take them as the doors opened, so she held them to her chest as she stepped through the doors and Janite passed by her. The crowd was still applauding and cheering as the doors closed.

She made her way to the stairs off the platform, not even seeing the other woman who would have to follow up her act. Calley was too amped up to take notice of her. She’d heard the crowd when the last dancer had left the stage, and compared to how she’d just left them, it was night and day. She knew she’d given a good performance. Now she’d just have to see how good.

No one backstage had access to their datapads, nor was there any chronometer in sight. The only way to keep track of how much time was left in the show was to see who was dancing and where she was in the show’s order. Calley didn’t really worry about it. She’d gotten dressed again when she’d returned to the dressing room. Despite the more relaxed atmosphere as the show progressed, seeing as less women were nervous about their upcoming performance, very few of the women were talking to each other.

The only exception was a woman who looked to be Calley’s age named Woghain. She was the one who’d gotten so wrapped up in her dancing that she’d forgotten to take off her underwear during her performance. One of the older dancers, Harrah, had cozied up to her and tried to calm the younger woman’s frazzled nerves. But as more and more minutes passed, Calley started to suspect that Harrah’s soothing reassurance might have an ulterior motive. She got the impression Harrah was trying to seduce Woghain. Calley felt a little guilty for watching the scene playing out and tried to look away only to find that the other women in the room were watching them too. There simply wasn’t anything else to do in there.

Finally, Janite returned to the room and announced the last dancer had started her second song. The women in the room followed Janite to the platform behind the stage. It was a little crowded with twenty women standing on it for a few minutes. Janite asked those near the front to, when the doors opened.  grab the last woman’s clothes from the utility robot. They could then bring them back to the dancer so she could get dressed, all while Janite would ask the patrons to vote for their favourite performer. Then the doors opened and the women began to file onstage. Calley was one of the later returnees so there were no clothes left with the robot when she stepped back onstage.

The club was better illuminated now so Calley could see the far wall opposite the bar had large viewscreens displaying the faces of each of tonight’s dancers. Were those there the whole time, she wondered, or had they been lowered from the ceiling? Either way, they were there now and numbers were appearing next to the faces of the dancers. She saw a few dancers had a vote total in the single digits and felt bad for them. Most of the others had somewhere between ten and twenty. But there was one exception. Calley saw her face next to the name “Sunset” and her vote total was one hundred and ninety-four!

As Calley realized what that meant, Janite announced to the crowd that Sunset was the winner of tonight’s contest. The patrons cheered and some of the other dancers congratulated the startled young Gynapsi. Calley did her best not to gloat, which wasn’t hard as she was more surprised than anything else. When she’d finished her dance earlier in the evening, she been confident that she’d done well, judging by the amount of applause she’d gotten. But there was a big difference between doing well and crushing your competition like Calley now saw she’d done.

Janite made a big show to the crowd of presenting Calley a credit chip. While this was happening, the other women were filing off the stage from its front where a small set of stairs had been placed. Janite led Calley in a few final bows to the audience and then led her to the stairs. Calley saw all her friends waiting for her there. She’d barely made it off the stage before Yutag grabbed her waist and hugged her tight.

“That was amazing!” the diminutive woman congratulated her. “Ya totally did the opposite of what we told you and it worked out great! Best routine ever!”

“Good thing we were here to vote for you though,” said Vijjah. “Might have been a close shave otherwise.”

Everyone laughed and Calley hugged them each in turn. The Gynapsi was glad to be amongst her friends again as they all made their way back to their two tables.

“Were you nervous up there?” asked Mitchewl.

“No,” Calley answered. “I just let the song guide what I did. I thought of some moves and, while I was doing ‘em, thought of some more. I almost got rattled at the start when somebody yelled out that I was a Gynapsi, but he quieted down after that, thank the Gods.”

“Forget the Gods, you have Yutag to thank for that,” said Deltai. “She went over to the guy’s table and convinced him to keep quiet.”

“How’d you do that?” the medic asked the Kutalan.

“I can be pretty persuasive,” Yutag said as she reached into her lap and slipped her hand under the skirt she was wearing. When she pulled it out again, she was holding a small but dangerous-looking pistol.

“Yutag!” Calley exclaimed in shock. “How’d you get that past the weapons scanner?”

“I work in the system’s security department, Calley,” Yutag said with a smile as she concealed her gun once again. “I know all sorts of tricks. Nobody gets to bother me or my friends.”

“Y’know Yutag,” said Spiroo, “if you’re in a protective mood, I could use an escort home. My section of Habitat Nine can get pretty scary sometimes.”

“I’ll keep you safe,” said the dark-haired woman. Calley smiled. It was always like that with her friends. A quick comment, and the two were paired up. Yutag would go to Spiroo’s domicile and spend the night there. No one was shocked or jealous and there were no comments to be made.

“Shame I got an early shift tomorrow.” Vijjah declared. ‘I’ll have to leave you lovely ladies soon. Can I get a ride back with you, particle-brain?” he added, the question directed at Mitchewl.

“I’m afraid so,” the redhead said. “I’m on patrol at zero-eight hundred tomorrow. But you’ll be in my dreams, Calley. What a dance!”

“Mine too!” Pyerick agreed. “But I’ll hafta get going soon too. Early class tomorrow.”

“What about you, Deltai?” Mix asked.

The holo-vid insider smiled at her and said, “I’m all yours if you want me, Mix. I don’t need to be anywhere until two days from now.”

“Wonderful!” the beautiful Rangxuan said. “You can give me a ride home and keep me company after that.”

“It’ll be my pleasure,” Deltai told her.

“Try to make it mine too,” said the brunette, which earned her a laugh from everyone.

It was then that Janite approached the group. Everyone greeted her and she bantered with the friends for a few minutes. When she turned her attention to Calley, she told the medtech, “You put on a damn fine show, honey. There are girls who’ve danced here for cycles who couldn’t do what you did. My boss asked me to offer you a job, but I’m not sure I want to. I really don’t need the competition.”

Calley gave her a warm smile and said, “No worries there. I’m a spacer and my ship’s almost fixed up. I’ll be halfway across the galaxy by the time you have another Amateur Night.”

“Too bad,” the veteran dancer mused, “I wouldn’t mind getting to know you better. See ya later, Sunset.”

“Goodbye, Lady Stardust,” said the copper-haired spacer.

Janite bid farewell to the rest of the group and went back towards the bar. The nine friends soon left the Sapphire House and most piled in to the military transport that Vijjah had commandeered for the evening. Only Daznee and Calley didn’t go with them. Instead, the two drove back to the spaceport in Daznee’s gravmobile. Though perhaps it would be more accurate to say they flew there, considering how fast the Vottonian pushed her vehicle. They didn’t talk on the way and soon reached the socialite’s shuttle. Calley had fallen into a reverie after inserting the credit chip in her datapad. Earlier, the day had been like any other and now she was richer in starcred and confidence. All in all, it had been quite an eventful evening.

NEXT CHAPTER: Calley is taken home.