by Viki Storm
She comes out with clumps of wet hair already wetting the shoulders of her clothing.
“We have to get you some new clothes,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “This thing isn’t my size, in case you haven’t noticed.” She’s rolled up the ankles and the sleeves, but the seat of the pants is comically baggy, and the neck hole is drooping off of one shoulder.
“You might not like what I’m going to dress you in,” I say. If we’re going to make the delivery on Laurentia for Hilf, then she’s going to need a new outfit to blend in.
“What you’re going to dress me in?” she says indignantly. “You don’t get to dress me like I’m a Barbie doll. I’m an adult, I can pick out my own clothes.”
“Sorry,” I say. “But if we’re going to blend in on Laurentia, we need to dress the part. Otherwise we’ll attract suspicion and word will get back to Phuru regarding your whereabouts. Do I need to remind you what will happen then?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” she says. “Where’s the stupid outfit you have picked out for me?”
“I will have it delivered to our room,” I explain.
“Our room?” she says. “If you think that there’s going to be any funny business, then think again.” I smile.
“Female, when I claim your body and sow your womb with Kenorian seed, there will be nothing funny about it. Laughing will be the furthest thing from your mind. Screaming in pleasure. Begging me for more. Twitching as one orgasm after another ripples through your helpless and exhausted body, yes. Laughing? No.”
“Men are so cocky everywhere in the damned universe,” she says haughtily, but her face has colored bright red, and there’s the earthy, musky scent of her arousal thick in the air between us. I could mention it, but I resist further embarrassing her. I know she’ll be mine—and probably sooner than later. I just have to be patient.
Patience was never one of my virtues.
“I promise there will be none of what you ignorantly refer to as funny business,” I say instead.
“Good,” she says primly, as if her cunt isn’t dripping sweet, slippery essence all over her swollen lips.
I take her to the room we will share tonight, looking at the other warriors in the settlement. Some of them I know from before, but most of them are strangers to me. Still, we are all brethren in our race and the shared tragedy of our decimated planet. They look at Brooke, and I’m filled with jealous rage, needing to clamp down my teeth to prevent myself from starting a fight.
When we get to our room, I see that the clothes she will wear tomorrow are already here. I wasn’t lying to her when I said that we need to keep a low profile or else risk the Phurusians finding out where she is.
“What the actual fuck?” she says when she sees the garments. “No way. Not a fucking chance.”
“You must,” I say. She holds up part of the ensemble, a thin strap that will cross over her chest, leading to a leash in the back.
“What the hell is this? A belt?”
“It is a slave’s harness,” I say. “It goes like this—” I try to take it from her hands to show her, but she dashes it to the floor.
“Slave?” she says. “I am no slave.”
“You are, actually,” I remind her. “A legally-sentenced convict and reproductive servant, property of the Phurusian Empire. Both of us—and this entire Kenorian settlement—are breaking several intergalactic laws by harboring you here. I guarantee that there’s at least a one-thousand-credit bounty on you as we speak. You know how many lowlifes on Laurentia would prostitute their own mothers for a thousand credits? We must make you appear to be a regular, run-of-the-mill human pleasure slave. Either that or you stay here while I go.”
“Run-of-the-mill?” she asks. “How many human pleasure slaves are there out here?”
“Not so many, and that’s why you’ll draw attention, but not a lot of attention if you look the part.”
“Jesus,” she says. “Human slaves?”
“They are rare, don’t get me wrong,” I say.
“I guess girls go missing all the time, and they’re never found. Their families assume they’ve been abducted by a killer or something, but maybe not. Maybe they’re all up here, collared like dogs and forced to spread for any gross alien with a few dollars to spend.”
“Who knows,” I say gently. I forget how strange this must be for her—to just now find out that there’s a whole Universe of planets and lifeforms out there. Arrogant Earth humans think they are the only ones. “There’s human settlement planets, too.”
“Human settlements?” she says. “Like humans on a planet other than Earth?”
“Sure,” I say. “I know of two.”
“Where did they come from? How did they get there?”
“No idea,” I say. “Maybe they’re escaped captives, maybe humans have always existed on more planets than just Earth. On Kenor we spent most of our time training, not studying the archaic origins of sub-species like humans.”
She purses her lips at my choice of words, but I say nothing, and neither does she. “The problem is your collar. A red collar is the universal symbol of a pleasure slave. If you walk around with a bright red collar and pantaloons and a cloak, it’s going to arouse suspicion. They will take second and third looks at you. Someone will recognize your face from a bounty circular that is most definitely hitting comm-panels all over the sector. So you must wear slave’s garments or stay here while I go.” I do not want to leave her here. I have no guarantee she’ll be safe, especially if Hilf is prowling about. He says he doesn’t care about one captive, but he could bring her back to Phuru.
“Fine,” she says. “I get it. Can we just go to sleep? You can parade me around like I’m your own personal whore all you want tomorrow morning.”
“I take no joy in this,” I explain. “Every male who lays eyes on you will risk having his eyes gouged out. But I’d rather a few lowlifes glimpse your flesh than for you to return to Phuru, where they will do much more than glimpse it.”
“I said ‘fine,’” she says. She lies down on the bedroll, and before I can say anything else, she is asleep.
Myself, I barely sleep. Worst case we’re walking straight into a trap. Best case, the lowlifes on Laurentia will try to double-cross and kill us. There is a quiet knock at the door. It has to be Hilf. I get up quietly, trying not to disturb Brooke. She can sleep for another hour or so.
“What is it?” I say.
“You’re not a morning person, I take it?” Hilf says with a smug smile.
“I’m not an any-time-of-day person when I’m being coerced into doing someone’s dirty work.”
“Dirty work?” he says with mock-indignity. “My oh my, not me. I’m just doing my best to save my society—as well as many other helpless planets—from a crazed, power-hungry despot. You know how much work that is? It’s a lot, let me tell you. I’m simply too busy to be running around on every little errand. I was going to have some underling do it or hire a courier service, but you happened to be handy at the moment, so here we are.”
“You are going to get the collar off of her,” I say. I’m not asking.
“It should be an easy task,” he says. It doesn’t escape me that he didn’t, strictly speaking, agree to do so. I lock eyes with him for a long time before he breaks my gaze. “I’ve already loaded the cargo into your ship and beamed the nav-coords into your system, along with a few specifics on the drop-off.”
“Then we’ll get going soon as day breaks,” I say.
“We?” he says, that smug smile back on his face. How I’d like to knock out a tooth or two.
“We,” I repeat.
“Don’t trust that little thing all alone here, surrounded by a bunch of strong, virile Kenorian warriors? I wouldn’t. You’d come back and there’d be a baby in her belly and a wad of dirty sheets in the laundry.”
“Of course you’d think that, you degenerate Phurusian. I’ll hold up my end of the bargain—you just worry about holding up yours
.”
“Hot-headed,” he says. “It’s no wonder you lot angered someone enough to destroy your entire planet. I’ll be in touch. Toodles.”
What a dandy. I’m glad he’s leaving because I wouldn’t have been able to stand much more.
I eat a little and wait while Hilf slithers off to wherever he goes during the day. Brooke’s still asleep, and I put on my boots and holster my weapon quietly as I can and sneak out the door. Before we leave, I need to check out the cargo. I’m not flying across the galaxy without knowing exactly what’s on my ship.
I walk all the way out to the landing pads. It gives me time to stew over that little bastard Hilf. He says he’s trying to save the Universe from a despot, but that’s what they all say right before they install a brand-new despot.
It’s going to be hot today, the temperature already high even without the sunlight. A good day to spend in the freezing black void of space.
I go onboard and descend into the cargo hold. I see what Hilf loaded, one sealed crate, about a meter square and half a meter tall. I was expecting more, maybe crates of munitions or barrels of black-market liquor. But just one small crate? What could possibly be so important?
Only one way to find out.
I examine the lock on the crate, and it’s a simple electro-magnet. I can short it out with a blast from my weapon. I take it off of my belt and point it towards the lock.
“Stop!”
I actually stop and turn around. It’s Brooke.
“When did you wake up?” I ask. “Did you eat?”
“Are you planning on leaving without me?” she asks. “I don’t want to waltz around in that skimpy little slave outfit, but I definitely don’t want you to leave me alone here.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” I say. It might be dangerous where we’re going, but if I keep her with me, I’ll at least know she’s safe. “But I need to know what sort of delivery Hilf is asking us to make.”
“Does it matter?” she asks.
“Of course,” I say. “If it’s illegal contraband, I need to know.” She laughs.
“Of course it’s illegal,” she says. “He wouldn’t ask you to deliver a shipment of vacuum cleaners.”
“I know that,” I say, irritated. “But I need to know what sort of danger we’re walking into.”
“Would it change anything?” she asks. “Would you refuse him?”
“No,” I say and realize that I mean it. As much as I don’t like dealing with Hilf, I’d do a hundred deliveries for the bastard if it meant a chance that she could be free of her collar.
“Then just let it be,” she says. “If you blast the lock and look inside, you might cause even more trouble and make a bad situation even worse.”
“We’ve already got plenty of trouble,” I say, “What’s a little more?” I depress the button and send a blast into the electromagnetic lock. It pops open with a quiet little poof of wispy black smoke.
I open up the crate and look inside.
“Well?” she asks.
“You’re right,” I say. “Things just went from bad to worse.”
Chapter 9
Brooke
Anax is blocking the way with his huge frame. I would hate sitting behind this guy in a movie theatre. Except there probably aren’t even movie theaters on these advanced planets; probably they just beam the picture straight into your brain or something. I try to push him to the side a few inches so I can see inside the cargo crate, but trying to push him over is like trying to move a statue.
“What is it?” I ask. I move around to the other side and peer in. Then I realize it doesn’t matter because I have no idea what those items are, and there’s some sort of writing, but I’ll be damned if I can read it. My translator implant might give me speech abilities, but it does nothing for reading skills. I wonder if I can get some sort of implant that will make it so I can read and write, too.
Actually, that’s stupid. I’m going back to Earth. I don’t need anything like that. Why would I think that I was going to stay?
“It’s bad,” he says.
“I can tell that from the look on your face. You look like someone stole your figgy pudding on Christmas Eve.”
“These are fuel cartridges,” he says.
“Well, we knew it was something like that,” I say. “It’s not like he wanted you to transport his antique paperclip collection.”
“Can you ever use regular language?” he says. “I never know what you’re talking about. Figgy pudding? Christmas? Paperclips?”
“What’s so bad about fuel cartridges?” I ask, ignoring his demand. He thinks he’s the one having a hard time understanding my culture? That’s a good one. I’d love it if my only source of confusion was a few random phrases.
“Can’t you see?” he asks.
“No, genius, I can’t read,” I remind him. “Unless they happen to be marked in English. Or Spanish, I could probably figure it out in Spanish, too.”
He grumbles. “It says: ‘Property of the Federation.’ And before you start in on how you don’t know what the Federation is, it’s the overseeing regulatory body of the planets in this sector.”
“I want to hope that they’re run by a bunch of low-I.Q. phonies just like the bureaucrats on Earth,” I say, “but you seem scared.”
“I am scared,” he admits. “You’re partially right. The Federation is run by a bunch of self-serving idiots, but they have top-tier law enforcement and special forces—and access to lots of funds, courtesy of the tithe-paying member planets. Because they’re run by a bunch of self-serving idiots, they like to flex their power and they take everything as a personal offense. The Federation Council would have no trouble authorizing a five-million-credit mission to capture the thieves who stole three million credits worth of fuel.”
“Sounds like the FBI,” I say.
“We need to off-load this as soon as possible,” he says. “And hope there aren’t any tracking chips embedded in any of the fuel.”
“This explains why Hilf wants someone else to deliver this,” I say, knowing I’m stating the obvious.
“Sure,” Anax says. “Penalty for theft of this magnitude is death.” As someone who was recently sentenced to sixty years of reproductive servitude, the death penalty doesn’t sound as harsh as it once did.
“Can I ask what’s the customary method of execution?” I ask, unable to repress my morbid curiosity. I wonder if it’s high-tech and humane or high-tech and grisly.
“Firing squad,” he says. That sounds so quaint. The mental picture I envision is a row of Civil War soldiers with muskets, even though I’m sure that a Federation firing squad probably just vaporizes you with lasers or something at the count of three.
Oddly enough, the presence of the stolen cargo isn’t affecting me as much as it’s affecting Anax. His butthole is so tight right now, he could turn a lump of coal into a diamond. This whole abduction experience has been a surreal whirlwind; I almost feel like I’m watching this happen to someone else in a crazy fever dream.
The flight is faster than I expected. Anax says, “We are almost there. You must put on your slave garments.”
“‘Garments’ is a very generous term,” I say, remembering the thin, strappy nature of what he insisted was befitting attire for a pleasure slave.
“Either you wear the slave garments, or you stay in the ship the entire time, hidden in the cargo hold.” I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. Either way, I don’t want to be alone out here in… wherever we are. If flashing a little tit is what I have to do, then so be it, I can live with that.
“I said I’d wear them,” I remind him. He gives me the ‘garments’ and directs me to a small cabin where I can change. I take off the overlarge spacesuit and pick up the bottoms of my little ensemble. They’re basically a regular red pair of panties, not even butt-floss thong underwear, so I’m glad about that. Gotta count your blessings when you receive them. I slip them on, and I actually am grateful because I’ve been going c
ommando in the spacesuit and I’m not used to it.
The top, on the other hand, is another story. I’m not even sure which direction it goes; it’s just a system of leather straps. I do not want to have to ask Anax for help—that’s just too much. I orient it to what I hope is the right way and slip it over my shoulders and fasten the buckle.
I jump when he knocks on the door. “Damn it,” I hiss, mostly cursing myself for being so jumpy. I arrange my hair over the front of my chest, trying for a little modesty. I know he’s seen me completely naked—and thrown me over his shoulder—but I don’t care.
It’s not that I think exposing myself will arouse him.
I’m worried that it will arouse me.
Despite everything, I’m feeling sort of sexy in this outfit. I feel like an X-rated Princess Leia in her little slave bra. I’ve never worn any lingerie before, unless you count a matching bra and underwear set I got on the clearance rack at Target.
“Come in,” I say, fixing a few strands of my hair to strategically cover my nipples.
Anax deploys the button to open the door and stands in the doorway, staring at me. I feel myself start to grow warm between my legs.
“You look the part,” he says.
“And what’s that?” I ask. My legs feel weak, but I force myself to take a step towards him. The top I’m wearing isn’t really a top at all. It’s just a harness, pure and simple, like the sort you put around your dog’s chest when you take him for a walk. It’s meant to control and restrain. The straps go around my shoulders, crossing between my breasts, and it pushes them out lewdly, cradling them and displaying them as if inviting strange hands to have a feel.
“Like your sole purpose is to pleasure a strong male’s cock,” he says. That’s funny because I am so not the bodacious sex-kitten type. I’m not sure of the difference between eyeliner and eyeshadow, and my hair routine consists of an elastic band and a few bobby pins. Guys never talk to me or hit on me; I must give off some frumpy spinster vibe or something.
“Jesus,” I say. “You just say the first thing that comes into your head, don’t you?”