Authors: Johnny Stone
Slave World (10 page)
“Miles,” her voice was smooth as silk now. “I was wondering if you would join me in my office to…ah…finalize the transaction. I’ll admit that I’m a bit curious as to how a remarkable specimen like this came into your possession. She’s worth every credit you said plus maybe a little extra for thinking of me first, instead of that lowlife Charagin.”
“I’ll tell you all about it, Alli, by the way, I need a favor.”
She rolled her eyes with a tight-lipped smirk, shaking her head in disgust. “I should have known; you’ll never change, will you?”
Quin followed her out, giving me a toothy grin of parting satisfaction. And why shouldn’t he be happy? He was free, while taking everything from me in the process, to include
my
freedom. My ship would follow soon enough; a modest bribe with the bonding authority and ownership along with the authorization code and registration would be transferred in his name no questions asked. That’s how things worked in the Outer Rim, possession equaled five tenths of the law. The other half consisted of brute force.
A brief flicker of dimming emotion surged through me when Dobbs grabbed his crotch, smiling, winking playfully as he disappeared from my life.
Someday you son of a bitch…
I felt no desire for him whatsoever now that the remote had been surrendered to one of the brokers. Just thinking about how he’d made me act, the things I’d said to him, threatened to push me over the top. Yeah, some day I’d make him pay for what he’d done to me, and John, my stupid droid that I loved as a man. I’ll make all of them pay for everything I had yet to experience.
My first day as a piece of property, if it wasn’t bad enough already, was one rude awakening after another. Within minutes of being sold, I was fitted with my restraint collar, the ever-present symbol of slavery throughout the galaxy. It was an unadorned silver band that could be tethered to a hand held baton by an energy field similar to an electric leash. No matter how I moved the length was constant, allowing me no slack forward or back, but it did give me about a 90-degree leeway left and right. Despite my lack of maneuverability, it allowed the baton wielder an unlimited range of motion.
I was mixed in with the batch of newly purchased slaves I’d seen earlier, herded from one area to another like livestock by hard-faced men giving harsh commands through universal translators. I continued to discover how the business of trafficking lives doesn’t discriminate in the least; we were all equal now regardless of what species we were, whom we’d been in the past, or where we’d come from.
Order was always maintained despite the vast differences between us. Any trace of slave infighting or rebelliousness was quickly smashed by the guards with brutally efficient force. Even the small group of warmongering Tartans, the race of muscle-bound Neanderthals that resembled mythical Minotaur’s from earth’s past, didn’t dare cause trouble, or try to bully any of the smaller, weaker races. Besides, what was there to fight over? There was plenty of food, although it tended to be bland and tasteless for the most part, and we all had our own bunk, along with a single blanket and pillow assigned to us by our identification numbers. My new name was slave 2451. That was my life now, a number, a bunk, and a blanket and pillow.
I thought it funny that things really weren’t all that different for me now than when I was with Fleet. You were nothing more than a number to someone most of the time, you were never really in control of your destiny, and there was always an unending line to wait in. Because of the surprising similarities, my fear quickly grew distant, replaced by mind numbing boredom that once again reminded me of the military’s ‘hurry up and wait’ mentality.
I could even understand the point of our continual nudity, looking at it from a military standpoint. Clothing gave you comfort, a sense of security and individuality, or just something to hide within. By removing it from the equation, by stripping a person down to their bare essence, it keeps you off guard, humbled and subdued. It was no different than the uniformity that made the wheels of the military machine turn with regulation haircuts and precision drills you reacted to instantly without thinking. You became a thing, a piece of the larger whole with a single-minded purpose in life. It let you know exactly who held the reins of power like a slap in the face.
As the days wore on, I was shamelessly poked and prodded during the course of a full medical exam. I received a broad range of inoculations, universal decontamination and an anti-fertility implant.
Not like I needed that.
My DNA was taken and put on record along with a retinal scan, aromatic body chemistry profile, brain scan, and holographic photo showing me from every angle. If I ever did manage to escape in the future, I would always be hunted; it would be worse than the bounty on my head. I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere now, without my identity inevitably being discovered.
I also underwent an in-depth psyche evaluation to determine my affinity to become a slave. This I actually found interesting and a bit of a surprise. I hadn’t considered the mental condition of a perspective slave would even be a considered factor. More or less, the machine measured the level of my submissiveness and propensity to obey orders, along with my possible threat level to a potential buyer. I didn’t catch all of it, but my results had been a disappointment from what I gathered. For some reason, I was categorized as unstable, volatile, and unpredictable, thusly labeled a high risk. It appeared that I wasn’t good slave material in the long run.
I’ve never considered myself to be innately violent, or much of a leader in my opinion, content to let others make decisions for me most of my life. I could only assume the test results were due in part to my military training, a strong survival instinct, and a lifelong practice of self-reliance that I’d grown to rely on since my life fell apart at the age of twelve. Apparently the machine was never wrong though, and if not for the remote curtailing these ‘flaws’, I would have had my brain picked apart with cerebral reconditioning, or made physically docile by means of a permanent implant. Thankfully for me, the remote was enough to pacify their fears. Besides, brainwashed or cybernetically lobotomized slaves brought in a significantly lower price, just like Quin had said.
What really threw me for a loop were the Holloway employees themselves. They acted like this was nothing more than a well paying, run of the mill job, carried out emotionlessly without the slightest bit of remorse or compassion in any sense. In the beginning, I half expected to be passed around like some sort of willing party toy with my remote on high pleasure, but I wasn’t touched sexually, or outside of necessity, by a single staff member the entire time. Alexi Holloway definitely ran a tight ship that’s for sure.
Other than when the need arose to discipline me, the slavers weren’t even abusive or cruel in my opinion. Don’t kid yourself though; there was always the pain of discipline in my life now. I was never physically beaten like I’d seen on the loading dock; none of us were that I knew of. Instead, I felt it through the tools that would instruct me in what it meant to be a slave: an electric jolt from my restraint collar, or a hand-held stunner.
At first, even if I obeyed instantly, I was still disciplined. I didn’t understand and tried to react quicker, trying to anticipate what they wanted before I was disciplined again. I didn’t realize it until later that I was being systematically broken and instilled with fear. I was being conditioned to serve with innately prompt obedience, without hesitation or question. I was learning what it was to be a mindless slave.
As the days became weeks, I underwent simplistic and generic slave training. Most of it was stupid and unneeded for someone of my experience; I’d learned the proper ways of addressing someone with respect thanks to Fleet. The other stuff was easy enough, and I hate to admit, was kind of arousing in a tingly sort of way. I quickly took to the correct way of kneeling and the other submissive positions, almost as if they came naturally to me. The basic sex training and numerous methods of pleasing men and women, humans at least, was almost a joke as I saw it. To tell you the truth, I think I could have taught the instructors a thing or two.
My cybernetic implants underwent a more thorough evaluation as well. Unfortunately, that included the remote in its full range of functions. It was not a good time for me to say the least as it was ramped up to nearly the maximum setting in both directions. Imagine every nerve in your body being dipped in acid, gnawed upon by ants and then sliced apart with a hot knife a strand at a time. Yeah, it was the kind of maddening torment that drove people to beg for death. At least it didn’t last long; Holloway was trying to sell a slave, not a drooling invalid. The pleasure mode seemed almost as bad after I came out of it, thinking of how I’d acted, how I’d degraded myself in front of the evaluation team. After going through something like that for a few days, while continually being paraded about in the buff around strangers, you could say that humility was no longer a viable word in my vocabulary. It was amazing what you learned to accept as the norm, given time and a suitable environment.
A month had passed since I’d arrived. As a final act a tracking beacon was concealed somewhere within my body, and I was given a laser engraved registration number on my neck. I was fully registered in the property database and ready for sale now. Afterwards, I was escorted back to my modest and surprisingly comfortable cell that I shared with three other human women. It wasn’t really that bad; at least it was climate controlled, but we did have to share a toilet. Big deal, I had to pee in front of other people. Hell, I had to do that in Fleet, not to mention we had uni-sex communal showers during training, and dirt side deployments.
Mmmm… the good old days of a wet and wild shower gangbang.
Damn, I miss those.
I stepped into my cell and the force barrier shimmered to life behind me. Slave 5378, the pretty young thing from some jerk water colony planet, rolled over in her bunk away from me when I walked past. I almost learned her name, her old name, last night. She’d foolishly struck up a whispered conversation with me after lights out, and had been promptly disciplined for her efforts. We weren’t allowed to talk amongst ourselves, not a single word. Her punishment had been excessive I thought, but at this stage of our captivity, she should have known better.
I crept over to my fold-down bunk, past the dozing form of 4501, stretching out on my back. I eyed her trim rump, and the slightest trace of her cute little pussy that peeked out at me from between the donut hole of her shapely thighs.
Yeah, she’s my type all right: tall, nice tits and a pretty face framed by dark auburn hair. I bet she tastes sooo…Ugh, stop it
!
I turned over, facing away from the inviting image with a huff,
trying to think of something else for a change. Problem was that’s all I thought about now, SEX, SEX, SEX!
It had to be a side effect of the remote, didn’t it?
Yeah right, I was a damn nympho long before I’d been sold.
It also happened to be the source of my own punishment on numerous occasions in the past. It would have been nice if I could at least play with myself every once in awhile to temporarily alleviate the ongoing hunger. An entire month of physical chastity was not an easy thing for me to deal with.
Despite everything that had happened to me, I was horny from the time I woke up until I fell asleep at night. The off/on cycle of pleasure from my remote while it was being tested only made things worse, leaving me in a constant state of expectant arousal, more often than not. More than once I secretly wished that the guards or techs
would
have their way with me, anything to ease the gnawing ache that wound through my body like innumerable tentacles of torrid desire.
It wouldn’t be long now, though. Soon, very soon, I’d be put up for sale, and I’d have an owner, a man or maybe a woman, that I would be powerless to resist, that I wouldn’t want to resist, as I was used sexually at a whim for the rest of my life. I ground my thighs together, savoring what little stimulation I could.
Oh my God, am I actually looking forward to it?
***
The day had finally come for me to be sold. I stood single file in a narrow hallway, like another link in a long chain of forced misery. I wore both ankle and wrist cuffs now, we all did. They were metal bands just like the collar with a magnetic energy field connecting them. They could be adjusted remotely for different lengths allowing either a full range of motion, or instantly locked together, literally hog tying the wearer. I was a good slave though and had never been restrained like that.
We waited our turn to enter the auction hall dressed in a loose, throw-over cloak that barely covered our naked bodies. It was the first piece of clothing I’d worn since arriving. I looked around at the others waiting to be sold off like cattle, oddly surprised at how many of them restrained tears behind puffy eyes, or who’s faces were locked in a mask of concealed hate. I didn’t feel that way in the least; up until now, I’d actually felt a relaxed calm that was nice for a change. I had no responsibilities and no worries while I was here. I did what I was told, when I was told, and nothing more. But now I shifted on nervous feet, anxious to see how the next step in my continuing journey played itself out. I jumped, receiving a small shock from my restraint collar. One of the guards had given me a slap on the wrist, reminding me I was supposed to keep my head lowered.
It was my turn now, and a guard led me forward by my leash and the door closed behind us. There was another short hallway before we entered the auction hall. I kept my head down, respectfully averting my eyes, as I’d been trained to do. I was led up a flight of short steps to a wide platform, and the throw over about my body was removed. My face grew hot and my pulse raced in panic, no longer having the comfort of faceless obscurity to hide within that I’d grown accustomed to as of late. I was center stage now in a way I’d never imagined possible.
The room was heavily air-conditioned and I shivered, fighting against the urge to wrap my arms about myself, motionlessly waiting. I couldn’t see much, being blinded by bright lights, but the shimmering outline of holographic avatars, of those unable to attend in person, stood out in the darkened room. Real eyes peered back at me too; they were eerily quiet, and some of them were inhuman. I never seriously entertained the idea until now that an alien may buy me, although I knew how to engage in sexual activities with over fifteen of the major races, thanks to my training. I shivered again thinking of what it would actually be like. Watching videos while receiving a harried lecture in a classroom environment was one thing, but… I wasn’t really into that sort of thing to tell you the truth, but I would learn to like whatever my new Master or Mistress happened to be. I didn’t really have a choice in the matter anymore, so why worry about it?
Every so often I heard a random cough, politely muffled of course, or the shuffling of feet mixed with the faint murmurs of random conversation. It all seemed so normal in a way. I guess I was expecting something different, a mad house of screaming, leering men that couldn’t wait to get their hands on me. This had an air of quality about it, like people out to buy priceless artwork instead of a human being. A man chuckled from the darkness; he called me a homely looking cow. I lowered my face just a bit more, trying to hide in the glaring light.
There was a man at a podium, close, but outside of the harsh glare of the spotlight. The chills gradually became outright cold that caused my small nipples to harden into tight, fleshy marbles.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to present a very rare item today. Our next auction is for a 36-year-old human female…”
A larger than life, magnified image of me appeared overhead, turning slowly in the classic arms out, palms up stance, while the auctioneer began describing me in detail. Weird, it was like I was an open book on display for the entire world to view. The man droned on listing my cybernetic enhancements, followed by the use of my controller to modify sexual desire and appetite, while curtailing aggressive and unruly behavior. Oh yeah, we can’t forget the part about me being helpless to obeying any order, from whoever possessed it. The noise level in the room steadily increased; the buyers were interested now, and I knew what was coming next.
O’god not that, not in front of all these people!
First came a display of my strength and dexterity with a gravity belt and a series of free-weights. That was easy and brought forth a very positive response from the crowd. They were learning that there was much more to me than meets the eye; hearing what I could do was one thing, but seeing it was believing.
My remote was given to a woman in the audience I could barely see through the glare of the lights. She appeared to be tall and elegantly attired in a strapless red dress with a deep V-neck that bulged with cleavage. She was very pretty, I think, with dark seductive eyes set beneath long, midnight black hair. A representative from Holloway stood close by giving her instructions.
The room grew deathly quiet, and I dropped to the floor without warning, pussy convulsing in uncontrollable spasms, panting as a gasping surge of sexually induced impotence. I came instantly, pawing at the floor like an animal. I didn’t care anymore about the people watching me while I swam in a turbulent sea of electrical passion; I wanted them, all of them. I envisioned myself being fucked over and over, the woman holding my controller the first in a long line I couldn’t see an end to. Hundreds, I was being used by hundreds of people in my mind, and it was amazing. It stopped just as suddenly, and I lay trembling in a breathless heap as murmurs and slight chuckles of doubt drifted amongst the crowd.
“No, you dullard, she doesn’t know what I’m doing,” the women snipped.
Not the pain, please.
The pleasure came again, this time even stronger. I whined, contorting in wild throws of maddening ecstasy. It was almost as strong as when the slavers were testing it at maximum setting.
“Fff…uck me! Please anyone,” I screamed hoarsely as the thick, overpowering fragrance of lust drifted about me like the rich aroma of fine wine. It stopped and started like this several more times, and I began to shake uncontrollably from over stimulation.
“This is fun, I like her,” the woman chimed enthusiastically, while I writhed helplessly before an astonished audience.
“Buy me please, I want to be your slave,” I screeched, fingers deep within my pussy to satisfy an unquenchable craving. The demonstration ended a few wonderfully maddening minutes later; it felt like hours to me though. I slowly regained my composure, standing red faced and shaking in a puddle of desire. I felt about two inches tall; I wanted to hide somewhere. All I could smell was the warm perfume of poignant sex around me.
“I plan to buy you, slave, and price is no option,” the woman proclaimed loudly to the room as if daring someone to challenge her. She handed the remote back to the staff member and haughtily took her seat, as if my sale to her was a foregone conclusion.
“Let’s continue then, shall we?” The man at the podium announced. “Ladies and Gentlemen, that concludes our demonstration. I will now start the bidding at 40,000.” A plasma display on the wall behind him came to life, jumping, whirling with identification numbers and the amounts from the top five bidders. The highest amount for my ownership was 67,500.
“The next round of bidding may now commence.” The buyers whispered in surprised excitement when the bid jumped to 89,236.
I really couldn’t explain what I was feeling while I stood by in helpless silence, chest heaving; it was a combination of appalled disgust and fear, but also exhilaration. People were fighting for my ownership and it excited me. The silent war for possession of my soul continued.
98,769…
101,501…
108,781…There were only two bidders left now, number’s 45 and 87. Who would it be? Who would own me, and what would he or she be like? I should be horrified or scared to death, but I wasn’t. I was just as anxious to see the outcome of my sale as everyone else was.
The war continued for several more rounds with neither one of the bidders willing to give in. The amount was now up to a staggering 120,350. That was a lot of money by any standards, and I felt humbled by the fact that others thought so highly of me.
“No more bids?” I was trembling with suspense.
“Going once…” The auctioneer’s voice was filled with amazed anticipation. I had no way of knowing it, but I was about to bring in the second highest amount in Holloway Trading Company history.
“Going twice…” The woman wearing the red dress in the front row beamed with satisfied glee. It looked like she’d made good on her promise; I was about to have a Mistress.
With a soft chime, someone reentered the bidding, upping the total to an astonishing 145,000. The crowd broke into pandemonium and my one time expectant owner scowled, shaking her head in disgust. There were no more bids after that, and with the sound of a buzzer, amid a thunderous applause, slave number 2451 became the property of bidder number 53.
I was quickly ushered away and placed in a transit cell along with two men and another woman, if you wanted to call her that. She was a scrawny little thing with puffy, bloodshot eyes and a tangle of long magenta hair.
Poor girl…
she wasn’t ready for this, and if she didn’t harden her soul as I had, she’d never survive, at least sanely. I took a seat next to her, wishing I could comfort her, knowing it was impossible. Instead, I leaned back against the wall closing my eyes. It would appear that bidder 53 had purchased all of us, if I were to guess.
I waited patiently, contemplating the future for nearly an hour, before two more women joined us, followed lastly by a large Trusk. I wasn’t sure if it was a male or female; I’ve never been able to tell the difference, nor bothered to learn the subtleties in their species that defined the two. I’ll call him ‘he’, just because that was my first inclination. Either way he was bestial, standing over eight feet tall with a grotesque assortment of bulging muscles and thick powerful limbs. His grayish-brown skin had the texture of rawhide, and his face was reminiscent of walrus with large floppy jowls, minus the whiskers. My fellow cellmates instinctively shied away from him.
I’d dealt with Trusks’ before, and despite their outward appearance, they were one of the gentlest, kindest races in all the galaxies. The Trusk race as a whole had received the reputation as sadistic, man-eating fiends during the Dominion Conflict. I would have thought the same thing if I hadn’t known the truth; it was Federation propaganda and nothing more. We’d been the bad guys in that one, I thought darkly,
I know, I was there.
In the end we’d butchered them like the animals they resembled.
He must have sensed my ease, briefly looking around the cell before taking a seat next to me. I couldn’t help but look between his legs as he squatted beside me. I’d never seen a naked Trusk before, and I really wasn’t sure what to make of the writhing mass of light pink, spaghetti-like tendrils that shifted lazily, animatedly floating in an unfelt breeze. I wouldn’t even know where to start with something like that to contend with.
Ewe…
It was kind of gross to even think about actually.
I looked up for the first time since he crouched beside me. My face turned bright red, thinking that I’d been caught red-handed ogling him, but he stared back at me with nothing short of silent anger behind his large, multi-pupil yellow eyes.
Uh-oh, he’d seen my Fleet tattoo.
I slowly moved my hand closest to him, gesturing in the silent speech the Trusk spoke in. We all had to learn it before going dirt side during the pacification of their homeworld. Even if I could speak openly with him, I wouldn’t. Trusk talked incredibly slow, methodically, using flower speech that would make a romance writer cringe. It took them nearly a minute just to say hello. I gave him the customary greeting, then friend.
His surprise was made manifest by puffing his floppy jowls and a gurgling snort through his broad, flaring nose. I guess he wasn’t expecting a polite greeting from a long time hated enemy. We spoke for several minutes as apologies were made and explanations given. The past was in the past and would stay there as far as we were both concerned given our current situation. I did learn that he was actually male and his name was about six syllables worth of incomprehensible gibberish if I would have tried to pronounce it out loud. I just called him Chuck for short.
It was about thirty minutes later when the guards ushered us into a cargo debarkation area, and we all prepared for stasis travel: a light blue jumpsuit, an injection of Provacine to ready our bodies for the near death experience of cryo-sleep, followed by a mild sedative. It was a frightening experience being placed into stasis, one that left many people scarred for life with nightmares of drowning and claustrophobia. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to again.
I stepped into my tube, head downcast, leaning back against the padded couch as the door hissed shut encasing me in foreboding darkness. Several things happened at once; the life support and injection bands clamped snuggly about both my upper arms, and the air around me turned bitterly cold. Moments later, the quasi-liquid sensation of packing gel surged upward around my feet, beginning to encase me in immobility. My chest jerked with quick, panicking gulps despite the sedative, as my ability to move grew less and less. I had to remind myself to relax and breathe normally; it would all be over within less than thirty seconds. My vital signs began to dip dangerously low, and my skin started to crawl.
I can’t breathe!
I panicked trying to move as the gel oozed closer to my face, threatening to smother me completely. My mind began to fade as the numbing, near death experience penetrated my very core.
I’m dying! John, help me, I need you!
The stygian darkness closed in removing every trace of fear that I had.
