Slaves of Elysium (3 page)

‘No, miss.'

‘Remember, you're just a servant.' Rebecca sneered down at her. ‘I could buy you a thousand times over. You do what I say when I say, and you don't speak back, understand?'

Bent low over her mopping, Jeni trembled and mutely shook her head. Rebecca flicked the flat of her magazine across Jeni's back. ‘I didn't hear you!'

‘I understand, miss,' Jeni said quickly.

A curious smile came to Rebecca's lips, and rolling up her magazine she smacked it lightly across the seat of Jeni's shorts. ‘You really are a spineless little creature, aren't you?'

‘If you say so, miss,' Jeni replied faintly, her eyes closed, her body beginning to tremble.

Rebecca laughed contemptuously and smacked Jeni across her bottom a little harder. ‘Just a little nobody,' she mused, and smacked again, the crisp stroke sounding even over the background music.

Jeni whimpered and bent her head lower, and Rebecca's smile grew wider as she forgot her seasickness, momentarily lost in the fascinating spectacle of her humiliated and subservient maid. She had an unexpected new toy to play with. ‘Pull down your shorts,' she said.

‘Miss?'

‘You heard me. I want to see your bottom bared.'

The drone of the engines and the swaying of the boat seemed to recede from Jeni's awareness until nothing else existed but herself and Rebecca glaring masterfully down at her. Hardly daring to breathe she reached back, hooked her thumbs under the waistband of her shorts, and wriggled them down until they gathered about her knees. Her bottom flesh was still girlishly rounded and quite flawless. The pale cheeks rolled smoothly inwards to a deep valley, which curved down between her thighs to divide about the full split-peach of her pubes.

Rebecca examined the two hemispheres with clinical interest, running a sharp fingernail over the satin skin that left a white trail behind it that filled quickly with pink. Jeni whimpered at her touch, causing Rebecca's smile to broaden.

She drew back her arm and swung the rolled magazine with even greater force at the naked and defenceless bottom, taking out her frustration on Jeni's unresisting person. Again and again the sound of hard-rolled glossy paper striking resilient flesh rang out in the cabin. Jeni gasped and mewed under the assault, but did not move from her abject posture except for slight forward reflex jerks of her hips as each blow struck. She was totally cowed by fear and dark excitement. This was it. There was no turning back now. A new world was opening up for her...

Just then the boat bucked sharply under the impact of a high wave. Rebecca gave a sudden groan, threw the magazine aside and scrambled for the cabin's en-suite bathroom, hand over her mouth. Jeni heard a retching from within the cubical, and with a shudder she fought down her seething emotions, pulled up her shorts, got to her feet and went to do her duty.

 

When she was cleaned up, Rebecca allowed Jeni to help her back to her bed. Jeni gave her some more sickness tablets, made her as comfortable as possible and returned to report her condition to Devereaux.

‘She'll get over it,' he said with a shrug. ‘Win or not, this time tomorrow she'll be at the best club in Nassau. That ought to cheer her up.'

‘You'd better try to get some sleep while you can,' Ash advised her. ‘There won't be anything much to see for a few hours.'

 

Back in the privacy of her own cabin, Jeni gingerly peeled down her shorts and examined her rear in the cupboard mirror. Her whole bottom blushed a bright pink. She touched the stinging flesh tenderly, yet there was no feeling of anger and resentment within her that should by rights accompany such spiteful treatment. It just confirmed what she already knew about her private needs, a brief taste of what she most feared and yet most needed.

Where would it lead, she wondered, now that Rebecca had glimpsed her secret self? Preoccupied with her seasickness Rebecca might have forgotten the incident by tomorrow. Jeni could only wait and see. It was not something she could bring upon herself. That was not in her nature.

Jeni lay down on her bunk, not bothering to undress. The pulse of the engines sounded through the hull even louder here, so making plugs of cotton wool she stuffed them into her ears, which helped a little. She tried turning off the light, but the motion of the vessel was too disturbing in total darkness, so she left it on. Rinsing out a flannel in her tiny basin she folded it carefully and placed it over her eyes and forehead, then lay back again and tried to relax.

This time tomorrow they would all be in Nassau one way or another, she told herself. If they managed to win the race as well, then Rebecca's temper would have mellowed and all would be back to normal. No, not quite normal, as her sore bottom attested. Such bittersweet pain. Was there more to come? She would find out tomorrow.

Tomorrow...

 

At some point she must have dozed, for the next thing she was aware of was a muffled howling from beyond the portholes and the cabin shaking violently. Instinctively she clutched the bedrail to stop herself being thrown to the deck even as the lights flickered. What was happening?

A fist pounded on the door and Ash's voice bellowed, ‘Jeni! Lifejacket on and get out here now, understand?'

‘Yes, all right!' she shouted back.

She tore the plugs from her ears and the full force of the noise hit her. A storm was shrieking and wailing about the yacht. Brilliant white light flickered through the portholes, illuminating black mountainous seas frozen in impossible peaks and troughs, followed almost simultaneously by the crack and boom of thunder that seemed to drive its way into her bones. Then the scene was wiped out as a wave washed over the porthole and pounded the hull.

In a daze Jeni struggled into her lifejacket and opened the door. The corridor was yawing and pitching wildly as the
Galatea
was tossed about like a toy boat in a bath. The engines were labouring under the strain one moment as they strove to make headway against the storm blast, then racing wildly as the props were lifted clear of the water.

Jeni hauled herself along by the handrails to the lower helm position. Devereaux was wedged into one of the seats, knuckles white on the wheel as he fought to keep the boat on as even a keel as possible. There was no point in distracting him by asking foolish questions. It was obvious what was happening. Jeni staggered over to the couch and tried to brace herself into its angle.

Ash appeared through the saloon supporting a dazed and white-faced Rebecca, also in her lifejacket. Her led her to the couch and sat her beside Jeni, closed her hand round a rail, and then took the navigator's chair beside Devereaux. Jeni noticed that the helm dash displays were flickering wildly, throwing a kaleidoscope of colours across Ash's sweat-beaded face.

Rebecca gathered her wits enough to scream out accusingly at Devereaux, ‘I never wanted to go on this stupid race!'

‘You thought it would be a laugh!' Devereaux snapped back over his shoulder.

‘Argue later!' Ash bellowed, his deep voice rising above the howling wind. ‘First we've got to come through this in one piece. As long as the boat holds together we've got a chance!'

The lightning blazed again, sending fingers of cold fire through the saloon windows. This time the thunderclap was almost deafening. The storm was right on top of them.

Rebecca whimpered. Jeni clutched her free hand and held it tight. ‘Can't we outrun it?' she shouted.

‘Maybe, if we could tell which way it was headed,' Ash shouted back. ‘It blew up out of nowhere in minutes. No weather warning broadcast, nothing on the radar. Suddenly we were right in the middle of it and the equipment went crazy. I can't even fix our position!'

The
Galatea's
prow dipped even as it yawed and rolled violently to starboard.

And kept on dropping and turning.

Rebecca shrieked as they were pressed against the back of the couch. The boat was spinning round ever faster as though they were being sucked down into a whirlpool. Jeni felt herself being squeezed tighter and tighter. She could not breathe. The pressure was crushing her. She was going to die. The lightning blazed once more, illuminating the whole boat and freezing their anguished expressions in an instant of time that seemed to last forever.

Then all was blackness.

 

 

 

Jeni felt herself rising from dark and nameless depths into the light and calm. Slowly she opened her eyes.

The sight and sound and fury of the storm had vanished as though it had never been. In its place warm light gently illuminated the saloon. The
Galatea
seemed to be riding on an even keel on still waters. The engines were silent.

Rebecca was curled up in a ball at the other end of the couch. Devereaux was slumped across both the helm chairs while Ash was sprawled on the deck, and as Jeni blinked he stirred and heaved himself onto all fours, shaking his head as though to clear the daze from his mind. Devereaux groaned and sat up. Jeni leaned forward and touched Rebecca's shoulder, who flinched.

‘It's all right, miss,' Jeni said reassuringly. ‘It's gone. We're safe now.'

Cautiously Rebecca uncurled and looked about her. ‘What... what happened?' she asked.

‘The storm must have blown itself out as fast as it came on,' Devereaux said thickly.

Jeni frowned at the bright windows. ‘Why is it daylight outside?'

Devereaux could only gape back at her vacantly. Ash rose to his feet and slid back the saloon door. Hesitantly they followed him out onto the aft deck. They were floating on dark water so still it might have been a sheet of glass. A pearly-grey opalescent fog hung about the boat, amber tinted where the bloated ball of the sun hung just above the horizon, its thin rays hardly warming the misty, clinging droplets. There was no sign of sky or land, or any other craft. Except for the occasional trickle and drip of storm water running through the deck sluices there was absolute silence.

‘Looks like dawn sure enough,' Ash said, wonderingly. ‘But the storm hit around ten-thirty. Suppose we must have blacked out. Must have been unconscious for hours.' He looked at his watch. ‘Eleven-fourteen pm?' he puzzled. ‘That can't be right.' By reflex they all glanced at their watches. All were working and all agreed it was still only a quarter past eleven at night.

‘I suppose one of those lightning bolts generated enough of an EM pulse to throw them off,' Devereaux suggested, but Jeni doubted that explanation. Her watch was a cheap model and might have been disrupted as he said, but Ash wore a sturdy diver's chronometer that was proofed against almost any interference, mechanical or magnetic, while Devereaux and Rebecca sported the best that Rolex and Patek Phillipe could supply. They were not watches that stopped easily. And even if they had, would they all have started again in exact synchronism? On the other hand, she could think of no better reason for the apparent disparity.

Then a new thought struck Ash and he muttered a curse under his breath. ‘What's it done to the rest of the equipment?' He hurried back inside, the others trailing anxiously after him.

With Devereaux's help he checked over the helm controls while the two women looked on. Some of the displays appeared steady while others flickered wildly.

‘The helm chronometer reads the same as our watches,' Ash muttered.

Jeni watched the two men punching buttons and saw their expressions become increasingly grim.

‘Isn't the radio working?' Rebecca asked. ‘Can't you call for help?'

‘Seems to be live, but it's not receiving, not even background static,' Devereaux said.

‘I've got a radio-cassette player in my cabin,' Jeni offered. ‘Maybe that's still working.'

She brought the radio back quickly, but though the power light came on nothing was received on any channel.

‘Burnt out as well,' Devereaux said.

Ash pressed a button and the cassette in the machine began playing normally. ‘I'd have thought something powerful enough to burn out the radio would have killed the rest of the electronics as well,' he said.

There were four more portable radios on board. They tested all of them with the same lack of success.

‘Maybe we can still send out, though,' Devereaux said, returning to the helm. He punched some more keys. ‘That's the automatic distress beacon activated. Maybe somebody'll home in on it. We can't do any more because we don't know our position.'

‘You said the
Galatea
had GPS, or something, and you could always tell where she was to a few yards,' Rebecca said, an accusative edge entering her voice as her initial shock gave way to her natural impatience.

‘Yeah, we have satellite navigation, but right now the system can't get a fix on anything.'

‘But what about the compass?' she pressed. ‘Doesn't that help?'

‘We've got a backup magnetic and gyrocompass, miss Lamont,' Ash answered. ‘And they're both spinning loops. Lots of things might screw up a magnetic compass, but this gyro system is about as reliable as it's possible to get. That storm must have been a record breaker. Possibly it screwed up radio reception at the same time.' He frowned. ‘There might be a lot of people in our fix right now, perhaps worse. Depends how big an area was affected. Search and rescue teams have probably been alerted, but they might be spread thin.'