Thus, we must stumble barefoot along the hard tiles of the floor, most of us half-numb with shock. I’d hoped to conceal my nudity in the crowd of frightened bodies, but we’re made to advance in lines. Lines of naked women, twenty in each one, all linked by the crude collars around our necks.
Across the expanse of The Hub awaits the shuttles that are the only means of access to the planet surface. Offworld males are not permitted on the shuttle craft, or onto the hot desert planet that is the Slaver’s true home. Only citizens, i.e. males of Aghara-Penthay, and female captives may make the journey. No woman undertakes it willingly, for a visit down to the ground seals her doom. Once a woman arrives, she is not permitted to leave until she’s implanted and processed – docile, and under the control of any male that commands her.
We are walking to our doom, and yet we walk anyway, most of us silent, a few weeping. Women that try to delay or to conceal their naked bodies are quickly punished with a touch from the goad. We’re already too familiar with those hateful weapons.
Chained in the third position from the front of my line, I hurry along as best as I can for a woman with terrible internal injuries. I’ve only been goaded briefly, but it was enough even to overcome my other suffering.
Another chain of twenty women – ones with much lower scores – walks parallel to ours. Four more chains, side by side in two-by-two formation are ahead. I can see dozens of my fellow captives. It’s easy to tell the ones who have already been raped from the way we hobble along, as though we’re already ancient. Some of the fallen ones, including me, carry blood streaks or other filth as further evidence of their downfall. I stopped trying to wipe mine away, hoping that the mess might deter further assailants, but the male eyes study me hungrily anyway.
Flanking us are Slavers carrying batons. They are not particularly watchful. It’s already too late for us to run.
The Hub is the gateway between Aghara-Penthay and the rest of the universe. On its lower level are the docking rings, where the Slaver cruisers dock, along with myriad supply vessels, bounty hunters, and the ships ferrying those who seek pleasure. The upper of the three levels is given to administration, and The Hub’s defenses.
It is the middle floor which is notorious. The Mezzanine is a long lurid strip of brothels, bars, restaurants, and hotels where vast profits are made by catering to every sensory desire. The Mezzanine also contains the auction houses where every galactic year, thousands and thousands of processed slaves are sold.
We hear the Mezzanine before we see it. Blaring music. Loud conversation. Men shouting. Raucous laughter, of many males. Interspersed with this, sometimes there is the sound of a female, usually a cry of suffering.
On we stumble. At the front of my chain leads a girl bearing the red mark Forty-Eight on her bare thigh. Behind her, and directly in front of me is Fifty – an exquisitely formed brunette human, with pale skin. I must watch the graceful flexing of her bare buttocks as she walks, and I’m forced to recall once hearing that the shape and tone of a woman’s rear is a signal of her fertility. Then comes my place, and behind me, another Forty-Nine. Two Forty-Sevens, three more Forty-Eights, and on and on.
I’m unable to process the change in my life. Hours ago, I was a free citizen of the Republic. Only feet from me are men who are still free citizens. They are destined to leave The Hub and go back to their lives, when I am destined for sexual slavery. I’ve just been gang raped, and these assholes are here on vacation.
One group of men sit languidly around a table, particularly close to where our unhappy chain passes. They’re watching the chains move past, drinking alcohol as they lap up the view of so much free nude flesh. In any other place you’d take them for clean-cut college boys. But males don’t visit The Hub by accident. Perhaps something about them looks less brutal and more hopeful, for Fifty breaks out of the line and moves towards them, and so, pulled by an uncomfortable tug at my neck, I must follow her.
“Please,” she begs the nearest, a handsome man with neat blond hair and a buff sportsman’s body. He looks the same age as I am.
“Please,” Fifty says again. “Help me. I’ve just been captured. I’m from Illyshkin Four. I’m a citizen of the Republic. Help me, before they take me down there to be implanted. I’ll be your wife, your girlfriend, I’ll be your fantasy. Just save me, before I end up a sex slave.”
“Come closer,” says the blond man.
“My name is Tana,” offers the girl. “Tana Dinovchek.”
I glance anxiously at the nearest Slaver, expecting Tana to be goaded for her audacity, but he’s smiling meanly and is content to watch, at least for now. It’s easy to see why. Things don’t seem to get off to a good start for Tana Dinovchek. She shrieks as she’s seized, and pulled into the man’s lap. There is a sharp drag on my throat, and I must move even nearer.
With the girl in place, the blond man strokes his hand up the back of Tana’s thigh, and over the curve of her naked buttock. He squeezes her breast. Tana looks uncomfortable at such audacity, but she decides to press on with her appeal.
“I was at the Universal Beauty contest, on Iniver Four,” she says. “Lots of us here were there. We’re supposed to become famous models.”
“No shit? I love that show. I’ll watch out for you.”
He pulls at her nipple, and Tana flinches.
“And what do you want from me, hot stuff?” asks the blond man.
“Help me,” she repeats. “Buy me, before I’m taken to the surface. My family are wealthy. You’ll be rewarded by them. And then by me.”
“Well, that’s quite tempting, Tana Dinovchek,” he answers. “But you know what the problem is? I’d rather see you implanted first, and then think about buying you. I know girls like you. You’re too used to getting your way, just because you’re hot. I bet you wouldn’t look at me twice, as soon as we were back on your home world. But here… on Aghara-Penthay, you’re suddenly grateful to have me squeeze your nice juicy tit.”
“Asshole!” says Tana, and she tries to rise, but the blond man tightens his grip.
“Uh-uh,” the guard says to her, finally intervening. “He’s not given you permission to leave. Stay where you are, slavegirl.”
Blond man continues to play with her breast with one hand, while the other he presses between Tana’s bare thighs. She resists for a moment, and says, “stop that!”, but at a frown from the man in uniform, she gives in. Then blond man roughly forces his fingers inside her vulva, and Tana gasps at the discomfort.
“She’s tight,” blond man reports to the guard.
“Fresh catches,” he shrugs. “So new, so fresh off the slave ship, that some of them are still virgins. Need to learn their place.”
“Is that true, bitch? Do you need to learn your place, Tana Dinovchek?” asks the blond man. He withdraws his fingers and reaches up with them to smear her face. Tana flinches, automatically raising her hand to protect herself, and in retaliation he slaps her, slaps her shockingly hard. Before she can do anything, he continues, “Yes, you do need to learn. Probably never had to try and please a man before, huh? Bet you’re used to guys running after you.”
With that he ejects her from his lap, and she stumbles away, tearful, pulling me along behind her, and me pulling the other forty-nine behind me.
“Well, it’s your turn to run. Hurry along and get your implant, cunt!” are his parting words.
After that nasty encounter, none of us try to attract the attention of the men on The Hub. But it’s as though an announcement has gone out. Everyone seems to notice us, and our line is forced to pause frequently.
“Hey, dangles,” a stranger says, stepping in my way. “Nice tits. What’s your name?”
“Coora,” I answer, unable to come up with anything but the truth.
“What are you, Coora? A species from the outer planets?”
“I’m a Dystyr. I’m a citizen of the Republic.”
“Not any more, you’re not. The Republic won’t come and save you here,” he leers. “Can your species have sex with humans?”
“Yes,” I blush, unable to think of an answer other than the truth, “but…”
“A lotta guys have a thing for the alien girls. You’re gonna get pounded raw.”
He says it as though I’ve not thought of that. As though this is all my idea.
“What’s that stuck to your face?” he asks.
Mercifully, I don’t have to answer.
“Keep moving, slaves,” commands one of our guards, and we comply, eager to escape this public beasting.
The lines of women only begin to slow as we approach the far end of the Mezzanine, where the shuttles ferry Slaver male citizens and their captives to and from the surface.
The urge to flee rises in me. Perhaps it’s the horror of what lies on the surface – the implant, the slave mark, and my doom. Perhaps it’s that I’ve not been goaded for a while, and I’m beginning to forget how painful it feels. Perhaps as I’m still young, I’m beginning to recover some of the resilience drained by the gang rape I endured on the ship.
“We have to do something,” I whisper urgently to the women nearest me. “I’m a Republic citizen, studying political theory. I’m meant to go and work for the Republic government.”
“We’re all Republic citizens,” says Tana, the model contestant who was just humiliated by the tourist. “Look where being a free citizen got me. That man…”
“But I can’t be implanted,” I moan, my voice breaking.
“I’m sure the Slavers will be fine about it if you just explain that to them,” says a sarcastic woman’s voice from behind me.
“We could make a break for it,” I suggest, making my voice loud enough to be heard by the other chain of women at our side. “If we all go at once, we might seize some of their weapons, and fight our way to the docking level.”
“We’re stark naked, and we’re chained together by our necks,” a stocky female close by in the parallel line replies angrily. “How far do you think we’d make it? Each one of us they stunned, the rest of us would have to drag her.”
“But we have to do something,” I plead as we get closer and closer to the guarded shuttle bays.
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