“Your name is Tana?” I say quietly, not wanting to draw the attention and perhaps punishment of the guard. “I’m Coora.”
“The alien girl, they took away to rape on the ship?” she replies sympathetically.
“That was me,” I shamefully admit.
“I was in the cage next to yours,” she says.
I look hopelessly towards the Slaver settlement, across the void of empty air from our platform.
“We could throw ourselves off this pad…” I say softly. “End it, here.”
But I don’t really have it in me. And neither does she.
“Where there’s life, there’s hope,” says Tana. “Some slaves are rescued. The Republic has a whole sanctuary for them.”
“Follow me, slits!” interrupts one of the guards, and he leads the way into an opening where a flight of stone stairs leads down into a building. Accepting our fate, we pad docilely behind him, naked feet following booted ones. Another couple of Slaver men follow behind, but there is minimal supervision needed now we’re down on the planet’s surface. These new men are administrators, not warriors. For anyone with a vagina instead of a penis, there’s nowhere to run on this world.
Inside, it is like stepping from the modern to ancient galaxy. I’m padding down roughly hewn stone steps, that resemble the interior of a castle, rather than anything from my era. Only the bioluminescent lighting, or the occasional blink of comms or sensor panels, reveal the presence of tech.
At first there are windows – narrow slits without glass, as the protection from the climate is unnecessary on this world. But we work our way down and further into the building, and everything from then on is under artificial light. After several minutes we pause, in a wide hallway.
A guard with a badge of rank addresses us.
“Slits,” he says, “you are the lucky ones. Your beauty is all that defines you, as a female on Aghara-Penthay. Beautiful women like you have higher value. Training will increase that value further. Shortly, you will be taken to a pen used for holding slaves during their training. Work hard at your training, or you will be punished.”
“But first, a medical scan,” he barks. “You will be sent in twos, through this door and along the corridor to a room. Put your head into one of the boxes you see embedded into the wall. You’ll be scanned for disease and parasites from your inferior worlds, infections which may threaten the security of Aghara-Penthay, and your brain outputs will be read for sexual tendencies. After the scan, proceed out the far door towards the processing room. Do you understand?”
My stomach rolls with nerves. “Processing”. That means the implant, the mark. Processing is the end of my life as a Republic female. An implant chip will be injected into the brainstem. After that, I’ll be submissive to men forever. Even if I’m one on the rare few who are rescued, I could never resume anything like a normal life. A loser like Jurong would just have to ask me to sleep with him, and I’d comply. Jurong would love that – seeing me reduced to an obedient and receptive slave. I pray our paths never cross again.
“First two cunts,” says the Slaver, bringing me back to the present, “you, and you.”
The two women he indicated, both creatures with their beauty marred by their expressions of terror, proceed apprehensively through the door. I try to see inside, but only glimpse another corridor. For several minutes we just stand there. Tana has bunched so close to me that she’s brushing against me. I think she just wants contact with another female.
Then there’s a squark from a comm link, and the Slaver directs the next two women through the doorway. One of this next pair has just wet herself from fear, and her legs glisten with her own urine.
We draw back away from the puddle.
“I’ll make you lick that up, afterwards,” the Slaver calls after the departing woman.
Again we stand, each remaining female growing more and more frightened as our numbers reduce. A scan, and then processing. By the end of this day, the worst day of my life, I’ll be implanted, and forever a sex slave. I would do anything to delay what’s about to happen, but my moment has come.
“You next, dangles,” says the officer, indicating me, “you and your sexy friend, through the door.”
Tana and I move as directed. We look back towards those still waiting for a second, as the door closes behind us. But then we’re in a bare stone corridor, and our only option is forwards.
“I can’t be implanted,” I whisper to Tara. “So as soon as the scan is over, if there’s somewhere to run – we run. I don’t care if they shoot me. I should have jumped from the platform.”
“Agreed,” she replies. It didn’t take long to give up on the “where there’s life, there’s hope”, then.
A heavy alloy blast door is at the far end of our corridor. Pushing our way apprehensively through, we find ourselves in a chamber that’s almost empty save for the tech. One wall is not stone, but contains banks of the boxes, and display screens.
A Slaver male waits here – someone of lower rank than the one who directed us. Still, he is a male, and therefore free, which makes him much better than us. He is clothed, and has a chair and a blaster. We stand nude. A pad at his side is playing a vid. He is bored.
The boxes we were told about are obvious. They’re at chest height, side by side in a row, and have a large oval opening, big enough to fit even a skull like mine, with its scorns of flesh. It’s completely black inside them, as though they’re part of a magician’s trick to produce flowers or a pet out of nothing.
“Heads inside the scanners, cunts,” the guard says lazily. This lowlife is so unconcerned he’s half slumped in his seat. I guess even sex Slavers can have repetitive jobs.
Fearfully, I half bend forward and insert my head into the dark opening, as Tara does the same alongside me. My bare rump is left pointing out behind me.
“Get right in there, bitches, right in, until you feel the far side press on the top of your heads,” the male calls languidly.
I comply. There’s a square of padded alloy pressing against my crown. What will the scan feel like? Lights, sounds? I wonder how they can build data on me, without yet possessing any of my personal details.
I’ve considered myself to be intelligent – I’m a woman at an elite college, but by the time I realize I’ve been tricked it’s too late.
Something mechanical seizes my skull in a grip like a vice, seeming to press in on me from all directions at once with irresistible force. Before my scream has even begun, I feel a pain like I’ve never felt in my life – a piecing, at the back of my head, as though someone has shoved a needle from the top of my spine through to my eyes. Simultaneously, there’s a white-hot burning at my cheekbone – torture flaring as hot as the touch of the slave goad.
My cry of agony is deafening in the confined space. I think I hear Tara howl beside me from the same suffering, but I’m not sure.
And then the pain is fading, and the vice’s hold begins to relax its grip. In a panic I try to withdraw too soon, and painfully scrape my head against the retreating clamps.
Tana’s expression shows a silent scream of unimaginable horror. Where moments earlier there was only the smooth pale skin of her cheekbone, she now carries a swirling dark mark – a mark recognized across the galaxy. The mark of a slave woman of Aghara-Penthay – someone processed and implanted.
She raises one hand tentatively and presses her fingertips behind her skull, at the top of her spine. I mirror her action. I can feel a lump that wasn’t there before. Swelling around the injection site. That’s where it went in – my implant.
“You two look upset,” says the guard, unconcerned. “So kiss, to comfort each other.”
I could really use a sign of tenderness from another living being. Tara must be feeling the same, for she and I move close. “I’m sorry,” I say, and holding her freshly marked face with infinite gentleness, I draw her towards me. Her lips are warm and soft, and they taste of tears.
“That’s enough,” says the guard. “Now go through there, and wait.”
We’re already implanted, lost. There’s no point resisting him now, so we silently follow the orders and shuffle out.
“Next ones, boss,” the guard is already saying into his comm as we leave.
In the room beyond, the females who went ahead of us are waiting. All of them similarly damned with the slave mark, the mark that means they carry the implant.
I will have one of those on my face, too. Every man in the universe who hasn’t been hiding under a rock will see it, and know what it means. I am broken. I have no ability to resist their commands. I will be their sex slave. Again, instinctively I fold an arm across my chest, and use my other hand to cover my sex. As though that will protect me.
A couple of the women are weeping. I feel close to crying again myself.
I press my fingers again on the lump. How long do I have before it works? How long before I lose my free will?
“It’s not fair,” one of the newly-marked women moans. “They said processing would be in the next room. We weren’t given a chance.”
Have the other women captured from the transport already been implanted, just like us? Trindii? Cliria? Thirty-nine? So many of us…
Cliria wished me slave luck. The guard on the landing platform said we were the lucky ones. It doesn’t feel like I’m lucky, so far.
7 – Pens
If I was to choose the person I hate most in the universe, someone who didn’t know me will might expect I’d have gone for the men who gang raped me on the transport, or Jurong, who tried to violate me during the pirate raid, believing he’d be safe because I’d be seized, and wouldn’t have chance to report him. But no – it’s Trygg, our slave trainer.
Trygg is the male with responsibility for maximizing our value before we’re delivered for auction.
On Aghara-Penthay, Slaver society is divided into factions – four tribal groups under a chief, or faction leader. The transport carrying me, and the unlucky others, was raided by pirates from the faction of Jackran-ad-aktar – known across the universe as “The Alien”. Trygg works for him. So do all the men who live in this particular Slaver settlement. On the arm of Trygg’s soiled uniform is a badge, bearing Jackran-ad-aktar’s livery.
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