I freeze, staring in horror at remans that moments before were a living, thinking, being. Someone grabs my hand and I’m pulled roughly towards one of the corridors.
“This way,” he says. It’s Jurong.
I don’t know how he’s managing to stay so calm when most are barely managing to control the hysteria. The fallen are suddenly lying around us everywhere. Where minutes ago there was order, I now have to step over corpses to reach the corridors. How can so many be gone already? But although the devastation presents superficially as chaos, I have enough wits remaining to confirm there is a method in the carnage. Younger women and the strongest and most handsome young men are the only ones being spared. They’re lying stunned – frozen there as inert as waxworks. Those of us with value as slaves. Everyone else is being killed.
I hurry after Jurong. I’m willing to go with anyone with a coherent plan to save me. The prospect of rape at the hands of the Slavers would be devastating. I’m a Dystyr. I left my homeworld before mating, and like most of us who go offworld, I’ve remained a virgin. I can’t be a sex slave. I can’t be a sex slave.
And there’s something as horrific as the rape awaiting captives. Decades ago, the Slavers would suppress their captives with sheer brutality. But now they do something far more insidious. It’s called implantation. A biochip is injected into the brain stem at the base of the skull. The chip grows tendrils into the tissue, which emit signals interfering with the neurons relating to free will. The victim of an implant is unable to resist a command, so long as it’s delivered by a male. Order the victim to screw – they will screw. Death is not even an escape. The implant has many protocols besides obedience, including one which prevents a slave ending her life.
Women freshly captured by the Slavers are always taken first to the surface of Aghara-Penthay. There they’re implanted and often given further barbaric augmentations, and then they’re branded with the slave mark. It’s a swirling mark on the cheek to signify she is a processed woman. A quality control sign for the buyer. A lifelong badge of shame for the wearer.
Please no – this cannot happen to me.
“Where’s Trindii?” I moan to Jurong. I realize for the first time she is not with us. We’re being swept along with panicked passengers making for one of the lifepod bays. Civilization is beginning to break down. An old man has collapsed face down on the floor, clutching his chest, alive but fallen, and no one helps him. Including us.
“Trindii is on her own now,” Jurong says harshly. “This way.”
Instead of following the herd, he pulls me roughly into a deserted corridor of cabins. These rooms are better class than the shared accommodation purchased on a student budget, which offered us little more than twin bunks. Through the open doors I see large double beds, loungers, viewing screens.
“This way,” Jurong repeats, hurrying. “Here,” and choosing one apparently at random, he pushes me inside.
“What are we doing?” I ask him, confused. “We can’t hide for long. They will have life scanners. They’ll search the ship.”
Maybe his plan is we try to conceal ourselves long enough for the Republic to arrive. Maybe he intends to shift from cabin to cabin and try to slip past the searchers. Hide and move, hide and move.
Jurong hits the pad to close the cabin door.
“Wait! We should go to the escape bays, Jurong. The ship has fallen. If the lifepods all launch together, at least we have chance,” I tell him, turning to leave, but he pushes me with all his strength, so I almost fly back onto the bed, and his true intent dawns on me. Immediately I start to lever myself up, but he quickly throws himself on top of me, and I scream. I can feel it pressing against me. That’s his erection that I can feel. That’s Jurong’s penis.
“No!” I plead, trying to push him away. “Jurong – No!”
Sometimes, I just hate men. We should be fleeing for our lives, and Jurong choses now to get an erection.
“We’re lost anyway, Coora,” he grunts in my ear, his voice heavy with lust. “Hear those men? If you’re gonna get fucked anyway, I’m going to have you first.”
I do hear them. Amidst the screams from outside are the unmistakable sounds of blaster weapons, and the shouting of hostile male voices.
“No!” I protest again – louder, more urgent. I’m continuing to fight him, but he’s stronger than me, and he has the advantage of his weight bearing down on my body. His hand first seeks my breast, and I’m unable to prevent him squeezing me. So it’s come to this. He’s won his wish. Finally, he’s got to touch what he’s imagined for so long.
“Gods Coora, you’re perfect,” Jurong tells me, and he buries his face in my neck. His human stubble is alien to me, and I hate the scratching and his hot breath. I struggle with all my strength to escape from under him, but it’s not enough to break loose.
“Help!” I scream. As though in the middle of a pirate attack, anyone is going to attend to one woman’s cries.
Jurong releases my breast, but only so he can start hitching up the fabric of my dress. I wish I’d fastened it all the way down now. I’m lucky I closed enough that most of the fabric is tight, and the task requires both hands. This means he only gains slow progress with our combined weights inhibiting him, and I’m resisting every inch of exposure, but gradually he wins, and I end up with cloth rumpled like a concertina around my hips. My legs are now bared completely to him – skin he’s never seen before – and he pauses a moment to caress my thigh.
“Jurong,” I say, “Please don’t. Don’t touch me.”
Jurong freezes, but not because my plea produced any positive effect.
“Wait. Quiet, Coora. Listen!” he says in a harsh whisper.
I hear more screaming, from somewhere very close. A voice cries out then is suddenly cut off. A man laughs without mirth.
“We don’t have long,” he says, and reaches for me again.
There’s a painfully sharp tug at my pelvis, as next, my panties are ripped forcefully away. I’m left in a state of unbearable openness without them. My newly naked genitals are pressing against his erection. Only the layers of his pants are between us now. Jurong reaches down, fumbling for the fastening to free himself.
I scream as loud as I can this time. Perhaps the fear of discovery by the Slavers will stop him.
“Be quiet, you fool!” he snaps.
Please, why won’t someone come? I have only seconds remaining to do something, and it’s going to be down to me to save myself. Looking round for any form of aid, I stretch desperately for the only thing in range. It’s a glass ornament – the form something alien and unknown to me. It’s heavy, but I can lift it with one hand.
Jurong releases himself from his pants and gods help me, I can feel him – exposed man pressing exposed female. The flesh of his cock is warm. There’s no softness to his organ at all. It’s as though a rod of iron is probing against my pudenda. In moments he’ll back up his hips to where he can point the foul thing at me, and the rape will begin. I have to do something. I’m not normally savage, but I’m not normally desperate. With no other option left, I swing the ornament into the side of his skull. It strikes with a sickening crunch. Jurong’s eyes roll back in his head, and at last I’m able to push him off me.
I’m on my feet as quickly as I can get up. In spite of the urgency I still pause to push my dress back into its correct place around my legs. The coverage is a blissful relief.
I look down at Jurong. For a moment he’s so still I think I’ve killed him, but then like a jump-started speeder, he jolts and groans. His cock is still out his pants. The erection is beginning to shrink. Gods it’s disgusting. How could anyone want that inside their body?
I spit down on him, venting my venom.
“Asshole,” I say.
The compulsion to escape Jurong is so strong I’ve hit the door release and I’m in the corridor before thinking of my safety. There’s a body on the floor right outside – one that wasn’t there before. An older male, face down, with a blaster hole the size of a dinner plate burnt out the back. There’s no more time to consider the dead. Which way are the lifepods?
My heart pounding, I choose a direction at random. But it’s the wrong one. After only seconds, at the junction ahead of me, two Slaver troops walk right around the corner. They’re mooching – not even looking for prisoners. Simultaneously we see each other.
The larger of the two men, a dark skinned, unshaven fellow, grins.
“Hello, pretty.”
Without hesitation, I turn the other way, and I run for my life. The adrenaline spike of fear makes it feel like everything happens in slow motion.
Behind me, the men murmur something to each other.
Perhaps they let me hope for a moment, perhaps, because I almost manage to reach the junction. Then something hits me in the back like the punch from a giant fist. I find myself sprawled face first on the floor before I know it. I try to move, but my muscles don’t seem to respond to commands. I can’t even move my eyes. I must just stare at the patterned laminate covering the floor until a Slaver boot fills my view. There is a red dust on it. The ground from Aghara-Penthay. My instinctive urge to get up and run is overwhelming, but I can’t budge an inch.
“Well ain’t you a catch?” a man says to me. “How did you slip past the others?”
I know what’s happened. Blaster weapons, of the type which have just struck me, come with stun and kill settings. Pirate groups long ago found that it was too easy to make mistakes switching between settings, so they adopted a tactic of having raiders work in twos. One man with the kill setting eliminates threats, and those who have no value. The other, with stun, aims at live captures.
I’ve just been stunned. I’m lost now. I’m beautiful, I’m woman, and they called me pretty, so they want me alive.
I feel a hand invade between my legs and my dress sliding up for the second time. I can’t turn to see who’s doing it, but his hand traces his path up my skin with dreadful slowness.
“Gotta check her hidden for weapons,” the Slaver says to his companion, and then, to my shame he calls, “Guess what, Tren? No panties on. We have ourselves a slut.”
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