Slavers of Aghara-Penthay

Slavers of Aghara-Penthay

Olga Anastasia

To my muses – Werner H, Humilator, Brian S: I hope this pleases you. Olga. x

1 – MIA

When an emergency call comes to the university and it’s summoning me to The Fortress, I sink straight into despair. It’s just as I’ve long feared. There is one reason anyone at that place would want to see me, and only one reason for the nightmares. Something has happened to my precious Gara.

Of course they do not tell me that over a public holo-screen. I’m pulled from a lecture and into the privacy of the faculty office to take the call. A junior officer is at the other end of the line. She simply asks: “You’re Lara?” and states: “Please come urgently to The Fortress. Red Duchess needs to see you.”

Red Duchess. Intelligence staff are known by only by code names, so although the woman has a real name, my sister has only ever referred to her commanding officer as “Red Duchess”. And Red Duchess wouldn’t want to see me for any happy reason.

I didn’t want Gara to join the Gaianesian military. It’s dangerous work. As identical twins, we always were particularly close, and selfishly I didn’t want to lose her.

But Gara always was willful, and there is a war on.

So she took up arms for our planet’s cause, her sharp mind and healthy body quickly attracting the attention of the intelligence department. For my part, I grew up more interested in science that matriotism, so when I turned eighteen I only completed the bare minimum mandatory military service, working in engineering on Vengeful Angel, one of the corvettes in our space fleet, before beginning to study astrophysics at Gaianesia’s most prestigious university.

That was two years ago. Gara and I are twenty three, in the calculation of the galactic standard year.

Don’t let her be harmed, I pray.

I feel in my blood that she’s still alive – some twins have a psychic connection and I’d have somehow known if she were dead, but the thread joining us across time and space also tells me that something is terribly wrong.

Gara never talks about her work, but I’ve picked up enough hints know it’s usually offworld, and dangerous. Sometimes she returns home for planet leave with a haunted look in her eyes. When we share the same bed she rolls in her sleep to lie against me, instinctively seeking the reassurance we gain from physical contact. When she’s away on missions, the bad dreams come.

For example, only this morning I woke from a nightmare where a huge dark shape loomed over me, and there was a terrible pain stabbing into my pelvis. I cried out, but the bed was empty and I was alone.

The summons leaves me sick with dread, and imagining all kind of scenarios that might have happened. At the university I gather my books and data-pads and make my way to the shuttle station, ready to make the short flight to the center of Gaianesia’s capital – Solar City.

There are no males attending university, but I see my first drone in the marbled corridor, mopping the floor. He does not look up at me, of course. Drones have their concerns, women have ours.

Inside the rooms of learning we can forget the dangers from space, but by the university’s palatial entrance evidence of the war resumes – a vast flack cannon, half the height of the towering building, with three women in the tight jumpsuits of the gunnery corps killing their hours of sentry duty by playing cards.

It must be a boring job for them – there’s not been a raid for several months, but at least it’s a beautiful warm day outside. In the distance behind them a heavy ship is climbing slowly to orbit – a freighter of some kind – the magnesium-white flare of its gravity drives bright even against the blue sky.

I take out my holo-communicator and try to patch through to Gara, but there is no connection. Not surprising. She never carries it with her when she’s on a mission. Worrying anyway, I continue towards the station.

The shuttle departs from a commercial zone, located a short walk from the university gates. There are more drone-males serving here – males working in the convenience stores; cleaning; selling tickets at the shuttle port. All tasks that suit their abilities and fulfill their lives. As with all the drones, the men look at me with expressions that are polite, but do not show sexual interest.

I purchase my ticket and can turn my thoughts back to Gara. Please be okay, Gara! Just this once, let my twin sense be wrong and let the terrible dreams be a coincidence.

I catch a sight of my reflection in the marble façade of a building. My perfectly symmetrical features show my anxiety. It is often claimed that Gara, like me, is an exceptionally beautiful female, but neither she nor I give our looks much consideration. Such matters are only a matter of great pride to our mother. Three years ago mother secretly sent an application form in our names to Miss Gaianesia, and the first thing we knew about it was when we were contacted to appear on the show. We declined of course. I don’t know what she was thinking. It would hardly do for Gara to have such publicity. Although the current White Queen may once have been a Miss Gaianesia, that was before she joined the struggle.

I pause to stare at my face. While our looks are unimportant, if she’s been scarred it would be a pity. I don’t sense that’s the case – it doesn’t match the nightmares – but some injury to her lower body would explain the repeating phantom pelvic pains.

The shuttle port is busy – a buzz of bright and bubbly student women chatting, and also diligent drone-males about their tasks. Seeing life continue as normal eases my fears a little. I note with satisfaction that the fashion for women growing their hair is continuing to spread. Defying the inherent risks, more than half the student girls around me have rejected the safer and more practical buzz-cut that is typical in older generation of Gaianesian women, i.e. they who served during less successful years at the battle front. I take it as a good sign – that in spite of the constant threats from our nearest planetary neighbors on Harka-Ringworld, and the danger to a Gaianesian female in having long hair, these girls feel secure enough to adopt the galactic fashion of the human women.

I too am prone to the same vanities as my comrades. Gara and I wear our hair particularly long, our glossy dark brunette color prized among Gaianesians as much as it is among the humans. We don’t just do it for the appearance – I like the sensation of feeling the perfectly straight strands brush against the curves of my buttocks when I’m nude.

In the years when we were still a family, Gara and I could spend hours doing nothing but brushing each other’s hair, enjoying the euphoric calm this would produce with its warm tingling at the most intimate place between our legs – a tingling that told us we were ending our time as children and we had become women.

That was until our mother discovered us in the act, and forbad us participating in such demeaning behavior. Red-faced with fury, she lectured that Gaianesian women had not fought so hard for freedom from our own males and the Harkens for us to start acting like slaves.

Mother… I smile sadly as I think of her. Gara was always her favorite, even though the two of us are so similar. It’s perhaps a mercy that the ship carrying my mother on a routine mission to Calico was vaporized – an instant of freakish bad luck manifested as friendly fire from our own ground defenses. If mother were alive today she’d have been distraught by… well… whatever is going on with Gara.

Gara, I silently shout to the blue sky. Where are you? Not knowing is the worst part.

I pass a giant screen above the concourse carrying live news feeds from across the galaxy. They would be unlikely to publish news relevant to an intelligence operative, but I glance at the board anyway. Nothing there about space disasters, or battles with the Harkens or Aghara-Penthay. The news is still dominated by the political scandal raging between our leader President Dolan, and the male rights campaigner Ilona Minani.

Ilona’s party believe we should stop dosing the drones and let them take a place in society as do human males. That is not scandalous in itself – equality campaigners have agitated since the first White Queen. What’s filling the tabloids is President Dolan’s allegation that Ilona has gone further than that, and indulged in the most shameful act possible from a woman in our society – sexual submission to a male.

Ilona spent two years on the vice planet of Merlon – a world controlled by cartels where just about everything was for sale, so she certainly would have been in the presence of non-pacified men. And the young are often attracted to experiment with the taboo. But I don’t believe there is more. Claims of submission in politics are almost as old as our liberation. However, if President Dolan does prove her allegations Ilona will be ruined. Female submission is a rejection of everything our society stands for, and submissives are rightly ostracized.

Just before boarding the shuttle I pass the familiar bronze statue of that very first White Queen – Listu Adorin, she who liberated Gaianesia and began the program to turn us into the peaceful world we have today.

Every citizen of the planet recognizes her image and we all learn about her life. I mean – she even features in the university logo. I’m not usually interested in ancient history, and haven’t given her much thought since mandatory education as a child, but today I’m seeking anything that keeps me from worrying about Gara. For all the duration of the short flight, I test my memory of the facts from our distant past, and silently I whisper the names of those famous heroines as though they’re a mantra that can somehow protect me.

2- Gaianesia 101

No one knows whether our species originated from Gaianesia or near-neighbors Harka-Ringworld, as there is evidence of civilization stretching back for millions of years on both.

Gaianesians can see further into the infrared spectrum than the Harkens and the humans, but we are all close enough to being genetically identical that we can interbreed with either lifeform. We look almost identical to humans, except for our species has a brown mottled pattern like a tire track which runs across our foreheads, just below the hairline. Our irises also come in different colors to human ones, and range from red through pink to the shade considered most desirable – a deep purple hue that in females makes the eyes look large and reminds others of The Reflex’s color.

There is speculation we and the Harkens were once human – our world seeded by their ancients long lost to history. That will probably always be a subject of academic debate, however one topic both habitable planets in our system do agree on is that fifty thousand years ago – no time at all in evolutionary terms – a solar flare caused the same mutation in the two worlds, triggering devastating social consequences for both.

A minor alteration in the Y chromosome meant that from that point forward, four out of five births in our species were male. We were at the time reaching the early stages of technology and industrialization, but the mutation plunged both worlds back to anarchy as competition to breed with desirable females became ferocious. Rape was so common it was the most likely cause of death in a woman.

On our neighbor Harka-Ringworld, after several thousand years in that dark era of chaos, a patriarchal society emerged where women were protected, but only by a status change where females became chattels of male houses. The highest ranking Harken men were joined by marriage to suitable females, and lower ranking Harkens were denied completely, or were forced to relieve physical desires with prostitutes or slaves.

Warring was constant between the feudal Harken states, with female captives being the most sought after prize. However the species survived, and gradually progressed into a hierarchical society with each state’s native men at the top, then citizen women who at least had certain freedoms within the restrictions of their house, and then slave women captured from other states and used for breeding, and captive males at the bottom.

War and masculinity became ingrained over thousands of years into the cornerstones of Harken culture and they remain so today, with the only change being that Harken bloodlust has spilled over into local space.

After the solar flare Gaianesia descended into a similar era of millennia in anarchy and mass rape. Until that is during the fourth millennia after the flare, when some women banded together into a large enough group to protect themselves, and then they co-operated to make rapid technological advances.

Their solution to the planet’s problems was brutal, at first. Spiking the planet’s water supplies on a vast scale with a cocktail of hormones and chemicals, they turned the violent animalistic males into the docile, submissive and sexually inert drones we see today.

Our leader’s name back then – Listu Adorin.

Once the lust of our masculine population was safely under control, a few males with high intelligence and physical strength were permitted to live without drugs and be used for breeding purposes, sustaining new generations and ensuring the high quality of Gaianesian offspring.

Meanwhile Listu’s regime began an indoctrination campaign with the pacified males, counselling them on their correct place in society as servants to the dominant and superior females. There was resistance of course, but brutal times demanded brutal solutions and Listu prevailed.

Within a couple of generations of men being educated from birth to understand their natural place in the order, they too began to see that peace resulted from our two tier social system. From then on men co-operated to fight wholeheartedly for the women they viewed as superior enough to be almost divine. We were creatures to be revered, instead of desirable objects to be subjugated and possessed.

For generations now, our drone males are trusted to staff our nurseries and teach each new generation. It is thus ingrained as unthinkable for them to harm us, and unthinkable for us women to wish ill against those who raised us. We exist in perfect harmony.

All trace of the dark terrors of the rapacious past are forgotten by our planet’s women, except for the additional genetic consequence of The Reflex that makes us so desirable to the Slavers of Aghara-Penthay. But there’s no need to reflect on that shameful secret.

Once stable governments were established, the relative peace our two planets – Gaianesia and Harka-Ringworld, continued on their separate paths. A scarcity of certain natural resources meant that although we were aware of each other and communications had been open for centuries, we were late getting into space and meeting face to face. Even today a lack of metals means most of Gaianesia’s buildings are usually made of wood and stone, giving the cities a classical look that tourists consider quaint.

Interstellar travel had to find our worlds, rather than us reaching out, as neither planet contains a source of the trimium crystals used to power gravity hyperdrives.

But inevitably the frontier of civilized space expanded passed us, bringing contact from the young Republic, as well as encounters with the less pleasant inhabitants of the galaxy. Fifteen light years away on Aghara-Penthay, unfortunately one of our next-nearest neighbors outside the home system, a particularly cruel group of pirates had settled on a planet which was habitable but devoid of intelligent life, and therefore ideal to use as their base of operations. There was nowhere for captives on Aghara-Penthay to run, when the only way back into space was through the masters.

Gaianesia and Harka-Ringworld had existed in harmony for millennia, but once we joined the galactic community that all changed.

The commencement of trouble wasn’t even because of the uncontrollable cravings of Harken males for women. Yes, they made some half-hearted attempt to take us as captives, but we were the technologically superior, and raids by Harkens on Gaianesia were infrequent and usually rebuffed. Besides, rather than plunder women from ourselves or other Harken states, there was an easier solution for Harka-Ringworld – human females could be purchased by the thousands from that vile neighbor I just mentioned – the slave trader’s world of Aghara-Penthay.

No, slavery wasn’t the issue. For us, the weak and sexually-fixated wills of Harken males is actually a good thing. We appreciate that while our controlled and selective breeding makes Gaianesian women strong, with tall, toned bodies resembling the finest female athletes in the galaxy, the Harkens dilute their gene pool with human pussy. If human women are too frail to keep out of slave chains it’s their outlook.

The problems began with exploration of the third planet in our system – rocky Calico with its toxic atmosphere of methane and carbon dioxide. Sitting on an orbit almost exactly halfway between ours and the elliptical path of Harka-Ringworld was one of the largest sources of trimium crystals in the galaxy. As soon as the minerals were discovered both worlds made immediate territorial claims on Calico, and despite there being more than enough bounty for both, the dispute quickly became violent.

And violent it has continued, for six centuries now – a barely moving battle front concealed beneath Calico’s stormy surface, which divides the world approximately in half. War is waged unendingly through underground tunnels, with armies departing from vast underground cities built to equip the mines. We are fighting to kill our enemy, whereas the Harkens once more trying to capture as many of our women alive as possible, where they can be returned to Harka-Ringworld to serve as breeders in one of the houses.

That’s what I fear most for Gara. A prisoner on Calico, or undercover on Harka-Ringworld itself. Enduring a non-drone man’s lustful hands on her body, and The Reflex, and then Gara pregnant with a Harken child. Gaianesians say that death is better than captivity, but faced with that possibility when it’s my own sister, I can’t accept that so easily. Is death worse than being debased to the level of a slave, too shamed to live down her submission if she did make it home? She would be ostracized, but she’d be alive.

I still don’t have an answer when after disembarking the shuttle, I half-run across the broad plazas towards The Fortress. Please, please, don’t let it be either of those. Let her be wounded, in her pelvis to explain my nightmares, but nothing that can’t be fixed by a bacta tank to bring my Gara home safe and intact. If there are gods, please hear me.

3 – Duchess

The vast concrete complex of The Fortress is the center of Gaianesia’s defense and intelligence operations, so security at the entrance is tight.

Although any Gaianesian woman can be trusted, and we can all be recognized by the distinctive markings on the skin of our heads and shoulders that make us distinguishable from human females, unfortunately many of the Harkens look just like we do. Female Harken agents have been known to try and infiltrate the building – traitors to their own sex who believe in the Harken ideology of masculine supremacy.

Of course males are not permitted within The Fortress. Not even to complete the menial jobs.

At the closely guarded control gates I ask for Red Duchess, and present the palm of my hand for yet another DNA verification of my identity. There is a painful reminder of why I’m here when the scanner incorrectly recognizes me as Gara, and I have to explain myself to the guards.

Once inside, the narrow corridors feel claustrophobic – the same sense one gets being underground with a vast weight of rock above. The walls are thick enough to withstand the most powerful of blaster weapons.

A junior recruit – probably a girl on her mandatory service lucky enough to avoid the battle front, escorts me through the bustling building.

The door of Red Duchess’ office is ajar. I’m about to walk in when I hear the sound of an argument is raging inside. I automatically pause, waiting for a polite moment to interrupt. My escort, similarly uncertain what to do, also hesitates, and we can’t avoid hearing the conversation as follows:

“It goes against everything we stand for, to deliberately send someone there,” Red Duchess is telling someone. “You know what they do with Gaianesian women.”

My escort looks anxiously at me. As a conscript she’ll get in the most trouble for eavesdropping on state secrets.

Red Duchess is just inside that room. I’ve only met my sister’s commander once, at a social occasion to celebrate a breeding, but Red Duchess comes from a rural region in the far north of Gaianesia and I recognize her distinctive accent. She was a naturally imposing leader, as are all those who reach Duchess rank, and I found her a little intimidating. But the other woman inside the office interrupts impatiently as though lecturing a subordinate.

“What other choice do we have? We desperately need those plans and we have two incredible strokes of luck with Gara having a genetically identical twin, and Riyena still being on the Hub.”

I’m too surprised at the sound of the other speaker’s voice even to react at first to hearing my sister’s name. For the speaker is no other than the woman who runs the whole military operations on our planet – White Queen. The current White Queen enjoys the status of a celebrity on Gaianesia, for when she first took over the battle on Calico she won more territory in two years than her predecessor did in the last two decades. Things have deteriorated rapidly there over the past six months though, with ominously high losses of women to the Harkens. All the same she’s still a legendary commander – possibly as great as Listu Adorin.

And White Queen is in that office discussing my sister? I didn’t even know she was back on Gaianesia. What could Red Duchess, or Gara, have been doing that was so important that White Queen is personally involved?

Red Duchess is not awestruck like I am by the living legend.

“I don’t care,” she retorts rudely. “I’d rather lose a thousand lives to the Harkens than deliberately send one of our people where Gara’s gone.”

“You’d rather lose a thousand, but I think we should offer Lara that choice, don’t you?”

Did I just hear that? White Queen just said “Lara”. Why would the great White Queen know my name?

“I disagree,” barks Red Duchess. “Lara shouldn’t choose. She doesn’t have enough experience to understand what she’d be volunteering for. Look at her file. Just look! She’s had nothing but basic fleet training. It doesn’t look like during her service she ever left the corvette and set foot on another world. I’m not sure she’s even been to the trading enclave. Does she have the first idea what non-Gaianesian males are capable of? Especially around a female that looks like she does.”

Of course I do, well, in theory anyway. But that logic is forgotten as I’m gifted the opportunity to replace worry with anger. They’ve started talking about me as though as I’m a child, and I won’t stand for it. I have the same willful spirit as Gara, and hearing them be so condescending spurs me to action.

I knock firmly on the doorframe, boldness that makes my escort go wide-eyed with horror. Leaving her to flee down the corridor, I walk into the large, elegantly furnished room, and confidently greet the two women inside.

Red Duchess is familiar to me – a short, slender woman whose motherly appearance belies her tough manner. Even though she’s only her early forties her skin has bronzed from years of sun to a texture like a walnut. Her markings are beginning to fade. Things are safe enough for women here on Gaianesia, but she still chooses to wear her hair short – a tribute to our ancestors or a sign of readiness for battle. Red Duchess’ expression is strong but there’s kindness there also. Here is someone who cares for her people.

The other woman looks colder, ruthless. White Queen is in her sixties, or perhaps even seventies. She was considered to be the most beautiful woman on Gaianesia in her youth, and her face is still striking. However the markings around her head show greater age, having faded from the chocolate brown color that advertises a Gaianesian woman as young and fertile, to the pale ivory of a female well past her childbearing years. Her hair turned silver many years ago, but she wears it as long as I have mine.

Both are dressed in the ankle-length, loose fitting robes that conceal the figure – typical of fashions in older Gaianesian women. Notable on White Queen is the bandage she always has wrapped around her right wrist – a proud but disfiguring scar rumored to have been a wound suffered undercover on Harka-Ringworld itself.

The women have stopped talking to inspecting me as I inspect them. I’m spoiling for an argument to discharge more of the fear and emotion I’m feeling about my sister, but Red Duchess has an expression of sympathy that reminds me of my mother, and seeing this makes me crumble.

“Please,” I say in an anguished voice. “Just tell me, where is Gara?”

The two women look at each other as though trying to decide if I can handle bad news.

“Please,” I say again, and Red Duchess finally speaks. Only with a question, though.

“Did Gara tell you much about her work?”

“No. Only that she was keeping us safe from the Harkens.”

Red Duchess nods.

“Then what I am about to tell you is most secret, and I hope we can rely on your utmost discretion.” Red Duchess states firmly.

“Oh, just tell her,” White Queen interrupts angrily with a dismissive wave of her hand. “This is Gara’s sister. Of course she’s not going to blab to our enemies.”

“Let me do it my way,” Red Duchess snaps. “I’m getting there.”

Both sigh almost simultaneously, and frown at each other. I’d always assumed military intelligence would work in harmony towards united goals, but these women don’t seem to like each other.

Once Red Duchess convinced White Queen isn’t going to interrupt she begins.

“Gara was handler for our most important agent on Harka-Ringworld. Her name is Riyena Erkeegan, and unusually for a Harken female she’s a high ranking member of their military. Riyena disagrees with some of the restrictions of Harken society. Specifically – she’s a lesbian.”

My eyes widen. A Harken lesbian? Well that explains why she’d betray her homeworld. The Harken perception is that relations between two women are seen as a waste of precious female breeding flesh, and thus are strictly forbidden on Harka-Ringworld.

“One of our moles on Harka-Ringworld first passed on the rumor that Riyena Erkeegan might be a lesbian. So we tested it, arranging that your sister (who you must admit, like you, is an exceptional beauty), would cross her path at the weapons exhibition on Mordlin Four and pose as an equipment buyer.”

I wave the compliment to my looks aside dismissively. It does not matter.

“Gara seduced her, in the usual manner of these things. We arranged for the women to come across each other a second time, and a third. Unusually for a Harken female Riyena travelled frequently offworld. The two women became intimate. Riyena fell in love with Gara, and became convinced that Gara loved her back. As the relationship became established Riyena wanted the two of them to be able to live together openly, so she began to ask about claiming sanctuary on Gaianesia. At the appropriate moment Gara revealed that she was, in fact an intelligence agent.”

It sounds like the stuff of spy thrillers. But my sister – the lover to a Harken female? Surely she felt no true affection? However, if that was the case, then it means Gara give away her intimacies for material gain instead of love.

“The relationship could have fallen apart at that point, but the couple were too close for Riyena to be deterred. Quite the opposite happened. When she learned the truth, what she offered in exchange for protection was beyond our wildest dreams. Riyena said she could access an almost complete download of the Harken military operations on Calico and give them to us, simply in exchange for a new home on Gaianesia. We’re talking technical drawings of equipment, maps, military personnel files, strategy documents… Everything. Most precious of all – designs for the new Harken stun weapon that’s recently started wreaking havoc up there on Calico. It’s being kept secret by the press, and you must not reveal this either Lara, but in a matter of weeks we’ve lost a third of our territory, and stunned Gaianesian soldiers are all taken captive. It’s a catastrophe.”

The thought makes me cold. How many women, taken into the Harken breeding program? It doesn’t bear thinking about. And might be Gara one of them? Is that where Gara is?

I must concentrate on something else or lose my mind. And even with my limited knowledge of covert operations I latch onto something – a problem in what Red Duchess is saying.

“But even if she could download the plans, how could this… Riyena… ever be allowed to leave Harken space carrying the information?”

Red Duchess nods approvingly, as though I passed a test.

“You’re quite right, Lara. Of course Harka-Ringworld and Calico are highly militarized and on permanent lockdown, so Riyena couldn’t just fly out carrying a data file unless it was hidden, copied onto a chip and implanted into her flesh.”

That still seems unlikely to succeed.

“But the Harkens scan for implants, just like we do…” I continue.

Red Duchess nods again.

“Yes, Harken security do scan departing citizens for implants. Riyena herself proposed the solution – something that seemed cleverly simple at the time – that her chip would configured to remain entirely inert and therefore invisible, unless it was triggered by the presence of your sister’s DNA. A physical touch between the two women would be all that was needed, but without that the chip would simply seem redundant, obsolete. Only in a safe situation when they were together could the upload take place to a device in Gara’s custody. If anything went wrong, both women could deny everything, avoid body contact and no-one’s cover would be blown.”

“I suppose Riyena mainly saw her plan as a way to guarantee your sister’s continued participation, but it had tactical merit. Everything was agreed and set in motion. The first part of the operation went entirely according to plan and Riyena left Harken territory.”

“Of course with the war raging, there is little contact between our worlds. Riyena could not simply take a shuttle directly from Harka-Ringworld to Gaianesia. The shortest civilian connection between is from Harka to travel to the deep space trading outpost of Escarod, and from there back to Gaianesia. And so it went. Riyena caught a commercial shuttle to Escarod, under the pretext to her superiors of a few days leave, made the rendezvous there with Gara, and the two women caught a ride on an inconsequential merchant vessel carrying metals bound for Gaianesia – the Irulin Darkstar. Just when success seemed certain the worst happened. I’m sorry to tell you Lara, but that freighter never arrived here.”

I feel as though something inside me is preparing to explode. Here it comes.

“Dead?” I ask in a high, panicked voice. “Some kind of accident?”

No. She can’t be dead. Terribly injured, her pelvis ruined? The dreams…

“Worse.” Red Duchess says bluntly. “The freighter was attacked by pirates and captured.”

“Not pirates…” I plead. I don’t want to hear more now, but she presses on inexorably.

“Raiders from Aghara-Penthay.”

When I hear the name of our dreaded neighbor it’s as though someone has cut my legs from under me. My vision blurs and the world becomes unreal. With my head spinning it’s difficult to stay on my feet. A woman’s hand goes to my elbow, supporting me.

“Gara taken by men from the rapists’ planet?” I moan. “Gods no…”

Tears have already started trickling down my cheeks. I can’t keep my voice steady as, unsure which answer I want to hear, I ask my next question.

“Are they alive?”

“We’re only certain that Riyena survived. But your sister is exactly the kind of female the Slavers most prize. If they could have done, they would have taken her.”

“My Gara? Captured for a sex slave? She’d never allow it!”

I’m not sure which is worse. The possibility that Gara might be dead, or the chance that rather than fight to the end she might let herself be debased and degraded, a plaything to those monsters. Human women are weak, but not Gara. She’d know her career, her life, her chance of breeding would be over if she were made slave.

But then how do I explain the dreams? The stabbing pain… Could that have been? A man…? Not wounded… Oh Gods, no! Don’t let me imagine her like that. No! I must say something, anything. Grasping for a question I blurt out:

“Riyena. How do you know they have Riyena? How do you know they have any of them? Maybe they all perished.”

Silently Red Duchess hands me a data pad. Through the blur of my free-flowing tears I look down at the screen to see it shows an advertisement.

The woman in the image I do not recognize. She’s a youthful brunette with the pale skin and mottling typical of our two species. On the side of her face, overwriting the creamy silk of pale skin and brown mottling is a swirling mark like a tattoo. I know enough of Aghara-Penthay to recognize it – the slave mark that the Slavers permanently tattoo on all their captive women, as a sign of quality.

She’s pretty, although in my biased view not as attractive as Gara. The woman’s breasts are small, and her hips are not so wide in proportion to her waist. Her vulva is entirely hairless. Its pale pink lips are fat and rounded, almost submerging the vertical slit.

She’s less strongly built than the females on our world. A Harken woman.

This female is stark naked, which is does not shock me. Gaianesian women are comfortable being nude in front of each other. What makes me gasp is her pose, to see a woman with the markings of our species on her knees and holding her thighs open, as though she needs to humbly plead for sexual attention. A sex traitor! A whore!

That’s why my first reaction to the picture is, “And this submissive thing thought my sister was good enough for her?”

“Don’t judge her too harshly,” Red Duchess says firmly. “The Slavers of Aghara-Penthay implant a microchip into the brainstem of captive women. It disrupts the signals relating to willpower, meaning an implanted female is compelled to follow orders, as long as the order is given by a man. They only had to ask her to pose that way and she would have obeyed.”

I’ve heard that before, but my beliefs are too ingrained to accept that some part of her nature must have already been inclined to submission. Otherwise how could a woman look so unashamed, displaying her sex like that?

I’m looking at a female debasing herself to please men… Possession of this image could get someone into trouble on Gaianesia. I would throw the revolting filth away in disgust, were I not obliged to pay attention to the writing, which is the common galactic script.

“Riyena, 25, from Harka-Ringworld,” I say aloud. “Fifty credits for a session, slave also for permanent sale by auction galactic date 10:13:4452. Enquires to the Palace of Roses, Mezzanine Level, Aghara-Penthay Orbital Trading Station.”

A footnote adds, “Bring your own slave. See her abused as the plaything of this woman hater.”

“Woman hater?” I ask. “I thought you said Riyena was a lesbian. Gara would never be intimate with a misogynist.”

“The brain implants can do more than force women to obey” White Queen explains. “They can change the woman’s personality, sexuality, anything they want. With lesbian females they often enjoy turning them sadistic towards their own sex, a trick they also like to do with women from female dominated societies such as ours.”

What kind of animal would want to do that – alter a woman’s very identity? I feel faint with horror. And I’m more disgusted these women think my sister would tolerate such treatment.

“You actually believe they did this to Gara as well?” I say, outraged. “Surely not! She’d take her own life rather than do anything the Slavers wanted.”

“We don’t know,” says Red Duchess in a placatory tone. “We don’t know about anyone else on that ship. There were twenty on board, mostly humans, and Riyena is the only one about whom we have any information. I’m sure your sister will have resisted to the last during the pirate attack, and she may no longer be alive. But it’s possible she was stunned and taken alive, and is being processed somewhere on the surface of Aghara-Penthay. It’s also possible she’s already been sold and is somewhere else. There’s even a chance she’s on the trading station orbiting the planet. The Slavers like to market women with a backstory, a connection, so they would see a value in keeping Gara close to Riyena.”

Red Duchess pauses, giving me that breaking-bad-news face again.

“All we can do is tell you your sister is Missing in Action at the moment.”

But I can see from the other woman’s condescending expression that White Queen clearly believes Gara was weak enough to let herself be captured.

“If your sister was selected for auction, they’d advertise it on the usual galactic slave trading networks and we’re monitoring those channels,” White Queen says bluntly, “but Gara might have been retained without auction, or sold privately, or any number of fates where which case we wouldn’t find out about it. The best chance to find about her fate, and about the plans, is to send someone to the Slavers’ orbital station to ask Riyena in person.”

I laugh scathingly at the impossibility of doing that. There’s an obvious problem with a Gaianesian going to that den of scum. On Slaver territory, women do not have the same rights as men. Any female around Aghara-Penthay is automatically a slave in the eyes of their laws. And slaves must have owners. Unpacified male owners.

Unescorted females are captured instantly and taken to the planet’s surface for processing by the Slavers. Not even male offworlders can reach the planet itself – outsiders can only visit the orbital Hub. The only people allowed down to the arid surface are male pirates working in the four Slaver factions, and their female property.

As for the Hub where Riyena is being held, it is one of the most popular tourist destinations for male visitors, flooded as it is with cheaply available sex. Females occasionally visit as well, but still have to comply with their laws. Women on the Hub need a male owner. Visiting slaves who are not the property of Aghara-Penthay are still obliged to be identified against their owners, this being done by bracelets locked on the wrist or ankle which carry registration information.

But this is all aside. Even if a Gaianesian woman would submit to the deep degradation of accepting a male as her owner, she couldn’t visit the Hub. There’s yet another problem. Aghara-Penthay hates Gaianesia almost as much as they do the Sadami women. A Gaianesian female, detected via a DNA scan during her registration for the slave bracelet, would be instantly seized and become the property of Aghara-Penthay.

“You have a male agent willing to travel to the trading station?” I ask Red Duchess. “A human?”

“We have allies,” White Queen answers for her evasively, “and no doubt it wouldn’t take much persuasion for an unpacified human male to travel on one of the tourist shuttles on our behalf and make an appointment at the Palace of Roses. But that would only get us news about your sister. A male agent wouldn’t be able to activate Riyena’s chip and upload the plans we desperately need to survive the Harken war. Only Gara can do that, or at least someone who the implant believes is Gara.”

Before I can consider what she’s just said Red Duchess interrupts, speaking critically to White Queen.

“I must restate for Lara’s sake that I’m entirely against this idea. By everything Gaianesia stands for, what you’re suggesting is wrong.”

“What idea?” I ask, but there’s no need for them to answer for White Duchess’s “someone who the implant believes is Gara” just caught up with me and I finally understand the implications of why I’ve been summoned to the Fortress.

I’ve felt faint since learning Gara might be on Aghara-Penthay, and now the horror of it all, the terror of what I’m being asked to do becomes too much, and this time consciousness does desert me.

4 – Mission

“See? She’s not as strong as her sister,” Red Queen is protesting from somewhere close by.

“She’s tough enough,” disagrees White Queen. “It’s in her genes, remember. We’ll cheat the DNA scanner with a skin graft so the Slavers don’t detect her species, and we’ll mask her markings. She’ll be on and off the Hub in a matter of hours. After that, apart from the trauma of the experience and being stuck with the damned bracelet, there will be no permanent effect. ”

Reality comes crashing back in on me. White Queen’s plan is that I, I, should go to the Hub orbiting Aghara-Penthay. I wish I could lose consciousness again. I wish I could rewind and forget all this. But I’m here, this is real, and Gara might have been taken by the Slavers.

Reluctantly I open my eyes. I’m lying on a low couch I’d seen at the side of Red Duchess’ office. The two women are sat close by, posed as demurely as statues. but having resumed the earlier argument.

“If she agrees,” Red Duchess is countering. “And Gaianesian beliefs are too ingrained in her to do that. She’s a model citizen.”

Rather than adding to my earlier eavesdropping, I push myself up from the couch, propping my torso with one arm. Once they see I’m awake, I go straight to the attack.

“Aghara-Penthay. You didn’t just bring me here to give me bad news. You want me to go to Aghara-Penthay for you, don’t you?” It is White Queen of whom I ask this, and I do so accusingly.

Before she can answer I expand on what that would mean. “You want me to shame myself. You want me to bow down and follow the orders of those men, as though I’m as weak willed as a human female. Not even the women locked in the prison for submissives would debase themselves enough to enter that place, but you expect me to go?”

I’m angry, and this seems to amuse Red Duchess.

“I told you that’s what she’d say,” she informs White Queen with a wry smile.

White Queen frowns wearily and rubs her brow.

“In intelligence sometimes we have to set aside personal dignity for the good of Gaianesia.”

“The good of Gaianesia?” I almost spit. “At least you have the decency to admit that’s what this is about. Only Gaianesia. You don’t care about rescuing Gara. You just want me to go to Aghara-Penthay to recover those plans.”

She closes her eyes in acknowledgement.

“We’re losing, Lara,” she says. “Losing worse than you know from the media. And it’s not just about territory on Calico. Their new blaster technology might weaken the defense grid and there might be raids here on Gaianesia, soon. I respect your sister, but we can’t give up just because one brave woman is lost. So yes, those plans are more important than any one of us.”

“Our culture is founded on the natural dominance of females,” I restate, as though she needs reminding. “We shun those who submit to men. And you’re asking me to willingly walk into slavery? What happens when I come home, if word gets out I went there?”

“Again, the circumstances are extraordinary enough to ask you to take the risk,” White Queen says. “But I still wouldn’t send you if I thought you might be going into permanent captivity. You would simply mimic the tourist groups of human traitor women, who travel to Aghara-Penthay to temporarily experience debasing themselves. For a suitable fee your male escort” (I notice at that point how she slyly avoids the words “master” or “owner) “would take you to the brothel where Riyena is enslaved. You’d touch the girl, uploading the information to a receiver we’d implant into your own skin. You could ask where your sister is. In under an hour you’d be back on his ship, and you could remain in your cabin for the rest of the voyage.”

She looks at me earnestly.

“We ask you to endure one hour of humiliation that you’ll be able to put behind you, Lara, in exchange for answers about your sister and saving your homeworld.”

“But it’s not ever going to be entirely behind me, is it?” I accuse. “You’re conveniently forgetting that the wrist bracelets of visiting slaves can’t ever be removed. There’s a toxin injector inside the bracelet that detects tampering. What will I say when my friends and family see me wearing one of those things?”

“The situation isn’t perfect,” White Queen sighs. “But it’s our only chance to recover the plans.”

“Not perfect?” I splutter. “I’ll have to put myself in the power of a non-passive male. Walk with someone who’s controlled by his cock, while I’m wearing next to nothing, right into Aghara-Penthay, and then ask if he’ll be kind enough to take me to be in the power of a sadistic lesbian and hope he leaves me alone. Even supposing he co-operates what happens when Riyena sees me? She’ll think I’m Gara, and she’s bound to raise the alarm.”

Red Duchess nods emphatic agreement with me, but again White Queen has an answer.

“You can make sure your escort is instructed to ask for a private audience in a soundproof room,” she says smoothly. “They’re common in the brothels that specialize in sadomasochism and torture.”

(I shudder at the mention of sadomasochism and torture)

“Listen to me Lara, you can easily have your man command her not to shout or make a fuss. Her slave implant will compel her to obey him.”

I have objection after objection.

“I can’t go there,” I insist. “They enslave Gaianesian women on sight. They’ll see the marks of our species. And the DNA scan will reveal it.”

“Simple invisible skin patches around your wrists will fool the scanners in the bracelet, Lara. And we can give you an injection that will fade your markings for a couple of days. You’ll look just like a human woman.”

“But what about Gara?” I demand. “Even if I find out where she is, this mission isn’t going to save her.”

“We can’t guarantee anything there,” White Queen says, “But sometimes Gaianesian women come up for sale in the auctions. If this happens with your sister, as a reward for your cooperation a male agent will be instructed to buy her.”

My breath catches in my throat. An inviolate law on Gaianesia is that we never pay ransoms for captured women. Many of our people hold the view that a woman weak enough to fall doesn’t deserve anything else. But it’s mainly because once we gave in to one ransom, the demands would never stop.

“You’d give money to the Slavers of Aghara-Penthay?” I say in shock. “For Gara?”

The scandal of Ilona Minani being a submissive would be nothing compared to the outrage if word leaked out that the government paid even a credit to Aghara-Penthay. Just suggesting the idea could ruin White Queen’s career.

“To save your sister, yes,” White Queen says bluntly. “But you have to help us first.”

I clench my fists indecisively. Gara… If only you were here to advise me. What am I supposed to do?

“I won’t let you talk her into this…” Red Duchess cuts in taking advantage of my hesitation. “It’s all very well for you to send her there to suffer these indignities for you, but the two of you don’t know the first thing about real men.”

“And you do?” White Queen looks amused.

“Even private slaves find the Hub an ordeal. Men know they can act with impunity on Slaver territory. Lara’s going to be molested from the moment she sets foot on that station until the moment she leaves. She’ll be lucky if she’s not raped by her owner. What happens if he decides to keep her, or sell her to them? It happens sometimes, even with the more reputable tourist escorts.”

I take offense to that.

“I’m strong. No one is raping me.”

But my reply only seems to fuel Red Duchess’ patronizing attitude.

“See? Proof she doesn’t know what she’s getting into. Lara, you’re exceptionally beautiful to human eyes, which means to the men of Aghara-Penthay you’re Grade-A slave material. Understand me, Lara, that valuable as you are as a citizen of Gaianesia, to the scum on Aghara-Penthay you might be worth more. Over fifty thousand credits as a sex slave.”

I look down at myself. Yes, I’m tall; I’m slim with a narrow waist and wide hips; I’m athletic and toned like most Gaianesian women; and from my mother I inherited the exceptionally large breasts that unpacified males are supposed to desire. But really – it’s nothing but a body. Fifty thousand credits just for this? That’s more than I earn in five years.

While I look disbelieving Red Duchess rounds on White Queen.

“I won’t have it,” she insists. “You can’t sit here safe on Gaianesia and send Lara as a sacrifice to do something you wouldn’t do yourself.”

No-one likes accusations of cowardice and color rises in White Queen’s face and I think for a moment she’s going to explode.

“I’m not sending her to do something I wouldn’t do myself.”

“Ha!” snaps Red Duchess. “Easy for you to say.”

“Is that how little you think of me? Right…” White Queen snaps, and haughtily she reaches down to the cream bandage around her right wrist. Wordlessly she pulls back the elastic band of fabric, exposing the pale wrinkled skin of an elderly woman underneath.

I’ve heard many of the stories of White Queen’s valor for Gaianesia. She was badly injured on Calico at the battle of Abraxas Wells and still walks with a limp.

Her bandage is rumored to cover up scarring from an undercover operation on Harka-Ringworld itself. But the skin of her forearm and hand are entirely unharmed.

Instead, tightly encircling the bone of her arm, just above the joint of her wrist where most citizens might wear a watch, is a slave bracelet of Aghara-Penthay.

5 – Decision

Red Duchess gasps at the same time as I do. So she didn’t know either.

“A slave bracelet…” she says in absolute shock. “That didn’t come from Harka-Ringworld. You went to the Hub, all those years ago.”

Twice White Queen has put her reputation in our hands. Saying she’d pay the Slavers to buy Gara, and now this. A braceleted female can’t be White Queen. It doesn’t matter if she earned it in the service of our planet. She would have behaved like a submissive while they locked it on her, and if a woman is capable of submitting once she always will be.

We’ve seen what we needed to see, and White Queen is already testily pulling the bandage back over her forearm to conceal the proof of shame.

Red Duchess is almost as astounded as I am.

“Why could you have possibly needed to go there?” she asks.

White Queen frowns as though she has a bad taste in her mouth.

“The protection on Aghara-Penthay is designed to keep large enemy warships away, and trap slaves in. But the security is less rigorous in preventing individuals infiltrating and reach the surface. Someone had the idea that if we could get a team of heavily armed agents in one-by-one via the Hub, they could steal a shuttle and make a stand for women, by disrupting the Rape Run. Of course, it would be a one-way trip, and they’d have had to kill themselves before being captured and turned into sex slaves themselves. But for once, the men would have been defeated by the women.”

“It needed someone who knew the mission concept to recon the Trading Hub. I volunteered, even though I knew I’d end up wearing the bracelet as a consequence.”

We’re looking at her open-mouthed, and White Queen looks uncomfortable for the first time I’ve seen. Maybe that’s why she keeps talking.

“Gaianesian women were taken on sight by the Slavers even back then, but as I’ve already proposed for your journey, our skull markings can be hidden and the sensor in the registration bracelet only scans the DNA of the skin it touches. They’re easy to trick with a graft. It’s lucky I could pass as human, because the Slavers desperately wanted me for the Rape Run even then. If they knew this bracelet corresponded to me,” (and she holds up her wrist again), “they’d use it to track me down, and bounty hunters would be waiting as soon as I left the safety of Gaianesia.”

The Rape Run. She’s able to mention it so casually, the universe’s cruelest and most-watched sport. Ten of the galaxy’s most desirable women are captured and left in an arena on Aghara-Penthay’s surface known as The Zone. Then the five, now four, faction leaders of the Slaver clans the “Hunters” set out to find the women. And when they do find one, and in front of the galactic viewing audience they rape her and rape her and rape her.

The women Runners know this is their likely fate but they do their best to compete anyway, for the last one uncaught is the winner and becomes the rarest thing on Aghara-Penthay – a female who leaves the Slavers free and relatively unharmed.

And this is White Queen’s fate, if they ever catch her.

Red Duchess is also dwelling on the brutal event some think of as entertainment.

“Forgive my rudeness, White Queen, but I thought they only took young women for the Rape Run.”

“I was nearly captured five years ago, in spite of my advancing years. The Slavers have rejuvenation technology using the bacta. They could rebuild my body to an age they consider most desirable. The Hunters have their own personal bounty hunters, you know, as well as using the freelancers, and they dispatched one of those.”

“Salarin, the most sadistic of the Slaver faction leaders, has a bounty hunter working for him called Egregious Klink. He captures well protected, high value women, either as slaves captured to order, or for participation in the Rape Run. I was in a battle on Calico and the whole situation turned out to be a sting to try and take me.”

“Their plan could have worked, if it wasn’t for women’s natural courage. We fought our way out of an encirclement. Injured my leg badly, though.”

Red Duchess doesn’t seem to have considered that the Slavers are capable of regressing age, but I’m not too surprised. In last year’s Rape Run they entirely changed someone’s gender, turning the overthrown fifth faction leader Leshan into the beautiful slave woman, Leesha. If they could build someone a fully functional female body, regressing cellular age shouldn’t be any challenge for them.

Here on Gaianesia we consider it infinitely preferable to be female, but things didn’t improve for Leshan when he switched gender. Women do sometimes kill each other in the Rape Run, and in a dramatic three way showdown with Leesha, a Republic space fleet Colonel called Melena de Santo and a sharp-witted bounty hunter named Ja-Alixxe, Melena de Santo almost vaporized Leesha after finding out her real identity.

Then, in the best conclusion to the Rape Run for years for the galaxy’s women, Melena and Ja-Alixxe made fools of the Slavers, escaping The Zone in a stolen ship and disappearing without trace.

So great was the disgrace that it triggered wrangling between the Hunter factions over how to best make an example of the escapees, with the cruel dominant Cronorgan and the womanizing Lotho-Etsarra advocating the two Runners should be raped to death if recaptured, and the giant alien Jackran-ad-aktar and the sadistic Salarin advocating keeping the women alive to endure the worst humiliations the Slavers could conceive.

But that’s the politics of Aghara-Penthay. Here on Gaianesia White Queen has had enough of the debate.

“So, Lara,” she says. “You know the situation, and the risks, and I’ve trusted you with a secret that will end my military career if it’s revealed. I ask of you nothing I haven’t done myself. For your sister and for your home planet – will you go to the trading station at Aghara-Penthay?”

“What was it like there?” I ask quietly, and add, “Please… the truth.”

A shadow seems to pass over White Queen’s face.

“I’ve never been somewhere so vile, so horrific. I was there with an escort, but still those men… Never mind. They treated me like a piece of meat. But knowing how it was, I must still ask on behalf of your planet… Will you go?”

It is the power of this woman’s conviction as much as the need to know about Gara that makes my decision. I feel a surge of patriotic fervor, and certainty that my planet’s way of life is the right one. Snapping to attention I give her the Gaianesian salute.

“When do I leave?”

6 – Preparations

Riyena’s auction date is only ten standard republic days ahead, so we have to move rapidly if I’m to be escorted to the Hub before it is too late. So over the next few days I witness the proud might of the Gaianesian military machine in action when under the greatest secrecy, different ministries and departments are bought into the plan.

First, there is the matter of getting me to Aghara-Penthay.

Most of the women who betray our sex, by deliberately seeking to go to the Hub and temporarily debasing themselves – the so-called “Tourist Slaves”, depart from a starbase orbiting the cartel controlled planet of Merlon. This choice is a matter of pragmatism. There is no direct contact between law-abiding Republic worlds and rapacious Aghara-Penthay. Merlon is the most convenient planet outside Republic space, yet still being on the main hyperspatial travel routes.

A den of vice almost as low as Aghara-Penthay, Merlon Starbase makes much of its profits by being the departure point for those en-route to its foul neighbor. Shiploads of men take off, many per day, to seek the pleasures of cheap slave flesh forced to serve every conceivable taste. The less well-to-do female travelers join these flights, hence the ferries accruing the nickname “Tramp Shuttles”, and are allocated an owner from amongst the crew or sometimes the passengers – whoever finds the woman most to his liking. Women with only the means for these trips are frequently abused from the moment of departure – raped and abused by their owner and their fellow passengers – and it is common for the more valuable or attractive females to find themselves sold to the Slavers, rather than enjoying the return trip home they’d expected.

The more affluent female masochistic, or woman simply ghoulish enough to want to visit Aghara-Penthay, hires the services of one of Merlon’s licensed escorts. These business’s livelihood relies on their reputation with female tourists, so offer a greater chance of a safe return home. Escorts also offer a more bespoke experience – want to visit a particular location? The escort will take the woman there.

Licensed escorts advertise a no-rape guarantee from the host (unless the woman wants that experience too) but she puts herself just as completely in his power as any slave girl does her owner, and when she happens to be desirable – betrayals still happen.

There is an agent friendly to Gaianesia who works as one of these escorts. His name is Acheron Doe. Despite being a Gaianesian, I will submit to being owned by this male. I will submit to a male named Acheron Doe. He has been briefed on that small bit of our plan that he needs to know and is capable of understanding, and compensated handsomely for ensuring I remain unharmed. With his ship chartered by my Government solely for my service, I should be on the Hub enduring wearing nothing but the blue wrap of a private slave for under two hours.

Acheron Doe… I find myself distracted by repeating his name over and over, imagining what he might look like.

But back on topic: once I’m there, I have to avoid being recognized as a Gaianesian – a situation where failure would earn me permanent enslavement. The biotech department of the intelligence team prepare a serum I’ll inject in my face just before leaving home. It will temporarily fade my beautiful brown markings, so I appear to be no more than a particularly athletic human woman.

The serum only lasts forty eight hours, but Acheron Doe will leave with me as soon as I reach Merlon, and in his fast ship the journey to Aghara-Penthay lasts only a few hours. We should have plenty of time, as long as nothing goes wrong.

More challenging is fooling the DNA scan that will be made of me, registering me in their eyes as a slave for life when the shameful identification bracelet is locked forever on to one of my limbs. For this we follow the same procedure as was done with White Queen. A human female visitor to the foreign trading enclave in Solar City was recently, unknown to her, swabbed. Our Biotech team merge invisible skin grafts from her cells onto my forearms and ankles, to cover any eventuality for placement of the bracelet. These too are temporary, but sufficient for the duration of my visit.

In the whole of the real woman’s life, she’s unlikely to ever discover she’s registered as a slave on Aghara-Penthay unless she betrays our sex and tries to visit herself. I have no sympathy for her, in that case.

Finally there’s the matter of preparing me to extracting the data we desperately need. The technical department configure a chip for implantation into my forearm. Just as with Riyena’s and Gara’s chip it will remain inert except when I am in physical contact with the correct female.

As soon as I even touch Riyena, brushing her with a fingertip is enough, the essential files will copy.

Everything falls into place.

A Gaianesian ship, Vengeful Goddess, is laid on to deliver me to Merlon Starbase. Given the importance of success, White Queen is to make a rare departure from our system and go with us on the warship, commanding the operation personally. Her attention to me and to every detail of my wellbeing makes me very proud.

Gaianesian warships attract attention wherever we stop, so Vengeful Goddess will dock at Merlon only for minutes, while I disembark. It will then remain in communications blackout, but will tail Acheron Doe’s vessel as close to the Slavers’ world as is safe, and will be ready to intervene should something go wrong.

Acheron has been instructed that during the flight he must make an appointment at the Palace of Roses, asking for a soundproof room. Although Riyena is advertised as configured to inflict sadistic punishments on other slaves, he will request that she be the one restrained and immobile for our entertainment. Thus I will be safe when she inevitably recognizes me as related to Gara, and calls for help.

My planet is doing everything it can to support me, but the humiliation I’ll endure is nonetheless all personal. Before we arrive I will have to undress completely and put on nothing but the demeaning slave wrap. Acheron, a male, will inevitably see me in this clothing. It can’t be avoided. I can’t conceal myself from the crowds on the trading station either. If I act too shy or proud it will attract suspicion. I must pretend to be naturally submissive, showing my bare legs and my figure as though my owner has ordered me to present myself attractively.

At customs, as a new visiting slave I will be braceleted, have my fake DNA scanned, and I’ll be registered. I will never be able to remove the bracelet. I will have irrevocably become the property of a man named Acheron Doe and will lose all my own rights, at least under Aghara-Penthay law. And if someone spots it once I’m back on Gaianesia, I risk being outcast.

Once on the Hub we will have to walk through the concourse to the House of Roses. That’s the part that I’m dreading most, as it’s when I’m most likely to be sexually assaulted.

In the brothel the plan is I touch the girl, her chip will believe me to be Gara, and the upload will begin. I will ask about my sister’s fate. I’m not sure which answer I want and it doesn’t matter – as a female on Aghara-Penthay I can’t do anything to save her. But I will know.

In minutes I will be leaving.

There will be a second walk of shame across the station.

And the ordeal will be over. Back to Merlon, under the secret guardianship of Vengeful Goddess, then transfer to the warship itself. After it’s all over my only reminder will be an absent beloved sister, and a bandage like White Queen’s, hiding the shameful secret that I was once a slave.

With the prospect of what’s ahead filling my every waking thought, I do not need more emphasis on the horror of the Slavers’ planet. But during a briefing in The Fortress it comes anyway. A woman bursts into the room, her jumpsuit bearing the insignia of a junior officer. Out of breath and looking upset, at the last moment she remembers her rank and salutes.

“White Queen!” she gasps in a quavering voice. “There’s a broadcast from Aghara-Penthay… The heroine of last year’s Rape-Run, the bounty hunter Ja-Alixxe, has been caught.”

7 – Ja-Alixxe

Women rush to the viewing screens, even White Queen forgetting her dignity for a moment as she pushes her way to a monitor.

At one time the Gaianesian government tried to censor these viewscreen transmissions from Aghara-Penthay, judging them bad for morale and encouraging women into submissive behavior, but it quickly was proven to be pointless when any woman with a basic understanding of technology was able to defeat the blocking signal and receive the feeds. Furthermore censorship gave the impression our leaders had something to fear from the Slavers, blessing their broadcasts with the same mystique as anything taboo.

So even though it is disgusting and against all the principles of our society, Slaver transmissions remain unblocked. The full uninterrupted coverage of the Rape Run is available here. I’m sure many women watch it in secret, staying glued to their screens in sick fascination to see what might be their fate, should our planet’s defenses ever fall.

Certainly we’re all familiar with the voice of the sleazy compere Wagner, who interviews the Runners and provides the voice-over commentary.

“I’m sure you’ve not forgotten the beautiful Ja-Alixxe?” he is saying over a montage of scenes from the Rape Run of her standing proudly, or stealthily hiding, or moving gracefully dressed in the tight costume of that year’s contest.

“And you’ll remember how disappointed we were when she left without giving us the chance to see her get fucked.”

This comment is delivered over archive images of Ja-Alixxe powering the stolen ship out of a cave hidden just beyond The Zone. The expression on her face, tattooed with the slave-mark, is a picture of resolve.

“But where is she now? All that rebellion, and look where she’s ended right back after all…”

And the broadcast cuts to a gradual sweep of the camera, showing the large mezzanine concourse of Aghara-Penthay’s trading station. Seeing it makes my stomach knot with fear.

“I don’t think Lara should be watching this,” says Red Duchess, but I say “No!” and elbow her aside.

I can’t imagine a more depraved den of vice and debauchery than what is the one on screen – the place I’m destined to go. Out on to the broad mezzanine spill the open fronts of bar after bar, brothel after brothel. Men are taking their base pleasures everywhere I look, most of them loud, and many of them drunk.

Satisfying those pleasures are the women. The luckiest merely serve food or drink, but even those have to dodge or submit to the grasping hands. Some are made to dance. Others, perhaps lacking specific skills, merely stand to advertise their immediate availability for sex.

Every single female I see is of the age and body shape we are taught men consider desirable. The majority of women wear the single garment of a slave of Aghara-Penthay – a scarlet silken wrap like a towel, barely large enough to reach from the breast to the pelvis, which is configured to leave the girl open on one side. The wrap fastens with a bow under the left arm, so it may be untied and removed easily even when the wearer is restrained.

Those less fortunate are naked – including the women being publically violated in plain view of the crowds, and the unattractive ones – those forced to display more in order to lure customers to their bodies.

I only glimpse a few in that panorama who are wearing the garment destined for me – the blue wrap of a private slave, i.e. not owned by Aghara-Penthay. The blue wrap is much sought after by the local slaves. It means the woman will leave. It means she can hope.

The undergarments common to most free females across the galaxy – bras and panties of some design, are not permitted to women anywhere on Slaver territory. Captives must be open and accessible at all times, the owner easily slipping a hand inside the wrap, or pulling it aside to bare her.

It’s hard to believe this place is real – and only a short distance away across the galaxy is somewhere that life is so different. Crowds of mostly humanity, but also some other species. The males relaxing and enjoying themselves. The females suffering.

And through this milling throng walks the former bounty hunter, Ja-Alixxe.

She has already been stripped. In the first glimpse the galaxy has had of her since her escape, we begin viewing her from the back. Her body is beautifully toned, almost as fit as a Gaianesian woman, making the rounded curves of her buttocks exquisite. The camera pans round the side, showing breasts that are surprisingly full for someone with so little body fat. She has large dark nipples. There is no hair to hide the contours of her exposed sex. The Slavers usually give females a treatment that prevents it re-growing, and not even Rape Runners are spared.

Ja-Alixxe walks without resisting, but they have restrained her anyway. A device like a belt is around her hourglass waist, with a fixed wrist bracelet either side over the hip. It traps Ja-Alixxe’s hands close to her most vulnerable places, but leaving her unable to protect them, either in the front or the back.

She looks straight ahead out her dark eyes. Her hair flows loosely about her face. Really, she’s exceptionally beautiful.

Ja-Alixxe seems free to move her legs for now, but there are ropes about each ankle, trailing away to somewhere off camera. I don’t understand their purpose if they’re not being used to restrain her.

“Another successful hunt for Egregious Klink,” says Wagner. “The bouncy hunter captured by the bounty hunter.”

Egregious Klink… That was the name White Duchess mentioned. He finds women for the sadist Salarin. He tried to catch White Queen.

“Mind how you go there, bouncy hunter,” Wagner quips, repeating the pun he seems to think clever, and on cue from somewhere off camera the ropes round Ja-Alixxe’s ankles are jerked behind her with such force her feet leave the floor. Unable to use her hands to break the descent she sprawls flat on her face.

Immediately a man runs up, dressed in the overalls of the merchant fleet. He is a scruffy fellow, sweaty with a face sprouting with several days’ unshaved stubble.

“Bounty hunter…” he slurs drunkenly, not to Ja-Alixxe but to someone else off camera. “I’ll give you a thousand credits if you let me fuck her in the ass. She was the best girl by far in her year. I’ve jerked off hundreds of times thinking about raping this bitch.”

He waves a bundle of hundred credit notes. We don’t hear Klink’s response to this offer but I can guess the answer by the cheer from the crowd who begin gathering for a better view, and by the way the man starts pulling down the zipper at the front of his overalls.

“Is she a virgin?” drunk asks the same person off-screen, and I hear Egregious Klink’s malicious voice for the first time.

“Not anymore.”

Understanding what’s about to happen to her Ja-Alixxe has drawn up one knee and rolls her torso to the side, attempting to get up, as though despite her lying in the epicenter of male dominance standing upright would somehow help her evade what’s coming. It makes it more heartbreaking that even on the brink of public shaming her face hasn’t lost the same resolute courage I always saw in her.

“Is her implant working?” the stale man asks. He has his penis out now – it’s a foul thing, a pink fat semi-erect worm an inch thick with an eyeless purple head and only a slit for a mouth.

“Yes,” Egregious Klink states simply.

“Then lie flat on your belly and don’t move, slave!” the man spits down at her. “Until you feel my cock penetrate you, that is… Then I want you to resist me with all your strength.”

And immediately Ja-Alixxe resumes the prostrate position, with her stomach and her breasts pressed to the mezzanine floor. Her legs are together, extended straight behind her. She lies still as though she’s been paralyzed. An implant’s control is that powerful? Not the least resistance? Such barbarity…

The scruffy man sits down on the back of Ja-Alixxe’s knees, straddling her. He strokes a finger down her spine almost reverentially, an expression of awe on his face. Then he leans right down to her, where her buttocks meet the fulcrum of her legs, and he inhales her intimate scent.

“Oh, this is one fine looking woman,” he gloats to the watchers. “And her pussy smells as fresh as a teenage virgin’s.”

Straightening he looms over her, propping his body on one arm, his now rigid penis held in the other.

All through this Ja-Alixxe remains completely passive, staring straight ahead. She doesn’t react when he strokes his organ up and down the cleft between her cheeks, probing for the star of her anus.

It’s only when he penetrates her, sinking the rest of his bodyweight down onto her back as he pierces her bowels, that she responds.

First Ja-Alixxe screams, an animal howl of fury and anguish. Then she starts struggling. I see her legs twisting and bending, trying to get enough purchase with her knees on the floor to lift the man off her. At the same time her upper body moves from side to side, as though she’s trying to escape by wriggling forwards like a snake.

With her hands locked to her sides it’s hopeless though. He’s a heavy man and his body weight pins her down. A fit woman would struggle to throw him off, even without restraints.

Again and again we watch his hips rock back and forth, back and forth, as he thrusts his dick into her. It looks acutely painful for his victim, and Ja-Alixxe frequently shrieks during her rape.

As ordered she fights to the end though, writhing underneath him even after he makes one long last straining thrust deep into her backside and his victory is complete. While he empties his seed, her suffering forces a long moan that matches his groan of pleasure.

Fat man slices out of her and begins to climb off. We’re treated to a close-up of his rampant cock which is coated with a slime of semen, excrement and blood – evidence of the violence of his assault.

No longer obliged to move, the bounty hunter goes limp except for her heaving ribcage. She rests her forehead briefly on the floor, allowing herself only a moment to succumb to the defeat, before lifting her chin to look at the baying crowd.

The man in the boiler suit has had his pleasure, but it seems anally raping her in public was not enough to dissipate his hatred of her, or perhaps women in general.

“Stay down, bitch!” he yells down at her, and without warning he smacks his open hand down on the back of her head, making her face slam hard against the concourse floor. There is a spray of blood and when Ja-Alixxe yet again lifts her dazed head, her nose looks broken and her lip seems split.

(“Gods,” the woman next to me says, appalled)

“Sorry about the damage,” the man in overalls says to Ja-Alixxe’s off-screen captor. He is back on his feet now, zipping up his overalls.

“Nothing a bit of bacta won’t fix,” I hear Klink answer nonchalantly.

His lack of concern seems to inspire others to step up.

“Stay there but open your legs, Ja-Alixxe,” a pimpled young skinny man, barely adult, says. He’s ugly and immature, and in any other universe she wouldn’t look twice at him, but compelled by a slave implant she obeys him immediately, spreading her ankles wide so her body shape forms an inverted “Y”.

“Keep still,” he says, and then I see this pathetic youth run up behind her and kick Ja-Alixxe as hard as he can at the defenseless apex offered between her open thighs. He has heavy work boots on and the contact is enough to lurch her torso forwards, but Ja-Alixxe barely groans.

“Ha-ha, I got her right in the cunt!” he roars, laughing so hard what he’s done he collapses to the floor and rolls round in a ball.

As though his actions trigger an avalanche the crowd close on her, and while Ja-Alixxe lies helplessly on the floor she receives the beating of a lifetime. It’s too horrific to watch and like many of the women around me I have to turn away from the screen. No one shows her mercy. It’s not even sexual, just an unleashing of hate. Some of the men have slave girls with them, and forced by their implants the slaves are ordered to participate as well. I’m glad that the many bodies block my view of how badly she’s mauled.

“That will teach her to defy the proud men of the galaxy,” Wagner resumes approvingly. “If we were the weak ones, that would have been enough and we’d have let her die from that whooping, but a swift death would be far too good for Ja-Alixxe…”

Gods no, is there’s more?

And still on the public display of the concourse Ja-Alixxe is revealed now bent over a four-footed piece of furniture resembling a gymnastic pommel. The former Rape Runner is as naked as she was in the earlier scene. Her arms and legs, hanging vertically down, are shackled to the corners of the pedestal. Its short narrow cushioned surface is too small for her, so her pelvis protrudes from the back end, and a breast dangles either side of the central pad, hanging down like udders.

She’s been belted down onto the device at her waist. We view her from behind first, which shows us that her position leaves her genitals and anus presented obscenely and immobile.

Then the camera moves round to show us her front. I’m bracing in anticipation of bruises and dried blood, but as promised by Egregious Klink the bacta has done its work and she appears as though the earlier incident never happened.

A sign hangs from her neck.

“Free Fuck. Help yourself, while she lasts.”

And the galaxy does help itself. With time-lapse footage accelerated to high speed we see man after man relieve himself into her, a fraction of a second for each one. I soon lose count.

“Look behind her,” whispers Red Duchess in quiet horror.

I notice for the first time the sign at the front of the emporium in the background. “Palace of Roses”, it says in the standard galactic script, and there is a logo of a red flower, its thorn-bearing stem encircled by chains.

My stomach knots with fear, and I feel a cold sweat break out on my skin. That’s where I’m going.

My view of the establishment is restricted by Ja-Alixxe’s body and the men raping her, but I can see near-naked girls lounging out front dressed only in the red slave-wraps of Aghara-Penthay. None of them look like the Harken woman.

“Ja-Alixxe had her share of dicks,” Wagner says, interrupting my dreadful reverie. “But there’s still room in the tank, look.”

The montage finishes with a view is of Ja-Alixxe’s face. Her hair has become crusted with some foul substance, and she has dried matter stuck to her cheek and on her forehead. She looks physically exhausted, but her eyes are still alert and she seems remarkably calm. Death is perhaps welcome when the alternative is sexual slavery.

“How much more sperm can that girl hold before the end? Come to the hub on Aghara-Penthay to find out,” Wagner concludes, and the broadcast suddenly cuts to a black screen.

Women look at each other in slack-jawed horror.

“How can they be cruel?” I say, voicing what everyone must be thinking. “Is every male who’s not pacified like that? The dirty one in the overalls – why would he want to stick his thing in her ass?”

White Queen is looking at me shrewdly.

“How much do you know about unpacified males, Lara?” she asks suddenly. “And I don’t mean what we teach you in class. Practical experience. Have you ever been in the presence of one?”

I feel myself beginning to blush like a schoolgirl.

“Of course I’ve seen an unpacified male… On shore leave when I was a fleet engineer… At Rostora 6.”

“But that was in a group with other Gaianesian women, yes? You all went to a bar, or something?”

“Yes,” I say, “that’s exactly right.”

“Then come on dear,” she says, taking hold of my upper arm. “Come to my office. It’s time someone gave you the talk.”

8 – Admissions

“I don’t need a talk,” I say, slightly piqued, when we’re alone in the privacy of an office. “I’m not ignorant, you know.”

I remember most everything from the sex-education classes women receive on Gaianesia. Gara and I were eleven years old, at least in the Republic standard reckoning.

By then I’d had my first bleeding, and the full breasts that make my gender so utterly undeniable today had already begun starting to swell and they’d become tender. As always Gara had transitioned with me, becoming a woman two days after I did. We were fertile.

The mechanics of how I might become pregnant I also already knew – insemination of selected sperm being the method practiced on Gaianesia, or for most of the galaxy, ejaculation by an unpacified male inserting his penis into the vagina.

We Gaianesians are an enlightened culture, and schoolgirls laughed with horror that lesser women might want to endure physical contact with a male, when it was to us so obviously a disgusting and unclean process.

Our teacher Dolorae was fighting a losing battle as she tried to explain the facts of life for so much of the galaxy.

“We females are able to look upon someone’s body and find them desirable, so much so that there may come times you may wish to become physically intimate with another woman,” Dolorae said. “Some of you may be feeling this urges already, and there is nothing shameful in them. It is normal. I discuss them today because you need to understand the differing magnitude of sex drive between the genders. For us women, while our feelings may seem intense, particularly early into your maturity, for adult females sexual contact is something we can live without.”

“It is important if you are ever to mix with offworlders that you girls understand that this is not the case with the brains of unpacified males.”

“The hormones in a male’s bloodstream give him a desperate hunger to mate. It is a hunger so intense he cannot control it. Male orgasm relieves them of this hunger for short periods, but for the rest of the time whenever they see a desirable female, all they can think about is wanting to mate with her, and how they might remove any obstacles in their way from doing so. They will betray their friends, their morals, their principals, everything… just to satisfy their need to mate.”

Dolorae looked at a sea of skeptical young faces and tried a different approach.

“You don’t believe me? Think of the stim addicts begging on the streets. Their civility is erased by craving for the drug. It’s like that with unpacified males, and sex.”

This seemed more plausible.

“But in that case, it’s terrible for them!” said Onoona Arora in a shocked voice, putting her hand to her mouth. “How do they even function in daily life?”

“It is difficult for them, yes, and they struggle, Onoona,” agreed Dolorae. “That’s why they are to be pitied, because they can’t focus on a normal life because of the urges they feel without the pacification, and it makes them stupid. Studies show that males on Gaianesia are happier, more intelligent and live longer lives than their counterparts in the rest of the galaxy. The program begun by Listu Adorin was for their benefit as well as ours.”

Next to me Gara had raised her hand.

“In that case why don’t planets in the rest of the galaxy implement the programs?”

I still remember the guarded expression that flickered across Dolorae’s face before she answered my sister.

“The other worlds aren’t as enlightened as ours. They consider pacification an act of repression. That’s why Gaianesia isn’t allowed to join the Republic – no worlds where there is gender segregation are permitted membership, even though we act in our males’ best interest.”

Once she was sure we’d accepted this she continued:

“Another issue is that once unpacified men develop to maturity, the sensation they receive from touching their penis is said to be extremely pleasurable. They don’t wish to give that up enjoyment. Finally there is the issue that as well as males and females taking physical satisfaction from intimacy with each other, some societies prefer to favor one companion and devote ourselves to them.”

That concept was, as it were, alien to me and I frowned. There was nothing beneficial from being attached to just one individual Gaianesian, neither physical nor emotional, so why should anybody restrict themselves? Gaianesians are not prudish. True, our women are not intimate with males and reproduce is by artificial insemination from the breeding stocks, but that is because the concept is unpleasant, not because it is forbidden or we are inhibited. The only thing prohibited then and now is using The Reflex, but like any taboo, by our teens we’d all experimented with a trusted accomplice.

We consider ourselves to be a sexually liberated society. Gaianesian women are raised to form loose groups of other women they care for, taking mutual comfort and sexual fulfillment from these friends. We dress relatively conservatively in public, but in private we’re frequently naked in the company of our all-female groups, using our tongues and hands on each other, playing with sex toys or practicing mutual masturbation.

Before the day of Dolorae’s memorable sex talk I’d already experimented with Onoona, the two of us playing with each other’s bodies. Since then I’ve usually had several lovers on the go, but I reached my peak during my military service being intimate with all six of my fleet bunk-mates at once.

With women to satisfy my emotional and physical needs, why would I lay with an unpacified male? There’s no reason. And that’s what I tell White Queen.

“But don’t you have any curiosity about feeling a real cock inside you?” White Queen says rather brusquely. “In your pussy? The taste in your mouth? In your ass, even?”

I frown at her.

“I believe in the Gaianesian principles towards…” I bluster indignantly, but White Queen interrupts, waving her hand as though getting rid of a fly.

“I’m sure you’re a model citizen, Lara. But all women occasionally feel certain curiosities. And what you risk enduring on Aghara-Penthay would be more bearable if you at least have a token interest in experiencing those curiosities which relate to experimenting with the opposite sex. So, asking you not as White Queen, or as your gender politics mentor, but as a private conversation between two women, just tell the truth. Do you want to feel a cock inside you?”

I’ve had a dildo in there, but a man… Of course I’ve thought about it. Dreamed, sometimes. I guess it would be warmer – body temperature. It must be softer than the rubber-coated piece of vibrating plastic I used – for how could flesh filled with blood actually be “hard”? Does a penis have a smell? And his big hands? How would they feel?

“I suppose just once it might be fun to find out.” I’m willing to concede.

“And more submissive urges…” she continues immediately. “Have you experimented with The Reflex?”

Now she’s going too far.

“Of course not!” I say, my face flaring, but I remember being sixteen, the bedroom of a school friend, myself utterly inert lying back on her bed with my body turned to liquid desire.

“Hmm,” White Queen says, her disbelieving stare making my embarrassment worse. “You don’t have to be coy with me. Whatever the politicians say about the official stance, our Intelligence operations do need some agents with those tastes. It makes it easier for them to function offworld in environments where men are dominant, if they find some enjoyment in their work.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting Gara was one of those!”

“Hmm,” she says noncommittally.

“She was not!” I insist again. “And you’re hardly in a position to make insinuations about submission when you have that thing on your wrist.”

That strikes home and White Queen angrily picks up a datapad, her expression hard. I recognize my image on the screen – the headshot taken for my service in the space fleet.

“Then let’s move on. You’re twenty three,” she says, closing that discussion coldly. “So you’ve had your first insemination but didn’t carry the child?”

“It was a male.”

There is no need for explanation. An unfortunate outcome of only one in five births on Gaianesia being female is that to sustain a level of population each woman needs to bear at least five children during her lifetime to maintain our numbers of women. We have no use for so many surplus males, though.

Insemination takes place by artificial injection of sperm extracted from one of the ideal men, genetically selected as breeders for their physical prowess and high intelligence. These very few unpacified males are kept locked away in the Breeding Tower, to protect us in case they lose their minds at the sight of our perfection. Each breeder male will inseminate thousands of women in his lifetime. But he will never be permitted to see any of our faces, and we will never have to see his.

Should the female wish to bear a male child the baby will be handed over to one of the drone nurseries to be raised. Young females are also reared by drones, but there remains some family contact.

My own line stubbornly keeps to the one-birth-in-five being female, but when the girls do come we seem genetically disposed to produce twins. My mother was one of twins, and so was grandmother, and great grandmother. Our genes are thus highly prized on Gaianesia for their potential for increasing the female population. It was difficult for Gara to get permission to take a career of dangerous military work when she’s so valuable for her expected fertility.

Gaianesian females are usually expected to go through their first insemination at the age of twenty one and then again at a minimum of three years, but it is possible to delay the first time for reasons such as career progression or military service.

“You seem quite sexually open minded,” White Queen says, skimming rapidly through pages of text in my file. I frown. How has she formed that opinion? What can be in there?

“And yet, Lara, you seem to be hiding the curiosity in your nature from me behind a shield of the politically approved answers you think I want to hear. It’s as though you secretly want official sanction to seek out a man. Hmm.”

I shake my head while she closes the file, as though reaching a conclusion.

“Well, whatever your opinions, it would certainly be helpful for the character you’re trying to portray if you gain some experience with offworlders. You’ll arouse suspicion on Aghara-Penthay if a girl that’s too virginal choses to visit the Hub. So I’m allocating an agent to take you to the bars in the offworld enclave…”

“You want me to go to Subtown?” I protest, interrupting, and then remember White Queen might not know its street slang name, “Subardin?”

“I want you to go to Subardin, Lara. And while I can’t order you, I recommend your engaging in intimacies with one of the males there. Better you’ve been through it rather than being taken completely by surprise.”

I feel obliged to be indignant.

“Being open minded doesn’t mean I’m the kind of girl who visits that place.”

“If you can’t survive an evening in the enclave, Lara, you’re not going to cope with the Slavers.”

I frown at her, but secretly agree she has a point. A complete novice is unlikely to have the sexual confidence to take a tourist trip to Aghara-Penthay. Plus there is the tiny itch I can’t scratch of wondering what it feels like to have a male, an unpacified male, inside me. And here is the chance to experiment, and without fear of reprimand from the state.

But I see a problem. I’m due to leave for Aghara-Penthay in only days and it takes me time to decide on a sexual partner. What if males are similarly cautious?

“I can go to Subardin, but that doesn’t mean I’ll find a male willing to have sex with me,” I say uncertainly.

Up to this point I’ve had the impression White Duchess doesn’t like me very much, but her coolness cracks into a knowing smile at my concern.

“If you think that it’s going to be a problem when you look the way you do Lara, well that just proves why you need to go.”

9 – Experience

Special Agent Hoola Rathanka is a pretty brunette in her late twenties. She has full pouting lips that give a deceptively sulky expression, but actually her personality turns out to be as bubbly as the curls of her long hair. I take an instant liking to her, and within five minutes of her arrival at my modest student apartment I’m already placing enough trust in her to let her riffle through my wardrobe and choose my outfit.

Hoola herself is sporting a knee-length tight black dress, backless and low cut at the bodice.

We are taught in sex education that unpacified men fixate on the female chest, and Hoola’s outfit has been chosen for that reason – to reveal she’s one of the few women of our age with a larger rack than I possess.

Hoola is six inches shorter than I am, making her proportions seem more rounded than mine, but the toned muscles of her limbs revealed by that dress are athletic and slim, like the finest Gaianesian women.

I find her attractive.

Skirts and dresses which reveal so much leg are not common in Gaianesia, except for amongst the younger women who like to mirror the popular fashions of the unenlightened galaxy. I myself usually favor functional jumpsuits that cover the full body, although I do own a few more revealing garments kept for private parties amongst friends.

Hoola takes out the most daring set I possess – a white skirt that only covers part-way down my thighs, and a strapless top like a tube that clings tightly around my breasts. I object immediately – no way to showing this in public – especially not to Subardin, but she insists. Do I want to attract a man or not? As though my intentions couldn’t be more obvious, once I’ve blushingly given in on the outfit she selects me some high-heeled sandals – something also only worn by Gaianesians when they’re trying to emulate the human females.

I’m bustled out the door before I can think better of this whole idea, and feeling disgracefully exposed I leave my apartment with her, the two of us dressed in whorish fashions. While it’s not the first time I’ve worn this combination I’ve never felt ashamed of it before. Tonight it feels like the fellow students we pass in the corridor can read where I’m headed, and I have to fight down my glowing face.

The team at The Fortress are paying for a taxi shuttle to take us on the thirty minute flight out of Solar City, and into the offworlders’ enclave three hundred miles away in Subardin, so luckily we’re spared the humiliation of speaking the destination out loud on public transport. While our citizens are entirely free, and as I’ve said already there are no prohibitions on Gaianesian women fraternizing with the residents of Subardin, everybody knows that normal Gaianesian women only go there for one reason, and precisely the one that’s our purpose tonight – to experiment with unpacified male sexual partners.

It was decided long ago that our society could not risk offworld males running loose around Solar City, so a suitable location for a trading outpost was identified a short distance away. There, in the enclave, the water is not medicated, so males may safely visit to trade without losing any of their urges. During the day the commercial activity between ourselves and the offworlders is conducted. At night attention turns from credits to pleasure, entertaining our visitors with restaurants, holosuites, sporting facilities and bars.

The place had only been functioning as a trading enclave for a few years before the settlement of Subardin began to grow up around it.

We are not barbaric in Gaianesia, so the rulers of our planet had long sought a way to permit women who do not follow our social values to live out their lives, while protecting the rest of the population from pollution with deviant ideas. With the spontaneous birth of Subardin the problem unexpectedly solved itself. Women who sought longer term partnerships with unpacified males, and also those with a taste for sex outside the state-approved insemination programs, began to relocate by choice to the enclave.

The numbers of women in self-exile were soon boosted by those under official punishment. Women found guilty of crimes such as sexual submission were banished to Subardin and not permitted to return to respectable society. Eventually there were so many of these sluts and submissives – one in five-hundred of the planet’s half billion population confined to live among the scattering of launch pads and merchant warehouses – that Subardin became one of Gaianesia’s largest cities and acquired its slang name – “Subtown”.

Today a fortified wall forms a ring around the enclave of Subardin, giving it a ghetto-like atmosphere. Offworlders are permitted to roam within the barriers at will and a few even live there permanently in relationships with Gaianesian females, but they only step outside Subtown under close escort.

Flying on approach for my first visit, I look down curiously at the sprawling apartment blocks below. Inside the walls it’s crowded with buildings, and as we fly over I look down and see that the landing pads peppering the enclave are hosting ships bearing emblems from across the galaxy. I can even make out figures moving, but I don’t get close enough to make out the features any aliens or and of the exiled-ones.

That only begins when we disembark.

On the ground I study each face eagerly. At first everyone I see is female. I’d expected the women who live here to appear weaker than I am, physical inferiority explaining their psychological failings, but most of these seem to be perfectly healthy specimens. I’m a little shocked by the brazenness of these women who are clearly fallen. The presence of someone like me should shame them with their disgrace, but a woman with purple markings nods a greeting to me as though nothing is wrong.

I stare after her back until Hoola tugs my bare upper arm. Remembering my purpose I step after my escort, wobbling on my high heels, but once again I have to stop gawping like some yokel when I see the sex store. Hanging from a hook on view to any passer-by are the first pair of binding restraints I’ve seen in real life. They’re made of a fine material, almost delicate. It’s hard to believe someone couldn’t break them with a flex of a bicep. What’s more disturbing to me is their proportions – the diameter of the wristbands. These are too small for a male wrist, even an unpacified male. These binders are made for women.

Hoola is trying to keep me moving.

“Did you see what they were selling?” I say outraged. “That place should be shut down.”

“We’re nearly there,” is all she replies. “Not far.”

The bar Hoola has chosen is a spacious open-fronted structure with tables and chairs spilling out onto the street, not unlike the entrance to my destination – the Palace of Roses. Music blares out from inside and the lights glare bright with neon.

“This is a typical place to meet men,” Hoola says, and then she pauses as we step under the awnings. “Once we have company it will be less easy to talk freely to each other, and I’m sure it won’t be long before they close in on us. So a last reminder – do what you need to with them except for one thing: whatever happens don’t agree to spend the night on their ship. It’s dangerous.”

I nod even though she doesn’t need to give me the safety talk. Stories are rife of Gaianesian women who venture alone onto the offworlder’s ships, and then have their Reflex used to aid an opportunistic kidnapping. Some return disgraced after a few weeks. The less fortunate are lost forever, perhaps sold on to the Slavers of Aghara-Penthay.

In Subtown a woman needs to take care of her own protection, at least sexually speaking, as the view of the authorities is that any female who ventures there is “asking for it”, and proving crimes such as rape is almost impossible.

But Hoola and I know the risks, and we’re watching out for each other. So although I’m feeling nervous uncertainty like any first-timer, I step boldly forward.

Inside the bar it is busy, and unlike most Gaianesian venues, males outnumber females by about two to one among the clientele. Of course I see no Gaianesian men among the customers. The majority present from both sexes are human, although there’s a smattering of other species including a reptilian creature and giant blue skinned thing who looks as though he could break me with his hands.

I recall that on other worlds it is more often men attracted into space and women the home, so I am not surprised that these alien ship crews are heavily biased towards the masculine. What makes me stop in my tracks is the way these male visitors stop to look at me.

When we were little girls, Gara and I had a pet, a cute, furry species of mammal called a skrint. Intelligent, playful creatures, they originated as wild predators until Gaianesians began to domesticate them thousands of years ago. Nowadays there’s almost no trace of their hunting past in them, until the moment you put down their bowl of meat. Then you’d better not get in the way. Gara once tried to snatch away the food of our pet, no more than childish teasing, but the normally docile animal gave her such a vicious bite on the arm that Gara was left with a scar, and we had to convince our mother considered not to put the skrint to sleep.

I relate this memory because it’s the only way I can describe the way the men in the bar look at me… exactly the way the skrint would look at its meal. Of course I’ve heard often about masculine sex drive, and that this urge is the way most of the universe reproduces, but experiencing the reality for the first time, I feel a swell of sympathy for these creatures hypnotized by their longing. Gods, what we’re taught is exactly right. This is how they are – males – slave to their desperate compulsion to mate with me. For some of them it’s so overwhelming their jaws hang open as though they’re about to drool.

Almost every last man has his eyes on me, scanning up and down the curves of my body. The poor things are probably too drugged to realize what they’re doing, but I can’t feel sympathy when they’re making me so self-conscious. Stop staring, guys! They’re just my breasts, just my hips. I’ve never given my organs much thought before, but these male eyes are locking on my chest as though my tits define me.

It wouldn’t be so bad if this treatment was shared evenly among the females, but adding to my discomfort is the fact that far more men are focusing on me than any of the other females present. Yes, I have often been told I’m exceptionally beautiful, and Gara and I both inherited our mother’s long legs and full protruding front. But Hoola is next to me, and even better endowed than I am. So what is it about me in particular that seems to cast a spell on these men?

I follow Hoola forward, instinct keeping me close to her. Although the men all continue to watch, no one approaches us while we buy drinks. According to my briefing the men were expected to instigate the courting. Perhaps the information was incorrect.

The bar is meant for a place for social meeting and interaction, but the groups seem to be keeping largely to themselves – ship crews each spreading to fill one of the circular tables. There’s nowhere to sit with them unless strangers make a place for us.

The other Gaianesian women here are drinking separately, standing in small gaggles, although I can hear them giggling loudly and the more brazen are glancing towards the humans with open speculation. Perhaps we should ask our own species about courtship behavior.

A woman crossing the floor jostles me, a human female in the brown overalls of a ship crew. I look after her and instead of apologizing she scowls at me before making her way to her busy table. I begin to think our plan will not be successful and the males will only watch, and not request to mate with me.

“What now?” I ask Hoola anxiously, having to talk loudly over the music.

“We wait for someone to make a move,” she shouts back.

“But no one wants to talk to us,” I worry.

“I’m sure it won’t be long. We’ve only been here a couple of minutes.”

She has more confidence than I do about our attractiveness as sexual partners, but it turns out she’s right, for she’s barely finished this exchange when the first contender – a giant blue alien, looms over us.

“Are you ladies looking for something unusual?” he asks. “His voice is raspy, as though he has laryngitis. “My penis is eighteen inches long and three inches thick.”

Given we have no other takers I’m already pondering whether my vagina could tolerate penetration by something of that girth, but Hoola says firmly “I don’t think so”. And the blue alien seems to expect this rejection, for he is already moving away towards a circle of Gaianesian women who seem half hysterical with laughter that he’s chosen them to approach.

Uncertainly I watch after him, hoping Hoola hasn’t just blown our only chance. But I’ve been worrying for no reason.

“What about those guys?” I ask her, when I see two men in dark green flight overalls are clearly beckoning me.

She turns to look. One of them is a lean fellow in his thirties. He’s human, with an olive skin and jet black hair that suggests ancestry from a world with a warm climate. He’s handsome, but has perhaps overly so. He’s taken too much care with his appearance – the stubble on his face is trimmed to neat razor lines and his elaborately styled hair suggest narcissistic self-obsession.

Olive skin’s companion seems only partially human, a giant muscular black skinned male nearly seven feet tall with eyes formed of vertical reflective slits, more like those of a night-hunting mammal. This one watches me with the same intense stare of the other predators.

Either would make a suitable sexual partner for our requirements, and Hoola agrees.

“They’re satisfactory specimens, for males,” she says approvingly. “Why not?”

The men are sitting on chairs around a circular table, the surface of which is already covered with empty glasses. There are only two free chairs – one in a small gap between the two men and the other at the giant’s side. I would have preferred the more open of the two, but Hoola makes for it quickly, leaving me only the place between them. It’s tight, and once I’m in position their broad shoulders and upper arms press against me.

“Well hello, beautiful,” the smaller, groomed one says to me as soon as I’m sat down. “Aren’t you something special?”

I’m irritated they’re ignoring my friend yet again so I make a point of gesturing to her as I primly introduce, “I’m Lara, and this is Hoola.”

“Lara,” croons the groomed one, with barely a glance at my companion. “A beautiful name for a beautiful woman. My name is Gork Iren. I’m the flight officer, second in command on the merchant freighter Pride of Torconi. My friend here,” (and he indicates the dark giant) “is engineering officer Ker Armando.”

“Pleased to meet you.” I say primly.

“Hey guys,” greets Hoola with a wave from the fringes.

“Can we buy you two beautiful ladies a drink?” the olive-skinned Gork asks me. He has to lean in close to be heard over the music, and his breath smells strange – not unpleasant, just different.

“Why would you want to do that?” I reply.

I genuinely don’t understand. Gaianesian women don’t buy alcohol for each other. And the drones socialize by themselves, doing whatever drones do when they’re not working.

“You’re our guests,” Gork explains with an amused smile. “When someone is as beautiful as you are, you don’t need credits.”

Really? For something that took me no effort and is purely down to my genetics, we get given gifts? I look to Hoola for a cue, and she seems to be expecting this offer, so I agree.

Gork gets up and makes for the bar. In the interval we try to hold a conversation with the giant alien, who’s much quieter than his friend. I’ve already discovered Hoola can disarm anyone though, and before long she’s found out that Pride of Torconi has shipped technical equipment to Gaianesia. It has a crew of fifteen – thirteen male and two female. Gork, Ker and the two women are off duty this evening, but he says the two women don’t like coming to the bars in the enclave and have stayed on board.

“Why not?” I ask.

“They think this place is a meat market,” he states firmly.

I shake my head. It seems unlikely that a bar that’s good enough for Gaianesian women might be deemed unsuitable by offworld females. It’s more likely their women feel inferior in our presence. But the men wouldn’t understand that.

Gork returns with four tumblers of a bright blue liquid. He carefully selects the two he places in front of Hoola and I.

“Delsich Fire Spirit” he informs us. “Be careful. It’s strong.”

I’ve never heard of it before and we both sip cautiously. It does taste very alcoholic, but no worse than some of the distilled liquors I’m familiar with from Gaianesia. The drink produces a very fiery burn at the back of my throat though.

“Best to knock it back in one go before the taste builds up, like this,” Gork tells us, demonstrating with his tumbler. I’m willing to be led by their cultural knowledge, and copy him.

Alcohol hits me like a wall, but has the benefit of quickly rendering me relaxed and uninhibited. Conversation begins to flow more freely. The two men turn out to be very interested in us, and we’ve had little contact with offworlders so we’re as curious about them.

I feel courageous enough to ask the men what it’s like being powerless under the control of their sex drives, but they claim they wouldn’t want it any other way. Tragic. Deluded creatures, but not seemingly violently ones, and I judge it’s safe to risk physical contact. I stroke Ker’s hair sympathetically, telling him he’s so lost that they don’t even understand how much happier he could be.

Gork fetches another round of fire spirit, and then another. Always Gork, and although we offer, we don’t ever pay for anything. Returning to the table he’s always careful distributing the tumblers – “this one is yours, Lara.”

Gradually the conversation becomes intimate. I find myself answering questions about whether I’ve been with an unpacified man before (answer – of course not). Have I been with other women? Of course. Do we enjoy penetrating each other with dildos and artificial aids? Yes – we do. Do many Gaianesian women experiment with restraint or submission? No, only those deviants who deserve exile here. And is that why I’ve come to Subardin? No! Certainly not.

By now I’m saying much more than I’d intended at the start of the night, but given the purpose of our mission, it’s not a bad thing that I’m drunk enough to not feel embarrassment. If the men don’t initiate a sexual encounter soon I’ll have to take charge, so it’s easiest to keep the conversation on physical pleasure.

The fire spirit doesn’t just effect my throat, but gives me an intense warm glow through my body. Heat particularly pools at my most intimate place, and at one point when I re-cross my bare legs in my short skirt I realize I’ve become aroused and my nipples are tingling. When did that happen? I’m not just aroused. I’m so wet between my legs even the blue alien could penetrate me.

Perhaps sensing my growing receptiveness, our chosen males start putting their hands on me. The giant meaty hand of the dark man is one the pale bare skin of one of my exposed thighs, and his smaller but still masculine companion runs his fingers along my other leg. The points of contact send stronger electric jolts to the receptive center of my sex, making me want to squirm.

Further round the table. Ker’s other hand has worked its way right between Hoola’s legs. She seems to be much more intoxicated than I am, so much that she is barely staying upright in her chair.

I’m not sure what she and Ker have been talking about until she declares, loudly and abruptly enough for the nearby tables to hear, “We’re here on a mission so Lara can have sex with a man.”

It’s lucky she slurs her words so badly she’s difficult to understand but a few faces nearby smile all the same. Initially I’m embarrassed by her outburst, but then I remember what other reason brings Gaianesian women to Subardin? It’s not as if I’ll ever see any of these women again anyway, and besides, I am getting so turned on.

“Secret mission,” repeats Hoola. “Shhh. Very secret mission.”

The smaller, groomed man, Gork, touches my breast. He cups the underside of my heavy flesh and tests the weight as though he’s choosing a large piece of fruit. Then he glides his hand over the rounded surface, smooth except where my erect nipple protrudes visibly against the thin fabric of my top. I watch all this take place with mild bemusement. I like having partners play with my breasts and I don’t mind, although I’d have preferred he asked my permission first. What’s different with my first man is the way he squeezes more roughly than is ideal – something I’m sure he wouldn’t do if he knew how it feels for a woman.

“Really Lara, you have the most magnificent pair of boobs I’ve ever touched,” he tells me, and I shrug acceptance at the compliment.

I’m about to explain its no more than genes, but without warning Hoola slumps forward as though she’s fallen asleep, and just in time before her head whacks the table she sits back upright with a jerk.

“I think we’d better get the ladies out of here before we attract attention,” Ker speaks across me to Gork.

The men get up, and we also try to rise. Suddenly Hoola can barely stand, and Ker has to support her by pinning her elbows against her using his strong arms. I’m in a better state than she is, but I wobble precariously on my high heels and I’m grateful when Gork’s arm goes possessively around my back. He half-carries me from the bar, out into the cool starry night.

“Perhaps you’d like us to take you to our ship and give you a tour?” Gork asks as we’re maneuvered further from the noise of the bar into the narrow twisting street.

A tour would be good, but I’m not so drunk as to have forgotten my mission, though. I’ve come here for a reason, a reason that makes my personal craving for penetration even more urgent. I only want to see their ship if the men maintain interest in me. In only a slight slur I confidently state, “I’ll only see the ship if you’re willing to have sex with me there.”

I’m not sure why the two men find this so funny, but they both laugh out loud.

“I think we’ll be okay with that,” Gork reassures me.

With that settled I look around. There aren’t many people around on the street now. It’s not dark though, with Gaianesia’s green-tinted moon large enough to provide illumination even on cloudy nights. The span of stars across the Dorichi galaxy looks beautiful, but looking up at them makes me dizzy and I see an afterimage when I move my head.

My ankle gives way and I stagger again, but Gork’s arm keeps me on my feet. Walking shouldn’t be this hard. I must be wasted. Night air usually helps clear my head but this time the alcohol seems to affect me even more strongly outside. I comment on this.

“The fire spirit…” I murmur, my voice sounding slurred and drowsy. “It tasted strong, but I shouldn’t be this intoxicated.”

“That will be the drugs I added when I was at the bar,” is Gork’s casual answer. “I put a powerful aphrodisiac in yours, which both makes you compliant and also makes you very horny. And for your friend – she got something to help her sleep so she won’t disturb us while the three of us have fun.”

“Well that’s not very nice of you,” Hoola slurs in a childish, petulant voice. “What if I want sex too? At the very least you should have asked permission.”

I agree. I’m a bit annoyed as well, and I swipe weakly at Gork, batting him with my limp hand. But having gone through this much already when experiencing a man is what I’d wanted anyway, it would be harming myself to have to start over. Besides, they’re kind-of doing me a favor when my current level of chemically induced arousal leaves me in a much better state than not being turned on. And oh, am I turned on. Between my legs I’m aching to be touched. The craving need of my body dominates me so much that I can think of little else. With so much of my attention on my erogenous zones the world keeps turning unreal and disconnected from me, and I find myself dipping in and out of awareness.

At one point Gork is conversing with Ker, saying, “It’s just like I told you. Don’t worry about the female dominance thing here on Gaianesia. I’ve never been anywhere else in the galaxy it’s so easy to get laid… at least laid for free. All these curious neglected females naively trust in their own superiority, and they don’t think for a moment they might be exploited. Plus the genetic control of their breeding means they’re all gorgeous. Mind you, Lara here is exceptional even by the standards of this world. I couldn’t believe our luck when a creature like her walked into the bar.”

I frown petulantly. I’m not the only beautiful woman here. They mustn’t keep forgetting Hoola. I try to protest but only manage a moan that sounds sensual even to my ears, the vibration of my vocal chords triggers a tremor between my legs and for a while I’m lost again in my own body.

Next thing I know is the moment when I notice I’m walking oddly, in short restricted steps.

“Wait, something’s wrong,” I say to Gork, and we stop.

Looking down I see what the problem is – my panties have ended up just above my knees, so they’re stretching when I move my long legs. I’m not sure how they got there, because the simple white thong was tight on me, and couldn’t have possibly come down on its own.

“Oh!” I say, confused.

I hear other voices, people laughing and joking. The crew of another ship are coming towards us, relaxing offworlders on their way home from another bar no doubt. The crew in uniforms are all human – four men and one women. They have three Gaianesian girls with them. Each guy has his arm around one of the women. All eight in their party choose me to stare at. The men have curiosity in their expressions and the same look of hunger I seem to provoke. The women see me – a Gaianesian with her thong around her knees – and their faces show contempt, so I leer at them. What’s their problem? It could happen to anybody.

I decide it would be easier with no panties than walking like this, so I abandon them on the dusty street. I’m very wet between my legs and the sensation of air freely moving under my high skirt is pleasant.

Time progresses in jerky moments. Jump to us in the hanger looking up at the Pride of Torconi’s hull. Like most freighters it’s a boxy thing, built to maximize space, but there is pride in the men’s voices. I make appreciative noises. Hoola is having to be carried in Ker’s vast arms, and seems to be asleep.

A crew member stands watch at the ship’s gangplank.

“Who are these?” the guard asks the men with a knowing grin.

“Locals…” replies Gork.

The guard says he can’t let us on board without the captain’s say so, but there is an exchange of credits and assisted by our escorts we’re inside the vessel.

“Don’t let anyone catch you with them or we’re all in trouble,” the guard warns.

“We’ll have them in a taxi shuttle before morning,” Gork reassures him. “This isn’t going to take long. We only want to nail the hot one.”

I don’t remember if we ever did get shown around, but next thing I’m aware of is being in a large, opulently furnished cabin with a huge satin bed, a sunken bath nearly the size of a small swimming pool, and leather covered sofas.

Hoola is dumped face first onto one of these, limp as a sack, and on impact she remains so still she must already be out for the count. Without even checking she’s okay the men begin to undress me.

I’m perfectly capable of removing my own clothes, but they want to do it for me, and although I’m wildly aroused I’m not so wasted as to enjoy the way these two strip me. There’s a forceful insistence to their actions – one of the men always kissing me and holding my arms to prevent me interfering, while the other tugs at my clothing.

But my sedated willpower reminds me yet again the reason I’m here is to feel a male cock making love to me, which necessarily requires enough exposure of my body to enable penetration, so I remain consensual throughout. Nonetheless, what little of the sensible Lara remains warns me that if I was to change my mind, the atmosphere would turn ugly and I’m not sure they’d accept “no” for an answer. In a sense, I’m in danger.

Ker turns my head to kiss me firmly on the lips as my skirt comes down and I’m left naked below the waist. This new experience of the sandpaper rubbing against my mouth is erotic for its novelty. Gaianesian pacified males do not develop facial hair and all my previous sexual partners have been women, so I’ve never felt rough skin like this against mine before.

At one point Ker pulls me too him, and I feel the most important thing for the first time. Like a solid rod between his legs. So that’s it – a real male erection. The ultimate expression of men’s uncontrollable desire to mate, and the source of so much conflict and suffering across the galaxy.

“Oh,” I say.

I know the theory – a male penis fills with blood and becomes rigid – but at my first experience of the actual organ I find it much firmer than I’d expected. Up to this moment I’ve believed that if I suffer an attempted rape when I go to Aghara-Penthay, someone wouldn’t be able to penetrate me against my will with something as insignificant as a prick. We’re taught that a woman has to be mentally weak to succumb to rape. But no. Overpower me and a male could force one of those things inside me with no problems, and I’d be defeated just like so many women through history have succumbed to the violation of their bodies. I’m glad my drug addled brain and the attention of my escorts means I’m unable to contemplate the significance of this discovery.

My top is tight, and I have to raise my arms to help Ker pull it over my head. The under-layer is built into it and comes away with the same movement, suddenly spilling my breasts free. Males do not have tits of course, and that means female chests such as mine are fascinating to them. Gork doesn’t even wait until I’m completely undressed before groping me, squeezing me roughly and pulling at my nipples so hard the handling becomes uncomfortable.

“Oh, look at these hooters,” he says to Ker, lifting their weight out in his hands to show his friend. “Have you ever seen anything so fine?”

At this point my drugged haze clears enough to become aware that I am nude, but the men are still clothed. Granted Gork is already tugging down the zipper of his flight suit, and I gather he intends to at least partially strip as well. But the unease I’d begun to feel earlier intensifies if I consider that I, who as a proud Gaianesian should be the dominant one, am put in a subservient state of being the only one in the cabin naked.

It’s a relief to let the dream state claims me once more, so I let it claim me and next thing I know I’m stood passionately kissing Ker, the larger of the two me. I am tall compared to human women, but even so the height difference between us is so great his colossal erection presses against my abdomen.

I remain wetter than I’ve been in my life, and any time my various concerns threatens to crystalize into coherent resistance the drug dispels them like scattering startled birds. All the same I have enough self-awareness left to know I should be humiliated by what Ker demands next:

“If you want me to fuck you, let me smell your pussy.”

“What?”

“I think there’s nothing sexier than the scent of female. So please… get on your hands and knees on the bed, and from behind let me press my nose into your pussy and breathe in the smell.”

My face flares with embarrassed indignation. No, I really don’t like the sound of him smelling my pussy. But inexperience makes me uncertain whether this request is perfectly normal in heterosexual encounters, and unable to come up with an objection I find myself giving in, on all-fours with my bare rump thrust out behind me and feeling very exposed as I sense him approach my genitals. Then the hard ridge of his nose is pressing against my clitoris, and there’s the sense of air flowing over my vulva as he inhales the fragrance of my wetness.

Although it’s shameful being naked in a position like a beast waiting to be mounted, the sensation of Ker’s nose making gentle movements against my aroused trigger is intensely pleasurable. The part of me that wishes to flee once more evaporates and when Ker breaks contact to pull down the zipper of his suit I groan with longing.

“That’s the greatest smell in the universe,” Ker murmurs to Gork.

Meanwhile Gork has stripped himself. His body is wiry and lean, the muscles and sinews as defined as though he’s a medical school teaching model. The black hair sprouting on his body is strange to me – the pacification measures mean our own males never develop such growth, and I reach out to him to run my fingers through the thick rug on his chest.

He is very aroused. His penis protrudes horizontally from his body, sprouting from another nest of the midnight black hair. Gork is circumcised, and the head of him with its vertical slit is a darker color than the rest of the organ. The shaft is not perfectly round like a rolling pin, but ridged and deeply contoured with veins.

It’s intriguing to me and I can’t imagine what it must feel like to possess one. Curious overriding my other concerns, I wrap my hand round it, but after only an instant where I feel the warm firmness he gasps and draws back out of reach as though I’ve stung him.

“I’m sorry,” I say, embarrassed, not sure what I’ve done wrong.

“No, it was nice. It’s just if you keep hold, you’ll make me climax before I’m inside you,” he explains.

“Oh,” I blush. I didn’t know that.

Now the dark giant, Ker, has also extracted his cock. There is no further removal of clothing – he merely frees his organ. Ker’s penis, like the rest of him, is vast. Larger than any dildo I’ve ever had inside me. I’m thankful I’m so well lubricated in preparation, but even so it’s going to be a stretch.

I can see straight away he’s non-human, for there’s something additional on his penis – short spur-like ridges running down the length, as though someone decorated it with a series of thick lines. Ker follows the line of my gaze and understands my questioning.

“In males of my species the penis is barbed,” he says. “The barbs usually remain flat against the shaft, but reflexively extend during mating. So do not try to suddenly withdraw once I’ve penetrated you, or it will tear your inside. If you want me to stop fucking you, must warn me first, and I’ll take it out.”

He could tear me inside? Gods… I’ve never heard of this before and I become properly afraid. I shrink back from him as an adrenaline rush momentarily clears the clouds of the drug for a moment. I feel I have enough willpower to leave now, but Ker gently insists, “It won’t hurt. Not unless you fight. Just lie on your side on the bed,” and next thing I know there I am with him facing me, also lying on his side only inches away. His cock has already found its way to the apex of my legs, the hard tip pressing against my wet vulva. With the virgin’s anxiety before her first time I look up shyly, and he sees my fear and kisses me reassuringly on the lips with that scratchy mouth.

Behind me Gork also mounts the bed, so I’m sandwiched between the two men. Over my increasing heartrate I try to remind myself that all is going to plan. Ker will take me, just as I wanted a man to, then his friend will follow, and I’ll have the knowledge of two males to steady my resolve before I face Aghara-Penthay.

Women enjoy long periods of foreplay with their partners. But all I find happening on my first time with an unpacified male is that after briefly caressing my nipples (which sends a warm rush of stimulation through me), Ker lifts my thigh to expose my sex so he can press the head of himself against my nether lips. Then with a firm thrust from his pelvis he spears deep inside my body. I cry out loudly as I’m penetrated. Gods, this man is huge. I feel distended with him – he’s far larger than any artificial lovemaking aids I’ve used. It’s overwhelming. If I weren’t stretched enough there is even more pressure against my inner walls as the barbs press into the delicate tissue of my vagina. The knowledge I’m at genuine risk of harm from these additions adds an element of fear I’ve never felt before during a sexual experience, but it also feels so good it’s mind-blowing.

Ker begins to draw gradually backwards and he fucks me with steady rhythmic thrusts of his pelvis. His huge girth means the stimulation is at the upper range of my tolerance, and I understand why women moan whorishly in pornographic movies. I’m emitting the same noises myself each time he rams forward, burying himself so deep into me that his balls press against my apex.

During the brief instances when I can think coherently, I try to analyze whether what’s happening to me is pleasurable. If I can confirm a taste for men, I have less to fear encountering males on my short visit to the Slaver’s world. But although I’m undeniably aroused by Gork and Ker’s touching, by the aphrodisiac and by my own natural desire, and yes, although I’m wet and receptive, I’m still not sure heterosexual intercourse is for me. So far my mission to Subardin isn’t helping me anticipate being on a whole hub full of randy males.

Back in the present I’ve been expecting Gork to wait his turn with me, so I’m surprised when while Ker is still fucking me Gork closes in to press his nude body against my bare back. Sandwiched between the two men I feel him steer the stiff rod of his cock into the cleft between my buttocks. I tense completely from instinct to repel him, but he slides easily between my cheeks as though he’s oiled himself.

With one hand he shifts his cock along me, probing, and I feel an intense rush of fear as I realize what he intends to do.

Hold on, I didn’t agree to this! I certainly hadn’t set out this evening intending to let someone penetrate my ass as well as my pussy. Okay, once in a secret shameful moment with a girlfriend anal sex was discussed, and I even let her put a dildo in there to see what it felt like. But I found nothing but discomfort. It’s not for me.

I stiffen, automatically trying to push myself away the cock already inside me, but that only presses my back more firmly against Gork. “No!” I say.

Ker sees that I’m beginning to resist, so he tries to stroke my head soothingly before I injure my insides on his barbs. But while head-stroking might be comforting to a human woman, it’s certainly the wrong way for a male to calm a Gaianesian female.

“Don’t touch my hair,” I snap in a far more frightened voice.

He moves his hand from me immediately. By then the threat of The Reflex has distracted me for long enough that his friend is already penetrating into my backside. I’m not wet at my rear, and despite the oil coating him there’s a sharp piercing pain as he breaks though the ring of muscle, and I cry out. The initial flaring discomfort recedes immediately though, and once he’s deep enough inside me I find I can bear it as the two men screw me at the same time – one withdrawing as the other one thrusts forwards, in a steady rhythm.

Having two of them take me at the same time seems to double the stimulation from my pelvis, and for a while I lose any will to resist and much awareness of myself, not even knowing if I’m speaking, crying out or silent. Hands seem like they’re all over me, with my breasts their favorite place to grope. The mauling my tits receive is vigorous – on the verge of being too rough, but the squeezing tugging on my nipples is pleasurable all the same.

By the time I regain any self-possession the ordeal is almost over, and it’s too late for me to object. It is Gork who climaxes first. He emits an animal moan of lust and pulls me hard against him so my buttocks squash against his pelvis. His cock is buried to its deepest in my bowel, and I cry out again as he stiffens and holds me tightly in place. This seems to push Ker over the edge. He rams himself forward as well, and I feel the barbs extend as he grips to shoot his seed as far into me as he can.

And that’s it. I’ve had sex with men, vaginally and anally. With it over all three of us wait limp for a few moments. I wasn’t aware of exerting myself but I discover I’m panting as though I’ve run a race and I seem to be covered in sweat. The two men also seem to be exhausted. Both of their cocks are still inside me, but I feel no sign of the organs beginning to shrink.

“Gods, that was the fuck of a lifetime,” gasps Gork, addressing his friend rather than me.

“Mmm,” agrees Ker with a satisfied bass chuckle.

The giant smiles down to me and leans in to kiss my forehead tenderly when his friend abruptly withdraws from my backside. Strangely it’s more painful than when he entered me, and I shriek loudly enough to disturb Hoola into giving a sleepy groan.

Ker withdraws then, carefully. I actually feel his barbs retract so he doesn’t damage the delicate flesh inside my vagina. Even so the friction against my walls stimulates me so intensely that I moan as whorishly as a human. When he’s gone, leaving a trickle of sticky fluid between my thighs and a sensation of emptiness, I feel as though I’m still stretched open.

I’m the only one who didn’t climax during intercourse, so I’m still intensely aroused. The aphrodisiac has not yet worn off, and trying to reassert my authority in this encounter I remind myself there’s no shame in a proud Gaianesian woman empowered with understanding of her own body.

That’s why the first thing I do when they’re no longer within me is to roll onto my front, reach my hand between my legs and I masturbate. My rump, up in the air to allow my hand access to my genitals, makes rhythmic circular movements which probably look obscene to the two men. Touching my pussy feels different to me – the mix of Gork’s fluids with my own juices making them viscous and tackier than normal.

“Gods, look at her go,” I hear Gork say from behind me in a tone almost like awe. Yes, I think with satisfaction. Look at me. Admire my feminine strength.

The responses of my body are more familiar now, despite the aphrodisiac drugs and alcohol. Ignoring the insignificant males I bring myself to orgasm rapidly and it’s an explosive one, where I’m unable to keep down my cries of pleasure.

The adrenaline rush during sex must have been keeping me alert, for almost as soon as I’ve climaxed all sense of presence leaves me yet again, and I’m uncertain whether events are real or dream. I see an image of Hoola nude on the bed beside me, lying on her back screwing Gork with almost desperate passion. I also have a phantom memory of lying face down on the bed lifting my ass up in the air while Ker’s hand explores the naked curves of my rump, and hearing the two men converse in low voices. Ker says to Gork, “Do you know how many credits this one would be worth if we could get her to the market?” and Gork replies, “No, she’s been nice to us, and besides, we don’t finishing loading the ship for two days. There will be a search for them by morning if they really are government operatives. We’d never make it off-world.”

I’m no more certain that the memory of that is any more truthful than the one of the two men pulling me back into my clothes, and then carrying my limp form between them out to a waiting taxi shuttle. But the last part at least must have happened that way, for even though I have no sure recollection of dressing myself or of leaving the Pride of Torconi I did leave Subardin somehow. My mission to gain male experience successfully is completed, but at the cost of me feeling nothing like the victor.

10 – Gone

I have the mother of all headaches, and I groan. The sunlight, shining through a slotted blind, pierces my skull like a splinter. I groan again.

My surroundings are unfamiliar, but the architecture is reassuringly Gaianesian and I quickly work-out this must be Hoola’s apartment. Her naked body is entwined with me under the crisp white sheets.

Hoola stirs when I groan, and she emits a sound that suggests she’s suffering even more than I am. Then she pushes herself upright, the sheet sliding away to reveal her nudity. The special agent climbs gingerly out of bed; shuffles uncertainly towards the bathroom and I hear her vomit copiously.

I shift position on the mattress, discovering new sensations which had been masked by the intensity of the headache. My breasts ache from being groped too long and too firmly. My anus and pussy feel as sore as if I have internal friction burns.

Gradually the memories come. The bar; Gork; Ker; my drugged awareness; being naked on their ship; my discomfort about what was happening to me; but Gork penetrating my pussy and Ker my backside anyway; and then uncertain fragments until Hoola’s apartment.

“I have painkillers,” Hoola tells me reemerging from the bathroom. I try to smile gratefully, but even that hurts.

First things first – dealing with the headache is more important that dealing emotionally with last night. But when I sit up I’m overcome with dizziness. Hoola has to lend me an arm before I’m stable enough to keep on my feet.

For a society where males are pacified and feel no sexual desire for women, Gaianesia is surprisingly prudish about nudity in public places. But in private, among female friends, it’s a different matter. So I’m not surprised when Hoola walks away through a doorway without bothering to dress. Around those I trust, I too find it relaxing to be unclothed, and it’s not uncommon I arrive at a friend’s home and immediately strip.

But this morning, for some reason I’m feeling unusually self-conscious, and in need of the protection of having my body covered. So I borrow a robe of a rich silken material, and tie it around myself before following Hoola through to her apartment’s small kitchenette. There she hands out pills and brews the java that will also restore my spiritual balance.

Our medical science is a source of great pride on Gaianesia, and it takes these new drugs only five minutes to make us both feel miraculously back to normal. During this time we sit in silence on the cream sofa, reflecting on the night before.

My period is due and I can feel the first twinges of cramp, and I try to convince myself that’s the reason I’m feeling irritable. But I know that’s a lie, and the true source of my frustration is the two men and what they did to me.

“They didn’t have to drug us,” I complain when I eventually feel up to talking. “We were going to have sex with them anyway.”

Hoola looks at me with a wise expression.

“Is that why you’re looking so moody? You’re pissed that they tricked us so easily?”

I frown at being read transparent.

“Hold on to that emotion. It might help you, in a way Lara. Whatever happens to you on Aghara-Penthay you’re going to feel exploited afterwards, and this lesser experience will toughen you for what’s ahead.”

“It’s not the sex. I want to know why they had to drug us. Because their male urges made them that selfish? They were so desperate for us not to change our minds that they didn’t care if they made us unwell? And are all unpacified men like that, or where those two particularly bad?”

I know that in principle I have a body which is desirable to the unpacified. My face is considered exceptional even by other women, my legs are long, and my breasts are ripe and full. But it’s just a body when all said and done. I can’t understand why a male would make someone sick, just to make certain he could relieve his urges.

“It’s not just about sex drive. There’s a power thing to factor in,” Hoola answers. “Males are compelled to conquer. They liked that the drugs gave them some power over us.”

Images flash through my head. Walking through the dark street and realizing my panties were around my knees. Did I really do that? My growing discomfort with being with them, but then finding myself lying naked on the bed anyway. The barbs from Ker’s penis scraping inside me. The smaller man penetrating my anus. And every single time I tried to resist my willpower dissolving.

“They should be reported,” I state, clutching the robe to me.

Hoola shakes her head.

“No one would listen. We went freely to Subardin. We drank the drinks they bought us. The authorities will say we were asking for it. They’d be more likely to sanction us than the men. The guys would only have to claim we behaved submissively, and we could get in real trouble. Anyhow, you were on a mission to get laid. It’s not like they did anything you didn’t want, did they?”

She looks at me shrewdly.

“What did they do while I was out of it, Lara? I don’t remember much until waking up with the smaller guy screwing me, and that was just before we left.”

(A memory of Gork’s iron hard penis moving between my buttocks, and me saying “No!” but then him painfully entering me anyway.)

“All they did was make love to me,” I lie, “the bigger one first and then his friend. Then I passed out.”

But my face is flaring with the shameful recollections, and it feels like it must be obvious I’m hiding something. I’m too embarrassed to tell Hoola that Gork was able to take me in the ass though. Gaianesian women are supposed to be strong, and she might think I have submissive tendencies if I admit that all it took was a pill slipped into my drink, and I gave them everything they wanted.

Hoola looks at me shrewdly, but when she speaks her tone is gentle.

“It’s okay. Most of the galaxy isn’t like Gaianesia, Lara. Men are usually the predators and women the prey. You’re now aware of the truth that away from here you’re vulnerable, and being more wary will stand you in good stead on the Slavers’ Hub. So don’t beat yourself up about whether the men bested you last night. It doesn’t matter.”

But it matters to me. I’m supposed to be the strong one, the aggressor. There is another flashback of the two flight crew penetrating me, and when it’s gone I can still feel where their hands were on my body and feel the soreness in my anus. And it wasn’t just Gork and Ker. So many men in the bar looking at me with the same hungry eyes.

I shake my head trying to dispel the thoughts. My new knowledge is not helping me prepare to visit Aghara-Penthay. The dread I was feeling at the prospect of that place is tipping towards terror.

“I’m gonna use your shower,” I say with a weary sigh. “I feel unclean.”

“Help yourself,” Hoola says in a kindly voice. “I’ll watch the news on the video screen.”

I get the shower running, but I haven’t even stepped into the stream of steaming water before Hoola runs into the bathroom after me. The tender expression she wore only a moment earlier now looks on the brink of tears.

“You’d need to see this broadcast, Lara,” she says in a voice breaking with emotion. “There’s news from Aghara-Penthay. Ja-Alixxe is dead.”

I stop the water and the bathroom falls silent. Ja-Alixxe was condemned to be raped until death, so she must have only had hours left and it’s not as though her actions in the Rape Run deserved the sympathy of other women. I shouldn’t be shocked, or sad. But I hurry back through to the main room anyway.

I’m expecting a news ticker headline of “raped until dead”, but the text I see is something staggeringly different.

“Suicide bombing on Aghara-Penthay Trading Station claims the life of condemned former Rape-Runner, Ja-Alixxe.”

“What?” I gasp.

A regular news service would just relate what happened rather than have the bad taste to show it, but Hoola has tuned into the uncensored broadcast channel by the Slavers of Aghara-Penthay. They have no such scruples.

In the first images Ja-Alixxe is alive, still on her front as she’d been before with her limbs strapped to the legs of the same horse and her pelvis thrust out behind her. Only this video footage of her is poor quality – someone’s home movie acquired by the Slavers rather than an official broadcast.