The Rape Run

The Rape Run

Written by Olga Anastasia

The Runners:

Melena de Santo – The Colonel

Ja-alixxe – The Bounty Hunter

Aireela – The Amazon

Elionara – The Dancer

Palonae – The Princess (Princess Palonae Noonian Aurora Tonova)

Tasha Castelaine – The Career Woman

Jasmeena – Daughter of the Sands

Cara Haston – The Model

Leesha – The Born Slave

Oorla – The Actress

The Hunters:

Salarin – The Sadist

Leshan – The Runt

Cronorgan – The Master

Lotho-etsarra –The Libido

Jackran-ad-aktar – The Alien

1 – General

I am sleeping alone in my small regulation single bed, as always, when I’m woken by the urgent alarm call of someone pressing the buzzer outside my door.

“Light!” I command.

Sensors detect my voice, signal to the lamps, and my cabin gradually illuminates with a soft glow.

There’s enough light to see my soldier’s watch. As usual I fell asleep with it still fastened round my slender wrist. Zero-two-hundred hours, prime-world time. It’s not my duty period. It’s the middle of the night.

I recheck the time in confusion.

The ship’s engines are resonating with their familiar constant, gentle shush. I hear no tortured roar of battle maneuvers, and there is not the sound of blasts hitting the hull. Everything seems calm, so I have not been woken because we’re under attack.

I am not due on duty for hours. What can have been important enough to wake me up?

The buzzer repeats, a longer, insistent sound.

“Okay, Okay, I’m awake,” I shout out testily. The internal walls marking out the cabins in this cruiser are paper thin, so the caller outside will be able to hear me.

I swing my smooth, pale, bare legs from the cot and stand, padding across the floor to the door. My long hair tumbles into place down my back.

A screen to the right of the exit shows the image of Mansom, my steward. I scowl. Most in the Republic fleet would consider themselves lucky to be high-ranking enough to have their own assistant and normally I appreciate him. But in the middle of the night I’m only good for being tetchy.

I press the open button beside my cabin door, which sweeps aside in a rush of hydraulics, and I turn away without speaking, walking back towards the metal basin.

Mansom enters the room and the door closes behind him. He carries a steaming coffee to help wake me up. He knows my moods and habits well enough to bring this strategically sensible offering.

“Ma’am,” he says diffidently. “Sorry to wake you, but the general wants to see you immediately.”

I grunt, splashing my face with cold water from the basin, and turn back to catch him in the act of watching me. Mansom looks quickly away, but his guilty start gives away that he was staring at my body, again. Okay, I’m only wearing standard issue female underwear – flimsy white cotton panties and a tight vest, but really Mansom… Half the population of the universe are women with organs same as mine. Get over us.

But he’s been assigned as my steward for long enough, being forced to look every day at what he wants but will never have, that the normal male appreciation of a familiar woman has turned to desire, and then to hungry obsession.

I get this kind of thing all the time. Young women serving in the space fleet are vastly outnumbered by our male colleagues so we have to learn to cope with the constant hungry eyes. Luckily rank counts, and while junior ratings are perpetually hit-on, men of Mansom’s grade know better than to dare try anything with a senior officer.

For my part, I have always refused to let myself be treated any differently or behave any differently because of my sex. It’s a point of principle. So that meant when a male steward was assigned to me, I didn’t ask for a female instead. I determined he’d have to put up with me in my smalls, just the same as if he was steward to a guy.

I believe to the depths of my soul that a woman should be able to fill any role in the Republic fleet just as well as a man, and it shouldn’t matter a jot if that woman is considered desirable. If I show discomfort, well that’s just a sign of weakness on my part. So, just as I’ve done every other time this has happened, I pretend I haven’t even noticed my male steward mentally undressing me, and I sip my coffee.

It’s steaming hot and it tastes good. My mood starts improving immediately.

Mansom helps me into the snug white regulation jumpsuit that is my uniform. A symbol on the upper arm of my suit marks me as a colonel. The shoes I slip on are also white, sturdy and utilitarian.

Unlike some women in the fleet, I take no time to apply makeup. Men don’t have to. Why should I?

Only a couple of minutes later, clad in standard field dress, I am moving alone through the corridors of the ship towards the general’s office. Mansom is left behind, at liberty to return to his bed and his dreams.

Passing a place where the vessel narrows allowing viewing windows to have been installed on both sides of the walkway, I see no sign of a planet or sun around us. We are in deep space.

A cruiser of the Republican fleet never drops its guard, even in the middle of the night, so although it is my time to be resting, others are about their duties. A group of soldiers comes down the corridor towards me, dressed in the same uniform jumpsuits I wear. There movements are leisurely, confirming we are not on alert.

Most of the soldiers are men, but there is one woman with them, not as tall and long-legged as me but with a pretty face and neat blonde hair, that she keeps cut shorter than I wear mine.

The approaching group clock the insignia on my jumpsuit (or more likely simply recognize me), and give me the salute due to a senior officer. I return the salute casually. All the men make their way past me and continue down the corridor, but the blonde female hangs back.

“Guys, I’ll catch you up,” she calls after her comrades in her high voice.

Once the men are out of sight, formality can be dropped.

“Jasmine,” I say, pulling her to me in a chaste hug.

“Melena,” she says, giving me a peck on the cheek.

She carries a flowery scent along with her, like her own personal cloud. She shouldn’t really wear fragrance on duty, but no-one is likely to report her for it, including me. Jasmine is one of my few close friends here on the cruiser. Being two women in a mainly male environment we would probably have been drawn together whatever, but our similar personalities and sense of humor made us closer even than the many other serving females who can only let their guard down in the company of their fellow women.

Jasmine is quite junior to me in rank, a sergeant, so in front of the rest of the crew she has to treat me respectfully, but the moment we’re off duty I enjoy and actively encourage the open, casual way she speaks to me.

“Why are you up?” she asks me with puzzled concern. “It’s not your time on duty.”

“Something going on,” I tell her. “I’ve been summoned to see the general.”

“Raiders, perhaps? Or smugglers? Or a strike planet-side?”

“Possibly. But then why aren’t the crew at their stations, and why are we in deep space? I’ll let you know later, if it’s something I can discuss.”

Jasmine nods, and adds in a relaxed tone, “You working out today?”

“Certainly. I’ll come and find you.”

The gym on the ship isn’t sexually segregated, so Jasmine and I soon found there’s safety in numbers from the constant discreetly watching male eyes, if we perform our keep fit together.

Working out is supposed to be a nice part of fleet military routine, recreation, but I frown when I think of braving the gym. Okay, it’s the one place I can’t avoid wearing tight clothing, but it’s not that there’s a problem with guys trying to pick us up the moment I venture out in public. I am too senior in rank for men to come onto unless they want to risk being busted down to private, and Jasmine’s boyfriend – one of the space marines – would break anyone’s neck if they messed with his girl.

They never say anything, but we can’t forbid them looking at us, and boy, as soon as I step out from the changing room dressed in lycra, watch they do.

For example, I have to lean over a bench to lift a weight and work my triceps, and seeing how I have to do that with my ass sticking up in the air the bench press machine right behind me never seems to be without an occupant. Jasmine literally mounts a rear guard for me, scowling at anyone sat behind me who is being too blatantly obvious.

But even with her there I’ll always feel uncomfortable when I’m in that sweat-soaked room. And yet just like the situation with the male steward, at the gym I’d be letting them win if I let my sex stop me doing what I want.

“See you later,” I say in farewell to Jasmine, and squeezing her hand in platonic friendship, I continue my progress until I’m at the quarters of our commanding officer.

I press the buzzer at the general’s door, and hear his voice call, “Enter.”

“Sir,” I say, as I walk into the room.

The general is sat behind a large desk, with a facing chair on its opposing side already prepared for me. I’ve known him for years but salute him smartly all the same.

“Colonel,” he says, gesturing to the chair. “My apologies for waking you. Please sit.”

I do.

He surveys me for a moment, like a schoolmaster considering a difficult pupil. The general is a small man, wiry-built and in his sixties, but he still has a sharpness and a manner that commands respect.

“Colonel de Santo,” the general says. “May I call you Melena?”

I look suspiciously at him. First names in the fleet mean bad news.

“If you must, Sir,” I say.

“You have been critical in our Republic’s fight against the Slavers of Aghara-Penthay,” he begins, “and proven your courage again and again.”

There is not much I can reply with to this flattery, but, “It’s a fight I believe in, General.”

It is a cause close to my heart. I detest the Slavers, and everything they represent, and I think there is no more important task for the space fleet than bringing about their defeat.

For decades, no, centuries, the Slavers have been the scourge of this part of the galaxy. Acting like common raiders, they prey on ships following their legitimate business along the trade routes, and like all pirates the Slavers come not to destroy, but to plunder.

As their title suggests, their fortune comes from the capture and sale of slaves. They’ve been so successful at this work that over the centuries they’ve grown hugely wealthy.

These riches enabled them to afford so many ships and armaments to protect themselves that now they can menace this region with impunity. Even the Republic’s space fleet cannot currently beat them in their home territory, and dare not approach their hub, the horrific planet of Aghara-Penthay. We’ve fought a series of skirmishes along the frontier, encounter after encounter for decades and no sign of a victor.

“We all want to see them defeated,” says the general with a nod of agreement that our cause is the right one. “And I can imagine that as a woman, you particularly oppose them.”

Briefly I feel myself scowl, disliking any reference to my gender and how it might make a difference. He is, however, unfortunately correct.

While the Slavers deal in slaves of any kind, and are known for selling some healthy, strong males for breeding stock or for intense physical labor, their specialty and their fortune comes from trading women. Beautiful women. The sexual desires of the galaxy’s men are insatiable, and the immoral rich and powerful will always pay well for compliant, broken, and most importantly desirable, female slaves. So, yes, given that as I too am a female considered to be unusually attractive, it is in my own interest to free the galaxy from their threat. My gender makes us automatic enemies.

“You are perhaps the highest profile woman serving in the Republic fleet,” continues the general. “Your success in battle against the Slavers has made you a symbol of woman’s struggle for equal rights in the galaxy.”

I am further irritated as once more the general brings my sex into the discussion, so I wave an arm dismissively. Okay, the fleet’s publicity arm put me in a propaganda movie, and they used my image on a recruiting poster to attract more women into the fleet, but I never sought that attention.

“I’m not interested in being famous, or a symbol, general, if that’s the issue,” I reply with increasing annoyance. “If that’s what’s what you want to talk about, I’d welcome a lower profile.”

“Nonetheless, you have grown into a figurehead, and caught the notice of the galaxy, and the Slavers themselves,” he says, moving on in a calm tone, like I’m a difficult beast he’s trying to settle.

The general looks at me shrewdly, and even more carefully he says, “Your beauty has only added to the attention you receive. A journalist described you as both the most famous and the most desirable woman in the Republic fleet.”

Being reminded of this statement, and the teasing I received after its publication, makes me really angry.

“What difference does all that make, General?” I snap back, not hiding the hostility in my voice. “You know that’s all baloney.”

“It matters because your reputation makes you a target, Melena,” he answers patiently. “Imagine the damage to the Republican fleet’s credibility and the fear that will spread through the Republic’s women if even the great Melena de Santo was paraded as a sex slave.”

I dismiss this as well, for I have long known what the Slavers would try to do with me if I were captured, but I get on with the job anyway and I avoid contemplating that fate. I devote my efforts to the downfall of the Slavers, not to fearing them. All the same, when the general utters the phrase “sex slave” I shudder for a moment.

“I won’t let that happen, Sir. I would kill myself before they took me,” I say, trying to sound confident.

“You might not have that choice, Melena. Lots of women would rather die than be broken, and yet they are captured and tamed all the same.”

I clench my fists under the desk to hide my surging emotions. Every female in the galaxy is aware of their fate if they are captured by the raiders of Aghara-Penthay. Not even I can escape the fear the Slavers instill.

Deep down a part of me knows that like so many women before me, I would too be unable to resist if I fell into the Slaver’s hands. They would break me under the whip and the neural implants, and then I’d live out my days enduring rape after rape after rape. But I suppress my personal fears to fight the good fight, and that’s what I’ll keep on doing. I’d rather not dwell on such gruesome things.

“Why have you woken me to discuss this, General?” I ask suddenly. “What is so urgent?”

He pushes a screen across the desk. There is an image of myself on it, the one they used in the recruiting poster.

I remember standing proudly with my head held high for that photo. I’d turned up for the shoot in my regulation jumpsuit but Publicity had made me wear something stylized and tighter than my usual uniform. And I hate the camera angle they used in the end. In that profile, the most prominent thing about me is my embarrassing gravity defying breasts.

A few parodies and versions edited to make me look obscene have made it out to the ether. The photo on this one hasn’t been altered, but the writing on the version filling general’s screen isn’t the call to women to join the fleet. I can read the new text perfectly well for myself, but he speaks anyway.

“The Slavers have put a bounty on you, Melena, a bounty that’s almost unprecedented. They’re offering half a million credits to someone who delivers you to the Slavers alive. And what makes this situation even worse – we’ve only just come out of communication silence, and discovered it. That means this announcement has been all over the galaxy for several days. Bounty hunters will already be on their way here.”

The fears I’ve spent years quelling flutter in my belly, but I hide them from the general. I refuse to show weakness, especially weakness that results from me being a woman.

Inside, I’m in anguish though.

Who will resist such a fortune? It is enough credit for a bounty hunter to spend the rest of their life living in luxury. Every lowlife in the galaxy will be attracted by this fortune. And just for capturing me. Fortune seekers will already be on their way here.

“I have to take you off active duty and put you under protection, Melena,” the general says. “You need to go into hiding somewhere secure until this blows over.”

“No!” I protest. “That’s giving in to them, if you take me off service just because I’m female. The galaxy will believe that I’ve run away like a coward, and that would send a worse message than if I was taken.”

“No it’s not worse, Melena,” the general presses, almost pleading. “Just think what the Slavers will do to you.”

“I won’t give in to them,” I insist firmly, and then remember my rank, and say, “No way, Sir.”

The general pauses, leaning forward to make a steeple with his forearms, elbows on the desk, and tries a new tack. I can see the deep furrows of age in his face. His skin is quite brown, tanned from leave spent on sunny planets.

“Have you ever met a woman who’s been fully processed through Aghara-Penthay?” he asks.

“Of course not,” I reply.

Slaves are almost never recovered by the free planets of the Republic, once they’re taken. After capture, women disappear into the hidden places of the universe, the cellars, the dungeons, the pits and the cages of those who can afford them on the worlds that don’t respect law and order.

While women might have equal rights in most of the Republic, possessing a vagina instead of a penis means a human becomes property as soon as she sets foot on Slaver territory. Occasionally women return from the station orbiting Aghara-Penthay, where they can enter and leave under the escort of a registered male “owner”, but I’ve never met a woman who has been down on the planet’s surface. Females only go there when they’re lost, and on their way to be processed and sold by the Slavers.

“I think you should meet one, Melena. It would give you some perspective.”

And without giving me time to reply the general leans forward and presses the intercom on his desk.

“Ask Beyala to come in, please,” he says to someone.

While we wait for this Beyala he offers me coffee, but I’m pissed with him and I refuse. I sit back petulantly in my chair and fold my arms under my chest.

It is only a couple of minutes later when the girl enters.

She’s wearing a standard ship jumpsuit, the navy blue that designates a civilian, but despite her entirely generic attire I can tell immediately what she once was, a slave of Aghara-Penthay, because Beyala has the mark.

The slave mark – an indelible sign that a woman has been processed on the surface of that vile planet.

Beyala’s imprint reminds me of dark make-up, eyeliner or perhaps a tattoo, swirling patterns that emerge from the edge of her right eye to decorate the right side of her face. The spiral design is the same one that has been used by the Slavers for centuries, and is supposed to remind the observer of the letter that starts the word ‘slave’ in the ancient galactic universal script.

Even though it’s a barbaric thing to inflict I must admit that adorning Beyala, it adds to the beauty of an already exceptionally striking woman.

Unlike some marks and brands which owners apply to the thigh or the shoulder blade, Aghara-Penthay’s Slavers choose to mark the girl’s face, because for the rest of her life unless she veils herself it will be almost impossible to disguise. With each person she meets, their eyes will track to the mark before they go anywhere else, reminding the girl and everyone else constantly of what she is.

I realize I’m being rude and staring, and yet I notice Beyala is watching me with almost as much interest as I’m studying her. Embarrassed, I look away, down at the desk.

“Eight days ago we seized the heavily-armed ship of one Kazar, a drug trafficker and a thoroughly nasty piece of work,” says the general.

“I remember the mission,” I reply.

Yes, I was leading one of the assault teams. I lost a good man, blasted so completely that not even immersion in a healing tank could save him. My group dealt with the resistance from Kazar’s guards, but after the capitulation we left. I was not involved in searching the upper decks.

“When we searched Kazar’s personal quarters, we found Beyala waiting in his bed,” the general says. “He’d made so much profit from narcotics that he could even afford to buy a girl from the Slavers.”

I look at her respectfully, a real slave of Aghara-Penthay. This woman is exceptionally lucky to have been rescued. Very few of her kind ever see the free worlds again.

“Beyala,” the general says, addressing the woman in a kindly voice, and with great courtesy, he says, “If you’d like, you may sit.”

I don’t need an explanation for the general’s elaborate formality.

“They gave you the implant chip,” I say to her, my voice choking with sympathy.

Implanting is the stuff of nightmares, another example of the Slaver’s cruelty towards their captives. Lodged in Beyala’s brain stem, too deep to be surgically removed, it will be there. Her control chip.

Everyone in the fleet has sat through briefings on Slaver technology, and knows about implants. The chip interferes with brain patterns, so the slave behaves not according to their own free will, but according to the program’s configuration.

Some functions are common to all chips. An implant makes it impossible for the carrier to commit suicide, either through action or inaction. Yes – a slave cannot even escape their hellish existence by ending their own life.

A woman with an implant cannot harm a male, any male, in any way either, also by action or inaction.

The chips have a location broadcast ability, which enables the Slavers to find the slave, anywhere in the galaxy. That means once a slave is implanted, it’s almost impossible for her to escape the Slaver’s control. Even here in the Republic Beyala will live her whole life in fear of being retaken. She will never be free.

Almost all women’s chips have an obedience function active, which explains the general’s careful phrasing to Beyala. To me, this would be the greatest Humiliation to endure. She feels an overwhelming compulsion to follow any request, as long as it’s given by a man. That means her unlamented former owner Kazar did not have to worry about keep her captive or Beyala running away. He just had to ask her not to leave, and she would have felt an irresistible urge to stay with him.

Our best technicians still haven’t found a way to defeat a chip’s encryption and turn them off, and they can’t be surgically removed without causing terrible damage. The chips have to be left in place. Beyala is in a civilized place now, on a Republic cruiser, but she’s still a slave. So right here in this room in front of me, all the general would have to do to have sex with Beyala would be to tell her to put out, and she’d oblige gratefully.

There are other functions that can be configured in control chip, which the Slavers customize according to the owner’s wishes. Women can be made desperate for sex – turned into raging nymphomaniacs, or, for the tastes of the sadist owner, women can be conditioned to be repelled by contact, and loathe any touch of a man. Her dislike will not protect her. If ordered, the slave will yield just the same.

Women can be turned lesbian; or mute; or submissive; or be programmed to be aroused by enduring Torture or the wearing of restraints.

Even the women participating in the Rape Run are implanted, although as those ten are not yet full slaves, some of the functions are left dormant until after the competition is over. There would be no sport in hunting a female who could easily be found with a tracker. And where would be the victory in capturing a woman who would come the moment you called her?

“Beyala’s implant makes her very vulnerable to exploitation,” the general tells me, as if I, a woman, wouldn’t already know the implications of suffering the process. “The fleet will have to place here somewhere she can be protected by those merciful to her condition, and she will need assistance for the rest of her life.”

The look I flash him is hard, for I know exactly why the general is showing Beyala to me. It’s a crude attempt at manipulation.

This ruined female before me is a living example of the fate that awaits me if I fall into the Slavers’ hands. He expects me to go meekly into protection as soon as he shows me how her whole future has been shattered by one microchip.

His ploy works, in that the horror I’m meant to feel at the idea of living her life is so intense, it’s as if someone has gripped my heart. And yet the sympathy I feel for her, the sisterly comradeship, is also intense. This is why I joined the space fleet, to help put an end to such barbarity.

“I’m so sorry for what they’ve done to you,” I tell her with great tenderness.

“Your sympathy for me is misdirected,” Beyala surprises me by interrupting, her answer delivered in a brusque, dismissive tone. I’d expected her voice to be compliant, like a slave, but she sounds cold, almost authoritarian. I soon learn why.

“My implant prevents me feeling any unhappiness at my situation. Rather, I rejoice in serving men. So do not pity me. Furthermore the particular configuration of my chip programs me to feel masochistic urges around men – I truly want them to hurt me – but sexually sadistic cravings towards all other women. So your sympathy, to me, sounds only like an expression of your own weakness, and as it would arouse me to see you suffer, I recommend you do not show such vulnerability.”

I understand now why she has been staring at me so intently. She’s enjoying my fear of the Slavers. Floundering for something to say, I try to break the sudden tension in the room.

“Do you feel aware of the implant?” I can’t help asking from morbid curiosity.

Beyala looks contemptuously at me, and snorts with derision.

Gods, she wants to hurt me so much she’ll even try with words. Is the control over her that bad? And I do flinch, stung by such animosity from a complete stranger.

“I’m asking the question,” the general interrupts gently, taking control. “Answer me please, Beyala,”

Compelled now to reply, she immediately does.

“I know these instincts that make me such a slave once were not my own, Sir,” she says to him, changing back from hostility to humility so immediately it’s as though someone flipped a switch, “and yet today they feel so deeply part of my identity it’s as if they’ve always been there. In that sense I’m not aware of the implant at all.”

“Some piece of my awareness knows I’m being controlled and my inclinations I would once have believed were shameful and wrong, and yet through the core of my being they’re also now me. As I stand here, Sir, I’m so desperate for you to tie me up and abuse me that I resent every second your whore friend sits here in this cabin with her prissy legs crossed.”

My face reddens with embarrassment both at such frank admissions and the unceasing venom directed at me. Neither could be faked, and clearly they run to Beyala’s core. It’s impossible to believe the delicate girl openly begging for cruelty could have been a normal young woman with the same will and urges as my own.

For a moment I have an image of my steward Mansom politely asking me for sex, and my irresistibly complying in some degrading act. I shudder.

“And this could be your fate, Melena, if you don’t go into hiding,” the general resumes. “This, and worse than this, for unlike Beyala they will certainly want to subject you to public degradation.”

Looking away from the almost predatory stare of the slave girl, I restore my courage and my equilibrium. Preventing this kind of treatment of sentient females is why I joined the fight.

“Whatever the risks, you can’t discriminate against me just because I’m a woman, and because men happen to find me attractive,” I say angrily. “That would contradict everything we stand for.”

“You don’t understand how desirable you are, Melena, and what a trophy you could be. There’s only one reason for such a vast bounty. You’re so beautiful they want you for the Rape Run.”

Before I can reply to that, the general’s expression changes, as if he’s had an idea. He looks questioningly at me, as though he’s seeing me in a new way.

“Maybe that’s the problem, I hadn’t thought of that,” he says. “Maybe you really don’t realize how much your beauty puts you at risk.”

Immediately he scoffs for a moment at his own illogical thinking aloud.

“But no, surely you must have experienced the way men see you, and react to you, and you release what a threat that represents?”

The general is a strategic and tactical genius, and I’m familiar with seeing his mind race and his understanding grow. His eyes widen, and shame floods me as I know what he’s about to ask.

“You have been with a man, haven’t you Melena?” he says abruptly. “You know… intimately… I’m sorry to ask such a personal question, but it affects your safety on my ship, and I must apply a commanding officers prerogative.”

I don’t answer but my hot blush of embarrassment must speak for me. His look of utter incomprehension, and Beyala’s malicious pleasure at my discomfort makes the humiliation ten times worse.

“Seriously, Melena? There are eight times as many men as women on this ship, and all of those guys would like to bed you,” he says, awestruck, “and in all the time you’ve been stationed here, you’ve not had sex once?”

His elbows hit the desk with a clunk and he puts his head in his hands, a gesture of despair.

“Gods, what the Slavers will do to you if they find out you’re a virgin? Please don’t let them capture you as a virgin, Melena.”

He looks up again.

“What’s the matter? Are you a lesbian or something?”

While Beyala smirks at me, I’m about to reply that it’s none of the general’s business, but a deep boom resonates through the ship. It sounds like the docking clamps. The general taps a symbol on his pad and puts on a businesslike manner.

“Supply vessels,” he says. “Right on time.”

My opportunity to argue has gone.

“We have to bring this meeting to a close,” the general says. He stands up, so I rise as a well, as soldiers do for a senior officer.

“Colonel de Santo,” he says to me. “Your orders are to report in six hours to the supply vessel Koshkeen, docking here as a cover to escort you into hiding. Dress as a civilian. Koshkeen will transfer you to Capital Prime, where you will be safe.”

It is a direct order from my line commander. I am forced to obey, just as much as if I was Beyala, and I click my heels smartly to indicate acceptance.

With his official orders delivered, the general’s face softens.

“Melena… I can’t give you this next request as an order, but as someone I hope you think of as your friend, I suggest in your remaining six hours you look for a man you find slightly attractive, and get yourself laid.”

I am outraged at such a request, and blush furiously. Beyala’s smile widens at my discomfort, and she’s compelled to say, “I hope they catch you, and you lose.”

My dignity demands a retort to both insults.

“For the record, Sir, this stinks. I’m going off the ship under orders, but note my objection.”

“Noted,” says the general, and I am dismissed.

As the door to his cabin closes behind me, I hear Beyala has switched to her wheedling tone once more, and is asking, “Now, Sir? Oh please! Do I have to beg?”

2 – Visitor

All the way back to my quarters, I seethe at the general.

How dare he?

One of the main reasons I joined the space fleet was because the Republic believes in the equality of women. Back when I signed up even fewer women had made it into the fleet, so I worked hard to show everyone that being female was no handicap, and equality was correct. I was determined to do as well as a man, and I what’s more I wasn’t going to be one of those who set her career aside to mother babies.

As I rose higher through the ranks and members of my sex became even rarer, being the first woman breaking down barriers became a point of pride to me. I would be an example to other girls, showing them that the Republic space fleet was a great career.

All that toil has just been proven futile, in one ten minute interview. The general’s high-handed dismissal showed me that nothing had changed for women, over all these centuries. Because I am female, someone passed a particular set of chromosomes before I was born, I am being treated differently. Because I am female, I cannot reach my full potential. Because I am female, I am a seen as prize, a trophy. I will no longer be given the chance to fight men as an equal – they will fight over me while I remain docile and passive. The victor will give me commands, and will do with me as he wishes.

The general thinks he is protecting me, as though he understands the situation better than I do. All he is doing is demeaning me with his treatment.

And being ordered into hiding was not even the greatest insult I just received. How dare he advise me to go and get laid? I thought he was patronizing me by taking care of someone he sees as a female unable to look after her herself, but interfering in my private life is far worse.

Some of my anger is also directed at myself, because my reactions gave away that I’m a virgin, in front of the slave girl who enjoyed every moment of my embarrassment, when I should have behaved calmly. God damn, some days I wish I’d been born a man.

“Are you a lesbian or something?” the general had asked me.

He’d never have asked a male subordinate if they were queer. It just so happens I’m not, or at least I’ve never spent time thinking about it, but that’s my personal business. The only reason I have my cherry is because I have more important concerns than my sexuality.

Pausing, I sigh, leaning against a window to look at the complex form of the cruiser, and several smaller ships docked alongside to load supplies. One of these might be Koshkeen, here to smuggle me into seclusion as though I’m a nun.

While my breath fogs the window glass I face up to the honest truth that I’m lying, even to myself. Okay, so I have been concerned about my sexuality – hetero with a hint of bi – but my shameful secret is that my body’s sensitivity is what really deters me from intimacy. The few times I’ve touched myself the response of my body – flaring into passion – makes me feel like there’s a sexual animal inside me that could claim me utterly once it was released.

First and foremost I’m a Colonel in the Republic fleet. I can’t let myself be reduced to something so aroused I cry out uncontrollably. I’m strong, not a woman who can be made desperate to orgasm.

So my limited sexual encounters have always been kept strictly to my terms. I gave head to a guy at boot camp, swallowing his slimy seed like I’d heard girls were supposed to do. I made out with a few guys, but as soon as they dared their hands inevitably would stray to my breasts, wanting to play with nipples that are almost as responsive as my more intimate place. I’d push them away, and they’d call me cold.

Always the same pattern with roaming hands and me fighting off the advances, until later on I was able to use my rank as a shield. I was relieved when the requests for dates finally stopped.

But still they look. They always look.

God damn my body!

I hit the button hard to open my door.

One of the cleaning orderlies is changing the bedding on my regulation cot. She has brought in a huge laundry basket – too large to carry, so it’s on wheels, with canvas sides. She’s in the blue jumpsuit of a civilian.

“Ma’am,” she says politely to me, as I walk in.

She’s an exceptionally pretty girl, this one. Not delicate, but a strong beauty, like a sportswoman. She’ll be one of those unfortunates living a life like mine – unable to bend over in the gym without guys staring, and ordered into a subservient place by her boss, who is inevitably a man.

Yes, I think to myself, watching with righteous indignation as she humbly goes about work. Her kind of role is the only place where the fleet wants pretty women. If you’re desirable, that means you’re only good for performing menial tasks like changing bedding.

I haven’t noticed this particular woman before, but there is a crew of hundreds on the ship, and new people arrive all the time. All the same, the beautiful ones usually stand out. Everyone on the ship knows my name, for example.

My hair doesn’t help. It’s a deep red color, the shade of wine, and it’s ruler-straight, never showing the least trace of a curl. Okay the attention from my hair is partly my fault – I’m vain about the color, and I grew it long, down to the base of my spine, way back in my teens.

But as for the rest of my body – that I could do nothing about. It was my genes that decided I’d be tall and slender, with delicate features and large eyes that make my face look even more feminine. My greatest curse – the gravity defying breasts, I inherited from my mother, and she also gave me the slim but athletic frame that makes my boobs so noticeable in relation to my ribcage. I’ve considered a reduction, just to escape the endless men who greet me to my face but as soon as they dare, look down. Surgery would be another way to let them win.

Cursing, I hit the button heavily that closes my cabin door.

In the corner of my private space is a small shower area. I’m high enough rank to have en-suite, and not need to rely on the communal washing areas. Stepping around the busy cleaner, I cross towards my shower, ready to warm the spray. First I intend to get clean, and then I’ll sit and consider whether should give up the last of my self-respect and go out looking for a screw.

I never reach the taps.

There is the smallest pain, just above my right hip. A pinprick hardly there, but enough to make me pause. No worse than a mosquito insect bite.

I’m trying to continue towards the shower, but for some reason I can’t move. It’s like my body no longer belongs to me. Time slows to a crawl. The muscles in my body spontaneously relax, except for my heart which is suddenly racing. My knees bend, involuntarily, and I start to collapse towards the hard cabin floor.

I’d strike my head if it wasn’t for the hands steering me. The woman’s hands. She pushes me forward so I tumble into the laundry basket, which as it zooms towards me I see has already been lined with soft sheets. After this soft landing my feet and knees are tucked limply in after me. My inert body offers no resistance.

I’m on my side. I try to speak, but my mouth doesn’t move.

“Too easy,” I hear the cleaning girl’s voice say, and the sheet from my bed is thrown over me, so I see nothing but white.

3- Ja-alixxe

I have been kept restrained since my capture, my wrists shackled above my head, padlocked so I dangle from a fixture in the ceiling high above.

I am utterly helpless.

Ja-alixxe (I have learnt that is her name) is an experienced bounty hunter and clearly has no intention of allowing such a valuable prize as Melena de Santo to harm herself before Ja-alixxe claims the bounty. She is wise. Knowing the never-ending series of humiliations that await me once I’m handed to the Slavers, I will indeed take my life if I have the chance.

Kidnapping me was just as she said, too easy. It took less than five minutes from the moment when Ja-alixxe injected me with a temporary paralytic drug to the moment when she wheeled the laundry basket to her ship, docked in the middle of the other supply vessels. She was so confident she even took half a minute to flirt with the guards at the docking ring. Idiots – as soon as a beautiful woman bats her lashes at them, they’re too distracted to remember they’re supposed to check what she’s carrying.

With full permission of the fleet vessel, Ja-alixxe undocked, talking lazily to the command deck on her communications panel. All the while I lay helplessly in the basket next to her, hearing the voices of the fleet that should have been my salvation. I felt the basket roll slightly as we escaped into hyperspace and we were away, as easily as that.

I judged by the high pitch of the engines that we were in a much smaller vessel than the capital cruiser of the Republican fleet. “Be too small to be noticed”, is the mantra of the bounty hunter.

Once she’d safely escaped, Ja-alixxe attended to her captive at leisure.

I was first wheeled to a holding cell, still in the laundry basket. Before I’d recovered from the paralyzing injection she’d shackled my wrists closely together in front of me, and then cranked a winch that pulled me up to a suspension point in the ceiling. She surprised me with her strength, managing to move my limp body quite easily.

Hanging from my arms, my feet did not reach down to the floor.

I dangled, stretched out and at her mercy.

The next part was inevitable, but that didn’t make it any less degrading. Ja-alixxe couldn’t risk me carrying concealed weapons or tools I might use to get free. We both knew that.

The one piece jump suits work by the space fleet are hardly the most practical garments for wearing while restrained either – getting out of clothing for toilet breaks is impossible with shackled hands. So while I hung from my wrists, limbs still only just starting to tingle with returning feeling, she cut every last piece of my clothing away.

I was naked, and she wasn’t done with me. After I’d been stripped, a second set of shackles were locked onto my ankles, and threaded through a steel ring embedded into the floor. It seems unnecessary to me, but she was taking no chances.

“This key is going in another part of the ship,” Ja-alixxe told me, holding the small piece of metal that could release my shackles up to my view. “It will stay there until we arrive. So you can’t leave this room, even if you somehow successfully overpower me, because you won’t be able to unlock the restraints.”

Paralysis left me unable to respond so I just hung there, silent and shamefully bare. Ja-Alixxe appraised me, as she probably did with each captured bounty, and she must have seen the blush I gave in response to another woman looked at my body.

She showed her first trace of humanity.

“You won’t have to be nude for long,” she said in a more gentle tone. “Just until the drug wears off. I’ll find something convenient to clothe you when I come back.”

“Come back?” I wondered, and as she opened the cell door I realized she was going to leave me there in that degrading state. I tried to plead as she left me, but I couldn’t make a sound.

Alone, I waited there as limp as a side of meat in a butcher’s refrigerator, my spirits in the most miserable state I’d ever experienced.

I was seriously injured once, on a military operation against drug runners. You’d never know it to look at me now – they can do wonders with a couple of days immersed in a healing tank, even rebuilding an entire body. Anyway, the risk of being wounded I’ve always been able to cope with. My naturally sensitive flesh doesn’t have a strong tolerance to pain but I’ve never lacked for courage, and that time I was back on duty as soon as I was fixed, with the wreck the blaster had made of my body forgotten.

The prospect of rape has always terrified me, though. I think it’s because a rape victim is left with nothing, denied even the right to the intimacy of their own body. There is no humiliation in being wounded, but there is terrible shame in being violated.

So as I hung there and waited, paralyzed, privately, I could admit to myself that I was dreading my future. My mind kept going over visions of horror after horror of what might be to come – imagining what it would feel like if I were rendered passive and obedient, my skull implanted like the former slave on the ship; and then imagining countless faceless men looming over me as they rape me; rape me; rape me. I imagined being in the power of one of those men who likes to make girls scream, and I even imagined being sold to one of the carnivorous species that consider human female flesh a delicacy. I imagined torture and suffering. I imagined many things, but in those warped nightmares the pain was never as bad as the rapes.

These horrors had to be avoided at any cost, but on Ja-alixxe’s ship there was nothing I could do but pass the time anticipating these ordeals. As much as I could plan or think, or scheme, not one escape idea occurred to me. Dangling naked from my wrists, a captive in a bounty hunter’s ship, I was powerless to prevent any part of the destiny fast approaching.

I was there a couple of standard-galactic hours before I hear the sound of the security pad outside the cell. By that time I had regained the feeling in my body. Unfortunately my bladder was one of the last muscles to activate. Before physical control returned I humiliatingly urinated, a spray of warm liquid that went everywhere.

So when Ja-Alixxe opens the alloy blast door and I bravely lift my head to face her, she discovers me with piss drying on my leg.

And this is my new present life, the reality I must boldly face.

I have made only one strategic decision during my time alone in the cell, and that is to try to engage Ja-Alixxe in conversation every opportunity I have. Her mercy is my only chance now. I must appeal to her sympathy as a fellow female.

“How can you do this to another woman?” I ask her as my opening gambit. “You’ll know what the Slavers will do to me if they catch me.”

At the time when I pose my question she is sponging me clean. Ja-Alixxe has washed me, from my neck down, carefully moving my long red hair aside to clean my back. However much I try to keep stoically still I feel myself flinch and blush at the more intimate touches. Each time I twitch there is a clink from my chains. I give an unwanted gasp when she takes me by surprise, rubbing the sponge over my sex.

“It makes no difference whether you’re male or female, honey,” she says. “I’m a bounty hunter, and this is what I do. You’re just a commodity. There’s nothing personal in this. I’ll try to make you as comfortable as I can, while you’re in my custody.”

“They’ll make me do the Rape Run,” I press. “I’ll be defiled in front of the whole galaxy.”

Ja-Alixxe is not cruel, but neither is she kind. Not even my mention of the Rape Run, the most popular competition amongst men across the whole universe, and the most detested by women, provokes any sympathy.

“You’re just a commodity,” she repeats.

The sponge strokes between my legs a second time, and to my shame again I flinch.

“You’re sensitive,” she observes, pausing. “From the poster I was expecting someone tough. I didn’t think you’d be so… vulnerable.”

And so my body has betrayed me already. But that’s just the start of my embarrassment. A far greater humiliation comes when I see the clothing she has provided.

“Please, no,” I beg, for I recognize this uniform, and the vision of myself wearing such a thing has haunted my dreams.

The garment she’s brought me is a simple rectangular wrap of a silk-like material, the size of a small bath towel and scarlet red in color. These wraps are designed primarily for practicality, being particularly easy to remove and secure while the wearer remains secured, as their only fastening is one simple bow at the woman’s left side, under her arms.

They fit around the body also like wearing a towel, and the string bow is tied in place. The natural swelling of the female chest prevents it falling away.

These garments are made intentionally too small, for they are created to solely present the wearer pleasingly to men.

While I struggle futilely, my face growing hot with shame, Ja-Alixxe fastens mine about me. It comes down only as far as my upper-thighs, with just enough drop of fabric to conceal my most intimate place. On the Republic ship I would never show anything like this much bare leg.

At its upper hem it covers my areolae, but I am naked from there upwards, flaunting acres of my full cleavage and leaving my arms and shoulders bare. The thin fabric is woven not to be satin-smooth and as comfortable as possible, but to be just coarse enough to brush skin sensuously. With nothing protecting my flesh from the gentle friction of the wrap, my nipples are responding to the caress, protruding and drawing the eye to my chest.

Another deliberate design contrivance is making the garment too small to wrap round me completely. Thus at my left side where there is the fastening, a stripe of my flesh is entirely exposed. It is particularly undignified while I have my arms raised over my head, as I do now.

This view of my hip and the side of my breast makes clear to all who might see me I am wearing nothing beneath the one silk garment. Women are not permitted undergarments where I’m going, for this is the single item of clothing for a slave of Aghara-Penthay. She has dressed me as a slave girl of Aghara-Penthay.

Again I try to appeal to her conscience, mournfully telling her, “It would have been kinder if you’d killed me, bounty hunter.”

This, she doesn’t deny. But she justifies herself with:

“If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have found you. And a man would probably have raped you before handing you over.”

Once she’s finished washing and dressing me Ja-Alixxe moves away again. As she reaches the exit I realize I am to be abandoned in my cell for a second time.

“Wait, stay with me,” I plead, but the door is already closing.

Sensation has returned entirely to my body. So I use my rediscovered muscles to struggle, kicking out with one foot, but the ankle chain goes taut with a loud clang, and I start swinging so my view of the blank cell wall moves from side to side.

“Goddammit,” I say to myself.

I wish I didn’t have to feel so exposed, but my generous bosom means the slave uniform hangs down some distance away from my belly, and this combined with a denial of underclothes leaves me very open to the air. I look down and see my nipples are still showing.

“Goddammit,” I repeat. All someone would need to do to examine me would be to lift the hem. How is any woman supposed to bear this?

For a moment I kick out in a frenzy, venting some fear and rage, but all that happens is I finish swinging a little more noticeably in my shackles, my chest heaving with exertion and just as totally trapped. My hard nipples tingle from the teasing fabric.

So I freeze, and I wait, and I wait, and I wait.

After an eternity the tone of the ships engines alters – up on the bridge Ja-alixxe must be making a course change. She will be making for a rendezvous somewhere, taking me to sell me, and as soon as I think the phrase “sell me” my mind fills again with images of the rape and torture lying ahead.

I am not used to being in such a passive role – staring at the blank wall of a holding cell while waiting for a timetable only known to someone else, and it makes the hours drag out even more.

I try to pass the time by forming a new strategy. There must be a plan – I’ll go insane if I have to accept I’m really helpless. But by the time Ja-alixxe returns only one fresh idea has occurred to me. Appeals for mercy to my captor didn’t work, so at her next visit, I try another approach. Her own self-interest must be my salvation.

“You won’t be able to dock at the Aghara-Penthay trading station to sell me,” I tell her. “There are no free women permitted, even there. Any female has to be with a male escort – her owner.”

Ja-Alixxe is spooning a paste of nutrients into my mouth while I say this. I have considered refusing the food – attempting to starve myself, but I dismissed that approach. There will not likely be sufficient time to die of hunger before we reach our destination, and I’m sure once we arrive the Slavers will be able to ensure my co-operation. I am better to keep up my strength, and I docilely I swallow the savory paste.

“Do you wish to urinate?” she asks me when I’m finished eating. Ja-Alixxe is already pulling my wrap aside to permit me to do this, baring the neatly trimmed dark red nest of my pubic hair. I’m terrified by how quickly and easily my organs can be accessed in this nonexistent covering.

“No!” I quickly say, almost like a plea, and from my shrill cry it’s not clear if my answer refers to peeing, or the humiliation of having her expose my sex.

Trying to recover my dignity I warn again, “They won’t let you leave Aghara-Penthay.”

“We won’t be docking at the station,” Ja-alixxe says, and thankfully she drops my garment back into place. “We are travelling to rendezvous with one of the Slavers’ vessels. There the regulations can be a little more relaxed.”

“Even there, you’re taking a risk,” I tell her, and I deliberately look her body over to convey a sense of appraising her the way she looked at me. “Men would like to enslave you, as well.”

There is uncertainty in her face for a moment, but then I see her resolve herself. Ja-alixxe confidently spoons another mouthful of food into me.

“I have a plan for that,” she says. “The trade will be successful.”

During the next long period when I’m once again alone, still hanging from my wrists and facing the wall of my cell, there is little to do but try to imagine what this plan might be.

4 – Business

My dread has reached a level where I can barely keep from crying out when the moment finally arrives, and Ja-alixxe’s ship vibrates with the sounds of us docking.

She will come for me any moment, or maybe she’ll send Slavers in here to collect me. She will give me to them. They will put their hands inside my wrap, and they will touch me. They’ll want to put their cocks in me.

After the bass boom of docking, the ship falls almost silent as Ja-Alixxe ramps back the engines. I wish I could stop time, but it passes anyway. Slavers are coming for me, I scream in silent panic. And when the door to my cell opens, just as I’d dreaded it is not the familiar beautiful face of the bounty hunter I see.

The person before me wears a breathing mask that completely surrounds the head, and a dark brown jumpsuit that protects the body from any exposure to the air.

In his hand is a weapon, held like a baton, a prod or goad where the wielder can stimulate pain receptors by squeezing the handle.

A blast gun is also at this person’s belt, ready to deal with more serious situations.

At first I think this alien is one of the Slavers, already come to claim me, and in sudden panic I wail and try to shrink back, paddling my feet in the air to the limits of my restraints and making my chains jingle.

But then I see the slim build of the figure, and how the jumpsuit disguises the shape of the chest, and I understand.

“This is your plan for the trade,” I say to Ja-alixxe, calming my terrors and hanging still from my bonds.

I have to admire her ingenuity. Even the electronically synthesized voice she uses to reply sounds masculine.

“Melena – I can paralyze you completely and drag you along to the Slaver ship like I did before,” the male voice says, “but it will be more pleasant for both of us if you agree to co-operate and walk on your feet. For if you’re numbed and you arrive soiled, the first thing they’ll do is wash you.”

Not wanting to be stripped and interfered with, I comply, indicating this with a nod. The last thing I want when I meet the Slavers is to be paralyzed and even more helpless.

Ja-alixxe lowers me to the ground, and my bare feet touch the cool alloy of the floor. Gradually my wrists come down. My arms blaze with unexpected pain the moment I move, muscles protesting at the sudden change in my position after hours of suspension.

I’m free from the ceiling, but my wrists remain shackled. Ja-Alixxe only unchains my ankles from the ring in the floor to immediately rebind me. I am to walk in my chains.

In this fashion, like a condemned prisoner on their way to the gallows, I shuffle through her ship, proceeding in as large steps as my ankle bracelets permit.

The fabric of my slave wrap is almost weightless, and I can feel it waft around me even with my restricted movements, brushing my skin with an intimate kiss.

“Please,” I beg Ja-alixxe one last time when a cool air current flows across my sex. “Anything but this.”

But rather than provoke any mercy, my words seem to remind her of something – a task forgotten.

“Ah, we can’t have you speaking,” the masculine voice says, and without permission she holds an injector against the soft skin of my throat. There is a click from the trigger and I feel the familiar pulse of medication entering my bloodstream.

Behind it is a sensation of coldness, which spreads through my jaw. I try to ask her what she’s done but I only manage to emit a mute moan. My tongue feels like it’s enormous.

“I’m sorry,” the same male, electronically synthesized voice explains. “I cannot risk you betraying that I’m female. This disabling of your speech will be temporary, and you will be back to normal in a few hours.”

So it is in silent misery that I continue.

The shuffling journey through the corridors of Ja-alixxe’s ship is brief, with the vessel not being very large. A viewing window gives me a short sight of a larger cruiser docked above us, straddling Ja-Alixxe’s smaller ship as though it’s mounting to mate. It isn’t a Republican fleet ship.

Slaver.

I take a short elevator journey upwards with Ja-alixxe. Neither of us speak. She is unwilling, and I am unable.

Then, we walk along a gangway and I see a reinforced airlock, after which the color of the walls changes. I pause before this, longing reverse back up, but the bounty hunter indicates with a wave of her baton that I should continue. Blood pounds in my ears as filled with dread, I take a step over the line.

A Rubicon has been crossed. My feet stand on Slaver territory.

I am Colonel Melena de Santo. My sex – female. That means on this side of the line I have no more rights than an object.

The disguised Ja-alixxe whose true status is the same as mine gives me another shove, and despite my terror I force myself to walk forward again. In a small chamber beyond the hatch we meet the first men, Slaver men, and my suffering gets so much worse when I see the way they stare at me with such animal open desire. Eyes check out my face, then my breasts, then my long, bare legs, and then stay watching my boobs.

My face glows hot, and my heartrate climbs even faster.

God help me. I feel even more underdressed in my brief silken wrap than I did in front of Ja-Alixxe, and I hold my chained hands to my abdomen to keep from flashing glimpses of my front when the garment gapes open.

“This way,” one of them says to Ja-alixxe, making no comment at the bounty hunter’s strange appearance.

She prods me once with the tip of the baton to keep me advancing, but to my relief it isn’t switched on. With the jingle of steel I hobble onwards to my doom.

In this slow fashion we move further and further away from territory where women are free, and further away from hope. Ja-alixxe strides confidently beside me, not revealing any of the concerns she too must be feeling.

The two of us are boxed by four guards, male outnumbering female. All the slaver men are armed with similar control batons to the one wielded by Ja-alixxe.

I cannot help but look fearfully at these weapons. I know of their reputation, and mercifully I’ve never felt their touch, but it’s only a matter of time now. The baton is designed to inflict maximum pain, with minimal damage to the flesh. Their purpose is to control women by inspiring terror.

I’m expecting the financial transaction to take place on the bridge, but under the threat of these goads, we are led to the entrance of a room that looks like a recreation lounge. Here a man is sat waiting on a deep soft sofa. He is a bearded fellow with a scar on his cheek who looks over me so unpleasantly that my skin crawls.

He is in the uniform of one of the slaver’s senior officers, but I note he is not one of the five faction leaders – they who each provide two of the ten female victims for the Rape Run.

To enter his recreation lounge we have to walk through a frame as big as the doorway, which looks like a security detector for weapons.

I am not armed, and yet I notice a red light illuminates as I pass through the frame, and the same thing happens when Ja-alixxe walks through. I see the reclining man give a glance meeting that of his guards just for a moment, but he reveals nothing more away and makes no move to stop Ja-alixxe entering, even though she is quite clearly armed.

“I am Doshenk,” he says to her, “Captain of this vessel. You are in the realm of Aghara-Penthay.”

“Ja-alixxe,” I hear my captor reply, the electronic filtering making her voice sound deep and masculine. Not wishing to waste time here, she continues:

“I am here to claim the bounty on this woman, Colonel Melena de Santo.”

“Then sit,” Doshenk says graciously, “and have the slave kneel on the floor.”

I draw myself up taller. I have no intention of kneeling – taking the humblest place in the room. Unfortunately I have forgotten Ja-alixxe’s baton. A gentle push at the back of my knees, without the stimulator even being switched on, is all it takes to make me collapse painfully down.

I consider standing again, but it is foolish to expend energy in a futile gesture, and the bounty hunter puts her hand firmly on my bare shoulder, weight pressing down in silent warning.

Instead I quickly draw my bare thighs together. My wrap is too short to kneel with any modesty unless my legs are kept closed. Already I’ve probably flashed him a view of my most private place.

“Would you like some liquid or nutrition?” Doshenk asks cordially, but Ja-alixxe declines.

“I wish to be on my way, as quickly as possible.”

“We will hurry with completing the formalities then. I wouldn’t want to keep… such as you waiting.”

What Doshenk described as “formalities” are then performed, all the while with me waiting on my knees.

A sample of my DNA is taken, to be compared against the republic’s medical database for confirming my identity. While we await the results my shackles are exchanged, from ones that belong to the bounty hunter to ones where the keys are in only possession of the Slavers.

This change is a negative one for me, and not only in the identity of the new key holder is now a Slaver. The bindings on my wrists are also altered so my hands are locked together behind me, instead of in front. My sense of vulnerability increases – if I lean over my hanging uniform will move with it, gaping open. I am only able to hold my slave silk against my back with any dignity.

While I thus sink deeper into their hands one of the guards returns to the recreation cabin.

“It’s her,” he confirms to Doshenk.

The captain gives a self-satisfied smile. My fear ramps up further, even though I knew this was inevitable.

“Colonel de Santo,” he says to me, addressing me for the first time. “Welcome to Aghara-Penthay. I look forward to seeing you get fucked in front of the whole galaxy.”

I can’t help being stung by his coarse language, but there is no helpful reply I can make, so I wait on my knees, hiding my indignation. I don’t dare to look up and challenge him with eye contact. That would only invite reprisals.

He said I would be fucked and specifically stated it would be in front of the galaxy. It’s true then, as I’d feared. My future is the stuff of nightmares. It’s the Rape Run for me.

“Fetch the bounty payment for this female,” Doshenk commands, and the guard leaves the room again.

It takes two fully grown men to bring in the reward for selling me into slavery. The boxes of galactic credits – the bounty payment that will be enough for a life of luxury – look heavy.

“Our business is done?” Ja-alixxe asks. I can hear the relief in her voice, despite the mask disguising the intonation of her tone.

“There is one last formality,” Doshenk replies. “There are some criminal elements who threaten the security of Aghara-Penthay, and one of those is known to masquerade as a bounty hunter. We merely need to confirm you are not him. It is a straightforward identification check based on us viewing your face.”

“I don’t think so,” Ja-alixxe replies. “And I am no criminal.”

“Please, bounty hunter – just take the mask off, and you can be on your way,” Doshenk commands. He is polite, but it’s clearly an order this time.

“Negative,” Ja-alixxe replies. “Your atmosphere is poisonous to me. It is impossible to comply.”

I risk looking up to see what’s happening. Doshenk continues to be solicitous towards Ja-Alixxe, although his expression is skeptical.

“What gas mixture do you need to breathe?” he asks. “We have a sealed tank and can provide for your comfort. There we can satisfy this tedious requirement, and as soon as it’s done you can leave.”

He is playing with her. I am certain about the device at the doorway now, and also that they’ve know the truth about us since we walked through the arch. It is a gender scanner.

Ja-alixxe too has finally realized that things are going badly wrong, and Doshenk is playing with her. But she’s too clever to be greedy, and decides abruptly to abandon her riches, relying on surprise and speed of such an unexpected move. She turns to flee as fast as a cat, but one of the troopers guarding the door behind us must have anticipated her. There is a flash of bright light, and unlucky Ja-alixxe drops like a corpse, face first onto the floor.

She’s been stunned with a blast.

The guards chortle at her failure.

It is Doshenk who walks across to unclip the mask. Inexorably he releases the breathing helmet from Ja-alixxe’s head, and I see her dark hair spill free. Ja-alixxe’s eyes are still open and her head has landed facing towards me. I can see she is conscious, but unable to move.

“A pretty one,” he observes calmly.

Without ceremony he unclips some binders from his belt and snaps them onto her, securing the bounty hunter’s wrists behind her.

“Two for the price of one,” he tells the helpless woman, “or more accurately, two for free, as there’s no need to pay a female. Yes, you will also make a pleasing slave. Perhaps you’ll even be good enough for the Rape Run as well – a bounty hunter would make an interesting contestant.”

He signals to one of his men.

“Beam this new one’s details to the Hunters. And tell them we have the Colonel as well.”

Incapacitated by the blast, the bounty hunter is completely unable to offer the slightest resistance to her binding, but I see her eyes widen a little in dreadful understanding. She must be beginning to visualize her whole future ahead of her, just as I’ve been doing since my capture.

The next part comes with dreadful inevitability.

“This slave is improperly dressed,” says Doshenk, indicating Ja-alixxe. “Strip her, and get her into uniform.”

So I watch from my kneeling position as every last item of Ja-alixxe’s clothing is cut away.

Naked, I see Ja-alixxe is as physically fit as a soldier, without a trace of fat on her long, lithe form, although she is still notably feminine. Her backside is the rounded shape that can only come from womanly curves, with the deep cleft that will inevitably be violated, and despite her overall lack of body fat her breasts, squashed against the hard floor, are still full.

She’s much like me in her body shape, cursed with the kind of figure that is arousing to men. Rape Run or not, her time on Aghara-Penthay is not going to be an easy one.

The men flip her onto her back and I see her nipples are large and dark. Still stunned, she lies with her thighs apart showing a high pubic mound protected with a triangle of almost-black hair.

I can’t help feel sorry for her – she must be longing to close her legs, but a guard nudges her knees open even wider.

“Can we entertain ourselves with them?” One of the guards asks Doshenk. “We have no women on this ship, and we’ve been in space for some time.”

Someone has comes in with a wrap in for her. It’s the same color as mine. The guards don’t put it on her straight away though. They drop it on the floor beside her face, so she can feel her own nakedness and helplessness while she waits, unable to move.

The captain shakes his head, and I can’t help feel slightly grateful he’s spared the two of us from rape, even if it’s a temporary reprieve.

“This one is marked for special processing,” he says, indicating me, “and the other may also be selected for the Run. Put them into the cages. Prepare the ship for departure and open up a communication link to the home world. It’s time to take these women where they belong.”

5 – Aghara-Penthay

The Slaver ship docks with a deep boom that reverberates through the hull. It would appear we have arrived. I’m assuming this is Aghara-Penthay but I don’t know, for with my only view of the vastness of the universe being a blank wall of corridor outside my cramped cage, I have no means of telling where I am.

My view of this small world is through a grill, which only shows me that corridor and its featureless far wall. This locked door of bars is my only exit from a container with solid steel floor and ceiling, and alloy walls on the other three sides.

My confinement is an act of sheer cruelty. I’ve never spent so long in such a tight space. This is how a lab animal must feel in its cage.

I’m on my knees, my breasts pressed to my bare thighs and my forehead almost touching the steel floor. Despite this lowly posture the ceiling is so low my back is almost against the cage roof. It is impossible to straighten up.

The walls are as close around me as the ceiling. One is almost in front of my head, and the other just beyond the tips of my toes, so I cannot lie down or stretch at all within the length of the cage. My space is similarly narrow. There is insufficient room to turn round, even by a small amount. I wait with my side presented to the grill.

The shackles I’m wearing have not been removed, so my hands remain trapped, useless, behind my back, and my ankles are equally close together.

I feel utterly miserable. I’m not broken enough yet to cry from hopeless shame in front of these people, but I’m having a constant battle to keep my emotions under control.

The guards forced me in here and left me in the orientation where the open side of my slave wrap faces outwards. Technically I am dressed, but from their view I must appear almost as nude, with an uninterrupted view of my skin from my ankles to my shoulders. Certainly, whenever a guard has passed the cages, he has taken pleasure from pausing to admire me. Periodically they return, visiting this corridor of cages for no other reason than to taunt us. Men throughout the universe enjoy the opportunity to look at women, and with Ja-alixxe and I seeming to be the only females on board, we have received a lot of unwanted attention.

My beautiful red hair hangs down about my face, puddling on the metal floor before me.

Beneath the intimate place between my legs is a small open hole in the floor, to serve as a drain for waste. Close to my mouth is a feeding tube, similar in concept to a device for feeding a caged animal rather than a human being, except this one is shaped and colored to exactly like an erect male penis. Even drinking is to be turned into an act of humiliation for me, now I’ve been taken by the Slavers.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. My regulation watch was taken by Ja-Alixxe when she stripped me, and there is not a clock in my field view. But it was only minutes after we broke our docking contact with Ja-Alixxe’s ship – probably abandoning it to float as space debris, that they locked both of us into cages, nearly naked in our wraps. We’ve been here for the rest of the voyage.

They ordered us not to speak and I obeyed. There was nothing worthwhile to say.

As soon as the guards left me I noticed a small camera in the top corner of my tiny cell, Filming of women in the Rape Run starts early, often as soon as they’re captured. Trying to look brave, I scowl repeatedly at this hateful piece of electronics.

“Special Processing”, Doshenk said, and he also spared me from being used. That makes it certain. I’m for the Rape Run.

From the moment I padded barefoot onto these men’s ship my image was probably recorded for broadcast victoriously across the galaxy. The Slavers will have gloried in the way they could have Colonel Melena de Santo snatched from right on a Republic cruiser. I will be filmed every moment of my life now until the Run is over. Warm-up shows go out every evening – look what we did to Melena today.

It cuts me up inside that I’m inevitably being portrayed as so weak. And my personal shaming lets down all the women in the galaxy. No female is safe if we betray each other so they can capture me – that will have been the message broadcast with footage of me on my knees, humbled in a slave wrap.

During my time in the cage I had no intention of adding to the galaxy’s entertainment, so for a while I stubbornly avoided the phallic feeding tube. I considered that my fall would have represented a greater humiliation for the Republic and myself if the brave colonel was shown with her mouth on something like a cock, only hours after capture. But I wasn’t even permitted the right to starve myself.

“Feed!” one of them, in the uniform of a more senior rank eventually ordered me.

I shook my head. It was unlikely I would have been able to starve or dehydrate myself to death before we reach Aghara-Penthay, but I intended to try.

“Very well,” said the guard, and he reached up to press something concealed above my cage.

It was as though the ship has flown into the sun. It felt like every part of me in contact with the cage walls, floor or ceiling became as hot as lava, and I was shrieking uncontrollably.

Remembering it, I believe the guard probably only permitted this torture to persist for a few seconds, but for me as the unlucky victim it felt like I endured it for an eternity. Then as suddenly as it began the agony ended, as abruptly as turning off a light switch. My eyes had filled with tears while I’d been screaming. They’d made me cry already.

With my sanity restored I shuffled position to check the damage, expecting to see my skin burnt and stuck to the metal. My knees, so close to my chin I have been easily able to touch them with my cheek all this time, were the only place in contact with the cell that I could check in the cramped space, and moments after such agony I couldn’t believe they were completely unharmed.

Was this what a touch from a slave baton felt like? And that was just from the places on my body in contact with the cage – my knees, part of my feet, and my side. I couldn’t imagine how bad it might feel to have the pain applied to somewhere more sensitive. Somewhere intimate.

“Feed!” the guard repeated.

I hated giving in, but cowardice overwhelmed me. I was gripped by an unnatural fear that the walls might become white hot again. When that guard threatened me, I was willing to do anything not to endure that punishment a second time. Docilely, I extended my head forward and closed my lips over the end of the feeder.

The false cock even had the texture and temperature of human flesh, although with my single experience of the male form I did not know if all erect organs have this same rigidity.

Trying to take as little of the object into my mouth as possible I sucked, and my mouth filled with a bland, salty-tasting liquid.

I swallowed this back.

“Keep yourself fed and hydrated,” he commanded me. “We’ll be watching you.”

This was demonstrated by a gesture by him towards the camera.

Humbly I tasted the liquid again to prove my compliance, and to my intense relief, saw the guard was satisfied and moved away.

“Feed!” I heard him command to someone else.

“I’d prefer to suck on the real thing,” I heard the voice of Ja-Alixxe reply in a voice that was throaty and seductive. “Be nice to me, and I’ll be nice to you. No-one needs to know.”

There was a rustle of movement – I do not know if it was from her or him, and then I flinched hard enough to bang my head on the roof as I heard an animal scream of pain. The sound, very close by, was loud in the confined corridor with its cages and the voice that emitted that cry of agony was plainly female. Had I sounded that bad? It was horrific to witness.

“Feed!” the guard said to Ja-Alixxe again.

This time she too must have obeyed him, because I heard him repeat the instruction he had given me. “Keep yourself fed and hydrated. We’ll be watching you.”

There was the stepping of booted feet as he moved away, and then silence.

I looked cautiously at the camera, as I have done frequently since during this time in the cage, and to prove my compliance I extended my head once more, connecting with the phallic feeding tube using no more than a kiss of my soft lips.

It is difficult to measure time when you are locked away and naked, but I think it was an hour before anything else happened.

“Melena!” Ja-alixxe’s voice interrupted in an urgent whisper. She repeated herself, “Melena!”

I couldn’t believe her boldness. This woman was the reason I’m here, and she’d decided to try and make friends.

“What?” I replied testily.

“We need to escape, as soon they let us out of here,” she said. “We have to try to overpower the guards, and make a run for it before they unload us. Once we’re inside the station, we’ll never get back out. But I can fly this ship if we can grab their weapons and get to the bridge.”

As if I was going to join any escape plan of hers…

“Why should I help you?” I told her in a hostile voice. “You’re the reason I’m here waiting half-naked in this shameful uniform. I hope they fuck you raw.”

“It was nothing personal. We have to put that behind us and work as a team,” she urged me.

“Don’t you think they’re listening to us, right now?” I demanded. “They’ll know if you’re planning anything. Besides – we were ordered not to talk. You’re just gonna get us punished.”

Sure enough, an instant later I was screaming again, as the walls of my cell turned once more to fire.

“Cunts, do not speak,” a bored male instructed from an intercom, the sound of his voice seeming to come from all around me.

For the rest of the journey we were silent, waiting for the arrival that signaled our doom. The passage of time when you’re waiting for something terrible seems to take forever, and yet you wish it would last longer.

But happen it does, and the deep bass thunder of the docking process has barely faded when the guards come for us.

By now we have been cramped into our tiny cages for so long that the muscles in my thighs have locked and I cannot extend my legs.

The guards solve this problem, by the simple tactic of one of them grabbing me round my neck and another taking hold of my ankles. The two men then pull me out straight, making me shriek as tired muscles are forced back to use.

During this procedure my silken wrap slips down to the side, and I bare my groin to them completely, which feels unendurably shameful. It takes until I am on my feet before the slave garment falls back into place.

Both my pain and my embarrassment are very amusing to the guards.

Ja-alixxe suffers similarly while she is being removed from her confinement, and she too is briefly exposed. I feel a small amount of pleasure when the stretching of cramped muscles makes her cry out.

My wrists are still not released. The men leave them locked together behind me, as they have been since I was led onto the slaver’s ship. My ankles also remain in their bracelets, obliging me to move in short convict steps.

Back when she was captured, Ja-alixxe’s wrists and ankles were restrained in a similar manner to my own, her binders fastened there by Doshenk himself as she lay stunned.

She too remains secured, standing in the same design of slave uniform as I wear, completely open at one side and tied under the arm, similar to mine. Once she’s steady on her feet I think Ja-alixxe looks rather beautiful in it, although her eyes are dead with misery and defeat.

One of the guards fumbles behind me, at my wrist binders. I can feel he is fixing something else to the chain linking my wrists – there is a slight tension, still pulling my arms back away from my body, even once his hands are gone.

I dare not look behind me.

“Move,” orders the more senior of the two guards.

I shuffle forwards, using as large a pace as I’m able to in the ankle shackles. For a moment there is more unexpected resistance from my arms, which seem unable to keep with me and are pulled painfully backwards, but then I hear Ja-alixxe catching up behind me and I can return my hands to their place protecting my buttocks.

We are secured together then, in some fashion I cannot see.

The journey we make is not back to the recreation room, where I was traded and she was captured, and we are not taken to the bridge. Instead our chain gang waddles a short distance to the docking bay. The guards do not give us an opportunity to escape.

Around us the color scheme of the bland corridors changes to show we have changed vessels, and abruptly we find ourselves moving out onto a wide, busy concourse lined with shops, cafes and bars.

I know where we are, although only from having seen it on video screens. I’ve never visited here in reality, and never wanted to unless it was as part of a mission sent to destroy the place. This is the trading station.

Aghara-Penthay is the name of the planet below. In orbit around the planet is the trading station – a vast hub that’s decreed the only point in the Slaver’s realm accessible to outsiders.

This security measure makes it impossible for women to escape once they have been transported to the surface. Only the Slaver’s own shuttles allow access from the ground back up to the station – the route out to freedom. Slaves – i.e. all females, are not permitted on the shuttles except under escort, and they only make this journey twice – when they are transported down to be trained, and then back up after processing to be auctioned.

Around me on the station, I know that in large rooms off the concourse will be the various auction halls, dealing in everything from run-of-the-mill domestic or pleasure women exchanged for modest sums of money, through to the sale rooms for rare or significant females who change hands for fortunes.

Although the main trade on Aghara-Penthay is in women, and my sex is present all around me, the male population in the trading station significantly outnumbers the female.

Men flock here in their droves to enjoy the most notorious fleshpot in the galaxy. They come to buy pleasure, easy gratification, either for the night or by purchasing more permanent ownership.

Unarmed and outnumbered, even women who end up passing through here in larger groups have no chance of revolt or escape. The majority of fellow females that I see are naked save for chains which link them together in long lines of servitude. All the Slaver men are armed, most with the hateful goads and a few with blaster weapons which could do more serious harm.

Some of the sisters in bondage who mill around us are new arrivals, some are leaving, and some seem to be in service here on the station. I don’t need any skill to tell the difference between trained women, returned back up here and on their way out to be sold, and new captures about to descend into a world of torture and humiliation on the planet’s surface.

Processed women have their faces tattooed with the slave-mark – the sign of degradation that they will carry for life. Although I cannot see the implants buried in these women’s skulls – an even more terrible lifelong burden, I know each one of them carries one. For the mark of a true slave is applied only when the girl is implanted.

The new arrivals like Ja-alixxe and myself are yet to be marked. These fresh captures usually look terrified and broken and are frequently crying. Processed women have more stoic expressions of acceptance, and some of them actually look eager to be sold. Perhaps anything is better than the horror waiting for us down on the surface.

Slavery is everywhere, although not quite every woman at the trading station is destined for lifelong bondage. Some females come in as crew or passengers on ships, and depart on those same ships, only briefly tasting the abuse that will be unending for most.

Such women are permitted into the station only if dressed as a slave should be, and they must remain in the company of a registered male owner at all times. A female would be insanely foolish to venture here on her own, for she would immediately be taken.

These lucky visitors I see are still slaves, but slaves whose bondage is temporary. They will not have their faces marked, although if their registered owner does wish for a permanent memento, there are still places on the station where the masters can have their property implanted.

Private slaves, i.e. those not owned by the planet, have to wear bracelets locked on a wrist, registered with their DNA and linking them to their owner. The information is filed with the Slaver authorities and bracelets are checked frequently. A woman cannot “fake” an owner.

There are a number of different garments worn by private slaves. The most common is the wrap, like mine, but in navy-blue. It is greatly coveted by the many Slaver-owned girls, that blue wrap. Wearing blue means you’re not destined to go down to the planet. Wearing that means you’ll leave this hellhole.

For a few females, coming here is even a strange form of tourism – women who crave to briefly experience a reality where they are nothing but owned objects of desire, and they venture here with trusted escorts, deliberately seeking time in the bracelet and the navy blue slave clothing.

I can guess who these lucky ones are by their expressions, which are flushed with excitement and lack the dead-eyed manner of the others. When I look at those among my fellows who are true slaves, I wonder if I look as broken as they.

Two drunks stagger past, singing, and almost knock us aside.

The relaxed attitude of the men on the concourse differs dramatically from the women. Aghara-Penthay is a popular destination for male ship crews who flock here here to relax, get laid and enjoy the sight of so many scantily dressed females.

Ja-alixxe and I pass a typical crew in dirty overalls, sitting drinking alcohol, and I am recognized for the first time.

“Melena de Santo,” a mechanic covered in oil calls out to me jovially. “It’s really you. The news said they’d caught you, but I didn’t quite believe it.”

He adds with gleeful unconcern, “Man, you’re in for a rough time.”

His weedy looking colleague, a fellow perhaps still in his late teens, is groaning with longing as he blatantly looks me over and I feel shamefully aware of my body, of my femininity.

“Whoa, she’s even hotter in real life. Oh, check out her legs,” he says reverentially, staring at my bare limbs with unabashed lust. “Why can’t I ever get with a girl with legs like that?”

“Legs?” his shipmate scoffs. “Are you queer? Check out her titties. Those have got to be the best titties you’ll find in a thousand light years.”

With my face growing hot I try to hurry past, wishing the floor would swallow me up, but our guards are enjoying the status of escorting a celebrity. I am blocked from moving further on and have to wait in my chains, prolonging their demeaning inspection.

“Who is the other one?” another of the flight crew is asking as he indicates Ja-alixxe. “Quite a body on her, as well.”

“Bounty hunter,” the guard answers gruffly. “The one that sold out Melena, actually. Dumb cunt walked right through a gender scanner. She might be made to Run too.”

“Such a beauty,” says the same weedy fellow with unrequited longing. “What a woman. Nice breasts too. Bouncy hunter, they should call her.”

“Have a feel, if you like,” the guard says generously, and at last feel slightly sorry for her.

Realizing what has just been offered Ja-alixxe is trying to back away, but it’s too late. She is already being nudged forward by the guard, his superior weight and her restrictive shackles making it impossible for her to backpedal.

Forgetting we’re bound together I’m not prepared for the tug that also pulls me closer to the man. Pain shoots from my joints as momentum part-spins me around.

Next thing she knows, Ja-alixxe is in the weedy mechanic’s lap. He slips his arm around her waist, and holds her intimately close to him.

I can see how the leash linking us is configured now – from behind me at my bound wrists a cheese-cutting-thin cable runs between Ja-alixxe’s thighs to her own bindings. She must have to follow me or risk the wire slicing painfully against the apex of her legs.

The short length of the cable means I have to stand very close to the couple to avoid being dragged off my feet, or cause her serious damage. Reluctantly I go for the former.

“Let me go!” Ja-alixxe insists, hissing like a cat as she tries to rise from his grasp.

I had thought this small man lecherous but not cruel, but without warning he next slaps her face, not hard enough to damage – he is not drawing his arm back to strike with force, but it is certainly enough to shock and be painful.

“That’s not the way to behave, cunt,” he chides, and repeats the slap.

Over the next couple of minutes he hits her again, and again, and again with that same stinging smack, until Ja-alixxe admits defeat and goes utterly docile, almost cowering in his lap.

The other crew members are amused rather than shocked at his behavior.

“Oh, my dick is so hard right now,” the weedy man tells the guards. “Am I allowed to fuck her?”

“We don’t know if she’s a virgin yet, so no,” says the guard. “But cop as much of a feel as you like. And there are plenty of brothels on the station ready when you do need to shoot your load.”

Weedy man does just as the guard offered, slipping his hand right inside Ja-alixxe’s wrap without asking her permission, to squeeze her breasts. This time she knows better than to resist.

“Can I have a go with Melena de Santo?” one of the other crew asks abruptly. “That would be something to boast about – that I’ve had a feel of her.”

“No!” I plead in sudden fear, squeezing my knees together, and I actually try to back up towards the guards, seeking their protection now, although the cable soon goes taut and I can move no more.

“If it was down to me I’d agree,” one of the guards says with a nonchalant shake of his head, “but she’s meant for special processing. They’re going to make an example of this one once she’s down on the surface.”

Special processing… That means preparing me for the Rape Run.

“Speaking of which – we’d better move, these cunts have a date on the surface,” his colleague reminds him, and Ja-alixxe jumps out of the wiry ship crewman’s lap without a second invitation.

Without the girl covering his lap I’m left look in revulsion at a rampant erection bulging in the weedy man’s loose coveralls. As he’d declared he is indeed “hard”.

That incident is over, but is by no means the only obscenity I’m to witness in my journey through the station.

Scenes of sexual depravity seem to be commonplace on the concourse. I see a number of slave women opening performing fellatio on visiting space crews, and a couple of girls are sitting in men’s laps with their hips bucking rhythmically, shamelessly screwing the men to climax.

In spite of these many alternative attractions a small crowd still begins to gather around us during the abuse of Ja-alixxe, drawn partly by her unusually striking beauty but more by my celebrity status. This mob swells as we continue our shuffling progress. They escort us all along the deck of the station, taunting us the whole way.

For the next few minutes this crowd puts me through the worst experience since my capture. Worse than the pain in the cage.

I have devoted my life to service in the space fleet, trying to make the Republic a more just and safe place. I had expected this might earn me a token of mercy or kindness from the galaxy’s men.

The hostility I feel from them stuns me. I shuffle on through taunts, mockery and the most intimate of sexual comments. The guards repeat that I am not to be touched, but a number of males are so overcome with hatred of me that they snatch at my body and my clothing.

My wrap is dragged aside several times, flashing a view of my sex to the crowd before the guards can beat away my assailants.

The crowd begins to get to me, despite myself, and soon I’m fighting to hold back tears. It comes almost as a relief when we finally reach the far end of the concourse and pass through a guarded corridor leading down to a docked shuttle, even though I know boarding that vessel will represent another stage further away from any hope.

Large viewing windows look out into space, and for the first time I see the huge looming planet.

That’s it – Aghara-Penthay – in the entire universe it is the planet most feared by women. And it’s the place where I, a woman, am being taken.

The world below is a scarlet oxide red, betraying how hot and arid it is down on the surface. There is no cloud, not even over the poles.

Ja-alixxe and I shuffle through the next guarded docking port, and we are inside the shuttle. The vessel is small, with barely more than a holding brig and a more comfortable cabin up front for the guards.

There are no windows in here.

The hold is already packed with women destined for slavery on the surface. These other females are sat chained to each other on hard benches, positioned front-to-back in a long line as though they are to row a boat.

Ja-alixxe and I are the only two females who are not naked.

To prevent us feeling superior to our sisters we are not permitted to sit, but are made to stand against the wall. Our ankles and wrists remain in our shackles. Once we’re positioned facing out into the cabin, an additional collar fitted with some kind of electronic function is closed by the guard around my throat, where it locks with a snap. With my wrists still held together behind me, I am utterly unable to prevent even this simple device being fixed to my neck.

Ja-alixxe is locked into a similar collar. By means of these we are trapped close to points high in the wall, with only six inches of chain to permit us movement.

Our guards do not release the cable joining me to her, so it is difficult even to look at each other.

Satisfied we’re unable to run, our captors leave us alone to face the hold full of slave women, and they go to take their place up in front with the pilot.

After only a couple of minutes the ship jolts, and there is the soft rush of the engines. We are moving.

Almost a half of the population of this room are crying or moaning, and with only my own sex for company in this women-only privacy I briefly permit myself the catharsis of weeping.

I’m for the Rape Run. God help me.

Despair claims me completely. My chest heaves with sobs, and tears run openly down my cheeks, falling onto the silken material of my wrap where it protrudes over my breasts.

It is hopeless. There will be no escape for me now, save the one-in-ten chance that I am the winner of The Rape Run. Even if I survive without violation I will be a broken woman – marked forever as a slave, and never living down the varied other public degradations that lead up to the main event.

And what if I do lose? I will spend the rest of my days as slave to one of the five Hunters, or sold on to a wealthy collector when my captor grows tired of me. The implant they will embed in my skull will prevent me even from taking my own life and I will serve his sexual needs, believing it is my place to do so.

The humiliations I have suffered so far will be nothing to what lies ahead in the Run. In a way, even these nudes are better off than I am. Through blurred tears I look around the hold, wishing I was an anonymous naked captive, instead of the famous Colonel Melena de Santo, pride of the space fleet and about to become its shame.

When my tears are under control and I’m only sniffing, I’m obliged to meet the questioning gazes of the slaves on the benches. One of the naked women, a pretty blonde sat at the front of a row, is not crying. She turns and looks at me.

“I know you,” she says, confirming my celebrity status, “You’re Colonel Melena de Santo.” I am surprised to hear anger towards me in her voice.

“I have offended you?” I reply in a shaking voice, bemused.

“I thought you were doing good making your stand, but you have made things worse for free women, not better, now you have been captured,” the blonde says despondently. “You wanted to be famous and have the glory. You wanted to show your boobs off in that poster. Now those who are still free will for that with fear, when they see what the Slavers do to you.”

And so I learn not even the galaxy’s women are on my side. Black depression has me once more, but this time, I fight the tears. I’m not going to cry in front of someone just because they’ve hurt my feelings.

I stare numbly ahead for the rest of the flight. Occasionally the shuttle gives a jolt and secured to the wall only by my neck, I stumble forward, pulling painfully against Ja-alixxe who has not said a word since the concourse.

It seems to take forever to land.

When the ship settles with a heavy boom and the engines cut, the gravity we feel can only be real.

I am planet-side. My worst nightmare has come true. I am a prisoner on Aghara-Penthay.

6 – Holding

When we disembark the heat hits us as though we just walked into an oven. For the first time there’s a benefit in being the ones without much clothing, although my wrap flutters alarmingly in the hot breeze, making me feel even more undressed.

Around me is the planet’s surface of Aghara-Penthay.

My first view is from a landing pad, on the roof of a large stone building. The place looks ancient, like a desert castle. Nothing decays in the dry atmosphere, so apart from cosmetic damage from sandstorms the structures here last for centuries.

Around me women, dressed and naked, squint into the glare. Through a heat haze I can see sand, rocky ground and mountains, all in the same deep red color. This place – I call it the fort – seems to be part of a complex of similarly sized buildings.

Everything constructed on the surface is here for the process of selling slaves. Although there is indigenous life on Aghara-Penthay none of it is sentient. The Slavers chose this world as their home precisely because there is nothing to flee to, and no-one to give us shelter.

“Move,” says a guard.

With a jingle of chains we’re driven through a modern-looking guarded blast door, and into the building. Our escorts have a rapid consultation with the men at the entrance. Judging by the direction of their gesturing the conversation seems to concern Ja-Alixxe, who stands behind me in her binders.

Obeying another shouted order from our guards we shuffle deeper into the stone structure. Inside the building there is no air-conditioning – it relies on unglazed windows facing onto the desert for ventilation. Each opening is sufficiently large to let in sunlight and the arid breeze, but they are too small to fit the body of an escaping slave.

Luckily it is too dry to be humid.

I know already that the fort is not the place where the Rape Run takes place, so I am not in immediate danger. My future lies a specially prepared location – always in the same giant crater created by a prehistoric meteor strike. It is known to the galactic viewing audience as The Zone.

After passing a couple of branching corridors the two guards separate me from the line of naked women. Ja-alixxe is pulled along with me, which seems to confirm certain she is to be a Rape Runner too. The bounty hunter will be my rival in what is to come. I think of her without kindness as she follows me, also barefoot and wearing a revealing slave wrap.

Once she and I are alone with our escorts, the men release the binders on our ankles and disconnect the line joining us to each other. There is no need for them, now we have nowhere to run, no-one to run to, and no chance of escape. Our best chance of survival is now to co-operate, and try be the one from ten who is victor in the Rape Run.

The guards make us walk again.

Even though our wrist binders too are unnecessary they are only removed at the last moment, when we stand before a large alloy blast door that lifts into the roof. As we rub our sore wrists, the door raises and we both step cautiously forwards into a large cell. The blast door closes behind me with a rush of hot air and a clang before I realize the men don’t intend to follow.

My new location isn’t a very welcoming place. It is windowless, illuminated by only glow-spheres high in the ceiling, and the room is completely bare of decoration, save a few sleeping rolls on the floor. A small drainage hole in one corner with a grill bolted over it has a showerhead high above, protruding from the roof, and with it just one tap to control the water. There is no sign of anywhere to do our business other than over the drain.

It’s hot in here. It’s hot everywhere on Aghara-Penthay.

Protruding from the wall there is a nutrition dispensing tube, in the same pink phallic shape that was in my cage on the Slaver ship. There is only of these for us all to share. It is at waist height, so we’ll be obliged to kneel to use it.

A couple of other women are already in here, each dressed in the plain wrap of a slave, open along one side and barely low enough to cover the pudenda. In these uniforms they stand and look at us, sizing up cellmates who will inevitably become rivals once we’re in the Rape Run.

I was often told I was exceptionally desirable within the Republic fleet, but I feel average compared to these two. Both women would be considered exceptionally beautiful in their own different ways.

The face of the first one is familiar.

She has no surname, being simply known as Oorla. Here stands a genuine celebrity – an award winning actress. I’ve never been in the presence of a famous person before, unless you count my own appearance as the poster girl of the fleet, so it feels unreal to see her right before me.

Oorla is shorter in reality than I’d have expected – I have a good five or six inches on her. She’s not childlike though – her body is buxom and feminine, with a breast size similar to my own and a round curve to her hips. Her mouth is wide and sultry. One of the galaxy’s top poets wrote a verse where he dreamed about the pleasures of kissing those pouting lips.

Oorla portrayed someone in a rape and revenge movie, escaping slavery and turning the tables on her captors to slaughter them all. I can see how poignant the Slavers would find it to make her truly endure the abuse. If she is raped in The Zone, she will not defeat her assailants as she did in the fiction.

Oorla’s hair is platinum blonde – a silver curtain that contrasts the other woman. Her companion is a slender dark haired beauty I do not recognize. This one is of the same height but with dark doe-eyes and a more understated cleavage. The second female soon introduces herself to me.

“You’re Melena de Santo, the heroine of space fleet?” she says, in a high soprano. “I admire the brave stance you take. My name is Princess Palonae Noonian Aurora Tonova, of the Ring Worlds.”

Ah… I can see why the Slaver’s have targeted the princess. Palonae is a champion of equality between genders and species in the republican senate, which would have made her an immediate enemy of the Slavers of Aghara-Penthay. Furthermore she’s young and pretty, with a delicate slim body and big brown eyes that men no-doubt find appealing. She will make someone an exquisite prize unless she’s the winner.

“I’ve heard of you, erm… your highness,” I admit. We shake hands like men, although Palonae’s feels so small I could probably break her bones by squeezing hard.

“My condolences at your capture,” Palonae says, a politeness that makes me well-up with emotion for some reason.

“Likewise, your highness,” I reply.

“Who is that lady?” Palonae asks, indicating Ja-alixxe who has slumped alone at the far end of the cell.

“Ja-alixxe,” I say, loud enough that the traitor can here. “A bounty hunter. Don’t trust her – she’s the reason I’m here.”

“Just doing what I have to do to stay alive,” Ja-alixxe calls, unabashed.

Oorla comes across to me.

“Melena,” she says, “my condolences.”

Unlike the chaste handshake I received from the princess, Oorla hugs me then without inhibition. I’m surprised how wonderful this feels – just to receive some kindness from another human being. I feel like weeping again.

Her breasts are firm where they press against me and I want to put my arms round her, but by then Oorla has already broken the embrace.

“Let us find you some bedrolls,” the princess says. “They’re not very comfortable, I’m afraid.”

“How long have you been in here?” I ask.

“A day, I think. It’s hard to tell. Sometimes the lights go out, and we take that to be night time.”

“Two days for me,” Oorla says, releasing me from the embrace.

“How did they capture you?” Ja-Alixxe asks from her place resting against the wall.

“I was betrayed,” Oorla says candidly. “A crew were supposed to be taking me to a screen awards ceremony, on the Indigo Prime world. They docked with a Slaver cruiser, and found out they could make much more credit if they sold me instead.”

Oorla’s face takes on a pained, faraway expression, and she adds, “The crew made use of me first.”

None of us need her to explain what she means.

“I went to sleep in my bed in the palace,” Palonae says, letting Oorla lapse into silence. “When I awoke I was naked in a cage, on the hold of a Slaver ship. The guards didn’t violate me but I was abused. For example, at the time when I wanted to earn a slave wrap, I had to use my hand to please them.”

Thus we begin to learn each other’s sorry stories. We talk a lot on the first day, as women are stereotyped to do, but in our defense there is nothing else to do and the alternative is to sit in silent fear, and anticipate what is coming.

The Rape Run is broadcast to screens all across the galaxy, so I’ve seen glimpses of earlier years and I know exactly what’s coming. Processing, the exhibition, scarves, and then the terror and humiliation of the Rape Run itself.

Time passes. Under the artificial lights there is no sense of how many hours have gone by, but they go by anyway. My stomach churns so badly I get diarrhea and have to squat over the drain. Not wanting to earn punishment I make use of the demeaning feeding tube, even though I know I’m being watched when I kneel down and take the thing between my lips.

After an unknown eternity there is a click and we are abruptly plunged into almost total darkness. This must be a signal we are obliged to sleep. I find where I placed my sleeping roll, in the furthest corner from the blast door, and lie on my side curled into a fetal position.

I tuck my hands between my thighs, using them to protect my pussy while I’m still permitted to do so. I’m too afraid to sleep. This morning I was on the Republic cruiser. Now I’m here.

There is just enough light that to make out the bodies of the other women – the glow spheres have been turned right down rather than extinguished. I can see enough to witness something that should be tender, but is heartbreakingly depressing.

Palonae and Oorla join each other on the same bedroll, and their bodies entwine intimately. I watch their hands begin caressing and stroking, and heads extend to kiss.

Such couplings are a common phenomenon in women waiting in the holding pen for The Rape Run. But rather than being a romantic display of unforced lesbian affection, these encounters often arise as an antidote to misery, or even from mercenary reasons.

Alliances can be beneficial once the competition starts, so it is common for girls to flee the Hunters in small teams. Shared intimacy can be a good way to build trust between women, even though they know deep down that eventually, only one of them can win.

The second reason for seeking a lover is that in the face of so much abuse of their bodies, women are desperate to snatch any pleasant sexual experience they can and cling on to its memory.

Palonae looks across at one point and a glint of reflected light from her eyes shows she has seen me, watching her. In spite of this she is not ashamed – she draws her thigh up between Oorla’s. The other woman’s pelvis gyrates rhythmically as she pleasures herself against Palonae’s smooth thigh.

Both of them are certainly aware that footage from the holding cells is often broadcast in the build-up to the Run and during the contest, but they pleasure each other anyway. Oorla is married to an A-list actor, and homosexuality is frowned upon on Palonae’s conservative world. The two women must think it does not matter – the odds of either of them returning home are so slim they can worry about being ostracized on their return when it happens.

I too might be being broadcast across the universe right now – here is the latest shot of Colonel Melena de Santo resting in her revealing slave shift. I can even guess what the commentator – the vile Wagner will be saying: how the always-frigid Melena even sleeps keeping her hands between her thighs and with her knees drawn up.

I feel my face grow hot with impotent anger.

My slave wrap barely covers me when standing, so lying down I am probably showing an obscene view to anyone filming upwards from my feet. I can’t protect every possible viewing angle though, and all I can do is reassure myself that the Slavers are unlikely to broadcast any images of me that are too pornographic before the run. They will want to build anticipation to the moment when I am first stripped before the galaxy.

Stripped before the galaxy… Gods, please don’t let me be one of the nine caught. “Stripped before the galaxy” is the phrase that echoes around my head like the universe’s catchiest song, while leaving Oorla and Palonae to their privacy, I turn to face the other way and try to rest.

7 – Male

Over a series of days, our pen fills with more and more women. The Slavers won’t begin the Rape Run until ten of us are gathered and processed, so each addition to our group shrinks the time before the rest of us have to face our destined series of public humiliations. This makes it difficult not to resent the new arrivals, even though they are not to blame for their presence.

Jasmeena is the next Runner who pads into the cell, a stunning olive skinned beauty from a desert planet so conservative it makes Palonae’s home look liberal. Females on Jasmeena’s world normally robe themselves head to foot, unveiling their heads only in the privacy of their family homes. How the Slavers discovered Jasmeena looked so exceptional is a mystery, but I can only imagine someone close to her and someone female could have committed such a cruel betrayal.

Coming from a culture where female bodies were always completely covered makes wearing the revealing slave wrap is a particular indignity for the dusky Jasmeena. She cowers each time the guards enter, trying to cover exposure she considers almost as bad as being nude.

Jasmeena is not a big talker. You see the type in the Rape Run – the solitary ones. She has a strategy, and she doesn’t need anyone else to survive.

Next comes Aireela, a beautiful blonde snatched from a primitive world where small tribal groups live in dense jungle. Her hair – slightly curled – is exceptionally long, reaching down well below her rump. She looks human, but she’s actually a different species, where their men develop to be feeble mentally and physically compared to the lively, athletic females.

These tribes in Aireela’s society are therefore ruled by women, with men existing in near-slavery serving only for breeding and domestic labor. I can see the Slavers would enjoy seeing one such as her experience having their status so completely reversed. With little awareness of the modern technology likely to be used by Hunters in The Rape Run, I do not expect poor Aireela to avoid capture for long, which will be yet another tragedy. I find her quiet confidence appealing.

In the confined cell where we all live there is no air conditioning, and the heat of the desert pervades even this far inside the building. By the time there’s six of us the atmosphere becomes oppressive. Bodies confined in close proximity turn the dry air humid, and even though we try to keep clean, the smell of women’s sweat and fear is always present.

And still more of us are added.

Cara Haston was one of the highest paid models in the galaxy, until the moment when she is pushed into our holding cell, wearing only the wrap of a slave. We could all be considered as beauties, but most of us feel positively dowdy compared to the perfect form of Cara. This girl is unreal, ethereal. Even the way she moves is balletic. The only category where any of us could be said to rival her is breast size – Cara is a diminutive A-cup, and if it wasn’t for her exquisite features she’d look like a slim teenage boy standing there in a scarlet slave wrap.

Cara had known for a couple of years that she was a favored target to be forced into The Rape Run, and she had spent a considerable amount of her fortune on bodyguards. The Slavers of Aghara-Penthay had captured her anyway, killing her retinue in a straight-up gun battle and stunning Cara with a blaster bolt before she had chance to take her own life. I am sure they will consider her quite a trophy.

Cara seems the least fazed of all of us by her imminent ordeal. Perhaps in the same way many of the really beautiful lead blessed lives, she expects that if she waits her problems will sort themselves.

Unless they’re as physically breathtaking as Cara, every woman selected to be one of the ten Rape Runners has to possess more than mere beauty, for there are many desirable women scattered across the universe. Runners have to be exceptional.

I am one of those here because of what I represent, as much as for my looks. The Slavers like each captive to bring meaning and send a message, whether that message be that there is no escape and all women must fear; or that it is futile for women to seek equality; or that there will be a particular poignancy to seeing their target humbled low; or that it proves the Slavers are all powerful.

It is therefore easy to see why they wanted Tasha Castelaine. As one of the Republic’s most successful and well known business women and with a fortune in the billions of credits, like myself she is a symbol of female empowerment. Tasha is also beautiful in that pouting, proud way that makes men want to conquer her. No doubt she has been the subject of many male fantasies as she sat across the boardroom table. But now she’s no luckier than the rest of us. Unless she is the victor in the Rape Run, she will soon be acting out their fantasies for real.

On first being pushed into our holding cell Tasha lay curled up into a ball, weeping in her slave’s wrap. But she soon got a grip on herself, put her strategic brain to use and turned out to be the talker of the group. Tasha wants to know everyone. She’s using her time in the pen to deal and form alliances, working out which of us is the best to ensure her chance of survival and not wanting to make friends with a girl who will be a potential burden. She’s physically and mentally uninhibited, choosing to spend most of her time naked and only pulling on a wrap when the guards enter the room.

“We’re all women,” she says, “and it’s better to be nude than be dressed as a slave. You might be naked at home, but you only dress like this because you were forced.”

I don’t agree. I keep my wrap close about me except for in the moments when I have to wash, and have to void myself.

When I awoke after my first night in the cell, Palonae warned me women are not permitted to let ourselves become dirty. We will be punished with the goad unless we shower thoroughly at least once per day.

I feel self-conscious at the cleaning times when I’m obliged to undress, even though there are only other women present.

In the days of buildup before the Rape Run begins, we are sizing up potential allies and rivals, and not only based on physical prowess. With a handicap system applied in the Rape Run to make things harder for the Runners whom the audience really wants to see defeated, it doesn’t pay to be friends with the most desirable.

So while I wash I want to turn to the wall and conceal my beauty, hiding my pert, full breasts as much as I can, even though I know deep down it’s futile. The other women have been able to see me as well as I’ve seen them, and the brief wrap leaves nothing of our figures to the imagination.

Voiding is another occasion for public indignity, with all of us having no choice but to squat over the drain hole. No paper is provided so afterwards we’re often obliged to shower again, to avoid the smell of excrement being added to the other odors of humanity pervading our pen.

It is on the day when we are only two women away from our group being complete that something unexpected happens.

The majority of the thousands of captives brought annually to Aghara-Penthay are female, and the Slavers rarely interest themselves in male victims. When they do, it’s normally a case of kidnapping important figures to order, or taking of the strongest stock for fighting or breeding purposes.

When a male is taken captive, sometimes it amuses them to cage him with the females, after rendering him safely sexually impotent by some means. I gather that with the male sex drive being much higher than ours, it can be a form of torture to be surrounded by desirable flesh but unable to enjoy such bounty. What’s more – outnumbered, the hapless male usually suffers the vengeance of women who suddenly have an outlet to vent their terror.

I’ve been a prisoner in the cell for a week on the day when the door flies open without warning, and a man is pushed into our pen. It’s immediately obvious he is a slave, for he is naked, naked amongst women, stripped to show us his status is being even lower than ours. When the door reveals him, he has his hands behind his back as if to protect his rear, but this effort is insufficient defense. I see the spark as one of the hated goads, held by someone outside the door, touches his bare buttock. He leaps in with a shriek, and turns in time to see the door drop closed behind him.

I am so used to being dressed in the simple slave shift by this point that I’ve forgotten to be ashamed, but with Jasmeena comfortable only in the heavy, conservative dress of her planet she shrieks, collapsing into a crouch and drawing up her knees to hide her body. I too then hold my arms protectively about myself, trying to conceal my figure.

The man straightens up, looking round at us. He still holds his hands awkwardly behind his back, as though he’s about to give a lecture. He seems familiar to me, but I can’t immediately remember where I’ve seen him. It seems like another life when I recall my past, the time before they locked me away in here.

The man is young, perhaps in his thirties according to the common Republic year. He is very slightly build, slim but with a toned physique, and he’s not even as tall as I am. I could probably overpower him in a trial of strength. His hair is a mahogany brown, cut in an effeminate flopping style that almost covers his eyes.

His captors’ method of preventing the man from sexually rampaging, even though he’s a room of the galaxy’s most attractive women is immediately apparent – a circular band locked tightly around the base of his penis and his scrotum.

I have heard of such devices. They are called control rings. If this ring is armed, the minute the wearer becomes sexually aroused it will deliver a powerful stimulation shock to his genitals. I’ve never been in a situation to see one activate before, but I hear they’re agonizing enough to deter the most ardent lover.

The man makes no effort to conceal the control ring. He does not have the courtesy to cover his genitals either, but stands there uncertainly with his hands still behind him.

In disgust I look away. The last thing I want to see is a man’s penis. But even wearing the ring he’s too much of a threat to ignore, and I cautiously turn back again, keeping a watchful eye.

The man has sunk down, making no effort to move further into the room, and sits back against the blast door with his head turned away. I understand what he is doing. He will try to avoid staring at us, thinking of us as women, in case the sight of our bodies is sexually arousing to him.

This male is not to be left alone, however.

Ja-alixxe has leaped up from her bedroll, and is sashaying across to him. She has her arms by her sides, and she crosses our pen in as provocative a manner as possible. She has found a source of sport.

“Leave him be, Ja-Alixxe,” I complain halfheartedly.

I know what the bounty hunter plans to do. I can see from her cruel smile. Ja-alixxe is going to deliberately arouse the man until he suffers the agonizing pain from his control ring activating.

“What’s your story, handsome?” she says, putting on a seductive voice. Her hip was cocked, her pussy almost at the level of his face. He’d only have to lean forward to get an obscene view under her wrap, but he keeps his gaze high to maintain eye contact instead.

When she gets closer to him, Ja-Alixxe frowns.

“I know your face,” she says, puzzled. “Where do I know you from?”

“You’re mistaken, I’m nobody,” the man says quickly in a trembling voice, but it’s obvious he’s lying, and he’s oddly familiar to me too. Women move closer to look, and that’s when it happens.

“Wait – that’s Leshan!” Tasha Castelaine, the beautiful career woman says. “That’s one of the Hunters.”

“No!” the man pleads, sounding close to terror, but it is too late.

“It is him!” agrees Palonae, and the moment Tasha said the name I am sure too. We can all see it now, and in the instant of our recognition any chance of kindness to him has evaporated.

The Slavers of Aghara-Penthay present a united face against the galaxy, but behind the facade they are a highly hierarchical and factionalized organization. While the numbers of men who would identify themselves as a Slaver run into the thousands, each man also feels a strong sense of connection to one of the five Slaver clans. The five clan leaders are The Hunters and are the elite who have the privilege of compete to be first to catch each one the ten women in the Rape Run.

During the Rape Run the Hunters will set out into The Zone accompanied by a retinue of men and slaves, but it is only the Hunter himself is permitted to enjoy the moment of restraining, violating and then enslaving a Runner who falls captive.

Thus the competition in The Rape Run takes place on two levels. The women (the Runners) move from hiding place to hiding place in The Zone, attempting to be the last to evade capture – knowing that only when their nine sisters have been degraded and just one remains unshackled and out of custody will she be permitted to go free.

From the Hunters side, they compete to capture the most women, or they spend their time pursuing a female of particular interest to them. Hunters share use of Runner women after the honor of the initial conquest, but each defeated female remains legally as property of her initial captor. Once the Run is over the Hunter may keep the victims he claimed, or dispose of them as he wishes.

All of us, except maybe Aireela, know something about the five Hunters. I avoid watching the Rape Run as much as I can, finding no pleasure in seeing women broken and violated. But know who the Hunters are anyway. Everyone does. They are celebrities across the galaxy, broadcast year on year enjoying the sadistic cruelty that some consider to be sport.

Each one of the Hunters has a different temperament, and they deal with captives according to their personal taste. Most women dread (although a few masochists fantasize) falling to one Hunter, thoughts of him triggering terror more profound than his fellows.

Cronorgan is known as “The Master”. He is renowned for his need for dominance, and he enjoys breaking his captives down into absolute submission. It is victory in the conquest of wills that provides Cronorgan with the greatest pleasure.

Last year’s Rape Run was considered a particularly entertaining one, because of him. Cronorgan captured an unusually courageous female mercenary, not dissimilar in temperament to myself, early in the Run and it took the remainder of the competition for him to break her. Much of the footage of her two days in torment was broadcast. We saw her utterly defeated by the time the final slaves were run down, and thank the Gods the coverage could end for another year.

Lotho-etsarra is known across the galaxy as “The Libido”. Lovemaking is his forte – using chemically enhanced performance he can take a woman for hour after hour. That Hunter does not so much focus on any individual slave, but is more concerned with raping every desirable female he can possibly get. If a woman had choice, she would usually surrender to Lotho-etsarra because he doesn’t violate any slave for a second time. As soon as he’s used a captive Runner he trades her on, and she can disappear from celebrity into the anonymous mass of thousands of other female slaves.

It is not good to be captured by Jackran-ad-aktar – “The Alien”. The divide between human females and his own species is no barrier to his taste. His penis is much larger than a human male, and the body chemistry of his breed being different to ours, the semen he ejaculates into a human woman is caustic. It is agony to be raped by Jackran-ad-aktar, both from the damage accommodating his vast girth and the internal burning from the aftermath.

Jackran’s species are carnivorous and in their normal business his faction tends to specialize in providing the slave women that are sold to owners with a taste for the flesh of humanoid females. A woman who falls captive to Jackran-ad-aktar has the lowest life expectancy of a captured Runner.

Nonetheless I would rather be caught by Jackran than Salarin – “The Sadist”. Salarin does not care if a woman breaks to his will or not. He does not care if she yields. He takes pleasure from her pain, and the most desirable woman to him is the one who can suffer longest and most profoundly before she loses her mind.

It is the prospect of ending up in the power of Salarin that I fear most. He is the Hunter that haunts my nightmares.

My personal terror list, and I’m sure all the women here with me have one similar, is: worst – Salarin; second worst – the Alien; mid-table – Cronorgan, the dominant. If I am caught, I hope Lotho-etsarra is the one. My second “choice” would be the man naked before us now.

Leshan, smallest of the Hunters, is known as “The Runt”. Perhaps because of his diminutive size, Leshan feels driven to prove his physical superiority over women. Those of us familiar with his particular cruelty know that the best tactic for a victim of this man is to yield quickly and unconditionally. Fail to do this and Leshan gets more and more physically violent with her, until his psychological need to prove himself is met.

A Runner two years ago, one of the most famous female sports stars, if I recall, stood up to Leshan and was beaten into unconsciousness. Still that didn’t stop him. She was immersed in a bacterial healing tank, and as soon as she was recovered the abuse resumed. It took a day and a half before she cowed sufficiently that he was satisfied.

Some think Leshan should be named “The Violent”, instead of “The Runt”.

And now The very same Runt is here, naked and wearing a control ring, in our cell. I can see why he keeps his hands behind him now – barely visible on his lower arm is the glint of a slave shackle. Leshan is defenseless and Ja-Alixxe is going to make him suffer for his crimes.

“Any of you girls want to get some revenge on the male sex?” calls Ja-Alixxe, her voice cold with malice.

“No! Don’t!” Leshan pleads, scrabbling with his heels against the floor as though he could propel himself back through the blast door, but begging will get him nowhere now he’s been recognized. Tasha, Oorla, and Cara are on their feet and closing in, trapping him against the edge of the cell.

After the indignities I’ve already suffered I too want to kill the Slavers with my bare hands, but it’s not in my nature to be cruel without good reason. So I decide that although I’m not going to participate in this lynching, I certainly won’t intervene while my fellow females restore some self-respect at his expense.

“Two of you hold his legs,” Ja-Alixxe is ordering over Leshan’s pleading cries, “while the other two of us arouse him. The control ring will do the rest.”

With four women pitted against one restrained man, he has no chance.

Tasha and Oorla seize one of Leshan’s legs each, and they lift, so he tips back and cracks his head roughly on the stone floor, unable to break the descent with his shackled wrists.

While he groans, almost knocked unconscious, they pull his legs apart, obscenely displaying Leshan’s genitals and anus. He’s rather hairy, and it makes the cleft between his buttocks look unclean. With revulsion I look at the penis that might have been first to rape some of these women, rape me, had Leshan not suffered some kind of fall from grace.

Then my view of the vulnerable prick and scrotum is blocked by Ja-Alixxe and Cara, and I am grateful.

I can’t see, but I can hear what’s happening. Leshan is helpless to prevent those two women from caressing him, and the noises he emits are half-pleas, and half cries of unwanted arousal.

Of the remaining women present in my cell, Aireela the primitive Amazonian blonde watches with only casual interest. Men are weaker anyway on her world, and perhaps this scene of female dominance is not usual for her. The two women from more repressed worlds where they have little exposure to men – Princess Palonae and Jasmeena, are not engaging either, and avert their gazes from seeing a male in sexual arousal.

I too shift my position, and not just so I don’t have to watch. Now Leshan’s head is at floor level I don’t want him able to see up my too-short slave wrap. So I keep my knees together, twisting my body to face to one side, ankles drawn up close to my buttocks. I make sure the side of my wrap that gapes open faces into the wall. His attention is occupied only on his suffering now, but while they were spreading his legs he looked at me – looked right at me, and in his presence I feel underdressed.

It is not difficult to tell when the control ring around Leshan’s penis activates. His first scream of agony is deafening in the confined cell. I risk a glance and see his limbs have stiffened as if he’s receiving an intense electric shock. Leshan is bucking so uncontrollably that the women are struggling to hold him.

His scream fades to a hoarse cry. It is not enough for his tormentors. I hear Cara murmuring to him in her most seductive voice. “Did that hurt? Poor baby… Oh, let me take it into my mouth and suck it better.”

“No! No!” Leshan starts pleading afresh.

“Stick your fingers in his anus,” Ja-Alixxe suggests. “He’d do it to you.”

It is only a minute or two before once again they have him so aroused that the ring suppresses him, and I can hear nothing but a man’s screams.

By the third or fourth time, he’s been through this treatment, he is weeping uncontrollably.

“I want to rip his balls off,” Tasha says viciously. “They haven’t implanted me yet. That means I can still hurt men.”

And she tries to do just that, bringing a fresh chorus of howls from her victim. It turns out a female isn’t strong enough to part masculine flesh with her bare hands, but a woman can squash a man’s testicles in her fists, and she can kick him between his legs using bare feet.

For perhaps an hour it goes on. By the end Leshan is growing lost in the suffering, and his cries are beginning to weaken. I look again and see his eyes are now glazed. He seems only half aware of what is happening.

The women have used their claw-like nails on him, and his hairy skin is covered in such deep wounds it looks as though he’s been whipped. One of his eyes is blackening.

Of course it is the clever Ja-Alixxe who realizes she has one last weapon. Kneeling between his thighs almost submissively, she leans over, as though to deliver a kiss, but her lips are drawn back to bare her teeth. This time Leshan’s scream cuts of suddenly, and he lies silent and limp. Ja-Alixxe rises, smiling. The lower part of her face is covered in blood. She has something in her mouth, and I feel myself about to retch as she walks gracefully to the drain and spits something that looks like a piece of raw meat into the hole.

I cannot help but feel pity, and then I remind myself this is a Slaver. If I were helpless, would he be showing any mercy to me?

Other cellmates also believe such cruelty is justified. Tasha is closing on the bloody remains of Leshan’s groin. And still the women’s vengeance is not complete. Turning so I can’t see more, I put my hands over my ears and try to block out the world.

8 – Processing

Now that the full line up of this year’s Runners are present, all ten of us, I know they will come for me soon. Each time the door of our pen opens, I clench with dread, digging my fingernails into my palms to keep me from shaking.

As with every year in the Rape Run, our participation in the entertainment doesn’t spare us the processing received by any woman in the hands of the Slavers of Aghara-Penthay. I have already witnessed some of the other girls in our cell being taken away for the processing that prepares them for The Rape Run, and for an almost inevitable life of slavery, and for a future of pleasing men.

When they return to the same each sits by themselves. They’re unwilling even to talk to other women, having endured humiliations they can only come to terms with alone.

The implants and whatever further degradations are prepared will be horrific, but personally I’m dreading one treatment above the others.