Drone
1
The cell was inescapable, as all good confinement cells should be. The four walls, ceiling, and floor were a shockingly intense white, made of a polished plastic composite, unbreakable, and perfectly equal in size. There was no door, nor any discernible light source, though the room was well lit. The overall effect was that the prisoner felt as though she were in the middle of a thin, hollow cube, with only the slender walls of that cube separating her from freedom. She knew this was an illusion. She might have been deep underground, high up somewhere in the Central Administration tower of Proxima Five, or a dozen other places equally as impregnable. She had no way of knowing. Either way, more than walls, she realized, were keeping her prisoner, and unless someone made a drastic error in judgment, she would not be escaping on her own. As such, she didn’t bother pleading or pacing or performing any other useless action. Instead, she sat Zen-like in the middle of the cube and prepared herself mentally.
They would be coming for her soon.
She was sure they were. There was no toilet in her cell. It was obviously not meant for long-term imprisonment.
Well, this is a fine mess, Alexandra thought bitterly. You had to go yourself. You had to ignore Peter’s warning. And now look where you are.
Immaculate white walls met her eyes in every direction. I’m in big trouble, the baroness concluded.
The irony of it was, aside from getting captured, her mission had been an unqualified success.
The data had been recovered, the coordinates of the Solarian forces had been pinpointed to the last millimeter, and that invaluable information had been relayed by an impossible-to-scramble transwave to her colleagues in the Resistance. Her team had accomplished all that it had set out to accomplish. The war as they knew it would soon be over. And then Edgar had to go and drop his pistol down the shaft.
He dropped his blasted pistol!
The awful sound as it fell down the support shaft they had been crawling above had echoed throughout the complex, alerting the station’s security forces to their presence in spite of all the many electronic countermeasures at their disposal. Perhaps appropriately, the little computer specialist was the first among them to be located and shot. He died. The station used Xenonic mercenaries for its security, and Xenonic mercenaries, unlike the Solarians, used real bullets in their firearms. In a strange way, that had almost been comforting. Alex would much rather have been shot and killed than captured.
Her team had made it all the way back to their hidden flyer, but one of the mercenaries must have alerted his superiors. A Solarian detachment had been waiting in ambush, and they had used pulse rifles, weapons which temporarily disabled those nerve functions allowing for conscious thought.
The last thing Alex saw was a bright green flash, and she woke up here.
Without getting up, the young aristocrat reached round and felt the back of her head. There was something hard and plastic attached to her skin below the hairline. She had awakened with it, and she couldn’t remove it. More than mere pain prevented her. The thing felt attached to the bone itself, it was so immovably fixed. She didn’t know what it was, but she doubted it was for her benefit.
A vibration passed through the white cube, finally.
At once, Alexandra was on her feet in a fighting stance. Her captors had taken her weapons—even the carefully hidden ones—but she still had her uniform, loose and unrestricting, and she was trained in a variety of martial arts.
One of the white walls folded up into itself, revealing three figures in the corridor beyond.
A quick glance was all Alex needed to see that one of them was Citizen Nax, a governor of the Solarian Empire, an old enemy. She moved forward at blinding speed, her intent simply being to drive her index and middle fingers into Nax’s eyes, through the orbital cavities of his skull, and into his brain.
She got about halfway, maybe, a little more, perhaps, when the device on the back of her head buzzed, and all the strength fled from her limbs. She fell face forward at Nax’s booted feet.
“My dear baroness,” Nax said smoothly, his pampered and powder-smooth features as unruffled as his Solarian-accented voice, “that was most unkind. A rare lack of decorum for such an otherwise proper young lady.” The buzzing at her neck prevented Alex from giving the parasite the response she wanted.
All she could do was flutter and gasp weakly, like a fish out of water.
“Drones, collect this royalist trash and bring her to the forward lounge.”
For the first time, Alex noticed that the two figures accompanying Nax were pleasure drones. Pleasure drones! Alex’s flesh crawled at the very thought of them. Of all the wicked and depraved vices to emerge from Old Earth in recent decades, of all the inhumane crimes, “droning” had to be the worst.
A pleasure drone was a former human being, a woman transformed through advanced microsurgery, her body encased in a skintight coating of linked cell-sized chemiprocessors that bonded to her skin, in time becoming her skin and thereby starting a metamorphic cascade culminating in the victim being transformed into a living sex toy, a life-size and submissive fuck doll. Each drone was indistinguishable from any other. It didn’t matter whether the original person had been young or old, healthy or sick, large or small. All that mattered was gender. The skinsuit worked from the outside in, rewriting flesh, reknitting bone, replacing every original cell with a bioengineered, custom-designed substitute, burning with sexual desire. Pleasure drones were beautiful—a uniform 1.6 meters tall, hourglass voluptuousness, a model’s face with full and pouting lips—but they were inhuman as well, as seen in their bright artificially pink skin, featureless, pupil-less eyes, and the complete and utter lack of hair on both body and head.
The worst thing of all, though, was that the mutilation of the poor woman’s body was only the start of the degradation. A skinsuit erased its victim’s mind along with her physical identity. Pleasure drones were as alike in spirit as they were in form, programmed by their slave coatings to be obedient, pleasing, and wanton, as much sex toys in personality as in body. Nax’s pleasure drones, complying with their owner’s command, picked Alex up by the shoulders and got her to her feet. Holding her between them, they dragged the Baroness of Panara along the corridor behind Nax, their stiletto heels tip-tapping along the metal floor. Aside from their footwear, the two drones were completely naked.
Alex had only to look around to know she had totally misjudged her whereabouts. The curving walls and hatches were a clear indicator. She wasn’t on Proxima Five at all. She was in a ship in space traveling to some unknown destination. The baroness prayed she wasn’t on a tranship bound for Earth. It wasn’t the length of the journey that dismayed her—more than four years even within the null-zone of a light envelope—but the fact that no one ever came back from the seat of the Solarian Empire.
The possibility of rescue would be nil.
Oh, Peter, I’m sorry, Alex thought. The image of her husband-to-be flashed through her mind and comforted her. I should have listened to you. But she had wanted to lead this final mission herself.
She felt that she had to lead the mission, not to prove to others she was a fitting partner and queen for the future Sovereign of Outer Alpha Centauri, but to herself.
Why? he had asked before she left. Why you? Why must you always place yourself in such jeopardy? Peter had held her. I love you, Alex.
And I love you, Peter, she had replied. But we’re all in danger so long as the Solarians have such power here. If I can do anything to hasten their fall, I will.
She remembered laughing. I’m not afraid, your highness.
That’s the problem, Peter had said. I know how you are in the field. You take insane risks with yourself, but this time I can’t be there to bail you out if you get into trouble.
I’ll be careful. Besides, it’s a low-priority station. There’ll be little risk this time.
She had known even then that that was a lie—she had known about the Xenonic mercenaries—but even though the station itself was low priority, the Resistance knew it had valuable information nonetheless, the fault of a poorly designed data retrieval program, invaluable information, and so she had gone.
Peter would have a queen worthy of him. She had led men into combat before. She would do her part to end this vicious war. And so she had. She just hadn’t counted on getting caught.
Blast Edgar, she thought. Blast him!
She regretted the poor man’s death, but blast it, why couldn’t he have been more careful?!
Nax led his drones into a central lounge. Outside, the visible ports displayed the total ebony of space within a light envelope, a darkness that made the blackness of normal space, with its innumerable stars and radiation fields, look luminescent in the comparison. Nax sat in a throne-like chair prepared for him. The drones brought Alexandra before him and dumped her on the cold metal floor.
She tried to resist. She tried to fight. But the device on her neck made her so weak her limbs felt as if they were made of rubber.
The lounge was full of Solarian men, members all of Earth’s vast drug-addicted underclass. The sole representative of the Solarian overclass, Citizen Nax, laughed wickedly at Alex’s plight. His evil tones were echoed by the gaudy crew.
“Baroness Alexandra zee Panara,” Nax said leisurely, no doubt for his audience’s benefit, “so we meet again.” He pointed the control wand in his hand at Alex. Suddenly she had enough strength to speak.
“Nax! You overstuffed pig!” she screamed. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done!”
“Sadly, baroness, I agree with you,” the Citizen said, nodding and surprising Alex. As was the custom among elite Solarians, he wore rouge on his lips and jowls. His hair, too, laden with oil, stuck to his vaguely egg-shaped head like a brown mold. “Your forces have taken the day. My fleet is destroyed or in disarray, and when my superiors on Earth receive word of my epic failure, I will be a doubly sought man, as much by them as by your misbegotten prince.”
He directed his eyes upward and encompassed the room with a gesture. “All I have left is this ship and this crew.” He paused, as if in thought. “I’m strongly considering becoming a pirate.”
“Freak! Monster! You’ve been preying on the free Centauri worlds for decades!”
Alex pulled herself upright, though she still could not find the strength to stand. The device’s constant buzzing was in her ears.
“Worlds created by Earth,” Nax said. “Populated by Earth . . .”
“By free people fleeing Earth’s tyranny!” Alex interrupted.
Nax waved the issue aside, apparently unwilling to rise to the bait. “Politics, lady, and an unsuitable topic for a pretty creature such as yourself.” He leaned to his side in the chair, propping himself up casually on one elbow. “As equally unsuited as the role you’ve taken as revolutionary.”
Alexandra was conscious of the drooling Solarians surrounding her. She was fully aware of the danger she was in, of death and worse at their hands. She felt the threat in her deepest womanhood. But she had never backed down from overwhelming odds before, and she wouldn’t start now.
“Where is this ship headed?” she asked defiantly. “Where are you taking me? And where’s my team?”
“Your team,” Nax sneered. He snorted. “You have no team, baroness. Not anymore. As for your first question, we are at this moment en route to your homeworld.”
Beta Prime? Alex thought. She quickly made the calculations in her head. At this time of year, Centauri B was over 13,000 astronomical units from Proxima. Traveling at the speed of light within the tranship’s null-zone, that was still a nearly three month trip. Three months on board the same ship with Nax and a crew of Solarians! Small compared to a voyage to Earth, but still a nightmarish prospect!
“If you’re thinking of ransoming me, forget it. I’m not worth enough to my government, and they don’t deal with terrorists.”
Nax’s painted lips parted in an obscene grin. “My dear baroness, I think you underestimate your worth. Be that as it may, I have no intention whatsoever of ransoming you.” He straightened back in the chair and made a motion to the crew. They parted as one of them came forth carrying a loose and translucent item in his hands. Alexandra’s eyes widened as it was presented.
“I have quite another fate in mind for you,” Nax explained.
It was a slavesuit the Solarian carried. Lasciviously fondling it, the man presented the thin, pinkish material to Alex, and she gasped, overwhelmed by the shock and horror.
A skinsuit?! A slave film?!
They meant to turn her into a pleasure drone!
“NO!! You can’t!! You mustn’t!!” Alex struggled, but the restraint device kept her from getting up.
“But I can and I will, my royalist scum.” At Nax’s order, as the entire deck rang out in sadistic applause, the crewman brought the life-size skinsuit over, the diaphanous material resembling for all the worlds like the discard of some strange species of humanoid snake. “You’ve cost me a great deal. Now, like your colleagues Miriam Fletcher and Joyce Chan . . .” and he indicated the two pleasure drones standing beside Alex, “. . you will finally learn a woman’s place . . . at the feet of men!”
The lounge once again erupted in applause.
Miriam and Joyce!? These poor creatures were Miriam and Joyce?
Oh, my friends, my friends! Alex thought, staring at the two identical pleasure drones and trying to find something, anything! in their tall anonymous beauty to remind her of the women who had accompanied her on this ill-fated mission. Miriam had been a big redhead with fiery green eyes and a temper to match. I’m Irish, she used to say in a fake brogue, referencing an almost mythical place in time on a planet she would never visit. Rebellion’s in our blood! She was a crack shot and a fast runner. Joyce, on the other hand, had been a Proxima girl through and through. Pale from her planet’s dim sun, she had joined the Resistance after her family had been among those killed when the Solarian authorities shut down Proxima Five’s flare protection system. Many had blamed the Resistance for provoking the “act of retribution” in the first place, but Joyce had known better and lent her code-cracking skills to the Free Centauri Army. They were both good and loyal friends. Of them now, there was nothing left to see. Their denuded, pink plastic skin gleamed beneath the lounge’s overheads. Their full, plump lips were expressionless. Their eyes, golden orbs matching the color of their finger and toenails, were equally unreadable. All that they had been had been erased. They were pleasure drones, nothing more.
Their enormous breasts blatantly proclaimed their sole purpose in life now.
And she was about to join them!
“No! You can’t!!” Alex summoned every ounce of willpower she had and, somehow ignoring that immobilizing buzzing, pulled herself to her feet. She staggered, yet managed to fall toward Citizen Nax.
She reached for the control wand.
Nax, a startled look on his face, drew back. Alexandra landed before him, and he briskly planted a foot in her stomach and kicked her back. In her artificially exhausted state, she could not avoid the blow. She fell to her backside on the floor. In moments, the pleasure drones had her on her feet again, though this time firmly held within their smooth fingers, devoid of prints or other human attributes.
“That was most impressive, baroness,” Nax said, a little shaken. “Most impressive indeed. That energy will soon go to serve much more suitable endeavors, though.” He directed the drones. “Strip her.”
“No. Stop,” Alex muttered, futilely pulling from side to side. The drones ignored her. They slipped their glossy hands into her black uniform top and pulled it from her shoulders. “Don’t . . Nax . . . please, my people . . Peter. Peter will pay . . . a ransom.” Her clothes dropped to the floor. She stood there a moment swaying in her trousers and a black bra. A second later that undergarment joined her top. The Solarians hooted at the sight of the Baroness of Panara’s naked breasts, and she blushed.
Nax’s reaction was more restrained. “I am impressed again, lady. A most delicious rack.”
While one drone held her, the other dragged Alexandra’s pants down to her ankles and lifted them off one foot at a time. Alex had never felt more helpless and ashamed. She stood before her worst enemy clad solely in dark, formfitting panties. Yet not even that was enough. A moment later even that last bastion of her privacy joined the pile at her feet. Nax ordered the drones to display her, and they did, spreading Alex’s legs and holding her arms upward even as her head continued to slump tiredly.
The lounge was filled with the sound of rowdy good humor.
“I win, Iutak,” Alex heard one crewman say to another. “You see, she is shaved.”
His comrade grudgingly handed over a half-filled drug vial.
“Nax,” Alex said, “please. I . . I’ll do anything . . .” The dread of becoming a pleasure drone, a mindless plaything, horrified Alexandra more than any other terror in her life. Her courage wilted beneath the threat. Nax came to stand before her. Someone handed him the slaveskin.
“While the thought of raping you as you are for two months does appeal to me,” Nax said, “alas, I am too set in my ways and lack the energy necessary. As for my crew, they are used to a more refined pussy, and I would hate to disappoint them.” The crowd laughed at the crude joke.
No, this can’t be happening, Alex thought. It’s not fair. We won, damn it. We won the war.
“Peter . . Peter will destroy you,” she said. “Leave me . . don’t do this. We’ll pay . . . I’ll pay . . . anything.”
“Yes, you will,” the corrupt Citizen of Earth said. He bunched a fragment of the diaphanous slave film in hand and salaciously rubbed it against Alex’s cheek. It was cool, and it tingled at the brief contact.
Alex whimpered helplessly.
“Like your two friends here, you will make a lovely toy, baroness . . . and yet, that’s not enough of a revenge, I think. Don’t you agree?” The Solarian tilted his head questioningly in Alex’s direction.
“Yes,” Alex said at once, misreading the evil expression in Nax’s face. Desperate, she jumped at any hint of salvation. “Yes . . it’s too little a punishment. You want . . you’ll want to make me really suffer.”
“Yes,” Nax said. “Yes. You must be made to suffer. And hence the dilemma. Being droned, your mind would be immediately eclipsed by the slavesuit’s programming, as it was for these sluts.” The pleasure drones reacted not at all. “That would be entirely too quick for my entertainment.”
He held his left hand out expectantly. A crewman dropped a chemical injector into his palm.
Nax brought the injector to Alex’s neck and, before she could say a word, inoculated her with its contents. Hisss! Her eyes opened wide at the sensation. An inexplicable rush filled her head.
“Which is why we must slow the process down, mentally anyway.” Nax grinned in Alex’s face. “While it will have no effect on your outward behavior, which will always be determined by your programming, this cocktail will delay the eradication of your core personality more than long enough for you to fully appreciate your new existence.” He reached behind Alex’s head and did something to the device there.
Pop! It detached painlessly. What felt like a huge weight was lifted from Alexandra’s shoulders.
She tried to put up a fight with her suddenly restored strength, but along with that renewed vitality came dizziness, and once again she slumped helplessly between the two pretty fuckdolls who had once been her best friends. Nax handed the slaveskin to the drone on the right. “Prepare her,” he ordered.
“Noooo!” Alex yelped feebly. The drones lowered her to the cold, cold floor. “No, God, noooo!!”
The slavesuit was two or three times larger than it needed to be. The transparent film was also fairly amorphous. Although humanoid in shape—one head, two arms, two legs—it was lacking in details like fingers, toes, breasts, and so on, making it, in other words, only a rough approximation of the human form, such as, say, a one-piece, oversized set of pajamas might be. As such, it was easy to put on Alexandra. If the material had had to go on skintight, if the pleasure drones had had to squeeze Alex into an already form-fitting shape, especially as she was reluctant, to say the least, in cooperating, then the task would have been impossible. As it was, the drones quickly had her manhandled into the soft, pinkish material. One of them sat on Alex’s legs while the other slipped the top half over her head, drawing her arms in afterwards. The two of them then lifted Alex up and—the slaveskin had an opening in the middle—slipped her legs in. By holding the sides of the gap together, the material fused together, sealing shut. Within minutes Alexandra was completely enclosed within the accursed genetic device.
She wore the slaveskin that would soon turn her into a rightless, anonymous pleasure drone.
It was cold against her skin, ice cold, as if it had come directly from a refrigeration unit, and it tingled. It tingled madly, electrifying Alex’s skin and overwhelming her in prickly sensations, everywhere. She screamed. She tried to escape. She tried to rip the thin pink substance, to tear it between her fingers, but despite its looseness the skin was slick and hard to grab hold of from inside, and it absolutely would not tear. She tried to bite it, but her mouth opened and closed vainly behind the translucent film. All she did was stretch it further, fogging it with her breath. She screamed again, but the desperate sounds were stifled by the all-encompassing enclosure. The Solarians, Nax included, gathered round Alex to enjoy the spectacle. She heard them laugh at her, heard mutters of “Soon” and “I want to use her first.”
The two pleasure drones, forgotten in the midst of the show, stood silently off to one side, expressionless.
Alex’s body heat slowly warmed the slaveskin. As it warmed, it shrank and constricted. It drew close unto her skin, as if vacuum-sealing. In minutes the oversized pajamas became very, very close-fitting, and soon in quite another way seizure from within was rendered impossible. Where minutes earlier the suit had been too loose to grasp, Alex’s hands now became trapped inside the mitten-like ends of each sleeve. Her fingers flexed uselessly. Her mouth continued to stretch the soft pink material about her jaws, which became over her lips a thin membrane like the skin of a drum every time she cried out.
The suit grew tighter, tighter. Alex tried to sit up and was conscious of how the slick material grew taut over her naked skin. It squeezed her breasts. It pressed snugly against her abdomen.
The Solarians would not let Alex get up. They kicked at her gently yet firmly, keeping her on the floor.
After a time, they no longer needed to do so as much. As the tension of the slavesuit increased on her skin, it became harder to move. Alex could breathe. She could see through the film—it tinted everything a rich cherry color—and blink. But as the covering grew increasingly constricted, the flexing of her joints became difficult, and she was gradually forced into the basic contour of the drastically shrunken suit, flat on her back, her arms outstretched, her legs wide open. It was an obscene position.
Alex’s breasts were lifted and squeezed. Her thighs were clutched viciously. Her shoulders flattened.
She saw Nax hover over her and point. She turned her eyes—at this juncture it was all she could do—and saw a small, metallic orb barely a centimeter or two in diameter floating above her.
“See that spyeye? I’m recording your droning. I’m going to send a copy to Prince Peter on his coronation day with my best wishes.” Nax leaned down. “Make you sure you give him a big smile!”
Bastard! Alex screamed, or tried to scream at any rate. The slaveskin cruelly stifled her voice.
There had to be a way out. There had to be. Beneath Ulysses City, in the polished catacombs of the old Expansionist terraforming complex, she and Peter had once been pursued for hours by hunter amoebas linked to their bodies’ unique chemistries. No one had ever escaped the little flying poison blobs before, but using old laser gear and the contents of their nourishment packs, the two of them had managed to change the target frequency of the amoebas and direct them back to their handlers. On Beta III, against the Green Androids and their flesh-softening emanations, they had used sonic accumulators to polarize the air and create a shield for their troops. Alex had never faced a threat that she or Peter could not overcome with courage, ingenuity, and skill. This could not happen to her!
The suit compressed her rump, molding it, molding her. The suit pinched her sides painfully, as if Alex was wearing the universe’s tightest corset. It steadily grew hard to breathe.
Eventually, she couldn’t even blink. The skin was now very firmly taut against her face.
Alex could imagine what she looked like. She could imagine the picture Peter would see in Nax’s “gift.”
The slaveskin, so loose before, pressed compactly against every square centimeter of her skin, its very pressure keeping her down, preventing her from moving. It delineated every muscle of her body in soft pink. It squeezed her female curves into an obscenely provocative, insulting shape.
And her face. Peter would have no difficulty recognizing her face, however distorted by the pressure. They would clearly still be the features of his intended. Alex’s dismay was compounded, the pain and terror of her own plight made worse by how she knew her beloved Peter would react to the news.
Peter, I’m so sorry, she thought. I’m so very sorry.
The material gradually grew hot, and the hotter it became, even more closely did it hug Alex’s body. Its texture changed, too, slowly. It gradually grew tacky, melting into a liquid state.
Bit by bit, the tremendous pressure let up.
Oh, thank God, Alex thought. She had felt as if she were going to be crushed. But even as she relished the relaxed tension, she realized sickly that this change was not a good thing. If the slaveskin’s pressure was letting up, it was only because the . . . the (gulp!) merging process had begun.
No! No! Alex tried to move and found that she could again, albeit slowly. It was as though she was covered head-to-toe in tar. She lifted an arm from where it had brushed against her, and she felt the heavily coated limb stick for a long wet moment. A gluey strand dripped down as she pulled away.
Droplets of the liquid slaveskin hit the floor and then flowed back onto—into—Alex’s body, as if drawn by a weird magnetism. Not a smidgen would be wasted. Completely molten now, the film oozed, wrapping about Alex’s fingers and toes, around her breasts and nipples, becoming more and more form-fitting by the moment. It hung upon her, making her feel slick and slippery and disgusting.
At the same time, the tingling did not go away with the pressure. If anything, the sensation got worse, even more intense, the closer and gooier the slavesuit became. A sudden sharp pain blazed across Alex’s scalp. My hair! she yelled inside. The slavesuit was pulling on her long brown hair, yanking at it as if to pull it out by the roots. Similar, though less intense pains were felt along her entire body.
The film settled across her skin like an oil.
It poured into her rectum and the cleft of her sex.
Wherever it touched, the liquefying suit first stung, then burned.
Alex opened her mouth to scream, and the suit flowed down the open cavity into her throat, choking her. It pressed against her eyelids and caused them to blaze. It entered her ears and deafened her.
Alex’s world became a flowing, searing press of pink and red. It was agony. She was cocooned in a fiery sheath of hell. The pain mounted—her back arched, bending at an unendurable angle—and she screamed soundlessly, forever it seemed. She had been dropped into a vat of acid. It ate at her.
Everything turned red and black.
In spite of the pain, Alex did not lose consciousness. She could not lose consciousness, it seemed, and in time, because it could not grow any worse, the agony dissipated. Whether this was due to her becoming accustomed to the pain or simply that the nerves in her skin had finally dissolved, she could not tell. She had heard once that the worst burn patients felt no pain. They no longer had the capacity.
Alex prayed silently in her isolation, for with the pain had faded all other sensation, save for a low and disconcerting crunching noise she heard in her inner ears. She could not see. Her eyes felt like they were closed. Alex hung suspended, feeling nothing, not even the pressure of the metal deck beneath her. She might as well have been submerged in black tar, neutrally warm, only still able to breathe.
Alex did not lose consciousness, or at least she thought she did not, yet she was unable to keep track of the passage of time. Minutes? Hours? They were all the same to her in her sensory-deprived state.
Her thoughts felt cottony.
Poor Edgar. Poor clumsy Edgar.
There had been six of them on Alex’s team, including Alex herself. Edgar had chirped like a little bird when the Xenonic bullet struck him. He had been in front of Alex, between her and Miriam and Ky, in the middle so he would have the best protection. He had been such an inoffensive little man, completely unsuited for being included in a covert action team. But only he had possessed the requisite skills to access the station’s data retrieval systems, and so he had to go. He was a klutz, but a nice klutz, and when he stopped and chirped like a little bird, that little spot of blood appearing on his uniform top, Alex had been stricken. Edgar! Joyce had yelled behind her. Keep moving! Alex had yelled back, to all of them. She had been stricken, but there was no time for grief. She had to get her team out of there.
Edgar. Miriam. Joyce. The remaining two team members had been Khien Ky, small, smaller than Edgar, deadly with a knife, a scarred commando with years of experience in fighting the Solarians and their agents, who nonetheless had deferred to Alex in leadership because he trusted her; and Paul, a former thief and confidence artist, an expert in “acquiring” whatever was needed for the F.C.A., the self-styled best scrounger in the whole of Outer Alpha Centauri, and, in Alex’s opinion, deserving of the title. They left Edgar’s body in the support shaft and ran, Miriam, Ky, and Alex providing cover fire for Paul and Joyce, Xenonic mercenaries to every side. It had been a nightmare. Ky, in the lead, received two bullet wounds in getting them out, and neither slowed him in the least. With his thin, bony limbs, all gnarled and brown, he looked like he had been made of solid wood. He hadn’t even grunted with pain.
Such a strong man. Alex wondered what Nax had had done with him and Paul. What the Solarians did to women was bad enough, but the stories about what horrors they inflicted on men were truly the stuff of nausea. It’s my fault, Alex thought. Whatever happens, it’s my fault. I was the one in charge.
Poor Edgar. Poor clumsy Edgar. At least he had the good fortune to die quickly.
Blackness surrounded Alex, deeper even than the darkness of a null-zone.
Her return to awareness was so incremental she was not at first cognizant of it. Gradually, though, Alex became aware that she was once again—Had she ever left it?—on her back. She felt the weight of her limbs, the pull of the ship’s artificial gravity, and it comforted her. Not until she had lost the sensation had she been so mindful of the feel of gravity on her body, of the reality of actually having a body. In her total isolation, she had felt like a disembodied soul, a being of pure hypothetical mind. As she dragged herself back to reality, Alex couldn’t tell if she was naked or still encased by the suit.
That disturbed her. She could breathe again. When her mouth opened, nothing pressed against it, as before. Her lips were swollen, though, and she felt an unfamiliar weight settled against her chest.
She relished the return of her body, though try as she might she could not make it move.
She was paralyzed. Her eyes were closed. She could feel them to be closed, but despite her will she could not manage even the small act of opening them, as her mouth had done so mechanically.
Deprived of sight, her other senses grew increasingly sharp.
The crunching noise—What was that? Bones?—grew still, and Alex could once again hear the shuffling and conversation of the Solarian crew. She heard soft, moist sounds and a masculine gasping and grunting that she had only previously associated with Peter. Somebody, lots of somebodies, were making love. No, not love, Alex thought. Solarians don’t make love. They only fuck. Deep within the hidden recesses of her heart, the Baroness of Panara began to whimper in fright.
She whimpered because along with the return of her senses—she could hear the men in the room, she could now even smell them, a rich, earthy smell of sweat, cologne, and masculinity—came another feeling, a deep feeling, a feeling that now that she had become aware of it seemed to radiate from between her legs, wave after wave, growing stronger, warming her stomach and causing her nipples, which had never before felt so big or tender or responsive, to grow hard and achy, yearnful for something, to be touched, of course, to be pinched and fondled, her entire body needing to be stroked and petted, to be filled and used, to be made violently loved to, ah, but who was she kidding? to be fucked, to be fucked, to have her pussy, her cunt! plundered and explored, her tits manhandled, ah, men! men, oh she could smell them, hear them, and her body grew hot and wet for their exploitation.
This was what she felt.
No, no, please God, no, Alex thought and struggled to curb the overwhelming desire burning through her. Never before had she felt so hot and needy, so blastedly, monstrously aroused. She tried to push this new hunger, this new passion, away, but she could not. Her flesh tingled, not as before, not painfully, but in a way as worse, perhaps even worse, for it was as if a void had been opened within her, and she had to have it filled, she needed to be filled, she would forever feel incomplete if not filled.
Not even her beloved Peter had ever managed to make her feel this way.
Sensitivity. It was the returned sensitivity that was the problem. Her flesh felt incredibly alive, incredibly responsive. She decided the slave film was no longer coating her skin. She was naked, but so sensitively naked the baroness felt as though she were going to go mad! Her breasts, her pussy, her lips: never had Alex been so aware of them, and never had they felt so big, so inflated, so vulnerable!
Alex yearned. Her body screamed for a hard, hot use. And inside she wept, for she knew this was only the beginning. She prayed for death, and as she prayed, her pussy salivated, quivering for a man.
A shudder ran through her, and this motion was noticed.
“She’s almost ready, my children,” she heard Nax say. He was near her, standing above her, it sounded, and her sudden desire for him, for him specifically, was so shocking Alex shuddered again.
No! NO!! But it was true. She wanted Nax, her enemy, her hated enemy, to fuck her.
She needed him to fuck her.
No, Alex thought. No, that’s not true. That’s . . that’s my body. That’s only my body wanting him. Not me. Not me.
Regardless, she hungered for Nax’s thick cock—she dreamt, hoped, that he had a thick, scrumptious, magnificent cock—to poke and stoke that blazing furnace between her legs.
Alex shuddered, turned on so much it was all-consuming, eclipsing every other emotion.
Suddenly, uncontrollably, her eyes popped open.
She didn’t blink. Her eyelids didn’t flutter. Their motion was so swift and mechanical, in her mind Alex swore she could hear a click.
She saw the lounge ceiling above her, and on the periphery of her vision the Solarians encircling her.
If hearing and smelling the men had been arousing, seeing them was stimulating beyond measure. A sun went nova inside Alex’s womb. A black hole formed. It was a burning, longing force, a gravity, a magnetism, an energy that she could sense radiating from them that she desperately, hopelessly wanted.
Her pussy was wet, had been wet for some time now. Her vision—crystal clear in a way that made her previous eyesight seem lacking, though it had been perfect—emblazoned every masculine face, every bulging muscle, every centimeter of manly skin with absolute precision and committed them to memory.
The heat in her pussy increased exponentially.
“At last,” she heard Nax say. God, the timbre of his voice! So magnificent! So powerfully male!
All their voices as they laughed and kidded one another. Alex now heard an entirely new dimension of masculine power in their speech, and again the yearning heat in her veins reached out to them.
She felt an unbearable need to get to her knees and kiss them, to suck them, to be fucked by them . . . and yet save for her eyes—she still did not blink—and the occasional shudder, Alex remained motionless. She could not move. She had not been given orders to move.
“Back off,” Nax said—Shudder!—and the crew did so. The Solarian Governor circled her.
“Stand, baroness,” he said, standing near her feet. Smoothly, muscles flexing easily, slickly, Alex did so.
She stood before Citizen Nax, Regional Governor of the Empire.
A momentary dizziness came and went, though it did not show on her face. It was caused by the change in height Alex noticed for the first time. She was taller, whole centimeters taller. Where before she had met Nax’s eyes at more or less the same level, she now stood measurably above him. Then, too, there was a change in proportions. My breasts! Alex thought behind the passive mask of her face. They’re enormous! Their altered weight pulled on her chest. Her new tits were huge but firm and upright, unnaturally so. The nipples were perky and hard and waiting—craving—to be handled.
Everything was different. Alex’s ass felt weightier too, and her arms smoother, more willowy. Her legs were more svelte, graceful. The recycled lounge air felt cool against her bare skin. My hair! Alex wept inside. She felt the lack of hair on her head and desperately wanted to run her hands over her bald scalp. She wanted to run her hands all over her distorted body. But she remained still, like a statue.
She hadn’t been given permission to move yet.
A depraved smile filled Nax’s painted lips. Alex felt an irresistible need to have those lips on her body.
“The Baroness Panara,” he said slowly, lingeringly, obviously enjoying the taste of the words in his mouth. “The Baroness Alexandra zee Panara.” He snapped his fingers. Immediately the Solarian crew parted. “Go to yonder window, baroness, and appreciate the sight before you.”
Silkily, with a feline stride that felt paradoxically natural and artificial, Alex padded over to the nearest window. There was a slight ping! as someone behind her adjusted a control wand. The window’s refractive properties changed. The null-zone blackness of the port was replaced by a mirrored surface.
No, Alex thought, struggling. Her body was moving of its own accord. She stood, she walked, she looked into the mirror, yet none of it was her decision. She tried to lift her arms. She tried to blink her eyes. She tried to say something, anything! but it was as if she were a passenger in her own body.
She could think. She could feel. But she had no control. None. She was a puppet on a man’s string.
She looked into the mirror.
No! Oh God, no, noooo! Alex had known what sight would meet her gaze, and yet there was no way she could have prepared herself for it, no way to make that first vision of herself as Nax’s newest plaything any less devastating. Gone was the brown hair and familiar green eyes. Gone was the Panara family nose. Gone her lips, her cheeks, her face. Nooo! This can’t be happening! This can’t!!
Alexandra Panara stared helplessly into the blank and anonymous face of a common pleasure drone, her own face.
The pink skin, so much like living rubber, gleaming. The thick lips and soft teeth, ideal for cradling a man’s organ. The golden orbs in place of eyes, the nails the same shining color. The bald head and perfectly formed cheekbones. I’m a pleasure drone, Alex screamed inside. I’m a pleasure drone!
The enormous breasts. The hourglass figure. The legs that seemed to stretch forever, beautifully.
And all of it so pink, so brightly, artificially pink . . . a neon pink . . plastic pink.
Oh God. I’m a pleasure drone. He turned me into a pleasure drone!
As she had been instructed, Alex carefully “appreciated” the sight before her.
“Turn around,” she heard, and, as bidden, Alex did so, gracefully, elegantly, like the living doll she had become. Nax reached up and wrapped a black lacy collar around her throat. The merest touch of his man’s hands against her artificial, so sensitively feminine skin brought once more the fire to Alex’s veins and stoked her appetitious heat even more so. She felt like she was going to go up in flames.
She needed to be fucked. Oh God, she needed to be fucked!
No! No!
“There,” Nax said. “Just so I don’t lose track of you so soon.” Chuckling, the governor put his hands on Alex’s enlarged bosom. She gasped silently. “Don’t move,” he said. At his touch, some automatic routine had almost gone into effect. She had almost moved closer to him and put her arms around his neck. Instead, at his direction, Alex remained stock still, and as she continued to stand there, Citizen Nax began to touch her intimately. Inside, she quailed, mind melting beneath the exquisite pleasure. On the outside, she remained perfectly still, emotionless. Nax lasciviously explored Alex’s new body.
The crew cheered when he put his mouth atop her right nipple and began to tongue her.
Ohh, ohhhh! Alex’s mind exploded with the sensation. Oh, oh my God, my God . ohhhhhhhh!
He lifted his lips from her. His mouth and her tit were wet with moisture. He reached around and cupped Alex’s ass with his hand, letting his fingers brush against her cheeks. The caress felt so good it was a torture. Her body blazed. And when Nax slapped her ass, the sound and the sudden sharp pain brought the baroness to the brink of a cataclysmic climax, to a plateau of agony-ecstasy she had never before realized could exist. Nax gripped her arm and savagely pushed Alex down. Her body obeying directives she herself could only barely perceive, Alex fell to her hands and knees like a canine-animal.
She felt a hand wrap tightly about her throat from behind, and she was pulled forward to Nax’s throne, crawling like a common beast, wriggling her rump enticingly. Alex tried to stop and couldn’t. She had no control over anything. The Solarian’s hands crept between her legs, and the heat and wetness were more than she could stand. Her body was on fire! Nax disrobed beside her, and the heat she felt only increased further at the sight of his naked body. He was so incredibly masculine! So incredibly potent!
He was godlike in Alex’s droned perception.
Please, Alex prayed. Please!
“Your captain’s privilege,” Nax said loudly to the crowd around him, and they cheered. From the corner of Alex’s vision, she saw her droned comrades Miriam and Joyce already being put to use.
Their utter humiliation only enflamed her own more so.
Alex’s nipples were rock hard. She trembled, and she knew not whether this was a programmed drone behavior or her own emotions leaking through. Nax sat down and pulled her into his lap. Savagely, he bit her lips and raked his hands over her gigantic breasts. Her legs split mechanically. She felt his hardness rubbing against her. It felt so good! It shouldn’t have, but it did, and Alex kissed him back fervently, hands clutching Nax’s face, then sliding down his back, all pleasure drone eagerness and heat.
The governor began to slip inside her.
Alex opened herself for him. She pressed her enormous bosom into his chest, nipples rubbing against his body. The Solarians watched and applauded. Nax’s hands explored Alex’s transformed body, and she squirmed beneath his ministrations like a wet eel, gasping silently. She wanted his cock inside her.
She needed his cock inside her!
Deeper, he penetrated, pumping his shaft inside her pussy. God! God! Alex thought, unbelieving.
It was impossible to resist. She couldn’t resist. Even had she control over her own body, her droned body, she couldn’t have resisted him. Nax used her. He didn’t kiss; he bit and licked. He didn’t caress; he slapped and he stroked. Alex felt her orgasm coming, rising higher and higher, and she was afraid of it, afraid of how powerful it felt coming, how her body seemed ready to detonate like a bomb.
It would be a bomb. A sex bomb, an explosion of pleasure and submission Alex dreaded and longed for simultaneously. Nax pushed deeper and deeper. His hands pulled and pinched everywhere at once.
Now! Alex thought. Now! Please, now!!
He stopped. He pulled back slowly, lingeringly, the strain visible on his face.
“No yet, my pretty,” he gasped. “Not . . quite . . yet.”
He left Alex’s sopping pussy. Inside, she moaned.
Her body was throbbing all over. Her artificial skin was filled with electricity. Nax’s hand rubbed across Alex’s clit. He toyed with her, slowly. He was sweating all over. He laughed softly, enjoying his power over her. He let his fingers swirl over her pussy, then slide between her legs to her ass.
“The Baroness Alexandra zee Panara,” he whispered in her ear.
Nax then pushed the living doll to her back and again squeezed his thick cock into her tight pussy. The pleasure drone’s legs automatically wrapped about her user’s back and clutched at him so as to draw even more of his cock inside her. Nax’s hands found her face and held it steady beneath his fingers.
“Enjoying yourself, my new slut?” he asked. The programming made Alex nod her head wildly.
The Solarian Citizen looked down into his old enemy’s contorted, desire-filled face. Alex’s mouth opened in silent gasp after silent gasp, there being no voice left to her to express her conflicted spirit.
“Know this, baroness. I have longed dreamt of having the great Baroness Alexandra zee Panara writhing helplessly impaled on my shaft. No doubt you too greatly desired this moment, eh?”
Again, Alex was forced to nod vigorously. It felt so good, yet so wrong!
Nax chuckled evilly, his thickness stretching her pussy, bringing forth as much pain as pleasure. He pressed into her even harder, and the pleasure drone Alex had become arched her back. Her hands pulled at Nax’s head and shoulders, and the need to kiss him, to lavish his face with her lowly, slave tongue, consumed her. Her pussy clasped around the Citizen’s member with frightening intensity.
To her relief and annoyance, he stopped his savage thrusting, again. She tried to whimper and failed.
“I shall remember this always, as you will as well, I’m sure. In one sense, I am fucking the Baroness Alexandra Panara, betrothed to the heir of the Sovereignty of Outer Alpha Centauri.” He slowly began to withdraw, then, abruptly, thrust even deeper inward. The pain and pleasure were overwhelming, the one feeding off of the other. “And at the same time,” Nax added, sweating, his control magnificent, “I am but using a common pleasure drone, interchangeable with a million others just like her.”
His thrusts came harder and harder, with increasing alacrity.
“That is what you are now, baroness. A common pleasure drone, and that is what you’ll be for the rest of your life.” Thrust. “Your very long (Thrust) . . long (Thrust!) . . long (Thrust!!) . . life!”
He climaxed, and as she felt his seed fill her feminine depths, such a magnificent rush filled Alex that her body seemed to burst open. Her golden, featureless eyes rolled back in her head. Her blank, lineless hands clutched at Nax’s body, drawing his pulsing organ even deeper inside. She grasped at him hungrily. Her nipples raked across his hairless chest. Her mouth opened soundlessly, releasing a silent cry that reverberated within the confines of her soul, echoing in the reshaped chambers of her droned heart. The climax ripped through her. Her pussy muscles clenched about Nax’s member, vibrating in a progressive rhythm that mounted up, Up! Up!! UP!! and finally smashed into her with the force of a tranship’s engines igniting. Hydrogen fuel fused, converted into raw energy, and exploded into space!
The intense pleasure of her first drone climax set Alex’s nerves on fire and melted her insides.
Oh . . my . . God!! she exclaimed inside, unbelieving, uncomprehending, unwilling to face the awful truth, that she could receive such awesome, such incredibly deep satisfaction from her own rape. It was criminal—it was unjust—that something so bad, so mindlessly degrading should feel so good.
Nothing should feel so good! Nothing should be able to create such feelings inside a person, such powerful feelings that they could shake every moral foundation in a human being. Who could resist such incredible ecstasy?
Who could endure such a mind-blowing orgasm and still call herself an upright, decent individual?
The answer, of course, was that no one could. She wasn’t a person anymore.
She was a pleasure drone.
She had fulfilled her purpose. She had brought a man pleasure.
Alex’s soul cried out in terror and an absolute, unearthly joy.
Breathing heavily himself, Nax pulled away and resumed his seat in the throne. He leaned his head back and thrust his hips forward crudely, and the lounge was filled with Solarian cheering. The Solarian planted a single foot on top of Alex’s bald head and pushed her face to the floor.
Her body was throbbing. The heat was still there in her womb. It hadn’t diminished in the slightest.
Thoroughly raped, Alex found herself still burning mightily with a drone’s helpless need for cock.
The cheering and catcalls went on for a while. Nax lifted his foot away, and the new pleasure drone kept her face down. She felt herself adjust her position, head down, ass high, limbs curled beneath her.
It was a programmed response. Alex could sense/feel/remember hundreds of them in the back of her mind. Hundreds of positions. Thousands of sexual techniques. Postures. Movements. A catalog of depravity, and all of it immediately accessible through her newly chemiprocessed nervous system.
“Stand,” Nax ordered eventually, and she did, automatically adjusting herself for maximum desirability.
The Solarian Governor spent a long moment staring at Alex. His spent and flaccid organ twitched.
Alex felt herself desiring it, desiring him. Nax ordered her to come forward and kneel, and she did so at once, eagerly, her heat and appetite increasing with the greater proximity. He touched her head, and inside she screamed with denied pleasure.
“One recording to Prince Peter,” he said softly to her. “Then another to the Beta Assembly, I think. And the news services, of course.” He gestured, and Alex once again spotted the floating spyeye.
It closed in to watch as Nax carefully, deliberately, took himself in hand and gently rubbed his dick across Alex’s face. It watched as Alex’s mouth opened and closed feverishly, so eager for more.
Nax’s fingers traced Alex’s lips, which parted for him involuntarily. His thumb slipped into her mouth, and she sucked at it, gently yet wantonly. The spyeye took up a more advantageous position. A dark dread filled Alex’s programmed mind, and a moment later the Solarian confirmed it.
“Silence, ahh,” the Citizen muttered. “Such a lovely set of lips you now have, baroness. And so functional. Pleasure drones do not speak, you see, as you’ve already discovered for yourself. As for food, all your body’s needs will be provided for through direct energy transfer. So, you see, there is only one function for which these lips must now forever serve.” He pulled his hand away from Alex’s mouth and pressed down on the top of her bald head. “Get to your knees and service me, baroness.”
No, please, she begged inside. That’s disgusting. But the pleasure drone of her knew neither shame nor even a hint of resistance. Like a smoothly robotic thing, Alex went to her knees, lowered her head, and took Nax’s penis within her mouth. The way his cock so perfectly fit her lips was alarming.
“Ahhh . . . you’ve surely had practice, Alexandra. With that handsome prince of yours, indubitably.”
Peter, Alex thought despairingly. Opening wider, she slowly began taking Nax deeper inside her. Her beautiful lips—their only function was to suck cock—stretched to accommodate his stiffening member.
Nax’s comments notwithstanding, Alex had no experience in fellatio. She and Peter’s sex life—prior to her time here, he had been her only partner—had been regular and mundane. Now, she couldn’t believe how instinctive sucking Nax’s penis felt or how deeply aroused the activity was making her.
Her mouth provided all the necessary suction, her tongue and teeth all the necessary pressure. Alex tried to blank her mind, to let the slavesuit perform the task before her on its own, but it would not permit that luxury. Every motion of her tongue, every taste, every suck, was etched into her mind, accentuated. The suit’s programming was molding her thoughts to utter devotion and wantonness.
A pleasure drone’s commitment to providing service never wavers. After a moment, Alex drew back and released her user, swallowing what was in her mouth. Then she once more began licking and kissing Nax’s body. She used her drone teeth and nibbled at the skin of his hairless stomach and groin.
Alex looked up. Acknowledging Nax’s silent instruction with her pupil-less eyes, she once more wrapped her lips about his cock and swallowed him, her humiliation total. A rush of desire pulsed from within her slavesuited sex, inspired by the degradation. She was desperately wet with desire, with her fuckdoll body’s hardwired need to submit and be dominated by a man, to be used like the toy she was.
Relaxing her throat muscles, Alex slid further down her master’s engorged member, impaling her mouth on his masculinity. Her head pumped. She pushed harder. She had no need to hold her breath. Drones did not breathe. Cock filled her mouth. The tip of Nax’s penis tickled the back of her throat.
The Citizen grunted. Alex felt the growing spasm building inside her mouth. Without knowing how, she recognized the telltale signs of a man’s climax. She tightened her lips and cheeks. Her tongue moved in swaying patterns, luxuriously stroking the marbled surface of the man’s magnificent staff. Her hands gently gripped Nax’s balls and stroked them. Her head bobbed up and down, up and down, rhythmically. She felt him coming. Nax’s hands reached down to grasp Alex’s bald head.
She felt the huge member in her mouth swell. Alex squeezed and sucked, and a moment later a thick stream of semen filled her mouth and throat. The pleasure drone swallowed, accepting the pulpy liquid in great, steady gulps. Her lips pressed tightly against Nax’s body, her mouth and cheeks forming an airtight seal. Blazing heat rose from her aching breasts and sex. She climaxed, the taste of Nax’s sperm delighting her with its richness and potency. The drone eagerly swallowed spasm after spasm of fluid.
Once again she felt the powerlessness of her situation. Even had she control over her own body, Alex knew she wouldn’t have been able to resist sucking Nax’s sperm down. Every drop was ambrosia. Every drop was a new electric thrill. Had she been free, she would still have gone after it like a slut.
Oh, what they had done to her! How very low they had made her!
She took it all down. Not a drop was wasted. The spyeye gleamed.
Finally, Alex lowered her head submissively, licking the last white drops from the corners of her mouth.
She shivered with anticipation and dread. Would he fuck her again? Would he not?
Which would be worse? At that moment, she could not tell.
“You make a very good pleasure drone, Alexandra,” Nax said, rubbing her ear. “Just like your two friends.” He ordered her to kneel and then stood up. Alex crouched at his feet submissively.
“Gentlemen,” Nax said loudly, facing his crew. “I am . . . fatigued.” He shook his head in feigned amazement, and the savage crowd laughed. “I had no idea for very wanton this baroness of Centauri was.” He slapped his hand across Alex’s head, and, obeying interior directives, she assumed an animal-like stance on all fours, giving a wiggle to her rump and her dangling bosom. Nax put his foot before her, and she licked at it, weeping inside, yet luxuriating in the taste of his sweat on her tongue.
“I thought I could tame her on my own, but, I confess, I am spent.” He sighed over dramatically. “Can you finish her for me, my children? I would consider it an earnest favor on your part.”
God, no! NO! But still she licked.
“NAX!! NAX!! NAX!!” the Solarians roared, their clenched fists rising, up and down, pumping, the Solarian salute. The governor basked in their adulation for a long moment before turning back to Alex.
“Go to them, baroness,” he said, smirking. “Perhaps they can ease your newfound heat, eh?”
Monster, Alex thought. Monster. Her heat was permanent, insatiable. The needs of a pleasure drone could never be put to ease. That was the entire point. Nonetheless, obeying, she crawled forward.
The Solarians encircled Alex. They grabbed at her, like a pack of wild animals. Their hands probed her pussy, hot and wet. Their mouths latched onto her nipples. They fucked her. They fucked her long, and they fucked her hard, taking every advantage of her condition. Some were fast. Some took their time, as Nax had done. They made her lick and suck and sit and beg, and the pleasure drone inside Alex’s mind loved it. She pushed upwards with her hips. Their cocks stretched and filled her.
She licked their balls. She drank their seed.
And the cheers lasted throughout that long, long first night.