Drone
2
Thanks to the Empire’s Expansionist Period, the trinary stars of Alpha Centauri boasted eight habitable planets between them, planets rendered habitable through the same terraforming technologies that had earlier done the same for Mars, Venus, and Earth’s own Moon. By the time the Expansionist engineers reached Sol’s closest interstellar neighbor, they had a great deal of practice in their craft. Even tiny Proxima, a red dwarf and flare star besides, was provided a companion, though the livable portion of it would always face away from the star and require the presence of strong anti-flare shielding. Alpha Centauri B, or Centauri Beta, as it was known, claimed three reconstructed planets while Alpha, the finest of all three suns, enjoyed four. Previously rockballs of undistinguished merit, the seven “best” worlds—little Proxima Five would never be a vacation spot—now had climates filling the range of human acceptability. In addition, each of the three systems possessed numerous smaller colonies on the various moons, asteroids, and comets sharing the orbital planes of their terraformed cousins, in encapsulated environments that protected their inhabitants from space’s unforgiving extremes. In all, aside from Sol herself, Alpha Centauri had the largest and most diversified population in the human sphere of exploration.
Alexandra had been born in Panara, a large Mediterranean-like barony on Beta Prime. She had been, in her own estimation, a spoiled brat. As a member of the privileged Centauri aristocratic class and heir to a large fortune, she had known at a distance of the presence of the degenerate Solarians among them, but since their dissolute behavior little affected her, she had held little interest. There were numerous horror stories circulating, but those told of plights that happened to other people, and, God help her, she just hadn’t cared. No, like so many before her, it had taken oppression’s touch in her own life for her to finally begin to take it seriously. It had taken the rape and murder of Alisa, her best friend, to wake Alex up to the reality of the tyrannical Solarian Empire, with their pillaging, their habit of planetary blackmail, their rampant ignoring—nay, deliberate violation—of laws, customs, and traditions throughout the Centauri planets, and, worst of all, their appalling impressing of young males and females for their perverse pleasures. And it was all so pointless. Old Earth was over four years away either by communication or tranship. It was impossible for the Solarians to try and rule anything over so great a distance, yet they tried nevertheless. They needed no resources. They already had plenty in Sol. There were no major religious differences, no significant racial divides. Such prejudices had been weeded out of humanity over the centuries. The Solarians were simply pathologically driven to seek dominance, even where it gained them nothing, where in fact it actually cost them resources to try and maintain it.
Alex lodged an official protest to the Solarian Governor—not Nax—and called for an investigation into Alisa’s death. When her pleas were ignored, the young baroness went to the Beta Assembly—her first visit to that ancient forum—and spoke out against the tyrants publicly. She donated money and supplies to the Free Centauri Army. Thereafter, she narrowly avoided being murdered by an assassin, and, heated, joined the Resistance to help bomb a transwave station to Earth. When the foreign occupiers called for her arrest, Alex went underground, first literally, then as a full member of the F.C.A. Over the next few years she rose in rank and became a trusted senior field officer. She also met Peter, the legitimate heir to the entire Sovereignty of Outer Alpha Centauri, who, like herself, had been driven into hiding following the well-publicized execution of his parents. They had many adventures together. They went on many missions, and, in time, brought the dreaded Solarian Fleet to the edge of destruction, and, ultimately, beyond. They fought Citizen Nax on several occasions, and every time they won.
Alex had planned to get married. She had met the man of her dreams, the most loyal, most intelligent, most capable man she had ever known, and she was going to be his queen.
It’s not fair, she thought gliding down a ship’s corridor, a nameless pleasure drone.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to turn out!
She had been a month aboard the Solarian vessel, a nightmarish month of being used and abused almost constantly. Not a day had passed had she not given service—No! Alex thought viciously. Been raped! Not given service?! Raped!—numerous times to members of the crew. She was treated no differently than any other pleasure drone among such a loutish gang. The only indication that she was different was the black lace collar Nax had affixed about her throat. It was her sole identification. It was the only adornment she wore.
A Solarian crewman came walking in the other direction. Alex stopped, went to her knees, and lowered her head. It was a strange sensation. On one level, her actions were completely forced. Her body reacted automatically without any input from her mind, in either movement (stopping, kneeling, splitting her thighs open) or in feeling (nipples tightening, pussy heating and lubricating). At the same time, part of her wanted to do these things, felt it was only natural that she should react this way, for she was a pleasure drone, and she must always be horny and ready for sex. She was being bombarded with carnal emotions and desires, of being the selfless, nameless, will-less fucktoy she had been made into, and the essence of it was rubbing off on her personality. For instance, Alex didn’t know whether the heat she felt for this crewman was the slavesuit’s programming or her own exponentially augmented desires, or whether there was any difference between them. Sometimes, on a good day, they just walked past her . . . .
The Solarian stopped and patted Alex’s bald head, petting her. Alex closed her golden eyes and rubbed against his leg, helpless not to luxuriate in the touch of a man’s hand on her lowly artificial flesh. She opened her eyes at the sound of the crewman unzipping himself. A moment later the sight of his cock in her face triggered a response in her programmed behavior. Helplessly, she started to salivate.
This man likes to have his ass cheeks stroked during fellatio, Alex thought. A registry of likes and dislikes among the ship’s crew flashed through her consciousness. She had files on all forty-four of them, from the lowest ranking member—though still infinitely higher in status than she—to Citizen Nax himself. Alex was sure the rest of her sister-drones on board, the fifteen of them, kept similar records.
He prefers to spill his seed across my face rather than have me swallow it.
The Solarian thrust forward, and Alex opened her mouth to accept him, as she had so many times before. She worked her tongue over the crewman’s penis and was rewarded minutes later with his cum lying wetly across her cheeks and forehead. He left, and she licked herself clean with the help of her fingers. Again, she wasn’t sure the act was inspired by the suit or her own never-ending appetites.
Was there a difference, or was she only the slavesuit now?
She stood and continued on her way. Turning the corner, she saw another pleasure drone servicing yet another crewman in the corridor. Alex asked herself quietly, as she always did when she saw one of her kind, Is that you, Joyce? Or Miriam? Is that you inside that skin, Miriam?
She had no way of knowing. Every drone was identical, right down to the DNA. And, aside from her, they were all the same, in mind as in body. Alex passed the rutting pair, her outward demeanor unfazed, her internal world in turmoil. She wondered what it was like, to be a pleasure drone on the inside as well as the out. To have no thoughts other than obedience and pleasure, to be nothing more than a living fucktoy, with no past, no future, only a never-ending Now that encompassed everything.
She felt it sometimes, especially when she was being used (Raped! Alex screamed at herself mentally. When I’m being use . . no, raped! Raped!!). That Now. That calm, serene state of mindlessness.
Mindless pleasure. Giving and receiving pleasure. It frightened her, that feeling. And what frightened her most was how easy it would be to slip into. Alex felt sometimes as if she were balancing herself on an ice-slickened beam, holding onto a rung above her head as her feet slid back-and-forth precariously.
If she started to slide, she wasn’t sure she could pull herself back up.
She was so tired, so very tired from having to hang on, constantly. Her drone body needed no rest. She received beamed energy. Her biomodified flesh regenerated continually, keeping her perpetually fit and tone and desirable. And on the inside Alex hadn’t slept—hadn’t lost consciousness—in a month.
She felt like she was going to lose her mind.
Sometimes she wished she would.
Every motion robotically polished, Alex drifted into a recreation cabin. Aside from herself, a pair of crewmen, and the recently installed, quivering sex mechanoids hanging from the far wall, the chamber was unoccupied. One of the crewmembers was using a mechanoid, so Alex had to wait.
She took a place beside the vending machine and stood, watching the disgusting scene helplessly. If she could have closed her eyes and ears, she would have. The other crewman lay on a faux-leather couch, a happy, dazed look on his face. Even had she not observed the empty vial beside him, Alex would have recognized the expression. He had just taken a hit of Control.
Desperate to distract herself—the moist sounds, the squealing—Alex tried to think about something else.
Lounges. Recreation cabins. The ever-present availability of pleasure drones. The Solarians spent an excessive amount of time on their entertainments. At least a quarter of the ship’s resources, and more likely a full third, were devoted to satisfying the crew’s insatiable and depraved needs. In many ways, the entire Solarian underclass were every bit the slaves she and her sister-drones were. The eponymously named mind-drug Control, which they all used, was the end result of countless years of research and synthesis on Old Earth. The drug induced an artificial state of happiness as well as a heightened sexual desire. At the same time, it caused a more than slight decrease in initiative and intellectual prowess, especially in regard to imagination. It wasn’t enough to be a real handicap, but it was sufficient to render its users both pliant and accepting, especially when their appetites were fed and the threat of punishment so severe. Control was, of course, utterly addictive, usually from the first hit, and it was so pervasive among the underclass that it served as their unofficial form of currency.
Virtually every male Solarian non-Citizen used it.
And the female non-Citizens? They didn’t exist, at least according to one rumor. Reports out of Sol were a combination of innuendo and flat-out lies. Even F.C.A. Intelligence had conflicting stories. Some said the male non-Citizens were cloned in factories. Others said that all the female non-Citizens on Earth and throughout the other Solarian worlds were slaves, used as breeders or pleasure drones. Still other tales indicated that the overclass on Earth was actually ruled by women, that Nax’s superiors were an exclusive party of females who dominated through sex and psychological manipulation, just as the male Citizens ruled the underclass through drugs and decadent entertainments. The only sure thing was that no one was sure about anything. Earth was four years away, and the obfuscation had to be deliberate. No one even knew anymore who was in charge of the Solarian Empire.
Finally, the crewman finished with his sex mechanoid, loudly detaching himself from its center orifice and dragging a hand over its surviving genitalia. It shook and mewled plaintively, which was about the only noise it and its mate could make, despite the multitude of mouths and other openings in its leathery skin.
I’m sorry, Alex thought, trying to project her thoughts. I’m so, so very sorry.
The crewman replaced his uniform pants, then went to the vending machine. He played with Alex’s nipples while inputting his personal code with the other hand. The machine spat out his daily allotment vial of Control, and the man sat next to his buddy, popped the lid, and drank it down.
Alex worked quickly. She knew from experience that as soon as their drug high peaked, the two men would want to use the mechanoids again or her if she were still in the cabin. She replaced the contents of the first mechanoid’s feeding tube with supplies from the storage bin that now made up most of its lower body. There was still enough of the creature’s facial features left for her to recognize the expression of hopeless misery written there. She discarded a waste tube, then applied herself to the other limbless machine. Their service was part of her routine, established early in her time on the ship.
She was the only pleasure drone to see to the two former men, deliberately. Other significant parts of her “day” included being available in the ship’s lounge for all three shifts, for those off-duty crewmen who wanted to fuck a former Centauri aristocrat; providing fellatio service for those crewmen on-duty; and satisfying large blocks of time for individual, and lengthier, ravishings by the crew, by appointment, in the “sleeping” compartments set aside for that purpose throughout the vessel. One period she would be ensconced in Compartment Aleph, the next in Beth, the next in Gimel, and so on, before returning to Aleph and starting it all over again. She was a popular pleasure drone; statistically, she was used 27% more than any other on board. Naturally, it was her novelty value alone that was the appeal.
For, of course, practically speaking, there was no difference between her and any other drone.
She managed to finish before either of the crewmen were ready to go again. Did I work quickly because I could work quickly, or was it only the suit? It was impossible to know. Sometimes it felt as if she were doing things of her own accord, but that could easily have been a delusion on her part.
And what did it matter, really, either way? Either way, she was a pleasure drone. She existed to serve. She existed to provide pleasure (No! No! part of her resisted). She existed to [Obey Orders].
Having performed her daily maintenance on that deck’s recreation cabin’s fuck-and-suck toys, the pleasure drone left. She had one more stop to make before this “day” finished and the new one began.
In some ways, this was the part of the “day” Alex dreaded most. And looked forward to the most.
Within minutes she was standing outside his cabin. At this point, even hesitation was impossible. Alex tapped the call button lightly and adjusted her stance for [Seduction Mode].
“Come in,” she heard a voice say from inside, languidly.
And sighing solely within the confines of her heart, Alex once more entered Citizen Nax’s quarters.