Y
13
Four standard years earlier:
Centauri and Indi were roughly 9.2 light years apart. Taking into account those periods a tranship had to drop from its light envelope and check that it was still on course, the travel time between stars was almost nine-and-a-half years. The active crew of The Flags of Centauri Independence was divided into five rotations, each rotation being on watch and maintenance duty while the others slept in suspended animation, thereby saving on food, energy, oxygen, and, most importantly, good will and sanity.
Senior Lieutenant Bea Stoc was Gamma shift, and, thank her God, it was finally, finally coming to an end! She and her cohorts had held the duty for twenty-one months. In ten days, Delta shift would take charge. Some of them were already waking up.
The best thing of all, the Chief Astrogation Officer had stars to look at again. She sat in a reclining couch in her office bubble, relaxed, music playing in the background, ports open to three sides around her, a dozen screens floating in the air showing another dozen views of the starscape surrounding them.
Space was beautiful.
The eddies of interstellar gas. Twinklings of stars red, yellow, and white. Constellations viewed from an oblique angle relative to the starship. Bea loved it, and for the better part of a day she had lingered over her telescopes enjoying the views. No one had complained about the delay; the Independence’s chemiprocessors had already automatically run the calculations, but it was still customary for a person to double-check manually, and besides, after months of the pitch black emptiness of null-space, the sight of stars had improved everyone’s mood. Bea took her time. She knew they were exactly where they were supposed to be. The course corrections she would send down to Control later would be minor and well within projected figures. They would arrive at the system of the Flowerworld right on time.
Bea paused again in her work. The number-crunching, the calculation of declination, the figuring out in three-dimensional space where they were now and where Epsilon Indi would be in one thousand, two hundred, and seventy-nine days, was almost unconscious on her part. The work was practically already done, and Bea had allowed her mind to wander.
For the countless time, she wondered what the inhabitants of Indi would be like. Wonderful, she imagined. She wanted to be amazed. That was why she had volunteered to go on the long mission.
The hatch irised open. Bea looked down and saw Lieutenant Wirry floating. “May I come in? You have the best view on the ship.” He looked young and earnest.
“Sure.” Bea put her hand into the chemiprocessor softerminal and closed half of the holographic screens. Wirry floated in—they were just outside the Core, and the Ring’s Coriolis effect was minimal—and she helpfully tethered him in beside her when he offered her his anchor cord out.
The stars gazed back at them.
“Are we where we’re supposed to be, ma’am?” Wirry inquired. He was a very young officer, over ten years her junior. She nodded and pointed at a small speck of light above them. “See that?”
She put her hand into the chemiprocessor again. The point of light she indicated expanded in the port, transforming into a glowing orange-red sun. “That’s where we’ll be in three-and-a-half years.”
He smiled. “Okay. So, where’s the Flowerworld?”
Bea whispered into her throat-mike. All but the one holoscreen vanished. The star Indi rotated, descended at a port angle, and shrank. A series of simulated circular lines—six of them—appeared to surround the star and denote the paths of its planets. The five inner bodies, all within 1.7 AU of the primary, were more or less within the same orbital plane. The sixth and outermost world, at a more than fifteen degree inclination between its orbit and equatorial plane, was noticeably askew, though still within a marginally habitable 2.3 astronomical units. “There, Mister Smart Junior Officer,” Bea said.
Planets two, three, and four—Epsilon Indi A II, III, and IV—glowed. Each had large oceans, numerous small islands, and peculiarly golden atmospheres rich in O2 and CO2.
“Well, which one?” His voice was bantering.
“If I knew that, I’d be Senior Captain.” Bea’s fingers touched the animated port. “The best guess is A II. That’s what the experts say, anyway, but nobody really knows.” She didn’t have to explain, not even really this part. The whole crew knew. The Epsilon Indi system was radio dead. No one responded to their messages; no one was broadcasting a thing. It was frustrating, more so because someone obviously was at home. The system, their telescopes had long since determined, boasted not the one, not two, not even three unmistakably terraformed planets . . . but four! Four life-bearing planets, yet not one displayed any of the characteristic electromagnetic signatures an advanced society would produce, the kind of advanced society necessary to create such worlds in the first place.
Frustrating.
“What do you think?” Wirry asked. He pulled on his uniform tether, bringing the two of them slightly closer together in the near weightless observation bubble. At the time, Bea hardly noticed.
“I think it’s II, too,” she said and laughed at the wordplay. “That’s where most of the traffic is centered, what we’ve been able to see of it, anyways. The ships the Florans use must be very, very small.”
“What about A VI, then? Why are we headed there first?”
He pointed to the oddly orbiting little planet. That was part of the mission profile. After broadcasting friendship and recognition signals on multiple bands, the Independence would make a leisurely initial approach to the outermost of the Indi planets when it fell insystem.
“Because it’s terraformed,” Bea said, “yet it has no space traffic whatsoever, so far as we’ve detected. The thinking is that that will be the safest way in, assuming a continued radio silence.” She tilted her head. “We have to start somewhere.” She wondered why she was asking him. This was all obvious.
Wirry put a hand on her shoulder. Bea turned to face him, and he kissed her mouth.
“Stop.” Bea recoiled. She pulled out her anchor tether, putting space between them. She was absolutely not interested. “This is not happening, Lieutenant.” She emphasized the difference in rank.
Shipboard romances happened. They were a fact of life in the Space Forces, and over the months of her Gamma-shift duty Bea had observed some very odd pairings. Some were odder and more disagreeable than others: it was a not-so-great secret that there was a Solarian pleasure drone aboard and in the safekeeping of the Captain, who, while he was in hibernation, had loaned it—her—out to his cadre of friends. The only reason no one said anything was because he was the Captain, and, in theory, the drone was a gift from the Beta Assembly to one of the Artist-Princes of the Flowerworld. In general, though, policy onboard was simpler than that. If you were discreet, it was your own business.
While Bea had not remained completely celibate so far on the mission, her interest in such matters had been brief and unnoteworthy.
Wirry looked at her. “Why not? I know you must want it.” The expression on his face was condescending.
“What did you say to me?”
“Well, with your looks, I thought you’d be grateful for any attention.”
Bea’s eyes bulged. “Get out!” she said furiously. “Get out, or I swear I’ll report you.”
“I’m sorry if I offended you, ma’am, but . . .” What was he going to say? That you thought I’d be an easy lay? she thought. Because I’m so ugly?
“Leave now,” she interrupted, “while you still can.”
Wirry, shrugging, disconnected himself and pushed himself toward the hatch. After he was gone, Bea cried, thought about reporting him for disciplinary action, shook with rage, and in the end decided not to do anything for dread of what the ship’s gossips would make of the embarrassing incident.
Drying her eyes, Bea went back to the stars and her comforting calculations. But the fun had been drained out of them. She couldn’t wait to go back into the hibernation capsule.
The Planet Y: Modern Day
Every few days, the men of Citadel Korez would dine together in that great hall where Haru was first presented to her Master. These dinners were rowdy affairs. There was boisterous singing, heaps of steaming food served, gallons of potent spirits, and not the infrequent fistfight. The feasts were much like those a young Bea Stoc had imagined medieval barbarians had had millennia ago. It was strange to the slave Haru that these barbarians—and the Yn were barbarians, of that there could be no denial, complete and utter barbarians the lot of them, as scarred and muscular as any group of actors escaped from a Hereditarian historical recreation, only dyed red—should all the same so deeply excite and arouse her. She adored her barbarian masters. She could no longer conceive of a life without them.
And just as Yn men liked to eat in common, so they liked to have women serve them while they ate. There was a rotation, set up by Theru to avoid arguments (the slaves of Citadel Korez liked the dinners themselves, though less for the food and more for the numerous and awesome fuckings they received), and at least once every three days or so Haru was allowed the privilege of serving. Clad only in a black strap and loose ruffle, feeling scandalously open and, paradoxically, freer than she had ever been before in her previous life, she would carry tray after tray from the kitchen to that huge central table and back again, for hours at a time. She would fill endless goblets with the greenish beer her masters liked. She would clear empty plates from the table and replace them with full ones. She relished every command, and whenever she was seized and used, or put to her knees and used, or held in theirs arms and used, or, or, whatever! she blessed her God and her beloved Master she had been made a Yn slavegirl!
Haru was putting on her makeup, pussy wet and blazing in anticipation of that evening’s service, when the slave proctor came into the preparation room. “Haru,” she said at once. “You are wanted.”
“Yes, Theru.” She got up and assumed a deferential stance before the head slave. She waited. It wasn’t her place to ask questions, though naturally she was curious. Who wants me? she thought. She hoped she wouldn’t be taken off of the rotation. She was always guaranteed three or four good fucks at the dinners. On the other hand, perhaps her Master wanted her to serve him privately!
Her Master! Haru’s nipples became hard at the very notion.
“Go upstairs to the north wing,” Theru instead ordered, disappointingly. “Wait in the assembly hall. A man will fetch you.”
“Yes, Theru.” She lowered her head more so. She couldn’t not ask, she found. “Will I still serve tonight, Theru?” Her lips trembled. She expected to be reprimanded for her impertinence.
Theru surprised the slave and merely shook her head. “I don’t know.” She put a hand to Haru’s cheek and stroked it tenderly. “I’m sorry.” She sounded sad.
“Theru?” The proctor said nothing more, merely swiped at Haru’s backside to get her to move.
Not long after, a gloriously large soldier came and got the Betan-born slave. Her heat rose. She had already been used four times that day; she was well kindled, and any attention at all from a man while she was in such a state felt good. She was given curt, one-word directions, turning left or right until they came to a door. The soldier came to stand beside Haru—helplessly, the smaller slave looked up at the tall, masculine figure and felt her usual awe and arousal—and knocked.
When Haru heard the voice within respond, she was at once chilled. She both could and could not recognize it. No, it can’t be, she thought. The soldier opened the door. Hesitating on the threshold, really fearful for the first time in weeks, Haru’s arm was taken and her little body pushed inside with a casual display of manly strength.
A Yn male she both could and could not recognize sat in a chair facing her.
A fire roared in the fireplace to the man’s right. To his left was a table on which a metal goblet and a decanter of beer sat. The man’s eyes raked her, stripping Haru barer than she already was. Trembling, she fell to her knees. A thick blue-and-gold carpet saved her knees a little of the shock of impact.
It’s not fair, she thought. Behind Haru, the soldier closed the door behind him as he left.
“Hello again, Senior Lieutenant Bea Stoc,” the seated man said, confirming her worst fears. She wasn’t mistaken then. Haru’s gaze tried to bore even deeper into the carpet beneath her.
Her bones had turned to jelly. “Hello, Master,” she said, voice quaking. Oh God, she thought. What is he going to do to me? It was an exceedingly strange thing seeing and hearing this man, and were she not utterly terrified, Haru might have spent a moment in fascination at it. The man in the chair before her was a typical Yn male, and she desired him, as she desired every Yn male, whether she was kindled or not. That she was kindled truly and thoroughly now, aching for a warrior’s cock to probe her wet pussy, made the situation more bizarre. Why bizarre? Because she didn’t like this man whom she had yet never had met before. She didn’t like him at all—hate would not have been an inappropriate term, in fact—yet she desired him, wanted him to use her, wanted to serve his pleasure because he was a man and she was a slave. He looks different, she thought, and that was truly an absurd thought on her part.
Of course he looked different!
He had been transformed into a Yn, as she had been transformed. The man before her bore little resemblance to the hateful young man she had known previously, but, then again, neither did she.
Still, she knew. Her mouth was dry. “Please don’t hurt me, Master,” she begged in a rush of breath.
“Oh, think no more of it,” the man said, gazing upon Haru as a predator does his prey. They both knew what they were talking about, the incident in her office, without needing to remind one another.
Haru heard the radically transformed Lieutenant Larr Wirry stand.
“It was entirely my fault,” he said. She could hear the sick grin. “A miscalculation, made when I was still laboring under the delusion that you mattered.”
Haru quivered like a little girl. Wirry came close and towered over her.
“Stand, slave,” the once junior officer ordered his former superior. Haru obeyed. “Look at me.”
She did. He had become awesome, manly, terrible. “Ma . . master?” She was shaking.
“A little bitch,” he called her. “A little bitch, that’s all you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Say it.”
“I am a little bitch, Master.” She moaned in her desperate, slavish need.
“That’s all you ever were. You thought you were better than me, didn’t you?” He cupped her chin, raising her head even more than it already was, painfully. “Didn’t you, you little slut!?” he roared.
“YES, MASTER!!” she cried out. Wirry had taken the goblet with him when he’d stood. He upended it over Haru’s head, drenching her in alcohol. Haru cried out again. Long wet hair fell across her face.
“This is where women like you belong,” he told her, and she agreed with him. “This is where all women belong,” and again she said yes. He stripped off his leather kilt, and she gasped at his enormous size.
“You want it now, don’t you, bitch?” His expression was smug.
“Yes, Master,” she said at once. She did; most definitely, she did. She despised him for it.
“The first time, as I recall, I had to ask permission, didn’t I?” Haru said yes. Her eyes never left his cock. “And you turned me down. You turned me down when all I wanted to do was favor you.”
Favor me? she thought. “Yes, Master,” she said. The fires in her pussy were blazing very hot now.
“Well, things have changed, haven’t they? Now you’re going to have to beg me for it, bitch,” he told her, arrogantly. “Beg for it, like the little slut I always knew you were, deep down inside.” His penis was long and erect, a veritable ship’s prow of pleasure. Every quiver in it, every motion, raised Haru’s heat up another notch.
“Yes, Master,” she said. She went to her hands and knees. She crawled towards him.
“Please, Master,” she begged. Begging was easy for a slave. It was the denial that was painful. “Please, Master. Please fuck me. Fuck me like a slut and the slave I am.”
Wirry laughed at her earnest need. He ordered her back to her feet. Suddenly, Wirry seized Haru by both arms, throwing the emptied goblet across the room. His grip was tight, painful, then excruciating.
He lifted Haru and kissed her mouth harshly, forcefully. There were traces of pink blood on her lips when he withdrew after a minute. As a slave born to please men, Haru wanted to appease him. She needed to appease him. But she was helpless in his arms. He was cutting off her circulation. He obviously didn’t know yet his new Yn strength. Just when she thought she might faint, he dropped her.
An enormous new Yn cock was pushed into her face.
“Suck it, little bitch,” Wirry said, almost calmly.
Haru didn’t bother to reply; she pounced on the delicious-looking member, motivated in equal parts by terror and her previous kindling. Wirry’s penis invaded her open mouth, stabbing at the back of her throat. Only her Academy lessons kept her from choking. She massaged his testicles as she took more of him in her mouth. She exerted pressure with her mouth and tongue, drawing back on the slick flesh, partially to give her better control, partially as well to allow him to better thrust it further inside again.
Wirry simply fucked her face. She licked at the scrumptious meat of him; she sucked at him and was rewarded with his divine cum, which immediately caused her to climax and slip into a swaying trance.
I am slave, she thought. I was born to be a slave. Wirry lifted her cum-stained lips. “Not yet, bitch,” he told her, and the words echoed in her mind. Not yet, bitch . . not yet, bitch . . . not yet . . . .
Her satisfaction faded instantly. Her slave-inspired appetite came surging back stronger than ever.
Wirry lifted her again, by the waist this time. Haru split her legs automatically, and with a savage thrust the former lieutenant buried his cock inside her. “Oh, Master!” the slave screamed. “Oh, God!!”
She whimpered in mixed pain and pleasure as he used her. When he climaxed, it was his voice she heard riding the words of his hypnotic seed: “You are a slave. You are my slave. My slave!”
“Yes, Master!! Yes!!” She couldn’t help but respond to him, to yield to him. She was a slave.
Her pussy lips pulled at his cock as he pushed in and out noisily. His use was raw and unsophisticated, but it served its purpose. Wirry walked her over to a couch in the room and pushed her back to it. He leaned forward and mashed her lips again, invading her mouth with his tongue. He tongue-fucked her.
When she came, again, helplessly, for the first time as a Yn slavegirl, Haru felt embarrassed. Despite her love for him, in general, as a Yn man, specifically, she still hated Wirry. He laughed at her orgasms. With her true Master, her beloved Baor, and his men, her helpless, slavish climaxes were celebrations of her womanhood, reassertions of their manhood. With Wirry, they were nothing more than a joke.
Wirry used her twice more, each time progressively more brutal and complete. He made her crawl on her knees as he walked backwards around the room, Haru’s lips straining to wrap themselves around the erect member he dangled out of reach. When he finally did deign to use her, his taking was devastating. In his hands, Haru was the unfortunate recipient of both Wirry’s inexperience—as a Yn master, he had little experience with slaves, and this shown in his fumbled swayings, his rough physical handling, and his general inability to bring her anywhere near the kind of climax she had had with others—and his desire for revenge. He kindled Haru for the sheer joy of watching her burn, lighting raging infernos in her loins and letting her weep in frustration as he sat there watching with a smile on his face.
“Little slut,” he called her, with disdain. Usually, among Yn men, it was a compliment. Not with him.
“Yes, I’m a slut, Master!” Haru screamed, breasts aching with their need to be touched. “I am a slut! Oh, please, Master!!” She had been commanded into a position kneeling and holding her ankles. Such was the power of his swaying, inexpert though it was, that she could no more have let of her legs than if they had been glued together. His penis was within painful centimeters of her watering mouth.
“Little whore!” he said contemptuously. He grabbed the back of her head. “Shall I let the little whore please her master?”
“Oh, yes, please, Master,” she begged. “Let your little whore serve you.” And then she swallowed Wirry gratefully, hating him. Later, she lay at his feet, bruised yet still aroused despite his savage use.
She licked at his feet. “You are Bea,” he told her, swaying her. “You are Bea for as long as I have the use of you.”
“I am Bea, Master,” she said, wincing in pain. Inside, she still felt she was ‘Haru,’ because that had been the will of her true Master, but she must hear and obey her current user, whomever he was.
She was both, therefore, for a time, Haru and Bea. Her mis-swayed head started to ache. Bea . . Haru . . Bea . . Haru . . Bea . . . .
“Korez has lent you to me,” Wirry said, and Bea-Haru’s heart sank.
“I argued that your experience may come in useful, and he agreed.” He leaned down. “The real reason is that I wanted to have more time with you. Aren’t you pleased, Bea?”
“Yes, Master,” Haru-Bea said, trembling. The worst part about it, a part of her actually was.
“May I ask, Master? What . . experience do I possess that will be useful to you?”
Her teeth chattered slightly. It was not from the cold.
“You and I are taking a trip,” the new Yn said. He leaned back on the couch, and Bea-Haru (or was it Haru-Bea? his swaying had left her confused) continued delicately licking his lower legs. “Korez has charged one of his aides to bring my former cellmates back to Tolaam, and I’m going along to lend my assistance.” He snickered in a way the slave thought inappropriate when talking about her true owner.
“I’m going only because of her,” he said finally.
“Her, Master?” She immediately felt sorry for whomever that person was.
“The former Commander Serry Garrant,” Wirry said. “My future slavegirl, Serry.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help, Master,” Bea-Haru said, hating herself for the servile way she said it.
How could she hate this man so much when she absolutely craved him, loved him? Serry Garrant, she thought at the same time. Haru-Bea knew her. That is, the former Bea Stoc had known her. She had been the Chief Life Support Officer on the Independence. So, she thought, amazed, she survived too.
She did not envy her her future owner.
“They were taken in the raid a week ago. A detachment of privateers from Sooshr wanted to embarrass the Rexus.” He laughed again. “They were the ones who ended up getting embarrassed. Not only did the Tolaamese catch up with them, their hostages somehow got away in a skyboat.”
There are free and untransformed Betans on Y? Bea-Haru thought, amazed. “They ended up doing me a favor, though,” Wirry went on, not noticing the sudden light in her eyes. “A piece of masonry fell on me, crushed me. I was dying, so Korez called in the Brahma, and they saved me.
“They also transformed Damml and Gisha, while they were here. They should have practiced, as I did.”
He sounded wistful. “They didn’t survive their duels.” But then he brightened. “But I did, and look where I am now.”
“Yes, Master,” the slavegirl said. So casually the former Betan had spoken of their deaths.
“I inherited my opponent’s position, and now I’m an official retainer of the Chief Rexus of the City-State of Tolaam. Last week I was his prisoner.”
“Yes, Master.”
“And in another week she’ll be mine.” He was not talking to her, Haru-Bea realized. He was talking to himself. He was talking to his future. To her future. He had grown excited again, she observed.
Wirry turned and looked upon his leased slave speculatively. “Yes, Master,” she said, understanding, and she crawled up closer and served him a fourth time, and then, later still, painfully, a fifth.
The next morning Onora was the only one to wave goodbye.
She and the former Bea Stoc shared a heartfelt embrace on the citadel’s landing platform, and then the former Larr Wirry separated them, taking his temporary charge rudely by the arm. The two of them boarded a skyship along with a contingent of the Rexus’ men, and a few minutes later they were off.
Bea-Haru watched her friend and her home shrink in the distance. I don’t want to go, she thought, a tear in her eye. But she was a slave, usually a willing slave, and she had no choice in the matter.
No choice whatsoever, in spite of her own wishes to the contrary.
The wind howled. In the east, the Brahma base beckoned.