Y
20
Eben could hear his heart thumping inside his head. It was slowing down.
His breath condensed around his mouth, misting the air. He could no longer draw in a big lungful; he could only manage the littlest sips. He no longer felt any pain, but that was not necessarily a good sign. His chest had become a block of ice with only the barest hint of life left inside.
The cold had won. The cold of Y’s thin atmosphere had beaten him, crushed him more thoroughly than all the Yn who pummeled him back at the Brahma base had put together. The bone-chilling, frost-laden cold had reached down inside of Eben and squeezed his heart and soul until it seemed these were the only things left of him. He could not feel his hands. His feet were likewise kilometers away, disconnected from the beating heart to which he had been reduced.
Grimly, the senior lieutenant put one foot in front of the other, plowing a trail through the thick ice and snow. He could have stayed with the crashed skyboat—whether he froze to death amid the wreckage or out in the open meant little to his numbed brain—but if he had stayed there was a chance warriors from the base would have found him and brought him back, and that would be a fate worse than death.
That Solarian bitch had informed Eben what the women of the Matricharate intended. Besides, Sud would have wanted him to at least try to make it to safety, and he owed it to the late crewman.
He could not bear to think about Serry, left behind.
The air was perfectly still. The horizon was invisible. The sky was the same color as the snow, and the snow stretched off into infinity. At least he had managed to get off of the glacier: there were bushes, and a little white-dusted tree stood every few meters. The ground felt mostly rocky and firm beneath the snow, though once he sank into a bog-like squishiness that was hard to pull free from. There were hills in the distance. Eben struggled with the knee-depth powder. Pulling a leg out was like pulling it from wet cement. Plunging one back in was like scraping it against raw sandpaper. His feet were dead, but he could still feel their impact against the ground through his thighs. When the cold reached any higher than that, he would just stop and turn completely solid, a red-dyed icicle through and through.
For the first time, Eben understood what a “biting cold” was. It had only taken nine light years and six months on Y for the life-support officer to comprehend.
This chill in the air was not just an absence of heat. Y’s cold was a physical thing, a cold so intense it was a supernatural presence haunting him, a monster that Eben felt gnawing on his flesh and on his insides and which he knew was slowly killing him. He stopped exhausted in the snow and looked back.
He could not restrain the primal moan of despair. He could still see the remains of the flying boat behind him, the trail he had dug leading straight back to him. He had been walking for hours, it felt like, yet he judged he had traveled, maybe, three kilometers.
He felt suddenly dizzy. With the hills in the distance, the endless white expanse all around him, and the sky exactly the same lack of color, Eben saw himself an ant—a red ant—in the middle of a great porcelain bowl. He staggered. He was no longer sure which way was up, which way was down. He felt the planet rotating beneath him, the stars twirling haphazardly above the clouds.
Eben fell face first into the snow. For a minute, he tried to push himself back up, but it was too hard.
He started to feel queerly warm. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into the powder. He wasn’t sure to whom he was speaking.
The escape had not been planned. It had been pure happenstance. Eben still didn’t have a clear picture in his memory of what had happened. Partially it was on account of the mind-numbing freeze. Partially it was on account of the sheer speed with which events had transpired.
What he knew was this: a loud but familiar noise had woken him from the stupor into which his bruised, broken, and beaten body had lapsed. He had looked around and seen Sud lying next to him, but for the first time there was no one else around. The two of them were alone in that cavernous hangar, mere meters away from the steep vertical drop into absolute darkness that ringed the main platform floor.
“Get up,” Eben had croaked to Sud. “We have to get up.”
The hangar ledge had several secondary ledges arranged below the level of the platform, allowing landed skyboats to embark and disembark with a minimum of fuss. One could walk from the deck of the ship directly onto the hangar floor. A small skyboat, of the same type that the Lady Alyce and Aosha had used to rendezvous with them earlier, was moored nearby.
Staggering, holding each other upright, he and Sud managed to climb aboard the small hovercraft and start its engines. The size of the controls was no longer an issue. Eben got the boat into the air while that same noise that had woken him earlier repeated itself in the large, empty chamber, echoing madly.
“Are those micromissiles firing?” Sud had asked, and Eben nodded, though himself unsure. “Maybe Aosha’s target shooting,” he had quipped. At the time, he had thought it funny. Never again.
Once in the air, the problem was where to go. The interior space the Brahma used as their hangar was immense, like a dozen Hereditarian cathedrals merged together. But there was no sign of egress. Moreover, Eben had been reluctant to leave. He had wanted to stay and find Serry.
Eben had raced the small skyboat below the platform, staying near the mammoth cliff and hoping not to be spotted. They heard more sounds of micromissiles firing and cutterbeams slicing through the air, but the chamber was so big and the distortion from the echo so severe neither of them could find where all the excitement was coming from. There was a battle going on, from the sound of it, but they had no idea where. After nearly two minutes of just flying around, Sud—sure eyes again—shouted and pointed.
“There! Over there! It’s a way out!”
Indeed, there was a small—comparatively speaking: in actuality, it was quite sizable, being several tens of meters in length, but it looked small, in perspective—opening in the vast exterior wall of the base. Ice and snow blew inside.
With some reluctance, Eben had stirred toward it, still worried about Serry, and so he never noticed behind them on the ledge the Yn warriors gathering with rifles. He just heard the crack of their weapons firing, and Sud shouting again. “Look out, sir!”
The next thing he knew, a body hit Eben from behind, knocking him into the controls.
The blow, of course, had been from Sud, loyal Crewman Sud, shielding him with his own body, taking the bullet that would have hit him. “Sud!!” The barrage of rifle fire hit the controls too. They grazed Eben as well, and so stunned was he didn’t realize he had flown the ship outside until he actually had.
“Sud!!” The big Yn—the transformed Betan crewman—had lain dead in Eben’s arms, the wind racing around them, the skyboat hurtling out of control across the glacier. Eben had shaken him over and over, trying to wake him up. Sud’s pink blood soaked him. “Sud!!” Timed passed in a blur.
It no longer mattered. The snow was warm. I’m freezing to death, Eben thought, almost contentedly.
Sud was dead, his Serry was being raped, and the skyboat had crashed after taking him his God only knew where. In a way, dying was preferable to staying alive. Eben Halc closed his eyes, thinking about Serry.
He never felt, nor heard, the arms reach round his shoulders and pick him up.
[Model] [Base] [Life] [Thane] [Gender] [Female] [Process] [Memory] [Insertion] [Three] [Initiation] [Process]
She was red, and she was bound.
The slave—she was evidently a Yn slave, though she had no memory of ever being a Yn before, nor of being a slave—found herself in chains in a dungeon. As with so many other things, she had no idea how she had come to be there. All she knew was that she was red, and she was bound, and a magnificent Yn male was leaning over her, and she could not resist him.
Did she want to resist him? She didn’t know. Instinctively, she fought.
As the huge red male traced his hands along the side of her breasts, she cried out, “No! Stop!” But even as she spoke the words, the red slave found herself pressing her tits into the man’s hands. His naked skin felt so good! It felt so right that he should take her, claim her, use her.
He began kissing her neck. He worked his way down her chest. The slave could not lift her arms; they were tied behind her back. She was a helpless rape victim. It felt good to be helpless. She had always been so in control before, and she had hated it. Deep down inside, she had always hated it. She had wanted to be taken. Her Master now took her. He cupped her breasts and squeezed them, relishing his control over her, her utter helplessness. His mouth took one of her nipples in and gently bit down, not hard enough to cause pain but merely excite even more so the slave’s previously untapped passions.
She did not want this . . . right? She wasn’t sure. Everything was so hazy. I am a slave, she thought. I have a duty to obey . . . don’t I? She was unclear. What she wasn’t unsure about was how good it felt being fucked. His fingers caressed her clit. She felt his penetration, felt the long, massive intensity of him enter her body, and she rejoiced. It felt so good! She bucked with pleasure, grinding her hips onto his, feeling herself growing wetter and hotter with each passing moment, delighting in this absolute taking of her mind and body. His hands were all over her. They were pulling her this way and that, guiding her, controlling her. He was controlling her, and being controlled felt wonderful. It was a release from all her pressure. All her responsibility. What pressure? she quickly thought. What responsibility? She couldn’t remember. She was red, and she was bound, and she was glad to be red, and she was glad to be bound. Being red and bound meant that she had no control, and no longer being in control meant that she could be free, finally! free to be herself! It was right that she should be a slave.
His shaft was moving inside her, claiming her, making her his own. She breathed into his ear, “I love you, Master.” And she did. She loved him, she loved being taken, she loved being a slave.
With those damning words, everything went abruptly black.
[Process] [Termination] [Memory] [Insertion] [Four] [Initiation] [Process]
She was on Venus, and she was a Drey.
She was a member of the lower slave caste of the Thane Hierarchy, which had ruled the terraformed planet of Venus for centuries. The Thane ruled; the Drey obeyed. It was the way of things; it was reality; and that she should be used for the pleasure of a Thane was the most perfectly normal thing in the world. Wasn’t it? She still wasn’t sure. How did I get here?
Am I Drey? the Drey slave thought, as she was restrained onto the bed, a massively muscled Thane male atop her. I don’t remember being a Drey. The Son of the Thane touched her. His hands explored her flesh. He guided himself into her waiting cunt without delicacy, without restraint. He was of the Congressional Caste. He was a ruler of the Solarian Empire! It was right that she, a lowly slave, should have no rights. He took her. He raped her. It felt so good.
Everything went black.
[Process] [Termination] [Memory] [Insertion] [Six] [Initiation] [Process]
She was soft, and she was curvaceous.
A velvety layer of downy fur coated her exaggerated, hourglass proportions. Her fur was gray, and it was designed to absorb the relaxing oils she employed, that were her purpose in life, in fact, and deposit them smoothly upon the lightest caress. She loved to pet and be petted. She had been made for it.
She longer fought. She no longer wanted to fight. She accepted everything. The insertion was more real.
The softwhore’s surroundings were sumptuous. The massage room’s walls were made of solid gold; the ceiling was too, and all of it was etched with intricate baroque designs that flowed easily when traced by the eye and therefore helped contribute to a Master’s relaxation, as did the languid music playing in the background, the vanilla scent drifting in the air, Triton’s light lunar gravity, and, too, the genetic modifications performed on the softwhore. Everything was as it should be.
She had been born to fulfill her soothing function, and she would perform it well.
A Master lay on the central table. Warm lamps shown down on the naked skin of his back. The softwhore padded quietly across the room. The wall opened at her approach, also soundlessly, revealing two basins full of massage oil. The softwhore knelt at the basins and lowered her massive pleasure bags into each, soaking up the solution. She wriggled gently to avoid dripping, rose, and tiptoed to the waiting Master. She cooed at him—she was unable to speak, softwhores were a mute servitor caste—and lightly jumped onto the table. The weak gravity of the brothel moon allowed her to drift rather than land sharply. The Master on the table never stirred nor gave any hint he felt her settling on top, straddling him. She bent over, flexing her supple body.
She loved this part. It was what she did best.
Slowly, languorously, she pressed her balloon-sized mammaries into the Master’s back. Her nipples, like little fingers, each several centimeters in length, contracted, hardening, providing the pinpoint pressure necessary to accommodate her task.
The softwhore rubbed her oil-soaked, fur-laden breasts against the Master’s body. She squeezed her pleasure bags deep into the muscles of his shoulders and worked her way down, wriggling, squirming, making cooing sounds in his ear, easing the tension in his body. It felt so good to serve a Master. He was so deliciously male! Her arms held onto the table’s sides. Her feet were neatly placed in nodules worn from many repetitions of this task. Using her leverage, she pushed her massive mammaries onto him, spreading warmth and oil and love everywhere she went, from the top of his back to his delicious buttocks, sliding up and down, rotating her pleasure bags, driving her nipples into the proper nerve centers. The Master expressed a relaxed groan, and the softwhore felt her orgasm coming, and . . . .
“Enough!” The voice came out of nowhere. It was female and imperious. Everything—literally everything: the scene, the bioslave’s sense of herself, even her reality as a meaningless softwhore in a brothel amid the Outer Moons—suddenly faded and became a shadow.
[Process] [Termination]
The shadow darkened to an absolute black.
Pasqualina woke as if from a deep slumber. She tried to lift a hand to her face and found that she couldn’t. Her arm was stuck in something. She blinked several times in confusion.
There was a ringing in her ears that slowly faded. The world started to brighten and come into focus. Reality started to come back into focus.
“Lady Thane,” she eventually heard, coming around. “Her Magnificence . . . is unimpressed.”
Pasqualina looked about. She was back in the Imperatrix’s audience chamber. Had she ever left it? She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything. Have I been dreaming? the Thane asked herself.
The—what was the term used—“memory insertions” had seemed so real!
Standing near Pasqualina was the Greater Voice, looking resplendent in gold plate. The semi-nude Imperatrix stood slightly behind her servant, once more appearing remote and unapproachable.
One difference: the sovereign’s wrist, the same wrist she had used to stop the Thane’s super-strength blow, was encased in plaster. Holding Pasqualina back must have cost her several broken bones and dangerously twisted ligaments. Too late the Thane understood the advantages of Yn self-hypnosis.
“Despite your protestations,” the Greater Voice said, “ you are as much or more a slave than we! Your obedience and submission are engraved deep in your flesh, offworlder, or so the Brahma tell us.”
Pasqualina did not feel like herself. She was hot. Though she could not move, she could feel, and what she felt was randy, utterly and completely sexually charged. A vision from her dream or memory insertion or whatever it was came to her: of being fucked, of being held down and fucked, of being held down and fucked while a strong, delicious Master lay atop her, using her, filling her with his potency.
The Thane warrior moaned in heated lust. She wasn’t sure whether she was still dreaming or not.
She heard laughter. The crowd of Yn mistresses and slaves were gawking at her. Pasqualina felt a righteous anger and tried to move, but her arms and legs—her entire body from the neck down, in fact—was held in a soft yet unyielding, shiny black embrace. It didn’t take her long to recognize her plight.
She was trapped in the humongous cleavage of a Brahma drone!
The Thane had a sudden flash of what the human, Garrant, had undergone only four days ago, and she whimpered uncontrollably.
Release me, she tried to say, but the look the Greater Voice gave Pasqualina, magnified by the calm and imperious stare of the Imperatrix herself, brought forth once more that agonizing yet intensely joyful arousal from earlier. The saliva dried up in her mouth. Her nipples, smothered in the black synthetic flesh of the Brahma, tightened, and her pussy grew wet. What is she going to do to me? she thought.
She felt helpless. It was an unfamiliar emotion. In most mammalian species, the fight-flight response stimulated the brain’s locus ceruleus. Neuroreceptor rates increased. The person in danger became more alert and attentive. In Thanes, this biophysical reaction was skewed. Instead of constricting blood flow, decreasing salivation, and in general diminishing sexual arousal, their fight or surrender reflex actually increased their sexual arousal. When confronted with a physical or emotional threat, Thanes became more erogenously sensitive. Simply put, the sex was better for them when they were afraid.
This was the most secret of Thane secrets. Anyone outside of the Central Hierarchy who discovered this genetic weakness was ruthlessly eradicated. Why Pasqualina’s Revered Ancestors had allowed this fundamental flaw to creep into their design was a mystery. The heretical thought that it wasn’t a flaw at all but a deliberate modification, indicative of the kind of lives they meant their Thane descendants to have, had resulted in many savage purges over the centuries. Pasqualina abhorred the very idea.
It couldn’t be true. Could it? She tried to analyze the statistical probabilities, but the results scared her.
“It is all so obvious now,” the Greater Voice continued majestically. “The pattern is so clear in the retrospect. Your arrogant posturing . . . your contrived aggressiveness . . . your deliberate disrespect, all of it so carefully wrought to generate conflict. You wanted to instigate a struggle that, based on your reactions earlier and your body heat now, you so desperately wanted to lose.
“You wanted to be made a slave.”
“No,” Pasqualina managed to squeak. She shook her head as vehemently as the uber-voluptuous Brahma allowed.
“There can be no denial, offworlder. Your behavior before was so clearly an act. It was an act studiously performed, I grant you, so assiduously practiced, we are certain, part of you was consciously unaware of it. You have worn a mask so long, Lady Thane, you have forgotten you were wearing one.”
“No,” Pasqualina hissed in desperation. “I am not a slave. I don’t want to submit.” She had to ignore what the bitch was telling her. She could not allow herself to believe it.
The Thanes were not genetically programmed sex slaves. They were not! They couldn’t be!
The Imperatrix spoke. The audience and the Greater Voice alike bowed.
“You have no true wish to dominate. You have no true desire to control.”
The sovereign shook her translucently draped head, almost sadly. “You have been angry your entire life, offworlder. Your anger is written into your face. Your anger was apparent in your every action. You had the same look in your eyes my predecessor had when we dueled for the throne.”
The Imperatrix slowly approached the captive Thane.
“Anger is a loss of control. Anger divides. Anger weakens. Control is not shouting orders or abusing the helpless. It is not about inflicting pain. Control is achieving mastery over oneself, of knowing oneself so well that the weak come to you to be dominated. And that is why you came to me.”
No, Pasqualina thought. But she was so hot, so hot!
“You wanted me to conquer you. You wanted me to defeat you and make you my slave.”
Pasqualina pulled with every gram of strength at her disposal, with every genetically enhanced muscle, to no avail. The ink-black Brahma drone holding her between its breasts did not so much as budge. She turned her head at a noise and saw a second massively endowed drone bounce toward her slowly.
“Her Magnificence could have arranged with the Brahma your transformation into a Yn,” the Greater Voice of the Imperatrix said. The sovereign herself had resumed a watchful silence. “But since you made so clear how little you thought of us, she judged such a change would be inappropriate.”
The Thane gasped in horror. Beside the undulating Brahma drone, Pasqualina saw the pink pleasure drone she had earlier provided the Imperatrix. The walking fuckdoll was tall, beautiful, and blank.
“Her Magnificence wishes to express to you again her gratitude for the gift of the Solarian pleasure drone, Lady Thane. She wanted you to know that she enjoyed your toy so much, she could think of no reason she should not acquire a second, now that the opportunity presents itself.”
The Voice waved her hand in a grand gesture, smiling evilly. Pasqualina went paradoxically cold and hotter still.
The second Brahma, instead of assuming either a metallic gold or silver metastate, as the drones always did in preparation for resequencing a new lifeform, turned a bright and artificial pink!
Its pink was “pleasure drone pink,” the same shade of brilliant pink as the pleasure drone beside it.
The terraforming-resequencing drone jiggled toward the trapped Pasqualina, already turning liquid.
Pasqualina screamed.
“Usually, slave trials are not this involved,” the Greater Voice said. “The Brahma were able to match the DNA from donations taken from the original drone. While this process will not be quite the same as what I believe you may be used to in your Empire, it will serve.
“As will you.”
She stepped out of the way. The second Brahma, pinkly shining, brushed her gigantic breasts against the sister-drone holding the Thane warrior. They merged, the black substance of the first changing, assuming the same metastate. Pasqualina’s head was swallowed into the expanding pink mass.
She felt the pink Brahma-stuff bond with her skin until she and it were the same thing. Already, submerged in the transforming solution, she experienced the peculiar sensation of her face assuming the same bland perfection of every other pleasure drone in existence. And still, somehow, she managed to scream.
Because pleasure drones possessed no voice of their own, though, aside from the Brahma, the Thane’s outcry went unheard.