The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Author’s Note: This story is set in the same universe as “Drone,” though otherwise there is little connection with the characters and events of that serial. Call it writer laziness, but I worked out such a detailed setting background for “Drone,” I had to use it again.

Sacrifice

Helena stood tall and straight in the gray-paneled waiting chamber, displaying nothing of the anxiety and low-grade terror she felt. She did not tremble. Her posture was perfect. Her face was a model of stoicism. One of her two guards was lounging in a corner behind her, openly ogling her shapely form, so well displayed by the obscene dress the Earthers had sent her. The outfit was made of a white latex material, shiny and rubbery. Long and form-fitting, too, it left Helena’s dark arms bare but otherwise stretched from her throat to her feet, opening at waist level as a skirt. A gap in the middle exposed her legs as she walked as well as other portions of her anatomy Helena would have preferred to keep to herself. The semi-transparent nature of the dress showed off other things as well. The contrast against her black skin was startling, as was surely the intent. Besides the dress, she was permitted nothing else. Helena’s unshod feet rested uncomfortably on the floor. The guard in the corner cradled a thought-destroying pulse rifle in his arms, but he held it carelessly. His whole carriage showed disregard. His face was puffy with years of drug poisoning. A tube ran from the hole in his cheek to a packet on his glistening uniform shoulder, delivering narcotic continuously to his abused system. The second guard was hardly any better. He leaned against the wall in front of Helena and to her right. Though he had no intravenous feed, his features too showed the ravages of long-term, extensive drug use. He wasn’t looking at the young woman. He was too absorbed in himself, and Helena would have thought he was asleep had he not occasionally lifted his head to look blearily about. She had been waiting an hour.

Finally, the door to Helena’s left slid open with a hermetic hiss. A man entered. He was clearly a Citizen of Earth: perfumed, piggish of expression, and overly made-up, clad in an eye-offending jumble of reds, oranges, and blues. He wore tight pants and a loose shirt. His hair was sparse and oiled.

“You are Helena Harmonia Hsiao Saimo?” this harlequin asked. “Daughter of Chairwoman Polyxena Saimo?” He asked the question as if he didn’t already perfectly well know the answer.

Who else would I be, barbarian? Helena thought. She said yes. Despite her truthful answer, the Earther lifted a bioscan tool. A laser sting flashed Helena’s arm, too brief to be painful.

The man nodded. He must have recognized her DNA displayed on the tiny screen.

“Come with me.” Before they left, the Earther told the two guards to leave. “I don’t think we’ll need your help with this one. Report to Flesh Chamber 3.”

The guards’ eyes brightened with interest, the first real emotion Helena had seen them display. She didn’t care to think about the sort of things they did, and to whom they did them, in their unnatural and perpetual lusts for pleasure. “Follow me,” the higher ranking but no less dissolute Citizen repeated to her, and they left. Panic almost caused Helena to activate her Trigger, and it was only with the greatest practice that she managed to subside the lethal chemical reaction building in her blood and keep it from showing on her face. It wasn’t yet time. She didn’t want to waste the only weapon she had.

The floor beyond the sealed hatch was tiled and cold beneath Helena’s feet. The Earther acted unconcerned for his safety. He walked ahead of Helena without bothering to look behind, arrogantly confident that she would be following him. Helena could have struck his unprotected back any number of times, and she was tempted to do so. She restrained herself, though, again, knowing that if she did attack this man, there was nowhere she could run to escape, and the security when she was eventually captured would henceforward be more severe. She was already walking a delicate line. With any luck, she would be brought into the presence of the Earther governor, the leader of this installation, and at that moment she would strike. If at any time that no longer seemed liked a possibility, she would activate her other Trigger. She didn’t let herself consider the prospect of total escape anymore.

In every scenario she envisioned, her death was the only possible result.

The corridor was of a white plastic-like matter, like the dress. It had sound-absorbing qualities; their footsteps were hardly noticeable. The light was omnipresent, without visible source. Helena felt drowned in whiteness. Her exposed arms and head floated in nothingness. She looked in vain for a window to mar the blank perfection surrounding her. Now that she was inside the installation proper, there was nothing to indicate that she was on her planet’s moon. Even the gravity felt like Andromeda’s, an expensive luxury, though the Earthers could afford it. Helena’s eyes burned a hole in the Citizen’s back. She was so afraid, but her hate kept her focused. In short order, they reached a flaw in the pristine wall: an elevator. It opened silently at their approach, and without missing a beat the Earther stepped inside, waving Helena to accompany him. A moment later they were on their way.

Center yourself, Helena, the young woman whispered silently. Maintain your control. You’ve been trained. You’ve known your entire life this might happen. Maintain control, and when the opportunity presents itself, strike. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate. Just . . just let it happen.

She felt them, her Triggers, lying below the surface of her conscious mind. They were ready.

The only question was, was she?

After a few moments the door slid open. Helena blinked in surprise.

“You will wait here,” the Earther Citizen said to Helena. “Someone will fetch you. You may . . . relax.”

He smiled sardonically. The elevator closed after Helena stepped off. She could not make it open again. Sighing, biting back tears, she looked around at her new environment.

It was a large, oval-shaped suite. The ceiling and walls were a pastel color, coral pink. The floor was carpeted, also pink but in a brighter shade and in thick fibers that felt deliciously comfortable after the solidity of the elevator and corridor. There were lots of seats and couches, in various colors, all soft and amorphous, in appearance and texture less like pieces of furniture than blobs of squashy biogel and plushplastic. A little pressure would transform any of them into a place to sit or sleep. Sliding doors led to a lavatory with a bath; a smaller chamber with a central piece of shapeless furniture, obviously intended as a bed; and a closet surprisingly filled with an assortment of Andromedan fashion for women.

The outfits, all with a little inspection, were tailored to fit Helena’s generous figure. Some of the dresses looked quite nice, in fact, but Helena thought long and hard on whether or not she should change into any of them.

They wouldn’t have put them here if they hadn’t wanted to give me the choice, she thought, yet that in itself was enough to stall her. She hated what she had on, hated that it was the only thing she had on, that it felt slick and slippery and she was totally exposed beneath the skirt, but all the same, did she want to go along any further with whatever sick schemes the Earthers obviously had in mind for her?

Despite her discomfort, she remained as she was.

The suite’s main feature was a large picture window looking out upon the airless surface of her planet’s moon, Perseus. Above the paraterraforming complexes in the distance, Helena could see her home.

Mother, she spoke inside her head, gazing upon the beloved planet of her birth, unable to believe that she was not being listened to, I promise I’ll do my very best.

Helena’s homeworld, Andromeda, had been terraformed and colonized over a thousand years ago during what historians called the Great Expansionist Age. Dozens of star systems close to Sol were settled, most by philosophical dissidents ethically opposed to the unbridled genetic manipulations the Congress of Species was then, and still to this day, practicing. With travel at the speed of light made possible by tranships, the worlds of Alpha Centauri were the first to be transformed. Plato’s World, or Plato, simply, was the first extrasolar planet established. Andromeda, 19.4 light years from Sol, the second planet of Eta Cassiopeiae A, or “Cassi,” was one of the last. Helena’s home was a beautiful world, with rich oceans, four large continents, and a sky lit by not one but two suns, though the second, Eta Cassiopeiae B, or “Ceph,” was cool, dim, and distant and had little impact planetside. Andromeda was an idyllic world. For centuries Helena’s people had enjoyed every comfort in peace and tranquility. Their rulers were fair and just; there was no poverty; there was no war. And then, fifty years ago, the representatives of the decadent Solarian Empire had come back in force and overnight seized their moon. Since then they had dominated Andromeda, using the threat of randomizers, kinetic missiles, and biowarfare to get what they wanted. And what was it that these degenerate pirates wanted? What was it they had traveled nineteen years across space to seize from an innocent population? The Andromedan people’s dignity, mostly. The only land they took was Perseus, which they were gradually terraforming. Life on Andromeda remained much the same as it had always been, save that every year since the takeover a tribute of young men and women was shipped to Perseus never to return. What happened to these selectees was unclear, but it was presumed they were used for the Earthers’ twisted imaginations, their delight in perverse genetic engineering, their never-ending pursuit of carnal pleasure.

In celebration of the fiftieth year of their occupation, the Earthers had requested a “special” gift from the world they had so long ruled through terror. Helena was the daughter of the Planetary Chairwoman.

She had been separated from the rest of her year’s selectees upon arrival, for “special” consideration.

The elevator opened. As Helena turned from the window, a scandalously clad young woman stepped from the pod. Her ebony-black skin, epicanthic folds at the eyes, and honey-colored hair, much like Helena’s own, identified her as a fellow Andromedan. Two narrow bands of red cloth crossed at the girl’s throat and descended to conceal—barely—her large and luscious breasts. Another scandalous strip of material passed between the girl’s legs, narrowly covering her sex and her behind not at all.

The girl saw Helena staring at her, and she gracefully sank to her knees, smiling. “Welcome mistress,” she said. “My name is Lysia, and I’m here to serve you.”

“I . . I do not require your service,” Helena said, startled. “Please leave.”

The girl shook her head regretfully. “I’m sorry, mistress, but I cannot leave. I was sent here by my masters to see to your comfort and to help prepare you for your impending enslavement.” Blinking on her temples, just below the hairline, Helena saw two small metallic studs, each no more than a few millimeters in diameter. She recognized the redly flashing attachments as interface connections. Helena shuddered. The small devices, she knew, extended deep into the girl’s brain. They had been inserted by the Earthers. Her fellow Andromedan wore accessories that identified her as a piece of property.

“Please, get up,” Helena said. She went to the girl and helped her to her feet. Her skin was soft and silky, with a rich healthy underglow. She was, even with those degrading slave marks adorning her, absolutely beautiful, perhaps even, as a part of Helena considered in the back of her mind, more beautiful because of them. They served as contrast, highlighting the loveliness that was already there.

“You poor, poor creature,” Helena said, guiding the girl to a shapeless mass of furniture. She handled her as if she were made of glass. Ethical Ladies, what this girl must have endured, Helena thought.

A wave of sadness came over her. How long had this woman suffered in the hands of the Earthers?

“Thank you, mistress,” the girl, Lysia, said. Helena put her in the seat, but as she rose again, the girl dropped to the floor, obviously unwilling, or perhaps unable, to sit while another stood over her.

Helena helped her up again and sat beside Lysia, holding her hands. “What have they done to you?” she asked, her voice outraged. “How long have you been kept here, you poor thing?”

“I have been a slave six glorious years, mistress.”

Helena squeezed her hands in sisterly support. “You don’t have to call me that. You’re not a slave.”

Lysia sank slowly off of the seat, shaking her head again in polite denial. “I am a slave, mistress. I am nothing but a slave. And you are my mistress, until you too have savored the joys of submission.”

Helena frowned. “You don’t have to act like a slave around me,” she said.

“But I am not acting, mistress. I am a slave, born to obey my masters.”

“Um, no, that’s not right,” Helena said. She stood up, and Lysia bowed her head even more so. “You are a free person. A free citizen taken unjustly from Andromeda.”

“No, mistress. I am sorry to contradict you, but I am a slave, a slave joyously conquered, a slave who has been shown her rightful place in the universe, serving in blissful and perpetual submission to my masters, the same masters you too will learn the joy of serving on your knees and on your back.”

Her expression as she said this was radiance itself.

Unnerved, Helena sat down. “That’s horrible. Don’t say that, please, it’s horrible. You can’t really believe that, can you?”

“It is the truth, mistress, a truth you too will discover when your body is so gloriously violated, as mine first was six years ago. I envy mistress her first rape.” She lowered her face to the floor. “Would mistress like to partake of food or drink while she waits for her enslavement, or would she care to enjoy the many delicious pleasures my worthless but highly trained body can provide?”

Oh Ethical Ladies, guide your lost daughters, Helena invoked. The Earthers had twisted her mind, convinced this poor creature that she was their helpless slave. Her insistence that Helena was going to soon join her was unsettling.

“No,” Helena said, “I am not hungry.” She stepped up away from the girl, not enjoying in the slightest towering over her, and sat on another plushplastic chair. It molded itself for her comfort, vainly.

“I . . I do not want your service.”

Lysia rose to her knees. “I understand, mistress. Mistress still has dignity, honor, and shame, and she is under the impression that I still share those traits.” She stood, beautifully. “I do not. Those things were taken from me by my beloved masters, at the same time as my freedom, and I do not miss them, and neither will you when you are enslaved with me, mistress.” She lowered her head.

“I have been instructed to obey you. How may I serve you?”

The way she spoke that question, the plaintive note in her voice, conveyed her need for direction.

Helena took a deep breath. She did not want to abuse this girl, though she was clearly clamoring for abuse. She was not in control of herself, and to Helena’s mind, giving this girl an order which because of her mental state she had no ability to refuse was tantamount to rape. That she was likely going to be the instrument of this poor woman’s death as well, and the death of countless other enslaved souls on this moon, only made Helena feel worse.

Still, this was an opportunity to gain information, if she could trust anything this slave said to her. Helena knew Lysia’s presence here was designed to discomfort her. They had to be under surveillance. So, how to phrase her questions so as not to reveal her true purpose? Hmmm . . .

“Tell me where you come from, Lysia.”

“Thank you, mistress. I am told I came from Nereidon. ‘Lysia’ is a Nereidoni name, and I can only presume that I was one of the girls randomly selected after I came of age to be sent to Perseus.” She shrugged then. “I have no memories of my wasted existence on Andromeda, though, mistress.”

“Why is that?” Helena thought she already knew, but she wanted to hear it from the girl’s own lips.

Lysia smiled. She pointed to the blinking dots on her forehead. “I was erased, mistress, and a new personality implanted. It’s what will happen to you as well, unless our masters decide you would best serve them by being made a mindless pleasure drone. Then they will just encase you in a slaveskin and be done with it.” Helena gasped, but Lysia just kept talking. “But I don’t think that’s likely. You are an important person, the daughter of the Planetary Chairwoman, so I think our masters will have a special fate in mind for you.” She beamed happily. “What else would you like to know, mistress?”

Nothing, Helena thought, clenching a fistful of biogel in fury. Yet it was what she had expected. The Citizens of Earth enjoyed destroying minds. It turned them on. Lysia said she was from Nereidon. Thirty years ago, the Nereidoni had tried to fight the overlords of Perseus. They were made an example of. Randomizer pulses were used. On a low setting, the electromagnetic signals merely temporarily scramble brainwaves, resulting in a short-lived stupor. The Earthers had bombarded Nereidon with high-intensity pulses for hours. Over ten thousand people were permanently rendered idiots, most so functionally disabled they had problems feeding and relieving themselves thereafter. Never again had an Andromedan community attempted armed rebellion. Public sentiment since then had overwhelmingly favored appeasement. That was only one of many reasons why Helena’s mission was so secret.

“What . . what happened to you after you became a . . slave?” Helena didn’t want to know, but at the same time she had to know. “What exactly do you do here?”

“Mistress is being deliberately naïve, I think. Or modest. I am not permitted modesty. To answer mistress’ question, I am a sex slave. After I was programmed, I was granted the sublime privilege and utmost pleasure of being raped by a group of Earth personnel. They violated me in ways that I still shudder to recall.” She clutched at herself and shivered. “I never knew the human body could assume so many positions, or that there were so many different ways to give pleasure to a man. I was a virgin, you see, and very innocent.” She giggled. “Would mistress like me to describe the event in detail?”

“Ladies, no! Just . . just stand there and be silent, please.”

“Yes, mistress.” Helena put a hand to her brow and closed her eyes. This wasn’t working. She was just making herself upset, and besides, she knew the Earthers would never provide her any way to get useful information. She looked up at Lysia. Seeing that she was under inspection again, the girl lifted her chest toward Helena, a perky expression on her face. She seems so happy, Helena thought. Is it right what I’m going to do to her? Her resolve hardened. Yes, she answered herself. Whoever you were before you were enslaved, Lysia, you would want to be free. No matter what you say now, deep inside, I know you want to be free. She gulped lightly. And I will do that. I will set you free.

The ultimate freedom. Helena’s Triggers quivered inside her at the thought, waiting to be used.

The people of Andromeda may have disdained genetic manipulation, save to correct inherited disorders and similar flaws, but that didn’t mean they were ignorant of the practice. They were “new humans,” after all, not “old humans.” They were genetically enhanced for health and aesthetics, though nowhere near as reengineered as the castes of Sol System were. And they had devised their own techniques for the manipulation of body tissue. In preparation for her eventual trip to Perseus, Helena had had two subtle “triggers” encoded within her chemistry, either of which she could set off through the biofeedback techniques in which she had been trained. Her first Trigger was the simple one. Helena could stop her heart on command, so quickly she could be dead before her body could hit the floor. At the same time, her brain’s motor pathways would be depolarized, her cerebral cortex ruined, making any recovery effort fruitless. This was Helena’s failsafe. She and her mother had agreed long ago. Helena would not allow the savage Earthers the opportunity to amuse themselves with her. She would rather die first.

Her second Trigger was similar but more explosive, literally. Using secretion sacs hidden throughout her body, all completely undetectable, Helena could brew a volatile compound in her bloodstream, the resulting chemical several orders of magnitude greater than nitroglycerin. She would die, of course, but in doing so she would produce an explosion more than powerful enough to take out everything and everyone in her immediate vicinity. Helena’s hope was that she would be taken before Perseus’ governor and his staff before she was enslaved. It was not so unrealistic an expectation. She and her mother had anticipated that the Earthers would want to humiliate her. But though the explosion would be the immediate and most shocking effect, the real consequences would only be felt later. If the plan worked, Helena’s world might once more be free. It was a long shot, but Helena had volunteered for it, she and her mother knowing full well that the Earthers would sooner or later be sending for her.

Helena’s inborn explosion would of course cause her death, but it would at the same time stimulate the release of a specially engineered class of oxygen-bonding prions, abnormal and highly infectious protein molecules, which, upon infecting any biological tissue with which they came into contact, would do two things: stop all neuroelectric activity in the organism, causing that organism’s death; and, second, cause their infected tissue to produce more prions, such that the infection would spread, ad infinitum. If released on Andromeda, her mother’s experts predicted that all life on their planet would be dead within a matter of hours. If released on Perseus, within the large interconnected domes making up the paraterraformed surface of the satellite, the effect would be even faster, possibly within minutes if there was a central air supply Helena could infect with her explosion. The prions would decay quickly, as they were designed to. Within a week, Perseus would be habitable again, leaving all of the Earthers’ resources on it to the Andromedan people, in anticipation of when a new group of savages from the Congress of Species returned. They would use their own weapons and technology against them.

Helena did not want to die. But she was willing to give her life if her homeworld could be free.

It would be, as she saw it, in the greater scheme of things, a small sacrifice to pay for liberty.

The waiting was the hard part. Hours passed. With each minute, Helena’s unease grew. Had they discovered her biochemical Triggers? Was she being kept in isolation? Lysia kept asking what she could do to serve the young woman. Her mood was perfect happiness, perfect servility.

It was grating.

Eventually, the elevator pod slid open, and three people were disgorged. The short one in the middle Helena instantly identified as an Earth Citizen. He was an unattractive man. They all were. His eyes and nose were too small for his face, and his ears too large and dangling. His dark hair was oiled and slicked back from his forehead, thereby drawing an unpleasant focus to that over large and pale expanse of flesh. His garments were gaudy and brightly colored; his pants were tight enough to clearly delineate the shape of his organ. He was smiling at Helena in that strangely arrogant but sleazy manner she and every other Andromedan she knew associated with Earth Citizens. The women accompanying him were very different. Whereas he was short and scrawny, they were tall and brawny, their muscles flexing ominously as they strode in. Where the Citizen’s wardrobe was garish and complex, they wore simple skintight bodysuits of the shiniest white, a little like what Helena herself currently had on. The outfits even further showed off their physiques, rock-hard and sculpted biceps, stomachs, and figures which Helena did not usually associate with femininity. The women’s hair was cut short bristle-fashion, one blond, the other red. They were Soldiers, female counterparts to the all-male Citizenry of Earth, and they did not smile. They carried no weapons to intimidate Helena. They didn’t need any.

Lysia submissively went to her hands and knees before the Citizen, then rose half-way again and spread her legs wide in an obscene pose. The trio took no obvious note of her presence.

Helena felt chilled. It begins . . . she thought. A part of her was relieved.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the man said, his voice rolling off his tongue with slimy extravagance. “I am Citizen Ivlari Dar representing the Governor-Select of the esteemed Congress of Species of the grand Solarian Empire sent to shepherd the insignificant Andromeda system and its denizens.”

He made a half-bow even the manner of which Helena found insulting.

“Are you the head of this installation?” she asked. If he was, then she could activate her Second Trigger right now! Dar rose to full height, which was not much compared to the giants flanking him.

“Alas, no. I am merely Governor Vel’s, ah, assistant. We will be joining him presently.”

He smiled cheesily.

Though she did not show it, Helena was disappointed by the news. She would have to endure longer their sordid presence. The young Andromedan really did not want to die, but she did want to strike as hard a blow as she could against the Earthers, and if that meant she need sacrifice her life, so be it. She was also, of course, very afraid, though again her training well hid this. She was afraid her mission might fail, she was afraid of what the Earthers would do to her and her world, she was afraid of becoming as abject and pitiable a creature as Lysia.

“You did not change your clothes, Lady Andromedan,” the noxious Dar continued. “But why not, my dear?” He simpered. “Surely you wanted to look your best for your appointment with the governor and our enslaving tools?” The Soldiers smiled thinly.

“I spit on your governor and his degrading technologies, and I spit on you as well!”

And Helena did so, directing her outburst at the Citizen’s feet. Surprisingly, the Soldiers laughed, apparently impressed by the futile gesture. Dar said and did nothing for a long moment. Then he smiled and ordered Lysia to lick his boots clean. She crawled over at once to do so.

“Monster!” Helena yelled, aghast at the sight of the lovely but helpless woman humiliating herself. “Enemy of life!” She rushed forward to strike at him only to be grabbed and held fast by the two much taller Soldiers. They were very strong. Each of them could have taken her over a knee and broken her in two. As it was, they held Helena powerless.

“You struggle well, my dear,” the loathsome Earth creature said as she was turned to face him. “I wonder how well you will squirm in my arms later, after you have been educated in your new lot in life.”

He laughed, and Helena was outraged, screaming in her fury. She stopped only when she saw that it was useless and she felt the first stirrings of her Triggers rising within her. There were only three of them here. Only three, and none of them the governor. She must not waste her one and only strike!

The blond Soldier put her hand thickly into Helena’s hair and pulled her head high. “You will make a good slave,” she said to her captive. “You have passion.”

“Such pretty locks,” the redhead contributed, studying Helena’s hair. “It seems almost a shame to see them go.” Her tone was less than serious.

“Enough,” Dar said. “The governor awaits.” He snickered. Ignoring Lysia’s plaintive cry—She hadn’t finished licking!—the Earther led the three women, one a prisoner, to the elevator.

Helena glanced at her companions in the traveling pod. The Citizen was a full head shorter than she. The Soldiers were a good head taller. The elevator stopped after a few seconds and deposited them at one end of a long gray chamber. A large metallic chair sat at the corridor’s end, its foot and armrests each nearly a third of a meter in diameter. Its design was blocky, all hard edges and a square seat.

A disturbance was going on. From an adjoining hallway, a pair of uniformed men were carrying a struggling young woman in and forcing her into the massive chair. She was an Andromedan, like herself, and Helena recognized her from their trip together from the planet’s surface. She couldn’t remember the girl’s name, but she had said she was from Athstyx Island, from a small community near Iribacium.

She had sat the whole shuttle trip hand-in-hand with her man, the two of them staring into each other’s eyes. Now, she was fighting the Earth men with every bit of strength she had, fruitlessly as it turned out.

Above the chair, a massive cylinder descended from the ceiling, tapering toward the bottom. There was an ominous hole in the cylinder there. It looked like the opening of a water valve, and the set-up appeared as if it had been designed to inundate the head and body of anyone seated. Facing the hulk of a chair, two upright consoles stood a few meters to either side, near the walls. At each stood a technician. As the Soldiers frog-marched Helena forward, she saw both had narcotic drip implants in their cheeks, like her guard from earlier. Though they monitored their respective stations more or less adequately, it seemed, they both looked high on drugs. Their expressions were drunken and mean.

“Ah,” Dar said. “She must be the last one from this shipment.”

Helena groaned. What was the girl’s name? She couldn’t remember. Someone told her back on the shuttle that the man she had been seated with was her boyfriend. His name was Aeson, Helena remembered. He had volunteered to take another boy’s place just so that he could accompany his girlfriend. They had made a lovely couple. But for the life of her, Helena couldn’t remember the girl’s name!

Most boys, she had heard, were turned into worker drones here.

Was he somewhere even now serving the Earthers in that crude form?

Dammit, what’s your name? The girl was screaming for help. It didn’t seem right to ask her.

A female slave knelt in one corner, silent, waiting. She too was an Andromedan and dressed like Lysia. Unlike Lysia, though, she was completely bald. Her bare head shined. Helena shivered.

What kind of hell had they been sent to?

Kicking and screaming, the girl was strapped into the bulky chair. The equipment dwarfed her, making her seem even smaller and weaker than she was. Once in place, the ceiling-mounted cylinder was leisurely lowered onto the top of her head. The tapered end encircled her brow, and then stopped!

The girl whimpered. The ring at the end of the cylinder tightened loosely about her forehead, leaving only enough space between the girl’s scalp and the device for her hair to fall through loosely. She was crying in her terror, but so far as Helena could see, she was in no actual physical agony. She was trapped, but she was not being tortured, physically, at least. It was torture mentally, and the Earthers to either side of Helena were obviously excited by it. The girl’s face was visible from the eyebrows on down. Above that, the entire top of her head, the big machine had completely engulfed her. She sat like a bug beneath an old-fashioned microscope, the narrow end with the lens having swallowed her.

The cylinder made a soft chug-chugging noise. The girl, who had quieted slightly in the amazement of her predicament once she had realized she was still alive and aware, yelled out.

I can stop this, Helena thought, watching from the side in despair. I can use my Second Trigger and blow us all up, right now. The girl’s eyes widened in fear and unexpected sensations. They rolled upwards. She could apparently feel something happening to her head beneath the cylinder, a machine Helena now recognized as being but a very large and complicated helmet. The girl cried out again.

Helena knew she could end her suffering. But though she wanted so much to help this fellow victim of the Earthers, Helena chose not to use her Trigger yet. It wasn’t time. She could still do more damage later on, when the governor arrived. I’m sorry, Helena thought, trying to meet the unfortunate girl’s eyes and extend to her her sympathy. But she was in her own world.

A remarkable thing occurred. Her hair started to withdraw into the helmet, as if some mechanism inside was gathering it up. Again, Helena saw no pain in the girl’s eyes and in her protests. She was afraid, naturally, mortally afraid for her life and sanity, but no more than that. Her hair was not being yanked or pulled out at the roots, which had been Helena’s first thought. It was simply being drawn into the cylinder, centimeter by centimeter, as if vacuumed.

The girl in the chair saw it happening to herself and was obviously as perplexed by it as Helena. Her typically Andromedan long and luscious blond locks were sucked slowly in. Finally, they disappeared altogether. The collapsing ring tightened around her brow afterwards, now touching her skin. She was held absolutely still in its grip.

The machine kept chug-chugging along.

Helena looked around. Dar was touching himself obscenely. The Soldiers were smiling. The Andromedan sobbed. A few seconds later the hellish machine stopped. The girl, mouth moving silently in terror, gasping for breath, was still crying. The ring about her brow widened, and the cylinder was pulled back toward the ceiling again.

Helena gasped.

The first thing she noticed, of course, was that the machine had left the girl completely bald!

There was no trace of her old hair, no trace of any of the hair which had been sucked into the machine. The girl’s scalp was utterly hairless. Her bald skin shone, gleaming in the processing room’s overhead lamps. Her skin tone was undimmed, unblemished, the same dark complexion as everywhere else.

The second and more important change Helena saw were the two redly flashing interface connections in the girl’s temples. They were just like the ones Lysia had implanted in her head. The girl in the chair screamed in horror as she realized she was bald. She apparently hadn’t noticed or felt the presence of the studs in her head. Insertion must have been painless, Helena thought. And bloodless. There was no swelling around the skin, no scars, just two small metallic objects poking through the skin of her denuded scalp. For all that they had just been put in, they looked as if they had been there for years.

The listless technician at the console looked at Citizen Dar.

“Cleanse her, then insert a standard slave matrix,” the Earther official said. “Make her a common slut.”

“Leave her alone, you inhuman monster!” Helena screeched, and Dar chuckled. “Soon it will be your turn in the chair, once the governor arrives,” he said. The technician pressed a single control.

From the chair’s back arose two flexing cables, their shapes and movements so reminiscent of serpents Helena expected to see fangs at each end instead of the flashing red lights that were there instead. The flashes blinked in syncopation with the interface connections in the girl’s head. The cables were drawn toward them as if magnetically. From the corners of her eyes the occupant of the chair saw the metallic snakes angle towards her, and she let out the loudest of her screams yet, yet totally in vain.

There was no way to avoid their attack. The cables darted in, one to each side. They joined with the temple connections and locked. In a flash, the girl in the chair was connected. Her brain, through the union of the interface attachments and dual cables, was now linked directly to the evil apparatus.

“No,” Helena whispered, horrified beyond words.

There was a surge of power from the mechanism. The girl’s eyes widened in overwhelming fear and misery. Her mouth opened to let out one final scream . . . and nothing. No, Helena thought. Before her eyes, the total fright in the girl’s face smoothed out to be replaced by a look of . . . confusion.

Her arms and legs stopped thrashing inside their restraints. Her hitching breath eased. The confused expression she wore became instead a dazed and vacant look. The light in the girl’s eyes faded.

Her mouth opened in a witless gape.

What Helena saw was sickening in its entirety. Where a young and vital young woman had been sitting just moments before, she saw now a vegetable, a mindless husk drained of all essence and animation.

The flesh before her was unchanged, but the mind was gone.

She had been, in the words of the corrupt Citizen Dar, “cleansed.”

Terrible as this deed was, the machine’s work was far from complete. Another surge of power raced through the unspeakable engine, and a new, shocking expression formed in the occupant’s face. It was shocking because it was happy! Joyful, dreamy, and serene! Within a matter of moments, seconds, really, the expression worn by the woman in the chair had gone from one extreme to the other, from overpowering fear and anxiety to blank confusion and emptiness to now utter serenity and peace.

For the first time, the girl in the chair smiled.

It was a smile of utter contentment, of total warm bliss. The cables disconnected on their own and slid smoothly back into the chair. The technicians came forward and released the girl’s restraints.

She stood, swayed for a moment like a newborn animal, then, upon noticing the other people in the room, gasped and fell at once to her knees. She spread her legs and thrust her breasts toward Dar, the clear authority in the room. “Master,” she breathed heavily, her face full of sudden lust and adoration.

The Soldiers laughed.

“Master,” the girl repeated reverently, as if she had tasted the word and found it good. “How may this nameless slave serve you, my master?”

Helena bridled. The Earther saw and none-too-gently nudged her. “Soon, that will be you on the floor, begging so to serve.” The Andromedan was so furious she almost lost control of her Triggers then.

Center, she thought desperately. Center. The blood-fever rising in her veins slowed.

Dar turned to the technicians. “Name?” he asked peremptorily.

“Her name was Frona, sir. Surname . . .”

“Unimportant,” Dar interrupted. He turned to the girl Frona (That was her name, Helena thought, remembering finally, now too late) and addressed her. “You are Frona. Go with this slave for preparation, then report to Flesh Chamber 6 for your first ravishment.”

He grinned. “Are you looking forward to your first ravishment?” he asked.

“Yes, master,” the new slave, ‘Frona,’ said, her voice and demeanor now full of lust. She had been given her old name as a joke, as a further humiliation on the person she had been. “I look forward to pleasing the men here with my body. All that I am is yours to do with as you see fit.”

So different was she from the sobbing girl from before!

“And why is that?” Dar asked of her. Leave her alone, you monster, Helena thought.

“Because I am a slave, master. I have always been a slave, and I shall always be a slave.”

She looked up at the Citizen with a strange expression, a contradictory combination of coyness and utter sensuality. “Master, may I ask a question?”

Dar said yes. “Master, am I a virgin?” the new slave then asked. She doesn’t know, Helena realized. For all intents and purposes, this . . this ‘person’ was born only a few minutes before!

She was sickened.

One of the technicians nodded to the official. “Yes.”

Frona beamed. “Then my first use will also be my first use!” she said happily, her voice indicating this was a dream come true. “Will the men I serve be pleased more by my tenderness?”

Again Dar said yes. “They like nothing better than to rape virgin-sluts like you,” he said.

Ethical Ladies, I cannot stand it. Helena wept. Get her out of here. Get her out!

The fates perhaps finally heard her. The slave that had been waiting quietly in the corner came over, touched Frona on the shoulder, and led her out of the room. The enslaving machine sat ominously as all eyes turned toward Helena. “It’s time,” one of the Soldiers said, in a tone of happy wickedness.

No choice now but to do it, Helena thought. I have to use my Trigger now. She could not afford to end up like poor Frona.

She looked around. At least I’ll take these monsters with me! She took a deep breath and was about to cue the biochemicals in her blood when the elevator pod again slid open with a loud jar.

“Ah, governor,” Dar said, clapping his hands. “For a minute I thought we’d have to start without you!”

The station’s governor! Helena grasped. He’s here! She slowed the explosive reaction. She had to see him. She had to see the monster that ran this place before she destroyed him!

In a way, it was disappointing. Helena had almost expected fangs. But like every other Citizen she had seen, in person or in image, the Governor of Perseus was merely a short and rather funny-looking man, and only a man. Considering the genetic and surgical manipulations at their disposal, for which they were infamous, that the Citizens were so universally homely must have meant something. Perhaps the rumors were true, and the Citizens and Soldiers of Earth were themselves slaves to a higher, undoubtedly even more corrupt authority. The only significant differences between the newcomer and Dar were that the former’s lips were thinner and his eyebrows bushier. His rouge was thicker, too.

He was accompanied by his own pair of mighty Soldier bodyguards.

“I had pressing business,” the governor said. He stepped closer and examined Helena. “So. This is Chairwoman Saimo’s daughter.” He looked her up and down salaciously. “Most impressive, but shouldn’t she be on her knees before me?”

Dar started. “You’re right. Soldiers.”

Dar’s bodyguards forced Helena to kneel. They forced her head back too until it hurt.

She snarled in her anger.

This is the tyrant that rules my world, Helena thought. She let the blood-fever swell. Two Citizens, four Soldiers, some drug-addicted technicians, and an accursed slaving machine, she observed.

And that’ll only be the start. The prions would make sure Andromeda’s strike would last. It was worth it. She did not want to die. But there were worse things than death.

And better. Honor, Helena thought. And my world’s freedom.

“I have a surprise for you bastards,” she said, struggling to voice herself with the hands of the Soldiers on her. She wanted her voice to be the last they ever heard.

The governor’s bushy eyebrows lifted. He appeared comically horrified. “Such language, and from such a proper young woman!” Then, more snidely, he added, “I thought the Andromedans trained their women better.”

Helena had had a speech prepared, a brief but meaningful statement full of rhetoric and venom. But now that the moment had come, she improvised. “You see me down on my knees, monsters, but in the end, it is you and your people that shall kneel before a higher authority.”

Helena raised herself up as far as she could.

“My people and I stand higher than thou!” She yelled out. “I bring death upon you! And JUSTICE!!!”

She screamed it. The blood-fever peaked. The chemical cues activated . . .

. . . or should have activated.

Yet nothing happened. Nothing.

No sudden burst of white. No detonation of noise. Nothing.

The Earthers looked upon her comically. The lips of one of the Soldiers began to quiver.

Helena was . . . stunned. What? she thought. What?

Suddenly, as if a dam had burst, the Earthers all started laughing together. Their chortles were high, derisive, and mocking, and just like that Helena knew. They had known about her Triggers! They had known, and they had played her! They had been playing her all along!

The governor turned to Dar. “Was that all right, sir?” he asked.

“Excellent, Vel. Truly excellent. You portray me better than me!” They kept laughing. The four Soldiers, after a brief cackle, had resumed their air of cruel unconcern.

“You!?” Helena impulsively asked. “You’re the Governor of Perseus?” Dar nodded, tears in his eyes from laughing so hard. “But why!? Why all the pretense!?”

“To fool you, of course,” Governor-Select Dar of the Solarian Empire said to the now trembling girl kneeling at his feet. “To keep you from trying to use your precious Triggers too soon. If you had known I was in charge, you would have tried blowing us all up some time ago!”

He winked at her. “And that would have ruined the game.”

He turned to the false governor. “Activate the chemipanel. Then you can go. I’ll finish here.”

“Yes, sir.” The man nodded to the technicians. One of them dazedly touched his console. The wall behind him came to life: an image formed within its depths. Seeing what was displayed there, Helena cried out in shock and pain.

It was herself that she saw! It was herself, footage apparently taken from before, though she had no memory of any of it. Helena saw herself, in this very room, being dragged kicking and screaming, very much like the girl, and now servile sex slave, Froma, and secured into the enslaving chair.

She saw the ceiling-mounted helmet descend to cover her head.

“No,” she whispered. “No. This is . . this is impossible.”

“Very possible,” Citizen Dar said. “I suspected your mother might try an attempt at resistance, but to fix her own daughter so as to turn her into a living bomb!” He shook his head, not in amazement but appreciation. “A brilliant strategy! Quite admirable, though of course doomed to failure. I had the entire shuttle randomized before it docked, and while you and your fellow passengers were unconscious, I had you medically examined. We found . . . anomalies.” He smiled.

“It took days to find all the chemical cues in your blood and endocrine system. Your physicians are to be commended. They found entirely new ways to fool our sensors, though with time and your help we found what we were looking for.”

“My help!?” Helena cried out, not understanding. “But . . but I would never help you. Never!!”

“But you did, and quite forthcoming you were, after some adjustments.” He pointed to the wall-sized chemipanel. The Helena showed there from the unremembered was still struggling in her restraints.

The great helmet lifted, and though her hair on the screen remained undamaged and existent, the same kind of small interface attachments that had been drilled into poor Froma’s skull earlier were revealed also as having been drilled into her scalp as well!

“You may remember,” Dar commanded, speaking portentously.

Something seemed to shift inside the young Andromedan. Helena reached up instinctively to her temples, and though she could not remember seeing them earlier, or feeling them, horrorstruck, her fingers now brushed against the cold metal implants, one to each side.

They had been drilled into her brain. They had been drilled into her brain, and she had been made to forget and ignore it! She remembered them now.

“NOO!!” Helena screamed. She tried to stand up, but the single Soldier holding her continued to do so effortlessly. “Noo!! It can’t be!! It can’t be!!!”

“But it is,” Dar said, bending down to her level. “You are a slave, Helena Harmonia Hsiao Saimo.” He stood again. “You have been a slave for the last week, just long enough for us to verify all that you told us about your chemical cues.” And he gestured.

On the screen, the mind-altering, mind-erasing cables snaked out and descended onto Helena’s interface attachments. Helena saw herself go limp. She saw her face lose all expression, become as vapid and empty a thing as Froma had been earlier. Like Froma, she too had been made a vegetable!

As if to emphasize this, Helena saw Dar step into the picture from outside of view. He approached the blank figure in the chair, lifted her head, and then turned both their faces toward the recorder.

“Say hello to everyone,” the Dar-from-the-past said. “Say hello to yourself, my dear Helena.”

“Agggh,” the automaton in the chair grunted. It was a simple vocalization only, one caused by an autonomic reaction alone. No thought was conveyed. No thought existed. She was a empty.

The blank, soulless eyes of that living doll stared into Helena’s own.

She was a mirror of vapidity.

“No,” Helena-of-now repeated. “No.” She wept, and the cruel Earthers laughed at her.

“We recorded your persona before erasing you,” Dar said, barely heard. “We then reprogrammed you with your old set of memories but with a more deferential, slightly more obedient personality. Would you like to see?” Helena did not react. She could not react.

Dar shrugged and went on. “You told us about everything that had been done to you. Then, once you were examined and finally declared safe, we erased you a second time and reinserted your original memories, suitably edited, of course.” He snickered. “Your actions today are what they would have been a week ago, had your original plan gone through unchanged.” He clapped his hands. “Well done, by the way. Well done.”

No Triggers, Helena thought. No safety net. Nothing. Despair filled her heart. He’s going to turn me into a slave now, just like Froma. Just like Lysia. She looked up at the Earth monster.

“I hate you,” she said, with all the venom she could muster, the tears still flowing down her face. “I hate you, and one day I’ll kill you. We’ll kill you, all of Andromeda will kill you!”

Dar just stood there amused. Finally, he smiled slowly. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I think that very soon, within the next several minutes, in fact, you will be a hot and obedient slave whose only desires will be to suck and to fuck and to please and to serve.” Behind him, the elevator pod opened.

Lysia walked out along with a drug-addicted technician.

“Ah, your proctor has arrived,” Dar said. “We’re ready then.” As they came closer, the Citizen reached out and pulled away the blond mane still covering Lysia’s head. It was a wig. Beneath it, naturally, she was as bald as any other slave here. Like the slave she would soon be.

“That’s better,” Dar said. “Far more suitable.”

“Thank you, master,” Lysia whispered, and knelt to kiss the Citizen’s boots.

Dar scratched behind her ear, and she cuddled him. “Put her in the chair,” he ordered.

And so once again a kicking and screaming young Andromedan maiden was secured into the soul-draining device, into a machine that would empty her and remold what was left into a slave.

Helena fought, she bit, she cried, and then she was secured. The helmet descended.

I’m sorry, Mother, Helena cried out inside. I’m sorry I failed you.

The ring was cold as it wrapped around her scalp, for a second time now, Helena realized. Chug-chug. Chug-chug. She felt something like fingers on the top of her head. The sensation was, in a way, very much like a massage. It was not at all painful. Under different circumstances, it could even have been described as soothing. But it was not soothing this time. Helena wept as she saw her beautiful hair withdraw into the helmet. She was being denuded, permanently. She was going to be a slave.

In time, the helmet lifted. The air felt cool and strange on her bare head. Helena thought of home. She closed her eyes, and so she did not see the cables coming for her. She heard Dar laughing, though.

The cables stung as they connected. Helena thought.

I am Helena Harmonia Hsiao Saimo. I am an Andromedan, and I am free.

“I am Helena Harmoni- . . ,” she tried to say, but a bolt of nothingness interrupted her words, and after that they were no longer important.

* * *

“It should fit snugly enough to show off your body, but at the same time your Master should be able to remove it with just a tug.”

Lysia helped arrange the new slave’s red garment.

“Thank you,” Helena said and really meant it. She was so happy to be a slave! Lysia was such a good proctor, too! She had brought Helena to this nice bedroom with a view of the moon and showed her so many good things to better serve their Masters. The proctor slave had also told her things, incredible things, like that she had once been resistant to the idea of becoming a slave.

She had apparently even resisted her Master!

It seemed incredible, very idea. Totally unbelievable.

The door behind Helena hissed open. Automatically, both she and Lysia fell to their knees.

Master Dar entered the room. The sheer sight of him sent a hot wave of desire coursing through Helena. He was so virile and powerful. How could her former self have not perceived how handsome and majestic he had been before? All men seemed as gods to her.

He approached the two slaves. Both turned to him and opened their thighs, bowed their heads.

“Master,” Helena said as humbly as possible. Lysia did likewise.

“Helena,” Master Dar said, and Helena’s love for him increased with the sublime sound of her name on his lips. Her heart fluttered madly. Her sex grew instantly wet. “I see that you are a slave now.”

“Yes, Master,” she said. “Thank you, Master, for the blessing of slavery.”

He nodded, then turned his attention momentarily to Lysia. “Leave us. Report to Flesh Chamber 7.”

“Yes, Master,” Lysia said. She bowed once, gathered herself up smoothly, bowed to Master Dar a second time, and departed. The Earth Citizen returned his gaze upon Helena. Its warmth filled her.

“May I speak, Master?” she begged. He assented. Helena lowered her face over the Citizen’s shining boots and trembled. “Forgive me, Master. Please, forgive this slave. I did not understand before.”

She kissed and licked at his boots plaintively.

“And what didn’t you understand, child?” asked that magnificent, supremely masculine figure before her.

“I didn’t understand my place, Master. I was under the delusion that I was a free person with the right to make my own decisions.” Helena looked up at Master Dar with tears in her eyes. “I see now how wrong I was, Master. You in your munificence have seen fit to teach me the truth of my life.”

“And what is that truth?” he asked, again appearing interested in the words of a mere slave.

“That I have always been a slave, Master. That I was born a slave on a planet of slaves, and that for my entire life until I came here I was denied the exquisite happiness and joy of serving Masters.”

“Stand, slave,” Master Dar ordered. Helena complied at once. “Strip,” and with a shrug Helena discarded the red tunic she had been provided. “Hold your hands behind your head.” She posed before the Earth Citizen, her plump breasts uplifted. Her nipples throbbed with unchained heat.

Master Dar circled her slowly. His eyes explored her nakedness.

“You were a haughty slut, Andromedan.”

“Yes, Master.”

“But you are haughty no longer, are you?”

“No, Master.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I am a slave now, Master.” Helena trembled with fear and desire. She wanted to be had by him so badly. Her greatest fear was that she would not be found completely pleasing to his eyes.

“And is a slave all that you are?”

“Yes, Master. I am and have always been only a slave. Forgive a slave for not realizing this sooner.”

He laughed. “Spread your legs wider, slut. More so.”

She obeyed.

He stopped in front of her. Firmly, masterfully, Dar ran his hands over Helena’s bosom, cupping her breasts, enjoying their soft yet firm weight. She gasped in delight and moaned with the utmost pleasure. Her mouth opened, gasping. Master Dar laughed then, apparently amused by her abject responsiveness. Her nipples tightened, and as his hands brushed over them, she moaned louder.

“Such an arrogant, ignorant woman you were,” Master Dar said, continuing to fondle Helena, making her squirm. “You deserve punishment, don’t you, slave? You wanted to kill us all here, didn’t you?”

Helena sobbed. She didn’t recall any of her former crimes, but if her Master said it was so, it was so.

“Yes, Master. I deserve punishment. I am so truly, truly sorry, Master.”

He released her. “Kneel,” he ordered. Helena went to her knees and spread her thighs before him.

Master Dar stepped back so as to better examine her. “You look good on your knees, Andromedan.”

“Thank you, Master.” Helena lowered her eyes submissively.

“You make a pretty slave,” he said. He took a step forward again and lifted his hand to her face, cupping the new slave’s chin. “Almost as pretty as your mother, eh?”

Helena didn’t recall what her ‘mother’ looked like. But she knew the response she should give.

“Yes, Master. Thank you, Master.” Helena looked into the Citizen’s eyes questioningly. Again, he assented. “Will you punish my mother, Master, for what we had planned? Will you punish the people of Andromeda now?”

Master Dar raised an eyebrow curiously. “Do you believe they deserve to share your punishment?”

Helena nodded at once, vigorously. “We were fools, Master. My mother desperately requires erasure and reprogramming, as do my people.”

“Your former people,” Master Dar corrected her. “As a slave, you belong solely to us.”

“Yes, Master. My former people. And my mother especially. She needs to be mastered.”

The Citizen mused.

“Perhaps, someday. But though you and they assuredly do deserve punishment, that is not our goal.”

Reaching down, he guided Helena back to her feet, and, standing, he allowed her to kiss him, as she had been urgently wanting to do, and she did so, delicately, daintily, as the slave she was. Suddenly, Master Dar seized her with greater force and pressed his lips unto hers with vigor. She yielded to him, surrendering herself utterly. She clutched at his back, caught in the sweet throes of her slavery.

A fire bloomed in Helena’s belly. She burned with the heat of a thousand suns, and all with just a kiss.

She longed to truly please him with her body. She craved the carnal violation of her flesh.

Their lips parted. Master Dar smiled. “So, you claim to understand,” he said, looking into her wide eyes. “If so, tell me why you and they are not to be punished for your attempt to sacrifice yourself.”

Helena, under orders, thought hard, dredging the limits of the information contained in her programming.

It did not take her long. “I will not receive punishment for the acts of Helena Harmonia Hsiao Saimo because I am no longer that person. Helena Harmonia Hsiao Saimo is no more. I am nothing but a slave.”

“Yes, perfectly stated,” Master Dar said. “Go on.”

“As for that woman’s foolish mother, and the people of Andromeda,” Helena continued, “it’s not about punishment. It’s not about power.”

“So, you do understand,” he said, seeing the truth in her eyes. “You’re right. It isn’t about power, is it, little slave? At least not directly.”

“No, Master,” she whispered lovingly. She understood perfectly what he meant.

“It’s about pleasure,” he said, confirming her insight. “What the uninitiated perceive as Earth’s tyranny, what the people of your former world consider cruelty, is instead merely our kindness, our desire to bring pleasure to everyone. To see that everyone finds their proper place in the universe.”

“Yes, Master,” Helena said, luxuriating in this man’s powerful touch. “I pity them, Master. I pity my mother and all my former friends and family. They have no one to which to give their service.”

“We can only do so much, spread out over the stars as we are.” He reached down and with a manly exertion picked Helena up, gathering her in his arms. “I think the best thing to do,” he said, carrying her to the couch, “is not to say or to do anything. Let them wait, breathlessly, for your sacrifice, and let them ponder the reasons why their scheme ultimately failed.”

He snorted derisively. “If they decide you didn’t get a chance to use your Triggers, they may even attempt it again in the future.” They paused over the plushplastic seat. Dar sighed, satisfied.

“In the meantime, let’s get you good and fucked now, shall we?”

“Oh, yes, Master, please!!” the former free woman of Andromeda squealed.

Fucked! She was going to be fucked! How wonderful that would be!!

Master Dar laid her out on the couch and had Helena split her legs widely. He knelt down between her thighs and licked her out, his touch on her lower lips, her white-hot and throbbing clitoris, making the new slave pant and mewl like the animal she was. Later, he took off his clothes and roughly penetrated her, making her gasp in his arms, bringing her higher and higher, and lower and lower, in her slavery.

Later, Helena cleaned their spent fluids from her user with her tongue, feeling ever so complete and full of joy. When she was through, licking her lips, Master Dar had her kneel on the floor next to the couch.

She knew exactly what to do without need for further direction. She leaned back on her heels, spreading her thighs and clutching her ankles with her small hands. She pushed her breasts forward.

Her programming provided everything. All that she would ever need to know in her new life, she now knew. Along with that glorious knowledge was a perpetual hunger for ravishment. She gazed upon the naked body of the Earth Citizen who had just finished enjoying her. Already she was longing to feel his dick inside her again. Casually, Master Dar reached out and petted her, stroking her marked body.

“First, as the former daughter of the Planetary Chairwoman, we’ll have you give pleasure-service to the Citizens here, individually and in group. Then, once your novelty value has faded a little, we’ll assign you to the general pool of sluts in the Flesh Chambers, where you can give service to our personnel.”

“Thank you, Master. That sounds absolutely wonderful!”

“Then, perhaps, in a few months, or years, we’ll send for your mother, and then we’ll send you both back to Earth by tranship, along with a few other notables we’ll collect. You’ll make fine gifts to the leaders of the Congress: an assortment of beautiful, formerly high-ranking Andromedan slaves to use for their pleasure. You may end up a serving girl in the perfumed gardens of the Moon someday.”

“I shall strive to be worthy of such an honor, Master. Please, Master. Use me again! I beg it!”

Laughing, he reached for her, and as Helena achieved in his arms once more that sublime state of ecstasy, as the hormonal balance in her body reflected the exact mental state indicating an absolute acceptance of her slavery, of total bliss, her Third Trigger, the Trigger she had been unaware of, the one that had been instilled in her in secret by her team of doctors, activated, and Helena died, instantly, painlessly, in the throes of an unearthly happiness. Her death catalyzed a series of chemical changes in her blood, biological and chemical cues so subtle even the Earthers had missed them. An oxy-hydrogen reaction commenced, and before Dar was even aware his living sex toy was dead, she detonated in his arms, the resulting burst not only incinerating him but blowing a vast hole in the terraforming complex.

The initial physical damage was secondary, though. The same prions that were to have been released with the Second Trigger activated with the Third, contaminating the wreckage despite the hard vacuum and spreading sudden and unexplained death among the Earther repair crews and other personnel for weeks. The retributions inflicted on the Andromedan people in the months and years to come were severe, but for those who knew of the plan, the ones who had held the weeping Planetary Chairwoman in vain comfort; for the Chairwoman herself, whose pain at the loss of her beloved daughter had begun long before she ever left her side; for the harm it caused to their foreign tyrants, a blow delivered in the name of freedom and rebellion; and, lastly, for the history tapes transcribed in the era of liberty and renewed independence that eventually came, in the end, it was judged a necessary, if painful, sacrifice.

END