Y
12
Thirty-Two standard years earlier:
Captain Lindl had renewed the ship’s self-destruct routines for another six hours when Serry felt the surge go up her arm. At first, she thought it was her. She thought it was a random pain, nothing serious, a cramp from holding the same position for too long. Her next thought was that something had gone wrong with her combat suit. Her reason: at the same instant as the shock, the readouts in her helmet visor, the ones that gave her a constant, and, after the first few hours, ignorable, stream of information about her heart, perspiration, EKG, and content of the atmosphere around her, shut down.
Everything shut down. The lights on the soft chemiprocessor terminal she worked at, the main and secondary lights in Primary Control, the tiny and never-before-noticed safety light in her visor: all went out at the same time. Where a second before First Class Crewman Serry Garrant had been on the brightly lit and efficiently operating bridge of the F.C.A. privateer Ulysses Olandros, suddenly she was in total blackness, total silence, zero gravity. And it was then she discovered that she couldn’t move.
For a moment, maybe two, Serry felt no fear. Whatever had happened, happened so quickly there was no time for reaction. The fact of her paralysis, of her complete and utter immobility, in darkness and dead silence, was so immediate that for several long seconds Serry was as frozen inside as she was out.
Her muscles had locked. The joints refused to budge. Gods, Serry thought. She tried to move and nothing happened. She was frozen at her monitor station.
She bobbed weightlessly, in the darkness, in the silence, numb.
Still in a state of amazement rather than alarm, Serry’s next idea—ludicrous as it was—was that the ship had self-destructed. She was dead, and this was her afterlife. She felt nothing, yet she was still capable of thought. It wasn’t the kind of afterlife she had expected. She blinked, and by blinking, of her awareness that her eyes could still move even if they perceived nothing, Serry knew she was still alive.
The last thing she remembered was the captain renewing the ship’s self-destruct option. This was a standard procedure in any combat scenario. Every vessel in the Free Centauri Army was equipped with redundant self-destruct devices, from chemiprocessor routines that would overload a ship’s reactors and destroy it in a flash of atomic energy to manually set explosives secured in hidden locations throughout the hull. It wasn’t that the Free Centauri crews were suicidal or fanatics. It was pragmatism on their part, pure and simple. It was a recognition of the perversity of their enemies, and a desire not to fall into their hands alive, that had made every F.C.A. vessel the space-going bombs that they were.
It was the thought of the Solarians, finally, that brought about a recognition of the likely cause of her predicament, and it was only then that Serry began to feel fear.
After a long time, Serry felt a shudder go through the privateer. Slowly, she felt the synthetic gravity turn on for the first time in weeks. Weight returned. Her bones immediately started to ache.
A little while later, the lights in Primary Control came on. Serry looked around and saw a silent group of figures immobilized at their posts. She recognized Captain Lindl’s form near her.
The ship’s been taken, she thought, horrified.
When the hatch to the control cabin opened, Serry was in the perfect position to see and hear everything. Set in the middle of the ship and heavily reinforced, the Olandros’ Primary Control was shaped like a wedge. The narrow end held a hatch. Around the curving arc opposite, a semicircle of monitors faced center and the holographic tank in the middle. At the moment, this was without power.
The hatch opened. A pair of naked, sallow-colored humanoids stumbled in, pulse rifles roaming. Others followed. Behind her visor, Serry’s eyes widened. This was the only outward indication of her fright so permitted by her paralysis.
The humanoids—they were clearly not human—were big and ugly. Their flesh was distended and hung loosely off their frames. It looked diseased, as if each of the newcomers had suffered massive radiation damage. Warts and what looked like running sores covered their skin. Their hair was sparse and grew in patches. They were not actually naked, Serry saw after a minute. The intruders had huge pot bellies, but beneath these she saw small trunks covering their groin areas. On the side of each one’s head, an identical-looking metallic nodule hung, penetrating at the temple and extending down alongside the length of the creatures’ faces, which were universally ghastly.
Their mouths hung open; their noses dribbled; their expressions were indicative of idiocy. Serry had never seen their like before. Despite that, she knew who they were. She knew whom they had to be.
The weapons they carried were the final clue. The mind-destroying pulse rifle was a preferred weapon of the Solarian military. Whenever possible, the Solarians avoided killing. It wasn’t that they were adverse to the infliction of suffering. Quite the reverse, in fact. The Solarians liked taking prisoners alive because it was more fun to play with them that way.
The Solarian morons took up positions. They covered the cabin with their weapons. They may have appeared unintelligent—Serry knew by looking at their vacant eyes that their internal worlds were dim—but they were nonetheless competent. Their fields of fire did not overlap each other; they could have pulsed the entire cabin without affecting one another. They did not speak. They stood and waited.
While the morons were unknowns, Serry did recognize the next person through the hatch. Rather, she recognized his type. The man was short and gaudily dressed. The colors of his space suit were arranged with the fashion sense of a demented harlequin. Blues and reds, greens and yellows, other shades, all contrasted in the most eye-offending ways. He carried a utility pack but no weapon. Unlike his armed crew, the latecomer’s eyes were bright and beady and glistening with an evil intelligence. His mouth—small and pouty, with thick lips—was smeared with lipstick. His cheeks were rouged so redly they made him actually look like a clown. His hair was oiled and pressed flat to the oval of his skull.
The intruder radiated gluttony and selfishness. He was an Earther, what the people of that distant Solarian world ironically called a “Citizen.” Serry felt an immediate loathing.
“Is the room secure?” this piggish representative of the Solarian Empire asked in a squeal of a voice.
One of the morons nodded sluggishly. It drooled.
The Citizen giggled at the news. “Which one is the captain?” None of the morons answered, so the Earther went up to each space-suited figure and peeked through their visors. He looked in at Serry. His eyes crinkled with glee as they pawed at her face. He tittered again grotesquely, like a fool.
Captain Lindl had been at Serry’s left when the darkness and paralysis struck. He was still there. Sebas Lindl was a sandy-haired man in his forties. He always had a gentle turn to his mouth, but from his sometimes haunted expression Serry believed there was a tragedy in his past. She recalled that he had greeted her personally when she first boarded the Ulysses Olandros. “I handpick every member of my crew,” she remembered him saying. “I’m proud to have you aboard, Crewman.” And the way he had said it made Serry believe he really meant it. She would have died for her captain.
The Earther poked her hero in his chest. “This one,” he said. One of the morons came forward and helped remove Lindl’s helmet. It clanged as it fell to the deck and bounced up against the nearest monitor stand. The Citizen giggled again.
Captain Lindl’s face was frozen in the same look of astonishment Serry knew had to be covering her own countenance. Only his eyes were alive. They glared upon the Solarian with such a fury that in a better universe would have reduced the Earther to a smoldering cinder.
His mouth quivered. Either the paralysis was wearing off, or the extent of her captain’s anger was such that it was overcoming the muscle freeze they were all in. The Earther opened up his utility pack. The look in Lindl’s eyes changed as the Citizen brought a metal module up for his inspection. Tears filled Serry’s own. The module was identical to those hanging from the morons’ faces.
No, please, no, she prayed. The module’s outer surface was smooth. The inner was a fearsome conglomeration of tubes and needles. With practiced suavity, the Earther pressed the device flat against the captain’s face. Lindl made a frightful noise. He groaned, a heartbreaking, loathsome sound the memory of which for the rest of her life Serry would never be able to entirely rid herself.
The captain’s eyes rolled up in their sockets. He began to shake all over. His suited figure collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. The sagging moron who had removed his helmet reached beneath the captain’s arms and lifted him into a standing position. Captain Lindl’s head slumped within his suit.
The module quivered. Serry head a slight draining sound, as if some liquid was being injected.
Squirt! . . pump pump . . . pump pump . . . squirt! . . . pump . . . . The sound was beyond disgusting.
Serry had closed her eyes in fear and anger. They opened again when the Citizen spoke.
“Tell me now, captain. How many self-destruct devices are there on this ship?”
Squirt! . . pump . . . squirt! . . . pump pump . . . squirt! With the voice of a man pulled from the deepest, darkest layer of hell, the captain, slowly, haltingly, listed this most secret information. When the Citizen asked him how to deactivate these mechanisms, Lindl responded, weeping. He moaned. He wept. He gave detailed instructions.
The Ulysses Olandros was a 180-crew privateer operating in the far-flung Centauri asteroid belt. Her mission had been to harass the Solarians and their Drad allies from Bungula Imprimus. That was what they had been doing for the last three months: long periods of zero activity followed by short periods of frenetic commotion. Their routine had been to attach themselves to a sizable-enough chunk of rock in the belt and wait, observing using passive sensors only. Usually, nothing happened. After a few days or weeks the privateer would detach and move on to another rock. Sometimes, though, a Solarian or Drad vessel would be detected, and, if it was close enough, the measurements gauged in the millions of kilometers, the Olandros would attack using pinpoint lasers and smartmissiles. The best strategy in space combat was ambush. The first one to strike destroyed the one who was second. The Olandros had racked an impressive score of kills in this and her previous missions. That morning’s encounter had been noteworthy even for them, though. Instead of one or even a pair of Solarian ships, they had detected three orbiting in a patrol. And they had been close enough together for a simultaneous strike.
It was too tempting. Captain Lindl had prepped the crew, encouraged them, and activated the self-destruct options just in case things went bad. They had waited, waited, waited some more, then attacked, emerging from their rock with a blistering array that had vaporized all three Solarians in under six seconds. It was a textbook victory, and the Ulysses Olandros had only started to drift through the debris cloud when everything went dark. Serry strained with every portion of her strength. She thought she could feel something in her limbs, but she wasn’t sure. She still couldn’t move.
Serry examined her captain the best she could. From around the edges of the nodule, the captain’s flesh was already taking on a bloated, yellowish cast. A thin rivulet of blood and other unidentifiable fluids leaked down his cheek. The right side of the captain’s mouth, the same side as the device had been attached, began to droop, as if the man were suffering a massive stroke.
The Citizen spoke into a communicator attached to the collar of his uniform. He gave orders. The ship’s power was restored by someone in the reactor room. Teams were sent out to deactivate certain explosive triggers. When the Earther commanded Captain Lindl to instruct the main chemiprocessor to shut down the principal self-destruct mechanism, he did so like a man in agonizing pain. Within a handful of minutes, all the contingency systems of the Ulysses Olandros were pulled.
They were going to live. Serry prayed and tried to calm herself.
“What else do I need to know to make this miserable ship safe for my superiors?” The Earther sneered the last word into an insult.
“My . . my esefutive offi . . cer has the same . . . cobes as . . . I do.” Lindl’s voice slurred. He whimpered.
“We already have him,” the Citizen squeaked. “His brain is already turning into a jelly, as yours is.”
He reached up and adjusted a control on the captain’s hanging nodule. Lindl groaned like the damned.
Squirt! . . pump pump . . . pump pump . . . squirt!
“Hu . . ha . . how?” Lindl managed to croak. Drool was slipping from the downward turn of his mouth.
The Citizen held up his hands a few centimeters apart, demonstrating.
“A tiny probe, no bigger than this. They release in swarms of several thousand when one of our bait vessels is blown up. They disguise themselves as debris until one comes close enough to the enemy and . . .” He clapped his hands together. “Snap!” he cackled, shaking with glee.
“Ba . . ba . . bait?” The captain frowned as much as he could.
The Citizen nodded, sinfully happy. “Yes. The ships we let you blow up today were lures. It’s worth a couple of our ships to destroy one of yours. We have so many, and you have so very, very few.”
He shrugged.
“After all, it’s only people we lose. And people are easily replaceable. Why, you yourself are going to be joining my crew!” He reached out and grabbed the captain’s hair. A handful came out: not pulled out; fallen out. The captain’s head slumped. His flesh was rippling. It was turning a sickly yellow.
The Citizen touched his tab collar. “The ship is secure. It’s safe for you now, my most brave lords.”
“Watch your tongue, worm,” Serry heard a transmitted voice reply. The Citizen snickered.
“It will be amusing to have a captain of the Free Centauri Army as one of my mindless lumps,” the monster confided to the captain in an overloud whisper. “Very amusing.” The moron-to-be didn’t react. Minutes later, another pair of strange, yellow humanoids entered the cabin, complete with their own entourage of mindless soldiers. Unlike their sagging, loathsome companions, the complexion of this new pair of invaders was finer, smoother, and healthier. Their bodies were lean and handsome. Naked, their male genitalia were large and impressive. They were as hairless as babes. What drew the eye, however, had nothing to do with their idealized bodies.
What garnered Serry’s captive attention, shocking her back almost into a state of insensibility, was what lay above the two humanoids’ perfect necks and shoulders. Or, rather, what did not lay there.
The new arrivals had no heads.
Instead of craniums, gold-tinted spheres lay on the newcomers’ decapitated necks. It was as if some agency had taken an axe, lopped off the pair’s heads, and replaced them with transparent glass balls. The headless bodies moved well despite their handicap. There was nothing jerky about their motions. There was nothing remotely zombie-like about them. They were yellow, and they were missing their heads. They strolled into Primary Control as if they had every right to be there.
Each of the glass balls was twice the size of an ordinary skull of that physical body type. Inside each, the miniaturized form of yet another figure hung suspended. The movements of these smaller figures within the globes mirrored those of the golden vehicles conveying them.
The arrival of these manikins was both awful and surreal. Serry felt sick.
The headless things separated. One went to a chemiprocessor terminal. The other went to stand beside the Earth Citizen, who began pointing out the people on the bridge. The Earther made a special note to say to the unfinished monstrosity that both Serry and Lieutenant Norena were females.
“We’ll dispose of them in the usual way. It’s the men I’m interested in.”
The voice came from the thing’s sphere. The sound reverberated hollowly in the air. Serry felt a chill.
She was close enough to see the blue figure seemingly trapped inside. It was that of a small, naked humanoid, not entirely dissimilar to the much larger, though incomplete figure on which it rested, but softer and more doughy. Its doll-like head, while whole, was bald and inhuman. Its intact temples bulged outrageously, suggesting either a case of severe hydrocephalus or an enhanced brain case.
The voice came from the surrounding sphere again, vibrating. “Gather all the males to this side of the cabin. I want to examine each personally.”
Inside the crystal sphere, the blue figure moved its right arm. Its mouth opened. At the same time, the headless golden conveyance moved its right arm, and the air vibrated with the tones of command.
The Earth Citizen and his morons obeyed. The majority of the bridge crew were picked up and lined against one bulkhead, Serry and Lieutenant Norena against another. Serry understood now the joke the Earther had made at his superiors’ expense, calling them “brave.” The real high caste was on the Solarian ship docked to the Olandros. They wouldn’t even board the ship they were pirating in person!
Her disgust for the enemy, if anything, grew. Partially it was their cowardice. Mostly, it was her recognition of what the headless creatures were. They were waldoes. She wondered if they had been complete human beings once. It would not have surprised her. Shaping a living creature for such a perverse purpose, and in such a repulsive way, was against everything the Free Centauri stood.
The living teleoperated vehicle came to stand in front of Serry and the lieutenant.
It raised its two arms. From its unfolded palms a blackish gas jetted forth, bathing the two women within its murky layers. Serry immediately heard a crunching noise all around her. Seconds later she felt something tickling her cheeks, then her breasts and her legs, her lips, then everywhere, all over. The sensation wasn’t painful, but it nevertheless generated horror in the young female crewman. The gas particles caressed her with the touch of a million tiny insects. They penetrated her nose, her ears, and every other opening in her body. They crawled across her eyes. Serry screamed silently.
The gas ate her combat spacesuit. Serry felt the heavy plastioid material dissolve around her. She felt her panties and underwear similarly disappear, consumed by a million tiny mouths. As the barriers between herself and the bulkhead slowly vanished, Serry felt her back press against the cool surface. She felt her bare ass settle against the deck. Her hair, loosened from the folded bun of her helmet, fell across her face in an untidy mess. Between it and the black cloud disrobing her, she saw nothing. And then, before she was fully aware of it, the crunching noise diminished, and she was naked and lying on the deck before the Solarians, helpless and open. Again, Serry’s unheard voice cried out. Her face remained falsely composed. Her thoughts were a riot of fright and humiliation. The gas dissipated.
The image of the blue Solarian lowered his hands within his globe. The yellow body hosting his globe lowered its hands as well. The headless vehicle inspected the two naked women briefly, seemed unimpressed, then turned to the contingent of men. It sprayed them with its disintegrating mist as well.
Someone touched Serry’s bare flesh. Nooo!! something cried out helplessly inside her.
Serry’s hair was brushed back, and she saw and felt the soft and disgusting hands of the Earther Citizen on her. His painted lips were but centimeters from her own! His beady eyes gleamed.
He smelled of rot and perfume.
The Earther pressed those repulsive lips against her own. She felt his tongue lick at her and push inside her mouth like an invading maggot. Serry felt like vomiting but regretfully could not. For a moment, she was sure she was going to be raped then and there by the grotesque harlequin. Instead, Serry felt the Citizen wrap something around her throat and lock it in front. It was a collar. He groped her naked breasts rudely and tickled the warm cleft between her legs. The Earther then climbed off of Serry and went over to Lieutenant Norena, for whom the same attentions were soon given.
“What a lovely mouth,” Serry heard in the hollow reverberation of the headless waldo. She shifted her eyes. The golden conduit was crouched before the group of now-naked male bridge crew. With his teleoperated hands the creature was holding the head and running his fingers remotely over the lips of the young Crewman Jacb. Serry didn’t know Jacb well, but she felt badly for him now.
Jacb’s eyes blinked rapidly, madly as they stared into the face, so to speak, of his future rapist.
“Yes, what a lovely mouth,” the Solarian repeated, pushing the tips of his remote-operated fingers inside. The globe turned on its base to face the Citizen. “Have this one processed first. Convert him and have him sent to my quarters.” The globe rotated back.
Jacb’s eyes were all Serry needed to see to know what he thought of such a fate.
“It will be done as you say, lord,” the Citizen said obsequiously. He bent his head slightly in a show of respect that, from the careless manner of it, was both humble yet mocking at the same time.
“Stand,” Serry heard, and she felt her nude body respond to the command before she was fully aware that the command had been given to her. The collar around her throat tingled.
Serry’s body climbed to its feet and stood at military attention before the gaudily-clad Earthman. She had moved! Serry tried to lift her arms. She tried to direct her own limbs. But she could not. Her paralysis was gone, and her joints screamed with both relief and pain as circulation flowed back in, but it was not she who was in control of her body. The collar tingled.
She saw Norena from the corner of her eye come stand next to her. Both women were several centimeters taller than the Earther. He inspected their nakedness with the manner of a lewd company commander. “Activate routine D,” the Earther eventually said, after satisfying his voyeurism. Serry’s collar tingled a third time. She felt her fingers twitch on their own. A muscle spasm passed through her.
“Board the ship and go to Processing Chamber Two. Follow directions.” The Citizen reached forth and once more tickled Serry’s sex. He winked at her. “I’ll see you later, my little doll to be.”
NO . . NO! But Serry’s body moved like a puppet on a string. With an almost military flourish, she and Lieutenant Norena turned on their heels and walked robotically out of Primary Control. The last she saw of Crewman Jacb, he was being stroked by the Solarian along the thighs. The young man was crying. The last she saw of her captain, he was on his side near the holotank. Lindl was still clad in his spacesuit, but he wouldn’t be for long. Already, his thickening yellow neck was pressing hard against his helmet collar. The flesh sagged. His hair had fallen out. His eyes were dead and vacant. And then Serry left the cabin, striding purposefully even as she tried to will herself to stop.
Norena followed like a rank recruit.
The cramped decks of the Ulysses Olandros were curiously empty. The women marched single-file and encountered no one. Serry heard nothing. The ship gave the impression of being deserted. The collars directed their every movement. The ornaments tingled constantly. Naked, they approached the portside airlock, and only then did they meet people, more or less. A pair of sagging, yellow morons stood to either side of the hatch. Serry and Lieutenant Norena strode past them, slowing down not one iota. Neither creature lifted so much as an eyebrow. Either the gene-despoiled soldiers were constitutionally incapable of shock, being idiots (Poor Captain Lindl!), or they were accustomed to the sight of naked females marching in lockstep. Maybe both. A quickformed plastioid shell linked the two space vessels. Once transferred, the Solarian ship was a big change from the restricted-quarters atmosphere of the Centauri privateer. It was larger. Its corridors were roomier. No pipes lined every corner. There was no greasy smell of ozone. The deck plates of the Solarian pirate practically glowed, they were so well polished and maintained. The synthetic gravity was stronger too; it wasn’t as haphazard or as “springy” as onboard the Olandros, on those expensive occasions when it was used.
Serry and the lieutenant passed another sniveling Earth Citizen in one passageway, and they were forced to stop as the depraved soul pawed at the two helpless women, laughing and making snide remarks.
Inside the prison of her body, Serry wept over and over.
The Earther concentrated his attention on Norena. He stroked Norena’s body, then verbally ordered her to fuck him. Serry screamed inside. Norena’s eyes were panic-stricken and uncomprehending, she saw. The Citizen took off his shirt and trousers. Norena turned and faced the Solarian, spreading her legs and posing. Her legs were lean and marvelous. Her sex, lightly covered in soft, downy hair, opened like a bedewed flower early in the morning. The Earther bent forward and pressed his tongue gently into the woman’s hot wetness. He breathed heavily on and tickled her budding clitoris, and Serry heard her fellow prisoner gasp in mindless pleasure. The Citizen’s hands eventually grasped hold of the lieutenant’s hips and slid round to her smooth, flawless buttocks, which he cupped and savored for a long moment before drawing Norena close to him. He pulled her down. Her thighs twitched. Her nipples bounced perkily beneath her rapist’s hands as he lowered her silky body onto his ready shaft.
All the while, Serry could do nothing but stand there and watch.
Impelled by the control collar, the lieutenant kissed the disgusting man with one set of lips while the other, threatened by the engorged organ pressed against them, opened to accept his invasion. She engulfed him as he pressed down. Her lower body began to rotate, gyrating in a circular, rhythmic pattern. The Citizen let her do all the work. Norena’s face, when not covering his in desperate kisses, was utterly expressionless. She worked on him as emotionlessly as the living robot she had become.
From Centauri officer to anonymous sex machine, in less than an hour.
Serry felt like she was going mad.
As he climaxed, Serry observed Norena grip and ungrip his shaft repeatedly to maximize his pleasure. At the same time, the Earther pressed his face into Norena’s bosom and sucked on each of her breasts.
When he was done, the Citizen had Serry lick their combined fluids from his body with her tongue and lips, lingeringly, paying special attention to his genitals and spent shaft. She nearly gagged.
Eventually, they were let go again. The collars finally took them to a cabin on the larger ship. The hatch slid open (another difference from the Olandros: most hatches onboard the privateer had to be manually sealed and unsealed), and the two walked right in. The cabin was, in a strange way, empty yet filled to almost utter capacity.
No, Serry thought, upon seeing its silent, immobile occupants. Oh Gods, no! In that moment, the fates intended for them by the Solarians became painfully clear. The Citizen’s voice came back to her: I’ll see you later, my little doll to be. And what was it the first Solarian had said?
We’ll dispose of them in the usual way. The usual way. The Solarian way.
The room was filled with pleasure drones.
From around the room, golden eyes stared at the women unblinkingly. Pink, perfect plastic bodies sat side-by-side in the room, prim and proper with their backs straight and their knees together, belying their carnal function. There was row upon row of them until the end of the rectangular space.
That was to be their future, hers and Lieutenant Norena’s. To be turned into human fucktoys like them.
To be turned into living sexdolls. Pink, plastic pleasure machines.
Pleasure drones!
Every pink figure was identical to every other, in body and, Serry knew, in mind. Each was inhumanly beautiful, tall, voluptuous, and pink, so very pink. Each was programmed by their slave coatings to be obedient, pleasing, and wanton. They were a favorite commodity among the Solarians. They were a favorite commodity because pleasure drones had only one function, and that was to be fucked.
Serry knew then that she too was going to be fucked. An eternity of fucking lay in her future. She was going to be turned into a pleasure drone. A pleasure drone!
Despite the intensity of it, her howl of outrage never reached her face.
No technician, Citizen or otherwise, was waiting to do the cursed job. Most of the long chamber was used for the drone storage. Near the hatch, a large booth-shaped machine was built into the starboard-side bulkhead. A central, transparent cylinder sat in the middle of this wicked-looking apparatus, with a long metal strip of machinery lining one side. A control panel was located on the wall nearby. Altogether, the great mass of the thing resembled an old-fashioned boiler. Instead of metal and bolts making up its composition, smooth, semi-living plastioids and chemisensitive surfaces did, giving the machine a softer, more organic appearance. It glowed and pulsed faintly. Likely because she was the first person in, it was Serry’s body that strode to the panel and activated it, fingers operating on their own. Norena waited behind her with the patience of the mentally controlled.
The cylinder, connected to the overhanging machine, rotated on its base. An opening was revealed in its side. As soon as this opening was made clear, the lieutenant climbed quickly inside, and the machine rotated back, sealing her within. Serry’s fingers continued to betray her.
She could only imagine what was going through Norena’s mind. The silent mob around them spoke volumes. Their flesh gleamed, as if coated in plastic. Hairless, their only contrasting colors were the faintly reddish tints about their cheeks, lips, and nipples and the blank golden featurelessness of their eyes and nails. Their pink breasts were huge yet perfectly formed. The drones each had a look of stamped flawlessness about them, of artificial sexual precision. Nothing remained of the individual facial or physical characteristics of the women from which they had been made. Those things had been erased along with their minds, replaced by chemiprocessor-programmed erotic routines.
Serry wasn’t sure which aspect of her doom dismayed her more: that her mind would be, in the words of the Solarians, “cleansed,” or that she was destined to be a sex slave forever.
Please, no, she screamed inside. Don’t make me do this. Please, no! It was within the power of the Solarians to construct their living fucktoys out of almost any organic material. Serry knew the earliest androids, drones, and other examples of synthetic life had indeed been entirely of chemical creation. But this had been dissatisfying to the Solarian mindset, ultimately. Not enough degradation had been involved. There hadn’t been enough of a boost to their superiority. So, the Solarians used people as growth medium for the millions of cell-sized chemisensitive packages that it took to create even one drone. The Solarians enjoyed turning people into toys, even when they weren’t there to do the job themselves. Serry manipulated the evil machine like an expert.
At the top of the cylinder, a metal ring was set inside the transparent enclosure. It sat flush with the top. Prompted into motion by Serry’s collar-controlled hands, the ring slid down the cylinder’s interior, passing around Lieutenant Norena without touching her. The Centauri officer stood straight as a pole, her face entirely without expression. For a moment, the ring sat flush at the bottom.
Serry’s eyes probed. A thick, reddish gel filled in around the circle. At a slightly slower pace than before, then, the ring began to rise. A thin, translucent, pink-tinted material followed in its wake. The stuff jiggled. As the ring rose, the gel-produced cherry substance wrapped around the already confined lieutenant, further sealing her in, a jelly-like prison-within-a-prison. The effect was rather like using a tube to blow a soap bubble. This bubble, like a pink balloon, ascended to completely encase the naked woman. Unlike a soap bubble, this one did not at once burst harmlessly.
Eventually, the ring once again settled at the top of the cylinder. The iridescent skin snapped free of the circle and bounced shakily. If it had been made of mere soap and water, the surface tension would have been exceeded. All that would have happened to Lieutenant Norena was her getting wet. Would that would have been so. Instead, for a long moment, the pink sac wriggled and glistened around the still-frozen woman. Then it began to settle.
The sac solidified as it was drawn to Norena’s body.
While it still glimmered, reflecting the overhead lights, the sac no longer appeared wet. The enveloping material became like a transparent plastic wrapping, and this wrapping swiftly molded itself to the lieutenant’s body, spreading along her feminine curves until she was clad in a pink second skin.
The obscene thing about the process was that the lieutenant’s posture went unchanged even as the skin—the slaveskin—grew increasingly confining. It became so taut, lines of pressure began to form along Norena’s arms and legs, around her hips and breasts, radiating out from her joints like spider webs.
And still the lieutenant did not—could not—move.
Pleasure drones were models of erotic efficiency. The only thing they did was serve sexually. Their programmed minds were filled with little more than volumes of sexual technique. Where other android types could perform any number of useful services, all pleasure drones did was fuck and suck and lick and kiss. These thoughts occupied Serry’s mind as she watched Lieutenant Norena’s transformation.
The skin had tightened to what must have been an excruciatingly painful pressure. Norena’s body quivered like a tuning fork. She had long since ceased breathing. Even assuming there was an opening in the skin enough for her draw breath—there wasn’t—she would still have been unable to fill her lungs caught in such a restricting fabric. She vibrated steadily, for a long time, caught in an unendurable vise.
The machine was running on automatic now. Serry waited at the console with her arms at her sides watching, unable to move, unable even to scream. She could only cry.
I’m sorry, she tried to project to the woman in the cylinder. I’m so very sorry.
Finally, to Serry’s relief emotionally, and what must have been a sudden heaven for the lieutenant, the slaveskin started to melt. It softened into a liquid coating. The stress lines shrank in Norena’s mummy wrapping. Her shoulders, hunched over, straightened. Her stomach, crunching inward, loosened. Her breasts shook with newfound breath. If anything, though, the slaveskin dissolving into a layer of moistness allowed it to spread across the officer’s body more evenly, more completely. It became paint. It dyed Norena’s skin a dark pink. Simultaneously, the coating allowed things to pass through which previously could not. A hole opened at the top of the cylinder. A suction activated, causing the melted sac covering every centimeter of Norena’s body to ripple, like wind over the water.
The collar binding the lieutenant’s throat surfaced from the molten fabric. It snapped open. In the blink of an eye, it was pulled from around the woman’s neck and up into the hole in the ceiling.
The suction stopped. The hole closed once again.
Norena screamed. Pathetically, the sound failed to escape her soundproof container. The only effect it had was to allow the softened slaveskin to enter her open mouth. It streamed in, choking her.
Serry was still enthralled by her control collar. Lieutenant Norena, free of hers, was free to express the pain, fear, and anger at their shared predicament. She pounded on the cylinder walls. She tried to use her hands to scrape off the gooey slaveskin. Neither effort bore fruit. Though transparent, the cylinder walls proved unbreakable, at least through the exertion of a merely human force. As for trying to scour off her coating of pink transforming agent, the stuff came crawling back onto her, drawn to her female body as if by magic. The little droplets she did manage to fling away crept back like little amoebae.
The lieutenant was doubly trapped.
Norena’s blond hair surfaced from the ooze. From the gestures she made, the process must have been painful: a strand-by-strand removal. Within a short period, Lieutenant Norena’s hair had fallen out. The suction hole at the top of the cylinder opened again and vacuumed it up. The paint no longer rippled on Norena’s skin, Serry noticed. It was drying. It was turning a blood red, in minute splotches first, then all over. Eventually, even that look of something exterior faded. The strange tint no longer looked like paint. It looked like a natural skin color. Norena’s struggles reached a frenzied crescendo. It seemed she was determined to break every bone in her body, such were her violent thrashing.
Then, abruptly, she stopped moving.
Her arms relaxed at her sides. Her shoulders and neck slumped. The strength and energy seemed to slip from her. Some force within the cylinder kept her upright. For a time, nothing happened that Serry could see. She stared at the cylinder, and the figure in the cylinder slouched there, a crimson marionette with her strings cut.
Long minutes passed.
At first, the changes were so gradual, even staring at her body for a length of time, Serry failed to notice them. Lieutenant Norena, for a long time, still resembled Lieutenant Norena. She had been rendered bald, her skin had been dyed red, and she was slumped and unconscious, but she was still recognizably she. In the space of about ten minutes, as Serry painfully observed, this became no longer so.
Norena’s cheekbones were the first things to be erased.
Others followed. The lines in her face shrank down to nothing. Her chin retracted. Her nose grew flat until all that was left were small breathing holes. Her ears folded inward like flowers at day’s end. At the same time, her figure gradually reduced itself. Her bosom shrank, her hips became less curvaceous, even her navel filled in and vanished. All that was individual about the woman melted away.
Before Serry’s tearful eyes, Lieutenant Norena disappeared. She softened like a wax candle. What remained of her after several minutes was a caricature of a human being: an amorphous outline without a shred of distinctiveness. She became a rough, clay-like figure. It was only by looking closely that Serry could tell that this thing was still essentially a female.
Reduced to such a blank canvas, it was upon this surface that a new pleasure drone was fashioned.
The breasts expanded, first modestly, then hugely. Nipples reformed. The figure’s waist shrank, and from her body hourglass curves were carved. Golden finger- and toenails surfaced.
The limbs stretched. The doll-to-be grew taller. Her shoulders straightened. Her tummy was sucked in. The artificial skin lightened by degrees, gradually assuming the standard bright pink that was recognized now throughout star systems as “pleasure drone pink.”
For Serry, this last stage of the transformation was, in a strange way, the least traumatic of the entire process, horrible though it was. Lieutenant Norena was, after all, already gone. She had been buried underneath layers of cell-sized chemiprocessors. The ballooning of a pleasure drone from what remained—“ballooning” being the apt term considering her boobs, hips, and ass—no longer had anything to do with her. Nonetheless, Serry wept.
She cried for Norena. She cried for herself, too, for she knew she was next.
Every pleasure drone bore the same face. It was a beautiful face, with full and luscious lips, ultra-feminine softness, and a doll’s perfect nose. But for all its beauty, it was a stamped beauty. There was nothing remotely individual about it. Each drone visage was perfectly, erotically identical. Such a lovely yet bland face emerged from the reinflating figure. It wasn’t as if a sculptor were forming the features step-by-step, shaping the clay into eyes, nose, and mouth. It was rather more like a mask was surfacing that had been submerged in a pinkish liquid. A bump here, a bump there, an expansion, and then, suddenly, where nothing had been before, a lovely yet anonymous expression was formed.
A new pleasure drone eventually stood in the cylinder.
Another fifteen minutes passed before the sexdoll opened her eyes. They were gold through and through, as if jewels had been set inside the sockets. A moment later the cylinder rotated and opened.
The pleasure drone that had been Lieutenant Glora Norena stepped smoothly out of the booth and without even a glance at the female crewman standing at the console glided to the back of the storage room. There were still seats available there. The new pleasure drone sashayed over to one, sat, and assumed the same semi-respectful pose as all the other drones around her. She became still.
If Serry had not followed the drone with her eyes, had not known for certain which seat was hers, she would not have been able to distinguish this Solarian fucktoy from any of the other Solarian fucktoys.
And now it was Serry’s turn in the booth.
Directed by the control collar about her throat, straining with every gram of strength to resist, Serry’s fingers operated the chemiprocessor system and input the instructions to reduce herself to a living toy. The only difference between what she had done for Norena and what she did for herself was put in a time delay, just long enough for her to climb into the cylinder. She activated the machine.
NO . . NO . . NOOOOO!!! Her thoughts raged.
Serry was directed to turn on her heels. She tried to will herself to fall. She tried to will herself to grab something, anything! to delay her. Instead, she climbed onto the booth platform and then into the cylinder. Though no one was there to watch this time, she turned around to face the console again.
The cylinder walls rotated. The opening in the side closed. The ring at the top began its descent.
There was no going back now. The processing had begun anew.
Head frozen, Serry could only follow the ring so far with her eyes. It passed in front of her. When it hit bottom, it made a wet squelching noise. It was the sound of the gel accumulating, unheard before.
Going down, the ring had been silent. Going up, it made the subliminally painful screech of moist rubber stretched past its breaking point. The vibration grated on the nerves. The ring passed Serry and turned the world pink and wavy, the same perspective as seen from the inside of a pink balloon.
Somewhere above her, the ring popped! loudly. A bouncy quiver went through the “balloon.” It was torn free from the ring. Serry’s heart was marathon sprinting.
The jelly-like sac constricted almost at once, at least as how Serry judged time. The pink veil/horizon approached her face. She felt it touch her nose first. Then it was everywhere, touching everywhere, wrapping around her in a rapist’s embrace. As a child, Serry had been playing once at a poolside, and her parents had filled a small, transparent plastic bag with water to use as a simple pillow. At one point, Serry had poked a hole in the bag, drained it, stretched the hole big enough to poke her head through, and begun playing with it, pulling the tight, stretchy material over her face and enjoying both the taunt sensation and the distorted look it gave her in a mirror.
Another parent came by, saw what she was doing, and, horrified, scared that she would asphyxiate herself, took the bag away. Serry had been young, but she remembered the moment well. The tight feel of the slaveskin on her face was similar to her earlier experience but infinitely worse.
Now, no helpful passerby was going to come to help her.
Worse, the sensation was both all-encompassing—every square centimeter of her body!—and ever so much more restricting, so restricting that it wasn’t long before the sheer pressure became painful.
Her hands and arms, already forced into a neutral stance at her sides, were further packed down against her body. Her breasts were forced flat against her chest. Her nose and lips were squashed.
Everything disappeared into a red haze. She was compacted into a small, mummified figure.
When the mighty pressure finally started to relax, though she knew what it entailed, Serry’s first emotion was nonetheless relief. She loosened up. The slaveskin turned tacky and runny. In a few moments, it was like being coated in soft tar. Serry became so relaxed after the ordeal, she didn’t notice until was too late that her collar had surfaced through the gel coating. It unlocked and was off her throat before any reaction was possible. The suction caused her liquid overskin to ripple.
She couldn’t help it. As soon as the collar was gone, Serry screamed, just like Norena, and, again, just like Norena, the gel flowed down her throat. It went up her nose. It entered her nether cavities.
It touched her eyes. The world turned blood red.
Pain! Sudden vicious pain.
Her hair was being yanked out at the roots!
Serry thrashed. She pounded on the walls of the cylinder. She screamed.
The pain became too much, and mercifully, the young crewman blacked out . . . for a long, long time.
The Planet Y: Modern Day
Commander Serry Garrant woke to the sounds of wind, war, and men dying.
Her head spun, and she tried to orient herself. This was difficult because everything was slanted at a thirty degree angle. She noted she wearing a rebreather again. She felt something tug at her too. She looked and saw that she was chained by her ankle to the slanting overhead. The bulkhead was wood, the chain metal. She was in a small cabin on its side, with wooden slats for beds. Empty chains hung around her. I’m on that flying ship, Serry thought, recognizing the ship she had seen briefly in the air above Tolaam. We’ve crashed. That was becoming a bad habit with her, crashing.
She was in a holding cell. The hatch out of it was ajar. A big, red Yn male was on the deck facedown below her between the two rows of slats. He was unconscious and bleeding from a scalp wound. The blood was a bright pink, a color Serry had grown to loathe. Debris was scattered all around; the walls were splintered and torn. Outside, someone gave a savage war cry. Serry heard metal weapons striking each other. She heard booming rifle shots.
Serry’s head ached, and she noticed for the first time that she was naked.
The Yn male stirred.
He was dressed as the raiders from before, in a gray tunic that covered his chest and groin but left his ass free. There was a big Yn rifle lying near him—it looked more like a trumpet than a weapon of war—and on his belt was a key ring with several antique instruments dangling from it.
Serry climbed over the body and tore the ring free. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time. She played with the keys a moment, recognized not one of them, and started trying one after the other in the lock on her ankle. She had just managed to find the right one when the Yn muttered something in his native language and started to get up.
He was still woozy. There was a big wet spot with hair in it where he had struck his head on a slat.
Serry unlocked her ankle chain, grabbed, and dragged the end of the humongous rifle toward her. She scrambled up to the end of the cabin until her back was pressed against it. She tried to aim the rifle and was simply unable to. It was literally as big as she was. The Yn came to his knees, put an arm out to brace himself, held the other to his head, and looked at Serry bleary-eyed. He said something.
Serry had only the most rudimentary words in the Yn language down. She thought the Yn might have used the word “slut,” but she wasn’t entirely sure. His tone was incredulous. He reached for her.
Serry slid her body lengthwise underneath the long weapon. She braced the end of it against the wall and lifted the rest with her legs and feet.
She reached up, slid her hands around the trigger guard, and fired.
The explosion tore the rifle out of her loose grip and deafened her momentarily. Serry felt herself slam against the row of slats to her right. She smacked her head hard against something, and it hurt. She turned. The Yn was still looking at her. He wore the most stunned expression on his face.
His chest was blasted and bleeding from where she had hit him dead center. He fell over with a grunt.
The wooden deck shook.
Ears ringing, Serry got up and tried to find her balance. Everything was still off-kilter. She tried to leap over the Yn, and he turned and grabbed at her. He was reaching for a knife attached to his ankle.
Serry twisted and kicked him in the jaw. It was like kicking a tree. The Yn turned on his side for a better reach, and Serry slammed arms first into his wounded chest, punching over and over with all her strength. Pink blood covered her. The Yn let out a loud groan and collapsed against the row of slats behind her. Despite it all, he grabbed one of Serry’s wrists. She twisted again, rolled on top of him, and stamped as best she could her foot into the male’s chest, scissor-kicking over and over until she felt something inside give. The Yn let go and fell over, dead or unconscious again, Serry couldn’t tell.
She took the knife—it was as big as her arm—and slid to the hatch. It creaked open. Directly across from her in another cell, slanted downwards, Serry saw Eben’s masked face behind bars.
“Serry!” The Senior Lieutenant tried his strength against the wood. It didn’t even vibrate from the impact.
“Hold on,” Serry said and fell toward the door. There was still the sound of a big battle going on outside. She heard feet running and stamping on the deck above her. She tried the ring of keys and found the right one on her first try. Between the two of them, Serry and Eben pried the hatch open.
Serry saw Crewman Sud climbing up behind Eben.
“Where are the others?” Eben shook his head.
“They’re not with us. Maybe they’re still in Tolaam. I was hoping they were with you.”
“No.” The Yn liked to separate their prisoners by gender, just like the Solarians. There were no chains on the men’s ankles, she noticed. Damn, she thought at the same time. She did not like the idea of abandoning Wirry and the others. But this was their only chance.
“You’re . . . covered in blood, ma’am,” Sud said, trying not to look at her and failing, embarrassed. It wasn’t the blood he meant. Aside from rebreather masks, Serry saw the two of them were naked too.
“Come on,” she ordered. She and Eben pulled Sud out of the hole of their cell.
They stumbled down the slanted lower deck of the flying ship. There was a porthole at the far end of the short corridor. Serry looked through it. The ship was slanted on its side on what looked like a hill. Tundra reached to the horizon. The sky was white with clouds. Several meters away was a smaller hovercraft but otherwise similar in design to the one they were in now.
Serry saw no one between them and the ship.
“Follow me,” she said, and she jumped up and crawled out the window. A Yn male would not have been able to do it, nor an overly top-heavy Yn female, but the size of the hole was just right for three normal-sized human beings. They hit the ground one after the other. A loud boom rang out overhead, causing all three to duck instinctively.
The shot was not directed at them. Above them, they saw the shadows of people fighting.
“Run,” Serry said, in an almost conversational voice.
They ran. The exertion and the excitement kept the naked trio warm.
Another battle was going on behind them. Once again, half-naked Yn warriors were fighting other half-naked Yn warriors, bare-chested kilts against ass-open tunics. Axes plunged, swords swung. Serry handed over the huge knife she was carrying to Eben. They closed the gap between them and the ship.
Aside from the one they were headed, two other smaller craft were on the snowy hill. They were of a slightly different design. Serry guessed they were from Tolaam. They must have caught up with the raider and forced it out of the air. The different crews seem to have congregated on the larger craft.
They reached the hovercraft. It was quaking. The motor was on; the propellers in their hoods underneath were spinning. They were climbing aboard the small ship when a Yn male with a rifle and sword met them on the top deck. He yelled something in his native speech.
Neither Serry nor Eben hesitated. They jumped the guard/pilot. Sud joined the fray only a second later. Serry hit the man’s lower body and started hitting him in the groin. Eben, with the sword-sized knife, worked higher. Between the three of them, they pushed the Yn over, and then, in spite of his size, they were able to make short work of him.
It proved harder dragging him to the edge of the railing and pushing him out onto the ground. A pair of booms burst in the air meters away. Wood splintered near them.
Serry turned her head in the direction of the shots. Two marksmen were reloading their rifles and preparing to shoot at them again. They were on the downward tilted deck of the larger hovercraft.
Right, she thought and looked around for a set of controls. She crawled along the top deck.
“Get down!” Eben yelled to Sud. Another shot rang out over them. More wood splintered. Yn men were now running toward them from the crashed ship as well as from the other two.
The floating chariots used in their capture six months ago were controlled in front. Serry hadn’t been on a lot of boats—they may have flown through the air, but, in essence, the Yn aircraft looked like flying boats—but from what she knew they were usually controlled up front too. So, she went up front.
There was an overhanging alcove there: a half-of-a-room open in the back. In front was a big wheel, several intimidating levers, and a host of fist-sized knobs. Everything, of course, was Yn-sized.
Okay, Serry thought. Okay, take your time, Serry my dear. They’re only shooting at us. She was glad the motors were running. She would have had no idea where to start in turning this beast on. She tried a few of the levers. Under her manipulation, the ship moved a little back and forth raggedly.
“Whatever you’re doing, do it faster!” Eben yelled from somewhere behind her.
No pressure, Serry thought. She pulled another lever. She had to brace her foot against the deck in order to do it. The ship started to go up, slowly. Too slowly.
She had only barely managed to nudge the lever. Bracing herself again more firmly, Serry yanked on it as hard as she could. “Hold on to something!” she yelled.
The hovercraft leapt into the air.
Serry fell to her backside in the sudden acceleration. Eben would tell her later he had seen a pair of giant red hands grab at the railing just before the sudden takeoff. Then they and their owner went flying.
The Yn didn’t even scream as he plummeted to his doom.
More shots rang out. The ship lurched to port, now ascending at a dangerous angle. The deck started to tip over. Serry climbed to her feet and attacked the huge controls. The ship spun in the air. Sud yelled something incoherent. Serry grabbed the wheel for balance and twisted it.
The ship righted itself. Right side up is good, Serry reminded herself. She tried a knob experimentally. She felt the rate of the motors increase. She pulled another lever, and within a few moments she found herself piloting the Yn aircraft. It was a Forerunner miracle.
“Eben!” she yelled. “Come up here! I can’t see where I’m going!” This was true. Serry’s height was not enough for her to see over the top of the controls and the forward-facing window.
Eben lurched into the pilot’s alcove, gave Serry his patented You’re crazy-look, and did as she requested him. He told her to go south to put a row of hills between them and the downed aircraft.
Tundra stretched to the east and the west. In the east, there was a line of brilliant white on the horizon: the great glacier. Sud staggered in after a few minutes. He told them there was no sign of pursuit.
“Where to, cap’n?” The tone was facetious, but Sud was honestly asking.
Serry thought about it a moment. “East,” she decided. “Across the glacier.”
Eben said nothing. His glance shot the question to her. The wind howled.
“If we go back west, we’ll be in the same spot we were in before. Some city-state of males will grab us and hold us for ransom. Or turn us into Yn.” She directed the flyer’s controls toward the ice. They weren’t too dissimilar from gyrocopter craft Serry had flown before. Once she got over the fact everything was twice the size they needed to be, it wasn’t so bad. “The Brahma base is in the middle of the glacier between the western city-states and the lands of the Imperatrix. I read about it.”
“Why the Brahma, ma’am?” Sud asked. “Aren’t they the ones responsible for us being here?”
Eben answered for her. “You want to contact the Florans, right?” Serry nodded.
“They’re our only hope of returning home. If we can get hold of them through the Brahma, they can get us off the planet, at the very least.” I hope, Serry thought.
“But the Florans abandoned us, ma’am,” Sud said anxiously. “Can we really trust them? Or the Brahma?” Serry didn’t answer. Neither did Eben. After a while, Sud nodded. He must have answered his own question. They couldn’t trust any of them.
The Florans had abandoned them to their fate with the Yn. The Brahma had destroyed their starship and stranded them nine light years from home. But what other choice did they have?
The wind and snow continued to howl around them as Serry flew the hovercraft east.
She thought about Lieutenant Norena.