Y
26
There was a fight going on. Serry Sow did not understand. She was just the Serry Sow. She couldn’t understand. Master told her she was stupid, so she was stupid. She didn’t understand anything.
She was so stupid.
She had been brought from Master’s citadel. She was the prize. She was in a big room somewhere with other Masters and slaves, and the Masters and the slaves were watching a fight happening next door, on the pyramid next door. Serry Sow didn’t care. She couldn’t care. It hurt too much to care.
Her Master was fighting another Master. She didn’t care. Nothing would change. She was Serry Sow. Whoever won, she would remain the Serry Sow. She would remain stupid. She was so stupid
The Masters cheered. Serry Sow smelled blood.
Panting wildly, Halc struck outward with his blade. Cackling, Larr dodged, tripped his opponent, and kicked upward as Halc fell into the blow. Halc let out a mighty whoof!! and flipped over, swinging round his sword. Larr aimed a strike upwards. It caught the blade neatly and forced it out of his Halc’s grip. With his other hand, Larr plunged his smaller blade at Halc’s chest. Halc flipped again, avoiding a direct penetration, though he was cut. Bea whimpered. Halc got to his feet, armed with only his knife.
Larr, sword in one hand, dagger in the other, laughed.
Bea watched from across the expanse of one pyramid to the other. Usually, slaves and men didn’t share the same observation chamber in attendance at a trial of blood. The presence of the Floran had obviously changed things. The room was full of men and women. Larr swung with both knife and sword. Halc leapt back barely in time. He sucked in his stomach to avoid a disemboweling thrust.
Halc charged in and grappled with Bea’s owner. Larr hit him across the face with his fisted knife-hand, pulled back, and flicked upward with his longer blade.
The sword caught Halc along the ribs. Bea winced in sympathetic pain.
Blood splattered. Halc groaned but kept on fighting.
The only thing saving him was quick footwork. That and a Yn constitution. Every blow he aimed missed. Sweat stained his back. His muscles were quivering with exhaustion.
Halc, with the reflexes of a trained warrior, evaded a decapitating blow. He rolled around on top of the pyramid platform. He avoided a second blow—a third! He could not keep this up forever.
All of his attacks failed. They were well-aimed, strong, mighty, but they failed. He was losing.
Eben Halc was going to lose the duel. Bea was certain.
Larr had modified and configured as much of Aosha’s equipment as he could. She knew that hovering nearby was an invisible probe of Centauri manufacture capable of blasting anything within range with microwaves. Surely the Floran knew? She glanced at the small creature. Its face seen in profile swept from a Yn-like red to green to yellow to black, all within the few seconds she observed him. Yes, it knows, she thought bitterly. She could tell from the ironic grin on its face. The Floran could probably see the damn floating thing. Even if Eben Halc did get a blow in, the microwave blast would finish him.
Maybe not. Larr didn’t want anyone to know he was cheating. No, she thought, he’ll have programmed the probe just to target his knife, and only enough to cause Halc to drop it if he’s ever in any real danger. No one but me and the Floran will ever know. It wasn’t likely that events would even get that far, though. Larr’s real advantage in all his duels wasn’t his invisible probe or even the dagger he used openly. It was his dagger’s sheath that was fixed. She saw Halc swing and miss.
The men booed at his poor performance. They had expected better from a Shumaet tribesman.
It wasn’t his fault. Larr’s sheath generated a low-frequency sound wave. It was inaudible, but it had a serious effect on a target’s sense of balance. Her master had explained it all to her with great relish. It wasn’t strong enough to cause vertigo, which could be noticed, just enough to prevent careful aim.
Larr had never once been wounded in any of his duels. He had allowed himself to be scratched with the edge of a blade now and then, for effect, but that was all. He was a complete bastard and coward.
And he owned her. Tears flooded Bea’s eyes.
Halc went down. He was wheezing. Larr lunged at him, swinging expertly with both blades. He practiced incessantly; he was good enough for show. Metal struck on metal in a frenzy too fast for Bea to fully credit. All she knew was that Halc was being driven back, step by step to the edge of the platform. A crowd of red Yn males shouted from below. They shouted from the observation room.
Even the slaves were shouting. Everyone hated Larr, but he was putting on a good show for them at least!
Bea closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to watch. She turned from the window, pressing through the crowd of gawking slavegirls. They were excited by the fight. She was absolutely sickened by it.
She pulled out of the crowd. She pulled up short. Crouching in a forgotten corner of the observation chamber was the Serry Sow. Larr’s Serry Sow. His torture pet. The former Commander Garrant.
She looked like an animal. She was dirty. She smelled. Her eyes were vacant.
The blood froze in Bea’s veins.
She couldn’t let this go on. But what could she do? She was a slave. She was powerless on Y.
She had never been allowed to view any of her master’s duels before. She hadn’t wanted to. She hadn’t even wanted to come to this one. She turned and glanced over the heads of the other slaves.
The two adversaries circled each other. Larr lunged, and an exhausted Halc nearly tripped over the side of the platform. Pink blood from a dozen shallow cuts covered him. Larr attacked him again.
Her master had killed so many. None of them had stood a chance. Even Eben Halc didn’t stand a chance, though he too was a trained Centauri soldier. He too was a . . . . Bea’s eyes widened.
None of them had ever stood a chance. Because they were Yn. They had been born Yn.
But she hadn’t. Serry hadn’t. Neither had Larr. And Eben Halc . . . ?
Bea pushed back through the slaves and reached the window. “RECOGNIZE!!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “OVERRIDE!! RECOGNIZE!! THIS IS SENIOR LIEUTENANT BEA STOC!!”
Everyone looked at her, stunned, slaves and masters alike.
Even Larr turned from across that wide expanse. The only one who didn’t turn to look was Eben, still fighting for his life. He swung at Larr again and missed, yet he remained such an easy target.
“Slave . . .” the Rexus of Woom began to say, and Bea ignored him. He was the chief of the males present. When Aosha had used his weapons back at the Brahma base, the Marine had instructed it to target only non-Centauri. Only the non-Centauri! It had worked. She and Larr had been untouched in the reign of resulting firepower. There was something still inside them that the module’s chemiprocessor, its internal scanners, had recognized as Betan.
Please let it work, she prayed. It was quite possible Larr had reprogrammed the module since then.
“Recognize, ” an artificial voice spoke from the air. “Identified. Senior Lieutenant Stoc. Waiting.”
“What was that?” someone said. “Who said that?” The Floran nodded, grinning widely.
“You bitch!” Larr screamed at her. “Shut the fu . .”
The last command would be the easiest. She wasn’t sure she could just deactivate the weapon. It was a combat module after all. “TARGET ONLY NON-CENTAURI!! ONLY NON-CENTAURI!!”
“Acknowledged,” that invisible voice spoke. Though she couldn’t hear it, couldn’t sense it, couldn’t feel it in any way, Bea nonetheless heard, sensed, and felt the dagger sheath’s sound generators turn from Eben Halc. She heard, sensed, and felt the invisible module over Larr’s shoulder, protected by its holographic camouflage, aim its microwave emitter elsewhere. Larr screamed with absolute rage.
He swung at Halc, no longer fooling around, no longer playing to the crowd. Halc dodged the blow, parried a second dagger thrust, and riposted, connecting and leaving a vicious pink streak down Larr’s arm. The former Betan lieutenant looked at it in horror. For the first time in the duel, Halc smiled.
They charged at one another.
The Rexus took Bea by the arm. “What did you do, slave?” he demanded. “Tell me, now!”
“My master cheats,” she said, compelled to obey through the strength of the sovereign’s will. “You know that we were not born on Y. There is an invisible weapon he uses.”
The Rexus stared at her for a full second. He whipped his head to the Floran. “Reveal it! Now!!”
The Floran inclined its head. Its eyes wouldn’t leave the fight. Larr, though, suddenly screamed.
His dagger sheath turned a bright glowing red and fell at his feet. Likewise, over his shoulder, jetting and darting to avoid every blow, a round metallic sphere floating in the air materialized. He tripped and only barely avoided a lunge from Halc.
“Destroy that damn thing!!” the Rexus roared. The Centauri attack module flared and disappeared.
One of the Rexus’ men, a broad-shouldered warrior even by Yn standards, spun at the Floran.
“You! You must have known! And yet you did nothing! You’re as bad as he!” Those had been Bea’s thoughts exactly.
Tensions were high. The Yn were a passionate race. In a flash, and before anybody could say anything to dissuade him, the warrior pulled out his sword and swung at the small, highly colorful creature.
The blow never connected. Bea blinked, and that was all the time the transformation took, a blink of an eye. She never saw it. She heard an unnatural tingling, like a thousand pieces of small glass falling to the earth, and saw a brief, shining light. A moment later, everyone, men and slaves alike, crowded away. Where the warrior had been standing just a bare moment before, a purple statue of that same warrior made of what looked like transparent and indestructible plasteel had suddenly appeared.
In the blink of an eye, the Yn soldier had been gone from a live person to an inanimate piece of art.
The same snarl of rage remained frozen on his face, forever now. The Floran’s expression, too, went unchanged. Bea thought she might have heard music from somewhere. The creature hadn’t turned even a second’s glance away from the fight. Its concentration was inhuman. She shivered atavistically.
The Rexus let go of her. The other Yn in the observation chamber, the males, at least, shrugged and went back to watching. The slaves cowered and talked amongst themselves, ignored for the time being.
Bea looked back outside the window.
“Now we fight,” Halc said. She could see his mouth move to form the words. Larr plunged at him with knife and sword. He was still better armed than his opponent. He could still easily win. Halc was practically dead on his feet.
Halc met Larr’s first blow with his knife. Sparks flew.
He turned the blade and kicked out at Larr’s feet. He grabbed Larr’s arm at the wrist, the one holding the sword. The blade angled nearly at the base of his throat. Another centimeter or so and it would penetrate. Larr tried to break free. He thrust out with the knife, missed. Halc turned slightly, still holding his opponent’s arm, and twisted. Everyone heard the bone break.
Larr fell back almost to the edge of the platform. The crowd below stopped cheering. They all watched. “This isn’t supposed to happen,” Larr said. “I’m better than you. I’m a Yn warrior!!”
Screaming, he charged at Halc. Halc crouched for a second, blood dripping from him, then stood suddenly. He met the charge, his dagger pushed in and upward. The two opponents froze, face-to-face, embracing. Bea couldn’t tell what was happening. She peeked through her fingers.
Larr and Halc stared at each other from centimeters away.
“I . . I won!” Larr said. He grinned bloodily.
Halc shook his head slowly. “No, lieutenant. No.” He pushed him away.
Bea’s owner stood there for a few seconds, still smiling. Then he collapsed, Halc’s knife in his chest.
Bea fainted.
The Serry Sow did not fully comprehend what was happening. She wasn’t really capable of understanding. Master called her stupid, and so she was stupid. Master told her she couldn’t think, so she couldn’t think. She didn’t care. She was Serry Sow.
“Serry?” she heard. “Do you understand me? Can you understand?”
Glazed eyes looked upwards. There was a New Master before her. Old Master was dead. This was New Master. She didn’t care. She was still Serry Sow.
New Master stroked her hair. New Master bent down over her. “I’m sorry,” New Master whispered, directly in the Serry Sow’s ear. “This is the only way.” New Master parted her legs, and, automatically, the Serry Sow lifted her lower body at New Master. The motion was entirely reflexive; there was no desire in it whatsoever. Serry Sow no longer felt desire, though her body burned for cum.
She had to have sex in order to live. But she felt no pleasure in it. She was Old Master’s pet.
Would New Master be any different? The Serry Sow didn’t care. She couldn’t care.
New Master’s cock slid inside her. New Master’s cock stretched the Serry Sow’s pussy, and when New Master thrust, she responded spasmodically, totally without feeling. Her body milked New Master’s cum mechanically. New Master would sway her now. New Master would call her names.
She would become those names. She didn’t care.
“You are Serry Garrant,” New Master swayed her, the command slipping into her mind as effortlessly as New Master’s cock had entered her body. “Remember. You are Serry Garrant.”
“Tank yu, mas’sr,” she said. “I are Serry Garrant Sow.” That was her new name.
“No,” New Master said with ferocity. “No! Remember your past. Remember Serry Garrant. You are Serry Garrant. Say it!”
New Master kissed her mouth. Old Master had never kissed her mouth. Serry Sow grew perplexed.
He (New Master?) continued to fuck her. New Master’s (His?) penis penetrated deeper. The soft confines of the Serry Sow’s pussy closed round him tightly. Slowly, her arms, left dangling off to the side, reached up and took hold of his back. Something was different. This was a different kind of use.
“You are Serry Garrant,” she was swayed. “You are Serry Garrant. Remember Serry. Remember who you were!” He withdrew from her, still kissing her face. His licks and kisses proceeded down her chin and along her neck. He caressed her breasts, mouthing each of her nipples in turn.
He buried his face in her pussy and pleasured her.
He, her New Master, was giving her, the Serry Sow, the slave, pleasure. And he continued to sway her. “Remember who you were. Remember who you were.”
She climaxed. The slave’s eyes opened in utter surprise. Her whole body shook. The orgasm had been as sudden and severe as a whip crack, the latter of which she was much more familiar.
When New Master parted from her, lifted his face momentarily from her crotch, she moaned. “Please,” she begged. “Remember,” he commanded, and she tried, but it was so hard! It hurt to remember.
“No,” she said softly, pleading. The master atop her, New Master, shuddered and said, “You cannot resist. Slaves cannot resist. You do not want to resist.” It appeared to hurt him to have to say it.
She was a slave. She had always been a slave. She could not resist. Even if she had wanted to resist, she would not have been able to. Slaves cannot resist. Slaves do not want to resist.
So, she obeyed. She tried to remember.
She hadn’t been happy, she knew that. She had been miserable. She had failed her crew (What crew?). She didn’t want to remember. But she was a slave. She had to remember. She had been ordered to remember. Images flooded her mind. With the images came thoughts of greater complexity.
It became easier to think. It became easier to remember.
“Remember,” she was swayed.
Her new master picked her up. With Yn vigor, he took hold of Serry’s thighs, opened her wide for him, and buried his shaft inside her. She immediately had another orgasm, this one longer and more intense. “Ohhh!” she cried out. He redesigned the whole recycling system for me, she suddenly thought. She hadn’t meant for the dear lieutenant to do that. He had just gone ahead and done it anyway. Back on the ship. Because he liked her. Because he was in love with her, probably.
Had she loved him too? Probably. Yes, definitely. Most definitely. She had always loved him.
She kissed him. She held onto the back of his head and kissed him. She covered his face with kisses.
Serry recalled a ship. A starship. It was called The Flags of Centauri Independence. It had gone on a mission. It had gone on a mission to make contact and explore the Epsilon Indi system.
But she was just a mere slave! How could she know of such things?
She squeezed at her dear Eben’s cock. She gyrated her hips, drawing out his pleasure as the trained tavernslut she had been. I was a tavernslut? she thought, wincing as another burst of pleasure rolled through her.
She had! She remembered. She had once been named Honoa, and she had been a tavernslut. And before that, she had been the streetgirl Jurin. She remembered. The details fell into place, locked into her memory with every orgasm. “Ohh!” Another name. “Aiihh!!” Another place. She had been a streetgirl. She had been sold at auction. Before that, she had been Slave 27 in a great lot of sold sluts.
And before that . . .? The world spun. Everything closed in. She was not supposed to remember.
She had been ordered not to remember.
You have no name, a master had once told her. You have not be given a name. You have not yet earned a name. A harsh injunction, but she had obeyed it because she was a slave. She had had no name. She had had no identity.
Her identity had once been taken from her before. She had been turned into a pleasure drone by the Solarians. Pain filled her head. She remembered the Solarians. They had fought a war against them.
“Remember who you were, Serry,” her master, her Master, Eben, swayed her. “Please, remember!”
She felt on the verge of a titanic climax. Eben—she remembered his name but little else—pulled from her. Her mind was full of conflicting images. His body was covered in sweat and blood. It tasted good, his manly sweat. Serry licked at it. She licked at him. He was delicious. Masculine.
“Master?” she begged.
She didn’t want him to stop.
The Solarians had taken her identity. They had stolen her name and even her face. Another Solarian, a blond Thane on the Planet Y, had also tried doing that. She had been given to the black-ink Brahma to be transformed. Was there a difference? She had to know! She reached down between her master’s legs and took hold of Eben’s depleted manhood. With the training she had received, she brought him back to life with skillful fingers and the touch of her tongue and lips. “Master,” she said. “Please!”
“Remember,” Eben Halc told her.
Hard again, he picked her up and nailed her to the wall, impaling her on his mighty Yn shaft. Serry began to shake violently. Her final orgasm was almost within reach.
“Don’t stop, please!” she begged. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
He pounded into her ceaselessly. “Never!” His cock rubbed over her tender clitoris. She folded herself round him. His cum shot into her, his Yn hypnotic cum, and it happened. The universe shook.
There was a difference! The Solarians blanked their slaves. They erased their minds and souls. The slaves of Y were still people, though. They were individuals! She was an individual. She was . . . she was . . . she was Serry Garrant! A wave of crushing pleasure accompanied the realization, a molten flood of raw ecstasy that tantalized every nerve ending, radiating outward from the center of her being to cause her fingers and toes and even her hair to tingle with excitement! She was Serry Garrant!
She remembered everything that had happened to her on the Planet Y!
I remember! Serry thought. “Eben!?” she asked, wonderingly, and she fainted.