Chapter XII: More Girls, More Problems
By the time the sun rose again, Beachball had joined Scars in death. A guard who'd been on duty when it happened claimed that she'd gone through convulsions just as violent as Scars' had been, and Vorden was somewhat disappointed that he hadn't been there to see it. With those oversized tits, it must have been an impressive sight indeed.
Still, that was last night's news, and there was some current business to discuss.
"You're right, this looks extremely promising", he told his staff as they pored over the scout report that'd come in overnight. "The only question is if we can do it in time. Sudo?"
"It's four hours' flight each way, plus a few hours for the actual op." The engineer consulted his datapad. "After that we'd need another half day or so to get them processed and sorted out for pickup, so unless the ship pops up before noon tomorrow we'll be fine."
The fact that they weren't entirely certain about how closely the ship meant to pick them and their cargo of slaves up would stick to its schedule added a rather vexing level of uncertainty to their planning. It couldn't be helped, of course. Smugglers often had to make large detours to avoid areas of patrol activity, and their best estimate of when their transport would finally arrive was on the frustratingly vague level of "within a day or two".
"Alright. Kamal?"
He turned to the ex-marine who looked almost like a soldier again in his military-surplus nanoweave armor.
"Compound looks pretty solid, and we don't know anything about the interior. Could take a while to peel 'em all out of there", the big man mused.
They were looking at pictures of a large structure on the outskirts of a fair-sized town, probably a temple of some sort. In the large interior courtyard, a group of...priests, possibly? Vorden wasn't sure and didn't really care too much...were engaged in some kind of ceremony. They were also clearly female, their skimpy outfits leaving very little to the imagination. The scout's report had been
extremely enthusiastic, and Vorden could see why.
"Don't waste too much time", he said. "Grab what you can, but don't get bogged down. Better to leave some behind than risk keeping our ride waiting."
"Sure thing, boss", Kamal said with a grin.
The problem was that while the converted patrol craft that'd brought the crew here was reasonably stealthy, the freighter they'd contracted to haul their cargo was anything
but. The chances of a NPA patrol boat happening by to spot them was tiny, but the longer the freighter had to loiter in orbit the higher the chance of things going seriously wrong. So the moment it arrived, they'd have to be ready to load the cargo and get the hell out of there.
"Alright. Then let's get started, people...time is money."
Kamal just nodded and left to get his troops sorted out. The rest of the assembled staff also got ready to leave, but Vorden ended up calling one of them back: "One more thing, Yakuv."
The tall, lanky medic turned around and raised an inquisitive eyebrow. "What is it, captain?"
"I want you to give our special friends out on the main field another round of stim shots", he said.
"Uh, sure thing, captain. But why?"
"So they'll put on a better show. When the new meat arrives, I want them to have absolutely no doubts about what's going on there. While you're at it, make sure they get some water. I want some lively dancing when Kamal gets back."
"Hmm," Yakuv mused, "I can do that. Of course, they'll break down pretty fast once the stims wear off."
"That's not really an issue, is it? As soon as the ship arrives they'll have done their job. And if all three of them get the same dose it won't even skew the betting pool any."
"True, I suppose", the medic said. "Alright, I'll try to time it so Kamal's catch get their show."
"Good", he said, and got on with his breakfast.
The day passed without major incidents. An hour after noon, Kamal called in to report that he was on the way back with what he called "a fine load of booty", and as the sun lazily descended towards the horizon they got the processing tent ready on the field. A few slaves watched from their pens in silence. They knew what was coming, of course, all having been through that ordeal themselves when they'd arrived. The crucified didn't take much of an interest, three being too focused on their own agony to care much about the world around them, and the other two were quite busy decomposing. The survivors were more or less stable according to Yakuv, who'd added some nutrient injections to the mix on his own initiative. They might linger for another day or two in this half-aware state, but the stims would change that.
It was late in the afternoon when Kamal's raiding force landed, two large cargo skimmers escorted by four smaller armored aircars. They set down on the main field with a fairly solid attempt at military precision, making Captain Vorden nod in appreciation.
"Pretty good work", Calpurnia agreed. She was back in her standard no-nonsense overalls, datapad in hand as they waited for the new meat. "Guess it's true what they say: you can take the man out of the marines..."
Her voice trailed off as the first transport's loading doors were opened and the cargo came down the ramp.
They were bound together in the usual way, each captive's arms behind her back, linked to a leash around the neck of the next one in line so there was no chance of any of them making a break for it. They were also gagged, as they'd found that being unable to even speak during transport was helpful in putting prospective slaves into the proper frame of mind for processing. And they were loaded down with jewelry. Gold was
everywhere, along with colorful precious stones. Most of them, in fact, wore nothing
but gold and maybe a few scraps of red-dyed cloth.
A beaming Kamal strode towards them. "Good, isn't it?" he called out as he approached.
"That's a bit of an understatement", Vorden replied. "How many are there?"
"Twenty-three, total. But that's not the best part."
He grinned. "All of 'em are special stock material, if I'm any judge. Well, except for two that we kinda spoiled finding out that little fact."
He explained the details of the raid while the captives were lined up in front of the processing tent, facing the crosses. Apparently, they'd stumbled right into a religious ceremony of some sort. As far as Kamal could tell, they must have believed the incoming skimmers to be some kind of divine manifestation...until the men emerged and started hosing the crowd down with stun carbines. A number of them had been armed, with bronze-tipped spears and large shields, but neither of these had made much of an impression on the raiders. The whole thing had taken no more than twenty minutes between drop and dust-off, and the only little hiccup had been that one of the men, jumping down from his aircar just before it touched down, had managed to seriously sprain his ankle and was probably going to be the laughing-stock of the crew for a while.
"They speak a dialect of a language we've already got, so I was able to ask 'em some questions. Far as I can figure, that whole town is all-female", Kamal said. "Some kind of amazon cult thing. They keep men as slaves to breed the next generation", he continued with a grin, "which is gonna turn out to be kinda ironic."
Calpurnia burst out laughing at that but Vorden wasn't all that happy about what he was hearing.
"They sound like troublemakers", he said. "We'd better make sure they get the message right away."
"I think our runners are already getting started on that", Kamal said with a glance over at the prisoners.
The three crucified bitches were indeed giving the newcomers a good show. Yakuv had given them their stim shots half an hour before Kamal's landing, and by now they'd fully revived from their stupor. A measure of strength had returned to even Red's battered frame, and all three danced and writhed, moaning and crying as the stims brought renewed clarity to their senses. For a while, exhaustion had dulled the agony of their torture a little, but Yakuv's injection had robbed them of even that small mercy.
The new prisoners were watching in stunned horror as Red went through another cycle of convulsions from the improvised torture device attached to her nethers. Gagged as they were, their expressions of shock were non-verbal, but both the tone of their moans and muffled cries and their horrified expressions were easy enough to read. A few of them remained silent, instead staring at their guards with intense, focused hatred, and Vorden mentally marked them as potential problem cases.
"These three", he said, pointing out the most defiant-looking of the lot, "make sure they get the full treatment."
Yakuv nodded and his team got to work.
Two at a time, the new captives were cut loose from the line and stripped. Normally, new arrivals would simply have whatever primitive clothes they were wearing cut or just ripped from their bodies, but the unusual attire of this bunch warranted some more careful treatment. Gold by itself held decent value as an industrial commodity, but that price paled in comparison to what collectors would pay for genuine artifacts from a primitive culture like this one...particularly from a world under NPA protection. They might sell them separately, or even -another idea cooked up by Calpurnia- sell them together with the slaves who'd originally worn them as a special two-for-one collector package. If the guards were careful not to damage the prisoners' ceremonial outfits however, they were nowhere near as gentle with their wearers. Public humiliation was an important part of the procedure, and the men did their best to make it as complete as possible. They leered and laughed evilly while groping and pawing at their victims' bodies. They were, in Vorden's opinion, overdoing it quite a bit and he made a mental note to talk to them later on about maybe tuning down the ham acting just a little. By contrast, Yakuv's performance was rather more understated but no less effective. He was all scientist, examining the struggling future slaves with a critical eye and an expression of cool detachment, making measurements and noting them on his datapad. Captain Vorden strongly suspected that the medic's effect on the newcomers' mental state was at least as traumatic as the guards' efforts, with far less overacting involved.
After both slaves were naked and Yakuv's scientific curiosity satisfied, they were dragged into the tent where the med team had set up two examination chairs. They were similar to the ones used in legitimate gynaecological exams, but those would not normally be built quite as sturdily, or fitted with straps to firmly secure the "patient". The first girl, a black-haired, willowy type, didn't struggle much as she got strapped in, merely crying quietly to herself, although she did try to fight a bit when one of Yakuv's guys started to shave her nethers. This had a triple purpose: It'd make the examiner's work a little easier, it'd get rid of any annoying little passengers the girl might carry (always a risk, even on nominally civilized worlds)...and it'd serve as an extra source of humiliation. The girls were effectively left more naked than naked, and that was worth putting in a minute or two of extra work.
What happened next was, more or less, a standard examination. While a medic got busy around each girl's privates, another drew blood samples and administered a shot combining broad-spectrum antibiotics, antiviral drugs and some stuff that'd make most common endoparasites really regret their choice of hosts. Many of the primitives they'd caught ended up being more healthy than ever before in their lives, and Yakuv'd been known to joke that they should start charging them for the service. The next part, of course, probably wouldn't happen in any kind of reputable medical practice. Not outside of bad novels, anyway. To check the proper functioning of those body parts that would likely define their future lives, one of Yakuv's men brought a stim-wand to bear. Fear and shame had kept the girl from feeling any arousal from the close examination of her cunt, but as he ran the handy little device over his victim's body, the combination of a vibrating head and focused, short-ranged sonic pulses (an application of the same tech used in stunners, in fact) quickly got her juices flowing. One by one, following a well-practiced checklist, her body's most sensitive spots were tested for their reaction to the buzzing wand's power.
The second girl was a short, slightly stocky brunette who fought with every ounce of her strength until a guard shut her up with a stun-knuckled punch to the stomach, after which she remained quiet for the rest of her exam aside from the occasional whimper. She, too, was prodded and probed until Yakuv's checklist had been completed to the examiners' satisfaction, after which both of them were dragged out through the back of the tent into a waiting holding pen and the entire procedure started again with a fresh pair.
They'd processed six of their captives when it was finally the turn of one of the likely troublemakers. And like the stocky girl from the first batch, she tried to make a fight of it. She was darker-skinned than the rest of them, with curly black hair and an athletic build not entirely unlike Ice's. The skin of her left arm was marred by a set of scars that suggested she'd tangled with some kind of very large predator at some point, and judging by the ice-hard look in her eyes she'd probably killed it without flinching. It took three guards instead of the usual two to get her strapped into her chair and the contraption rattled and shook under her futile efforts to free herself. Even if Vorden hadn't marked her for it from the start, her behaviour would have certainly earned her special treatment in the form of stim-wands set to maximum power, overloading nerve endings and delivering burning, stinging pain all over her body. By the time she was done in the chair she was drenched in sweat, her cramped muscles trembling, but her ordeal was only just starting. Unlike the others before her, she was brought back out the front of the tent and tied spread-eagled to the top of a table, each limb firmly secured to a table leg and her head pulled down over the edge as far as it would go, arching her back. Before she could begin to recover her strength, a ring gag forced her mouth permanently open, and the off-duty slavers who'd been waiting for this moment lined up with their trousers opened and their cocks hard. Under the terrified gaze of her fellow captives, accompanied by the moaning of the crucified and the cheers of Vorden's men, she was taught her new place in the world in a savage gang rape. While one man rammed his cock into her virgin anus, another forced his into her mouth and down her throat, turning her pained shriek into a choked, gagging gurgle. It didn't take long for either man to finish, but their places were immediately taken up by others. Before long she was joined in her ordeal by the second potential problem case, a somewhat chubby little blonde with huge, pendulous breasts. She too got spitroasted over a table while those waiting in line passed the time by working over her massive tits with sticks, belts and anything else they could think of.
It was the third one who ended up giving them some actual trouble. She had copper-toned skin not unlike Vorden's bed-slave, full breasts and long, black hair which she wore in a thick braid that reached all the way down to her knees...and which nobody had bothered to check for concealed weapons. When Vorden rushed into the tent to find out what the commotion was about, she'd already pulled a small but nasty knife from its hiding place amid the black tresses and cut the guard closest to her across both eyes in a single efficient motion. While the man screamed in pain and let go of her, she made a grab for the combat knife holstered at his hip, and if Yakuv hadn't had the presence of mind to hose both of them down with his stunner, she could have done a lot of damage.
As it was, her brief rampage left one guard out of action for a while (thankfully she'd only managed to cut the man's eyelids) and caused a bit of a hold up in processing the others, but Vorden found himself faced with a minor dilemma. He needed to make another example, showy enough to leave a lasting impression but also quicker than the elaborate crucifixions they'd used on their five runaways. He was just about to call Calpurnia on the comms when he remembered something he'd read somewhere…
He keyed another comm-code instead. "Hey, Sudo? I need you in processing. And some stuff. I'll give you a list…"
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