My presentation of the training up to now has sounded mostly theoretical, but there are most definitely practical elements too. With the exception of the few virgins, our captors may use us at will, and they do. Trygg especially so. Girlfriends in the Republic had told me that human males could only climax a few times a day, but that man’s appetite for women seems insatiable.
Always he hangs around the training room, watching lazily, or goading either one of us, or Alurri, seemingly at random, until he becomes sufficiently worked up to wish to sate his lust. Then a victim is chosen and raped, usually by means of her least favorite manner, either in front of the group, or after removal to his room. There are several underling males reporting to Trygg, even though they have no obvious roles from what I’ve seen, other than to intimidate then rape women. These brutes make equally free with us.
Those girls who admitted in their interviews to being virgins are spared the vaginal penetration, as virginity is going to add to a woman’s sale value to many cultures, and for slave traders it’s all about the credits. But apparently a woman can remain a virgin while taking it in the ass or the mouth, so I’m not sure if the virgins are to be envied or pitied compared to the rest of us.
Our pens have no windows, so we soon lose track of time in our world of perpetual artificial light. There is a period when these lights are extinguished and we are ordered to rest. Those hours we call ‘night’, but it could be any time outside on the planet’s surface. The relentless sexualization of us does not cease with the darkness. Most often we sleep in the pens, but sometimes we are summoned to share a man’s bed. Serving as an overnight companion is a duty commonly expected of a sex slave.
Even at night in the pens, our time is not our own. On the first day, each of us was paired with another female. My double is Tana – one of the virgins, at least she’s a virgin except for the cruel male who fingered her insides on the Hub.
With our companion, we must sleep intimately close – squashed naked together into a cage with proportions resembling a large coffin. Any attempts at privacy or dignity were soon surrendered during the exhaustion of the first night, and from then on, we’ve slept entwined in whatever position gives most comfort.
The Slavers force us to form an emotional bond with our companions, that our feelings might then be used to torment us. Firstly, every night we must finger our companion, taking pleasure from each other until we orgasm. The noises from our pens, in the first hours of darkness, are quite obscene. I naively hoped to act this role at first, but found that thanks to my implant, my body moved under command as though without my volition. I can hold back my climax as easily as I could hold back the tides on my homeworld.
Secondly, we must share in our successes and failures. Often when one of us is goaded, both of us are goaded. Or sometimes, when Tana performs below expectation I am punished, or vice versa. The mind games are as insidious as the mantras. When she’s in pain, I learn to hate it. She’s just another sex slave, but her wellbeing matters to me.
As our climaxes fade each night, we often end up weeping, kissing, doing anything we can to briefly sooth each other’s mutual misery.
As the days of training roll on, our progress is assessed by each slave being forced to spend a night in a coffin cage pleasing Alurri. When my turn comes, I believe I bring my instructor to climax quickly, but next day I learn I wasn’t sufficiently seductive when Tana is punished with a whipping in front of the group.
Coora is cold – that is what everyone in our group is told. Coora thinks she is better than human women. You must teach Coora that this is not the case. That is an order.
Just before we are caged for the night, the human women administer my lesson. With faces apologetic but implacable, I’m given the beating of my life – kicked and punched by every single woman, driven by her implant. Even Tana joins in.
I don’t need a lesson from the other women to make me hate myself. I already hate myself for failing. I hate myself for being a sex slave. I hate this life. I hate being female. I should have thrown myself from the landing platform when I had the chance, but my implant prevents even that final choice. I believe that I’m so pathetic that I deserve to be a slave to men.
In this place of endless misery, we forget all about the past, and do not think of the future. We only exist now, trying to deliver whatever task is currently required to a level of perfection which might just avoid punishment. I forget Trindii, Jurong, thirty-nine, my friends at the university, my friends and family back on the Dystyr homeworld. I forget that there are many places across the universe where women are free. I chant my mantras – it is correct that I am a sex slave.
I even forget that our time in training has a purpose, and the Slavers never meant it to be permanent. On the night that turns out to be our last in the pens, I happen to be in my cage alone, for Trygg choses Tana to fill his bed. She returns, weeping and limping from her damaged backside, while I’m with the other women, preparing to practice my skills for the day. But Trygg and his men are not far behind Tana.
“Follow us, slaves,” Trygg orders, and so strong now is the compulsion of my implant that already it’s as though someone is pulling at my heart. “All except you,” and he indicates Alurri.
Tana and I look at each other anxiously, and we bunch close together to try and give comfort, but we all know this means new horrors are ahead. We know that the girls around us offer no protection against our fate, but we huddle together anyway.
It never rains on Aghara-Penthay, and except for the rare sandstorms, the climate is perpetually baked by the nearby star. And yet as we follow Trygg to the landing pad – the same pad where we arrived without implants as fresh captives, I pass the first empty window space and I realize it must have been weeks since I’ve seen sunlight.
8 – Sale
This time, the number they have given me is not a score. It is my lot number.
Forty women are packed into this slave pen, each labeled between one and forty, and each with our number displayed on a wrist strap much like a watch, so bidders may match what they see with whatever other information has been provided. Forty women – humans, aliens, different skin colors and body shapes, forty women who once had lives, loves and families, but each one now implanted and marked, each one naked. I am lot thirty-four. Just one of these forty women.
We are back on the Hub in orbit around the Slaver planet. From here, the Slaver raiding vessels dock with fresh captives, and transport ships ferry visitors to and from the rest of the universe. The transport ships that represent freedom and escape are so close I could walk to them in a matter of minutes, but they might as well be on the other side of the galaxy as far as I’m concerned. Men are everywhere on the Hub, and as soon as I heard one lewd request from a man, all progress towards a better life would end as I’d hurry to obey him. And that fate would only occur if we could even escape the auction center. The door to our pen has been kept locked since we arrived. This is the Hub. Men are close who are not of men Aghara-Penthay, and that means that here, the stealing of slave girls is a danger. The Slaver guards who did little more than rape us down on the planet, now take their responsibilities seriously.