Waste Disposal

A solo interstellar journey is always a boring business and the small and slow caravel that I have bought was already well past its scrap-by date before I was even born. However, I have a good use for all this time. I’m recording the reasons that put me here, outside of the Commonwealth of Worlds, in the back-end of the Orion Arm.

I’m out here looking for a single primitive, pre-interstellar world, when all that I know of it is it’s native name and the fact that it is within 60 to 70 light years of Aldebaran, the only star in the region that supports a high-energy interstellar civilization. I don’t expect that every listener will understand me and I’m near certain that many who hear my story will feel little love or sympathy for me, but I feel a burning compulsion to tell it, so I will start my tale at the point where I was already committed to my fate, but just didn’t know it. The story that ends here began in a very ordinary slave market.

*  

The mirror field that concealed the slave market was there by local statue. In this puritanical berg, no under-18s were allowed in to play with the sluts and boys being displayed to their potential buyers. However it also gave me the chance to check my 6 o’clock without turning my head and I did that automatically, even though this job wasn’t the sort that was likely to bring any serious violence. As I already expected, there was no threat, just the pair of us reflected in the visually impenetrable but otherwise harmless surface. 

I saw only my newest employer and myself. The former was a thin-faced young spacer boy with bad teeth and the sort of acne that only came from a recent encounter with puberty. His untrained flat-footed walk was only accentuated by the near proximity of an ultra-fit, evenly-tanned short-haired blond who moved with a graceful dancer’s glide, namely yours truly. He wore a spacer coverall with the insignia of private pilot and fully-fledged commercial navigator. I wore a light but opaquely ruffed synth-silk blouse and a short plaid skirt that both displayed my legs to best advantage and left them free to kick anything that tried to get cute. I always like to look nice, but even more, I like to look harmless. It occasionally can let you get in the first blow and if I get that advantage, then it’s usually also the last.

I don’t normally do slave supervision jobs. I’m far too overqualified and it pays too low when any pimply kid with a whip and an attitude can do it. So you may wonder why I was following a small-time would be slave-owner who’s already been eying me up as if he thought that I’d drop my knickers at the first sight of his greasy pecker?     

I can give you three good reasons. Firstly, the pay was surprisingly good, pretty near what I would get as bodyguard to a top class merchant going into a free trade zone. Second, the fact that the kid was giving me the eye was irrelevant because I knew that if he came on to me in too heavy a way then I’ll just pull his balls off and stuff them in his mouth. Third, and the clincher, I needed to get off the circuit for a few weeks whilst my shyster cleared the matter of my offing the nephew of this very berg’s mayor right there in his uncle’s own town square.

I guess that the last needs further explanation. I don’t do drink or drugs. Deliberately slowing your reactions can get you killed in my line of work. But I do admit to a predilection for hot lesbo action and a weakness for dice. The mayor’s nephew offered me the opportunity to indulge both. He was sat in an outdoor café-bar in the berg’s main square and I couldn’t walk past his mute challenge. He had a truly stunning, fully-trained hetaerae, the most expensive and exclusive sort of sex slave, kneeling in gorgeous translucent scanty-wear by his side and a pair of heavy bone-dice stacked invitingly on the table in front of him. Her use for the night was his stake. A week’s hard-earned wages was mine.

My luck appeared to be entirely out. He was grinning and mouthing encouragement like a snake-oil salesman as he kept matching and beating my throws. In a half-hour of time, I had spent a half-year’s earnings in trying and failing to win a night with that beauty. I have to admit now that he was one of the best dice-mechanics that I have ever seen in action. I would have defied even a casino pit-boss to spot his moves. However, nestled amongst the many semi-military enhancements that I have bought for this innocent little body of mine is infra-red sight and, when I finally realised that I was been hustled and turned it on, I clearly visioned the change in the heat signature of the dice as he switched them out.

He was also probably the easiest kill that I had ever made. I’m permanently tooled up for covert work, including assassination, and the only decision to make was whether I also needed to permanently off his bodyguard. The matter of professional courtesy to a fellow ex-jump-trooper resolved that. He was a professional, but I was in a different league altogether. It would be no extra sweat to take him down without leaving him with anything more than a headache and the need to pay a refund to his ex-Principal’s estate. So I stretched my arms gently skywards as if to un-tense my muscles and then brought both hands slowly and unthreateningly back down until I had lined up the dart-firing tube imbedded invisibly in my left wrist. A simple implant command put a non-fatal sleep-flechette into his neck and then I returned to the real order of business and stabbed out my right hand to push my equally well-concealed monofilament finger-blade straight through the hustler’s eye.

The hetaerae began to scream blue murder, raving about my being a mad animal, but I really didn’t want to damage such a cutie so I felt that, in the circumstances, I had better forego that part of my winnings. I merely scooped up all my cash losses and made myself scarce before the mayor’s police goons arrived and I had to kill someone who didn’t deserve that fate. There are laws that limit the rights of hustlers, thieves and slavers who prey on citizens. Once cool heads prevail, my shyster will get them to drop any murder charge, but I expect that the hustler’s wergild will still be more than I actually lost. However, I have my reputation to protect and I will not be ripped off by any man living.   

So that brings us back to my tale. The slave market’s mirror field let me pass since my implanted ID chip confirmed that I am over eighteen, even though many a cute slave-doxy, and even some free women with no reason to lie, have said that I could easily pass for a teenager. Inside the field, there was the typical slaver layout with a long catwalk looping out from the prime stage used for the auction of top-grade material. At this quiet time of day, the prime stage was empty but several of the subsidiary platforms displayed a handful of middle range sluts and boys on hopeful offer to the scattering of punters wandering the market. However, we were not here for the flash and expensive material that was worthy of the prime stage, or even the housemaids, doxies or studs that were within the price range of any citizen, but for the opposite end of the spectrum, the bargain basement lots of worn-down doxies, maids too clumsy to keep, whip-scarred or overly plain sluts. It was only to be sluts. Willum, my temporary new boss, had explained that today we were only after women. I could easily handle any stud, however big and strong, but my fellow-workers were of a lower calibre entirely and I had been told that those purchased for Astro-Waste would soon learn that they were to die rather unpleasantly and might attempt resistance. Little nude doxies in floppy-wristed revolt would be a joke but strapping great, fear-soaked studs might actually do some harm to my new colleagues before I put them down.

Willum headed for the rear of the enclosed area where the rental was cheaper and some of the lowest grades of slaves were sold. I allowed him to get several paces ahead of me. The merchants here were licenced slave-dealers and were unlikely to try to steal from their clients. I was more concerned about cut-purses or pick-pockets and a good wide field of view allowed me to watch out for their attentions.

A deep male voice came from my left and I turned slightly so that I could both continue my over-watch and observe the speaker. It was a naked male, a big, broad-shouldered heavy stud. The hairy backs of his hands concealed his crotch but it rapidly became clear that that was in order that he could swiftly stroke himself to erection rather than because of any shyness because as soon as his penis was erect, he struck a pose that exhibited his flat stomach and muscled chest to best advantage.

“Would Mistress like a real stud?” he offered in a gravelly voice. “Here, Ma’am. See what Rocky can offer his Mistress.” 

All men are such bozos and to have a hairy beast of a slave-male imagine that I would be in the least interested in his disgusting man-thing was even worse. However, it wouldn’t do to pull off his nuts and make him eat them. So I used the weapon that a woman always can use to bring down those testosterone-soaked lumps of shit. It was a line that had been old when the word ships meant wooden vessels on water but timing was everything and I believed myself a Mistress of the art.

“What is Rocky offering,” I asked sweetly. I paused. The pauses are everything when the actual line is hackned. “Oh yes, I see now. He’s offering something exactly like a penis - but smaller. Not interested.”

There was a sweet and gentle tinkle of laughter as his face fell and his penis went flaccid.

“Rocky is very good at being a stud, Mistress but I think that Ma’am would be in the market for something softer and warmer,” came a far more welcome voice, a sweet, soprano voice that lilted with Keltic charm. “Sylvia is fully Doxy-trained, Ma’am. She can cook, perform massage and would warm a discerning Mistress’ bed.”

I glanced back at Willum and the merchant. They were happily engaged in the usual haggling process that always preceded a deal. He was safe under the Sigel of the slaver’s own guards. I could afford to enjoy the view.

Sylvia was a tall willowy beauty with auburn-red hair loosened to fall across her shoulders. That hair was her only covering and when I examined the tautly held curves of her graceful body she looked to be a similar physiological age to me. Upon the myriad worlds of our interstellar civilisation, chronological age is never a certainty, but since she was a slave on offer from a secondary platform, it was unlikely that she had benefitted from the expensive full-strength anti-agathic regimen that had kept my body in its present perfect condition for the past thirty years. Her pale and delightfully freckled skin still had that fresh vitality and elasticity that only teenage youth or regular administration of full-strength ‘Dawnlight’ could offer. So most probably she truly was less than a half-decade past puberty.

“Much better,” I agreed with a grin at the beauty who was shamelessly trying to promote herself to me. I was not surprised at her efforts. Slaves have little say in where and to whom they are sold and, even if her secret heart’s wish was for a male master, she had probably decided that it would be better to be owned by a clean-living, good-looking free-woman of her own age than by some decrepit dowager whose slack-jawed quim stank of fish.

“Sylvia would just love to be owned by a Mistress of such beauty and obvious culture, Ma’am,” the naked cutie continued. “She would be the happiest Doxy in this market if Mistress would deign to purchase her.”

It was possible that Sylvia was telling the truth, although I was certain that she would have said the same even if she had never served a woman in her entire life. It is plain stupid to expect truth from a slave. The deal is that they flatter you shamelessly and pander to you unreservedly and in return, you don’t whip them until their spines show through the blood on their backs.    

“Oh no, little Sylvie-puss,” I cautioned her. “I don’t think that you’d be at all happy where I’m going.”

“Sylvia would be deliriously happy anywhere, if she was with a Domina like you, Ma’am,” the slim-bodied beauty continued her campaign. She gently touched the oiled and delicately rouged lips of her shaven crotch, and brought a long, carmine-painted nail up to her pouting lips. “Sylvia is all wet, just with the thought of serving her Mistress.”

I confess that she was making my own knickers slightly damp. I am entirely lesbo by inclination and her slim, lightly-freckled, athletic body turned me right on in a way that Rocky’s rough maleness did not. But she didn’t realise what a close escape from a horrible death it was what I reluctantly turned back to see how Willum was doing.

“I don’t need a body-slave at the moment,” I informed her off-handedly over my shoulder. “And that makes you the luckiest slut in this entire market.”

My temporary new boss was obviously at least a halfway decent haggler because the bearded Rabic merchant was smiling, but that facial gesture had a professional look to it rather than the broad false smirk of successful hustler to newly-gulled mark. Willum had just finished paying and I had seen a satisfyingly small number of thousand guilder notes change hands. However, I’m sure that the slaver was still delighted to have cleared so many bodies from the bottom end of his stock. It’s not unknown for slaves that low down the price range to sometimes be just cast free to fend for themselves rather than wasting storage space and slave-gruel until the next market day, so he was happy to take a few hundred guilders a head, less than a week’s wages for the sort of professional that I was, to get rid of them. Perhaps some of the sluts that Willum had just purchased had even hoped that manumission might happen to them, even if such belated freedom usually meant slow starvation on labour-pool wages or the precarious life of an unskilled snatch-thief. If so, they were going to be mightily disappointed.

I rejoined Willum and accepted the appraising examination of the merchant with as good a grace as I could muster. If Willum had been my Dominus rather than my employer and if he had been selling rather than buying then I am sure that the slaver would have been interested in making an offer, but he was plainly puzzled by me. I had occasionally passed myself off as a dancer to reach a target and I suspect that he had classified me that way, but I think that his Security Chief had a clue what I really was. The Chief Guard quietly signalled up another pair of his men with an unobtrusive signal that he presumably hoped would elude me. It was a professional move, even if it was not enough.  

The slaver’s men began to bring out the sluts that Willum had purchased as an unseen job lot. Those who knew enough to be fearful shuffled sullenly and apprehensively to the mark where their wrist chains were removed and tossed into wicker baskets for future re-use. Sluts in this low grade category lived a precarious life and they did right to fear their sale. They were near enough disposable items and that was Willum’s business plan. His newly fledged company, Astro-Waste, had the contract to clean up an asteroid that had been used as an illegal dump by Dwanascie space gypsies and there were only two ways to do that. The crap included high energy emitters that would fry electronics, so remotes were out. It would either be highly-paid, heavily-suited workers on short rotations or disposable slaves.

Willum had also purchased a fifty metre length of lightweight, steel-cored jack-chain and a bag full of centimetre-sized magnetic locks that could secure a loop of that chain about each neck. Between them, they would make a cheap neck-coffle. It would be much slower to attach and detach individual sluts and it was not nearly as secure as would be a real slave-collar and ceramal link-chain but it would suffice for merchandise that was so cheap.

The merchant’s men appeared to know their trade as they secured our newly-purchased slaves in that single-file coffle, but just in case, I slowly walked the length of the coffle to perform my own chain check as they attached each slut. The first score in the coffle were a mix of more mature or homely sluts carrying their few worldly goods, mainly a few cheap slave-cosmetics and perhaps a single change of knickers in little pouchettes fastened to their left wrists.

I saw typical bottom-end sluts of hardly any commercial value. They wore assorted styles of slave livery in various states of repair, but none of it was new. Sluts of that low grade usually wore higher slave’s cast-offs. New livery was for girls who served close to their Dominii and their serving or doxying days were over for these sluts, if they had ever begun. The exception was a small, slim-waisted, blond-haired doxy who would have been quite stunningly pretty if some bastard hadn’t cracked a bullwhip across her face, leaving a single but still-livid scar from ear to chin. She was not liveried at all but was stark naked except for a little lavender coloured pouchette on her wrist so that her perky little tits and a really firm ass were displayed to all.

Behind her were a second score who were on average younger and prettier, but they were untrained savages, plainly not of our civilized worlds at all. They were a parcel of primitives picked up in some raid on a pre-interstellar world. They were all still dressed after a fashion, although their petroleum-product based polymer clothing was even more stained, torn and ragged than any of the civilised girl’s livery, even though the latter might have been a decade old. Pre-nano-tech stuff doesn’t last like modern synth-silk fibres but it would have to do for their walk to the spaceport. They were not about to get new livery from Astro-Waste.

One of the primitives turned to face me, holding the chain with long delicate hands to allow her to ease around to look me straight in the eye in a way that would have got a properly trained slave a thorough beating. It was a fair bet that these savages wouldn’t have anti-agathic drugs so that her physiological age would be the same as her chronological one. That would put her in her late thirties or early forties. The ragged garment that she wore had once been stylish and well-tailored to her curvaceous body but the top half was now torn open to leave one generous tit entirely exposed and the hem was a saw-tooth of tatters between knee and her high-arched bare feet.

“Please Miss, you must help us,” she pleaded without even seeking permission to speak. “There must have been some sort of mistake here. We’re being treated like criminals! I am a surgeon and my staff and I have done nothing wrong. We were kidnapped and some of my nurses have been raped by these brutes. Please can you help us? We haven’t done anything to deserve this sort of treatment. Please call the authorities here and tell them all about this.”

Her accent was strange and exotic but the pure tones and air of command was unmistakably Aristo. That intonation to her voice was enough to put my back up, whatever the words. It was the plummy privileged sort of voice that I had heard from Space Marine Officers who had often turned out to be indifferent commanders and no sort of gentlemen at all. I snapped around fast on one heel and caught her a hard slap straight across the face. The look of absolute shock and horror upon her reddening face was enough to make me drop my hand without delivering any more punishing blow.

“You will speak when you are spoken to, slave,” I commanded. Willum needed her strong back and arms but his plans didn’t include allowing idle chatter between his work-sluts. She had to be able to hear and understand commands but he would have no interest in whether she could speak for herself. “If you utter another word before that, then I promise you that you won’t have a tongue in your undisciplined mouth!”

I could see fear and anger warring in the deep brown eyes of the primitive. I don’t lie or bluster and was both able and ready to pull out her tongue by its roots if she gave me anymore of her Aristo sass. Perhaps my determination showed through because her quivering lips remained closed.

The nude girl immediately in front of her in the coffle broke the brief tableau by slithering round to face me and dipping low in a really cute curtsy, her soft grey-blue eyes downcast to her feet. “Please Ma’am, your humble slave Popcorn begs Mistress’ permission to speak.”

I gave the Aristo primitive a look that hopefully read ‘watch that and see how it should be done’.

“You may speak, slave,” I allowed.  

“My slave sisters, even this new one, I expect, are frightened of what might happen to them, Mistress. Please could our new Mistress calm her humble slaves and assist them to do their duty by telling Popcorn and her sisters why they have been bought? What is it that you want us to do, Mistress?”

Even with the half-healed scar on her face, Popcorn was as cute as a button. She was hard-bodied, fit and still young enough, but not an inexperienced child. That was just as I liked them. I had been told that use of any of the sluts was a part of the employment contract until we got to the asteroid and they became persona non grata, forbidden entry to the shielded sleeping accommodation back on our interplanetary ship in case they polluted it. So I bit back the automatic retort that curiosity was forbidden in a slave. There and then, I had made my decision as to which of the coffle was to pleasure me on the several days of flight to the contaminated asteroid.

“Tell me first how you got that scar, Popcorn,” I demanded to know and of course she was compelled by her status to answer.

“Popcorn was an intimate body-slave, Mistress. Her first Dominus bought her as a newly enslaved levee-slut, but he had her properly doxy-trained. She served her beloved Master for nearly twenty years and her kind Dominus even permitted her a ten-percent Dawnlight plan to keep her pretty,” Popcorn began. That was uncommon, but not unknown. Dawnlight, even when diluted, was so expensive that, in straight financial terms, it was cheaper to let a slave age, then scrap and replace her, than it was to slow that process. But if a master became attached to a slut then pure commercial considerations sometimes were not applied. 

“My Dominus had lived for many centuries before Popcorn was privileged to serve him and even the best anti-agathics were beginning to fail him. That made Popcorn sad, but my kind and generous Master had always promised to free his loyal slave Popcorn in his will.”

That was more common. A slave who was lucky enough to become an intimate body-slave or personal maid would often also become a favourite and might even hope for manumission without the almost impossible task of collecting enough in voluntary tips and gratuities to buy their freedom. Many a rich man’s funeral simultaneously saw the bitter tears of some newly purchased slave who was to be slaughtered to ritually serve their Dominus in the afterlife and the joyful tears of slaves who were to be manumitted to the status of freedmen or freedwomen under the terms of the deceased final will and testament.   

“Popcorn never received that gift,” the nude young woman explained mournfully. “My dear Dominus’ wife and he argued more and more after Popcorn arrived in Dominus’ household, sometimes about the favours that he showed me. He was very unwell at the end and she gave him medicine that she had mixed herself. She said that it was for his digestion but I think that it was that draft that killed him. Then, when he was dead, she persuaded the praetor to appoint her as his sole executor and took over all of his estate and household. At first she told me that she would honour his promise and that she would free me, but only in another year’s time. She needed me to assist in winding up his affairs first, she said, and I would only be freed if I did that exactly according to her instructions and that included never speaking again about his last days. Of course, I told her that I would do whatever she commanded, because she was my Domina now.”

Popcorn looked close to tears but I wanted to hear the end of the story and whether the act of telling it was upsetting a slave-slut was irrelevant by comparison.

“Go on,” I commanded. “Tell me the rest.”

“I never spoke about Dominus’ death to anyone, just as she had ordered, but the year passed and she still didn’t free me. Then she found my diary, where I had written all the truth of what I knew and what I suspected and she lost her temper with me. That was when she hit me across the face with her whip. Then she burned the diary and sent me here for sale, but she said that however low the price, I was to be sold immediately and that it had to be someone who was going off-planet. So please may Popcorn ask whether you are my new Domina, Ma’am? And please can you say where are you taking Popcorn and her sisters? Please can you tell us what will become of us now?” 

“Willum, up at the front, is your legal Dominus, but I will be your overseer,” I admitted. “I am to have free use of any of you sluts, and at present, you look to be my first choice, Popcorn. I assume that your Doxy training included giving pleasure to women. So try your best to please me on our journey and you’ll find me to be fair in return.”

Willum and I had agreed that it would be madness to allow any hint of the fate that awaited the sluts in his coffle until it was impossible to conceal it any longer. So I added the subtly distorted truth that we had agreed. “Then, when we get to the place that we’re going to, you will all have some hard physical work to do for your Dominus. It will be long hours and rough conditions but at the end of that time, your old Dominus’ promise will finally be redeemed.”

“There will be Manumission for me, Ma’am,” Popcorn’s eyes glowed with sudden hope and several of the other sluts in the coffle perked up their ears. I deliberately raised my voice.

“What I mean is that if you and your slave-sisters here all do exactly as you are told then the same will apply to you all. This month will be hard physical labour but it will be your last month as a slave,” I told the portion of the truth most likely to keep the sluts quiet for the longest time.

“Thank you, Mistress. Popcorn will try to please you in every way, Ma’am. She will work hard to earn her freedom, kind Domina,” the innocent blabbered on until I snapped out an order for her to cease her wittering.

“Yes, Domina. As you command, Domina,” Popcorn fell silent, a little grin still wreathing her face.

Should I have felt guilty, I wondered? No, I rationalised it out. I’d done the poor slut a favour. Sometimes, the truth was too horrid to hear. Now she could have a few last days of happiness before she had to face it. If it made her a better sex-toy on the journey then that was just a bonus.

*

The merchant skiff ‘Boss Hogg’ was on autopilot for the three day burn to asteroid Fas 2276. There was nothing left to do on the bridge and it was now locked and dark until the time for docking manoeuvres. Now was the time for some entertainment and, by common acclaim, the entertainer had to be by far the prettiest slut on the whole work coffle. So Popcorn writhed in nude erotic dance before admiring eyes. Her naked body glowed with sweat and the shimmer of doxy-glow and I could see that she was hot in more ways than merely due to her physical efforts.

We, the watchers, were the four free overseers of the forty-girl slave coffle that was heading for a month of hard and ultimately fatal labour upon Fas 2276 and Popcorn was to be labourer number Thirty-Two, although she would keep her name along with her other delusions until we actually landed. Willum, the skinny spacer youth who sat to my left, was her nominal owner but I had made my interest in her clear and he had ceded her exclusive usage to me with only a minor grumble about the pointlessness of having undoubted legal rights when in some company. The other two males admired her lascivious body from afar but they had been warned of exactly what I was by Willum and both had backed off, even going as far as to address me as Ma’am in spite of the fact that they were both half again my age and each massed nearly twice my weight.

“Popcorn hopes that she has entertained her kind Domina,” the girl panted close to my ear, blowing her sweet breath into my lobe in a most sensual manner. “And Dominus and his friends too,” she hastened to add, showing that almost supernatural slave-ability to identify the real leader of the pack, whoever actually held their title deeds.

I ran a hand over the pert curve of her buttocks, pulling her close so that the scent of her body filled my nose. Her luscious lips opened under my hard and urgent kiss. Close up, I could see only the brightness of her eyes not the unfortunate scar on her face, although I had already noted that she had expertly half-concealed it with a neat and expressive make-up job and an artfully tied length of silky silver-blond hair.

“That was lip-smackin’ good, Popcorn,” I admitted, entirely truthfully. “You’re such a hot little piece  that I think that I shall take you away from here right now before one of these cowboys loses his self-control and tries to have you right here and now.”

“Popcorn must do anything that her Dominus and her other Masters want of her,” Popcorn sighed with just a hint of wistfulness. I gave her a hard stare. Was the little slut aching for a man-thing up her tight little pudenda? Well she wasn’t getting it. I was not having my own private little love-piece porked by any of that leering crew until I had quite finally finished with her. I took a firm hold of one hard nipple and gave it a half playful, half cruel twist.

“Does Popcorn hanker after a man-pole then?” I demanded to know. “Should I suspect that she might prefer a nasty hairy beast of a man to me?”

“No, Domina! Please forgive foolish Popcorn!” she sobbed most satisfactorily. “Popcorn loves Domina, only her Domina. She pleads for forgiveness, or at least her kind Domina’s mercy!”

I released her poor crushed nipple at that abject plea. I had been accused, by partners who were free-women and therefore allowed a say in the matter, of a preference for rather robust saphrotic sex. However, it was not to be taken to an extreme. Pain might be an occasional necessity of my profession and the delicate application of a sharp fingernail into the flesh of a sex-partner might enhance a moment of passion, but I was not a deliberate and flagrant sadist.

“Come along with me and earn that forgiveness, my little Popsicle,” I commanded, taking the still-erect nipple once again in a slightly more gentle hold to lead her out of the common room and to my cabin.

I discarded my ship-suit the instant that I was through the door, turning to display myself to the already naked Popcorn with a broad smile.

“So tell me what should be the penalty for lusting after man-pork instead of your very own Mistress,” I demanded.

“Only my Domina can decide that,” Popcorn murmured quietly and quite correctly in her cute little  whispering voice.

“A spanking, then,” I ruled. “I sentence you to ten of the best on that delicious little ass of yours. Then I shall kiss it until it is better and you will thank me in your own sweet way.”

“As Domina commands,” Popcorn whispered, forcing a hapless smile to her lips as she mentally prepared herself for whatever was to come. “Popcorn is her Mistress’ helpless love-slave and will do anything that her Domina wishes.”

“Yes, it will always be exactly as Domina wishes,” I agreed, flipping her expertly over so that she was face down upon the bed. She made no struggle but just bit down gently on the duvet cover as I slapped her pertly inviting, well-shaped butt with hard and well-spaced smacks from a flat hand. The firm flesh coloured nicely but Popcorn only moaned with either real or simulated pleasure that became more overtly animal as I finished the pledged punishment and applied the promised antidote.

If Popcorn had been a free woman then I would have gone further. I have been told that my tonguing technique is expert, but why would you bother to give pleasure to a slave. Their purpose is for your delight, not to supinely enjoy your efforts like some highborn free-lady in her boudoir. Instead, I rolled her over the edge from bed to floor and arranged myself on the bed with my own well-trimmed pussy wide and inviting.

“And now you can thank me in return, Popcorn,” I commanded.

“Popcorn thanks her kind Domina,” the girl obediently responded, sliding her head between my thighs. I squeezed my knees together, more to control her than to hurt, and after a brief squeal of fear, Popcorn applied her tongue with a will until my explosive orgasm caused me to lose it entirely so that my juice and dribbles of pee combined to squirt straight into her open mouth. She balked fractionally at the acid taste of urine and I grabbed her hair and ground her face against my throbbing pussy.

“Swallow it, damn you,” I commanded. “Swallow it all down!”

“Yes, Mistress! Yes, my most wonderful Domina,” Popcorn’s voice sounded as small as a beaten dog. I hadn’t intended to let rip like that but a slave should know her place. It was her skilful tongue that had driven me to that level of distraction and if I needed her as a piss receptacle as a result then she should be duly grateful.

“Say thank you, Domina, and mean it!” I commanded, releasing her silky blond hair only to allow me to twist one of her nipples until it hardened beneath my fingers.

“Popcorn says thank you, kind Mistress! Popcorn is so grateful to be allowed to serve her Domina in that way. Thank you, Mistress of mine!”

She was laying it on rather thickly, but it showed the proper spirit. I released her poor abused nubbin of a tit and lazily reached down to stroke her hair. She had done well and it was time for a little carrot to offset the stick.

“That was good, Popcorn,” I admitted. “You brought me right off with a vengeance there. I really enjoyed that and I’m very pleased with you. You may use my shower before you go back to your kennel and you will have a chocolate piece with your gruel tonight.”

Popcorn nestled contentedly on my shoulder. She lay on her side, her pert little butt pointing towards me. With her scarred cheek buried in the crook of my arm she looked as sweet as saccharine and I thought with genuine regret of what was going to happen to her in a few days’ time. I had never had a full-time slave of my own; my lifestyle wasn’t very conducive to it. However, if I did ever get the chance to own my own personal intimate body slave then I was sure that it would be a creature just like cute little Popcorn.

For a moment or two I just stroked that sassy little ass of hers as I idly ran some crazy options in my head. She could be mine. I could quite easily off the two cowboy wranglers and then Willum wouldn’t long keep the access codes for the Boss Hogg as his own personal secret. Not once I pulled down his pants and drew my monofilament finger-blade ever so gently across his ball sac so that I could pull out and slit off the little pills within if he didn’t talk those codes at me. Then I could either sell or just dump the other sluts and sale off into the sunset with Popcorn nestled beside me.

I gave a little snort of annoyance at myself, loud enough that Popcorn’s eyes opened anxiously to see if she had offended. I could certainly get the access codes and might just about be able to turn Boss Hogg onto a course that wouldn’t kill me, but Boss Hogg was a skiff not an interstellar jump-ship. The only place that I could go was the world that I had just left. I could always crash down on some unlicensed strip, sell Boss Hogg for scrap and vanish, but my hard earned reputation would be gone. The only thing that’s less popular than a mercenary who doesn’t stay bought is a bodyguard who decides to off their Principal, and I would be both. It wasn’t practical and it wasn’t going to happen.

I was a professional, with all that that entailed. What honour I still had left was tied up with doing the job that I had been paid to do. If Willum had given me good cause by dissing me or ripping me off in some way then it might have been acceptable to kill him, but he had been straight with me and I would be straight back in return. So my cute little Popsicle would have to die.

I looked down at the unsuspecting cutie who was nestled so trustingly in the crook of my arm. There was nothing I could do about the future, but the present was another thing. I licked one finger and then reached down to give her responsive clit a hard and fast frig. Popcorn’s long legs opened under my touch and on an impulse I dove my head down between her thighs and lapped accurately at her erect love-bud. It was only a matter of seconds before her long low moans were converted into the panted screams of multiple orgasms as I used my tongue as if I was trying to impress a Countess of high blood rather than a disposable work-slut. Tears poured down her face as her taut body shuddered its way down off her sudden and unexpected high.

“Oh Domina, kind, sweet Domina,” she whimpered in broken gasps. “Oh thank you, Domina, thank you! Popcorn thanks her kind generous Domina.”

I suddenly realised that I had slave-juices all over my face and gave my contaminated lips a quick wipe with the back of my hand. I suppose that I should have felt bad about it, but in spite of the potential embarrassment if anyone should discover that I had pleasured Popcorn as if she were a free lady, I couldn’t force myself to regret my impulsive action.  If I wasn’t going to save her life then perhaps she at least deserved one last good cum, even though she was only a slave.

*

The interplanetary skiff Boss Hogg was nestled against a large temp-dome, a structure big enough to cover the entire square kilometre that was the Dwanascie dumping site. Willum had called us all together as soon as he had linked our airlock with the temp and powered down the engines. This was probably the most ticklish bit of the operation and he had wanted to agree exactly how we were to process through forty slaves who could not for much longer remain ignorant of their probable fate.

I listened in the same way that I would have listened to a newly minted Rupert when I had been a jump-trooper sergeant. It was sometimes worthwhile to hear what others thought that they would be doing but I needed no telling. It would probably go entirely smoothly but if not, then I had winged it against the Great Theocracy’s Templers and Taurean Rangers during my twenty year enlistment. A posse of naked work-sluts was hardly likely to bring terror to my heart. 

“Miss Felicia, will you bring up the first slut for us and we’ll get started,” Willum finally asked me politely and I was on my way the very second that his final syllable was uttered.

I had decided that we must start with Popcorn. This was the time that I had least looked forward to for the majority of the trip here, but now that it was upon me, I was eager to have it over and done with. The work-sluts were secured in the skiff’s single hold. We had discarded their clothing once we had led the coffle into the Boss Hogg’s cargo space and so they were all stark naked. That was nominally a matter of security but the real reason was merely ease of cleaning. There were no secure, purpose-built cells so they had been chained in four rows of ten, each doxy secured by both neck and left-ankle collars to one of the ten parallel lengths of steel that were welded to the decking between the mattresses. To unchain and subsequently re-secure them all, one by one, in order to allow them to strip and shower would be a nearly full-time job. It was easier to keep them naked and to just hose them down daily where they lay.

They were packed supine on narrow self-wicking mattresses, pressed hip to hip against the girls on either side of them and laid toe against toe with the slut opposite. There was half a metre of mattress space in width and two metres of length for each slut. That was several centimetres more than the tight-pack minimum aboard a custom-made slave-ship, but those ships would set the gravity in the slave-holds at one tenth standard-gee once loading was complete. Boss Hogg hadn’t separate gravity compensators in each ship-space so the sluts aboard had endured nearly four days on those thin mattresses at full gravity. In spite of the self-wicking, supposedly self-cleaning surfaces, the small hold carried a distinct miasma of slave-sweat and most of the slave-sluts looked dishevelled and unkempt.

I went straight to Popcorn. Like all the others, she was completely naked but she looked to be in far better condition than most of the other sluts. She had spent more than half of the journey on my reasonably well-proportioned bed and I had permitted her to shower and relieve herself in the small but full-function refresher room that was attached to my cabin. So she was scrubbed clean and her long silver-blond hair was washed and combed out to a lustrous sheen. The scar upon her face was distinctly less livid and she had used cheap but effective foundation cream to conceal it yet more. Looking at her, I was certain that, if her previous Domina had not required that she be sold privately and off the planet entirely that she would have achieved at least a subsidiary stage auction and a better fate than that which she was about to suffer. 

“Domina,” she smiled brightly up at me, unable to otherwise move because of the short, three link neck chain that held her in position. “Have we landed somewhere, Domina? Is this where you will let me earn my freedom, kind Mistress?”

“Yes Popsicle. This is where you will work and eventually lose your slave status,” I maintained the deception even at that late moment. Partly it was to fulfil the plan. The sluts were to be unchained and then prepped individually in the main cabin with no-one but their overseers going back from there to give any hint to those still awaiting processing. However, I would have continued the charade even without that consideration, just to prolong Popcorn’s last happy smile for those few seconds longer. I dropped to one knee, ignoring the swiftly suppressed wincing moan of the girl whom perforce I had to kneel on. Popcorn had not been allocated an end of row position and it was only because I wanted to get this over with that I was collecting her first. After Popcorn was processed, I would unchain and lead the sluts through to the main cabin in strict order.

My mag-key was in the form of a broad platinum-coloured ring and when I touched it to her neck chain the heavy collar opened and Popcorn cautiously sat up, still with a beaming smile on her face. She obediently lifted her left ankle to allow me to perform a similar contact with that fetter and it too fell open. I felt a pang of what felt crazily like guilt as Popcorn eagerly rose to her feet, deftly wriggling one bare foot down between two neighbouring bodies to carefully step out onto open decking where she gave me a deep slave curtsy. She looked as if she was about to speak and I suddenly couldn’t stand the thought of her thanking me yet again when I knew what was about to happen to her.

“Not a word, Popcorn,” I commanded. “We are going to the main cabin now and I want you to be absolutely quiet.”

Popcorn gave another brief curtsy and then a silent nod as she gently touched her still smiling lips with one finger to indicate that she was already complying with my order. Then I led her through the connecting door to her betrayal.

*

As Popcorn tripped lightly through the door-arch that separated hold and cabin she saw Willum standing in his reactive armour skin suit, with what looked to be closely related to torture instruments spread before him. I hit the door closure to separate hold from cabin with a sound-proof barrier and then slid one swift step forward to her side. As Popcorn began to turn her head, confusion and perhaps the first indications of betrayal on her face, I took a firm hold of her left wrist. She barely resisted as I brought it up behind her back, expertly twisting the wrist joint against its natural inclination until Popcorn let out a squeal of pain.

“Stand still, Popcorn, and I won’t hurt you anymore,” I both warned and promised.

Willum approached from the opposite side to the one from which I was controlling the slave who was about to lose her name in favour of the designation work-slave number thirty two. I gave him a brief nod of professional approval. I would have brought her to her knees before she could have unleashed a kick, but he had not stepped directly in front of Popcorn’s unsecured feet.

“These are six-link fetters,” he explained, just as if Popcorn was actually interested. “You will be able to walk quite easily in them, but you won’t be able to kick out at the duty overseer.”

“Popcorn wouldn’t do such a bad thing, Dominus,” she broke silence at that but I ignored the infraction in light of what was still to come. “Popcorn wants to earn her freedom. She will obey her overseer’s orders and work as hard as she possibly can in order to do that.”

Popcorn indicated her willingness to obey by raising one shapely foot to accept the first fetter and then switching to stand on that foot as she offered the opposite ankle.

“Good girl,” I whispered in Popcorn’s nearest ear. “The next will hurt a bit but I want you to know that I can hurt you an awful lot more, so be as still as you can.”

Willum moved around so that he had a clear view of Popcorn’s chest. He took a hold of her right tit with one gloved hand that lifted and separated her breasts. Popcorn gave a squeal of pain as Willum forced a sharp-ended hook all the way through the breast just behind her prominent nipple. A wider part of the hook passed through the hole, further enlarging it and I had to give little Popsicle a touch of real pain from the vicious hold that I had snapped onto her wrist in order to make her stand still. Now she was panting with the pain rather than either sobbing or offering any physical resistance as Willum completed the circuit by forcing the sharp end of the hook into its receptacle so that Popcorn now wore a chunky steel nipple ring with a heavy, battery-sized, cylinder depending from it. 

“The other tit next, my little Popsicle and then we’re almost there,” I encouraged with her pet name without giving exact details of what the word ‘almost’ actually meant in this context.

Willum moved a pace further round to Popcorn’s front and performed exactly the same action upon her left breast, the one closest to me. Popcorn tried to pull away but I had her firmly under control and after a single loud squeak, she just stood stock-still on quivering legs, letting out little hisses of pain until she had mastered the throbbing agony.   

“Why Domina,” she sobbed. “Popcorn would have been good without this, Domina.”

“I fear that we can’t really rely on that here, my poor little Popsicle,” I told my ex-lover the bitter truth. “I only lied to you for your own good, but I’m afraid that this work is going to be harder than you can possibly imagine. Willum has a contract to fulfil and he can’t have you falling down on the job. Those little controllers will ensure your maximum effort, even when you no longer feel like it.”

“I’m ready to run a test sequence,” Willum warned.

“My skin-gloves are rated to well above fatal power levels,” I responded with a sharp reminder that I was not a Rupert who would make the mistake of eating the current himself. “I presume that having brought her all the way here, you’re not planning on testing to destruction.”

“That’s level four or even level five,” Willum told me testily. “We’re not going there today. But level one isn’t worth showing her. The brochure says that it’s no more painful than a nettle across the tit at the outside. Level two will be more like a hornet burying its sting right in her nipple tip. That will illustrate that we are serious without doing any permanent damage.”

Control of the Disciplines was via the overseer’s implant, a security feature that prevented some slave from getting hold of their own control device. Therefore Willum appeared to do nothing to operate the Disciplines but suddenly I felt the tickling static of current in my protectively gloved fingertips and Popcorn jerked so violently that I had to quickly move with her to prevent her wrist from snapping entirely. The half-strangled shriek of incandescently bitter agony that was torn from her lips was painful to my ears and hurtful to my soul. When I had been a jump-trooper, I had occasionally worked with interrogation units, but we had all liked to stay away from that sordid end of the business. I had never watched their actual conversion of a prisoner of war into a mewling object eager to tell all, just in order to be given the opportunity to die. I had never seen it, but I had heard it and Popcorn’s long piteous scream was a close second to that sound.

I eased her quivering body to its knees. Popcorn’s nude body was shaking uncontrollably and a cold sweat had covered every inch of exposed flesh. She had pissed herself uncontrollably and the absorbent floor material was only now swallowing up the large puddle.

“Wow, that was a bit more of a stinger than I was expecting,” Willum confessed. “Perhaps level one will do for the other sluts. I want them to know that these things can hurt but there’s no need to cook their tits entirely.”

“I think that you’re right,” I agreed absently. There wasn’t much to be done to help Popcorn cope with that shattering experience but I used what little skill that I had with the pressure points that released natural painkilling endorphins into Popcorn’s blood and, whether due to my skill, her natural resilience or the inbuilt stoicism of a long-term slave, Popcorn’s shaking subsided and her breathing returned to something approaching normal.

“That was pain level two on your Discipline,” Willum informed her. “There are three more levels above that one. You are now Work-slut number Thirty-Two and your only task in life will be to bag all the crap that the Dwanascie have dumped here before they cleared off, so that this asteroid can be used again for settlement. Do you understand what I am telling you, number Thirty-Two? Will you obey your overseers and do exactly what they command?” 

“I will,” she sobbed fervently. “Oh please, please, please, I’ll do anything that you say but please, don’t do that to me again.”  

“That’s all over now,” I murmured, stroking her damp hair. “Do what you’re told and it needn’t ever happen again.”

“There’s just her tongue-claw now and then Thirty-Two can get straight to work,” Willum announced.

“Is that thing really necessary for Popcorn?” I had to ask, although I already knew the answer. “She’s a biddable little poppet and hardly a Spartacus in the making.”

“If the sluts can talk to each other then, when they get really desperate, they could act together. It’s only sensible business that we make each one of them an island, entire unto herself. Better that than that we have to start killing them because they start a real slave revolt.”

I guessed that Willum was quoting, probably from the sales brochure for the tongue claws, but I shrugged in acceptance. He had already bought and paid for the wretched things. I could hardly expect him not to use them. I helped Popcorn, or number Thirty-Two now, to her feet and took a new grip upon the back of her neck.

“This really is the last nasty bit, number Thirty-Two,” I informed her with an encouraging hand on her shoulder.

I thought that I saw new tears in her eyes and she whimpered the word ‘Popcorn’ in a mournful tone that was so low that only my enhanced hearing could have picked it up. It was fascinating that even after she had eaten a pain-pulse worthy of a real professional torture team, she could still care about the loss of her slave-name and its replacement with the work-number that she would carry for the few weeks that she still had to live.

Willum held the tongue claw low at his side as he approached number Thirty-Two for the last time. I pulled her hair back so that she was staring at the ceiling behind him. It was a wicked looking instrument, so it was probably better that she didn’t see it until it was too late.

“Make her put her tongue out,” Willum ordered and I moved a hand under number Thirty-Two’s chin to gently squeeze her cheeks.

“It will be better for you if you do it yourself,Popcorn,” I offered. “If I have to open your mouth by force then I could very easily smash some of your teeth.”

I still thought of the work-slut before me as my little plaything Popsicle and, crazily, she was still gullible enough to trust me. With only the slightest hesitation she obediently accepted my last betrayal and submissively put out her little pink tongue. The claw snapped about her extended tongue with the force of a rat trap and she automatically pulled it back into her mouth, permanently lodging the barbed spikes of the tongue-claw in soft flesh. Its nanotech hooks sealed the wounds almost instantly, turning the whole device into a particularly unpleasant and functionally permanent gag that would allow liquid and semi-solid feed to pass but that rendered her entirely incapable of coherent speech.

“Number her up and put her through into the dome, if you will Miss Felicia,” Willum ordered politely.  “Geordie can start her working straight away whilst you fetch the next slut up.”

The eyes that had once belonged to my cute little sextoy Popcorn were moist with tears of pain and, I am sure, betrayal, as I used my best freestyle longhand to inscribe the number Thirty-Two on her chest above her cruelly pierced breasts and again on her left shoulder-blade. The pen was sold as indelible and those markings would certainly outlast the naked work-slut’s remaining short lifespan. I pushed the stumbling, sobbing new work-slave into Boss Hogg’s small airlock. It would hold two at a squeeze but I wasn’t going out there without full protective suit and respirator kit.

We were linked to the temporary dome and the air pressure in the dome almost matched our own but I still cycled the airlock fully as I watched through the heavy diamond-glass view plate. Geordie had gained the honour of the first two hour supervisory shift by drawing a deuce of clubs from the pack of cards that Willum had proffered to us all. Willum’s queen of spades gave him the minor satisfaction of taking the last shift in each cycle and my six of hearts put me up next after Geordie.

The heavily armoured wrangler was waiting immediately outside as the lock opened and I saw the radiation monitor start to rattle out its warning above number Thirty-Two’s head. She looked tearfully up at it and then turned to look straight at the diamond glass view port. Her eyes closed and she fell to her knees, still facing me. Then her body convulsed. Geordie had evidently hit her Discipline with a jolt of power. It was only a level one shock but the work-slut knew that worse was available at a mere thought command to her overseer’s implant. Slowly and unsteadily she rose to her feet and staggered through the outer door allowing me to cycle that door shut and turn on the filters and blowers that would clean up most of the contamination that had penetrated into the lock in the brief time that it had been open.

*

It was the end of the second week of the most unpleasant fortnight of my life. Anti-radiation medication is foul to taste and it ruins your appetite and I had lost nearly a kilo off a frame that had qualified as spare at the starting line. But I was like the Junoesque model of a renaissance painter by comparison with the work-sluts whom I was charged to oversee.

I was spending three two-hour shifts a day in the dome wearing full protective armour, my own private clean air supply and still standing as far away from the action as my implant’s signalling equipment would permit in that unsympathetic environment. The work-sluts were being driven for eighteen hour shifts, working stark naked in intimate contact with every poisonous and radiation-stained barrel of waste that the Dwanascie gypsies had dumped on our doorstep before piking off into flat-space to repeat their obnoxious trade in some other innocent system.

I was stood with my back against the airlock of our skiff Boss Hogg watching as the current shift, sluts eleven to forty, toiled at their fatal tasks. The lack of even a single stitch of clothing on any of the work-sluts allowed me to see their rapidly worsening condition. Number Thirty-Two, who had once been my own cute sex-slave Popcorn was at least five kilos lighter and her once lustrous silver-blond hair was beginning to fall out of its own accord. She had sores on her shoulders and back and several chemical burns on arms and torso. She was lifting a twenty kilo drum to try and shift it away from the Cello-wrapper. The Dwansacie had not even bothered to separate corrosives from radio-actives so that some of their unlined steel drums were dangerously corroded. We were wrapping the inadequate steel drums in Cellophrant monolayer. It was impervious to almost any radiation and could resist many corrosives but each drum had to be individually checked before it was wrapped and those that contained a chemical that could damage the gigantic single molecule that was the monolayer had to be man-handled, or in this case woman-handled, away from the machine for later chemical neutralisation before wrapping.

As I watched her emaciated body struggle to obey, I saw the corroded seal at the base of the drum give up its unequal struggle against the foul brew within. A large gobbet of greenish slime dripped from the seal onto Thirty-Two’s bare shoulder and she reacted as if scalded. She all but dropped the drum entirely as the flesh beneath the slime began to smoke.

“Get that drum away from the Cello-wrapper, number Thirty-Two,” I commanded. The Cello-wrapper had cost as much as all forty work-sluts added together and we had only the one machine. If it was damaged then we were royally screwed. Wrapping by hand would take five times as long and these work-sluts would never last the course.

Willum had decreed that the sluts should all work naked. The cost of any useful protective gear for them would have been prohibitive and ordinary clothing would have allowed the sluts to possibly conceal junk that could be fashioned into makeshift weapons as well as well as even further reducing their useful working lives by absorbing radio-actives and other miscellaneous crap that would stay with them whether they were at work or on one of their short sleep breaks. Therefore the second gobbet of steaming poison that dripped down from the leaking drum did so onto entirely unprotected flesh and that flesh smouldered and steamed under the combined foulness of that randomly hellish cocktail.

I could see that number Thirty-Two was close to panicking and running for the emergency shower so I gave her a short level one jolt through the Disciplines that hung from each tit. She had once felt a level two jolt and my timely shock would hopefully remind her that there were worse things than merely being cruelly burned by a corrosive and probably dangerously radio-active mixture of unknown constitution.                                          

“Don’t you dare to drop it or I’ll have to burn your tits off,” I both encouraged and reminded her. “Come on Thirty-Two. Come on little Popsicle! Move it clear of the machine and then you can run to the douche shower.”

Her blue eyes, those sapphire orbs that had once shone bright with worshipful love were moist with tears and dull with despair but she obeyed, staggering several paces clear before the base of the drum split entirely and a cascade of glutinous green slime poured over her shoulders, breasts and belly. The drum hit the ground and rolled, but its roll took it away from the precious machine until it collided with three other parked drums also full of unnamed but deadly crap.

“Thirty-one, Fifteen,” I identified the two closest work-sluts by the numbers written onto their chests and backs. “Pick up Thirty-Two. Get her to the Douche-shower quickly. Then get in it yourselves after her. You’re sure to get some of that crap on yourselves.”

Fifteen was the big-breasted older primitive who was some sort of Dark-Age bone-cutter. She leapt into action with a will, even wiping some of the Dwanascie’s poisonous shit away from Thirty Two’s face with her bare hands. Thirty-one saw the puddle of foul goo that was already forming at Thirty-two’s feet and the steaming blisters on her slave-sister’s shoulders, tits and belly. She balked, shaking her head as if she was about to refuse to obey. I gave her a quick reminder jolt of level one Discipline and she screamed out in pain and clutched at her little tits and the heavy cylinders that dangled from them as if she intended to pull her Disciplines entirely out, whether that tore off both nipples or not.

“Do you want one of those cylinders up your arse instead,” I hissed out a warning. “Touch them and I’ll insert their replacement where you’ll like it even less. Now move and do as I say or I’ll show you how very much worse those things are at level two!”

That got the slut into motion, although the bigger primitive woman still seemed to be taking most of the weight of the semi-conscious Thirty-Two. They half-dragged and half walked her into the shower and a flood of tepid water cascaded over my ex-lover’s shoulders to reveal blisters and pock marks burned deep into her skin. The pain was beginning to really take hold but Willum had also economised on nanite repair packs and even serious bio-tech pain killers. We had nothing but a few neo-morph auto-injectors and even they were strictly reserved for the crew. Thirty-Two dropped to the floor, her entire body squeezed into a foetal curve, her moans as piteous as a child’s death. 

Now water was pouring over the much reduced but still barely extant curves of Fifteen’s body and the thinner, emaciated frame of work-slut Thirty-One as they squeezed together under the douche-shower. The bigger primitive had several, relatively small, rounded burn marks on her torso and back but the worst damage was to her hands where she had tried to wipe the goo off Thirty-Two’s face. They were rough and skinned across both palms and she was nursing them to her as if she was rocking an invisible baby. The water flow stopped and she allowed her slave-sister to exit the shower before she drew strength from somewhere and stepped out and immediately began to minister to the sobbing Thirty-Two, gently dabbing at areas of maximum damage with scooped handfuls of the residual water in the shower base whilst her shorter slave-sister stood uselessly plucking at her own much less extensive splash-burns in mute self-pity.

“Thirty-One, get back to doing something useful,” I commanded. “Fifteen, I think that you’re wasting your time but I suspect that you’re trying to help. Are you trying to make sure that there’s nothing left still burning in those wounds?”

Fifteen wore the same cruelly effective Tongue-Claw gag as did all the work-crew. It permanently stopped her from ever uttering another coherent word but she nodded her head vigorously. 

“Well carry on then,” I accepted the intent of her efforts, even if it looked to be a little late to help. My poor little Popsicle was still writhing and sobbing in pain in spite of those futile efforts. Even if a real ambulance ship had pulled up alongside our dome they could have probably done nothing to fix that damage. We certainly had nothing that could even ease the pain, let alone repair any of those burns.

Fifteen must have finally come to a similar conclusion because she rose to her feet and took a couple of paces towards me. The dosimeter on my suit rattled a louder warning and I raised a hand to stop her. She obediently halted and I marvelled at the sudden change that I had seen in that primitive slut. She was clearly in pain herself and like all of the sluts, her once thick and elegantly styled chocolate-brown hair was ragged and thinning, her face pinched and her once fulsome body was now emaciated and blotched with blisters and burns. Yet she had drawn herself up and looked almost commanding as she pointed at the now softly-mewling foetally-curled slut behind her and shook her head sadly. She brought both hands together in a prayer-like gesture and then made an unmistakable plea, one hand gesturing back at the sobbing Thirty-Two whilst the second hand traced a long slow line right across across her own throat before she once more brought them both back together in the supplicatory prayer gesture.

I had already considered firing a sleep-flechette into what remained of Popcorn but I had dropped any thought of that merciful act when I realised that that would breach my suit integrity. The same would apply to use of my monofilament finger-blade, except that I would not only breach the suit but I would have to do it whilst in almost intimate contact with the heavily contaminated work-slut. By Willum’s edict we had brought no externally-carried weapons into the dome. A slave-revolt by emaciated naked work-sluts would be nothing but a minor distraction. A revolt by desperate slaves armed with a stolen laser would be altogether different. I had access to only one fatal weapon and the receivers for that dangled from Thirty Two’s breasts.

I used my implant to contact Willum and tersely outlined the situation and my proposed solution.

“Are you sure that you can’t get another few days, or even hours out of her before she dies,” he whined. “We are right at the edge already.”

“No,” I snapped back. “There’s absolutely no way.”

I was less certain of that than the tone of my voice suggested but the sobbing wreck that had once been my love-toy Popsicle was now curled in on itself, mewling like a wounded animal in a bear-trap. I was going to give her a painful death, but at least it would end her suffering. Then I had another idea.

“You’re right, Fifteen,” I actually heard myself agree that a slave had persuaded me of an action. “Willum agrees, or at least he accepts that putting her down is necessary. I want you to do it. You must do it. Cellophrant is plenty strong enough. I want you to cut a length, roll it into a thin cylinder and then put it round her neck and strangle her.”

Fifteen shook her head slowly, her big eyes plainly revealing the horror that the thought of that action brought to the surface of her brain. I was not used to slaves shaking their heads at me any more than I was used to explaining my orders to them but I stayed calm.

“You agree that it would be the kindest thing to kill her, don’t you Fifteen?” I found myself reasoning with a slave. “I’m certainly not stepping that close to her, so the only way that I can kill her would be to shock her to death through her Disciplines. You know what levels one and two feel like, don’t you Fifteen? You know how much it hurts?”

Fifteen nodded her head in mute agreement. Once she had realised that there was to be no mercy or remission, that strong-bodied work-slut had not only picked up her share of the load but had mutely encouraged the other primitives by helping them when they faltered. I hadn’t ever needed to use level two Discipline on her. However, Georgie had an altogether more robust sense of what constituted necessary correction and every one of the work-sluts, even the hard-working Fifteen, had felt that brain-wrecking level of agony during one of his shifts.

“Well level five goes through all of that before it builds to a crescendo that would finally snuff her,” I explained. “If you want to save Thirty-Two all of that pain then go and get a length of Cellophrant and do it yourself.”

Fifteen looked back at her whimpering slave-sister and slowly, clearly reluctantly, she nodded her head. Her eyes closed for a second as she focussed her will on what she must do and then she straightened her back, drawing strength from some primitive well. Once more she nodded and then turned her back as she trotted across to the Cello-wrapping machine.

Ten seconds later she was back. She lifted Thirty-Two’s head gently, almost reverently, and placed it on her lap, arranging the loop of Cellophrant loosely about her slave-sister’s neck. She drew up her stained and dirty bare feet under her until they were on Thirty-Two’s burnt and puss-covered shoulders. I saw what she intended and admired her ingenuity. Now that she was committed, she had clearly thought this through. She would tightly hold the Cellophrant in position with both hands whilst pushing her victim away from her with her strong legs. I had trained in garrotting technique and could snap a neck instantly with a real metal garrotte wire, but this looked to be about as good as you could get with an improvised cord that was too wide and made of entirely the wrong material.

Fifteen’s hands were white with self-induced pressure as she prepared herself. She squeezed her eyes shut in wordless prayer and then abruptly leaned forward to briefly kiss her doomed sister on the cheek between two livid and suppurating blotches. Then with a wordless grunt that forced air around even the wickedly effective Tongue-Claw gag that filled her mouth, she flung her torso backwards and pushed with all of the strength of her muscular legs.

Thirty-Two’s body arched, feeble hands clawing at her neck where the Cellophrant band was buried deep in flesh. Bare feet that were equally as dirty and stained as Fifteen’s own kicked futilely and drummed uselessly on the hard washable surface of the dome floor. The dying girl’s body arched but Fifteen maintained the steady killing pressure, continued to push with all the strength of her powerful legs until Popcorn’s body abruptly relaxed and urine dribbled from her to pool in a widening lake of yellow.

“Keep up the pressure until you’re absolutely certain that she is dead,” I reminded, although Fifteen seemed to understand that basic rule of physiology. A human body didn’t die swiftly and all in one piece. It was necessary to squeeze every last drop of vitality out of it as it followed its programming and gave up each function as reluctantly as a miser surrendering a part of his hoard to purchase the necessities of life.

When Fifteen finally released her grip, it was only because it was crystal-clear that Workslut Thirty-Two was dead. To my surprise, her slayer had barely relaxed her killer hold before she leaned reverently forward and delicately closed each of her victim’s sightless eyes with a soft and tender pressure on each lid. Then instead of recoiling away from that close encounter with death, she gently bowed her head even closer and kissed those unmoving lids. 

The big primitive work-slut’s soulful brown eyes were streaming with moisture and, as she rose back to her feet, her still strong body looked so taut that I swiftly activated my implant, ready to use it to send her Disciplines the short but unique level three command sequence that would shock her all the way to unconsciousness. I was fully prepared for any reaction, ranging from an attempt to attack me all the way through to an attempt to kill herself. Instead, she surprised me once again by merely nodding her head wearily at me in a half-bow that was almost insulting from slave to overseer before turning her back on me to trudge away to resume her deadly labours without even a word of command from me.

I checked the natural reaction to unleash painful punishment for that act of passive resistance. She had done what I wanted. I could let a little act of silent almost-defiance pass under the circumstances.

“You are dismissed and may return to your work, Number Fifteen,” I informed her receding back to retrospectively authorise her action.

*

The journey back to Willum’s world was a sober affair. Forty-four had travelled outwards and four were returning home. Willum had had his head buried in virtual screens since we he had engaged the autopilot, once the tricky undocking and lift-off procedures were completed. The rest of us could only watch canned entertainments or sit by ourselves and relive the last few weeks whilst anti-radiation treatments left all of us nauseous and uninterested.

We had spent two days thoroughly cleaning the ship and recycling the air through its scrubbers after the last work-slut had fallen at her post and the need for us to enter the dome had come to an end. The very last to go had been Fifteen, the primitive pre-atomic doctor. Perhaps that was a consequence of some greater vitality on the parts of those savages compared to the more refined physiology of civilised persons, but she had lived at least twenty three days, and she had been held to her work for twenty-one of them, although admittedly that had only been achieved with rapidly increasing and higher intensity use of her Disciplines on her last three days of solo vigil once the last of her primitive sisters had fallen to rise no more.

Willum had never bothered to find out what world had produced Fifteen and her primitive slave-sisters, but I was curious enough about her to want to investigate. She had been a strong and determined slut who had only been forced to obedience by the implacable power of the Disciplines that we had installed deep into her big breasts, but I was certain that, even so, she had never been fully broken. She had obeyed orders sullenly, but with sufficient dispatch to avoid too frequent a punishment jolt and she had used that strength and determination to regularly take on tasks that failing sisters could not complete if that could save them from Discipline.

I was impressed by her selflessness and stoic courage but one thing got to me more than any other. When something must be done, she did it. She had reprised her role as the strangler nearly two-score more times. By the end, she had terminated no less than thirty seven of her slave-sisters as they succumbed to radiation or other poisoning. In every case, she had carried out that necessary task efficiently and mercifully and I was unexpectedly sad that no one had been left to offer the same kindness to her when she finally slumped down over an unlabelled drum and not even repeated level two and three jolts to her Disciplines could do more than make her emaciated and burned body jerk spastically but ineffectively before it sank back into quiescence. If it had been practical, then I would have terminated her myself, but we had already started our clean-down and Willum would not hear of adding any further time or expense by reopening our airlock. So she lingered on for the whole two days that we spent cleaning down Boss Hogg before our departure from that awful place and she may still have still been alive when we finally boosted away, although I doubt that she was either conscious or aware of anything outside of her failing body.

I used the skiff’s com-laser as soon as we entered orbit to contact my shyster in order to find out if my case had been settled or whether I was going to have to try my first civilian jump from orbit in order to avoid the spaceport security staff. To my relief, the murder rap had been dropped, although, as I had suspected, the wergild set on the hustler’s life would entirely wipe out my earnings on this deeply unpleasant job and would still hack a sizable hole in my emergency reserves. However, I had already decided on a course that would negate the need to ever pay that compensation and at least I wasn’t going to have to jump from low planetary orbit in a civilian skin-suit. Now I could use the remaining few minutes of pre-paid com-link time to find out more about Fifteen’s world. I composed a google and sent in into the Planetary datanet.

“I’m going to take control back from the autopilot in a few minutes,” Willum informed us as the search results of my google pinged back through the com-link. “But I want you to know that we cleared nearly twenty percent of the crap that the Dwanascie dumped on us in this one excursion and we came in well under my original budget. You will all get an extra ten-percent bonus on top of what we originally agreed.”

Willum gave me one of his lopsided grins that he may even have thought was a boyish and appealing smile.

“You were an important part of that success, Miss Felicia. We still have four fifths of that crap to clean up, but there are plenty of cheap scrap-yard value sluts. Some dorks may have laughed at my idea, but it genuinely works. So would you be willing to sign up for a second trip?”

What did that lopsided complement do for me? I’m as hard a case as many ordinary citizens will ever meet in their humdrum lives but this had been no pleasure cruise. I had expected to feel a twinge of sadness at the demise of little Popsicle, and so I did. However that wasn’t what had really got to me. She had been a cute and willing little sex-toy, but at the end that was exactly what she was and all that she was. I was genuinely sorry that she had had to die but the deep and most heartfelt regret in my heart was for a work-slut whose older, big-breasted body had never even attracted me and whom I had barely been aware of until half way through the hellish month that had just passed. The courage and fortitude of a cheaply-purchased primitive slave from some pre-interstellar dung heap of a world had managed to penetrate the hard-boiled shell that I had built about myself to keep pity, mercy and compassion at bay. I never known Fifteen’s real name or world and I still wondered why it could possibly have mattered enough to me that I had wasted even pre-paid com-time in discovering it.

“I’m a cold-blooded killer, but some sort of killing is cleaner than others. Not now or ever again, Willum,” I replied coolly. “So don’t ask again. I will not appreciate it.”

“I will pay you an extra ten-percent basic, as well as any bonus. Plus you can have first pick or any of the sluts on the way out, and I’ll even try to add anyone of ‘em that you especially like to our coffle, if she’s not too expensive,” Willum offered and I turned towards him and my eyes fixed on his smirking face.

“Number Fifteen had a name before she was enslaved,” I quoted directly from the google result. “She was called Amanda McDonald and she had been a doctor amongst her kind before she was seized in a raid on her world. The slavers who raided it didn’t record any galactic name but the place is just called Earth by those who live on it. If the slavers had ever bothered to question her properly then they would have seen that, even if she knew nothing beyond the sort of bio-tech that every kid could do in their sheds, she could easily have been trained up to be a decent medtech and sold into a useful slavery. One day she might have even bought her way to freedom and become a real citizen, but we’ve just used her up like a paper tissue. My answer is no, and you will now shut your mouth and not speak to me again until I can leave your obnoxious presence.” 

“Don’t get her knickers in a twist, Miss Felicia,” Willum opened his idiot mouth unbidden. “She was only a slave-slut, just a pointless, almost worthless slave!”

My fingertips touched together behind my back and the infinitely sharp edge of my monofilament finger-blade flickered silently from its housing. Perhaps he suddenly realised the tenor of my thoughts because his face suddenly turned even more pasty than his norm.

“Indeed she was only a slave,” I spoke in the low and even voice that had been the very last thing that many thugs, heavies and would-be warriors had ever heard. I brought both hands round so that my thumbs were level with my mouth. The bare monofilament blade glittered with the iridescent rainbow of diffraction patterns all along its infinitely thin killing edge. A damp parch suddenly appeared across the front of Willum’s spacer coverall as I continued. “But she was once called Amanda McDonald of the planet Earth and she proved her worth as a human being by actions not words.”

I gave the necessary mental command to my implant and the deadly blade vanished silently and almost instantaneously into its cerametal scabbard. My eyes were on Willum, willing him to take offense and do anything hostile so that I could kill him, but he was plainly too terrified to move. It appeared that the act of getting him to soil himself would have to suffice.

“She proved that she was worth so much more than you that your sacrifice in her name would be more of a disgrace than an honour. So go away,” I commanded. “Go right now, and leave me without speaking a single word. You will land this skiff and then you will never allow me to see even a hint of your presence, ever again, because if we meet again then you will die.”

*

So here I am. I am penniless now and on a quixotic search for a world that I know only by its native name. The weirgild that I didn’t pay and every other florin that I ever had has gone on this antiquated caravel with a hold containing a focussing ruby large enough and nano-electronics bright enough to build a laser cannon that could gut a genuine naval corvette or any slaver star-clipper that has ever flown.

My only too vivid and increasingly worse nightmares ended the night that I made the decision that brought me here and I only have sweet dreams now. I was right about one thing. Taking Willum’s life in her memory would only have demeaned Amanda McDonald’s name, but my gift to her planet is given in her name and I’m content that it is fitting.

You can decide for yourselves whether I am mad or sane. 

I am content.