Boiler House

Synopsis:

The Eyrie is an aerial palace that serenely floats its rich and pampered inhabitants high in the atmosphere of its home world. But every slave aboard knows the terrible price of any failure to please the Eyrie Lords, whatever outrageous service might be asked. Below the High Eyrie’s gardens and glittering halls is the hell of the Boiler House. The Eyrie is maintained in its aerial position by the unremitting labour of naked girl-slaves working sixteen hours of every day for the rest of their short and pain-filled lives. Lyra is an ex-soldier forced by circumstance to become an overseer in that hell and even her very first shift is enough to make her wish that she had any other choice at all.

*

The crop-haired, heavily-built woman warily eyed the shimmering fields across the door-arch. It was not only a privacy screen, semi-opaque to vision but also an energy-permeated stun-field. When she had been a troop sergeant in the Screaming Eagles, more formally, the 201st Tamarisk Jump-Legion, she would have walked straight through such simple civilian defences without a thought, but she no longer possessed the military grade battle-armour of a jump-trooper. Instead she wore a plain blouson top and pantaloons of a dun-brown material. The reactively-armoured cloth was proof against chemically propelled bullets and most edged hand-weapons but it would not protect her against the ultra-high energy stun-field that prevented unauthorised access or exit from the Boiler room. That field would only be passible if she had been authorised to do so. She used her military-grade cortical implant to ping the aerostat’s controlling AI. All of the offensive military functions of that hardened and cutting-edge implant had been deleted or suppressed at her discharge but it was still the equivalent to any but the most exclusive civilian devices. She could still seek the answer to that question swiftly and safely without having to risk being shocked unconscious due to some careless misunderstanding.

“AI data request,” she sub-vocalised. “Confirm that I am authorised to pass through the high-energy field at the Boiler House entrance. List any special procedures to be followed.”

“You are identified as Lyra Secunda Hopemission,” the AI responded with only a fractional delay. You have been appointed as second shift overseer. You may freely pass through the stun field at any time and in either direction although the timing of your movements may be recorded for pay purposes. You may escort any unauthorised individual inwards, but their subsequent exit will require the specific consent of the Boiler Room Manager or authorisation by one of the Eyrie Lords.”

That was enough reassurance for a woman trained to prompt obedience by ten years in the legion. She pulled up her anti-dust rebreather mask to cover her nose and mouth and stepped through the energy field and into a scene that could have been lifted directly from Dante’s Inferno. From the raised entry walkway she could see over the two metre high fire-walls. The long boiler room flickered with a ruddy red light from a row of ten near-identical open furnace mouths and a dry and dusty heat struck like a physical blow upon her exposed face and arms as she stared at the scene within in disbelief. A score of figures were half-silhouetted against the light from the boiler mouths. They ranged from skinny to fulsome and from teenage to mature but their stark-naked bodies were all filthy and their bowed heads were either a ragged stubble of hair or completely bald. As Lyra watched, one after another shuffled forward on dirty bare feet to fling a shovel-load of black anthracite into the hungry maw that stood before them in their isolated pens and then shambled back to collect another load of fuel to repeat the endless cycle.

Lyra was about to perform her first shift as supervisor of the all-female teams of slaves sentenced to stoke the aerostat’s vacuum-generating boilers for the remainder of their short and wretched lives. Twenty slaves working at any one time, ten trying to rest on their narrow shared hot-bunking pallet-beds for a brief eight hour respite. She had been told that the Boiler room was essential to the aerial stability of the aerostat and that its workforce were slaves sent there for their offences against the Eyrie Lords. She had not imagined that such workers would be either contented or comfortable in their work, but she had certainly not expected them to be heavily chained and stark naked in such a hostile and unpleasant environment. The unnecessarily heavy chains could only make them less efficient and it was clear from the state of the burns and wheals on faces, limbs and torsos that nudity was likely to significantly reduce their effective working life. It seemed not only inefficient, but also an inherently risky exercise to trust all the wealth and lives aboard the aerostat to such an easily interrupted process in the hands of cruelly misused slaves who had so little to lose.

Lyra had arrived on the aerostat in an aging shuttle, but it had still used gravity polarisers to deliver her into the outermost edge of the dense atmosphere of the gas giant where the body of the aerostat floated between three massive vacuum balloons. The same technology as powered the shuttle could surely prevent the aerostat from sinking into the turbulent atmosphere without recourse to the coal-powered pumps that maintained the vacuum in the three kilometre-wide monolayer balloon canopies.

Lyra pinged the AI with a query to that effect and the semi-sentient machine promptly responded. She was simultaneously relieved and disturbed by the answer. The Eyrie Lords were not entirely reliant upon the ability of herself and her fellow overseers to continue to drive the Boiler sluts on to maintain an uninterrupted vacuum supply. The Aerostat was indeed equipped with back-up antigravity polarisers sufficiently powerful to support the entire floating structure without need of the vacuum pumps that were driven by the steam from the boiler room. She looked with new insight at the wretched toiling girls. It meant that, in the final analysis, their entire travail was pointless. It was merely an inventive conceit upon the part of the Lords who ruled the entire aerostat from their Eyrie on its uppermost decks. The AI also offered the two official justifications for the slave’s nudity, although to Lyra’s mind the reasoning was weak in the extreme. The alleged saving in the cost of purchasing and laundering of protective clothing could only be a real saving if the slaves themselves were considered freely expendable and of negligible value. The argument for increased security, since a nude could hide no tools or weapons, ignored the impossibility of exit through the stun field whether armed to the teeth or not. It was much more likely that it was nothing more than an act of disturbingly deliberate cruelty on the part of the aerostat’s owners.

***

Lyra once more connected her implant to the aerostat’s AI for a status report and data scrolled across her vision at fifty per cent opacity. The schematic showed green bars of varying lengths that hovered over all but the symbol for boiler four. That boiler was in serious energy debt, a long column of a baleful red colour. Lyra gave a grimace of distaste but headed down the metallic steps that would take her to Boiler Four. She didn’t relish the thought of applying punishment to slaves who were already suffering enough in this hell but she had accepted this filthy job as the only alternative to her own enslavement for debt. Her precipitate discharge from the legion had been engineered by NCOs whose schemes to divert legionary funds into their own private coffers had been disrupted by her refusal to co-operate. Instead of being praised for her honesty, she had lost her comfortable billet and had been discharged without pay or references. A wise woman would learn from her mistakes. If the aerostat’s Lords wanted their slave workers to be deliberately handicapped and then intentionally punished, then she would make no waves. She would keep her head down and apply whatever physical option was needed to keep her wretched slave-workers to their task.

Boiler Four was being serviced by a single naked woman who looked absolutely exhausted. Her buxom beauty was marred by her rough-shaven head, superficial burns and the dust and ash that coated her entire body. Even in the absence of any supervision she was working at a pace that left Lyra surprised that she was so significantly behind her allocated target. She staggered to the base of a high piled anthracite mound and thrust her shovel in to scoop up a generous load, then hobbled on dirty and bleeding feet up to the boiler mouth and threw the heavy load into the greedy maw. There was a flare of flame and smoke as the impact of the heavy coal upon the red-glowing boiler bed caused hot ash to bellow forth all around the nude figure. She gave a swiftly suppressed squeal of pain as the blistering slag spattered unprotected skin. In an automatic attempt to shield her face and the most delicate parts of her body she turned away to expose her torso to Lyra. Her face and body were dusty with black detritus and marked with dozens of wheals, blisters and wounds where hot steaming cinders had settled and burned into once pale flesh. Lyra’s eyes were drawn to bright flashes from metal hammered right into her body. Two shiny and obviously heavy cylinders depended down from elliptical silver rings that pierced her generous breasts in vertical loops set well behind each nipple. A further, near identical cylinder dangled between her thighs from a large ring that passed through both of her labial lips and then plunged deep into the flesh between her thighs. The unfortunate captive’s entire ensemble was completed by hammered steel anklets joined together with a short five link chain and a scarcely longer wrist chain between one-piece metal bracelets that were plainly not intended for removal. The substantial chains were plainly awkward and cumbersome, but they were mere decorative bracelets when compared with the centimetre wide rings that were hammered into soft female flesh. 

“What the fuck are those things through her tits!” Lyra demanded of the AI.

Ignoring the expletive as only a machine could, it promptly identified the unfamiliar cylinders at breast and crotch as Slave Disciplines, explaining that the silver conductor-rings and battery packs could be triggered from any overseer’s implant to deliver graduated levels of pain ranging from the equivalent of a bunch of fresh nettles being dragged across nipples and crotch all the way up to a shock that would send the recipient into agonised, muscle-ripping convulsions as effectively as the would an attempt to pass the guardian field across the entrance.

The nude worker saw Lyra for the first time as she turned away from the flaring boiler mouth and instantly released her shovel. She followed it swiftly to the ground to squat, her legs wide apart, back straight, chained wrists turned outwards at her hip. It closely approximated the display position of a pleasure slave, an incongruous posture for a burned and unwashed work-slut. Lyra had paid for and used young pretties in pleasure houses in her military past but her preference was for slim-bodied, sweetly perfumed beauties. A busty shaven-headed work slut who was dripping stinking sweat from hard and unremitting labour was not a sight that would tempt her. Lyra took a step closer to read the ten centimetre tall identification tattoo upon the filthy worker’s left breast, although the same information was also available as a visual floater via Lyra’s implant. It identified her only by her roll number, slave 4C.

“I thought that this was a serious fucking workplace, not a doxy-house. So is that supposed to be funny?” the ex-soldier demanded. “That number on your tit says that you’re a stoker-slut, numero 4C here in the boiler room, not some pampered hetaerae up in the Eyrie. Your only purpose for the rest of your life is to keep this bloody super-sized balloon in the air, and my job is to make sure that you keep shovelling enough of that fuel to keep us all floating. So pick up that bloody shovel and get your arse right back to work.”

“Hotlips did once serve the Lords in the Eyrie itself, Mistress,” the girl whimpered as she carefully rose to her feet. But Mistress is correct that now she is only a slave worker.” Her fingers steadied the heavy cylinders that weighted her pendulous breasts and she stared down at her dirty bare feet as she attempted to explain her actions. “The use of this slaves’ body is free to any overseer at the beginning or end of their work shift, Mistress. That is why Master Barnie has commanded Hotlips to display herself in this way whenever an Overseer arrives. If this slave has offended then she begs for her Mistress’ forgiveness, or at least her mercy.”

“Okay, so I can hardly play jazz on your Disciplines for obeying another overseer’s order,” Lyra snapped in return, “but let me see some serious stoking, tout suite, or that will be a legitimate excuse to try out those Disciplines.”

The girl wearily scooped up the broad-headed shovel and turned obediently towards the wall of anthracite coal that filled a third of the room. Her utter fatigue was writ plain in every quivering muscle but an overwhelming fear of the pain of the Disciplines still drove her on to one more desperate effort.

“Wait, slave,” Lyra commanded. “I’m supposed to relieve him in five more minutes, so where’s this fellow Barnie now?”

The girl slave halted on the spot, glad for even an additional brief moment in which she could rest.

“Master Barnie’s by the sleep shelter, back there, just behind the coal stack, Mistress,” she offered in explanation.

“Why? Why isn’t he out here doing his job, and why are you here on your own?” Lyra demanded suspiciously. I thought that each boiler was worked by a trio of you, with two on-shift and one off.”

“Yes, Mistress, but Master Barnie likes to use me first thing in his day, when he comes on duty,” the slave girl explained without any residual shame at explaining how she must whore herself at the lightest command. “Then he has my slave-sister Chocolate finish him off and then clean him up with her mouth just before he goes off-shift. So he’s with Chocolate now.”

From what the slave had already told her, it was clear that her buxom figure held some appeal for Master Barnie and that he had no compunction against acting upon that impulse. The dirt that was caked on her inner thighs was marred by runnels of a paler colour. That was almost certainly Overseer Barnie’s spent cum. Hotlips had clearly had no opportunity to wash or even wipe it off since her most recent usage as a sex-receptacle, so she must have been working without any break since before the previous overseer had first come on duty. Lyra had already anticipated that a slave-worker’s day would be considerably longer than that of the paid overseers, but she had assumed that it would at least be punctuated with minimal rest breaks.

“How long have you been working since you last had a break, 4C?” Lyra demanded.

“Hours, Mistress. Lots of hours, but there’s no clock in here and our implants are all suppressed. I don’t know exactly how long, Mistress,” the slave mumbled.

Lyra realised that she didn’t have to rely on the word of the workers. That data was available from the AI. She called up the individual work diaries of the three slaves who served boiler number four and examined the figures. There was something skewed about the situation. The charts showed that Hotlips had already been working for nineteen hours continuously and that her partner 4A, aka Chocolate, had had only a four hour break in the last twenty four hours. That didn’t smack of idling on their part, but where was slave 4B? She swiftly rejected the thought of Disciplining Hotlips for what was plainly not her fault.

“I’m not going to punish you now for failing to keep up with two worker’s loads on your own, 4C,” Lyra informed the toiling slave-girl to her obvious relief. “I’m going to go and find out what 4B has been up to and get her back to work first. Then, once she’s here with a shovel in her hands, I’ll expect that energy debt to start falling, or all three of you will feel a nasty fire in your tits.”

Lyra strode around the coal pile, immediately feeling the reduction in the radiant heat, although the air was still sufficiently hot and dusty that she felt no desire to remove her rebreather mask. The sleep-shelter was nothing but a rectangle of rough hessian sacking on makeshift struts of unseasoned wood. A mocha-skinned young woman half-blocked the entrance where she squatted before an older male whose battered denim shorts were about his ankles. In spite of her earlier words to Hotlips, Lyra’s eyes locked instantly upon the pixie-face and smooth chocolate-coloured skin of the slave-girl. Hotlips was undoubtedly still an attractive woman but her big-breasted flouncy femininity appealed to a discerning bisexual woman far less than the youthful delicacy of the sloe-eyed beauty who was being sexually abused before Lyra’s eyes. That youngster’s body was slim and toned and, although her head was shaven bald, the absence of hair just made her appear more exotic and desirable. She shared the same heavy chains and implanted rings as Lyra had seen on Hotlips but where the heavy weights had pulled Hotlips’ fulsome breasts into a faintly ridiculous and pendulous shape, the dark-skinned youngsters’ walnut-dark nipples stood proud upon the firm mounds of her tiny breasts.

The male’s erect penis was deep within her mouth and she was busily fellating him with great apparent enthusiasm. Lyra’s view of her performance was partially obscured by the older man’s skinny buttocks as he seized the poor girl’s ears and jerked her head violently back and forth along the shaft of his erection. Lyra saw the little slave-girl’s eyes close for a brief second as she absorbed that additional abuse and then redoubled her efforts. That additional stimulation was plainly the final straw and his hairy arse shook to the evident impact of an orgasm. Chocolate gulped down sperm furiously, desperately trying not to allow any to escape from her mouth. The male gave a low rumbling groan and then an angry growl. He slapped her upturned face with an open hand as he pulled out from her pouting lips.

“That was too quick by half, you fucking idle cunt!” he snarled in a rough labour-pool growl. “And now I need a piss.”

The slap sent gobbets of thick creamy sperm dribbling from the corner of her mouth but the dusky beauty only gave a meaningless grimace of a smile as she obediently opened her mouth into a wide O. A thin stream of yellow urine spurted from his flaccid penis into her mouth and she swallowed furiously, ignoring the acidic taste as she had ignored the rancid flavour of his unwashed penis and the lumpy stickiness of his cum. This was her life now. If she placated Master Barnie perfectly then there would be no pain. Otherwise, her breasts and crotch would burn with the indescribable agony that her Disciplines could deliver at the merest thought command from his cortical implant. That was all that mattered and she must focus only upon that.

Urine overflowed her mouth no matter that she was gulping it down as fast as she possibly could and she grabbed at her firm little tits, pushing them up to capture some of the spillage as it ran down her chin and onto her body. She had learned that making an apparent effort to capture that escaping urine, no matter how ineffective, pleased Master Barnie and that in turn decreased the probability of the pain that now drove her entire wretched life. The urine stream petered out into a dribble and Chocolate scooped at some of the pooled urine between her breasts, lifting wet fingers to her lips as if she was desperate to consume the yellow-grey mix of her own sweat and Barnie’s piss, all flavoured with ash and coal-dust. She turned her wide dark eyes upwards just enough to peep at his face and then dropped them immediately back to his flaccid penis once she had gauged his mood.

“Too quick,” he repeated ominously and Chocolate felt a surge of panic as she imagined the fire that only unconsciousness could quench.

“My Dominus Barnie was too masterful for Chocolate to control herself,” she lied swiftly, casting around in her head for anything that might placate him. “Chocolate is sorry that she is such a whore-slut in your hands, dear Master. Thank you for the gift of your sperm and for permitting such a worthless slut to pleasure you, my wonderful glorious Master.”

Such shameless flattery placated the overseer to the extent that he patted her bald pate in a gesture that would have ruffled her hair had she had anything but a faint stubble remaining upon her cranium.

“Right,” he grunted and Chocolate felt with relief that the crisis had passed. “It was okay for me too, so now lick me clean. But do it gently now. It’s still sensitive.”

“Chocolate will be as gentle as a baby dove,” she trilled in a soft soprano voice as she breathed a sigh of relief that she would not burn.

Lyra had no reason to show anger but the sight of that scrumptious creature wasting herself on some hairy-arsed pool labourer caught a raw nerve.

“Why don’t you just bite it off and spit it into your furnace instead. Then you could get back to work before this bloody aerostat falls out of the sky for lack of vacuum, 4A?” Lyra snapped testily.  

Chocolate’s eyes widened yet further into even more appealing saucers as she tried desperately to reconcile the contradictory orders of two overseers, both with the power to send her into paroxysms of agony with a single sub-vocalised word of command. She halted her dedicated cleansing of Master Barnie’s now entirely flaccid cock with her tongue and lips for long enough to reply.

“Please forgive a foolish slave if she doesn’t understand,” Chocolate gabbled. “Chocolate is your slave, Mistress, but she can’t do that. Chocolate will hurry back to work just as soon as her Master releases her, Mistress. Please don’t hurt Chocolate when she’s only trying to obey a Master’s command.”

Barnie pushed Chocolate’s head away from his penis and heaved up his shorts. His denim shorts were so damp that they could have been wrung out and his throat was as dry and gritty as a desert, but if the new overseer was here early then he could get out of this place and go catch a beer. That would be even better than the sensations that clever little Chocolate had delivered.

“If her wonderful, masterful Dominus has finished using Chocolate then may Chocolate go back to help Hotlips now, sir,” Chocolate pleaded. She wanted nothing more than to wash the taste of Barnie from her mouth but she knew nothing about the new Mistress. She had ordered her back to work. She might lose her patience and apply Discipline at any moment. Barnie ignored the waiting slave in favour of the new interloper.

“You’ll be the new un, who used to be a soldier-girl,” he barked in a gravelly but entirely unrepentant voice. “Eager beaver are you? Wasn’t expecting you for five more minutes.”

“I wanted to have time to see the place and maybe ask a few questions,” Lyra explained. “But I couldn’t find you on the work-floor. Do you screw all the Boiler sluts or only a few selectees?”

“All these sluts are free for our use and I like to leave here with a good feeling.” He looked towards the muscular woman who was still in the heavy undress uniform blouson of the legions. He saw that her eyes were not on him at all but had wandered to Chocolate’s well-defined and completely exposed body. The little dark slave stood in an attention position, dirty bare feet wide apart and her arms folded high behind her back so that her little tits were thrust out, even the weight of the heavy Discipline rings only pulling them down a fraction from their proudly jutting position. 

Lyra pulled her attention away from the slave and back onto her fellow overseer. He interpreted her look as one of guilt and gave a gap-toothed grin. “She’s free for your use too if’n you want her.” He sallied. “You would give your new Mistress a special treat with that magic tongue of yours wouldn’t you Chocolate?”

“If that is her new mistress’ desire then Chocolate is her devoted slave and will do whatever she commands,” the youngster replied swiftly, although not entirely convincingly. She had taken Master Barnie’s unwashed cock into her mouth to avoid the agony that he could so easily deliver. She would equally as willingly feign pleasure at plunging her mouth onto the sex of another woman rather than risk the pain of Discipline.

“Let’s forget that for now,” Lyra snapped as she tried to do just that against the illicit tingle in her crotch. Chocolate was a hot little piece and was only a slave, available for any such use by her owner’s command. It was tempting, but Lyra was not yet sufficiently needy or depraved that she would let a low-life male slob like Barnie watch her satisfy that need.

“You don’t wanna peel off in front of old Barnie, perhaps,” the poolie challenged. “But ’S fuckin’ hot in here and Chocolate, she’s got her own sort of heat. Ten sovs says you won’t still be wearin’ that soldier girl uniform when yer leave here at shift-end.”

The ex-soldier refused to be drawn into a pointless discussion. She had taken this job as a final option when the aerostat’s proctors had informed her that by the end of the next rotation of the gas giant, she must pay her outstanding bills and show a valid salaried job contract, or else she would be taken to an airlock and would have to learn to fly sans breathing equipment. If she had had ten sovs to her name then she might have taken the bet, if only because she didn’t have even a single change of clothing to her name. She would leave the boiler house wearing her uniform or clad in nothing but her boots and knickers.

“Is there anything else that I should know apart from the fact that it’s fucking hot in here, grand-dad,” she retorted in lieu of giving him a good kicking. “Like, for instance, why these two favourites of yours seem to be pulling double shifts.”

“Ask Chocolate that if you want,” the overseer replied shiftily. “If m’relief is here then that means that its shift-end for me, so no time to chat. I’m off for a cool beer.”

The tiny coffee-skinned figure went suddenly rigid and gave old Barnie’s unconcerned back a look of swiftly suppressed anger. Then she shook her head almost imperceptibly and dropped into the same shamelessly exposed display posture as Hotlips had adopted. Her little tongue snaked out to almost lick at the heavy weapon belt that held up Lyra’s army surplus pantaloons and she touched her own shaven crotch suggestively. “Does Mistress want to taste Chocolate now that Master Barnie has gone and Mistress is alone here?” she asked in a sudden volte-face.

“No!” Lyra snapped shortly. She may have received little formal education at the hands of the Hope Mission beadles and nuns but ten years as a legionary troop sergeant had taught her to spot an unexpected attempt to distract her. “So just answer the fucking question or I’ll put a shot of power through your cunt that will boil steam out from both ends of you at once.”

Chocolate blanched at the threat. She didn’t know this new hard-eyed woman as she knew old Barnie. She dared do nothing but assume that that threat was genuine.

“Mercy, Mistress. Mercy, please!” she sobbed in defeat. “Please don’t hurt Chocolate, kind mistress. Chocolate promises that she will answer whatever Mistress wants to know.”

“Right, then tell me why your Boiler is running in the red and where is 4B?”

Chocolate looked at the ground in shame and defeat. She knew the likely consequence of telling the truth but dared do nothing less under the remorseless eye of the new overseer.

“Buttercup, slave 4B, has been hurt, Mistress. Hotlips and Chocolate have been trying to do her work as well as their own, just until she is better, but we have to sleep a little so we’ve had to leave our boiler with only one stoker for some of the workday. We’ve only taken four hours rest each, but that’s why the boiler isn’t on target Mistress.”

“That wasn’t your decision, slave. You should have reported this earlier,” Lyra judged sternly. “That idle slob Barnie should have dealt with this but since he didn’t, I suppose that I must. Show me to her now.”

Once again Chocolate thought briefly of resisting or prevaricating but Lyra gave the quivering youngster her most sergeant-like look and that resistance collapsed instantly. She and Hotlips together had prevailed upon Master Barnie not to call the shift supervisor but this unknown and seemingly remorseless new overseer was an entirely different kettle of fish.

“Buttercup’s on our pallet in the sleep-shelter, Mistress,” Chocolate gestured and Lyra stepped around the flimsy sheeting to see a double row of narrow pallets set on centimetres apart and with less than a metre of walkway between the foot of each row. A grubby naked slave-girl was sprawled in exhausted sleep upon each thin mattress, some on their bellies, some on their backs. It was clear which was Buttercup. One sweat-soaked nude was curled into a foetal ball, moaning in fevered pain, her hands cupping her injured belly. Lyra had received the same basic med-training as any jump-trooper and she needed little more than that to see the severity of the hideous burn that had charred through the flesh of her distended belly until a damaged intestinal loop could be seen through the torn edge of her scorched flesh. That terrible burn was festering in the unhygienic conditions of the Boiler room and was plainly not a mere flesh wound that would heal with a little bed-rest.

“Stupid girl,” she rounded on the quivering Chocolate. “That’s as likely to heal on its own as I am to buy this aerostat with my army pension.”

She pinged a call to the shift supervisor. He seemed strangely reluctant to act but finally agreed to send the Boiler Room MedTech to assess the injury. Chocolate just stood with her big saucer-like eyes wide, a defeated and deflated look to her face.

“Why are you staring at me like that, slave?” Lyra demanded tetchily. “You know that I’m right don’t you?”

Chocolate was unwilling to agree and terrified to not. Dumbly she nodded her head a fraction. “Mistress must know best,” she conceded unwillingly.

“Then get your ass back to work,” Lyra commanded.

Chocolate obeyed, as she must. The dusty young woman wiped as much of Barnie’s salty sperm as possible from her mouth and lips and hurried the few paces back onto the boiler house floor. She bent to pick up her discarded shovel and thrust it deep into the pile of anthracite until the weight of heavy coal was almost more than she could bear. Her muscles ached in warning as she dragged it up before her with the extra energy that terror could impart and glanced towards their boiler to see that Hotlips had almost reached her position at the fuel pile after unloading her own shovel into the always hungry furnace mouth. Chocolate’s small bare feet slapped onto the fire-proof cast-epoxy flooring as she almost ran forward with the laden shovel held before her in an attempt to recapture a good rhythm where she and Hotlips could at least avoid collision or burning each other as well as themselves. Lyra nodded in satisfaction. The little dark girl could have achieved the same spacing by waiting until her big slave-sister had deposited her next load in the furnace mouth but she had started at a run instead.

“Good work, 4A,” Lyra praised. “Remember that Hard Work will make you Free. I saw that that’s what it says over the entry arch. I don’t know what the manumission price is for doing this shit but I assume that you won’t need to do many months of work this hard to rack up quite a credit.”

Chocolate looked at the new mistress with incredulous eyes. Was she just making fun of her helpless slave or did she genuinely not know that the slogan emblazoned upon the arch was merely a cruel joke. The only way to freedom from this hellish work was death. The only reason that she didn’t just lie down to die now was the knowledge of the pain that the heavy rings through her tits and crotch would cause to her if she should attempt to stop. Sparks leapt out at her as she threw her full load into the boiler and she felt the familiar pain of burning hot cinders as they whirled up and quenched their glowing heat in bare flesh. It hurt, but she knew that that was nothing compared to even level one Discipline. If this new Mistress thought that such a joke was funny then she might also take pleasure in applying that sanction. Although Chocolate’s head was light with the hours of backbreaking toil that she had already endured, she still picked up the pace yet more, ignoring the cramps in her back and the pain of her new burns in fear of an even worse agony.  

Lyra was watching the play of Chocolate’s rounded little arse as she shovelled coal into the boiler with furious efficiency when the MedTech arrived. It was plainly backbreaking work but the dusky beauty had taken Lyra’s words to heart and was working as if that repetitive action could erase some hidden hurt. The Tech was a pimply youth of no more than Chocolate’s age but he was a free man and both Hotlips and Chocolate slowed long enough to make sketchy nude curtsies in his direction before once more picking up their work rhythm.

“What’s your secret,” the MedTech enquired in astonishment. “You’ve got them really humming along there, Miss Lyra,” he remarked, his eyes on the bountiful charms of Hotlip’s glowing body. The big-breasted slave was drenched in sweat from her labours and had several new burns on torso and legs but she threw yet another shovel of anthracite into the ever-greedy furnace mouth and turned away for more, not even pausing to flick a smouldering ember from its resting place between her generous breasts before digging the wide-mouthed shovel deep into the coal pile.

“They just needed a woman’s touch,” Lyra replied vaguely. She was unexpectedly surprised herself at the way the two slaves had worked as if terrified that she was some form of devil, but she wasn’t going to show that surprise to this mere child. “Now let’s see what you think of the state of 4B.”

The MedTech let out a low tutting sound the moment that he entered the tiny sleep-space. He only opened the small medical carry-sac enough to extract a large indelible ink marker pen of the sort that battlefield medics used for triage. He used the wide-tipped felt marker to draw a large cross on the feverish slave’s small left breast.

“There’s nothing can be done here,” he announced. “You’d better put in a requisition for a replacement straight away.”

“And will someone collect 4B?” Lyra enquired.

“I know that you’re new around here but where do you think that you are?” the MedTech looked at Lyra in mystification. “I already said that there’s nothing we can do for her.”

“Not here, I know,” Lyra agreed. “That’s why I called you. “She needs the autodoc in a real surgical ward.”

The MedTech looked at Lyra as if she had suddenly begun to speak in Aramaic rather than standard Galactic English. “These work slaves don’t rate medi-help like that, Miss Lyra. None of them get to leave here,” he attempted to clarify. “The Eyrie Lords don’t really need this place to keep the aerostat afloat, but it works like magic for keeping their pleasure slaves in line. Their doxies up in the High Eyrie would probably stick their arses up in the air and allow themselves to be humped by a rabid camel rather than risk being sent down here.”

He stole a glance at the new overseer’s face. It looked like she still hadn’t got the message so he continued. “That’s because they know exactly what it means to be sent to the Boiler Room. They know that they will come in and be worked like donkeys, but none of ‘em will ever go out again. 4B is just scrap now. Scrap doesn’t get high-end medi-care, it just gets dumped in the discard pile.”

Lyra had killed at least a score of men and women in her ten year service with the legion so she had no illusions about the sacredness or preciousness of life, but this was different. The slave’s injury was bad but it was still survivable.  Now she belatedly realised just why the two other work slaves had been willing to go to such lengths rather than reporting Buttercup’s condition. She had just inadvertently sentenced the injured girl to death. If she could have rewound and replayed her actions then she would have done so, but that was not a facility available in real life. What was done was done. 

“Shit, I didn’t know that it would come to that,” Lyra spoke contritely. “I thought perhaps that Barnie or one of the Managers had injured her and didn’t want it reported in case they were blamed.”

“There’s no blame if you damage one of these sluts,” the MedTech laughed at the new Overseers innocence. “You can do what you want with them and no-one will care. They’re here to die and the more horrid it is down here, the harder the doxies who are still in the High Eyrie will work to stay up there instead. So why don’t you just get one of the other pair to smack her on the head with a shovel and then dump her in the oven. Once she’s recorded as dead by the AI you can order up another work slut to replace her.”

“We have to kill her, and then did you say to dump her in one of these boilers?” Lyra asked in shock.

“No!” the MedTech warned, “You mustn’t kill her. She’s supposed to be alive when she burns. You just throw her in and then close the fireguard up until she stops kicking and fighting. It’s two centimetre thick steel so she won’t get out and with the temperature in there, it’ll only need a few minutes before your sluts can start stoking again. But you may need to knock her unconscious first to get her in there. I saw Barnie once try and get one of his discards into the boiler while she was still conscious. She was clinging to the sides like some sort of limpet until the metal burned her fingers right off. It took him ten minutes and he had to break both her arms before he could finally get her in.”

“That’s gross,” Lyra objected. “And why burn her alive?”

“It’s to stop you overseers from giving one of your favourites an easy death,” the MedTech guessed. “If any of these sluts die too easy a death then they’ll all want it. A painless death would probably be better than this hell, but if the alternative is to burn alive then that scares the shit out of the others and they’ll keep on stoking until they drop. Some newbies like you don’t like it much. Come to think of it, I don’t much like to watch it myself. So, since I don’t have to be here, I’ll just take myself off now. The AI will certify the moment of death and you can requisition a replacement at any time after that.”

Lyra rounded on the boy. “I expected this to be pretty nasty brutish work but I wasn’t expecting to have to snuff some poor work slut on the first day, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to have to burn her alive. I’ve done my share of killing but nothing like that. What would the Eyrie Lords do if I just told them to take their job and stuff it up their arses?” 

“All of our contracts say that we will obey and are bound by the Eyrie’s Law. If you don’t do what you’ve signed up to do then I think that you’ll find that the breach of contract rules around here are rather harsher than you might wish,” the MedTech warned seriously. “If you renege as an overseer then you may end up shovelling coal in her place. You’re here now. So do or be done to, that’s the only choice.”

Lyra looked at the semi-conscious young woman. Could she do it? It sounded as if she must. So if it must be done, then it was best that it was done quickly, as some ancient murderous king and queen had once said.

“4A. 4C. Get in here right now,” she growled out the fatal order. “Come here now and bring your fucking shovels with you.”

The big-breasted slave Hotlips almost eclipsed the tiny figure of Chocolate as the pair entered. Hotlips touched the heavy dangling batteries that swung from her ringed nipples as she moved, gathering them against her dust and ash-stained torso to briefly relieve their insistent pull. The smaller, lighter girl dropped to her knees and pressed her hands together. The MedTech shook his head. “I’m out from here now. Do what you must, but just get it done, overseer or it’ll be your own arse on the line.”

“Please Mistress, you don’t have to put Buttercup in the fire,” Chocolate begged. “Hotlips and Chocolate will both work harder. We’ll take even shorter sleep-breaks, Mistress. We will catch up, we swear. Please don’t do it, Mistress.”

“You can’t possibly do anything but fall further behind. Then I’d have to punish you both and she’d still die,” Lyra informed with remorseless logic. “Just look at her. She’s dead anyway in a more few days, whatever you do. It may hurt but at least it’ll be over. So let’s get practical. We have to put her down now. Then I can get you some help so that I don’t have to jazz your Disciplines for failing your targets.”

“Please at least give us a few moments to say a few last words, Mistress,” Hotlips pleaded for even less than Chocolate. “She’s been our slave-sister on boiler four since Chocolate and I were first sent down here. She helped us then. Let us say goodbye to her now.”

Lyra subvocalized a question at the AI and the reply whispered into the aural buds implanted in each ear. Buttercup had survived six months of the remorseless toil of the boiler house. That was five months longer than either Chocolate or Hotlips had served and nearly twice the average survival time in that place. The full survival time graph hovered as a tiny image in one corner of Lyra’s vision but she blinked it away. Too much detail wouldn’t make the job any easier.

“Your fucking work won’t get done by itself but I’ll give you two minutes,” Lyra conceded. “So say a quick goodbye right now. The clock is ticking.”

“I’m sorry, Buttercup,” so sorry!” Chocolate wept as she bowed over the crumpled figure. “I know that this is all my fault, but please forgive me.”

Hotlips fell onto her knees and took hold of Buttercup’s limp hand. Wordlessly she squeezed the hand as Chocolate continued to speak.

“Father of Heaven. Guide your daughter to your light,” Chocolate prayed. “We only knew her as Buttercup, but you know all, Great Father. Whatever wrongs she may have done, remember her kind words to a pair of frightened new slaves when you must judge her. Remember her kind acts when kindness could have no reward and grant her your mercy.”

“Okay, time’s up,” Lyra snapped, cutting the session short, unwilling to admit that she had been moved by a slave’s words and not wanting to hear more for fear of its impact on her resolve. “Now pick her up and send her on her way.”

Chocolate almost complained at the blatant breach of the promise that Lyra had offered, but Hotlips grabbed the dusky youngster’s elbow.

“Don’t say anything, Chocolate. Mistress is right. Our Dominii are always right aren’t they!” she hissed. “Please don’t be silly. I couldn’t bear it if you had to leave me too.”

“Mistress is right,” Chocolate whispered unconvincingly. Hoplips released her shovel and used both arms to lift the injured girl. Buttercup let out a piteous moan as her ruptured bowels moved and burned flesh was stretched by even that gentle attempt to move her.

“Get a hold of her feet,” Lyra commanded Chocolate. “Pick her up and carry her out to the furnace. If it has to be done then let’s let this over with.”

Chocolate gave an almost inaudible sob and she shook her head wildly.

“Do as I say right now,” Lyra commanded. “Do what you are told or I’ll use your Disciplines and burn you instead.”

Chocolate raised her shovel before her eyes to hide the sight of her pained slave-sister. Lyra moved automatically into a defensive crouch but Chocolate’s action was not an attack but merely an act of defiance. The shovel clattered harmlessly to the ground even as Lyra triggered a level two pain pulse to all three Disciplines.

Chocolate screamed, her hands clutching at her tiny breasts and then sliding down her flat belly to grab at her pierced labial lips in what looked to be a grotesque parody of female masturbation. The scream ululated into a broken whimper as Lyra allowed the current to cease and Chocolate began to regain control of her violated body. A pool of urine slowly spread across the dusty floor between the quivering young slave’s knees.

“Please Mistress, Hotlips will do it now!” the bigger slave gabbled. “Please don’t hurt Chocolate anymore! Hotlips will do what you said on her own if you don’t hurt poor Chocolate anymore!”

Lyra sent a second pain pulse through Chocolate’s Disciplines and the dark-skinned little girl once more screamed piercingly and tore at her piercings with hooked fingers.

“Slaves do not bargain!” Lyra snapped. A third pulse followed and Chocolate grovelled in the pool of her own urine as her limbs gave up all effort to support her and she pitched forward onto her face, her bare feet flapping as if she were a landed fish. “Slaves obey their orders!”

Hotlips desperately attempted just that. She rose to stand with her dirty bare feet a half metre apart and tried to lift Buttercup to her feet on her own. The injured girl could not support herself at all and Hotlips’ remaining strength was unequal to the task. Both slaves slid back to leave potential executioner and victim alike sprawled on the narrow pallet. Buttercup let out a piteous groan as the deadweight of Hotlips pressed down upon her to open the rupture wound yet further.

“Oh Christos!” Lyra swore to relieve her feelings. “We have to burn her, not try to pull her apart! Get off her before her fucking guts fall out entirely.”

Lyra had watched jump-trooper recruits under her command as they had abjectly failed at every task from peeling potatoes to stabbing a foe. There was only one response if the job really needed to be done. Lieutenants might exist to give commands but sergeants were the part of the great military machine that made things happen. Chocolate had plainly disobeyed and Hotlips had failed spectacularly. It was the time of the sergeant, not the mouthing officer.

Lyra stepped forward with fluid combat grace and scooped up the shovel from where it had fallen near Chocolate’s feet. She swung it high and brought the flat work surface down with brain-jarring force onto Buttercup’s head. She tossed the blood-encrusted shovel back at the feet of the still twitching Chocolate and turned to Hotlips.

“Right you useless doxy. I’ll do your job for you and get this fucking body into the oven but you’d better follow me with your shovel. If you let her get out again then we’ll have to start all over and that will hurt her even more than if you just pin her down in there with your shovel until I can close the fire-grate. So follow me now, slave.”

“Yes Mistress,” Hotlips sobbed in sorrow for Buttercup and terror for herself. “Hotlips understands! She will do as her Mistress commands.”

Lyra scooped up the unconscious Buttercup in an efficient fireman’s lift. It was no more than a dozen paces around the coal stack and up to the boiler mouth. It was hellishly hot that close to the actual fire-bed and she briefly wondered how naked slaves could force themselves to approach it time after time. Then she reminded herself of what she had just done to Chocolate. She had seen her mental command to Chocolate’s Disciplines convert that pretty young work-slut into a screaming, mewling wreck that had flung itself to the ground and soiled itself under the influence of what had only been the middle pain setting on her Disciplines. That was the reason why. Even pain could be topped by excruciating agony. 

There was a half-conscious sobbing groan from the limp form on her shoulder and Lyra let the badly injured girl’s emaciated body roll off the shoulder to fall towards the floor, face down, head towards the boiler mouth. As the body passed hip height, Lyra converted that momentum into forward motion with all of her considerable upper body strength so that Buttercup’s falling body flew head-first through the open front of the boiler intake to land with a crunch on the red-hot coals of the fire-bed. Ash billowed up in a cloud and Lyra wiped a hot cinder off her cheek with an almost casual motion. The pain from her cheek was nothing to the sickness in her stomach. She knew that she had just doomed another human being to die in a most horrible way but what choice had she had? What choice was there ever in real life?

There was a stench of burning entrails as the partially exposed loop of Buttercup’s intestines smouldered in contact with glowing coals and skin burned and charred in the hellish heat of a fire that had burned unchecked and untrammelled for weeks. Smoking bare feet kicked wildly and Buttercup let rip a hideous, inhuman shriek of agony that was torn from her tormented throat as every nerve in her body sent messages of agony to her brain.

With tears pouring down her face and a wild scream on her lips, Hotlips stabbed her broad-headed shovel into Buttercups crotch, pushing hard against her wild attempts to scrabble backwards away from the flames. “Please die! Just Die! Stop it! Stop it! I’m sorry but I have to do it Buttercup. Don’t fight! Just die, Buttercup! Just die!” she screamed pointless and only half coherent instructions into the flaring boiler.

The screams subsided as hot air seared lungs into dysfunction, but still the burning body writhed and fought against certain death with wild thrashing movements. Lyra shoved Hotlips roughly aside with one shoulder and slapped the heavy barred fireguard into its allotted place so that only a careful rotational movement from without could dislodge it. Burning bare feet kicked hard against it without effect and the doomed woman’s head smashed against the metal grating and down onto the glowing coals in uncoordinated paroxysms of agony that appeared to last ten times the minute or so of horror. Then abruptly, Buttercup gave a final spasmodic kick and it was over. The AI reported that life signs had not yet ceased but at least the struggle was ended. Muscles no longer obeyed nerves in the blazing ruin that had once been Buttercup. Lyra staggered back from the bars that separated life from death in relief. She could not fully believe what she had just done, yet she still knew deep inside that she would do it again if that were necessary for survival. That guilt made her turn towards the sobbing slave Hotlips and deliver a mind-focussing level one jolt to the Disciplines.

“Why’d you do – “ Hotlips screamed out an objection before she managed to control herself enough to convert it. “What has Hotlips done Mistress? Please Mistress, tell her why she’s punished and she will try to correct it and do better!” 

“It’s over, so now get your worthless arse back to work or what you’ve felt so far will feel like being goosed by a fucking feather,” Lyra snapped back in an equal temper.

Hotlips rocked on her heels. Discipline level one had felt as if a powered sanding disk had been thrust into her crotch and her tits burned as if the area behind her nipples, where her Disciplines were irrevocably inserted, had been set alight. She stared blankly through the metal fire-grate at the still living ruin inside the boiler and Lyra gave her a second minimum power jolt of pain, just to get her attention.

“Yes Mistress!” Hotlips screamed her surrender through the throbbing pain from her Disciplines. “Anything! Just tell me what to do and I will do anything, but please don’t hurt me anymore Mistress!”

“Throw on more coal,” she commanded. “Leave the bars in place for now, but get some more coal in there to keep the temperature up.”

“Yes Mistress,” Hotlips shrieked as she ran to the coal heap and then back to throw a heaped shovel load of coal at the half concealed furnace mouth. Lumps of anthracite rattled off the grate that prevented the writhing body within from escaping but more passed through gaps that were set at a width that would thwart a human body but not prevent the passage of coal. Hotlips shovelled furiously until Buttercup’s body was nearly buried. It was all that she could do now. Buttercup was either dead or dying. If the former then nothing more could harm her. If she still lived then it was a kindness to keep up the temperature so that she could pass more quickly. 

Lyra watched the big-breasted nude as she worked as if demented. Hotlips was doing the right thing and doing it well. It was a pity that it appeared that the overseer’s role was all stick and no carrot. In less horrible slaveries, merits could be awarded and even points towards manumission, but here there was only pain or no pain. She pinged the AI for a time check. She had arrived early and the time hack said that she had been the official overseer for less than half an hour.

Hotlips was still working alone. The little dusky slave Chocolate still lay in a pool of her own piss that she had sprayed forth in the agony caused by level two Discipline. So what should be done with her? Had Chocolate paid a sufficient price or must more pain follow? The wretched girl had been set a task and had failed to obey that command but she had also writhed in the exquisite pain that only Disciplines could deliver. Was that enough?

“It’s enough,” Lyra spoke out loud but the words were intended only for herself. Some of her fellow overseers might think her weak, but Chocolate still had a splendid little arse and really kissable lips. She would taste them one day, so it would be a shame to mar her further. She would call it quits. So now she must go and drag Chocolate back onto her feet and get her back to work. Then, as soon as Buttercup was finally dead there would be the paperwork of a requisition for her replacement. She also must at least briefly check out all the other work-sluts at her additional nine boilers in case there was any sign of slacking at any of those stations. An overseer’s work was never done.

*

End of part one 

*

next --- part 2  – A proud and spoiled Eyrie Princess falls from favour and is sentenced to be Boiler Slut 4B, Buttercup’s replacement.