CHAPTER 1

       It was 8 o’clock in the evening on a Tuesday in late June when Victoria Bidarte was kidnapped. It had been dark, damp, overcast and unusually warm, and every worker on the roofing site was sweating in the 90-degree heat. The men were sullen, and tempers were high. Those who worked on the ground envied the workers who perched on the roof, hammering and stapling the sticky shingles into place, for their access to what little breeze there was.

       Victoria was of course one of those on the roof. One of only two women on the construction site, her small size and agility made her invaluable as a worker on the highest portions of the roof. As a farmer’s daughter, she didn’t mind heavy labour, but on this hot day she certainly would have preferred to be in the air-conditioned university lab across town, doing her winter job as a sample analyst for the biology department. Unfortunately, the university lab, as a teaching lab, closed during the summer. Some of the lab assistants were lucky enough to land part-time jobs at the hospital, but it was generally all volunteer work, and anyhow, Victoria didn’t want to be around premeds if she could help it.

       So she had taken the roofing job, just as she had the past year. Everybody at the company knew her, so they were perfectly willing to re-hire her for the summer. In fact, she was legendary among the employees of Gerhardt Roofers, Inc. Victoria, unlike the older, rougher and generally much larger woman roofers, stood only 5 feet 3 and weighed only 111 pounds. However, she was far from weak. Her lithe frame was solid muscle, without a spare ounce of fat anywhere on her petite body, apart from her 32C-cup breasts. Her family was mostly of French-Canadian origin, but her Basque grandmother had contributed the genes for Victoria’s black-haired, olive-skinned looks.

       Although she was good-looking, Victoria had had only two boyfriends in her twenty-two years. She had never been a friendly or personable girl, preferring to roam the fields around her home collecting insect specimens when she was not needed for farm work, or to sit on the weathered porch in front of her father’s white-shingled farmhouse and sketch pictures of various epic battles and daring romances from science-fiction books or manga. Her favourites were the manga Berserk, the Star Wars Jedi Legacy series, and later, the manga Blood+ and the Star Trek manga adaptation. Most of these she had borrowed, then inherited from her friend Jolene Lockwood, who had run away from home when she was sixteen and was never heard from again.

       Victoria had always been a bit of an oddball, but she made up for it with her intelligence, professionalism and resourcefulness. Always a rationalist and an atheist from the age of eight, she tended to irritate the religious folk with her frank statements to the effect that she thought the supernatural silly, but no-one really hated her, although they did not exactly like her either. This neutrality of feeling extended to her family. Living in Montreal, more than a hundred and fifty miles from her hometown, she rarely saw them except on Christmas and Easter. They were good to her, and obviously loved her in their way, but her parents, especially her father, were not the warm-and-fuzzy sort, a trait which they had passed on to their son and particularly their daughter.

       Her boyfriends, however, were decided disappointments. The first, a Korean boy named Adam Li, was an intense but troubled high school romance. A brooding, Emo-ish boy, he had fascinated the lonely Victoria. For three years, she had done everything in her power to win his love, even dressing in a feminine version of his clothes and carrying a notebook with her wherever she went. Finally, in their senior year, he had returned her affections by asking her to the prom. On prom night, the two had bundled into his decrepit 1993 Honda Civic, ditched the party, and driven into town to catch the last, bargain-rate run of I am Legend, then high-tailed it down the deserted street at 120 k’s an hour with the windows down, drinking their soda and shouting nasty comments about the “popular” crowd at the top of their lungs. They finally ended up at the local make-out spot, where Victoria had reluctantly lost her oral virginity to Adam’s pubescent rod, swallowing his seed with a wince as he pulled her short hair.

       Unfortunately, this relationship, seemingly made in heaven, did not last. Adam revealed himself to be extremely jealous, following her around and searching through her things for clues that she might be attracted to another boy. He never hit her, but he shouted at her terribly and would break her possessions and threaten to kill himself if he had any suspicion that she had thoughts of other boys. He had no interest in her vagina, but preferred short, rough sessions of fellatio, especially when he was jealous. The breaking point had come when Adam had found a drawing of a shirtless Keanu Reeves circa the Matrix trilogy in her sketchbook. He had lost it completely, and had actually pulled a knife on her, threatening to kill first her, then himself. The tearful, frightened Victoria had thrown a textbook at him in self-defence and run. They never saw each other again, and the last Victoria had heard he had joined the army.

       Louis was a different story entirely. She had met the gangly, gentle, blond-haired lad at a meeting of the college anime-fanciers club, and they had taken to each other immediately, until she had learned that by dating Louis, she was dating his mother as well. Louis’s mother controlled every aspect of his life, even down to the clothes he wore, and was both a strict disciplinarian and a religious fanatic. This had decidedly warped Louis’s mind, and indeed the boy was her brief but terrifying introduction to bondage.

       Yes, Louis was obsessed with hard-core femdom, as well as being a foot- and mother-fetishist. He could only sustain an erection after (entirely coerced) verbal and physical abuse, anal fingering, breast-worship and foot-worship from Victoria. She was revolted, of course, but she would do anything to please her man, and so she had reluctantly participated in Louis’s perverted fantasies. They had had vaginal intercourse several times, but it was only due to the fact that Victoria was fingering his anus and verbally abusing him as he penetrated her. Louis’s favourite activities had been being tied and blindfolded with Victoria’s dirty socks as she ground her almost always dry crotch into his face, sucking on her sweaty toes while calling her “Mummy”, or suckling wetly at her breasts, again addressing her as his mother in a sickening, childish voice.

       The relationship had ended when his religious mother had dropped over for a “surprise clothes inspection” during one of their face-sitting sessions. Under orders from his mother, Louis had tearfully dumped her on the spot, still maintaining a rather disturbing erection.

       And so Victoria was alone. She didn’t mind it terribly. Obviously, she had little sexual satisfaction, but a dildo constructed out of a marking pen, several layers of felt, and a layer of duct tape was enough to keep any annoying needs at bay. Lonely, but not disablingly so, she led her cold, quiet, reserved life in relative peace. Until that Tuesday.

       Victoria was usually the last to leave the site. She knew this was a dangerous thing to do, but she had always carried a switchblade and felt herself completely prepared to fend off a rapist. It was the quiet, the dark beauty of the summer nights that drew her; the desolation of the construction site and the scent of warm tar, oil, cut wood and freshly turned dirt. She would often sit on the roof of the a new house, sipping on a thermos full of cold tea and admiring the semi-apocalyptic scenery. She could almost imagine herself in a world with no other humans, wandering the post-industrial wastes and watching the chaos spring to life with thin, warped plants as the years went on.

       The key word, however, was “rapist”. Most Earth rapists are outwardly ordinary men with a sickness that drives them to brutalise women, but do not devote their whole life to the career of abduction and ravishment. They do not necessarily train at the gym or in martial arts in order to overpower women, may or may not carry a weapon, and do not always meticulously plan their attacks. In other words, they are not professionals. A space slaver, however, is a different matter entirely. Experienced, trained and suffered to live by his Kurii employers, he abducts pretty young women with the cunning and ease of a hunting lion, but is arguably not so smart or civilised as a cat.

       Victoria didn’t even know what hit her. She heard what sounded like a small air rifle being fired, then there was a sting in her neck, a sensation of coldness, and she fell unconscious, splayed out on the warm tar roof.    

                

CHAPTER 2

       She woke in a small, cramped, urine-smelling cage among what looked like a dozen or so other naked, attractive young women between approximately eighteen and twenty-eight years of age and of an even mix of races. Each girl had her own cage, but the cage itself was only about five-by-five-by-five feet in dimensions, which meant that few of the girls could come to a full standing position. Her arms were chained behind her back and her feet chained approximately a foot apart, which would have made her incapable of anything faster than a slow shuffle had she been able to stand or walk in the first place. Her neck was sore as though she had pulled a muscle, but she did not feel drugged. She looked down at herself with a stiff neck and noticed that the cold air of the ship (for surely that was what it was) had made her puffy, light-coloured nipples rise to full erection. What was this? Obviously she had been abducted for forced prostitution abroad, like the urban legends, but surely that couldn’t happen here, on a construction site in the Montreal suburbs. Didn’t things like that only happen to runaways and drug addicts in urban centres?

       Part of her wanted to follow her instincts and scream, try to escape, even give her life to save her dignity, but her rational side appealed against such desperate measures. No, it was more logical to wait, to plan, to speak with the girls in adjacent cages to find out first of all where the HELL they were!

       She scrambled over to the left side of her cage, where a tall, voluptuous ginger girl with extremely large breasts was pressing her face against the bars. “Where are we?” she demanded without preamble. After all, this was not a situation that required polite introductions.

       “I have no goddamn idea,” said the girl in a smoker’s rasp. “Got here the same way you did, didn’t I?”

       Victoria nodded. “Fair point. Sorry to be so rude.”

       “No, that’s okay. I was just as panicked as you when I got here.”

       “When you got here,” said Victoria with a frown, “How long have you been here?”

       “Hour or two, maybe. You want more info you should talk to Danika over on your right. She’s been here for like, twelve hours or something.” The ginger girl paused briefly, her eyes on Victoria’s black-haired crotch. “By the way, did you know you’re bleeding?”

       Victoria froze and looked down. “That can’t be! I’m at least two weeks from my period!” Then she felt the sting in her vagina and labia that had heretofore been suppressed by adrenaline. “Oh, god,” she said in a dull, quiet voice. “I’ve been raped, haven’t I?”

       The other girl nodded with a look of pity on her face. “Looks like. And pretty hard, too, unless you’re a virgin.”

       Victoria shook her head, trying to hold back tears. “No, but I haven’t had sex in two years. That’s bound to have tightened me up.”

       “Look,” said the redhead in a compassionate voice. “If there’s anything I can do, let me know. I’m like, a couple feet away from you, after all. My name’s Carla, by the way,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

       Victoria stuck her hand through the bars. “Thanks. I’m Victoria, but you can call me Tori if you like.

       “Good to meet you, Tori,” said Carla, shaking her hand more firmly than one would in an ordinary situation, almost as though she were offering comfort. “I don’t know if Danika knows anything, but I guess you could try her and see if she knows where the fuck we are.”

       Tori nodded. “I’ll do that.” She crawled over to the bars and addressed the tall, thin black girl with a dreadlocked ponytail who sat pressed against the bars, watching Tori and Carla’s conversation. “Hey, d’you-”

       Her statement was interrupted by a loud, gruff voice speaking in a foreign accent that did not seem to belong to any defined ethnicity. “No talking, sluts, or you’ll feel my lash on your pretty paps!” Danika shrank against the far wall of her cage, a terrified look on her face. Tori could now see dark-red welts on her small, coffee-coloured breasts. Tori took her implicit advice and also adopted a submissive position. There was no good in getting injured in such a dirty environment, where her wounds would be likely to become infected.

       She heard the tramp of heavy boots approaching this line of cages and snuck a look through the bars to see a pair of tremendous feet clad in dirty, crudely sewn black leather boots with rudimentary hobnails on the metal soles. There was not a trace of either plastic or rubber in them, and they looked as though they had come from five hundred years in the past. The pillar-like legs above them were just as anachronistically encased in heavy, navy-blue hemp cloth with riveted black leather chaps and, far above her crouched postition, almost at the level of the top of the cage, bulged an enormous codpiece of black leather. She could not help but wince at the sight of that codpiece. If that was what had raped her, there was no wonder that she had bled! When erect, that monster must be at least eight inches long!

       The legs flexed at the waist and a dirty, bulbous-nosed, blond-bearded face loomed over her cage, its gap-toothed mouth opened in a brownish grin and its small blue-grey eyes crinkled with laughter. “I see you are awake, little slut. I must say I enjoyed your nice little heat! Tight as a glana, but already opened, so I got to enjoy your sweetness on my rod.” Victoria did not know the words “heat” and “glana”, but she could make a good guess. She prudently lowered her head and curled up so that her arms and legs covered her breasts, and at least some of her folds. The hideous brute continued his discussion.

       “I like my sluts small. They have the tightest quims and no blubber to make ‘em slothful or height to make ‘em uppity. A little slave knows where she stands. She knows that old Vorkarm could break her tiny neck in an ihn if he pleases. But it’s nice when they have big paps, too. Gives me something to hold on to while I use ‘em, like reins on a tharlarion. A slut won’t fight when I’ve got hold of her paps. Well, enough chit-chat. It’s feeding time, and I won’t have my catch dying on me like that idiot Golham. The clod lost four of his twelve on the last voyage; it’s small wonder the Kurii killed him.”

       A key turned in the lock on the door of her cage, and she shrank as far away from the entrance as she could. It was remarkable how quickly violence could change a tough, educated 21st-century woman into a cringing beast. She rationalised it of course. A beating or another rape could open her up to infection and a horrible death. Yes, that was logical, wasn’t it? Or was it cowardly?

       Vorkarm laughed at her obvious fear. “Never fear, slave! I’m only feeding your pretty face. I fed the others while you were down, so now it’s your turn. Oh, I’d stuff your heat again if I could, but duty before pleasure! Now eat your slave-gruel and hold your tongue like the miserable slut you are.” He gave her one last evil grin and said quietly, “By the by, your quim was juiced when I pounded it!”

       Victoria fought back tears of shame. Was he telling the truth? Could her long spate of sexual deprivation have made her body betray her while she was unconscious, making her wet against her will for any kind of penetration, consensual or not? But she had bled, she could not have been very aroused! Yet perhaps it was not unreadiness that had made her bleed, but merely the size of his tool and the force with which he had used it. After all, she had never had rod nor dildo larger than six inches.

       She clenched her teeth in rage and shame, but controlled herself and turned to the metal bowl of greyish, lumpy gruel. It certainly looked unappetising, but she hadn’t eaten since noon, and it must be nearing nine or ten o’clock in the evening. She tried to bring her chained hands in front of her by stepping over them like an escape-artist so that she could eat with her hands, but she had no room to manoeuvre and her hands were chained so tightly that even her flexibility could not shift their position. It looked as though she had no choice but to eat with her face in the bowl like an animal.

       Outwardly resigned, but inwardly raging against her captors, her situation and herself, she placed her face near the bowl and began to lap and suck up the gruel as delicately as she could. It tasted like cold, overcooked oatmeal with a hint of the metallic medicinal flavour found in vitamin supplements, with a strong overtone of fish. She did not gag, she had too much self-control for that, but the experience was decidedly unpleasant. When she had licked up as much as she could, she wiped her mouth on her arm and sat back against the far wall of the cage, lost in brooding thought.