His hands moved instinctively to her breasts as she kissed him, then she brought the
stim tube to her lips, drew the smoke into her mouth. She kissed him again, blowing the
smoke into his. Unlike her, he drew it in deep, grunting in satisfaction as it set his
lungs tingling.
"Are you feeling nice, sweetie?" she cooed, bringing the tube to his lips.
"Yeahhhhhh," he sighed softly.
She let her hands massage his chest.
"Captain?"
He grunted.
"The next time we're near Epsilon Prime, do you think maybe I could go down with
you?"
His eyes didn't open but his lips curled up into a smile.
"You don't get enough on Panther?" he chuckled.
"Just to see new stuff, Captain," she said idly.
"Epsilon isn't for you, baby," he muttered, dull eyed. "It's an evil place full of
evil bastards and cheap whores."
"Then we'd fit right in," she said brightly.
He chuckled softly, kneading her breasts.
"Think you're gonna make your fortune at the Style racks, baby?"
"May-be," She drew the word out.
"And what would you do with it?"
"I dunno, what's anyone do with money?"
"You ain't anyone. Epsilon ain't for you."
"I'd be good," she promised poutily.
"Too much trouble," he said in a grunt. "Ain't many women out this far, and damn
few look like you. I take you down there... “His eyes moved up and down her body "I'd have
every two-bit twerp with an ache in his pants wanting the loan of you, half of them
willing to gut me to take you away."
He drew in a deep breath from the stim tube and laid his head back with a groan.
"I can, you know, dress down," she said.
He smiled again, staring up at the ceiling. "You can't hide what you've got, baby,
not for long. An old toothless hag would be enough to cause murder down there." He drew
his head forward, eyes blinking as he inspected her elfin face. He blew out a deep breath
and chuckled. "They got a look at this soft warm white flesh and all hell'd break loose."
"They must have some women here," she said in irritation.
"This isn't the Argon sector, Cori, where Hudson Bay whipped along plush routes
between Cluster planets. There ain't nothing here but agricultural and mining combines.
Men work twelve hours a day, seven days a week for the combines. It's pure muscle work.
There's no room for women, and sure as hell no room for kids. Fact is, if this was two
years ago when Panther needed a new engine and we had damn all in credits I'd bring you
and the whores down, rent a room, and put you on your backs for all comers for whatever
they'd pay. Five minutes a pop. We'd have them lined up for miles."
She stiffened at his words, and drew back.
"Make enough for a new engine in a few days," he said, chuckling weakly and laying
his head back against the seat again.
He didn't notice the ice in her eyes as he sucked contentedly from the stim tube.
Panther had begun life as a destroyer. She had six torpedo tubes in her bow and an
engine which could once outrace almost anything in space. The six tubes in her stern had
been removed, along with all the equipment and crew which supported them, to make room for
more cargo holds. Since her last naval crew had mutinied she had raided shipping in the
frontier sectors of the slowly expanding Terran Empire.
To galactic east was a gaggle of mostly single system governments, everything from
hereditary kingdoms to theocracies to military dictatorships. All of them were heavily
armed, but none of them showed much concern with happenings beyond their borders, and
there were a lot of empty systems to traverse between one and another. Panther had begun
taking advantage of that in the last year, and was doing much better because of it. The
torpedoes she was now carrying were a generation ahead of the ones she'd had only a year
before. True, they were still simple nukes, not gravitonics, but their guidance and EMC
systems were impressive for a frontier raider. The engines had recently been overhauled
and the control systems steadied, and she now had something which approached a backup
environmental system, an unheard of luxury only a few years earlier.
She was designed for a crew of one hundred and twenty nine. She carried sixty two,
some of them of uncertain status, like Cori, and twenty-one coolies, men brought aboard
from low-tech worlds, mostly willingly, to do the scut work of maintenance. She also had a
few “whores”, pretty young women taken off ships Panther had pirated. Few of them lasted
long. Some killed themselves, some were killed by angry, drunken crewmen, and others were
offloaded somewhere, sold to other pirates or combine managers. The only things Cori ever
did aboard Panther which she remembered with shame were the episodes with those captives,
when she was forced to act the part of the uncaring, cold-hearted crew-member and laugh at
their abuse.
Never show weakness, never show fear. And if you had a heart make sure it was
walled in ice where no one could see it.
She passed one of the coolies in his red jumpsuit, on his knees working on an air
conduit. He looked up at her hungrily but did not move or speak. If he annoyed her she
could put a gravity knife through him and the other crewmen would just laugh. She was crew
now, after all, even if she weren't entirely trusted by some of the officers. And she was
as close to expert with a gravity knife as the ship had, courtesy of Tal McGregor, a
missile tech who had exchanged lessons for access to her body.
Grover was right. She had no need of money. What she wanted she traded her body
for. She had been stupid to even suggest otherwise. She would only need money if she were
planning to leave Panther and the last thing she wanted was for Grover to think she was
even thinking along those lines. She had spent years convincing him she had no interest in
leaving, painting a portrait of a girl who had been abused by a violent father, and had no
other relatives in a cold, uncaring universe to turn to. He believed her, or seemed to,
but had yet to allow her to leave the ship, even with him to watch her.
Eventually he would relent, or his successor would. Eventually she would find a way
to get off this tub and blow it up behind her. There were escape pods, and ways to play
with the drive that would -- but that was a last resort, one of those plans sliding around
the back of her mind waiting the right set of circumstances.
She entered her quarters, a small steel box barely longer than her. She was the
only non officer to have her own quarters, a sign of status, and, of course, an
acknowledgement that she'd get no sleep in with any other crew members.
Not that she slept there. She hadn't occupied her bunk in weeks. She slept with one
or another of the officers each night, tolerating their not always unpleasant grunting and
fondling and humping in exchange for placating whatever ill-feelings they might have about
her.
Of the six officers, two were likeable, and, under other circumstances, might have
turned out to be reasonably good men. Two were cyphers, speaking little, showing little
emotion, doing their jobs and having sex with her with equal lack of emotion. And then
there was Sub-lieutenant Abrams and Lieutenant Parnel, sly, sleazy, cowardly, vicious,
vindictive weasels, the both of them. She disliked them more than anyone else on Panther,
for their cruelty was unpredictable, and they had ambition. She spent more effort playing
up to them than she did to the other four, and did her best to appear both stupid and
harmless around them.
And, of course, there was Lieutenant Wayne. Wayne was the most dangerous man on the
ship. He had killed two officers and three crew for a variety of reasons, and no one dared
cross him. He had been the worst of them during her first months aboard Panther. Most of
the crew were simple and crude. Wayne was neither. Wayne had not been nearly as interested
in her body as he had been in her mind. She had watched him with other female captives
over the years, and had found his attitude unchanging. He toyed with them and hurt them,
not so much their bodies as their minds. He was like a sadistic child plucking the wings
off butterflies. He humiliated, degraded and broke them - and then lost interest.
He had lost interest in her when she had stopped showing fear or embarrassment or
even care at the things he did to her. When she responded with dull-eyed obedience and
nothing more. He was not one of the officers she slept with now, except on rare occasions
when he was feeling up to having another try at degrading her, shocking her, or sticking
her out. She was grateful for that. It took a lot to hide her hatred of him when he got
close, and putting up with his sexual games on a regular basis was likely to push her
closer to doing something desperate.
She did not like to think about what he would do if he took over from Grover. It
was easily possible he had been forced to keep his sport toned down so as to not rob the
others of their own pleasure. Freed of such considerations he might put the Marquis de
Sade to shame, and she was the most likely subject for him to start in on.
But desperation had gotten her nowhere in her early years. Cold-blooded planning
was her only hope, and making use of anything - including her body - which might help her
bring her plans to fruition. Her long term plans were unchanged - getting off Panther and
seeing every man aboard die in pain and despair. Her short term plan was, at the moment,
stopping Wayne from getting the captaincy.
She unlocked her clothes cupboard and examined the contents briefly. Most were left
behind by previous female captives, picked up in shopping expeditions by whatever man she
could encourage to buy things for her, or altered from standard crew gear. For the most
part it was all too tight, low cut, or revealing for her liking, but there was little she
could do about that.
The vest, for example, was too tight, too short, and too open at the sides and
middle. Her pants were too tight, too low slung and too thin. She tried to dress like a
woman who was just incidentally revealing bits and pieces of herself. As far as the crew
were concerned she loved sex, and loved showing herself off.
Sex and her attractiveness were weapons for her, as well as her protection.
Besides, Grover was right. Dressing up in a baggy jumpsuit would not have lowered
the interest of the male crew in getting their hands on her. It would not have freed her
of the need to placate the officers who wanted her, or of playing up to Grover.
And it would make it harder for her to use her assets in the most efficient manner
possible.
She stripped and stepped into the sonic shower, washing off the smell of Grover and
considering her options. Normally a First Officer had little chance of winning an election
if it were even close to fair. The First Officer was in charge of discipline, and by the
time the captaincy came up there were too many crewmen who remembered being put in the
shock box or on slag duty by Jimmy the One.
But Wayne was clever. He had had a lot to do with Panther's new state of wealth,
and had made sure word of that got down to the crew. Any time now, once her refitting was
finally complete Panther would be heading for greener pastures, where she could take out
the fast, modern freighters who raced between the Cluster worlds. Seizing just one of
those and then selling her would bring every man aboard Panther a fortune, enough to stay
drunk or zoned for a year.
There were more than a few crew looking forward to him taking over, and she had to
do her best to dissuade them.
The black pants were tight and clingy, the leather like material turned sheer just
below her groin, and all the way up her hips... Atop them she wore a thin halter which
pulled her breasts together from the sides and pushed them up from beneath - offering them
up for inspection in the deep cleavage. She dangled her gravity knife prominently from the
front of her belt and headed up the corridor, then down the lift to the lower sections of
the ship, where the cargo bays and docking ports were located.
And where the slave girls were kept. She reminded herself of that as a hatch opened
up the corridor and she briefly heard a miserable cry of pain before the hatch closed once
again. She steeled herself to ignore it even as she approached the hatch and passed it on
her way to the cargo office.
The hatch opened again and she stiffened as a voice called out to her.
She turned, bracing her face into casualness. It was Sub-Lieutenant Abrams, and he
was half scazzed as he leaned against the open hatch. “C’mere, Billings,” he drawled,
gesturing bonelessly.
She strode back, fighting to keep her distaste from her face. Abrams was a geek,
and a mean one who hated women. Probably been turned down by every woman who ever came
near who had a choice, she thought sourly.
“Wanna see what I built?” he asked with a leer.
He didn’t wait for her to answer, but took her wrist and yanked her into the
compartment after him. There were several more men there, including Sub-Lieutenant Parnel,
another sleaze, and a couple of senior techs. They were slouched against the walls,
laughing at what occupied the centre of the room. Cori looked, felt startled, then
shocked, but forced her face to look amused.
One of the slave girls was there. She wasn’t surprised by that. She was surprised
at the depths of depravity she was witnessing, though. It had taken Abrams considerable
time and effort to bring a perverted idea like this to reality.
There was a wide post in the centre of the room, and a number of strong metal arms
protruded from it in various directions. The girl, a tiny, big breasted blondes who was
barely nineteen, Cori knew, was bent, belly down over the post. Clamps on the ends of the
metal arms held her ankles down and well apart. Each of her toes was encased in a narrow
metal ring which spread them apart and, she guessed, pulled them painfully outward.
Her arms were pulled straight down and shackled in place. Her hair was tied with
wire into a thick braid and pulled straight up, holding her head horizontal. There were
metal bands around the base of the girl’s heavy breasts, squeezing them down like fat, red
balloons, Thinner, smaller bands circled her fat nipples, squeezing them out like dark red
raspberries.
Her jaw was lined with metal clamps jammed in beneath her teeth on either side of
her mouth. In her bent over position her bottom and sex were lewdly visible and
vulnerable, and a half dozen powered arms rose behind her, each containing a menacing
looking implement.
Even as Cori watched one of them, under the guidance of a control wand Parnel was
holding, rose and turned in. On its end was a fat, thick, ringed and studded metal - Cori
fought off terms like “cock” or “dildo” and decided to call it a torture device instead.
It certainly wasn’t designed to give sexual pleasure.
As she watched, the fat metal thing thrust itself against the girl’s sex opening
and with machinelike strength pushed unhesitantly through into her body. She screamed in
pain as her sex lips were roughly stretched wide, as the fat ringed metal cock drove up
through her belly with brusque efficiency, filling her utterly.
“Please! Please!” she sobbed, her voice filled with pain, her words distorted by
the metal clamps attached to her jaws. “I’ll do anything you want! I’ll be good!”
The men laughed, and Cori forced herself to give a hollow laugh as well. The thing
drove deep, at least a foot into her slim young body, then began to pump in and out. At
the same time another of the arms moved, this one holding a studded metal cock which
thrust deep into the girl’s anus. Another scream and sob of despair erupted from the girl
as it buried itself in her rectum, then began to twist and turn and pump in and out.
Two more metal arms rose beneath her. At the end of each was a dozen thin metal
fingers each ending in a rubber suction cup. They closed around her taut, bloated breasts
and began to knead them while a narrow tube pressed in around her nipples and began to
such rhythmically.
The cock thing in the girl’s anus pulled out, the arm hissing as it drew the thing
up and back. A second arm thrust an even fatter metal cock down into her rectum, and Cori
winced internally as she saw the strain on the girl’s anal opening.
“Bet you’d like to try my little toy out, eh, Billings?” Abrams sneered.
“But you do such a good job, Mr. Abrams,” she said. “Why would I need a machine?”
There were sneers from the others, the techs who were jealous they couldn’t touch
her, but Abrams merely sniffed, having no real reply.
The fat cock in the girl’s belly were pumping faster, tearing up her insides. She’d
be heavily bruised or worse after this.
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