Chapter One.North Planet, Europa, Rain-Region.
The air surrounding the earthen-floored Town-Square that was the centre of the financial quarter, smelled a musty-brown, souring the woman’s nostrils; the almost constant rain made the stench even more acidic. Breathing chemical odour, that was almost the smell-colour of parchment before its bleaching, was fast becoming the norm as muck tinged both the air and the wet ground producing mud steps under the feet of Skiritus, mirroring her opinion of the mucky working of the women who practiced in the two-storey credit buildings around the square, controlling life-credits, controlling people.
The face of Skiritus didn’t move but her eyes moved upwards, hating the workers in the lit offices above her, hating the constant rain.
My bloody credits but they always make you feel as if they’re allowing you something, as if your credits are theirs to give you, but only if they deign to be so kind. Maybe that’s why I prefer inanimate credit machines. Last time I faced the tellers inside they called me Ski - write - us which sounds like a disease, but I'm used to explaining that Skiritus rhymes with Sirius the star, my mother knowing I would be the brightest in any constellation. Being a witch, vampire, succubus and satis I was not likely to be the shy, withdrawn type.
Wild and manic for most humans but normal for Skiritus, the concentrated thoughts of others near her that swam through her brain replicated the fast pulses through a credit slot.
She pushed long, black hair behind one ear with one hand while her card was finger-slid into the bank-wall slot with the other. Putrid green pulses in seven shades, so impossible to replicate in colour or intensity, shot through the scatter-patterned card-gaps. Two index fingers were pressed onto the crystal pad when voice-instructed, sucking energy from her or so it seemed, in exchange for what was rightly hers. It was more dangerous than face to face credit gain, but she knew there was no evil around her and the credits were safe. She looked about her anyway, suspicious of any movement, the twisting of her body allowed the rain on her short-hoody to drip onto bare midriff flesh, Skiritus’s nod to current fashion.
Evil thought within eighty strides, close enough for vampire thought-reading, long-distance witch-reading not required. The danger is not closing in so it’s safe enough for me to continue. A distance of eighty strides is a luxury these days and the detected male is merely fantasising about his living in a time before the Gender Wars. Those two women pretending they don't know each other, no threat to me, just swapping male-slaves for the night, against kirk rules but done for variety and cheaper than a brothel. What do I care? Yet again, the feeling that I do not belong here but there is no alternative. Where is my real world? Is it in the past? At somewhere around a cent-add-fifty sun-laps, maybe it's my time to wither and die because I'm tired of moving on every time someone comments on how young I still look after years of them knowing me.
Replenished credit wise, and hopefully able to survive through the future actions of eating, drinking and visiting her friend's special house, Skiritus pocketed the credits in tight leather trousers and headed towards the market quarter for food-purchase and maybe some small-beer drinking prior to that brothel visit, but she was alive to the fact that a narrow corridor separated her from her destinations and would have to be mind-scanned before entry.
There’s always an obstacle between present reality and progress, between credit boost and food necessity. At least the area is quiet tonight and evil is distant for once. Ah, mid-moon-phase, many are at Kirk praying to their gods, but not me and my soul that’s destined for hell fire after all I've been through.
Food purchase, enough I think for at least one moon, paid delivery to my home for my men to cook. Then small-beer to get my happy head on and my kidneys washed through and then home; maybe passing my favourite brothel to see if I can buy an experienced muscleman to make me feel good for an hour. Can't be arsed to find a pretty face but it's always nice to look down on a good body while screwing it. If only I was rich enough to black-market buy the brothel drugs allowed by the authorities, those drugs that produce a permanent erection. It would mean I could stay at home for my entertainment. Maybe I can dry off my short jacket on a rad while I dry off my exposed midriff on some male muscle.
She moved the black hair, her symbol of power over bald males, back down to her cheek, the face it then framed had brown, sometimes a darker-brown, eyes able to penetrate the minds of those around her, searching out evil and potential harm. Long ago, too long for anyone around her to have experienced, Skiritus had fought in the Gender Wars. Men being obviously unavailable to her at that time, she had an affair with a ginger-haired beauty called Larna. Larna had told Skiritus, during a deep snogging session, that her eye colour ranged from a light ginger-bread, almost opaque and full of mystery, through the shade of a tan-leather book cover, to wood-mahogany, depending on the light. Skiritus remembered telling Larna her eye colour changed with her mood and proceeded to eat the poor green-eyed girl until she collapsed into sleep, unable to take any more, unable to return the compliment. Larna's sleeping words as she drifted off were, “I'll have to watch out for wood-mahogany and brace myself.”
Maybe I'm a bit depressed and yearning for the past to amuse me. Fashion kept me slim prior to the Gender Wars, attractive enough to please Larna at least. Back then action and fighting kept me thin but now I’m middle-aged at cent-add-fifty and my body has filled out to what was once kindly called voluptuous. Lack of exercise, too much small-beer and good food all add to the bulk, so screwing is my only calorie burner because brothel-men cannot choose the shape of a woman that pays for them. That's my brothel visiting excuse anyway.
World War Four had seen the removal of many bodies from the planet but Skiritus had come through unscathed, physically anyway. Pandemia-Three was easier for her to get through as her ability to see the tiny, orange, pandemia-particles in other's breaths had seen her avoid any serious risk of entering cough-clouding. With all these people about now though, at least six in the square, it was hard to imagine what the world was like before billions left it. But then, more of the globe was occupied back then, was able to be occupied, was capable of providing food before hole-mend and globe-boil.
Having lived longer than all those around her, Skiritus often had a compulsion to talk to others about the good old days, pre-Gender War, between World War Three and Four, in the time of her mother and father’s prime, when the men worked, provided a woman with a house and children and everyone seemed happy. Yes, women had won the brutal gender-war, but at what cost? Her mother had an ancient and unfathomable expression that told of women cutting off their noses to spite their faces, but Skiritus's generation had a filthier and more anatomically accurate version.
She hid my father and visited her own mother’s remote cottage when she needed him. Her expression to me as a child was that she had to pay a visit to cure clit-itch and womb wobble. No wonder I grew up feeling strange compared with others.
All this thought gave Skiritus the impulse to move towards the area of tavernas and bars. A warm feeling between her legs would be stoked with small beer and the walk, the long walk, towards her friend's brothel would see her rampant by the time she got there. Memories flooded back. Were those memories a punishment for her thoughts or was it a matter of hanging on to hope?
My auntie Monique, full-vampire unlike me, where is she now? Still riding her Harley searching for oil-fuel? Still alive and converting vampires behind gateways? Are there any gateways left? Mam told me before she died that she herself was married to a human that she didn't ever bite, a man called Peter who cheated on her and then left her. Donna, a turned vampire, left the area and left her husband Siritus, the full-vampire who took on breeding duties with Skye, my mother. Look what they produced. A lonely woman who has to move town as soon as someone notices I've not aged in well over cent-add-fifty sun-laps and have stayed looking twenty-five. A mental casualty of the gender-war and a casualty of a general hatred of vampires. No wonder I'm deviant and a non-Kirk goer. Why I took on vampire aging but not the need to bite with no lust for blood nobody knows, unless it passed from my non-biting mother. They did learn though, when I was very young, that my mother's other powers were condensed within me and no longer called witch, vampire, succubus and satis but referred to as Skiritus's weird power. Easier to say, harder to handle.
I did go to kirk back then with friends, to try to be able to class myself as normal, but the last time I went, listening to that woman’s sermon, it seemed to be directed at me alone. Spoken to me rather than be a warning to all against deviancy. If it’s in your head you’re halfway there I say.
The irony of females being victorious in war but feeling defeated was not lost on Skiritus. The ultimate female weapon, a chemical dreamed up by superior, female scientists, had the power to destroy the tissue of men's sperm-producing glands, also increasing the size of their prostate glands and most importantly hindering blood rush to that area, destroying their libido and reducing testosterone to make hair fall out. A powerful weapon for a woman to hold over them. The male stubbornness, pride and inability to imagine women ruling them was their ultimate blunder, inviting their own destruction by not surrendering to the threat of the chemical's use. They just couldn’t admit that a woman’s brain power was clever enough to invent such a weapon. They saw it as a bluff, a made-up threat.
After receiving the chemicals in wide-ranging clouds, men's chief purpose for fighting was reduced, aggression left them, a need for power left most of them, and they could no longer be bothered to fight street by street. They could no longer use rape, or the threat of it as a war tactic and quite a few changed sex and ultimately changed sides. All of that alone did not win the war for women, but did allow for a more level playing field. The fact that the chemical used was called Hardon was meant to be a joke that backfired of course. Mortars of chemical would be fired to shouts of “Have you got a hard-on? Try this to cure it."
Women, victorious and now in charge of men, subjugated their captives to be slaves, but still retained the need to birth, and still hankered to breed and produce offspring into a world depleted of humans, especially depleted of men; but they were surrounded by almost sterile men with a constant and sudden need to pee all the time. Some talked of the complete demise of humankind, others talked of a rebalance of Earth's numbers.
My own men back at my dwelling, the four allocated to me because I'm apparently an egg producer, have about ten live sperm between them and just as many brain cells. My trips to my local brothel are not only for pleasure. Accidentally getting pregnant and earning a credit boost would be phenomenal. Letting that new-born child filter into authority care, knowing the powers it would inherit from me could be confusing for the kid, but I coped, sort of. First though food and beer. Before that, this bloody, creepy passageway. There is a long way around but it passes my brothel and that would be too much of a draw and anyway, I just can't be bothered and I'm here now so here goes. The sooner I get it over with, the quicker I get to rub myself on male hardness and maybe even take him in if I feel like it.
The buildings, too close together and forming the dark corridor, were clay-formed and unpainted, higher on both sides of her than her body height and windowless. While mud spoiled her shoes which were not the best, allowing the mud to pass water to her feet, the sky darkened to give a brown-tunnel feel especially at the point of the passage's bend, where neither entrance nor exit could be seen. Trouser bottoms could be washed later, maybe washed by her male purchase at the brothel after she'd pleasured herself on him.
A male body, that she detected without turning, annoyingly followed her into the corridor but no evil intentions were detected by her. She still felt anger at his unsympathetic action towards a superior gender though. She scanned his bald head and was content that her card of credits was safe behind a zipped pocket, but still, protocols dictated that no male should appear to follow a superior female; but then protocols had started to break down half-cent sun-laps ago so were well disintegrated by now.
As the sound of his pace quickening through the mud, mild panic entered the stomach of Skiritus, making her heart beat faster and so her walk-pace increased to get to the corridor end and the safety of the women she could hear in the distance, enjoying food-order-shopping and drinking. She increased her pace until they both seemed to be speed-walking along, but with an invisible thread of elastic that kept him close and the corridor never ending. Since the Gender Wars, females were superior in almost all respects but a group, or gang, of males still had the ability to overpower a lone female physically, if brave enough, or evil enough. Surely though, this man was scrawny and alone.
If another male appears in front of me, I'll draw my dagger at the obvious trap.
Attacks on lone females had been known, had been talked about in tavernas between women, and maybe not all the stories about females suddenly disappearing were made up to excite, stimulate or scare the listeners.
No doubt, every time I move on to a new town, rumours spread of my sudden disappearance.
The fast walking stopped before the end of the passage at the point when the unfit lungs of Skiritus said it should stop and she turned to tell off the non-evil male she'd detected. She would tell him off for following her into the corridor, and tell him off for keeping the same pace as her and not dropping back. Before she could open her mouth though, red eyes not only peered out from under a grey hood, they glowed fiercely with an evil she'd been unable to earlier detect, a hypnotic flame burned behind the eyes, slowing down both her thoughts and her actions.
Chibbard. How long have they been able to close their brains to others?
He raised his arm to show the long, black weapon in his hand that took Skiritus's attention away from his eyes and away from the fact that her mouth was open to scream, but no sound was coming out.
Life was then conducted in extremely slow motion to aid her slowed brain. Skiritus knew that reaching for her knife was a futile gesture that would take too long to carry out, but it needed to be tried, needed to be proved to be futile. Her proposed words of admonishment slowed to an unrecognisable gargle as her eyeballs moved upwards to see the black truncheon against a brown sky. The weapon, high above her head was jet black but with something gold on it and as it approached her head, she could see that it was gold writing.
For some reason, her brain tried to read the blurred wording. The blurring was because of speed and then the gold writing was too close to read. The truncheon struck her left temple, the pain travelled downwards into her cheek bone and upwards into her brain at the same time, maybe cracking her skull just as you would an expensive emu egg. The arc that her cracked head made, from its full height to being on the floor was a long-timed, backward arc, a perfect quarter circle.
A whole sun-lap-tenth's credits will be gone. I must tell the rest of my family, if I ever find them, that the Chibbard have found a way to shield their evil from our thoughts. Please just take the credits and leave.
She knew, as she fell, that her last wish, maybe a last dying wish, was pointless and she would be touched by evil Chibbard fingers with long, unmanly nails, not so much for his pleasure but purely to denigrate her in a physical and mental manner to make her scared, maybe even housebound. Chibbard as a race had no desire to rape humans, but leaving their touch on female body parts they saw as a long-term torture of the brain, and that brain torture they did desire. At least she would be oblivious of his actions as they happened but he may, as a Chibbard, know that she would be able to trace his movements on regaining consciousness.
Blackness overtook the misty-brown of the day and sleep came to a brain that had been temporarily turned off like an old-fashioned computer with a rocking-button 'on and off' switch and when her head hit the mud the squelch cushioned her from complete skull-break. In dream-state she reasoned that mud in her hair would take precious water to wash out and with no credits, small-beer drinking would have to wait for another day.
Chapter Two.
When the broken-computer-feeling brain switched back on, Skiritus felt a power surge causing a jolt through her whole body as if in shock from auto-defib yet again. The processing power of Skiritus’s brain slowly started up one programme at a time, basic programmes first, movement from that jolt. Before the monitor could even begin to fire up, using her eyes to feed it, all would be a mid-programme dream until that brain-screen and the vision sent from eyes to brain through optic nerves, was reset and working properly.
Senses came into play with smell being the next to arrive but only allowing her the knowledge that she had either been dragged to a public toileting area, or she‘d been used as one by passers-by. Her imagination saw disgruntled male slaves getting retribution, pissing and laughing. Sight was out of the question for now as was taste, but touch allowed her to know she was still in the wet, and hearing allowed a low-level, muffled sound of lots of people talking, but talking with their heads in glass bowls so that the sound could not escape clearly.
Through the blackness of her eyelids Skiritus detected the past feelings of touch that the red-eyed Chibbard male had carried out before he'd left. If he'd left. Detection was nothing to do with her powers though; a Chibbard finger trail stayed with a victim haunting her for weeks. His fingers could be traced upward on her exposed waist, under her hoodie and over her chest that now felt cold, but no decent recording had been made while her brain was deactivated so she switched off from that scene and force-thought primroses in a garden in her childhood, rather than the brutal attack on her.
Chibbard don’t rape. They proved that in the gender wars. Was I lying unconscious and touched by a passer-by? Raped and left bruised? Are the gender wars restarting? Am I a war prisoner? The gods my head aches. I believe the garden with primroses was the rear garden at my mother’s house, left to her by her first husband Peter, a man that I didn’t know.
It felt to Skiritus as if she was still in the narrow passageway, laying on her back and rainwater had seeped from the mud through possibly a still-intact top and had soaked parts that didn't want to be soaked, causing shivering to her spine and making it feel as if her top was missing.
The Chibbard left, I was undressed further, touched again for a human male’s cheap thrill and left like garbage in this alleyway to die and be eaten by dogs. Why has no fellow woman come to my aid? Where has the acid smell of the air gone? I got used to it and somehow prefer it to what is in my nose right now.
Her arms, splayed out above her, cramped and stiff, meant painful movement to get her right hand downwards to check where her pocket should be, and her knife should be strapped to that same leg, even though she already guessed that the knife would be missing.
Something stopped that final reaching. The sound of metal against metal slapped at her wrist on each try, confusing the slowly waking brain until her eyes slowly opened looking for an explanation. Monitor up and running, brain connected to eyes, those eyes saw a square of hazy light above her and they immediately closed again to stop the pain. A calm voice next to her, soft, feminine and reassuring, maybe a doctor, or a friend in the taverna but not the half-expected male Chibbard.
"Calm yourself unnamed woman. You are laying in a leaky ship, wooden in structure, in manacles and you have somehow regained consciousness after days of apparent death, so I win the bet. I bet my neighbour on my other side, my winter coat against her summer dress that you would be okay, but where we are going dresses will be no good apparently, even if she was able to pay the bet.”
Too much useless and rambling information, giving no clue to Skiritus's whereabouts. Maybe a taverna more likely a bar and maybe the talker had ingested a surfeit of small beer, maybe even spirit. A possibility that the woman was mad but she didn't sound a threat. Skiritus forced her heavy eyes to open against their wishes, now hating beer and feeling sick, thinking about intoxication in one of those 'never again' moods. Hazy. Everything was hazy and slightly out of focus but not as bright as she’d first thought. Light came from a square above her as if she was underground and the horizons had closed in.
Attacked or passed out drunk and dreamed it? Or, passed out drunk, attacked and touched? Touched is not the word. I feel bruising between my legs. Did I drink too much and go wild in the brothel?
After a struggle, she managed to lift her head slightly. A ship is what had been said. The hull of a large ship it actually seemed to be, stacked to the full with women just like her, all manacled to the ship's sides, all naked above the waist, some of them lying on their backs, others sat up to look at her. A cent worth of women looking like the large picture in a brothel she'd visited, an old painting of naked women with gossamer scarves that covered their triangles but left too many breasts to count. There were too many minds for Skiritus to read, all focused on her thoughts and that hurt her brain even more.
A beach of topless sunbathers in a magazine of my mother’s. No suntan though, from that square of light above us. That painting, the artist a man, showed women with pert, young breasts, not the mixture before me now.
Skiritus spoke and immediately realised she’d had no liquid through a dry throat for some time. "My top? My credits?”
The soft voice spoke again. “Our tops and bras have been burned to partially fuel the ship's boiler, to turn a propeller, to aid the sails, or so they said as an excuse to keep us all naked above trousers or skirts, and also vulnerable and subservient to them. Your credits have been stolen as has your life's inheritance. Can you feel the absence of your index fingers? We are all, here, four fingered, half-naked animals, overpowered by a vigilante male army who are taking us to a new land of religious power and freedom. Freedom for them, anyway."
Skiritus couldn't move her head upwards to see her hands but wiggled her fingers and felt bandages where some of those fingers used to be.
The removal of our index fingers, to steal all our credits but also to make us lose hope of survival without them. Something that helped spark the gender-wars; forced subjugation of females. Hecate's cat, they'll have us cooking and cleaning for them next as Skye did for Peter. Or did she tell me she paid other women to do it for her?
With no index fingers and therefore no means of accessing credits, Skiritus knew she might as well be dead. Knowing her attacker had every credit passed down to her from past generations, death could not come quickly enough. "My throat is sore if I try to talk. I can trace the red-eyed man’s hands over my upper body but the surface crack to my skull has knitted together quickly.”
A smile came from the neighbour who had the ability to either confuse or enlighten Skiritus and managed to do both. “They come around in threes, the men who categorise us. None had red eyes though, as far as I could see. They’ll ask you if you’re viable and will categorise you as either a worker or a breeder. You may find them checking categories by hip width and what they disparagingly call udder size, and whether you have the ability to stimulate.”
The throat of Skiritus hurt to speak. “Where going? Gender war again?”
Mustn't tell these women, who probably only know of the gender wars through historical fiction, that I served and got to the end of the war without being raped. World War Four was more about the condensing of growable lands after globe-boil, so is this the start of World War Five? I have no fight left in me, no credits, no index fingers so I need death as soon as possible. I have lived for too long. It’s my time to go. Red eyes? Shit, I forgot these women know of the Chibbard but only my Satis powers detect them by their eyes.
Confusing-woman carried on adding information to Skiritus's waking brain. “Touched women, forced to allow these men to enjoy themselves while they attempt, mainly unsuccessfully, to raise an erection, ask questions and all those around listen to boasted answers from the males, as the women look to gain information and then pass it around in whispers. It is said we are on a voyage to the other side of our planet, to the hot, dry, down-under side, uninhabited since globe-boil. There, men have set up a counter-colony with a counter-culture, where males are in charge again, like before the gender wars we've all read about. Women till the soil to grow and gather food for the men and then cook it like slaves for their owners."
Skiritus tried to sit by pulling on her manacles to slide her body back towards their anchor point. Failing badly, she felt the arms of two helping women, one either side of her, holding her arms and lifting her into a sitting position as her leather trousers sloshed through shallow water. Her chatty companion waited until Skiritus settled and waited for a nod from Skiritus to see if she was taking things in, before continuing.
"It's a secret, break-away Kirk based on an old religion. Their doctrine comes from their belief that religion has been watered down and all humans should revert to the old ways in order to save the planet. One woman, on the front end of our deck, is a religious kirk-minister and she reckons it happens now and again; a new religion springs up, better than the last and they all start fighting over who is the holiest. This new one centres on a book they have that tells them that males are superior and women should be serving them, you know, the Adamant and his stupid girlfriend Evening book. That book where Adamant had Lilith as his slave, but she was a strong woman and refused to serve him, so he chose the dull brained but naked Evening who was pleased to serve him. so that all their offspring would be like them and women would serve men forever. Bloody fairy stories but they have it in their heads that it’s fact and those born with a dick are superior. Probably a fight back over the known fact that their dicks are all but useless unless we work them to death to get them alive.”
Lilith that seduced the archangel and their offspring were all succubus females and incubus males and I am partly descended from that line. Not the time to reveal that though I feel.
Again, the woman made sure Skiritus was able to take things in before continuing her story. “All beings, male and female in this new colony, we are told, wear trousers only, not like your tight leathers but loose, colony-issued trousers with nothing allowed above a waist belt so that no woman can disguise herself as a man by shaving her head and swaddling her breasts, and so that gang bosses can admire those sunburned breasts. Breeding, if possible, it is said, gains not credits for women like in our old world but young, new slaves to be owned by the man who sired them, to be sold for old-fashioned metal coins to offset the original cost of the mother. When we dock, we will be taken to a slave market where, depending on whether the men there want a worker or a breeder, they’ll bid for us at auction and the men of this ship will be paid and will make another journey. Those of us that already carry a child on docking will fetch a higher price. There are two on board, apparently, women with-child that is."
Skiritus flinched. “So, rape occurs onboard?”
“No.” The answer came with a smile. “Against their new religion fortunately, unless the woman is paid for and owned, and anyway, from what I’ve witnessed, none of them are capable of getting it up.” Chuckling came from those listening in to their conversation. “The ones on board that are pregnant, already were when they were coshed. Talking of your tight leather trousers by the way, just behind you you’ll find your pot. We’ll look away while you use it, and every morning; we pass to the woman next to us until the pots have gone full circle, and all have been emptied into a barrel at the end that is hoisted up and probably fed to the fish. You don’t always get a pot back as clean as the one you gave out though. You won’t use it much because they only give you porridge and it sets like mud in your stomach, refusing to pass through.”
Skiritus moved her arms about and realised that now that she was sat up, she had enough movement to eat and to use her pot and, unfortunately, to also see her hands with cloth over what used to be her index fingers. Wiggling that finger allowed her to know that it had been cut below the knuckle.
Although talk was painful for her, Skiritus felt an urge to organise things in her head. “Two centime-years ago or so, my family passed-down tales that topless sunbathing was common and women would go to warm, rainless countries that existed in Europa to brown their breasts to attract strong males to pollinate them or, at least to get them to want to pollinate them. Our owners, I believe, will feed us to keep us working. Work will keep us fit until we have the strength to fight back as we will surely outnumber the men. What is the difference between a breeder and a worker’s life I wonder? How would an owner mate a breeder without rape being involved?”
Her neighbour smiled at her bravery. “Your head is still addled. Women classed as breeders are happy to not have to work in the hot fields, or so we are told by the men on this ship. Some women sweat all day watering crops and planting crops, others sit about looking pretty, waiting to pleasure themselves on a master who thinks he’s in charge of their body. Water for drinking will come to you soon, now that you are conscious, along with bread that is so hard it can be kept for you to chew on through the day. Every other day we get the thrill of a wooden bowl full of porridge to eat with a wooden spoon. It’s a real treat.”
She looked inquisitively at Skiritus. “You talk of memories of times gone by before we were all born, you talk of tracing a man's hands on your body, you ask about red eyes. Who exactly are you? We have guessed that because this new land sounds primitive there will be no ovary-check machines. As I told you, these men’s brains see breeders as having wide hips and firm but large udders so you should do fine. Workers, they say, have strong thighs and strong backs with some bicep muscle, so I suppose you could be classed as either.”
Witch strength had always been a deep-seated secret within Skiritus's soul, but if she was to organise a rebellion, she thought it was important that she be looked on as a leader. She spoke in answer to who she was, with as much authority as her croak could muster, and as if standing tall and not in her current position of being sat up, the manacles being fixed low to the plank of the ship's side but the chains just long enough to allow sitting but not standing. She entered the thoughts of all those on her deck as she announced, to anyone within earshot. "I am Skiritus, a descendent of the great Skye. Sired by the potent Siritus, leader of The Pack and chief servant-man of the women of the victorious in the Gender War. Bred out of Skye, area-queen of the victorious in the Gender War. I believe ladies that war is about to start again, and I am to lead you to victory. We have men to defeat in this new territory. Also, the Chibbard, that you believed to be extinct, have defiled me making me mad for revenge.”
The shackled, half-naked, sitting in sea water ladies, stared at her, some open mouthed. Skiritus read their reactions one by one. Point one, that was unanimously agreed amongst them all, was that they didn't feel like starting a new war or even being in a position to even think about starting one. Point two, who was this weirdo who couldn't quite understand the predicament she was in and believed she was some sort of nutcase, queen of the fairies, sired from ancient characters, touched by an extinct race of Chibbard and who wasn't a slave to be sold?
Skiritus was brought back down to Earth Planet when three men approached and looked around the throng. One held a whip, one a bucket of water and a ladle, the last a board with parchment on it. Whip man dropped his whip, grabbed Skiritus’s ankles and twisted her onto her front with no resistance from a stiff and weak body. He grabbed her trouser belt that was already low on her hip and pulled it down further.
“Ten kilo, five cent and seventy-two." He read this while obviously staring at her bum crack, so Skiritus assumed she'd been branded or tattooed on the base of her spine while unconscious.
"Blank.” Board holder announced.
Her head spun as she was easily twisted back into her sitting position, bucket holder scooped a ladle of water and placed it in Skiritus's mouth where she drank voraciously and then she listened as her name was demanded.
"Skiritus.” She announced between gulps, her throat now feeling oiled, but she left out the announcement of her family tree this time. Scratching of a pen on parchment seemed loud. "Worker or breeder?” He waited, presumably to fill in a further column and Skiritus wondered if the decision was hers or whether he’d been thinking aloud.
Whip-man decided he'd announce which category after laying down next to her and testing, but was annoyed she wasn’t a mover and appeared to be oblivious of his actions as he pushed her back down to the timbers and lay next to her. The man took boring male-minutes, pressing against her thigh, trying to obtain male strength to that part of his body as he also pummelled roughly her breasts, solely for his own benefit and then felt her hip bones in a doctorly sort of way. “Breeding hips and udders,” he announced.
Skiritus read that he desperately dreamed of his further strength inside her and that growth between his legs would come from her breasts, via his rough hands. His usual thrusting against her leg appeared unusually weak to him as he stayed flopped, unable to raise his usual semi. He couldn't understand why his brain kept imagining that this was his sister being attacked by this gang of men, with him taking first turn, forced into incest or receive loss of face. He felt his limpness while he tried to concentrate on this newest conquest who had a face that now looked, side on, a bit like his sister's.
"Worker,” he proclaimed, getting up and fastening a trouser button, leaving Skiritus with no feelings whatsoever and leaving her abuser with an appendage that was now smaller than when he’d first arrived at her side.
It wasn’t until the men had left that Skiritus smiled at her mind transfer, the first probably of many. She had no reason to help him obtain straightness, no need to enjoy the pig. Now was not the time for a fight back though; that time would come, and when it did Skiritus would know. She turned to her neighbour. “Why not judge us from afar? Why all the stupid laying against us?”
A smile from the neighbour with no name. “We think it’s to degrade us. We are all used to being the boss in any male-female relationship, some with a male slave, some with more than one, so they have to break us down on the trip. No tops, boobs exposed, big deal, numbered just above a bum crack, and they can lay with us, touch us, and pretend to be strong males. We’ll be sold, auctioned more like, on a stage as if we are as low as cattle and eventually, we’ll break and admit to our subservience.”
“Well, I guess we’ll have to not break then, let them think we have and then fight back when the time is right,” Skiritus told anyone within earshot.
Chapter Three.
The unbearable heat of the cloudless day in the globe-boiled island down south, had turned into the relative warmth of the night. Danderos sat comfortably on the lap of his breeder Laney, a tall, Amazonian-looking blonde with hips wider than his chest, and breasts that Danderos thought were enough for many men at the same time, but were his and his alone because he’d paid for them. He looked around his cool, dark, living room with the smile of a proud man. He sucked on the red tip of his tobacco-and-opium-filled clay pipe, the bowl almost at arm's-length from his mouth and then he blew out in a straight line the contents of his lungs. The smoke found the nearby, stone chimney stack where it rose to dissipate into the still warm night air, while the effect of the opium passed from his lungs to his bloodstream that slowly nourished his head, helping his brain cool from the rigours of the day. The day had been hot for him, even hotter for his female field-workers.
Laney sat half-naked under him and was fawning to him as usual. She sighed, tucked her long blond hair behind her ears and ran her fingers over his chest knowing it would start to stimulate him. She chewed on her bottom lip as if he was the hunk that he thought he was. “You’re so manly master. The type I've always fancied, the man I’m sure to be able to breed from me successfully, given time, given practice.” She giggled like a girl much younger than she actually was.
Laney knew from her old-world personal history that her ovaries were hardly viable. Science didn’t matter to the male brain though and all it saw was wide, child-bearing hips and udders to feed twins with milk to spare. Laney was not the type to play down the advantage of her looks now, and never had been.
Danderos knew the effect of the opium, knew well that it reduced libido so did not offer the pipe to Laney who he wanted pregnant. He also knew that he wasn't stupid enough to believe the actions of her fawning. Yes, he enjoyed the flattery of a subservient woman, what man wouldn’t? He knew she had no real choice. and was aware that she would rather still be in the Europa Region with men serving under her. It was obvious to him that she only pleased him so that she wouldn't be demoted to worker, and then a new breeder obtained at the market. He ignored the flattery, externally anyway, looked down at her trousers, the only garment she was allowed to wear, removed the pipe from his mouth and used the same hand to gently run the backs of his fingers over her bare breast until a nipple was pearled enough for him to play with it.
"How go the workers Laney. Have you spoken to them about my bees and about extra water hauling?” He asked this to the nipple he’d controlled as he controlled all his women. He felt smug, as if all was well with the world and nothing could disturb his life, but maybe that feeling was being helped by the opium in with the tobacco.
His past had seen him as owned by a woman much larger than him who made him sit on her lap and stimulate her in all ways possible before she viciously rape-seeded him. From a past life of servitude under a cruel and vicious Europa woman to where he was now, head calmed by poppy and tobacco both grown in his patch, this woman under him but trying to please him rather than boss him; it was a huge step. His mind happily thought of his old life as a kirk member, the whispers passed to him from fellow kirkers while he was shopping for his mistress, the plans made outside kirk among male followers, then his escape and his signing on to work on the religious-freedom ship to the new world, eventually ending up where he was now.
Danderos had been secretly recruited by the whisperers, into a job as a ship's haulier. He'd jumped the slave ship on his third trip, and wandered into this hot country and had no idea at that time what he would do with his life. To find this plot beside a river, then to find river-mud to fashion bricks that would bake in the daytime sun, and then to be accepted at market as a settler, were all beyond his wildest dreams; especially when his settler-paperwork, that he said had been burned in a house fire, were passed his way as replacement, making him legitimate. To cultivate his land using river water and to find a hive of wild bees was a bonus, and selling pollinated food at market and honey too from a constructed mud-hive saw him as more than comfortable in his new life, able to buy workers and finally a breeder. He stared into space, enjoying Laney’s hand on his bare chest while he was still toying with her nipple.
Laney could see his clouded mind deep in thought and felt ignored, so she rubbed his chest and squirmed under him, trousers against trousers and he took it as a sign that she didn't enjoy talking about the fact that her master’s workers existed. When Laney felt insecure, she always squirmed, trying to please herself and to raise as if by magic the erection she desired in her master. She always at those times talked like a young and vulnerable girl and looked him in the eye as if to discover his thoughts.
A snake charmer, he thought, hypnotising the snake by staring into my probably bloodshot eyes. Her stub nose and pouting, full lips did things to him, providing a feeling inside his groin that activity was wanted but couldn't quite start. Why did her top teeth, outside her lower lip, look so enticing?
Laney's pouting voice was that of a girl of five or six who wanted something from her mother. “Nobody has settled within miles of us master, and the bees are still happy to stay locally, feed from your crops and fruit blossom, and not to wander like naughty bees. Flowers and fruits are at their height and need extra water from the river to be able to plump." She’d moved his thighs apart and her hand moved between them on the word plump. “And the girls now struggle to get enough pitchers to the ever-larger plot master, that keeps growing in size." She rubbed him with the palm of her hand making him wonder whether she was talking about the plot or his body part, the opium confusing the conversation in his addled brain.
She kept talking as Danderos half-listened but slowly became disinterested and wanted something else. Women in this new land, he knew to be the weaker sex, but when Laney acted like this, he was willing to give her the power to be the decider, to get them to the bedroom where things would then dramatically change. She was still rubbing, still talking so he tried hard to concentrate on her words.
“They have watered about half way up the plot from the house, but if we had more help starting at the far river bend, the workers could meet halfway and start again at either end. They've asked me whether I was brave enough to ask you if they could have extra help; more profit for you, more time for you to love me while they work.”
“And you said?”
Laney giggled like the girl with only sixteen summers that she’d possessed when Danderos had first bought her at the market. It made him think of how young and innocent she'd looked, half-naked and vulnerable standing tall on a stage being gawked at by men, her long blond hair trying but failing to cover breasts and how shocked he’d been to find how experienced she was at pleasing both herself and her man. It was not for the thought of producing youngsters alone that he’d chosen her as a breeder.
How does such a tall, full-figured woman look so vulnerable? Is it her voice alone, her pretence at naivety? The gods, she knows how to push my buttons.
She was in her eighteenth sun-lap now and more than ripe for carrying, if only male seed was as potent as in the past kilo-sun-laps. A baby would endear her to him, leaving her a breeder. That pathetic voice came out of her, pleading, wanting, child-like.
"I told the workers that I would only ask my powerful master, after we'd bred tonight, ask you only if I pleased you and you were in a fine mood. I didn't though master, mention that against female kirk-law back home, and even against all new male kirk-law in the country that we find ourselves in, that I would present myself to you as a wild bitch-dog begging my alpha-dog to breed his bitch in season, animal to animal with no human love involved.” She was stroking his cheek now; her lips close to his. “To have told them that might have seen us both incarcerated and going through reconditioning or even hanging.” She pulled his head into hers, pecked his lips and snuggled her head against his neck, submitting to her alpha dog, nipping gently at his neck. “Our little secret.”
To Laney, their ‘little secret’ was her blackmail-guarantee of being kept as a breeder, never to carry a pitcher. To Danderos it was purely an illegal way of always obtaining the erection needed to breed; a physical thing with no mental thought behind it.
He took a last drag in of smoke, that smoke was aimed for the chimney-stack again and he smiled to think he'd built that stack into his abode ready for a winter that never came. She was trying to excite him with the daring sex she had planned for him but he had other stimuli that he enjoyed. “Tell me again about your Europa kink Laney. It has started to harden me to think about it and as smoke finds its place in the fire-hole, my little man wants to find its warm place.”
She pecked his lips again, the sharp taste of the opium making her lips tingle and quiver, and then she pulled his head into her chest as if she was a mother telling her child a story. “Living in my parent’s house with seven male servants and an inheritance in credits to survive on and pass to any future children, I tried for pregnancy in my supposedly virginal, young, nubile body, taking my servants one by one when my parents were out.” One hand stroked his bald head while the other was running up and down Danderos’s waist line. “None of them resisted me obviously, but I knew in my mind that there was more to breeding than having a man lay under me while I rape-sexed him aggressively, removing his seed from him and then climbing off to show I felt nothing for him other than seed gathering."
She smirked, knowing she was coming to the part of the story that excited him most. “Eventually, I visited the same brothel on many occasions and found three prostitutes who were willing to follow my instructions. I would dangerously submit to a man against all laws, legal and moral, and it would shock them. They would, for extra credit, illegally take their animal and pretend to take me against my will holding my hip bone in one hand for pressure and my hair for reins in the other hand, while I enjoyed myself with my dexterous fingers at the same time. Double sex for me, double pleasure and also the chance of pregnancy.
Nobody ever found out but, on the eve of my birth date of ten-add six, I was returning from my brothel with a smile on my face when I was coshed from behind by the shipmen who brought me here.” Her rubbing of her master became quicker as the story progressed with more pressure on each of her down strokes. “Imagine my joy to be bought by a handsome freeholder who was as kinked in his head as me and wanted to try being a pack-leading, alpha-male dog with his compliant bitch. Maybe I put the idea into my master's head? Maybe it was there already, waiting to come out with the right breeder. The only breeder that would allow it.”
Laney hoped she’d dampened herself enough for non-hurting entry, took her master’s pipe and placed it carefully onto its wooden stand on the table so that the long, clay stem didn't break. She dipped her fingers into the bees-wax pot she’d left open next to the pipe-stand and polished his fine baldness, stretching up to see the top of his head and 'accidentally' leaving a boob pushed into his face. It worked every time and they both knew it as he latched on.
She stretched her legs to stand easily, as if he hadn't been a weight of any sort on her lap and the thought of taming that strength excited him. His body cradled in her arms, his hands wound around her neck, fingers interlaced, she stared into his eyes with an expression of false fear for what was to come covering her supposedly innocent face as he instructed her to carry him to their bedroom.
Laney knew she’d been born at the wrong time in Earth history, and should have been born when women were submissive, as in this new world. She often wondered whether, if adverts had been placed in the Europa Region, how many females would have travelled to this world voluntarily. She would have.
In the bedroom that was all bed, with no visible floor to move around it, she placed him down and pulled her loose trousers off. It always delighted him to see white skin from the waist down, in contrast to the tanned upper half that was sunned all day. Being in the middle of nowhere, there was no need for curtained windows. Nobody was around for at least a day's walk so nobody could suggest his arrest for deviance. The light of the oil lamps in the living area gave a soft glow to the bed and to Laney.
He knew he had no power to raise her hips off the bed and it was a willing move by Laney, but still she protested to excite him.
“Please master, I know not what you are doing to this young, naive girl. What could you possibly want with me?”
He looked down on the face that had returned to the youngster he'd bought at the market. The pouting lips pinker now, fuller with blood. His opium-fuelled brain tried to concentrate on her words.
“Have mercy on me master. Please sir. I'm a virgin and need to be atop you sir, not broken as an animal. Too big master, too big for me to handle. Please, no.”
The banter continued, neither of them believing a word of it, Danderos's opium head half believing it and enjoying every moment until both collapsed. Laney, with no index fingers, carried on solo with middle finger until she too was satisfied, turned to him, cuddled him in her large frame and they slept, secure in the knowledge that their secret was safe and that life was good. Having planted the idea of extra workers into her master's head, Laney now waited for him to announce that it had been his idea to go to the market to buy more help.
Chapter Four.
Opening sticky morning-eyes, Laney was still suffering from tiredness, feeling used and abused and just how her body enjoyed feeling. Danderos came around even more slowly to see Laney up on one elbow looking into his face and smiling as if he'd pleased her immensely.
She wet her middle finger and stroked it over his dry lips. “Do I stay as your breeder master? Was your bitch to your satisfaction? Did I stop barking when you bit my shoulder to calm me?”
Grabbing her and eating her was better than any words she could have hoped for. “Do the girls get extra help, master?” She asked while holding his head firmly where she wanted it to stay. She couldn't press for an answer and waited patiently knowing her tongue enjoyment was greater than his and life was almost as it had been in Europa Region for her, as she held onto that bald head and moved it to her satisfaction, trying hard not to crush his skull between her strong thighs.
In time he surfaced and lay with his arm around her. “My plans may have changed. I've been thinking about something for a while now and have finally come to a decision.” He told her this with a serious tone that raised Laney's eyebrows in false curiosity, wondering what his decision could possibly be.
“I knew that selling fruit and vegetables to the passing, carting interim-buyer was false economy and think I now have enough coin for a horse and cart of my own. Taking our goods to the port-market myself would cut out that middleman and make extra coin. But, where to feed the horse? If I went to port and bought two extra worker slaves, they could water a field of newly sown grass for the future horse, and when the grass was established, the new girls could help your existing workers in the fruit and vegetable patch. More to sell, enough coin for the horse and cart, everything would come together nicely. Everything would run smoothly. I would have more leisure time and a youngster to take over from me would be more likely to arrive. It’s a long walk to the port so I’ll try to find a lifter with a wagon. You’ll be in charge while I'm gone and, if anything goes wrong while I’m away, your punishment will be severe. Oh, gather poppy seed also and I’ll drop it at the distillery and pick up some addition to my sun-dried tobacco.”
She’d won. Life was good with her master. He treated her as she wanted to be treated and life with the workers would be easier once she’d explained to them, not in detail, how she’d secured extra help for them. “It's a brilliant plan master and if I am to be punished if anything goes wrong in your absence, I may, accidentally make something minor go slightly wrong, to be able to enjoy your punishment of me. My turn for breakfast master.” She slipped below the sheets to thank him.
The following day Danderos reluctantly sauntered away from his homestead. He knew that leaving Laney in charge was a risk but all the women, the workers and his breeder, knew that if they walked off to find a supposedly better life, they would either die of hunger, or thirst away from the river, or be picked up by another owner who could treat them worse than he did. Laney surely could not survive without the things he gave her. The women's worst-case scenario would be to be found by a bounty-hunter of the religious authorities, punished and their number brands traced back to him where the women would be delivered back to be punished yet again. He'd made it quite plain to all his workers, just what their punishment would be if they tried to escape.
On the dusty roadway, after a walk of many paces, a wagon caught up with him. The driver, who wore a wide brimmed hat similar to that of Danderos, was headed to the port to purchase help and they soon struck up a conversation as they were horse-pulled along. A chat, while the sun burned down on both their backs, about the various merits of owning a horse and wagon, saw the journey time-shortened. Danderos asked what a horse would eat in a day and how big a field it required. He learned that a stake in the ground, holding a rope to the horse, not only kept the horse in one spot of grass but stopped it eating fruits and vegetables.
They split up at the sale that was already in its third day, but Danderos hoped to meet his new friend again to get a lifter back to somewhere near his river. The naked, upper flesh of females on display up on the auctioneer's stage excited him at first, but then the women all started to look the same, all white with no tanned upper and he started to concentrate on leg muscle, biceps and back strength, reminding himself that he needed workers not breeders and that large but firm breasts did not aid farm-work. His first purchase was a bit more expensive than he’d expected but her large thighs looked as if she could carry a load all day. His second purchase compensated by being cheaper because she was auctioned while most of the buyers were lunching and frothing on cold small-beer.
Younger than I envisaged buying. More the age of Laney when I bought her. This one though is small, looks vulnerable with tears down her cheeks and looks like she could grow into a breeder one day. Best to have a plan B in case Laney changes her mind about our deviance. This girl looks as if she could be manipulated into anything I wanted her to be, she's that petite and mouldable.
As Danderos thought about paying his bill, securing his purchases with rope and heading for home, wondering how far his new units could walk, he received a strong urge to inspect the woman who was up on the timber stage. She was not any different or impressive in any other way than the rest of the slaves, she was called a worker, but Danderos had an urge to mate that worker and maybe use her to breed from.
Is my deviance affecting my brain? One good worker, another worker who may grow into a compliant breeder and now I'm looking at a woman who could justifiably be a good worker, but also someone I'm drawn to sexually. In fact, she moves blood to my man from this distance. Imagine what she could do if stood next to me. She is easily imagined to be suntanned and not lily-white.
In particular, he was drawn by her child-accommodating hips to hang on to from behind, if he could possibly turn her mind. A slim waist from starvation on the boat always emphasised a woman’s hips and she had fine, average sized but extremely firm breasts that maybe could be grabbed while inside her. Her face, framed by jet black hair, was immaterial to his choice but it would be, he thought, nice to have two breeders, one blonde one brunette. Her penetrating eyes were visible, even from this distance and he realised that no other woman on sale had shown eye colour to him and these were so brown they were almost black. He was intrigued. The thought of her in his bed started even more growth between his legs that no other sale-slave had achieved, but he couldn't say why.
Bidding started at low coin but rose quickly and Danderos turned to walk away, but then the bidding stumbled with all the bidders seemingly losing interest at the same time and he couldn't understand why. Why couldn’t the buyers see what he could see? Was it just the thought of her accepting his illegal kink that made him place a bid?
The auction manager could see that she was going cheaply and he would therefore lose commission. Danderos had put in a cheeky bid that was accepted as the axe eventually fell, blunt side down, on the auctioneer’s lectern. Danderos pushed his way to the back of the stage, showed his bid number, registered the three women's brand numbers against his paperwork, with the stamp of the black-cloaked religious authority man and paid a decent coinage for three workers with a hint, maybe, of at least one breeder and a young, future breeder thrown in.
Maybe it might take a bit longer to save for that horse and cart, maybe not if the extra help gains more coin. That last purchase is a worker for me, not a breeder and I must remember that. I cannot afford the luxury of another breeder, especially if this young one is in reserve.
After walking some distance with the women roped together, one trousered, two in skirts, he found his cart lifter homeward travelling behind him. Danderos jumped into the wagon-back, after helping his three women in. He did it by placing a hand on each covered buttock to push and then he discussed with his new friend about his plan, that his purchases would bring in extra income from fruit and honey, maybe even enough to purchase a horse and cart of his own. As they travelled homewards, the compulsion to mate his last purchase seemed overwhelming and he couldn’t work out how his passion had grown.
The women sat quietly, looking either depressed or scared of the unknown. The young one was still crying gently, sniffing a lot and he wondered if he’d made a mistake in purchasing her. Had he seen her too much as a future breeder? Had he seen her as young and easily manipulated? Maybe his inner fantasies, the ones that became external fantasies with Laney, were clouding his judgement. To compensate, the dark-haired beauty was sat upright, stomach in, chest tight, shoulders back and eyes looking out into the distance carefully avoiding his own eyes. He wanted to grab hold of her there and then, devour her and find out exactly why she had the ability to produce that feeling between his legs.
Now was not the time to reveal his and Laney’s animal kink. Laney would not like this worker and may work her hard if she suspected what was in his head. This brunette in leather trousers would be his special worker, to be taken as a snack when required when Laney was not around. Of course, he had total power over Laney but having her compliant and also kink-compliant made life both pleasant and safe for him.
Just Laney for now to keep everyone happy, the dark haired one as and when I want because she does things to me in a way that Laney cannot achieve, and the young sniveller in a year or so when she’s a bit more mature and compliant to my ways. I’ll have to slowly lead her to my way of thinking.
After leaving the cart, the walk from the road to the homestead was slow, hot and tiring for the women who had legs that had not worked for some time but the two women either side of Skiritus, the dark-haired beauty, were unaware that she'd directed blood away from their stomachs and into their calves, to aid both their journey and their hunger pangs.
On reaching their new home, after being instructed to wash in the river, Laney took charge, issued the three new women with jobs and settled back to be foreman and her master's only breeder. In Laney’s mind, she was in charge of the women’s bodies and also her master’s mind and therefore his body.
The workers that Danderos proudly owned would be split into two groups, he decided, but not until the following day. His original group of three, wearing traditional trousers, carried on watering as before. The new three would tomorrow be issued with standard trousers, walk with him along the river bank and pass the hives until they reached the far end of the plot. He would instruct them on what to do and he would then watch them take pitchers to the river as they watered the crops starting from the distant end, working towards the plot's middle.
Laney was satisfied that the new women looked like good workers and decided to tell the women that it had been her decision to leave it a day before issuing standard trousers to them, so that they could see who their boss really was. Then she pulled her master's arm to take him to the bedroom to show how much she'd missed him.
Danderos allowed himself to be pulled but watched for as long as possible the new girl, his third purchase who was easily imagined to be bending at the river, filling her pot, presenting to him in a way that invited him to also fill her pot, so to speak. Maybe tomorrow.
I bet she would seek favour with me by bending in submission. If I try and she refuses, it will be extra work for her until she changes her mind.
His thoughts were disturbed by Laney, taking charge. “Excellent work master, buying the young one cheaply. I’ll work her hard, to gain muscle on her and she'll soon be worth more than you paid, should you wish to sell her and make a profit.
You must think me stupid Danderos, if you think I'd believe this scrawny bit of female flesh is for working. You see her as being manipulated into your depravity and that’s my position. If you think I'm going to work for you while you take young flesh, you are mistaken.
“Your breeder has missed you master. I need to be pacified and my innards are shaking. You may have to tie me down to be able to cure my shakes, please.”
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