Erotica Ebooks: Free ebook sample of "Slave" by Cheryl Brooks

Chapter One

I FOUND HIM IN THE SLAVE MARKET ON ORPHESEUS Prime, and even on such a godforsaken planet as that one, their treatment of him seemed extreme. But then again, perhaps he was an extreme subject, and the fact that there was a slave market at all was evidence of a rather backward society. Slave markets were becoming extremely rare throughout the galaxy—the legal ones, anyway.

I hitched my pack higher on my shoulder and adjusted my respirator, though even with the benefit of ultrafiltration, the place still stank to high heaven. How a planet as eternally hot and dry as this one could have ever had anything on it that could possibly rot and get into the air to cause such a stench was beyond me. Most dry climates don’t support a lot of decay or fermentation, but Orpheseus was different from any desert planet I’d ever had the misfortune to visit. It smelled as though at some point all of the vegetation and animal life forms had died at once and the odor of their decay had become permanently embedded in the atmosphere.

Shuddering as a wave of nausea hit me, I walked casually closer to the line of wretched creatures lined up for pre-auction inspection, but even my unobtrusive move wasn’t lost on the slave owners who were bent on selling their wares.

“Come closer!” a ragged beast urged me in a rasping, unpleasant voice as he gestured with a bony arm.

I eyed him with distaste, thinking that this thing was just ugly enough to have caused the entire planet to smell bad, though I doubted he’d been there long enough to do it. On the other hand, he didn’t seem to be terribly young. Okay, so older than the hills might have been a little closer to the mark. Damn, maybe he was responsible, after all!

“I have here just what you have been seeking!” he said. “Help to relieve you of your burden! This one is strong and loyal and will serve you well.”

I glanced dubiously at the small-statured critter there before me, and its even smaller slave. “I don’t think so,” I replied, thinking that the weight of my pack alone would probably have crushed the poor little thing’s tiny bones to powder. I know that looks can often be deceiving, but this thing looked to me like nothing more than an oversized grasshopper. Its bulbous red eyes regarded me with an unblinking and slightly unnerving stare. “Its eyes give me the creeps, anyway,” I added. “I need something that looks more…humanoid.”

Dismissing them with a wave, I glanced around at the others, noting that, of the group, there were only two slaves being offered that were even bipedal: one reminded me of a cross between a cow and a chim­panzee, and the other, well, the other was the one who had first caught my eye—possibly because out of all the slaves there, he was the one seeming to require the most restraint, and also because he was completely naked.

I studied him out of the corner of my eye, noting that the other prospective buyers seemed to be giving him a wide berth. His owner, an ugly Cylopean—and Cylopeans are all ugly, but this one would have stood out in a crowd of them—was exhorting the masses to purchase his slave.

“Come!” he shouted in heavily accented Standard Tongue, “my slave is strong and will serve you well. I part with him only out of extreme financial need, for he is as a brother to me, and it pains me greatly to lose him.”

His pain wasn’t as great as the slave’s, obviously. I eyed the Cylopean skeptically. Surely he couldn’t imagine that anyone would have suspected that his “brother” would require a genital restraint in order to drag him to the market to part him from his current master!

Rolling my eyes with disdain, I muttered, “Go ahead and admit it. You’re selling him because you can’t control him.”

“Oh, no, my good sir!” the Cylopean exclaimed, seemingly aghast at my suggestion. “He is strong! He is willing! He is even intelligent!”

I stifled a snicker. The slave was obviously smart enough to have this one buffaloed, I thought, chuckling to myself as it occurred to me that no one around here would even know what a buffalo was, let alone the euphemism associated with the animal.

I blew out a breath hard enough to fog the eye screen on my respirator. Damn, but I was a long way from home! Earth was at least five hundred long light-years away. How the hell had I managed to end up here, searching for a lost sister whom I sometimes suspected of not wanting to be found? I’d followed her trail from planet to planet for six years now, and had always been just a few steps behind her. I was beginning to consider giving up the search, but the memory of the terror in her wild blue eyes as she was torn from my arms on Dexia Four kept me going.

And now, she had been—or so I’d been informed— taken to Statzeel, a planet where all women were slaves and upon which I didn’t dare set foot, knowing that I, too, would become enslaved. The denizens of Statzeel would undoubtedly not make the same mistake that the slave trader had, for I was most definitely female, and, as such, vulnerable to the same fate that had befallen my lovely little sister. That I wasn’t the delicate, winsome creature Ranata was wouldn’t matter, for a female on Statzeel was a slave by definition. Free women simply did not exist there.

Which was why I needed a male slave of my own. One to pose as my owner—one that I could trust to a certain extent, though I was beginning to believe that such a creature couldn’t possibly exist, and certainly not on Orpheseus Prime! I was undoubtedly wasting my time, I thought as I looked back at the slave. He was tall, dirty, and probably stank every bit as much as his owner did. I was going to have to check the filter in that damn respirator—either that or go back and beat the shit out of the scheming little scoundrel who’d taken me for ten qidnits when he sold it to me. I should have simply stolen it, but getting myself in trouble with what law there was on that nasty little planet wouldn’t have done either my sister, or myself, a lick of good.

As I glanced at the man standing there before me, he raised his head ever so slightly to regard me out of the corner of one glittering, obsidian eye. Something passed between us at that moment—something almost palpable and real—making me wonder if the people of his race might have had psychic powers of some kind. That he was most definitely not human was quite evident, though at first glance he might have appeared to be, and could possibly have passed for one to the uneducated. There weren’t many humans this far out for comparison, which was undoubtedly why I’d been able to get wind of Ranata’s whereabouts from time to time. She seemed to have left a lasting impression wherever she was taken.

Just as this slave would do, even with the upswept eyebrows that marked him as belonging to some other alien world. His black, waving hair hung to his waist, though matted and dirty and probably crawling with vermin. I had no doubt that his owner hadn’t lied when he had said that the slave was strong, for he was collared and shackled—hand, foot, and genitals. I’d been through many slave markets in my search, but I’d rarely seen any slave who was bound the way this one was, which spoke not only of strength, but also of a belligerent, and prob­ably untrainable, nature. The muscles were all right there to see, and while they were not overly bulky— appearing, instead, to be more tough and sinewy—their level of strength was unquestionable.

This man had seen some rough work and even rougher treatment, for jagged scars laced his back and a long, straight scar sliced across his left cheekbone as though it had been made with a sword. He had a piercing in his penis, which appeared to have been done recently, for the ring through it was crusted over with dried blood.

A chain ran from the metallic collar around his neck, through the ring in his cock, to another metal band that encircled his penis and testicles at the base. The pain that such a device could inflict on a man was horrifying, even to me, and I’d had to inflict a lot of pain in the course of my travels—though never to someone so defenseless and completely within my power as a slave. My never-ending search for Ranata had left me nearly as tough and battle-scarred as the slave was, and I’d often had to fight to the death in order to stay alive. So far, however, I’d never stooped to torturing a slave, and sincerely hoped I never would. This slave owner obviously had no such qualms, and it made me want to take a shot at him, just on general principles.

Call me an old softy if you will, but I must admit that I considered buying this slave, if for no other reason than to set him free of his restraints. I might feed him first, though—and perhaps buy him some clothes…. I cocked my head to one side as I considered him again. You’re a fool if you think feeding this thing will tame it, I told myself. A bona-fide fool…

And fools didn’t last very long around these parts. This was the dirtiest, toughest, most lawless region of space I’d ever been to, and I was ready to get back in my ship and get gone—if for no other reason than to be able to breathe fresher air again. But I’d been on Orpheseus for over three weeks now, haunting the slave markets, and this was the first humanoid possibility that I’d run across. Even though he didn’t look very promising, I felt that I at least had to ask a few questions—he might turn out to be my last, best chance at getting what I needed.

“How much?” I asked.

“He will be in the auction!” the Cylopean protested. “He will bring a high price! To sell him now would be…”

“A wise move,” I said firmly. “Just look at what you had to do to get him here! Oh, no, he will not sell at auction, my friend! At least, not for as much as I will pay for him now. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that in the auction, I’ll be the only one bidding when he’s up there on the block. I’ll probably get him for less than it cost you to bring him here.”

He knew I was right, of course, but I’ll swear he had the soul of a Bedouin horse trader! “I will not sell him outright!” the man insisted, flapping his arms and kicking up dust with his feet as he stomped them in a gesture of outrage. “I will auction him!”

It occurred to me, eyeing him with disfavor, that while Cylopeans never look very agreeable, this one looked even less so than most. Sort of made me want to turn around and leave right then, just so I wouldn’t have to look at him anymore.

I shook my head sadly. Stupid, stubborn man! My God, they were everywhere, on every planet, and in every system! I could take this one for the price of a slave he couldn’t control—though he might consider it a good bargain in the end. On the other hand, the one I was thinking of buying was obviously pretty stupid, and stubborn, too, or he wouldn’t have been in such a state in the first place. I revised my earlier opinion of his intelli­gence, for a smarter man would have been more docile and wouldn’t have required such a horrendous level of restraint. Of course, I had no idea what had been asked of him. For all I knew, he might have been forced to commit some heinous crime, or maybe he just wouldn’t do windows. It was also possible that the Cylopean was just a sadistic little bastard who enjoyed such things. Glancing at the slave again, I wondered how many men it had taken to hold him down while that genital restraint had been applied.

I tried another approach. “Where did he come from?”

This question seemed to surprise him, for he appeared to be rather puzzled for a moment. “Originally? I have no idea, though I believe he was a prisoner of war at one time. He is a fine fighter and has fought by my side in many battles.”

A soldier, then, I decided. One whose loyalty could possibly be bought with the promise of his eventual freedom. I could use a good mercenary; one who would fight and see that I stayed alive long enough to reward him. I was still a bit skeptical, however, and asked what I felt to be a rather pertinent question, given the circumstances.

“So, tell me, how did you manage to keep him from killing you instead of the enemy?”

The man shrugged. “If I die, he dies,” he said simply. “It was in his best interest to see to my continued welfare.”

Which spoke of other means of control, like one of those poisons that don’t work until you stop taking them. I wondered if, in, say, three day’s time, my new acquisi­tion would suddenly begin writhing in agony and then die a rather nasty, painful death.

Deciding to leave that question for later on, I asked, “And now? Have you no further concern for your own, um, welfare?”

I thought he hesitated for a moment before answering me, but I believe he was telling me the truth when he said, “I have no need of a fighter any longer.” He left it at that and I didn’t press him any further, for just looking at the man told the story pretty plainly. That he was every bit as seedy-looking as anyone there on the auction block was easily observed, and if he’d ever been blessed with any degree of wealth, it certainly wasn’t apparent at this point. Quite plainly, he needed the money, and if he was desperate enough, I still might be able to pull off a deal with him.

“Mind if I make a closer inspection?” I asked cautiously. “Is it safe to approach him?”

“Oh, yes! He will not harm you. Not while I have this,” the Cylopean replied, holding up a remote control of some kind. I didn’t ask what would happen if he turned the dial on it since I was already too creeped out by the outrageous forms of control I could see with my own eyes.

I nodded and walked around the slave. Yes, he will do very nicely! I thought. There weren’t very many open wounds on him, though I had no doubt that there were probably sores beneath those restraints. He seemed healthy enough, too: no wheezing when he breathed, no cough, and his color—what I could discern of it from beneath the layer of dust and filth caked on his skin— seemed normal enough, though it might not have been for one of his kind.

“May I touch him?” I asked.

“Certainly! Touch him, if you will!” the Cylopean urged. “Feel the firmness of his muscles, the strength of his bones!”

Actually, all I really wanted to do was to knock some of the crud off of the sores on his back to see if there was anything festering under there. I didn’t have to feel him to know that he was strong. Stepping up behind him, I flicked the crusts off with my glove. No pus, I noted, but the cuts appeared to be recent—perhaps they simply hadn’t had the time to become infected as yet.

“Any sickness?” I asked.

“Oh, no, he is quite healthy, I assure you!”

“What about his teeth?” I inquired. “Are they rotten?”

Where I was going, a man with bad teeth would stick out like a sore thumb (not that this man would blend in anywhere, mind you). It was just that I didn’t want him to appear as though he had been the one to have been a slave, rather than myself. On Statzeel, with the women enslaved, all the men had personal groomers who kept them in tip-top condition—even to the point of brushing their teeth for them.

“Not at all!” came the reply. “Wait, I will show you.” The Cylopean stepped forward and gestured to the slave, who promptly opened his mouth. “You see? All present and in good condition.”

And sharp enough to cut through most conventional tethers, with canines a full quarter-inch longer than his other teeth! Damn, he looked dangerous! What the hell was I thinking? I should move on. Then it occurred to me that the command to open his mouth had been unspoken.

“Can he hear and speak?” I asked quickly. “Does he understand Stantongue?”

This was important since he’d have to be doing the talking for me on Statzeel, and possibly on other worlds, as well. A mute would be of no use whatsoever, and I didn’t want to have to take the time to teach him a new language, either.

I was looking at the slave when I asked that question, and noted the faint flicker of a dark, feline eyebrow. Oh, yes, he understood me, all right.

“Yes, of course he can!” I was assured. “He is quite fluent!”

“Let me hear him, then.”

“You may speak, slave,” the Cylopean said in an offhand manner and with a callous wave of his hand which made me long to punch his beady little eyes out.

My own eyes were drawn once more to those shining, black orbs which flashed as the slave raised his head, an act which drew the chain between his collar and the genital cuff taut and lifted his penis by the ring running through the top of it. If I’d previously assumed that his posture was one of submission, I’d have been wrong, for obviously it was merely the position of the greatest comfort for him. Well, the position of the least discom­fort, anyway.

“What would you have me say, Master?” the slave asked. The words were respectful, though his tone was carefully neutral.

“Tell me where you come from,” I asked.

His dark eyes narrowed and the tips of his eyebrows became more vertical.

“You may speak,” the Cylopean said with a depre­cating wave. “Answer the questions as you wish.”

My, that was brave of him, I thought! I might ask him what a rat his master was—of course, “Master” still held the remote and would probably zap him if he said anything out of line. Then again, I might not like his answers, either, and I decided that if he gave me too much lip, I wouldn’t mess with him. I wondered if he realized that his freedom was hanging in the balance with his reply.

“I come from the planet Zetith,” he replied.

There was a slight accent in his speech, one that I couldn’t quite place. Of course, I’d never heard of Zetith, but then, I’d never run across another specimen that was anything like him, either—and I’d seen a lot of strange beings in my search.

“How did you come to leave your planet?”

“We were at war with other worlds,” he replied. “I was taken prisoner along with others in my unit. We were to be executed, but were sold as slaves, instead.”

Well, so far that coincided with his master’s story; however, hearing him talk was a bit like listening to a computer spitting out information. His inflections and syntax seemed acceptable, but his replies were clipped and short, and he didn’t seem to relish the idea of giving me any information about himself. I tried again.

“Would you like to return to your home world?”

“I cannot.”

“And why is that?”

“It is gone.”

Which might explain why there were so few of his sort scattered throughout the galaxy—and also why I’d never heard of the place. It was safe to assume that if he had any relatives, they were as dead as his planet. Of course, I’d heard of planets that had been largely destroyed by war, but never one that had been completely obliterated.

“Do you mean that all life is gone, or that the planet itself is gone?”

“The planet itself,” he replied. “An asteroid struck it, and it was destroyed.”

“And how would you know that?” I inquired curiously.

Those dark eyes regarded me unblinkingly. “I watched it happen,” he said shortly.

“And how did you do that?” I asked, rather intrigued. “Were you watching from another world, or from a ship, or what?”

“In my mind,” he replied. “I saw it in my mind.”

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