Chapter 2 #8
I snort into the remnants of my rice. “I didn’t have a mate, no. It’s not really like that down there now. People don’t really mate. They fuck, sometimes, but they don’t live together and have families. It’s not really legal anymore.”
“It’s not legal?”
“Kids are lab grown,” I explain. “You didn’t know this?”
“I have never interacted with human pets before.”
“People used to just breed normally, I guess?” I say.
“But it was really inefficient and it was down to people to somehow pick good partners, and then often their partners weren’t good.
So now, making your own kid is considered irresponsible.
Because, you know, when you can create a person with perfectly healthy genetics, it’s pretty irresponsible to make a whole human with just whatever you happen to have.
People used to breed however they wanted, and a lot of them had undesirable traits. ”
I’m parroting the party line, but that’s how it is on Earth now, and it’s the easiest way to explain it.
“What are desirable traits?” Kronos asks the question.
“Compliant, agreeable people for working the jobs that involve being compliant and agreeable, and aggressive, vicious people for military applications. There’re others too. They breed people who work in codes and stuff. And there’s a special strain for people who go on reality TV programs.”
“So they’re breeding for temperament.”
“What else could they be breeding for?”
“Appearance?” Kronos suggests.
“Oh, no. That’s really frowned upon. That would be wrong. They breed to make healthy happy people who function correctly in the world.”
“And is everyone happy and healthy?”
“No. But it functions the way the people in charge like it to.”
I finish my chicken fried rice, and the third of my alien owners appears.
“What she wears will reflect on us.” Sharp has appeared suddenly.
He is holding a garment in his hands, a sort of short sparkling nebula tunic.
It looks pretty. Not my usual style, but my usual style is nothing more than the most practical attire I can find.
Wasn’t a lot of call for pretty dresses in my previous life.
“Come,” he says. “I need to clean you.”
“What?”
Sharp already has me by the back of the neck, and he is directing me out of the galley and to some other part of the ship.
I think it’s his room, because it’s much like the other spaces I’ve been in, but somehow even more sparse.
I don’t know how he’s managed to make a plain wall even more plain, but he has.
He slides open a partition revealing a small pool of steaming water.
“What’s this?”
“Humans like to wash in copious amounts of water. It reminds them of being in the womb. So I’m going to give you a bath.”
“They do? We’re not allowed to consume more than four gallons of water per day on the sky islands. I usually wash myself with a wipe and a sterilizer lamp.”
“Get in the bath,” he says.
When I don’t immediately get in, he picks me up and puts me in it. These aliens keep having a distinct physical advantage over me. Who knows how I’m going to overcome that when I break free and return to the overarching task of forging my own destiny in an uncaring universe.
The water engulfs my body, and I instantly feel a deep sense of calm.
Sharp picks up some foaming liquid and starts washing me with it, rubbing his lightly scaled palm over my body, following all my curves. I find my eyes halfway closing as he massages and cleans me.
I am being taken very good care of.
There’s a temptation to just let it happen. This is so nice, being fed, being snuggled, being washed, being fucked. It’s a dream come true, I suppose.
Each of these aliens has a slightly different approach to me, but all of them are working super hard to take care of me. I’ve never been looked after like this. I don’t think most people have been.
I close my eyes and let him wash me, until he is all the way inside me, his finger stroking in and out of my pussy with gentle strokes. Then my eyes fly open and my hand goes to his wrist.
“I intend to clean all of you,” he says. “You were well used last night.”
“It’s self-cleaning,” I say, or rather, moan. “I don’t need you to… mmmphhh fuckk.”
“What did you say?”
His finger is running around my clit in slow circles, and I am arching my back and trying to move toward it even more.
“You have this little pleasure bud that can be stimulated repeatedly,” Sharp tells me. “You can be made to orgasm over and over again. I think we will find that useful in managing you.”
He proves the point by making me come, water splashing out over the sides of the tub and being absorbed into little grates in the floor as he works his fingers in and around my pussy until I contort with need.
When I am finished orgasming, he pulls me out of the bath, towels me off, and puts the dress on me.
It fits pretty well, actually. It comes down to mid-thigh and clings to my curves.
There are boots, too. They’re the boots I came to space with, but they work.
Simple black knee-high boots are really universal.
“Cute,” Sharp says. “Today, you’ll come to the market with us. We need to restock some supplies before we depart the station.”
“Oh? Where will we be going after this?”
“We’re going to be looking to get some bounties handled,” Sharp says.
“Oh, we’re bounty hunters?”
“We are mercenaries,” he says, swatting my ass lightly. “You are our pet.”
We all end up back in the main lobby of the ship. It’s probably not called a lobby. Boss, Kronos, and Sharp are discussing what they need to get for the ship and for their missions. I listen in, but every time I seem to be too interested, they stop talking and remind me that I’m their pet.
“Do I also get a gun?”
“Pets don’t have weapons. We’re confiscating yours. You can rely on us.”
“Oh,” I say. “I can rely on you?”
“Of course.”
Of course fucking nothing. I met these creatures yesterday and they expect me to give them their full and total trust today? Madness by any name.
I am starting to think I’ve made a huge mistake.
Not being murdered by my boss is one advantage of being in alien territory, but being owned by aliens seems like it’s going to be, I don’t know, actually maybe kind of boring?
I’m not very interested in being told how to breathe.
I don’t want to be dressed. I have been independent for a long time, as independent as anyone could be on a dystopian planet full of floating islands.
They take me out with them to the station’s market, where stalls and small buildings are inhabited by aliens of various kinds selling wares also of various natures. It’s quite a busy, bustling place, and there is always an alien hand on me from one of the three of them.
I do not give them any trouble. I am far too interested in seeing what is happening, and what they are buying. Food and ammunition seems to be the order of the day. They have both carted back to the ship by runners.
They are all dressed in a way that screams, “I will kill you, and then my friend will kill you.”
Sharp is wearing a long black cloak with an interior lining that matches my dress.
He looks tall and intimidating and bad fucking ass.
I feel little tingles of excitement every time I look at him.
Kronos is wearing a sort of… what do they all those things.
Gambeson? It’s like a soft armor with chain over it.
It also looks hot. His hair flows in an impressive golden mane, and he draws eyes wherever he goes from male, female and other alien genders.
Boss, well, he’s boss. A pair of shiny leather-ish pants that probably aren’t actually leather given his history, unless they’re made from Harvester hide, and he’s good to go.
I am ushered between them, kept in the triangle space they naturally make when they walk.
They buy me treats here and there. I get some candy, because sugar is loved by almost everyone everywhere, I discover. Except the aliens who experience it as a powerful toxin.
It would be quite a nice outing, except for the fact that a human slave auction starts up. The women who were captured from Earth are shackled to moveable stages, which are pushed into place. An auctioneer begins to call out the lots.
I can’t pull my eyes away from the scene.
In a sea of aliens, the ladies look scared.
They are of all ages, most of them young and beautiful, but some more mature and beautiful.
The auctioneer makes a comment on the thick breasts of one lady, who blushes furiously as the green creature handles her as if he is entitled to do so.
“What are you doing, pet?”
Kronos notices that my attention is not on them anymore.
“We have to stop that,” I say.
“What do you mean?” Boss is looking at me with a curious expression.
“I want to help the other women escape the auction. If they’re going to go to food, if they’re going to be hurt, or eaten. I can’t let that happen.”
“You want us to interrupt a human auction backed by Sligtonians,” Sharp says.
“To free human females who are going to be vulnerable to exactly the same kinds of exploitation you faced, but will likely not be lucky enough to meet others capable of defending them. If we stop the auction, the likelihood of any of those women lasting more than three days is close to zero.”
“They’re being sold to breed, not to eat,” Boss says, as if that is some kind of good thing I can be grateful for and happy about. “Some of them will simply be companions. It’s quite a good deal, if you think about it.”
It’s not a good deal, but I’m not going to tell the Minotaur that he’s wrong. Every single one of these aliens has a super authoritarian complex. They don’t listen to what I think. They tell me what’s going to happen, and they think I’m just going to go along with it.
I fall silent and nod my head, and then a vendor asks them if they want bullets that are also knives, and they all turn to him.