Background
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By the 24th century, advancing technology has enabled a human diaspora throughout space. Planets orbiting remote stars are licensed to large corporations, who develop the world to suit their needs. The eagerness to turn investment into profit means that hastily-built settlements are rapidly populated by a combination of adventurers and those who have been dispossessed of their homes on Earth. Added to this group are the growing number of Earth's undesirables who find their name added to some arbitrary blacklist. The various agencies on Earth regularly round up political dissenters and others who annoy the ruling elite. Few of those accused of dissent will receive any form of judicial hearing or trial. They are quickly and quietly transported to one of the more remote sectors of human occupied space where few laws exist.
The settlements in the Tenth sector of human occupied space, are little better than squalid ghettos, with residents enduring a subsistence level of life little different from medieval serfdom. Unsurprisingly, the Tenth sector settlements are a popular destination to send those banished from Earth. However, a combination of corporate devotion to profit, widespread corruption, and general incompetence, threaten the very existence of those worlds as they struggle for survival. The ores and chemicals mined and manufactured in the Tenth sector are shipped to lucrative markets, but very little of the money generated finds its way back to those living in the Tenth sector. Perhaps that is what attracts the barbarian raiders from neighbouring sectors. They are like vultures waiting to pick the bones of the nearly-dead. To those on Earth and the core worlds of the First and Second sectors, residents of the Tenth sector are considered to be little better than vermin. Hence the lack of any serious action to stop the barbarian raiders from the rogue Thirteenth and Fourteenth sectors.
Part 1: The Journey Begins
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Chapter 1: Lorna CB351286: Departure
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"You are required to eat," says android DGS63. "Failure to keep yourself healthy will result in severe punishment."
Its words are addressed to several of the other women, but they make Lorna sit up with a jolt. It's a firm reminder of her... their... predicament. Lorna is locked in the hold of a converted space freighter, Dog Star Six, with fifteen other young women. Lorna looks towards Caitlin, who simply murmurs 'what did the stupid fools expect'. The hunger strike orchestrated by Tamarah ends as quickly as it began. A sharp pulse through the control collars of the offenders soon brought them into line.
Two months ago, Lorna's life had been very different, although not necessarily better. Her rebellion against the corrupt corporate system had been effectively stopped two years earlier by an increase in the already long hours she had to work in the factory. Despite regular rumours of barbarian raids and tales of plundering and kidnapping, Lorna's crippling workload didn't give her time to worry about events farther afield. Besides, she always thought Cerberus was safe from attack. Deep inside the Tenth sector, Cerberus is a long way from the more lucrative targets preferred by barbarian raiders. Cerberus's corporate overlords told the settlers that the sector's sentry drones would repel any attack. They didn't. That false sense of security was shared by everyone living on Cerberus and its neighbouring worlds. It's an error for which many hapless Tenth sector settlers have now paid for with their lives. Perhaps they shouldn't have so readily dismissed the rumours.
Like all citizens of corporate controlled worlds, Lorna's family name was replaced with a serial number when she arrived on Cerberus. That was eight years ago, when Lorna was just fourteen. The 'CB' prefix in Lorna's serial number identifies her new home planet, and the digits correspond to her assigned Cerberus citizenship number. Only those living on Earth, or one of the 'core' worlds of the inner sectors, are allowed to retain their hereditary family names.
Until recently, the periodic barbarian raids into the Tenth sector were confined to the sparsely populated mining asteroids on the fringe, well away from where Lorna lived. The raiders had never previously attacked settlements as large as Andromeda or Cerberus. Although Caitlin lived on a neighbouring planet to Lorna, they had both grown up listening to cautionary tales of barbarian raiders' lust for loot and slaves. Lurid tales of ruthlessness and brutality. The stories both scared and excited them. After all, they were just stories. Stories their parents told them when they were younger to make them behave.
Lorna could easily have been mown down next to her murdered family and friends. However, the raiders obviously thought a pretty twenty-two year old woman was worth ravishing first. Lorna was dragged into the building the raiders used as a barracks for the four day duration of their raid. A control collar was placed around Lorna's neck, making escape impossible and any resistance on her part painful, but conversely rewarding compliance by injecting aphrodisiac drugs through the tiny needles in the collar. The effect of the aphrodisiac drugs made the brutal experience tolerable at the time, but sickened and terrified Lorna once the effect of the drugs wore off. During her ordeal, Lorna was joined by other male and female captives, and they were passed between raiders of both genders like whores. All three of Lorna's holes were well used during the four day ordeal, and her clothes reduced to pitiful rags. Lorna acquired more bruises and welts than she cared to count.
However, Lorna survived the ordeal and she didn't waste time in useless self pity. Despite the horrific brutality, the ordeal was no worse than Lorna had previously experienced on Cerberus. There are no laws on Cerberus protecting citizens against sexual assault. Wild drug fuelled parties invariably got out of hand, and then the law of the jungle applied... the strong preyed on the weak. It would be a mistake to think all sexual assaults were men attacking women. Far from it. Lorna is no shrinking violet when it comes to satisfying her sexual needs. In Lorna's case, her taste is for rough lesbian sex as several of her former peers could testify.
Lorna's resilience at the hands of the raiders must have impressed the barbarian leader. She considered Lorna to be valuable enough to justify hauling her across space to the Thirteenth sector's illegal slave markets. The other captives in the barracks weren't so lucky. Their bodies were left to rot alongside those killed in the initial assault. Lorna hopes that enough of the settlers on Cerberus escaped the attack and will return to give the dead a decent burial. She knows that Cerberus's corporate overlords won't be so considerate.
Two weeks later, Caitlin and Lorna, along with scores of other captured women from various sources, were placed on the auction block on a planet Lorna had never heard of before, and sold. The degrading process was mercifully short, although none of the women liked being examined as though we were so much prime meat. Their most private parts were fondled and examined in the most intimate detail. At the time Lorna had no idea who had purchased Caitlin and her, and both women had already learned that asking questions earned them a beating. A few extra welts to those Lorna gained on Cerberus didn't seem to detract potential buyers. For nearly a week after their sale Caitlin and Lorna were kept in a large cage with new control collars around their necks. One by one fourteen other young women joined them in the cage. They are now Lorna's and Caitlin's travelling companions. Only after the sixteen captives were all marched onto a converted space freighter, Dog Star Six, did the women learn that they had been purchased by a local chieftain as a gift to Malik. A gift to prove the chieftains's fealty to the leader of a much feared rogue organisation battling for control of the more 'civilised' Fifth sector.
To Lorna's surprise, some of her travelling companions think they are fortunate. Lorna supposes that they might be considered lucky, compared to many of the alternative fates for a young slave woman. The Thirteenth sector abounds with seedy brothels and iniquitous sex dens where the most perverted desires can be satisfied at a modest price. The slave markets exist primarily to satisfy the voracious appetite of the brothels and sex dens for fresh talent.
Lorna doesn't feel lucky. Several, like Adalhia, are still struggling with their grief. In Adalhia's case, her refusal to satisfy one of her assailants on Pandora resulted in her having to witness her sister's horrific execution. Adalhia readily joined the hunger strike, in the hope that she'll quickly join her family in the afterlife. But the subterfuge was quickly discovered. All they achieved was to draw the attention of the android overseeing the women in the ship's hold. That's when Lorna is reminded that she and the others no longer have any control over their lives. They are slaves. Their entire existence will be determined by a powerful man whom they may never meet.
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Chapter 2: Lorna CB351286: First encounter
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Lorna's quarters on the Dog Star Six consists of a narrow bed with a small overhead locker. Her nearest neighbours are across the narrow aisle and at the head and foot of her bed. The dormitory module, as the quarters are called, contains sixteen beds laid out in two lines of eight head-to-toe beds, either side of an aisle. A pair of net curtains drawn around the three open sides of her bed are the only privacy offered. A second passenger module, about three times the size of the dormitory module, provides kitchen and bathroom facilities, as well as a multi-purpose area for recreation and dining. The entrances to the two modules open onto a circular atrium, with a vertical ladder providing access to the deck levels above and below their quarters. While the women are allowed to roam the ship, all sensitive areas are securely locked behind remotely controlled steel doors. Lorna has so far counted five androids watching over the women, and crewing the ship.
The women are informed that it will take nine weeks for Dog Star Six to reach its destination. The spaceship has obviously been refurbished, and its human crew replaced by androids controlled by a relatively modern Artificial Intelligence. To Lorna, that makes sense. No human crew would be eager to smuggle an illegal cargo of slaves halfway across human occupied space, to a destination that nobody in their right mind would voluntarily travel.
The relative lack of entertainment is an issue resolved early in the development of space travel, well before the invention of hyper-fast drives that shortened long distance journeys to weeks rather than years. Aphrodisiac compounds that boost both men's and women's sex drive are inserted into the food cubes. The theory is that having sex often enough will make people more tolerant towards the lack of other entertainment. Years of studying the effects space travel has on humans has shown the theory to have merit. The food cubes on Dog Star Six are all laced with an aphrodisiac compound, so it isn't long before all sixteen women feel the need to satisfy a sexual urge.
