Buccaneers: Imperium's Reach #01

Emma's jump was perfectly timed, the hatch closing over streaming red locks of hair as her feet hit the corridor, the sound of the uncooperative stardrive now muffled as the silver-jumpsuit-clad buccaneer smoothly transformed her landing into a full-speed sprint towards the bridge.

"We'll be needing Plan B now!"

The walls around her rumbled as a third hit rocked the Silk Shadow. The first hit had taken down their shields, the second hit had accounted for the stardrive that Emma had just spent the last few minutes futilely trying to fix.

"Hopefully, Plan B didn't involve using the guns, because that hit just knocked them offline!" was the discouraging reply from the privateer's bridge.

Not that a pair of plasma railguns were (a) going to hold off the combined missile battery of the Dominator-class patrol cruiser currently sitting on their asses, or (b) be any threat to the cruiser's hull such that it might try and find easier prey elsewhere.

Emma arrived at the cramped bridge of the two-woman privateer and slid into the co-pilot's seat next to a black-haired, ebony-skinned beauty whose piercing green eyes could normally have had their way with any man, but were currently proving completely ineffectual against the misbehaving controls on her console.

Emma squinted at the viewscreen.

"Any chance of outrunning them at sublight speed?" she ventured, knowing the answer already but not wishing to face up to it just yet.

"The patrol cruiser? Maybe, if we're lucky and it's being piloted by some rookie fresh out of Academy. The squadron of starfighters its captain could easily deploy to chase us down instead? No way in hell."

The Silk Shadow shook again as a fourth blast came perilously close to separating the starboard thruster from the rest of the ship. "Jess!" Emma yelped, as she grabbed hold of the navigator's console and about eight different sensors started flashing critical alerts on a display overhead.

Emma steadied herself and then looked enquiring at her partner, Jessica. "Okay, okay, so what assets have we got?"

Jessica swung her controls hard to the right and was rewarded by the sight of two more missiles sailing past them harmlessly to the left on a rear viewscreen. Without taking her attention off the flight controls she quickly listed their remaining assets in what Emma thought was far too brief a statement for her liking.

"Three tractor-beam generators, for if we lose our minds and want to get closer to that cruiser, and two Turgenian laser pistols guaranteed to end the miserable world of whichever Imperial soldier pokes his head through the airlock first!"

"Great, and what about the miserable worlds of the nineteen other soldiers likely to follow the first schmuck through the airlock?"

Jessica shrugged. "I suspect their miserable worlds will continue to be miserable, only less so in comparison to what ours will become!"

"Not super encouraging there, Jess. And liabilities?"

"Well, there's this ship for starters!" Jess waved a hand at the controls and threw the now-sluggish ship into a series of manoeuvres that barely evaded the next wave of missiles. "And the fact that we're probably about two volleys away from becoming a rapidly expanding ball of space dust, and" at this point, Jessica took time out from muttering curses at her controls to throw an accusing stare at her red-haired alabaster-skinned partner, "the fact that you chose to broadcast that video of the duchess naked and tied spread-eagle to the table across six different inter-system channels!"

"We don't know that's why they're after us!" Emma started to protest, but Jessica just rolled her eyes.

"Yes, because, Empress Rochfelle is well-known for letting things like that slide." She retorted with what Emma felt was an unconstructive level of sarcasm.

"She had it co..." Emma tried to reply, but resulting cacophony of complaints from the alarms and sensors caused by a fifth explosion cut her off.

"... And if you're wondering what that flashing red light is that's fifth in from the left on the second row of that display," Jessica said with exaggerated calmness as she threw her arms up in the air, "that would be our sublight engines deciding they need a rest after a hard day's work and going on a break..."

Emma squared her shoulders determinedly and gave Jessica a fierce look that said, "They may seem to have us beat, but now they have to deal not just with stopping the Silk Shadow, but coming in here and dealing with the two most kick-ass, sharp-shooting, quick-witted buccaneer babes this side of the Rift!".

Reaching across to a compartment next to her seat, Emma retrieved a sleek, short-barreled laser pistol with one hand, while extending her other hand across to give Jessica's left shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"We've got this!" Emma said, forcing bravado into her voice, as the sound of groaning metal echoed through the ship, signalling that the patrol cruiser had latched on to the Silk Shadow with its own tractor beam. "They're not going to know what hit 'em!"

****

"Just for the record," Jessica said dryly, as she experimented with the binds on her wrists and ankles that kept her arms and legs pinned to the chair in the interrogation room, "following up `You'll never take us alive you fuckers!' as they cut through the airlock with `Meep, we surrender!` at the first sign of an imperial suppression rifle poking through the hole, was one hell of a tonal shift..."

Emma clenched her jaw. "It was a strategic move to throw them off-guard!" Emma also twisted in her bindings but to no avail. "Besides, discretion is the better part of valour, and all of that."

Jessica looked down at her own body and then glanced quizzically at her best and only real friend in the Universe. Technically, the two women still cohabited with their jumpsuits in the same room, but distressingly and, perhaps more pertinently, undressingly, the jumpsuits were piled up neatly on a table to the side. Instead, the two women were left in bras and panties, bound with their legs open and facing a long mirror that undoubtedly had a viewing audience on the other side. "What a great time for you to learn about discretion!" Jessica mused. Emma's underwear was green while Jessica's was scarlet red, but both women felt a little blue about their current situation.

"Look, the Duchess had it coming, right?" Emma fired back. "She was being a bitch, and needed taking down a peg or two."

"Or three, or four, or..." Jessica interrupted airly, as Emma began to launch on a rant.

"You know what kind of woman she was! How she treated her subjects on Artion!" Emma fired up. "You're telling me she didn't deserve to be stripped of all her fancy finery, financed undoubtedly by funds from slave labour?!"

"Wasn't exactly the job we were hired for was it though? `Deliver the duchess to the rebels so she can be ransomed.`"

"We did deliver the duchess to the rebels! They did ransom her!" Emma protested.

"I think they were somewhat expecting her to be slightly more dressed upon delivery and slightly less broadcasted-to-the-entire Imperium-while-gagged-naked-and-bound before they'd had a chance to start ransom negotiations."

"Well, that's on them for not being more specific."

Jessica was about to retort when the doors to their room slid open with a sigh and a tall thin man dressed entirely in black and with a humourless smile entered, bringing his own chair which he placed on the floor in front of the semi-exposed women, the chair legs causing a shark clang to echo between the grey metal walls of the inhospitable interrogation room. The man folded himself into the seat, and his smile edged up a couple of levels in humourlessness as two dead eyes casually took a stroll up and down both women's beautiful underwear-clad bodies. Emma and Jessica looked back in mute defiance.

Eventually, he broke the silence with "You are Jessica Scandar and Emma Warsmith. Pirates. Kidnappers. Rebels."

Jessica and Emma both looked at each other and shrugged. "I think the term you're looking for is `Buccaneers`," Jessica replied casually, "kind of sounds better to us."

The tall, thin man parted his lips to reveal two rows of shark-like teeth, which somehow achieved what Emma thought would have been impossible and made her nostalgic for the smile he'd worn when entering the room.

"You do not deny capturing the Her Grace, Duchess Annabelle of Artion, rightful ruler of the subjects of Artion, the niece of the Empress herself, glory be to the Grand High Protector of the Faith and Eternal Leader of the Imperium. You do not deny subjecting the Duchess' body to the most cruel and vile of public humiliations?"

Jessica took another look down at her bra-clad breasts. Two perfectly formed c-cups covered in scarlet red lingerie would normally be a good means of winning over a man. However, their interrogator seemed to be the type to gain arousal from altogether more sinister activities.

"Given the treatment you've dished out to us and our ship so far, I'm going to hazard a guess that trivial questions like innocence or guilt aren't going to play a major role in deciding what happens next. So sure, why not, we publicly revealed the Duchess to be the woman she really is, an ugly, conniving, vicious bitch who..."

The man's expression didn't change, but he casually leaned forward and slapped Jessica hard across her face, the sound of the slap suddenly filling the room, causing the dark-skinned beauty to gasp and grimace.

"You will tell us who hired you and where we can find them, eventually. No matter how long you try to hold out, you will tell us in the end." The man said, matter-of-factly.

Emma suddenly piped up. "Oh, sorry, I feel like there's been a huge misunderstanding here. You're like, expecting us to say 'Go fuck yourself tall, thin man who looks like his parents' disappointment in him is matched only by that of any unfortunate woman who's had to share a bed with him! We'll never tell you who hired us!'"

Emma shook her head earnestly as the man's sneering gaze settled on her.

"When in fact, we're going to be like `Go fuck yourself tall, thin man who looks like what you'd expect a Roygardian space worm to resemble if it were to actually regress on its evolutionary path! If you let us go, we'll more than happily cooperate!'"

"Emma!" Jessica admonished her, while still feeling out her stinging cheek with her tongue.

"No, no." Emma said, "Look, we aren't rebels. We're just two women hired to do a job. We've got no beef in this game and nothing against the Imperium!"

The man looked back and forth between his two captives. However, as Emma started to speak again, he acknowledged her only by reaching around his back, retrieving a small black ball gag from a pocket, and roughly shoving it into Emma's mouth before she had time to properly protest. The redhead struggled helplessly, unable to do anything but move her head with her limbs bound tightly to her chair. And no matter how much she shook her head, she couldn't stop the man securing the ball gag behind her, and her cries of "stop it!" quickly became muffled, hard-to-distinguish protests. Emma glared at the man as he stood back to admire his handiwork and pouted.

"You will... eventually... tell us what we need to know." The man repeated, taking special pleasure in enunciating the word "eventually". He snapped his fingers, and the door to the room slid open again. A man and a woman, similarly dressed to their interrogator, entered and quickly took their station directly in front of the bound prisoners.

"Prepare them."

Jessica started to protest as the new man in front of her brandished a pair of scissors and made quick work of cutting the front clasp in her bra. On the one hand, she could breathe a little more freely now that her chest wasn't contained by the bra, on the other hand, it was an entirely different kind of freedom that she actually needed. Her protests only led to the same outcome as Emma's though, and soon both women were sporting matching black ballgags while what little was left of the dignity was stripped from them.

Both bras were now on the floor, and two pairs of heaving breasts were on full display as the two newcomers now leaned down and started their scissor work on the hapless buccaneers' panties.

Emma tried to twist out of the way with what little room for movement the bindings allowed, but a sharp slap of the scissors' cold metal across her exposed thigh made her rethink that strategy. Grumbling through the ball gag, she instead grudgingly arched her hips as the female guard silently commanded, allowing the woman to make quick snips on both sides of the green panties, and then pull them from between her legs, now completely exposing her womanhood. A tuft of well-trimmed red hair guarded her ladyparts like you might say a golden retriever guarded a house - invitingly and with no sense of security.

Emma looked across at Jessica just in time to see the male guard similarly relieve her friend of her scarlet red panties and slap her on her exposed pussy for good measure. Jessica grunted and futilely tried to kick out, only causing the guard to laugh harshly. Emma gave him a death stare. Only she was allowed to handle Jessica's pussy, so that particular indignity would need paying back tenfold.

The guards stepped back and the two naked women seethed in their chairs as they wondered who was monitoring them through the mirror and what next steps were being planned for them. They did not need to wait for long. A remote-controlled hover tray was sent into the room, holding a long-sleek cylindrical device and a dozen circular patches connected to a small bright silver block.

Emma and Jessica looked at each other in confusion.

The male guard reached for the circular patches and lurched towards Jessica's bound and defenceless body. Jessica grumbled through her gag as he industriously began to apply the patches all over his body. For reasons Jessica didn't grasp or appreciate, this required the man to grope her exposed breasts repeatedly and fondle her inner thighs. Jessica managed to get an approximation of "fuck you!" through the ball gag but otherwise had to just sit there as a dozen patches were applied all across her body, including two on her nipples and one on her womanhood. The patches all had thin wires that connected back to the silver block, and it didn't take a galaxy-class engineer to figure out what that was for.

Emma watched helplessly on at her partner's growing indignity for a moment but was then distracted by the sudden sensation of the female guard inserting the sleek silver cylinder up into her pussy. Emma's eyes shot open in surprise and she yelped through her own gag, shifting uncomfortably as the guard made sure the cylinder was in all the way, before sinking back onto the chair, her eyes a fluid, ever-changing storm of defiance and fear.

Finally, the guards stood back and the tall thin man returned back to his spot directly in front of his captives.

"I have a 100% track record of captives _eventually_ giving us what we want." There was that over-emphasis on "eventually" again. "And today we will use some simple but effective motivation."

He laughed mirthless momentarily and then produced a hitherto hidden small remote control from the hover tray before dismissing the tray to a corner of the room.

"I sense that you are both lovers. Well, dirty pirate whores to be precise. Nevertheless, I detect an emotional attachment between the two of you."

Jessica and Emma exchanged a look of trepidation.

"Oh," the man said, waving the remote in front of them in an off-hand way, "don't get me wrong. I couldn't be happier that you two can't control your filthy, sinful, lesbian ways. It permits me to practice a technique I haven't had the opportunity to try out for a while now."

His smile ratcheted up another notch, in an inverse relationship to the two buck-naked buccaneers' mood.

"A simple matter of self-control, of which I know neither of you possess, and mutual punishment, of which I know you both deserve in vast quantity."

The man pointed at Emma's pussy, which still uncomfortably housed the cylindrical object that Emma had now guessed to be a vibrator.

"A press of a button, and your vibrator starts. You will fight it at first, I'm sure, but not for long. No, not for long. It will only be a matter of minutes and you will feel your arousal build. Your climax crescendoing until it sweeps over your body uncontrollably."

Emma narrowed her eyes.

"And that... that is where you come in." The tall thin man turned to face Jessica. "When she orgasms, you will feel the first electric shocks from the patches. You will of course fight them too, initially, but again only for a short while. Then you will arch and twist and try to escape the patches. Struggle as you might though, it will be pointless. And as you arch and twist and contort yourself against your bindings, those very movements will cause her vibrator to increase in intensity."

Jessica and Emma both gasped through their gags.

"And so the circle will continue. Climax, shock, climax, shock. Each more intense than the last. You," he drawled, pointing at Emma, "will know that every arousal you feel will cause your partner pain, while you," he continued, now pointing at Jessica, "will know that every time you react, you set your partner on another cycle. Over and over and over again, until - or indeed if - I choose to stop it."

Jessica and Emma both had one more go at tugging at their bindings, with exactly the same outcome as the previous half-dozen attempts. They slumped back in their chairs and tried to look like the man didn't scare them.

"When we speak again, you will desperately want to please me. To hear my voice as it thanks you for your information. You will crave my good graces and do anything to make me happy. You will beg for forgiveness for your whore ways and thank me for the lessons you are about to be taught."

Flaring their nostrils, Jessica and Emma snorted derisively, more to buck each other up than anything else, to let each other know that no matter what happened, they were together and would stick together.

The man laughed again, the harsh sound ringing in their ears even as he turned to leave. The guards moved forward one last time and roughly shifted the chairs so that Emma and Jessica now faced each other. Then, as the tall thin man causally flicked a button on the remote over his shoulder, the three captors left the room, the door slid shut with a sigh, and the quiet hum of the vibrator started up as, for the second time today, a "meep!" escaped from Emma's lips.

****

They were now approaching their fourth climax. Emma's body glistened with sweat and she slumped forward as much as the wrist and ankle bindings allowed.

She had resisted it for so long, for what had felt like hours. Time was hard to measure in this room, under these circumstances though. Maybe it had been minutes, maybe only even seconds. No, surely not seconds, not after the struggle she'd fought. The first climax had been sudden. She'd gritted her teeth, ignored her body, denied herself the pleasure of coming for what had felt like an eternity, felt her senses scream at the constant attentions of the vibrator but nevertheless closed her ears to such demands. She'd alternated between closing her eyes and then opening them, staring into Jessica's aching beautiful green eyes, letting the knowledge that Jessica would feel pain fuel her resistance. Eventually, the walls had been breached though. The moan, muffled as it was by the gag, was quickly followed by Emma throwing her head back and arching her spine. Her breasts, small yet firm, and with two perfect areole that were now diamond-hard, pushed out and she ground her hips and pelvis into the chair, feeling the humming vibrator shift ever so slightly. The climax swept over her body like a tsunami, and her eyes rolled back in her head.