Sold to the Alien Soldiers Page 2

  “I know this,” he snarled. “I devised the Gods-damn plan myself. Get to the point.”

  The advisor pauses. I can feel him stare at me. I want to shrink into nothingness.

  “There are some… beauties in your own household, sir. Why not choose thirty of them? Of those thirty, perhaps four will be sold – and let’s be honest, sir; you’ll never notice the difference, and I’ll find replacements for them quickly.”

  Dead silence fills the room. There are ten of us slaves working in the main room, including my best friend Danielle, and we’re all thinking the same thing…

  Please… Please, don’t pick me.

  The advisor was gutsy to make the suggestion. He can’t know if Peter will be furious at the idea of selling his own private stock of slaves, or if he’ll jump at the opportunity.

  My fears are realized when he chooses the later.

  “Very well. Very fucking well. Which of these sluts do you suggest?”

  I cringe, feeling the smile stretching across that bastard of an advisor’s lips. With horror, I watch out of the corner of my eye as he raises his hand and points straight at me.

  “Our intel showed that these particular Bullfrogs love women of the… ahem… curvy disposition. This one here? She’s a perfect specimen.”

  Peter sighs. I keep my eyes down as he turns and looks at me.

  “Dammit, I enjoyed having that one working for me. Nothing calms me quite like the sight of a perfect bottom.” He snaps his fingers. “Come here, slave.”

  I can do nothing but obey.

  Reluctantly, I step forward, clutching the duster as if there’s the vain possibility that it will offer me some kind of protection. Peter looks me up and down as I approach, his eyes lingering on my body.

  “Yes,” he nods. “She’s perfect – one of my favorites, too. Take her and just twenty others. I won’t lose my entire staff if the Bullfrogs decide they have taste for many such beauties.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Tsk. What a shame. The prices that species will offer are not enough to warrant losing such a beauty.”

  The first advisor, emboldened by these events, rubs his throat to get Peter’s attention.

  “Yes?” Peter snaps at him irritably.

  “Sir, there’s another matter. Three Aurelians have entered sub-space.”

  Hope flares up in my heart. If there are Aurelians coming down to the city of Lipa, Peter might be too afraid to host this planned slave auction.

  Even better, these Aurelians might come and save me altogether. It’s only a faint hope, but anything is better than thinking that my future will be spent serving a huge, warty Bullfrog for the rest of my life.

  A hint of fear flashes through Peter’s face – so quick that it’s barely perceptible, but I notice it. The man is strong, and it takes a lot to get him off balance. It gives me hope when I witness it.

  “Army?” Peter demands.

  The advisor gives a small smile, and my hopes crumble. He should be scared, not happy.

  “That’s the thing, sir. I believe they went Rogue. They’re not communicating on their regular scanner, but instead using sub-communications that can’t be traced by the Aurelian Empire. They’re offering a stripped Reaver – including the Orb that powers it – for a small fortune. Good negotiators. Permission to take possession?”

  Rogue Aurelians.

  My hopes disappear. Rogue Aurelians eschew their Empire’s covenant against slavery. They leave their Empire for one reason and one reason only – to own women.

  Peter grins. The slave auction and my potential fate as the toy of a Bullfrog has left his mind. Now, he’s suddenly focused on this new business potential.

  “Immediately! And see if you can get them to spend some of that cash back with us – they’ll drive the prices up at the slave auction if they bid – to the point where I’ll no longer care if I lose any of these wenches – or all of them.” He snorts. “Aurelians have deep pockets and deep desires, especially for virgin stock. You’re a virgin, aren’t you?”

  It takes me a second to realize the question is asked of me.

  My cheeks flush red as I notice Peter staring at me, and I nod shamefully, humiliation filling me.

  Peter purchased me when I was just eighteen, and in the two years since no man has dared go near his property. Sure, some of the guards like to whistle or click their tongues to show they want me – but there isn’t a man alive who’d risk getting his balls chopped off to have a go at my prized virginity.

  Peter himself views his slaves as walking, living art – and although the mobster has many flaws, he doesn’t rape us.

  Peter peruses me. I realize now he’s looking at me to determine the price he’ll get for me; no longer caring about my role in his manor.

  I suppose he’s got plenty of slaves to dust his furniture.

  “Good,” Peter eventually nods. “Now, back to work.”

  With my fate sealed, he walks away – and I’m left standing here.

  For three years, I’ve been owned by Peter Paradooli. To his credit, he’s never once touched me, or allowed anyone else to. Yes, I’m owned – but out here in the outskirts of the universe, there’s some protection in being owned by such a powerful man.

  But how long will I continue to be Peter Paradooli’s property? And what price will he need to let me go?

  Peter turns and stalks away, while the advisor who suggested this slave auction waits awkwardly behind, glaring at the slaves in the main hall. All of those poor souls try their best to appear smaller than they actually are.

  They can still avoid this fate – but not me. Now, whatever happens, I will be sold to the highest bidder in a spectacle designed to showcase Peter’s wealth to his new business partners.

  Suddenly, without warning, I throw up on the marble floor.

  The advisor who decided my fate opens his eyes wide in disgust.

  “Gods be damned!” He shakes his head. “Clean that up, wench! And if it happens again… Well, you won’t make it to the slave auction.”

  3

  Conan

  My knuckles are white on the triggers. I scan the empty space, searching for any movement among the billions of twinkling stars – almost twitching in anticipation.

  There!

  Something moves, and I fire before I can even register what it is...

  I blast an asteroid into nothingness.

  Evander yells from the pilot’s cockpit: “Easy, Conan. That could have been a friendly ship! We’re entering sub-space now – we need to keep our cool.”

  He could have telepathed those words to me – but he knew I needed to hear them out loud. Evander’s voice calms me… a little.

  He’s right, though. I could have killed an innocent with the fiery swathe of my Orb-Beam. We’re all running on adrenaline. None of us have slept since we watched our comrades die in the Scorp-infested caverns.

  I feel like I died, too. I’ve certainly lost my identity. Conan the Aurelian Warrior has been replaced by something primal – and I can feel in the auras of my battle-brothers that they’ve succumbed to those feral instincts as well.

  We’re all on edge, and we all have the same feeling of impending doom. There are so many risks facing us now.

  Too many risks.

  We’re just four days of skipping orb-shift travel away from the Aurelian Empire, but it might as well be a thousand. On the periphery of the Empire, the rule of law is gone. I’m no longer bound by the very same laws I’d spent my life respecting – the laws I’d even recently committed to enforcing during my hundred years of service.

  But all that is behind me now. When my blood-brothers and I fled from certain death – from watching our comrades be slaughtered all around us – we all experienced the same phenomenon.

  Ego death.

  Everything we’d been taught was ‘right’ had suddenly been flipped on its head. Our commander’s bravery wasn’t noble – it had just got our entire company killed. His pride wa
sn’t admirable – it had instead sent us into an engagement we couldn’t possibly have won. This notion of nobility, of ‘right’, had turned out to be a curse. All the tenants of the Aurelian Empire – everything we’d been raised to hold dear – had been revealed to be just empty promises; ringing hollow in the desolate brutality of the universe.

  I’d followed Evander’s command to run without a thought. He is the leader of our triad – it was his call to make – but to my shame, I didn’t even question it.

  I’m grateful to still be alive – but I’m glad that call will not be my burden to bear. I felt a deep guilt for abandoning the rest of our unit, but I was at least following orders. Evander made that decision – and he must feel the weight of it tenfold.

  I breathe in deeply and center myself. There’s no use dwelling on the past, and Evander’s leadership is not in question. Just look at the deal he just negotiated with the humans in this sector. He made it sound real. He made them believe him.

  The sub-coms suddenly light up. The channel is crackly and full of static, relying on a radio signal.

  Evander responds to the signal: “Go.”

  “We agree to your terms.” It’s the humans that Evander was negotiating with. They sound confident – arrogant, even. “The coordinates to land are 56009-2329. There’ll be a warehouse. Please turn weapons signals off before you land.”

  “Agreed.”

  There’s a pause. Then the human continues. “There is another matter. Sir Peter Paradooli is an esteemed member of our high society. He wishes to extend an invitation to an auction he’s holding. Now that you are no longer… constrained by the rules of the Aurelian Empire, he wondered if you might wish to… trade in the more exquisite pleasures of the flesh.”

  My heart beats. Not a one of us has tasted a human woman before. It’s only after their hundred years of service to the Empire that most Aurelians have the means to start building the vast harems of human females for which our people are famous.

  Infamous, even.

  “Perhaps,” Evander muses non-committedly. “We’ll consider attending.” Then he presses the button on the comms unit to cut transmission.

  Conan’s hands are shaking. “You’re seriously considering attending? This auction he spoke of – to invest in the pleasures of the flesh. He meant slavery, Evander. We can’t fall so far. We’ve gone Rogue – we’ve abandoned our hundred years of service – but there are still standards. We’re not slavers.”

  Evander turns to us both as he pilots towards the atmosphere.

  “We make our own destiny now, brothers. The rules of the Empire no longer bind us – and they no longer stand in our way either.”

  “But to turn our back on what’s right, Evander. What’s decent.”

  “We decide what’s right and decent now, Conan – and then we enforce it. This is a planet of slavers and criminals – and we must at least appear to condone their ways.”

  Conan’s face contorts into a snarl, but Evander holds up a reassuring hand.

  “We must appear to condone it,” he growls. “But then we will tame this planet. We will make it ours – and then it is up to us to decide what’s right, and what’s unforgivable.”

  The sincerity in Evander’s eyes is clear, and Conan nods – getting it.

  Evander isn’t suggesting that we abandon all sense of right and wrong, and embrace the darkness that other Rogue Aurelians have done.

  But in order to make a future for ourselves, now that our past is left burned and smoldering behind us, we might have to appear to be sympathetic to those whose morality disgusts us.

  After all – you can’t cut the head off a snake unless you get within reach of its fangs.

  4

  Ashley

  Danielle is quivering. Her bright red curls tremble. I wish there was something one of us could do, but we all feel the same horror. All twenty of us girls are waiting in a room that I’ve never been allowed in before. It’s furnished in rich mahogany – it feels and smells like old money. All twenty of us – hand-selected women from Peter’s staff – are standing aware that very soon, we might be sold into slavery.

  The door of a side room opens and Tracey, one of Peter’s newest acquisitions, steps out.

  She’s changed. She’s been beautified – adorned with clothes and makeup that have turned her from a possession to be looked at to one that invites to be touched. I recognize the treacherous fabric of the light, orange-colored pleasure dress she wears; fabric that hugs every contour of her body and teases inexorably.

  The beautician responsible – a woman in her forties with long, ebony hair that gleams in the firelight of the room – points towards me next. I freeze at the accusing finger. I can’t even stand up from the couch I was sitting on.

  Danielle reaches over, gently touching my thigh. Her comforting touch centers me.

  Danielle. She’s as close as I have to a friend in Peter’s house. Will we ever see each other again? What if one of us is sold, but the other isn’t?

  There’s a sickly silence in the room as I stand up on wobbly legs. Reluctantly, I walk to the side room that Tracey has just emerged from. The raven-haired beautician follows me, and she doesn’t smile as I’m directed to sit on a raised chair in front of a mirror.

  “No,” the beautician snaps. “First, the dress.”

  My lip trembles. I’ve heard about pleasure dresses, but never been forced to wear one before. The concept is that they turn your own body into an enemy against you – betraying you by making every act – every movement – tantalizingly pleasurable; no matter how angry, humiliated, or frightened you are.

  They’re called pleasure dresses – but they’re a slave’s garb. They’re chosen by slave traders to force their unwilling female subjects to appear aroused at all times.

  The worst part? In this room there’s an entire rack of shimmering pleasure dresses; meaning that Peter had always had the means to buy and sell a litany of women. He might not have ever touched any of us – his household staff – inappropriately; but that didn’t make him much less of a monster.

  I stand up and step in front of the row of dresses. The beautician eyes my body shape, her cold gaze measuring my ample curves like a robot. Eventually, she picks out a long, flowing dress and hands it to me.

  The moment I touch the material, I know I’m doomed.

  It electrifies my body. A shudder runs down my spine as I feel the impossibly soft fabric. It teases my fingers, stimulating the entire flesh of my hand, moving and contorting as if it has a mind of its own.

  I know there’s no use begging. There’s no mercy in the beautician’s coldly-dark, brown eyes. She’s simply looking at me, waiting – as if I’m livestock, not a human being.

  There’s nothing I can do. I hang the dress across the back of the chair and strip down to my undergarments. I reach for the dress when the beautician snaps angrily: “No! Take it all off.”

  I shudder. I’m being forced to strip down to nothing, and the entire time this cold-eyed stranger is watching me – judging me. There’s no room for privacy. No room for dignity. She’s analyzing me like a robot, as if running a report comparing me against what she considered to be her ‘worldly’ standards of beauty.

  Eventually, without a trace of emotion in her voice, the woman remarks: “You’re lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  It’s a bold move for me to sound so scathing – especially naked, in front of a woman who works for my ‘owner’ – but I can’t control myself.

  “How can you consider me lucky?”

  The beautician barely registers my anger, and coldly answers: “You’re lucky because Toads generally prefer slimmer women. These Bullfrogs may be different, but they’ll not desire a woman of your… generosity in the same manner as Aurelians.”

  Generosity?

  Curvy, she means. That’s certainly a word that’s been used to describe me plenty of times.

  But do my womanly curves make me lucky? Perhaps so, if I av
oid being sold to a Bullfrog or Toad. But what about an Aurelian?

  I shudder at the thought.

  The beautician ignores my response, and continues to explain how ‘lucky’ I am.

  “Aurelian men are addicted to the attributes associated with fertility. Those hips of yours? That bottom? Those tits?” She snorts – the first sign of emotion I’ve seen from her. “They get one look at you, and those haughty bastards will be lost.”

  I say nothing. I can’t believe any scenario that involves me being sold – like property, or livestock – can constitute me being ‘lucky.’

  But the beautician continues:

  “If you are lucky – blessed by the Gods, perhaps – it’ll be those three Rogue Aurelians who buy you.” She sniffs disdainfully. “You’ll have a better fate that at the hands of a Bullfrog.”

  I shudder again – the ‘hands’ of a Bullfrog would be cold, slimy and sticky.

  So, perhaps that makes me lucky – but oh Gods….

  Those Aurelians have been invited to the slave auction? When they get one look at me…

  It’s not arrogance that makes me think that. I don’t view myself as especially attractive – despite what the beautician and even Peter himself has said. But I do know the tastes of Aurelian men – after all, their insatiable appetite for fertile woman is near-legendary.

  I might not consider myself a beauty – but I know I’ll suit the taste of an Aurelian.

  I swallow as I imagine being owned by not one, but three of those towering, haughty, near-perfect Aurelian males.

  Their species stands nearly seven-feet-tall – or sometimes more. Almost all of their race have enormous, rippling muscles and perfect physiques that no human bodybuilder could ever match. There might be a few specimens of human-kind that stand seven-feet-tall – athletes for most part – but none of them have the same proportions as an Aurelian; five hundred pounds of slab-like muscle that can move quicker than a lightning bolt.

  I’ve seen a holo-vid of Aurelians in battle – they were born for war.