Cargo

Synopsis: a smuggler is woken from cryosleep unexpectedly and comes face to face with his cargo.

Thanks to Boris Ludmenkov on the mcforum for editing and suggestions. This story draws loose inspiration from Before the Storm by Corrupting Power, Firefly, and Children of Time.

Extra warning beyond the usual for breathplay.

Darian manoeuvred stiffly through the cramped corridor of the Sariyah 2, the fog of cryo-sleep still clinging to the valleys of his consciousness. Having being awoken on schedule by the ship’s computer over an hour ago, the lingering effects of being in the pod were a worrying symptom of its degradation that he should have been paying more attention to. But Darian had more important things on his mind. Entering the cargo bay, he glanced at the wall terminal, which confirmed that the S2 was in position. He called out an instruction to the ship, “engage cargo clamps, bring it aboard.” When nothing happened, he stabbed the command into the terminal. Another thing that was breaking on this old bucket.

He felt the vibration of the slowly operating clamps through the ship’s hull, and the slight acceleration of station-keeping. Before long the airlock’s indicator came on red, accompanied by muffled whirring and hissing, a subtle thud, then green. A tap on the terminal opened the inner doors, and another initiated the cargo lift to haul the crate inside. Darian noted immediately what the crate was: a portable cryo-pod. As usual for him and most in his line of work, he hadn’t known what he was picking up until it was onboard. He floated over to take a look. These things were only used for one very illegal purpose, as any regular traveller through the stars could use a ship-board chamber, so they were always something of a jury-rigged job, so he wanted to inspect it before flying away. The surface of the pod was grey plastic, a thin black line showing where it could open up to reveal whoever was inside. A rudimentary status read-out claimed that the occupant was alive and healthy, and had been in there for 17 Astaran years, helpfully equating this to 21 solar.

As Darian followed the pod to its bay - thankfully the ship responded to his instructions for moving it - he couldn’t help but speculate who was inside. He tried not to think about such things, since it invariably led to discomfort that made it harder to complete the job, but the questions asked themselves. There was generally no point in shipping regular slaves this way - the only reason was for high value individuals being sent long distances to someone who wanted that particular person. It wasn’t always immoral, actually, depending on where you stood politically; fugitives could be and were shipped this way to avoid detection.

Reaching the berth, Darian connected power, backup life-support and data lines up before returning to the bridge to run further checks and get them underway. Tied down in his chair, the ship’s own diagnostics communicated with the pod to give him a read-out. He swallowed hard when he saw what the computer showed him, and tried not to think about what his cargo’s fate might be. Maybe she’s some rebel leader’s daughter he thought. The display showed him a rotating picture of her, clad in a tight, anonymous shipsuit and with a generic hairstyle it had made up. If the diagnostics were accurate, she was incredibly beautiful: blonde hair, refined features, busty. Darian swallowed again. There were no problems indicated - although the computer did note some unidentifiable objects inside the pod, they were probably just personal effects and nothing to worry about - so he executed the next pre-programmed step in his itinerary. It’d be another 40 years of real time until they reached the drop-off point, but he wouldn’t be worrying about her for any of that. He unstrapped himself and trudged under the gravity of the acceleration burn - still a little stiff - back to his pod. He really should get it overhauled at the next opportunity, he thought as he climbed in. You didn’t tend to notice bad cryo-chamber malfunctions, but that was of course because you tended to just never get out of a broken one.

He blinked, wondering what had happened. He tried to remember what he’d just been thinking about and failed. He tried to stretch his aching arms and also failed - they weren’t doing what he asked of them. He finally realised he had been woken up from cryo-sleep and his body, unmoving for forty years, needed a little time and a lot of recovery drugs before it would work again. His brain worked out that he was looking up from the autorecovery and he gasped and grimaced as a cocktail of stimulants flooded into him from the line attached to the catheter in his arm. He shook his head. Why was the wall terminal flashing red? “Why is the wall terminal flashing red?” he asked the room.

“Red flashing indicates an alarm status on the ship,” replied the ship, uselessly.

“I knew that,” Darian replied, pointlessly, “what is the cause of the alarm status?” He got no reply. Grumbling he hauled himself carefully over to the terminal and thumbed through the report. It didn’t make any sense. He’d only been asleep four solar months according to the date on the terminal. “Security breach,” was the cause of the alarm, but he was the only person on the ship. Oh, he thought. Not any more - his fogged brain gradually catching up. How the fuck had she got out? Frankly it was incredible that the security system on the Sariyah 2 even worked - he never met anyone face to face on this thing so never checked it, but had successfully sealed off the cargo bay which his cargo was now - according to the feed he brought up - trying to pull apart in order to get out of.

Darian patched himself through to the announcement system in the cargo bay. Even as he detached himself from the autorecovery, his tongue felt too big in his mouth as he spoke. “Ma’am, please stop trying to destroy the spaceship.” He saw her look frantically around at the sudden voice. Fuck, she was even more beautiful than the computer had shown him. She was wearing a loose grey tracksuit that still couldn’t hide her chest.

“Where the fuck am I, and who the fuck are you?” she shouted, her anger and panic rendered clearly over the old intercom. But Darian wasn’t paying attention to her words - his stomach had lurched when he saw the dark metal band around her neck. About three centimetres wide, it was unmistakeable. A Telmaran slave collar. His mind racing as fast as it could just after waking from cryo-sleep, he replied,

“My name is Darian and you’re on board my ship. Look, don’t worry, you’re safe. Just chill out and we can talk.” He grabbed a commcell from its slot on the wall and left the enveloping comfort of the autorec chair to head to the bridge. He’d obviously said the wrong thing though, as the cell barked back,

“CHILL OUT?! SAFE!? Then what in the name of holy Qorlarian FUCK is around my neck, DARIAN?!” He winced at that.

“I-I- don’t know what’s going on. Look, the ship only just woke me up so I’m still catching up, OK?” No immediate response to that. “What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Seren.” came the reply after a few moments.

“OK Seren, let me get to the bridge and - ow, fuck–” he hit his foot against the hatch “–see what’s going on. I think the security system shut you in there.” He made it to the bridge chair and started making queries as fast as his sluggish fingers would allow.

After a few moments, she spoke up again, quietly now, and worryingly calm. “Don’t think you’ve fooled me, Darian. I know what this collar is. I know what you are.” Silence as Darian found what he was looking for in the pod diagnostics, then, “where are you taking me?”

Stalling for time, Darian said, “I… I’m sorry Seren, I just get given coordinates.” There on his display was what he needed and where it was in Seren’s pod, but how to get it?

“Send me them!” hissed Seren, her anger rising again. Darian took his time doing so as a plan developed. It wasn’t very sophisticated. “Fuck,” came her barely whispered response when he did send them and viewed the location.

“OK Seren, I’m coming to you, I’m going to open the door and we can talk about this. I… look, I don’t want to do this, but I’ve got a stungun with me, so just don’t try anything, OK? I don’t want to clean puke off my walls.” He saw her step back from the hatch on the terminal display, her shoulders slumped. He keyed open the door and stepped through, his “stun gun” trained on her. He hoped she didn’t know enough about long-range hauler equipment to recognise it as an automatic coupling probe. “Hello, Seren,” he said, dumbly. The thought came unbidden that he could see why someone would want to collar her. Neither the diagnostic render nor the tiny commcell display could do her beauty justice. Her hair was shaved close to the scalp.

“Hello Darian. What are we going to do, then?”

“That’s a good fucking question, Seren. Guess I can tell what you want me to do.”

“I think it’s pretty fucking obvious what anyone in my position would want, Darian. Why don’t you tell me what you’re guessing, and I’ll tell you if you got it?”

Darian walked towards Seren’s open cryopod in a way he hoped was nonchalant. He leaned against it, keeping his eyes and probe on her. “I’m guessing that you want me to drop you off somewhere that isn’t the coordinates I sent you, and forget I ever saw you.”

“Well fuck me, Darian, you’re a Qorlar-damned genius. Now let me take a guess: you’re scared of what whichever shitstain low-life is paying you to transport me in this rust-bucket will do to you if you don’t deliver your human fucking cargo.” Darian bridled at the description of the Sariyah 2 and winced at the accuracy of her assessment. His hand groped in the cryopod where the diagnostic had told him the unidentified object nestled.

“Yeah.” He sighed, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Fuck.” She breathed, sitting on a box of spare cabling. Darian saw something change in her eyes as she looked directly at him. “Well fuck that. I’m not getting back in that pod, Darian. I’ll take my chances against that stun-gun if I have to but I will fucking fight you. What would you do in my situation, anyway?” Darian’s hand found its way to the compartment that had been indicated. It wasn’t locked - the pod was never supposed to open until it made to the recipient. His hand closed around the contents - it felt like a pencil stub with an octagonal cross section, four centimetres long. Instead of answering her, he slowly brought it into view. As soon as he did so, Seren’s eyes locked onto it, as if she couldn’t see anything else.

“Do you know what this is?” he asked. She shook her head, but her eyes told him she guessed. “It’s the key to that collar around your neck. I mean, not that it can unlock it. It can… you know, operate it.” She nodded, breathing hard. “So. I’m not going to answer your hypothetical bullshit. You’re going to stop moralising at me, and you’re going to get back in your fucking pod, OK? And you can either do it voluntarily, or I can push the little button on this key and make you. Which is it?”

“Fuck you,” spat Seren, “you slaver scumbag.”

Darian flinched at her words, but ignored her. He pressed the end of the key and said, “stop talking and get in the pod.” Seren gasped and her eyes seemed to defocus for a second, but she immediately got up and walked over to the pod, started silently getting into it. “And stay in there,” he added. Letting out a breath, he closed the pod’s lid on top of her, avoiding her terrified, accusing eyes as he did so. As soon as he looked at the read-out though, he groaned at what he’d been too preoccupied to notice up until that point: the reason she’d woken up in the first place. The chamber was completely shot and was showing major faults in three subsystems. There was no way it could even put her under, never mind keep her alive and youthful for the still-nearly-forty-year journey to her new owner. Darian cringed inwardly at the term.

Sighing, he opened the pod up again. “Get out, the pod’s fucked.” When she just looked at him, he stared back dumbly, then realised his mistake. “Cancel command to stay in the pod,” he said while holding the button. Rolling her eyes, Seren sat upright then stood out of it. She waited, looking expectantly at him then, when he didn’t do anything, pointed at her mouth. “Oh. You can speak.” After a moment, he added, “Don’t attack me or, you know… try anything.”

“Really? Try ‘anything’? Want to be any more precise?” she said, sarcastically.

“Give me a break, Seren, or you’ll be back in the pod while I work out what to do. It’s not like I’ve had any practice with this.” He started moving towards the hatch, then looked back. “’far as I know, you don’t need to be precise with those things anyway. It’s not like you’re instructing a computer. Anyway, come on. And seriously, don’t try anything.”

Sat at the console on the bridge, Darian was thinking aloud. “Well, I’m fucked either way, aren’t I.”

“Can’t see how you’re worse off than I am,” muttered Seren, but Darian just glared at her and waved the key.

“Here’s how it is. This ship has a cryo-chamber. That’s for me to use so that I can make more than one of these trips in my sorry life. My secondary cryo-chamber is only designed to get me safely to the nearest station so that I can repair the primary. If you use it you’re guaranteed to age, just not as fast as real-time.”

Seren caught his meaning and cocked an eyebrow, “so what? We’d still get there.”

“Yes but you’d be older. I don’t exactly have a written contract here, but if I show up and you’re all wrinkly there’s going to be questions.” Darian drummed his fingers on the console.

“Sure you could answer them.”

Darian smacked the console with his palm. “In case you hadn’t realised, Seren, the people I deal with aren’t exactly the savoury type. If there’s questions, they tend to be asked after the shooting, you get me?” He thought some more.

“Just put me in the primary cryo-chamber,” she muttered, interrupting him.

“Wha- Fuck you, I don’t want to get older than I have to carting your sorry arse around!”

“It was just a joke,” she huffed, but the more he thought about it the more sense it made.

“The only other alternative,” he mused, “is that we make for Tavrar station, get in touch with my contact, make my excuses and try to work out whether I’m going to get vapourised on or before arrival. Fuck.” He asked the computer to calculate how many years the journey would cost in the secondary chamber. The output made him pale. “Whoever goes in the secondary is going to gain about ten years solar. That’s for Tavrar - more than that going to the rendezvous.”

“A decade?!” said Seren, her voice rising. “What kind of–”

“Shh! Wait. If we swap…”

“Swap?”

“Yes, swap. I’ll program in a scheduled wake-up and we can swap at the half-way point. It’s saying each of us should age about two or three years. The secondary’s effects get much worse the longer you’re in it.” Seren looked a bit sickened - losing three years of life in the blink of an eye was not going to brighten anyone’s mood even without the prospect of then being handed over into slavery.

“Why do you only have one fucking decent one? Gods… Can’t you just get the secondary pod upgraded at Tavrar? Or fix the pod I came in?” she asked. Then, realising, “Fuck, why am I trying to solve this problem…”

Darian rubbed his chin, thinking, before coming to a decision. “No, it’s too risky. Tavrar station will do pod repairs for sure, but it’s not a major outfitter or anything. Probably won’t be able to do an upgrade like that. It’s not just the pod itself, it’s retrofitting my ship. And the pod… I don’t have anyone on Tavrar I’d trust with that kind of job.” He started entering a schedule and checking the ship’s course. “Right. Screw Tavrar then. Still want to try and fight me, or will you get in the pod yourself?”

Seren didn’t answer immediately but just stared at the wall of the bridge. “Fuck. No sodding point, is there?”

“Nope.” She got up and they moved off towards the cryo-chamber, which housed both primary and secondary pods. Darian checked that his commands in the bridge were reflected on the secondary’s display and gestured for Seren to step in. She stared at him pointedly until he realised she needed to undress, so he waited outside the chamber until he heard the door to the pod hiss closed. The display indicated it was starting its initial calibration. Darian had already decided to wait before going into cold-sleep himself - it wasn’t likely, but if he could spot an issue with her pod before getting into his own, all the better. It would be an hour before the pod even started administering the cocktail of drugs needed to safely enter cold-sleep, another few hours before she was actually frozen.

While waiting, Darian decided to dig into the less savoury parts of the ship’s knowledge base and see if he could find out a bit more about Telmaran slave collars. The first thing he wanted to know was whether commands would persist through cold-sleep.

Forbidden knowledge apparently made the hours pass quickly and Darian was soon brought back from his dive by a notification on the console that Seren had been successfully frozen. Time to check on her, then. In the chamber, he went methodically through the pod’s diagnostics looking for any early signs of problems, but found none. Before going to the primary, he toggled the glass to clear. It was supposed to be a more-or-less last ditch tool to check that the contents hadn’t been mummified, but he found himself staring at Seren’s pallid, blank face. Even pumped full of sleep drugs and frozen stiff she was stunningly, if eerily, beautiful. Darian couldn’t keep a vision of her naked, helpless body from leaping into his imagination.

Shaking his head, he double checked the primary’s settings and wake schedule, stripped off his shipsuit, folded it and stepped in. He woke up a moment later, twitching and jerking. Seemed to Darian the autorecovery took its time calming his motor neurons, overactive after… he checked the terminal as his vision cleared a little - years of unuse. Seemed he’d woken up on schedule this time.

With no alarm this time, he took his time recovering in the chair. His senses gradually clarified after the initial rush of recovery drugs and he regained some semblance of control over his muscles. He experimentally levered himself out of the chair when it pinged readiness. He’d set the computer to automatically reduce the acceleration burn to a comfortable 1.5g for this middle portion of the journey; the disorientation of the flip would happen later, and while he and Seren were on ice there was no reason to accelerate or decelerate so mildly. The ship hummed quietly with the vibration of it.

Darian walked over to Seren’s cryo-pod and flicked through the status report. No issues. According to the report, she had aged only two years rather than the predicted three. Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same as being awake for two years - the real biological process of aging could be almost perfectly stopped. But ever so slowly, some chemical reactions proceeded, and the primary pod was much better at removing the buildup of such byproducts which otherwise caused permanent deterioration. He cleared the window, gazing at her face again. It looked the same as when he’d just - when he’d looked at it twelve years ago. He sighed and went to find something to drink. The autorecovery’s fluids didn’t quite quench thirst the same as actually swallowing something.

He did a quick stock-take in the galley as he sucked down some water. He had enough provisions to make them both something resembling an actual meal before they swapped pods for the second half of the journey. He instructed the manufactory to start making something greasy and salty, which was all you could taste just after waking up anwyay.

On the way back to the cryo chamber, Darian remembered what he’d been looking up before he’d frozen himself. Standing in front of the secondary pod, he was faced with the possibilities he’d been trying to banish from his mind ever since he’d seen that thick metal collar. He clambered back to the galley, trying to clear his head. Looked through the feedstock inventory again, walked back to the cryo-chamber. “Fuck” he whispered, making his decision. It wasn’t that big a deal, he told himself as he spoke to the collar-key before initiating her thawing, and in any case it was easier to make when the person involved was covered in frost. Instructions given to a collared person did, he had found out, persist through cold-sleep, at least as well as any other instruction that the person would obey of their own volition. He’d also learnt a lot more about how the key could be used: in particular, it was able to parse reasonably precise instructions like “don’t try anything”. This mode of operation had the advantage that instructions could be given when the person was unconscious, and they’d be enacted the next time the person was awake and the key was in range.

It had a secondary use, too: it was trivial to give a command without the person realising. It was rash decision in the end, easier to do without thinking when the person was out of sight.

Darian waited in the galley, having left a note to Seren that he’d left her some privacy for recovery. To be honest, nobody wanted to see another person in that state, anyway, especially after a spell in the secondary pod. After a few hours of listening to music played over the ship’s serviceable PA system, a vision emerged shakily through the narrow hatchway into the galley. Looking closely he realised that Seren’s hair had grown a little - a centimetre of fuzz over her scalp. But he couldn’t look closely for long, for the rest of Seren’s body was far more enticing and, crucially, completely naked. Just as he had instructed. The gravity over human standard made her large breasts sag a bit, but that couldn’t hide how perfectly they wanted to curve, nor how her pale nipples stood out in the cool ship’s air. She was on the shorter side and slim, with a tight arse that made Darian bite his lip. Her legs were slender, elegant and at their tops was a triangle of short, blonde fuzz. What draw his eye more than all that though - more than her firm rear and perfect tits - was the collar itself. Three centimetres wide and about half a centimetre thick, it would be mistaken by the uneducated as a fashion statement. It had no visible seam or clasp, but three parallel lines encircled its polished, scratchless surface, interrupted at the front by a diamond indentation within which was etched the emblem of Telmar.

Darian took all of this in as Seren hauled herself into the small room, then met her eyes when she looked up. This was a mistake he thought, uncomfortably shifting himself within the legs of his shipsuit.

“What in Qorlar’s holy cockshaft is this?” she demanded, standing beside the table, which was set, as best it could be with Safiyah 2’s stock, for dinner.

“Food,” said Darian, simply. “If we have to be awake, may as well enjoy something more than nutrient slurry, eh?”

Seren’s lip curled as she looked between the food and Darian. “Listen here, dickbag. I know you can force me to do whatever with that little key, but I am not entertaining whatever romantic fantasy it is you’re acting out, here.” The effect of her anger juxtaposed with her state of undress would perhaps have been humorous in other circumstances, but as he had commanded her to appear without clothes and was the immediate cause of her anger, it was merely awkward.

Darian sighed and rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you fucking listen? I’ve never had my cargo wake up before. I’m just trying to treat you like a human being here, not… not whatever you think I’m doing.”

“A human being?!” yelled Seren, “Treating me like a human being would be letting me go for fuck’s sake!” She turned away and Darian thought she would leave then, but instead she seemed to deflate, shoulders slumped. “Whatever. I’m hungry. Going to eat somewhere else though. And feeding me doesn’t make you less of a scumbag.” She took the tray from the table and awkwardly maneuvered out of the hatch. Darian watched her go and couldn’t enjoy the view.

Darian ate his food in silence, stewing. He wasn’t a scumbag, he reasoned, just a guy caught in a difficult situation. A smuggler couldn’t choose his cargo like that - people just didn’t understand. Oh well, it wasn’t much more waking time until he could be rid of her and not have to worry about it. After he’d eaten, Darian sat, thinking and reading news reports the ship had caught on the sub-ether. After another hour or so, Seren returned and sat at the table. She ignored him at first, so he kept reading on the commcell.

After a while he looked up to see her staring at him, her expression somewhere between fury and resignation. Rather than meet her gaze he looked away, and she shook her head and sighed. Darian tapped the table, then said, irritated, “what?! I don’t expect you to like it but if you’re going to give me shit you can get the fuck back in the pod!”

“Make m… fuck,” she replied, realising her mistake. Darian looked dangerously at her and brandished the key. “OK OK, fuck. Fine.” She breathed “I’ll cut it out. Please don’t use that on me. Just… can you stop looking at my tits? It doesn’t exactly help me keep my cool.” Darian swallowed and again avoided meeting her eye. The silence that followed was uncomfortable for Darian, but Seren just seemed pensive. In spite of her request, she didn’t seem to realise that her state of dress was anything out of the ordinary.

Eventually it got too much and Darian felt he had to say something, but found himself unable to think of anything very suitable. He settled on something he’d read on the sub-ether. “Picked up a report that the Hochtaler insurrection was finally put down four years ago.”

Seren looked at him, her expression between incredulous and uncertain. “You’re… OK, talk about the news, is it? You know, my brother went to fight in the insurrection. Guess he’s dead now, or in prison.”

“Shit,” muttered Darian, “sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

Seren shrugged. “Whatever. I’ve already accepted I wasn’t going to see him again, you know? Even… before this fucking thing.” She leaned her head in her hands and stared at the ceiling. “Pol, his name is. I told him it was a stupid idea to join, actually. It was obvious how it was going to end.”

Darian grunted, uneasy. Should’ve realised talking to her would lead to her talking back. Fuck. Silence stretched on. “Were you… close?” he asked. Shit question.

“… I guess. Not especially.” She sighed, wistfully, he thought. “He was… just a normal fuckin’ brother, to be honest. Teased me when we were small, mostly ignored me when he got older. But he had my back.” For the first time since he’d seen her, Seren smiled for the briefest moment. “I remember one time some older boys were trying to push me around. He come running over, ready to fight them all and one of them tripped him before he could even say anything. Fell flat on his fucking face.”

Darian laughed weakly and started returning the food trays to their washer-storage unit. “Actually what fucking year even is it? I got no idea how long they had me on ice before this.” He told her. “Holy fucking ballsacks… what took so long? I was… last thing I remember was twenty years ago.”

The conversation continued, almost natural except for the way in which it avoided the one topic looming over the two of them. Darian suggested they take a cycle of real sleep before returning to the pods and watched her bare legs disappearing through a hatch after she agreed and followed his directions to a sleep chamber. He was distracted though, having come to a decision which half of his mind still tried to tell him was insane. A new identity, body modifications… a new life in a distant sector, all weighed on him. But the awkward, cringeing but undeniably real conversation had cemented something which had grown unnoticed.

After both waking up and eating what passed for breakfast as produced by the ship, Darian told Seren. Speaking gruffly, he started, “I, uh… decided something.” He paused, trying to come up with the words, while Seren just stared with mild disdain. “I can’t… I can’t do this. Dropping you off at Gods-know-where. I changed our course so that you can, you know.”

“Go free?” He nodded. “Huh. What made you… actually forget that.”

“So anyway, we’re heading to a station and you can try and find passage or whatever. It might be hard to get rid of that,” he said, pointing at her neck. “Can worry about that later though. Let’s get in the pods.”

There followed the routine of freezing and thawing, coming round half comatose and wrung out, wondering what damage had accumulated this time. After that, Darian was on the bridge, waiting outside Halmar station’s security perimeter for clearance, while simultaneously vectoring into an orbit which would allow a faster approach once cleared. Like most stations in areas where less-than-legal business was done, Halmar was cautious, and it would be a slow journey in to avoid being slagged by jumpy goons.

After a while communicating with a security officer and monitoring the ship’s orbit, Seren joined him. He turned around and his eyes widened involuntarily. “Good Gods, Seren, why are–oh, never mind,” his voice trailed off into mumbles.

“Why am I what?!” she replied with indignation.

“Nothing, just… put some clothes on” said Darian, trying to stare at the console

“Fuck off, I’ll wear what I want. Why’s it a problem, anyway?”

“Really?” he said, “you just want to hang out on the bridge naked? Wonder why that might be…”

“Well sure, I… I mean… Fuck. It doesn’t make sense.” Her brow furrowed. “I wouldn’t do this normally, but somehow I just… don’t feel like…” She stared hard at Darian until he looked away. “You fucker,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, I… look,” he fumbled for the key, spoke, “go put some clothes on,” he muttered. A light on the key pulsed orange, indicating that a previous instruction had been countermanded, and Seren immediately left the bridge. A moment later, Darian received the call from Halmar station granting their approach, and Darian initiated a comfortable 1.5G burn to do so.

Seren returned a short while later looking furious, Darian suddenly remembering that the orange light meant that an instruction had been partially, not entirely, countermanded. The collar had done the minimum necessary to obey his new one, so Seren had come back wearing a grey underwear and nothing else. “Really??” She hissed, her glare murderous as she bore down on him.

“Woah, woah, chill out,” he said, instinctively activating the key as she drew near. The effect was instant - her fury melting away to placid calm. Looking at her in disbelief, he asked, “did that… work?”

“I, huh. I guess so,” Seren replied.

“What’s it like?” he asked, quietly. A deceptively simple question.

Seren looked at him, uncomprehending. “What?”

“When I… when you get an order on this?”

Her face belied her disbelief as she eventually replied, “why do you even want to know?”

Impatience flaring, Darian ordered her, “just tell me, truthfully,” holding down the button. “I’m just… curious is all.”

Seren’s eyes fluttered and the words started to spill from her. “It’s hard to describe. It’s almost like I’m choosing to do it but not quite. When I thought about not wearing clothes, I just thought… you know, that I didn’t feel like it. But that was different because I didn’t know you’d made me do it. Just now it was different, I knew I didn’t really want to come back topless but I still did… it’s like telling yourself not to eat a piece of cake, but still do it, because part of you just wants the fucking cake.”

“So… part of you wanted to do it?”

“Not part of me, it’s just like that.”

Darian looked curiously at her then. At first she gazed back, still calm but uncomprehending. After a moment, a sort of realisation dawned on her and she shook her head wordlessly as Darian slowly tapped the key against his chin in thought. “Get on your knees,” he said quietly. Trembling slightly in spite of the most recent order, Seren obeyed.

“Please,” she whispered, “please, you don’t have to do it more, I… I’ll…” but Darian pressed the button again and she trailed off.

“Play with your tits and… and tell me what’s going through your head.” Her eyelids fluttered again as she started to massage her beautiful breasts, hypnotising Darian as she rolled them around in the heavy gravity and pinched her nipples, hardening them in the cool ship air.

“I… I don’t want to do it, but… whenever I think about stopping I just fucking don’t. It… I know it’s only because of this thing but… Why? I thought you were going to let me go…”

“I am! I was.. I am…” Seren’s protesting caused Darian to waver, but he was too far down the path already. Why exactly he gave his next command he couldn’t say exactly, but slowly, deliberately, he whispered, “Have… an orgasm.”

Seren shook her head, looking up at him with pleading eyes. “That… does that fucking work? Oh Gods…” Darian knew it worked because he’d read about it, but now he got to see it. It didn’t happen instantly - as Seren’s pleading trailed off, she gasped quietly, her eyes going wide and one hand clapping across her mouth, even as the other continued fondling her gorgeous tits. It had little effect though, barely muffled moans escaping, rising in pitch and volume over the course of a long minute, her bare chest flushing bright red under dim bridge lighting, until her whole body convulsed, went rigid, then after a few seconds, slowly relaxed. Panting, she looked up at Darian, terror and fury in her eyes, alongside an undeniable trace of arousal.

“So.” Darian tried to hide the genuine curiosity in his voice. “Did part of you want that?”

“I mean it was an orgasm, it’s fuckin’ involuntary isn’t it. You know, autonomic or whatever. Please, you said you were going to let me go, don’t… you don’t want to ruin it. Please.”

“I don’t fucking care, Seren, that was too hot. Now…” He paused, her words weighing on him momentarily. But her heavy breathing, the flush still clinging next to her collarbone, melted her pleas away. “Suck my cock.” He presented it to her and without breaking eye contact, she took it in her mouth and started to blow him. He couldn’t decide whether her pleading expression was a distraction or an even greater turn-on, but as he tweaked his instructions to her to make her suck faster, more enthusiastically, deeper, her expression softened until eventually her eyes closed. “Oh fuck Seren you’re good at that,” he groaned, pulling out of her mouth with a wet sound, leaving her panting.

His order for her to be “enthusiastic” didn’t let him rest for long though: breathing heavily, she pushed him back into the captain’s chair, struggled to straddle him until he adjusted the acceleration burn to 0.5G, then managed to do so, pulling aside the simple standard-issue knickers and plunging his straining cock into her. She was dripping wet, he realised, dimly through the haze of pleasure. Was this just part of following her orders or did it signify something more? Darian lost his train of thought as he felt her tighten around him, slamming down on him as a scream escaped her lips, leaving her shuddering and moaning. The pulsating grip of her pussy sent Darian over the edge, gripping her hips as he groaned and ground into her.

The aftermath was awkward, or would have been had Darian not used the collar to send Seren away. He then pursued the obvious strategy of trying not to think about what he’d done and the supposed ethical principles he had decided to uphold at considerable cost to himself by bringing Seren to a safe location, and then promptly violated. He reset the Sariyah 2’s trajectory and negotiated the docking fee, as well as making some enquiries about refit and resupply services. Once he’d organised as much as he could, he, still trying not to think, clambered through the ship to Seren’s sleep chamber. He buzzed for entry, and waited. It took a long time for the door to open, Seren standing, still topless, just inside. Darian swallowed hard.

Operating the key, he said softly, “cancel all instructions. Do not harm me or the ship.” Without waiting for a reply, he returned to the bridge.

Seren joined him later in the galley while he was eating. She moved around in silence, getting her own food, sat down at the table without raising her eyes. Darian shuffled awkwardly in his seat, eventually breaking the silence. “I, err… didn’t think you’d join me.” But she replied only by leaving wordlessly. Stupid. Fuck, Darian thought to himself, trying desperately not to think.

With nothing left to do until nearer Halmar, Darian turned in himself. Tossing and turning in the berth, it took him a long time to find sleep. It seemed he had been asleep only seconds when he was awoken by an insistent alarm. “What, ohfuck, not again…” he mumbled incoherently, until he realised it was the door entry. What the fuck? He stumbled to the door, low gravity taking him by surprise - the acceleration burn was finished, anyway.

Outside the door floated Seren. “What are you–” he was cut off as she pushed him back into the chamber. “Hey, you can’t hurt me re–”

“Shh. I can’t fucking… I don’t want you to talk any more than necessary OK. Just…” she searched for the words. Her expression was inscrutable: a little desperate, conflicted, Darian thought.

“What is it?”

After a long silence during which she fidgeted, she answered. “I need you to… to order me to do something.”

“What?!” Darian said, incredulously.

“Don’t fucking… I don’t want to explain it! Just something… I can’t stop thinking about how it felt to…” her voice faded to a whisper, a blush touching her cheeks. Darian didn’t trust himself to respond, didn’t trust himself to think about it. Had he thought about it, he would probably have stopped himself, knowing the agony that would probably await. Instead he retrieved the key and turned back to look at her. With the door now closed it was hard to read her expression in the near darkness of the sleep chamber, but he fancied he could detect anticipation in her shallow breathing, in the way she had followed a little too closely behind him.

“What should I order you to do,” he asked, dumbly.

“… There isn’t really any fucking point if I fucking tell you, is there?” she said.

“Alright, alright… gimme a second,” he said, finding himself suddenly lacking inspiration. “Did you– so you did like it then?”

“I… ‘like’ is the wrong word… I…”

But an idea struck Darian and he interrupted before she could finish. “Tell me you loved it.”

Seren’s breath caught in her throat as she croaked out, “I loved it Darian,” biting her lip as the collar forced her to obey. She wanted more though, and moved close to him so that he could feel her breath on his neck as she gazed into his eyes.

“Tell me why,” he said, still not daring to touch her.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, “it must be because I… I…’m a slut.” He actually saw her shiver as the word left her lips.

He traced the curve of her cheek, then her lip, with the collar key, whispering to her without pressing the button, “I bet a slut like you would love it if I used it to make you cum again, wouldn’t you. Her eyes fluttered closed at his words and she nodded in silence.”Well I’m not going to do that, Seren.” He clicked the button and spoke carefully, “you are unable to orgasm. Try to.” He saw her eyes snap open again and go wide at the same time as her hand dove into her ship’s issue grey underwear. While she whimpered and fingered herself, Darian ran the key along the curve of her chin, down her neck and down the side of her breast. “If there’s no point you telling me what you want me to order you to do,” he whispered into her ear, sending a shiver down her spine, “tell me… what do you fear I’ll order you to do?”

Seren tried to hold back but the words bubbled up within her and tumbled straight out. “I… fear you’ll hurt me, or choke me, or…” she moaned as she said it, “make a video, broadcast across the galaxy.”

“What about, that I’ll never give you back the ability to cum?”

She groaned loudly, using her free hand to pull the two of them together. “I don’t nngh think you’ll do that… you fuck made me cum just ’cause before… but yeah I wouldn’t like that either. Fuck I’m so close, please! Please let me!”

“Not a chance, Seren,” he said, then kissed her. Something about the kiss unlocked something within him, a loosening of tension that allowed some of his suppressed guilt to melt away. He couldn’t know it, but something similar was happening to Seren: her suffering due to her subjugation muted by a moment of tenderness, even one precipitated by the very tool of that subjugation. Whether it was an unknown submissiveness surfacing, or some effect of the collar’s control that opened her to the connection, was not clear; all she perceived was a kind of calm she had not felt since she had awoken in this unfamiliar ship, not even at Darian’s orders.

Seren moaned into his mouth and he broke the kiss, suddenly needing more. “Strip,” he said, as he did the same, not needing to use the key’s power this time. In moments her body was displayed again to him, her fingers still working desperately at her clit, wetness glistening in the dim light. Manoeuvering themselves into position was challenging in zero-gee, but they managed it. Darian wasted no time and slid himself straight into her pussy, eliciting a shared groan of pleasure. Before he started moving, he held the key in front of Seren’s face. Her eyes focused away from his and locked onto it, her anticipation palpable. “Broadcasting a video to the whole system sounds pretty hot–” she whimpered beneath him “–but… I think that might bring too much attention onto me, so…” he paused deliberately to watch the fear play across her face. “I could order you to accept being choked, but…” she ground her body into his “…I have a better idea.” He leaned close to whisper in her ear, “stop breathing.”

Once again her eyes widened in shock, then rolled with pleasure as Darian started to move within her, grabbing her hips and hooking his feet into a tie-down to stop them floating apart. It felt incredible, Seren’s eyes rolling and fluttering as the sensation overtook her, fear and desperation still behind them, the pleasure evident in them contrasting with her near-silence, the only sounds from her mouth being the occasional whine as air was forced out of her lungs by their fucking. After a long minute, Darian allowed her to take a breath and she gasped, then moaned after they repositioned so that she could use her arms to push herself down onto him, then was silenced once more as her breath was taken away. This time Darian waited longer, enjoying being able to squeeze her tits with his free hands, until the fear in her eyes started to give way to panic which battled for dominance with the pleasure.

Darian pulled their bodies closer and placed one hand lightly at Seren’s throat, emphasising the power he exerted over her as well as its source, then mused aloud, “I wonder… which would you ask for right now, if you could? To be able to cum, or to be able to breathe?” Her mouth opened in a silent scream as she desperately ground her pelvis into his. Even as she did so, Darian could feel her strength beginning to fail, but even so, she mouthed a single word to him. He felt his cock pulse and, gritting his teeth as her reply triggered his own climax, gave the command. As the orgasm crashed through her, she gave a choked cry, the force of it meeting and overwhelming her cessation of voluntary breathing. Before the cries ceased, Darian thumbed the key and said, “you can breathe again,” himself now breathless. Her gasps came deep, ragged, and tinged with pleasure. Tears ran from her eyes and she gripped Darian in a tight embrace, locking them together.

This time he didn’t need to prompt her to describe the experience: “That was… indescribable. I was so, so fucking terrified. Don’t you fucking dare do that again. But… sodding ballsacks it was hot, I’ve never cum so hard before.” They fell asleep in the cramped bunk in each other’s arms.

The ship woke Darian a short time before it would need input from him for the final approach to the station. Seren was no longer there with him, and he found her on the bridge, rolling the collar-key between her fingers. “It doesn’t work if I use it on myself,” she said. She looked up at him, shyly. “I tried… you know, the orgasm thing. Nothing happened.” Darian was a little taken aback to see the key in her hands, swiped from wherever he’d left it before they’d slept. He was even more surprised when she threw it easily to him, something in him not fully willing to believe that she trusted him.

Catching it, he replied, “Well, I could do that for you now but we do have other things to be getting on with. I have to get us docked and–”

“Last night,” she interrupted.

“I didn’t–”

“Yes, but I… I need to say it. I don’t know what came over me going to you. I feel… Do you know, when I woke up I was mostly disgusted with myself?” Darian flinched. “How could I want… need that from you?” She stared at a console, eyes rimmed with tears. “But I can’t deny the truth of it. Whether it’s this fucking collar doing it to me or something that was in me all along, I… yeah.” She looked at Darian and then down. “I can’t reconcile it, the… morality. But I don’t care.”

Darian hadn’t expected so many words and fidgeted a bit. “Well, about that… we have to work out what to do about this”, gesturing with the key.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, as I alluded to earlier, it’s not exactly legal to own a slave even if she did tell you she needed it and then forced herself on you.”

“I did not force myself on you, in fact if anything–”

Before she could finish her retort, Darian had pushed the button and said, flatly, “apologise for forcing yourself on me.”

Seren gasped as she threw herself at him, pressing herself to him and looking up, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for making you have sex with me! Will you forgive me?” She stared, pleading, into his eyes until the effect wore off and she looked away, blushing.

“I think you enjoyed that, didn’t you!” laughed Darian, and chuckled harder when she didn’t reply. “Anyway, I was being serious, I can’t bring you onto the station with me. I’d be a dead man. You can maybe go out wearing something to hide it as long as I leave soon after, but…”

“What’s the problem with me just staying on the ship?”

“Well, I…” Darian searched for the words. “This… is your chance to get off the ship. When I leave… I’ll be back to the same old routine. Smuggling, I mean. It’s, well. It’s not a life I’d recommend to anyone. We were coming here so you could disappear, hopefully get that thing removed.”

A sober look spread over Seren’s features. “Oh. Yes. I suppose… I suppose I don’t really know you.” A long silence followed during which Darian sent messages out to the people and companies he’d contacted previously, finalised the resupply and followed up on a place that would overhaul his secondary cryochamber. Eventually Seren spoke again, “Darian. I’ve got no fucking life left. How am I going to survive? On my sodding own? I know… I know you don’t fucking owe it me, but… Isn’t there a space for me here? I know there’s no guarantee it’ll… that we’ll… but you’ve gotta return to civilisation often enough that I can get off at the next station if it doesn’t work out. Please?”

Darian didn’t respond, merely staring into the bridge console, drumming his fingers against the grey bezel. After an eternity his fingers stopped, but he still didn’t turn to look at her, instead taking the key and whispering something to it. Not hearing the command, it was a second before Seren gasped out, “Oh!” and then, “Is that a ye–ooohhhh fuuuuck!”