I must have you understand: it was not easy for me.

I was born on Juno, at the very heart of the Highmothers' domain. It was unremarkable — but only because every land touched by the Highmothers was equally as beautiful. It was an island, with white sands and an ocean the color of aquamarine. The waters were so fruitful we had no need to hunt or to farm. The priestesses caught fish in great nets woven of pale, strong rope and collected fruits and berries straight off the vines. The priestesses reared us all in communal, feminine harmony.

Despite this, I was not well-liked. The other girls were so very insipid, uninterested in the world beyond their white walls. The priestesses thought me standoffish. My fondest memories were not when I was surrounded by my sisters, but on the nights when I snuck out of the temple alone and gazed out upon the shore. I would stare at the wide moon reflected off the dark waters, and I would think of the world off-planet, where ships spurred endlessly on spreading our prosperity. I knew, for as far back as my memory stretches, that I was meant for greatness.

Few believed me, but it did not matter. I learned how to get along. With no sentiments to tie me down, it was easy to curry favor with the priestesses and form friendships in a strategic manner. When the time came, and starsailors came to pick the cream of the crop to join them, I was one of only two of my colony chosen for the prestige. Myself and Gisal.

My first job was at an outpost processing material. It was an exercise in boredom. Day in and day out I monitored the assembly line, searching for mistakes that I would then report to my superiors. But I was at the end of the line — there were never any mistakes. Only an endless parade of empty flesh. 

By the time the material had reached my section, all fight had left. Bound stock straight to the metal arms, their heads drooping with the weight of the machinery at their temples, the material only had to glide smoothly towards the light, where their assignments would come.

Fresh workers often turned ill, seeing what were once womyn reduced to such a state. I had no such weaknesses. There was not a doubt in my mind that these individuals — indoctrinated from birth with poisonous thoughts that would not prosper — could not have been rehabilitated. I was only glad that they did not have to be discarded, that they could still be of use. My aptitude was noted, and swiftly I was reassigned to the rod.

It was a wicked weapon — a long spiral of steel ending at a rounded tip. It did not gore, it did not cut. It was imbued with an electric power that would shock with intense pain, but would leave no mark or infection. I was now one of many that waited as the material was first led from their transport into the queue.

They shivered freshly-stripped in that dark place. They saw me and they would scream and cry and try to speak to me, to beg me to let them free. When they held up the line, I would strike.

My lack of mercy became my primary trait amongst my peers. I must confess that it brought me great joy. The only joy I ever felt. It was well known, whispered in the bunks at night when they thought I could not hear. Attendant Winter, they would say, has the makings of a Slavebreaker.

Slavebreakers had their own ships. They had their own Labryades, programmed to obey. They had concubines and sessions with the High Priestesses where they received orders straight from the Highmothers' mouths. They were the most revered of the military ranks. It was not a want, and even calling my ambition a need tells it too lightly. To become a Slavebreaker was a destiny, my only destiny. I would crawl up the ranks to that ever-swinging light. I would become a Slavebreaker, and I would prove myself worthy.

The worst job was at the nursery.

Should a colony be liberated, there would always be a certain proportion of children sufficiently young to not have been too sullied by incorrect ideology. It would be a waste to process them, but neither could they be allowed to continue on with their unsalvageable people.

The nursery was a highly controlled environment, designed at every level to ensure the babes associated our society with prosperity. Heavy emphasis was placed on the children's happiness. There were playrooms at every corner, sweets given for good behavior, and much praise and smiles all around. At the nursery, I was forced to act like a smiling buffoon, bouncing from one foot to the next to please some disgusting colony child who, had they been born a few years earlier, would have certainly felt the sting of my rod.

All my thoughts were on the future of these young things. Whenever I held a baby, I thought, What if this one grows up to be a Slavebreaker instead of me?

But I continued on. I continued because I believed — truly, wholly — in the Highmothers' teachings. Even in the darkness of the processing plant… when I gazed out at the waiting rows of naked womyn, their heads bowed, their minds rid of all thought and memory of the awful worlds they left behind… I saw my beautiful ocean and silver moon. I saw my home with its white temples and its beautiful girls, all the love and cooperation a society could hold. It was a perfect world we made.

"There are many who do not understand." A priestess spoke to me as slaves strapped on my pauldrons. "They are wrong — but they are as powerful in their wrongness as you are in the truth." She brushed back a lock of my hair. "It may frighten you. Never give up hope."

My head still ached at the temple; the skin around my implant had not yet healed, and the sight of it was ugly. A steel diamond, bisected down the middle, ringed with scabbed skin. The effects, too, were disorienting. I was compelled to push through my discomfort, however; my training had been deemed sufficient, and I was to be sent on my first mission.

I was the one directing the slaves as they laid on my raiment. My mind, schooled to serenity by thousands of meditative hours, could form orders, crystalline in my internal vision. I would let the command hang in its slow sloughing form before pushing it out — or something akin to that. A push is too small, too human to describe what I could do now. I pushed in the same way the seawater pushes at the sand. Through the Maiden-fed connection my Labryades would respond.

The sight of them was ever satisfying. How with only my thoughts, a single twitch of the eyelid, they would obey. Learning to use them was like learning to use another limb. And I relished the challenge.

They lowered the helm onto my shoulders, and with it erased the final flicker of my recognizable self. In the smooth waters of the temple I was reflected — a figure in jet armor, ray-gun strapped to my hip. I was only the leader of the Labryades, a beloved and useful hand of the Highmothers. I’d seen such a figure cutting through parades all my life, awe stirring in my chest. This one moved when I moved, spoke when I spoke– but not yet did it occur that it was me.

I did not dwell on the feeling. Soon, I was a guard on a ship, the illustrious Unicorn. It was a transport vessel heading for the Highmothers' temple — a daunting mission for even an experienced Slavebreaker, let alone her first.

The ship was laden with riches. Rare birds squawked beneath the silk that covered their glittering cages. Beautiful flowers sat suspended in glass cubes, to be re-planted in the finest garden in the Empire. Among these, unassuming amongst all the splendor, sat several hundred pounds of kimia — that which fueled the Highmothers in their glass vessels of repose.

All went well, to start. From the control panel, I merely observed the ship. My slaves patrolled the halls and, though the phantom sensation of their feet against metal floors made my teeth ache, I remained alert and professional.

"Entering Sector Flegmat," said the pilot beside me. "Ship will be landing in approximately twelve —"

Then, all the lights in the cargo hold went up red.

"Stowaways!" the pilot gasped.

Two small, black scurrying figures in the viewfinder. One of them passed very close to the lens. A womyn, black mask over her mouth, a lone curl loose from her hood. She passed before I could blink— the other had yanked her away.

The other…

"What…" I asked, "is that?"

I had only seen such a thing in books. Old photographic reproductions or, more often, illustrations in children's fairy stories. Those that menanced the young womyn with their overlarge stature, their bulging muscles and leering tongues (before the clever young girls inevitably defeated them).

The pilot stammered, “She’s – er… uh…”

Our species was once dimorphic, went a favorite audiolog of mine. An atavistic imperative encouraged reproduction, and therefore integration, between two sexes.

"And one of them yet lives?" I said.

The pilot swallowed sickly. "We must be mistaken..."

Click. "Catch them."

I watched the proceedings in all of its multi-minded beauty: my slaves tracking down the infiltrators upon the illustrious ship. Were they trying to reach the Highmothers' temple? To what end? Refugees seeking liberation? They were not worthy, no matter the intention. I would catch them, and I would offer them passage in exchange for their minds.

Well — the womyn, I would.

Hosts of Labryades encroached upon the hold. Every exit in the ship was locked in swift, brutal fashion. Armored heels clattered throughout the metal halls.

The intruders panicked, and they moved to destroy the viewfinders. From this, I got a good look at the strange one. I did not then realize the significance of the moment: the two black eyes staring dead fast into the lens before shooting it with a ray-gun in a blaze of light. I did not know, then, that this was the first time I gazed upon my worst enemy.

"What do we do, Slavebreaker?" The pilot turned to me — in times of distress, I had superiority.

"How long can one survive on the rations in the cargo hold?"

"Not long, Slavebreaker. There are no food stores — only salt, the parrots for the menagerie, and the kimia."

The kimia — invaluable to the Highmothers' survival.

"Then, they will not last long," I said. "We will make it clear that we mean them no harm, and if they do not believe us — well, they will only last a short time without water."

Even if they slaughtered the birds in their cages and drank the blood from their necks, they would still have to leave. And when they left, I would find them, and ultimately rake in the rewards for a job well done.

"We must get in a report to the High Priestesses."

"Not yet," I said. "Not until I have them."

"And the…" The pilot paused. "The…?"

I did not get a chance to decide what to do with that one. The alarms went up again — there was a hole in the ship's hull.

I ran with anger and panic to the controls. "What do you mean?"

“The stowaways — they must've had some sort of laser on them. They've cut straight through, and — oh, Highmothers forgive me —"

"What? What?"

"A second ship… There was another ship that took them."

We realized it at the same time: "These were not refugees from some ravaged wasteland," I said. "This was planned from the beginning. We’re dealing with…"

It was a flurry of panicked activity, to keep Unicorn from going down. This in and of itself was an impressive feat — I had the Labryades seal shut the hole, while the pilot deliberately unbalanced the ship to keep it flying upright. In this whirlwind, it was discovered that a portion of the kimia had gone missing.

The phallic half, aware of their innate inadequacy, instead used their brute power to build systems to ensure perpetual coddling. Once the mechanisms were in place, the machine became self-perpetuating. Womyn were denied their actualization, men were praised for their faults, and for untold centuries, none knew that theirs was a backwards, twisted mockery of Nature.

None but the four Highmothers.

“We are not weak, we are not unintelligent,” said Highmother East.

“Indeed,” said Highmother West, “we are stronger and wiser than the men.”

Highmother North said, “Men have destroyed the world they made.”

“They will destroy us all,” said South, “if we do not eradicate them first.”

The genetic signatures — what little was left in the remains of the hold — brought me to a seedy bar on a mining colony.

The air was thick with soot and dust as I stepped inside, surrounded by my retinue of Labryades. 

"All will remain where they are," I proclaimed. “I am Slavebreaker, hand of the Highmothers. This location has been found to be harboring rebels and thieves. We will not leave until those who have robbed Unicorn are brought to justice, and the stolen goods returned. All must obey."

The bar stood in distrustful silence. Dirty faces of mining womyn glowered at me as I stepped deliberately forward, the boards creaking beneath my boots. My voice was clear and strong. My hand was upon the rod. The noncompliance mattered little — the thief was there, already, and he was staring straight at me.

"You —" I pointed. “You will be inspected."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Because I have willed it." I stepped towards the center of the bar where he stood, elbows propped up against the counter.

"Now, that's not fair at all!" he said. "Aren't we all citizens of the same empire? It's not fair that you get to mosey on up into this bar, and single me out like this." He smiled then — and his dark eyes glittered. "Why is it your will I should obey? I don't know anything about you, beneath that helmet. For all I know, you could be a man under there."

"Watch your tongue, scum, lest I rip it out." I raised my hand, and gave an order to my slaves. "Round them all up."

If he was so concerned about my being unfair, so be it. They would all be punished for what they allowed to exist. I looked him dead in the eye. "Better now?"

“They are warlike. They are facile and ruthless.”

“They crave nothing but to penetrate with their destructive organ.”

“And yet, even once they rule the world, they are not content.”

“I pity them. They are like dogs. But even dogs are capable of love.”

“Dogs do not know they are dogs, and good for them. A man knows he is a dog, and resents it.”

"You — you monster! Get your hands off of me!"

The Labryades were grappling with a mousy, curly-haired womyn. She whimpered as the grip tightened. "You — you can't!"

The thief looked at her warily. "Kasra…"

"He hasn't done anything wrong! None of us have. You can't just arrest us just because you feel like it!"

"I can do whatever I want," I said, still looking at the thief. "And what I want is to find that kimia."

The thief raised his chin to meet my eyes. "Go on.”

I reached out with the sharp talons of my gauntlet and plucked at the buttons down the front of his shirt. He was wearing something beneath it, some sort of tightly bound bandage. I sliced through it with my gauntlet like a knife, and he made no reaction outside of an unconscious shiver.

I said, "What are you, hm?"

He only grinned at me.

“We, those that are so capable of love, understand best.”

“They resent living, poor things.”

“And so we shall relieve them of the burden.”

“We shall make it painless.”

“It will be painless, to those who do not resist.”

“And what of the foolish womyn who remain? Those that worship the phallus?”

“If they must worship and grovel, so be it. They will worship and grovel at the cunt, and they will love it.”

“It will be a better existence.”

“We must understand that, in the end, it is a moral good,” said Highmother South. “The male has outlived his usefulness, and grown sour in his pathetic, frictionless state. He will be worse off if we let him live; we must show our great kindness, and cull the male species before it culls itself.”

It was not, in the end, a stunning first mission. I was praised for my dedication in tracking down the stowaways after their unforeseen escape, but the cost of processing every womyn in the bar was not well justified (they said). 

What was worse was how I had let the rebels escape. How I had let them take advantage of my shock and horror so that the mousy womyn could attack me in the midst of my inspection. How I let them skitter away into the night, and thus starting the cat and mouse chase that would define me for years afterwards.

But there was no staunching the horror. I pressed my hand between his legs, and instead of the violent weapon I had seen in diagrams, I felt…

Sometimes, on the darkest of nights, the priestesses would share a story with the children. Around the fire we would huddle, shaking with fear and cold from the shadows all around. Even the priestesses, usually so collected, would tremble to speak the prophecy. It had been passed from foresister to foresister— a terrible future to come if we were uncautious. If we let one slip through the cracks.

"He-she will come draped in the guise of womyn," said the priestesses. "He-she will behave like womyn, will speak like womyn, will look like womyn. He-she will be as one of us, and rise through our ranks through deception and falsehood. But he-she will not be one of us. He-she will not be of our beloved Highmothers, but of…"

The sight was burned into my memory: the priestess standing above the fire, her eyes wide and glistening towards the stars as her breath hitched. "Man."

This being of man would ruin our kingdom. This creature would wear a beautiful face, a sweet, sensual smile, a finely sculpted body — and all in the service of destroying what the Highmothers had built.

A terrible story — but only a story.

Men were not even born, not anymore. In the old days, it was a brutal affair. Infants tossed off cliffs and the like. But long had the technology advanced. Broodmothers scanned at every stage of sacred birth. A simple injection to terminate those who would destroy us. A terrible, terrible story.