They had strapped Na’Sara into a frame as Vasir stood helplessly watching, unmoving, yet not unthinking.

Her mentor had been almost folded into place, her legs bent at the knee, ankles crossed, beneath her, her arms folded behind her back with wrists together.

Firm restraints had then bound her at the ankles and the wrists, leaving her lying flat, folded in on herself, and unable to reach her weapons or any of the other equipment the Marshals were issued.

It wasn’t as if Na’Sara could act for herself; the same effect that prevented Vasir from acting on her own thoughts had taken her mentor earlier. The alien with the hypnotic eyes and the local had then brought in a tall metal frame, about six feet by three, with two magnetic clips at the top.

Vasir watched helplessly as her mentor was lifted by the upper arms, and secured by forearms and thighs with heavy leather straps. A breath mask was fitted over her mouth and nose, then the two of them picked up the frame and slotted it into position in a large case with four or five of their other victims.

The alien turned back to face Vasir, and it was smirking before it made eye contact and Vasir’s awareness fell away again.

"Assume the position,” he told her, and her body moved to obey, wrists clasping elbows behind her back, sinking to her knees and then attempting somehow to tuck each foot around the other knee.

The alien caught her as she inevitably pitched forward; he had her by one shoulder and by her hair. She held the pose as she was ordered, ramrod-straight, body rigid, while his friend bound her in the same restraints as her mentor.

Vasir couldn’t believe how helpless she felt. It wasn’t like when she obeyed her Master; true, she couldn’t resist that either, but how was a Marshal of the Order to turn aside from duty in the first place? Her duty was to her Master.

This, though, was something outside of that order. Something beyond the normal.

The alien fitted her with another of the breath mask and there was a scent to what she inhaled, a muskiness that went straight through her. Suddenly the strange dullness that had settled on her was overridden, a purely chemical lust filling her body, though it still did not move, bound both by the heavy restraints and by the alien’s command. But oh, how she wanted to be fucked.

Then they strapped her into a frame, just as they had her mentor, except they then lifted it and turned it upside down, grunting with the effort, so she was suspended from the frame instead of lifted by it, and then she was loaded into the case that contained her mentor, face to Na’Sara’s crotch, the heavenly, lust-driven musk filling her nostrils, knowing her mentor was breathing the same thing.

The case was sealed around them, and they continued to stare at the other woman, the drugged breathmasks pushing their brains to ever newer heights of lust.

They had, Vasir realised, an entire journey ahead of them from the outer reaches of the galaxy to the Inner Worlds.

Time enough for their brains to be lust-filled sponges obsessed with the imagined scent of one another.

*

As always, Na’Sara felt the moment where they left hyperdrive in her mind; it was a jolt, a sudden surprise, to realise she had senses left for anything other than the gas in the breathmask.

She closed her eyes and reached out toward the Starsoul. It felt different, this time, as she drew it into her very self; not in the tainted way she had experienced on Gradinar, where the Starsoul itself had been corrupted by the remnants of sorcery.

She wasn’t at all sure what made it different this time, but she had the worrying feeling it was her; whether that was because her enslavement to the Shadow Order had finally affected her link to the Starsoul or because of this very chemical drugging, she wasn’t sure.

Whichever was the case, she just hoped she could hold on to the Starsoul for long enough for it to matter.

She held it for as long as she could, though part of her just wanted, wistfully, to sink back into the dream she’d been enjoying.

Even though she knew she shouldn’t.

*

Na’Sara dreamed.

She was in the Grand Hall of the Marshals, in one of the side rooms, and Vasir was with her. She was unencumbered by the restraints in which they were trapped, but the scents and the drugs they had both been breathing in stayed with them.

Vasir’s eyes were wide, dilated, high on some kind of drug. Her breathing was slow and deep, her chest rising and falling heavily. Na’Sara’s eyes were drawn to it and she could feel her ochre skin flushing dark; the arousal flooding her was beyond her control and was mirrored, she was sure, by Vasir’s own.

Everything about this was wrong, but she felt she could not help herself; she reached out, roughly catching her student by the arms, and pulled her in close. Vasir’s mouth opened readily under her own, the two kisses desperate, feeding off each other in their hunger.

Na’Sara took the lead, her mind linking into Vasir’s with the Starsoul as she had before. Her student felt nudge after nudge guiding her; likewise she felt her mentor’s hands on her body.

Ouhanians tend to be more slender than humans, and their fascination with human breasts and buttocks are well known. Vasir, overwhelmed by the drugs and by her mentor’s own mental powers, became nothing but a frenzied ball of need, giving herself fully to her mentor’s desire to tear her clothing from her body and ravish her.

Na’Sara’s lusts reached such a peak that she reached out with the Starsoul in a different way, using its will to grasp Vasir physically around the neck, holding her loosely enough but making it clear she was now firmly collared.

Using the Starsoul as a leash she turned and stalked out into the main foyer of the Grand Hall, where three or four dozen other Marshals were gathered, and where Vasir followed along on hands and knees.

“I claim this one as my own,” she announced firmly, daring anyone to censure her for it. “As the Marshals used to do, before we changed the Code. Does anyone here dispute my claim?”

Her head-fronds were dancing fiercely, and nobody spoke against her; indeed, some few of the Marshals applauded, though Tanner was nowhere to be seen.

She turned back toward the kneeling Vasir, who she allowed to rise to one knee. Na’Sara lifted her leg, planting her foot on Vasir’s thigh, and drew her Starsoul-leash in, pulling Vasir’s face toward her crotch.

Her student drew aside the padded undergarment that hid Na’Sara’s sex. The musk that filled the room was the result of so much pent up desire and delight, as if the two of them had spent an interstellar flight being marinated in pheromonal drugs.

Her face so close to Na’Sara’s pussy, Vasir couldn’t help but plunge herself into it, lost to everything but her own needs - her desire, Na’Sara’s arousal, her need to show that Na’Sara had been right to claim her - needing only to make cum and to cum in turn.

*

The effect of the alien’s hypnotic gaze had long worn off before They were unloaded, which was doubtless why the drugged breathmasks had been fitted. Vasir had been squirming within her bonds for most of the journey, wishing so much that her legs had been strapped high enough up her thigh that she had something to grind against.

When she was released from the frame she crumpled backward to the ground, even with her restraints gone; there wasn’t enough energy left in her to even put out her arms to break her fall.

They dropped her mentor, similarly loose-limbed, on top of her. Their breathmasks were gone now, having served their purpose, but the two women were so close that Vasir could feel Na’Sara’s lust through the Starsoul, just as she had while Na’Sara was shaping their dreams in transit.

She made contact with her mentor’s mind more directly, hoping to find something of the great Marshal she knew Na’Sara to be, but she was still only starting to find her bearings - engaging with the minds of other species wasn’t something she’d done enough of to make it easy yet - and so she wasn’t entirely sure she’d found anything still active beneath the lust before the alien gripped her by the jaw, turning her eyes to meet his hypnotic gaze.

“Rise,” he said, and rise she did, standing on wobbly legs, her arms hanging useless and limp by her sides. She wasn’t the only one; Na’Sara was beside her.

The alien clipped their belts back around their waists, gave them back the hilts to their energy blades, but Vasir knew it wouldn’t matter; her arms were drained, the only reason her body was moving at all now the fact it was compelled to by the alien’s eyes and words. “You get these back,” he said. “So they know they’re buying real Marshals, with real influence to use on their behalf.

“Follow,” he said, and they followed, walking with the others who’d been enclosed in the case - men and women, humans, Ouhanians, Leandrans - all with the same slow, languorous, unsteady motion, all of them clearly drugged in the same way and conditioned by their own lived, ongoing experience.

*

They formed a line on stage, standing listlessly in place, staring out on a shadowy audience.

Na’Sara couldn’t make out any of the people before her. Instinctively, she reached out and tapped the Starsoul, starting to feel a sense of these people.

There was no actual aid to her vision in doing this, but it often felt like it. The heavyset figure in the shadow, for example, surrounded by another four smaller figures, she knew now was one of the cephalopodic Styptrenes, the figures around them cybernetically-enhanced bodyguards, the whole the central ring of a crime family; she saw them, in the shadow, not as they were but as they saw themselves, their self-identity resonating toward her through the Starsoul.

It was something of a shock to the system, a sobering realisation; she drew the Starsoul around her to prevent any indication of this from showing in her body language. It was, after all, the smallest and most meagre of edges, and she was not at all sure it would be enough.

One of the Leandrans was compelled to step forward of the others on the stage, and someone Na’Sara hadn’t encountered before started reading from a databoard.

“Leandran, trained chef, age equivalent to 38 human standard,” he began. “Confirmed fertile, possessed of at least two fetishes…”

Na’Sara’s sense of what was happening in the audience was that various of the people there were indicating interest, and another of the slavers present by the stage seemed to be monitoring this. The fact she was pulling this information in only through the Starsoul suggested to her that these bids were electronic.

Which spoke to how well-organised and long-lasting this thing must surely be, but it also worried her.

There would be no way for her to track these things.

She became aware, as the Leandran was told to strike various different poses, and as the slaver monitoring bids became more and more excited, that there was someone else applying their sense to her, through the Starsoul.

It took her a surprisingly long time to identify that the mind connecting to hers was that of her student, but Vasir’s mind seemed somehow entirely different from within its fog of lust.

Marshal?

Vasir, are you alright?

I… don’t know, Marshal. I… keep remembering flashes…

I’m sorry I got you into this.

Yes, but, Marshal?

What, Vasir?

We failed our Master.

The thought chilled Na’Sara to the core. She hadn’t thought about that at all, which was shameful in and of itself - but their Master, their handler in the Shadow Order, had ordered that when the facilities be cleared out, the address be transmitted to him.

They hadn’t done so.

The very thought gifted her steel in her spine.

Two sets of programming and two sets of instructions warred in her head, while she dedicated herself to masking any sign of this with the Starsoul.

At the same time, her sense of Vasir and Vasir’s sense of her were starting to reconnect, to stand together once again. This was… awkward… and more awkward when Na’Sara experienced enough to know that her dream had been shared with Vasir somehow.

Perhaps they had dreamed it together. Perhaps Na’Sara’s needs had been imprinted on Vasir. Perhaps she didn’t remember the alien giving their thoughts a direction to run along.

Those all seemed like plausible options - not ones that were necessarily good options, but ones she’d believe - but it worried her that she couldn’t be sure which was true.

Do you trust me, Vasir?

Of course, Marshal.

Do you think you can act, when you need to?

Of course, Marshal.

Wait for my signal.

She sensed the hesitation in the reply, was not sure if that was distrust or just eagerness to act.

Yes, Marshal.

"…and this woman,” the auctioneer said, “has been proven fertile already. Perfect for those with generational wealth and generational planning horizons, or to reward any employees who may have neglected their own familial goals.”

A polite titter emerged from the audience, though Na’Sara couldn’t see what part of all that could be thought of as funny.

“Bidding will start at thirty-seven thousand.”

Which was such a strange number, she thought; there had to be some reasoning behind it, and just because she couldn’t see what it could be didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

She waited, feeling out the others in the room for their excitement, and waited, and then her sense gave her an indication of what she’d been watching for.

There was a bidding war going on. And even if all the bids were electronic, everyone in that audience was focused on the screens, and so were at least some of the slavers.

She poured a jolt of her cold fury at failing her Master down the Starsoul into her student, fully expecting it to push Vasir into the same full wakefulness. As she did, she was already plucking the hilt of the energy blade from her belt.

She was still topless, as she’d been stripped before they’d ever left the previous planet, and this made her body’s balance subtly different, but a seasoned Marshal learned to cope when much more off-balance; every planet had a different gravity, after all.

The blade snapped back into action and Na’Sara leaped, drawing on the Starsoul to fill her body with all the energy that her long travel had taken from her. The alien with the hypnotic eyes realised its danger too late; her blade took his hand off at the wrist, and as he dropped to his knees, clutching at his injured arm, she pivoted almost before she landed to bring her booted shin down across the back of his head.

He was out could before he could properly react.

Vasir had responded differently, heading for other targets; her long legs and the Starsoul’s might gave her a loping stride that could outpace many sprinters.

She skipped past the auctioneer, reaching out with one arm to catch him under the chin with an arcing punch backward as she did. Blocked a shot from one of the Styptrene’s bodyguards, catching it on her blade. Planted her feet firmly on one of the few empty chairs in the audience and surged forward, calling on the Starsoul to carry herself in one bound to the double doors that were the audience’s only way in and out.

There Vasir planted her feet, raised her blade, and resolved to prevent anyone from escaping.

Na’Sara, meanwhile, ignored the audience. This was not something they had discussed, nor was it exactly a common tactic between them; however, in combat, they were so accustomed to fighting together, drawing on the Starsoul together, that their instincts had started to synchronise, and each had a clearer understanding of the other’s intent than should be possible.

Her attention remained focused on the slavers - at least the ones in the room - and her blade danced as she moved between them, her every motion impossibly graceful, somehow remaining so even on the point of exhaustion.

Na’Sara had endless compassion for those who couldn’t access the Starsoul in the way the Order were trained to. There was a theory that it was something in the blood which allowed them to do so, but biologically, that seemed implausible. Individuals from too many species had the ability.

She was using her energy blade, where possible, as a threat, striking to subdue unless forced otherwise, the anger that had seen her disarm the hypnotic alien now back under control.

At the same time her sense was reaching out further, working on a deeper level. Tanner had always praised Na’Sara for her ability to follow multiple streams of information through the Starsoul. As well as the threats around her, she was reaching out further and further, her head-fronds twitching in slow circles as they followed her attention out and out in ever widening sweeps.

Na’Sara was searching for the mind of someone in law enforcement. When, eventually, she found one of them, she paused for a few moments, focusing in on the sense of that mind, the identity within it. There seemed, at that distance, to be no signs there of corruption.

She brought her arm up, catching a wild forearm swing before it could connect with her head, and then rapped her assailant pinpoint on the forehead with the butt of her blade hilt.

Having thus bought herself the time to do it, she drove her own sense of will, her own identity, and her location and situation into the mind of the law enforcement officer.

Get help. Bring me help.

She could feel Vasir relax, too, so close was their link. They both knew there was only one thing left to worry about; the Starsoul could only nourish a tired body past exhaustion for so long. If their rescue arrived in time, all would be well.

*

“I appreciate your tact,” Na’Sara said as the two left the Inner Sanctum of the Grand Hall, three solar systems from where Na’Sara had called for help, and three months after the help had arrived.

It had taken a longer time than Na’Sara was at all comfortable with; they had been recalled home, or at least to the planet she mostly thought of as home now, with all the time she’d spent training there before she was ready to start work with Marshal Tanner.

They’d spent time recovering. And in none of that time had they been in a position to reach out to their Master and to obey his command, to redeem their failure. Na’Sara had resigned herself to hoping that he followed inner worlds news, and so would at least be able to pick up on what court cases to read for the addresses.

Finally, they’d been asked to the Inner Sanctum where the Grand Marshals sat, to account for the state in which they’d been found; drugged, exhausted, and half-naked, which was far from the image the Marshals liked to project when dealing with other law enforcement.

There had to be a hearing; Na’Sara and Vasir had assumed, incorrectly, that the agenda would be about any embarrassment done to the Order.

They had been wrong.

“In your report,” Lucius Ponfer said, “you were affected by some kind of chemical serum.”

Ponfer held the highest rank. Like most of those who did, he was human, though in his time at that rank the Grand Marshals had steadily become more diverse. It was rumoured that his occasional lovers were all non-human. “Yes, Grand Marshal.”

“You were also subjected to the gaze of a Phaan.”

“If that is their species’ name,” Na’Sara said, “then yes.”

Lucius had nodded. “The Phaan are little known,” he said. “They are in fact not a species of their own. An offshoot, born of manipulation and kept alive by the unscrupulous for their utility. At one time each one was considered as a terror weapon.”

Na’Sara glanced across to Vasir, and could tell through the Starsoul they were both unwillingly contemplating this idea. It didn’t seem to fit with the specific Phaan they’d encountered, but then times had changed. He had likely not been brought up to consider himself a weapon, but instead simply to look for opportunity.

“So… their gaze is something that was engineered into them?” Vasir asked.

Ponfer nodded.

“That’s horrible,” Na’Sara said, thinking, far better, if you have to twist a mind, to do it with deft hands, a winning smile, and such wonderful drugs seeping into my brain through my head-fronds…

She realised, awkwardly, that she was smiling. Realised too that Ponfer had noticed; that the entire council had noticed.

Her ochre skin flushed dark.

“The Phaan affect those whose will can be easily overcome,” Ponfer said. “Long ago, when I was barely ready to work without a mentor, I encountered them and became one of our experts.

“It is unusual for one of them to suborn the will of a Marshal,” Ponfer continued, “and stranger still for one to suborn two.”

A cold, unhappy feeling settled around Na’Sara, and she mustered all her will to hide it, wrapping the Starsoul around her.

Her eyes widened. As she’d reached out to draw in the Starsoul, she realised how firmly it was already focused on her.

All these Grand Marshals. These experts, whose touch on the Starsoul was so light it was unnoticeable - or so it had been said.

And they’d been monitoring her. Watching her.

You will keep this secret from the Order. Even from your mentor. Because this secret is above the Order, and is secret from them. You have passed my tests, and I will work as your handler, your puppeteer. You will serve and obey as is your duty, and it will be your pleasure. Even keeping this secret will be your pleasure.

That was two of her Master’s orders she’d failed. She turned and tried to bolt, but she made it no more than three steps before her body refused to continue running.

“Yes,” Ponfer said, and he sighed. “I did worry…”

Na’Sara and Vasir, who had likewise turned and tried to bolt, found themselves turning back to face the Grand Marshals, much against their will.

“We hoped,” Grand Marshal Urula said, with compassion filling her voice, “that this was a Phaan with an unusually powerful effect. That would be a concern, but it wouldn’t mean two of our own had been compromised.

“Let’s be as clear as we can be,” she continued. “You will not leave this chamber without our confidence that whatever effect you are under is gone. Whatever it is, your current controller’s influence will be broken.

“In this way, you have already failed. Do you understand?”

Neither of them wished to answer.

“So,” Ponfer said, “We will also receive a report from you both, in your right minds, on everything that has been done. You can, if you wish, tell us now.”

“But we expect you will not wish to,” Urula added. “Not yet. Are we wrong?”

Na’Sara and Vasir remained silent.

“Very well,” Urula said, her voice sombre and grim. “Let us begin.”

What followed shivered the two younger Marshals to their core. Little by little, their lives were relived in reverse, decisions unmade, until finally the roots of their slavery were unearthed.

The grips of the control they’d been under cracked, piece by piece, and Na’Sara felt abruptly as if the weather had changed, her head lighter as if a storm’s pressure was abruptly gone.

Light-headedly, they almost fell over themselves to confess almost everything that had happened.

Almost.

And that was how it was that Na’Sara came to quietly thank her student, who had held back some of the most embarrassing details.

“You’re welcome,” Vasir said. The two walked side by side for a while in a silence that managed to be both awkward and comfortable, all at once.

As they stepped out into the open, Vasir spoke again. “Marshal?”

“Yes?”

“While we were being transported, I had this dream…”

Na’Sara could feel herself flushing again, felt her head-fronds coil in cringing embarrassment. “I… think I know the dream you mean.”

“Yes,” Vasir said, and they resumed their uncomfortable silence a while longer. Then, “My apartment isn’t far, if you’d like to put your idea there to the test?”

Na’Sara was silent for a long moment again. Awkwardness was gone, nervousness taking its place.

“Show me your apartment,” she said.

“Yes, Marshal.”

*

TO BE CONTINUED IN EPISODE VII

The Shadow Order Watches