After both Marshals had been stripped nude, they had been compelled to stand facing one another, “close enough for your nipples to brush against one another as you breathe,” as Melavox had put it. This had also entailed Vasir being made to bend at the knee, as she was a good four inches taller than Na’Sara and they would not otherwise fulfil the instruction.

“Look into each other’s eyes,” Melavox instructed, and they both obeyed, the heat of their pleasure rewards throbbing through them, aching so deeply that they could not speak or even think to object.

“Now, take your hilts in your hands, and put your arms around one another, the tips of your hilts pressing against their spine.” Again, they obeyed, staring into one another’s eyes, the mentor seeing a helpless student, the student seeing her lost mentor. If either of them activated their blade, they would grievously harm the other.

The Elders turned out to have habcrys in their ship, and Karich Presvan had gone to fetch it. He played the hose over the two unmoving Marshals, encasing them in the transparent, breathable crystal as it reacted to the air.

Melavox and Karich drew their energy blades and trimmed the crystal down to most easily fit up their ship’s ramp, and the two Marshals were loaded aboard, the shuddering pleasure-rewards of the Elders control ebbing only slightly now they couldn’t move at all.

*

At their destination the crystal block was lifted out of the top of their ship and deposited on a raised plinth. The Elders did not live so alone that there was no audience to this; the plinth was at the centre of a small starport that, evidently, was under their complete control, but which itself was at the centre of a small town.

Many of them came by while the Marshals were frozen on display, looking them over. Reaching out through the Starsoul, Na’Sara perceived that they saw this as some kind of ritual, something had had been happening once a decade or so in this central space since the development of habcrys - generations of the people of this planet had come to observe a captive, or very rarely more than one, on display.

Once a decade or so, she thought, clarity slowly returning to her mind as her will finally stirred through the cloud of arousal that had kept her from thinking for days on end.

Once a decade was much more often than they needed to change host bodies. Far more often than the Marshals had known about.

Na’Sara frowned. She widened her consciousness a little, pushing it out to make contact with Vasir’s mind.

Immediately she was flooded with the younger woman’s arousal and pleasure and a glimpse - strapped down to the bed, wrist and ankle restraints impossibly strong, unbreakable, her robes cut away, a device powered by the Starsoul itself pumping in and out between her legs, her own hips bucking back around it in her lust, being used as a broodmare by some alien threat - of what was happening in her mind.

She would have shivered if she could, knowing Na’Sara was still so trapped in the delusions the Elders had used on them.

*

They remained there for over a month, the habcrys itself the only thing that sustained them. Na’Sara realised early on that this wasn’t just a demonstration that the Elders held power over their two captives; it was also their way of forcing the Marshals’ minds from full alert.

Try as she might, she couldn’t tell herself she was as alert now as she had been when first captured - and in any case that hadn’t helped her avoid being captured. The whole thing was a nightmare.

She reached out periodically to check on Na’Sara.

- my mentor holding my head by the hair, standing over me, foot on my back between my shoulders as a cock fills my mouth. I look up, sucking eagerly but trying to look as if I am fighting this with everything I have -

- the tables turned on me, my wrists and feed secured with magcuffs, shackled to the table I’m bent forward over, one of them tilting my head as far back as it will go as they pour the cloying, sticky obedience drug into my mouth so fast I have to gulp it down to keep from drowning in it, the other of them inside me from behind, pounding me, his thighs slapping rhythmically against mine, his hips smacking into my buttocks with every thrust -

- I stand by his side, not moving, staring straight ahead. I know he is talking to the man in front of him, and the man in front of him answers, but I have no idea what they’re saying. The words are happening past me somehow. My mind is constantly wandering, always coming back to the fact I do not want to think for myself. If I have to think, I want to think for him.

He says something to me. I still do not register it but I am stepping forward. My hilt springs to my hand through the Starsoul and ignites. The man in front of him turns to run, but I cut him down. I cum, rewarded for my obedience -

- I remove the last of my armour, revealing myself naked and vulnerable, standing beside Na’Sara. I remove her robe in turn, discovering that she is completely naked herself, except only for her belt and blade. We turn together, seeing the chair on which our minds were first taken, and we smile to see Karich Presvan sitting on it.

We approach, coming to a halt on either side of the chair, and we kneel, silent, mirroring one another’s motions, facing one another across his erect cock. We behave as if we are carrying out a ritual. He snaps his fingers.

Our mouths shame themselves into Os as we lean forward, working together in worship of his cock. We worship as befits our duty toward an Elder.

It is a pleasure to worship. I want to worship. I am happy to worship -

Na’Sara recoiled from that last one, breaking the connection. She recognised it all too clearly; it had happened, although at the time it hadn’t been Karich, and they had both, for a time, believed it to be a dream. Na’Sara had hidden how deeply enslaved she was from herself by virtue of calling it a dream for a very long time.

She had been told to.

She was under no illusions as to the control the Elders asserted, though. All they had to push back was their own free will, and after a month frozen in place in the habcrys, Na’Sara didn’t think either of them would have much of that left.

Whatever was coming, she had a bad feeling about it.

*

At the end of the month, Melavox made her way out toward the habcrys slab and stood outside. Na’Sara’s hand still held her energy hilt, and Melavox had stood close enough to be in reach; a single wide cut would have brought her down, if the habcrys had not been there. If Melvox were not able to parry. If Na’Sara could have the courage and the will to follow through.

The month had taken much from her.

“You,” Melavox said, close enough to be heard through the habcrys, “you are the senior.”

Na’Sara could not speak, but as she would in any case not have been willing to answer, it didn’t matter.

The Elder reached out and laid her hand on the habcrys, palm-first, and directed the Starsoul into it through the contact.

Na’Sara’s ears were suddenly alive with crackling; a conjured electricity, often rumoured as an ability cultivated by the Elders, shunned by the Marshals. Such a thing had few uses that were not destructive.

This was, to be sure, one of the few; a powerful enough charge altered the state of habcrys, turned it into something halfway between jelly and slime.

Na’Sara was no longer supported by the rigid habcrys around her, but any strength there had been in her body had been lost over a month frozen in place. Thigh muscles quivering, her knees buckled, and she almost collapsed, except that Melavox had a hand in her head-fronds, and with the Starsoul providing just enough extra support to keep her from falling, Na’Sara stayed off her knees while Vasir sank forward onto them.

“I have a choice for you,” Melavox said. “I trust you are interested.”

Na’Sara dredged some last scraps of determination up within herself. Still unwilling to speak, she projected her disgust through the Starsoul. Melavox smirked.

“Remember, afterwards,” Melavox said, “if there is an afterwards for your consciousness, that you chose not to co-operate. You brought this on yourself.”

*

Na’Sara remembered, years ago, walking through the corridors of the Commissarial Palace on Geyomob, her robe tucked back slightly to make access to her energy hilt easier in case it was needed. Walking alongside her was Commissar Firdig, a lean Aref with the characteristic mottled purple skin of his species wrapped inside a well-tailored military uniform. He carried two holstered pistols on his right hip, of which one was loaded. The other - heavier, older, and exquisitely ornamented - was a badge of office, not to be used as a functional weapon unless no other choices presented themselves.

She had been under the spell of the Shadow Order at the time, but hadn’t been operating on their orders. Had only dimly been aware of the control they exercised over her.

“She is ready for questioning, then?” Na’Sara asked.

“She is in the interrogation room,” Firdig answered with a dignified, precise politeness. “I do not expect her to be willing to answer questions.”

“No,” Na’Sara sighed heavily. “No, I imagine not. All the same, though, we can do some things.”

“This is your Marshal training? With the Starsoul?” She read his curiosity easily, not even calling on the Starsoul to confirm.

Geyomob was a fringe planet, and visits from the Marshals were rare - these two facts often, but not always, going together. The Commissariat which ruled the planet had become in all but name a hereditary monarchy, and Firdig, while a good criminal investigator, was a noble scion who happened to have talent for his appointed position, not someone who had earned the role.

He knew what the Marshals could do, but had not seen it himself, and could not believe wholeheartedly without seeing it. Even hearing her tell him would reassure him. She’d seen the same behaviour now dozens of times, and understood that part of her role as a Marshal was to give them what they needed.

So she nodded. “The Marshal’s code forbids us from reading the thoughts of others this way outside an investigation,” she said. This was not entirely true, but t was in line with the way she behaved so she didn’t mind that. “But if an individual is thinking about something, there are ways of drawing that information from their mind. Simply in some cases. If she puts up resistance, I may have to employ other techniques.”

Firdig subsided, simultaneously reassured and ill at ease.

“I have the thefts in mind to interrogate her for,” Na’Sara said. “I understand that on Geyomob, some of these may be considered political crimes as well?”

“Yes.”

Na’Sara repressed the sigh that had threatened to escape. It would only have caused trouble. “I will need to know what these issues are, to watch for them.”

“She is a dissident,” Firdig told her. “She rebels against the state, and her lawbreaking comes from this. Some of the thefts in question are from government installations, and these are the ones which are also political crimes.”

Na’Sara didn’t entirely agree with that definition, but it wasn’t worth provoking an argument about. She let Firdig lead her the rest of the way to the interrogation room. “What was her name again?”

“Vasir.”

Na’Sara pushed open the door and stepped through, a slight sense that something was wrong tickling the back of her thinking.

There was something familiar about the human woman she saw sitting quietly on the room’s only chair, hands in her lap weighed down by heavy wrist manacles, legs secured to chair legs by shackles at both ankles and knees, but Na’Sara couldn’t place it. It was, in any case, not relevant.

“Hello, Vasir,” she said softly, moving forward into the room’s central circle of light with the suspect. “Do you know why I’m here?”

The woman glowered sullenly up at her. “Inevitable fate,” she said at last. “You could no more avoid this confrontation than I can escape my bonds.”

Na’Sara felt she did well to keep her surprise out of her expression. “Well,” she said. “Setting that aside, more specifically I am here because you have stolen.”

“We are being stolen from,” Vasir answered her.

“We? The people of Geyomob?”

“No. You and I.”

The whisper that something was wrong was becoming louder. The other woman’s eyes had an intensity to them; the intensity of someone who truly believes what they say, without reservation.

One of Na’Sara’s great regrets was that she could not believe those people’s words with the same unhesitating acceptance. It was seldom that they were correct; more often they were simply fanatical.

She moved her hand toward the energy hilt on her blade, but she wasn’t prepared to walk away from this with nothing. “You know what you’re suspected of?” she asked, opening herself to the Starsoul to listen for the answer in the human’s thoughts if she wouldn’t speak it aloud.

There were no thoughts to listen for, even as Vasir said “It doesn’t matter. I’m not the one you should be accusing.” Na’Sara frowned.

There were always thoughts to listen for, unless perhaps you were dealing with a droid.

Could that be the case here? A droid’s mannerisms tended to be locked in stone and few in number, so the flood of emotion Vasir had demonstrated before Na’Sara started talking didn’t quite fit. But a lack of audible thoughts meant something else.

She pushed a little harder through the Starsoul, and found something there, a not-shape, a barrier that had been undetectable before contact. Na’Sara’s frown deepened. That meant the woman had her own training, able to mask what might leak out of the Starsoul, and had the will to reinforce it, backing it up effectively.

Yet she was no Marshal, was not part of the Order. Those who could touch and shape the Starsoul were not uncommon, but those who could accomplish substantial things with it were rare; it was something that typically took training, and the earlier that training started, the greater the expected cap on ability

If she was not part of the Order…

Well, there were not many other sources of the relevant training.

By far the most likely explanation was the Shadow Order. And if they had someone on Geyomob, fomenting unrest, there was a wider plan.

Na’Sara felt a strong sense of destiny. This, she believed strongly, was the moment her life had been building to. Her hilt was in her hand, and the blade extended; she didn’t know when that had happened, but it was irrelevant. All she had to do was cut down this criminal and she would have fulfilled her destiny.

All she had to do…

She had something else to do. An old compulsion, one that would be burned out of her by the Order but which still thrived in this memory, had risen up, and whatever else might guide her thinking was irrelevant in comparison to the compulsion. The man who had laid it had made sure of that, teasing and massaging her head-fronds while he talked it into her.

Even at that moment, Na’Sara felt like she could feel a hand gripping her head-fronds, though much more painfully than he had. That must be because she had such an inclination to act against the compulsion.

She did not want to let her Master down. She would obey.

Her blade flicked out in three quick cuts, severing the chain between Vasir’s manacles with the first before a downward and upward stroke broke the knee and ankle shackle on her left, then the ankle and knee shackle on her right with the return.

And then she sank to her knees, head bowed. “I am an agent of the Shadow Order,” she uttered, hardly louder than a breath. Quiet enough to hide the truth from herself. “I cannot impede your progress.”

Another voice said “What?”

*

The world around Na’Sara dissolved. There was no other word for it; sharply defined points like the floor, the walls, the battered restraints and the chair became undefined and then nonexistent. She was on her knees on the concrete outside a spaceport on whatever desolate world Melavox had brought them to, her body bare, an ignited energy blade in one hand, her head only upright because Melavox held it, the dripping jelly of the habcrys slowly shedding from her body.

And in front of her, ready to have been cut down, was Vasir.

And Vasir, her eyes alight, was smiling at her. Their eyes met. A message passed through the Starsoul.

She can’t stop us both. Swing when my blade ignites.

Na’Sara wasn’t sure she still had the will or the strength to swing, but she was willing to try.

Vasir’s blade ignited and she brought it up and down in an overhand cut, while Na’Sara rolled her wrist with the ease of a trained reflex, slashing upward. Melavox put out her free hand, stopping Na’Sara’s cut, her attention focused on the mentor, not the student.

Vasir’s cut took off the hand holding Na’Sara’s head-fronds. As it flew away, Melavox let out a scream that reverberated through the Starsoul as well as through the local area, shuddering both of them.

Adrenaline surged through the Marshals. Straightening up, Na’Sara responded with a bellow of her own as she thrust forward. Melavox was listening to the Starsoul; she danced back a step, twisting away.

And if she had been fighting only Na’Sara, this would have been enough. Vasir’s cut was aimed a half-pace beyond Na’Sara’s thrust, and the Elder had no knowledge that it was coming; a moment later, her head bounced free on the ground.

For a heartstopping few moments the two naked Marshals looked at each other, wordlessly trying to grasp the situation - or at least that was how it seemed to Na’Sara.

After a few moments Vasir shattered that illusion, exclaiming “We need to get out of here! Can you get the ship warmed up?”

Na’Sara gaped at her. “How did you-?”

“I’ve been working on hiding what’s really going on with me in the Starsoul since they deprogrammed us. I knew I needed help with them. But we’ve got to go, now, we-”

The Starsoul warned the two of them, but there was no time to do anything that would keep themselves safe. A wave of force was hurled across the open space, sending them both flying toward a wall. Both Marshals cut their blades on instinct, not wanting to risk being cut as they bounced off something. Na’Sara didn’t try to break her fall; she hit limply and rolled to her feet.

It’s often said that those who don’t try anything when falling seem to escape the worst of it because they don’t do anything wrong. This idea passed fleetingly though Na’Sara’s mind as she looked up to see Presvan Karich staring at her. She had been marvelling at two things; her student’s development, if she was able to pull that skill together, and also the fact that now, having been indoctrinated by the Shadow Order had saved her twice from other controllers who wanted even worse for her.

She was still exhausted, but they’d lost their opportunity to retreat. Slowly, she rose to her feet, drawing on the Starsoul itself to keep her exhaustion from her face.

If she was a visible weak point, Presvan would focus in on Vasir first, feeling confident he had the time and space to do that. If he had to divide his attention… and if, she hoped, Vasir had more left in her than Na’Sara thought she did…

There would at least be a chance.

“You can surrender, if you wish,” Na’Sara told him. “Your way of life has been ended. Do you really believe you’re going to find another student?”

“Do you think you can go back to how it was before?” Vasir chimed in. “Alone, with nobody to protect you, and an established Order to face you down?”

Presvan looked at them both, glowering. “You killed her,” he growled. “You expect me to forsake my revenge?”

“We live in hope,” Vasir muttered under her breath. It was far from the first time Na’Sara had heard her say it, but it always made her smile. It was a particularly human expression, and it had taken her some time to understand.

Karich Presvan did not understand. His energy blade ignited, he raised his hand, and he clenched his fist -

- and a dozen men and women stepped through doorways into the open space, moving identically, carrying blasters.

Na’Sara allowed herself an expletive.

“Vasir,” she said, after a moment. “How limber are you feeling?”

“Not enough,” her student said grimly. “But it will have to be.”

And with that, they both started running forward.

The shots started slow, and for the first few yards the parrying was easy. But the rate at which Presvan’s puppets fired increased as they got closer to him, and it took more and more concentration to turn the energy bolts aside with their blades.

To control so many of them in real time so easily, Na’Sara thought, they must have had their minds systematically worn down.

Her thoughts flitted back to the long imprisonment, wondering about how often they’d put others through this. All those extra captives the Order had never known about.

She skidded to a halt, going down to one knee, letting her anger at what Presvan had done fuel her connection to the Starsoul, give power to her limbs, speed to her reflexes.

Without running she could focus better on blocking the blasts, and not even just on blocking them - she focused instead on deflecting them, sending them toward Presvan.

He was having enough difficulty in keeping the blasters firing while also deflecting Vasir’s attacks. As Vasir pressed the attack and the shots picked up in intensity, it got more and more difficult for him to keep everything going.

The first shot to break through caught him on the hip and set him spinning. Vasir immediately unleashed a backhand cut that he only barely parried.

But his hold on the blaster-firing men had weakened. Most of them kept following his commands out of inertia, but two turned their shots on him. He twitched his blade across to block one in response to the Starsoul and Na’Sara saw an opportunity, hurling her blade with the Starsoul to steer it. As he brought his blade back to parry Vasir, her hilt slid into his heart.

Silence fell abruptly over the battlefield. Na’Sara’s eyes rolled up in her head and she pitched forward on her face from her kneeling position, finally succumbing to exhaustion.

*

Consciousness returned to Na’Sara floating in a vitra tank back on Homeworld. She kept her eyes closed, not wanting to have to deal with anything just yet. There would be awkward conversations to come with the Marshals where they would both have to explain everything.

She wanted to be fully rested before she dealt with that.

She was fairly sure that her need to serve the Shadow Order had returned.

And since it had twice saved her life, she wasn’t sure she wanted it gone.

She took a deep breath before opening her eyes to see Vasir dozing in a float chair near the tank.

You didn’t have to wait, she sent.

Vasir woke up. Their eyes met, and she smiled warmly.

You and I, Na’Sara sent, need to talk about your fantasies. Because if you weren’t under their control while we were in the habcrys, you need a hand I trust on your leash.

THE END?