Chapter 3

Sabac had his hands full. “Anna! Easy, bitch! Take it a little slower and back off on the teeth! Damn!” The bitch was nothing if not enthusiastic — something Sabac had trouble understanding — but she was also completely without experience. “Hold it! Stop!” Anna ground to a halt; it didn’t take a degree in anthropology to read the expression on her face — you’d think he’d taken away a favorite toy! “Okay, let’s take it slow! Lick the underside with your tongue ... Yeah, that’s it ... The idea of a blowjob is to use your mouth to simulate a cunt! You got teeth in there?” God knew she had plenty in her mouth...

Anna eyed him sorrowfully. “Oo ca pu ch eh ou...”

Becky opened her mouth, but Sabac waved it shut. “Let’s not bother with that. A little instruction should make all the difference. Grip with your lips, and use your tongue — and try to keep your teeth out of it! I’ll guide your head; you were in a mad rush, too, which didn’t help...” He cradled the back of her head and started using her — and it was good — but it wasn’t quite enough ... Ten minutes later, he thought he might go insane from the sensations, but ejaculation forever hung beyond his reach. “This isn’t getting it,” he grunted, waving Anna off. She had drool all over her, but the look on her face was pathetic; obviously, tears were on the way... “Oh, quiet down,” he grunted, forestalling an outburst. “Lay back and spread your legs — it’s time for the main event!”

“You gonna fuck her?” Becky asked, grinning from ear to ear.

“That’s the plan...” From the way they acted, you’d have thought he’d offered them candy, or something. Anna’s face fairly shone! “Hey, this is likely to hurt a little bit, at first, you know — I sure can’t figure out why you’re celebrating...” Sabac shook his head. ‘Dumb cunt looks pleased to death... ‘

Anna WAS pleased! Sabac just didn’t understand; Anna had fully expected to have to give her virginity to some functional moron — with her handicap, it appeared to be the best she could do! Instead, she had a shot at a big, handsome, muscular guy, (Sabac was coming out of his combat gear), who somehow understood every word she said! It was a dream come true! She threw herself on her back and spread her legs, lifting her knees. “Ii iss okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” Sabac damned sure couldn’t miss it. She had a furry little pelt over loose rubbery lips; damn, he could see her clit from where he was standing! He knelt down and started positioning himself over her when something grabbed his attention and he looked up directly into Becky’s face at about two klek’s distance. “FUCK! What the fuck do YOU want?”

“I wanna watch,” Becky returned calmly. “You’re gonna do it right, right?”

“Well, yeah...” Shit, Sabac had never DONE a virgin! Any hole he’d pounded had seen a couple thousand OTHER dicks, first. “Back off! Why in Entropy I got saddled with a crazy woman and a kid trying to take lessons...” He shook his head, but reached down to tease open Anna’s nether lips with his cock — an exercise that felt mighty ticklish...

Anna licked her lips as he seated his cock against her opening, but her eyes shone. Sabac looked up. “Okay, this is likely to — never mind; you’ll see!” He snapped his hips, going glans deep.

Anna’s eyes popped, but that was it. She looked down between them at Sabac’s cock, partially buried, and back up at his face — but Sabac was looking down there, too ... Anna’d been fairly wet, so he’d made some ground, but he hadn’t popped anything, yet. He backed off a bit, Anna’s opening nibbling at him, and powered through another thrust.

Anna winced, but serious masturbation and tampons had beat the Hell out of her hymen; there wasn’t that much to it. Sabac drew back for the big push and powered on through to the root, and it just wasn’t that bad ... Sabac looked up; Anna’s eyes were still big, but she hadn’t uttered a peep. She had to know he was in deep ... He essayed a couple of slow strokes, and they were mighty fine, so he did a couple more, then, gaining confidence, he began to set up a rhythm.

But Anna had other ideas. Suddenly, she wailed, “Oh, SHIIIII — ISS GOO ARE’EE!!!” and started driving herself up to him, wildly. Controlled strokes were out; it was all Sabac could do to hang on! Anna wrapped her legs around his hips, and ground herself to him, literally lifting both of them from the ground with the force of her lunges.

About a mil and a half later, Anna stiffened and surged, red faced and panting, and Sabac got his first relief since she took off. Taking back the initiative, he rolled them over so Anna was on top. “If you’re gonna do all the work,” he grunted, “you might as well be on top...” He flexed and wiggled a bit, and Anna took off again, pounding away, lunging atop him and pistoning up and down on his cock like a wild thing, wailing, “Fuh ... fuh ... fuh... !!!” at the top of her lungs. This time, she pulled him along with her and he shot like a fire hose, pinned against her as she stiffened, feeling her vaginal muscles pulse along his length as she rode out her orgasm. As he lay there, wasted, Anna kissing and nibbling at his neck, a voice above him rumbled, “Sabac? Damn, Son — what’s going on?”

A few minutes before, Rendec had staggered up off of Val, having delivered his second load into her hungry pussy. Wild Val was in ascendance; the cock crazy girl that she’d been in college was back, overriding the more staid, matronly image of the mother of two. The look the redhead had given Rendec over her shoulder told him all he needed to know, so he took immediate action: “Crewman, come over here and feed this bitch some cock! You, too — there’s plenty enough for both of you, believe me!” The two squids, recently released from the boat crew, had been examining the leftovers when the Captain had offered a better cut of meat; the pair settled on Val immediately.

Rendec adjusted his battledress and looked around. It had been a bit less than half a dec — around forty minutes for the locals — and the first round was about over. Most of the troopers had gotten themselves a piece, and some had gotten two; there were used women staggering around all over the place, most with semen pouring out of them, and some of the younger ones with a bit of blood mixed in from maidenheads that they now wouldn’t be able to offer a local male. Reactions were all over the map, from apparent unconcern to outright hysteria, and everything in between. A shocky looking woman whose age Rendec guessed at twenty GSCs staggered up to him and asked, blankly, “I’m all right, aren’t I?”

“You’re fine,” he assured her. “You just had a little sex — nothing to worry about. You HAVE had sex, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” The woman looked blank. “A bunch of times.” She blinked. “But my ass hurts. I think somebody missed...”

Rendec rubbed at his face, trying to keep it straight. Fortunately, she’d never remember... “Happens all the time; don’t worry about it. How was it at the time?”

The woman clearly wasn’t all there ... She thought about it for a moment, then, “Okay, I guess. I don’t think I came, though...” Rendec nodded sagely and the woman staggered on.

Rendec glanced back at the red headed cunt he’d been plowing; the two squids were feeding her from both ends, but she seemed to be doing most of the work, hurling herself from one cock to the other. The woman was apparently insatiable; she could probably handle the whole company by herself! Two other squids were wandering through the leftovers; one of them glanced down at the stasis chamber. “Hey, Sprik, when will this one be done?” The medic wandered over, checked the readouts, and grunted, “Another five minutes, if you want her jaw to work.” The squid plopped on the lower end of the chamber; apparently, he was going to wait. In the meantime, he pointed out a heavy woman with mouse-brown hair, “Strip, and lemme get a look at you.” The woman pulled off her top and bra, revealing some serious jugs — which was fortunate, because the layer of fat she then exposed below nearly covered her pudenda. The squid grunted, disgusted; Rendec couldn’t blame him.

Sprik went off to check the other chamber, and Rendec followed him with his eyes. Dolf and the three or four troopers with him were deep into their entertainment; the woman he’d fisted second, last seen with a cock in her mouth and Dolf’s big fist in her pussy, was lying on the ground, panting, but not looking too much the worse for the wear. They had the third up on the bench, giving her the treatment; apparently, Dolf had picked her ass, because one trooper was using her mouth, and another had her legs up and was pounding her snatch. Dolf himself had moved on to the chunky blonde who had seemed to be so fascinated with him; he had her knelt up and was driving his cock into her. She was a noisy one; she’d been babbling ever since she was taken. Given a front row seat to three different fistings and several rapes, her exclamations of shock and horror had been a background for their activities for some time. Wandering closer, Rendec noted that her eyes were still huge, but with Dolf’s cock moving in and out of her, she’d settled for repeating “Oh, God!” again and again ... Rendec suspected that she wasn’t hurting too much, which was fortunate...

Rendec was beginning to be seriously unhappy with the overall moral position that the raid put him in. Now that he was sated, for the moment, the implications of visiting this kind of crap on innocents left him less than thrilled. Oh, sure, the Raiders had pillaged before — to the victor, the spoils, and the loser pays up — but these people hadn’t done anything to deserve this... “Sprik! When we pull out of here, I don’t want to leave anyone damaged — how many can we give short-term med repair injections?”

The medic looked up and thought about it for a moment. “We got a ton of ‘em, Cap’n, not having seen a whole lot of ground action. Shouldn’t be a problem. I probably have enough in the ambulance — and there’s more in the boat.”

“Plan on it, then. We’ll use the sleepygas with the memory wipe additive, and give ‘em all a general; when the locals come to investigate, nobody will know anything, and nobody will have a mark on ‘em. That’ll confuse things nicely.”

“Aye, Sir.” Sprik popped the cover on the chamber, and the Indian chick sat up, blinking. She stood up and reached behind herself gingerly, but her ass had returned to normal. Sprik looked her up and down and grunted, “All right, get over here, kneel up, and start sucking my cock!” The woman opened her mouth, but he forestalled her with, “Unless you want me to get Dolf to stick his fist up your ass all the way to your mouth! And I won’t fix it, this time...” The woman’s mouth shut with an audible clop and she moved to follow instructions, her eyes taking in the other local victims. By the time she knelt up, she was obviously intent on being utterly pliant...

Rendec chuckled, and turned away. As he glanced around, he noticed that things were heating up again; troopers were wandering around, collecting naked and half-naked bimbos for the second round. He punched up Kald and grunted, “Okay, I’m back. Anything I should know about?”

“Female troops got a late start, Sir, but the male cock-hounds are helping ‘em out.” Alerted, Rendec noted increased activity around the circle of local males. Flipping down his snoopers and dialing up the magnification, he found himself zoomed in on the Pretty Boys giving some poor local fuck the treatment from both ends. Poor bastard looked really unhappy — but he had a hard-on ... Other local males were swarming around the female troopers, all of whom seemed to be naked; the outriders were giving the Pretty Boys’ victim and a couple of other unfortunates in the grip of some squids nervous glances. “Squids were slow off the block, too,” Kald added, “I’ve got two of mine and two of Second’s on watch in the boat, so they could play.”

Rendec grunted. “How secure are we?”

“Place is reasonably remote. There were a dozen or so vehicles on the road in, locals milling around trying to figure out what the fuck ... I had the squids pulse the field, and they’re all napping peacefully.” Kald’s grin carried in his voice.

“Speaking of play — what about Tenyek?”

“I offered to relieve her, and she said ‘no’ in a tone that caused me to wonder, so I sneaked by for a look. She’s giving a half-dozen of the older girls cunt-lapping lessons — but it isn’t at gunpoint, so I let it alone.”

Rendec shrugged. “You get any?”

“Nope. Don’t like screamers.”

“Come get a piece of the redhead, then. She likes dick — LOTS of dick. You’d be doing her a favor.”

“Huh! I’ll be dipped in shit! You sure?”

“Never hurts to ask...” Rendec turned toward Val and her two current partners, “Hey, Red! Want another dick?”

“Shit, lookit that! Who’d have thought?” Kald had dropped his snoopers and magnified the scene of the action; there was no arguing the beckoning wave from the redhead. “On the way, then...”

Rendec chuckled. “It’s good shit, too. If you want something fresh, she’ll probably offer her ass...”

About that time, new noise erupted from the vicinity of the female display line. Some woman was squealing her head off, incoherently. Rendec was surprised; he’d figured most of the good stuff was gone ... There was a quality to the uproar, too ... Rendec wandered that way, picking up activity; some trooper was pounding away at some slut on the ground, it looked like ... There was another woman there, squatting, apparently watching the show — something Rendec found odd; the usual pattern was to avoid watching another woman being raped ... The woman being fucked was thrashing wildly; Rendec wondered what the trooper had done to set her off like that — some kind of insect, or liquid heat? The woman suddenly arched, and hung there, fully supporting the trooper atop her for just a moment before collapsing, and things got quiet — but Rendec’s curiosity was piqued, so he headed that way. Rendec flipped down his snoopers for a closer look; the first thing he discovered was that the watching woman wasn’t — it was a young girl, maybe 8 GSCs or so, red-haired and freckled. Why in Entropy wasn’t she with the other kids? About that time, the couple in coitus rolled over, bringing the woman on top, and a moment’s observation surfaced the reason that the whole thing had caught Rendec’s attention in the first place — the woman, now on top, was impaling herself wildly on the trooper’s cock! That was what was weird about it! The slut was enjoying herself! Loudly! She was lunging up and down, wailing “Fuh! Fuh! Fuh!...” at the top of her lungs, titties swinging...

Rendec stopped by the stasis chamber as the other medic examined the readouts and popped the cover; the woman in it, the one Brok had used for a martial arts dummy, sat up looking highly confused. The medic slapped her, more or less gently, to get her attention, and locked eyes with her. “Go over there and do whatever he wants, Honey. I’m sure you don’t want to have to end up in this thing again...” The woman nodded and climbed shakily out of the chamber, feeling at herself in various places.

Allison Hayes’ body might be whole again, but her mind remembered pain, terrible pain leading to unconsciousness that suddenly ended when she opened her eyes in that box a moment ago. She remembered being mauled like a slut by some hulking bruiser, and she remembered slapping him for it. Then she remembered an awful snapping noise and her arm had stopped working, and right after that a terrible impact, and her jaw wasn’t right — it wouldn’t close properly, and the pain ... She remembered being hurled to the ground, and the brute dropping atop her, using her left hand to try to slap at him and stave him off ... And she remembered burning pain, being unable to move her arm, and looking to her left to see a knife pinning her bicep to the dirt. After that, there were just waves and waves; she didn’t remember the brute going away, or being moved ... Now, suddenly, here she was, back where she started after climbing out of that coffin ... The slap helped her to focus, but she was still confused; one thing was clear, however: she was to do as she was told, or else!

Allison had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Mama was beautiful, and Daddy was rich. All of her life, men had bowed and scraped, vying to make her theirs; she’d never really had to DO anything until she’d married and Justin had gotten her pregnant with Ashleigh! THAT had been a miserable nine months, despite the birth coach and the nurse...

Nobody had EVER treated her like this! But then, what WAS this? Her jaw worked again, her right arm was whole, and her left ... She couldn’t see anything...

The squid, one Engineering Mate 1st Class Hallek, eyed her. “Wondering if it was all real? What do you remember?”

“H-he broke my arm — and my jaw. Stuck a knife...” She pointed to her bicep.

Hallek looked up at the medic, who checked the readouts. “One broken right radius, one broken mandible. Blood loss from stab wound in left bicep. Various other bumps and bruises, and complications from being slapped around AFTER the jaw was broken.”

“Brok got her,” Rendec offered helpfully. “She was apparently operating under the impression that she was more than fuck meat.” Rendec watched the wince his deliberate brutality generated in the woman. “She pissed him off, bad, while he was in his battle trance. If I hadn’t called him off, a box wouldn’t have helped...”

Hallek’s eyes widened. “If you fucked with Brok, Honey, you’re lucky we had a box!”

“I’m fine, now...” Allison was trying to deny the whole thing.

“You’ve been out of it for a bit. The box is a repair device,” Hallek explained patiently. “Look around; does it look like anybody’s had it easy around here?”

Allison looked around. Here and there, women were being fucked on the ground, on benches ... That hulking bruiser that they’d tossed Joy to was sitting with his back to a fence post, and Joy was draped across his lap, sucking his cock! How disgustingly sluttish! Still, there were a lot of women lying around or shambling about with the look of rough use. Nearby, a redhead was knelt up with two men working on her and another pulling off his clothes...

Hallek started losing patience. “Come over here, and kneel up. You need to earn that repair job!”

“I’m not...”

“The fuck you aren’t, Slut!” Rendec roared. “What ARE you? Too stupid to live? Now, you can kneel up and cooperate with these two, or I can find a dozen others to help! Your call...”

“You wouldn’t!” Allison spun and turned her full attention on the leader of these animals, ignoring the other two.

“Are you BLIND, as well as stupid, Slut? Look around! I HAVE!” Rendec rolled his eyes, then flicked them at Hallek. As bad as he felt in general about the conditions he’d imposed on these women as a group, THIS one demanded a serious attitude adjustment!

Hallek collected Allison’s right arm and took it immediately into a hammerlock. Allison’s eyes popped for two reasons: surprise, and the flash of pain along the area where she remembered the break.

The medic popped up with, “Take it a little easy, the arm isn’t one hundred percent yet. It takes a few decs for the new cells to blend in properly — if you break it again now, the second repair won’t be as good!”

Allison stopped dead and her eyes widened. “Okay, okay!”

Rendec glared. “Stupid cunt.” Glancing at Hallek and the medic, he grunted, “Wear her out. Yell for help, if you need it. Be inventive. I’m guessing that this cunt has had a loooong, free ride.” He took in her mussed, but obviously carefully cared for blonde locks, the feelie-star shape, the tan... “Time to pay up, Slut.” Eyeing the medic, he added. “Try not to break anything she can’t be conscious during the repairs to — I want her to remember, next time. But feel free to break things, if she isn’t TOTALLY cooperative.” He returned his attention to Allison. “Understand, Slut?”

“Y-yes...” Hallek pushed down on the trapped arm, and she bent her knees and knelt.

“Break the other one, if you want to,” the medic reiterated, “I don’t want to have to fix that one again.”

Hallek grunted, “Okay. Gimme your other arm, Slut.”

“O-okay.”

Allison gingerly reached back and Hallek switched grips. “What about the knife wound?”

The medic shrugged. “Soft tissue damage is easier to fix. If you cut her up but don’t take out any major organs, turnaround on a repair is pretty quick.”

“Hear that, Honey? I can chop your tits off and let you hold ‘em for a while, then we can put you back together and do it again!” Hallek leered.

Rendec was still casting about for a way to heap more indignity on the woman; something about her just pissed him off... “Can you fix it without putting her in the chamber? I want her to remember, this time.”

“I’d have to send for a special pack,” the medic hazarded.

Rendec grunted, and shifted to comm, so Allison couldn’t hear. “Don’t, then. Nothing she can’t stay conscious for. You can tease the shit out of her, though, by all means.” Shifting back to voice, he voiced a brainstorm, “Do you ride, Slut?”

Allison’s eyes were pools of fear, and she was shaking visibly. The threat to her breasts, one of her display features, was ghastly, and had deflated her natural arrogance. “N-no. S-sir. My daughter Ashleigh...”

“How old is she?” Rendec demanded.

“Uhhhh, twelve, S-sir...” ‘Oh, shit!’ was painted all over her expression.

Rendec grunted and switched to comm, “I need somebody to go get a little cunt out of the outbuilding. An Ashleigh Hayes. Deliver her intact.”

A Third Platoon trooper hanging out with Dolf rolled to his feet and put his gear together. “I got it Captain. Do I deliver any messages?”

“Don’t fuck with her,” Rendec directed, “Her mother is the target.”

“Roger.”

Hallek nodded to the medic. “Want the first blowjob?”

“Huh! Dunno. You ever suck cock, Slut?”

“I...”

“Yes or no!” Rendec grated.

The answer was ‘no’. No one, even her country-club scion of a husband, had ever worked up the nerve to press Allison for one. Realizing that the lack wasn’t going to be any help to her, she hung her head. “No, Sir.”

The medic, Zakan, who was only a rating, glanced up at Rendec, but the Captain waved him off, grunting, “We don’t have time to teach the bitch military courtesy; besides, it works to our advantage in teaching her respect. Slut, from now on, ALL men are Sir to you, understand?”

Allison understood that she’d screwed up somewhere, but the nature of it wasn’t clear. The good news was that the leader was going to let it pass... “Yes, Sir.”

Zakan sighed. “Awright, cocksucking 101, then. NO TEETH! You use your tongue, your lips, and your throat to simulate a pussy!” He undid the catch on his trap, freeing a fairly decent-sized hunk of meat nestled in curly pubes. “Pussies don’t have teeth, and if you fuck up and bite me, you won’t either — understand?”

“Yessir.” Gawd, she was going to have to lick and suck on that? Inchoate thoughts regarding sanitation, taste and the fact that it SHOULD be going elsewhere flitted through her brain.

Zakan raised an eyebrow. “Now would be good, Slut. This is the LEAST of your worries.” Rendec shifted from foot to foot, obviously gauging the opportunity for delivering a blow. Allison took the stiffening tube of flesh in her hand, leaning forward and licking her lips nervously, which saved her from a slap. It felt sort of like Justin’s only it was softer...

His anger satisfied for the moment, Rendec’s attention was caught by the increase in the noise that had caught his attention before. There was that other slut nearby — obviously a REAL slut — riding a trooper hard and grunting “Fuh! Fuh! Fuh!...” at the top of her lungs. Nearby, the redheaded kid knelt, watching in absorption. Weird. Rendec wandered over, arriving just in time to see the slut give a final wail and stiffen, clutching at the trooper, whose hips punched upward; looked like he was shooting in the little bitch ... Wandering closer, he recognized the troop, “Sabac? Damn, Son — what’s going on?”

Sabac opened his eyes, and made to bat the slut off of him and rise, but she was draped flat, kissing his neck. “Sir!”

“Relax,” Rendec chuckled. “What did you do to this one? Most women aren’t much into being taken against their will...”

“It wasn’t, apparently, Sir. I don’t begin to understand it, but SHE does...” He waved an arm at the little redhead.

Rendec turned to the child, who was just sprouting titties. She was pretty pink in the face and shoulders, though, and she was slowly moving a hand away from her crotch. Give her a year or so... “Okay, so what’s up here? And why aren’t you with the little kids?”

Becky nodded at Anna. “I run with her — we’re a team,” she asserted. “Anna is older, but she doesn’t talk good. I hang out with her and translate, for normal people. You guys, though, seem to understand her...”

“Okay.” Rendec accepted that, but... “That doesn’t explain why she’s so happy about this...” Anna was eyeing Rendec, but she had both arms and both legs wrapped around Sabac and was kissing him all over his neck and chest. Rendec took in the face, which was nothing to write home about. Was that it?

Becky stood and walked over to Rendec, and stood beside him, staring down at her best friend. “I don’t think you get it. Anna isn’t pretty, but that’s nothing beside the other problem. She’s plenty smart, but she can’t talk! This gets her thrown in with people who are REALLY fucked up — oops! Sorry! — and gives her no chance at all to catch a decent guy! How would YOU like it if the only chicks you stood a chance to date were ‘way ugly AND ‘way stupid?”

“Okay...” Rendec was getting there.

Becky barreled on, “This dude is probably the only one who ever offered to get into Anna’s panties — and she’s had an itchy clit as long as I’ve known her! Uh, excuse the language...” Rendec brushed it off; it wasn’t important to HIM! “And he’s pretty nice looking, but most important, HE UNDERSTANDS IT WHEN SHE TALKS!”

Rendec blinked. “That right?” he asked Anna.

“Uh huh. Iss uh may ngh!” Anna pushed out, eyes starry.

“Amazing? I doubt it,” Rendec chuckled.

Becky rounded on him, “You, too?”

Rendec nodded, smiling. “The light begins to dawn. We use a translator chip to understand people. It captures concepts in higher-level thought — when you’re composing speech — and translates it for us. Entropy, most of us don’t speak each other’s languages at all! So, we get Anna’s meaning when she says things...”

“You don’t know ... I don’t know how to explain it — for her, it’s like maybe somebody pulled your tongue out, or something. But I guess THAT wouldn’t matter to you, either...”

“I begin to get it,” Rendec replied. Your people don’t have any workarounds?”

“Well, there’s sign language,” Becky replied, making a few gestures with her hands that meant nothing to Rendec, “but most people don’t know it any more than you do...”

Rendec grinned down at Sabac, “You know she’s gonna be stuck on you...”

Sabac grinned back. “Well, it isn’t THAT bad, Cap’n. This is the first woman I EVER had who fucked ME, instead of vice-versa! It was all I could do to hang on!”

Two male minds started working in the same direction. Anna’s facial problems were probably relievable by cosmetic work, if not the alleviation of the underlying medical issues ... How often did you find a woman who loved to fuck that much? Rendec turned on Becky. “What’s YOUR story?”

Becky shrugged, and her face blanked. “I’m an orphan — you understand?”

“Yeah. No parents to raise you. We’ve got places where nobody has parents, per se ... Just professional caregivers...”

“Well, I hope it’s better for them than it has been for me,” Becky replied, “Still, I’m pretty independent ... Anyway, some social welfare jerk thought it might save money if they mixed in orphans and the retarded and let ‘em help each other. Doesn’t usually work, but Anna isn’t REALLY retarded — she just can’t talk! So, we’re sisters, kinda.”

Rendec nodded. “Right.” He nodded at Sabac, and wandered back over to see what was happening with ‘the stuck-up bitch’, which was his mental shorthand for Allison Hayes.

Trooper Tillam stuck his head into the barn’s unlit interior, dropping his snoopers to pick up infrared augmentation for the moment that it took for his eyes to adjust. There were kids all over the place, some just sitting around, some playing. Tenyek’s ID marker was superimposed over a stall; Tillam picked up her comm channel. “Tenyek? It’s Tillam.”

There was a scramble, and Tenyek came on. “Roger, Tillam. What’s up?”

“Captain sent me after a young cunt. An Ashleigh Hayes.”

“Okay,” Tenyek replied. “I don’t have her here, but if you need help...” She appeared over the stall door, naked to the waist, at least. Tenyek had nice tits — too bad...

“No problem. I’ll handle it.” Turning toward the open area in the center of the building, Tillam announced himself, “I’m looking for Ashleigh Hayes!”

Everybody stopped. There was a rustle, and a high-pitched voice asked, “Am I in trouble?”

“No,” Tillam replied, trying to sort the girl from the crowd, “but the Captain wants to see you.”