Rocky DiGiorgio was getting damn tired of all his father's sluts thinking they could just go around giving him these orders, and expecting him to obey them. The thirteen year old was being punished, one more time, for not doing something he'd been told to do by one of his father's damned concubines. This time, it was that damn Erica Saunders, his father's favorite concubine, whose instructions he'd once again refused to obey.

He wished his father would hurry up and get back home again. Hopefully, when he did get back this time, he'd explain to all four of those sluts of his, that Rocky was no longer subject to their authority, at least not in the same way that all the other, much younger, children still were.

Rocky knew he'd soon be a man. In less than a month, he'd finally turn fourteen. After that, he'd be in a good position, able to make all his own decisions. All he'd need to be free and totally independent from anyone, was a qualifying CAP score.

Rocky was absolutely confident that, after undergoing his own CAP testing, he'd score high enough to be a qualified Confederacy volunteer, just like his father had been after he'd first taken his test.

He'd only been seven years old when his father had been extracted by the Confederacy. His whole life had been turned upside down and inside out on the day that had happened.

Rocky's mother and father had been divorced from each other since the time of Rocky's earliest infancy. His mother had later remarried, back when Rocky was just turning three years old. Her new husband had been a very nice man, and, over the following four plus years of his young life, he had been the man that Rocky thought of as his father.

Rocky hadn't known or remembered the man who'd appeared in front of him just as soon as the young boy had been transported aboard the Confederacy pod ship.

His father, in not much more than an instant, had gone from being a complete stranger to him, to being the only person in total control of the little boy's life. As soon as he'd been successful in getting the Confederacy Space Marines to spirit Rocky away from the only parents he'd ever previously known and loved, Rocky's father went right back to totally ignoring the boy.

Little Rocky had been attending school, just like he normally did, when two Confederacy Space Marines had shown up at his school carrying Confederacy authorization to take the boy, and had whisked him away, using a portable transporting field. One minute he was in Mrs. Tyler's second grade class, and, mere seconds later, he found himself onboard a Confederacy pod ship, being introduced to a man who claimed to be his real father.

Dino DiGiorgio, when Rocky had first met him, had been a short, balding, forty year old, heavily built man. He'd been dressed in these ridiculously hideous plaid cargo pants, a too loud Hawaiian shirt, and one of those straw hats you sometimes see people wearing on a beach, hoping to avoid too much sun. This had been what he looked like on that day when Rocky had first met him. A few days after this first meeting, Dino had gone into one of those Confederacy medical machines and had come out of it in mid process of being turned into one of those six and a half feet tall, incredibly fit, and heavily muscled, Confederacy Space Marines. Rocky couldn't believe the physical differences the alien machine had brought about. The man was somehow evolving and changing his physical shape almost in front of the boy's eyes.

It had been much the same way with the four women that Rocky's father had chosen to be his concubines. Before they were physically augmented by that alien technology, all four of them had been barely worth looking at. After their treatment though, they all looked like some of the famous actresses that Rocky had seen on the television set back home, back in the days before he'd been kidnapped by this so called 'real' father of his.

Rocky had been frightened, angry, depressed, and extremely upset during the first five or six months after being extracted with his father. It had taken that long to get Rocky to finally accept that there was nothing he or anyone else could, or would do, to get him returned back home to his mother and step dad. What his father said, he slowly learned, was all that seemed to matter to anyone he came into contact with. Rocky had no say so at all. Nobody cared, not even a little bit, about what he might want.

In the six and a half years that had passed since Rocky had first been evacuated from Earth, he had been given almost no say so about anything having to do with how or where he lived. He was just a kid, and one who'd discovered that he had absolutely no rights at all. All that would change shortly. Just as soon as he passed his CAP test. Rocky never even entertained any thoughts about where he'd be, if, somehow, his test results weren't actually high enough to qualify him to be a Confederacy volunteer.

Dino DiGiorgio had mostly ignored Rocky after having him taken away from his bitch of an ex wife. He was off planet a great deal of the time anyway, serving with the Confederacy Marines, trying to at least slow down, if not actually defeat, the 'dickheads'. That was what everybody called the Sa'arm, this other group of aliens that the alien members of the Confederacy seemed so afraid of.

When Dino was back home, resting and relaxing, after returning from one of his recently completed military deployments, or from one of his many troop training assignments, spending time with his eldest child certainly wasn't anything that held any high priority for him.

Instead of interacting with any of his children, he spent almost all his time, when back from a mission, fucking his four sluts, and having all his Marine buddies come over to his pod for one of the many wild parties that he threw, parties that sometimes lasted for several days at a time, and where every concubine attending could be used, sexually, by any other Marines attending.

The one good thing about Dino that Rocky had ever noticed, was that he didn't seem to treat anybody else any better than he did his oldest son. In fact, sometimes, when Rocky asked him for something, Dino would let him have his way. Sometimes, if he was in a particularly good mood, Dino would side with Rocky, over either one, or even all of his sluts.

Of course, this wasn't because he loved Rocky, it was just that he didn't really care anything about any of his concubines either. This indifference of his was extended to all nine of the children he'd sired with these four women too. If Dino cared about anyone, other than himself, and possibly his space Marine buddies, then Rocky sure wasn't aware of it.

For all his obvious shortcomings around his household family, Dino was still considered to be an excellent Marine. He'd advanced through the ranks to become a gunnery sergeant in the six plus years of his Confederacy service. He'd also been cited, several times, for his bravery, and for the loyalty to his fellow Marines that he'd shown while engaged in combat against the Sa'arm.

As much as Rocky disdained his father for his total lack of caring, he had to admit to himself that it made him proud, sometimes, when he watched the way most of the other Marines seemed to look up to his father.

Three days before Rocky's fourteenth birthday, the planet's AI had informed the planetary governor that the assault fleet that Rocky's father was attached to was expected to make planet fall sometime in the next twelve hours. They'd been deployed somewhere off planet for the past six months.

Erica Saunders, Dino's favorite, and thus the head concubine in Dino's pod, was looking forward to having her sponsor return. Six months without any heterosexual satisfaction was really too long of a time for her to be going without.

Unlike Jill and Teresa, the two bisexual women in their family, Erica and Diana had always tried to shy away from that sort of thing. They would put on shows for Dino and his friends, at the parties, if he ordered them to, but girl on girl sex wasn't something that held much appeal for either of them. Of course, it had helped that they both had a selection of little sex toys they could get from the pod's replicating machine. Both women used to masturbate themselves with these toys, but it just wasn't the same as having a flesh and blood man to spend some quality time with.

Ever since he'd undergone that whole Marine enhancement package, Dino had become a real terror in the sack. Erica had gotten around quite a bit, back when she'd been a bar maid working some of the hottest joints in South Miami. This was before Dino had chosen her to be one of his four concubine picks.

Before the enhancements, Dino had been one of the worst lays she'd ever experienced, and that was really saying a lot, because she'd been bedded by some real pathetic losers in her time.

She'd been forty one years old back when Dino had first picked her. They'd been hard years back then, and Erica had needed to use her body, many times, just to try to keep a roof over her head, and food on the table for her, and her two teen aged children. Her kids had both been too old to qualify to be extracted with her when Erica had been picked up, but Erica didn't really miss having them underfoot all the time.

For Erica, these last six and a half years had been a big improvement over her first forty one. She had a nice place to live now, no worries about where or when her next meal was coming from, and plenty of great sex whenever Dino came back from his Sa'arm fighting duties. Those were her favorite times, when Dino was back home with them, relaxing and waiting for his next deployment.

If it hadn't been for Rocky, and for all those other whining, crying, snot nosed little brats that Dino kept planting in her, and in all the other concubines, whenever he was back on the planet, Erica's life would have seemed idyllic to her.

She even had to admit that she'd always enjoyed being at Dino's wild parties. She didn't have any feelings of love for Dino, after all, so she didn't really mind being passed back and forth like that, or even being loaned out to someone else, like she had been a few times over the years. It had never bothered her at all, being shared around like that with most of Dino's friends. Erica just figured that it all came as part of the deal she'd made with Dino to get him to take her away from the Sa'arm's rapid approach to Earth. If she made a deal, she'd honor it.

She had known going in, that having children was her primary reason for being allowed to leave her doomed planet, but that didn't mean she had to enjoy the process of having, and raising, all those little brats.

Right then though, her thoughts were on that damned oldest kid of Dino's. She'd really tried hard to find some way to get along with that brat, she really had, but nothing seemed to work where he was concerned.

He was still resentful, even after all this time, that his dad had gotten him picked up like he had. God knew he should have been grateful to be taken away like he had been. Now, he was one of the people who were safe from those damn alien 'dickheads' who'd soon be feasting on all the people who were still left on Earth.

He should be grateful, but he wasn't. Dino didn't care about that kid of his either, she knew that much. He'd achieved everything he'd wanted to when he'd had the kid snatched away from his ex wife like he'd done. Dino could be a vindictive prick about things like getting back at someone he was angry with. He'd taken his kid away from the kid's mom without any difficulty. Once he'd accomplished that, he was pretty much done with the whole thing.

What worried Erica the most, was wondering about what was going to happen after Rocky turned fourteen, and became, legally, an adult. Before he'd left, Dino had hinted that Rocky would be getting full sex privileges with all his concubines. She didn't know whether he'd really meant that, or if he was just pulling her chain to try to get a rise out of her and the other women living in the pod. It worried her though. It worried her a lot.

For some reason, Dino couldn't seem to imagine that oldest kid of his having any chance at all of scoring well enough on his CAP test to qualify to be a Confederacy volunteer in his own right. Erica wasn't so sure. She'd seen the kid spending quite a bit of his free time hooked up to the Confederacy learning machine they had in their pod. She knew, for a certainty, that Rocky had completed the full primary education package the Confederacy had put together for the dependent children of sponsor's and their concubine's.

Rocky was a pain in her ass, but he wasn't stupid. She had wished, many times, that he was. It would have made things a lot simpler for her if he had been. In some ways, she hoped he would score well enough on his CAP test when he took it. If he went off on his own, it would make her life a whole lot simpler. He was the only one in the household who had steadfastly refused to accept her authority over them. With him gone, Erica's life would be even better than it already was.

Erica was already forty eight years old, although she appeared to be a young girl, somewhere in her late teens. The last thing she wanted, or needed, was to be having yet another master. Especially one with the same life or death power over her that Dino had long enjoyed. For all her efforts to get along with him, she'd never once managed to get even a single sign of either respect, tolerance, or overt cooperation out of him. It was as if the boy had made it his life's mission to make her life more difficult.

As soon as the planet's AI was made aware of the Marine casualty list for the battalion's recent encounter with the Sa'arm, it took steps to secure and preserve existing Confederacy property on the planet. Because Dino DiGiorgio's name appeared on the list of battalion fatalities, his pod was locked down, and no one would be allowed to enter or leave until such time as an officer of the Civil Service was able to go to the late Sergeant's pod and arrange for the disposition of his property. Once this had been done, the pod would be held in reserve until it became needed again by incoming Space Marine personnel.

The late sergeant's concubines would be reassigned to the Civil Service. It would be up to them to decide the best way to either utilize or dispose of them. Dependent children were a different matter though. They would become the protected responsibility of the Confederacy, until such time as a final determination was made of their surviving concubine parent's status. As a usual thing, former concubines who were able to acquire new sponsorship for themselves, were allowed, and encouraged, to keep all their offspring with them.

Former concubines who were either recycled, or who were being utilized in some other capacity where child rearing was deemed problematical, such as acting as sexual comfort providers on certain types of Confederacy Naval vessels, their offspring would be reared in one of the Civil Service Child Care Centers, until such time as they were mature enough to sit for a CAP test of their own, and have their test scores determine the new status they'd hold as adults.

As soon as Rocky and his father's concubine's were informed of the death of their sponsor, a period of upset and panic ensued. While it had always been a definite possibility that Dino might not survive one of his deployments, only Dino himself was possessed of sufficient status to make binding arrangements for any, or all, of his household that would be surviving him. Dino had made no such arrangements.

Because of this lack of provision for his surviving household, Dino's family automatically became Civil Service property, immediately upon the proper notification by the Confederacy of his death.

Over the forty eight hour period immediately following this notification, two of Dino's Marine buddies, having open slots within their personal households, made application for two of his former concubines, as well as their seven children.

Both Diana and Jill accepted these offers of new sponsorship, right away, and were allowed to leave their old pod with their children, with all their personal accessories, as well as the toys and any other personal belongings of their children.

Left behind in the pod were Erica, Theresa, and Rocky, as well as the other five young infants or toddlers the two women had given birth to. Between the two women and Rocky, only Theresa seemed that personally upset about Dino's death. In fact though, it wasn't the loss of Dino that she was mourning. She was much more upset and concerned about Jill's having been claimed by another sponsor than she was about Dino's demise. Erica and Rocky weren't aware of the true nature of Theresa's sadness. They assumed her tears were being shed for Dino. Had they both known that it was Jill she was crying about, they would have gotten a good laugh over it.

The day of Rocky's fourteenth birthday arrived right in the midst of all the dislocation that was taking place within the pod. Someone from the Civil Service center had arrived to escort the remaining pod inhabitants to their temporary quarters.

Rocky was led over to the building where CAP testing was held, shortly after being settled in his temporary room over in the Civil Service complex. He'd only be housed there until his new status as an adult could be determined.

The test itself was all done automatically, using a specialized Confederacy AI, with Rocky sitting in a chair that had been attached, by a wiring harness, to a viewing screen that sat on the desk the chair and Rocky was facing.

Rocky had little conscious sensation while participating in the testing process, other than answering a few specific questions that had been designed for allowing the AI to get it's sensors dialed in correctly with the unique combination of Rocky's breathing, sweat gland output, and the wave patterns of his brain. It was still a matter of hours rather than minutes before Rocky had completed the comprehensive inventory of his intelligence, learned skills, and the full range of his personality characteristics. Alien technology that was capable of measuring so much more accurately than any human machine could hope to match.

A Confederacy CAP testing technician handed Rocky his newly produced CAP card as he walked back towards the front entrance to the testing rooms. Rocky had eyes only for looking at the important, overall status determining number, the one prominently displayed on the top of his new card.

"Oh boy, I scored a 7.3! On his top score, HE just barely got to a 7.0. I'm only a kid, so I'm probably way ahead of the CAP score he would have gotten if he'd had to take the test back when he was only my age."

Rocky had some finely developed fantasy's, ones that all revolved around different scenarios of him out doing his father on the CAP scoring. That day had come, and his hopes had been fully realized. Except for Rocky now realizing that Dino, his father, was no longer in a position to be either impressed, or concerned about it.

Rocky had out paced his father's best CAP score, but Dino would never know of it. He would never again be in a position to feel anything. Knowing this, Rocky felt cheated out of this moment where he'd be turning the tables on his father.

In a sense, realizing this, Rocky felt somewhat robbed of his chances for fully celebrating this great CAP score he'd earned. He'd been looking forward to leaving his father's pod with some kind of a grand gesture, one that would somehow loudly announce, to his father, all his father's sluts, and all his father's Marine friends, Rocky's complete independence from the man who'd practically kidnapped him from his real home and family so many years before.

Dead father or not, Rocky was determined to get the most out of his triumph. He strongly believed he'd earned his high score, that it hadn't just been handed to him as a result of his father's genetic contribution. To Rocky, his test scores were a direct result of all the sacrificing he'd had to to ensure that he was not only keeping up with all his mandated studying, but, additionally, was making steady progress towards gaining sufficient new technical knowledge that would push his CAP testing scores far ahead of what he'd need to qualify as a Confederacy volunteer. He'd studied his ass off, and now he was reaping his reward for putting in all that extra effort.

At fourteen years old, Rocky was too young, by Confederacy military standards, to be sent out in harm's way, on any of the Space Marine assault ships. Instead of being used in any possible combat situation, Rocky would receive intensive military training, and undergo further technical education, until he was at least sixteen years of age, and thus eligible for a posting that could put him into direct contact with the Sa'arm.

While his military training would be starting almost immediately, Rocky would be given adequate time to enable him to pick out up to four concubines for himself. In addition to the time allowed for picking his concubines, Rocky would be given a chance to set up his new household in whatever pod that he'd have assigned to him.

On the planet where he now lived, Rocky's only source for finding new concubines would be from the pool of people currently being cared for by the Civil Service staff. Ironically, if Rocky hadn't scored above a 6.5 on his CAP test, he'd have been a member of that same pool from which he'd now be picking.

Both Erica and Theresa could tell, just from the grin plastered on Rocky's face, that his CAP testing had gone quite well. As Erica looked at Rocky walking towards her, she had a brief second of fear that the boy might opt to choose her as one of his concubines.

She knew that her life would be one misery after another if he were ever to get such complete control over her. Theresa had no such fear. It never even occurred to her that Rocky might pick either her or Erica to be his new concubines.

"You did well then?" Erica spoke to Rocky as he pulled to within ten feet of where she was standing. For some reason, she'd wanted to be the first of them to speak.

"Well enough, better than he ever did." Erica knew the 'he' that Rocky was referring to could only be one man, her late benefactor and sponsor.

"He'd have been proud of you, Rocky." The lie passed through her lips effortlessly. Dino would have been surprised though, and it wouldn't hurt anything to give the boy some sense that his late father had cared about what happened to him. Besides, maybe Dino would have felt some pride in his oldest son. It was extremely unlikely, but it was definitely possible.

"He wouldn't have cared. He never cared about anyone else. It doesn't matter anymore though. He's dead, and I'm just getting started. I asked the Civil Service lady if I could get our old pod back. She said I probably could, but I'd have to wait at least another day before it can be released to me. For tonight, I'll have to sleep in that temporary room they assigned me to when they brought us all here earlier."

"He cared enough to be sure that you got evacuated before the swarm attacked Earth and kills everyone who hasn't left. He cared enough to want to make sure you would have a chance to grow up and have some kind of life. Instead of blaming him for everything, you should at least be a little bit grateful that he thought of you before he just took off."

Instead of continuing the argument, Rocky just nodded to her once, an almost imperceptible acknowledgment that her words had been received, and understood. He didn't tell her he agreed with what she'd said, but he didn't bother to try to refute what she'd said either.

He walked away from the two women who'd had much to do with bringing him from being a young boy to his current place as a young adult. While their relationships hadn't been the best, they'd spent many years together. Those years had bred a certain familiarity between them. In the new situation each of the three now found themselves in, any familiarity brought with it a certain degree of comfort.

The next morning, Rocky found himself in a small room, poring over pictures and personal data transcripts which fully described each of the ninety three eligible concubines, people who were now available for him to select.This wasn't the complete list of potential new concubines. It was just the full inventory of the people then in residence at the Civil Service center.

Like Erica and Theresa, most of the concubines were only available for reassignment because of the death of their former sponsors. There were six concubines though, all women who had been released by their former sponsors, usually for reasons known only to the releasing sponsor. Rocky looked at the dossier's of these six women first.

In addition to the concubine's available through the Civil Service center, Rocky was given more information on the three hundred and nineteen potential concubine's then living with sponsoring volunteers. These were all cases where the current sponsor either did not have an opening to take on an additional charge, or ones where the sponsor didn't wish to make a concubine of the individual available for consideration. In most cases, these available potential concubine's were very young adults, having some blood relationship with their sponsor.

It didn't take Rocky very long to begin to feel like he was being overwhelmed with too much data. He'd always thought it would be a simple matter to pick out his concubines. He felt like it could have been made a whole lot simpler for him than it was. After three hours of fruitless searching, Rocky was fed up, and ready to give up on the process entirely.

When he said as much to the Civil Service officer who'd gotten him started on his search, she just laughed and told him he might be better off finding someone he knew, and asking that person for help in picking the right people for himself. At first, Rocky resisted that suggestion. Later, after giving the matter some thought, he decided the Civil Service lady had been giving him some sound advice.

It was early afternoon of that same day before Rocky had summoned enough nerve to knock on the door of the rooms assigned to Erica, Theresa, and their children. When she opened the door, Theresa saw Rocky, and, for the first time, entertained the idea that he might be there to ask either her or Erica to become his new concubines. She was somewhat surprised to discover that she would be willing to say yes if he were to ask it of her.

Life for the concubines was uncertain enough, even in the best of times, but a concubine without a sponsor was really placed in dire jeopardy in several ways. For one thing, an unattached concubine could be temporarily assigned to almost anyone, for the sole purpose of getting that concubine pregnant.

Any concubine who failed to go along with one of those kinds of assignments could very easily end up finding herself being led away from the Civil Service center under a Confederacy order that she be immediately recycled. This was quickly made known to all concubines brought in for reassignment. The main reason for the Confederacy spending any of their valuable resources on these unassigned concubines was their capacity to help restock the available pool of humans the Confederacy needed to draw from.

An unassigned concubine was a liability to the Confederacy, a drain on their overall assets. They were property, pure and simple, and, as such, in the final analysis, whether they continued to breathe air or not, often depended on an impersonal assessment made by some AI tasked to make such decisions.

The Civil Service officers did their utmost to find places for displaced concubines, but even they had to step back from their charges at times and give in to the greater necessities being forced upon them. Being an unassigned concubine was a precarious position to find yourself in.

When resources are severely limited, you sometimes have to make the best deal you can get. For the past twenty four hours or more, Erica and Theresa had both been learning the potential realities of their new situation. They had learned that they only had a very narrow window of opportunity to latch on to another volunteering sponsor. Like Rocky, they too had been given a much shorter list of potential sponsors, and now knew of the slots they currently had open and might want to fill. It didn't look very promising for either of them.

So it was that Rocky's knocking on their door had come at a time when both women felt extremely vulnerable. After Rocky had explained the purpose of his visit, Erica and Theresa both began to lose whatever small grain of hope they'd had at seeing Rocky. He wanted their help in picking out his new concubines. In explaining himself, Rocky had made it perfectly clear that he didn't consider either woman to be possible candidates to fill any of his four available slots.

Even after acknowledging her disappointment to herself, Erica was determined to do her best for Rocky. Not for his sake so much, but because she thought she owed it to Dino, for his having taken her away from Earth, and for allowing her to spend the past six plus years in mostly comfortable circumstances. She'd been better off with Dino than at any other time in her earlier life. She felt she owed him something for providing her with that much.