Chapter 1

Joe enjoyed people-watching; it was something to do while waiting for his coffee to cool. He wasn't here in Ossie's just to watch people, pleasant though that was. He'd planned coming here. Joe was good at planning, he'd been doing it for years. He smiled and nodded as some of his former colleagues came in for their lunch. Former, because he was now happily unemployed, again thanks to planning ahead. He'd anticipated a downturn, and was ready to take redundancy when the chance came.

What he hadn't planned for was the President's announcement of the impending arrival of the alien Sa'arm and the partial evacuation of planet Earth. Not really something he could have anticipated. Naturally he took the CAP test: 6.6. Enough for the Confederacy to pick him up, and his two sex slaves with him. Officially they were called concubines, not sex slaves, but anyone who was paying attention could see what was really on offer. Joe always made sure that he paid attention.

The new situation needed new plans of course. The official line was that the Confederacy were doing random pick-ups. Joe quickly saw that was bullshit. He followed the news reports of extractions. The locations they were hitting weren't random, anything but. He even knew some of the people who'd been picked up and had a good idea of whether they were sponsors or not. Take Twanda from work; she was frighteningly intelligent, an excellent team leader and almost certainly a sponsor. She'd been extracted from a technical conference in Chicago along with a bunch of other delegates. There was no way that was random. The Confederacy was targeting specific places.

How to anticipate them, so he could be in the right place at the right time?

There were a lot of lunch places in town, serving office workers and shoppers. Some concentrated more on one or the other type of customer, but Joe thought that his best bet was to go for places with a well-mixed clientele. He'd eaten in many of them, trying to see them as a Confederacy extraction team would. Were there enough sponsors around? Was there a good mix of concubines for the sponsors to pick from? Could the place be easily sealed off by that gray barrier field the Confederacy used?

Breakfast time wasn't good. The office workers were there, but not the mothers doing their shopping. He planned on taking an experienced mother as one of his two concubines, and there wasn't a big enough choice in the mornings. There were more mothers around in the afternoons, but by then the workers were back in their offices, so the number of potential sponsors had fallen. Everyone knew that it was more difficult for women, mothers included, to reach the score for sponsor. The Confederacy didn't just want concubines, it needed sponsors as well.

Lunchtime. The workers were getting lunch out of the office because they were looking for a chance of a pickup. There were enough mothers taking a break from shopping to give a reasonable choice and there were sufficient concubine workers – easy to tell from the way they weren't dressed – to make up the numbers. Lunchtime.

As far as he could tell, four places in town were easy for the Confederacy to isolate and also attracted sizable lunchtime crowds. One of the four had been hit six weeks ago, which confirmed Joe's hypothesis. Today he'd picked Ossie's: the coffee was good and the torpedo rolls were better. They weren't prepackaged, plastic-wrapped and tasteless. You had to get in line, order what you wanted and they assembled it in front of you as you waited. Joe preferred slow food to fast food. Other people seemed to as well; Ossie's had always done good lunchtime business, even before the President's announcement. It was near his old office, so he could keep in touch with former colleagues and put out feelers for any extra work that was going. One effect of the Swarm coming was that a lot of new money was going into defense, so work in that sector was ramping up. Even if there wasn't an extraction, he might be able to pick up some part-time contracting with his old firm. Two birds, one stone.

He saw that Christina was working the ice cream bar today. Joe smiled across the room at her, and she smiled back between serving customers. Greek, with the typical Mediterranean look, she had a really nice smile which lit up her face. They had a running joke between them that if there was a pickup here, he'd be her fifty-five-year-old boy toy. Joe liked her a lot, and he liked her sense of humor. She was definitely on his list of potential concubines, that is if she wasn't a sponsor herself. He couldn't quite decide. He hadn't asked to see her CAP card, that would have shown his hand too early. She hadn't asked to see his either. Better to keep things low-key and friendly for the moment. All would be revealed soon enough if the Confederacy arrived.

Today there was a bunch of high school kids in for lunch. Some days they ate downtown, probably hoping for a Confederacy pickup, like a lot of the other people here. Other days they ate in school, usually after the Confederacy had hit a school. Of course, 'after' was usually too late. There was a random element to pickups, though they weren't as random as many people assumed.

Looking over the rest of the lunchtime crowd, Joe saw what he'd anticipated, office workers and some mothers taking a break from doing their shopping. The high school kids were something of a bonus, but they looked old enough, so they counted.

Joe started sipping his coffee – it had cooled enough by now. It was an interesting exercise trying to guess who were the probable sponsors and who were concubines. He recognized most of the staff here. Christina might be a sponsor, but the rest seemed likely concubines. The schoolkids were relatively easy: those fully dressed were probably sponsors while the almost undressed were concubines, female concubines anyway. It was more difficult to tell with the boys. The mothers were mostly concubines, though they wore rather more than the schoolgirls. One or two might even be sponsors; there wasn't as much variation as with the kids, so it was more difficult for him to tell. Office dress codes seemed to have gone by the board, so the female concubines were mostly easy to recognize. As with the schoolkids, it was more difficult with the men. Not a big problem since he wouldn't be taking a male concubine.

Looking over the mothers, Joe tried to see which of the probable concubines had lively, alert and well-behaved children. Not all of them had children with them of course, but at least it gave him a head start if the Confederacy did arrive. Two of them looked like good prospects: a pregnant redhead with one boy about five, and a blonde with three-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.

A very large man wearing a horribly bright Hawaiian shirt came through the door, distracting Joe. That was certainly unexpected, he hadn't anticipated such sloppy planning from the Confederacy. The ghastly shirt did nothing to disguise the man's six foot seven frame – though given who he probably was, two meters might be a better description. He could just about have passed for a professional football player, but there wasn't an NFL team around here. Sloppy planning. Very sloppy.

Joe looked across the room at Christina. She'd noticed Mr. Hawaiian Shirt as well, and was watching him closely.

Everybody noticed when the outside went gray and Mr. Shirt announced in a loud voice, "Can I have your attention please! I am Corporal Alfano of the Confederacy Marines and this is an extraction." As he was speaking, four more big Marines in full uniform arrived. After the initial stunned silence, a lot of the women started stripping. The corporal continued, "We have seven sponsors here today. Will Joseph Brooks, Dean Gonzales, Patricia Keown, Christina Panagopoulos, Niall Quinlan, Jayden Wade and Albert Zuckerman please gather by Private Farrier to my left."

One of the other Marines raised her hand, so Joe made his way over. When he got there he grinned at Christina, "You'll have to find yourself another boy toy, I'm afraid."

She gave him her best smile and shrugged, "Oh well, I'll have to settle for second best."

The only other sponsor Joe knew was Al Zuckerman from his former work, and they exchanged nods. There was no time for a conversation because Private Farrier was handing out CAP card readers and they needed to listen to her quick briefing on how to use them. After that it was time to head out and pick their concubines.

Joe made straight for the mothers. On his way he experimented with the card reader, talking to it. "Confederacy AI, can you hear me like this?"

The reader's screen displayed, 'Yes, I can hear you, Sponsor Joseph Brooks.'

Good. Confederacy technology was as advanced as he'd suspected. "I'm interested in two of the mothers here. The pregnant redhead who was wearing a green top with denim shorts and the blonde with two kids who was in the blue and red dress. Which would be the better match for me in the lead concubine role?" The two women were both naked by now, the green top and the dress hurriedly discarded on the floor. They were lining up with the others, hoping for a sponsor to select them.

The screen displayed a picture of the pregnant redhead. 'Both are suitable as concubines. Alison Pedley, Age 29, CAP 5.9, is more probably the better choice as your lead concubine.'

Pregnancy presented Alison well. Her breasts and belly had swelled, so there was less sag to her breasts and her stretch marks weren't so obvious. Her generous areolae were dark pink and the carpet matched the drapes – a natural redhead then. Inevitably, being a redhead, there were freckles. Her makeup covered those on her face, but for the parts that weren't normally visible...

"Hello, I'm Joe Brooks. Can I see your CAP card please?" he asked, smiling at her. He was old enough to resist being too distracted by her naked breasts. Talking to her tits wouldn't start things off on the right foot. She was nervous enough about being nude in front of a lot of strangers without him making things worse for her. He slid her offered card into the reader. Wow! Her motherhood sub-score was 7.2! Joe wanted a mother, and Alison had that in spades. That was far and away her best score, with leadership coming a distant second. None of the others were bad; all of them were near or above average, and her overall score was 5.9. She even beat Joe on sex, just.

"Tell me about yourself, Alison," Joe asked, looking up from the card reader.

"I'm married, twenty-nine, one five-year-old boy and a girl on the way." She glanced down at her baby-bump. "I do a little part-time work when Scott is in pre-school." Joe smiled and nodded. "I'm ready to leave with you, but you have to take Scott. I won't leave without him."

"If I accept you then I'll certainly take him as well," he assured her.

"Thank you," she smiled in relief. "What about yourself, Joe?"

He returned her CAP card, slid his own into the reader and passed it to her. She quickly picked up how to use its touch-screen interface. Alison wasn't stupid, so she passed the unannounced test Joe had set her. "Joe Brooks, fifty-five, divorced with three grown kids," he told her. "I worked as a Project Manager for various software companies and I'm now effectively retired early."

"Tell me about your divorce," she asked. An obvious question, given the circumstances. A sponsor 'divorcing' a concubine could have very serious consequences for the concubine.

"We married in our early twenties and by the time the kids were grown we'd developed in different directions," he explained. "We separated more-or-less amicably. Neither of us wanted to pay a lot of money to lawyers, so we negotiated everything we could between ourselves. The kids were gone by then, so it was reasonably simple."

Alison blushed very pink, which was interesting with her coloration, "Erm ... do you want to test me?" Around them most of the other sponsors were getting on with their own test drives.

"Just a small test. I have two concubines to pick, and at my age I have to take things steadily. I want you as the mother-in-chief in my new family, so sexual performance is useful but not a priority. I think a blow-job will be enough."

Alison nodded, "I can do that." She started to kneel.

Joe could see that the Marines had sent the children and non-participants to the back of the room, behind Alison. He told her, "Wait." As she looked on, puzzled, he picked up a chair and turned it so it faced away from the children.

As she moved to face the seated Joe, Alison realized why he had stopped her. This man thought things through and was considerate. Both good signs. Turned round this way, Scott and the other young kids wouldn't be able to see what she was doing. Maybe his divorce wasn't so important? He'd stayed with his wife for long enough to raise kids, so he probably wouldn't be changing concubines every five minutes. From what she'd seen on his card, there were no other obvious problems with him.

Joe had Alison kneel in front of him while he extracted his semi-hard cock. She jacked him, and gave a few preliminary licks to harden him up. Once he was ready, she slid most of his six inches into her mouth. She wasn't deep-throating him, but she was certainly willing and she knew how to use her tongue on its head. He'd mostly done without sex in the years since his divorce, so he quickly began to build towards a climax. This was a quality blow-job.

He knew that he still had one more concubine to find, so, unfortunately, he had to stop her before he reached completion. He tapped her shoulder, "Stop there please, Alison."

She looked up at him and pulled back, disappointed. Surely she wasn't that bad?

Joe smiled at her. "That was very good, Alison. Will you become my concubine? I'll take your son as well of course."

Alison felt a massive wave of relief; Scott would be safe! "Yes, yes! I ... we accept," she agreed quickly.

"Thank you, Alison. We need to find a second concubine, so we'll leave Scott with the other children for the moment." She nodded her agreement. "I'm looking for a younger woman, one who'll be ready to follow your lead and to learn childcare from you." Joe didn't plan on picking two mothers, they might argue about the best way to raise children.

Alison nodded. "We could try for one of the younger office workers, or perhaps a schoolgirl?" she suggested.

Joe thought the same, so the two of them made their way towards the line-up of naked candidates.

By this time the other sponsors had already made some of their selections, so there weren't as many prospects left in line. Joe noticed that Christina had one of the counter guys who assembled the rolls licking her pussy, while an older black woman, naked except for a hair net, stood by. She'd obviously gone for two of her fellow employees. That made sense; she'd know them better than she knew the customers.

To the fifty-five-year-old man, almost all the young women and teenage girls in line looked attractive, and Confederacy technology could apparently fix those that didn't. That helped by removing a potential distraction. Joe wasn't going to give appearance too much emphasis in his choice. If they all rated an 'A' for looks, then it was useless in helping him pick. His problem was that these women had already been looked at, and rejected, by the other sponsors – some of them had cum running down their thighs to prove it. After looking at CAP cards, and a few short conversations, Joe could see why most of them were still in line. A couple were possible, but none of them sparked any real interest. Alison wasn't very impressed with any of them either.

Since this wasn't getting him anywhere, Joe decided to bring in some help. He stepped back from the line and asked his card reader, "AI, show me the most suitable childless female concubine candidate younger than twenty-two. She will be subordinate to both myself and Alison."

The card reader came up with an attractive looking blonde, 'Suki Moore, ' the caption under her picture read. 'Age 15, CAP 5.2. She is currently being tested by Sponsor Patricia Keown, but has not yet been offered or accepted a position.'

Neither he nor Alison recognized her face; this Suki Moore hadn't been in the line. He solved the problem by finding the second female sponsor, Patricia Keown. She'd been in the school party, and Joe had flagged her as a likely sponsor: white, glasses, mousy brown hair, baggy jeans and a loose long-sleeved top. She certainly hadn't made any effort to attract a sponsor. She had two naked girls standing by her, while four boys were fucking two other girls bent forwards over two tables. One of the two being fucked was blonde, though Joe couldn't see her face since a tall white boy had his cock down her throat, while a black kid was pounding into her from behind. The second girl was also being spit-roasted, but she had long straight black hair.