Chapter 3: The Journey

Finally the selection was over and all four volunteers and their concubines went through the transporter nexus. The marines led them from the transportation chamber to the big briefing room.

“Volunteers, please collect your concubines around you and find yourself a place to sit down.” Sergeant Ryan started the on-board routines. After a minute, everybody had found a comfortable place. “Volunteers, you are now on board the colonization ship ‘Sergeant Pepper’. It is one of the older Aurora class ships, but still fully functional. Welcome aboard. We have space for 96 sponsors with their new families and we will fill up in the next two days. You were just the first ones. Our main order is to stack up the losses of Marines on two colonies. So, some of you will have more time than others to adjust to this new situation.”

Joacim raised his hand “Sir, may I get two headsets with universal translator access? It would make things much easier here.”

Sergeant Ryan ordered a marine to get the requested gadgets.

“I need you volunteers to collect all CAP ID’s of your concubines. Ask them if anybody is in need of immediate medical treatment for diabetes, blood pressure and the like. If someone is addicted to cigarettes, cocaine or anything like that, we will fix that too. We will make a priority list out of your responses for the med bay. Also, I need the names and probable locations of children below the age of 14 that the volunteers are willing to accept in their new family.”

There was a little argument among the group of Egon Ellert. “Sir, I have a little problem here” Egon pronounced.

“What’s up?” the Sergeant asked. A marine approached just in case a stinger was needed.

“Nelly here has a two year old son and I’m willing to get him to the colony. Nelly had been very obedient until now, but she doesn’t want to tell me his name. She refuses to sell her son into slavery.”

“Ah, that’s information from page 5 of the written information we spread in billions of copies. A lot of people stop reading at page 3. Listen Nelly and everybody else. Children are not concubines. Children are volunteers in training. No sponsor has the right to dump a child or harm it. The sponsor is responsible to raise the children he accepts here and all further children in his household in a proper way. I expect he will delegate this to his concubines though, and the AI will teach knowledge. At the age of 14, the child will be CAP tested. If he or she reaches a score of 6.5 or above, we have a new sponsor who can collect his own concubines. If a sponsor decides to give a mother to another sponsor, it is his decision to keep the children or let them go with the mother. If a sponsor gives a mother to the Civil Service, he has to keep the children and raise them as best as he can.”

Several of the other concubines around relaxed a little. Obviously they hadn’t read this part of the written information either.

Nelly calmed. “I apologize and obey. I didn’t read that. His name is Olaf. My mom takes care of him when I’m at the university.”

“You have a good mother here it seems. But keep an eye on her if her children don’t reach a CAP of 6.5” the Sergeant said.

Joacim checked his family for the requested information.

Sabine raised her hand, “I have no health problems at all but my child’s situation is urgent.” Joacim was surprised when she told him her daughter Zoe was seven years old. He already knew Sabine was twenty. “Please bring her up quickly. She’s most probably at home with her father – who’s mine too.”

Joacim interrupted the questioning to bring this piece of information to the Sergeants attention immediately.

Sergeant Ryan turned to another marine “Sergeant McGregor, would you please collect two of your men for an emergency dependant pick-up? The child may be in the hand of her incestuous paedophile father.” Sergeant McGregor quickly left the room.

“Zoe will be picked in about half an hour. Sergeant McGregor has a talent for situations like this. He doesn’t like paedophiles.” Sergeant Ryan told Joacim.

Joacim returned to his group and continued the questioning.

Petra had no health problems except smoking. She had two children below fourteen, her daughter Irene, age thirteen, and her son Markus, a smart but somewhat rebellious boy, age twelve. Most probably they both should be at home, doing homework. Her third child, Maria, was fifteen and had already been selected as a concubine a few months ago.

Helga had no health problems at all. Her little five-year-old daughter Honi should be at day-care until late evening.

Anita admitted to taking ecstasy pills from time to time. “But I really use them only when going on wild parties! I’m not addicted to them.”

Prudence had a minor blood pressure problem. “Nothing serious, really. I have low blood pressure. I sometimes pass out from boredom because of this,” she chuckled. “But currently I’m so pumped up with adrenaline that I will be fine, really!”

“L’ielit” Joacim talked into the microphone of the headset. “Do you understand me?”

L’ielit looked up for the first time she had arrived at the ship. “Yes.”

“Do you suffer from any diseases? Do you depend on medicine or anything like that?”

“No, I’m fine now. I’m really fine now.”

The four sponsors walked over to the Sergeant with the required information.

“OK, ladies and gentlemen,” Sergeant Ryan declared “We have to pick twelve children altogether. That will need a few hours. I’m handing each sponsor a nice little GPS gadget that can be voice controlled. You say ‘to my assigned pod’ or ‘to the med bay’ or ‘to the briefing room’ and the GPS will show you the way. Please take your new families and make yourself comfortable at your assigned pods. While you wait for your children we will call single persons or groups to the med bay. Just hand them the GPS. The first med bay visit will only last fifteen minutes. Please make your concubines wear shifts or walk nude outside the pod. You will find shifts in the pods. That makes it a lot easier to differentiate between sponsors and concubines. If you are curious about the possibilities of pod configuration, ask the AI from within your pod. It will answer any questions. Currently only the sponsors are allowed to change configurations but you can give individual levels of permissions to your concubines. Thank you, Ladies and gentlemen, that will be all for today. We meet here at the briefing room tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock and start your education and the more time consuming med bay sessions for body adjustments.”

Sergeant McGregor was on his own mission now. He didn’t like pick-ups that much, but they gave him opportunities to punch a child molester’s face from time to time. The Confederacy would normally not pass minor cases of child molesting to the local police, especially if they have little evidence and the child would be taken up to a colony anyway. But in McGregor’s opinion that was not fair enough. He liked to let them know that he knew and see what happened. But of course, the child’s safety came first.

“Private Zabata, watch the rear door. You have one minute to get there. Don’t let anybody pass, especially no one with a child. Better zap an innocent than let the target slip away”

Private Zabata wasn’t entirely sure if Sergeant McGregor’s ‘target’ was the child or the father.

“Private Spinosa, we’ll enter through the front door.” A minute later he rang the doorbell of the small townhouse.

An old woman opened the door “We know of the extraction from McDonald’s at noon. You must be the Marines?”

“Yes madam. We expected little Zoe be here with her father. Where is Zoe?”

“She’s upstairs, first room to the left. Bob is in there too. He’s terribly mad.” The old lady signalled Sergeant McGregor to lower his head to her level. “Shoot him. My son has gone way too far,” she whispered, hand-wringing. “Rescue Zoe.”

Sergeant McGregor signalled Private Spinosa to follow him upstairs quietly and readied his stinger. The first door to the left was not closed entirely. The Marines heard the rhythmically squeaking of a mattress. With one big step Sergeant McGregor was over the man and pulled him off the bed. Underneath him the Sergeant spotted the naked seven-year-old child. There was a pool of blood on the sheets below her. “Grab her and head for the transporter. Call Zabata. Call the ships medics for an incoming emergency. I need 30 seconds here...” When Private Spinosa had left the room with Zoe in her arms he punched the struggling man through a two-layer brick wall.

Joacim had just reached his new home and told his women to explore a little. They just found the shifts when the voice of Sergeant Ryan came out of nowhere “Mr. Zelle, we have little Zoe here and she’s currently in a med tube”

A scream came from Sabine “Is she OK?”

“She will be physically OK in about 30 minutes. But for her mental health, she probably will need the presence of her mother when she comes out of the tube.”

“Sabine, wear one of those shifts” Joacim demanded “Let’s have a look at how serious the damage is.” Two minutes later they were on their way the med bay.

A female marine in a quite dusty uniform awaited the two “Hello, Joacim Zelle? Sabine Engel? I am Private Olivia Spinosa. I am a member of the team that picked up Zoe.”

“Is she ok?” Sabine tried to peek into the tube but wasn’t able to see any details.

“She will be, I was told,” the Private answered. “Sergeant McGregor and I came too late to get her unharmed. We found her father on top of her unconscious body.”

“I’ll kill the bastard!” Sabine shrieked.

“You are a little too late. Sergeant McGregor has taken care of him.” The Private smiled weakly. “The house is a little damaged and your former husband is dead. I hope you two can handle this situation now. I have to change my uniform and do some more under-age pick-ups, hopefully without trouble.” The marine left the med bay.

“Why didn’t you leave that house with Zoe long ago?” Joacim asked.

“And then what?” Sabine said. “I had nowhere else to go. Bob was gentle most of the time. He only started to become violent when something wasn’t going the way he liked. He hadn’t touched me before the age of twelve and I’ve spotted no signs of abuse on Zoe until now. I think this situation took him over the top. God, this is all my fault,” she sobbed.

Joacim grabbed Sabine’s arm and turned her towards him “Stop thinking like that. Do you even understand what you just said? He impregnated you at the age of 12! He raped your 7 year old daughter an hour ago! He is the rapist, not you. He is the child molester, not you. The only thing you should have done better would have been to grab your daughter and run away and report him to the police. You were a child. Nobody blames you for not having had the courage to leave the only place you knew. This whole mess is HIS fault, not yours. Understand?”

Sabine nodded. Joacim held her in his arms and comforted her.

20 minutes later a corpsman helped a very confused little Zoe out of the med tube “Where am I? Why am I nekkid? Mommy! You wear funny clothes. Ayye, no bear hugs please, Mommy! What’s all this???” The corpsman got a shift for the child.

Sabine let go of her daughter. “What is the last thing you remember?”

“Pop was watching the news on TV and suddenly got very upset. He grabbed me and dragged me upstairs, calling you bad names. Then he hit me in the face with his fist. What happened?”

“Sweetie, do you remember when we talked about Confederation extractions? This kind young man selected me and now we are on a colonization spaceship. Daddy became very upset when he heard that there was an extraction at the place where I normally have lunch, and he did very bad things. But now, all is fine, all is fine.” Sabine hugged her daughter again and cried silently.

“Mommy, please, why are you crying?” Zoe asked confused.

“I’m crying because I am so happy that you are here and you are OK and Daddy can’t hurt you any more.” Sabine swallowed her tears “Now where are my manners. Zoe, this kind man is Joacim. He is the boss of our new family and he has 5 more wives. Joacim, this is my daughter Zoe.”

“Hi, Zoe, nice to meet you,” Joacim put forth his hand.

“Hi Joacim,” Zoe grabbed his hand carefully.

“You know, I don’t bite,” he grinned at Zoe. “Let’s go back to our new home and look at what we have there. I know very little about your mother or your new aunts right now.” With Zoe in the middle, they walked back to their pod.

While Joacim and Sabine were out of the pod, the other women continued to inspect their new home. First, they were a bit confused about the lack of enough bedrooms for all of them. All they could find was the living room with separate dining area and an open kitchen, the master bedroom, a bath room, an office and a storage room where they had found the shifts. They tried to ask the AI about additional bedrooms but the AI didn’t react on them.

They started a search for hidden doors when suddenly Prudence shrieked. Helga saw Prudence quickly moving upwards, struggling for her balance. Prudence vanished in a hole in the ceiling that previously hadn’t been there. They needed only a few minutes to figure out how the elevator worked. With that, they were able to explore the upper level and found four smaller bedrooms, another bathroom, a nursery and a family room. But more than half of the upper floor was just a large common room that was empty except for the elevator. They guessed this was open space for more bedrooms or whatever was needed.

The women made themselves comfortable in the living room again and started chatting.

“Looks like there is nothing more we can do,” Helen said. “Everything in here is operated by the AI and the AI ignores us.”

Anita giggled. “I just thought how it would be if we have to ask for Joacim’s permission for everything and pay with sexual favours.” They all burst out in laughing.

At that moment the door opened and Joacim returned with Sabine and Zoe. “Sounds like you started partying without us?” Joacim asked with a grin.

“Not really,” Helga said. “The music is down and the DJ was out of the building.” The women burst out in laughter again.

“Sorry about that, but important things first. Ladies, this is Zoe. Zoe, these are Petra, Helga, Anita and Prudence. Zoe is fine, everything is ok. Where is L’ielit?”

“The female called L’ielit is currently in the storage room near the main entrance.” the AI declared.

Joacim went to the room while the women greeted Zoe. L’ielit was sitting on the floor, hugging her knees. “What’s the matter L’ielit?”

L’ielit looked up at Joacim. “This headset is only translating your and the soldiers’ speech. When your other wives started chatting in German, I felt a little lost. Except for that, I’m fine.”

“AI” Joacim demanded “Make the headset of L’ielit translate speech in a normal hearing distance until she gets a universal translator chip and translate her speech for all others.”

“Confirmed”

“AI, all my concubines and children have permission to ask you questions and operate the pod for daily business.”

“Confirmed”

“Now come L’ielit and join us at the living room. I want you be an integrated part of my family.” Joacim said softly.

When L’ielit rose from the ground, Joacim demanded “AI, I need shifts in the proper size for every concubine. The shift should be long enough to cover their ass and vulva.”

“The requested items will be available in one minute.”