Chapter 4

I should probably take a moment to describe the three women, as they were all quite attractive. All three were around five foot, four inches tall and they all had shades of wavy brown hair that fell to their mid back. To say that they were attractive would have been an understatement, as all three of them would have been quite noticeable in a crowd. Certainly, the three of them together were quite striking.

“Can one of you tell me what is going on and why you were drifting in a ship in lunar orbit locked in the hold?” I asked.

I noticed that all three women were shivering, and I heard what I thought was a sob before the woman in the middle seemed to gather herself.

“Sir, we were captured and kidnapped by terrorists from the State of Islam. We’ve been dosed with a new drug they have developed that makes a woman imprint on the first man that she sees. He then becomes her Master. We were brought here to Lunar Base to be sold to the man who is to be our Master.”

“Well, I guess that won’t be happening now, as Lunar Base is a burnt-out crater. It looks like there was a big explosion there earlier today which is when I noticed your ship.”

The woman on the left who had been crying had now become very still and quit crying. The other two were still clearly very tense and nervous.

“So how did you come to be in that ship drifting in orbit?” I asked

This time the woman on the left spoke up. “Master, we were sedated for transport to you. We don’t remember anything after being dosed with the drug and then waking up here.”

I was taken aback at being addressed as Master. I had heard about some of the horrors that the State of Islam was capable of committing, but slavery and the development of some kind of mind control drug was news to me.

“Can you tell me anything else about this drug you were given?”

“Master, we can only tell you what we learned from the other women and the guards that were in the prison with us. We did see the results, though, and one of our former cell mates went from fighting the guards all the time to completely docile and devoted to one of the visitors. One of the guards told us later that she had been dosed and sold to him. This is how the State is now raising money for their wars.”

I shook my head at the depravity of it all. I had lost my sister in an attack by the State when I was just a teenager. I had tried to enlist after that, but based on my scores, they wanted me to fly drones. I did that for a while, earning a reputation as a real master at maneuvering the small planes and hitting targets no one else seemed to be able to hit. But after a few years and the death of my family, I had taken my flying skills into space and Lunar Base.

With the money from the settlement of my parent’s estate and a good lawyer suing the other driver, a rich playboy out for a joyride, I had been able to set myself up nicely on the moon. And while Lunar Base had a few women who were happy to be your friend for a bit, I hadn’t had much in the way of female companionship for the last couple of years.

Now faced with three women kneeling in front of me, I hated to admit the lustful thoughts that were running through my head. My mother had raised me to be a gentleman despite the general collapse of societal norms back on earth, and even more so out here in the settlements, but this was a terrible temptation.

I hated the State, and I hated what they had done to these women, but I hadn’t done it. I was just in a position to benefit from it. I wondered if they bonded to me if they could be taken away from me. Would the State send someone after me? Did they think they had all died in the explosion that wiped out Lunar Base?

All these thoughts were running through my head and I was in a terrible turmoil when I was broken out of my reverie.

“Master, are you still there?” The woman on the left asked.

“Yes, I am still here, I’m just trying to decide what to do!” I answered rather abruptly. As I spoke, I saw all three women cringe at the tone of my voice and I immediately regretted it. I wondered how badly they had been treated while they had been in the captivity of the State. While I was certain that they hadn’t been badly physically injured, the State wouldn’t have wanted to hurt their investment, but that didn’t mean that pain hadn’t been inflicted upon them. I suspected it had been, repeatedly.

“So why are you blindfolded?” I asked.

Complete silence settled in the room and I would have sworn that the three women quit breathing. Then I realized what I had asked and its implications. They had assumed I was upset with them for covering their eyes, when I was just curious why they had done so, trying to understand their baseline conditioning.

Then the woman on the left suddenly reached up and ripped off her blindfold, staring at me in the face. I watched the tenseness and strain on her face disappear and her entire body relax, and she sagged to the floor in a perfect kneeling position, a loud pleasurable sigh escaping her lips.

“No one move!” I exclaimed, panicked that the other two would do the same, but my order could not prevent the other two women from sobbing and shaking, realizing what had happened to their colleague.

I walked over and touched the woman on the left.

“What is your name?” I asked quietly.

“You may call me whatever you like,” she answered her voice changing from one of formality to one of a seductive purr that instantly made my pants uncomfortable despite the awkwardness of the situation.

“What were you called before today,” I clarified.

“I was called Mary, Master, but you can call me whatever you like,” she replied, again in that seductive tone. Her body undulated sensuously as she spoke although she kept her face pressed firmly to the ground in a perfect kneeling posture.

Meanwhile her two colleagues were trying their very best to be small, quiet, and invisible. Their sobs had stopped but if fear was palpable, it would be as thick as pea soup in the air.

“I like the name Mary, so why don’t you keep that name.”

“Oh, thank you, Master! Thank you!” She exclaimed crawling over and kissing my feet.

“So, when did you know that I was your Master?” I asked, trying to figure out if the visual aspect was really how the drug worked.

“Master, I thought it was you when I heard your voice, but as soon as I saw you, I knew for sure that you were the only man for me, my true reason for being,” she replied. The earnestness in her voice was unmistakable and a little scary, like one of those cultists. In fact, if they were using this drug on their own people, it would explain a lot of the behavior we had seen in some of their soldiers.

“Come with me Mary,” I said and started to leave the room.

“Wait!” sobbed the woman in the middle, and then she froze, realizing that she had drawn attention to herself.

I paused at the door, almost afraid to turn back and look in case it required looking at my face to activate the bonding.

“Yes?”

“What are you planning to do with us?”

“I wasn’t planning on doing anything with you, or to you, or anything else. I will call on the intercom before coming back in here so you can cover your eyes.”

I turned to Mary. “Mary, you are forbidden from coming into this room without warning the occupants and making sure they are blindfolded.”

“Yes, Master,” she replied.

“Sir, please don’t hurt Mary,” the girl on the end who had done nothing but cry, sobbed out before breaking down in tears again.

I just shook my head and wondered if I was hallucinating from spending too much time alone. I lifted Mary to her feet since she started following me out of the room by crawling. I then closed and locked the door, setting a different code for the door from the rest of the habitat.

Over the next several hours, I learned quite a bit and everyone seemed to settle down.

Mary was an only child who had gone to Africa to search for her missing parents. It was while she was there that she had been captured. One of her guides had sold her out to The State and led her into an ambush, misleading her into believing that she was going to meet someone who might have information about her parents.

I had asked why a single young woman who was as beautiful as she was thought that it was safe to go into Africa without a full brigade of soldiers. And when I say she was a beautiful young woman, I truly meant it. She was the tallest of the three women at almost five feet six inches, thin and willowy with long wavy dirty blonde hair that hung down to the middle of her back, rivaling the best of the European models. She told me she had even been offered some modeling jobs.

She replied that she was trained in martial arts and was a member of NATO Special Force. She had thought that she would be able to handle herself in the wilds of Africa. And while she had been wrong, she told me that she was now very happy that she had been wrong as it was how she came to meet me.

Mary was also able to tell me a little about the other two women who were currently in my habitat.

Karen was the oldest of the three and had been their leader in the compound. She was from southern Italy, with dark hair and a dark complexion, but had come to the United States when The State started carrying out attacks across the Mediterranean from Libya. It was on a trip home to visit her dying mother that she had been taken. She was almost thirty and had been a sort of mother to the group.

The last girl was Xina, the youngest and smallest of the girls, with brunette hair that depending on the light could look brown or dark red. She had been sailing with her family from Perth to Christmas Island when hijackers had taken the family. They had fought bravely, killing all but two of the hijackers, but those two had killed all of her family eventually and taken her hostage when she had run out of ammunition.

After talking to Mary and learning more about her and how she came to end up in my lunar habitat, or at least the bits and pieces she could tell me, I turned my attention to the attack on Lunar Base. I started trying to message the other settlers and soon found that those of us that were far enough away from Lunar Base seemed fine but those that lived closer weren’t responding to calls and a flyover showed extensive damage to all the habitats around the base and the base itself was gone, just a big black hole in the ground.

I posted that I had found a drifting ship in orbit, but it was empty and I was claiming it for salvage. I needed to make the claim and if someone had done a fly over, I was certain they had already seen the ship. I got a few good-natured grumbles that I had all the luck and I must have made a deal with the devil to have the luck that I did. Mostly folks left me alone so long as I helped them out when they needed it.

A few of the settlers were out on a rescue mission, looking to see if there were any survivors near Lunar Base hunkered down in their safety shelters, but most of us were realistic enough to know that we had been hit by a terrorist attack and a lot of good people had died.

I made sure that I didn’t say anything about the three women that were on the ship and told folks I would join in as soon as I had either ship in functioning condition again. I also offered to ferry any serious injuries earth-side since I still had a few launch credits with Space Command.

Once I had done my due diligence with my co-settlers on Lunar surface, I turned my attention to the two girls in the main living area. I turned on the cameras and saw that they had settled down in a corner of the room with some blankets and pillows. They were currently holding each other and talking softly. They still hadn’t taken off their blindfolds, but at least they weren’t kneeling on the floor any longer.

I panned the camera around the room just to see if I could tell what they had been doing. The room, though, looked completely untouched.

The sound of the camera servos must have alerted them to the fact that I was watching them, because by the time the camera panned back over to where they had been huddled, they were again kneeling on the floor, their head touching the floor, their bodies oriented toward the door.

Mary joined me as I watched them, rubbing up against me, purring, or making a sound as close to purring as humanly possible.

“They used to beat us if we weren’t kneeling when they entered the room,” she said as she watched them.

“Are you going to beat them?” she asked.

I was absolutely stunned and rendered speechless. If I didn’t know she was one of the women who just a few moments ago had been one of the women who was beaten, I still would have been amazed at the tone of her voice. It sounded as if she thought I should beat them!

“How often were you beaten?” I asked Mary as she leaned against me and watched the other two women on the camera.

“Almost every day, Master,” she replied. “No matter how hard I tried to behave, they always seemed to find some fault with me. Even if I behaved better than all the other women in the compound, they would pull me out and whip me with a crop until I screamed.”

I wondered about the dynamics that would lead a group of men to pick one woman to beat regularly when she absolutely floored me with her next statement.

“That was why I removed my blindfold,” she said. “I didn’t want to be beaten anymore.”

Then she looked at me with the most adoring expression. “You aren’t going to beat me anymore, are you?”

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A man, nearly broken by loss, lives a solitary existence off planet earth in a small habitat he has constructed on the moon.

Skimmer

Lorn Skye

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