Chapter 1

The kick from the armoured boot hurled her naked form into the bulkhead, her hip crunching against a stanchion, blood was streaming from both her nose and mouth from previous blows. Varna coughed, pain lancing through damaged ribs gained from one of yesterday’s many rapes. A hand grabbed her hair, dragged her away from the bulkhead. Laughter and cries echoed through the corridors. Hands and blows moved her body into the crewmembers desired position. Varna didn’t resist, as it just prolonged the inevitable. Her head was yanked back painfully, compressing her spine, forcing her to watch the rape of Elaine.

Elaine had attracted the attention of the worst of them, the one the girls feared above all. Varna felt both grateful, and ashamed of being grateful at the same time, that it wasn’t her. The clink of clothing buckles sounded behind, almost lost in the multitude of screams that were echoing throughout the Reavers hull.

“You have such lovely nipples cunt. Little puffy buds on that almost flat chest. Maybe we should ‘pump’ you more, to see if they inflate...” He thrust his hips hard against Elaine, driving his cock as deep as he could inside her as he said the word ‘pump’.

“Please leave me alone...” Elaine wailed and Varna went cold inside. He didn’t like being told what to do, it made him crueller. If such a thing was possible.

“Are you telling ‘me’ what to do cunt? ME!”

The man behind Varna chortled and his erect cock slapped against her left butt cheek. Varna adjusted her position slightly, the pressure on her spine ensuring that it wasn’t by much. She shuffled her knees apart a bit more, allowing a bit more space between her thighs, relaxed her pelvic muscles, so as to make the impending rough thrust into her dry vagina more tolerable.

Elaine’s attacker had pulled out his knife and began to play with it as he fucked her. He ran the tip over Elaine’s stomach. He held all the weight, but even then, the tip left behind a narrow line of red, which widened randomly in globules of blood as the tip travelled across her skin. “Such pretty little nipples...” The blade was tilted over, so the side of it pressed against flesh. The wrist jerked and the blade sliced through the nipple, sending it flying into a dark corner. “Oops!”

Elaine screamed. As did Varna, when the cock that had been pushing against her, entered her via her sphincter rather than her more forgiving mons. Varna’s scream of pain echoed around her cabin as she jerked upright.

Blearily she looked around as her confused senses sorted out what was present and what had been memory.

Her breathing was hard and fast, adrenaline making her muscles twitchy. Her T-shirt clung to her chest, soaked with fresh sweat. Her brain finally took control “Awe, fuck!” Confusion made way for depressed resignation, as she became aware that not all the moisture around her was sweat. This was the second time in almost a week. Varna pulled back the covers and headed for the shower, stripping off as the water burst from the head. She had thought things would have become easier with time, as she moved on with her life. Obviously that wasn’t happening.

As painful and uncomfortable as it was going to be, she was going to have to seek help about her nightmares if she wanted to move on in her life. Varna shut the water off and sluggishly towelled herself dry. She did not bother putting on a ship suit, and still damp, she stripped the soiled sheets from her bed and stuffed them in the cleanser.

Taking a cloth from under the sink, she wiped down the water-proof cover over the mattress and collected the towel and soiled nightclothes and bunged them in the cleanser as well. By the time she fitted fresh clean sheets, she was too awake to go back to bed and her skin had dried off. Pumping moisturiser into her hands, she spread it over her body and looked out fresh clothes for the day as she watched the feed from the camera’s overlooking the archaeologist’s encampment. They had wasted no time in setting up after yesterday’s farce of an ‘inspection’ with the customs and border ships.

Varna watched her passengers on the view screens as they hurried about, preparing to load out their cargo from her hull. There wasn’t a great deal to do, other than watch the archaeologists. Local media stations were obsessed with ‘The Prophet’ and if they were not singing about him, it was because they were lecturing, at length, about his teachings. She had surfed through all the available channels and eventually turned them off completely. The music was monotonous and bland and the holo-shows seemed to be based in a reality completely at odds with the one Varna was familiar with.

It was all a little surprising that her passengers had received permission to do whatever it was they were planning to do, as it could only end up in direct contradiction to the reality being peddled by the planets government, or ruling religious elite, or whoever claimed to be in charge. Furthermore, the local planetary access to the ever-net was firewalled to death and only allowed a small amount of heavily moderated content from the rest of humankind to be accessed by the general inhabitants of Mathnut. Varna couldn’t help but notice, that the little that was allowed, showed the rest of humanity in bad light. No doubt in an effort to bolster the religious line that life on Mathnut was the best around.

Varna had a plan of the potential dig site, and once the dozer had made the road and levelled off the area marked for accommodation - scraping away the topsoil down to the firmer sub-base - the quads departed her hold towing their large trailers. It was all very chaotic. But what the archaeologists lacked in experience they were making up with an excess of enthusiasm. However, once they managed to get the first module in place and assembled, they were quicker with the second and subsequent ones.

The first week consisted of them setting up camp, learning how to and then boring a hole for water, followed by the dozer creating a wide but shallow depression a suitable distance away from camp, which would be part of their biological filtering process for the sceptic tank that had taken them the better part of several days for them to install. It was two weeks before they finally had the camp up and running.

Electricity was being provided by banks of solar panels on the accommodation units and one wind turbine. They had one generator for emergencies as fuel was limited, most of it being needed for the dozer.

During all this time, there had been no interest from the religious council that ruled the planet. After her initial request to land and subsequent acknowledgment of successful landing to the singular port authority, there had been no attempt to contact her, and she had made no move to contact them.

The archaeologists appeared oblivious to all apart from the task at hand - which was setting up ‘home’ as they termed it.

Aware that she needed to become used to open spaces, Varna wrapped herself up in clothes with a scarf wrapped around her head, having taken aboard the dangers of sunlight that she had learned at the clinic. The walk up the cut path was fairly straight forward, as long as she didn’t look ‘up’. Every time she did, her mind thought that she was going to float away. Which wasn’t helped by a lack of a’ ceiling’. Before she got to close to the camp, she left the road and darted round the dig site. There was a low hill that overlooked the site and she sat down on the side of it to watch the archaeologists from afar.

The sun was pleasantly warm through her layers of clothing and once she leaned back, she found herself dozing off for short periods. The archaeologists could see her, but they made no move to come over and engage in conversation. Varna watched them lay out a series of lines across the ground scraped of top cover by the dozer. The lines, when they converged, created a grid across the area, letters were pinned to the ground along one axis, numbers along the other.

Once the grid was created, her passengers moved to squares of their choosing, armed with wheelbarrows, round objects with a mesh bottom and an assortment of small hand tools.

Slowly scraping away the top layer into piles, they then moved the piles by shovel into the barrows where they dumped the spoil clear of the grid work, to where the dozer could push it further away.

Varna could tell, just by their body language, that sweeping the ground with small bushes was providing them with a great deal of pleasure.

Moslach

“Is she back?” Moslach asked from his hole.

Conradca nodded her head. “Yup, on the hill, usual spot.”

The age of the woman on the hill was hard to determine, given how wrapped up she was, but there was no argument, given the diminutive stature and curves the clothing couldn’t hide, that the figure was female. She had been sitting there, most of the day for the last few days.

Moslach had wandered over to the unknown woman’s spot when she hadn’t been there, to see what she could see. The spot on the slope allowed the viewer a good view of the dig site, which was coming along wonderfully. There were outlines of definite walls appearing through the dirt. They hadn’t yet dug deep enough to reach what had been the original surface of the site. That would be happening over the next day or two.

The air was so clear and fresh, and apart from the continual scrape of trowels against earth and stone, so very quiet. There was a very informal and very impolite book open as to who and what she was. The current leader by far, was that she was Mathnut Security Services, keeping an eye on them and keeping her religious superiors appraised of their progress.

Another, highly probable - indeed, it was the second one in the running - reason for her being there, was that she was a local woman bored of her life and religious constraints. Looking for a husband and the means off this world. A couple of the women had even joked about what lay under the woman’s, clothes, which led to the third option in the running, that she wasn’t actually human and was one of the living descendants of whoever had originally been here.

As heavily clothed as the woman was, it was obvious that she didn’t possess a third leg or arm. Which, Moslach had to admit, was a little bit disappointing.

Grabbing the handlebars of the wheelbarrow, Moslach threaded his way carefully past the open pits and tipped the contents out on the rapidly re-growing spoil pile. Even Kertog had stopped polishing and obsessing over his mechanical love, to grab a trowel and scrape the ground. At first, Moslach thought it had been purely to help collect soil faster so he could play with his dozer sooner, but now he wasn’t so sure. His current theory was that Kertog was just as curious as the rest of them, to find out what was down there, and the quickest way to do that, was to grab a trowel.

Pollen was filling the dig site’s air with the sweet, lovely, smell of food again. Hiring her had been one of his better decisions, as Pollen liked cooking as much as she loved archaeology. Moslach glanced over to the tripod holding a camera which was time lapsing the progress of the dig. Even if they found nothing of worth, their position in the history books was all but guaranteed, and it was all down to him. Mostly. Moslach parked his wheelbarrow back at his pit and set to re-filling it.

There was good natured laughter as they sat in chairs outside the accommodation, looking out over the site. There were flying creatures aplenty, but they didn’t seem to be interested in humans. Certainly not as a source of food. So sitting outside in the evenings was exceptionally pleasant.

Palmaris was out on his ‘garden’ pulling fresh weeds. They had brought the seeds of various vegetables in order to supplement their food stocks. Moslach tried not to think of the possible ecological damage they were doing in the process. Palmaris had planted most of them and the crop most of the team were looking forward to, was the potatoes.

The elicit still had already been built and disguised as ‘research equipment’. Though Moslach doubted they would fool anyone with previous knowledge of distillation.

Whilst the flight here had started off exciting enough, cabin fever had been quick to get a hold and trying to fall asleep difficult. Here, the fresh air and physical graft ensured that he went to bed early and slept soundly. He was even developing a tan, and somehow surprisingly, given the amount of food he was consuming, losing a bit weight. He’d had to tighten his belt a notch. The difference proper prepared meals made over pre-rendered junk food. Which had mostly been his staple as a bachelor back at the University.

The others still seemed to have some energy, but Moslach found himself nodding off, so he made his excuses and headed to his room. He was asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow.

Moslach woke when he awoke. He hadn’t set any hard and fast rules about the length of the workday. They had collectively agreed fixed times for breakfast, lunch and evening meal. Mainly for Pollen’s benefit so she knew when to prepare for meals and for whoever was chosen to make the meals on Pollen’s day’s off.

Donning some clothes, Moslach stretched and stood in the doorway. Pollen was doing something at the strange woman’s spot. It looked like she was dropping something off, before she turned and made her way back down the hill. A few others were already at their dig sites and the sound of a spanner against metal told him where and mostly what Kertog was up to.

Moslach scratched his chin through his growing beard. Another consequence of not being at the faculty and not having to adhere to its strict code of dress and appearance. He contemplated what his next action was going to be then he smelled the coffee and the decision was made for him.

He was, admittedly, a little stiff and sore. He had expected it to wear off, but all that happened, was the fitter he became, the more he exerted himself the next day and then the day after he would pay for it and the cycle continued.

“There’s worse problems to have,” he said to himself as he went in search of the coffee...

Varna

The course work for her ‘official’ pilot and captain certification had arrived just as she entered Mathnut Space. The last package before she fell under the control of Mathnut’s communication sphere and all the ridiculous censorship that entailed, which was basically the loss of well over ninety five percent of her communication access. If her mail could not be read by the censors, it was automatically blocked. If only it had arrived one day later... Varna sighed. There was no point in putting it off, as only she would suffer. There was a lot of information and a greater amount of lessons. It was almost depressing enough to make her wish she was back on the pirate ship. Almost. She gave it a good few hours though, before she had reached her limit.

Wrapping up, she headed out of her ship to her ‘spot’. The sky still wasn’t right and every time she felt a breeze, she automatically reached for an oxygen mask that wasn’t there. Atmosphere in a ship existed because the hull kept it in. But planets with atmosphere didn’t have a surrounding hull. It didn’t make sense. Why didn’t it all just disappear into space? She had tried looking it up, but the explanation didn’t make sense. Mass led to gravity, fair enough, and gravity pulled things with mass down, but atmosphere didn’t have mass. She didn’t feel it with her hands and body like she did with water. It was all ... weird...

Varna really hoped that she didn’t have to understand all that gravity stuff to acquire her accreditation.

Her hips and joints weren’t hurting as much. The first time she had made the journey, she had felt as though she was back on the pirate ship and had been made a punching bag. Again. It stirred memories of life on the pirate vessel best forgotten.

She changed her route slightly every time, as she didn’t want to wear a path into the grass. Varna didn’t even know why she was hiding from them. She had nothing to hide - apart from her past - and it wasn’t as if she distrusted them. People, she forced herself to admit. She just didn’t trust people. And if she didn’t get herself out of that frame of mind, she was always going to hold herself back. But she was finding it easier to think about being sociable, than actually doing it. A bit like going outside of her hull whilst on a planet, or doing her course work. It was easy to think it, something else entirely doing it.

Though to be fair, she was slowly mastering her agoraphobia, though even that didn’t quite make sense, as she had no problems walking - or working - on the outside of a hull in space. You didn’t, get much more ‘open’ an environment than space. She hadn’t even know such a word existed until she had searched on the ever-net as to why the open space on a planet’s surface scared her so. It had certainly ruined her dreams of frolicking in a waterfall under a foreign sun whilst a man...

There was a box where she normally sat.

There was a note on the box. Held in place by a stone. She experienced an unpleasant and unjustifiable moment of panic and it took a moment to regain control. She removed the stone and lifted the note to read it.

Hi!

I hope you can read standard! I was baking and there was plenty left. You should come down, eat with us. We don’t bite! You can take the box back to, well, wherever you stay, and you can bring it back when you have finished. Sugar!- I hope you don’t have any food or nut allergies. If you do, just leave the cakes, though you can still come down and join us!

Pollen.

It was a fair point, and she was rather curious as to what they were doing and hoped to achieve by digging in the ground. It would mean socialising though. She didn’t mind socialising in a professional scenario - docking control, freight contract discussions or discussions with the medical professions. These were all clinical discussions that didn’t involve actually having to have an actual conversation.

Varna much preferred chat where ‘yes’ and ‘no’ were perfectly acceptable replies and no further contact was required. Inside, she knew why. Her time on the pirate ship had made personal attachment hard. It was hard to form any bond with her fellow captives, especially when they were also actively conspiring against you.

Looking back, grudgingly, she understood now, the mind games her captors had played against them. Some of it had been pure sadistic pleasure on their part, but a lot of it was in keeping the girls separate and alone. Individually they were easy to handle, but that would have changed if they had been allowed to band together.

For months after her ejection into the void, she had scrutinised every decision she had ever made, trying to work out how she could have avoided Anya and herself being in that position. Only now was she finally realising that there was nothing she could have done that would have changed the outcome. They were always destined to be killed. They had simply been on the ship too long, and that was a bad status for a crew that wished to remain fully in control of a cowed harem.

With time, it had all became so horribly understandable. How they were made to fight each other, sometimes to death - just for scraps of food, or for even the now dubious pleasure of a night alone un-molested. Their captors had played them and played them well.

Her fingernails were digging painfully into her palms and her breathing had become rapid. Varna forced her hands to unclench and her breathing to settle. To distract her mind, she opened the plastic tub, pulled her scarf aside and tried a cake. They were very nice. But her mind wouldn’t leave her past alone, always going back to pick and probe at things she desperately wished to forget. She pocketed the note and put the lid back on the box, stood and headed down to the dig site.

The only way she was going to conquer and control her past, was if she refused to let it, refused to let them, win.

Moslach

Conradca watched the woman gingerly make her way down the hill. Steady. Slow. With obvious difficulty.

Con knew the feeling. Her limbs and joints were no longer anywhere near as flexible, supple or even just plain reliable as they had been. Growing old was such a bitch and society should reward you for simply getting this far. They were all rapidly speeding through the twilight of their years, with the exception of Palmaris and Ramulicho, who by the muffled sounds at night, the only speeding they were doing, was into each other. She had a damn good idea Mos had deliberately picked the makeup of the team to be the way it was. He was still trying to be the Alpha male, even though he was now closer to ‘Zulu’ than he was to ‘Alpha’.

It would be laughable, if it wasn’t so sad. Con knew that Mos - with the exception of the two gay men Ram and Palm and the old caretaker Kertog - had slept with every woman here. If he thought to relive his glory days, he was sadly mistaken. None of them were as naive as they had been back then, and she doubted that any of the other women found him attractive any longer. But then, it would depend on how long they found themselves here.

Con placed her trowel down, making sure that it lined up perfectly with the shovel and wheelbarrow, and stood, moving to intercept the woman.

“Hi” she said with a smile “You speak standard?” The old woman nodded. “Do you stay locally?” A pause, and then a slow nod. Not the talkative type then “It’s starting to take shape, now that we can see the walls. It’ll be even better once we hit ground level. Not current ground level, obviously, but the original ground level when these walls were built. Do you have any knowledge of this place, any folk tales, or passages written in lore?” A shake of the head. “That’s a shame. We were hoping that there would be some local knowledge of the place.” Maybe the premise that she was Mathnut Security Services was true after all.

The woman’s eyes were the only thing visible of her face through the wrapped scarf and they were bright, active, darting around, absorbing everything.

Damn! Secret police it is. “We stop for a break about now anyway. Sorry you’ve been watching for a few days now, so you already know that. Come, join us.” Con walked beside the woman as they walked between the pits, ready to offer a stabilising arm if the old woman needed it. The others were watching their progress surreptitiously and Con hoped that someone took down the still running book, which was still up on the wall, with its theories and current odds. Just in case the woman went prying. It wouldn’t do for them all to get arrested because the ruling regime had a religious law against gambling or something.

Con pulled out a chair for the old woman under the sun awning that they tended to congregate under. The others were quick to leave their holes, intrigued to see if the mystery of the woman was about to be resolved.

Pollen noted the reduced contents of her box. “Did you like my cakes, love?”

“Yes. They are very nice. Thank you.” The woman’s voice was soft, quiet, difficult to make out, as was the accent. Pollen poured them all coffee and the others added plastic milk and sweetener to their desired tastes.

The woman raised her gloved hands and visibly hesitated, before she removed her wide brimmed hat and started to unwind the scarf around her face. A quick glance revealed to Con that every other person was watching intently out the corner of their eyes, trying to feign un-interest.

The scarf was unwrapped and Con caught several sharp intakes of breath from her fellow diggers as the ‘old woman’ turned out to be the opposite. Con doubted that the girl was even clear of her teens, though her eyes were those of someone considerably older.

Mos put down his coffee cup. “Have we met before?” His face was screwed up, as though he was wracking his memory for something. Con made a note to have a word with some of the other women, to ensure that the girl was never left alone with Moslach. He may have lost his looks, but he could still turn on the charm, and there was no telling how susceptible the girl would be to ill-intended flattery.

The girl’s cheeks were sunken, as though she was coming out of a period of anorexia, or heading straight-on into one. Emotionally vulnerability was a major turn on for Mos, Con knew from past experience. Conradca felt her mothering instincts kick into full gear. She wasn’t the only one to take a sudden, intense, interest in the girl. Rowan was also studying the girl with an intensity that was starting to cause the girl obvious discomfort.

“How rude of me!” Con caught the girls attention, trying to head off any social awkwardness. “My name is Conradca - you can call me Con - and I am the underling of that grumpy, lecherous old man there, Moslach.” Con pointed to Mos, deliberately putting a warning in her tone for both the girl and Mos.

“I am neither old nor grumpy.” Mos argued.

“That’s up for debate. To your side there, is Rowan, she’s our medic.” Con noted the tension drain out of the girls shoulders at the knowledge the woman who had been intensely staring at her was a medic. Interesting. “Pollen is our chef, but you’ve probably already worked that out by now?” The girl nodded, as Con carried on introducing the team.

“I know where I’ve seen you before!” Mos rudely interrupted. “Back on Gozie! Didn’t you have a broken nose then?”

“Don’t be rude and interrupt, Mos” Con chastised How would a girl you saw on Gozie find her way here, you blithering idiot.

The girl nodded and Mos snapped his fingers “I knew it! I never forget a pretty face.”

The girls face went stony and her eyes hardened at Mos’s last two words, the girl’s demeanour suddenly turning chilly.

Interesting ... Con observed and noted the change. Even Mos, who obviously still possessed the ability to read someone, an ability which had made him such a predator of women all those years ago, had a flash of panic cross his face as he realised that he had somehow offended the girl. “How did you get here?” Con asked the girl, trying to deflect yet another potential flashpoint.

“The Anya.”

“Ahh, you’re ship’s crew. This,” Con waved her hand across her front, encompassing the surrounding open countryside, “must be quite the change from ship-space?” The tension in the girl visibly slipped away and Con prayed that Mos kept his mouth shut.

“Yeah. It’s hard to get used to it.”

Everyone were still looking a bit uncomfortable at the awkwardness. “Do you want to give it a go?” asked Conradca.

The girl looked perplexed. “What?”

“Archaeology.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh it’s easy to get into it. Here, let me show you.” Con held her hand out and the girl hesitantly took it. “Sorry, I never caught your name?”

“Varna. my name is Varna.

The blade landed at her feet with a clatter and she shuffled a foot quickly away from the bare edge as another blade landed at the feet of the other girl. They were both naked, surrounded by jeering men as money changed hands.

The other girls were there as well, silent, eyes downcast.

The other girl was gaunt, a feral madness in her eyes, her ribs protruding from an almost skeletal frame. She, on the other hand, had only been here a few weeks, still had flesh, still had muscle. But she also had something the other girl did not. A broken leg.

The other girls had tried their best to straighten it, but it hadn’t really been successful and it was currently held semi in place by two broken bits of packing crate and the better part of a roll of packing tape. She was also pretty sure one or two of her ribs were broken. Definitely cracked.

The girl picked up her knife. She did the same, having to hop on her good leg as she couldn’t really put much weight on the other for any length of time.

“You know the rules cunts. Only one of you lives. If neither of you fights, you both die. Simples. Times a tickin’...”

The other girl launched herself forward with a scream. She grabbed the other girls knife hand in her own as the girl did the same to her. Easily unbalanced and in pain, she was pushed over and they both fell to the cleated grid floor.

The cleats dug into her back and the blow to the back of her head made the pain of her leg mostly disappear. They thrashed about on the grid floor, the metal cleats slicing into skin. There was no co-ordination or thought, just limbs flailing as they screamed their rage and fear into each other’s faces.

A blade sliced into her, as she felt her own blade strike bone. They were both quick to tire, but ultimately her muscle mass won through as she buried her knife up to the hilt in the other girls chest.

“Thank you...” the girl said with her last breath.

Sobbing, Varna pulled the sheets aside and sat up, the memory too distressing to attempt any further sleep. Collecting a soft toy animal from the floor where it had fallen sometime during the night, she slowly walked to the kitchen area. She made herself a hot chocolate drink and sat at the table, hot chocolate in front of her as she cuddled the soft toy tightly to her chest, her nose buried in its pretend fur, rocking forward and back slightly as tears rolled down her cheeks.