Chapter 4

"Five minutes until final jump," said a voice over the prize ship's intercom.

The interrogator looked at her watch, she supposed this session was about over anyway and it had certainly been productive.

In the middle of the room stood the member of the prize's crew who the interrogator had been in the middle of interrogating before the intercom had interrupted. She was restrained with her hands cuffed behind her back; the cuffs were bonded together by a tractor field and a similar tractor field acted on her collar to keep her in the middle of the room. She was naked; her nipples were stiff and her pussy glistening. The girl had been cooperative; the interrogator hadn't used the crop at all except in the very beginning to establish dominance, so the girl was mostly unmarked.

"Is there anything else that you think I should know?" asked the interrogator.

"No, Mistress," the girl said.

The interrogator studied the girl's face for signs of deceit and found none. Letting a smile appear on her face for perhaps the first time since she had powered up the restraints, the interrogator cupped the prisoner's face in her hand and kissed the girl on the forehead.

"Well, Talima, I suppose you've earned a good come," the interrogator said as her hand dove towards Talima's pussy, "Spread your legs."

"Yes, Mistress. Thank you, Mistress!" said Talima, obeying enthusiastically and overflowing with gratitude.

No. Thank you, Talima, the interrogator thought. The information that she had gotten from Talima might prove very valuable indeed.

Victor was walking out of the regional governor's palace after having the first round of negotiations with the local prize office. With Victor were Aimee, Carla and Inez. Inez was Carla's new servant.

The street they were walking down was much more crowded than it had been that morning. Normally a crowd of women would part with great deference and haste in order to let a man through, but the street at this hour was so packed that it was just not physically possible to pay Victor and his group that courtesy.

"Let's stay close together, Market Street is just around the corner," Victor said, the tone of his voice signaling just how agitated he was. He understood the reason for the wet dock and hangar area being completely surrounded by the industrial district on one side and the commercial district on the other, but that didn't mean he had to like the obstacles presented to those coming and going. It didn't help that you could get anywhere quickly and comfortably via the city's ubiquitous skyline rails, except of course the governor's palace and the docks!

As they slowly made their way past the shops and stalls, Carla's communicator began vibrating. She took out her communicator, pressed a few buttons, and read. Frowning she said, "Master? The Second Officer says that they have discovered something interesting, and she requests that we come strait to the prize ship after we take off."

"Oh?" Victor said, taking his own communicator out of his jacket pocket. Victor used his communicator to access Carla's communicator, which like the rest of the crew's communicators wasn't secured against its owner's owner. Victor brought up the message, skimmed over it and after finding it only slightly less vague than what Carla had told him, he decided to do some idle snooping; Victor wasn't the most patient person and did not like surprises.

While Victor did his research, he started feeling as if something wasn't right. Suddenly while reading up on the Marine interrogator who was mentioned in the message, he realized what was wrong; these were public logs, and it showed the former Warrant Officer's former rank right there in black and white! This was a serious oversight; any pirate who bothered to do anything more than scratching the surface in researching his prey would quickly figure out that that fat juicy freighter wasn't what it seemed, he wouldn't take the bait and further more he would tell all his pirate friends to steer clear as well.

"Master? We're here," said Aimee.

Victor looked up and discovered that they were indeed at the dock. He put his communicator away and made a mental note to find out how this had happened and make sure that it didn't happen again.

"And this was how long ago?" Victor asked, looking up from the interrogation report and raising his eyebrow at the nervous former Warrant Officer in front of him.

"She wasn't sure; she didn't have access to timekeeping resources. She thinks it was less than twenty, but more than six years," answered Security Officer May.

Victor frowned and leaned back in his chair. The important information that May had was that one of her prisoners had apparently been a former possession of a very well to do merchant prince whose ship had been captured by the pirate Jack Cruz. As she tells it, her Master hadn't simply been killed, as would be expected in the situation, but had simply been marooned on a nearby world. Victor was rather torn, on the one hand, if all turned out well it could potentially mean quite a bit of reward money from rescuing the merchant prince, on the other, if conditions weren't just so it could be a complete waste of time.