Chapter 20 - Planning

Martha found Kate's technique for handling the prisoners not all that different from her own with new girls in the House of Joy. Having shown them her power by using the neural whip on one of them, she processed each one rapidly through to the medibot, ignoring the protests of innocence, error, mistreatment, and cheating which they variously expected her to correct. While they were in the medibot all their belongings were hidden away in a cupboard and an overall was issued. Then they were taught the auction procedure, which consisted of a walk up and down naked, followed by displaying the front and back of the body and finishing with a touch the toes, feet wide apart, back to the audience. This was rather like the promenade and display that her girls did in the choosing room for individual clients. The difference was that this would be on an auction block with Kate taking bids.

Surprisingly, Kate started with the best of the prisoners, and in consequence had very few bids for the last half-a-dozen, many of the bidders leaving before the end. Martha's presence was questioned by one man; he was, Martha thought, a nasty little man with his eyes too close together. From the conversation she gathered that his name was Karl and that he was fairly junior in the hierarchy but had a vastly inflated idea of his own importance.

She also gathered that it was unusual for a prisoner not to be auctioned, but Kate's explanation of Martha having "special skills" seemed to satisfy most of them.

Karl's insistence on having chapter and verse on these skills was abruptly ended when a large man in the front row turned and said, simply, "Shut up, Karl."

Evidently his authority was sufficient to end the discussion there and then. Keen to identify the power structure here, Martha studied this man intently. He was about her own age; later she learned that they had, coincidentally, been born on exactly the same day, on Earth. He must be at least six feet six tall and quite heavily built, perhaps seventeen or eighteen stone (240-250 lbs.) and fit looking. There was an air of authority about him which did not, in her estimation, contain any viciousness at all. 'Hard but fair' was her summing up.

The sale proceeded with little fuss. Most of the prisoners did as they had been taught with little argument but equally with no enthusiasm. The odd recalcitrant one behaved really rather quickly if the neural whip was waved at them. Nobody had had a dose of it since the demonstration in the outer room.

After the auction they went by hovercar back to Bernard's house, which was enormous to Martha's eyes, at least six rooms, maybe even more. On Earth people were usually two or more to a room. When they were there, Kate showed Martha what would be her room, at least for the time being. Martha expected that there would be a session on the bed there and then; she was sure that the newly-purchased female prisoners were all already in use by their various new owners. Idly she wondered how the young girl who was tricked into sex at the space port on Earth was faring, but she hadn't even learned her name, and couldn't remember who had bought her.

Kate, however was all business, "We want a brothel open to service maybe a hundred men whose only alternative is wanking or each other. We want it to start as soon as possible after the next batch of prisoners arrive in four weeks time, So, what do we do now?"

"Who was the big man in the front row of the auction?" asked Martha, ignoring the question.

"That was Hugo," answered Kate, "He runs the planet and has never had time for a live-in woman, so he borrows occasionally. I would expect that he would be a regular customer when we open. As to the next level down in the hierarchy, there are six or seven bosses who run things. Bernard, my man, runs the farming effort and nominally food distribution; Vincent runs the power side of things like the electricity generators; Andrew runs the infrastructure, like the water supply and sewage; Jason runs the mines and the uranium processing; reporting to Jason, and the next level down, are Arthur who tries to keep all our vehicles running, and one you will have to watch, Karl who is the mine boss here at Csadia City. He was the little man who kept questioning why you weren't being sold; he's a complete sadist and occasionally kills somebody by his excesses. They all have their own women and most of them also have a manservant. Then reporting to Bernard are two important people. Me, I actually run food and prisoner distribution; and you, you run the entertainments side of things. So, what do we do now?"

Again ignoring the question, Martha observed, "You don't run those auctions at all well. You could get twice the money, well, maybe not twice, but a lot more, if you put the worst prisoners up first and saved the best until last. And you should sell all the men first, and then the women."

Kate thought about that for a moments and said, "You are the answer to all my prayers; of course you are right and I'll do it like that next time. But as I said, so, what do we do now?"

Continuing with her theme Martha added, "And if the prisoners were a bit more enthusiastic it would help."

Kate exploded, "Tell me about how to start setting up a brothel, not about how to run an auction ... Anyway, how would I get the prisoners enthusiastic about being sold like cattle?"

"Same way I get girls enthusiastic about being rented out by the hour like giving them a cut; say one or two percent of their purchase price as a stake to start with. Tell them that the more they cost, the more they will be looked after by their new owners. Anything to convince them that the better the price you get, the better it is for them," Martha answered.

Kate thought hard for a few moments, then she said, "At the risk of seeming monotonous, what do we do now?"

Martha became all business also and reeled off her requirements.

"I shall need cost figures, in terms of buying girls, feeding them, keeping them in clothes, rent, taxes, squeeze, everything. That will give us a price to charge. A girl in normal work can take three, or even four, men a night, six nights a week, so to service a hundred men who want it say twice a week, we need," she paused for a bit of mental arithmetic, "about ten girls, and I'll have to work as well."

"That's lucky, there are twelve coming in in the next shipment, according to the message which came in with your ship. Now maybe a couple of those will be dead, but I know I can get Hugo to let us have all of them," enthused Kate.

"No way," came the response which dampened Kate's excitement only a little, "I need someone to stake me with working capital and I will buy the girls I want at the auction, not just accept anything that arrives. If we don't have enough to start with, that doesn't matter; the punters will pay extra if it is rationed and they think they can bribe their way to the front of the queue."

"Crafty," said Kate, "and the first night when everyone wants a go?"

"An auction, of course," said Martha.

After a few moments when both of them were thinking hard, Martha said, "Ten girls is a huge house and we need a room each for the girls to have as their own, ten rooms for fucking in, a Choosing Room where the punters meet and pick their girl, and ideally a bar where they drink afterwards. We would need four or five staff, an older woman for the girls to tell their trouble to and to tidy up, you can't seem to program housebots..."

Kate interrupted her with, "We have no housebots here."

"Two older women then," continued Martha, "who can do all the cleaning and be mothers to the girls. Three bouncers, big reliable men who get paid like slaves, but get free fucks now and again. That means about thirty rooms; it isn't going to be cheap. And do you want specialities?"

"Specialities?" queried Kate.

"Bondage, domination, sadism, shit-eating, golden showers, anything else you can think of."

"There would certainly be a demand for some of those," opined Kate, "but we can leave them out at first."

"It takes special girls to do those things anyway," said Martha and her eyes gleamed as she added, "But I do domination as it happens. It's my speciality. But you haven't said anything about how all this is to be paid for, except the foolish suggestion of stealing all the girls from this shipment."

"Why is it foolish?" asked Kate, genuinely not understanding.

"Because of the resentment it would cause among the men who would be bidding otherwise," explained Martha.

"Oh," said Kate, "I hadn't though about that. I'll have to talk to Hugo."

Just as she was about to leave Martha's room, Kate turned and said quietly, "You realise Bernard will probably want to fuck you tonight, don't you? Please don't upset him."

Then she left the room before Martha had time to say anything.

About an hour later, Kate came bouncing back into the room, bubbling with excitement.

"We've got our building and you can have as many credits as it takes to set up and run the brothel. It's going to be state owned. Hugo's coming to fetch you now; I've had to sell you to him. Isn't it wonderful?" she enthused.

"Brilliant," said Martha, totally unconvincingly, "and how many more owners will I have had before I know for sure who expects to fuck me tonight?"

"You don't understand," Kate said, "The deal is that we run this together; Hugo finances it with strict accounting out of Csadia Central funds. He isn't coming to take you off for a fuck, he's coming to fetch you to see the new K&M Brothel as it will be called."