Chapter 9

MONDAY May 12

Monday turned into an extremely eventful day. Marco’s definition of early and mine were off by a few hours. My personal communicator started talking to me shortly after four a.m. “Hey Mike, wake up!”

“Hmmmmph?” I answered. Marco’s hearty laughter finally woke me up.

“What time is it?” I asked groggily.

“Mid-afternoon,” he laughed.

“Then why is it still dark?” I grumbled.

“Mid-afternoon just hasn’t gotten here yet, it’s still over the eastern Mediterranean,” he laughed.

I groaned. “Okay, I’ll be there in about ten minutes,” I promised. Renee woke up while I was talking to Marco and the rest of the girls woke up between the talking and me crawling out of bed, sliding wistfully from between my beautiful wife’s legs. They insisted on going with me, and hurried to get dressed, well, half-dressed at least. I asked Renee to wake Katie up and have her meet us at the hangar next to the lab. “Oh, warn her that there will be a guy there besides me,” I added as an afterthought.

“Hey Mike, I finally got the particle accelerator you asked for,” Marco’s voice cut in on my communicator as the hangar completed its imitation of an old-fashioned drawbridge. Obviously, he’d scanned the area and noted more people than just me in the vicinity.

“Relax, Marco, it’s just my wives and close friends with me, and their mother and another woman joining us in a couple of minutes. I promise its safe.” Five minutes later, with Marco’s ship nestled safely below ground, the hangar began closing.

Marco cautiously stuck his head out of the hatch of his ship and looked around. Seeing only women who were barely awake and me, also barely awake, he exited. “Wives?” he asked. “I didn’t know you were married.”

“Almost sixty hours now,” I replied grinning.

“Damn, they could be twins,” he commented.

“They are twins, in vitro, eight years apart,” I explained.

“Only you could find a setup like that,” he laughed. “Speaking of setups, I got your engines and power supply in here.”

“Cool, I’ve got good news for you, too. I think I can finish today. I’ve got a helper who knows her way around a ship,” I explained.

“Wow,” Katie gasped when she walked in and actually saw the large freighter dwarfed inside the monstrous hangar.

“And here she is now,” I commented glibly.

“All this time I’ve been coming here and I’ve never seen anyone but your ugly face. I guess I’ve been showing up at the wrong time,” Marco teased.

“To tell the truth, up until six days ago, you and I were the only two people alive who knew this place was here. I showed my girlfriends last Tuesday just before I asked them to marry me. We showed their mom the next day. Katie and several other women just joined us Thursday,” I said.

Marco looked confused and looked back over at Renee and Katie, noticed their matching tattoos. “Concubines?” he asked.

I saw the look cross his face; he didn’t approve, but recovered quickly and covered well. “Katie, either Marco thinks you look awfully ugly this morning or he doesn’t approve of your tattoo,” I said.

Marco threw his hands up defensively. “Mike, what you do here is your business. I just deliver,” he said. He looked confused when the ladies started laughing. Katie had made her way over to us and walked up to him.

“Marco, we’re all here voluntarily. Mike is protecting us from the type of thing you’re upset about. Hell, before I could get him to go to bed with me, I had to get permission from both of his wives. Even then, he won’t start anything. I had to practically throw him on the ground and jump on him,” she laughed.

I knew the look on Marco’s face. He was thinking about something or counting dollars in his head. “How many women do you have here?” he asked me.

I shrugged and pointed to Renee. “He doesn’t want to know. He makes me take care of the details since it was my idea. Right now, we have over forty girls and sixty troops. By tonight, we’ll have another twenty or so girls.”

“Damn, Mike, it takes some serious bucks to be able to keep so many women, at least six billion.

The girls started laughing again. “That means we still have room for another sixty-four hundred women,” Renee exclaimed.

Marco stood motionless, mouth agape, staring at Renee, and then turned his head to stare at me, mouth still hanging open. “That’s more than the annual budget for at least half the countries in the world,” he gasped. “Now I don’t feel so bad about letting you personally make me a multi-millionaire,” he laughed.

“Speaking of which, how much do I owe you?” I asked.

While Marco and the ladies chatted, I went to the bunker where the vault was and pulled out forty-five million in gold and another forty-five million in currency. I needed a grav sled to carry it back with me. On the way, I called for James and asked to have the androids join us to unload Marco’s ship. James also filled me in on Kateryna’s night. Marco’s eyes flashed their money gleam when he saw the loot. The girls took their turn to gasp at the cash and gold and then decided they wanted to see what I’d bought. Marco led us into his ship’s cargo hold.

“Oh, my God, you really did get them,” Katie squealed. “How?” she asked.

Marco smiled indulgently. “Beautiful Miss Katie, in this business you never ask any questions beyond how much and when. More than that is too dangerous to know.”

“Sorry, I was just so excited to see them again. They are each a masterpiece of engineering,” she told him. Marco was impressed that she’d worked with them before, and even more impressed when he found out she was the one who made the UN realize that the engines were too powerful.

The androids then and began unloading Marco’s cargo under Katie’s watchful eye. I again saw Marco gape as he watched the ease with which they handled the heavy cargo. “Androids?” he mouthed at me, stunned. I nodded. I borrowed a handful of them and started working on the upgrades for his ship. Vonna, Jenna, Renee, and the rest went back to get breakfast started, to make sure everyone got off to wherever they had to be today, and to get the troops up and moving. Thirty minutes later Jenna and Renee came back with Bree, all three freshly showered and carrying breakfast for three. The unloading was finished and Katie and I had a dozen androids helping with the upgrades.

Bree asked if I could open the lab so she could work on the androids. I took a few minutes out of my work and did it, and then realized she could have already done it herself. Bree snuggled against me from behind, lightly rubbing my cock through my overalls. “I know you’re busy, but could you spare a few minutes? I’d like to test my new necklace,” she purred, holding up her green necklace. Now I knew why she wanted me here. I tried to go down on her but she wanted me inside, right then. Luckily for her, I was still sexed out from last night so Bree managed to near her third orgasm before I filled her full of cum, driving her to a third peak.

She smacked me on the butt after we caught our breath. “You need to get back to work lover,” she laughed. “Katie and I may bring a bed down here for relaxation breaks,” she continued, looking at the couch we’d just used. There was little doubt in my mind that they’d have it done before the end of the day.

“Problems?” Vonna asked when I got back.

“Yeah, Bree wanted to test drive her green necklace,” I grumbled.

Marco looked up when the three ladies started laughing at me. “Bree just jumped Mike’s bones in the other lab,” Katie explained, still laughing.

“So, how do you go about finding these girls?” he asked.

“Renee started with girls she knew who were close to getting claimed. Most of them had a sister or other relative, or a close friend who was having trouble, too. They’re invited, and if they can deal with the rules, they sign up voluntarily.”

“What are the rules?” he asked. I could tell by the thoughtful look on his face that he had someone in mind.

“If they are currently in school or wish to continue, we make the necessary arrangements, including paying for it if they don’t have scholarships. Few do at this point because someone bribed people to make sure they could be claimed. If they aren’t in school, I expect them to hold a full time job working for me because someone is also probably keeping them kept from finding a job outside in the real world. Students may work as much as they want as long as they keep their grades up. Any money they earn working comes to me so everything looks legitimate to outside scrutiny. Tara keeps track of it, and when they leave, every penny will be returned to them. Everyone is expected to pitch in and help with household chores, although the domestic androids do most of them.

They can wear any type of clothing they want to in public, but it has to be tasteful. Everything they say and do in public will reflect directly on me. In my house in town or out here, what they wear is their business as long as it doesn’t offend anyone else. If that happens, they have to work it out between themselves. I refuse to be a referee. I hear that the pool area has been officially declared a clothing-free zone. There is no requirement that they have sex with me, in fact, the fewer that want to, the happier I’ll be. The ones that do want to have to talk to both Vonna and Jenna and get their approval.” I reached over and held up Katie’s necklace. “A green necklace means they’ve been approved, and are free to approach me. The tattoo they wear,” and I pointed to Katie’s, “can be removed easily in a couple of days. Oh, and they have to agree to let me spoil them outrageously.”

“So you give them a place to be safe AND pay for everything?” he asked.

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” I responded. “Who do you have in mind?”

“What do you mean?” he replied defensively.

“I mean, who do you know that you think needs someplace safe?”

“Am I so obvious?” he asked.

“Only to someone who knows you and the look you get when you’re thinking about something serious,” I replied. “So?” I prodded.

“Any chance I could convince you to let my wife and daughter stay here ... or at least my daughter?”

“They’re both welcome, Marco. Bring them by whenever you want.” He was quiet for a minute.

“I guess I should tell you about my wife before you agree. Does the name Inna Petrachkov mean anything to you?”

“Yeah, she re-wrote the books on shielding and cloaking before she retired. She’s your wife?” I asked, amazed.

“Yeah, we were both born in Russia. We ended up working together and fell in love. One of the big bosses from the Russian Mafia got pissed off when we got married. He’d planned on taking her as his personal sex toy. After that, he made our lives miserable. I heard he was planning to have me killed, so we escaped and have been living on the run ever since. We were living in a pirate enclave, but a friend warned me that a couple of the guys were planning to kidnap my daughter, Natasha, and turn her over to Vladimir Derevenko, the man who wanted Inna. They were hoping he’d let them go back and live in Russia again. Fat chance of that happening; he’d just kill them once they came back.”

I saw the pain in Marco’s eyes, pain from having to leave the Mother Country and pain from knowing that his family was always living on the edge. “So, when are you going to bring them over?” I asked. Marco grinned his big, toothy grin. The Marco I’d known for so long, the apparently happy-go-lucky Marco, was back. He wrapped me into a bear hug.

“Shall we get his ship finished so he can get his family?” Katie chided. Marco took a quick nap in a comfortable chair in a quiet room off the hangar while we worked.

Gwen called me to let me know Kateryna wanted to talk to me. She voluntarily told Savina that she had screwed up and needed to talk to her. Savina sent her to Gwen, and Gwen re-directed her to me. I’d asked James to brief both women first thing this morning on Kateryna’s night. It was a very pale and frightened Kateryna that approached me. I directed her inside of my lab to the couch Bree and I just finished screwing on not long before. “How did you get involved with them?” I asked matter-of-factly. Kateryna got even paler. She started to say something, and a brief flicker of defiance flashed in her eyes, but the flicker died out quickly.

Breaking down and sobbing, she explained that Kateryna Repin was not her real name. She was born in Russia, Olena Gregorovich. Her parents managed to sign up with a super secret group that smuggles Russian families out of Russia and into bordering countries. A family of five died in a fire in the Ukraine and her family was the closest fit. Both fathers were engineers, and their three children were close enough to the ages of the ones who died that they simply took the place of the deceased family, assuming their identities. Olena was five when they did it.

Four months ago, a man approached her. He told her that he knew all about her family and would tell the authorities unless she tried to get the girls to work for him. When that fell through, she was required to tell him if anyone hired a large number of the girls. He wanted to know who it was and what they wanted the girls to do. Not knowing what else she could do she agreed, hoping it never happened. Last night she went outside to make the call, but couldn’t make herself betray her comrades-in-arms. After fighting with herself for an hour, she finally threw her com unit on the ground and broke it. Then she fell in a heap and cried, knowing that she’d just sentenced her family to be jailed or deported, and not sure what might happen to any relatives still in Russia. She didn’t remember going back to bed, but she woke up there this morning with one of the domestic androids snuggled against her to keep her warm.

Unable to keep the secret any longer, she decided to tell Savina, knowing that she faced expulsion at the minimum and possibly even execution. Savina seemed to already know and sent her to Gwen, which freaked her out. Gwen also seemed to know, and sent her to me. I confirmed her suspicion that we knew, and now she wanted to know what we were going to do with her.

Fortunately, her account matched James’ account perfectly. Cloaked, he had watched her internal struggle, and watched her cry herself to sleep lying outside on the ground. When her body temperature started dropping, he uncloaked, picked her up, and carried her to her room. He raised his external temperature a few degrees to help warm her and had two domestic androids put her to bed and snuggle against her until she was warm again. One android left at that point, the other was to stay and make sure she was okay.

Between bouts of sobbing, it had taken half an hour to finish her story. I waited patiently through it, having decided already what to do. The choice was hers. When she finally ran out of explanation, I told her, “The good news is that I have no plans to execute you. The bad news is that the three options available to you are all distasteful. I will tell you that the third one is my preference, but I will accept whatever decision you make. If you ever change your mind, we can do that, too.”

“The first option is simply to spend the rest of your life here in a cell. There will be no trial, and no further contact with the outside world.” She blanched visibly at that option.

“Your second option is to run away into the desert. There is no place to go, and you can never escape the base. The entire base is shielded and cloaked. You may live in the wild for a long time, you may not. If you leave, nobody will try to stop you. There will be a cloaked shuttle within a hundred feet of you the entire time, even if it’s years. If you change your mind and ask for help, you will be brought back to choose from the two remaining options. If you never change your mind, the shuttle will watch over you until you die, and an android will bury your body where you die.”

I paused to let her digest that option before continuing. “If you decide to stay, I have a special job for you to do. It’s dangerous, but less dangerous than what you’ve done in the Special Forces. You will not be allowed to talk to your former comrades-in-arms unless they ask you a specific question, and then you are only allowed to answer their question. Nothing else is to be said. You will address every member of the base military contingent, no matter where you are or what their rank is, as Sir or Ma’am if they talk to you. You will follow every order they give you as if I gave it to you personally unless their order violates one of my rules. You may talk freely with anyone not in the military, including me.

“I will provide you with your own uniform to wear when you’re working. It will be totally different from any of the other military uniforms. When you are not working, you are not allowed to wear any clothing here on the base. You will have two collars to wear. One says ‘Traitor,’ and the other says ‘Slave.’ In addition, I will occasionally offer you to people I do business with to use as a sex toy in any way they wish. My two rules will be that they are not allowed to scar you or injure you. I will also allow one week for your former comrades-in-arms to retaliate against you in any way they see fit. The same two rules apply to their retaliation. You will find yourself ostracized and humiliated, but you will not be injured unless it’s doing the job I give you to do, and the job will be an important one.”

I watched her as she stared, unmoving, at the floor, digesting what she’d just heard. Tears continued to flow down her cheeks, collecting on the lower side of her jaw before enlarging the two wet spots on her shirt. Getting no response after a few minutes, I asked, “Do you want to sleep on it and let me know later?” She shook her head, shaking loose two more teardrops, apparently having reached her decision, so I waited.

“I want to stay and help,” she answered finally, her voice so quiet that most people might not have heard it.

“Very well, I want you to find a room in the estate with nobody else in it and move your things there. If other civilians ask to move in with you later, it’s your decision, but for right now I think it’s best if you were alone. Let one of the domestics know which room you choose and I’ll have lunch and dinner brought to you today. Tomorrow, you’ll have to face everyone at breakfast, and the retaliation will begin when you finish and leave the table. I predict that it will be ugly.” Kateryna nodded her agreement with my assessment.

“What’s the job?” she asked meekly.

“Actually, it will be several jobs, and I’m sure I’ll add more as we go. The main thing will be reconnaissance. I’ll send you in a cloaked ship to observe a target so we know what we’re going into.”

“You’d trust me to do that?” she gasped.

“Shouldn’t I?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, but...”

“The ‘but’ is that only you and I will know you’re doing the recon. I don’t think they’re ready to trust you that far, yet, so you can’t mention it to anyone. The second job you’ll be doing is to help Renee with weapons procurement. She’s got a lot to do and will need help. You may also be called on to help with training the androids in the techniques and weapons Special Forces use so that when we integrate them with human troops, there won’t be any problems. There may also be times where I use you as a bodyguard for one of the women staying here.”

“Wow,” she commented, “I figured the job would be digging latrines or scrubbing floors or something.”

“That would be a huge waste of talent, wouldn’t it?” I asked. She shrugged. “Are you ready to start?” I asked.

She sighed resignedly. “Not really, but that’s not ever going to change so I might as well get on with it.”

“Okay, strip,” I ordered. Her mouth opened in surprise, but she quickly collected herself, stood up, and did as she was told. There was no animosity in her eyes, only resignation with her new position in life.

“Do you want to use me for sex?” she asked. Now it was my turn for a deep sigh.

“Kateryna, what I am doing for you is very difficult for me to do. I don’t like doing it, but I feel overall, it’s a better choice than the other options I had. It includes punishments that are visible to everyone. Even though they will see you around, when they see you, they’ll be reminded that you are being punished ... every day. It also offers you a chance to contribute to our effort, and maybe even a chance to regain some amount of respect. However, at no time will I make you have sex with me. If you and I ever have sex, it will only be after you get permission from my wives, and only if you ask me.”

I handed her a package about a foot square and three inches high. She opened it cautiously, and even more tears filled her eyes when she saw the contents. Wordlessly she took out the two collars and put them on around her neck, and then attached the ankle bracelet. “If I really thought I’d ever need the locator bracelet I wouldn’t offer you this choice,” I told her, trying to soften the blow a little. She clipped the leash to the “slave” collar and let it hang. She looked confused when she saw the computer and the com unit.

“You’ll need them to be able to contact people. I’ve included numbers for Renee, James, and me. You can add others as you need. James can put you in contact with any of the domestics or you can simply ask one for her com number and use the same one all the time. The computer is so you can submit orders to Renee for processing. You should also take some time today and make a complete list of everything you could possibly need or want for doing recon, including weapons.” She was surprised by that.

“I have no intention of sending you into danger unarmed. Regardless of your status, your life is important to me. I want you to have the best equipment money can buy for your recon. Get whatever cameras, recorders, data cubes, sensors, or anything else you might need. You’ll also want some sort of restraints and gas to knock prisoners out. Get me the list by dinner so we can have everything delivered tomorrow.”