Chapter 1

"Stel, I know you completed all the work I gave you for the negotiations today, but I need an enormous favor from you."

Sophia had sent the message with a special emergency flag that Stella had given her, causing it to flash up on all of the mirrors and windows in her flat, as well as blinking an alert on all her personal cards. Stella set down the glass of wine she'd poured to celebrate the completion of the contract and the coming weekend, and mashed a fingertip against the words "CALL BACK" on the vanity mirror.

Stella's reflection was replaced by a scene of total chaos in Sophia's office. Men and women in smart business attire ran back and forth carrying boxes of supplies and personal effects, and members of the Amalthean national guard were conferring in groups, readying weapons and mobilizing toward exits.

"Sophie! Are you nearby? It's Stel. I got your note!"

The scene of confusion and panic continued, and finally a young man in a striped shirt and waistcoat noticed Stella and waved to someone off-screen. A few seconds later, Sophia's face filled the mirror, her eyes betraying total despair.

"Oh Stella, listen. It's all gone horribly wrong! The tripartite negotiations today were a stitch-up. Someone knew everything we had going on, and the others just completely steamrolled us. Amalthea and the other disputed worlds are no longer part of the Commonweal, and we're nowhere near meeting the requirements to confederate with your people. All Amalthean nationals on Torei are now completely without protection of the Interstellar Act, and the Ministry of Truants already had its forces ready for this."

Sophia took a deep breath, holding her forehead in her hand, as if to hold her weary face upright for a minute longer. "We're protected for now here in the embassy, but there are 403 women without legal guardians currently at large in the offworlders' complex. We've alerted nearly all of them to head for the nearest friendly embassy, but there are two we can't reach."

Stella realized that her mouth was open the whole time she'd been listening. She quickly snapped to attention, pursing her lips, straightening her posture, and tugging her glossy dressing gown into a more modest décolletage.

"Right, what do you need from me?"

"Stel, It's the twins."

Minutes later, Stella had thrown her casual work attire back on and run to the nearest lift. Alem's tower (where Sophia and most other Amaltheans lived) did not have a skybridge to the space elevator yet, so her fastest route was to catch an express train in the ground levels of her own home tower. She used to make this trip more frequently, back when she and Sophia had been an item, but her destination seemed light years away, now.

Stella paced on the platform amidst a motley crew of off-world pleasure-seekers, native-born businessmen, and enticingly dressed slaves and local freewombs in all stages of bondage or exposure. She spent so much of her attention fussing over the arrival estimates for her train that she was on board and seated on the bench before she noticed the Truant Officers boarding her carriage.

The men wore the maroon and gold uniforms of the International Truancy Bureau, and both officers sported the Alemic Ensign on their epaulets. The crowd parted for them as they stepped on, dragging a chain of four casually-dressed women between them.

The women were bound in glittering steel fiddles, wrists held together in front of their faces by the rods coming from their metal collars. Each girl's fiddle was bound to the collar of the woman in front of her, and the stiff bar the four yokes made caused them to stumble and step on one another's feet as they walked.

Stella could not make out the identity of any of the four women, as their heads were all covered in well-oiled maroon leather hoods with brass buckles. Their muffled moans and wails suggested terror and a gradual loss of resistance. Stella stared in horror as she realized who these women must be.

"So, what's yer name, clit?"

Stel's heart pounded as she realized that one of the truant officers had sat down next to her on the bench, the line of women stretched in front of them as if for their inspection.

"Stellanova." She replied curtly, swallowing hard.

"Oooh, Stella-nova, eh? Barq, that sounds like an Amalthean name, donchathink?"

"I dunno, all them funny names sound alike to me." Barq muttered, fussing with a card in one hand while he held a leash attached to the front girl's fiddle, "I've got one for a 'Stelleana', but no Stellanova. Sorry, boss!"

"Are you sure you got that name right, clit? I bet them long words are hard for you to wrap your mouth around sometimes. If you like I've got something simpler for your mouth to try out..." The seated guard had pulled the strings of his maroon trousers, revealing his cock to the whole carriage.

Stella knew what was coming, and fumbled for her passport and emancipation reference as a pre-emptive measure.

"Here's my ID, Sir. My parents were from Amalthea, but I was born on Hotchkiss and have confederate citizenship."

The guard cinched his codpiece back on with a quick flutter of laces, and his face took on a darker aspect.

"All right, all right. Not to worry, we won't touch your 'feddy cunt without asking. But if you want, we'd be willing to overlook your accident of birth and let you join your sisters, here. Make something nice out of you, I'd expect."

Stella tried to stare forward, between the waists of the captured girls to an entertained passenger on the other side.

"No thank you, Sir."

"Or ... I tell you what. You step in for one of these ... terrified young ladies, and we let her go at the next station, hmm? I'll let you pick which one you want, even. Maybe you'd like to walk in front, show off that lovely chest you're covering up, eh?"

Stella's stomach turned. She knew it was all lies, and that those four women were going to Alem's Ministry of Truants no matter what she did. She also knew that even with witnesses testifying to her agreement to the plan, the Confederacy had enough power that she'd be free again before bedtime. It was a non-choice, but what ate at her gut was the image in her head of Sophia's twin nieces being hauled off because Stel had tangled with an officer of the law.

"No."

The officer grinned and leaned over to the third captive from the front, hiking her skirt up over her hips. The girl's hands balled into fists above the cuffs of her fiddle, and she stood pigeon-toed. From within her hood, Stel could hear muffled throaty protests.

The man then reached up and pulled the poor girl's panties down to her knees in one quick motion. With expert grace he slapped her thigh and pulled the knickers off completely while she squirmed.

"See? This one's a blonde like you, although I'll never understand why you people don't depilate properly. I bet the processor would just notarize you under her passport and you'd be in."

The man held the crumpled panties to his nose and inhaled deeply, eyes lidding over as if savoring a unique experience. He gasped with satisfaction, and then tossed them onto Stella's lap.

"No? Well then here's a memento of this womb's last day of freedom!"

Stel was fuming, but trying her hardest not to let them get to her. The standing guard was grinning ear to ear like some sort of simpleton, and one of the businessmen standing by the train door had been making pantomime kisses and winking at her. Even some of the slaves were licking their lips and batting their eyelids in her direction.

Stella breathed evenly through her nose for six breaths, then politely handed the underwear back to the sitting officer.

"I will not take you up on your offer. Please put these back where you found them."

The man took them and gave them another appreciative sniff.

"Kamn, the smell of fear in these! It's ... well it's why I love this job!"

He un-bunched the garment and dangled it in front of Stella's face.

"All right, womb. I'll put them back on her. Whatever you say!"

He fished in a bag at his belt and pulled out a miniscule rubbery cylinder of some kind. Palming it, he pulled the panties up to the squirming captive's knees, and then his colleague helped him hold her legs as far apart as the stretchy fabric would allow. He pulled out a tiny tube and squeezed a drop of some gel into the cylinder before reaching between the poor girl's legs and rubbing with it.

The captive girl jerked against the men holding her legs, but they held her up. The officer teased out her clitoris, and then squeezed the cylinder, causing the aperture to widen considerably. He shoved it on and let go, and with a wet popping sound, it sucked her sensitive nub in and held tight.

The officer pulled up the panties and lowered the skirt back down to cover the girl's thighs. The moment the two men let go, her knees snapped together. Stella was beyond caring that the truant officers could tell she had been staring at the performance.

"You know what, womb? I think I misjudged you."

Stella briefly caught his gaze and immediately regretted it.

"Yeah, I don't think you're cut out for a slave's life. No, you're one of those freewomb types who goes out buying a little harem of your own, aren't you? I think once these four are booked and processed, you might want to buy a couple of them at auction."

Stella's face felt hot, and she knew her pale blonde's complexion must have turned beet red. The brute's words hit too close to home, and given her mission and what stood before her, she had no response.

"Don't worry, my precious little freewomb..." The man pulled out a card and aimed it at the third captive, tapping sigils on the clear plastic. "I'll make sure she's given a velvet collar. She'll be conditioned for pleasure, ready to become your next girlfriend. You'll have her tongue at your command, and she..."

The officer flicked the last control, and the pigeon-toed girl jolted in her bonds. Her hood shook left and right as she realized what the button was doing, and her thighs began to rub together as she ground her hips.

" ... she will enjoy pleasures of her own!"

Stella recognized the device on the girl's clit as a vibrator. The goo must have been one of the myriad devilish stimulatory creams that could be bought in any convenience store on Torei. Stella watched the woman writhe in arousal and humiliation, and found herself half wishing for a little stimulation on her own erogenous areas.

Enough time passed without anyone saying anything, and Stella felt acutely aware of everyone's gaze again. Her silence was a little victory for the smug truancy enforcer, and she wanted nothing more than to kick and punch and scratch at him until his head caved in.

Stella's public display of self-pity was cut mercifully short, though, when the announcement for Alem Tower station came over the loudspeakers. Stella stood up and walked over to the doors, her back to the carriage, her eyes wrinkled shut to match her grinding teeth.

The train pulled into Alem Tower Station with perfect grace, and the doors on the opposite side of the carriage from Stella opened to the platform. Stel turned to head out, and watched the two truant enforcers drag their quarry off the train. Anxiety knotting her stomach, she watched the row of women stumble blindly on, guided only by the tug of the leash on their wrists and necks.

The third woman, the one that the officer had ministered to personally, was clearly stumbling worse than the others. She ground her hips as she walked, lifting her knees high and rubbing it across the opposite thigh. As Sophia had taught her during their time together, you didn't need to be in the mood to be aroused on Torei: there was always a way to make you ready for sex.

The other three captives had to work that extra bit harder to carry the squirming girl's weight from time to time, and she received a disproportionate amount of attention from the crops the enforcers carried. Stella nearly missed getting off the train before the doors closed, she was so distracted. Her fears and anxieties were giving way to arousal at the sight of the women being controlled in this way. She almost did wish she could buy them for herself.

Stella barged into Sophie's apartment, calling their names out.

"Dimi! Cali! Kammit please be here!"

She got no response, but then again she wasn't actually expecting to see them there. The real reason she had stopped in was to make use of a spy she'd planted in a fit of jealousy over a year ago. Pulling out a glass card, she brought up the soubrette's control application and got a display of her current location.

Stel marched over to the linen closet and threw open the door, revealing a slavegirl in a glossy black latex maid's uniform straddling the cylindrical clothes-washing machine. It was one of the old-fashioned kind that used ultrasound to break up oils in fabrics, and the girl was clearly enjoying some sort of effect from the humming tub between her legs. It was difficult to tell too much, however, because of the black rubber scold's mask that formed a posture collar over her neck and mouth.

Stella traced her fingers over the card, and the girl's eyes fluttered open as the mask retreated down under her chin, making an audible pop as a cylindrical protrusion retracted from her mouth.

"Ohhhh, ank ou istwess!" the maid gasped, her jaw still stretched wide from being accustomed to the wide plug that had likely filled her mouth for the past month.

"Where are they?"

"Nistwess?" the girl drooled, working her jaw with painful-sounding pops and clicks as she tried to bring her teeth together.

"The twins, kammit! Where did they go?"

The maid had been a gift from Stella to Sophia, shortly after they broke up. Stella had specifically ordered them a soubrette, trained to spy and gossip and generally get into mischief so as to earn punishments later. At the time she had thought it would be the perfect revenge: she'd distract her ex-lover with an irresistible coquette, and have a gossipy slavegirl to interrogate about Sophie's love life. In the end, though, the desire for revenge softened to an occasional pang of regret. For her part, Sophie just let the girl do the cleaning and left her stored away in neglect most of the time.

"Mistresses Dimiza and Caliopa went out to celebrate their 18th birthday, ma'am." The slave smacked her indelibly-red lips as she recovered control of her mouth.

Stel's heart sank.

"Where? Where did they go? Tell me, you worthless cunt!"

"They didn't say, Mistress! But one of their friends--the stuck-up Peladian princess with the family cocklock? She said she knew one of the bouncers at Venus in Furs and they'd let the twins in a few hours before they're legal."

"Venus? Kamn! I just hope I can find them before the truant squad does."

"WAAAAI--NGKHPHHH" Stel had switched the maid's gag-mask back on, and was nearly out the door. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she re-released the soubrette's mouth from the mask's enormous gag and turned to hear her out.

"Ghkkaagh! Ah, thank you Mistress! I only want to warn you that you'll never get in on a busy night like tonight the way you're dressed!"

Stella hated to admit it, but the slave had a point. She bit her lip thoughtfully and tapped her toe as if shaking her head would change things, but then just threw up her hands in exasperation. Five minutes later she had raided Sophie's wardrobe as well as that of the twins to assemble a proper clubbing ensemble.

"Right, how about this?" she strutted in front of the maid, turning once on the toe of her black patent knee-high shitkicker boots. The silver sheen of her metallic-look glossy stockings disappeared beneath a skirt made of wide black straps festooned with wide steel studs and laced together with silver cables.

Above her bare midriff Stella was contained by a silvery bodice laced moderately tightly behind her back. The cups of the bodice were themselves straps laced together with black monofilament cord, squashing her C-cup breasts up and together into a plush V of cleavage. Just above the cleavage sat a mirrored black stone in a silver pendant setting. Her makeup and hair were pure elegant vamp: blood red lips, black-lined eyes with smoked lids, and black hair pinned up in set curls.

Without benefit of modern technology, she'd have wasted an hour on the ensemble, but Toreans were masters of the quick costume change and every boudoir could turn a mouse into a princess in seconds.

"It'll get you past the bouncers," the maid mused, "but I'd have gone for teaser-top stockings and left the skirt unlaced."

"Yes," Stella bit her words, her mind already focusing on what she'd do to the twins once she found them, "I suppose you would."

She punched the maid's gag back on and stabbed the laundry machine button with her thumb, sending it into an extra-high cycle. She didn't stop to watch the maid's eyes roll back into her head with pleasure, but grabbed a fur coat and bolted out of the apartment.

The queue for Venus went around the corner, scandalously costumed partygoers chattering away and waiting for their turn. Stella walked the length of it twice, squinting at women in hoods and domino masks, trying to see if any of them were Dimi or Cali. Satisfied that they weren't waiting outside, she folded two large-denomination notes and tucked one in the garter of her stocking and the other snugly between her breasts.

"I think you'll find that I'm on the list." she said boldly, stepping in the front of the queue. She pulled her fur coat open slightly, granting the man a glimpse of the currency in her cleavage. The bouncer smiled and made a show of checking his list and making a tick mark before gesturing to the coat check window.

Stel shrugged off the enormous fur cloak and passed it through the window, collecting the token code on the stone in her pendant. Following the bouncer's instructions, she spread her feet shoulder width apart and reached up to grab the bar over her head. The bouncer reached down and slowly frisked her.

His heavy hands moved quickly over her right boot, but slowed dramatically on reaching the smooth material of her stockings. Stella sighed slightly as she realized that she'd stuck the payoff into the left stocking, and that he'd do the full measure before finding it. Sure enough, he reached the top of the right stocking, feeling the top with both hands before running a finger over the front of her panties and tracing a line over her slit.

It was degrading, but as a young woman on Torei she had once been accustomed to the process. She and Sophia had come to this particular club countless times in their more golden years, and somehow it had never seemed like anything more than a frustrating imposition. Now all Stella could think of was how the Truant officer on the train had teased and molested that woman. She bit her lip and did not exhale until the bouncer had found the money.

He wasn't finished, though. He stepped around in front and ran his fingers under the edge of her bodice, running his hands up her curves. Finally he plucked the money from her bosom and gave her rump a playful swat to signal that she was allowed to step inside. Stella lowered her arms and took long strides toward the interior door, wondering if the bouncer's thick hands had felt anything from the steel spikes he had just slapped.

As is the tradition, the dance club was dark and smoky. The lights were flashy and the music was rhythmic and loud, but something about the place had always struck Stella as a bit fake. It was really another example of Toreans trying to import an off-world tradition, getting it right in the details, but missing some essential premise of the experience.

For starters, most of the women out on the dance floor were clearly owned by the establishment, and performed cleverly synchronized ensemble dances somewhere between the traditions of Torean court dances and more free-spirited off-world club moves. The bar had trouble accepting payments for drinks, instead being set up to lease out private rooms and cubicles for time with the dancing girls. The go-go cages, something you'd expect a Torean to understand implicitly, often lay empty due to Torei's lack of any dance tradition that involved staying in one spot for any length of time.