Outpost Pt. 02

Outpost 02

Hunters, Hunted and Aliens

Thank you for looking at this story, which is the second volume in the Outpost series. Please be warned that it is very different to the first, with significantly "harder" content. While it is undoubtedly science fiction, it would also be at home in both the "BDSM" and the "Nonconsensual" categories. Many of the actions depicted would be harmful without the use of treatments that do not exist in real life.

If you have read the first part, you can safely jump now to Chapter Three below. If you did not, you should be able to catch up very easily. Ha-Lee is a young would-be warrior in a fairly primitive and almost isolated tribe living on thinly-populated continent. In order to "graduate" as a hunter he must demonstrate his ability to find and take resources for the tribe, but instead of the usual animal, he is hoping to capture a slave. Several days from home he encounters a group of girls who seem to be out gathering shellfish, and he is able to stalk and capture one of them. He must then get her safely back to his tribe, evading the efforts of her companions to find and rescue her. That involves keeping her in bondage and forcing her to carry his supplies and equipment. He also gives way to the temptation to use her body for his pleasure, losing his virginity and, he imagines, taking hers. She doesn't seem to mind, but he draws no conclusions from that.

Chapter Three - Phoebe's People

To Ha-Lee, Phoebe seemed like a dream come true, the fulfilment of all his youthful fantasies. In the finest stone-age tradition, he had captured her by hitting her over the head with a wooden club. He had then kept her bound for days, subjected her to intensive sexual slavery, and used her as a beast of burden. Once he had demonstrated his determination to take her she had revelled in her bondage and cooperated fully in her ravishment. She had made no attempt to escape, or to alert possible rescuers to her presence.

Ha-Lee's awareness of his tribe's ambivalent relationship with its slaves- especially its sex-slaves- had made him forget- if he had ever known- the old adage that, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Phoebe was not what she appeared to be. For one thing, she was a clone. Being almost buried in leaf-mould and mud, Ha-Lee had barely glimpsed her four companions when he had first encountered her by the lake. If he had, he would have noticed that they were virtually identical. When he got a better look at them later on, he thought them sisters.

They were, however, the creation- and the slaves- of an alien race unknown to human civilisation. Despite the sudden and rapid dissemination of the ability to travel in the voids between the dimensions- interstellar travel at almost infinite speeds- the half-dozen races capable of exploiting the technology had not all encountered one another.

Long before the first civilization appeared on Earth, a dying but deeply benevolent society, thousands of light-years away, had sought a kind of immortality by packing the sum of its knowledge into an unknown number (possibly only one) of giant interstellar ships. Each one travelled in inter-dimensional space for a hundred light years, and emerged to spend a generation broadcasting its data, by various means, in condensed packages that required genius, and a certain level of advancement, to interpret. Then it passed on for another hundred light years, and so ad infinitum.

Phoebe's masters had received the packages three hundred years before they reached Earth, and were far ahead in their understanding and exploitation of the alien technologies. They had even begun to build on them. By the time of Ha-Lee's birth, human interdimensional ships (HISs) usually arrived at their destination carrying some residual velocity- often about thirty miles per hour- and so needed open areas of land, water, or specially developed "spaceports." "The Folk"- to interpret their name for themselves very roughly- could arrive stationary on a spot, and could thus use caverns or halls, provided they were large enough to cushion the displacement of air. That was important for clandestine operations, and their presence on Wilderland- Ha-Lee's home world- was certainly clandestine.

The Folk occupied half a dozen planets, but with a low birth-rate they were spread thin. As a civilisation they had been unprepared for rapid expansion, but it was generally agreed that the best planets in the region needed to be claimed and occupied before they were taken by others. There was an acute shortage of manpower, exacerbated by the social structure. The aristocracy was top-heavy, expanding because all members of noble families inherited tax-exempt status and the expectation of a life of leisure. The participation rate was decreasing when it needed to increase. It was an opportune moment to discover the existence of the human race, among which slavery was commonplace, although controversial.

Human beings resembled Folk in almost every respect, except that they were, on average, a little smaller. The Folk homeworld was slightly more massive than Earth, and the forces of evolution had produced beings who could easily be mistaken for large and strong people, averaging about six feet six inches for men, and just over six feet for women. They were not just tall, however, but well-built all round, giving them an unmistakeable presence and charisma. Most were good-looking, and all had access to the techniques that could make them so.

The females had a preference for very large, firm breasts. Both males and females used a variety of hi-tech methods to enhance their sexual prowess and responsiveness, and human men and women who approached them closely were usually captivated. The races could mate but not reproduce. Humans usually found their first sexual encounters overwhelming. Women could not help but notice the length and girth of the males' sexual organs, while men were often frightened by the strength of the females' vaginal muscles.

Human women often struggled to deep-throat the larger Folkish penises, and the sphincters of both sexes needed weakening before sodomy was comfortable for them. There were many internal differences, so the Folk had to take great care to ensure that their dead never fell into the hands of free humans. They were also aware that at least one other race was harvesting slaves on Earth, so large-scale operations were always very risky.

The only safe option was withdrawal and sampling. They took a very carefully selected hundred of each sex to add to the few dozen already in their possession. Having bred them to enrich the gene pool as much as possible, they then started cloning. It was something they could do safely and easily, although they were careful to limit the numbers. The growth of the human population was slowed mainly by the shortage of fully tamed and trusted individuals to care for and train the young, for it was not a popular job among the Folk.

A century later, when Ha-Lee was coming of age, there were far more human slaves than Folk. The younger generations knew nothing of Old Earth and no life but servitude, but just in case of indiscipline or rebellion, they all had implants that responded to aggressive impulses against Folk by inflicting excruciating pain. Very few ever felt it in their lifetimes.

Most were loyal, for their lives were far from intolerable. The Folk's command of the new technology enabled them to double and then redouble the sexual capacity and responsiveness of their humans, and to make sure that most were physically attractive enough to serve as sex slaves. For most it was a secondary function, but a small minority of the loveliest women and the prettiest males were kept purely for pleasure. Most of the slaves were encouraged to breed with one another, for cloning alone was seen as risky in the very long term.

The Folk had also managed to slow the aging process. Generally they matured normally, and most were left to breed amongst themselves between (in Earth years) eighteen and twenty-five, by which time their aging was slowing down. At forty they still looked to be in their early twenties. Those that were taken by the Folk as pleasure slaves would probably serve for eighty or ninety years, often used many times a day in strict bondage.

Folk were generally well supplied with vanilla sex by their spouses, so slaves satisfied their fetishes and perversions. Among the aristocracy, husbands and wives usually kept a few caged in their quarters, though they often exchanged or shared their favourites. The less wealthy had more modest arrangements, but every adult individual was guaranteed at least four humans by the state, including one pleasure slave.

Meanwhile the Folk expanded their territory, increasing their holdings to twenty worlds, with small bases on a dozen more. Ten years before Phoebe met Ha-Lee, they had suddenly discovered small numbers of humans living on one of the latter planets. They were not part of a base or a proper colony, but seemed to be living in a number of primitive tribes, as if at some point in the past they had been accidentally marooned, or possibly exiled as undesirables. They only occupied a single large continent, and there they were spread very thinly.

A much closer watch was kept then, and it was discovered that human HISs were paying occasional and clandestine visits, landing behind the shelter of an offshore island and crossing the strait by boat in darkness. There were some permanent but well-camouflaged buildings on the island, and signs of camping on the mainland. There were no tribal villages nearby, but the Folk explorers found a few tell-tale signs- a key and iron stakes hammered into the ground- that suggested slave-hunting. They also found plenty of evidence of local game animals having been skinned, cooked and eaten.

They left hidden cameras, and for their own base they chose a site far away, in the interior where some inconspicuous openings in a cliffside gave access to an extensive network of caves and caverns. The oligarchy appointed a middle-ranking noble family to take charge; it was the usual practice to treat such assignments as fiefdoms. The continent, now named E'lath, acquired, unknown to any of its inhabitants, a new Count and Countess, to give the titles the nearest equivalent. The cliffside swallowed them up with their household of ten Folkish staff and administrators, and over a hundred human slaves.

For a short time there were far more; gangs of labour-slaves rented to transform caverns into stately, luxurious apartments, suites of offices, kitchens, storerooms and quarters for the servants and slaves. The largest cavern, however, was widened and deepened further, and designated the spaceport, with room for four of the standard HIS vehicles. Traffic was heavy for the first few weeks, but it soon settled down to one or two arrivals and departures each day, bringing mainly food and drink.

There were usually a few slaves as well, rotated with those on the family's other estates. The Countess' personal staff had a particularly high turnover. The most stable elements were the two sets of five clones who were there to infiltrate the local tribes. They had to be given more freedom than most, to spend enough time in the surrounding countryside to be able to pass as natives. After a few months they would be sent further afield, and if everything went according to plan they would be captured one at a time, by different tribes. It was important, obviously, that they were taken one by one. Adult quintuplets would sound a warning among even the most primitive villagers.

The ten clones were among the more fortunate of the Count and Countess' slaves. None of them had ever been in the couple's private quarters, which were separate and some distance apart. The messenger who came to report to the Countess that Phoebe was missing entered a world that was almost self-contained; one of violent contrasts and almost unimaginable decadence.

Chapter Four - Countess G'ruthrie

Countess G'ruthrie was the epitome of the strengths and weaknesses of Folkish society. She was highly intelligent, perceptive and capable, and an excellent judge of character. She was pragmatic and had an instinctive grasp of the vital elements in complex situations. She was also, however, lazy, cruel, and self-indulgent, and most terrestrial aristocrats would probably have kept her well away from the levers of power. Her husband, however, relied on her completely, for he was the Folkish equivalent of a "good old boy." On that day he was watching an exceptionally handsome young white man covering a very lovely black girl, but what he was mainly interested in was the strength of their thighs, for he was breeding human ponies. He was interested in a wide range of sports, and a connoisseur of food and drink.

The Countess spent much of her day in an office that, except for the lack of windows, could have been a room in a long-established stately home. It was lavishly appointed, with wall hangings and rugs, paintings and tapestries, and beautiful antique furniture. Her desk was inlaid and veneered, and owed something to Thomas Chippendale, who was surprisingly well known to upper-class Folk.

Her chair was also very traditional at first glance, but had a shorter-than-average seat. When she sat comfortably her crotch was right at the edge, so the female pleasure slave who knelt, hogtied, on the floor in front could easily reach her vagina with her mouth. Her task was to stimulate the Countess gently, not bringing her near to an orgasm, but making the tedium of her working hours pass more pleasantly.

On the Countess's right hand side was a vertical post, to which was bound, very tightly, a naked male slave. He was thoroughly gagged but not blindfolded, and like virtually all human males he was fitted with a device to control his erections. He was kept hard throughout his day-long shift, and whenever her right hand was free she stroked him, almost absent-mindedly, never allowing him to approach a climax. She was convinced that the two slaves together were an aid to her concentration, and the male's occasional mewling gave her a little adrenalin rush that could kick-start her thinking when her mind was sluggish.

A second male was bound in an "X" shape between the bottom posts of a huge brass bed that was at the far end of the room, his back to her while she was working. Neither of the men were there to service her, for she was a confirmed lesbian. They never saw her naked, because she was always dressed in a billowing chiffon robe that teased them by offering brief glances of a single breast or a hip. On the bed itself there was always a female pleasure slave, bound and waiting for the times when the Countess felt in need of a short break.

That happened, usually, three or four times each working day. The girls were not chosen at random; she had three favourites, all exceptionally beautiful and very busty. They had been chosen, however, mainly for their oral skills, for their mistress loved cunnilingus and analingus. They were often spread out in an "X", but sometimes hogtied or simply left with their hands behind their backs and their ankles crossed. Occasionally they were "frogtied" with their calves bound to their thighs.

The bound male had to watch: at least he could see the slavegirl naked, and he could hope for an extra glimpse of a folkish buttock or even her quim. Sometimes there was another Folk woman in the room, for the Countess had a Lady in Waiting. If she was present, she would give him a few strokes with a whip, just as her mistress was cumming. She never seriously damaged him, but left some vivid marks. The Countess was spurred on by his screams, and was often inspired to go on to another orgasm.

The Countess was a sadist, but her excesses were limited by her husband, who was lazy but sensible enough to curb behaviour that he thought was dangerous. He had explained to her the implications of there being a dozen Folk on the planet, with over a hundred human slaves and an unknown number of native humans. He asked her whether she was confident that, in the case of a concerted attack by several tribes, the slaves would risk their lives to protect them.

"Imagine, my dear," he said over a dinner at which the centrepiece was a large local game animal, "some of the local savages get in here, somehow. No security is foolproof. One of them comes running at you, with a spear. On each side of you is one of your male slaves, those you keep tormenting in your study. The burning question of the day is, do they jump in front of you, risking their own lives to save yours?"

"Won't you be there to protect me, husband? What are you suggesting?"

"That you, and we, should make sure that the slaves derive as much pleasure as pain, or even just discomfort, from their servitude to us." That doesn't mean that we shouldn't punish slackness or wrongdoing, but it does mean that, if they behave themselves and serve us well, their experience should be positive."

What it meant in practice was that the Countess stopped using needles and spiked cock-cages. One of the junior folkish staff was delegated to adapt an algorithm to pair the slaves in rotation during their rest periods, so that even the meanest scullions had occasional turns with the most ravishing pleasure slaves. The policy did seem to work, and considering the ways in which they were treated in the Countess's apartments, morale among the human staff was remarkably good.

Chapter Five - News

By and large, the Countess did not allow her dissolute lifestyle to reduce her efficiency as an administrator and decision-maker. The same could not be said of her husband, who was often completely preoccupied with his pleasures during working hours. His most recent enthusiasm was rubber-coating. He, or his assistants whether folk or slaves, would pick out a pleasure male or female, choosing one with full, sensuous lips and a powerful tongue.

The subject's eyes were taped shut, and breathing tubes placed in the nostrils and fed around to the back of the neck. An oval around the mouth was masked, and the rest of the head was thickly coated in a black, opaque rubber-like substance that cured quickly on exposure to the air. The result was to leave the slave featureless, blind and about three-quarters deaf, but able to breathe freely.

The slave would usually wear the rubber mask for about forty-eight hours, during which he or she would be cock-caged or chastity-belted, and anally plugged except when answering the call of nature. All the slaves had very sensitive mouths, and the females' breasts hung free, so they could experience pleasure. The Count made it clear to everyone that rubberization was not a punishment or an ordeal. It was a means of enhancing the experience of oral sex for all concerned. He would spend hours both kissing his subjects and being fellated by them, but others, both slave and folk, also used them, so they were rarely alone. Most felt that a spell in rubber left them with improved oral skills.

When the message was received, that one of the clones had been kidnapped by a tribal warrior, the Count was on the bed in his office, being blown by a rubberized girl who was actually another of the clones. In turn he was giving cunnilingus to one of her "sisters", for he adored the taste of pussy-juice. Neither girl was from Phoebe's "set", and he was beginning to think that importing two groups had been overkill. He was inclined to the view that it would be better to permanently reassign one to pleasure slavery.

The young male slave who brought the news waited patiently for his master to finish, both ejaculating into the rubber-slave's mouth and tonguing the other's clitoris until she had orgasmed several times. When he was finally told, the Count failed to appreciate the importance of the event. He assumed that the clone-girl would be easy to snatch back, or that she would die- possibly used as a human sacrifice- at the hands of the tribe that had kidnapped her. Although not cruel, he could be coldly pragmatic at times.

To forward the message the Count used a girl whose ankles were chained together, so she had to shuffle and jump through the long tunnels to reach the Countess's apartments. She was punished for her tardiness by having her wrists and ankles joined by about two feet of chain, so she had to crawl all the way back. The Countess processed the information, which she took to be good news, by retiring to her bed, where one of her favourite pleasure slaves was stretched out in a rigid "X". She knew that she needed time to rehearse the arguments that she would use on her husband.

Neither of them had expected it to happen so quickly. The Count had thought it would be another two or three months before any of the clones were fully trained and ready. The girl who had disappeared was not fitted with retinal cameras and transmitters. Those devices were designed to dissolve into the bloodstream in two or three weeks, ie. before the clones were likely to be exposed to up-to-date detection equipment. The intention was to fit them immediately before a mission began.

Nevertheless, with her normal implants, they would be able to follow Phoebe's location and monitor her life-signs, giving them a rough idea of what she was doing, or what was being done to her. The Countess thought that it would be enough, and was confident that something could be gained from the impromptu "mission."

At dinner with her husband that evening, she had her work cut out to make him agree to continue the experiment. There was an obvious danger that, being poorly prepared, she would somehow give away their presence and location. His instinct was to send a party out to snatch her back. Failing that, it was possible to use her implants to kill her instantly and painlessly. The Countess was more confident of the clone's ability to learn on the job, and in the meantime her inability to speak the local languages would prevent any premature disclosures.

The Countess was able to bring her husband around to her point of view, but it took longer than usual and left her frustrated and needy. They never had sex in one another's presence, so the serving-wenches and wine-waiters were belted and caged. By the end of the evening she badly needed to pee, but made herself wait until she was back in her own quarters, where a human toilet was always on duty in her private bathroom. No males, free or slave, were ever allowed past her study, and so far she had managed to prevent the Count from finding out about that facility, of which he would certainly not have approved.

Once relieved, she went to her office to begin plotting the progress of the clone and her captor, and that was her principal occupation for the following few days. Phoebe's life-sign monitors produced enough detail to show that she was being fed and watered adequately, and that she was having sex often, with frequent and very satisfying orgasms. She was uninjured except for a few bumps and bruises, and for the most part she was neither too hot nor too cold.

She was, however, often tired from constant walking. That was obvious from the location data, although because the transmitter was very weak- to minimize the drain on the implanted battery- the signal was often lost when Phoebe was in dense woodland or jungle. The available maps were also patchy. Elevations and principal watercourses were shown accurately, but the detail of the landscape did not approach what would be expected of, for instance, maps intended for walkers. The Countess was hoping that the young lovers' route would at least indicate where a following party could move without blundering into native settlements. An obvious detour might suggest a village, or possibly just a hunting camp.

When they finally stopped and did not move again for several days, the Countess assumed they had reached the young warrior's home. A cross-check with other sources confirmed a strong infra-red signature: the site was already thought to be one of the largest villages on the continent. For the moment, it was better to leave Phoebe to settle in, but some initial observations could be made. A Folkish scout leading a group of humans disguised as a hunting party, would be sent to retrace the route, and possibly to pick up the odd prisoner from settlements nearby.

Perhaps it was time for the local population to realise that there was a powerful presence in their midst. Whatever the official policy of the Folkish government, she didn't think it appropriate for the Count and Countess of E'lath to be hiding from their subjects in a cave. She had plans that, had they become known to her husband and others, would probably have resulted in her removal from the planet, and from any position of authority.

Although her husband knew that she was a sadist, he believed that he had brought her more extreme impulses under control, and that she was amenable to reason. That was not the case. She had managed to identify a handful of slaves who were completely devoted to her, probably because they were of like mind. They had explored the parts of the cave system that were not in use, and which were remote from those that were, and they were, slowly and quietly, turning one of smaller caverns into a torture chamber.

The Count was willing to use forceful methods to interrogate rebels and criminals, but he would not countenance the use of torture for pleasure alone. It would not be possible to "disappear" any more of the establishment of slaves. He would notice, for he prided himself on his ability to recognise the females by feeling their breasts with his eyes closed, and the males by stroking their lips and/or their erections. She needed to capture some tribespeople, and to smuggle some of them into her dungeon without their existence being recorded.

Then her pleasure would be complete. She already had implants that would enable her to hear the feed from the torture chamber without alerting those around her. She imagined herself in bed, preparing for sleep, holding one of her favourite female pleasure slaves. She would kiss her, knead her breasts, and push fingers into her pussy, bringing them out wet for them both to lick and suck. Gradually, she would drift off into dreamland, soothed by the screams of freshly captured slaves as they suffered on the rack, or writhed under the lash, or felt the pressure of a testicle-crushing vice. In the morning, when she awoke, they would still be screaming.

Chapter Six - The Atlanteans

None of the people- human or folkish- who lived on E'lath knew how it had come to be inhabited. It was originally a project initiated by the Ministry of Justice on a planet named New Atlantis, where the prison population was growing out of control, partly due to the rigorous enforcement of laws regulating sexual behaviour. Once the idea of a large-scale penal colony had been approved, however, a number of other planets bought into it, so the numbers involved ran into the thousands.

The plan was to land the prisoners on the continent with a strong contingent of guards and an administrative staff. They would live in large compounds by farming and other forms of rural craftsmanship, wearing shock collars that would prevent them from leaving. Every so often a few would be released into the wild, to be tracked down by tourists who would pay for the privilege of hunting them. Successful hunters would return them to their compounds or take them home as slaves.

It was expected that a small "free" community would form, but neither there nor in the compounds would the numbers increase, for all the prisoners would be sterilized before they were dispatched. There would never be any children on E'lath; the numbers would be maintained by sending new convicts, who might well, from some jurisdictions, be mainly political prisoners.

The plans did not survive first contact with the planet. The HIS vehicles travelled in a way that was not fully understood, but it involved jumping between alternate universes from one known location to another. It was not done Stargate style, because there were no physical gates involved, but as both origin and destination were always moving rapidly through space, the corrections involved were inconceivably complex. In addition to the astronomical corrections, vehicles were able to correct for changes in the environment, so they would not, for instance, arrive underground, or in collision with one another.

As has been noted, the human interpretation of the data packages was imperfect enough to ensure that the HIS vehicles usually arrived with some residual motion. They were also very limited in size, usually holding no more than fifty passengers. The fleet that carried the first contingent for the penal colony hit a worst-case scenario. It was meant to land on a broad beach at low tide, disgorge its cargo and passengers, and leave immediately. A local tsunami flooded the beach at the very last moment, and the vehicles- none of them designed to land on water- were correcting for that, seeking dry land beyond the fringe of jungle that bordered the beach, and they were doing so all at once. As the available clearings were far too small to accommodate the whole fleet, they were immediately having to dodge one another.

Some of the vehicles crashed together in mid-air, some were tipped over on landing, and some fell into the water. As luck would have it, most of the prisoners survived, and most of the guards and administrative staff were killed or rendered helpless. The survivors were quickly overwhelmed by the weight of numbers. The convicts were surprisingly well-organized, with some having real leadership qualities. They took all the restraints, tools and weapons, enslaved the surviving staff, and disappeared into the forests and jungles of the continent.

It took very little time for the Atlantean authorities to abandon the plan to house the prisoners in compounds, and to acknowledge that it would be too costly to hunt down all the escaped prisoners. The remaining staff were effectively hostages, and could not be rescued. Instead, they decided to continue dumping more convicts, in smaller numbers, releasing them into the wild.

Others planetary authorities followed suit, and some used the continent as a place of permanent exile for other undesirables. Several authorities had banned human cloning, and any examples that were found were sent to E'lath. One such was Ha-Lee, who had been vat-grown to adulthood and had only false and implanted memories of his early life. By his lifetime, all the original convicts had died out, and his own village was mostly comprised of clones and persons who, for one reason or another, had been raised in isolation in other places of exile. Very few, therefore, had "real" memories of Atlantean civilization.

The aim of turning the continent into a hunting ground had not been abandoned, and some facilities were built on a small island just offshore, only a two-day march from Ha-Lee's village. It would now be more risky, and would attract hunters who were willing to put their lives on the line, paying more and expecting to spend their "downtime" in luxury. An abundance of slaves were installed, therefore, and they included both pure pleasure slaves and others who would serve as porters, also providing sexual services while on the march.

Parties of hunters were often encountered closer to the shore. Although the natives often ventured into that area, they were always careful not to leave trails that would lead hunters to their homes. There were richer pickings further to the north, where the island staff had identified several communities that had begun large-scale farming. They defended themselves with spears and bows and arrows, and the hunters were not allowed to carry lethal weapons, so they suffered increasing numbers of casualties for diminishing returns, and began to turn their attention elsewhere. That put Ha-Lee's village, which still depended mostly on game and fish from nearby rivers, in greater danger.

Ha-Lee was living his best life, now having exclusive control of Phoebe who served as his sex-slave, cook and general housekeeper. On one of his hunts, in an abandoned encampment, he had found a long, rusty chain with a manacle at one end, and he had, with a great effort, managed to drag it back to the village, covering the tracks as he went. There he had cleaned it up, attached one end to a stake in the middle of his hut, and put the manacle on Phoebe's ankle. The blacksmith sold him a catch that could only be opened with a hex key, which he kept well out of her reach.

He could thus leave her secure while he went about his business, which included regular hunts that could last two or three days. She could wear the chain while in bed with him, but he could unhitch her and take her with him if he went, for instance, to the meetings of hunters, or to the general assemblies of villagers. Like many of the more prosperous inhabitants he would make her kneel between his legs, his penis in her mouth, and the boring business went more quickly and pleasantly.

Although he was growing very fond of Phoebe, Ha-Lee was hard-headed enough to use her to forge alliances with other hunters and artisans, so he was open to offers of short-term exchanges. She didn't seem to mind being packed off to warm another bed for a night or two, and her chain was easily attached to another anchorage. He took a liking to a tall black woman who was the chief's usual pleasure slave, and a plump and giggly girl who was owned by the wheelwright and his wife, who was a cooper. Ha-Lee was making valuable connections and relationships, and Phoebe was willing to help, because the higher her master rose in the tribe's hierarchy, the more she was likely to learn.

She was learning the language very quickly; more quickly than she was revealing. One problem was that, when she became fluent, she might be asked about her origins, and she needed to know enough about the environment to invent a plausible story. She was not enamoured of her chain and manacle, which made her ankle sore. She could have learnt much more about the tribe by wandering freely about the village, and she had no intention of running away. When she showed Ha-Lee the marks, however, he simply transferred the cuff to the other leg, and put some ointment on the sores. She did her best to make him think she was grateful.

Ha-Lee still had no inkling that she was anything other than a native. As he was a clone himself, he was unlikely to see any signs that she was also one. Both had belly-buttons, and he had no means of comparing her with the woman whose genetic material had been used. Nor had he met the Countess. If he had done he might have thought Phoebe less of a flight risk, for he and all his fellow villages were racing certainties in a popularity contest against the folkish woman.

Chapter Seven - The Hunters

The Duke of New Tiverton had spent months- and a great deal of money- planning a hunt that would penetrate deeper into the continent than ever before. He intended to find and ransack whole villages, returning to Base Island leading coffles of chained slaves who would be taken to work on his estates for the rest of their days. He had assembled an expedition of ten hunters, including himself, armed with stun guns, dart pistols and electric prods that could, if required, be thrown like spears. Twelve porters were armed with dart pistols and would also serve as sex slaves, but they were also taking two dedicated pleasure slaves, mainly for his use. The party's equipment included two crossbows, intended for hunting animals for food.

The island's governor had tried to persuade him to scale down his ambitions, because his group was twice the size of the next largest ever to cross to the continent, and that one had not been successful. The Duke spent the night before departure in bed with two pleasure slaves, one male and one female, and as a result he got little sleep. The predictable consequence was that, after reaching the mainland, they covered no more than five miles before camping for the night.

Word of their arrival, therefore, spread further and faster. For the next few days the party moved slowly, spending as much time having sex as marching, and they saw no signs of human activity. One of their problems was that the porter-slaves were overloaded, as the Duke was determined to provide for every eventuality, and wanted a comfortable tent in which to sleep at night. He had been told that the most successful parties travelled light and moved quickly, but had ignored the advice.

From the third day, the Duke's expedition was virtually surrounded by hunters and scouts from Ha-Lee's tribe, plus a few from allied and neighbouring villages. Messengers were spreading the word far and wide, and under such circumstances a temporary truce was always in place, preventing all raiding and slave-rustling between the tribes. The feral groups of runaways simply stayed clear, but they were the least likely to well-informed about the whereabouts and numbers of the intruders.

To such groups, the hunters presented a tempting target, with weapons, food, drink and even slaves for the taking. The Duke, however, had taken some precautions. The nightly camps were protected by movement sensors and he always set a guard. He was, if anything, more concerned about his privacy than the possibility of raiders, for he was determined not to be photographed having sex with a mere porter-slave. When the alarms sounded he was using two, his penis in the bottom of a bound female, while one of the males, his hands free but his ankles locked together, buggered him vigorously.

It was one of the Duke's favourite combinations, because the thrusting from behind helped him to ram harder into the woman. He was not a subtle or gentle lover. It took him a few seconds to understand what he was hearing, and to unplug himself from the two slaves. It was half a minute before, butt naked, he was outside his tent holding a stun gun. Other hunters were emerging into the open in varying states of undress, some followed by slaves carrying stun guns or pistols.

Shadowy figures were already carrying away boxes of supplies from the periphery of the camp. The two guards on duty were shooting darts into the near-darkness but had no idea whether or not they were hitting anyone. Screams and cries for help indicated that at least one of the tents had been overrun, but most of the happy campers managed to mount an effective resistance. Several received minor wounds from arrows, one in the shoulder, and two found themselves fighting at close quarters with savages wielding clubs. Ultimately the stun guns and dart pistols prevailed, and the invaders faded away into the night.

One hunter and two porter-slaves had disappeared, carried off by the raiders. The Duke's party had also lost about a quarter of its supplies and had expended a tenth of it anaesthetic darts. Some of the stun guns were fifty percent depleted, and although they had the means to recharge them, it would take time.

The Duke was not prepared to wait. As dawn broke the next day, and after a hasty breakfast, he insisted that they set out in pursuit of the raiders. Although the latter were skilled at covering their tracks, some of the hunters were trained and expert scouts, so they kept up the pursuit into increasingly broken country. They had two prisoners, darted unconscious but now recovered, and they were chained together by slave-collars and driven as a coffle, with their wrists locked behind their backs.

With several of the party carrying wounds that needed periodic anointing and dressing, their tiredness from lack of sleep and the caution that was a natural response to the surprise attack, they made slow progress. With a rocky escarpment looming ahead they came under sporadic fire from arrows shot at long range. Nobody was hit, but they had to don body armour and try to shield themselves with their backpacks. Then the Duke deployed his secret weapon.

It was strictly forbidden for hunters to use drones to find their prey, but they could be carried in sealed packages and used strictly for emergencies. The breaking of the seals triggered an automatic enquiry, but with an increasing unease among the members of his group and with three members having been kidnapped, he felt justified in deploying the two that they had with them. He also communicated with the island, asking for a supply drop and, if possible, reinforcements. As the arrow fire increased he was thinking that it was no longer a hunting expedition, but more like a small war or a rebellion.

The locals had never seen any kind of aircraft before, so they never kept a watch on the skies. The drones were small, light and very durable, with batteries that could last for more than an hour, and they were virtually silent. Their cameras had powerful zoom lenses with very high-resolution sensors, so with a clear field of view they could hover a couple of thousand feet in the air, easily mistaken for a small bird, and watch a tiny insect on the ground.

One of the drones was used to survey their immediate surroundings. It was easy to locate renegades lodged in trees or lurking behind shrubs, especially as they needed some space around them to use their longbows. Two females were outflanked, darted and carried back to the group to be added to the coffle. At least a dozen others were spotted, and the obvious conclusion was that there were many more than that hidden deeper in the undergrowth. Despite their four prisoners, all of whom were suitable for training as sex-slaves, the Duke's expedition was beginning to feel more hunted than hunters.

The other drone bore out that impression. Flying high and over the escarpment ahead, it revealed a jumble of limestone outcrops, cliffs and deep ravines; a landscape that was eminently suitable for ambushes. Half the charge was used by the time they located the renegade group in a hollow under a near-circle of vertical cliffs, with obvious cave openings and a single narrow gully for an entrance. Some of the area was in deep shadow and some of the people kept entering and leaving the caves, but there were at least a hundred people there. Undoubtedly, more were guarding the access routes.

Even without those who were still harassing their camp with occasional arrows, the Duke's party was grossly outnumbered. The only obvious option was to make for the coast; a depressing and humiliating retreat during which they would probably keep losing people to arrow fire and nocturnal raids. The Duke now understood why slave-hunting was usually done near the island by small and fast-moving parties. It was the more humiliating because the drone was now revealing to him and his companions the fates of kidnap victims, now clearly visible in the enemy settlement.

Chapter Eight - Captives of the Renegades

The captured hunter was a close friend of the Duke's and an important figure in the politics of his planet. Viscount d'Escargot was known to the gutter press as "Lord of the Snails," and was as rich as the Duke, although now that availed him nothing. He was only thirty, and reckoned to be very handsome, with an athletic figure that made him a hit even with free women.

The two porter-slaves were both women, and by pure coincidence the youngest members of the Duke's party, both being about twenty-three Earth years old. Janice was blonde and buxom, and considered very pretty. Jean was slimmer, but her face was, if anything, more attractive, with very finely defined and sculptured lips. Both were able to function as pleasure slaves, but their powerful hips and thighs suggested that, under different circumstances, they might have been used as ponygirls. When the camp was attacked, both girls were being used by the Viscount, with Janice fellating his cock and Jean sucking his testicles. Both had their hands bound behind their backs, so they were easily dragged away. The Viscount managed to reach his dart pistol and shot one of the intruders, but he was then knocked unconscious with a club. Both were carried off into the undergrowth.

When the raiders were driven from the encampment, the Duke's people did not attempt to follow in the total darkness, which was broken only by the light of their campfires. There was plenty of time to hang the three prisoners over long poles by their wrists and ankles and carry them off.

The three of them passed the whole of the next day hanging from the poles, with breaks for meals and changes of bearers. As daylight dawned they were all blindfolded, and they were gagged with bits of old rags tied in place with larger strips of cloth. It was not a comfortable ride, and they were only fed and watered once. That was, they assumed, at lunchtime, and with them all lying on their sides on the ground, the two women were sexually used from behind, and d'Escargot was buggered, by person or persons unknown. Perhaps it seemed odd that they were only done once; a token use, perhaps, to ensure that if they were rescued, they would not be virgo intacta, as far as the savages were concerned.

Unlike the Duke's party, the raiders, complete with their loot, made it back to their village in a single long day. The three prisoners were handed over to the women who were not warriors, and knives were held to their throats while their hands were released and bound behind their backs. The "tribe" seemed very short of metal restraints, but they did have miles of natural fibre rope, a characteristic of which that knots compressed almost to nothing, making them impregnable to questing fingers. They were all cleaned thoroughly with lukewarm water and very basic soap, and they were astonished to be given enemas.

It came as no surprise that several of the women, none of whom were particularly attractive, expected cunnilingus, and a few demanded analingus. D'Escargot was masturbated into a flask, which was a surprise, for they had no obvious means of keeping samples, and no use for sperm donations. Then they were allowed to sleep on straw mattresses, still bound as they were.

They spent the next day bound in "X" shapes between upright wooden posts; straight sections of young tree trunks sharpened and hammered into the ground. Their wrists and ankles were tied directly to them, not hung from them, so their weight was very evenly distributed, and they could all see one another. D'Escargot noted that the girls still wore their slave collars- indeed the savages had no means of removing them- so it was obvious that they were owned and that he was free. It also meant that they were easy to locate, and unless their captors were unaware of that, they were probably using them as bait in an ambush.

The drone from the Duke's camp sighted them just after lunchtime, but the view was pretty much the same all day. Members of the renegade tribe took turns to "attend" them, and they did whatever they wanted. The porter-slaves were mostly fondled, by both males and females, with much fingering in their mouths, pussies and assholes. Some edged them for half an hour and left them hanging, but a few gave them orgasms, some so intense that the posts creaked and groaned as they fought their bonds. They were fed some kind of unleavened bread at lunchtime, and afterwards they were each penetrated by one male vaginally, and another anally, with both ejaculating.

In the afternoon, the two women were visited mainly by mixed pairs, so they were usually being stimulated from in front and penetrated from behind, or vice versa. Occasionally they were kissed, and in their semi-delirious state they would respond as best they could, but while they were considered "unbroken," no-one was going to risk a cock between their teeth, even when, later in the evening, their positions made that possible.

Both the slaves and d'Escargot found that, as they became more used to hearing the renegades speaking, they could make out a few highly accented words of Standard English. It seemed to be the intention that virtually everyone in the settlement would try out the two captive slaves, with a view to reaching a collective view of their quality, possible uses and likely value. To whom they might be sold remained a mystery, but d'Escargot was not getting the impression that the group was completely isolated. There was too much evidence of trade, especially in metal objects.

His treatment was slightly different, although no less intrusive. For him there was more edging and only two ejaculations, one just before lunchtime and the other after the evening meal, just before he was brought down from the posts. He was buggered after lunch, but all his other visitors were women, whose primary aim seemed to be to see how long they could keep him hard without cumming.

D'Escargot was fitted with a regulator, but it was the old-fashioned type that worked only with an external handset coded to it, and that had been left behind. Despite the almost desperate state of frustration in which the women kept him as they stroked his cock, rolled his balls and poked fingers into his bottom, he had to be grateful that he had been set to "natural." Priapism would have been difficult, but if he had been set to "soft" he might have been found suitable only for human sacrifice, or possibly to be sold as a eunuch.

The evening's activities were not much different, except that the three captives were lying on their sides or fronts with their wrists bound behind their backs, as they were all night. By this point, all three had concluded that, given the strength and location of the tribe, they would not be rescued by the Duke's party. Their only option was to cooperate as much as they could, and do their best to demonstrate their usefulness, preferably as sex-slaves. That applied to the Viscount, just as much as it did to the porter-slaves.

It need not be too bad, it seemed. That night, one of the slaves slept in the cave occupied by the chief and his favourite wife. When she drifted off, exhausted by the long day, his penis was still in her bottom, and one of the wife's nipples was resting lightly against her lips. The other slave was sandwiched between two female warriors who were obviously lesbian lovers. D'Escargot's situation was the least comfortable, left in a cavern with half a dozen unmarried women who spent the night in shifts, licking, stroking and generally teasing his genitals. He didn't really know whether or not he got any sleep at all, and began to wonder whether he was the subject of some kind of record attempt.

Chapter Nine - Retreat

It was a bitter disappointment to the Duke to realize that he could not hope to rescue d'Escargot and the two porter-slaves from the savages. At best, he might be able to save himself and the rest of his party. With the aid of the drones they had managed to stabilize the situation in and around their camp, capturing several of the savages and driving the rest out of bow-range, but they were effectively besieged, with diminishing stocks of food and ammunition. They would have to break out and make for the coast, expecting the island to send them enough help to compensate for their lack of numbers.

The island was very poorly equipped for such an operation. Their drones were designed to support groups of hunters who operated no more than ten or twenty miles from the shore, with a couple of much smaller ones for longer-range reconnaissance. There were no more than twenty trained guards, for the local tribes had never shown any interest in boats that could cross the strait between the island and the continent. The tides generated fierce currents and the shores were rocky, with very few safe landing places.

By loading the drones lightly, it proved possible to drop fresh stocks of darts to the campsite, with a few freshly charged stun guns and some medical supplies. Drops could become more frequent as the party covered the distance to the coast, but a few packages were lost as tribespeople reached them first, covered by showers of arrows as they ran away with them.

The Duke's method was to use his drones to reconnoitre the way ahead and then to move quickly, attacking the warriors who remained hidden in the undergrowth or behind trees or rocky outcrops. At the cost of being perpetually overheated, his people could protect themselves with clothing that was supposed to be spear and arrow-proof, and they had visors to protect their faces. They had to wear their "armour" twenty-four hours a day, which was a hardship to which they were wholly unaccustomed.

One of their greatest hardships was doing without sex in any satisfying form. Everyone- both hunters and slaves- was enhanced to an extent that celibacy, even for a few days, was not an option. They were reduced to wanking one another fully clothed and guarded, and some of the hunters preferred to masturbate, forcing the Duke to allow the slaves to do the same, which was very unusual indeed.

After three days of marching and fighting, the Duke's party met a contingent of guards, and twenty-four hours later they were boarding the vessels that would take them back to the island. They were battered, hungry and dirty, and most of them carried minor wounds. One slave and one hunter were more seriously injured; arrows having penetrated between the parts of their makeshift armour. They were all very lucky that no-one had been hit in the face, but one of the slaves had a hand wrapped in rags, and it turned out that several bones had been broken.

The hunters spent the minimum possible time on the island before, patched, cleaned and fed, they left for their homes in the HIS vehicles. Although the senior staff on the island wanted to conduct a full enquiry, the Duke did not wait to be questioned, and was the first to leave. He did, however, transfer sufficient funds to ensure that the injured slaves could be transferred to a clinic that he used for his own family, where they would be treated as if they were free VIPs.

The Duke's interactions with the island authorities and its off-world owners were more confrontational. He took the view that they were running an entertainment facility and had concealed the risks that their customers ran. He stopped short of demanding restitution, but did not offer to fund a rescue expedition, or offer any help other than his generosity to the injured slaves. The island authorities, however, insisted that he had been properly advised, but had accepted the risks, as had all the free members of his party. They blamed him for the damage to their reputation that had resulted.

The dispute hovered just below the level of litigation, partly because interplanetary cases were very difficult. There was, in any case, a big grey area, for although the Duke had been advised that his plans were dangerous, the island had still provided him with slaves and other equipment, and had transported the expedition to the mainland in its boats.

The Duke finally brought the dispute to an end by making an ex gratia donation of all the slaves captured during his expedition, except for one very promising red-haired woman with a figure that he regarded as almost perfect. They would all be thoroughly interrogated, and because of the language problem it would be a long process. It was necessary, because they would have invaluable information about the environs of the tribal territory, their numbers and weaponry, and their contacts with other peoples. It might also be a painful process, for the usual practice was to combine a rack with a highly accurate lie-detector.

Most of the captives would then be auctioned, and those who were suitable would find themselves in the pleasure-pits and brothels of various distant planets, some of them inhabited mainly by aliens. The redhead would be sent back to the Duke, to disappear for the time being into the dungeons under his private apartments. There, slowly and methodically, she would be broken to sex-slavery, a process that he enjoyed more than anything else in his world.

Chapter Ten - Aftermath

Ultimately the Duke's disastrous holiday was only one incident in the many developments that affected the future of the continent. Ha-Lee and his tribe were aware of the hunt but kept their distance, so they were also aware of the renegade tribe that attacked it. Their scouts were very careful, but they saw enough to work out the approximate location of their camp in the granite massif, to which they had always given a wide berth.

The question now was, should Ha-Lee's tribe gather its allies and mount a major operation to eliminate the renegade tribe? It was almost unknown for groups to wage existential conflicts of that kind, but if it continued to gather waifs and strays it would soon be a threat to its neighbours. What they could not know was that it would inevitably bring them into contact with the Folk, or at least with their human slaves. That, however, was bound to happen sooner or later, given the Countess's view that she and her husband should be aiming to rule the entire continent directly.

In a very limited way, of course, contact had already been made. Over the course of a few months, Phoebe achieved native fluency in the language of Ha-Lee's tribe, and having become his confidante as well as his sex-slave, she had an intimate knowledge of its affairs. She was the better informed because he was allowing more exchanges now, and elders and their wives never understood that the snippets of gossip that they used for pillow-talk could be joined together to form larger pictures.

Among such snippets, she found out that the tribal elders were aware of strangers moving in the countryside around the village, but without any obvious purpose. They did not seem to be hunting or trying to take prisoners. They left behind some unusual artifacts that seemed to be machine-made, but they were not from the island, of which the tribe was now well aware. The current advice to warriors and scouts was to leave them alone, for they surely indicated a presence on the continent that was powerful and well-equipped, and better watched than confronted.

In her day-to-day life, Phoebe was generally happy, even though she missed the comforts of home. She did not miss having to fear the Countess, even though she had never encountered her face-to-face. She had seen the Count's rubber masks, and was happy to be well clear of those as well. She missed her clone-sisters, and assumed, without any solid information to go on, that some of them were now established with other tribes.

Phoebe was fond of Ha-Lee, but she found it irksome to be kept chained, and he turned out to be disappointingly conservative in his sexual tastes. After a few early experiments there was no anal sex, and he liked fellatio only as foreplay. He was loving and gentle, and often went to sleep with his penis still in her vagina, although he almost always slipped out before waking up. His bondage also lacked creativity, and he usually used her with her wrists bound behind her back, leaving her legs free except for the chain. Most nights were spent like that. He never tried three or foursomes. She looked forward more and more to the exchanges.

Although the chief was an elderly man and neither attractive nor particularly virile, his second son was a delight; a warrior who was both brave, intelligent and generous. He was also fond of anal sex, but more appreciative of the special qualities of all her apertures.

The more recent clones created by the Folk were not the traditional type created from cell cultures and DNA, which produced a kind of "factory reset" of the original. It would be more accurate to call them "copies"; identical cell-by-cell reproductions of the original, with modifications- even piercings- faithfully rendered. For that reason, it made sense to lavish resources on high value slaves, and then clone them up to the maximum number allowed; usually five. Taking into account the cost of the procedure, they got six for the price of two.

Pheobe's "clone mother" had been generally thought to be the finest pleasure slave on the most populous and developed of the Folk worlds. Extensive work on her passages had provided them with muscles that had no right to be there, and like her lips and mouth they were sensitized with sampled, cultured and transplanted clitoral cells. In Phoebe and her "sisters" the work was reproduced at no extra cost. Ha-Lee had no means of knowing that her talents were not natural or common, and did not seem to notice that the other women with whom he exchanged her lacked most or all of them. They probably explained why their first couplings, out in the wild, had been such a success.

Jo-Jo- the chief's son- knew that they were not normal. He was willing to lie with his shaft in her bottom, feeling the walls of her bowel rippling against his flesh, for as long as he could remain erect. He liked to keep it in her vagina even when he was soft, and her mouth was pure bliss. She was taking a risk, of course, because he was intelligent enough to guess that her abilities were alien to his world. He was not inclined to advertise them, however, and reduce his own time with her. She claimed to lack any memory of her childhood, or the reasons why she was on the planet, so he was able to conclude that her origins were shrouded in a criminal past that had been deliberately erased from her memory.

Of the leading figures on E'lath, the most eager for change was probably the Countess G'ruthrie. Her torture chamber was now virtually finished but it was unoccupied, and she struggled to resist the temptation to risk embezzling a few slaves from under her husband's nose. She had small reconnaissance parties roaming the countryside, and she fed the Count with so much detail of their activities that he soon lost interest, but still opposed sending out any more clones to be captured.

She did not share with him the intelligence that was gathered about the Duke's expedition, the renegade village in the limestone massif, and the three captives who were being held there. She knew almost everything. She had two small parties in the area and she was deploying drones of her own, again without her husband's knowledge or consent. The radio traffic between the Duke and the island had been constant, very informative and "in clear", and she shared just enough to avoid later accusations of keeping secrets for her own purposes.

She was certainly doing that, for she had earmarked the newly-discovered tribe and its captives as likely sources of recruits for private cavern. Whether it would be necessary to somehow force the surrender of the whole tribe, and then to isolate two or three likely prospects, or whether she would make friendly contact and try to buy their prisoners, she had not decided. She rather preferred the latter option. Either of the two porter-slaves would look wonderful on her rack, while the other would doubtless appreciate the breast press. The man called d'Escargot was ridiculously arrogant for a human, and even when he was being used by the savages it was easy to see, even from a thousand feet in the air, that he felt superior to them. The testicle-vice would clarify his view of his proper place in the world.