Q&A Ch. 02

"I know you would," Toys said. "And you are terrified that I will forget." She ran a fingernail down the tar-baby, starting at the eye slit. The material split like stretched rubber. Satin's shoulders were still trapped, in fact pulled tightly behind her, pushing her naked chest and stomach up like an offering. Toys kissed her on the lips. "Don't be afraid. I won't forget you're dangerous."

Yet Satin did not feel dangerous any more. She had lost all fight and all words. Her throat was tight, her eyes overran. She wept in anticipation as Toys kissed her way down Satin's trembling belly.

***

"Tell me about your mother," Toys asked afterwards, ruining everything.

"Why." Satin was instantly on guard.

"You cried out her name again. And, I guess you don't know, but in your sleep you sort of mumble it."

Satin knew it would be a mistake to speak, knew she was going to anyway.

"She died. It was a slow thing. Took months."

"I'm sorry. I know what that is like. Sometimes there is nothing anyone can do."

I didn't say it was natural causes, fucker, thought Satin. The old blackness circled around her once more.

"What about your Dad?"

Satin stared at her a moment before deciding to speak.

"He took me places," Satin finally said, turning to face the darkness.

Toys could not get her to say more. Not words in any case. Satin couldn't stop Toys from forcing other sounds from her lips. She hated Toys and what she was doing to her. She tried to. Soon she was moaning and struggling to push herself deeper onto the pressure of Toy's knee between Satin's thighs and into the protective embrace of her arms.

***

"Toys, you know that murderous bitch is lying to your face." Anna's voice.

"She didn't say she didn't do it," Toys responded.

"She was practically gloating."

There was a long pause before Toys answered.

"I know what she is, Anna. She's mine. She's been mine a lot longer than she knows. I know all her games. She's mine. That's all there is to it."

"But you're not hers. You're no-ones'. It's not healthy, Toys."

Satin wondered what Toys meant by that: 'She's been mine, a lot longer than she knows.' How long had they been hunting her? Why had they given her to Toys?

And why was Anna trying to mess things up, Satin thought with annoyance.

"Toys," she called sleepily, and Toys was by her side in seconds. Take that, Anna.

***

Days passed, and there was barely a minute when she was not seconds from helpless ecstasy. There was always someone with her and usually it was Toys. She preferred it when it was Toys. She couldn't stop gently grinding her pelvis, milking pleasure from that device every waking and sleeping moment. Even for the brief periods she was free of it, she found herself swaying her hips unconsciously. She couldn't fight it anymore. All she wanted was for Toys to be the one holding her each time she crested. Often enough it was.

Satin knew everything was going to end badly.

Her mind could not help gnawing at the problem. What did they want her for? How did Toys seem to see into her soul?

Who was the Displacer?

"What's bugging you, Satin? Its not like you to sulk," Toys said as she returned from the vendor machine with a cup of something hot. She had been talking to Quills. The Mess was empty apart from the three of them.

"How would you know. You've known me five days."

Toys decided to change the subject.

"I made you coffee. I even put a drop of lemon in. The way you like it."

"How did you know."

"Oh," Toys hesitated. "I just.."

"I want to know how you knew! Get out of my head I know what you are!" Toys who could always get inside her head. Toys who had been right there on the displacer rack. Toys who wanted her.

Toys tried to calm her but Satin just screamed louder, and louder still to keep her fear and hatred ahead of the pleasure that sought to wrap her up in cobwebs and make her weak and helpless.

Quill was the first one to get through to her, once Toys was suitably distant and Satin's throat sufficiently raw.

"All that, from a drop of Lemon, Satin? Don't be stupid. You think something like that wouldn't be in Reich files? You think we can't tell you every order you made from a vending machine in your life? You know better. They kept a very close eye on you, Satin, watching for the least sign that your use as a hunter was at an end."

"She's the Displacer, isn't she," Satin hissed.

"Toys is no Displacer, Satin. You just found yourself trusting her and couldn't bear it. That tantrum was your escape. Your easy out."

Satin glared at Quill. "Then who is your Displacer. You?" But she could not put any force behind the words.

Quills straightened, looking down at her coldly. "Maybe. What do you think? You're the Reich bounty hunter. You hunted psykers for them. You tell me what a Displacer looks like."

Satin tried to stare her down, but found herself dropping her eyes to the floor first.

"Now you will apologize to Toys."

Satin couldn't look either of them in the face. She had been so sure, but Quill was right. She had been so stupid. She wanted Toys to understand but how could she?

Only one person had ever been able to get into Satin's head. She hadn't been able to shut out his laughter.

Her dad had been a Displacer psyker. That is why he did the things he did to her. He hadn't been human in the first place.

He'd made her kill Mom.

Mom thought it was Satin killing her.

Satin had turned Dad in when she was eleven. He got bolted into a Reich battleship. She got her first bounty.

Could she say that out loud? What if Toys didn't believe her? What if she looked at Satin the way Mother had?

But she wanted to so much.

The decision was taken out of her hands. The cup trembled. The room began to tilt and the steel cup slid from the bench to bounce loudly off the floor.

The intercom erupted into life. It was the Captain. "Quill! Thirteen light seconds to port. We are leaving NOW."

Toys looked at Satin in horror.

"What! What have I done?" Satin cried.

"Fuck, fuck FUCK!" Quill was saying unhelpfully, and then lunged at Satin. She grabbed a handle at one of Satin's shoulders and began hauling her from the room. Satin fought madly without even thinking. The possibility of calm did not exist. What had she done? What had gone wrong?

"Not yet, Quill. She's not ready," Toys was crying.

"Shut up Toys. Take her legs or get off this ship," Quill replied. Satin thought Toys might refuse, but she didn't. She grabbed Satin's legs around the knees and helped push her out into the corridor.

Satin got heavier as the engines built to full power. They must be pushing two gravities now.

"Where are you taking me," begged Satin as they bundled her into the lift.

Toys said, "Something just ripped through into normal space. It'll be the Destroyer that's been one jump behind us since sol system."

"Thirteen light seconds is close enough for lasers. And they could be closing at a substantial fraction of .c" Quill added. She punched the elevator controls and they began to drop. Towards the engines some hundred meters beneath their feet. There was nothing down there, nothing but grimy access tubes and the warp pool, where the Displacer psyker was plugged into the machine that could push them all into another universe and drop them back somewhere else.

"No." Satin whispered. "Not me. It can't be me."

Satin fought with everything she had but it made no difference. Muscular crew-girls wrestled her down onto the padded iron pentagram, only then releasing her from the tar-baby. She was bound, naked, spread-eagled, first her shins in two massive pneumatic gauntlets, then her forearms. Even so she barely touched the rack, so hard did she strain and arch as she screamed with her already hoarse throat. Toys was crouched over her, trying to calm her, as they forced a thick hose into her mouth and sealed a mask to her face that covered her chin and nose.

This was it. She had been so fooled. She had almost felt safe. Now the wolf was in the room with her, waiting to eat her. In Satin's hysterical mind the room echoed with the wolf's mocking laughter. They didn't know what they were doing, some small part of her mind insisted, they didn't know the wolf was among them. Desperately she twisted her masked head around but couldn't see his face, couldn't find his eyes amongst the women's stares of pity. Fake pity. Mocking her, but they weren't the wolf. Even Toys looking down at her. She could almost feel his breath, rapid panting. Or was that her?

Thick liquid rose, engulfing the rack. No. The rack was sinking and pulling her down with it into the pool. "I'll kill you all," she howled, though no one could have understood her muffled voice. "I'll escape. I'll hunt you down and eat your children in front of you." She began to laugh hysterically. The smooth liquid flowed over her ears, her cheeks, her eyes and then she saw it, reflected back at her.

My, what big eyes you have, grandma-ma.

She was staring directly into the wolf's gleeful insane face. The muzzle was a mask. It was her own face staring manically back at her reflected in the pools surface above her.

I am the wolf?

***

For a second Toys lost sight of Satin's face as she disappeared under the fluid. She didn't see the instant of change but she heard the neural alarms. By the time the liquid had slipped up over her own thighs and arms, and her own mask had replaced Satin's reflection, Satin looked almost peaceful. The readouts said the girl was plunging into catatonia yet for a moment she thought she had seen Satin look at her and smile.

Satin was not catatonic yet, not fully. She welcomed the touch of the engineers' practiced hands, attaching the instruments of her punishment. The only punishment she deserved. Infinite, transcendent pain. The universe rejecting her from it's reality like a splinter, pinching her and everything for a thousand miles off, or would it be that the pain forced her to reject it, pushing all the stars away?

New heavily insulated tubes were connected to her breathing mask, and a similar pipe plugged into the double catheter. Sucking electrodes were attached to all parts of her, but clustered most where her nerve endings were densest. Everything was stillness. Floating in the liquid of the warp pool Satin could not feel if the ship was accelerating or spinning, or shaken by the ablative impulse of Reich lasers. This was peace.

The first coruscating bolts seemed to creep slowly along the tubes towards her. X-static; a billion fembots, tiny neural smart bombs. The strange particles would play her nervous system like a musical instrument, eliciting whatever sensation her captors wished her to suffer, to whatever degree they wished.

She felt the liquid solidify around her before the first charge hit, holding her so her limbs would not snap.

Paradigm shifting pleasure exploded onto her. The coolest drink, best sex, multiplied by the power of a lightning bolt, as an afterthought pulling her brain out through her anus. Not what she had expected. She wanted to be punished. She rejected this. She tried to. Her will was strong and for a few seconds she did and the ship twisted around her. But every pleasure her body remembered was echoing back and forth inside her at an increasing rate. Every touch. Every glance that had raked her flesh and made her hot. The tastes, She was subjected to it all. Wailing with anguish turned brutally to pleasure Satin felt herself begin to open. She felt a thousand licking tongues wash over her clit, each sensation crystal clear and distinct. Her mouth sucked greedily, convulsively swallowing, her tongue seeking far up the tube to experience every iota of what was delivered to her.

It only grew stronger, each ten times stronger than the last and Satin wanted it all inside her.

She was dimly aware that some of these experiences were not Satin's experiences. Each was beautiful. She accepted them. She understood them. Some of the experiences were not those of crew or people at all but the experiences of cells and steel and superheated plasma; memories of past entanglements. She understood the ship without simplifying it. She wanted to understand more. Somehow she grew to accept it all.

There was an apogee to her ascendance. She knew all things and the universe was spinning slowly in her womb, waiting to be born. It was a beautiful moment, but to stay would mean infinite loneliness. Regretfully she let herself begin to fall back, first the universe gushing forth, the ship growing tight inside of her, thinking about Little Black Satin Heart again. Satin, of all the crew, why did she have to be Satin? Satin the victim and murderer. Satin the hurt and the hurtful. They might care for her but they would never trust her. She had grown beyond the twisted girl that had awoken on the psykers ship just days ago. Why, with all her powers, did she have to return to that? She could not face it. She did not have to. She would allow herself this one selfish act and stay, and be free. She wouldn't go back.

***

Toys' shuddering form was draped over the naked and still body of Satin, bounty hunter for the 6th Reich. "I lost her. I lost her."

The girl Toys had begun to know that week (not the murderer, not the psycho) she was gone. Toys would never meet her again.

No one seemed to care. They were all to busy congratulating themselves on a successful jump. For most of them their job was just beginning. Scan reports were coming in; Numerous red lights were winking on panels: the usual scattering of freeze fires and misalignments that followed even the smoothest of displacements. Only Toys' job was over.

Someone put a towel over her. It was Anna. She must have passed her competency exam. She was wearing her collar for the occasion. Anna squeezed her hand. Toys nodded in thanks and turned to leave but Anna did not let go. Her job was not over yet either.

For a moment Toys wanted to rip her hand away, but the captain would not approve. "Alright. Follow me." Toys pulled Anna from the room and through the grimy corridors and cornered Anna behind a heat exchanger, where Toys had known bedding was piled for casual trysts. Toys pushed her over the smooth hot curve of the machine and began ripping open Anna's clothes. Anna wasn't saying anything but then again she couldn't, unless Toys gave her the chance to touch a finger to her collar and deactivate the mute. It proceeded a lot like rape. Anna finally fought back, overpowered her, then it proceeded a lot like rape, with Toys underneath and her arms pinned, screaming out in rage as Anna got her off, just trying to feel what it must have been like.

In the aftermath Toys was crying on Anna's shoulder and saying: "It's not fair," and "I lost her. Again."

***

There was not much to say at her debriefing. It had happened like Toys had long ago learnt it always happened. The moment Satin could not avoid the conclusion any longer that she was the Displacer, she went totally berserk, followed by catatonia. It wasn't deep enough to escape the pleasure of the pool, nothing could, but enough to throw the entry a little. And when she came back… back to square one. Satin had somehow reverted once more: any progress, each new Satin, stripped away. The docs suggested this was a defence mechanism, to avoid knowledge that was somehow too painful for Satin. Toys didn't know.

Toys didn't think anyone else really cared about making Satin well. It would be a smoother ride if Satin did not enter the pool each time kicking and screaming, that was all. They could slide through space-time without a ripple. Reich vessels tore through reality, and reality screamed.

They'd lose that Reich battleship that had been dogging them. The snow-wolf. Perhaps that was the only reason the captain let her best engineer tie up her time this way.

***

Toys looked down at Satin's restless form, sleeping fitfully on her bunk, already bound once more in the Tar-baby that Toys had constructed for her, long months and many jumps ago now.

On impulse Toys waved the Tar baby away. It poured off Satin's fitfully sleeping form to become a black sheet beneath her. The captain would not approve but Toys knew that Satin in this state would never voluntarily Displace. The only danger was to Toys herself.

A thin sheen of sweat inspired the Reich hunter's pale skin to glisten. She was so beautiful. Especially when her face relaxed, between whatever dreams tormented her. Satin arched on the black sheet and emitted a small moan. She wouldn't wake yet though. Toys slid her palm up one smooth white leg, over her hip and jutting ribs to cup one breast and feel it's warmth. Satin's face seemed to relax a little, but Toys knew it was just a lull in her dreaming, deep beneath the surface.

Toys kissed Satin gently on the lips then sealed the Tar baby over her once more.

***

Satin lay, dreaming she was dead. Gentle hands interfered with her lifeless body. The very psykers that had killed her now explored her. That was ok. A dead body was turf. You couldn't dirty it any further. Besides, the hands were nice. The mouths were even nicer.

Satin knew she was dead. The psyker scum pirates had somehow intercepted her shuttle as she slept. She had clawed her self out of sleep, fumbling for her weapon; just in time to see them burst into her cabin.

Last thing she remembered was the flash of actinic fire as three charge gun bursts blew out her chest and stomach. It must have been messy.

Satin moaned with both passion and unease as the hands stroked her whole flesh, mouths kissed where there should be nothing unburnt to kiss. Her illusions were tumbling but she desperately clung to them; so she could have this one thing, receive this one thing. Before she woke. Before she had to be Satin.