Calypso Slaves - Ghost Story

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"A kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being, nor can the dead ever be brought back to life."
-Sun Tzu

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It wasn't much of a trial. No one made any mention of Majestic Thirteen, if only because their existence was still hypothetically a secret. "Majestic Thirteen" was, most of the time, any of the Dominion's supranational agencies who didn't want to take responsibility for actions that had reached the public.

But it's not like they needed to come out and admit that demons were real to have Cassandra sentenced under blasphemy laws. Her room was stuffed with supernatural paraphernalia, much of it demonic in nature, including no small number of books openly hateful of Christians. Also: Humanity. But it was the alleged hatred for Christians that was relevant to the trial.

Cassie's stunned patrons withdrew their support and, because she had no independent wealth, she was forced to represent herself in court. Her knowledge of the law was pretty fuzzy. The defense she ended up mounting was that she never intended any harm nor performed any rituals, that she thought of the books as curiosities only, and that she most certainly bore no ill will towards Christianity or any other religion. Just because she owned a book didn't mean she agreed with its contents, right?

It was never a defense that was going to get her off completely, even if they accepted everything she said as absolutely true, because owning all this stuff was still illegal. Really what she was playing for here was to get the charges of criminal conspiracy and hate speech dropped and to put the judge in a lenient mood when it came to the sentencing on the blasphemy charge.

That was not what happened, and instead the judge ended up sentencing her to a total of twelve years. And that was way over the point where someone could get sold, taken out of the Rho Geminorum system, and then forgotten about. Nobody ever wasted Alcu on letting nearby systems know the sentence of a prisoner, nor bothered using the kind of electricity needed to send luminal messages strong enough to be readable from neighboring star systems by the time they arrived. So if a slave owner swapped out "twelve years" for "life," no one outside the star system where the sentencing took place was in any position to correct them.

According to official government figures, this happened in a negligibly small number of cases. Underground sources put the amount of slaves actually released at the end of their sentence at less than 10%. Plus, there were rumors that Majestic Thirteen guarantees that sentences get extended indefinitely, regardless of behavior, for people who've caused supernatural trouble, if they don't just arrange a prison murder.

Cassie's sentence wasn't yet official when two men in black sat down across from her in an interrogation room. She was still in the white, color-dappled t-shirt and black skinny jeans she was arrested in. She never had the chance to pull on shoes and socks before they slapped the cuffs on. Nor did she have the chance to wash off the ritual blood, which did not do her any favors in the trial. She'd washed it off as soon as she arrived at the jail where she was held during the trial. There was never any photographic evidence and she tried to play it off as a makeup disaster. No one bought it.

"A lot can happen in twelve years, Miss Heart," one of the men in black said. "You could be very far from home when that sentence is up."

"I guess," she said.

"People in your positions have adjustment difficulties. Often leads to unruly behavior, which can extend sentences even longer. Try not to let that happen," he continued.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"We could make an arrangement with the judge," he said, "could get that sentence knocked down to five years and add in a clause about extrasolar transportation."

"And in exchange?" she asked.

"The names of your accomplices," he said, "even a basic Hellmouth requires three ritualists acting in concert. You must have at least two accomplices. Give us their names and we'll see about the extrasolar clause. Give us more and we might reduce the years on that sentence."

Cassie looked back and forth between the two and swallowed. There were three ritualists total, Jack and Jeanette had worked with her to channel the energies of the planet's leylines into opening up a Naraka connection across most of Toluca County. The other two were at other points of the triangle, and Cassie had no idea if one or both of them had already been caught. She could just keep her mouth shut, and one or both of them might get away clean. But she needed that extrasolar clause, and she needed it desperately. Without it, she might never walk free again. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth. "I only know one of the others," she said, "he kept the other ritualist from me, and kept me from him. Said it was safer that way."

"Awful lot of coordination," he said.

"He seemed like he knew what he was doing. Our leader, I mean," Cassie said. Jack had evaded the law for years. If Cassie gave them Jack, he'd probably get away anyway. All she had to do was convince them to give her the extrasolar clause on her sentence for one name.

The agents just stared at her. "It's one or nothing, I can't give you any more," she said, "I literally can't, I don't know." What if one of them was a mesmer? It was really rare, but if they were, then they'd be reading her mind. But then wouldn't they already know everything they needed from her? Maybe they were hoping she would think about some specific crimes for the trials of Jack or Jeanette? Cassie pointedly avoided thinking about any actual rituals she'd performed, instead focusing on the two agents in front of her.

But her resolve was starting to crack. "Please, I really only know one name." They got up and started heading towards the door. She half opened her mouth when they reached the door, but then closed it again and let them leave. She wasn't going to sell out both of her friends. She wished she hadn't offered them even one, and she felt the familiar workings of memory revision in the back of her head, she wasn't going to give them a real name, she was going to pin it on that one shop owner she'd already sold out for being a child-kidnapping psychopath, but she squelched the thoughts. She was going to give them Jack's name in exchange for the extrasolar clause, and hope he was savvy enough to avoid them. That he would be able to dodge Majestic Thirteen the same as the Toluca County Police. But she dodged that bullet when they refused her offer, and she had the guts not to give them both, at least, and if they asked again she resolved not to offer them anything.

The judge's sentences were finalized at the end of the day. The guards took Cassie to the station's imaging room, used for evidence collection and...Advertising. A pair of rotating pillars mounted with cameras provided a complete 3D image of whoever stood inside. The guard told her to remove her clothes, stand in the middle of the room, and hold still. She took a deep breath, and then slid her shirt over her head and jeans off. Goosebumps broke out over her naked skin and she turned away from the guard, who demanded that she hurry up.

She placed her feet on the marked spot of the floor, spaced at shoulder width. "Stand with your back straight and arms at your sides," the guard said. Cassie sucked in a breath and glued her arms to her hips, fingers splayed tight across them and gripping the skin hard. The guard never said anything about her head. She closed her eyes and bowed her head forward until her dark, shoulder length hair gathered around her face, and the machine spun slowly around her. An image appeared on the technician's screen, a perfect photorealistic shot of Cassie's naked body. The technician rotated it around a few different angles to make sure it'd worked and then submitted it to the network, before waving to the guard, who cuffed Cassie's hands behind her back and dragged her out of the room and back to her holding cell.

Cassie's clothes were slid into a tiny lockbox, theoretically along with other personal effects, but given the conditions of her arrest she didn't have any. This was supposed to follow her until release. In practice she'd heard these go missing a lot, sold off by whoever buys the slave. But would anyone bother selling a t-shirt and jeans?

There were a few glances from the other police as she was escorted through the station, and a few lecherous glares. Cassie shrank back away from them, hunching her shoulders, bowing her head, trying to make herself as small as possible. At least the holding cells were empty. Toluca County was a sparsely populated place, it didn't get a whole lot of crime.

The very next day, Cassie was taken from the county jail, which was no surprise as it only held people temporarily, to the ferry out on the center of Toluca Lake, which was rather more of a surprise as that was the location of the space elevator. Cassie wasn't entirely certain where the prison for longterm detention was, but she was reasonably certain that it was something like two counties over, not in space. So presumably she'd been bought.

Cassie was loaded into a small shuttle, her hands cuffed to a tiny plastic seat while other slaves were loaded on in zero gravity. There were three other naked slaves already inside, one brown haired and olive skinned, floating bored in her cuffs. Another short, purple haired, and with at least enough sense of modesty to fold her cuffed hands over her pussy. The last an amazon, tall and physically toned, with blonde hair and staring straight ahead.

"Hey," Cassie said to the brunette. She didn't turn to look, just sat floating in zero-g, attached to the bench by her cuffs. "I'm Cassie," Cassie said.

Now the brunette did look at Cassie, just barely interested, sizing her up. She shrank back a little and was reminded for the hundredth time today that she was naked. "Giovanna," she said, finally.

"How long have you been here?" Cassie asked, "I mean, in prison or owned or...Whatever."

"Just today this time," she said, "been inside before, though."

Cassie almost asked what it's like, but if she wasn't bleeding 'fresh meat' all over the place already, she didn't want to start now. How else could she keep this conversation going? "What did you do?" she asked, and immediately kicked herself. 'What're you in for,' really? Was she going to get prison tats, join a gang, and shank someone for a cigarette next?

"Sold something," Giovanna said, "would've been for a lot of money if I'd ever gotten it. Still don't know how I got caught. Maybe it was Cato."

"Bernard Cato?" the purple-haired girl asked.

"Yeah, that's him," Giovanna asked, "you know him?"

"I took a job from him, it's the one I was caught on," purple hair said, "something happened to my tech support guy, still don't know what."

"Oh, that can't be a coincidence," Giovanna said, "I'll fucking kill that bastard."

The door slid open and a guard floated in dragging a grinning redhead by the arm, caught himself on one of the straps that dangled from the ceiling. The redhead's hands were cuffed behind her back and attached to a chain around her waist. The guard chained her ankles to the floor, but attached her cuffs to the bench still behind her back instead of bringing them in front like Cassie and the others. "Call me!" the redhead said as the guard left and the door slammed shut behind him.

"Who're you?" Cassie asked.

"You don't recognize me? They said I was all over the news, planetwide. Maybe it's 'cause I don't have my paint on?" the redhead said.

"I've been out of the loop since I was arrested a couple of days ago," Cassie said.

"I'm Andraste," she said, "the girl who set Sacrum on fire." Sacrum? Then what was she doing at the top of the Toluca elevator?

"More like the girl who got her ass kicked while her gang set Sacrum on fire," Giovanna said.

Andraste jumped out of her seat and snapped her teeth in Giovanna's direction, her wrists and ankles caught in their cuffs. Giovanna, a solid two feet out of Andraste's reach, didn't even flinch, but purple hair, sitting across from Giovanna, pushed herself back a bit. Andraste giggled at her.

"I didn't catch your name," Cassie said to purple hair, who seemed the most stable of any of them.

"I'm Lily," she said, and a buzzer sounded throughout the cabin. The five of them were pressed into their seats by the acceleration to 1G.

"What was your name?" Cassie asked the blonde, and if Lily wasn't the most stable of them, the silent blonde probably was. On the other hand, the guards felt the need to put her in heavy restraints like Andraste's for some reason or another.

"Tanirt," she said.

"Nice to meet you," Cassie said.

Tanirt did not respond.

"Where are you from?" Cassie asked.

"Tuscan," Tanirt said. That place in the middle of the desert on the big island/small continent of the Nova Byzantum archipelago.

"What's it like?"

"Hot," Tanirt said.

Cassie decided against talking with her further.

It was another hour or so before the shuttle arrived. The others made intermittent conversation with one another. The shuttle began to bank, Cassie grabbed onto her chains to keep the cuffs from digging into her wrists. Then gravity returned, she was taken into some kind of infirmary, and with no further explanation, put under with anesthesia. When she woke up, a cold steel collar was locked around her neck, and she could feel...Something at the nape. She reached back to feel, and she could feel the steel going beneath her skin. It was attached to her. Went inside her.

It was several more hours before she arrived at...Wherever it was they were going. She filed out into a large docking bay. The guards wore mostly black armor with white plates. Most of them had their heads concealed by helmets. Cassie folded her arms over her breasts and looked away from them. They probably saw bare breasts on a daily basis and didn't particularly care about Cassie's, but it didn't feel that way. As she was led from the docking bay and into processing for her mug shots, she noticed the lights flickering. Some of them were exposed and sparking. The floors were metal grated tiles each five feet across, and one of them was ripped up at the corner. What the Hell happened here?

Finally she was led into a room fit for thirty people, sparse and empty with only the five of them standing there, one guard near an entrance, and another stepping in front of the slaves. "I'm Lieutenant Mira. I'm in charge of keeping you in line. You'll call me 'ma'am' or 'lieutenant.'" She began to pace back and forth in front of them. "I'm not going to lie to you. We're running on a skeleton crew. Without the guard power we'd like to have, the gangs have asserted themselves. They control territory. They perpetrate crimes. And when they're feeling up to it, they riot. They are going to want you to join them. They are going to make promises. Most likely they are going to promise you that the next riot will storm the bridge and take control of the ship. The bridge is a detachable module. If you ever get within two decks of it, it's going to leave. All you're accomplishing is tearing up the parts of the ship you have to live in." She gestured to one of the lights up above, ripped from its mooring, sparks falling onto the ground. "I live three decks up from here. I don't have to care."

"I'm not going to try and convince you to remember the consequences of disobedience, although you should. But when it comes to riots there is something else that should stick even deeper in your heads: We are in space. When you tamper with our wiring, wreck our generators, and tear up our ship, you are not a badass who's going to show all the guards not to fuck with you. You're a dumbass who's going to kill our life support and boil your own eyes. This," she taps her armored suit, "is not standard issue. It's in case you decide to riot again and manage to take out another generator and black the ship out. You do not get one."

"I mentioned the consequences for disobedience. You're slaves. If you don't do as you're told, you'll be punished," she draws a cane from her side and begins walking up and down the line. "This place doesn't have to be miserable for you, but believe me, it can be. So." She stopped in front of Giovanna and slapped the cane lightly against one of her nipples, and Giovanna winced, but was silent. "Are you going to be trouble?"

"No, ma'am," Giovanna's voice was flat, robotic.

The lieutenant stepped in front of Tanirt. She'd had her hands cuffed behind her back and to a waist chain like Andraste, although Cassie wasn't sure why. She seemed cooperative enough. Granted, they had a gun pointed at her head when they uncuffed her from the shuttle. "What about you?" Mira asked, tapping the cane against Tanirt's bared nipple.

"Don't," she started, but then the cane came down, just hard enough to sting, and she winced. "Don't do that," she said, "I won't give you trouble if you don't give me any."

"Beg for it, slave," the lieutenant said.

"What?" Tanirt asked.

"I didn't stutter. Show me you know exactly how much bargaining power you have."

Tanirt glared at her a moment, but then her head fell. "Please, lieutenant," she said, "don't hurt me."

"Good girl," the lieutenant said and stepped to Lily. "You going to give me trouble?"

Lily moaned with pain as the cane slapped across one of her stiffened nipples, leaving a soft red mark across it. "No, ma'am," she gasped, "please."

"Good girl," Mira said again, and now it was Cassie's turn. "And you?" the lieutenant asked, tapping the cane softly against Cassie's bare skin, and she screwed her eyes shut.

She moaned and whimpered as the cane struck her, goosebumps all across her naked body. "N-no, no ma'am," she said, and swallowed hard.

"Good girl," Mira said.

Andraste didn't even give her time to ask. As soon as the lieutenant stopped in front of her, Andraste spat in her face. With a sigh, the lieutenant brought the cane down hard against Andraste's breast, and Andraste turned the moan into a snarl and tried to tackle her. Andraste's hands were still cuffed to her waist chain, her legs were still locked in ankle shackles. It wasn't hard for the lieutenant to sidestep her, and unable to recover her balance or even break her fall, Andraste face planted. The lieutenant whipped Andraste's ass, and Andraste crawled forward, trying to get to her feet or get distance or get something, but all she got was whipped. "I really don't have time to play this game for an hour until you get over yourself," the lieutenant said, "so I'm just going to send you with the others down to your cell and strongly encourage you to think about what exactly you're going to prove and to who by giving the wrong answer next time I ask that question."

"Fuck you, bitch," Andraste said from the ground.

Then she winced as the cane struck her again. "Think about it," the lieutenant said, "corporal, escort the slaves to their cell."

"Yes, lieutenant," the armored guard near the entrance said, his voice tinny and synthesized through his helmet, and he grabbed Andraste by the arm and pulled her to her feet while the lieutenant left the room. "Your pride makes you about as menacing as a broken coffee machine, and I don't think it's worth the pain. That cane looked like it hurt," the corporal said to Andraste, "the lieutenant will work with you if you pay your dues."