Calypso Slaves - Ghost Story

Cassie was pretty sure the guard would save more time if she just sat directly behind Cassie and whipped her all the time. Because every time there was ever a slowdown, it was always Cassie's fault. She wasn't even trying to slow things down, she hadn't made any decisions one way or another and was defaulting to just trying to match pace with everyone else, but it wasn't working. Every few minutes the guard checked the quota, noticed that the line was even further behind than they were a few minutes ago, and walked down the line, whipping everyone who wasn't holding a rod, waiting on another slave to hurry up and grab their end. Cassie was never waiting, never resting, and when the guard came down the line it was always her ass that turned bright red from the next blow. She took it quietly at first, as she was pretty sure it was unwise to show weakness, but after a while she began to yelp and moan with pain.

Finally, the lunch buzzer sounded, and exhausted from the work and the whipping both, she began shuffling with the rest towards the exit. But the guard stopped her and a handful of others on the way out. "Back to work, cunts," she says, "you've been holding up the line and you're going to make up time now."

For about a second and a half, protests swam around in Cassie's head, but she swallowed them before they got to her lips. She'd seen the guard's reaction to Lily's protests against her whipping yesterday, and he seemed like he was trying to be nice. "Yes, ma'am," Cassie said, and walked back to her place on the line. There were huge gaps, now, so with a few swats from her crop the guard rearranged the slaves. Cassie had already learned to tell the difference between the 'you fucked up' and the 'you need to do what I say right now' blows. The former stung across her exposed skin and usually drew a yelp of pain out of her. The latter were flat and thuddy against her skin, the pain from them faded within a few seconds, and she jumped a little, but more from fear of the whip than real pain.

Once the slaves were properly arranged Cassie began feeding the rods again. Now the guard had a smaller section to patrol, and it was made up of all the slowest slaves. Even among them, Cassie was the slowest at first. It's not fair, she thought, it's not fair that she was taken from an academic life to one of labor. She was trying her best, it just so happened that her best was a little bit worse than everyone else's average.

But the more the crop bit into her ass and looped around her chest to hit the sides of her breasts the more she started to keep up with the others. And the more she kept up with the others, the more the hurt was spread around the rest of the crew. And something in Cassie, that rational academic part of her brain that looks for things that make sense even if they're uncomfortable, decided that maybe she hadn't been doing her best. Like, the whipping didn't magically lend more strength to her muscles. So clearly she had more to give and she just couldn't give it without an incentive.

This is why poor people aren't academics, Cassie concluded as she packed the academic part of her brain away for now and reasserted to herself that this is not fair. She wasn't entirely sure why it wasn't fair, but it definitely wasn't. By the end of the lunch break, when the rest of the slaves came filing in, they were back on quota, but just barely.

The line formed again. No one had a particular assigned place, and the guard kept the slower slaves next to each other so she could keep an eye on them. This meant that Cassie wasn't in direct competition with the slaves who just ate and rested, but she still needed to match pace with the quota. The guard's whip remained a constant companion, even when the slave on the other side wasn't waiting on Cassie and they were on schedule for the quota. But the guard was spreading it around more now, whipping at the other slaves as much as Cassie. Sometimes Cassie even got a few moments of rest when one of the other slaves fell behind her.

It wasn't quite dinner when Cassie hit the quota, the new rods stopped coming, and a mechanic came by to wind the machine down. The next machine down the line kept humming, bending the molded bars into links of the chain, fully automated work that no human could ever hope to do. The guard went down the line and gave the first few slaves, including Cassie, a few guiding swats, pointing them towards a work table where they began screwing a thing into another thing, over and over again, the table filled with two kinds of parts, one type that screwed into another. Cassie had no idea what this was actually for, but she didn't care. Her muscles felt like soup, and while the table had no seats for her aching feet, she wasn't sure her ass would handle the seats very well anyway. There didn't seem to be any quota to meet here, and there wasn't even a guard watching over them.

For the first time today, Cassie could get a proper look at the other slaves working. She could see Lily among them, but not Giovanna, and several slaves that Cassie didn't recognize, two of them with serpentine tattoos snaking up their bare arms. If the whip marks are anything to go by, most of the slaves were from the group who missed lunch and bore the brunt of the guard's attentions that morning.

"Does anyone know what these things actually do?" Cassie asked.

One of the nearby slaves, a dark-haired wiry one, shrugged. "Looks like some kind of socket, maybe?"

"I think the clamp looking piece is just used for distance, they drill the screw in, then take the clamp off so there's an air gap," another slave, this one a short-ish blonde, offered.

"Drill the screw into what?" the wiry slave asked.

Now the blonde slave shrugged. "I dunno, some machine or something."

"All I care about is, it's easy," another slave said, this one tall and skinny like a beanpole, and half-whispering as though a guard might overhear and reassign them to something harder.

"So, I'm Cassie, by the way," Cassie said, "I'm, uh," it suddenly occurred to her that saying 'I'm new' would be a very bad idea, "I just got to this station yesterday."

"I'm Jackie," the wiry slave said, extending a hand across the table to give Cassie's a quick shake before returning to her work, and throwing a quick glance over her shoulder for guards. She didn't seem like she'd received nearly as much attention from the whip as the others, her mid-size breasts mostly unblemished, though she hadn't escaped the occasional red streak.

"How long have you been here?" Cassie asked.

"Couple of months," Jackie said.

A few other slaves introduced themselves -- Geneva, Joan, Leona -- and Cassie tried to keep track of them all. Was forgetting someone's name a faux pas on a slave ship the way it was on the surface? Would it get you shivved? Cassie didn't want to find out. Leona, the skinny slave, reached out to shake Cassie's hand when she introduced herself. Her breasts seemed to have taken more punishment than most of the others. Cassie wondered if there was a connection.

"I'm Lily," Cassie's friend said, as badly whipped as Cassie was, "I came in with Cassie."

Cassie looked to the blonde slave expectantly. "Are we supposed to be introducing ourselves? Is this kindergarten?" she asked.

"That'd be Kelly," the wiry slave Jackie said, "don't mind her, she's always having a bad day."

"We're all always having a bad day, I'm just the only one who 'fesses up to it," Kelly said. Jackie just gestured to Kelly as if to say 'there you go: Always having a bad day.'

"Have all of you been down on this deck the whole time?" Cassie asked.

They all nodded, and the buzzer for dinner sounded soon after, the workshop emptying out towards the elevator. Cassie and the other slaves who'd been working the table ended up next to one another, about two dozen slaves back, but even from here Cassie could see the elevator grind down. A pair of naked workshop slaves pushed a crate into the elevator and the admin slaves opened it up along with the food crate. Cassie's curiosity as to what was going on didn't last long. Before receiving dinner, each slave was fitted with a waist chain with attached cuffs and a pair of ankle shackles. It was the same set they'd put Andraste in, except that at least they weren't actually cuffing everyone's hands in. The cuffs just dangled from the chain behind. So that's why they were making chains today.

"What's up with this?" Cassie asked while the guards put the slaves ahead into their chains.

"No idea," Jackie said, "it's never happened before."

"Joan?" Cassie asked. She'd been here longest, but she just shrugged.

There didn't seem to be any exceptions. As Cassie got closer to the front of the line, the crowd ahead grew thin enough that she could see even the admin slaves were in chains. And they were supposed to be at least third class. "Maybe it's because of the riots," Cassie said.

Whatever the reason for the chains, the guard had a set waiting for Cassie when she reached the front of the line. "Turn around," the guard said.

"Yes, ma'am," Cassie said, already responding mostly on autopilot to the commands. She locked the waist chain around Cassie, then cuffed her loosely in the ankle shackles, before tugging on Cassie's shoulder to turn her back around so the admin slave could hand her dinner.

When Cassie got back to her cell, she found Tanirt's hands were still cuffed behind her back. Cassie wasn't sure why, or how long that was going to last, but it meant that she couldn't feed herself, or at least not easily. Lily took Tanirt's dinner bar from her cuffed hands, opened it up, and fed it to her a bite at a time. Tanirt's expression was...Not one of pure joy. "They sent you to the shop today?" Cassie asked Giovanna.

"Yeah, stamping out grates, probably to replace the ones that got ripped up in the riot," Giovanna said, ripping off a chunk of her own dinner, and running the sink into a cupped hand for something to wash it down with.

"You learn anything else helpful today?" Cassie asked.

"Did you?" Giovanna asked.

"No," Cassie was forced to admit. Lying to Giovanna would come back to bite her in a hurry.

"Then come talk to me when you have something to trade," Giovanna said. It occurred to Cassie that she could offer her body, and to a somewhat darker portion of her that she could offer her Lily's body and Lily would probably be okay with it. There wasn't going to be any opportunity for that until tomorrow, though. Lockdown was any minute and it was easy for the cameras to see everything going on in the cell. Cassie could talk to Lily about it later and maybe arrange something at lunch, if Giovanna even cared. She'd only been here for two days, she probably wasn't desperate for sex already, and Cassie didn't even know if Giovanna liked girls. Maybe they could trade sex for food and then food to Giovanna for information?

God, Cassie had to find some way to get her hands on something tradeable other than sex. She could grapple with the idea of trading sex for favors now and again, but she didn't want to be a full time whore. And she didn't want to rely on Lily doing something she wouldn't.

A guard came by in the last few minutes of the dinner half-hour, lashing out a crop at Lily's breasts, who had the misfortune of being the closest to him when he arrived, and shouted "on your knees!" The four of them (Cassie didn't know and honestly didn't care where Andraste had got to) complied, kneeling on the ground, and the guard went around one by one, bending their heads forward until they were pressed to the ground, cuffing their hands behind their back, and then tugging them up until they were kneeling upright again. Once he'd finished and left, the cell door slid down from the ceiling, bars sealing them in for the night. So this was apparently a part of lockdown now.

It was lockdown, but it wasn't lightsout for another hour. Still, Cassie's bed had never called to her more than it did now. Even with the harsh glare of the lights above and the cuffs on her wrists and ankles, she was asleep almost instantly.

The light only half woke Cassie up. She struggled to pierce the veil of slumber, but it was useless. After a few minutes of trying to find the will to pull herself off of her bed, she sank back into it, admitting defeat. Lily tried to shake her awake. "Cassie, come on, you're gonna get in trouble," she said. Cassie knew she was right. She had to get out of bed. Cassie moaned noncommittally. "Cassie, I'm not leaving without you, so get up!"

Cassie knew what Lily was doing, and it was working. She could shove the thought of her own punishment out of her mind, convince herself that it'd be worth it to just have a few more minutes. But the thought of getting her friend punished was not so easily squelched. Cassie got to her feet. "My hands," she said, noticing they'd been uncuffed, "when did they...?"

"A guard came by when the cell door opened, you slept right through it," Lily said, tugging Cassie by the arm out of the cell, "come on." They hadn't removed the waist chain or the shackles on Cassie's legs, so she couldn't run. The cell was deserted except for Cassie and Lily, but Cassie could see the crowd of slaves at the end of the hall towards the workshop and there were a few other stragglers.

"Thanks for waking me," Cassie said.

"Don't mention it," Lily said.

The two of them were the last into the workshop, but only by about five seconds. They still both got a crop on the ass for their trouble, but it was closer to the guidance swat than punishment. "Don't drag your feet," the guard said, and both of them chirped "yes, sir."

Today, Cassie was cleaning pipes. Pipes caked with some kind of viscous ooze of industry. The first and ooziest layer was easily cleaned off with a quick swipe of the rag, but to actually properly clean the thing Cassie had to scrub it down hard. At first she thought it'd be an easy job, and at the very least it'd certainly be quieter, the din of the presses, mills, and other machinery a solid fifty feet distant, but just like the breakdown mill, she could soon tell that this would wear her down over time. And her muscles were still stiff and sore from yesterday. Cassie committed to working as hard as she could, getting a strong lead on the quota, and trying to work past it before lunch to give herself more breathing room. The faster she got promoted up to fourth class, the faster she could get some work that more suited her prior experience. Or at least was less completely unrelated to her prior experience. "Ghost whisperer" and "photographer" were probably not available jobs at any class.

Her plan worked great. For about thirty minutes. Then her limbs start to get tired, like, really tired, less stiff and more noodle-y. Her early and encouraging lead on the quota only lasted her through about half the morning, and by the time lunch was drawing near she'd begun to fall behind. The guard was mostly patrolling the assembly lines, but when he did come by, once every thirty or forty minutes, Cassie was invariably the target of his wrath. "Faster, cunt!" he'd say, whipping at her breasts, her ass unavailable as she knelt on the workshop floor. "Yes, sir!" Cassie whimpered back, but it was an empty promise in the end.

Just like the day before, Cassie took the punishment silently at first, but within a few hours her will was exhausted and she began to yelp and moan when she was whipped. By the time lunch rolled around, she was covered in grime, her breasts stung with every stray breeze of the circulating air, and she had fallen behind the quota.

It was Sunday, which meant she had three hours of free time to meet quota if she couldn't do it during the main shift, which meant she wasn't necessarily required to skip lunch even if she was behind. And she slept through breakfast, so there was no way she was missing lunch. She'd been operating on about two meals a day as it was. Instead, she waited in line for her meal bar and started heading back towards the workshop as soon as she got it, barely chewing each piece before swallowing. She was about halfway through it when she got back, wrapped it back up as best she could, and stuck it in her waist chain. She'd have time to finish it later.

Half of lunch only re-energized her so much. It was still only half of lunch, she was exhausted from the previous days' work, and...Well, never mind the third reason. She just wasn't doing very good work was the bottom line, and an extra ten minutes wasn't enough to fix it. She was going to have to work through at least part of the free shift. She sped up again whenever the guard came by and gave her breasts another thrashing. It was the same every time. "You're falling behind, bitch! Faster!" Thwap! "Yes, sir!" And for a few minutes, she would.

Finally, towards the end of the abbreviated shift, the guard began hovering over her exclusively. Most of the others had already met quota. And now the truth that she'd been avoiding earlier was unavoidable. She'd had only half of lunch, she was exhausted, and for the most part, she was free from the whip. Or at least, she had been before. And now that it was back, she was digging into energy reserves she didn't know she had. She was still way slower than when she was well-rested, but much faster than when she didn't have the whip to urge her on.

It was partly the stinging and partly the realization that it's not going to be enough and she was going to miss at least part of her weekly three hours of spare time, but a large part of the reason why she was sobbing by the end was because of the realization that the whip was what made her work harder. That they were beating her because it worked, even if only to squeeze the last bit of effort from her once the exhaustion set in. The exhaustion set in after like two hours, there was plenty of time when squeezing was efficient.

The guard came over when the buzzer sounded for the end of the shift. "Keep working, slut," he said, "keep on until you've finished the pile."

"Yes, sir," Cassie said, miserably.

If Cassie could finish her work in one hour, she'd have two hours left before dinner. All the official functions would have closed their doors except the church service, but she'd be able to explore more or poke around for the black market or other things just so long as she could get this over with quickly.

Cassie took a deep breath and tried to pace herself this time. She had about a dozen pipes left in the pile. If she could go at a rate of one pipe every five minutes, she should get through it in an hour. Just go slow and get it done. It occurred to her, as the guard posted himself nearby, that she would work faster under his attentions.

But she was not going to be a slave. Okay, she was literally, legally going to be a slave. That's...Just kind of something she had to deal with. And it's not like she was going to start a riot or anything. The guards didn't seem that bad and she didn't know what to think about the shadowy commander who presumably made all the rules they were enforcing, but she definitely didn't want to hurt anyone. Okay, maybe see someone get whipped a little, see how they like it, but not, like, permanently. But that didn't mean she was okay with being a slave. She wasn't, and she wasn't going to be okay with it. She was going to quietly condemn the entire institution of slavery while doing exactly what it told her to. Because she was a rebel.

Cassie's slow and steady pace worked. She'd got about two hours left on the clock when she finished and went to the guard. "Excuse me, sir," she said, "I finished my pile. May I go?"

He looked at her stack, examined a few pipes at random. "Good girl," he said, "get going."