Slaves of Elysium (9 page)

‘Don't you understand, we need help?' Rebecca shouted in frustration.

‘I don't think anybody here will understand us, miss,' Jeni said.

‘What do you mean? Of course they must! There's always somebody in every country who speaks some English.'

‘Not this time, miss. Not here.'

Rebecca's self-centredness had evidently blinded her to the strangeness of their surroundings, but a sense of dislocation had been growing within Jeni. The disparity between the soldiers' uniforms and the flying disk, their peculiar language, the sun rising behind the island, all going back to their time deceived by a will-o'-the-wisp in the mist. There was an obvious explanation if one had the courage to accept it. She and Rebecca were no longer in the world they knew. They were somewhere... else.

The soldiers were tugging at the nets, doing something that made them lose their stickiness and fall away. In a moment Jeni and Rebecca were free. Strong hands used to handling prisoners, Jeni suspected, pulled them to their feet. Eyes glittered through the slots of the men's helmets, as they looked them up and down with frank interest. Jeni shivered, recognising their natural authority, instinctively knowing what it portended.

‘I'm rich, I can pay you if you help us,' Rebecca said slowly and distinctly, sounding out each syllable in the futile hope that it would somehow bridge the language barrier. ‘Take us to somebody who speaks English.'

She was still trying to reason with their captors, Jeni realised, unable to accept that she had nothing to bargain with. Anything she had that they wanted could simply be taken from her. Jeni felt a tightening in her stomach at the thought.

The commander reached out and caught a lock of Rebecca's hair, rolling it between thumb and forefinger as though examining its lustre.

Rebecca slapped his hand away. ‘Stop that! Do you know who I am?' Her words were still defiant but her voice was trembling now.

The man simply smiled at her and turned to Jeni, subjecting her hair to the same scrutiny. Jeni shivered, her eyes shying aside from his steady gaze, but she did not attempt to pull away. What would be the point?

The commander said something else in his own tongue, which brought an enthusiastic response from the others. Two of the soldiers caught hold of the girls' arms just above the elbows and bent them behind their backs, causing them to thrust out their breasts against the thin material of their shirts. Jeni felt her remaining resistance drain away, surrendering to the strength of the hands that pinioned her, but Rebecca was not so easily cowed and screamed and kicked futilely.

The commander and the remaining soldier drew their daggers.

Rebecca froze in horror.

The two men grasped the hems of the girls' shirts and sliced upward, the stained material parting before the sharp blades, Jeni's heart pounding as she felt the back of the blade brush her flesh. The strength seemed to go from her legs and she only remained upright because of the man clasping her arms. Rebecca's face was fixed in wide-eyed amazement, unable to believe what was happening to her. The blades emerged from their cleavages and the shirts fell open. Two more slashes through the sleeves and the ragged garments were cast aside, leaving them naked from the waist up.

The men's eyes gazed appreciatively on the two pairs of bared and trembling breasts, glistening with sweat. Rebecca's rounded and full, capped with perfectly domed red-brown nipples. Jeni's smaller but still prominent, tapering to conical pink nipple crowns.

The spell that held her broke and Rebecca began struggling again with the strength of a wild thing, at the same time begging miserably. ‘Take her!' she pleaded. ‘She won't fight. She'd enjoy all this! You can have her, do you hear? I'm giving her to you. Not me, not me...'

The commander winced at the rising shrill of her voice. He drew his baton from its belt loop and jabbed the end circled by a silver band into Rebecca's stomach, then there was a sharp crackle, Rebecca gave a gasp that died in her throat, and then went limp. The man pinioning her let her slide gracelessly to the ground.

For a second Jeni thought her employer was dead. But then she saw Rebecca was still breathing and her eyes rolling in their sockets. She had been paralysed by some kind of electric shock.

Still holding his baton ready, the commander turned to Jeni, raising a questioning eyebrow. Jeni pinched her lips and lowered her eyes. She would not shout or scream. She knew her place. With his free hand he clasped and squeezed her bared breast, sampling its fleshy weight and smoothness. Its nipple grew harder under his manipulations. Jeni closed her eyes, her breath coming in short, panting gasps as her heart thumped. He pinched the swollen nipple, stretching it taut. Jeni gave a whimper but did not pull away.

He laughed and nodded. He clearly recognised what she was and approved.

The soldiers did not trouble working out the fastenings of their shorts, but slashed the waistbands and dragged them and their panties off. Jeni's thighs clenched instinctively as her shorts were lowered but an extra tug overcame this slight resistance. Rebecca was handled like a side of meat; held up by her ankles to lift her bottom so her shorts could be stripped away. Then she was rolled onto her back and her legs splayed wide to reveal what lay between them. Jeni watched in hopeless fascination. Even though she was sure they were both about to be raped she found it impossible to look away; Rebecca, paralysed and helpless, sprawled on a nameless beach displaying her private parts for the pleasure of unknown soldiers.

But it seemed the soldiers had other plans for them than rape. Their commander knelt between Rebecca's legs and slipped two fingers into the cleft of her pouting vaginal lips. Rebecca's eyes rolled and the faintest groan came from her partly open lips, but he continued to probe her until his fingers had gone as far as the knuckle without meeting any resistance.

He withdrew his fingers with a satisfied nod, then turned his attention to her closely trimmed golden pubic curls, which seemed to please him less. After tweaking the tufts thoughtfully he stood up and moved to Jeni, still being held upright and pinioned by the soldier behind her.

She knew what he was going to do and that convention demanded she protest against the violation of her person, yet instinct told her such action was quite pointless. She was overwhelmed by the inevitability of it all. How much simpler to surrender, how much truer to her nature.

The commander smiled at her almost as though he understood, and perhaps even sympathised with her inner turmoil. But that did not stay his hand as he brushed it over her pubic bush. It was not quite as golden as Rebecca's, but it was untrimmed and thicker and fluffier. This apparently pleased him. Then his fingers slipped inside her, bringing forth a little squeak, and she shuddered at the thought that these were the same fingers he had used to probe her mistress only moments before. Rebecca's juices were mingling with her own! It was disgusting yet exciting, and a tingle began to grow in her loins.

Satisfying himself that although tight Jeni was no virgin, he withdrew, leaving her with a sudden feeling of emptiness. He looked at the glistening deposit she had left on his hand, then raised his fingers to his nose to savour her intimate scent. Jeni watched him in total fascination. Had she really lubricated so copiously and so readily?

Apparently coming to some decision he spoke a few crisp words of command to the others, and Jeni and Rebecca were quickly and efficiently bound with some kind of metallic adhesive tape drawn from the soldiers' belt pouches. A strip across their mouths effectively gagged them. Their hands were pulled behind their backs and their wrists strapped together. Longer lengths of the tape linked their ankles, forming hobbles. Still paralysed, Rebecca was hauled upright and carried up the ramp of the flying disk slung casually over a soldier's shoulder. Another soldier caught Jeni's elbow and led her, forcing her to make rapid shuffling steps to keep up with him.

The open cockpit of the disk was ringed on the inside with a bench seat. The disk's pilot stood before a small control panel similar to a car dashboard shielded by a curving glass or plastic windshield. He and the remaining crewman eyed Jeni and Rebecca with interest as they were sat down on the bench with a soldier on either side of them. The one next to Rebecca propped up her limp body with one hand between her thighs and his elbow pressed against her chest.

The rest of the soldiers took their places and the ramp was folded back up. The commander said a few words to the pilot and the disk rose into the air. There were no visible jet exhausts or obvious means of propulsion, though Jeni thought she felt a slight vibration running through the metal plates under her feet.

At a height of no more than a hundred metres the disk turned inland, and Jeni glimpsed a last sight of the beach before it was lost behind the trees. The scuffed sand and the rags of their discarded clothes were all that were left to mark the time and place when the course of her life had changed. She was surprised how relatively calm she felt, when in the circumstances she should have been both astonished and terrified. Here she was in some other world, naked and bound in the company of strange men who evidently cared nothing for her dignity, yet she felt only a tingle of excitement and ache of anticipation. Was her submissive nature even deeper than she imagined?

She realised the soldier sitting opposite her was staring at her exposed breasts and the cleft of her thighs and that there was nothing she could do about it. Wasn't that shameful and humiliating? Yes, but it only contributed to her newfound sense of being intensely alive. In fact she was getting wet and aroused under his eyes. What a depraved creature she must be!

Beside her Rebecca groaned, lifted her head, which had been slumped forward with her chin on her chest, and twitched her legs. Obviously the effects of the shock were wearing off. She turned her face to Jeni, her eyes wide and pleading, mumbling indistinctly behind her gag. Jeni could only stare back at her and shrug helplessly. What did she think she could do? Perhaps it was just her nature to expect others to solve problems for her, but Jeni found herself unable to conjure up much sympathy for her employer. She had been willing to hand her over to the soldiers when she thought it might save her. Now, however, they were both prisoners and equally helpless; all her wealth and social status meant nothing.

The disk, still flying low, was travelling at moderate speed, making it no windier in the open cockpit than riding in a convertible with the roof down, and the absence of any engine noise made their progress seem even more sedate.

The belt of wild coastal vegetation had been left behind and they were now travelling over a patchwork of cultivated fields and orchards, divided here and there by streams and paved roads. At one point they crossed a canal, spanned by graceful arching bridges. As far as Jeni could see the landscape remained generally level, interrupted by a few low hills and stretches of forest. The only coastline in sight was the one shrinking behind them; if this was an island it was of fair size. Between the fields were scattered colourful buildings Jeni took to be farmhouses. Most were simple flat-roofed structures, but a few sported small domes or shallow pitched roofs. They passed close by one larger gathering of dwellings, presumably a village or small town, enclosed by a high outer wall.

They were so low they could clearly see people going about their business below them, either tending the fields or travelling along roads. A few looked up at them as they flew over, but showed no special interest. Presumably flying disks were a common sight.

Then ahead of them across the plain, Jeni glimpsed what at first she took to be a very regular steep-sided hill. This resolved itself into a great stepped pyramid built of white stone, standing at the centre of a city-sized conglomeration of houses, many two or three stories high. The city was enclosed within a high white outer wall with turrets at its angles, in turn ringed by a wide moat. Except for the pyramid at its centre, it reminded Jeni of a medieval European fortified town.

In a minute they were crossing over the outer walls, and Jeni glimpsed strange-looking guns mounted on turntables set on the top of the turrets. Who were they intended to be used against? Was it the same enemy the soldiers in the flying disk were looking for when they came across them on the beach?

The pyramid had seven tiers, the lowest being the size of a city block. Its vertical walls were boldly incised, with tall narrow windows set in the angles of the recessed sections. Pinnacles rose from the corners of the topmost level, with more of the mounted guns on the level below. The disk began to descend, heading for the wide roof of the lowest level, where several similar craft were already parked. The great pyramid seemed to rise about them and the craft touched down with only the slightest of bumps.

With a soldier holding an arm each, Jeni and Rebecca were escorted off the disk and across the roof to a recessed doorway. Two men stood guard by the entrance, each holding oddly shaped rifles. They saluted the commander of the flying disk as he passed by, thumping clenched fists against their sternums.

Inside several doors and corridors opened off a high-ceilinged atrium ringed by desks. The tall windows cast bars of light across a green marble floor. A number of people were passing briskly through the space. Some were uniformed like their captors while others, both men and women, wore simple white tunics falling to just above the knee, patterned with variously coloured hems and sashes. A few of them cast curious glances at Jeni and Rebecca as they passed, but generally they were ignored. Were naked and bound women so common here?