🎉Welcome Aboard!
For those who haven't joined yet, my P@treon offers:
✨ Advance chapters (read way ahead of public releases!)
🔥 NSFW art with every chapter to level up your reading experience
đź”—If you'd like to enjoy early access and exclusive content, make sure to check it out here: [email protected]/Plash_Mount
(Just replace @ to a)
Thank you all for the amazing support!
â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â– â–
Kate studied the latest photos with a magnifying glass. She wanted to memorize the layout of the town, especially the town square. When the most recent photo fell out of the digital processor, she turned white with fear—and fury—as she held it up to the light. Unless she was mistaken, her four crew women were all being held on some sort of platform, bound to stakes. They appeared to be naked, just like all the other women in town.
Dammit, Ally, how could you let them take you? Kate knew she was missing something. Somehow these sixteenth-century beings managed to overpower an intelligent, alert woman armed with a late-21st-century weapon. What had happened?
She would have to be very careful.
Taking one last look, she climbed down the ladder into the escape pod. Kate paused before she slipped inside, looking around her ship. It might be the last time she would see it. But she had no choice. She was going to rescue her crew or die trying.
Kate glanced at her chronometer as she strapped herself in. Nearly an hour and a half had passed since she radioed Earth. It had taken some time to reposition the ship to give her the best aim at landing near the second pod. The pod would travel nearly all the way around the planet as it made its way through the atmosphere. Once it was in the upper atmosphere, she'd have to hope that her calculations about the prevailing winds were accurate. Otherwise, she might end up two hundred kilometers away.
She decided to launch before guilt made her wait for NASA's response. She had no doubt that Hunter would be sending one, probably to tell her "under no circumstances" should she leave the ship. Screw him. She bolted the door and fastened her restraints.
"Hey, it was a nice career," she said out loud and pulled the launch handle.
The escape pod was designed to rocket away from the bay door, in the event the ship was about to explode. She hung on grimly as the G-forces pressed her back in her seat. Kate let the computer aim the pod at the right angle to pierce the atmosphere.
Within minutes, she felt the craft being buffeted. Red streaks and sparks flew past the two oval windows. Her heart pounded, and she wasn't sure if the bumpy ride was responsible or her overwhelming knowledge that she was the crew's last hope.
Kate read the instruments, using her training to calm herself down. When she hit ninety thousand feet, the heat began to dissipate. At eighty thousand, blue skies returned to the two portholes. She waited several long seconds, then saw the panel flash green. She held on until her position matched the computer's best guess. She pulled a lever. A moment later, she felt the reassuring lift from the parachute. Leaning down, she could look up through one of the portholes to see it open above the pod.
Thank God! That's one worry gone. Now if I can just land close!
The winds were strong. Kate watched the screen that showed the blips from where the second pod had landed and where the crew was being held. They were still in the village, grouped together near the center. Kate watched, dismayed, as the winds carried her rapidly toward the second pod. She glanced at the altimeter: forty thousand feet. Dammit! She was going to overshoot it by several kilometers. She began firing the forward thrusters to slow down her rate of drift.
The second pod slipped by underneath as she passed eighteen thousand feet. A mountain ridge appeared in her windows. She calculated her rate of descent and the approaching mountain and thought she just might get down before she was dashed to death on its cliff face. "Come on! Come on!" Kate fired the thrusters again. The pod rocked, then leaped forward again. She couldn't fight the wind for long.
The ridge filled the windows as she came down the last five thousand feet. She had saved a little fuel and used it just before landing, cutting the chute loose at the same time to avoid being dragged. The pod bumped down underneath the brow of the angry butte.
Kate popped the hatch and crawled out. She checked her portable scanner and found she was thirty-six kilometers from the pod and thirty-eight kilometers from the village. Actually not too bad, considering. She took her supplies, including her phaser and a U.T. If talking didn't work, she carried a few cubes of explosives and blasting caps. Bet they haven't invented C4, she thought.
She wrapped the remaining explosives around a detonator and set the timer for thirty minutes. That should give her plenty of time to get away. She dropped the bundle into the pod and shut the hatch. "Sorry to do this to you, old friend, but I can't leave you here for the natives to discover," she said.
Then, without a backward glance, she turned and headed for the village.
Jorja stood before the crowd, trying to ignore the leering and shouts. She had been dragged to the front and displayed like so much horseflesh, made to walk back and forth while one of the men held her firmly by her upper arm. Jorja was a big woman, but she was petite compared to these men.
Lumpy touched Jorja's breasts and cunt, displaying their uniqueness to the crowd. Like a used car salesman, she imagined him saying, "Low mileage! Smooth styling! Still under warranty!"
Beth watched from her post, fascinated despite her fear. The anthropologist in her found the actions displayed by these humanoids paralleled Earth's own history. Throughout time, the selling of slaves was commonplace. It was inconceivable now to imagine, but back then, humans of one ethnicity often felt morally superior to those of a different ethnic background. The Pharaohs enslaved the Jews, the Spaniards overwhelmed the Incas; heck, even the Americans brought Africans over to work their cotton plantations. What made this culture different was that they apparently enslaved an entire gender.
She had seen the way women behaved here, just in the few minutes they had been in town. While it was difficult to tell from the ship, at ground level, it was obvious women were docile and obedient. They followed behind their men, awaiting directions, even if they weren't leashed. It was not unlike some Middle Eastern countries of Earth, only those women were always covered up. Here, nakedness simply accentuated their subjugation. It certainly made them more accessible for sex, she noted.
Beth attributed much of the cultural development to the imposing physical differences between the sexes. On Earth, women were not all that much smaller, and some women were even larger than the men. On Devon, all of the men she had seen so far were well over six feet, while the women were usually under five-eight, although it was hard to tell because many walked with their heads bowed.
This planet represented a monumental discovery that the doctor would enjoy exploring for years—but not as a participant, she reflected, pulling at her bonds. It's one thing to observe how the Romans treated the Christians; it's quite another to be thrown into the lion's pit with the underdogs.
Beth heard the man repeat one word often to the crowd that sounded like "detashia." In context, she wondered if that meant "fair-skinned" or "exotic" or "valuable." Maybe it just meant "hairless." She was determined to learn their language, rather than wait for the U.T.s.
Jorja brought a number of bids before one man apparently won. There was some excited jabbering, then the man came forward, trailed by a younger man and a woman. The man was even taller than Lumpy, Beth noticed. He had gray hair and a beard and seemed to command a certain amount of respect.
She thought the younger man might be his son. He had the same eyes set in a thin, sallow face. If he had been an Earthman, she'd guess his age would be about twenty. The woman behind him seemed older, but Beth wasn't sure if the woman was his mother, a slave—or both. In fact, the whole family dynamic would make a fascinating study.
Jorja struggled. She did not want to be separated from her crew members. She shouted at the men, angry and afraid. The buyer just laughed. He seemed amused by the spirited woman. He may live to regret that, Beth thought. She knew that Jorja was a black belt in karate and had taught classes for years, even while serving as an astronaut.
Money—or what seemed to be money—exchanged hands, and the buyer roughly grabbed Jorja off the platform and pushed her at the younger man. He smiled and bent over to look at her lack of hair between her legs, jabbering comments. Jorja cursed at him. The young man picked her up as if she was a child and slung her over his shoulder. He strode away through the crowd. The older man stood there with his wife/slave and watched, puffing his chest with pride.