With rough hands she was pulled out of the darkness.

She emerged from the neoamniotic gel naked and hairless, coughing like a cripple as birth-fluids drained from her nose and mouth. Lashless eyelids blinked spasmodically, trying to focus. Her new world was cold and bright, edged with steel: a medical facility or biological lab, that much she knew. But how she came to be there, she did not know. Her past was a void, her present, only slightly less so.

She was stood on her feet. One of her attendants shone a bright light in her eyes: weakly, she struggled, unable to make sense of the situation, or of herself. More hands opened her mouth, seeking her tongue. Mortification washed over her as she felt a flexible tube enter her mouth and snake down her trachea, suctioning up the last of the fluid. Another attendant hosed her down with warm jets of water, rinsing away the last of the gel. At the same time she felt her wrists and ankles being flexed and rotated. The treatment was brusque, businesslike; not rough, but not really gentle, either. She shivered as they toweled her dry, the rough fabric burring across her exposed nipples, her naked sex. With a final swab they cleared her eyes, so she was able to fully see her handlers... and herself, as she stood reflected in a steel cabinet across the aisle. A sturdily built female in her early twenties, pale skin flushed pink from the scrubbing.

Me? It was the first conscious thought she had. She was nude and hairless, her naked skull as large and vulnerable as a baby's. Her eyes looked dark and bruised. This is who I am?

A sense of wrongness stabbed her. This isn't right. This can't be right. But her handlers were turning her now, making pleased noises and running their white-gloved hands over her soft newborn's skin.

"Perfect."

"Bit uncoordinated."

"They always are, after they're detanked."

Detanked. A vision came to her, a semitransparent pink vat, a dim human figure entombed within, tubes and wires trailing. It will be fully mature when you return, an oily voice had whispered. Ready and waiting for your use. The smell of pink gel, antiseptic and sexual at the same time, a pungent mixture of medicine and musk.

"Did the neural transfer take?"

"We'll know soon enough." Fingers snapped in front of her face, a male voice demanding, "You there. Do you know your name?"

Ghost-thoughts spun away as she tried to grasp them, mocking her: a starship, a binary sun, a raptor's cruelty, a captain's pride... and yet also a nagging worry, as if she was supposed to remember something vitally important, and failed. She eyed the empty vat as if it would give her some clue. But she remembered nothing before her detankment.

A palm struck her roughly across the cheek. "Your name, bitch. Don't you understand me?"

Tears filled her eyes. They should not have called her that. The voice had been sharp, disrespectful. She did not remember much, but she knew she should not be spoken to in that tone of voice, by that class of people. But her name. She wracked her brain, not sure why she felt compelled to obey the sharp inquiry. Memory dug deep, coming up with a first letter and a fumbling series of sounds: A - Arsenae - Alisebeta - Alanys... She opened her mouth, motor skills taking over conscious thought, and with a shaky voice pronounced, "Aleeta."

They laughed, like she had told an amusing joke. They were propelling her forward now in their starched white arms, her own feet pattering uselessly against the tiles. Unbidden, a second sentence escaped her mouth. "Unhand me, scum."

More laughter. She dug her heels in, but her struggles were nothing to them, though she grew stronger and more coordinated by the second. Naked, she was marched down the catwalk, the sharp edges of the grid digging into the tender soles of her feet. "Why are you doing this to me?" she said. "Am I your prisoner?"

"She doesn't know," the hindmost handler said, voice touched with amazement.

"She'll remember soon enough," said another.

"Remember WHAT?" she shouted, her voice rising. She jerked an arm free, her fingers forming a fist.

Black lightning arced through her, and she found herself lying on the floor. Roughly they hauled her up. The tips of her fingers and toes, as well as her scalp, tingled with pain. "Misbehave, and you'll get another dose," the male voice whispered in her ear. "Got it?" She tried to nod, but could only roll her eyes. At the edge of her vision she saw a red-tipped rod approach her throat; before she could protest it discharged over her larynx, flooding it with a sharp, flashing warmth. Her mouth stretched in a shriek but no sound came out.

"Don't bother. I've paralyzed your vocal cords." With a poke in her back he pushed her on. "You're not a starship captain anymore. Remember it."

Tears stung her eyes, but another piece of the puzzle had flashed into place: I am -- was? -- a starship captain. Memory sparked again... an asteroid field, a dance through rock, her ship's twin fusion scoops open wide. Ambition and ruthlessness, cruelty and skill. Behind her trailed a chain of refined ores -- gold and iron, carbon ingots, icebergs of water and ammonia -- while below her, kneeling at the juncture of her thighs, bobbed a dirty-blonde shock of hair, its warm, well-trained mouth servicing her sex with its tongue.

I am Captain Aleeta Dawnslade. The fact came out of nowhere, striking her with its intensity, fanning a stubborn, unburnt pride within her. But why had she been captured, been the victim of these experiments?

And why did this place feel so familiar? Had she been here before?

Her handlers frog-marched her out of the laboratory and into a darkened room. Spotlights shone down on an oval-shaped dais, and on it, a low reclining chair... which was actually more of a frame, with strategically placed pads of black leather and many buckled straps. Again, it looked familiar, but she could not place it. Was it from a former visit to this place? Whether it was for bad or good she could not remember, but her struggles became more energetic as she realized they meant to put her in it.

Her panic rose, and for the first time she felt real fear. Roughly they forced her into the metal frame, strapping her cruciform with her arms stretched to each side. If she hadn't been sure of her status before, she was now. She was a prisoner, put into this strange device to be tortured or executed... with no chance to either defend or exculpate herself. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out; she could only thrust and bounce against the straps. Her back arched, nipples pointing at the ceiling, as her thighs were cranked apart, exposing the wet pinkness of her sex.

If this is torture, at least let me know what I'm being tortured for. Her eyes flashed left and right, looking for a clue from her handlers, but they had disappeared, save for one who went to speak to a stranger who stood at the left edge of the dais. She growled at them, baring her teeth.

"Be quiet." Another stun, applied to her belly this time. Her body jerked upwards and sank down, a pain like burning nettles blooming over her flesh.

The stranger laughed softly. He or she was garbed in black leather, a dark red scarf wound over its head and the lower part of its face. But the eyes gleamed with the intensity of a wolf's.

"Strong. A fighter." The voice was a confidant, musical contralto; it could have been either a man's or a woman's. But there was steel in it, too, and an unpleasant echo of the cold recesses of space. It was also familiar, striking sparks against something deep inside her.

"You would know," said the other.

"Yes, I would know. I still have the scars from the last one." The stranger took a step closer, stretching a gloved hand towards her firm, taut belly.

Oh god, what does this person mean to do to me? She gritted her teeth, but the smooth leather fingers only stroked, tracing a circle around the pink mark where the handler's weapon had struck her. "She's perfect. The temperament, the fire... you've outdone yourselves again." The thumb traced a line towards her mons. She felt the hint of a sharpened fingernail within the leather, and her hips jerked spasmodically.

The stranger laughed, and the hand lifted. "I will take great pleasure in breaking her." The fingers curled in a lazy gesture. "Let's finish the job."

She barely had time to gasp before two halves of a wide metal collar clamped themselves against the sides of her throat, snapping shut with a click. Red-tipped heatpens appeared to solder it shut, the tiny hot sparks hitting the underside of her chin. Four cuffs of a similar metal snapped around her wrists and ankles, the spidery robot arms likewise sealing them shut. The feel of them was solid and cold against her skin. She didn't have to guess what they were for.

She was being enslaved.

She would have howled in rage, if she was able. Slavery had been outlawed for decades in the Alliance; only on outsystem planets, rogue worlds and brigand moons, could slaves be bought and sold. Had she been drugged, kidnapped for this purpose? That could be why she couldn't remember. But it didn't account for the horrible familiarity she felt for this place, or the mingled outrage and indignation that throbbed like poison in her blood.

I'm a starship captain. I can't be made into a slave. There must be some mistake. With horror she saw that each of the dull silver cuffs had a ring attached to it, so she could be coffled or chained... raw human ore, a piece of anonymous slave-meat destined for the markets. Panic hit her again as a new pair of spidery robot arms hovered into view, a pincers-like apparatus on one, a needle on the other. No! This can't be real! It can't!

Before she knew what was happening the septum of her nose had been pierced and a metal ring run through the bleeding hole. She shrieked, but only a squeak came out, and a string of drool that stretched towards the metal grid of the floor, and dropped through it.

"Hurts, doesn't it," the stranger commented.

"Bastard," she whispered as the ring was soldered shut. At least her voice was returning to her.

The stranger's eyes, hazel-green like her own, crinkled slightly, as if he or she was smiling beneath the silk. "You hate me already, don't you. Good."

She glared back defiantly, feeling a trickle of blood worm down her upper lip. It struck her that the stranger was her captor, the one responsible for all this. Yet a current also passed between them, an almost erotic sense of conspiracy, and for a brief second she felt as if they had switched places, so that she was now the one looking down on her strapped, helpless body. And that she was getting not a little aroused by it...

A pair of silver cups suddenly clamped themselves over her nipples, a strong vacuum pulling them erect. At the same time another device gripped her clit, stretching it with modulations of suction. She gave a startled wheeze of pleasure at the violation, hips jerking on the leather cushion. Something gentle yet firm pinched each labia, teasing it from its soft, wet nest, opening her wide. Her breathing quickened, face flushing beet-red. They can't mean to...!

The quintuple stab of pain sent her over the edge. Crimson waves lapped the edges of her vision before the five points of fire were mitigated by a tingling coolness. She opened her eyes to see her nipples, too, had been pierced, the thick metal rings resting heavily on her flesh. And though she could not see it, she knew similar rings now pierced her clit, and the lips of her labia.

Pierced. She felt like weeping with the shame of it. Like a common whore-slave, the ones she had...

"Who are you," she demanded in the loudest voice she could muster. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Don't you know?" the stranger said. A woman's voice, she was sure of it now. "Look at you, lying there helpless and naked, pierced and collared. Can you tell me you do not remember this?"

Memories kaleidoscoped before her: hijacked cargoes, battles and blood, explosions like flowers in the velvet depths of space... as she, Aleeta Dawnslade, pirate captain, brigand, and outsystem freebooter, stood in command on the bridge of her own ship, a whip of thin leather in her hand. Then came a scene outside of time, seeing herself, strapped in this same chair, writhing in the same artificially induced orgasm, knowing that the money, the bribes, had been worth it, because how else could she could possess this piece of delectable, familiar, and most trustworthy flesh. Twenty years she spent making her solitary circuit, and even with longetivity drugs that was too long, too lonely, and simustims got stale fast. No, what she needed was a companion, a nubile bedmate suited to her tastes, tastes developed and nurtured over many long years...

No, this is wrong. It can't be!

The stranger smiled and unwound her veil. And looked down on her, as she looked up at herself: they were the same. "You are my clone," she explained. "Aleeta-6. But you knew that, didn't you?"

Slaves were illegal in the Alliance, but clones were not. A high-end clone, modified in certain ways, was as good as a slave, as she'd found out long ago with Aleeta-2. Clones had no rights; they were the property of those who made them. Her same-cell genetic daughters were known qualities, bright, malleable, and above all, loyal... once they had been properly trained, of course.

She moaned. She knew what that training entailed, for she had full access to the memories of her maker. And she knew that she had been destined to replace Aleeta-5... as the new group of rapidly divided cells, now called Aleeta-7, was destined to replace her, to be detanked and likewise enslaved in twenty years' time, when the original Aleeta revisited this system when her cycle of plunder was complete.

She glared at her maker. You will never train me, bitch. I will fight you every inch of the way. If I can, I will kill you. I don't know how, but I will.

Her maker laughed. And Aleeta-6 knew what she was laughing at, the defiance on her face, because she, like her, had seen it all before, and knew that it was useless.

"Ah, my sweet, sweet daughter. I know what you are thinking. Don't you remember how we trained your predecessors? How they fought so hard, and were broken in the end?" The gloved hand stroked her naked pate, sending shudders through her flesh.

It was all coming back to her now, the chains, the positions, the varied punishments, the mental and sexual conditioning, the whole designed to create a completely submissive, yet intelligent, combination sex toy and second-in-command, one who could switch from total compliance in the bedroom to handling the ship in a crisis if need be... all the while retaining ultimate loyalty to her maker, to die for her, if circumstances called for it. Bored and isolated on her solitary runs, she'd developed the techniques herself, remaining ageless on black market longetivity drugs as the years rolled by.

"Is it masturbation, or sadism?" her maker asked idly, fingers now playing with her nipple. Aleeta-6 gasped as they tugged the ring, sharply, stretching the pink organ like a piece of rubber. "Self-hatred, or self-discipline? Remember how we had that debate with Aleeta-4?"

"I remember," Aleeta-6 said in a strangled tone.

"I prefer now to think of it as self-discipline. One part of me subjugated to serve another."

"I am not you!"

"True," her maker laughed. "I am biologically older than you, after all. But in other particulars we are the same. We decided on that long ago, remember? We are pirates, outlaws. How can you serve me, be part of me, without my skills and ambitions?"

Aleeta-6 ground her teeth as her maker finished with her nipples and moved on to her clit, teasing the tiny protrusion between her thumb and forefinger.

"Of course, the part of my mind that they transferred over will make you that much harder to break... but you, out of all us, should know how we enjoy a challenge."

It was true. Each fresh soul had been a virgin world for her to conquer, a way to occupy her time through long years of transit. Each clone she had trained had only added to her skills, while each trip brought out more of her deviancies... because, in the isolation of space, she had no one to turn to but her latest creation. Her clones were at once an outlet for perversion, and the source of it.

And she had only herself to blame.

Her maker's face glowed with obscene joy. "Oh, how I am looking forward to this!"

Aleeta-6 grunted as a ribbed, cone-shaped object rose between her knees, the tip of it lubricating as it slowly rotated, making the glistening liquid flow down its shaft. Fixedly she stared as it moved slowly forward, aiming at the helpless shaft between her legs. Mewling, she tried to inch her hips away, but there was no purchase to be found. The tip of it bumped her pubic lips, the feel of it surprisingly warm and rubbery. She groaned as it entered her, stretching her vaginal walls uncomfortably. Something tore within her as it continued to drill her, flushing her with a dull pain. Grown in a tank, she'd remained a virgin until this moment. The pain continued to grow as the phallus forced its full length inside her, filling her completely.

God help me, she thought, as a trickle of blood oozed out of her pussy. Tears flowing, she felt her two labial rings lock themselves together, keeping the monster sealed inside her. A training tool, she realized now. One to give pleasure as well as pain.

"There," her maker said brightly. "A gift to remind you of me. And another --" Aleeta-6 squealed as a hot object pressed itself to her left buttock, and withdrew -- "...to remind me of you, everytime I do business. It's our personal seal."

Sobs came again when she realized she'd been branded. She hadn't thought to do that to any of her former clones. Thankfully, anesthetic followed, or else she would have been unable to walk. Still, she was wobbly on her feet as the handler unstrapped her and fastened her wrist cuffs together behind her back. It didn't occur to her to resist. Why bother? Her maker had the power; she was a clone, nothing and no one. The monster waggled inside her as she stumbled forward, pressing against her insides with a disconcerting finality. She knew that it could come to life in an instant, sending her thrashing to the floor, moaning in orgasm or screaming in pain.

Her maker brusquely clipped a chain-link leash to the ring in her nose. The wound there, left untreated, was a humiliating reminder of her status. Unbidden, fresh tears began to pour down her flushed, reddened face.

"Come along, Cunt," her maker said gaily, leading her to the airlock where her -- her former -- ship waited. "That's what you'll be called now. You know I am not so sentimental anymore to let my clones use my name. You'll be staying hairless too. You look so much more submissive that way."

Dully Cunt stumbled up the ramp. Twenty years she was to serve as this woman's -- her own -- sex slave. Twenty years before...

Remembering how she had disposed of Aleeta-5, she screamed.

But her maker pulled her on. The ship's hatch sealed with a hiss. Shortly after that, her training began.

END

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