Free on board (closed)

[SRP_lover19]

The man wore an old style pea jacket like a cape over his tunic, ready to show the four sleeve rings of a licensed captain if necessary. He also wore it against the chill of the evening mist which obscured most of the landing field. The field was deserted, rarely used, but automated beacons still operated, including the one that recorded his ship as the tradeship Sunflower, owner/operator S. Daniels of the Martian Union. Who any of that was the man didn't know, it was an identity forged by software and guaranteed good for at least a couple of hours. People knew the man as Will -- no middle, no last name -- of nowhere in particular. The ship had once been called Clermont but now it too had no name.

The field was rarely used except for unregistered flights by unlicensed ships whose identity would not stand up to any close examination. The ship itself was hidden under an anti-radiation blanket that would defeat most commercial scanners or satellites -- not military grade versions, but if that happened the gig would be over all too soon.

He was not overly worried. He'd been paid enough -- but not too much to make him suspicious -- to not question why this remote port facility, or the exact nature of the cargo, or, for the moment, even the exact destination.

He heard footsteps well before a figure loomed out of the mist.

It was a woman.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Cexlice Cavanaugh was a woman who needed to escape from the planet she was on the run from her master. She was a slave and she had stole money from her abusive master. She would be beat for any little thing that set him off and she wouldn't even have to be a part of it. She wouldn't mind anything in the realm of bdsm but just getting beat for nothing at all wasn't her idea of fun.

"Are you the one I have hired to tale me off planet?" She asked the man as she walked up to him.

 

[WPackenham]

She emerged from the mist -- more of a girl than a woman, and, to his surprise, obviously a slave, the marks were still visible even though she'd made an effort to disguise them. She was talking, he wasn't paying close attention as his mind raced ahead. Punishments for helping slaves escape in this part of the galaxy were severe, sometimes worse than being the escaped slave.

... take me off planet?"

"Hey, you didn't hire me. You paid an agent to find transport, but the decision is ... look, Miss ... there's nothing in my instructions about transporting slaves, and don't deny it, you're one of them. They'd confiscate this ship if we were caught and I'd be lucky if I weren't condemned into slavery myself."

 

[SRP_lover19]

"No you are unlucky if you even get caught talking to me everything you fear happening will because they will follow the paper trail back to the agency that paid you and thus figure out I paid them. The only thing I can see happening here is you do what you got paid for." She said hoping her bluff worked.

 

[WPackenham]

Her bluff wasn't working. His go-between, the contact he knew as Max, was on the payroll of the army, security services, organized crime, police and customs, otherwise he wouldn't be able to function in this twilight world. Fugitive slaves were hot commodities. Would he risk his livelihood? Running guns was half as dangerous and Max wouldn't handle those, even if the profit was twice that of helping slaves escape.

He idly wondered what she had done to convince him. And he still wasn't sure where she wanted to go.

He stepped closer, to get a better look at her through the mist. A pleasure model of some sort, no doubt. How would he even disguise her? Overalls?

He took her papers, glanced through, looked up, said, "Cexlice, you're going to have to do better than that to convince me".

 

[SRP_lover19]

She seen a couple of port workers and then she said "ok You could take me or I could go over to those people to tell them I am a escaped slave and you took money to take me off plannet."

 

[WPackenham]

"One of those people," he pointed with his eyes at the one who was already staring at them, "is a low level informant for the Security Service and he'd turn you in to move up the food chain. The other was someone he didn't recognize and seemed preoccupied with something else, which made him potentially more dangerous.

"The other one, well, there are worse thing that can happen to an unescorted young lady dockside than being arrested as an escaped slave."

 

[SRP_lover19]

"Well I wonder how far he would move up in the food chain when he turns in a slave and the transporter let's go ask shall we?" She asked faking walking over to the informant.

 

[WPackenham]

"His name is A.C. Mannerheim, Secret Rank is Kustoms Oberinspektor Lower Class, he's 32 and married, two kids and he's on my payroll as well," he said, making up everything as he went along.

He was sure he could bluff his way out of a confrontation with the dockyard hands -- that's what money was for -- and her contract always had the standard degree of plausible deniability, it contained only a vague description of the cargo. But why invite trouble.

"Shall I whistle him up myself?"

 

[SRP_lover19]

"You could and then I could tell them that you and my contact have both received marked stolen money. The ladt time I checked that was a severe crime punishable by slavery to the cheapest and trashiest who're houses." She bluffed hoping that the prospect of a bath is something earned not a luxury you get to keep diseases from spreading.

 

[WPackenham]

"I like you. You're smart. Too smart for your own good, because you're totally bluffing and your very life is in my hands. So let's pretend that I'll honor this contract ... where do you want to go? And wherever that is, you're going to have to pay a lot more than what you've got here. You are a red hot commodity."

 

[SRP_lover19]

"Take me off planet and the laws change surely you know that once you break the atmosphere of a planet the law changes to the space laws that the IGPF set up and the last I checked if a slave gets off a planet that lets people own slaves they are free and cannot be hunted down." She said hoping that knowing this he would lower the price.

 

[WPackenham]

"It's not leaving the atmosphere, it's low orbit -- in most places, that is. But not here. This benighted planet filed reservations to that treaty. Here you could be arrested up to the edge of the solar system and farther out if the police or customs service are in hot pursuit. This isn't the fastest ship in the Known Universe like in those old space operas, Princess. The price isn't coming down, the only question is how much more you're going to pay, and how you plan on paying. So you'd better make up your mind because even this backwater port comes alive after sunrise."

 

[SRP_lover19]

"I don't have anything else to give." She said almost breaking into tears as she could taste freedom and now it is threatening to be taken away.

 

[WPackenham]

He looked at her, that's not exactly true, he thought.

He was a fair man, some said he was a brutal man. He admitted to being fairly brutal. But he'd never, he thought after a moment's reflection, taken a woman without her consent by guile in the context of purely outside coercion. Definitely not on a Friday.

"Ok, he said, "we can figure out all that later. Come along, but there will be Conditions. Yes, conditions that will not be negotiable."

 

[SRP_lover19]

"What are those conditions?" She asked wondering what he had in mind. She didn't know what he had planned for her but it was not going to be like before she escaped she was determined to have a say in what and who she laid with. She was forced to have sex with every alien race imaginable and humans.

 

[WPackenham]

"Smuggling people is not the same as running guns or illegal furs or almost anything else you can think of that can be hidden or, gods forbid, jettisoned into space. Don't look at me like that. I mean dumped with a cargo net and a coded beacon for recovery later."

He was patient, as if he were explaining something to a small child.

"Smuggling people means I have to account for your presence when we're boarded, as we are likely to at some time. So you're going to have to pretend to be crew, for your safety and mine. Meaning, dress like one -- I have some spare slops -- act like one, take orders like one. Cargo space is money, so living space will be crowded, there won't be much, meaning no, privacy."

"That's not asking too much for now, right?"

 

[SRP_lover19]

She shook her head no wanting to leave so she would agree to almost anything he wanted her to do.

 

[WPackenham]

"There's an escape window in about an hour when this field is not covered by observation satellites ... a glitch in the flight operations planning. We'll have to be away by then."

He looked at her outfit and frowned.

"But there are always roving inspection teams, and air surveillance and boarding at some point is a possibility. So you can't wear the outfit of a slave if you are an escaping slave. I imagine you'll want to assume the identity of a crewman, although there are other choices."

He swept his arm forward to where his ship was hidden, helped her up the gangway, the hatch closed automatically and the ship went into automatic preflight and systems check mode.

As he explained, the ship was mostly engine and airless cargo space ("space is money, luxury is not"). There was a single bunk and a double locker, from which he found work overalls that were likely too big for her and a special model identify disc that would format itself to her biometrics.

"Sorry about the lack of privacy, but now get out of that slave costume," he said, not unkindly.

 

[SRP_lover19]

"It's fine." She said as she got undressed revealing her naked body to him. She was used to this by now seeing how she was forced to strip for people all the time.

 

[WPackenham]

He stared for a moment, then caught himself. She undressed casually and showed no embarrassment and managed to display her body but not in a lavacious way. He knew little about the details of sexual slavery but suspected her owner had put her to good use.

The crewman's overalls he had intended to offer were stained with an anti-radiation goop that carried an unpleasant odor. They would clearly not do. He did have a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and a worn pair of deck slippers that would work in a pinch.

"Put on these, instead. If you have to dress for work in a hurry we'll find something else."

Actually not bad, not bad at all, he thought.

His voice softened. "Now then, tell me what skills ... I mean, what other skills you have."

 

[SRP_lover19]

"I don't have any other skills beside sex. I was born into sex slavery it was all I knew when I became of legal age (18)." She said with tears walking up in her eyes. She changed again stripping in front of him once more.

 

[WPackenham]

While sitting on the small bunk bed, and without thinking he stretched out his arm, touched the tears on her face with a finger.

His finger lingered, just a beat too long and he withdrew his hand, quickly.

"And you've done this all your life, you never had a choice of partners?"

 

[SRP_lover19]

"No when you are a slave you do not get s choice at all what you do is either listen or be punished for being disobedient." She answered.

 

[WPackenham]

"You've never had a choice? Never had a partner you wanted to have?"

He gestured her to have sit down

"What will you do when you get out of here"?

 

[SRP_lover19]

"I don't know maybe stay with you." She said to him flirting with him a bit. Though she was a sex slave she still found men attractive.