Kidnapped

Charlotte didn't respond, all out of verbal claws. She was too busy, shaking away the funk of recent orgasm and reeling at her monumental bad luck. The Mag-Lev, the madness, {Mrs Oliver}'s wild goose chase mixing family drama and espionage made a huge pile of unlikely disasters. And now, she was to be **** by a band of space pirates. Harold had mentioned his fears of an evil conspiracy trying to rule the world, starting here, but that wouldn't matter for Charlotte much longer. If these creatures wanted her, there was no predicting where in the wide, and cold, and horrifically vast universe they might take her.

On autopilot, she backed away up the steps until stuck against the podium beneath the statue. In silence, the monsters mirrored her move, and huddled around close shutting off all escape. Their leader approached, reaching out towards her, still grinning with his broken fang. He grabbed hold of her and it was all over in an instant - almost. Twisting the shoulders and shoving down was swift and easy. By the time Charlotte was thinking half-coherently again, she was on her knees with her hands tied up behind her back. Meanwhile, a small celebration was held.

"What do you think, boys?" the leader said, "Did we snag a good one or not?"

All but one of his men made rough noises of assent, grunting, growling their approval, even the odd gargled monosyllable that Charlotte couldn't imagine was of the common tongue. From a high, nasal voice came the only intelligible reply: "We got the one, I'll say. The definite article."

"Well said, Taffy. Take her."

Huge gloved paws took hold of her and lifted up, spinning her round on the way. Taffy was the bulkiest of her captors, and under the hood she glimpsed a pale splash of pink before he slung her over his shoulder like a sac of potatoes.

Quarry secured, the group set out, and Charlotte soon discovered how they had appeared out of nowhere. The pack circled the podium until they were behind where the android warlord's statue was facing. Stone scraped against stone, just barely audible now that no one was making loud noises, and a secret door opened. The square was still deserted, the paved ground still mostly ice, with no salting machines in sight, and no lights in the opera house, the municipality buildings or the theatre. No living soul consciously witnessed the abduction.

For Charlotte it was pitch black inside the podium, and when her kidnappers continued on their way without pause she knew they must all be Outworlders of some sort. Their leader was almost certainly native to Ringworld, the wheel-shaped space station orbiting Jupiter. Huge eyes that could see in the dark, pasty complexion, and extra showy fangs were trademark of the living conditions engineered by its inhabitants.

It had been a slow move, over centuries, during the long period that the Solaric Empire took to fragment and collapse. Charlotte had seen rare photographs in history books capturing Ringworld's hydroponic plants before and after the change. In one image, it resembled what was the ideal landscape on Earth, bright green pastures on gently rolling hills, with rivers and streams down the middle, and woodland near the edges. It lay as a long thin strip of land, inside a gigantic transparent tube. The tube formed a ring, making the landscape curve lazily upwards in the distance, so there was no true horizon. The ring had nine arms on the inside holding on to an enormous cage of the same transparent material of impossible strength and resistance to heat. In the cage burned a fusion reactor lighting up and warming a tiny bubble of space, stubbornly fighting the endless darkness and cold to maintain its own miniature habitable zone, just big enough to swallow the station.

The second snapshot in the book had revealed a twisted nightmare of that small pocket of paradise. Forests of misshapen, overgrown bushes with thorns and spikes and snaking stems covered the formerly fertile terrain. The few tall trees rose almost high enough to touch the metal ceiling and scorch themselves on the super-heated isonon surface. You couldn't possibly tell if that had actually happened, because all the foliage appeared black anyway. If any small settlements persisted, they were invisible, smothered by the unruly vegetation. Only the largest artificial structures betrayed a continuing human presence, the giant elevator shafts standing as pillars to support the sky, and hulking control stations sticking out like warts from the walls. And on each metal or otherwise smooth surface, light from the surviving artificial sun bounced blood red.

They took her down a narrow stairway, spiralling into dull blackness, until, at the bottom, another door had to be opened. It's screeching whine on poorly oiled hinges was like an enraged cat's mewling if its strained larynx was made of tin. Beyond, was a large open space, its size showing thanks to a pale phosphorescent glow radiating from stone all around. This chamber widened and ballooned outwards, until the light from the furthest walls was too weak to reach to group. Soon, even sound didn't make it back, and footsteps on the floor did not echo.

At first, Charlotte resolved not to waste energy trying to talk. A huge shoulder was digging into her gut. The fur coat and thick layer of muscle did nothing to dull the edge, so it was strenuous now just to breathe. But now, she could think of her fate without cloud from anger, or pleasure or surprise, and the her odds of survival long term were awful, by her reckoning. Fear swelled inside, a ball of panic further oppressing her diaphragm, making her breaths more and more shallow. She needed a means to procure more air, or suffer the unutterable shame of passing out from simply getting scared. Time to risk speaking out of turn.

"Do we have far to go?" she managed to croak.

"No," the leader said.

"Please can I walk?"

Everyone stopped dead. Charlotte could hear her own heartbeat in her temples, throbbing. The absolute quiet was such that she wondered if the others were also holding their breath, not just her. But no harm came, and the leader called to his giant. "Taffy, let her down."

There was not a word of protest, and suddenly she was sailing backwards off her uncomfortable perch. Her knees buckled on impact, and the same hands that had propelled her down effortlessly stalled her fall. She huffed and panted, finally able to fill her lungs freely, every second expecting that the pirates lose patience and send her back up. They waited however, and only when she spoke her readiness did the group set out again. Charlotte was gently nudged forwards in her first few steps until she was ahead of everyone, walking by the leader's side.

"What are you going to do with me?" she asked.

"What we are to do depends on your cooperation," he said, "Although I suspect there won't be much trouble concerning the principal interests me and my crew might have..."

"I'm not sure I understand..." Charlotte interrupted, but faltered immediately. A hand was touching her, pressing through the layers of cloth until it found her buttocks.

"Your ultimate fate," the leader said as he squeezed her backside, "Is not ours to know."

"Oh," she said.

"In the meantime, let me complete introductions. My name is Olar Skund. You've met my friend Taffy, who carried you, and these other gentlemen make up the rest of my crew. I'm sure you realize by now we are not of this world..."

Charlotte ceased listening, as her little grey cells lit up with sudden, horrifying insights, and her body went limp, carrying her on like an automaton, almost oblivious to any further groping. That offense was trifling compared to all that could follow. Within the alien's cryptic remarks she saw a puzzle completing itself. The pirates had selected her as bounty based on her performance on Kraken Square, the very ploy she'd thought up to drive attention away from herself. They couldn't know she was a newcomer, an outsider, someone not affected by whatever caused the alterations, and so had no reason to think she wasn't an exemplary specimen. And they would continue to think she was "the definite article", as Taffy said, unless she contradicted them, in which case...

"Steady on, little lady..." Olar Skund gripped her waist firmly as she stumbled, her foot splashing in a puddle of liquid. There was liquid water here, and not even particularly cold. She could smell it, a dampness in the air, tinged with the faint flavour of a type of weed that grew in **** low-light conditions. Only half-aware of it before, she now knew they were in one of the canals. Somewhere beside them, she couldn't tell whether left or right, there must be another trench just like the one below her hotel. Depending on when it dried up there might or might not be vestiges of all kinds of structures. There could have been railroads, stacks of storage containers, even the odd house if ever the Burrows were connected to this place.

Another metal door appeared ahead, set into a wall that likely cut short the entire tunnel. This could be because the roof had fallen in ahead and so it was no longer safe to walk in there, or simply because the locks went down here, and all those locations were concreted over systematically. Olar turned the wheel in the door, and it yowled just like the one under the podium. Inside there was no phosphorescent lighting, so he told her "Stairs." Unspoken was the question as to whether she wanted to risk it blind and handless.

The light in the tunnel was too dim to judge from Skund's face whether he would yield, so Charlotte made the bold leap and hoped for the best. "Where am I going to run?" she said, "Untie me."

Taffy scoffed at her, and the other crewmen made similar disapproving growls under their hoods. But Olar Skund ignored them. He turned her gently around, lifted up the cloak, and granted her request. His touch lingered on her body, and he felt her naked flesh under the heavy circle of cloth. In her ear he whispered "Where indeed?"

Charlotte squirmed while he groped her, but said nothing. The words to oust herself as a renegade were on her lips, itching to be given voice, but she wanted to know better what sort of fate awaited her following that revelation. When he let her go she hurried forward, hands outstretched. The door led to another spiraling stairway. They led straight down in utter darkness for a few turns, and then a new light appeared, a deep orange glow bleeding upwards from a source that must be in the next large open space. She arrived at the bottom ahead of the others, with a few seconds spare to behold the bewildering spectacle on this lower level.

Light that was nearly strong enough to make colours distinguishable illuminated another artificial cavern, with a canal traveling in the same direction as the previous one, but much lower, and with a much higher ceiling. Water roared through the trench, a massive torrent rushing by, and there was no sign of where it was coming from, it seemed to burst from the base of the concrete wall covering where the locking gates would have been. Above this roiling, bubbling cauldron, absolutely still in the air as if resting on stone, floated the pirate ship. It was a perfect sphere about forty feet in diametre. Its surface was smooth, utterly unblemished without the slightest trace of wear, and no seams hinting where doors, windows or even gun ports might be. The hull was the source of the light, a translucent material slowly and softly pulsating like a giant jellyfish. This orange blanket of photons pulsing out was warm and soothing, the ship's serene existence clashing with the watery hell raging a dozen few metres below.

The moment of reckoning approached, and Charlotte felt the flow of time accelerate as though dragged and shoved along by the wild racing water in the abandoned canal. Olar and his men arrived. They spoke to the sphere, rousing it from slumber. It pulsed a little faster, and gracefully hovered closer to the group. In its underside a circle opened and a ladder extended. A head appeared inside the opening, another deathly pale alien with huge black holes in his face. Words were thrown back and forth while some of the men climbed the ladder into the ship. Most of the conversation was lost on Charlotte where she stood frozen on the spot trying to make a decision, but she caught the end of it, as attention shifted back towards her.

"The whore's gone," called the man inside the sphere, "She walloped me over the head with a PD rifle and scarpered. I reckon she was planning on it all along too."

"Oh dear," Olar lamented, "I rather hoped she would stay and entertain our guest on the long voyage back home..." He turned to Charlotte and smiled apologetically, but with his disproportionate features and the still inadequate light, all she saw was the same leering grin as before, crooked fangs poised for a vicious bite. She shrank back from him. "I'm afraid you'll be alone with us now," he said, oblivious to her reaction, "At least all the way to the Asteroid. I promise we'll try to keep you occupied."

Taffy came behind her as she was retreating. She tripped into his arms, and he nudged her forwards. "Your turn, now," he said, "Time to leave your little rust-ball behind."

The ladder was warm in her fingers, and throbbed at the same gentle pace as the great round jellyfish above. It soothed Charlotte enough that she could coordinate her limbs to climb about halfway up to the ship, but then she looked to her destination. The other crewmen were waiting there and watching her, hood-less and their heads haloed in the ship's inside lighting. It turned their skin a sickly green hue. The leader of these creatures, with their portholes for eyes and massive canines protruding from closed lips, had just promised to keep her occupied, and all were convinced that in the most intimate domain of activities, she would offer no objection to any of their whims.

"Skund!" she cried, at last, ducking her head under her up-reaching arms to gaze down at the remaining pirates behind her. But more than Olar's and his men's bizarre faces, her attention fell upon the unprotected edge of the walkway that she had just climbed away from, and the slope beneath it, and the masses of water roaring by. Taffy was on the ladder now, and he had to stop because of her. She saw clearly under his hood for the first time when he lifted his head to see why she was not climbing. Every inch of his skin was scarred and lined like a bad painting furiously slashed apart. One eye was bigger than the other. His mouth was pulled open on one side in a permanent snarl. All of his choppers looked razor sharp.

"Yes, dear," the pirate leader called back, "What do you desire?"