I'll never forget that day.
We'd been holding ground for nearly two weeks, though I'd be lying if I said I knew exactly how long. Everyone with any real authority had long since been picked off by snipers or... worse. The highest ranking Guardsman left was a lieutenant fresh out of the academy. But we all knew the truth: here, without any officer old enough to grow a mustache and most of the sergeants dead, we were all equal in rank. And soon to be equal in death.
The Dark Eldar, to my knowledge, are generally a smash-and-grab group. They come in, kidnap as many humans as possible for Emperor-knows-what, and leave before any resistance can organize. They're frail as all hell and can't take a tenth of what they can dish out. That's why we lasted as long as we did.
We were defending Queran IV, an old set of ruins from the Dark Age of Technology, or so I heard. As you may have guessed, I'm just a grunt. A private. I'm the girl they send ahead of the baneblade because repainting it when bullets chip its paintjob is more expensive than giving me a funeral.
That's right: I'm a female guardsman. We may be prevented from joining the Officer Corps in any real capacity but I can die alongside my brothers just fine, thanks.
We'd been sent to the ruins along with some Adeptus Mechanicus fellas. No idea what the ruins were, but they were supposed to be some incredible breakthrough in something. These Dark Eldar didn't want us getting it. We should have been better prepared, but we weren't expecting actual trouble.
They started by taking out the ship orbiting the planet, then the ratio tower. The tower tried to get a message out into space, but to my knowledge, it failed. Our salvation would come in a less expected manner. Heh... I'd been kind of hoping to see a space marine. Ah well.
The Dark Eldar were clearly as unprepared as we were. They'd been expecting to take us out quickly, so it must have been surprising when we rolled out the tanks. Those tank guys, they were the ONLY competent people we had. It was a shame when the xenos finally took them down.
The Dark Eldar settled around the ruins, about a half-square-mile, and waited. And we did the same. Neither of us could deal any damage without running into a clusterfuck, but their snipers took out our leadership before our snipers took out theirs (it was such a shame to lose Commissar Lawrence. He'd only executed three of us for heresy).
For weeks, as I said, we were pinned by the Dark Eldar, who were completely clueless in how to get us out once their snipers were dead. The Mechanicus guys, by the way, were working nonstop in some hole they dug in the ruins, and were no help. They wouldn't even repair our busted tanks.
As I said, I have no idea what the Dark Eldar wanted with us. Obviously it was about the ruins because why try to kidnap people who can actually defend themselves?
So, after about two weeks of this, one of the remaining sergeants gets the bright idea to try and negotiate with them, without consulting anyone. He left his post open. I'm almost glad I don't know what the xenos did to him: can you even imagine being at the mercy of those things?
They pour in through the weak spot. We killed as many as we could, but it was over, and we knew it. Their skiffs or whatever the hell burst through and slit the throats of our men perfectly, and a bloodbath ensued. Why was I spared? I suppose the Emperor was just looking after me. No one knows why but him.
Just then, the ground began shaking, and I fell on my ass. From the ground rose something. Human-shaped, but at least a hundred or two hundred feet tall. It was, I later learned, a titan. But not just any titan. A titan co-designed by some human empire from before the Emperor united us and a faction of Dark Eldar. I learned later that both sides betrayed each other and the titan was buried. Remember when I said I didn't know why the xenos were there? I lied. I'm a bitch like that.
So it rises up, yeah? I tumble to the ground, and fall into the hole ITS ass was in, breaking my Emperor-damned arm. If not for what happened later, it'd have taken months to heal. I watch the titan make a lightshow like nothing else. I cannot even describe to you what this was to watch. The xenos scattered, but they were dead. Not a single one survived, I later learned. I hate to admit it, but the Mechanicus guys? Actually came through.
The titan starts walking away, so I scramble to my feet and run after it. "Wait! Wait!" I scream. It stops, looks at me. I mean, it turned around and LOOKED at me. I doubt I could feel smaller without the Emperor himself standing before me.
"Help?" I squeaked out.
A massive hand reached out and plucked me from the ground, depositing me in its torso, in which a hole opened for me to enter. Inside it was, well, science-y. Buttons and lights and shit. You get the idea, right? I'm no scientist.
One of the Mechanicus guys comes out, in his red-rust robe.
"You one of the guardsmen?"
"Yes."
"Thought you were all killed."
"Seems not."
He snorted. He put down his hood, and I realized: he was a she. The hood had muffled her voice and the robe had obscured her gender, but now, with it off, she was pretty attractive, I suppose. Blonde hair, brown eyes, small nose, flush lips. A bit, you know. Cyborg. But you get the idea.
"Come with me." she said. "I'll fix up your arm."
She took me to what I think was the control room. The other Mechanicus guy was there: he, too, was a she. All these weeks they'd been women and I'd had no idea.
"Emperor dammit," said the new one. "I've got the thing up and running, but there's a problem."
"What?" I said.
"The damn thing's FTL radio is down. Permanently. To repair it would take tools that don't exist for light years. Literally. We can move, but we're stuck on this planet for at least years before a slower-than-light radio signal gets to someone who can pick us up and has the time and resources to."
"Resources?"
"Well we're not leaving this titan behind. It's more valuable than half of a damned Forgeworld. This thing could revolutionize titan technology forever."
"Do we have food and water enough to last?" the other one chirped up. She sat me down, found some bandages, and set my bone. Thing was painful as all shit.
"There's a freshwater lake a few miles off and the entire planet is full of edible plant life. Our only problem," she said, looking directly at me. "Is that we have nothing to do but study the titan."
"Isn't that your guys' whole gimmick? Studying technology?"
"Sure, but even we need a break now and then. Amy," she said, talking to the one bandaging me. "We're going to need a pet to pass the time."
"Yeah." Amy sighed, and looked directly at me. "Sorry about this."
"What?"
From a fold in her robe emerged a long metal... tentacle? It hit me over the head and I was instantly knocked out.
I awoke who-knows-how-long later. I was naked, alone, in a steel room. The cold floor was painful to the touch. I opened my eyes blearily, and tried to stand before falling to the ground.
When I fell, I noticed I, well, *clinked* on the ground. I looked to my neck. One of the them had fashioned a strip of metal and wound it around my neck, not tight enough to stop breathing but still tight. It was welded together: I'd never get it off. Attached to it was a tag. I read it.
KARY
That wasn't my name, by the way. In case you were wondering.
"You're awake!" I turned around, and Amy walked in through a door I hadn't seen.
"What's going on?" I asked. "Why am I naked? What's with this collar?"
"Oh, better not talk."
"Why not?" I asked, still lying on the floor, too weak to stand.
She walked over, and bent over me. "Because animals don't talk." She had a newspaper (how?) and whacked me with it.
"Ow!"
She whacked me again. This time I knew not to speak.
"Good girl." she said. "We fixed up your arm; this titan has incredible medical technology."
She turned me over, onto my belly. I became painfully aware of how naked I was, at this point, and how fully-clothed she was.
"Well, Kary, you've been asleep for five hours. Enough time to rest. We're going to start your training immediately."
"What trai--" Another whack.
"Your pet training, of course. Got to get that foul human-acting out of you. Pets aren't people, you know."
She stuck a surprisingly-warm hand into my anus. I screamed. Another whack.
She stood me up on my four limbs. I tried to stand, but she pushed me down again and I was too weak to fight it.
She picked me up (she's MUCH stronger than she looks) and lifted me over her shoulder, taking me into another room. In it was a makeshift treadmill: you could tell they'd taken various bits of other machines and crammed them together to make it. It was already on, I'd guess, two miles an hour.
Amy took a length of wiring (that I learned, later, was much stronger than you'd expect, and essentially unbreakable) and tied it around my collar. She set me down on my hands and knees and placed me before the treadmill.
"Walk."
"I--" Another whack.
"Walk." she commanded. I "stood" where I was.
She sighed, disappointed. Her tentacle emerged again and touched my butt, giving it a slight shock. "Ah!" I moved forward a little, involuntarily.
"Walk, or it'll hurt more."
Hesitatingly, I moved a hand onto the treadmill, and then another. I "walked" on all four, looking at her, wondering what was going on.
"Kary, I--"
"That's not my name." I said, still walking. "It's--"
A shock to my butt again, this time tens times worse than the first. I cried a little.
"We have to get that out of your system." she said.
She tore off a piece of her robe, got another piece of wiring, and turned it into a ballgag, and stuffed into my mouth, tying it around my head. I tried to stop her, but the shocks to my butt were enough to stop me.
I was crying at this point, and had the ballgag (and shocks) not stopped me I would have begged it to stop.
"Listen, Kary." She placed a hand gently on my chin and knelt down, rising my head to see her. "We're going to be bored for the next few years. You're going to be our pet. We're going to break you, and there's nothing you can do stop us. Laura is working on getting us to the lake right now, but she'll be your master just as surely as I will be."
I remember looking at her, incredulous. Was this real?
"Now walk." she said, a prodded my tush.
I walked, oh Emperor, I walked. For fear of my life, for fear of the shocks. I walked. After hours she let me stop. "Now I'm going to blind you."
"Whff?" I tried to say, but was muffled.
She tore off another piece of the robe and used it as a blindfold.
"Keep walking. I'll guide you."
"Nff!" I "screamed" and shook my head. "Nff an afinamfl!"
Electrical prods on my butt, but I resisted.
She sighed. "Oh, Kary. I thought we'd made progress."
Cold steel claws from the tentacle grabbed me by the neck and dragged me to the wall. She removed the blindfold, and looked into my eyes.
"I guess our trust-building exercises will have to wait until tomorrow, then. You've walked for hours, you're exhausted. I suppose I can forgive a little rebellion, but tonight, you're going to bed without supper."
She removed the ballgag, and I bit her.
"Ah!" she shouted, pulling her hand back. I tried to stand, but pain shot through my feet and I fell to the ground.
"That's right," she said, nursing her hand. "I installed some spikes in your feet. They don't hurt if you're not standing, but if you are, the pressure drives them in. Because," and here the newspaper appeared again. "Animals!" WHACK! "Don't!" WHACK! "Stand!" WHACK!
The wall, I now saw, had a hole in it. It looked like it had been a ventilation shaft at ground-level, but the covering had been removed. I couldn't see into it.
She rose me to my four, and forced me in. It had been a ventilation shaft, but about four feet in she'd erected a wall I couldn't pass. Curiously, the floor "rose" to meet the wall, so my head had no maneuvering room.
In the one-by-four foot hole was I. My legs under my belly, my head forward, I realized something. My mouth touched something hard; not the wall. It was attached to the wall, but...
It was a dildo.
Now entirely in the hole, she put the covering back on, but on its interior was another dildo. It plugged into my butt perfectly, and the force of it forced me just slightly further in, and my mouth involuntarily formed around the dildo. I was now nestled perfectly between the two, in the lightless hole in the wall.
"That is your new bed, Kary!" I heard. "I hope you like it! It took me hours to make up properly."
I struggled, of course, but I had no room. No slack. No nothing. I was trapped in a cage, and I couldn't even scream. I couldn't even poop, if I'd wanted. I knew I was in there until Amy took me out. Tears streamed down my face, they still do, at my fate.
And that's why I ordered all of my thoughts like this, you see. "Wrote" it all down in my head. Because I think tomorrow she's going to try to break me properly. Going to feed me, walk me, let me poop when she decides I can. She's going to undo what makes me me, and replace it with an obedient pet. And this is the scary part.
I've been thinking about it, and I think she's going to succeed.