I had intended to wait a while on this, but my muse (Picture the Biker Bitch from Hell) dragged this out of me while I was at work. It is about her first attempt to free one of her 'sisters' and in the next segment will introduce the rest of her 'family'. Oh, and all of the things Nigel does to make things go boom? They really work...

How she came to be

Lori wasn't on the bridge, she was the cook today. She stirred the Alfredo sauce, then the linguine. "Almost done."

"Good, I'm perishing here." Nigel commented. "I wish I could cook as well as you do."

"You boil water and the room blows up. Why do you think you're not on the cooking rota, Nigel?" She commented.

"It's just that I like my food spicy."

"You get to eat, then you do dishes. I don't want to have to redecorate again."

"Picky, picky."

She drained the noodles, and pulled down a stack of plate, thrusting them into the man's hands. "You know the drill."

He sighed, setting the places as Lori set the salad bowl, homemade dressing, and fresh made garlic bread on the table. Then she walked out of the galley, headed aft. Ralph was sacked out; so she didn't bother him. Sean was walking through the fusion room, merely noting the readings. On a ship as small as a dispatch boat, you didn't need a standing watch in the major spaces, helm, com and engineering. So you had one who walked through the ship fore and aft, and one on the helm.

"Supper's ready. We should be done before we reach Torch."

"Thanks, skipper." She sighed inwardly. It wasn't that she disliked the three Ballroom ops of her team. It was that they never seemed to loosen up around her. The ones she considered family joked, played, teased, even; in the case of Sasha, did other more intimate things with anyone who would stand still long enough.

She wondered for a moment as she headed forward if it was possible that she had held them at arms length for so long that they just felt she didn't like them. Henry was on the helm, and she promised to bring him his dinner. Nika and Sasha were in their quarters, playing chess.

The game had never appealed to Lori. She believed as a famous fantasy writer of Earth had once said, that it was a microcosm of authoritarian society; the pawns going off and dying while the fat cats sit back and schmooze. As he had commented, if you got the pawns and Rooks together, you could stage a peasant revolt and have the board be a Republic in four moves.

Hiram and Sean were in the small gym. Hiram reminded her of the HD bad guys in prison, working on his upper body with the resistance weights. He did it though to convince other people of how bad ass he was. The guy was one of the four best read on the ship, and his library rivaled her own when it came to the variety of what was in it.

Sean was using the uneven parallel bars, going through a routine that would have looked better if he were a woman competing at a competition. He had once commented that as a child before he had been freed, he had seen a competition where they had teams competing, and always wondered why the men didn't use the uneven bars to compete. Then he would describe how much it hurt if you were a bit too tall when you swung from the upper to scissor around the lower. Like a swimmer or gymnast, his muscles were long and sleek. He looked about as dangerous as a treecat, and to carry that analogy further, he was as dangerous at need.

She headed back, and found the others already seated. Ralph was there, commenting that if he didn't get up now, the others would leave him maybe a crust of bread. Ralph was a stolid hard working man built like an old American football defensive lineman, he hadn't said a complete sentence in a day since she met him, so the entire sentence above was five words, 'don't eat now, won't eat'. She'd made enough for fourteen, which was good because Nika and Ralph were both people who needed the extra reactor mass just to keep from starving. Nika at least set aside a portion for Henry before they started.

There was light chatter as they ate, but again, mainly from her family. She finished, dabbing at her mouth with the napkin. "We'll come over the wall in twenty. Nika, get with everyone and be ready with our stores list. Sasha, you're on com this time. Please, please, please, do not proposition someone over the air this time."

"But he was so fine, skipper!" The woman gave her a gamine grin. "And he was so much fun when we did meet."

"Be that as it may. This is not a Love Boat."

She bowed, tapping her forehead on the table twice. "My captain's wish is my command."

Lori shook her head. Something in Sasha's genetics made her as horny as an Earth bunny, and as fertile. She had once joked that her mother got pregnant at the drop of a zipper. Luckily her implant stopped it. But she practiced every chance she got. The problem was she was also as flighty as a bee, going from flower to flower as if none would ever satisfy her. She had both the hormones and the self control of a teenaged boy.

SS Coral Snake came over the hyper wall, her sails flashing with coruscating colors, then formed her impeller wedges. She surged into motion, headed toward Torch.

Lori went through the usual automatically. Reactor mass, stores required, reactivating the accounts. By the time Ruth Winton's call reached her, she was done.

"Welcome back." The Maven said. "We didn't find two of your line on Good Times." She waited until Lori's face fell. "We found four."

"Wonderful!"

"And one was from your batch. In fact she's number one to your five."

Lori stared at her. She had met only one of her batch before. And that had not been the best thing in her life. It was the first time she had tried to free a slave, and it had almost been her last...

First Attempt

Lori had been transferred to the Geatland as first mate, and of course Henry followed. They were friends, and shared everything. He taught her a love of Celtic poetry as done on Gaia, and she taught him her mother's recipes. Every meal he was hailed as a master chef, he said, because of them.

Geatland ran the Clockwise circle route from Beowulf to Merda, Maya Sector, Erewhon, then back to the Old League and home. A trip that took over a year.

They had stopped at a Verge World named Eyes of Texas. She had wanted to snort. There were seven worlds christened with the name of that State in there somewhere (Including one called Baja Texas, where people who claimed to be of actual Texan Descent were not even allowed). From what she had learned having traded on five of them (Three inside the League), was that the only people the Texans hated more than interlopers, were people from those other worlds that bore the name.

The schisms between them went from the sublime to the ridiculous. Three had broken away because they didn't agree with who should be Rangers, which is the only thing they all agreed on; Rangers were the government officials whether it was elected appointed or hereditary. One planet had been settled by people who thought proper music had not been made since someone named Hank Williams had died for example. She knew it took all kinds to make a galaxy, but some people abuse the privilege.

They had gone to a restaurant in the Outlander's Quarter to celebrate her 43rd birthday. The others of the crew that had come with her had headed back after dinner except for Henry when the captain had called. A couple of the new hires had supposedly gone looking for a rumored illegal casino.

She wanted to curse. No actually, she wanted to rip off the tops of their heads to try to find out what impulse in their brains had made them do something that stupid. Merciful Buddha, as the second officer before, and now first officer, how many times had she given that gotterdamnt speech? Coming from Beowulf, these planets on the Verge were like walking in the slums of Earth. Somewhere shivery to tell your friends about.

That is, if you survived.

She'd tracked them by their local credit plates. The ones used these days back in the League were designed to not allow withdrawals without the person it belonged to either holding it in hand to use, or having a thumbprint with a temperature monitor; which stopped the sadistic types that would steal it and cut off the thumb to take along. This place wasn't even remotely high tech enough for them, so the captain had taken part of their salaries (Issued in port upon request or upon their return home) and put it in prepaid old fashioned magnetic swipe cards with PIN numbers. Better than actual physical cash; because by calling up the bank records, the captain could track them like a hound on the scent.

The trail led to yet another bar in the section that was supposed to be locals only; though like a lot of such places, it was an official 'do not do' that most ignored, though at their own peril. At least they were in civvies, because except for the dock space, uniforms were only permitted for the retinues of the local ranchers and Rangers. She had read about how rival gangs would kill anyone on their 'turf' for wearing the wrong colors back in the old ages of Earth, and she had seen enough of that elsewhere to make her worry. This was one of those places where they still had 'cause of death; because he was stupid' as an acceptable determination before a coroner's inquest, right up there with 'he deserved killin'."

"So they were here for a drink." Henry said coming out. On this station, she wouldn't have even been allowed in the door because she looked so young.

"How drunk were they?"

"Still mobile and relatively coherent according to the barman. Wagner Chen was making sounds about being interested in finding some companionship..."

"Does he even try to keep it in his pants?" She shook her head. He was almost her age, but he thought restraint was either the cuffs a local cop used making an arrest, or a something you used in kinky sex. Then she grinned. "But if this place is like most..."

"Of course it is, in that regard." Henry motioned. "A house of ill repute called the Golden Flower, that way."

"Golden Flower? That's pretty upscale sounding for this neck of the woods."

"Disputes with Yellow Rose of Texas. They threatened to hire a fleet if any one of the other Texans used it."

She shook her head. For some reason, the names of bars hadn't matured with the rest of the species. She had lost count of the bars where singles met named Meet Market, or Dew Drop Inn. "Insanity, thy name is Texas." She commented softly. "Lead on, MacDuff."

"It's 'lay on', Number One."

"I know that, you silly bitch."

The area went from bad to worse in less than three city blocks, though it was only a term people from the ground would hope to understand when on a station. The Golden Flower had a holographic representation of (of course) a yellow rose, and the shill outside the door was ready to give them the spiel even before they moved toward it until he saw Lori.

"Hey, little lady. Only customers allowed inside, and no one under age."

She took out her ID, and showed it to him. "First officer of Geatland out of Beowulf. Two morons from my crew were directed here by a local bar. I've come to collect them."

He ran the card through his scanner. "Well, all right. But have your man here with you at all times. In those clothes, you might be taken for one of the working girls."

"Only until I hurt them enough to leave me alone."

"You'd best find a more... subtle approach." The man was suddenly serious. "If they think you work here, and you hit them, they can hit back."

"What, you don't treat ladies politely here?"

"They're workin, they ain't ladies, if you get my drift."

"I see." On Beowulf they had licensed escorts which was the modern way of having women (Or men) delivered who would supply such services. It was a crime to strike them just as much as it would be if they were people you passed on the street. Worse yet, the escort services reserved the right to blackball you if you were abusive.

The place looked nice, if you like red velvet wall hangings and erotic art. There was a bar with women dressed in everything from an ancient school-marm to a dancing girl of that bygone era when Texas had it's first heyday down to corsets and antique bloomers. A beaded curtain led to another room where the girls actually working a shift would be.

Lori looked around, appalled by the casual pinches and caresses the girls had to put up with. "What kind of woman actually accepts this in this day and age?"

"Those who don't have another trade, Number One. And genetic slaves."

She grimaced. "Yeah. All right, we're going to find these two morons, and send them home. Then we're getting the hell out of here." She took out the flatpics of the crewmen, and went to the bar.

"You're underage, you can't drink." The bartender said the instant he saw her. Again she handed over the ID, followed by the flatpics.

"Ain't seen 'em."

She sighed, pulling out her own cash card. "I am not a jealous wife or daughter. I am the first officer of a Beowulfan ship. These two are not supposed to be out of the Outlander's Quarter. So you would be doing a public service by getting them out of here before there is trouble."

He looked at her for a long moment. "Fifty Pesos."

"Twenty."

"They're your people, not mine. Forty."

She sighed and nodded. "And a couple of drinks, please."

He took the card, scanned it, handed her the PIN pad with the amount of fifty Pesos on it, his bribe and the drinks, and she authorized it. "Table right back there. I'll have the bouncer find them and get them out, once they've finished their... exercises."

She picked up her drink, sipped it, then handed it back. "I don't pay five pesos a shot for watered down whiskey, and neither does he." The bartender traded them out, she sipped, accepted hers, and they moved to the table he had marked.

It didn't take that long. The first one was a kid on his first cruise, and it was only his first time off the reservation, so she only told him to head back to the ship right now, and expect a rocket from the skipper for his indiscretion. Chen didn't have that excuse, and she spent several minutes reading him riot act before sending him on his way. She looked at the half empty glass before her. She hadn't really wanted the damn thing, but in a bar, someone without a glass was immediately suspect. She picked it up, eyes going to the mirror behind the bar, and she froze. She was reflected in the mirror-

-twice. To her left near a man with as the old saying goes, rushin' hands and roamin' fingers, was someone that looked like her. She was smiling, but it was a practiced smile, with no real warmth in it. The smile of someone only doing their job, not because they like the person they're with.

She set the drink down. Henry started to talk, and she waved him to silence. The woman at the bar, stood, brushing the man's hands away with a teasing air; also well practiced, and walked across the room toward the bathrooms.

"Lori?" She was already in pursuit, and it dopplered away as she moved at a fast walk. She pushed the door open, seeing a standard restroom you'd expect anywhere they had indoor plumbing. It was empty at the moment. No doubt they had this only for the rare female customer of such an establishment.

There were two stalls, and she heard the system flushing, then the woman stepped out. She went straight to the mirror, looking at her make up as she washed her hands. It was her, or rather like her namesake, like she would look when she appeared to be forty odd years old. She had the minor lines near her eyes of wrinkles, and those eyes were dead. She was dressed in a Chinese Qipao, cut short enough that there was a flash of black panties and stockings below it. The make up was the garish colors you'd expect from where she worked, and looked layered on like someone had used a trowel. The woman looked up, saw her standing there, and motioned. "The stalls are free."

"I didn't come for that." Lori walked forward. She moved as carefully as someone approaching a feral kitten. "I think you and I have something in common."

The woman merely looked at her. "Unless you're a new hire, the only thing we have in common is our sex." She turned, and froze as Lori touched her shoulder gently. She couldn't think of how to say it, to explain who she was and what this woman she had just met for the first time meant to her. Finally, she stuck out her tongue.

The woman looked at it blankly for a long moment. Then she extended her own. C-21a/51-7/8-9. "Why," she motioned to Lori, then herself. "Why do you look so young?" She touched the corners of her eyes, the furrows on her forehead. Then hesitantly touched the same unmarred places on Lori's face.

"They got me away from it. I was rescued. Now it's your turn." Lori took her shoulders, "Let me save you."

The woman's face fell. "You can't save me. Leave me here, please."

Lori was stunned. "You want to be used like a facial tissue? Just used and discarded" She shook her head. "Come on, I'm getting you out of here."

"No, you can't!" Lori was on autopilot, dragging the woman even as she protested. She got to the bar area, and motioned to Henry who saw the woman with her, and suddenly understood.

"Hey, where you taking my bitch!" The abandoned man howled. The room fell silent. Every eye was on her, but in her righteous fury she wasn't paying attention.

A large man near the door stood, and she glared at him. "If you want to keep your balls, you will get the hell out of my way!" She snarled. He stepped aside, but as she and Henry reached the threshold, they spasmed as a field stunner blasted them into unconsciousness.

Her head felt like what a tennis ball must feel after a brisk match. Besides the bad taste, she also felt as if her tongue had almost been ripped out. Her stomach was not at all happy, and while she had never been stunned before, she had read all of the information she could get about it, since occasionally members of her crew had been stunned. So she wasn't surprised that she felt like vomiting. She fought a rearguard action against the coming explosion.

Someone jerked her up by the neck of her dress, and she lost the battle, spewing all over the indistinct figure in front of her. The man cursed, then a ham like fist slammed her back to the floor.

"Gently, Vince." A voice said. She knew if she ever heard such a smarmy tone with a rich Texas accent again, she'd automatically loathe the speaker. "She isn't going to be much use in my stable if you break her jaw."

"Sorry, Mr. Lomax." She opened her gummy eyes, looking around to find out who had spoken. He was actually a rather attractive man in a suit that would not have looked out of place back home, meaning a lot more upscale than anything she had seen so far. But if the taint of evil could be seen at birth, there would been an infanticide when he was born. He was standing outside the caged enclosure, looking at her speculatively. Then he looked at the IDs he held. "Henry Duchamps of New Dijon, and Lori Pettigrew of Beowulf." He mused. "But that tongue says you're a slave."

"Was." She spat to try to get the taste out of her mouth. "A free citizen of Beowulf since I was eight."

"You aren't on Beowulf." Lomax replied calmly. "You and your man here are in violation of the local law. Attempted theft of private property; my slave Jade." He pointed, and she looked. The woman she had tried to rescue sat in the corner deep in her own misery. "The punishment is fifteen years in the local lock up."

"Fine, take me to court."

"Been and done." He said, smiling. "You've been sentenced, and turned over to me as the wounded party. When you grease the right palms, justice is very swift out here. Your ship has been informed, and has been ordered to depart." The smile widened. "So both of you get a chance to see how the other half lives." His smile grew feral. "And how they die.

"Your friend will get a chance to live, for a while, in my arena. But Jade?" He walked around the cage, hand running over the bars almost lovingly. "Jade, Jade, Jade. I told you the last time that it would be the last." He looked at Lori, and his hate shown for just a moment. "She's tried to escape every chance she got. She was in hospital for six months the last time.

"You would not be alive today if Ranger Bonham had not liked you so much. And this is the thanks he gets." He leaned, hand through the bars, and Jade flinched at his gentle touch. He leaned closer, whispering. "But you're starting to show your age, aren't you? And since you never got Prolong, you'll just wither away until you're as attractive as an apple doll. I'm being merciful actually."

He stood, finally completing the circuit. "Ranger Bonham got the Prolong treatment before he found out about Jade here. She's been his favorite for over thirty years. He even introduce his son to sex with her. But the young man is not as pleased with her. She's too old, too... used. But you did, meaning you'll be as fresh and young as you are now when his grandson gets his first taste, and that boy's grandson.

"But you get a treat first. You get to see what is going to happen to them before I turn you over to my men to be properly broken in." His hatred showed again. "So they can thank you for what is going to happen to them. Vince, bring them." Three men moved to the gate, cuffed them, and brought them out.

Plaza De la Muerte

"My Plaza De la Muerte." Lomax waved from the glassed in box. Below him the seats were filling. "My own little gladiatorial arena, and it's televised in every bar on the station outside the Outlander's Quarter."

"Bloodsports?" Lori couldn't keep the distaste out of her voice. Where ever man went, he took his darker side with him. For every sport where there was some danger, you had ones with the safeguard removed. Instead of boxing, you had bare knuckle boxing sometimes leading to someone being beaten to death. You would have wrestling become a spectator sport with choreographed mayhem, then arrange it to end in serious injury and death instead. Finally it would sink to this. Three thousand years after Rome began to fall apart, they were still throwing men into pits and watching them die for entertainment.

"A big money maker. Every bookie on the station is tied in, and we make money hand over fist." Lomax seemed to enjoy her reaction. He looked past. "Here's what will happen to Jade tomorrow morning for the early show." Below them, a door opened. A woman in the rags of what looked like a uniform was shoved in. She looked around, then up at the filled seats. Someone behind her threw in a short sword, then the door closed. "The last of my revenge on the Manticorans." Lomax commented. "Three years ago, I had sent a consignment of slaves I had on hand to Silesia. The Manticoran Navy captured the ship, freed the slaves, and executed the crew. My crew."

"So an associate who has connections to some of the pirates out here happened to capture a Manticoran merchie. He sold me the crew. Fifty of them. Once a T month I have one brought out, and they face this in repayment for that. I send the HD along to their different embassies and trade legations out here on the Verge, so they know what's happening, and why, but not who is doing it. She's the last of them." Below the woman had picked up the weapon, but as if she'd never held one in her life. As this was happening, the announcer was talking about her; name, rank, ship she had been on when captured. Then the rationalization that she was getting what she deserved just because she was born in Manticore.

Across the arena, another door smoothly opened, and two and a half meters of horror pounced out. A Beowulf Dire-wolf; one of the fiercest predators in the League. The woman screamed, backing into the sealed door behind her, then she spun, dropping the weapon, pounding on the door, screaming for release. Behind her the animal paced angrily, snarling, then he turned toward his victim.

As someone who had spent most of her life on Beowulf, Lori knew what would happen even before it did. Except for nature preserves where people could see the animals via remotes, the Dire-wolf was extinct. Predators on Old Earth over hundreds of thousands of years had learned that killing a human being led to swift retribution. There, except for the old ones too weak to hunt properly, no predator attacked man unless desperate. But it had been less than two millennia for those predators. They had not had time for that Darwinian lesson to passed on the unborn.

Which is why anyone who wanted to enter those preserves to see the animals up close were required to first watch videos of people who had been so foolish before, then sign a release. Like the bears native to North America in their National Parks, the Dire-wolves had learned to recognize that the vehicle was inedible. But if they saw a human in it; as those Earth animals had learned to recognize the coolers people used to transport their food, they were quite capable of ripping the roof off the ground car to get to the meal that had been delivered.

Like any school child, she had watched the take on those remotes, seen the animal in all it's savage beauty in it's native element. But she had been struck by the fact that the Dire-wolf shared one thing in common with Old Earth's domestic cat. Like that smaller animal, it liked to play with it's food before killing it.

Above the arena there were screens with all of the different views. One came from the hall beyond the door she had been thrust through, and you could read the terror in her eyes. While the audience here probably couldn't hear it, she knew that the video feed from that angle probably recorded every word she screamed. The Dire-wolf padded over behind her; she was too busy trying to convince whoever held that camera to let her out to know what was about to happen. He cocked his head, then casually swatted her, opening her back in bloody seams. The woman had locked her fingers on the grill, so it did not fling her across the sandy arena. But she dropped to her knees as her back was broken by that almost gentle blow. Lori looked away until Vince grabbed her chin and forced her to watch.

Jade was standing a few meters away, head down, refusing to look. But as the woman being savaged began to scream in pain, Jade's head went back and she echoed them until the man holding her cuffed her into silence.

It was neither swift nor pretty. The animal broke both of her arms before he could get her away from the grill, and that was early in the 'entertainment'. Finally the woman stopped screaming and writhing away, and the animal became bored. Lori prayed to all the gods of man that the woman had died from blood loss or shock. But as the jaws clamped down ripping open her abdomen, the woman gave one last scream.

Lomax pressed a button on the console before him, and they could hear the crunch of bones, the mewling growl of the Dire-wolf as it fed, the whimpers that blessedly fell silent as the woman died. He turned back to the prisoners. "Tomorrow morning, love. But your friends haven't seen what's going to happen to him yet."