Firefly

( ][ )( ][ )( ~ ][ ~ )( ][ )( ][ )

Fireflies give off a little light once in a while. What our two heroes could use about now is a lot more than a little light from a firefly. However maybe one little light is all they really need. One soft little glow that says their lives will get better.

( ][ )( ][ )( ~ ][ ~ )( ][ )( ][ )

Chapter one

Rick had been on this planet for the last two days. His ship, like several others, was in an almost underground area and round in shape. Around it was the ability to refuel, do minor maintenance, connect and dump the waste tanks while filling the potable water tanks. Rick had dumped and filled his tanks first thing. His ship didn't use fuel which was mostly meant for smaller ships that never actually left the system unlike what he did routinely. Once those tanks were accounted for he went out to purchase food and fill his kitchen. However, he was so low on food he had to have it delivered which might be today or tomorrow.

It was just his luck as he sat around doing mostly nothing to find out that it was going to be tomorrow. Still they had shown up nice and early so he could still leave today as planned and go get a load of cargo and transport it.

Thanks to getting his kitchen filled early he could go shopping for other things. First on his list were spare parts. It took him two trips because after buying what was on his mind and taking them back to his ship, he stowed them only to find that he'd forgotten something. So cursing at himself for his memory he went back to get what he had missed the first time.

Having taken care of that he could only think of one thing left to get. The place had a casino but he considered those places for suckers. Most of them were unregulated which meant chances of winning were terrible. You had a better chance of losing control of your ship, plunging it into the system's sun, coming out the other side, and finding a guy on the other side offering up a victory cigar.

He skipped that one and went into a clothing store to see if there was something else his apparently bad memory had forgotten. Though as he walked what he did see was an outright and obvious theft attempt. It was just a kid and Rick could only shake his head. He had already observed that this idiot kid had been spotted and was being followed. Until he actually tried to leave the store he was just collecting items. It still wasn't a theft until he tried to leave with them.

Depending on just what that stupid kid did it might mean jail or his life. Being this far out from the core planets meant things were handled differently.

In his world there were six core planets that were patrolled by the Alliance. The Alliance had large military ships that were mostly state of the art. Most of them patrolled the core planets. Those ships took prisoners. They wanted to show that you could be captured and forced to live out your life on a prison moon.

A prison moon was pretty much what it sounded like. It was a moon orbiting a gas giant in one of the six systems. The moon itself was heavily protected. Any ship trying to get in that wasn't an Alliance war ship was challenged. Most of those would turn out to be supply ships.

All the others were attacked and boarded. The result of being that stupid was you ended up on said prison planet without a trial. The moon itself had nothing on it. Only what the prisoners built for themselves.

They hunted for food, and that included cannibalism, as well as hunted for local wildlife. You also would try and plant crops. The moon itself had broken up over time into different factions. There were workers, slaves captured from other factions, and warriors.

Other factions would raid the farms to gain food and that faction fought back. The entire planet was unregulated and the Alliance made sure everyone knew that. Being sent to the moon was a life sentence. The chances of dying of old age were none unless you were already really old when you arrived and even then the chances were still none.

Each faction needed young men to do most of the fighting while everyone else worked at one thing or another.

Plus if you thought the moon was for men only, guess again. Even though the moon was populated mostly by men, there were women on the moon. Most of those became property of the men who were in charge of which ever faction you were leader of.

Even then all the women were effectively sex slaves. A leader would rape her himself or loan her out to other members of his faction in order to gain something with said something being anything he thought would benefit him.

However, there was one thing the Alliance made sure you understood completely. If you were sent to the moon, you went there sterile. Both men and women got snipped. There weren't going to be any children on this moon. Ever!

Rick left this stupid kid and kept looking around. It wasn't until he saw the socks area that it occurred to him he needed socks so he picked out six pairs and went up front to pay for them.

Once out of the shop he stuffed them into a pocket in his coat and kept walking. There was basically one last thing to get. He didn't really need it. It was an indulgence. The question was just what was he going to get and that would be based on the cost.

( ][ )( ][ )( ~ ][ ~ )( ][ )( ][ )

Kate was walking home, carrying what her master/owner had purchased. As normal she was out front which allowed him to walk behind her and watch her ass as she walked. She already knew that if she didn't put enough swing in her hips and act like a slut he would beat her.

She was his property. Kate knew the Alliance didn't like slavery and would force a person to give up his slave(s) if he had any. Though out this far the Alliance always looked the other way.

She and her parents had lived out here all their lives. They had never had much of anything. Just getting food and sometimes even water was difficult and took hard work. You could hunt the local wildlife if you could find any without needing anyone's permission. The problem with that was most of the wildlife had been hunted to near extinction. Then they had hit a bad patch. A really bad patch.

Kate had watched her mother sobbing as she was being taken away. They had sold her to gain something. She didn't even know what it was or how much of it they had gotten for her. Now she was a slave.

Her master, she'd quickly learned, was mean. If she didn't say the word, "Master," she was beaten. If she broke something, she was beaten. If the place wasn't so sparkling clean that you could eat off of it, she was beaten.

Most times of late it was just a slap. In either case it all hurt. She had just the one item to wear and she was barefoot. He didn't buy her anything save for tampons. He had learned his lesson about not providing them and ended up with blood on his floor. While it was his fault, he blamed her. She got to clean up the mess as she had learned to expect but she did find a box of tampons for her to use the next day.

She had also learned that what she ate was what he didn't eat. Even if she didn't like the taste she ate it. She even licked it clean to get every last bit. And the only thing she was allowed to drink was water. That in itself wasn't a problem; all she'd ever had to drink was water, sometimes of questionable quality. At least this was mostly clean. She even drank the water he didn't drink.

As a result she was thin. Granted she had always been thin for as long as she could remember. She could always feel her own ribs and that hadn't changed any since being sold.

Kate was trying to watch where she was going. If she dropped it whatever it was would shatter into a million places and if that happened she knew she would be beaten, probably heavily, once they were home.

Kate was up against the wall so that she really only had to worry about just one side of her. Even then she had been forced to twist her body to protect it more than once.

The latest had her twisting away from some kid who was running the opposite direction. She took a moment to turn to stare at him for being so stupid and trying to get her into trouble. It also allowed her a moment to see her owner staring at her ass as usual.

Turning around since she was still walking she had just enough time to see him, but not much of anything else. He slammed into her hard and just kept on running. However, she lost hold of it, crashed into the wall, then fell to the floor with a million of pieces of what she had been carrying spread out all around her.

"STUPID BITCH!"Her owner only really saw that she had dropped it and fallen to the floor. He'd never really seen the kid that had run past them let alone the person that was right behind him. All he knew or cared about was that she had screwed up.

Kate felt his hand of steel lift her up off the floor and the next thing she felt was his fist striking the side of her face which sent her back down to the floor.

She was whispering on the floor from the pain. "I'm sorry, they hit me." It wasn't her fault. She had been doing her very best to get it home in one piece.

"STUPID BITCH! OF COURSE IT'S YOUR FAULT! …You're not worth the money I paid for you," he yelled. But instead of hitting her again, kicking her, or even lifting her up and making sure she went home so he could beat her even harder, he stomped away. He left her lying on the floor up against the wall whimpering from the pain he had already inflicted and the pain she was sure to come.

Kate actually picked up some of the broken pieces and wondered for a split second if she could figure out a way to put it back together. But she knew it was hopeless. The pieces were sharp, there were so many of them, and people were even stepping on some of them, crushing them into either smaller pieces or into dust. A few even got kicked and went flying down the hallway.

She was dead. For a moment she wondered if that wouldn't be a better end than what was coming her way.

Then suddenly there was a man standing there. His boots had crushed a few more pieces. That sound had Kate looking up at him. The tattoos she had on the top of both of her hands clearly showed that she was a slave. Though that was all they did.

He was wearing what to her looked like a real leather coat that almost reached the floor. His boots were big, heavy-looking, and black in color. He was wearing black gloves and beige pants that he was actually holding up using suspenders. His shirt was a dark burgundy. It didn't look like he had shaved for a couple of days.

Kate preferred men who were close shaved but it looked good on him. He was actually good-looking.

Then she watched him take something out from the inside of his coat and wave it across her. It just kinda beeped softly at her but did nothing else. Then he put it away. "Get up," he told her and grabbed her arm and lifted her up. "This way." He walked her away from where she lived. Kate knew if she didn't show up at home soon he would beat her even harder.

Except she was a slave so she didn't fight him. They didn't go far when Kate found herself being taken into a bar and up to the bartender. "One bottle of single malt scotch and one bottle of Chardonnay." Then he turned to her and looked at her from barefoot to head. He changed his order. "Better make that two bottles of Chardonnay."

Kate saw the bartender set three bottles on the bar and watched as the man paid for them then picked them up one by one and made them disappear into his coat.

"Let's go." He took hold of her arm and began walking fast causing her to stumble for a moment to keep up.

Kate needed to complain but she was a slave and didn't have a voice in this. She counted herself lucky that she had gotten to keep the name her mother had given her instead of something else.

They kept walking and he had a tight grip on her arm. Then suddenly she walked into an area that was open to the sky above after going through an airlock. Once in there she saw a ship. She hadn't seen too many but it looked like a ship to her.

He took her up a ramp and over to the side of the ship. This part looked flimsy and weak. Then he pressed a panel, the door opened, and he took her inside. She watched as that door closed. He input a code on the wall next to the next door and it opened.

He dragged her inside and closed the door behind him. Kate saw a large open space. They were effectively right in the middle. There were things to her right and her left. To her right looked like bunk beds. Beyond that she didn't know. To her left were two places that she had no idea about.

He finally let go of her and she watched as he hung up his coat and walked to his left. "This way."

Kate knew she shouldn't but she was also used to doing what she was told so she followed him. She watched him go around a hole in the floor and one just like it in the ceiling. There were two ways in while the other two sides had railings.

In front she saw three chairs and nothing but glass. He sat down in the middle one that was the farthest forward. The other two metal chairs were on either side and just slightly behind that one.

"Sit down." He patted the chair to his right. Kate stepped up and watched as these screens that were a little small came to life on each side. She looked at the chair he wanted her to sit in and they had screens just like it on both sides. So did the other chair.

He pulled straps over his shoulders one at a time. "Sit down, please," he told her only this time instead of ordering her like she was used to he had said please. No one said please to her, not ever. She sat down and just then she heard noise that she wasn't used to. "Better buckle up." Kate assumed he meant those straps and twisted to find hers. Then she found this round thing to snap them into.

Just as she did they start going straight up as the noise got louder. Soon they were outside and all she saw was the desert that they lived under and lots of sunlight until suddenly the glass got darker.

She also saw he had this tiny thing on his head. That had her looking around and found one just like it. She picked it up and studied his to see how it went on. She had it over her head; there were these things that went over her ears and a short piece that ended before it reached her mouth.

However, now she could hear him talking to someone and he was being talked to in return. Mostly what she got out of it was the word orbit.

Her eyes opened wide. Orbit meant space. He was taking them out into space! She had never in her life been out in space; she wasn't even sure what was out here. Then something about clearance for FTL. The planet disappeared from view and all she saw in front of her was blackness.

As she watched this tunnel formed and they surged into it. "Course set for Denab IV," he said to someone and then everything was silent. It allowed Kate to look at the screens on her chair. There were four of them and each one looked like it showed something different. So she concentrated on one of them. She thought she saw what she took to be a course that they were following.

Another was filled with numbers and colored bars. The next showed what she thought was the planet they had just left behind but there were red dots in various areas. The fourth one she really didn't begin to understand.

Still he was silent so she stayed just as silent and watched. Eventually she watched all of the red dots end up behind them then finally disappear. "Changing course for Telnab station." Kate watched as suddenly the line going somewhere changed to going somewhere else.

"Why?" Kate asked and then clapped a hand over her mouth. She was a slave and didn't have a voice. She didn't have the right to ask questions.

"Rule number one, never tell anyone where you really want to go. Not if you want to avoid trouble." He had actually answered her question and hadn't yelled at her.

"Auto pilot set." He took the thing off his head and hung it up. He followed that with removing all the straps that held him in place and stood up.

"Come on, I'll give you the tour." He actually just stood there and waited for her. Kate hung up head thing where she had found it, finally figured out how to make the straps let go, and stood up. As she did she finally noticed that a lot of the noise was gone.

He stopped at the hole in the floor and ceiling. "One twin B5 rail gun up and another down. They can be fired by computer, which really isn't the best idea but if you have to you have to. They can be fired from the chair using the targeting system which is better or you can climb up or down to man them personally. Usually the best idea.

"Living room and living room." He pointed to either side. "Above this sofa is the video system for movies or watching any local programming if there is any. Movies are all stored in the computer." He kept moving.

"Kitchen on the left and medical on the right," he mentioned. To Kate the kitchen was just this round table with bench seating on maybe three sides and a pole in the middle of the table from floor to ceiling.

Medical didn't look like anything to her. Maybe a few storage bays but that was all. However, he kept walking so she hurried to catch up.

"Cargo bay. Depending on size it comes in through the lone airlock or the floor on either side goes down and you load and lift it back up." He continued walking.

"Sleeping. This is my bunk." He tapped the lower one on the left side. "You can pick one of the others which ever one you like."

A BED!? She slept on a mat on the floor with maybe a pillow if she remembered to snag one from the sofa. He was offering her a real bed. Kate was still stuck on bed until she noticed he was still walking.

"Bathroom with shower on the left and work bench that I use so try not to move anything on it or I'll wonder where it went. Through the door is engineering but you don't have a reason to go back there." Then he moved back to the bed. "Each bed has storage under it even the upper ones." Kate watched as he demonstrated. He pulled out a drawer then watched as it tilted down to show all of the space. "Each bed also has a cabinet to hang clothes in. I've used up both on either end at the moment so you can have one of the other two on the other side."

Not that she had any clothes to hang up or anything to put into the drawer.

Then there was her primary problem. She was a slave and she was on someone else's ship and she was out in space. A simple beating was something she wasn't going to get this time. Her master was going to break something, maybe a lot of somethings. That was if he didn't outright kill her for this.