Chapter Two
Through the Looking Glass

Tia Anlor tried not to limp, favoring her sore right hip as she strained to push the large, heavy breakfast cart out of the turbolift onto the dimness of E-deck. This area, like the rest of the ship, seemed perpetually shrouded, the low light three-quarters of what she considered normal for Aura. Most of the ship's power, she knew, was devoted to weapons control, but she wondered if the humans really wanted it brighter, or if they preferred not to be able to see their privations.

Trembling, she tried to ignore the agony in her right breast from the vicious squeeze Harry Sanders had given her before she'd managed to escape his quarters. Finding the corridor empty for a moment, she risked pushing the cart one handed as she held her left hand to her pain, the agony deep. She clamped her teeth together, not daring to sob but the excruciating pain in her crushed glands wouldn't ease.

The escape had been too near, but that wasn't the worst of the encounter. Sometimes she wished the translator device could be turned off so she didn't have to hear what he'd intended to do to her.

She'd plead that she had to deliver the rest of the breakfasts, particularly to the Officer's deck, and would let them know the reason for her lateness. That was the only way she had managed to escape, but he'd taken his frustration out on her in pain.

But now the 'refuge' she had pretended this deck to be was shown to be a lie, and it became what it really was; a nightmare gauntlet to be traversed as she had to every eight hours. She released her breast, pushing with both hands, knowing she has to move faster.

Gamma/Alpha shift change. Gamma was one thing, they had not been relieved yet and she could just leave their dinners in their quarters. But Alpha shift had not yet started; she'll meet each of those people, and have to deal with over a score of personalities, none of them kind. Most of the Officers were on E deck, and almost all of them were Alphas.

Stopping for a moment, she inspected the pale gray dress, or so her captors called it, her only article of clothing for she didn't even have any shoes, let alone undergarments. Most of the slaves had at least that much; but when it became known that Auran custom gave no consideration to any particular parts of bodies above others, nor to clothing outside the functional and necessary protection against the elements, she was reduced to only the single outer garment. Someone's perverse decision left her without even undergarments, and she determinedly said nothing, never allowing anyone to see how she felt about this. It had been done to hurt her, and to allow that hurt to be known would only satisfy her unseen tormentor.

x

But she took great care to preserve her one article of clothing, and examined it carefully, relieved it was not damaged. She'd been up late sewing it back together along the new 'seam' that ran now from the deep V between her breasts to the hem, and her best efforts were not a strong mending at all. It was true that Aurans had no particular care about clothing beyond the purely functional, and on her world her favorites had usually run to long, flowing styles in floral colorings, but here the garment she was given had become an indispensable necessity. She knew many of the men would not object if she were to remove it, they tried often enough to do it themselves, and yesterday evening one had before satisfying his Terran lusts on her body. But some women objected strongly indeed, and could be very vindictive if she were to expose herself to a man they found desirable.

'Expose herself'. There was the biggest Terran joke of all. How many times had she been forced to submit, not daring to defend herself, to the lustful demands of a ship full of men who cared nothing for her feelings or her will? At least, most of the time, she managed to escape violence through compliance. Most didn't try to hurt her, most just wanted to use her - but there were those who seemed addicted to pain – the pain of others.

Worst of them all, she thought with a shudder, was Lt. Hoshi Sato, the Communications Chief. That woman was a vindictive terror; cruel, merciless, and manipulative. That manipulative nature had led her to ultimately winning the favor of the Captain - and as the 'Captain's Woman' she openly used her position for her own benefit and pleasure. Tia occasionally wondered if Sato spent time thinking of ways to make her life more miserable, but she knew from the others that she was not being particularly singled out.

Sato was just one mean, vindictive karpatchi!

x

It was so different now than when she'd been brought on board. On her home world she had been a highly trained guerrilla warrior battling the Silurians, until she and her team had escaped from the Silurians on one of their own ships.

But that ship had been intercepted, and though they'd won the battle the ship had been decimated and she was the only survivor. When she was found aboard the wrecked ship by Enterprise and brought aboard, she had fought rather than be taken and enslaved again. But every time she fought, they won, most times because the Terrans knew how to deal with resistance, sometimes by sheer numbers alone.

It began with weeks of torment, where any hesitation to obey an order, or any resistance was met with floggings or merciless beatings. She'd tried to use her many skills against people who looked like pale replicas of her own race, but they were viciouls fighters and there were more of them. She'd tried to fight, to resist, and instant beatings were their only response. And each time, after they had reduced her to a bloody, broken and agonized wreck crawling on the floor, she still had to fulfill the commands they'd given her.

Finally, the Terrans did what a planet full of Silurians could not. They broke her.

When life consisted of one merciless beating after another, she began to give in, to submit, to do anything she could to lessen the beatings. Gradually they diminished as she learned compliance, submission, but always there was the threat of more pain, a pain she found she could no longer endure. They'd broken her spirit. They'd broken her courage. Now all her life consisted of was menial drudgery she can never escape, for she'd quickly learned after escaping her captivity on Aura that when the Empire controlled all of space.

Now this was all she had left; work, pain and satisfying the lusts of any man who fancied her for an hour's recreation.

x

She started pushing the heavy cart again, needing a shove to get it started. Decks D & E were her assigned areas; and she rarely made it twice through and around the huge saucer in time. The food was always late from the galley. By the time she was done serving breakfasts and dinners to the changing shifts, she was always late and collected a lot of abuse at the end of her rounds for it. Occasionally, she was relieved it was verbal. Sometimes, and these times she dreaded, it was not. Then there were the days that some delayed her with 'extra demands'.

She stopped in front of the first assigned quarters on E deck, her least favorite, Commander Charles Tucker III, Chief of Engineering. Immediately the scar seared into her left breast twinged in remembered pain. She flashed back to the day he'd scarred her, ordering the doctor never to heal heal it, though the Denobulan Medical Officer did a reasonable job in keeping her other injuries from crippling her.

Tucker had sent for her to come to Engineering, her least favorite place to visit due to the faulty warp shielding that had taken half the man's face, leaving it a hideous mask of burned scar tissue. She'd been in her second week as a captive slave aboard this battleship, and had made the monumentally stupid mistake of refusing his advances, unable to deal with the horror of his visage. An hour later he had summoned her to Engineering. She'd gone in with high trepidation, knowing to expect something unpleasant but having no idea how horrible it was to be.

She remembered with crystal clarity how he'd gripped her throat, slammed her hard into the bulkhead, his one-handed grip strangling her. She couldn't breathe or make a sound against his grip, but she'd already learned well enough not to raise a hand in her own defense. Scores of very thorough, very professional beatings by the MACO soldiers had cured her of that instinctive mistake. Besides, if he was going to strangle her it would only free her of this nightmare.

But then he'd pulled the top of her dress down, exposing her to the gathered men. Scared as she was, she had only expected gang rape or death – one not unusual either here or home and the other a release. But then she saw the small 'T' glowing white at the end of the rod held before her and fear had leaped quickly through terror to panic as she realized what he intended to do.

It was a 'T' junction which had been attached to a metal rod and placed to interrupt the high tension charge across a circuit. The metal was not damaged, but had grown white hot.

He'd aimed just above her left nipple, and before she could raise her hands he'd thrust it in. She heard the loud searing of her flesh and, even against his strangling grip, she'd shrieked! She could smell the horrible stench of burning flesh as her screech ended and, strangled, she could only stand pinned to the wall and feel the terrible agony before everything had gone black.

When she'd woken up on the deck, pain was the first, virtually the only sensation she knew. The letter 'T' had been seared into her flesh, three centimeters tall, black and burnished with golden blood, just above her areola. She had had to put herself back together and stagger out of Engineering as everyone went about his own business, completely ignoring her, the brutalized and branded slave.

That had been, she'd thought, the worst thing she could possibly experience since escaping from the Silurians on Aura, all her friends killed in battle, and she being captured by a salvage crew which had found the derelict ship. That crew had been led by a monstrous Chief Engineer who'd found a beauty and had claimed – and ultimately marked – her for his own.

But that marking had been eight months ago, and she had since learned that there were more and greater, and more varied horrors for her to endure as a member of the slave class on this flagship of the Empire.

x

Now she hesitated in front of the door of this cagrspratch, this monster in human form, trying to work up the courage to enter. He'd tried to mark her as his own, and when he had been overruled by Captain Forrest, he'd gotten far more unpleasant, far more physical.

But her fear of him was overwhelmed only by the knowledge of what awaited her if she was late on her rounds. Taking a tray off the cart, she pressed the annunciation button. A moment later the door slid open. Offering a quick, fervent prayer to Aura, she stepped across the threshold.

"You're late."

For an instant her golden eyes flicked to the tall man dressed in the blue uniform, his face a nightmare. The scars that marked the right side of his face had pulled his eye downward, perpetually half closed, while the radiation had also prematurely grayed a shock of hair on that side of his head. But the scars on his face, frightening though they were, only gave a clear view of the scars in his soul. She cast her eyes down, trying to repress a shudder.

"Well? Put it down," he commanded savagely.

Hurriedly she crossed the room to the table, carefully and quietly set the tray upon it, trying to balance speed with perfection of placement and avoiding any clatter. She did not believe she was late, she kept careful track of the chronometer, but she did not dare contradict him. Just put it down and get out. Don't look at him. Don't show how afraid she was. Just get out!

She left the table, having settled everything perfectly, and hurried across the room to the door, trying not to look like she was running away. "Stop!"

x

She'd made it nearly to the door, to safety, but stopped instantly. She didn't look up from the floor as she fought the trembling that grew in her body. She heard him come closer, saw his feet as he stepped in front of her. "Look at me."

She did not want to do that. She couldn't school her expression, her eyes, enough to hide her fear of, her loathing for, this monster. But she knew what it meant to refuse Charles Tucker's orders.

As hard and ruthless as he was in the domain he ruled as a prince who would be King, he was even more merciless with her.

Slowly her eyes rose as she picked her head up, scanning over his body, up his chest and the collection of silver medals. She didn't know what they were for and never wanted to find out.

Even the uniform seemed designed to inspire terror in those that saw it. What kind of people would adopt as their symbol a sword slicing through their own planet? Or crossed swords almost quartering their own ship? Or a belt bristling with so many weapons it needed a leather shoulder strap to hold it in place?

She looked further up, past the black and triple thin silver epaulets proclaiming his rank, to his face. She wanted to hide how scared she was, but her breath came in short, fast gasps and her chest heaved with her effort not to pass out from the terror.

The scars on the right side of his face which distorted his features, pulling his eye out of place, and the shock of gray hair by that eye, only served to show the distortion within. There was coldness, mercilessness that even many of his crew mates didn't exhibit. It was like he was forever punishing the universe for his disfigurement.

Tia knew one thing about this face; it kept the Terran women away, at least those that had a choice. There were many he could order to comply, or compel in some manner to submit, but she knew no woman came willingly to him.

He knew it too, all too well, and that knowledge fueled the terrible resentment within him. Those he could compel to his bed, and that was every woman below his own rank, never enjoyed the experience.

But worst of all was the way he treated her. With Tia, he barely had to compel or order her submission – he had the right to simply take her and he used it. But even when she gave in to him, mostly to avoid being hurt, there was always that anger, that resentment in him, that found expression in her discomfort, in her pain.

And she knew that he didn't care. He simply did not care. He could have her, use her to work off the tension and resentments of the day, and she could do nothing to prevent it.

She had never faced him over these months when he had not hurt her in some way, until she grew to fear him more than any other being. Worse, he came to represent to her all the horrors of this Empire. Other than the Silurians who had decimated her planet, she did not think she could come to hate another living being, but it was not so.

Tia Anlor truly, passionately hated Charles Tucker!

x

Not daring to look away from the horrible visage of his face, she felt him touch her, his hand close over her right breast. She tried to endure his touch, but her spirit quailed within her. Briefly she tried to imagine, seeing the undamaged side of his face, what he would look like if he were not so horribly scarred. She desperately tried to make herself less afraid, trying to force herself to imagine this.

She stared at that horrible face, though, because she couldn't bear to look at what he was doing to her. He increased the pressure of his hand, steadily squeezing and she cried out, her exclamations sharp, every breath a short cry, so sharp she had to force it out as he squeezed tighter and tighter. She had to endure, didn't dare resist, her fractured breaths cries of sharp pain that increased by the second as he squeezed harder and harder.

Her knees almost buckled and she fought to stand, knowing that if she fell to the floor she'd suffer far worse than this.

She fought the tears, not daring to cry as he squeezed harder still, crushing her breast until, eyes clenched, head back and mouth wide in a silent scream she gave in to agony she dared not voice.

A moment later the agony was gone – and she realized he was just beginning to hurt her!

She felt his hands on the deep 'V' of her gray dress and her fear overwhelmed her. He pulled the material out and as she could bring her head down to look his eyes were cast down. Her gaze fell off his as she dared now to follow his look. He was looking down her dress at her heaving gold tinted breasts, but where others would care about them as a sexual sight, she knew he was just as interested in his mark upon her. She looked up at him, seeing his smile at the view and the merciless glint in his eyes. "Please," she whispered, her voice shuddering in her terror. "Please."

"I think what you've got in there will make a tastier breakfast."

"Please, Commander Tucker," she begged, starting to tremble more. She tried to keep from crying as her terror mounted. "Please don't! I have much more food to deliver. Please, sir!"

"You were mine. You still bear my mark – and you will all your life. He thinks he took you from me, but you are mine." He clenched her left breast tightly, the one Sanders had crushed and this time she did scream, agony vying with overwhelming terror. She cringed, her legs giving out under her. She clamped her mouth shut with one hand, trying not to scream as he squeezed her sensitive flesh crushing her. She longed to be able to fight back, if only she could dare. "Did you go to him? Is that it? Did you ask him to interfere?"

"No, sir. Please. I did nothing." He squeezed tighter and she screamed "I DID NOTHING!"

He released her, and then brought his hand up hard and fast, backhanding her across her right cheek. She cried out as much in fear as pain, her hand going to her stinging face.

"Get it off," he commanded, his voice grating.

She tried to keep from crying, knowing she was lost. How could she stop it?

But if she was late, she was going to be punished. No one down the line cared why she was late, just that she was late. And their punishments …

"Please, Commander. I still have to deliver to Captain For–" She realized her mistake in mentioning his name as she would for others as his hand came up even harder to slap her left cheek, the crack echoing off the close walls as she was knocked a foot back. She regained her footing, trying to cover both cheeks. "Please, Sir. Please!" He advanced on her, fury contorting his already horrible features. He grabbed her right hand, pulling it down. She couldn't evade his left fist as it caught her under her jaw, knocking her to her left to slam into the bulkhead.

x

Momentarily stunned, trying to push back off the bulkhead, she couldn't prevent him from grasping her shoulders, turning her and slamming her backward into the steel. She barely managed to duck her head to keep from being knocked senseless. Still she remembered her 'lessons' and kept her hands down at her sides. He'd kill her if she raised them and maybe that was better!

"Please, sir. Please. Have mer–" He grabbed her collar in a tight, two fisted grip. "No, Please!" she cried, panicking. "I just fix –!" She wailed in torment as the material, barely sewn well enough to hold together under normal wear, parted from collar to hem and was yanked viciously off her shoulders and down her arms to fall to the floor behind her.

She cared less that she was naked than that she would have to complete her rounds with what little, if anything, she could salvage of the garment. "Please, Commander. Please." She did not dare try to cover her body. "When I finish my rounds I'll come back. I promise. Please!"

x

She never saw his right fist before it slammed brutally into her stomach and she doubled over with an agonized, ragged cry.

Tucker grabbed her long golden hair and yanked upward, slammed her head back against the bulkhead. The pain almost made her pass out. Tia stood clutching her stomach, trying to breath. She couldn't get the rhythm back, gasped brokenly, unable to get air into her lungs. She tried to put her hands up as he hit her left breast, than her right, over and over again, his punches pinning her to the wall.

She couldn't defend herself, didn't dare try as he beat her mercilessly as she stood screaming for mercy, screaming for help that would never, ever come. She knew that, as badly as he was beating her body, punishing her in his fury for being taken from him, if she tried to stop it, it would be infinitely worse. Dazed and helpless, she tasted blood flowing back into her mouth, felt it trailing down her face. She was so battered she could not even try to get away, could barely think.

Finally, after an unknown time measured only in pain, he stopped and she fell to her knees, pitching forward to fall upon her face. She was semi-aware of being moved, but could do nothing to prevent it. He turned her over, straddled her waist and she tried to get her hand up an instant before his fist slammed into the right side of her face, snapping her head left. She tasted blood in her mouth an instant before she felt him move off her, and then his hands on her knees shoved her legs apart. "Please, Commander!" she cried through the blood. "Please! I have to deliv–!" She felt him come down hard upon her, pin her to the floor. "PLEASE!" Searing pain, worse than the branding, knifed into her.

Under her shriek the intercom sounded. "Bridge to Tucker. You're late for your shift."

"I'm busy!" he yelled and his thrust ripped another scream from her. From where she lay on the floor, Tia could see the intercom light didn't go out as she kept screaming. Whoever was there was listening to her rape, certainly enjoying it and she couldn't even try to quiet herself or him.

Tucker thrust even harder, her screams echoing through the room as he ripped more pain from her helpless body.

x

When he got up off her, leaving her on the floor; he fixed his uniform and stepped over her bruised and battered body, the door opening and closing a moment later.

Tia Anlor lay still upon the floor, unable to tell one pain from another. She couldn't move, couldn't try to get up. She was beaten so badly, used so brutally, that she could feel nothing but pain. She forced herself to look. Her body was already covered with dozens of bruises, her breasts swollen and burnished. Her face felt wet with golden blood and she could feel more of it flowing from her violated flesh.

And now she was late. She couldn't get up, but she still had a deck of meals to deliver. She was going to be punished for being late, and each person down the line could take what punishments he or she deemed fit.

It didn't matter why she was late.

She was going to be punished for this!

Left alone on Charles Tucker's floor, Tia cried.