6: Ladies' Luck

Ever since the first explorations in space, the devices which carried mankind there were designed to be redundant and robust.  Compared to modern, twenty-second century technology, some of the early rockets and capsules were nothing more than tinfoil.  But even then they knew that space was unforgiving.  A disaster on Earth would likely still leave the people involved somewhere they could breath; somewhere they were still relatively warm and not too hot.  Problems in space lead to death, not rescue.

The MultiPod designs are a modern way of dealing with these sorts of issues. Each area of a ship is designed to lock from one to another.  These internal bulkheads are necessary when explosive decompression is a possibility.  But the idea behind the MultiPods is that each of those areas is essentially it’s own ship — it has its own engine, its own life support and it’s own air and armor.  These work to fuel the entire ship, but can be set to run only a local section of the ship if necessary.

The Raptor-class MultiPod ships are even more flexible. The pods are ships themselves, with their own impulse engines.  Used this way they are single-man crews. Separating in that way necessarily underpowers the main ship (which is also becomes much smaller), but allows for more tactical choices for the starship Captain.  The Raven is focused on fighting; the Hawk’s pods are slightly larger transport vehicles; the Kestrel sits between them: more cargo than the Raven, but with small one-man fighters, making it a self-defending merchant, or a long-term skirmisher with plenty of supplies stored on it.

It’s also an excellent pirate ship, which is why the Ladies’ Luck is a MultiPod Kestrel Mark IV.

The joke was that Roxy comes with the ship.  It was true, she loved the ship.  She’d loved it when she first arrived. Her lover then, Lira, had been the engineer, and had seduced Roxy with the story of complicated toys. The best was the ship herself, and she’d taken a job on it, and risen to XO before Shurinko stole it.  When no one was around she’d lean against the bulkhead (naked as always) and feel the gentle hum of the ship, vibrating on her resonant frequency.  Assuming she hadn’t been ordered not to, she’d come that way, a gentle comforting come, nothing like what her Captain could do, but good nevertheless.

So, she loved the ship.  She loved only one thing more, and that was her Mistress, her Captain.  She’d betrayed the ship for her, back when she worked for Yamato, and the Ladies’ Luck had been the Sinister Hand, one of a pair of Kestrels that patrolled the asteroid belt for resources, pirates, or whatever old man Yamato wanted.  They’d set into port for some much needed shore leave, and Roxy had found the one and only lesbian leather bar on the base. 

There didn’t need to be more than one, because she found Captain Amy Shurinko.  The Captain had pegged her immediately, like she knew her every secret.  They’d rented a room, and Shurinko had taken ownership of her.  A leather belt made an impromptu collar, and welts on her back and ass, and an orgasm that swept over her entire body in time to the beats of the belt.  No low soothing vibration that, and no simple comforting come, either.  Instead on that awoke in her a need to be owned, and to be owned by Mistress Amy.

Of course, she’d learned later that Amy had known her every secret, when she agreed to help the captain steal the very ship she was XO on.  “I want to come with you,” was her only condition.  Somehow, Mistress Amy had agreed to it, and they became something more than temptress and pawn.  Now they had been together for years, renaming and refitting the Ladies’ Luck and finding the all-female and capable crew that they had.  Roxy was still the XO, and her Captain gave her a lot of leeway with the ship, but in private — and always on ship, she was Mistress Amy’s willing, loving toy.

And Amy was her owner, and as devoted to her as they both were to the Luck. Amy had other lovers, that was a Mistress’ prerogative.  Roxy didn’t care, because, ultimately, she had two loves as well.  She spent all her time taking care of one or the other, and being taken care of in return.

Roxy reclined in the ship’s control room, monitoring the station network traffic, and the cameras on the ship itself.  Amy had been out all night; that hadn’t been the plan, but it worked for Roxy.  It let her spend a little quality time with her first love.  And things were going well — they had a small cargo lined up.  Small but valuable, which was there normal mode; a few data cubes, where what was on the cubes was what mattered, and speed in travel.  No matter how secure encryption got, hand-carrying data was often more secure.  The girls in engineering had the ship pretty much ready to go, as well. 

The station nets were going wild about some escaped/kidnapped sex clone from one of the older Geneforge labs.  It happened every now and then, clones were by nature intelligent and sometimes the programming didn’t take hold, and they ran.  Or someone decided they wanted to take one who had been trained especially well, or was particularly beautiful.  The holos that the station was dissiminating made her look beautiful, but they were low quality images at best.  What was really interesting about the whole thing was that as the news traveled out into the solar system, rewards for capture had been coming from some other places — and they were offering as much or more than Geneforge.

She loaded the image into the ships computer, and started adding the code to a search and retrieval program that would scour the station’s networks for matches.  She let the little virus out — it ran on the Lady Luck’s internal network, and external cams, and then slowly infiltrated the station. Roxy didn’t expect a hit, really. They weren’t going to be there long enough for her program to get too far.  But who knew? They might get lucky. But they wouldn’t get lucky at all if they didn’t look. You make your own luck, Roxy thought, you just have to be ready for the opportunity.

So Roxy was surprised when she got a hit, and she got it fast.  And she was doubly surprised that her Captain, her owner, was walking right next to the clone.  She pressed a few buttons on the ships communication console, and got a direct encrypted comm link with her Mistress.  “Captain,” she said.  “Are you aware that you are traveling with an escaped or stolen sex clone.”

“Yes,” Shurinko responded.  “She’s our passenger. Ready the ship.”

Roxy let everyone on board know, and sent messages to the two women who spent the evening on station that it was time to head back.  A few more keypresses and she was tapped into the feed from her Mistress’ visor and the surrounding video surveillance equipment.  The clone was more beautiful than Geneforge’s bad hologram implied. The stirring between her legs let Roxy know exactly why it was such a bad hologram. She shook her head.

Time to make some adjustments to protect the ship.  She altered her virus, telling it to remove images of the clone and her Captain from the feeds, quietly dropping them from the image and making sure that no one knew they had ever been there.  A few more changed would erase it from anything that was saving copies.  They’d find the damage, maybe even restore the files, but they’d be gone by then.  Anything to buy them a few hours while they got away.

She, however, captured all the images, and watched the red-haired clone as she moved beside and with her Captain.  They had slept together, Roxy knew.  That was the only way Amy would be doing this. Amy was a strong woman, a wonderful Mistress, but she had a weakness for a good, willing sub.  And this clone, this overly sexy beautiful and indubitably well-trained clone was probably more than just a willing submissive.  It wasn’t something she could be, it was something she was.

Roxy knew she herself was close to that, but it was never that simple. She had two loves, to mistresses.  But she ultimately wanted to be free.  She could be free with the Ladies’ Luck and Mistress Amy, so she was willing to serve them.  This girl, this clone, she would never be truly free, and Roxy couldn’t compete with that.

She saw Amy’s obsession.  Already she was was thinking about it herself. How Mistress would top them both, making them serve each other, making them compete for the right to be with their Mistress; making them fuck each other into oblivion while their Mistress controlled the what and the how much, the where and the when.  It made her nipples harden as she thought about kissing the redhead everywhere and being kissed in return.  And it frightened her.

She couldn’t compete with her, could she? The girl was a clone, made to be what she was.  Roxy just wanted it.  And wanting wasn’t enough, the clone wanted too — with every fiber of her being.  Mistress Amy would tired of her, and cast her aside in favor of this clone.  The thought frightened and excited her.

The normally competent Roxy spent the next fifteen minutes watching her cameras as the clone and captain approached the ship.  One hand was under her shift, teasing her clit.  The other had exposed her breasts, and teased first one nipple then the other.  She was smart enough not to come, not without permission.   But she couldn’t keep her eyes off this person, this sex clone who had entranced her captain, and was entrancing her even now.

The proximity alarms broke her out of her reverie, and she ran down to the lock to open the ship up for her Captain and Mistress.  As the door opened, she felt a tight pit in her stomach as she saw the other woman, dressed in low-G stationer clothes that made her look sexy and trampy at the same time.  But that was just the clothes.  She didn’t look like a tramp or a slut.  But she exuded sexiness, power, and submission all at the same time.  Roxy bit her lip to keep from coming — the earlier stimulation betraying her, along with the return of her Mistress. At the same time, she felt a pang of jealousy pass through her, and take a grip on her heart.

“Roxy,” her Mistress spoke.

“Yes, Mistress,” she said, turning away from the clone, to face her Mistress.

“This is going to be our passenger.  She will be my slave for the trip.”  Amy smiled wryly, and grabbed the redhead’s hair.  The clone’s face went slack, and her eyelids fluttered.  Roxy could see hard nipples through the clone’s shirt.  She understood the effect her Mistress could have.  “That’s how she’s paying for the trip, right?”

“Yes, Mistress,” the clone said.  Her voice sent shivers through Roxy.  Her arousal grew, but she clenched her fists. She didn’t want to be aroused by this woman, this clone. 

“She’s a clone,” Roxy said.  “She’s someone’s property.”  Amy glared at her for a moment, and Roxy added, “Mistress.”

“And we’re pirates,” Amy replied. 

“True,” Roxy said. “There’s a substantial bounty on her. One message and we could get—”

“No,” Shurinko cut her off.  “There will be no messages about her from this ship. She might be considered property here, but she won’t be where we are going.”

“And where, exactly, is that, Captain?” Roxy asked. 

It was proper address, certainly, but not normal for her. Amy arched her brow, and let the clone’s hair go.  “To the Belt,” she said.

“No,” Roxy said.

“No?”

“No.”

Roxy stepped back as her Mistress and Captain strode across the room.  She took a deep breath as Amy’s hand went around her throat, and pressed her against the bulkhead.  “No?” Amy said.  “You dare?”

“It will take months,” Roxy whispered forcefully, the most sound she could make.  “They’ll find us, they’ll hunt us down.”

“It’ll be too late by then,” Amy said.

“Fine for her, but what about us? What will we do when we have to come back here?”

“She’ll be free,” her Mistress reiterated.

Roxy looked into her Mistress’ eyes, and felt a deep sadness.  She could barely breathe, and sucked the air in slowly.  Her program might be able to wipe it all away, hide their tracks.  And maybe not. If not, they would no longer be free, no longer could be free.  She let her glaze flick over to the clone, who stood there watching, aroused by the scene.  And Roxy was aroused, too.  It would be so easy, just submit, just give in, let Amy take care of it all.

But Amy wasn’t her only Mistress.  There was also the ship.

“She’ll never be free,” Roxy said. “She’s the whore they made her, and she’ll always be that whore.  Are you going to be her whore, too?”

Amy’s hand tightened on her throat, and Roxy couldn’t breathe in at all. “Well?” she mouthed, no sound escaping her lips, no air passing at all.  Her Captain threw her down, and Roxy fell to the floor, gasping, catching her breath.  Her tears pooling on the floor as her body was wracked with sobs and a leftover arousal she didn’t know what to do with at all.  When she looked up, the clone and her Captain had gone.

It wasn’t hard to go up to the control room.  It wasn’t hard to cycle through the cameras and find the one for the stateroom she shared with her Captain.  It wasn’t hard to override the block and see and hear everything that went on there.  It wasn’t hard, but it wasn’t wise either.

Her Mistress, her Captain, Amy Shurinko was angry.  Her face was blank, and cold, and intent.  The clone’s ass was covered with stripes from a cane.  Roxy watched as she took the beating that was rightfully hers.  She watched as the clone cried out in pain and moaned in lust as Amy worked her over.  She watched, and she masturbated.

What hold did this clone have on her? What hold did she have on her Mistress?  She was perfect.  That was the problem.  Perfectly submissive, but with backbone and strength.  Perfectly proportioned, symmetrical and round. Her hair shone and glowed, her eyes flashed with intelligence and lust.  Roxy wanted her.  She wanted to lick her pussy until she writhed in orgasm, and to clutch those red tresses against her own cunt while the girl did her.

Her body shook with stress and arousal.  Her hands found her pussy, fingers of one hand inside, fingers of the other pressing against her clit.  She watched as Amy pushed the clone down to her knees, forcing her into oral sex. She flashed on herself there, both sides, on her knees in front of her Mistress; dominating the clone.  Her hands moved faster, and faster.  As her Mistress came, so did she, crying out inside the control room.

She wiped the tears away from her face.  The orgasm had calmed her down, and tears had done the rest.  The clone was sexy; she wanted her, wanted to keep her.  But the ship could never survive. The trip to the Belt would take months, during which they would be trackable, findable.  There were already people in the Belt who wanted the clone.  They’d be there, waiting.

And her Mistress would fight.  In a few months she wouldn’t want to give up the clone, wouldn’t want to deliver her anywhere.  She’d be crew.  And Roxy knew that, by then, she’d be replaced.

There was only one choice that would keep them safe.  And maybe her Mistress would forgive her.  It was the wisest thing to do.  She quickly composed the message, and set it on a timer. 

She watched her Mistress fuck the clone, and cried for all she’d lost from her betrayal.