Ain't No Rest for the Wicked
Adventures of the crew of the Ice Lancer
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked
Adventures of the Ice Lancer
Chapter One
A Night on the Town
by RedFox6
Regina 'Reggie' Mors had prepared carefully for her night's excursion into the Rapid City Free Port Zone on Lorgar. The attractive human had first made sure her right arm was fully charged. After doing a function check of the built in concealed weapons, she had spent some time on her makeup, going for the classic easy and sleazy look. Then she'd changed into some of her sluttiest clothes and began making the rounds of dive bars, looking for prey.
She had been lucky that night. After less than an hour in the first bar, twin rabbit morphs, freshmen on break from the local college, had made their move on her. They had been looking for some dangertrim in the dives of the Free Port Zone, and decided she would be suitable for a night's adventure.
After 'allowing' them to convince her with their flattery, and several free drinks, she had taken them back to her cabin on the Ice Lancer, the fast courier ship she was currently crew on. Once there and undressed, she had been truly impressed by their physical attributes. As the night went on, she gained an appreciation for their stamina, skill and quick recovery time, as well as their willingness to try anything. Another plus, they were equally dedicated to ensuring her pleasure as well as their own.
But after hours of almost non stop coupling, it was time to finally end the game.
Lounging on her bed, watching the rather tired looking brothers as they sat across from her, she said, “Well men, it's mornin', almost time to part ways. But before we do, I have a special treat for special people.”
She rose from the bed and crossed to her cabin's mini fridge. Bending over and giving them a good look at her ass, she drew out three bottles of Starflare premium beer.
Turning around, she smiled brightly and said, “I've been saving these for a special occasion, and I think this counts.” Bending over so they got a good look at her breasts, she handed a bottle to each, then opened her own, saying, “To an unforgettable night.”
The two smiled widely, and Carl, or maybe it was Donnie, she couldn't really tell them apart, replied, “We'll never forget this night.” They opened their bottles, raised them in a toast to Reggie, and drank them down.
“No,” she thought, as she watched the Xombex she'd laced their drinks with take effect. “you'll never forget this night.”
She took the bottles from their hands as they sat there, unresponsive. Even flaccid, their cocks were still quite impressive, and she gently petted them, saying, “Pity. I almost wish I could keep you around for myself. But, profit calls.”
Standing up, she quickly donned pants, boots and a shirt.
In a business like tone, she told them, “Stand up and turn around, putting your paws behind your backs.”
Wills totally suppressed, they did as they were told.
Reggie fished around in a drawer for a few seconds, coming up with two sets of plastic restraints.
Once their wrists were secured, she left them standing there while she went through their fones. As expected, they were using cheap burners. Erik's slicer program had no problem with the fones' security, but the twins only had their ID's and a few hundred credits in a debit account on them, with no access to any other accounts they may have had.
Sighing in disappointment, she quickly emptied their accounts, then ordered them to follow her as she left her cabin.
In the hallway, she met Erik Dietrich, carrying a rather exhausted looking squirrel fem over his shoulder, her paws cuffed behind her and her tail drooping between her legs. The human's 200 centimeter height and 136 kilograms made the fem look even smaller than she was.
“Mornin'” he said pleasantly. Looking over the rabbits, he went on, “Looks like you had some good luck. Twins?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And very talented, as well. And full of stamina. Almost wish I could keep them.
“And you?” she asked, looking at the squirrel fem over his shoulder.
“Aw, yes,” he answered with a smile, slapping her naked ass hard, causing her to jerk and moan softly at the pain. “Trust fund baby on college break. Came here for some dangeroso ruterokin' with a sexy rogue. Sweet pie, an' a very talented mouth. Said she didn't want it up the tail 'cause I was too big, so I had to slap her aroun' a bit to convince her.
“Still,” he went on. “Despite her reluctance, whoever buys her will be puppin' her all over. She'll be gettin' all the ruterokin' she wants.”
“Just like these two,” Reggie replied. “They even told me it was a day they'd never forget.”
They laughed together as they headed down to the cargo bay with their captives.
Behind them came, “Wait up.”
Turning, they saw Erik's wife, Jekka, approaching, tugging along a naked human male by a leash attached to his balls. His hands were cuffed behind him and his body was crisscrossed by whip marks, while his dick and balls were swollen and covered in red and purple bruises from repeated strikes from a cane, clearly showing that Jekka had been indulging in her favorite pastime with male prisoners. Even the heavy dose of Xombex couldn't keep all the signs of pain off his face.
Reaching them, she leaned up and kissed her husband, before saying, “The captain was right. Spring Break is the best time to acquire more product here. All these spoiled college kids looking for a cheap thrill. And thinking that they'll be safe in the Free Port Zones just because they're citizens.
“Actually,” she went on with an impish smile. “we're doing Lorgar a favor, removing stupid people from their gene pool.”
Frowning, Reggie asked, “You didn't break it, did you?”
“Oh, no,” Jekka answered, grabbing the man's balls and squeezing them hard, causing him to flinch visibly. “Most of the pain should be gone by the end of the week, and by the time we reach Viky's, all the bruising and swelling will be long gone.”
She twisted the man's balls cruelly, driving him to his knees, before continuing with a smile, “But the psychological trauma will last forever.”
Jekka yanked viciously on the leash, forcing the male to stand up, before saying, “Unfortunately, the ungrateful bastard only had a few hundred credits on his burner. Still, money's money, right?”
At the others' agreement, she went on, “Let's get them stowed in their containers, shall we?”
As they entered the elevator, Jekka continued, “I wonder what tidbit the captain has picked up.”
Exiting the elevator in the cargo bay, they headed for the dozen cylinders lined up against the starboard wall, threading their way between their ground vehicles and various cargo containers. The cylinders were one and a half meters tall and a meter wide. Once locked into one, it was almost impossible for human sized captives to either lie down or stand fully upright, and they could only sit down with their legs pulled up against their chest. The grilled floor had a dual purpose, it allowed waste to exit and increased the discomfort of the captives forced to stand or sit on it. Partway up the wall opposite the door was a 20 centimeter long nozzle for dispensing liquid food. When the light next to it turned green, it was the signal for the captive to take the nozzle into their throat. Only when the captive's nose touched the wall above the nozzle, would it dispense the thick, flavorless emergency rations it was charged with. It dispensed enough for the captive to survive, but not enough to totally alleviate either hunger or thirst.
Between the complete isolation, the cramped conditions, the random feeding times, the extremely bright, shadowless illumination, and the occasional blaring of sirens to disturb what little sleep the captives managed to snatch, it was easy for them to become totally disoriented, losing all sense of time.
Reaching the cylinders, they found the captain waiting for them, a naked human fem kneeling at his feet, her hands zip tied behind her and her eyes slightly glazed from the captain's favorite combination of drugs, Xombex and Maiden's Ruin. Heyboi, his Little Shadow, was standing behind and to his left, dressed in his usual worn and ragged clothing. Metal cuffs on his wrists and ankles matched the collar he wore, and his right hand was never far from the heavy revolver on his hip. Despite the years of working together, and having been told repeatedly by the captain that the crew could be trusted, he still eyed them suspiciously.
Captain Mathias McCarthy himself was standing in a self consciously heroic pose. His uniform was pressed to within a centimeter of its life, his square jaw was clean shaven, his golden blonde hair was elaborately coiffed and braided, and his boots were shined brightly enough to use as a mirror. All in all, he looked like a stereotypically heroic starship captain from a bad tri-dee.
“Well,” he said. “I see that we were all successful last night.”
Looking at Reggie and her two captives, he went on, “Overachieving as usual, I see.”
With a wicked smile, Reggie answered, “Hey. It's not my fault. They came on to me, asked if I was interested in a threesome. How could I refuse such a request from such a handsome couple?”
Raising an eyebrow, she went on, “Looks like you found something tasty as well.”
“Tasty, but rather unimaginative and not very bright,” he answered, contemptuously looking down at his captive.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out an expensive designer fone, saying, “For example, she used her personal fone instead of a burner.”
The crew's various facial and verbal expressions revealed their collective disbelief at the victim's foolishness.
“And she thought oral was the height of naughtiness. Granted, she is quite talented at that. But the thought of having it up her tail horrified her, and she out and out refused. She was still under the impression that she had some say in the matter.
“I managed to convince her otherwise,” he finished with a smirk, tapping the ever present compact slave prod he called his tingler that hung at his belt.
“Not bad, once she gave up and gave in,” he finished, reaching down to ruffle her hair. She gazed up at him vacantly, the drugs still slowing down her thought processes.
Handing the fone to Erik, he went on, “See what you can get out of it.”
Erik took it with a grunted, “See what I can do.”
“Well,” the captain began. “now that we've seen what everyone's procured, let's get our cargo stowed properly for the next few weeks.”
Most of the cylinders were unoccupied, so it didn't take long to get everyone locked up. With the satisfaction of a job well done, the crew went back to their regular duties, making sure the ship was ready to launch when their window came up.
Well before their launch time, they were at their bridge stations, Reggie holding down the pilot's chair while Jekka sat before the sensor station. Mathias of course was in the captain's chair while Heyboi sat behind him, patiently watching and waiting for orders from the captain.
While the others took their seats on the bridge, Erik went back to his post in operations, doing his best to ignore the bio-androne floating in her tank back in the corner. Though he would never admit it, the thing creeped him out. The bio-andrones were artificially grown biological android drones designed to be directly hooked into computer banks to improve efficiency. They were supposed to be blank slates when they were installed, and were not designed to become self aware. He himself wasn't so sure, for sometimes it seemed like the thing was deliberately watching him as he worked.
But despite his misgivings, he had to admit that the computers were running at least thirty percent faster than their listed ratings, making them almost as good as the best military grade computers.
The captain never did say where or how he had acquired this BAD, but from certain looks Mathias gave it, Erik suspected that there was some kind of personal connection. And probably not a friendly one.
He sometimes idly wondered if some of the darker rumors about BADs were true. Specifically, that operations could be performed on actual people turning them into bio-andrones while leaving their consciousness intact, but locked into their minds unable to do anything but helplessly observe whatever their body was doing.
He always dismissed the theory as foolishness. It was too dangerous, and not just that it would be illegal. What if the person inside regained control? If they wanted revenge, they were now in full control of all the vital parts of the ship. It would be so easy to kill the crew, and escape into deep space long before anyone would notice. And even as part of a ground based system, there was so much a BAD could do to sabotage things. Depending on what they were part of, it could run the gamut from ruining a company's finances to destroying facilities and causing massive damage, especially if they were in charge of planetary defense systems. And given that everyone knew that BAD's were non sentient, no one would even think about suspecting them.
While he was doing this, he was automatically scanning his board, checking for any problems. The lack of missiles in the missile bay, the intermittent shorting out of the starboard rear shield generator and the damage done to the targeting system for their port beamer were the only serious problems that came up. They had managed to patch up the rest of the damage, and the repairs were mostly holding, although they would need to visit a proper repair shop to completely fix the ship.
“Captain,” he said as the diagnostic programs finished. “The board is green, we are good to launch. Launch window is in five minutes.”
“Roger that,” McCarthy replied. Then, “Helm, status?”
“Our course and speed are laid in, Captain,” Reggie replied. “Estimate entering hyper in 30 minutes.”
“Our flight corridor is clear, Captain,” Jekka added from the sensor station. “Weather is clear and calm, and visibility is unlimited.”
“Excellent,” Mathias said. “Prepare for launch.”
When their launch time came up, the Ice Lancer lifted off, contragravity propelling the long, sleek lines of their Lakota class ship as they carefully followed their flight path, passing the orbital defenses and patrol ships that made up the extensive Defense Grid of Lorgar.
The trip was uneventful, and 30 minutes later they reached their jump point and made the transition to hyperspace.
The crew went about the procedure for rigging the ship for hyperspace travel. Once everything was locked down and the watch rotation was set, the Captain dismissed them from their stations.
They quickly settled into their shipboard routine. There was routine maintenance to be carried out, PMCS to be performed on their ground vehicles, and system checks all across the board.
Waking up the next morning, Reggie had changed into her workout clothes and headed for the cargo bay.
Once there, she'd warmed up and then spent an hour on the universal workout station, before moving on to her running routine. As she began her laps, Erik came in and began his routine on the UWS. After spending time stretching out, he programmed the weight bar to start at 100 kilos, and began his reps.
Reggie finished the first of her twenty laps around the cargo bay. She began walking the next two laps to cool down, using her PPC to check the cam footage of their captives, especially Carl and Donnie. As expected, the Xombex had worn off and they were all working on some variation of screaming to be released, along with threats about what would happen if they weren't, intermixed with promises of what they'd do to get out. In between they struggled with their restraints, though how they thought that would help them she didn't know.
“How predictable,” she thought, before checking on their longer term prisoner, a female Ke”ala they'd picked up several weeks ago. Ke”ala were very similar to baseline humans, standing two thirds the height of an average human, with olive green skin and large pointed ears that stood out from the sides of their heads. There was a niche market for female Ke”ala, as their green skin and almost cartoonishly large breasts appealed to a certain type of buyer. This one had red hair, uncommon among Ke”ala, but that would only add to her value on the market.
She was a dipper who had tried to lift Erik's wallet in Yanenya, deep in the dense jungle that circled the equator of New Amazon. When Erik had grabbed her, she'd fought back, attempting to escape. Erik had been smiling cruelly at her futile attempts when she nutted him, hard.
He'd gone down, but had managed to hold onto her. A heavy blow with his right fist had stunned her, giving him enough time to recover and beat her unconscious before cuffing her. When the pain had died down enough for him to walk easily, he'd thrown her over his shoulder and carried her back to the Ice Lancer.
Reaching the cargo bay, he'd slapped her awake, stripped her and beaten her some more before brutally raping her. Finished, he'd secured her ankles in plastic restraints with about twenty centimeters of cable between them and locked a shock collar on her neck before tossing her into a cylinder.
Once a day for the first few days, Erik had pulled her out of her cell and beaten and raped her. He'd also disabled the feeding nozzle and set the sirens to go off every twenty minutes, keeping her from sleeping.
Eventually, his 'roid fueled rage had abated, and he'd left her in her cylinder under mostly normal conditions.
By now she had fully recovered from the beatings Erik had given her in the first few days of her captivity, and had spent the last three weeks locked in this cylinder as they traveled towards their favorite slave trader on Thieves' World.
As Reggie watched, the captive was rising up to suck on the food nozzle when her shock collar went off. She stiffened and shuddered as the pain inducers sent waves of unbearable agony through her body. She screamed, silently through the sound proofing, then collapsed to the bottom of the cell when the collar switched off. While she trembled from the aftershocks, the green light next to the food nozzle went off.
Noticing that the collar had been triggered manually, she looked over at Erik. He had paused his workout and was watching his PPC and smiling happily.
“Erik, you truly are a mean, sadistic bastard,” she thought.
Smiling slightly, she went on, “I bet she's regretting trying to dip your pocket. And especially nutting you while trying to escape.”
Finishing her walk, she started her next set of twenty laps, idly thinking about how they hadn't even bothered to find out who she was.
Several days later Erik went to talk to the captain.
“Captain?” he began. “I finished scrapin' her fone. Wasn't as hard as I thought; the security on it was pretty cheap smeg. Kept lookin' for the booby traps and backup security, but there wasn't any.
“Looks like you picked up a good one. Name's Laura Hanneke Vang, of the Vang family back on Lorgar. They got a lotta money, an' influence, pretty high up the social ladder.
“I managed to get data on her personal accounts.” He smiled cruelly and went on, “Stupid slitch even had her access codes on her fone, labeled as access codes and annotated with what they accessed. Convenient, huh?”
After a shared chuckle with the captain, he continued, “When we drop out at Draugluin I'll empty 'em out an' send 'em to some of our lock boxes on Deseret. If'n they don't get flagged by the time we reach Thieves' World, we should make 'bout twelve mil. An' that's after the conversion fees, laundry fees and bribes.
“Course that's Lorgar creds,” he added. “But still, should translate to 'bout a couple mil in crowns.”
“That gets us caught up on our Guild fees, along with some badly needed repairs and upgrades to the ship, plus a full restock and resupply. And should still leave enough for a small payout to everyone,” Mathias said.
Erik grunted in agreement, then continued with a small smile, “Also did some pokin' aroun' on social media. Turns out little miss Laura is a bit of a wild child. Always gettin' inta trouble an' havin' to be bailed outta various scandals by the family. Looks like the biggest payout was aroun' forty million a couple'a years ago. Some incident involvin' a buildin' burnin' down and injurin' several people. The details seem to have been covered up, but it was serious enough to be worth forty mil, so....”
He went on after a pause, “Was thinkin' maybe we could hold her to ransom. I'm assumin' you used Maiden's Ruin on her?”
When the captain nodded, Erik continued, “So that'll muddle her memory for a while. An' a proper dose of N'penthe should make it so she can't recall anythin' that happened to her since.”
“And if we can't come to an equitable agreement,” Mathias said. “we could still sell her, and make a tidy profit off that.”
“Aye,” Erik agreed. “An' we can enjoy her while we're waitin' on an answer. Give her all the ruterokin' she wants, and make sure she's broke in proper like for a sex toy.”
“Sounds good,” Mathias said. “Alright then, start adding the N'penthe to her food for the rest of her trip. We'll work out the rest of the details as we travel.”
He sat back and thought for a moment.
“This will be tricky,” he finally said. “We're going to need time to set things up properly. We should have enough time to work out the details. We won't be able to get back to Lorgar for at least a month or more anyway, depending on how long it takes to refit the ship at Thieves' World.
“Might not be a bad thing,” he went on. “Let the family worry a bit. Maybe make them more amenable to paying.”
“Hafta be careful they can't trace it back to us,” Erik added. “As much money as they have, they could easy buy bounty hunters or assassins, if'n they wanted to. They might even have connections in the Guild that could cause us trouble.
“And dependin' on if'n they was monitorin' her, they could have a good idea of where to look,” he went on, “I didn' find any trackin' programs, so maybe we got lucky there.
“Yes,” the captain agreed. “We'll have to convince them to deposit the money in a dead drop. After we confirm that the money's there and not flagged, then we drop the slitch off and give the location to the family.”
Erik shrugged and said, “We get to Thieves' World, I know some discreet companies that'll sell us some one use Vepans. Won't be cheap, but they'll be untraceable.
“Proof of life'll be the tricky part,” he went on. “Inside of the cylinders are generic enough not to be traceable, so that'll be best for viddy. An' it'll drive home how rough she's havin' it as our 'guest'.
“Course, 'tween the Vepans, dead drop and other miscellaneous fees, it'll cost us a fair few crowns up front. That'll use up any surplus we might have after our expenses fixin' the ship.
“In fact, depending on what prices look like on Thieves' World, we might havta postpone some of the repairs till after we get paid.”
“Still,” Mathias said. “If it's a large enough payment, it'll be more than worth it.
“But we'll have to run a full risk/benefit analysis. Her family might be the type to hold a grudge. And based on their net worth, they could easily spend a small fortune tracking us down, and it wouldn't be more than a line item in their budget.
“Well, we've got plenty of time to work out the details. For now, we need to make sure that our shipment for Danial and Korrigan is in order.”
Erik said. “Just checked it out yesterday. Everythin's sealed tight, an' it's the proper grade an' amount to keep all their workers happy and hooked for the next month or so. Shouldn't have any issues.”
“Excellent,” Mathias replied. “Anything else then?”
“Nah,” Erik replied as he got up to leave. “Just wanted to keep you up to date.”
He left as Mathias went back to his paperwork, already beginning to sketch out how to turn this situation to their advantage.