Q&A Ch. 02

Chapter 2: The Tar-Baby

Little black Satin Heart wasn't named for her skin. Satin's skin was white as snow. Her eyes were wells of black that sucked you in like gravity.

And everywhere that Satin went mayhem was sure to ensue. She had promised herself that. Satin enjoyed killing people; but only bad people; only psykers; wolves in human skins. It was her job. Right at that instant Satin was enjoying being dead.

It's peaceful, she thought, unconsciously grinding her pelvis into that lapping warmth, that lashing tongue whose implications had not yet dawned on her.

If I am dead, why does this feel so heavenly sweet? Satin Heart had never expected heaven. She hoped for blackness, nothing more.

Why am I so sure I am dead?

The end: Actinic fire blossoming at the needle tips of a dozen charge-guns pointed at her chest; fault of the psyker-scum pirates that had burst into her cabin as she clawed herself out of sleep, scrabbling for her gun; fault of the proximity alarm that she had ignored long seconds in her slumber; fault of the tedious off-world errand that had absolutely no opportunity of action, danger or death; never knowing that this was the time the Wolf would get her.

But had he finished with her? Could death be that easy? Was death far enough?

The weapons might have been set to stun. Then she would be alive, wouldn't she? That thought terrified her. She clung to her delusion a few desperate breaths longer.

Satin woke with a gasp in a darkened bunk-space. She couldn't move. She struggled against her bondage, had been even before she woke, bare skin against that strange slickness that touched every part of her; a sensation she could not yet place. It caressed her face too, everywhere but her lips and eyes.

Her eyes traveled down her shiny black-clad sides to where the strange material opened once more, and there was a psyker-girl licking Satin's baby bare cunt with a tar-black tongue.

Satin tried to scream but it all became tangled in a breathy moan. Breathe in then scream, girl! That simple plan was beyond her. The tar-black tongue would not stop. The sensation was cresting now, poised above her like a curling wave. She gained her voice just as she was crushed beneath its fury, and the lungful of air was spent announcing just how thoroughly she had been despoiled by the psyker girl.

Shuddering to silence.

Satin fixed her assailant with those eyes that had watched many a psyker die, waiting for her breath to calm enough for speech. "There is going to be an axe-man at the end of this tale", she told the psyker. "I bet your life on it."

The psyker girl blew some damp brown strands from her face, rolled her eyes as if she had heard it all before. She twisted to shout over a pale naked shoulder: "Hey ev-rybodeee, sheeeee's baaaack…"

A new shape leant over her, Dark carmel skin. Spikey black hair. Second in command, according to her collar studs. "And glad to be back, by the sound of it."

Satin's mind was in turmoil, but she had the wits to bite her tongue and keep silent. She would get a chance to kill them, or she would not. If not… Precisely as her mind took that turning, she felt a hand placed on her trembling belly. "Name's Quill," said the second-in-command.

That was too much. "You don't talk to me!"

"We talk to you honey, you just don't listen." Quill said.

Laughter echoed back to her. Several women had gathered.

For a moment the proximity of all those psykers and half-breeds almost drove Satin to hysteria, but she contained it by retreating within herself. The strange black material helped somehow. She felt insulated by it.

It clung to her like a second skin, Glossy black but too smooth to be latex. Smooth as wet tar but it wasn't wet.. Metal studs she recognized as CPUs dotted faint seams. Smart-cloth?

Satin recognized the material with a start. They had bound her in a tar-baby!

Reich Police used tar-babies to bind psykers. Satin had restrained a few that way herself, although she avoided the missions that involved bringing back a target alive. Perhaps the psykers thought this would shake her, some sort of psychological trick: treating her like this. They were wrong. Just as it kept psyker minds in, it could also keep psyker minds out. Satin often wore a jacket and mask of a similar material to keep them out of her head. When she was on missions. When she slept. That was part of the reason they called her 'Little Black'.

Behind her mask, Satin smirked. Score one to me, she thought. Cocooned in that material she felt irrationally safe. The illusion was enough for now. It let her think, and plan, surveying the outside world and sorting its' sensations into data dispassionately.

"Keep her warmed up." Said Quill. "I will inform the captain that our sleeping beauty has awoken."

"My tongue's tired," the girl with the tar black tongue complained once Quill had left. Another girl took her place, touching the tar-baby material around Satin's crotch briefly to instruct it to retreat further. Then the new girl began to kiss and lick. The long hair of her Mohawk brushed against Satin's newly naked belly.

It doesn't matter, Satin told herself desperately at this new assault. That's the dirtiest part of me. It's distant. It's right down there. They're not inside my mind and that's what matters. Satin preserved her distance. Even when the girl with the black tongue recovered enough to instruct the tar-baby to surrender one white breast to the cool air, and began to tease the nipple with her lips and teeth. The nipple puckered and hardened but she was still safe, observing from a remote place the strange things that people do.

Her arms were glued to her sides, quite literally. The tar-baby material had been instructed to fuse all the way down to her wrists. Her captors could change that in a second if they found a use for her arms. She had one or two herself but Satin doubted the pirates cared for her intentions.

Her hands flexed and clenched with each assault, fingers scrabbled ineffectually against the slick black of her thighs. Her legs were wrapped around the bunk. Tied, somehow. Satin tested the bonds. No good. She couldn't even throw off the rhythm of that girl's relentless tongue.

Concentrate on something else. Satin recognized the deep thrum of a U999 class Reich starship. A 'U-boat': old and discontinued but popular enough among pirates and traders that favored speed over cargo. At a quarter klick in length the U999 was about the smallest starship ever made. Starship. That meant there had to be a Displacer lurking on board somewhere, a Displacer psyker. Satin shivered.

Other than the two girls working on her, Satin could see one or two others watching, a couple sprawled together in sleep and one reading a comic in a overhead bunk. Some girl was muttering somewhere. Satin tried to ignore her tormentors enough to catch the words:

"She wants you to space the fucker. Pop Satin in the head and Flush the fucker out the airlock. She wants you to bind her up in Satin's place and lick her instead. She wants you to mess with her with ice cubes and stuff. She wants.."

The mutter sounded deranged. Satin twisted her head to see the source. The girl was sitting on a bunk between two others, and watching her distrustfully. Her shirt was half off and a pair of crew-girls were touching and stroking her. The girl was a pure-breed; Aryan with bleached short curls adding to the effect.

"She doesn't like Satin looking at her," the Aryan girl said, speaking of herself in the third person, apparently.

The two crew-girls ignored her mutter; nor did the center of their attention seem very ashamed by it. Some sort of affliction, Satin guessed. Then gasped as that damned tongue almost got to her again. Her tormentors were not distracted from their goal either.

The crew must all be used to the Aryan girls' condition. Maybe that was why she permitted their molestations. Back home she'd be spayed if the condition were genetic, a breeder if it was head trauma. Perhaps she preferred to be ships pet to a tribe of psykers.

Any sympathy Satin had for the pathetic girl died quickly at that thought. "Tell her from me," Satin hissed at the girl, "that when your precious psyker crew slip up and I get free, I'll choke that stinking race traitor on her own blood."

One of the two playing with the slave girl, a redhead with no obvious deformity, huffed in annoyance. "Anna Jane follow," she instructed, pulling the Aryan girl away by her shirttails. With obvious effort Anna quelled her inane mutter long enough to turn to Satin and speak a few laborious words.

"You've one solid redeeming feature, 'Satin'. You're a crazy fucked up psychotic bitch."

The redhead laughed as the three departed. "Your speech is getting better, Anna. Now we are going to take you back to my cabin and give you singing lessons."

Anna was saying "Fucking bitch fucking bitch," violently as if she had spent all her control with that one sentence; but she was looking at the redhead coyly and her shoulders were relaxed as they stepped out of view. And Anna labeled Satin fucked up?

The face of the black-tongued girl intruded. "Don't mind Anna," she said. "We did that to her. Then we decided to keep her. You wouldn't be here with us if it weren't for her. So really you should be grateful."

For a moment there was an icy silence; should have been, but for the ceaseless licking of the Mohawk girl, the giggles of the diminishing audience of crew-girls; the scratchy sound as a bored crew-girl turned a page of her comic. It was hard to maintain an icy silence of one.

Satin just stared at her for a second. "What did you say?" (Lick, lick, went the girl with the Mohawk.)

"We did that thing to her head getting the information out. So we could identify. you and intercept your shuttle without blazing ions all over sol-system. My name's Toys, by the way."

Satin just stared. (It didn't slow what they were doing to her. That went on.)

"I guess you are not ready yet, but I really want to kiss you when you do that stare."

Satin felt a scream building up inside her, and this time she was not remotely in control. So she screamed and howled her throat hoarse. It didn't stop the girl with the Mohawk teasing her clit or even the black-tongued girl from grinning down at her as she traced that one exposed breast. It did help in one way. When she couldn't scream anymore she couldn't expose anymore of herself in front of her captors. She was contained once more. When next she came, she barely made a whimper.

***

The girl with the tar-black tongue was called 'Toys', Satin discovered. The source of her nickname was soon to be made apparent. Toys had a knack for invention.

"Hey Satin, ever seen one of these before?" Toys was holding some sort of sick strap-on toy, squeezing lubricant from a tube onto each of the inward-facing chrome protuberances. Satin said nothing.

"No? That's because you never did much EVA. It's the plumbing double catheter for a gal's spacesuit. Let me show you how it attaches. Lift her butt up, Mo."

The girl with the Mohawk was stronger than she looked. And that wasn't a normal piece of spacesuit plumbing. No way would a working girl have something that big pushed up inside her all day.

"You may have noticed I've made some modifications," Toys was explaining as she eased the smaller probe into Satin's ass. The other she slid deep into Satin's vagina. Satin could not resist their entry regardless of how hard she clenched down. They were just too frictionless. A belt around her hips and another between her legs held both probes snuggly inside her. Toys instructed the Tar-baby to close over it by tracing a symbol on the material over Satin's belly. The only sign of what was hidden beneath was a circular plug where the lip of the vaginal probe exited, sealed on all sides by the Tar-baby.

"That's some grip you have, Satin," Toys was saying, examining some readings in a notepad. "You see, I can read it off here, along with your temperature, your pulse, etcetera. But that's not all." She touched a key, and Satin spasmed as pleasure racked her.

Toys straddled the convulsing Satin bound in the Tar-baby. "Relax. Relax and it will stop."

Satin forced her limbs to relax. Eventually the jolts and the spasms subsided.

"See? When you grip down it delivers a neural shock. A pleasurable one. That's a low setting. It only threw you cause you struggled."

Calling it a neural shock was a strange piece of modesty. It had felt like nerve-tickler porn fast-forwarded into a blip. Tongues and hands and lips and then climax. Ticklers plugged into the head, not into your cunt. Dreams turn out easier to share than raw physical input. Satin wondered whom they had recorded that experience off.

Satin's first attempt to speak triggered the device again, just lightly, but enough to transform cold threat to embarrassing squeak. She relaxed, and began again more carefully. "Why?"

"Well for starters my tongue was getting tired." Toys laughed but said no more. Satin would not lower herself further by asking twice. It was a mistake to speak to the psykers at all. They were just playing games with her. Let them take their time with her. She had games to play too, and they only needed a couple of second's freedom.

"You're getting that look again," Toys laughed. "I don't think we'll be making any more progress today. You'll sleep better after you get some exercise." She pushed a key on the notepad again and Satin was inflicted with jolts of pleasure once more.

"Now it'll keep going until you're just too tired to squeeze down," Satin heard Toys say. It was true. The slightest tremor would trigger it now. Toys must have increased the sensitivity. Satin squirmed helplessly in her bondage. The constant stimulation made her skin super sensitive and even the almost frictionless touch of the tar-baby material against her breasts and thighs was driving her wild.

They untied her ankles after a few minutes, but the spasms had sapped her control of her limbs. Toys lay down next to Satin, pulled her close so she could stroke Satin's side. The strange material transmitted the sensation of her fingernails through to Satin's flesh as if she were naked.

Only when the convulsions had exhausted her almost to the point of sleep was her response weak enough to escape further jolts. Toys was with her all the time, talking to her, stroking her. Even when she did sleep, it was punctuated by sudden blasts of pleasure. All her dreams were wetly erotic.

The wolf was still there, but he was always there in little black Satin Heart's dreams. Tonight he couldn't get close, though she couldn't run either. He would have to chew through an orgy of warm bodies to reach her in the dreams she had that night.

Morning came like the falling of an axe. "Mama!" Satin woke with a cry. She was still tangled in the arms of Toys and Mo'. For a moment Satin struggled wildly then came with a shudder, her face pressed to Mo's breast. Satin wept even as she tried to push her body closer. In the second of her wakening she was a wanton creature below the waist and a lost child above it. When she recovered she was so ashamed. She hadn't cried out for her mother in years.

"You'll feel better after breakfast," Toys said, stroking Satin's arm. The two of them pulled Satin from the bunk and helped her stand. Standing would have been a lot easier if they had turned that damned device off. The tension of each step triggered small spikes of pleasure down her legs and up her spine, with the promise of much worse if she exerted herself more.

It could have been worse. Satin's steps felt light. Three-quarters gravity. But three-quarters gravity was way below the top acceleration of a U999. No one was pursuing, then. They must already have displaced at least once since they captured her, and that meant the odds of rescue were very small indeed. Psyker ships might be obsolete compared to the knife edge technology of the Reich, but when psyker ships displaced it was almost as if they had never been.

The secret no doubt lay close at hand. Satin had no wish to learn it. Somewhere on this ship there was a Displacer psyker that Satin very much did not want to meet. It had been there when they displaced; While Satin had slept it had been there, bound to a warp rack, a pentangle of iron.

How long had Satin been unconscious? She shuddered as though someone had stepped on her grave or, just possibly, as if a Displacer's thoughts had brushed her defenseless form.

Satin dropped to her knees gasping as the device buried inside her triggered viciously, causing thighs to clench in senseless lust as her mind reeled in terror. It took some seconds for the spasms to subside.

"Gotta pee," Satin said, after it all. No point keeping quiet about that. They probably already knew. That damn device. She was hauled back to her feet and taken to the fresher next to the turbolift. If she expected a few seconds of privacy and her hands free she was to be disappointed. They just pulled a hose from a wall and clicked it into the disk between her legs. Warm water blasted into both ends, emptying her out. She didn't even feel her bladder loosen. After what seemed like the longest fifteen seconds of her life it was over. Cursing and swearing, her limbs turned to jelly, she was helped into the lift.

That lift ran the spine of the narrow ship, with the living quarters amongst the up-most levels, to be as far as possible from the engine rooms far below, and from it's various emanations: neutron hail and others distinctly less wholesome.

The mess hall was a short way off the lift a few levels down from where she had fitfully slept her first night.

Satin's entry into the mess hall only prompted some friendly catcalls from the girls there. Their familiarity ground at her, and confused her. She'd kill any one of them, first chance she got. Didn't they know that? She wouldn't hesitate a moment for fear of what they might do to her after. Whatever was coming was coming.

"As a special treat, and while you are good, you can eat with you hands free. Choose something from the menu."

Satin was sat down at a long bench, Toys and Mo bracketing her neatly. A menu was held before her and Satin scanned it quickly. "Steak and mash."

Several women cheered. Coins and bits of paper changed hands.

"Steak and mash? For breakfast? What ever can you be thinking," Toys asked with mock astonishment. "I forgot to mention. You're not getting a knife, or even a fork. Ever. So I suggest you get used to things you can eat with just your fingers and your teeth."

"Then peaches," Satin said.

A bowl of fruit salad was placed before her, and Toys traced a symbol on her back with a finger. The Tar-baby material retreated from Satin's face and hands, and her arms were freed from her sides. Satin spent a few seconds exploring her new freedom. She could kill with a well-placed blow too.

Something was wrong. She could move but not quickly. It wasn't just stiffness and it wasn't drugs. It took her a moment to realize it was the tar baby.

"Yeah," Toys said in response to her expression. "We didn't want to use anything on you that could detune significant portions of your nervous system, like a slaver collar. I redesigned the tar baby to restrict speed of movement. Keep your speed beneath a couple of feet per second and you won't even notice it is there. Otherwise it stiffens."

"Ok," Satin said. She started to eat slowly. Why didn't they want to affect her nervous system? No, that was a lie anyway. They did want to affect her nervous system. They had been affecting her nervous system all bloody night long. Keep her warmed up, Quill had said. That fucking monstrosity was still pushed up inside her. She was squeezing it almost without thinking now, like a baby sucking on a pacifier.