Part Seven: Prisoner of the Xlant
...Rok the teenage Begorian started setting out metallic pieces on the bench where I was both laying, and nearly cooking. He pulled what looked like scrap metal left over from some repair project from under the bench, as if this magnificent body of mine didn't deserve "fresh and new" materials for whatever he had in mind. That was selfish and impractical of me though, because little of what was on the Xlant actually looked new at all. In other words, this ship was OLD, and the fact that it wasn't presently under tow was a testament to the men that somehow kept it running.
Rok's bench, I was to learn, was specifically designed to fabricate things, in the old school tradition, as in “by-hand”, like they used to do it a thousand years earlier. It made sense to me to at least understand how people used to build things, lest all this fabulous technology fail for some technical reason or another, and some old school repair needed to be made without the aid of a fabricator computer. They specifically still taught both navigators and captains how to find their way using star charts, even though navigational computers were quite dependable these days, so there was precedent for this kind of thinking. Smugglers were especially good at this too, because one might not want to always officially document where one traveled to, but I digress...
Rok's bench had slots and holes all over it's surface, reminding me of our local restaurant's rather dated cooktop grill; that plus the heat of it's surface added to the being-cooked-alive feeling I was getting. His body temperature was several degrees warmer than my own, so this possibly felt normal and comfortable to him. He obviously wasn't out to hurt me, because as he pointed out earlier, had he wanted to he could find much more efficient and entertaining ways to do so, possibly even entertaining for the both of us.
Despite these rather light thoughts, my mind instead went to a dark fantasy kind of place; I was for all intents and purposes this teenaged Begorian's captive, his prisoner. In my mind he was going to extract some kind of important information from me, like a dungeon master from some ancient and barbaric time, extracting a confession. It had been over a standard day by that point since I had any male companionship too, and to say that my modified female body was needy would be an understatement. Rok would do quite nicely for my purposes - my body decided for me - even right here on his work bench if I could entice and seduce him on it. Would others walk by, or hear what we were doing together and then come to investigate? I doubted it with all the noise in the compartment, but if they did, so much the better with the randy way I was feeling, the more the merrier.
This young Begorian was exhibiting an amazing level of restraint all things considered; his human counterpart under almost any similar circumstances would have already taken his liberties, most certainly with a willing "captive" such as I. He just needed a little nudge in the direction I desired, my body decided; I was almost a spectator to my own lusty actions. I peeled off my borrowed shirt and placed it under my body, as if on a bedsheet, not only denuding myself before a startled Rok, but removing the captain's rank insignia visibly from my body.
I laid down on his bench and sprawled myself out, spread eagled and stretching sinuously for the corners of it, the position reminicent of the Begorian bride's own, from the torture porn hologram I had seen in the cargo office. He looked at my freshly exposed and offered body like a thirsty man, fresh out of the desert, might look at a glass of ice water, licking his lips in anticipation. He then muttered something under his breath that I didn't catch with the noise in the compartment, but I had a feeling it was a curse, or some other rude word in Batchi, his homeworld's language that I didn't speak.
Rok smiled at me, but not like a potential human lover might - even a self-serving one from the ranks of the Fortunate that knew what, and who, I really was - but much more like a starving man both looking and smelling the juicy meal placed before him; but one he can't quite tuck into just yet for some reason. I've tempted this young ‘man’ as far as I dare, needs or no needs, but I maintain my stretched out come-get-me positioning anyway. He has an obvious plan, and I apparently can't dissuade him from it, although after he completes his captain's orders...
Rok reached behind my neck and released the eye hook hidden within my minutes-old but brand-new collar, and then maneuvered it into one of the many slots on the table's surface, the eyelet apparently protruding right through to the other side by design. I watch him do this passively, but in reality no amount of resistance that I could physically provide would have stopped him; his large hands wrapped around my collar, it in turn rigidly wrapped around my throat. He wasn't rough with me, but I was definitely going, and doing, exactly as he wished, and not what I wished, nor even what my randy body wished.
...HE was in charge, this teenager from another world, and not I, it was quite humbling. I may have had needs, but he had orders...
He then reached under the table, clipping something unseen to the ring protruding from my collar, but I felt the clunk of it's mechanical application, holding my collar rigidly in place to the tabletop. I tried to sit up experimentally when he had released his hold on my collar with his remaining hand, but I was jerked to an abrupt stop by it, nearly strangling myself in the process. I looked warily at this young Begorian anew, this stripping and offering myself up so brazenly to him suddenly not seeming like such a good idea now.
...I hadn't fully appreciated, at the time, that as much as my human female scent of availability was likely distracting him, his own masculine scent was doing much the same to me, scrambling my mind's higher order functions...
"It's a fabricator's table, very strong, square, and flat," Rok told me, as if explaining something very basic like this is a good distraction to what we're both feeling, and wanting. "Little pins and clamps go into the slots, and whatever is anchored to the heavy top just isn't going anywhere, but you're free to try," he tells me matter of factly. His command of my language is impressive, especially when considering my ignorance of his.
He took my left wrist and stretched it out even more than it already was, clipping the exposed eyelet to the tabletop by means of one of the many slots in its surface, just like my collar, repeating the process with my right leg to get perfect symmetry between the two. My remaining two appendages are next, my bound body tautly stretched and made to take the shape of the letter ‘X’. I tug at my bonds experimentally, but the effort is wasted. This table was designed to hold things that have great mass, preventing even their slightest movement, so that they can then either be repaired, or fastened to each other by some antiquated mechanical means. A very long time ago this might have even meant rivets, or even nuts and bolts, old old ships designed to sail the seas were once held together by similar means, and while not strong by today's standards, they may well be strong enough for Rok's purposes with me.
Little laser dots were then projected down onto my body from above someplace, and the busy Begorian adjusted my positioning ever so slightly to get my perfect symmetry truly perfect, centering the dots on my forehead, and my four extremities. He verified this with a very old measuring stick to the corners and sides of the table, Rok being quite thorough. I am reminded of making basic female costumes for my gender-swapping junior college plays once, the old adage as true with cloth as it is apparently with metal; measure twice, cut once, especially when the metal is in short supply.
I was watching the young Begorian work, wishing my head wasn't pinned to the bench so that I could see better, reduced to looking out of the corners of my eyes as he constructed a frame around my stretched out helpless body. I'm fascinated, I've never even seen something that was riveted together in real life outside of a museum, and here I was watching Rok actually rivet this frame together around me. Once the frame is complete, flat metallic straps are placed under each appendage, one at a time, one end having a slot to accommodate the eyelet in my cuffs and collar, and the other also riveted in place to the sturdy frame.
I was so intently watching Rok work that I didn't notice an older and graying Begorian approaching, until he looked down on me from over my head, his smile warm, but hungry. The two banter in a friendly way, but in what I assume is Batchi, Rok left smiling when the older one walked away, to do who-knows-what.
"Who was that?" I asked Rok. I hadn't really been speaking to him much during this latest ordeal; since my failed attempt to seduce him on his bench. I felt chided and rejected by this teen, and felt like I needed to do something to right that.
"Chief engineer."
"Good news?" I asked, extending our interaction, just to have some conversation with somebody. I was feeling like a thing, an object that shouldn't be expected to say a word, although the human component that made up who I really was NEEDED to interact. The two Begorians speaking warmly in their native language only drove home the point of how alone I really was here.
"Yes, and no. The chief engineer likes the simplicity of my design, but he has reminded me that if I tear you apart with my overzealous teenage aggressions, and therefore ruin your magnificent body before the others get a chance to sample you for themselves, that I can expect to have every bad and dirty job on this ship for the remainder of our voyage. And trust me when I tell you this, there are a lot of bad and dirty jobs on the Xlant!"
"Oh, I expected that the captain would like... well, to go first."
"That's just not how it works on the Xlant."
...I had a lot to think about with that last statement, surely my own captain had been most giving once, the Fortunate's first ship's queen being his own new wife, that in itself was most generous, and actually gave him and I something in common, in an odd sort of way. My own wife, back on planet, was community property as well, and by her own desires too; her lust for such was well before any interest of mine in actually working in space, but that's a separate problem...
"What are you building anyway?" I asked my young captor, feeling the need to both keep talking, and change the subject.
"Is it not obvious?"
"I can see that it's a frame, and that I'm mounted to it, but why bother, I'm not exactly going anywhere."
"Are all human women exactly like you?"
"I haven't met 'all women' obviously, but I should think not; tall, short, heavy, thin, different colors and shapes, you get the idea."
"Are they all just as passive, sexually, as you apparently are?"
"I wouldn't think so."
"Begorian brides are much the same, so some are up for the more traditional wedding and breeding ordeals, and some less so. I am therefore creating my own version of a Begorian bride's breeding mount, as once our ship's bride is properly mounted in it, pretty much everything that happens after that is down to the simple mechanics of breeding, or in your case, attempted breeding. It was considered bad luck, in ancient times, if a bride wasn't with child by the end of her wedding night, either by her new husband, or one of the town's elders, or even some of the groom's own bridal party. It pretty much turns into what you would call an all-night-orgy, lots of whiskey, and pretty much everybody in attendance ends up getting lucky, they're actually a lot of fun to attend."
...I was only half shocked to hear this, as I had seen the cargo man's torture-porn hologram, strangely enough starring yours truly. This also lent a whole new meaning to the term "best man," although I had no idea if there were a Begorian equivalent to this more human wedding tradition, and in that tradition if he was the second-up, so to speak, after the groom did his best for his new wife...
"I saw a hologram of a part of this once Rok, the 'bride' in that one was hung only from her wrists, but with her hanging ankles chained. The groom in that one, I assumed, was whipping her raw, she had a panel gag over her mouth but was still howling for all she was worth, right through it."
The young Begorian smiles, as if reliving some happy memory from back home. "That's another very old tradition, the strung up bride is sometimes whipped up into a sexual frenzy, not all of them are up for this though, so like the breeding mount, it's optional in less traditional ceremonies. The whipping part actually takes practice to get right, and it usually does take Begorian women, at least, to a very high level of arousal. They sometimes thrash around quite violently, and curse like an old sailor, so the gag makes sense in that case too, as do over engineered breeding mounts, lest one be torn apart by the bride and ruin the show. If the bridesmaids are feeling especially generous they may even bathe the traditional gag with a liberal splash of whiskey, before they chain the bride up for the festivities."
My mind was going into that dark place again, and that part of me wanted the whole experience. If Begorian brides got off on this, why couldn't I?
"How... how many strokes would I... that is she, get?" I asked, the sexual tension obvious in my voice. Just TALKING about this was taking me to a higher plane of sexual arousal, I couldn't imagine actually doing it. But I knew that very thought was a total lie the moment I had it, because I could see myself subjected to such treatment, as I in fact already had, in holographic form.
"The old tradition was for one stroke for every invited guest, it kind of kept the guest list from getting overly large, back in the day. And if the bride were haughty and popular, and wanted like a hundred people at her wedding anyway, her guests would be treated to one hell of a show afterwards. Not to worry though, as there are only ten crewmembers presently aboard the Xlant."
"...Anybody could do ten strokes," I thought foolishly in my head, and in exchange for what I needed with every fiber of my being, a bargain...
I watched Rok finish his creation, pinned in five places to his fabricated frame, and freed from the bench holding me fast. I still can't relax my arms and legs, but the lightweight frame can be made to move about slightly on the benches surface. Rok isn't done yet though, and with careful measurements he places blocks under each side of the frame at roughly my hip area, finding the perfect balance point of both me, and the frame I'm attached to. He attaches something to this place as well, on both sides.
Apparently now done, he once again used the antique chain hoist, lifting my frame, and I, clear off the bench, am left hanging and swinging high up in the compartment and feeling once again like a broken machine of some kind. He dragged me along by the chains of the hoist, swinging and twisting like a broken erotic billboard near a seedy spaceport that has slipped it's moorings. I'm on naked display for all to potentially see, but with only ten Begorians aboard, that's a short list, and they're all apparently busy.
Rok maneuvers me over the top of some device with heavy wheels on it, looking like a holding fixture for something heavy, again no local gravity control in the compartment - apparently - so that such a device with it's stout construction is necessary. My frame is lowered onto it, the last pieces Rok has attached to my frame perfectly aligning with the mounting stanchions of this great wheeled fixture. He attaches the two, and then lets the chain hoist down further, my frame rotating about the center section so that Rok can reach the top point and unhook the chain.
Once free he gave my frame a great shove, and I was set to rotating, head over naked heels as I watched him walk away...