Wednesday 12 February 2014

Wednesday, February 12, 2014 -

Soul Music

by John Benson
Published: Dec 20, 2013
Words: 23,907
Category: fantasy
Orientation: M/F
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OPENING EXTRACT
Soul Music

The meeting broke up for now. Cdr. Baker got up and stretched. His exec excused herself and hurried for the can. An NCO entered with an indigenous woman in tow. "She asked to speak with you Sir," he said. "Her Standard's pretty good."

Baker looked at the young woman, not much more than a girl, really. Her face was too round for his taste, the eyes too wide apart, the nose too broad. But youth and health will forgive much. She wore the short dress of a slave, but her gaze was unafraid, as if she were a noble woman.

"Leader of Leaders," she said. Her Standard had their odd vowel shapes, but was indeed not bad.

"I have five minutes," Baker said. "If what I hear interests me, I'll have five minutes more."

She bobbed her head. "I am Okasha," she said. "My uncle is Speaker for the Great Ones. He killed my father to take over the God House. He slutted my mother and he slutted me. I hate him. Let me be your weapon for vengeance."

One of the ruling class, and she had passable Standard. The ethnologists would be ape-shit. Baker saw his exec re-enter the room. Viki sat down quietly and stayed out of it. "Your people might see us as a threat," he said. "You sure you want to aid us and be thought of as a traitor?"

"Speaker for the Great Ones must fall," the girl said. "You use me for that end, and I use you."

"Maybe we're a threat," Baker said. "But the truth is maybe we are, and maybe we aren't. The truth is, the ones who sent us haven't decided." Viki cleared her throat in polite protest.

"I don't understand," the girl said. Viki looked at him pointedly, but she had made her point and did not pursue it.

"The Polyculturalists want only to study you," Baker said. "The Human Rights Party is horrified and wants to intervene."

"Let me be your slut," the girl said. "While far away your thinkers are making up their minds, let me be your slut. It pleases you, the thought of a woman who must do what you want. Use me when I am good and beat me when I am bad. You'd like that, wouldn't you? It stirs old dreams, that thought."

Viki yawned, feigning disinterest. Baker found the girl's arrow uncomfortably close to the mark. "You're guessing," he said. "You don't even know me."

"I do not guess, Leader of Leaders. I hear the Soul Music, and yours yearns for a girl who must submit."

An Empath. There were old rumors of Empaths lost out among the stars, but up 'til now they'd always been proven false. But there are so many planets men have gone to. So many suns. "We don't take slaves," he said. "The Basic Covenant of Human Rights forbids it. But I won't lie to you and say the thought's not tempting."