GOLDEN

1.

Susan kept her eyes open, facing the moment she'd dreaded as forthrightly as an amazon should.

Earth slid into view on the panoramic viewscreen as Queen Kysa Herself brought Sorceress onto final approach. Susan looked at her homeworld as it glowed, a perfect disk in the glare of the Sun behind them as Kysa kept them dead center before biasing over to find the entry window. Earth was so helpless, so unaware, so ready to be taken.

The dread vanished. Susan looked at Earth and felt nothing that a warrior of Venus, a willing slave of Venus' Queen, should not feel. My will is nothing. Queen Kysa's will is All. Venus is Hers. Earth will be.

This was only a slave raid, but for Susan, everything belonged to her Queen already.

Susan's Venerian lover and battle-companion Parriel moved beside her in the seat they shared, but for this moment Susan didn't even seek comfort in her soft, strong grip. She stared at the planet that had given her birth and life and thought, I am not yours. I am Kysa's now, a Queen's warrior, and do Her will. We will pluck your blossoms, Mother Earth. My Queen will savor your fruit as She takes it from my hand.

Somehow Parriel felt it, and she felt Parriel's lips on her ear. She knew it moved and excited her lover to know the depth of the former Earthling's devotion to their Queen.

"They all admire you," Parriel murmured. "You are as much Hers as any Venus-born girl."

Susan said nothing. In the darkened compartment behind Queen Kysa's command dais, the cadre of Her warriors sat waiting, like their sisters in the larger bay a deck below. Even if Susan had cared to look around, their faces and their startling gold-irised eyes would have been invisible in the faint light of the flight stations around them, and the alien glare of Earth that diminished as Kysa's course put more of the shadowed nightside across the screen.

She wondered what they really thought of her, as she rode the ship she'd helped them design and build, to help them abduct more Earth females to recruit or enslave. First of a fleet that might soon come to take Earth itself.

She'd come to them as one of a crew of explorers, intrepid Earth scientists seeking knowledge in the first landing on Venus, and then peaceful contact with the matriarchal humanoid civilization they'd never known was there. They'd wondered, with less and less urgency each day, where the males were, but the women who lived and ruled had welcomed them. One of their own male-creatures kept whining about "purdah" and veils--it was hard and unpleasant for Susan even to remember the Earthling males, and she willingly let her mind go blank.

The Queen Herself had chosen Susan and relentlessly seduced her, with sex and Her riveting presence, and finally with hypnosis Susan by then had no desire to resist. Her Supremacy's other subjects had been dealing with the other Earthlings Susan was only intermittently remembering to think about.

It hadn't taken long.

By the time the Earth-malescum had vanished as utterly as the Venerian ones, Susan had been too rapt in the wonder of Queen Kysa to care. She could only recall slick embraces, Her Supremacy's cool, sinewy touch owning her, sharing of their hearts and cultures . . . well, she could remember sharing her own knowledge, anyway. She'd answered ceaseless soft questions as she stared into the blinking light of a recording machine, going without sleep to satisfy the Queen's majestic curiosity.

Susan roused herself from the reverie that kept claiming her in the hush of the ship, both soothed and turned-on by Parriel's placid stillness beside her, but as she looked up at Kysa in Her seat, she recalled again those remembering sessions. The Queen hadn't actually attended them all: Susan could remember being silenced and led to Her bedchamber, to kneel at Her bed and bend to taste Her flavor.

At the memory she hissed in her breath and tensed against Parriel, who rested her head on Susan's but did no more. It didn't matter: Susan was hot with just the thought of the submissive fervor that had refilled her with each such sip of Her syrup. Each time she was brought back to resume recording, the taste of the Queen on her lips kept her talking for hours more.

Of course, even if she was a special pet of the Queen, Susan was still an Earthling, alien-born, in the golden eyes of many of the Venerian amazons.

Back there in the shadows of Sorceress' main compartment, somewhere, was Ylan, a Queen's favorite before the Earth ship had landed and given the Queen new horizons to conquer, new women to mesmerize and use. Ylan never defied Her directly, of course, but she readily scorned Susan herself as not only an unworthy Earthling but a traitor to her whole unworthy species.

"You might be fit for fucking after battle," Ylan had told her once, with passionless intensity. "Giving tongue-baths to real warriors, after the mindbenders dimmed your wits and locked your lusts into what they left of them. I might even deign to own you, for a while.

"But not to keep you. Treacherous bitch from a male-tainted planet. My nether lips deserve better."

Susan could have asked, Better than the Queen's? I worship Her lips at Her command. But she did worship Kysa, too much so to invoke Her in a quarrel that wasn't even suitable between Her warriors.

Still, even knowing the Queen's favor, even living in a constant trance at just the thought of Her sun-colored gaze and a constant heat at the dream of Her touch, Susan had been chilled by the other amazon's simple hatred. She knew Ylan wasn't alone, either. Others, many back there now in their battle-pairs, resented the alien woman who graced their Queen's bed with her exotic juices and her odd mating sounds.

It didn't matter that after she'd succumbed to Kysa's control, she'd helped them use the expedition ship to jumpstart their own space program. They thought she should have been brainwashed into a drone, drained of her knowledge, and bound over to sex-slavery.

She didn't care, really. It was Kysa whose will and pleasure she lived for, and if Her Queen willed it she'd let them tear her apart. That she was still Kysa's favorite now, a year after the "lost" expedition to Venus had first fallen into Her hands, showed the Queen valued her.

Susan asked herself how much of her worship of Kysa was love and how much was the hypnotic conditioning she could sometimes remember. But, as always, Susan thought of Her depthless eyes and compelling voice.

She knew that Venus, and her Queen, were the only answers she would ever need.

2.

There was Parriel, too. Even though she'd been one of Ylan's trainees, Parriel really did admire Susan, and loved her for her luck in catching the Queen's fancy and her worth in keeping it. Others like Parriel had made Susan welcome among the Queen's devoted subjects, but Parriel did more--something in the pretty Earth exile seemed to call to something in her.

Susan watched night cross North America like a sheet drawn back from a sleeping maiden, and remembered their mission. She leaned into Parriel's body, moaning softly. There was no time to fuck, now, and not even the deep arousal diverted her from the greater need to stay strong and alert for Her Supremacy. But just to think of what lay ahead . . .

Her old school, Santa Perdida, in a high remote meadow in Colorado, would be stirring soon, full of supple young women just awakening--soon to be put into a deeper and more obedient sleep when Sorceress swept down over them and began emitting the Siren's Cry. Some would never awaken.

Others hadn't. Kysa's conditioning had numbed most of her earlier memories, but she thought about the other Earthling females with whom she'd flown to Venus. Venus had had her way with them while Susan had been falling under the Queen's erotic thrall.

Serena, the navigator, had been seduced and exhilarated by the physicality of the warriors that guarded them and was soon sharing sweat and dueling-practice and bruising sex with one of the sentry-captains. Like Susan, she wore the Queen's harness proudly now, and Kysa's hypnotists had helped her thoughts become loyal and simple.

Jessie . . . Susan didn't really remember what had happened to her, only recognizing the engineer's face between her thighs during a barracks orgy, midway through her own amazon training. Jessie's mouth was as skillful as her eyes were empty, and when Susan had recovered from the orgasm someone jerked Jessie's leash and she'd gone to whore for another warrior. Susan had admired her soft body and sleepy poise as she knelt to lick the stranger, and then Susan gave her own mouth to Parriel, forgetting her shipmate as her shipmate had long since been trained to forget her.

Later, she'd seen Ylan use Jessie, her eyes fixed on Susan as she'd thrust onto the other girl's mouth, and as Susan had come, she'd tried to tell herself it was Parriel's caress that brought her off, not seeing Jessie's blank arousal as she was fucked.

Marin . . . Marin had refused. Somehow the First Officer had looked into Queen Kysa's eyes and resisted. She hadn't gone to her knees, hadn't begged to serve. Susan had watched, but she herself was already too enslaved by the Queen to feel more than a vague ache. Susan didn't know whether the ache was regret that she wasn't as strong as Marin, or a hunger to watch Her Supremacy hypnotize the First Officer into a fawning concubine. She listed as the First Officer had quietly asked to die, instead of submit.

Kysa had stared into Marin's eyes and watched the Earthwoman tremble. But she hadn't taken Marin's will where she stood, or sent her to the mindbenders to be enslaved. Instead she said, "Be it so. Send her to the Goddesses. But be it gentle and quick for this brave one, to show Them My regard."

There had been nothing gentle about the disposal of the male crew, after they had passed on what they knew of their own ship and Earth technology. But Susan no longer thought about them except when her Queen bade her, and Kysa never did that without hypnotizing her first.

Soon, Susan knew, there would be more Earthling girls at Queen Kysa's feet, helpless and ready to be brainwashed and converted to Her amazons--the suitable ones, anyway. Some would become mindless toys like Jessie, though even that was an honor for an alien female in Her service.

Would a few choose as had Marin?

Would the Queen leave anyone awake that long?

"Susan. Attend Me."

Kysa's soft command was still echoing through the compartment as Susan snapped to obey it, her thigh sliding along Parriel's as she rose, feeling Parriel's hand on her arm. She mounted the dais and knelt by the Queen's chair.

"Ever yours, my Queen. I live to obey."

The Queen rested her hand in the back of Susan's neck. "Ever Mine, pretty one. We pass unseen through the detection web, just as you said. I acknowledge your submission to My will--you have given Me the run of your world."

Susan looked up, her throat tightening. "Your Supremacy--it is Your world."

Kysa looked deep into Susan. "In time, I will ride its length and breadth astride you, slave . . ."

Susan blinked and realized she'd fallen into the Queen's gaze, dreaming of the Queen's bit in her mouth and Her spurs and whip on--"Return to your place, My Susan. Prepare for descent and attack."

Susan made it back to sit beside Parriel's friendly warmth, and copied her movements as the compartment filled with the sound of threescore amazons fitting the transparent mindshield helmets on. When Kysa threw the switch, the Siren signal would radiate from the emitters in Sorceress' hull, and would stay on through landing and their stay at the target. The ship was opaque to the Cry's hypnotic effect and the Queen, Her guard corps, and the flight crew would stay safe aboard, but without the helmets the warriors who went down the ramp would quickly become as docile and obedient as their prey.

Without knowing why, Susan shivered as she felt the gravity shift, and the odd dark feeling even tainted her admiration at how smoothly the Queen, so new to spaceflight, guided them down.

Again, Parriel sensed her mood, and looked at her through the two clear thicknesses of shielding. She put her hand to her own helmet and stretched her lips to it, then held it to Susan's. Susan smiled and mouthed a kiss in return.

As they dropped out of the sky, Parriel's hand found hers.

3.

Sorceress loomed over them as Susan and Parriel stood at attention with the others. Susan held discipline and stared ahead toward the mountains, trying to see if the Siren's Cry effect were visible or whether she could hear it, but there was nothing.

But as she'd lined up with her section, she'd seen it was working: a scattered handful of early-morning runners and some girls on one of the playing fields stood listlessly, neither fleeing nor even trying to talk with each other. Inside the buildings were the rest of the prey, dazed into stillness and awaiting someone else's voice and command to replace the wills they'd forgotten.

Some stood close to where Sorceress had landed, already under the Cry's mindbending spell and too stunned even to think of moving by the time they realized the Venerian ship was there and coming down. A frisson went through her as she wondered whether anyone had been standing under a landing strut, no longer knowing how--or why--to flee.

But she forgot that as she saw close-up how varied the Cry's effects were, even among the few women in her field of view as she braced. One willowy blonde in a loose T-shirt and nylon shorts stood slackly, staring straight through Susan's head, her eyes focused somewhere else, without thought. On the ground near her a girl with chiseled, angular West African features had been caught in the hypnotic field as she was stretching, thighs spread and her feet together. She was stronger--her face was expressionless but her eyes kept sliding closed and flipping open as she fought the lethargy stilling her mind.

The girls' brief attire made her feel less chilled, standing in the thin Rocky Mountain air in nothing but the Venerian battle harness and boots. Colorado was not as hot or humid as the jungle where she'd helped stalk the dinosaur whose fine scales, cured and softened and drone-woven, now bound her crotch and breasts. Most of her, like the other amazons, was bare to the light breeze that kissed her.

"Section--helmet check," said their section leader, a lithe amazon named Khri, as she strode before them, watching each warrior's eyes and hands as they obeyed. She stopped and peered at one.

"Section--pause," Khri said, and they fell out, Susan joining most of the others in turning to look for whatever girl had the problem.

One of them stayed at attention, her eyes glazed but narrowing, struggling like the dark-skinned schoolgirl. Khri ordered her to surrender her weapon.

With only the slightest twitch, the woman obeyed.

Susan gasped with the rest, as deeply indoctrinated as any of the Queen's subjects. A warrior with free will would die before she gave up a weapon, edged or barreled, to anyone--even a superior. Weakminded Earthlings like these schoolgirls were one thing, but now she was frightened to see how obedient a loyal amazon of Venus became when she, too, heard the Siren's Cry.

Khri was gentle as she leaned closer and shook her head at whatever flaw in the helmet had left the girl open to the control. "Return to the ship and rest," she ordered, and motioned for another woman to go with her and carry the weapon she'd surrendered.

Shaking her head, Susan saw a few other pairs of amazons, one free with one caught in the slaving-beam, going back to the ramp. I wonder, she thought suddenly, if yielding to the Cry feels anything like falling under Her control, and slid her thighs together.

She felt eyes on her and saw Ylan a few paces away, her yellow gaze unblinking at Susan's lust.

She froze, and met the stare, and was startled out of it by Parriel's touch. "Come, love. We're to go to the building." Turning away, she saw Ylan's section heading the other way, to round up the women dreaming out here on the athletic fields.

Khri's section reformed under a panel that slid open along the underside of the ship, and a honeycomb of translucent tubes descended. They watched as other amazons took up position, and Susan remembered from her programming that she and the others were to bring the newly enslaved females here. The sections posted there would load each captive into a conversion tube and ensure the programming probes were in place.

As Sorceress carried them back to Venus to serve, the tubes would brainwash the Earthlings, draining their thoughts and replacing them with new truths even simpler than the ones Queen Kysa and Her mindbending women had imprinted onto Susan. A girl here or there might be kept aside to be tested as a potential recruit, but Her Supremacy wasn't seeking new amazons here at Santa Perdida.

These girls would be the first fruits of the slave orchard She would make of Earth.

Susan shivered, longing for the day when her Queen would mount and ride her through the orchard, as She'd said.

She followed Parriel and the others under the ship to where Santa Perdida's main buildings loomed against the sky like a brick frigate and its escorts. As they passed out of its shadow a voice suddenly thundered out over their heads, a woman's voice speaking English.

Susan's own voice, she realized, and knew too that she had no memory of recording this message.

"You are asleep.

"Your mind is asleep.

The warriors Kysa had handpicked for this raid had all been programmed to understand English, to handle their captives, but most spoke it with an accent that was clear and lovely but might distract a hypnotized but skittish victim from total focus on her new instructions.

"You cannot think.

"You cannot decide.

"You cannot remember how to think. You cannot remember how to decide."

They strode through a sculpture garden of paralyzed Earthwomen going deeper into trance. Susan couldn't tell how many were already enthralled like the mindless blonde and how many were waging a dreamlike resistance against the beams and commands sapping their wills. They were all a half-clothed, smooth-skinned blur as she listened to her taped self brainwash them.

4.

She moaned into her helmet with a need to fuck, to masturbate, as she heard herself go on so vibrantly. When she'd recorded this she was probably as deeply in trance as these Earth girls, and her knees nearly gave out as she realized how deep into their minds her words were plunging as the Siren's Cry kept them still and receptive.

"You are aroused.

"Your pussy is aroused.

"It turns you on to stop thinking.

"It turns you on to obey.

"You want to stop thinking and obey.

"You will obey my voice . . ."

Parriel turned to her as they approached the main building and gave her a smile that shone from her golden eyes. She'd recognized Susan as the command voice, and it made Susan proud to see her admiring look at how the more susceptible students were nodding, a few starting to mouth the suggestions taped-Susan was implanting in their minds. "Your voice will make them obey," she said.

"You are warm and aroused.

"You want to be erotic.

"You want to be nude.

"You will be nude. You will be more aroused as you become nude."

More division among the victims: some obeyed like already well-trained attendants of the Queen, while some could only paw at their clothes, too dazed to translate their need to obey into coherent action. They stared worshipfully into the fog the Siren's Cry was making of their world. Susan almost envied them that fog, the heat and obedience that would waft from it and envelop them.

But she could obey Her Supremacy consciously. Each action, each breath she took in carrying out Kysa's will and Her implanted commands was like a fingertip on her cleft.

Parriel had halted halfway up the steps to the main building. A redhead stood bare-breasted by the rail, her eyes wide and blue. Her hands had almost undone the pleated uniform skirt and still held it over her thighs--Susan could see her gingery tuft peeking from the shadow--when she'd apparently forgotten how to continue.

Taped-Susan's voice had moved on to deeper topics of submission and obedience, and the redhead had no one to remind her how to strip.

"Let the skirt drop," Parriel told her, and the redhead instantly did so, the wool whispering down her thighs and skidding onto and away from her dark knee socks. Pooling at her feet, it partly covered the slip of satin she'd slid out of first, under the skirt, while she could still process the disrobing command.

Susan smiled to see that the girl, even hypnotized, had instinctively dropped her panties first. "You're a slut!"

The redhead stiffened and her eyes grew even wider, and Susan realized she' d just dosed the girl with her own live version of the voice she was being conditioned to. The girl's eyes closed and then opened in ecstasy, and her hands relaxed by her softly-curving hips.

"I'm a slut!"

It penetrated to Susan that she'd brainwashed the redhead very thoroughly, burying that simple truth in a mind already melted soft by the Cry. It might be possible to deprogram her now, but with a half-appalled thrill she knew no one would bother.

Parriel had watched and actually licked her lips as she saw Susan's words seal the girl's fate. She stroked the smooth skin, enjoying the girl's exotic, un-Venerian pallor, and said, "Yes. A slut. You will never be an amazon."

"I will never be an amazon," the girl whispered. Susan watched the red triangle dampen between the girl's flexing thighs and put a hand to her helmet, feeling frustrated.

"You will only serve them," Parriel said, reaching up to cup one lightly-freckled cheek and turn the eyes to face her own. Susan shivered to see her lover mindfucking the girl so coolly.

"Only serve them . . . yessss . . ."

The redhead's blue eyes were bluer as her pupils shrank to pinpoints and her attention collapsed onto Parriel's implacable focus. Susan could almost see Parriel's golden stare burning into the helpless girl, and it reminded her of the predatory look Ylan had given her back by the ship.

As arousing as it was to see her amazon comrade make a slave of this soft Earthling, it hurt more to see sweet Parriel turn as cruel as her trainer. Susan stepped forward, almost afraid to break the spell Parriel was weaving, and started to embrace her.

Their helmets thumped together, and it snapped Parriel out of her hunt-focus and Susan from her weird fear as they both laughed.

They turned to see that the redhead was oblivious to the gaffe and still going deeper into trance, and they laughed harder at her. Susan knew the Parriel she loved was back when her lover pursed her lips in concern and stroked the girl again. "What is your name, Earthgirl slut?"

"Stephanie," their new slave said quietly, calmer as though she felt better now receiving commands. Susan wondered what her own recorded, hypnotized voice had been putting into Stephanie's head while none of them had paid attention--the girl had been receptive to everything while they'd stood there playing with her.

She wondered if taped-Susan's commands were converting herself.

Parriel's voice was soft. "Stephanie, where do they make announcements here? So all students and staff may hear and obey?"

The girl blinked, and Susan swallowed what she'd been about to say. It had been years since she'd been at Santa Perdida as a student, and even when she'd described this place for Queen Kysa's acquisitive pleasure she'd known her detailed memory of the layout would be hazy and outdated.

"The new, office . . . annex," Stephanie said, wonderingly. Susan imagined that thinking, at her new mistresses' command, must feel like a privilege behind those prettily-glazed eyes.

"Take us there now, Stephanie."

The girl stepped gracefully from her panties and skirt and went up the steps in nothing but her knee socks and loafers. Susan and Parriel happily followed, enjoying the exquisite view.

They passed through a lobby and Susan let the deja vu slide off her as she focused on obeying her programming. She saw students and staff standing in trance but most were clothed, more or less. The building's structure hadn't kept the Siren's Cry from reducing them to docile stillness, but it had blocked out Susan's recorded call to submission. The women in here hadn't heard the command to strip, or any of the other indoctrination that had already enslaved Stephanie.

Susan looked up and saw the PA system, much sleeker that what she remembered when she was here years ago. She grinned to herself, looking forward to the bass undertones she could put through it. She didn't know what else Her Supremacy had hypnotically programmed her to say when she found herself at the microphone this time, but she knew it would take deep root in the minds here being tilled by the Siren's Cry.

5.

Leading them out the back of the main building, across a plaza toward the newer annex, Stephanie's thighs flashed bright over the contrast of her dark socks, like and unlike the sight of a booted amazon from behind, and her whole body flowed up and out from them like a bright flower from a darker stem. Susan broke her focus on the redhead's wonderfully swaying ass and looked to the side.

It was a glass-walled indoor pool--she recalled a brochure with plans for it, when she'd graduated. She glanced inside and saw more entranced women waiting quietly for the Queen's amazons to herd them to the conversion tubes.

Susan stumbled when she saw about a dozen girls in matching maillots and swimcaps standing impassively at attention--they looked so fit and earnest she imagined for a moment that they might be some weaker Earth echo of Her Supremacy's warriors, a local excuse for amazons but with no Queen to worship. About to venture out into a losing battle with Her women.

Then she saw they were just a swim team, their minds stolen by the Siren's Cry just as they were being instructed at a morning practice. Their coach stood before them, no longer in control but as hypnotized as they were. At her feet were a whistle and a clipboard where she'd dropped them, and the clip had sprung open--some of the papers had found puddles and flattened to the floor, and others flapped unheeded against the coach's ankle in a draft.

She looked at the other women around the pool. A few stood alone, caught by the controlling beam before they could go anywhere. There were two girls sitting on the pool's edge, not kicking their legs but limply moving as small ripples washed up to them. Both stared lost at whatever the water was reflecting while the Cry echoed in their heads.

Another woman floated on her back, just buoyant enough that her nose and mouth were out of the water. As Susan looked away to the laned section of the pool, she saw another a bright red swimcap, still spinning slightly, the float lines beside it lifting as the girl's shoulder slid beneath it. Susan stared at the drowned girl, wondering what stroke she'd been practicing before the Siren's Cry caught her face-down and erased it from her thoughts.

She looked away from the red swimcap.

Looking up, she saw a girl poised like a statue on the high platform, still and erect and waiting. Lower down, there was another girl, just as erect but balanced on the diving board--Susan thought she could actually see it move as the entranced girl's heartbeat vibrated through her. She wondered which one had been waiting for the other's dive before the Cry took them both. She wondered if either one had enough mind left to see the red-capped swimmer, or enough willpower left to be afraid of falling in and drowning with her.

"You cannot think.

"You cannot decide.

"You cannot remember how to think. You cannot remember how to decide."

It was not her voice. It was deeper and there was an erotic lilt in it as the well-programmed Venerian amazon recited the implanted script. For a moment Susan was almost resentful--It's my task to indoctrinate the new slaves!--but her own slave training wilted her assertiveness and she meekly accepted that she would simply obey some new orders to serve the Queen instead, as soon as someone gave them to her.

The voice had freed her from the tableau of the pool slaves, and she turned to see that Parriel had been whispering into Stephanie's ear and touching her. The nude redhead was rigid and her tiny nipples were flushed and pointed. Once more Susan wished it were safe to doff the helmet and slurp the juice that she knew was seeping from Stephanie's cleft.

She was beyond caring, now, how Parriel might be warping her. It didn't matter--during Stephanie's long sleep as part of the cargo back to Venus, the tube's programming would wipe this from her mind along with her pointless Earthgirl memories, her will, her inhibitions, her sense of herself as anything but a toy for golden-eyed women.

Then Parriel broke off and gazed at one of the dorms overlooking this plaza. Stephanie trembled in her hands and ignored everything but whatever the last thing was that Parriel had slid into her mind. Susan tracked her lover's gaze up the wall of windows until she, too, saw the flickering near the corner of the third floor.

Parriel's face lost its playful sadism and she turned to Susan. "There may be energy weapons. Some may resist. We must see."

"I obey," Susan told her, slipping easily into deference to the more experienced amazon. As they began to walk to the stairwell below the window, Stephanie stirred and blinked and turned as if on a string to follow Parriel. Her face glowed, as though she expected a treat from Parriel's hand but was learning it was treat enough to obey Parriel's voice, even filtered through the helmet speakers.

Susan shook herself, knowing she was following her lover with scarcely more thought for anything but doing Parriel's bidding. She was trained that way, but even now she knew there were questions. Who would have energy weapons here? And even if someone did, how--whoever she was--could she remember to use them now, with her mind singing with the Siren's Cry? Was there someone else shielded against it?

But she was still walking obediently at Parriel's heels, enjoyably helpless under the compulsion to obey her. She let Stephanie's ass mesmerize her again as she followed the Earth slave up the stairwell after Parriel. They passed a blonde in loose shorts and a T-shirt slumped on the first landing, a burnt-out cigarette inches from her bare calf.

On the second landing, as they went out to the corridor, Susan gently pushed Stephanie aside so she could be at Parriel's back to help her. Her whole body tingled with how soft and warm and smooth the redhead was and how obediently she moved where she was put. Her wide eyes, blue and innocent, moved across Susan like a reverent caress before losing focus again as Stephanie, empty of purpose now, stood as still again as when the Cry first took her.

Susan moved close to where Parriel waited, leaning to press her shoulder to her lover's back, the ancient promise of skin to skin before they moved apart to face a danger to their Queen. Leveling their weapons, they stepped into the room.

Ylan turned to smile at them.

6.

The room's shadow lit the bubble of Ylan's helmet differently, its curves almost opaque, making her look doubly alien as she stood poised, slowly lowering her fieldlight to her side. Before her next to the bed stood an Earth girl with short-cropped brunette hair, with a lavender sports bra but nothing else to hide her almost-sculpted muscle definition, more tautly at attention than the others Susan had seen under the spell of the Siren's Cry.

Beside her was another girl in nothing but a leather anklet, a tanned blonde with cornrows, even stronger-looking but just as entranced. They stood at an angle and their stares crossed each other without the slightest awareness. On the floor and elsewhere Susan saw the debris of uniforms, though she couldn't tell which sport the two girls played.

Had played. She knew what they'd play from now on, back on Venus.

"They were lovers," Ylan remarked, looking at Parriel. "That much they won't need to be programmed for. They were still fucking when I found them--maybe each one had been commanding the other to come when the Siren's Cry turned their minds into obedience, and that was what they had to obey." She seemed very pleased, but anxious for Parriel's reaction.

"You can imagine how easy that made it to deepen them, especially with the strobe setting."

Susan was suddenly very afraid.

But each thing she'd seen since they'd left the ship had wrapped her in another gossamer thread of arousal, and now the web made her too hot, too wet. She didn't know what she feared, yet--but she already wanted to lick it.

Almost. "Parriel. I--"

Ylan looked at her once, very briefly, and stepped away from her captives, halving the distance to Parriel. She snapped her fingers.

The two athletes sprang at Susan from where they stood, and they were so fast--so brutally sexy--that she forgot her training and stood frozen as they seized her on either side, and then pressed against her, trapping her weapon and her arms against her.

She couldn't have fought anyway--she was melting against their firmness and juicing at their flat-eyed obedience to Ylan. When she looked at Ylan, the triumph in those pitiless golden eyes made her sad and terrified and so, so moist.

But she could still feel ashamed about that as she saw Parriel bring up her weapon in a blur, leveling it between Ylan's eyes.

"What are you doing?" she asked quietly, after a brief, priceless nod to Susan. "Why do you have slaves defy an amazon of the Queen?"

Ylan was serene. "They did so well, didn't they, Parriel? Well-fleshed and as conditioned as an Earthling slut can make herself, without a mistress to saddle her and drive her to her true potential. Quick and strong."

"Ylan, tell them to let Susan--"

"They might look like amazons, or at least recruits, but in the end they're flabby minds in taut bodies, easily led. These two have already pledged their souls to me. On Venus they'd be a diverting fuck for a while, and useful for a new apprentice to spar with. Once she passed novice she could kill them, and that could be their next service.

"But amazons? No. Earthlings serve and sleep." She glanced back at Susan. "All Earthlings."

Parriel gripped her weapon, never having had to confront a comrade this way before, much less her own trainer. "Ylan, let her go. Our section leader--"

"Yes. Told you to take the little puppet to the address system so she can coax the rest of her slave-sisters into coming to our ship to go into the conversion tubes. As you heard, any real amazon can control these sluts, and they'll do anything they're told. We don't even need this whore of yours to mindfuck her own kind."

Susan wanted to scream Stun her! as she watched Parriel try to argue, but she felt warm solid arms wrapping her, and a moist cunt tight and hot against each thigh, and she drifted.

Parriel swallowed.

"Our Queen called Susan one of us," she said. "Do you question the Queen's will?"

Susan admired her lover's thinking as she saw Ylan weaken for a moment as Kysa was invoked. But Ylan recovered quickly and said, "Her Supremacy uses many ways to beguile an alien bitch with useful knowledge--even toying with one and letting her play Queen's-chosen. But She will see how deep slavery runs in the Earth species." She turned to melt Susan with another bright glare.

"Susan will show her."

Parriel couldn't bring herself to attack Ylan even now. "She trained with us! For someone who wasn't raised to the warrior's way as we were, she can--"

"No, she wasn't," Ylan agreed. "She didn't share what you and I did, Parriel. She didn't worship the Queen from birth, as we did. She didn't learn to think the way we do, to feel the way we do, to believe everything that we do, to believe the complete truth as we do, to obey as we do, to obey as you and I do, to listen carefully as you do, to believe as you do, to obey without question as you do . . ."

Parriel was staring into her eyes, and the weapon was drooping unheeded in her hands. She breathed faster and gripped the weapon but didn't remember to raise it also. Susan watched in horror but even so she felt cold admiration for Ylan as her enemy stood without flinching as Parriel, half-hypnotized, waved the weapon across her chest. Even if Ylan did this perfectly she could still die, slain by her own slave. Ylan was driven by hate but she was no coward.

Then Parriel blinked. "N-no. No, Ylan. Don't try to do this to me. You could do it before when I was younger, when I was still learning and you were still teaching me."

"A wise woman never stops learning," Ylan said. "And you let me control you, when you needed it. Do you remember the weights, how you strained under them, how tired it made you to force them up, how weak you felt pressing against their irresistible--?"

"Stop . . ."

"You remember," Ylan told Parriel, convincingly, and Parriel could only nod. Then she shook herself out of the trance.

"S-s-stop it, Ylan. Stop hypnotizing me. I won't let you. This isn't . . ." She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, and Ylan's smile showed teeth as she read the memory that Parriel was pushing away from her mind, from her pussy.

Susan thought of them in a Venerian training hall, nude among the weights, eyes reflecting each other's gold as the hypnotic balance swung, shifted, held--Parriel's voice whispering in sleepy, blissful submission, lost in Ylan's hiss . . .

They waited to see if Parriel would be put into Ylan's thrall by her own memory. But Parriel forced her eyes open and shook her head.

Parriel! Look at me! Susan wondered why she wasn't shouting it to her lover, until a pussy slid again along her right thigh and stopped her wondering.

"Push the dream away," Ylan whispered, turning Parriel's resistance-image into more deepening. "Push, so heavy, so hard, for me. Sleepier with every straining breath."

Parriel's eyes closed and opened and she stared pleadingly at Ylan, unable to look away, as though she'd forgotten there was anywhere else to look. She tried to say "no" once more.

She succeeded. "No . . . Ylan . . ."

"So, so strong, and so loyal, my Parriel. I knew I might need to use you some day, to put my finger on your mind and control you the way a touch to your clit would make you docile in training. I would need the skill and strength of the warrior you were becoming--wrapped around the obedient little handmaiden of a trainee you still were. I would need the handmaiden to awaken and put the warrior to sleep.

"I put something inside you to help me do that, once, when you trusted me."

She paused. "When you loved me."

Susan's gathering resolve to shout dissolved in confusion at the sudden pain in Ylan's tone.

"It's still there in your mind, Parriel.

"Remember it now.

"Taste me, slavegirl. I sit astride you. I am all you know."

Parriel's eyes widened even as her eyelids fluttered. Suddenly she looked younger, softer, less sure. "I taste you again, mistress. I hear your call and remember and obey." Her lips worked and her eyes rolled back.

"Oh, god," Susan whispered. Then, louder, "Parriel. No!"

Her lover ignored her, seeing only Ylan.

Parriel's eyes were open now and calm and she straightened, looking alertly at Ylan. She held her weapon with new attention and swung it automatically to ready stance.

"This trainee is yours to command, Mistress."

"Parriel!"

Still staring into her eyes, Ylan pointed behind her to Susan. "That is a captive."

Parriel looked straight at Susan. She blinked but she repeated, "That is a captive."

"Parriel! God! Please!"

"She must be enslaved." Ylan's voice dripped satisfaction.

"She must be enslaved."

"Parriel!" Susan's throat hurt and she realized how loudly she'd screamed.

Her hypnotized lover was as heedless of her as the two enslaved athletes that would hold her forever until someone put another command into their minds.

"Handle her." Ylan watched as Parriel skillfully slung her weapon and came toward her with both hands free.

"Parriel--? Oh, love . . ."

Susan had started to give up, but her quiet, hoarse despair seemed to reach past Parriel's conditioning where outcries hadn't. Parriel slowed and stopped, her eyes shifting focus. She stared at Susan, and her head tilted as it did when she needed to figure something out.

Susan started to cry, and that hurt her throat, too.

"Mistress? She . . ."

"No." Ylan's voice was knowing and kind, now. "You won't have to hurt her at all, Parriel. The slaves will keep her still, and it will only take a moment.

"Once her helmet's off, she'll agree with me. About everything.

"Remove the slut's helmet now, Parriel. Let her hear the Siren's Cry.

"Obey me."

7.

Susan tensed and writhed, but only the slaves' moist clefts slid on her--everywhere else their powerful grip kept her pent. She didn't stop trying. She croaked out a plea even she didn't understand, trying to rouse Parriel with her tone, but she knew it was too late--Ylan had seen that Parriel still cared for her and soothed that care, and now Parriel could be tranquil as she obeyed.

If there were any doubts behind her golden gaze now, Ylan's hypnosis had quelled them.

Susan realized that in a few moments, she might be telling Parriel that it was all right and she was perfectly happy now--in just the words Ylan would program her with. Seeing Ylan's avid attention, she was suddenly sure Ylan would do just that.

Ylan read her eyes and nodded.

Then Susan knew how it would feel.

Becoming mindless before this enemy wasn't just frightening. Susan remembered her orgasm when she'd finally surrendered to the Queen and given Her everything--her freedom, her will, her friends, her sexuality, her world--and that had been joy. The Queen had taken it as a gift and given Susan Her trust, a place by Her side and in Her bed.

This was worse and darker, and promised only slavery, on her knees and her belly and her face before Ylan and every Venerian.

This was more seductive, and she had nowhere left to hide from that truth.

This climax would not be mind-shattering. Her mind would still be there on the far side of it--obeying, worshipping, forgetting whatever they told her to . . .

Her heart raced. She couldn't. Not for Parriel, not for her Queen. She spasmed between the two brainwashed Earth girls, realizing that for each one her entire being was consumed with restraining Susan. Not even their obedience to Ylan's command distracted them--they were the command now.

She knew Ylan would keep her more aware than that, knowing what had been done to her. She knew the other woman would make her like it.

She wondered how many heartbeats that would take.

Parriel's hands were on the helmet.

Susan was too full of thoughts to know what she thought now, and just stared out through the plastic at her lover, remembering the smell of her hair when they'd slept. She heard the click and the hiss and . . .

. . . and . . .

Far away, she heard the sound change, suddenly richer, fuller. She knew music would be prettier now, voices more powerful, words (commands truths) harder to deny. There were smells, hitting her with the nostalgia of a women's dormitory, a cool morning coming in the windows instead of the thick Venerian tropical . . .

Pussy. Flavors of arousal, all around her, against her. Slaves beside her, sweet with her sweat and theirs. Taken during sex, orgasms etching their minds at the moment they gave them up. She moaned between them, going limp at last, weak in their erotic strength. She wished she could lick them both clean.

One flavor was hers. She was dripping as she lost her freedom, and she dripped to know it.

Her head was empty and it was full. She felt the humming in her brain, diligently shaking her thoughts apart, massaging loose her ideas and beliefs to flow out of her.

It felt so . . . good . . . so fucking g . . . good . . .

Like someone's tongue on her, someone with no other thought than where to put that tongue, when to lick when to flick when just to rest it on the very tip of . . .

Jessie's tongue. Jessie--friend, whoring between her thighs. She was just like Jessie now, obedient and happy--except she hadn't been trained to lick the way Jessie had.

She would be. Ylan would see to it.

She looked up into yellow eyes and came.

"Slut."

The word rang in her head. Slut. Her. Yes.

"Slut," she said. She remembered watching a redheaded girl, naked to her socks, pale and pretty and hypnotized, realizing she was a slut. Now it was Susan. Now she knew how good that was.

"Slave."

That felt even--hotter.

"Think for me, slave."

She looked up. She was obeying--thinking was just the way she'd been told to do it now, and part of her quivered, waiting for how it would ripple through her when she was told to stop thinking.

Obeying. She kept obeying.

She realized how powerful the words were, when Ylan spoke them. She had to obey Ylan, it was something her mind and her pussy knew.

She put her lips together and realized how long they'd been apart, wondered if that was why the beautiful hypnotic amazon before her was laughing.

"I wanted to know what it was like when the prey knew she was losing her will. Sweet enough to see them staring like gaffed fish when it stops them in mid-idea, but to watch you . . . go . . ." Ylan smiled and Susan squirmed.

"Get out of that harness," she snapped, and Susan pulled at it, basking in the contempt. "Amazons wear that--slavegirl whores wear nothing.

"Unless they're told to play dress-up."

Ylan laughed to see her hands slip as Ylan's words preempted her brain and strummed her pussy, and the laughter drove Susan deeper.

Soon Susan was naked, kneeling on the floor and leaning against the legs of one of the two enslaved athletes, who were now at attention again over her. She couldn't see Parriel and a tiny, dying part of her was bleakly glad.

It was Ylan who mattered now, anyway. Susan could remember the Queen, and loved her without having to think about it, but her time at Her Supremacy's side was becoming a fragmenting dream. How could she have been the Queen's favorite, when she was just a pussy-minded slavegirl who spent more time on her knees than standing, and most of that time between the knees of smarter, braver women for their pleasure?

She tried to lean forward to nuzzle at Ylan's crotch, tempting behind the taut dinosaur-hide of her harness, as she realized the whole fantasy had been something for the Queen's amusement. So amusing that slave-Susan, brought on this raid as a diversion, had managed to get herself into mischief she was too silly even to remember now.

But Ylan had come to fetch her. Ylan's voice would still her mind and make her obey.

There was a golden moment and she was looking up at Ylan, remembering.

"Yes, Mistress," she said softly. "You fooled me and you enslaved me. I will remember. I was an insolent Earthgirl and you made me nothing." She knelt in the pain Ylan left in her, and felt the gratitude that Ylan had braided with it, deepening her obedience to the other . . . no. Not the other amazon.

The only amazon. Susan was a slave.

"Mistress, may I taste you? May I please you with--?"

"No," Ylan said, genuinely cold. "Unlike you, I rule my pussy--and I respect it too much to soil it with a slut's tongue in a active area.

"I just wanted to hear you ask.

"Now stand up."

Susan had to close her eyes, as the joy of standing when she was told to blanked her mind.

Ylan asked, "You've found something?"

Then Parriel stood beside her, gazing fondly at her and holding out a handful of cloth. She turned to Susan and smiled, but it was the kind of smile she'd given to . . . Stephanie? . . . the redhead who obeyed so deeply now . . .

"She's so wet," Parriel commented to Ylan, and it made Susan want to touch her wetness, finger herself. She tried not to do that in front of them. It would be so . . .

. . . humiliating . . .

Her fingers went faster as she saw how they stared at her. Yesss . . .

"She'll blend in with these," Parriel told Ylan. Ylan took the cloth and tossed it to Susan.

It was one ankle sock and a sweatband. Susan found herself putting them on without being told. She was still obeying the command to think, and she knew what it meant.

They were going to lead her out with the other entranced Earth girls, looking just like them, like a jogger getting ready to shower when she submitted to the Siren's Cry and stood still to await command. The other amazons would just see a dark-eyed, nude slave. No one would save her. No one would know.

She'd let them put her in a conversion tube, and the last thing she'd remember would be the automated conditioning program putting her to sleep.

She looked up at Ylan, and saw her Mistress well-pleased. Ylan knew she didn't have to gloat.

She'd already programmed her slave, Susan, to do that for her.

Susan sank to her knees. She wanted to use whatever was left of her will to salute her enemy, to show her that she understood. She wanted to worship her conqueror, and piss away her last moments of coherent awareness groveling.

She bowed to the floor and then knelt up, feeling the borrowed sock against her ass, begging Ylan with her eyes to fill her empty mind with something.

Ylan's golden gaze drank in the sight of her like that, and all the way to the tube, Ylan gave her nothing.

As Susan's eyes grew heavier and the brainwashing cycle started eating deliciously into her thoughts, she stared past the pretty spinning lights in the headpiece they'd fitted to her as long as she could.

All she could see were golden eyes. All she could think of until she stopped thinking . . .

Ylan had given her this, at last.

Worshipping her enemy was the last thing she'd ever do as herself.

Susan thought she might be climaxing around the probes, but she . . . could . . . n't . . .

missssstrrrressss . . .

8.

susan kept licking the bush between the smooth thighs that held her head so gently.

she loved doing this. It was one of the few thoughts that stayed in her head for longer than it took to turn it.

It might be that stephanie was such a friendly, passive girl even for one of the toys.

It might be the exotic pallor of her skin that the Amazons took care to protect from the sun, though she often wore bed-burn with vague pride. stephanie's pale skin and blue eyes were not rare.

There were still Amazons who came to play who wanted Earthlings to fuck. But there were so many more Earthgirls now.

This toyroom was the Queen's. stephanie was popular with the Queen's guests.

So was susan, not as much.

It might be the sweetness of the nectar that seeped out that so addicted susan to licking stephanie. Or the lovely cries she could bring forth from stephanie when she did that with her--ohhh . . .

susan didn't know, and she didn't try to think about it.

susan didn't think a lot, or do it clearly when she did. There wasn't much room in her mind for thoughts, with the commands that her programmers had put there.

There was a little room in it to be sad that the Queen sometimes looked at her when She was here, but never played with her. That had been less and less room lately. susan didn't wonder why that didn't make her happier.

she realized she'd stopped licking stephanie's cunt. Now she was resting her face on the redheaded whore's pale belly, licking the perspiration that coated them all here in the Queen's summer palace. Something was nice on her neck: stephanie's fingers, making a sleepy circle.

That made susan sleepy too, and she purred happily into stephanie's navel. stephanie bucked in slow, graceful motion, already dreaming.

susan dreamed. It always made her wake up coming, whether it was an orgy or being carried off by beautiful Amazons or . . . other things.

The golden eyes made her come, but that dream didn't let her sleep again for a while. These eyes weren't like the other golden eyes, all the other beautiful Venerian women so superior to Earthsluts like her and stephanie. Not even like the Queen's eyes, that always looked away from susan.

A hand on her ass, light and nice. she purred again and slid on stephanie' s limp form to see.

Golden eyes, a nude girl, a native Venerian whore.

susan smiled. Whores were equal, until Amazons chose them, and again when the Amazons were done.

Golden eyes. Different.

"Susan?" Tentative, afraid.

Puzzling. Who feared an Earthgirl whore?

"Do you remember me?"

susan smiled. "i don't remember a lot," she said. That usually made other slaves smile, and Amazons laugh.

But this one's golden eyes were wet. "Maybe you're lucky, susan."

That bothered susan, so she looked down the other woman's athletic body to see if she were wet anywhere else. A little. she licked her lips.

"I've been assigned here now, to--" The other whore closed her eyes and mewed through an orgasm, but they were clear when she opened them. Her voice was rougher for a moment.

"i made a terrible mistake," she said, and susan realized they were both whispering, to keep from waking stephanie. "i . . ."

susan touched the other girl's breast, and saw her surprise as well as her pleasure. Most whores expected to be touched and taken at any moment. It was fun, not knowing when someone would turn you into her toy and turn your life over for a while.

"She was so angry," the Venerian said. "i thought She'd understand, but She was so angry."

She closed her eyes and then looked at susan again. "The brainwashing worked, susan. you don't remember much of anything except how to please other women and obey orders." She saw susan smile to hear that, at just the pleasure of hearing someone say it, and she had to smile back. It was a very sad smile, susan thought, maybe not better than no smile at all.

"It's . . . irreversible. i wish i could give you back who you were, and it's so odd because i like that woman now, and i don't even think it's because i've been reprogrammed to.

"But i have been reprogrammed. This is what She willed be done to me for subverting Her subjects." She paused.

"This means nothing to you, does it, susan?"

susan leaned forward and kissed the other whore on her cheek. "Your voice is very pretty to listen to," susan told her.

The other wept openly now, forcing the words out. "Then, if i tell you that Parriel is--Parriel is dead, that she killed herself when i awakened her, and she realized what i'd made her do to you . . . it isn't going to hurt you?

"i'm the only--?"

susan leaned forward and put her arms around the other woman, and that seemed to make her cry harder, but she was nice to hold, and after a while she was still.

"i have to atone," she said into susan's shoulder. "i don't know if that's real, or if the mindbenders told me that while i was staring into the lights, but i feel i did wrong.

"Her Supremacy let me know that. She ordered that i be kept aware of what befell me and why."

susan's hand had drifted down to the Venerian whore's smooth cleft, and after a moment the other woman relaxed and let her play, tensing and fading as susan learned her.

"my name is ylan," she whispered once, and susan whispered "ylan" into her ear in a way one of the other whores had taught her.

ylan climaxed hard. stephanie awoke and grinned at them.

Later, ylan looked into susan's eyes. "This isn't a plea. When i think about her, about Parriel . . ." she searched susan's eyes as she said the name, and something faded from her own at whatever she saw there. ". . . i think i might not deserve to get out. Not for defying the Queen, either, but Parriel trusted me.

"Her Supremacy Queen Kysa told me that She would allow my release, would even reinstate me in Her guard.

"If you forgive me, susan." ylan said that and then pulled away, and left the room where they'd lain together.

Soon, there were Amazons to please and lick, and it was later when susan found ylan again.

ylan looked at her. "It really wasn't," she said. "A plea."

susan smiled and shook her head and reached for her. "i know. But it doesn't matter, ylan.

"you didn't do anything wrong to me. i'm a slave whore in the Queen's brothel. It's the only place i should be--i can't remember anything else.

"So i can't forgive you. There's nothing to forgive you for." she looked into the lovely golden eyes, filling with knowledge she knew she could never comprehend.

"Can i eat you out instead?"

she watched ylan's eyes and pussy both moisten, and she knelt to tend to the more important.