“How many men did you lose?” the baron asked, looking over the three friends as if he were inspecting cattle at auction.
One of the sec men stepped forward. Ryan figured him to be the sec chief. “Just the one. This one chilled him,” he said, pointing his blaster at Ryan.
“That why you brought him here?”
“No, sir. If we chilled him, he might have awakened the rest. He—”
The baron nodded as if he weren’t interested in what else the sec chief had to say about Ryan. His attention was suddenly drawn to Mildred. He walked over to her and examined her more closely. After being pushed around and getting on and off the wag with her hands tied behind her back, her clothes had become disheveled and her shirt had opened halfway down her chest. The baron put a hand on her cheek, gauging the texture of her skin and pulling her lips back to examine her teeth.
“Nice,” he said. “Very nice.”
Mildred jerked her head away from the baron’s touch, and the man laughed.
“Spirited, too, I see. I like that. I like that a lot.” He lingered in front of Mildred for a few moments, putting a hand on her neck and letting his fingers roam down her chest, under her blouse and over one of her breasts.
Mildred didn’t move. Instead she stood by impassively, letting the baron squeeze her breast and tweak the nipple. But when he finally looked her in the eye, she said, “You better be enjoying that, mister, because you’re going to be paying the price for doing it.”
The baron withdrew his hand from her breast, seemingly unsure what to make of the dark skinned woman. And then he laughed. “Oh, that’s good. I like that,” he said. But then just as quickly, the humor was gone from his voice. His eyes narrowed and he moved in closer to Mildred’s face. “I wonder if you’d be just as courageous with a red-hot angle iron shoved up your ass.”
Mildred said nothing, wisely deciding not to press her luck with so many armed sec men around.
The baron moved down the line to Ryan, standing in front of him for long time while his eyes moved up and down his frame. “So, you chilled one of my sec men.”
Ryan said nothing.
The baron turned his head slightly to the side. “What’d he do it with?” he asked the sec chief.
“Bastard big knife,” the sec chief said. “Cut his belly wide open the second we woke him up.”
The baron nodded, obviously impressed. He reached over and flipped up Ryan’s eye patch. Instead of being disgusted by the empty socket, the man seemed intrigued by it.
The baron replaced the eye patch and puffed on his pipe. Then he reached between Ryan’s legs to fondle his genitals.
Ryan wanted nothing more than to put his knee into the man’s groin and then stomp on his neck as he flopped around on the ground, but he knew it would be the last move he ever made. So instead of fighting back, Ryan followed Mildred’s lead and did nothing.
“Hmm,” the baron said. “You just might prove to be a useful addition to my operation.” He took his hand away and ran his fingers through Ryan’s hair. “Ruggedly handsome. You wouldn’t have any problems finding a breeder to rut with, would you?”
The baron moved on to Krysty.
“Ah, saved the best for last, I see.”
He stepped in front of her, then did a slow walk around her so that he could appreciate her from all angles. There was a wide smile on his face.
“I knew she was attractive from afar,” the baron said, “but I had no idea…”
Krysty’s sentient hair was curled tightly around her head and shoulders, and the rest of her body looked just as uncomfortable with the baron’s attention.
“The possibilities…” the man muttered. There was a fire alight in his eyes.
He stood there in front of Krysty for the longest time, simply looking at her body.
The sec men seemed to be getting tired of just standing around. Finally the sec chief asked a question. “What do you want us to do with them?”