DOWN MEMORY LANE, INTERLUDE
GREAT WAR IX, Vienna, 1932
The Socialistas were beaten – the brown-clad Frauen of the underground Axes had cleared the street of them, and were now, as the crowning humiliation and celebration of victory, stringing up the ones beaten unconscious or left to groggy to escape as the
rotefront ranks broke and ran.
Scharführa Ophelia Skorzeny watched coldly, with her hands crossed behind her back, as the Reds were tightly bound, gagged with great wads of cloth in their mouths and hung with ropes under their armpits from lamp poles for the Police to find.
‘Look at them squirm!’ her superior, Elisabeth Kaltenbrunner laughed, slapping Ophelia’s epauletted shoulder. A dark, strong-featured beauty, she put her heavily painted face cheek to cheek with Ophelia’s and pointed at the struggling Socialistas. ‘Can you imagine how they must feel, Ophelia dear? What an absolute humiliation? Can you even think of anything worse?’
Worse? Unbidden, her mind took her back in time many, many years, to one of her first missions for CONTROL, the time she first met The Enemy face to face. As always, the vivid memories and the emotions carried with them made her shudder.
ROMAN III, Rome, 710 Anno Ab Urbis Conditae
‘Treasea!’
‘Yes, Athanasius?’ Ice blue eyes rose from the mosaic floor and looked down on the corpulent and pompous Chief Slave.
‘Stop that and go clean the master’s office while he’s out. The Senate will be in session all the afternoon, so you need not hurry. I want it spotless by the time he comes back!’
Obediently, the Gallic slave girl lifted her broom and stopped sweeping the Atrium of Caesar’s house.
‘Except Caesar won’t come back, except to be mourned!’ she thought, and with relief. It was the Ides of March, and her time masquerading as a meek slave was almost over. What she said was very different though:
‘Of course, Athanasius.’
The Chief slave nodded happily, his great fat cheeks quivering. ‘What a boon you are, Treasea! Never talking back, never doing a shoddy job… If all his slaves were like you, the Honoured Gaius Caesar wouldn’t even NEED a Chief Slave! Honestly, I can no longer even think of whom I’d entrust with cleaning his office if I didn’t have you!’
Which of course was the whole point of her meek and efficient behaviour, thought the girl. The slave that cleaned the master’s office had access to all his personal documents, and if that slave could also read Latin and Greek (talents unsuspected in a barbaric female slave) she could identify, copy or even replace key documents.
With a pounding heart, she walked back to the corner of the female slave quarters she called her own to pick up the equipment needed for the job: broom, cloths and bucket. For Caesar’s office she had a special broom, hollowed out and provided with a detachable top. Inside was a piece of parchment, carefully fabricated at CONTROL after the photographs she had provided in earlier forays into the office; a version of Caesar’s will in which his entire fortune and name went not to his grand-nephew Octavian but to his grand-niece Octavia.
Octavia Thurina Minor, grand-niece of Gaius Julius Caesar
Ashexee had briefly met Octavia Thurina Minor, as her complete name went, and frankly didn’t see the girl as a potential founder of an Empire. But the whole operation was a long shot from the start. This was their last chance; The Roman Republic was the last bastion for women of any power and influence in this timeline, and even here there weren’t more than a handful of female senators left. Gaius Marius and his Populares party had championed the patriarchal leanings of the masses, and the conservative dictatorship of Cornelia Sulla had been only a short reprieve. Now Gaius Julius Caesar had brought the Populares back to power, and while he had proscribed no one, he had swelled the ranks of the senate with men, men and more men.
‘And in sixty years or so Christianity comes knocking on the door, and then… game over for the next two-three thousand years!’ Ahsexee thought. It was always that way in already patriarchal timelines.
Armed with her broom , bucket and forged will Ashexee walked through the busy corridors, narrowly avoiding bumping into other slaves as they went about the various chores of the house. Some of the other girls smiled at her, but none of the men: she had defended her virtue vigorously since her arrival in Caesar’s house and bloodied a few noses in the process. Her nickname in the male barracks was now “that frigid bitch”.
She turned a corner and reached the door to Caesar’s office. Two soldiers in red tunics and mail harnesses stood guarding the entrance, with swords hanging from their belts. They recognised her and nodded an informal greeting – and then three unknown men, young, strongly built like soldiers or gladiators and wearing stock-standard white tunics came out of another room, penning her in against the soldiers.
They carried daggers in their belts and wore the iron rings of Roman citizens of the plebeian class. She assumed they were veterans of Caesar’s army, or possibly, to judge from their bulging musculature, former galley slaves made freemen, some Roman criminal groups liked to employ their kind as strongmen. She directed an alarmed look at the nearest soldier who smiled, made an obscene gesture at her and winked, patting his belt pouch. Apparently, he had been bribed to let these citizens have their fun with a slave of Caesar’s.
Ashexee had never seen the men before, but they seemed to know her; without hesitation they charged her with extended arms and she decided to fight first and ask questions later. With her CONTROL martial arts training, she should be able to handle three Roman roughnecks with ease.
That confidence lost her the fight before it began. Her high kick to the throat of the nearest attacker was deflected with a textbook underarm parry, followed by an elbow punch to her stomach that left her without breath. This didn’t last though – another of her attackers floored her with a fist to her jaw and bright lights went off behind her eyes before darkness rolled in. The last thing she heard was rude jokes being exchanged between the soldiers and her attackers.
When Ashexee woke up again, the first thing she noticed was that she was bound with thick leather thongs and soundly gagged – a sponge-like object was in her mouth and was held in place by a thicker leather cord cutting into the corners or her mouth. And she was upside down, hanging from the cords around her body though, not her feet. Her white linen dress was hanging down from her waist over her head, exposing her lower abdomen and legs and preventing her from seeing anything but a dirt floor – and three pares of undoubtedly male sandaled feet. Her feet had been tied together to the leather cord she was hanging from, so gravity made her knees point straight out in opposite directions, making her feel tremendously exposed and vulnerable. She immediately closed them. Of course that gave away the fact she was no longer unconscious.
‘Well, well, well, what do we have here, my friends?’ a male voice asked, sounding very amused and pleased with himself. He was speaking Latin with just the smallest hint of an accent. It was obviously a rhetorical question.
‘You know, Balbus,’ another voice answered, ‘I hate to point out the obvious to you, but you did ask: that is a very nice piece of ass.’
‘No.’ a third voice objected flatly. ‘She’s an ETNAL KROSA, a murdering bitch from CONTROL, as you very well know. There’s no telling how many of us she’s killed without compunction or thought in her career.’ The voice was full of suppressed rage and hatred. ‘And you want to play games with her?’
Ashexee’s heart almost stopped there. They knew about CONTROL! Now there could be no question about who the three men were – she was in the hands of Enemy agents!
‘Falco, shut up!’ the one called Balbus hissed. ‘You know the modus and the codex as well as I do! She’s incapacitated, tied up… no, as far as I’m concerned, Marcus is right: that IS a very nice ass, and nothing more!’
Ashexee saw the central pair of sandals come closer; she heard the sound of a knife being unsheathed. Then the feet stopped, giving her time to anticipate the icy pain of a stab, which never came. Instead she felt a hand, large, dry, a little bit rough, touch her left knee, sliding softly from there down her outer thigh down to her hip. She bit her lip and tried to ignore the groping lout. The hand reached her hanging skirt and pulled at it. The knife ripped through the skirt, splitting it from the waist to the hem hanging in front of her face. She could see again, and the first thing she saw was the smiling face of the man she had tried to kick in the throat, apparently the one the others deferred to and called “Balbus”. He was sitting on one knee, placing his face level with hers. He was dark-haired and his cheeks and strong jaw were somewhat badly shaven. His dark blue eyes were full of mockery.
‘An ETNAL KROSA, eh? I don’t suppose you want to tell us your name?’
She shook her head, trying to deliver laser beams of hatred and contempt with her eyes. If she succeeded, Balbus was laser-proof. His smile grew even broader. There was something almost hypnotic about it.
‘As you wish. We’ll just call you “Treasea” then! I would say that you may call me “Balbus”, although as you’ve probably understood by now, that is not my real name. But frankly, I do not see any point in letting you speak at all. Women like you would do so much better to just shut up and look pretty. Silence becomes your sex, almost as much as obedience!’
Despite her helpless rage against the arrogant bastard, she was also beginning to find “Balbus” fascinating. Back in HOMELINE, aside from the occasional pervert, who could possibly be attracted to men? Pathetic louts all, so eager to please, so submissive! One out of every ten women were so repelled by the “fouler sex” they couldn’t bring themselves to bed one even to conceive. Fortunately artificial insemination meant no one had to go through that ordeal any more if they didn’t want to.
The Enemy were different, of course, intellectually she had known they would be – the natural order had been reversed in their domain through some accident of history, and as a result the males were dominant. They had been spreading that anomaly through as many timelines as they could, and this one was one of them. Already the men of ROMAN III were like a different species than those of HOMELINE, but not even the Roman men she had been interacting with had achieved the same obscene degree of gender arrogance as the Enemy agents. The hatred of Falco she could handle, but this Balbus, the leader, seemed genuinely amused by her, as if she was a cute child playing at spies! And as infuriating as that was, it was also fascinating. It was like watching CONTROL high-rankers disguised in perfect male bodies. The combination was strangely appealing and repellent at the same time.
‘Now, Treasea,’ Balbus continued, ‘let me tell you what has happened, and will happen. First of all, Gaius Julius Caesar is alive and well, despite your machinations. The bodyguard we provided him with got him out of the Curia in time, and his troops are cracking down on the conspirators as we speak. Caesar’s campaign against Parthia and the resulting series of wars will usher in a new golden age for the Republic, in which the male martial virtues are exalted. All those soldiers sent East for the next century or so will also help spread Christianity when it emerges. There’s your nail in the coffin!’
Ashexee inhaled in horror, her brow furrowing and her face wrinkling up in anguish. Poor, poor women! Thousands of years of subjugation awaited them, all because CONTROL had failed, SHE had failed…
’As for you…’ Balbus said in a mild voice. ‘You will not be hurt. You will not be killed. No violence will be used against you. That is a promise. Do you believe me?’
She shook her head. The Enemy was ruthless, and would stop at nothing. Balbus just laughed.
‘However, we
will teach you a lesson, and to ease things a bit, I will now give you an injection… no, really, don’t worry!’ Ashexee had started to hyperventilate and struggle against her bonds. ‘It’s no poison, except to your inhibitions. It’s a powerful aphrodisiac, that’s all.’
Balbus produced a small plastic auto-injector from his belt pouch and put it against the struggling Ashexee’s neck. A sting, a hiss, and the contents rushed into her bloodstream.
She found she hadn’t died or passed out, so she guessed he had been telling the truth. An aphrodisiac? So that was what the bastards were going to do to her? She should’ve known, and the cowards had to use a chemical crutch too! Drug or no drug, she was determined to resist their clumsy attempts at arousing her, but it seemed to be a potent aphrodisiac they had administered to her. Already her treacherous body was tingling with anticipation and she found her eyes following the outlines of Balbus’s hard, muscled limbs. She pressed them shut – no use. Her mind produced images even more disturbing. She opened her eyes again.
The two other men drew their knifes and stripped off their tunics, leaving them only in their brief undergarments. They then joined Balbus, who had also bared himself, standing on either side of the dangling Ashexee, who found herself surrounded by a wall of tanned, muscled flesh. The knifes, she soon discovered, were put to good use in slowly, methodically, cutting her dress to shreds. As they did, the cold hard blades would slide over her smooth skin, making her shiver with every contact.
As the tatters of her clothes fell away, except where held in place by the cords, the men grew more bold. Their strong hands played up and down over her body with featherlike gentleness, caressing here, pressing slightly there;, making her skin burn and igniting another fire deep inside. Their movements made her swing slightly, bumping into their warm, hard bodies. Ashexee fought hard to keep her breathing even and not gasp, and kept her knees together even harder. Then they began to cover her soft skin with kisses until she thought she would go insane. She fought her instincts for as long as she could but then they started using their teeth. Short, sharp bites in sensitive spots, each one just hard enough to inflict a minimal sting of pain. The sensations caused were like electric bolts through her body, and she found herself eagerly awaiting the next bite, and the next… Finally she could not repress a moan. Balbus reacted to this by kissing his way up from her chin, her chest, her belly… when his head bumped into her thighs, she couldn’t take it any more; she relaxed her muscles and her legs fell apart. Marcus and Falco received them, supporting them.
Balbus didn’t stop though; his lips and hands explored the newly exposed skin, caressing, kissing … she didn’t care any longer, let him do it and be done with it! In her drugged state, how could she ever have hoped to resist? Through her gag she moaned again, and kept doing it. There was no holding back now.
The knife came up again, slid in under her loincloth. She trembled violently from the contact, and then it sliced out and cut away her last garment. Balbus continued his explorations for a while until he finally went THERE, oh finally, FINALLY! Ashexee writhed as if burnt and her soft cries found their way through her gag. In her hyper-excited state, she knew this could not last for long, but just when she though she was about to climax, he stopped, but continued to tease her trembling body elsewhere. Soon he began again. And stopped, just before. And again. And again.
She screamed if fury through her gag.
‘You wish to speak?’ Falco asked sarcastically. ‘Balbus, I think the prisoner wants to say something. Shall we let her?’
‘Oh, why not?’ Balbus said with a shrug. ‘I suppose it couldn’t hurt much.’ He kneeled again and untied her gag, soon removing the dripping wad.
‘Please, I can’t stand it! Please, please just finish it!’ Ashexee sobbed.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Not like that. You’re a only a
woman! It’s not right or proper that you should take pleasure from a man and not give any. If you want release, I’ll give it to you by possessing you!’
‘No!’ She shook her head.
‘Fine. Know though that I can keep you in this state for hours. Then we’ll just stop and leave you to cool off. Your choice.’ He began as to replace her gag, she crumbled.
‘All right, you bastard, have it your way! Do it, take me!’
‘Your wish is my command!’ he said with biting sarcasm, but his voice was thick – he was thoroughly aroused too.
She had been suspended from her point of gravity, so it was easy to spin her upright again. The enemy leader tore off his own undergarment and stepped closer, pressing himself against her. She drew up her legs and encircled him, feeling him press against her. His arms were around her, holding her and as his face drew near, her head darted forward, her lips meeting his. Their kiss was furious, desperate, driving them both to frenzy. Balbus began to breathe more heavily and Ashexee responded by pushing herself slightly up and then he was inside her, filling her hungry void. It was over quickly – he gave a shout and fireworks went off between Ashexees legs, traveling up her spine to explode in her brain, blotting out reality. She heard someone scream, and realized it was she.
She hung limply, and they stepped back, backslapping, laughing. They began to dress. Reason, and with it, hatred of them returned.
‘Oh, you’re good, aren’t you?’ she mocked them. ‘Yes, what skill it must take to excite a woman out of her reason with drugs! How lucky women under your rule must be!’ She spat at the floor.
Balbus picked up the empty auto-injector from the dirt floor. ‘I’m afraid I lied to you, ETNAL KROSA,’ he said with a condescending smile. ‘I gave you no drug, just saline solution.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Liar. You’re lying, it was a potent drug, it must have been!’
‘No. I’ll leave this for you, take it back to CONTROL for analysis and see for yourself. You’ve shut off your mind with inhibitions and hatred – you only needed to allow yourself to enjoy this, to give in, and we provided you with an excuse, that’s all.’ He drew his knife and cut off the leather cord she was suspended from, dropping her in a heap on the dirt floor. Then he threw the knife into the opposite corner of the room.
‘When you get, free, we shall be far away. Go home as soon as you can, there’s a price on your head in Rome now. You will be killed on sight as party to the conspiracy to murder the Dictator. Goodbye, “Treasea”! It’s been fun!’
‘I’ll kill you, you swine!’ Ashexee screamed after him. ‘I’ll cut you all open and strangle you with your guts! This isn’t over! You hear me? You’ll regret the day you met me!’
GREAT WAR IX, Vienna, 1932
Ashexee/Ophelia shook her head to clear away the memories. It had been long ago, so very long ago. Would the memories never fade? But the Kaltenbrunner was expecting an answer.
‘Can I imagine anything worse?’ She looked at the furious Socialistas, struggling against their bonds. ‘Yes, easily,
Gruppenführa Kaltenbrunner. Very easily.’
. (It least that's the impression one would get from her
