Things came to a head when Pride of Justice got a special assignment to head for Ortha Six in search of the famous intergalactic slave trader, V. Known to be ruthless and extremely cunning, V had been at large for so long that most of the galaxy had given up hope of catching him. But the rumor was that he was going to be at the annual black market to sell some exceptional slaves to the rich and famous of the Ortha system.
V wasn’t going to be the only career criminal there, but apparently to Captain Keer, he was the only one who counted. For years, different law enforcement agencies had tried to pin something on him but even though slavery was illegal and V was known to have traded slaves for years, he had never been caught. No matter how dirty his business, his hands were always clean, a fact that seemed to rub the straight-laced Zentorian captain the wrong way.
A staff meeting was called and a plan put together. To no one’s surprise, least of all her own, Tabitha’s name wasn’t included in the landing crew, or even the planning crew. In fact, Keer didn’t mention her at all. Apparently she was now invisible as well as inconsequential, Tabitha thought bitterly. And that was when she decided she’d had enough. If Captain Keer wouldn’t let her in on the sting, she would stage her own sting. On her own, with no one else’s help. And Tabitha thought she knew just how to do it.
Her head filled with visions of bringing down the galaxy-famous criminal on her own and single-handedly earning both her captain’s respect and a full promotion in rank, Tabitha began to lay her plans.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. All they really needed to bring V to justice was proof that he was actually a slaver, instead of a rich merchant dealing in oddities like he pretended to be. Tabitha slipped out of Pride of Justice just as dusk was gathering over the dusty, dry Orthan marketplace with a vid-surveillance device hidden on her collar, certain she could catch him in the act.
She was dressed in civilian clothes, the better to remain inconspicuous, with her badge concealed in one pocket. The plan was to get the evidence then slap her immobilizer cuffs on the wily slaver and lead him back to the ship before he knew what was happening. In her mind’s eye, Tabitha could just picture the look of shock and respect spreading over Captain Keer’s granite-like features when she presented him with the criminal he had been hunting for so long.
Soon enough she found the forbidden zone, dodging down dusty alleys and hiding in the shadows of the dull beige buildings made from chemically hardened sand. Ortha Six was an arid planet whose main wealth came from the many mineral deposits beneath its sandy surface. That and the illegal trading that went on constantly.
At last Tabitha spotted him. A tall, heavy-set man with dark skin and a black beard that forked at the end like a snake’s tongue, V was hard to miss. He wore the traditional long purple robes of an Orthan merchant and his white teeth flashed in his dark face as he talked and laughed. Tabitha held her breath when she saw what he was doing and made sure her vid device was catching everything.
“This lot ought to bring a good amount at the market tomorrow,” he was telling two large, swarthy men leading a group of half-naked men and women who were chained together. They were obviously slaves, their heads drooping in dejection as they shuffled barefoot in the dusty street. Not to mention the fact that they were naked—well, not entirely naked, Tabitha saw, squinting to see more clearly in the dim light. They were all wearing some kind of silvery cords that crossed over their shoulders and ran over their torsos in intricate loops and knots.
The cords the male slaves wore ran over their flat chests and wrapped several times around both cock and balls. Tabitha saw that most of them were erect and she wondered if the slaves’ state of sexual readiness had to do with the silvery cords they wore. She couldn’t think of any other explanation for the male slaves, who looked downtrodden and defeated, to be walking around with hard-ons.
The thin silver ropes the female slaves wore seemed to be even more intricate. After crossing over the shoulders, they framed the breasts and encircled the nipples, which were obviously being held erect just like the male slaves’ cocks. Looking lower, Tabitha could see that the silver cord split into three separate strands at the pubis, two to hold the pussy lips apart and one that appeared to encircle the clit before it continued down between the women’s thighs and out of sight.