Prelude: How the Leopard Got Her Spots
28 Apr 2022Aurora Bael
(CW: THIS ENTRY CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF EXTREME EXPLOITATION AND ABUSE OF AN ENSLAVED PERSON. While care has been taken to keep the content of this entry PG-13, the subject matter is intensely dreadful, and may be emotionally difficult or triggering for some readers.)When I was young, I really loved living in the Empire.
We were never part of the wealthy elite, but both of my parents worked good jobs and had enough to live on with some to spare for fun. Early childhood was really the best. My mum and I spent a lot of time painting pictures and playing in our little garden on Kurrae A1. She used to call me her Little Duchess because I was so precocious and very proper. I remember lining up a few little dolls and giving a speech about the importance of duty and honor around the age of seven, making sure they all sat up straight and paid very close attention. I'm sure it was just the ramblings of any other little girl of that age, but in my mind it was a very important lesson... And I remember it so well because that was the day Mum died.
It was no one's fault. Terrible accident, they said. A rack she was stocking in a nearby factory suddenly collapsed and crushed her to bits. I never heard many details. I remember my little brother, Simon, crying at the funeral and I tried to scold him and tell him to put on a happy face for Mummy... About a minute before I also bawled my little eyes right out of my head.
Father never really got over the loss of his wife. They were very affectionate with each other and when she was gone it was like a part of him had been ripped out. He drifted from job to job, taking pay cuts along the way as he tried to fill the void with gambling and booze. He seemed to resent Simon and I more than anything. We were little more than painful reminders of what he had lost. He didn't strike us that I can remember but sometimes it felt like that would have been preferable to his cold indifference. It was around my tenth birthday that he decided he'd try and join the Imperial Navy, probably trying to get some kind of purpose in life. I knew the moment he left that he was too drunk to fly worth a damn. And sure enough he failed the entrance tests, despite how hard he studied. "Aurora dear, don't dream. It's a waste of time."
Things got worse after that. We moved three times to smaller and smaller apartments farther away from the countryside. He started pouring his love and care into Simon, assuming I was old enough to care for myself... I wasn't really, but I learned and made due. Then one day he came home chalk white and frightened. He scooped Simon up and held him tight and patted my head and...suddenly looked at me with... I'm not sure exactly. Relief? I didn't know why at the time but... That would be the last time I saw either of them.
The next day, Father told me to pack my things as quickly as I could. To take only what I needed. I grabbed some of my favorite clothes and the storybooks that had helped me escape and one or two dolls that reminded me of Mum, and then he...dropped Simon off with a neighbor and no bag, and took me by train out away from the city to a large...what looked like a boarding school for girls and told me he was giving me to someone who could better take care of me. I wondered how he could afford such a place until, when talking to the headmistress, the question of payment came up... He began asking how much he would get for me... It took about three days for me to realize I'd been sold. Not because I'm thick. But because I couldn't believe it. And I'm afraid this story is not about to get any happier.
Madame Regiana's Finishing School for Girls at first seemed... Well, quite normal. Apart, of course, from the fact that I was allowed to keep none of my own things. We were taught all your maths and sciences, Imperial history and the workings of governance. The social order of things and why such a regimented society was so necessary, so essential to the nature of humanity, and where in that order all of us stood. But despite our low station we were taught all the dignities of higher class society, and at first I really relished those lessons. How to laugh at a joke that wasn't funny. Posture and dining etiquette. How to play an instrument (in my case, piano). How to carry on a conversation using just enough of what we'd learned to appear interesting without controlling the conversation or discussing any views of our own. Proper grooming and formal dress. The economics of running a household and the proper care of young children... It wasn't until my third year that it became clear what all of that instruction was for. I wasn't merely in a school for house servants. I was to be a courtesan.
The first man I...entertained, let's say, was gentle and kind enough, but at that point I had been so thoroughly groomed into supplicance I'm not sure it would have mattered. Over the next year the lessons became more explicit and overt (I'll spare you the details). Until finally when at graduation they placed the brand on the inside of my forearm, I barely made a sound. At 16 I was put to work for the school, teaching younger girls the things I had learned while entertaining clients to pay for my education. The idea that I would eventually work off whatever 'debt' I was worth was never mentioned. This was my lot. And if it was going to be my life I may as well be good at it.
Around age 17 I was finally sent to my Forever Home, the family of a... I suppose he was a Baron; it's so hard for me to keep it in mind. I was always instructed to refer to him as My Lord and Master. I can't remember his name. I don't know why I can't, only that I can't. I could tell you he had striking green eyes and black hair and kept a clean chin and a bushy mustache. So after three and a half, maybe four years of constant grooming and another year of teaching others the same while serving singular clients, here I am given a whole family to care for. By then, it wouldn't have mattered how he treated me. I was stuck. He wasn't altogether cruel, nor his wife, My Lady, but his control was absolute. Beatings were not particularly common, but it was clear that there would be consequences for not making myself available to them at any hour for any reason.
So I managed their house and raised their children with, on average, about three other girls. They all came and went for one reason or another, but I remained. I'm sure it was at least something to do with the children... God, they loved me, and I loved them. Playing with them, telling them fantasy stories of wizards and goblins, teaching them little secrets of baking and cooking... I loved them like they were my own children, patching up their bruises and scrapes, reading them bedtime stories, running around the garden at hide and seek... Even though as they grew older they saw me less as a figure of nurturing and more as a pet and a lesser, I still cherished those times. They were by far the best part of my old life... A close second, however, was that whenever I had finished my chores and got the children off to school, I often had time to myself to read all of their books.
My Lady was a shrewd woman, but she had some very particular tastes for classical literature and nonfiction. Her library was full of hard leather bound books on every subject from every era. I read The Origin of Species, Principia Mathematica (the ones by both Russel and Newton), th Feynman Lectures, Hawking, Maxwell, Statham, Louise Cardinal's Frame Shift Mechanics, Biologica Astronomea... And when I had my fill of the sciences I read the politics of the Caesars, Machiavelli, Marx, Hitler, Stalin, Soong, early works of Marlin and of course the countless treatises of the Duvals throughout the centuries. But my favorites by far were the science fiction writings of the 20th and 21st centuries. Bradbury, Roddenberry, Lucas, Asimov, Clarke, Cixin Liu, Hammersmith, Lovecraft, H. G. Wells, and dozens more. Some were dark but so much of it was irrepressibly optimistic, imagining a universe teeming with life and adventure. It seems like a lot but when it's your only leisure available for the better part of two decades and the only escape your mind can even consider from the bonds of captivity, the pages fly. I likely read more of those books than My Lord and Lady ever did. To them, they were trophies. To me? They were freedom.
...But I was still bound to service. That reality was one I never dared to question. Not even when it nearly cost me my life.
My Lord was not particularly wealthy by the standards of Imperial high society, but he did have enough to occasionally throw rather extravagant parties for his subordinates and superiors alike. A sort of ritual bonding among the upper crust in the Empire. How well you can entertain is a symbol of status and wealth, even if you can't always back it up. And of course, as a ward and servant of his house, among the instruments of the evening's entertainment was yours truly. Often I would play a piece or two on piano, serve drinks and hors d'oeuvres, and then my more particular services offered to superiors as a favor or subordinates as a reward... It was quite routine, honestly. Until...
Honestly I can't give many details about it. Good taste and decorum demand that I leave much of it out. What I can say is that one such subordinate of My Lord possessed a savagery I've never seen in a suitor — or human — before or since. My face was slashed and my left eye destroyed. My left arm was shattered so badly that much of the soft tissue below the skin couldn't be saved. The same was true of much of my upper left chest cavity. When My Lord finally heard the commotion and broke into the room he was horrified. Furious. I do not think that man survived until morning, but... I don't know for sure. I only know that I never saw him again. My Lady was so disgusted at the sight of me she was never able to look me in the face again. She begged My Lord to sell me off even after I had been put back together again, but he was very... attached... I was his favorite and he insisted on keeping me and getting me whole again.
As soon as I was well enough to stand? I was right back to work serving every need he had, but now with a cruel Lady and doubly distant children. I think it was then that I started to understand exactly how bad my lot was. Exactly how little my humanity mattered.
And it was in the midst of that abject despair that James Randall Conrad entered my life.
Unbeknownst to me, My Lord had made some powerful enemies off world. Out of system. Beyond the bounds of Imperial Space even. Some shady dealings in his private life as a Commander or a score to settle from his position in the Navy Reserve, I don't know. But suddenly one day our home was invaded by a team of four. Just four mercenaries. I was making My Lord and Lady their dinner while the children were away with one of the other girls when suddenly we heard the rapid staccato of weapons' fire. I glanced out the window and saw the black-clad figures moving through the front garden, weapons drawn. Three guards were down on the ground and bleeding. I screamed. My Lord spun around one of the bookcases in the library and retrieved his rifle, ordering me to go hide. So I did as he asked, for fear I'd be killed or taken or worse. Into the servants' quarters, locking the door behind me, I pressed against the far wall and listened as the house erupted beyond. Even after it went quiet I dare not open the door, just crouched down between the bed and the wall, watching and listening.
There was a knock. I caught my scream and shoved it back into my throat. They knocked again. Then a boot smashed the knob through the wooden frame and one of the killers came inside, hands up and empty for me to see. I started crying but he cooed to me and told me it would be alright, then took off his mask. He wasn't an Imperial citizen. The voice was all wrong, the way he carried himself, it was just clear... I had always been told that people from beyond the Empire were oafish, ugly, smelly, unkempt, that I'd know them when I saw them. Well this man was not ugly. And if he smelled of anything, it was gunpowder and blood. Star dust and space. Wildness of some kind which I couldn't place. God that smile... His smile could melt away anything. He said his name was Conrad... But when we were alone, I always called him James. I don't think he ever let anyone else call him that...
"It's okay... I'm not going to hurt you. I want to show you something. Will you come with me?"
It had been so long since someone asked me what I wanted I... I just nodded and came with him. He lead me through the upturned house until we reached the library. And there bound to a chair in the center, face bloodied, was My Lord and Master. Suddenly, there's a pistol in my hand from who-knows where and a voice whispering in my ear.
"Do you want to be free?"
"Jesus Christ, Conny! What the fuck?" Another man, still masked, yelled back.
"Oh shut up, Bob, she's got more right than any of us to do it! Look at her!"
"I AM looking at her! Are you?"
I was crying... Shaking. I... The magnitude of the choice I had just been given. Freedom hadn't even occurred to me as an option! I thought I'd just be shuffled off and resold but now... Now the chance to actually kill My Lord — my owner for the last 15 years — and take my freedom by force was literally right in front of me, looking at me sunken and defeated and pleading... I couldn't even move, much less kill!
"Shit... I'm sorry, Miss. I get it. First time's always the hardest. But it gets easier. Here, I'll show you," Conrad said, took the gun from my hand, and put a bullet right through the bridge of My Lord's nose. I screamed in shock at the sound but... After a few seconds I realized I wasn't crying anymore. I was...I was laughing. A man was dead. A man whose children I had raised and whose bed I had shared more times than I could count had just been killed right in front of me. I was laughing as the light faded from his eyes. Part of me knew it was horrid, tragic, savage even. But that part was quiet. And it would stay quiet. Until...
We, erm... "liberated" the Baron's Clipper, and made for a fleet carrier belonging to a private security and intelligence firm called Foxtrot Company. Conrad wasn't a Commander; no one in the unit was, but there were several good pilots authorized for company vehiles. They told me that from there on out I could go where I wanted when I wanted, they'd drop me anywhere I wanted to go... But I had nowhere to go. So I shaved my head, changed my name, learned how to talk like a Yank, and trained with James to earn my room and board. New skills came rushing in. How to curse properly. How to drink. How to shoot and where for best effect: foot for information, thigh to stop, hand to startle, arm to warn, chest and head to kill. How to start a riot. How to debug a room. How to avoid cameras. How to force a basic encryption. How to use my sexuality as leverage. How to commit murder and sleep at night on a pile of money. How to run from the Feds.
Power... It's a hell of a drug. Habit forming, too. All hundred and fifty of us were high as a kite on it 24/7. Foxtrot was damn near untouchable. We swept through systems on a stiff solar breeze and rolled out before anyone even noticed we had dropped by. We did as we pleased when we pleased and there wasn't a goddamn thing anyone could do to stop us. I might have lived like that forever... Except... Well, for some of them, the high wore off fast. And they'd go looking for a fix around the rest of the company. I remember one time Jade and Mitzy, the only other women in the whole company, started fighting over the last cup of coffee. Never mind we could make more or that it was hours old already. Jade wanted it and Mitzy did too. So there was a fight. Yelling. Broken furniture. Bloodied noses. Then after a tussle Mitzy got up and realized there was a knife sticking four inches into the meat of her thigh. And the bitch laughed about it. Just said "okay you win" with a big old grin on her face, tied a quick tourniquet around it and limped off to the med bay. And Jade poured that cup of skunk ass coffee, sat down right next to me and just... Drank it. Smug. Happy.
It was her eyes that got me. They were still hungry. And I knew if I didn't clear the hell out, I was next.
We all got the itch from time to time. Even the cooler heads like Bob Harkness and Jacques Paris got snippy when we went too long without work. But no one — not a single goddamn one of them — got it worse than Conrad.
Guess who he took it out on. If you guessed his pretty emancipated girlfriend, you are right.
It was never the same twice, but always the same. Too drunk or too bored, too high or not high enough. I'd say something he didn't like and it was go time. Sometimes it ended in bandages. Other times it ended in bedsheets. Sometimes whether I liked it or not. It never got quite as bad as being a slave, but you know what, after five goddamn years that didn't really matter that much to me anymore. I started taking inventory of how many people I'd murdered since meeting him and around the time I got to 800 with over three years to go, I just gave up. I had become that fabled "one woman genocide" that masters told their slaves back in Kurrae about why it's so important for a supplicant to know their place.
For the first time, the high wore off and I just... didn't want another fix. I realized that as much as I hated my old life, I was hating who I was becoming almost...more. James knew something was up. Learned to read me like a book and even through all the first fights and abuse, still in his way wanted to make me happy. Whether that was love or fear, I don't know. I don't want to know. Not that it matters anyway... One night, a few hours after a really brutal ...episode... he saw me sitting alone in the dark and asked me if we could do a job together, just the two of us. "Like we used to when we met."
"Yeah... Yeah sure. Maybe tomorrow?"
He smiled and kissed my forehead. "I know it's been rough, baby... I'm sorry. We'll set it right, okay? Just like old times." Fuck that smile. Fuck those kisses. Fuck all of his half baked apologies...
"Yeah... Like old times."
"Love you."
"Love you, too." ...Goddammit I still meant it. I still do mean it... Why do I still mean it?
The next day we knocked over an Imperial Slave auction. In Torval space no less. How poetic. Getting in was easier than it should have been considering the value of the human beings up for sale. I...really wasn't in the mood to get bloody, so once we cleared the offices and bagged the cash, I walked into the auction floor and fired madly into the air. The Buyers scattered like the cockroaches they are, back to their ships and cars and the relative safety of their palacial estates. But the auctioneers we kept. I watched him go to work on the owner for nearly an hour before I got bored and started opening the cages, leading people out. But Conrad caught one girl by the arm, a puckish look in his eyes, and brought her over to the man who was waiting to sell her that day.
He put a pistol in her hand, grinned like the Ace of Spades and whispered.
"Do you wanna be freeeee?"
That's when I killed him. Right there, on the spot. Three rounds, right down his ear. He didn't even have time to notice. I knew in that moment nothing would ever change. Nothing could ever be different. Life was a game and to him, dealing death was winning. Toying with the living was just a fun bonus round. The girl yelped and looked fearfully at me. I rolled up my sleeve and showed her my brand. "Afraid I've heard that song before, sister. You wouldn't have liked how it ends."
And that was it. That was when I decided to get out. I beat stardust back to the Carrier, packed my shit and my money, handed Harkness the keys to the castle and bounced out for the Pilots' Federation to see if flying could give me something a little more real.
...So when I say "I'm hesitant to make a home again," here's why. That's what I'm running from. Roots are dangerous and at this point? I'm worse. Every home I've touched has been shit or a prison or both. Bringing this kind of baggage into a house of love and joy feels reckless. Criminally negligent. How could I suffer someone else to bear the burden of THAT?
But when Lily heard this story — when she heard me inside of it — she didn't shrink away in horror or falter in her offer even the slightest. She reached across the table and took my hand and said "Rory, come live with me. With us. Honestly, I'd be disappointed if it wasn't a little dangerous. We need people like you, and you need people like us. Take as much time to think about it as you need. This offer is not going anywhere. Ever."
Goddammit, you know what? I deserve that. After 35 years of blood and terror, I fucking deserve that. I've been through too much and denied myself for too long in service of principles that I don't even know for sure apply anymore. I deserve to have a place to rest. I deserve to have a home.
Hell, doesn't everybody?
- Aurora Angelica Bael
Security Consultant
Chilton Terminal Agricultural Cooperative