Jade Darcy and the Affair of Honor

Chapter 1: Nightmare-1

Chapter 1: Nightmare

He came at her, naked and erect. His body was small but solidly built, and his face was strangely hidden in shadow that obscured nothing else about him. The smell of his sweat mingled unpleasantly with the tang of her own fear. He moved with the dazzling quickness only another carc could achieve, yet his approach was strangely slowed, as though viewed from a projector run at half speed. Horrified though she was, she could not take her eyes from his body—and particularly from his large, thick p***s with the blue veins in bas relief on the side.

Her first impulse was to run, her second to fight, but she could do neither. She couldn’t move. She knew intellectually she was just as fast and almost as strong as he was, but her body would not obey her. Her hands were held at her side by some invisible force, her feet were pinned in place. She stood helpless, struggling against her unseen bonds and gasping from the desperation of her efforts as he drew nearer.

Though his face was still in shadow, she could see his eyes quite clearly—darkly gleaming with both desire and triumph. His eyes took in the contours of her body, and she realized for the first time that she was naked, too, totally helpless before his lecherous advance.

At first all was darkness around her, the silent darkness of the grave. She screamed at him to stop, to leave her alone, but no sounds came from her throat—and despite the shadow over his face she could tell he was beaming a salacious grin. His thumbs were rubbing the tips of his fingers as his large, callused hands prepared to reach out and touch her helpless body.

Then the scene shifted and she was in the ingesterie, with its dim lighting and crowds of strange beings from dozens of worlds. The noise level rocked from stillness to the deafening drone of alien speech, hundreds of simultaneous conversations, but still her screams could not be heard. Most of the beings around her were strangers, but even so she saw many familiar faces.

There was Rix in his accustomed box behind the glass wall, his multiple arms controlling the environment for his varied patrons. There was little Bab-ankh and slimy Lorpet, and so many others who were just a flicker of recognition in the back of her mind. Colonel Stavros, who’d never been within a hundred parsecs of this place, sat placidly at a nearby table, fingering his mustache and looking pointedly away.

She tried to call out, but her voice couldn’t be heard above the din; she tried to reach out, but her arm would not move from its place. She could only stand there, naked and helpless, as the man with the shadowed face came toward her with lust in his eyes.

Then the man laughed, and all noise ceased. The ingesterie’s patrons stopped what they were doing and riveted their attention on her. But not even the other arbiters made a move to fight off her attacker. Most of the patrons sat or stood where they were, and some even came around behind the man, ready to help him. She looked down at her own body and saw that strange arms and tentacles were now holding her in place. There was no safety, not even here. They had all betrayed her. They had all turned against her. Her anger rose against them, almost—but not quite—covering the fear she felt at the man’s approach.

Her breathing was ragged and her heart was banging so heavily she thought it would surely burst through her chest. Her stomach was grinding away at itself until she wanted to throw up, and yet she couldn’t. Somehow that would be a victory for him, another bit of herself he controlled. She couldn’t allow that.

The patrons were cheering silently as the man came toward her, his p***s long and stiff, looking oddly deformed and menacing. Though she whimpered and twisted, she could not escape the inevitable moment.

Then the ingesterie vanished and she was in the woods again. She lay naked on her back with her feet spread widely apart as he continued toward her. The ants bit at her back and buttocks, and she writhed on the damp ground but couldn’t escape. The man’s face was no longer in shadow as he knelt between her legs and reached up to grab her jaw with his strong right hand. It was a face she knew well, a face she’d cared for—once. Now it was twisted into a leering mask of sadistic lust, the lips swollen and red with passion, saliva drooling from the right corner.

His right hand gripped her throat tightly while that elbow leaned heavily on her left shoulder, pinning her to the ground. His left hand grabbed her right breast and squeezed it so hard she cried out even through his choking grip. Everywhere his hands touched her skin she felt a burn like strong alkali eating away her flesh. As his left hand roughly stroked the right side of her body it left a trail of slime as though an army of slugs had crawled over her. Her mind whispered it was only sweat, but her flesh screamed otherwise.

Now he leaned his face down toward hers, and the sour smell of his breath combined with the smell of his sweat and the stink of putrid s*x. His lips forced themselves on hers, and the slimy touch made her stomach flip over. She wanted to vomit in his face, but her body was so paralyzed even that reflex was denied her. And still his hands were touching her, pawing her, burning her. His right elbow shifted and dug into her left breast even as he squeezed the right one again with his left hand.

Then his right hand pushed her head all the way back, so far she thought her neck might snap. She couldn’t see what was happening, now, but at least he’d stopped kissing her. Of all the perversions, that mockery of love seemed the most disgusting.

His p***s jabbed at her, but the angle was wrong and it missed her v****a, poking hard instead against the upper edge and pressing her flesh against the pubic bone. Tears of pain came to her eyes and she tried to cry out, but he held her throat so tightly she couldn’t make a sound. Twice more he jabbed and missed, bringing so much pain that her body involuntarily arched to aid his entrance even as she hated herself for doing so.

His p***s tore its way through her unlubricated labia, pulling her pubic hairs with it and seeming to yank some out from their roots. Her v****a was on fire as he plowed through the dry tissue that suddenly moistened with her own blood. The man looked down at the blood and smiled in triumph, and pumped some more as he pressed himself against her and kissed her and...and...and....

“Let me go, let me go!” Jade Darcy screamed as she opened her eyes and stared in horror at the gently lit ceiling panels overhead. Her screams reinforced her already heightened fear, producing an accelerating spiral that ended only when she ran out of breath. She struggled to sit up, but her arms and legs were restrained tightly at her sides and she couldn’t break them free.

“Please read the numbers on the screen,” said a gentle voice from the side of the room.

“f**k you, Val! Let me go!” she shrieked.

“Swearing isn’t good enough; you can do that in your sleep. Please read the numbers on the screen.”

Jade turned her head desperately to the right and tried to make her eyes focus. The computer screen had a series of random numbers displayed on it. “Four, thirteen, twenty-eight, five,” she said hoarsely, gasping like an asthmatic for air to fill her empty lungs.

“Good morning, Jade,” the computer said as it released the restraints on her ankles and wrists.

“Motherfucking son-of-a-b***h computer,” Jade muttered as she pulled her limbs in quickly, before the computer could bind them again. Her body was quaking from the aftermath of the experience, and her stomach was a pit of fire and nausea. As soon as she could control her arm movements well enough, she reached for the plate beside her bed and grabbed some saltine crackers. She stuffed them into her mouth, nearly choking as she hurried to get them down to ease the burning in her gut.

Her body still felt slimy and dirty from the mauling by her phantom attacker. She remembered how bad the feeling was seven years ago when the nightmares first started, when she would stumble half blind from the bed, knocking over anything she hadn’t already broken in her sleep, to reach the shower and stand under the running water for hours trying to rinse off the disgusting feel of his skin on hers. At least things had minimally improved since then.

“Shower, Val,” she said when she finished her mouthful of crackers.

“Already running.”

Her body was starting to feel more like her own again. As soon as she could trust her legs to support her she swung them over the side of the bed and stood up, then staggered into her tiny bathroom. She peed and stood under the shower for fifteen minutes, letting the hot water wash away her sweat and purify her skin. She didn’t bother to lather just yet; she still had her morning exercises to do and some residual anger to relieve.

She walked naked into the second room of her two -room house, the special exercise room. For half an hour she performed the 108 movements of t’ai chi to center herself, to bring her back into herself, to reclaim her body from the possession of her dream attacker. She’d been taught to start from the center, the gut, then to place herself and her movement in harmony with this center. But it was this center that had been violated; it was the extremities that had been safely away, apart. These were all she owned after the nightmare. Starting from her fingertips, the exercises brought feeling in through her limbs and into her torso and feet, pushing out all unwanted intrusions and making her body and spirit whole again. Once she was back in control, she was ready for her real workout.

She did some quick stretches, then, walking to the set-in arsenal closet, she looked over her choices and finally selected a pair of long-bladed knives. She held one in each hand for a few moments, letting her fingers grow accustomed to their feel and weight. When she was ready, she closed the closet and said, “Fifteen minutes, Val, mode A.”

The lights dimmed to twilight level and the walls disappeared, replaced by an infinite plane of darkness. Jade Darcy forced herself to relax, running through the mild self-hypnotic tricks she’d learned years ago in Special Training. She put her conscious mind in the passenger seat, leaving the actual work to her subconscious, her training, and her computer-augmented reflexes. She’d watch and evaluate as a detached observer, not needing to participate unless an override was necessary.

From off to her left, barely visible in the corner of her eye, a faceless figure rushed toward her, and her body responded even before her mind registered the fact. Spinning on her left foot, she swung her left arm in a backhand s***h that would have cut the attacker across his groin if he were a real person instead of a holographic image. The instant she delivered the disabling blow the image vanished, replaced by two more assailants coming from behind her.

Jade whirled and moved again, causing one of the attackers to charge past her. The second man came closer, only to receive her right-hand dagger up under where his ribs would have been. He promptly disappeared, leaving her to face the onslaught of his partner, coming around for a second pass. She didn’t even need her knives for him; the back of her left hand hit him hard in the windpipe even as her right foot lashed out to kick him in the crotch. This attacker vanished and two more appeared, coming at her from opposite directions.

By ones and twos, holographic images of attackers charged at her, all faceless, all unarmed. All of them were dispatched with effortless blows her well-trained body delivered before her brain even had a chance, in most cases, to register the threat. Her body did not seem anchored to the floor. She moved in space from her center, not her feet. There were no separate motions, but fluid cascades along four, five, or even six axes. This was routine exercise for a carc, as mindless as sit-ups were for ordinary people; Jade’s mind could revel in the sensation of her body behaving as it was supposed to, and the satisfaction of disemboweling and castrating the men who came charging toward her.