After a few furtive glances to see if Sondra was anywhere nearby, Feld looked beyond the blaster’s muzzle to see who his captor was. She was approximately 140 cm tall with an athletic build and dressed in the usually stimulating leather attire of a local dominatrix. On any other night, her commanding presence and garb would have fetched some healthy coin. Tonight, however, her outfit was torn and bloodied, with half of her top missing altogether. But that was not what held Feld’s attention. It was her eyes, the eyes of a wild animal, of a predator, deep-set within a sooty, blood-stained face.
“Get up!!” she yelled, her blaster held out at arm’s length.
As Feld slowly rose to his feet, she retreated three or four steps to measure up her captive. Or prey, Feld thought to himself. Feld winced noticeably as he tried to stand straighter. Several ribs on his left side proved quite sensitive to his movements and his left knee was throbbing spastically.
Stepping to the side, the Dominar, as Feld labeled her in his head, motioned him to walk forward out of the lot. Pausing a bit to survey the lot, Feld saw the tangled wreckage of the airbike, but Sondra was still nowhere to be seen.
“Move!! Now!!” the Dominar commanded. Obeying, Feld limped out of the lot and down the sidewalk, his captor trailing behind.
Where they were going, Feld had no idea, initially, but every city block they passed descended into another level of Dante’s Hell. Blaster shots sizzled in the night air, each one hunting an unseen quarry. Bodies littered the streets, the gutters flowing with blood and other wretchedness. Uncontrolled fires raged among clusters of buildings while others sat dark and lifeless as if waiting for their turn in an abattoir.
After walking for a few city blocks, the Dominar yelled, “Left!!” when they came to a primary street intersection. When they turned the corner, Feld saw that he was in the outskirts of the tralk districts and heading for the main plaza in that area known locally as The Hole. Unlike the neighborhood they had just passed through, The Hole was teeming with activity. Roving bands of armed people were out and about, avoiding the dead bodies in the streets and the assorted wreckage of buildings and aircars alike. As they walked, he became aware of a possible clue to the current situation, but it remained elusive.
As they got closer to The Hole’s center, the level of destruction increased. Fully a quarter of the buildings were ablaze and the air around was filled with soot and burning ash. There were more armed bands as well, all moving around The Hole or outward away from it. Perhaps it was because he was a captive, but none of the bands paid him any mind.
They were two blocks away when he noticed the bluish light emanating from The Hole itself. The plaza itself was also blocked by throngs of people in various states of dress and injury. Approaching the throngs, the Dominar yelled, “Make way!! Make way!!”
Upon hearing the commanding voice behind them, the people in the back rows turned and immediately scowled upon seeing Feld walking up to them. As the crowd parted before the verbal onslaught of his captor, Feld was buffeted with punches and scratches, kicking, spitting and various violent epithets. He was halfway through the crowd, when he realized just what it was that was bothering him. All the people in the crowd were female. In fact, most of them were the working girls of the district, though Feld spotted a few female law enforcement types as well.
When they finally passed through the crowd, Feld could not believe his eyes. There in the center of the plaza, on a makeshift dais of assorted wreckage piled high, was Solara. She was standing with her arms outstretched to the side, head thrown back as if basking in the warming glow of a winter’s sun, completely nude, though that was not the most remarkable thing about the scene. Her body was glowing in the bluish light that filled the plaza. Tendrils of energy arced and sizzled about her. She was beautiful, the most beautiful being that Feld had ever seen. She was the Goddess Electric! And Feld fell to his knees weeping over the wonder of her transformation and for the friend he knew to be lost.
A kick in the back sent him sprawling onto his face. As he lay there catching his breath, he heard the electric snap of an energy discharge and looked up in time to see another flaming aircar crashing towards the ground.
“Feldy dear! Do get up.” rang out the familiar voice. Feld picked himself up from the pavement and stood staring up at the beauty before him. Her pheromone scent struck him then, hard, like a sharp kick. He swooned, but caught himself before he fell to the roadway once again.
“Solara? What are you doing?”
Solara’s expression changed to puzzlement upon hearing her name, but she quickly resumed. “What? All this? This is my destiny, Feldy dear. Don’t you like it?”
“Solara, you need to stop this. Look at all the destruction around you. This can’t be your destiny. This is not you.”
“Oh, but it is, Feldy. It is.” She fixed him with an angry gaze as she continued, “For far too long women have suffered under the fealty of men. At best, we are tolerated. At worst, we are your playthings, your toys, to use and abuse and amuse. No more!”
Upon hearing the rebuke, the crowd began chanting, “No more! No more!”
“It is time for a new age, Feldy! An age made by women, of women and for women. The old ways are dead, Feldy. Dead! And, as the powers that be will not go quietly into that good night, they’ll need some prodding.” Suddenly, Solara’s face took on an expression of dark wrath. “Frellniks!” she screamed. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with!!!” She turned her face skyward then and closed her eyes. In a moment, a glowing orb of energy quickly formed in the air above her head, it being fed from the energy that surrounded her. When the orb grew to the size of an aircar, it winked out of existence. Before Feld had time to figure out what was happening, a bright flash appeared in the night sky overhead.
“Solara! By the hairy photon, what did you do?!” Feld asked, though he suspected the answer.
“I saved your life, Feldy! And all of the lives around here! That orbital cruiser was targeting us. Like I said, they’ll need some prodding.” A smile appeared on her face just then, though no warmth flowed from it. “Which is why I had you brought to me, Feldy. You see, men will indeed have a place in our new order. They may not like it, but it need not be such a terrible existence. All they need do is submit. Come to me, Feldy! Kneel before me and accept your place in a new world!
When Feld stood his ground, Sondra continued her entreaty. “Feld? What troubles you? Don’t you want to submit to me?”
“It depends,” he answered.
“On what?”
“On which decision keeps me alive,” Feld said with a smirk on his face.
Tendrils of energy lashed out at him then, enveloping his head and forming a link between Solara and himself. The feeling was beyond pain. He could feel and hear individual synapses firing as his muscles and vital organs convulsed throughout his body. “Feldy, sweetling,” her voice called to him, “there are times when your mouth is most entertaining. This is not one of them. Submit or die!”
The assault stopped as abruptly as it started. Feld felt the coolness of the pavement on his cheek as he opened his tearful eyes. He knew then that he had no choice. It wasn’t the first time in his life that his free will had been compromised, but he still wasn’t happy about it. And now, frankly, he was scared drenless.
“Ok, Solara. You win. I submit.”
“Come to me, then. Climb up here and swear fealty to me.”
Feld got up to his hands and knees, and no further; that was all his body could handle. Slowly, he crawled toward the dais. It took all his concentration and effort to make such minimal progress. Perhaps, if he was lucky, whatever Solara had in mind for him would kill him. He hoped that his death would be mercifully quick.
“Frellniks!!” he heard her yell again as he began his climb up the debris pile. “Will they never learn?” Solara then busied herself creating another starship-destroying energy sphere. Midway up, as Feld climbed past a gap in the debris pile, he felt a hand grab his arm and pull his weakened body into the relative shelter of the interior of the pile. Looking around in its haphazard shadows, he saw pieces of a nude shimmering gray female form crouched beside him. Her hand was around his lower arm.
“Wh-”, he began to say as a muted corrupted pheromone scent filled his senses, but her other hand covered his mouth.
“Shut the frell up,” she whispered urgently, “and follow me.”
Feeling a new hope surge within him, Feld followed the gray woman’s course into the debris pile to its very core. There, on the ground in shelter of the pile, was an open sewer hatch. Without a word or a motion, the gray lady quickly descended into the darkness beyond. Feld followed, sure that never before had freedom smelled so foul.
It was a severely weakened Feld that tumbled out of the access pipe and into the filth below. A hand quickly grabbed the back of his traveling robe and yanked him to his feet. “Follow me!” she hissed as she splashed into the black void that surrounded them.
Whether they splashed ahead for an hour or a day, Feld had no idea. He did know that when they reached an access ladder, he was quite relieved.
After climbing up the ladder, they passed through a hatch and into a dry cement-clad room. His guide closed the hatch behind them and turned the lights on. Feld gasped when he saw the other person in the room.
“Mathieu!” Sondra ran over and wrapped her arms around him.
“Sondra. Wait. I’m covered in –”
“I don’t care.” She hugged him again for good measure.
The Gray Women known to Feld as Lucretia interrupted their reverie. “While you two frell each other senseless, I’ll be in the shower.” Feld finally took notice of his surroundings after hearing her words.
They were in an underground pumping station, or at least some kind of maintenance facility. In addition to the tools and heavy machinery, there were also beds, a kitchen and a full showering facility. Lucretia, naked and still exhibiting her shimmering gray form, walked to the showers.
“Mathieu,” Sondra whispered, “can you believe it? A Gray Woman! I thought they were all dead.”
“No. Not all of them.” Feld replied absently. What the frell was Lucretia doing here, he thought to himself. Being rescued by a Gray Woman, never mind Lucretia, was the last thing he expected.
Turning back to Sondra, Feld said, “Come. Let’s get out of these fouled clothes and get cleaned up. The next few days are going to be tough.”