Chapter 1 - Détente

 

On New Year's Day, 2100, the Patriarchy of Slavic Peoples (PSP) announced the end of a 20-year conflict with the Slavic Women's Resistance (SSZ) movement. The world took this news with an unusual degree of exuberance. Perhaps it was the birth of the new century and the general feelings of renewal and optimism it the air; perhaps people were simply tired of the killing; whatever the reason, the world celebrated.

The fighting between the SSZ and the Patriarchy (the successor nation to the Russian Federation) had been especially savage, even more so for the way it pitted men against women. Many people had thought that gender war, enable by the easier-to-use lethal technologies, would become a new reason of human conflict. They were happy to see it settled or at least ended for the time being.

The terms of the peace were also hopeful in their uncharacteristic leniency-the Patriarchy agreed to pardon all SSZ fighters and to try SSZ officers only for the crime of aggravated dissent, which carried a two-to-five-year sentence of reeducation. The term "reeducation" didn't fool anyone, nor was anyone convinced that the PSP would keep its word, but it didn't matter-everyone was willing to overlook a little cheating to end the war. The PSP had committed horrible war crimes but so had the SSZ; the idea that some of the guilty would get the punishment they deserved was appealing.

Major Mila Sokolovski, 26, the photogenic commander of a company of SSZ fighters operating in the Turkmenian desert, was one of the first officers to surrender. During her trial, she confessed to war crimes-ordering the gruesome torture and execution of several PSP prisoners. She claimed her actions were in retaliation for the PSP's equally horrific treatment of SSZ fighters, but they were not on trial, she was. The court, however, strictly followed the terms of the reconciliation and sentenced her to three-and-one-half years of reeducation at Turkmenistan's Ovadan-Depe Prison. The foreign press this unambiguous evidence of the peace treaty's success.

On March 15, 2100, the Honorable William Mattingly, the U.S. security of state announced that after more than two decades of mutual distrust, his country and the PSP were reestablishing diplomatic relations, and that the U.S. would be reopening its embassy in Moscow. The European Union followed suit a few days later, declaring the peace treaty "a new dawn for Europe." Both the U.S. and the E.U. issued written statements decrying the Patriarchy's policies of male domination, but they buried these deep in a blizzard of praise. Several Western journalists even called the PSP-the most reactionary government on earth-progressive.

In general, the world ignored the PSP's institutionalized oppression of women while applauding its newfound benevolence. People desperately wanted to believe that the world had entered a new period of détente.

 

***

 

Consciousness returned slowly.

The pain told her she was still alive even though she was blind and unable to move or speak. Something hard was pressing against the back of her throat, against her uvula making her want to gag. Instinctively, she moved her head back and something sharp bit her on the nose between her nostrils. The pain made her immediately jerk her head forward and the object in her mouth slipped down her throat forcing her to gag. Panicked, she pulled her head back again then forward as teeth bit at her septum.

RELAX...her mind screamed! FOCUS...find the position with the least pain.

Slowly, she trimmed her position until she found a tolerable balance between the two pains. It wasn't pain free, but it was less painful. That's real life, she thought stoically-always a compromise between two bad choices. She had learned that in the desert...with the lives of her fighters. At least she had a choice.

Radim could have simply tied her head in place with the faux cock deep in her throat. She would have awoken and begun jerking immediately. The threat of suffocation would have forced the response. She would have been unable to stop it, like a fish out of water. It wasn't much of a favor-he was still making her suffer-but it was something and she was grateful.

A kindness, even a gesture, in the middle of such monstrous hatred and acrid bitterness was noteworthy, she decided. She could have done the same to the PSP soldiers she had tortured, but she never did. She had never shown them the slightest mercy. She had hated them for what they did to her fighters, to her friends; she hated them with a fury that only an agonizing death could quench.

Hatred... It was a terrible thing. It destroyed both the hater and the hated. The memory of what she had done, what she had allowed her fighters to do, was crushing her, sapping her spirit every day. One part of her mind welcomed Radim's tortures-she deserved to suffer; it was just, biblically just that he was her torturer. The SSZ had killed had tortured and killed his brother. He had the right, almost the obligation to seek vengeance.

Her head slipped forward, and the dildo pushed deeper inside. Not only was it painful, but it sent a clear message-she was a cocksucker! Her mouth was fit only to be a toilet for a man's semen. He was right about that as well-she was a cocksucker. She had sucked a lot of cock as a slugi. Yes, Yasha and others had forced that and more on her and yes, it was necessary for her to obey if she wanted to live, but it had still been a choice and she had chosen life. Did that make her a despicable whore; did that make her the pizda (cunt) that Radim called her?

No, it did not. What made her a pizda was the way she had abused the PSP prisoners they captured. It would be different if she could look back and say that she had acted like a human being, that she didn't deserve this...but this was not true. She had not acted decently; she had sought revenge on them just as Radim does now on her. She deserved this and more.

They had named her "the Desert Fox" and put a bounty of a hundred thousand Euros on her head. She knew the word "fox" was not used because she was clever as Rommel had been. They gave her the name to remind her of what they would do to her once they had captured her. The pretty ones always suffered more at the hands of the Spetsnaz.

It would have been nice to have had a normal life. Men treated most women in the Patriarchy well, better than "well," they were honored, esteemed. She could have been one of them if her... She could have found a normal man to love, to cherish. She would have loved him, made love to him, sucked his cock until he begged her t stop to show him how much she loved him, to show him that she was his woman. She didn't have a problem belonging to a man; it was natural-women, even strong women, found pleasure and satisfaction in subordinating themselves to a man. She would have as well if her father had given her the chance.

If he had...

The girls in her unit, mostly former rabs (slaves), talked about the pleasures of real love and heterosexual sex all the time. She knew they were purging themselves of emotion, of feelings. All they had in the desert was talk, each other, and the occasional PSP soldier to distract them.

She tried to remind them that they were fighting against the Patriarchy's oppression of women; that the Patriarchy was waging war on them. She told them that they were fighting for the freedom and dignity of all women not just those the Patriarchy chose to protect. Even then, the words had sounded hollow. They accurately reflected the SSZ's (Soprotivleniye Slavyanskikh Zhenshchin) dogma, but nothing could excuse what they or the Patriarchy's soldiers had done in the Karakum...nothing. The propaganda was an inadequate defense; what counted was how you conducted yourself no matter what the enemy did to you. And on that score, they were all guilty of war crimes.

The dildo pushed against her uvula again and she gagged. The real thing was softer, she remembered; it shaped itself to her mouth and slipped down her throat like an oyster. She had even enjoyed it sometimes; she had even enjoyed some of the discipline, the bondage...

STOP...! She had never had thoughts like these in the Karakum; she had never doubted herself, questioned why she was here. Was she doing it now because she would be dead soon, dead and unloved? No, it was because surviving in the desert, surviving against nature and the Spetsnaz, the Patriarchy's best soldiers, required all her attention and energy. She had been the leader, the person responsible for the lives of the 144 SSZ fighters in her company. There had not been any time for guilt, for erotic thoughts, for dreams of sex...with a man.

STOP, please...! Her mind was rambling, jumping from one painful thought to another, lingering on thoughts she had banned from her mind in the Karakum, lingering on distractions long denied. She was surprised by her weakness, but she should have expected it. She was different here in Ovadan-Depe. In this place, she was just another pizda, another SSZ cunt for the Spetsnaz to punish for her crimes. She was even starting to think like a pizda.

Carefully, she tried to move her arms, to shift her position, but something was holding them in place at her side. They had bound her on her knees, on her haunches, while she was unconscious, probably to one of the iron posts in the cellblock's punishment space where all the prisoners could see. Something solid (the pipe?) held the metal collar that was around her throat in place. The collar was keeping her upright, keeping her head straight. She could feel leather straps holding her ankles to her thighs; she could feel heavy iron manacles at her wrists locking her to the stanchions at her sides. A thick blindfold held her eyelids closed, blocking out all light, and a gag tied behind her neck kept the cock tight in her mouth. Radim must have put a metal clamp in her nose, on her septum, and tied it to the post as well.

The clamp was a small thing, a detail, but it was the accent that made the torture truly agonizing. It was always the details that mattered, and Radim never forgot the details. His creativity and imagination when it came to inflicting pain was pure genius. Genius...what kind of man uses his natural talents to deliver pain? In her experience, most men were scared to reveal their latent sadism; society preferred that they appeared...benign. It was only when conditions were exactly right, did they show their true nature.

Demons lived inside men. Demon who enjoyed her pain, her shame... She was naked of course; the guards enjoyed gawking at her young and fit body, they enjoyed watching her move when she was in pain. They had kept her without clothing since she had surrendered. At first, be naked in front of them had humiliated her, but after a time, she realized that it gave her power over them. She could see how different poses, different gestures affected them, stirred their desires, frustrated them. It wasn't much, but any power was better than none. The only time they had allowed her to wear clothes was at her trial.

And what clothes...! The Patriarchy had gone all out to make her look beautiful. They wanted to cast her as an empty-headed beauty whom the SSZ had duped into insurrection. They wanted the world to see her as a willful but contrite child-woman rather than a worthy adversary. She had been more than "a worthy adversary," she had been a vengeful ghost. Wrecking death and destruction on them for years. This was the reason they had sent the Spetsnaz, the Patriarchy's best and toughest troops, to the Karakum.

Still, the clothes had been elegant...feminine. She had not dressed like a woman in years. She could still remember the white silk blouse by Milano, the Bruno Cinelli linen skirt with its metallic waist, the sensible but alluring heels. She heard one of the guards say that the clothes had cost the government more than her trial...maybe they did.

The matron who had guarded and dressed her for court had enjoyed pushing the electrified pigeon egg up her ass, enjoyed inserting the copped dildo in her vagina while the guards held her down. She kept telling her that she was "incorrigible," a reprobate, a miscreant who didn't deserve a trial let alone such beautiful clothes, and that if she even looked sideways at the foreign press, she would shock her.

She kept her word. The witch had smiled kindly in the courtroom whenever she had the opportunity to administer a warning-dose of electric current, which she did whenever she glanced at the press, whenever she opened her mouth, or put any kind of expression on her face other than bland acceptance. The pain was too terrible to resist, so she cooperated with the charade.

Not that she had anything to say in her defense. She had surrendered herself and her company-what was left of it-the day after the Kasimov government announced the pardons. She was not ashamed to admit that the Spetsnaz had beaten them; that surrender was the only option left if they were to live.

No one other than her mother knew about the list. No one knew that the real reason she had surrendered her unit so quickly was because she needed to be someplace where the Americans could find her. She knew that the list could inflict a million times more damage on the Patriarchy than she ever could fighting in the desert. Surrender was the only way she could get it into the right hands.

The call to her mother had already cost the lives of three fighters. Not just their live-the Spezsnaz had captured and crucified them at their camp gate. It had been hard to pass under their dead stares. They had been so close to freedom...to have it snatched from them at the last moment, to die so horribly. She had almost given up at that moment, but it was the hatred that kept her moving. She had never believed the promises the PSP made regarding officers, at least for those SSZ officers in the Karakum-the Spetsnaz were savages who believed in vengeance and retribution. Instead of the cross, they faced the tortures of Ovadan-Depe prison.

The cross...the Spetsnaz enjoyed torturing their SSZ captives-they started by sexually abusing them for days or weeks and finished by nailing them naked to roughly hewn crosses. The desert sun baked them alive as their muscles slowly strangled them. It was a horrible death.

She had commanded four platoons when they started, 144 fighters all women ranging in age from 18 to 36. There were 50 left when they surrender. Of the others, 52 had died in battle, the desert had killed 24, and the Spezsnaz had captured and crucified 18. The numbers were seared into her mind.

They had responded to their brutality in an equally horrific manner. Her SSZ fighters had hung their Spetsnaz captives naked by their ankles from a tree with their arms bound tightly behind weighed down with a heavy rock. The rock's weight slowly dislocated the man's shoulders. The excruciating pain usually drove them insane before the desert foxes or wild dogs finished them off, but not always. Sometimes they could hear them screaming just as they could hear the screams of their sisters. Sound, especially screams, carried a long distance in the desert.

It was a vicious and ugly war on both sides. She was glad it was over.

Over...for others but not for her, not for the desert fox. The Patriarchy was not gentle with those few who defied it; she still had to endure the Patriarchy's terrible retribution. She must endure it; she must get the list into...

"How are you today, Osnovnoy (Major)?" a man's voice whispered in her ear.

Surprised, she jerked her head back, and the septum clamp sent another spike of pain into her brain. It was Radim, Sergeant Radim Hospod-her keeper and torturer.

"Take it easy, desert fox," he said scornfully. "You need to hold your head upright, Osnovnoy, like the proud SSZ fighter you are. You are the Desert Fox, the she-wolf who killed hundreds of Spezsnaz soldiers. Of course, I understand that it is hard to feel proud with a cock in your mouth, but you need to try. There will be a lot of cock is your future-you are going to be here at Ovadan-Depe for three and one-half years. I cannot keep the guards off you for that long. You might think of this time as your Hell but know that there is worse to come...for years and years."

He emphasized the last "years." It was impossible to imagine that she could suffer this way for hours let alone years, but with someone like him watching out for her, it was possible. He wanted her to know it; he wanted her to imagine what years with him was going to be like.

"For the next week, I will tie the rubber a bit farther inside each day so you become familiar with the feel of something in your mouth and throat, so you can control your gagging. You will never lose your gag reflex entirely, but you can learn to control it...or not. It doesn't matter-some men enjoy the way a girl's gagging tightens her throat muscles on their member. Good cocksuckers need to practice every day to improve. I swear to you that that you will get all the practice you need."

The prison's administrator had assigned her to Radim for her initial "orientation," and he enjoyed talking to her, taunting her as he worked. What he said had terrified her at first, but now she welcomed his sadistic monologues. It was human contact...of a sort, and his voice was always gentle even when his message and his tortures were not.

Radim had been a Spetsnaz medic before SSZ troops in the Urals had hung his Spetsnaz brother (his real brother) upside down and broken his arms. After that, he had volunteered to work in the prisons using the skills he had learned as a medic to obtain justice for his brother. She understood how he felt; how vengeance calmed the soul.

He reached down and rolled her nipples between his fingers to make them hard then placed the piranha clamps. The sudden pain caused her to jerk her head forward again and swallow the cock. He like to use piranhas with their clamps with sharp metal teeth that bit deeply into her flesh.

"Shush, shush, Osnovnoy. I know it hurts terribly, but you need to become accustomed to feeling pain on your sexual parts. The memory of such pain needs to settle in your mind so you can appreciate a man's soft touch. Believe me, when I turn you over to the guards as a full pizda, you will welcome their rough hands on your body."

He ran his finger along her clitoris to stiffen it then attached another piranha. She tried to remain still, but it was impossible. Her body shuddered with agony as the dildo pushed deeper inside.

"There...it's all over now. Tomorrow, I will clamp your lovely ear lobes to give your nose a rest. We are going to be together for a good long time; I don't want you developing an infection or becoming dulled to the pain. I want you healthy and alert, Osnovnoy; I want you to feel every moment of suffering just as my brother did.