Chapter 1

 

My name is Brian Giddings and I am quite immoral-or perhaps amoral would be a better description. I am not concerned with morality-except my own and that is based on two things: money and sex. Both these thing became the driving force in my life from the moment I began to understand them: the money thing early, when I understood I was an orphan without a cent to my name; the sex thing after puberty when I began to appreciate how wonderful it can be.

I was orphaned as a baby and I still have no idea who my parents might have been-neither do I care. I grew up first in institutions and then in a succession of foster homes all of which surrendered me back to the orphanage when they found me unmanageable. I was always a loner. I didn't make friends easily and I still don't. In fact, while I have sycophants all around me who call themselves my friends, I don't consider a single one of them in that category, with the possible exception of my personal assistant, Adam Harris, anyway.

I studied hard however and I gained a degree in business and marketing and then I began making the deals that would, in the space of only thirteen years turn me into a billionaire. I borrowed but I always had the edge and the buildings and estates I created had a flair to them that made me millions each time. Soon I could go it alone and I then made even more.

I eschewed all social activities except sex. Once I reached and passed puberty, I realised just how wonderful the female body was and while I didn't want any relationships as such, or even a girlfriend, I had a girl available any time I wanted one-and that was often.

In time, I set up a series of brothels all over London and in the major provincial cities of the kingdom. These were extremely high class salons where only the best girls provided the wealthiest clients with the very best service-of all kinds. But then, as time passed and I approached my thirty-fifth year, even that palled and I cast around for a better means to satisfy my lusts.

It came while I was reading a sex-book on a mythical island owned by a rich and powerful woman and who kept a stable of beautiful girl-slaves for the pleasure of her clients. It went off in my brain like an exploding light globe!

A ship! That was it. A floating slavegirl city.

I began to plan feverishly. First I would unload my company. It would be easy. A number of other development firms had been eyeing me off hungrily for some time for I was the biggest and the best and I was too much competition for them. Within a couple of months I had the deal stitched up and I was cash rich to the tune of 1.2 billion pounds, that is £1,200,000,000. This could have kept me in riches for the rest of my life without me lifting a finger but I wanted this new thrill-the ownership and exploitation of hundreds of the most beautiful women in the world.

Whether this was because my own mother abandoned me on the orphanage doorstep and that act had twisted my mind, I don't know and I don't care. It did mean I had a new challenge in my life and one I was going to enjoy. Was I concerned at the illegality of what I proposed? Not at all. I was going to put in place various means to keep the world's policemen off my back and at the same time, cater for the jaded lusts of its richest men.

I won't bore you with the details of my acquisition of the ship and its crew. Of the ship, suffice to say she was modern; a small cruise liner converted for my purposes, and she had huge fuel and food storage reserves which meant we could cruise for many months without the need for re-bunkering and victualling. The ship's own resources turned seawater into fresh so that was not a problem.

So far as the captain, officers and crew were concerned, I was very careful indeed. Through my brothel network, which I had not sold when disposing of my major companies, I had built up contacts with some international characters who could headhunt just about anything you wanted and they came up with a shortlist of candidates for master and officers. Once we had these in place, the crew would not be difficult.

Captain Jeremy Carswell was not a nice man. Like me, he had an abiding interest in money and girls and when, after satisfying myself he was the genuine article, I informed him of my plans for the Helot (a most appropriate name, I thought, since it means Spartan slave), he was very enthusiastic about joining me. The pair of us then went over the lists of possible officers, and once these were appointed, the crew, at least his crew-those who would run the vessel itself. There was another crew of course-mine-the dozens of trainers and overseers who would be responsible for training and disciplining the girls once we acquired them.

I would be managing this side of the ship's operation myself and as my assistant, brought Adam Harris with me. I had always liked Adam. Of all my staff, he was the only one who had not been sycophantic towards me. He was also athletic and very good-looking with fine fair hair and blue eyes that made him look like the angel he certainly wasn't. He had the same predatory attitude towards females I did. He wasn't tall or even overly muscular but boy, was he strong.

It was Adam and me who selected the men who would train and then keep discipline amongst the hundred-odd girls I intended to acquire. And this brings me to their acquisition.

Adam was very good with the Internet and over a period of weeks, sent out feelers from an anonymous terminal in a rented office under very fictitious names. In this way we found our slavers... men who still engaged in the business of capturing and enslaving girls (and boys, although that side didn't interest me-not then) and selling them to the small but very wealthy cadre of men who still owned slaves.

I was to be surprised at the number of these. I had thought slavery was dead and buried except for a few notable exceptions in parts of the Middle East and Africa, but I was to discover there were men who had the resources to keep slavegirls (and boys) in perfectly normal societies, quite hidden and totally unknown to their neighbours. Of course, to do this, you would have to be extraordinarily wealthy and own a property big enough to hide them adequately, but I was shocked to find such people in Beverley Hills (Hollywood), Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and even in certain rural estates here in the United Kingdom! It didn't matter how 'civilised' a nation might be, there were still some individuals who craved to own another human being and to use and abuse them-and if they had the resources, it was very possible.

Perhaps (I thought), I could have had my very special brothel on land...? But no, the ship was better and anyway, I had a hankering to cruise the oceans of the world. Of course, we would be putting in to any regular ports and when we did, the girls would have to be securely hidden away. Fortunately we made provision for this, but more about that later.

As the ship neared the completion of her refitting to suit her as a slave-ship, we, the captain and me (and Adam and me, too), had just about finished our two recruitment drives. I hired a small holiday camp down in Kent to accommodate the two sets of crews and here we set about training them in their roles.

"As you are aware," I began after we had assembled for out first session together, "you are either a seaman or a trainer. Both roles however will involve handling the slaves once we acquire them and I want you all to understand exactly how this is to be approached.

"They will be, once we have them, no longer considered as human beings. They will be slaves. Their one role in life from that moment on, will be the giving of pleasure to our clients-and, to some extent, to you as well. All of you have been carefully chosen for your willingness to treat girls and young women as objects and no longer people. Our aim will be to knock the stuffing out them from the very beginning while also turning their bodies into paragons of lithe, athletic beauty. Once we have cowed them, we will train them under the lash and the cane to offer themselves in any way their master-of-the-moment desires and this will include suffering.

"There may even be cases where a girl will die at the hands of a more exuberant client and while this will not be encouraged-and the client will be charged a huge fee for his indiscretion, it may happen. All this you are already aware of...

"There are some of you who are specialists: our MO, Dr Strange is one; another is Billy Gibson who will have charge of physical education. Still another is our technician, Shaun Harding who has made electrical torture an art form all of its own.

"Now, the ship's crew will be under the direct command of Captain Carswell and his officers while the rest of you will be under my direction-mine and Adam here. In normal circumstances, my crew will have the control of the slavegirls but there will be times when a seaman crew member may be called on to assist with an unruly girl or for a particular event. In such cases, my authority is supreme and my orders are to be obeyed with the same force as those of the captain.

"Let me make this very clear. I expect loyalty and dedication from you all. If it is not forthcoming, you will be punished. Just as the girls will suffer a great deal of pain and degradation in the course of their training, I will not be backward in ordering a dose of the cane to any of you who fail me. You are being paid extremely well and you have all agreed to accept corporal punishment for any failure... If there is any among you who now wishes to recant on that agreement, let him leave now..."

There were none. Of course none expected to have to suffer the cane to their naked buttocks but I expected to have to apply the cane at times, at first anyway.