Part VII: A Seaside Stroll

He turned his head to see Calpurnia, still in her faux-antique robe, accompanied by her slave and a group of guards.
"Great show, boss", she said with a cheerful grin. "But I hope you're done now, or these girls will miss their appointment."
He glanced at the timer readout and quickly suppressed an expletive. He'd always taken pride in his self-control, and losing track of time like that was…vexing, that's what it was.

He stepped away from the trembling primitive.
"Is everything ready?" he asked his second-in-command.
"All the cunts are present, the guards are in position and the trees are waiting for some fruit", she said. "Sudo's even found the right kind of nails somewhere."
"Well, no time like the present, then" Captain Vorden said, gesturing to his men. "Let's get this show on the road, people."

One by one, each cunt was cut loose from her post, then had her arms rebound behind her while shackles were added to her legs. Red had apparently recovered some of her fighting spirit, spitting and cursing as she wriggled like a worm on the hook in the grip of a guard while another attached the heavy chain to her feet. Another one of Cal's low-tech solutions, that. Back when Vorden had first started this outfit, they'd been using flexible and damn near indestructible nanoweave restraints of the kind in use by security forces and less savory individuals all over known space. Lightweight, reliable, impossible to escape from. But when applied to the primitives they hunted, well…their captives didn't understand what nanoweave was. So they'd had dozens of valuable slaves injure themselves trying to get out of those seemingly flimsy bindings.

Then Cal had come up with the shackles, and they'd been a hit from the start. Sure, they'd had to have them specially made, they weighed a ton and took up a lot of space (both important considerations for a business involving a lot of travel aboard freighters that charged by the kilogram and cubic meter), but the effect they had on their cargo had been as immediate as it had been impressive. No cunt, no matter how savage, could fail to grasp that bands and chains of thick steel weren't going to yield to anything they could try. Shackled bitches would meekly follow orders where those bound with lighter restraints might start thinking about rebellion, and that meant less work for Yakuv and his medical staff.

By the time everything had been sorted out Vorden had got himself cleaned up and dressed again.
From the looks on their faces, the five runaways realized that they were about to die. Of course, they probably expected to find a noose at the end of their final walk…

He gave the order, and they set off. Calpurnia led the procession, again leading her slave by the tits. After that came the dead-cunts-walking, each flanked by two guards who drove them onwards with barked orders, kicks and the occasional loving caress of a shock prod. Captain Vorden brought up the rear, smiling faintly as he watched Flappy's shapely ass sway and tremble in front of him while she struggled to walk on. Halfway up the path to the field she stumbled and fell, hitting the ground tits-first with her ass up in the air. Those big cunt-lips made the whole thing look even funnier than it already was. Flappy wasn't laughing, of course. Kamal roughly pulled her to her feet and pressed a prod deep into the flesh of her buttock before triggering it. With a yelp, Flappy staggered forward, suddenly extremely motivated to make up for lost time.

Vorden wondered if she might have been less eager if she knew what awaited her. Last night, Cal had given him a fairly detailed explanation of how a crucifixion worked, and he looked forward to seeing it in practice.

They passed through the ranks of the assembled slaves, most of them staring in frightened silence at the condemned. By now, whispers in a dozen primitive dialects had spread through the crowd and the air was heavy with dread.
They reached the open space around the crosses and stopped. The cunts looked around in a mixture of worry and confusion. The gallows they'd been expecting was nowhere to be seen, and it didn't look like any of them had any idea what the wooden objects in the grass were for.
Well, he thought, time they found out.

Calpurnia stepped out in front of the crowd, her ridiculous outfit catching the breeze, and started to speak.
For a moment, Captain Vorden was utterly nonplussed as he failed to understand a single word, but then his translator caught up and he started to laugh. It was latin.
The crazy bitch was actually making a speech in a language that'd been dead for over three millennia. He caught a look of fake indignation from Cal and quickly got the laugh under control. Her eyes twinkling with amusement, she continued.
It was a simple enough proclamation. The crimes of the would-be-escapees were listed, then their punishment, and then…

"Bring forth the first of the condemned!" she proclaimed with a grand gesture towards the guards.