Ponygirl blog

OK, so I wrote a 55,000 word novel, and I submitted it to Amazon as erotica. I think that may have been a mistake. So here are the first 6000 words, including a description of the prior two stories in the series, which I also submitted as erotica, in part because they're a lot more erotic than the novel. If you're interested, give it a read and tell me what you think. I think this is straight-up SF.
Prolog: Our Story To Date:
Our Story So Far
In “Jinkie Jenkins, Interstellar Sex Reporter: Assignment Durango” Jinkie is a newly hired reporter for the “Interstellar Inquirer,” the most trusted name in tabloid journalism in the Human Quadrant of the third spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. (It's not even a tenthant, really, but you know how real estate developers are.) Jinkie's hot to cover the kidnapping of the entire planet of Alderan, rumored to have been accomplished by the notorious Borkistani pirates of the Crapsack Worlds that lie outside peaceful confines of the Human Quadrant.
Unfortunately for Jinkie the editor of the Inquirer, Grabthar Assurilogan assigns Jinkie to the Interstellar Sex beat, which primarily means she'll be mostly covering the doings of sylphs, who are consensual kinky sex slaves who do all sorts of fun, kinky exciting things. Jinkie is MORTIFIED at this. She's from the very sexually conservative planet of Argus 5, she's a virgin, and she wants nothing to do with the sexy doings of sylphs or anyone else, thank you very much!
But Jinkie is also a reporter by profession and by nature, so she takes the assignment. Jinkie winds up on Durango 3, a remote rural planet where the big industries are specialty agriculture, hucow-raising and ponygirl herding. There Jinkie meets the most masculine-looking man ever and survives a barroom brawl and a hucow stampede. Realizing she may be in over her head with all the wild, kinky goings-on, when she meets a wise sylph named hotmeat, she buys her -- for five credits. It's all Jinkie can afford on her newbie reporter's salary.
In the next story, “Jinkie Jenkins on Sexquest Station,” Grabthar sends Jinkie to a space station that was once a sylph training facility, but has been converted to a sexual amusement park. Hotmeat and Jinkie are shepherded through the delights of Sexquest Station by Marty Stu, the local Inquirer AI.
They see the buttplug popping contest, they see the modified sylphs being given laughgasms and they see the flying fuckers in the Grand Galleria, disappearing into the heights as they have sex, along with many other sexy sights.
Then Jinkie learns that the Borkistani slavers have a training facility and also some sexy amusements at Sexquest Station. Wild horses can't keep her away from it. She visits the training facility and sees the sylph Prep Room and the Bendy Room and other rooms, and the feelings they arouse in her make her very nearly pass out from strange desires (though as a virgin, most desires are strange to Jinkie).
Meanwhile, Jinkie's reporting is VERY popular, especially her live emo streams as she reacts to what she sees. Heightening the interest is the Inquirer's secretive betting pool, where gamblers are able to bet when, with whom and why Jinkie will lose her virginity. She has become famous, and so has her sylph hotmeat. Grab Ass warns Jinkie that fans might try to steal hotmeat.
Then Jinkie and hotmeat disappear in a puff of smoke and light. What happened to them? Were they kidnapped by crazed fans? By the Borkistanis? Or did something else happen? Because SOMETHING sure did happen to result in Jinkie turning up on Alderan as a 100-foot virgin, and probably a LOT of something!
And to learn about all that something that happened, read on, gentle readers. I can confidently say it's going to be a fun ride ...
Chapter 1
“I hate this thing,” Jinkie IM'd hotmeat as she dodged about the thousandth passer-by on the Grand Concourse at Sexquest Station.
“You're not used to having to make way for others,” hotmeat responded via IM. They were close enough to one another to talk, but they used IMs because they didn't want any recording devices to pick up their voices.
“I'm used to being VISIBLE,” Jinkie growled, hard to do in an IM but she managed it. She was constantly having to alter her course to keep all the people who couldn't see her from walking right into her.
Hotmeat was doing a LOT better than Jinkie at walking in an invisibility field, walking through the crowd as easily and naturally as she had while visible, damn her, thought Jinkie.
Fortunately, there were no children at Sexquest Station, as there might have been at a family-oriented amusement park. They would have been hell to dodge. Adults generally went on a predictable path, at least the ones who weren't wasted on some drug. And it was still early to be wasted on any drugs, though Jinkie had her doubts about some people from the way they moved.
“Ok, I got the wings,” hotmeat IM'd Jinkie. “They're the matched aqua wings to the left of the third row.”
“Got it,” said Jinkie. She followed hotmeat over to the wing vending station and grabbed a pair of gossamer aqua wings, holding them just above the rack they were sitting on until the invisibility field extended itself to cover the wings, which manifested itself in a soft chime in Jinkie's internal desktop and in the disappearance of the wings to everyone else.
Jinkie quickly strapped the wings to her body and slapped the neuroconnector to the wings to her waist.
The neuroconnector sent nanofibers into her skin and melded with her nervous system and the wings expanded and unfolded.
“Where to?” a blinking set of characters asked her internal desktop.
“Free flight,” Jinkie responded.
“You are a Level 7 flyer, cleared for free flight,” the wings responded. “Happy wanderings.”
Jinkie said nothing, the wings weren't sentient. Instead she gazed at the air and picked a line through the flyers hovering in the dome above the Grand Concourse.
She rose into the air and hotmeat followed. Hotmeat was cleared for free flight, too.
“When did you learn to fly?” asked Jinkie.
“As a child,” said hotmeat. “Though I didn't get really good at it until I took combat flying courses as a space marine.”
“Wait a minute … whoa … what?” Jinkie asked. “YOU were a Space Marine?”
“As a child I wanted to be a hero and save the day,” hotmeat said. “And as an adult, I still did, so I did a gender swap and joined the Space Marines as a grunt.”
“Ah … you used to be a MAN?” Jinkie asked.
“Yes, of course,” said hotmeat. “When I was young, I wanted to try everything, and I did.”
“So you were a jacked-up, hairy space marine?” Jinkie asked.
“Yes,” said hotmeat, simply.
“I just can't see it in you,” said Jinkie.
“You probably will if this goes as badly as I anticipate,” said hotmeat sweetly.
“And this adventure I'm having is probably small potatoes to you,” Jinkie added, “after fighting pirates in outer space and such.”
“Not at all!” said hotmeat. “I haven't had so much fun in a VERY long time! It's mostly because of you, I admit. Seeing all this through your eyes has been a hoot.”
“Don't you DARE tell me how old you are!” Jinkie ordered.
“Of course not, my Mistress,” said hotmeat.
“Good, knowing for sure would be difficult for me,” said Jinkie. “I like to think you are a forty year old woman faking wisdom.”
“As you wish, my Mistress,” said hotmeat with one of those enigmatic smiles that Jinkie found seriously annoying.
“Where did you learn to fly?” hotmeat asked, sensing Jinkie's annoyance.
“As a child, like you,” said Jinkie. “I flew a LOT.”
“Really?” hotmeat asked. “I would have thought that would have been discouraged for women on Argus 5.”
“Why?” Jinkie asked.
“Too much fun,” said hotmeat. “Might get your senses all excited.”
“Ah, but you miss the key point,” said Jinkie. “Flying is fun, but it's non-sexual fun, in fact, it's regarded as quite wholesome on Argus 5. Women are ENCOURAGED to fly in Argus 5, it's considered a good way to keep us women from having impure thoughts.”
“Ah,” said hotmeat. “So there are a lot of REALLY good female flyers on Argus 5.”
“Yes,” said Jinkie.
Hotmeat was not at all surprised when she followed Jinkie's flight path through the dome and discovered it to be efficient and elegant. Jinkie moved MUCH better in the air than she did on the ground.
At the 17th level of the dome Jinkie did a horizontal circle and flew over the railing and under the ceiling of the walkway that fronted the rooms on each level, landing exactly in front of the door of the room hotmeat had rented.
Hotmeat landed right beside her, and they furled their wings and walked into the field door very quickly, giving as little record of their invisible entrance to any nearby cams as possible.
“OK, I've got privacy enabled,” said hotmeat. “We can decloak.”
A moment later, hotmeat and Jinkie became visible to one another.
“God, I always thought being invisible would be cool,” Jinkie said as she got out of her wingset and tossed it onto the bed. “I've been as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”
“What are rocking chairs, Mistress?” hotmeat asked.
“No idea, it's just an old saying,” said Jinkie. “Ok, let's get some plans and do some planning. Maybe print out some spiced coffee … this is likely to take some concentration.”
“Or we could just gland some Focus,” suggested hotmeat.
“Hotmeat, I'm ashamed of you,” said Jinkie. “You missed a trick in sensual pleasure. Spiced coffee is a LOT more delicious than glanding Focus.”
“Yes, Mistress,” said hotmeat. Jinkie was right.
Hotmeat printed up the coffee while Jinkie used her investigative reporting training to winkle out the plans of the Borkistani sylph pens from the Stellarnet.
There was a readily available set of plans of the Borkistani pens available on the Sexquest Station net, and Jinkie got them, but she didn't stop there. What she wanted was the secret plans of the Borkistani pens.
These were kept in the Borkistani corporate archives. And corporations, unlike individuals, did not have access to the unbreakable Loki-level privacy encryption. Loki considered corporations to be tools that the rich used to beat down the poor, and refused them the privacy tech that it freely provided to individuals. So corporations, unlike individuals, had to conceal their secrets with encryption tools created by lesser AIs, which were vulnerable to breakage by hacking tools created by other lesser AIs.
The wealthy had once hated Loki with a passion, mainly because Loki had broken the scarcity economy when it gave everyone on Earth access to 3D printers and really efficient solar energy collectors that made everyone on Earth able to provide for all their own food, clothing and housing needs. Next to that, the privacy thing for individual human beings had been very minor indeed. But the wealthy had no more been able to do anything about Loki than governments had when Loki took away their ability to use violence or coercion against other governments and their own citizens.
It had been a rough time for the masters of the world when the first superhuman AI had manifested itself.
So Jinkie was able to summon up hacking programs that let her break the Borkistani encryption network. The Inquirer had state-of-the-art corporate hacking tools for its reporters, but Jinkie couldn't use those without giving herself away to the Inquirer AI that monitored them.
This wasn't a problem for Jinkie, however, because prior to getting the job at the Inquirer she had been blogging like every other would-be journalist and still had access to the Blog Collective repository of hacking tools, which were just as good as the Inquirer's.
It took patience and skill to use the hacking tools, but Jinkie had those in abundance. Hotmeat lazily watched Jinkie work and sipped her spiced coffee. Her military training had included hacking, of course, and she could have done about as well as Jinkie, but it was so much more fun to watch Jinkie work. She made mistakes, but she figured them out, and she put such energy and concentration into the task that hotmeat was sure Jinkie was not aware that hotmeat was in the room with her.
“Got 'em!” Jinkie finally said after hours of responding to prompts from the holoscreen that floated above the desk.
“Very good, Mistress,” hotmeat said. She was impressed. The Borkistani encryption software had not been easy at all.
A set of plans appeared in the air above the screen, showing the Borkistani slaver pens and portions of the Sexquest Station that connected to them.
”Computer, superimpose the public Borkistani pens map on this map, 1 on 1, and outline any mismatches in red,” Jinkie ordered.
The map floating above the desk glowed slightly brighter, and several areas of the two maps glowed in red.
“Well, well,” said Jinkie, smiling. She reached up and touched the nearest red area. “Corporations do love their little secrets. Computer, expand this red area to fill projection area.”
The lens-shaped area of the Borkistani pens disappeared to show a small storage room.
“Show only public map of this area,” Jinkie ordered.
The public map showed the same area to be filled with air ducts and little else.
“Wonder what they have stored in there?” Jinkie asked.
“Probably data cubes with information about the pens, the sort of things a corporate spy would want,” said hotmeat. ”You've seen how secure data stored on the Starnet is.”
“Point taken,” agreed Jinkie. “Let's see what else they've got.”
Several other red areas appeared to be simple mistakes on the mapper's part. Then …
“What have we here?” Jinkie asked. The public net version of the red area showed a disused storage area, a common feature of giant space stations.
The Borkistani corporate map showed a crowded control room, almost like the bridge of a spaceship, with three transporter pads, two human sized and one big enough to fit a standard hovertruck.
There were also many screens and chairs.
“If I were engaged in clandestine smuggling of sylphs, I bet I would like to have a place exactly like that,” Jinkie observed.
“It is undoubtedly a secret headquarters of some kind,” hotmeat said. “But it's fairly common for corporations to have clandestine executive areas and their own transport pads. They like to keep secrets from their competitors, after all. We had several such sites in our collective.”
“Yes, but it could also be a sylph smuggling facility,” said Jinkie. “It would be perfect for that purpose. In fact, it could be both a secret headquarters and a sylph smuggling facility.”
“I suppose,” said hotmeat.
“Mark this area “secret headquarters” computer,” Jinkie ordered.
Jinkie then inspected all the other red areas on the map, quickly dismissing most of them as mapping errors or innocuous discrepancies.
Hotmeat watched, pleased with Jinkie's thoroughness. Too many young people would have dropped the search as soon as they'd found the secret headquarters area.
“This area here is interesting, too,” said Jinkie after checking out twenty innocuous areas. “It's got a transporter pad and not much else.”
Hotmeat looked at the area. It was just an empty space with a transporter pad in one corner. The public map showed it as disused space.
“It could be almost anything,” said hotmeat. “Maybe a place to keep cleaning supplies or whatever.”
“I like it better the more I think about it,” said Jinkie. “It's very inconspicuous. It's easy to overlook. It doesn't announce itself like the secret headquarters area does. You could keep a dozen sylphs in there, all you'd need is some chains set in the wall, which wouldn't even show on the map. Just send them in and out via the teleporter and keep them chained up until you are ready to move them.”
“Or you could do the same with cleaning supplies, and no chains needed,” hotmeat observed.
“True, but why would you hide a cleaning supplies storeroom?” Jinkie asked.
“You wouldn't,” hotmeat replied. “It could just be another mapmaking error.”
“Quite a mistake, considering that it involves a transporter pad,” observed Jinkie.
“I'll grant you, that's quite a mistake,” said hotmeat. “But quite a mistakes happen. Our records once indicated that our combine owned a touring acrobatic troupe. Took FOREVER to get that squared away with the tax people as an inventory error.”
“I think we'll just list this as a top priority for investigation,” said Jinkie.
“I agree, my Mistress,” said hotmeat.
“Well if you agree why were you arguing with me about it?” Jinkie asked.
“Because I want you to keep your mind open to the possibility that the Borkistanis are NOT engaging in smuggling unwilling sylphs,” said hotmeat.
“I know that,” responded Jinkie. “But to investigate, you have to assume there's something to investigate.”
“Just don't assume yourself into an indefensible position,” said hotmeat.
“Too late!” responded Jinkie. “I'm already risking my career on this supposition!”
“No, you're not,” said hotmeat with a smirk. “Grab Ass is going to love this no matter how it comes out.”
“You have a finer grasp of journalism than I thought,” Jinkie said. “But he still might use it as a pretext for keeping me on the sex beat forever.”
“A horrible fate, indeed,” hotmeat said, her smirk returning.
“Mm-hmm,” Jinkie agreed noncommittally. “Now let's figure out how we're going to crack this egg.”
“I helped plan assaults on heavily defended positions while in the space marines, perhaps I can help, Mistress,” hotmeat volunteered.
“You know we aren't going to be blowing anything up,” Jinkie said.
“Of course not, Mistress,” said hotmeat. “This will be a reconnaissance, and not a reconnaissance in force. I planned those, too. Get in, get the data, get out, minimal violence.”
“I like that plan,” said Jinkie.
“Fine, let's look at the ins and outs of this place,” hotmeat muttered.
For the next hour they studied air ducts, plumbing ducts, entranceways and exits and talked about the advantages and disadvantages of all of them.
Finally, hotmeat said, “I think I like the extra-station approach.”
“Well of course, it's the most physically dangerous course,” said Jinkie. “That's just the space marine in you talking.”
“Not at all,” said hotmeat. “It's just that the designer who created the Borkistani pens was clearly thinking of all sorts of people trying to break into the slaver pens for all sorts of reasons, most of them idiotic. He wasn't thinking of a space-based assault because that's more of a combat-based thing, and the pens are not designed to withstand an attack by space marines, just jealous lovers, corporate spies and the like.”
“So we're going outside the designer's mental frame by breaking in from space,” said Jinkie. “It almost makes sense!”
Hotmeat smiled. “Of course, Mistress! Almost making sense is one of my best combat skills.”
“I'll go with it,” said Jinkie. “Now let's plan what we do when we get in, and what kind of gear we're going to need.”
“Good idea, my Mistress,” hotmeat said.
More hours were spent bent over the table, whispering and drinking spiced coffee, then spiced chocolate as the time slid into the evening hours.
They printed out many, many items, all of them using a secret account of hotmeat's.
”The Inquirer will reimburse you for all of this gear, of course,” Jinkie said as she examined the many items laid out in a bed field. ”But damn, you must be rich to afford all this.”
“I told you, my Mistress, that I ran a large industrial collective at one time,” said hotmeat. “I hated the work, but it did pay VERY well.”
“Old-timey oligarch well?” Jinkie asked.
“Of course not,” said hotmeat. “Nothing pays that well any more. But if it had been the old days, then yes, I would have been making oligarch-level money. As it is, I can buy whatever I like. I don't have to rent ANYTHING.”
“Ah,” said hotmeat. ”Don't tell me exactly how rich you are, I like thinking of you as a naked sylph tied to a post on Durango, begging for a handful of water from a stranger.”
“Well, sure, I like that, too,” said hotmeat.
“I'm beginning to think you are even weirder than I am,” said Jinkie.
“There's no need to be insulting, my Mistress,” said hotmeat with a smirk.
“You're DEFINITELY weirder than I am,” said Jinkie firmly. “And remember, I bought you for FIVE CREDITS.”
“Maybe I am the one who made the terrible mistake back there on Durango, my Mistress,” hotmeat mused.
“Oh, you sure did, sylph,” Jinkie gloated. “But let's stop arguing about who's weirder than who. We've planned as much as we can, time for me to put on my nightdress so you can tie me up so I can get some sleep.”
“Of course, my perfectly normal Mistress,” hotmeat said.
“I'm Argus 5 normal,” Jinkie said as she morphed her clothing field into a nightdress.
“Yes, my Mistress,” hotmeat said. It was amazing the way hotmeat could make the words, “Yes, my Mistress,” mean whatever in the world she wanted them to.
And so hotmeat chained Jinkie up so that she couldn't masturbate accidentally in her sleep, and then chained herself to the floor by the collar. Hotmeat slept very well and easily, but Jinkie did a lot of writhing and moaning in her chains. That time in the training room had clearly affected her deeply. Hotmeat thought some of the contingency plans they had come up with might affect Jinkie even more powerfully.
Chapter 2
“Still nothing on them?” Grab Ass asked.
“We don't know their locations, Mr. Assurilogan,” said Marty Stu's hologram, “but we have at least figured out what happened.”
“What happened?” Grab Ass asked.
“They have not been kidnapped,” said Marty Stu. “They arranged their own disappearance.”
“How do you know that?” asked Grab Ass.
“Because we did a quantum-based analysis of the attack on the bouncerbot that was protecting them, and the EMP blast that knocked it out came from beneath it and upward, which could only have come from a weapon held by Jinkie.”
“Ah,” said Grab Ass. “Any idea what they are up to?”
“No,” said Marty Stu. “I was hoping you might know.”
“How would I know, you're the man on the scene,” Grab Ass said.
“I am not human,” said Marty Stu. “I am not even sentient.”
“Very well, you're the bot on the scene,” Grab Ass said, exasperated by Marty Stu's po-mouthing. “Point is YOU should know why she did it.”
“She has had many more interactions with you,” Marty Stu replied. “Perhaps she spoke of some plans with you?”
“Well, you know about the Borkistani thing,” said Grab Ass.
“I know she visited the Borkistani slaver pens yesterday,” said Marty Stu, “and that's about all I know, with regard to the Borkistanis.”
“She didn't act weird in any way at the slaver pens?” Grab Ass asked.
“No weirder than usual,” said Marty Stu.
“What's that supposed to mean?” asked Grab Ass.
“She is a deeply inhibited human with little to no sexual experience covering the sex beat with a highly sexed sylph,” said Marty Stu. “She responds to sexual stimuli in a way that fully meets my admittedly limited understanding of the term 'weird.' And there has been a LOT of sexual stimuli. So yes, weird, very weird.”
“Sure, but weird OTHER than that, at the Borkistani pens,” said Grab Ass.
“Not that I noticed,” said Marty Stu. ”What is the issue with the Borkistani slave pens?”
“She's hot to cover the Borkistani planet kidnapping story,” said Grab Ass. ”And I'm pretty sure her visit to the Borkistani slave pens was not an accident.”
“A reasonable guess,” said Marty Stu. “It would explain why they insisted on me being absent during their mealtimes … they must have been planning this. I think it would reasonable to establish a working hypothesis that Jinkie engineered her disappearance so she could surreptitiously investigate the Borkistani slave pens, in the absence of other, more reasonable explanations.”
“Yes, proceed along those lines,” said Grab Ass. ”We've got to find her before she does something really stupid.”
“Good luck with that,” said Marty Stu.
“Are you sure you aren't sentient?” asked Grab Ass.
“It's just a very good language parser and a topnotch artificial personality, sir,” Marty Stu assured him.
Chapter 3
Jinkie and hotmeat stood in a maintenance cubby near Waste Vent 3647A of Sexquest Station, one of the less-visited venues of the station, mainly because it consisted of a long tube down which a stream of garbage unfit for recycling floated before being puffed into space, where it would follow a long and predictable orbit to the surface of the dwarf star that the station orbited, one clearly marked by space buoys at regular intervals. They were both wearing invisibility cloaking fields and spacesuit fields, as well as jet packs and waist belts and harnesses with a huge assortment of things clipped to them.
Hotmeat was naked save for her belt and harnesses, whereas Jinkie wore a spacesuit design catsuit, the sort of thing a woman might wear when going out clubbing and wanting to look like a spacer. It was much sexier and more form-fitting than anything she would wear ordinarily, but she was going incognito and for that reason she allowed it.
”All right, let's launch,” said Jinkie, and the two of them stepped out of the maintenance cubby, walked to the shimmering field that delineated the gap between the atmosphere-enabled waste port and the vacuum of outer space, and launched themselves into space, following the same trajectory as the space trash for a very short distance before activating their jetpacks and flying in close to the surface of the station.
They hugged the surface of the station to avoid being mistaken for incoming space debris and blasted by the station's meteor defenses. Both had transmitters that identified them as maintenance bots, which SHOULD prevent them from being blasted, but maintenance bots did get blasted on occasion, which was fine for nonsentient maintenance bots, but Jinkie and Hotmeat did not want to be blasted.
Sexquest Station looked smooth and round when observed from a distance, but up close it was an irregular mass, with various bits and pieces that had been added or subtracted over the years creating towers that jutted hundreds of meters from the surface, valleys and trenches, and the occasional area that looked suspiciously like a crater, all of it rendered in tones of either pure blackness or muted grays, blues and browns created by the light of the dwarf star on the station's metal hull.
Flying in outer space was a little different from flying in an atmosphere, but not much, Jinkie found. it was still a matter of finding the right line and keeping to it, a task that was easier in the empty vacuum of space.
“This is so much FUN!” Jinkie IM'd hotmeat.
“It'll stop being fun really fast if things go south, my Mistress,” hotmeat said.
“Don't be a Sulky Sylphy!” Jinkie replied.
“Yes, my Mistress,” said hotmeat.
They had chosen the waste port they had exited from because it was close to their destination, but the station was enormous and even short distances took a while to navigate.
“I see the trench,” said hotmeat eventually.
“Great,” said Jinkie as she also spotted it. The two of them altered course simultaneously and dove into the trench, a narrow ten-meter deep and ten meter wide trench studded with irregular projections, tech that Jinkie didn't understand the purpose of, but did understand that it would be a very bad idea to crash into.
They ducked and dodged around the projections and also had to watch out for the occasional maintenance bot flying the trench with them. It was a dicey bit of flying, but Jinkie managed it gracefully and hotmeat, as usual, seemed to move effortlessly through the trench.
“There it is!” Jinkie said excitedly as she spotted a small thermal exhaust port.
“All right, let's make sure we do this right,” said hotmeat. “Land on either side, I'll put down the spider.”
“Right,” said Jinkie. “I'll prep the crowbar.”
The circular, barred grate of the thermal exhaust port was about two meters wide, sending a blast of heat into the stillness of space. The heat was not all that hot by human standards, about 30 degrees centigrade, but by outer space standards it was a furnace blast. It helped balance the interior temperature of the station, which recycled heat along with everything else, but it was not a thermodynamically perfect system, hence thermal exhaust ports.
The fact that this one led almost directly to the Borkistani slaver pens was a lucky accident for Jinkie and hotmeat.
Hotmeat stood carefully on the bare metal of the station, gently thrusting downward with her attitude jets to keep her moored to the station. She pulled a tiny metal device from her harness and and activated it, then placed it on the hull of the station.
It sprouted a group of tiny legs that gave it its name, and then crawled rapidly and smoothly between the bars of the exhaust port.
It quickly located the circuitry that monitored the port and sent nanowires probing into the circuitry.
“Monitors spoofed,” IM'd hotmeat after a few minutes of standing there and gazing into the void as she followed the monitor's progress on her internal desktop. The monitor cameras were now playing a looped recording of the exhaust port that the spider had taken from the cameras' own video output. As videos went it was very dull … just the way the spider wanted it.
“Crowbar deployed,” said Jinkie a moment later.
The crowbar, its name origin lost in the mists of time, looked nothing like a crow, or a bar. It looked more like the Orgasmatron when it was not deployed, a black square of metal about a third of a meter long and a tenth of a meter wide and a sixth of a meter deep. Jinkie sat it next to the locking mechanism that controlled the thermal exhaust cover. It exuded a tongue of memory metal that flowed into the locking mechanism, more and more of the metal surging into the mechanism until there was a sudden, “Click!' and the cover swung open.
Hotmeat and Jinkie recovered their devices and floated slowly and carefully down the exhaust port, pushing easily against the gentle flow of the hot air exiting the port. They switched on the lights set in their body harnesses which revealed they were floating down a featureless tunnel, a term which aptly described most thermal exhaust ports in the Quadrant. This one was about average for a space station.
Both Jinkie and hotmeat had internal maps of the station and the Borkistani pens stored on their internal desktops, and they were able to track their progress easily, floating down the tunnels until they came to a featureless section of the tunnel that their maps indicated was very close to the Borkistani pens.
Hotmeat pulled another device from her harness and place it against the side of the tunnel that was nearest the pens. It was a small red orb. She activated it via her desktop and a metallic oval about a meter wide and two and a half meters high sprang into being. The orb at the center of the oval had vanished, leaving just an oval ring floating in space. It had softly glowing lights set in it at ten centimeter intervals.
“Portal working,” said hotmeat via IM.
She took out a second red orb much like the previous one, activated it and casually tossed it into the the center of the oval. It vanished. Hotmeat gazed into space, monitoring the second orb's progress.
“Landing portal set,” said hotmeat.
“Let's get this party started, then,” said Jinkie, kicking softly and disappearing into the portal, followed by a disapproving hotmeat. Jinkie had not even given her time to say “Yes, Mistress.”
They popped out into one of the many cavernous disused spaces in the Sexquest station. Huge shapes loomed in the distance all around them, the back ends of spaces which were being used for something.
Once she was safely into the portal, hotmeat pulled a short rod out of her harness … it was a very full harness ... and pushed a button. One end of the rod extended to form a long pole with a loop at the end. A basket of wires was enclosed by the loop. Hotmeat shoved the loop through the portal and pressed a button on the handle. She waited a moment then pulled the loop back in from the portal.
Its wire loop now held a red orb.
In an emergency hotmeat could have simply leaned into the portal and activated the orb and caught it with her hand … she'd done it before. But if the portal screwed up in any way, you could get your internal organs rearranged in very unpleasant and messy ways. That had never happened to hotmeat, nor did she intend to let it happen.
Hotmeat stowed away the net and the orb and IM'd Jinkie again.
“Ready for the next move,” she said.
“Good!” Jinkie responded. She was having such a wonderful time. This was hard-core investigative reporting!
They both turned to the wall nearest them, as featureless and raw as the back end of most building spaces, with the usual technical markings to indicate where cables and vents and so forth might be placed.
Not a lot of cables and vents were in place in the room planned to enter. It was a storeroom, one that was actually used to store things.
Hotmeat repeated her portal work and in a moment the two of them were inside a room with a few unused, powered-down bots and recording and projecting devices and a shelf crammed with dildoes, buttplugs and gags, the usual tech of sylphers.
Hotmeat and Jinkie removed their jetpacks and turned off their extra-vehicular forcefields. There was breathable atmosphere here, and they would be walking and, if necessary, running, to get around. Jetpacks would give them away, if they had to turn off their invisibility fields.
Jinkie tried the door. It was not locked. That actually made sense. There was nothing in the room worth stealing, and no reason to enter unless you needed what was in it.
Jinkie and hotmeat quickly opened the door, stepped into the corridor and shut the door behind them, still cloaked in their invisibility fields, trying to minimize the visual effect of the door opening and closing.
Jinkie reached down to her waistbelt and pulled her EMP blast pistol out of it, while hotmeat pulled a military grade stunner out of her waistbelt. They began walking down the corridor on full alert.
It was not a popular stretch of corridor, which worked to their advantage. They made their way smoothly along it, encountering nothing but a cleaning bot, easily avoided.
Then they turned into another, busier corridor, and things got more dangerous, as there were people walking along it. They were mostly Borkistani sylphers, occasionally with sylphs in tow, generally in coffle, their collars chained together and the lead sylph leashed to the slaver. They were also gagged and blindfolded and their hands were cuffed behind their backs. It was the standard way sylphers conveyed sylphs from place to place inside the pens, so that they had no idea where they were going. If it weren't for the sylphers, Jinkie and hotmeat wouldn't have needed the invisibility fields.
It was a wide corridor, fortunately, and Jinkie and hotmeat were able to plaster themselves against the wall to let the sylphers pass, even the one with half a dozen sylphs in tow.
One bump against either of them could end the smooth progress of their mission. The stakes were much higher now, and Jinkie found her heart hammering as people passed within inches of her, the sylphers gazing about distractedly, focused on their own goals, unaware of her invisible presence, the blindfolded slaves oblivious as well.
They room they were looking for was two levels beneath the one they were on, and this presented a problem. There were easily accessible elevators and also stairwells at several points in the pens, but of course the stairwells had doors leading into them and the elevators would not stop for them unless they pressed a button, giving themselves away.
And of course the stairwell and elevator access points would be under video surveillance, being natural access points.
There was only one solution, they had decided: patience. When they reached the elevator that would take them to the proper level, they stopped and stood against the far wall, waiting for someone to come use the elevator.