Tain Halliday struggled back to consciousness, at first having no idea where she was. She lay on something that felt like bare metal, and when she forced her eyes open she found she was right. It was metal she lay on, just like the metal of the bars a few feet in front of her eyes.

Damn! Tain thought as she sat up and looked around, memory returning in a literal flood. That damn female did get us caught! If I live through this and somehow manage to get away I’m going to kill Coleson!

Rather than wishful thinking, the intention to kill was more of a sworn oath for Tain. Coleson was head of Tain’s department back at headquarters, and he was the one who’d made no effort to refuse taking on one of the director’s lame nieces. The girl had no aptitude for being an agent, but because she wanted to be one she and her uncle had seen no reason not to indulge her whim.

And they still won’t see why this was such a bad idea, Tain thought as she settled into a cross-legged position and looked around at the other cages standing near hers. The little imbecile was supposed to take my orders, but instead she blundered around until she set off a trap that caught us both. That will become my fault, of course, because I was supposed to be in charge. But when that happens and I’m accused of not doing my job, at least I’ll have the pleasure of punching out a director. Right after I punch out his niece…

But right now the girl, Ennie Farrow, was still unconscious in her cage. This world of Oliven, degenerated from what it had been since it was settled, was more than a little backward. Properly protected upper class women were supposedly never bothered, but all the rest were considered fair game for enslaving. Tain and Ennie had been disguised as upper class women and should have been safe to do their job of locating the various places where the leaders of the area met, but then Ennie had taken off on her own. Tain had been forced to follow, and she’d caught up with the mindless girl just as Ennie walked right into a slaver trap.

And now Tain sat naked in her cage, seeing the other naked women in other cages. Many of those women were crying softly, the rest either silently angry or resigned to the point of depression. Tain’s department had been given the job of finding a way to end the practice of enslaving women, but the job wasn’t proving easy. Women on this world were raised to think of the practice as normal, so if they happened to be enslaved most of them went along with it. Not that they were given much of a choice…

“No!” a shout suddenly sounded from one of the cages, unsurprisingly the cage holding Ennie. “No! Let me out this minute! I’m important and you can’t do this to me!”

Tain just sat where she was, a faint smile curving her lips, unworried about what Ennie would say. Coleson, the fool, had been going to leave the girl just as she was, but Tain had insisted that Ennie be rendered incapable of telling anyone about who she was and where she came from just like every other agent. When Coleson tried to insist, Tain had put her foot down and refused to take the stupid girl along. Too bad she hadn’t stuck with that refusal even after Coleson backed down…

The girl kept shouting for a good couple of minutes before anyone appeared in response. The women and girls in the other cages watched silently all the while, and when a man appeared who looked like a guard to Tain some of the other captives lay down and turned their faces away. A number of the other women wore expressions that said they were waiting for the loud-mouthed captive to be taught to be silent just the way they were being, an event that didn’t take long in coming.

The man who appeared wasn’t all that tall, but he was broad in the shoulders and wore an annoyed expression. It was very obvious that he didn’t like being bothered, but Ennie wasn’t bright enough to notice little things like that. Tain saw the girl all but sneer at the brief body wrap and thin vest on the man, all the covering that was really required in a hot climate like the one where they were, apparently missing the fact that she, herself, was naked. The girl sat up straight, the cages being too low to stand up in, a glare in her usually-flat blue eyes.

“It’s about time you got here,” Ennie spat out, her spoiled-brat attitude more than clear. “There’s been a mistake made by somebody, and that somebody is going to pay hard for it! You people had no right putting me in this thing, and I demand to be released at once!”

Rather than answering, the man Ennie spoke to simply reached to the top of the cage and moved the latch that held the cage door closed. As the door swung open Ennie’s expression changed to one of smug satisfaction, but the look didn’t get to stay on her face long. As she began to leave the cage, the guard put a fist in her blond hair and dragged her out rather than letting her move on her own.

The girl screamed in outrage over the way she was being treated, but had no choice about going where the guard took her. That place was only a short distance away, near the wall between two of the cages where there was a low wooden shelf holding various items. The guard reached to the shelf with his free hand and got what looked like a thin branch to Tain, and then he was suddenly using the branch on Ennie’s backside. This time the girl’s screams had no outrage in them, just the sound of shocked pain.

The guard spoke softly to Ennie, who was trying to protect her backside with her hands, and then the girl’s hands were out of the way. It was perfectly clear that Ennie didn’t want to move her hands, which made Tain sigh and shake her head just a little. The girl had been told what usually happened to female slaves, but Ennie’s shock and disbelief showed that the girl hadn’t paid much attention to the intel she was given.

We’ve obviously been loaded up with the drug that makes it impossible to disobey the orders of anyone in charge, Tain thought as the guard went back to using that branch on Ennie’s bottom. That fool girl can’t believe anyone would treat her like that, and she doesn’t even seem to know what’s going on. But she’s certainly in the process of finding out…

The guard gave Ennie ten or a dozen hard swats with the branch he held, then he put the branch back and took something else from a small box. Tain couldn’t see what the something else was, but the guard spoke softly to Ennie again and then turned so that his body hid what he was doing. Tain saw the way Ennie’s eyes widened as she gasped and tried to cry out, but it was clear that the guard had given the girl orders about not making any more noise. Ennie was bouncing and crying even with her hair still held, but she’d stopped screaming or making noise of any kind.

Once the guard finished with whatever he was doing, he put Ennie back into her cage. It was possible to see painful-looking welts criss-crossed on the girl’s backside, which meant that Ennie went to her stomach inside the cage. Her body squirmed around where she lay and she continued to cry hard, but there was no more noise coming from her. The guard looked around once the cage was locked closed again, specifically in Tain’s direction as if he knew the two women had been captured together. When Tain’s quiet showed that she had no intention of doing what Ennie had, the man turned and left the area again.

And then there was nothing to do but wait. The number of other women in cages told Tain that it wouldn’t be long before they were all sold, not when there was a chance that one or more of the women’s men would show up demanding to have his or their woman back. Not every man on Oliven believed in enslaving women, Tain’s department had found out that much, but that group wasn’t organized while the slavers and their supporters were.