The Pacification of Ilene Li

“Attention Terran Space Navy Personnel! You are now prisoners of the Alliance. You will now exit your escape module, strip, and walk through the indicated hatch.”

Inside her escape module, Spacer First Class Ilene Li grimaced. She’d wondered which side had picked her up, and now she knew. The voice projected through the module’s side didn’t just declare her to be an Alliance prisoner, but had done so in the feline growl of a leotaur. So she must be on a squidcat ship, one built and crewed by the unlikely alliance of squid-like kraken and cat-centaur leotaurs.

It could have been worse though. A couple of years ago, she’d have gone into hysterics on learning that she was a squidcat prisoner. But now she’d been through CET - in fact, she’d gone through Captivity Endurance Training back when it was a secret experimental project.

On the other hand, if it weren’t for the new CET program she wouldn’t be here at all. A couple of years ago Navy was strictly on the defensive, with crew and officer morale both at rock bottom and their collective butts getting kicked. The old Harrier would never have been sent out as part of a three-ship raid, and the Captain would never have held her in formation, even as he ordered the crew into the escape modules.

Well, there was nothing for her to do now but grin and bear it. She snorted softly to herself as she released the locking toggles. Soon enough she’d be doing more than grinning.

A few minutes later she stood nude on the airlock deck, the top of her head just one centimeter above the Navy minimum of 150. This shortness, along with her golden skin and almond-shaped eyes, showed her mostly-Asian ancestry. But unlike a now-mythical “pure” Asian, her eyes were a bright blue, and her hair was like sunshine, bequests from the Scandinavian side of her family.

She looked around. Escape modules of various sizes littered the deck, some open and empty and some still sealed. The squidcats were, sensibly enough, ordering their captives out one module at a time. Above, the swiveling snout of a tee-pod caught her eye as it trained on her, and on the other side of a transparent wall, a kraken watched her with its huge eyes.

It gestured with its tentacles. “Through the hatch, space-human,” it said through the airlock speakers. Its leotaur-made vocoder gave its English a feline growl.

“All right! I’m going!” Ilene waved back. She walked toward the flashing lights of the indicated hatch. Stepped through it. Tensed in anticipation.

Ilene felt the tee-pod hit between her shoulder blades with a familiar soft squelch. Eyeblink quick, it unfolded, wrapping her in ribbon-tendrils, mummifying her so as to leave only her head, feet, and a patch of skin around her belly button exposed. She started to topple, and a pair of manipulator arms darted down from above to catch her. Lifting her up, they set her in a waiting transbox, a device that looked rather like an open-topped coffin on wheels. As the transbox moved off, Ilene began to giggle. The tee-pods squirming tentacles had already gripped her large toes and were now beginning to probe the soft skin of her soles and belly.

By the time the manipulators had reached their destination, Ilene was shrieking with laughter. She had known, of course, from her CET course, that she was in for some serious tickling, but she had forgotten just how much the blasted things tickled. She was only vaguely aware of another set of manipulator-arms lifting her onto a couch, one of a set of twenty or more most of which were already occupied by squirming, laughing women. Ilene though she recognized some of the other female crewmembers from the Harrier, but then the restraint-straps automatically buckled into place, and the tee-pod wrapped around her doubled its efforts.

Ilene twisted in futile struggles, sweating and giggling as the tee-pod tickled her feet and stomach. Sometimes the tentacles would stroke slowly, around and around her belly, and up and down the insteps, heels and balls of her feet. Sometimes the tentacles would apply quick soft flickers, back and forth, either in a rapid rhythm or with pauses between each touch. Occasionally they pressed in more heavily and wiggled, seeking out her navel and the spaces between her toes. And as the tee-pod performed its tickle-magic, conjuring squirms and giggles from her, the laughter of the other women echoed in her ears, as their own tee-pods gently worked them over.

Tee-pods are psi-active organisms, originally discovered by the leotaurs and then genetically modified by the kraken into their current form - a form is designed to subdue and pacify humans. It can sense the ticklishness of its victims, and its artificially-enhanced instincts drive it to maximize the tickle-effects of its touch. As it tickles, it inserts a psionic inhibition through the victims’ weakened mental defenses, making it harder for the victims to commit violence against their captors.

Of course, this inhibition fades with time and so requires repeated application to maintain. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, the squidcats consider the use of tee-pods to be a more decent and honorable method of subduing prisoners than the threats of crude force. And if some mental maladjustment causes the prisoners to perceive the tickling as a torment, and to break under it, well, that’s their problem.

The tickling tentacles fell away at last, and Ilene felt the grip or her large toes released. Tee-pods become fatigued much more quickly than humans do, and it generally requires seven or eight of them, applied sequentially, to bring a human victim to a state of full tickle-exhaustion. As the manipulator arms lifted her into the transbox again, Ilene knew that her ordeal wasn’t over. She would be wheeled into a ‘changing room’ where a special spray would cause her current tee-pod to fall away, and a fresh one would wrap itself around her.

But in the changing room, Ilene received a surprise. Two people waited there, one a female leotaur who stood watchful and aloof in a harness of barbaric leather, and the other a human male with a bushy beard and a big grin. He wore an outlandish uniform with a captain’s insignia, and a black bodystocking of tee-pod-proof fabric underneath.

“Good day, my dear,” the man said. “I am Captain Jones of the good ship Resourceful, and this is my first officer, Emily G’rofff. I have a proposition for you.”

“You... rotten... turncoat,” Ilene gasped.

“Not at all, my dear. I’m afraid we told you a small lie, back in the airlock. The Resourceful is a Treasure World ship, not associated with the Alliance at all. Or with your Terran Navy. We’re independent, honest merchants.”

“Pirates, you mean.”

“If you like,” the female leotaur said. “But by the same token, you are a deserter, technically speaking. You are out of uniform, after all.”

Ilene managed a glare. “Only because you demanded it. Under false pretenses.”

The leotaur shrugged, a deliberately human gesture. Captain Jones put in: “Emily is here as a witness, to guard my honor and my interests. I’m making you personal offer: You can ransom yourself by sharing my cabin as a bed-companion, or you can stay in the hold as part of the cargo. It’s your choice, my dear.”

“Cargo?” Ilene asked.

“Certain places in the Treasure Worlds always have a good market for harem slaves,” Captain Jones said.

“You slimy stinking...” Ilene cursed him thoroughly, for the space of two breaths.

“I take it that’s a no?” Captain Jones said cheerily.

“That’s a ‘Hell No!’“

“Pity.” The captain shook his head. “Carry on, Number One,” he called over his shoulder as he left.

“Aye Captain,” Emily replied. Her thumb pressed a control, resuming the automatic process she had paused. Then she padded out herself.

All four of her paws were covered with fancy buskins of real leather, Ilene noted with a mixture of derision and envy. She wiggled her own bare feet as she waited for the spray.

It came, washing over Ilene’s tee-pod, the trace chemicals in the solution causing it to loosen its grip and fall away. Ilene made an effort and stood up. She now had five minutes, according to the countdown projected on the nearest bulkhead. Five minutes to stand, stretch, relieve herself, and get a drink of water. Five minutes maximum: If she made a nuisance of herself, the tee-pod projector would just shoot her early.

Four minutes and forty nine seconds later, Ilene watched the timer apprehensively as it counted down the last several seconds. She heard the projector ‘poot,’ felt the fresh tee-pod squelch softly against her back. It wrapped around her as usual, and she felt it begin to probe her soles and stomach as the transbox once again whisked her to her couch.

Twenty-odd hours later, Ilene sat on the deck in the pirate’s cargo hold, chewing a desperation bar and considering her current and likely future fate. The hold contained four or five dozen nude female prisoners, half of them sitting on the deck, like Ilene, and the other half sprawled on the disposable pads that served the captives as mattresses. The hold also contained four four-person ‘fresher units, a pair of mismatched cleaning robots, and a food dispenser stocked with desperation bars. Ilene made a face at her own bar. It was guaranteed scientifically nutritious and healthy, but also so gritty and tasteless that only the desperate would eat them.

I have to keep my strength up. Ilene told herself, and took another bite.

The pirates were running the tickle-pacification program constantly. Overhead, the hold was festooned with manipulator units, tee-pod projectors, security sensors, and an elevated pathway for the transboxes. Every so often, a transbox would enter along this high pathway and stop to let the manipulators lower a tickled-out victim to the deck. A projector would then swivel, selecting a new victim. Once the victim was secured, the manipulators would then lift her squirming body to the transbox, which would then whisk away again to the monitoring chamber.

Ilene watched the latest tickle-victim being lowered gently to the deck. She saw a projector swivel - to take aim directly at her. “Oh hell!“ She threw her half-eaten bar aside. Just in time: With the usual quickness, the tee-pod’s tendrils wrapped around her, and she felt the manipulator lift her up.

Ilene knew, of course, that a tee-pod could deal with a desperation bar, or most types of clothing, or even many kinds of jewelry. It didn’t necessarily deal with them gracefully, however, and so victims were, if not nude, normally dressed in lacy concoctions of pseudo-silk that left the arms, legs and midriff bare.

When the transbox arrived at its destination, Ilene was only vaguely aware of being lowered into the couch that would monitor her tickle-pacification. Of far more immediate importance were the tentacles surrounding the exposed skin of her belly. The tapped their tips with diabolical aim and timing on that sensitive surface.

Ilene couldn’t keep from twisting her body, and twisting was futile. She couldn’t keep herself from squirming, and squirming was futile. She couldn’t keep from laughing at the tickle-sensations so effectively being produced, and laughing just made the tickling worse.

The belly-tickling faded in tempo, only to allow the foot tickling to take prominence. As usual, a strong tentacle grabbed Ilene’s two large toes, but this time they pulsed and twitched, delivering irresistibility squirmy tickle-sensations into those two trapped toes. At the same time, more tentacles began their dance across heels, insteps and balls. They twisted a slow and lazy path from the insides of her arches to the outer edges of her soles.

Then the tentacle-tips suddenly struck. With short sharp strokes. Light strokes. Quick strokes. Strokes that drove Ilene into a tickled frenzy. Laughter poured out of her as she was driven to struggle as hard as she could. No one could hold still with those tickle-sensations pouring through the soles of her feet and up through her entire body. But the tee-pod wrapping her, and the security straps holding her in place, could and did insure that Ilene’s struggles, no matter how violent, did not reduce the tickles being inflicted on her by one iota.

And this would go on for hours. For days, while the tee-pods worked their pacification powers on Ilene and the other female captives of the pirates. There would be brief pauses while the victims caught their breaths, and slightly longer pauses when one tee-pod became exhausted and a fresh one put into place. There would be time to eat and sleep, between these bouts of tickle-pacification. But the tickling would go on and on. It would repeat just enough to have the victims cringing in anticipation, and vary just enough to keep the victims from becoming desensitized.

It would never end. Once tamed, the captives would be sold at auction, on one of the Treasure Worlds. Their new masters would then want to keep their new purchases pacified, and there would be a proven method at hand for doing so...

The tickling was just like the CET course, Ilene though as she stepped slowly from the ‘fresher three days later. Unfortunately, the exhaustion was just like CET as well. That pad looked terribly inviting, but she really ought to draw a desperation bar, first.

She made herself walk over to the food dispenser, passing one of the cleaning ‘bots as it made its slow way around the hold. A memory tugged at her. She drew her bar, and walked back, past several other tickle-exhausted nude women to an empty pad. She heard a tee-pod splat, and the manipulators whir as another giggling victim was lifted to the transbox, but she ignored this. She had heard it too many times already in the past three days.

She sat on the pad and looked at her bar with disfavor before taking a bite. One of the cleaning ‘bots, the human-made one, was coming closer, while the other one, a squidcat model, cleaned on the far side of the hold. What was that memory? Something from her time as a newbie, not part of her regular training.

The human-made ‘bot paused, to let a buxom brunette pass on the way to the ‘fresher. And then Ilene had it. She’d once been told a space-story, about how a maintenance robot had once been used to send a scream-for-help signal. The sensors in many ‘bots were miniaturized versions of the old-style starship sensors. Those old-style sensors in turn resembled - and could be converted to - a hypercomm signaler.

Ilene levered herself to her feet, desperation bar forgotten. Three steps took her to the cleaning ‘bot, bringing it once more to a halt. A moment’s work popped off the maintenance cover, and Ilene peered inside.

Yes, it could be done. Cross-connect this and that, and cut out this failsafe, and the scream-for-help signal would go out. It wouldn’t have much range, and it would burn out awfully quickly, but it could be done. She could do it.

But then the inhibitions tickled into her during the past three days kicked in: She could do it, but she shouldn’t, a voice whispered in her mind. She hadn’t been given permission to do this. She wasn’t allowed. Ilene stood fighting the inhibition for a moment, then replaced the cover. She went back to her pad, and her bar, and continued to fight a losing battle with that nagging voice in her head. She had surrendered. She wasn’t permitted to try to escape. It was wrong to resist.

She took a vicious bite from her desperation bar. As she finished the unappetizing ration, the human ‘bot drifted away and the squidcat bot came closer. She had surrendered, and was now a captive of the pirates. But she had surrendered to the Alliance, not to the pirates. The pirates were holding her under false pretenses, as the result of a fraud. If she encountered a squidcat military unit, she could turn herself in to them. In fact, she ought to turn herself in. In fact...

The nagging in her head suddenly reversed its position; instead of holding Ilene back, it drove her forward. It was her duty to contact the proper squidcat military authorities, if she could. She stood up again, and tried to think it through: On one hand, it will be iffy. Fifty-fifty chance of it working, at best. On the other hand, it looks like it will be my best chance; nothing better is going to come along. On the third hand, even if it does work, no good deed goes unpunished. The squidcats will put me through their own tickle-pacification process from the beginning. Then she grinned, briefly, despite the ache this caused after three days of tickling and laughter. And this will be a bad thing? a formerly-suppressed thought chimed in. There was a part of her, she finally admitted, that had been looking forward to that fate ever since she’d ejected from the old Harrier. Or possibly even earlier, starting in the middle of her CET course, as the captured tee-pods had worked her over.

Ilene stepped to the squidcat ‘bot, popped its maintenance cover, looked inside. The innards were arranged somewhat differently, but the logic was the same. Cross-connect this with that, and where was the failsafe? Oh. The squidcat design ran that pathway through a second failsafe. Cut them both out. Replace the cover. Go back to the pad and lie down.

Inside the squidcat-built cleaning robot, overloaded circuitry sent out a scream-for-help hypersignal. Its range was only a bit over a light-day, and it only lasted seven minutes and 23 seconds before the circuits burned out, but the repeaters on the pirate ship automatically sent out a boosted signal, adding positional data to the squeal.

Five light years away, the Alliance frigate Arrow picked up the signal. Junior-captain Fraadress twitched an ear as his comm-kraken made her report. If this turned out to be a ghost-chase, the admiral would bob his tail. But ignoring a distress call was not an option. “Best speed to the Moraxian Limit,” he commanded.

At the start of her next tickle-session, Ilene’s transbox was diverted. She found herself looking up again into the bushy-bearded face of Captain Jones. “Good day, my dear. I hope you haven’t reconsidered my offer of a few days back, because it’s no longer open. Instead, I want to know what you did to that cleaning ‘bot.”

“Cleaning robot?” Ilene asked innocently. Her tee-pod still held her helpless, but a spray had temporarily halted its tickle-activity.

“In particular,” Jones said, his voice remaining pleasant even as his eyes grew hard. “I would like to know just how you managed to overcome the tee-pods’ inhibitions. I’ve heard rumors of a new training system, in the Terran Navy, and I see I’ve been remiss in not investigating them. Alex Unpronounceable here,” he gestured to his side, and Ilene turned her head to see a waiting kraken, “will question you on the matter.” “Captain,” Alex said, his vocoder giving his voice the usual leotaur accent. “If this spacer-human has some sort of anti-inhibition training, then interrogation will be of questionable use.”

“Alex, my dear,” Jones told the kraken. “Resistance can be burned through, if you know its there. And as a bonus, I authorize you to keep the nerve-recording as part of your personal stash, if you succeed.”

Alex’s skin took on the hue that was the kraken equivalent of a smile - or a grin - and his huge eyes narrowed in pleasure. Nerve-recordings of humans being tickled were a popular form of entertainment among the kraken, and the war meant that only bootleg supplies of new recordings were available from the Alliance. “Thank you, captain. I’ll get the information you need.”

The pirates’ interrogation setup was different from the standard pacification outfit. Instead of one large tee-pod, it used six smaller, modified ones, holding down the subject’s legs, arms and torso to a padded X-frame. Lights dot this X-frame, with the tee-pods covering them when the frame is in use: Their purpose is to flash at specific frequencies, controlling the tickle-activity of the modified ‘pods.

Alex settled comfortably behind the control panel and hooked up his personal recorder-unit. “I will begin slowly,” he told Ilene. A tentacle-tip activated a control, and the six modified tee-pods holding the human helplessly in place began to apply soft, gentle strokes to the soles of her feet, to the backs of her knees, to the tops of her thighs, to her stomach around her belly-button, to her ribs under her arms, to the insides of her forearms, and to the back of her neck. Ilene giggled, and the kraken allowed this lazy tickling to continue for a time before starting to slowly ramp it up. After all, the goal was not to tickle-torment the subject into talking, as in a spearman-and-devilfish fantasy story. No, the purpose of this tickling was to painlessly slip in inhibitions against the subject withholding the truth. Agony would be counterproductive, and would ruin his recording, besides. Alex was not a fan of the classical nerve-recordings, with their clashing impulses and their undercurrent of terror. Instead, he preferred the modern, romantic style.

Time. He adjusted his controls, increasing the tickle-intensity on a slow gradient.

Ilene began to giggle and squirm as the tee-pods began to softly touch and stimulate the various exposed patches of her sensitive skin. Not that her squirming could do any good. Such struggles were expected, and desired, and could not possibly overcome the tee-pods’ grip. But Ilene didn’t have any real objection to having the truth tickled out of her in this fashion. She had already told the truth. After her first impulse to be cute about it, she’d described what she had done, and how, and why, and so had no cause to object to the pirates’ confirming it. Her plan had either worked, in which case help was on the way, or else it hadn’t, in which case... In either case, talking about it could not do any damage.

Attempting to resist the tickling, however, could cause damage. Trying to hold still, trying to deny the tickle-sensations, demanding and begging that the tickling stop, either silently or aloud - that had been the sort of desperate fearful resistance against the squidcat’s tickle techniques that had left human POWs mind-damaged, back before the Navy had started running its personnel through the CET courses. The way to avoid becoming a permanent harem slave, the Navy had learned, was to cultivate the part of one that secretly (or not so secretly) enjoyed being tickled. That way, the inhibitions implanted by the tee-pods would fade with time, leaving the subject essentially unharmed.

And so, although Ilene strained and twisted, she ultimately did not resist the tickling that poured into her through the tee-pod tentacles and then back out of her in the form of laughter. She did not resist the scrunching up and down, and back and forth, across the soles of her feet, as the tee-pods traced out wiggly, giggly patterns. She did not resist the wildly delicious sensations as they vibrated behind her knees. She did not resist the regular strokes over the tops of her thighs and the insides of her forearms, strokes that didn’t tickle much by themselves, but that instead seemed to double her sensitivity elsewhere. She did not resist the twitching tattoo around and in her belly button, and along her sides up to her armpits.

Every so often the tickling would pause, allowing Ilene to gasp for air, and to gasp out answers to the questions the kraken put to her. Then the kraken, at his board, would flick a control, and those sweet, maddening, inescapable, and delightful tickle-sensations would once again wash over her.

“I begin to believe that you are telling the truth,” Alex’s vocoder informed Ilene during the eighth or ninth pause. The last tickle-bout had concentrated on Ilene’s feet, with the rest of tee-pods tickling her only just enough to keep her sensitized. As a result, those feet of hers, held bare and vulnerable in place, throbbed with a most wonderful ache. The tickling had been both too much and not enough; she couldn’t possibly stand another session, and yet she wanted more.

But before she could receive more, the captain interrupted. “Mr. Alex,” his voice came through the comm. “Have you learned anything new?”

“I am roughly ninety percent certain that this spacer-human was telling the truth, captain.” the kraken answered. “I am about to begin additional runs for additional confirmation.”

“Belay that, Mr. Alex,” the captain’s voice replied to Ilene’s disappointment. Then she heard the good news. “We are being chased by an Alliance frigate. If they catch us, our best defense will be a salvo of rabid space-lawyers. So stand down your interrogation, and be prepared to purge records if necessary.”

“Aye, captain.” Alex answered, with both his artificial voice and natural skin-hue going flat with a lack of emotion.

A pause, and then the lights flickered. A rumble ran through the ship’s artificial gravity. Another pause, and then the comm clicked on again, this time with the voice of the leotaur first mate. “Attention, all hands. We have taken major damage to engines two and four, and so we must heave-to for boarding by the Alliance frigate Arrow. Run purge-plan C, and move all captives to Hold Number Two. Repeat: Run purge-plan C, and move all captives to Hold Number Two. And be sure to cleanse any personal stashes; we will be having guests aboard, shortly.”

The kraken flipped a set of switches in what Ilene guessed to be the ‘purge’ command. “Sigh.” Alex’s vocoder translated his emotion into a word. “It was such a nice recording, too.”

Spacer First Class Ilene Li, of the Terran Navy’s late ship Harrier, stood barefoot before Junior-captain Fraadress of the Alliance frigate Arrow. Barefoot, but not nude: She now wore a skimpy confection of the squidcat’s pseudo-silk that left her arms, legs, and midriff exposed.

“Spacer Li, I understand that you are the one responsible for the Resourceful sending out an emergency signal.” The male leotaur raised an eyebrow, inviting response.

“Yes, Sir,” Ilene answered.

“Because of this, I am giving the - scuttlebutt? - yes, scuttlebutt, directly to you to pass on to your comrades. I have three cuts of news, one good from your point of view, and two more that are less good.” He gave her a human-style shrug, then continued. “The first cut of bad news is that Captain Jones and the Resourceful have a reserve commission in one of the Treasure World navies. He has moved his battle into the legal battlefield, and it appears that he might win there. In any case, we cannot hold him as a pirate.” His tail flicked in apology.

“The cut of good news is that the war looks to be over. There is a cease-fire currently in effect, and prisoner exchange should occur in a quarter-year, or less. You and your comrades will need to be our guests for only a short time. And here is the second cut of bad news, from your point of view. The formalities and legalities require that your pacification be restarted. The time you spent in Captain Jones’ custody cannot count. So this fine space-kin here will take you out through that hatch, and shoot you.” His gesture took in the hatch, and then a kraken spacer, who hefted his portable tee-pod projector and gave a small acknowledging wave with a tentacle-tip.

“That’s... not as bad as it might be, Sir,” Ilene said.

“Oh?” The leotaur opened his mouth to ask a question, and then closed it again. “Carry on, then, spacer,” he finally said.

With the tee-pod projector right behind her, Ilene Li marched out through the hatch of the squidcat ship to meet her fate.