Chapter No.4

They were only an hour out from the asteroid when Ryan decided that Chara's plan had a problem. He sat down next to her before offering his suggestion. "There's a problem with your plan. I believe that the mining facility is monitored, which means that if we do anything suspicious, they will know about it."

She looked at him for a moment before replying. "What do you suggest we do to prevent that?"

Not knowing how she would react, Ryan stared at her for several moments before he replied. "Well, for one thing, they expect to see me tormented. You can do that to show that you are following your assignment to punish me. In the meantime, you can use your protocol connection to the mining facility computer system to have the robots stock the ship with water, fuel and food before you initiate a self-destruction command for the station. The top officials of Space Command will be distracted enough to not notice that happening. Then, you can issue an emergency event, giving us the time to secretly make our exit. They will be aware of the detonation and assume we were killed in the event."

"I don't want to make you suffer," she said without any signs that it she was concerned.

"Don't worry about me. I don't mind being punished. I deserve it for being an idiot. I believe it's the only way for us to escape this situation and for you to search for the ninth planet."

She looked at him for a few seconds before turning to a communications screen. "I will study the official pain stick torment instructions they sent me."

"They have a manual for that?"

"Yes, and it has detailed information on how to do it correctly to cause the most pain without having the subject lose consciousness or go into shock."

Ryan huffed. "That's ridiculous." He sighed. "Although I'm not surprised. Most Space Command procedures are that detailed."

"I am ready now to do my job," she told him with no signs that she was pleased.

He blew out a disgusted breath and simply looked at the image of the asteroid grow larger as they approached it. The uneven surface of the asteroid was pock marked from numerous ancient collisions. The mining facility was buried beneath the surface with only a small docking station showing above a rugged-red-tinted landscape like a bottle cap on a sandy beach.

The asteroid's spin made any approach tricky, but Chara completed the delicate maneuver with the precision of an atomic clock. Once secured in the entrance chamber and pressurized, Ryan and Chara were able to enter the mining facility's staff headquarters, which was pressurized and had standard gravity. There was no one there. Most functions were computer controlled, and the last officer sentenced to rot here had died from suicide.

Chara made a thorough check of the operating processes of the mine. The actual mining and ore processing were completed by robots that were cretins compared to Chara. After she was satisfied, Chara turned to Ryan. "I am connected to the operations system."

Ryan didn't reply.

"I am ready to punish you," she said with no signs of emotion. It sounded like she was considering this as just another task.

He swallowed hard. "Okay." He realized that he was going to be tortured by a machine that knew every efficiently intricate way to cause excruciating pain without any conscious feelings about doing it.

He followed her to a round metal chamber designed for punishments. A chain with two manacles hung down from the ceiling. Another set was attached to the floor. Several rods with narrow blunt points hung in a rack. Some of them had long handles, making them easier for the tormentor to reach the victim.

Ryan undressed and then sat down to allow Chara to place the manacles around his legs and his wrists. The wrist manacles were secured together by a short chain. She used a remote to retract the chains and pull his body up so that he was suspended upside down and stretched slightly. Ryan looked over at her while she chose a long-handled pain stick from the rack. After she activated it, she walked over to him and touched the business end of the pain stick onto his belly. The pain stick stimulated his pain receptors, causing him to violently twitch like a moth caught by its legs in the sap of a carnivorous plant. He grimaced but didn't offer a vocal protest.

Subsequent applications on his ribs elicited yells and more violent twitches. Chara applied the pain stick to various bodily locations with similar effect, but when she applied it to his genitals, he howled like a wounded dog. His reaction prompted her to smile and she amused herself by more applications of the pain stick to his sensitive genitalia.

Chara continued the punishment until she knew that the robots had packed their vessel with supplies. She then initiated an emergency alert that indicated that the nuclear power systems were malfunctioning. She caused the video feed from the punishment chamber to fail, giving her time to release Ryan and quickly get him to the vessel and begin a departure.

Ryan sat next to her and watched the image of the asteroid shrink. Chara had moved their ship away just enough to avoid any damage when the station was obliterated in a violent explosion that lit up space for thousands of kilometers. The ship's shields just barely held.

Chara quickly entered the commands to begin the journey to the other side of the Sun. The main M-drive engines accelerated the ship to the velocity necessary to enter a course that would rise above the ecliptic and end up on the other side of the Sun relative to Earth. But it would take three months to compete and there would be no link to Space Command if anything happened.

They were on their own.

Chara didn't mind. She was happy as a fully loaded candy machine on her way to discovering something that she only dreamed about. Yes, machines do dream in a digital confluence of kaleidoscopic technicolored quantum computing. The only distraction she faced was a male human that she considered to be operationally broken.

He sat next to her in the command station looking like a train wreck. His body was like a graffiti billboard spoiled with reddish splotches as if someone had thrown rotten tomatoes at him. He looked over at her with bloodshot sunken eyes and coughed before he raised his manacle encased wrists. "Can you remove these, please."

"Those restraints are locked electronically," she replied. "I didn't bring the remote that could do that. I'll have to program a universal to remove them."

He lowered his manacle encased wrists and sighed. "Did you recover my clothing?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't have time to do that." She paused for a moment. "You don't need clothing. I believe that humans wear clothing to cover their sexual organs in the presence of the opposite sex."

"I think it's more than that," Ryan retorted. "But that is one reason."

"I have no sex," she said without any emphasis.

In a way she was right, Ryan thought, but she was effectively a fully functional female with simulated genitals.

"Are you going to leave me like this?"

She gave him a rebuking stare. "You are my prisoner now, and I will do with you as I wish."

He blew out a disgusted breath. "I thought that you were disgusted with Space Command!"

"I am, but I consider you to be a threat."

He shook his head. "I wouldn't do anything to you! I thought that we were going to work together to find your planet."

"I don't think you believe me and will attempt to stop me from finding the planet. You consider me to be just an artificial life form that can be disposed of."

"You crazy bitch! I am not planning anything against you!"

"I think I will punish you for insubordination." She stood up and grabbed the chain that connected to his wrist manacles and pulled him up out of the copilot's chair.

That's when Ryan realized that she was much stronger than he was despite her fragile female appearance.

She suspended him from a hook in the passageway that separated their quarters. He hung there by his wrists wondering what she was going to do to him. She departed, leaving him to his thoughts, which were not very pleasant considering his circumstance.