Some treasures are hard to find, and harder to hold onto.

Gems of Ordon

by Cleo Kraft

Chapter II

I woke up lying naked on top of a bed in some sort of cabin room aboard a space liner. I could tell it was a space liner because of the familiar rumble and low gravity, not to mention the room decor that only space liners were known for. Blue and red sparkled wallpaper, white beds, orange velcro floor, emergency pressure suits hanging on the wall beside the door. It was obvious I was now on my way to some unknown destination.

I sat up and looked out the porthole and saw stars outside, confirming for a certainty that I was no longer on my homeworld, Mars.

I looked around for my clothes but they were gone. Whoever did this to me not only wanted me off Mars, but also wanted to humiliate me on top of it.

I glanced over at the pressure suits and realized I'd look almost as ridiculous wandering around the ship wearing one of those as I would walking about in my nakedness.

No clothes, no wallet, nothing, and probably half a million miles away from my homeworld to boot.

I figured a pressure suit was better than walking around my stateroom
naked, but my captors didn't leave me with a very good selection. There was a green suit but it was for someone half my height, and that left only a pink suit . . . a woman's suit as was evident by the narrower waist and double cup design in the chest.

I squeezed in the pink suit as best I could. Luckily the waist stretched both outward and upward to compensate for differing height and girth. Even still, it was a tight fit and extremely uncomfortable, let alone embarrassing.

I put on the helmet and lowered the black sun visor to disguise my face. At least people would think I was a woman, even if they still thought was crazy for wearing a p-suit on a star liner.

I opened the door and walked out into a red hallway.

Some women passed me, laughing at me as they continued on their way.

I turned and walked out into a grand lobby filled with hundreds of young beautiful women walking about to other parts of the ship.

I walked down the great spiral staircase to the next level and stood beside a huge marble fountain. Everywhere about the room there were women, and they were laughing and pointing at me like I was some kind of freak for wearing a p-suit.

"Hi, I'm Tanya. What's the problem, honey?" a woman staff member asked. "If your room is too cold, all you need to do is call the main desk and we'll fix it for you."

A few other women laughed at that.

"Um, I'm lost," I said. "I think I got on the wrong ship. Where are we headed?"

Tanya looked at me with raised eyebrows and asked,"What's the matter with your voice, dear? Not to be rude or anything but through your suit speaker it sounds almost mannish, but that's impossible, right? This is a private cruise for women only, and where we're headed is Neptune."

"Neptune?" I asked in horror realizing now I was on some sort of slave ship. No women ever go to Neptune voluntarily, at least none that I've ever heard of. This was some kind of slave ship bringing new slave girls to one of the most notorious parts of the solar system.

"Yes, dear," Tanya said placing her hand on my shoulder. "Neptune. Now why don't you run back up to your room and take off that silly pressure suit, okay?"

"But-"

"But what?" Tanya asked.

"But someone stole my clothes and things," I explained.

"Very well, what room are you staying in?" she asked.

"Two-fourteen I think," I shrugged.

"We'll send someone right up with some courtesy clothes and makeup. How's that? Better? Okay, now run along dear," Tanya said turning me around and patting me on the back.

I walked back up the stairs and back to my room. Luckily the door was unlocked, but I guess on a slave ship like this you don't really need locks on the doors anyway.

I walked in the bathroom and shut the door and waited there because I knew sooner or later someone was going to ask me to remove my helmet and they'd catch me. Better to hide in the bathroom and let the delivery girl just drop off some clothes and things for me. Too bad they can't also drop off a wig but I'll have to make due with what I have if I want to get out of here.

"Hello?" a woman called out. "Anyone home?"

"I'm in the bathroom," I replied through the door. "Just leave the things on the bed."

"But I have to know your size," she called back.

I opened the bathroom door a crack and stuck my arm out and said,"I'm this tall, and about this wide . . . from here to here."

"Huh?" she asked puzzled.

"Oh, and my bust size is about out to here," I said gesturing from the edge of the door outward a bit, then quickly pulled my arm back in the bathroom and shut the door. Then I opened the door and stuck my leg out and shook it about and pulled it back in and shut the door once more. "That's for my shoe size."

"That's silly," the woman said. "Don't you know your own clothing sizes?"

"Um . . . fine, how are you?" I said pretending to mistake her question.

"I'll just leave the makeup here on the edge of your bed then and come back with the clothes," the woman told me. "Anything else?"

"Uh . . . You wouldn't have a blonde wig and a razor would you?" I asked hopefully.

"A wig?" the woman asked.

"Um . . . Hair loss . . . Bald spots. You know. Standing too close to the microwave antenna when dusting the rooftop. You know how it is. Nasty stuff, those microwave transmitters, you know. Nuked part of my brain too," I said konking my helmet several times against the bathroom door.

"What in the world is wrong with your voice?" she asked. "Oh, nevermind, it's not worth it. Okay, so you want one blonde wig and some razors. Very well. I have to go back to the supply room for the clothes anyway. I'm going to take a guess at your bust size if you won't tell me. If it's wrong, just ring the front desk and they'll send someone right up help. Anyway, I'll be back in a jiffy."

___-----___

Sometime later after the woman delivered the rest of the things, came out of the bathroom and looked over the goods.

Three dresses, all red, but slightly varying lengths, the longest coming to just below the knee from my guess.

Several pairs of stockings, panties, and bras lay folded neatly in little piles beside the dresses and three pairs of high heeled shoes, all black but varying heights, lay on the floor beside a box of makeup and what appeared to be not a razor but some sort of permanent hair removal wand I'd seen on commercials before. Beside the dresses sat a long blonde wig.

Whoever kidnapped me and stuck me naked on a slave ship for girls, was definitely not on my happy list, that's for sure. Even if I managed to get all dressed up in drag to somehow fool the women on board this ship, I still didn't know how in the world I was ever going to get back to Mars without my wallet, and if the slave Lords caught me snooping around their girls like this, I can't imagine what they'd do to me. Bottom line is if I ever see that red headed girl who was involved in kidnapping me and sticking me on this cursed space liner, I'm going to be so mad with rage, I won't be responsible for my actions.

It's just humiliating, that's all. Having no choice but to get dressed up in drag just to hide my male identity - it's completely humiliating.

I looked at the dresses once more and realized it could be worse. It could be gegrothins instead. That would be really humiliating if I had to wear a gegrothin. Humiliating and painful. Those things have a built in crotch grabber that's designed to pull tightly against a woman and . . . well you get the picture. It's designed not so much to hide their sex, but to reveal it as through a second skin. If a man ever wore something like that, it would crush the life right out of him. Might as well shove a bear trap up between your legs because that's about the same effect a man would get from wearing a gegrothin.

Pure, excruciating pain.

Literally women are the only ones that could ever wear a gegrothin. Chalk up one more thing women can do that men can't, I guess. It's no wonder that Todd Angle wore one last night while in that rented female body. Even I'm a bit curious as to how something like that might feel like sculpted right up snug against a woman. I hear it's a constant turn on for women wearing gegrothins. No wonder Todd was horny as hell as a woman yesterday, even in the restaurant.

I reached down and picked up the hair removal wand and walked in the bathroom.

I got out of my p-suit and stepped in the shower, bringing the hair removal wand with me.

I hesitated for a moment because I knew this was going to be permanent hair removal. If I used it on my legs, I'd never grow hair there ever again. It would take special medication to grow hair again, and even then it wouldn't ever be quite the same. I had rather hairy legs that I was proud of. It showed how much of a man I was when I'd wear shorts to the beach or to the gym. Hairless legs just wasn't manly to me, probably one reason why I never wanted to become an Olympic swimmer.

I still didn't know if I could stand to zap off all my leg hair for good, just in a crazy attempt to disguise myself as a woman and somehow escape this slave ship and return to Mars where I belonged.

What has to be, has to be.

I flipped the "on" switch and the hair removal wand hummed loudly as waved it up and down my legs just inches over my skin as it vaporized the hair with some mysterious, invisible energy beam.

I quickly finished my left leg and ran my hand down my thigh, realizing the wand not only removed my leg hair but also tightened and toned up the skin into perfect smoothness. I couldn't even see the tiny holes in my skin where hair used to grow from. It was gone completely.

I waved the hair removal wand up and down my right leg and then decided to do the rest of my body, save the hair on my head and my eyebrows and eye lashes. I even waved the wand over my face to remove all hint of beard growth. I couldn't grow a beard or moustache now even if wanted to. It was gone forever.

I turned off the hair removal wand and stepped out of the shower, placing the wand back in the bedroom on the edge of the bed.

Then I went back in the bathroom and took a quick shower.

I realized that drying off after the shower was now a much quicker job without all that leg and body hair. Most of the water just dripped right off me before my towel even had a chance to do anything. It was amazing.

I went back in the bedroom and took another look at the clothes lying on the bed.

With a sigh, I picked up a pair of white cotton panties and pulled them on. They were a bit loose on me but the elastic band held them in place fairly well.

I picked up one of the bras and fumbled with it for awhile, trying to figure out how to put it on. After a few minutes I managed to get it into place, but it, too, was loose on me other than the elastic straps that held it close to my chest. Obviously I'd have to stuff this thing with a whole lot of something in order to make it look like I had any breasts at all.

I walked back in the bathroom and found some toilet paper and stuffed what seemed like rolls and rolls of the stuff into my bra. Then I walked back out to the bedroom and examined the pantyhose.

There were several different colors and styles to choose from, but finally I decided on a pair that was so black they might as well have been tights than pantyhose. I quickly pulled them on and in my haste I created several runs in the stockings.

I discarded the black stockings and found some dark tan ones that I thought would work fairly well. This time to avoid ripping the stockings to shreds, I carefully rolled each leg of the stockings up into little doughnuts and placed my feet inside, slowly unraveling the stockings up my legs until they were snugly in place.

The material felt silky and extremely stimulating as I practiced walking about the room in my stockings just to get used to them.

I picked out the longest red dress, which came to just below the knees, and put it on. The zipper in the back gave me no end of trouble but after about ten minutes or so I finally got the thing all zipped up.

The dress was really tight on me. I heard once that clothing companies started sewing automatic corsets right into dresses and this one was no exception. Almost as soon as the zipper in the back was fully locked in place, the built-in corset pulled my stomach painfully inwards. I wasn't really overweight to begin with but the corset obviously thought I needed to loose a good many inches off my waistline, pulling tighter and tighter until I had a thin, almost dainty waist.

Breathing became immediately difficult with that torturous dress on but I adjusted by taking shorter, quicker breaths than I normally did. I again walked about the room to get used to the clothing a bit and finally got to the point where I hardly noticed my breathing had changed at all. Kind of like getting used to the strong scent of roses in a garden. At first the smell can be almost overwhelming, and then you kind of forget about it and just enjoy it. That's how it was with this dress. Kind of overwhelming at first, but after walking around the room for a few minutes, I got used to it.

I carefully picked up the makeup box and walked in the bathroom, setting the box down on the counter by the sink.

Women's makeup applicators had changed considerably over the years, and as a man, I had really no idea what any of the stuff did anyway, which only made it that much more complicated for me as I rummaged through all the bottles, powders, lipsticks and creams.

I about kicked myself when I discovered at the bottom of the box was one of those full face makeup applicator masks. I'd seen these in commercials before and sure enough, it was fairly simple if you could figure out what all the dials and knobs were on the side control panel.

I set the eye shadow control to medium blue haze, whatever that was, and the lipstick for pretty pink. Then I set some sort of base applicator control to medium. In fact, I set most of all the settings on medium because I didn't want to overdo it, nor underdo it.

Once the controls were all set, I lifted the bulky silver mask up to my face, I closed my eyes, and I clicked a button on top. It worked sort of like how a camera works actually.

I heard a beeping noise but nothing else happened.

I pulled the mask away from my face and turned the darn contraption over this way and that in my hands until I saw the readout display. It said something like "lipstick cartridge empty . . . base makeup empty . . . paper jam . . ." and so on.

I finally figured out that you had to plug in about twelve different cartridges into the thing. It was now twice as bulky as before and now I wondered if it was really such a great scientific advancement compared to just putting on makeup manually.

Once again, I put the mask up to my face, closed my eyes, and pressed the button.

The mask got real warm and I felt it rippling against my face in warm, liquid waves of pulsating energy. Something rubbed against my lips and traced over them, leaving a slick substance behind. I felt tiny little combs grab my eyelashes and carefully run through them, painting them with what could only be mascara.

A bell rang and the mask popped off my face with a hissing noise as powder shot out all over the floor and counter.

Amazingly enough, as I set the mask down and looked at my face in the mirror, I realized the mask did quite a good job on me. If it weren't for my slightly larger nose and squarish chin, I was sure I was looking at the face of a woman. Not really too pretty, nor too ugly, but kind of a plain woman's face. Just an average girl I guess.

As good a job as the mask did on my face, it did an even better job on my dress with all the powder that now spotted up my outfit.

I'd have to remember to wear the dress last next time.

I went back out to the bedroom and removed my dress, then getting into a shorter one that came up two inches above the knees. At least my knees weren't really bony or else this wouldn't work at all.

I took the blonde wig and put it on, then walked over to the bathroom mirror to adjust it so it looked somewhat natural.

I looked in the mirror at myself and saw that the wig enhanced my girlish disguise considerably.

I went over and sat on the edge of the bed and tried on the shoes.

This is where I ran into trouble because none of the shoes fit me at all. My feet were just too long. There was no way I was going to fit in any of these shoes.

I decided to call the front desk. At least I looked more like a woman now than a man, so I knew this time I wouldn't have to hide from the delivery girl.

A few minutes later, a woman came in the room and glanced at me sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Oh, I see you've tried on some of the clothes I left you," she said and looked down at my feet. "Well, the shoes didn't fit, huh? Okay, those look like they're in the beta class, no offense."

"None taken," I said in my best girl's voice, which wasn't really all that convincing.

"Your voice sounds stranger than ever, girl," the woman said.

"Microwaves, remember?"

"Oh my," she said looking at my face and studying it for a moment. "You weren't kidding about getting too close to a microwave transmitter, were you? Oh, my poor girl. This just won't do. We're gonna have to do something about your looks if you're going to bring in any money at the auction block. Come on. Stand up for a sec, would ya?"

I stood up and she looked up at me.

"Oh my," she said. "This won't do at all. How did they ever pick you, you poor child? You're much too tall. Much too much too tall. We can fix that, and your face when we get to the space station. They've got cures for this sort of thing and we don't want the slave Lord's to get angry, do we girl?"

"There's something you don't know-"

"No, no, my girl. We'll talk about this later," she said reaching up and taking me by the chin, turning my face to the left and right. "Oh feel so sorry for you, girl. We'll get you fixed all nice and pretty and petite, don't you worry a bit. We'll fix that odd little voice of yours too. No, wait. I've got a better idea. It's a bit unorthodox since the slave Lords prefer original bodies, but I think what the slave Lords don't know won't hurt 'em, right? I'll phone ahead and have someone prepare princess clone. We'll just do a quick old fashioned body exchange on you, darling. Now don't you fret. We'll make you the prettiest girl in the entire auction and you'll make the slave Lords very, very rich, and some lucky new master very, very happy. Now lets just forget about the shoes for now, okay? We'll get you all fixed up at the station. So just stay here in your room and if you need anything, just give the front desk a ring and I'll be right up. My name's Sharla."

"And I'm . . . Jeanette," I said using the name of one of my ex-girlfriends.

"Jeanette?" she asked looking up at my wig. "Hmmmm . . . Seems like more of a brunette's name than a blonde. How about I set up a brunette clone? . . . That is, unless you'd prefer a blonde."

"Uh . . . brunette's fine," I said gulping, realizing now I had to find a way to escape more than ever because if I didn't, I'd soon find myself living the life of a real slave girl.

She turned around and left, waving happily at me as she closed the door.

___-----___

I searched in my mind dozens of ways I might escape from this mess, but in the end I realized there was really no way I could escape this unless somehow while I was on the station I could manage to get out of my female disguise. In all likelihood that situation wasn't going to happen. Slave girls may have free roam on a ship like this, but such freedom for slave girls wasn't known on Gamma Station, if that's where we were headed. They'd post at least two guards on me at all times if what I'd seen on different news programs about the slave trade was true.

If I blew my cover at Gamma station, I could take the chance of escaping to freedom as a man, or getting thrown in some slave Lord's prison for masquerading around as a woman on board his slaver vessel.

If I let them swap me into a real woman's body, I'd be trapped for sure whether I wanted to be or not.

There was one other way, but it meant almost certain death if it went wrong. I could try and get to an escape pod and hope that it would land me on Neptune near one of the big cities. The problem with that idea is if the pod didn't land near a big city, I'd be stuck in the middle of nowhere with oxygen running out and not much food or water to live on. Plus, if the pod didn't get to Neptune, I'd probably just drift off into space and die anyway as the life support gradually failed.

There was also the problem of Neptune itself. The entire city structure of Neptune was composed of both asteroid grids interconnected with gravity attractor discs to hold them in place all around the tops of the clouds of Neptune. If the pod were to pass the high altitude population grid and plunge deep into the atmosphere of Neptune, the enormous winds would tear the pod apart. Failing that, if the pod should travel even deeper inward, the atmospheric pressure would almost certainly be too great for the pod to stand up against, and if the pod made it all the way to the surface of the core, the boiling, poisonous liquid would finish the pod for sure.

The escape pod idea was about the only chance I had to escape this ship before we got to the space station, but I was too afraid to risk almost certain death if the pod went too far off course. Oh, there were distress beacons built into the pods, sure, but I don't want every slave Lord on Neptune coming to my rescue considering they'd be able to trace where the pod came from and that would put me in an even worse situation than I'm in already. Slave Lords are known for being pretty harsh to guys that mess with their precious cargo ships.

As I sat there on the edge of my bed thinking about my options, I realized there really was no way out of this mess. If I got out of my disguise and gave myself up, the slave Lords would kill me. If I didn't, I would be body swapped into a princess clone, probably one of the immortal models. You know, the kind that are set at age eighteen or twenty-one permanently. I'd be stuck literally forever as a beautiful young slave girl with pretty low chances of ever going back to who I was before.

I got up off the bed and walked over to the bathroom mirror.

I was six foot tall, but no doubt I'd loose at least six to twelve inches off my height if they stuck me in a girl's body.

My hands were kind of rough from my years of being a mechanic, but they'd be changed to soft, delicate girl's hands if I went along with this fiasco.

I had over thirty thousand plinkets worth of credit card debt, but by becoming another person, it would be wiped out. I'd start off with clean slate. Of course, I'd also never be allowed to own property as a slave girl, so there was that price to consider as well.

As a guy, I didn't really do too much with my life. I was a workaholic, spending more time at the shop or working on my own hovacar than trying to actually go out and live my life or have any fun at all. As a girl, I imagine I'd become a sexaholic instead, and though I wonder what that would really be like, I'm not sure I'm ready to find out, but do I even have a choice? That's the real question. Do I really have a choice in all this, or did the redheaded girl back at the park screw my life up forever all because I wouldn't answer her question about the Johnny Mob?

Obviously, whoever that girl was, she wanted me out of the picture for some reason, and I just can't imagine why she'd do this to me just because I failed to answer one simple question. I wonder if she was onto the whole thing about Vin's secret money stash? Probably not. The only one's that probably even knew were Vin himself and the few people I talked to in that hovavan. Still, if I ever get ahold of that redheaded girl that did this to me, I won't be responsible for my actions.

___-----___

Sometime later the door opened in my stateroom.

"Knock-knock," Sharla said peeking her head inside and then stepping in the room. "Are we ready? Come on, it's all set. You're new body's waiting for you. Leave that junk here, we'll be back for the trip down to the planet. Come on, now. Follow me, Jeanette."

I silently followed Sharla down the hallway. She was wearing a white dress with a gold belt. A little white cap adorned her head. Her whole uniform matched that of all the other staff I saw as we headed down the spiral staircase and into the main lobby.

People stared at me, probably because they each secretly guessed I was not who I appeared to be. I was not a woman but a man in a fairly bad disguise. A few women chuckled to themselves as I passed by, while others only stared, and still others took no notice of me at all.

I wondered if my disguise was really all that bad, though. It certainly seemed to fool Sharla anyway, or did she only pretend I was a woman for other reasons? What if she was in on that redheaded girl's little game and wanted to change me into a woman as part of some evil little plan of theirs to get me out of the picture for good without actually going through the trouble to kill me?

But changing me into a woman would be nearly the same as killing me anyway. The person known as Jack Larnstrom would cease to exist.

I lined up behind three other girls and Shawna and two guards dressed in black body armor escorted us down a red carpeted gangplank and onto a moving sidewalk that quickly sped us along, deeper into Gamma Station.

The girls standing in front of me must have been going in for body swaps as well. One of them was even taller than I was, and the others were just a tad overweight in spots. Obviously we were all going to be swapped into newer and better bodies to better impress the slave Lords. I wondered how it was that these minor imperfections in the girls were overlooked in the first place. Probably didn't matter much to the cargo runners if all it took was an illegal body swap into a princess clone to correct such things.

The moving sidewalk ended in a red carpeted hallway with white marble pillars along the walls.

We marched forward through an open doorway and Shawna produced her identification badge to a guard standing in a small entryway.

We continued through and into a small waiting room.

A short, chubby man wearing green Neptunian Army fatigues stood there to greet us. "Welcome to Gamma Station, ladies," he said looking at us and then looking at his clipboard. "I'm afraid you won't be enjoying your stay here too long. Point of the matter is you're here because your bodies are unacceptable as they are. Ugly women aren't acceptable as slave girls on Neptune, and boy are you ladies dog ugly. However, because of your looks, you were cheaper to purchase, but we'll fix all that in a few moments, my ladies, and place you in more expensive bodies that we feel will serve both your new masters well while also easily make up for the added risk and cost of this procedure when you are finally sold on the auction blocks. Now in order to be fair, we'll take ugliest first and move right along."

"Ugliest to the front!" one of the guardsmen ordered.

Another guardsman looked right at me and said,"That means you. Now move it."

A nurse stepped in the waiting room from a door on the far wall and said,"We're ready for the first patient now."

I looked down at my stockinged feet, trying to think of some way out of this.

"Move it, lady," a guard said jabbing me in the ribs with his phase rifle.

I walked forward, surprised that all the guards remained behind to watch the others.

"This way please," the nurse said and I followed her through the door and down a white hallway and into a large room.

There were suspended animation chambers lined up like coffins to my left and right as I followed the nurse up to a platform that held two additional chambers, one of which was occupied by a sleeping brunette woman dressed in a black bikini.

"Please get in," the nurse said gesturing to the empty chamber.

"What will become of my old body?" I asked gulping, wondering if now was a good time to make a run for it. To my knowledge, there was only one way back out of this room and that was the hallway that led to the waiting room and the guards. No way of escape. I had no choice but to go along with this and hope I'd find some way back to normal later.

"Archive and eventual deletion," the nurse replied. "You won't need your old body anymore anyway. Now please get in. There are others waiting."

I gulped once more and carefully climbed in the empty chamber and lay on my back.

The glass lid closed above me and a hissing noise filled the chamber as cold fog surrounded me.

This was it. I knew I was going to die. Jack Larnstrom was going to die now.

No matter who or what I became after this, it didn't matter because the person I knew myself to be will no longer exist.

I heard about these suspended animation chambers, but never knew they used them in combination with body swapping.

Amplified cold. That's what this stage was all about. In a few moments I'll soon feel the chamber rumble from my feet up to the top of my head and final wave of icy fog will blast across my body, placing me in a deathlike sleep. After that, I suppose they'll do the mind transfer. I guess it was better this way, at least for the poor clone. She will never have a single waking moment of awareness on her own. Her body was made simply for others to occupy. She will never become a conscious individual. Her brain was reserved to place another's memories, thoughts and consciousness inside. That is why swap clones were made illegal, but laws only really seem to restrict the general population, while giving crooks a monopoly over a technology that was never meant to be.

Poor clone. They'll swap us and then kill her in my old body after archiving my DNA and structural pattern for some library computer somewhere on Gamma Station.

Archival and deletion. I'd heard of it before but only on animals. It wasn't ever meant to be used on humans. Once again someone came along and misused science to achieve their own selfish ways.

The chamber started to rumble.

This is it. My male life is about to be over with.

The rumbling gripped my feet and I felt a stabbing pain shoot up through my legs as the suspended animation process accelerated.

The whole chamber vibrated wildly and the cold jutted up through my legs, abdomen, chest, neck

Everything went black and silent.