Battery Life Ch. 01 - Crush

Princess Elenore gazed longingly at the tall officer giving her the tour of the starship. He was so striking in the red dress uniform that it took her breath away, and she again struggled against her tight corset for a few moments trying to get enough air.

The bridge of this new ship was, of course, as grand as all the remarkable things he'd shown her so far. No expense had been spared for this vessel. The high, sweeping ceiling arches, informed by the neo-classical architectural style the gigantic ship mimicked, made for a command bridge the size of a ballroom—abundant space for the several dozens of bridge officers presently working the consoles to prepare the ship for warp—while still leaving room to spare for Ellie's entourage and all the press. The viewport, protected by impenetrable enchanted crystal, opened the entire front of the vast bridge to a striking panorama, currently including both the stars and the rich aquamarine blues of her home planet. Yet, as spectacular as the sight was, she found her eyes being drawn back to the lieutenant in charge of the tour.

"And next is finally the battery room," her handsome guide said, boldly meeting Ellie's admiring gaze.

Ellie felt her cheeks going rosy at their eyes meeting, and she looked down demurely, attempting to collect herself. She realized she was fiddling with her fingers and made a conscious effort to stop, letting her hands rest together in front of her artificially trim waist, just above the full skirts of her lovely pink evening gown. It wouldn't do to appear smitten in front of all the reporters and the holo-cameras. Ellie glanced sideways to Minuette, one of her dearest friends in her entourage, and the other teen exchanged a playful look with her, knowing the Princess too well to miss the unmistakable signs of a developing crush.

"Yes, I do believe that is why everyone is here," Ellie said breathily. "Please... lead the way, lieutenant." Despite her feverishness, she did her best to sound regal as her eyes swept over the gathering, the dozen reporters and cameramen, and the hundreds of high-born females in her entourage. With all the young ladies, there were more silk and sumptuous dresses currently onboard than any starship had ever seen before, and she figured all the corseted nobles' daughters in their dazzling ball gowns were making as strong an impression on the dress-uniformed officers as the young officers were making on the supple girls.

The lieutenant offered his arm, and she took it and hung from it like arm candy—the purpose of the Emperor's youngest, most beautiful and popular daughter as always to look ornamental on some important man's arm in front of the flashing cameras—as she was taken to wherever they were going. There was a smug, pleased grin on the lieutenant's face as he looked into the cameras and took control of her again with his hand at the small of her corseted back. Ellie relaxed and let him command her, trying to not picture herself as a young mare being driven. His masterful touch steered her through the surprisingly spacious passages towards the ship's engineering section while he made innocent small talk. Ellie couldn't help but be impressed at how skillfully he handled her. The well-practiced, subtle domination simply made her melt. 

Naturally, the officers were aristocrats too, used to red carpet events with decorative females dressed to be shown off, but Ellie dared hoping that her lieutenant had never had a young woman with quite this sort of pedigree happily yielding to his authority before. With as many children as her father had sired, only the ones carried by Elenor's mother were recognized as part of the Royal bloodline. So there were three official Royal Princesses, and Ellie's two older sisters had been married off by now.

She was the only one her father still hadn't arranged into marriage as part of some power deal, and it made her available for propaganda functions like these. Elenore wasn't thrilled about being leveraged for General Kessel's latest PR campaign, but at least her handler was a treat.

Not that she'd had any choice in the matter. Her father had told her to do it, and she was the Emperor's daughter. She obeyed, even though she was hesitant about the message she was being used to sell.

This starship's new warp spells for faster-than-light travel were controversial. Or at least what they used for power was.

There were so many types of tributes that a Mage could offer to power his magic. Incinerating cherished possessions, blood sacrifice, slaughtering animals or even people. Some of these were commonly thought of as somewhat crass and a bit wasteful.

And then there was sex magic. A Mage dominating a beautiful young woman, forcing her to climax, harvested the only mystic contribution a member of the intrinsically non-magical female gender could survive making. There were no females with mystic abilities, but the power exchange of the girl's surrender and loss of agency when her sexual control was taken from her could still easily be used to charge a spell—and if done skillfully, the tribute could be extracted over and over without damaging the girl much. As demeaning as the concept was for a woman, Ellie knew most of the Empire's men, and not just the Mages, considered it both beautiful and appropriate—renewable energy at its best.

There was a complication though—just like with a driver controlling a span of mares put before a carriage: the more horsepower, the more skill was needed. While a Mage could easily control one female at a time, or maybe even a four-span or eight-span if the girls were well broken in and competently primed—for enchantments that needed a lot of power, it didn't scale well. To charge up more demanding props, Mages were known to work their entire harems in sessions that went on for days, using ruthless bondage magic and brain-damaging aphrodisiacs on the females to push them well past their limits. Harmful spells like that were how most Mage-owned concubines inevitably became giggling shells of themselves. It was almost as straining for the Mage as it was for the collared and magically bridled young women—though somehow the Mages had managed to make the stamina-enhancing drugs they themself consumed to be less deleterious than the potions they fed the females. Ellie figured that the slow, permanent mind-emptying was just another not-so-subtle part of the domination, or that the Mages simply enjoyed the long-term effects on the girls.

This was all very relevant for starships, Ellie knew. Using magic to thoroughly defile the laws of physics was, unfortunately, the only way to facilitate faster than light traversal—and it came with a steep price. The occult warp cores were one of the most power-hungry Maker props ever conceived.

So ships were small to keep the power demand reasonable. Crewed by knit groups—a Mage, his harem, and his daughters. The harnessed young concubines worked to exhaustion by the Mage for them to hold even the most light-weight ship in warp for a few hours—and for a more substantive vessel, perhaps ninety minutes—before having to drop to normal space for recuperation. And then doing it all again as soon as at least the Mage was able. For anything but the tiniest two-person courier ships built for speed—where one tied-up girl got the entire brunt of a Mage's fully focused attention—many short warps were needed to go from a star system to another.

When in port, warp Mages were always trawling nightclubs and bars for impressionable young women that they could lure with the stories of their travels and swashbuckling adventures, to later at night slip an ensorcelled pleasure collar on them and initiate them to the intelligence-destroying addicting bliss a female could only experience on the chain in a sex Mage's harem. A few warp Mages were among the many men Princess Elenore had been presented to at her recent debutante ball. Even at that sophisticated reception, where some things were hardly decorous, she'd felt their eyes roaming over her corseted curves as they'd sized her up. Perhaps considering how they'd tie her down and drive her if she was naked, drugged with potions and drooling in their collar—instead of being led around on the ballroom stage, tantalizingly displayed to them in her bespoke, virgin-white debutante ball gown, for the moment still pure and unclaimed; a Royal Princess just put on the market.

Warp Mages were known to trade daughters with each other to get new submissive fuel for the harem. She figured they wouldn't mind bartering with even an Emperor for her, based on their leers. It was the sort of attention that made her flushed and short of breath, weak in her knees and at risk of fainting in her impractical, constricting corset and tight bodice. So far—since she wasn't already spellbound and on her knees in a Dark Sorcerer's bed-chamber—apparently no Mage had yet managed to offer the price her sire expected. Or perhaps he simply thought she'd increase in value if he didn't trade her so young.

Eventually, she knew someone would propose a deal for her hand—and body—that her father would accept. Somewhere, deep inside, she dared thinking that belonging to a dominant and powerful warp Mage was a more exciting future than being given to one of the stuffy old aristocrats her sisters had been made to marry. At the very least, it meant she would get to travel. She wouldn't want to end up confined in a gilded cage, isolated in some remote lord's castle. But Goddess, even that would be preferable to General Kessel acquiring her, as he'd once told her he intended to. He'd looked as if he'd expected her to consider it an honor to get to swell with his babies, while she was struggling to find a polite answer to dispel the notion. He was older than her father. She'd known him her entire life. When had he gotten the idea that she was a suitable womb for his children?

Reminded of Kessel's interest in her, Ellie again thought of his campaign, and the significance of how wide the corridor they were walking through was. This new starship was immense. The artificers certainly hadn't seen a need to save volume or mass when it was produced. The beautiful wall tapestries, the luxurious carpet covering the floor they were walking, the ballroom-sized bridge, and the comfortable quarters for guests and crew alike—this spacecraft was designed to make a point. There had never been anything remotely like this ship before.

For centuries, starships had been limited in speed and size by a single warp Mage's stamina and ability to control his girls. Now it had all changed. The money the Empire had poured into research and development had finally paid off, and a team led by a notoriously deviant old bondage Maker had come up with a way to automate the process. The siphoning of a female could now happen without a Mage's personal involvement. A Mage didn't even have to be present. The subjugation was set up once, using magical props, and the female was then driven automatically.

It was a revolution—like creating a motorized, heavy truck in a world where there existed only horse-drawn carriages.

Suddenly spaceships could be colossal. They could stay in warp longer. There was no practical limit to how many females could be pooled to power them. With bigger ships, interstellar trade of other things than just luxury items made financial sense. With a fleet built on its exclusive hold of this new occult technology, the Empire would be unstoppable—finally able to grow past the handful of stars it currently controlled.

This ship they were on was the first one completed since the breakthrough.

And Princess Elenore was here as part of the campaign to convince the Empire's daughters to do their patriotic duty and help power it.

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