The Iron Maiden Read Online Free PDF

left the women. The pirates were armed and ruthless. Their deal was simple: submit or die. If the women died, the children would be left without any remaining protection. Spirit heard Helse explaining it to Hope.
    But he would have none of it. “That's my mother down there!” he said, and launched himself forward.
    Helse caught him, but couldn't entirely stop him. “Spirit!” she cried in a whisper. “Help me hold him!”
    Spirit snapped out of her remaining stupor and grabbed Hope's legs. Together they held him back.
    “But our mother's getting raped!” he protested.
    “I know it,” Spirit said, and did not let go. She had come to understand about sex as a tool to do what was necessary. Certainly their mother understood. It was maddening, but it had to be.
    Hope continued to struggle, until Helse hugged his face to her half-bared bosom. Spirit felt the fight go out of him then, and marveled at the evident power of a woman's breast.
    Still, he protested, wanting to try to save their mother somehow. “Let it be, Hope,” Helse told him.
    “Those women are trying to save our lives.”
    “At the expense of their honor!” he retorted, and Spirit had to agree with him there.
    “Their honor is not of the body, but of the spirit.”
    That made Spirit jump, though she knew it was a coincidental use of the word. She saw the point, however: the grown women were doing what they had to do to preserve their lives and the lives of their children. How could that be called dishonorable?
    So they remained there for a short eternity, letting it happen. Spirit could see very little below, but her imagination filled it in: men thrusting their swollen members into the poor women, getting inside, making it happen. Then, sure enough, they were done, and they went away. It was amazing how quickly men lost interest, once they jetted.
    At last they could let Hope go. Helse put her clothing back together, covering her bared breast. “You sure are pretty, when you show,” Spirit said enviously.
    “You will be too, very soon,” Helse said.
    They climbed down--and the women acted as if nothing had happened. Hope opened his mouth, but Helse intercepted his words. “Say nothing!” she whispered. That shut Spirit up too.
    When they were separate again, Helse explained: "The women don't want us to share their humiliation.
    We must pretend to be ignorant, and hope that the real children don't catch on. So as not to undermine their sacrifice."
    Spirit pondered it, and realized that it made sense. It was a necessary deception, on both sides.
    But things did not get better; they just got worse in different ways. There was not enough food; they were running out, even with the men gone. They went down to quarter rations, and Spirit felt hungry all the time. But their natural functions remained, and the toilet facilities were filling and clogging from overuse.
    “Another head's clogged,” Spirit said. That cut them down to three functioning ones, and that was not enough. But she had an answer: “Why not just dump the stuff into space?”
    Thus it was that Spirit, Hope, and Helse volunteered to go out on the bubble surface to unclog the heads.
    They had to use the clumsy space suits anchored by safety ropes. It was awesome, clinging to the little hooks outside the bubble, so as not to be thrown clear by its rotation. The sun was just a star, but Jupiter was huge beyond belief.
    Hope made his way to one of the pressure release valves and used a big wrench on it. Spirit was reminded of her dialogue with Helse, about letting off sexual valve pressure, and almost laughed. This wasn't sex, it was shit.
    Suddenly the valve let go with a jet of vapor. It carried Hope along with it, which was another scare, but he was secured by the rope, and Helse reeled him in again. Then he and Spirit worked on the tank itself, opening it and getting the refuse out. It slid out in a huge awful mass, and immediately started fragmenting in space, becoming a cloud. She