Mistress Of Planet Dominatrix

By Jed Darke

A science fiction detective story set on a planet where women rule and men are kept as slaves.

On Planet Dominatrix only the women are considered human. Men are considered less than animals. They are property, male slaves, to be bought and sold. And to be used in any way their mistress desires. Since these men slaves are not considered human, just property, the killing of a male slave is not considered murder. If you kill someone else's man slave without their mistress' permission then it is vandalism. But no one really cares about the dead male slave.

So when a man slave is shot during Festival no one thinks it is an urgent case. Sure, it's mistress will want the killer to buy her a new slave, but there is no sense of urgency. Male slaves are not expensive on Dominatrix, they are not a "high value product", so the police are not keen to interrupt Festival for the investigation. Secure the crime scene, then tomorrow will do.

But one observant police officer realises there might have been a greater crime on Planet Dominatrix. What if the killer had not been aiming at the male slave, but had missed the intended target and killed the man slave by accident? What if the killer had been aiming at the slave's mistress, a woman, a real human being?

If that was the case it would not be vandalism, it would be murder!

What if the killer tried again? And what if this time a woman, a real human being, is killed?

If that really is the situation, then the police have a serious investigation on their hands.

One thing was for certain - Festival would have to wait this year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Smith Publishing
• Release date: Jan 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310432408

Jed Darke

Jed Darke's brain stopped processing new information somewhere around the end of 1979, and most of his work is in the style of 1960s and 1970s movies and TV.

Book preview

PE5673

Brianna looked over her estate. It consisted of nearly ten square miles of land, most of it farmland. The largest estate on the planet, and the largest farm. But Brianna could claim a larger estate than that, Brianna could technically claim the entire planet as her estate, because Brianna was supreme ruler of the planet designated PE5673, but known more simply as Dominatrix.

* * * * *

When PE5673 was first discovered there was little fuss made. It was earth like, slightly higher oxygen concentration, slightly lower nitrogen concentration, and no industrial pollutants. Indigenous life contained a wide variety of flora and fauna, with the most intelligent life form the initial survey found being about the same intelligence as an earth sheep. Most of the plants and all the animals analysed by the first survey were edible to humans (later surveys found a few insects and small reptiles that were poisonous, to varying degrees, if eaten). The largest land animal was slightly larger than an earth cow, vegetarian, and made an ideal beast of burden. Although many of the animals would attack if threatened, only one appeared to consider humans as a possible food source and so liable to attack unprovoked. Three species of plant had stings of comparable strength to an earth stinging nettle, and two had stronger stings, one of which was potentially lethal if stung in sufficient quantity (but you would probably have to roll around naked in a large patch of the weed to get this high a dose).

In short, PE5673 would have been the ideal planet for colonisation if it had been closer to earth. However, since it was a long way from the mother planet, transporting colonists that far would have been expensive, let alone the cost of transporting essential supplies (or rather 'supplies that colonists considered essential' which is not the same thing, PE5673 was sufficiently earth like that the colonists could have been dropped naked with no supplies whatsoever and survived, but with a [very] few exceptions, most colonists considered a reasonable amount of technology an 'essential supply').

Since, at the time of its discovery, there were plenty of planets nearer to earth that were sufficiently earth like for colonisation (many more than were needed by earth's expanding population) and PE5673 held no excessive mineral (or other) wealth to make colonising it exceptionally attractive, the planet simply got noted and its details filed away. There were more interesting and useful discoveries being made nearer to home.

Over the years humans colonised more and more planets, and over time moved further and further from Earth. But the need for new planets was never enough for PE5673 to be a viable colonisation prospect. After fifty years the initial excitement of exploring new frontiers died down, and the colonised planets settled into usual human patterns. This included territorial wars, both between nations on multi nation planets, and between entire planets. As usual money and resources were spent on war rather than exploration. Also the death toll of these wars helped to keep populations stable, so the urgency of finding new living space was no longer a pressing concern. As a result, about a hundred years after the start of the big 'galactic colonisation' bid, it was mostly over. Both the need and novelty were gone - the 'fun' had gone out of it.

Of course there was still some colonisation. Mostly by groups of private individuals, sometimes by governments, and occasionally by rich people looking for some pointless way to spend their vast fortunes. But still PE5673 was too far away to be an attractive proposition.

And really it still is.

But in the earth year 2314 Nysa Ordell at last got enough followers (and consequently, and more importantly, enough money) to start her dream colony. Her views were unpopular enough with the general public for her to think it a good idea to set up her colony well away from any inhabited planet. So she spent weeks going through the records of expeditions to the further galaxies, and eventually decided on PE5673, simply because it was the furthest suitable planet on her side of the universe (if you are going to spend a fortune crossing 'empty' galaxies, there is no point in spending more money crossing populated galaxies first).

Nysa Ordell's dream was a planet run only by women. Women in control, women as the only human population. Of course they would take men as well, but in Ordell's new world men would be classified as animals, not human. This meant that the human population (the women) could treat them how they liked, and do what they liked to them. However before starting her colony Ordell changed her mind about classifying men as animals, instead she gave them a classification of their own. Unimaginatively she called the kingdom (in the biological sense of the word) 'malumans', a contraction of 'male humans' and decided that her new kingdom was above plants but below animals. This was because she abhorred cruelty to animals, but had no reservations against cruelty to men (in fact she quite enjoyed cruelty to men), so felt that 'male humans' had to be classified below animals. The name malumans was not just a contraction of 'male human', Ordell also liked the name because she had been a student of ancient dead earth language French, and so to her 'malumans' also sort of meant 'sick or diseased humans', and as far as she was concerned, this was a perfect description for men.

Unsurprisingly she had plenty of female followers, but surprisingly nearly half the people who wanted to live in her new dream world were men. And it was mostly from the men that the money to start her colony came. This was not because men still earned more money than women, but because in Ordell's new world men would no longer be able own anything (they were below animals, and how many hamsters do you know with a house, a car, and a second mortgage), so had to give all they owned to the new colony. Women, however, would still be human, they would need money on the new planet, so could only give a part of their money as a donation to start the colony (in most cases only a very small part). So ironically the new 'women only' planet would be 90% funded by men. In fact it would never have been possible without the men's money.

But Nysa Ordell was unaware of this irony, and if she had in fact though about it at all, she would have considered it fair and just that the men pay to be subjugated.

So in late 2315 Nysa Ordell, 5398 other women, and 5198 men set off to PE5673. No one 'owned' any unpopulated planet, you just turned up and claimed it. So that is what they did. The area around the landing site was portioned off into properties for the women to set up homes. The men were made to do all the work. Outside this new city, land was portioned off as farmland. To start with, men were communal property, the majority of their work was in setting up the new colony. But once the city was finished and the farms running the men were shared out among the women. Those most in need of men for work that was important to the community (such as the women who ran the farms) were first given the men they needed to do the work. Once these important needs were met, the remaining men were distributed by lottery. Since over seventy percent of the men had gone to about twenty percent of the women for 'work important to the community' this meant that there were about 4300 women without men and only about 1500 men for them to fight over. So the majority of women did not get a man.

And this was where the trouble started.

If you had asked the female colonists why they supported the project, most would have said something pretentious like I believe that most of the wars in the world are started by men, most of the problems are caused by men, this is not man's fault, it is in his nature, natural selection has made him this way. But women do not suffer from a 'macho' impulses, women can make informed, intelligent decisions, so women should be the ones who really run the government. However if you had injected them with a truth drug before asking them this, most would have answered Because I want a man as a slave.

Unfortunately the mathematics of the situation meant that nearly 3000 of the women did not have slaves. Well over 50% of the human population (men did not count as 'human') did not have what they wanted. They had spent money, given up their old life, their homes, their friends and family, and were now living on a distant planet with very little technology but plenty of hardship, and they did not have what they wanted. So to say they were 'a little unhappy' is a gross understatement.

Remember that bit about most of the wars in the world are started by men? Well within 2 years of founding their colony the woman proved that women are just as good at starting wars as men. Te result was a lot of fighting, a lot of death, and no real solution. True, most of the deaths were women, so there were now a larger percentage of men. But with 70% still going to women who needed them for 'work important to the community', there were still not enough to go around.

The two main results of this war were:

A group of several hundred women were expelled from the city (still at that time just called The City as it was the only one). Although these rebels were still technically part of the colony, and still covered by colony law, they set themselves up as a separate society. They were not allowed to take any men with them, and in time got over this deprivation by deciding that men were an undesirable evil. The only use for men, in their society, was for sperm. Eventually (many years after being expelled) they started stealing men from the parent colony to use for breading. Once the men had succeeded in making a woman pregnant, they were killed. And so were any male children. These rebels considered themselves the 'true' women and began to call themselves Amazons, after the legendary earth society.

The other main result was that Nysa Ordell was deposed as leader of the colony, and a democratically elected government of twelve women took her place.

To get round the 'man shortage' the new government spent a large percentage of its reserve finances sending a ship back to the nearest technologically established human colony to purchase a supply of the drugs that allowed women to choose the sex of their child, to ensure more men slaves were born.

This was an unmitigated disaster. With the choice of giving birth to a 'daughter and heir' or a 'man slave', no woman would choose the latter. Consequently rather than solving the problem (at least for the next generation) they were worsening it. So the government brought in a law where no woman could give birth to a daughter until she had produced at least two sons.

This led to the second war.

More lives lost, the adult female population (not counting the Amazons) now down to less than 2000, there were nearly enough men for one each. What little remained of their reserve finances was spent recruiting more men. Eventually they reached the point where they had one man slave per woman (plus enough for 'work important to the community'). However by the time they reached this point they had got through their entire reserve finances and sold off a lot of the luxury items they had brought with them. They had also sold off their colony ship. The only ship they had was a small ten man flier (ten woman flier) with just enough fuel for a return trip to the nearest technological advanced system. This was to be kept for emergency. Only the most dire emergency would cause them to use it, because it was their final lifeline.

This meant that the new government could abolish the law that said women had to have boy children. However they could not now stop women using the drugs that allowed them to choose the sex of their child, for fear of starting a third war. This meant that practically no boys were born.

Nysa Ordell soon made political mileage out of this. She claimed that she had foreseen this problem and that was why she had refused to