Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 05:45:09 -0800 (PST)
From: Pete Brown <petebrownuk@yahoo.com>
Subject: Mandrasat, Chapter 20

MANDRASAT: Part Twenty

	At their first fleeting moments of awareness after being carried
from the branding table into Mandrasat's bowels, Bret and Ballard found
themselves in a dimly lit cell, lying face down on a cold stone floor, and,
except for that circle of fire hammering their right buttocks, their bodies
felt cold and numb.  Thick swirls of analgesic gel had anesthetized the
rest of their battered flesh, and, though they would not have believed it,
the horrifically painful scrawls branded into their buttocks were much less
intense than they might otherwise have been.
	Their breathing was raspy and haggard, and, instinctively, neither
moved, fearing an escalation of torment from even the slightest twitch.
Slowly, as time inched by, and their consciousness gradually expanded, they
became aware of their arms and legs, their hands and feet, their heads and
torsos and the aching those parts bore.
	Their wrists were still cuffed behind their backs and chained to
their slave collars, the endorphin secreting pads still affixed to their
sides and to the front and back of their thighs, and, to their shock and
distress, they also discovered their cocks were rigid and straining
painfully beneath them, oozing fiery precum.
	The agony inflicted upon their bodies and the hormones leeching
into their blood streams fueled their throbbing cock muscles, stretching
and contracting them, puckering the lips of their piss holes and screaming
for release.
	Their wits not yet fully about them, the two slaves began slowly,
mindlessly writhing on the rough cement floor, grinding their burning cocks
between its gritty surface and their naked bellies until they belched a
stream of scalding cum the length of their fuck shafts and spewed it out in
a wild clenching of their pubic muscles.  Pain, like a torrent of molten
lava surging from their ravaged asses, ripped through their cocks, and
drove them to a frenzy.
	"Oh, God," Ballard cried, his gut muscles cramping, burning,
powering the explosions of boiling cum streaking from his cockhole, up the
length of his gut, and splattering his chest.  He gasped loudly, digging
his toes into the cracked cement floor, as each spasm jerked his buttocks
together triggering more violent shock waves.
	Such suffering overpowered their minds, and, in a fog of pain, they
were only peripherally aware of shadowy hulks hovering over them, moving
them across the floor, touching them, pawing at them, but all they could do
was moan.
	As their moments of awareness slowly, steadily increased, growing
longer, merging, they recognized and recalled the function of Shareem's
Nubian slaves, to fuck and torture them.  But the four Nubians clustered
around their bodies were wearing metal sheaths on their cocks and were held
in check by two huge, naked overseers planted in opposite corners of the
cell, their gigantic cocks standing hard and stiff in front of them,
stretched taut by the gilt rings encircling their bases; each held a cattle
prod in one hand and Mandrasat's inescapable whip of knotted cords in the
other.
	They would tolerate no nonsense from any slave.  Shareem's orders
were clear and immutable, no one fucks a slave's hole who has just been
branded, no Nubian, no overseer, no exceptions for seventy-two hours.  A
slow and grisly death awaited anyone violating this rule, hence the full
length steel restraints on the Nubians' cocks.
	Shareem's edict was in no way prompted by any shred of compassion
for his suffering livestock; he wanted the brands to be crisp and clear,
healing unimpaired and well set.  The sight of a sharply branded slave's
ass would arouse a master's sense of power and domination as he probed and
prodded the curves and muscles of its body, increasing that slave's value
on the auction block considerably.
	Shock and the sudden, excruciating pain from branding most often
paralyzed a slave's bowels, and, if unchecked, severe and agonizing
constipation could last a week or more, endangering the slave's life.  But
Shareem forbade administering enemas to the slaves during these first three
days, which would be the only respite their holes would have from constant
rape.
	They were not to be washed, and they lay in their own urine, but
anesthetic gel was continually and liberally applied to the brands as well
as all other wounds and welts, bruises and abrasions.
	They were forced to feed twice a day, water poured down their
throats to offset dehydration resulting from trauma and pain.  The Nubians
hauled them into position and held them, surreptitiously stroking them and
rubbing against their bodies as the two moaned and lapped the slave slop,
doggy style, chocking and gagging on the nauseous swill that was also laced
with antibiotics and steroids.
	During the second day of their agonizing recovery, the Nubians
pulled them to their feet amid much crying.
	"Silence!  Stop your whimpering," a snarling overseer shouted, "or
I will lay this whip to your butts, on top of your markings, and give you
something to cry about."
	The threat of knotted cords slashing across their branded flesh was
sufficient to prompt the slaves to grind their teeth, strangling cries of
distress in their throats.
	"Start walking," the overseer commanded.  "Get those legs moving
and I do not want to hear any more crying sounds."  To emphasize his point,
he snapped the lash hard against the wall, startling all with its explosive
crack.  "Think about that sound," he growled, "and how this whip would feel
ripping across your asses."
	With the Nubians jabbing and pulling them, Bret and Ballard
stumbled and hobbled around the perimeter of the cell over and over and
over, stopping only for watering.  -0-
	With no windows and a single light fixture dangling from the
ceiling of the cell, no point of reference existed to gauge the passage of
time.  The three days of their isolation could have been a month or two
weeks or an eternity; Bret and Ballard had no way of knowing when or even
if this hell would ever end, until the door burst open and Kasim strode
into the room, looming over the prostrate slaves, legs spread wide, cock
jutting out like a battering ram.
	"On your feet," he barked, "time for you to rejoin Master Shareem's
slave pods."
	Three days, and the continuous application of the gel, had
significantly reduced the initial severity of their pain; they were now
able to stand and walk on their own.  As the pair of overseer guards
departed, the Nubians pushed and shoved Bret and Ballard forward; neither
resisted as they staggered through the doorway into the corridor outside.
	"You stink like a herd Egyptian camels," Kasim hissed, leading the
way to the latrine, then terror seized the battered slaves' guts as he
continued, "your Nubians are going to douche and wash your pretty bodies.
They've been waiting patiently for three days to fuck your holes; now it's
time for their chastity wraps to come off.
	"Remember," he clucked, "to show your gratitude for the way they've
taken care of you."
	Shaking with fear, their raw and inflamed cocks hard as steel rods,
the only thought the two brutalized victims had in their minds was how the
Nubians' assaults in the latrine and showers would exacerbate the torment
they had already suffered.
	Though each footstep brought an eruption of pain, the slaves were
no longer crippled by it; they could walk; they could even control their
instinct to cry out, but the fire burning in their arms shackled behind
their backs was another matter.  Each pulse beat sent lightening bolts
slicing through biceps, forearms, wrists, and fingers stiffened from three
days of bondage.  They had no choice but to wince, groan under their
breaths, and endure.
	The reality of their enslavement and all the pain and suffering
that accompanied it had been burned ruthlessly and indelibly into their
consciousness, and each uncontrollable spasm wracking their bodies made
brutally clear that resistance or escape were not options.  Anyone with
power over them could as easily thrust them into unfathomable torment as
brush away a fly.
	"Inside," Kasim snapped, pointing to the doorway of the latrine.
The Nubians began to giggle and hiss, snuffling and gurgling as they
trundled their two moaning auction slaves into the grimy, dark, and foul
smelling toilet.  "I want to see you well fucked and well scrubbed inside
and out."
	Half a dozen additional Nubians were waiting inside, leaping about
and screeching with excitement, their thickly veined stiffened cocks
bouncing up and down in front of their hairless bodies.  With a wave of his
hand, Kasim signaled the Nubians to begin, then leaned back against the
wall, grinning widely, fingering his balls with one hand and stroking his
rigid cock with the other, as Bret and Ballard were pulled howling to the
floor.  Their former attendants quickly snapped the metal tubes from their
own eager cocks and ripped the endorphin pads from their victims bodies.
	The ten Nubians fell upon their prey like a pack of hyenas,
savagely wrestling them into the positions they wanted, giving neither heed
nor response to their cries of anguish.  Instead, their instinct, neither
to shield the two white slaves from pain, nor to diminish it, was simply to
ram their granite hard cocks full force into their holes.  Grabbing them by
their ankles, they jerked their legs off the floor of the latrine in a
cyclone of gut wrenching pain and slammed their knees back against their
shoulders.
	Kasim guffawed at the scene unfolding before him.
	"Fuck 'em good, you donkey dicks," he shouted.  "Drill their asses
hard and deep."
	Both slaves had been so continually ass fucked and mouth fucked
over the brief period of their captivity, that the pain now assaulting
their minds and bodies did not erupt as much from Nubian cocks as from
Nubian hands grasping and mauling their branded buttocks.  But there was no
random torture, no random rape at Mandrasat.
	Every cock gouged into Bret's ass or crammed into Ballard's mouth
was part of a well scripted scenario to shatter a slave's will and
self-esteem; Mandrasat's slave training program had been created over
generations, handed down through the ages and refined by each successive
head of the House of Shareem up to the present moment, and it was now time
for Kasim to play his part.
	After almost an hour watching one thick, black Nubian cock after
another fuck ball deep into both slaves' holes, Kasim sprang forward,
dropping down and crouching behind a Nubian who'd just slung Bret's legs
effortlessly over his shoulders and had begun machine gunning his cock up
his cum chocked fuck chute.  The overseer slammed himself into the Nubian's
back wrapping his powerful arms tightly around Bret's upended thighs and
squeezing them tight against the Nubian's chest.  Roaring at the top of his
lungs, Kasim rammed his cock viciously into the Nubian's ass, propelling
him full force into Bret's hole.
	Bret, in a barely coherent haze of rape shock, instantly felt the
abrupt and massive explosion of the Nubian's cock bulldozing through his
guts and focusing his paralyzed consciousness on the thick, hard fuck
muscles pounding deep into his ass and mouth and hurling him wildly across
the floor.  His vision was blocked by the pitching, rolling, flat muscled
belly of a Nubian hunched over his head and shoulders, trying to keep his
balance while stuffing his cock into his throat, but he heard Kasim's howl
of triumph as he ramrodded the other Nubian's fuck hole.  He was now
virtually upside down, squeezed onto his shoulders and the back of his
neck, with Nubian cocks plunging vertically into his mouth and ass.
	Kasim, convulsively spearing the Nubian's ass, roared ecstatically
as his fuck tube blasted wad after wad of scalding semen deep into the
gasping slave's guts.  The Nubian himself, screeching deliriously as ropes
of the overseer's hard driven cum splattered against the lining of his
bowels, shot his own massive load into Bret's belly, grinding his cockhead
abrasively into his prostate nodule, driving him to suck furiously on the
other fuck shaft wildly reaming his mouth.
	Kasim hurled the writhing foursome across the floor, digging his
cock into the Nubian's ass in front of him as another slave beast dropped
to his knees behind, clasped his massive hands around overseer's hips and
buried his face deep between his sweaty, rock hard buttocks, tonguing
deeply past the firm pliant lips of his ass hole.
	As Kasim squirmed furiously on the fleshy wedge of tongue digging
into his ass, the Nubian slid one hand around the overseer's balls, rolling
them together and rubbing them against the underside of his chin, across
his bobbing Adam's Apple, then squeezed the other hand around his own cock
and began hard jerking it savagely.
	Howling at the top of his voice, Kasim worked himself toward a
second volcanic orgasm thrusting mercilessly back and forth onto one
Nubian's tongue then into the other's fuck chute.  Two more Nubians joined
the twisting writhing coil of bodies, sucking their mouths over Kasim's
back and shoulders, up and down his neck, forcing their tongues into his
armpits, humping their cocks against his straining thigh muscles; reaching
around the first Nubian's body they jerked Bret's cock and twisted his
balls with tightly clenched fists.
	Bret, embedded in this sweat drenched mass of flesh, helpless
against the waves of pain exploding from his tortured cock and balls and
flaming out from his jaw and ass hole, struggled to suck air into his lungs
around the thick shaft hammering his mouth.  The Nubian spike driving into
his ass, grinding his prostate, flung him again into a swirl of pain and
madness and blistering lust for a harder, deeper gouging.
	Kasim roared loudest as seven fuck shafts exploded at the same
moment, blowing geysers of cum in every direction, up fuck holes, onto
bellies, chests, and thighs, exploding in Bret's mouth and down his throat.
The latrine's own fetid atmosphere now hung heavy with the acrid stench of
cum and sweat.  Seven bodies, convulsing and coiling around and over and
under each other, finally collapsed into a mound of writhing arms and legs
and twisted torsos.
	Long minutes of clenched gut muscles and cock spasms passed before
silence replaced sharp cries and moans.
	Five Nubians also lay sprawled over Ballard's body, all panting
heavily, gasping for air.  Nubians exercised no control over their cocks,
wanting only to fuck as hard as they could and blow cum as often and as
quickly as possible.  They had ridden Bret and Ballard's holes mercilessly
as their part in Shareem's plan called for.  They knew well how to batter
prostate knobs with their cock heads and shafts, hurling any auction
slave's body into mindless spasms of lust and euphoria.
	Barely conscious, Bret and Ballard lay side-by-side on the latrine
floor, groaning under the weight of the Nubian bodies and feeling globules
of thick, sticky cum from Nubian cocks draining out of their sore and
burning holes, their bellies filled with an equal amount of semen and well
into the process of digesting it.  The wads of cum blown into their ass
holes and down their throats were becoming part of their living flesh.
Their bodies were literally feeding on it.
	"Get the fuck up," Kasim shouted, kicking the Nubians and dragging
them to their feet.  "I want these two slaves douched, cleaned, and
groomed, and I want it done now!"  He emphasized his demand by grabbing the
largest Nubian's cock and twisting it.  "I said now," he screamed above the
cries of the yelping Nubian giant.
	Bret and Ballard were dragged moaning to the line of shit holes
along the far wall.  They knew what to expect; they'd gone through this
every day since their capture and were paralyzed at the thought of a long
sharp applicator shoved repeatedly up their burning asses and discharging
liters of abrasive cleanser into their guts, but neither had the strength
to struggle.  In seconds, they were on their knees, their foreheads slammed
to the floor.
	The pain was so sharp as their buttocks were split apart that their
holes puckered like women's lips causing the Nubians to giggle uproariously
and finger the two slaves' cum choked asses.  It took only one low rumble
from Kasim's throat to bring the Nubians back to their task at hand.
	Bret and Ballard were each worked on by five Nubians, four holding
them in place and one ramming the enema bottle's elongated tip deep into
their guts.  The churning foam spewing from the bottles burned their
bowels, compounding the agony brought on by a barrage of violent cramps.
	The heads of the enema bottles were kept wedged tightly into their
chutes until their cries and moans reached the right pitch, then they were
yanked out and the two slaves thrown bodily over the shit holes.  A sharp
punch to their stomachs unleashed an explosion of shit, foam, and cum.
	This tortuous procedure was repeated twice, then the Nubians
uncuffed Bret and Ballard's wrists, unchaining them from their slave
collars and inflicting the pain of a thousand needles stabbing their arms
and shoulders, another searing torment in their crucible of suffering.
	They were dragged like rag dolls into the showers; crying and
begging for mercy, they were lathered and scrubbed until Kasim, attended to
himself by three Nubians, was satisfied, then like kept animals, he ordered
their teeth flossed and brushed.
	He demanded they walk on their own from the showers back into the
latrine where two Nubians waited with cans of gel to cool the livid scars
on their buttocks and the burning column of pain up their asses.  He then
ordered the Nubians to scrub the latrine.
	"It reeks in here," he barked, punching Bret and Ballard in the
shoulders, shoving them back into the dank corridors outside.  He continued
jabbing them in the back, snapping commands, "Turn here!"  "Left."  "Right
here." "Faster."
	Before they were even aware of where they were, Kasim had led them
back into the courtyard where their agonies had begun.  The square was now
filled with black Nubians and white auction slaves and overseers of every
color, but, after three days buried within the darkened confines of
Mandrasat's walls, Bret and Ballard were blinded by the glare of the
desert's morning sun, able to distinguish only darkened shapes.  Not until
their eyes adjusted to the harsh sunlight were they hit with the sight of
the branding table in front of them and overcome with fear.
    	A huge wooden gate in the courtyard's eastern wall had been thrown
open, and carts of various sizes were lined up around it and on the dirt
road outside, and slaves were being yoked to them as draught animals.
Remembering the horror of his first experience harnessed to a farm cart in
a pod of Nubian slave beasts, Bret felt his consciousness crumbling and
could only gasp, "No," over and over.
	Kasim shouted at the two slaves to follow him and led them to a
rickshaw style buggy, sprouting three instead of the usual two long dark
wooden shafts, a handle bar running across in front, connecting them.  Four
shackles hung on short chains from it.
	He forced Bret and Ballard to stand behind the crossbar on either
side of the middle shaft, ordering them to lift and hold the bar in place
as he snapped the shackles onto their wrists.
	"You'll just be pullin me today," he drawled maliciously, "instead
of one of them big old heavy farm carts."  Then stepping behind the two
slaves he reached into the carriage and pulled out a wickedly long, thin,
buggy whip.
	Standing again in front of them, he sliced the whip back and forth
through the air, grinning broadly at its whistle.  Suddenly, without
warning, he snapped the end of the whip savagely into each slave's navel,
bringing forth sharp cries of pain in response.  The two tried to pull
away, stumbling over their feet as Kasim slashed the whip over their
nipples and back across the base of their cocks.  Cuffed as they were to
the crossbar, they could not escape or cover themselves.
	"Just so you know this buggy whip ain't just for show," he
sneered. "I know how to use it, and I will.  Where I use it on you," he
smirked, climbing into the carriage, "depends on how good you pull."
	Bret knew exactly what to expect and, bent over the crossbar,
grasping it in a death grip, tightly squeezed his eyes shut.  Ballard,
tensing his body, knew they were going to be whipped, but he didn't know
where the crop would bite first.
	"Now git," Kasim barked snapping the whip across their shoulders
and backs.  "Move your asses."

-0-


	With centuries of experience to call upon, Shareem's slave training
program always unfolded flawlessly.  Mandrasat's reputation for offering
the finest, most obedient, best trained man-flesh in the world dates back
millennia, and the Masters had long ago learned that the first month of
captivity was the most crucial time period of all, whether training hard
labor slaves, body slaves, or gladiators.  Each had to be brought to the
brink of physical, mental, emotional, and psycho-logical annihilation.
With explosions of pain detonating throughout their bodies and no hope of
escape, Bret Hauser and Jonathan Ballard teetered on the edge of that
abyss.
	Terror had always been the primary tool of Mandrasat's Masters,
capitalizing on a slave's blinding fear of imminent obliteration, and Kasim
was Shareem's instrument of terror and torture.  He fed on the agony he
inflicted on his hapless victims, knowing instinctively how deep to plunge
them into the fires of hell and how long to keep them there.  He never
failed to pulverize the minds and wills of even the most resilient and
stubborn slave delivered into his hands.  Hauser and Ballard would be no
exceptions -0-
	Kasim aimed his buggy whip at the back of Bret and Ballard's necks,
at their shoulder blades, their left buttocks, even at their ears.
	"Faster," he shouted.  "Faster you fuckin slaves," and his whip bit
deeper into their skin, as their lungs burned and minds dissolved.
	Bret already had the agonizing experience of a day yoked to a farm
cart to draw on, and, even though his mind was shattered by the pain raking
his back, his body adjusted quickly to his wildly flailing cock and balls;
Ballard's body had no such ordeal to remember and struggled vainly trying
to out run Kasim's whip at the same time trying to avoid crushing his balls
between his pounding legs.
	Kasim whipped his slaves along the broad dirt and gravel road, past
Mandrasat's fields and orchards, luxuriating in the pain they were
suffering and contemplating their oh-so-fuckable bare ass bodies bent over
the front crossbar.  He could almost taste the pleasure he would suck from
all the ways he'd make them beg for mercy.
	For a quarter of an hour they ran, legs hammering the road like
pistons, tears streaming down their faces, mucous draining from their
nostrils mixing with saliva and spilling out of their mouths.  Their
heaving chests aflame, sand and gravel biting the soles of their feet, fire
crisscrossing their backs and legs from Kasim's slashing whip, the two
slaves who less than two weeks before were known as Navy Lieutenant
Jonathan Ballard and Father Bret Hauser plunged forward, oblivious to
themselves, oblivious to everything except for the bite of Kasim's whip.
	They'd run just a mile and a half, much less than they would have
achieved running freely and competitively as the lean hard bodied
triathletes they were.  Kasim began shouting, "Slow down," repeating his
command over and over, restraining his inclination to use his whip, until
finally his words broke through the roaring in the slaves' ears.
	As their senses began to resurface and the fiery tracks laid by
Kasim's lash across their backs roused their consciousness and focused
their attention on the overseer's voice, their pace slowed, their gasping
grew louder, and Kasim snapped the tip of his whip at at their ankles and
heels.  "Slow down," he continued to shout.
	Half a dozen Nubians carrying large buckets of water came running
from the fields at the side of the road, giggling and chirping, their cocks
bouncing up and down, balls swinging side to side.
	"Stay standing, you fucking slaves," Kasim roared.  Bret and
Ballard, shaking, on the verge of collapse, muscles on fire and throbbing
could not focus their eyes or their minds.  They were on the brink of
hysteria and losing their footing fast.  The buckets of water hurled over
their bodies did not refresh, nor were they intended to; their sole purpose
was to sharpen the torment the two slaves were suffering and to make
avoiding Kasim's whip their only goal.
	As spasms of pain ripped through their bodies, Kasim exited the
buggy and freed a long rectangular box from its rear luggage rack.
	"Time to start teaching you slaves the difference between left and
right," he snickered, opening the box and handing it to a nearby Nubian
water bearer to hold for him.
	"Going to get you hitched up proper," he continued, removing a
black rubber cylinder, six inches in length and about an inch and a half in
diameter, trailing leather straps, buckles, and rings at both ends.
	Stepping in front of Bret, half smiling, half snearing, Kasim
suddenly grabbed the slave's nose with his right hand, squeezing his
nostrils tightly together and forcing his head back.  As Bret gasped
loudly, Kasim shoved the cylinder into his gaping mouth, then in one swift,
smooth motion, pulled the straps tightly behind Bret's head and buckled
them together, leaving the large rings dangling from the ends.  Kasim
repeated the procedure with Ballard.
	With the black rubber bits wedged firmly into the backs of the
slaves' mouths, Kasim pulled two tightly wrapped, lengthy braided leather
straps from the box, their ends woven onto silver clips.  Unwinding the
straps one at a time, he snapped the clips onto the rings at the ends of
each bit, then, motioning to the Nubian to affix the box back onto the
luggage rack, he jumped into the buggy and carefully wound the leather
straps around his wrists and through his fingers.
	"Pay attention, slave," he snarled.  "When I snap the reins like
this," jerking almost hard enough to pull Bret off balance, "you turn to
the right.  Understand?"
	When no response was forthcoming from the panting slave, Kasim
cracked his whip at the base of Bret's neck and shouted again,
"Understand!"
	Bret screeched loudly, shaking his head furiously up and down.
	"Good.  Then let's try it again."
	Five times in a row, Kasim yanked the reins attached to the bit in
Bret's mouth, driving it painfully into his lips and gums.  Bret responded
quicker each time, turning to his right at the slightest movement of the
bit, as if that would somehow diminish this new arena of pain.
	"Both you slaves need to turn at the same time," Kasim continued to
shout.  "When I pull one set of reins, the other slave'll feel the kiss of
my whip, like this," and, as he jerked the reins to Bret's mouth piece with
one hand, his whip bit sharply into Ballard's right shoulder.  Both slaves
cried out as they spun quickly to their right.
	Kasim practiced this maneuver again and again until Bret felt he
was losing his mind over the pain inflicted on his mouth.  Then Kasim
changed direction, turning the pair to the left, jerking the reins to
Ballard's harness and slashing into Bret's shoulder with his whip.  The
slaves were shaking and sweating profusely at this additional pain, but
Kasim paid no attention to their suffering.
	After a half an hour of turning in place to the right and to the
left, Kasim aimed his whip at the small of their backs and ordered them to
move forward, driving them to the middle of the dirt road.  He would make
the pair sprint down the road, away from Mandrasat, then make turns onto
narrow side roads, sometimes no wider than a foot path, running into the
fields.  He whipped the back of their thighs as they learned slowly and
painfully how to turn the buggy completely around, heading back the way
they came.
	The sun was well past its zenith and many buckets of water had been
thrown over the slaves before Kasim aimed the buggy back in the direction
of Mandrasat's walls.  -0-
	"Sailors, I cannot stress strongly enough how tragically different
the world is today from what it was just a little over three months ago."
	Captain Roscoe Turner's words were piped over all speakers to all
decks on the Everett Ralston as it entered Maputo harbor, Mozambique.  Sean
Olivier glanced sideways at his buddy Jeremy Posten and rolled his eyes
back.  Captain Turner felt obligated to give a 'play it safe' speech every
time the Everett Ralston pulled into port.
	"I don't have to tell you that the continent of Africa has been
ravaged by HIV."
	"Then why tell us," Sean rasped in a stage whisper which resulted
in a swat across the back of his head by a PO3 standing right behind him.
"Ouch," he coughed in mock surprise.  "What'd you do that for?'
	"Shuddup," Petty Officer Ryan Buckley groused good naturedly.
"Captain's talkin."
	Sean rolled his eyes back again.  Jeremy broke up, not able to
suppress his laughter.  Buckley scowled at them both bringing guffaws from
their ship mates standing around.
	"I want you to play it safe," Captain Turner droned on.  "Even
though it's the holiday season, remember HIV never takes a holiday."
	Sean, patting his side pocket, winked at Jeremy and murmured the
words, "Condoms.  Enough for Christmas and New Years."

	That earned him another whack from Buckley.

-0-