A Commanding Weakness Ch. 05

Crewman Lori Delaney made her way to the bridge of the starship Inyx in fits and starts. She sprinted in bursts, pounding the deck beneath her feet because she was running so urgently, but every now and then she stopped - not just to catch her breath, but because she needed to ask herself whether or not she was crazy.

What she'd seen in medbay defied all sense. Dr. Hiraga, Chief Samira Carter, and that dorky science officer, Morgan, acting out some kind of crazy fantasy, dressed in absolutely ludicrous outfits, whilst Wasp, the hacker they were supposed to be hunting, lorded over it all. If someone told Delaney they'd seen something like that, she'd never believe them. Not if they swore on a hundred years of replicator rations.

But she couldn't dismiss the very last part of what she'd seen. Wasp had some kind of brainwashing device she was going to use to take over the Inyx. And it was almost perfected. Hearing that had made Delaney's blood run cold. She needed to act, but she was just a petty crewman. She was powerless. She needed help, but if Dr. Hiraga and the ship's security officer had already fallen, there was no telling who else might already be in the hacker's clutches.

There was only one person Delaney could think to turn to: Captain Yvonne Vasser.

It was funny. Normally, there was no one Delaney wanted to see less. Captain Vasser was the very worst kind of commanding officer: one who truly believed in all of Alliance Starfleet's bullshit about protocol, professionalism, and discipline. Most captains would allow a little leniency on a long tour of duty like this. Not Vasser. She was always on Delaney's ass - about her uniform, about showing up a little late to her duty shifts, and about a hundred other tiny little rules and regulations Delaney didn't give a shit about. And when it wasn't her, it was her pet thug, Carter.

Why couldn't Vasser take the hint, and accept that Delaney was only in this job for the paycheck and the training? And why did she care about petty crewmen in the first place? Didn't she have more important things to pay attention to?

In a situation like this, though, Delaney couldn't imagine anyone else she'd sooner tell. Captain Vasser was a legend. A machine. She was untouchable. Even if everyone else on the Inyx fell to Wasp, she'd fight tooth and nail to set them free. Delaney was sure that Captain Vasser would know exactly what to do.

"Where's the captain?" Delaney demanded as she rushed out of the turbolift and onto the bridge.

Heads turned, every one of them looking at her like she was suicidal. She had no business being here, after all.

"Captain Vasser is in her ready room," said Lieutenant Kuznetzov, in a voice cold enough to freeze the air between them. "But I would remind you, crewman, that-"

"Great, thanks."

Delaney grit her teeth as she interrupted and dashed past him. She really hoped she wasn't crazy because if not, she was seriously going to pay for that.

Before anyone could stop her, Delaney raced into the ready room. Once she was inside and the door slid closed behind her, she found herself alone with Captain Vasser. The captain was sitting behind her desk and looked up at Delaney with an impossibly stern, displeased expression on her face.

"Crewman," she said in a warning tone. "Just because I do not lock my door, does not mean you should presume to-"

"Forget that!" Delaney cut her off.

She paled slightly as she watched Captain Vasser's eyebrow raise higher than she'd ever seen it. However, the captain seemed to sense her urgency, and gave her a chance to speak.

"Captain, I saw something," Delaney began. "Just now, down in medbay. I..." She paused, wishing she'd spent more time thinking about exactly what to say. "It's Wasp. She's infiltrated the ship. And she's doing something to people. I don't know what, exactly. But she's in their heads. She's controlling them."

Delaney paused to catch her breath. She half expected Captain Vasser to query something, or else yell at her for telling tall tales. Instead, the captain just stared at her with an odd, vacant look in her eyes. Delaney couldn't tell what that meant, but it made her nervous.

"I swear, Captain," she added quickly. "I really saw it. You have to believe me. We're all in danger. That's why I came running in here. I couldn't tell anyone else, I couldn't even use my communicator. We don't know who else might be-"

Suddenly, Captain Vasser bolted to her feet. Delaney broke off mid-flow but then tried again. "Captain, please, I-"

"I believe you, Crewman Delaney," Captain Vasser said, somewhat stiffly. Relief swept over Delaney. "And you did the right thing by bringing this directly to me. You must not tell anyone else. Now follow me."

She started walking at a brisk, purposeful pace, out of the ready room and toward the turbolift. Delaney moved quickly to follow her. In that moment, she could have kissed Captain Vasser she was so grateful to be believed. She wasn't sure where the captain was taking her, but it was an immense relief to see that she seemed to have some kind of plan for contingencies like this. For once, Delaney was glad to have a hard-ass as a captain.

As they crossed the bridge, Delaney caught plenty of dirty, impressed, or downright incredulous looks. The officers must have been wondering why she wasn't currently being chewed out for insubordination. Captain Vasser ran a tight ship, though, and as such, none of them dared to question her. They just busied themselves with their assigned tasks, and so Captain Vasser and Delaney made it into the lift without comment. From there, they headed down into the Inyx's decks. Delaney didn't think to ask where they were going until, after they left the turbolift and started walking again, she realized what they were heading for.

The holodeck.

"Uh, captain?" Delaney ventured as they stepped over the threshold. "What are we doing here?"

All too late, she was giving thought to how Captain Vasser had seemed during the walk down. She had been oddly quiet, and unnaturally serene. Delaney had assumed she was simply trying not to give the game away, but it was starting to seem like more than that. Captain Vasser was behaving more like a robot than a person. It was almost like she was-

"Computer, seal the holodeck," Captain Vasser said. Her voice was chillingly monotonous. "My authorization. Hold all communications. Load up and engage scenario Wasp One."

"Wasp..."

The penny dropped. Delaney turned back toward the door, only to see it slide closed and hear the heavy-duty mechanical locks slam into place. She was trapped. A beat later, the holodeck's many, many highly sophisticated holographic projectors hummed to life. At her rank, Delaney didn't get a lot of holo-rec time, but she was still familiar enough to brace herself for the walls and floor shifting and dissolving into a new scene. Instead, though, all that happened was that a single hologram appeared in the space between Delaney and Captain Vasser.

It was Wasp. She looked just as she had in medbay, complete with the bizarre, regal, latex costume that was such a strange match for her neon green hair and punk looks.

Now Delaney knew she wasn't crazy. She just really really wished she was.

"Well, I guess this was always going to happen," Wasp complained, throwing up her arms and looking straight at Delaney. "But you really picked your moment, you know that? Right as I was finishing up all the preparations." She glanced at Captain Vasser and snickered. "Good thing your trusted captain knew exactly what to do. Or rather, good thing I programmed her with exactly what to do."

"You..." Delaney paled. "What the fuck? What the fuck is going on?"

"Oh, well, allow me to fill you in!" Wasp bowed mockingly. "At least, as soon as I..."

She snapped her fingers, and her bizarre, latex getup phased out of existence, replaced with an outfit that was equally conspicuous, but far more in keeping with the hacker's usual style.

"Basically, I'm in your ship's computer," Wasp explained. "I'm running the Inyx. All of it. The only thing around here I don't control is the crew. At least, not yet. But I'm working on it. Turns out, if you know how, getting into a person's head isn't so much harder than getting into a computer."

Delaney shook her head in disbelief as Wasp crowed. She reached up and slapped the communicator badge on her chest.

"Emergency channel," she said urgently. "This is Crewman Delaney to the bridge. Delaney to the bridge. Do you read me?"

There was no response except the sound of Wasp's laughter.

"See?" she mocked. "Believe me now?"

Delaney balled her hands into fists. She felt powerless, and it was pissing her off. She looked at Wasp. No point punching a hologram. She looked at Captain Vasser. She was clearly a puppet. She looked back at the door. Locked, and military-grade.

There was no way out.

Delaney didn't understand. This didn't seem possible. Up until half an hour ago, this had just been a normal day. She was struggling to make sense of it all.

"You... you have..." she said slowly. "Some kind of fucking... device? That you just put in people's heads? And then you're in control."

"Uh-huh!" Wasp nodded happily. "I do now, at least. That delightful little science officer is figuring out the finishing touches."

Delaney shook her head in futile disbelief. She'd never heard of technology like that, but there was no way to deny what she'd seen in medbay. Something was missing from Wasp's story, though.

"But then," Delaney asked slowly, "how did you get to this point? You... you got the captain under your control? But... how? There's no way any of this should have been possible without..."

She looked at Captain Vasser, willing her to somehow rouse herself from the strange, mesmerized stupor Wasp seemed to have her in. If there was anyone who could get her out of this mess, it was the captain. Delaney just needed to figure out exactly what was wrong with her.

"Oh, that's the best part." Wasp sauntered over to Captain Vasser and stroked her cheek, almost affectionately. "She was the key to all of this. I made it into the holodeck on my own, but all the rest? She gave it to me. Let me into all the critical systems. She was the very first piece of the puzzle. She couldn't help herself."

"N-no," Delaney breathed. If any part of this madness was truly unbelievable, it was that. Captain Vasser would never put her ship or her crew in jeopardy.

"Yes," Wasp insisted gleefully. "Your captain has a few skeletons in her closet. Or a few spirals, as the case may be. Captain Yvonne Vasser is a complete and total hypno-slut. A fetishist. And she broke her brain so hard, all I needed to do was pull a few strings and use a few of the right words."

"You're lying," Delaney hissed. It didn't make any sense. The captain was... no. No way. Wasp was just messing with her. That was the only explanation. What she was telling Delaney was completely impossible to square with everything she knew about Captain Vasser. "Fuck you!"

Wasp arched an eyebrow. "I'm really not. You should see the amount of porn she had buried in the ship's computers. Hell, you should see how messed up she got looking at some of it. Drooling, eyes blank, head drooping..."

"Go fuck yourself!" Delaney yelled angrily. "You're full of shit!"

It was strange. She was the last person she'd expect to defend Captain Vasser's honor. Maybe some of that deeply annoying basic training had sunk in somewhere along the way. Trust the ship, trust the captain. Maybe it was that in all the time Delaney had been serving on the Inyx, Captain Vasser and her sternness had simply always been there. You counted on it, the way you counted on the sun coming up each morning. Maybe it was just that she'd always assumed that when the going got tough, Captain Vasser would be there with a plan and a steady hand. Whatever it was, she couldn't just let Wasp run her mouth like this.

"Hmm." Wasp drew her face into a lopsided, daring smirk. She seemed to take Delaney's words as a challenge. "Well, why don't we see what the captain herself has to say about all that?"

She turned to Captain Vasser, still standing just where she had been when Wasp had first appeared, with a blank, dazed expression on her face. Wasp lifted her hand to the captain's face and snapped her fingers a few times.

"Captain? Earth to captain? It's time to wake up. Oh, and that's an order."

At those last words, Captain Vasser seemed to stir. Her pose became a little less stiff and she blinked her eyes a few times, and slowly they cleared of fog. It was like watching someone wake up - but slowly. Agonizingly slowly. Delaney couldn't begin to fathom how deeply Captain Vasser had been under, or for how long. What did that mean, for how she'd been commanding the ship all this time?

"W-what..." Captain Vasser said in a desperately faint voice. "W-w-where... am I?"

"That's it." Wasp kept snapping her fingers impatiently. "Come on. All the way up."

Her insistent snapping seemed to do more to disorient the captain than anything else, but eventually, Captain Vasser seemed to get her bearings. She looked around at the holodeck, and then at Delaney, and then at Wasp - and then she turned as white as a sheet.

"You..." Captain Vasser breathed, aghast. She looked down. "Oh. No, no, no..."

"Captain!"

She looked like she was about to fall over, and so Delaney rushed to her side, ready to support her. She couldn't possibly fathom what was going on in the other woman's head, but she knew what was at stake and she knew her duty in a situation like this: report to the captain, and be ready for orders.

"Captain Vasser," Delaney said crisply as her captain peered blearily at her. "Wasp seems to be in control of the ship's systems. We need to stop her. What should we do?"

Captain Vasser's eyes widened. She started shaking her head. "T-that can't be," she said. "I didn't... I wouldn't..."

Delaney's heart started to sink. What was happening? "Captain!" she said, louder. "Orders, captain?"

She just didn't seem to be getting through to her. Captain Vasser kept shaking her head and winced like she was recoiling, both from Delaney's question and from the sudden torrent of her own memories. "Crewman, wait, I... I need to think."

Delaney's face fell. Who was this woman? She was like a husk of the captain Delaney had known. Seeing her like this was unspeakably demoralizing, and it was enough to make Delaney wonder if Wasp had actually been telling the truth.

"Captain, she..." Delaney ventured slowly. "She said you let her into the critical systems. Something about... your, uh, holodeck material?"

It seemed to take Captain Vasser a moment to process Delaney's words, but once she did, she reacted in a way the younger woman never would have expected. Her nerve broke, and she looked away. Her face turned a deep scarlet with shame.

"T-that's not..." she stammered. "I didn't m-m... No, no, there must be something else. I couldn't... wouldn't..."

"Captain..." A sense of insurmountable disappointment washed over Delaney. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. Captain Vasser was making excuses. She sounded like she was in denial. Was this really the woman Delaney had chosen to put her faith in?

"O captain, my captain!" Wasp echoed mockingly, rounding on Captain Vasser. "Come on, cap! Tell her! Let's see... which scenario was it? You've so many, after all. The one with the student, at the academy? I think that was it."

"Shut up!" Captain Vasser barked, but her voice was too high-pitched. It lacked authority. And Delaney couldn't help but notice the other ways she was reacting. She was squeezing her legs together as if taken by a sharp yearning. "S-shut up."

"Or you'll what?" Wasp cackled mercilessly. "Lick my boots again? Please! And you can't tell me you wouldn't enjoy it. We both know that's a lie."

"N-n-nooo," Captain Vasser cried.

"I think maybe even your crewman does too," Wasp added. "I checked her file, you know. Lori Delaney. A real troublemaker. But she came straight to you anyway. It's almost touching, isn't it? Such faith? What a shame that you're just going to let her down."

This time, Captain Vasser couldn't seem to muster the strength even to deny it. She just let out a wordless whine that was half shame, half ecstasy. Delaney backed away uncertainly. What the hell was she watching? This felt, more than anything else, like some kind of twisted foreplay.

"But I suppose you're enjoying that too, aren't you?" Wasp went on. The way she posed and gestured theatrically, drawing out each word as she tormented the hapless captain out of sadistic glee, was infuriating to witness. "That's one of your favorites. Getting humiliated in front of someone younger. Someone subordinate. Someone who should look up to you. If only she was hypnotizing you too, huh? I bet that would really get you off."

"S-stop," Captain Vasser begged. "P-please. I can't... think..."

It was all too clear why. She was blushing like a maiden and sweating visibly, and the way her body twitched and contorted with each of Wasp's loaded, venomous accusations was undeniably suggestive. Between shame and pleasure, pleasure was evidently winning out. This was a side of Captain Vasser that Delaney had never seen before, and it left her horrified and transfixed in equal measure.

"Can't think? I thought you'd be begging for that." Waps giggled, and then made a little gesture with her hand and plucked a holographic pocket watch out of thin air. She dangled it by its chain and started swinging it back and forth like a pendulum in front of Captain Vasser. "Well, I think Crewman Delaney here has gotten the picture. What do you say, captain? Do you wanna go back into that nice, blissful, trancey sleep? You know what you have to do. Just look at the pocket watch, and let your mind go blank."

As she swung the pocket watch, Wasp's voice changed. It became soft and melodious, a luring song, beckoning Captain Vasser to calm and submission. To Delaney's horror, it seemed to work. Slowly, Captain Vasser's face turned towards the pendulum, and as soon as her eyes locked onto it they started to go dull. With each swing, more and more emotion and personality drained from her face, and she started to slip into a kind of stillness that was disrupted only by occasional, rapturous shivering that hinted at the blinding, fetishistic pleasure she was experiencing.

Seeing how pathetically susceptible the captain was made Delaney tremble. It was practically confirmation of Wasp's story. But that wasn't the worst part. The very worst part was the ghost of the last expression Delaney could see haunting Captain Vasser's face.

It was relief. The captain was relieved at being hypnotized. At not having to think anymore. At not having to face what she'd done. Delaney's hands balled into fists again. She couldn't take any more of this farce.

"Hey!" she yelled, striding forward. "Snap the fuck out of it already!"

Delaney shoved Wasp's hologram out of the way as roughly as she could, grabbed Captain Vasser by the shoulders, and slapped her across her face. Captain Vasser shuddered in the aftermath of the blow, slowly coming back to life.

"Wwuh... hhuh?" she said blearily. Delaney noted with disgust that she was actually drooling.

"Wake up already!" she demanded. "Captain - no, Yvonne Vasser. Wake the fuck up, Yvonne. You're better than this! I know you are! You're one of the youngest and finest captains in the whole damn Alliance, even if you are a total bitch. So, Yvonne, I don't care what you did or what you're into. I just need you to straighten up, get your head out of your ass, and figure out how we're all going to get out of this mess!"

Delaney wasn't one for pep talks, but she thought it was a pretty respectable attempt. She just hoped it got through to Captain Vasser properly. Even though Delaney had managed to rouse her from trance, she looked like she was back to barely knowing where she was or who she was talking to.