Captain's Logs

Author's Notes: Space opera for those who like coercive sissification. The series inspiring the setting is pretty obvious IMO, but this story does not take place in an existing "universe." This is a long story, and as one might expect with something like this there's a whole lot of world-building before any sexy bits happen. Contains forced feminization and nonconsensual elements, do not read if that's going to ruin your enjoyment. Also note that this is another one of those pieces where the "hero" (he's not, dammit) doesn't win, so don't read if that bothers you.

Disclaimer: The following is a piece of fiction. Fiction (in case you don't know) means it's made up, not real, a bunch of lies. The characters in the story are all fictional too, meaning they don't exist. While non-existent, if they existed and had an age they would be over 18.

The basic idea wasn't all that complicated. Data found on Gelar ships that didn't manage to self-destruct before capture revealed that a large region of space on the far side of the Gelaric Empire was occupied by a race (or nation, or collective, or some kind of big organization) the Gelar called the Ulgg, and that for more than a century interactions between the Gelar and the Ulgg had been if anything even more hostile than those between the Gelar and the Confederation. The fact that the Ulgg were still around after a hundred years of fighting the Gelar must mean they were both advanced and a formidable adversary. Cooperation between the Confederation and the Ulgg could only be bad for the Gelaric Empire, and therefore good for the Confederation.

Of course, communications had to be established before any such cooperation could happen. This presented a conundrum, since even the full Confederation fleet wouldn't be able to get from the near border of of the Gelaric Empire to the far side where the Ulgg were supposed to be located without getting blown to subatomic particles in the process. That difficulty was partly resolved by discovery of a mostly-collapsed wormhole in Confederation space, the far side of which terminated in a desolate system inside Gelar territory which happened to be not all that far from their frontier with the Ulgg. By deploying a massive amount of dark energy the wormhole could be propped open long enough for the Confederation to send a single ship through it.

If the ship sent through the wormhole was fully stealthed it could then evade detection by the Gelar, aided by the fact the Gelar wouldn't be looking for Confederation ships on the far side of their empire, especially ones trying to sneak out rather than in. This ship could head for the border with the Ulgg, make contact, and initiate diplomatic relations. The ship could also securely carry subspace communication codes which would allow an easier means of consultation between the Ulgg and the Confederation in the future, which in turn would allow the planning of joint operations against the Gelaric Empire. On the whole this was a brilliant plan, a stroke of subtle strategic genius.

At least, that's how Alan figured the brass back at Fleet Command thought about the whole fiasco. The admirals were too busy patting themselves on the back for coming up with such a "brilliant" plan to pay attention to the fact that the largest Confederation ship that could be fully stealthed was a corvette, which was the lightest class of combat vessel in the fleet. Or that the need to carry the contingent of diplomatic, linguistic and xenology specialists necessary to open contact with an intelligent species about which very little was known meant that most of the back-up and replacement crew a military ship like the Virago normally carried in case of battle losses would have to be left behind to make room for the civilians.

It also seemed unlikely to Alan that much thought was given to how the crowded yet at the same time undermanned corvette was going to get home after completing its mission. And most importantly of all, no one at Fleet Command apparently considered the way a group like the Ulgg, who had been fighting the aggressive and devious Gelar for decades, were going to react when a mysterious but armed and stealthed ship which could only communicate in a language they didn't understand was noticed entering their frontier from the Gelar side.

As the Virago approached the Ulgg border the entire civilian team had stuffed themselves onto or near the bridge in anticipation of first contact and the need for their services. The outcome was that the initial Ulgg volley (targeted on the corvette's "We Come In Peace" message) took out both the command crew and almost every diplomat and xenospecialist aboard in one massive blow. The ship's automatics took over at that point and sent the Virago on an evasive course back the way it had come, though the ship continued to be hit again and again before the Ulgg gave up pursuit. In the end over eighty percent of the ship's total complement were either killed or so severely wounded that they ended up dying later.

Which was how, just two weeks into their (aborted) mission, Lt. Cdr. (brevet) Alan Harbor, formerly the Supply/Morale officer for the ship, had ended up in command of the CFS corvette Virago.

Even that outcome wasn't foreordained. Alan hadn't been the officer in charge of Supply/Morale a month ago. He'd been just Lt. Harbor, Morale Sub-Officer under Lt. Cdr. Pursell. In retrospect Pursell had been more perceptive about the realities of the Ulgg mission than the planners at Fleet Command had been. She'd developed a convenient case of Denebian fever right before the Virago was ready to launch. Since the expedition was "vital to the Confederation cause" she recommended that Alan be breveted to Lt. Cdr. and take over her post for the duration of the mission, while she stayed behind and recovered from her sudden illness. The brass had concurred, Alan had shipped out as Supply/Morale officer with a temporary rank upgrade, and the end result was that he was the senior officer left aboard the Virago after the attack killed most of the crew.

"Lucky me," Alan grumbled to himself. He did it pretty much on a daily basis.

++++++++

"Hey, Harbor? Medical here."

Alan had given up trying to get Chin to call him by his rank over the intercom some time ago, so he didn't bother trying. "Yes, Mr. Chin, what is it?"

"Finally lost brain function on Durrand. Thought you should know."

Alan sighed. There had never been much hope, the woman had suffered massive organ damage during the Ulgg attack. "Log everything and space the body, then."

"Oh, you think so? You don't want me to keep the corpse around as, I don't know, a pinata or something?"

Alan closed his eyes and counted to five. "Mr. Chin, I realize we're all under a lot of stress, but a little more respect when talking to your captain would be considered appropriate."

"Yes sir, captain my captain. Sir, I will get right on spacing the body like you say, sir, yes, sir."

"Captain out," Alan said, toggling off the comm before Chin said anything he'd have to officially react to. It wasn't as if Alan could discipline him effectively anyway. The ship's surgeon and both their nurses had died in the attack, meaning Pharmacy Mate Bai Chin was the only crewman left with any sort of advanced medical training. And it was true that Chin had suffered psychological trauma in his largely futile efforts to save the worst wounded, even beyond what the rest of them had endured since the Ulgg attack. Alan had to make allowances for that.

Alan brought up the crew roster on his screen. Durrand was the last of the severely wounded they'd been able to temporarily keep alive, and her death brought the crew down to seventeen.

Commander - Acting Captain Alan Harbor

First Officer/Weapons - Lt. Resun

Navigation - Ltjg. Mchumba, Ens. Nakamoto, Sp. Taylor.

Communications - no assigned personnel

Computer - Lt. Montgomery

Security - Lt. Montgomery, Sp. Kummel, Sp, Kent

Engineering - Ltjg. Beyazit, Cw. Gerry, Sp. Abdullah, Sp. Tripathi

Life Support/Hydroponics - CPO Reston, Sp. Sung, Sp. Belev

Medical - PhM. Chin

Supply/Morale - no assigned personnel

In some ways they'd been lucky. The Ulgg onslaught had killed all the senior officers and most of the weapons, comm, and computer personnel, but enough of the lower-ranking engineering and life support crew had survived the assault that they were able to repair the ship and keep it running. Between their intact hydroponics level and all the extra supplies they'd loaded to feed the contact team, their synthesizers had enough feedstock to support the remaining crew for years. A good thing, since the circuitous course the navigators plotted involved the Virago skulking through the most desolate regions of the Gelaric Empire in an attempt to avoid detection, meaning it was going to take a little over 500 days for them to reach the Confederation border, give or take a couples weeks depending on how many times they had to hide from patrols.

It really didn't matter that they had no one for Comms. There were in Gelaric space trying desperately not to attract attention, it wasn't as if they were trying to contact anyone. More concerning was the fact that Alan had to assign the same officer in charge for both the Computer section and Security, something the regs said was strictly prohibited. But it wasn't as if Alan had a lot of choice at this point. Trevor Montgomery, former assistant security chief, definitely had more programming experience than anyone else now on board, as not one person from Computers had survived. Monty had in fact been instrumental in helping them reroute helm and navigation control from the destroyed bridge to the secondary computer center that now served as the ship's helm. If he hadn't been able to do that in time, the ship's automatics would have run the Virago straight back to the wormhole they'd used to arrive, with no way to open it from this side and with Gelar warships alerted and prowling the area.

Regarding Alan's own former position, after they'd rechecked the computer's inventory of their supplies for damage from the Ulgg attack (minimal), with their reduced crew and limited objectives the ship wasn't in much danger of using up the supplies too fast, meaning there wasn't a lot of work for a Supply officer anyway. Alan could easily do what was needed while also acting as Captain. As for Morale, well...

The Confederation had long ago learned that over long space voyages a sexually frustrated crew was an unhappy (and potentially mutinous) crew. They therefore deliberately screened personnel for their sexual predilections and assigned them to ship crews in a way that tried to achieve a harmonious level of erotic interactions on board. In addition a number of sexdroids were normally carried, to provide a safety net if this should fail.

Under this system a Confederation Morale Officer's main job was to make sure things along these lines went smoothly. Arranging educational programs and entertainments that promoted casual and short-term relationships while discouraging long-term romances (such things be disruptive to ship operations), setting up regular "social mixers" to allow people to mingle and blow off steam, counseling crewmembers when relationship obsessions or excessive jealousy emerged, and of course keeping an eye out for any serious social mess-up and fingering the culprits to Security for the Captain to deal with.

At the time the Virago departed, Fleet Command had taken note that considerably more than half of the diplomatic/contact team were women, and most of these were attracted to men. Because of this and because of the need to considerably cut back on crew numbers to make space for the diplomats, when setting up the criteria for which crew would stay and which would be left behind one of the things Fleet Command had included was a preference for heterodirected males to go on the mission. Alan knew this because as Morale Officer he'd been armed with profiles of the civilians on board, to better "enhance morale" during the mission. Since there was also a pressing need for storage space to put all the extra equipment and supplies the contact team required, Fleet decided that the sexdroids were non-essential and would be left behind.

As luck (consistently bad so far) would have it, every survivor left aboard at this point was male and, at least according to his service record, strongly heterodirected. In the initial desperate scramble to get away from the Ulgg and repair the ship this went unnoticed. Now, after 89 days and many weeks of creeping through Gelaric space without incident, stress and frustration were growing.

And there wasn't a single thing the ship's former Morale Officer and current acting Captain could think of doing that would help.

++++++++

The door to the makeshift command center slid open and Har Resun strode in, almost filling the door as he passed through. The backlighting made his bald scalp glisten as he moved, an effect caused by the finely scaled skin which was part of his reptilian-analog heritage.

"Permission to assume the conn, Acting Captain," he blared.

"Permission granted, lieutenant. Nothing new happening, Har, I suspect you'll have another boring watch."

The squat alien fixed Alan with a look which probably indicated disbelief, though it might possibly be disdain. Alan found Servanian facial expressions hard to read. "Duty is never boring, Acting Captain."

"Uhh, yeah, sure. Carry on, lieutenant." Alan winced. He should have known better than to try and make small talk with Har. Servanians didn't do small talk. Servanians did well at duty, service, and dying nobly in battle, but social graces and chit-chat weren't part of their toolkit.

Alan suspected that Har was peeved he hadn't died during the one-sided "battle" with the Ulgg, which would have meant in Har's mind perishing in honorable combat. Instead the junior-most weapons officer had been off-duty in his sleep-cycle at the time, meaning he didn't get to take part in any of the "fighting" and had survived without a scratch, which certainly was not the Servanian Way. Alan was also sure that Har was disgruntled that Alan was in charge despite the fact that Har was command branch and Alan was mere support branch, and furthermore that Alan's superior rank was solely due to his sudden brevet promotion to lieutenant commander at the start of the trip.

Not that Har would ever confess being peeved by either of these. Male Servanians did not admit to things like ambition, jealousy, disappointment, lust, or similar "petty" emotions and needs. Their lifelong training in duty and service to the greater good was supposed to prevent them from feeling such things. Which was why a Servanian male could be stationed on a ship where the rest of the crew was entirely human, since Har wasn't supposed to be frustrated (sexually or otherwise) by the situation. Even if he was frustrated Har was never supposed to show it, and as far as Fleet Command was concerned that was the same thing.

Alan couldn't be sorry he had Lt. Resun as his first officer even if the alien hated his guts. While the rest of the crew was suffering from depression and stress (and Alan was aware that Bai Chin was merely the blatant tip of the bad morale iceberg onboard), Har would never let himself lose control. Alan half-wished he could turn over command to the Servanian just for Alan's own peace of mind. But he couldn't, it would be both against regulations and an example of abandoning unwanted responsibility, the latter being a thing that the crew certainly didn't need right now.

Speaking of stress, now that Alan was off duty there was something he needed to do, badly. He stopped briefly at his quarters to pick up a certain carrying case and headed for the training module.

++++++++

A training module was a standard feature on all Confederation warships, even one as small as the Virago. The module's climate and gravity controls could emulate many planetary environments, and by donning VR contacts the occupant could see simulated surroundings of any type. Meanwhile the universal treadmesh floor and walls meant you could hike or run for "kilometers" towards a distant horizon or even scale an apparent mountain. To provide interaction with other beings, ottos (automatic opponents) were provided - three of them in the case of a corvette. The ottos needed frequent recharging and weren't really of use outside the training module, but inside it and combined with VR they could represent any of a number of alien races or creatures for the purpose of combat training or, for that matter, etiquette and dancing (the Nagari for instance didn't consider you civilized or even sentient unless you could do their formal dances properly).

Alan had set aside the next hour for a private training module session. After making sure he was alone and sealing the door, he stripped off his uniform and donned the clothes he'd brought with him from his cabin; a tight, skimpy undergarment that snugged up between his bottom cheeks and which Alan thought of as "panties," plus a short, almost transparent gown. Both were made of Ogono spidersilk, and the slick, cool feel of the violet fabric brushing his nipples and sliding over his nether regions immediately had Alan's penis swelling.

Alan's personnel file indicated that, aside from some normal and expected experimentation in his younger days, he was strongly heterodirected, and that all of this sexual interactions in recent years were with human women. Which was true, as far as Fleet was aware. It was also what Alan would prefer to be true, even though it wasn't.

What Fleet's profile left out were the details of Alan's stay with the Ogono. Assigned to Carpenter Base as a midshipman, Alan went along when some friends decided to "borrow" a long-range shuttle and visit the next star-system over. The midshipman who was piloting wasn't quite as good at it as he'd claimed to be and the shuttle had its engine blown out by a debris field they'd hit on the outskirts of the system. The escape pods with the other cadets in them had made it to the normal shipping lanes, but Alan's had malfed and headed into deep space instead.

That could have been the end of Alan, but by chance his pod's distress beacon was detected by a passing Ogono worldship. The Ogono were an ancient humanoid race, one that millenia ago had dominated a region larger than the Confederation and the Gelaric Empire combined. But that domain vanished long before humans arrived on the scene and the only Ogono left lived on worldships, huge vessels the size of a large moon that traveled among the stars, only occasionally stopping at an inhabited system to trade and take on supplies. Both the Confederation and the Gelar largely left the Ogono alone, both because the race no longer seemed to have any desire for territory and because they still owned weapons that allowed one of their worldships to vaporize a heavy dreadnought in seconds.

Despite their long history and superior technology, the present-day Ogono had a culture that the Confederation would consider primitive in a less powerful race. Males followed a strict and violent code of behavior which resulted in constant bickering and frequent duels. Females lived in seclusion and were rarely seen by outsiders, though some researchers believed they were the ones who actually ran the worldships. With male and female society largely separate, males turned to each other for a sexual outlet, but never in any kind of equal relationship. Instead more powerful males preyed on and subjugated weaker ones. Any sign of submission by a male would inevitably lead to sexual exploitation by other Ogono males.