Starship of Lust Ch. 10

Catherine

"Squad Delta, hold your current coordinates at all costs. Gamma and Sigma, circle around in flanking position. Stay hidden and wait for my signal." "Yes, ma'am!" Crackling through my headset, three gruff male voices acknowledged my orders. Their response was emphatic and immediate. They had complete and utter faith in me, and I wasn't about to let them down.

I surveyed the data display one more time, triple-checking all variables. Rendered holographically before me was a large three-dimensional map of the forests of Kisarn, overlaid with dozens of blue dots representing the real time locations of Unified Nations personnel. Interspersed throughout the friendly forces were pockets of white dots; the estimated positions of Imperial hostiles.

"How long until she can make it?" The question was directed to my adjutant, Lieutenant Lisa Gonzalez. She stood on the opposite side of the display, amid several other men and women commanding their own sub-contingents in this operation. As soon as I asked, Gonzalez punched a series of inputs into her tablet. After a second to parse the response, she replied, "Ninety seconds, ma'am."

Excellent. "Sigma, hold. Gamma, open fire." While there wasn't any dramatic gunfire or explosions on the display, a number of white dots quickly blinked out in time with my order. I could imagine the intense combat happening at this very moment, but if all went according to plan...

"Now, Sigma!" The dots representing Squad Sigma collided with the scattered enemy forces, routing them down an apparently empty valley. Just at that moment, on the outskirts of the projected terrain, a new dot appeared. While its size was the same as all the others, its scarlet color gave it a striking presence.

"Perfect timing as ever," someone commented. I had to agree. She never let me down.

Acting autonomously, the scarlet dot approached the hostile remnants from the other end of the valley. Common sense would dictate that a single soldier couldn't block the enemy escape unassisted, but the Scarlet Hunter was an anomaly that upended all traditional wartime notions. It hadn't been easy for the troops to hold out this long but, now that they had, our victory was assured.

I reopened the comm line, knowing it was the last time I'd need to do so tonight. "Adams, take us home." "Roger." Her voice was as flat and calm as ever, as if I'd asked her to buy some groceries rather than mop up a couple dozen armed combatants.

The scarlet dot collided with the group of white. In less than a minute, she was the only one left standing. At that, I removed my headset and glanced at the handful of officers arranged throughout the room. Their expressions were respectful but expectant. With a small smile, I stood to my full height. "As commanding officer of the Athens, I hereby declare this operation a success. Congratulations, everyone." My declaration wasn't met with any cheers or exclamations; we were professionals, after all. However, a noticeable wave of relief swept through the gathered personnel, along with some handshakes and pats on the back.

"Lieutenant Gonzalez, I trust I can leave troop retrieval in your hands?" Gonzalez saluted earnestly. "Yes, ma'am! Thank you for your service once again." I saluted in return, and everyone in the room followed suit. After receiving a few more words of gratitude, I took my leave of the team. With all substantial enemy forces on Kisarn eliminated, all that remained were routine cleanup procedures, which I rarely took part in directly.

"Mmph..." I stifled a yawn as soon as the door closed behind me. The operation had been a lengthy and taxing one. Nonetheless, it wouldn't be appropriate to completely retire for the evening, at least until the men were safely on transport home. There was an outside chance new complications could arise, so I had to stay on standby.

For now, I suppose I'll head back to my quarters. Luckily, it was only a brief walk from the command center. Taking the shortest possible route, I was at my doorstep in just under a minute, and strode in without stopping.

"Good evening, Anthony." The Chief Engineer of the Athens sat at my desk, typing gently but decisively. As soon as I said his name, he paused to look up at me. "Evening, Catherine. Did everything go well?" Before he'd even finished the question, I was sitting across his lap, with one arm wrapped around the back of his head. "Heh. Do you even care?" I teased. "Of course I care..." he began, interrupting himself as his lips brushed against mine. After a light kiss (by Anthony's standards, anyway), he continued in a whisper. "It would have been a tragedy if the operation went sideways. Where else would I find a pair of tits bigger than your sister's?"

As he spoke, his hand tried to venture under my skirt. I opened my legs a little wider to let him. "Fantasizing about Samantha while you're feeling me up? You're too much." I playfully rolled my eyes before turning to face the screen. Anthony had been busy; there were hundreds of lines of code and data here, surrounding a revolving diagram of a brain - my brain. "Any luck?"

"Some, but it's a tough nut to crack. The subconscious mind is a lot more difficult to manipulate. Up until now, there were always elements of your own will making the decisions. The implant isn't necessarily suited to unilaterally rewriting someone's entire neural network."

"Hm..." I crossed my arms, lost in thought. "What about increasing the amplitude here in the frontal lobe?" I indicated a section of the screen. "That could allow you to... hm, yes, and then-" Anthony chuckled, cutting me off. "Before you get off to the races, how's your camera battery?"

Pursing my lips, I opened one flap of my jacket just far enough to expose my bra, revealing an active miniature camera pinned to my chest. I read out the small display on its side. "Still three days of charge. You're so paranoid, Anthony. Don't worry, I'll make sure I stay in control." As I emphasized "I", I placed my hand on Anthony's crotch. I could feel how erect he was through his pants, the horndog.

He wanted nothing more than to fuck me here and now. I wanted the same, of course. but... "The operation is still technically active, Anthony. Hold on for a couple more hours." "Fine..." He huffed lightly, but didn't argue. He always knew when to take things seriously. I loved that about him.

I was horrified to imagine how combative our relationship had been for so many months. It was so freeing to let go of my vindictiveness. It felt right to be intimate with Anthony. My husband, Charles, was a good guy, but he paled in comparison to Anthony Cooper. Perhaps that's stating the obvious. After all, cocky, stuck-up women like me love to be controlled and dominated, and there's no deeper form of control than hacking into my neural implant and brainwashing me. It was only natural to be obedient to and aroused by a man capable of such a great feat.

I'm fairly certain Anthony had brainwashed me to feel that way, but I found I couldn't care less. In turn, he may have brainwashed me to not care, and then to not care about not caring... but if I spiraled down that road, it would never end. All anyone can do is act according to their beliefs, and mine delighted in submitting to Anthony. Bottom line, he had been resourceful enough to outwit me. If I were truly Anthony's better, he'd be behind bars right now. Instead, here I sat on his lap, getting wetter and wetter at the thought of his dick making a mess of my pussy.

"Mm..." I squirmed a little, moaning so softly Anthony probably didn't even hear it. If I had to be patient for a while longer (and my intact sense of duty insisted I did), the next best thing would be to help Anthony bring things to a conclusion. As he explained it, my current personality was nothing more than a "character" my mind had been tricked into assuming. My "life" would end as soon as the camera attached to my bosom ran out of power. Of course, more cameras could prolong the process indefinitely, but that wasn't a long-term solution. Any number of things could and would go wrong eventually. If we gave the "other" me even an inch, I knew she'd find a way to turn it into a mile. I'd never see the light of day again. For Anthony's sake, I would do everything in my power to prevent that outcome.

-------

Four days ago...

"Grk..." My vision was a blur. My entire body ached. I could feel the cold, unforgiving floor pressing against my cheek, and a line of drool dribbling down my chin.

I closed my eyes, then opened them, then closed them again, then opened them once more. With each blink, my surroundings began to clarify. I could see a leg of my desk, and my chair leaning precariously against the wall. I was naked on the floor of my quarters. What was-

"Shit!" I shot up in a panic, remembering everything. Shaking off the physical and mental doldrums of the stun pistol, I cautiously turned around.

A muscular blonde woman in cute pink lingerie was sprawled across my bed. She was breathing, but her limbs were arranged in an awkward heap, as if she had suddenly lost consciousness. On the floor next to the bed, barely a foot in front of me, a bespectacled black-haired woman was half-crouched, motionless. My wall camera stared down at her, its red recording light indicating that it was currently powered on.

Ignoring Samantha for a moment, I circled around to face Catherine. She was like a statue, her face and body locked halfway into a defensive stance. Based on her footing, she had been in the middle of turning around when the camera's data-feed flooded her implant.

Deciding that Catherine wasn't a threat, at least for the moment, I pried the stun pistol out of her hand and fired another round into Samantha. The Scarlet Hunter's extremities twitched a little but, since her body was still recovering from the last stun, there was no reaction otherwise. Consecutive stuns over a short period of time can cause problems with the nervous system, but I was confident Samantha's well-trained body could handle it. Well, even if it couldn't, it's not like I had a choice. She had to stay out of this until I'd dealt with her sister.

Turning back to Catherine, I waved my hand in front of her face. It was eerie; her expression was lifelike but immobile, while her eyes were glassy and unseeing. However, before I could let myself relax, I had to be sure she was incapacitated. "Hello? Anyone in there?" I knocked on her head a couple times, then poked her tits for good measure. Nothing.

Only then did I collapse back onto the floor, flooded with relief. I wish I could say Catherine had fallen for some devious trap of mine, that I'd had counterplans and counter-counterplans for this exact situation, but no, she had genuinely outmaneuvered me. I had almost lost everything. I didn't want to consider what might have happened if any one of a million things had gone slightly differently. If Catherine's aim had been just a little bit better, if my reaction time had been just a little bit slower, if Samantha hadn't been here to shield me... hell, if Samantha had even recovered from the stun before me, that probably would have been game over. Thankfully, while a half second is the bare minimum recycle time for a stun pistol, it takes more time for the stun to reach full potency. In effect, Samantha had taken a full-strength stun, while mine was more like three-quarters strength. Still enough to easily knock me out, but I'd recovered a tad sooner.

I stood back up, looking down at my helpless superior, and found myself growing more confident. It's true I'd been saved by pure luck, but don't they say luck is its own kind of skill? Yeah... after all, "luck" started this whole thing. If Catherine had just told someone else to make that R&D report all those months ago, our lives would have continued on their former trajectories uninterrupted.

I poked Catherine's tits again. The crafty bitch. She more than lived up to her reputation. I'd been as careful as possible, leaving her less than breadcrumbs to follow, yet not only had she still managed to single me out, but she was confident enough in her deductions to charge into my quarters, guns blazing. How much did she know? How did she even figure it out? I wasn't sure, but there'd be plenty of time for questions later.

I almost felt bad. She'd come so far, gotten so close, only to stumble inches before the finish line; a brilliant woman who now held no intelligence, no thought of any kind, behind her eyes. At some point, I'd grown completely erect at the sight. Unable to resist rubbing it in a little, I held her chin in my hands, lightly slapping her cheek with my cock. "Not so tough now, are we, Catherine?" It goes without saying that there was no response.

While the circumstances were obviously less than ideal, this was the endpoint I'd been working towards. Ever since we'd started incorporating the data-feed into my "sexual processing", Catherine had been gradually "becoming" her character once the camera turned on. While she thought this would occur only during "sexual processing", I'd secretly been layering "update" after "update" to train her brain to automatically "become" the character any time she receives a relevant data-feed, even without her conscious approval. (Typically, a data-feed has to be approved by the user before it can access one's neural implant, but that was trivial to bypass since I had control of the implant itself). I'd have preferred not to test this out under such dramatic conditions, but all the simulations had indicated Catherine should be ready for it - and clearly, she was.

However, since she attacked me out of nowhere, all I'd had the chance to do was turn on the camera. The whole time I'd been stunned, she's been receiving a blank data-feed, a "character" of "nothing". In effect, her mind is thus forcing her to try and be nothing. Fortunately, while that killed her conscious thoughts, it doesn't appear to have stopped any involuntary processes, like blinking or breathing.

It was so tempting to see her like this. I wanted nothing more than to have my way with her right now, but this wasn't the time or place. I had to work fast to assure my future as a free man. The rest could come later.

I righted my desk chair and sat down at my terminal. I'd have to update the data-feed and tell Catherine what "character" to play. With Samantha temporarily out of commission, there was room for some trial-and-error here. Sure, this wasn't how I'd expected things to go, but my original plan was still somewhat intact. Here and now, I had the opportunity to essentially reshape Catherine's entire personality to my whims. It would only be a "character" but, as long as she always had a camera on her, it could buy me some breathing room...

-------

... and now, here she is, helping me brainwash herself.

Still sitting on my lap, unbothered by my hand caressing her thighs, Catherine carefully reviewed my slate of planned "updates", making various minor tweaks along the way. Her current personality - her current "character" - was nearly identical to her original self. She remembered everything that has transpired up to this point, and her skills as an admiral are completely untouched (that was a necessity if she was to be "in character" for an extended period of time). In the vast majority of ways, she's the same person she's always been. I've merely modified certain facets of her disposition and ethics.

Since this change is the result of "playing a character", rather than adjusting her neural pathways via implant "updates", there's no need for the alterations to be gradual or even subtle. In fact, I felt it was safest to be as blunt as possible. I couldn't babysit Catherine every minute of the day, so I had to make sure she wouldn't turn against me as long as she was "in character".

To put it simply, she now harbors a deep inferiority complex towards me, viewing me as fundamentally superior to herself. In tandem with that was a version of the belief that "might makes right"; in her head, since I had "beaten" her, it's only natural that I can have my way with her. Sprinkle in some intense sexual attraction plus a strong dash of masochism, and I've created a passionately loyal sex slave, without radically compromising Catherine's public persona.

The harder part of that day had been convincing Samantha that nothing was amiss when she woke from her stun. Catherine ("in character") explained that there had been a severe misunderstanding and that she had wrongfully suspected me, similar to when Samantha herself interrogated me about the data access. Samantha didn't press the issue, but remained somewhat skeptical of the situation. It's not every day your sister stuns you unprovoked, after all. However, considering how deeply Samantha trusts the two of us (genuine trust for Catherine, artificial "update" trust for me) and that she wasn't present for Catherine's discovery of my brainwashing, any lingering suspicions are sure to go nowhere.

The best part of the new Catherine was that her considerable intellect had been weaponized against herself. When I eventually heard her explanation of how she'd discovered my crimes, I realized how formidable she really was. I had to reckon with the fact that Catherine Locke truly was smarter than me. At some point, I'd started underestimating her. On some level, after weeks of successful "updates", I'd forgotten that she was a galaxy-renowned strategist and started treating her like just another member of the crew. That was a mistake. On a ship of cats, she was a tiger. If I give her even the slightest opportunity, she'll rip my throat out - especially now.

Catherine's current situation is precarious. It was risky bringing her into the fold. If the camera attached to her chest ever shuts off, she'll remember everything that happened while she was "in character". I was running out of time to deliver a decisive, finishing blow... and right now, the best plan I had was trying to manipulate her mind with more and more "updates" while she was "in character". Would it be enough?

"I have an idea." As if sensing my unease, Catherine spoke up, not taking her eyes off the screen. "Let's hear it," I replied.

Over the next few minutes, Catherine laid out some discoveries she had made from examining her own brain waves and implant data. Some of her conclusions were informed by research she'd done independently. She was very dutiful; that part of her hasn't changed.

After her explanation was complete, I smiled. This was it. This would be the final key. "That could work," I commented, trying to disguise my excitement. You're brilliant, Catherine, I added internally.

-------

Catherine

The camera turned off. Suddenly, I was lucid, like a bucket of ice-water had been dumped on my brain. I was completely naked in my quarters, both hands cuffed to the bed. I was belly-down, facing the wall, but by craning my neck I could see Cooper at the other end of the bed, also naked.

"You motherfucker!" I tried to kick him, but my legs were bound as well. For better or worse, I remembered everything which had led me to this point. I'd been the "character" (or caricature) of me for six whole days; nearly a week of doting on Cooper, helping him with his "updates" and constantly attending to his, ergh, needs. I didn't want to think about it.

I tried to calm my skyrocketing heart rate and suppress the rising panic in my chest. It didn't work. I knew what was about to happen. I'd helped the bastard plan the whole thing, after all. The fact that our neural implants could be used in this way... HQ had to be informed. I had to get word out to someone, before it was too late. I refused to let Cooper get away with his crimes. But how?