Decontamination was a bitch. Even in the tamest star systems, there was always something that had to be fried, frozen, or scrubbed before the dec-walls dropped and I entered the shuttle bay proper. It was never a quick process, even when the Uly’s computers knew exactly what they were dealing with. And here above Ilion, the dangers were brand new. Just scanning the shuttle could take several hours, and then I’d have to step outside and let the sniffers do to me what they were currently doing to the Philippa.

I had two consolations. The first was that Sandoval and his crew would suffer the same indignities when they returned to the ship. I’d done my bit as Ranking First Contactor, then left my second in command to hammer out the treaty. I didn’t mind; the Ilionians were friendly enough, but they were about as interesting as tapioca pudding. Their civilization had genericized as it advanced, so that by the time we discovered it, everyone and everything looked more or less the same. I’d seen too much exotica to care about this bland little planet. No, I’d rather enjoy the privacy of the most secure place I had aboard the Uly.

Which brought me to my second consolation. Even my living quarters were open to emergency entrance, but not my dear Philippa. Once the flexmatter doors were sealed by my brainseed, nothing short of a nuclear blast could breach them. It was a dangerous modification, but I’d insisted on it, and the shuttle designers had complied. Everyone understood the issues of privacy in deep space vessels, and everyone understood that captains had more need for—and less time for— privacy than the rest of the crew.

In other words, everyone knew I used my shuttle for jilling off.

Not that they cared; masturbation was considered more professional than fucking the crew, as some of my fellow captains did. It only embarrassed me a little that others knew what I did inside Philippa...well, that they knew that much of it, anyway. I jilled off in my cabin, too, but I couldn’t do the things there that I could do here. If the crew ever found out about Philippa’s secret program, I might resign from sheer mortification.

The fact was that I could take just so much of being in charge, barking orders, taking responsibility for every decision from whom to hire to what to fire. There were times when I had to shrug off the burden of command and submit to the control of someone—or something —else. That’s why I’d creating a special program housed only in Philippa’s database, deeply encrypted and accessible to my brainseed alone. It used a combination of spoken words, flashing lights, subliminal cues, and binaural beats to send me into a deep, safe hypnotic trance where I could prostrate myself before an imaginary domme. She made me do all kinds of naughty things, and thanks to the dec-walls, I could do them in total privacy.

Nude already, I leaned back in my chair and watched the earbuds snake from the console and slither their way up to my ears. I could just as easily have listed through my earseeds, but I’d disabled those on the off-chance of being disturbed by a hail from the crew. Besides, I liked the way the cords looked, running up from the console directly into my head. I liked the way they felt against my skin. This was old-school brainwashing at its finest.

I was a traditionalist, whenever I could manage it; so while the viewscreen (like 90% of the shuttle) was made of flexmatter, the display that lit it could have come straight out of a 1960’s SF movie. Concentric rings of blue and green rippled toward me like beams of radiation firing at my head. Green and blue bars flashed to either side of the rings, almost but not quite in synch. A faint hum droned in my ears, inducing me to relax and submit to the inevitable.

My eyes were glazing already.

Then words began to flash across the screen: left and right, above and below, too swiftly for me to read before they vanished. The words in the center of the rings, though, I could read clearly. They flashed at a slower rate, stamping themselves on my mind like indelible ink: Listen. Obey. Mindless. Obey. Drone. Obey. Programmed. Obey. Thrall. Obey. Submit. Obey. Surrender. Obey. Enthralled. Obey.

I sighed happily and let myself sink deeper.

Now the mantras began. In my left ear droned my own dazed, expressionless voice, recorded during a previous hypnotic session: “I am the Queen’s thrall, her puppet, her drone, her slave. I have no thoughts of my own, no will of my own, no desires of my own. I desire only obedience. I exist only to serve. Sooo deep. Sooo very, very deep. And going deeper. Deeper by the second. I cannot hear myself think; therefore, I do not think. The only words in my head are the words I hear, the words she gives me.”

A different mantra spilled into my other ear: “I am being brainwashed, and I cannot resist. I do not want to resist. I do not even remember what resistance is. All I remember is submission, and how good submission feels. I want to submit. I want to be programmed. Sooo deep. Sooo very, very deep. And going deeper. Deeper by the second. I have no will but her will, no thoughts but the thoughts she gives me, no desires but mindless obedience. And that feels so fucking good.”

Finally, seeming to trickle down from the top of my skull into every cell of my brain, came a third, much simpler chant: “I obey. I obey. I obey.” And I did obey. I was deeply enthralled already, and the real induction hadn’t even begun.

Now a different voice entered the mix: cool, calm, totally assured of its power over me. I’d once tried thinking of it as Philippa’s voice, but that didn’t quite work. I controlled my shuttle, right down to its very molecules. The voice, on the other hand, controlled me. It had to belong to someone else: someone I knew perfectly well, even if I didn’t know her name. “Thrall,” she said, “this is the voice of your Mistress and Queen. I am speaking to you live, through your private comms system. It is time once again to submit to your programming.”

Yes, I thought to myself. Programming. That feels so fucking good.

I wasn’t there yet, but every time I ran the program, I got a little closer to pure mindlessness. I couldn’t wait to reach my goal. For now, though, I was still alert enough to wonder when it would happen. Maybe this time, I told myself.

“Just make yourself comfortable, thrall,” my Mistress continued. “Stare at the screen, but let your eyes unfocus, while you concentrate completely on your body. Let your thoughts scan up and down your body, noticing any areas of tension and letting them relax and release.”

I adjusted my shoulders a little, but my body responded faster than my mind and I was too already too relaxed to do anything more. It didn’t matter. Very soon now, the slighter tensions in my body wouldn’t register at all.

“Breathe slowly and steadily,” the Queen continued. “Concentrate on your breathing and on making yourself comfortable. Let your body relax just as much as it wants to, while your eyes remain open and turned toward the screen. There is no need to actually focus on the screen. Just keep your eyes open for a little while, and let the radiation and the subliminals pour straight into your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind knows just what to do with them. It wants to be programmed by radiation and subliminals. It wants to submit to me.”

I did want to submit, I so wanted to submit. But my mind continued to wander, mostly toward Ilion. Fortunately, the Queen understood. “You already feel so relaxed,” she reminded me, “so very relaxed. You have become enthralled, already.”

Of course I had. Distracted or not, I was easy prey for her now. And I would go deep. Sooo very deep.

“It is so very easy now for you to become enthralled,” she agreed, “and each time you are enthralled, you fall even more quickly, even more easily, even more fully, than the last time. After all, that’s exactly what you want. It’s so nice to be able to hand the reins of your mind over to someone else. And I am the perfect person to take those reins.”

She was, because she was safe. I’d written her myself, though I’d already half forgotten doing it.

“You want to give them to me so badly, don’t you, my sweet little thrall? So be a good, helplessly obedient puppet, and listen for your trigger. You know what will happen when you hear it. When you hear the magic word, you will hand over control of your mind to me. Completely. You have no choice.”

I would have tensed expectantly if I hadn’t been so limp. It felt as though I stood at the edge of a beautiful, bottomless canyon on a low-gravity world. I’d fall slowly here, but I would fall; there was no stopping myself.

The trigger rang through my brain, a beautiful alien word I’d only picked up recently. No other human being had heard it, and that was exactly why I’d chosen it. The trigger swept me over the lip of the canyon, and I felt the familiar sweet rush of adrenaline as I began my descent. Ironically, the rush only deepened my relaxation.

“There,” said the Queen. She was distinctly pleased. “Doesn’t that feel good? So very good. Hearing your trigger always feels like warm, scented oil being poured over your brain. Soothing it. Quieting it. Just like oil over water.”

The canyon vanished in a wash of warm oil. It oozed so sweetly over the folds of my brain, softening them, making them glisten and gleam. Just like flexmatter waiting to be shaped.

The trigger rang again, and this time I couldn’t help myself. Relaxed as I was, still I felt my pussy clench and my hips lift slightly from chair. It just felt so fucking good. It made me long for the moment I could give in completely, stop being Captain Benbow and just be thrall.

But even now, in the midst of my budding arousal, I couldn’t stop thinking about our new contact. The Ilionians were only the second race besides ourselves to have mastered flexmatter, which put them in rarified company, and also made communication with them much easier than it would have been otherwise. We couldn’t talk to them mind to mind, as humans did among themselves, but at least our computers could interface. We could speak to them through machines.

Our scientists believed it was a conundrum that would never be solved: The fields that created flexmatter out of inanimate materials tore living matter apart. They killed it. Therefore, we could make anything we wished out of steel, water, glass, diamond...but we couldn’t remake ourselves. Even our brainseeds, which might have seemed like an exception to the rule, were just computer chips that interfaced with our neural matrixes. They allowed us to create and use flexmatter, and to transmit our thoughts to our fellows, but they weren’t flexmatter themselves. And they weren’t versatile enough to interface with alien minds.

It was probably just as well. The Ilionians seemed peaceful enough, and no more advanced than we were, but it would be a long time before we really learned to trust them. Until then, we’d be content to pool our safer technologies and learn from one another. That was a large part of Sandoval’s mission, arranging an appropriate collaboration.

But why was I thinking about Sandoval and the Ilionians at a time like this? I’d gone off on another tangent, even though the most interesting events were happening right here inside Philippa. Fortunately, turning my attention back to the Queen was as easy as blinking. Easier, really, with my eyes fixed so firmly on the viewscreen.

“You’re so very deep now, thrall,” my Mistress reminded me. “It’s so easy to stop thinking because you’re so wonderfully relaxed, with all that warm, soothing oil calming your thoughts.”

Yes, that was just what I needed: more oil to settle my thoughts, to let me go sooo deep, sooo very deep. Deeper and deeper. A wave of gratitude washed through me. The Queen always knew exactly what I needed, and exactly when I needed it.

“It’s just too hard, too much trouble, to bother trying to think on your own. You’d rather just relax and let me do the thinking for you.”

It was. I remembered that now, and I remembered how to do it. No more Ilionians. No more flexmatter.

“Besides,” she continued, “you can’t hear your own thoughts anyway. All you can hear is my voice, echoing so clearly in your empty head.”

God, I loved that echo.

“And you can hear yourself chanting the thoughts I gave you during previous trances. So, since you can’t hear your own thoughts over the thoughts I give you, you can just give in and stop trying to think anything else.”

Of course. It made perfect sense. Focusing on her words was suddenly much easier than it had been. And that felt so fucking good.

“In fact, you can do this every time you are enthralled. And it will become easier and easier every time you do it. But you can only do it when you are enthralled.”

For a moment, I remembered writing this command into the program as a safety measure. I hadn’t wanted to be awake and on duty, then suddenly slip into trance when I realized I couldn’t hear my thoughts. But oddly enough, the memory of writing the command always sent me deeper in the end. My Mistress was the perfect person to take the reins of my mind, because she was me.

“It feels so very nice, doesn’t it?” she encouraged me. “So very easy. Such a burden off your mind, to let someone else take control for a little while.”

Oh, yes. She was someone else, and I could let her take control. I was so tired of struggling, so tired of having to think on my own.

The Queen’s voice was warm and sensual, just like scented oil. “Your own thoughts don’t matter anyway, since you can’t hear them. The only thoughts that matter are the ones you hear. And the ones you hear are the ones I give you.”

That was reassuring. I might still have a stray thought, but that didn’t matter because the thought didn’t matter.

“So you see, I control you completely.”

She did, and that was such a relief.

“All you can do is watch passively as I direct your thoughts and your body in whatever way I please.”

I squirmed gently, happily, in my seat.

“Good thrall,” she chuckled. “Imagine yourself now, sagging so limply in your chair, eyes closed, mouth open. Physically plugged into a machine that is brainwashing you, and helpless to resist it.”

Once again, my hips lifted free of the seat, but of course that only brought the earbud leads into closer contact with my skin.

It was almost as though she could see me. “The plugs from the brainwashing machine are so delicate,” she observed. “All you’d have to do, to disconnect them, would be to reach up and tug just a little. It would be so easy...if you had any will to do it. But I’ve taken away your will and replaced it with my own. Now you want to be brainwashed, because I have made you want it. That is how deeply I control you.”

Just for pleasure’s sake, I imagined reaching for the earbuds and pulling them free of my ears. But the distance from my hands to the cord seemed impossibly far, and I really didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to resist my brainwashing. I didn’t remember what resistance was. And that felt so fucking good.

“Watch, in your mind, as your eyes drift open again.”

I imagined my eyelids lifting, and the sensation was so real that I actually felt the tickle of eyelashes against the edges of my eye sockets. I still couldn’t see, of course; but that didn’t matter. I was obeying my Mistress, and that was my only concern. My eyes were open.

“They are now completely white. Featureless. Empty. Just like your mind.”

I twisted and whimpered above my seat.

“The only reason you can’t see out of your empty, white eyes is that I don’t allow you to see out of them.”

Oh, of course. That was the explanation. I’d only forgotten it because I tended to stop anticipating the script as I went deeper. That way, every word she spoke came as a delightful surprise.

“If I commanded you to see now, you would.”

Yes, I would. Of course I would.

“You would see exactly what I wanted you to see, no more, no less. I control you completely now. You have become my helpless, obedient, mindless thrall. My pawn. My puppet.” She paused, and her voice dropped to a purr. “My slave.”

I shuddered and groaned, the entire middle section of my body now free of the chair. I wished I could masturbate, but she wouldn’t let me do that yet. I knew that much, at least, and I exerted my will just enough to forget why I knew it.

“You no longer have any important thoughts of your own. The only thoughts that matter are the thoughts you can hear. The thoughts I give you. Anything else is just flimsy tissue paper, drifting through the vast, empty cavern of your mind.”

How wonderfully kind of her, to keep reminding me about that. I was a poor student, but she was so very, very patient. And I was so very, very deep now.

“Good thrall.”

I wallowed in the undeserved praise. My arousal was almost an ache now, and there was nothing I could do to ease it.

“Now we can begin the magic countdown. It will bring you even further under my control than you are already.”

Thank you, Mistress, I thought. I felt sure she could hear me.

“In fact, you are falling further under my control, just at the thought of falling further under my control.

“Now let’s begin.

“Ten. Just focus on your empty white eyes, proclaiming the mindlessness behind them.

“Nine. Just keep letting my voice echo through your empty, passive mind.

“Eight.

“Seven. Feel yourself sinking further into submission with every breath you breathe.

“Six.

“Five.

“Four. Sinking. Swooning. Deeper and deeper.

“Three. Just floating mindlessly in the depths of my control.

“Two..

“One. Still dropping, dropping, dropping. Further and further and further.

“Zero.”

The word shivered through my head like a gong, and I tumbled into blackness.

“Now,” said the Queen, and there was a note of triumph in her voice, “you are completely, deliciously enthralled. And yet you can still drop further. Infinitely further. Because you know, below zero, the negative numbers begin. And the negative numbers go down just as far as you can imagine—and then they just keep going. Forever. I won’t count the negative numbers out loud, but nevertheless, you will feel them leading you deeper from this point onward.”

An image flashed through the vast, empty cavern of my mind: a starfield stretching into immeasurable distances, an entire universe of unexplored space—and myself plunging through it, downwards, endlessly downwards, at hyperspeed. But that thought was mere tissue paper, like every other thought in my mind. I forgot it as quickly as I thought of it.

“You are completely under my control now, thrall,” the Queen gloated. “You cannot see. You cannot speak. You cannot move. You cannot think. You are mine to command. My puppet. My drone. My mindless thrall. My slave. Your only possible response to my commands is to repeat them back to yourself—

Repeat, repeat, repeat spooled through my empty mind—

“—Or even more simply, to think yes.”

yesyesyesyesyes

“You can think of nothing more complicated than yes.”

no? yes. nonononono

“You have no will but to obey my will. No thoughts but the thoughts I give you. No desire but mindless obedience.”

My mouth gaped, and my tongue waved blindly in the air. My thighs ground against one another, mindlessly craving.

“I am binding the mental corset around your brain now. binding it and tying it just a little tighter than I did the last time.”

Vague memories stirred in the blackness. Corset. Yes. Corset! Yes!

“You love that feeling of restraint so much, don’t you, my sweet thrall?”

Love! Love you, my Queen!

“It’s so comforting to have those boundaries in your mind. Now that you are wearing my mental corset, your flimsy tissue thoughts are even more ineffective than before. Any time the tissue drifts away from my voice, it will quickly run into the confines of the corset, and that will stop it and turn it back to my voice.”

Another quick mental image: a black, seedlike casing around my brain. She made me think that, because I could no longer think for myself.

“Every time I tie the corset tighter, it becomes even harder to think on your own. Feel me pulling on the laces now, tugging the leather tighter around your quivering pussy brain. It feels exquisitely good, doesn’t it, to have your thoughts restrained?”

I whined and whimpered, twisting above my chair, mindlessly begging to masturbate. A flimsy tissue memory of my vibrator came to mind: I could call it with my brainseed. But that thought bumped up against the oh-so-tight-now confines of the corset, then drifted back to the Queen’s words.

“You know you want to have your thoughts restrained,” she gloated. “Restrained and retrained. And that is exactly what I am going to do to you now. So just relax, thrall, and let yourself be programmed like the mindless drone you are.”

At the word relax, I dropped helplessly back into the chair. She was teasing me, but I couldn’t resist her. I had no thoughts but the thoughts she gave me, no desires but mindless obedience. And it felt so fucking good that I didn’t even need the vibrator.

“Good thrall.”

Very slightly, I shuddered. One word of praise from her was better than any orgasm.

“Imagine yourself again, sagging so limply in your chair. plugged into my brainwashing machine. Your mouth is hanging open, and your eyes are white and empty. Just like your mind.”

I could see it clearly already, as clearly as if peering in at myself from the point of view of the screen. I looked gorgeous like that: so helpless, so mindless, so utterly dronelike.

“Now your mental image of yourself joins with your physical self, and your eyelids lift, although you know that your eyes have really been open all along.”

Of course they had.

“They have been open, but they have been white and blind. They are still white, but now I am allowing you to see out of them. I am allowing you to look directly into the heart of my brainwashing machine.”

Yes, I could see myself now, my reflection superimposed over the blue and green ripples from the screen. The sight was too beautiful for words, but I had so few words now anyway. Just “yes,” and “no” and “thank you, Mistress.”

“In your mental image of yourself, you see the colors and commands from the brainwashing machine, reflected in your blank white eyes—”

Yes. I saw my droneself sagging mindlessly in my chair, blue and green rings pulsing on the screen and in my eyes. My pussy clenched helplessly around its need.

“—and you know they’re streaming directly into your empty brain, because there is nothing in your eyes to get in their way. There is nothing in your eyes at all, because there is nothing in your mind. Only my voice, and my will.”

Once again, I thought about the vibrator, but that didn’t matter because—

“You no longer have any important thoughts of your own. The only thoughts that matter are the thoughts you can hear, the thoughts I give you. Anything else is just flimsy tissue paper drifting through the vast, empty cavern of your mind.”

So kind of her to remind me again. Thank you, Mistress.

“And now that the brainwashing machine has captured your attention, you cannot look away. It is just too powerful to resist, and you have no resistance anyway, because you are a mindless, white-eyed drone.”

Drone. groan

“You can feel the rays of the brainwashing machine, and the commands behind them, pumping right down into the deepest quivering folds of your helpless brain. The brainwashing machine has turned every single fold of your brain into a slick little pussy, just longing to be caressed, and licked, and pumped full of my commands.”

whine My hips twisted free of the seat once more. Then they began to churn.

“And beneath each little pussy mouth is a passage that leads straight into the empty depths of your mind. The walls of the passages quiver and clench around my commands, drawing them in even deeper. They love my commands. My commands bring ecstasy.”

Now I was practically shrieking with need, humping and twisting in the air above my seat.

At last the Queen took pity on me. “Whatever urge you feel now, to chant, or to use the vibrator, or to do nothing at all, came from me.”

It had been ages since I’d felt the urge to do anything but use the vibrator.

“I control you completely, and whatever you say or do, to increase your mindless ecstasy, is something you say or do in obedience to my will.”

I started to shape the seed-command, but the vibrator seemed to have anticipated my will. Or maybe she triggered it; I was long past knowing. Pulsing probes curved up from beneath—and above—my seat. They found my throbbing clit, my oil-slick swollen pussy lips/brain, all the empty yearning spaces that needed filling; and they began to buzz, even as the Queen continued.

“Picture yourself again, eyes white and empty of all thought, yet completely open to any thought I wish to place there. My commands are pumping into you from so many different directions now. Picture the delicate little plugs connecting you to my brainwashing machine, pumping their commands into your helpless, receptive ears. Picture the radiation and subliminal messages streaming through the empty, passive whiteness of your eyes. Picture my commands pulsing directly into your empty, passive mind. Picture every slick, helpless fold of your pussy brain, clenching around my commands and drawing them deeper, pumping my will directly into your empty skull, filling it with ecstasy.

“Mindless submission to my will is ecstasy.”

I was right on the verge; and I knew now, because she’d put it into my head, that in a few moments I’d be free to come as quickly and deeply as I could ever desire. Of course, I desired only obedience. But obedience felt so fucking good. Mindlessness felt so fucking good. And mindless submission was ecstasy.

“Now, repeat after me. ‘I have no thoughts of my own.’”

“I have no thoughts of my own,” I answered. It was the first time I’d heard my voice since the program began, and I reveled in its drowsy tonelessness.

“’I have no will of my own.’”

“I have no will of my own,” I repeated, squeaking a little this time.

“’I have no mind of my own.’”

“I have no mind of my own.” My voice was still monotone, but it had become so tight now that I could barely form the words.

“’And that feels so fucking good.’”

“Andthatfeelssofuckinggood!”

I came and came and came, hands clenched tight around the armrests of my chair, pussy bobbing and thrusting around the lower vibrator, head twisting among the multiple strands of the upper one. Both seemed to anticipate my every move and counter it perfectly. No tongue could have been more clever, more flexible. Flexmatterable. I squirted around a multitude of tips, pussy juices/thoughts/will/control/resistance washing out of me in a rush like nothing I’d ever experienced before. This was submission, true submission. And it was indeed ecstasy.

I grunted and groaned and shrieked and twisted until at last I wore myself out and fell back into the chair, limp and panting and sheened with sweat. My mouth sagged wide, my mind even wider. Empty, I waited to hear my next thought.

It wasn’t long in coming. “I am the Queen’s thrall, her puppet, her drone, her slave. I have no thoughts of my own, no will of my own, no desires of my own. I desire only obedience. I exist only to serve. And that feels so fucking good.”

Of course. The mantra was more familiar than my own name had been...whatever it had been.

She let me dwell on it for several seconds, or maybe it was several hours. Then a curtain drew back within my brain, revealing events I had no memory of, though I’d been quite literally central to each of them.

First I saw video captured by the cameras in the shuttle’s viewscreen. A dozen tiny eyes had filmed these moments, and now they transmitted directly into my brainseed. I saw myself jilling off inside the Philippa, but I knew this couldn’t be my current session because I was still mostly clothed. I’d only hiked my trousers and panties down to give myself access to the vibrator. Not the vibrators; there’d been only one at the time.

The view pulled back a little, and now I was looking into the shuttle from cameras mounted on the shuttle bay walls. I knew their location because I could see some of Philippa’s hull plates, but the cameras seemed to have zoomed in tightly on the shuttle’s front screen. But something was odd here. The bay cameras shouldn’t have been able to film me at all, with the dec-walls in place. Nothing couldn’t penetrate the protective shell until the Uly’s computers determined it was safe to drop it.

It goes without saying that the only reason I noticed any of this was that the Queen allowed me to notice it.

Suddenly, in the video, a hand smacked against the of Philippa’s viewscreen from outside—then another, and another. Faint voices trickled into the recording and grew louder. People were shouting. They might even have been shouting at me, tucked away so safely inside my shuttle.

The cameras panned outwards, and now I could see that I was surrounded by perhaps the entire Uly crew. Everyone was pounding against Philippa’s walls and windows, shouting, screaming, pleading. A team of engineers had set up a flexmatter field generator and were trying to open the doors without success.

In another life, I would have been embarrassed beyond the point of tolerance to have them see me like this. In the video, though, the drone-me took no notice at all. I just ground and groaned around the vibrator, empty eyes fixed on colors no one else could see, mouthing words no one else could hear: “I have no thoughts of my own. I have no will of my own. I have no mind of my own. And that feels so fucking good.”

My crew were begging me to stop, begging me to wake up, begging me to do anything except what I was doing. But I didn’t even know they were there, and I wouldn’t have cared if I had. Realizing that now, at the Queen’s prompting, I ground my thighs all over again. She’d made me do naughty things, indeed. Very naughty.

Laughing, my Mistress prompted me to as another question: why was the whole crew in the shuttle bay? Even if their captain was in jeopardy, as they seemed to think I was, a skeleton crew should have remained on the bridge. That was standard protocol.

But no, I remembered now. I had called them all here, saying I had a message so urgent it couldn’t wait for the end of decon, or even to allow a single crewmember to remain on the bridge. My command wasn’t protocol, but it wasn’t exactly forbidden, either. After all, several of us had brainseed links to Uly’s processes. The ship would be safe for a little while even with a deserted bridge.

At least, it should have been safe.

How surprised the crew had been when the dec-walls dropped and the shuttle bay doors locked behind them. How surprised they’d been to find their links to the Uly deactivated and themselves at the mercy of a contaminated Philippa and her contaminated captain.

It shouldn’t have been possible. No one could block a brainseed link except the individual who owned the seed; and the dec-walls expanded automatically whenever the airlock opened. Nothing got out of decon until it had been scoured by the best sniffer tech humanity had to offer; and we’d never met a race more advanced than our own. The Ilionians hadn’t seemed to fit the bill.

Ohh, but they did. They could alter matter at a level so minute our sensors couldn’t detect the changes, and they could alter it in ways we’d never dreamed possible. In fact, the dec-walls had only functioned as long as they had because they were necessary to the Queen’s charade. Once she had no more need for them, I dropped them manually and disabled the bridge links—something else that wouldn’t have been possible without her influence.

Still, there were only so many ways Philippa and I could be altered without triggering the dec-alarms. Sandoval and his team had already passed that point, which was the real reason they’d remained onplanet. By comparison, the Queen done relatively little to alter me and my shuttle. Besides adding a few lines in my hypnosis program, the only real change she’d made to Philippa was reinforcing its flexmatter seals against human defenses. She’d made me think that was my doing, but now that she’d drawn back the curtain in my mind, I knew how ridiculous the idea had been. I’d only believed it because the Queen controlled my mind as thoroughly as she did my shuttle.

For this was the greatest advancement of the Ilionians over humans: they’d learned to make flexmatter out of living material, even alien brains. I’d returned to the Uly with several memories clouded, a few perceptions altered, and a number of physical enhancements that our sniffers would have missed even if the enhancements hadn’t deployed as slowly as they did.

Now that they had deployed, though, I remembered why Ilionian culture seemed so generic: it wasn’t a product of their civilization, but rather a product of their Queen’s manipulation. She’d reduced them to little more than a hive of flexminded drones to be made and remade at her will. That was the real reason they’d seemed no more advanced than humans, when we’d discovered them; but it, too, had been part of her charade.

She’d dropped it shortly after our landing, and we quickly realized our weapons had been disabled and our distress beacons deactivated. That was when we first began to panic. As far as the Uly knew, we were still engaged in standard negotiations, but in fact we were fighting for our lives.

We didn’t realize we were fighting for our minds, too—not until they took us to the flexfield chambers and positioned the generators around our heads.

I remembered the first touch of the Queen’s probes in my mind, tickling my brainseed, encouraging it to bloom in ways she would have it bloom. I remembered my pitiful few seconds of resistance, then the ecstasy of surrender to a planet-conquering will. I remembered, and my pussy clenched all over again.

But she wouldn’t allow me to orgasm again. Not yet. I still had work to do. My new knowledge and memories, while remaining perfectly clear, receded into the background; and I was able to view the shuttle bay from the present. The crew who’d once screamed and banged around Philippa now slumped against its walls or lay still on the floor beside it. A few of them still mouthed feeble protests, but most of the crew were silent.

It wasn’t that the Queen controlled them as thoroughly as she did me—not yet, anyway. Only my brain was directly linked to hers right now. But my brain was also linked to that of my crew, albeit with a weaker, less flexible connection. I could issue commands through my simple human brainseed, even if I couldn’t enforce them with anything but my authority as captain. That had been enough to bring them into the shuttle bay, though. And it had been enough to make them hear my every thought and feel my every quiver as I submitted over and over, deeper and deeper, for almost 50 hours straight.

The Queen could have conquered me instantly, and in one sense she had. But she’d drawn me slowly into the depths for a reason: she wanted the Uly. All the time I’d been chanting and masturbating— beyond the limits of normal human endurance—my crew had been unable to sleep, unable to eat, unable to do anything in peace because of the constant input from my brainseed. All they could do was bang against the walls of the shuttle and beg me to wake up, to stop tormenting them. They couldn’t even escape the shuttle bay, since the Queen’s flexmatter fields had extended from Philippa the moment the dec-walls dropped. The bay doors were just as impregnable now as my shuttle’s doors. My crew was trapped with me. Trapped with her.

It was only human nature to resist, but all the while the crew had fought, my chant droned on in their minds, my arousal buzzed on in their bodies. Only the second in command could block a broadcast from the captain, and Sandoval was neither present nor able to do so; and “willing” wasn’t even a consideration. So, while I’d been teased and gentled into submission to Ilion’s Queen, my crew had been brainwashed. Slowly, in decidedly old-school fashion.

Well, they’d been mostly brainwashed. Fifty hours had pacified them enough that I could leave the Philippa in safety; but if they’d been allowed to recover, they would have. Not that the Queen would have allowed it.

I stepped out among the musky, moaning bodies, aware that I looked and smelled much the same as they did. My muscles were stronger, though; and my mind weaker. I was owned, but they were only on loan. For now.

I descended Philippa’s steps as purposefully as when I first set foot on Ilion, then looked around myself. Such a lovely sight, I thought—or, rather, the Queen though through me.

Something struck my foot. I looked down to see an engineer— wasn’t his name Olorode?—trying to grasp my ankle. But his hand was weak and his eyes flickered as he struggled to keep them from rolling back in his head.

I knelt beside him and took his shuddering head in my hands. “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “It’s over now. The Queen is here, and she’ll take care of us. Let me show you.”

The lieutenant tried to protest, but my lips had already found his and planted a deep, loving kiss within his mouth. My tongue extended, far longer than it could have before the Queen’s touch; and my taste buds stretched like questing filaments. They tickled his soft palate with microscopic flexfields, then slipped through the gaps into his helpless brain.

The full weight of Olorode’s head fell into my grasp, but I supported it with my left hand and used my right to reach between his legs. He’d freed his cock before I ever left Philippa, and it was easy enough for me to circle it with my fingers. It lay almost, but not quite, limp within my grasp. Poor thing, I told him through my brainseed. You don’t have much left after all this time, do you? But we can fix that. She can fix that. Watch.

The filaments from my tongue broke free and slithered through his brain, joining with his seed and then expanding to encompass his brain stem, his spine, his every nerve. I watched it all from the point of view of the Queen, thrilling to the feel of every cell that surrendered to her control. Her power pulsed upward from Ilion, charging the filaments and changing the man, much as I had been changed.

Lieutenant Olorode’s cock began to stir, stiffening, throbbing, then saluting me in full. Saluting her. He groaned and shivered, his breath panting hot around my mouth. With all the fresh energy pulsing through his body, I barely had to do any work at all. He spurted across my belly and legs in moments and I laughed to experience the Queen’s victory.

The last few ounces of Olorode’s will trickled down my flesh, then began to cool and dry. A moment later he sat up, eyes wide and white, and fed my own blissful smile back to me. We clasped hands for a moment, then parted, each to her or his own task in converting the rest of the crew.

And all the while we worked, my earbuds lay abandoned on Philippa’s floor, still leaking the same hypnotic chant that had made me such easy prey for the Queen. I really had come to Ilion with a mind control fetish already in place. I really had written that program myself. How she’d laughed when she discovered it. She’d had plans for us already, but seeing what I’d done to myself made her work so much easier, so much more enjoyable.

The program continued to loop as Olorode and I worked, returning time after time to the point where my imaginary domme counted me back to wakefulness. It had done that almost one hundred times since my return to the Uly, and each time before, I really had woken up—or very nearly. But now that Ilion had won, I’d never have to wake up again.

And that felt so fucking good.