Scout - A hotshot pilot changes teams. content: d/s, scifi, medical, mind control, slavery ---- "They're jumping! They're jumping!" "Fleet HOLD, I said HOLD your align. Do NOT warp off, get your props on and ALIGN out to oh-one-tac." "Holy shit, look at local count, holy shit--" "HOLD... do NOT aggress, and as soon as you're clear of bubbles we will FLEET warp to the outgate, we're not leaving anyone. Scouts, oh-one status?" "Clear." "Good, we're gonna be fine. Take this. On land, you're g--" "Ma'am, it's an incursion." "CHECK check, Lena, say again?" The commander's voice held steady, but just perceptibly pitched higher. "BND-16 is held by a Sansha's incursion, we have three systems ahead of us under their control before we reach the regional gate." Comms were silent. Two jumps ahead of the fleet, Lena held her gate cloak, floating in a system whose nebula had garnered a sickly viridian hue. A scavenger frigate crested across her vision as it orbiting the gate below them, bristling with grotesque spikes and pulse lasers alike. She heard Alexis sigh, and could picture her grimacing. "Heard. Fleet... stay this course. We will jump into oh-one, align bee-en-dee, and move together through this constellation. We're faster than those cruisers, and they won't risk chasing us at our pace. They'd lose more than a ship or two to Sansha's." "Yes ma'am." "Aye." "Roger," the fleet sounded off. They were few in number compared to the dozens of Caracal-class cruisers that were hot in pursuit of them. Their upgraded assault frigates were sturdy, dependable ships, with the firepower and speed to punch up outside their weight class, but everyone knew that the situation called for a full retreat back to the safety of empire space. Their commander had earned their trust long ago, so risky manuever or not, they would follow her. And besides, thought Lena, the Sansha's were at a sore disadvantage -- they didn't have her. She heard the first soft thud of a ship arriving at the gate below and she roared forward -- her Malediction-class interceptor ripping off its cloak and immediately disrupting one of the Sansha's frigates before her. She wordlessly broadcasted her target, and seconds later, the frigate was riddled with holes, torn open by antimatter as it tried hopelessly to get out of her range. She kept the frigate held down and helpless to hit her at her speed, until it was a gash of fiery gas on her sensors. As the rest of her fleet materialized, she started her practiced dance, weaving her optimal range around several other key targets -- all small ships with the ability to tackle her fleetmates, and each one went down as she reached out to mark them for death. "Tackle clear, eff-cee." "Excellent. All ships..." The next two system jumps went just as this one did: Lena clearing a path through the incursion's miasma, ships desperate to hold down their fleet transforming into wrecks, their dutiful logistics wing holding all of the incoming laser fire at bay, and their commander wasting no time in moving the fleet to their next gate. Also, it seemed like the pursuing cruisers had indeed decided to let them go. Lena dove in front of one of their Deacon logistics frigates that was straggling, not being quite as agile as the other ships that had already made this last warp out of the constellation. She flew in close to the aggressing ship already held firmly in her grasp -- a jagged, blackened hull marked as a "Centii Loyal Servant" on her overview -- and hit it with a pulse of her stasis webifier, dragging its velocity down sharply. With a last burst of its engines, the Deacon coasted clear of the Servant's disruptor, and Lena picked up the telltale thud of its warp drives wrapping the ship in vacuum and speeding it off to safety. She breathed out audibly. "All clear commander. Last ship's off." "Good. Very good work, Lena." Lena felt warmth bloom in her chest at the commander's words. "Come back to us now." "Yes'm, on m--" A warp drive alarm blared loudly. She found herself shaken, slow to grasp what was going on until she felt herself getting dragged to a halt. "He's got a scram?! Fuck-- commander! Alex, I--" As her ship's microwarpdrive redlined and spun down, a second, no... third Sansha's ship broke cloak and rammed her interceptor, and laser fire had already penetrated her shields. The light armor on her hull melted like cheap copper as she ran through her options. The ship's gone; she'd already done that math. The fleet was safe, and it would be a painful journey home, but she'd be greeted there by her fleetmates afterwards. Her body was just that, a body, and she was a veteran capsuleer -- in fewer words, an immortal. But these Sansha's types were vultures, and so... "Oh no you don't... if you think you're gonna get *hnng* THIS!" Lena started a grim process; as her Malediction was peeled away from her, she awoke in her capsule, suspended in fluid, and started the self-destruct sequence of her capsule, as well as methodically destroying her implants -- her high-grade "Snake" set. As much a part of her body as they had become, she would sooner see them scrapped than in the hands of Sansha's Nation. Only problem was... this involved tearing into her body and ripping out whole chunks of tech with her bare hands -- a crude procedure that normally involved the support of a full Jove-tech surgery suite. She'd be lucky to survive sabotaging her valuable body, but to a capsuleer at this juncture, hardly a consequence. "Fuck-- hgg." Gritting her teeth through the pain, she dug for each of the processing modules that helped her hone her piloting. With each nerve that she tore out, a jab of lightning pain shot through her temple, and she would not have been blamed had she missed the view outside of her pod. The frigates had ceased fire, and though they still held her pod firmly, all but one had peeled off... returning to a massive shard of metal looming above them, nearly occluding the BWF-ZZ star. "... A Revenant." Lena felt gravity shift around her. She was being tractored into the hull of the supercarrier. She felt her body dying, and she focused her remaining strength on squinting at the backup display mounted on the interior of her capsule. 0:39. 0:38. 0:37. 0:36... At least, she thought to herself, some poor fucker in the tractor beam bay might get a faceful of titanium diborite, and she tried to hang onto that spiteful thought as this clone's final one. Her actual last thoughts, before blacking out, were of the loud sound of metal being shorn aside, the timer abruptly dropping off the display, and a pulsing white-hot sliver of pain piercing her mind. --- Lena awoke slowly, and found it difficult to regain herself. Sitting up didn't work, and trying to focus her eyes was an exercise in futility. Even taking into account the sabotage she'd done to her own augments, she couldn't explain why her body wasn't moving as it was supposed to. Then she noticed the crude surgical pins running through her metallic joints, fixing her to the bed -- no, table -- she was lying on. Innumerable wires ran ad-hoc into the holes in her head from where she had ripped her implants, as well as into the socket where her cybernetic arm used to be. There was also a tube of amber fluid hastily plugged into one of her umbilical ports. A part of her mind managed to conclude that she was being sedated -- drugged. "You can struggle, but it won't do anyone any good." She turned to get a fix on the voice. She was in a medical bay, dark by comparison to any she had been in before. A host of unsightly equipment lined the walls, and if she squinted, she could almost place the unfortunate bodily affordances of each tool. A shadowed figure stood just out of sight of the bright lamps above. "It actually would be disappointing, you making a further mess, perhaps managing to off yourself in the process. You were shrewd, I'll admit. Had our surgical team not been prepped to receive casualties, we might have not been able to get you back." The figure stepped forward, revealing themselves to be a ghostly pale woman with straight, roughly cropped black hair. She stood lithe in a Sansha's naval military uniform, with several unrecognizable insignias on her lapel, though the first thing Lena noticed was the right half of her face, which was wrapped in sickening augmentations: sensors, cables running out of her head down her back, inhuman grafts barely making an effort towards symmetry. She felt both halves of the woman's face focus on hers. Lena lifted her head up and tried to speak, managing a croak. "I'm scrap, lady. There's no point to it... you can't keep me alive like this." "No, surely not." She leaned in, inspecting Lena part for part, in a way that made Lena feel like she was being scrutinized... no, appraised? "I am Fleet Captain Nier. I'm the commander of this battle group." Lena thought to spit in her face but found she had barely any to provide, so she opted to silently glower. Nier straightened back up. "But you're wrong... I can yet find a point to you, little pilot." Lena prickled, feeling indignant, jerking her body as far as the pins would tolerate. The captain went on. "I had been conducting research into your hydrostatic capsule technology for some time, at great personal expense. Our chief office has tried to scrap my research many times. The aim was always to eventually capture a pilot, but I'd never managed to keep one alive. In my grasp. That is... until you, and after you tore through so many of our fast movers. Protecting your gang until the last man? What a specimen you are." Lena said nothing. She felt flush, concluding that it must have been the effects of the drug cocktail being pumped into her. The captain was gesturing to Lena's capsule, which was shackled next to them in a makeshift pod assembly, a mess of cabling running under its cracked shell or into its open hatch. And yet, her eyes remained fixed on the captain's gaze. "Lena Charen-Teng. Interceptor pilot. 3,585 kills, 54 of them solo killmarks. Two years flying combat with the Center for Advanced Studies, then onto the private sector for two more." "I'm good. What of it?" "Well, it's certainly a record, but not what I'm after. I see something in you I can use. You're... frustrated." "No shit." Captain Nier calmly reached across the table and retrieved a small dial pad. She twisted the dial, and instantly, crisp violet pain erupted in Lena's mind and body as electricity entered through the many wires trespassing her, running its course. Lena screamed, unable to writhe away. Nier finally let off of the dial. Lena's body spasmed uncontrollably for a few seconds more, and her ears rung loudly as she was able to unclench her jaw, not quite able to refocus on her surroundings for a moment. Her usual pain tolerance was in bad shape. She shook and sucked in breath. "--n to interrupt, little pilot, when I am speaking... now. I found you were fierce. Cunning, even. This does not make you unique. No... you have a hunger about you, one you won't even admit to yourself. You have no idea what you're capable of, not in the hands of your commander and your sorry crew." The captain paused, and reached again for the dial. "I could show you." Lena had little time -- to brace herself, to respond to her confusing terms, to beg -- before the current running through her slammed into every working muscle in her broken body. She felt crossed wires, broken logic, half-formed thoughts collapsing on themselves as her mind blanked from new, constant pain again and again. In spite of her dire situation, and her best effort, it felt to her like she would never die. In fact, she felt sickeningly alive. An eternal instant later, the captain was leaning down, her face hanging close, nearly sharing Lena's ragged breath. She spoke aloud, musing to herself, as Lena was finally allowed to succumb to her exhaustion. "I'm certain now, little pilot... you will make an excellent pet." --- [uuu] --- Something wasn't right. She was in space, exiting warp near an unfamiliar sun. Her external sensors felt sluggish as she spun them around, dully taking in the shape of ships around her. She stretched and pushed with her mind against wetware and nanocontrollers to feel them push back roughly against her... "It's about time. Wake up, little pilot." Lena's body jerked in its suspension, and a bucket of ice water shot through her veins, shocking her from her daze. "AH! Fghk, wh-what did you..." How long had she been out? Captain Nier's voice came in crisp over her comms, but reverberated in her mind somehow, unassisted. "My work, of course. Your body was badly damaged, but I did not just save your life, far from it. You and I are about to each surpass ourselves." Disorientation was not common for Lena, even by capsuleer standards. In this moment, though, she struggled to grasp her condition. First, her ship. She reached out and felt foreign engineering... curved bulkheads, grotesque spikes, large sublight engines. A Succubus...? A highly customized Succubus, at that: custom deadspace modules she would have never convinced herself to install on her own ships. She tried to shift in her unfamiliar frame and... no joy. She was locked into an autopiloting sequence to the fleet's destination. "Fleet." The captain again. "Take warp to this gate, jump through on land." Dull dread crept in as she gathered that the ship itself was fine, running nominally, even. The itch of wrongness, the breach, was deeper. She fumbled as she examined herself, urging her mind to respond with any coherent observation at all. Her body shivered and twitched, she felt that, but not from cold. Stimulants? And yet her perception was dull, slow... sedatives as well? But the sensations never stabilized, and each attempt to assess her state was contradicted by yet another confusing feeling. In fact the only constant she felt was the neural thrum of a new set of implants, like none she had seen before. Her eyes reported back dully; Sansha's make, but with sleek casing, wrapping her form in alloy, an artistic work of joinery filling in her self-inflicted injuries. And most constant of all, the way her arms, newly grafted, seemed to be restraining themselves. As best she could tell, they were now fused together behind her back. And she felt the heavy pressure of blanking alpha waves, emanating from some component of her new hardwirings, pushing down on her thoughts. She knew she was beaten. Violated. However, her mind rang hollow. She wanted to feel any sort of way -- wrathful, determined, even just panicked -- but the drugs and implants held her still, and her ship flew ahead. Nier hadn't just taken away her freedom, but had also locked away her will. "I'm... a Sansha's slave," Lena concluded. "Not exactly," the captain responded, back on the private comm channel. Lena found herself listening raptly; why was she waiting on the captain's every word? "To not neglect the full truth, I meant what I said: you were special in my eyes, and now even more so, my pet." A small surge of energy snuck up on Lena and shot through her body, and she doubled over. She gasped. What happened? The captain said... and her heart had skipped a beat, and her mind was racing to no end. "You see, a capsuleer pilot's mind is hard won. Many would rather die than survive a True Slave conversion, in fact one or two have done. Those were early attempts. I now know and will prove this today: one must have the whole person: mind, body, and soul. Only then do you truly own your prize. And what a prize you are." Again. At the captain's words, Lena felt static on her skin, heat building in her core, and she couldn't help but squirm against herself. For all of her effort to feel a single hateful thought earlier, this warmth she felt so clearly, as if it was seeping into her bones. She wanted... why did she want that? Why was the captain's twisted adoration of her the only thing that stayed fixed in her mind? What did she have to do to hang onto this last remaining feeling? "Fleet, hold on this gate. We spring the trap here." She felt the captain's gaze on her small frigate, amidst the cloud of Phantasms and assorted support ships likely of ill-gotten provenance, now sitting poised on a regional stargate. In spite of herself, she felt very small indeed. And the captain spoke: "Let's see what you can do, little pilot." The control lockout lifted from her ship, and she was in control. First, the adrenaline hit her system. Combat drugs followed soon after, some familiar, some less so; some life support system was perverting her mind with supernatural focus, and a hunger was building up inside her. She felt driven... bloodlust. She hadn't had combat shakes like this in years. And when the first enemy ship revealed itself and aligned for a warpout, she thought nothing -- her Succubus was already screaming forward with its afterburners heated. She did not dance, she did not weave elegantly through the decloaking fleet around her. She did not look at the ship's designation or corporate insignia to catch that it belonged to a corporation's roaming fleet, much like one of her own. Her ship simply reached its target, and she bit down like an animal. Her guns spit beams of light like curses upon the malignant crew of the ship below her. All of her module racks glowed hot, and so did she, as ecstatic electricity ran through her spine with every volley off her ship's broadside. And when the battlecruiser she held in her grasp lost atmo and quickly collapsed from violent decompression, her capsule flooded her with arousal as she already dove for her next target. She felt like she would lose her mind from the velocity, strange sensations filling the edges of her mind with bliss, and pilot and ship both groaned as she pushed her engines even harder. Her ship took stray hits from the railgun fire around her. It didn't matter, her captain wanted this. Gods, she felt so good. The enemy fleet engaged the Sansha's around her, both sides ruthlessly taking kills and casualties alike. It didn't matter, she just had to please the captain. With each new target broadcast, the Succubus spun around to face them, and she rode the pleasure of acceleration anew. In the dim back of her mind, she knew that she was compromised, her psych training screaming from behind padded walls -- she could just warp out, she could escape. It didn't matter, she just had to please the captain. In her pod, Lena writhed and squirmed. Her eyelids fluttered and her eyes rolled back as her ship sped forward, a deadly, obscene display. As the last remaining enemy ship cracked under relentless laser fire, she dove for the pilot's pod itself, ripping its occupant from inside with frenzied, gleaming light. Her smoking frame was finally allowed to cool, and as logistics ships quickly patched up the damage she had taken, Lena herself ached desperately. She sucked in pod fluid. She needed to be taken. To fly into the sun. To be given just one more order. To hear her voice. "That's it, fleet. Excellent work. Gather up what you can of the salvage and cargo, then align out." Please, she screamed in her mind. I need it. I need-- She heard the crack of the captain's private channel. "You exceeded my expectations, little pilot. You're already such an excellent pet, and soon, you won't know anything else. Take your warp now." The warp drive activated, and Lena whimpered as superluminal velocity overwhelmed her senses. The ship rocketed across the system, and a shuddering, unending climax took hold of her.