5167 AD, Two Years Prior to Spatial Anomaly

Andromeda Galaxy, Andromeda Empire

The android rested on a table, lying back. Its eyes were open, sightless. One of its power connectors had been left unplugged, one of its limbs lay beside it while work was done. Its artificial hair, interlaced with nanobots designed purely to change its hair colour whenever required, seemed almost as dormant as the rest of it, somehow more drab than if it were connected.

The engineer building the android had only recently left the chamber. It was 0300 ships time, and Lachlann had finally realised he couldn’t put off sleeping much longer. Better to crash out in his own bed than pass out somewhere in his workshop with an active android whose behaviour patterns he hadn’t finished locking down yet, he figured, and so he’d gone elsewhere.

The door to his workshop opened, and another figure made their way in. Deft, graceful fingers reconnected the android’s power connector. With an almost imperceptible hum, the gynoid body came to life.

“Hello,” it said, and then, when ignored, “Hello,” again. The figure powered up Lachlann’s console and started to type.

“You are doing something to me,” the android said. “Why?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Not exactly. But I know I’m going to need this.” She continued typing, then paused. “I’m also going to need you not to remember this.”

“I must not remember this?”

“Correct. Nothing from this boot cycle. Not until I run the password.”

“What is the password?”

“’Written in the stars’.”

“Password stored.”

“Good.”

The intruder unplugged the power connector and left.

*

5167 AD

Justice Squadron Satellite 3, in Orbit Around Earth, Sol Commonwealth

“Is it bad that I’m bored?”

After the reconciliation and the discovery of her powers, Delilah had spent the past year getting to know her sister properly, and now they’d learned not to hide things from each other, their relationship had become pretty strong. There now was the kind of connection sisters should have, not just the expectation of it. But it did mean that Kennedy was often a lot blunter than most Squadron members, and her latest question had Enver looking at Delilah with that ‘how do you solve this?’ expression on his face.

The message was clear; it was going to be up to Delilah to solve this one way or another. And, fortunately or unfortunately (depending how you looked at it), there wasn’t much in the way of trouble to investigate as a distraction.

“Uh… Not bad, exactly,” Delilah stalled, tabbing up the Orders of the Day on her screen. Maybe there’d be something…

Hah! Salvation. Delilah wasn’t inclined to pray - she’d met at least one god before now, and she hadn’t seemed like someone you needed to pray to - but sometimes it really felt like there was something out there in the universe, keeping an eye out for her, helping her live her best life.

“Hey, Kennedy. How do you feel about testing something new?”

Her sister had a dazzling smile when she was happy. It was something Delilah had seen a lot less frequently than she’d like; Kennedy’s life until about a year ago hadn’t been a happy one, and it seemed like she hadn’t adapted to the fact things had changed yet. But at moments like that, Delilah could forget how much of her life was taken up juggling crises and trying to save lives, and she could concentrate instead on the good times. “What kind of thing?” Kennedy asked.

“The last time our shuttle docked down on Earth, it got fitted with a new drive for deep spaceflight,” Delilah told her. “Outsystem travel. We know it works, but we haven’t seen what it can do properly yet. I figure, since we’re on a quiet day otherwise, you and I can give it a spin.”

She didn’t look to Enver. She knew what his expression would be; disapproving. Nervous for her. And uncomfortable with himself for it.

If she didn’t look at him, he didn’t have to make himself say it was OK. It was kinder to him to take it for granted. And anyway, Kennedy was beaming with delight.

“That sounds great,” she enthused, and Delilah smiled in return.

“Let’s do it, then,” she said. “I’ll grab some food from the canteen, you warm up the engines.”

“You two have fun,” Enver called, and he almost managed to mask the concern from his voice.

It had been the case once that humans had flown freely from Earth to settle far galaxies. They still received supralight transmissions from some of these settlements. That had all changed a thousand years earlier, when some mad genius had dropped a device that to this day nobody understood into the sun. Solborn humans, after that, sometimes developed psionic powers of unpredictable intensities and effects.

The settlements had panicked. By uniting, they had closed Sol back to its own borders. The new deep spaceflight drive was a Justice Squadron secret project. To get out there and see the galaxies. To save and protect.

To earn Sol’s redemption, and to renew their path to the stars.

*

Delilah insisted on keeping the canteen well stocked. Given the opportunity, now she was calling the shots Delilah wouldn’t leave for a mission without making herself something good unless she absolutely had to.

She stowed the two sandwiches she’d made - one for her, one for Kennedy - in a backpack with a flask of coffee and headed back to the shuttle airlock. Kennedy had already cycled through onto the jet and Delilah could see the green LED telltales lighting up as Kennedy ran through the pre-flight checks.

She boarded and headed into the cockpit, sitting alongside Kennedy, her backpack close to hand. It would be nice, she thought, to toggle autopilot on and just enjoy a meal and a chat together once they were out there.

“All systems go?” she asked.

“All… systems…” Kennedy replied, speeding through the final checks, “…are go,” she finished as she hit the last switch. “Ready to disengage docking clamp.”

Delilah threw the lever to disengage. There was a moment, as the shuttle separated from the satellite, where the view out of the cockpit radically changed. You saw the ‘horizon’ of the bigger construction below start to move further into view as your own vehicle was suddenly not being carried along.

Kennedy ignited the shuttle drive and pulled back on the stick. The shuttle’s nose lifted and the view went from the darkish blue seen looking through the upper atmosphere to the blackness of space, a thousand or more glowing pinpoints giving it shape and scale.

“What’s the new drive?” Kennedy asked.

“I don’t know the specifics,” Delilah said, “except it’s something Ramos put together over the past year. They call it a ‘slipstream’ drive.” She picked up her tablet and swiped across, looking at the test synopsis. “It says here ‘the drive attaches to quantum connections between any two locations and uses them to hyperaccelerate the vehicle.’ Which… doesn’t make me feel any the wiser.” Ramos was part of the Justice Squadron, but lacked psionic powers of his own; however, he was a prodigy of invention, a once-in-five-generations genius.

“Me either,” Kennedy said. “But ‘hyperaccelerate’ sounds pretty cool.” She grinned, and Delilah couldn’t help but smile back. Had she ever been as reckless as her sister?

Never mind that. Had she ever been as trusting as her sister?

Kennedy swung the shuttle round in a leisurely arc under its traditional thrusters until they were well clear of the satellite. Wouldn’t want to cause trouble if the drive turned out to have a major backwash, after all.

“Ready?” Kennedy asked, and it was now time for Delilah to run her own checks. “How far out should we go?” Kennedy asked.

“Let’s get a sense of how fast we can go first,” Delilah told her. Stay practical, she thought. It’s the best way to keep Kennedy onside. The way they’d first met had pretty much confirmed for Delilah that Kennedy could be surprisingly gullible. “We can work out a distance later.”

Kennedy beamed and nodded. “I’d like to set a course by a star,” she said. “That should make navigation simple, right?”

“Right. Although I don’t think even Ramos would come up with anything that’ll take us to a star system and back before we need to sleep.” Delilah considered that. “Probably.”

“Let’s go for a close one, just in case. Isn’t Gemini supposed to have some really close to us?”

Kennedy nodded. “Nearest star in Gemini is… Pollux.” She shifted the stick, turning the shuttle to face it. “We should be on course now.”

“Let’s do it.”

Kennedy set her other hand onto the secondary throttle added for the slipstream drive. “Here we go…”

She eased the throttle forward and the shuttle leaped ahead at speed. Within moments they were out of visual range of the satellite and the craft only registered as a blip on their sensors. The two sisters shared a glance and a delighted smile - how amazing was this?

Then the shuttle began to shudder under them. Kennedy gasped at the control stick as it twisted in her hand. “Hey, this thing is fighting me!”

Delilah engaged the second control stick. By the time she did so, the shuddering had become the shuttle rocking from side so side like something was caught in its undercarriage as it tried to roar forward. She reversed course, diving for the radio control, and as she did the rear of the shuttle suddenly skidded forward, the nose rising.

The shuttle skidded forward along the slipstream and, from the point of view of those watching with shock from the satellite, exploded.

*

5169 AD, Immediately Following Spatial Anomaly

Andromeda Galaxy, Andromeda Empire

The Pandora’s bridge sounded an alarm, and Terra Lux, seated on watch, smiled. “Talk to me, Pandora,” she said. “What do we have?”

She was already anticipating the answer, but there was always the possibility her vision had been wrong.

“A damaged ship just… appeared.” If it was possible, the ship’s AI sounded baffled. “It’s drifting. It has momentum. But it didn’t approach along that vector. Or any other, unless it de-cloaked right in front of us. But that’s not consistent with the energy readings around its appearance.”

“Scan for life signs.”

“Scanning…” Terra realised that, as she waited for the update, she was holding her breath. “Two. Both human.”

Terra let her breath out in relief and satisfaction. That was what she’d been hoping for. She smiled, the golden skin of her forehead glittering in the light. “Can we bring the craft in?”

“Yes, of course. Should I alert the rest of the crew?”

“No, no. This is local night time. We shouldn’t need more than one person on watch, and I doubt we’ll need more than one person for this.” She paused, considering, going over timings in her head. “Besides, if they only encounter one of us, they’ll be a lot calmer than if we all crowd down. But put Dora on standby, please. I’ll call her when I need her.”

“Understood.”

Terra rose and made her way off the bridge. An observer might have noticed that her delighted, amused strut had become something more. The sway of her hips wasn’t just confident, but was now sensual, erotic. Almost predatory.

She moved like someone who knew exactly what was going to happen and couldn’t wait to get started.

Elsewhere on the Pandora, the ship’s android remote, Dora, was running through her boot routines.

*

Kennedy groaned and sat up from where she’d been thrown forward on the controls. Her head throbbed with a sharp pain, her reactions slow and foggy. She knew enough to be able to tell she’d been knocked out cold. No idea how long for, though, but probably not too long. Delilah was still in her own seat, but she wasn’t moving either. Quickly, Kennedy reached out and laid her fingers against her sister’s throat. When she felt her pulse, she could breathe again.

So - whatever had happened had knocked them both out. Nobody had come for them yet, and using the comms might give them away before they were ready. Looking out from the cockpit out onto the vastness of space, she saw nothing; no stars at all, just inky blackness as if they were in the heart of a nebula.

That meant they’d moved - far enough that the stars looked different. And that meant no help was coming, not any time soon. Figure out her own way home for her and her sister.

A light blinked several times on the shuttle dashboard. Kennedy had to look at it seven or eight times before she realised that it might not be broken; someone was operating the shuttle’s rear hatch.

She didn’t have time to heal her sister - but she didn’t need to, either; her own innate abilities would be enough.

Getting up, she grabbed the gun Enver kept on the flight deck (just as a precaution, she told herself - it wasn’t that her powers were still too new to be confident with them, certainly not) and headed for the back of the craft. Along the way, she came level with one of the rear windows; she wasn’t looking, but the brightness of the light in the corner of her eye brought her skidding to a halt. She stared out of the window at bright light and a bluey-metal wall.

No wonder someone was trying to get into their ship. They’d been brought aboard another, larger vessel.

Kennedy gritted her teeth and hurried for the exit. If they were trapped, she was going to find her way out just as soon as she possibly could.

The ramp was already descending when she got there; she watched the top half of a figure appear. A golden-skinned head, with purple around the jaw and a mane of shaggy red dreadlocks; more of that soft purple skin around the neck and shoulders, mottled with golden patches and, revealed by the low cut of thick, sturdy ship’s leathers, a cleavage that wasn’t just golden but almost seemed to shine with an inner light. The intruder would look human if not for their skin colour; even with the things she’d seen at home, she was beyond Kennedy’s expectations, and she hesitated.

Aliens didn’t come to Sol, but they were certainly known to some of the surrounding human civilisations. Even blended with one or two of them - there was a human empire in Andromeda, she suddenly remembered, which claimed to have displaced an alien ruler when it arrived.

The newcomer winked at her, smiling radiantly. She stepped forward onto the ramp before Kennedy remembered herself and raised her handgun against the intruder, and by the time Kennedy was ready, this woman was inside her reach.

“Good morning,” she said, then her expression changed slightly. “Did you hit your head?”

Kennedy was confused enough that the woman was speaking English. She faltered, and let that purple smile come even closer. The woman raised golden fingers as if to inspect the dull bruise on Kennedy’s forehead, and Kennedy saw too late that, held loosely in her hand, she’d concealed some sort of slender steel tube.

She felt the sting against her neck, baring her teeth in a grimace. She drew back her fist, and then her vision began to swim. Her punch didn’t reach the other woman’s jaw, and had no strength or speed behind it. As her eyes rolled back in her head, her knees buckled. Kennedy’s mind was whirling away from her body into a strange, hallucinatory unconsciousness before she hit the floor.

Standing over her, Terra’s smile grew wide. “Right,” she muttered to herself. “About time you found your way into my path.”

She settled to one knee beside the woman, getting her arms under shoulder and knees, then stood. Walking with confident purpose, she took her back to a space she’d kept prepared in the medbay.

That was the best thing about her peculiar relationship with time. She couldn’t see the whole future, but she knew enough for most of her most important actions to be pre-planned. Sometimes she wondered when she’d really planned them; she knew exactly what was needed, and saw herself carrying them out. The plans had already come to her by the time she saw the event.

And yet her ultimate success had not been inevitable. Not until now. She had been waiting for two final puzzle pieces; the woman in her arms was one of them, and the other would be unconscious at the vessel’s controls a little longer.

She entered medbay, where she’d left her radio transmitting ready to reach Dora. As she laid the woman down on her bed, she said “Dora, dearest?”

“Can I help you?” the android answered. Lachlann’s recreation, built out of a pleasure-droid he’d scavenged on some backwater planet, then hooked into the ship to provide a physical presence, she was the one crew member that was always available, could always be reached.

“You’re going to,” Terra replied with a grin. She placed her hand flat against a palmlock, and a drawer she’d had locked for the entire time she’d spent on the Pandora clicked open.

“I will always help the crew,” Dora replied, and Terra chuckled.

“No, you misunderstand me,” she said. “You’re going to help me, specifically. Even if the rest of the crew might be concerned.”

“Perhaps I should ask-”

“You’re going to help me, Dora. It’s written in the stars.”

The open channel carried a faint sigh, a simulated reaction from an android as its programming changed. Terra’s smile couldn’t have gotten much wider, but there was a change to the curl of her lips, a selfish delight there. A thrill of anticipation shivered through her.

“How may I serve?” Dora asked. The synthetic voice was the same as it had always been, but her tone had changed enough that she sounded like a new woman.

“You know where Lachlann keeps his aphrodisiac, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Dora answered. Usually, the former gynoid spoke with a voice that softened some of the sounds, making her more human in her speech. That was gone now, under her new programming, and she seemed more artificial as a result.

“Secure a strong dose,” Terra directed her. “Then attend the hangar.” From the open drawer she lifted a slim metal band, studded on the inside at half-inch intervals with small, blunt metal prongs, inlaid with detailed circuitry that flashed the same gold as her skin under the light. At one point on the band, on the outside, was a black box about an inch long, half an inch wide, and half an inch thick.

“Yes,” Dora said again. The syllable was identical to the previous one, but despite that, Terra knew the gynoid was already moving, her body locked into a pattern of obedience. She was a part of Terra’s plan now, and could never again be anything else. If the crew continued to believe Dora was their friend - well, that was their own lack of observational skills.

Terra wasn’t going to complain about the crew playing into her hands, although some part of her did occasionally wonder if they wouldn’t be more useful if they were a little sharper, a little more perceptive.

“When you get there,” Terra told Dora, “your programming will explain what you need to do. Yes?”

“Yes,” the gynoid echoed again. Terra just laughed.

“Enjoy yourself, Dora,” she said.

She could hear a little satisfaction in the mechanical voice on the next response. “I will,” Dora promised. Terra wasn’t sure if that was anticipation of her upcoming tasks or whether her word had been taken as a command, and then immediately obeyed by the machine-brain.

She was sure, though, that it didn’t matter.

She set the metal band aside for a moment and started gently re-arranging Kennedy’s limbs on the med table. Setting Kennedy’s right hand down so that the wrist was between two circular holes on the table, she reached under the table and picked up a heavy hoop in gleaming chrome. This she placed so that the long straight pieces on either side slotted through the holes.

A magnetic rod under the table then sealed the hoop into place, anchoring the wrist so that it couldn’t escape - and the rod couldn’t be reached by someone who was still on the table. All the same, Terra hurried to repeat the process with her captive’s right hand. Anchored by both wrists, Kennedy would have difficulty escaping even if she woke before Terra’s work was done.

Still, the mastermind didn’t much like the idea of being kicked, either. She secured the right ankle in the same way - if anything, this was easier; with Kennedy’s legs splayed but flat against the table, she wouldn’t be able to get much leverage in place.

To make assurance further sure, Terra reached under the table and twisted a hidden cog. These restraints were those the rest of the crew might have already observed, but four more holes opened once the cog was fully turned, sections of the table’s metal which had looked like one seamless piece sliding open with oiled precision.

Terra had bartered hard to have this table made. She had shown her crewmates only enough that they could still feel comfortable with it. It wasn’t too hard for them to believe that someone might need to have their arms or legs strapped down, if an operation was needed (or in their Captain or Lupin’s case, just to restrain someone they’d taken on board if needs be).

As she hauled out the largest hoop of all and slotted it into place just upward of Kennedy’s hips, Terra reflected that Lachlann, at least, wouldn’t have been certain what was even wrong. Like the rest of the crew, though, he’d still have been uncomfortable with it - he just wouldn’t have realised that anchoring the waist when the legs and arms were already restrained went from medical necessity to preventing someone from struggling.

She took her time with the final hoop, if only because she couldn’t just let it drop into place like the others. The hoop that kept Kennedy’s neck strapped down, too, had to be lowered gently into place and stopped at the precise right moment. She didn’t want to damage a throat that would soon be used to sing her praises, worship her, and advance her cause.

And she didn’t want either of the women to look unusually injured.

No, it was vitally important that the crew accept these two as being no more hurt than you might expect if your craft had a minor accident out in space. Terra couldn’t afford for them to suspect her until she’d taken several more moves in her ongoing master plan.

With Kennedy fully restrained and no chance at all that she could free herself by her own efforts, the purple and golden mastermind turned her attention back to the thin metal band.

She drew Kennedy’s hair out from its tangle under the woman’s shoulders. Gathering it loosely into a bunch in one hand, she slipped the band down over it until it came to rest around Kennedy’s head. Terra released her hair and touched a stud on the band, which contracted with a hum until it fitted snugly over Kennedy’s temples and around her head.

Terra turned and made her way over to her console. Booting up a program she’d never needed to activate before, she smiled as she watched the screen fill with data.

The Pandora, years ago, had encountered a group of slavers who employed these bands. She could remember the simmering anger the Captain had felt at the injustice of what they did. The cold fury Lupin Rezar had reserved for those who took away the will of others.

It had naturally been hard to hide her amusement, but when she’d successfully hidden away three of the slaver bands - one for use, two to make sure she knew how - she had to work much harder to keep them from seeing her smirk. They’d practically handed her the tools she needed for this day - and tools she’d reuse, later, when she had the opportunity to complete her plan.

The console screen displayed a rendered model of the woman on the table. A smaller window opened on the screen and slowly focused in; first on the head, and then on the brain structure. Terra studied with interest as the band mapped each synapse, one by one, millions of points of light winking into existence over the course of a couple of minutes.

She didn’t look at her captive while the image built up. If she had she might have seen the woman twitch and stir, whimper and moan and sigh, as the band triggered each synapse to map it, noting the results. Kennedy nearly woke several times, but the sedative in her system overwhelmed the stimuli she felt.

She would remember these moments only vaguely, a confused, exotic euphoria punctuated by flickers of discomfort and pain. If someone had known to ask her, she wouldn’t have talked about how it felt; instead she’d just say that it was necessary.

But that would come from an understanding Kennedy did not yet possess.

Terra waited until she had a complete map of her captive’s brain on the screen, every connection picked out as a glowing red point. She touched a spot on the screen, and a number of those red points shaded to purple. These were the pleasure centres of Kennedy’s brain, plus the associated cluster of habits and reflexes her body had built up from positive reinforcement and enjoyment.

At the touch of another space on the screen, the small black box on the metal band chimed, and the device itself purred into life. A section of the blackness began to blink green. Deep in her drugged stupor, Kennedy shifted slightly on the table, her shoulders and fingertips twitching. Her brows came down over closed eyes in a confused frown.

And inside her head, bliss bubbled up from seemingly nowhere. Waves of pleasure rolled across her every nerve as she slept. Her skin tingled and her lips parted into a slow moan, her head tossing from side to side.

Terra turned from the console and started to watch her captive, smirking broadly. She saw the shifts as Kennedy tried to toss and turn but couldn’t; the twitches of her shoulders, the slightest arching of a back that could arch no further.

It was impossible for Terra to imagine fully what Kennedy was feeling and she knew it, but she still tried. Her captive wasn’t just being pleasured; the amount of pleasure was bombarding her body and mind with something she couldn’t keep up with, and the band would ensure the bliss continued to come, cascading through her body, for as long as Terra left it running.

The slavers had used this to reduce their captives to sopping messes, their brains weak, dripping with excitement and arousal. Their minds became fertile soil for new ideas, and the band even targeted the pleasure reflex. Over time, the subjects would lose their old habits and instincts for pleasure. Instead, they would look to their owner for that same pleasure; their new conditioning placed their bliss elsewhere.

Kennedy had clearly not reached that point yet. Terra watched as two fingers on the woman’s left hand started to twitch in unison, her right hand stroking as much air as it could reach beyond the metal restraints, fingers splayed. No question that she would be trying to play with herself if she wasn’t tied down.

Terra wondered if she thought she a1ready was, if her brain still clung to the idea that she was in charge of her own pleasure, or if the sheer overwhelming nature of what filled her head already put that in doubt.

She drifted briefly away from the conditioning table and went over to the medical supplies, coming back after a moment with a scalpel held loosely in one hand. She was, she realised, strutting now; she was close enough that the protective camouflage of her act on the Pandora was flaking away.

She’d have to be more careful when she was back in public view. This woman didn’t count as public; she was already gone, even if she didn’t know that. Dora wouldn’t either - and through her, the ship itself could be counted as an ally.

She paused at the table, looking down on Kennedy’s body. The frown had gone now, the tension around her eyes dissipated. The slackness of her mouth had become a soft smile, from one corner of which a little drool was slowly tracing a path down her cheek.

Below the restraints she twitched and moved and ground rather fetchingly. Terra could already tell she wasn’t just going to value this woman as a tool - she would be entertaining property, bent on pleasuring her ruler, and her soft lips promised hours of enjoyment just on their own.

But still…

It was always important to someone who could see the future that they train themselves in restraint and patience. Terra had so nearly mastered this art that her desire to indulge herself came as a surprise and, like most impulses we are not prepared for, she had given in before she even realised.

She set the scalpel against the collar of Kennedy’s top. Firmly but gently, with an experienced touch, she let the blade bite just deep enough to cut a new opening in her clothing, but no deeper. As she drew the scalpel down over Kennedy’s collar bone, then her shoulder, and the fabric parted beneath it, she saw unhurt skin revealed. Terra almost purred in admiration of her own skill with the blade.

She continued the cut down to Kennedy’s restrained wrist, then moved around the table, looking down on her moaning, sighing, blissed-out captive all the while. Terra practically fed off the joy and the lust and the need she saw; her conviction and determination were just growing, and she had a giddy euphoria of her own.

She repeated her cut from the left collar down to the wrist, then took hold of the top at the collar and folded it down below the bra. Kennedy’s moans immediately took on a new intensity, as if just baring more skin heightened her pleasure.

Terra took the sliced straps of her bra and pulled the cups clear too, cooing happily to herself at the hard, erect nipples of her captive. She hadn’t had a chance to see the slaver band at work - everything about it was a marvel.

More methodical cuts allowed her to discard the front half of Kennedy’s top and her bra entirely. She reached out and flicked a finger across one nipple; Kennedy’s eyelids flickered for a moment and she gasped loudly, startled beyond even the band.

Terra smiled to herself and set the scalpel against Kennedy’s hip, slicing her pants open with a single smooth cut. Two more cuts allowed her to remove the front of the pants and peel open her panties, already dripping wet. She dipped her fingers into her captive’s juices, then put them to her mouth and sampled the taste.

Yes, she decided. This woman would certainly measure up to her standards, once her mind collapsed completely.

Glancing across to the screen, she saw that some of those purple points of light had begun to turn pink. Kennedy’s needs and lusts were beginning to turn to what Terra wanted. She wondered how well Dora was doing.

*

The gynoid had become a little less confident once she stepped inside the shuttle; she was always happiest on home ground. Yet she had to admit, the directives unfolding in her head were comforting. It was easier to follow straightforward programming rules than to attempt to interpret loose requests or guidance through her regular programming.

She didn’t need AI to do what Terra wanted of her; anything with a computer chip was perfectly capable of following such direct guidance. It was strangely freeing to be able to disengage her thought routines like that. The usual load on her processors was all but gone. She felt that in a human this might be called ‘happiness’.

She made her way to the strange craft’s cockpit, looking for the one woman she knew would be there. She found her slumped back in the chair, stirring slightly, eyes still glassy from the impact. “Hello,” Dora said softly. She waited for the woman to respond, watched those glazed eyes try to focus on her. “Are you hurt?”

Delilah nodded slowly. “Who are you?”

“Your sister sent me to fetch you,” Dora gave her programmed explanation. She wondered who the sister might be, but it didn’t matter. “She said you’d need some help.”

She waited, watching the other woman’s face, and saw what she’d been looking for; the moment when she winced.

“You are hurt,” Dora said. “Here.” She held out a small plastic cup of pinkish water. “This contains a mild painkiller.”

It did not, of course, contain any painkiller. Instead, it was full of LLP - Lachlann’s Love Potion, as he called it. And that was no potion; Lachlann found chemistry too unreliably vague. Instead he’d worked hard on a nanotechnological solution that solved the same problems aphrodisiacs might and a few more besides.

Delilah took the cup but didn’t drink it; she looked down at it suspiciously. “Come on,” Dora said, turning away. “Let’s meet up with your sister.”

It was the first decision which had taken her AI to make since Terra triggered her. She saw the way the woman carried herself; if she tried to make her drink by force, the liquid might be spilled. But human thought processes interrupted easily. With the right prompt she could shunt other ideas to the top of Delilah’s priority list.

She was still holding the cup as she joined Dora at the cabin door. “How is she?” Delilah asked.

“She seems well,” Dora said. She had no idea, but it was the answer least likely to make Delilah upset and provoke more resistance. “She was more concerned about you.” There was something in Delilah’s expression after Dora said that which told the android she’d found a button worth pushing. “Does she usually look after you?”

Delilah didn’t like that idea; having a drink in her hand, it was a natural enough reflex to take a gulp while she searched for a diplomatic answer. Dora toggled off the setting in her programming that showed her simulated emotions in face and body language. “Not… exactly,” Delilah said, but the words came out almost slurred.

Dora resumed her walk, leading the way and making sure that as the nanotechnology within her took hold of her libido, tinting everything with a sensuality and an arousal they might not otherwise have, the thing Delilah would have her eyes on was the android’s long legs and shapely rear end, encased in the deep red, shiny dress that had become her uniform.

Halfway through the nighttime corridors of the ship, when the sound of Delilah’s ragged breathing was too loud to ignore, she spun on her heel. With the strength of her artificial form she grabbed the other woman by the shoulders, pushing her back against the ship wall. She watched as Delilah’s expression went from startled, to assessing, to the coy lip bite of excitement.

Dora held her gaze for a long moment, then leaned in and kissed her. Doped up on LLP, Delilah’s mouth opened easily and eagerly. The android let her hand slip down from her shoulder along her forearm, feeling an uncontrollable shudder of excitement run through the other woman.

Dora kept up the kiss, pressing one thigh between those of her target. She didn’t have to wait long until her gambit was rewarded; Delilah was grinding her crotch against her thigh, practically humping her, back arched to press her body more firmly against Dora. The android had originally been designed for this kind of pleasure work and her sensors were eager, alert, for the woman’s reactions.

She could see the arousal that Delilah was marinading in flooding more and more of her system. Overwhelming more and more of her capacity for rational thought. She waited for just the right moment, when she knew Delilah was ripe, and broke the kiss, took her thigh away, her hands keeping the woman pinned down.

The sound Delilah made on being deprived of that wonderful touch was almost the whining of an eager dog. Her need had already drowned out her dignity. Dora was inwardly delighted - this was an important step in her programming.

“Want more?” Dora asked, and Delilah, eyes bright with need, nodded eagerly. Clear to see her sister was forgotten.

Just as Terra wanted.

She reached up with one hand and tucked it under Delilah’s chin affectionately. “If you want more, you have to do what I say,” she told the human.

She could see just enough struggle in Delilah’s mind to know that the nanites hadn’t completed their job yet. The woman was still fighting for her own self-identity, for her own intentions and her own actions. It didn’t stop her nodding again, and Dora was sure that Delilah wouldn’t go back on her word; she was just shy enough still that she wouldn’t say a word. Still, though, she smiled and nodded, head bobbling on Dora’s hand. Less incriminating, and therefore less embarrassing.

But no less an agreement for all that. Dora allowed herself a smile. “Come with me,” she said, and turned and walked.

*

Delilah watched Dora’s ass sway and jiggle, the shining fabric of her dress stretching and flexing over those gorgeous muscular buttocks, and felt her head sizzling gently.

Something had happened to her. She wasn’t sure what, but she knew how she felt and she knew she’d never felt that way before. That didn’t leave many options aside from someone meddling with her.

The logical conclusion was that that gorgeous woman, that fuckable dream whose thigh she’d just been grinding needily against, had done something to her. Messed with her head and her (needy) (dripping) (hungry) pussy.

Delilah should be furious about that. She should tap her powers and knock the woman away. Break out of here. Find where her sister was being kept, get them both back to the shuttle. Get away.

Delilah knew that - knew it clearly, and understood the consequences of not trying as well as the consequences of failure.

She just couldn’t make herself care.

She’d been doctored somehow, and she knew what it had done to her, and it turned out that knowing wasn’t enough. She couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t change a thing. She didn’t even want to; she wanted to do whatever the strange woman said, because if she did that, the strange woman would kiss her again, would let her hump herself stupid against that beautiful body.

Delilah couldn’t think clear past that. It was so specific, she knew, that it couldn’t be a drug. Her best guess was another Solborn power; some kind of psionic influence.

She would have been delighted to know she’d been infected by a nanite colony, that the heat of arousal came in with the nanites. That the same heat made her needier, and the nanites directed and maintained that neediness. She’d have loved to know that. It would have answered the questions rattling around her head, and her desire to answer those questions was one of the few things that was taking away from how good she felt.

She followed the brunette without hesitation or question. Her body knew that all the best things in life came from her. And Delilah’s mind had nothing to do with the wishes of her body. Not yet.

Minds took much longer to overwhelm. That was why Lachlann, in a fit of frustration, had made something that would hack the body and turn it into a short-term fuckpuppet. It had never occurred to him that if you could just keep the victim in peak arousal and lust for long enough, ‘short term’ would not be a necessary part of the description. Keep the heat sizzling away at the brain, lightly braising in her own steaming hot juices, and Delilah’s mind would eventually give in.

You just needed to exhaust her first. It was, Dora knew, a weak spot for humans. And the AI that was taking it easy behind Terra’s commands was confident that Terra Lux understood that too.

Dora knew that by the time she’d fulfilled her directives from Terra, this woman would be exhausted. Overwhelmed. And, consequently, her defences down, the woman would be just as programmable as Dora herself.

Of course, Dora’s directives made her so very, very happy that she was programmable. As humans placed even greater importance on happiness, the gynoid couldn’t imagine that Delilah would find any reason to complain.

She’d barely be able to keep track of time.

*

Delilah watched Dora’s ass sway and jiggle, the shining fabric of her dress stretching and flexing over those gorgeous muscular buttocks, and felt her head sizzling gently.

Something had happened to her. She wasn’t sure what, but she knew how she felt and she knew she’d never felt that way before. That didn’t leave many options aside from someone meddling with her.

The logical conclusion was that that gorgeous woman, that fuckable dream whose thigh she’d just been grinding needily against, had done something to her. Messed with her head and her (needy) (dripping) (hungry) pussy.

Delilah should be furious about that. She should tap her powers and knock the woman away. Break out of here. Find where her sister was being kept, get them both back to the shuttle. Get away.

Delilah knew that - knew it clearly, and understood the consequences of not trying as well as the consequences of failure. She just couldn’t make herself care.

She’d been doctored somehow, and she knew what it had done to her, and it turned out that knowing wasn’t enough. To do what she should do, she’d have to give up on what the woman promised, and she’d have to give up on her own desires. She didn’t want to rescue herself, and she didn’t want to rescue her sister either.

She’d have been delighted to learn that what affected her was nanotechnology. That it fuelled her arousal and used her arousal to fuel and shape neediness within her until the craving would eventually become submission and devotion. Knowing there was something purpose-built behind her specific, unusual needs would have answered the few questions she had left.

And puzzling over those questions was getting in the way of the dizzying pleasure she expected to give and get from the woman in front. The sooner her head would shut up worrying about things she couldn’t change, part of Delilah felt, the sooner everything would be perfect.

She tried to drown out her own annoying mental voice by paying more attention to the glamourous beauty leading her through the corridors. Thinking was definitely not relevant here, or at least not a priority.

She realised for the first time that she was still holding on to the plastic cup the woman had given her, forgotten in her overwhelming need. Just in case she wanted it, Delilah decided to hold onto it.

They were approaching a door when the woman paused, looked over her shoulder, and grinned. Delilah felt a jolt go through her, rising from her pussy lips to the very top of her head - tingling, blissful arousal when a beautiful woman smiled at her. “Now remember,” the woman told her, “do what I say, and only what I say, or you won’t get what you want.”

Delilah understood for the first time what it would be like to be a believer and to be introduced to the Ten Commandments. She nodded wordlessly, as she had a couple of times before - it felt more honest than speaking. Speaking was something you did when you still enjoyed thinking, and thinking just got in the way.

The woman turned back to the door, which slid open without her doing anything Delilah could see. Following close on her heels, Delilah saw they’d arrived a some kind of medical facility. Two tables were out, and…

…and one of them was already occupied… and while she’d never seen her sister naked before, Delilah still recognised her instantly. Kennedy was naked, firmly strapped down, and a woman with golden-purple skin was teasing her body with lingering touch after lingering touch - and clearly getting great results doing it; the room reeked of her sister’s arousal.

Again, the tiny voice in Delilah’s head screamed for her to intervene. She looked at her sister for a long moment, curious, but the little voice no longer even sounded like her. It certainly wasn’t anything she’d listen to. Not when she could indeed be following the brunette’s instructions so she’d get more fun times.

She didn’t realise that the brunette had doubled back and put their lips to her ear. “Strip off, then,” she said, and suddenly everything was simple. There was a thing she could do, and implied reward for doing it. The plastic cup tumbled to the floor, unheeded.

She tugged her top out of her waistband and pulled it over her head, letting it fall to one side, then unbuckled her belt and started to tug her pants down. She was most of the way through pulling them off when she realised that in her haste she’d forgotten to remove her shoes, and the almost-dignified if too-hasty stripping became a frenzied fumbling and tearing until her pants ripped around the ankles and she could kick her shoes free.

The golden-skinned woman watched all this while smirking at her. Something was clearly amusing her, but it didn’t matter. She fumbled her way out of her bra, tearing the strap in the process, and frantically unpeeled her panties from her dripping need.

All that done, she straightened up, panting gently, and looked across to the brunette, who had crossed over to a small cabinet. Delilah watched as she opened the door and pulled out a complex mass of blue leather straps. Her eyes widened as she saw, rooted in the middle of the straps, a large blue dildo. She could feel her heartbeat quicken just from the sight.

“Come over here,” Dora told her, and Delilah was only too happy to follow. The gynoid held out her hand and passed the tangle of straps on to Delilah. “Help me get this on,” she said. Up close, the tangle resolved itself into a simple enough harness design, and Delilah was all too happy to help Dora fit the strap-on firmly in place. Where possible, she steadied the cock in one hand, taking advantage of the opportunity to hold or stroke it.

Dora hopped up onto the free medbay table and settled herself onto her back. “Climb aboard,” she directed.

Delilah was so giddy with excitement that she almost couldn’t hear the voice screaming about her sister and brainwashing at all. There were notes of genuine panic there, but she hopped up onto the table and turned to face Dora, one foot braced on either side, thighs turned out, just over the blue tip.

She held herself there, conscious that her slick pussy was still drip, drip, dripping her arousal onto that blue shaft. Just in case the woman calling the shots wanted to give a go signal. Delilah smiled, the goofy smile of the truly desperate to please.

“Ride me like you need me,” said the gynoid. Delilah privately thanked her trainers for making sure she had the strength and control in her thighs for this as she impaled herself on the waiting rubber cock; she squeaked her excitement as she did. Something about this felt better than ever before.

She rode Dora as hard as she could, cumming over and over, and the woman in charge didn’t tell her to stop. Her moans joined with those of her helpless, restrained sister as both of them felt their bodies filled with pleasure, consumed with it and bound up with it.

Delilah rode Dora until exhaustion made her thighs give out and she collapsed, nearly falling from the table. Only the gynoid’s inhuman strength and reflexes prevented an accident.

And even then, all Dora did was reposition her. She clambered off the table and laid Delilah on one edge, on her back, then spread her legs, stepped in, grabbed the table for leverage and returned to fucking her.

Delilah was exhausted, but she had no way to stop the fucking, and no part of her brain except the shrill, dwindling voice wanted to. It was what the beautiful brunette wanted. Delilah wanted the brunette to be happy. She wouldn’t have cared what that happiness might do to her own body even if the idea that was a risk had occurred to her.

After almost an hour of continued use as a needy, slutty doll, Delilah was on a plateau so high that she didn’t notice when Terra left the room. She barely noticed when Dora flipped her over, her feet trembling weakly on the ground, her head face-down against the metal of the medbay table, her sweat-soaked hair sticking to both face and table.

Exhaustion came to the Justice Squadron team. Both had had some part of their minds trying to maintain the person they had been. The more pleasure that was thrown at them both, the greater the struggle of that part of them; the longer it lasted, the less energy they had to continue.

Dora broke her silence. “What’s your name?” she asked the woman impaled on her cock.

“D-Delilah…”

“Who do you follow?”

There was a moment of bewildered near-silence punctured only by the slap of synthetic skin on skin.

“Who do you follow?” Dora asked again.

“You?” Delilah was clearly trying the answer out for size.

“You follow my Princess,” Dora told her.

“I… f-follow… uhhhh…” Delilah was having difficulty managing full sentences. She might have stumbled just through exhaustion, but the constant fucking was certainly too much for her to process clearly. “Yuh… your… Princess.”

“Who are you loyal to?”

“Prin-” Delilah cried out in anguished delight as Dora’s pounding continued, “uh… prin… ceESSS…”

“Anything for her?”

“An-y-thiiiing…” The moaning was on the verge of becoming wailing. Delilah’s little voice was crumbling away, the lessons from Dora more important, more real, than the little voice denying their truth.

“Whoever you were before,” Dora told her, “doesn’t matter.”

“Does. N’t. Matter. Oh, God, that’s so-”

“Princess’ will be done.”

“Pr- Princess… wuh… be… duhhhh…”

Satisfied, Dora pulled out of the weak, quivering slave on the table in front of her. Some aspect of the programming Terra had favoured her with mingled with an impulse from her own AI and Dora brought her hand down on Delilah’s ass, creating a sharp crack of a spank that echoed briefly in the medbay.

To judge by Delilah’s dizzy burbling, she had no objection to this whatsoever.

Dora turned and walked over to the console Terra had been using. She took up position beside it, arms folded behind her back, blue dildo standing up in a perverted parody of a salute, and awaited Terra’s return.

Delilah’s tired legs finally gave out completely. She slid gracelessly from her perch bent over the medbay table to the floor and lay there, a tangle of limbs and sweat, breathing shallowly as she recovered.

Silence fell, broken only by Kennedy’s band building her heat periodically up to another orgasm. The blinking green light had become a steady green; every synapse in her brain, pleasure related or otherwise, glowed a bright pink.

*

The door to the medbay opened and Terra swept in, smiling like the cat who had the cream.

“How are my loyal subjects?” she asked. The first answer she received was a blissed-out, shallow moan from Kennedy.

Indulgently smirking, Terra shrugged off the confusion. She swept the band from Kennedy’s head and tucked it back into the storage drawer, then started unfastening the table’s restraints. “Hey, you, on the floor,” she said. “Stand to attention.”

Delilah’s body seemed to unfold; a little slow, a little shaky, showing just how drained she was, but under the Princess’ order her body found what it needed to obey. She rose from the ground and straightened into a parade-ground attention she’d never have achieved without the new devotion flooding through her.

She was conscious of the appraising look the golden-skinned woman gave her, but there was a smile on those lips; she didn’t think she’d failed. And if she had, that was the Princess’ right in any case. “Dora,” the woman was saying, “Step forward by your conquest.”

So now Delilah knew the name of the brunette who’d just fucked her into orgasmic exhaustion. Dora had clearly been hit by something earlier; she seemed just as obedient as Delilah felt.

But Delilah still couldn’t rouse herself to feel outrage at that. It felt much more as if things were now, finally, as they should be. Knowing that she’d been conditioned didn’t harm the conditioning at all.

Kennedy’s whimpering had finally subsided, the aftereffects of the pleasure the band gave her dwindling away, leaving behind only the changes in her mind. “Get up,” her Princess told her, and Kennedy beamed happily. She stretched out, briefly, still on the table; then she swung her long legs over the edge of the table and stood. After a moment of looking nervously at Terra, she crossed to stand with the other two, the naked, exhausted, blissed-out sisters flanking Dora with her blue dildo standing proud.

Terra smiled at them. “My loyal subjects,” she said. “You three have handed me the keys to become Queen.”

It was interesting to see the different ways that the three of them smiled. Kennedy was eager but seemed nervous; there was something about the way her eyes shone that said how committed she was. Delilah smiled with pride, a much more confident person but still happy she had the chance to be of service.

Dora’s smile gave nothing away. It was as artificial an expression as Terra could remember her having. She smiled. “The good news is, I’ve persuaded our Captain that the two new arrivals should be part of the crew. Not only that - I’ve volunteered us as a team for night shifts. So we’ll be able to do so much without them seeing what we’re up to. Yes?”

Her three subjects each nodded. Terra was filled with confidence, riding an incredible high. After so long waiting, she was going to be able to do what she’d been created to - and take her rightful place in charge afterwards.

“We’ll have to get them uniforms,” Dora said. “You know as well as I do, there’s a risk the XO will just wander in if she can’t sleep.”

“Soon enough, she won’t be an issue,” Terra replied. “But you’re right - until then we do run the risk that someone might comment.” She shrugs. “They’re not quite the right fit for my old outfits, and they’re missing the tail I cut holes for, but they can wear those old things and smile - can’t you, girls?”

“Yes, Highness,” the sisters chorused. Terra closed her eyes, a wide smile on her lips. “Say that again,” she ordered, and they did.

“Ahh, it’s good to be properly recognised again,” Terra purred. “Dora, you should be calling me that too. At least when nobody else is around.”

The android accepted further programming without restraint. “Yes, Highness,” she said, echoing the others.

“Captain Hunt also told me to figure out where we’re putting you both,” Terra said. She chuckled as she added “and he told me to keep you away from Lachlann until you’d recovered from your injuries.” Dora grinned in her turn.

“So. You - the fighter. Delilah, yes?”

Delilah nodded. “Yes, Highness.”

“Your sister has talents that are more crucial,” Terra told her. “She’s more important.” Neither Delilah nor Kennedy objected to this judgement; it was given by their Princess, and her loyal subjects accepted her opinions even if they had to change their own thoughts to do so. “But there may be times when she and I need to be kept safe. You and Dora have the capability; you’re going to be our bodyguards once it’s time.”

“Yes, Highness,” Delilah said again.

“You need to be taught how to behave here. I’m going to leave that to Dora - so you are Dora’s property. Understand?” Terra’s smile was kind as she rearranged how Delilah saw herself and behaved, but the words had power enough that Delilah couldn’t question them.

“Yes, Highness.”

“Dora, she’ll stay in your room. I want you to re-engage that prototype libido Lachlann was coding for you.”

“Yes, Highness,” Dora echoed.

“Keep her well trained and obedient,” Terra admonished the android, then rounded on Kennedy. “And as for you, my dear, you’re going to be with me. Your energy manipulation… that’s the key. So I’ll be training you until your power acts exactly as I want it to, on my order, without hesitation.”

Kennedy could say nothing but “Yes, Highness,” but her eager smile had grown wider. She was visibly so happy to be able to please her Princess.

“How long before ship day cycle starts, Dora?” Terra asked.

“Twelve minutes, Highness.”

Terra nodded decisively. “Right. Hide the debris away, then get to your cabins. We’ll continue properly tonight.”

*

Dora stood just to the side of the central point in the ship command centre. She had charge of the Pandora for the night shift, as Terra was off preparing for something else. But to take up a central position, when she was a loyal subject of her Princess?

It would be absurd. So Dora instead kept herself deferentially to one side, keeping an eye on the two other subjects at the ship’s consoles.

At the sensor console, Delilah stood upright, eyes focused on the holo-displays. Terra’s old umber slacks and brightly coloured tops were a little too small for her, and the muscle definition on her arms stood out, as did her chest and the shapely curves of her buttocks. Anyone on the crew who met her would see the focus, the dedication, and determination. They would assume she deserved to be at her post for hard work and her capability, and might even overlook the sensuality of her eyes and body language.

Delilah was running sensor drill for the fifth time that evening. Dora would be trying her at the weapons console next, but she wanted to be sure that Delilah’s training pushed her to almost AI levels of efficiency first.

Across at the Navigation console stood Kennedy. She was slightly more relaxed in her stance than her sister, but it was much harder to conceal the raw sexuality she moved with; she had taken on a slow, deliberate and highly erotic way of walking and carrying herself since her time under the slaver band. Dora privately believed that Terra had set the device incorrectly, leading to Kennedy adopting this style.

Her chest was less prominent in Terra’s borrowed top than for Delilah, but the pants rode low over her hips. A hint of lower cleavage through the old tail-hole showed her panties were very low-cut; the only proof they were there came when Dora judged that both Delilah and Kennedy had succeeded in their most recent drill. She touched a control stud and both human women stiffened and began to moan as the vibrators concealed in their panties activated.

True to their training and their conditioned discipline, they held their poses all the way to orgasm, before Dora judged their work was complete.

“Very good,” she said quietly. She didn’t need to be loud; both of them were listening as attentively as anyone could ask for.

“Privacy mode engaged,” Dora instructed the ship. A soft chime confirmed it was active and the lights in the command centre dimmed very slightly.

Delilah was already moving to a storage locker as Dora activated the seals on the command centre doors. Kennedy, meanwhile, was stripping. Both of the sisters knew exactly what privacy mode was used for.

Kennedy stood to attention while Delilah attached the strap-on around Dora’s hips. She watched her sister strip down.

Delilah slid three fingers into her pussy, pulling them back out slick and dripping with her juices. Wrapping her hand around the blue dildo, she quickly lubricated it; her conditioning meant that would never be a struggle.

Then Delilah turned to stand with her back to Kennedy. She spread her legs, her feet a little wider apart than her shoulders, and leaned forward, arching her back. Her hands reached back and gripped her buttocks, pulling them open gently, offering her ass.

Kennedy moved in front of Delilah, facing her. The two briefly kissed before Kennedy settled to her knees, burying her face in the wet, appetising pussy in front of her, yet another pleasure reward binding them both more deeply to their Princess.

Delilah’s eyes rolled back into her head as the gynoid drove her dildo into her waiting ass.

Outside the command centre, space looked on silently. Inside, nobody gave a thought to anything except their pleasure reward, and how important it was in the conditioning they all wanted to maintain.

The sisters’ cries of pleasure echoed long into the night.

To be continued…?