A Commanding Weakness Ch 06

Wasp - or rather, her hardlight hologram - was bending over one of medbay's examination chairs and staring very, very intently at the woman lying in it.

"Wow," the hacker remarked, eyes shining. "Engineer Sai Kabir. She's pretty hot. Cuter than her pic in the personnel files. Definitely a good choice, given what she's hiding - under here." Wasp poked the engineer in the chest. "And up here." She moved her hand to Sai's head. "Doc, how's she coming along?"

Dr. Hiraga was standing just a short distance away. She was dressed in her usual uniform, but the unnaturally stiff, still way she held herself made her seem more like a mannequin than a person.

"Subject Sai Kabir's responses are well within expected parameters," Dr. Hiraga replied. Her voice was completely empty of any emotion - a far cry from her usual, friendly bedside manner. "Neurological readings indicate that her thought patterns are about seventy percent subjugated at present. There are no predicted obstacles to successful indoctrination."

"Seventy percent, huh?" Wasp mused. "That's a good number. A fun number."

"Engineer Kabir is the fourth subject today," Dr. Hiraga continued. "As per Stress Relief Officer Vasser's protocols, we are proceeding with extreme caution to minimize the risk of alerting the rest of the cr-"

"Yeah, I don't care right now," Wasp interrupted. She sighed at her brainwashed puppet as the doctor fell silent. "I thought I was making Vasser more fun! Here's what the new stress relief officer doesn't quite understand yet: extreme caution is so boring. We're... what? A quarter done? A third? It's taking forever! I want to have fun - and this girl is the ticket."

Under normal circumstances, Sai Kabir would never have tolerated anybody speaking about her or her captain that way. The engineer was a serious, career-minded woman - young, but she had hopes of climbing the rungs quickly. That meant she was determined to do her part in stopping Wasp and bringing the hacker to justice. But these weren't normal circumstances.

A little earlier that day, Sai had reported to medbay for what was, she'd been told, a routine medical procedure. An inoculation of some kind. With no reason to be suspicious, she'd arrived exactly when scheduled and had helpfully allowed Dr. Hiraga to strap her into the examination chair so that she could inject something into her ear.

After that, everything had been spirals. They had flickered to life behind Sai's eyes, so bright and disorienting they left no room for other thoughts. Then, whispers; new patterns of thought and feeling, written directly into her mind by what she was seeing. Trigger words. New beliefs. New responses. Bit by bit, over the span of little more than an hour, Sai Kabir was being completely and totally brainwashed.

She hadn't resisted. She hadn't been able to. She hadn't even realized what was happening until it was far, far too late.

Wasp knelt down to the level of her face and started talking to her, even though she knew perfectly well Sai couldn't hear her. "You know, I never did like playing with dolls. They don't react. It's no fun. Much more fun making the other kids cry. My own personal Alliance warship is way, way too good of a toy to pass up on, but frankly I was enjoying myself more when there was a little pushback. A little resistance."

Sai Kabir's head slumped slightly to one side. A thin trickle of drool was running down from one of the corners of her mouth. Her eyes were huge, vacant orbs, lit from behind by the shimmering, holographic spiral that was reflecting on their insides. She comprehended nothing at all of what Wasp was telling her.

"And you? Well, I was digging around, and I found a few fun little programs buried in your holodeck files. Turns out that everyone around here uses that thing to work out their little kinks. So I figured: why not take you out to play before you're completely zonked? Call it a stress test, or something." Wasp stretched forward and hungrily kissed the side of Sai's face, then giggled. "Anyway, consider yourself lucky! Maybe you'll be the little mouse that manages to wriggle free." She glanced at Dr. Hiraga. "Shut her implant off."

The doctor obeyed; she tapped a few times on the dataslate in her hand, and the unnatural light in Sai's eyes disappeared.

"Wakey wakey!" Wasp sang out. "Lots to do, engineer."

Full consciousness came to Sai Kabir agonizingly slowly. It was like struggling to wake up from the worst nap imaginable. Her thoughts were treacle, and after so long being forced open, her eyelids were impossibly heavy. Paralysis held her in its grip; even after she had regained some semblance of independent thought, it took what felt like an eternity for her to be able to lift her hands and rub the sleep from her eyes. Reconstructing what had brought her to the examination chair took even longer. All of Sai's memories felt like nothing more than figments of dreams, and most of them were warped beyond recognition.

Then, eventually, the medbay around her came back into focus - and she saw Wasp.

That was the shot of adrenaline Sai needed. She'd have recognized the hacker anywhere, with her neon hair, scruffy clothes, and wild, malevolent eyes. Recognition brought with it alarm. She could sense that Wasp's presence here meant something was very, very wrong. Sai gathered all her strength and, with all the coordination of a staggering drunk, managed to somehow force herself to her feet.

"Dr. Hiraga?" Sai croaked; her throat was painfully dry. "Why is this-" She broke off after looking at the doctor. It was immediately obvious she wasn't going to be of any help. Sai slammed her palm on her comm badge. "Engineer Sai Kabir to-" She broke off again. No chirrup of acknowledgment. Her badge wasn't working. "Fuck," she muttered to herself. "G-gotta get to the bridge."

Sai lifted one foot to take a step toward the door and almost fell over. The room around her was still spinning.

"Woah, careful!" Wasp laughed, reaching out to help steady her. "Why such a hurry, engineer?"

Sai pulled away from her sharply, even though it threatened to make her topple. After throwing Wasp a fierce glare, she fixed her eyes on the door. "Gotta warn the captain," she muttered to herself through gritted teeth. The words helped her find some clarity amidst the awful fog filling her head.

"Warn the captain?" Wasp reached out and grabbed Sai's chin, forcing the engineer to look at her. "But I am the captain, silly. I'm your new captain."

"No, you are fucking n-" Sai froze mid-sentence. As she looked at Wasp, something was coming back to her. A memory, deeply buried, now being dredged out of the abyss.

Wasp was her new captain.

It didn't seem possible. It made no sense. But somehow, Sai couldn't bring herself to doubt it either. Wasp was her new captain. She just was, and Sai just knew. That certain conviction sat uncomfortably alongside the fast-fading sense of alarm and urgency she'd been experiencing just heartbeats before. With the adrenaline draining from her bloodstream, she was left staring at Wasp in hopeless confusion.

"You're... my new captain?"

"That's right," Wasp replied, a huge, shit-eating grin on her face. "The order just came through from headquarters. I'm the new captain."

"You're... the new captain," Sai repeated, tasting this new truth in her mouth. The absurdity of remembering something that she was now being told had just happened was lost on her. The truth was settling in her head, but it brought with it a barrage of contradictions. "But... you're our enemy."

"Not anymore," Wasp told her.

"Oh." Sai nodded slowly. Wasp wasn't their enemy anymore. That made things simpler. "OK. What about Captain Vasser?"

Wasp giggled. "Oh, don't worry about her."

"Right." Sai nodded again. She didn't have to worry about her. This was starting to make more sense. Or at least, she couldn't seem to figure out why it didn't.

"Hm?" Wasp pursed her lips disapprovingly, although the glee never left her eyes. "Engineer, is that how you address your captain?"

Sai's breath caught. "No, sir!" Even though she was still struggling to pull herself together, she managed to bring her feet together, straighten her back, and salute. "Sorry, captain."

Wasp just giggled in sheer delight. That struck Sai as a strange way for a commanding officer to conduct herself - but it really wasn't her place to question.

"Glad we're on the same page," Wasp said, after a moment. "I could get used to this. Anyway! Take off your shirt."

Sai did a double take. "C-captain?"

"You heard me," Wasp insisted. "Take off your shirt."

Two patches of deep red appeared on Sai's brown cheeks. "Yes, captain."

She reached down and lifted her uniform shirt off over her head. Beneath, she was wearing something that, while not at all against regulations, was likely to raise a few eyebrows. Wrapped around Sai's chest several times was a length of white linen, fastened so tight it was evidently compressing her natural form into a sleeker, less pronounced shape.

The engineer was binding her breasts.

Sai was practically squirming as Wasp ogled her chest. She preferred that people didn't know, and she strongly preferred her breasts not being the object of attention or interest. But there was no helping it. Wasp was her captain.

"Now take that off too," Wasp ordered, pointing.

At that, Sai stiffened visibly. "Captain, that's... I don't think..."

"Engineer?" Wasp affected shock. "I gave you an order."

"That's..." Sai twitched. Disobeying made her uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as what Wasp was suggesting. "I can't do that, sir."

Wasp snorted. "Wow. I didn't figure you for insubordination. You really do have a complex about this."

Sai blushed even deeper. "I-It's not insubordination! Captain, Alliance regulations clearly impose several limits on the orders starship captains can issue - violating basic bodily dignity being one of them. I believe you're crossing that line."

"You do, huh?" Wasp's grin returned. "I guess you're right about that. But I think you might have forgotten something, engineer: those limits don't apply if I say 'Captain says'. Then, it's an order you absolutely have to follow."

"They... don't?" Sai said uncertainly. That didn't sound right to her. Not at all. But she hardly had the regulations memorized. If anyone would know better than her, it was the captain.

"No," Wasp giggled at her own improvisation. "They don't."

"R-right." Sai was starting to remember now. It had just taken a moment, like how it had taken her a moment to remember that Wasp was the captain now. "But you didn't say-"

"Captain says: take that off," Wasp interrupted, pointing at Sai's chest.

Sai shuddered in horror. That was the last thing she'd wanted to hear. She would have taken any alternative - but there was no choice. She couldn't possibly disobey an order like that.

"Y... yes, sir."

With utmost reluctance, Sai reached behind herself and untucked the ends of her binding cloth. Immediately, the whole thing unraveled and started to slip down her body, and her chest sprung free - exposing the very reason for her breast-binding.

Sai's chest was absolutely huge.

Wasp made no attempt whatsoever to hide her lurid enjoyment as she ogled Sai's bare chest. The more she looked, the redder the engineer became, but it was soon clear that Wasp had more in mind than just staring.

"OK," the hacker said, "you can put your shirt back on."

Sai nodded gratefully, and rushed to start gathering up her binding cloth - until Wasp stopped her.

"No, no", she chided. "Captain says: you can only put your shirt back on."

Sai shuddered again, but obeyed. Putting her shirt back on proved to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, having anything at all to cover herself was a relief. On the other hand, she'd made sure her uniform was sized to fit properly over her binder, not without it. Now that her binding cloth was strewn uselessly across the ground, her shirt was woefully inadequate to contain her chest. Sai had to struggle and strain to get it on, and once she did, the shirt was stretched to its absolute limits. It looked like it might pop a button at any moment. Somehow, the way her shirt fit without her binding cloth made her chest look even bigger than it had when she wasn't wearing it.

Sai's face was burning hot. She wanted the ground to open up and swallow her.

"Perfect," Wasp mocked. "Alright. Time for your mission. I'm sending you to the ship's canteen. But first, take this."

She gestured to Dr. Hiraga, who then offered Sai an earpiece communicator. The engineer took the small, transparent device and nested it into her ear. Her badge didn't seem to be working right now anyway. Earpieces were sometimes used as a replacement for faulty badges, although their main purpose was discretion. If Wasp talked to her using this, nobody else would be able to hear.

"Great!" Wasp said. "Now get going, engineer."

Sai saluted again, but then frowned. "What... am I actually doing, captain? What's the mission?"

"Oh, don't worry about that." Wasp waved a dismissive hand. "I'll update you on the way. It's urgent, you see. Very important. Now hop to it."

"Yes, sir!"

If it was that important, Sai knew there was no time for more questions. This could be a chance to distinguish herself. She turned to leave medbay and - after one last uncomfortable glance down at her chest - stepped out into the corridor.

***

Puberty had been, by far, the worst time in Sai Kabir's life - and it was all thanks to her chest. She'd been told dozens of times, by dozens of other girls, that they were jealous of her amazing growth spurts. There was absolutely nothing to be jealous of. Over the course of her teenage years, Sai's breasts had grown to become almost cartoonishly large. They had no precedent in her family, and totally dwarfed the rest of her figure.

And as far as most people seemed to be concerned, they dwarfed her personality, too.

Her chest was all anyone else ever seemed to notice. It was all they looked at - no, all they stared at. Had they thought she couldn't tell? Sai could always tell, and it was always utterly humiliating. And they made the most crass assumptions about her, ignoring all her seriousness, all her intelligence, all her effort. It was maddening. Objectification like that was supposed to be a thing of the 20th century, but it had plagued Sai everywhere she'd went. There was nothing she could do except change what other people saw.

Binding had been an easy choice. Not a comfortable one - keeping that length of cloth wrapped so tightly around her chest all day was desperately unpleasant. But it worked. With her chest bound, she'd been taken seriously again. She'd distinguished herself as a smart, professional, career-minded engineer, and won a posting on the Inyx, one of the most prestigious ships in the Alliance. She even enjoyed the respect of the hard-headed chief engineer, an older woman she was quietly enjoying having a crush on.

It was everything she'd ever wanted, and everything her ridiculous chest had stood in the way of. The only reason she hadn't had surgery was because a medical incapacitation like that would have risked putting her ambitions on hold. As she'd begun her starship engineering career, Sai had felt sure of one thing above all else: she hated her chest, and she never wanted anyone else to see how big it truly was.

Then the fantasies had started.

Fantasies of being exposed. Fantasies of being stared at. Fantasies of all the people who knew her only as a serious professional suddenly seeing just what her body was really like. At first they'd just crept in, but soon they were all-consuming. Now, it was all Sai could get off to. Whenever she got worked up, she just couldn't get her exhibitionist fantasies out of her head.

And fuck, she was so ashamed of it.

Sai was keenly, painfully aware of what anyone would say if they knew what was going on in her head. She didn't want to deal with any of that Freudian psychobabble. She just wanted those fantasies gone - but that was easier said than done. Once Sai had realized how bad it was getting, she'd tried ignoring them. It hadn't worked. The more she let herself get pent up, the worse it was. So, she'd tried indulging instead, hoping that whatever sick part of her brain was obsessed with her own tits would eventually get bored of the idea. She'd even made custom holodeck scenarios to try and get it out of her system.

That hadn't worked. That really hadn't worked. Getting a little taste of what it might feel like to walk through the Inyx's decks with her tits on display had lit a fire within Sai like nothing else. She wasn't a virgin, but sex paled compared to that feeling. It just couldn't satisfy her the same way.

Actually living it turned out to be a hundred times more intense.

As Sai rushed through the bowels of the Inyx, her face was so hot she could feel her skin scorching the air. She tried to keep her mind on the mission, but that was impossible. More than anything else, she was hyper-conscious of her own chest. She knew exactly how she looked. There was no way she could ignore it. Fuck, she could see her chest bouncing with every step she took.

She wasn't wearing her binder.

Her uniform barely fit her chest.

And everyone could see.

The first time she'd turned a corner and found someone else walking towards her, Sai had almost moaned. They'd stared, of course. Who wouldn't? She looked obscene. Their eyes had felt like twin lasers on her body, scouring her with impossible heat and treasonous shocks of pleasure. Sai tried to tell herself that she wasn't really enjoying this. That she was an Alliance engineer on a mission, and that was all.

She knew it was a lie. As deeply, painfully ashamed as she was, it also felt incredible.

Sai was fighting to maintain her dignity and resist the siren allure of her fetish. But she was losing.

It didn't get any easier. A ship like the Inyx was never truly quiet. There were always people coming and going, and each one made the delicious, sinful pleasure in her body redouble.

They all stared. Every single one.

Sai couldn't help imagining what they might be thinking. No, worse than imagining. Fantasizing. The ones she didn't know barely even glanced at her face, and that was a kind of mercy. Maybe they wouldn't recognize her after this. They'd be left wondering about the mysterious crewman showing off her incredible body on deck seventeen. But it was humiliating, too, in a way that stroked all of Sai's darkest dreams.

It was like she was nothing but a pair of tits to them.

But it was infinitely worse with people she did know. There were three or four of those; each time, they'd glance up at her face, just for a fraction of a second, and then do a kind of double-take. In that tiny moment, Sai could sense their mental image of her being completely rewritten. She could feel their shock. Their judgment. Their lust. She could hear the whispered conversations they'd have later, with others, about just how big her chest was. In Sai's mind's eye, the rewriting was permanent. They'd never look at her quite the same way again.

Fuck. Why did that turn her on so much?

After far, far too long, she reached the turbolifts. Sai could have wept with relief as the door opened and she threw herself inside, finally free from the burning eyes of her comrades.

A moment after she touched the button for the canteen deck, she realized she wasn't alone.

There was someone else there with her. A petty crewman, from the look of her uniform. Conscious of Sai's superior rank, she was doing everything she could to remain calm, composed, and respectful.

Unsuccessfully. Sai could see her glancing down at Sai's chest out of the corner of her eye. It was driving her crazy. Fuck. She could feel herself soaking through her underwear.