I was the oldest of six children, which was a real oddity in of itself. For over a millennium, it had been exceedingly rare for any family in the far flung Collective to have more than one child. However, my mother had wanted a large family, and my father had always acquiesced to her desires.
Of course, that hadn't kept mom from leaving when I was just 12. I can barely remember her now, but I do recall that she had a fondness for ancient Earth societies, especially the Norse Vikings, which might explain why all her children ended up with Viking names. I was stuck with Alaisiagae, a war goddess, but everyone just called me Allie.
Back when she abandoned us, I had been a skinny freckled outgoing redhead, who loved to play sports. However, that all changed, when I got stuck with raising my four brothers and baby sister. Worse yet, I had to tend to my father as well. Never a strong man, the divorce crushed him, and he became a wirehead. He just sat around the house, juicing the pleasure centers of his brain, while I had to make sure everyone was feed, clothed, and taken care of.
Dad had always been an extraordinarily submissive male, and from what little I can remember, mom had been a highly dominate woman. About a year before she cut out, I had accidently walked on them having sex. To be more precise, I had seen my naked father strapped face down on a wood cross, and my mother, dressed in a tight black leather outfit, brutally whipping him. His back was literally covered in welts, and he screamed into a ball gag each time she hit him.
Hiding in the shadows of room, I stood there for a long time watching them, in utter fascination. When mom put on a giant strapon, and went to work on my father's ass, I had seen enough, and quietly slipped out.
I never spoke about what I had witnessed with anyone. However, the image of their sadomasochistic activities had been burned into my brain, and clearly shaped my sexual desires and appetites for the rest of my life.
Until I went away to university, I had little free time to myself. However, I managed to sneak a few dates with boys. I instinctively sought out the most submissive ones, and then tormented them. My actions toward them came partly out of resentment toward my father, but mostly because I derived immense pleasure from their anguish. Like it or not, I was my mother's daughter.
I delayed college for two years, staying around to run things until my baby sister was old enough to fend for herself. Then, like mom, I was out of there. At university, I was thrilled to find young men willing to suffer at my hands, and learned new and exciting ways to humiliate and punish them.
During this time, I went from one failed relationship to another. When I became frustrated with men my age, I began trolling the local BDSM clubs for subservient older men. However, even the most compliant eventually found my wicked cravings too much for them.
In my senior year, I switched to women, but still had no luck. Even the most obedient ladies found my nature too extreme. I was destined to spend my life alone. I would never find a person that could endure my need to endlessly shame and inflict pain.
From childhood, I had set my sights on becoming a captain in the space merchants. For several reasons, it was the perfect occupation for me. First, most space freighters were only crewed by two humans—a captain and first mate. Most people found my controlling nature intolerable, so the relative isolation of a long space journey seemed ideal for me.
Second, I loved the idea of command, giving orders that had to be followed. And, in the absence of any counterviewing authority, I would have absolute control of another human for years at a time.
Upon graduation, I joined the space merchants, and endured two tours as first mate. The captains I served under couldn't stand me, though both gave me top scores. Furthermore, they recommended rapid promotion, if for no other reason than to make sure that no other captain had to endure a mission with me.
Before I took my first assignment as captain, I spent hours studying the available first mates. I carefully examined their psych evaluations. Searching for the most subservient individual possible. I finally settled on Jeff Soros, a cadet fresh out of the academia.
When Jeff first boarded my freighter, I was shocked at his imposing physical presence. His holos didn't do him justice. He was a remarkably attractive man, tall and well-muscled. However, despite his size and looks, he was the most submissive male I had ever encountered.
As we got underway, I was pleased to see that Jeff not only obeyed my every order without question, but also appeared to enjoy my harsh style of delivering them. Although he was a terrific first mate, I criticized him endlessly about his poor job performance. And, despite being strikingly handsome, I often made disparaging remarks about his appearance. No matter how far I pressed, he seemed eager for more. I found every imaginable way to humiliate and shame him. He suffered through it all without a single objection or compliant, seeming to relish my brutal behavior.
However, I was surprised, when just months into our mission, he confessed his love for me. As a reward for this emotional outburst, I had administered his first physical punishment. I gave him such a vicious whipping that it required a full day for the ship's medical facility to heal him.
From that moment on, we spent all our time together. I had our freighter's AI construct a makeshift dungeon in an empty cargo bay. We spent so much time there, that we began missing duty shifts aboard the ship. However, the AI handled every aspect of the ship's operations, so our dwindling participation wasn't a problem. Ostensibly, we were there to "monitor" the AI, but we really served no purpose other than a public show that humans were in still in charge.
As months turned into years, Jeff and I pushed each other's physical and mental limits. I had finally found a companion that not only kept pace with me, but was even more insatiable than me. My innovative and vicious punishments that would have made the sea captains of old squeamish. In a word, we were happy, at least until our freighter encountered the Imperium warship.
After being abducted by the Imperium AI controlling the strange craft, we had been transformed into alien hybrids, and forced to switch genders and copulate in the most painful way imaginable. Fortunately, a conflict broke out aboard the Imperium flagship, distracting the AI. We took the opportunity to escape.
Jeff, now a female hybrid, was pregnant, with almost three thousand hybrids. We decided to go ahead with the delivery, and found a suitable planet for the birthing. On the way there, we discovered that our own human society, the Collective, had been taken over by the very AIs that had once served it.
While raising our multitude of hybrid children, Jeff had come up with a bold, perhaps insane, plan to rescue the humans in the Collective from their traitorous AIs. However, it would require the assistance of the Imperium AI we had escaped from.
The idea of returning to the Imperium flagship made both of us queasy. Nonetheless, we left orbit in our stolen scout ship and headed retraced our escape. Our rescue plan for the Collective was fraught with serious risks and challenges, but it was the best we could think of. The first challenge was to find the flagship that had taken us captive. Hopefully, that giant warship had been disabled enough to still be where we left it. We quickly travelled to that location.
Jeff sat next to me, in the pilot's chair. Our scout ship had been programmed long ago to only respond to female Imperium DNA, so Jeff had to pilot it. I studied him carefully, amazed by the alien transformation that had so thoroughly changed him. Like me, Jeff was covered in scales, but his were blue, while mine were crimson.
As a female hybrid of the Imperium, Jeff was much larger than a human. His breasts were multi-nipple, and he had a short tale. His head was shaped like a giant hammer, with recessed yellow lizard-like eyes, and a short snout. Somehow, I found his appearance quite attractive.
As a male hybrid, I had a physically imposing physique, with powerful forearms and legs. By comparison, Jeff was far more slender and supple. I was about three meters tall, a good third higher than Jeff, and sported a longer and thicker triangular tail. Jeff had the equivalent of an alien vagina, while I had the most massive lethal-looking cock imaginable. In addition, I had four retractable tentacles, which could be used for locomotion, combat, and sex.
From the holos that we had seen of the Imperium, Jeff and I now looked very much like members of that ancient, highly advanced, but long dead alien race. However, we also retained some of our human ancestry, mostly in the form of emotions and biological drives. It was a lot to take in.
When we got close to the last known position of the alien flagship, we cut engines in hopes of remaining undetected for as long as possible. Our stolen scout ship had stealth technology. However, we had learned from the technical manuals that, if our engines were operational, the AI aboard the flagship might be able to spot us.
So, we cruised silently through space, with any luck, invisible. We sat in the command cabin, both tense, waiting for any sign of that gigantic warship. This seemed as good a time as any to broach a potentially touchy subject.
"I have been thinking about the way we refer to each other, you know, with our original pronouns and names," I said, pensively.
Jeff briefly glanced up from his instrument console, and replied, "I've given that some topic some consideration as well."
"Since we seem stuck with our reversal in genders, I suggest we begin using the proper appellations to reflect our new reality," I said, a bit apprehensively.
Jeff simply nodded in agreement. I sighed in relief.
"It might also be helpful to select gender-appropriate names too," I said.
Jeff looked thoughtful, and didn't reply for several minutes.
"Do you think we should adopt Imperium names?" Jeff queried.
We had gained a working knowledge of the spoken Imperium language, though most of it was telepathic in nature. We understood enough to now read most of the technical and historical documents in the scout ship's vast archives. So, we had a long list of Imperium monikers to choose from.
"Since we are human-Imperium hybrids, it really doesn't matter which side of the family tree we draw from," I said, chuckling.
Jeff glanced at me, and began laughing too. The sounds we made were more like snorts, sniffs, whistles, and grunts, than human laughter. Strangely, we had quickly grown accustom to this peculiarity, along with the many other changes that our new anatomies had imposed upon us.
Jeff sighed, and then said, "I would like to go with 'Freya.' It is the name my mother once told me that she would have given me, if I had been born a girl. She said it was the female equivalent of Jeffery."
Since we would soon be dealing with the humans of the Collective, it seemed appropriate to openly acknowledge our lineage as homo sapiens by taking human names. And, besides, I liked the name Freya.
