The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

It was the ninth week of the Signet’s close-orbit of LB-1 when McKay picked up an unusual signal from their electromagnetic receivers.

“Captain: I’m getting a Space Force navigation beacon signal. It’s at the end of detectable range, but it’s matching the Space Force profile—allowing for the time dilation. High Doppler shift, so it’s coming in our general direction but I don’t know their course yet. We might get a better read in an hour or two as we move in orbit.”

Reine sat up in her command chair. “Which vessel?”

“Don’t know. The vessel ID is not in our data banks.” McKay shrugged. “That’s not unexpected. There is a chunk of the signal that I can’t decode, though. That implies to me that the beacon protocol was extended after we left Earth.” She looked at her Captain. “What should we do?”

Reine smiled. “Remember when we launched the two supra-light-capable lifeboats two weeks ago, sending them towards the event horizon and detonating them once they were far enough away?”

“Of course.” McKay mulled for a moment. “Oh, I see, I think. We can pretend to be a derelict?”

“Almost, Frances. Almost. I’ll let you figure it out.” Reine paused. “They can detect our beacon, I’d assume?”

“With a later-generation ship? Definitely. They’ve probably picked us up a while back. Mind you,” McKay grinned, “I wonder what they make of our time dilation?”

Aboard the Space Command ship “Mustang”, the crew was chewing on that very issue.

“It’s the Signet, all right, Captain: The navigation beacon signal is very clear. But they’re at a 1/50th time dilation relative to us. That seems... unexpected? They must be much deeper in the gravity well than I’d expect them to be. So there must be someone aboard, keeping the ship running—or it wouldn’t last very long.”

Captain Indira Rau heard the tone of hope in her navigator’s voice. Lieutenant Kate McKay had her own personal reasons for being on the crew searching for the fate of the long-lost Signet.

“Understood, Lieutenant. Still, let’s not make any assumptions.” Rau scrutinized the ship’s compact navigation screen. “We still don’t have a range or course on them, do we?”

“Well, they’re moving so slowly relative to us,” shrugged McKay. “Remember, they haven’t even traveled for half an hour since we detected their signal a day ago. We don’t have much of a baseline.”

“Give me your best guess,” Rau encouraged.

“Assuming they’re at the 1:50 meridian in the well, and there’s nothing else relativistic going on—and we still don’t know that much about LB-1, so I would not rule that out, by the way—we can probably locate and contact them once we’re at the 1:2 meridian, which will be about three days from now at our current course and velocity. Obviously, voice comms will be unworkable—from their point of view, we’d be absurdly speeded-up—but we can send text. It’s probably better anyway, given the interference from LB-1’s radiation.”

“Thank you. I won’t hold you to that estimate, but let’s use it as the basis for our planning.” Rau chewed on her finger. “Okay, let’s start seeding a sensor field. Drop one sensor globe in a stable orbit every three hours. I’m sure the Signet will have gathered a lot of data on LB-1, but there’s no guarantee we’ll be able to get it; we may have to build our own. And if they really are at the 1:50 meridian, I’m not going there without a damn good reason.”

She looked at her chief engineer. “What do you think, Donnie?”

Commander Donald Shatner shrugged. “We have ample engine power to get in and out, even at that meridian. The Signet has much more powerful engines than we do, but it’s also much bigger; their thrust-to-mass isn’t even a third of ours. If they can hold there, and I assume they have done so for a while, we can get in and get out with plenty of margin.” He paused. “Just remember: we aren’t going to be able to bring the Signet out with us. She has to come out under her own power, or not at all.”

Rau nodded.

“Okay, let’s set up for an orbit at the 1:2 meridian, and see what we can find out.” She paused. “Kate, I know this is what you were hoping for—but we don’t know what has gone on, or even if anyone is still alive. Don’t get your hopes up too far, okay?”

“Understood, Captain.”

Over the next hour on the Signet, McKay and Reine got a clear baseline of the new ship’s travel.

“They’re setting up for an orbit,” confirmed McKay. “It’s obvious that they know we’re here. It’s a shallow orbit, approximately coplanar with ours, around the 1:2 meridian, I think. In fifteen minutes or so, they’ll be able to detect us directly if their sensors are comparable to ours.”

Reine looked at her straps-and-mesh outfit. “Perhaps it’s time for me to change into something a little less formal.” She smiled. “They’re going to hail us when they get in range. Call me when that happens.” She left the bridge and headed for her stateroom.

McKay watched the plot of the new ship’s navigational beacon streak across the display. She knew that the apparent speed was just an effect of time dilation, but it was still somewhat intimidating. The beacon slowed down as the ship, whatever it was, entered the gravity well proper and started to reduce the relative time dilation between them.

McKay saw a message flash onto her console, and hit her communicator. “Captain, message from the other ship. It’s a Space Force ship called the ‘Mustang’.”

“Acknowledged. On my way.”

McKay stared at the message:

“FROM: SF MUSTANG TO: SF SIGNET: WHAT IS YOUR STATUS? CAN WE ASSIST? PLEASE EXPLAIN APPARENT REDUCED TIME DILATION. CPT RAU, END”

Reine peered over McKay’s shoulder. “Well, our graviton field has confused them, as expected. Let’s send them a message back.

“FROM: SF SIGNET TO: SF MUSTANG: SHIP OPERATIONAL APART FROM SUPRALIGHT. TWO CREW. DILATION DUE TO EXPERIMENTAL GRAVITON FIELD. ARE YOU WILLING TO JOIN OUR ORBIT AND DILATION? IF SO, WELCOME. STREAMING CHART OF LB-1 GRAV FLUX TO YOU. CPT REINE, END”

“Send them the chart we’ve compiled so far, Number One. It’ll help them plot a safe approach.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”

“Maxine, we need to conceal our conversions. Ensure that any of them in the crew spaces are fully covered, I don’t want any skin showing. They have to pass visually as androids.”

“Yes, Captain.”

A new message flashed back on the screen.

“It’s rather unfair, really,” Reine mused. “We get their messages instantly, and they have to wait hours for replies from us. I bet it’s frustrating to Captain Rau.”

Reine would have won that bet. The initial reply from Signet had posed many more questions than it had answered, and Rau was feeling impatient.

“All right. So there are two people there, including—apparently—Captain Reine. For a ship the size of Signet, how the hell does a two person crew keep her running? And what happened to the other five hundred plus people on board?”

Commander Fournier, her 2ic, was similarly concerned.

“And they’re asking us to rock up to a modern day Marie Celeste deep in the gravity well with some experimental graviton field reducing dilation—and, I should point out, we’ll have to experience the full 1:170 dilation and gravity of their meridian before we get inside their field, even assuming we can in fact fit in there.“

“But Captain, this is what we are here for,” Lt McKay softly reminded her commander. “We’ve found the Signet. There are people on board who can answer the questions we have about what happened to her. And just that gravitational chart alone means that, from a scientific point of view, our mission is already successful.”

“I still don’t like it. I want to know a lot more.” Rau was silent for a moment. “All right. Let’s try to get visual comms. McKay, plot a course to a 1:50 meridian orbit. Donnie—any concerns about us at that level of gravity?”

Shatner shook his head. “Plenty in reserve, Captain.”

Fournier raised his hand. “We’ll be burning many days of our mission budget down there, Captain—two days per hour spent, even if we don’t go deeper into the well.”

“Understood. I’m okay with that.” Rau checked her planner. “We had two months Earth time budgeted for searching around LB-1. We can go a bit over if we need to—I can’t see us doing anything else here after meeting with Signet, if we do indeed choose to do so. And our budget was mostly focused on supplies—and since we’ll only experience a couple of days here at most, we’ll actually be in a better position for the homeward trip.”

She sat up in her chair. “Message Signet that we’re moving to the 1:50 meridian to establish visual comms in common time dilation. Nav, take us there.”

The viewscreen in Captain Reine’s quarters started to flash, indicating an incoming video request. Reine, who had been waiting patiently, hit the “ACCEPT” button.

The viewscreen showed a strong-featured, handsome Indian woman wearing a Space Force uniform subtly different in style from Reine’s own.

“Captain Reine? I am Captain Indira Rau of the Mustang. Our greetings to you, and we are relieved that your ship was not in fact lost—as has been assumed for many years.” The video briefly glitched, no doubt due to the imperfect time dilation match.

“Captain Rau, a pleasure.” Reine paused. “I expect you have many questions, but I have one first, if I may. If you believed us lost, do I infer that our crew did not make it back?”

Rau paused for a moment. “I am afraid not. We have heard nothing from the Signet since you left direct comms range. Did your crew abandon ship? If so, why?”

“Our supralight drive was disabled by a swarm of small meteors that overwhelmed our defenses, and killed a number of the crew,” Reine explained. “The lifeboats were the only supralight-capable vessels we had, though of course not as fast as the Signet would have been. The remaining crew left more than three months ago, by our time—ten to twelve years for you. I would have expected them back in detection range after two years of travel.”

Rau shook her head. “I am sorry. We never found them.” She looked at Reine. “May I ask, why did you two stay?”

“I had not been relieved of my command,” Reine explained. “The ship was still serviceable, so I stayed with it.”

“And I stayed with my Captain,” McKay said, entering the camera view. “My view was that two of us had a much better chance of survival until rescue than only one.”

“Sissy!” Lt McKay on the Mustang jumped forward. Rau graciously moved aside. “You’re alive!”

“I am,” McKay confirmed, smiling. “Hello, Katie. I’ve missed you, little sis.”

“I’ve missed you too.” Kate started to tear up. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, K.” Frances scrutinized her sister. “You know, you’re older than me now. It’s the first time that I’ve had a big sister! Is that gray in your hair?”

“Hah! I should spank you for that cheek.”

Captain Rau gently cleared her throat. Lt McKay moved back.

“Sorry, Captain. I got carried away.”

“It’s okay, Kate.” Rau addressed Reine again. “You know, Captain, if there are only two of you, we could fit you aboard the Mustang and bring you back to Earth.”

“That could work, yes,” Reine agreed. “Do you want to dock at one of our side ports? You would be safely inside our graviton field. Also, we have large amounts of fresh food from our hydroponics which you’d be welcome to share.” She scrutinized the Mustang’s image on her scanner. “That’s a fairly tiny ship you have. How much crew does it need?”

“Only eight,” Rau confirmed. “We do a lot with AI control now. Space Command moved away from ship designs like the Signet’s—they were just too expensive to build and crew.” She sighed. “But I have to say, fresh food does sound tempting, one year into our journey. We don’t have space for hydroponics, as you no doubt guessed.”

She looked at the nav plot that Kate McKay had drawn up. “We should be on final approach to Signet in four hours, your time. If we run into problems, we’ll boost back to this meridian and try again.”

“Understood. I’ll get the kitchen to start on dinner,” Reine smiled. “See you soon. Reine out.”

The Mustang was on final approach to the Signet. The Mustang’s crew had observed the disconcerting effect of the Signet apparently speeding up and running away from them as they descended further into the gravity well, but the orbital change had been carefully calculated, and they ended up matching velocities and position one orbit later.

Mustang very slowly moved towards the Signet. At this range, tens of miles, the full size of the older ship became apparent.

“Magnificent,” Fournier breathed. “They just don’t build them like that anymore.”

“For a good reason,” said Shatner, drily.

The grizzled Chief Sobchak had joined the bridge crew, leaving his usual nav/sensor space. “I was a fresh-faced recruit when that ship launched. Never thought I’d see her in deep space, let alone in a place like this.” The visual radiation from LB-1’s event horizon made an eerie, dramatic backdrop.

Rau checked their position. “Run a scan of the Signet, please Walter. I don’t want any nasty surprises.”

“Aye, Captain.” Sobchak set up a program. “Scanning... now.”

Two seconds later, a bright blue beam shot from one of the stubby towers on the edge of the Signet. The Mustang rocked slightly, and a whole panel of indicators lit up red.

“High energy laser!” Fournier checked his instruments. “Hit our close-range sensor array. The array is... gone. It’s going to be days to repair, if we can repair it at all.

“Check for other damage!” Rau hit her console. “Signet, this is Mustang: cease fire!”

Reine’s distressed face appeared on the viewscreen. “Captain! I am so sorry. Your scan tripped our automatic defenses. The varying time dilation confused the computer, and it thought we were under attack.”

Rau ground her teeth. “Tell me you’ve disabled the defenses now.”

“Of course I have. Is anybody injured?”

“No, it’s just our close-range sensor array—which has been slagged.” Rau leaned over to Shatner. “Can we still dock safely?”

“Yes, Captain. We didn’t activate the microwave radar for the scan, and it’s located elsewhere on the ship; it’s still functioning.”

“All right, we proceed with docking as planned.” Rau glared at Reine. “Please give us access to your spare parts stores on arrival, Captain.”

“Naturally. Again, I’m very sorry. See you soon. Reine out.”

Rau turned off the viewscreen and looked around her bridge. “Thoughts?”

“Suspicious, but plausible, Captain.” Fournier was scrolling through specs of the Signet. “They’d be stupid not to have automated defenses turned on this deep in LB-1, not least because of the meteor damage they mentioned earlier. As to the system thinking our scan was an attack...” He shrugged. “We’ve advanced ten years in active sensors, Signet didn’t have our nav beacon in their records, there really is a ripple in the time dilation this close to the ship—yes, it is plausible.“

“Anyone else?”

Sobchak cleared his throat. “I can’t help but notice that we’ll now be docking onto a ship about which we know practically nothing—we only have the Captain’s word on their situation, and no way to confirm it.”

“Commander McKay has supported her Captain,” Lt McKay noted, bristling.

Sobchak nodded in acknowledgement. “There is that, yes, Lieutenant.”

“Still, I don’t like it.” Rau thought for a minute. “I want at least two of us to stay on Mustang once we dock.”

“I’ll stay,” volunteered Sobchak. “I can make a start on the sensor array repairs.”

“Good. I’d like an officer to stay too. Any volunteer?”

Surgeon-Commander Osei climbed up from the lower deck space into the bridge. “I’ll stay for now. I am professionally curious about Captain Reine and Commander McKay’s state of mind, but I think you would get a better initial read on it without me—if a doctor was present, they’d likely be more guarded.”

“That makes sense, thank you Efua.” Rau looked around the bridge. “Commence docking, please.”

The six crew from Mustang waited for atmospheric pressure to equalize, then Fournier cautiously opened the airlock door to enter the Signet. The air smelled different from Mustang—fresher, perhaps.

A teal-colored humanoid robot was waiting for them.

“I am Maxine. I will take you to the Captain.” Her cyan scanner surveyed the six people. “I was informed that we expected eight people.”

“Two of our crew will remain on the ship, to effect repairs,” Fournier explained.

Maxine’s “face” was impassive. “I understand. Follow me please.”

The crew trailed behind the robot, looking around at the ship as they proceeded through it.

“Very retro,” commented Chief Tours. “I suppose that with five hundred people, you quickly run out of ideas to make the spaces interesting.”

“Ideas—and money,” added Senior Chief Ortega. “But I would like to see the engineering spaces, if we have time.”

“I understand your interest, Senior Chief.” Rau was taking long strides to keep up with Maxine. “Still, we can’t dilly-dally here. The time dilation is huge.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Maxine led them to a shuttle car station. “Please enter this car; it will take us to the officer’s dining room.”

The six crew joined the robot, and held on to the supports as the car accelerated down the length of the Signet.

Commander Frances McKay was waiting for them at the arrival station. Kate leapt out of the car and hugged her sister.

“I thought you were dead!” She tried a glare, but couldn’t hold it. “Don’t ever do that again, you... you bampot!” She punched Frances’s arm.

Frances laughed, quietly, stroking her sister’s hair. “I’ll try not to, Katie.” She looked at the other crew. “Welcome to the Signet.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Rau looked around. “This is an impressive ship. I’ve seen the blueprints any number of times, but you don’t appreciate the size and spaciousness until you’re actually in it.”

“I guess I take it for granted after so long being here.” Frances released her sister. “The kitchen robots have dinner ready. Maxine says that two of your crew are staying on the Mustang? We can send food over, if you like.”

“That would be good of you.” Rau gestured forwards. “Shall we?”

Frances showed the six guests into the dining room. Captain Reine, impeccably groomed, was standing at the head of the table.

“Welcome, Captain Rau. Welcome, crew of the Mustang. I am Captain Reine; you have already met my 2ic, Commander McKay. And may I say again, how sorry I am about the sensor incident.”

“Thank you for receiving us, Captain,” replied Rau formally. “I am Captain Rau, as you know; with me is Commander Fournier, my 2ic; Commander Shatner, my head of engineering; Lieutenant McKay; Senior Chief Ortega and Chief Tours. Surgeon-Commander Osei and Chief Sobchak send their apologies; they are working on repairs.”

“Please sit.” Reine gestured to Rau to sit at Reine’s right hand, and the other crew took their seats in rank order. By unspoken consent, the McKays took seats together at the foot of the table.

Two robots entered, and started to serve a salad.

“Oh my, fresh greens,” Fournier sighed. “I can’t tell you how good this looks after a year of ration packs and vitamin pills.”

Reine laughed. “So, not everything in the past ten years has been progress?”

“Not everything, certainly.” Fournier gestured around the dining room. “You have an amazing ship, Captain.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Maxine appeared, bearing a bottle of wine, and Reine gestured for her to serve the table.

“Not for me, thank you,” Rau said, covering her glass. Maxine gave a small nod of acknowledgement and moved down the table.

“Try the fresh orange dressing,” Reine advised. “It’s quite something.” She added a serving to her own salad in emphasis. Commander McKay followed her lead.

“Tell me, Captain,” said Rau, having savored several mouthfuls of well-prepared salad, “are you ready to return to Earth? Personally, I mean.”

Fournier, well attuned to his Captain’s phrasing, slowed his chewing to ensure he heard the response.

Reine looked thoughtful. “An interesting question, Captain. We have accumulated a huge amount of knowledge about LB-1—and of course, the efficacy of our graviton field in cushioning ships against gravity and relativity. Do I want this knowledge returned to Earth? Of course. Would I want to be there to conduct further research based on it? Absolutely. But against that, what if I were to send the data back with you and McKay, stay longer and build up additional knowledge? I have no real attachments on Earth anymore.”

Rau smiled, without humor. “As the senior captain between us, Captain, I could actually relieve you of your command and bring you home that way.”

“You could! You could indeed!” Reine laughed. “Though, are you the senior captain because of time experienced in rank, or am I the senior captain because I was a captain when you were still a fresh lieutenant? Doesn’t time dilation make things interesting?”

Fourier winced. He doubted that the engineers could tell what was going on, and Lieutenant McKay was absorbed in a discussion with her sister, but this felt like being ringside at a very genteel bare-knuckle fight.

The robots cleared the salad away, and started to serve the main course; synthesized venison with grilled asparagus and tomatoes. The scent of the food made the Mustang’s crews’ mouths water.

Reine turned to Rau. “Captain, would you be so good as to propose a toast?”

“But of course.” Rau pushed back her chair and stood, the crew following her lead. “To the missing crew of the Signet. Thank you for your dedication and bravery. You will be long remembered.” She sipped at her ice water.

“Long remembered,” echoed the others, dutifully, sipping at their glasses too.

Fourier saw a slight narrowing of Reine’s eyes as she resumed her seat.

“This is great, Captain,” said Chief Tours, happily munching on his asparagus. “Perhaps we made a big mistake going away from hydroponics for long missions.”

“Perhaps you did, Chief.” Reine took a bite from her own plate. “We would be very happy to give you a tour of the hydroponics bays, if you would like? I think Captain Rau and I have a good amount of administration to do after dinner, and I know that you don’t want to burn too much time here, so maybe I could get Maxine to guide you around the bays.”

Fourier saw a slight nod from Rau. “That sounds ideal, Captain. Thank you.”

“And don’t be afraid of plucking a few grapes, tomatoes, or lemons,” Reine smiled. “We’re massively over-provisioned now, we won’t miss them.”

“Captain: do you want me to take them?” asked Commander McKay.

“No, thank you Frances. I’m sure that you and the Lieutenant have a lot to catch up on. Probably more interesting to both of you than hydroponics.”

“Yes Captain, thank you,” beamed Lt McKay.

Rau was actually enjoying the venison—she was a vegetarian, but still appreciated the flavor of meat as long as it didn’t come from a dead animal. There were many questions buzzing in her mind, but she realized that they wouldn’t get answered by Reine in a public forum, so she concentrated on the food.

“Captain,” began Shatner, “how did you come across the graviton field? I’ve not seen anything like it, even in the theoretical literature.”

“My engineering genius, Lt Cdr Nelson.” Reine sighed. “A wonderful brain. Couldn’t socialize or strategize for the life of him, but give him a focused problem and he went at it like a terrier. He spent weeks poring over our sensors, seeing how graviton interaction changed qualitatively at denser levels of the event horizon. He figured out that a relatively weak field of the right shape could substantially reduce the apparent gravitational and relativistic effect—and of course, where we were orbiting, he could do a lot of practical experiments to make it work at small scale, then grow it to ship-size.”

“It’s an incredible achievement,” agreed Fournier. “The man needs to be recognized.”

“You know,” said Commander McKay, chiming in from the foot of the table, “he would have hated the publicity. It’s ironic, but from his point of view, sharing and celebrating his achievement after he passed on was probably optimal.”

Rau acknowledged the point, finishing off her asparagus. “And one other very impressive achievement, Captain—how did you get to the point of being able to run Signet with a crew of two?”

Reine smiled. “You’ve met some of our original robots; except for Maxine, they are, excuse me, morons. I’m sure you’ve got far better models available now. We realized, not long after departure from Earth, that we needed something different for a long mission like this—instead of general-purpose morons, more special-purpose ‘average Joes’. So, we built our own. If you will excuse my immodesty, I was fairly eminent in the field of AI before we left, and I was able to set up a functional trainer to produce very limited but effective AIs in specific ship spaces—engineering, sensors, damage control, navigation and so on. Give them a standardized android body, and you have a substantial force multiplier. We had about thirty of them, experimental models, when the meteors hit.”

“That must have been a tough time,” sympathized Fournier.

“It was, it was.” Reine shook her head. “We lost nearly fifty people, and of course our supralight capability. It was clear right away that the only way back home was via the lifeboats. We took a couple of weeks to fix the other damage and really ramp up production of the new models; once we were happy that they could perform their functions, the crew felt they could leave.”

“And you moved the ship deep into the gravity well?” Rau enquired.

“Indeed. We had no idea how long a rescue would take, nor how long we could keep the ship working even with the autonomous crew.” Reine shrugged. “Stretching out time seemed like the least bad course.”

“It’s quite a story,” agreed Rau. The robots distributed a fruit salad, causing several of the Mustang’s crew to sigh in happiness as they tasted the fresh apple, strawberry, grapes and other fruits.

“I guess we can skip the vitamin pill this evening,” quipped Ortega. “Thank you for this meal, Captain.”

“My pleasure, Senior Chief.” Reine leaned back in her chair. “Captain Rau, how about you and I retire to my stateroom and we figure out a plan?”

“Certainly, Captain Reine.” Rau dabbed at her mouth. “Lt McKay, I hope you have a good time getting reacquainted with your sister; Mr Fournier, you’re in charge of the rest of the party. Let’s rendezvous back at the Mustang in four hours, and check in with the others.”

“Yes Captain.” Fournier and Lt McKay checked their watches.

Reine stood, and the rest of the table followed. “It was lovely to meet you all. I look forward to our future work together. Captain Rau, shall we?”

The two captains made their exit.

Frances McKay turned to her sister. “Come on, Katie. I’ll show you the ship. Everyone else, Maxine will guide you to

Hydroponics.” The crew shuffled out of the room; Maxine was waiting there for them.

“Follow me, please.” The teal robot walked briskly down the corridor.