Calley's Chrysalis

(Note #1: All comments and constructive criticisms are welcome and appreciated. If you wish for a response but don't want your name appearing in the comments everyone can see, feel free to e-mail me through my profile.

Note #2: Those of you wishing for a quick story to wank to will want to look elsewhere. Although there are a few nude scenes described in some chapters, and a quick love scene in the preceding one, the next sex scene only starts in the chapter following this one.

Note #3: And finally, huge thanks to volunteer Literotica editor TheNyxianLily for her help with this chapter. In addition to her usual editing advice, she helped me avoid a huge story faux-pas and got the plot back on track.)

"Captain," Calley began, "I know I wasn't at my post on watch when we ran into the asteroids. I should've been. You can take the cost of the repairs out of my share of the profits going back to when you made me a partner."

"Well that's awfully generous of you Calley, but I don't think that's gonna cover it," Sal told her.

"Then you can dock my salary going forward. I don't need much to live on, so you can go back to paying me as an employee. Keep half or two-thirds of my pay and put it towards my debt."

"Your debt?" the captain said with some confusion. "Are we posting fines for dereliction of duty now?" he asked Alezanna.

"I don't recall discussing that," she answered from the pilot's station.

"Neither do I. In the militia, we'd be punished with crap duties or imprisonment if it was serious. Maybe flogging in extreme cases, but I never saw it come to that," he continued, his words aimed between both his listeners.

Calley didn't know what to say so it was Alezanna who clarified the situation for him. "She seems to think it's her fault we ran into the rocks and she should pay for all the damage. Or maybe that we'll throw her off the ship if we reach Rangxu."

"I see," Collondo said with a nod before turning back to the distraught young woman in front of him. "Calley, let me ask you something. Suppose, for a second, that you'd been in the cockpit when the engines cut out. And suppose that instead of sitting at your station like you normally do, you were sitting at the pilot controls. And let's even suppose that you possess powers of clairvoyance or something that told you the asteroids were in our way. So there you are, primed and ready to act when the Hi-Vels shut down and the breaking thrusters fire up. What, exactly, do you think you could accomplish in this case?"

"I could've altered course to--" she began.

"No way!" he interrupted her. "In the split-second it happened? I know these controls better than you do and I couldn't have done it. Unless you have a very different perception of time than the rest of us do, there's no way you could've altered course. So let's cut that crap out right now. You aren't responsible for the asteroids or the damage to the ship. As far as paying for it, you'll pay your share the same as Alez and me. I warned you when we made you a partner that sometimes runs don't pay off. Well, this is definitely one that won't turn a profit. As a matter of fact, fixing up the ship's probably gonna eat up every microcred we've made since your birthday. We're gonna watch our spending for the next little while."

"You said we'd have to get rid of non-essentials," Calley reminded him.

"And I meant it," he acknowledged. He was going to add something but saw the look of distress on Calley's face and realized what she was thinking. "Wait, not you Calley! We need you like crazy! Forget the fact that running without a medic means quarantines in most places we go to. Even when we don't get affected by whatever virus we come across. We made you a partner 'cause you fit in with us so well. You're just as essential to the ship as Alez or me. I'd sell the reactor before I'd get rid of you."

"Agreed," Alezanna added.

"No, the non-essentials I'm talking about is anything that's not nailed down. Spare parts we're not using, some of the wines I've been collecting, maybe a few of Alezanna's outfits."

"Oh, I don't think so," the Bellixan said with a hint of edge in her voice. "Those are tailor-made for me and I'm not selling any of them. We're not selling Calley's dress either. You touch one of my creations and see what happens."

Collondo raised his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay. It was just a thought. We'll live in poverty but we'll look good doing it."

"Calley and I will. You're beyond hopeless. Blind clowns dress better than you do."

He turned back to Calley. "Are we done with this ridiculous notion that we're getting rid of you?"

"I guess," she answered.

"Though there is the matter of you leaving your post on watch. Now, let me say that I've done that a lot myself. Sometimes I have to hit the head. Sometimes I get hungry and grab a snack from the galley. I normally eat it in here, but I'm still out of the cockpit for a couple of minutes. So being out of the cockpit, that's no big deal. What I wanna talk about is where you were and what you were doing."

Calley swallowed hard. She'd been focusing on her possible punishment for her actions because she didn't want to focus on the actions themselves. But she realized that the captain didn't feel the same way. He was going to make her talk about it.

"Where were you when the Hi-Vels cut off?" he asked her.

"You know where I was. You heard me fall down."

"Yes I did. You sounded like a mallard caught by surprise. But I wanna hear you say it out loud. We can make sure we're all talking about the same thing here. So, where were you when the Hi-Vels cut out?"

Calley's discomfort worsened as she answered, "In the starboard hallway."

"What part of the hallway?" he calmly asked her. Again, this was something she was sure he already knew. But he seemed determined to have her confirm every detail.

"Right outside the hatch to your room," she admitted.

"You weren't just passing by, though, were you?" he said. His intonation made it clear it was not a question.

"No."

Without losing his calm, he pressed further. "What were you doing there, Calley?"

"I was..." she started to answer before she stopped. Admitting what she'd been doing would be hard to say out loud, but she knew she had to. She took a breath and said, "I was watching the two of you." She couldn't meet his gaze and looked down at the floor.

"And what were we doing?"

"You were making love," she answered him. She was still quite uncomfortable. But now that she had admitted to her voyeurism, she thought the hardest part of her questioning was over. She was wrong.

In the same calm tone of voice, the captain asked, "And what were you doing while you were watching us?"

Calley stiffened. She didn't expect him to ask her that. It was another question he had to know the answer to. She suddenly realized answering this question was going to shame her far more than the previous ones. "I was..." she began but the words caught in her throat. She tried again with, "I was..." but again found herself unable to continue. She couldn't articulate the words. Finally, she simply said, "You know."

"I have a pretty good idea, yes. Your jumpsuit was wide open afterwards so you don't need to be a genius to figure it out." He leaned forward to try to get Calley to look at him, to no avail. "But I wanna hear the words come out of your mouth, Calley."

Alezanna interjected with, "Captain, do we really need to--"

"Not 'Captain', pet!" he cut her off. His voice had an edge Calley had never heard him use on Alezanna before. He turned to look at the Bellixan. "You know what to call me. If Calley's watched us, then she's heard you say it. So you can say it now."

"Yes, Master," the older woman acknowledged.

There it is!Calley thought to herself. It was indeed a title she'd heard Alezanna call Sal in their intimate moments. She had many questions about it. Was she his slave? Officially or metaphorically? In the bedroom or in all things? She wanted to know, but didn't dare ask now.

"And to answer your question," he continued back in his regular voice, "yes, I do need to have Calley answer for what she did. And that includes admitting everything about it." He turned back to the young spacer and said, "So Calley, tell us what you were doing while you were watching us."

Calley didn't want him to unleash that harder tone that he'd just used on her friend. So she forced herself to blurt out the word, "Masturbating." Once she'd said it, it relieved some of the pressure she was feeling. "I was masturbating, sir."

Collondo nodded as he said, "All right then. You weren't at your post because you were watching us and masturbating. Now we're getting to where we need to be."

Before he could continue, Calley added, "I'm sorry, sir."

"Very well, but for what?"

Calley was confused by his question. Was he going to make her go through all of it again? Wasn't it enough that she'd already laid it out? "Well... for everything, I guess," she ventured, hoping the answer would be enough this time.

"You don't have to apologize for everything. Masturbation isn't a crime. If it was, there were cycles there where I would've had the biggest bounty in the galaxy on my head. Especially after Alezanna showed up."

"I love you too, Master," the mechanic told him. Calley was confused by her tone. It was almost playful, whereas before she'd been somewhat subservient to him. Her curiosity about the nature of their relationship remained but would have to wait as the captain continued talking to the young woman.

"You're an adult woman, you have sexual urges. That's normal. You need to indulge them sometimes. That's normal too. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying or trying to get you in a cult. So never apologize for that. But what's not so normal is spying on your friends while you're doing it."

"I know. I'm so sorry, sir."

"So you keep saying. But I'm very curious as to what possessed you to do that in the first place. Were you curious as to what sex looked like? I know you were on your own a long time before we came along and your previous experiences weren't great. You told me about that guy you had to zap with the power cable. But if you had an interest, well, there's better ways to indulge it."

"Yes sir, you're right."

"Can we drop the 'sir', please? You can stick with 'Captain' for now. When we're finished with this, we'll see where we stand on first names. So, what made you start watching us?"

"Well," Calley began nervously, "about a sub-cycle ago, I was on watch and the two of you were in your quarters. I went to the head and on my way out, I heard the two of you making love. I was gonna pass by without looking but I heard Alezanna call you 'Master' and that seemed really strange to me. You both told me stories of what you were doing before I joined your crew and there was nothing about slaves. And Alezanna just doesn't act like any slave I've ever come across. Well, except for a minute ago when you corrected her."

She'd kept her eyes down during her explanation and almost looked up at the taller woman at this point. Before she could, the captain's words stopped her.

"She's not my slave. She's my pet. It's very different."

"Nicer," Alezanna added. "There's no forcing, no coercion. He's my master because I trust him to be."

"And in return, I don't abuse that trust. I don't do anything without considering Alez' feelings. But I have to be in control. After two bad marriages, I was very careful when we first got together. And it just kinda evolved into what we have now."

He extended his right arm towards his lover and she did the same with her left, taking his hand in the glove of her spacesuit and giving it a squeeze. That done, the two disengaged and Sal turned his attention back to Calley.

"But I interrupted you. You were telling us about the first time you watched us."

"I didn't watch at first," Calley corrected him. "I was curious about why she called you 'Master' so all I did was creep closer to your door so I could listen in. I was hoping I'd hear something to explain it. So at first, I was just listening to you. But it didn't clear up the situation. So then I wondered if maybe you had a shock stick or she had a collar on. Y'know, like you see slaves wear."

Alezanna snickered at the idea and Collondo told the young spacer, "We're not really into that kinda stuff. Anyway, go on."

"Well, I took a look to see if you were wearing those things. You weren't. You weren't wearing anything at all. You were just naked and having sex. Now, I'd seen holo-vids of sex before. Like you said, I was on my own when I started getting curious about it so I'd looked into it. But the way you were doing it was different then I was expecting. Not as rough. More... tender I guess. Nicer. More loving. In the holo-vids, it's usually rougher and there's more swearing."

The captain chuckled and told her, "Yeah, well, those vids aren't real sex, Calley. Real sex is very different."

The young medic managed to raise her eyes from the floor and look at him. "I can see that now. Your way is much more beautiful."

Sal chuckled again and Alezanna asked him, "Is that something we should take as a compliment? I've never watched those kind of vids before."

"No, not really," he answered her. "Being told you're more beautiful than porn vids is like being told you smell better than a sewer. It's not a high bar to clear. But I think Calley was simply being honest here, so let's just thank her and let her go on." He returned his attention to the Gynapsi and asked her, "So that first time, did you touch yourself?"

Calley was surprised at his bluntness. "No," she answered. "I just watched. I knew I shouldn't but I couldn't stop. When you were finished, I went back to the cockpit and finished my watch. But then, after I went back to my room, I thought about what had happened. What I'd seen and heard. I kind of got worked up and, well..."

"You took care of yourself," Collondo finished for her. "All right. So that's what happened that time. Have there been other times between then and now?"

Calley nodded as she continued to feel shame. "Yes," she acknowledged as she returned to staring at the floor.

"How many times?"

"I'm not sure," she answered as her throat tightened up again. Every time she thought she couldn't feel more ashamed, the captain's questions would trigger another wave of guilty feelings. She wished he would simply get angry and yell at her. She could handle that better than all his questions.

"Enough times to lose count? Well, that's pretty troubling," he mused aloud.

"Eight or nine times, I think," she quickly told him. She didn't want him to think her voyeurism was worse than it was.

"Still not good. Once or twice, I would pass off as just indulging in your curiosity. But that many times, it's no longer a case of accidentally coming across us making love. You started checking on us on purpose, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And when did you start masturbating while you were watching us?"

This time, answering the question didn't bother her as much. Her voyeurism and masturbation had already been exposed, so going over it again wasn't so bad. "The third time, I think. Before that it was after I got back to my quarters. And I felt guilty about it afterwards. But the third time, I started doing it a little and, the next thing I knew, I was going at it pretty good. I was worried at first that you might hear me but you were both pretty, umm..."

"Pretty involved with each other. To be honest, if we hadn't been thrown off the bed earlier, I'm not sure I would even have noticed when the ship's alarm went off. But that's exactly why we need somebody on watch in the cockpit. So we need to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen again."

"It won't, Captain, I promise!" Calley told him, and she meant it.

"Promises are nice, but I wanna make sure." He turned to Alezanna and asked her, "Do you think we can trust Calley? She has these crazy hormones that led her astray. She seems remorseful now, but who knows what she'll do in the future?"

"I think we're safe," the older woman opined. "I think all your questions embarrassed her enough to set her straight."

"I'm not convinced. I'm not finished grilling her. I think this situation is gonna require some pretty radical therapy before I'm confident putting her on watch again."

"Master, you're not going to punish her, are you?" Alezanna asked him with a hint of worry in her voice. Calley, on the other hand, was quite worried, but resolved to endure whatever punishment the captain deemed appropriate.

"Depends on what you consider punishment," he answered cryptically. "I'm certainly gonna make her more uncomfortable, but after what she did, I'd say I'm entitled." He turned back to Calley and ordered her, "Look at me Calley." After she forced herself to meet his gaze, he continued. "If you didn't like answering my questions before, you're really gonna hate these next ones. But you're gonna answer 'em, girl. And you're gonna tell us the truth. I've known you long enough to know you're not a very good liar, so don't try that with me."

"I won't, si--, I mean, Captain" she said, cursing herself inwardly for having forgotten to stop calling him 'sir'.

"Now before I keep punishing you with my questions, let's be clear about a few things. I'm not punishing you because of the asteroids. It ain't about leaving your post either. But watching us without our knowledge, that's a big problem. We trusted you to respect our privacy and you didn't. You watched us at our most basic state. You saw us naked, making love, having orgasms, and we never gave you permission to do that. You know that's wrong. So here we are now. You did some bad things and I gotta punish you for what you did. Do you accept that I have to do this?"

Calley resigned herself to accepting the Captain's punishment. "Yes, I understand. Whatever it is you wanna ask me, I'll answer."

"Don't be so quick to accept my terms," he warned her. "Like I said, you're really gonna hate talking about what I have in mind. If it gets to a point where you can't answer, you can just go to your quarters. I'll lock you in and give you food until we get to Rangxu. Then you leave the ship and that's that. Or you stay and tell me what I need to know so we can clear the air and make sure we have trust between us again. That's why I gotta ask you these hard questions. So keep in mind that you can end this at any time by leaving. Do we understand each other?"

Calley swallowed hard and nodded in agreement as she braced herself for what he'd ask her next. Despite her efforts, she was still unprepared for his next question.

"Do you fantasize about us?"

"What?" she said in a low voice. She'd heard him clearly, of course, and understood his question. Her retort was born of surprise.

"Do-you-fantasize-about-us?" he repeated more slowly, like he was talking to a child. "When you're looking at us make love, are you just taking in the action? Or, in your mind, are you inserting yourself into what's going on?"

"I... umm..." Calley tried to answer but found herself unable to. His question had forced her to admit she had indeed fantasized about them. She was ashamed and disgusted at her thoughts, so much so she hadn't wanted to acknowledge them to herself. But now the captain had forced her to face the truth. It was the worst admission she'd be forced to make, and she wasn't sure she could do it out loud.

She tried to look away from him but he wouldn't let her. "Keep your eyes on me, girl! Now answer the question or leave the cockpit!"

It was all too much for the young Gynapsi and tears started to fill her eyes. Her hands gripped the sides of her chair to keep herself straight. She couldn't speak so she quickly nodded her head. She hoped that would be answer enough to satisfy him, but it wasn't.