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When it starts, he's idling, circling some unfortunate planet that looks small and vulnerable from up in orbit. The on-ship technicians have taken the chance to do maintainance, and he's disassembled and aching, his pitiful/powerful wetware brain dizzy from the medication they flooded him with. Even the ship-senses feel numb and out of whack. There isn't really enough presence of mind in him, there isn't enough mind, to really appreciate the respite from pain. And anyways, even then there are still sharp stabs and dull lashes wherever the new connections are asserting themselves.
Unlike his unnaturally fortified body, the wires that eat and feed and tether him are mortal, even if their cycle is centuries slow, their lifespan longer than his natural warmblood one. They wither and start to transmit imperfectly, and eventually they have to be replaced. A grueling process, the tips of them plucked from his skin with wet, resonant sounds like arteries pulled from their proper place. The wounds they leave behind leak hot golden blood. What they gave him poured hotcold through his mind and prevented him from struggling, and he still hangs limply when the new connections start to grow in, ready to absorb psionic force before it even gets discharged from his skin.
The wet tangle of leechwires licks up the Helmsman's sides like flames on this his pyre, settling and wrapping around his limbs and torso, devouring him, embracing him. He feels them move, and he knows terror somewhere in the far reaches of his brain, but echoing in the forefront is only a robotic inventory of each and every new contact point, some of them adhering to old wounds, some of them making new ones. His own breathing, thick and slow and unending. He's being devoured. Eaten up only to be replenished, only so he can be fed on again, and it's gone on so long it's all he knows, and it's been long enough that it's driven him mad, beyond any semblance of reasoning or rationality. Or rather, it has replaced his former understanding with a new one, his old life's rules overwritten by other knowledge, but his new life is insane, so he has to be as well to endure it.
Somewhere during the process he rasps out a sound from damaged vocal chords, and the concept of hope is some vague far-off thing but he still hopes that it'll be over soon, this periodical horror of uprooting and growing and burrowing replaced by the pain of steering, which hurts but doesn't hurt the last scraps of sanity clinging to the inside of his skull, not as much. There is Life in the wet, ropy cords that enables them to grow at an accelerated rate, crawl over him and ensconce him in the tangle of vines and settle in their place, only to expose their wire-contact teeth, dig into him, and start siphoning. A little of it bleeds into him, a few sparks of crackling-hot life that heal the connections as soon as they're made and anchor the vines more firmly in his flesh, and the taste of it, the power pressing against the inside of his head, is familiar and terrible (and he hates himself for enjoying it). He wants life to drain from him, the part of him that believes in prayer clasping its hands, asking for death, but the feeling of it filling him instead and keeping his cells from breaking down is good, in an unwanted visceral way, a satisfaction like thirst being sated, he loves it he hates it he is filled and surrounded by it.
The wires twitch and pulse against him, the mesh growing tighter, new ones crawling up to fill the gaps until he disappears beneath the half-living weight of them. They wind and tighten around his legs, moving like one mind with a thousand hands, easily finding his skin through the uniform that's more holes than fabric at this point. One of them settles high up between his thighs and he draws in a sudden harsh gasp; the thick shape of it is pressing up against him tightly and squirming in that blind, searching way, the questing motion bumping it up against nearly-forgotten nerves over and over again. His stomach drops, a sick sudden reeling when the still-conscious corner of his mind realizes it's pleasure that he's feeling, unbidden, as the cable continues to squirm between his thighs without settling in place, pushing the scraps of his uniform aside and rubbing unrhythmically against the outside of his nook.
He flinches away, but of course he can't move, and it only presses closer, slick and cold (like a tyrian's skin, he knows this and wishes he didn't), finding some sort of insane rhythm now, parting the lips of his nook and sliding back and forth in long, smooth strokes, terribly deliberate. The nerve endings respond, going crazy, and he can feel himself flushing, spasming, growing wet and slick and hot against the cold surface. The length of it drags over the unsheathing tip of his bulge and he jolts, a flaring haywire burst of psychic energy, and moans brokenly and bites his tongue until it bleeds.
It's g-- it's not good, his body is responding with sense-starved enthusiasm but the remains of his mind are fighting like they fight everything else, pushing the pleasure away like they push away the pain, he's open and dripping and barely stifling moans but that's nothing, nothing that he can't ignore, what happens to the wetware is inconsequential and he can retreat into the circuits, wait until it's over. Except the circuits too come to life, suddenly, with a subroutine whose shape he knows all too well, that has her fingerprints all over it, her deliberation, her will, he should have known this was no accident.
It's another of the obedience programs meant to overwrite and correct his thoughts, except it says something else, writes something else onto his mind while his body jerks and writhes in the wires, helplessly responding to the stimulation. He's not being given commands, he's being told statements in the tone of absolute truths and his mind struggles to reject them before they become true.
(You're enjoying this) they're thoughts in his own head, poured in from outside, written to sound like his own but they sound like her voice still (it feels good) and he knows that she planned this, another way to break him or perhaps to amuse herself or both (you want this, you like this) and he bares his teeth and endures the pleasure like he'd fight through pain, but somehow it gets to him deeper than pain ever could (you like being an engine, you've been good and this is your reward).
He twists with what strength his muscles still possess, reflexively, but it grinds his wet nook and the swollen underside of his emerged bulge hard against the smooth, flexing cord, and -- his mind, out of his body, who cares what happens to the meat, it's not him, he is somewhere else -- it feels so good.
(You're giving in, it feels good to give in) the affirmations keep pouring in and his mind can't hide from them, can't carve out corners of safe space from the code because it's too distracted by what the body is feeling. The string of revulsion he's chanting to himself is breaking up, wearing thin, the only thing that keeps it running is sheer repetition that he does not want this (but it, they, she will make him want it). And then the cord flexes and presses against him hard and discharges another stored pulse of life energy right into his throbbing core and something gives and something flares through him -- yes oh yes -- and he wants it, he does, he wants it to keep going and relieve this ache.
The vine twists and thrashes between his thighs, slick with his fluids, then changes the angle and plunges into his nook, and the Helmsman arches his back, eyes strobing, and screams.
The cable is thin and flexible at the tip, growing broad and thick quickly, and he takes it easily, worked up and wet and getting stretched only feels good, and the needle sunk into his spine pours drugs into his blood to make sure that he'll like it, and he does. The strokes are long and slow and torturous, pulling out all the way then pushing back in, and the cable's wicked tip is hidden away, instead something soft and fleshy and squirming probes at his insides and makes him pant and clench and his nerves light up. The motion responds to the feedback of pleasure from his brain, keeps going for the spots that drive him mad, hits them just right on every thrust and there's still protest in his mind but the lust is louder, the submission, giving in because the pressure is too much and there's nothing to do but bend to it.
His resistance weakens, and for every bit that he gives in, he gets rewarded, pulses of life shot deep into him. Each one feels like release on its own, blowing his mind, but the ache just keeps building and he can't stay strong under the weight of it. Guilty and ashamed but it's so good, changing the pace now, short quick strokes deep inside of him and he's moaning helplessly, drooling, his head lolled forward. His bulge thrashes and flexes against his stomach, half-trapped by the snaking cords and blindly fucking the gap between them, dripping with yellow fluid. The obedience subroutine is still running, whispering into his head you want this you need this and he finds himself assenting, nodding with every word just so he'll get more, so he'll get release, closure. The waves of Life come in shorter intervals now, releasing into him and spreading into his gut, cells, brain, filling him with life and it's terrible, it's amazing, something deep inside him spasms and clenches hard around the cord with every pulse of it.
It pistons into him, fucks him fast and hard and wet and there are tears gathering in his eyes, his tongue hanging out past his teeth, it's good and he can't help it and he doesn't want to. Another shiver of life and this time it pushes him close to climax, a hard tight shudder through him, an itch in his spine, in his leaking, pulsing nook, his bulge coiling and coated in translucent yellow.
Another pulse, another hard deep stroke, and every muscle in him tightens, and he's pulled down into his body, enjoying it because he might as well. And then another and another in rapid succession, bursts of life and the cable plunging in and out of him and he comes, tightening and releasing in convulsive waves, in blinding, overwhelming pleasure, white-hot and deep and so, so good. A rush of fluid spatters from his nook and from the head of his bulge, coats the wires and his thighs down to his knees, and he shivers as the stimulation keeps going, fucking him through his orgasm and past his threshold until it turns into pain. Even the pain is good, and for those long moments he wants this and nothing but this, and then the cord pulls out of him, another rush of genetic material flowing out with it, and he sags in the wires, stupid with pleasure.
There is nothing but the background hum of the idling ship and the aftershocks for a long while, and he hangs there and pants and endures it because there's nothing else he can do. As fully mad as he is, as he has to be, there's still a selfpreservation instinct there that guards his self, cut and diminished and shaken but not destroyed, and it rationalizes against the guilt. This is nothing more than all these times he cried for mercy against pain and promised loyality that he didn't feel, he tells himself, and he almost believes it. In some preserved corner of his mind he knows that she's watching, that she's watched the whole thing, and that she'll let him stew a bit longer and then come in and look into his eyes as he's cleaned up and tell him how good he's been.