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Dark Lord Substitute

Chapter 9

By Draconicon

Mark took the news that he was actually a slave better than Bertram expected him to. If anything, the hyena seemed to like the fact that he was actually confirmed to be, rather than wondering about it. Certainly, he carried himself lighter after that, walking out of the control chamber afterward with greater ease and a spring in his step that he'd lacked. The ram shook his head; he doubted that he would ever understand the man.

Zelda left with him, and Bertram was happier for that. She had become a possible problem, and he doubted that she would be solved so easily. With the anger that she'd shown, and the fact that she had come close to drawing her weapon and threatening him, he knew that he would have to take greater care.

She might come to regret her choice to support me, he thought as he looked down at the Indoctrination chamber, watching as other soldiers cleared the room, save for Ilia. She might not be able to leave the army, but I will have to make sure that she doesn't have openings to betray me if she has second thoughts...

Bertram hadn't expected to think that when he had the power of mind control on his side, but the Indoctrination system had already proved that it wasn't flawless. He had to watch out for what people might do with loopholes that they discovered, and for all her other problems, Zelda was no fool. She could find the loopholes in the system.

For now, however, he would have to trust Mark to keep an eye on her. The hyenas were close, and he doubted that they would do something without telling one another. Better not to just adjust her Indoctrination just yet.

Hmm...is this the things that you don't see in the stories? he wondered, looking up from the screens and Indoctrination programs for a moment. The dilemmas that the villains have, and how they have to sort that out?

He imagined that it was. This was quite the dilemma, too. He was the Dark Lord. He was expected to rule through the unfairness of the mind control devices that he'd been given. He was expected to be an autocrat, someone that ruled with an iron fist, that forced his rule down on those that lived under him. That was the role of the Dark Lord against the 'free' systems that lived under the Federation.

But was that the case? If he just used the Indoctrination as a tool, instead, as a means of -

Bertram shook his head. He had freedom of choice so long as he wasn't involved with the enemy. For now, that would have to be enough. He couldn't think of that while he still had to undo the puzzle of the Indoctrination itself. The ram touched the intercom button.

" Ilia. Can you hear me?"

To his relief, the snake didn't immediately leap up with joy. Instead, she looked confused. Eager, but confused, lacking the raw devotion that he had seen before. After stripping her of the prior conditioning, and all of the conditioning that the standard Indoctrination program brought with it, she was a very different serpent.

"You...where are you?" she asked, looking around.

" Somewhere out of your sight. Tell me. Who am I?"

"...I don't want to use your name."

" Will you do it if I order you?"

"...I hope not."

" Let us find out. I order you to say my name."

"...You...are..." She gritted her teeth, her jaw standing out for a moment, but the commands had apparently settled too deep to be ignored. She sighed. "You are my Master."

" That is what you didn't want to say?"

"I wanted...I wanted to call you the Dark Lord, but that title...it's...it's burning in my head..."

" Burning? Describe that."

"It's hot. It's...it's hot enough that it burns everything else away from it," she said, covering her face and leaning back against the wall. The posture she was in pushed her breasts forward rather enticingly, he had to admit. "I...I don't want to think of you...but...but you keep...coming back..."

" Would you say that you are obsessed with me?"

"Fuck...I'm more than obsessed. I can't...I need you there. You need to be here."

" Hmmm..."

"I can...if you don't talk...please don't talk..."

She slumped down slowly, pulling her arms around her. It was enough to hide her chest, but as she went down, he saw that her legs spread. Whether that was conscious or unconscious, it allowed him a view of her nethers, and how wet they were, how damp the front slit had become and how much her ass clenched, almost as if she remembered their previous bit of pleasure together.

He timed it. It took her six minutes to be completely under control again. She stared straight ahead of her, her eyes fixed on the wall.

"I can think of other things...if you don't remind me what you are. If you don't say it...if I don't think of you that way...I can be normal."

" But the moment you think of the other way..."

"Then you...you burn my mind."

A definite step down from the hyper-devotion, in a good way. She had a tool that would allow her to take steps forward and backward from him, allowing her some independence and keeping her from being addicted to him. At the same time, it meant that his absence caused her what appeared to be physical pain. She needed something, someone there to take care of her, to order her around, and she wasn't getting it.

Hmm...a dilemma.

"...Are you there?" she asked.

" I'm here."

"Why are you doing this? Why are you...why do you want us to be slaves?"

" You would be surprised at the real answer," he said, tapping his fingers against the screen, bringing up her commands. Once more, he started eliminating the various commands in her psyche, countering them until they disappeared from the list. " I am not opposed to slavery, though I am far from an advocate of it. At the same time, I am pressed into an uncomfortable position at the moment. As the Dark Lord, I am bound to a system, rather than the system being bound to me."

"What does that mean?"

" It means that I am compelled to use slavery as a weapon. My only choice is what kind of slavery one is afflicted with."

"Mmph..."

" And how much I can make it enjoyable for my subjects."

"You...was what we did before..."

" I do not believe that was rape. You are clear-headed at the moment. Do you?"

"..."

" Ilia?"

"I don't know. It's...I liked it...but I don't know...if I was forced to or not."

" That is fair."

"Are you going to...mess with my head again?"

" Yes."

"Why?"

" Because, above all, I must be safe. Because I do not know if the Federation will allow you freedom or kill you. Because I must learn."

That was all truth, as far as he was concerned. He ended the communication, and began typing in new commands. The previous list was copied off to the side, and he started tweaking the levels of devotion that she had. The sheer strength of the 'master' term was toned down, as it had obviously bothered her, but at the same time, he started adding things on the side. Rather than being devoted to her master to the point where she needed distractions just to function, he started offering her different pleasures for being obedient.

There would need to be a great deal of experimentation...and he would need someone else that he knew was struggling against the Indoctrination. He leaned his head back.

" Data."

"Yes, sir?"

" Get me King Soledad."

"Right away, sir."

That was the good thing about Data. The AI didn't ask questions, nor did he need explanations. He didn't judge, didn't believe that he should know what was going on, didn't do anything besides what he was told.

Bertram imagined a galaxy of AIs...and then decided that wouldn't work. Being the one person in charge would get very wearying after a while.

He was halfway towards a solution with Ilia when the Indoctrination chamber opened and allowed King Soledad in. The mouse king was still wearing the same headgear as before, the little points and dancing lights remaining. They were obviously not part of the Indoctrination as he had once believed, which meant that they had a different tool.

As the naked mouse turned towards the far side of the room, looking up at the panels that Bertram was looking through, the king crossed his arms.

"Then you figured it out?" the king asked.

" If you mean that you were not completely Indoctrinated, yes. I understood that at the first meeting."

"Hmmmph. I doubt that."

" Believe as you will. There was no harm meant to me at the time, and I did not feel the need to change you."

"You mean kill me."

" You may believe as you like. But you will, perhaps, find this easier after I do something."

He opened the same list of commands as he had done with Mark and Ilia, looking at the commands that King Soledad had been marked with. Too many. Far too many. He shook his head, beginning the same process of erasure.

No sooner had the list begun to thin than the mouse king held one hand to his head. His eyes narrowed, his mouth falling open. Bertram shook his head. The king was obviously sharper than he had appeared, and it was quite clear that he was feeling all the different commands slipping from his mind.

He was aware of his restrictions and his freedoms. At a guess, Bertram imagined that the electric light show around the king's skull were connections to some sort of Cloud memory, something that held back-ups and comparisons. They couldn't fix things for the mouse himself, but they were able to keep him aware of what had happened to him. That adjusted a few theories that the ram had, but at the same time, he believed that the core basis of the theory was sound. Awareness of one's helplessness allowed for a greater resistance to the thing causing the helplessness, but in the case of Ilia and the others, he imagined that they were more aware of what they were being asked to give up without their will.

Indoctrination could push someone hard, but they weren't blinded by it. They had to be guided, cajoled, made to embrace the Indoctrination, given rewards that they wouldn't get somewhere else. Which meant that the one-size-fits-all Indoctrination that they had been using was scattershot, at best.

Psychologists will be needed. People that can build profiles, others that can start pulling together lists of needs for the prisoners...

That meant that Ilia needed someone over her, wanted someone that would give her commands. She had something in her that needed that oversight, that needed someone to want her, to crave her. Otherwise, that Indoctrination would not have worked nearly as well as it had.

Fascinating.

"You. Why did you do that?" King Soledad asked, bringing Bertram back to the moment.

" Why did I do what?"

"You know what you did. Why?"

" ...For several reasons. The first being, I know that the commands aren't working. The Indoctrination is not as strong as my underlings believed."

"..."

" And I need it to be stronger."

"There it is. Bastard."

" That said, it only works if it is something that you can be convinced you want. Ilia has already discovered this, I believe."

The king glanced back at the snake woman, his cheeks burning as he looked away. It was clear that there was some desire there; the Indoctrination hadn't taken away all of the king's desire for females. Before Soledad could continue, Bertram beat him to the punch.

" This means that I can either study you, pushing you to the point of digging out all your secrets, your wants, your urges, and then customizing the Indoctrination that you will live under. Or...we can negotiate a fairer slavery for you."

"...What kind of insanity is this?"

" The kind in which you have a voice."

"Why would you care about that?"

" Simply put, it has a better chance of keeping me alive."

"...I can't deny that..."

" Which will it be, King Soledad? A negotiation, or a fight?"

"You already have my planet. You already have everything that I had...why do you care? Why bother offering?"

" Perhaps I am not the Dark Lord that you have been trained to believe I am."

And certainly, it would be far faster if he had King Soledad completely under his thumb before the reinforcements arrived. If he could do that, if he could send a broadcast back to Mistrum of a truly enslaved king, then it would do a huge amount to keep any rebellion on that planet down. A king that had given in properly, that had allowed Indoctrination rather than had it forced on him, would keep the rest of the population from being so certain that revolt would be a good idea.

He could do that without negotiating, as well, but at the moment, it would go much faster if he didn't have to force it. But the mouse king needed to be the one to decide that.

Bertram might have been sweating in his suit. He honestly couldn't tell, due to the way that its internal climate control had been improved over the last few days, but he felt like he might have been. His forehead felt clammy, and his hands itched behind the gloves. If this didn't work out, then he had his work cut out for him, and it was not the best start to a plan that was already on shaky legs.

Finally, King Soledad lowered his head. He pinched the bridge of his muzzle for a moment, then nodded.

"Fine. I'll...negotiate."

" I'm glad that you are willing, King Soledad. Come up. We will talk. And Ilia?"

"Yes?" the snake asked.

" You will have the same chance. If you wish."

"..."

She didn't answer, and instead looked down. Not beaten, but contemplative, something that he hadn't entirely expected.

As he sent escorts in to take King Soledad to a briefing room, Data whispered into his helmet.

"Is there a reason that you wish to negotiate with him, sir?"

" The same reasons that I told him. It will make things easier for me, and I will be more likely to survive if they feel that they get something out of the deal."

"I suppose that is true, sir."

" Are you wanting to negotiate for something, Data?"

"Sir?"

" An idle thought. Forget about it." He shook his head. " Bring up a file for King Soledad. Everything that we know about him. I want that to compare to anything he says, in case he lies to me."

"Yes, sir."

The negotiations were relatively abrupt, in all senses of the word. King Soledad was quite the astute politician, and realized that his people were under threat. More to the point, the mouse came in with a list of demands, and while he was willing to bend, he had come with a list of fallback positions for each one of them. Bertram ended up giving three specific concessions before he realized what was happening, and he was rather impressed with the king for managing to wheedle them out.

The first was a personal protection detail for his family. They were not to be common slaves to be plucked for use by the average person, and they were to be given good posts. He had started with removing them from the slave pool completely, then asking them to be taken in, and then faltered back to that after three other requests. Bertram had been so worn down by the negotiation on that one front that he had ended up giving in just to have it done.

The other two points had appeared minor, at first, but once they were further on, he realized that they were part of an overall strategy. The first was that there would be mice promoted to the officer ranks to disperse the hyena majority in the upper ranks, and the second was that there would be a permanent defense fleet above Mistrum. It was only when the king had started tilting the negotiations towards who would command that fleet that Bertram realized where it was going, and he cut it off...mostly. He allowed two mouse under-officers to the fleet commander, but no more.

After that, he had to take control of their talk. He forced himself to be attentive, and to follow through to see just how many layers of arguments and fallback positions the mouse actually had. Many, it turned out, but he had his own list of demands, now, and he could meet Soledad point for point.

Eventually, they came to a natural break. An hour of talking, and they had a list of concessions for both sides. Bertram leaned back as Soledad shook his head.

"You gave me more than I thought you would," the mouse admitted.

" You are becoming a proper slave after this. A life is as valuable as you make it."

"You could have said no."

" I would have less of a king under me, and more of a rebellion waiting to happen."

"You think that won't happen now?"

" I think that there is less of a chance."

"Why?"

" Because you know what the cost of changing your mind would be. Your officers slaughtered. Your people undefended. Your family easily snatched."

"..."

" This negotiation was as much to find what you desired, what was important to you, as it was to find an agreement. Let me be clear. I do not wish to take this further. I want this to be a solemn agreement. But if you continue to push the buttons of what-if, if you continue to threaten what you might do, then you should know what the consequences are. I am bound by fate; I cannot stop what I am doing. I am trying to make this as painless as possible for all involved.

"But you need to help me with that. You are smart. Very smart. But any anger at me is misdirected. I had yet to be summoned when the conquest of your world occurred. I am here now, and I am correcting the problems of all previous Dark Lords as we go forward. If you want to believe that I am worse than them, then believe as you will. I am not. I will not be. But I will have your compliance, one way or another. I would prefer it to be willingly. But that is up to you."

A small part of him hated himself for saying that, but the ram was flat-out exhausted. He wanted to enjoy himself. He wanted this to be easy. But with the limitations of the Indoctrination protocols, as well as the various difficulties that the king kept pushing his way, it was hard for him to feel safe. If he was going to survive, let alone succeed - and the two were becoming ever-more intertwined - then he needed to take care of threats like this before they could get worse.

Quite honestly, he wanted this to be amicable. He remembered the pleasure that the mouse's mouth had given him before, and he remembered the various things that he had done with Ilia. He wanted them both to be on his side, to want to be with him, but that wouldn't happen if they were constantly at logger-heads. He needed them to be willing on some level, and if that willingness had to come from the king knowing the consequences of his actions, so be it.

Soledad lowered his head. Despite everything, the king had a smile on his face.

" What?"

"I'm...surprised, I guess."

" How so?"

"You're a Dark Lord, but you know what family means. You know what all the freedom that we have means to us. You're supposed to be the monster in the dark, but you're doing more with this authority than anyone in the Federation does. More than I could, certainly."

" That seems little reason to smile."

"I guess I just feel I can trust you. Someone that's open enough about what he can do and why is someone I can trust to be frank with me."

" That you can trust."

"Good. Then...I guess we're done."

" Report back to the Indoctrination chamber, then. I will program you for your next...session."

"...May I say goodbye to my family?"

" You won't lose so much as you think. They will see the same man. Mostly."

The guards came, taking the king away. Bertram remained in his seat, watching the mouse's curved rump go, and he couldn't help but feel a hint of arousal down below, even as he imagined what kind of turmoil was going through the king's mind. The mouse had been rather emotional towards the end, and it had affected him to some extent.

Still, there were experiments to be done, and another negotiation to be conducted. He called a guard, giving them a data chip with the notes that he'd made for the king's new commands, and then gave the order to have Ilia brought to him. He imagined that was going to be the harder conversation of the two.

Twelve hours passed. Three of them were soaked up in conversation and negotiation with Ilia, and the remaining nine were divided between programming and brief periods of sleep that were interrupted with messages from his generals. Pertinent messages from Mark about the distribution of their defenses, petty ones from Zelda asking for 'permission' to do the most menial of things. She still wasn't taking her slave status well.

However, the Indoctrination experiments had borne fruit. With King Soledad, he had managed to negotiate a slavery contract that bound the king's entire planet to him, properly, without any further argument. He had also managed to get the king to agree to a maintained mental shift towards being bisexual, allowing him to maintain his attraction to his wife and other females.

But that meant that the king would remain with him, a body-servant, a royal slave to the rising emperor. Bertram had ordered the king's conditioning to be tied into the loyalty that he had for his people, that the orders given were meant to better his people, and that he could serve his people by being a proper slave. That had been the turning point; once they tied the Indoctrination into keeping the mouse's people safe, everything got simpler. Adding a few pleasure hooks had only made it better.

Ilia had been less complicated, but more...battered? Broken? Something in that vein, as the marks of her previous Indoctrinations weighed heavier on her. She remembered what she had gone through, and she remembered loving what had been made of her. Her past in the mines, as an officer over those that had been digging out Outpost Zonga, had been prestigious enough. She had authority and power down there, but once he had turned her into a pleasure slave, she had found herself enjoying losing her power, being stripped of everything that she had been to become someone's toy.

She had been afraid of becoming that again, but wanted it on some level. For her, that made the hooks for the Indoctrination easier to find. Lust, pleasure, both of which were easy to offer her for obedience. She was given authority, but with limitations, given a small security squad under him that would have accelerated and advanced training compared to the others. The main thing that he would have to do was ensure that she had her ambition for responsibility and prestige balanced against her newly-awakened lusts and needs. Anything that brought one or the other down would threaten the delicate balance that she'd managed to establish.

With the programming done for both of them, he sent Ilia out with her squad to get a feel for land-based maneuvers, wanting to have a report showing just what her skills were. It would help him figure out how to use her going forward.

But first...

He turned to the naked mouse in the recording chamber. Or at least, that was what he was calling it. It was a created room on the bottom side of the Indomitable, circular with cameras and recording devices set into the floor, walls, and ceiling from various angles. It would allow for a fully holographic and 3D presentation later, which would be important to prove the veracity of this.

King Soledad was still wearing the cock ring that he'd been adorned with during their first meeting, the mouse looking...not quite drugged, but definitely more 'happy' than usual. The eagerness that had been implanted in him to serve showed in his eyes, and his cock bobbed up and down as he looked the ram over.

Bertram imagined the plating in the crotch of his armor fading away. The plates there disappeared, leaving his shaft rising up and free. The mouse king groaned, slowly sinking to his knees.

"I never thought I'd want that so much..."

" You will find many things different, under me."

"Are we going to -"

" For your entire planet to see, yes."

"...For them, I can do that."

" Then let us -"

Beep, beep. He held up a finger, shaking his head.

" Data, what is it?"

"I apologize, sir, but there is a ship requesting entrance at the edge of the system."

" What sort?"

"A diplomat, sir. Coming from the direction of Sur's Den."

Which meant that the fleet wouldn't be far behind. He looked at the naked king, groaning under his breath as he realized that they were going to be blueballed for a moment. But there was something else to determine, too.

How was he going to make this call without turning stupid? That was something that they were undoubtedly counting on, that he would become an idiotic Dark Lord, easy to defeat. But that happened with eye contact, with seeing the enemy...

What if I don't look at them?

" Open a text channel."

"..."

" Data?"

"Pardon, sir. I was checking to ensure we had that. Opening now."

A hologram of a text window opened in front of him. The Dark Lord waited, arms crossed, and was even more thankful for his mask as King Soledad walked over, stroking a finger along the base of his cock.

"Would you mind..."

" You wish to serve?"

"I should get used to the taste."

" Feel free. I will be texting."

As the king knelt, he saw the first message appear. It came with the name 'Lazir' attached to the side of it.

Lazir: An unorthodox method of communicating. Are you trying to hide something, Dark Lord?

Gritting his teeth through the oral attention he was getting - and getting a firm reminder of just how talented the mouse's mouth actually was - he pressed his hand to the hologram and typed in return.

_Dark Lord: I am giving you a chance to preserve your modesty. My pleasures are many, and do not stop for communications.

Lazir: You...well, I suppose that's fair.

Lazir: Though I would not have objected to the show.

Lazir: ...You do not need to remember I said that.

Dark Lord: Consider it forgotten.

Lazir: Kindly given.

Dark Lord: Now, what do you want?

Lazir: Well, your surrender, of course. Mostly a formality, really.

Dark Lord: And if I were to say that I would?_

" Hmmm...it allows me to phrase it in the hypothetical, at least."

_Lazir: ...I'm sorry, I must have misread that. What?

Dark Lord: Suppose I said I would. What would that involve?

Lazir: I...this is the first time anyone's actually considered it.

Lazir: I need to look at the protocol.

Dark Lord: Take your time._

A plan was already forming in his head. It was a plan that would only work once, but if he could manage it, if he could pull off a lie that nobody expected, then there was a chance of turning a potential disaster into something that would empower him. It all depended on how clueless the diplomat was on the other side of the console...

And how well he could focus while Soledad deepthroated him.

The End

Summary: Bertram explores the Indoctrination process in-depth, and plots out a way to subdue a planet without needing quite so many individual Indoctrinations.

Tags: M/M, F/solo, Ram, Mouse, Snake, Sci-Fi, Series, Mind Control, Oral, Blowjob, Interview, Negotiation, Patreon, Dark Lord Substitute, Isekai,