1 – The Interview

Before me the door opened to reveal the huge figure of General Manager Nopal, a man so senior to me in the company we shouldn’t have been breathing the same air. He spoke his welcome with a faint smile and a tone of condescension, “Come in Haiko, please.” How did he even know my name? I stepped through but the gap he made was barely wide enough to squeeze past. The door shut behind me with a click, then locked. I started to sit down before his desk, but he halted me, “No.”

I looked back at him. His eyes were upon my rear and my well groomed tail. He was a baseline, or at least he possessed no obvious gene splices. Perhaps something to give him that bulky muscle and square jawline. “No Sir?” I inquired, but the way his gaze remained fixed on my body, not me… This was not going to be a pleasant meeting—for me.

“I have been told that you are ambitious. You don’t just climb ladders, you break the rungs on your way up. Admiral traits for a lower level exec, but that’s not how things work here, not at these levels.”

Shit, was I about to get demoted? Promoted? Canned? “I… I don’t know what…”

He held up his hand, thick fingers splayed open. “No,” he repeated in the same tone. “From here on out, if you want to advance then you will need both allies and results. Piss off any of your coworkers, and they have the power to ruin your life.”

I frowned deeply while I shrank under his gaze. I could those his eyes on my tail and unconsciously tucked it between my legs. No, he wasn’t going to fire or demote me, he wanted me to feel vulnerable. Did he just want sex? Power over me? It wouldn’t be the first time, or the last… I forced myself to relax and raised my tail a little, just enough for his gaze to see under. “Allies? Such as you?” It was how the game was played.

He approached and laid a heavy hand upon one of my shoulders. I resisted the urge to shake him off, his touch revolted me but I wasn’t going to screw this up. Only an amateur freaked out when their boss came onto them. A professional turned it to her advantage. I focused my gaze, then blinked once. A recording icon appeared in my peripheral vision. I’d play his game my way.

“Yes, I could be your ally. You do something for me, I do something for you. I reached my position through hard work, determination, and knowing who to keep happy and contented. Make sense?” While he spoke, his hand slid along the collar of my shirt and up into my hair. Those fingers tangled, curled, then tugged. I felt goosebumps rise and a shiver roll down my spine.

“Yes Sir, it does,” I answered. “What would make you—content?”

His fingers unclenched and trailed down. That wasn’t better. I shivered involuntarily as his fingers traced my spine, all the way to the base of my tail. He took it in hand, an intensely intimate and, for a stranger, rude gesture. My stomach tightened and thighs closed protectively but I did not force my tail down. I’d deal with him in time, but for now I’d go along with it.

I looked back up over my shoulder at him, filled my vision and the recording with his face as he spoke. “I have a problem, an ache that I cannot satisfy. It’s an irritation that interrupts the smooth day to day flow of my duties. You understand irritations, I’m sure.”

I bit my lip, a fairly absurd expression I felt, but it seemed to excite him. “Yes Sir, I do.” Yes indeed, one such irritation had his filthy mitts on my tail! “Do you have a solution? Is it anything I can solve?” As if I didn’t know, and he didn’t believe my innocent front in the slightest.

His grin spread slowly, even reached his eyes. He was a very friendly and forward man, even for a professional rapist. How many others had stood here in his hands, how many had been bent over that desk? Did he have a cleaning service dedicated to sexual fluids? Perhaps a porn industry grade robot.

“I need someone I trust, someone willing to go above and beyond the limits of polite society. Someone who has what it takes to succeed in the face of impossible odds.”

My flirtatious expression faltered, we were speaking of the same subject? “Impossible odds, Sir?”

“I wonder if you really are the woman for the job. Can you solve my problem?” He let go of my tail and circled his desk, then took a seat. Just like that, the temperature in the room fell again while the chill in my bones warmed. I reached for normal footing again. “What would you do, for my favor? I could help you rise even beyond my station.”

That was… that was odd, “Beyond you? Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest?”

“Hardly Haiko, our company is vast. I’m a general manager of Ter-ari sector production, that’s high enough for me. I unlike you, am not ambitious. I have my cake, and I eat it too.” His eyes drifted away from my face, over my breasts and down. “I have appetites, especially for spliced freaks like yourself.” The words were cruel, but his expression suggested no malice. Had he himself gene spliced in something odd? It wasn’t obvious.

“So, what is this problem. Quit beating around the bush, what thorn is irritating your position of comfort and contentment?”

“What do you know about organic metal-ceramics?” Whatever game he was playing, I was pretty sure he’d be whipping out his genitals sooner or later, but I just couldn’t follow his jumps in topic.

“Solid mass extrusions or Organic Metallurgy?” The former were just created through organic processes, yeasts and bacterial growths that left behind deposits, while the latter were the stuff of legends, living space ships and cities grown from native rock.

“Organic Metallurgy,” he answered, then continued, “Delta Pavonis. That is my thorn. The only non-Terran life ever found and it’s barely beyond the stage of slime molds and mycelium masses. However, the research being done there is beyond cutting edge. The life there uses a hydrocarbon and silicon-phosphate based genetic encoding that makes it both fragile, and easy to manipulate.”

I followed, though all of this was new to me. No one had ever even suggested that we’d found alien life, slime mold or otherwise. I was about to ask further, intrigued and excited in the same breath. The words remained unspoken as his hand rose from below the desk and placed a small vial before me. “We should be seeing breakthrough after breakthrough come from Delta Pavonis. It is the poster child of incredible potential. Instead, production has dropped 79% in the past five years, and the most impressive product? A new drug, dubbed Violet Milk.”

I stared down at the vial, inside was a milky purple liquid with a few bubbles suspended within. “Your thorn, is an alien drug?”

“No, not alien, human through and through, but found through researching alien biology. It… it is something… I don’t have the words to describe it, I can only show you. Do you grant me permission to alter your mind state for the next few hours? My own will be greatly altered as well.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“It’s not even known by the rest of the company, let alone a government. It is not a scheduled drug, so no, it is not illegal.” He then looked at my breasts again, with no embarrassment, “Under the influence, I will drag you over this desk and force you to pleasure me, probably hurt you in the process. You, you will accept this willingly, even eagerly. It will alter your perception of me, permanently as well. New pathways will be worn in your mind that cannot easily be undone.”

I recoiled in revulsion. The idea of it was sick, the suggestion by one of my superiors made it possibly criminal and certainly amoral. “I cannot, will not be a part of this!” I proclaimed firmly, I was adjusted to be sterile and cool headed, but even so… I would not subject myself to these violent lusts of his. Willingly? What kind of… “that’s like some ultimate date rape drug.”

“It’s worse than that even, snowflake, it’s mind rape.” I flinched back from the nickname, flushed darkly, and started to leave. “If you want to rise in this company, you have to help me put an end to this… abomination.” Then he tapped the stopper atop the little jar, “If you take the job, you will come face to face with this drug, you will be raped, and you will be enslaved. Production has dropped to a stand still, because the workforce has found a new purpose, servile and depraved. You need to know what you are facing, and resist it. I need to know that you can resist it.”

His words were honest, but there was another story there too, a deep shame that burned behind them. “You’re addicted. You can’t resist it.”

“It’s taking all of my willpower not to simply crush this between my fingers and smear the drug and broken glass into your fur… I…” the table thumped, but both of his hands were visible. “The source needs to be cut off, the drug needs to be destroyed. Hell, if it comes to it, glass the fucking planet from orbit.” The thump came again, he shifted in his chair. “Prove to me that you are stronger than I am.” He closed his eyes tight and took a deep breath, “I faced it, I failed, and I had to be dragged from the world by the captain of my ship. While I was helplessly raping her.”

I reached out and touched the back of his hand. My disgust and anger at him faded slowly, he was a monster still, but he didn’t want to be. His skin felt cool and clammy, his face was shiny with oily sweat. I could smell him, an unpleasant odor of musk and sweat. The desk thumped once more. I pulled the vial from between his fingers and held it up before me. Pale violet, creamy, thick, frothy from jostling in his pocket. “How much? How do I use it?”

“It’s a high vapor pressure organic amalgam, a mixture of proteins, peptides, and monoamines in a solution of Volatile Organic Compounds, ethyl acetate, methyl acetate, and methyl formate. Just open it and relax.” He smiled, then shook his head in dismissal, “Or don’t. If you don’t think you can handle it.” He wanted me to open it, wanted me to lose control just like he described. Monster, whether he chose to be or not.

“You’re sick,” I told him, voice flat. He shrugged, the desk thumped again. “What is that?”

“Hmm? What is what?” He didn’t sound innocent.

“That thumping, are you kicking something?”

The huge man shrugged again and raised his hands, “Don’t change the subject Snowflake. Open it, or get the fuck out of my office. I’ve got another meeting planned after yours, hopefully they’ll have the guts to follow through.”

My lips curled back in an instinctive snarl. Couldn’t he just be a bastard, or a pathetic sexfiend? Why did I have to pity him, hate him, and like him in turn, only for him to act like a callous jackass? I wrenched the bottle open, the violet liquid spilled over my fingers in my haste. It flowed like syrup, yet left my fingers slippery and greasy. A few seconds later the incredibly aroma hit me, a sweet and fruity chemical odor. My nose burned a little and my tongue tingled as I breathed.

“Damn, I expected something bitter or foul. That actually smells good, like fruit and nail polish. So what…” I began to ask him what was supposed to happen, but my fingers were rapidly drying and the contents of the vial was boiling away into a steamy wisp. I stared at it and got the notion that maybe I shouldn’t breathe so deeply.

He nodded at me, “Aerosol delivery, crack it open in a crowded room and produce pure mayhem. It’s not just a mind rape drug, it’s a bio weapon.”

I started to panic, “Bio weapon? You mean it’s dangerous?”

“No, not as far as my own testing has come up with. Not in and of itself anyway.” The desk thumped again, then again, and again, rhythmic and steady. “I hope you don’t mind, but I…” He reached a hand under the desk and undid the clasp of his pants, then drew down his zipper. I looked away and bit my lower lip with unease. The desk was struck again, a meaty slap more than a thud, he sighed. “I… Um… what was I saying?” Slap, slap, slap. The desk was struck again and again. It wasn’t in time with his breathing, or his heartbeat as far as I could tell.

“Uh, Sir, you were, um…” I suddenly couldn’t recall. What had we been discussing? Why was I even standing here? “Why do you keep your office so hot?” I asked. A shiver ran down my body, short, fuzzy fur stood on end then laid flat again. An involuntary moan slipped from my throat and startled me something fierce. “What the hell?”

His body flexed, or perhaps clenched, his hips shifted in the chair and the desk rocked slightly as it was slapped again, hard. His breath came in a sharp gust. Then he calmed himself with a long sigh and nodded “Yeah, first time is a bit confusing. Can’t even feel it can you?”

“Feel what?” I smoothed the fur down on my arm, then again and again. I felt momentarily cold, then hot. My body couldn’t make up its damn mind. “I feel kinda feverish or chilled? Both? How is that even possible?” I shifted from foot to foot a few times, then sat myself down in the large chair before his desk. That was a mistake. The moment my thighs parted and the panel of my panties pressed against my sex, the dam broke.

“Thermoreceptors, something in the, um, drug… one of the peptides maybe? It screws with our temperature sense.” He spoke, but I had stopped listening. My eyes were fixed upon the leather between my thighs. It glistened. Where I’d scooted across the seat, I’d left a wet trail. Heck, a puddle was forming under my rump! His words penetrated my fixated thoughts again, “…heat like physiological response.”

I was suddenly laser focused as I told him, “I have that turned off, I know some splicers are into it, but I like being in control.” Heat, my mother had left that gene activated, her antics had been a shameful display. She’d masturbated in public, humped furniture, and spread her legs for anything with a cock. “I’m not some beast, just because I look like one!”

He raised a hefty fist and fixed one digit upon my hips, “Oh? And what are you doing?”

I looked down at the hand thrust between my legs. I’d torn my underwear with absent violence and held my legs spread wide enough for him to see everything. The desk bounced again. My hips rolled and smeared my soggy folds into my palm. “Uh, shit.” It was all I could think to say. The desk thudded, I looked up at it. “What is that?” I asked it, even as my fingers played and understanding dawned. I was so dim witted some times. “What kinda splice did you get? Something you could hide, obviously.”

My hips rocked faster as my fingers slipped inside. What the fuck was I doing? I was in my Boss’s office! Hell, my boss was right in front of me, watching. The shame I should have felt didn’t come, the flush that spread under my fur was something else all together. By the time he answered, I’d already forgotten the question, my eyes fixed on the little glass bottle I’d dropped. What was that again? His words startled me, “Come under here and find out. I know how much you want to. Always in control, hmm?” the desk thudded again.

I remembered. He was spliced, something exotic maybe, easily concealed. My hips slid forward inch by inch until I managed to come right off the edge of the chair. My thighs were soaked, my skirt a sopping mess, and the scent… oh fuck. I could smell myself, the salty sour tang wafted up as I fell. I breathed in deep and filled my nose. I could taste the tangy musk on my tongue and began to salivate.

“I didn’t think you actually would,” He said aloud with a laugh and the desk bounced again with a thud.

“Huh? Actually would what?” I looked up from where I knelt, a rivulet of saliva drooled down my chin and sopped into my throat fur. I couldn’t see him from that position, or at least, not his face. The desk bounced again with a slap. What I could see was his erection, a splice from the depths of perverse hell. He was human in all ways but one. Well, no that wasn’t true, at least three if you included those huge testicles. His pants were down around his ankles and hairy thighs open wide to reveal his truly inhuman genitals.

My hand rose of its own volition, I didn’t even realize what I had done until I saw my own fingers close upon his massive length. The head flared under my fingers and spat a rivulet of moisture into my palm. Equine, horse, that was obvious. No adjustment for scale either, he was sized for a full Clydesdale stallion. His erection twitched a moment after he flared, the twitch was violent enough to be jerked from my grasp and slap hard against the desk. There was a dent in the oak, a dent and a smear, this was not the first time he had sat at this desk with a freed erection.

As it drooped again over the edge of his worn leather chair my eyes widened. Instead of a medial ridge there was what could only be a canine knot, but sized up for a horse. My gut clenched in rejection while my mouth opened involuntarily and my saliva glands jetted hard. I felt like I was going to throw up, but the reaction was one of pure untempered lust. I was not in control, I had no will of my own, I did not even consider my actions as I took them.

My hands closed again on his shaft, that knot throbbed under my fingertips and his penis filled with blood again. I kept my grasp this time and felt his pulse quicken. Above the desk and a million miles distant from my awareness, he moaned and began to rock in his seat. I responded without thought to his eager lust. My lips closed on the drooling urethral straw just as his head flared again. His precum gushed free across my tongue, alkali and pungent. I swallowed, inhaled, swallowed again, then lost every last sense of reason. The scent of sweat, salt, musk, and stale semen left me desperate. I’d never desired them before, but now…

His thick fingers closed on the back of my head, and pulled me in. I leaned forward eagerly, no fear or hesitation in mind. His huge head passed between my lips and teeth, then flared. I’d never given oral to a purebred stallion, only anthro’ pony boys and other hybrids. I should have been terrified, should have had the sense to run the fuck away. I didn’t. My jaw popped and pain bloomed with his flare. His hips jerked before my eyes and he struck the back of my throat like a damn hammer.

I should have pulled away, screamed, bit, something—anything else. Like a mad fool I swallowed, then leaned forward and swallowed again. My throat trembled briefly with a gag reflex, then he flared again between my tonsils. I tried to scream but no air passed the swollen object lodged within. His hips bucked again, I leaned into it. That knot before my eyes grew closer as my throat stretched, then tore. Yet still I swallowed without struggle.

My own liquid heat jetted from within as my sex clenched. A wet splatter echoed back at me as my juices rained upon the chair and floor behind me. Oh how I ached! Ached with a deep hunger, something starved and broken. I could hear the squelch and pops of my own sex as it gaped and clenched, gaped and clenched. Above me he grunted and gasped as he flared again, then I was force fed a torrential jet of precum. I swallowed and as before, leaned into it, the knot grew closer. I assisted with my own destruction.

He stood then, the chair fell back and away. Before me his balls swung forward; inhuman orbs the size of mangoes. I was dragged from under the desk by my hair. Another hand took me by the skirt, and lifted. I felt like a sack of potatoes, thrown about, then the air was knocked out of me as I was slammed down onto his desk. The blunt letter opener jabbed me in the shoulder, a crystal cube paperweight gouged my butt, papers were tossed aside.

When my vision cleared I was left with only the view of his huge erection, testicles, and hairy thighs. Nothing else was clear. Then he thrust again and my skull pressed into the padded edge of the desk. My head tilted back to align my throat and mouth. He sank the rest of the way inside. Something in my chest popped with a sense of intense heat and discomfort. My hips in response, rose and fell as a puddle began to form under my tail. Why weren’t there two of them? The thought was the first one I had in minutes. I wanted a second stallion between my legs.

He thrust again with a groan, his knot mashed into my lips. I strained to open my mouth, frustrated tears began to fall. A hand fell to my stomach, it drifted lower. Fingers curled hard around my left thigh, the other hand was white knuckled on the edge of the desk to my right. His hips rolled, the knot retreated, I sobbed a choked, half drowned sob, then sucked in a single breath. My eyes stared up at his knot, watched it retreat, watched it throb, watched it descend again.

Something snapped in my jaw, a loud pop. Hot pain bloomed in the side of my face as my body arched in response to his thrust. It took my addled mind a moment to realize what had happened, it took his knot to throb again. Between my lips his knot swelled… Between my lips, behind my teeth, against my tongue. It swelled, then swelled again and again. My jaw opened wider than I’d ever thought possible, my lips stretched to white bands wrapped around his shaft.

His testicles flinched upward within my dazed vision while thighs and hips flexed. I saw his release come, like an avalanche in slow motion. His urethra swelled just above his sack, the swell rolled forward, inflated. I felt it swell against my nose and upper lip, then tongue as it vanished into his knot. A moment later my stomach swelled in response. His penis made a sound, a rushing gurgle like water in a pipe, I’d never heard anything like it, never imagined you even could.

The eruption passed with a relished exhalation. He fell forward and buried that knot against my tonsils, where it belonged. Again his sack flinched up and away followed by another incredible release. My guts began to ache nearly as bad as my face. He jerked again, something deep inside gurgled and the pressure released blissfully. I almost came.

His knot deflated like a balloon. So incredibly quickly it went from a boulder between my teeth, to nothing. His entire erection failed and slipped from my defiled throat. As he withdrew, the last dregs of his ejaculation splattered free. Thick as chewing gum, his jelled release filled my throat and mouth, and stayed there. I inhaled, air came, but so did his sperm filled gift. I coughed, it did not dislodge but did slip into my sinuses. I inhaled, sneezed, inhaled, coughed. His ejaculate burned in my eyes, nose, sinuses, lungs, and throat. The smell of it, the taste of it, alkali, bitter, salty, humiliating.

Even as I choked and coughed, his erection returned. I didn’t see it, couldn’t see through my tears. Only when I felt those heavy hands push my knees apart did I realize what was happening. My sex clenched, gaped, clenched. His flared head kissed it, still soaked in slippery seed. “Yesssss!” I hissed, then coughed again hard enough to dislodge the mass of jelled semen and spit it free. It landed in a sticky rope on his chair. My gaze fixed on it, pearly white stained pink and streaked with red blood.

He bucked, I pushed back. A distant thought came to me, that if he got that knot inside, I’d never walk again. he’d split me in two. He bucked, I bucked, his head bent and squished between my nethers, then flared. My back arched involuntarily, pain and pleasure twisted together as he stretched my tiny vagina. I was no virgin, but I’d never been one to give it up easily, let alone to something that monstrously huge!

His words came, a stuttering chain of thoughts that barely cohered, “I can feel it. Heat. So much. The smell of fertility. It… it does it. Something does it. Can you feel it Haiko? Can you feel your eggs fall? Can you feel yourself ovulate? I can smell it… taste it.”

Ovulate? I had that shut off, what was he babbling about? “Wh.. whuh? No, I shuh ih off, noh eggs.” My hips rose against his thrust, my depths burned as he sank into them. I felt like I would break as he flared again.

Firm and almost clearly, he explained, “It makes you.” He thrust hard, bottomed out inside of me, then thrust again as if there was any deeper to go. His knot swelled between my thighs. I pushed back hard, I wanted it inside where it belonged. “It never fails. One hundred percent fertility rate. I’ve had to hide so many women away… so many children. I can’t stop. I won’t stop.” He withdrew until only his flare remained within, then slammed forward, a thrust like a spear, the wind was knocked from me and my shoulders slid off the edge of the desk. Another thrust and I was clutching at anything to keep myself off the floor.

His words sank in at last, some form of coherent self began to emerge. “Huh? Noh… Noh… I tur tha off. B-Bahd fuh johb.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “It’s too bad…” He started to pant, to tense. His hips flexed and scrotum flinched up.

“Oh shih,” I gasped aloud as a spark of panicked reason bloomed clear and bright. He was about to ejaculate, inside of me. This drug turned on fertility, one hundred percent. I planted both of my feet in his stomach and pushed as hard as I could. I had no rational thought beyond that spark, panic overwhelmed my lust. He fell away, stumbled over the guest chair, and landed on his back. A heartbeat later a stream of white blasted up and splattered against the ceiling three meters above. The second eruption rained down upon me and the desk. “Oh fuh, fuh… Noh… Noh!” I reached between my legs to wipe the mess clean… but there was only a trickle of his precum and my own sopping wet flood. No jellied sperm, no thick ropes. My wiping turned to masturbation and my mind began to unravel again.

“Ow…” He said at last, “W-why?”

“Noh yuh brood mare,” I mumbled at him between pants and squelching strokes.

“But…” He trailed off, then laughed, “Shit, I forgot. Well, I guess you’re strong enough, stronger than me!” He laughed again harder between involuntary shudders, still mid orgasm. It continued for a while, then altered, shifted into something softer and less pleasant. It took my drug fouled a while to make sense of it. He was sobbing. My lust faded to a dull ache, the mood lost.

Carefully, I sat up on the edge of his desk. I was a mess, my blouse was torn and sloppy, skirt plastered with mingled fluids, and underwear simply torn apart. The whole room was pretty well drenched. Nothing was quite as sad and sloppy as the chubby half naked man with the horse and canine splice jutting up from his lap, still ejaculating. Great wracking sobs shook him, even as his hips bucked and his load splattered across his chest.

“Geh ahold of yuh’sef,” I told him. The drug had to be clearing at last. I was beginning to remember why I was here, Sigma Draconis? Right?, “yuh goh a shih fuh muh?” No, wait, Delta Pavonis. I pounded palms into my temples, then shook my head. That was a mistake. The pain flared again, as sharp and hot as daggers in my neck. My jaw flopped open and closed a few times, teeth didn’t align, and I managed to bite my tongue. “Yuh bohk muh jahw!” I howled.

“S-sorry, I’ll… Vale will fix you up before you leave,” he responded, then snorted wetly and shuddered with another sob. “You don’t know… When I first went there, I was drugged and… and…” he shuddered once more, this time in some inner revulsion. “I didn’t care. So many. So many. I couldn’t stop. The very air of the facility was tainted.”

“Wuh yuh halking ahout?” I half yelled, “Yuh bohk muh jahw!” Oh how it hurt to talk.

His gaze fell on my face, I saw shame, but his eyes did not linger there. They fell upon my crotch, his penis began to erect again, he began to rise once more. “S-sorry,” he repeated, but it seemed more of an unconscious habit now than meaningful. So many rape victims is what he meant, so many imprisoned while they went through their pregnancies and births. He got back to his feet, his thick hands reached for me, his stomach clenched, his penis throbbed and swung upward like a baseball bat to strike him with a wet slap in the chest. It came down again and landed upon the desk between my thighs. “Sorry.” Hands reached to take my hips.

I kicked again, this time I aimed square for his huge equine sack. I’d never kicked someone in the testicles before, let alone such huge gonads. His face went red with fury and pain. I thought he might turn those meaty paws upon me like battering rams—and tensed. My jaw tried to clench, agony bloomed, the blows did not fall. Instead, he went crossed eyed, then he fell to his knees and clutched his injured sack. “Sorry yourself,” I thought, pitilessly. “Whah shihp Nopal?”

He gasped out, keened for an entire breath, gasped again, then with a sob got control of himself, “Oh-fuck-oh fuck! Sorry, I’m so sorry. Ship? It is the Trophy of Joy my own ship, captained by Vale, she’s still fueling I think. I’ll… I’ll call a private escort. She will surrender command when you board.” He muttered something under his breath, then closed his eyes and sagged back against the guest chair. “Fuck.”

“Yuh shoohd be ahamehd,” I told him as I tried to clean myself up. Globs of tacky cum came away in smears upon fist fulls of his desk papers. Most were already soaked, but I did my best.

He nodded, “I am. You have no idea.” He took a moment to compose himself then said, “Obviously you will not breathe any planetary atmosphere. That was my mistake. But… but…” But they could have other methods of delivery, I finished silently. He chortled a moment later and asked, “Know what that remaining 21% of income is from the planet?” He paused, I just stared at him, “We’re selling porn!”

I thought of some of the weird sex fads going around in the splicer communities lately. Alien looking mods, weird fetishes. “Ah. Bahstahd.” He nodded in agreement, then the door opened and a quartet of heavily armed marines entered. My escort. They took one look at me, and nodded. I did not see pity or disgust in their gaze. With as much pride as I could muster, with one breast bared, drenched head to toe in sperm, and a throbbing lust between my loins, I saluted and entered their circle.

2 – Hard Choices

“I was told that the planet is nothing but orgies!” He sounded eager, young, and stupid. Had I ever been young?

I overheard, but pretended to ignore them. “Shut up with that nonsense. Anyway the old lady will take your head off if she hears you talking about going AWOL.” I had become the old lady, a feared force of nature, ruler of a microcosm in space… and I was only twenty fucking three.

The other retorted, “Leave off, it’s none of your business.” He sounded petulant, a little brat who wanted to go traipsing through a field of drug induced rape zombies. It was too early for this shit.

I yawned and suppressed a wince. My face still throbbed when I did that—or sneezed—or swallowed—or showed any expression that tugged on any facial muscles. It left me with a stony expression most the time, and my voice didn’t help. The first crew member responded, heated, and I’d heard enough. “I’m not deaf you imbeciles. If you would like to continue, you can take this outside. Suits stay here though, company property and all that. In fact, drop your clothes off at the laundry before sucking vacuum.”

They stared up at me, briefly, the one look terrified. “Yes Captain, argument is over.”

The other eyed his companion, then nodded and slipped out of the mess. I noted his name tag, Ensign Tulow. I shoveled the last fork full of reconstituted egg emulsion down my throat, slipped the platter into the recycle chute, and stood. Over the ship-wide came my Exec’s voice, “Starfall in twenty minutes, find your designated stations immediately.”

I swiped another bulb of tea from the heating carton then kicked off and drifted into the corridor. It would be good to have real weight again. Even thrust “gravity” was only an approximation, and far too gentle to really feel like one’s self. We’d spent the better part of a month in free fall, drifting in a superluminal non-space. Beyond the metal walls of our ephemeral soap bubble was a nothingness less than nothing. To the naked eye it just looked black, not the black of space, which was more like a smear of sparkly semen—why did my mind insist on using erotic metaphor now? It was a black darker than any night could ever be, not even the thin gas and dust of interstellar space. Still, it didn’t trigger weird neurosis the way zero gravity did.

I rebounded off a wall, kicked down the passage, then threw myself up into operations. Chandi glanced up from her navigation immersion just long enough to recognize me. Aden gave a nervous wave of greeting, then he too returned to his duty. Only Vale looked calm and collected. “Reporting in, Exec. Any stragglers?”

“One lout down in cargo three was found napping. Nothing of note otherwise.”

“You going to your bunk?” I asked.

She smirked, “Not on your life Captain. If I’m going to be scraped across the cosmos like a fine schmear on a bagel, I want to see it coming.”

“If that happens, you won’t have a chance to see it coming.”

“Not the transition, no, but I might see the idiot who pushed the wrong button so I can hunt them down in the next life.”

And I was the one who might take heads? I shook mine and settled into the harness above my immersion. Non-space was empty, no light, no dust, no gas, not even vacuum energy, nothing. My immersion though displayed quantum gravity, and that spilled over, just a little. “Looks like we’re right on the mark. Those curves are starting to steepen nicely.”

“We could have initiated Starfall an hour ago. We are already deep within the gravity well of Delta Pavonis,” She affirmed my observation. Of course we could have, but no one had the guts to push the button until the Captain was on the bridge, and no one was going to make the Captain get out of her shower early. Even Vale showed a strange deference in those deep, troubled eyes.

“Proceed as scheduled. As soon as we return to real space I’d like to send off a burst transmission, please warm up the com laser.” I took a pull of hot tea from the bulb, then stowed it on a hook in my harness.

Aden gave a sharp nod and sank his fingers into his immersion. A moment later an open record element appeared in mine. I touched it, expanded it. A moment past as I considered recording it sub-audible, then spoke aloud for all in Ops to hear, “To whomever is still receiving this transmission, this is Captain Haiko of the Trophy of Joy. We have just completed Starfall into Delta Pavonis and will be entering orbit shortly. If there is anyone with a cohesive pair of brain cells left, please advise us on the conditions dirt side. Even if you are heavily under the influence… if you can respond—do so. Inaction on your part may endanger the lives of everyone under the domes.” I halted the recording then looked up toward tactical, “Prepare to arm and fire atomic weapons upon the domes at my word. Make them dirty.”

“Dirty?” Aden asked, shocked. “Why not kinetic armaments? Why are we firing at all?”

They were not aware of all the facts, and I’d just spelled out how deadly serious this mission was. Quietly, with an edge of ice in my husky voice I told him, “A heavy rock will kill them, but a dirty bomb will keep grave robbers from sniffing around for centuries. What they have? It could destroy civilization and they are using it like a fucking Quaalude at an orgy.”

“What do they have Captain?” Chandi asked without looking up.

Vale snapped, “Something worth the lives of everyone on board this ship if it should slip away. Focus. Starfall in seven minutes.” Her voice had begun to tremble slightly.

Chandi ducked her head and flushed, “Yes X.O.”

I looked over at my exec with a slight frown. The look in her eyes was nearly as haunted as Nopal’s. Aden fixated his gaze on his own immersion, manipulated data and systems with a practiced hand, and tried to be as small and unobtrusive as possible. He was a slight man, quick witted, and quick with a smile. He might have made a fine bedmate too, had he been stationed on any other ship. With the Old Lady and Vale the Impaler leading, that wasn’t likely.

Vale’s fingers brushed through her immersion. The not quite fluid distorted at her touch. Her words echoed over the ship-wide, “Five minutes until Starfall. Sedatives are available on request to all non-essential personnel.” That was a change, perhaps she was feeling a bit guilty for snapping at Chandi. I cocked a brow at her and she responded with a tight smile.

She had been there with Nopal the first time. Was she only one of his victims? Or had she lost her mind to the drug as well? Why wasn’t she leading this instead of me? I’d so many questions I’d never dared ask, after all, how did you ask someone if they too broke their jaw on a knotted horse cock or had enjoyed a drug induced orgy upon an alien planet? She’d been there when I’d come onboard, jaw broken, soaked in semen. There had been no pity or disgust in her eyes then, only what looked like relief.

The minutes ticked away toward zero. One last announcement went out, “Starfall in ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…” The computer could have dictated it, but that wasn’t her style.

Chandi gave one last nod, then sat back as all her calculations and control cascades executed. Vale’s lips formed the word zero, but the breath left her lungs in a violent gust. I exhaled sharply, but easily, ready. Aden wheezed. Chandi sighed an almost sexual sound. Electronics failed at once with an all encompassing pop. My mind blanked, halted, stuttered. For all intents and purposes, I had died.

The fact that it stuttered, that I knew I had forgotten something, that meant I was reborn. That instant eternity between non-space and real space did not exist, could not be measured, could not be understood. When one transitioned, one left causality and treated time like another axis in space. We took a left turn on the penrose diagram, went superluminal, and passed back through the event horizon of an artificial singularity. The human mind, body, physics, and the very bones of the ship simply did not make sense outside of the domain of causality. Yet, here we were. Then the pain struck as delayed nervous energy returned like a tidal wave breaking upon the shores of thought. I screamed, and I wasn’t alone.

When the static cleared from my vision, I found my immersion changed. The black non-space had been coated in the thin, creamy ejaculation of the Milky way galaxy. My mouth watered and sex clenched involuntarily. Everything reminded me of sex now, and I hated it. Ovulating for the first time had been a nightmare of emotions and physiological repercussions, but that had passed and my hormones had stabilized… but my mind had not recovered entirely. I still shook with the echos of agony, my skin prickled, fine peach fuzz fur stood on end all over my body. Yet, yet my eyes rose to find Aden and wondered if he had a gene spliced dick as well? He was probably gay, or wasn’t attracted to splicers like me, but more and more he was in my thoughts when I went to bed. I wondered what he would smell like… with my muzzle buried in his crotch.

I swallowed hard, forced saliva and bile back down and fixed my gaze on the immersion below. I sank my hands in and tracers appeared around my fingertips. I clutched, pulled, and redirected the view until Delta Pavonis was centered. Larger than Sol, darker orange, but almost the same mass. She was on her way towards stellar death, too much iron in her—like a poison leeching the life from her mottled skin. The subgiant would last another few million years, then expand into a red giant and engulf the habitable zone.

I touched the symbol of (δ Pav) and expanded it into a categorized list. Two dozen primary orbitals, a few thousand secondaries, millions of rocks and iceballs from a few million tons to a few kilograms. At the top was (δ Pav-Γ), dubbed Pavlov’s World. She was the third primary orbital, a rocky planet seventy percent earth mass, with an atmosphere that could be breathed but would give you lung cancer if the CO at nearly eighty thousand ppm didn’t get you first.

I expanded the planet until it filled most of my view. Green and gray, with wisps of pink in high atmosphere. Spectroscopy readings produced a bewildering soup of organic and inorganic molecules, but was dominated by nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and a surface oxygen ratio of nearly forty percent. Water vapor came in next, followed by Dichloromethane and Chloromethane of all things which accounted for the high carbon monoxide concentrations. “Don’t take your suit off down there,” I told the others unnecessarily, then took another sip of tea. It was starting to cool.

Vale responded with a lighthearted tone, “The atmosphere smells sweet, something like strawberry cotton candy in a moldy cum rag.”

I choked, a spray of tea and saliva caught the light in an expanding halo. “That sounds… unpleasant,” I told her once I’d cleared my throat. “You actually smelled it?”

“It isn’t all that bad. Last time I was here I had to run six hundred meters without a rebreather in the open atmosphere. I was singing lullabies and counting butterflies by the time I reached the next airlock, but I survived.” She sounded proud of herself, but there was still that haunted look in her eyes still. What happened to you here?

With a confidant’s grin I asked, “Anything else I should know?”

She shook her head, “The Old Man already told you everything important. You’re here anyway. Don’t lose control.”

Aden asked, “Lose control? Like dropping nukes on civilians?”

I shot him an annoyed glance, “No, like bending tactical officers over their station and…” I stopped myself before I went further. Vale shot me a look like a deer in headlights, then narrowed her eyes. I winked at her.

Aden on the other hand jerked upright in his restraints and stared back at me, mouth agape, “I… wha… huh?”

I changed the subject quickly, “Did you send my burst as requested?”

“She’s away. Should be arriving at Pavlov’s in twenty seconds. We’re only a few hours out ourselves, Chandi left us with some excellent Delta-V.”

“Damn, I was hoping for some thrust gravity at least.” I sighed, took another pull of my bulb, then glanced back down into my immersion. “Radio chatter is almost non-existent. Looks like automated systems and EMI only.”

“Not entirely,” Aden responded with a strange expression as he tossed an animated graph to me. I reoriented it and expanded. A vast list of audio and video streams ganged together into a single transmission. I expanded one where it looked like there was activity and tuned into that audio track. The sloppy sounds of intercourse filled Ops along with a series of desperate whimpers and moans. The woman was barely visible, coated in sexual fluids and something dark purple. She was straddling a man who didn’t even appear to be conscious, though his erection remained upthrust and throbbing. There was something wrong with both of them, something my unconscious picked up but I couldn’t put a finger on.

“Shit,” I yelped and backed out. Then I looked back to Aden and demanded an explanation, “What the fuck was that?” Why were you sending me porn, kid, while on duty.

“The only vaguely useful signal coming from the planet Captain. I thought you were just pulling my leg when you mentioned orgy.” He blushed and glanced back down at his immersion. I looked around Operations. Chandi had her face in her hands, her ears pink. Vale looked calm, if a bit uneasy. Aden looked more scared than embarrassed.

I touched the ship-wide icon and activated it, “We will be entering the orbit of Delta Pavonis Gamma, Pavlov’s World, in two hours. It is time I briefed you on the details of our mission.” Vale gave a sharp nod, then began to unstrap herself. I waved goodnight to her, then went into general detail on the situation. Contact was lost, a terran compatable bioweapon had to be contained or eradicated entirely. I tried to emphasize the danger involved without explaining that it turned you into a rapine lunatic. They would figure that out soon enough and didn’t need their Captain giving them the birds and the bees speech.

An hour later and a few thousand cycles of my burst message, someone finally answered. There was video, but it was black and the audio was subvocal. I ran a quick analysis on it, and determined the source was an ocular uplink. We were seeing what the person on the other end was seeing. “Captain? Ship? Am I hallucinating again?” The texture of the blackness changed, I could make out a faint blur of dim or distant light, perhaps a reflection upon a curved surface? “No, no there it is again. Someone is really out there?”

The person on the other end moaned suddenly, a lusty, impassioned sound that made my stomach clench. “I’m Dora, sub-assistant researcher, organic extrusion, dome three, ID number… uhm… Shit.” She trailed off, moaned again, louder. Something moved in the darkness, someone? Her eyes closed I guessed as the texture changed again to black, the wet sticky sounds that followed where unmistakable. She panted, gasped, then sighed in exhausted pleasure. A few more wet, repetitive noises later, then whoever it was shuffled away again. She was making noises, inhuman noises, noises that spoke to physiological responses and bestial instinct.

I signaled Aden to halt the transmissions. “Dora? This is Captain Haiko on the Trophy of Joy. Are you coherent enough to respond?” I checked the delay, it was a one hundred seventy one second round trip at this point. “Light delay is about three minutes.” I kept the pickup open, so she could hear my breathing, so she would know I was still there. Right on time I heard her breathing change, she heard me.

It was another two minutes before she managed to speak again, “Huh? Wha… Captain? Three minutes? Oh! Yes, right. I’m trapped, trapped in here with these monsters. The drug was bad enough, but… but they…” she choked off, a wet sound was audible. She loosed a strangled groan, a sound somewhere between pleasure and pain. I could vividly picture her body arch as she did it, could hear the clench of her muscles and strain in her tone. She began to gag and cough, wet and deep lunged, then even that was choked off for a while.

It was another minute before she breathed again, rapid and desperate breaths. Then at last her breathing calmed again and she let out a contented sigh. It sounded post-coital. “Dora, tell me what they are doing to you. Are you being held prisoner? I am sure they are raping you, but…”

Her voice returned, interrupting me. “Oh Captain, please hurry. I don’t know if I can endure this much longer.” The darkness changed as her eyes opened. This time Aden managed to enhance and clarify the image into cumulative stills. The curve was her stomach, glossy and swollen. Rivulets of sloppy mucous had run down her flesh and hardened into a broken crust. She was on her back, no, on her shoulders with her back to the wall. Her legs were spread uncomfortably wide, bent at the knees, and seemed to be affixed by some solid mass. As I watched, she groaned aloud and a lump appeared upon the drum tight surface of her stomach, dried mucous cracked. The lump vanished in the next still, then appeared again slightly to the right in the one after.

I felt sick. My mouth watered and bile burned in the back of my throat. A fresh flood of mucous poured down her stomach, the rivulet split over her herniated naval, then pooled between her breasts. There was something more going on here than just drug induced rape. “Aden, do we have a fix on her broadcast?”

“No Captain, she’s using a local network access point, the broadcast is coming to us from dome three’s communication array. Once we land someone we can get a look at the local network map and pinpoint where she’s at.”

Land someone. Was that even a reasonable possibility? Shouldn’t I just order him to glass half the planet and setup new domes on the other side? I shuddered visibly, but neither Chandi nor Aden were looking my way. Before me, that gravid alien expanse of Dora’s body rippled. She gasped aloud, then moaned, a moan that reminded me unnervingly of my own mother in the depths of her heat. Even if we rescued Dora, she would never be right in the head, she would be like Nopal but worse. About the best she could hope for, would be a job in a brothel. Sub-assistant researchers were skilled, but would she ever be able to concentrate for more than five minutes?

I had to see how much of her was left. She was an organic chemist, so get her talking about work, right? “Dora, what are the most common nitrogen fixing molecules with at least twenty percent by weight.”

The delay was only forty seconds this time, “Huh? Oh… I see. Uhm… Ammonia, nitric acid, hydrazine, urea, ammonium nitrate… no wait, that’s only eleven percent. A lot of oxides and nitrides would count too, right? Azides?” She continued listing while I tuned her out. She was still there, she was still human.

Eventually she ran out of steam and I prompted, “Dora, tell me about your job. What were you making before it all went to shit?”

“Oh it was so much fun! Doc and I were developing a new process involving UV reactive fungal growths to accrete Titanium Dioxide nanofiber structural material. We… We were going to grow the future, you know?” Sorrow filled her voice, “My little mushrooms could have grown a space elevator or planetary scale Photocatalytic air filters for rapid terraforming!”

There was a sound in the background as she trailed off into quiet tears. Someone approached with wet footsteps. Another flood of mucous poured down her stomach and pooled on her chest. Her thighs parted and hips rose in eager offering. Whatever she might have been thinking, was gone in an instant. Her crying stopped, her breathing calmed, then quickened again for a different reason. Then her eyes closed. I practically yelled, “Dora, open your eyes, let me see!”

She moaned, the sounds of intercourse resumed, wet and urgent. I could hear the splatter of moisture as it hit the floor and the exertion of each buck, thrust, and shudder. Eighteen seconds after I told her to, her eyes opened. I couldn’t make out anything at first, not enough data to form a composite. A few seconds passed, a blurry shape came into view, a thick trunk of flesh thrust between her legs. A few seconds later her view vanished again with a lusty cry. Everyone in the room listened in awkward silence as the last person on the planet climaxed.

I brought the only useful image back up. The flesh was curved, not a rigid straightness. I watched the source data and intermediates to get a feel for it’s motion. It bent as it thrust, curled down from above. An elephant’s trunk? I couldn’t make out texture or color, just a dull purple-gray smudge. I killed my mic and looked over toward Aden, “How long has it been since her prior… session?”

He checked the timestamps, then glanced up, “One hour thirty eight minutes.”

“Compare audio samples, are the sounds being made by him the same as the previous time? Or could it be a different person entirely.” He nodded and turned back toward his immersion and went to work.

Chandi timidly spoke up, “Captain, five minutes until deceleration burn. We’ll enter stable geosynchronous orbit seventeen minutes after that.” That was a long long orbit, well outside normal insertion protocol. She was being cautious.

“Thanks Chandi. What else are we sharing orbit with?” As I spoke, Dora wailed. There was a gushing sound as well, like a hose in a bucket. I tried to ignore the lusty little puddle I was making between my thighs and killed the audio.

Chandi relaxed a little as she took a moment to gather her thoughts and notes. “A few functional satellites, the docking station is gone but a few smaller bits of debris remain. I see significant cratering on the equator but no damage to the domes. I’d guess the station came down about two years ago judging by the seasonal erosion I can see from here.”

I asked, “No ships?” She shook her head.

I tuned in to Dora, privately this time. The gushing sound had changed, the bucket was full and overflowing, I could hear it splattering in rhythmic splatters and gushes across the floor and wall. She was panting and gasping with hard enough exertion to be a marathon runner on the last mile. I listened to another climax and felt my own body respond involuntarily, then silently cursed Nopal, I’d never had such intense urges before he’d offered me that drug. I could have done this without the experience, better even!

“Dora, come back to me sweetie, I know what you are going through, but you need to fight it. Your neurochemistry is being rewritten, new circuits opening and being reaffirmed. That means you can resist. Start to feel one way or think one way, think another and feel another. Change your reactions!” I wasn’t sure if she could even understand words at this point. I remembered my own mental degradation and shuddered hard in revulsion. Maybe I was trying to convince myself more than her.

“C-Captain?” came a small, confused voice only a few seconds later.

“I’m here Dora. We’re coming for you.” And in that moment, I realized, I was. There was no way I would abandon her to her fate.

Aden’s voice intruded, “It’s another person Captain. Vocalizations are completely different. Barely human, both of them, but distinctly different.”

I looked up and stared at the man for a long confused moment, then nodded as I remembered. The rapists, there were two rapists, maybe more. She wasn’t held captive by a single lunatic. It changed things, I wasn’t sure what, but I felt it did. I brought up the video broadcast and scanned from segment to segment until I found one with activity.

There was a woman on her back, her stomach bloated beyond normal human capacity. The messy, effluvia soaked expanse of her body was stained purple, blotchy, and limp. She barely looked human, barely looked alive. But her stomach shifted, a bulge rolled across it, then another. Her hips twitched and her head rolled. There was no audio on this feed, but I could imagine the sound of it anyway; an animal moan of pleasure and pain. A wet fountain jetted from between her swollen, puffy folds. The clotted mass splattered in a tangled spray of snot and cottage cheese, black and violet in color. I was revolted, nearly threw up on the spot.

The mass wriggled, the clots resolved into shapes, the shapes began to squirm across the floor, back toward her. This was… this was something more, something worse than drugs synthesized by bored researchers. I started to change my mind; glass it from orbit. Nothing from the site should be allowed to come aboard, even if it was still remotely human!

“Captain?” the choked sob came.

I opened the pickup, “I’m here Dora, I’m here.”

“I can’t… I can’t resist. He smells so good! He tastes so good! He feels so good!” Her words came in a breathless tumble, coherence and madness twined together. She moaned, a splatter of moisture followed, but the sounds of intercourse were gone, he was gone.

“I know he does sweetie, I know. You’ll probably spend the rest of your life, yearning. But you won’t survive down there. How long have you gone without proper food, water, a bath? How long without normal human contact, conversation, or hell, even a psychiatric session?”

She sobbed, moaned, whined, sobbed, all in the same breath. Where there little things squirming around inside her right now? Could she feel them? My mouth watered again, my sex clenched, I felt aroused and nauseous at the same time. What did it feel like? She was enjoying herself, that much was obvious. Was it because of the drugs or was it pleasurable in and of itself?

“Dora? How long has it been?”

She loosed a wail of frustration. Wet splatters followed. Existential dread welled up in my heart and the bottom fell out in the pit of my stomach. The timid, quiet voice that came back was filled with exhausted failure. “I don’t know.”

“You’re using your implant, you have a chronometer, it should be synced with the local network.”

“I can’t remember, Captain, I don’t remember… anyone.” She was lost, so very lost, and so alone.

Chandi’s voice intruded, “Brace in five, four, three, two, one…” Weight returned. My harness creaked, the ship around us groaned, the drives thrummed a low, bone rattling drone.

“Check your conversation logs, call timestamps, messages. Someone somewhere spoke to you one last time.” My voice sounded different under thrust. I’d kept myself in shape with hours of exercise but nothing was quite like feeling your own flesh drag at itself and hang from your bones. “How long have you been trapped like this?”

Her voice somehow managed to become even smaller, weaker, and more fearful. “I… I last spoke to Doctor Everen. Doc, that’s Doc! She was… she was my supervisor here. We were going to change the world with our Titanium Dioxide nanofibers.”

“The Date, Dora, how long ago did you speak to her?”

“Ten, eight, twenty three fifty one. Mid afternoon. She… she was scared.”

Seventeen years. Seventeen fucking years. I checked time dilation and superluminal losses. I’d lost five years in transit for four months reference, but she’d gained about two months on Sol in those seventeen years. I tried to wrap my mind around her situation. How was she still even alive? How were any of them alive? I looked again to the other woman. The larvae or whatever they were had reached her swollen, gaping passage and wriggled their way in again as I watched. Her stomach continued to churn and shift with alien life just below the surface.

Seventeen years. Those neuropathways were so well entrenched now, so well worn. Day after day, hour after hour, they had endured, and slowly broken under the grind wheel of alien lust. How was this poor girl even aware when nobody else was? There were other bodies engaged in different forms of sexual activity, or just they laid limp and broken as life squirmed inside. None showed any sign of awareness, biological machines trapped like cogs, turning on their well worn grooves.

I watched someone crawl past the camera. The floor was caked with years of built up sludge, ruts were worn in it where hands and knees passed in the same unbroken pattern. Ahead, the path forked and entered a dark chamber to the right, then continued on down the hall. The broken man approached with his penis dragging along the floor, limp and drooling behind him. It was five or ten times as long as it should have been, the urethra gaped. He entered the dark room.

In my ear, Dora whimpered out a quiet, “Captain?” I could hear someone approach, a wet patter of hands and knees in muck. I didn’t bother to respond, she wouldn’t remember a thing in a few minutes, she wouldn’t remember the date, or Doc, or myself. In the darkness beyond the open door, I listened as the broken man climbed on top of Dora, pushed his limp trunk between her legs, and penetrated. He had no thoughts, I was sure, nothing remotely human anymore. His path was clear in the ruts on the floor. How many were like him? How many migrated from room to room?

“This voice does not match the first two, Captain.” Aden’s voice intruded, but did nothing to alleviate my tormented heart.

I started to speak but my throat was too tight. I swallowed, then looked over at him, “I know, Aden, I know. Prepare for orbital bombardment.”

Dora whimpered and asked, “Captain? What are you doing? Orbital bombardment?”

What could I say? “Aden, I want everything within five hundred miles of the dome to look like the surface of the damn sun.”

His eyes glistened as he reached into his immersion, “Yes Captain.” He was such a sensitive boy. I hoped he never grew as callous as I felt now. Then my own tears dampen my cheek, maybe not so callous.

“Dora. We’ve never met before today and I wish we could have, Physics and Chemistry are my specialty as well. We could have come up with some great ideas together I’m certain. But… But it’s been seventeen years since you last spoke with Doc. I’m sure it’s been longer since you were… taken. I can’t imagine all of what’s happened to you, but I don’t think there is any going back. I… I have to…”

She panted steadily, moaned, then came through clearly, almost fully sane for a moment, “It’s like that old movie, Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.” She laughed a hollow, broken laugh, moaned, then continued, “If this got to Terra it might be the end of us all. I know. I can feel the neuropathways you mentioned, the patterns etched in my mind.” She moaned again, long and full of pleasure. The distance was only a few seconds now, practically real time. She was doing a terrible job of convincing me to kill her.

As I listened, she began to climax again. I pressed my lips into a firm line, clenched my thighs closed, then looked to Aden and nodded, “Fire when ready.”

“Yes Captain,” was his sober reply.

Chandi was openly crying.

I looked back down at the darkness of Dora’s viewpoint. The thrust vanished a moment later and zero gravity returned. I swayed a few times in the elastic restraints, then the stabilization system countered the pull and left me still relative to my immersion. The ship thudded twelve times in rapid succession, thrust returned briefly as the we fought against recoil. “Missiles away Captain. Thirty four seconds to impact.”

I nodded without looking up from the darkness, “Thank you Aden.”

“W-what Captain? Um… Sodium Nitrate, Nitrocellulose… no that’s not over twenty percent.” She trailed off as the sloppy sounds sped up. I almost wished I could watch, I wanted to see the mess as it pumped into and out of her, covered her. My labia were swollen and my whole vulva seemed to throb. I clenched my thighs and fought against the patterns already etched in my own neuropathways. It did no good. Her moans alone were enough.

“Y-you’re doing good Dora. We’ll count Nitrocellulose, why not? Gun Cotton was integral to the advance of modern chemistry.” I tried to sound as normal as I could.

“You’re right. Without it, we would…” Static filled my ears and the screen.

Aden stared hard into his immersion and manipulated the distorted data as it returned. “Successful detonation of initial wave. Second wave is on track, third wave going dumb.” Another wave of static, I killed the feed and tapped into his visualization. A cherry red ring surrounded a molten hot core of white. I played it back: a small circle bloomed directly over the colony, then the outer ring of five detonations enveloped it. A minute passed, “Third wave successfully rebooted, initiating final impact.” A third ring twice as wide as the first, made of six impact points. The blobs of heat blended together into a single white hot circle a thousand miles across.

The more sensitive external sensor packages came back online and I pulled up a composite feed of the planetary surface. The sky itself seemed to be on fire, the plumes of heat extended well beyond the atmosphere into the depths of space, and as I had asked, the surface glowed as hot as the sun. Aden stared at his own heat map view, he didn’t switch over to visual.

“Captain,” he said in a far away voice, “May I be excused from Ops? I do not believe my assistance is required any longer at this present time.” He was openly weeping, even harder than Chandi had been. His proper tone and words were thin cover over the horror he felt, perhaps even guilt.

“Aden, you did the only honorable thing that was left. It is no solace, but…” I shook my head and waved a hand, “You are excused, please slave your controls to mine for the time being.”

Stiffly he replied, “Thank you captain,” then left the room. The door hadn’t even closed before he began to retch. I couldn’t remember the last time a colony had been sterilized, not in my life time as far as I was aware.

With a sniffle, Chandi told me, “You did the right thing. That poor girl… Seventeen years, and she couldn’t even remember…” She trailed off and placed her face in her hands again.

“I think, Chandi, that was a blessing. She lived in the moment up until…” I couldn’t say it. She had sounded happy, the only pain and anguish had been what I’d brought her. “Rescue would have been a cruel torture.” I thought again of Nopal, “And possibly dangerous for other reasons.” She only nodded.

I began to wonder then, where had Nopal gotten his drug? No one had returned in years, that was for certain. Seventeen years since the colony was overrun by… whatever that was. Nopal had taken five years to come back, and I’d taken five years to get there again. No one could have made a round trip in the seven year gap between. I’d have to ask Vale about it some time.

I looked back to the glowing ring that had been the original colony site, labeled Future Point. I erased it, erased all reference to it, then put a simple designation of Alpha Site in the system. In effect, I erased every reference to the colony outside of basic location, and the reports people had filed. None of those had contained knowhow on drug manufacture; Nopal had seen to that.

I turned the globe in my immersion and tried desperately to dismiss Alpha Site from my mind. “There,” I highlighted a shallow sea, with a wide river delta, “large concentrations of minerals washed down. A good cross section of biomes. We’ll begin construction here. Within a year we should be turning a profit on discoveries.”

Chandi wiped her eyes and gave a sharp nod, “Yes Captain.” It was as good a spot as any, “What will we call it?”

I looked at her, blank for a moment. “I don’t know… Beta Site?” She shook her head and scowled, “You’re right, terrible.” I thought of that woman I’d just murdered, how much hope she had once had. “We’ll name it after her.” Chandi didn’t follow. “Adora. Without Dora.” She flinched. “I want to be reminded every single day.”

Quiet as a mouse, Chandi said, “Yes Captain. I think that we should never forget. Even if it’s just us.”

3 – Second Attempts

I stood upon the mushy swell of a hill. It wasn’t familiar, not soil, or dirt, mud, or grass. It was closer akin to a mat of tangled mycelium and fruiting bodies. Like a confused jumble of different mushrooms. Whatever proper language had been invented to categorize the different biota of the region, it had been lost with Alpha Site. A few important records remained, lodged in orbital servers or transported away on regular courier ships in some one’s unread report. I had taken to calling it fundra, just to piss off the ecologists who called it fungal tundra.

The spot I’d chosen was far north of the equator for safety reasons. There were still large chunks in orbit, and most would fall within the next five decades, somewhere between twenty degrees north and south. So I’d picked thirty five north, seventy west. It was a nice flat bit of coast, plenty of swamp, brackish pools, and—fundra to please the science team. It would be decades before we recovered to the state we had been before the… event. Only a very few knew the true nature of what had happened up there, six months ago.

Aden had been put on psychiatric leave and confined to quarters dirt side. Chandi had joined the cartography team, but mostly acted as pilot to science teams. Vale was… Well—Vale. She knew, she didn’t speak of it, and she wasn’t comfortable on the surface. So she remained on board, one of the dedicated skeleton crew who’s job it was to keep watch on us below. Only Vale and her relief knew that they might be called upon to vaporize another chunk of this poor world.

Below me, I watched the first of the permanent domes begin to inflate. Once the interior seal was molded into place, the final struts would be laid down and life would begin to take on something almost normal. I’d never imagined I’d end up on a border world heading a research colony, but life took one down strange paths.

A couple walked past, arguing, “They have to be migratory! There was no sign of them a week ago, nothing, not even skeletal residue in the fungal peat mass.”

“We just didn’t look deep enough. You saw those bore holes, they could have swarmed up from below, some sort of seasonal, or multi-seasonal compulsion. Like cicadas.”

I shouted down at them, “You’re both wrong, spontaneous immaculate conception! It’s the only answer!”

One began to retort hotly, then caught himself mid word. His eyes widened and stared for an uncomfortable moment, then looked away. Still the Old Lady, now even older and more feared. I’d glassed an entire colony and no one knew why. To myself I muttered, “Maybe I should have just gone down with an expedition and… lost my body armor. Though Vale would have had to glass me along with the rest of the colony in the end.” I sighed and looked up. The sun was so large here, but about the same intensity. The equator must have been a sauna, even this far north it felt like summer heat back home.

I took a deep breath and expected the sweet scent of hay and dust. But—the clinical smell of my rebreather was the only thing I detected. The air might be sweet, and I’d caught a few whiffs of it from time to time for one catastrophic reason or another, but it was nothing I wanted to take a deep breath of. I tugged briefly at my skirt and straightened the buckle over my tail, then turned back toward the dome. Another six months, perhaps a year, and the first wave of true colonists would arrive. In time Alpha Site would be forgotten except as a terrain feature, or an old tale to scare children. Would anyone even wonder why I’d named the new site? It felt like the least I could do to remember that forgotten girl by. No one had yet asked.

I felt a bittersweet smile tug at the corners of my mouth, turned away again, and started down the steep hill toward the beach. It wasn’t much of a beach, no sand or even rocks, but it was where land met sea. I took off my footwear and stowed it on a tuft of some bloated fruiting mass, well above the waterline. It felt strange to walk barefoot on an alien world. The spongy ground was leathery and tough, but occasionally broke away in disturbing ways, as if it might just swallow you whole. It probably wasn’t smart either, all things considered.

The sea was warm and shallow. The tiny waves lapped pleasantly at my calves and soothed my aches. Underfoot, the waterlogged biome was easy footing, not slimy and slippery like Terran aquatic flora. These plants didn’t waste energy on biofilm. But… The water was rich with rather unpleasant organic molecules and salts. There were of course the biological organisms as well, but so far nothing that had figured out how to use humans as hosts…

I stopped that thought right there, for it was a lie. Somehow, Dora had become host to the life here, a well adapted host. Had humans helped it along? Twisted the native biology to support our alien needs? Had we done it to ourselves? Were there other life forms on this world that could adapt to human biology?

A strange notion came and went, a part of me that wanted to experiment. I kinda wanted to prove that the alien life here could compete. Terra had developed life over billions of years, and so had Pavlov’s World. Terran life had reached out into the stars, colonized other worlds. Pavlovian life had simmered in warm pools of their own bile. Was it pity I felt? Or did I want to place the blame somewhere else?

I sloshed my way back to dry land and climbed up, then sat down next to my shoes. The sun settled toward the horizon and swelled while the color deepened into shades of gold and salmon. I still didn’t know what it was that tinted the sky pink even at the peak of noon, but it did make for gorgeous sunsets. I almost started to relax, it was a near thing! I might have even smiled for absolutely no political or social reason. Couldn’t have that, could we? My foray into contentment and self analysis was cut short by an emergency override and it’s following words, “Governor, we have a problem.”

“Of course we do,” I muttered to myself, then toggled the channel fully open as I donned my shoes. “What is it?” Maybe they had found that human-adaptable alien life I was fantasizing about shamelessly.

“One of the exobiology teams came back short a person and behaving strangely. They refuse to go into quarantine until they have spoken with you.”

I sighed over the open comm and stood. My feet rubbed uncomfortably against the padding material, not quite dry yet and now caked in salt. “I’m on my way, please don’t shoot them or anything until I get back, unless you really really have to.”

“Understood Governor, we’ll use kid gloves.” The comm closed and I was left with an empty, disgruntled feeling. So much lovely water, and you couldn’t even swim in it without a hazmat suit. I’d have to remember to sterilize and deep clean my legs when I got back. I jotted a note down for later.

I was panting with exertion by the time I got back to the pop-tent habitat. A ring of a dozen armed men stood around four unarmed figures, guns forward but no fingers on the firing stud. I broke through and put fists to hips before the quartet, “Alright, I was watching a beautiful sunset over an alien ocean after a long, fifteen hour day. What the fuck do you want?”

The one closest, practically a boy, flinched away from my tone. A woman stepped forward and laid a hand on his shoulder. She stood proud and straight with her jaw out thrust in defiance. “It’s important Governor Haiko. No one else to show it to.”

“What. I want to know, what is important?” She shook her head and pointed back toward the air lorry. “Did you find the ghost of Christmas past? Perhaps the jackalope came home at last and asked you in for tea?” I asked, so annoyed that my ears twitched and tail curled. I wasn’t being fair, in fact, I was being down right cranky, and said as much, “Forgive me, I’m cranky, obviously this is important or you wouldn’t have interrupted me. I know you’re all terrified fools, worried I’ll step on you like bugs, so this must be world shatteringly important!”

“It is, Governor,” the boy admitted, then shrugged the older woman’s hand off him, “I found something down by the delta, something that shouldn’t exist. Maybe something leftover from Alpha Colony.” My blood went cold. The circle of men stirred. “And… and the leader she…” The older woman laid a hand on his shoulder and shook her head.

“Don’t be a speculating fool,” I admonished, “Nothing can be left of Alpha Colony. Probably some deep sea creature or other bottom dweller who came up to the surface. I heard a duo arguing just an hour ago about some exotic life form they had never seen before. It’s a whole damn alien world, what we have seen is in an error bar so small it rounds up to zero.” The boy relaxed, the soldiers relaxed, it was the right thing to say. He looked a bit put out, but the relief was palpable. “Alright, if I want to get some sleep tonight, I’m going to have to have a look, now aren’t I? Someone’s in trouble?” The quartet all nodded.

The lorry ride took longer than I would have liked and the sun was a distant memory by the time we touched down. The delta was vast, a hundred miles or more from edge to edge, and it seemed like they had gone to the far edge for their survey. The older woman stepped out first with an emergency medical kit under one arm. The boy stepped out next, empty handed, I followed after, but laid a hand to my side arm instinctively. The other two had remained at base in quarantine, I’d insisted. The pair had remained silent throughout the entire flight, and even now said nothing as they lead me down from the fundra mound toward the marsh below. Alien reeds grew in spiraling tufts. Their stalks were as tough as rawhide and resisted our passage, but we managed.

The ground squelched under my feet, a mixture of river borne silt, living, and decayed organic matter, but we were above the water level. For that I was thankful, I didn’t feel like throwing away a perfectly good pair of boots just because I’d used them as an accidental bucket for a slime mold. We hadn’t met one yet who would actually eat human flesh, but it was only a matter of time I supposed.

The reeds parted stubbornly and we stepped through a narrow gap into a small clearing. A single woman knelt, her work light fixed upon something before her. The shell of that something looked like a starfish, but with seven truncated limbs, hollow at the end. A skeleton of something, bone white where it wasn’t smeared with mud. Yeah, yeah that was something important, something beyond interesting.

“A skeleton?” I said aloud, and was startled by my own voice.

“Exoskeleton,” the kneeling woman corrected. There were no vertebrates on this world, nor exoskeletons, endoskeletons, or shells. This thing even had joints at the base of each limb.

“What is it composed of?” I asked as I knelt at the woman’s side.

She pressed a hand out to hold me back, “Haven’t taken a sample yet, but it’s hard. Not calcium based, I suspect it might be a Titanium oxide of some sort.”

“That tracks. Some of the fungal analogues extrude titanium dioxide as a scaffolding. Not really a skeleton of any sort, just helps them root in place and weather storms. Could this thing maybe have a symbiotic relationship with some other organism? Lives on its skin and accretes a shell over time?”

“Maybe. That’s not what has me so worried though. I… I’m kinda… I heard rumors, lots of rumors, but nothing concrete, you know? Governor, you know, you can tell me if I’m just being crazy or not. Am I… am I dead?” She shook with suppressed sobs. I hadn’t realized how tense she was, her bulky suit hid most of her body.

I stared back at her quizzically, “That sounds pretty damn crazy to me. The dead don’t talk.”

She shook her head, tears pattered against the goggles of her rebreather, “Living dead, walking dead, doomed. I think… I think I’ll just show you.” She reached down to her waist, then undid the buckle of her suit and pulled them open. At first I didn’t understand what I was looking at. Something like a big purple bruise spread across her right inner thigh and curled about over the front like a strap. Then it rippled, a wave like pulse upward around her leg and to the front, wetly textured and sticky. The second limb was thicker, shiny, leathery, and more muscular looking. It held her by her other knee with a sharp pointed beak like tip tucked against her right inner thigh. That beak was nestled just over the thick artery below the skin and there was a smear of blood, just a trickle, from where she’d already been pricked.

The first tendril rippled again and a quiet moan bubbled up from the woman’s throat. Quietly, with a sense of dread, I told her more than asked, “It’s inside of you, isn’t it.” I’d been fucking right, I’d jinxed myself, and our whole colony. It was an inane thought, my imagination had not made this happen, only put together the possibilities just in time.

“Y-yes Governor. And I don’t feel like myself. I’m all shivery, chilled and hot, and…” She looked back to her companions, who stood as far back as possible. The young man was wide eyed but not afraid, the older woman looked like she was about to collapse.

“You two, go back to the lorry and lock it tight. If I don’t come back by dawn, go back and tell Vale everything you’ve seen here. I’m pretty sure this is nothing to be too concerned about, it’s not the first time a biologist ended up attracting another species as a mate. It’s not like they can interbreed or anything. It’ll finish, then go on it’s merry way and we’ll have a fucked up tale to tell when we’re all drunk. Well, not you kid, not for a few years yet.”

He scowled at me and retorted, “Hey, I’m almost twenty!”

“yeah yeah, well if you want to see twenty one, get your ass on that lorry, lock it up tight, and wait for me. If I am wrong, then… then I’m wrong, and you’ll be able to tell everyone I was an idiot. Got it?” He nodded and pressed back, nudging the other woman. She nodded too but said nothing as she bustled away.

I turned back toward the woman who’d gotten herself into this mess as the rustle of their departure faded away. “Nice job,” she told me with a faint smile, it faded away quickly. “Now convince me.”

“Well, this answers—partially—one of the questions I’ve had since Starfall.” Humans didn’t create the drug, didn’t splice up their own boogie man either. I shook my head at her, “I’m going to be honest with you. I think you’re dead, or close to it. It won’t be unpleasant though. Or, it wouldn’t be anyway. Dora, she spent seventeen years in bliss, then I killed her with my nukes. Named our little colony after her.” First person beyond the bridge staff that I’d admitted it to.

Upon her thigh, the tentacle pulsed again, and again. I could hear the faint squish and gush of fluids as they pulsed into her. Her cheeks were pink in the light of her headlamp, her lips were parted, and eyes shrouded in shadow. A faint sound, terrified and helpless issued forth, then it turned to something lusty. “Y-you’re so cold,” she said at last, then shivered as her stomach muscles clenched and hips flexed. “What is it doing to me?”

I didn’t answer her complaint, but focused on the latter question, “I’m not positive. Really I should probably hook up a medical array and get some readings. I’m a bit curious myself. I know the end result, or at least, something like it. Mental deterioration, increased hormonal production, suppression of fear and self preservation instinct. And that’s just from the scent. It’s pretty incredible, really.”

She shuddered again and reached a hand down between her legs. The beak on her inner thigh twitched, blood leaked, but she did not resist or attack so it did not strike. She asked, “Wanna trade places?” Her fingers came away coated in violet mucous.

I spoke honestly to the doomed woman. “In a heart beat. But… But it’s too late for you, and I don’t think our little friend will cooperate.”

“No,” she said and took a shuddering breath, “I don’t suppose he will. Not unpleasant you said?”

“Heavenly. You won’t have a care in the world, everything will be wonderful, and you’ll spend the rest of your days going through cycles of pleasant mating, feeding, and birthing.”

“Sounds horribly nice.”

“Oh it is, it is. I won’t let it get that far of course. I’ll even try to save your life, for what it’s worth. Not that I feel much hope in that respect. Poor Dora was only playing broodmare to a number of broken men, this little guy… I have no idea what he intends to do with you, but his threat is serious and surprisingly clever. How did he know to go for your femoral artery I wonder? Anywhere else…”

“I was wondering that myself, for the past two hours. He won’t even let me lay down! I even sway and that arm flexes like a boa. You have no idea how strong he is. I’m pretty sure he could snap my thigh in two if he felt like it.”

I nodded sympathetically as I reached back for the medical pouch and began to rifle through it, “I suspected as much. The life on this world is pretty darn tough, lots of interesting structural developments. It only follows that ligaments and muscles of a predator would be a match.”

“Don’t say predator… please.”

“Well, you are it’s prey at the moment. Parasitic reproduction is a predatory act.”

“Oh gods above, please don’t say that!” There was panic in her voice now, and I was doing nothing to calm her.

Another pulse of the tentacle buried in her vaginal passage, and fluid began to spurt free. “looks like you’re full. I better get this setup before the next stage begins.”

She shook hard as the violet fluid drooled down her thighs and stained the muck below, “Stage? What happens next?”

I unfolded a tripod and dropped out the telescopic legs, then sensor package on top. It synced to my implant and I began a routine scan. The device whirred and clicked occasionally as actuators tilted the sensor back and forth. At last I told her, “I don’t know, I’m only guessing. It can’t really just be as simple as pumping you full of alien sperm cells, can it? You’re the biologist here, think it through.”

Gingerly, with tongs, I reached out a swab and collected a coagulated glob of violet fluid, then tucked it back into its tube. The seal popped a moment later though. I pressed it together again, and watched as the seal strained, slid, then popped with a hiss. Whatever the fluid was, it was out-gassing intensely. I ran a few simple chemical tests on it, and it came back as seventy percent Dichloromethane with a mixture of other alkanes, ethers, ethyls, and gobs of alien organic matter. Water only constituted about four percent of the total weight, and that might have been contamination. I whistled in appreciation, then tossed the sample into a freezer bag and triggered the chill cycle.

“What? What is it?” She asked, the panic had faded though into a low mellow serenity. Her eyes were half lidded, and I was sure she was smiling.

“Interesting chemical soup. How do you feel? Bloated? Any pain? Irritation?”

She considered, or looked like she was considering for a moment. Then she nodded, “Yeah… My private parts feel like they are on fire. It itches so bad, but I… well I don’t really feel the need to scratch, it’s weird, you know? It’s just sensory data after all, nothing scratching will do anything about. Yeah, very bloated, and I’m cramping something fierce, I think the animal tore my cervix too, that hurt, but he did it so slowly, so gently, I didn’t realize it really until he sank in farther. I’ve never felt something in my uterus before, you know?”

I shot a friendly smile to her, “I know,” I didn’t. I had no idea, but she seemed desperate for some sort of empathy, some connection and understanding. “You’re taking this all pretty well, you seem calm, calmer than you were a few minutes ago.”

“Yes, well, you’re right. I’m dead, and if it’s going to be pleasant I might as well enjoy it, you know?”

This time I did, “Yeah, I know. Looks like he stopped irrigating your uterus though. Been maybe two minutes since the last ejaculation.”

“Oh, I hadn’t even noticed… Now that you mention it though, I think he’s pulling out.” It was, though very slowly, slug like slowness. Her labia were swollen and angry red, an inch of her inner vagina was dragged out, like a limp sock wrapped around the limb. She expressed no discomfort, but as his tip emerged entirely and extracted itself from her prolapsed sheath, she moaned, a lusty moan, a moan I hadn’t heard since Dora.

“You are enjoying this,” I observed.

She nodded vigorously, hard enough that the grasping limb gave her another warning stab. “Yes, oh yes! The fire, oh the fire inside burns without him! I need him back inside!” She rolled her hips involuntarily, the beak didn’t stab. She bucked, hard, and her limp labia and passage waved like a flag as a rivulet of violet began to sputter and bubble from her depths. She giggled at the sensation, as bubbles of evaporated fluid swelled and were released and with them were misty sprays. I could imagine what it smelled like, what it might do to me if I took my rebreather off. I was tempted, I felt like an idiot, but the notion persisted. I was an addict, and the drug of my addiction was drooling from this poor woman’s ruined cunt as I stared.

I touched myself, hadn’t even realized I was doing it until my fingers pressed the crotch of my panties in. My folds squelched wetly and a trickle of moisture beaded through the fabric to drool into the muck below. I was playing with fire, and knew it. Reason suggested that I pull out my side arm, kill it, kill her, jump in my space ship, and glass the whole fucking planet.

Reason could take a fucking hike.

She dropped to her hands and knees, naked rear pointed towards me. Her angry red vulva throbbed as I watched, and drooled. That inky fluid was chock full of volatile organic compounds, things no sane person ever wanted in their body. It boiled from her skin with a faint haze of violet mist and left behind a dark, sooty residue that stained. The drug Nopal had given me was much refined and lacked many of the dangerous and poisonous compounds here, but the nature was the same. Her sex swelled, then gaped as a misty vapor belched free. It was a humiliating sound, even more-so to watch, but the cloud of mist flew through the air and expanded under it’s own evaporating pressure. I didn’t realize my danger until I felt a few faint droplets land upon my hand. The hand between my legs.

I’d been masturbating with underwear pulled aside like a complete idiot, fuck Nopal and his notions! That mist sprayed across my hand, wrist, and open sex. Panic filled me, panic and excitement. It was just some weird alien mucous I reasoned, nothing contagious, maybe a bit would get through my skin and make me horny for a few hours… Not that I knew anything, not that I had any idea what it was or did. A few microscopic droplets touched my bare skin, so what? So what if it was full of some sort of sperm spore, and triggered an ovulation cycle, and…

The animal moved at last, a rapid movement, something like an octopus under water, darting and smooth. I lurched away, fell, and landed upon my back, too startled to think rationally and already in the midst of a panic attack slash erotic fantasy. To my relief and regret, the animal did not move for me, but climbed atop the biologist. Limbs had sprouted from the bobbed end of each exoskeletal arm, each was slightly different, different shape, different size, different structure. Specialized tools for specialized jobs. They enveloped her form, and collapsed her face first into the muck. She moaned like a rutting beast, no fear in her anymore.

The tentacle limb with the beak remained where it was, but a new one reached for her genitals. How did it know to go for her genitals? How did it know to go for her Femeral Artery? This new tentacle was long, thick as my calf, slippery, deep violet, and glistened like polished onyx. It curled in, not unlike an elephant’s truck, with three stubby finger like protrusions with a wet and drooling orifice between them. The previous limb had been thin, sticky-wet, and relatively muscular. This one was fat, smooth, and flaccid.

The fingers splayed the woman’s folds open, then pressed forward. She screamed, not in pain but with ecstatic relief and pleasure. I shuddered as I watched, shuddered with pleasure of my own, as I rolled my pulsing clit back and forth. I’d forgotten my own body, forgotten my panic, and could not tear my eyes away. That could be me, I wanted it to be me. What the fuck was wrong with me? Was it just Nopal’s drug, or was I starting to fall under the influence of that misty ejaculation?

Her hips bucked back as a finger pushed inside, then a second, and the animal opened her wide. I stared down her violet stained passage and watched as another splatter of volatile ejaculate sprayed from her backside. It hit me again, stained my calf, thigh, and forearm, then began to evaporate into a violet cloud. I paid it no attention. That tentacle clenched it’s digits like a fist and punched their way inside. She screamed again as her vaginal prolapse slurped back inside, and her hips bucked back in eager welcome. I’d experienced that once, under the influence. That eagerness, fearless self destruction. My jaw throbbed in sympathy.

It sank deep, deeper than should have been possible. Her stomach shifted and bulged, her pinned body writhed under the weight, and she fell into an orgasm that never came to an end. There was nothing left in those eyes when she stared back at me. No recognition, no understanding, no thought. She moaned, she thrashed, she spread herself open like a beast in heat, and welcomed the alien inside. Whoever she had been, was gone.

It bottomed out, stopped, then took a better grip upon her. Arms and legs entwined, neck held tight, and a single limb forced deep into her body cavity. It began to waggle, a sharp jerk one way, then the another, then back again. With each waggle the woman was dragged back and forth, her ruined sex stretched open to either side. That self destructive impulse throbbed in my loins and behind my eyes, I wanted it to be me, as much as I wanted to live, possibly more. My sex ached and breath came in rapid hungry gasps, my mind twisted toward the alien purpose.

In the end, I tore my gaze away and backed up from the mating pair. Fluids were beginning to billow and spray from her again, sticky wet fluids full of actual water. I didn’t know what might be in them, and I didn’t get close enough to sample. I forced my hand away from my sex, straightened my twisted panties, and stood again. Behind me I heard a wet, sludgy gurgle and the biologist screamed again in ecstasy. I turned in time to watch her stomach swell, she bloated before my eyes and pressed limp nerveless hands to her navel.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, then began to pack the gear up. I wondered if there was anything left in her to understand. I honestly hoped there wasn’t. I left the sensor package in place, recording. I’d leave it behind and get everything I could from it. That seemed reasonable. I’d even leave the woman alive, I supposed. For the sake of understanding this animal’s life cycle.

There was a wet gush, like a cork being pulled, and I turned back again. The huge three fingered tentacle had pulled free, arched high in the air. A lumpy stream of mucous sprayed downward from it’s gaping orifice while another stream ejected from the prolapsed passage of the broken woman. I stared at the violet sludge as the pool spread. I even went so far as to drop to one knee and get a closer look. Eggs. Millions of pea sized eggs, transparent themselves, but floating in a violet jelly like mucous. I realized something I hadn’t understood before, something that had disturbed me greatly then and even more-so now. That woman from Alpha site and the writhing splatter of maggots expelled from her depths.

I stumbled away with a hand against the mouth guard of my rebreather. The alien finished expelling it’s brood into the dirt and turned toward me, brought the beaked tentacle up while a second and third rose to either side. One I recognized, the thin, sticky wet flesh was unmistakable. The other was larger than the first two, but smaller than the ovipositing limb, and it’s orifice was ringed with sharp, bone white teeth. “Oh fuck,” I gasped, next on the menu.

Even as the biologist squirmed and thrashed with mind breaking pleasure in the puddle of eggs, the animal leaped. It cleared the distance, a good five meters, maybe more. It landed heavily, then bunched and leaped again. I dove off to the left, but felt that sticky wet limb coil around my ankle. I screamed. Terror pumped adrenaline into my veins. The beaked tentacle reached down. The toothed tentacle reached up, straight for my face.

Without conscious thought, my pistol was in hand, leveled, and I fired. The bullet passed clean through the beak, shattering it, and up the length of the limb. Shrapnel spat out and struck the hard shell. It cracked and the animal stumbled a few steps back. Other tentacles probed at it’s own shell, then the mangled beak limb. I shot again, clear through the opening into it’s shell. Viscous sludge burst out under high pressure. I shot again, the shell shattered and shards flew off in all directions.

In the relative silence that followed I could only hear the biologist’s desperate whimpers. Her hips rose and fell in the puddle of alien spawn. Her hand pressed at her belly, limp fingers splayed. She seemed to be trying to masturbate, but couldn’t reach. Then that arm spasmed and twitched before falling limp. She couldn’t move her legs, or the other arm either. Only her stomach and pelvic muscles pulsed in violent but futile thrusts.

“And I want to be in her position?” I asked aloud, then scoffed, even as my vaginal walls clenched upon themselves and a sticky gush of my own lust pooled in my underwear. I pulled them off and used them to wipe myself clean of violet filth, then tossed the soiled panties onto the alien’s shell. “Keep em.”

I gave the woman one last glance, and considered. I looked at the gun, then the sensor package, back to the gun, and nodded. The gun went back to my belt, I snatched up the fallen medical kit and turned toward the distant Lorry. Behind me, the woman continued to moan her desperation for the camera, and the life in her gut began to hatch. I watched the sensor stream with intense fascination. Though I did feel a little guilty, I didn’t even know her name.

4 – Exposure

It started with a rash. Nothing serious, a little bit of immunosuppressant ointment did the trick, cleared it right up. I didn’t even give it another thought. I’d started wearing hazard pants while outdoors, no more skirts for me. I figured, it was just a bit of jock itch. Nothing to worry about. Hazard pants didn’t breathe after all, that was the point. They could give you a bit of swamp ass by the end of the day though.

When the rash came back two days later, worse than before, I began to get a bit concerned. It was a starscape of red speckles covering my pubic mound and a few streaks of irritation between my labia. I reapplied the ointment, the irritation faded, the redness vanished, back to normal.

One day after that a sharp, burning pain started that held no immediate source, just seemed to originate between my folds, or possibly inside my very clitoris. Scratching, rubbing, and medicating did nothing to alleviate the searing ache. It wasn’t until I squatted over a camera and stared up into my own vagina, did I see. Oh—oh how I did see. My labia were threaded with fine violet filaments, and my poor aching clit was speckled with splotches of near black from which more filaments stretched.

Panic, that was the answer, panic. That was always the first answer to any unsolvable, unmitagatable, unimaginable problem. So I panicked. I tore half my room down as I screamed myself hoarse. I just thanked the miserly managers who had decided to splurge on sound insulation for the governor’s residence, even in a pop-tent. So I panicked, and raged, and eventually wore myself out. The ache did not abate, it only grew and grew.

An hour later, the filaments had tripled in number and thickness. My vulva was swollen and angry, half due to scratching, half due to the immune response my body was putting up. Would I have suffered the same fate had I not used the immunosuppressant? Probably, I reasoned. What did my body know about fighting off alien infections?

Another hour and my beautiful vagina had turned from pale pearly pink to dark, glossy violet. It was the same violet of the animal. My panic was gone, faded into a surreal depression. An alien life form was growing in my genitals, something that had completely destroyed another colony. Would I begin to lose control? Would I run out into the wilderness, take my rebreather off, and hope some alien came by to pump me full of eggs?

Behind me the door opened and one of kitchen crew entered with a covered tray. “No!” I shouted in the ravished chamber. But the next breath I took, I could smell it, the sweet terrifying scent of alien fluids. A violet rivulet welled between my labia and fell to the deck at my feet. I recognized him, though I didn’t know where from at first. The badge on his breast stated his name though, “Ensign Tulow.” Right, the one who’d wanted an alien orgy.

“Governor I…” He started to say, then dropped the tray as he saw the room, and my naked body. He looked embarrassed and a little afraid, but then the scent hit him and his eyes dilated. The front of his jump suit tented immediately.

“Get the fuck out!,” I snapped at him and he nodded, but didn’t turn. “Shit.” The door shut with a firm click and he stepped closer. I didn’t feel lusty, but I could smell that sweet drug in the air. Was it contagious? What was I thinking, of course it was. “Get back you fool. Don’t you…” of course he didn’t, I hadn’t told anyone, not really. He didn’t know his danger, probably wasn’t even thinking. Had I been thinking when I’d crawled under Nopal’s desk?

His hands fell to my shoulders. The look in his eyes wasn’t entirely blank, but it wasn’t sane either. I slapped them away and stood up, but he was still a head taller and strong as an ox. His brows furrowed, confused more than anything else, then his hands were upon me again, grip painful. “I need… I… Captain I…” I felt my back hit the remnants of my upturned bed. He pressed himself against me, erection just below my navel, and grunted in frustration.

I gave a brief struggle, but there really wasn’t much option. His grip tightened, my shoulder creaked, bones shifted. I tried another tactic, desperate to reach him, “You can’t do this Tulow, you aren’t thinking clearly. It’s me, the Old Lady, you do this and I might just turn you to ash.”

“You’re not old,” he answered absently. “I can smell you… I’ve never been with a furry splicer, I hear they are wild.” He was right, I could smell myself behind the alien odor. A rivulet of lust drooled down both thighs and dripped off calves. I wasn’t aroused, not mentally, I was terrified, confused, and depressed. My body was something else, something unfamiliar.

He pulled me up against the mattress and pinned me against it with one hand. His other fumbled with the zipper of his jump suit and opened it. I felt his bared erection then, a warm firm meatiness against my thigh. My body responded involuntarily, my mind recoiled in rejection. I didn’t want this, I didn’t want him! He let out a breathy croon as he thrust. My sopping wet depths welcomed him easily. The itching and burning infection became a searing agony. I wept. He moaned.

Four short, violent thrusts later, he shuddered and lost control. I felt his seed spit, cold against the heat of my infected flesh. It soothed, but only just. His body shook, hips jerked, and his breath rattled, then he began again. Was this how it happened? Was this how it began in the Alpha Site? A mind broken rapist and a trapped, helpless woman? No, both would have been mind broken, under the influence.

Each thrust was a painful stab, my swollen, angry flesh pushed aside to make room for his malehood. He climaxed again, but didn’t stop, though he had begun to whimper. He seemed weak, exhausted, but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. I shook with pain, he shook with fatigue, then climaxed again. My legs were wrapped around his hips, my arms around his neck. His cold sperm drooled from me and ran down my limp tail and mixed with my now alien fluids.

His eyes were open, fixed upon the ceiling. His mouth wide, a grimace that looked like pain upon his lips. But for the unsteady roll of his hips, he didn’t move. I felt him throb, but only a trickle of ejaculate oozed free. He still didn’t stop, still couldn’t. It was my fault, the moment he had smelled me, he had lost control. I wept quietly and hugged him to my breast. “I’m so sorry,” I told him, quietly, then laid my head to his shoulder and let him continue.

Hours passed, people came and went at my door, but no one else was so foolish as to enter without invite. His knees collapsed, but he didn’t stop. I was on his lap on the floor, clutched in his trembling arms. No thought flickered behind his blank eyes, nothing existed within the shell that had once been a man. My sorrow and regret lingered until at last, he was too weak to resist, and I pushed him away.

He fell to his back, hips still shuddering, swollen cock upthrust. It was purple stained, bloated and soft, capillaries had ruptured. A continuous trickle of milky translucent drooled, but already there were veins of deep violet growing within his shaft. I touched my aching stomach, was I even fertile to a human anymore? Or would larvae hatch? I didn’t want to find out, didn’t want this madness to continue.

I acted with slow, deliberate movements, careful of the pains I felt. The safe came open, I extracted a quartet of incendiary devices, and set one in each corner. They wouldn’t explode, just bathe everything in super-heated plasma. After witnessing what I had of Alpha Site, I’d made some absent minded arrangements. It had seemed a silly idea at the time, but it would leave nothing contagious behind.

I pulled my clothes on, gingerly when it came to my underwear, for the searing stabs had become a bone deep throb of agony that just grew worse and worse the farther it spread. What effect was it having on my nerve endings? I touched myself, and shuddered. Pain mingled with pleasure, I’d not felt it before, but it was there. Worse was the texture of my own sex, still wet as ever, soaked in cum and my own strange fluids, but firm and elastic where it should have been soft and tender. Was this what had happened to that biologist? Had her body been infected from the inside out while I watched? Was that why her limbs failed first, because it had gone straight to her spine?

I snarled, jerked my underwear up, and screamed at the sensation. Glowing hot nails stabbed where the stitches in the fabric lay. I ignored it and pulled my hazard suit on. Last, my rebreather slipped over my head and I felt ready. I checked my side arm, charge full, projectile mass at ninety percent. I was ready. I took one last shower, with my clothes on, and washed my gear of anything that might endanger the colony. Then it was time to leave.

I opened the door carefully and shut it behind me. The hall of the habitat was dingy and gray, but it felt like home after all these months. I shook tears away and made my way out the airlock. No one questioned me, who would question the Old Lady? I called up a lorry. I should have been stopped, there should have been a reason. Even the Governor needed a reason to requisition a lorry. But I was the Old Lady. I smiled bitterly at that. I’d been young once, perhaps a year ago from my frame of reference. Innocent. Then that bastard Nopal had offered me a drug.

I rose into the air, then activated the sanitation bombs. There was no thud, no explosion, nothing to indicate that something had gone wrong. However the thermal cameras showed a plume of hot air rising over my pop-tent. That was enough. Nothing inside would survive and I’d done the best I could to contain it. There wasn’t even an alarm. I shook my head with confused emotions and regret, then I flew with as much speed as the boat would give me. She was designed for lifting and carrying, not racing. I covered the expanse of the delta in half the time it had taken before. I landed on the hill, noted the clearing in my HUD, and stepped out into the marsh once more.

I found the tripod where I’d left it, though the sensor had died with it’s battery after only three days. In that time the woman had not moved, but now as I looked toward the vacant spot, I could only vaguely make out the half rotted detritus of eggs and alien ejaculate. Of the alien itself, there was no sign, every last shard of it’s shell was gone.

I knelt in the middle of what had once been a vast pool of life. The eggs that remained were shriveled, but unhatched. They required a host then. I stood up, pain flared between my legs, and spread upward into my stomach. It began to feel like a continuous, throbbing cramp, wave after wave, like the worst gas pain imaginable. I gritted my teeth, and the pain in my jaw flared as well.

I threw my head back and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Well I’m here, you fuckers! I want you, you want me, lets make a happy fucking family, alright?!” Nothing responded, nothing moved, only the faint breeze and the rustle of reeds.

I fell to my knees, pressed face into hands, and wept. The goggles of my rebreather caught my tears, and I felt no comfort of my fingers upon my cheeks. I hated this world, hated it with a burning passion that put the fire in my depths to shame. I wanted to go home, back to Terra, back to my bed, back to one whole G of weight. But I couldn’t, could I? I was infected, I was tainted. There was nothing in the medical files to tell anyone how to cure it. Worse, I’d become a murderer, first the Alpha Site, and now Tulow.

I drew my gun and pressed it between both hands. It would be a simple and quick way to end it. No one would need know or care what happened to the Old Lady. I was far enough from the lorry that when they went to collect it, they probably wouldn’t even find my corpse. I smiled at that, another legend to terrify their children with. Don’t go out at night into the delta, or the Old Lady might take your fucking head off.

I pressed the gun to my lips. It clacked hard against the rebreather. Right. I laughed at myself, bewildered by my own idiocy. I hated the thing, but I’d grown so used to it. I reached up, touched the release stud, and waited. Confirmation played across my vision, I confirmed. The strap unlatched and I pulled the mask from my face. “Why shoot myself when I can just lay down, breathe deep, and pass the fuck out forever?” I asked to the reeds. They only rustled in response.

My eyes started to itch, just a little. I blinked, tears welled up. Fuck, was I going to cry now too? My nose began to itch, my sinuses began to burn, my lips tingled. With deliberate force of will, I parted those lips and forced myself to inhale.

Sweet. So sweet. Not cloying or acrid, just sweet, pleasant, and comforting. It wasn’t the sweet of hay back home, or the sweet of nail polish. It was a sweetness all its own, that belonged to this planet. I smiled, then laughed aloud. At least I’d die in a pleasant haze of sweet contentment.

I tossed my gun aside, unzipped my suit, and stripped naked. The sun felt good on my bare skin, the wind divine. I breathed in again and felt a dizzy spin take place behind my eyes. So I laid down and settled into the disorientation. It felt kinda pleasant too, not nauseating. I took a third, even deeper, suicidal breath. My sex clenched involuntarily and began again to drool like a hungry wolf.

My sex, my whole pelvis and stomach. The pain was gone. I blinked in surprise, wiped tears from my eyes and sat up. The dark filaments reached my navel and knees. My fur had fallen out where the skin darkened and turned glossy. I touched myself, stroked my rubbery, tight folds apart, and shuddered with pleasure. “Holy fuck, oh fuck me...” My head spun and my skin had begun to pink under my fine fur. Monoxide poisoning. But… I felt good anyway! The edge of black continued to spread, and where it spread it itched briefly, then faded into a pleasant tingle. It seemed to be expanding even faster now, far faster than it had in my room.

“Huh, were you starving little parasite?” I mocked, “Hungry for your natural atmosphere?” I took another incredibly deep breath, exhaled, did it again, “Well here you go, have it, have it all!” I laughed as my thoughts clouded and heart began to slow. The dizziness became too much and I fell back into the muck and rolled my head aside. Violet mud greeted my eye, I laughed. Of course I was aroused, how much of that alien ejaculate had been dumped in this very spot? My eyes closed, my mind began to still. It wasn’t the worst way to die, I supposed. My vaginal passage clenched in response, it was the last thing I felt.

When my eyes opened again the sun had set and the wind had picked up. I could smell the salty sweet brine of the sea, like rich caramel and sex. My mouth watered, my sex drooled, and I began to caress myself. I didn’t feel entirely myself, but at the moment that didn’t concern me. I stared up into the starlit sky as my fingers plunged between my alien folds. The shape was right, every contour and cleft familiar, but the texture… glossy, smooth, and hard, a hardness that yielded to softness after a moment, like melting ice cream. I felt slightly numbed as well, as if something stood between my fingers and my skin. I felt the pressure, vibration, and stretching, but the tactile contact was simply gone.

I grew slightly frustrated and more violent with myself. I scratched, clawed, pinched, pulled, and pounded, yet nothing pushed me over that blissful edge. The frustration was just one facet of it, I felt desperately aroused, in heat. Was I in heat? Maybe, I could be in heat. I probably was in heat. I probably needed a big male to force himself inside and fill my fertile depths with… I shuddered hard as the thought skidded to a halt. No, no children. No. I didn’t want children. Oh no, Tulow! I remembered, briefly, and hated myself.

What did I want? The thought struck a chord. I remembered the gun in my hand, the rebreather coming off. Suddenly I was very, very confused, and not a little bit frightened. I was naked, maskless, and alive under an alien sky. I should be dead, why wasn’t I dead? I’d wanted to die, desperately. Why? Why had I wanted to die? That was a nonsensical desire! I wanted a big male to… Tulow… My halted again, “No!” I screamed aloud, arched my back, and shook with the intense and overwhelming mix of desires.

“First thing first. Haiko, you are alive. As impossible as that seems, you are breathing, your heart is beating, and your genitals want to impale themselves on that entire reed mound over there. Calm thyself girl. You are not your mother, you are not Nopal, you are not Vale.” The thought of Nopal and his stupidly oversized genitals left me breathless for a moment as my womb figuratively clenched like a fist and punched me right in the neocortex. I lost coherence and reason, then began to masturbate again.

When I came back to myself, it was nearly dawn and I was exhausted, yet no nearer to orgasm. I’d orgasmed before, it wasn’t hard for me like some women, but now… I slammed both fists into the muck, and screamed at the pale sky, then threw myself to my feet. When I stood there, panting, breathing in the heady sweet atmosphere, I began to wonder again how the fuck I was still yet alive.

“Parasite, this is your doing isn’t it,” I accused, “Give you a little fresh air, and you take it all, huh?” All was the proper word, for I could feel no fur anywhere left on my body, not even my once beautiful plush tail. I tucked it with a timid embarrassment, then focused once more. “This place is bad, very bad.” I inhaled deeply and I could smell the delicious odor of alien lust, my own, and perhaps even the residue of that biologist. My depths clenched again and I felt a strange, dizzying sensation as a cascade of neurochemicals released. I watched myself lose control again, watched my own thoughts change, as if I were two people.

“No!” I screamed again, stomped my feet, swung my arms, and acted like a petulant child who didn’t want to go down for a nap. Awareness clawed against bestial instinct. Ego squared off with Id and threw punch after punch. I’d been sent here because I could master this, I could overcome this! I’d proven that, and I’d prove it again!

I came back to awareness some time later, face down in the mud, both hands buried between my parted thighs while I humped and bucked into the numb, aching digits. “W-what happened?” I muttered aloud. Then swore, “Shit.” I’d lost control again.

With shallow breaths and careful steps, I gathered my belongings and climbed from the marsh toward the hill where I’d left the Lorry. As I rose above the fetid sweetness of the swamp, my head began to clear. Enough so anyway that I came to a very bleak conclusion. The lorry wasn’t there. There was signs of a search, broken reeds, scuffed ground mold, but they hadn’t found me.

I stared out at the distant ocean, then across the delta. I could just barely make out the silvery line of the river, as wide as the Mississippi, and I was on the wrong side. I fell to my knees, the spongy ground flexed and bounced slightly under me. I stared at my hands and asked the most important question I’d ever considered, “Can I even go back?” Dark violet flesh, glossy and smooth, lined with alien veins. Would I even exist in another month? So many others had lost their identity already, as their biology failed and was replaced. “But not Dora. She lost so much, but she remained true to herself. Even at the end.”

Could I have saved her? What kinda life would she have had, locked in a quarantine chamber until she died of old age? What kind of life could I have? I didn’t want to dwell, so of course I did. I dwelled, moped, and simpered even as I began the long inane hike toward the river, and the even longer hike toward home. I didn’t think too hard on it, what would happen if I showed up, or even if I would ever make it, or whether there would be a me to make it. I couldn’t answer any of those questions. Maybe it would be just like another splice, a bit strange, a bit alien, but still essentially human. “Who am I kidding,” I sighed and put one foot before the other. The moment another smelled me, they’d spend the rest of their life buried to the hilt inside of me. Poor Tulow.

5 – The Old Lady

“Who is the slime mold minded motherfucker who stole my lorry?” I screamed at the top of my lungs. All activity came to a halt, all masks turned towards me, eyes wide behind their goggles. “Now, I won’t kill you, I promise, But before I let you leave again I’ll have you so twisted up and insecure that you’ll beg just to kiss my shadow.”

Someone laughed, but it died halfway through. Someone else took a stumbling step back. “Captain Haiko?” a once familiar voice asked. Chandri. I looked down into those wide, terrified, and confused eyes. “We thought you were dead!” Tears brimmed, then she threw her arms around me and bawled like a child.

I returned her embrace, the first bit of human contact I’d had in nearly a month. “Nope, just left without a ride on the wrong side of a river delta with no food, no water, and no long range transmitter.”

She pulled away, slowly, and stared up into my maskless face. She seemed to recoil inward as at last she took in the violet glossy skin and the silvery eyes. I closed my hands upon her cheeks, and tilted her head up to look upon her squarely. She was so much shorter, a slight little waif of a woman. I inhaled deeply, smelling the sweet aroma as volatile compounds reacted with her skin. She smelled fertile and inviting. No. Not yet.

“H-how did you survive?” She managed to ask. She didn’t ask about my pop-tent or Tulow I noticed.

“I gave up. A couple times even. Laid down the first time, took off my mask, and you know what happened? I didn’t die. I started walking, I got hungry, so I ate the first soft thing I could find. I didn’t die. I got thirsty, drank the first mud puddle I could find. I didn’t die. I got horny…” I trailed off at that, and smirked down at the woman. Her cheeks were pink but her eyes were fearful. “Seventeen years, she survived in that dome. Do you think the enviro controls didn’t fail after the first?”

Chandri asked, “She? Dora?” I nodded. She worked up courage, I could see it coming, like a swell on the ocean, building until it crested and broke. “What are you now?” Each word was spoken with dread and deliberation.

I lied. “Why, I’m your Old Lady. A little darker, a little less sane perhaps. I’ll admit, I don’t have it all together, but I never did really, did I?” I looked up at the gathered crowd, took a deep breath of the alien air. It no longer tasted alien to me, just like air, sweet, clean, and fresh… Though not so fresh here, there were undertones of grease, exhaust, ozone, and other stenches that only human civilization produced. There was another scent on the wind too, familiar, terrifying and bright. My mouth began to water. “You know, I don’t think we should be standing around like fools, back to work with you. Oh, and find me the fool who decided to declare me dead after only a night.”

“A night? We didn’t go looking for you for almost a week, then spent another week searching.”

“Ah, well… Okay then. A little bit of forgiveness I suppose is due. I may have lost a bit of time I guess. I have been out there only about a month, maybe a month and a half, right?” She nodded, “Good. Good. I’m not too late then.”

“Too late?”

“That colony ship will be here soon.” She nodded mutely. “We’ll need prepare for them, much easier if they haven’t landed yet.”

She was beginning to grow nervous again, “Why?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think, obviously. I’ve got some guesses, some notions that don’t add up. But… we shouldn’t be yammering out here. Back to work I said!” and I clapped my hands sharply. Stares shifted away, then back, but most of them did eventually return to what they had been doing. Chandi remained, her dark skin stained with tears behind her mask.

“Is it… is it what happened to the Alpha Site?” I nodded firmly, “Is it going to happen here?” I nodded again. “When?”

The scent on the breeze grew stronger. My skin tightened and eyes dilated, my sex clenched, then drooled. “Oh Chandi,” I sighed aloud, then enveloped her in my arms. She struggled briefly, trapped. I squeezed harder, pressed my lips to her brow, then let her go. “Run sweetie. Run and don’t look back. You get to the shuttle and you tell Vale to turn that boat around and head straight back to Terra. Tell them that Delta Pavonis is off limits.” It was close to truth, an honest lie.

She looked like she might argue, but I gave her a firm shove toward the landing pad. Someone off in the distance yelled, She looked, I didn’t, only gave her another push. She took the hint at last and ran, ran as fast as her little legs could take her. I turned away and strode forward, into the newly aired dome. The lock cycled, fresh, clean, sterile—dead—human air flooded my lungs. I waited, but the pain did not come, not yet. I stepped through into the dome, then began to disrobe.

A guard came to attention, then shouted as he took in my appearance. I stepped forward, into him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed. My tongue parted his lips, forced it’s way past his teeth, and slicked his mouth with sweet saliva. He shuddered, his eyes widened, dilated. I pulled away and turned. His companion asked him a question but he didn’t respond, she asked again, then I heard the latch on his armor come undone. She yelled, then yelped, then screamed as fabric tore. I began to smile. A violet rivulet drooled down my thighs and left a puddle of rapidly evaporating droplets in my wake.

It took only two or three circuits to fully saturate the dome. A few people would remain locked in their chambers until air ran out and they had to escape or suffocate. Most lay in the streets, half naked, tangled in bestial passion without reason. I felt the desire, felt the urge to join them, to spread my thighs and give in. I did not. I was in full control now.

The airlock opened for me again, but I did not exit. A lithe, narrow form loped across the fundra, then another and another. Seven limbs each, a different shape—a different purpose. Feed hands pressed into my fingers, nibbled and nuzzled. Those terrifying teeth gave no cause for alarm. A deft hand tucked in under my armpit and rubbed lightly at my ribs. I ushered them in and cycled the lock again, then they burst out, into the welcoming dome. No shots were fired, no intentions misunderstood. The children found only willing holes and welcoming caresses. I cycled the lock once more, and exited the dome into chaos.

It was almost time. In the distance gunfire rattled, men screamed. Not far off a woman lay face down writhing on the ground in lust. The back of her pants had been torn away, and a violet slime boiled up from between her labia. A single dose, enough to incapacitate, just like I’d taught them. Another struggled as one of the children bent her double in the air, held by all four limbs. Her clothes split as the salivator tentacle slithered up her pant leg and found it’s way into her. By her expression, I suspected it’d entered her backdoor.

I continued on, made my way through the turmoil, blood, and sex. On the launch pad the shuttle was beginning to warm up. I quickened my pace but didn’t run. Someone in armor off to my left struggled with a dark violet form. Her gun barked a dozen times, then fell silent as the armor was torn apart and the vulnerable flesh below exposed. The Child Maker fetched the rebreather from the woman’s belt and fitted it over her head, even as she thrashed and struggled against. Then she too succumbed as the salivator tentacle spilled into her. He thrust twice, eager and lacking discipline, but managed to drag himself away to begin the assault upon another.

Intense memories drifted through my mind, vivid sensations, flavors, and emotions I’d never be able to escape. My sex clenched and a splatter of violet rained upon the ground. Something shuddered in my belly, something alien, a violent hunger and anger not my own. I welcomed it, but did not surrender, “Almost there… almost.” I muttered to myself.

I reached the ladder and climbed toward the maintenance hatch on the shuttle’s rear. The turbines began to whine, the whole vessel shook, then began to rise. I climbed faster, I couldn’t be caught out here when the main engines engaged. My hand closed on the emergency handle. I twisted, pushed, twisted, pulled. The door opened like a guillotine’s blade, fast as death. I threw myself inside then hammered the lock button. It snicked closed just in time. A moment later came the roar of the engines and I was thrown back against that very same door.

I remained there until we reached orbit and free fall. I remained yet longer as I at last linked my mind to the local network and took stock of the situation. Aden and Chandi were in the cockpit. A number of other survivors were in the main cabin. Two of the Child Makers were stowed away already near the cabin vents. No one wore rebreathers, though a number had them hanging from their belts. I relaxed, it was going to work. There would be justice.

Hours passed in silent contemplation. I fixated upon my own desires, but did not act. I was the master of myself, I was the weapon honed sharp and true… She’d heard that in a movie once. A smile touched my dark lips, stained with milky violet saliva. I waited, patient as I could be, until the shuttle docked and the bay doors closed. Until that moment, Vale could blow the bolts and send the shuttle hurtling through space, but not with the bay closed, not without killing herself and everyone else on board. Though she still might.

I heard it at last, the distant thud of a thousand tons of metal coming together as gentle as a kiss. I moved. The Child Makers moved. Salivator tentacles bloated full and pinched shut, were let go. Violet mist filled the cabin. It was over in a heartbeat as people gasped, breathed, and blinked the fine irritating mist from their eyes. Some brought rebreathers up, but it was far too late. I held my breath as I darted past the chaos, toward the cockpit. Aden was staring back with wide, confused eyes, Chandi slammed her fist down on the emergency lock control with a surprising foresight and competence. Oh she was a smart little thing, Chandi, I couldn’t wait to have her bent over… I pushed those thoughts aside.

The door thudded shut, bolted, then fused. I swore quietly, but rebounded and kicked toward the shuttle airlock. She would be telling Vale, she would get off the warning. I had to be faster. I kicked off a floating trio of bodies tangled together. Two men and a splicer woman with bat wings. I wanted to join them, wanted to throw myself into the orgy and do my loving duty. My stomach clenched violently, a sharp cramp like pain inside. No, I had a purpose. I had to finish!

The airlock cycled open at my command, both sides held wide as I fell towards it. Someone tried to override, but I still held the rank of Captain as far as the computers were concerned. The door remained open, I fell through, into the main ship itself. One of the Child Makers followed, the other was left behind as the door at last closed and locked.

“Captain, what a strange meeting. I wish you had called ahead,” Vale said over the ship-wide. “You should really rethink this.” Her voice trembled.

I didn’t respond, it was a game of cat and mouse now. We fought over the computer systems, even as I barreled my way through the ship, hunting for her. Room by room, corridor by corridor, I searched. I caught her scent more than once, but it did not lead to her. An old sock, a piece of trash, a discarded food container. She was masking herself somehow, she was clever, and she was frightened.

I persevered. Minute by minute I began to take territory. Every room I entered, I smeared my lust upon the floor, walls, or ceiling. Of the skeleton crew, I found each one, disarmed, and incapacitated them handily. Vale hadn’t warned them, they weren’t even wearing masks.

In the end, I cornered the terrified woman in the aft cargo hold, hidden inside a shielded crate, furnished for long habitation. A little touch of dander with her essence however had come to rest upon it’s handle, fresh as new fallen snow and twice as sweet. My stomach clenched again, the cramps grew worse, the pain blossomed. I wrenched the door open with my bare hands, bolts stripped and brackets bent until at last she was revealed.

Pale and beautiful, her face once haunted, was now hunted. She clutched at her knees with trembling hands, and pressed herself into the far corner, as if she could sink through the metal and escape. I said nothing as I entered, she said nothing as she watched. Our eyes met, and I smiled. The words I spoke weren’t my own, “You were missed.”

She finally responded, her voice childish and petulant, “I-I’m not going back, I refuse!”

“You made such a mess last time, so many innocent deaths.” I chided.

“You could have saved them!”

With a shake of my head and a sigh, I told her, “No, you broke them, you broke each and every last one of them.” My hand reached up, cupped her cheek, and smeared violet mucous into her pale skin.

Her eyes closed and she pressed her face into my palm, an intimate and trusting gesture. Then she pulled away and glared. “I am not going back, I will not serve again!”

The words that I spoke next, had not been anticipated, and my own reaction was nearly as violent as her own. “I don’t need you, I don’t want you, I’ve found another more worthy.” my hand slid down her cheek to her throat, then closed on it, claw like. “But we don’t need you making another mess, do we? We want peace, quiet, and did I say peace? You though, are a little brat who can’t keep it in her pants for five minutes.

She grabbed at my wrist, pulled, thrashed, but couldn’t dislodge me. Her eyes bulged as she struggled, desperate and terrified beyond reason. Then her stomach shifted, twisted, and a font of violet mixed with bright red blood burst from below her skirt. The globs of wetness drifted away and clung to every surface. Something dark and violet thrashed between her thighs, then tore itself free at last, with another spray. My hand released her neck, she gasped, gulped down desperate mouthfuls of wet air, and I reached for the other.

She looked like a worm, a single tentacle, or perhaps double ended There was a toothy maw on one end, and a trio of slender fingers at the other. She struggled to move in zero gravity, but only managed to writhe in the air. My fingers closed on her and she went limp. There were no words anymore, no speech that I could understand, but I think something was said in a language I did not comprehend. She surrendered, perhaps she begged for forgiveness, perhaps accepted justice. I didn’t know. My fist closed, her tiny, soft body broke, black blood welled between my fingers. It was over.

Vale, the real vale, stared at me with a mixture of confusion, horror, and helpless lust. I gave her a smile, then climbed my way out of the stowaway crate, she scrambled to follow. Silently I asked, “Another, more worthy?” My bowels churned and a flood of euphoria passed through my mind, but I felt no loss of control or awareness, he was letting go. Slowly, I made my way back through the ship, past the writhing bodies of the crew, and once more to the shuttle bay. Outside the shuttle I looked in at Chandi and Aden. Their eyes were wide and terrified, and confused. They were also clutching at one another, naked, with globs of creamy white clinging to the inside of the canopy.

“Hey, Chandi. Why don’t you open the door now, it’s over. Good guys won.”

Behind me I heard a hand slap gently against a wall, “Who are you people? Where am I?”

I turned to see Vale again. She’d followed me all the way from her crate, “Ah, I’m Captain Haiko, That’s my Exec Chandi, tactical officer Adan, and you’re… well you’re kind of a stow away. I’m afraid though, that you’re stuck with us. Planet is under quarantine.”

“Planet? Which planet?”

“Pavlov’s World. Turns out there’s a seriously contagious strain of organic machinery running rampant on it’s surface. Something only twisted sci-fi authors and artists dream up. You’ll get used to it though, I promise.”

“Pavlov’s? I’ve been there, I think… I remember… I remember… I think I was dying, someone stole my rebreather and left me stranded…”

“Yeah, we’re not entirely clear on what happened after that. Maybe you’ll remember, if you do, tell us? We’re quite curious.” I turned away and looked back toward Chandi through the glass. She was beet red and struggling to put her clothes back on. “Relax sweetie, we’re all going to have to get over a little embarrassment. Now get those doors open so we can air out the cabin and go home. I already set the ship’s emergency broadcast cycling. Only suicidal fools will come down after us.”

“Y-yes Captain,” she responded at last, “I have to admit, I’m a little confused.”

“So am I sweetie, probably more than anyone else.” Silently I added, “and you are going to explain everything as soon as we get some time to ourselves.” I felt a silent wave of pleasure, followed by a hint of guilt. I still wasn’t entirely sure who He was, or why I trusted him.

6 – To Be Queen

A sob tore from my throat as my back arched away from the bedding. Bright violet spilled from between my gaping folds but not a streak of crimson as the massive alien squirmed it’s way out of me. Chandi held my head in her lap, her head forward and her braided hair draped like a beaded curtain. One of the Child Makers sat at my side, relaxed and limp, a single deft manipulator limb draped over my chest and the twelve fingers at the end laced and twined with mine.

Another involuntary spasm, and my body at last ejected the creature. It looked a lot like false Vale, but thicker, and without the trio of fingers on his tail end. He laid limp between my legs, drenched in ichor and breathing heavily, nearly as much as I. The presence was gone at last and I felt fully in control of my faculties. He had held me in check, restrained, a prisoner in my own mind and thoughts. At last, with him gone the memories resurfaced, at first a trickle, then a flood of terror, pain, and confusion I’d endured. It was free to be analyzed, but first had to be endured. I experienced it all over again for the first time, the world around me was gone, Chandi was gone.

–

Starving and hopeless, I’d stumbled through the marsh upon bleeding feet. I’d lost my boots at some point, then my gun, and even my rebreather. All I had were the tattered remnants of my hazard suit. I fell to my knees at the side of the river, then forward into it’s shallow warmth. My first destination reached, I but held no hope of anything beyond. Five miles wide, and though sluggish, it was fast enough that I would be swept out to sea long before I crossed, even if that were physically possible in my state.

I gave up, I laid down, I closed my eyes, and willed myself to death. But death did not come. Each breath of poison air filled my lungs with sweet kindness and invigorating health. I turned my head and let the muddy water fill my belly. Whatever contagions or poisons it held would either give me death, or do me no harm. I drank, breathed, drank, and slept. When I woke again the heat had returned, more intense than ever. It was worse than in Nopal’s office. Fiber by fiber, nerve by nerve, I burned.

Something touched my face, a mouth with sharp teeth, but the teeth did not bite. Sweet cloying breath exhaled across my face and stirred my loins again. Not far away, a woman sat clutching her swollen belly. Her eyes were empty, yet she smiled with adoration, at me. I knew her, though I didn’t know her name, an exobiologist I’d met briefly.

The worm squirmed his way the rough the water, then twined himself around her twice, three times, and settled his terrifying, lampray maw against her cheek and… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, he nuzzled her. Her smile didn’t change, didn’t flinch. Her eyes showed nothing, not a thought, not a care, not an awareness. Yet, yet her hands curled upon the alien’s form and clutched him like a child with a teddy bear.

When next I woke, I was in shallow water upon my back and things… wormy, tentacle things, each no larger than a kitten, squirmed and played across my naked body. I shuddered in revulsion and pulled away. The little things scattered far and wide, some too far out in to the water and began to struggle. Something like shame filled me as I watched, until I couldn’t take it any more. I lurched to my hands and knees, then crawled forth into the deep water. They thrashed away from me, but I caught them, gently, and towed them back to shore.

The others encroached in a semicircle, they touched me with little arms, explored me anew as I sat before them with their brothers cradled to my chest. They were like children, curious, scared, and playful. I recognized the alien in them, unmistakable, the seven distinct arms, the starfish like alignment. But they had no shells, they were skinny, naked, and strangely dog like in a way, like a lean greyhound, wasp wasted between two sets of limbs four forward and three aft. Beak, tapered penetrator, and toothy mouth at one end. These tended to stay underwater, exploring, delving into nook and cranny. At the other end, I’d never paid much attention. One limb was thick and powerful with three clawed fingers and no orifice. The opposite on the other side was thin and deft, with twelve articulated fingers that played in the water or air like a pianist. Between them, one was held always aloft, soft steady breaths taken through it’s numerous cleft nostrils. The last I was familiar with, thick, with three blunt fingers, nearly as strong looking as the first of the four, but softer, pudgy, and less active, the ovipositor.

I watched them play for a time, even joined them, splashing and teasing with a bit of drifting debris. I might have stayed there all day, fascinated, but a moan split the silent day. I recognized the voice. Gingerly I laid the children down on the bank and stepped up, into the fungal fruiting scrub and swaying reeds. The moan came again, I followed it to a dry clearing well above the mud.

There she was again, I hadn’t imagined her. She’d been bloated with pregnancy last time I’d seen her, it had only been the evening before hadn’t it? But now her stomach was wrinkled and sagging, empty. As I watched, the giant worm dipped his aft end into her. Her stomach distended around the curved shape of him. Then he shuddered and a ripple washed from one end to the other. She moaned again and clutched at his rubbery body. Violet fluid gushed across the ground, expelled from her gaping sex.

The smell hit me, sweet, chemical, and mind shattering. Between one breath and the next I was overwhelmed and fell to my knees, then hands. Saliva drooled from my lips, faintly pink upon the chalky white fundra. A second drooling mess poured down my thighs, darker pink, almost a pale fuchsia. I moaned, and felt my thoughts drifting away upon a neurochemical tide of bliss and surrender. My eyes closed, I didn’t have the energy to fight.

Something touched my open mouth, moist sweet breath washed my cheeks. I opened my eyes and saw the worm, his aft end still buried in the other woman’s womb, his body still pulsating with what had to be some sort of orgasm. His breath huffed, his body shook, then he nuzzled at my cheek and exhaled again, deliberately. Another sensation washed over me, something so unlike the mind breaking lust and surrender.

I felt sorrow, deep as an ocean yet placid. It was not anguish, but more like something seen from a distance, a helplessness to stop the inevitable. I imagined my own unborn children fighting one another, killing one another, hating without reason. He shuddered again, the unnamed woman moaned and rolled her hips, little more than involuntary spasms.

He exhaled again, and I felt hope, joy, and even happiness. There was pleasure, lust, even possessive carnal desire, but it was tempered by self control and reason. A time to play, a time to fight, a time to rest. I stumbled forward on hands and knees, then fell to the woman’s side. Her arm curled around my head as it laid to her breast, hugging me like a teddy bear. The alien draped himself over both of us and sighed again as he continued to ejaculate. I closed my eyes and listened to the rushing gurgle of life spilling into the woman’s body. I was at peace for the first time in… I couldn’t remember ever feeling such contentment. Smiling and peaceful, I fell into a mid afternoon nap under the gently scented breaths of the alien.

When I woke again, it was to pain, pain beyond reason, beyond telling. I couldn’t move, couldn’t think of anything but the pain. My thighs were splayed open, and between them, the alien’s head had lodged itself deep in my sex, and it’s sharp, vicious teeth were beginning to chew through me. I tried to scream, but my lips didn’t part and my lungs didn’t draw breath.

My head still laid upon the woman’s breast, but her heart no longer beat and her body was cold, though her arms yet held me, clutching with desperation frozen in rigor mortis. The pain faded a moment later into a dull cramping ache as he tore the last membrane aside and burrowed up, into my body cavity. I was dead, food for the worms, literally. I knew it, I knew it like I knew the sun would rise and set. He squirmed forward, his slippery body wriggled up my stretched passage and through the rent hole in the back of my vagina. Then the final pointed tip of tail passed between my lips and disappeared inside. My stomach felt full, bloated, and uncomfortable. My bowels gurlged and shifted unpleasantly as he squirmed to get comfortable.

He stilled for a time, and I began to gain control again. My toes twitched, my fingers curled, and I managed to lick my dry lips. Then he shifted once more and a new, dull, non-localized pain spread thorugh my back. I heard the scrape of teeth on bone, felt something shift in my spine… my spine! I screamed aloud and broke free of the paralysis. He was chewing on my spine! I clawed at my stomach, but it was mostly flat, just a faint bulge, nothing to indicate the monster within!

Then the voice came, somewhere between words and intent. It was my own voice, echoed back, I spoke, but did not remember speaking, only hearing. “Calm, peace. I know you are in pain, I know you are afraid. If I could have explained I would have, if I could have asked permission… I would have done it with or without. The other, she was too weak, too broken. The forgotten Child Maker had gone wild, he damaged her.”

“W-who are you?” I asked, but I knew the answer, the worm, the worm was speaking to me in my own voice. I felt like I was going mad, lost in some Alice in wonderland like story. Was he next going to pull out a pipe and start smoking?

“I am the last… you could call me a Prince. I am the last prince of my kind. I am the last, and our queen has forsaken us. She breeds mindless abominations and destroys everything she touches. She is full of rage, pain, and fear. We almost had her once, almost, but she escaped upon one of your exploration ships. Yet, though she has been gone these many years, I smell her upon you, you once were close, you once tasted of her foul miasma.”

A lot of words spilled unbidden from my mouth, I had no control, no way to stem the tide or ask for elaboration. When it was over, I was left breathless and scared, but far wiser. I closed my eyes and buried my face in my palms, then shook with sorrow not my own. I wasn’t myself any longer, I wasn’t the person I’d been seconds before. I felt him inside, felt his depth and patience, and felt his existential terror creeping up behind it.

“Child Maker? What is a Child Maker?” It was the smallest of details I could latch onto, the shelled alien, it made children, that was obvious, but… I didn’t understand. “It isn’t an animal?”

“No, it was once an attendant in my spawning pool, a friendly, kind, and generous soul who lived only for the young it cared for. It forgot that, forgot kindness, forgot generosity, but did not forget children. It lived now, wild and mad, with only one purpose, to bring for it’s progeny.”

I felt the sorrow build again, the echo of warring children without reason. In the distance I heard splashing, a patter of little limbs on wet mold. “Those children…”

“They are precious, perhaps the last. I will try and raise them to be good and kind, but the queen too has gone mad. She returned and rained fire from the sky upon our world. Had I remained in our spawning ground near your landing site… but I had grown frustrated with lack of progress and left.”

I flinched as if struck. “That… that was you? Thousands of my own people, as broken as this one,” I gestured at the dead body, I felt no natural revulsion to it, no sense of wrongness. She had served her purpose, in the end, and she’d been happy as I’d promised. I stopped trying to justify myself to the alien, and instead looked up toward the sky. I felt calm spread over me, and reason reassert. At last I said, “I think I may know who your runaway queen might be.” A memory of a haunted face, a fear of ever setting foot upon this world again. She hadn’t rescued Nopal, she’d latched onto him and used him like a life raft to escape. Might he have recovered from his addiction without her? I wondered if she was the true source of the mind rape drug.

“Yes, the river of your thoughts converge on truth. A queen has only one need, to control. One, or all, she must reign.” He sighed with my lungs, and sat up. His movements were ungainly, but careful. “She must learn to temper her hunger, or cease to be. You and I, my strange alien friend, we will find an end one way or another.” In the distance, I heard the patter of little limbs on wet mold, the prince heard joyous laughter.

My eyes opened and I stared up into Chandi’s dark face. My body hurt, my loins were on fire, and my mind felt like a bowling ball had lodged somewhere behind my right eye. “Oh, fuck me.”

Chandi laughed as tears dripped onto my face, “Damn it Captain, don’t scare me like that. What happened? You had a seizure, then passed out, snoring like the dead.”

I smiled up at her and retorted, “The dead don’t snore Chandi, that’s kinda the point, breathing stopped.” But, I knew what she meant. “I… I remembered. That’s all. I think when he disconnected our nervous systems…” I shrugged and reached out toward the limp, exhausted shape of the worm. He lifted his head and pressed his toothy maw into my palm, then curled up and around my wrist and pulled it back down. He was an alien, a toothy monster of nightmares, and in that moment I felt utter affection for him.

Once we rested, once we had recovered, then he would make me his queen. I felt that burning promise, a hunger so great that it had permanently etched itself into my mind. Would I have wanted it without that influence? Would I have consented? I didn’t know, it didn’t matter. The Child Maker at my side pressed it’s toothy face in close to mine, inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, then laid down in the hollow of my throat where it could taste my breathing. I felt a foreign wash of contentment from it, of belonging. It knew I’d been there at it’s conception, and at it’s birth, and raised it like a parent for all of it’s short, confusing life. I was the single rock it knew, even more than the Prince.

“Captain. I don’t know what’s going on, I am so confused right now, scared, and a little bit out of control. Can you please tell me, honestly, that things are going to be okay?”

“Chandi? I can’t tell you we won’t face some interesting and difficult times, you know that. But, right now, I think the future looks pretty damn bright… just very VERY weird. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a very big day ahead of me, and I really need to… to finish this, then sleep. Wake me if the colony ship arrives, or if the dead rise from their graves and start snoring.”

She chuckled a little, then soberly responded, “Alright Captain, I’ll let you rest. But I expect a very detailed explanation in the very near future, understood?”

“Understood,” I agreed, then curled into the Child Maker and used it’s toothed limb like a pillow, letting Chandi rise. Behind me, the Prince curled in as well and pressed his aft end against the underside of my tail, a trickle of moisture spilled, his or mine I wasn’t sure. I smiled to myself and listened to the woman depart, waiting.

We waited until the sounds of the colony faded into slumber, until the lights went out, and we were truly alone. The prince, the Child Maker, and myself. I didn’t understand the mechanics of it, born and raised in a world of two biological sexes, nothing prepared me for a world of five. I wanted to ask them how it worked, but they couldn’t even hear my words, let alone interpret them. Sex I understood well enough, but queen making? I squeezed the Child Maker’s fingers, then released them. It rose above me.

I laid back into the Prince. Spread my legs, and tried to relax. He had assured me, the Child Maker, though young, had the instincts imprinted upon his germ line and knew what to do physically, and that his instruction had given the alien enough knowledge to influence alien biology. I remembered the ancient wild one, it’s deft touch holding the exobiologist hostage. The beak never came close though, the deft hand, and the strong hand touched me timidly. I smiled, closed my eyes, and surrendered.

The salivator rose to my lips, sweet and pungent scents filled my nose and burned on my tongue. I was to be an extension of the spawning pool, a part of the whole symbiotic sexual jumble. The Child Maker was to make me that part, to alter me, to splice in alien genes, to induce the growth of alien organs, to gift me with fertility. The way he had said it felt poetic and profound, but now it just seemed a bit chaotic and disorganized. That was life, I guessed.

I opened my mouth and tilted my head up to wrap my lips around it’s salivator. Pungent fluids gushed free to fill my mouth with alien flavors. I lost control, felt myself buck, my stomach heave, my jaw gape, and my throat swallow. Emotions not my own took over, thoughts not my own formed. This wasn’t the sexual deluge I’d met in Nopal’s office, there were deep and meaningful instincts rammed through my mind like red hot nails.

Another deluge of sweet and pungent fluid poured down my throat. I belched a second later as it evaporated and the toxic vapors expanded. A violet miasma filled the pop-tent and thickened with each release. Again and again, the young Child Maker nursed me upon alien aphrodisiacs and mind altering substances. My stomach swelled, bloated, and burbled, filled with noxious fumes and highly bio-active compounds. When I’d undergone my splice, it had been a series of injections and some post-trauma therapy. This was different, understatement of the century.

The cramps and bloating were nothing in the wake of the liquid fire that began to pour through my veins. It wasn’t pain, not in any rational sense of the word, but something less tangible, molten dread or liquid shame? Raw emotion surged along nerves never meant to carry them. I began to feel things in places I’d never even known existed. How could my pancreas be happy and my liver angry? The confusion was intense, but the intensity was even more confusing.

I started to laugh, helplessly, it was the only rational response when the world stopped making sense. “It’s not funny,” Water Weaver complained.

“Yes it is, how can my pancreas be happy? What does my liver have to be angry at?”

“You just aren’t interpreting things correctly, give it time. All is in flux mother, all is in flux.”

I jolted, “Mother? Wait, who… Who are you Water Weaver?” That was a stupid question, ask someone, by name, who they were? Just more madness to add to Alice’s psychedelic joyride. Defthand curled into my cheek and caressed with loving adoration. My throat swallowed upon it’s salivator over and over, stuffed half way to my stomach already. “Nevermind, I’m just… I’m just confused,” I added after a moment’s thought.

The two actions fell into conflict, my mind recoiled in rejection, like a mind bending magic eye illusion that couldn’t possibly be. I couldn’t be speaking, and swallowing at the same time. I couldn’t be. I could not reconcile the notions, so I tried to speak again, and only burbled and belched around his invasive limb. “Relax Mother, hush now, Father told me that you are not born to understand, you were not even born of this world. I don’t understand, but that’s okay. You don’t understand, and that’s okay too. We can teach each other, yes?”

I nodded and swallowed again. Emotional fire raged, sensations beyond recognition twisted through my nerves, and my own flesh began to rebel. I’d consented to this, I’d welcomed this. I didn’t have any idea what I was getting myself into, but I had agreed. Firmly I fixed my mind, as firmly as was possible when your brain boiled and your thoughts blew like a kite in a hurricane.

The prince stroked himself across my nethers, his sensual touch full of promise. To him I was yet barren, an empty vessel. He had tried with the biologist, tried until her body gave out. He had learned better. Yet he was eager and so very lonely. I reached with a trembling hand and drew him to my breast. He calmed, though his tail end continued to press with promise at my sex. He had only one purpose in life, and though he had grown well beyond that purpose, it still compelled. He had to breed, he needed a queen to breed.

I began to drift in and out of some sort of dream state. Memories came and went, altered, were stored wrong. I knew I was losing parts of myself forever, just like poor Dora. It was inevitable, but it was terrifying. For a moment I forgot the color orange, it wasn’t weird that I forgot, it was weird that I knew I forgot. It was like staring at a gap in a puzzle that had been whole a moment before. What had been there? What might go there? I tried to put anger in, but it didn’t fit. Sour didn’t either, Ode To Joy nearly fit, but didn’t jive with my memories, how did one paint a wall in music? Orange returned sometime later, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t my orange. Yet, the walls, the fruit, and the sky were orange again in memory, and the word didn’t rhyme with anything I could think of.

Why was I dwelling on a color I wasn’t sure I even remembered correctly? It was to distract myself from the mutilation of my flesh. Perhaps orange and green had swapped places, I wouldn’t know, but when I felt my hips strain apart and a second tail begin to grow from the wet folds of my sex? Yeah I felt like screaming. My original tail distorted, thickened, and softened. A third tail sprouted as well from the the ring of my anus, extending and stretching. I felt like my insides were liquefied and flowing out.

“I… I’m scared,” I admitted.

Water Weaver squeezed one cheek with defthand and pressed it’s mouth against the other. I tasted the words on it’s breath, “I am too, Mother. I’m afraid I’ll make a mistake, or break you. Humans are so fragile, so vulnerable.”

Pines in Silence pressed his eager member into me, up the thick, tight passage of my still elongating entrance. The fit was snug, and felt… it felt right. He spoke too, a tired, yet excited voice of calm reason. “Water Weaver, you have nothing to fear. Mother, you are safe and loved.” I accepted his words as truth, I internalized them, and began to relax again and drift into a nightmarish morass of dreams.

When dawn broke and the light of Delta Pavonis began to spear through my blinds, I awoke. My mouth was gritty and slick with alien mucous, my body ached, and a hunger like a thousand starving wolves clawed at my guts, but I didn’t feel wrong any longer. In fact, I’d never felt so right. It was human nature, I supposed, to never feel quite right in your own skin. That was why Splicers existed, why throughout history people pierced things, tattooed, and modified. I no longer felt that way.

My arm rose, strong and muscular. My other arm rose, thin and deft. Three tails swayed in the light before my eyes, one thick and luscious, one thin and salivating already, one beaked and… I realized for the first time it’s intended purpose. That tail was my bowel! Then, as joy spread through my heart I spread my legs, arched my back, and moaned. The sound that jetted forth was deep and resonated through my ribs like a bellows. With it, scents drifted up from my lips and filled the room with that very same contentment I felt inside. Pines in Silence stirred, raised his head and breathed deeply of my contentment.

“Oh my queen!” He exhaled, then curled his small form around me. Small, much smaller. I had grown, tripled in size at least. My bed felt tiny and awkward like a child’s chair. The air filled with his scent of purpose, of need, of desperate desperate lust. I however, did not feel ready, I felt—empty.

The limp, exhausted form of Water Weaving clung to my side. It was half asleep, but stirred at my touch. I asked a wordless question, and the answer came clearly. Three were required; A father to sire, A mother to incubate and influence, and a maker to spawn the eggs. It’s ovipositing limb rose limply and pressed in between my spread thighs. The sensation of it’s touch was incredible. My vagina, once so small and tucked away, now extended half way across the room in a dark, smooth skinned sheath of muscle. That vaginal trunk, so sensitive to pressure, yet still dulled to tactile, flexed of it’s own will.

My whole body recoiled and strained as Water Weaver’s thick limb slithered along my vast length. It pulled, and I drew it in, curled it with new muscles and nerves. The three blunt fingers at the tip flexed open, clenched into a fist, then spread again. They pressed their own three fingered tip to mine, small in comparison. Our fingertips touched, slippery moisture welled between us. We laced those fingers, something like a sexual embrace, and then they thrust.

I sobbed aloud and arched away from the small bed below me. It’s frame creaked and groaned as I thrashed, but I couldn’t contain myself. Water Weaver’s ovipositor pushed it’s way into me, slithered as deep as they could reach, then began to lay. It was an act of unrestrained violence and pleasure. Their body thrashed even harder than mine, their limb quivered and swelled within the confines of my own, their other limbs coiled and grasped at me, the bed, and themselves.

The swelling grew, strained my passage, left me feeling even fuller than even Nopal had. The mass of eggs gurgled and sloshed their way from Water Weaver’s body, and gushed into me, a frothy, lumpy ejaculation of new life. It felt wet, filling, and strange at first. The mass squished, stretched, and flowed with each throb of my inner walls. It traveled the remaining length of my channel, then reached my womb. I sobbed. The sensation was nothing short of relief. I suddenly felt—complete.

The Child Maker stumbled back and fell limp, still ejaculating, but the flow only mucous now. They trembled a little with each pleasurable discharge, but had lost consciousness. I tenderly extracted the little one’s limb from my depths and laid them out gently upon the floor. At my side, my eager Prince squirmed and reached for me. I curled my now fertile tail in and twined it with his own. I could feel the throb of life, of potential deep within, Water Weaver’s eggs settled into place. It was another right and natural feeling.

His phallus slipped up and over my entrance. The tip curved, then nudged my sensitive fingers apart. I relaxed and opened myself to him, welcomed him. His length slithered inside much like the others had, violet mucous oozed free and left my long passage slick with welcome. His own lusty fluids began to dribble, then his first violent release rippled from end to end, and I felt that first incredible wash of seed.

It had been so long, before even Nopal perhaps, since I’d felt an orgasm. I could have given myself one perhaps, masturbated to climax in my cabin on the ship, or even planet side. I hadn’t. The urge had not been there, only disgust at the incessant lust. And then I’d been altered and lost the capability entirely. His penetration still felt distant and insulated, though delicious. It was his release, that powerful jet of reproductive material, when it hit the walls of my passage it felt like an electrical cascade. He thrust, and the sloshing fluid poured in, forced its way up my channel and into my womb. Every where it touched, pleasure blossomed with an intensity of atomic fire. I lost control.

Ejaculation after blissful ejaculation, Pines in Silence fertilized me. The small alien sent me on a trip through a strange sort of heaven. My new limbs thrashed, crashed, and clutched at everything in the room. I bucked and writhed, but the little prince remained buried up to his neck in my passage. Only his toothy maw stuck out beyond the end. I even managed to bash him into the floor and ceiling, but he didn’t seem to mind. Every ripple of his long body ran down the length of my vaginal passage, then terminated in a release of orgasmic intensity.

This was his purpose fulfilled, to fertilize and please his Queen. My purpose was to rule, to drive, to strive, and to spread. I could feel the quickening in my womb, a thousand fertile eggs awaiting his reproductive material. I felt it happen, a wave of living sparks, tiny motes of something beyond human understanding. Where his seed flowed, the living fire spread, and contentment followed. Then, the last egg sparked, and the sensations ramped up. I howled and pressed my powerful limbs to every corner and every wall as the pleasure became too intense, too much. The room creaked, then cracked and split apart. One wall fell out, the dome roof collapsed. With a final throat wrenching cry my hips rolled, my vaginal tail whipped, and Pines in Silence was flung, still spilling his seed, into the dirt beyond my broken tent. He rolled a few times, then collapsed with an exhausted sigh.

I panted and whined as oversensitive vaginal walls trembled and shook with each slosh and drool of his potent seed. My eggs were fertilized, all of them, the pleasure had reached it’s peak, and shot beyond, it would not end! My thrashing continued, hips bouncing and tails squirming as it regurgitated most of his thick, jellied ejaculate. Only when the last of his mess, and all of my inner mucous membranes cleansed themselves was I able to relax.

“H-holy shit,” I whispered, my words carried upon the wind and echoed from the broken walls. Humans had come out at the commotion, dark violet skinned now one and all. They stared at me with wide, confused eyes, but the scent of my words reached them. Awe spread like a wave, understanding bloomed from the void of ignorance. Each of them received the first words of their queen, and fell to their knees before me. Not in an act of reverence, but simply overwhelmed with the raging emotions carried with whisper. One man clutched at his groin as violet milky semen drooled between his fingers. One sentence, two words, had sent him over the edge.

I grinned wide and climbed off my collapsed bed to stand before them. My tails swayed and flexed in the cool morning breeze between my powerful thighs. I stood twice the height of the tallest of them, but I saw no fear in anyone’s eyes, no distrust, nothing but love. “From now on, your Old Lady is in control,” I told them, the mix of innuendo was clear, no misunderstanding. I was in control of myself, in control of them, and would soon be in control of far far more.

Chandi rose from her knees and rushed forward to wrap her arms around my vaginal tail. The pressure was delightful, right. This was where she belonged. I draped my defthand over her head and pressed her face into my lap, then raised my aft most tail and felt for the glandular impulses. It swelled with potential and welled with emotional fire. Without a word I arched the tail over my head, and sprayed the volatile miasma across the assembled crowd. Control. The word was a pale concept compared to what I evacuated over them in that moment. Minds bent, bodies obeyed, and thoughts focused. No one broke, no one blanked. No one suffered. Their purpose was clear and their joy intense. Host mothers, they would all nurse my brood and teach it what it meant to be… well we couldn’t call ourselves humans anymore, could we?

No, not all, not Chandi. Her I held close and protected. My little princess, my precious little princess. “Chandi, sweetie?”

“Yes Mother?” she asked, wide eyed and breathless.

“How would you like to greet our guests on the colony ship when it arrives?” The beaming smile that spread across her beautiful face spoke louder than words, nearly as loud as the intense scent of joy that rolled off her skin. I pressed my aft most tail down to her open lips and began to salivate. Just as Water Weaver knew, I knew. She swallowed, then a moment later her universe came unraveled as I released.

Epilogue

General Manager Nopal retched quietly in his cabin as the colony ship completed starfall. One of his women clutched at him, her pregnant belly firm against his thigh. Another lay in the corner, curled up with her face in her knees. He was out of violet milk, his drug, and without Vale to get it for him… “Captain, have we arrived?”

“Yes Sir. The Trophy of Joy is in orbit but I’m not picking up much from the surface… no, wait, I’m getting an alert from the ship. Looks like the original colony is gone, a new colony has been founded. Huh… I don’t like the look of this Sir, I’m getting weird readings.”

He scoffed, he’d come all this way, months with only bland, boring sex and annoying pregnant women. “Nonsense, open a com to the surface, I’d like to speak with Captain Haiko, or Vale, either one.” I wiped my mouth and pushed the simpering girl aside.

“At once Sir.” A moment passed, “Message sent, we’re still five light minutes out and that gap is expanding, so may be a while before we hear back.”

Nopal sat back and spread his legs, one of his women, he couldn’t remember her name, scampered over and wrapped her lips around his bared cock. He relaxed, or tried to. He closed his eyes, and imagined what it would be like, when he finally had the drug in hand again. Nothing else mattered now, nothing but the wonderful bliss, and powerful urges it awakened in those around him.

The com opened again, “Sir, the Trophy of Joy is leaving orbit on an intercept.”

“Any response?” He asked.

The captain sounded worried, “It’s too early for a response, it’s too early for the Trophy of Joy to have even heard our message. They started moving the moment our gravity waves reached their position.” he was silent a moment, “A signal has arrived. I’ll copy it to you.”

A very dark skinned woman appeared, bald as an egg. Her eyes were silvery, with faint violet hints where her whites should have been. She was smiling, a bright, joyful smile, her white teeth shone like the sun against the unnatural dark violet skin. “Welcome colonists to Pavlov’s world. I am Chandi, your host, here to teach you some new tricks.” A trickle of saliva oozed from the corner of Nopal’s lips, he wiped his jaw dry with the back of his hand.

“Captain, who is this?”

“It appears to be the chief navigator of the Trophy of Joy. At least, I think she is. She’s changed—a lot.” Before our eyes, extra limbs rose into the camera screen, reaching for controls. Then weight hit her, dragged her back in her harness.

“How long until she reaches us, Captain?” Nopal demanded.

“She’s under one fifty meters of thrust. She’ll need to circle the planet but… We can’t starfall in time.”

“Can we fight?” Stupid question, colony ship against a battle cruiser. “No, of course we can’t. Put me through.”

The screen changed, recording. “This is Nopal, General Manager of the Ter-ari Sector. I thank you for your welcome Chandi, and am eager to learn some new tricks.” He smiled his best welcoming smile, but it did little good.

The woman between his legs continued to suckle, though Nopal felt no pleasure. Dread filled him as he stared at the many limbed woman on the screen. She wasn’t human, wasn’t splicer, she looked… she looked alien. He killed the com and looked down. The broken woman continued her oral affections, even as his member went flaccid. He never went flaccid when he had his violet milk.

“Sir, what are we going to do?” His silence continued. “Sir?”

Hours later Nopal found himself on his knees as he stared up at the violet alien-human hybrid. She was huge, twice his height, and her stomach was bloated with life, squirming, violent life. He stared, eyes wide as her tail rose over his face. Others had resisted, been dosed with violet milk, and surrendered. He, he did not resist. His mouth opened, eyes eyes wide and fearful.

The tail descended, clear violet mucous drooled from the three wide spread fingers. They closed over his face, one in mouth, two on jaw. His lips were forced open. His enormous cock slapped his stomach and chest hard in anticipation. The woman’s vaginal tail bulged and something squirmed down it’s length, toward his awaiting mouth. A tiny, frightened part of his mind gave a single desperate whimper, then the flood of mucous filled his mouth followed by a multi-armed alien.

It crawled down his throat as fast as lightning, squirmed past his gag tonsils, gag reflex futile. His cock flared, his knot swelled, his hips bucked. A stream of ejaculate sprayed across the hybrid’s feet as the spawn reached his stomach. He clutched at himself, could feel the thing writhe inside. Then there was pain, deep, gut wrenching pain. He doubled over just as he had seen all the others. His hips bucked, his own ejaculate sprayed across his face. The world vanished in a rainbow hued haze of static and pain.

When Nopal woke again, he wasn’t alone. There was someone else within him, a quiet, tiny mind full of wonder. He felt strange, the strangeness was the comfort, the contentment he felt within his own skin, like he finally for the first time in his life—belonged. A voice came to him, his own voice, but not by his volition, “Hello Mother, I am pleased to meet you.” His heart filled with deep, never before dreamed of love.

“Wait—mother…? What!?” Something in his stomach shifted.

End

04/12/2020

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