The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

‘Weapon Ready’

(mc, f/f, sf, nc)

DISCLAIMER: This material is for adults only; it contains explicit sexual imagery and non-consensual relationships. If you are offended by this type of material or you are under legal age in your area, do NOT continue.

SYNOPSIS:

Captives of an alien race embark on a desperate plan.

* * *

‘Weapon Ready’

Part One

awaken

Dessa slowly opened her eyes.

She felt... good. Warm, and held, and floating... as though she were waking up from a brief nap in the whirlpool spa back on Gaheris.

But she wasn’t on Gaheris. Languorously, she turned her head to look around. This room was... organic. The walls and ceiling and even the floor were covered in—or made of—oblong curves of grey-green flesh. It was very rounded, no corners to it that she could see, and every surface glistened wetly.

Dessa found this interesting, but not worrisome.

That was interesting, too—she realized that waking up in a strange, biological interior space should have disturbed her... but she was unable to remember precisely why. Or to remember much of anything else.

She lifted an arm and looked at it. Her skin glistened with some clear, gelatinous substance—and was partially enclosed in clear, smooth flesh.

Fascinated, Dessa raised the arm and rotated it. On the back of her fist was a large, smooth, clear lump of material; it continued back down her arm in two long arcs to the elbow, where a rounded spike of it protruded like an unfriendly elbow guard. That in turn was connected to more glassine flesh that ran up her arm and joined with more on her back.

She felt it on her back now, and on her neck—it was holding the back of her head, like a gentle hand; it turned with her, like her own muscle and flesh, but she could feel the slight weight of its unfamiliar extra resistance. She looked at her right arm and it was the same. She held both arms in front of her to look at her hands.

The skin of her inner arms, her palms, was not covered by this strange clear meat; nor were her breasts, which glistened up at her. They were strangely large, and felt tight; in fact, her whole body felt like she had just finished working out, strong and slightly swollen, but joyous with endorphins.

step free

Dessa raised a leg and leaned forward, and she felt her body and its strange new exosuit pull free of the wall. She turned to look back as she took another step forward, watching streamers of glistening slime droop and snap as she took a few more small steps. She was emerging from some sort of Dessa-sized impression, an indentation in the grey-green flesh of the wall exactly her size and shape. There was a rim around it and Dessa had a sudden memory of the niche being sealed, closed up by a clear membrane which must have opened just before she woke up. There were... orifices, mouths in the wall, on the back of the niche, and they blindly puckered a few times before they closed.

Walking felt strange. She looked down at her feet, only to find that they were not touching the floor. Instead there were black hooves, pressing lightly into the grey-green meat of the floor. The hooves flowed upward, draining quickly of all color, to where Dessa’s own feet seemed to hover, toes angled down, gripped tightly by the clear suit of strange flesh she wore.

Her legs were engulfed and gripped tightly by the clear flesh up past her knees, where the suit turned into a pair of long arcs on the outside and the inside of her thighs.

And at her crotch...

The suit stroked her sex.

Dessa shivered. That felt good. She peered over her swollen, shining breasts, across her glistening stomach (which was bare, the suit running along her sides, and down to her tingling pussy. She had always kept hair there, but no longer; her bare flesh was now surrounded by two zipper-like lines of tiny tendrils. They looked like the fronds of a sea anemone, one on either side of her exposed labia.

They rippled and their motion stroked her pussy.

Dessa moaned and closed her eyes.

leave chamber

She wanted to stop and masturbate but Dessa looked around the room and sure enough, a door was opening in one wall. Not a door, really; it was an orifice the size of a woman, unclenching from a central point until it was large enough to walk through. She wondered for a moment about the voice—it was more like a feeling than a voice—that was giving her directions, but she knew that she would obey and placidly walked on her strange new legs over to the door. Walking was a strange combination of strange and normal; she was half a meter taller in this transparent suit, and her legs felt oddly jointed, but her body knew exactly how to move, as if she had been wearing it her entire life. Without additional thought, she stepped through the opening.

* * *

“I don’t give a fuck what Colonel Messing-Trinh said, he’s not part of our chain and you knew good and fucking well that—”

And then God slapped the Berengaria.

Everything in the rec room that was not attached to the ship flew to the ceiling and bounced off, hard. Vira was lucky enough to hit a flat section of ceiling and not have anything particularly massive slam into her, either then or when she fell back to the deck. The pool table landed with a tremendous splintering crunch less than a meter away.

Crazily, her first thought was that at least the arti-grav was still working.

Messaline was screaming a few meters away, but Yue and Singh were already helping him; Vira saw the bright glint of blood. She rose unsteadily to her feet and saw that Curry was just beyond the pool table, groaning on the floor.

Vira hurried to Curry’s side, shoving away chairs and a shattered terminal. A laceration on her scalp was bloody but not serious, but Propulsion Engineer First Class Candaes Curry’s right leg was twisted in a way that indicated multiple fractures. Vira popped out a utility knife and slit the fabric of Candaes’s pantleg, then grabbed a nearby pool cue to use as a splint.

“What was that?” Candaes groaned as Vira cut strips from the sleeve of her uniform jacket.

“No idea,” Vira replied. Messaline had stopped screaming, which was a minor blessing, and his pained moaning indicated he was still alive. Other fleetsmen were scrambling to get out of the room and get to their duty stations.

With a deep whine, the lights went out. Emergency lights flickered into yellow life.

“Asteroid? An attack?” Candaes gasped, mopping the blood away from her eyes.

“Can’t be a asteroid, sitware would have detected it. Has to be hostiles.”

“Lizards?”

“They’ve got nothing that can do that. They prefer wave weapons.”

“Could be something—hrrrnng—something new,” Curry gasped.

“I think it’s pretty obvious it’s something new. Can the speculation, we’ll know soon enough. Okay, let’s get you up.”

Vira placed a knee to the floor and rolled Candaes onto her shoulder.

“Lieutenant, don’t you need to get to your station?”

“I do,” she replied, rising with Curry hunched against her. “Good thing it’s just past the third quad medbay.”

With Curry hanging onto her, Vira threaded her way through the detritus littering the rec room floor. Aside from Messaline and the fleetsmen tending to him, the room had emptied as officers and crew ran to their stations.

The corridor outside was the same yellow glow of emergency lighting; three marines ran past with weapons free. Vira turned right, and tapped at her shoulder comm. “Lieutenant Razka to CentInf. Requesting sitrep.”

Berengaria has been boarded by hostiles,” the cool computerized voice replied. “Initial impact damage: first quadrant topside: total. Command deck: total. First quadrant core: fifty-seven percent. Second quadrant topside: fif—”

“Cut. Identify boarders.”

“Boarders identified as Omphalids.”

“Slugbugs?” Candaes gasped incredulously. “But they don’t have—”

The crack of projectile weapons suddenly mixed with the high-pitched hum of hand beamers. Just ahead of them, a fleetsman stumbled backwards out of a side corridor and slumped to the deck. Vira could see a half-dozen long barbs sticking from the front of his uniform.

Immediately, she wheeled and began hauling Candaes the other direction as fast as she could.

“Leave me,” Candaes gasped. “I have my sidearm, I can slow them down.”

“Sidearm won’t hurt them,” Vira hissed back. “We need to get into hardsuits. If anyone’s in command of the ship now, they need to increase the gravity. Slugbugs aren’t very strong—”

They had just passed the open rec room door. Just ahead of them was the corridor that led to the second quad access shafts. A figure emerged from it.

It wasn’t human.

The center of the alien was a shiny black oval; four long articulated legs reached to the floor. Above the oval was a cylinder, inky black and pinched in the middle, that connected at human head height into a smaller and more complicated oval from which four articulated arms branched out. Two of the arms held spiky black objects Vira recognized as weapons.

Atop the thorax was the Omphalid’s wedge-shaped head. Two green-black dragonfly eyes shimmered as it considered them.

The entire body was covered in a layer of glossy transparent flesh, giving the creature the appearance of an insect encased in gelatin. Hence, “slugbug”. Vira’s commanding officer had sometimes referred to them as “wasp aspic”.

It squared itself off in the corridor, completely blocking their path, and looked down at them with its thousand-faceted eyes.

Candaes went for her gun. Standard hand beamer, popped a plasma capsule for a burst of concentrated energy across a wide spectrum band well down into gamma rays.

The glossy skin of the slugbug fluoresced and it raised an arm in front of its eyes. Since it had four, that didn’t affect the two with weapons, which were still pointing them at the women.

Vira let Candaes slump to the floor. Humans had fought slugbugs on precisely two occasions, one of which had left no records. She had reviewed the other one a dozen times at the academy; from it Vira knew that slugbugs were almost impervious to radiation in any wavelength, very hard to harm with projectiles, but physically weak—if she could close the distance and overpower the thing, knock it to the floor...

The weapons discharged and Vira had a moment to look at the long needles in her chest before her body went boneless and she crumpled to the floor.

* * *

Dessa had emerged into a hallway that was very similar to the room she had left; grey-green wet flesh, as though she were stepping from a stomach into a giant throat.

Or other internal passageway.

But she forgot her curiosity regarding the tunnel a moment later, as she turned and saw that another woman was standing there with her.

Dessa blinked. She knew this woman.

The woman smiled.

Dessa opened her mouth to speak but her mouth felt sticky, like it was full of honey, and her tongue felt swollen and taut like the rest of her body. It pressed against the inside of her lips and a dribble of liquid ran down her chin; Dessa closed her mouth again.

hello dessa-motive

It was surprising and yet not, as though she were rediscovering something she had known long ago. The woman was there in the hallway and Dessa saw her with her eyes, but she was also a presence in Dessa’s mind, a presence with a location and a distance. The words... the woman had thought them at her.

hello Dessa thought back.

The woman’s smile widened.

i am anneke-motive. do you know me?

i... know you. But Dessa did not know how, from where. She could picture Anneke in her mind, from before... a willowy young woman, of twenty years or so, with ice-blond hair that hung in a neat queue down her back...

Now she was tall, and her body glistened with the taut curves of feminine muscle. Her breasts, too, had grown, although for Anneke this meant from basically nothing at all to the size of snakebites. She was equally wrapped in glistening clear flesh, identically matching Dessa’s, from the nodules on the backs of her hands to the trunk which gripped her back to the twin lines of tendrils framing her bare sex to the glossy black hooves pushing into the floor beneath downward-turned feet.

i know you dessa-motive. we were friends. now we are sisters.

Dessa looked Anneke... Anneke-motive up and down. Anneke-motive’s powder blue eyes returned the favor.

what... is this? Dessa thought at her. She gestured at the world around them.

rebirth. purpose. you now obey the Hive.

The truth of it rushed through Dessa like a hot wind through tall grass. The fronds fringing her pussy rippled and she gasped. Obey the hive. That is what she would do. What she was for.

you will sheath-train, now. come with me.

Dessa’s whole body tingled. She wanted to touch herself, to touch Anneke, to use her honey-filled mouth... but more than that, much more, infinitely more, she wanted to obey.

obey anneke-motive came a different, familiar voice in Dessa-motive’s head, simpler and more clear. There was no need even to reply “Yes.”

Dessa-motive stepped toward Anneke-motive, who turned and began to walk down the hall. Her body moved in a strange, erotic way; her legs were four-jointed now, at hoof and ankle as well as knee and hip, and her slick nude buttocks, framed in clear flesh that accented her hip flare, added to the sexual need that smoldered beneath Dessa-motive’s belly.

She walked that way too, now, Dessa-motive knew; the gait seemed perfectly natural.

you have been reborn. now you are motive. your purpose is in your sheath; it protects you, arms you, grants you power. you move it. you are motive.

Of course. It was perfectly clear, and perfectly true. Dessa-motive wondered at the purity of her purpose. And stared at Anneke-motive’s delicious ass.

An orifice was opening ahead of them, in the right-hand wall. Anneke-motive entered it. Inside was a large room, with more solid-looking fixtures set into in the grey-green flesh of the floor and walls. Metal, stone. Benches and tables, on which a profusion of strange objects lay.

Anneke-motive led Dessa-motive to an area of empty floor. She turned around, her face blank and blissful. She held her arms out to either side, and clear blades slid out from the nodules on the back of her hands.

now, dessa-motive, i shall teach you how a sheath-warrior fights.

* * *

A cascade of darts rang off her armor like chimes.

Csina laughed.

She looked up to find two more slugbugs had entered the corridor. Her lips pulling back into a feral grin, Csina unclenched her left hand, dropping the pulped remains of the prior slugbug to the deck. With a building growl, she launched herself towards the two newcomers, the metal feet of her battlesuit ringing on the deck, her shoulders rising, preparing for impact...

The slugbugs had produced their melee weapons—jointed, nunchaku-like sticks with wicked barbs—but it was too late. Csina plowed into the one on the right as it whirled the thing, smashing it into the wall. The barbs clattered helplessly on her armored back, and she punched in and up with the blade clasped to her right forearm.

The outer layer of flesh, so impervious to radiation weaponry, held for a moment and then tore, viscous goop splashing out. Csina puled her fist back and slashed again, and again, stabbing like a frenzied yellowjacket. As she stabbed she rolled over, gripping the slugbug to her, rolling onto her back so that the body of the slugbug was between her battlesuit and the other alien, blocking its attacks even as she carved into its fellow.

Csina was screaming, as usual, insulting the slugbug’s unlikely parentage; her fat blade shredded its flesh all across the thorax but was glancing off its internal armor, scoring grooves in the black chitin but not penetrating.

Then she fired the explosive.

On top of her right arm was the knife, a Roman gladius, fifty centimeters long and four thick; underneath it was a shotgun. Without the flesh to cushion and disperse the energy, the slug shattered the alien’s internal breastplate and exploded its internal organs; Csina punched her knife in afterward.

The slugbug flailed atop her, then went dead. She threw it aside and flipped to her feet, all her teeth bared, and advanced on the second one.

Something warned her and she spun around to see two more in the corridor behind her. How many of these motherfuckers are there? she thought; but of course the Revolutionary General had been hit by a boarding spike and there could have been thousands of them boiling onboard. As usual, it had been at high velocity and nearly invisible, catching the human ship totally by surprise. Only Captain Tjurallaienan’s strict adherence to readiness protocol had meant that Csina and the rest of the on-shift marines were in armor and prepared for boarders.

Not that she knew where any of the other marines were; the slugbugs had scrambled all the comm frequencies.

I’ll just have to kill them all myself, she thought.

The newcomers were raising weapons, and the instant before Csina dismissed them as more subdual darts she realized they were something different, and twisted violently as the weapons discharged. They didn’t hiss like the dart guns, they erupted in gouts of fire and dust.

Although her battlesuit gave Csina plenty of mobility, it was nonetheless armor and had limitations on now fast it could dodge. She felt the impacts against her left shoulder and lower left torso, and her display lit up with unnecessary information about the damage she had just taken.

Her left arm was completely numb. Csina prayed she had not lost it; al-Shadr had a replacement arm and he said it was never quite the same.

She was on the floor now and struggled to rise; the slugbugs were approaching. There were five of them now. Then seven. She raised her right arm and fired the shotgun at the closest one, scoring a direct hit, but the projectile was slowed enough by the slugbug’s clear meat that it bounced off the internal carapace and hung there, suspended in the flesh.

Several of them had spun their sticks up to impressive speed and Csina felt them hit her suit; the barbs punched through her armor and burst, shattering it and sending her convulsing back onto the floor.

One of them must have darted her, because everything went black.

* * *

block, dessa-motive. faster.

Anneke-motive was striking her, lashing out with the long blades which emerged from the back of her hands. The blades hit and hit again, but Dessa-motive was not harmed; the sheath she wore was now plated, clear hard armor that covered all of the areas which had formerly been nude.

The plates had slid out from the flesh of her suit as Anneke-motive had approached her. Dessa-motive felt both surprise and not-surprise, looking down at her own body as the suit transformed her into a crystal-suited knight. Curved plates closed in front of her face, and she was in armor.

Dessa-motive had knives, too, hard clear things that the sheath had extruded from the back of her hands, and she raised them now to block at a speed she felt to be terribly fast; but Anneke-motive was a blur of motion and struck her again and again, rapping against her belly, her face, her inner thighs.

you are a motive. you do not think. you act. act faster.

Strangely, although she was intensely focused, her body energized, her heart pounding, Dessa-motive felt no fatigue. She knew that the sheath was draining it from her, keeping her focused, active; at her peak.

do not think, dessa-motive. only act. only obey.

She had to strip herself. To cast away her habits, the learning she had from when she was a human woman. She was a motive now. She should not think. Must not think. She needed to act.

Anneke-motive came at her and rather than looking at the incoming blows, thinking about them, and then reacting, Dessa-motive relaxed and simply moved. She would not think, she would act, she would obey.

Her blocks were at first ridiculous, wrong, did nothing. Anneke-motive’s blades rapped harshly on her breast and belly plates. But then...

Anneke-motive’s arm was a blur and Dessa-motive’s arm blurred to meet it, and the blades clattered together. The surprise of it woke Dessa-motive’s mind and she missed the next dozen attacks, but Anneke-motive stepped back and Dessa-motive stilled her mind, and the next attacks were met with speed, fully half of them intercepted by Dessa-motive’s lightning-fast arms.

good, dessa-motive. good! we are motive, dessa-motive. we act, we obey. we do not think.

Something prompted Dessa-motive to go on the offensive and she obeyed, lunging at Anneke-motive, arcing her blades at Anneke-motive’s breasts and belly. Anneke-motive was far too quick, blocking each strike easily, with long practice of unthinking action.

Dessa-motive struck upward at Anneke-motive’s crotch, and was met by both blades, trapping her own weapon, pinning her arm against the hard plate covering Anneke-motive’s sex.

Dessa-motive looked up and Anneke-motive smiled at her.

The plate slid away.

you improve, came the gentle words from her mind. it is time for your reward.

Anneke-motive’s blades slid back into her sheath and her hands took hold of Dessa-motive’s wrist. Dessa-motive relaxed and felt her own blade return to her sheath, and stared into Anneke-motive’s pale blue eyes as Anneke-motive guided Dessa-motive’s fingers forward, to the wetness and flesh of Anneke-motive’s pussy. Anneke-motive shivered, smiling.

Dessa-motive curled her fingers, stroking, and felt her armor retracting all over her body, retreating into the flesh of the sheath which girdled her. Fingers still gently stroking between Anneke-motive’s legs, she rose forward from her half-crouch to press herself against Anneke-motive’s body, her swollen breasts pushing into Anneke-motive’s slender torso, sliding upward until their nipples rubbed together.

She had forgotten, while fighting, just how horny she had been, but now it all came back, filling her body, electrifying her skin. Fucking Anneke-motive what what she wanted most in the world.

Anneke-motive opened her mouth and drooled a mouthful of clear slime down Dessa-motive’s chest, revealing a tongue that seemed three sizes too large.

She felt Anneke-motive’s fingers alight on her own pussy and slightly widened her stance; two of them slipped inside. Anneke-motive’s tongue was a snake, curling towards her, and Dessa-motive opened her mouth and welcomed it inside. Slime squished from her open mouth and dropped down to where their glistening bodies crushed together...

Anneke-motive’s tongue played with her own and her fingers delved in Dessa-motive’s wet cunt. Dessa-motive whined as the fronds of her sheath began to rhythmically pet her labia, on either side of Anneke-motive’s wet fingers.

A stray thought: Dessa-motive had never... as a human, she hadn’t been aroused by...

But no. She was not a human, she was a motive. She would act and not think. This was right, and what she wanted more than anything.

Dessa-motive would obey.

The two motives slid to the floor and made love.

* * *

J’anna crouched low and watched the bugs move around the streets.

The big ones, the slugbugs, they would have been able to see her. They had thermal vision or motion sensors or both, possibly some sort of individual sound amplification system—in any case, they had hunted down everyone who had hidden away in town. Everyone but J’anna.

Now the slugbugs were in the country, rounding up those who had fled. In town they had left... the bug-bugs, bipedal insects without the clear fleshy armor that gave the slugbugs immunity to lasers and beam weapons.

There were different sorts of bug-bugs. J’anna could see at least three from where she crouched in the drain: four-legged, four-armed quadrupedal sorts that looked like slugbugs without the external flesh, smaller bugs that seemed better at manipulating things and were systematically examining and looting the colony’s technology, and flattened bugs that walked on all eight appendages, and were used to haul and carry things.

Such as the colonists.

They were all being... encased. The bugs were carrying around wadded up balls of material that seemed like nothing so much as a sleeping bag, and they would take one of the colonists—some of whom were dead but most of whom were unconscious, stunned either by the area weapons the bugs had deployed or by those vicious needles from their hand weapons—and wrap them up in the material until they were mummified. The four arms, sometimes working with two of the legs, made it a quick task.

Then one of the flat bugs would take the cocooned body over to the landing vehicle. It squatted on three short legs in the middle of the Main Street Park, atop the snapped-off trunk of the Foundation Oak.

Once there, one of the bugs would attach a long tentacle to the cocoon, and it would slowly inflate until it looked a great deal like a sleeping bag; the skin of the cocoon would become transparent as it filled, the body of the person inside becoming visible as they floated in whatever that tentacle was pumping into the pod.

Then, the bugs would detach the pod from the tentacle and carry it around the landing vehicle to an orifice on one side. They would feed the pod into the orifice, and that would be that.

J’anna had watched them feed two of her classmates into the ship that way.

She had already been in the storm drain when they came, hunting for the verr’vek that had been raiding their small orchard. The detonation of the area weapons had knocked J’anna off her feet. Shortly afterward she heard the noises, the pounding, the screams. She was smart enough not to show herself even to look.

This particular drain fed out into the creek that ran right through the central part of the colony; now J’anna watched from the shadows behind the grating as the Main Street area was depopulated.

Her father had warned about this. “They will hit the colonies,” he’d said. “Obscurity is not security.”

Her step-father, however, had disagreed, and the money that Xu-Harding-Xu had waved at them to come here to New Troana had been too tempting to ignore. 92% terraformed, the kids can play outside, plant your own vegetables. Which rotation-sick station dweller wouldn’t jump at that?

Something rustled behind her.

J’anna spun around. She’d been looking outside for too long and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

The verr’vek glared at her.

Then it turned and ran. J’anna frowned at it, and turned back to look outside.

A bug-bug was looking in at her.

“That freaking verr’vek,” she thought, as the darts stabbed into her arm.

* * *

Sometime later, dessa-motive became aware of someone else in the room with them. She slithered her marvelous new tongue out of anneke-motive’s pussy and looked up.

Another motive stood near them, watching them. Her skin was honey-gold, and she seemed... familiar? dessa-motive felt anneke-motive’s mouth detach from between her legs, and the two of them rolled apart.

The woman watched wordlessly as the two lovers rose to their feet. dessa-motive felt her tongue curl and seat itself low in her mouth once more, and the remaining cavity began to fill with slime.

anneke-motive. dessa-motive, the newcomer thought. She looked fit and strong in her sheath, from her black hooves up through her strong thighs, her glistening brown-peaked breasts. Her hair was black, and as it had with anneke-motive’s hair the sheath had pulled the hair upward and woven it into a coil that hung down atop the sheath’s fleshy back.

liquang-motive, anneke-motive replied, and dessa-motive felt a flash of memory.

i know... you... she thought.

as humans we were together, liquang-motive thought. i commanded a grouping of which your grouping was a part.

The word seemed odd. Admiral? you were older, dessa-motive thought.

i was older, liquang-motive replied. now i am younger and now i am a slave. The thought was wreathed with happy satisfaction, and dessa-motive felt herself smiling in response.

Then she stiffened slightly. Words which were not words entered her mind; hive-thought, which would be obeyed.

The three motives left the sparring chamber. They were to visit a renewal pool, the location of which was now planted in dessa-motive’s brain.

She watched the smooth flexing of liquang-motive’s ass as she walked in front. Even having just moments ago been engaged in sex, dessa-motive felt herself aroused again. She glanced down to find the tendrils of her sheath lightly stroking her sexlips.

there will be time for fucking in the renewal pool, came liquang-motive’s thoughts. i will enjoy fucking you, and being fucked. your body is very erotic. Dessa-motive looked up. Liquang-motive had not turned to look at dessa-motive, but of course doing so was unnecessary.

are we always so horny? dessa-motive inquired.

Amusement tinkled through her thought channels. yes, replied anneke-motive, motive-thought is usually sex-thought. when our obedience is immediate, we think of nothing. when our obedience bides, we fuck, or think of fucking.

welcome aboard, liquang-motive thought, and amusement echoed in their minds.

The question had lit an inquisitive spark in dessa-motive’s mind. why... why do i not remember things that i am aware i once knew?

your question is perceptive, dessa-motive,liquang-motive replied. you were once Dessa, a non-slave human, opposed to the Hive. the Hive has taken you and resuited you to Its purposes. the memories of your life before will return over time.

do not waste time thinking about them, anneke-motive suggested. they are interesting as they resurface but are irrelevant to obeying the Hive.

Obey the Hive. That was what dessa-motive lived for, what she yearned for above all else. She felt the tendrils enfolding her pussy ripple and stroke her, and she moaned happily.

* * *

“Three Holy Gods,” Wei-Li breathed. Suddenly, she felt hollow; the coldness of space rushed in.

Outside the viewing pod, the stars were blocked out by the Omphalid vessel.

She felt that she should be running, back into the station, back to somewhere behind marines and guns, somewhere safe. But there would be nowhere safe. The sheer mass of the alien ship about to hit them was greater by far than that of the station itself. Would engulf the station.

Wei-Li stared in horror as the spikes, each the size of a missile submarine, began to impact the station. She felt the impacts through her feet, felt the station buckling and shuddering around her.

She would be blown out into space. The viewport would get hit by something and shatter, or the neck connecting the viewing pod to the station would get torn away, or a spike would hit her dead-on and simply plow through into the bulk of the station. She should run away, clamber back down the neck and find a spacesuit.

Wei-Li didn’t move.

She was not a military woman but she had seen the vids of ship to ship combat. Seen spike impacts, the terrible weapons that wreaked such havoc on the human navies. The war had been going on for eight years now, had spelled the end of the Five Worlds Alliance. The Omphalid War was a known factor; Omphalid attacks were numbers on her actuarial tables.

She had never seen a ship like this.

It blocked out the stars; the edge of it slid across Genesh IV, the gas giant Washington Station orbited. It was impossibly vast, a grey-green tentacular sheet being drawn across the sky.

Almost idly, Wei-Li noticed that the spikes were still attached to it by long green cables.

Alarm klaxons had started blaring at some point; when, she could not quite remember. The viewing pod did not have its own life support system and was insisting in a pleasant Arizona-neutral voice that she leave the pod and find an escape shuttle.

Escape to where? The Omphalid ship was blocking out the sky.

Wei-Li stared as it came closer—the long tentacles attached to the five spikes she could see were becoming shorter.

It was reeling them in.

It was going to eat the station.

That thought finally motivated her. Washington Station wasn’t being destroyed. It was being engulfed.

She scrambled along the rungs of the ladder that led back into the body of the ship. Suddenly she was slammed against the opposite wall, felt herself being crushed, a tremendous weight pinning her to the wall, compressing her eyeballs, her lungs, her heart...

It released her, and she floated.

The station had stopped spinning.

But Wei-Li had worked in space long enough to have no trouble with zero gravity. She pulled herself down the last of the rungs into the external corridor and flipped off, leaping and bouncing off the walls in the direction of the escape pods. Being killed along with the station, in a surprise attack, that was one thing.

Being taken alive was different.

The alarms were still blaring and Wei-Li heard small arms fire in the distance. But the escape shuttles were just ahead, and they were Colorado Industries ships with powerful thrusters; if she could get out from under that Omphalid monstrosity before it swallowed the station, it wouldn’t bother to come back for her.

The air smelled acidic and Wei-Li’s vision blurred. Oh no. Gas. She twisted in the air but her momentum kept her flying down the corridor, into the expanding cloud.

A heavy darkness spread from the back of her head. Her hand finally found a wall grip but her fingers went limp even as she seized it, and her body tumbled gently onward.

* * *

The corridor had grown wider and liquang-motive had broken into a run. Dessa-motive followed suit; her four-jointed gait felt novel for only a few moments and then became a joyous rush, the bliss of flexing muscles and speed and power and freedom... dessa-motive’s sheath increased her height half a meter and she felt like she was flying atop her long, long strides.

Amplifying her joy was the mental link with anneke-motive and liquang-motive; her joy fed to them and reflected back, and their own pleasure with their physical bodies washed over dessa-motive.

They emerged into a larger corridor, and liquang-motive slowed. Although the corridor was larger, with a vaulted ceiling glistening with moisture, it was also more crowded.

With women.

Dessa-motive kept her focus on liquang-motive—and her smoothly pumping ass—but she could not help but glance around herself at the dozens of other women moving forward and backward along the corridor. They were all totally nude, all prime physical specimens; shoulders rounded with muscle, breasts high and firm. Their skin colors and body types appeared to cover the entire human ethnographic range.

And went beyond. Dessa-motive was distracted by a woman walking past with slow but sure steps; at least, she might have been a woman. Her skin was a rubbery fuchsia color, her hips great curves wider than her shoulders; each breast was larger than her head. She was completely bald, above and below, and her lips were swollen and glossy. Her eyes... her eyes were featureless white orbs.

The woman-thing walked by and dessa-motive returned her attention to liquang-motive’s ass.

She could feel the women around her in her mind, but not as she could feel the other two motives, whose minds had presence and personality. The other womens’ minds were more ghostly, docile and quiet, radiating no emotion beyond a soft thoughtlessness.

As they walked, they stared mindlessly ahead. No face held the slightest trace of emotion.

Then, a bug. Dessa-motive blinked as she recognized it; taller than the women moving closely around it, the bug was an eight-legged glossy black thing, with glittering faceted eyes on the uppermost of its three sections.

A... slugbug? Yes, that’s what they had been called.

Dessa-motive could feel its mind. It was... gemlike, faceted and alien, but open and... not friendly, for friendship was unknown to it. But there was a comrade-feel there.

The bug and dessa-motive were both slaves to the Hive.

The bug passed by them toward whatever task it was destined. Then liquang-motive turned, entering an orifice that nictated open at her approach. Dessa-motive followed; she was sensing a growing happy anticipation from anneke-motive and liquang-motive both.

The air in this chamber was more humid; dessa-motive could almost feel the condensation in her nose. The room was warm and the moisture on the walls trickled in rivulets to the floor. The ceiling sloped down ahead of them, where the room became dark and shadowy.

Dessa-motive could sense other minds, now, other motives. Ahead in the darkness the room was lit by a glow rising from the floor; as they approached, she realized it was actually above the floor, a glow coming from behind a waist-level wall, and as they drew closer still she could see that it was a glowing pool of translucent white liquid. A large pool, stretching ten meters back from the edge they were approaching, and reaching in long curves off to either side.

There were shapes at the pool’s edge, shapes which were hard to make out; then dessa-motive realized that they were sheaths. Empty sheaths, their leg-parts standing on the ground but their bodies standing open like glass-petaled flowers.

Liquang-motive stopped, and her body shivered. Then her sheath began to peel away, long sticky strands of adhesive clinging to her honey-colored flesh.

Gently, liquang-motive lifted a leg and extended her toes to the pool’s edge. She stepped to it, then stepped down into the white goop; it flowed around her, a gently glowing slime that swallowed her foot, her calf, her knee. She turned and smiled at dessa-motive. Dessa-motive could still sense her mind, but differently, more faintly.

open your sheath, anneke-motive instructed her. it is part of your flesh, your body. Unclench and step free.

Yes. Dessa-motive’s sheath was part of her body; she could feel it, feel its skin as though it was her own. Gingerly, as though opening her eyes for the first time, she opened it. The crown slowly peeled back from atop her head; with a soft suction, it released the back of her neck, her shoulders. With a delicate curl, it pulled free from her hands, her arms.

The last to open were the sheath’s legs, so solid around her own. Tentatively, dessa-motive slid her foot free, raising it out of the the warmth where it belonged.

She reached out a strong leg, and stepped into the phosphorescent ooze.

It was warm, and felt balmy on her nude skin. Gingerly, dessa-motive withdrew her other foot and brought it under her; the interior of the pool had a sloping bottom, and liquang-motive was already crotch-deep in the ooze. She stirred it with a languid hand, then brought her goop-covered fingers to her face. She gave dessa-motive a deeply sultry look as her long, long tongue rolled out of her mouth and curled between her fingers.

Anneke-motive had emerged from her sheath as well. For a moment, dessa-motive awaited the gentle voices in her mind that would instruct her, but she realized that it was the sheath that allowed them. Anneke-motive approached through the pool, her thighs leaving quickly filling voids as she moved, and took dessa-motive’s hand. The clear slime slid from her mouth as she opened it.

The tip of her long tongue stroked dessa-motive’s chin.

Anneke-motive turned and led dessa-motive by the hand, deeper into the white slime. Other groups of women—of motives—were further in the pool, and watched in the darkness as anneke-motive and dessa-motive joined liquang-motive and the three of them crept deeper.

Dessa-motive noticed with surprise that there were holes in anneke-motive’s back.

Anneke-motive felt dessa-motive’s pause, and turned her head. She looked down her back to where the twin orifices—for they pinched shut, then opened again—sat, low on her back, neatly seated in her dimples of Venus. She drew dessa-motive’s gaze, then slid her hands up the back of her neck to her hairline, where she raised her hair to expose identical orifices, one on either side of her neck; they flexed open just large enough to slide a finger into.

“We ahh whon with thah sheath,” anneke-motive said thickly, around her tongue.

Dessa-motive slid a finger down her own back and found an orifice there; it felt like nothing so much as a tiny mouth, and it gripped her fingertip gently as she touched it. Its twin lay across her spine, and there were two more at her own hairline, neatly flanking her neck.

She and her sheath... were one.

It was somehow wondrous.

They were up to their navels now, and liquang-motive slowly turned and dropped herself down, down into the slime, until her head submerged and her black hair floated loose on the surface. Dessa-motive and anneke-motive held hands and watched liquang-motive re-emerge, skin coated with thick goop, her tongue curling out to wipe off her eyes.

Then anneke-motive’s tongue was on dessa-motive’s cheek, and as she turned to face her it slipped into her mouth and down her throat. Dessa-motive returned the favor with slow enthusiasm, and liquang-motive’s soft fingers slid down her belly and probed their way into her pussy, reminding her of nothing so much as the loving tendrils of her beloved sheath.

* * *

END part One