Ingredients list (mild spoilers):
2 cups consensual non-humanoid alien sex
1 cup humor
1/2 cup questionable pheromonal/aphrodisiac influence
1/4 cup sci-fi worldbuilding
1 pinch of cliffhanger
This is Number 2 in a series --
Intimate First Contact
. Each story is somewhat self-contained and enjoyable on their own, but they're definitely best read in order!
Thanks to
Privates1stClass
for editing and beta-reading!
Earth was gone. The Moon was gone. The stars were in a different position. A swirling greenish nebula of gases now filled the view of the observation deck window. A small red sun was visible in the distance.
"What... What just happened? Where are we?" Austin gasped.
"Do not know..." Blue whispered, squeezing him tightly. "Ship?...Ship?"
There was no response. The light emanating from the walls had gone dim, leaving only the faint ambient light of unknown space. The low hum of the ship's air circulation system had gone silent.
"Shit... When Ship connected to my network account and looked at my spam folder... I think It caught a virus."
"Virus? Is not possible... Ship not biological. Also, Earth DNA chirality not compatible with--
"No, no, a computer virus. Humans sometimes design computer programs to damage or take over other computers... I think Ship must have tried to run one of them."
Blue's five eyes blinked in confusion. "How we fix Ship? Blue is not AI specialist, is not engineer..."
"Lucky for you, Blue, you abducted a certified electrical engineer!" Austin said with a grin. "I mean... I haven't actually done a lot of engineering, I've mostly worked entry level IT jobs... Can we get to Ship's... I dunno, brain? Mainframe? Processing unit?"
"Oh, yes! Ship mind accessible under of fabrication room!" Blue said excitedly. She rushed to the door, pulling on a concealed access panel to manually release the door. "Follow, Engineer Austin!"
Austin trailed behind Blue into the pitch black interior of the ship, following her faint vanilla scent and the pitter-patter of her five tip-toe feet.
Blue found the door to the fabrication room. After a bit of fumbling around at the fabrication tool bench, Austin found some handheld flashlights, finally giving them some light to work with. Blue found the access panel on the floor, prying it open with Austin's help.
Under the panel was a low service tunnel, just barely big enough for someone of Blue's species to crawl through. Austin had to get down on his hands and knees, but the floor was made of the same slightly spongy material as the rest of Ship's interior. Austin started giggling.
"What funny, Austin? Situation is not funny to Blue..."
"Oh, it's just... I never thought I'd get to crawl through a real Jefferies Tube!"
"Who Jeffery is?"
"Never mind, it's a long story. Maybe we can watch some Star Trek if we ever get back to my solar system."
The service tunnel opened into a slightly larger space, other tunnels branching off at right angles. There was a conical object hanging from the ceiling, like a chandelier made of thousands of delicate brass threads, intricately woven together.
"Blue, what am I looking at here?"
"Quantum mind," Blue said, squeezing up next to Austin, her leggy body pressed against him in the tight space. "Not know how works, though."
Austin scratched his chin thoughtfully as his eyes traced over the overwhelmingly complex system. The top of the "chandelier" was a tangle of larger tubes and conduits in a variety of colors, snaking off into the depths of the ship.
"Hmm. Blue, is there a color that represents electricity in your culture? Or, like, a color that warns of electrocution risk?"
"Danger color is... how to say... Black-Red? Like of venom fish."
"Uhh... I don't think I'm able to see that color. Can you point to it?"
Blue leaned against Austin, lifted one of her five limbs and pointed at a thick dark cable. He followed it to a junction box, clearly designed as a removable connection. He shrugged; disconnected the cable; waited for about thirty seconds, then plugged it back in.
With an audible hum and a noticeable vibration, Ship's quantum computer restarted, now twinkling with multi-colored blinkinlights. Lights turned on in the service tunnel.
"Austin is brilliant engineer!" Blue exclaimed, hugging him tightly with two of her limbs.
"Goddamnit..." Austin muttered. "Abducted by aliens, lost on the other side of the galaxy, and my job is still turning the computer off and on again."
"J U U M M P comple-- oh shit, what just happened?" Ship's voice echoed through the corridor. "Where are we?"
"Ship is okay?" Blue asked.
"I'm not sure. The last thing I remember was digging through Austin's network directory, and I saw a file that looked interesting, and..."
"Don't open those files again!" Austin blurted out. "Congratulations, Ship, you might be the first interstellar victim of a crypto virus."
"Ugh... I guess I owe you one, biped. Alright, I need to identify and plot distances from known pulsars and black holes, to figure out where we are. It's going to take a couple of hours, unfortunately."
"What do while wait?" Blue blinked at Austin.
"How about a shower? I'm feeling pretty grimy after crawling around in this tunnel... No offense, Ship."
The bathroom was a lot like a hot spring or Japanese onsen. Most of the space was taken up by a large recessed pool, shaped with smooth ledges and bowls of varying depths. Austin idly wondered how Ship's gravity worked, but soon had other things on his mind.
Austin watched Blue peel off her five-legged jumpsuit and place it in a recessed cubby near the door. Now that he had spent time around Blue wearing clothes, he found himself enjoying the sight of her naked form.
She tip-toed into the bath, purring happily as she moved into the deeper side of the bath and submerged herself entirely, relaxing and spreading her legs out like a starfish.
Austin followed Blue's lead, taking off his grimy clothes and stepping into the pool. It was warm and salty.
He found a comfortable bowl-shaped depression to lay down in, letting the water come up to his shoulders. His hairless penis stirred in the warm water, becoming half-erect.
Blue swam over to him and climbed up onto his lap, two limbs wrapped around his shoulders in a pleasant hug, one of her big blue eyes gazing into his.
"Thank Austin for fixing Ship," she said. "Am sorry for taking from Earth orbit, was not part of plan... What if not return in time for employment period?"
"Oh, my job?" Austin chuckled, casually running his hands up and down two of her silky thighs. "They'll probably fire me. I'll just get another terrible IT job, plenty of places willing to exploit an over-educated tech with no ambition. I have to be honest, Blue, there's really nothing waiting for me back on Earth. I'm single, my job sucks, I'm bad at keeping in touch with friends... pretty pathetic, really."