This is the second actual installment of the "Case Kentauris" stories, inspired by the work of Spacegirl and Marjorie B. Greene. A while back I promised you sexytime adventures and tentacles, so here you go. Need a mental picture of Tatjana, this episode's starring attraction? Google actress Katheryn Winnick ("Lagertha" of the TV show Vikings)... that's who is starring in this one.
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By the second night of the meteor shower, when the communications went down, and the navsats went offline, everyone on Delporte knew something was wrong. The only thing working was shortwave radio, and even that was largely jammed. The fragments that passed around were bizarre, reports of strange creatures, attacks on homesteads, and missing travelers. This was enough evidence for the planetary governor to call up the militia. Delporte was a backwater agricultural world, with only Delporte Down worth being called a city, and a scattering of towns along the rivers and road network.
It was on the third day that the Intai Juhen actually arrived in force. The ConFed frigate "San Cristobal", a hired security vessel that usually sat in orbit overhead had vanished. Some people claimed to have seen a white flash, a nuclear warhead at the edge of space. Either way, it meant that Delporte was alone. Rock-encrusted assault pods fell out of the darkness, slowed down by gas jets. They slammed into the reservoir around Delporte Down. Minutes later, the armor and spine encrusted combat drones of the Intai Juhen emerged from the dark waters and started their inexorable advance into the city. The hideous creatures resembled some combination of bears and crabs, and bore weaponry of horrible effectiveness, both biological weapons and energy weapons.
The local militia fought bravely, using their obsolete small arms and mortars to fight the combat drones. Without the cutting edge powered armor of the Outworld Expeditionary Drop troops, or the genetic enhancements and cybernetics of the Hypatian Star Marines, the hundreds of volunteer citizen-soldiers were simply no match for Intai Juhen Combat Drones. It was largely over by morning, with the survivors scattering to the outback to regroup, pursued by the victorious Combat Drones. Delporte Down and its cowering civilians were left to the tender mercies of the Intai Juhen occupiers.
Later that night, a young woman named Tatjana Morris hid in the damaged shell of a prefab housing unit near the shattered spaceport. She had barely managed to avoid capture by the hideous creatures that seemed to fill the streets of Delporte Down. Still wearing her work coveralls, Tatjana tied her long blonde hair into a simple ponytail and wiped her sooty, tear-streaked face with her hands. The gray coveralls were relatively baggy, hiding her lithe, athletic figure from her leering bosses and her admiring coworkers at the food processing plant. She hoped that the dull coloration might help hide her, but she'd heard the things hunted by smell as much as by sight. Shivering both from fear and from the cool night air, Tatjana clutched at the shotgun she'd found in the security locker as she'd run from what she'd seen.
With the withdrawal of the Combat Drones, the city was now infested with a myriad of creatures that seemed to have one purpose - subduing human females, and raping them into submission. She had already witnessed it once, when a huge worm-like thing the thickness of a tree trunk had captured Dena, one of her coworkers at the plant. It had appeared in the break room of the plant out of nowhere, and sprayed Dena with some paralytic toxin. The giant worm rapidly disrobed the young woman, pleasured her into mindless ecstasy with a cluster of tentacles seemly designed for that purpose, then swallowed her whole in less than a minute. Tatjana had watched in helpless terror, and could still hear the muffled screams and cries of orgasm coming from within the belly of the thing as it slithered away. She could only surmise that the victim was not food, but rather was bound for some possibly worse fate elsewhere.
Too afraid to peer out the window, Tatjana lay quietly in a corner, under a blanket. In the distance, cries of anguished pleasure echoed through the streets as one more survivor met an unwelcome but irresistible fate. In the closer darkness of the housing park, she could hear unearthly howls and ululating whistles, a sure sign of the Intai Juhen creatures doing their foul work nearby. Each sound worked at her frayed nerves, forcing her to choke back tears - a single sob escaped before her fear of discovery conquered her despair.
To her left, she heard a scraping noise on the wall outside, and froze in terror. Tatjana didn't dare move, but she could see movement in the shattered window frame. Two tentacles, both thin things with a leaf-shaped tip, peered into the room where she hid. Even in the dim light, she recognized the dark spots as eyes of some sort... the thing, whatever it was, was looking right at her. However, while she sat perfectly still, the thing made no attempt to enter the room. The shotgun lay propped against a sofa, just barely beyond her grasp. Tatjana weighed her options, few as they were. She was athletic, and fast - a track star in the little town she hailed from. The Intai Juhen she'd witnessed were all stealthy, and stronger than made biological sense, but they didn't seem fast. If Tatjana could reach the gun, she might have a chance against whatever this was - and if she could reach the open street, she would run until she reached safety or died of exhaustion. The decision made, she moved.
As Tatjana lunged to her right, the thing slid swiftly over the window sill in response. She grabbed the shotgun and rolled around as fast as she could, taking in the sight of the monstrosity coming for her. It was a large flattened oval made of something dark and flexible, like a man-sized bathmat a foot thick. The edge of the thing was covered with waving tentacles, and the underside was similarly covered by a hideous mix of glistening tendrils, segmented legs, meaty looking tubes, flattened paddles, and other less describable organs. As the barrel of the gun swung to bear on her target, her heart leapt into her throat at the speed of the thing. "This isn't going to work", she thought, but she pulled the trigger anyway.
The shot struck the dorsal surface of the thing ineffectually; pellets blasted into the thick brown hide without diverting it from its purpose. An instant later, tentacles lashed out, striking Tatjana across her back and shoulder and slapping the shotgun from her grasp. Deafened by the report of the shotgun and stunned by the blow, she reeled backwards, stumbling over something and falling. The creature was on top of her immediately. Tatjana attempted to bring her legs up to throw the hideous thing off of her, but it was both too massive and too slippery, and it quickly slid down between her thighs, pinning her to the floor by simple mass.