Ship's Interface

Captured - Will they survive long enough to be rescued?

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Content Warning: There's a bit of erotic horror in this chapter. If that's not your style, please skip to the next chapter.

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"They've breached!" He called out as an enormous dark shape filled the door frame. It was a blob-like creature with no face or features except for several meaty arms hanging underneath it, looking like some massive dark jellyfish hovering over the threshold.

Will didn't allow it to enter before firing a quick burst from his rifle. The rounds impacted it like it was hitting ballistics gel, sending rippling waves across the surface of its featureless mass. It wept dark fluid from the wounds inflicted by Will's burst of gunfire, but they didn't slow it at all.

Attracted by Will and June's bright thermal signature, the dark jellyfish squeezed in through the doorway and reached for them with its muscular tentacles. Will switched to auto and emptied an entire magazine into the monster, viscous fluid spraying everywhere, covering Will in its gore.

It finally fell to the floor, unmoving, but there were several behind it waiting to take its place. Will gestured to June to retreat as he replaced the mag and began firing into the next one. She held her sidearm low, waiting to fire as Will unloaded his weapon again. "Bunkroom!" he yelled, and they retreated through the door and barricaded it.

They stood side by side, facing the door as Will reloaded the rifle. "How many mags are you carrying?" Will asked.

"Two," June replied. Will gave her one more, and then he opened the channel on the comms. "I've got two mags for the rifle and three for my side. Wait until I've emptied the rifle, which should get the bastard at the door, then we'll blow the canopy and rush out. Once outside, run like hell, and don't look back. Got it?" Will's voice was like iron, then softened. June, whatever happens, I love you. The same goes for you, too, silver girl. I'm glad I got to meet you."

June was about to argue when he stopped her short. "No! You will get out and run for it. Use the gun if you need to, but you are going to make it. I've seen how good a runner you are; you are going to clear the ship and run hard back to the Nestia!"

"Will, I can't leave without you!" June argued, her eyes wide as the pounding deformed the thin door.

"Stick to the plan," Will commanded.

As Interface listened over the comms, she couldn't move or speak. It was happening all over again. People she loved were in trouble, and she was powerless to do little else but watch in despair.

The door finally buckled, and a dark gelatinous form squeezed into the room. With one glance at June, Will fired on the invader, shredding it to pieces and spilling its gooey core onto the floor. His rifle was not empty, so he stepped into the hallway and fired at the next dark blob until it, too, fell, and his rifle clicked empty.

"Now! Go!" He commanded, and June hesitated momentarily before following the order with tears in her eyes. As Will switched to his sidearm, June rushed to the cockpit, pulled the safety lock, and then the emergency canopy release.

The explosive bolts fired with a deafening sound in the cockpit, and the canopy jumped about ten centimeters, but all of the dirt piled onto the front viewport held it in place, only shifting it slightly, still barring her way. "Fuck!"June swore. She briefly thought about shooting her way through the viewport but realized that shooting it out wasn't an option if it could withstand micro-meteor impacts.

With that cold realization, she turned again to stand beside Will as he faced down their attackers. He looked at her, not understanding why she was still there at first, but a glance into the cockpit, with dirt pouring in around the edges of the canopy, told him the story.

They glanced at each other without words, then they held their pistols out in front of them and fired every round they had, dropping two more before their weapons were empty and useless.

The next dark jelly squirmed over its fallen brothers, advancing on Will and June. Will drew a knife from his belt, pushed June behind him, and charged. He slashed wildly and hacked at the beast, but he was soon entangled and subdued. The beast pulled him in tight to its body, then backed around the corner and disappeared.

"Nooo!" June screamed as Will was pulled from the ship. Another squeezed through the corridor, backing June up to the cockpit. She searched frantically for a weapon but found none.

Backed against the mis-deployed canopy, time seemed to slow as she looked down from the cockpit of 'Saturn's Heart'. It was the place that she and Will had called home for nearly a decade, traveling the space lanes on shipping runs, seeing the galaxy one small spaceport at a time. It was a time full of companionable friendship and eventual love, but now, she thought mournfully, it had been turned into a dark place where nightmares are real and monsters exist.

June's perception of time returned to normal as she watched her fate squeeze down the hallway, irresistibly drawn by her infrared profile. Inhumanly strong arms reached to entangle her. "Get the fuck off me!" She fought and swore but was ultimately subdued by the staggering number of limbs the beast brought to bear.

Dozens of constrictor-like limbs drew tight across her, causing her to struggle for breath. A slightly smaller appendage wrapped around her neck, and then she felt a small, sharp prick near her carotid artery and a cool sensation radiated out from the sting, and she fell limp.

Her head hung loosely, swinging side to side as the monstrous jellyfish squeezed back down the tight corridor of the ship. Carrying its prize, it left the ship and out into the night.

The cool evening air hit her face as the last light of dusk palely illuminated the scene. June's mind had calmed, probably due to the paralytic being injected into her neck, leaving her defenseless but her rational mind unaffected.

"What is the evolutionary benefit of having your prey, paralyzed but completely cogent?" She thought, unable to voice the words. "Paralyzed prey makes sense, they won't struggle as you devour them, but leaving them the ability to think clearly?" She coolly pondered it until her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of fabric ripping.

As the jelly holding her moved out of the doorway and circled the abandoned cart, she saw she was surrounded by a pack of dark jellyfish, more than a dozen of the silently floating beasts milling about. She then saw the jelly that had captured Will as her head flopped back and forth limply.

Will also had a tentacle wrapped tightly around his neck as well, presumably injected with the same paralytic. The dark jelly rolled his limp body over and over, like some kind of spider, but instead of binding him with layers of silk, it was tearing his clothes off in small patches, letting them flutter to the ground. "Just like the Muncher's quills." June thought. Analyzing the scene in the low light, she could make out several more piles of quills and realized they were about to share their fate.

As June calmly came to that conclusion, the dark jelly constricting her loosened its grip, letting her body hang in its arms like a hammock, except face down. She felt its arms scrunch up, grip the back of her jacket, and tear it apart with ease. The strength of these creatures should have terrified her, but in her drugged state, she only made a mental note of it and waited patiently for the next stage.

Much like she observed Will and the beast holding him, June was rolled over, this way and that, as she was shucked like an ear of corn. As the beast carefully tore the fabric of her sleeves from her arms, her attention fell on the communicator on her wrist. She heard Interface's panicked voice pleading over the comms. "Will! June! Please respond! Are you okay? Say something! Anything! PLEASE respond..." Interface pleaded.

"Interface is going to be devastated," June thought. "The poor girl is going to be left all alone again, and after everything she's been through, chances are she's not going to make it either." A tiny bit of sadness and regret managed to pierce her drug-induced indifference.

The dark jelly continued to shred the clothing covering June's body, removing the tattered legs of her pants, boots, jacket, and shirt sleeves. The last thing it removed was the communicator on her wrist. June watched it fall to the ground below, Interface's pleading voice still calling out.

The jelly had finished its work, leaving June completely naked in its arms. The cold night air blew over her unresponsive body, chilling her, but she was unable to even shiver. The jelly's arms then pressed her tight to the underside of its large, bulbous body and wrapped around her, providing a measure of protection from the cool air, though the jelly's body wasn't much warmer than the air had been.

After stripping its prize, the beast began moving through the crowd of other beasts, floating over the ground like dark clouds. The jelly carrying her left the pack, heading down the valley for some unknown destination. It was surprisingly fast, picking up speed; June soon lost track of where she was and couldn't quite get her bearings. The valley floor sped by her face, the silence only broken by the slight wind of their passing rushing across her ears.

June tried not to ponder their destination or what grim fate must be in store for them; instead, she counted off the seconds, marking time in her mind as they glided with speed to their yet-to-be-revealed destination. They sped on for about an hour and a half until the beast slowed and began to work its way around some rough boulders until it stopped.

Held tightly underneath, June was in perfect position to watch several tentacles, those not holding her, start to paw at the sloped ground just in front of them. Having found what it was looking for, the beast pulled open a trapdoor disguised to look like the surroundings, much like a trapdoor spider conceals its lair.

The opening wasn't much larger than June's prone body, but the jelly, apparently without bones, easily stuffed itself through the small opening, dragging June with it. Once through the small opening, the space inside opened wider, but they were enveloped in complete darkness, not allowing June even a small clue to where she was being taken. June felt the beast travel down several twists and turns of a pitch-black labyrinth and noticed them brushing past others with increasing frequency.

"They must live together in some sort of colony, and this is their hive," June analyzed. "This would be completely fascinating if it weren't for the inevitable conclusion," She thought without emotion.

The passage they were traveling through seemed to widen, and the darkness pushed back as a soft purple glow reflected off the hard dirt floor, which was the only thing in her field of view. As she approached the purple light, odd sounds started reaching her ears. She heard bleats and bugles from nearby Munchers and other strange sounds she could not place. The Munchers didn't sound out long before they were silenced, the quiet filled only by a peculiar, squelching sound.

Moving along, the hard-packed dirt beneath her turned into a dark purple resin, covering the floor in every direction she could see. As they moved deeper into this resin-covered chamber, she could see in her periphery a multitude of hairless Muncher legs covered in the same resin, fixing them to the floor and holding the prey in place.

The jelly carrying June slowed and seemed to be searching for some space of its own. It stopped, hovering over a section of resin cover floor that June noticed had four indents, suggesting it held another member of the Muncher herd sometime in the recent past.

The jelly hovered in place, and June's captor carefully loosened its grip on her limbs without releasing her torso, letting her arms and legs dangle limply beneath her. June then felt a strange undulation on her back as the jelly holding her seemed to be preparing something. The skin of the beast pressing against her back split open, spilling a cool, viscous liquid on her naked form. Muscular tentacles proceeded to spread the liquid up and down her spine, covering her from the back of her neck and shoulders to the base of her spine just above the crack of her ass.

It painted layers of the stuff on her back, slowly stiffening into a hard shell stuck to her back. "Huh, it must be endothermic," June thought in an almost disinterested manner as the paste cooled on her skin, hardening into more of the tough resin.

Once the shell on her back was hard and strong, the jelly lowered itself until June's dangling limbs rested on the resin floor, in the small depressions left by the previous occupant of this spot, as if she were kneeling on her hands and knees. A set of dark tentacles arranged her limbs so that her knees were left wide apart, exposing her sex to the strangely warm air of the chamber.

The several tendrils painting her back began slathering the wet resin down her arms and legs in an odd pattern. As it hardened, the tendrils covered her arms and legs in a spider web-like pattern that would maximize both strength to secure her, even though the drug in her system prevented her from even lifting her head while exposing the maximum amount of skin.

It finished the job on her limbs by completely burying her hands and knees deeply in resin, getting in between her fingers, and covering the back of her knees up to the top of her calves. The resin hardened, and June was securely anchored to the floor, her body restricted and supported by the resin.

It seemed the jelly was not quite finished as a thick tendril wrapped around her head, covering her left eye, squishing her nose, and pulling her head back so it was no longer hanging limply. It positioned her head facing forward, horizontal to the floor. The tentacles painting the resin across her body began painting up the back of her head, thoroughly wetting her hair and smearing layers over her forehead. She closed her exposed right eye, the only control she had over her body, as the gloop ran down from her forehead.

The tendril held her head for several more minutes until the resin had set, then released its grip, letting the newly hardened resin hold her head in place. Not finished, the jelly pried open her mouth as far as it would go, almost to the point of discomfort.

Another small tendril painted the wet resin over her upper and lower teeth, along the insides of her cheeks, and covered most of her tongue. The resin cured, holding her mouth open wide and locking her tongue down. Finally seeming satisfied with its work, the jelly retracted the small needle injecting the paralytic from her neck, and the tentacle wrapped around her neck loosened then withdrew.

Having successfully delivered its quarry to the nest and prepared it, the hunter lifted off and silently glided from the chamber.

June silently thanked her luck that one of her eyes had been covered while applying the resin. She looked around the large chamber and was astonished by what she saw. Her one clear eye immediately found Will's bound form, almost directly in front of her and to her left, his ass pointing ten o'clock away from her. She was simultaneously relieved to see him but a little sad that he would be sharing her fate, not able to emote too deeply as the paralytic was slow to clear her bloodstream.

Will was coated in resin, like every other captured prey in the room, including her. However, he was unlucky that both of his eyes were covered by the cured resin frozen on his forehead, covering down over his angular cheekbones. His mouth was held open wide with resin, the same as June. With both eyes covered and likely still feeling the effects of the paralytic, he did not move or call out. June couldn't call out either and had no way to let him know he wasn't alone.

Continuing to scan the room, June could see that most of the herd of Munchers that were taken were already glued to the floor as she and Will were undergoing various stages of whatever processing the jellies were subjecting them to.

They seemed to be arranged in chronological order of arrival, which made sense; the closest to Will and June were similarly cemented, silent, and motionless, while some a little farther away were starting to show signs that they were regaining motor control, though bound and completely immobilized. These started sounding out weak bleats of protest.

Just beyond the bleating Munchers, June couldn't determine what was happening. These Munchers, though she couldn't see the beasts themselves, were surrounded by a dozen glowing jellies, roughly the same size as the hunters but with many thinner tendrils hanging from below them instead of the large, muscular tentacles. They must have a different purpose, June supposed.

The last group of Munchers she could see shocked her, even in her drugged state, and took her breath away in a gasp. The only thing she could see of the Munchers were thin, frail-looking legs, still clinging to the now oversized resin structure surrounding their limbs. The bodies of the herd animals were wholly enveloped in a large bag-like membrane, emitting the same purple glow as the other jellies in the room. The difference was that thousands of glowing, wriggling larval jellies inside were stretching and bulging the containing membrane in a grotesque and unsettling fashion.

One of the Munchers furthest from June and presumably one of the first arrivals was enveloped by a membrane almost twice as large as any other of the jellies in the room; the larvae wriggling inside were nearly as large as her thigh. They pushed and strained against each other beneath the surface of the purple membrane containing them so violently that it finally split, spilling the swarm of adolescent jellies onto the floor with a wet, sick-sounding splash.

The sight that horrified June the most was the state of the suddenly revealed Muncher. Though locked in the very same pose she was, The Muncher was desiccated and gaunt, eye sockets empty, completely sucked dry of all vitality. Dead. She knew that was to be her fate. It was going to be Will's fate. And Interface would likely die alone in her ship, haunted by the ghosts of all those she loved and lost.

It was all too much for June, and as the suppressed emotions finally bubbled up, tears streamed out of her one exposed eye. The paralytic had finally relented, and she was filled with fear, terror, and heartbreak all at once, and she sobbed loudly.

Will suddenly stirred, hearing June's crying. "-une! -une!" he called June's name, unable to form words properly.

"-ill! I'- -ere!" Will I'm here, June called back. "Uhh, -noo," Will despaired, realizing June hadn't escaped. It crushed him. More than the thought of his inevitable demise, knowing that he couldn't protect June and she was doomed to his fate broke him, and he sobbed uncontrollably.

The bleating of the reviving Munchers and June and Will's despair-filled cries stirred the hive of jellies into action. A dozen new jellies entered the chamber, silently floating like some grim, glowing procession. These jellies came in single file, then fanned out amongst the bleating Munchers and hovered directly over them one by one.

These blob-like jellies were slightly different from the others in that they only had three tendrils, two thin tendrils hanging out their end like a tail, and one somewhat thicker tendril. They settled onto the stiff resin cover backs of the terrified beasts and wrapped the thicker tendril around the neck of each animal.

With surgeon-like precision, the thinner tendrils were inserted deep into their nostrils with one swift thrust. The Munchers began shuddering wildly in their bindings, hooting and bugling like June had heard earlier. Then, slowly, the skin of the jellies on their backs started to undulate as they sank onto the Muncher, swallowing it up, silencing the beast's wailing until it had enveloped entirely it with only their legs protruding from the bottom of the purple sack, supporting both beast and jelly.