Vine

Archimedes returned to real space, not with an elegant blink but in an explosion of hot gasses. Trailing fire it shot through the void, damaged sensors peering about, lenses glinting in the fierce light of the nearby star and the sharp illumination of its binary partner.

Six planets visible, all but two gas giants, or ice giants, too cold, too far from their sun, to have inhabitable moons. Close in to the star, baking in hellish temperatures, was a planet that might be valuable for mining one day, but useless to Archimedes in its dire need.

But, in answer to a desperate prayer, there was another, blue and white from sea and swirling clouds. Spectrography confirmed conditions suitable for life. It was their best hope.

It was their only hope.

Captain Darling's baritone voice was calm and confident. Only the tension about his grey eyes betrayed his fear. 'All hands. Brace for atmospheric insertion. This is going to be rough.'

And it was. Archimedes groaned and shook and screamed as it descended, the hull blazing white around the damaged tail. They nearly made it too. Darling levelled off over a lush, green canopy. Trees whipped past below at supersonic speeds.

The clouds were dense, visibility low. The sensors were all fried and the ragged tail sent shock waves through the hull as it fought the high velocity wind. A giant cliff surged out of the cloud ahead and Darling forced the ship to turn - and suddenly they were spinning wildly. A distant explosion revealed the tail that had broken off and slammed into the mountain.

'Brace for impact,' he yelled, not that anyone wouldn't have guessed what was coming.

That anyone survived was remarkable. That everyone survived was nothing short of a miracle. Where once the Archimedes had had a tail, now there was a jagged, blackened opening into the ship's fragile interior. In the far distance a plume of black smoke marked the place where the tail with the FTL drive and fusion core had hammered into the cliff. In between the mountain and the battered ship was a trail of shattered trees and a deep scar through the thick soil and vegetation.

On a good day they would have analysed the atmosphere before stepping out of the ship's controlled interior. But there was no controlled interior. The hulk was pierced and cracked and broken in a hundred places, and the outside was seeping in, bringing wonderfully scented fresh air. Breathable air.

Darling was the first to step out, though his muscles screamed and he ached to sit, to lie, to sleep. The others limped out after him, and they stood in a row, bathing in late afternoon sunlight as they marvelled at the destruction caused by their landing.

*

In its cave deep in the mountain, Grack, the last Erdor, stirred from its aged slumber. A hundred years it had lived and never before had it heard such terrifying noises. Creeping to the entrance it peered out and saw flame and smoke erupting from the cliff face, from a tangled, twisted something unlike anything it had ever seen.

A glint of sunlight on metal in the distance caught Grack's eye, and it observed the path of chaos. Something had fallen from the stars. Not a comet or meteor, but a metal ship. Many generations had passed since a ship dared to land on Adina. The Erdri had chased them away, protecting their territory, but a great illness had followed, devastating the Erdri.

All that was in the past. Grack had grown up in a time when the Erdri were few and far between, a once-proud species in decline. One by one they had fallen, and a decade had passed since it last had company. There was no one left to defend Adina from the star people. Except the Vine, perhaps.

Curious about the newcomers, Grack launched into the air and flew close to the treetops for cover. Its muscles ached with the effort, a sign that age would soon be claiming the last Erdor.

*

This was Ensign Louise Carter's first alien planet. Her first deep space mission too, and what a disaster. Two weeks of utter boredom followed by two hours of absolute terror, first the attack by the Lukuri and then that roller-coaster landing. And now this. A whole new planet in need of exploration. 'How long?' she asked, almost forgetting to add, 'Sir.'

The captain shrugged. 'The main transmitter's there.' He pointed at the smoking cliff face. 'It will be at least a month before anyone will think to search for us, and maybe another month before anyone thinks to look here. There's a chance someone will come sooner. There's also a chance the Lukuri will follow our trail.'

Two months, then. To explore a world. An amazing world, more full of life and potential for human colonisation than any other she'd heard of. 'I'll go take some samples,' she said.

'Stay close to the ship, Ensign.'

'Yes, sir.'

And she did. There was no need to go far. They were surrounded by vegetation. It was a rain forest, the air rich with the fragrance of flowers, a wild array of colours from the flowers that wound about the tall, ancient trees in search of sunlight that shot in bright rays through the dense foliage. Tiny birds flitted about between the branches, their wings humming. The soil was dark, rich, moist, and she scooped some up for analysis. She pulled a leaf from a vine, snipped a thin branch from a tree, plucked a small, purple fruit from a bush, labelling everything carefully.

Soon Carter's backpack was stuffed. She felt so at ease. Despite being stranded on an alien world, she felt a wonderful sense of freedom, perhaps because life on Archimedes had been so dull and almost suffocating, and not helped by the unwelcome attentions of the engineer. Lieutenant Grant hadn't broken any rules, hadn't touched her or harassed her or anything, but he had always seemed to be watching her.

So it was good to be alone. But it was getting dark, and she was getting thirsty, and her need to pee was getting distracting, not helped by the quiet whispering gurgling of a nearby stream. Water. It would be worth getting a sample. And it didn't sound too far away. She could get there and back quickly.

Carter followed her ears through the trees, looking round often to make sure she knew the way back, and came to the stream. It was narrow enough to straddle, and she did so as she bent to fill a vial. Unfortunately, the pressure on her bladder worsened, and she realised she was in danger of wetting her pants. Even the short distance to the ship seemed like too much.

Sighing over her own foolishness, she stepped away from the stream. Looking around to make sure she was alone, she dropped her trousers and knickers about her ankles and supported herself against a tree as she sprayed her pee onto the alien earth. 'Just marking my territory,' she said to the forest.

She dressed quickly and headed back to the ship, eager to start the analysis.

*

Ensign Carter's territorial claim did not go unwitnessed. Lieutenant Eric Grant had seen her walk into the forest, away from the ship, and had followed quietly. There was something about Carter's air of innocence that excited him. For two weeks now he had been thinking about her, imagining her tied up helpless as he showed her what a wild and wanton slut she truly was under her coating of sweetness. Now he watched as she spread her legs wide for him, showed him her beautiful pussy as golden liquid sprayed out from those virgin lips.

Grant had very nearly revealed himself. It was so obvious that she wanted him, that she needed a man to fill her and claim her and teach her - but it was getting very dark now. They would be missed soon. He would wait until the following day to give her the satisfaction she craved.

He watched her make her way back through the shadows towards the ship, but didn't follow. Instead he crept to where she had squatted, and he put his nose to the earth, breathing in the intoxicating odour of pee and wet soil. He groaned with lust, his cock fighting to be free of his trousers, and within seconds he had freed it. In his imagination it was the smell of her pussy that filled his nostrils, so raw and delicious, and such was his arousal that only a few strokes were necessary before his cock was spraying his seed onto the ground as he panted through an intense climax.

It was only when he tried to stand that he discovered the vine that had curled about his ankles.

With a scream he tore it away and stumbled to his feet. The vine slithered out of reach as he kicked at it, hampered slightly by his need to pull his trousers up. Suddenly the forest seemed dark and dangerous. Who knew what wild animals were out there. Or what plants even. The shadows were restless. The birds were quiet now but there was a whispering in the trees.

Grant made a run for the ship, but his feet tangled in an unseen vine and he crashed onto soft soil. Moments later he was upside down, dangling from his feet, his fingertips brushing the ground. 'Help!' he shouted. 'Somebody help me!'

Nobody heard. Nobody came.

More vines wound around him, progressing steadily down from the ankles, binding his legs, tightening about his waist, crushing his arms around his head. Thick vines at first, with the sinuous strength and purpose of deadly serpents, then lesser vines that explored him, studied him, even penetrated him, worming into his ass and mouth, tiny tendrils of vine piercing his skin and burrowing into his flesh.

Unable to scream or even breathe, he writhed in agony until at last unconsciousness claimed him.

*

There was another witness, not only of Carter's call of nature but also of Grant in a sexual frenzy with his nose pressed to the pungent soil.

Once the Vine had calmed down, Grack glided down to the forest floor and scooped up handfuls of earth rich with the aliens' essence. There was a sweetness to it, and a softness to the aliens themselves. They were not the hard-shelled bitter aliens the Erdri had fought against.

And they certainly weren't invaders. They were more like children exploring a new home. Grack sighed. It would be nice to be a child, the first of a kind rather than the last.

Sniffing the alien essence again, Grack smiled. Maybe it could be both.

*

The sharp glare of the bright binary gave definition to the leafy canopy but failed to penetrate to the forest floor. Darling shone his torch through the trees, making the shadows between and beyond writhe and dance like malevolent spectres. 'Lieutenant Grant!' he shouted. 'Damn it, Eric, where are you?'

There was no sign of the engineer. No sound either. No cry for help, no footprints. It was as if Grant had vanished. Perhaps he was lying unconscious just beyond the range of the torch, but there was something about the shadows... something alive and sinuous... slithering and whispering...

Darling cursed his imagination for its childish fantasies of monsters. He was far more worried about real threats out there. If Grant had fallen into a ravine or been eaten by a wild animal, then he didn't want to meet the same fate out of stupidity. Far better to wait until morning so that the searchers could actually see something.

On his third circuit of the ship he did see something, but only for a fraction of a second as the enormous bat-creature crashed into him, sending his torch flying into the forest. Enormous wings wrapped around him as they fell to the ground, and he felt a mouth pressed against his own, the smell of rotting, fermenting fruit almost overwhelming him as a long, thick tongue explored his mouth.

The shock of being French-kissed by an alien bat was nothing compared to having the thing force its tongue into his throat. Darling gagged on it, choked on it, fought it, bit it, but it slid deep inside him, blocking his airway until he convulsed in desperate need for air. He wondered if this was what had happened to Grant. What a surreal way to die, French-kissed and deep-throated.

The creature released him suddenly, the long tongue whipping out, the wings relaxing. With a strange, mournful cry, the bat-creature leapt into the air and flew away awkwardly, only to crash into a tree trunk. It fell to the ground, whimpering, and after a minute it fell silent and was still.

Darling retrieved the torch from the forest and shone it on the creature. Its leathery wings and skin were gold and red, quite beautiful in a way, but its face was ugly as sin, and its eyes were jet-black and utterly devoid of life. Whatever the creature was, it was dead. He had thought it would kill him, but somehow he had killed it.

A fatal kiss.

His mouth was full of that rotten-fruit smell and taste of the creature's mouth. His throat was in agony, his lungs aching, which was perhaps only to be expected, but his stomach was beginning to rebel too, no doubt offended by the creature's hideous saliva. Giving Lieutenant Grant up for dead, he hurried back to the ship before any other bat-creatures decided to make out with him.

*

The Vine was ancient. A million years and more it had tended its home, the ever-changing jungle. The Vine itself had changed too, from weepy, climbing tendrils to great, thick trunks that sprawled across mountains and rivers, to deep-sunk roots, to vines adapted to a thousand different purposes. At one time it had covered the whole planet, but in time it had retreated to the warmth and vitality of the jungle. Sometimes it slept for centuries, sometimes it woke with a hunger to transform itself and its home.

It had been deep asleep when the Archimedes crashed, slicing through vines and splintering trees. It was but a scratch on the surface of the world, and it would heal in time, but to be woken in such a manner was unpleasant. The Vine had reacted carelessly, tearing into the strange creature, so quickly, so clumsily, the creature had died.

And in dying, the creature had released a vile poison. Not a poison of the body, but of the mind. A hunger unlike anything it had ever experienced. A hunger that made no sense. It was an itch, a distraction, a need that served no purpose. Like a parasite. A sickness. The Vine was suddenly more awake than it had ever been, and it didn't understand why.

But the answer was inside that ship, that hollow metal rock that had plummeted down from the stars. The Vine had seen many rocks fall, but none that had had creatures in them. It coiled itself around the ship, sensing the movements within, listening to the voices, studying the scents and tastes - most were vile and unnatural, but threaded through them were more natural odours, and some even that excited the Vine's new hunger.

And one in particular that clutched at it, demanded its immediate attention. The ship was quiet now, the movements diminished. The creatures sleeping. The Vine slithered in through every hole and crack in the ship it could find, following a scent that made it dizzy with that alien hunger, breaking through doors that stood in its way, blocking others to seal the unwanted creatures inside.

Until there she was. Asleep. Oblivious. And as much in need of this union as the Vine was. It stripped her sheets away to reveal bare legs and the place between them that held all the answers.

*

Carter awoke as vines coiled about her ankles and pulled them wide apart. She was more disorientated by the loss of her sheets. The touch on her ankles was too strange, almost as though something had snagged them as it moved past her. The room was dark. More than dark, it was pitch black. She reached for the light switch by the bed, only for her wrist to be caught by something smooth that wound around her arm.

She came to her senses with a shock. 'What the -' she said, loudly, interrupted by the vine that thrust abruptly into her mouth, filling it with a salty sweetness that startled her. She grabbed at it with her free hand, only for another vine to snatch her arm away. She bit into the vine angrily, trying to make it move, but the smooth, leathery surface was too tough. 'Leave me alone!' she screamed, but the words were unintelligible.

Her unseen assailant had her helpless, all her limbs held fast, her legs spread wide. Even without a vine filling her mouth with precum like a horny cock, she would have known what was about to happen to her. Angry as she was at being raped by some weird alien tentacle monster, she was even more angry at herself - for finding it quite exciting.

Even as she struggled against the vines' grip on her, part of her was impatient for the ravishment to begin in earnest. Carter would never have admitted it to anyone, but this was one of her fantasies - and she knew she wasn't the only girl with fantasies of being tied up and ravished by an alien creature. She just never expected it to happen - or at least not on her first journey into deep space.

Vines slithered up her legs, squeezing under her knickers and then under her pyjama top, then tore her clothes away from her, leaving her naked. She shivered as tiny tendrils teased the tips of her nipples, which were already hard, and wound around them and tightened until she cried out with pain. Before she could breathe again, the vine in her mouth plunged deeper, deep into her throat. She gagged around it, fought to escape it, but the vine held her still, and meanwhile other vines caressed the lips of her pussy and sucked on her clit and tickled the little ring of muscle that guarded her ass.

It was a tease, a gentle torture that had her hips writhing in a desperate quest for greater stimulation. At last the vine pulled out of her throat and she gasped for air, panting and swallowing as more salty-sweet precum oozed from the vine between her teeth. Without warning it thrust deep into her throat again, and she felt a thick vine nudging its way between her labia, seeking the entrance to her vagina. Worryingly thick. The kind of thick that needed buckets of lubricant. Far beyond anything she had ever encountered before.

But either she was very wet, or the vine was secreting its own lubricant, because it felt smooth. It stretched her painfully wide as it forced its way into her, slowly, with superhuman strength, but it felt smooth as it worked deeper and deeper into her. Until it bumped against the entrance to her womb. Again she gasped for breath as the vine eased from her throat, but this time she was better prepared when it dived in again.

The vine below eased slowly out of her, then thrust in again. Carter climaxed suddenly, and silently, her body vibrating like a violin string between the vines in her mouth and vagina. Afterwards, the vines eased from her throat and vagina, giving her a chance to recover her breath, while a slender vine forced its way into her ass. She cried out in mumbled complaint: 'No! Not there!' But she was ashamed to discover she enjoyed the strange and intense sensation of having her ass filled.

The other two vines resumed their assault on her vagina and mouth, all fucking her together now but with different rhythms. The vine in her ass thrust long and hard and deep. The vine in her vagina, that stretched her so blissfully wide, was slow and steady. The vine in her mouth would plunge deep into her throat and rest there a while, before withdrawing slowly to give her a brief chance to recover. And all the while there were tendrils squeezing and twisting her nipples and others caressing and sucking at her clit.

And she still couldn't see anything at all and had no idea what had happened to the rest of the crew and had long ago stopped caring about whether they were listening to her cries of pleasure as climax after climax tore through her, the only sounds she could hear were the wet slurping of the vines fucking her and her own voice loud in her cabin.

Eventually it all blurred into a hazy fusion of pain and pleasure, and she was too exhausted to do anything but lie passively and let what was happening happen, until she felt the vines thicken and stiffen, and all together they convulsed with orgasmic contractions, filling her mouth and vagina and ass with streams of thick, warm cum. There was so much of it. It flooded from her mouth and poured down her cheeks. It streamed out of her ass and pussy around the vines that continued to thrust into her, although they were moving slower now and gradually retreating from her.