Chapter 3

Captured - Will they survive long enough to be rescued?

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

“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.

Groups of the thin, tendriled jellies returned and surrounded the enveloped Munchers. This time, June could make out some of what they were doing. The thin tendrils were stabbing into jelly surrounding the Muncher, the long reach of their tendrils sounding its depths.

June’s view was soon blocked by the arrival of more of the three tendrilled jellies. Most took up positions over the Munchers directly behind Will. Then, the last two hovered over the two lovers.

June yelled out as best as she could with her mouth held open, calling repeatedly, “Will, I Love you! Will I Love you!” She knew he understood because he called back as best he could, “I love you June!”

She watched in despair as the tendril wrapped around his neck, and then he suddenly let loose a loud guttural scream. She watched his dick rapidly swell and started ejaculating even before he was completely hard, painting the hard resin of the floor with his seed. The jelly wasted no time and inserted the thinner two tendrils deep into his nostrils, choking out his voice, but he continued to gurgle. As the surface of the jelly began to undulate and surround him, June felt a slim tentacle wrap around her neck.

Her weeping was driven from her when a small needle-like barb pierced her neck, and a new venom began pumping in. Her entire nervous system caught fire, every neuron firing, with a screaming orgasm so powerful, it seared her body with more pain than she had ever felt in her life. She squirted hard, covering her legs and the floor. The orgasm consumed her mind, then found an outlet in a scream until her voice was silenced by the tendrils shoved through her nostrils and into her lungs, stopping the air from passing her vocal cords.

The world was burned away in the terrible fire of her unending atomic orgasm, save for two thoughts of Will and Interface. Her mind clung to the image of her lovers, the only thing that allowed her to bear the torturous fire of desire consuming her.

As she shook with the brutal intensity force upon her, the jelly on her back swallowed her. The viscous fluid in the center of her uncaring passenger filled her unclosable mouth, but she didn’t have the senses to taste it.

After a few short moments of agony that felt like years, she felt tendrils pierce her prison, seeking her. Dozens probed around her face until they found her mouth, then plunged down her throat, hitting the bottom of her stomach. They were followed by an overwhelming number of tendrils that jammed in and stretched her throat painfully.

Simultaneously, she felt dozens of tendrils groping her nethers, seeking her boiling insides. When they found her asshole, they savagely pushed deep into her bowels, stretching the muscled ring of her anus with their unforgiving numbers until her flesh tore and bled. Other tendrils found her pussy and stretched it to its limits, not satisfied they were deep enough and pressed on for more. Her overstuffed pussy and vaginal walls stretched and strained as tendrils painfully battered and stretched her cervix open, finding her final depth. They entered en masse and filled her uterus, writhing and squirming until she was completely full.

It all fueled her unrelenting orgasmic inferno. She clung desperately to sanity by chanting her lovers’ names in her mind, “Will. Interface. Will. Interface.” The sensation and pain ramped up to the intensity of a supernova when she felt each of the tendrils deep in her body pulsing into her depths. Thousands of little packets were being deposited in her core. There was no logic or cold analysis, but she instinctively knew she was their seedbed, an incubator for their young who would suck out her lifeforce, the very essence of who and what she was.

This was why she was being forced into a nuclear-fired orgasm, so the young would have an ample source of energy from which to feed. These jellies were the antithesis of everything Interface was. She was kind and warm; they were cold and uncaring. She was soft and gentle; they were hard and brutal. She gave freely; they took without remorse. Despite the mind-obliterating mega orgasm, she thought of the sweet silver girl, and her mind called out. “Interface...”

Having filled and bloated every space and pocket in her body until it was unnaturally swelled to grotesque proportions, the tendrils all retreated, leaving her mouth open and empty, her asshole and pussy gaping and bloody. She felt a new sensation inside, adding an extra layer of her misery. She felt thousands of tiny popping sensations in her core, almost like a carbonated drink, then the wriggling of a horde of larvae. It was soon followed by the feeling of hundreds of tiny paper cuts directly cutting her soul, moving from her center and spreading outward as each tiny jelly fixed itself to any surface it could find to begin feeding. She burned like a nuclear furnace, but with a small chunk of ice in her center, growing larger. The writhing masses in her were swelling, growing larger along with the horrible icy chill, bulging her body, stretching it until June felt like she would tear open.

The pressure and cold in her stomach grew more than she could bear, and she wretched, expelling some of the small but growing larvae into the fluid surrounding her. With her one eye not covered by the resin, she could make out the indistinct shapes wiggling and swimming in the fluid with her. A new layer of panic hit her as the little larvae swam back to her face and latched onto her lips and cheeks. The feeling of profound cold began radiating where they latched on. She continued to vomit up the larvae, adding to the numbers surrounding her face.

She felt the same cold traveling out of her backside as she started to expel more of the growing larvae from her ass and pussy. The cold sensation of a thousand little paper cuts spread across her body, finally covering every square centimeter of her, inside and out. She called out in her mind for the last time, “Interface...” before she gave up and submitted completely to despair and anguish.

Interface stood transfixed on the bridge of the Nestia, with the binoculars pressed tight against her eyes as she watched Events unfold at the ‘Saturn’s Heart’.

“Interface, what do you see?” Will asked over the comm.

“They caught them all, but they haven’t moved anywhere, yet. The ship is still completely surrounded.” She answered him.

Interface tensely watched through the binoculars. “They’re beginning to carry them away.” Interface reported.

After a few minutes, she reported again. “All of the Muncher signatures are gone, but there are still a dozen of the dark signatures all around the ship.”

A few tense minutes passed.

“They found our new door,” Will reported over the comms. Interface’s anxiety was through the roof at this point, but there was nothing she could do.

“They’ve breached!” Will called on the comm as Interface saw the tiny flashes through the binoculars. Will left the channel open, and she heard the gunfire over the comms.

“Bunkroom!” Will yelled, followed by more gunfire.

“How many mags are you carrying?” Will asked as Interface listened intently.

“Two.” she heard June reply.

Will again clicked the comm button, thinking the channel wasn’t open.

“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 ordered June. Interface realized Will was preparing to sacrifice himself for June. “No!” She cried over the comms, but Will was still transmitting and couldn’t hear her.

“June, whatever happens, I love you. The same goes for you too, silver girl. I’m glad I got to meet you.”

Interface lost all composure and started weeping; she had lost everything and been alone for so long, and now that she had someone again, she was going to lose one of them, maybe even both. It was more than she could bear.

She hadn’t been listening for a second until the sound of gunfire over the comms grabbed her attention.

“Now! Go!” Interface heard Will give the order. She quickly raised the binoculars to her eyes and zeroed in on the ship at the opposite end of the valley.

She watched, waiting to see June’s IR signature run from the front of the ship, but she never emerged.

She heard more gunfire and the distinctive sound of empty guns clicking. Will roared a battle cry, and Interface listened to a struggle over the comms, followed by June screaming, “Noo!” She heard more sounds of struggle then silence.

“Will! June! Please respond! Are you okay!” Interface pleaded. No response over the comm except for silence. She called out again. “Will, June, talk to me, what’s happening? Are you okay?”

Interface watched the scene ten kilometers away intently through the binoculars, hoping beyond hope that they were okay. That was when she spotted a dark shadow emerge from the side of the ship, a bright heat signature in tow. Interface gasped and held her hand over her mouth when, moments later, a second bright signature was brought out.