Chapter 13: In Control

The Drones carted Walker down a dingy passage, gripping him by the arms so that there was no chance of him escaping again. They were walking him deeper into the tunnels, far away from the scents that he recognized, as if they were trying to scramble his mental map of the hive. He assumed that they were returning him to his cell to spend the rest of his stay locked behind bars, but after a long walk that must have seen them descend hundreds of meters below the planet’s surface, they came to a stop in front of what looked like a featureless wall.

No, there was one of the blob-like buttons, there must be a hidden door here somewhere. His suspicions were confirmed when one of his captors released a complex pheromone, the biological keypad seeming to wobble and flex in response. It opened the door, a dirt-covered panel that perfectly conformed to the curvature of the tunnel wall sliding to one side to reveal a hidden chamber.

It was domed, as were most of the rooms in the hive, but this one was fairly small. There was maybe twenty feet of floor space, and the ceiling was probably fifteen feet at its highest point. It was lit by the usual glowing moss, the air thick and humid.

The Bugs pushed him through the door, Walker noting that it was larger and wider than seemed necessary, and they had closed the panel securely behind him before he could pick himself up.

Well shit, he was in a cell again. Back to square one. At least it wasn’t cold, they had never given him his fatigues back. He brushed himself off and walked over to where the door had been a moment before, now a flat wall. The construction methods of the Bugs seemed so archaic, hollowing out cavities in the soil and sealing them with saliva, and yet there was some remarkable craftsmanship involved. He ran his fingers over the dirt where he knew the door to be, but he couldn’t detect so much as an indent beneath his fingertips, nor could he see anything that might have given away the panel.

There was a keypad in here, identical to the one outside, and he reached out a finger to prod it experimentally. It shifted as if trying to pull away from him, its slimy surface wobbling. It was like some kind of limpet or barnacle without a shell, clearly alive in some capacity. It must sniff out pheromones in the air and respond to commands, not unlike a digital lock. The difference was that rather than scanning the fingerprint of the user, or opening for a numerical code, it waited for the correct scent to be emitted.

Walker could not yet produce scents, at least not intentionally. He had no way of opening the door. Frustrated, he hammered his fist on the panel, hearing a metallic ring. Well, that was one way to detect the doors at least.

He wondered what the Bugs must be thinking of him now. He had cooperated until an opportunity for escape had presented itself, did that make him insane in their eyes? He was a deviant, a non-conformist, someone who did not blindly obey their orders like a mindless Drone. Unpredictability was his strength, he had to play on their biases. He might yet get another chance to escape.

Although Walker had expected to be left to stew for a while, he felt vibrations beneath his feet. Something was coming down the tunnel outside the cell, something big. He stepped away from the door as the dirt-covered panel slid open, his heart leaping into his throat as he saw the unmistakable pincers of a Warrior. Its bulk blocked the doorway, which was just barely large enough to let it pass, the panel snapping shut behind it before Walker could make a move to slip past.

He backed up against the far wall as it took a few lumbering steps towards him, his hands shaking. Was this it, then? Were they going to eviscerate him for his transgression? Was he standing in an execution chamber?

He relaxed somewhat as the Warrior split open, revealing a glint of orange carapace buried beneath a mass of tentacles. It was Tangerine. The slimy protrusions released her from the biological vehicle, and she stepped out, her shell coated in goo. There were no Workers present to lick her clean.

She looked as angry as the Bug’s nearly expressionless faces could look. Her blue eyes were narrowed, and her mandibles were waving erratically. Clearly, he was making whatever job had been assigned to her a whole lot harder than it needed to be.

<CHAMBER IS SEALED, YOU CANNOT ESCAPE.>

She reached down and gripped him by the wrist, tugging him forward as he dug his heels into the soil. She pumped out red scents, frustrated with his odd behavior, finally getting sick of his disobedience and lifting him off the ground by the underarms. He kicked and fought, but her arms were longer than the reach of his legs. She turned around and began to walk towards the Warrior’s open husk, Walker straining to turn his head to get a look at the thing, as it was behind him now.

As she neared the lobster-like torso, half a dozen of its slimy tendrils reached out towards him, grasping at the air like the appendages of some mindless sea anemone. He redoubled his efforts, trying to break free of her iron grip, but he couldn’t get any leverage while she had him suspended in the air.

One of the tapered tentacles brushed the bare skin of his back, and he shivered, feeling the trail of sticky slime that it left in its wake. He felt like he was being fed to some horrible deep sea creature, its gaping maw swarming with feelers that would drag him down to his doom. Tangerine released him into the custody of the tendrils, and they wrapped around his body like sinuous ropes as they pulled him inside the Warrior, tightening around his limbs and his torso with their powerful muscles.

They were wet, coated in slippery mucous, and so their grip came from their tightness rather than their texture. Perhaps that method worked better for securing a Pilot’s smooth carapace, but it felt disgusting against his skin, like they were giant slugs or tongues. At least they were warm, clearly alive as the tubes of muscle pulled him snug against the inner wall of the Warrior.

Its spongy flesh pressed against him from behind, soaking his underwear with slime, its exposed innards shifting and pulsating. He yelped as he felt one of the tethers press against the small of his back, probing for a plug with what felt like a tiny mouth, as if it was a lamprey trying to find a spot to latch onto. Three more followed suit, running up and down his spine as they searched for a way to connect. It tickled, and he squirmed, but the tentacles tightened their grip to keep him still in response. They seemed to be able to detect his spine, attracted to the neurological activity perhaps, or maybe the electricity produced by his nerves. They could find no way to hook in, however, and they eventually gave up their fruitless probing.

Tangerine seemed annoyed, and she stepped closer, leaning into the Warrior’s open abdomen and sliding her long fingers behind his back. She traced his vertebrae, her touch made slick by the presence of the mucous, then loosed a cloud of irritated pheromones.

“I’m not a pilot,” he grumbled, one of the tentacles tightening around his neck. “And could you tell this thing that mammals need lungs to breathe? It’s getting a little tight in he-”

His complaint was choked off as the slimy muscle that had curled around his throat flexed, and he shut his mouth, concentrating on breathing instead.

The size of the Warrior put Tangerine at about head height to him, her face an inch from his as she lingered there. Now that she was closer to him and they were away from the myriad scents that had clouded the air in the hanger, she could smell him more easily. Something had piqued her interest, that much was clear as her blue eyes played over his bound body and her hard mandibles clicked curiously. Was she perhaps smelling the residue of his night with the Repletes? There had been no Workers to clean him up after the fact and so he likely still smelled of their honey and ... other fluids.

He was wrapped in a cocoon of tentacles, nothing but his head open to the air as his limbs and torso were buried in slimy flesh. She seemed to have pheromonal control over her Warrior, not dissimilar to voice commands, but with scent instead of speech. She gave a command that Walker was not yet experienced enough to interpret and a few of the tendrils pulled away to exposed his chest and belly. There was a thick one still curled around his waist to hold him in place, and another wrapped around his neck to keep him from squirming loose. His limbs were held tight, too short to really fit into the holes that led to the arms and legs of the biomechanical vehicle, and so the Warrior had him firmly shackled with its appendages instead.

She ran her long fingers from his chest to his belly, testing the firmness of his muscles, fascinated by his alien physiology. Where the Bugs had hard exoskeletons, he had smooth skin and a layer of soft fat, with firm muscle beneath. Tangerine liked the texture, and his scent was changing the hue of her emotions from an angry and frustrated red towards a more covetous pink.

<WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING? THERE IS HONEY ON YOUR ... BODY... >

She pressed closer than Walker would have liked, her mandibles brushing his cheek as she examined his scent, a tongue as long and as flexible as those of the other castes leaving her mouth to taste his skin. Her demeanor had changed, and suddenly he felt more vulnerable than he had before.

She moved down, following a scent, and planted a hand on his stomach. His muscles flexed beneath her palm in response, flinching away from her touch, and she dragged her smooth tongue across his chest. The salt from the sweat that caked his body after his mad dash for freedom, the residue of the Replete’s honey from the night before, there was so much that might tempt the inquisitive Pilot.

“You’re ... going a little off-course there,” he said as her slippery tongue crept down towards his navel. “I thought you were all business?”

She didn’t respond, of course, likely didn’t even have ears. If she could sense anything at all, it would only register as vibrations to her. Her warm tongue lashed across his belly, skirting the waistband of his shorts, and he felt a pleasant tremor flow through his body. He wanted to push her away but his arms were bound, his vulnerable position making him hypersensitive to her touch.

She seemed confused by his underwear, running her hand across the fabric, and squeezing gently when she found something soft. A burst of unwelcome pleasure shot up his spine as she cupped his equipment, holding it through the cotton and watching him as he reacted. The Warrior’s tentacles held him steady, preventing him from pulling away as she moved down his thigh, running her fingers across his exposed skin.

They all seemed so curious about his physiology, and why would they not be? They were sapient creatures after all, and curiosity went hand in hand with intelligence. Humans might work side by side with aliens on a daily basis, but these Betelgeusians were an intensely xenophobic race, they would never have had the chance to examine an alien so closely. At least one that wasn’t on the wrong end of a gun.

Interested in what might lie beneath this barrier of fabric, her tongue slowly slid out of her mouth, winding its way towards his waistband like a pink worm. It pushed beneath the elastic, feeling its way along as it roamed down his shaft, glancing his balls as he struggled against his fleshy bonds. His member began to swell, the sudden twitching exciting Tangerine, her wet organ curling around his growing erection as if to measure its length and girth. That had the side effect of only arousing him further, his cheeks flushing and his breath growing ragged as the slimy tentacle gripped him by the throat. He couldn’t do anything to stop her. His thighs were bound so that he couldn’t close them, as were his arms, and the wriggling of his hips did little to dissuade her.

<MALE... >

It was happening again. His body was betraying him, pumping out a pheromonal come-on that he had no way to stifle. He could smell it himself now, his grafted organ sending chemical signals coursing through his bloodstream, leaking out of every pore as if his skin was secreting an aphrodisiac. Contrary to popular belief, humans did produce natural pheromones, but they were so subtle as to go unnoticed. His new sensory organ seemed to piggyback on that system, amplifying it a million times over and feeding it chemical instructions that enticed the Bugs.

Tangerine licked his belly, enjoying the sweet taste, his member tenting the fabric of his shorts as she reciprocated. The Pilot released her own pheromone, his brain interpreting the signals as best it could. Scents of women and lust washed over him, sparking memories of sheets stained with sweat, of wet skin sliding against his own. The feeling of a soft breast deforming beneath his fingers as he kneaded it, the gentle sigh of a lover, her husky voice whispering obscenities in his ear as he plunged his face into her cascade of auburn hair.

It was irresistible, as if the very essence of sexuality itself had been bottled and then used as an alluring perfume. Tangerine was drawn to him like a moth to a flame, his taste and his scent overwhelming to her, the two adversaries feeding into one another’s desire like some kind of infernal perpetual motion machine.

<YOUR SCENT HAS CHANGED, YOU SMELL ... GOOD.>

She knew where the scent was heaviest, tearing at his underwear with her hard fingers, ripping them like tissue paper to expose his member. It was hard and swollen, bouncing in the air in time with his heartbeat, a droplet of excitement welling at the tip. Walker couldn’t move, couldn’t defend himself. He strained against the rope-like protrusions that were gripping him, but there was no hope of breaking loose.

<BREED... >

She wasted no time, her tentative explorations were over apparently. The Pilot lifted one of her jointed legs and stepped into the suit, the cramped space scarcely large enough for one of them, let alone two. With the carapace open, they had a little more room to maneuver, but it was still a tight fit. He felt her hard abdomen press against his erection as she slid her legs into the recesses, the tentacles that trapped him shifting and twitching as if responding to the presence of their master.

It almost felt as if the living walls of the Warrior’s body were flexing and expanding to make more room, and Walker wondered if it was responding to the commands of its Pilot or if it had enough of a rudimentary intelligence to act of its own initiative.

Tangerine ran her four hands across his skin, wet with the Warrior’s mucous, sliding her fingers across his ribs and roaming downwards to take handfuls of his ass. She was all over him, almost as bad as the damned Borealans.

As she pressed closer to him, pinching his cheek with her mandibles, her scent invading his senses with renewed strength. She looked like a giant insect and yet she smelled to him like the most beautiful and comely woman in all the Galaxy. He could scarcely stand it. He wanted to reach up and kiss her, his instincts telling him that he would be met by soft lips, but his higher functions knew that the only thing awaiting him were hard mandibles. Besides, the tentacle that gripped his throat would not have allowed it, and he felt it slither tighter as if it knew what he was thinking.

She wrapped her long fingers around his shaft, enjoying the sensation of it throbbing in her hand for a moment before pressing her hips closer to him. Her loins were identical to those of the other castes, a ribbed tunnel line with satin flesh, with a trio of finger-like appendages that opened to grant access. He felt them probe his member, the Pilot wasting no time as she used them to position his erection, her thick fluids leaking forth to coat his skin in a slippery sheen.