Octopodded Ch. 01

Brenda dropped her tray onto the table with an audible clank. "Shitty burnt eggs again," she complained. "I know we're out in the ass end of nowhere, but that just means there's no excuse for ruining good ingredients."

"Can it, Brenda," said Rosanna. "Unless you think you can do better."

"Yes, lieutenant," replied Brenda, standing to give her a faux curtsy.

Rosanna grunted, ignoring her snide tone. Brenda's complaints weren't unwarranted, but Rosanna didn't want her complaints to spread. If they offended the cook, their food would probably get even worse. She wasn't sure how that could be possible given their current rations, but she was sure Heidi would find a way.

Brenda clutched at her heart. "I'm feeling terrible heartburn, lieutenant, I'm not sure I can finish my shift. I think I need to go lie down and rest."

Rosanna shot her an evil eye. "Okay then, if that's the way you want to play this. You can go see Brent. I'll send a note ahead to make sure he gives you a thorough examination. I'm sure he has an extra bitter brew he can give you to make that pain go away."

Brenda twisted her lips into a snarl and sat back down, slamming her fists onto the flimsy table. "That's not playing fair, and you know it."

Rosanna's lips twisted, but she said nothing, slipping a forkful of burnt potatoes into her mouth. Brenda was just being moody. She'd calm down, in time.

"Are you going on again about the food?" asked Regina, slipping through the hatch with her own plate of burnt offerings. "Why don't you come off it, this might be shit, but at least we get a lot of it."

She sat her tray down and doctored her eggs with large dollops of ketchup. Taking a forkful, she made a display of chewing the food carefully, making loud satisfied noises.

Brenda fixed her beady eyes on Regina, teeth gritted. Regina had the unnatural ability to pull the worst out of her colleague, usually quite by accident. Even on her best days, her cheerful personality grated against Brenda's grim attitude. And that wasn't when she was doing her best to get under Brenda's skin. It wasn't much of a stretch to say that after months of being forced to work together on the same team that they hated each other.

"Yes, you certainly are getting 'a lot of it.' I know you're spending a lot of time with Hank from environmental and Sparks from engineering. How often do they fuck you? Every week? Every day?"

Before Regina could reply, Rosanna raised an arm. "That was uncalled for. Brenda, apologize to Regina."

Brenda sat there, stone faced. "Fine, then, this discussion is over. Brenda, you're confined to quarters until the the next jump. You can use this opportunity to think over your actions and put together a proper apology. But don't get too comfortable - tomorrow we have a job to do."

Brenda slammed her hands on the table, leaving her food behind as she stomped through the hatch.

Turning her attention to Regina, Rosanna arched her brows. "You're not blameless, either. You know how easily you get under her skin."

Looking contrite, Regina swallowed a mouthful of eggs. "I'm sorry, I'm just fed up with her bad attitude." She paused. "You should know. I've already put in for a transfer. I just can't stand working with her any more."

Rosanna sighed deeply. She didn't want to work with her either, but they were stuck with each other, at least in the short term. "Tell you what. Let me see what strings I can pull. If we can get her transferred instead of you, would that be acceptable?"

Regina nodded her assent.

"Great, looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me." Rosanna smiled wryly.

***

"Rosanna, this is the captain speaking. Do you have that ship rigged for tow yet?"

Rosanna cursed, pressing the button on her receiver. "Only half way down the checklist, sir, I can't guarantee we'll keep the whole hull if you reel her in now."

"Understood," he replied in a clipped tone. "We're on a tight schedule here, lieutenant, if that ship isn't rigged in an hour we'll have to get what we can and leave the rest for later. Roger out."

Rosanna scowled and jabbed the comm button. That man had a tick in his bum if he thought they'd be ready for a safe lift in an hour. She flipped the comm frequency to the local band and made a call.

"Gina, Brenda, captain has ordered best effort in one hour before we dust this rock. Concentrate on critical lift points and leave the rest."

"Shit, lieutenant, ain't that cutting it close? What

if she drops a reactor? How worried are we about the mess?" Brenda's voice came through tinny on the radio.

Rosa looked out over the jagged cliffs of Antasia and grimaced. The crashed ship had been mostly intact until it had the misfortune of smashing up against the rust red rocks. The forward third had separated from the rest of the ship, ejected three hundred yards away like a bad habit.

They hadn't bothered with that section, preferring to salvage the more valuable engineering section with its reactor cores. As the cleanup crew for the Regulated League, it was their duty to salvage what they could for repair and reuse. This also had the useful side effect of denying pirates and other interested parties their technological secrets.

"Don't get your panties in a bunch, focus on the most critical sections. If we're lucky, this will be sufficient to get the job done. If not, I'll vouch for you in the court of inquiry. Do your duty, Rosanna out."

There was an exasperated noise on the other end of the line, but Brenda didn't protest further. Rosanna had made it perfectly clear that she wouldn't budge once she had made a decision. She was the solid rock of duty, the one everyone depended on to get the job done.

None of this duty stuff was helping her to finish this job, though. She unsnapped a target director from her belt and slapped it onto a critical structural point on the hundred and fiftieth frame, next to the port exhaust vent.

To perform a tractor pull, the salvage ship in low orbit needed to be able to precisely direct its energy beams to certain points on the hull of the target ship. Otherwise, the power of the beams stood a real chance of ruining the structural integrity of the hull. That could break the ship into multiple pieces, which would take weeks to cleanup. It was her and her crew's job to ensure that didn't happen.

She slid further down the side of the hull, unwinding the line that kept her attached to a winch anchored at the top of the fallen ship. As the ship had broken apart during the crash, it had fallen on its side, making for an almost impossible climb to the top. The shuttle crew had performed a tricky maneuver to drop them on the top of the ship to make their work easier. It was a hairy landing that she wasn't eager to repeat.

She set a few more targets, working her way down. The work was going quickly, and she thought for a moment that she would be able to finish on time. Her communicator beeped, and she sighed.

Pressing the button, she clenched her lips together. "Rosanna here, this better be good."

***

"Shit," she muttered under her breath.

Brenda had been working her way around the tail section of the ship. A bag filled with her targets sat on the ground to the side, untouched. This would normally lead to a reprimand, but for the three alien figures who had approached the wreck from the east.

They looked vaguely humanoid, but were different enough to make her shiver. Their bodies had a deep red coloration, glowing in spots with a virulent pigment. Their heads were in the shape of an octopus, eight tentacled arms splaying out in all directions. The arms curled gently, displaying rounded suckers down their length.

Instead of a mouth, the creatures had a rounded, fleshy hole. Planted in the center of their faces was a single, solitary eye, overlapping the area where a human would have a nose. The eye was distracting to look at, as it was the size of a large grapefruit. The irises had variable colors, but all of them were vibrant with intense coloration. A single blink lasted a few seconds, languid in nature.

They were completely nude. Two of them were female with the third being... obviously male. She averted her eyes for a moment, but realized that she was being silly. What were human social mores to these aliens? Why would they care about her embarrassment?

The overall effect was as if a human body had been taken and adapted for life on this planet. A mad scientist grafting sea creatures onto people's heads. She had never heard of that happening before, though, and she knew better than to insult the aliens by airing her idle thoughts.

Rosanna had only trained in the basics of first contact and she had never considered it her job. The first rule stuck in her head: treat them like normal. No matter how strange or ugly they look, don't insult them, don't run away, don't display violence. Try to engage them in conversation or displays of friendship, then contact a higher authority for instructions.

As she arrived, it was clear that Regina had already been trying to communicate with them, as some tools from her toolbelt were lying on the ground in a jumble.

"Greetings," Rosanna began. "Do you speak galactic?"

Regina jumped up from the ground and darted over to her, face blushing with excitement. "No, they don't! Isn't that exciting? This is a totally new discovery!"

Warding off her enthusiastic colleague, Rosanna pulled herself together. Getting excited here could lead to bad results. She was the rock of the team. She would get through this.

She walked up to the aliens, who all rotated to face her, their eyes blinking slowly. Damn, it would be hard to get used to that. She picked out the one at the front of the delegation and focused on it, trying to focus her attention on the creature's body language.

"Hello, my name is Rosanna. Do you come in peace?" she spread her arms out wide in a gesture of openness.

The lead creature burbled, tilting its head. Its eye widened, bulging from its octopus-like body. It was so beautiful. She found herself being drawn inside its boundless, scintillating colors.

She blinked and shook her head, the moment passing. When the creature failed to do anything else, Rosanna continued, studiously avoiding its brilliant eye. "We welcome you and greet you. If you do not disturb us, we will not disturb you."

She tried to figure out what else to say, when the creature rushed forward and seized her arm, tugging on it. It wasn't trying to kidnap her, but it clearly wanted her to follow. She frowned, not knowing if she should.

"Just a moment," she explained, taking out her communicator.

The alien stopped trying to pull at her, all three of them making a strange whuffing noise. She concentrated on the device, hoping she wasn't offending the strange beings.

Flipping to the right frequency, she called the captain. "Captain Roger, this is lieutenant Rosanna calling, please respond."

"Roger here, what is it now, lieutenant?"

Rosanna sighed. "We've hit a snag - first contact. Three alien creatures have approached and they seem to want to take us with them." The alien creatures continued to whuff. "They're a boisterous bunch. What would you like us to do?"

The captain grunted. "I'm not in a position to assist, but protocol dictates you should do what they ask until we're able to send down a team with the appropriate specialists. I'll consider the lift tonight scrubbed. Keep me apprised, Roger out."

By the book Roger. At least he wasn't breathing down their necks to get the ship salvaged, but now they were in unknown territory. Rosanna had never considered herself to be the most tactful person, and now she had been promoted to chief negotiator. And now she had to bring her full team together, which meant they were liable to get pissy. Brilliant.

She set her comm back to group chat. "Brenda, you better get down here, we've been ordered to play xenobiologist."

The comm crackled. "The only way I like alien life is under my boot."

"Well, you better hurry up if you don't want my boot up your butt."

"Sounds kinky. Brenda out."

Rosanna sighed. This was going to be a bit of a problem.

***

The aliens led them down a single path trail which ran down a cliff side. The scrub brush around them gradually gave way to stunted conifers and grasslands around the verge. They even had to cross over a stream or two, which had been bridged with neatly trimmed logs.

This pathway couldn't have been hastily constructed, but that didn't assuage Rosanna's suspicions. The aliens seemed nice, whuffing as they toddled along, but she had no idea where they were being taken. She kept her hand close to her side, palming her personal defense pistol. A last resort, yes, but she wouldn't hesitate to plug one of these octopus beings if they turned hostile.

"Look at this, lieutenant," said Regina, who was studying the local flora. "It looks just like a plum. It's curious how similar the vegetation is to what we're familiar with. Seems a bit strange."

Rosanna's eyes narrowed. They weren't stuck in some sort of AI simulation, were they? The lush forest they were entering seemed like something out of old earth. Before the nuclear wars.

Brenda grunted." Looks like a transplant world."

The phrase brought Rosanna up short. Yes, she had heard of the naive experiments earthers had made in their vain attempts to terraform worlds to suit their nature. It usually ended poorly, especially when alien life was discovered that did not appreciate the 'enhancements.'

Was this a similar scenario? If so, these aliens might not be happy about their presence. She wrapped her hand around her pistol in a death grip, looking all around her with a nervous tic.

She wasn't security, damn it! Her friendship with Sally, the security chief, wasn't nearly enough to prepare her for an unknown threat scenario. Was she missing something subtle they needed to know? She was so far out of her depth she knew she wasn't making good decisions, but there wasn't much choice. Not if she wished to avoid a tongue lashing from the captain.

When the aliens gestured towards a semicircular opening in the rock face bounded on both sides with arched evergreens, she summoned fake confidence. This was on her, and her team would look to her for guidance.

"Come on, everyone," she declared. "Time to see the hospitality of our hosts!"

Brenda grunted, hands in her pockets. Regina grinned and skipped forward with ebullience, stopping to examine a large, flowering plant. "Look at this!" she declared with curiosity. "It almost seems to be breathing!"

Rosanna sidled around her colleague, examining the flower. Its head was huge, the size of a dinner plate, twelve inch petals flowing out In a corona. Half way down the stem was a bulbous swelling that ran up and down the neck like an Adam's apple. The flower swayed back and forth, turning towards them despite the fact that there was no wind.

Realizing the danger too late, she attempted to push Regina out of the way as the flower expelled a large cloud of pollen with a loud whoosh. She coughed, wheezing as the irritant attacked her lungs. "We have to... leave!" she gasped.

Her vision hazy, she stumbled away from the cave, heart racing. More flowers surrounded them, hanging down from above and hemming them in from the sides. It was a trap! How could she not have seen it! She was such a fool!

It was too late to hold her breath. She had already inhaled too much of the initial blast. Maybe she could warn someone? She reached down to pull out her comm, but something grabbed hold of her arm.

Right next to her stood one of the octopus aliens, her hands and arms a scaly red. The hands felt warm on her arm, preventing her from retrieving the comm.

More than just her hands felt warm, now. Her entire body was flushed with heat, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to think. Her heart raced, blood rushing to her head. Right before she blacked out, a lingering thought bounced through her fading mind. What would the captain think of her incompetence?

***

She woke up to an annoying dripping noise, echoing from somewhere in the distance. She opened her bleary eyes, groaning at the aching pain in her wrists and legs.

She tried flexing her limbs, only to discover that she had been glued in place by some sort of secretions. Her utilitarian jumpsuit was missing, exposing her to the sharp, cool air of the cave. A soft breeze tickled its way past her privates and up over her well endowed chest, giving her the shivers.

Concentrating on her right arm, she pulled with all her might, looking at the opaque covering which held her fast. Hard as crystal, the coating refused to budge, gluing her to the wall from her wrist up to her elbow. It was the same with her legs, no joy there, either. She was a captive of the strange aliens.

She breathed slowly, refusing to panic. There must be a way out of here. Where had they taken her equipment? She made a visual survey of the area around her, taking care to inventory anything that might be of interest.

Luminescent fungus grew from nooks and crannies, illuminating the cave with an eerie glow. The enclosed area lacked stalactites and stalagmites, indicating a lack of groundwater. It instead looked like a giant hand had jammed itself into the ground, scooping out all the dirt.

The walls were smooth, coated with a glistening material that was hard to look at for long periods of time. She could see strains of blue and red in the reflections, a dazzling display.

A groan from the wall to her left focused her attention. She turned her head, pulse jumping as she realized Brenda was bound next to her. She licked her lips, dry from whatever that knock out pollen had done to her. "Brenda? How are you holding up?"

The moaning continued. "She's... in my head," Brenda complained, murmuring with delirium. "I must obey Her... yes."

Something was wrong. Rosanna twisted her head, trying to get a better look. She jumped, tugging against her restraints. On top of Brenda's head was a red octopus, perched on her skull like a hat.

Its arms waved languidly in strange patterns, the soft flesh stroking against Brenda's shoulders. She could see the suckers grasping gently. A faint hint darker red pulsed down its arms, circulating throughout the alien creature's body.

Shit. "Brenda, are you okay? Hold on there, we'll get out of here and get you some help."

Brenda's head turned to look at her, eyes cloudy. "Why does it feel so... good?" she slurred. "She's wearing me like a cheap suit, and I love it."

Rosanna tugged harder, but the secretions refused to budge. This was an alien intelligence far outside her capacity to deal with. She had studied the chart once, out of curiosity, and any being that could affect someone's mind would definitely have made the grade for quarantine. Possibly... total destruction. All of their lives were at risk.

"Just hold on, everything will be okay!"

That was a blatant lie, but she didn't know what else to say. Brenda might be an asshole, but even she didn't deserve whatever was being done to her. If she could just reach her comm... but no, she had no idea where they had taken her tools.

A clopping noise echoed through the cave, drawing her attention back to the right. Another alien, this one in the form of a quadruped, trotted into the cave from a hallway. It was colored the same red as the aliens they had initially contacted, its head in the shape of an octopus.

It was about the size of a large goat, with hooved front and back feet. Its taut skin was a ruddy red, hairless. Its belly dragged against the floor, distended with rounded bulges. It stopped and looked at her for a moment, the eye on its face glaring at her with intensity.

As she watched, a thick tube extended from its mouth, swelling and lengthening with increased blood flow. It looks like a penis, though the end had a well defined rounded opening. The tube lengthened, curling downwards from gravity, its surface glistening. To her shame, her thighs instantly became wet.