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rotworld · 2 years

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2: Atonement

an alien is seemingly exiled to your remote outpost, abandoned without explanation. taking him in seemed to be the right thing to do at the time.

->explicit. contains noncon, terato, hunting, animal death, gore, feral behavior, predator/prey, mentions of hard vore

You know something weird’s happening because Albatross Outpost is crowded.

Nothing is ever crowded here. There are salvage company ships with a higher population than your entire backwater planet. Albatross Outpost is a glorified post office, a communications tower with the vague components of a town attached as an afterthought. Mail Day is an official holiday, an annual event when the nearest extranet satellite reaches the sweet spot of its orbit and the local servers catch up to the rest of human civilization, letting you send messages offworld for a few hours. It’s not Market Day, it’s not a festival, it’s not even particularly pleasant weather with the wringing heat of a merciless, glaring sun.

And yet, everywhere you look, you see people. The dusty, uneven lane affectionately known as Main Street is bustling with a sea of parasols and wide-brimmed hats, chatter and laughter and an air of excitement. There’s a line at the general store, people streaming out the doors and winding all the way around the building. Katri’s Repair is a green tent and a heap of scrap metal outside of a gutted hangar, but today, that hangar is packed and someone’s blasting party music with a bassline that rattles the foundations. REPAIRS 50% OFF TODAY ONLY proclaims a spraypaint scrawl on the concrete.

Could be a supply crate just came in, you figure. It’s always excited to get new seeds from Earth or the colonies. Could be a welcoming or going away party. You plan on asking once you’ve run your errands, but then you see a ship parked on the runway behind the comm tower. It’s a weird little thing, oblong and tapered at one end like a tulip bud. Not a design you recognize. The crowd gets denser the closer you get, but you see a clearing up ahead, a respectful perimeter.

And there, right in the middle, you see them for the first time.

They’re big. Thin and willowy, almost fragile-looking, but definitely tall. Jude, one of the comm techs, is a little over six feet and standing right next to them, and he has to crane his neck to meet their eyes. Beneath sleek, form-fitting flight suits, their bodies are shades of moss and emerald green, four arms and four eyes each. You hear a low, almost tactile buzz like a subwoofer rumbling. Jude looks terrified and speaks with exaggerated gestures. The exo he’s talking to tilts their head and starts pointing at the crowd.

You push your way to the front. Jude looks like he might faint in relief when he spots you, calling your name in a warbling, panicked tone. “Everything okay?” you ask.

“You didn’t check your email, did you?” he says, accusing.

“I never check my email, Jude. What’s going on?”

The same subwoofer noise vibrates against your ears again. It’s coming from the exos. You see them speaking quietly to one another, mandibles clicking as their mouths part along segmented joints. Jude introduces you, gradually placing you between him and the exos. “They’re an exolinguist,” he tells them, his words carefully enunciated. “They can speak better. Understand you.”

“Was an exolinguist,” you correct, eyeing him. “Jude, I don’t speak—”

The exo he’s talking to immediately crowds you, coming forward in two long strides to loom over you. They speak in quick, rumbling chitters that you don’t understand. It takes some back and forth, trying every pidgin you’ve ever learned, but eventually, you find something you both speak. “Taiek,” they introduce themselves, a hand on their chest, two more gesturing to their companions.

You return the favor. “Human,” you say.

The other two come forward, one shoving the other towards you. “Human. Yours.” And without another word, they abandon one of their own, walking back to the ship without so much as a glance back. Jude sputters in disbelief as the exo ship’s engine rumbles to life and lifts into the sky.

You try not to make anthropocentric assumptions, but the last taiek looks at you, mandibles flaring, sharp teeth bared with an awful, reptilian hiss, and you think it’s safe to say they’re not happy.

The taiek’s name is Uora. He doesn’t tell you this, nor does he tell you that he is a “he,” or that his exile is a form of “disciplinary action.” He just shoves a datacard at you and stares at the ground while you run it through your readtool’s translator. “You need somewhere to stay,” you say. Uora says nothing. You can’t help but notice that his file never said what he’s being punished for. Jude says he’ll try to get in touch with somebody about the proper protocol for a situation like this, but you both know it’s useless. Mail Day was a week ago. You’ve got another year before anyone offworld will hear about this.

“You’ll have to stay with me for now,” you tell him. Still no response. “Do you understand me? I speak hyuek pidgin, too.” Nothing. He sways lightly on his feet, like he’s half-asleep. “I’m parked over there,” you say, gesturing down Main Street. When you start moving, Uora follows. He walks with his head down, his body language closed and hostile.

It’s a long way home. You watch Albatross Outpost turn into a speck in the rearview mirror, swallowed by dust. You get the feeling he doesn’t want to talk, but an hour passes in silence and you just can’t take it anymore. “This planet is called HGC-2129,” you say. “But a lot of us call it the Grandest Canyon. It’s a joke. There’s a place on Earth, the human homeworld, with a similar name. It kinds of looks like it.”

You sneak glances out of the corner of your eye. Uora has his arms wrapped around himself tightly, lower arms clinging to the higher ones. He watches the rocky, desert scenery pass by in a sandy blur. Two of his eyes are large and flecked with blue, the smaller pair set beneath and solid black like marbles. “I don’t know much about taieks,” you admit. “Never heard of you or even seen any pictures. But if you need anything, just let me know. I’ll figure something out. Hopefully you can eat what we grow here, or I can synthesize something, at least.”

“...hot.”

You think you imagined the word at first. Uora’s lower eyes glance at you almost shyly and quickly dart away. “Hot?” you ask. “Are you overheated? Want me to turn up the air?” He makes a quick buzzing sound. You have no idea if that was a yes or a no, but you angle the vents towards him and he doesn’t complain. That’s all you get out of him the whole way back, but it’s a start, at least.

The sun is setting by the time you get home. The Grandest Canyon’s two enormous moons, silver and dusty pink, settle near the horizon. Uora files in behind you silently, looming uncomfortably close as you give him a tour of the house. You don’t have a lot of space, but there is a room full of old research documents that could become a decent guestroom. Uora says nothing as you explain this or show him the space. He doesn’t react when you offer him the couch.

“Where do you sleep?” he asks. His voice is strange, his words light and airy over low, scratchy rumbling, a constant growl in the background of his words. “We are communal. I sleep where you sleep.” You’re not sure how you feel about that. But when you show him your bedroom, he glances around, picks a corner seemingly at random, and sits on the hardwood floor. “We will speak in the morning,” he says, and that’s it. He shuts his eyes, his breathing slows so much you think he’s dead, and he’s out like a light.

You drape some blankets over him in the middle of the night. Uora’s lower arms knead the soft fabric.

“Do you need help?” Uora asks over breakfast.

He likes salt, you learn, and slimy things. Taieks apparently have food synthesizers, so it doesn’t take him long to work yours, but you have no idea what the abomination on his plate is. It’s spotted yellow and pink, moist and veiny, and it jiggles when he sits at the table to eat with you.

“Help with what?” you ask.

“You are a farmer. I saw your crops, and the animal box. You left the door open.”

“That’s on purpose,” you tell him. “I don’t really keep animals. There’s a herd of markwas, these reptiles native to the planet, that hang around here. They moult in the shade, so if I give them some cover, I can collect it later. It’s tough, useful stuff, good for lots of things.”

“Do you need help?” Uora repeats.

You shrug. “It wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think I have much for you to do, though. I’ve lived alone for a while so I’ve kept things simple.”

Uora considers this. His main eyes study you, the smaller ones glancing around the kitchen. He seems to be looking for something. “Why?” he asks.

“Why what?”

“Why do you live alone? You are breeding age. Appealing.”

You almost choke on your food. “Thanks?” you say.

“Why?” he presses.

“That’s just how it turned out.”

He seems to sense your unease. “I will help,” he declares. He slurps up whatever godawful thing he made and leaves his slimy plate on the table. “There are water animals?”

“Water animals? Like fish?”

“Fish,” he says, mandibles clacking. “There are some?”

That’s how you end up hiking to the nearest lake together, sitting on the muddy shore. You don’t feel the need to supervise him, but you feel bad leaving him alone. He’s already been abandoned once. He doesn’t ask for a rod or bait or anything, just a container to bring the fish back. You only realize what he’s doing once he’s already got his flight suit down to his waist. You’re not completely caught off guard. Some exos are casual about nudity, especially once they’re out of a ship and on a familiar, terrestrial environment. You fully intend to politely avert your eyes, but then you hear something peeling. Like an unraveling fruit rind, the flesh of his back splits apart.

He has wings, and they’re gorgeous. Translucent membranes catch the light like prisms, glowing under the morning sun. You’re surprised by their size, how they unfold from compacted bumps on his back to broad, shimmering sails. He stretches, rolls his shoulders, and his wings flutter with such speed they send little waves across the lake’s surface. When he takes flight, it’s breathtaking. His lithe form soares across the water with avian grace.

And then he strikes.

The movement is so fast it’s nothing but a blur to your eyes. He doesn’t stop or slow, one hand plunging into the lake, sending a fountain of water sparkling across his wings. It takes less than a minute from takeoff to landing, clawed, prehensile feet landing in the mud right in front of you.

“That was amazing!” you tell him.

He doesn’t seem to think so. “I was aiming for two.”

“I’d have a hard time catching even one.”

Uora sets the fish in the container, his lower set of hands absently fidgeting and cleaning the first. “Game,” he says, then buzzes, eyes narrowing. Not quite the word he wanted, you think. “Hobby? For fun, not for work. I like to catch things.”

“That’s a useful skill,” you say.

You can’t quite identify the expression on his face when he looks at you. His mandibles flare and then fold back into place. You see a long, black tongue lick across his sharp teeth. You’re staring, you realize, and quickly look away. “Very useful,” he agrees, almost purring. It’s easy to blame the scorching heat for how warm your face feels.

The new routine is effortless.

Uora wakes first. Sensitive to sunlight, he’s up and moving when the sky starts to lighten from black to deep blue. He unwraps himself from the blanket cocoon that’s gradually amassed in his corner and tiptoes to the kitchen. He’s learned which floorboards creak and moves soundlessly through the house. By the time you’ve dragged out of bed, he’s set the table and made both of you breakfast. He prefers fish over synthesized food, but he still adds an ungodly amount of salt. You talk about nothing in particular. You ask him, just once, what he did to get sent here, and his mandibles lock stiffly against his jaw.

“I should not be here,” he says quietly, just the faintest, vibrating hum beneath his words. “It is not right.” He doesn’t speak to you for the rest of the morning.

By noon, you’ve been out to tend to the crops and he’s checked the markwa shedding box. Sometimes, a few of the critters are still in there, rubbing against the rocks and hissing at the sudden violation of privacy. He’s been bitten a few times, but their fangs can’t get through his carapace far enough to inject any venom. On Market Days, he catches fish in the morning to sell. People stare when you get to Albatross Outpost but less as the weeks go by and the novelty wears off. Katri mods your outfitter so he has something other than a flight suit to wear. He makes a draping garment, a sash that folds over one shoulder, around his torso, and hangs in front of his pelvis. Interesting, you think, because there’s nothing there, as far as you can tell. At least, nothing external.

At daybreak or sunset, he glitters. There are patches of chitin on his hips and shoulders that shimmer at just the right angle. With the curtains open, the setting sun spills through the kitchen windows during dinner and Uora is effortlessly beautiful haloed in light. There are so many little things he does that you notice with fondness. The way he hums, those little subvocal noises that tell you what he’s saying without words. Warbling when he’s thinking about something, pitched and choppy for surprise, that low, purring growl for delight. It hits you suddenly one evening that you like him. You’re far from the first person to harbor an interspecies crush, but you try to ignore it. There’s still this uncertainty nagging at the back of your mind.

You dig through your cluttered spare room sometimes, searching the fragments of your old life for research papers and old exo files. You want to understand him better. For a while, you don’t find anything. No records of contact, no cultural exchange programs, not even a homeworld listed. What you have is probably outdated. You’ve been out of the field for a while, and offworld information is a luxury out on the Grandest Canyon.

There is, however, a report you manage to find one night. Sitting in the middle of the floor, surrounded by boxes overflowing with old datacards, textbooks, and scribble-filled notebooks, you stumble upon it completely by accident. It’s wedged between unrelated field reports, a stack of curiosities you must’ve gotten from a colleague years ago. The word “taiek” is never mentioned, but the description is a perfect match. Tall, bipedal, vaguely insectoid, capable of space travel and maybe even terraforming. The research team kept a diary detailing the usual expedition minutiae, sample collection, interviews, the occasional photo. The exos are friendly but not particularly talkative.

And then, a couple weeks into the research team’s stay, something goes horribly wrong.

You think, at first, that it’s an error. The files must be corrupted. The digitized diary entry is empty. Switching to the image scan of the original page shows you a creased and partially-shredded page of notebook paper. There are stains and splatters, bloody fingerprints all across the bottom of the page.

Written in a hurried, messy scrawl are the words, “THEY ARE EATING US.”

The pictures are harrowing. What was once a neat, orderly base camp has been utterly razed to the ground. Nothing is left. Makeshift labs and living quarters have been torn apart like paper, gouging marks left in the steel like some horrible thing teething. Wounds are deep and mangling, large chunks that snap clean through bone and leave gaping, red holes behind. There are places where the ground is saturated with blood. A series of photos shows a trail of carnage, bits of bloodied clothing, equipment and human bodies like gruesome breadcrumbs leading out of the camp and into a looming forest. The dead are nothing but pieces, discarded limbs and skull fragments with scraping marks etched into the bone.

“Hungry?” Uora asks.

You drop your data reader and it clatters to the floor, your heart pounding. Uora takes up the entire doorway, blocking your only exit. He stands there with a fresh fish, still dripping lakewater. You look at the gasping thing clutched in one of his hands—long-fintered, clawed hands, and as it writhes and squirms, right before your eyes, one of his lower hands squeezes so hard you hear something snap and it goes limp.

“No,” you say weakly. “No, I’m—I’ll be down later. Don’t wait up.” You have to stand up. You feel too vulnerable sitting there, engulfed in his shadow. Uora’s small eyes glance at the datareader on the floor, but his larger eyes never leave your face. He says nothing. Every memory you have since his arrival races through your mind. Has he ever done anything threatening? Ever tried to hurt you? He can hunt—likes to hunt, told you as much himself—but that doesn’t have to mean anything. Uora is your friend, isn’t he? You can’t just make assumptions like that.

The room is stiflingly, suffocatingly hot and sweat dripping down your back. Uora’s rumbling takes on a pattern you don’t hear often, something disgruntled. Finally, he steps out of the doorway. With one last look over his shoulder, he steps out of view. You don’t hear him go down the stairs, but you wouldn’t. He’s sneaky. He knows just where to step to avoid making noise.

With shaky breaths, you sink back to the floor.

The comm techs send out heat advisories and a drought warning to all Grandest Canyon residents via email. You never see it, but you know all the same. The red line on your kitchen thermometer keeps climbing as the days go by.

Uora starts eating synthesized food again.

He sits across from you with that thick, pink jelly quivering on his plate. Feeding is quick and efficient with all of his jagged mouthparts. His mandibles pin the wet, squirmy mass in place as his monstrous teeth grind it into paste. His tongue darts out, licking bits of gristle from the pointed end of one mandible. He catches you staring. He doesn’t say a word.

“Tired of fish?” you ask. It’s supposed to be a joke, but it comes out nervous.

“Variety is good,” he says.

You push your food around on your plate, uneasy. Uora watches your movements with unnerving focus. “I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

“I will check the animal box.” He leaves in such a clumsy rush that he bangs his knee on the table. You find yourself peering through the curtains after him. Uora’s slim back and tense, muscular shoulders glint in the early morning light. He seems paler than usual, more seafoam than emerald. You find him walking up to the markwa box, his four eyes fixed on the writhing mass of creatures gathered in the shade. He seizes one by its long, ropy throat. It hisses and rears back to bite his fingers, fangs scraping uselessly across the back of his hand. Your heart leaps into your throat and you busy yourself with the dishes. The water running doesn’t quite mask the awful, shrill sounds of a creature screaming, squealing, the crunch of flesh, tissue and bone violently compacted—and then deafening silence.

Bones.

Nothing but bones.

There were reed-like plants, swaying water grasses and croaking marsh creatures all over this lake, sleek silhouettes darting between lakeweed stalks, and now there is nothing but bones. Piscine with gaping sockets, half-moon ribs, skeletal fins and flippers, carpeting the lakeshore. You stand there with your heart pounding in your chest and sweat pooling between your shoulders in the awful, suffocating heat, and you’re afraid to go home.

We need to talk.

You practice the words in your head as the sun sets. The cadence, the confidence, the way you will carry yourself. We need to talk, you’ll say, and you won’t back down. You wipe the sweat from your brow and shoulder through the front door, eager for a shower.

You run right into Uora. He catches you, a steadying hand on your shoulder, a lower hand grasping your hip. You mutter a “thank you,” and pull away, or try to. He doesn’t let go. “Uora,” you say, a tremor in your voice. He says nothing, but he rumbles to show he heard you. It’s lower than usual, more powerful. The vibration travels through his hands and fizzles on your skin. “Can you let me go, please?”

You’re reminded of the day you met. It’s like he was sleepwalking. Hearing, but not quite listening. Trapped in his head. You thought he was distressed, understandably upset about his situation, but was that all it was? There’s something different about his eyes. He’s turned from seafoam green to almost gray, his carapace dull and sick-looking. You hear his wings unfolding and the hand on your shoulder squeezes just a little too hard.

“Hot,” he says through gritted teeth. His rumbling is unbearably loud when he speaks, hurting your ears. “Bad. Can’t think. Hungry…” His mandibles spread open in a grasping, prey-seizing motion and you jerk violently in his grasp. One pointed tip scrapes your cheek just as you manage to free yourself, stumbling back towards the door. Uora’s eyes are wide. His mandibles click shut but they’re trembling, scraping against his face. “Go,” he mutters.

You take a low step back. Another. You put the dining table between you, feeling blindly behind your back for your keys but you can’t find them. You twist, take your eyes off of him for just a moment, and he makes a sound you’ve never heard before, a wild, howling roar. His wings splay open, flinging aside your dining table like it weighs nothing. “Go!” he shouts. You don’t look back.

You can’t outrun him. You know that. Can you hide? Can he track you? By smell? Infrared? You don’t know. There were so many things you should’ve asked him. Dirt and gravel crunch beneath your boots as you sprint across the wilderness. Flatlands as far as the eye can see. You run for the lake and the bones of everything that came before you. There are prickly woodlands if you follow the river, dense shrubs and wildlife. Will that distract him? Will it deter him at all? That deafeningly loud buzz fills your head and rattles your chest. A winged shadow swoops overhead.

You’re going to die. Out here, in the dark, in this godawful heat, in the middle of fucking nowhere, and no one will know for months. You run until your lungs are full of fire and your legs are aching, threatening to give out beneath you. Sweat drips into your eyes and all you can see is a smear of silver in the dark, the moon reflected on the lake’s surface. You don’t think. You don’t plan. Your ankle twists in the mud and you go down screaming as liquid cold bursts and swallows you whole. And then there’s new fear, water filling your aching lungs, pain as you grope for something to hold onto, something to right yourself, not knowing which way is up.

The buzzing is a dull hum, a song far above you. Something strikes you, scratches you raw and bloody. You hold onto that clawed hand and you don’t let go. Uora strains and struggles but you’re no fish and he goes crashing into the lake.

You see spots. White light. The moon is a watery, melting circle. The world whirls around you at breakneck speed and your hands scrape the bottom of the lake, all of those little bones slicing up your palms as you are dragged back to the surface. You cough and sputter, gulping down cool, night air. Uora is heavy on top of you and he’s so loud. You hear him taking fast, ragged breaths, the wet slap of his waterlogged wings against his back.

“Sorry,” he says. His hands are all over you, rough and painful. You don’t know what he’s doing, why he’s hurting you, sinking his claws into your shoulders and thighs, and then the air hits your bare skin as he tears the damp, ragged remains of your clothes apart. You gasp his name. Uora rests his forehead against yours. He makes a miserable sound that vibrates in his chest, an animalistic wail. “I should not be here,” he murmurs. “It is not right.”

Something hot and long and pulsating throbs between your legs. You never get the chance to see it. Uora rolls you onto your stomach and overpowers you easily, dragging your frantic, wriggling body back under him. “Wait—Uora, stop!”

“Sorry,” he whispers. “Sorry. Sorry.” His upper arms wrap around your stomach, pinning you to his body. His lower hands grab your hips, lifting them, his claws sinking into your skin when you try to squirm free. “Sorry,” he says, and what must be his cock prods against you, threatening to penetrate. “I will not eat you. I promise. I will not, I…” He groans and his hips buck against you, his tendril slithering around as though tasting you. “I will bite. I will be…cruel. I will not eat you. I will try not to.”

That’s all the warning you get before he tenses pounds his entire cock into you in one hard, surging motion, punching all the air out of your lungs. You can’t even scream. The wheezing, miserable noises you make are just whispers. You can’t hear anything over the hum that starts up within him, that rumble returning even louder than before. It makes his whole body vibrate, you discover, your nails raking helplessly through the mud. Uora’s mandibles scrape down your back as he slumps over, blanketing your back. His thrusts are mercifully slow at first but they’re deep, his cock never fully leaving your body. He’s torn something, you’re sure of it. If you had the strength to maneuver yourself, you’d see blood trickling down your thighs and streaking his length.

“Will not eat you,” Uora murmurs, even as his mandibles stab into your shoulder to hold you still and the needlepoints of his teeth turn your skin to tenderized, gummy mush. “Promised. I promised. I will not. I will try…” You feel him quaking with exertion as he lifts his face, one hand stabbing into the ground beside your body to anchor him. “You have been so kind to me,” he says softly, one of his hands sliding between your legs. You want to tell him no, to push it away. You don’t want him to make you enjoy this. But he’s so careful, so incredibly gentle with you, mindful of his claws as he works you with his fingers. This is the tenderness of someone who loves you. You can’t understand how he does it while he fucks you bloody.

Just as you begin to adjust, your breathing even, the pain excruciating but predictable—his pace changes. Uora’s legs bracket yours as he properly mounts you and he starts pounding into you with even more speed and force. You feel his length sliding against your sore inner walls, a long, shaky withdraw before he spears you on his cock again. Every movement is pure violence and domination, not chasing pleasure but some other, even more mindless need.

His lower hands are restlessly exploring, squeezing you, stabbing almost instinctively anywhere soft and tender. He grasps you when you start to slump, keeping you right where he wants you. The hand between your legs loses rhythm, forgets what to do. It finds your throat and squeezes, and you fear for one agonizing moment that he’s going to kill you. Snap your neck with nothing but the flick of his wrist, so fast you won’t see it coming. But he never does. His hips keep pumping into you, his cock drilling into your weary body, the slap of his hard, chitinous hips a thicker, more solid slap than flesh against flesh.

“I will not eat you,” Uora mutters, a chant, a mantra under his breath. “We will…we will speak in the morning.”

You would laugh if you had the strength, the air, the space for anything in your body but Uora’s thick appendage. It seems absurd to talk about the future, to even consider it. You don’t think you’ll even make it through the night. But Uora stops thrusting just long enough to reach down, to find your hands with his trembling, upper hands and clasp his fingers over yours. The gesture is frightening. His hands are so much larger, his claws sharp and pricking even from the sides. But you feel how he shivers and you hear the breathless apologies between his desperate promises, his insistence that there will be something after this.

As his pace quickens again, you close your eyes and try to believe him.

#rotpeach writes #original #goretober #i mentioned it last year too but for clarification im not into soft vore or what most people think of when you say vore #this is the gore-heavy threatening to take bites out of somebody variety #i think hard vore is the right term i just want to make sure everyone knows what theyre getting into lol #id call it cannibalism but theyre not the same species

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etymologyofmind · 10 months

Text

Pushing the Bounds

Previously...

And now...

Within the body of a ship, normal space was usually taken for granted. Certainly, there were occasions where anomalous this or unprocessed that made it through the shields or warp fields, but usually it was a pretty stable environment, by design. Most species who travelled through space needed such stability, integral as it was to biological function, so it was uncommon that the inside of a ship endured abnormal conditions for very long. Automation kicked over, suppression systems kicked in, and sometimes, in dire scenarios, atmosphere kicked out, with a number of safety protocols aligned to trying to keep crew in when the rest of it had to go out. MacDougal’s Gambit, however, was such an audacious plan, that much of the routine protections which had not been disrupted by the predation of the pack had needed to be put on standby, or disabled outright, to allow the effort to take place.

On the bridge, a decision had been made to press on into the unknown in a desperate bid for survival. Controls made of light and energy had received inputs calculated by a team of mad geniuses who had proposed that the best way to squeeze power out of dying engines was to literally squeeze it, and had thus fabricated a circumstance where the ship’s warp field—its tether to reality in the much more abstract stratum of subspace through which it travelled—had been compressed and focused through a lens of spacetime which would theoretically vault them across an unexpected expanse of space, while leaving behind the impression they had been destroyed by the forces they toyed with. Combining theories of transporter mechanics and warp field theory, gravitational force and spacetime lensing, the crew of the Vellouwyn had stacked edge case against edge case into a faint chance of success. As soon as the final keystroke was locked in, powerful mechanisms of science distorted the powerful forces of nature, and the battered ship leapt through the eye of the needle as if pursued by angels and demons alike, pulling their warp bubble with them in an inversion field which had the anticipated effect of destroying the warp focus gate.

The unanticipated effect was that it had pulled subspace through with it, and though the Vellouwyn’s jump was intended to be brief and stealthy, the hole it ripped in the fabric of the sector falling away behind it was anything but.

Deep in Engineering, Crewman Owouom Hotler was manning a monitoring station, a third-tier backup in case something went wrong. He was no warp expert, no engineer in fact, having a specialization in exolinguistics and exopictics which came naturally to his race of polyglots, but the Gambit was so unconventional that it was considered to be an all-hands-on-deck scenario, and no member of the crew was found resting during the jump. When the moment came, however, it was immediately apparent to Hotler that something had gone wrong, and that he was quite possibly the only crew member who would not be cripplingly affected.

The Vohn Barran people were few in number: their kind were probably an engineered species, derivative of some other which had either been made extinct or had left the Beta quadrant behind long ago, and the few colonies which persisted had been run by the Emerald Chain for centuries. Literal slaves, unable to function without the life support systems provided by their dominant owners, Hotler’s kind had been given to industrializing the least hospitable environments imaginable, working through asteroids without life support, class Y planets, and other such terrain while their populations were managed like cattle. It had been barely half a century since the Federation had liberated them, but the Vohn Barran had taken to their freedom fervently, and invested their gratitude and passion into the society which had given it to them. Regardless of the efforts of federation scientists and the persistence of the Vohn Barran people, there had yet to be developed any therapy or procedure which could fully liberate them from their life support apparatuses, as an un-augmented Vohn Barran had never been found to be compatible with any of the standard environments favoured by other species.

As such, when the Vellouwyn fell into subspace in its compressed envelope of reality, Hotler found himself suddenly buoyant, not as though gravity had failed, but as if it had thickened into a fluid state. The light of the ship took on a distinctly blue cast, dark and deep with shadow, and nearby holograms and projected controls distorted into fragmented apparitions. He felt the pressure of the environment around him pressing down dangerously on his leathery outer skin as the nictating membrane over his eyes slid into place reflexively, and the environmental collar he wore continued to provide sustenance as he flailed to get his bearings, but it was barely a heartbeat before he recognized that none of the rest of the crew would be able to endure these conditions like he could.

Point of fact, a crew member nearby—his friend, Crewman Quorrok—flailed in a look of sudden panic and agony, and started struggling to find footing in an environment which offered him little purchase. From the corner of his eye, he could see that further down the engineering section, the Saurion exobiology specialist who had taken such an interest in him, Crewman Solnus, was scrabbling at the deck plating to try and find proper purchase as he struggled to move aft. Hotler knew that if there was anything to be done—and he did not know if there was anything to be done—he would need to act fast. Glancing over his controls as he had been drilled to do, the readouts told him that something was wrong with the warp field dynamics, beyond what had been anticipated by the Gambit. It was compressed, as expected, but distorted, almost as if it had produced a twist in its projected frequency, and it rotated around the ship like a screw. He would not be able to do anything from this station, but if he could reach the emergency controls that they had set up at the injection chamber…

Hotler had aced courses in zero gravity training. Moving in low to no gravity environments had been bred into the instincts of his people. He had also mastered courses on various other special athletics, from aquatic to climbing, high gravity to low atmosphere, and the adaptable Vohn Barran was in his element here. Catching a hooked toe on the edge of the console behind him, he clamped his hind-heel onto it so that he had a solid grip, then bent powerful legs to launch himself down the channel along the bottom level of the engineering lower deck. The warp drive, in its horizontal configuration, was not a standard for Star Fleet ships of this century, but the Vellouwyn was nothing if not unique; it spanned nearly four decks in length, with scientific research stations studded along its length, and the foremost segment now missing to have formed the warp lens they’d just launched themselves through. Kicking off of bulkheads and grappling with ladders, he sailed over Solnus’ head, not pausing to give him any fruitless comfort, and made his way to the emergency control station.

Midway along the warp core, Hotler came upon the scene. There was a cross-brace here at the second segment of the core where power systems ran through from floor to ceiling, and wall to wall. If anything aboard the Vellouwyn could be considered ‘central engineering’, this was it, and for the Gambit, most of the important officers were here. Warp Systems Specialist Jan’aar was reaching for one of the consoles, his craggy Xindi Arboreal eyes bulging with effort and asphyxiation, while nearby the Denobulan-Antaran that served as Chief Engineer, Huda Vantel, floated as if transfixed by some unseen spike. Pratt Denning and Tendan Omar seemed to be struggling with one another, trying to right themselves and panicking for the resistance of the other, while the Tellarite specialist in Fundamental Forces, Fargan Dend, was swiping at something half seen, which Hotler’s broad-spectrum vision told him was probably the Holographic CTO, trying to manifest in the broken light. None of them were very lucid, nor very much in control, so he kicked off of the bulkhead, moving to the console that Jan’aar was groping for and assessing the situation.

The information on the console was not helpful; Hotler was, again, not an engineer, and it was much more complicated than he was able to interpret. However, one index along the side listed a surprisingly large number of defected safety protocols, and levels of threat and risk reaching well outside of range, next to a glyph which was flashing ominously with the words ‘Emergency Abort Sequence’. With no better option, the Vohn Barran tapped the glyph, and suddenly the world collapsed desperately back into focus. The klaxon sound of red alert howled desperately around him, nearly masking the repetitive whumph as the bodies of his fellow crew fell heavily to the deck around him. He suspected that the scene was similar throughout the ship, and hoped he’d been fast enough to have spared his ship most of the damage. An instant after the blue light swung back to a fuller spectrum, Doc snapped into existence, checking Hotler’s unresisting form aside to feverishly enter commands into the console. “See to the team!” he barked; “Get me Jan’aar, I need him to cap this reaction!” was all he said before investing his full attention into the work.

Hotler was, unfortunately, also not a medic, but the recent endeavors with the pack hunt had left him with more insight and trivia into how his more normally adjusted crew worked with injuries and trauma. He could probably stem bleeding, certainly knew what a tourniquet was, but wasn’t entirely sure how whatever had just transpired would have affected a space-normal humanoid body. He leaned down next to Jan’aar, and, mercifully, found him already trying to recover. Blood flowed from his nose, and, surprisingly, his ears, which Hotler suspected was a bad sign, but the Arboreal was resilient, and both waved the Vohn Barran’s help off, and accepted his help up, with good humour. Getting him leaned against a console near Doc’s position to recuperate, Hotler started working his way around the engineering nerve center, working to try and get the team stable.

It wasn’t long before Solnus joined him, looking little worse for wear, probably somewhat more resilient as a Saurian than some of the others: amphibious nature ran among his people, and he had redundant membranes like Hotler’s nictating eyelids and an impulse which sealed his nostrils when submerged that probably served him well. The Kiley, Pratt Denning, was snoring fitfully in an unconscious state which wasn’t something Hotler wanted to risk disrupting, and the Fargan Dend had pulled himself up beside Jan’aar to get to work on whatever it was they were doing. Hopeful for a general recovery, he allowed himself a moment to relax. A moment after his muscles untensed, he felt a hand grip him by the elbow, and, startled, turned to see Doc, the Holographic department head of the Technology division who’d pushed him aside scowling at him. If he could sweat, this would be where he would.

Doc looked him up and down, callously took a grip on the breather which was anchored into Hotler’s face, and gave it a firm, but gentle, shake. “Seventy-three seconds, Crewman. That’s worth a commendation. Go see who else you can help; I’ll be filing this in my report.” He smiled a half smile, which looked begrudging on his stern face, but there was unmistakable pride in the holographic eyes. “Check in with Sick Bay and see if they need you first.”

Then he was gone, back to the console, chattering with Jan’aar and the others to try and deal with the technology of the situation, leaving Crewman Hotler more off guard than he’d been when the world fell out of the warp bubble. Mutely, he turned and walked towards the corridor with the turbo lifts, intent on making his way to Sick Bay as ordered.

Surprises waited there, but he didn’t know that; not yet. Nor, unfortunately, did anyone else.

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