Alien Presence

Akimbo Gonzales started stripping out of his suit and laying it aside.

"What the hell are you doing?" Said Danica.

He looked up at her. "Skinny dipping."

He disrobed until he was down to a skin-tight fabric that covered his chest and groin, and then he jumped into the water. He took out chemical analysis device from the survival pack and started wading in towards the plants.

"I hope it latches onto your face." Growled Danica, but secretly she was cursing herself for not going first. Akimbo, had an annoying habit of assertiveness, which left Danica feeling not so much like she was pushing him forward, but that he was leading her behind him.

Akimbo looked up at her. "You should take off that suit. Whatever the hell captured us, it looks like it spent a lot of time figuring out how to make us comfortable."

Akimbo stepped up to the bulbous spheres that hung from the vines. "I wonder what these are. Maybe eggs? Perhaps this place is one giant incubator and we're just food for whenever these creatures hatch."

Danica squirmed at that thought and then moved the barrel of the gun from off Akimbo's body onto the hanging fruits.

"Well, let's see." Said Akimbo. The chemical analyzer was one long, thin metal rod, attached to a computer. Akimbo slowly sunk it into the milky white fruits, and looked at the computer read-out.

"Amazing," he muttered to himself. "Organic material: proteins, starches, carbohydrates, nothing toxic." Akimbo reached forward and grabbed the white, milky plant, and pulled until it popped off the stem, milk running down his fingers.

"Stop," gasped Danica, but Akimbo had already brought the greenish-white bulb to his lips and took a bite. A clear milky liquid dripped down his chin as he started eating.

"Good." He said. "Kind of sweet."

"That was stupid. You could have died." Growled Danica. Akimbo ignored her and kept eating. He pulled off another one.

"Here," he said, and tossed it to her. "Eat." She looked skeptically at the pulpy mess in front of her. "It's fine, the analyzer checked it. You need to eat."

Akimbo's concern for her only made Danica angrier. She remembered the report; Akimbo had been arrested for pimping out female crew on the lower deck. He had never gotten court-martialed probably, Danica suspected because Akimbo had given his girls to higher-ranking crew members who then protected him.

She peeled off the top of her suit, while Akimbo tested the darker fruit. The cool, moist air felt good on her arms and chest, breathing through her under armor tank top.

"This one is definitely toxic." He said, "I don't think it's an egg, but it definitely has some complex neurotoxins in it. I guess whatever trapped us in here didn't want us to eat this." Akimbo backed off and pulled himself out of the pool. Water clung to his tight clothes, and for a second, Danica could see every contour of his musculature underneath his under armor. "Let's see what's in the other room."

There was an arch in the wall that led through a stone hallway to another room. The other room was a hemisphere like the first, but this time the ring in the middle was smaller and covered by a metallic grill. As they entered, Danica heard the deep growl of a furnace, and light and heat started emanating from the grill. "I think it's geothermal energy," remarked Akimbo. "Simple but efficient."

"We can't assume anything." Said Danica. She was starting to get upset at how easily Akimbo ignored the gun in her hand while consumed with curiosity with the structure.

"And look here." Said Akimbo. There were small white chambers in the wall. As Akimbo stepped in, the wall closed in behind him, seamlessly disappearing.

"Akimbo. Dammit. Akimbo." Danica realized that she was scared, that as much as she hated him, being alone was worse. Then the door opened. Akimbo stepped out, naked. His body was exactly how she imagined it when he stepped out of the pool, hard without any body fat. His skin was dark olive, a dark trail of black curly hair trailed down to a trunk of a cock that hung between his legs. He stood naked and unconscious of it.

"I think this room is like a bathroom. It hit me with a pulse of energy and now my skin feels clean. I also had to take a piss and now I don't so I guess it took care of that somehow as well."

He looked around. "I guess this is where it wants us to sleep."

There were heaps of black furs that gleamed with an oily purple luminescence but felt like a soft, silky pelt in the corners of the room.

"No argument from me." Akimbo grabbed the survival supplies and his space suit and set it the corner of the room.

******

A few hours later and Danica's eyelids were beginning to droop in the warm bask of the central heat. She had needed to use the bathroom earlier, and after she had forced Akimbo at gunpoint to turn his back, and then stripped, she had entered the cylindrical machine.

A bright blue light enveloped her entire body and a pulse of energy passed through her, then steam shot out through vents covering her in hot, moist droplets of water that cooled against her skin. When she came out of the machine, a hot dry heat blasted her as the doors open, the air felt hot and clean on her skin. She gestured to Akimbo who was smirking at her, and after he turned again with a shrug, she pulled on her under-armor.

Akimbo didn't bother putting on clothes, instead wrapping himself in one of the dark black cloaks and sitting close to the fire. Danica could see him, deep patches of shadow, and slivers of skin reflected in the golden light of the vents. He was staring into the fire, ignoring her, and contemplating something with furrowed brows and eyes that were pits of darkness.

Suddenly, he surprised her by speaking. "We will need to find a way out of here tomorrow. Somehow we will have to learn what this place wants from us. It be best if we got some sleep tonight."

"You expect me to sleep with you across from me. Don't make me laugh."

Akimbo pulled the dark pelt from his shoulders, his arms were broadly muscled, like a gorilla. "It serves me nothing to attack you now. To survive, we will need to work together."

"I fall asleep and I wake up to you raping me. I know what you Kesslerites are like. You treat your women like dogs."

"No," Growled Akimbo, "A dog has more sense and would be a better companion."

"You want some bullet holes in that blanket."

"You fire in this room and you miss, the bullet just as likely to bounce off the wall and hit you, foolish girl."

"I'll risk it."

Akimbo paused. "You know nothing of the Kesslerites. Though you could do with being put on a man's knees, I am forbidden to touch you."

"Is that so." She laughed.

Akimbo spoke into the fire: "My people were the first to leave the solar system of Sol; the first to brave the depths of space; the first to set foot on a new planet. The seven Keplars, our dream, before we even knew what they contained; we went in search of them, on a journey we could never return from. Twelve generations born and died on those early ships, before we eventually arrived, and constructed a wormhole for you who came afterward. Twelve generations, seven hundred years, we made those ancient ships our home."

"You skipped over the part where you devolved into savages."

"Our culture changed it was true. We shed the trappings and accessories of sophisticated Sol. Our women were highly valued, and seeing their own value, and the lengths we would go to protect them, we made a bargain with them. We domesticated them."

"You enslaved them."

"Is the idea so terrible. We protected them, and fed them, and cared for their needs, and in return, under our training and disciplined hand, they serviced us. If you were to watch the face of one of my female pet beneath me, you would not thank their lives painful. Well---" He corrected himself, "perhaps some pain, for instructive purposes, but no meaningless cruelty."

"One of them?"

On my eighteenth birthday," reminisced Akimbo, "my father gave me my first pet, a ginger-haired sweet creature with such wonderful cries. The same whether I whipped her or fucked her. The first one is given to us. The others we must earn through deeds. I earned three others through acts of service to the Great Council and took one legally from a man I killed in a duel. Five I had in total and all great beauties and servile animals, but I had to give them away as gifts when I joined the Sol Confederation navy as a yeoman. They are all some other men's pets now. "

"So you had a harem. And remind me again why I should fall asleep around you."

"After the building of the Quantum Gates, we made an agreement with the Sol Federation, in return for not interfering with our cultural way of life, no Kesslerite male is allowed to take a Sol female as his pet. So you are safe. I will not leash you."

"What about the women on the Pegasus?"

He laughed. "Ship life is hard, especially for young, female crew members. When some of them realized how well I could provide for them, and all they had to do was give up their freedom and become my pet, they jumped at the chance. I gave them out to men on the ship, but at a steep price, and I made sure that they knew that I would protect them from any harm. These girls were used to a hard life, and once they became my pets they had lives of leisure. They jumped at the chance. Of course, once they surrendered to me, I had to teach them not to think of themselves anymore as humans, but as loyal pets, but they soon learned and performed as well as any Kesslerite girl. You may not be so different as you think."

Akimbo gave her a long look and for a second Danica imagined herself on her hands and knees with a collar around her throat attached by a leash to a strong, masculine hand. She imagined Akimbo's hands sliding up and down her body petting her, and spreading her open. Then she shook herself in anger.

"Don't think to try any of that stuff with me. I am your superior officer and am well within my right to shoot you for mutiny. I'm keeping you alive, because I think you can still serve the Sol navy, and help me get off this rock." She showed him the gun in her hand.

"You think you're the first female superior officer to threaten me. I know the real reason for your anger. The temptation is getting to you. You wonder what it would be like to give up that responsibility and trust in me to protect you. You wonder whether it might not be better that way, without all of your petty, female emotions getting in the way of our survival. The thing is, everything your wondering, you're right. You would be better off by giving me that gun, and minding me."

With an insufferable air of confidence, He turned away from her and wrapped the blanket around himself. Sooner then she wanted to admit he was asleep.

She woke up surprisingly comfortable, in a warm room, with a soft mink-like fur against her cheek. She lifted her head squinting and pushing her hair from her eyes, and noticed that Akimbo was gone from the room. She leaned up, startled, and grabbed her gun. He was gone. There was only one way he could have gone.

She stepped up and walked through the archway into the room with cistern. As she entered, she felt the moisture of the warm water hit her skin. The light in the room shifted from the orange glow of the furnace to the moon-like blue of the light coming from the clear pool.

Akimbo wasn't in the room, but something had gone into the water and plucked the dark, avocado-skinned plant (the toxic one, Danica remembered) from the stem. The dark, bulbous plant was on the ground beside the pool. Someone had bitten into it; there were teeth marks, and white foam was dribbling out.

Danica went back to her room and noticed that all of Akimbo's gear was still there. She reached into the bag and got the chemical analyzer. She quickly went back and stabbed the stem into the half-eaten fruit. Sure enough, the screen showed that the dark blotchy skinned fruit was the same as the green ones, except for a major dose of neuro-toxins, enough to kill a whale.

If Akimbo had eaten this, he should be dead, according to everything Danica knew about toxicology. But where was the body?

The hairs lifted on the back of her neck. With a sudden, nauseating realization, she noticed that the other hallway, the one that led to the sealed exit, had moved and was no longer there and that sometime in the night, a new hallway had been formed against the opposite wall, leading deeper into the mountain.

She walked down the corridor, deeper into the earth, and the tunnel quickly opened outward into a wide, spherical cavern. Without Akimbo, there was a gaping silence. The floors shifted into a walkway suspended above immeasurable space. Along the curved walls, glass terrariums displayed alien plant life, similar to what they had found in the first chamber, but in every possible hue and shape.

The causeway climbed upward until it reached a round disc-shaped platform suspended in the center of the cavern. As she got closer, a white light shot down from above illuminating the platform and the pale figure standing in the center.

Danica stepped into the light and faced the creature. A translucent white veil covered its body. It was clearly an alien, humanoid. Silver eyes stared at Danica as she stepped forward and waited for it to speak. She was shocked when it kneeled before her. She could see three sets of breasts outlined beneath the veil. The air suddenly smelled sweet.

"Welcome. I am Obeisant. I submit to your request for information, visitor."

"How did you know I wanted information?" Asked Danica.

"I was chosen to bear the aspect of servitude. I am now service rendered flesh. As you are now submission."

"I'm not submitting to anything."

"But you ate of the fruit. It has merged with you."

"Do you mean plants, the ones in the first room, what are they?"

The creature's eyes glowed blue and it lifted its---hers---Danica couldn't help thinking of it as her--- hands in supplication.

"The makers were creatures of infinite powers. They grew tired of living consumed with the multitudes of emotions and personalities within them. They strived to identify their own psychological states, collected them into specific ethos's, and distilled them. The makers became beings of neutrality and could choose any aspect at will. If a maker wished to exist in a particular state, he would eat of the fruit and have it merge with him. He would then become that thing until he wished to change."

"So the fruit is a parasite. Is it inside me?" Danica asked.

"The fruit is an aspect incarnate. The makers wished for me to serve so they had me eat of the fruit of service and made me as I now am. Now I exist to serve."

"My partner. Have you seen him? "

"One came early. The Domitus. He compelled me to serve him and I obeyed."

"Akimbo? Was it a human? Like me, but male?"

"The Domitus was once human."

A cold chill ran down Danica's spine. "Where is he?"

Obeisant looked confused. "He is here."

Danica heard a noise behind her. She turned and stared out into the void in front of her. In the darkness, a creature unfolded itself, turned and looked at her, and then scurried across the ceiling. Danica fired the bullets, exploding the glass terrariums seconds from where the creature was. As quick as a thought, the creature scurried away, shadows merging with its bible-black skin.

"He has eaten the fruit of Dominion and become one." Said Obeisant.

"What the fuck was that," Screamed Danica, but in her head, she knew what it looked like: Some sort of mutated cross between a giant centipede and Akimbo Gonzalez.

"He wants you. He is going to take you soon."

Danica turned toward the alien. "Don't try anything."

"I do not need to. He will take you. Go to him."

Danica backed away and headed down the stairs. She was acutely aware of her nakedness in her flimsy tank top and shorts and decided to head towards her space suit. She walked into the room, gun drawn. There were only three places where Akimbo could be: the water room, the bedroom, or the other hallway.

The water room was empty. Just the sound of water bubbling up from the cistern and flickering lights reflected on the ceiling.

The dark hallway in front of her was a gaping hole. Danica skirted that hallway and looked into the bedroom. There were the orange glow and piles of blankets. Danica pondered whether the thing that once was Akimbo could fit beneath the blankets, but then she decided it was impossible. She looked down the hallway. He had to be somewhere in there. If that was true, then she had him cornered, and easy enough to kill.

She took a step towards the hallway. Through the corner of her eye, she noticed that the bathroom was opened and light was trickling out. It was closed when I looked in the room, she thought. She turned and he was standing right behind her. With one swift movement, her gun was knocked from her hand. Then his large claws completely encircled her throat and she was lifted up with legs kicking above the ground.

The creature looked at her at eye-level, as she pulled weakly at the hands around her throat. The creature's face had large, silver-dollar, glowing eyes and a mouth like a shark that salivated slime. Black horns adorned his skull. A centipede body trailed down his back like dreadlocks made of spider appendages. Black spots began to form in front of her eyes as he pulled her towards his maw. A long black tongue snaked out and slapped across her face leaving a trail. "Sweet dreams, Princess." The creature that was once Akimbo growled.

****** She awoke again on the black furs. Her body was feverish and exhausted as if she was half-awake. For a second, she thought it had been a nightmare or fever dream. She lifted herself up on quivering arms. Even that action, exhausted her. Her head felt stuffed with cotton and her vision was blurry.

"Am I dying?" She wondered out loud. Her lips were dry and raspy.

She was about to collapse, when something reached forward, grabbed her by her hair, and held her body up. A ridiculously long thin torso stepped in front of her, with chitin skin and three thin talons for toes. A large black horse-cock hung between its legs.

The creature loomed over her and pressed its cock to her lips. "Eat." It snarled.

She pursed her lips and whine like a baby refusing food. He pressed forward, his precum dripping on to her nose, but she turned her head to get away. She smelled the scent of his pre-cum, in that instant, and her mouth began to drool. She was deliriously hungry and weak and the pre-cum smelled delicious.

Gingerly, she stuck out her tongue and lapped at his cock. From above her, she could hear the voice, like a shark, growling. "Good. You are weak from the transformation. You need to eat or you will die."

"What am I doing?" Thought Danica. She wanted to rebel, but her body betrayed her. Her mouth opened up shyly, and her tongue extended outward hungrily. He sunk the head of his cock into her mouth. Her jaw was distended holding the entirety of it. She could taste the milky fluid covering his cock and she unconsciously started to suck at it.

The pre-cum bathed her tongue and felt immediately soothing. Almost without thought, she began to suck at the tip wanting more. The action was soothing and child-like. Her fear dissipated and her mind went to mindlessly sucking at her lifeline.

The creature placed both of his clawed hands in her hair and started to push her head down on his cock. Rhythmically, he pumped her mouth. She wanted to resist but she was too weak and tired. Her thoughts were her own, but her feelings told her that his act of domination made her feel safe. He was showing he owned her that meant that he would care for her. It would start with her feeding.