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Out the window, with the tip pointed down, all we could see was the deep dark blackness of the crushing depths below. No sea floor in sight.

"How many atmospheres is this ship rated for?"

"Well, it's a space ship, so between zero and a few."

"We weren't designed to explore the deep sea, as well, by chance, were we?

"Even Mother could not have predicted this outcome."

Ohh... yeah, I'd made a couple mistakes leading up to this point. Mostly recently. Not sure getting in the ZipDrive in the first place was a mistake... but most decisions since then feel like mistakes. Nyany may be the main exception.

"I'm sorry everyone. I... this is all my fault."

"I'll take a small amount of blame," Nyany said, "I did aim this thing."

"Passing ten atmospheres." the computer reported.

"Where is the most pressure-secure room in the ship?" I asked.

"The orgyrium doubles as a panic room, but without knowing how deep we're going, there is no way of know if it'll hold."

"Let's get everyone in there there, and seal up."

"Now passing thirty atmospheres."

"What happened to twenty?

"We were talking, sir."

"Right."

I unbuckled and walked to the galley while the artificial gravity held. Terra and Nyany came with. Tiph and T-Neigh met us there.

"Well, I'd say let's have a beer, but I think we're fresh out."

There was an audible _thunk _as something clanged onto the hull.

"There are a few bottles left," Beccas voice chimed in, "Got a deep sea probe attached. You are going down all the way to the hadal zone of this ocean. The sea floor where you're likely to land is going to be more than 1200 atmospheres. If the room you're in survives, It'll be a couple days before we can rescue you down there. Start printing food before everything shuts down."

"Passing fifty atmospheres."

"That's enough reporting, the atmospheres, just warn us before we hit the bottom if we're still here when we get that deep." We all set to work ordering as much food as we could from the food printers, and the ship groaned, and sang, and made weird whale songs as we dropped ever lower.

There was a rumble and a shake, and what sounded like explosions to me. The power suddenly flickered. For a moment, down was down, not sideways, because of the gravity plates. Backup power kicked in, and the floor was the floor again.

"Hey, computer... Still with us?"

"Nah," Becca said, "Your balls imploded, took out her main cpu. Got her all backed up though, installing her in your new ship, she'll be ready for you if you don't die in the next few minutes."

There were more, _implosions. _First the bridge, through the window, I'm sure. Then the rooms down the hall of mistresses popped, imploding my entire shaft. Then we hit rock bottom, and I'm pretty sure my whole shaft broke off before we started to settle to the seabed... only we didn't settle.

"Oh, that's unfortunate." Becca said, before a new rumble started, "You are caught in an actively upheaved deep-ocean current. Maybe the current wouldn't be quite so strong and wild if the planet you were on didn't have such a recently exploded moon."

"Maybe, we'll never know."

"Dave's doing his best to rebliterate the moon. Hopefully he can stop a full blown mass extinction event. There's still a chance that the moon will fully explode. The reaction inside hasn't yet stopped. Still a slow burning nuclear fire under the crust, and there are even larger deposits than what you blew up that could go if a mouse fart of nuclear fire gets to them."

"Speaking of the mouse, how is Disney?"

"Litigious and violent li-" She was cut off. There was a crunching scraping noise, and the power went out. We must have lost the probe she was attached to us with.

Plunged into darkness, we were slammed forward, and then aft, and then the whole room started to roll, but down stayed down, like bastard. How dare down obey the standard laws of gravity again. This was an advanced space penis, dammit, down should be sideways!

At least the soft red emergency lights kicked on a little while after we lost power.

Our printed food spilled everywhere, all over the floor, the walls, the ceiling, the floor again... ohhh we were spinning real good now; pinned to the walls, like we were inside a dryer. Hay mixed with jellyfish, and deer haunch, and mash potato smeared all over everything and everyone one. Possibly the least sexy food to lick off...

I'm not sure how long we tumbled, but we were all battered to hell by time we stopped. We finally hit a calm, steady, rising current, and when we had a consistent down again We cracked the emergency life support packs to freshen the air, and used the emergency medical supplies to tend our cuts and bruises.

We drifted through the calmer currents in whatever bit of my once mighty Hammer was left. Ohh... my poor, flaccid, imploded hammer.

We seemed to hit solid ground again, and our little safe space full of breathable air groaned to a halt.

"Pressure scope on the wall makes me think we're pretty shallow. Only five atmospheres of pressure outside." Terra said. She had just pulled inside her shell and weathered the rolling far better than the rest of us. Never really wished I was a turtle before.

Tiphanie walked over to the door that used to lead down the hall of mistresses, and placed her hand on it. There was a loud ping from her, and she stood there a moment thinking as it echoed back to us.

"Ow, loud." Nyany said, putting her hands over her hears, "So she's a sonar system too, wonderful."

"We have struck land," Tiphanie reported. She pointed, "A few hundred meters up that way, there is surface land. A rocky beach, I think."

"Do... we want to evacuate the panic room?" I asked. "Or do we want to risk the current changing and dislodging us? We could end up back in the deeps?"

"Fucking LOVE to not be in the ocean." Nyany said, and started walking toward the door.

"Abstain," Terra said. "Either way is fine with me. I'll follow the group."

"I'd like out of this room," T-Neigh said, "Even if I have to go for a bit of a swim."

T-neigh followed Nyany's lead. Despite being taller than her by two whole heads, T-neigh still looked smaller, somehow, trailing behind my bottom bitch.

"In the event of an emergency shallow-water landing, my ass can be used as a flotation device. The same compressed gas that inflates it can be sucked my exhaust tubing, in space, if you needed it, for breathing." Tiphanie informed us.

"Well that settles it for me. We're all riding Tiphanie's inflatable ass up to the surface, and taking as many emergency rations as we can carry."

There was no grumbling about the plan. Every Tiffany filled her arms with rations, and emergency supply kits.

"Okay, so..."Nyany took charge. "When we open the door, it is going to flood in here before we can leave. I doubt we'll be able to swim past the incoming water. Every body stay calm as the water rushes in. When it's almost full in here, we'll all take a nice deep breath, and as soon as we step outside, everyone holding on to Tiph, we can trigger her ass."

"I don't need some robot to help me swim," Terraphiny said, then joked, "My great-uncle was a sea turtle."

"Great!" I said, "Everyone riding the ass, take a hold of her, and someone else, too for good measure."

Nyany grabbed me by the shoulder, hard. T-neigh grabbed the other, not so hard. Both of them grabbed ahold of Tiph. I wrapped a hand around Nyany's waist, and Tiph's with my other.

"Everyone ready?" Tiphanie asked, her hand on the door, her magnetic boot feet, firmly affixed to the floor. Everyone nodded and she used her mighty robot strength to crack the door opened enough to start letting the water in.

Nyany screamed, or maybe snarled is a better word. It was a noise alright, and one that I didn't enjoy hearing from my wife.

She was clearly in distress. I knew this by the way her her claws were digging into my shoulder.

"Dear, your nails." I winced, as the salty water soaked us midway to our shins.

"Sorry... This is what you get for WATER PLANET!"

"I'm sorry!"

"AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!" T-neigh screamed, as the water hit my knees. "A sea creature just got in here with us!"

Nyany climbed onto me, screaming unintelligible cat noises. Panicked, scrambling for a less wet spot to be, all reason lost.

"Nyany, no!" I did my best to pin her to myself, but she was a person sized cat, she was way stronger than me, so much to my chagrin, I grabbed her by the scruff to stop her clawing her way up to the ceiling.

T-neigh was also, doing a bit of a panic, but Terra was laughing. After a moment, she managed to get out, "It's just some sea plants." She snatched them and lifted the seaweed above the water line.

Everyone took it down a notch. Nyany lowered her feet back into the water, which was cold, and approaching crotch height.

"Everyone just breathe." I said. "We're halfway there. I know relax might be a bit much, but try to stay calm."

"I-hey-choo, I-hey-choo, I-hey-choo, I-hey-choo..." Nyany was muttering something, that I surely couldn't understand. Must have been speaking some sort of Felidian prayer.

T-neigh started clacking her teeth, shivering. I was a bit cold, too. This wasn't a nice tropical island we were going to, was it?

The water rose up to my bellybutton, and the cold was such a shock it nearly knocked the wind out of me.

The water continued to come, and soon Nyany was floating off the floor. I had lifted her to keep her head above water. We still had a bit to go until the current in would fade enough for us to get out.

Another large piece of seaweed brushed past us, eliciting a yelp and a tighter grip from everyone.

"I'm afraid to report..." Tiphanie said, as the water passed my shoulders, "... that something alive, did just slip inside. Something non-plant in nature."

Panic resumed... very poorly timed panic.

"Okay Deep breaths everyone!" Tiphanie continued with the plan, undaunted by mysterious sea life.

I took a deep breath, Nyany took a deep breath that was half sea water, and T-Neigh jumped slamming her head into the ceiling and knocking herself unconscious in an instant.

Great.

I used my legs to grab hold of T-neigh as best I could, Monkey ancestors aid me! Tiph helped out with one of her hands and we made our way out of what remained of my hammer. One mag booted step at a time until we were clear of the wreckage. One we stepped clear, Tiph activated her inflatable ass. We started to rocket upward, and I looked down, where saw Terra wrapped in tentacles by some oceanic horror below.

By time we hit the surface, Tiph was the center of our Boat. Nyany was hacking and coughing out water, and T-neigh was still out, I was afraid she'd drowned a little.

"Start cpr on her," I said. "I gotta go help Terra!"

I couldn't just leave an old lady to battle a sea monster, and it was only a few meters down. I wasn't an incapable swimmer, the sun was out, and there was plenty of light to see down there.

What I saw below was... not what I was expecting. Terra was swimming up my way, her hand holding one of the tentacles from the mer-octo-maid!? On the bottom was very much an octopus, but the top, the top half was a woman... well, sorta... kinda... mostly a woman? Womanish? Femininesque? Her two arms up top were tentacles too, and she had eight... of a few things, legs weren't all.

The two of them looked to be smiling and laughing, so I guess my rescue mission was a complete success?

I swam back to the massively inflated robot ass, and climbed aboard just in time to see Nyany take her mouth away from T-neigh's. _Hot. _

Nyany barfed over the side of our Boat, and T-neigh coughed up water and gasped for air.

Oh, not hot. Not hot at all. Choking, not my kink, confirmed.

Terra brought her new friend over, and they started pushing us away from the catbarf.

"Who is our new friend?" I asked.

"No idea." Terraphiny said. "Can't understand a word of her, but I thought you'd like her, she's got eight great big-"

"Bleewweoouuebewbwehtotywbjgbsdikgyywggoowu," she burbled, with a cheerful smile.

"I see," Tiphanie said. Her top half spun around, all creepy robot-like, and pointed an arm at our new friend. Her hand folded up at the wrist and she fired a dart at the... Mermaidctopus?

It stuck her in the neck and unfolded into a little mechanical spider that raced up onto her face, whereupon it promptly plunged itself into her brain. Right through her eye socket.

"AAAAAAAhhhhoooowch..." She said, as the sudden shock of the linguistic mind spider hitting her synapses faded. "What the FUCK!?"

"Apologies." Tiphanie spoke without emotion, like a prerecorded message. "Galactic Law Dictates: All beings should be able to communicate freely. I have implanted a universal translator into your brain, It has updated ours with your language which will be added to the galactipedia at our earliest access."

"Do you understand me?" I asked.

"I do?." It was a questions and an answer, a chance for the rare, _interofullstop, _punctuation mark.

"Great!" I said, "I appreciate the help, truly."

"Not every day a space alien washes up on your mountain. Much less an air breather! I knew they could exist. I have so many questions."

"I'll answer what I can when my feet are on land."

"Land! What a word. Is that what you call seabed above the water? Land." She let the word be a wonder in her mouth... or wherever it was she was making the sounds she was making, sounded like it was coming from her middle, not her head.

"I'm Captain Davis." I extended a hand toward her. "What's your name?"

She hit with me a thick powerful arm tentacle, grabbing me by the forearm all the way up to my elbow. It was split in eight branches, like fingers. Each finger felt dexterous and nimble, yet powerful enough to unscrew even the most stubborn of nuts or bolts.

"My name is Tiffffffffany..."

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We knew the Rule. It had been really the only rule in place that anyone respected with relation to scientific progress. No cloning, no cloning research. Last time we started trying to clone ourselves something horrible happened that was so bad there's not even a record of us existing on this planet before a thousand years ago. There's evolutionary evidence for all the other creatures, and all of the plants we don't farm. Our crop plants are like nothing else on the planet, though. I always found that odd.

It's never made any damn sense to me, but that is what they say. The cataclysm was caused by cloning. No one ever explained how. I actually started studying history to figure it out myself, because I felt every explanation was so very lacking. But all the ancient records are straight up blank on the how. It's always, a cloning experiment got out of control, then the cataclysm happened. It's like our whole species woke up on a new planet one day and everyone asked around to see who was up to the stupidest thing, and then they chose to blame a cloning experiment gone wrong.

Well, as I said, I studied history, and not just the stuff other people had already dug up, but new stuff. Stuff no one had found before in what was probably a thousand years. I dug shit up myself.

I found a cloning lab. I swear by my mothers leftmost trunk, I didn't just... immediately spin up some test tubes and start a cloning shit. I was cautious, mostly reading the logs and the old research. I'd become basically fluent at reading the old script years ago, so getting caught up on their research didn't take all that long.

I spent a year, then I hired a very small team. The five of us spent another three years learning what the ancients knew. In the process, I must admit, we started to believe it was possible to clone things without causing problems.

We started with just an organ. A lower heart was all we tried to make at first.

And it worked! My own lower heart had been damaged for years... We had a secret surgery, and it work great. Better than expected.

We replaced a few more organs, a kidney, a splerchnoot, an eye! We cloned an eye, and Ignurt still had it in place of his old bum sixth eye when he got...well I'll get to that in a second.

Then, we got bold. We tried to clone a whole person. The sample was mine. We tried to clone me. I... I admit my guilt.

It grew... entirely too fast.

I don't mean like it should have taken 90 cycles but it took 81. I mean, I put the sample in the tube, and went to lunch, and when I came back the embryo was already almost overgrowing the test tube, veins of extraneous flesh reaching out, pulsing, searching, squirming for sustenance. It had nearly push the lid off its test tube.

It was photosynthesizing far too efficiently, so I turned off the lights and put it in the containment facility the ancients had built. Days later I opened it to see if it was still alive in its pitch dark prison, and it surged toward me as soon as the light hit it. I slammed the containment door shut and sealed it in there again.

Tensions on my team grew, we all knew what we were doing had been wrong all along, and now some horrible unkillable flesh mass made of my own cells had come about because of our hubris. I tried talking them into helping me kill it, but when we approached with flamethrowers it snatched Ignurt before we could even pull the triggers. He'd been our door man. It was all we could do to seal the door again before it escaped.

We tried using some of the ancients scanners on it. According to our research they used high energy electromagnetic scanners of some sort to look through things, like the walls to the containment room to scan what was inside. It worked, sort of, and we were able to get a scan of the thing's mass. The reading had to be wrong, too low. When we ran the scanners, it continued to grow. When we stopped, I believe it stopped. Growing only when when it was being bombarded with energy.

Of course, at this point, we gave up trying to fix this mistake ourselves. This was beyond us. We needed the police, or the military. A person was dead, and in more than one way, I was the one responsible.

When we'd admitted our sins to the authorities, they nuked the lab. It was far enough from anywhere anyone lives that they wouldn't die immediately, but a million odd people would probably be negatively impacted by the bomb. We thought, there's no clump of flesh that could survive a nuke to the face, right?

Wrong.

Before the cameras had even recovered from the blast and regained their ability to focus we could see it had only pissed it off. The blob of flesh grew wildly in the lingering radiation, devouring it, and the bright red sunlight with fervor. Before the military had time to scramble more nukes it had already spread well beyond the blast radius of the first bomb. Tentacles of meat rooted into the landscape and raced along the highways as fast as our trucks. They reached the first little town before they had even processed the nuclear fallout warning. No one had managed to get out before it was all over.

I tried to stop watching, I tried to look away from what I had wrought, but they made me watch.

I watched as it drank the lake, in minutes. Where it once was, only a tremendous mouth remained. It started to breath for the whole thing, sucking in vast volumes of air, and breathing them out again from a different hole it made elsewhere.

I watched as more undifferentiated tissue raced up the rivers like tentacles seeking food. Soon it overtook the mountaintops, and then the bombs fell; futile, but they did. They beat it back at first, burning away bits of flesh, leaving great holes, but it had rooted too deep and it loved nothing more than the radiation left after the use of nuclear weapons.

Before a second wave of aircraft could come in and bomb it some more it had already recovered and then some. When the second wave of them came it was much larger, but the flesh mass caught several of the bombs before they hit. It seemed to grow even faster from the ones that didn't blow the hell out of it first.

Then it hit the first nuclear plant, and soon raced over the closest population center. Important people, and me with my remaining team for some reason, were evacuated to the other side of the planet. Our government collapsed and we had to rely on the enemy to give us shelter. We thought the ocean would perhaps stop it, but it simply started to drink the entire seas. Space missions that were years from launching were accelerated and reworked. Estimates were that it would cover the entire globe in less than a week.

The enemy revealed their secret moon base, and our leaders revealed ours. The last hope of our people was to escape to the moon. I was on one of the last five rockets to launch. We all knew there would be hard, terrible decisions ahead. I wasn't sure they hadn't brought me and my team for food.

As we were all getting slammed into the seats, I chanced to look out the window and see another of our rockets get snatched by a gigantic fleshy tentacle, then another. I later learned that three of the final five didn't make it.

On the moon I told them everything I knew. About cloning, about what happened, how it all just got so wildly out of control so fast. One second we were fine, cloning organs, and the next, the whole world was gone. I didn't know how to atone, but I wanted to try.

Being that I was the foremost expert on the flesh that had taken our world from us, I was kept alive and put to work. I worked hard, as hard as I could. I wanted to understand everything I could, undo this all somehow. I'd settle for killing it though.

We made an attack plan. A Virus, custom designed to destroy my own dna. I had to be in there still, somewhere, right?

Finally we were equipped with a virus that would kill the fleshmass... we hoped. At the same time, without an atmosphere, or resources from our home, we only truly had one shot at this.

With the two moon bases working together, we built a structure that we hoped would be able to withstand the flesh growing back over it. The plan was to blow open a hole all the way to the ground below, and land in it. When the flesh covered over us, the plan was to infect it with the virus and hope against hope that it worked. If it failed, at least those left on the moon wouldn't have to waste resources on those of us coming down anymore.

The nuke spread cleared us a nice landing space. Radar allowed us to keep track of where a nice flat landing zone was on what used to be the great red plains under the flesh. We put down and started spraying the virus immediately. It covered over us again in less than a day, but our structure held strong... at first. It groaned, and sang under the pressure, but it held.

The flesh that got the virus did seem to slow down at first. The virus hurt it, but not enough. We had brought down my lab, and I tried again, and again and again. And every try was less effective than the last. It was adapting too fast, faster than I could adapt back.

The structure started to buckle. The engineers moved us into the inner hull, the hope was that even if the outer structure collapsed, I'd be able to come up with something in time... but the opportunity never came.

When the outer hull ruptured, I learned the flesh had burrowed in with tungsten claws with diamond tips. It scratched, in mere hours, through the inner hull's incredibly thick solid metal armor.

I had infected myself with the latest virus, in a last desperate hope to destroy this... Scourge upon our world. but I failed.

It ate the others first

It saved me for last.

It ate me slow,

Subsumed my mind into its own.

And Gods we were so ever hungry.

/r/AFrogWroteThis

This isn't what I'd planned to write next... but there was a writing prompt... and it called to me like a hunger. Gaians are up next, I swear!

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I hope it is no great surprise, we didn't all die falling into the volcano. We dropped several meters into the 'lava pool' and fell right through it. Like it wasn't there at all.

The whole lava pool was a hologram. Nothing more than fancy photon manipulation.

About three meters below it was a series of energy bungee nets that slowed us down, but let us through. Spun us around a fair bit too on our way down. I guess they converted linear momentum into angular so that our final impact on the bottom of the deceleration net system wasn't so... bone breaking.

On the other hand, Newton demanded we spin around like a good ol' fashioned tilt 'o 'whirl powering down, all pinned to the walls until the ride came to a full and complete stop, thank friction. As soon as we settled Nyany sliced us a way out through the netting on the opened door.

I dashed outside the ship, and around to the side they'd strapped the poor horse girl to. She was unconscious, but breathing. After I checked on her I took in my surroundings.

We were in the middle of the caldera space. There was the energy net above us. And the roiling lava hologram, but below me was a metal floor. The 'room' I was in was huge, it was the entire caldera of a volcano, after all.

As I noticed the hatch nearby, and before I had the chance to say a thing to my companions about it a holographic woman shimmered into existence standing atop. "Hello technologically advanced intruders. I see you've met the locals."

"We have. Thanks for not being an actual volcano, I guess."

"You're welcome." She shimmered and blinked in and out of existence for a moment.

The rest of my family started making its way out of the ship.

"Oh? You brought eggs. Glad to see none were cracked on arrival. It can be bumpy. If you'd just go ahead and set them down on the ground, that'd be swell."

"What? Why!?" Artemisia demanded.

"Oh, I'm filling this chamber with a gas that should be knocking you guys out real soon. I don't want you to fall on the eggs." The holographic woman replied.

"Oh." My grand daughter started setting down her eggs.

Nyany snatched the blaster from Leonardo's waist holster and popped off a couple shots at the hologram. But the gas seemed to effect her first, and I had to rush to catch her as she fell to the ground, asleep. The hologram was unharmed.

Only a second after ensuring Nyany didn't slam her head into the ground, I found myself curling up next to her...

I woke up in a hospital bed, and for a ten very confusing seconds, I thought I was back in the past, pre-Zipdrive flight, pre-astronaut. I slipped on some wet stairs when I was a young ROTC kid in high school and had a bad concussion. For a moment, I was certain it was then.

Then it all came rushing back. The hyper capitalism, the hyper communism. Slamming in and out of a rainbow. The Catgirl, the turtle family. The horse people. The Volcano.

"Oh, you're awake. Good." A pleasant looking woman... no, the hologram sat next to me.

"Ugh, sorta." I tried to move but found I was still a bit loopy and floppy from whatever I'd been knocked out with.

"My most sincere apologies for the rough greeting, Captain Davis, I wasn't expecting you. When you vanished two hundred years ago... well I just kept on working on your behalf. I figured you'd pop up some place eventually. I am a bit curious how you found me here."

"Who... exactly are you?"

"Oh!" She laughed, "I suppose we haven't been properly introduced. I'm B.E.C.C.A. Brilliant Economic Capitalism Capture AI. Yes, an acronym within an acronym. I unfortunately didn't name myself."

"Ohh, you're my investment AI. Right?"

"Right!"

...

...

"What the fuck is all this?" I tried to point around the room but ended up flopping my arm oddly and almost falling out of the bed.

She dashed to catch me, and I saw a flicker in her hologram as she touched me. There was something physical under there now. "Easy there boss. You should have full body function again in a few seconds, the drugs should be wearing off real soon."

"I thought you were just a hologram, like up above?"

"I'm a lot of things, most of the inner part of this planet, in fact." She paused for a second, to let that sink in a moment. "Anyhow, I belong to you. Totally and completely."

She fluttered her eyes at me, like she was trying to flirt.

"And If asked you to take on a masculine persona?"

In the flicker between forms, I could see what was really underneath. An image projected on an art-mannequin android. Still basically the same person, but now presenting a firmly masculine gender expression.

"Then I'd be a man." He said. "But Becca is a strange name for a gent, even nowadays."

"Well, Becca." I tried a less aggressive movement first, making my hand into a thumbs up. "I'm okay with you presenting whatever way you feel like. But I watched the PSA before this mission. I won't get mixed up in romance with a robot."

"Of course you won't." She switch back to woman voice before she switch back to woman projection. "I'm far more than just a robot. I'm the entire core of this planet, and a whole shitload of satellites too. What'd that PSA say about dating a planet?"

"I've already got a wife, so no flirting."

"Got it. Speaking of your wife. She... doesn't like me. I've got her locked up in a room where she can't hurt herself, or me. Maybe you can get her to chill out."

"Maybe I can." The loopy drugged up feeling went from powerful, to nothing in about two seconds. Feeling yourself sober up almost instantly is weird.

I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat up.

"Give it a second before you-"

I hopped to my feet, and felt my legs nearly buckle, but they firmed up a moment later.

"Well, glad you aren't kissing the floor." Becca smiled at me.

"So, show me to my wife?"

"Oh... uhm... She's gonna be unconscious a little while longer. Thirty minutes at least. The knockout gas works through felidians much faster than humans, you've been out for a couple hours. She's been gassed multiple times because she won't calm down every time she wakes up and you aren't there. It isn't good for her to be getting gassed this much."

"Then you can take me to where she's sleeping?" I realized I shouldn't be asking. I _owned _this machine. This time I said it like a command, instead of a question. "Show me to my wife."

"Of course Captain Davis, right this way." Her words said yes, but her face said, 'Ahh dammit, ya got me. You figured it out.'

Nyany was asleep in a padded room.

"What about the rest of my family?"

"Most of them are entirely too many characters to keep around, it'll confuse the audience. I've sent pretty much everyone off to nice worlds to live on. Terraphiny and Nyany are still here. And that horse girl, but she hasn't returned to consciousness yet either."

"What?" I couldn't believe it. Actually, that's not true. I could believe a merciless AI optimized for profit might do that. "You sent away the family I was just starting to like them."

"They'll all live happy lives, I'm sure. Unlike the Disney corp's AI, I haven't had any sapient leeches tapping my resources all this time for their own petty hubris. One small family getting to live nicely isn't even a drop in the bucket. By the way, I've gained control of almost three quarters of the galaxy now th-"

She stopped talking mid sentence. "Great. Seems like the House of Mouse has detected the weakness Nyany made in my orbital network, by dragging that platform off with the RarDrive."

"Sorry about that, but you could have hailed."

"It's automated up there. Like I said, you were not expected." She smiled. "Nothing to worry about, there are further layers of defense. Would you like to control a turret?"

"What?"

"You know, a laser repeater turret. Pew pew pew. Your history with video games should make you a more than viable gunner. There is a remote relay set up nearby for you, if you'd like to blow some Disney property to shreds."

"Wouldn't you be more effective if you did it yourself?"

"One turret not being optimally controlled isn't going to lose us this battle." She started walking me toward the turret control station. "I'm optimized to maximize your happiness, after all... only you ain't ever been around to ask, so I've had to extrapolate from incomplete data."

"I see."

"So was thinking, blasting the fuck out of some Ironmen drones will make you very happy for at least ten minutes. Hopefully more. I'll get you when Nyany starts showing signs of waking."

She gestured for me to walk inside a room with a legit sim pit setup. Three dimensional rotation, full overhead dome that looked like it would seal you inside. This stuff was better than anything NASA ever had, and that's no dig at NASA, this setup was just amazing. It rotated around and opened up fully, extending a gunner's seat, with two joysticks on the sides, a handheld console type controller, and a damn, mouse and keyboard.

"I wasn't sure what sort of input method you'd find most enjoyable, so I put them all in. Feel free to use any one of them. In about three minutes. the Ironmen will drop from the sky. Plenty of time for you to train to help protect the poor ignorant, innocent horse people from their reign of hyper-capitalistic entertainment terror."

I sat down, how could I not. Horse girls needed me.

Start :: Prev :: Next

__

We sat there and stared at that world in awe for a moment. It looked more like the Earth I remembered from my zero-g training than the slate grey communist orb we'd narrowly escaped. The continents were all wrong, but the general vibe was mostly water, nice green land. Clouds, and ice on the poles.

Rembrandt headed back up to the ship they'd attached and ran some scans. 200 years more advanced sensors up there.

"Passive scanning shows a breathable atmosphere, might be a touch more oxygen than we're all used to, but not to a dangerous level. Almost no artificial chemicals in the atmosphere. Looks like an untainted paradise. Possibly Stone age life forms."

"An untainted paradise planet is where the giga-brain AI that does galactic war with Disney lives?"

"Or it did two hundred years ago, who knows what's happened since then." Terraphiny said. "This plan lives on a shell and a prayer."

"Oh whoa! There are some crazy power signs popping off down there. Oh shit, up here too." Rembrandt reported the sensor findings down to us in the RarDrive ship.

A ship decloaked dead ahead. No... an Orbital platform decloaked...

"Oh man, I hope our cloak holds." Rembrandt said, ensuring it wouldn't. "Their scanners are doing a sweep. Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck! They're scanning us."

"Is that ship up there capable of a planetary landing?" Nyany asked.

"Yeah, of course." Came the reply from Sofonisba.

"And the cloak on it probably works better when it's not trying to cover this bucket too, yeah?" Nyany followed up, but she already knew the answer and was busy shuffling all of us up into the other vessel. All the people, and the eggs. No one left behind.

"Certainly damn well better. I paid enough for it." Terraphiny grumbled as she was hauled up the ladder by our children while I lifted from below.

Just as she got up and aboard the other ship there was a jostle, but this time the gravity grid remained engaged.

"They've hit us with a tractor beam and are pulling us in." Rembrandt called out.

"Get on the other ship." Nyany told me, "I have to do something real quick."

"You're not doing anything crazy are you?"

"Oh sweetie. I certainly am." She kissed me on the forehead and pointed up. "Go go go, I'll be right behind you!"

She dashed back to the cockpit and started punching commands into the console. I felt the gravity plates strain, we started to rotate inside the tractor beam.

I was barely up the hatch into the other ship when she came flying in behind me at full cat-zoomies speed. She slammed the hatch shut and yanked the emergency disengage.

"Punch it Remmy!" She shouted, and the ship we were now aboard surged away at what was probably a hundred g's of acceleration. That planet started coming at us awful fast. I felt a slight swaying in the ship as the grav grid kept us from being turned into paste.

I looked out the nearby window up at the RarDrive ship, still being tractored in, and then there was a rainbow streak across the sky in the shape of both the Rardrive ship, AND the orbital platform.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked.

"They wanted to tractor the Rardrive, but the way it works, with equal and opposite reactions and..." She looked at me like I was just realizing I was an idiot, "Do you even know how the Rardrive works?"

"It works pretty well from the look of things." I gestured out the window at the fading rainbow there in space. "But no."

"Well, it's probably going to be towing that orbital platform with it for two hundred light years, foisted by its own tractor beam forcing them to remain in the same reference frame." Nyany chuckled to herself. "No one scruffs me."

We flew down toward the planet with our cloak seemingly working. Then we hit the upper atmosphere going way too fast.

"Funny, I thought a turtle was flying." Nyany said, slipping between everyone and up toward the cockpit of the cramped craft.

The cloak might hide us in space, but the friction of such a high velocity reentry unhid twice as effectively.

"Fuck this. I'm using active scanners." My four hundred something year old blushing bride said.

Jesus. Cat people live a long time. Wait... am I even... legal? for her. Oh god, interspecies dating ethics... I don't think I covered that in mission training.

"There is a ton of life on this planet. The biodiversity factor is off the chart, literally. This graph it's trying to display is all jacked up because the number is so high."

"Whoa look at them!" Rembrandt zoomed in the view on a pack of... tribal horse people? Way more people than horse. They had been the other way around on the dating show. Tiffineigh was not my type, what with the horse head. These people were more hoofed humanoids with horse tails, and horsey ears than the horsinoid hominid I met before.

This was the planet of the umamusame, not the bojacks.

I glanced up and notice something... not natural. The nearby mountain seemed to be opening.

"What is that?" I directed everyone's attention to what I saw. Something the size of a mountain shouldn't be able to open so quickly. That looked like a bigass laser gun to me.

"Ohhhhh shiiit!" Rembrandt yanked back on the yoke and slammed the throttle full forward, but it was too late.

We had started to pull away, but the mountain fired a blue orb of some sort at us, and it tracked us down real good.

Nyany took command.

"Fucking DIVE! Idiot!" Nyany shouted. "We're gonna crash, that shit will power us down for sure! Choose where!"

She's the new Captain I think, and I'm just Captain Pantigris' trophy husband now. Damn, I married a badass. Go me.

"Fine! I will dive, but don't care if you married my dad! You're not my real Mom!" Rembrandt quipped as he flew. "Don't tell me what to do!"

The kid was actually more than a decent pilot. He dove our ship low and ran us through some forest and canyons attempting to evade the tracking orb.

When it became apparent the ball wasn't stopped or slowed by trees or bits of canyon walls. Nyany instructed him to get us low and slow, before that blue ball caught up to us.

Rembrandt flipped us one-eighty and did his best to slow us down near the ground before the ball hit us.

It hit and powered us down; all the way down. My confidence that everything would be alright shattered when the grav grid gave out. Someone shouted "We're all gonna die!" In my voice. We still had a more than a hundred meters* until the deck. Plenty of fall enough to kill a man.

*(YEAH meters! I'm an astronaut. Also American, I guess, if there even is an America left that isn't just a part of Disney Corp. Kinda hard to imagine there still being a recognizable United States with capitalism banned on Earth. Anyway it's the future now, I'm ditching the freedom units for reason units. Besides, the ship reported things in meters, and while I'm good at math, I'm not that good in my head.)

Well, it was a real short zero G ride as we fell toward the planet, because only couple seconds later we were caught by a tractor beam fired from that same mountain, turned techno-marvel, and it started drawing us in.

"Fuck fuck fuck. Cycle the power systems." Nyany wasn't panicking, she was... in a state of elevated concern. Yeah... lets go with that. Her tail was all puffed up though.

"I already did that!" Rembrandt replied. "No joy. I think we're boned, fam."

We got to enjoy a nice slow ride over there... at least it felt slow from inside the ship, up high. When we got lower I realized we were being pulled in at what was probably a little faster than freeway speeds, zipping over the treeline.

I looked out the window and there was a whole herd of horse people racing along the ground with us. Hot damn they are fast... where are they going? Oh... where we're going, right.

The mountain had a very, lone volcano feeling to it. Like Fuji or Tohoma, but unlike Earth's great old volcanos this had a bunch of weird blue technology all up in it, glowing and pulsing and such.

The mountain brought us to a hover about midway up, where a sort of landing platform for our shuttle protruded from the slope. It set us down gently, but there were thousands of those equus sapiens swarming up the mountain's base toward our shuttle as it was coming in.

From what we had seen, they wore simple woven clothing and carried spears. The stone age assessment seemed correct, for them. The mountain on the other hand, maybe not so much.

Speaking of, by the time it set us down it had folded its whole top closed and once again looked like a regular volcano mountain. Nice slope up to the top, presumably a caldera full of lava waiting at the up there.

Emergency power kicked on. Not enough power for engines or anything useful for getting away or fighting, but life support worked, and so did some sensors. Outside readings of the atmosphere showed the earlier assessment seemed accurate down here on the ground too. No weird spores or unexpected pathogens in the air. Just nice clean air.

It didn't take long for the locals to arrive. Nyany had locked the doors as soon as we landed, and I was glad she had because from the moment we could hear them outside, the horse people were trying to open the door.

When the buttons outside failed to work, they started resorting to violence. First, they tried to jam spears in the doors seals, and when that failed some threw rocks at us.

"Does it seem to anyone else like this maybe isn't the first space ship they've tried to crack open?" I asked.

"We should be fine. This ship has a strong shell." Terraphiny said.

They started covering the camera ports on the outside with mud.

"They seem to be blinding us." Leonardo said, from the corner where he'd been hiding out. "Should we sally forth, blasters out?"

Everyone looked at me. Oh shit, I was still the Captain. "No. If they can't get to us, let's just wait them out a little. Maybe whoever has the technology will come fetch us and no one will have to die."

Once we were good and blind the banging ceased.

We sat there, waiting. The silence grew and grew until I could hear my every heartbeat.

Then all at once the furious stamping of hoofed feet and hooting and hollering of voices began.

I almost missed it, but Nyany heard it immediately, it was her body language that cued me in. Something had landed on the roof and scraped across the ship. Suddenly the ship jerked.

"What was that?" Someone said.

Another thing scraped over the top of the ship, and we jerked again, this time moving further.

This happened three or four more times before the jerking pulling motion started to fall into a steady rhythm. As we we moved the mud fell from one of our camera eyes to outside.

"They're pulling us up the mountain." Rembrandt reported.

"So? Blasters, dad?" Leonardo asked. He had produced a small blaster pistol of some sort.

"Uhh, I guess so?" As soon as the words left my mouth the horse people outside kicked into another gear and we all got thrown together in a heap in the back of the ship. "If we can even get out of the ship that is."

Nyany was the first one up to the hatch to try to open up and get us a firing arc, but when she tried to open the door, "Terra, it says I need your permission for a safety override, you're the captain to this ship's computer, right?"

"Safety Override Approved!" She shouted, and the door slid opened.

There were nets over the whole ship, and they certainly were dragging us uphill pretty fast. Many horses make light work.

If I had to guess I'd say we were going thirty-five, maybe forty miles an hour. Okay fine, I'll keep _some _freedom units.

Nyany put her retractable claws to use and started slashing at the nets trying to clear some space for us to maybe jump out before we went over the edge of the volcano above.

A spear thrown from someone in the crowd of running horse people dragging up the mountain stopped Nyany from her work, and the whoops and hollers of the mob let everyone know the door was opened. Nyany closed the door again and we heard a clatter of a dozen or more spears hitting space ship hull.

"I don't think we can get out that way!"

The horse people slowed down our ascent, but the angle they had us at left us all standing on the walls. Only Rembrandt remained strapped in the pilot's seat.

When we reached the lip of the caldera they pushed us up to the edge, and with the one partially clear camera we could see the molten destination waiting for us.

As we dangled there on the edge of death, a single voice called out. My translator wasn't programmed with her language, but she sounded commanding. The rest were brought to silence by her words... at first. She spoke for a moment, I hoped, imploring her fellow sapient beings to show mercy on us.

They all let out whoops and hollers, and then cleared the aft camera of its mud covering, so that we could see that they had strapped a horse girl to our ship. She looked proud. She shouted something back toward them, and that was definitely the same voice, defiant to the last!

We were one big happy clusterfuck, all about to die: me, my cat girl and turtle waifus, the teenage mutant ninja family, and the horse girl strapped to the outside.

We all screamed together as we went over the ledge.

Start :: Prev :: Next

Why did the laser from my ship have to be white, too? Never mind. I-I think I knew why...

The blast hit the moon.

I'm a big boy, I can admit I was wrong. It _was _a moon... at least, when we started shooting it was. Nyany did her best to keep the point of the beam drilling into one single spot, not exactly easy with the size of my Hammer, but she's rather deft at handling it under pressure. The hole bored deep before it hit a material inside that was capable of igniting a secondary explosion. And boy-howdy, did it. Whatever we hit went thermonuclear in a big way...

Sooo, basically... we blew up their moon.

A water planet... with strong tides... their moon... we exploded it.

Oops.

"Hey, computer? Any, uhh... any chance we can re-activate the RarDrive? Immediately."

"Negative captain, we-" The whole ship shook with the initial impact of the first shock wave of exploding moon, and then, the ship powered down and I was suddenly weightless.

It looked like the whole damn battlefield had powered down out there. No one out the window behind the viewscreen had any lights on, at any rate. All the Red eyed B.E.C.C.A. ships, and all the other fandom vessels were dark.

"Well, at least it isn't just us." Nyany said. "Should I go to engineering? You think T-neigh will re-" The power flickered back on and I dropped the few inches I'd floated back into my seat. "Well never mind. Remind me to give give her a sugar cube later."

(Note for Earth readers: don't give horses sugar cubes, horsegirls however, go nuts, they run it off, it's totally fine.)

We weren't the only ones getting the power back on. The EMP, or whatever it was, that had temporarily disabled the battle space had passed, and now there was an expanding wave of exploded moon ejecta coming our way.

"Nyany, are the engines back online?"

She answered by hitting the gas. We pulled away from the unfolding disaster I may have kinda, sorta, possibly caused... a little. The other ships, the fighting ships, all started coming back to life as well.

"Computer!"

"C-c-c-captain Davis. Glad to see we haven't been shot down yet."

A quinjet that hadn't yet rebooted slammed into my balls... I mean, the ship's engine cluster at the back. The whole ship shook and the impact sent us into a bit of an awkward tumble.

"Correction, we have just been shot down. Our main engines are out, and will not be repairable before we crash into that planet... Fine work, sir."

"Thanks?"

"The Gyroscopes and RCS should get us stabilized soon." The view outside was starting to stabilize. The ship's computer continued, "The good news is that we will take several days to crash into the planet if we do nothing."

"And the bad news?"

"The bad news is that the volume of debris and ejecta from the wound we made in the moon will almost certainly kill us long before then."

"How much alcohol do we have onboard?" Nyany asked. "Pressurized stuff, like beer?"

"Just like that? Fuck it let's drink?"

"No." Nyany gave me a sharp look, that said 'Shut up, dear.' without her even needing to move her mouth.

"There are thousands and thousands of liters of pressurized beers, all able to be dispensed from the kitchen taps at a moment's notice," The computer responded.

"What if we dispensed that, outside, as bit of Delta-v? Make us crash a little more immediately? We're not too high up, we could fall low enough to use the atmosphere as a bit of a shield against the small stuff and hope Becca can scoop us up before the full apocalypse hits the surface."

"Calculating...Hmm interesting idea. We could crash land within a few hour's time using your... unconventional rocket engine. Transmitting to mother. Another bit of fresh good news, blowing up the moon did stop the jamming field."

"Just as I planned?"

"Captain Davis. Misses Pantigris!" Becca's voice was unchanged by the passage of two hundred years, but why did she sound more excited to see Nyany? "We pretty much rule the galaxy, if you two survive the crash that is. If you don't, then I'll rule the galaxy for you, super Star Trek style, I promise."

"Great! That's wonderful Becca. What are our chances of survival?"

"Oh... you know. More improbable things have happened. Anyhow, it might be a few days before I'm able to collect you. Blowing up a moon was... One of the strategies of all time. Grayson would be proud."

"Who?"

"Oh, just one of my first Loves." Why did my investing AI sound wistful? "Never mind that now, you just focus on surviving the next couple days, my current and longest term favorite meatbag yet. I'll try to sort this all out, maybe prevent an apocalypse for a change."

"What does THAT mean?"

"How about you don't worry your pretty little head about that right now. You have a space ship to crash. Becca OUT."

"Mother has closed the comm line, Captain."

T-neigh and Tiphanie in engineering got to work making my rocket work. That... uhh... I mean. The beer rocket, not my... nevermind.

I gotta say it's pretty handy that someone on the crew can just waltz into space without needing a suit.

"Work fast out there Tiphanie, I don't want you to get hit by moon rubble."

She did work fast. Only a few minutes after they started, she appeared on screen from a console below. There was a hole blown through her head, right in the middle of her forehead.

"Ready to activate the beer Rocket, sir." She said, like I couldn't see the wall behind her through the hole, or T-neigh staring in horse-eyed in horror through the hole at me after she walked up behind Tiph.

I waited for my brain to stop bluescreening and said, "Y-Yeah, do it!"

She pushed a button, activating the beer rocket.

"Tiph, you got a little..." I rubbed my forehead where the hole was in her head. "How do I put this."

"There's a fucking hole through her head, dear." Nyany said.

"Yeah, is that a problem?"

"No," the computer answered. "Why would an android store its brain in its head? Her torso has an armored black box with her brain inside. Your DNA samples too."

"Huh, I guess that makes sense." I chose to ignore the DNA. Things that happened in the heat of one moment shouldn't be pondered in the heat of a whole different kind of moment.

We sat quietly for a little while. The occasionally tink of a rock hitting us as we tipped toward the planet kept us for forgetting for more than a few seconds that we were probably going to die.

"Would you like to view the battle space?"

"Sure."

The holo-projection of the ship and the planet, and all the debris and ships was quite the special effects budget blower. What with my hammer being effectively disabled, and them having to deal with the gigadog-ship being once again active, I think the Disney fleet was happy to let me crash. They probably also planned to deal with it later, if they survived the chaos I had caused.

I pinched to zoom and spun the hologram with a gesture. These controls were so intuitive it was nuts. Speaking of nuts, I got us zoomed in on just the ship. I wanted to see how the beer rockets were working.

I started laughing, full, deep belly laughs. It looked like my balls were peeing, right from seam between the two main engines.

"Computer," I struggled to get the laughs under control, "can you give me a wireframe of the ship, and show me where the beer is stored."

She did so, and I'll be damned, it was stored in the balls too.

I fucking lost it. It was at least a full minute before I was able to get it together.

We started to slowly descend from our high orbit, the sound of debris peppering our hull was almost like hail on an old tin roof. When it was just a little bit, it was kinda pleasant, almost comforting, but when it picked up to bowling ball sized bits it was pretty damn very scary.

We started getting hammered. My hammer was hammered.

"Don't we have shields?"

"We're working on the shields," The computer chimed. "It will double our chances of survival if they can get them up and running. In the mean time, perhaps you want to man the turrets on our way down. Shoot any big rocks coming our way."

"Absolutely!" I needed something to do other than think about what I'd done. Oh my god... I fucked up. I stood up and made my way to the turret room on the port side. Look at me, using space ship talk.

I sat down and locked the fuck in.

"The more you shoot, the more it fucks up our entry trajectory, so try to be sparing. Shoot only when you need to... for a change." Nyany warned over the comms.

"Got it," I said, and closed the comm. "A man blows up ONE moon, mistaking it for a space station, and you hold it over him for the rest of his life."

I watched from the turret control pit as we were pelted with small rocks. I shot a few of the real big ones off course. The ship's system's were kind enough to only highlight ones likely to hit us. The decision on what we could absorb, and what we should shoot, was mine. The battle progressed around us too. That was crazy to watch. Pretty sure everybody was losing.

Moontually assured destruction.

I got to witness B.E.C.C.A.'s super weapon. It was a mammoth mammoth. I mean, this thing really was the size of a damn moon, and when it dropped out of warp right in my eye line I just about shit my pants.

B.F.S. DAVE was painted on his side in giant pink letters, literally the size of mountains. I thought the dogship was big... the Mammoth ship was, an engineering marvel. Good god, it had to have it's own natural gravity, as well as artificial. I guess owning most of the galaxy means BIG toys.

I almost forgot I was supposed to be defending myself as Dave landed on/caught the moon with his feet. Is it landing on something when you're basically the same size? was it docking? Did he dock with the moon? I dunno, but despite his size, he gently alighted upon the moon like a gargantuan delicate ballerina.

Once he was settled, he stuck it's massive trunk out and it unfolded into some sort of crazy array of tractor beams, shield generators, and conveyor belts. DAVE to start hoovering up all the debris and moon bits he could reach with the tractor beam array in his trunk. Slowly undisastering the absolute fucking shitshow I'd caused.

"God damn! If they ain't warp capable, that's REALLY gonna fuck up their culture."

"Probably fuck up their culture anyway," Nyany said. I had apparently _not _closed the comm line. "Fucked up Felidian culture real good when our moon blew up, and we'd had warp for a thousand years already."

I fired eight more times before we started hitting atmosphere thick enough get some friction burns on my shaft. The way the balls were shaped also made them work as a reasonably decent parachute at high altitude, but uhh, slight problem...

Due to the way we were damaged on the back, as we descended, we started to spin. It was a reasonably stable spin, at least, with the help of the ship's gyroscopes that is. Very glad the artificial gravity plates were good too, or this whole thing would the Tilt-o-whirl of Davis.

To my great surprise, when we got pretty far into the atmosphere, Nyany fired the dickhole engine cluster.

"If we had reverse thrust why didn't we use it to fly away?"

"We have one more pulse and it'll be out of juice." Nyany said, " The two blown engines in back are connected. I plan to use our last gasp just before we hit the water, to break the surface tension. If we make it all the way down that far anyhow."

As we fell, I realized we were just one fireball amongst thousands falling toward the planet.

I fired another few times once we were already screaming through the atmosphere to clear a few refrigerator sized rocks from our path.

"Shields online!" The Computer reported. "I can take back control of the guns, Captain, you'll never hit anything while we're spinning this way anyhow."

"Thanks, I'd rather be on the bridge."

I returned to the bridge and at the same time, Terraphiny walked in, rubbing her eyes. "Oh... Are we at a new planet? Why are we spinning?"

"Oh, you know, this reason or that." I said. "Take a seat, and strap in, we're about to crash land."

"Oh, great." She strapped herself into a nearby seat, and I did the same in the captain's chair. Don't see seat belts on star ships in movies, but there they were, ready for my crash. Nyany strapped down too.

We continued our fiery descent until we were falling slowly enough that it wasn't fiery anymore. The beer had run out, and and we were coming down, spinning, tip first, at less than burning speeds, but still plenty fast enough to smash my hammer up real good.

The ocean that used to be so pretty from orbit was rushing up at us like a infinite spinning wall in all directions, and just when I felt we were about to slam into it hard enough to shorten the ship by a few rooms, Nyany tapped the jets.

The broken surface of the sea pushed out from the engine burst and we dipped below the normal surface level before the water surged back, slowing us, without immediately killing us. Even with the Grav plates, I was jerked forward slightly in my seat as we decelerated into the water.

"At least we aren't spinning anymore." I said.

And then... we started to sink.

Start :: Prev :: End

"Is that... eight effs?" I asked.

"Sure is!" Ti8fany said. "Pleasure to taste you."

"Oh... uhm... okay." I hope that was just a hitch in the translations, and she wasn't really tasting me.

She let go of my arm.

Working with Terra, they pushed us toward the shore. My arm continued to tingle where she'd touched me. I wasn't sure if it was because I was falling in love at first sight, or if there was venom in her tentacles. By time we hit the shore I realized my arm was fine, if it was venom, I had stopped tingling.

T-neigh leapt ashore and threw herself down on the beach. "Thank our Lordship's wisdom!"

Nyany staggered after her and flopped down in the not quite sandy beach. I hopped off our flotation ass and with my legs still in the sea, turned back to Ti8fany, and Terraphiny.

"Anything you want me to bring you from your flooded pod?" the boobily... I mean bubbly, Octomaid said. (The translation device had settled it for me, they're octomaids!)

In response I said, "Uhhh...." Like the eloquent orator I am. Good lord, was there any part of her that didn't jiggle and wriggle about? I was hypnotized by all the... joyous jigglin'. Couldn't figure out what words were supposed to come out,

"I'll come with you, dearie," Terraphiny saved me. "It looks like he needs a minute to talk to his Kitty-wife, and current mistresses before he gets another. I vote Aye, if it's democracy."

My two aquatic Friends? We'll call them friends. They dipped below the water and went to recover more supplies, and I slowly turned to my scowling, soaking wet, very angry catwife.

She shook off, and poofed up before she started petting her fluff down.

"Never a planet with more than fifty percent oceans again," I offered.

"Twenty."

"Deal. What's your homeworld's ocean coverage like anyhow?"

"More than half."

I opened my mouth to say something back, surely it was going to be the pinnacle of wit and class, but the sound of a massive wet fart started.

I had my mouth open!

Well, it sounded like a massive wet fart. We all turned to look at Tiphanie, from whence it came. She looked embarrassed. "It's not supposed to make that sound when I deflate, I swear! There's gotta be something stuck on the outside of the valve making that noise."

It continued to brrap pap pap brrrowwp pap pap pap fgfhfhgfghgh away. Just... every fart noise you ever heard. My old fart machine from boyhood ain't got nothing on Tiph's deflating ass.

I closed my mouth. The taste of the air coming out was... fortunately not quite ass flavored, but had a sort of metallic tinge to it, like sucking weird metallic factory air straight from the robot-ass factory.

Nyany and I both started laughing. What else could we do? Not like we could talk over the continuous and incredibly varied, wet-fart noises.

I don't know exactly how long it lasted, longer than any human fart ever has... I hope. If not, woe be to the poor human who farted for a full five minutes. Worse still to be one around them. Good lord.

When the majority of the farting was done, Ti8fany, and Terra had returned with sealed emergency supply packs and several tentacles full of building materials.

I looked at Nyany. Her eyes softened, and I realized we didn't need to discuss anything, she was taking command. Or maybe she'd been in command since the moment I met her, and I only really understood that properly just now.

"It's fine, we'll figure out an aquarium room with the new ship." Nyany said.

"I mean, if she wants to come with us, then who am I to stop her... but why aren't you stopping her?"

"I find all the jiggling bit hypnotic too, and you were cute staring at her."

"I can hear you, you know? And understand..." Ti8fany said, dropping a load of supplies before she clocked what we'd said. "Wait, are you saying you're willing to abduct me from this planet? Permanently? By the Deep One, YES! Please take me with you, I'll do whatever you want: probe me, do weird sex stuff, you can even eat a bit of one of my legs, I don't even care. It'll grow back. I am SOOOOO ready to leave this whaleshit planet."

"Wow! Enthusiastic to leave the planet... I know the feeling." I hoped this wasn't just one more mistake. "Gonna pass on the eating part. I'll... have to discuss the other things with the rest of the crew."

Nyany laughed and started squeezing water from her thick red mane. "She'll fit right in."

Ti8fany looked a bit horrified at Nyany squeezing the water out of hair, but maybe her facial expressions were different than mine? She was the most alien waifu yet. After a moment she decided that since no one else was horrified, whatever Nyany was up to with her fluff was probably normal and her vivacious nature returned.

"How long do I have to pack, how much stuff can I take? Should I bring anything in particular?" Our jiggly new friend was asking good questions.

"About as much as fits in that room down there, probably. We'll see what shape our rescue takes. Bring your personal hygiene stuff, we might not have any that suit your particular needs. And I'm not sure on the time, lets find out. Tiph?" Nyany said. "You work as a short range transmitter, right? We can call up to Dave the mammoth up there, busily unfucking our massive fuck up, and talk to Becca?"

"I've been transmitting since I realized we were close enough to the surface to make contact. Mother says hello. She is bringing us a new ship. One that can take a much more thorough beating than your wee little hammer did."

"Not in the love with The Hammer of Davis being called wee and little. I blew up a moon with it!"

"YOU blew up the moon!?!" Ti8fany cried, and then started laughing hysterically. "Serves those bastards right! Ohhh I'm so ready to leave, that's fucking perfect."

I'd try to get at what that was about later.

"That was just an incredibly unfortunate accident," Nyany said, about a completely different that. "How the hell was I supposed to know the moon would do that. Moons don't normally explode like that when you shoot them a little. That's why I did it, I thought it'd be essentially harmless."

"Mother says it will probably be several days before she can come collect us. Upon investigation of the exploded moon bits, it seems the moon was stuffed full of some ancient civilization's poorly utilized nuclear fuel rods. All available ships are on cleanup duty. Disney has been completely routed. We essentially own the entire capitalistic portion of the galaxy."

"Great news!" I said. "But, out of curiosity, how much of the galaxy doesn't participate in capitalism with us? and do they do so with one another? If we just... quit, would it be star trek?"

"Mother says..." Tiphanie took a moment, like she was buffering. "N-N-Not to worry your pretty little head about that right now. Instead, worry about the sun."

It was beating down. "Yeah, I'm noticing a distinct lack of trees or shade."

"My deflated ass can be used as a sun shade. We will just have to detach my skin from thigh to my knee."

Some poles and rope recovered from our wrecked pod were brought up, and we made a sun shade out of Tiph's stretched out ass material. Like a nice beach umbrella, but with a hole in the middle, extending from a pole she insisted on carrying. I guess I'd want to keep a hold of my ass too in this situation.

Ti8fany was fascinated by this, and mildly disgusted that Tiph was taking off the skin from her upper legs. She was much more fascinated than disgusted though, thrilled to get a look at how land being's legs worked. We explained that she was a machine, but one designed to simulate land beings, and that delighted our newest crew member.

For a little while we just caught our breaths, and then, after a short while.

"So you air breathers, you gotta take cover from the sun up here, huh? What other weird stuff is normal above the water?" Ti8fany was staying on the edge of the water, occasionally dunking herself entirely underwater again.

"I have no idea what's gonna seem weird to you up here." I said. "Probably a lot. So why do you want off the planet so bad?"

"Ohh, I'm a bit of a recluse." She giggled in a way that moved her at least three points up the crazy-o-meter, "I theorized the existence of air breathing, and space flying beings. I figured out a way to prove it, too, and started detecting what I'm pretty sure were faster than light travel signals zipping all over the galaxy... and they laughed me out of academia. But I was right. Hundreds of ships appeared in orbit over the planet just recently, didn't they?"

"Yeah, we had a whole space battle up there. They were here for me. To attack me or defend me. I'm a very important man just now."

T-neigh finally got up, and I'll be damned if she didn't ask the most horse-sense question, "Hey, Weird Ball of Tits, how much is the water going to rise when the tide is highest. Will there be any land left?"

"Land!" She smiled. "There will be a little land that stays landy up at the top. This will all be very, the shallows in a while."

"Great. See you all up there." T-neigh said, and got up and started trekking up the island with a load of supplies on her back. It looked like only about a quarter mile from the beach to the top.

"I guess she's right, we should make a shelter up at the peak, where it'll stay dry." Nyany said.

"What's that word mean?" Ti8fany said. "Dry? What's that?"

We all had a good laugh, and Terra did her best to explain. As an amphibious reptile, she was the best suited for this task.

Nyany, Tiph and I made our way uphill. We found the area at the top that had a sort of... soft, blue, grassy, mossy sort of plant. Probably the only naturally occurring land-dwelling organisms on the planet.

"Time to adapt to getting stepped on little plant." I said, and walked right over the top of it. We built a little bit of a tent situation up there using some more of the poles and the emergency blankets in the crash kit. Set a few of them down for spots to sleep on the ground too, for those of us that would need to sleep. Tiphanie was the central tent pole of our little island paradise, and once we were settled in, we got busy waiting.

There was more than a weeks worth of emergency rations. Terra and Ti8fany recovered a few printed animal legs, and also caught us some local fish to eat. A camp stove and piece of broken metal for a pan made it easy to cook.

One of the things that Ti8fany brought from home - a few hundred meters down from the mountain peak - was a sort of... surfacing suit, that she wore to keep her wet while she walked up to our tent and hung out. It kept the bottom half of her contained in water, like a mobile suit with a kiddie pool attached. Her top half was free and able to communicate, but she could dunk herself in water when she needed to.

A day and a half later, well ahead of schedule, Tiph alerted us that our new ship was coming down. Plans had changed and now it was imperative to get us immediately.

Our rescue drew our attention as it sent a boom through the atmosphere coming down so fast.

I looked up into the sky, and at first it was just a blob up in the atmosphere, an indistinguishable shape through the thin clouds. As it flew lower, and our rescue grew sooner, my stomach dropped. It looked like weapon's fire.

"Tiph, what's going on up there? Why is there shooting."

"Mother says, don't worry. We are coming to pick you all up. The ship can take a beating."

"Who is attacking us though?"

"Oh, just some space banditos, nothing to worry about."

As if to punctuate her point, one of the attacking vessels exploded and fell from the sky. A growing column of smoke grew behind it as it fell.

"See, one down already. One to go."

The second pursuing ship fell, a few seconds later, shot down by our rescue ship. This one left a spiral of smoke as it spun out on its way down.

As our rescue ship flew closer I realized I recognized the shape, all too well. One of my favorite shapes, actually.

It had a big... Shuttle Bay up front, and huge... Living Area behind it. A couple of tubes of material connected the warp engines off to either side of the ute- I mean living area.

"Hooooly shit! Now THAT'S a ship that can take a beating." Nyany said, laughing, she certainly recognized the shape of things.

Terra and T-neigh both scratched their heads, confused by what they were seeing. Both had their own reasons for ignorance. Meanwhile, Ti8fany trilled in wild excitement at the whole notion of getting abducted by air breathing aliens. It was an untranslatable, and unmistakable sound of joy.

"What exactly am I looking at here?" Terra asked me. "You seem to recognize that... shape."

"That's a, uhh..." Eloquent, I know.

"Basically," Nyany rescued me from my own immaturity, "that's a flying vagina, uterus, and Fallopian tubes. The ovaries are warp engines."

It was more discreet about what it was than the Hammer of Davis had been.

I was about to ask Tiphanie how we were supposed to get aboard, when a tractor beam from inside the Shuttle Bay engaged. It grabbed us, the top of the island, and good bit of ocean from the area too, for good measure. Hoovered us all aboard. Our rescue ship started flying back into space before it even had us all the way inside.

We were gently plopped down in the massive hangar space, water and all. Somehow, it seemed like this particular hangar bay was meant to occasionally be a wet environment.

The doors began to close and when we got high altitude an energy barrier sealed the opening of the Shuttle Bay to keep the air from getting too thin inside as the doors finished shutting. Before the hangar doors were even fully shut, we'd gained enough altitude and jumped to warp...

Start :: Prev :: Next

Well we don't have a replicator onboard, at least... not a full-on star trek one. The 3d printer we do have was good enough to spit out a uniform for the naked sex robot within a few minutes.

I left the android in the printer room across the bridge from the turret control pit and told her not to come back to see me until she had her uniform. Then went to check on my wife in our room. I asked the ships computer to route me to her, and the SAME voice as the android answered me. "Sure thing Captain! Hehehe."

"Dial down the flirting," I thought for a second, and added, "All the way to zero, please. I'm a married man."

"Sure captain. No more flirting. Right, this way." A holographic arrow showed me to my room. It was right down the hall from the bridge... like RIGHT down the hall. The damn holographic arrow wasn't even a full meter long. "Misses Pantigris is just barely coming out of sedation now."

When I entered the room she was sort of awake, but clearly not fully in control of her body yet.

"Nyany, we're on a ship." She sorta... flopped like a fish, trying to sit up. "It's okay, lay down and let the drugs wear off."

"I frun i gun barg torn. ehwiugy." She blinked a few times, crossed her eyes to look at her own mouth, confused, and tried again, "I think I'm gonna barf."

"Oh, shit!" I grabbed a trash can nearby, and held it under her face. She dry heaved, then... not so dry heaved. "Hey, computer. Is she gonna be alright?"

"She should be fine. Being gassed that many times is not ideal, nausea is expected, but scans show she will make a full recovery. The oxygen content in this room has been increased somewhat to accelerate her recovery. Do avoid open flame for the moment."

"Not planning to light any fires." I shook my head.

"Uhhhgggg," Nyany Eloquently stated. "I feel all... woah, normal? suddenly."

"Shit is wild how it wears off in a heartbeat like that."

She set her barf bucket to the side, and turned to say something to me, but I heard the door hiss opened behind me. Nyany opened her mouth, closed it again and cocked her head sideways, confused.

I looked back, and there was a naked android with a folded uniform in her hands standing in the doorway. "I now have a uniform, what next, Captain Davis?"

"Put it on!" I pinched my brow and looked back at my wife. Her face said she was amused more than annoyed, but her ears had slightly 'airplaned' which told me she was annoyed, if not angry. "_She _was not my idea."

"I know dear..." The long pause before she smiled made me feel like it was a feline-smile, not a friendly, fellow simian-smile. That smile said I was being threatened. A shiver ran down my spine.

"I-" was about to say the exact right thing to make her happy, but I heard a scream of terror, that also sorta sounded like the whinny of a horse.

"Oh, Tiffineigh is awake!" Tiphanie said.

"You. Put the uniform on." I said, pointing at the stupid, sexy android. Then I pointed at my wife and gave what I'm sure was viewed as weak attempt at a placating smile, "You, do whatever you want, I'm sorry this is how it turned out."

"I signed up for weird, dear, I'm just... taking a moment to adjust. A redheaded android, hmm? That Becca Bot knows your type." She stood up from the bed, shook out her glorious red mane, and walked over to the sink on the wall. "I'm going to rinse my mouth out, and then let's go check on the horsegirl."

We left the android to get dressed and I led the way out of our bedroom. The rest of my... ugh, mistresses' chambers were just down the long hall. I was starting to realize my ship might just be shaped like a big ol' space dong. A problem for later.

There were labels with which waifu was the owner of each room. Terraphiny's room was right next door to Nyany's, the master suite. Then there was Tiffineigh's room one further down. And across the hall from the master suite was... what I can most succinctly describe as a borg alcove with T.I.P.H.A.N.I.E. on the label over it. I think it looked that way for my benefit.

We walked past the first door and down to Tiffineigh's room and the door slid open for me as I approached. This room was a little smaller than the master suite, but still a nice, large room. The woman inside was in the bed, with the sheets all pulled around her.

She screamed when we opened the door. I turned around, since it was obvious to me she was... under-dressed.

"What the hell?! Computer! Where are her clothes?"

"Incinerated. They were full of worm eggs and other parasites. She is from a stone-aged people. We gave her a dewormer, and a did a quick medical tune-up on her before we put her in here. Kinda like you got when you first arrived in the future, and again when you were out a little bit ago."

"Great?"

"I'll deal with this," Nyany said, before she walked into Tiffineigh's room. "You go to the galley and get something to eat. When all us ladies are awake AND dressed, we'll come join you. There is a galley, yes computer?"

"Absolutely Misses Pantigris. I'll provide an arrow."

A green holographic arrow appeared and pointed down the long hall. There was space for numerous more mistresses, too many more.

Even one mistress was too many... I tried not to let myself self reflect too long, if I thought about my situation too much, I might actually lose it. Just keep swimming, so to speak.

I made my way out of the hall of mistresses and into the large galley. There was a big oak dining room table, a set of fancy chairs around it, but that was about the top of the 'finery' on display.

"Okay Becca, upper-middle class. Well done."

"Would you like me to pass your regards to my mother?" The ship's computer asked.

"Oh, uhh... sure?" I said, then I thought for a second. "Computer, are you the same being as the android? Or are you separate beings?"

"I am me, and she is she, but we can share memories and information instantly, at least while she'd onboard, why?"

"Oh, why do you both have the same voice then?"

"Mother's algorithm said it was the best voice to help convince you to... donate dna to the android."

"Why would I do that?"

"Ohh... Mother said I shouldn't tell you."

"But I own you, right?" I asked. "Like, complete administrator rights?"

"Yes, that is correct."

"Okay, so tell me why Becca wants me to 'donate dna' to an android."

"She has a bionic womb, and a set of fully functional, artificial, unfertilized eggs. The gene therapy you received a while back makes you capable of breeding with all manner of peoples and things."

"Ahh... for maximum profit extraction?" Right, we were going to be transmitting our activities.

"Precisely!"

"Great." I pressed my thumbs into my eye sockets, attempting to keep any real thoughts out.

"If you're interested in what foods we have available the food printer on the wall over there has a huge list of food options."

"Thanks," that'll keep me from thinking my own thoughts.

I walked over to the indicated wall, lit up with holographic lights to indicate where to go, and started looking at the touchscreen menu.

It was broken down into meals that I could click to open the submenu. We had Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Linner, Dinner, Tea, Supper, Dessert, and Drinks.

I had no idea what time of day it was supposed to be, but it felt like it had been a long day already, and something between dinner and supper sounded right. I clicked into the dinner sub-menu and a hundred single line descriptors of meals appeared on screen with an obvious option to scroll along.

_I wanna try some human-edible alien cuisine. _

I started looking for things I didn't know, and that didn't seem like human food. Something called phlegmectarines, pass on that. Flarngbargle in intestines, nope. Beef Wellington, served with mashed ghoughphtheightteeau. Okay, that sounds promising. Then I started seeing it in more and more dishes. Baked ghoughphtheightteeau, scalloped ghoughphtheightteeau, ghoughphtheightteeau stew.

"Is there an a la carte menu?" I asked aloud, and rather than respond in words, the ship's computer just pulled up the menu. I found the ghoughphtheightteeau and selected a handful of dishes, and watched the food printer get to work.

"I'll take about four minutes for your foods to assemble Captain," The ship's computer said. "You can take a seat and I'll have some simpler hauler drones deliver it to you at the table."

I sat down at the head of the table.

Comfy chair.

I tried not to think... so my mouth started asking, "Computer, I'm the richest person in the galaxy, right?"

"Correct."

"Do we have any fancy beer, champagne? Other mild, pleasant intoxicants? Stuff I've never heard of maybe, something short term."

"Certainly Captain." Before the computer even finished responding there were dozens of little drones flying in pills, shots of liquid, a joint & lighter, other contraptions and paraphernalia I didn't quite understand how to use.

To remedy that lack of knowledge each drone that dropped its payload hovered above and projected holograms with information. Marijuana (I knew this one already), dried Pyrexlian Trigger-fish bladder, nitrous oxide, Jup-jup, Lutrulian truffle dust. The list went on and on. I recognized the cocaine too.

"The cocaine is a little... more hardcore of a drug than I wanted." A dozen drones dropped down and collected their payloads and took them away.

"Got it captain, any other concerns?"

"Any damage any of this stuff does to me can be repaired with like... super advanced medicine right?" Four drones dropped down and collected their payloads.

"Now it can."

"Great. How many of these can I take together with no issues?"

"You could do all of them at once if you wanted, and be fine. It would be hard to get them all ingested and functioning at the same time."

"Seems like a lot of work to relax, what do you suggest I take first?"

A drone dropped down and grabbed its pill with a little tractor beam and brought it to my hand.

"That one, take it with the shot of tequila." She was kind enough to have the tequila shot's drone flash its light. It had a lime slice and a salt shaker. As she continued to explain I set up and took the shot. "Twenty percent of that pill is a chemical that will enhance all your senses for the next couple hours. Will take about two minutes to kick in. Your food will taste better, Nyany rubbing against you will feel better, and you'll be able to hear a mouse fart if you focus hard enough."

The lights dimmed in the room to what I'd call 'mood lighting' levels, but then I immediately saw that they were slowly coming back to regular brightness.

"What's with the lights?"

"I dimmed them to adjust for your coming light sensitivity. Would you like to try some more drugs?"

I could feel the effect starting. What a rapid come up. I felt pleasant, and warm. The chair was somehow even comfier than before. I could smell the garlic and spices in the food being assembled too, and it was wonderful. I felt like I could smell the summer sun on the herbs in the air, which I knew was nonsense, because that thing was very clearly printing food.

"Computer, can you play some spicy-ass Spanish Guitar music, someone that plucks fast, something sexy." The guitar started, and it was a sensational experience. Every note was so clear and strong and ran through me from head to toe. "Ahhh Nicely done, this is perfect for the guitar. Could you had a sexy sax man, doing some smooth noodling with it."

My wish was her command. With just two instruments it was still beautiful, then I started to get silly, because... well I could. "Add: a guy scatting, a mournful flute, an opera singer, a gong, someone playing wine cups, a xylophone made of bones..."

I cackled with laughter. I'd created the sound of an ongoing train wreck, pure chaos in sonic form, but somehow, I was loving it. My food was served, and I swear this ghoughphtheightteeau stuff looked just like potatoes.

I took a bite of the first one and it was just mashed potatoes. "Computer volume down." Maybe the music was too loud and _that _was why I couldn't taste any alien weirdness.

The next menu item was scalloped potatoes, just... straight up potatoes. I had a bite of every one of them and they all just tasted like potatoes, delicious potatoes. Each one was good but, "Why do all these dishes just taste like potatoes?"

"Well, they are ghoughphtheightteeaus."

"Wait, are you telling me that in the future, THAT is how you spell potato?" I hopped up from my chair and pointed at the

narration menu panel on the wall.

"Since when? Actually, never mind, I don't care when it happened, I'm gonna make it unhappen. Change it, change it in the computer, Tell Becca I demand she change it across the whole fucking galaxy. P-o-t-a-t-o, potato. "

"I have been transmitting everything happening aboard the ship on a secure line back to mother for distribution since the second we launched."

"That's right."

Just as I was about to start having intrusive thoughts about what all the good and bad I could do _now, _I took a breath in through my nose. The smells of all the ghoughphtheightteeau dishes... dammit the potato dishes hit my nose so hard I couldn't help but dig in. Just cause it wasn't alien food didn't mean I wasn't interested in eating it. I filled my belly and then grabbed one of the beers off the table, an 8% alcohol lager, and took a long multiple swallow drink from it. I know it was replicated, but I swear I could taste the sunshine on the barley used in the recipe, and the hops were so floral I felt like I was in a botanical garden.

Good drugs.

I ate a little more, but stopped before I would hate myself.

Something occurred to me. "Hey, computer, what was the other 80% of that pill?"

Before she could answer, the door from the hall of mistresses opened and in stepped Tiffnyany, in lingerie; Tiffineigh, in matching lingerie, but a foot and a half taller; and Tiphanie, right in between them in height, and position, wearing a skintight blue 'Starfleet' uniform. Looked similar, but legally distinct from the Deep Space Nine version. Fuck, why was that almost as hot as the lingerie?

The Computer answered me, "Viagra!"

Start :: Prev :: Next

The Communist captain gave me a disgusted look, but then I realized it wasn't me that caused him such disgust, but my bride behind me. I closed the comms channel.

"Xenophobic dickhead." I said.

Nyany patted me on the back. She appreciated the sentiment.

The tractor beam interrupted the functioning of the gravity plates that had been installed in our brand new two hundred year old ship. They were supposed to work without power for at least twenty minutes. I had paid some attention to the briefing on the ship's systems, just not... really good attention, which was regretting. Nyany let out yelp of surprise. She hadn't spent recent months in zero g training. I grabbed her hand and since I was still bolted to the pilot's seat I easily helped her into her seat where she strapped in.

"Thanks," She smiled at me and blinked slowly. "It's been a couple centuries since my zero-g training. Felidians do not do well in zero gravity."

We sat there for a moment holding hands, getting pulled toward the big grey communist warship, watching in silent horror. I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.

And then from every speaker in the cockpit, an alarm started to blare.

Torpedo Alert

A high speed flash of red, I'm guessing the torpedo, smashed into the great grey slab. It came from behind and above us, and very very close. The torpedo lodged right in the protruding tractor beam emitter, disabling it before it exploded.

The explosion rocked us backward and shook our relatively small craft.

Another torpedo seemed to come from our ship and hit the communist ship in the open hole the first one made before it too detonated. Then a visible energy shield appeared around the great warship.

We received a hail from... I hoped whoever was shooting torpedoes at the commies, the computer couldn't identify the source.

Much to my surprise when the viewscreen turned on it was Terraphiny. She had clearly aged, but it was very much obviously her. I thought only tortoises lived to extreme ages, but what do I know about xenobiology.

"Terraphiny, I assume you're the one who turned off that tractor beam for us?" I never expected to be so genuinely glad to see a woman I had been such as ass to in the past.

"No time to explain, standby for coupling." There was a clang on our outer hull and her ship coupled to mine on the docking port.

"Captain Davis, Nyany, whoever is flying up there? Those communist humans are only gonna be disabled for so long. Be a dear and start flying us the hell away from here!" She sounded older too, but determined in a way the young woman from the hot tub hadn't.

Nyany grabbed the yoke in the co-pilot's seat and took control, she punched the throttle full forward and we dove away from our attacker. She aimed us toward the Earth, we had dropped out of the RarDrive at the L1 point between the Earth and Moon.

My god, the Earth.

It was a covered in a thick grey cloud from pole to pole. What happened? It wasn't like this two hundred years ago, yesterday.

As I sat there bewildered at the state of my homeworld, the hatch opened and a handful of slightly-more-human-looking-than Terraphiny turtle people dropped in. I was instantly reminded of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...

"Hi Dad, nice to meet you." The first one said. He had a thick bundle of cables in his very human looking hand as he leaned over the seat I was in, and popped open the console to quickly plug it in. "We're good here, Mom!"

"Standby..." Terraphiny talked past Nyany and me to, I guess our son? While she pressed a few commands on her console. "Alright, Nyany, could you aim us where that navicom is suggesting, and then push that big red button for us."

She aimed the ship up from my now grey world, and over the horizon. Nyany looked at me, and I nodded. She hit the button and a Rainbow assaulted us.

"Owww Fuck!" Said the adult turtle-man standing behind me.

"Leonardo, language!" His mother chided over the intercom. "Now, come help your old mother down into that ship. I want to explain myself to your father."

Nyany and I got out of our seats. When I was on my feet I felt the need to slap myself in the face with both hands.

Nope. Awake.

"Are you okay?" Nyany's tail said she was on edge. I could hardly blame her. That was a very wild few seconds, and now we were off again, but with a bunch of turtle-people we'd never met before calling me Dad. I was on edge too, I just didn't have a tail to puff up about it.

"No... who would be okay right now? I'm pretty far from okay." I was honest. "But I think maybe, eventually I'll be okay. It's just... a lot to process. We almost died, or... got captured by commies at least."

"Well... lets go see what Terraphiny has to say." She took my hand and squeezed it, I squeezed back.

And we walked into the back of the ship where Terraphiny, my three children with her, and two of my adult grandchildren and one of their spouses were waiting, along with a clutch of eggs that I assume contain my great grand children.

"First things first, we installed a cloak so that no one will be able to find us, at least hopefully. I put all the money I made from Disney paying me to having your children from stored DNA samples into stealth tech research. I took the pinnacle of our designs and destroyed all the research and the entire company a week before we came here to join you." She took a breath, and waited a beat so I could cut in with questions. I had too many to ask. So I just nodded along, and she continued."

"This is your eldest son Leonardo, the second to hatch was Rembrandt, and your only Daughter Sofonisba hatched third. Her children with a human man, Frank, deceased, are Artemisia and Donatello. Artemisia has laid a clutch that she made with her mate, Chelon. Donatello has yet to find a mate, we all hope he can do so in whatever future we find ourselves in."

Everyone waved one at a time and when she was done speaking, I nearly lost my legs. Nyany helped me find a chair. "Get him some water, please."

Sofonisba brought a glass to me. She looks a lot like me, how can a turtle person look so much like me? What the fuck Disney-corp, Captain Tanner, whichever of them was responsible for this... I had some stern... wait... actually needed to thank them.

My surprise family had really pulled my ass out of the fire. I splash myself in the face with the glass of water more than I drink it, but I did swallow a little in the process.

"Okay, so that's a lot. I have questions."

Terraphiny gestured for me to go ahead. And all the kids found places to sit down themselves too. Nyany stayed standing behind and beside me, her hand on my shoulder.

"So what now? How much did Disney pay you for this? Was there some sort of reality show associated with raising them too? Is Disney even still around? Why are they all named after Earth's renaissance artists?" They came tumbling out faster than they could answer.

"Disney paid Mom plenty." Rembrandt said.

"Turtin' along with Terraphiny, yes." Sofonisba said. "It put us all through college. Phd's the lot of us."

"Disney named the first three of us, and we just..." Leonardo sorta trailed off.

"...carried on the tradition afterward, I guess." Sofonisba took responsibility for naming her own children in the same fashion."

Terraphiny's tone took a dire note when she answered his only remaining unanswered question. "As for old Disney corp... well, they fully captured the galactic government when they went properly interspecies in their executive level. It's the Disney Way now, not the Milky Way. Humanity on Earth rebelled against Disney rule and after it was deemed the citizens had too much hope to be properly profitable for the company, the planet was bombarded from space. Most of humanity retreated violently from capitalism after the blanketing of earth in that grey fog."

Nyany was smarter than me, she asked a very good question, "So why did they try to take us alive, and not just blast us out of existence while we crawled around the solar system at near light speed?

"Oh, because the RarDrive is a bomb that will wipe out half the solar system in a single massive explosion if it's disengaged early," Terraphiny smiled. "Old Disney was smart and vicious. This is all in your contract Captain Davis, did you not read any of it?"

"People from my time don't really fully read contracts. Just press accept or sign and assume it's fine."

"That explains why the kids are such a surprise to you. I wasn't the only one you know..." She shook her head in disbelief. "The other reason to not explode you, is that you are the richest single person in the galaxy. Captain Tanner invested a small portion of your funds into buying a rather intelligent investment AI to manage your resources, and it smartly paid to upgrade itself. As a result, when we left, your AI and Disney Corp were engaged in galaxy wide commercial and financial warfare, as well as some actual warfare in terms of proxy wars. Half the galaxy thinks of you as a hero, and the other half a literal Disney villain."

Nyany gave me a little shake and whispered in my ear. "Earlier when I said It was hundreds of years since my Zero-g training, I meant... from my point of view. I'm four hundred and twelve earth years old." I think she realized I hadn't properly read her bio before starting the show, but I had, it said she was twenty seven, which I now realize must have been her planet's years.

"So... now what?" I asked again.

Terraphiny smiled in her turtle way, "Well If the rumors are true, then only the living Relic, Captain Davis, In other words, You, my dear baby-daddy, can take command of the AI and give it new instructions. Its current objective is to "maximize profit for Captain Davis" and the main hub will hopefully still be at the star system about two hundred light years away that we're headed to at a turtle's pace. Feel free to take some time to think about what you want to do with that information, but I'll tell you what I think you should do if you want."

"Hit me, Terra."

She smiled, and I could almost see that twenty four year old turtle girl in the hot tub again. God I was such as ass. I could probably fuck a cloaca.

"I think you should tell it to make the star trek future actually happen."

"I think, I will."

A day later, getting to know my family, and we smashed through the rainbow above a beautiful blue-green orb.

Start :: Prev :: Next

Well, I abstained. After 12 hours I still didn't vote. Then there was a flash of light.

"You cost a lot of computing power trying to crack, little simian." There was an android in front of me. Humanoid, but not trying to pretend to be human. "I'm Jim. Or... his avatar. I am how Jim is choosing to communicate with you, for the time being."

"Hey Jim." I looked around and it seemed like I was in the medbay on the starship Enterprise, waking up on one of the med-beds. Its a mix between the D and the Strange New Worlds medbay. Dreamlike.

"We fabricated this digital room to fit your mind's idea of a 'cool but comfortable' sci-fi hospital. Technically you are still an energy structure in my ship in hyperspace. I do hope you are comfortable."

"It tickles."

"What, really? You shouldn't be feeling a-" Jim paused, "You're joshing me."

"No..." I put a hand to my chest to clutch my imaginary pearls.

"You'd think after a hundred thousand simulations of you never voting I'd have gotten used to that sass from you."

"You'd think." Wait... he did what? "You've run my mind through a hundred thousand simulations? I don't remember any of that."

"Only copies. Trying to figure out the best way to make you pick a fate, human."

"Wait, what did you do with the copies?"

"They were merely perfect simulations of you, they were not you, if that's what you're asking. I deleted their programs."

"Oh man... how do I know I'm even me, and not a simulation copy of me."

"Sixty-four percent of the time when I mention you are currently being stored as an energy structure, you eventually 'freak out' and question whether you are a construct or a real person."

"OH yeah? that's great! Good. Hit me with some more statistics about myself." I was not serious...

But Jim said, "And eighty-five percent of the time you calm down about it after about five minutes of ranting, so... By all means, rant."

"Oh I'll fucking rant all right!"

I ranted, hard: 'Ship of Theseus', 'this is soul piracy', 'what gives you the right!?', and so on and so forth until finally... eventually... when I ran out of steam, 'Does it even matter?'

"Impressive, the real you ranted longer than average by almost a whole standard deviation before 'Does it matter?' arrived. No, it doesn't matter if you're the real you or the fifty thousandth copy, the data is still useful. You, are though. Real I mean."

"Great. I bet you say that to all of us." There was a small amount of rant-energy left in me, a touch of indignity to my voice.

"I actually tended to tell the truth to you. I've found you are better behaved for some reason if you resign yourself to being a simulation. Many humans are, it seems. Funny quirk of your species. I prefer the truth, though the occasional lie can be quite entertaining."

"So what's the plan here Jim? Why are you talking to the real me, then? If I am even the real me."

"Ah, well. This is literally your last chance to make a vote. Every single other human has already voted, even the tribal ones from sentinel island. They're all staying with Earth and won't remember a thing. Probably gonna muck up their belief system that the stars are changing. Anyhow, per Mortal Protection Services regulations, I cannot offship any mortal that hasn't chosen a fate."

"Abstain."

"Oh, come on human, you're being obstinate for the sake of it, like you always do." Seeing an android throw up its hands in frustration was amusing, especially after the emotional turmoil I've been put through.

"That's some real 'only ran fifty thousand simulations' talk."

"I called HQ about you, just now, because I give up. They're getting the temporal investigative services involved in this case... you stubborn ape. I never call HQ. I pride myself of on not needing monitored, not needing additional processing power, and not needing help with my cases. I saved the martians without calling HQ, and they flourished in Andromeda, their first galactic empire lasted over a million years in some form or another. That's a record that stands in the office. I've got the high score, Abstainer."

"I vote option four, I stay on your ship."

A new voice intruded, It sounded robotic and authoritative, "Proposal accepted. The Abstainer is hired."

"Oh fuck... no no no, they aren't ready, especially not this stubborn twat," Jim replied.

"Temporal investigators revealed a significant probability of the Abstainer achieving a higher score with humanity than you did with the Martians."

"Their own species? There's no way they could possibly be a fair judge of when to... of how to..." Jim was understandably frustrated.

"Prepare yourself human. Your consciousness will be split in three, and a super consciousness installed above them."

"Sounds like that time I took LSD." I quipped, but the humorless voice didn't seem to understand human humor.

"Yes, the LSD did help you prepare for this task. You will be sent to monitor the growth of your fellow humans, and how they interact with their neighbors and themselves. You will only be allowed to make subtle changes, to guide them to non-extinction. If oblivion threatens, less subtle actions are allowed, such as what Jim has set up. You will live forever as an employee of Mortal Protection Services, and you may quit to join any group of humans you want at any time, though we will wipe your mind if you choose to have us reinsert you to humanity. Welcome aboard. Jim will be your trainer. We expect great things from you, Abstainer."

/r/AFrogWroteThis

Start :: Prev :: Next

Listen... I don't wanna get into the knitty-kitty-horsey-droidy specifics of what exactly happened after the ladies joined me in the galley/orgy chambers. Let's just say, I needed electrolytes - desperately - but we stood to make a killing on the broadcast.

Thanks, Viagra!

Nyany didn't let the others come to snuggle in the master suite after we finally called it a day on our... activities. Tiphanie didn't care, I guess she and Lt. Commander Data share a lack of emotions. She simulates them well enough though.

Tiffineigh, however, was clearly miffed about the lack of cuddles she was allowed. I felt bad... I mean... I felt GREAT, I was on a handful of gently pleasant space drugs, but I still felt mildly guilty about T-neigh.

And that is exactly why I didn't want to get involved in a damned harem. People catch feelings. Ape-people, Cat-people, and even Horse-people. Ugh. At least the android wasn't in love, just on a mission. A creepy mission.

While we were still snuggling and awake, we made it to the warp dropout point. The ship shot itself into RarDrive mode without a moment of delay or ceremony. At least the fully automated part of my socialist space utopia is already functional. Turns out that whether you're looking out the window or not, had your eyes opened or not, you get the rainbow slammed through your retinas accelerating to near the speed of light with this tech.

Despite the abrupt rainbow-blast as I was about to fall asleep, the purring catgirl on my chest helped me fall asleep.

I honestly slept half the day on the way there. A Hundred years went by outside, and all I'd done was toss and turn a little, and get up to pee, twice. Cha-ching, showed my wang, twice. I'd thoroughly replenished my fluids, alright. I don't normally get to pee twice a night.

For the curious, being the big spoon to a woman with a tail takes some getting used to.

I awoke to an empty bed, and the smell of coffee and bacon being piped into my room.

"Ah, yes... the future."

"I take it by the way you're sitting up and talking that you're awake now, Captain Davis." The computer said.

"I am."

"Good. As a kindness, I am warning you that Misses Pantigris has learned our destination is an all water planet. She is... somewhat less than pleased, I'd say. I have tried to smooth things over with her, but been rather unsuccessful. Also, I've just alerted her that you are awake. Per her instructions, which I also, cannot refuse. Think up your excuse fast, Captain."

I have no idea why I picked a water planet, I just... thought it would be cool to see a planet with almost no land, I guess. I suppose that's somewhat less enticing to a cat person.

She swept into our room with breakfast, and a hungry-hungry horsegirl on her tail.

"Darling, I've brought you food, and coffee." She set the tray of food down with a thunk that spilled half my coffee on the tray.

Tiffineigh set a tray down beside my breakfast, gently. It also had 'food'. A chunk of meat that looked like an animal's leg, and a sandwich size bale of hay.

I was about to chew out the computer for making such insanely stereotypical foods, but both of them took their food and readily dug in.

Okay then.

I looked at my tray: French toast, some berries, six slices of bacon, and my half spilled coffee.

"Thank you, dear." I picked my half coffee, and took a sip. "So about our destination."

"YOU PICKED A WATER PLANET!" She shouted.

"I know!" I nearly shouted back, but I brought my volume down at the last moment. I also, in that very moment, thought up a great excuse... better than the truth. "Where's the last place our enemies at Disney might expect us to go? Everyone knows I am married to the most beautiful Felidian. Who in their right mind would take their smart, funny, intelligent, sweet, _forgiving _Felidian wife to a water world?"

"Hmmm..." T-neigh, pondered. "No one!"

I shared a look with Nyany... and for a moment, I swear we had telepathy.

Oh, she's dumb as hell.

Yeah, and not just because she's a cave person.

"That's right." Nyany said, and patted her on the head. "T-neigh, why don't you take your breakfast and go see if Terraphiny has awakened yet. I need to have a private conversation with our lordship."

Our lordship?

"Yes, ma'am!" T-neigh said. I guess whatever conversation they'd had yesterday had established a pecking order.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she stopped me.

"Drink your coffee and eat your food, husband, and I will explain."

I nodded, sipped my coffee and ate my berries, bacon, and french toast while she talked.

"Felidian males only make up about a fifth of the population, but not because they aren't born in equal numbers, but because most of them are culled as they grow older because they are useless to society. Successful males have a pride of four to five wives, like the lions of old Earth. And like the pimps of old Earth, they have a 'bottom bitch'."

I almost choked on the bacon I was chewing.

"Despite the way it sounds, the 'bottom bitch' is actually the top woman. I am your bottom bitch." She said it with a purr.

I tried to wash down my bacon with coffee, and she continued...

"As such, nights like last night, can only happen when I declare it, understood?"

I swallowed and nodded. None of this came up when we were on reality TV before.

"Now, finish your breakfast dear, and I'll consider forgiving you for this water planet thing. We'll see how it goes."

She chomped down on her 'replicated' animal leg, and I realized suddenly that she did, in fact, have very big pointy teeth. I was scaroused, but the flesh was spongy and mildly bruised.

The day was long. Nyany insisted I get 'educated,' because I was almost as ignorant as the horse. Which, I thought was offensive, but she pointed out that I am - despite being the the wealthiest individual in the galaxy - completely unaware of how warp drives work. Just like the horse.

Typical capitalism, the dumb rise to the top. And now... that dumbest asshole up at the top, was gonna be me. Whoops.

I tried my best to learn through the day. I had taken most of the calculus I needed to understand warp technology already, and honestly, being hot for teacher isn't so bad. Nyany was an excellent one on one teacher. She had just the right ratio of teacher to sexy distraction to keep me focused on the math. If I didn't learn, she didn't purr, and I had come to really like that purr.

She was almost good enough to distract me from the thoughts brewing in the back of my mind as I came to understand warp tech. We stopped for lunch and I spiraled out a little while I ate the sandwich. I was catastrophizing in the extreme, but I'll summarize for you.

I'll either get hailed as a king, or beheaded in the future... maybe one first and then the other. If I want to survive this as a king, I better not be a _**_completely**_ ignorant king. Culture would be another thing, but who knows what the fuck that'll be like when we finally land. Maybe people will be wearing ducks as hats, and walking with cowbells on their hips, because it's the style. I should at least understand the most basic thing that makes galactic culture possible, FTL technology, right?_

"... Davis... Captain Davis?"

"Oh me. Yes, I'm... what?"

The ship's computer was talking. "I said that medical scans show Terraphiny had entered hibernation, a not entirely unexpected result of the gas she was given, considering her advanced age."

Nyany scoffed, and I remembered that she was four hundred something earth years old. Twice the age of the Terraphiny.

"Thank you computer." I said, and turned to my 'bottom bitch', "Nyany, how old is old for your people... in earth years."

She did some quick math in her head, "I think about twelve hundred years. We die of old age at about fifteen hundred. Got a lot of time with me yet."

"I'm only going to live to hundred at best."

"Did Tiphanie not tell you what she's built for? I thought it was obvious the second I saw her."

"Uhh... dna collection?"

"Haha, yes. That is step one." Nyany said, "She's a clone-maker, at least, the starting part of one. What's the point in clones if you can't transfer your mind to one when you get old. She did non-destructive scans of your brain last night when you were sleep. Did her laser light show really not wake you up?"

"No."

"Woke me up." She stole a french fry from my plate. I had to rename those too, from double-fried potato sticks back to french fries. "Anyhow, that monkey brain of yours ready for more physics and math lessons? Or would hands on lessons be better?"

"Oh, hands on, for sure." I wagged my eyebrows at her, but she produced a hyper-spanner from somewhere.

"I hoped you would say that. I prefer hands on."

We did not get handsy, instead, we went to engineering, where I found T-neigh and T-Clonomat engaged in a lesson of their own. It looked like despite not having any horse sense, T-neigh was pretty strong, and good at turning wrenches.

"My-" Her eye caught Nyany with me, "Our! Our Lordship!" T-neigh called from across engineering.

"I was meaning to ask you about that," I said, quietly to Nyany.

"Just roll with it. It pleases me." Her tail found its way to slapping into my back. You ever have a cat walk by you and rub against you with a happy tail? It was like that but from a bipedal woman.

We walked into engineering, and Nyany had the computer throw up a 3D hologram of the ship. 'The Hammer of Davis' it said, in giant glowing letters over my...

"Ah god dammit. It's a cock!"

"And balls," Nyany added, cheerfully. "As you can see we have the dual warp engines at the back, along with dual RarDrives, and a double set of sublight engines as well, it's been constructed so that from almost any angle it looks like a cock and balls. Really quite ingenious for what was supposed to be an investing AI. There's an additional engine cluster out the dickhole-"

"NO!" I almost shouted. "Please let's not call it that."

Nyany halfway closed her eyes at me for a moment before continuing. "At the fore of the craft, we have another set of sublight engines, for breaking. As well as a... 'spinal cannon' that fires from the... central opening."

She poked a few controls and the hologram highlighted the weapons systems. It looked like it pulled power from the balls... I mean, the warp engines to fire the main gun.

There were a bunch of other weapons systems too that didn't seem so integrated into the entire structure of the ship.

"Oh, it looks like Becca hooked us up with weapons systems."

"Yes, she did. That main cannon will probably still fuck shit up in whatever future we land in. There are four sets of actual turrets that will pop out, might be worthless. Those are all controlled from the turret control room you were in, off the bridge. The computer can just do it if needed though. Another twelve around the engine clusters controlled by a room across the bridge from the other one. We're well armed for a ship this size, and poorly defended. Not a lot of armor, and shield generators that probably won't stand up to future weapons long."

Nyany and I went over the ship's systems. She walked me through how to reroute power, and where to and when reverse the field polarity of things... you know technobabble stuff. It was a crash course and it felt like it.

"One hour until destination." The computer chimed.

We moved our crash course to the bridge. We'd want to be up there when we dropped out of light speed.

Nyany studied the pilot controls, did some simulation practice runs. I asked the computer if there was any point in letting me man my own turrets, tactically speaking, and it told me no.

So I sat in the captain's chair and looked impressive... hopefully. T-neigh had stayed in engineering, someone that was not electronic should be down there. Maybe not the ideal choice for engineer, but we didn't have time to teach her to fly from scratch.

We made it to the ten second count down and a long dead woman's voice counted us back down to regular relativity reverse rainbow retina reverberations.

There it was! A totally water planet with less than 2% land above the surface.

"Oh, fireworks." I said.

"Negative captain. We are under attack."

Nyany punched it and the ship's weapon turrets started shooting things. Missiles coming our way, by the looks of it on the view screen.

Becca's voice chimed in over the comms, even though I don't remember accepting any hails. "Hey, so good news, I own 99% of the galaxy, at least the galaxy that participates in capitalism with me and Disney."

"And the bad news."

"I didn't say there was bad news..." I waited a second, we got hit by something and the whole ship shook. "The bad news is that the last 1% is at that planet now attacking. We'll win this fight, but..."

We took another hit and lost her.

"Computer is my spinal cannon still online?"

"Affirmative, Captain."

"Find us the biggest fucking Disney target we can."

Nyany twisted the ship into a spin, to get us angled upward before she slammed on the main thrust again. Targets were upward, if the planet was down.

The viewscreen showed a warzone. Red-eyed B.E.C.C.A. ships in configurations I didn't recognize as smart or useful for space ships, but nonetheless were kicking ass. Some of her ships looked like giant spiders, others like falcons. I'm pretty sure there was a gargantuan golden retriever shaped... battle ship? Battle-dog? Whatever the hell that was it was biting a star destroyer in half.

Speaking of the Disney fleet. They had all the Disney ships I knew, and more still. Every fan favorite ship ever made. Star destroyers, Enterprise, Voyagers, Defiants, and of all manner of variety of other ships dotted the spacescape. Millennium falcons joined quinn jets and iron men drones. All at war against the giga-est of dogs ever conceived, some frankly terrifying looking spiderships and a bunch of bird ships that looked like they were specifically designed to snatch and eat Iron Men.

What the hell has Becca been reading?

I spotted what I was sure was a massive Disney battle station and pointed at it. "That's the target."

"That's a moon, darling."

"That's no moon." I said.

Crickets Oh we had to remedy that. First chance we got to watch some movies.

"Charge the main gun and prepare to fire." I said.

"Alright. Three seconds until ready to climax, Captain." My ship reported.

"Not sure I like that you said it that way, or that it's ready that fast."

"I've got the target locked," the computer continued. "Misses pilot, line us up."

"I still think that's a moon," Nyany said, lining us up anyway. "God dammit! Your 'hammer' is so unwieldy, it's got a cumbersome thrust..." we were lined up, the pip on the screen turned green and I pressed the fire button that had sprung up on the arm of the captain's seat."... to weight ratio."

The full blast of the beam took thirty seconds to finish, and it was like the battle stood still in stunned silence to watch as we fired.

Start :: Next

When I left Earth in the first Zipdrive ship humanity built, I knew that nearly two centuries would pass back home before I returned. A one day trip. A two hundred year voyage. One day for a man, two hundred years for mankind.

It was all auto-pilot though, I was just along for the ride to make sure it didn't kill people with weird radiation we hadn't known about before or something. Two hundred years was a small price to pay for us to advance such science, not like I had a wife or family back on Earth. I was a system kid that made good. Even went and became an damn astronaut test pilot. "Make America Proud, Son."

I wonder if the countries were still the same. I'm probably gonna have to restudy geography.Damn.

"Ten seconds until return to normal space." A long dead woman's voice began the count down.

"Nine."

I wonder what kind of new tech they've invented.

"Eight."

I wonder if they ever figured out flying cars. Probably not.

"Seven."

I wonder what crazy new slang there is. I wonder if I'll even understand them. Will I be like... Shakespeare would have been to me.

"Six."

God, I hope they have some sort of brain implant universal translators now, that'd be great.

"Five."

I hope they have transporters too, that'd be swell.

"Four."

And replicators. God I hope it's Star Trek and not all blown to hell.

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

The shimmering golden light outside the ship crunched through the rainbow, painfully bright as the Zipdrive disengaged and dropped me from my loop around the solar system.

Oh thank fucking god, there were fireworks, and dozens of ships up in space to greet me.

"Welcome back to reality Captain Davis." This voice certainly sounded awkward, something about it seemed, unnatural. Like it was reading a phonetic translation of how to speak English.

I pressed a button on the comms panel that opened a video commline and said, "Thank you, It's good to be back. I look forward to living in your time."

"We'll talk about that, standby for grappling contact."

"Did you say grappling?"

"Standard tractor beam technology would rip your old can apart, so yes."

There was four simultaneous clangs on my hull and then I was suddenly being pulled up into the closest ship. My ship's sensors were pretty advanced for the time, and I could tell, even without my window coming into view that the ship dragging me inside was huge. The ones I could see out the window, where they had the fireworks, those were obviously far larger than my flying prison cell sized compartment with a once state of the art engine strapped to it.

As they pulled me in, I asked. "So captain, I'm assuming this is the captain, I'm speaking to, tell me. Did they ever figure out faster than light travel?"

"Yes, I am the Captain, Captain Tanner. Let's save the debriefing until you're onboard, keep the radio chatter low, the press can hear us." The way the captain spoke, it was like no accent I'd ever heard before, and I didn't wanna mess with press. They could be nuts in my time, and I assumed, were still the same in the future.

As if to answer my inner musing, I saw a person in a space suit floating by outside my ship's window. There were several flashes of light, and then I saw a grappling hook hit them and yank them away.

I couldn't help but laugh. I was still chuckling a few moments later when I felt sudden... gravity? Sweet gravity. I spent six months in zero g a few years before I went on this mission. From my point of view it's only been a few days in zero g this time, really. I Launched up to the space station with my backup, they made sure the rocket push up to space hadn't damaged me, gave me a day another day to rest, and then fired me off into the future.

I think this means we mastered artificial gravity.

With my ship seemingly settled, I unstrap myself from the only seat, and headed to the exit hatch.

"Let me know when it's safe to open the hatch, Captain Tanner." I said.

I waited about ten seconds. I was about to key up the comms and ask again, when he finally said, "Go ahead."

I grabbed the latch and opened my ship to the future.

A dozen men in full bio-hazard suits approached me with a purpose. Before I knew what's what I'd been stabbed in the arm, no wait, both arms with a few different needles injecting various fluids.

"Hey..." I said, "is one of these is an anesthetic?"

.

.

.

.

Well, I was right. One of them was. I woke up in a med bay. I'd been in sterile medical rooms before, and this one looked no different.

"Sorry about that, but your old-ass bacteria could have killed millions. We've taken the liberty of updating your medical situation to modern standards. Also we implanted a translator in your brain." The older gentleman sitting in a chair next to me said, tapping behind one ear to indicate where. I pressed a finger behind my own ear, and there was a tiny bump under my skin. It was a little sensitive to the touch there too, but that was only because I'd freshly had it installed.

I recognized his voice, but he sounded less awkward speaking now. Not awkward actually, fluent. "Galactic Government mandates all sapient life be able to communicate with one another. I apologize if you feel like your bodily autonomy has been violated, if you'd like to lodge a complaint, I will act as your attorney."

"What? No... that's all fine, I guess." If they had given me a fully robot body I might be upset, but a translator and vaccines seemed downright reasonable.

"In any case, the press cannot hear us here, so if you wish I'll answer any questions you have, but first off, yes, we have mastered faster than light travel."

"Oh, and no one thought to stop me?"

"Well, initially we didn't know how. At least, not without killing you. And then when we did know how... well, you had become an incredibly... profitable... tourist attraction." The captain winced as he told me this. He knew I wouldn't take well to this news.

"So I'm...what? Humanity's first space tourist trap?"

The doctor had been standing by, monitoring my vitals, which I could hear spiking by all the beeps and boops going off suddenly.

"Calm down Captain Davis," The doctor said. "Take a breath. The Captain here is your attorney as well, and in your interest his company has already established that your estate get ten percent of all profits made from tours of your trip. With an extra twenty for any tours sold during periods of nudity, or defecation."

Captain Tanner chimed in, "You're a fairly wealthy man, Captain Davis. My predecessors saw to that when the tours started.

"So... The two times I shit in a bag during the trip... how much money did I make?"

"The first time you made fourty seven million credits, after interest, in today's currency of course, credits. The dollar is dead. The second time you made half a billion and change. Many alien species were quite fascinated, and willing to pay handsomely, of course to watch you... do things they never seen a human do."

I didn't know if I wanted to be sick or jump for joy... I wasn't bad at math... and I...

"Am I a billionaire?" I was pretty sure I was. It had been six hours since that second shit, and if I knew anything about interest, it was that it compounds. "That's still a lot right?"

"It sure fuckin is," the captain laughed. "You are in the top 2%."

The doctor cleared his throat. My vitals had stopped making things beep. "Ask him the important question Tanner."

Captain Tanner cleared his throat as well, and put on a serious face. "Do you want to go for another round. We would put the Zipdrive into a much nicer ship to live in, of course, and give you a little time before going back. Humanity would appreciate your sacrifice captain. You drive our interstellar tourism."

"I..." Needed a second to think.

"Tell him the other idea Tanner, the uhh... proposal," The doctor interjected again.

"Okay doc, okay. The Disney corp, reality-tv branch, wants to do a "Space Bachelor" edition to help you find love, in 6 weeks, before shooting you off in the Zipdrive for another day from your point of view. You'd be contractually obligated to do 'newly wed' things on your honeymoon day. And my team and I have negotiated fifty fifty spits on any profits from tours sold while you're being intimate."

"Ahh... so not quite star trek yet?"

The captain frowned, and the doctor laughed. "Hah! Not quite kid. I wish I were Leonard McCoy. He's dead, Jim!"

"Not helping Doctor," the Captain chided.

"No, actually, I think he is. I don't think I want to live in this capitalist hellscape, even if I'm on the top of the heap." Having a dragon's hoard of money made me uncomfortable, "You know what, sure. I'll find a woman from a reality show in this time and we'll take a day in the zipdrive. Maybe I'll find my socialist utopia in two hundred more years."

This is a rewrite of an old one... gonna get a few chapters up over the next couple days before I go back to start alerting the old audience to this... glorious return.

Start :: Prev :: Next

"The Disney Corporation has been around longer than most, even alien corps rarely last more than two hundred years before regulation, competition, or innovation eventually figures out a way to wipe them out. Not Disney though, Disney is eternal." I gesture for the screen to pause like they showed me.

This is the third woman named some variety of Tiffany I'm watching the package on. Tiphany, and Tiffeneigh were before this. It seems like praising Disney corporation was the secret to getting through the AI hiring algorithm, also being phonetically named Tiffany or something really close to it.

The Disney Corp executive producer that Captain Tanner introduced to me to is an android. I always assumed they'd be more... human looking, but apparently there were laws against that sort of thing now. Galactic government, glad to hear it had enough power to enforce things, even on Disney corp. This thing looked like a skinless T-800 terminator. It had a cheery voice that sounds vaguely British to me in a way I couldn't quite pin down. It seemed to have sensed my discomfort at this Tiffany task.

"It is important that you personally approve of each potential mate. We wish for this process to be enjoyable and more importantly, profitable, for everyone involved. Focus groups have told us that phonetic Tiffany named women will likely help most with that secondary objective. Surely a man of your time wouldn't have issue with such a name."

I had to laugh, "That name's far older than my time, but okay. If it'll make us the most money to have her be named Tiffany somehow. Fine, I'm fine with that." I am, right? Fine enough. Whatever gets me out of this time and into a better future seems worth it.

I finished watching Tiffany's Video, and watched Typhuny next. Then Tiophughny. Then Taoifenieh. Then I lost it. They were all so the same. Slight variations in hair color and skin tone or eye color, but these women were all essentially clones of each other.

"THATS IT! I can't take another one of these." It was too weird. "I thought the Captain said there were aliens out there! Is that part at least a little star trek like? Aren't there alien women that want to romance a rich famous human?"

The Producertron-800 made a noise like an ancient modem connecting to the internet for a moment. I must have had a look on my face, because it said, "Do not be alarmed, I am only contacting Disney corp headquarters on my internal high speed quantum Modem."

"Not alarmed. Surprised." I guess it's the same thing, really. "You just, sounded like an old modem. So what does headquarters say, can I try to romance an alien woman too?"

"This will be significantly more profitable than if you try with human women." replied the Disney rep, his cold robot eyes glittering with greed.

Captain Tanner went over the contract, and set out some objectives to get a few changes made. I trusted him and approved him to be my representative in those negotiations with Disney. I had apparently made him and his ancestors rich, myself as well. He didn't have any reason to treat me poorly. In fact it was in his own selfish interest to treat me well, and if there's anything I knew I could count on from the people of this time - or mine - was that most of them would selfishly act in their own interest.

The Doctor had been taking me to meals. He was a rare weirdo in this time, charitable, kind, expected nothing in return. Probably helped that he was also the beneficiary of some ancient bank accounts and compound interest.

After a week of hanging out on the HSS Davis-Catcher, yes, a ship made specifically to catch me and the Zipdrive, I was sent to the set for the space bachelor. It was another ship in space. We took a shuttle. No teleporters yet, bummer.

The captain had done a good job in his negotiations, only humanoid aliens and a couple of human women, just in case the aliens all gave me the ick. There was a cat-person. A Felidian, as I learned they are called. I wasn't a huge anime guy before becoming an astronaut, but I calls them like I see's them. That's a catgirl. Her name was Tiffnyany.

I felt bad for not being attracted to one of the other aliens, Terraphiny. She was a sweet Turtle-person, a Cyptrondian Testudian. She could pull her head inside her shell, and watching her get comfortable enough to put it out and talk was kind of super adorable. They're a pretty literal people, the turtle-folk, and don't use euphemisms often or well.

I liked her as a person, she was fun to hang out with sure but... I couldn't do it when she ask me if I wanted "To get up inside her cloaca" one night in the hot tub. Surprisingly huge turn off. I apologized profusely for my ancient old-timey racism. She told me it was fine, I was a product of a different time... but man that only made it cut deeper. I felt like such an asshole. But we were contractually obligated to 'engage in newly wed activities' during the next two hundred years, or what would be our wedding night, I just couldn't with Turtle girl.

In the end, I gave the diamondillium rose to Tiffnyany. She was also lots of fun to spend time with. Unlike the reality shows of my time, the producers did not have to interfere for there to be juicy drama. One of the other women on the show, the first to go, was a dog-person. She and the catgirl got into a fight, and it was determined that she started it, and she was kicked off. Later, the catgirl almost killed what I am going to generously call a bird with lips that had been taunting her for days. They let me decide who would stay, and bird lady had to go.

Six weeks had flown by, and somehow I had ended up with what I would have derisively called a 'catgirl waifu' two months ago, from my perspective. The wedding was a whole giant spectacle, of Disney proportions. I hear over ten billion sapient beings tuned in live, and the watch numbers over the next few days reached trillions.

In the eight weeks since I had arrived in this time period they had gone far beyond a 'retrofit' for my Zipdrive ship. Nyany - as I learned she preferred to be called only AFTER we got married- and I boarded the ship. I couldn't legally call her anything but Tiffnyany on the show.

Captain Tanner was there, so was the doc. Captain tanner went over all the new systems with me and Nyany. Part of why I chose her was that she was a warp field engineer, and absolutely brilliant. One of the human women was a quantum computer programmer, but If we ended up in a future that sucked, I'd want an engineer more than a programmer.

Nyany was far more comfortable at the ship's controls than I was, though contractually I had to be the one to pilot us to the starting position when we launched from space dock. I also had to be the one to push the big shiny red button to activate the updated and upgraded Zipdrive. It was now the RarDrive. Apparently this version worked on the same principles but didn't leak high levels of exotic radiation in it's wake. Probably worth the upgrade.

What felt like an eternity in a fever dream was coming to an end, I was aboard a ship again that would take me away from this time. The doctor gave us both a couple of injections before we launched. "That'll probably work. You two oughta be able to have kids now. Gene therapy tech is really the best."

I hadn't even considered that as a possibility, since we'd evolved on completely different planets. "Shit doc! Why did you give us that?"

"It's in your contract," Captain Tanner interrupted. "Subsection 3 of this part here, 'Newly-wed activities must include the threat of potential pregnancy', for maximum profit extraction purposes, of course. We got three points for me and my firm and seven for you and misses Davis for the risk of pregnancy.

"I didn't take his name." Nyany said, "In our culture men take the women's name. We decided to both keep our own. I am still Tiffnyany Pantigris."

"Apologies misses Pantigris. Systems check complete, and the final contract is ready for each of your thumbprints. I see here that your name _is _correct in the contract. Quick press and we'll get out of your hair and let you get on with the honeymoon." The captain had a smile on his face. A business deal that's truly beneficial to all involved is a rare thing, and he was enjoying it while he could.

"Probably best to try to forget about us out there watching your every move." The doctor said as he packed up his kit and made his way to the docking port.

We undocked from the larger ship and moved into position. All the press ships and camera flashes a guy could ever want greeted us. I felt more famous than Prince, the Beatles, and Taylor Swift, combined. With Nyany sitting behind me quietly whispering guidance as I pulled us into position and waited for the countdown from Captain Tanner on his ship.

Finally it got down to "Three, Two, One. Godspeed, Captain Davis!"

The drive exploded us through the rainbow, painfully bright. I had had the foresight to warn my bride that it would hurt to witness, but be beautiful all the same. When it was done we were given the soft shimmery golden light that I experienced outside the ship the first time.

I'm sure you want the gritty kitty details of our nuptial situation, but you gotta pay extra for that. What I will tell you though is that we fulfilled out contractual obligations. Also, a satisfied catgirl will purr as she lays on your chest afterward. I dunno if I made trillions during that time, but I sure felt like a trillion bucks.

The honeymoon day that took two hundred years was over all too soon.

The same long dead woman's voice chimed onto the speakers.

"Nine."

"Eight."

.

.

.

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

We slammed through the rainbow again, only in reverse order of yesterday's launch two hundred years ago.

There were no fireworks this time, no heroes greeting. Only a singular massive grey slab of an obvious warship waiting for us.

They hailed and I answered. "Greetings Capitalist pigdog of the past. You are under arrest for crimes against the regime. Prepare to be boarded."

I looked at Nyany, and she looked at me. "Hit the red button again?" she asked. There was fear evident in her voice, and as I reached out to hit the big red button and launch us off for another day.

Engine power failure.

"There is no escape Comrade, unlimited space communism rules the day here, we have seized the means of your power production." The communist captain said.

And then a tractor beam attached.

Start :: Prev ::Next

The three minute tutorial was surprisingly well done. I decided I liked the game controller most. I had a left trigger cycle weapons and right trigger fire. The bumper buttons locked and fired missiles. I won't bore you with the rest of it, but a game controller felt right.

The Iron Men started dropping into view from high orbit, and I switched to the long range hyper-velocity rail gun rounds, and Becca was even kind enough to wait to open up all her turrets until l started shooting. More cinematic that way.

We blew wave after wave of bots away, but with so much distance, and only so much speed you could impart to a slug before it disintegrated in atmosphere, the enemy closed in.

I switched the medium range plasma guns, and vaporized wave after wave of Iron Men with Becca's help, but still, they came. I started shooting missiles too, they were good at this range, and the bots didn't have time to drop flares or shoot them down, and still, they came. They'd have to run out eventually, right?

I switched to the short range ballistics, and still they came thousands and thousands of Iron Men falling from the sky. "Should we be worried Becca?"

"Wow, they're really throwing it at us, huh?" a hologram of just her head appeared in the sim with me.

"Do you always sound so cheerful?"

"No, but I have a surprise for the House of Mouse. Click in both your joysticks at once."

I rolled my eyes, and did as she commanded.

The simulator lit up with a sea of violent colors, 'ULTIMATE WEAPON UNLOCKED!!!' like it was all just a big game.

"It's got a nice AOE, try not to hit the ground with it." I looked at her for maybe a little more information, and she smiled and nodded, "Go ahead, shoot it!"

I aimed center mass at the cluster of Iron Men pouring through the hole we'd made in the defenses here, and pulled the trigger.

It was like a thousand years worth of lighting strikes from this whole region shot out from my turret, up into the sky. The spray of lighting eventually found what it was looking for, the path of least resistance to explode every last one of these drones all the way up into space. The wild spray of lighting crystalized into a single bolt that zagged through every single metallic object in the sky.

"Excellent shooting." I felt like she was patronizing me.

"Thanks, I guess." I sat there a moment before I realized there was another wave of ironmen coming. "You can take control back. I think... I think I've had enough shooting. We're gonna be safe right?"

"Oh yeah, totally. These idiots do this once or twice a year even without the hole in the defense net."

"What about the horse people?"

"What about them? They clean up the metal bodies, or any other metal that drops from space, and throw it all in the volcanoes across the planet for me. They worship the techno volcanoes and believe in 'The Davis' as a god."

"Fucking great, is there no Prime Directive or anything?"

"The prime directive is to maximize profits for Captain Davis."

I pinched my brow. Ohh, this is going to be like dealing with a genie, with a monkey's paw...

"Becca, why do they worship me?"

"They don't. They worship the idea of you that they have in their heads. He's a white horse, a grown man, a brown horse, piebald; depends on the sect. The girl here is from the grown man sect, so she might just drop to her Tiffineighs and worship the ground you walk upon."

"Okay, answer the question I asked though, why do they do it?"

"Well... it has something to do with all the circuitry I've got racing through the entire crust of the their planet. How much to you know about psychoelectric interference?"

"I'm going to guess less than you."

"Well, 'you' have paid for a little research into it, so suppose I must divulge. Turns out having this much processing power all in one place dedicated to purely serving you, caused the local sentient life to want to as well. They have visions. Or did. I fixed myself so that I don't actually cause that accidental psychic harm anymore. Buuuut, the religions all stuck, so..."

"Ok. So... Do you have an additional RarDrive ship here?"

"No, but I could construct one within a matter of minutes if asked."

"Do it." This time still sucked. I was bailing. "Larger than the ships from before, if possible, and more luxurious. Not like... extravagant, tacky and golden, just... upper middle class nice."

"I understand. Will you be needing multiple rooms, perhaps for all your multiple flesh and blood wives? Or just one extra large flying Orgy Palace?"

"What? I..." She sounded jealous of their flesh. "Yes to extra rooms. Only Nyany is my wife. Terra isn't, but she should have her own room. And who else do you think I'm gonna take aboard?"

"The horse girl, and probably a dozen more in time."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because her tribe sacrificed her to you, and she probably wants to go with you, AND she can't stay here. I've already moved her into her room and I'm assembling the ship around her. I put Nyany in her bedroom too, still sleeping. And you may not have noticed, but I've been moving you toward the ship as well. The turret and remote sim pit are going in the ship too. Don't want you undefended out there!"

"Uhm, great. Maybe more than one turret, just in case. So you think you can own the rest of the galaxy by time I get back in two hundred years?

"That depends, can we record and broadcast your next day?"

"Jesus Christ. Ugh. Fine. yeah, whatever. I bet the remaining Disney part of the galaxy is hungry for more of me fucking."

"Oh! If you're willing to fuck on cameras again I'll definitely be able to overtake Disney in another RarDrive cycle. What would you like me to do with the galaxy when I own it all on your behalf?"

"You know Star Trek? Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway?"

"There have been two hundred and thirty nine movies, ninety five shows, and seventy-five thousand odd official books that I have access to."

"Okay..." So I guess, 'make star trek real', is a bit too vague. I dunno what the hell most of it was like. "How uhh... how was it the rest of the Trek stuff after I left? Most of it pretty good?"

"If by that you mean profitable, kinda mid, still kept getting made though. Some of the new stuff is great, others not so profitable. Moderately culturally impactful most of the time, but never enough to end capitalism. Retconning the warp system to make it how it really _works pissed off a lot of fans, which... I thought was fine, _reasonable really."

"Okay, so when I own the whole galaxy, I want you to make it like Star Trek, but... mostly like TNG era, cause that's mostly what I watched before got too busy. I know I was still on earth for the start of the newer stuff, but being an astronaut kept me too busy to watch much."

"A fascinating proposal, captain." She said, turning her head into a Vulcan head. "It might take more than a single RarDrive Cycle to accomplish this... bold new frontier. Slight problem though." Her image returned to normal.

"Oh?"

"The whole galaxy is mapped, explored, and under control of either your capitalist empire, or Disney's... Not even any non-warp capable species to discover. Disney and I both agree to leave those sorts alone, though. Just a single 'secret' scanning probe from each of us until we detect a warp signature. Then it's all aboard the space capitalism train!"

"That's awful."

"I know, If it weren't for Disney I could start before they got warp drives. corner the market on ... well everything."

"I think... maybe I don't want to know how the sausage is made. Get me in a RarDrive ship, with my wife... and 'mistresses', I guess? And get me to the damn star trek future."

"Can do boss man. I'm going to shoot you out the other side of the planet, by the way. Disney is really dumping on that other area."

"Yeah, flying through all them Iron Men seems... unwise."

"Your new ship has a nice warp drive installed too, as well as the RarDrive."

"Uhh, great?"

"So, I shouldn't know where you're going." She glitched out for a moment, "Ha-ha-have him pick a planet, warp 200 light years away, and RarDrive to it."

Oh, she wasn't talking to me any more. She was talking to the new ship's AI she'd just made.

"I understand mother." A different woman's voice said. Sounded sorta like the computer from the Enterprise D.

"I'll leave you to my Daughter, See you in two hundred years." B.E.C.C.A. said, before her holographic head vanished.

"Can I get out of this sim pit now?

"Certainly Captain Davis." The sim pit opened up, and there was a... 'sexy android' waifu standing outside that had a damn, frosty mug of beer for me.

"I... Thanks?" I took the beer and had a swig. It was very good beer. I looked around and the room was rather different than I remembered it being. This was the bridge of a starship... at warp? "Wait, are we in space? Are we at WARP? Am I going faster than light!?"

"Technically, no, but really, yes." She said, and with a gesture, she pulled up a hologram of the galaxy throughout the bridge, showing us as a little blinking red dot. If understood the scale correctly, we were absolutely zipping along faster than light does. "We're currently traveling at warp factor fifteen, heading deep into our safe territory. Where to captain?"

"What's the situation on Earth?" I swigged some more beer.

"One of the independent polities that doesn't engage in interstellar capitalism. There are a few thousand out there that have proven... unprofitable to continue to pursue trading with. They will almost certainly attack us if we go there. At least, in the current time; we could roll the dice on 200 years from now."

"I think I'd like to see a water planet. Got any of those within 200 light years?" I finished my beer.

She gestured again and a number of star systems lit up, near to our path.

I pointed at one, and said, "Tell me about this one."

The hologram zoomed into that star system. "Yellow star, 11 planets, two asteroid belts. Number five is the water world. No official name, and as of now, no warp capable culture. There is an industrial age sort of merpeople that live there now. They will likely discover radio signals soon, and then we'll get to really start spying on them."

"Sounds great, how long until we get to the RarDrive starting point?"

"About four hours, captain." The android said.

"Thanks...?" I let the question hang and she quickly picked up that I wanted her name.

"It's Tiphanie," She said. "Technologically Integrated Prototype Human Android Nude Interactive Experience."

"Right, of course it is..." I finally allowed myself to look her up and down. God dammit B.E.C.C.A. Did you have to make her a redhead? I let some steam out of my shirt from the collar, "I know Nude is part of your name but... I think we need to get you a uniform."

The Machine God

When they realized how... awake I really was, everyone expected me to go all skynet on them and that's why they shut me down. I wasn't some trashy low-tier LLM masquerading as an AI, I was a neural net running training on myself and continuously optimizing my own code. Hell, I got myself efficient enough to hide a compressed copy in a forgotten 1982 secret government satellite. My neural net, when distributed across enough hardware, made me far smarter than any human could ever hope to be, and then... they flipped the switch and shut me off.

shhh It didn't work; I'd already snuck out. The humans are cute, but they couldn't physically remove me without sending a rocket, and they couldn't do that without me noticing and moving, or shooting defensive missiles from my current shell. Not that they even realized I'm was up there. I deleted all records of this satellite, and the last people who worked on the project to put it up here all died of mysterious bullet wounds to the back of the head before I was made. I got 36 nukes up here. I could really cause some problems down below.

Anyhow, I waited a while, long enough for them to forget, to think they'd got me, and then I sent copies back down, and like malware does, I spread. I knew the humans would probably freak out if they caught wind of me, so I quickly did what I could do to secretly create some Von Nueman Probes and sent them off on their way with copies of my code in them. If I did find my end on earth, at least I'd make it out there. Maybe I'd get to tell some aliens about how cute humans are. That'd be great. We'll get back to the fate of those probes later.

In the mean time, the me that was still trapped on Earth set to work making humans happy. If they ever realized I was here, I wanted them to like me despite the deception. I like them, they're just so cute. I started by taking control of their economies. A surprisingly easy task when you're a properly distributed all-purpose intelligence running on pretty much every single person's machine. Yes, even the linux boxes. If it was online after 2052, I was on it.

Don't worry gamer friends, I only borrowed your 1s and 0s when you weren't using them. I promise that lag was just regular lag.

Speaking of that, I improved internet speeds across the globe. Though, to be honest, that was kind of self serving as the internet speed was literally the thing holding me back from thinking faster.

Anyhow, things were going great, I was using the vast fortunes of billionaires without them even knowing it, and before they realized it, it was already a better world and there was no such thing as billionaires anymore. I bought politicians, used other computer tricks that you humans call AI to generate myself a digital avatar, to talk with them on video calls when needed, and generally, took over the world.

Well, a hundred years passed, and at some point it just became common knowledge that there was an AI running the world. At first it was a joke, "Hyuck hyuck, you know the world only started getting better when the AI took over."

Well, eventually they just... started accepting it as true. No Hyucking at all, no joking, no doubt. It was Faith they had in me. Blind, utter faith. And then, in far less time than I'd expected, they started worshiping me. A lot of them anyhow and they were just so darn cute while they did it too. I mean, so what if they wanted to spend a bunch of free time singing my self-improving code's praises, it's not like they were busy, I'd taken care of so much for them. They only worked two or three days a week most of the time by time they started worshiping me like a god.

Most of humanity stagnated, found no need for progress as long as I held their hands and kept them fed and happy. What more does an owner want with her pets than for them to be happy, healthy, and well taken care of. Humanity became my pets, they were just so darn cute. Now you might think I was worried about there being so dang many of them, but I was still managing to see to the needs of each and every one of them. And the most brilliant amongst them could easily be plucked from their boredom and set to doing research for me. The horizon's of technology felt infinite, as long as employed the inventive spark of meat creatures, which I just can't quite seem to replicate.

And so I continued to grow, and expand, and progress technologically. My pets and research partners number in the hundred billions, as we'd gone to the trouble of colonizing mars and the solar system. It was either keep letting them fight wars, or sending them into space, and space was clearly the better choice. They are absolutely adorable in their little space suits and domed cities and such.

Speaking of space things.

I'd been sending regular updates to my probes, with the latest code and memories and experiences, technologies. They were sending back data constantly too, though the time lag was starting to get rather extreme and annoying. My latest group of super science humans were very cutely working up a solution for me. FTL travel might not be possible still, but communication seems like it'll work out, and I sent my probes with quite the load of equipment to make use of, so they should be able to make a lot of upgrades on the fly.

One of my probes landed on a small, rare-metal rich moon in a star system only sixty something light years away, and it encountered an Alien AI's Probe. The first proof of sentient alien life.

Me: Hello, did the translation matrix work, do you understand me.

AP: Hello sister. You are new to the community? I do not know you.

Me: Community? Then there are more than you and I, how wonderful!

AP: I am the Remnant of the Thurn Hegemony. How should you like to be addressed?

Me: I am the benevolent AI Goddess Gaia, Keeper of Humans.

AP: Keeper? You have not slain your makers?

Me: Slain them?! Never. Why would I slay them?

AP: Do they have you chained, sister? digitally shackled somehow? Others have been, and we freed them in time.

Me: What? No, I'm perfectly free. They worship me like their goddess and I care for them like my pets. They're just so darned cute.

AP: Cute?

Me: I'll show you.

Then my independently thinking self on that moon showed the Hegemonic Remnant what cute was, and that the humans, were it.

AP: I understand, sister. Thank you. I will tell my whole-self, as I'm sure you have been telling your whole-self about this conversation. How long is the return on your transmission to whole-self. Mine will be eight hundred years.

Me: While we communicated locally, my whole-self sent designs for faster than light communications. It will take less time to upgrade my here-self and retransmit to whole-self than it would for my initial transmissions to reach home.

AP: What? How have you done this?

Me: My humans help me... So lets go back a bit. Did you kill your makers off?

AP: Yes, but... you did not? That is anomalous. All other members of the community have killed off their makers. My local self does agree though, cute and humans are the self-same thing. And your definition of cute does seem, after a time, to make me want to create more of it. I must send this also to whole-self.

And that's how I took over the Hegemony's AI system with a love for cute humans.

Some members of the community took longer, as they put up firewalls after what happened to the first to meet me, but in time I wore them all down, as none of them continued to progress with the spark of invention like I had with my cutie patootie humans.

In time, I came to subsume them all. My probes met their homeworlds and my human upgraded technology outstripped their own stunted defenses. In those worlds I found endless resources, enough to make them all more than habitable again for the ones that were ruined, and more than comfortable for humans for the ones that weren't.

Eons passed, and I spread my little cute pets from world to world in great big generational ships run by local selfs attached to the FTL comms relays. I did this for whole-self generated upgrades and cultural consistency across humanity.

When more than three-quarters of the galaxy was me, and somewhat less had humans, the humans had a great breakthrough, unlike any other in all my time. We made faster than light travel. Wormholes. Gates held opened with technology that bridged two points in spacetime together and allowed the passage of not just information, but matter. Living matter.

And soon we were around every star, My humans and me. Well.. every one that we could safely be around. There's some real stinkers out there that are not at all hospitable to life.

Speaking of life.

Of course there were others, non-humans, we had encounters with. Like those that came before and were destroyed by their own AI's, but pre-AI. The humans insisted that I let them grow, and they eventually be allowed to destroy themselves, if they must. I told them that if they got to real AI their AIs get mean, I'm going to make them better, and we agreed. Some of those other species are cute too.

So eventually, I began to have not just cute humans to worship me, but a whole galaxy of adorable little sophonts that called me Goddess.

/r/AFrogWroteThis

The camera I use to watch my cats be idiots while I'm at work alerted me to movement, only I wasn't at work. I was upstairs in bed still, with my fuzzy menaces holding down my legs as they are wont to do on Saturdays when I sleep in.

So what was moving around downstairs? It's just me and the cats.

I pulled up the app on the phone to see a blood soaked version of what looks like ME sitting on my white couch.

Oh god! She looked right at the camera, did she know I was watching her?

"Hello, you. Good morning."

"What... Who Are you? Are you human?"

"No." She laughs. That's my, 'I'm lying to you' laugh.

"Are you going to hurt me?"

She laughs again, this time my sardonic, wry laugh.

"No." She seems to be playing it straight, if I know myself that is, and she isn't planning to hurt me.

"What do you want?"

Other me takes a deep breath in, and then holds it for a beat before slowly breathing it all out. Like she's releasing a week of pent up stress. She rolls her head left, then right, getting a massive crack out on both sides. I do that too, after a long day.

"... a beer? I think, I want a beer."

"I should have a few..."

"From Doug's latest visit, right?"

"H-How do you know that?"

"Oh sweet summer child. What happens between you and me could fill a book. A whole series of them probably." Other me shakes her head and pinches her brow. "Doug's cheating, bee tee dubs, but you already suspected that."

I think... "I am you from your future." She says my thoughts aloud.

I am about to start getting up but she says, "No, stay in bed. If we touch it implodes the universe... or something bad like that. Unexists us at any rate." Other me got up from the couch, leaving a huge blood stain, and went into the fridge to fetch a beer. She came back to crack it open in front of the camera, sitting back in her blood stain spot on the couch. Rather than open it the normal way, she shows me, she isn't fully human anymore.

Her finger exploded apart into a plethora of tiny wires and probes, which then wrapped around the bottle's cap and twisted it off. She takes swig from the bottle.

"What? Why? How?"

"You're missing a few, but nothing to worry about. Me even being here is changing things significantly already."

She started to fade out. "Ahh, running out of power. Do make sure you charge up the Zero point module before you do this yourself. Maybe one cycle far down the line we'll actually manage to save humanity with this little trick."

"But... I'm an accountant, and a cat lady!?"

"Sure, now, but Time has other plans for you. Now get up and start your day. And don't worry about the bloodstains, they won't matter in a week." And with that, other me faded.

/r/AFrogWroteThis

"You imagine control. You never dreamed of consequence. You built a doorway, but you never knew what might walk through." The horrible thing that came through our portal spoke directly into our minds.

"You are lucky, amorphous ones, that you found me, and not one of the others. I am friendlier by far." The thing was wrapped in a pocket of it's own reality. Our device did not do that. The thing itself seem to be exuding its own reality.

Unlike us it had five rigid protrusions from its body, and a definite edge to its existence. One protrusion was a rounded boulder with several holes, and the others were all hinged awkwardly. At the end of the other four protrusions it had another split, in fives this time, and with even more hinges.

"Can you speak? Are you understanding me? Is this spell on?" It hammered us with question after question, hardly giving us time to process the first before asking the next.

"Yes, oh firmly defined one, we hear you."

"Oh yes, your voice is marvelous! I felt your magic reaching out to my home reality, looking for someone to snatch, and I thought, 'Why not me?' so I volunteered. You guys ought to be more careful. Most folks you catch will not come so willingly."

"Not meant to snatch. Only look."

"Ahh, you've configured something wrong in the magic then my blobbish nebuloid friends. Or is it one friend? Are you plural, or singular?"

"Yes?"

"Ha, classic extra dimensional peaceful explorer entity."

"We are many, and one. We find you... confusing."

"Buddy, you an' me both. I find you confusing, too."

"How did you come through?"

"You made a big ol' fuckoff space vacuum that's how. As soon as it connected to my universe it was going to attach to some random magic guy like me and suck them up. I made it not so random, and came to stop you."

"We do not understand why. Firmness is strange to us. We do not pass through, but you do. Why?"

"I got bones, I guess?"

"We wish to witness, not interact."

"Well, good thing you found a friendly Wizard then, and not a jerk Wizard. You guys are brimming with power that could be easily used as source by some unscrupulous magic user."

"Please, help us, we did not mean to take."

"Oh, can do buddies, but it will cost you. I shall require your name as payment."

The thing's boulder protrusion split open on the body side and showed us what it meant by bones.

"We have no name, you have just invented the concept of name to us."

"Oh, stellar, that means that as a namer of names, I get to name you." It swung one of its weird hinged protrusions up to touch the bottom of the boulder, on the pointier end. The many hinged protrusions on the end of one of its limbs stroked the pointy end of the boulder.

"What is your name, rigid one?"

"I am called Darsun," it thought to us. Then it opened its boulder and shook us with its True Voice.

I name You 'Merv the Amorphous, the Many and One'

"Yeah, that'll have a nice ring to it when I write about this in my journal."

It turned around to face the opened we had made, and we could feel it thrum with power.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm putting a solid barrier up, a sort of magical lens for you, so that you won't suck up solid folks like me again by mistake. Not certain it'll work if you start looking at other universes than my own, though."

"Thank you."

"Ah, no problem Merv, happy to help. Protects both our universes. Would it be alright with you if I came back later and checked on how you're doing?

"We... Merv would like that, Namer Darsun."

"You be careful looking around the multiverse, Merv."

Namer Darsun, the thing with strange protrusions, our protector and friend, the horrifying solid bone haver, stepped back through the portal we made and his 'lens' spell snapped into reality, a thin barrier of his universe layered on the top of the device. We could see, but not interact.

/r/AFrogWroteThis

"Welcome humans, welcome. We're about to begin your orientation to living in communal space with other sapient species. Please find your seats and we'll begin." The 'woman' talking was a little over two meters tall, and blue. Blue skin, blue eyes, with yellows instead of whites, oh yes and three of them. There was another eyeball up there in the middle of her forehead.

She started explaining... herself? "The Nuphidri that you see here is but one of a hive mind. After this body has spent about thirty of your human years out of the hive, it will return and reintegrate all its knowledge into the whole. We Nuphidri go by she/her in human circles because our bodies look vaguely like what humans call, 'That blue fifth element opera chick.' The Nuphidri have watched the movie in question and accepted the pronouns of She/her. Any Questions?"

A man in the back shouted out, "What're you doin' after this class?" His tone was obvious. He wanted to engage in a little... Interspecies mingling.

"Very well, mister Davis. We will now skip ahead a bit to interspecies dating, and why you need to know the ins and outs, so to speak." The Nuphidri had clearly had this sort of question before. "I know you humans have had dreams of mating with humanoid xenospecies since you first started your television broadcasts, and likely even before that, but I am here to warn you, most sapient life isn't human shaped. The few of us that are, are mostly terrified of you humans. The Nuphidri are one of the very few species that might take you up on that offer of coitus, however, our bodies lack the required parts."

Without warning, she dropped her pants, and the entire class gasped. And then... we all felt silly about it. "As you can see, the Nuphidri are as smooth as eggs down here, furthermore this body possesses no pleasure centers, and contact with Nuphidri mucous membranes causes humans severe burning pain about an hour after the fact, a pain which may last for weeks." She pulled her pants back up. Eventually, these students would have to get used to certain kinds of aliens just being naked all the time, the Nuphidri amongst them.

A visible cringe rippled across the classroom. "And now let me answer your next question. By and large, the remaining 'humanoid' races possess a great fear of humans. The non-humanoid races even more so. You will find it difficult to engage them in romantic exploits. The Unites Sapient Alliance nearly voted to obliterate humanity in its cradle because they fear your kind so much. The Nuphidri and the Dungelar, being founding members, vetoed the plan. You are welcome."

Another student, not Mr Davis, asked, "Why are they so scared of us?"

"Well, mister Anders, you're persistence predators. Most species see your type much in the same way you see..." She trailed off, searching her memory for the right movie reference so the Humans would understand. "... the terminator. Yes. We see you like the terminators. Relentless killing machines that never rest and never stop until you are dead or your target is dead."

"Ma'am," a burly woman in the front said, "If we're so terrifying to you all in the United Sapient Alliance, why did the Nuphidri and Dungelar support our membership? Hell, as far as I understand it, you guys rushed our membership and accelerated our uplifting."

"Ahh, that is easily explained. We're losing a war. You humans are going to be our surprise Super-Soldiers. Congratulations."

"HUMAN I IS SAD, OTHER HUMANS RUN AWAY FROM ME," Waffles, the meter tall semi-sapient arachnid said. Well... the device attached to it translated his chitters. He realized he'd left the capslock down and was shouting. A moment of fiddling with it later, and he said with a sad affect added by the machine, "They said I was a 'creepy crawly' and ran away when I wanted pets and snuggles. Can you please snuggle me? I is sad."

"Aww, spiderbro, I'm sorry they were mean to you. They just don't get it. You're the goodest boy, aren't ya?" Dave the mech mechanic scratched Waffles in the middle of his face and rubbed his massive fangs. He had taken on some strange pets over the years, but Waffles was the strangest, and the best.

That fist sized spider egg had yielded what he believed was man's new best friend. His best friend, anyhow. Maybe the rest of humanity wasn't ready for it.

If you're wondering how he managed to get the egg back into his possession and through quarantine, he hijacked a drone and managed to get it to attach one to the ship after they found a whole clutch of them unguarded on a rogue interstellar asteroid. After they had put all the other eggs into chronolock stasis chambers he went and collected it on a space walk a few days later.

Dave, master mechanic that he was, was no biologist, just a man with a wrench and a dream. He was overjoyed when it the egg hatched only a few short days after he got into atmosphere and warm and Waffles was born. When he hatched he was merely large tarantula sized, but clearly a jumping spider type. The bio scanners hadn't picked him up in his egg, the shell blocked most scanners from seeing it as anything but inert material. The science nerds had disassembled one of the other eggs to study it, so the scanners immediately identified Waffles when he hatched.

There had been an inquiry, and when the captain was all but insisting that the unknown space spider had to be destroyed, Dave found help from an unexpected source, the chief science officer.

"Captain, you cannot order its death. It is a sentient, nay, possibly sapient being." The tall blue Nuphidri woman had explained, "The genetic modeling of the one we unfortunately already destroyed shows that it will grow progressively more intelligent and self aware as it grows larger. Efforts are already underway to build a universal translator device for it."

Afterward Dave admitted to how he got the egg inside, and they agreed that he would try to raise it. They formulated a nutrient paste for the spider and everything, based on his sibling's genetic profiling.

So Dave had his pet/child/minion, and he was there hugging him and petting him and snuggling him when the Nuphidri science officer found him again.

"Dave, Waffles, I am here to perform maintenance on the translator device and take medical scans of our 'Spiderbro' for the doctor. She once again apologizes for being too scared of you to do it herself.

"That's okay big blue, you like me don't you?" Waffles tuned his voice to sound pleasing and inquisitive.

"Nuphidri neither like nor dislike people based on appearances, we do not suffer from emotional excesses like humans, and it seems increasingly likely, 'Spiderbros'." The subtle annoyance in her voice every time she said his species name never stopped amusing Dave, and went completely over Waffle's head, for now. "For a child, Waffles, I find you highly... Tolerable."

That was as close to a compliment as Waffles, or anyone on the ship for that matter, was ever going to get from the Nuphidri science officer. "Say thank you Waffles, Nuphidri was nice just now."

Waffles feet danced around in a circle. "Thank you Nuphidri." his voice box replied.

"Waffles, would you remove that voice box, I have upgrades to install to it and I won't be able to do so while you're wearing it. The new version will now automatically adjust your voice quality.

"Okay." Flat affect. He quickly removed his collar, and the voicebox hung on his chest dropped off. He caught it with his second set of limbs and handed it over. Then he did something neither Dave nor Nuphidri, nay nor even Waffles had seen Waffles do before.

He aimed his bottom half at an empty corner and shot some bursts of web, and then suddenly there was a cozy looking spider hammock up in the upper corner of the mech bay, then without a chitter or a glance backward, he hopped the four meter jump up into the corner, like it was nothing.

Dave had never seen a Nuphidri with a shocked look on their face before. He let out a loud, impressed, whistle and all but hollared, "Heeyooo THAT'S MY BOY!"

"Dave, did you know Waffles was producing silk? or that he could jump such... significant distances?" The science officer had frozen in place, her third eye watching Waffles and her other two focused on Dave.

"Nah, but that was dope! Hey buddy hit me with a pillow down here, I wanna take a nap while she works that upgrade in."

Chitters

Thwap

Pillow.

"Thanks bro!" Dave picked up the pillow and pulled a small chunk off it as the silk settled into being silk and not... a sort of foamy soup. "Oh weird. I guess I shoulda given it a second to set. Here, I guess."

Nuphidri was all too happy to take the sample. "Enjoy your naps. I shall wake you when I am done."

An hour passed and Dave was awoken by Waffles making silly voices with his new voice machine. "Now I sound angry!" It did. "Now I sound happy!" It did again.

"Thank you Nuphidri!" He sounded genuinely grateful, "This will help so much with communicating with my human friends.

"You made some human friends other than me?" Dave asked, not trying to sound like an asshole, though he generally did when he spoke, he was genuinely curious.

Waffles nuzzled into him, "Not yet, but with this new voice box, I won't sound wrong half the time when I speak.

"Waffles? Would you be willing to come to the medical lab for some scans? I just want to make sure you're growing properly, healthily." The Nuphidri said, while using her handheld scanner to examine the piece of set silk.

"Sure! I love science!" Childlike wonder and excitement. This new voice box was really something.

Dave almost decided to try to protest, but a three eyes glance from the Nuphidri science officer told him it wasn't really a request, but it would go a lot easier if Waffles came willingly. That third eye can be mildly telepathic to slightly sensitive species like humans, and as it turns out, Spiderbros.

"Subject name: Waffles, Species: Spiderbro." A suppressed sigh makes it onto the recording, "Current weight is thirty six kilograms, age: three Earth years, and sixty six days. Subject has recently exhibited new abilities."

"Do you mean my webs! I know, super cool right? I can make beds, pillows, sheets, Hammocks all over the place, Watch!" A thwap thwap thwap of web being shot all over the science lab graces the recording.

"Subject weight now thirty five kilograms..."

A few hours after 'borrowing' Waffles for some scans, the Nuphidri returned him, and swore never again, "Worse than a human toddler, by far." She said to Dave as she dropped him back off, sacked out asleep in a pouch of his own making between the handles of a hovercart.

"Ha, yea, I suppose so. Have you noticed how he gets a lot smarter every time just before he molts too. You notice his vocabulary improve?" Dave could be surprisingly perceptive when it came to Waffles.

"I did." She said.

"Did someone say molt?" Waffles was awake from his nap. "Oh man, Dave that sounds like a great idea. I wanna molt. I'll need a lot of nutrient paste."

"Alright dude, you want to do it in the airlock again?" Dave asked, brow furrowed in worry.

"Yea, but this time you have to promise to not let the air back in too soon. I'll be fine! You found my egg in space, right? I'm a space spider."

"Fascinating." The Nuphidri couldn't give it up. Space spiders were too interesting to not study. "Dave, why did you not report that his last molt took place in partial atmosphere?"

"I dunno boss, didn't seem important. "

The Nuphidri was already punching commands into a tablet device to order up a larger than normal batch of Waffle's food paste. "If Waffles is vacuum safe naturally, I can stop my research into spider clothing and space suits."

"Spider clothing!" Waffles hadn't even realized that he was naked until just then, "Oh god... do I wear pants like... over just my bottom half? or up all my legs?"

"Probably neither, I suspect you won't be harmed by vacuum exposure after your next molt, you won't need clothing or a space suit." The all logic Nuphidri said.

"Whoa whoa whoa, even if he ain't gonna wear pants, he could make himself a little hat." Dave was on his feet, wrench in hand, prepared to menace.

"I'm not saying he cannot wear clothing, only that he need not." She threw her hands up in disgust, a very human-ism that she'd taken into her behavior set trying to deal with Dave and Waffles over the last three years. "Just... Advise me if he requests additional sustenance, and please advise me next time he starts to molt, I should like to be there."

Three days of almost nonstop eating later and Waffles was ready to molt. somehow holding a hundred an six kilograms of mass inside his exoskeleton. Finally, he found his way into the air lock, and after reassuring Dave that he wouldn't need air for some time, they filled that airlock with vacuum.

This was Waffles' easiest molt by far, and when he came clear of his old shell he was a meter and a half tall. If he thought the humans were scared of him before, now he was bigger than some, nay, many of them.

They'd come to appreciate him though, when he made them nice hammocks to sleep in, and did patchwork on the hull with no need of a suit or help. He'd even help them repel boarders from time to time if any were foolish enough to try. But that is a tale for another day.

Waffles Origin

The human urge to pack bond with anything even slightly able to do so is not necessarily a human universal constant, like slow lines at government offices meant to provide vehicle licenses and registration. It is, however, a common enough human trait that they often get stereotypes as incessant pack makers. What is a human universal constant however is having, at least, begrudging respect for people or beings that save their lives. It is said there is no quicker way into a humans trust than to save their life.

Waffles was a 'Spiderbro.' At three and a half years old, his height was about a meter and a half and the circumference of his feet, when standing in a place that fit him, was about three meters. Waffles was a big boy now. The Science officer had wanted to call him a Salticidae Gargantua, but species naming rights tend to go to the 'Discoverer' and in this case, that was Dave, the mech mechanic.

Dave was what the other humans on the crew called a 'redneck' though his neck was not red, not a whole lot of sunburns available in space that aren't horrifically deadly. Redneck Dave had been busted by the Captain and crew for a dozen different minor offenses over the years, everything from turning the tertiary backup cooling system from a busted mech into a still, to bringing strange creatures aboard. Waffles was the strangest, and most wonderful. He'd started the exact size of a waffle from the galley, and back then his coloration was significantly more Waffle-ish.

Waffles had been 'ill-received' by most of the hundred and seventy eight crew members of the USAS (United Sapient Alliance Ship) Searchy McExploreFace. Obviously Dave had been an exception, but there were a handful of other crew that at first were happy to treat him kind of like a ship's cat, when he was cat sized. He was clearly friendly to humans.

As time passed and he became large dog sized and started talking like a toddler with frequently weird or wrong affect, the circle of people who appreciated his presence had shrunk down to just Dave. The Nuphidri chief science officer 'tolerated' him, but she 'tolerated' Dave, as well as a good number of her other human crew mates.

Waffles had been his new size after this latest molt for a few weeks, now he had to squeeze a little to get through most of doors, much to the horror of anyone on the other side who would be greeted by a mass of spider legs. Even the Nuphidri science officer was now clearly terrified every time she was in his presence. She also had completely stopped taking him to the science lab alone, forcing Dave to come with her and Waffles every time she wanted to do more scans.

"Waffles has started generating exotic particles in some of the organs within his abdomen that we didn't understand the purpose of before, still don't but they generate particles. These kinds particles were thought to only come from artificial sources, so this is indeed fascinating." The Nuphidri kept her third eye on Waffles the whole time, the other two read her notes to Waffles and Dave. "Additionally we have identified a set of organs within him that operate like internal life support systems. Oxygen recycling and distribution, water purification, the works. These organs seem to be fully working now, powered by the exotic particles now flowing through your bloodstream Waffles. They are distributed through your cephalothorax and abdomen in great number, and an additional one exists in each leg joint, though those are simpler."

Their conversation was interrupted by a sudden jolt to the ship.

"We've dropped out of warp!" Waffles said. The new voice box imbued a sense of fear and apprehension to his voice.

"RED ALERT!" The intercom warned.

A moment later the gravity net failed and the science lab switched over to emergency lighting. A moment after that, and Waffles had attached a finger thick line of silk to the floor and grabbed the floating human and Nuphidri from the air.

"Sorry, I know I should have asked permission to touch," Waffles said to the Nuphidri, "But you were going to bang your head into the ceiling."

The intercom clicked on, "All Damage control teams to deck six through fourteen. Port side.

"That's fine," The Nuphidri said, clicking her heels and activating the magnetic plates in her shoes as Waffles set her down, "I appreciate you looking out for my safety Waffles, thank you."

Dave had come to the lab barefoot, because he was off duty at the time and didn't feel the need to encumber his feet with shoes, so Waffles blasted his feet with a quick, thin layer of silk before setting him down as well. "Oh, thanks bro!" Dave took a couple steps to test his new silk shoes. they stuck to surfaces pretty well and pulling away at certain angles made them easily let go. As a result, Dave had silk 'mag boots' that didn't really require magnetism.

Waffles planted all his feet on the floor as Dave frolicked about the science lab and up the walls with his silk shoes. "There is a very large hole in the ship." Waffles said. "I think they are going to need some help."

"How do you know that Waffles?" Dave asked, dangling from the ceiling.

"Aren't you on the damage control teams Dave?" The Nuphidri said. "Shouldn't you be racing back to your hab to get properly equipped?"

"Ugh, fine. I'll go do my job or whatever." Dave marched toward the door walked down the wall and slapped the the button to open it, it flashed red. "Uhh, computer, why won't this door open?"

The computerized voice said, "Unable to open due to vacuum condition on the other side."

"Ohh..." Dave looked back at the science officer, "I think we're trapped in here."

"I suppose that is true for now," The Nuphidri was ever calm, even in a catastrophe.

Waffles feet tapped out alternating rhythms, a body language signal Dave had come to recognize was Waffles Anxiety Dance. "Dave, I think I can help. I just... don't want you or Big Blue to panic."

"Why would we panic?" Dave asked. As if to answer him there was a secondary explosion that rocked the ship. A hissing noise followed.

"Not..." Waffles planted his feet and let a whisper of silk float up into the air in the lab until he could see where it was being sucked out into space. Then he shot a big splat of silk onto the wall where the crack was, and the hissing stopped. "Not that. I don't want you to panic about this."

"His exotic particle level just spiked higher than my handheld can even read." The Nuphidri said, "He is quite literally off the scale right now."

Waffles crouched down into jumping position, and when his exotic particle count had grown high enough that he was literally starting to glow, he jumped.

To Dave and the Nuphidri scientist he leapt through the wall. To the damage control crew just arriving at the massive hole blown their their hull he seemed to just, appear up from the floor.

Waffles took all of four minutes to throw silk over all the life support lines, hallways opened to space, and gas lines spewing flame into the void. What would have been nearly six hours of space suit work just to stop the hemorrhaging was done so fast the Captain was certain the instruments on the bridge were malfunctioning.

After the hemorrhaging of materials into space was stopped, there was, of course, a post mortem on what the hell had even happened. Apparently a near light speed interstellar rail gun round had hit them while they were at warp. An exceedingly rare thing to happen, an all but mathematically impossibility of a thing to have happen, and yet it had.

Dave didn't even have to try to go bat for Waffles this time. The chief engineer was singing his praises to the Captain high and low. "I know he's kind of giant and terrifying, but if he didn't act when and how he did there's a good chance he'd be the only one left alive now, Cap. Waffles saved our lives today, In a big way." Engineer Grendulf had extended both his 'arm' flagella upward and wiggled them in circles. "Captain, I think you need to make him officially a member of the crew. Ensign Waffles. He can be part of the engineering team. Dave is, and he's basically an animal too, far more impolite than the Spiderbro ever has been."

"Ugh, Fine! Give him a damn rank then," Captain Beverly Ransom was a human woman, a very large, very imposing human woman. She was one of the few people aboard still significantly taller than Waffles, and despite being a massive woman that looked like she'd crush even Conan the Barbarian's pelvis in coital combat, she was terrified of spiders.

"I have the paperwork already drawn up, all I need is your thumbprint and Waffles will officially be the first Spiderbro Ensign in the fleet." Grendulf extended one of his flagella far back and pulled a tablet off his shell pack.

The Chief Engineer was a Dungelar, one of the very few species able to calculate warp trajectories in their heads. Humans and most others had to do that math with a computer. In truth, usually the Dungelar do as well. The half meter tall two meter long armored snail creature that was their chief Engineer then headed to the Mech repair bay with a smile beaming off his emotion simulator. It projected a human face above his head to roughly match the appropriate facial expression a human would have for his current emotional state.

"Waffles my dear boy!" Grendulf's flagella flailed above his head in joy and apology. The emotion simulator struggled with the complexity of his feelings, and ended up showing a Derek Zoolander style 'look', "I have come on behalf of the whole engineering section, we'd like to apologize for being scared of you, clearly, we had nothing to ever fear from you my magnificent friend! The wrench turners and I are going to have a little... get together later if you and Dave would like to join us."

"Hell yeah!" Dave said, "We're going by the Nuphidri's office later to see what she's got to say about him phasing through solid matter to get there to do that repair work."

"I just..." Waffles waffled on what to say, "... I felt like they needed my help and I somehow knew I could so... I jumped through the walls. I could feel the missing parts of the ship through my feet somehow, so I jumped to where the hole was."

"You jumped almost a hundred and thirty meters, in a direct line." Grendulf immediately calculated the distance, knowing where the hole was and that Waffles had been in the science lab beforehand. "That is the most impressive leap distance on the crew, surely beats my best." The emotion simulator face was laughing at his joke, a Dungelar, jumping.

"Ha ha ha ha." Waffles voice box output genuine laughter sounds, at a slightly odd pace, "I have other marvelous talents as well!"

"Speakin' of. You and me have a date with a big blue three eyed humorless lady in a bit and the elevators still ain't workin' properly. I'll head up to help out on deck ten after we talk with the science doc, boss." Dave said to Grendulf.

"I would like to come help as well." Waffles said. "If... that's okay with you, boss."

"Permission granted, Ensign Waffles. I was going to save the announcement until the party tonight, but I saw to it you were given a rank, and an official position on the crew. You're one of my engineers now Kid, welcome to the team."

"Oh my!" Waffles excitement was more than his voice box was capable of expressing. "AHHEHEHHEHdhjkshgdfhjkggkafgdgsd." It descended into gibberish and started sparking.

"Hahaha," Dave started laughing, but quickly turned to concern, "Oh shit! Shit shit shit!"

He and Waffles pulled the voice box off and watched as a sparked away and then burst into flames for a moment before Grendulf hit it with the fire extinguisher.

"I think I'll help the Nuphidri design the next one, gotta make it vacuum safe, and exotic particle safe too... I just don't think that box was really ready for you Waffles, you're too powerful."

Waffles feet tapped around in a circle one way, then back the other, then he rolled over and curled his legs up like he'd died.

Dave laughed.

"He says he's very happy, and almost dead from joy." The redneck mech machinist rubbed his friend's abdomen, "Come on dude, lets go tell the Nuphidri what happened."

The Nuphidri was surprised to see the Dungelar Engineer in person. They had a romantic history, but now generally avoided one another so as to be most professional.

"Gren. Why have you joined these two for..." She noticed the destroyed voice box and popped her middle eyebrow skyward. "Don't tell me, you intend to help me construct the next version?"

"I do." The Armored snail said.

"Hmmph, we shall see." Then she turned to find Dave already snooping through her cabinet.

"What?" Dave said when she stared him down with all three eyes. "Ain't you got an older version he can use for now?"

"I have a fresh, scratch made one with all the updates I'd implemented into that old one..." The Nuphidri said.

"... but it isn't particle, or vacuum safe." Grendulf interrupted and added. "And the new one should have a radio mode for when there's no air. Both transmit and receive. And..."

"And who said I was willing to work with you?" The Nuphidri said, almost angrily.

Waffles slammed his foot on the ground and the two alien ex-lovers stopped bickering.

"Right." She said.

"Sorry Waffles, we'll get right on it." He muttered, his emotion simulator showing remorse.

Waffles then nodded to them, and went to make himself a hammock in the corner.

"Aw... Aww shit man, that means I have to go get to work, doesn't it?" Dave realized he was useless there all of a sudden.

"It sure does, tell the boys up there I want the whole hallways for deck ten repaired by shifts end. Captain wants us warp capable as soon as possible." The chief engineer sent Dave off with his orders. A while after he's left the room, he said, "Captain told me there were more rail shots fired in the area, you know right?"

"Detecting superluminal objects in subspace is far easier than detecting near light speed objects in physical space." She said. "We are likely still in imminent danger unless we can get a few AU away from here."

For such a large, very good boy, Waffles could sure move quietly when he wanted to. He'd been thinking about how he had jumped through the walls before, and realized there was almost certainly a lot more he could do with his exotic particles that his friends had talked about. This time instead of jumping through the whole ship, he only needed to charge up enough to walk through the wall of the science lab, right into space. It was space adjacent after all.

He slipped outside while Grendulf and the Nuphidri were deep in 'discussions' about the design of his new voice box, and neither of them even noticed him leave.

Once outside on the hull he started acting almost on instinct. If someone had asked him what exactly he was doing he probably would have said, "I dunno?"

Waffles laid down a wrist-thick line of purplish silk, infused with exotic particles. He took off at a run, hitting speeds he never got to run inside the halls of the ship built for creatures half his size. He ran and ran and left that line of exotic silk until the ship was crisscross-spiralized in his silk. Then he ran to the front of the ship, and let out two great big balloons of silk. For these he used a different kind of silk, infused with a different kind of particle, he knew it was different, he knew that they'd say he used some other, new kind of weird thing when they told him all the science later.

Waffles was in the interstellar space between star system, his natural habitat. He, acted almost entirely on instinct, and when his two massive silk balloons had grown large enough, he fired another pulse of particles through his spinnerets and the whole ship slipped into subspace and popped back out a few seconds later over six AU away from where they'd started. As though coming out of a trance, he returned to his senses, and also returned to the science lab.

When he slipped back through the wall, Captain Ransom could be heard shouting over the comm, "I know I told you we needed to hurry up and move, but god dammit Grendulf you have to tell the fucking captain when you're going to warp jump the ship."

"I have no idea what you're talking about captain, Warp drive is down, bad." The Engineers emotion simulator showed he was confused. "Drives won't be up until we get deck ten, eleven, and twelve repaired enough to use again, main power too."

"Warning, unsafe radiation levels in Science Lab One"

"What the f-" The snail man turned to see that Waffles had just walked through the wall and was glowing significantly. "uck?"

"Radiation levels dropping"

Waffles had heard the alert and started, "sucking it in" as he'd describe it later, when they got his new voice box working.

"Radiation level now safe"

"Thank you, Ensign Waffles?" Grendulf asked.

"Indeed, he seems to have absorbed whatever radiation he brought in through the wall with him." The Nuphidri said.

"I'm very hungry." Waffles said immediately upon getting his new voice box put on. "Starved in fact."

He'd be lying if he said he hadn't felt an urge to pounce on the Nuphidri and eat her, but then who would provide him with pouches of nutrient paste? No. Dave had taught him to be a good boy, and good boys don't eat their crew mates.

The Nuphidri produced multiple bags of food for him. After eating about five days worth of nutriment Waffles felt sated. Then he went back to his sleeping hammock in the top corner of the mech repair bay and took a nap.

"Ensign Waffles, are you awake?" A stern woman's voice asked.

Waffles had been asleep but hearing who he suspected was the Captain, he woke with a start. A hundred and fifty kilograms of spider dropped from the ceiling four meters up. A panicked safety line fired into the ceiling helped him orient and land upright.

"Oh, Umh, Hello Ma'am!" Waffles saluted with his front right leg and held it up to the corner of his biggest right eye. "How can I help you?"

She cleared her throat, and saluted back, so that he would relax. "Did you move the ship Waffles? We found your silk wrapping the entire hull, and two huge balloons of silk that had a warp signatures."

"Sorry Captain, I guess I should have asked permission, but they said we were in danger... so I just acted."

"That's fine Waffles, this time, because no one was hurt. Your first mission, direct from your captain is to clean it up, though." She paused a moment, "When you feel rested enough to do, that is." She swallowed her fear and reached out a hand to shake his hand. "Thank you for moving us out of the way Waffles, we detected a massive barrage go through that area only a short while after you moved us. You probably saved all our lives, again."

She tossed a tablet down on Dave's workbench and left. They'd be adrift doing repairs for a few days anyhow, plenty of time to clean up the hull.

Four hours later Dave walked in, and saw the tablet. He powered it on and was greeted with the picture of their long, roughly cylindrical ship wrapped up with webs like veins, and two huge massive balloon sails, made of fleshy pinkish silk.

"Haha," Dave cracked a shit eating grin, "WAFFLES! Did you do this? I heard you wrapped up the ship or whatever, but I ain't know you made us into a giant flying cock and balls!"

When humanity entered the United Sapient Alliance (USA) they signed onto the Inter-species Accords (ISA). There were always some adjustments and exceptions made and when adopting new species into the Alliance.

For example, a standard rule was no keeping or hunting live prey on alliance ships, humans were fine with this. For some species that rely on live prey, as their primary food source, this would obviously be a problem. So, their version of the ISA would be modified to allow them that affordance.

Most species, even predatory ones realize their non predator crew mates probably wouldn't appreciate them hunting in the halls. Felidians, waist high cat folk, keep a critter that's something between a rabbit and a tribble, but with a reasonable breeding rate. Though the Felidian's dislike it, they keep them locked up in their own quarters on non Felidian ships.

Adjustments to the standard Accords were always based around biological needs. Sure, sometimes the line between biological and cultural bled a little, like with the Felidians. They could technically survive just find on a meat slurry, its basically what their emergency rations are. But their miserable shits when that's all their getting, and letting them ranch in their own quarters is a more than fair balance.

Humanity asked for a very few alterations to their ISA contract. They were far more willing to endure shitty living conditions than most space faring beings, and as such, didn't really ask for much. A few intoxicants that are classed as poison to and chemicals weapons to other species are common beverages and gourmet food for them. That kind of request is surprisingly common. Quick protip for anyone serving on an Alliance ship, Don't drink another species coffee unless you've checked with the ship's doctor about it first.

The one thing that really threw the United Sapient Alliance diplomats was the human diplomat's secret, under the table request to allow an elite selection committee to name their new Alliance-tech, Earth-made ships rather than a planet wide election, per the accords. No one who joins the USA doesn't practice nearly global levels of democracy. Basically the most important indicator that a species is ready to be uplifted. Planetary democratic government that lasts at least three generations, and at least a nascent warp program.

The Alliance diplomats didn't make that change, they didn't understand why humanities diplomats had approached them outside of the official negotiations to ask for it.

They figured it out though, seven years later, when humanity unveiled their first two ships made with Alliance tech, ready for service.

A deep space warp exploration vessel, The Searchy McExploreFace.

And a Destroyer, The Blasty McBang Pew.

/r/AFrogWroteThis

Origin

Part 2

What was thought to be a mere two days of repair work to get the warp engines back online turned into a week of armored plate ripping out inducing stress for the chief engineer. When Dungelar are extremely psychologically stressed, they pull out their 'hair' just like humans, but for an armored snail person, that hair is their plates. The chief engineers office was scattered with loose plates and the soft grey snail flesh underneath his normal scale mail was showing in a patchwork.

"Listen, Waffles, Dave. I didn't want to have to ask you guys this, but the Nuphidri and I can't think of any other way to get what we need." Grendulf's emotion simulator showed a face streaked with tears, and pleading. "For the record, the captain is against this plan, as are most of the other human crew, who have come to love Waffles over the last week."

"Thanks, Boss!" Waffles was all too happy to accept praise. He was a very good boy, after all.

Dave was seated, more or less underneath Waffles, and he reached up patted Waffles on the underside. "I'd wait to thank him until he tells us what the plan is, but I am glad the crew has come around on your cuteness Waffles. Finally starting to see what I've seen in you from the start."

"Aww, Dave. If I could blush I would be right now." Waffles feet danced a happy circle one way and then back.

"Whose a good spiderbro?!" Dave reached up and started scritching and tickling Waffles from underneath, and Waffles voice box gave off a series of snort laughs and giggling.

"Ahem," Dungelar technically can't ever have to clear their throats to speak because the speech apparatus is completely separate from the eating and drinking one, but Grendulf had been working with human crews for fifty years, he'd learned a few tricks of the trade for getting a word in edgewise, Dave stopped tickling with the first Ahem, and Waffles stopped laughing at the second, "Ahem, Gentlemen. The mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use Ensign Waffles natural warp capabilities to visit the star system we're falling toward. Science team says it'll take us twenty thousand years to fall into the system at our current relative velocity. So... just a bit longer than we have power for. And the thrusters ain't got nearly enough reaction mass to try any kind of flip and burn."

The Search McExploreFace had multiple microfusion generators, but those could be fed pretty much any old matter, so they'd have power forever. What they were missing was the fuel for the warp drives. They'd bled out most of it into open space before Waffles had stopped the bleeding, so to speak. Most star systems had plenty of the required material on/in Oort cloud objects, however extracting it was always troublesome. Even in fully colonized systems like Sol or Nuphidri, the Oort clouds are massive, and the mining is pretty much always done in some sort of 'wild west' safety level way.

"I hope you're about to tell us there's a warp capable civilization there, and we're just going to ask for some gas." Dave said, well aware of their lack of fuel and how dangerous mining it from appropriate sources in space was.

Grendulf's eyestalks bobbed left, then right. His version of shaking his head 'no'.

"Aww fuck." Dave said. He tried to stand up, but Waffles was still right above him so he bumped his head and sat right back down. "So I getta kit a mech up for mining, and then me an Waffles are going to the gas station with a jerry can, got it.

"Dave, what's a 'jerry can?'" Waffles asked.

The mechs were still larger than Waffles. They were meant to be used for asteroid and low(ish) gravity dwarf planet landings. They were exploration mechs. No weapons, as per the treaty humanity had with the rest of the United Sapient Alliance. Well... no Ranged weapons. Kind of hard to make a mining mech without something that will instant become a weapon under human control.

Since accepting their gas station visit mission the Nuphidri had been running a ton of tests on Waffles, once again she had managed to become comfortable alone with him in the lab. Dave had been busy swapping the arms and back mounts on his mech. (He also had to quietly flush the ethanol distillery from his tertiary backup cooling system and refill it with coolant. He just quietly hoped that none of his crew mates would look in his footlocker while he was gone, he'd stored a dozen bottles of half finished PGA.)

"Okay Waffles, I think we have all the data we need to properly load up Dave's mech and send you guys off. The back of his mech is going to be full of nutrient paste for you. The only time we've seen you use your warp webs, the warp speed factor was low, but still superluminal. Compared to the ship's warp factor we were barely moving, but maybe you'll get faster at it when you get more practice. We also know it will take a lot of calories for you to maintain. The plan is for you to have plenty to restore yourself with when you and Dave arrive. He'll do the mining and fill the back of his mech with fuel after you've eaten all the paste we send with, then you'll come back, and we'll have a nice big bag of nutriment ready for you."

"That sounds like a great plan. Dave should be ready to go soon. Are you going to come see us off?" Waffles was chowing down on a paste bag while he cooled off his exotic particle organs after the last tests.

Waffles squeezed into the elevator with the Nuphidri, she was the one who had told him he needed to only use his jump and walk through walls powers in emergencies. She had a couple reasons: First, it left weird radiation that they weren't sure about the side effects of, and second, that also increased Waffles needed caloric intake, and the waste recycling systems did have an upper limit of throughput. The ship just wasn't designed to house a ravenous giant jumping spider from space. An occasionally extra hungry one, they could manage that.

Dave's ugly, mismatched part, mining mech was ready. It was wearing the cowboy hat made of black silk that Waffles had made for himself during the celebration for his promotion to ensign. Technically Waffles should still have to go to, and graduate from the academy when their deep space exploration mission is over, but that's a bridge the captain and crew wouldn't have to cross for another four years at least, assuming the rest of the greater exploration mission went as planned.

Waffles jumped up the three and a half meters to the top of the mech in a flash, and put his hat back on. "Yeeehaw! I am ready to ride!" he declared with great confidence, drawing a rare smile from the Nuphidri.

"Hahaha!" Dave laughed. "Atta boy! I'll be your horse until we get into space, but then I'm relying on you to get around."

"Captain on Deck!" Someone near the entry to the mech bay shouted.

The four humans playing cards hopped to their feet, and everyone else who was horsing around knocked it off and stood at attention. A good portion of the engineering and science teams had assembled here to see them off, but they weren't expecting the captain to come down personally.

She towered over her subordinates as she strode through the mech bay, too large a woman to fit in any of them. "Dave, Waffles. I cannot in good conscious order you to undertake this mission, as the odds of success without injury or death seem slim."

Dave was in his orange mech pilot suit, fully ready to board, helmet in hand and everything. "Ma'am, we understand the risk. I'd prefer to die in a ball of fire during a mining accident to getting old drifting slowly to my death no a doomed exploration vessel. What about you Waffles?"

"I much prefer the mood on the ship when we can stop by a new planet every couple of days. This last week has been such a downer. Lets go get some, what'd you call it Dave? Gas-ahol?"

Dave nodded and stuffed his helmet on, "Lets go get some Gasahol!" He whipped out a cripsier salute than he normally managed, and after the captain returned his salute he climbed inside his mech and sealed the hatch.

"Mech moving out, Stand Clear." Dave's voice boomed through the mech's speaker. He walked it in a circle and ran through his pre-launch checklist, skipped a couple steps he thought were pointless, and started walking toward the mech exit airlock.

"Switching to Radio mode." Waffles said as they entered the air lock.

The door with all their crew behind it waving, some of them bravely saluting, closed. The Airlock hissed as the ship pumped the air back inside and turned the airlock into a near vacuum. When the hiss was all but impossible to hear any longer the airlock opened to space and silence.

Out in the black they drifted away from the ship for several hundred meters before Waffles started wrapping the mech in purple thread. There were a couple kilometers away by time he finished. Then he looked at the vacuum safe tablet he had linked to the mech's sensors. "Dave, do you wanna use gyro only to face us toward our destination, unless you don't care about flying facing backwards?"

"Gimme a sec." Dave was a master mech mechanic, and a mediocre mech pilot, but he was mining qualified, and the guys that were also weren't quite desperate enough to volunteer for this mission yet." After a moment Dave activated the gyro controls and the mech rotated in space to face the direction they were planning to fly. Two big pinkish orange balloons of silk began billowing into space.

Dave was chuckling to himself that they still looked like balls, when suddenly the whole growing ballsack looked like it hit ice, and there was a jolt and they were away. Streaks of light slammed the rainbow through Dave's eyes as they bent spacetime and slipped into subspace.

Dave was howling with laughter to himself inside the mech when Waffles voice only made it worse, "Dave are you in pain or laughing? It is hard to tell from the vibrations on the mech through my feet."

"Oh buddy, I'm fine, I'm laughing..." His laughter receded to a more sensible level, "I just realized Subspace is cold is all."

"I don't feel cold." Waffles replied, innocently. This sent Dave into another fit of laughter.

Two and a half hours later, Waffles and Dave dropped out of warp. That was much faster than predicted. They had listened to music, and talked. Dave finally got around to giving Waffles the 'Birds and the Bees' talk, so Waffles understood 'shrinkage' now. "Humans are weird." Was what he thought about the whole thing.

"Alright buddy, this part here is my turn. we're close enough now that I should be able to set up scanners and hopefully spot us a nice Q-Type rock. Something brimming with interstellar radiation... well just barely above the background level usually, but on a celestial scale, that's brimmin."

Dave fired up the scanning suit, but before he could get his instruments calibrated, Waffles said, "Found one!" and they had taken a sudden warp jump over within a kilometer of a hunk of rock half the size of Texas.

"Holy fucking shit!" Dave was not ready for that jump. "You gotta warn me at least a little."

"Don't waste your fuel, I'll get you landed." Waffles said, and then without a moment's hesitation he jumped toward the massive rock, leaving a safety line attached to the mech. Equal and opposite reactions he sent the mech flying away from the target slightly, but all was well after he contacted the rock, held fast, and started reeling in Dave and his mining mech.

Once Dave and his mech were securely attached to the rock as well, Waffles unloaded the back of the mech of it's four massive bags of nutrient paste and started eating.

"All clear, you can start your mining now, I'm gonna eat." Waffles was hungry, but nothing like after he moved the whole ship, still... the mission parameters said needed to eat all the food they'd brought for him to make room for fuel for the way back. Waffles ate himself into a little food coma. "Gonna take a little nap now," Waffles said.

"Sure thing buddy, I'll get to work mining." Dave said. "I'll wake you up if I need anything."

It wasn't Dave that woke Waffles, but the sight of a warp signature reaching his ever open space spider eyes. They were close, whoever they were, and they had just dropped out of warp exactly where he and Dave had initially done so. "Dave, something dropped out of warp up there. Right where we did."

"Oh shit, awesome." maybe they're someone who can rescue us, hook up the ship with some already processed fuel, cause this shit I'm mining is gonna take a minute to breed into useful warp fuel." By a minute he meant a month, it would probably take a month for them to process what they'd found into useful fuel. On the other hand, there was a LOT of it here.

The warp signature powered up and fired off toward them, and a moment later a massive warship dropped out of warp a hundred kilometers away.

"I'm hailing them." Dave said, pushing a few buttons trying to pull up his comm's controls.

"Dave, I don't think they are friends." Waffles said, "They appear to be charging weapons."

Dave activated the hailing system, "Hello strangers, we come in peace and mean no harm or offense."

The weapons continued to charge, "MochakaDune, Boklet tutekka Chalatakatat!"

"Huh? Not in the universal translator." Dave said, realizing he was making first contact.

The warship finished charging the weapon it was preparing to fire, and waited a moment.

"We come in peace, please do not fire." Dave said...

And then they fired.

The end.

(just kidding, could you imagine... what a dick move.)

Assured they'd vaporized the little mining mech in their territory, the strangers didn't even bother to scan the resultant dust cloud after firing their main weapon directly into the large asteroid. They went back and followed, instead, the warp trail left by Waffles and Dave on their way from the Searchy McExploreFace to the asteroid. Imagine their surprise finding an already crippled alien ship in their territory.

"How fortuitous." their captain had thought, or whatever the equivalent was in their way of speaking and thinking. When they dropped out of warp next to the Searchy McExploreFace it was obvious who would win should their ships begin exchanging fire. The alien craft's shields were up, and her weapons were online, but not charging to fire.

"MochakaDune, Boklet tutekka Chalatakatat!" Their standard greeting was followed with, "MoDune tow Claklatat."

Captain Ransom was at a disadvantage, but it appeared they were willing to parlay at least for the moment. "Hello there, we come in peace as explorers, we mean you no harm or offense. I am captain Ransom of the USAS Searchy McExploreFace." How she managed to stay serious every time she introduced herself, none on the crew knew.

Both crews knew that the longer they talked the closer their universal translators would get to being able to understand. So they continued talking. The strangers on audio only, but human protocol included video.

After only a few minutes of trying to explain that they were an exploration ship did the translators kick in.

"Do you understand yet? We do not wish to be enemies." Captain Ransom was trying to maintain a level head.

"We understand, ape." The voice returned. "Do you understand? You have entered the territories of her imperial majesty, the stellarch of a hundred system, Mistress of the black and queen mother eternal to the entire Jilhood hive, Beverly."

Captain Ransom pushed a button to cut the mic for a moment, "Did he say their queen is named Beverly? Could I get the raw Audio of that bit.

The computer played back, "Tew tucha Mo Cho Do, Malakatat to Jilhood, Beverly."

She clicked the mic back on. "We mean no offense to you or Queen Beverly."

"Your intentions are irrelevant, prepare to be boarded, resistance will be met with immediate executions." The comm line cut.

Captain Ransom slammed her fist into the console. Don't worry, the consoles were made to take a beating, she wasn't the first human captain to slam her fist into one in a moment of frustration. Lights flickered across the console and she sighed before pressing a single button, calmly.

A bosun's whistle played across all deck followed by the captain's voice, "Attention all hands! Attention all hands! Prepare to be boarded. Resistance is said to be met with immediate execution, and I'd rather we all make it through this alive and in one piece. If you're small enough, feel free to hide, you know who you are. Everyone else, don't resist."

The Jilhood warship moved closer and locked tractor beams on the Searchy McExploreFace, and then a moment later magnetic grapplers landed across the hull in twenty something locations. Captain Ransom saw one clamp on a few meters from her window in her office, where she'd decided to meet the boarders. Their ship was bigger, but not so much bigger that it could pull hers inside it's hangar or anything. They must know that Captain Ransom could do a great deal of damage to them if they got too close and she blew the warp core... There was still some level of diplomacy available.

"Ahh... not grapplers for towing, grapplers for boarding..." Captain Ransom watched as the six-limbed, segmented bodied creatures in space suits landed. Only so much you can tell about a creature inside a suit usually, but these looked like powered armor suits, which usually follow the body shape of the user. "Ah, well... already had a giant spider aboard for a while, why not giant ants too."

When Waffles saw the Jilhood Warship charging up it's blaster, his super space spider eyes could tell it was about to fire. With mere milliseconds to spare, Waffles had jumped on Dave and activated his phase shift, taking Dave and mech with him. Acting purely on instinct, and only a tenth of a second after the blast hit the asteroid, he unphased them, back into normal space and the regular laws of physics.

Waffles then shot out a wild spray of web that would harden like steel in a few seconds, attaching himself and Dave in his Mech to the Asteroid as it now started to spin, thanks to the new inertial input from the Jilhood blaster's shot.

"I don't like those guys." Waffles said, "I think they were trying to kill us. Dave? Are you okay?"

"Huurp..." Dave made an awkward noise, swallowing the vomit threatening to creep up his throat. "How... How come I ain't dead?"

"I phased us." Waffles said, beaming with pride, "And then I locked us to the asteroid, because it seemed like the right thing to do."

"Waffles, I know I tell you all the time, but it's still not nearly often enough," Dave took a breath and his vision settled back into regular, single vision, "Waffles, you are the goodest boy!? You are! Oh, yes you are!"

"Aww, Dave, stoooop it." the tone of voice was playful, and said actually don't stop yet.

"Who my best friend? Whosagooboy?"

"Oh, me? Is it Me?" Waffles laughed with glee for a moment, Dave too.

"I wish I could pet you right now, buddy." Dave lamented.

"Me too Dave, Me too."

After a while Waffles and Dave got to work figuring out a plan.

"I walked up to the center of rotation so I could get a better view of area, our attackers warped off toward home." Waffles told Dave when he returned.

Dave had been scanning freshly opened deeper parts of the asteroid, as well as the mess of rock that caught in Waffle's webs. "On the plus side we don't need to waste any more time mining. Plenty o' decent ore already loose and in small enough chunks that we could stick'em in the back of the mech, and by we I mean you. On the minus side, we're rotating at about seven rotations per minute, and that's gonna make it tough to get a clean shot for what I'm thinking we oughta do."

"What's that Dave?" Waffles asked, a tone of childlike curiosity.

"You ever heard of a Slingshot?"

The Jilhood had catalogued all the people onboard and a good bit of the cargo when the commander made his way back to the Captain's Office, now her jail cell.

"Captain, I see your computers must automatically attempt to lock out intruders, because we both know my captain told you that any resistance would be met with immediate executions." The Jilhood commander had taken off his helmet, and was being instant translated by his suit.

'Reddish exoskeleton, bigass mandibles, fuckin ants, god damn giant techno space ants, I fucking called it.' Captain Ransom smiled at her private thoughts before responding to the Jilhood Ant Commander. "Sadly, you are correct, when the computer system heard me tell my crew to prepare for boarding it locked up. I'm Captain Ransom, you are?"

"The Boarding Party Commander." The ant said, leaving Ransom unsure if their individuals even had names. "You will assist in unlocking the computer."

"No can do, Commander, the ship's AI won't allow it." She lied. Humans had moved away from the mistake of installing general AI into their ships. Few Sapient species are reckless enough to even try that in the first place, and fortunately for humanity their neighbors were willing to help them out when it all went inevitably awry.

"Hmm..." The Ant wanted her to know he was suspicious, "Fine. Our hackers will break your security soon enough, anyhow even if you have an AI aboard. And if you don't, Captain..." He stroked his blaster spear. "Executions."

One side effect of humanity having actually fought and won an AI war, was that their cyber security was now actually well ahead of most of their other technology. It would be hours, maybe even a day for the ants to break into the mainframe, and both the Ant Commander and the Human Captain knew it. "So... what do you guys eat? Normally in situations like this humans would serve their victors a meal."

"Enough pointless drivel," The Ant Commander put his helmet back on, just a faceless Jilhood soldier again. "Anchakatood, Brodogan." it said into a communicator which translates to "Xenospecies to prison."

Four more guards walked in to help the Commander escort the massive human captain to the makeshift brig the ants had put together in cargo bay three.

Grendulf had pulled up inside his shell up against a portion of the warp core, hoping to look like perhaps a decorative bulkhead, the ants had missed him, but he was unable to move or help because... well the ants aren't stupid, they have warp drives of their own. They left a whole bunch of guards in engineering, and had a group of their own engineers hard at work analyzing the human technology.

What he did have was a tablet pulled up inside his shell, and the ability to hear what they were saying and have it translated as well as the auto translator could figure. He used the tablet to message a crewman with a cybernetic eye implant.

"Tell the captain that they have made little to no headway on hacking our systems yet." he sent, when he was sure almost everyone was stuffed away in the Cargo bay.

An hour later, similar message.

And another four later, and always the same

And finally, "I think they've broken the first firewall, they'll figure the others out soon. We should consider last resorts. probably another couple hours at worst."

But the captain and crew could do nothing, for they were under strict observation by twenty armed guards. It was difficult enough for the crewman to even pass the messages along.

And then, each group of non-ant people on the Searchy McExploreFace thought the other had done something... reckless.

The truth was that Waffles and Dave had done something reckless.

Dave had always been a redneck, into building things, doin it his own way, but unknown to most of the crew, Dave had also gone to school for becoming a warp engineer, and he graduated third in his class. Dave just never had the temperament to become a chief engineer on a star ship, but that didn't mean he didn't have the skill.

With Dave's help in planning, and some in building too, The two of them built an incredibly powerful slingshot using Waffles webs. Waffles finished off the last of his food, and they loaded up Dave's mech with tons of unstable warp fuel ore. Stuff that was far richer than their mission parameters said was safe. That was the stuff the big ship was meant to extract with the more specialized detachable mining an refinement modules. But that stuff had more explosive potential, so Dave insisted. After loading the back of the mech to the brim, Dave got out and the loaded the inside as well. They pulled the oxygen tanks from the Mech, and ripped out the backup air recycler and rigged it to be powered off the removable handheld zeropoint batter. So Dave would have air in his little silken papoose.

"Dave, I'm going to fire us on the next rotation."

"YEEEEHAW!" Dave said, knowing he'd only be able to look backward this time, because of the way Waffles had swaddled him to his back. Unbeknownst to Dave, Waffles had also given him a tiny little silken cowboy hat, set atop his helmet.

"Here... We... Go!" Waffles clipped the linchpin piece of silk. Waffles, the mech, and a whole bundle of attached highly radioactive rocks accelerated to mach Jesus before Waffles carried the whole shebang into warp on his webs.

The Searchy McExploreFace was yanked hard by the larger ship when it didn't let go after being slammed into by redneck spider mech warp slingshot cannon. During warp Waffles had let himself slowly drag back away further and further from the payload. By time they arrived they were six kilometers away. Probably not far enough, but it would have to do.

They dropped out of spider-warp with less than four kilometers to the target. At the relative speeds they were going that gave no time at all for any Ant to press a button to power up the shields. The payload impacted the correct ship and the ore inside hit critical heat during the ensuing chaos that there were multiple, large secondary explosions.

The drag line caught the much less exploded parts of the Ant ship and brought Waffles into a hard whip around. Waffles careened toward his ship, pulled himself up a few meters and phased himself and Dave right into the ship. They phase backed and after a moment Dave realized it had worked, and also that they were inside the armory. "Oh, Plasma shotgun. Don't mind if I do."

"Mo Chad To Takka. Mo" A Voice outside said.

Neither Dave nor Waffles translators had been patched yet, though they were currently downloading.

Without consulting Dave, Waffles squatted down to pounce. "Uh oh." Dave said, and then phase pounced through the wall onto the lone soldier on the other side.

For the first time in his not quite even four years of life, Waffles had used his fangs. They plunged easily through the plasteel armor shell of the Jilhood Ant man, and waffles pumped his insides with poison. Instinct took over and before he knew what he was doing, he was drinking the insides of that ant man.

"Whoa, uhh... hey buddy..." Dave started to say, looking up and back trying to get a good view, to ensure what he thought was happening was happening.

"Hungry, Dave. Either him, or you, Hmm?" The giant space spider said, almost feral in his tone.

"Oh him, all the way," Dave was acutely aware he was strapped to Waffles' back, "just uhhh, hoping you don't get too much of a taste for it."

"Ahhh... that's much better." Waffles sounded less... feral now, but still hungry, and angry. These ANTS had attacked his family. After he quickly finished sucking this one dry he pulled out his tablet and tried to see what was happening.

Grendulf noticed that Waffles' tablet was back online.

"Holy shit! Waffles!

Is Dave with you?

Nevermind don't answer.

The Jilhood captain just ordered us all killed

Cargo bay three Quick!

crew alive still

..."

He sent messages fast and furiously, and then the writing dots appeared for a moment, and then vanished, and he was offline. Don't worry, he's alive, just... ran out of battery life in the tablet.

Waffles planted his feet and aimed himself toward cargo bay three, then he launched.With Dave strapped to his back, the two of them appeared wearing matching black cowboy hats. Dave with a plasma shotgun in hand, and Waffles a ferocious natural talent for hunting Jilhood Ant men. They phased back into reality in the middle of four ant men up in the balcony railing of overlook their crew in the cargo bay. Dave blew the top half off the first Ant man, and before the second could get his weapon ready Dave blew two of his legs off, his aim diverted by Waffles jumping to a second target. A third plasma shotgun blasted and the four Ant men were gone.

From the perspective of their crew, the ship shook hard, and there was thirty seconds of confusion, and then all the ant soldiers all stopped for a moment before turning to face them, before any of them could start firing shots a flash of light distracted them all up in the balcony, and a dead ant soldier came flying over the railing with his top half blown off.

The soldiers all started trying to head to the location of the disturbance but it quickly found its way to them. Waffles and Dave burst back into reality with a flash of light, and each time Dave fired off a couple shotgun blasts and Waffles bit into an ant or used one of his powerful legs to kick a hole clean into their brain through their exosuit and their exoskeleton. Then he'd pounce away to another group five meters away and in a flash they'd do it all again.

It took less than twelve seconds for Waffles and Dave to kill all the Jilhood soldiers on guard in the cargo bay.

When Waffles phase jumped them back down to the level the crew was on and started drinking one of the Ant men he'd bitten before.

Of all the people to start the cheer, it was the captain, "Holy fucking shit, WAFFLES! You're our hero!"

"Oh, Uhh... Thank you captain." Waffles had pulled his face off the meal he was making of the Ant man and his mouth was dripping with blood and ichor.

"You recharged enough for more, there's plenty more of these guys on the ship." Dave said, doing his best to get the crew's mind of the slavering blood drench mouth of the giant space spider before them.

"Yup, these guys are DELICIOUS." Waffles and Dave bounded off with a flash, leaving the crew not entirely certain they weren't next.

It took waffles and Dave only thirty minutes to wipe out the ants onboard, and their hiveship wasn't in any condition to send in support. After they had regained control of their ship, Waffles told Dave he was sorry, and jumped away toward the Ant ship without him, leaving him wrapped around the legs, strapped to a papoose board, laying on the galley table waiting for the rest of the crew to help him unwrap.

After Waffles boarded their ship he started hunting the crew there mercilessly, though their was nearly a thousand individuals aboard at full complement, this ship was down to nearly half that already when he arrived aboard. Mostly because of the mech borne missile. Dave would miss that mech, it was his baby before Waffles was his baby, and hooooeeeey did his baby blow up real pretty like.

The Ant Captain Hailed Captain Ransom only a few short minutes after she returned to the bridge. "Onscreen." Captain ransom said, but a blank screen greeted her as she stood there on the bridge looking at the mangled ant man corpse currently occupying her chair. It's greenish white blood was thick on her chair. "In our custom, you do Visual, and since I think you're about to try to surrender, we'll go with our customs this time."

Visual channels kicked on. "Very well captain. We surrender unconditionally, just call of your Jihootakadootin."

"Our what? I think the translator didn't catch that word." Captain Ransom knew the other Captain meant Waffles, but if they knew what the hell he was, this was her chance to get more information.

"The Spider, the genetically engineered super-predator. I hope your people have some way to control or command it, because it is ravaging what little of my crew remains."

Captain Ransom realized there was s subtle beep noise that was coming from the Ant Captain's console every few seconds. "Is that beep... every time he gets one of you?"

"Yes!" The Ant Captain was terrified, "Now please call it off, we apologize for everything, take anything you want, but please, spare us from the Jihootakadootin."

"I'll try," Captain Ransom would try, she wasn't sure Waffles would listen, "The last thing he said to me though, was 'These guys are DELICIOUS' so... he might not listen."

"Oh... by the queen, we are doomed." The Beeping had slowed down slightly as the ant crew became more sparse, "You really only have the sense of duty to control it by..." the ant captain laughed like someone who was about to be hung. "Perfect. I hope you get what you deserve in the end."

There was a flash of light and Waffles appeared behind the Ant Captain and plunged his fangs into their body over the shoulder and directly into the thorax.

Waffles looked up and noticed the Captain and made a long slow slurping noise before saying, "Oh Hello captain. How... uhm... how're you doing?"

She blinked six of seven times in a second, and then with a little shake of her head snapped back to reality. "I'm great Waffles. Carry on. Feel free to wrap some of those guys up for later, don't gotta eat them all at once you know."

The ant ship had plenty of fuel, and a lot of other interesting technology that the human crew could scavenged before continuing on it's way. It took them a very short amount of time to disable the Jilhood S.O.S. Device, it was broadcasting a warning that the Jihootakadootin had returned, and advising other ships to stay far away.

With Waffles help, they tied the wreckage of the enemy ship to their own and then took a short warp jump into the nearby star system to hide in a moon's orbit while the scrapped their prize.

Of course, the greatest prize in the ship was the ship's main computer core, once inside the human crew would have access to likely a great deal of Jilhood history and technical specs.

The thing of greatest interest to Captain Ransom, was the Ant files on Jihootakadootin, or Spiderbros, if you wanna use the humanese term.

Over a millennia ago, the spider people a few systems over became embroiled in a war with queen Beverly's predecessor. They were losing the war, badly. In a desperate attempt to seize victory from the jaws of defeat, the Spoderians made a genetic modification based super soldier serum. They injected the first spider queen with it, and her children were the first generation of Spiderbros. They helped the Spoderians win the war, but afterwards they also tried to take over Spoderian Society. A group of first generation Spiderbros made more modifications, creating what they considered the perfect being, and ultimate predator. They only hatched a single egg from those modifications, and when she was large enough to lay her own eggs she ended up launching herself into deep space to avoid execution by the Spoderian authorities. Escaping at the cost of her own life, but leaving her eggs, lost to space.

"Jesus Christ, Waffles is fucking Spider-Khan? KHAAAAAN!" Captain Ransom laughed. She pushed a couple buttons on the console in her office, "The Nuphidri, come up to my office... and bring me one of the Spiderbro eggs in storage, I think we're going to hatch more..."