Bugging Out (3/10)

Story by Serathin on SoFurry

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#3 of Bugging Out

Dathmoth was a planet that was ugly, scarred, and barren in all regards. There was no reason that anyone would want anything to do with such an inhospitable place... until a new sonar technique that had been developed showed the presence of Falchorite, an invaluable substance that would cause a company to spend an insurmountable amount in order to try and dig it up. The mining crew is eager to get off, but what they don't know is that there was something else that was trying to get off the planet as well.

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Back in the drilling station the three miners on duty were busy celebrating, drinking from the bottle of cheap champagne they managed to smuggle down with them during their shift. Behind them the computer displays flashed with the declaration that their sensors had detected the Falchorite in significant quantities. "We did it boys," he said as he raised his glass in the air. "To the main vein!"

"And the bonus that comes with it!" another said before downing the glass in one gulp.

"It's about time we finally managed to score one," the third replied. "What are you going to do with your share Colton?"

"Finally get out of the debt that's been keeping me here like a dog on a leash," the first miner said as he sat back. "How about you Bill?"

"The usual," Bill replied gruffly. "Gambling, drugs, hookers... Danny?"

"I'm going to get certified in administrative services," the youngest of the three miners said. "Try and see if I can't get that management position that keeps floating around."

"Ambitious as always," Colton said with a chuckle before raising his class. "To Boss Danny!" The other two laughed as they drained their glasses once again before they were promptly refilled. "Just remember who got you there when it's time to hand out raises, alright?"

The three continued to laugh and talk about what they were going to do when their jubilation was cut short by the sound of alarms going off. "What in the hell is going on?" Colton said as he shut down the drill, standing up with the other two as they heard the computerize voice announce the details. "A quarantine alarm? On this rock?"

"Maybe the others got jealous that we were about to strike and thought they could shut us down," Danny suggested.

"At the risk of getting fired?" Colton replied. "I doubt it. Let me go up to the communications relay and see what's going on, you two stay here just in case."

The other two miners nodded and sat back down on the supply crates, continuing to work on the bottle as they waited to hear news back on what was going on. Even though they both speculated that it was a false alarm or potentially some sort of test it didn't stop their minds from thinking about the worst-case scenario. For all they knew some sort of accident breached one of the environmental seals and now the facility was being flooded with the toxic environment from the outside. All they knew though was that they were in a room deep below the surface of the planet with the only way back out is through an elevator ride several miles up where they would have to wait for a shuttle to come and pick them up.

As the minutes passed their concern grew, especially when Colton didn't come down to give them any sort of updates on what was happening. With the drill off the room was almost deathly silent and what little small talk the two had tried to generate between them fell flat. Just as Bill vocalized his thoughts about going and seeing what was up himself they heard the doors into the drill chamber open. Breathing a sigh of relief they stood up and went over to see what their mining team leader had to say... only to find that he wasn't there.

The two looked at each other and scratched their heads in confusion, Danny stepping forward and opening the door once more. The two miners looked out into the hallway to find it empty as well, though the automatic lights had come on. "This whole damn place feels like its falling apart sometimes," Bill scoffed as he looked out as well. "If it weren't for the fact it would melt us they'd probably have out drilling here while living in tents and eating bugs."

Danny let out a slightly nervous chuckle as the two brought their heads back in and closed the door once more. As they began to walk back towards where their mostly empty bottle of booze something they felt caused them to stop dead in their tracks. It was like they had stepped through a spider web, both their hands swatting through the air as they felt the invisible threads against their skin. When they looked down to try and see what was on them they saw extremely thin purple strands against their clothes, which began to smoke slightly before chucks of the cloth began to fall to the floor. As the two struggled to hold onto their quickly disintegrating jumpsuits they turned and ran back towards the door only to find themselves stuck to several thicker strands of the extremely sticky substance.

"What is this!?" Danny shouted as tried to get free, only to find himself growing more entangled as it cut through his clothes like a laser and adhered to the skin underneath.

"Hell if I know!" Bill shouted back, grunting as he tried to reach down for the pocket that had fallen to the floor only to find that his arm was completely stuck to his side. "Danny, get my knife from my pocket! It's got a monofilament edge to it!"

The younger miner nodded and knelt down to attempt to get to the pocket, which had been cut open by another strand of the material that had fallen on it, only to stumble forward. With his hands already stuck together he had no way to brace himself and crashed into Bill and caused both of them to tumble up against one of the nearby walls. The second that they were pressed up against the metal they found themselves stuck fast, not only to the cold metal against their bare flesh but also each other. Though they had a little bit of movement anywhere the purple goo touched their skin seemed to have been bonded as though welded together.

Despite their situation they continued to wiggle against one another for some time until they finally exhausted themselves, slumping down as best they could while adhered to the wall and one another. By then the entirety of their jumpsuits had fallen off their form. With their naked, muscular bodies rubbing against one another it was hard for the two to try and not be embarrassed, though that was mostly on Danny's end as Bill continued to try and think of a way out. As they let their exhausted bodies rest for a second they heard the doors open once more and they saw that this time it was Colton on the other side of it.

"What the..." Colton said as he saw the two naked guys covered in strands of purple goo stuck up against the wall. "What the hell happened here?"

"Well... we're still trying to figure out that one ourselves," Bill replied as their leader went over towards them. "Wait! Whatever this stuff is it's really sticky and apparently doesn't like clothing. Now I have a knife that this one was trying to get in my pocket, if anything is going to cut us out of this it's going to be that. At the very least we can use it to get off the wall, after that I suppose we can go to the med bay to figure out what this stuff is."

"Well that might not be the case," Colton replied as he walked over to the pile of clothing and carefully extracted the knife from the remnants. "I had a hard time getting through to the security office but apparently there's some sort of outbreak of an alien disease, which means we're going to have to stay down here until they lift the quarantine. That's all they would tell me and then I had to get off the line because they were going to go and see about containing the situation."

The three were focused on the immediate problem of extracting the two stuck miners from their situation, both Bill and Danny watching the other miner look over the two of them carefully to try and figure out where exactly he should cut that wouldn't harm them. If he did it wrong then it was possible that he could cause real damage to the two of them and all they had down here was an emergency trauma kit. They were all so focused on what Colton was doing they failed to see that more of those gossamer purple strands were slowly floating from the ceiling down onto the one that was still free. It wasn't until Danny happened to look up from the blade as it grew close to him, but by the time he was able to say anything the strange strings had already looped themselves like a lasso around Colton's body.

The sound of clattering as the knife hit the floor was quickly drowned out by the shout coming from Colton as he was lifted off the ground, his body being pulled away from the other two. That was when they saw what had entrapped the three of them in the first place as their eyes widened. What they saw coming down from the ceiling behind their struggling crewmate was a creature unlike anything they had ever seen before. The purple and black chitinous plates of the humanoid creature glistened in the light as it hung upside-down from the ceiling before twisting its body and landing on its thick-toed feet with a dull thud.

The movement of the humanoid arachnid caused Colton to swing around while in his bindings, and when he saw what was staring him in the face he started to scream before something purple and sticky was smeared across his lips to seal them shut. Already his clothing had started to get dissolved away just like Danny and Bill had happen to them as the two sets of arms quickly put the squirming human in his grasp. Then as one pair began to spin Colton around the creature took his lower set and began to stroke his cock. A few seconds later a bright purple liquid began to dribble out of it that one of his two lower hands took and stretched until it became a thread that he then began to wind around the miner's body while the upper set continued to keep his arms pinned.

Both Danny and Bill stared with a look of pure shock on their faces as they realized that they had gotten stuck to one another and the wall by what was essentially the creature's cum as the monster continued to use it to wrap around the restrained miner. Soon the entirety of Colton's torso was covered by it, cocooned like a fly trapped in a web, but the rubbery spider man was not done with him yet. With the aid of the strands of purple hanging from the ceiling the creature seemed to have a look of perverse glee on his face as he began to wind the strand down towards his legs.

"Hey, leave him alone!" Bill finally managed to shout out, attempting to kick the dropped blade at the anthro arachnid but finding that his bare feet were also stuck to the floor. "Come and unstick me and I'll show you a fair fight there!" The creature hardly even registered the shouting as he stuck Colton's legs together, despite the human's best attempts they were bound just like his arms were against his sides before being wrapped up in the shiny purple substance. As the other two continue to watch helplessly they also noticed something strange that was happening, their horror tempered by curiosity as the hips had still been exposed had Colton starting to sport an erection as the process continued.

With the two unable to engage in either their flight or fight responses their brain tried to click over to something they could solve and the two found themselves looking at one another. As the gazes drifted lower they found that while their own members were still flaccid they seemed to twitch from the attention, which caused both males to immediately look back up. By this point the rubbery creature had finished with their crew leader's legs and had moved on to the head, still leaving the now throbbing member bouncing in the air as he quickly wound the purple silk around it. It wasn't long before the creature had completely covered his face save for two holes for breathing, leaving Colton looking almost featureless as the anthro rubber arachnid seemed to move on to its next phase.

Bill and Danny could only watch as the spider took care to back the bound human and began to lean him against one of the containers. The spider's webbing had deliberately left the rear of the male uncovered as well as his groin, which to their surprise had become fully erect. Whether it was something in the webbing or possibly some bizarre fetish that they didn't know from their crew leader it seemed that he was actually enjoying himself, to the point where he heard a muffled moan coming from the captured human. By the time the strange ridged purple cock of the creature had started to slide inside of the male beneath him Colton was squirming in his cocoon for an entirely different reason.

The pleasured mating between the two continued for a few minutes between the two of them and all Danny and Bill could do was watch like some sort of bizarre porn. When the creature was finished, ending in the bucking of his hips forward while its back arched. The spider creature continued to lock his groin against the human for what felt like ages after that, then put the webbed human back on the floor before going wrapping up the last of the human flesh in his webbing. Just when the two stuck miners thought it was their turn the creature left, which caused them to looked at one another in confusion before they stared back down at the limp form of their crew leader.

"Is he... dead?" Danny asked fearfully.

"No way to know until we get ourselves unstuck," Bill said as he motioned with his foot down towards the knife. "I think you might have the possibility to go and get the knife, I just need you to stretch your foot out and get it."

Danny nodded and though they were still stuck together as he tried to reach his foot out and get the knife he realized that they were starting to loosen from one another. Neither one wanted to celebrate though since they still had Colton lying there on the floor in front of them, not to mention the fact that the creature was still out there somewhere. Both were glad though that it seemed to have gotten distracted and didn't want to be there when it came back. Just as Danny stretched enough to get his toe against the base of the blade however the body next to it jerked and caused him to go back up against the back of the wall once more.

For a few seconds the two continued to stand there and watch the cocooned body in front of them, waiting to see if it would do it. Just then Colton shuddered back and forth more and the two began to think that he was trying to escape. The stands of the webbing bulged and stretched as they thought that lthe strands were weakening, but as the strands began to tear away it revealed shiny bright purple flesh beneath it. From the bulge that were the crew leader's arms a second pair of lumps began to try and push out as well, and the two screamed loudly as the purple cocoon around Colton's face split to reveal the mutating human's face underneath just as a pair of mandibles pushed out from his elongating mouth...

Elsewhere on the station the cries of panic and alarm could be heard echoing through the hallways, miners and other personnel alike attempting to run or hide from the creatures that had started to overwhelm the station. No one knew where they came from, most didn't even know that they existed until one of the anthro rubber scorpions burst into the mess hall and began to pin and pounce people down. As people began to try and leave they were suddenly cornered by another that had burst through the opposite doorway, trapping them inside. While people attempted to try and find another way out some were dragged off while others had an ovipositor shoved down their throat.

Things quickly devolved from there; while security tried to go in and contain the alien threat that had broken out in the mining station others tried to help people that had been implanted, only to find their help rewarded by being taken by the individuals they attempted to save. Soon half the station had either been transformed or implanted and as security tried to move forward to eliminate the threat they found that those that had been captured were put into strange translucent purple pods. The worst part was that whatever armor or plating that these creatures had seemed to be impervious to the energy weapons that security had on them.

"There's no use!" one the guards shouted as they continued to back away, one of them attempting to drag back one of their fallen while the others continued to fire at the humanoid rubber insects coming towards them. "They're everywhere!"

"Everyone fall back!" the head of their security said, motioning for them to follow him as he started to make a run for the doors. By the time they got to one of the doors that had meant to be an airlock and closed it there were only four left and one of them had been dragged in by two of the others. "Alright... status report..."

"Status report?!" one of the younger guards said as he put his hands on his head. "We're being overrun by bulletproof creatures that are mutating people into bugs! We're probably the only people left at this point Richard!"

"Don't snap at me Lawrence!" the older guard replied angrily before sighing and rubbing his head. "Getting angry at once another isn't going to get us anywhere... what we need to do is bring in the cavalry, maybe even bring in a heavy cruiser to save us and sterilize this place."

"Sir..." the one tending to their fallen crewmate said. "Are you saying that we nuke the station?"

The older man sighed and crossed his arms while the other two looked at one another. "There is a reason why something like that is mentioned in the hand book," he explained as he motioned for the others to follow him. "This wouldn't be the first time that they had to level a facility because there was some sort of alien incursion, or a space virus, or something else that would threaten the rest of the universe that was deemed too dangerous to try and take care of. Now either follow me back to the security station or go ahead and join them now... it seems that if you give yourself willingly they'll give you a good ride while they put their eggs into you."

That was more than enough of a description for the other two to follow, both of them once more helping the fourth to their feet so they could come along. Even though the hallways was one of the secured ones that linked one section of the station to the other an ambush where several of them burst through the outer wall proved that they could survive in the environment outside. They continued to keep their guns up, even though they knew that they were no use against the creature, and made their way back to the security terminal. When they finally got to the room they found it free of any more of those alien creatures they used explosive bolts to seal the blast doors behind them.

Once they had accounted for everything Richard went over into a separate room that had the communications relay to try and bring up someone on their radio while Richard went to the cameras to try and see if there were any other survivors in the station. As he flashed through the cameras what he saw was more than disheartening; all those that were moving around were the alien creatures that people had transformed into, roaming the hallways in search of others that might have possibly not been infected yet. There were a few that were laying on the ground, but he knew that they wouldn't be for long as he already saw one or two of them twitching and spasming while they started to mutate.

"Hard to believe..." the one that had been tending to the injured guard said as Lawrence turned to see him standing there. "All they have to do is put one of those things in you and you start to change, or they kidnap you and put you in those weird sacs in the infirmary and transform you that way. Either way you end up one of those bugs."

"Yeah..." Lawrence replied with a sigh, looking back at the one that was leaned up against the wall with a bandage around his waist. "Tell me Shawn, is he going to be alright?"

The other guard looked over as well and then down at the floor. "Maybe..." Shawn replied. "I tried to tend to his wound as best I could but I'm not a doctor, though considering that he's probably one of those things now too I'm the best he had. The stinger didn't look like it had punctured any organs but a scanner is a pale comparison to the technology they have on a medical frigate and if there some sort of alien poison in his system we have no way to diagnose that."

"Well hopefully our fearless leader can get a hold of someone that can come down here and help us," Richard replied. "Do you really think they're going to glass this whole facility? Especially when we've actually hit Falchorite?"

"No way," Shawn stated simply. "They'll probably come in here guns blazing and kill everything in here, but they're not going to let all this go to waste like that. All we have to do is hold tight and keep our heads down until they get here."

Lawrence nodded and went back to the security cameras while Shawn went to the injured guard to help keep a check on his position. Though he could see that the bug men had attempted to try and breach the airlock they were finding themselves having a hard time of it, and with the reinforced plating for all surface modules they weren't going to get in from the outside either. But as he continued to watch them he noticed that these creatures weren't purely driven by instinct, especially a few of them that appeared to be the leaders of the hivemind. Just as he switched over to the camera that showed the strange fleshy pods where several were being transformed he heard Richard clear his throat that caused him to turn around and look at him.

"Good news," their leader said. "Even though those bastards knocked out the main comms I managed to get an emergency transmission through to the Polaris, a heavy cruiser that was fortunate enough to be in comms range. I had to explain it to them a few times in order for them to get what the situation was but they said that they'll be landing here and will be able to extract us if we can rendezvous with them in the lobby section in a few hours."

"That's great!" Lawrence said excitedly before glancing over at the steel door. "But we bolted the door shut, how are we supposed to go and meet them?"

"There's an emergency escape hatch that allows us to escape through the utility system," Richard replied as he motioned upwards towards an area accessible only by ladder with a single red handle on it. "Once we crank that handle though we can't close it again, so we have to be sure that we're ready..." the guard's sentence trailed off as he turned to look at the other two guards to see that they seemed to be kissing one another rather passionately, Richard's face getting red as he saw them making out and stomped over towards them. "Hey, you two can make kissy face when we're off this rock and not while we're-"

Though Lawrence was farther away than Richard both guards gasped when the two were pulled apart and Shawn's head tilted back with his eyes completely rolled into the head and a fleshy tube pulsating as it pushed down his throat. It came from the mouth of the other male who looked at the one that had separated them with his eyes... both sets of them as a second pair opened over the first. Richard turned back to Lawrence and shouted at him to run before pulling out his energy pistol, only to have it smacked out of his hands before being pulled to the ground. As the older guard struggled to get to his feet he suddenly let out a wince of pain as the stinger from a tail that had shredded its way through the back of the infected male's pants buried itself into his lower back.

Lawrence found himself standing there in dumbfounded shock as he watched his friend's flesh start to turn purple around his lips as his throat bulged, no doubt from an egg being deposited into his body. How... the guard thought to himself as purple fluid began to leak out of both guard's mouths while their clothing began to rip from the added mass that the virus was giving them. When he finally did snap out of it he tried to go over to Richard to try and help him but even as the older guard struggled to release himself from the grip of the infected guard's hand he kept waving him off. It was clear to the both of them that the venom of the strange alien had transformative properties and Richard knew that it likely had spread to him.

With the other three out of commission the only one left to greet the crew of the Polaris was Lawrence, but unfortunately he was stuck in a room with two, soon to be three, transforming creatures. It was then he looked up at the hatch and realized that he would have to go now as the infected guard was busy infesting Shawn, who by this point had started to gain multiple eyes as his clothes were shredded to reveal a pair of purple gossamer wings growing from his back. It wouldn't be long before they would start chasing him and with the help of Richard shouting at him he went to the ladder and began to climb up. Though the ceiling wasn't far up his body was practically shaking at the scene that was unfolding in front of him as he got to the hatch and turned the handle.

The heavy piece of metal immediately fell away and hit the floor with a loud thud, as Lawrence looked back he saw that it had gotten the attention of the partially transformed, half naked guard. He quickly stood up and tore away his shirt to reveal the muscular physique that the virus had given him, complete with shiny purple skin as he ran forward. With a single jump he managed to get close enough to almost get his growing claws into the escaping guard's shoes. Even though Lawrence was halfway into the shaft he looked down and realized in horror that when this creature was ready to jump at him and will probably drag him down.

Just as he braced himself Lawrence heard a loud thud and looked down to see that Richard had plowed into the creature and pinned him to the ground, keeping him down on the floor. He knew that the human wouldn't last long, especially with the wound on his back, but it was enough for him to get all the way up into the utility tunnel. Just before he pulled himself all the way up however his gaze drifted over to Shawn, watching his friend as he had started to change more just like the infected guard did. Though he wanted to do something for him at that moment he knew that it was too late for him... just like it was too late for all of them as he made his way further into the utility system.