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GOD OF WAR, Part I

Phobos, the Panic

By Sovandar

Doctor Nasir stepped cautiously into the Overseer's office. "Is this a good time?" the balding Turk asked, with only a little hesitation, stepping further in and adjusting his glasses to cover the hint of trepidation. This probably wouldn't be the easiest conversation...

Overseer Claudia Johannsen looked up with irritation. "No, not really", she said, "I'll be free tomorrow."

She continued focusing intently on her computer for several more seconds, ignoring Nasir entirely. But the Doctor stayed where he stood, silent and immobile, waiting. Johannsen sighed. "...what is it?" she said, sitting back and glowering at Nasir.

"It's fairly urgent. I'd asked the Magistrates to keep an eye out for certain classes of non-violent criminal, the sort who'd face severe punishments but might be willing to, ah, bargain for something *apparently* less extreme..." Nasir began.

"Just get to the point", Johannsen cut him off. "I have a war briefing in an hour, and I've got three situation reports to get through first."

Nasir nodded. "Well, that's partly my point. Project Cadmus requires a test subject, and I believe I've found a candidate, name of Sharif Sulaiman; he's been convicted in the Lieberman case. I want the Arean War Council to offer him amnesty and a pardon, in exchange for his participation in Cadmus. I have the details here-"

"Whoa, whoa", Johannsen interrupted again, frowning in growing surprise. "The Lieberman case? The biggest fucking security breach in the entire war?! No way am I asking the Council to let a convicted spy off the hook!"

Nasir nodded, but with an uncertain wave of the hand. "Not a spy - unwitting accomplice, junior staffer following orders, and all that. It's a long story, so it's best, quickest, if you trust me on the details."

Johannsen sighed, pushed her paperwork aside, and folded her arms. "No dice. Touching the Lieberman case is more than my job's worth." She glowered at Nasir. "...geez. You really think this is justifiable? Fine, tell me why. Start from the beginning, what on Mars is this 'Cadmium' thing?"

"Cadmus", Nasir corrected. "Nanotechnological enhancements for spies and infiltrators. For now, it's just a possible replacement for anti-capture microexplosives... that's Phase 1. Eventually, by Phase 3, we hope it will be a fully reversible tool that saboteurs could be given as standard... but that's a long way off, hopefully the war will be over before we get that far." He paused. "Phase 1 is stalled at the moment, there's been, shall we say, a crippling shortage of human volunteers..."

Johannsen raised an eyebrow, her frown deepening. "Duh. It's a replacement for a suicide bomb? Who in their right mind would volunteer to test it?"

Nasir was shaking his head gently. "It's not intentionally fatal. But, if used in the field... well, we would all pray for the agent's safe escape, of course, but the key intent would be to ensure they aren't captured alive for interrogation... and hopefully to cause some collateral damage while they're at it."

Johannsen's eyes narrowed. "You'd better not be about to tell me you're developing a nano-plague..."

"No, no", Nasir interrupted quickly. "It's not a nanoweapon. It is a personal augment only." He looked irritated, stung by the accusation, as if his integrity should be unquestionable. "Nanites of augment-capacity are so complex they can't survive long outside a host, and require a large 'critical mass' of them working together before they can start self-replication within a host. The chances are essentially zero of it happening even once, let alone repeatedly! Augments aren't contagious, as you're... presumably... aware", he sniffed.

Johannsen looked reassured, but still mystified. "Well, as I'm sure you're... presumably... aware, capital punishment is banned on Mars..."

Nasir shook his head. "Indeed, the Theologiae are very clear on that... let me explain a little. The Cadmus nanite doesn't cause death, it alters a subject's biochemistry; making them stronger, faster, granting heightened senses, growing natural weapons such as claws, teeth, you get the idea. Cadmus, given that it's an option of last resort and aimed at spies - who, ah, tend to be quiet, introverted people, not at all violent... well", he cleared his throat. "It would cause fairly extreme physical alteration, and prompt a surge of aggressive, violent tendencies to perhaps the point of madness; though that is one of the key factors we will need to test. Hence, as I said, there is a high likelihood of death in the field, but for a lab test, we don't foresee any fatalities."

Johannsen sighed again, leaning back in her chair. "Fine, I see. It won't kill your lab rat in a nice, safe prison cell. So... you're going to reverse whatever you do, right?"

Nasir shook his head. "We, ah, can't yet. It's possible, but only in theory. It's an area we can't easily research until Phase 1 is completed."

"...and you're expecting this guy Sharif, a Jovian spy, will volunteer for this?" Johannsen said, shaking her head in disbelief. "Don't hold your breath, Doctor."

Nasir gave a slight cough. "As I mentioned, he's not a spy. No known enemy sympathies."

Johannsen scoffed. "Pfeh, even less likely he'll cooperate then. Negligent about security, that's, what, maximum twelve months at Syria Planum, then house arrest until the war ends... and only if he's unlucky with the parole board. I don't see his incentive."

Nasir rolled his eyes heavenwards, with a faint sigh, but without surprise. "Very well, but I warned you. Young Sharif migrated out here to Mars a decade ago, from Kuwait on Earth, as a dependent of his elder sister Elinah, who was killed three years ago in the Battle of Ceres. He is only superficially religious, probably just for show; he has few friends, no surviving close family, and work colleagues describe him as extremely private. When he was arrested, they found... certain compromising data in his personal computers..."

Nasir tapped something into his wrist-mounted computer as he spoke, then tapped the device to Johannsen's computer screen, "...like this."

Johannsen blinked for a few moments, before she realised she was looking at a naked, extremely hirsute, extremely erect Caucasian male... strange-looking, inhuman, mutated, perhaps...? Almost bull-like around the head. Some classical myth imagery, or someth-

It took her a heartbeat's hesitation to realise that a second, doglike figure kneeling between the man's legs was equally male, equally naked, and equally erect, in the midst of pleasuring himself.

"Ugh!" she shouted, disgusted and startled, holding up a hand to block the depraved scene from her view. "God's sakes, Nasir! Get this shit off my computer, now!"

Nasir withdrew his wristcomp, and the image vanished. He shrugged, but didn't apologise.

Johannsen continued. "You could be hauled in front of the Theologiae just for possessing that image. Care to explain, before I'm too tempted to give them a call..?"

Nasir shrugged. "It would be hard to justify an arrest, given that it is a matter in an active trial, on public record... not widely publicised, but still public until the case is complete. A Magistrate friend passed these along to me, as proof that he'd found me a candidate..." He shrugged again, pausing. "Besides, I did say it would be better if you trusted me on the details."

Johannsen glowered at him, genuinely fuming now. "You could just have told me, you know." Her mind was racing, though; the awful outline of what Nasir was suggesting was becoming clearer by the moment.

Nasir continued as if he hadn't heard. "Sharif, according to the court psychiatrist's report, identifies with a minotaur avatar, and uses some anonymous, immoral, and highly illegal networks to meet like-minded men, exchange home-made VR sims, and... well, you get the idea, though the psychiatrist's opinion is that he's not a practicing sodomite... yet." Nasir shrugged. "There's material there biased towards the occult, the monstrous and the demonic. But transformative, in almost all cases, interestingly. He could get a very long sentence under the Morality Laws, as things stand."

Johannsen found herself shivering slightly, and felt oddly sick. She could see what Nasir was getting at... and she couldn't tell which part of this sordid tale was the worst, the behaviour of this young man, or the way Nasir wanted to use it against him. It might not be... explicitly... blackmail, but it was something damn close.

Nasir grinned slowly, an almost predatory look. "...so! I daresay you will concede my point now. As an ex-Kuwaiti colonial, legally, he would be tried by Ali Pasha's tribunal. I'm sure you remember him - very fire-and-brimstone. A possible sodomite with a taste for the occult? It's a toss-up if he'd avoid an apostasy verdict - usual sentence is chemical neutering and corrective neurosurgery to remove all 'vice'... the result isn't pretty at all."

Johannsen sighed, and closed her eyes... war was war, though. Compared to the casualty reports that flowed in every few days, what was one man's freedom, one prisoner's dignity?

Nasir continued. "The War Council can overrule the Theologiae Tribunal on this matter, defer the trial indefinitely. He can be offered tis reprieve from a lifelong humiliation... and in exchange, through Cadmus, he can live out an, ah, unusual private dream, in perpetuity."

Johannsen nodded faintly and pulled her paperwork back in front of her. "...fine, you've made your point. I'll bring it up in the meeting and ask for a snap vote. If they refuse, this goes no further. Understand?"

Nasir's grin remained fixed to his face as he backed slowly towards the door. "Of course, Overseer. I've no doubt about their decision... Many thanks for your time."

* * *

The young, lanky, swarthy Arab sat shivering slightly in the brightly-lit, cell-like room, awkwardly running his fingers through his short-cropped, jet black hair, or scratching at the two-day growth of beard that had formed on the journey up the Space Elevator to this place, the medical lab complex of the Gateway Station.

He was deeply uncomfortable; the air in here, a tad too chilly, too dry, the gravity too high. He was used to Martian surface gravity, or microgravity in his shifts on Phobos Station. Here, the artificial gravity was halfway between Earth surface and Mars surface, a compromise for visitors from other worlds... he'd not felt Earth gravity since he was in his mid-teens, back in south-eastern Europe, but even this pale imitation felt crushing.

The situation was bad, too. It was more like a fever-dream, a delirium... sudden arrest, even more sudden pardons, nanotech transformations... he'd been kidnapped out of his own life and thrown into something surreal and impossible. Through the looking glass... or should it be through a mirror darkly, he wondered?

He should've left years ago, shouldn't have let Elinah talk him into staying once he turned 18... she didn't know about his sexuality, though, or she might have thought differently. Once the war started, and she was dead, it was too late; Earth, never friendly to colonials trying to return, had closed its borders to colonial citizens, regardless of their faction, and declared that the homeworld was staying neutral in what was a purely colonial war. If he'd gotten to Earth before the fighting started, things would've been better...the United American States, perhaps, or the Eurasian Union, somewhere that his sexuality wouldn't cause him trouble like this; somewhere that had done away with supreme religious oversight and morality laws, and wasn't prepared to re-invent them on a whim the way the arch-conservative Martians had.

Hell... even the Jovian Federation, despite being the enemy, and for all their ruthless communist repression... at least their 'thought police' wouldn't be interested in that part of his life.

He'd been so careful, too... the authorities here hadn't suspected a thing until they'd screened his computer as part of an investigation into his boss. He'd thought he was done for... and maybe he still was. This 'experiment' sounded insane, but, well... it beat being chemically neutered and lobotomised in the name of Allah, right? But even though they said it was safe, if they were having to force him into 'volunteering', how safe did they really think it was?

He glanced down at the picture on the glowing screen set into the table. A quadrupedal creature, though its front paws still had a thumb and fingers, quite like a hand... in build, it reminded him of a cheetah, or some other large cat, but instead of fur it seemed to have shiny scales instead. Its head was somewhere between a dog and a crocodile, with holes instead of ears; and it had a few feet of tail hanging behind it, with what looked like a spade-tip, sharp and - according to the dossier he'd read on the journey up the space elevator - venomous, just like its bite; two long snakelike teeth protruded from the open jaw.

The rest of its teeth looked sharp enough to do plenty of damage, though; and though the claws on its forepaws were short and apparently retractable, the claws on its hindpaws were long, with deadly sharp points.

Its skin was coated in dull brownish-red scales, similar in colour to the Martian soils he was familiar with; and there was some subtle patterning along its underside, where the scales also seemed thicker.

He glanced involuntarily between its hind legs again. Nothing visible there, but this was just a CGI extrapolation, not a real creature, and the Theologiae could be quite odd about that sort of thing... or maybe its genitals were internal, or maybe it was female... no way to be sure, just like he couldn't be sure of its size, since the picture lacked any reference points or scale bars.

Was this some sort of cruel joke... some twisted test that the Theologiae were putting him through? He'd never heard of anything like this. Not really, even with the way nanotech had advanced in the last few years...

He jumped back slightly as the door slid open, and a lab-coated, slightly balding middle-aged man strode into the small room. "Ah. Mr Sulaiman? I am Dr Nasir; I believe you spoke with my associate, Overseer Johannsen?" He sat in the chair opposite Sharif, without waiting for an answer. "I hope you had a pleasant journey and had plenty of time to read the Cadmus dossier?"

Sharif looked at him. He seemed... a little forced, maybe, but didn't look like a mad scientist or anything. Though, could one tell?

"Uh... yes, well, some of it, sort of... I didn't quite understand it all..." Sharif admitted, tripping over his tongue suddenly. What was one supposed to say? Surely nobody had ever been in a situation quite like this one before.

"I, er, thought, yes, so..." he stopped, took a deep breath, and tried to make himself at least seem calm and collected. "...I, er, really didn't get the part about being able to breathe outside, I mean, there's no air on Mars..."

Nasir waved a hand dismissively. "No, but there are perchlorates in the soil. With appropriate enzymes, it's fairly simple to extract and store those, and use them as an oxidising agent for metabolic activity, even without a significant amount of atmospheric oxygen. You can survive outside by eating soil, for a while... it's not 'food', of course, and you'll still need water. And I very much doubt it will taste good. But it should work."

Sharif sat still, uncomfortably. "Oh", he said, still somewhat mystified. "Er, I guess, the dossier didn't say what CADMUS was short for?"

Nasir gave him a puzzled look. "Short for? What do you- Oh. No, no, it's not short for anything... it's a myth of the Romans, from Earth. A Mediterranean king called Cadmus slew the Dragon of Mars, God of War, and pulled out its teeth. When he threw them onto the ground, they grew into able-bodied soldiers, and together with the best of these newly made fighting men, Cadmus founded the city of Thebes and filled it with the secret knowledge that the Dragon had guarded. I'm sure you see the connection."

"...oh", Sharif said, not really seeing the connection at all... beyond the mention of Mars, at least, but every society on Earth had myths about the red star in the sky, why bother choosing any one or other... some self-referential ivory-tower crap, no doubt.

There was a lengthy pause. Sharif had no idea what to ask or say; he wanted to know a lot more, but where to even begin? He'd spent days with a head full of questions; now that he was here, he was just paralysed.

Nasir waited patiently for several long seconds before he broke the silence. "Sharif, it's natural to be a little confused. But you should take your time and consider this carefully, all the ramifications. If you say yes, you'll be very different for the rest of your life, and you'll always be something of a lab specimen. If you decide that's too much, well, I'm afraid the Theologiae will resume your trial, and that will also have consequences, probably for the rest of your life."

Sharif nodded, gloomily. He'd always wondered what it might be like to... change, to be something, anything else... and yet, even with the impossible suddenly being offered to him, it was frightening. Dangerous. The idea of a life under a metaphorical microscope, and perhaps with his mind fundamentally altered, suddenly seemed like a bad trade-off. But then he'd be forever different either way, once the Theologiae had done its worst to him...

"...what will you study about me?" Sharif asked, before catching himself. "I mean, er, if I said yes."

From Nasir's half-grin, it was clear that the Doctor thought he'd already won the debate. "Oh, a number of things. We would need to test regenerative ability; rates of biochemical alteration; metabolic rate; mental state. Those are the obvious ones! Then we'd need to ensure that the, ah, let's call them 'military' traits, like the extra aggression, are manifesting correctly and can be controlled. We need to ensure the nanites can be activated and deactivated, and that their propagation rates are appropriate. The perchlorate metabolism, well, we would need to ensure that it is possible for you to survive outdoors on Mars, and survive high radiation environments like a solar flare... within reason, of course. In the end we intend Lamarckons to survive in a vacuum, but we need much more research before then." He coughed slightly. "And of course, we need to validate the effect on lifespan. It should, in theory, make no noticeable difference... but that remains to be proven. It's possible you could age very rapidly and die quickly... or that the transformation itself will cause a critical metabolic problem and kill you." He shrugged. "I won't lie about that. It's a risk, though you'll be under complete medical supervision just in case."

Sharif paled slightly, and tried not to think about that. "Er... Lamarckons?"

"Yes", Nasir said. "From Lamarck, as in Lamarckian evolution, and Dragon. I dislike the mythical implications, but the lab technicians ran a lottery for the name." He sniffed, dismissively. "I don't see what was wrong with Cadmites. Now, any other questions?"

Sharif was mystified, but stammered another that was on his mind. "W-will I have any privacy? Like, can I talk to any friends or... anything?"

Nasir chuckled. "From what I'm told, you don't have any friends you keep in touch with regularly. If that means the authorities don't know about certain friends of yours, perhaps best to keep it that way, mmhmm? Besides, you'll not have vocal chords like you do now; if a Lamarckon is captured we want them unable to give away any secrets." He paused. "You will still be a prisoner, don't forget. You're not off the hook completely."

Nasir sighed, and added, "That said, yes. Privacy, to an extent, but limited. You will probably be a dangerous creature for a time after the process is complete, so even though you should remain relatively intelligent, we can't allow too much freedom. For security reasons."

"...relatively intelligent?" Sharif echoed. "I, er, thought it was just physical change. Plus the aggressive stuff you mentioned? But it sounds like it's... more?"

Nasir shook his head very slightly. "Yes, but to ensure the programming works, the Cadmus nanites will be inhabiting most of your neuronal junctions to monitor, interrupt and replace neural signalling, especially the dopaminergic pathways... those are the pathways that control enjoyment and learning, we want to turbo-charge those so during and after the change, you get a 'crash course' in the new personality we're intending you to develop. Then it will come naturally afterwards."

He paused again. "But that neuronal block will cause an element of... slowdown... for some higher cognitive functions. The exact effects aren't known, before you ask, but you should, with practice, be just as capable of thought in future as you are now. Just... in a different way, and it may take a while to re-learn."

Sharif's eyes widened, and his face flushed slightly. "That, er, sounds like it'd hurt...?" he muttered.

Nasir shook his head more vigorously. "Not at all. The neuronal pathways are set up first, partly so that pain signals can be blocked off. Endorphins and more potent opioids are released during the change, so you'll feel pretty good during it all... completely incapacitated, of course, but on top of the world." Nasir paused again, and pursed his lips. "It's worth warning you that the same response is triggered, albeit in a lesser form, as part of the Lamarckon fight-or-flight response... it wouldn't do to go feeling pain when in lethal combat, after all."

"Wait...so I won't know if I get hurt?" Sharif asked, incredulously.

"Not if you're in a fight at the time and not paying attention, no", Nasir nodded. "You'd only realise later, even for quite a severe injury. Which has the unfortunate side effect that any injuries you sustain are likely to be a lot worse than if you did feel pain normally. Remember, we're not building Lamarckons for long-term survival; it's an emergency measure... arguably a suicide pill by a different method. The aim is to be able to take as many of 'them' down with you as possible, if you've no other choice."

Sharif shivered again, but stayed quiet.

"Any other questions? Anything you didn't understand?"

"...uh... I didn't really get that bit about Lamarck?" Sharif muttered, a little distractedly.

"Lamarck was a biologist who believed that animals evolved by 'trying' things, rather than by natural selection. He thought that, say, a giraffe developed a long neck to eat from tall trees, by trying to stretch up to reach tall trees so often that their neck actually grew." He chuckled. "Utter nonsense, of course. But with nanotechnology and the latest miniaturised quantum computing systems, the Cadmus nanites are able to interpret sensory input and adapt the body to emerging requirements. So, if you're..." Nasir rolled a hand in the air, trying to think of an example, "Say you get stuck in a room and need to break down the door but you're not strong enough. The panic or anger, combined with the attempts to break out, would prompt the nanites to read in sensory data from your own senses, decide what the problem is and what the solution needs to be, and in that case would increase muscle density and bone strength until you could break the door down. Clever, if I do say so myself", Nasir added, almost purring with self-congratulation.

"...so, uh..." Sharif said, trailing off again.

"I'd expected you to be brimming with questions", Nasir observed. "Unless the dossier we put together in that new prison-wristcomp", he pointed at the shiny new sensor package cuffed securely around Sharif's wrist, "...really did answer everything?"

Sharif flushed harder, and shook his head. "I, er, the guards didn't like me reading it. I couldn't finish."

Nasir raised an eyebrow. "That's a bit of an issue, since you need to give an answer one way or the other, within the next hour. Don't you have any questions about the shape? Abilities? How the transformation will work?"

Sharif flushed harder, and half-heartedly nodded. "Yeah, but... I don't know where to start."

Nasir rolled his eyes. "Alright, I'll leave you alone to read up more before your final answer. In precis, though? The transformation will take between 48 and 72 hours, we think. The first stage will take around 24 hours and will be almost entirely hidden; it will be the rewriting of the DNA, and the initial setup of the neuronal interfaces, combined with the nanites replicating to a full working complement. Got it?"

Sharif nodded.

"After that, the physical changes will begin, slowly at first, and concurrently the early stages of the mental conditioning will begin. Dopamine and endorphins, and blockers of both, will be deployed in growing doses to start nudging behaviour towards the intended mindset. This will take, probably, another 24 hours. The physical changes will complete rapidly after that; throughout it all you'll be extremely hungry. The changes will halt if you're in danger of starvation, don't worry."

Sharif cleared his throat. "Er... w-would I look like that?" He pointed at the image on the table. "... Will I get bigger?"

Nasir shook his head. "Not bigger, no. The nanites can't conjure matter out of thin air, they can only work with your existing body mass. If you overeat during the transformation, I suppose they'd add that mass to your Lamarckon form, but it wouldn't be much."

Sharif nodded again, but looked disappointed.

Nasir raised an eyebrow. "...right. You can choose cosmetic features if there's any you'd especially like to have, like skin colour for instance, but the overall form is quite rigidly defined. You'll be essentially quadrupedal, for speed, but retain full articulation of the hands, and capable of standing upright. Thick hide overlaid with scales, for protection. Denser bones and muscle tissues. And, ah, phenotypically female."

Sharif flinched, his eyes widening; it was obvious to Nasir that the young man had overlooked that part of the dossier.

Nasir sighed. "Sorry. That's non-negotiable, of course. We're not intending to create a true-breeding species here, so all Lamarckons are intended to be phenotypically female, or maybe gender-neuter, and... well. Given your predilections, the Theologiae tribunal insisted on that element being kept, to..." he paused, and for the first time seemed the slightest bit uncomfortable. "...ensure your morality. I should note that sexuality of any kind is not part of the intended personality for the Lamarckon; I'm sure some of your old drives will survive, but you'll find a lot of instincts and desires are very different after the change. A lot will seem less important."

Sharif didn't look entirely happy about that, but nodded.

"Assuming you say yes... we'd remove one of your rear teeth and replace it with a concealed nanite deployer, of the kind the final Cadmus design will use, so that we can test that it delivers an appropriate dose of nanites efficiently. Unlike the intended recipients though, you won't be supplied with the activation code - that will be done by our technicians once you arrive at the test facility in Barnard Crater, south of Hellas Planitia... it's four kilometres below the datum, so it's one of the lowest points of Mars... thick enough atmosphere, you see, it should be survivable to your new form, just about. But, ah, surrounded by higher elevations that will be impassable..." he grinned, a little mischievously. "So no easy escape, I'm afraid. Plus, no food or water on the surface, so you'd not get too far even if you did."

Sharif nodded again, more weakly this time, clearly losing track of what he was being told... not the sharpest tool in the shed, Nasir thought.

"Well, I'll leave you alone to read the rest of the dossier, unless you've already got an answer to give?" Nasir said, standing slowly, and starting to walk towards the door.

Sharif sat silently, uncomfortably, looking down at the floor, his face flushed slightly. His thoughts raced... it wasn't what he really wanted, not quite. Closer than you're likely to find ever again. Maybe it wasn't worth the risk; maybe he should just accept the trial and serve his time. The Theologiae will chew you up and spit out the husk to make an example of you, you'll never recover. But this way, this experiment, it could just kill him immediately because some technician forgot to carry the one in a calculation years ago...

Yet, as he was uncomfortably aware, for all his doubts, his maleness had swelled to half mast. Some deep part of him wondered what it would feel like... and would always wonder if he didn't say...

"...yes", Sharif whispered. "I'll do it." He flushed almost beetroot red. "I... I want horns. And really dark scales, with..."

Ignoring him, a grinning Nasir tapped a few buttons on his own wristcomp, and Sharif's wristcomp buzzed; a waiver document and disclaimer appeared on the device's screen.

"Yes yes, we'll discuss exact requirements while the dental technicians prepare. Just sign that. You can read it on the way to surgery; we'll begin right away..."

* * *

Sharif awoke slowly and groggily in an unfamiliar bed. Urgh, his head stung and pounded heavily... he felt confused, where was this, had he seen this room before..?

...no, he realised. It was a small, extremely Spartan guest berth; that was right, he was at the Gateway Station, at the top of the space elevator on Mars... they'd anaesthetised him, to put a fake, nanite-filled tooth into his jaw...

He gingerly felt around his mouth with his tongue, and felt the unfamiliar, smooth new molar that had replaced his rough-edged, slightly crooked one on the far right-hand side of his upper jaw. This was really it then... he was committed. In the morning, he'd be transferred to some lab on the surface, and... and t-transformed against his will...

He felt scared now. Deep, dark doubts swirled around his head... had he done the right thing? This was insanely dangerous...

At least he'd gotten to choose cosmetic details... it was a little scary, but oddly satisfying. His favourite dream had always been a minotaur... jet black fur, massive horns, powerful muscles... a, a thick, fuzzy sheath...

...well, the latter was apparently off the table, as was fur, something about chemical reactions with the Martian dust. Scales it had to be... but dark, very dark. Obsidian. Yes... and horns, not quite like a bull's, it didn't look right, he'd decided. Swept back, though, running backwards from the top of the skull... and more muscles. He wanted to be bigger, physically bigger, and to have strength that was obvious for everyone to see.

He sighed gently, his face flushing with embarrassment as he recalled the female lab technician asking him for his 'order'. Going through in some detail... she kept asking why, and he'd just sit in awkward silence, unable to explain, his tongue refusing to let the deeply-buried thoughts out into the open.

She'd tut-tutted at a lot of his suggestions, kept dialling them down. Curled horns? Better keep them straight and thin to avoid neck strain. Sharp tips? Okay, but they'll dull down quickly. Keep them blunter and shorter or they'll always get caught on things, it'll be irritating. No, muscle definition won't show easily, the scales have to be thick so they can insulate against Mars surface temperatures. No, no, don't add more muscle to overcome that, or you'll be dead of high blood pressure in a few months, from all the strain on your heart. Back a little, back... if you want strength, we'll just heighten the steroid releases and you'll have to work for it, it's plain wasteful to make the nanites do it all...

She'd simply shaken her head when he asked if there was any chance of staying male. Pity, but it was what Nasir had said, too. Still, at least if they forced him to be female, he could at least have a body with some of that masculine bulk he'd always dreamed of having. He'd never really considered anything with scales before... but, it wasn't that he had a choice there either.

What would it feel like, would he feel the muscles growing... what would the first scales feel like... what would a tail feel like...?

How often had he dreamed, alone in the dark, about his body warping, shifting, the pale light of Earth's moon streaming through a window and calling out an inner wolf, the predator to go on the hunt... or sometimes an inner bear. Or a minotaur... something big, strong, and covered in fur, something dangerous and masculine... so often he'd touched himself fervently as the dreams, or sometimes VR sims, of his lycanthropy built to a climax...

Despite the misgivings, he felt his maleness stirring. This time he imagined taking his shaft in a scaly, clawed hand, as he felt the muscles growing in his arms, perhaps an involuntary hiss escaping his lips... did dragons, er, Lamarckons, hiss...?

He felt his member inflating faster as the thoughts ran through his head, strengthening quickly. In the next few days, he'd actually find out... but in the meantime, he didn't have many more opportunities left to use his male parts... so...

His hand cupped himself, and fingers curled around his pulsing member as he rolled onto his back, spreading his legs slightly. Mmm... he gently pumped the flesh, teasingly, one, then twice...

There was a sudden, audible *crack*, and a sheet of white-hot agony raced through his wrist up to his elbow, and down through his fingertips and, excruciatingly, through his cock as well.

"AaaafuckfuckFUCK!!" he yelled, leaping from the bed so quickly it felt like he almost bounced off the ceiling. He held his injured wrist, whimpering slightly, and looked around the room in astonishment. What the absolute fuck was that?!

Wide awake now, his fingers bumped against the cool metal casing of the wristcomp, still cuffed on his wrist... and he realised the screen was lit. He glanced down at it.

"Decency is required for all prisoners. Punishment will be administered with increasing severity for repeat offences", it read, in dark red text.

He stared at it incredulously. "...fuck... fucking bastards!" he hissed, through gritted teeth. "That f-fucking hurt!" he added with a snarl, kicking the blanket hard, then punching the pillow a few times in helpless frustration.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he picked up the blankets and pillow, set them straight, and climbed back into bed, folding his arms angrily. His member shrivelled quickly, and throbbed with pain. How big a battery did they put in this damned thing anyway?!

He frowned morosely at the wall. He was a prisoner, after all; expendable. For all the promises that he'd be looked after, that he was a valuable test subject, for the implications that he'd keep some human dignity... well, he'd only keep the dignity they were willing to extend to him... which, apparently, was almost none. That would never change...

He sighed, sadly. In some ways, maybe it was better that Dad, and Elinah, weren't around to see him reduced to this... he sighed harder, realising that the family line quite literally stopped with him. He'd be some sterile test subject for the rest of his life, however long that was; and there were no other living relatives that he knew of... nobody he knew, anyway, though he supposed there must be members of the extended family, back on Earth.

He frowned, thinking back suddenly. What was the guy's name, Elinah's business-partner-and-on-again-off-again-boyfriend..? Ian something..? Mackilroy, Ian Mackilroy. The light aircraft pilot who ran a zeppelin cargo haulage company, down in the Hellas basin; Elinah and Ian, with some support from Sharif, had dreamed about setting up a salvage business, dismantling some of the old abandoned mines and habitats that had been built deep in the basin's lower reaches.

Hellas' recesses were the lowest natural points on Mars; so the atmosphere was thickest there, the temperature often warmest. It had been built up quite extensively before the Terraformation project had started; but now that the atmosphere was being artificially thickened, greenhouse gases manufactured and pumped into the air, the pressure and temperature in the lowest parts of Hellas meant liquid water sometimes collected there.

In decades to come, Hellas would become a series of lakes, then finally an ocean. Knowing the land's fate, the facilities there had been run down, mothballed, and then finally abandoned, waiting for the flood. Only a few were used now, mostly for observational and experimental purposes.

Still, there was a lot of stuff there that could be profitably scrapped... reclamation was a big business in the area. Elinah had wanted in, wanted to make her own destiny...

It had come to nothing though; and Ian was part of the reason, though it would be unfair to say it was his fault. Ian had been a vocal campaigner for the Hellassic Secessionists - a radical group that wanted political independence for Martian regions, particularly Hellas. They'd pushed through a local referendum to that effect, which had passed in dubious circumstances; mass strikes, riots, clashes with police and the Arean Peacekeepers, terrorist attacks, even at one point an armed insurrection that seized an entire township, and held it for a week. The ringleaders were arrested and the affair died down, especially after the war with the Jovian Federation started; but a new business startup in the area was effectively impossible in the aftermath.

...Ian wouldn't hold much love for the authorities. So... just maybe, if Sharif could get a message out to him, ask for help, perhaps... yeah, if somehow Sharif could escape, Hellas would be a good place, lots of abandoned structures, some still airtight... it was relatively warm there, temperatures sometimes got above freezing at this time of year... and if the Hellas Separatists were still active, and they surely must be in some form, then he might even have allies to help him hide. He'd need the help; after becoming a Martian dragoness, he couldn't exactly put on a different hat and hope people wouldn't recognise him.

How far was it from Barnard Crater to the nearest edge of Hellas...? Well over a hundred kilometres, and even then, Barnard was south of Hellas; most of the population was clustered around the subsurface glaciers in the northeast, well over a thousand kilometres away. Even if his new form could 'breathe' on the surface, and assuming Nasir was wrong about the lethality of the altitude around Barnard, he'd surely never make it that far on foot... he'd need a vehicle. Maybe Ian could send an aircraft? Surely if the lab wanted to test his ability to survive outdoors, they'd let him, well, go outdoors, so he could just make a run for it and try to meet up with a rescue party...

He sighed; this was starting to sound a bit whacky, a fever-dream in the middle of the night. Sure, he could remember Elinah's private encryption key... he'd been given access to it after she was pronounced legally dead; no reason to expect any eavesdroppers on any communications channels would know it, but that wasn't the problem - if he persuaded anyone to let him send a message anywhere to anyone, they'd cut the channel the moment he encrypted it.

Though, scientists were supposed to be pretty liberal, weren't they? Maybe he'd have allies amongst the staff. Besides, if it was a lab that was intended for volunteers, there would be compromises in the security: loopholes, sloppiness, weak points. Though; the scientists were working on something for the military, right? So they'd be patriotic, and would remember him from an espionage trial... maybe they wouldn't be very sympathetic after all.

Maybe he didn't need help. They were going to turn him into something that, basically, was designed to be able to fight its way out of a tight corner... maybe he should be trying to transform before they were ready? Speed it up somehow? He experimentally tried biting down on the false tooth, quite hard, grinding the teeth together; but it just made his jaw hurt. The damned thing seemed more solid than his real teeth were...

Nah, that was a bad idea anyway... if it took a day or two to transform like the Doctor said, they'd notice pretty quickly, and have plenty of time to intervene.

Still. The outlines of an idea were there, assuming he remembered the details after his change, and assuming he had the wits to pull it off once he was a, what was it, lamarckon. He rubbed at his temples, trying to will himself to remember it, burn the idea into his head: encryption key, call Ian, get to Hellas...

Against all the odds, he drifted into a doze.

* * *

He sat bolt upright in surprise as a loud chime sounded suddenly from a wall panel. The lights in the room brightened immediately.

"Change of plans", came Nasir's disembodied voice through a hidden speaker. "We have to head out early, via shuttle. The space elevator is being turned over to military use for the day, so our slot is, ah... well, you can at least look forward to beginning the project sooner than expected, you can fly straight to Barnard from here with the rest of the team. Better get washed and dressed, you've got ten minutes."

Bleary and confused, he quickly showered and put on the standard-issue clothes he'd arrived in. At least they weren't making him wear a prison jumpsuit or anything... he was only just in time, as moments later an armed guard was marching in alongside Nasir and a pair of lab technicians; the man, Sharif didn't know, but the woman was the same person who'd talked him through the 'cosmetic adjustments' yesterday.

With barely a word, he was handcuffed, leg-cuffed, and led swiftly down the corridor outside by a short length of chain. "You've flown in spacecraft before, I assume?" Nasir asked, as they hustled along.

Sharif nodded, "Uh... yeah, obviously". He'd emigrated from Earth; he'd worked on the moon Phobos; how did Nasir think he'd done all that, flapping his arms really hard?

"Good, you know the drill then! You'll set off in about fifteen minutes. You'll be planetside within the hour." Nasir grinned that oddly predatory grin again. "I'll have to leave you in Rachel's and Nikesh's hands, here", he gestured at the two lab assistants, who glanced around and nodded, politely but distantly. "I'm needed at the lab here for a few more days."

They were hustled into a large hangar bay, the gravity strength suddenly dropped back to Mars surface normal, within the distance of a single stride; several shuttles rested around the bay's four walls, held in place by the artificial gravity fields; at 30 metres long and half as many wide, they seemed to fill most of the space in the sizeable hangar.

All were hives of activity; many of the people around had grim expressions, and uniformed soldiers barked orders to cargo-handlers... this wasn't normal, surely? Something wasn't right... was this an evacuation?

Nasir suddenly took his hand, without any warning; and shook it vigorously. "You have my thanks, if I don't see you before you begin. You've saved Cadmus! Many people's lives will be better for the knowledge we acquire here, mark my words, in ways you can't even begin to imagine."

"Many people... but, not mine..?" Sharif said, sarcastically. After the sleepless night, a chance to collect his thoughts, and a plan to try and get away from these creeps, he felt a lot less overwhelmed and out of his depth. Enough to feign confidence, at least.

Nasir's grin didn't falter at all. "Depends how you measure it", he said, not skipping a single beat. "Oh. Here, sterile container... I almost forgot. Ah, Rachel, you'd better handle it, I need to get moving."

He pressed a small, sealed plastic cup into the female technician's hand. She blinked at it, and looked a little uncomfortable, then glared faintly at Nasir, but said nothing.

Within a few more seconds, though, the armed guard was pushing him in through the door of the shuttle, and away from Nasir; the Doctor hung back slightly, and waved a polite goodbye, still bearing that strange, knowing, predatory smirk on his lips... but then he turned, and walked briskly back towards the main structure doors.

The armed guard handed Sharif's chain to another uniformed security officer, gave a brisk salute to the other man, and then marched quickly back out of the shuttle, past Nikesh and Rachel who were just stepping in, along with the pilot and co-pilot.

This part of the shuttle was a cargo area; half filled with standard plastic packing crates, about three feet each side, with a canvas strip across the top securing the crates to the shuttle's deck.

The new guard was looking at him, intently, from behind a pair of aviator-style dark glasses and a flak helmet; Sharif looked back, and felt a growing unease as he realised the guard looked familiar...

"Sulaiman, isn't it?" the guard said, suddenly. "Bloody hell. You're the spy Rachel's experimenting on? I'd never have thought you'd be on the other side..."

Sharif bristled. "I'm not a traitor. Lieberman was, I was just unlucky enough to work in the same office!" he said, and then fell silent. Where had he seen this guy before..? Was it the dock, or had it been one of the armouries...?

The guard snorted, and looked annoyed. "We're all fucking unlucky, pal, they purged the whole staff, near as damn it. I got busted down to babysitting runs like this. I'll have to muster out of the Force sometime and get a civvie job, private security maybe. Total bullshit." He sighed. "Now, you're going to get into that cage over there, yeah?" He pointed; there was a set of metal bars running vertically from floor to ceiling, with about two square metres of space inside, and no furnishings at all. "Prisoner transport, after all. You're not getting a break just because I remember you."

Sharif sighed, and walked to the cage; no sense in delaying the inevitable. He stepped in through a swinging door, and the guard slammed it shut and locked it behind him.

...Nicky, was it? Or was it Vinnie... 'thing-y' of some sort...

The shuttle door clicked shut, and the pilots, along with Nikesh, walked through a door in the forward bulkhead, and into the cockpit, shutting it behind them. The woman, Rachel, walked slowly over.

"So..." Sharif asked, coughing slightly. "What's with all the shuttles..? Is something wrong?" Sharif asked.

The guard frowned at him, surprised. "Obviously! The space raid alert?" He paused, noticing that Sharif was genuinely baffled. "...Didn't you hear the announcement? Possible fleet group active in our sector. Most traffic's being grounded within an hour, some emergency flights but nothing more. Elevator's shutting down, obviously and... eh, why am I telling you this, you worked at Phobos, you know the drill."

Sharif nodded slightly; he'd not heard any alarms or announcements, did they disable it for prison quarters? Might make sense, it's not like someone in a cell needed to, or even could, react to it.

The lab technician, Rachel, interjected. "Probably because your pal Lieberman, Mr Big-Shot Spy, passed them the defence plans", she said, without malice. "Obviously they'll have changed all the deployments and codes, and all that jazz, so we're not defenceless, but they can't just change the entire structure of the Ares Defence Grid overnight. Jovians have probably been rushing to try something ever since they heard he'd been caught... once the Grid's fully realigned and redeployed, his info's useless."

The guard turned at the sound of her voice, and grinned. "Hey there, light of my day."

She smiled back coyly. "Hello to you too, Lemuel."

'Lemuel' reddened slightly. "Lenny, please... you know I prefer Lenny."

Rachel laughed sweetly. "Mmm... no, too familiar. You'll have to try a bit harder to earn that... especially after that last time you offered me a coffee."

They evidently knew each other, Sharif saw; where from, though..? He didn't think he'd seen Rachel before on Phobos. He didn't normally pay as much attention to women, but he was sure she wasn't familiar...

Dark eyes, dark, shoulder-length hair... six feet tall, and slender, both common traits for children born and raised in Mars' low gravity. With some Italian ancestry, perhaps? The combination was aesthetically very pleasing, Sharif had to admit; he wouldn't find it sexy, but he could appreciate beauty. He was sure he'd remember her.

Lenny paused, frowned slightly, and opened his mouth to respond... then glanced at Sharif, closed his mouth, and cleared his throat instead. "Ahem. You've got some business with Sulaiman here? Something about that thing you're carrying?"

Rachel opened her mouth to speak, then paled slightly, and looked down at the plastic cup that Nasir had handed her. "Oh. That. Yes, I suppose", she said, and sighed, turning her eyes up to heaven as the shuttle's atomic engines revved into roaring life, and the hangar visible through the portholes started to slide past quickly, before turning suddenly into a starry void.

"...well, there's no easy way to say this so I'll just get it over with. There was some discussion yesterday and given the circumstances, you know, that the treatment will render you effectively sterile, it's only fair you get the choice of freezing some of your gametes, in case, well, so you have the option of children, at least."

Sharif stared at her, and felt his cheeks burning. He glanced involuntarily at Lenny, whose jaw had dropped limply open in surprise.

"Oh my god. Not right now?" Lenny suddenly said, aghast. "Why're you asking now?! Surely that's supposed to be private..." he looked at Sharif, sternly. "Hey. You ask her to 'help' and you're going out the nearest airlock, capeesh?"

Rachel snorted and suppressed a giggle. "He's more likely to ask you."

Lenny looked at her, uncomprehendingly. "Huh?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "What do you think the morality charges were about? You volunteered for a prisoner transport, so you must've been briefed, right?"

Lenny looked back at Sharif, his cheeks reddening as well. "...huh. I, er, never figured you were on 'that' other side, either. Guess I wouldn't know, though."

Rachel gave a half-smile, genuinely amused at Lenny's embarrassment. But she stepped forward, bent down slightly, and rolled the plastic cup gently between the bars to Sharif. "There. Just keep it in a pocket or something. Don't use it yet... er, obviously." She grinned more widely. "Or you might kill poor Lemuel from the shock", she chuckled.

Then her levity dropped, and she adopted a more professional tone. "Seriously though, it needs freezing quickly after, ah... you know. It's a controlled process."

Lenny looked disgusted. "...but why are you doing this here? Don't they have any of those on Mars, or something? It's just fucking Tupperware!" He paused, and thought about it. "Uh... literally?"

Rachel sighed. "Probably just Aziz being Aziz." She looked at Lenny, seeing his confusion. "Doctor Nasir? Aziz Nasir? But I suppose, in fairness, I don't know if there'd be any at Sheridan Nanolabs, not proper ones. It's not that sort of... well, it's a specialised facility, not medical."

Sharif silently pocketed the cup, and then just sat very still, wishing for a hull breach in the floor beneath so he could just vanish into a silent vacuum, away from this.

Rachel sat herself on a nearby crate. "We'll not be long. We should start re-entry any minute; then, within 20 minutes we'll have landed. Beats two days crawling along in an Elevator car, and another few in a rover!" she smirked. "That's one bit of luck for us."

She looked down and started tapping away at her wrist-comp almost at once. Her temporary embarrassment at her... delivery... seemed to pass by exceedingly fast, and she just seemed disinterested in Sharif and Lenny now.

Lenny seemed to relax a bit as well, and took off the uniform helmet, setting it down beside him, straightening his hair with his fingers. Dirty-blonde hair, a bit too long for military standard, and pretty unkempt... not unattractive, Sharif thought idly. There was something vaguely raw and intriguing in the young man... maybe that was what Rachel saw in him?

Lenny glanced in Sharif's direction, and Sharif looked away uncomfortably - objectively assessing Lenny's attractiveness was very much the wrong way to pass the time. Maybe there was something else on the convict-issue wristcomp that could pass the time instead..?

An alarm suddenly buzzed. Rachel and Lenny looked up and glanced around, startled.

"...huh?" Lenny said, sitting up and taking hold of his helmet again, breaking the frozen moment.

Rachel swallowed, scratching at her ear, listening carefully. "Er... that doesn't sound good. I'd better go check..." She stood, and took three paces towards the cockpit.

The shock came without warning; despite the artificial gravity field, all three people - and several crates, snapping instantly free of their moorings - were abruptly flung three feet into the air, held there for a split second as the gravity generators fought whatever was happening, and then they all dropped unceremoniously back to the deck with a crash. A horrific high-pitched screech filled the air for several painful seconds, like scraping nails across a blackboard, only amplified to soul-rending volume. Then there was silence, except for the insistent buzz of that same alarm.

Sharif's ears were still ringing as he picked himself up from the floor. What the hell was that..?! The lights in the cabin flickered, then went out; for a moment the only illumination was the eerie red glow of re-entry plasma, racing past the viewing ports.

Then, deep orange-red emergency lights flickered into life; and he saw Lenny was lying motionless on the floor, his aviators snapped clean in two, a little blood starting to stain his hair. The flak helmet he'd taken off just a minute earlier rolled next to him... how ironic.

Rachel stood and grabbed hold of the cockpit's doorhandle; then made a strange, strangled gasping sound, recoiling back from the door so quickly she tripped over one of the loose crates and fell sprawling. It was only then that Sharif realised: the roar of the engines had stopped.

"Lifepod... where's the lifepod, we need to get out..." Rachel suddenly said, standing back upright, pale and shaking, wringing her hands and looking wildly around the room. Her eyes caught sight of the illuminated emergency sign by the starboard wing, and she gestured frantically. "There! Lenny, you hear? Get in the lifepod, we need to get out of here, we've got to go..." she said, rushing into motion, pushing past and jumping over the crates in her way.

"Lenny?!" Rachel suddenly exclaimed, noticing belatedly that her... whatever he was, friend, boyfriend, nuisance colleague... was lying unconscious under a hefty piece of cargo. She pushed aside a few loose crates and rushed over. "...Lenny?!"

Rachel started dragging Lenny towards the little emergency doorway. "C'mon, Lenny, don't do this, don't do this, we've got to get out of here, we've got to go..."

Sharif's head hurt where he'd swung heavily into the cage when the gravity flipped for a moment... urgh, all down his back, it felt like someone had prodded needles in between his vertebrae... he looked up, opposite to where Rachel was headed... there was another lifepod, right there... one over *each* wing...

"Master Alarm. Thruster Failure." The computer's female voice echoed around the room monotonously.

Holy shit, wasn't she going to unlock the cage...?! "Rachel! Wait!" He flung himself at the bars, suddenly feeling wide awake again, ignoring the pain. "Let me out! You've got to let me out!"

Rachel stared at him, blank with shock. "I, I, I'm not supposed..." she looked down at Lenny. "...shit... where's the key, the keys...?!"

"Master Alarm. Thruster Failure."

She started to frantically rummage through the unconscious man's pockets; she was hyperventilating so hard, Sharif was amazed she didn't just pop like an overfilled balloon...

His eyes wandered around the room, and he blinked a few times. He felt oddly detached... this had to be his chance, there might never be another! Was there a radio on board that still worked, was there a way to broadcast anything...

"Master Alarm. Thruster Failure."

There was a slight but growing shift in the gravity; a slight angle developing to the vertical. A few loose items started rolling towards the walls. He glanced up at the viewing ports... too small and too distant to make out much, but he could see a consistent glow of plasma, interspersed with several seconds of a dark void, and several seconds of a bright, reddish-brown surface...

...oh shit... they were spinning out of control...

"Master Alarm. Thruster Failure."

"Here!" Rachel said, suddenly, and with a well-telegraphed build-up, threw a small key-ring to him. "This way, the pod's here..."

Sharif grabbed at the air, fumbled, dropped the key, but managed to step on it before it slid away from him. He started to try unlocking his handcuffs, blinked, and then started fumbling at the door lock. Priorities, focus, focus... the door lock clicked open.

"Master Alarm. Thruster Failure. Spin Alert! Spin Alert!"

The slant of the gravity was growing... it wasn't just one way, it was towards both walls... the light and dark through the windows was pulsing faster and faster. He fumbled a little with the cuffs... his hands were shaking, so hard he could barely use the small keys...

Rachel dragged Lenny bodily into the little lifepod, and started pushing the unconscious guard into one of the five seats mounted around the pod's wall. "Come on! We've got to go, get in!" Rachel shouted, her voice now sounding calm, strangely flat; in shock.

Sharif had the unlocked cuffs on his hands and legs... he was standing in the emergency door, the small pod only a pace ahead, five seats with heavy-duty seatbelts arranged in a ring around the outside. Emergency launch levers by each seat; a glass-covered button just inside the door... the door would slam shut, small retrorockets would fire to separate the pod from the stricken shuttle... it had to be launched from the inside. But, maybe...

He took old of one of the wrist-cuffs, letting the other cuff hang loose on its weighty chain.

"Spin Alert! Master Alarm. Thruster Failure. Spin Alert!"

Rachel tightened the belt buckles around Lenny. He might just be knocked out... or he might be dead, there seemed to be a lot of blood dripping down his neck, his head lolled without any hint of animation.

Rachel evidently cared a lot for Lenny... he idly wondered what their story was. But it didn't matter; if they had something together, it was more than he'd ever had, or ever would... and they'd be leaving without him.

His eyes narrowed, now or never. Rachel looked up at him to shout another instruction; he saw her freeze, her eyes widening as she spotted his expression. Without another word, he swung the cuff like a mace; she flinched, raising a hand, as if she thought he was going to fling them at her... but instead, the swinging cuff smashed the glass on the emergency release button two feet inside the door.

He half-jumped, half-fell back as the pod door slid almost immediately shut, and the lock slammed into place. Through the window in the pod door, he had just enough time to see a horrified Rachel leap to her feet, and take a step towards the door, confusion and shock written across her face...

...and then in a puff of flame and a blur of motion, there was only the rapidly spinning horizon outside the window. He felt the jolt; and the ship's spin suddenly started to accelerate. With the weight of the stricken vessel so imbalanced, any semblance of a slow, orderly progression was lost... the situation was degenerating fast.

"Attitude control failure. Abandon Ship! This is not a drill. Abandon Ship!"

Sharif turned, and gulped, breathing heavily. This was probably the single worst idea he'd ever had... what if the cockpit crew poured into the room, re-cuffed him, and dragged him off anyway? What if the ship just broke up in mid-air right now..? How long could a shuttle survive in an uncontrolled hypersonic spin? Minutes... seconds?

Hurry... message, had to send a message somehow... there was an interface panel on the wall, right by the pod's empty berth. He tapped at it quickly.

"Computer, record message!" he shouted, finding the right subroutine and tapping in Elinah's old encryption code on the interface. An icon blinked on the screen; it was listening, recording.

"Abandon Ship! This is not a drill. Abandon Ship!"

"Ian?! It's Sharif Sulaiman! Elinah's brother! I've been kidnapped by the government so they can use me to test a weapon on!" he shouted, over the sound of the alarms. No time for context, no time for detail, had to sound serious... "I'm trying to get away! If they catch me, they'll take me somewhere called 'Sheridan' in Barnard Crater! I'm going to try to get to Hellas and stay at Elinah's old picnic spot! Remember?! Elinah's picnic!" he yelled, desperately trying to remember some kind of reference point that an eavesdropper might not be able to look up on a map. He hoped he was remembering the right place...

"I need help! Please, you've got to help me, I've nowhere else to turn!" he shouted. Then he touched the icon to pause recording; it took two goes, the shuttle was starting to shake violently. The gravity field was failing fast, and the main force was outwards now, towards the walls... the floor was becoming a wall... shit, he'd have to climb to the other lifepod!

"Abandon Ship! This is not a drill. Abandon Ship!"

He touched another control to activate voice commands; there was no way he could type with the ship juddering like this!

"Computer! Send to Ian Mackilroy!"

"Please specify", the computer drawled in between frantic alarms. "198 Ian Mackilroys found."

"Hellas Basin! Pilot!" Sharif shouted, desperately.

"Abandon Ship!"

"4 matches found. Please specify."

Sharif opened his mouth to clarify further... then froze, his blood suddenly running cold as the alarm changed abruptly.

"TERRAIN WARNING! TERRAIN WARNING!"

Oh shit.

Oh shit, shit, shit!

"Fuck it, send to all! Send ALL!" he yelled, slamming his fist on the touchscreen twice, in the general area of the 'Send Recording' button. A 'please wait' icon appeared...

"TERRAIN WARNING! TERRAIN WARNING!"

...he had to get out of here, fuck the computer, he couldn't wait to check! Sharif pushed away from the wall, and clambered awkwardly up the increasing incline of the deck. The other lifepod seemed an infinity away from him...

"TERRAIN WARNING! TERRAIN WARNING!"

"SHUT UP!" he yelled, as he reached the half-way point. The gravity lessened, then reversed, in the space of a matter of inches... the spin was so extreme now that the view ports were more like strobe lighting in the chaotic cabin, several times a second...

The strap around the crate he was balancing on snapped suddenly as the shuttle shuddered; he had barely enough time to raise an arm before he crashed heavily into the open door of the prison-cage, and fell past it, five more metres to the opposite wall of the shuttle again, bouncing off the still-anchored crates all the way...

He yelled in pain; his left leg felt instantly numb, such an absence of sensation that for a moment he was convinced it had been torn off his body... but no, there it was, still attached...

He had a dreadful feeling he must have broken something. Agh... why, why, Allah... or Jesus, Buddha, Providence, Fate... anybody, everybody out there, why do this to him... he couldn't move... the gravity pinned him brutally to the wall...

"TERRAIN WARNING! TERRAIN WARNING! TERRAIN WARNING!"

He felt a sob catching in his throat as he tried to roll towards the other lifepod. He was taking too long, he was going to crash and burn and die, flailing helplessly in this fucking metal coffin... all because he'd refused to get into a fucking lifepod when he had the chance, when it was RIGHT THERE, typical, trying to be so clever, thinking he'd be lucky, 'it' would never happen to him, FUCKING MORON, you IDIOT...

The computer continued its automated scream, increasingly frantic. "TERRAIN WARNING! PULL UP! TERRAIN WARNING! PULL UP!"

He rolled along the wall, and fell into the small lifepod, catching his fall by grabbing onto the door frame with one arm. He yelled in sudden pain, wrenching his badly bruised shoulder, and feeling a fiery agony run through his injured leg from the shaking; argh, fuck, yeah, the leg had to be broken, Allah be merciful... he could barely hold his weight up, he felt faint, the sheer gravity pulling him down with a force that felt like tens, hundreds of gees, crushing the air from his lungs...

Only a foot to drop, had to try... he let go of the door frame, and screamed as he struck the lifepod's wall. Maybe he should just give up, it would stop hurting any second after that...

No! Lever, trigger lever, the launch switch... had to launch the pod, last chance... it was no chance, he was going to die if he couldn't pull one single lever, push one button... he gritted his teeth and kicked out at the seats beneath with his right leg, with as much strength as he could muster, the last of his reserves... he kicked again, and again, yelling something wordless and incoherent each time...

"TERRAIN WARNING! PULL UP! TER-!"

His boot connected with something that moved with a loud click, and with a crash of hydraulics the pod door slammed closed, cutting off the alarms... and a split second later, the retro-rockets fired, slamming Sharif into the floor, hard enough that he saw stars. Blood flowed freely from his nose, he couldn't see from one eye... but then he was floating, weightless in the air...

...the pod was in freefall...

...Got to strap in... the pod knew what to do... it had to... or the impact would just kill him, smash the fragile shell into a smear on the red soil of Mars...

"ALTITUDE WARNING. Emergency chutes deployed!"

There was a clunk from somewhere overhead; he groggily grabbed the nearest seat and started to pull himself into it, feeling a slight gravitational tug start to pull him towards the floor... none of his limbs worked properly, how hard had he hit his head...?!

He managed to tangle himself in the seatbelts, he wasn't sure if he'd managed to fasten them properly... He prayed, for the first time since his childhood. Emergency parachutes? There was barely any atmosphere on Mars, even after years of terraformation it was barely 5% of Earth's. Parachutes were as good a survival aid as a tablecloth here...

"In sha Allah, in sha Allah..." he muttered, begging any force that could hear him, to let him, please, somehow, anyhow, get through this... God willing, please let him live...

"Drogue chute deployment... confirmed. Braking rockets armed."

...fuck, had he just abandoned the rest of the shuttle crew without a lifepod?! Oh shit... nothing he could do now. Something must have happened, if they weren't abandoning ship already... he hoped, craved, guiltily. He'd not even considered them...

Gravity returned like a punch as the braking rockets fired; there was a loud roaring on the edge of his awareness, growing quickly, up to a crescendo, and suddenly the computer was shouting back at him again.

"BRACE! BRACE! BRACE! BRA-"

* * *

His eyes snapped open as he felt the impact, as he crashed at supersonic speeds into... soft pillows and bedsheets?! The sound of gentle beeping and a faint whirr, like an air conditioning fan, surrounded him...

W-what..?

He tried to move his head, and instantly felt a strong nausea, dizziness rolling through him. Pod tumbling, gravity gone, no up, no down, just hold on, hold on...

...Uh... no, wait... there was gravity this was a room... a hospital..? His legs hurt. His chest hurt. His arms hurt... his head, too. His back... everything hurt. The room was shaking slightly, chaotically. Or was that his imagination..?

Realisation gradually dawned. He was alive - somehow.

His body felt numb, immobile... his movements didn't quite work. He couldn't even try and push aside the bedsheets, couldn't do more than loll his head to each side and hope he wouldn't vomit. He could taste blood in his gums, he couldn't even open his mouth... how bad was it..?

He felt around his teeth, suddenly feeling worried... no, no, surely, it was tougher than teeth, it was secure, right...?

He felt an ugly, bleeding gash in his cheek; two badly chipped molars with sharp edges beside it... and a larger, solid, false molar, with a neat vertical line bisecting it. Ah... well, just fuck it, then. Not much more he could do, this was a thing, it was happening.

He felt like he wanted to laugh at that... but his mouth didn't obey, there was something in the way, something tied to his face... blowing cool air gently over his skin...

He felt his grip on consciousness slipping slowly... but felt a little relieved, too. Whatever else happened, at least he wouldn't have to decide himself whether to activate those nanites... he knew he shouldn't, but such a part of him wanted to, wanted to see where it might go... maybe the nanites would heal him? That would be great. Yeah...

His mind's eye put him back in the lab up on Gateway Station. Nasir, sternly saying, "You'll be a dangerous creature". How long for? Maybe forever?

Should he say something to whoever was nearby... warn them..? But, it had to be someone official. They had to know already. The shuttle would be tracked, they'd not take any chances... Nothing needed doing... nothing at all. Just relax. Just let it all happen.

His eyes rolled back with a strange sense of relief, and oblivion rushed through him again.

* * *

His eyelids flickered. What a weird dream... he ached all over. But he vaguely remembered excruciating pain, so, this was better... huh. What had happened, what was it..?

"Oh, hullo there! Back wi' us?"

His eyes opened wide in surprise as the heavily accented... Scottish..? voice suddenly echoed around him.

Memories drifted back. Wait... the crash, the pod... where was he?

...shit, the nanites...! Forget where... who, what was he?!

His eyes flicked around carefully, not daring to move his head more than a fraction. He still... felt like himself? He didn't feel like a dangerous animal, not even slightly... he just felt like a confused person.

He tried to focus... could he feel anything weird, sharp teeth, a tail..? Maybe he'd changed, but the 'dangerous creature' bit was overblown, and he'd just be himself still..?

...no new body parts he could feel. He was lying on a bed... it felt fairly comfortable... he could hear the beeps of equipment around him... so, he was human. Probably. Kind of. And not dead. And he felt a lot better... so, everything good?

He started to sit up, and groaned; he ached all over...

"Easy there, take it easy. Ye took a nasty tumble, fella, aye? Nae need tae be moving too quick, just relax a wee bit", the voice said again.

"Who..?" Sharif started, and coughed. His throat felt dry, rasping, sore... was that the nanites, or just ordinary injury? He forced himself to sit up further and look around... some sort of medical bay, not very large, a bit grimy and dilapidated, and coated with the ubiquitous Martian dust that got absolutely everywhere... the acrid tang of it stung his nose, as always.

"Jim, Jim Callahan, First Technician, Mining, Shackleton Open-Cast. And ye?"

...should he use his real name..? Escaped prisoner, duh, obviously not.

"...Uh, Nikesh", Sharif said. "...So... where are you?" he asked, changing subject quickly. The room was empty except for himself; Jim's voice came over a speaker.

The place wasn't large; it was dusty, grimy. The walls held cabinets filled with various medicines... and a supply of raw chemicals, all named but with "Feedstock" printed on the side, plus a QR code.

Five stands of medical computers, complete with monitors, stood around the bed; they were wheeled, and there was an alcove in the wall that they probably fitted into. He felt an odd worry as he realised that sensors were wired from all those machines to his torso, his head, his sore left leg... and one marked "Emergency Defibrillation" was connected to his chest.

He started to carefully unfasten that one. What about the rest? It might actually be handy to find out what his condition was, these machines could tell him something, probably...

Jim continued, oblivious to Sharif's thoughts. "Nikesh? Glad tae see ye're recovered, ye got some nasty breaks and a few fractures, but nothing too serious. Lucky man, yer ship took a right tumble! Anyone else on board? We've got at least one more pod beacon further oot at the edge of oor range, are Sally and me wasting oor time?"

"Uh..." Sharif momentarily pondered whether to say he was alone. But, well, Rachel, and possibly an injured Lenny, were in that other pod... or else the real Nikesh and the cockpit crew. Either way, condemning them to die in the pod by tricking their rescuers would be a pretty nasty thing to do to anyone.

...besides... the fewer people around right now, the better.

"Uh, yeah. Be careful, though..." Sharif said, suddenly feeling inspired. "I was transporting some prisoners, a man and a woman... they'd escaped in the confusion. They're, er..." he paused, wondering how to play this. "...not dangerous? Not really. But, you know, be prepared, don't give them too much freedom, be sceptical if they try making up a story, make sure you don't let them access communications... in case they call any accomplices."

"Holy Christ! What'd they do?"

"...er..." Sharif clenched his eyes shut. Maybe he should've just kept quiet. "...fraud. Big, well-organised scam they ran for a few years. Er, if they lie about who they are, don't let on that you know this, okay? Just keep them occupied a while... I'll, uh, call the Peacekeepers in to collect them, just sit tight and wait."

"Aye? Well, could be a while, we've nay had the all-clear on the raid. Comms are all locked still. Yer pods' emergency beacons are the only signals anywhere."

Sharif blinked in surprise. Oh yeah... the raid.

In an active raid, radio traffic was suspended, to prevent hostile forces homing in on specific targets accurately... almost all devices had a computerised override that the government could activate, locking out any further transmissions from them until the all-clear was given. But raids were usually over pretty quickly, no more than a few hours... only usually, though.

Had his message to Ian been blocked by the blackout, or had he got it through before...?

"...Hang on, we're still under blackout?! How are you speaking to me, then?"

"Direct wire. We're running the rover along the cable road for now... nae broadcasts. Dinnae worry."

"...well, good, but, how long was I unconscious?"

"Best part of a day since the crash, same time comms were shut. Must be a pretty bad one! We gave ye a dose o' morphine and some anaesthetic tae keep ye oot, and let the auto-doc do its stuff back at Shackleton. Sorry fer leaving ye all on yer lonesome, but there's only two of us, Sally and me. We needed tae go make sure we'd found all survivors, so..." A pause. "Just sit tight, we're only a few hours away, and the auto-doc is the best... best a shoestring budget can manage, anyway!" Jim chuckled amiably.

"...I'm, er, alone? Oh. Okay..." Sharif said, trying not to sound too gleeful. Perfect! Before the blackout lifted, he could make a break for it and be far away before they knew what was happening.

...that was better for them, too. If he, er, lost control of himself when he changed, well...

"Aye. If this other pod's got a bunch of crooks in it, probably best it's not just one of us meeting 'em! Sure they're not dangerous? Anything we should do tae be safe?"

"Oh, er, they're not rated dangerous prisoners... not personally. Just try to keep them occupied and distracted until the Peacekeepers can sort them out, and don't let them leave if you can help it."

"...yer vitals are goin' a bit funny there, Nikesh. Ye sure ye're okay?" Jim said, after a pause. "Ye woke up bloody early from the jab we gave ye, it mightn't have worn off yet."

Sharif looked around at the medical equipment, and it slowly dawned on him that, of course, if there was nobody else nearby, this equipment had to be telling Jim and Sally about his every heartbeat, every breath...

...maybe even every quietly shifting organ... maybe even every individual nanite, if it was a really serious piece of kit... they might not notice yet, but he might be a few keystrokes away from total exposure.

"Uh, yeah, I'm fine!" he blurted, noticing the heart rate and blood pressure rising quickly on one monitor. Damn it... he had to disconnect after all. No way this wouldn't be suspicious...

"...take it easy! Chrissakes, relax."

"I, er, I feel fine. Honestly, no need to worry, I'll go get something to eat", Sharif said, realising he did actually feel really hungry. He started popping off the sensor cups stuck to his skin... blinking in slight surprise, and even wonder, as he saw that patches of the skin on his chest were either a dark, charcoal grey, or a reddish-brown like the soil outside... some bits even felt smooth to the touch... scaly...

He shivered slightly. It felt strange to touch those patches of skin... strange, but very pleasant, despite the odd underlying ache that reminded him of prodding a bruise.

His fingernails were only half as long as they used to be, too. As if they were being sucked back into the nailbeds...

This was really happening. It actually felt pretty good...

"...well, if ye're sure... I mean, I can't stop ye, but I don't think disconnecting the auto-doc's a good idea, Nikesh..." Jim continued, sounding worried. "Ye got pretty badly beat up."

"I'm sure, don't worry. I, er, need to check some things, I'll call you if I need anything!" Sharif said, in a sudden rush, as he spotted the communications control at the side of the bed. "'Bye!"

"Hang on, at least leave the ch-" Jim began, but then Sharif flicked the intercom button to "off", and silence reigned.

He breathed heavily, and glanced down at his lap; a bulge was clear in the bedclothes. He sighed gently. Damn; if not for the damned wristcomp and its fucking moral enforcement, he'd love to get at least some use out of that...

Something about his wrist didn't feel right, though... gingerly, he raised it from under the bedclothes, and stared at it in growing surprise. The wristcomp wasn't there any more... he looked around quickly, checking under the bed, and quickly found his neatly folded, dusty, slightly torn shirt and pants. The cuffs, the keys were there, too... he'd forgotten those, hopefully the keys at least made his story seem more plausible.

Yes, there was the wristcomp, too. The cuff part was still in place, still locked; but the computer part was not. More than half the circumference of the device was computer, and it had snapped clean off at one end, wires and part of a circuit board hanging free. There was some blood around the edges of it; he must've cut himself pretty badly on it, but the nanites evidently were helping heal...

Well, good fucking riddance to that piece of shit! Hopefully he could grab a spare basic wristcomp from somewhere here, maybe upload the dossiers from this hard drive so he could still check them. He'd need to manage his condition alone...

...and, of course, next to it was the sperm sample container. He sighed as he looked at it; what must Jim, or Sally, have thought of this bizarre collection?

He picked it up and held it idly. His changes had already started... was it already too late? He felt a strange pang; he didn't much like the idea of definitely, never, ever being able to have children... even if it wasn't something he'd really thought about before.

He looked back down at the bulge in his bedsheets, with a faint nervous smile. He, er, did... rather... like the idea. Any excuse...

"Looks like you're getting an outing after all, little buddy..." he said, adding a chuckle, rubbing a hand over his scalp, noticing that his hair felt thinner, thin enough that he could feel smooth scalp in places. There were two definite lumps near the back of his head... the start of the horns he'd asked for, maybe..?

He carefully pulled off the bedclothes, leaving himself in just his bulging briefs. The air in the room was cold, but it hardly registered to him as he pulled the waistband down as well, letting his shaft spring up into the open. He blinked with slight surprise as he saw dark, scaly flesh on the skin of his cock, too... not a lot of it, but definitely some... he rubbed at the scales on his chest idly, feeling how good they were to touch... and wondering if the ones on his member would feel just as good, maybe better...

Within a few more seconds, he popped the lid of the sample container free, and with his other hand, gently took hold of his shaft, shivering in bliss. Mmm... the scales really did feel amazing on such a sensitive spot... he stroked a few times, and couldn't help but give a moan.

He leaned forward, holding the container in his lap. Oh mercy, it was happening, he was really changing, here he was becoming something else... he'd felt bottled up ever since the first time he was briefed on the 'offer' about Cadmus, all the worse for being unable to... relieve the pressure... along the way...

He spread his legs wider and grunted, his pace starting to speed up, feeling a familiar tickle starting to build in his balls... yesss... he gritted his teeth and on impulse, tried to see if he could hiss. He giggled a little drunkenly, it sounded pathetic... but mmm, maybe in a few more hours it wouldn't... or maybe he could roar like a lion instead, like that VR sim an anonymous friend had shared with him... the moonlight warping the unsuspecting lycanthrope into a four-legged lion, his mane and his barbed cock growing huge, before he'd gone to stalk other residents of the apartment block, looking for an unsuspecting young man to plunge himself into, thrust deep until he came, until the young man's body started to twist and warp too...

Sharif stroked the scales, the real scales on his arms, against his flanks as he squeezed himself, carefully aiming his tip into the little sample container, s-so close... his hand moved frantically over his shaft, unable to hold back now.

He gave a whimper, then a louder moan as his dick started to shiver and pulse; and a moment later his hot, white emission spat hard into the plastic cup with an audible plapping sound against the base. He groaned louder and kept on stroking, the orgasm seeming to draw on and on... it might be his last time like this, focus on it all, enjoy it, make it last, he told himself, writhing and revelling in the sensations...

...but the flow all too quickly slowed to a trickle, and, panting, his stroking likewise slowed, then stopped; panting heavily, and shivering slightly. That had felt amazing... maybe it was all the... opioids, was it, that Nasir had kept talking about? Or maybe he was just high on the morphine, he barely noticed the underlying aches right now?

Maybe he shouldn't have had other medicines in his condition, maybe they could interact... he shrugged. Nothing he could do, he thought, and giggled again. What needed fixing? He felt great!

He'd half filled the little container... impressive, he thought, he didn't usually cum that much... er, did he? He'd never really measured or anything. But it looked like a lot... maybe for some reason he was just producing more now.

That thought tickled his fancy. Even if it was just temporary, mmm, so virile... manly, masculine, potent, like he always dreamed... He felt his arms, were they more muscular..? Or was it just his imagination?

His cock hadn't really softened, but it started to harden again quickly as he thought about his fantasies again. There was a favourite he'd dreamt this one time about an old crush of his... coming back late from a party, when suddenly the young, handsome man dropped to his knees by the window and started to grow, bull-like horns sprouting and muscles tearing free of shirt, trousers... and a huge bullcock tearing free of his tight boxers... strong, insistent arms picking Sharif up, pushing his only half-unwilling mouth onto the slick animal shaft, pumping until it filled his mouth with so much cum that Sharif's belly swelled with the load that he swallowed... and then of course his own transformation slowly began, a-and...

He gingerly grasped at his aching member again, feeling almost mad with the drunken lust even though he'd cum barely a minute before. This was getting strange... he pushed the lid quickly onto the sample container before he spilled any, and swung his legs over the side of the bed, letting go of his rod. Try something else... like seeing what he looked like all over. A mirror, there must be one..?

He didn't have to look far; just around the corner was a little surgical wash-up area - a little pointless, with all the dust around - but the sink had a decent-sized mirror mounted above it. Oh, yeah... his chest looked more chiselled, far better defined than he remembered it being. His shoulders looked different too... he started to think, broader, but then shook his head, that wasn't right, that wasn't what had changed. Lower down, maybe? Was his neck longer, his neck was supposed to grow longer, right?

His dick throbbed, demanding attention, but he tried to ignore it, instead putting down the warm sample container and trying to pull at the mirror; he needed to see the rest, his back, those hard to see areas. This would only happen once, he didn't want to miss a thing! He'd probably need two mirrors, and move them around to get a good angle on every body part... did this one move..?

Yes, it was a little loose! The screws weren't fastened all the way... He quickly grabbed them and started to turn them with his bare fingers, it was tough to grip but he just about managed.

...He grinned, and his cheeks blushed red, as an idea occurred to him; one that his aching member throbbed in agreement with. Why not? Use it or lose it... or don't use it and lose it anyway, he thought, with a slightly despondent sigh, and an uncomfortable shiver.

He quickly pulled the mirror free of the wall, blowing the dust off it, and then set it on the floor. He kneeled in front of it, looking down at himself in the floor, meeting his eye around the edge of his jutting spire with a mischievous grin. Grabbing the sample container, he popped the lid off a second time and set it down underneath himself. May as well collect _everything_that he had left in him...

He leaned forward, stretching his arms out in front of him on the ground, like forelegs. Like a quadruped... it didn't feel right nor comfortable, his 'hind legs' were just kneeling on the floor, the proportions were wrong. But it would fit better soon, it would soon...

He reached back under himself and grabbed his maleness, and gave a deliberate, low half-growl as he gave himself a few quick, eager jerks. It didn't sound right, still... but better than the hiss he'd tried...

He eyed the sample container irritatedly as he realised he couldn't maintain this 'three-legged' position while both rubbing himself, and holding the container too... he looked down at the mirror underneath, and grinned. Yes... this was a good view!

He couldn't see his head or face, somehow that seemed a bit awkward, like hearing a recording of his own voice, too uncanny. But he could see a strange body, a mutated, mutating body that wasn't, quite, obviously him... plus, a sizeable member and low-hanging balls, and a clearly scaly hand wrapped around the shaft... yessss... he'd never really looked at anything scaly before, he'd much rather become the dark-furred minotaur of his dreams, but this, this felt amazing, this would do...

He imagined how it would be later, if he tried this... with a tail waving behind him, wagging in excitement, clawed hindpaws scraping at the metal beneath while a half-articulate forepaw rubbed eagerly at a growing member...

He mightn't have one of those later, but he desperately tried to ignore that right now. What would a dragon male look like..? Ridged, yes, with a thick knot, mmm... what would one feel like inside him...

He gasped as he imagined the weight of a transforming male on his back, an inflating knot pressing at his... tailhole, he supposed... he'd have another hole by then but why not dream a bit... so this dragon-Sharif would have a cock to match, yes, his own claws would be rubbing at his ridged member, while only inches above, the other male's identical shaft pressed deep into his prostate, over and over and over...

He gasped, feeling his orgasm starting to build, and this time felt a powerful urge to lash out, to move, to let out energy in EVERY direction... go wild, l-like...

His leg spasmodically kicked out behind him, connecting with and toppling one of the medical devices with a loud crash of breaking glass. He felt a bizarre visceral satisfaction that reverberated through him, right down to the root of his cock...

He leaned forward, gasping for a few moments as he teetered on the edge... then came again hard, trying desperately to aim at the sample container, but instead spraying a long rope across the mirror beneath, then another, and another... not until the fifth shot did he finally manage to get some into the pot... he stroked on, a steady flow of seed drooling from him into the container below... his cock dripped, rather than fired, but the bliss was just as real!

He breathed heavily, feeling tired, and hungry, but deeply satisfied as he stopped jerking...

Two of his best ever orgasms, and so close together, he'd never managed anything like that before!

As he sat back upright, he suddenly coughed, realising he could taste his own cum.... he was licking his fingers clean?! Without even thinking, he'd brought his hand to his mouth and, and... started to clean them? Like an animal, maybe?

He grinned, embarrassed at himself, but... it felt good. The taste wasn't too bad... he let himself continue, using his other hand to pop the lid back onto the almost full sample container.

It'd need refrigerating, he thought, licking the last of his own precum from between his fingertips, grimacing as he found a little of the acrid Martian dust there as well, the taste reminiscent of household bleach...

He could put the sample into a fridge... no, freezer... here and leave it? He mightn't be able to take it with him and keep it cold, but the authorities surely wouldn't just get rid of it, no matter what they thought of him personally. They had *some* standards, he snorted to himself.

Maybe he should leave a note as well, to explain. In a couple of hours, he'd be gone, and the other crew, maybe the other shuttle survivors, would be here... might as well tell the truth then.

...Or would that be weird, leaving a confession note wrapped around a sperm sample?

...Yeah... probably too weird. Besides, the more he left them confused, the longer it would be before any pursuit started.

...plus, if he went to find a fridge, there might be food in it... he was absolutely starving. He grinned again; the change needed fuel, Nasir said... get a quick snack, maybe, while he checked this place's computers, found out what was around. Other buildings, offices, hangars, maybe...? Maps of the area, too.

There were two doors out of the small medical area. He took the nearest one, and quickly found a set of four bunks in two smallish curtained alcoves - though only two bunks, one in each alcove, looked used. Personal belongings left lying around suggested a man and a woman, presumably Jim and Sally.

He pushed past; there was a shower room, a toilet, some storage areas, a break room... this was obviously the living area, not any kind of control centre. There must be a fairly extensive work area for an open-cast mine, he figured. But only two people, suggested it was an automated facility, rather than a mining town; there had to be a monitoring station, at least, or the crew couldn't do their jobs.

There might be a kitchen around here, though... ah, there! He spotted the cooking worktops, and dashed in, rather overeager, throwing open the cupboards and drawers. Lots of tinned foods; dried foods; a fridge containing plenty of plastic containers of pre-prepared meals... he grabbed one and popped it into a nearby microwave, it'd do, whatever it was.

Ah, a small door at the rear of the room led to a walk-in freezer; he walked in and took a look around inside. A chill breeze blew past him as the pressure equalised; and his feet felt unpleasantly cold as he stepped inside... he looked down, and realised with surprise that he was still naked.

Hadn't he gotten dressed before leaving the medical area? Evidently not... he knew he was alone here, but even so, that was a bit odd to forget! He frowned at himself, his slightly sore member stirring again, remembering what else he'd done in the medical bay... he couldn't deny that his behaviour was a bit different now; the worrying part was that he hadn't noticed some of it. He should pay more attention.

He put the sample container on a nearby shelf, and closed the freezer door; he'd settle for the fridge's contents, he didn't feel like waiting for a frozen packet of something to cook through.

He closed the freezer, and headed back to the medical bay; but by the time he arrived, he'd decided that he may as well just put on the underwear, do the bare minimum to preserve his decency. It felt pretty warm, almost tropical in the base; even though when he checked the thermostat and environmental monitor on the wall, it was only 17 centigrade.

The microwave had finished its work by the time he returned, and he put the open container on a plate, added a spoon, and carried it with him as he explored - ignoring all the notices warning not to take food and drink out of the kitchen area.

It took him about fifteen minutes to explore all around; there seemed to be only two windows in the whole place. One was a viewing gallery, or something similar; looking down a shallow but uneven slope, with the entire level of the land dropping steadily. Canyons and crevasses cracked the land in the middle distance, and to the left and right, perhaps a hundred miles distant each, spectacular mountains rose towards the pinkish sky.

He could make out a road of some sort... a tarmac surface, at least, half-buried in the ubiquitous wind-blown dust, to the left. To the right, a line of blue flashing LED beacons blinked in sequence... a runway, maybe? Or was it part of the mine?

The other window was the control room's viewing area; it overlooked the mining operation itself, and it was hard to mistake the human impact here. The rock had been excavated in layers some 15 metres deep each, so the landscape for at least two miles in all directions as far as he could see from the control room window, looked like a chaotic mess of steps, a great staircase gone bafflingly wrong. Trucks, tractors and diggers operated all around it, with white and green flashing LED beacons all over them - green to stand out from the background, of course; on Mars, red was just an omnipresent feature, not a warning sign.

The computers proved cooperative; Shackleton was an automated mining base, as he'd guessed; it mined copper; it was on the southern edge of the Mare Serpentis, and only a few dozen kilometres south, great cliff-faces and canyons would start to descend down into the Hellas Basin itself.

11 kilometres below him now, 3 kilometres further down than Everest was tall - the scale of Hellas had blown his mind when Elinah had first explained it to him...

Thinking about Elinah just upset him though; he gave the console a whack in frustration for good measure, and regretted it as he nursed a bruised fist afterwards.

That was quite a bit of luck; the shuttle must have deviated northward in its flight, and ended up on the northern side of Hellas. About fifteen hundred kilometres off course, but not bad for an unpowered crash landing... and it put him a bit closer to his intended destination, though not by much...

The gradient wasn't steep, on average - only 10% - but the ground was rough and broken, not for the faint of heart to try off-roading through. He had little choice, though; taking a proper road was a sure way to get recaptured quickly.

Distance was an issue; the 'picnic spot' was on the northern tip of Alpheus Colles, a raised plain of rock on the north-central plateau of Hellas Planitia, the basin's main floor; a picturesque area where the relatively flat plains gave way to cliffs and hills that plunged down into the area between Behola and Badwater craters, the absolute lowest terrain on Mars; and a sterile, highly saline swamp during these summer months.

It must be a bit over six hundred kilometres away, he calculated, call it seven hundred since he'd have to divert around the cliffs and the worst of the marshes...

Elinah had bought the place at one point. It was an AstroCulture Mars hydroponics research station, built to experiment with ways to grow genetically modified crops in the salty Martian water, and in 'soil' full of Mars dust and toxic perchlorates. It had got to the stage of producing experimental crops reliably, but they tasted awful and sometime caused perchlorate poisoning in humans, so there was a lot more work to do.

When Terraformation began, the parent company relocated and changed its focus; it now designed photosynthetic bacteria to help oxygenate the atmosphere, and had given up on plants designed for 'natural' Mars once it was clear that natural earth plants would be Mars' future... even if that was a century or three away.

Elinah had bought the place at a cut-down price, there was a lot of useful structural material in the ruined greenhouses, and it might be a useful place to have a salvage depot, she figured. Plus, the view there - on a raised hill on what had once been the scree slope at the end of a primordial glacier, was stunning - hence her nickname for it.

When the business fell through, it had been repossessed, and - with the outbreak of war - it had since had fallen quite low on people's priority list. Hopefully it had never been sold, and still lay abandoned.

He started typing in the name to search an exact location from the Shackleton computer... then paused, and deleted the query without searching. Computer activity would be logged; and he didn't feel confident he could remove every trace. It would be rather stupid to just type in exactly where he was going...

Could he even get there? He instead turned the search to what vehicles Shackleton possessed; even if he transformed and became as capable of surface survival as Nasir had said, walking nearly a thousand kilometres - with no guarantee of being able to find food or water on the way - was insanity to consider.

Tractors, diggers, cargo trucks... capable of getting the distance, sure, but intended to be automated, and to follow strictly pre-programmed routes. They might have emergency pods aboard, though; most vehicles did... worth considering.

Oh, the base had a microlight aircraft? That sounded more useful; but when he checked, he saw that Sally Islington had logged the flying machine out for 'emergency rescue' yesterday. Damn... worse, that meant maybe he didn't have as long alone here as he thought, if one of the crew was piloting rather than driving.

Two emergency rovers with two crew berths each, though; looked like one was supposed to be fully charged for use at all times, while the other recharged at base. Jim Callahan had checked out one rover, of course; and the other, at 95% charge, was still sitting around a sealed garage.

Rover it is, he thought, finishing the container of food; no other choice, really. He paused to go prepare another, he still felt pretty hungry.

Maximum range..? 150 kilometres, max speed 20 kilometres an hour, but optimal operation at 10 kilometres per hour... not great at all. Still... if he transformed, he was supposed to be able to survive surface temperatures and pressures, right? Heating was a big power drain on human-rated systems, so if that was shut off... he checked if the rovers could be put on autopilot for unmanned missions, found they could, and rechecked the range. 300km while empty... better, but still a long way short. He'd probably need some extra power though, so he mightn't get that much boost.

Spare batteries? Ah, there was one in store, so recharge that and he was away!

...Eh, the damn thing needed two. Figures... That put him... 250km short, roughly, even in a perfect setup. Was that gap walkable..? Probably not... it'd be like trying cross the damned Sahara back on Earth, and at least the Sahara had *some* animals and plants that could be eaten. Here? Nope. All had to be carried, and that was a long, long way to haul food and water without help.

Wait... he queried if the rovers could recharge in the field. Maybe it'd give a list of all potential recharging stations... or maybe it'd have solar panelling, and could recharge itself in an emergency...

Yes?! Well, that solved that... he read on. It did indeed have rooftop solar panels, but a really slow recharge rate... not possible to use for manned travel since the sun wasn't enough to run the heating system, he read, but dismissed the warnings, he hopefully wouldn't need much life support by the time the batteries ran out.

Huh, 5km per hour of full daylight in good conditions... even though Mars had an extra half-hour of daylight compared to Earth, that wasn't a great rate of progress per day... He walked back to the kitchen and heated another container of food as he pondered the problem.

He was still looking at a journey that'd take two-ish days just to get to the point the batteries ran out. The daylight absorbed in that travel time, er, well, the sun moved across the sky, so even if the panels had some mechanism that made sure they pointed at the sun all the time, maybe, call it 2/3rds of the day he could get the full 5km per hour, so, bit over 8 hours of recharge a day... 40km a day, and for two days, so 80km. So about another three days of travel after that, and most of it would be done at a snail's pace - or parked, waiting to recharge.

...doing the maths, he suddenly felt a lot less lucky about being 'close' to Hellas. He should have thought through his choice of meeting place better... though if he'd chosen somewhere close to Barnard, he'd be even further away.

With the blackout active, he had a window in which to escape, but he was looking at nearly a week's journey... no way he'd go unnoticed all that time.

Still, it was his best bet. Maybe if he didn't take too much food or water, and was willing to starve himself a bit for the last leg of the journey, it would be doable quicker...

No, that was stupid. He might end up trapped at an abandoned facility, only to find Ian had never got the message; that the supplies he thought he remembered Elinah sending there for emergencies, had already been scavenged; and that the clunky old water recycling and aquifer reclamation system had long since broken down beyond repair.

Safest to keep in the rover and take as much as possible with him... at least then he'd know when he was making a choice between death or imprisonment, whereas if he kept having to gamble, it would be down to luck. More weight though, meant less range...

He shook his head pensively. Cross that bridge when he came to it. In the meantime, spare battery... he'd need to get that charging, of course. It'd be partly charged already, if it was an emergency spare, but it'd need at least a top-up. In the meantime, he needed to get the rover filled with supplies, as much as he could fit, and forget 'creature comforts'... he chuckled, and looked down at his mostly-naked body again, trying to decide if the scales had advanced... he decided they probably had, but it was hard to tell.

He looked curiously at the plate in front of him, realising it was the fourth one he'd finished, and he still felt pretty hungry. He had a feeling he might burn off a lot of extra supplies on the way. Stuff that could be eaten cold; no sense wasting power on cooking!

Maybe it'd been a bad idea to eat so much already... Nasir said the nanites would pause if he'd literally starve otherwise. Was the reverse true, was he speeding them up by giving them extra resources..? Maybe he should hurry to get the heavy lifting work done, just in case...

He hoped they had spare pressure suits in his size... then he chuckled. Maybe a suit a few sizes too big... just in case. Maybe if he took too much food along, he'd end up assimilating the bulk he wanted after all!

He shivered and shook himself out of it as he felt his member start to respond again. He had to get moving... the battery recharge would take a while, no doubt... the locals were on the way back. He grimaced; if they had a microlight, he needed to get as far away as he could, or they'd track him from the air insultingly easily.

He took a deep breath, and logged off the mainframe. Time to get moving.

* * *

He set the spare battery and the medical kit on top of the stack of boxes of tinned food, and started to peel the oversized pressure suit off himself, shaking slightly, feeling the sweat sticking his skin to the interior. He felt quite feverish... and, yes, his skin looked a lot darker all around, the scaly patches had spread quite a bit. He'd pushed himself as hard as he could, but he could barely move his arms and legs now, his coordination had deserted him...

He staggered to the rover's cockpit, and set the autopilot. He picked a latitude and longitude that looked about right as the destination; he'd have plenty of time to set it more accurately once he was underway and felt less sick. He called up autopilot options; there were some more immediate worries.

Set to avoid the main road... secondary road... highlight all roads, avoid, avoid, avoid... highlight towns, waystations... avoid... avoid... there was a canyon not too far away, less than fifty metres wide for a length of over a hundred kilometres, part of a branching flood system that must have once snaked down from these relative highlands towards Hellas itself. Chaos terrain, he recalled; broken, cracked, dangerous... not too hard to hide in, even from the air. He just hoped the autopilot could cope.

The vehicle engine spun quickly into life, and he felt it lurch out of the bay, the garage's pressure door opening automatically to allow it to leave. He half-collapsed into the driver's seat, and began pulling off the rest of the pressure suit as best he could.

...Canyon? The walls would block the sunlight, same as they'd block aerial views. His journey would be even longer... eh, fuck it, he felt dreadfully ill; this didn't feel good at all, despite the promises. Damn Nasir.

He'd probably overexerted himself. He'd carried in what must surely be a few hundred kilos of tinned foods; all manner of soups, protein stews, baked beans by the crateful... medical provisions, of course. Water tanks were thankfully lower priority, the rover had a hefty water reclamation system that should do the job, as long as he didn't waste any... and hopefully he'd be able to drink the marshes at the base of Hellas by the time he got there, if it came to that. Worth a go, if he could eat soil he should be able to manage muddy water.

He dropped the pressure suit onto the passenger seat, and looked at his shaking hands. The nails were completely gone now; his muscles and even his bones ached so hard he couldn't keep them still, even though he hardly had the energy to stand any more...

He still felt starving. Should he sleep, or eat something? Rest a bit, certainly, even if he didn't sleep just yet...

He rose slowly, and staggered back into the cramped living area. Two fold-out beds, a seat, a computer desk, a small 'shower' cubicle that dispensed little more than washable wet towels... a dozen square metres of floor area, including the cockpit. Half that area, he'd filled with 'borrowed' supplies... he grabbed a packet of painkiller tablets and took two. He felt he needed something stronger, but he didn't feel entirely confident in using any hypodermics while his hands wer shaking like this... it made him wince to imagine snapping a needle off in his flesh.

He popped a small handful of vitamin supplements as well. The nanites probably needed some of those.

He moved aside his clothes and the spare batter so he could sit on the only accessible bed, tapping at the wristcomp he'd managed to find in Sally's drawers. He apologised mentally to her, but he was a fugitive; so no sense being coy about minor offences now.

He'd found it easier to steal from them than he'd expected, actually; he'd also taken some clothes from each of them, mostly thermal wear so he'd be comfortable even without using the rover's heater, but also some ordinary changes of clothes; he had only the civilian outfit he'd been wearing when the shuttle went down, battered and bloodied and pretty torn now. So he'd taken a selection from each of them; mens' and womens' clothes. He had no idea if he'd wear any of them, nor how he'd feel once things had, er, advanced.

He felt his face flush. He felt too ill to feel anything erotic, but, weird though it felt to consider that he'd end up female someday soon, there had been some underlying thrill to preparing for every eventuality... he'd brought the mirror along as well, of course. There was only a small shaving mirror in the rover, and that wouldn't do at all.

He tried to open a tin of soup, his fingers fumbling the tin opener badly, then spilling some of the contents. He poured it into a little bowl, and angrily flung the tin away... then stamping his foot frustratedly at the mess it had caused, his anger surprising him. Was this the start of that aggressive streak, he wondered, drinking down the cold soup in one, long swig.

He lay back on the bed, still shivering and feeling feverish, before reaching for another tin; it wasn't enough...

This was going to be a long journey, he thought, weakly lying back and fumbling with the opener again... but he had a couple of hours' head start, and as long as the autopilot managed its way through the canyons, he'd be difficult to find even with a microlight. .

It'd have to do.

* * *

He woke with a start, from a strange, claustrophobic dream... where was he, what was this place..? He sniffed the air; a cacophony of spilled food odours assaulted his senses. Fucking air filters...

His eyes opened slowly as awareness came back to him. A rover... he was escaping. He still felt starving...

He blinked a few times. His nose looked very swollen... oh. Yeah... the nanites. That part really hadn't been a dream!

He put a hand up to his face, and blinked as he saw that his fingers looked stubbier, wider, and darker than he remembered... and had a short tip of hooked claw protruding from the end. He tried a few times but struggled to focus his eyes on it; he brought it closer and accidentally tapped himself on the nose, finding it a little further out than he expected.

He lowered the hand and shook his head, trying to wake himself up properly... his head's movement abruptly stopped, and he heard a tearing noise.

He sat upright, gingerly, and realised a horn had caught in the flimsy mattress, tearing a strip of fabric loose. A real, actual horn, he marvelled groggily, grabbing it with one hand. He looked down at himself; his feet still had five toes, but what had been his smallest toe was a half-shrunken, misplaced dewclaw; and the other toes had swelled quite a bit, and spread apart further. Claws emerged from their nailless tips as well, but larger than the ones on his hands.

Looking further up his legs, the muscle tone had definitely improved; and the skin was now scaly; a very dark black, almost obsidian, until the knee, then with a dark reddish-brown stripe creeping in along his inner thigh, thickening as it moved towards his groin, paling and yellowing in the innermost parts of the band to an almost sandy colour.

His excitement built up as he saw nearly two feet of tail lying between his legs as well. He had a tail! As he watched, the limb quivered, and the tip flicked back and forth involuntarily. He tried to calm it, but he just made it shiver and spasm worse... he held his legs together instead, trapping it. After a few moments, he managed to make it stop.

He flushed slightly as he remembered he'd changed clothes to lie down; the tail had pushed aside a set of feminine knickers, rather than his usual briefs. When he'd gone to lie down, exhausted and stuffed even though he still felt famished, he'd not been caring what he'd picked up. He vaguely recalled thinking groggily about needing to get used to it... There was still a bulge at his groin though... but it looked wrong, smaller, not the right shape, no scrotum for sure..?

Think about something else, he thought, as he felt a bit of panic rising in his chest. He looked further up his torso instead; he was surprisingly colourful, despite the darkness of his skin and early scales originally. The centre of his chest, where thicker scutes plated his abdomen - soon-to-be underbelly, he thought! - was a sandy, earthy colour, fading at the edges into a wider swathe of darker crimson-red scales, that in turn faded into the black he'd wanted as his scale colour, only darkening fully on his flanks.

No sign of either nipple beyond a slightly rougher patch of smaller scales; his belly button had been entirely covered in the platelike scutes.

He regarded his fingers more closely; they still looked very human, beyond the scales and the claws at the tips, and hadn't changed as much as he thought when he caught the first bleary glimpse of them. His arms were more muscular, though; and he could still see some extra muscle in his upper torso, though the scutes obscured them for the most part... that extra food must have gone somewhere, he reasoned. Hrm, maybe if he ate even more, the nanites would convert it to even more muscle...

His head, what did his face look like?! He swiftly swung his legs around and intended to leap lightly off the folding bed, but winced, and gave an audible groaning hiss, as pain and aches struck all of the fast-moving joints almost immediately. Urk! No sudden movements... ouch.

He took a moment or two to recover his breath, and to experimentally try and make that noise again. He could sort of hiss, and make a sound almost like a bark; and a growl... he tried speaking, and was a little relieved to hear words, albeit in a deeper, more gravelly voice. It felt a bit of a strain to speak though; he'd not be able to keep it up long, but 'thankfully' there was nobody to talk to anyway... He'd miss the power of speech, he thought. Maybe he should learn sign language...

He stood slowly; he felt awkward and hunched a bit, but not uncomfortable. Experimentally he dropped to all fours; that felt a lot worse, the proportions still all wrong. Evidently his transformation had a fair way to go yet... he stood back up, and reached for the mirror, examining his face.

There was something familiar in the shape of the skull... in broad outline. Shape of the eyes, too? But the spacing was different now; his nose had grown forward, and merged with his upper jaw, pressing outward another two inches into the blunt beginning of a snout. His hair had gone, and dark scales covered his head now; and a pair of horns, only a bit over an inch long, protruded from the rear of his skull.

His eyes were different too... the iris had expanded, and whereas he'd always had brown eyes before, now they were quite a bright red colour - reflective in the bright light, like a cat's. Were the pupils slightly slitted, or was that just his imagination..? He couldn't quite tell.

He opened his mouth, and felt a bit repelled; the tongue was longer and slightly thinner, and there looked to be some rearrangement of the tonsils too... but he couldn't look far past the ugly mix of sharp new teeth that had pushed their way into the forming gaps between his duller human teeth. It looked horrific; though at least it didn't hurt. He closed his mouth; still a fair way to go, then.

His jaw ached a bit; in fact he ached a little all over, but it was a good ache. Stretching after a workout, that kind of ache.

He prodded at his wide nostrils. He could smell a lot more; either that or some of the food had started going off, maybe he should wash stuff up..? Actually, dumping the waste tins would be useful, it'd reduce the rover's weight, even if just a bit...

He could smell the faint odour of human... or several? He closed his eyes and put the mirror down, trying to concentrate. He could probably just smell himself... he tried picking up the folded clothes he'd arrived in, and sniffed at them. Acrid Martian dust was the main scent he got from them, and it made his eyes water a moment, before he involuntarily licked his lips... getting an odd craving to taste it. Anticipating it almost like the prospect of a salted snack.

...maybe some other time, he thought, putting the clothes back down; he could smell his human self on them, yeah; and of course he could smell two other humans, very faintly. He'd stolen their laundry.

He sniffed at his elbow curiously, then his armpit. He smelled different now, certainly. His human-scent was all over his scales, obviously; but a new, reptilian side was there as well.

There was another edge to the scents of the room too; the edge of musk from the slightly smeared mirror he'd just put down. Where he'd, erm, missed the sample container. It smelled quite strong now he was close to it, and seemed to stand out through the food-scents of the room.

He looked down, feeling his member stir in the unfamiliar, tight undergarments as he remembered what he'd gotten up to. He saw the outline of his maleness clearly; the angle was odd, though, like it had been twisted up, or something... or maybe it was partly internal?

He didn't much care, he just felt a flood of relief that it was still there. He really didn't want to lose it, not really! How long would it last, though?

He sniffed the air, surprised. He could smell his arousal suddenly; quite clearly. Where the faint residue on the mirror was stale and dully human, this was vibrant, alien, masculine... without thinking he realised he'd bent lower to examine his swelling member; some sort of fluid coated much of its length, and was wetting the fabric around it, but he wasn't hard enough for it to be precum...

He was leaning a lot of weight on the edge of the computer desk anyway, but he surprised himself as he managed to edge the tip of his snout closer and closer to the fabric covering his crotch... he'd never been very flexible, no natural gymnast, how was he doing this..? His back ached quite a bit but the tip of his snout was within inches, the potent scent of his own fluids holding him almost mesmerised, easily overwhelming the detergent and human scents of the fabric. Pheromones, or s-something, right? That's why it cut through everything else, it was like a lightbulb in the room, impossible to ignore, defining everything else around. He stared at the pulsing, dampening fabric...

...the thought recurred. How long might he still have 'use' of those parts? Why waste one..? He felt his snout heat up, an invisible blush, as he realised how he was going to try this new flexibility out.

With almost unseemly haste he lay back on the bed, putting the mirror aside so he didn't roll over it, and curled himself back around, his nascent muzzle straining to reach down to his midriff. As if trying equally hard to reach back, his clothbound shaft twitched, a little precum staining the fabric this time. His nostrils sniffed; this was a different scent, but only in the overtones, there was a deeper familiarity...

His fingers curled beneath the knickers' elastic, raising it enough to release the trapped organ within. His snout strained; how might it taste, could he reach...?

He pulled the fabric away further, feeling a lot less intimidated by the potential changes down there now, and gripped his cock, trying to pull it a little closer to his snout. It was surprisingly moist... but he saw with a little surprise that his cock was almost bare now, naked flesh; what had been the skin around it had retreated to form a narrow sheath around the base, presumably it must've been nestled inside that? There was no sign of his testicles at all though; just smooth, hairless skin, all the way back to...

He blinked, realising he could see his anus a little way behind where his mind's eye said his balls should be. With his other hand twisted behind a leg to keep him in position, he gently prodded at his neat, well-hidden asshole, fascinated.

...Well, his tailhole now, he supposed!

His snout heated up in a blush again as another thought occurred to him; he stroked along the base of his tail until it felt narrow enough to get his fingers around it. He took a firm hold, sliding his grip along it nearly to the tip, then letting go of his cock, letting his fluid-slick hand grip his tailtip, rubbing the wetness over the scales...

His breathing quickened, bringing with it the heady musk of his own pheromone-laden scent. This definitely felt stranger, different, more intense in some ways, than his human experiences...!

He had to really focus to stop his tail wriggling and writhing out of his grip, damn it was tough keeping this thing under control... but he just about managed it, pulling his new organ lower, the sensations amazingly alien to him... but such a turn-on, too. He had a real tail!

He prodded the tip of the thin organ against his pucker; it flicked with excitement, tickling the gap in the scales and making him shiver all over. But he didn't have a lot of fluid on the tip; he squeezed the tip harder to keep it still, adding a drop of precum to it, before pressing it gently against his tailhole.

The thin tip parted it fairly easily... he eased it in further, feeling it prod and poke inside him, the nice feeling of being stretched was gradually building up as each extra centimetre eased in... his cock throbbed gently, four inches from his snout. The tail's sensations had been muted before, alien amidst so much else that was alien... but now the tip felt so warm, embraced in tight flesh, tickled faintly by the muscles under his pucker...

He growled in satisfaction... how had he never dreamed about being a reptile before, this big, thick tail felt so great, had so many uses..!

His tailtip gave a flick of excitement, and he gave a startled, bark-like grunt, his whole body suddenly tensing at the quick brush against his prostate; a large drop of precum dripped from his shaft onto his scutes. Despite the thick scale, he could still feel the faint sense of moisture, the cooling evaporation... everything was so sensitive!

He let go of his tail with the slickened, drying hand, and returned it to his shaft, unable to resist giving it a quick stroke. He made a purring sound at the intense sensation of scales on his member, the involuntary clench of his tailhole, the gentle squeeze around his hidden tail...

He reached out with his tongue, almost but not quite able to close the gap... he pushed his tail forward a little more, trying to arch his back harder. So close to managing it!

He gave a faint grunt as his back clicked, but despite a moment of discomfort it felt a little easier to bend afterwards... his probing tongue could almost reach...

He licked his lips in surprise as his tongue withdrew into his snout, and the scent intensified very suddenly, almost like a taste..? Didn't snakes do that, taste the air rather than smelling with their nostrils..? He must have some snake genes in him... obviously, to go with the venomous fangs he was supposed to develop!

He leaned forward harder, pulling at his legs to try and pull them back further... and to spread them apart more, to give his own tail better access... he tried again, and this time his tongue met the precum-leaking tip, with an explosion of flavour on his tastebuds. As he withdrew the tongue, it intensified into a universe of strange but delightfully familiar sensation.

He grinned, slightly manically. He hoped it was a flavour he'd get used to... mmm, or that maybe someday he'd meet a willing male 'dragon' and find out what was similar, what was different... and have a fun time while they were at it...

He pushed another two inches of tail into himself and gave a yelp as the overexcited tip flicked around inside him again, causing him to clench his toes involuntarily and another glob of precum to spit from his cocktip.

He pulled his head forward, curling all the harder, and managed to bump his snout on his cocktip for a moment... so close, so frustratingly close! His hand gently teased along the underside up to the tip, scraping over his tongue as he extended it to lap at the cockhead. Yesss...

His eyes nearly rolled back in their sockets, this was better than he'd dreamed of, his whole body tingled with the force of it, the anticipation...

He stroked his cock a little, and then unable to halt himself, sped the pace a bit... then slightly more. His snout bumped his cocktip as he licked at it frantically, pushing more of his tail down into his depths... when he relaxed his grip it slid out on its own and he pushed it back in, but only gently... the lubrication wasn't the best...

His eye glanced sideways, startled by a half-seen movement in his peripheral vision. The mirror, right next to him; he'd rolled slightly and could see a part of his reflection in its smeared surface now...

There was a lithely muscular, scaly, anthropomorphic creature, its tail buried in its backside, its snout... as good as sucking itself, and desperately pawing at its cock, needy beyond belief... it still recognisably had some of his features...

He whimpered, it was as sexy as anything in some of the forbidden VR sims he'd tried. So many little details that the sims had glossed over, so many falsehoods and wrong guesses, this was just so intense, so real...!

His tailtip started flicking again, and this time he was so excited he couldn't control it as it brushed rapidly past his prostate. His body tensed again, and his stroking faltered, his toes curling, nnnng, too much, too intense...!

He knew he wasn't going to be able to stop himself, he felt the familiar tingle building fast, two slight lumps appearing in the scaly flesh below his 'sheath' where his scrotum should be... half-hidden in the damp knickers, but he felt a little relief; he still had his testicles... but no time to take that in, no time to think...

He moaned and hissed in desperation, just about managing to press the tip of his spire between stiff reptilian lips at last, it hurt slightly to hold it there but the flavour of his intimacy was too potent a lure; his claw was almost a blur as he stroked and squeezed himself hard, and felt himself going over the edge, his toes curling hard, and his left leg starting to involuntarily spasm and kick in the air...

The first spurt across his tongue nearly choked him. Intensely bitter musk filled his maw suddenly, coating his tongue with the cloying taste of reptilian cum... then the second shot hit the back of his throat, and he coughed and spluttered, his shaft slipping from between his lips. His tailhole clenched hard, trapping his biological vibrator inside, and his cock started spurting across his muzzle instead, under his chin, over his chest...

He swallowed what he could and growled with the all-consuming feeling of his release, as if his entire being was focused into his groin, all the sensations in his body originating from so many sensitive organs all pulled together in one spot... he bucked his hips, stroking harder, his tail wriggling excitedly inside him, the orgasm seemed unending..!

But as the flow started to slow, the sensation of his tailtip pounding his prostate suddenly tipped over into outright pain, and he winced, shaking slightly, as the excitement died away and he could finally bring his tail under some semblance of control - or at least, to stop it moving.

He panted hard from the exertion, he reeked of sex now, the food aroma far overpowered. But it didn't smell bad... he sniffed curiously, realising he could smell, taste, a faint hint of garlic in his cum. Onion... asparagus? And something fishy... maybe all the food was having an effect after all...

With a satisfied sigh, he gingerly pulled his tail out from his depths. It was a lot rougher emerging than it had been on the way in, and he was more sensitive now. He'd need some proper lube, he decided... next time. There'd have to be a next time... his shaft remained stubbornly at half mast, and his heart was still pounding with the intense sexual excitement. He remembered back at Shackleton, how he'd been able to go twice without breaking a sweat... he licked his lips, tasting his own cum on the scales. Precum tasted better, he decided, but it wasn't like he needed to choose...

...mm, focus, though. How long had he been asleep... he shakily grabbed the wristcomp.

12 hours?! After losing best part of a day already after the crash..? Well, at least it passed the time so he didn't need to get bored, there were several days of journey left to go...

Better check the autopilot, if he'd made good progress he might be nearly out of the canyon networks... and after that, he could be more easily spotted. Until he got to the marshy terrain in the lower reaches of Hellas, he'd kick up some dust, which might make him more easily spotted from the air...

He stood slowly, stretching, then tried experimentally dropping to all fours... it felt easier now, like his back had clicked into place for it. He idly gave his member a fondle, and blushed, trying to see if he could maneuver his tail back around and insert it, without needing to do it manually... but he could only make it sway, or wriggle in confusion...

...focus, he thought, standing back upright! He didn't usually have this much trouble concentrating... he chuckled, he wasn't usually turning into a lamarckon, a dragon, or whatever he was becoming! He strapped the wristcomp onto his arm, and set some music on shuffle. Maybe that would help?

He ached, but evidently he was in one of those better moments again, where he was entirely functional and felt amazing; possibly too amazing, a little giddy and delirious. Maybe it was because he'd not eaten in a while..? If that was the case, he should get some food prepared again and get ready for the next part of his change...

He languidly stroked his half-hard cock as he stepped towards the cockpit, smiling as he spotted a can of vegetables in oil in one of the food stacks... maybe he could leave te autopilot for a few more minutes. Get as much use out of this body as he could, before he fed the nanites and got them to change him faster, after all he didn't want to get rid of his dick before he felt entirely done with it...

He grinned harder. He should definitely take the time to practice more with his tail... he definitely wouldn't need to get bored!