Bugging Out (6/10)

Story by Serathin on SoFurry

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#6 of Bugging Out

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

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A few hours had passed after the three had split up, all of them assigned to their different tasks to get the materials they needed in order to pull off what they were thinking. Though the hour was late there was no stopping them, not after all three had given in to the corruptive instincts that had been imprinted onto them from the pods on the planet. Unfortunately in order to escape detection from the intensive screenings they had been given there hadn't been a single piece of organic substance that had been integrated into them that could mutate them. But they wouldn't have to get back down to the planet in order to get some, they couldn't even if they wanted to, because protocol stated that a sample of the substance would be sealed away in their specimen vault for later study in the event they had to obliterate the area.

That was what practically called out to Grayson as he made his way through the corridors of the ship towards the science bay. With it being the technical night shift of the ship there were very few people about, most either being asleep or at their designated post during this hour. While that meant that he didn't have to interact with people and hide the disgust he had for their soft, unevolved forms it also meant that he would need to find a different way to access the scientific wing. Even if he did have clearance to go in, which he didn't, he still wouldn't be able to walk out with the canister that contained the sample of alien material.

Of course he probably still had the easier task, Grayson thought to himself as he went to the control panel of the main door and looked around before popping open the casing. At the same moment he was breaking into the science wing Lawrence had to go down to engineering and pick up a container of liquidized Falchorite, something that was also guarded heavily given the valuable nature of the substance. If either one of them failed in their task that meant that they would probably be court marshalled... if they didn't figure out the reason that they had done it in the first place. He suspected if they knew what he and the others were thinking at the moment they would probably give them a one-way ticket to join their hive before they destroyed the entire planet.

After a few minutes of fiddling with the wires inside Grayson managed to override the security system and head inside. It wasn't exactly a tight operation, the only reason most of the ship had any checkpoints at all was to prevent people from wondering into the wrong section, and it hadn't been the first time that he or someone of his squad had overridden a security lock to get somewhere. The only difference was instead of trying to get at the store of liquor that was reserved for officers he was attempting to start a revolution and save a species he had just recently become a part of. Once he was sure that he was alone, the science wing usually powered down during night operations to conserve energy, he made his way over towards the specimen contamination.

When he got to the locked vault he once more found that all the security measures were used in order to keep things in, not keep people out as he began to hack into the system to open it. As he watched the lines of code scroll by a small, nagging piece of humanity floated to the surface and reminded him him that he was about to betray everyone in order to do this. His friends, his crewmates, the captain... if he took the specimen from the vault he could never go back on his decision. Even if later he did decide that this was a bad idea they would know that someone had gotten into the vault to disturb the contents within, each sample on a pressure plate to help with monitoring it while also keeping track of how many times it had been taken out.

But this wasn't betrayal, Grayson thought as his mind suddenly snapped back to its more alien thoughts. Once he had enacted the plan and evolved himself he would make sure that everyone else got the same gift they did. All metahumanity on this ship would be part of the hive, they would make sure of it. The only thing at this point he was uncertain of is if they could take the ship quick enough to save everyone down on the planet...

There was a small chirp and he looked down at his computer to see that the decoding process had finished, the thick metal door opening with a loud hiss and sliding back to reveal the contents within. Dozens of similar metal canisters sat on the shelves beyond it, but Grayson didn't need to look up which one was the one he was looking for. He could feel the alien material reacting to his presence as he reached back and picked it up, the green circle that it had been resting on turning red once the container was removed. This was it, he thought to himself as he looked at the pressure plate he had just activated, there was no turning back now...

With no reasonable way to hide the container on his purpose Grayson merely moved with purpose like he was supposed to be transporting the item, though his exposure to others once more was minimal as he made his way to one of the storage bays. One thing that he could count as fortunate in being relegated to supply detail was he knew which room was rarely visited, the three able to conduct their business with little chance of being disturbed. When he opened the door and stepped inside he saw the other two already were there waiting for him. Since they were about to transform themselves the guise they had given themselves had lifted to reveal their human forms once more as they leaned against a secure cargo container.

"I see that you managed to secure your supplies," Grayson said as he walked over and put the metal canister on top of it. "It appears fortune is on our side tonight."

"For now," Scathe stated as he looked around nervously. "If anyone sees what we make here before we're finished then we're all going to be exterminated without even a thought. I mean I'm still ready to do this, but I would be lying if I didn't say that I would be nervous."

"You are making the greatest sacrifice out of all of us," Lawrence said as he began to decrypt the specimen container to open it. "Are we sure that we can't just infest the medical bay?"

"Too risky," Grayson said as he shook his head. "But from the inklings that I get from the hive we may still be able to make sure that Lawrence gets his fill... but that's for later. Right now we have to start the process, and that happens when you get that container open."

Lawrence just nodded and the other two watched as he finally managed to get the seal broken, wisps of vapor coming out as he slowly brought the cover up to reveal the contents within. To the untrained eye it might have looked like a vial of liquid Falchorite or mining waste, but as they shook the bottle slightly they saw the alien egg floating within. As the junior member of the team Scathe had volunteered to do the next part as he went up and broke the final seal on the lid of the jar. There was a moment of silence between the three part-humans as he hesitated for a few seconds before tipping the entire thing back and gulping down the contents.

All of them could feel an electric tingle as the human infected himself, swallowing the egg as well as the rest of the fluid before tossing the empty container aside. As they waited for the alien DNA to start assimilating him both Lawrence and Grayson pried the container open to reveal the contents within. The purple substance in this one was pure liquid Falchorite, which normally would be fed to the emergency dispersal system in the event of a neutron engine leak but now would facilitate the growth of their evolution. Even as they slid the open container over to the wall so that Scathe could rest against it they could see the changes already starting to happen to his body.

In preparation for his transformation Scathe had opted to get naked, which allowed the other two to watch as his stomach began to gurgle and swell. Even just a few minutes in it looked like most of the human's insides had been shifted, his skin bulging and stretching unnaturally as he began to pant. As his belly continued to swell he grabbed onto the container of Falchorite and his fingers stretched into tentacles, turning a deep purple color as they dipped into their precious food source and began to cause the level of the liquid to lower. Though a couple of purple droplets escaped from the rapidly thickening cock of the creature most of it appeared to be staying right inside his body as the rest of his limbs began to deform and mutate.

Unlike most mutations Scythe's body wasn't about to turn into the anthropomorphic bug like most of them had the luxury of turning into, for the changing human he was becoming the very thing that would change the other two. With only one egg they needed him to change into something that produce the most powerful creature that their kind had yet to create, and that thing was a bio-chamber. Scythe let out a loud gurgle as his mutating body continued to drain the contents of the container, purple ooze beginning to coat the walls behind him as his arms and legs morphed into rapidly thickening tentacles that climbed over the metal room. As Grayson and Lawrence began to back away from the growing creatures their eyes were fixated on the tentacle cock that had continued to grow between his legs.

They were so distracted by it that neither of them noticed that the tongue of the hardly recognizable human head had also underwent a transformation into a giant purple tentacle until it pushed its tip over the head of Grayson and rolled down over his body. Lawrence jumped back slightly in surprise as he watched the other male get lifted up into the air, his feet kicking as the new bio-pod sucked him in with powerful rippling alien muscles. At the same time the cock tentacle of the creature caught up the other male, who fell onto the increasingly gooey purple floor as it wrapped around his legs twice before going down and enveloping him by the feet. There was no fight from the two, after the initial surprise and confusion they knew what was happening and was ready to embrace their own evolution as their bodies were drawn into the separate tubes.

It was the first time that two of them shared the same bio-pod, even down on the surface of the planet when they had converted the three medical biopods to conversion chambers they made sure to do it one at a time. As their bodies entered into the fluid-filled mass that had been Grayson's rookie crewmate they could sense the reason why already. Together the two of them would be made into one powerful creature, one that could go out alone and conquer this entire ship by themselves if they needed to. They would become the one thing that the hive was lacking... a queen.

Incredible waves of pleasure washed over the two of them as Grayson could feel something solid between his legs, though the appendages were quickly losing their form as the human cells were completely bombarded by the alien virus mutating their DNA. He could feel what he thought might be the head of the other male sliding up his legs, the tentacles inside the pod maneuvering them around so that their bodies would knit together flawlessly. It appeared that their still expanding cohort knew exactly what they were going to turn into, the two leaving it in Scathe's tentacles as Grayson felt something nuzzling against his rock-hard erection. Even amidst the massive mutations happening to their bodies Grayson felt the other creature begin to suck him off as his knees and shins merged into the shoulders and chest of the one beneath him...

For hours the pulsating pod of bright purple rubbery flesh stood dormant, only the occasional bump against the side or wiggle of one of the many tentacles that had grown across the wall indicating something was going on. As the night shift was about to end on the ship and day shift started to stir there was something else that was awakening, the wall of the biopod growing more and more translucent to reveal the creature within. The biopod itself began to shiver and quake before the thinning skin of the front opened, releasing a torrent of goo and the thing that it had created within it.

Grayson had been so lost in the bliss of pleasure that he hadn't even been aware of what was happening to his body, especially as it felt like the former security officer had been blowing his cock the entire time. As he tried to reach out mentally to see where he was the creature realized that they were sharing their body like some of the others down at the mining site... but not quite in the same way. As the transformed male quickly attempted to get his bearings he could sense the consciousness of the other male coming to as well, except as Lawrence did so it caused a burst of pleasure to go through both bodies. If it weren't for the set of mandibles that had pushed their way out of the blunted muzzle of Grayson's lips he would have smiled as he watched his tentacle cock look around of its own accord, ready to turn others into creatures by drawing them into their shared abdomen and heavily infecting them...

With the mystery of where his fellow hivemate was solved Grayson took the time to look at himself, feeling power flowing through his bright purple rubber body as he flexed his powerful arms and watched the meaty muscle underneath bulge. His fingers had merged into three solid digits with claws on the end of them, though as he blinked with his three sets of eyes he could tell they were even more dexterous then his original human fingers, then continued to watch as a second set of hands entered into his field of vision from another pair of arms just below the first. The rest of his upper body had remained somewhat humanoid as well, two sets of plump purple pectorals controlled his new arms that lead down to an impressive eight pack that framed right above his huge sentient cock. The lower part of his body was not as spared, the heavily mutated lower half of him arranged in a tauric configuration framed by eight powerful shiny spider legs around a rather robust abdomen.

It was the body of an apex predator, Grayson thought to both himself and his new body companion as his already alien conditioned mind processed the changes that had happened to him. As he thought about all the metahumans that were on the ship waiting for them he could feel his fangs slide down past his lips, a single drop of translucent purple venom dripping from it that contained an extremely potent dose of the alien virus. He also had the ability to produce and lay vial eggs as well as spin Falchorite webbing. It was the most powerful creature that the hive had ever created and its sole purpose was to assimilate the Polaris before it could destroy the hive down on the planet.

As Grayson got used to moving on his new configuration of legs he felt the presence of another mind besides his own and Lawrence, feeling Scathe swimming around in his body as well. Since the biopod would remain stationary and had a high chance of being discovered and destroyed once they got started it appeared the alien virus had adapted to the circumstance. The newly created parasite was practically yearning to get a host and the new queen was more than happy to accommodate as he skittered towards the nearby wall. With their new form going out the door would not only immediately alert the entire crew of their presence but leave them boxed in should security respond... luckily for them they had another means to travel through the ship as Grayson took his webbing and began to place it against the steel wall.

****************************

As day shift began to take the place of the skeleton crew they did their usual routine, trading notes and making sure that all the systems were up to day in their inspections. With the ship in standing orbit there wasn't a whole lot of risk that might come to the engines and therefore it was more of a formality then anything. As long as they weren't about to drop out of the sky towards the planet things were considered good as the new shift took the position of their bleary-eyed counterparts. The lead engineer for the Polaris was an alien creature named Garthak, the reptilian humanoid stretching his rather flexible neck to see all the readings on his station before looking over and doing a status check.

Everything appeared to be going as normal and Garthak was considering going to go and get himself another cup of coffee, a human drink he particularly enjoyed, when one of his crew asked for him to come over to his station. "Sir, I think that there might be a glitch in the monitoring system," he said as he pointed to the section that measured neutron interference from the engines. "It says here that the levels of neutron radiation are at twelve percent and climbing, but we just installed new Falchorite plating that should be keeping it below five. Permission to do a system purge and reboot?"

A frown formed on the muzzle of the creature as he looked at the readings and saw them rising even while he stood there. It was impossible though... even if they had suffered a direct hit from a meteorite it wouldn't cause enough damage to the shielding to cause that much of a spike. "Go ahead," Garthak replied before going back up to his station and getting on the radio. "Commencing system reboot, please remain at your stations until everything is back online."

Once everyone had called clear on their systems Garthak looked behind him and motioned for the human to initiate the reboot. For a few seconds almost the entire section went dark, every monitor and screen in the room going to black as they instructed their computer core to perform a scan and then come back on-line. Thanks to advances in quantum computing they only had to wait for about fifteen seconds, and when that time had come the lights flickered and all the screens came back to life. Before the alien could go over and ask how the readings looked however an alarm immediately starting going off that caused them all to look up in shock.

"Neutron readings are off the charts!" the one that had wanted the system reboot said as he looked at his screen in shock. "Auxillary engine rooms are completely flooded with neutron radiation!"

"We're seeing shielding breaches in engine two!" another engineer shouted. "Engine three is about to crack in thirty seconds too!"

"Use the flooding system!" Garthak shouted. "Evacuate all personnel on any deck around that area and put up the secondary dampening systems! Then shut the engines down as soon as they go through their cycles, I'm not going to have this ship explode because someone who did our retrofit screwed something up!"

There was a chirp that came from the communication system, the voice of the captain coming over the speaker. "Engineering, this is bridge," the captain stated. "We've got multiple code blue warnings in your section and see that you're evacuating several decks. Report."

"The Falchorite shielding has been breached on engines two and three," Garthak said as he others around him scrambled to fulfill the orders that had been given to them. "So far the neutron radiation has only been in auxiliary decks that don't have anyone in them, but we're moving people away in case this goes any farther. We've deployed dampeners and are flooding the engine rooms with Falchorite foam, but we're going to have to shut them down until we do a permanent fix."

"Sir!" a sudden shout caused the reptilian creature to look up. "The flooding system isn't working, the system says that the tanks are completely empty!"

"Empty?" Garthak said, his confusion quickly turning to anger as he started to shout. "How could they possibly be empty?! There's over forty liters of Falchorite foam that could fill up half this ship if it was needed, how in all the stars of the galaxy is it reporting empty?!"

"I thought it might be another system malfunction," the technician said, shaking slightly as he pointed to his screen. "So I had one of the maintenance crew in the area check the tanks and he said that somehow they're bone dry. I don't know how, but there's nothing there..."

The reptilian alien just shook his head and waved his hands in the air to get everyone to stop what they were doing. "Plan continues on as normal without the foam," he said, pointing to several on the station nearest to him. "Continue the evacuation and make sure that you expand the reach, without the foam every second we have those engines up the more the area gets flooded with radiation. Speaking of such how close are we to getting those engines shut down?"

"Sir, the breach happened in the middle of the cooldown cycle," the engineer stated. "I can't get the authorization to shut it down now because if I do so then the feedback could damage the couplers and we might not be able to get them online again for weeks."

The reptile went down to the station where the engineer was at and punched in a sequence on the data pad next to him, which caused the buttons to slide away and reveal a bright red lever underneath. "Authorization for override granted," Garthak said as he turned the lever, the entire ship shuddering as the engines went into forced shutdown mode. "Now get me every person that's touched those engines in the last week and haul all their asses up here so we can figure out what happened and how we fix it. While you do that I'm going to go and get chewed out by the captain now."

Down in the maintenance decks three humans that had been down there doing routine maintenance checks on the power flow relays suddenly found themselves running for their lives. Though the radiation hadn't reached them yet they were told that every second counted in their escape, the two men on either side of the woman as she punched in the code to get them through the bulkhead. They were the last to get out, their section being the farthest from the evacuation zone, and such they not only were the closest to the lethal radiation leaking into the ship but also had to make sure that containment protocol was in place for each door that they passed through.

Since there was only room for one there was nothing for the other two to do but wait, looking behind them as though they could see the invisible force coming towards them. "You almost done with that?" the larger of the two guys asked while looking down at her. "I don't feel like having my skin melting off anytime soon."

"Relax ensign," the woman shot back as she typed in the codes to activate the lockdown for this door. "If it really was that bad they would tell us to move faster, and with the dampening fields in place it'll take an hour in order for it to get through here. Right now I just want to make sure that our lives aren't made any harder when they leave it to us to decontaminate everything once they fix the problem."

Half a minute later she announced her victory and the door slid open, the three going on the other side and closing it behind them before breathing a sigh of relief. "Six down," the smaller guy said with a smirk as he pushed against the other guy. "Another, what, three dozen left to go?"

"Maybe four if we take the scenic route," the female officer replied before they got moving to the next bulkhead to seal. The room they were in was merely an empty staging area, a place where they could load in equipment to check before they had to send it elsewhere on the ship to fix whatever problem might be ailing them. As she plugged in her computer to the next console it started beeping at her, something that caused her to let out a noise of confusion that caught the attention of the others.

"What's wrong?" the ensign asked. "Won't it let you connect?"

"No, it's not that..." the female officer replied, typing in a few command lines onto the screen as the map on it zoomed to a different location. "It just registered that a door opened behind us that we had already locked down. It was in... sector two."

"Sector two?" the male officer repeated. "But that area is already completely flooded with neutron radiation, there's no way anything would be moving around in there. At least nothing that would be living for very long."

The female officer started to nod, then looked down at the screen suddenly as it shifted again. "Another bulkhead just registered as being opened," she said as she looked back at the door that they had just gone through. "Whatever it is it's coming down the same path as us."

"How is it opening the doors?" the ensign asked, all their eyes glued to the screen as the dot that represented the unknown person or creature continuing to move towards their position. "I thought they were all locked down!"

"Yeah, to prevent people from coming into an area contaminated with radiation!" the female officer said. "They wanted to have the bulkheads be able to be opened on the inside in case anyone was working on the source of the problem and needed to escape in a hurry. Whatever it is will be coming right for us, and it'll be getting here real soon..."

The three of them backed up against the door as they could hear the ones that were further down the hallway opening and closing. Though the computer had no way of identifying what was coming in their direction and though they could just keep running through the doors all of them were frozen there by a mixture of intrigue and fear. As the dot reached the door that was separating them from the entity they all closed their eyes and braced themselves...

Only to find that as the door opened nothing came rushing at them. The three waited there for about a minute before they found themselves no longer tensing up, all of them staring at the door in question before the female officer started laughing. "Must have been some sort of echo that the monitoring computer had," she said as the others breathed a sigh of relief. "Looks like its stuck on the last door, I'm going to go and reset the system again, should only take a minute or so."

The other two guys looked at one another and started joking how they were going to need new containment suits as they watched the officer go over to the bulkhead to secure it once more. That jubilation quickly turned to horror however as the second she crossed over to the other side her entire body was lifted up into the air, prompting the two to run over and help her. As the male officer shouted to see what was wrong while they ran over they saw her quickly drop down once more, the woman holding her neck and stumbling into the room towards them. Their advancement towards her was quickly stopped as a purple, six-eyed head lowered down into sight from the ceiling, its fangs glistening in the light as the very large creature moved with unnatural agility into the room.

The ensign let out a scream of terror as the spider-taur passed the female officer and practically pounced on him, the male officer falling back to the side as those eight legs wrapped around the bigger male's body. As the ensign continued to struggle and scream the male officer looked back at the other crewmate and decided to grab her instead, trying to stay out of the creature's vision as a large purple tentacle rose up from its underside. Though the ensign continued to shout for them not to leave him there the male officer grabbed the one that wasn't completely trapped and that also had the maintenance key and practically dragged her over to the bulkhead.

Though she appeared delirious with the help of the other officer she managed to plug in the key and get the code to open the door, still hearing the male behind them shout. Though he didn't want to the male officer looked back and felt all the blood drain from his face as the ensign as completely enveloped from the waist down in the tube-like appendage of the shiny purple creature, the arms of the upper half of its body weaving purple strands around his face to shut him up. His brain couldn't believe his eyes... yet he somehow knew that this thing was swallowing up the ensign in its cock! He quickly turned back and prompted the female officer to hurry, not wanting that to be their fate either as he could see the outline of the human in the throbbing purple flesh as it pulled him in.

Suddenly he heard a beep and the female officer said that she got it, the male officer taking her and pushing them both through the door before closing it on the other side. The second that he got through he took the computer and plugged it into the door, changing the contamination lock down to a security one before breathing a sigh of relief. "We... we made it..." he said. "We have to go and tell the others, if this thing is what caused the breaches then we have a very... serious... problem..."

As the male officer had been talking he had turned around to look at the woman, and for the first time saw the two puncture marks on her neck and the throbbing purple veins that were quickly spreading over her skin. "I feel... very..." she paused for a moment and let out a slight grunt as her eye teeth began to elongate, becoming fangs as she looked over at the frightened man with purple-tinted eyes. "Strange..."