Bred Among the Stars

“Captain’s Log, Day four thousand ninety-two. The crew grows more and more anxious by the day. They are anticipating the results of our excursion with increasing excitement, as any scientist should when faced with such a beautifully daunting task. We are still searching for the source of the energetic flares, and have narrowed our options down to a small planet in the Xenome quadrant. Planet L-24B9-6, where small bacterial organisms have been the only sign of life for the past two centuries. This is a fascinating discovery in of itself, but the fact that multiple search crews have been lost almost as soon as they got this close is evidently making my crew very uneasy. I hope we will find what we were sent here for, and remain unscathed.”

The woman sat back in her chair as she set the recorder down, her soft brown eyes scanning the scene in front of her. Her crew moved quickly and efficiently around her like the bees she was so fond of when she lived on Earth. Her home in a small Mexican town south of Cancún seemed so far away now, and she was much happier here among the stars, on the Stormchaser 12 with the first all-female crew to open and traverse through a wormhole. The scanners projected the image of a bright pink planet in front of her, striped with magenta and red, surrounded by a few lone asteroids.

“Captain Cruz,” one of her crewmates called from the control bridge, “the radar is picking up a dramatic change in the radiation levels emitted by the planet. Small heat signatures are popping up in clusters of half a dozen to a dozen signals. Strange, isn’t it?” A few strands of her short blonde hair fell gently into her face as she turned around to show the Captain.

“Very,” she responded, pulling up the same image on her own hologram screen. “None of them are very far from this larger signature in sector four… we should investigate.”

“Understood, Captain. In T-minus 23 minutes, we’ll be within shuttle distance. I can send a few parties out to scout the area before we -”

“No,” the Captain interjected, raising a delicate hand to silence the crew member. “I’d like to take a solo shuttle and do a quick scan before I send any of you.”

The blonde looked startled, and a young woman with bright purple hair came to stand beside her. “Captain, with all due respect, it’s very dangerous to put yourself in such a position. We don’t know what’s out there, or what’s causing these heat signatures. It could be hostile – you’re taking a huge risk.”

“I understand that, Christina, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Donna, prepare Solo Shuttle Z34,” she said, the tone of her final words proving that she had made her decision.

———

Getting into the flight suits was always a challenge for Captain Imelda Cruz. The suits were streamlined and made of strong latex-like material, designed to be strong enough to move through any common foliage on any planet while remaining smooth and flexible enough to allow them a full range of movement. But the slick pseudo-rubber was always a struggle to fit into, on account of Imelda’s well-endowed body. The way her wide hips and thick, jiggly thighs contrasted with her slim waist made it difficult to pull the suit up onto her body. If she did manage to get it past her voluptuous lower half, the task of pulling it past her slightly pudgy tummy was deceptively easy compared to the fight to get it up past her round, bouncy breasts. Each was at least two handfuls, and she found herself trying ungracefully to stuff them into the chest of the suit every time she had to put it on. But eventually, she managed to slip into the tight white catsuit, and with every blue accent line only serving to highlight her curves, she was ready. She grabbed the helmet that reminded her of the motorcycle helmets on Earth, and headed for the docking bay.

Solo Shuttle Z34 was humming with energy as she stepped into the small cockpit, and she gritted her teeth with anticipation as she locked herself into the seat. The blonde engineer from before stepped forward on the bay, her face wrought with concern. “Be careful out there, Captain Cruz,” she said softly.

Imelda smirked at her, nodding. “I’ll be fine, Perrie. Prep the rest of the crew for exploration. I’ll signal for you when I’m ready.”

Perrie nodded, stepping back, and Imelda closed the shuttle, and she was off.

———

She reached the planet with ease, landing on a rocky expanse of pink dust that seemed unexplored thus far. Cautiously, she stepped out of the shuttle, peering around anxiously. The scanner in her hand was picking up all kinds of signals, all of them coming from the same area about three hundred feet away. With a deep breath under the helmet, she set on her way.

Her heart was beating faster and faster as the scanner beeped louder, telling her she was getting closer to some of the clusters of heat signals they had picked up on the ship. As she crept closer, she realized she was standing over a ravine that swirled with pastel pink fog. Her scanner was beeping louder now, and she knew something was down there. Prepping the laser gun strapped to her wrist, she put her scanner away and started to make her way down the rocky slope.

Almost as soon as her feet touched the bottom, she heard a soft moan. It sounded tired and weak, but human. “Hello?” she called out. “This is Captain Imelda Cruz of the Stormchaser 12. Identify yourself.”

“Captain Cruz?” the voice answered back quietly. “You need to leave.”

“Identify yourself,” the Captain repeated. “I am armed and ready to shoot.”

“Captain…”

Imelda glanced down as she walked forward, and gasped. The fog cleared just a little, and she was left staring at the bruised and naked body of a young black woman with hazy eyes. Her belly was swollen, and she was covered in some sort of pink fluid. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, telling Imelda she could breathe this planet’s air, and she touched a button on her helmet that lifted the face of it, allowing her to see the body clearer. “Identify yourself,” Captain Cruz said again, though she turned the gun off and instead crouched down closer to the woman.

The woman shuddered before answering, her eyes still glazed over. “Neh… ohh… N-Nia Jacks-son of… uff… of the Stardweller Eh… Eight…”

“Jesus Christ,” Imelda hissed. This was the head engineer of the last ship that had been sent to this area. “What the hell happened to you?”

“You need to leave,” Nia said again, one hand moving slowly to touch her bloated stomach. “That thing… it’s too good… feels too good… it’ll take you, and… and…”

“What thing?”

“You need to leave b-before it gets you…”

“What fucking thing, Jackson?!”

Too late. Nia fell limp, and the gentle rise-and-fall of her small, naked breasts was the only sign that she was alive. Imelda huffed in frustration, and as she stood up, the fog cleared a little more, and suddenly she was speechless.

Nia wasn’t the only one.

Countless bodies littered the ravine, all women, all naked and bruised and covered in the same pink fluid, and all of them with their stomachs swollen to near-bursting. They were alive, she could tell, but they were all in the same-trance-like state.

Feeling nauseous, Imelda made her way past them across the ravine and hauled herself up the side. For what felt like ages, she followed her scanner, finding more and more groups of naked, tired women with swollen bellies. “What the fuck is going on here…” she muttered. Eventually she reached a cracked pink ravine that she could tell was made of tall, balanced rocks, and she gasped as she spotted someone familiar.