The blue seas and white clouds of K-19C swirled below the saucer like a painting of some hallucinogenic wonderland. Coll, the Jemark of Vessel 247, always thought it looked far too chaotic compared to the peaceful landscape of Jora, where the seas had the decency to pool in round craters, and clouds were flecked sparingly across the green sky like flocks of skrips.
“We are now slave to K-19C’s gravity well, Jemark-Coll.”
“Is the Eighth Ray activated?”
“Since we passed the orbit of K-19C-A, yes.”
“Excellent work, Jella-Tars,” Jemark-Coll stated laconically, working hard to suppress his sincerity. Tars was his own son, after all, and thus in line to inherit if not this ship directly, then one of his own. “Are the Brides prepared?”
“I received word from the Changling Room that they were ready for insertion, but have not yet inspected them personally.”
“Understood,” Jemark-Coll replied. Jella-Tars had his pedipalps stuffed trying to avoid the vast clouds of junk K-19C’s natives had thrown into their inner orbits. Vessel 247’s hull was rated for all micrometeoric impacts, but some of the debris clotting K-19C’s orbitals was anything but micro in nature. The smaller-bodied individuals of the technician caste had nearly bitten off their own tentacles trying to execute an emergency Soja Weave when an entire dessicated space station barreled towards them like a kalokarp in heat!
But the brides were ready. That was what mattered. Jemark-Coll intended to inspect them for himself once they made landfall, with Jella-Tars. The tadfry Jemark-Coll had played catch with so many times back in the purple fields of Jora had emerged from his pupae a man, and part of the duties of manhood for any member of the soldier caste was to witness the essential means by which his species propagated.
He glanced at the holodeck again. They were going at something better than twenty-four thousand antens a minute, but when Jella-Tars fired their graviton thruster right about…
… now…
…. they would slow to a mere twelve antens a minute, letting Vessel 247 alight like a bubble onto the desert plateau they had selected as their landing zone.
There was no sensation of rapid deceleration. The ship was built to sustain this g-force times fifty, and Jemark-Coll was a seasoned admiral. Some fresh tadfry right out of his mother’s belly-pond might get spacesick, but not one who had gone on over seven hundred such voyages across the stars. Jemark-Coll glanced at Jella-Tars to see if he was getting ill, and was pleased to note that there were no signs of nausea on his son’s face.
The ship landed precisely one-half anten off target, nearer the edge of the plateau, and Jella-Tars’s headfins briefly flashed a pulse of crimson in annoyance. Jemark-Coll sighed, wiping off the lenses of his eyes with his antennae. He would address Jella-Tars about this in private, once they returned to Jora. It was only a minor navigational error, and there was no sense in scolding him now on the cusp of his first triumph as Jella.
“Let us go to the Changling Room,” Jemark-Coll said, once Jella-Tars finished his post-landing checks- yes, systems were all in order; yes the Eighth Ray had been shut down; yes, all crew were well and accounted for- and even as he said it, he noted a trace of his old spacesalt Jella voice creeping in. Just a bit, perhaps unnoticeable even to Tars, but it was something he made note to get under control. This was Tars’s show; he was merely here as an observer.
Satisfied that the ship was intact, Jemark-Coll pushed a tentacle against a button on one of the wall panels, which disgorged the case containing the Jella’s ceremonial staff. Jemark-Coll held it out to his son with much pomp, and Jella-Tars took it into tentacles that trembled with pride and anticipation. Then Jemark-Coll and Jella-Tars, father and son, glided upon their diplopods downstairs to the Changling Room.
“Rather hideous, isn’t it?” Jemark-Coll laughed.
Jella-Tars looked like he was going to be sick. “Stars preserve me, do their females really look like that?”
He pointed an accusatory antennae in the direction of one of the brides. Her disguise was excellent; had she worn the more regular clothing of a K-19C female, he would have thought her a stowaway. But she wore a pale bridal gown and veil, the mating garb of K-19C, and so he knew at once that she was a Changling. The stark white walls of the Changling Room only made her dreadful appearance stand out more to his confounded eyes.
“It’s quite different to see it firsthand, rather than just reading about it in nudie holozines, isn’t it?” Jemark-Coll said.
“What’s the matter, big boy?” the Changling teased, smiling a broad, mammalian smile at Jella-Tars. Her name was Jellia, and this was her first breeding tour as well. “Tarkin got your tongue?”
Her smiled remained broad and white as Jella-Tars’s headfins flashed rings of mottled blue in boyish embarrassment. Jellia’s “lips” were in fact a slight rearrangement of her pedipalps, and she’d had to change her skin color in this spot specifically to be a bright splash of red. Only here, and no other part of her, else the disguise would have been utterly ruined. The rest of her skin, formerly a lovely brindled green, was now pale as the shells of Cytherea, and she had somehow managed to arrange her headfins and cilia into a sheaf of bright yellow “hair” atop her head. Somehow too, she managed to hold her entire figure in the slight build of a K-19C female, resembling one of the time-turner toys Jella-Tars had played with in his youth, the one full of sands from Vulcan. She had two large, globular masses upon her upper torso, which he was given to understand was a prominent sexual display feature in K-19C females. In her hands, with fingers- even the nails!- carefully and seamlessly formed from the fringes of her tentacles, she held a yellow bridal bouquet picked from special flowers grown on the ship.
It was truly a magnificent disguise, and Jella-Tars couldn’t help but be impressed by her craftsmanship even despite his utter revulsion. That was natural, he told himself. It was how he was supposed to feel in the face of such mastery of disguise. The effectiveness of a female’s disguise was intensely arousing, and even though the beings they were mimicking were repulsive, Jella-Tars was grotesquely enthralled by Jellia’s mastery of deception.
“You understand, of course, why this is necessary?” Jemark-Coll asked, rhetorically. Every tadfry knew the female of the species needs to gorge herself on flesh before laying her eggs. Brooding her offspring in her upper-stomach chamber, nourishing both them and herself on her last large meal, she is rendered completely torpid until the young are developed enough to hop out of her mouth under their own power.
Jella-Tars nodded dumbly. He looked around the Changeling Room, feeling like a young tadfry just discovering his palpal bulbs. The other six brides were camouflaged just as expertly, and his own bulbs certainly asserted their existence, swelling almost unbearably at the sight. The whole pregnancy process had been thoroughly fetishized by the Jorites eons ago, and the mere thought of females preparing to feast was intensely erotic. Well, here they were in front of him, actually preparing to feast, their eyes wide with hunger and lust. He would have to choose one of these females as his own mate, on their return trip, and though they all seemed lovely, Jellia thoroughly commanded his attention. Flashing her dusky blue eyes at him- blue eyes, where an hour ago had been the nightblack lenses of a Jorite! He looked at her again and in his gills his choice was made.
Jella-Tars swallowed tightly. It was time for the brides to disembark. The ship would need to take off soon, reactivating the Eighth Ray to cloak itself from the detectors of the K-19C militaries. They were near several of their bases right now- a rather perilous position, but the size of the nearest settlement made the risk worthwhile. It also enhanced Jella-Tars’s own standing among the females- just as the males of Jora were entranced by the witchery of a female’s disguise, so too did Jorite females appreciate boldness in the male.
He cleared his throat. “Are the Ladies of Jora ready to disembark?”
“Yes, Jella!” a chorus of lovely, teuthidane voices replied.
“Then let us waste no further time,” he said. He meant to address the whole room, but couldn’t help looking specifically at bold young Jellia, “Here you embark upon a sacred mission, to carry out the propagation of our blood and the survival of our race. Go forth, and dine well, Ladies of Jora, for each bite you take sustains the hopes and dreams of all future generations.”
He tapped his staff thrice upon the floor of Vessel 247, and watched raptly as the ramp opened below him. It was twilight in the desert, the lights of the city scintillating far below them. A feast was to be had there, for sure. Jella-Tars watched after each of the females as she strutted down the ramp on diplopods reformed into the shape of human feet, and his palpal bulbs swelled once more as Jellia winked at him before she, too, exited the ship.
Once the females had all departed, he turned back to Jemark-Coll. His father’s pedipalps were twisted in wry amusement, and he whimpled his headfins contentedly at his son.
“Come, Jella-Tars. The bridge is reporting K-19C military aircraft converging on our position. We must take off and reactivate the Eighth Ray to evade them.”
Joey Mars leaned back against the bar’s brick wall and huffed his Marlboro. He’d stayed at O’Mare’s til last call, and his booze-clouded mind felt somewhere between the bliss of angels and an elephant in musth. He took another deep drag of the cigarette, savoring the smoke as it swirled round and round in his lungs, before fuming it out like dragon’s breath. It had been a long week, and like everyone else in Phoenix he was grateful Friday night had finally rolled around.
He’d been hoping to get lucky, but pussy at the bar that night was dryer than the Mojave. All old married couples out for dinner dates. Ah well. It happened. He still had Cheryl’s number on a crumpled paper somewhere in his wallet… maybe if she didn’t have another customer already he’d take her for a spin…
He was just starting to feel his jeans constricting at the memory of Cheryl bent over his kitchen table when he saw her. Not Cheryl. Some blonde lady in a wedding dress, walking down the deserted street towards him. He gave her a quick, approving lookdown. Damn but that dress was tight. Her tits seemed to be spilling right out of it, even bigger than Cheryl’s if such a thing were possible. Enticing tresses of gold cascaded down her shoulders, and one impudent corkscrew tendril hung low over her eyes, begging for a man’s hand to brush it aside. He couldn’t get a good look at her face because it was half-concealed by a bridal veil, but he thought he felt her gaze upon him. He nodded and smiled at her but she didn’t seem to notice. What the hell was a newlywed bride doing out on the street at this hour?
She stopped under the streetlight a few feet away from him. Looking around as if in a daze, but then her eyes settled on Joey and she smiled warmly.
“Excuse me, sir,” the bride asked, and her voice was sweet and innocent as a churchbell, “I’m a bit lost. Could you help me find my way back to the chapel?”
Joey looked her down again. She didn’t sound drunk. She sounded… he couldn’t put his finger on it. Needy, he thought, but that wasn’t quite right. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. Her voice was honey, and he’d known enough women in his life to never, ever trust the honey. Still, she was a lady in need, and even though he used women like tissues he still possessed an atavistic, heavily atrophied sense of chivalry. Especially when he could use it to his advantage… maybe, just maybe, he could hit a homer with another man’s wife, right on her wedding night.
“Sure thing, sweets,” he said coolly, scratching the back of his neck to soothe the hairs that had stood up at the queer tone of her voice, “What church are you looking for?”
“Oh, it was, hmm,” she said, her voice trailing off as if confused. “I don’t remember the name. It was a few blocks that a’way. Do you have a map?”
Joey’s neck hairs stood on end again. What broad didn’t remember the name of the church she was getting hitched at? But then, what was the con? He cast a glanced sidelong into the alley beside him. No, no one was there, so she wasn’t a decoy for a mugging. Cop, maybe? He had a couple percs on him but it was all prescribed… at least, that’s what the note said. He shook his head. Bitch was probably just kooky. Fine. He’d walk her to the nearest church and dump her there. Or maybe try to convince her he was her groom. St. Gabriel’s was on the way back to his apartment, after all.
“Nah, I don’t got a map, sorry,” he replied, putting on his best faux-concerned voice, so as not to startle her, “I think I know which one you’re talking about though. C’mon, I’ll take you there, hon.”
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so very much!” the bride said. “They’ll be so grateful to you. So, so grateful.”
Yeah, whatever toots, Joey thought. Man why are the hot ones always completely fucking bonkers?
“Okay, let’s go.”
They started walking the three blocks to St. Gabriel’s. To Joey’s surprise, as they set out the girl took his hand into hers. It felt… nice. Warm and pleasant. As her toxins leeched through his skin, he started to forget his earlier misgivings and could only think of how dearly he wished to see her to her destination. At the sound of a coyote yipping somewhere off in a far-flung alley, she clung to him like a frightened child and the warmth of her breasts pressing against his arm was a thousand times intoxicating than the liquor that thrummed through his veins like jet fuel.
The church loomed ahead on the dark street like a medieval fortress. An old Spanish mission, built back in the days when Apache raiders meant your church had to be able to withstand sieges.
“Well, here we are, sweets,” Joey said, and he didn’t think it odd at all that the church was completely closed up for the night and not a soul was on the street.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so dearly!” the girl said imploringly, throwing her arms round Joey’s neck and hugging him tightly. Another, much higher dosage of neurotoxins percolated his skin, making him feel giddy and aroused. “What can I ever do to thank you?”
“I- uhh,” Joey stammered. His copilot could think of a few things, but upstairs he was too overwhelmed by booze and alien poisons to think straight anymore.
“I have an idea,” the girl replied coyly, biting her lip and tugging at Joey’s motorcycle jacket. She took a step back and cast her bridal veil back over her head like a fishing net. For the first time, Joey got a full look at her face.
Her eyes were… so bright and blue, Joey thought. But then, they changed. Right before his own startled gaze, they changed to a vivid shamrock. Then amber. Then tangerine. Then periwinkle. Then crimson. And then they swirled and pulsed rings of every color in the rainbow, and even more wondrous shades he had never, ever seen before. Joey stared deep into the eldritch seas of the bride’s kaleidoscopic eyes, unable to resist.
It felt good. So very, very good. So good that he didn’t notice the bride’s hands gripping at his wrists. He smiled dumbly, only vaguely aware of her warm grip changing to something cold and slimy, something that slithered up the length of his arms to his elbows and pinioned them at his sides in an iron vise.
Nor did he notice, as he gazed into the bride’s pulsating eyes, the rest of her face contorting. Her pretty red lips coming undone, the upper and lower bows swinging out each to one side and unsheathing a pair of black fangs. Her ghastly tallow mouth opening wider and wider, til it seemed her jaws were splitting apart at the seams. When her yard-long tongue shot out lassolike to coil tightly round Joey’s chest it knocked the wind out of him, but all he could think was how pretty her eyes were, how good it felt to look at them.
That intoxicating goodness continued to saturate him even after her eyes fell out of view, leaving a hallucinogenic afterglow seared into his corneas; as he was lifted into the air and her tongue began to reel his yielding body into her pallid maw, shoving him down her gullet and into a warm, wet chamber that he fit into snugly, curled up like a fetus, returning him to his natural end in yet another womb.
Blearily, he blinked away the afterglow of her eyes, and it was only there, in wet, musky darkness, that he realized what had happened to him, what was happening to him.
It didn’t hurt. Not at first.