The mountain range was grey with a blue and white sky over it. The locals had some trade routes through the passes, but it was otherwise bereft of life. That made a landing by a bell-shaped space capsule go relatively unnoticed in the foothills of the mountains.
"Damn Northrop junk," Astronaut Lena Baker slammed the hatch shut and kicked the side of the machine. The capsule rested at an angle on four landing legs. Its side was scorched by more than reentry. A deep cut broke six of the thirty-six small thrusters forming the rounded aerospike engine that was the bottom of the ship and the heat shield.
Lena adjusted her environment suit and looked at her PDA. "Now, where is that energy source?" The chirping device pointed her in the direction of the mountains themselves. "Great." The bike wouldn't serve her today. She glanced out at the plains to the west. Smoke columns rose from primitive manufacturing and cookfires.
Lena was a private explorer, some distance from Earth. She'd stumbled across an odd signal on an alien world, some sort of energy source. She'd settled into orbit, deploying standard probes and satellites. The planet was earth like, but occupied by a medieval civilization. Records indicated it had been more advanced in the past and was slowly rebuilding. To her disappointment, it was not isolated, satellite photos showed a road leading to it. Maybe this was sign of electricity being redeveloped.
Lena looked up at where the computer said the anomaly was. "Road, my ass." It was a distant trace of one, but nobody had maintained it."
Unfortunately, this being a primitive world, and the presence of the supposed road meant it belonged to the locals and wasn't some curiosity, meaning she couldn't go down. Lena knew her ship was capable of landing, but she couldn't land on a primitive world like this. Her rich payday would have to wait a few weeks for proper federal authorities.
Twelve hours earlier, however, before she could transmit a report, something went wrong. There was an explosion on the service module, like Apollo 13. Her oxygen tanks and half the fuel cells were dead in minutes. Lena shivered at the memory, the bangs and shimmies as the computer tried to regain control. Her PDA beeping chirped louder.
Unlike those astronauts, Lena didn't have a lunar module for a lifeboat. So she had to put down. That was how she found herself in a misty mountain range, looking at her scanner. Her reentry capsule had separated from the main body of the ship and landed mostly intact.
Lena looked back at the capsule, and up at the sky. The service module was still up there, despite the damage. It's electronics were partially intact and it transmitted an automated distress call. She also still had the microsatellite constellation for GPS and scanning capability. She'd be rescued. But she had to find a way to survive until then.
The capsule came down near a lake to get plenty of fresh water. Lena could see it off to her right. It was surrounded by jagged stone rocks forming a perimeter. From here, she could see solid green plants around the lake, remarkably like Earth. The amino acids seemed compatible enough according to tests from last night, though Lena didn't like her chances. Sinister-ass lake, she thought. The rocks looked like teeth. It seemed almost fitting that it was her best chance at survival.
She turned her attention back to her scanner. "I came all this way, might as well find out what the fuss is about," Lena murmured to herself. She followed the road, or the dusty trail of barely recognizable asphalt. A few kilometers down, she was already sweating. She'd turned down the temperature control on her suit to save her batteries some stress. Even rechargeables could run out if the rescue took too long. Lena's thoughts turned back to survival. The air was breathable, and she didn't detect any spores, but she had to be careful. She patted her side. A 3-D printed sidearm sat comfortably in its holster. Her mechanical counterpressure suit clung tightly to her body by design. Most of her gear was back in the capsule. She had everything she needed to survive.
The road led to a gully against the mountainside, carved by heavy machinery long ago. The edges of the gully were worn down, but the slope was still at a perfect angle. Lena could see down into it, lengthwise. At the far end, in the mountain, was a large metal blast door. It was still somewhat ajar.
"Must be an old bomb shelter," Lena muttered. She approached it. She hit her flashlight and lit up the inside. The large doors protected a voluminous airlock. Animal droppings lay across the floor. The walls were painted in alien script. There were empty storage racks, and a series of showers on one wall. Beside them were primitive hazmat suits, ragged and worn by exposure to the elements.
Lena moved closer. She'd seen satellite photos of the natives, but this was the first time she could get close to something similar to them. They were taller than the average human, but based on the suit, they had two eyes, two arms, two legs, and, looking at the oddly-shaped rear, a tail. The visors on the suits stretched out for some dog-like muzzle. "I can see why the first survey team called them hellhounds," Lena muttered.
The big inner door was closed. Lena hit some controls on her scanner. "What did they invent? Fusion? No..." Where was this anomalous reading coming from? There was some interference from the power source that had fueled this place, but that wasn't it. Her scanner flickered and buzzed. Then it showed the manufacturer's logo. "A reboot? What the hell is wrong with you?"
There was a drip sound in the distance. Lena looked over. If the scanner hadn't rebooted, she wouldn't have seen it. It was the same color as the walls but outlined against them. Lena moved closer. Something was glowing inside. She moved closer and pushed the door open.
Inside, it was dimly lit, dripping with the sound of water. It was as if the energy source was guiding her. She found a large black sphere resting on a pedestal in the center of an inset, like a hot tub pool. Her scanner chirped again. She had found the anomaly. "Like I need a scanner to tell me that," Lena said.
Whatever the room was, it was some sort of secret, judging by its fitting into the wall. Lena moved further along. She stepped into the empty pool.
Watching the sphere, Lena felt strange. Her vision seemed to distort for a moment, then focused. She reached out and picked up the sphere, holding it in both hands.
The top of the sphere exploded. It coated her front with an enormous blast of black goo with a sloppy, wet splattering sound. Lena stumbled back, blinded, and tried to pull it off. Her hands stuck to it, and they came away sticky and with black strands. There was a sizzling of smoke. She opened her mouth to cry out. "Aa-- omph?!" A slimy, gooey, and sticky rod speared itself into her mouth and knocked Lena's head back. She was unable to even scream as the black oil covered the rest of her face.
She tripped and fell on her backside into the pool. She scrabbled at whatever was in her mouth. It was filling her cheeks out, expanding with her throat. It felt like she was on the receiving end of concrete. Her jaw was being held open and her cheeks blown out.
The orb continued producing slime like a faucet. Lena felt the little alcove fill up rapidly with slime. It felt like being hit by a wave at the beach, a tidal force of goo swiftly moved to engulf the rest of her. In less than ten seconds the rest of Lena was covered in the goop. She felt like a scarecrow covered in tar. Lena cleared her eyes enough to realize she was up to her chest in the black gunk.
"Mmf!" She exclaimed. She tried to stand up but the muck and goo was so sticky it was like trying to stand in quicksand. She relaxed, and tried to think her way out. She was sitting back against the edge of the pool. It felt like a mud bath. She wasn't completely immersed, and there were some gaps. She tried to feel for her equipment.
Then she smelled smoke again. Lena lifted her arms. There was a burning sensation against her skin. What little gaps there were in the goop showed. Her clothes were being dissolved by the slime.
"Mmpf!" She screamed. The fabric was eaten away. Her clothes dissolved completely, absorbed by the slime. She tried to grab some of her equipment, like her gun, but abruptly her arms were pulled down. Her body no longer obeyed her commands. She was pulled into a sitting position with her legs stretched out. Then, the slime adjusted her posture, slanting her back slightly as if on a therapist's couch. The slime hardened, and she could barely move. She felt like a marshmallow in Jello.
She whimpered. Is this thing alive?
A distant part of her mind recognized the pit as like a mud bath before the thing in her mouth made a thrust. The spear filled out the inside perfectly. It went down her throat and opened a corridor for her to breathe. She let out a choked wheeze and groaned. The slime traveled up her front and into her mouth. It followed the channel down into her esophagus to coat her insides. Whatever it was reached further and further down, expanding out her entire system. It writhed and shifted constantly, never stable, always stretching out in one way or another. The slime finally covered her eyes. The goop went up her nostrils, into her eye sockets, around her sclera. Still more poured into her ears. The slime had swallowed her whole, and what's more, was inside her brain.
What a weird way to g o...
The slime had covered her body completely. Lena whimpered but almost resignedly. Every single crevice and angle, every little contour of her body was coated in eight layers of muck. It was warmer than she expected. More slime poured onto her body and hardened immediately.
Lena let out a muffled moan at an unexpected sensation. Oh, come on! She gasped as the entity opened her backdoor and her vagina at the same time. Her eyes went wide under the slime coating.
Two enormous spears penetrated her, filling her, not slowing down like the one in her throat had, but filling her up immediately. She arched her back as she was filled up. The first one went up into her womb and parked in her fallopian tubes. Her anus was filled and the intruder made its way into her digestive tract, through her large and small intestine. Lena could feel it moving inside her. Everything inside her was stretching. Then it met the mouth spear in her stomach. All three were pumping slime into her like she was an industrial container.
Lena let out a muffled wail as the best orgasm of her life hit her like a freight train. It was the strangest sensation she'd ever felt. Every single part of her was filled with a blackened and filthy alien slime. It constantly moved, constantly shifted, trapping her in this mud bath of the black lagoon.
