by S. J. Smith
“What the hell,” she said softly. The room released a soft hissing noise and Juniper looked around quickly, wanting to see where the creature would come out from if it did. Nothing came out, and she sat there confused.
The unit that regulates the oxygen on her suit, on the right arm, beeped loudly to let her know it was deactivating. She panicked again, trying to set it back on, but it was reading that the room was filling completely with oxygen. She watched the readings, stunned, and double checked them to be sure. It wasn’t a mistake, these devices rarely ever malfunctioned. She left her helmet a bit longer until what oxygen was left in the suit was depleted. Setting her helmet in her lap she turned her attention to the wall behind her again.
The gash was now a navy blue so dark it was almost black. She touched it and through the gloves of her suit she could feel that it felt like hard blown glass where she had cut, no longer soft and giving under her touch.
What did that ball of quills do to make it so there was oxygen in there? She couldn’t help but ask herself this and many other questions. She decided it probably was able to gage what her suit was filled with by probing it and puncturing the helmet, but even then she was amazed it could replicate the oxygen so perfectly.
The creature slipped back into the room through the aperture in the ceiling, circling the ceiling before coming down and resting in front of her on the ground. It rolled forward for a moment and dropped a quill at her feet before backing up again. Slowly, with measured movements, Juniper reached down and picked it up, turning the quill over in her hands a couple times.
It was heavier than it looked, and at the base it was more of a red than a black color. She bundled it carefully, so that the tip of it couldn’t puncture her suit, and then packed it into her bag. She spotted a veggie bar in a small bag and realized how hungry she actually was. She began to bite into it when she realized she had received a gift but not given one in return. Breaking the bar in half, she leaned forward to offer one half to the creature, setting it on the ground in front of the spike ball. Seemingly pleased with the offering, it picked it up with one of its small paws and turned it over, tilting itself back to Juniper to watch her. She ate her half slowly, brushing the crumbs from her mouth gently.
The creature watched this carefully, it’s quills rippling in excitement. Juniper smiled at it genuinely, it seemed intelligent enough and mostly harmless, this was a once in a lifetime discovery as far as the expeditions she had been on were concerned.
She began to try to communicate with it when a huge explosion erupted from what felt like just a few feet away from them. In the moment it took her to gather herself the creature had vanished.
***
Pov had leapt into the molten mess the moment he blasted into the ground and immediately found himself being swarmed by a mob of spiky balls that weren’t exactly stabbing him, but definitely weren’t being careful with him as he felt himself quickly be swept away underground.
Watching the monitor closely he could see they were dragging him towards the heat signature he was sure was Juniper. After a few more moments he was shoved through a narrow aperture, he lost hold of his handheld in the commotion, but it was worth it. It felt like he was being born anew as he fell down from the entrance in front of Juniper. She rushed to his side and looked him over.
“Are you okay? What was that noise?” she asked, dragging him up into a seated position. He looked into her blue and worried eyes, amazed by them for a moment before he too got concerned.
“Why is your helmet off, put it on,” he responded, not answering any of her questions in his own worry.
“I’m fine, look the room is completely full of oxygen and it’s being cycled somehow,” she showed him her right arm so he could see the screen. “Now answer my questions.”
“I’m alright also, I just used this little babe,” he motioned to his blast gun, “because I saw your heat signature was here and I needed to get to you.” He removed his helmet, leaning back against the wall of the room and catching his breath. Assured that he was fine, Juniper sighed a breath of relief.
“You interrupted us,” she complained. “I was so close to getting to see if the damned pin cushion could communicate more than body language and you had to blow a hole in its home.” She knew that he was just trying to help her but she was first and foremost a scientist; a scientist who just had the validity of her study of an alien creature compromised.
“Look, I know you are wanting to figure out these spike balls but I heard that you were sucked into the ground and it scared the hell out of me okay? You’re so brilliant and important and the thought of anything happening to you terrifies me,” he said angrily. He was pissed she couldn’t understand where he was coming from with this. “I didn’t have a clue where you were or what was happening to you, you could have been dead- so don’t you dare scold me for wanting to be sure that the cleverest person I know didn’t just disappear from my life without me getting to say goodbye,” he finished, breathing heavily and angrily.
This was the first time she had properly seen him as a man, instead of just the cyborg nerdy kid who ran her ship. She looked into his eyes, really looked into them, and could see the emotion clearly behind the dark coloration, it was all out there in the open.
Tearing the helmet off his suit, she pressed her lips against his, her hand on the back of his neck. She could feel goosebumps rising on his nape.
“Okay,” she said, backing away from his lips and pressing her forehead against his. “Okay, I’m sorry you’re right. You're always right,” she could feel her own heart beating rapidly.
“I've liked you for ages, always flirting but I never thought you'd actually feel it back,” he said softly, his breath was warm on her face. Juniper shook her head.
“Of course I like you, of course I do, I just,” she sighed. “I just am married to the job, you know? I never considered stepping out of that until…” she paused.
“Until what?” he asked.
She knew that he knew what she was going to say, but she let him milk it out of her anyways.
“Until I realized that we could vanish at any moment, the work can't hold me tight and help me forget that,” Juniper explained.
Pov didn't respond. This time he pulled her to him, his lips were warm and brash against hers and he held her cheek with one hand. She leaned into the kiss, his tongue requested entrance and she allowed it, letting their tongues explore each other’s mouths, almost panting in need.
He pulled her into his lap and she straddled him, they had both unwittingly waited so long for someone else to make the first move. She unzipped the top of her suit a bit, down the front of her neck, it had suddenly gotten so warm in the small room. His hands slid down to her hips, and then his lips trailed from her lips to her neck, eliciting a reverent gasp from her. Her hips subconsciously ground against his and it felt blindingly good. She stole another kiss from his lips, bruising a little bit but wanting every ounce of him.
He smiled at this and his gripped her hips a little tighter. She paused for breath and he returned his attention back to her neck. “This isn’t the place,” she gasped after a moment, regardless of the fact that she was arching back as she felt him nip a bite above her clavicle.
“I know,” he replied, soothing the love bite with a soft kiss. She pushed them apart to arm’s length, still sitting in his lap.
“I absolutely do want this, but it wouldn’t be right to do anything here,” she explained.
“I know,” he repeated, smiling cheekily at her.
The suits were already skin tight, and she could see some interest showing in the front of his, a bulge that raised up and to the left of where his navel would be. She eyed it for a moment before trailing her fingertips up the length of it. Pov gasped and leaned his head back against the wall of the room, taken aback by her boldness.
“Maybe going a little bit further wouldn’t be too much of a shame, I don’t think they’d understand what we were doing if th
ey walked in on us anyways,” she said thoughtfully, caressing the head of his dick through the fabric with her thumb. “I’d just hate to leave you hard up like this,” she smiled.
His hands tightened on her hips again and he pulled her against him, closing the space quickly. He kissed her more passionately than before and she couldn’t help but laugh into it, sliding her hand up and down the length of his dick to elicit a sweet moan from him.
He lifted her up before lying her onto her back, his eyes looking over her as if it were for the first time. Leaning forward he kissed her again, his right hand skimming her left leg’s inner thigh, pinching a little bit teasingly, it was Juniper’s turn to gasp.
“I want to make you feel good,” he said roughly, pulling his face away from hers. There were a few options and all of them sounded amazing to him, but he wanted to know what she liked. “Would you rather my hands…,” he punctuated this by taking a long swipe between her legs, adding the most pressure to the clit and making her have to close her eyes, “or my mouth on you?” he asked, his voice was as close to a growl as it could get.
“Oh damn,” she muttered, unable to make up her mind for once in her life.
“Or would you rather if I just…” He leaned down on top of her and ground his pelvis against hers. This elicited a moan from both of them.
“Yes, that… god that,” she muttered. It had been so long for her since she had anything but her fingers down there that she forgot how incredible it felt just to be in contact with someone else.
“Mm,” he replied kissing her as he rolled his hips against hers.
She moaned again, arching her neck to a point that it broke their kiss, it just felt so good. Her arching her back corrected the angle so that he hit just right on her clit. She was shaking as she rolled her hips back against his, increasing the friction.
He was now kneeling between her legs, he pulled her hips into his lap and she lay back rolling her hips in opposite motion of him, making their connections longer and more intense. She moaned again, grasping to the strange moss flooring.
“You’re so beautiful,” Pov said, keeping a languid pace that was driving her insane. His grip on her waist was divine, but she felt like if he didn’t speed up she’d die.
“Let me drive,” she said, leaning up and kissing him. “Lay on your back, with your knees up so I can lean on them,” she commanded. Her voice lit a fire in him, and she liked it a bit more than she expected.
She lowered herself onto him, the naughty feeling of dirtying their suits was enough to make her face flush red. The suits were air and water proof, so it’s not like stains would show up, but it was an attractive idea. Modulating her hips back and forth while bearing down on him was incredible, it felt better than she could have hoped for. She leaned her head back and felt him unzip the top of her suit more, revealing her bra and bare chest. The bra had clasps on the front and she undid them herself, letting her breasts out, sweat beading across her chest as she continued to rub against him.
He thumbed her left nipple, then squeezed it between his thumb and middle finger. Juniper gasped, looking at him through half lidded eyes.
“I’m close,” she gasped out, his hips bumping back against hers. He leaned up and she met him halfway, kissing him while still rubbing in all the right places. Her breasts were now jostling quickly with her movement and he was adoring them with his warm hands. He sat up and licked her right nipple, scraping his teeth against it slightly, and that’s all it took, she was quickly coming and so hard.
The white-out of her orgasm was blinding and seemed to go on forever, her mouth was open and she knew she was moaning but there was nothing to be done about that.
“Fuck,” she moaned as she came down from it. The moment she did, she could feel Pov buck up against her and suddenly his crotch and the stomach of his suit were a lot warmer than they had been. He collapsed back against the ground, resting his hands on her thighs.
“If this is what happens whenever you disappear, you should do that more often,” he joked. Juniper laughed and swung her leg over so that she could get to her pack.
“Here, you can take care of the mess a bit with this,” she handed him a small travel pack of tissues she’d had in her bag.
“Thanks,” he said, taking it and turning away to clean up, she smiled at the sound of his zipper as she turned around to check what else she had packed.
***
Bren was pissed and panicked.
He couldn’t walk away and go get his gun because the last time he went to the ship someone vanished, but just standing there he was useless.
Breathing deeply, he decided to take a step back and look at what he knew. They were disappearing into the ground, this was proven by the fact that although he hadn’t said exactly what he found, Pov had shot downwards into whatever was down there and that’s when he vanished.
He wasn’t sure if they were alive.
He wasn’t sure if Juniper, the woman he- he stopped these thoughts in their tracks, they weren’t helping. Looking up at the suns he tried to gage how much time until nightfall came. The further sun was just flirting with the horizon, the other was still a way off from it, he had a handful of hours. He needed to stop trying to fix what was already done. He ran back to the ship. If anyone else were around he’d joke that he was at least getting his cardio for the day.
Searching through what the ship had to offer, he didn’t see much that he could use without hurting them if he were to try to blast them out. He could dig, but he had tried to do that with his hands earlier and it wasn’t a possibility.
They had been dragged under by whatever it was once they drew attention to themselves, he could do that also.
Grabbing the loudest handheld speaker they had on the ship, he wired it into his system through the ports on his right wrist, so that his voice could be transmitted out of it. Grabbing a couple guns and his pack he loaded himself up with weaponry. He’d be as loud as possible to draw whatever it was out.
Stepping out onto the planet’s surface again, he began to shout obscenities.
“COME ON THEN, IF YOU WANT ME TOO, COME ON OUT AND HAVE A COMPLETE SET,” his voice boomed from the speaker, he had amped it up so the volume would be even louder than usual. He fired a blast gun into the sky and it boomed and echoed as it went off, mingling with his voice. “DON’T BE SHY NOW, I’M DONE WAITING,” he continued, blasting off another shot into the sky. He was sure Juniper would have a heart attack if she could see what he was doing to the ecosystem here, he didn’t care.
He continued with the loudness, running over to where the crater was and still doing it. He wouldn’t fire into the ground, he couldn’t tell where in the soil and moss they were, but he would absolutely raise the most hell he could.
*****
There was something wrong.
Pov and Juniper could hear huge amounts of noise, they were muffled a bit by the moss but still there, still booming.
“What the hell is that?” Juniper asked, placing her hand against the moss on the wall of their enclosure. It was shaking. “We need to get out of here,” she said sternly.
“How? It’s not like we can fire the gun, we’d cook in a small place like this,” he responded. Juniper had another idea.
“Look, feel the dark part of the wall, notice how hard it is?” she asked, motioning for him to put his hand on it.
“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully, realizing where she was going with this.
“My knife didn’t do much, but if we could fashion something sharp out of this before we kill it, we might be able to cut through the wall more deeply with it,” she explained, already getting to work. She used her knife to cut a long, almost perfectly shovel shaped, pattern into the ground. Quickly working, she then lifted the tip of the thinner side of the “handle” the most she could and cut under it, freeing it from the ground. It hardened as she pulled so she had to be sure to move quickly, handing the end to Pov so he could pull it straight as she worked.
“We need to move quickly or these will be pointless, we might be able to dig ourselves out if you do the digging,” she explained. He was a cyborg, parts his body had literally been designed to move faster and be stronger.
“Alright,” he said, leaning over to pick up her helmet and hand it to her. She slid it on and secured it, taking a moment to look at the hole the creature had made and repaired.
“Alright,” she agreed, ready.
He started into the wall at a 45-degree angle upward from a height they could easily climb into. The slot he basically was scraping out for them was no wider than a couple feet, no taller than five feet, it was tight and he had to crouch down to do it. She waited in the main chamber, not wanting to be smacked by all the debris that was flying out from his quick work. The debris landed hard like rocks against the soft flooring of the room.
One of the pincushion creatures came into the room from one of their more organic tunnels and just sat there, no rippling, no reaction.
“I’m sorry to destroy your home, but I can’t stay here any longer,” she said softly. Pov shouted down that she could come out now, he’d reached daylight and it only took him five minutes. She hollered back that she’d be right up, and then looked back at the creature sadly before hoisting herself up and through the tunnel. It was a tight and short travel, but when she finally got out she was so excited to see one of the two suns just sitting on the horizon.