by Lyn Gala
Max followed. As the exterior hatch closed, an unfamiliar claustrophobia gripped him, but Max focused on the task at hand, pushing his fears aside. “I think you’re asking me if my species likes the young of other species. The answer is yes. I love dog offspring. I like cat and horse and cow offspring.” Max tried to remember if he’d been around other babies. He’d had fish growing up, but considering how many of those had died, he should probably avoid mentioning that.
“Query. Dogs.”
“Another species. I have raised two dogs. I raised a cow once.” Considering that had been for 4-H, Max planned to avoid any discussion of what had happened to it.
Rick stopped at the junction of two corridors and turned in a circle. Max should have chosen a better name because he was getting a brain cramp thinking of this tentacle creature as “Rick.”
“Query. Military.”
Max stared, not sure what Rick was asking. “I need more words.” When Rick let the silence continue, Max added, “Translation matrix failure.”
Rick rotated the other way. “Human Max military.”
“Yes. I’m an Air Force captain. I fly ships,” Max agreed. If this was a job interview, he wasn’t sure what sort of answer this guy wanted. Maybe he was afraid Max would lose his mind and chop his children into pieces. Who knew what sort of military personnel he knew.
“Query. Fight.”
Max needed to minimize the chance he would lose the only high-paying job he had been offered. “I tried to fight Nish. I didn’t do well. No good fighting.”
Rick stretched upward so several of his largest eyes were on level with Max’s. It meant his huge head and weird hat were pressed against the low ceiling. He must not have had an internal skeleton because his head flattened out. “Translation matrix fail.”
Max sighed. “I feel like I’m going to hear that phrase a lot. Deep conversations are not in our future.”
“Translation matrix fail.”
“Yeah. I got that. It’s a good thing I can amuse myself. On the bright side, you’ve never heard any of the Star Wars stories, so I can tell that story and you’ll think I’m brilliant. At least until I get to the first trilogy, but I’ll change it up. My personal theory is that Jar Jar Binks is a Sith. I’ll tell you that version.”
“Query. Trilogy.”
To hell with shooting someone else. Max might shoot himself. “Query. Offspring.” Maybe if he met the kids and figured out what he was supposed to do to keep them out of trouble, he could get his mind off his troubles. With any luck, the kids would be too young to speak and then the language barrier wouldn’t even matter. Max would need to figure out how to change alien diapers.
Max frowned and studied Rick’s body shape. Unlike most aliens, he didn’t wear clothes—only a saddle-like hat that carried tools. That was pressed up against the ceiling right now. However, Max had no idea how Rick or his kids would eat or where the diaper would go. Maybe underneath where the central leg tentacle came out of the center mass? Max forced his mind away from alien poop and looked Rick in the eye... well, the eye that was pointed toward Max.
Rick said, “Query. Health.”
“Answer. Healthy.”
Rick slid a few inches closer. “Query. Health.”
“You want to check my health, don’t you? Oh, there are so many X-Files episodes I’m flashing back to right now. I truly regret my addiction to television. Deeply regret.” Max knew he was being stupid, but his heart rate was still doing a jittery dance.
Rick said in a voice loud enough that it would have rattled windows if any had been around, “Query. Health. Query. Offspring.” He followed this with a huge blast of untranslated bugle sounds. That was cursing. Weird, but cursing sounded like cursing in every language, apparently even alien ones.
Max nodded. “Yeah, you’re a nervous father. I get it. You don’t want me to give the kiddos smallpox. That’s reasonable.”
One of Rick’s large tentacles shot out and wrapped around Max’s wrist. “Translation matrix fubar!” he shouted, and Max might have agreed—enthusiastically agreed, even—only he had to focus on keeping his feet under him as Rick dragged him through a maze of corridors. For a creature with one tentacle leg, Rick was graceful and fast.
“Hey! Wait. Slow down,” Max gasped out when they stopped in some sort of transport. His stomach lurched when the diagonal movement didn’t match any direction he had anticipated. Rick braced his tentacles against the transport walls, and the space was so small that Max ended up pinned into a corner by two of them. The transport jerked to a halt and the door slid up.
“Can we talk—?” Max ended with a squawk when Rick rushed him down another claustrophobic corridor. They stopped next to a door, and Rick let Max go. For a half second, Max contemplated running, but first, he needed the job. Second, he didn’t know how to get out, and third, he sympathized with Rick’s frustration at their lack of communication. He didn’t approve of the grabbing and dragging, but he’d been known to do something similar with his brother when the twerp frustrated him.
Max felt a needle-prick to his heart at the thought of Petey. He’d be at least twenty before Max would be able to get home again. Assuming Max could get home.
“Let’s talk. Communicate,” Max said hopefully. The door folded in on itself like an accordion, with the folds disappearing into the top of the doorway. Inside was a space just as tight the others he’d seen on this ship, but this one had a tilted table in the middle. Max’s imagination went into overdrive.
Rick blurted a huge burped conversation, but the translator only caught three words: confirm, health, and firewalled. Rick’s computer translator appeared to have picked up a different set of words than the translators on the first ship, and Max wasn’t impressed with how it used them.
“Right. So, I guess this is where we do the whole checkup. You’d better keep your tentacles to yourself.” Max eased into the room. Since Rick was ninety percent tentacle and had no other way to use instruments, Max figured he didn’t have good odds on that, but a man could hope.
Chapter Four
Max stood beside the low table and wondered what he was supposed to do. For all the earlier rush, Rick didn’t seem interested in hurrying now. He went to one wall and spent significant time sticking his tentacles into various holes and grooves. “My mother always told me I shouldn’t stick a finger in a light socket,” Max said. “But then Wile E Coyote taught me the exact opposite, so who am I to judge?”
Rick ignored him.
Max wondered if Rick was watching him. The fact he had eyes scattered all the way around his head ranked high on the freaky scale. And given that Max had spent the last several days living on an alien ship—that was saying something. His freak meter had reached terrifying new levels. A hologram rose in the middle of the table—a tiny human figure. The hologram got larger and shifted to display a vascular system. “Query,” Rick said.
Max sighed. He preferred it when Rick lost patience and dragged him across the ship. At least then Max wasn’t risking death by boredom or frustration. “I’m going to get sick of hearing that word, aren’t I?”
Two tentacles twitched. “Query.”
Max sighed. “Blood. Vascular system.” And that started the most boring four hours of Max’s life since he’d taken the SATs in high school. He identified hundreds of words for various parts of the human body. When Rick decided he wanted to check the health of his new nanny, he took that job seriously. Eventually, the digestive system led to discussions of intestines.
Rick zoomed in to show the wall of the intestines, and as the tiny sliver grew to fill the whole hologram, candy-shaped structures wriggled. “Ew.” He had been half lying on the desk, but now he took a step back.
“Query.”
“Yeah, yeah. Either I’ve picked up alien parasites or those are bacteria.”
Two of Rick’s tentacles shook. “Query!” he said louder. Apparently he didn’t like ambiguous answers.
His temper fraying, Max sh
outed back, “Bacteria!”
Rick ran the scan down the intestines, the camera view turning and twisting to show different segments. “Query bacteria.”
“Answer. Digestive system,” Max said. He had no idea how to reassure Rick that bacteria were normal. Hell, maybe Rick thought the bacteria was the intelligent life form he’d hired and Max was the meat suit it was wearing. Max got an up close and personal view of his colon all the way to the end before Rick shifted to the reproductive system.
At least he didn’t obsess over it as much as the bacteria, although Max did spend too much time looking at his own sperm. He was grateful when Rick moved the scan down to his feet. “Check health,” Rick said.
“Yeah. I thought that’s what we were doing.”
Rick slid a few inches closer. “Health offspring.” A thinner tentacle darted out and ran up the cuff of Max’s uniform shirt.
Max jerked his hand away. “Whoa. Hey. Bad touching.”
Rick blasted the air with his weird musical belching and caught Max’s shirt. Before Max could free himself from the tiny finger tentacles holding him, another tentacle had pushed his shirt up and over his head. Rick had some real muscle, because he lifted Max onto the table.
“Rude much?” Max asked, but then one tentacle pressed a flat instrument of some sort against Max’s cheek while another pulled at his undershirt. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t rip it. It’s not like I have anything else to change into. As it was, Max needed to figure out washing facilities. On the military ship, those had been marked, so Max only had to look for the symbol shaped like a worm with three horns. So far, none of Rick’s doors had any signs. He stripped off his undershirt and put it next to his uniform shirt on the edge of the table. At least Rick had been polite enough to keep it off the floor. The whole time, Rick kept the cool metal instrument against his cheek.
“Query.” Rick followed that with another blast of words, these closer to whale song than burping.
“Yeah, I didn’t get any of that,” Max said, but then a tentacle reached for his waistband. “Okay, so we’re going for the full physical. I would normally ask that a nurse sit in for this part.” He slid off the table/desk and unbuttoned his pants. When Rick had first started asking about his health, Max had expected the full monty. The existence of the magical scanners had given him a glimmer of hope that he could avoid it. “I suppose I can’t blame you. I’d feel guilty if I gave them the measles.” He folded the pants and underwear and put them with his shirt and undershirt. “I don’t know whether your nudity makes this better or worse.”
“Translation matrix failure.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Max got back onto the table, his bare ass right over where the hologram appeared. He felt like a kid trying to photocopy his butt. Rick pressed the flat metal against Max’s thigh.
“Health offspring digestive system.”
Max frowned. “I don’t think my gut bacteria will hurt your kids.” He didn’t know if that was true. Neither college nor the Air Force had covered cross-species contamination with aliens. Thinking of home caused an all-too-familiar jolt in Max’s gut, so he pushed those memories away. He couldn’t afford to get maudlin, especially when he was flirting with depression. It was one thing to sit around with a beer and good-naturedly gripe to his friends about the promotions board being full of shitheads. It was quite another to let himself dwell on all the ways life had kicked him in the teeth.
“Do you ever wear clothes?” Max asked his many-tentacled boss. “I mean, the guys on the other ship had wide belts or skirts and one even had tentacle pants, but you’re letting it all hang out. Or it would hang out if I knew what your balls looked like.” Max frowned as he considered the various tentacles. They were different shapes, some bulbous and some tapered. One of them might have been Rick’s penis, assuming he had one. Rick might have been a girl. Maybe caring for children primarily fell to the parent who gave birth to them.
Rick curled a tentacle around Max’s thigh and yanked up fast enough that Max fell and would have slammed the back of his head against the table if another tentacle hadn’t caught him. “Warn a guy!” Max shouted.
Rick blasted out something, but the translator only caught “acceptable,” “offspring,” and “health.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sadly, you still have a better bedside manner than my Air Force intake doctor.” Max kept up a steady stream of conversation and avoided thinking about the tentacles mapping his skin. “I don’t know whether he wanted to weed out the weak or if he took exception to me because I’m gay. Who knows? It’s hard to tell who dislikes me and who dislikes my sexual orientation, which is why I try to avoid those conversations. You’re a pretty good listener, did you know that?”
A tentacle brushed against Max’s cock. “Whoa. That is a little personal.”
Despite the fact that Rick had ignored Max’s whole monologue, this caught his attention. He said, “Query. Define personal.”
“You are touching parts of me that even the military didn’t touch. And I thought their physicals were pretty invasive.” Max drew out the word pretty.
“Query. Pretty.” The translator mimicked Max’s pronunciation.
Max gave a braying laugh. “I’m pretty sure you want to define invasive.” A tentacle slid between his balls and over his hole. Max yelped and scooted back a few inches, which was how much slack he had before the tentacles drew tight. “Whoa. That. That’s invasive.” His voice was dangerously high. “That right there is invasive.”
Rick stopped. A couple of tentacles pulsed against Max’s leg, but everything else grew still. “Query. Compensation. Offspring.”
Max drew a breath. Right. If he wanted compensation, Rick needed to check out those scary, scary bacteria. One little anal probe by an alien tentacle was absolutely not more terrifying than flying a jet fighter against alien invaders. Hell, it wasn’t even as scary as his ROTC commander. Even his dad trumped tentacles for sheer terror, although he refused to think about family while naked. Nope. Some psychological trauma was not worth it.
“Answer. Compensation,” Max said. One tentacle slowly slid up his back. Max took a breath and looked away from the bulbous head hovering near his right shoulder. The tip of a tentacle pushed against Max’s ass.
It had been a while since anything had gone up there. Duty had kept Max so busy that he’d barely had time to masturbate in the shower. Hell, he’d gone steady with his right hand so long that it would have gotten jealous if Max had tried playing with a dildo. So the feel of something sliding into him sent unfamiliar shivers through his body.
“Thank God you use slick,” Max said.
“Query—”
“Answer!” Max shouted. He couldn’t deal with Rick’s annoyingness and his tentacles at the same time. Rick made a sound like a long trombone note, and then pushed his tentacle in faster.
“Oh fuck!” Max gasped, and technically he wasn’t wrong. That felt like fucking. Too much like fucking. Why the hell had he ever objected to Daniel’s tentacle dildo toy? If anything, the porn that Max had read and vowed to never admit to reading had underplayed the sexual prowess of tentacles. Even though Max knew Rick was only interested in checking out gut bacteria, the undulating movement against Max’s prostate was driving him past the point of coherent thought. Rick made a fluttering trumpet noise the translator didn’t catch at all. Maybe Rick was expressing surprise that his new nanny was a fucking tentacle whore.
Max took a deep breath and tried to calm his racing heart. That didn’t help his cock situation, but even the thought of Old Man Wilson with his nose hairs and black acne couldn’t counteract the evil brilliance of Rick’s tentacle. The damn thing swelled and bulged, and the delicious stretch made Max’s ass hunger for more.
“Query. Blood flow increase.”
“Oh hell yes.” Max gripped the edges of the table and fought an urge to jerk off. He was pretty sure that ejaculating on your boss was bad manners in any galaxy, but if Rick didn’t finish soon, that’s exactly what would happen.
“Query. Blood flow changes.”
That was it. Max was in hell. He was getting the best ass stretch of his life. His ass was full of twitching, swelling tentacle until his brains were leaking, and the damn fucking alien wanted to have a fucking conversation. This was hell. Max’s dick threatened to explode, and that would be the perfect shit cherry on life’s sundae.
“Query. Blood flow changes,” Rick repeated. He also twitched his tentacle. Max’s cock leaked pre-cum.
“Answer. Reproductive system.” Max held on to the table harder when Rick tugged his tentacle. Whatever he was doing up Max’s butt, his tentacle appeared to have gotten stuck, so he gave several tugs. Each time, the pressure increased against Max’s prostate, and Max fought the instinct to buck his hips.
Never one to pass up a chance to be annoying, Rick said, “Query. Blood flow changes.”
Max gasped, not able to answer immediately as his brain suffered a small white-out. His ass was stuffed so full that he feared he might split in half. Of course if that happened, he would die a happy man. Rick gave another tug, and the pressure edged over into pain. It was enough to anchor Max to reality for a moment. “Answer. You are turning on my reproductive system.”
Rick grew still. Eventually he asked, “Query. Human offspring. Now. Soon.”
Max laughed. “No offspring. I need woman with a different reproductive system to make offspring. And no offense to the women in my life because I love many of them deeply, but I would cut off my dick before I would put it in a woman.” He respected bisexual men, but he was not anywhere near the middle of the scale. If he wanted kids, and he did one day, he would have to find a nice man to settle down with and look into adoption. As hard as it was for a gay couple to get a kid, the system was impossible for a single man.
“Query. Woman.”
“Man reproductive system plus woman reproductive system leads to offspring,” Max said. “How is this my life now? I feel like I’m trapped in a spaceship with a three year old... oooha.” Max’s voice rose to a squeal as Rick’s tentacle caused a stomach cramp so severe that Max’s stomach rippled and contracted. “Fuck. Shit. Fucking shit.” Max writhed in pain. “Oh Lord. Too much. Too much.”