Tyarsis Äegris's Worst Day Ever.

By Rose.

Content warning: This story contains fatal vore. The exact nature of this is left as a surprise to the reader.

Tyarsis Äegris was having a very bad day. Well, the entirety of the Muudris Collectorate was having a bad month, really, but she in particular was willing to bet that this day of hers ranked amongst the worst. Learning she was being kicked off to the front territories, not just as a scout but as a denial team, had been the first big chunk taken out of her mood; but at least there was a chance she and the rest of her crew could feed to their hearts intent if there wasn't any action. And as it so happened, G.A2.H.NL, or "Ulis" as the natives called it, had some particularly good "food". Yet, as was the case across the Collectorate, no such luck was afforded to her.

The planet below offered no sympathies. Nor did the whining alarms sounding through her skull, nor the telepathic screaming from a third of the entire ship.

It had gone wrong literally the instant they arrived. Their warp landed them barely ten lightseconds from a hostile fucking battlecruiser, and within realtime range of several fighters. And though the intruders stealth couldn't keep them hidden at such close range, it did keep them as only a blurry faded smudge in the return while the warp bubble was clearing...

Two point four seconds. That was how long it had taken for three ships to become a glowing, shattered torus of light, disemboweled and smeared across the black canvas of the void by some kind of relativistic kinetic cannon; their shields too slow to autodeploy and their active protection still struggling to figure out what was a target and what was leftover warp noise.

Particulate shields were deployed at maximum for the next volley less than two seconds later, but that was the end of them. Weapons that looked like lasers but hit like gamma ray bursts carved a cruel path through the hyperdense fragments that formed their defence system. When the battlecruiser's guns hit, the resultant flash did not simply wash harmlessly across their shielded skin as it should have. Instead it met with the plasmatic remains of their shields and dragged it through, eight more ships lost in a horrifying flare of sparks and plasma, their allies behind coated in the sublimated remains of their strongest ships.

Tyarsis reaches out, and lets her thoughts flow into the ships techno-organic system. Normally it would reach out to welcome her mind. This time there's simply no resistance, her telepathy really just reading the dying twitches of the system. It retains barely enough function to allow her a view outside. It's nothing particularly pleasant. Though the atmosphere of the planet below seems to shimmer with a glowing iridescence, any sight would be equally as sullied when twenty percent of it is taken up with the flickering remnants of her allies' shattered ships... and another third by the immense black monoliths of her enemies ships, predating on the corpses.

They should have stopped further outside the system. They should have been ready to warp skip the instant they came in. They should have demanded reinforcements before they arrived. They—

"They should all just shut the fuck up, because it's obviously way too late now," thought Tyarsis. Though their interception systems of their last four ships had finally gotten their act together, punching the incoming missiles out of existence with warp boosted particulate, they were struggling badly even with the entirety of the shield grid to utilize. The thought of counterfire was laughable too: Though a single direct hit with the 200c warp particle system might be instantly lethal, the intruders strange shields had proven an utter nightmare, dispersing their weapons local warp field into useless noise unless they had time to tune their weapons in each engagement. They could still fire at a decent percent the speed of light, but without the enhanced power and penetration, they were lacking a distinct advantage...

It was during the busiest moment of missile intercepts that the fighters managed to slip in front of the fleeing group, kinetic weapons readied for another volley. The Muudris ships were luckier this time: they knew what to expect when the fighters opened fire, shields deflecting away their shells in a glorious eruption of blue-orange sparks and plasma, all four of their own ships lancing out at the hostiles, pinpoint strikes cutting a trio of the fighters down...

But the tiny victory was hollow, and very, VERY short lived. Half a minute after they first jumped in, and only seconds after the fighters' second volley, another enemy ship swept its way out from behind the planet. It's dark, triangular form was barely visible against the backdrop of space even to their sensors, its iridescent sheen matching the planet below in some cruel twist of fate...

They could barely intercept one ship's worth of missiles. Their defence system quite literally melted at two.

Tyarsis flicks something akin to a mental switch, moving her view to the internal cameras of the ship. Her sight lingers on some commotion in the aft section for a moment as several people fight over the last charge of the teleporter. Dumbasses. They'd soon realise it didn't work when the intruders were around anyways, they'd already found a way to- Oh. Apparently they'd decided to take their chances. A bright flash and a distinct thump marks the activation of the device: a red alert suddenly flashing in the teleport control room marks that the three who'd just tried to use it have been scattered across the void as less than atoms.

The next view isn't much better. She watches as a crew member she's come to recognise, Vitris Adurai, bangs all four fists against a door already closed in the lockdown. She can't quite see what he's so terrified of in this view, but whatever it is, he's clearly screaming himself to death trying to crack the door...

She doesn't need to...vbut she takes a look at one more camera, just to confirm her suspicions. She doesn't need to, of course; she already knows what's happening. But trapped in the bow of their ship, she hasn't got a lot else to do...

Aside from wait her turn.

It's not considered official Muudris policy to truly surrender. With the sheer power of their medical technology, and their fairly early creation of the teleporter, it's almost always possible to either run, or continue fighting despite all injuries, so that allies can heal you later. This is particularly relevant given consideration that being captured is pretty much always a guaranteed death sentence anyway, given the generally very relaxed Muudris attitude around what's considered food, what's considered a person, and what's considered a war crime.

That's why it didn't surprise Tyarsis when the orders were to keep trying to run or shoot long after their shields were vapour, and their overloaded drive systems were pleading for death. What did surprise her a little was the sight of the second, triangular ship approaching the groaning remains of the craft beside hers. It seemed... bold, to attempt to board a ship that was still evidently trying to escape, albeit in futility: the crew would surely fight to the end, or perhaps even use their transporter to hop aboard the ship of the intruders if they got the chance...

Unfortunately, boarding was not on the intruders mind. She watched through her ships own sensor eyes as the dark monolith glided silently in, twisting to align its underside with the pointed bow of its prey. From this angle, she could even read its name on the hull: ISS Moonlight.

Tyarsis did not have time to give the name any thought before the great maw across its belly gaped open wide.

It was... horrifying. She thought she must be hallucinating at first; not merely the interlocking teeth adorning the salvage bay doors, but the strange, writhing bundle of tendrils that slithered fourth, encircling its victims hull, punching their way into the weak, unguarded heart of its quarry, pulling the drive core out as if to savour the moment. But the shimmering vessel did not procrastinate on feeding for long, soon pulling its prey up and into the abyss of its jaws, the ships teeth scything through the now fragile skin of its prey, ravenously chomping through to the tender flesh of hardened, precious metals, seasoned with the bodies of the crew.

Her telepathy betrayed her in full. She could hear, see, even feel what was happening within the belly of the beast. Darkness, confusion, agony as something flooded the torn off chunks of ship, pooling around the legs of the crew and then crawling up, puncturing them like a million fangs and filling their bodies with hungering poison, a gluttonous ooze creeping through their veins and devouring everything it touched along the way. She could feel their minds collapse as their bodies did in kind, the pain dispersed but the terror remaining for as long as their brains could still process such a thing.

A few minutes ago, she was hoping she'd be spared such a fate. When she watched the battlecruiser USCS Verdant Dawn pull up above her, she actually felt relief. At least it didn't look like it had teeth, aside from in the metaphorical sense.

That was a few minutes ago, though. That was before the battlecruiser had fired down some sort of pod through the hull of the ship. That was when she didn't know better.

Then she was simply hiding away at the furthest point of the ship, watching on internal cameras as the same silvery, iridescent ooze march through the ships corridors. Perhaps it was just her imagination but it seemed to flow with purpose, with intent, hunting down its victims as it subsumed every surface. She could do no more than watch as Vitris failed to escape, his tail caught first in the slime. He didn't even seem to notice it at fist, so intensely focused on trying to breach the door, but when he finally did, he seemed to forget about everything else but his most primal instinct: to run. He ran and ran, directly back through the spreading puddle of ooze, sprinting for who the fuck knows where. He didn't get far, not before his feet liquefied beneath him, sending him face-first into the creeping silver tide. The cameras were high quality, and so she could watch in perfect detail as his skin slipped away wherever the fluid touched, his blood tainting the tide red for only a moment. He put up more of a fight than some of the others did, but only until something important is devoured, at which point he collapsed down, eyes still glancing about in mortified disbelief, until they too were swept away.

It wouldn't be far from her now.

She doesn't really want to know. But something pushes her again anyways, and she switches cameras once more. This time... the scene is much closer. It's the one she can hear in fact, though only barely as it's muffled by a room in between her, and the five crewmembers still firing in futility at the liquid death. It only makes things worse. Though their weapons do seem to burn up a small portion of the ooze with each shot, they also splatter it across the walls, across the ceiling, and, after it gets just a little too close...across themselves. They're more perceptive than Vitris; they notice what's happened almost immediately, but that doesn't actually change anything. One gets the idea to try and burn off the affected arm before it can creep further up across his body; but hesitation on the part of his fellow crewmate kills that choice dead as it winds around to his midsection, dropping him to the floor in screaming agony while he's quite literally eaten alive. The others fair no better, all trying to flee but hardly making it five steps before they either meet the iridescent slime head-on, or drop to the ground, stunned with pain...

Tyarsis disconnects it there. She doesn't need to see them all torn apart, externally digested—

"Huh....that's funny actually..."

The door she's been hiding behind starts to drip. The drip becomes a spill, and then it simply... forgets it was ever solid in the first place. Tyarsis does not back up against the wall. She simply watches the apex predator approach, already having seen her friends, and allies smelted alive, already knowing that resisting is hopeless.

"...this must be what food feels when it meets me."