I urgently needed to go. I snatched up the left tube, praying I’d correctly understood the Scythin, and slipped it over the anal chute. Then, in the penultimate moment, I held back, worried on its narrow diameter and ability to accept what I had on offer. Though the prospect of catastrophic equipment failure loomed, I could fight no longer. I took the ultimate leap of faith and relaxed.

Relief came like a cool breeze and I flopped onto my side, eyes glazing as I looked toward the fog from where alien legions watched me crap into a hose.

“It works?” asked Patton, shuffling along the floor and grabbing the second set of tubes.

I moaned pleasurably. When I finished, I’m pretty sure the tube ran through a bidet protocol.

Business complete and awash in nature’s afterglow, I snatched up the rightmost tube, thinking it had to be food, and pressed it onto my belly hose.

Well, it was certainly something.

It was heroin – no – it was heroin cut with fireworks and soaked in gasoline.

I was transported somewhere else. Soaring over infinite fields of culinary pleasures like the God of Cakes. I tasted – and felt – every flavor I knew – and many I didn’t, in a strange duality of experience. Tastes were perceived all at once, and individually. There were flavors I didn’t understand, indescribable except by color – and even by emotion. Lime green and citrus orange chroma pinged my taste buds as delicious, joyous, penetrating sours, followed by the semi-sweet melancholy of robin’s egg blue, curious sugared avocado purple, and ecstasy-flavored cheesecake-filling pink. There was a distinctly sexual pleasure to the experience that cycled tantrically through energetic peaks and cooling lulls. For hours or minutes, I couldn’t say.81

Filled to bursting, I was treated to soothing gulps of water.

Somewhere Patton moaned. Maybe he’d found his way onto the food tube... or the poop tube. They were both great.

81 Bepenised female cave bugs of the genus Neotrogla routinely have sex for seventy hours straight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The ship decelerated and Aptat’s voice came through the com. “I’ve reset security parameters. They won’t be able to get into the systems again. Dilaceration cannons are charging.”

Naecia had maneuvered behind a screen of pipes where they converged at the bulkhead. “Aptat, run a scan. They’re on the hull.”

“Impossible! You blew the dock!”

“Run the scan!” she screamed, already knowing what it would show. “They can come through the breach.”

Aptat cursed through the com. “Six of them. Sneaky shits. They must have debarked the Glaive while it was back-burning. Hold tight, I’ll spin them off.”

The inner hull lit with light beams.

“Too late.”

“What do you mean?” asked Aptat.

“They’re inside,” she whispered, even though the hull space was in vacuum and no one would hear her. “Must have blown a bigger hole than I thought.”

“Do they know you’re there?” said Aptat.