Horrors of the Stars

Prologue
In the deep and cold depth of space, there lie many mysteries that have yet to be found. Whether they are new worlds with habitable life, or new space anomalies that boggle the scientific mind, there is always something new and extraordinary to be found.

But not for a certain crew of aliens, aliens that are simply known as Gems.

The ship the aliens piloted was fairly small, a mere scouting vessel that patrolled the borders of their star system. The ship’s shape is a flat rectangle, sporting a distinctive greenish hue with a visible cockpit at the front.

Inside the cockpit lies the pilot and her copilot, one actually piloting the scouting vessel while the other makes small talk amid the quiet reaches of space. The Gems appeared to be like human women, but that’s where the similarities between them and humans ended.

The pilot has a green skin tone, which matched her greenish and black space suit, while her copilot had a more purplish skin tone with matching colors on her suit. Both beings also sported a yellow diamond symbol on the center of their uniforms, but the most glaring detail were the gemstones that are attached to them, the green alien having her gem on the back of her neck and the purple alien having her gem on her forehead.

The purple alien looked bored out of her mind, darting her eyes at the black space, to the buttons on the control panels, to the pilot focused on her task and back to space.

“This is the worst job ever.” Commented the purple Gem, leaning back on her chair despite the cold comfort it provided. “Why did they make me a scout?”

The pilot simply ignored her companion, her visor filed with streams of data as she operated the ship.

The purple alien noticed this and bumped her elbow at the pilot’s shoulder, wanting a response.

“Hey Apatite!” Shouted the purple alien, getting the pilot’s attention.

“What?” Asked Apatite, looking back at her copilot for a brief moment. “I’m kind of busy here, Kunzite.”

“Busy? We’ve been patrolling empty space for who knows how long.” Said Kunzite. “We should just go back to Home world.”

“Not until we figure out the anomaly that was detected by the last ship.” Answered Apatite, annoyed by her copilot’s impatience. “Besides, we have orders to investigate every inch of space at the Crystal System’s borders, Blue Diamond herself said so.”

“Blue Diamond.” Kunzite scoffed at the mention of the name. “She’s always paranoid about anomalies. Every time we investigate them, we come up with nothing to report.”

“She’s a Diamond.” Reminded Apatite. “You can’t say no to their orders, no matter how ridiculous they may be.”

“But we’ve searched the whole border three times already! There’s nothing out here but stars and rocks.”

“Actually, those ‘rocks’ are called asteroi-

“Whatever! Space rocks.” Interrupted Kunzite. “This is boring.”

“I don’t like it either, but Blue Diamond’s orders were clear.”

“Maybe Blue Diamond should come here herself instead of us.”

“Watch what you say, young one. It’s not good to talk ill of the Diamonds, behind their backs or in front of them.” Warned Apatite.

“Or what? I’m loyal to the Authority as much as you are. I may be new, but I’m not stupid.” Argued Kunzite. “It’s not like I’ll end up like Ro-

Apatite smacked her Gem copilot on the back of her head, silencing her before she could finish her sentence as if she disciplined a young child.

“You’re lucky the Diamonds don’t hear you mention her.” Apatite brought her hands back to the control panel, focused on her mission once more. “Don’t bring it up again.”

Her, was a sensitive topic for their kind to talk about. Even in a casual conversation, that topic wouldn’t usually be brought up among their kind, and it was best to leave it that way.

Kunzite decided to change the topic, not wanting to cause even more awkward tension.

“So uh, anything at all?”

“No.” Responded Apatite. “We’re almost done with the fourth patrol, so we’ll be home after this last run.”

Kunzite sighed as she stared out into deep space once more, just as bored as she’s always been, wanting something to happen already so her job as a scout could actually be exciting.

Suddenly, the control panels started to beep rapidly, flashing red to alert the Gems who were equally surprised at the activity. Something was using warp travel to their general location.

Within a split second, a large wormhole appeared out of nowhere. The Gems stared in shock as they saw the space anomaly, swirling rapidly as the Gems waited in anticipated fear of what was to come.

Large objects then appeared from the wormhole, warping into space in a mere nanosecond before the wormhole collapsed and dispersed, leaving the Gems to stare in shock at what was in front of them.

“By the Diamonds…”

It was all Apatite could say at the sight, because right in front of the scouting vessel was a massive ship that easily dwarfed the scout, but the ship was far different than anything they had ever seen.

It had an eerie organic look to it, such as having a pale colored carapace exterior that acted as its hull with more stone like armor that covered the upper half of the ship, and tentacle like appendages located around the end of where its engines would be, but instead of engines there is a large vent of sorts. The ship also has a long and thick body similar to that of a squid’s, with large crimson spines in rows across the stone like top and a more segmented carapace along the bottom with small gaps between it.

The ship began to extend the bottom front part of its hull downward, revealing some kind of fleshy muscles inside that pulsated and opened up several holes, shooting out tentacles that quickly wrapped themselves around the Gem ship.

All the Gems could do is hold onto their chairs as their ship was being dragged towards the larger behemoth, holding on to dear life as Apatite attempted to make communications to her superiors.

“This is Apatite! We spotted a large ship that’s attacking us and request assistance! Do you read? Over!”

The coms replied in static, her message going unheard of as the scout vessel was dragged inside the muscular interior, with the large organic like ship closing its bottom front, claiming its target successfully.

The muscular part of the ship the Gems were in disturbed the aliens, who have never seen such a horrible sight in their lives. All that could be seen is the pulsating flesh illuminated by green orbs floating around, as the ship slipped through large holes still held onto by tentacles that were bringing them to who knows where.

Apatite was trying to keep herself calm, as she attempted to communicate once more to her superiors, this time she didn’t even receive static, just plain silence. Kunzite was scared out of her mind, regretting that she wanted adventure in her life and was panicking to herself.

“Oh great Diamonds, please help us. Please don’t let us die…” Kunzite repeated over and over, hoping her weak prayers would come true.

Apatite gave up on communications, seeing that there was no way for them to work and all the Gem could do is try to comfort her copilot, patting a hand on her shoulder.

The trip through the muscular interior was cut short, as the last holes they exited brought them to large fleshy chambers, the floors were covered in some kind of bright red creep, the walls had some kind of hard pale webbing, the ceilings dripped some kind of green liquid all oer the spacious chambers, where several deep holes littering the floor helped to form pathways all around the chambers. The holes were not just there as empty space, some pulsated with squishy tumor like structures, while others had fleshy doors that opened and closed for whatever crew members that lived here. The ceiling not only had more of these flesh doors, but were also part of the source of the several tentacles that were stored here, along with the green liquid the dripped occasionally.

The most interesting parts of the chambers however, were the creatures that were crawling all over, from the floors to the walls, up to the ceilings and through the flesh doors, they were everywhere. They were some kind of ten inch long plump worms with pale chitin covering them, four short crimson spines ran across their backs, along with four crimson insect like legs on each side of their bodies that allowed them to crawl around, with two inch mandibles in front as part of their mouths that hid a slit between them. While these worms had no eyes to see with, they could sense the presence of the Gems on their ship, making nearby worms open their slit like mouths to reveal several thin and fleshy tendrils, waving them around at the Gem’s general direction, sensing them inside their ship as they screeched loudly.

The Gems were taken back by the grotesque sight before them, never had they seen such creatures before, but they were more concerned about themselves than the worms, desperately seeing if there was some way to leave.

The tentacles that held onto the ship started to wrap themselves around the cockpit, applying pressure to the hull to break through. The Gems screamed as the appendages broke through the cockpit, grabbing the occupants and crushed the ship’s hull as most of the other tentacles broke through, as if it were checking for anything else on interest before deciding to send it back out to space, first tearing it apart before sending pieces back out though the muscles behind.

The two Gems struggled to break free, but the vice grip of the tentacles kept them in place as they were lifted to the center of the chambers, where a loud screech could be heard from the large hole in the bottom. The Gems looked down and at first, it seemed like some large vent that exhumed some kind of green gas around it, but they saw something large crawling out of it, something that filled the hole as it emerged from the large pit.

All the Gems could do is stare at the creature in shock and horror.

“By the Goddess…”

The grotesque creature was some kind of larger worm like creature, but was much longer and fatter and lacks spines, but has several pulsating tumor like growths all over its back instead. The worm like creature also has a large glowing orange eye that it uses to stare directly at the Gems, chattering its several crimson mandibles below its eye out of curiosity.

The creature leaned itself closely to the horrified Gems, staring at Apatite’s gemstone with its eye, before going to Kunzite as the tentacles moved her around to show the gemstone behind her neck. It screeched lowly at the sight of the gemstones, and then chittered while looking back and forth at the Gems before leaning back.

Fleshy tubes started to emerge from the sides of the hole the large worm creature was at, lowering themselves down the hole as two larger tentacles came up from the hole, but these tentacles had a long spike on their tips. The flesh tubes attached themselves to the edge of the spiked tips, then connected themselves to the large worm’s pulsating growths, and then connected the tubes back from where they came.

The tentacles that held Kunzite were brought to the large worm first, who turned the Gem back for her gemstone to face the creature. The purple alien cried tears as the two spiked tentacles came to the back of her neck, and she cried out for help despite the hopeless situation.

“Please Apatite… Help me!”

The spiked tentacles quickly impaled themselves inside her gemstone, managing to pierce through without shattering it. Apatite watched as her comrade’s body twitched and writhed, all Kunzite could do was let out a strained face of pain as the tentacles began to drain her of her life.

This was what shocked Apatite the most, Gems were not organic creatures, and yet this… thing, was actually draining the life out of Kunzite through her gemstone, making it slowly lose color as purple fluids coursed through the fleshy tubes. Kunzite gasped as she felt her life being taken away as slowly as possible, her skin tone also losing its color as she grew paler, unable to do anything but suffer.

“What are you things?!” Apatite asked while shouting. “What do you want from us?!”

The worm creature ignored the Gem as it focused on her comrade, its flesh growths and eye now changing its color to purple, almost finished with its process of draining life.

The gemstone was completely drained now, nothing but a black husk as Kunzite poofed into a white cloud of dust, her physical form finally destroyed as the now colorless gemstone fell to the ground. The worm creature stood still as the purple fluids inside it coursed through the tubes once more, satisfied with what it has accomplished as the tubes detached themselves and returned back to where they came, along with the tentacles going back down to the hole.

Apatite just cried as she witnessed her comrade’s gemstone being taken down the hole by a smaller worm around the area, while Apatite was taken to one of the fleshy walls by the tentacles still around her. She was held down onto the walls, and she could feel the moist and squishy surface it had as the worms around the wall started to crawl around her.

Apatite screamed and squirmed from the tentacles, but to no avail as the worms opened their horizontal slit mouths wide open, revealing their fleshy tendrils that covered her whole body as the tentacles let her go. The tendrils then detached themselves from the worm’s bodies, wrapped around Apatite like webbing and stuck her onto the wall perfectly.

The only part of her body that was not wrapped was her head that could barely move, the bright red webbing restricting her movements as she stared out at the chambers, just noticing that there were several other alien creatures stuck on the walls too.

All she could do is scream as a worm crawled above her and silence her for good, wrapping its tendrils around her face and surrounded the tendrils around her gemstone.

As the chambers were filled with empty silence except for the sounds of screeching worms and dripping liquids, an echoic voice that only the worms could hear boomed throughout the ship, a deep and menacing ancient evil that has given its orders.

“'''GEMS…... TO HOMEWORLD…… MUST ASSIMILATE… MUST…… CONSUME… BECOME ONE WITH…… THE ETERNAL HIVE.'''”