by  turanic

You can find the original submission here.
Open for critique!

---

The ship had died in fire, but not in darkness. Silhouetted against the midnight black of the star field and Saturn’s bright earthy reflections, the derelict drifted rudderless in the void. Pockmarked by meteor strikes and bearing the blackened scars of laser burns, the frigate had been all but sawn in half by the fire of some old conflict; its spine shattered and splintered among its dorsal plating. At least that was how the rim trader they had bartered the information from had chalked it up as. All that could be seen at that moment was a single scarlet blip on the emerald and black sensor display nestled between the patchwork maze of salvaged instruments, buttons and repaired sub-systems.

With an aggravated grunt of boredom, the pink haired cat buckled into the co-pilot’s stretched her arms and looked about.

“How long again?” she asked.

“About an hour at sub-light until we’re in visual range,” her compatriot answered, sounding marginally more alert “Give or take a bit, depending how much power Sofia can coax out of them.”

“Hm. Uh, I spy with my little eye…” she began before a snowy white tail lightly batted against the side of her head.

“Cass,” the other feline said, giving her a warning look “this is the kind of game which can only end in a gunshot.”

In the half light of the illuminated control panel he was grappling with, he looked like a ghost out of some old horror film. Both eyes glimmered against the neon glow as his fur took on a bizarre pearlescent shade, turning it into a series of jagged edges. For as many years as she’d seen Pablote helming the Ironclad halfway across the solar system to the other, that sight never failed to send a chill down her spine. With a slight nod of acceptance, she squeezed herself tighter into the chair, hugging both legs against her chest, triggering a few unfortunate sounding squeaks from her thin biosuit. Just a few more hours to waste then, she thought to herself, peering up at the pinpricks of light dotted across the overhead canopy of the ship. Hours upon hours upon hours…

“What’s stopping us going FTL again exactly?” she asked abruptly, already knowing the answer to that particular question.

Pab paused; hovering over the controls, paws poised over some minute movement of the vessel’s manoeuvring thrusters. “Find it out for yourself, you should find it marked under ‘crap I already explained to you’” he started, quietly slowing for a few seconds as a tremor shook through the vessel before picking up again “oh look, even the Ironclad agrees with me.”

“But this is boring,” Cass groaned “we’re supposed to be space adventurers, bio-enhanced salvagers, the daring people who can! Not the guys trailing eight times below maximum sublight speeds. Can’t we even turn up the FTL drive just a little.” She raised one paw in a pinching motion with a hopeful grin. Pablote didn’t return it.

“Last time we tried that we lost the kitchen. Oh and the living room. And my room,” he deadpanned, utterly disbelieving that of all people he was the one who needed to be the voice of reason here. “You want to have some fun? You could forget your suit’s helmet again next time you’re near the reactor, I’m sure Sofia would love to roll you back out of there again.”

“That was one time!” she protested “it’s not my fault someone hid it next to the reactor and had me swell out like that!”

“That had nothing to do with me, it had just been buried in a spare parts container!” Finally Pablote’s face split into a smirk, peering at her over his spectacles “though it was adorable the way you bounced about the ship, balloon butt.”

“Oh, you’re impossible!” Cass announced in exasperation, unbuckling her harness and kicking off of the seat. Swinging herself about in the ship’s zero gravity environment, she turned about the seat and launched herself toward the airlock behind them. “Just let us known once we reach this hulk we’re after.”

---

‘Uglies’ were the ever popular informal designation used for the scrapheap vessels cobbled together out of wrecks, but the Ironclad was a ship which fully epitomised that label. Whereas others at least had some semblance of structure and logical design to them, the cruiser was little more than a network of leftover half-destroyed hulls and sealed bulkheads. Connected by a tight, interweaving hub of transportation tubes and sub-systems, it was a mess of a vessel, a mishmash of failed designs, but it was home. Of course, it hardly helped that same home was a near perpetually broken mess of failing systems and barely compatible designs. One only kept going by some miracle work on their engineer’s part, and ready to fly to bits at any time.

Pablote had barely been exaggerating when he’d mentioned the parts they’d lost in their last FTL jump as the misshapen vessel swerved drunkenly in its flight path. With trailing clouds of debris still drifted along their port side, the ship was repeating a rhythmic sequence of engine ignitions as the main drives were periodically engaged and reactivated. Burning just long enough to push the ship a few hundred kilometres ahead before cutting out and long neon bursts of plasma from their manoeuvring thrusters worked overtime to push their nose back in the right direction. The uneven strain wasn’t exactly healthy for vessel which was little more than a metal spider web of half working ruins, but it was either that or try to get there by spacewalk.

Watching the lightshow of engine flares from one window, Cass shook her head at the thought of ditching the Ironclad. Given how little oxygen she and Pablote actually needed, they probably could actually pull that off. Assuming she didn’t mind risking hanging about with the inflation maniac without the relative protection from cosmic radiation the Ironclad offered. Turning away from the viewing port, she kicked herself further down the hall, towards the ship’s main section. How far was it now? Four meters, five, six seven, eig-! The feline yelped in shock as gravity suddenly took hold of her and she was unceremoniously dropped onto her side, hitting the deck plating hard. Groaning, Cass righted herself, rubbing the back of her head. Eight meters then. Sofia must have fixed more of the grav-plates leading up to the cockpit then.

“Hello? Are you okay?” the husky’s booming voice asked as if on cue, echoing up from some way down the corridor.

“Um, fine!” Cass answered, scrabbling to her feet and massaging her elbow “sorry, didn’t realise you’d been doing work up here.”

Something halfway between a grunt and a laugh answered her, followed by the sounds of the husky getting back to work. Gingerly shifting her weight from paw to paw, Cass eased herself back into the artificial weight of the central section. Going right from weightlessness to three and a half times Earth’s normal gravity was never an especially pleasant experience, but there were few ways to change that. That particular part of their ramshackle ship had originally been designed with Sofia’s people in mind, and no amount of begging or bribery was going to switch it back to standard Earth settings; and she’d seen from Pabs that sabotage was nothing any sane person should attempt. It had taken them the better part of a month to untangle his elastic body from about the engineering section after his last attempt.

Awkwardly stumbling down towards the origin of Sofia’s voice, Cass felt the familiar faint tingling of raw radiation against her whiskers. With a few murmured curses in German and Mandarin, she unhooked the bubble helmet at her waistline and clicked it into place about her neck. After a few stuttering seconds and loading screens the inteli-glass hummed into life, as semi-transparent readouts and HUD menus filled her vision. One particularly helpful menu imitating a Geiger counter clicked away in rapid succession as she made her way into the engineering core.

“A little forewarning might have been nice.” Cass said as she stepped out into the vast spherical room “You know, before you started peeling away lead shielding and opening up the ship to Gamma radiation. Again.”

The entirety of the engineering core was really that, a single inverted sphere with a glowing central pillar fixed into place. Reinforced struts of titanium they’d added encircled the room, reliving its fractured walls of their burden and between them were the bronze coloured hubs of the secondary cores. Most of which were open, leaving the room awash in the pale glow of countless plutonium rods exposed to the elements. Stooped over a small access panel along the main core’s base section, clad in the remnants of an engineering uniform and with a spanner in each hand, was Sofia.

“Surprised you need a warning,” Sofia answered without looking up as Cass started down the ladder toward her “haven’t exactly stopped since we last spoke. Speaking of which, how’s the belly?”

Cass flushed red at the mention of that, stopping halfway down the ladder and pressing one gloved paw against her stomach. Nope, still normal thank the stars. It seemed that Pablote, or whoever it was, hadn’t gone so far as to mess with her suit’s shielding.

“N-normal thanks,” she answered, lightly stepping down onto the main deck and over to where the husky was working, careful not to knock over the small mounds of discarded tools and parts piled up across the ground “Is, um, is this safe though? Having all these open at once?”

“The coolant systems are working overtime” Sofia admitted, pulling something large and quite expensive looking from the core “but it’s about as safe as we usually are. If it helps we’ll only explode if I forget about the…” she stopped for a few seconds, snapping her fingers “Ah, secondary turbines, that was it.”

“Huh,” Cass said with a slight shrug. Not all that reassuring, but she’d managed not to blow them up yet “actually I kind of meant the radiation you’re flooding the ship with. This can’t exactly be safe, can it?”

This time Sofia did stop in her work and turned to look over at Cass with an irritated shake of her silver furred head. Then, realising that she wasn’t joking, pushed herself up off of the ground with two of her arms, using the other set to pick up a few stray items. Raising herself up to her full height, towering almost a meter above the feline’s head she stretched out with all four limbs.

“Cass,” she said with slow sigh “not sure if you’ve noticed but we’re not exactly normal by anyone’s standards. We were kind of built for this sort of thing, and it’d take more than a pitiful 5,200 PBq before we felt any negative effects.” She stopped, nodding her head to one side in consideration “Well, you might if someone were to scratch open that suit of yours. Nothing being hooked up to the secondary back-up supplies wouldn’t solve though.”

Okay, not all that reassuring but she’d happily take it. It had been a rather obvious question anyway, even if putting out enough energy to practically make the Ironclad show up as a miniature sun on anyone’s sensors was pushing things. Like the ship they were stuck with, there wasn’t a person serving on the Ironclad who’d not been modified, upgraded or altered in some way before banding together for a new life.

It had been during the Earth-Pluto war that people had finally realised just how big a bomb bio-engineering was. For all the shiny new tech they could churn out, the side with the better crews were always going to win the long, bloody void engagements between battlegroups. So, with that had come the first wave of gene-modification, building or altering crewmen until they could fly ships blind, work without food, fight without sleep and be churned out by the truck-load.

Naturally, the brilliance of bio-engineering had quickly been plagued with a few notable teething problems, and Cass was one such result. Test tube tailored orbital worker? Check. Capable of surviving total decompression and requiring little to no oxygen? Check. No ill effects from continued exposure to low gravity environments? Check. Innate instinctive understanding of most tech? Check. All that had gone off fine, but then some egg-head had decided that “living battery” seemed like a good idea to help store energy. Unfortunately that hadn’t come with any kind of off-switch. One drop of high voltage energy, and she’d be blimping up beyond even Sofia’s engorged size. The others had their own problems but, she wasn’t about to pry. Sofia in particular always seemed to change the subject when it came to anything besides her additional set of limbs.

“So, besides the obvious, anything I can help you with?” Sofia asked, breaking the brief silence as she got back to work on the main power systems, peering into the morass of tangled pipes and wires behind the reinforced plating.

“No, no,” Cass shook her head, propping herself down atop of one nearby crate “It’s just too quiet up there and Pabs isn’t in a talking mood. Kind of needed something to distract myself before we went nuts at one another.” Admittedly the room itself was doing a great job at that. Cass’ eyes skimmed across the readout of her helmet, as the HUD highlighted a good fifty or so potential dangers Sofia had left littered about the area. Great engineer or gearhead maniac? Right now it seemed she was straying a little too close to the second stereotype for Cass’ tastes.

“Well if you want a decent distraction there’s a few upgrades I’ve been meaning to add to your gear,” Sofia said, mopping her brow with a rag she’d procured from somewhere “nothing overly fancy mind you, just a few software patches and additions here and there to help with work. Who knows, might make life a little easier for you.”

Cass paused, ready to object, before stopping. Sofia had usually been the one on the receiving end of her complaints about their equipment or spacewalks in particular. Nuts as she might be, she had brought up some good ideas in the past and half the reason they were still flying was thanks to her. Slowly the feline inclined her head in agreement, trying not to inwardly panic at the excited grin Sofia bore upon seeing this affirmation. At least it’d be something to help pass the time.

---

Fidgeting uncomfortably, Cass peered in the mirror at her new outfit. Well, old outfit with new bits. Very little seemed to have actually changed from what Sofia had added, slightly bulkier gloves and boots. Twisting about and flicking her tail in irritation, she tried to figure out just what Sofia had actually improved. After sitting for over an hour atop of the husky’s work bench as she made alterations and fixed bits onto her gear, when it’d come time to actually explain anything, the husky had suddenly turned pale. With a garbled mention of having forgotten some vital detail, she’d raced off elsewhere saying something to the effect of “if I don’t do this, it’ll blow up the ship!” Now the big question was if Cass dared risk mashing the small control panel fixed to her right wrist to see what each option did, and hope she’d not installed a self-destruct device.

“Like what you see?” a voice came from the doorway, and Cass looked back to see a rather amused looking white feline peering at her over the brim of his spectacles. She never had quite gotten used to his ability to sneak up on people like that, even when wearing a flightsuit riddled with flashing lights and indicators.

“Ah! Uh, no. not at all!” Cass answered, quickly sidestepping away from the narrow mirror upon realising who it was. “Just trying to figure out what’s been upgraded and, um, how.”

“Upgraded? Oh, you let Sofia talk you into something new?” Pablote answered, sliding into the room to join next to her, keeping both hands behind his back “So what gimmick did she add this time?”

“That’s the problem” Cass slowly admitted, frowning at how he seemed to be very intently looking down toward the small panel fixed to one wrist “not a clue what any of this does. She kind of took off before actually explaining anything about these new gizmos.”

“Hm, shame.” Leaning over, Pablote curiously prodded a few of the more silvery electronic sections tacked onto her gear with one paw, face creased in concentration as if he were trying to remember something. Watching for a few seconds, Cass awkwardly stood there quietly wondering what he was doing before Pablote’s face split into a broad grin. “Ah, there it is.”

“There what is?“ Cass cautiously began to ask, before a loud hum of energy began to thrum about her, emanating from her outfit. Wincing as it continued to increase in pitch, Cass winced in pain, hammering her paws at the side of her helmet as the multiple screens and information flickered from existence. As they did a single red message filled her vision across the glass:
[REMOTE ACCESS ACTIVATED]

Cass looked on, in stunned bemusement for a few seconds, before shooting daggers at the white furred cuprite next to her. The one still grinning. The one who, in one paw, was holding up the control device which was previously strapped to her wrist, and a tattered dog-eared book marked ‘Instruction Manual’ in Sofia’s unmistakable scrawl in the other. Pablote said nothing, just wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

“Son of a-!” despite immediately regretting yelling inside an enclosed tight glass dome, Cass lunged forwards. Wildly grabbing for either item, she half stumbled half fell as Pabs danced back out of reach, both of her feet fixed to the deck with the loud hum of electromagnets.

“Yeah, that little upgrade was on page one” he said, excitedly thumbing through the scraps of paper “you wouldn’t believe some of the things Sofia managed to add onto that glorified space-spandex of yours. She asked me to pass this onto you a bit earlier, but how about a brief crash course instead?”

Oh this was not good at all. Trying to yank her legs clear of the ground for a few seconds – with about as much success as anyone would expect – even taking another swipe at Pabs as he curiously looked through the book with a manic grin, Cass gave a hopeful smile.

“Um, P-pabs, if this is for pestering you in the cockpit earlier, I’m sorry. But, really, could you please give me that back? Really, one ballooning was enough for this week!” At this point she was one step away from all but bowing before him and begging, but that was going to be a small price to pay. She only had two of these outfits left after the last incident, and they weren’t exactly cheap to replace these days. For a moment, Pablote seemed to stop and looked down at Cass as if considering the offer. One finger was hovering over a rather large button which, if Cass had to guess, was probably marked “AIR” or something similar.

“Hmm,” he muttered to himself as if taking this into account, mulling over the idea as his finger circled the button. Cass frantically watched, hoping against hope it wouldn’t hammer down on the control panel, activating whatever the he had planned for her. “W-e-e-e-l-l-l,” Pablote said drawing out the word, eyes still glinting as he smirked down at Cass “cute as you are as a balloon, that joke is getting a little stale…”

“Ah, yes, agreed entirely!” Cass readily added, still hopefully peering up towards him “now, if you could please just hand it back, we can, um, just forget this ever happened?” Hey, if one long shot had worked there was no reason not to risk another, right? Well, it might have worked if Pablote were even listening. Still smirking and muttering a few comments to himself, he made a few adjustments to the device. Then, flashing another dangerous grin at Cass, he stabbed down on the activation button.

Reacting instinctively, Cass forced both paws against her belly, pressing in as hard as she could and curling up against the impending ballooning. It was the standard in-built response her training had given her to an impending ballooning, and from the past few times entirely ineffective. Still, what was the alternative, removing her helmet or trying to struggle out of her gear? Like anything close to Sofia’s heart, it was probably filled with enough radioactive isotopes to turn Cass into a wobbling sphere in a few seconds. Turning slightly red faced, Cass could feel her body tightening against her suit at the very thought of it, squashing up against it and ready to tear free. Then her suit started to creak loudly, and suddenly Cass had the feeling it wasn’t quite her imagination after all. Seconds later and she could feel her entire body starting to practically fold in upon itself.

For those watching, Cass’ body seemed to be thinning out. Bit by bit, it was being squeezed backwards, her already thin form compressed down and neatly folded inwards bit by bit. Taking one paw away from her belly, Cass looked on in wide-eyed shock what appeared to little more than a gloved skeletal hand.

“Wha-what have you done?” she looked over at Pablote, now watching on with barely suppressed laughter as she tried to stand upright, the crumpled biosuit hissing and heaving like a bellows as more air was sucked out of it, hugging tightly against her.

“Exactly what you wanted,” Pablote chortled, watching the increasingly stringy feline struggle against her bindings “no chance of being ballooned on this setting! Ooh, this bit looks interesting!” With an exaggerated flourish, he twisted the dial further, a few electronic bleeps accompanying it as he made further adjustments.

With a cry of surprise, Cass arced over backwards, her knees giving out from under her as the space-age material tightened further, and then began to stretch. Thinning out bit by bit, she could feel as her limbs and torso were pulled apart like elastic, wringing her out like soaked cloth as it twisted and turned her body about, warping it inch by inch. As she lay there in a crumpled heap of elongated limbs, Cass desperately fought to gain some measure of control over her overstretched body. Of course, it couldn’t just end there. With a high pitched giggle worthy of a mad scientist, Pablote strolled over, scooping up the now cartoonishly thin Cass in his arms, peering in through her visor.

“Comfortable in there?” he asked, happily picking up both her forearms and raising her above his head. With the sound similar to rubber being pulled to its breaking point, Cass released a surprised whimper as she felt her body squeeze tighter. Still clamped firmly in place by the gently humming magnets, Pablote tugged her apart, yanking her body this way and that, before thoughtfully running one paw down her side. “Still a bit round aren’t you? Time to remedy that I think.” Cass paused, a lump in her throat.

“Remedy this?” she said, her surprised desperation finally boiling over into anger “Pabs, if I get out of here you’re going head first out the airlock!”

“Oh we’ll be going out there in a minute” he flashed another grin “I’m sure you’ll make a wonderful solar sail to help speed us up after all, just after we’ve made a few proper adjustments…” More bleeps followed that statement, as he reached away with one paw to twist the dial further. Then, tightly wrapping his arms about Cass, he began to squeeze. With a pained groan, Cass felt him squashing inwards, gripping hold of each stick-thin arm and neatly folding them in against her back, tightly hugging against her crumpled form. Compressed down bit by bit, she felt herself being pushed inwards even as Pablote punched each side of her torso and began to pull. As he did, there was a loud ripping sound.

One moment, Pablote was there, stretching out Cass’ narrow form until it was barely thicker than paper, the material swaying and twisting with even the slightest movement. Then, as the overstressed material of the biosuit finally reached its limit, the central section parted leaving Cass’ grey fur bare to the air. And the radiation. Then the inevitable began.

“You- you damn-“ Cass stuttered, turning red with rage as she felt the particles of gamma radiation tingling against her exposed abdomen. Like a sponge dropped in water, her thin fur began to bristle, before the skin beneath it began to wobble outwards. Swelling from this breach, within moments Cass’ squashed, stretched and papery form ballooned outwards. With the sound of further ripping fabric as her growing muscles met with clothing now several times too small for her, the feline rapidly unfolded herself standing shakily to her feet, back to normal once more. Albeit, only if you counted “normal” as being largely nude, with a swollen stomach which was making odd sloshing noises. Not that she seemed to be paying much heed to this. All of her attention instead seemed to be directed towards the increasingly worried pilot right in front of her.

“Cass?” Pableote said, his previous confidence disappearing in the fact of Cass’ rapidly swelling rage, edging backwards towards the workshop door “just calm down, there’s no need for blood! I-uh-I can get you back to your room, no problems at all, no tricks, promise!”

Cass’ expression gave all the answers he needed. He barely made it three paces before, bursting out through the remnants of her gear, Cass dive-tackled him. With a distinct sloshing sound usually only made by an overfilled water balloon, Cass slammed into Pablote’s back, sending them both tumbling against the metal floor. Cass herself didn’t so much crash as bounce as she hit home, her belly swelling outwards as she hurled through the air, jiggling excitedly as Palbote’s white furred form disappeared under her girth. We he tried to cry out and struggle free, the rest of her body started to catch up.

With her entire form rippling as it soaked in energy, Cass’ continued to swell. As her vast abdomen cushioned her against the ground, allowing the small feline to rock gently against Pablote’s futile struggles, her legs began to part. Swallowing and squashing themselves into her vast behind, her tail hit the ground with a wet thud, now thicker than the feline’s head and wobbling with charged radioactive isotopes. A few muffled yells came from somewhere beneath her furry form.

“Oh, sorry Pabs, what was that?” Cass said, halfway between a laugh and a snarl “you might wanna speak up.”

A few more muffled cries answered her as the Ironclad’s pilot wrestled about beneath her, shoving and pushing against her blubbery underside. Each of his blows were absorbed into the mass of light grey inflated flesh above him, succeeding in only garnering a few giggles from Cass. Wriggling herself about to get comfortable, she pushed down with both sagging arms, squashing them against her stomach as it continued to fill out. With one final hissing rip of fabric breaking in two, the few scraps still holding her destroyed suit’s helmet in place slumped free from her shoulders, rolling out into the corridor beyond.

Of all the revenge schemes she could have masterminded, Cass was fairly sure this one wasn’t anywhere near the top. For all that though, as she felt a few more frantic attempts by Pablote to struggle clear, she was hardly complaining. There was so much more she could do before this was over as well. Awkwardly rolling her weight forwards, and feeling a few more panicked yells from somewhere beneath her, Cass reached out with one oversized paw and clumsily plucked the one remaining item left of her shredded biosuit. A single chrome air cylinder about the size of her forearm. Now more than a little dented by its experiences and releasing a quiet hiss from the broken valve at one end. Oh perfect.

Humming to herself for a few moments, Cass allowed Pablote a few seconds more of her full weight pressed down upon him, before rocking back again. This time pulling back just far enough for his head to stick out from under her bulk, if little else.

“O-okay Cass,” he coughed, gasping for air “you’ve had your fun, now you can let me go now. Right?”

Cass didn’t answer at first, instead just tossing the small canister lightly in one hand. At this gesture, Pablote’s eyes flickered back and forth between it and the look in Cass’ eyes.

“Really?” he said, oddly disappointed at this threat “that’s it? I balloon myself six times a week for fun, you think that’s much of a revenge?”

“Nope, not at all” Cass gave an unpleasant smile, looking down towards something just below his neckline rather than in his eyes “that flight suit of yours, it’s custom made, right?”

“Cass…” Pablote gave a warned, his disappointment replaced by rather understandable concern “eheh, let’s not do anything we’re going to regret!”

The other feline ignored him and pressed herself forwards, doubling over her huge stomach until she was inches from his face, still showing off that same grin. Then, without a word, she casually unzipped the front of his outfit and slid the hissing air tank inside, giving the valve another good twist before zipping his clothing back up. It didn’t take a scientist to guess what was going to happen next.

Fighting to free his limbs, Pablote looked down wide eyed as his suit began to expand. Still squashed beneath Cass, it also only left it one place to go. Rolling back just far enough to keep both arms pinned, she watched as his suit began to swell, undulating as the broken valve began to give way. Whereas Cass had been a rapid expansion, Pablote’s growth could be better described as a detonation. With a metallic plink signalling the valve snapping off, Pablote’s chest hissed loudly as a billowing hurricane of oxygen was forced into his suit, inflating and expanding the material in moments.

With protested squeaks and the sound of wires snapping, the feline’s upper half quickly began to round out, stretching until its taut material was barely pushing back against Cass’ own massive weight. Slight hissing jets of air could be seen venting from the suit’s valves or trying to force their way out of the seams, it shook with energy. Almost done. Just one last thing to do. Giving the pilot an almost comical wave goodbye, Cass reached down with one extended claw and pressed down against the overinflated material.

One moment Pablote was still there, pinned in place, the next, he was bereft of his clothes and airborne. Cass watched him disappear, bouncing against a few of the corridor’s walls as he passed stunned crewmen before rounding a corner with a loud crash. Nude, immobile, and thoroughly radioactive, she gave a resigned sigh, settling down and waiting Sofia's return.