Needs Must Part1A (Patreon)

Starting us off this week, Need's Must, Part 1A! I'm very lucky to have Tach as my writing partner on this one, his work is nothing short of amazing. <3 

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Ava idly bounced a small wad of paper between her feet as she sat on a bench in the largely abandoned loading dock. She really didn’t want to be here. The Colony Ship Theseus had been the main transit hub for the sector until it was suddenly put into quarantine. Now the old hulk was more like a ghost town as the bulk of the original population had left as soon as the quarantine lifted. News had been sparse to say the least leaving only rumors of some sort of ‘biological weapon’ floating around the net. Still, Ava had a pact to honor.

She had never expected for the plump pig to call her in on it. If she had to be honest with herself, Jenny rubbed her scales the wrong way. They had met at the mars orbital transfer station, both setting out to make their mark on the universe. Ava had always found the image of transport captains compelling; making sure people got what they needed when they needed it. Plus she found the long stretches of solitude appealing. Jenny on the other hand was looking for more of a high risk high reward position, although Ava doubted the girl had enough self control to actually make it work. After a rather lengthy discussion at the station where Jenny did the bulk of the talking, Ava had been disheartened to find they were bunked together on the same transport out. The one sided conversation then continued for longer than Ava cared to think about. Still, Jenny seemed to have a certain sincerity about her dream and they both had agreed to offer aid should the other ever need it. Friends, even irritating ones, were important when dealing with vast distances and unknowable horrors.

“Ava?”

Ava looked up expecting to see the rather plump pig from memory but what greeted her was quite a bit larger. Ava blinked a couple of times. Several hundred pounds larger. Jenny’s stomach had taken on a somewhat spherical appearance, sticking out a couple of inches past her breasts. The gray jumpsuit she was wearing only partially covered it leaving a sizable chunk of pink flesh exposed. She had also grown considerably wider than Ada remembered: her butt now almost filled the narrow entryway. The thought of being stuck in her transport’s tiny crew compartment for a couple of weeks with Jenny suddenly began to look a lot more unpleasant.

“Uh, Ava?” Jenny looked rather embarrassed; her face slightly pinker than normal.

“Oh. Sorry… Hi.” Ava looked away, trying to not stare at the enlarged porcine. As she glanced around Jenny, she noticed that she hadn’t brought anything. Not even a bag. “Do you need to pick up your stuff?”

A wave of sadness crossed Jenny’s features before she quietly responded, “No, it’s just me.”

Ava had intended to lecture Jenny on being more responsible and not getting stuck on a mostly abandoned station, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “Oh. Alright." They stood awkwardly in silence for a few moments before Ava finally said, "Are you ready to go?”

Jenny nodded. “Yeah, where is your ship docked?”

Ava looked at Jenny in confusion. “Uh, you know I fly a cargo transport right? No docking collar?”

“But then how do we get on board?”

Ava produced a small rectangular wand from her pocket and held it up for Jenny to see. It was non-descript except for a small dark screen near the bottom. “Teleporter.”

Jenny’s eyes widened. “How do you have one of those? I thought only the top of the line ships had anything like that.”

“All the large transports have them now. They’re no good for cargo but they weigh a lot less then all the hardware you need to dock. And you know how important weight is when moving cargo.” Ava glanced back down at Jenny’s stomach causing her blush to return. “I better do this one at a time.” Ava pointed the wand at Jenny and tapped the screen.

Jenny managed to blurt out “Wait, what?” before a shimmering distortion surrounded her body and she popped out of existence.

Ava sighed to herself, “Well, this should be fun.” She pointed the wand at herself and tapped it, a familiar tingling sensation covered her body as the poorly lit loading dock began to shimmer. Ava braced herself. The sudden shift from gravity to the ships weightlessness was always somewhat jarring. As her view of the dock twisted and faded it was replaced by her well lit but tiny teleporter room. Unexpectedly she found Jenny’s considerable rear end inches from her nose. Jenny's upper half protruded into the hallway beyond but her hips appeared to be quite snugly held by the door frame. Ava could hear grunting noises as Jenny tried to wiggle deeper into the ship.

"Are you stuck?"

Jenny flailed for a moment in surprise before hanging limply from the frame. Ava could barely make out of small squeak of "Yes."

"Ok, hold on." Ava lightly pushed off of Jenny's butt and spun gracefully in place, maneuvering herself so that her feet touched the wall. Steadying herself she placed her hands on Jenny's derriere and began to push roughly. Her hands sank into the poor girls flab as she strained against the bulkhead. Finally, after a couple of moments of pressure, Jenny popped free of the frame and began to slowly float further down the hallway, flailing somewhat ungracefully as she tried and failed to find a handhold. Ava watched with a small amount of amusement as Jenny slowly hit the cockpit door with a muffled slap sending jiggling shock waves cascading across her body. Fortunately she managed to grab one of the handles around the frame before she bounced any further.

Pushing off of the wall Ava floated down the hallway tapping the walls as she approached Jenny, starting a slow spin and changing her trajectory just enough to avoid the still jiggling swine. Ava landed feet first on the door and in one fluid motion spun and with a fair amount of effort shoved it open. She lightly pushed past Jenny and moved into the darkened cockpit.

“Sorry about the lack of gravity. I can’t start rotating the pod until we’re cruising.” Jenny nodded as Ava brushed the panel responsible for retracting the cockpit’s shutters before grabbing onto the back of the pilot’s chair. She always got a tiny chill from watching the universe slowly appear. Shadows began to dance around the room as more and more pinpricks of light dully illuminated the cockpit. The feeling was somewhat ruined as the bow of the ship and several attached containers came into view. Ava definitely wasn’t going to break even on this trip; the deserted station needed no imports and the only thing she’d managed to pick up were a couple of trash and bio-hazard containers along with Jenny’s goofy bubble salvager. The recycling plant she intended to haul them to wasn’t even offering a decent price. The whole thing was owned by some military-for-hire group which Ava would normally avoid, but it was better than nothing. As the shutters finished opening with a dull clunk Ava could just make out the top part of the Jenny’s ship, the rest of it clamped to the hull out of view. “I can’t believe you still have that thing. Most people would have moved to a bigger ship by now, you know.”

Jenny’s pudgy face popped into view from beyond the top of the cockpit door, she looked confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s just that you normally put your first few paychecks into upgrading”

Before Ava could finish she found Jenny barreling towards her at a high rate of speed. Ava briefly wondered how she had cleared the frame before being crushed between the pilot’s seat and Jenny’s stomach.

“You have my ship!” Jenny cried out, squeezing Ava even tighter in a sudden hug.

Ava tried valiantly to escape but found her hands simply sinking into Jenny’s expansive gut. It felt like she was being enveloped by it even though she was at least a foot taller than the rotund pig. Jenny finally relented a couple of seconds later after catching on to Ava’s squirming.

Ava coughed as she tried to catch her breath. “Of course I have it, they loaded it along with the trash.” Ava gestured to the two cargo containers clamped to the front of the ship.

“But it was… it was...” Jenny stopped. She looked like she was reliving an unpleasant experience. “It was impounded.”

Ava was shocked for a moment. She had expected Jenny to be in a bad situation from her original call for help, but nothing this severe. For a captain to lose their ship… Ava shuddered. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

Jenny simply nodded. She looked somewhat lost in thought. “How did you get it?”

“I just asked.” Ava blinked.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I asked for the ship registered to you and they moved it. I figured you had cleared it since they didn’t ask for any other info.”

“No.” Jenny said quietly.

Not wanting to push it any further she moved into the pilot’s seat and began to buckle herself in. “You should strap into the copilot’s seat. We’re running light so the acceleration is going to be a little heavy.”

Ava watched as Jenny responded in the affirmative and awkwardly moved into the seat. As she fiddled with the belts Ava noted that Jenny didn’t so much sit in the seat as fill it, with a good amount of butt spreading beyond the edges. The edge of her stomach brushed the control console, even while retracted. Ava pulled her console forward snapping it into place before selecting the course she had plotted earlier. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Ava pushed the button that engaged the autopilot. The star field twisted sickeningly as the ship rotated onto its escape trajectory, the flickering lights of the Theseus spinning past. A couple of seconds later the main engines kicked in, pushing Ava and Jenny back into their seats. A few minutes of this brought the ship up to the speed where the light speed systems could take over, ending the feeling of acceleration despite the fact that they continued to move ever faster. The stars outside the windows began to smear as they exceeded the speed of light.

“This is a lot different than my ship.” Jenny commented.

“Yeah, your ship probably uses a newer jump system. This thing is all old school, but it’s a lot more efficient. Even if it’s slower.” Ava shifted in her seat, lifting a nearby safety cover and flipping the switch underneath. “But the good news is I can start gravity now.”

They sat in silence for a moment as the smearing increased, the stars looking less like stars and more like continuous lines of light. The whole view started to sickeningly spin as the entire crew module started to rotate along the axis of the ship; faint tugs of gravity beginning to pull Ava downward. Ava looked over at Jenny as she watched the blurry spinning sky, she looked sort of ill.

“Ugh, how can you look at this?”

“You get used to it. Um. If you’re going to hurl please don’t do it here.”

Jenny nodded as she began to take on a greenish pallor. She fiddled with her belt and pulled herself from the seat, standing somewhat unsteadily in the slowly increasing gravity. She began to carefully move herself out of the cockpit.

“There’s a cot in the kitchen to the right. Sorry, I don’t normally have guests.” Ava said as she continued to monitor their course. She glanced back as Jenny exited and watched as she navigated the door frame. Her stomach squished around the frame and after a moment of struggling she finally popped through. Ava could hear her trying to catch her breath in the hallway.

Ava busied herself with the flight as they approached their final top speed. The gravity was looking good as they exceeded 1G. Ava liked to keep it a little higher than normal as she found the increased pressure somehow reassuring.

“Ava?” Jenny called out.

Ava looked backwards from the seat again, Jenny was still in the hallway but she was holding onto her stomach, or at least as much as she could hold on to. She somehow looked even bigger than before. Her legs were shaking, almost as if she was about to collapse. “Was she sweating?” Ava wondered to herself.

“Can you turn down the...” Jenny huffed. It almost looked like she was turning red. “Can you turn down the gravity?” She looked desperate.

Ava’s eyes widened, “Oh shit, sorry.” She punched in 0.6G and the sound of the braking thrusters on the pod firing filled the room. “I forgot that was a low gravity station.”

Jenny panted, “It’s okay.”

Ava watched as Jenny’s stomach slowly began to sag slightly less but protrude slightly more. It was sort of mesmerizing. A small ding indicated the ship had reached its preset values, and Ava reached over to push the panel to close the shutters. There wouldn’t be anything to see until they slowed back down anyway. She stretched and got up from the seat, preparing the give Jenny the grand tour of her tiny 6 room cabin.