Despite the continuous advances of space travel technology, there are still many dangers associated with it. These dangers, of course, are not routinely noticed by those making short jumps from planet surface to an orbiting space station. Or the relatively mundane act of traveling from one star to another using FTL. The true dangers of space travel come from prolonged missions or jobs done in some far off section of space. Deep space mining ventures are usually the ones that have the most risk associated with them. It is quite easy for a ships crew to get sloppy after so many months by themselves on some asteroid. Watching automated drillers carve apart a mineral rich chunk of space debris starts to become mundane and the dangers associated with it can become forgotten.
	It's for this reason that deep space salvage had become such a lucrative business. Salvagers waited for word of a ship or station to go dark or send out a distress beacon. After that it was all a matter of getting to the station, offering help to tow the ship back or provide repairs and then it was off to the parent company to collect the reward. A ship lost through accident or space disaster were the most lucrative of bounties. Companies would pay a high price to get mining equipment back. And, of course, they were happy to get the crews back as well. Although that was always listed as a secondary objective on job postings. 
	A salvagers life made up of long stretches of little activity followed by brief periods of high activity. Which is why most who got into it did it as a side job. An extra source of income that added onto the bottom line.
	For Cinnamon though, it was a full time job. It hadn't taken much for her to finally settle onto salvaging as a career. The horse wasn't much into the idea of working for a corporation or a military outfit. She preferred a laid back life and towing ships back to stations or offering to run supplies was a good way to live while she waited for jobs regarding high value salvage targets.
	It had taken her a few years to finally cobble together enough money through smaller jobs to afford a proper salvage barge. The ship, which she named the Lucky Find, was a typical model for the work. A decommissioned military tugboat , the Lucky Find was rigged with powerful grav thrusters, a burly FTL drive, and had been modified to fit extra cargo space. The ship had the shape of a cigar but sported an aft that many other pilots had come to know as "that bottom heavy boat". Cinnamon liked to think the ship and herself were built for each other. Years of sitting on her backside had given the mare a bottom heavy look as well. Her brown bulk, stuffed into a flight suit, was a common sight in the flight lounges and canteens around many of the core worlds major trucking routes. She had a frame built for relaxing forays into space and the sturdiness of her breed ensured that no one could say there wasn't some power under all that extra padding. 
	Despite making a good living off her job, Cinnamon still wished to find the kind of score that so many other salvagers like her wished for. A valuable, company owned ship, that could be towed back and sold back to for a modest finders fee and of course, a sizable reward for saving a ship worth more than GDP of any colony world. She was soon to find that such a find isn't found without its own kind of dangers attached to it. 
	
	It had been a normal day like any other. Cinnamon had awoken in her sleeping bunk which had been placed conveniently just behind the bridge of her little tug boat, and made her way into the galley. The galley was, in actuality, little more than a closet she'd turned into a makeshift kitchen. A food dehydrator, coffee maker, and an ice cream machine, served up a variety of foods that served for the mare on the go. Once she'd gotten a few packs of vitamin rich breakfast flakes and a cup of coffee, she floated her way into the cockpit and settled herself into the captains chair. The cockpit of the Lucky Find was one of the few parts of the ship Cinnamon hadn't stripped down to make room for more cargo. She'd kept it just as it had been when she'd bought the ship. A room large enough for a captains chair, complete with computer rig and interface that allowed her to inspect other ships through on board cameras, and a navigation chair which sat just ahead of hers. The only change she'd made was tearing out the captains chair and replacing it with a padded recliner that had served as a bed for many a long distance flight.
	 The ship had been docked at a station orbiting Mars, one of the central trading hubs of the Sol system. Once settled in, Cinnamon flicked on the view screen in front of her, adjusting the small camera pointed at her to avoid letting anyone see her in her underwear should she get a sudden message. The flight suit might be designed for comfort but the hefty mare still preferred to sleep in just a bra and panties. 
	The job prospects around the Core Worlds were usually of the safer variety. Short jumps from Earth to Mars to deliver goods or perhaps the odd taxi job. There were many furs that couldn't afford interplanetary travel on a proper transport and would often buy passage on ships like hers if she happened to be going in the same direction. But those kinds of jobs didn't interest Cinnamon that morning. As she sat there, sipping her coffee, trying to ignore the attempt at an authentic flavour, she found herself scrolling through another set of listings known as the Rumor Mill.
	The Rumor Mill was well known to salvagers and space truckers alike. It was a listing posted by members of traffic control on different stations and listed the comings and goings of ships. For the laymen, it was just a garbled mess of ship designation numbers, course layouts, and departure times. For those in the know, however, it was a list that could hold a potential fortune. If you knew the model of a ship, the average time it took for travel from a specific destination, and a departure time, you could piece together what ships might be running late. A ship running late long enough might have become stranded or broken down which would mean a big payout for anyone that could find it.
	Cinnamon scrolled through the posts, frowning at the tags on various posts which denoted others had already done the math and headed off towards the potential salvage. There was always a chance that Cinnamon could beat them there but that was usually frowned upon. A claim jumper wasn't held in very high regard among salvagers. Only the most desperate or those not concerned with making friends would try to beat others to a job. She was just about to give up when a message suddenly appeared on the screen that hovered above her head. She reached a plump finger out to the touch pad built into the armrest of her chair and opened it.

	"Hey Cap'n," The message read.
	"Hey Tach," Cinnamon said out loud, the words appearing in the message as she spoke.
	"You on a job?"
	"Nah," Cinnamon replied. "Just scrounging around in the mill,"
	"OH really? Well, check out MDX-LL2"
	Cinnamon swiped the message window aside and started a search for the ship number that was suggested. Sure enough, she found it, buried deep in the flight logs. It took a moment to cross reference the ship model and when she found it she frowned.
	"That's weird," She said the computer screen. "It's reading as a make of oven,"
	"I know," The message window replied. "It's a cover model for high profile ships, research vessels and stuff like that,"
	"So?" Cinnamon said.
	"Read when it was supposed to arrive at dock," 
	Cinnamon dutifully examined the log again, sure enough, the ship was supposed to have docked well over a week ago. "So what? you think it's lost?"
	"Of course I do," The messenger known as Taco replied. "A ship like that might be a big payday,"
	"It could also just have docked at an unlisted colony," She reasoned, "Or it just stopped at an unlisted station."
	"True, but it could also have broken down. I'm digging through the data to try and find its proper number and figure out where it was headed. If I can find it there might be a fat payday in it for both of us. You in?"
	Cinnamon looked at the message for a moment. Tach was rarely wrong when it came to his finds. He had a knack for spotting a good mission. Maybe this was the kind of thing she'd been looking for? What was the harm in trying?
	"Alright," she said. "If you find any concrete information let me know,"
	"Of course," Tach replied before the message closed. Cinnamon looked at the blank screen before finishing off the rest of her coffee and her breakfast. With a job like that she could afford an actual food replicator. Hell, if the ship really was valuable she could afford to completely rebuild the Lucky Find from the ground up. The possibilities danced around in the mare's head as she spent the rest of her morning drifting around the net and thinking about the job to come. 

	Meanwhile, Tach got to work.

	As far as engineers for hire went, Tach was one of the best. The lynx had made a reputation for himself after working for a few years as a floater in the Core Militia. He would only  spend anywhere from three to six months on a single ship. During that that time he was expected to learn the layout of the ships engines, its problem areas, idiosyncrasies and limitations and be able to use all of that information to ensure the vessel worked at peak efficiency. He’d been good at sorting out problems and finding work arounds. The issue with most ships in the Core was that few of them were ever made by the same manufacturer. This meant that parts that should have been interchangeable required endless fixing and modding in order to allow them to work across the various equipment that needed to be fixed. Add in the fact that many of the ships in the militia were well past retirement age and it meant that Tach was kept on his toes constantly. 
	He learned quickly how to spot problems and to find solutions that would last until he could get the parts he needed or come up with something better. Through constant access to engines and thrusters he learned the make and model of almost every ship in the fleet. This sort of renown meant that he was run off his feet not only from working on whatever ship he was keeping afloat but also from answering help requests from other engineers on other ships that had encountered problems that required his delicate touch. The work was stressful and the pay wasn’t very good but Tach found a joy deep within the work. It was a joy that came from doing a job that was needed and doing it well. He felt pride knowing he’d managed to extend the lifespan of a ship and anytime he spotted a ship he’d worked on while on leave on station or just through the porthole of a ship he was on he felt his spirits raise. 
	Despite this joy, the work really had begun to wear on him. After five years of constant movement across the militia fleet, Tach finally decided he’d had enough. There wasn’t much of a future in just keeping a fleet running for a few months at a time. What kind of retirement would he get? Would he just end up too tired to go on and get stranded on whatever colony world he happened to be too poor to leave? He wasn’t about to let that happen. He wanted a nest egg and the best way to do it, well, the safest way to do it, was through salvage. But Tach, by his own admission, was no pilot. He could fly a ship if need be, but the responsibility of captaining a ship just wasn’t what he was looking for. He preferred to be with the engine, ensuring everything was running smoothly, rather than in the cockpit.
	It was this attitude that eventually caused the lynx to run into Cinnamon. Tach had been working maintenance on a space station near the edge of the Sol system when the Lucky Find came limping into port. Tach had been immediately drawn to the ship by its very nature of being an ex militia ship. 
	“Where’d you find it?” Tach asked. He’d been running a paw over the outer of the ship. Cinnamon had still been floating out of the airlock into the zero g of one of the stations hangar. Even when Tach had first met her, Cinnamon had been pushing well past ‘sturdy’ and into ‘plump’ range. 
	“I got her at an auction out near New Horizon,” Cinnamon explained, drifting down to where Tach had been admiring the ship. “She was going to be scrapped. Can you believe it?”
	“Sadly, yeah,” Tach shook his head as he looked over the ship. Sure, it wasn’t much to look at, but it didn’t need to be flashy. A ship like that only needed to be reliable. “Everyone wants the newer models these days.”
	“I know,” Cinnamon grunted, watching an automated refueling arm extend out from the side of the hangar and lock into the side of her ship. “They want ‘em so much that they don’t make parts for her anymore.”
	“They wouldn’t,” Tach went on, only half listening. The ship looked to have been heavily modified into a cargo ship. It certainly didn’t do the ship any favors in the looks department but the work seemed solid. “Most of the old TR-1 series parts have all been snapped up.”
	“Yeah,” Cinnamon said with a hint of sadness. “I may have to end up trading her in for something more up to date,”
	“What?” Tach gasped, finally pulled from his examination of the ship. “You can’t do that!”
	“Hey,” Cinnamon raised her paws when she saw the stocky lynx’s emotions flare up. “I don’t want to. But unless I can find a supplier of parts then I don’t know what else to do. I don’t wanna end up lost out in space on a mission because she’s dead in the water.”
	“But this ship is a classic!” Tach waved his paws at the ship. “What’s wrong with her?”
	What followed was a long list of ailments that Cinnamon had noticed during her previous transport runs. Tach listened intently as she spoke of engine backfires, grav thrust shorts and tether fatigue. It was a laundry list of issues that suggested Cinnamon was a caring owner but not equipped to do the kind of maintenance that the ship needed. She had taken Tach into the ship after she noticed how interested he was in the ship. She watched as he poked around through every corridor, opening seemingly random panels to show frayed wires and various damage that had come from previous repairs.
	“This is the trouble with planet side engineers,” Tach had said while his upper half was crammed into some obscure part of the ships reactor. “They just think of short term trips, never take into account the effect deep space has on electronics.” 
	“Is it really that bad?” Cinnamon had asked in the tone of one who suspected there might be a rather large bill coming her way. She’d always meant to get to these repairs herself but, if she was honest, so much time spent sitting on her rump on long hauls had left her with a physique that wasn’t the right size for many of the problem areas on the ship.
	“Well,” Tach said, tugging himself out of the reactor. “She’s in rough shape but she’s not terminal. I’ll need to order some parts and I can get to work on her.”
	“But I’ve got a delivery to make,” Cinnamon said. “I’m just here to refuel then I have to get going.”
	Tach could feel the chance to save a piece of space faring history slipping through his paws. “Are you going to be heading back this way?”
	“Only if there’s work,” Cinnamon said. “I’m heading to Mars, I can’t afford the trip and the repairs.”
	“What if I found you another job?” Tach said, his mind racing. “Would you be able to come back then?”
	“If there was work?” Cinnamon tapped her chin. “But then there’s the cost of the repairs to consider.”
	“I’ll do it for free!” Tach said, a little more forcefully than he had intended. 
	“Free?” Cinnamon repeated the word. “Alright then,” She stuck her paw out towards him. Tach reached up and squeezed the mare’s plump palm, giving it a shake. 
	And that, as they say, was history. Tach more than lived up to his side of the bargain. His position on the station and his experience had allowed him to find a number of lucrative contracts found through several other transport captains complaining about food shortages on several stops along their flight paths. He relayed the info to Cinnamon and the mare was able to make a tidy sum by getting those goods to a few far flung colonies before heading back to the station for repairs. From there, Tach poured all his skill and technical know how into repairing the ship and bringing it up to a level of performance that Cinnamon had never even known it was capable of.
The pair became partners soon after. Tach was able to supply jobs and Cinnamon was able to offer up a finders fee as well as ferry any parts that the lynx might need when working on one of the endless repair jobs that would need to be done on ships that made their way to his station.  Both of them supplied something the other lacked. Cinnamon, with her ship and piloting skill, plus a nose for business and sifting through the leads Tach gave her to find one that would actually pay off, offered up the chance for Tach to work on an old ship and also offer him the money he needed to retire somewhere decent. While Tach, on the other hand, kept Cinnamon’s ship running and ensured she’d never run out of jobs that could keep her lifestyle as a trucker come salvager going. 
It was for these reasons that Cinnamon trusted Tach, or Taco as he called himself on com channels, to find the info needed on that possibly missing vessel. It was the kind of deep diving, technical work that the lynx relished. He started sifting through the databases and ships logs in order to find any info on the ship. When that came up empty he began looking through the station manifest to find what other ships had been in the hangar at the time. After that it was a simple matter of getting in contact with the captains of those ships and seeing what they would be willing to accept for access to their ship’s flight recordings.
One crate of non imperial panel couplers and a two boxes of ice cream bars later, Tach had the info he needed.  A view from a cargo hauler heading it the Rim turned up a perfect image of the ship he’d been searching for. Tach looked over the picture a few times in his little workshop, trying to ensure that what he was looking at was correct. 
The ‘oven’ turned out to be a research vessel used by mining companies to explore strange sightings and samples that were discovered by mining crews in the far reaches of space. The ship looked a bit like a large pain relief capsule. A smooth, featureless outer shell with a bridge on top of it filled the image that Tach had paid for. The shell was there to protect the delicate instruments and equipment used in investigating any potentially dangerous finds and could be opened and closed at a moments notice. A ship like that was worth a fortune. Whatever company owned it would pay enough to buy a small fleet of ships if it was brought in without any major damage. But where was it going? And was it even lost? That was what he was going to have to find out.

“So? What’s the verdict?” Cinnamon asked. It had been a week since Tach had brought up the possibility of a high value salvage target. Cinnamon had run a couple surface to space jobs to keep close in case Tach found anything before finally just making her way to him.  As much as she didn’t want to get her hopes up, the mare sounded excited. She found Tach in the small repair shop that served as his office. The place was littered with boxes of salvaged gear, older model parts and tools along with work orders and a few computers built to mimic the software in a star ships FTL drive. He shared the shop with a couple other mechanics who were out on repair jobs in the hangar. His time spent on stations had pushed his body towards a slight paunchiness but nowhere near the hefty hourglass frame that Cinnamon sported. The lynx wore an old gray jumpsuit, one of a dozen he’d made off with on one of his last jobs. Along the arms were patches from the various ships he’d served on during his time as a floater.
“Well,” Tach had said, sliding away from a table covered in bits of wire and a stack of old flight recorders. “I think it’s lost.”
“You think?” Cinnamon said, placing her paws on her wide hips. 
“Yeah, here.” Tach coasted across the floor of the shop on his chair, stopping in front of the computer’s he’d set up. “I did some calculations with the info I got from the ships departure trajectory. I got a hold of the angle of its FTL jump.”
“And you can use that to find where it is?”
“No, I can use that to figure out where it’s going.”
Cinnamon frowned. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
“No,” Tach explained, switching on the computer monitor. The flat screen image that appeared was a star map showing a sizable swath of the milky way galaxy. Cinnamon could see several dozen points had been highlight. “It might have gotten lost, remember? I can figure out where it’s going. But to find out where it is will take some actual leg work.”
	“What kind of leg work?” 
“It’s not too difficult,” Tach continued. “With the trajectory of the ships FTL jump I figured out where it was going, then I just mapped out the positions of various objects and mining points along that route.” He tapped a few buttons on the keyboard and Cinnamon watched as dozens of little lines began to criss cross across the screen, spanning nearly half the known galaxy.
“How many possible routes could it have taken?” She asked.
“Around four hundred, at least.” 
“At least?”
“Well, these don’t account for possible stops to refuel or pick up crew.”
“So you want me to comb the entirety of the known galaxy to try and find a ship that might not even be lost?” Cinnamon could feel a familiar emotion rising up. It was the same one she got whenever she investigated one of Tach’s leads that didn’t go anywhere. Only this one was all the more intense because she’d spent so much time waiting around for the results. 
“No, no, nothing like that,” Tach replied. “Remember, we have it’s destination. We just need to go to the next possible location on the map and then look for clues. Once we get out there I’m sure we’ll find what we need.”
“We?” Cinnamon said. 
“Of course. You think I’m going to leave you to do all the heavy lifting? Imagine finding a derelict research ship. The tech they use on a ship like that might still be in prototype stage. Besides, you’ll need me to get the everything back online if there’s any issues.”
She had to admit, Tach made a good point. “So, what’s our next move?”
	“You just get the ship refueled,” Tach said as he began to unhook his computer setup. “I need to pack.”
	Cinnamon had anticipated that Tach might have wanted to come along. In all honesty she had counted on it. Her skills when it came to salvaging were limited to slapping a few tow hooks on the craft and dragging it back to port. But with a job like this, it paid to have an engineer. There were just too many variables to consider. What if the ship had been drilling into an asteroid? What if its pieces were scattered? It could take days or weeks to collect all the valuable parts on her own. Having someone who better understood technology and what to look for in terms of valuable salvage was a useful resource. Especially when dealing with more advanced tech.
	Which is why, when Cinnamon opened her ship up to Tach, she wasn’t surprised when he pushed his way past her and set himself up at the navigators seat in the cockpit. The unused portion of her ship was quickly reactivated and Tach waste no time getting to work. For the next few days he spent all of his time in that seat, pouring over data. Cinnamon didn’t have a whole lot to do while Tach worked. She punched in the coordinates for each new stop as they hopped from potential stop to potential stop. When asked, Tach would explain that he could use the galaxy map to see if there were any celestial bodies that might have been in that place when the ship passed through. He could also, through the Lucky Find’s own meager but serviceable scanning equipment, pick up any trace of another ship that their quarry might have rendezvoused with. It was tricky, tedious work, with Cinnamon starting to grow more impatient with each passing day. But, she had put her faith in her friend and she just had to trust that he would be able to see them through.
	The Lucky Find lived up to her name at the end of the fifth day of searching. Cinnamon had just floated into the cockpit after a shower, rubbing through her mane as she floated through the air towards her seat. Tach was still in the navigators chair. Since he’d gotten onto the ship he hadn’t left it unless it was necessary. Empty food wrappers and containers drifted around him like plastic moons as he poured over data fed to him by the ships computer.
“Any luck?” Cinnamon asked, squeezing herself back into her chair and doing up her flight suit and keeping her bosoms from bouncing around too freely in the low gravity of the ships cockpit.
“Wait.” Tach said over his shoulder. He’d hunched himself closer to the screen in built into the dash in front of him, watching new data roll in. “I think I’ve got something. Switch on the external camera.”
Cinnamon tugged over the adjustable monitor that hung from a swivel arm built into the side of her chair. She punched in a few commands and her screen filled with an image of the outside of the ship. Tach pulled up his own image and the pair found themselves staring at what looked like a cold capsule that had broken open, revealing the insides to be the complex inner workings of a research vessels delicate instruments which had all been smashed to bits from the impact of an asteroid that was still pressed against its side. The duo stared for a few moments longer before Cinnamon opened up her comlink.
“This is the pilot of the Lucky Find calling anyone on board. Do you read me, over?”
	Silence was the only response. The research vessel appeared to be dead in the water as it were. There didn’t even seem to be any running lights on.
“This is Captain Cinnamon Black of the Lucky Find is there anyone there? Do you need help? Over.” 
	“Try the emergency channel,” Tach said. Even as he spoke, Cinnamon was already doing just that. She turned up the volume, hoping to find some kind of communication or recording but was met with dead silence. 
“Looks like that hit must have did them all in,” Cinnamon said.
“I hope not,” Tach replied. “Maybe they made it to escape pods or are in a part that still has life support. 
Cinnamon looked over the info that her ship was giving her. The ship was still registering no life signs but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone on board. Her ship didn’t have the most robust sensors and the research vessel might be able to confuse what readings she could make.
	“Well,” She said, matching the speed of the Lucky Find to that of their quarry. “Might as as well go in for a closer look.” As the ship drifted closer, the image on their screens became clearer and they could just make out a name on the side which read ‘Frontier Ho’.
	“Strange,” Tach said. “It doesn’t look like there’s any hull damage.”
	“So why do you think it’s dead?”
	“Dunno,” Tach replied while he ran a list of possible causes through his head. “The impact might have blown out life support. But The engines are still running.” He gestured to his display and Cinnamon brought up the readings she’d sent him. Sure enough there was a faint amount of energy in the engines. “I’d have at least punched in some coordinates into the autopilot to take me back to the nearest port if I was them.”
“Looks like there’s enough energy going to keep them from spinning,” Cinnamon said as she pulled them up alongside the smashed vessel. Once she’d gotten them close enough she switched on her ships salvaging rig. Several hatches opened on the underside of the Lucky Find and tethers guided by small rockets drifted towards the ship, magnetically locking in place. Both of them felt the ship lurch as they connected. An opening appeared around the perimeter of the airlock and a thin membrane stretched out, reaching for the research vessels barely visible airlock. Once it had connected the umbilical like tube inflated with air, allowing safe passage in between the ships.  Their quarry was larger than the Lucky Find but most of that size came in the sophisticated instruments that were now wedged into the asteroid. The portion of the ship that housed the crew and what Tach suspected to be research labs, were roughly the size of the Lucky Find itself. They would have to search the entirety of the ship for any survivors. A staggering task for just two salvagers.
“It won’t be so bad,” Tach said as hey the unstrapped themselves from their seats and floated towards the airlock. “When we get on board i can use the ships computers to scan for any life signs.”
Cinnamon wasn’t sure exactly how she felt about possibly sifting through the corpses of the previous crew. But she knew that the job might take a less than pleasant turn when she accepted it. The only thing to do was to suit up and get to work.	
The Lucky Find sported one custom space suit designed for Cinnamon's shape and girth. The hefty mare squeezed herself into a blue space suit built for space walks in close proximity to the ship. It was a bulkier rig due to her size. Tach had a skin tight suit that fitted over his jumpsuit and formed a tight seal around the fishbowl helmet that he tugged out of one of the lockers in the airlock. Cinnamon had thought about going that route, a skin tight suit that she could activate at will would have been convenient but she couldn’t really justify the cost. Her ample frame would have cost more than she was willing to pay. Besides which, the cockpit could seal off at a moments notice if there was any trouble. 
Once suited, Cinnamon opened the airlock and they drifted out into space. The distance between the two ships was only around one hundred feet but it was hard not to feel vulnerable. The only thing separating the pair from being tossed out into space was a thin membrane built to keep out solar radiation and keep oxygen in. The pair traveled in silence across the gap, as though any conversation might risk the delicate structure of their protection. As they got closer they could just make out a symbol on the side of the ship, indicating that it was part of the Earth Scientific Research Division. They let out a simultaneous sigh of relief once they made it to the far airlock. But once they got there they found another obstacle.
“Locked,” Cinnamon said, the large gloves covering her paws grasping around the entrance to try and find an emergency override.
Tach nodded,“Thought there might be one,”. He reached into the backpack he had brought along for the trip and produced a small tablet which he pointed at the door. Cinnamon turned to watch as Tach punched in a few commands into a program. “This thing cycles through the known emergency override commands. The thing isn’t hackable but most of these ships never switch off the factory settings.”
“You really think they’d be that stupid?” Cinnamon asked. It was hard to think of anyone spending so much on a ship and not bothering to randomize something as fundamental as the lock on their door.
“You ever reset the password on yours?” Tach asked without looking up from his tablet. 
Cinnamon felt her cheeks turn a bright red. “Let’s just get inside.”
	It wasn’t long before the tablet came up with the proper code and the airlock began to cycle. The pair stood in front of the seamless entrance to the ship, watching as a door seemed to appear out of nowhere and slide into the sides of the ship, revealing the circular opening of an airlock. The locks on the outside of the entrance started a complicated dance around the center of the door before spreading apart and the airlock slid open without a sound. 
	Tach and Cinnamon stared into the airlock, both of them expecting the worst, and found it to be empty. The circular chamber was ringed with lockers, each containing a pristine space suit. Tach looked over the suits hungrily, his natural inclination to scrounge was going into overdrive but Cinnamon checked him.
	“We’re not thieves, Tach,” She said through comlink. “We need to find the crew first.”
	“Right, right,” Tach said, moving away from one of the lockers he’d already opened. “But I wonder why none of the suits are touched.”
	“We won’t find out standing around in here,” Cinnamon said, trying to focus on the task at hand. “Let’s keep searching.”
	The empty airlock opened into an empty corridor that was lit only by the lights on the pair’s suits. Two identical looking passages stretched off in either direction.
	“I guess we split up,” Cinnamon said, turning towards the passage that led towards the front of the ship.
	“What?” Tach said with a touch of surprise. “You want to split up?” 
	“Oh come on,” Cinnamon replied with a roll of her eyes. “You think there’s anything dangerous on the ship? The life support is off and there’s no distress beacon activated. The ships dead. I’ll head to the bridge and see if I can find anything.” 
	“I, alright,” Tach said, trying to match Cinnamon’s confidence but failing. “Just keep in touch.”
	“Of course, be sure to let me know if an alien jumps you,” Cinnamon said, unable to help teasing the jumpy lynx.
	“Not funny,” Tach grumbled as he made his way towards the engineering. 
	The trek through the ship for both of them was a strange one. As they passed through each section they found every door in the ship open and unlocked. Cinnamon made her way to the ships bridge and found it to be far more sophisticated than her setup. There were half a dozen stations in a semi-circle in front of the captains chair as well as a large screen that stretched across the far wall of the room. Cinnamon had always dreamed of having a screen like that, as impractical as it might be. Each station appeared to be abandoned with chairs turned away from the consoles. She looked back towards the captains chair and looked over the console. There didn’t appear to be any sort of damage to any of the controls. So where had the crew gone? If there was power she could at least check the ships manifest and find out who how many were in the crew. With no power though, there was no point in sticking around, she might as well start searching the rest of the ship.
	While Cinnamon examined the bridge, Tach made his way towards the engine room. Of course, he didn’t expect to find anything alien in the ship. There was surely a perfectly acceptable explanation for where the crew went, why the ships power was offline, and why they hadn’t sent out a distress beacon. There had to be. However, that didn’t stop the lynx’s brain from concocting any number of terrifying monsters that might be hiding around every corner. He found himself jumping at shadows and poking a flashlight into a room before sticking his head inside.
	Much like what Cinnamon found the bridge, Tach failed to find any sign of the crew as he passed through what appeared to be labs and test chambers. Again he found every door to be open wide. It certainly made passage through what should have been a ship on lock down much easier, but it was no less unsettling. Finally, after passing through a few more corridors and empty rooms, Tach found himself walking into engineering.
	The research vessel sported a robust set of engines and FTL drives. The power core of the entire ship sat in the middle of engineering, a massive cylinder holding a reactor surrounded by a chamber of coolant. Tach tried to ignore the empty chairs and strewn equipment as he made his way over to one of the consoles. The ships engines hadn’t been compromised from the impact with the asteroid, nor had the power core suffered any sort of damage. Theoretically, the ship could have flown back to port while fused with the asteroid. So why hadn’t they done so? Many terrible thoughts about the fate of the crew began to flow through Tach’s mind as he searched for the main terminal. It wasn’t long before he found it and, after a few simple button presses, watched as power began to flood back into the ship.
“Hey!” Cinnamon suddenly said in Tach’s ear, causing him to jump out of the chair he was sitting in. “Everything’s powering up!”
	“Yeah,” Tach said after catching his breath. “I switched everything back online.” 
“Great, wait,” Cinnamon replied. “You just switched it back on?”
Tach looked over the control console in front of him, there didn’t appear to be any damage that he could see. “Yeah, everything was just turned off,”
“Why would the crew have done that?” Cinnamon asked. 
“I don’t know,” Tach said, a sense of dread starting to creep up his spine. “But I get the feeling that maybe everything was off for a reason.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Cinnamon said in his ear. “Anyway,I’m still sifting through the ship for survivors. When I’m done we can meet up somewhere. How about the mess hall?”
“Sounds good,” Tach replied. “I’ll head over once I get the life support and main systems back online.”
“Good, over and out,” 
Tach looked up from the control console he’d been working on and back to the power core. The thing was two stories tall and about the width of a grain silo. A soft blue pulse emanated from its inner workings, bathing the engineering bay in a eerie blue light. He tried to ignore it as he began to switch on the power systems in the ship. A diagnostic display indicated that everything apart from the outer instruments on the ship were in perfect working order. He went down a list of different subroutines in the ship  and slowly brought everything back to life. Out in the hallway, Cinnamon noticed the vents begin to blow air back into the rooms.
“Life supports online,” Tach said into his com as he continued to reactivate systems. The sounds of computers coming to life and power restoring to the ship started to banish the dread that he’d been feeling. A powerless ship was a dead ship and a dead ship was nowhere he wanted to be. 
“What say we meet up in the mess hall?” Cinnamon suggested, making her way through more of the ship. “We can put our heads together over a meal.” 
“A meal?” 
“You bring any food?” Cinnamon asked. “‘Cause I didn’t. And I’m not going all the way back for some. This ship’s gotta have some sort of replicator on it. Maybe it’s even got a few prototypes!” 
Tach couldn’t help but notice the sudden hint of anticipation in Cinnamon’s voice. “Alright, I’ll get down there as soon as I can.” 
	After the conversation ended, Cinnamon continued her search while Tach dug into the ships logs. 
Meanwhile, something in the core began to stir.

	With the power restored and lights back on, the pair felt a great deal better. Cinnamon wouldn’t admit it, but she had been just as creeped out as Tach was. The empty ship, lack of any apparent struggle or evacuation was more than a little unsettling. Now however, with the power on, she began to feel confident that there was a reasonable explanation for everything they’d encountered. She made her way back through the ship, checking the PDA built into the wrist of her bulky space suit. A series of beeps indicated that it had linked with the ship and displayed the a layout of the ship.
	“Uh Tach?” She said as she made her way down a corridor. “How come I’ve got a map of this place?”
	“Huh, everything must have reset,” Tach replied. “Guess they really did shut things down. The security for the entire ship has been turned off.”
	“Why would they need to do that?” Cinnamon asked. “Would have thought they would have had access to their own ship.”
	“Maybe it was just to make a rescue ships job easier? Wouldn’t want them stuck on the other side of a bulkhead if you needed help.”
	“I guess,” It was the mare’s turn to sound dubious. “Still doesn’t explain where they went.”
	“Hopefully I’ll find the answer in the ships logs,” Tach and Cinnamon hoped he was right. The sooner they were able to set the record straight the better. In the meantime, Cinnamon still had a galley to find. The task was made all the easier by the map on her wrist and it wasn’t long before she found herself standing in a large dining area and lounge. 
	Cinnamon had always tried to make do with the space that she’d been given on her ship. Her setup at the cockpit, while comfortable, was not ideal. She’d spent as much as she dared on creature comforts that would see her through long haul flights but she still yearned for the comforts that came with an actual living area. It seemed the crew of this ship were able to afford such a luxury. 
	The galley of the ship was a large room, roughly the size of the rec room in a school dormitory. One large circular table dominated the room around which a dozen chairs law strewn across the floor, several of which were broken. A pair of green couches sat near a viewing window and wouldn’t have earned a second thought if both didn’t look like they’d been crushed in a hydraulic press. There was the remains of a pool table and what appeared to be an old style video gambling machine, both of which were in a similar state as the couch. All around the room were discarded clothing which Cinnamon would have assumed belonged to the crew. She would have assumed, were it not for the machines that drew her eye. She was drawn towards the wall opposite the large windows which sat behind a bar on which sat scattered bottles and empty glasses. Cinnamon passed all of this on her way to the food replicators which sat behind the bar.
	The issue of dealing with food in star ships was one that had been solved soon after the development of FTL drives. Freeze dried, dehydrated food served for most deep space flights but as space travel became a normal fact of life, furs in space strove for better quality food. As a result, replicators were invented. These devices were able to recreate almost any food imaginable, depending on the quality of the machine. The most expensive ones could even create meals which were one hundred percent healthy but also tasted delicious. A double cheeseburger would have the same caloric impact as a stalk of celery or a bowl of ice cream could do as much damage to a furs waistline as a cucumber and spinach smoothie. The sky was the limit with the top tier designs. Cinnamon had always dreamed of one day getting to see one and now a brand new model was sitting right in front of her.  
	A host of different possibilities presented themselves as Cinnamon looked over the controls. Helpful displays indicated the possible combinations of food and nutrients the machine could make, along with easy to understand instructions. Cinnamon ran a gloved paw over the panel lovingly. This was the addition to her ship she’d always dreamed of. But she shouldn’t think about food at a time like this. She had a job to do. Although, she reasoned, with the ships power back on and Tach looking into the whereabouts of the crew, she was free to relax a little bit. Already, her suits HUD was reporting life support was back to acceptable levels and the internal temperature of the ship was rising. Surely she could afford to take a break? She’d been working all day, searching a spooky ship, stuffed into a stuffy space suit. She had earned a bit of time to rest. 
	After double checking the air levels in the ship, Cinnamon undid the clasps on her helmet and pulled it off. The scent of stale air met her nostrils, causing her to grimace It seemed the life support was still cycling out the last of the dead air from its systems. She ignored the smell, trying not to think what it might do to her sense of taste, and began to poke around at the replicators controls.
	Being built as a prototype, the display lacked the friendly greetings and lengthy start up animations where various smiling foods would dance out of a simplified version of the modified quantum replication field held within. Instead, Cinnamon was treated to a much simpler, and much more welcome display featuring a list of ingredients, nutrient counts, and a quick menu of different dishes. Not wanting to miss out, she began to punch in a few different foods in the hopes of seeing what the machine could do. She passed on a few snacks like chips and cookies, those were easy, and went right into the section for dairy. Most machines had difficulty dealing with anything that involved living cultures or complex fats. 
	To her surprise, the machine had a list of different milks, creams, cheeses and ice creams. She punched in an order for a wheel of brie along with a plate of biscuits to go with it. The replicator made no noise, no gentle hum to suggest something inside was working or a whir to create a sense of complexity that would justify the cost. The replicator had been trimmed of any superfluous functions it seemed and a small metal door near the bottom of the machine popped open revealing a small wheel of soft cheese and a plate of biscuits to go with it. Cinnamon reached a gloved paw towards the food before thinking better of it. She’d been poking and prodding things all over the ship. The last thing she wanted was to smear grease or space dust on her food. She unlocked the gloves that covered her paws, letting them drop to the floor and made a mental note to pick them up later, before grabbing her food.
	Cinnamon was impressed at the quality and the speed. Most machines would take around five minutes to produce something that wasn’t even half the quality of the food this one made. The cheese certainly looked the part. The firm outer skin of the brie was a clouded white, complete with marks that suggested it had sat on a rack at some point in time while the biscuits looked crumbly and had a slightly sweet aroma to them. She carried the treats over to the large circular table in the middle of the room, righted a chair, and sat down before realizing that she had nothing to cut the brie or spread it with. She didn’t like the idea of having to get up and root around under a counter to try and find a knife so she simple broke off a chunk of the brie from the wheel. The cheese stretched before finally breaking apart, forcing Cinnamon to lift the piece she’d taken over her muzzle to catch the errant strands that would have been sadly lost. 
	The flavor of the cheese was certainly impressive, it really did taste like real brie. Cinnamon sat for a moment, rolling the treat around in her muzzle, enjoying the slightly musky flavor mixed with the creamy texture. How long had it been since she’d had anything close to this quality? She’d been in space so long, living off nutrient packs and flash frozen meals that the taste of such high quality food almost made her weep. She managed to pull herself together enough to push one of the biscuits into her snout along with another chunk of brie. The textures and flavors mixed in her mouth, soft on crumbly, sweet on dairy. The decadent treat caused her to lean back in her chair in order to fully savor the moment. At that moment, Cinnamon didn’t care if they found the crew or even got paid for this job. Just getting to sample something so rare out in the depths of space was payment enough. 
	That being said, she still did want to be paid. The equipment in the galley alone would be well worth the trip. Who wouldn’t want a prototype like the one in the galley back safe and sound? She continued to muse over the idea of the replicator, wondering if there was a way to actually haggle one for herself, until she began to feel thirsty. Brie and biscuits are a good treat, but they are hardly the kind of satisfying repast that made up a reward for a hard job. 
	“What I could go for,” Cinnamon said out loud, breaking off another piece of brie, “Is some tea,”
	The replicator worked in complete silence which is why it took the mare so long to realize that there was a fresh pot of tea sitting in the replicator. Cinnamon almost dropped a biscuit when she spotted the finished drink sitting in the machine.
	“No way,” She said, making her way over to the replicator and opening the hatch. Sure enough, there sat a pot of tea alongside an earthenware cup. “This thing is voice activated?” She whispered, not able to believe it. She lifted the pot and cup out of the dispenser slot and looked over the machine once more. “Sponge cake,” She said. The dispenser port on the replicator snapped shut for a moment and was finished by the time Cinnamon sat down the tea at the table and returned to find a plate of fresh, fluffy, sponge cake waiting for her. She lifted a slice with a trembling paw. The cake was two half's held together with what appeared to be jam and had been dusted with icing sugar. She took a bite and her knees went weak. The flavor was like coming home after a long journey. A taste of a long distant past that she had never been apart of but immediately saw clear as day. She savored each bite of the piece she’d taken before carrying the plate back to the table and sat back down.
	The food she’d prepared vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Cinnamon was ravenous for those rare treats, pushing more cheese and biscuits into her snout, following it with a gulp of tea before popping in another slice of cake. As she ate she felt her suit chafe and wrinkle around her. The suit wasn’t built to be worn for anything other than space walks. Cinnamon began to become aware of how it chafed her chest, her hips, her backside, her stomach, her neck when she leaned forward, her tail when she tried to adjust it, and her hooves, thighs, wrists, ankles and shoulders. The damned thing felt like a prison at that moment. How could she possibly continue to wear something so confining and uncomfortable while eating something so delicious? 
	Without wasting another moment, Cinnamon hopped up from her chair and began to fiddle with straps and clasps, letting her suit finally fall off like a sweaty, confining outer shell. Once she was free, Cinnamon sat back down., the skin tight jumpsuit she wore under it leaving very little to the imagination. Her stomach was squeezed tight, showing off the extra rolls and slight folds on her stomach which rested ever so gently against her thighs. She let out a groan of pleasure at finally being free, able to let her tail flick and adjust itself into a more comfortable position, before digging back in.
It wasn’t long after that when Cinnamon began to order more food. The teapot was empty and the brie was gone. She was just finishing the last of the sponge cake before she piped up at the machine. 
“How about some little sandwiches?” She said, licking her snout in anticipation for what the replicator might make in response. The only sound from the machine was the click of the dispenser unlocking. Cinnamon almost ran over to the machine, sliding out a plate of triangular sandwiches that were stuffed with cheese and ham and looked to be just fresh out of a frying pan. Grilled cheese and ham sandwiches? Cinnamon felt her heart soar as she walked back to the table, calling out a few more orders before sitting down and stuffing one of those treats into her snout. It truly tasted like a homemade sandwich. There was no hint of preservatives in the ham. This was no approximation of store bought, pre sliced, lunch meat. This was freshly cut from an actual whole ham. Cinnamon could even taste the mustard glaze that had been used on the ham when it was roasting. Or rather, when the machine fashioned the requisite parts together to create the end result of roasting a ham. 
After the sandwiches there was no going back, Cinnamon was hooked. What could she do? Years of space travel had left her woefully unprepared for high quality food. The only thing that mattered was sampling and savoring every food and treat she could have ever hoped to have tried. She began to think of meals and treats she’d seen in restaurant windows or on the packages of ready-meals that she wanted to try. But what next? What should she choose? There was an infinity of choices and who knew how long she had to try it? 
“Hey Cinnamon,” Tach said from the galley doorway. The lynx was looking down at the tablet in his paws, still focused on his work. “I think I might have worked out where the crew went. We just have to wait for this to…” He trailed off when he looked up, spotting the hefty mare leaning over a plate of sandwiches, greedily stuffing them into her snout. “...decrypt.”
Cinnamon looked up from her plate of food, then to the table where a pile of crumbs and bits of food lay, then back to her plate, then up at Tach. “Hey,” She said, licking her snout before pushing each plump finger into her snout, licking them clean. “Make any progress?”
“What are you doing?!” Tach shouted
	“Just having a snack, what’s the problem?” Cinnamon asked. Tach marched into the room and looked around around. He saw the knocked over chairs, the crushed couch, discarded clothing and every other warning sign that the mare had apparently missed.
	“What’s the problem?” Tach almost choked on the words. “We’re on a derelict ship in the middle of nowhere, it’s crew nowhere to be found, and you think it’s a good idea to take off your space suit and start eating?”
	“Oh relax, Taco,” Cinnamon said, eating another sandwich, “It’s fine,”
	The lynx stood beside the table, trying to figure out what problem he had with her statement to start with first. “It’s not fine! We don’t know if there was a virus or, or a contamination or whatever! You could be breathing in a brain parasite for all we know!”
	Cinnamon looked up from the plate, giving Tach a look that suggested she was beginning to find his constant paranoia a little tiresome. “Tach, listen to me. I’m fine, I checked and double checked the air before i took off my suit. Do you really think if the ship had some sort of parasite or bio hazard they would have left no warning? Even a ship running some crazy, highly illegal experiment would make pains to try and warn furs away from coming on board, not turn off all the locks and let anyone in. Honestly, Tach, you’ve got to calm down. I’ve been thinking about the whereabouts of the crew as well you know. I’m just as interested in getting to the bottom of this mystery but I’m not going to go jumping at shadows or worrying about space aliens coming for my brain.”
	“I’m not worried about space aliens, Cinnamon,” Tach replied. “Or, maybe I am, I don’t know. I just don’t want either of us to take any unnecessary risks. You’re acting like this entire situation isn’t incredibly suspicious. Did you even notice the broken furniture in here? The clothing strewn on the floor? That doesn’t strike you as a little unsettling? I’ve been waiting for the ships computer to give me a complete analysis of every inch of this ship before I even think of taking my suit off. This ship was off the books, hiding out in the middle of nowhere. It’s not something that should be taken lightly. And the more evidence I see the more I know that my suspicions are correct. We’ve stumbled onto something weird here, Cinnamon, and if we want to be able to make it back to port and get paid then we need to remain cautious.”
	Cinnamon looked over at her friend. She’d always known Tach to be careful, calculating, and meticulous, it was his nature as an engineer to be so. But she was  pilot, a captain of her own ship, she had learned to trust her gut and look beyond the little details and worry about the bigger picture. She had to do it because there really wasn’t anyone else around she could rely on most of the time.
	“I’m telling you, Tach,” She said, getting up from the table and walking over to the replicator. The scent of spices filled the air and she removed a tray of freshly cooked tacos from the machine. “You’re getting worried over nothing. I’m guessing they called for help, got picked up by another ship, and then decided to come back later for repairs.”
	Tach had to admit, that made a sort of sense. It would explain why there wasn’t a distress beacon. “But why leave all the doors unlocked?”
	“Maybe because they needed to get out in a hurry? Who knows.” Cinnamon said, crunching into the hard shell of one of the tacos on the plate. Tach turned his snout away, blushing a bit, at the realization that the jumpsuit Cinnamon wore left little to the imagination. Her hefty breasts wobbled heavily in plain view, resting against her stomach thanks to the ships gravity. “All I know is that if it was my ship, If I had been hit by an asteroid, I’d call for help, get everyone off the ship, encrypt all logs and files, lock the door, and come back later. No one knows this ship is here apart from us. And we only found it because you have a knack for digging through the details.”
	“Maybe,” Tach replied, not entirely convinced. 
	“What other explanation is there?” Cinnamon went on, sensing the lynx’s resolve was starting to crack. “We haven’t found any bodies, bloodstains or signs of struggle apart from the broken furniture in here. Which yeah, it seems a little weird. But without a crew log we don’t know if there might have been someone on board big enough to do that kind of damage. Maybe there was a fight in the ship? Maybe someone tried to mutiny? We don’t know. There’s no way to know until we can get access to the ship logs. Until then I’m not going to spend my time worrying about imagined fears. Now come over here and have something to eat.”
	Cinnamon didn’t get riled very often, but when she did there were few who could stand against her. Tach felt himself battered and bruised by her logic, her sensible take on the situation. Every time he tried to bring up a reason to worry she shot back with a plausible answer. Her confidence battered at the foundations of Tach’s paranoia, causing it to finally collapse around him into a heap of capitulation.
	“Alright,” Tach said, undoing the clasps on his helmet and tugging it off. “I guess a break would be nice. It’s not like I can do anything until the decryption finishes.”
	“How long do you think that will take?” Cinnamon asked without looking at the Lynx. She was standing in front of the replicator, punching up a few more treats for the both of them.
	“Hard to say, the ships doors might be unlocked but the logs are shut tight. Maybe four hours?” 
	“Good thing we’ve got plenty of food then,” Cinnamon said, making her way back to the table with a bowl of dip, nachos, garlic bread, toast points and chicken wings. “Now come over here and dig in.”
	Tach took a deep breath. The stale air of the ship had largely been removed, leaving only the scent of the food which caused his stomach to start growling. Like Cinnamon, he had learned to live with the bland, uninteresting foods that made up the bulk of interstellar cooking. Fresh foods were scarce on his station and so the idea of getting try some of the foods he’d heard about after so long eroded away the last of his worry. He made his way over to the table and was about to pluck a chicken wing off a plate when Cinnamon slapped his paw.
	“Take those off,” She said, licking her fingers clean of dip. 
	“Oh, right,” Tach said, blushing a bit and wishing he had the mare’s confidence. Tach was by no means fat. But a life spent hunched over computers and fiddly things with wires coming out of them had given him something of a paunch. For some reason, here on this ship, all alone with her, made him all the more aware of himself. Still, he had real food, or at least as real as he was ever going to get, and wasn’t about to let that opportunity slip away. His skin tight suit separated from him with less effort than Cinnamon’s did. He merely pressed a few commands into his wrist PDA and the suit sagged around him like a onesie that was a few sizes too big. After tugging it off he draped it over the back of a chair and sat down at the table across from Cinnamon.
	“That’s better,” She said, sliding over a plate of wings towards him. “Now, let’s eat!” 
	Tach didn’t need to be told twice and promptly lifted a wing to his snout. The flavor wasn’t like anything he’d tasted before. Certainly he’d purchased foods that claimed to have the same flavor as a chicken wing but they were mere suggestions of the glory that actual thing contained. He savored the sauce around each wing, licking his fingers as he tore the meat from the bone before licking it clean and setting it aside and digging into another. He ate with the same ravenous pleasure and curiosity that Cinnamon had. Even going so far as to try dipping the wings into different sauces that the mare had brought over. 
	Once the wings were done, Tach moved on to nachos. He’d enjoyed bags of them before, but never ones that had been freshly prepared. After trying those crisp, crunchy, deliciously salty treats, he knew that he was ruined. There was no going back after this. He was eating real food. How was he ever going to adjust back to a life of frozen meals after this euphoria? He decided to forget about that sort of thinking and instead focus in on the pleasure of the moment.
	The snacks lasted only a few minutes between the two of them. The pair were ravenous, almost unnaturally so. Their appetites increased by worry, relief, and the idea of being able to try new foods. After the plates were empty and both were sitting back, licking their fingers. It was Tach who suggested they try out proper meals.
	“I’ve always wanted to try a real burger,” Tach said, holding his paws up in front of his muzzle. “A big, double cheeseburger, like the ones you see in those commercials for Earth living,”
	“Yeah,” Cinnamon added. “And a biiiig chocolate shake!” 
	Even as they spoke, the pair could smell the fresh ground beef and sweet chocolate aroma that wafted from the machine. Tach was up first, being the more nimble of the two, and carried over a plate with a burger and fries on it. He gave the shake a drink, his tail fluffing up and swishing as he tasted a real dairy treat.
	“Hey! Don’t keep me in suspense!” Cinnamon shouted, leaning over the table as Tach drank deeply. “How is it?”
	Tach lifted the cup away from his snout, “Perfection,” He said, dreamily.
	The mare couldn’t get to the replicator fast enough,“Another chocolate milkshake and burger!” She yelled as she ran. The machine had them prepared before she even arrived. She lifted the burger up, stuffing half of it into her snout, groaning in pleasure. The grease, the cheese, the bacon, it was all too much. Too rich, too delicious. She didn’t care if no one came back, if no one ever found the ship and they were stranded there somehow. The food was amazing, it was real, it was all that mattered. 
	After that moment, the pair were truly hooked. They began to relay food from the machine to the table. Tach ordering burgers, sandwiches and various fast food dishes from places that he’d heard of but never gotten a chance to try. Cinnamon, on the other hand, began to focus more on sweets. She ordered macarons and slices of cake, bowls of ice cream and brownies. The machine could do it all. It worked tirelessly to produce each and every succulent and filling treat that the duo could possibly imagine.
	Tach was impressed, amazed even, at the speed of the machine. Never once did it complain or warn of overheating or running out of materials. If anyone was able to test the limits of the machine it was them. They ate without care or worry, not noticing how their stomachs never seemed to get truly full. Never questioning their expanding middles after enough food to feed well over a dozen furs was shoveled down their hungry snouts. They were lost in the pleasure of eating, of stuffing their faces. No force in the universe could pull them away from that wonderful sensation of filling themselves with a pleasure they had never realized they had been missing. It was Tach that had finally figured out how to activate the replicators mobile mode. He had been wondering aloud about the things ability to bring food to the user rather than either of them ever bothering to get up. The machine had heard his question and switched itself on. Cinnamon and Tach watched, amazed, as the machine slid from the wall and floated towards the table, dispensing their latest order. After that, there was nothing to do but sit back, eat and watch each others stomachs inflate.
	After an hour, the pair finally began to slow down. The large table in the middle of the galley was a mess of plates, cups, sauces, crumbs, pizza crusts, empty bowls, chocolate smears, milkshake spills, and errant fruit chunks that had been picked off of elaborate desserts. They sat on either end of the table, their bellies stuffed and their minds content. Tach’s paws rested on the heavy dome of his belly. It looked as though the feline had swallowed a medicine ball, so massive was the bulge that stretched out his gray jumpsuit. He stroked his stomach gently, a dazed, satisfied look plastered on his muzzle as he burped and groaned in pleasure. 
	Cinnamon, being bigger, didn’t look quite so inflated as Tach. Where the feline sported a slightly paunchy frame with a comically large belly, Cinnamon sported a swollen stomach that seemed to just make the rest of her body look bigger. Her jumpsuit stretched painfully around that stomach, the normal slight rolls on either side of her stomach were invisible due to the fabric being stretched around her stomach. Her ample chest sat high on her belly, looking perky and even more full thanks to all that food propping them up. She’d tugged over another chair to rest her backside on. Not out of any real need or worry that her rump was going to droop off. Rather, it was because there wasn’t any other decent furniture and she wanted to get at least the sensation of sitting on a couch.
	The pair looked fat and happy, both swollen with food and bloated on pleasure. Tach tried a few times to start a conversation but found the words dying on his chocolate smeared lips. Cinnamon could only burp and moan in response, lazily grunting out a few scattered syllables while she struggled to keep herself from passing out. Neither of them had looked over the settings of the machine. Cinnamon had largely ignored everything but creating food and Tach had just assumed she’d set things to a safe level. Perhaps had either of them bothered to check the setting the machine had been set to when they found it they might have been given some clue as to what happened. 
	“I had no idea burgers were so good,” Tach said, stifling a belch as he rubbed his dome like belly. 
	“Yeah,” Cinnamon agreed, licking her pudgy fingers, “All that grease. I thought they’d taste gross. But oh, they’re so good! And fries! Who would have thought they were tasty when dipped in a milkshake?”
	“Not me,” Tach grunted. “But, I really should check out the ship logs. We should really be focusing on trying to get the ship back to port.”
	“In a bit,” Cinnamon replied dozily. “Just need a nap,”
	Tach let out a yawn so large he worried the top of his head might fall off. “I hear you,” he said, patting his stomach once more before his head dropped forward. Cinnamon soon followed suit, leaving both of them sleeping the sleep of the truly well fed. 
	
	There hadn’t been any warmth, that had been the problem. It was too cold, far too cold. There was nowhere to go, no reason to go anywhere. Nothing to do but stay in place, wait for the warmth. Then it came. SO much heat, energy, overflowing with it. There was nothing to do but head towards it, stay close until warmth comes back. Heat always returned, it just took time.
	The core of the research vessel continued to hum and pump out energy to the rest of the ship. It’s steady rhythm like that of a heartbeat in some great metallic animal. As the temperature surrounding the core returned to comfortable levels, something began to move. Had there been anyone there to observe it they might have thought it was some sort of coolant leak. A red, viscous fluid began to drip and dribble out from the inner shielding of the core, a place where nothing should have been able to live. The fluid began to drip out faster, pooling on the floor around the core.  As the heat in the room increased, so to did the speed of the fluid. It flowed faster, more steadily now, like water off a mountain in spring. Gallons and gallons of the strange substance began to gush out, starting to solidify into a gelatinous shape. The entire floor of the engineering bay was soon covered a thin layer of that thick, crimson syrup. When the last few drops of the fluid had removed itself from the core it began to concentrate itself into a rolling, pulsating mound in the center of the room.
	The ship was warm, it hadn’t been before, but now it was warm again. It could move without fear of cold, without fear of freezing. The strange entity moved without anything resembling thought as it was known. It moved instead, towards heat. The core had provided the warmth it sought well enough. But now, with the entire ship pulsing with fresh, life giving heat, it could search for more satisfying sources of heat energy. It slid its way towards the wall, leaving no trail or stain as it moved, and began to climb up the wall with apparent ease. It oozed itself through the slits in the ventilation duct, slipping along the air vents, tendrils of itself breaking off from the central mass to explore other parts of the ship. Each pseudopod using some unknown sense to seek out its quarry. 
	It was halfway through the ship before it caught the scent of what it was seeking out. One of it’s tendrils pressed towards the ship’s galley, a place it remembered, if a creature like that could be said to have memories at all. The rest of the entity began to pull itself towards the galley, waves of the reddish ooze pressing through the vents, causing them to bulge in sections with the speed and volume of the creatures mass. Here was what it was looking for, although it did not have eyes with which to look. It could sense them, two large, warm, things. Two sources of heat that pulsed and throbbed with the energy it needed. The heat and energy that only things such as they could produce.
	Had Tach or Cinnamon been awake, they would have surely noticed the red slime that began to bubble and gush through a vent just above the entrance of the galley. The amorphous mass rolled and slurped across the floor, sliding around crumbs and discarded plates, avoiding their discarded space suits before stretching itself towards both of them. The merest touch against the pair caused a rippled of something that might be considered pleasure in such an alien being. It slid up their bodies, pulling itself high and higher, moving around bloated stomachs and towards those open muzzles.
	As Cinnamon slept, she dreamed. She was in her ship, resting after another successful mission. The payment for her latest job had just come in and she was still deciding what to spend it on. There were a variety of important ship upgrades that she could have spent it on but her desire for creature comforts was threatening to override those sensible purchases. She was just punching through a series of options on new cockpit chairs when an alarm went off. She toggled the message on her HUD and found there had been a rupture in one of the ships coolant tanks near the engine. Panic gripped her at the realization that should the coolant leak into the ship, she would be drowned. Thinking quickly, she slammed the panic button on her captains chair that would seal off the cockpit from the rest of the ship. But it was too late, the coolant came flooding in, submerging her completely. In her panic she screamed, mouth open wide in a panic shout which was muffled by that strange tasting fluid. She squirmed and struggled, trying to climb out of her chair and make it to an oxygen mask nearby but her movements were sluggish. The coolant hindered her movements, making it feel as though she was swimming through pudding. She continued to squirm and struggle, feeling her stomach stretch as the coolant filled her, pushing inside and stretching her out in some bizarre need to fill every available space. She gave one last terrified silent scream before the dream ended.
	Tach dreamed as well. In his dream, he saw himself working on a ship, a carrier, one of the largest in the entire Sol system. It needed extensive work on a ruptured oxygen tank that would have caused a disaster if it failed during a flight. He was doing a space walk, wearing his usual snug fitting space suit. A lifeline fed from the back of his suit to the small drone that carried his tools and equipment as he worked. Things were looking good, until an errant screw that had bounced off his suit flew towards the side of the tank, severing the line of his suit. Panic struck him in that moment. His suit had only a minute or so of reserve oxygen in it. He needed to find another line to connect to. He looked around frantically. He was in the vacuum of space with nothing around him. Nothing except the oxygen tank he was working on. Thinking quickly, he rigged up a new nozzle and stuck it onto a valve on the large tank. His HUD indicated that he was safe. His suit was filled with fresh oxygen. Everything looked good, only, the oxygen level was rising. He looked from the tube to the tank. Of course! What was he thinking?! The tank had been ruptured. The safety valve had been ruptured. He could feel his suit starting to bloat as the oxygen filled it, stretching out the fabric around him. He reached for the valve, trying to tug his line free but his suit was already bloating larger and larger, his movements limited. He couldn’t get his paws to the valve. He looked around, watching his suit swelling like a parade float. His paws merely divots in the sides of his spherical suit. It wouldn’t last though. His suit wasn’t designed to take that strain. It was only a matter of time before his suit would go pop. He felt the suit reach its limit, groaning as the oxygen kept forcing its way in before there was an all consuming bang.

	Tach awoke on the floor, his backside smarting. Apparently he had fallen out of his chair at some point during his nap. He found himself staring up at the ring of lights above the table he’d been sitting at. He made an attempt to get up but found his movements sluggish. Thinking at first that it was just his lethargy from so much food and such a long nap, Tach made another attempt to sit up and was rewarded with a thick sloshing sound. He craned his neck up just enough to see the source of the sound and the obstruction. It was his stomach. 
	Had there been a mirror above him, Tach would have been horrified at what he saw. He was enormous. His stomach was by far the biggest part of him. No longer a swollen dome from the banquet he’d shared with Cinnamon but now a heavy, rolling mound of soft, jiggling blubber. His stomach strained his suit, letting him see the outline of that massive gut that would surely have rested heavily on his newly fattened tree trunk thighs. His chest had puffed as well, turning into a pair of round moobs that would have rested on that shelf of a belly. His cheeks had puffed as well, bloated with fresh pudge that gave his multi hued gray cheeks a rounder, softer, more adorable look to them. A muffle of blubber ran around his neck, cradling that soft muzzle in warm, fluffy pudge. Gone was the slightly paunch engineer and in its place had been set a gurgling heap of lynx lard stuffed into a straining jumpsuit. But he could not see himself, he could only feel the roll of his belly as he squirmed, the heft of his love handles as he reached a flabby arm up and pressed his plump paw into his stomach and pressed. His stomach gave generously, sloshing and gurgling heavily, sending a strange sensation through him that was not unpleasant. A deep purr tried to force its way out of his snout but his shock kept it from rising up. He lay there, staring in horror and fascination for a few more moments, feeling how his slight movements made his tightly packed but still quite soft frame quake, when he heard Cinnamon waking up.
	“Ohhh,” Cinnamon groaned from her own spot on the floor. “Wh-what happened?”
	“Cinnamon,” Tach groaned, wiping drool and grease from his snout as he rolled onto his side, trying not to think about how his belly slapped against the floor and spread across it and how far it would have spread had he not been wearing his jumpsuit. “What did you do?”
	“What I did?” Cinnamon belched, “I didn’t do anything!” 
	“You, oh jeez, you must have done something. What did you set the machine to?” Tach was still rolling over, sloshing himself on top of his belly, feeling it spread out under him like a semi inflated yoga ball. He shifted himself back to his knees, feeling his plus sized rump cheeks bouncing against his heels, and hoisted himself to his feet using the table as leverage. 
	“I didn’t,” Cinnamon groaned. “I just turned it on,”
	Tach groaned as he managed to lift himself to his paws. The weight on his body made him pant with the effort. He felt as though someone had loaded his jumpsuit with sand. Every movement felt sluggish and took a great deal of effort. He was still marveling at his own limitations when he caught sight of Cinnamon and his own concerns vanished.
	“Little help?” Cinnamon’s voice sounded from somewhere behind the swollen hill of jumpsuit clad blubber that heaved and jiggled atop the blimped mare. Cinnamon had eaten more than Tach and, having already been far larger, had apparently gotten the worst of whatever the food had done to them. Her jumpsuit was barely holding on, straining to contain the heaving, gurgling mass of blubber that was packed with. Her stomach rose high above her, no doubt sloshing against her knees had it not been for the suit. Her chest, already rather ample before, had expanded into a pair of knockout breasts that could have smothered anyone that got too close. Her backside had inflated as well and really would need a couch to contain them when she sat at the table. Her flabby arms wiggled helplessly, sending her bulk rolling side to side. Tach shuffled himself around to her side, his paws hoisting his groaning stomach, as he did so. Cinnamon's snout had fattened heavily as well, her muzzle blunted by fresh blubber which plumped her cheeks and, Tach had to admit, made her look rather cute. She looked up at him with tired and slightly worried eyes. “I can’t get up.”
	Tach reached out and grabbed her paw in his and tried to lift. It was like trying to move a tent filled with cement. Cinnamon wobbled and grunted, burped and sloshed, but she couldn’t rise off the floor. After a few attempts Tach staggered back, panting and groaning at the strain of his suit pressing in around him. “It’s no good,” He grunted. “I can’t life you. You’re too heavy.”
	“Well I can’t stay here!” Cinnamon groaned, paws pressing into that heaving mountain that was her belly. “I gonna be crushed under my own belly.”
	Tach looked around the room, hoping to find something he might use to lever her onto her side and maybe alleviate some of the pressure when he noticed a control terminal next to the entrance. Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it before? A ship this advanced no doubt had climate and gravitational control in every room. He turned away from Cinnamon and made his way towards the door, thrusting his swollen thighs out in front of him with a grunt as he shuffled along.
	“Where are you going?” Cinnamon grunted, trying to watch Tach but losing him to the view of her stomach. “Don’t leave me here!”
	“I’ve got it, don’t worry,” Tach said, making it to the terminal and poking at it. He looked at his paws as it switched on, unable to really believe just how soft and plump his fingers had become. When the terminal turned on he saw right away what he was looking for, the gravity controls. He poked a few buttons and the walls began to hum as the dampeners came online. Almost immediately he could feel the turgid pull of his newly minted girth lessen as the rooms gravity lowered. The relief he felt was palpable, causing him to sigh in relief before turning back towards his incapacitated friend.
	“Oh, thank goodness,” Cinnamon moaned, patting her sides in relief. “I thought I was a goner,” 
	Tach made his way back towards her, no longer needing to carry or hoist his bulk as he went. He was a little unsettled at how his stomach swayed in front of him, rolling side to side like a balloon and he found himself gripping the sides of his gut to keep it from bouncing so freely. Cinnamon, more used to being heavier, was already rolling onto her side and heaving herself upright. She bobbed in the air for a moment, her hooves flailing, sending all that expanded blubber jiggling and making her jumpsuit creak dangerously, before she landed back on her hooves, her body rolling and sloshing around her as though the mare was submerged in her own personal ocean. “How did this happen?”
	“I don’t know,” Tach replied, trying not to watch the mare’s chest and stomach jiggle as she looked around. “There must have been an issue with the replicator,”
	“But how?” Cinnamon asked, looking over to the machine which had retreated back into the wall. “I never touched the settings, I just ordered food.”
	Tach waddled towards the replicator, paws still holding his stomach, and inspected the controls. Everything looked normal. “Are you sure?” He asked.
	“I told you,” Cinnamon  grunted with the annoyance of someone having to constantly repeat their innocence, “All I did was order up some food. I don’t even know how the machine works, how could I fiddle with settings?” 
	“All right, all right,” Tach said over his shoulder. “I’m not blaming you. I’m just trying to figure out how all that food could do this.” He gestured to his stomach. “I wasn’t this big when i went to sleep and neither were you.”
	Tach continued to fiddle with the machine, leaving Cinnamon to waddle around the room, testing out how her body reacted to its new weight. It was a good thing she was wearing that straining suit. Moving around with all that blubber able to slosh and jiggle freely would have made getting around almost impossible. She waddled around the table slowly, hearing her suit creak and groan as she shuffled, conscious of every jiggle and ripple through her body. She reached a paw out and gave her chest a soft pat and watched the ripples flow through her breasts and felt it jiggle down her sides, making her bite her lip as the ripples flooded down to her hips and thighs. She could get used to this.
	“Ah,” Tach said, not seeing Cinnamon's experiments, “Here’s the problem. The last person to use this thing set the calorie count of the food to the maximum settings. Everything we ate had around triple the normal calorie and fat count. Must have converted it all into fat.”
	“I didn’t think we ate that much,” Cinnamon said, looking down at herself. They’d eaten quite a bit, a feast really, but nothing that could possibly merit growing to such a vast size. 
	“Me either, but,” Tach gave his stomach a squeeze, managing to stifle another pleased purr. “The proof is in the pudding,”
	Cinnamon groaned at the terrible joke. “Well that’s all very well and good but we still need to get this ship back to port.”
	“Right,” Tach nodded, feeling his chins bounce as he did so. The  gravity made getting around easier but it certainly exaggerated every move he made. His body felt all the more wobbly and doughy when even the slightest movement caused him to jiggle or slosh in that reduced gravity.  “The ship logs should be decrypted soon.”
	“Great,” Cinnamon said, waddling towards the entrance to the galley. “In the meantime I’m gonna find a new jumpsuit.”
	Tach was just bending over to grab his tablet when he suddenly realized what Cinnamon intended. “Wait!” He shouted, far too late, “Don’t!” But it was too late, Cinnamon took a step out of the galley and the gravity in the rest of the ship asserted itself. The swollen mare let out a groan as she felt gravity return, dragging her bulk back down. Tach watched from behind as the mare seemed to visible droop down. Her hair going slack against her back while her stomach sloshed down, straining her suit to its limits. “Oommpphhh.” She groaned, pressing her paws against the doorway as she staggered along the hall. 
	“Are you okay?” Tach asked, waddling towards the door but not daring to step out of the galley. 
	“Yeah,” Cinnamon said with visible effort. “She turned to face the hallway, giving Tach a profile shot. Her belly certainly had taken the brunt of her expansion, it’s mass kept in place by the valiant efforts of her suit. “I’m fine, just gotta get used to it,” She said as she waddled along, her stomach sloshing and swaying in front of her as she shuffled down the hallway, looking for the crew quarters. Tach knew he shouldn’t stare, but the sight of that massive rump bouncing and swaying with that equine tail swishing and flicking over it wasn’t something he could tear his eyes away from. He watched, entranced, until that jiggling blimp of equine flesh finally waddled out of view before turning back to the galley and looking over his tablet. So far, only a few of the files had been decrypted. This was going to take longer than he thought. 
	Meanwhile, something in the vents moved, causing something within the lynx to churn and shift. Tach let out a thick belch as his stomach groaned and heaved, visibly wobbling and shifting. The lynx pressed his paws into his stomach, letting his tablet float harmlessly to the floor, while his body seemed to be moving on its own. His gut continued to churn and wobble, groaning as though digesting something heavy. He staggered towards a chair and sat back which was made all the more difficult with the lowered gravity. He skidded across the floor before coming to a stop.
	“What’s happening?” Tach said, watching his belly shift and wobble on his lap. Was it a reaction to the food? The machine was a prototype after all. Maybe he was allergic to something? He’d never eaten anything approaching real food before. Oh god, what if he had a dairy allergy? He was so busy worrying about the state of his stomach that he failed to spot the air vent into the room which was now clogged up with a thick red goo which was now starting to stretch its way out into the room.
	
	Cinnamon's heavy, sweat filled, seemingly endless, poorly planned venture to find a new jumpsuit led her along several indistinct corridors. Her lack of a space suit meant she had no access to a map so she was forced to guess. She shuffled through the ship, paws resting on the sides of that wobbling middle, looking around for anything that might denote crew quarters. Sadly, the ship was not equipped with signs. The metallic gray walls revealed nothing about her location yet she pressed on. She thought about giving up and heading back to her own ship to find a jumpsuit that might fit but discarded the idea. Even if she wanted to turn around she had taken too many identical paths to ever hope to find her way back before collapsing. Thankfully, luck was on her side. Cinnamon turned another corner, her swollen frame ready to give out at any moment and leave her beached, to find herself standing in the entrance to the crew quarters on the ship. She let out a deep sigh of relief, not just for making it to her destination, but also at finding another terminal on the wall beside the door. She quickly tapped a few buttons on it and felt the weight of her body begin to disappear. Once she’d adjusted to the lower gravity, she took a look around the room.
	The crew quarters were designed with function over form. Cinnamon found herself staring down a narrow space between bunk beds that had been built into the wall. Each bunk sported a series of drawers built into them to store clothing and personal effects, all of which had been tugged open, their contents strewn across the floor. If there were any private rooms they must have been reserved for the captain and the bridge crew. Cinnamon looked down the narrow space between the bunks which led, no doubt, to other sections with similarly designed bunks. Cinnamon squeezed her way into the path between the bunks, feeling her bulk brushing against the bunks, shoving drawers shut as she waddled through discarded clothing, uniforms, underwear and jumpsuits. She had only gone a few feet before realizing that, with her stomach in the way, she wouldn’t be able to see any of the clothes on the floor that might fit her. This was solve by kicking her hooves up, knocking clothing into the air until it was high enough for her to see before floating back down to the floor. She did this for the first pass, wiggling and squirming along, finding nothing but woefully small scraps of clothing and jumpsuits. 
	She continued along another row of bunks, her eyes scanning the floor and the air in front of her for something to wear, failing to notice the strange red ooze that was condensing around an air vent just over her head. The reddish entity began to move through the air, the lowered gravity allowing it to stretch itself through the air, reaching towards the unaware equine. Cinnamon was just about to turn around and explore another section of the bunks, hoping to find a locker room of some kind, when her stomach began to gurgle and churn just as her comlink sputtered to life.
	“Cinn..ackmph...don’t...nophm!” It sounded like Tach, only garbled with some sort of interference.
	“Tach?” She said, pushing a fat finger to her ear. “What’s going on? I can’t hear you-mph!” Her words were cut off by the tendril of ooze that wrapped around her snout, sealing her muzzle. Cinnamon’s eyes bulged as she felt her air cut off. She reached her arms up, trying to grasp at the strange viscous liquid that had smothered her snout. Her paws sank into the goo with little resistance. She pulled her paws away, hoping to tear the gunk from her snout but it merely stretched out. Her belly growled and churned louder and louder, rolling and bouncing from the force of the digestion going on within her ample belly. Her heart began to pound as, to her sudden horror the ooze, sensing the change inside her,  began to force itself down her throat. A sweet, almost cherry flavor, filled her muzzle as the ooze flooded into her. 
	Cinnamon stood for a moment, panic gripping her completely, while she was filled. Amazingly, she found she could still breath. She didn’t have long to ponder how she could breath despite having no air however, as her attention was drawn to her expanding middle. 
	The jumpsuit that Cinnamon had bought had been another one of her splurges on her own comfort. Built to handle her larger size, it had been purchased specially made from a company that made jumpsuits for armor pilots. It was built to withstand gunfire and the inside was lined with a special material to allow it to be worn for lengthy periods. It had been double stitched for extra security but even that stitching was no match for the bloating mare that was contained within. She heard the groans and creaks of the fabric as her stomach inflated, bloating with that strange ooze that was now funneling into her snout at breakneck speed. She turned slowly, her stomach waving and sloshing from the low gravity, her paws sinking into the sides of her bloated middle, and struggled to go back the way she came. She had to get back to Tach, had to warn him about this thing, this monster!
	As she moved the ooze moved with her, more and more of it surging out of the vent and into her muzzle. She pushed her expanding belly through another narrow line of bunks, the sides of her stomach rubbing against the beds painfully now, her rolls sliding and scraping over pulled out drawers. She kept forcing herself forward, shoving against that bloating middle, hearing the creak of her suit as she pushed through, popping out of the first set of bunks and into another small path that separated the lines of bunks from one another just as the first seams of her suit failed. There was a ripping sound, like canvas being cut with a hunting knife, and Cinnamon felt a strange mixture of pleasure and terror as the sides of her jumpsuit ripped open and that reddish brown blubber spilled out. Two thick love handles of blubber rolling out into the blessed space of the hallway, and still the ooze kept coming.
	As quickly as she could, Cinnamon rushed for the next path through the bunks, this one leading to the exit. She pressed her stomach against the small space, feeling her stomach groan and churn, obstinately expanding and pressing into the sides of the path, blocking her from getting through. Cinnamon groaned as she blimped, if she ended up too wide to get through then she’d be trapped in the crew quarters! She gritted her teeth, a tough feat with ooze flooding her fat muzzle, dug her hooves into the floor, and shoved. A chorus of rips and tears could be heard as the pressure from her compressing belly tore the fabric around her middle completely, letting her belly slosh and gurgle into freedom. The backside of the suit ripped open as well, revealing a strip of her massive rump but still she pushed, forcing her stomach into the space.
	That balloon of red brown blubber slid inside with her pushing along behind, her legs flailing as the low gravity caused her rotate, leaving her kicking and flailing, wedged between a pair of bunks and still expanding. She looked around, frantically trying to see anything that might help but there was nothing. Still the red slime surged past her swollen cheeks, fattening her middle, each gulp wedging her more deeply into bunks around her. 
	“No!” She thought, she wouldn’t let it end this way. She was a pilot damnit! She had her own ship and got by on instinct and grit! She wasn’t about to let some alien goo have its way with her. 
	Cinnamon summoned all the strength she possessed and reached her swollen arms out, gripping the two bunks on either side of her and pulled with all her might. Her stomach stayed in place after the first pull but Cinnamon grunted around a snoutful of ooze and pulled again. Her stomach began to slide ever so slowly along the bunks. Without the benefit of her jumpsuit the drawers and sides of the bunk scraped and scratched over her swollen, sensitive flesh, but still she pulled, crawling along the bunks like they were a ladder. Inch after inch, foot after foot, gulp after gulp, Cinnamon dragged her expanding girth along the shrinking space, finally reaching the end of the bunks. She stretched her paws outwards. She could feel the sudden tug of gravity in the hallway. If she could just get herself in there, then maybe she could pull herself out by sheer weight alone. She just had to try. 
	The ooze had swelled her stomach to the point that it was almost blocking the path through the bunks entirely. Cinnamon could feel the ooze slipping around  her belly, sliding through folds, passing up over her swollen breasts and into her snout. But she couldn’t think about that now. She had to escape! With another pull she heaved her bulk forward, that gurgling mass of ooze filled belly churned and heaved, sliding reluctantly along as she panted, sweat coating her body as she pulled and tugged, working more and more of her bulk through. She could feel normal gravity dragging at her now, helping with the movement. Yes! She thought to herself, almost there! Sh gave another heave, using the last of her strength, and dragged her head and chest out into the hallway. The tug of gravity was like having someone try to pull her skin off  but she knew it had to be done. She felt the strength in her arms leave her as gravity asserted itself again, pulling her down, dragging the rest of her body with her.
	Perhaps it was the distance from the vent to the bloating mare, or the thought that she’d been filled enough, for whatever reason, the ooze separated from the clump around Cinnamon's snout which quickly schlurped into her muzzle, depositing itself in her groaning, sloshing belly as she rolled out into the hallway, resting atop her expanded, naked belly. 
	For a long time, Cinnamon didn’t dare to move, not that she really could. She simply lay in the middle of the corridor outside of the crew quarters, her body swollen, her stomach blimped, her arms sagging against the sides of her churning, sloshing belly, completely exhausted. Every ounce of strength had gone into that last pull, leaving her spent.
	“Ugh,” She panted, sweat matting her hair to her face. “Tach?” She said, her voice sounding deep and husky to her ears. “You there?”
	“Cinnamon,” Tach said eventually, his voice had taken on an eerily similar huskiness. “We gotta do something.” 

	While Cinnamon had struggled through the crew quarters, Tach had been given a comparatively less perilous expansion. The ooze had struck him as he was looking over the first few encrypted files, revealing something about the state of the ship. Apparently, the craft had been sent to explore deep space anomalies. It was equipped with a suite of labs and experiment chambers. As to what the ship had been exploring he didn’t know. The ship logs were still largely encrypted. He could only find a short list of events in the ship black box which pointed out the impact of the asteroid and the damage to the ship. He didn’t know what actions the crew had taken after the impact, or whether or not the crew had evacuated, there were still questions that needed answering. He had looked up from his tablet, intent on moving back into engineering to find more information, and had found himself staring at a hovering glob of what looked like translucent red slime. 
	“I..” Tach found no words to properly convey his surprise and sudden terror. His muzzle slipped open which the ooze took as an invitation and promptly flew towards it. 
	“Ackmph!” Tach grunted, trying to shield his muzzle from the flow of slime but it was no use. The ooze slipped around his fingers, pushing and squirming, intent on getting inside of him. He managed to raise his paw to his ear, activating his comlink. Maybe he could warn Cinnamon.
	“Cinn..ackmph...don’t...nophm!” Was all he could say before the ooze closed over his snout entirely and began to pump into him. He staggered backwards, paws pressing on the sides of his stomach, and fell over. The low gravity let him sail across the room a bit before his cushioned rump bounced into the far wall. There the ooze pinned him, surging into his muzzle, leaving him to flail and groan, somehow able to breath, and able to watch his stomach groan and expand. He saw the ooze flooding from the vent, working its way through the air in thick pulses before depositing itself into his belly.
	The groan of fabric could be heard as Tach’s suit began to strain around his swelling bulk. He could see through the reddish hue of the ooze, his stomach stretching and billowing in front of him, hoisting up by the low gravity and the taught fabric of his suit. There was little he could do to stop it, his stomach swelled and churned as the taste of cherry surged into his gullet. As he stood there, watching his figure become ruined by this blob, he tried to think of it’s source. It hadn’t been in the vents before, he was certain of that. He’d run a scan on the ship as soon as he had arrived to check for any alien life forms and had come up empty. There were no reports of chemical leaks or escaped lab experiments. Nothing to suggest something like this might exist. But then the logs were all encrypted weren’t they? He had no idea what was going on and was currently expanding with some strange creation. It must have been the reason he and Cinnamon had grown so much after their nap. The thought of this thing filling him while he was passed out sent a surge of revulsion through him which was suppressed by the ooze expanding his middle.
	His suit was quick to give up the fight of holding back his middle and soon began to tear, ripping along the stomach, revealing a surge of gray furred pudding. He reached his plump paws down, groping those rolls as they bloated between his fingers, stretching and expanding. He writhed as the pressure built, sending rips along his hips and thighs. Shreds of his specially designed jumpsuit, which had had been integrated into his space suit, tore away in chunks, allowing his furry bulk to swell and roll outwards. It was a relief, much as he hated to admit it, to finally be free of the confines of his suit. The strain of it across his stomach, legs and rump had been a constant annoyance ever since waking up obese. He slid down along the wall, feeling his wide rump bounce on the floor as he leaned back, paws resting on that gurgling mass of expanding flesh that was his belly. He hoped, he prayed, that it would end soon. He wanted to be free of this feeding, this fattening. If he was free he could find Cinnamon. Cinnamon! His eyes widened, he had to find her. She could be in danger! She probably was if this thing had infested the ventilation system. 
	With a muffled groan, the swelling lynx dragged himself to his feet. The ooze seemed content to let him move so long as he wasn’t trying to stop it’s work. He waddled forward, paws resting on the sides of that expanding middle, feeling the last shreds of his jumpsuit fall away, leaving him in a pair of stretched boxers which barely covered those twin cheeks which jiggled behind him. He worked his way towards the hallway, feeling his stomach groaning and gurgling, slowly reaching its limit as he waddled and sloshed along, stopping only to pick up his tablet which had landed near the door, before making it to the hallway and stopping. He remembered what happened to Cinnamon when she left the room. He was already swollen to her size when she’d left and was expanding well beyond. With all this ooze in his belly would he even be able to move? He had to do something.
	He lifted the tablet in front of his snout, raising it over his head as his expanding belly pushed his moobs and chins up under his snout, giving him the look of a parade balloon. He began to flip through the ships processes, hoping that he’d cracked into the subroutines he needed. Thankfully, the ships gravity controls were not as well hidden as its logs, and he was able bring up the gravity controls for the entire vessel. With a few swipes he lowered gravity everywhere, drawing it down and hoping his girth would help keep him from floating away. He stuck a paw out into the hallway, wiggling his fingers and found the gravity to be equal to the gravity in the galley. With a heave he jumped out into the hall, the ooze trailing along for a few meters before snapping free, leaving the last tendril to slide into his muzzle and into his belly. Tach sailed through the air like a great gray zeppelin, before bouncing against the far wall, his stomach compressing and spreading out for a moment, forcing a belch from his muzzle before he rebounded off the wall and floated gently back to the floor. His stomach continued to gurgle and churn for a few more seconds before finally settling down.
	“Tach?” Cinnamon’s husky voice said into his ear, “You there?”
	“Cinnamon,” Tach grunted, stroking the side of his swollen middle. “We gotta do something.”
	
	It watched as the swollen lynx made his way down the hallway, paws rubbing the sides of his belly as he sloshed and gurgled along. It wasn’t in any hurry to follow. It had deposited enough of itself for the time being. It didn’t want to injure the warmth. It would wait until he was ready for more. Likewise it would wait for the swollen red brown blob in the other hall although that was harder. She was so warm, so filled with heat, perfect to sit inside and enjoy. It would wait though, it did not want to push too quickly. A tendril of ooze sat suspended in the air, seeming to regard the retreating lynx for a moment longer before slipping back into the vents. The reddish mass still filled the vents in every part of the ship. There was so much of it that needed room and there were only two of them. It would just have to wait until they could handle it all.

	“So what is it?” Cinnamon asked, her voice sounding as though she had stuffed her cheeks with cotton. 
	“I don’t know,” Tach said, hearing the same impediment in his own voice. “But I’m hoping the crew figured it out before they left.”
	Tach had made his way to Cinnamon without much difficulty. He had his tablet with its map and had found Cinnamon still laying atop her swollen stomach, completely naked. He’d hid his eyes at first, blushing at the sight of those expanded breasts and the immobile mare wobbling in front of him but he’d soon gotten used to it. The pair couldn’t afford modesty to get in the way of survival at that point and so he’d helped her up. It was a bit like trying to roll a half inflated Christmas decoration. Cinnamon groaned and churned as Tach pressed his stomach and paws into the expanse of her stomach, heaving her over and setting her unsteadily onto her hooves. She stood for a moment, swaying in the middle of an ocean of her own blubber, her stomach rolling and bouncing, swaying down towards the floor, slapping it lightly and bouncing back up. The sound of all that churning and gurgling filled the air, causing the mare to moan softly in frustration and pleasure. It was difficult to move or to think with her body heaving and jiggling like gelatin. Her breasts rose up, forcing her to press her paws down onto them, keeping them wobbling against the top of her groaning belly. Tach kept his eyes averted, still blushing as he waddled in front of her. The pair made their way slowly through the ship, both churning and rolling, bouncing and sloshing as their low gravity bodies tried to drag them off their feet and send them floating through the ship.
	“Do you think it’s an alien?” Cinnamon asked, “Something inside the asteroid?”
	“That’s kind of what I was thinking,” Tach replied. “Some sort of entity that was frozen in space until the ship crashed into it, or it crashed into them, whatever. Whatever it is, I’m willing to bet the crew had some knowledge of it.”
	“How do you figure that?” 
	“Didn’t you notice the ripped clothes?” Tach said without looking behind him, “The crushed pool table and broken furniture? Clearly this things been here for a bit. They must have run into it and have tried to figure it out. If we can get into their labs then maybe we can find something that can stop it.”
	“Do you think it’s dangerous?” Cinnamon asked. She hadn’t admitted it, but she was enjoying the sensation of her body sloshing around her. Since they’d started their slow path to the ships labs the ooze inside her stomach had started to digest, spreading itself across her frame. Now her backside swayed with the heft of a truly mighty rump and her thighs had long ago become forever entwined with each other. The same change had occurred in Tach, who’s boxers had long since snapped off, leaving those great gray rump cheeks bouncing and that hefty belly swaying down to his knees. 
	“Look what its done to us,” Tach said, turning around to show his belly as evidence and turning back just as quickly when he saw that round fat snout, pressed cutely between those swollen cheeks and sitting atop that massive belly and those enormous, wobbling breasts. “How could this be seen anything other than bad?”
	“Well,” Cinnamon replied. “I’ve heard about colonies where fatties are considered quite sexy.”
	“Don’t say that,” Tach said, his tail fluffing up.
	“What? Fatties? It’s what we are, Tach,” She said, waddling forward, bouncing her belly against his rear, causing the lynx to sail through the air a few feet ahead of him. “A couple of fattened blobs waddling their way down to the labs. To overstuffed hogs sloshing along after a hefty, belly busting meal. Don’t try to deny it, it’s what we are.”
	“I know,” Tach said once he’d regained his footing. “But I don’t want to see what that ooze does with a couple of...fatties.” 
	Their path led them through another set of corridors and past an opened bulkhead that surely would have been authorized personnel only had the ships doors not been all left open. The pair had thought about simply running back to the Lucky Find, cutting their losses and getting out of their but neither one could fit any of the space suits, let alone the airlock itself. They were stuck on the ship with that ooze and so had to find a way to stop it.
	The labs, according to the ship layout on Tach’s tablet, were a set of a dozen closed off units, six on each side, and connected by a central corridor. Cinnamon and Tach waddled through the corridor into the lab, passing more tattered clothing which had a far more worrying significance after their own experiences with the ooze. As they bounced along, Tach began to fiddle with more of the tablets controls.
	“I’ve got more ship systems unlocked,” He said as they made their way to one of the labs. “There’s some logs on the lab computers that are separate from the ships systems. If we can access them we might find more info.”
	“Well, let's get to it,” Cinnamon said, bouncing towards one of the doors to the labs which, oddly enough, was closed. She tried the small control panel beside the door but it remained closed. “I thought the ships locks were overridden.”
	“The lab is on a separate grid,” Tach said, waddling up beside the swollen mare. He fumbled with the control panel for a moment, holding his tablet near it as he tried to see if there was a work around.
	“So,” Cinnamon said, looking around at the corridor. “We find an antidote or cure or whatever to this thing, then we head back to my ship and get out of here. If we’re stuck this size we rig up the ships controls and pilot my ship remotely and get back to port.”
	Tach kept his eyes focused on his work, “Right.”
	“I still don’t see why I don’t work on getting a remote setup going. I can do that much at least. I feel useless just standing around,”
	“If we don’t manage to find a cure,” Tach said, not wanting to really think about it but knowing it was a possibility. “Then we can’t risk the ship going back to port with that thing still on board. We don’t know anything about it.”
	“We know it’s cherry flavored,” Cinnamon replied.
	“Yeah, but beyond that,” Tach was cut off by the sound of the door to the lab sliding open, letting a breath of sterilized air into the corridor. The pair looked inside. It was a relatively simple set up. One long table sat in the middle of the room, complete with several large instruments that neither of them could identify along with cupboards filled with what they assumed were samples or other instruments and devices. But that wasn’t what the pair were searching for. Tach shuffled into the room, the sides of his belly brushing the doorway while Cinnamon stood outside, far too bloated to hope of getting in after him. The lard stuffed lynx made his way to the computer that sat on one of the counters that ran along the wall. He set his tablet next to it and began switched it on.
	“If we’re lucky,” Tach said, “We’ll find some lab reports,”
	“Good,” Cinnamon said, rubbing the sides of her stomach which had begun to gurgle and churn loudly. “Oomph, what’s going on now?” she grunted. Tach turned around and saw Cinnamon's stomach rolling and bouncing, it’s contents shifting. His eyes caught sight of movement near the ceiling. Another helping of that ooze had emerged from a vent in the corridor and was making its way towards the mare.
	“Cinnamon, get in here now!” Tach shouted. Cinnamon jumped at the command and turned her head to see the ooze floating towards her. She let out a yelp and pressed her stomach into the door, groaning and shoving with all her might.
	“Nggh, help!” Cinnamon yelled, flailing her arms in the doorway. Tach, throwing all caution and sense of modesty to the wind, rushed over to her, his stomach impacting with hers, making the pair ripple and slosh as he reached up and gripped her fat paws. His snout sank between those breasts and he tried not to think about it as he tugged and heaved, working her swollen frame through the door. All the while that ooze snaked closer, seeking out Cinnamon's muzzle. She ducked her head down as it darted towards her, forcing her head through the door. The ooze bounced against her back, missing her muzzle as she was slowly heaved through the door. It poked and searched, rubbing around the sides of the door but finding her girth in the way.
	“Ah!” Cinnamon cried out, giggling as the ooze prodded around her sides. “No! Stop! That tickles!” she kicked her legs, backside sloshing and jiggling back and forth while Tach yanked more of the bloated mare through the door. Little by little, inch by inch, she squeezed through, while the ooze slid down, crawling across her backside.
	“Oh no,” Cinnamon’s face went pale when she felt the ooze pressing against the red canyon of her ass crack and began to push between her cheeks. 
	“What is it?” Tach said, still tugging, “I’ve almost got you,”
	“Faster!” Cinnamon squealed. “Faster! Faster! Fa-ahh! Ohh!” She moaned, leg’s flailing, as the ooze pressed between her cheeks and found an alternate route inside her. Cinnamon’s belly churned and groaned, slowly expanding while Tach furiously tugged and heaved, working more of her into the now cramped lab. Finally, he managed to drag her all the way through, her bulk knocking instruments to the floor and sending boxes containing gloves sailing through the air. Tach managed to squeeze past the blimp of a mare and hit the doors control pad, causing the door to slam shut, cutting off the last bit of ooze which slid between those cheeks.
	“Augh!” Cinnamon groaned, rubbing her belly as she lay wedged between the door, wall and counter. “At least buy me dinner first!” She grunted, blushing terribly red. 
	“Are you okay?” Tach asked, pressing his paws against the sides of Cinnamon’s groaning belly.” 
	“Yeah,” She said, trying to roll herself back to her hooves. “Guess that stuff doesn’t need to use your mouth to fatten you up.
	Tach tried to ignore the implications of what Cinnamon said, instead focusing his attention on the door. The ooze was there, poking and prodding against the door, trying to find a way in but the room was sealed off. 
	“Can it get in?” Cinnamon asked, unable to see behind her.
	“No, We’re safe for now,” Tach said. “The labs are separate from the rest of the ship.”
	“Makes sense,” Cinnamon grunted. “What good is a lab that isn’t airtight. Which reminds me, are we-”
	“We’ll be alright,” Tach cut in. “These labs have their own air system.”
	“That’s a relief. Maybe we can hide out here until we’re rescued?” 
	“That won’t work,” Tach said, going back to checking the lab’s computer. “The labs are sealed off in other ways,” He held up his tablet, “I can’t get a message out with this thing. Anyone else that enters the ship will have to contend with the ooze when they find us.”
	“Damn,” Cinnamon grumbled. She’d finally rolled back onto her feet and sat with her bulk pressed against the door. “So what do we do?” 
	“Well, I’m checking these logs,” Tach said. “You can check the tablet and see if anything of use is on the ships files.” 
	Cinnamon watched as Tach tossed the tablet through the air towards her. She reached a swollen paw up, catching it and looking it over. Tach gave her a nod which caused her to blush which in turn made Tach blush. The pair worked in silence for a few minutes, each trying to focus on the task at hand rather than the sensation of their own bodies wobbling and bouncing ever so gently against one another in that cramped lab. 
	Cinnamon began to look through the unencrypted files that Tach’s program had managed to bring up. It was mostly classified information on ship schematics and technical information on the ship’s labs. There was a crew roster, listing one hundred and fifteen crew along with six officers, fourteen lab technicians and four doctors. Cinnamon looked through the list, hoping the crew managed to make it out safely, before she found another file named ‘specimen XXL’. The coincidence was too much to bear and Cinnamon quickly opened the file. Inside was a series of videos numbered one to five.
	“I think I found something,” Cinnamon said, turning the tablet towards Tach. The lynx looked up from his work and waddled over.
	“Lemme see,” He said, reaching up for the tablet, their bodies sloshing against one another before grabbing the tablet and playing the first video in the series. A small projector lens in the back of the tablet clicked to life and Tach pointed it towards the wall. A crystal clear image of a video from the labs internal camera sprang up in front of them. The image was of a rat dressed in a lab coat over a jumpsuit.
	“This is Dr. Matthias Dendrin, lab report two dash seven seven three. The specimen recovered has been brought to my lab for analysis after delivery by the Delta Sky transport ship,” The camera panned over, pointing to a large chunk of rock the size of a tractor and the color of frozen strawberry sherbet which sat behind a large protective barrier.
	“My initial studies have found the sample to not be another type of mineral but, in fact, another form of life. This one long since frozen in the depths of space. Perhaps knocked off of a planet after an impact or perhaps even further. Initial tests have shown it to be largely inert. Further testing will hopefully yield more results.” The video ended there.	
	“Huh, looks like it wasn’t from the asteroid,” Cinnamon said. Tach nodded, pressing play on the next entry. Once more the image of the lab came into view, showing the same rat from before standing in front of the same barrier. Only now the barrier was filled with the familiar red ooze that looked large enough to fill a swimming pool.
	“Lab report two dash seven seven four. After subjecting the specimen to heat, we have discovered it’s original or normal form. This strange entity is a totally amorphous creature. There are no apparent internal organs or means of propulsion beyond extending itself out and dragging the rest of its mass behind it. My tests have found it to be quite receptive to heat.”
	With that, the rat turned towards the barrier and lifted a small space heater in the air. The ooze seemed to shudder and move towards the source of heat. The rat walked back and forth in front of the barrier, waving the heater around. The ooze seemed to follow like an eager puppy, rising and pressing against the barrier, eager to get at the source of heat.
	“How it is able to sense heat is a mystery. It seems to be aware of ambient heat in the ship but more concentrated sources of heat have gotten its attention. It has even been seen following crew members who have passed in front of the chamber. More studies are needed to learn more about this creature.” The video ended there.
	“So we know how its tracking us,” Tach said, “But we don’t know why.” 
	“Well we know why,” Cinnamon said, patting her immense belly. “Let’s see the next one.”
	The next video started with far more action than the first. The light’s in the lab were off, the only light coming from the red emergency lights that bathed everything in an eerie glow. The rat once more came into view, rubbing his head after some sort of impact.
	“This is Dr. Matthias Dundrin,” He said, shaking his head again. “We’ve been hit by something, I don’t know what.” There was sudden crash from off camera. The rodent looked towards it and his face filled with horror. “Oh shit! The barrier is down! The specimen’s escaped-mphh!” The rat was cut off by a sudden surge of ooze overtaking him, carrying him off camera. There were shouts and screams suddenly cut off out of shot before the video ended abruptly. Tach and Cinnamon looked at one another. That explained how the thing had managed to escape. Tach hit play on the next video.
	The image on this video was far calmer, but no less terrifying. The rat stood in frame, or rather, wobbled in frame. His body had expanded drastically, his stomach bowing low to the floor, his jumpsuit hanging in ripped clumps and his lab coat stretched across his back. He looked to be about the size of Tach who rubbed his stomach self consciously. 
	“This is,” The rat puffed, seeming out of breath. “Dr. Matthias Dundrin. Lab report two dash seven seven four. The specimen has escaped confinement and made it into the rest of the ship. Attempts have been made to catch it but it’s made it into the vents. Attempts have been made to shut off the vents but nothing seems to work. Only the labs seem safe from it. It has been seeking out the rest of the crew, injecting itself into them orally.” The rat pressed a paw into his stomach, causing his belly to churn and gurgle. “It seeks out heat of living things and converts itself to fat cells inside of them. As to why I don’t have any idea. My research has been slowed by...physical limitations. I hope to find a way to reverse these effects on myself and the crew before anything else happens.” 
	“Maybe they found a cure?” Cinnamon said without much enthusiasm. Tach simply pressed play on the next video.
	The video started as before, with the rat standing in front of it, looking heavily swollen. He’d apparently been filled with another helping of ooze only he seemed different. He sat on the floor in front of the camera, his bulk spreading out around him, rising and falling with a motion that seemed to great to be his own breath. His features seemed softer, less defined. It wasn’t just the extra weight on him. It was as though his body was melting.
	“Thib ib Dr. Mabbias Dundin,” He said, his cheeks jiggling as he spoke. “We’b tribed ebrything to stobp the oozth. Nothinb seems to work. I’ve been workib on a pothible cure. A way to stob the metabolism process.” the swollen rat raised a paw, pointing at a machine on the counter to his left. “The ooze,” he groaned, his body churning and shifting heavily. “It converts its host into more oozth. Afther it turns to fat it slowly changes the cellth around it to more of itf.” It was then that the pair noticed the reddish tinge of his fur. “I thought locking myself in the lab would stopb it but i was wrong. When cut off from the resth of it. It just converts isthelf to more ooze and waiths.” He seemed to concentrate for a moment, trying to keep his mind in focus. “The rest of the crew has gone, turned into more of that...jelly. The captain hath made one last attempt. She’s shutting downb the ships power. Maybe it will starve it, make it freeze. It’s too late for us, we’re all infected, too far changed. I can feel it now, turning me into more of ithself. The cure is in my lab,” The rat seemed to go to sleep for a moment, his snout sinking into his chest as he turned a deeper shade of red. “If anyone finds this...use the cure, then get the hell out of heremmphmh.” The rat gave one last heave as his body gurgled and churned. His head seemed to sink into the mass of his body, his arms losing their form as they sank into the gurgling mass of his body. His fur soon disappeared as well, leaving nothing but a quivering red mound of ooze. The lights in the lab dimmed suddenly, evidently the captain had activated her plan.	
	“Emergency shutdown activated” A robot voice said. “Life support systems offline, minimum core levels activated.” the ooze on the floor began to slide out of shot, no doubt searching for some source of warmth. The only source it could find, the core. It was then that the video ended.” 
	It was tough to figure out who began to panic first. Cinnamon, the larger of the two, was definitely aware of how her stomach groaned and jiggled from the ooze inside of her. Tach was filled with a sudden surge of ‘i told you so’ which was quickly stomped when he saw the look of fear on Cinnamon’s face.
	“Ah!” They said in unison, both feeling their panic rise but checked it when they realized they didn’t want to make the other panic. This caused them to bounce and shake, looking from their stomachs to the floor, to the switched off video, to each other and then to the doorway.
	“I don’t want to turn into ooze!” Cinnamon wailed, rubbing her paws over her stomach. “I like being a pilot!”
	“You won’t, Cinnamon, don’t worry!” Tach said, pressing his paws into the sides of her stomach. “I won’t let that happen!”
	“How? You’re infected too! You’ll turn into ooze just like me! Just like the crew before us!”
	“You heard what he said, Cinnamon!” Tach said, “There’s a cure! We just have to find it. It’s in one of the labs.”
	“Alright,” Cinnamon said, getting a grip on herself. “Alright, yes. We just have to get it. But,” Cinnamon was in no position to look out the window in the labs wall and out into the corridor but Tach could. He could see the ooze, tendrils of it moving around, seeking a source of heat. It seemed like it couldn’t find them but after they opened the door there was no telling how much time they had before it found them. The growling and churning in both their stomachs suggested they were long overdue for another feeding. “How are we gonna do that?”
	Tach thought for a moment. “We’ll need a distraction. One of us will have to go out there and get its attention while the other searches for the cure.”
	“Right,” Cinnamon nodded, “But which one?” 
	The pair looked at each other for a moment before Tach made his way to one of the cupboards and began to look through them, finally dragging out a pair of space heaters. 
	“What are you doing?” Cinnamon said, watching as Tach grabbed a length of surgical tubing from a drawer and began to tie it to the handles of the heaters.
	“You can’t move fast enough, you’ll be wedged in a hallway before you go fifty feet.” Tach said as he finished tying the heaters together and slung them over his shoulder, one bouncing against his belly while another bumped against his backrolls. “I’ll lead it away, draw it down to the ships loading bay. While its busy with me you can find the cure, inject yourself, and then come for me.”
	“But what if I can’t get to you?” Cinnamon asked.
	“Let’s hope that won’t happen.” Tach said, trying not to think about that eventuality. “You’ve got more experience moving around at bigger sizes anyway,” He said with a chuckle. “More used to being a fatty.”
	Cinnamon laughed softly, “Alright, help me up, let’s do this.” 
	It took a few minutes to finally roll Cinnamon back into a position where she could squeeze back out of the lab by herself. She sat, wedged against the door, ready to spring forward and haul herself through. Tach meanwhile, squeezed in front of her, his belly pressed against the door, rump sinking deep into her belly.
	“Ready?” She asked, trying to see the smothered image of Tach over the horizon of her breasts.
	“Yeah,” Tach grunted out, reaching for the door control.
	“Tach, If we don’t make it,” 
	“We will make it,” 
	“Yeah, but if we don’t,” Cinnamon said, giving a soft roll forward, her blubber smooshing against him. “I want ya to know you’re a great friend, and you look rather sexy all swollen and soft.”
	Tach grunted a thanks before giving her stomach a pat, “You too,” He said, before hitting the door control and letting Cinnamon's blubber shove him through the corridor.
	The bulk of the ooze was concentrated towards the ships core, where a constant warmth could still be found but the rest of it was still sliding through the vents, trying to find its quarry. It didn’t want them to be turned into ooze just yet. There was still so much warmth it needed to acquire. The pair would do for a good long while if it let them grow and expand like the rest of the crew. The hunger had been what caused the others to start stuffing themselves in the galley. The endless hunger that the ooze forced upon those that tried to resist. When they had bloated out of their space suits and their hazmat gear it had struck again, snapping up its prey with ease, fattening them like berries until they were ready to join the mass as more of itself.
	The ooze it had left in the labs had grown dormant from lack of action. With no heat to seek, they had retreated into the vents. But now, now something appeared, heat radiating off it in great, glorious waves. Ooze slurped out from vents, quivering with excitement as Tach bounced into the hallway. The heat he gave off blinded it to anything else. It wanted that warmth, wanted to make it grow, to become more of itself. So much so that the force of its desire caused the vent covers to snap off and clatter towards the floor. Thick ropes of ooze surged out, heading towards the swollen lynx who hopped through the air, sailing out of the labs and moving as fast as he could through reduced gravity. 
	Tach had stood, frozen like a deer in the headlights, as that ooze surged towards him. “Ohhh shit!” He shouted, turning and rushing out of the lab. “Follow me you damn alien goo! Fill ‘er up!” He shouted, waving the heaters around. Cinnamon watched a flood of the ooze surging down the hall like a fox after a rabbit. She waited a moment, watching the ooze in the vents suddenly come to a stop. The ooze must have moved to another part of the ship, seeking out Tach and using the other vents to do it. Once she was sure there was no source of ooze around her, Cinnamon began to squeeze herself out of the chamber and into the hall.
	She hadn’t been too sure how she was going to manage it. She’d been barely able to do it with help and had gained a few inches after that invasion by the ooze when her snout hadn’t been available. But Tach was counting on her so she had to try. With a groan, she began to shove herself through the door, feeling her still sore sides slipping through the doorway, blubber oozing through as she forced herself through. She used whatever leverage she could, pushing off the the table in the middle of the lab, the walls, anything. She forced herself through, looking like red brown play dough slowly squeezing through a door shaped opening. Her breasts flopped out, followed by her head and, eventually, her fat swaddled arms. Once her upper torso was through she gripped the sides of the door and hauled with all her remaining strength which wasn’t much. She could feel a hunger growling inside of her. How long had it been since she’d been fattened with ooze? Her body was growling and gurgling, demanding another filling, and the fatigue from lack of food was starting to show. But Tach needed her to do this.
	More and more of her blubber sloshed through, her rump cheeks being the biggest obstacle, but she was so close now. Cinnamon squirmed and sloshed, bounced and groaned, leaning forward and tugging at the floor, hoping her sweaty pelt would help ease the passage before finally popping free. She sailed through the air, pressing against the far wall with a loud slap, her body spreading out heavily before bouncing back and careening against the opposite wall. She floated like that for two more bounces, her body groaning and her head spinning. She finally settled on her backside in the middle of the corridor, dizzy but no worse for wear. 
	After taking a moment to collect herself, Cinnamon hoisted herself to her feet and began to waddle towards the lab door that Tach had pointed out to her. He’d found the ship’s crew list and the lab associated with the doctor. All she had to do was get in, get the cure, and then get it to Tach, easy. She made her way over to the door, turning to her side and hitting the button on the control panel. Tach had said the door was unlocked, something he could still do from the inside of the lab, and the door slid open.
	It was at that moment that Cinnamon remembered what happened to the rat. He’d been turned to ooze but the doors to the lab had all been locked. She was just able to see the implications when a bloated rat sized mountain of ooze flooded towards her. She had no defense from the attack. The ooze, starved from lack of warmth, surged into her muzzle, forcing her mouth wide open. Cinnamon groaned as her stomach surged outwards, bloating and pressing against the wall in front of her while a blob the size of Tach sloshed into her stomach. She groaned in despair, her stomach inflating before her eyes. There was no way she’d be able to fit into the lab after this! More and more ooze flooded into her, making her shudder in pleasure and shame. Her tail flicked back and forth in delight, her frame heaving and rippling while that ooze swelled her belly, bloating it to at least the width of the door before the last few drops slurped down into her stomach. Cinnamon took a few steps back, her stomach dragging on the floor even in the reduced gravity, and fell onto her rump, groaning heavily and kneading the sides of that massively swollen belly.
	“*urrp* sorry Tach,” She moaned. “I failed you,” She sniffed, feeling tears well in her eyes, making the world around her glint and sparkle. Something on the floor, however, sparkled a bit more brightly. With herculean effort, Cinnamon leaned over to spot something laying on the floor. It looked like a spray bottle of some sort. Beside it sat the discarded clothing that the doctor had worn. She craned her neck more, trying to read the side of the bottle, until she finally rolled onto her side, landing with a slosh, finally able to reach the bottle with a fat paw. Once she scooped it up she could see it clearly now. It was a small spray bottle, the kind that was used in administering medicine without a needle. Thinking quickly, Cinnamon pressed the tip of the bottle into her arm. It sank deep into her soft flab, obscuring her paw as well, before meeting any resistance. The nozzle on it depressed, spraying a burst of medicine which moved through her skin without breaking it. Immediately, Cinnamon could feel it working. A cool sensation, like being dunked into an ice bath, flooded through her body. It spread through every fold, every roll, every pocket of blubber on that sloshing mass of equine blubber. The gurgling in her stomach seemed to cease as did the lethargy that seemed to overtake her. She was filled with a newfound strength and a newfound purpose. She’d found the antidote. Now all she needed to do was to get to Tach.
	“Just hold on,” Cinnamon said as she pushed off the floor and floated back onto her swollen legs. “I’m coming.”

	Tach bounded down the hallway, heaters bouncing on his back and belly, as though the devil was on his heels. He careened off the far wall, forcing a burp from his bloated middle, before using the impact to send him sailing down another corridor where he skidded to a halt. He looked down at the tablet clutched in his swollen paws, checking which way to go. He could hear the ooze flooding after him like a rushing wave. It sounded like the entire ships supply was gunning for him now. But he couldn’t think about that, he had to keep moving. With another leap, Tach sailed down the hall, using all his training at his disposal. Unlike Cinnamon, who only dealt with low G's in her cockpit and around the loading bays, Tach was an expert. Traveling from one part of a space station to another usually required passing through long corridors and vertical shafts. It took a certain skill to move through paths and corridors with so much ease. Even with the extra weight he was carrying he was still able to move quickly. 
	That speed was soon put to the test, however, when he went sailing past the galley. Several tendrils of ooze, attempting to head him off, flew out of the door towards his spherical frame. Tach flailed for a moment, trying to turn himself in the air. He managed to avoid the ooze by mere inches before bouncing off the wall, using his cushioned frame to propel him once more. Things seemed to be going well. He just had to hope that Cinnamon could get a hold of the cure. 
	Around another corner, past another door, Tach sailed through, his great gray body jiggling and churning, gurgling with the lack of ooze feeding into him. He tried to ignore that sensation and what it might mean and focused on his next move. Another forked path was coming up. He needed to go left but he saw a large wall of ooze blocking his path. No! If he got caught here he’d probably burst! Thinking quickly, he grabbed the heaters around his shoulder and threw them towards the right corridor. The ooze, sending the sudden increase in heat, surged towards the heaters, enveloping them and giving Tach enough time to press his legs into the wall to his right and bounce off, sailing through the air and sliding down the left passage. At the far end of the corridor he could see his target. The entrance to the loading bay was only fifty meters away. He was almost there! He sprang off another wall, his stomach pressing, rolling around him before he pushed off with his paws, one last heave to send him towards the door. Only this time, he found himself a passenger. He looked down and saw that he’d pushed off a vent. A thick blob of ooze pressed into his chest, stretching from the vent and reached up, plunging itself into his snout. Tach groaned, feeling the ooze bloating him, swelling his stomach as he rotated in the air. He could feel his sides surging out, belly groaning as he was stuffed helplessly. Even as he flew he knew he would be too wide for the door. He already had trouble leaving the lab doors and these ones looked to be about the same. He would crash into the doors and wedge inside, probably fill up the entire hallway before finally transforming into ooze. 
	His doomed outlook turned out to be somewhat premature, however, as the ooze in it’s haste to fill him, pressed more of itself against him. He flew through the air like a bullet, his head pointed towards the doors, while several other clumps of ooze pressed in around him, pushing him along, speeding him up. He sailed into the doors, wedging painfully for only a moment before the onslaught of ooze behind him slammed into him and he popped into the empty loading bay like a cork with the ooze in hot pursuit.
	Once it had him, the ooze wasted no time. I had been seeking him for ages and would not be denied. Tach felt the ooze gushing into him like a fire hose. The surge of it caused his belly to stretch in front of him as he bobbed and gently floated down the metal floor. His fat arms were stuck out at his sides, rapidly looking shorter as he swelled and his stomach gurgled. The ooze seemed to be working in overtime, converting to fat to allow more of itself to swell into him. He turned his bloating muzzle towards the tablet and pressed his fat thumb against one last command, the one that sent out a distress signal. It wasn’t ideal, but he’d managed to find the lab data on the cure. Maybe if someone found the ship they could find out what happened and prepare against it. The last thing he wanted was to end up spreading this terrible plague across the galaxy. 
	Once the command and message was sent, Tach let the tablet float out of his paws. His fingers were too fat for the buttons anyway. He simply let the ooze press him into the floor, leaning him down, gushing more and more ooze into his stomach as his wobbling bulk spread across the floor. Those gray rolls of lynx lard inched out further, smothering the metal in rich, jiggling blubber. His cheeks plumped, making him squint as another chin slid in, enveloping his neck in a rich muffler of blubber that kept his head locked in place. His ears twitched lazily as he felt the ooze pressing around him, caressing his groaning frame. He let out a deep purr of pleasure. It was warm and soothing, like being in a warm bath. He just had to let go, let himself drift away as he bloated.
	“Hang on, Tach!” 
	The voice seemed to come from a distant place. Tach opened his eyes lazily, annoyed that something would disrupt his pleasure. He looked out across the gray expanse of his sloshing belly, to the entrance to the loading bay where a great, red brown blob was rolling towards him. Cinnamon had made her way through the halls, managing to avoid being found by the tendrils that were still eager to find their way into Tach. She was enormous, nowhere near as big as the blimping mountain of lynx lard, but still massive. She filled the entirety of the corridor, her weight pressing in around her from all sides, before she finally made it to the entrance of the loading bay and popped through, followed by more ooze that quickly began sliding around her, trying to fill her muzzle.
	“I’ve got it!” She shouted, twisting her bloated muzzle around as she sailed towards the mountain of lynx who was now the size of a two car garage. “Damn you got fat!” 
	“Mpphhm,” Tach grunted in reply, his body feeling softer, saggier, more and more like the ooze every second.  Cinnamon reached her arm up, merely a small hill in the globe of blubber that was her body, and waved something clutched in that mitten like paw. She floated towards Tach, bouncing against his belly, her entire girth sinking into him as she plunged the nozzle of the sprayer into him. Tach felt a distant shot of cold in the outer perimeter of his stomach which made him squirm. That cold sensation spread across his body, banishing the warm lethargy and replacing it with a cool and sudden blast of clear headed consciousness. Although he was still being fattened with ooze, Tach felt a million times better. The cure was there! It had worked! 
	He turned his head towards Cinnamon, hoping to try and signal some form of thanks but found her already indisposed. The ooze had found her finally and was wasting no time in filling her. Her body gurgled and churned as she drank down that ooze, her stomach rolling against his. He felt her warm flesh slapping against his own, surging upwards as if making up for lost time. The pair sat against one another, groaning and churning, swelling and bloating, each fattening heavily as the ooze worked into their systems, unknowingly turning itself to fat without any ability to change back.
	Soon Cinnamon rose into his view, her muzzle blocked with ooze, her body groaning and heaving. He felt her breasts rubbing against him, her body sloshing heavily. The warmth of the ooze was replaced with the warmth of her body, each of them swelling and rolling against the other. Each one the other source of heat. On and on the swelling went. Their  bodies past immobile, past enormous, bloating to fill the loading bay as every nook and cranny, every doorway and loading dock was stuffed with tons and tons of surging, sloshing, rippling blubber. By the time the ooze had finally spent itself, the pair were only a few feet from reaching the rood of the bay. Their bodies sloshing mountains of ooze stuffed lard.
	“I think….that’s it,” Tach groaned, unable to see beyond his cheeks or the swell of his chins.
	“It’s..over,” Cinnamon groaned heavily. “What...happens next?”
	“We get...towed to port,” Tach huffed, unable to imagine just how was able to withstand being so enormous. “Hopefully, shrunk back down,”
	“Maybe not all the way down,” Cinnamon grunted, making herself wobble a bit more. “We could, keep some of the weight?”
	“We could,” Tach said. “After we get paid,”
	“Think we will?” Cinnamon panted. “We didn’t do a good job salvaging this...ship.”
	“Yeah but...insurance..exposure to dangerous materials...lack of proper safety protocols...we’ll make off like *urrrp* bandits,”
	“Not bandits,” Cinnamon belched. “Like salvagers,”
	“Right,” Tach said, letting the rippling waves of their combined bulk roll him off to sleep. He was exhausted, bloated, and stranded. Hopefully the deep space beacon would attract someone on the payroll of the ESRD and bring someone in that could do something for them. For now though, they could only wobble, and hope. He gave another heavy sigh, waves sloshing across his immense bulk, “Like salvagers,”