FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

By Psion

A Hearth Star Series

These are the voyages of the GRSS Stout Bulwark, Fabricator-class engineering cruiser of the Galactic Republic Space Fleet. Her motto, "The difficult before breakfast, the impossible before lunch." With her skilled crew of engineers, the Stout Bulwark patrols the fringe of GalRep space and averts disaster on countless worlds...

Captain Honifield was silent as he boarded the Stout Bulwark at the Space Fleet base at Beacon's Light, one of the largest inhabited systems connecting the core of the Galactic Republic with the barely settled fringe. As he quickly dropped off the last of his personal effects to the captain's... his quarters, he still had trouble believing this was real. His first real command, even after all his work and all the time he had to let it sink in, the ursine officer was still holding back his urge to jump for joy as he walked along the Bulwark's gleaming corridor towards the bridge. Time to inspect and meet the crew that would be under his command for the foreseeable future.

"Captain on the bridge!" The order echoed the moment Honifield stepped through the double doors onto the bridge. Immediately on cue the overstuffed crew rose to their feet and stood at attention. The stout brown bear regarded the assembled sailors clad in black Fleet uniforms with an approving nod. As expected of the ship's class, the majority of the crew wore the same pumpkin orange highlights of Engineering as Honifield did. Yet there was also the tan of Galley Services, the green of Helm, and a big-bellied Rubent female wearing the red of Security. Overall, a crew that was as well rounded as its individual members, the ship's new captain decided silently as he inspected each member of his new crew, trying to put faces to the dossiers he read on the shuttle ride up to Beacon's Light. Meanwhile the crew looked back at their new captain with a mix of concealed emotions.

Commander Soket kept his expression professional as he took his place next to Captain Honifield and started facilitating introductions. The barrel-shaped Buk officer was privately a storm of warring emotions. Platinum blond hair was trim to a regulation cut as he gestured towards each of the crew in turn. This should be his command, his captaincy. Still, he had to do what protocol demanded of him...

Lt. Bargebottom kept her round face perfectly still and her posture as straight as she could manage, hoping the captain wouldn't look past her floppy hat and the tan Galley Service highlights on her uniform before moving on. It was unlikely considering Soket introduced her by name but she hoped anyway. Because then came the inevitable questions, yes Admiral Bargebottom was her aunt. No she did not expect her family name to carry any weight. She certainly hoped Honifield didn't expect her to be like her cousin, the admiral's bitchy daughter Captain Cryptal Bargebottom...

Lt. Cheze gave a predatory grin and a snap salute as Cmdr. Soket introduced her to Honifield. Security was an unusual specialization for the rodent-like Rubent but according to the personnel file the captain read, it suited Cheze's temperament perfectly. The black fabric of her uniform was stretched by a considerable paunch that had become the final home of more then a few space monsters. If she couldn't shoot it, Cheze would definitely try to eat it. Honifield couldn't shake the feeling that someone, somewhere, would find the notion of one of the Security Reds eating space monsters amusing...

Ensign Widget did her best to avoid looking nervous in front of her new captain, a barely noticeable tremble in her salute as she returned the gesture. Captain Honifield in turn pretended to not notice the "fresh from the academy" jitters the Buk female clearly demonstrated. Still, she was apparently the best in her class in the Fleet engineering college and excelled at drone operations and general fabrication so she certainly had promise. She certainly gave him less misgivings then the other junior engineering officer on the bridge.

Ensign Earlong wore his best smile as he saluted Honifield when his turn came up for introductions. Honifield did his best to keep his expression neutral as he returned the gesture. He might be wrong, he hoped he was wrong, but the engineering ensign's posture and demeanor gave the newly commissioned captain the impression that Earlong was a bit of a screwball. That has panned out both ways in the ursine's previous experience...

Crewman Thumper looked quite serious as he returned Honifield's salute, the second male Lapeen seemed to be the model of a dedicated Space Fleet sailor right down to the pronounced beer belly filling out his black jumpsuit. The helmsman appeared to be all business and for now, Honifield decided to leave it at that. He still needed to tour the rest of the ship and receive the first orders of his new command...

Leaving the bridge with the new captain in tow, Commander Soket showed Honifield the rest of the ship from top to bottom. The Stout Bulwark was an older vessel but hardly showed its age thanks to diligent maintenance and a crew that consisted largely of engineers. The crew dormitories and ship's galley were nestled on either side of the ship's spine, the main corridor that ran down the length of the ship's upper decks and connected the main sections of the ship with a hallway of warm browns and reds.

A large fabrication shop, materials storage, and a disassembly bay for breaking down wreckage and hazardous debris occupied the lower deck of the ship. Division between the three main areas was more formality then physical barrier due to the interrelated nature of each space but the equipment was impressive, the fabrication shop in particular looked like it had recently been upgraded with the latest Industrial Printers before command had been passed over to him. The schematic databases were up to date with a vast catalog of tools, weapons, and parts. And the assembly bay was fully stocked with a variety of hand tools, power tools, and multifunctional drone manipulators. All in all a good ship and one he hoped he could do proud.

A tour of the facilities completed, he then turned to the orders from Command waiting for him in his quarters, patrol a route running the length of the frontier and provide engineering support to all ships and military bases of the Galactic Republic encountered along the route. Simple enough... it actually sounded quite boring in a way. Hopefully it would be as boring as it sounded, even simple patrols could be anything but dull.

The _Bulwark_made its launch time without incident, casting off from Beacon's Light and promptly jumping to hyperspace. Sitting in his chair on the bridge with a mug of tea in his hand, Captain Honifield remained expressionless as the ship... his ship jumped back into normal space. Sensors registered nothing of interest orbiting around the red dwarf star or the trio of barren, airless planets lacking the gravity to maintain any sort of atmosphere. Just as well, interesting things tended to be trouble more often then not...

The patrol passed like this for three days ship standard time before the _Bulwark_jumped out on the edge of a massive asteroid field. From the helm console, Thumper announced that the ship's sensors detected the signature of a Wuff frigate drifting aimlessly. Honifield frowned when he heard the report. Given the Wuffs and their reputation for being ruthless pirates, this felt like a trap but he ordered them to cautiously advance all the same.

The Wuff frigate loomed ominously in the Stout Bulwark's view screen as the bridge crew scanned the seemingly abandoned ship closely, waiting for it to suddenly display signs of life. But it was a trap that never came, sensors showed no sign of life on the enemy vessel and heavy internal damage. Power was almost depleted, there was barely enough left on the emergency reserves to maintain life support... what in the name of the saints happened here?

After a second scan and Crewman Thumper artfully brought the Bulwark adjacent to the ghost ship, an away team was assembled. Honifield expected Commander Soket to raise objections to having him lead the squad destined to explore the abandoned ship but curiously his executive officer seemed to accept the idea without protest. Honifield made a mental note of this behavior and went back to overseeing the boarding of the frigate.

The Wuff privateer was dark, lights flickered dimly, and the air stank with the pungent stench of dried blood as Captain Honifield ambled onto the abandoned vessel with Soket, Widget, and Cheze. The Rubent security officer had taken point, brandishing a pulse SMG held tight against her ample belly as she slowly waddled aboard and swept the immediate corridor before waving the others through. The smell of blood increased in intensity as the ursine commander followed after his subordinates, his powerful nose picking up the smell of Wuffs and another, unfamiliar, species.

As the away team properly waddled aboard the pirate vessel and looked down both corridors, the scene became the preamble for a holo-vid horror movie. The corpses of slain Wuffs were strewn across the floor, sometimes in several pieces, while someone had, in Wuff blood, defaced the wall leading towards the bow of the frigate with some alien dialect. On reflex, Soket pulled out a Universal Array Device and scanned the graffiti. The blood did indeed contain Wuff DNA while the writing itself was recorded and logged with the Bulwark's computer.

As Cheze started to examine some of the corpses in closer detail and Widget began to recover from her initial blanching at the sight of the carnage, Honifield stood with Soket and tried to read the alien dialect to no real avail. The writing " WE WILL NEVER BE SLAVES!"might as have been a recipe for a sandwich for all he could tell without a translation to Universal.

"What do you think Lieutenant?" The round ursine captain asked as he shook his head to clear it. Reading alien text he didn't know how to translate always gave him a headache.

"Well cap'n, I'm not sure if it was a slave revolt or a dispute between two factions among the crew that did all these Wuffs in. All these wounds look like they were from their own weapons. The cuts are all evenly cauterized, typical with their energized blades and the burn patterns are all irregular as typical of their crude energy weapons, whoever did this did it with Wuff weapons." The huge-bellied mouse with short jet-black hair explained as she turned over a Wuff corpse with the toe of her black Fleet-issue boots.

"Must have been Wuffs then." Soket interjected. "Why would any other self-respecting species use weaponry that crude?" He replied haughtily, the Buk's barrel-shaped belly full of racial pride in his people's talent for engineering.

"Perhaps those were the only weapons available..." Honifield countered, rubbing his chin as he mused. "How would you classify the skill of the assailants Lieutenant Cheze?"

"Well that's the confusing part sir, I'd say there was at least one or two that knew what they were doing... and a whole bunch that couldn't hit the broad side of any of us." Cheze explained, gesturing to the scorch marks where an errant shot found a wall instead of a Wuff. The dim lighting made it hard to see all of the missed shots at first but now that the security officer pointed it out, it looked like the accuracy of most of the mysterious combatants left a lot to be desired.

Honifield nodded in reply and motioned for the team to move towards the bridge. The neophyte captain expected the carnage to continue and was not disappointed. The pirate ship's bridge was a mess of damaged consoles, blood, gore, and the very creatively dismembered corpses of what were once the Wuff captain and his bridge crew.

Widget had just recovered her composure when the away team made its way to the bridge, blanching beneath her brown fur pelt but remaining firm. Honifield remained unmoved despite the brutality that had been dealt, particularly to the Wuff captain. Brushing the decapitated corpse of the Wuff engineering officer aside, the ursine captain tapped the synthetic diamond screen and coaxed the console to life. The main screen came to life with the readout from the battered engineering console as the brown bear skimmed through system reports.

"Hmmm, all escape pods have been ejected and security data of the incident has been wiped... Did anyone see any non-Wuff corpses in the hallway?" He asked, the others shook their heads in reply.

A further search of the Wuff vessel revealed no further clues about its fate. Documenting what they could and transmitting a report to Space Fleet HQ, Honifield directed the Bulwark's crew to focus on their next task. An abandoned ship was a potential navigational hazard, an abandoned warship adrift along a trade route, no matter how minor the route or the ship, was an invitation for trouble. Demolition charges were placed and once the away team was safely aboard their own ship, the explosives were detonated and the pirate frigate was broken into several pieces. The atomic fires of the high-energy bombs had barely been extinguished by the cold blackness of space before the Stout Bulwark started spearing the larger pieces of wreckage with tractor beams and fed them into the ship's fabrication bays. Automated disassembly equipment came to life and broke the wreckage down into base metals and polymers the ship's Industrial Printers will use for feedstock to manufacture items as needed. Once the recovery operation was finished, Honifield and his ship moved on with their patrol. Soon it would be time to see what Lt. Bargebottom had prepared for dinner...

Lt. Bargebottom puttered around the ship's galley, floppy tan chef's hat and bulbous feline rump bouncing in time with her steps as she softly whistled a popular tune of the day to herself as she put the finishing touches on dinner. Oh what a week, what a week it had been, two new additions to the ship's crew including a new captain and she still hadn't learned all of the favorites of the original crew yet. She still had to stop and remind herself to cook for two additional plates from time to time but thankfully that was becoming less and less of a problem.

The feline galley chef had just finished setting tonight's stew to cool and bent over to pull a large loaf of carbohydrate out of the Provision Generator when her feline ears perked up to the sound of someone walking in behind her. Her triangular ears were sharp enough that she could recognize the ponderous footsteps of most of the crew and the sound of the captain's step was easy enough to quickly memorize. By process of elimination it could be only one person.

"Hello Ensign Widget." She greeted while slowly turning around, her hefty bottom-heavy figure wobbling from inertia. "Dinner won't be ready for another half hour." She began, her tone comforting but her stern expression clearly communicating how the wide monochromatic feline felt about snacking this close to mealtime.

"That's alright, I haven't been particularly very hungry since we came back from the away mission." The Buk engineer sighed and shook her head.

The rotund lieutenant's face softened somewhat at the mention of the abandoned pirate ship and the short mission to explore it and figure out what happened to the crew before the Wuff frigate was scrapped and scuttled. "I heard about that. Wish I had something encouraging to say but... welcome to your glamorous new life in the Fleet Ensign."

"Is it always like this?" Widget asked dejectedly.

"Some days it is. But then there are the days when you end up being a big damn fatass hero just like in the holos." The lieutenant giggled slightly. "Maybe not in the same way but you'd be surprised the way you leave an impact on people some times." She added, smiling softly and looking over her shoulder at her pronounced rump. "Pun not intended."

Widget giggled softly, the thin flicker of a smile appearing on the engineer's face once more. "Thank you ma'am." She nodded and saluted.

"Glad to help. Though perhaps you can answer a question I've been wondering for a while. What's your favorite food?" The galley officer asked warmly.

The ensign was taken aback by the upfront nature of the remark. "Ma'am? Why?" Widget stammered with a blush.

Bargebottom's smile only broadened. "Oh just a silly little habit of mine, I like trying and collecting new recipes. And since we're all light years from the Republic core worlds I like to see if I can provide a little taste of home every once in a while."

Smiling back with her cheeks still reddened from embarrassment, Widget began to describe a dessert recipe the lieutenant never heard of before but as the Buk began going on with more and more enthusiasm the feline had to admit it sounded delicious. Writing down the name and ingredients in her data assistant, she saved the half-finished recipe card just as the rest of the crew began to file in for dinner. Looks like progress was being made...

Once the Stout Bulwark jumped back into hyperspace after destroying the frigate, the patrol settled into a mundane routine once more. Honifield used the relative quiet to review his notes on his crew now that they had been working together for over a week now. Some of his perceptions had held up while others had not. Widget, Thumper, and Earlong all lived up to his initial assessment thus far. Ensign Widget in particular... well to be perfectly fair, walking over the corpses of a dead and obviously very disliked pirate crew was a very unpleasant first away mission but on the positive, she seemed to be pulling herself together as well as to be expected. Earlong was still very much the joker, Honifield wondered when the practical jokes would begin or if he was dealing with that kind of joker. Meanwhile Thumper was still stalwart, diligent, and likely very tightly strung. The two Lapeens may or may not pose a problem together...

On the other side of things, both Lt. Bargebottom and Commander Soket defied initial expectations in different ways. With Bargebottom the Galley Services chef... Honifield would have to been a buffoon to not immediately recognize the name and figure out she was part of the chief admiral's extended family. Still, instead of being a Fleet brat content to rest on her family's laurels, she tried to stick to a branch that largely saw her out of the limelight in most officer circles. Yet again, she actually showed signs of habits that were the mark of a good officer such as an attention to detail and a concern for her crew.

Commander Soket on the other hand... Honifield saw the commander's disappointment before and even related to them to an extent yet he had hoped he would never be on the receiving end like he was now. The subtle testing and one-upmanship had to stop and soon, preferably without either of them losing face by letting the issue come to blows. The next week or so would tell whether or not he would need to take stronger steps.

The ship had just transitioned back into normal space when Helm picked up the distress call. "This is Star Corps base Pork Rind! We are requesting emergency assistance from any Galactic Republic military vessel! Repeat, this is Pork Rind base requesting emergency assistance!"

The bridge was silent as the message played then repeated, all eyes on Captain Honifield as he briefly thought over the message and its contents. The Star Corps and Space Fleet had been rivals ever since the Republic's founding, for the gung-ho Troopers of the Corps to not care who came to their rescue meant the situation had to be fairly dire.

"Are we in system?" Honifield asked, addressing Crewman Thumper from his chair.

"Yes captain, Pork Rind is on the fourth planet from the local sun." The helmsman replied dutifully as he stared at his console intently.

"Very well, set a course Mr. Thumper. Let us see what sort of trouble the Star Corps found themselves in this time and if we can offer assistance." Honifield ordered.

Fort Pork Rind was situated below the surface of a frigid aquatic world and seemed to consist of a hundred beings, a remote outpost woefully undermanned to take on the task of protecting the Galactic Republic's flank from invaders and pirates. Arriving in orbit over the white and dark blue planet, Honifield ordered a scan of the base and the area immediately around it while attempting to hail Pork Rind's comm. officer. Yet if the situation was that bad, they weren't likely to receive a reply to their hail...

Yet to the ursine captain's surprise, a Bov Trooper in Star Corps greens promptly appeared on the screen. "Oh thank the -URRRRRRRRRRRP!- saints someone answered!" The blue and white bovine male greeted with a riotous belch.

Honifield blinked and he was sure his bridge crew did as well. A stout, well-cushioned figure was considered normal for the citizens and defenders of the Galactic Republic but the Bov answering the call was huge even by GalRep's generous standards. From what they could tell from their screen, the Trooper had positively ballooned into a nearly spherical olive green blimp that seemed barely capable of walking. Periodically the camera would give them glimpses of other Troopers stationed in the command center in a similarly bloated state. Was the entire base like this?

"This is Captain Honifield of the GRSS Stout Bulwark, we have received your distress call. Who am I addressing and what does Pork Rind need assistance with?" Honifield began from the comfort of his command chair as the rest of his crew continued to scan the planet below and maintain orbit.

"Lt. Angas sir... URPPPPP!" The Bov replied with another belch. "Space Fleet? The captain's not going to like this but well... about a week ago our equipment went haywire. Been frantically trying to clean up ever since."

Honifield smiled slightly despite himself, an equipment problem? Sounded simple enough. "What is the problem exactly Mr. Angas?"

"There's a species of edible seaweed here that the eggheads at GAS thought was hyper-dense in carbohydrates. Well, I guess they were right because somehow some of the seaweed got into the provision generators and now they won't stop producing carbohydrate meal."

Soket snorted from his seat on the bridge, Honifield couldn't blame him. It sounded like a simple problem that should be well within the purview of any Fleet engineering officer or Corps combat mechanic fresh out of specialist training. "Have you tried turning them off and resetting the recipe data base Mr. Angas?"

The Corps officer shook his head, wobbling his flabby cheeks and stack of multiple chins. "You don't understand, the provision generators WILL NOT TURN OFF. They have been flooding the base with carbohydrate meal for the past week standard. The only reason why it hasn't completely filled the base yet is because we've been eating it as fast as it's been coming out." The bovine communications officer explained, clumsily reaching down and patting his immense gut for emphasis.

The Stout Bulwark's engineers were silent in contemplation. They needed to work quickly to diagnose and fix this problem or the base would be destroyed by either an overabundance of carbohydrates or an overabundance of Trooper flab. Whatever happened to Fort Pork Rind, it wasn't going to be reversed by having the crew and himself sit up here and do nothing.

"Very well then Lieutenant, let your base CO know we have received his distress call and will be arriving planet side shortly." Honifield replied and closed the channel. "Mr. Thumper, bring us down. Unless of course the landing field is flooded as well."

"Negative sir, landing field is clear. Bringing us down now."

As the Stout Bulwark landed on the snowy plains of the planet's glacier shelf not far from the target area, Honifield went over what they learned so far as he prepared his crew for a planet side mission. Provision generators were a fairly ubiquitous piece of equipment in the Galactic Republic and the Star Corps tended to value simplicity, reliability, and durability in their technology so for one to experience a failure this bad meant several things had gone wrong at once. And not all of them could be easily explained away by a bunch of half-drunk Troopers indulging in some "inspired" tinkering...

A provision generator was a device that came in a variety of different models and formed one of the cornerstones of most ship galleys and base mess halls. Based loosely off of ancient 3D printer technology, the sturdy machine prepared a variety of edible foodstuffs from a preprogrammed recipe matrix and feedstock of concentrated carbohydrates and simplified proteins rich in caloric energy. The result was an economical, space-efficient solution to the logistical problems of provisioning long space voyages and new colonies. The fact that regular users tended to pack on considerable poundage after a while was hardly a concern to the lipophilic Galactic Republic.

Yet despite being a fixture of GalRep military installations and seeing use in remote civilian outposts, the technology was not without its shortcomings. Vegetable biomass was still a ways off and while the food was nourishing and dense in calories, a proper chef with fresh ingredients was still far superior when it came to taste.

That all being said, Provision Generators were a reliable technology so to cause a system failure this catastrophic was unusual. Yet as he discussed his thoughts with Soket and Widget, the ensign came up with an interesting question. Where was the additional feedstock coming from? The cause of the flooding was obvious; the machines had been overloaded with excess carbohydrates and vented the surplus instead of exploding in a shower of shrapnel. Yet after that occurred the entire system, from the Provision Generators all the way back to whatever equipment the Corps were using to harvest the carbohydrate stock, should have shut down and needed to be manually rebooted. The whole incident should have created an inconvenient mess that was resolved in a day. So why was the harvesting equipment still carrying on like nothing was wrong and still flooding the base with carbohydrate mush?

It was a question Honifield did not have an answer for when they landed and put on their cold-weather uniforms before disembarking. A cold frigid wind blew across the snowy plain as the entire crew made their way into Fort Pork Rind proper. As the high-capacity lift took all of the robust Fleet sailors below the planet's surface and disgorged them into the underwater Star Corps base, Captain Honifield and his officers were immediately greeted by the base commander and a small detachment of Troopers in the base atrium.

Small in number at least as much like the communications officer that handled their initial conversation, Fort Pork Rind's commanding officer was an immense sphere of a Porceen male. The swine-like being wobbled like a mound of gelatin as he removed his helmet and greeted Captain Honifield. The two Tuk Troopers standing at attention behind him were not that much smaller, each of them boasting a padded belly that marched out at least four feet in front of them. It looked like every Trooper needed to commit their gut to the clean up.

"Captain Honifield... I'd say it's a pleasure but I think we both know that's a bald-faced lie." Captain Sowbreaker greeted with a handshake, his chubby-cheek face fixed in a plump scowl.

The Fleet captain nodded as he returned the gesture. "Agreed, the sooner we fix the problem, the sooner we will leave." He replied then quickly introduced each of his crew in turn. No sense in pretending there wasn't any love lost between the Star Corps and Space Fleet, especially not when the clock was ticking. Even the stout-bellied defenders of the Galactic Republic could only hope to eat so much and the Troopers were already at capacity from the look of their swollen stomachs and growing waistlines.

Waddling through the gunmetal gray utilitarian hallways behind the bloated olive figures of their gargantuan hosts, Honifield and the others were briefed with further details on the haywire provision generators and shared their thoughts based on the description of the problem so far. The lowest levels of the base were still completely flooded; the reactor and the control unit for the harvest robots the base was using was located at the very bottom of the underwater compound and as such was completely buried in carbohydrate mush despite the Corps best efforts. Surprisingly, Sowbreaker already thought along similar lines and remarked that the drones were acting strangely for about a week before the incident. The remote harvesters used were also a simple model that was programmed beforehand to avoid the offending plant. The fact that they suddenly ignored this instruction made Sowbreaker grumble about theories of sabotage. Honifield decided to delay agreeing with the Trooper captain until he saw the machinery for himself.

Unfortunately to do anything they would have to drain the bottom two levels of Fort Pork Rind first. Drain and hopefully stay on top of the provision generator still actively producing carbohydrate mush. The base did have one portable Feed-o-tron 9000 and were lending it to Honifield and his crew. Honifield accepted the bulky food pump and resisted the urge to shake his head. The Feed-o-tron was a huge, heavy thing that only he had the strength to wield. Which meant one of his crew had to follow behind him and serve as a receptacle for the pumped mush, switching whenever one had gotten full to bursting. Good thing the emergency shut-off procedure once they got down there was relatively simple; Honifield doubted that his crew had the collective capacity to do much more.

Looking over the Feed-o-tron and quickly figuring out its workings as the lift took them down to the flooded portions of the base, he turned back to his crew to look for volunteers. Almost immediately Commander Soket and Lt. Cheze volunteered to be first. The Rubents were legendary for their ability to eat until they were little more then cartoonish balls filled to the brim with food and Honifield didn't doubt that Cheze had that same ability. It also was something he wanted to hold in reserve in case someone lacked the guts for the task. Soket on the other hand... well if he wanted to prove he had the guts Honifield lacked, the ursine captain saw no reason why he shouldn't... overindulge that delusion for a little bit.

So without another word, Honifield handed the feeding mask to Soket and waited for him to finish putting it on before opening the door and nearly flooding the elevator car with the grayish white carbohydrate mush...

As the metal doors slide open, they moved aside to reveal a solid wall of the gelatinous mush. A wall that was slowly starting to ooze its way into the car as the captain of the Stout Bulwark quickly squeezed the trigger on the Feed-o-tron 9000 and began clearing out a path through the bottom levels of the base.

As more of the room around them was uncovered, the crew slowly fanned out into the opened space. First was Honifield, then the ballooning figure of Soket right behind him, then the others. Soket's already pronounced potbelly began to bulge out further and further with every gulp of carbohydrate mush he swallowed. The Buk commander's waddle began to acquire more and more of a pronounced sway as he dutifully consumed the flooding mush. Already possessing something of an "apron" belly that hung down to his crotch, his gut soon stretched down to his knees as he continued to hold his expanding abdomen in his hands and feel it grow out foot by foot. By the time Honifield managed to clear out ten feet, Soket had reached his limit. The commander's uniform continued to stretch admirably to hold in the ballooning mass of Soket's gut as it touched the toes of his boots and gently brushed against the slimy metal floor.

For a brief instant, Honifield considered attempting to squeeze one more foot of carbohydrate mush into the commander's gullet before switching the baton over to the next volunteer. But with the mush from the level above flooding back down to try and fill in the empty space he had carved out, he quickly thought better of it and removed the feeding mask before handing it off to the next volunteer. Lt. Bargebottom quickly took the mask and strapped it over her face with a deftness that surprised Honifield; something to keep in mind and maybe inquire further about if he could phrase the question in a way that wasn't inappropriate.

The Galley Services lieutenant turned out be quite the gluttonous feline, Honifield was quick to discover. By the time he carved out another ten feet and rendered her gut as heavily distended as Soket's, he turned his head to look back at her. Bargebottom merely shook her head and gave her ballooning stomach a defiant thump that sent ripples through her figure. As her stomach began to press against the floor, she continued to push along, slowly following behind her captain as they continued. By the time he carved out thirty feet, the galley chef started to look a little green beneath her monochromatic fur. By thirty-five feet, she was finally at her limit and the mask was quickly passed again. Honifield tried to not think about the fact that he was leaving a trail of bloated crew behind him as the upper level continued to drain down into the space he had cleared out. Crewman Thumper and Ensigns Widget and Earlong all put up a valiant effort but still fell short of matching Bargebottom's surprising capacity or even Soket's dutiful ten but progress was still being made. Fortunately the objective wasn't that far ahead.

As the procession slowly continued into the control room, a large space completely filled with mush, Honifield finally handed the mask to Lt. Cheze. It was now or never. Was it his imagination or did the security officer smile once she finished strapping the mask to her face?

Honifield had heard many countless stories about Cheze's people and their legendary gluttony but never was sure what was truth and what was fiction until just now. Were he not watching her swell up like a gas giant survey blimp, he could have sworn that the Rubent female's stomach housed a black hole. Bigger and bigger she swelled up and every time he thought she would have reached her limits, the security specialist shook her head and thumped her expanding middle. Her stomach continued to just bulge outward more and more until after extending several feet in front of her, it just stopped and she began to expand in other directions, becoming wider and more spherical by the moment. Yet still she silently signaled that she had plenty of room left. Soon her expanding abdomen started to "swallow" her hands and feet, sucking in her arms and legs as she grew more and more spherical. Her face and head began to flatten as her neck vanished by the expanding mass inside her. Only once they cleared out three fourths of the room did Cheze finally reach her limit. Yet even though she sat immobilized, the Rubent wore only the biggest grin on her face.

The room successfully drained, Honifield removed the feeding mask and set the bulky Feed-o-tron down next to a nearby console as the rest of his engorged crew slowly lumbered in after him or sat immobile in the center of the room. Moving with a swiftness his plump bulk may not have suggested, the Fleet captain brought up the diagnostic systems for Fort Pork Rind's provision generators and immediately ordered a base-wide shutdown of the entire system from the generators to the harvest drone network that was feeding the system with raw feedstock. In seconds it was over, the provision generators stopped producing carbohydrate mush. Meaning the only overflow that was left was the mush that was still draining downward from the upper level to try and drown Honifield and his crew...

Making sure his crew was firmly behind him; Honifield hefted the Feed-o-tron up one more time and put the mask on over his face. He already asked enough of his crew and maybe this will silence Soket's unspoken criticisms about the ursine captain...

As the Feed-o-tron 9000's vacuum motor whined back to life, Honifield chugged down the flooding paste and was promptly reminded why the carbohydrate mush served by provision generators was generally flavored before being served hot. The cold slurry was almost flavorless enough to be considered unappetizing yet he chugged on. His brown-furred belly bulged and tightened as the ursine engineer drained his surroundings until the flooding from the floor above abated and all that was left was an ankle deep pile of mush running through the bottom level. The immediate crisis had been averted, now all that was left was to deal with the clean up and the throbbing pain of indigestion everyone was likely suffering from now...

It took some effort and creative use of a cargo loader in Lt. Cheze's case but the entire crew managed to return to their ship. The next few days were spent lazily digesting several hundred pounds of simple carbohydrates as the _Bulwark's_engineers ran through every possible way Fort Pork Rind's provision generators could have failed. Captain Sowbreaker wasn't particularly pleased to have the Fleet engineers linger but his own Combat Mechanics were still in the base infirmary with an extreme case of indigestion. Despite the Star Corps' protests, the problem was quickly isolated thanks to Honifield's engineers. The old harvest drone employed an obsolete operating system that no one in the Galactic Republic proper used in years. Someone had attempted to reformat the drone's memory core and install a newer, more modern OS with better cybersecurity on it and forgot to reprogram the old exceptions that prevented it from harvesting the carbohydrate seaweed. That in itself seemed innocuous enough but didn't explain the other problems that should not have happened. Nor did the installation appear anywhere in the base maintenance logs...

A mystery that certainly supported Sowbreaker's theory of sabotage but for the life of him Honifield couldn't see a possible motive to perform such an act on such a remote and insignificant GalRep outpost. No matter, the report was compiled and transmitted to Fleet HQ and their part in this incident was completed. Now they needed to take off and resume their patrol... and hope that their next encounter isn't as filling as this one was. The ursine captain smiled and shook his head as he looked down and contemplated the added poundage on his doughy bear belly. What was once a plump tummy now ballooned out and down to his knees. The rest of the crew were in similar shape. Cheze was left in the cargo hold to fast and hopefully slim down enough that she could fit and walk through the corridors again while Lt. Bargebottom had to frequently stop and turn to keep from getting her broad backside stuck in the doorways aboard the ship. Well, none of them would be true sailors of the Galactic Republic if they didn't have the girth to show for it...