“We’ve completely fucked it this time, haven’t we?”

“I don’t know, we’ve been in worse predicaments, I feel.”

“This one is pretty tight, though.”

“It’s pretty tight.”

“Bloop.”

“Hardly relevant right now.”

I could hear them, but their inane chatter didn’t warrant a reply as I stared at the cold, slightly damp, grey wall illuminated by my head torch. This was supposed to be a simple mining recon mission on a rather uninteresting asteroid. The company suspected there could be something of value buried within the Swiss cheese of its surface and, as usual, old dogsbody and the motley crew had been sent to take a gander. 

These trips always came with some risk, but I had been tunneling and prospecting long enough to know where the real dangers lay. Sometimes, though, mistakes are made. This was one of those sometimes. Now, here I was, wedged head down between two slimy rocks, deep in an asteroid graced with nothing more than a serial number for a name. It was hardly the most dignified position for a professional to be in. The constant, unhelpful yapping of my crew wasn’t helping either. 

“Ahem.”

I felt a gentle tug on my boot, followed by some poking at my hips and ribs close to where the rock had locked me in. 

“Seriously?” I asked. “You’re going to have to try a little harder than that.”

My arms were locked above my head. I had tried to crawl through somewhere I thought I could fit, provided my arms were up. I was wrong. Now, with my shoulders squeezing my cheeks and legs pointed towards whatever ‘up’ is, I was wedged. Breathing wasn’t exactly a breeze in this position, but all I needed was for the idiots behind me to give me a pull. I didn’t know what was keeping them so long. 

“Bleep,” our automated Robot Prospector ‘ARP,’ offered. 

“Oh, stop it, you,” I heard our navigator retort as she playfully slapped its chrome chassis. The metal machine had barely enough AI to string together a coherent walking algorithm, let alone be charming, but our human compass had the hots for it anyway. Things get lonely out here in space, and I heard that at our last pit stop, she had acquired some aftermarket ‘tools’ from a rather nasty-looking shop with blacked-out windows. Whatever they had bought, she was spending a lot more time ‘repairing’ it than before. 

“If you’re finished out there,” I continued, “I would like to get on with the rest of this mission and clean some of this disgusting wall slime off me.”

“I don’t understand how you even got stuck in there in the first place,” my second in command added. “It was plenty wide enough when you moved in.”  I knew this, and I was just as perplexed as he was. 

Second in command was a loose term. These recon and mining operations were little more than scout trips. It was only because of union regulations that we had a ‘second in command’ position. As was the case here, the role was typically filled with some straight-from-the-academy newbie or the lazy son of one of the mining bigwigs. I was lucky enough to have been lumped with both, rolled into one completely incompetent mass of zitty flesh. 

The only person who took pleasure in his company was old Robominer. I think the two of them connected on an intellectual level I couldn’t quite grasp. I would often catch him staring blankly into the corner of a cargo hold for hours, precisely the same way ARP would while sitting in its charging bay. Sadly, for ARP, its love was unrequited. Second in Command only had eyes for things with a pulse. In fact, I’m not sure he was even that picky. Just ‘Warm’ would be enough to arouse the interests and passions of the hormone-fuelled teen.

I knew he was probably staring gormlessly at my behind as it stuck out of the crevice where I had become wedged. It only made me want to get out even more. The thought of his slack maw, hunched shoulders, and dullard’s eyes gave me even more desire to be freed. 

I looked ahead. The tunnel was a grey one that tapered down to a small, ringed group of rocks. It was a dead end, although I swear that the initial camera probe had shown it open. It must have just been the unusual mucus playing havoc with the light. 

“Alright,” I gasped. “Grab my legs and pull”. Breathing had become a little harder, and I was getting significantly warmer. I could feel my skin-tight space suit beginning to struggle with the temperature regulation. 

ARP clamped a tool around my belt, and the other two gripped my legs. With a concerted heave, I felt my spine decompressing with their efforts. The whine of ARPs servos told me that it was trying its darndest, but those tracks were doing nothing but spinning on the slippery floor. 

Just as soon as they started, they all stopped at once. 

“Did you feel that?” 

“Blurp”
“A tremor?”

I had felt it too, but I was being squeezed too tightly to reply, and I was having to snatch breaths when I could. 

“Okay, this place is not stable,” Second in Command helpfully notified us all. “We need to get out now, it’s only five minutes to the surface.”

“Not… Without… Me… You… Don’t” I managed to wheeze. I felt some of the mucus running down my neck towards my face. I was certain that the gap was closing. It wasn’t just my rising panic that was taking my breath away. 

Relief washed over me as I felt the three of them grab hold of my body with an urgency they hadn’t shown before and put their bodies behind their efforts. My bones cracked, and the spacesuit threatened to rip as they pulled. But, despite their whining, grunting, and whirring, I wasn’t going anywhere. 

The gap had changed. My body was no longer wedged. Whatever had shifted in the rock had moved the pincer directly around my waist. It was like I was being held by a tightening rope around my torso, just above my hips. We were going to have to try something else. 

“ARP, quickly, I need you to start drilling around my waist. Take care, but work quickly. Use the laser on low power. The rock is soft; it should be enough to break it away. You two, keep pulling.”

The mindless drilling machine got to work, and I could feel the heat. I felt it singe my skin as it briefly burnt through, but the company suit’s inbuilt pain-killing and vacuum-sealing capabilities quickly sorted that out. I had the union to thank for the small mercy.

“Fuuuuck,” I heard the navigator add. “It’s getting hot in here.” The laser was warming up the small cave we had entered. The walls had begun to sweat profusely. The mucus was running over my face and arms by this point, but I hardly had time to think about how disgusting or potentially toxic it was.

I felt the two drop my legs as an unmistakable rumble was heard throughout the body of the asteroid. The sound came from the walls, and I could feel it through the rock wrapped around my body. I had no idea what the asteroid was made of, but the sound wasn’t like any seismic movement I had ever heard. It felt like it came from deep inside. It was a rumbling bass, vibrating less like grinding and more like a growl. 

Immediately, I knew we were fucked. I had made an enormous error in not going over the reports before landing. The company had sent us on a suicide mission without knowing. Some mouth breathing paper pusher had sent us all to our deaths because they hadn’t seen the glaringly obvious. 

The many mouths of the esurientem spatium petram, also known as Prospectors’ Plague, draw in whatever they can over the colossal creatures’ billions of years of life. We had walked straight into one. They’re slow to wake and easy to spot, but our carelessness had resulted in our downfall. 

“Run,” I shouted with my last breath. Looking up, I saw the rock above me iris open and the glistening rock behind it gape open. With a crunch, the rock around my waist clamped closed, severing my body in half. The flood of morphine from the suit was enough to deafen me to the screams I could see on the faces of my shipmates as the rock jaw opened again before crushing down on what used to be my legs. 

The taste of iron filled my mouth as my consciousness slipped away, along with my body, into the cavernous digestive system.