Captain Rigg had to walk briskly to match the longer stride of the newest arrival to this hip, and she heard it in his voice. "You've read your predecessors' reports?"

Dr Alessa Moore offered the ghost of a smile, distracting a passing crewman. "Yes, all of them. And yes, I will be proceeding. And yes, I will be alone, and unarmed, and without a comlink. Trust is paramount in such exchanges." She hadn't needed her borderline telepathic abilities or observational training to have guessed his next questions.

For a time then, the only sounds between them were their footfalls on the deck, and the swish of the tails of Alessa's avocado-coloured longcoat around her legs. She had memorised the deck plans of the Sirocco along with her mission briefs, and had not stopped walking since she'd left the transporter room, determined to get to work and save the accolades for later.

But now she paused at a corridor junction, as if to catch her breath and bearings, and regarded him. "This last fortnight hasn't been easy for you or your crew, has it, Captain? One day, just another freighter captain hauling ore on the Draylax Run, the next day, you're the focus of attention from Starfleet, the Federation Council-"

"And the Elchee." Richard Rigg was a stocky man in his fifties, with iron-grey in his beard, a lifetime's worth of service patches on the sleeves of his scruffy blue civilian worksuit, and wearing the harried expression of a businessman with the creditors forever nipping at his heels. "I tell you, it was the damndest thing when one of their warships just pulled up in front of us, and beamed that thing into our hold."

Alessa bit back her initial condemnation of his racist remark, made under pressure and by someone unaccustomed to dealing with any of the more. exotic races in the Galaxy. "It was obviously a misunderstanding on their part for choosing your ship as a venue. However, once I've made a proper First Contact, we'll be allowed to transport the Ambassador to a starship, and you can put all this mishigas behind."

Rigg couldn't hide the doubt from his eyes, but he nodded politely and led the way down to the cargo holds. Alessa understood his misgivings: three prior specialists from the First Contact Office had tried and failed to communicate with the Elchee Ambassador, citing "violent, incomprehensible behaviour".

But then, none of them had been her. She was the best, most successful in her field; to hell with false modesty. Still, she wasn't blind to the difficulties. There was little known about the Elchee, and for decades they had defended their privacy as rigorously as their borders. And though the Federation had always been eager for dialogue with them, without an opening gesture from the Elchee, the eagerness remained unfulfilled.

But now that gesture had been made, and Alessa was determined to take hold of it. And afterwards, there'd be commendations, lectures, book deals.

They reached the airlock to Cargo Hold 4, and she turned to Rigg. "Thank you, Captain. I don't know how long this will take, maybe minutes, maybe hours. However much time, I don't wish to be disturbed for any reason. I'll call you when I've been successful."

The Captain seemed ready to comment, but shrugged instead. "I'll have a bottle of Aldebaran whiskey waiting in my Ready Room."

"I look forward to it." As he departed, she relaxed, focused, stared at her reflection in the polished metal door, at the ponytailed ebony hair, the upturned freckled nose, Mediterranean cheekbones and defiant green eyes, and she emptied her mind of all negativity and distractions.

Then she stepped into the hold.

The first thing to catch her attention was the odour, a thick organic musk that vaguely reminded her of her old Irish setter Butler, and filled the enclosed space as pervasively as the blood-red maintenance lighting. Then there was the chow mein of cables sprawled haphazardly on the floor, wrapped loosely around crates and barrels, or hanging lazily from ladders and overhead support struts like vines, without apparent regard to safety regulations.

But of course, these 'cables' were living, or at least part of a living, sentient being. "Greetings, Ambassador. I am Doctor Moore, First Contact Office. It is an honour to meet you." She projected her thoughts with her words, hoping the reports that the Elchee were telepathic were true.

The Ambassador's main body, all seven hundred kilos of it, was wrapped serpent like around what appeared to be a container of kivas ore, and dozens of its tentacles and tendrils radiated out from it randomly, capriciously. There was no head, no apparent eyes or mouth upon which a humanoid can focus, nothing seemingly ordered. Even its skin appeared in places to be smooth and dry, bonelike and chitinous, mottled, muscular, spiny, furry, red-purple, transparent. it could have been some child's rendering of a space monster.

Alessa forced back such atavistic thoughts. The Elchee were polymorphic, though not master mimics like the Changelings, unbound by any need to be symmetrical. She drew closer, careful not to step on any of the tentacles at her feet, projecting to the main body her desire to communicate, to find common ground, and establish meaningful dialogue. Something else she noticed: there was no sound from it, not even respiration, nor movement.

But there was heat, a great deal of it, radiating from the skin - oy, it was like standing in a sauna, and the musk was even stronger! She could feel the sweat beading down her back and between her breasts, racing to her waistline, and she wished she'd taken off her longcoat when she'd entered, and not drawn so close to the Ambassador-

Alessa started as the tentacles above her head moved, uncoiled as if slipping off their perches, reaching out to her, the ends of them splitting to form thick, stubby grabbing digits, running them along the sleeves and hem of her coat. She kept still, watched from the corner of her eye as the grabbers reached the shoulders of her coat, grasped the material, and gently but insistently tugged upwards.

She beamed to herself and shifted in place, shrugging her shoulders to let it take the coat from her. It had responded, responded directly to her discomfort! This was a significant breakthrough, and she hadn't been in its presence for more than a minute! She would have this mastered in an hour's time!

Such was the distracting power of her self-congratulation that she didn't feel the grabbers return to touch her black silk blouse until they began tugging at it. "Uh, Ambassador, no, that's not necessary, I'm fine now."

But if the Elchee understood, it paid no heed, tugging more forcefully at her blouse until the fabric started to rip. She reached up to remove the digits, finding the skin hot and spongy, but with a solid mass of muscle underneath, immovable.

And in response, more tentacles snaked from above and below, entwining about her limbs and waist with a frightening speed.

"No! Stop this!" Panicking at the sudden, unexpected actions, Alessa struggled futilely, finding the tentacles as strong and unyielding as oak roots as they effectively immobilised her. She stood there, helpless as a marionette, forcing herself to calm down enough to project her pleas and protests at him, after a moment feeling the need to add her voice, if only to hear herself. "Ambassador, stop this at once! I am a representative of the Federation!"

In reply, tendrils tore the front of her blouse open like tissue paper, revealing full breasts heaving within a black frilled bra of the finest Orion silk, a gift of sheer expensive indulgence to herself for a prior successful mission, and flesh that was sweat-beaded and pink from heat and fear. The tendrils tore away further, until tatters of the sleeves hung on her arms.

"Stop it! Please! Why are you doing this?" She thought of calling out louder, but knew no one could hear her in here, or would disturb her, on her own orders. She was alone, held by a being of obvious power and inexplicable motive. Deep down, she believed that if the Ambassador had wanted to kill her, she would be dead now. But this hardly eased her anxiety.

And anger. Her training momentarily forgotten, she called out, "Damn it, let go of me, you bastard!"

In seeming response, the tendrils returned to her chest, the stubby digits lengthening into slender fingers, now running delicately over the outline of her bra as if tracing its dimensions, making her skin tingle whenever they touched her directly. The tendrils found the catch behind, almost seemed to measure the strength of the back and shoulder straps.

Alessa winced as she suddenly felt a series of tiny prickles on her skin, as if she'd just touched a cactus. She glanced down in time to see the tendrils now growing rows of minuscule sharp, curved bristles, bristles that perforated the straps of the bra, hooking and cutting the material-

-And then shredding them as the tendrils drew back, pulling away the remnants and baring her breasts like some bodice-ripping Gothic hero from Earth's more lurid literary past. Alessa gasped, and then blushed to herself, more ashamed of her reaction than of anything else, not feeling like a sophisticated 24th Century woman. She had to fight to control her breathing.

Then lost the fight as the tendrils moved towards her black trousers, grasping and shredding them with terrifying ease, without even touching her skin. She struggled and cursed and begged, all to no avail, watching helplessly as the scraps of fabric fluttered like leaves to the floor of the cargo hold, baring more and more of her legs.

It paused, when all she had left to protect her modesty was a pair of skimpy black silk knickers, and absurdly, her black shoes and socks. But she had no illusions that the Elchee was finished, and she was proven right as smooth tentacles rose before and behind her, snaking under the waistband to crawl down into her bush and between her cheeks respectively. Then they pulled and ripped brutally, carrying away scraps of her knickers, allowing the rest to flutter away, and leaving Alessa bound and, apart from her footwear, very naked.

She was no prude, but she doubted if even the most uninhibited of her contemporaries could react in this situation to anything other than abject humiliation. The thick, humid air touched nearly every part of her body, and she stared at the faceless, unreadable mass of living flesh that had brought her to this state. "Why? Why are you doing this?" Her voice was hoarse.

The tentacles securing her abruptly rose, lifting her up, and for a terrible second she feared it would pull her literally limb from limb, like some sadistic child dismembering a captured insect. Instead, it suspended her, facing the ceiling, her stomach cambered up and her head lolled back, the blood rushing past her eyes, as she stared upside down at the distant cargo hold door, silently, hopelessly wishing for it to open, for her to be rescued. She felt the tendrils at her feet, felt them grip and manipulate her shoes and socks from her.

Her stripping was complete.

She felt another tendril slide under her neck and the back of her head, raising her up until she could see the rest of her body, hanging like some piece of meat in a market. The tendrils holding her moved slightly without releasing her, offering her muscles scant comfort.

Then they parted her legs, and though she knew otherwise, she could imagine eyes bearing down onto her exposed pussy. And in reaction, her pussy pulsed inexplicably, as if this was meant to be exciting, arousing.

More tentacles appeared, distracting Alessa from these thoughts, and she watched as the tips of them shapeshifted, producing clumps of shiny black bubbles, or soft, feathery cilia, or rows of slits that seemed to breathe, or flat, moist-looking patches.

Sensory organs. The Elchee obviously could morph whatever they desired to let them see, hear, touch, anywhere on their bodies. She felt tendrils comb their way through her hair, unravelling her ponytail. She felt the tendrils with the slits pass closely under her arms and behind her knees, smelling her body. She saw the tendrils with the bubbles - which she guessed were eyes - pass over her face, regarding her. And the tendrils with wet patches drew themselves over her breasts, feeling rough and leaving moist trails.

Oh God, the Ambassador was tasting her.

"Please, Ambassador," she murmured, staring into the many eyes that stared back. "Please stop this. I'm a Federation citizen, one of its leading representatives; you can't treat me like this. I don't like it."

But even as the words left her, she heard the lies in them. For yes, the Elchee Ambassador could treat her like some lab animal, regardless of her rights and standing.

And yes, she did like it, did crave the touch and attention, however alien and unwanted. Her work, and her own high standards of late, had left her without a lover for an unconscionably long time.

The tendrils that tasted her skin and sweat slowly, almost languidly ran up towards the peaks that were her nipples, converging on each one and encompassing the areole. Then Alessa cried out as it applied a slight sucking pressure, and her pussy cried out as well. Memories and fantasies appeared unbidden with the sensations: lovers, young and eager, or older and more experienced, hot summer nights on exotic worlds, the sheer banquet of sensual delights that could send her soaring at Warp Ten.

Tendrils with flattened, fur-coated tips reached out and stroked her face and hair as if she were its pet, and despite herself she closed her eyes and sighed, feeling rather than seeing the wet-tipped tentacles moving between her legs, to her inner thighs, her mound, brushing gently over the bristly hairs of her pussy, delicately stroking her pursed labia, moistening them as if with kisses and licks, over and over. Electric tingles danced from her sex, spreading like heat waves through the rest of her, and she felt as if she was sinking into a vat of cream. And yet she felt parched, the sweat pouring heavily from her, running down her sides and the backs of her legs.

Alessa opened her eyes again when she felt something prodding against her mouth, and she almost gasped at the sight of the phallic, pink-purple tentacle hovering before her mouth, perhaps two centimetres in girth, with a series of ribbed rims along its length leading to a bulbous, multi-slitted head. She turned her head away in disgust. "No!" When the Ambassador forced her head to face the phallus once more, she clamped her lips shut, refusing this violation. She took some pride in this tiny victory.

The phallus withdrew, and the ones holding her waist and limbs began moving her in place, as if she was an egg being rotated in someone's palm; she quickly realised she was being made to face the cargo hold floor, her arms still outstretched, but her legs drawn together and her buttocks raised. She tried in vain to look behind her, but could only feel the flat, furry limbs running up the backs of her thighs, to the undercurves of her cheeks, then the cheeks themselves, gently patting, tasting the suppleness of her flesh, reminding her of an old encounter with a particularly avid lover- "No!"

Her protests became shrieks, as the Ambassador began spanking her with short, rapid smacks on each cheek, the force of the blows not strong but certainly sharp and humiliating. Alessa struggled with renewed vigour, but her efforts remained in vain, the punishing tendrils remaining steady and swift in their power and rhythm.

She felt the shock and pain rising through her, but quickly suffused with a heat spreading from her bottom, a heat she knew was borne not from the pain or humiliation, but because of it; the Ambassador was unwittingly bringing to life many of her deepest, most forbidden fantasies.

Or was it unwittingly? Did the Elchee know what it was doing? Did it understand such thing, being so different to humanoids?

Then it ended, her cheeks aglow, as her captor returned the phallus to her mouth, along with the tentacle that held the blackberry-like eyes, and a grabber that clasped her hair and lifted her head up slightly. The eyes regarded her red, tear-stained face, and the phallus drew closer. Alessa knew what was expected now, and she nodded weakly in compliance, not knowing if it would understand, opening her mouth and accepting the intruder. It slipped past her lips and teeth, but not so far as to induce gagging, and there was a strong, unidentifiable taste to its warm, spongy flesh, a taste that complemented its animal-like musk.

And as she began sucking on its length, sucking and licking its contours, it began emitting a liquid, thin and watery, one that she instinctively swallowed, surprising herself with how swiftly it quenched her parching thirst. The Ambassador was feeding her, and from its own essence, and despite the humiliating manner, she sucked greedily for more and more, reminded once again of fantasies.

In response, the tentacles holding her breasts against her chest began sucking themselves on her nipples, and other tendrils rose to caress her inner thighs and labia with feather-like cilia. She moaned, her mouth filled, as they nudged between her pussy lips and found her clit, gently encircling and making her jolt in the Ambassador's inescapable grasp.

Alessa almost missed the penetration into her vagina, until the head of another phallic tentacle slipped its hot, velvety surface into her sex, meeting no resistance to this new violation. It had been almost inevitable that the Ambassador would do this, she realised, and Alessa, powerless to stop this, was determined to take whatever pleasure she derived from it, whether or not the Elchee knew what it was doing there was still perhaps some doubt.

Her doubts vanished when the phallus in her mouth stopped producing fluid, and grew hard and firm, and began thrusting back and forth. In response she began licking along its rims, her teeth rubbing without biting. She opened her eyes to look into the intense black orbs of the Ambassador's own, seeing her own reflection in them: naked, sweat-covered, bound and filled in almost all her orifices, the stare a further penetration of her being and she relished it.

The climax that burst from her clit shouldn't have surprised her, but it was like a slap in the face, her eyes widening and her filled mouth emitting a muffled cry.

Still penetrating her, the Ambassador slowly turned her around again, raising her legs up until she could see her lower half, see all the tentacles wrapped around her shins and thighs, see all the tentacles converging at her bush, her pussy, caressing or pumping into her, as others with eyes watched from every angle. Another climax burst from her, and a trickle of urine escaped momentarily and her limbs jangled and her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

Other phalluses descended from above, hovering over her torso, and Alessa watched with concupiscent lust as loose skin sheathing the lengths began pumping back and forth, as if by invisible hands. And with this Alessa understood, understood that she could no longer consider herself a plaything in the Ambassador's eyes however many he had or as a lab animal, but as a lover, physically inferior to it, but still a lover, one who could be fulfilled by it as no other could. As no dozen lovers could!

The phalluses in her pussy and mouth throbbed distinctively as they thrust in and out of her, and she came again, briefly too distracted to notice the small, narrow tentacle slipping under her and between her buttocks like a grass snake, until it began probing at her rear. Then the Ambassador spread her legs again, and it nudged at her puckered opening; she felt it emitting a lubricating fluid there to aid its entry. Oh Gods, no, it would be just too intense for her!

Wouldn't it?

She came again as it filled her last orifice, slowly, carefully, her penetration full and complete. Each of the phalluses in her thrust at once, in time, and the ones on her breasts sucked almost painfully on her nipples, but it was more a sensory overload than actual pain.

Suddenly, the phalluses above her began spurting thick, grey-white, viscous fluid onto her arms, her chest and stomach; they were hot globs, different from that she had drunk before, and as they splattered, her last climax rose again, a sustained wave of bliss.

And then the phalluses in her pussy and ass ejaculated as well, upping the ante, and in a small corner of her mind that still functioned, Alessa imagined that the Ambassador itself had lost control, as unlikely as it seemed, its curiosity over her having surrendered to its own form of lust. Her mind overloaded with ecstasy, and distantly she felt her body dance as if by an epileptic fit. She passed out.

And woke to find herself sunk deep into what appeared to be a plush couch, one that had almost swallowed her in a warm, wet embrace: she lay in the main body of the Ambassador, its 'lap'. Tendrils hovered over, some gently stroking her arms and breasts with soft cilia, others with eyes, watching her. She lay there, her body red and coated with milky fluid, her limbs weak and occasionally spasming from an after wave of her orgasms. Beneath her, the surface hardened, pushing her up, and she rose feebly to her feet. She remained naked.

Phalluses appeared and surrounded her, and she shook her head slightly, unable to undergo another session like that again. But they sprayed something more akin to water on her body, drawing away the more viscous fluids. She stood there, running her hands over her skin, sweeping down the coatings like rinsed shampoo. And as she allowed the Ambassador to treat her like this, her mind danced with a cacophony of images and sensations, received from the Ambassador through the fluid and the intimacy they shared, details that would allow her to continue and complete the negotiations between their governments.

She smiled; there would have to be more meetings like this.

When the Ambassador was done, it returned Alessa's longcoat to her, the only piece of clothing of hers still intact. She laughed and gratefully accepted it, wondering idly how she would explain all this to the Captain, let alone the First Contact Office.