A Secret Military Experiment

As the prison transport crossed the Moraxian Limit, a silent groan of disappointment went through the command center of the pursuing Terran destroyer.

“Check weapons,” the captain ordered, stone-faced. She had been willing to risk casualties among the human prisoners in an attempt to rescue them, but she wasn’t willing to kill them just to stop the squidcats from escaping.

“There she goes,” someone whispered as the hyperspacial vortex formed in front of the fleeing transport. But this vortex was unsteady – and too small to for the transport to pass through. Instead, a dozen small spheres detached from the crippled ship and fled, disappearing as they fell into the vortex.

“Ma’am, she’s launching escape pods. They’re abandoning ship!”

“Launch the marines!” the captain rapped out.

Several minutes later, the marine lieutenant’s face appeared in a comm screen. “We have the ship, Ma’am. The scuttling charges have been disarmed. No prisoners, though. It looks like the ship had both kraken and leotaurs on board, as well as some human prisoners, but they all got away.”

“Well done,” the captain answered. “Too bad about the prisoners, but the brass will be glad enough to get their hands on a squidcat ship. Tell your people ‘well done.’”

“You want to do what?” the admiral asked.

“We’ve already learned everything we can from the hardware side,” Dr. Harkess explained. She was lean and dark as a panther, and annoyingly civilian. “We need to learn how the squidcats manage to break our people down. You’ve seen the reports: They’re not prisoners anymore, once the kraken and the leotaurs have worked them over. They’re,” she shrugged. “Harem slaves.”

“I know.” The admiral leaned back in his chair, frowning. Humanity was barely holding on against the unlikely alliance of the cat-like centauroids and tentacled things that humans had dubbed ‘leotaurs’ and ‘kraken.’ And low morale was the worst problem of all – precisely because the squidcat alliance did take prisoners – and then turned them into ‘harem slaves.’ This female mad scientist was right on that point, at least.

“We’ll have to ask for volunteers, of course,” Dr. Harkess went on.

“Volunteers?! You want to ask my people to volunteer for that?” he waved his hand at the datachip inserted in his desk’s reader.

“It’s the only way, Admiral,” Dr. Harkess told him softly.

The admiral frowned more deeply than before. A minute passed, and then a small evil smile tugged the corners of his mouth. “You may have ten volunteers for your experiment,” he told the waiting scientist. “Provided that you yourself are one of them.”

The ebony face of Dr. Harkess could not turn purple, but her eyes bulged as a horde of emotions migrated across it. Anger. Fear. Horror. Disgust. And finally, a grudging acceptance.

“Agreed,” she said.

Marine Sergeant Kathy Smith shut the locker and sealed it. Like the nine other volunteers for “a special project,” she now stood nude in the locker chamber. Eight of the other women she already knew, and she held out her hand to the ninth. “Sergeant Kathy Smith,” she introduced herself.

“Dr. Emily Harkess,” the dark woman answered. “Civilian, not navy or marines. In fact, this whole crazy project was my idea, so you can blame me for what’s going to happen.”

“What is going to happen?” Kathy asked.

“You weren’t told? You should have been briefed before you volunteered. Anyway, it’s – “

At that moment the bosun-buzzer sounded, drowning out all conversation. “Now hear this,” an equally loud male voice announced. “All volunteers will form a line at the indicated airlock.” A green light flashed over one hatch. “Exit the chamber one at a time, and proceed down the corridor. Now hear this. All volunteers…” The voice repeated its message as the ten nude women, ranging in size and color from short and blonde like Sergeant Kathy Smith to tall and black like Dr. Emily Harkess, formed a line and stepped one by one through the hatch.

Sergeant Kathy Smith went through the airlock first. By the time she had taken three steps past the hatch, she realized that she was now on board a squidcat ship. “Great,” she muttered under her breath, keeping a wary eye on the manipulator unit that hung inert from the ceiling in front of her. She took a fourth step and the tee-pod hit her, squelching against her back. On contact with her skin, the basketball-sized alien creature unraveled, wrapping ribbon-like tendrils around her body. It pinned her arms to her side, and held her legs together, with more and more tendrils winding around her until she was encased like a mummy. Only her head, her bare feet, and the skin around her navel were left exposed.

Kathy tottered, but before she could fall, the manipulator whirred to life. Its grabbers seized her and it carried her off, following the track set in the ceiling. As it left, another manipulator moved into position.

Half a minute later, Dr. Emily Harkess emerged from the airlock. She knew what to expect in general, but not in specific: Once she had ‘volunteered’ for the project she had been cut off from the planning sessions. So when she stepped forward, looking around nervously for the tee-pod projector that she knew was there, she didn’t see it until too late. In moments the second tee-pod had Emily wrapped up, and the second manipulator was carrying her away.

Emily also knew just what a tee-pod was: A psi-active alien creature, first discovered by the leotaurs and then genetically engineered by the kraken for the purpose of restraining and subduing human and humanoid prisoners. The first function was accomplished by the ribbon-tendrils that were now tightly wrapped around her body, and the second function was accomplished by tickling.

Already Emily could feel the tee-pods thicker tentacles wrapping around her toes and probing the soles of her feet. Another set of tentacles began to explore the exposed patch on her stomach. Emily began to giggle.

In the same way, the other eight volunteer-victims were captured. One by one they stepped through the hatch and took a few steps down the corridor before being trapped by the tee-pods. One by one the manipulator units whirred into action, carrying them into a hold where ten restraint couches waited. The manipulators placed Kathy at one end of the row, and Emily at the other, then filled the places between with the other eight women.

Each couch had a camera attached, focusing on the bare and vulnerable soles of the female occupants. Each couch also had a pair of black restraint-straps that clicked automatically into position across the ankles and chest. And each couch was equipped with a sensor-net that monitored and recorded the responses of the female captives as the tee-pods performed the task for which they had been bred.

Once the victim was lying on a firm surface, a tee-pod would secrete an adhesive, gluing the victim into place. This helped restrain the victim further as she squirmed and bucked – and the victims did squirm and buck, as hard as they could, but to no effect. For the tee-pods heavier tentacles probed and stroked and tickled the naked skin left exposed around the victim’s navel as well as the helpless soles of the victim’s bare feet. A victim might try to shield one foot with the other, but the tee-pod would then just grab the two large toes with one tentacle, while others applied a gentle and fiendishly effective tickling.

Most of the ten volunteer-victims were already giggling when the manipulators lowered them into their couches, and as the tickling progressed, the laughter grew louder and more frenzied: “Hahahaha…ohno…hehe not the belly but..eeeehehehehahahah!” “My haheehaheeehahaha feeeet!” “Ohahahohohoho eeeeee! hahahahaha!” “T- hahaheeheeha…t-tehehehohahaha…toes! Toehaheeheehahahahahahaha!” Tears started in the eyes of the victims as the tickling went on, and sweat slicked their skin as the tentacles touched and stroked and wiggled. They tickled the twenty bare soles, heel and ball and instep, the pads of the toes, and between them as well. They tickled the ten navels and the sensitive belly-skin around those navels. Guided by the psionic senses of the tee-pods, those tentacles knew just where, when, and how to tickle for optimum effect. They could not be avoided. They could not be resisted. The women might strain their utmost, might buck as hard as they could, but the confining tendrils and restraint-straps, and the tee-pods secreted adhesive, prevented more than the slightest squirming wiggle. And that squirming did not interfere with the tickling at all.

Time went by. To the ten volunteer-victims, suffering through the tickle torments of the tee-pods, it seemed like an eternity, but by the chronometers it was 57 minutes and 12 seconds when the first tee-pod became satiated. Its tickling tentacles went limp, but its ribbon-like tendrils continued to hold the victim helpless. She gasped and wept and relief as the manipulator unit whirred over, plucking her from her couch and taking her away. A minute later, another tee-pod relaxed its tickle-tentacles and another victim was removed. And another, and another. At 65 minutes and 27 seconds, the manipulator removed the last victim from her couch.

“You damn civvie witch,” Kathy cursed her cellmate wearily. She and Emily lay on two narrow bunks, too exhausted to stand, almost too exhausted to drink the water and nutrient solutions dispensed by the tubes hanging near their heads. The tickling hadn’t ended with the satiation of the first set of tee-pods: The tickle-creatures had fallen away when sprayed with a vitamin/sedative mixture, and the women were released to stretch, drink water, and relieve themselves. But then a fresh set of tee-pods had splatted against their nude bodies, and had wrapped their ribbon-tendrils to render the women helpless once again. The manipulators returned them to their restraint-couches, and the tickling had resumed. It was only after the eighth set of tee-pods that the women had finally been allowed to stumble to their bunks, and locked in two to a cell.

“Hey, I’m going through the same thing,” Emily answered with equal weariness. “If you want to wish your troubles on me, you’ve already got it.”

“But you knew. You knew what was going to happen.”

“Yes. For all the good it’s done me here.”

“Still, you know what this ‘special project’ is all about. The rest of us don’t. So give.”

“All right.” With an effort, Emily raised her head and took a swallow of water. “All right,” she repeated. “As you probably have guessed, this is a squidcat ship. In fact, it’s the prison transport that the navy recently captured. We went through all the hardware on board, but that didn’t get us much closer to figuring out how the squidcat alliance manages to break down the human prisoners it captures. And figuring that out was a high priority down at earth-side headquarters. So they authorized this little experiment, where we volunteers go through the squidcat prisoner treatment in order to find out just how it works.”

“It’s obvious ‘how it works,’” the sergeant said derisively. “It’s tickle-torture.”

“Yes and no,” the black woman answered. “Tickling, your ‘tickle-torture,’ can’t produce the effects we’ve seen in the squidcat prisoners we’ve recovered. That was one of the first theories tested. No, there’s another factor involved, probably psionic since we know that the tee-pods are psi-active organisms. So we volunteers are given to the tee-pods, and then monitored. The data is recorded, cross-referenced, analyzed, and sliced, diced, and deep-fried. Hopefully we’ll be able to figure out just what’s going on, and how to counter it.”

“Lovely. But what I want to know how long this experiment of yours is going to last. You did say this was your own idea, didn’t you?”

“For my sins, my own personal brainstorm. But I don’t know how long its going to last. When I volunteered, I was cut out of the planning, and the duration hadn’t been decided yet. It could be three days, it could be two weeks, or it could be…even….longer…” And with those words, Dr. Emily Harkess fell asleep.

“Longer.” Sergeant Kathy Smith cursed for the length of three whole breaths, dredging up foul vocabulary from marine traditions stretching back to salt-water navies. “Longer,” she repeated with her fourth breath. And then she too fell asleep.

The next morning the ten women lined up, still nude, with ten tee-pods lying inert on the deck before them. “Now hear this,” the announcement boomed. “Marines and space-crew who wish to opt out may do so without prejudice.”

“Yeah, right,” one of the women said.

“An opportunity to opt out will be given before the start of each day’s investigations,” the booming voice continued. “Those who are willing to continue will now step forward and pick up the tee-pod before them.” Then a new voice came over the speakers:

“Dr. Emily Harkess,” it said. “The Admiral wishes to inform you that you will not be permitted to opt out unless all the other volunteers have done so as well.”

Emily clasped her hands behind her to keep them from shaking, and called out: “I’m not quitting. This study is too important to discontinue now.” But she made no move toward the tee-pod in front of her.

Silence hung in the air as the ten nude females shifted uneasily. Finally a woman with a strongly oriental appearance spoke up: “Navy may be too chicken to go on,” she said as she stepped forward. “But Marines are too tough to wimp out.” When she picked up the tee-pod, it immediately unraveled, wrapping her in its ribbon-tendrils. A manipulator whirred forward and carried her off to the restraint couches. One by one, the other women then followed suit, and within three minutes all ten were lying in their couches, squirming and laughing as the tee-pods tickled them.

For Sergeant Kathy Smith, it was just as bad as the day before. The tickling was driving her crazy! More crazy. She had to be crazy to blindly volunteer for this frigging experiment, and doubly crazy to step forward again once she knew what it was about.

She bucked and squirmed, howling with laughter as the tentacles gently stroked the sensitive places between her toes. Another set paused just long enough to let the tickle-sensation sink in before drawing a circle on her belly, spiraling slowly closer to her navel. Then the first set temporarily left her toes (except for the one that held her large toes together), and wiggled over the rest of her feet. It paid special attention to a certain strip along the edges of her insteps, and she twisted and lunged.

Uselessly, of course. The ribbon tendrils wrapping her, and the restraint-straps and tee-pod adhesive holding her in place, were far too effective. Escape was impossible, but Kathy could not keep herself from struggling, any more than she could keep the laughter from pouring out.

Dr. Emily Harkess found herself unexpectedly in hog-heaven. Yesterday’s tickle-session had been pure, exhausting torture. A soft and gentle torture, but still torture. This time, however, the same tickling touch seemed to send shocks of exquisite pleasure racing through her entire nervous system.

It was still exhausting, though, as the tee-pod’s tentacles sped to a wiggling crescendo across the soles of her helpless feet and the small vulnerably exposed area of her stomach. She giggled and laughed just as loudly as the day before, and squirmed just as hard against the restraints that held her helpless.

The tickle-tempo slowed, and Emily gasped for breath as tears and sweat dripped from her face. The tee-pod didn’t stop completely, however. Its tentacles continued a lazy caress as the pair that gripped Emily’s toes stiffened, gently stretching them to a position of complete vulnerability. It was wonderfully seductive, the softly teasing touch of the tee-pod. But Emily could hear the screams and laughter of the other tickle-victims, and she knew it could not last. Hoped that it wouldn’t last.

And it didn’t last. The tee-pod launched a sudden assault, a vigorous wave of tickling that swept back and forth across Emily’s feet and around and in her navel. Her laughter was just as loud as any of the other volunteer-victims at the wild bliss of the intense tickling.

It was the third day of tickling, and Space-Tech Connie Kolasa tried to go with the flow. She was on her fourth or fifth tee-pod of the day – she had lost count – but still she squirmed and wiggled almost as vigorously as when the tickling had started. It was an endurance trial, she told herself, and then she squeaked and stiffened as a tentacle reached into her belly-button. That tickling continued for several eternal seconds, and when it ended Connie twisted and tried to shield her feet, knowing what the tee-pod’s next move would be.

But the tee-pod anticipated Connie’s maneuver. Two tentacles pulled her feet slightly apart, and additional tentacles raked her soles. The foot tickling slowed, and the tee-pod teased the edges of her exposed belly with light, rapid strokes. Tears came out of her eyes once again as she squirmed and laughed.

And now the tee-pod began a slow tickle cover both feet and stomach. Slow at the beginning that is, for Connie could feel the tempo increase. She fought down a stab of panic; she had to go with the flow, go with the flow, just go with the flow – she lost it as the tickling came too fast for her to stand, and she babbled incoherently between the giggles.

It was the twelfth day, and Private Ilene Li tried to hide just how much she was enjoying the tickling. The first two days had been agonizing, and she had nearly wimped out. Only stubborn pride and an intense desire not to show weakness in front of the navy pukes had allowed her to step forward and pick up the tee-pod back on day three.

Some time during that third day, however, the tone of the tickling had begun to change. It wasn’t any less intense. It still couldn’t be fought as it inexorably forced squirming and giggling from her. It still made her cry and sweat from her laughter and her struggles. But it was no longer agonizing.

Or at least it mostly wasn’t agonizing – there were still moments when Ilene screamed and jerked and babbled for mercy. Such as when a tee-pod once again imposed a certain soft but insistent tickle along a certain sensitive stretch of her insteps. Or when it applied an especially vigorous tickle simultaneously to both feet and the exposed patch of her belly. Most of the time, though, Ilene squirmed and laughed and bucked, and suppressed her pangs of disappointment when particular intensely-pleasurable bits of tickling ended.

If Ilene had been less distracted by her own struggles, she might have noticed signs of the same thing happening to the other volunteer-victims. The ten women lay on their restraint-couches in the prison bay, wrapped in the tee-pods’ ribbon tendrils just as they had on the first day. They were just as thoroughly helpless and vulnerable, with only their heads and bare feet exposed, along with a patch of skin around each navel.

Their giggles and howls of laughter were just as loud, and their squirming and struggling just as vigorous and just as useless. Their eyes still bulged or screwed shut as tee-pod tentacles applied different sorts of tickling to feet and belly, toes and heels, insteps and the balls of the feet. The sweat and tears of laughter was just as copious as the tickling went on for hour after hour, broken only when a tee-pod became satiated and the manipulators lifted the woman away for a brief respite before she had a fresh tee-pod inflicted on her.

But there were also differences from the beginning of the experiment. There was less swearing, and fewer incoherent cries and pleas for mercy mixed in with the screams and giggles. The tone of those screams had changed as well, being richer in knowing apprehension and poorer in the panic of ignorance. And the struggles, while just as futile, and if anything more vigorous than ever, lacked the edge of fear that they possessed during the first tickle-sessions.

There were other, more subtle differences as well, differences duly recorded by the cameras at the foot of each restraint couch and by the other sensors that webbed the chamber.

“I have here the final results from Phase I of the experiment,” Dr. Yuan said to the small audience in the briefing room. “Dr. Harkess should be presenting them herself, since the project was her brainchild, but even though she’d been released from the squidcat prison transport, she’s still being reclused from these meetings.” He shot a dirty look at the admiral.

“I’m sure she’ll want to volunteer for Phase II,” the admiral said blandly.

“As may be,” Yuan answered, and then went on. “Here we see the primary measures of haremization.” An animated slide appeared before the audience, busy with graphs. “As you can tell, the measures for assertiveness, self-reliance, willpower, and so on are within normal parameters for all ten volunteer subjects. However.” Here the slide changed to a montage of ten pairs of wiggling soles, all being teased by tentacles. “The secondary indicators show what would be advanced haremization if these were recovered prisoners.” Color codes appeared over the soles, marking their sensitivity and reactions.

According to the legend at the bottom right of the slide, greater sensitivity was indicated by greater color-saturation, while type of sensitivity was indicated by hue: Blue for agony, and red for pleasurable sensation. In the animation, blue areas on the soles faded and were replaced by growing red patches. The first pair of soles went a deep red almost immediately as the animation fast-forwarded through the three-week experiment, while the other nine sets of feet reddened more slowly. After 15 days, all the soles showed mostly red, with occasional pink areas and flashes of purple and blue.

“The view of the science team is that this represents an immunization against the squidcat’s haremization effect. We believe it is due to the presence of Dr. Harkess among the volunteers, and that her own rapid reaction produced a ‘psionic feedback’ effect.” Yuan reran the animation, this time focusing on the first pair of soles in the set of ten, soles that had dark pigment around the edges and that quickly developed a dark red in their color overlay.

“The military evaluation, on the other hand,” Yuan went on, “is that the primary indicators of normality are deceptive, and that we are seeing authentic haremization.” Here the slide changed to show ten nude women, stepping unhesitatingly forward to pick up the tee-pods lying on the deck before them. “And with that I will turn over to Colonel Snodgrass.”

The officer in charge of training stood up. “Thank you, Dr. Yuan. As you can see,” he reran the last slide’s animation again, this time extending it to show the beginning of the tee-pod’s tickling, “the consensus among navy and marine officers is that our ten volunteers are showing true haremization, despite having their primary indicators in the normal range. In my own case, I’ll admit to bias: A captivity-resistance program would be a godsend to morale, even if it were of only limited effectiveness. And since I want it so badly, I’m skeptical about it actually happening here.

“As a result of the various disagreements between the science team and the military side, we have developed two options. The first is to continue with Phase 2, recruiting 50 additional volunteers – including ten male subjects – and using the current ten subjects as cadre to produce the ‘psionic feedback’ that Dr. Yuan mentioned. In addition, we would run tests to challenge the supposed immunization of our current subjects to squidcat haremization.

“The second option – Plan B – is to simply continue the study with only the current set of ten volunteers.”

“Thank you, Colonel Snodgrass, Dr. Yuan,” the Admiral said. “The floor is now open to discussion.”

After half an hour of heated debate, the decision was made. Fifty more volunteers would be recruited. Phase 2 would commence.

Tickle Bay One of the squidcat prison transport once again rang with giggles and shrieks of laughter as twenty-five women squirmed helplessly, encased in the mummy-like wrappings of the tee-pods. Tickle Bay Two likewise was filled with women lying in restraint couches and undergoing tickling at the tentacles of the tee-pods. Twenty of the women in each bay pleaded incoherently as the laughter was forced from them, for this was their first encounter with the squidcat’s tickle-organisms, and they had not known what to expect when they had walked nude into the airlock.

Five of the women in each group, however, did not babble, even though they squirmed and jerked just as helplessly as the tee-pods tickled their vulnerable feet and stomachs. They had been here before, and knew exactly how useless their pleas and struggles would be. They had known exactly what they were walking into, and yet they had stepped forward anyway.

Back in the orbiting station, Colonel Snodgrass skimmed over the initial reports on Phase 2, and began to sketch out plans for Phase 3. The tickling would continue until morale improved.

End