The archaeological researcher stared at her small bathroom mirror, before deciding to cut her dark hair short. The heat of Pandora's baking 90 hour days demanded the most of her utilitarian mindset. Reduced to a short bobcut with bangs, the energetic, offbeat young scientist felt ready to tackle the day. Their 76th day was to be a grueling excursion. The security staff, researchers, and other personnel were relocating the entire basecamp closer to the most promising alien artifact digsite, and it would take more than a day of laborious effort. Patricia wanted to personally oversee her equipment's safe porting, not trusting the loathsome convict laborers Dahl was 'hiring' for the most menial jobs.
Exiting her small, collapsible prefab, Tannis was immediately assaulted by the desert environment. Wrinkling her pale, button nose at the dusty wind buffeting her face. She affixed a pair of reflective goggles, protecting her dark eyelashes from the nasty sandstorm. The crack of a Dahl brand assault rifle signaled yet another 'incident', beleaguering and endangering their already over-budget research expedition.
Carla came waddling up to Patricia's shelter, making the introverted researcher grimace at the hefty woman's presence. "Oh, hey, Tannis! Did you hear? Another one of those criminal workers made a run for it, the guards just blasted him!" The Dahl corporation had been using cost-cutting measures at every step, hoping to ape their Atlas competitor's discovery of usable alien technology on Pandora, without spending a lot to do so. The HR department had imported hundreds of thousands of despicable bumpkins from every backwater jailhouse they could bribe their way into, and now Patrica's research expedition had their pick of inbred rapists to work with. At least the security personnel had, ostensibly, been vetted. Tannis knew her petite, feminine figure was liable to attract the wrong kind of attention on the remote workcamp, and the thought preoccupied her greatly. She especially ruminated on the no-doubt lascivious thoughts her male co-workers must be thinking about regarding her, late at night, in the sheets.
Suddenly, Carla distracted Patricia from her deep introspection yet again, with another bout of annoying co-worker gossip. The irritable Tannis did her level best to tune out Carla's keening voice, focusing on organizing the break-down of their most sensitive analytical equipment as they made their way about camp. She knew Dahl was likely too cheap to pay for proper replacements, so every piece of research gear was of critical importance. Worse, their convict haulers seemed as hell-bent on damaging their delicate digging tools as the hostile environment did. However, after hours upon hours of terse managing, the haughty, young researcher was confident they could proceed without too much effort.
Security was on heightened alert during the trekking part of their relocation expedition. More and more of Pandora's invariably hostile wildlife was seen in the area, including creatures they'd never documented before. Corporate spies had been unable to extract much information from Atlas about the horrid planet's unusual ecosystem. Thus her Dahl research crew had gone in mostly blind, following the most promising artifact leads without much telling of what to expect planetside. They were joined by Dahl mining crews, and their teeming hordes of half-mad prison slaves, but the mining operation was it's own compartmentalized branch of the conglomerate. In truth, there was more competition than cooperation between the disparate branches, as they extracted value from Pandora through different means. Tannis had been exhaustively reminded about controlling costs during the speculative mission, and it was all the meager security detail could do to keep the savage fauna at bay.
The expedition group formed up into a single, meandering caravan, flanked by Dahl marines and various mercenary fighters. It went well enough at first, but the petite scientific advisor became aware of an increasingly dire series of incidents. It began with creature sightings. Scampering, quadrupedal little canine monsters had been seen at the vagaries, scuttling about and braying in small packs. They died easily enough, but there were more and more sightings of them as they made their way to the new camp location. Once, one of the creatures was seen emerging from underground, tunneling out and appearing perplexed at the sight of all the humans around, before it was promptly blasted to bloody pulp by a hail of gunfire.
Soon after, the disappearances began. Patrica Tannis was just one of several scientific advisors on the large expedition, but she was one of the first to notice their numbers seemed somewhat diminished. her grim suspicions turned to concrete fact, when a horrible scene was intercepted by a pair of hired guns. One of her fellow archaeologists, though it was difficult to ascertain who by the pair of slimy legs sticking out of the creature's mouth, was in the process of being consumed on the margins of their path. One of the canine monstrosities had somehow gotten the poor Dahl employee half-way chugged down, despite the fact that it wasn't much larger than its live prey. The mercenaries turned to Tannis, worriedly asking, "W-What do we? If we shoot it, we're gonna hit that--" but his stammered concerns were cut short, as a large pack of the voracious beasts crested the nearby hilltop in a plume of dust.
The half-devoured researcher was consumed in the hail of weapons fire and explosive shrapnel that fended off the slavering monsters, dashing any pretenses of rescue. The troop huddled into a much tighter formation at this point, their convict workers growing increasingly restless as the dangerous situation escalated. Rather than dispelling the feral hordes, the noise of their weapons seemed to attract more of the snarling wretches. The expedition's mercenary team grew increasingly beleaguered, trying to fend off the encroaching packs of three-jawed canine abominations who were trying to devour everyone in their group. As ammunition began running low, the guards encouraged people to abandon the heavier equipment, as they sped along towards basecamp in an increasingly disorganized route.
Suddenly, as if organized beforehand, all of the expedition group's convicted laborers heaved off their baggage. Like a wave, the surly men made a concerted break for it, ignoring the dangers of the encroaching wildlife and clutching rocks and stolen microscopes as defensive weapons. The mercenaries didn't even bother trying to stop the fleeing workers, as they tried to shepherd the remaining scientists to the more secure digsite. They moved as fast as possible, more and more of the creatures hounding them despite the scores that the security detail slew. Even when someone was caught by the creatures, the rushing retreat did not stop to help, the Dahl marines increasingly fending for themselves as everyone sprinted ahead.
Tannis was able to maintain a level head in the fluster. The dispassionate woman didn't notice the approaching beast, as she focused on gathering up the most critical research equipment left behind by the churlish, worthless slave-convicts. Her consumption was averted, when Carla bowled over into the lunging creature before it could begin gobbling up the small Tannis in its three-jawed maw. Patricia decided to name them 'Skags' in her indifference to the terrifying circumstances, realizing she had discovered a new species. The 'Skag' was currently in the process of overcoming Patricia's ernest savior, who collapsed back on the petite research advisor in the scuffle.
The small woman angrily grumbled aloud, as Carla's wide, flabby back smashed her into the sandy Pandora ground. The big woman was rapidly losing her ill-advised struggle with the voracious Skag, which promptly had her puffy cankles sliding down its elastic, lubricious gullet. Helplessly pinned beneath the hefty woman, the scientist in Tannis came out as she began clinically analyzing the newly discovered creature's fascinating predation habits. Despite the relative size difference between predator and prey, considering Carla's incriminating and unflattering corpulence, the hungry Skag seemed to be making quick work of the gruesome process. Before long, the research assistant's thick, pudgy thighs were squishing down into the little monster's tight innards. Patricia's detached analysis of the situation kept getting interrupted by Carla's rude thrashing and pointless shrieking, which was especially ignorant considering there was nobody around to help them at this point.
The gluttonous Pandora canine seemed to be having trouble with Carla's wide, feminine hips. A lewd squelching noise kept issuing out whenever the feisty beast attempted to munch on the plump, womanly hips that made up her haunches. Patricia's dispassionate academic focus was broken, when Carla's stray elbow bumped her hard, eliciting Tannis to assume a more defensive posture under the half-swallowed fat girl. The smaller woman decided she might try to extract herself from Carla's mammoth girth, using a series of forceful shoves in her attempts at freedom.
However, Carla's fight to stay out of the smaller beast's belly kept the other, lither academic from extracting herself, and Tannis simply had to wait for the Skag to finish its meal. The Skag's wet, sloppy grunting sounds were growing increasingly strained as it tried to manage Carla's mighty girth, but the depraved carnivore seemed entirely incapable of forcing the thick, meaty woman down its undulating throat. Occasionally, the monster would stop attacking its still living prey, and emit a short series of terse growls that sounded like muffled yowling from around the voluptuous figure lodged in its gullet. It was only after each attempt at submerging the human meat failed, did it give up on attacking Carla's frame directly, and begin licking about the big woman's girth. Tannis watched in morbid fascination as the hungry Skag began to lubricate the fat folds and crevices of Carla's hips and stomach to facilitate a deeper, easier ingestion process.
"Arrrgh...Y-You little shit! Fuck off!" Carla grimaced in anger and disgust. She was futilely struggling against the painful 'love bites' the vicious dog-monster was using to incrementally work her huge body into its stomach lining. In between failed attempts, Carla managed to lean over, pull away her captive hand and punch the offending creature on its trifold jaws. This didn't dissuade the Skag, however, who would just go back to methodically working Carla's soft, wide buttocks and belly into it's slimy, flexible gut.
"Nngghh...Oh god! Can't you shut up?" Patricia yelled, finally losing her temper. Carla's shrieks were absolutely intolerable from this close by, and the scientific advisor desperately wished for an escape route. She rummaged through her equipment belt, checking for anything that might prove useful in defending herself. Upon finding nothing that seemed remotely lethal, she went into a frenzy, furiously searching every pocket and pouch in Carla's remaining ensemble next. No more than 10 seconds later, and many of her frantic scrabbling failed to find even the most meager metal utensil. While the Skag started working the prey woman's arms and breasts down its gullet, Patricia realized she'd simply have to patiently endure the indignity of being under the fat woman until she was eaten alive.
At this point, Tannis concluded it was worth another glance at her fallen fellow scientist beneath the greedy predator's tightening jaw folds. The creature looked comically bloated as the big research assistant was firmly folded down into it's powerful abdomen, like a quivering hard-boiled egg being shoved into a coinpurse. Then, with one final tug from the beast, Carla's neck was almost entirely inside of it's wet, slippery gullet. Tannis was able to scrabble out from under the engorged Skag at this point, and she gathered the precious research equipment in hand and turned to leave. She spared a final glance backwards, watching Carla's mewling face at the opening of the predator's throat before a big gulp swallowed the woman's head whole. Muffled noises from under the wet, sealing monster lips clearly indicated some sort of struggle beneath its jaws. It wasn't clear who was winning, until a pudgy hand briefly emerged from the creature's mouth, accompanied by a pair of bulky pink high heels. The skinny woman tried to get away again, but the beast held her in place as it happily chewed on her body while she clawed at its loose flesh. Tannis paused to watch as the Skag expertly spat out the big woman's clothes and shoes, leaving them in a slimy pile as the relatively larger woman fitfully settled into her new abode.
Tannis resolved to leave Carla behind, as she fled for the digsite. She managed to slip by several more Skags, who where each busy with their own respective meal of screaming, squirming Dahl employees. Patricia was dismayed to realize how badly this would set back her research team's plans. Without these vital scientific personnel, they'd have to halt work until further researchers could be brought to this site. Her new thoughts were interrupted when she saw a looming gunfight signal that she was close to the hastily erected new campsite at their new digsite, and the research advisor eagerly made way through the carnage at her feet, lugging a burdensome load of scientific equipment in tow.