Work Text:
Don't go into space.
Don't go onto space with idiots.
Don't explore alien caves with idiots.
Don't fornicate with random women.
Don't become pregnant.
Don't-
But I am interrupted in the creation of a note to myself by some idiots needing me to accompany them on an ill thought out expedition into an alien cave. This requires that they suit up, a laborious, boring process that leaves one looking like an overgrown special needs child. An extremely fragile and unarmoured special needs child, with nought but a Weyland-Yutani mercenary for protection.
“But Mettin, you're the merc!?” says one of the many women eager to jump into my bed. Roxy. She's brunette, pretty, petite, small breasted and big hipped. And stupid, like every member of this little ‘science’ expedition. Every expedition I have been on involving scientists has ended in mass murder and or death. Meanwhile, they assume I'm the stupid one because I'm the one holding the gun.
So the hazmat suited children and I exit the sleek, semi-safe ship, heading towards a blue granite structure like a man-made cliff, the eggheads frolicking like they're traversing a corporate park and not a hostile, airless, grey wasteland existing under a pair of foreign suns. There must be something deeply wrong with you in order for you to find space exciting.
The giant cliff is only the facade of something much greater, as I discover when we enter through what look like gigantic double doors. Massive tunnels run through it, round, like those found in apples. Only this apple is navy blue, lightless, and evil. Immediately upon realising that there's breathable air filling this dark warren, some of the geniuses take off their helmets.
“You shouldn't do that. The average enemy would prefer to destroy the head first.” I am so noble, that I warn them even though the pretty brunette has also taken off her helmet, and her face is the only good looking thing in the entire quadrant.
“Solider Boy, you're too uptight. It'll be fine.” says one of the interchangeable nerds, aiming finger guns and a wink at me. I cannot wait till he dies horribly. All the men can die and leave the women to me. Too bad no one is allowed to fall pregnant during Company time, because I have absolutely no problem passing on my genetic material.
Two of the nerds wander off down a side passage while my back is turned and I'm keeping an eye on the rears of the main group, a group which features all the females. Good. The Company Handbook doesn't require me to save anyone, but only to be present. In fact, if the choice is between some alien monstrosity and an employee, I'm to save the alien monstrosity.
Fine by me.
👁️👽👾
The science team locate ancient alien eggs and ancient alien canisters sitting around on a featureless floor. They elect to take some of the canisters back to the ship, reasoning that canisters are less dangerous and easier to store than eggs. I disagree that either will be easy to store, but the chief scientist overrules me. Fine, my job's done for now, since the only threat now is from personnel or android, and I've got things to do.
The curvy, plastic walls of the ship corridors aren't as flimsy as they look, and my arm doesn't make it boom when it hits one. “Hey.” Boxing a girl in against a wall is the quickest way to turn her on. I know this from countless encounters. They like feeling like prey being cornered by a conquering beast. No further or more complicated proposition is required. Either she submits, or the beast sinks his fangs into her.
“Hey Chucky. Need something?” says Roxy, twisting side to side like a much younger female. She's one of those women, the best, most juicy kind, who never lose their girlishness. Coquette, is the word. Good word.
“Don't call me that.”
“Or what? What are you going to do about it, big guy?”
Before being sent on these jobs, I imagined scientists were dry as Company issued scones, but it turns out, that no, they're all desperate to show off their individual theories on biology. Having been presented with all their ‘lectures’ by the time we entered this planet's orbit, it's amusing to watch them fight over which ‘thesis’ is best, offering to explain to me again and again, so I'll understand once and for all that their particular incomprehensible delusions are better than the other women's. Little do they realise that men couldn't care less how intelligent or educated a female may be.
She shows me her stupid little presentation and we have intercourse.
Several hours later, while I'm standing on the gangway burning to death one of the now un-missing idiots who got himself lost down a side-passage of the alien structure, the worst ache I have ever suffered rips through my guts.
“Arrr!”
“Huh, what's wrong with you-”
Can't help it, but the shocking cramps jerk me sideways, so that the lead scientist is washed with fire from my Company issued flamethrower. He adds his screams to my own.
What now? Anyway, I am a professional, so I ensure the men are a sticky pile of ash before taking myself off to the auto-doc, stumbling like a drunk and clutching my stomach, managing to hold most of my wails and shrieks inside. Don't want the women to think I'm soft, but either something terrible happened to the awful rehydrated food (suspect: scientists) or my appendix has burst. Again.
👁️👽👾
Nope. No. No. No. It's not my appendix, I think, around my fist, which my teeth are dug into.
“Congratulations, Sir.” says Dolly, the android that is always around, doing nothing and staring creepily. “Weyland-Yutani would like to remind you that pregnancy is prohibited in its employees. Please resolve the issue.”
Yes. Yes. I need to resolve the issue, because this is no human baby making mincemeat of my intestines. Obviously.
What the hell?!
What the hell!! This line loops through my head as I fiddle with the auto-doc. For some reason it is programmed for men only, which would be fantastic, if I wasn't inexplicably suffering a female-only condition.
Dolly stares at my keyboard smashing, its waxy skin an unnerving grey-yellow. “Do you require assistance reprogramming the machine? I notice you are a soldier."
“No! We received computer literacy training, idiot!” Where are the drugs! where are the drugs! Wherearethedrugs!!
Oh, in a big plastic bin in a corner, free for the taking. Possessing big hands, I take fifteen shots of Company brand morphine. I will never EVER mock period cramps ever again.
The android loitering in the operating theatre raises its eyebrows, but says no more, its expression both uncanny and mocking.
I can mess with the auto-doc (wiping my sweat off the touch keyboard while I furiously complete a series of inane and insane mini-games) so that it will perform an appendectomy, but since I possess no appendix, it will hopefully remove whatever it is that I'm currently pregnant with. The huge machine begins spinning up, opening itself for me, the patient.
‘P l e a s e s t r i p f a t t y.’ says the auto-doc. There's no fat person in the area, so I strip instead. Dolly stares at me in a way I dislike.
“Why don't you investigate what all that noise is about, huh?! Why don't you leave before I tear your stupid head off with my bare hands?!” I advise it. While I've been messing about with the life saving equipment, the sound of calamity has been echoing around the rest of the ship.
“O kay.”
As soon as the robot steps out of the door, I lock it. Lock it with every available lock and block it with all movables.
‘C l i m b i n t o m e f a t t y.” tweets the auto doc. I can only barely make out what the stupid thing is saying, but I do as it says, heedless of anything else except removing the thing that has somehow gotten into me. As soon as I lay down on the cold bed, thin but absurdly strong medical straps shoot from concealed ports to encircle my wrists, arms, legs and ankles…I'd forgotten about that. Best hope I programmed the thing adequately.
The auto-doc is a perverted torture device, because it slaps a mirror above my face, so that I am forced to watch it cut into my abdomen from a bird's-eye view. I refuse, preferring to stare at its laser scalpels.
It also fails to provide anesthetic, preferring to deliver me a lecture about pre-flight safety.
‘I f y o u r e q u i r e a s e a t b e l t e x t e n d-’
No time to care about that or inject myself with my fifteen morphine shots, as my gut begins heaving like the high seas of Europa. The robot is so damn slow that before I can stop to consider my actions, I discover a laser scalpel in my right hand, only to witness it cutting into my own stomach, then pulling the layers of skin, fat, and muscle apart so I can reach into and remove the entity flailing around in there. I must enter an altered state of consciousness, because I don't feel anything when a bloody squid emerges from my abdominal cavity, clutched tight, and apparently tenderly, by me. I must have fainted at that point too.
👁️👽👾
‘F a t t y’ s w o k e.’
“Yes.”
“Argh. I'm not fat.” an image of my sellotaped together, blood smeared stomach greets me when next my eyes open. A Weyland-Yutani blanket lies over my chest, but nowhere else.
Dolly swims into view on my right. “Hello.” it chirps. That's concerning, but what is more concerning is the weird briny scent and gelatinous gazumping noise in the room.
“How did you enter the theatre, freak?” I ask. The android has never given me a free lecture on biology. I have no reason to treat it well.
“Your daughter let me in.”
…????!!!!!!!!
“What?!”
Dolly doesn't answer, but instead clamps a hand to my shoulder, wrenching me upright with absurd and scary ease. It's then that I see what is causing the concerning smell and noise. The pale squid I removed via cesarean section, is now ten times its original size, and flopping around the theatre, watching over the pulsating remains of some humanoid alien.
Dolly pats my shoulder once, hard enough that I wish I were dead. “You are about to be a grandfather.”
‘C o n g r a t s g a y b o y.’
I think I pass out again when something bursts from the chest of the alien.
👁️👽👾
Exiting the theater is an ordeal. Not because I'm in danger of death, but because my daughter is large.
‘L i k e h e r d a d.’
On my slow and agonising (stomach muscles cut!) way to the cockpit, I am able to confirm that everyone else in the ship is dead. Well, every other human. Including all the women. That's it, I'm travelling to Thedus, where I'll probably be shot by the Company for successfully completing my four hundredth mission.
When I take a seat in the cockpit and begin the same keyboard smashing I performed before, with Dolly watching, the thing I saw being born, crawls onto the ceiling above my head. Yet I do not die.
Maybe I will not be shot for being Employee of the Year. My daughter and granddaughter(?) do not appear to hate me, quite the contrary, so who knows, maybe I'll live on to enjoy many more lectures.