FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pres,

When he was a little boy, he saw many things that children normally didn't see. To the contrary of first impressions of that widely broad fact, these things were good.

He had grown in a family of scientific minds, between parents that found studying the ways of physical reality, the greatest of all passions to inspiration, and expanding of the human soul.

His father took into the mind the way things worked, while his mother took into the mind the way things lived, and they did so together, and they taught their son how to do both sides of a greater tree of knowledge.

Maps of archeological digs, alien mountains and oceans, techniques of cultivating crops no farm ever mass-produced in any colony system, hints of solving mysteries people had spent their lives attempting to, and failing, to answer.

Glen Hannson remembered the moments of his sheltered, early life like yesterday.

He remembered the feeling of no worries, confidence, and brilliance as he unraveled the words of the galaxy at such a young age.

He remembered the interesting coworkers and allies his parents accumulated.

He remembered the interesting coworkers and allies HE had accumulated.

He remembered all of these amazing things that had rendered him a bright, intellectual boy who had the answers to problems so many other beings struggled to cope with and live to. The ways he wanted to help people, and the techniques he would use to do so.

The pride on his parents' faces when they realized their child would live on to do astonishing things written in the data-logs of millions of other souls...

-And then he remembered the sleek, onyx monsters.

If there was one thing that his parents were ever hampered by in their quest to aid civilization, it was the greed and power-influence of the Company, of Weyland Yutani.

Less weapons and propagation for such, meant less money. So his parents were a threat.

His father actually became a target when he stumbled across 'Project Xeno.'

Project Xeno killed both of his parents.

Project Xeno put Glen into the vigilante boots he had served in for half his life.

Project Xeno produced his greatest hope for reliving the comforts of his old life...

"You're thinking again."

In the darkness, Glen's eyes snapped open.

He remembered the onyx monsters...

And then he remembered her.

"What are you thinking about?"

She hovered over him with graceful acrobatics, her long, sinewy ankles and forearms wrapped in a hug to the metal ceiling above where he lay. From his sprawl below her, he could make out the shining, jet black that contrasted the lit shadows of the chamber.

Glen Hannson kept a frown over his features, he shifted against a warm softness underneath him, and gritted his teeth, he responded in a rasp.

"Nothing."

She fiddled with a fifth appendage looping from behind her, cast it away from her grip, and let it loosely drape, sway behind her body. The other moved two sets of four fingers, traveled across the metal bars and wires, panels, without challenge.

Her blackened form hovered directly overhead of him, and her frontal grip was abolished, her torso fell to hang before his face, her own elongated head angling to playfully dote on him.

"Talk to me."

"..."

"Talk to me. Please."

"You're not fond of that word." He mused lowly.

"Makes me feel submissive. Uncomfortable. I'll use it when I feel inclined too. TALK. TO ME."

"About what?"

Her limbs unraveled, the ceiling distanced from her, and weight applied itself lightly to his waist and legs. Her shadowy self sat above him, her palms traced in a repeating pattern down the bare skin of his ribcage.

Glen moved under the duress of contact and proximity, he took his hands and stroked at her chitin-like wrists.

Grinning lowly, he marveled at how the 'Upside-down' angle she had previously held, had been transitioned to such a pose. She made an intrigued sound and he chuckled at her.

"Whatever you want. Tell me something, ask me something..."

"Asking?"

"That last bit wasn't suggesting anything..."

"You're full of it."

She clammed up, heated, and drew back her fingers, her palms, receded from the contact to sit back in his lap, gazing downwards with sudden apprehension.

"Maybe it isn't just me with the baggage?"

"I want you to ask me..."

"Why?"

"You... Know why."

"Ask you?"

"Yes."

"How about I tell you first?"

"Of?"

"You remember when I found you in the Company?"

"I... I do."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pas,

There was a brief flick of disturbed atmosphere, the hissing of discharging landing gear, and the whine of active, spiraling servos that lowered down a massive plate of metal with which to walk.

In an order of three minutes, the great hauler craft clacked with a final impact to the pad that had received its weight, the ramp extended and bore its innards in a darkened, mist-hazed state in which shadows broiled.

The very pad itself was covered in the white, sloshing gases that expelled by plumes from the internals of the craft, and by all the mean, bitter chills that followed in their waves throughout the air.

This was the cryo-seal that the hauler's compartment had been locked in for, if the reports were reliable from the outer rims, nearly two months of Q-Rupture travel from the colony the subject was found on. Very much like the heat-starved tundra this requisition had been dragged from, the transport took a piece of the world it hence hailed.

Security officers felt the guns in their hands become heavier as their arms took freezing spells, the NCO at the back of the ranks clomped his boots on the deck to work musculature.

Indeed, there was no exaggeration for the mere appearance of the thing, the cargo was kept at a standard of -45'F on most arrivals from long journeys that proved lucrative. This time, an unknown mechanical error had dropped the mobile freezer to -70'F, and it was a miracle that the ship still functioned under even a controlled miniature biome of such proportions.

Waving a palm in front of his face to clear the noise, Glen Hannson managed to catch the barest hint of a clue to this finding before tens of researchers clad in grey jumpsuits, faces obscured by HAZ-Helms, swarmed over a large container laden with electronics and wrapped in a fine net of Synthetic-Mesh.

Via internal lift, the container hit the deck with a deep thrum from the hauler's rear-claw mounted in the ceiling of its cargo hold, the triangle shaped ship grew dark whilst the pilots exited the drive.

All in such a short time, the largest, most peculiar seeming crate Glen had ever seen was lifted by twenty lab-coats onto a fork-buggy controlled by an automated drone. The little thing bleeped positive to clasp, and sped down the serviceway connected to the lower chin of the landing pad with the scientists, giddy, following closely.

They didn't even pay heed to the thirty or so security that watched all of this transpire with awkward expressions.

In truth, the payment said nothing on the lines of scientific experiments being conducted in the same facility.

But the fine print was becoming obscurer over the years anyway.

So went Weyland Yutani and its shit-show corporation.

Private contractors were given credits, boat-loads in fact, to keep their mouths shut and carry guns whilst looking intimidating and official among the Yutani facilities here, so, like all others, Glen did nothing to question the container, or the scientists, as much as curiosity wanted him to.

The pad grew... Normal, again with seconds, two Yutani guards announced a lesser need for aid, and the contractor party dispersed back to preliminary duties established beforehand.

Checking the safety on a sidearm, Glen shrugged and waltzed back to the door of the hangar without a sound.

Glen was a young man, presumably, for many his senior, TOO young to be on the spot of mercenaries. He was twenty six, fresh meat in the eyes of many here, and liaison to many others, the rookies got the bad beat because of lacked experience.

Realistically, Glen didn't have much experience to speak of.

But that was in a realistic sense. There was nothing said of unrealistic, ludicrous, or, just plain batshit insane.

The Company didn't relinquish much... In fact, to the hired guns, all they were given was schematics with all the 'Classified' sections of the building blacked out, codes to all civilian bulkheads and terminals, and ammunition.

Yet Glen knew things that could earn Weyland's attention. In fact, he was smart enough to know that the Company would try to snuff him into silence should he speak of his learning's. Glen was always silent, many of the mercs' thought he was mute.

It was irrelevant though, because Yutani was run by maniacs, and Glen had dedicated himself to stopping maniacs.

He wasn't a merc', though, the appearance and the improvised background made it seem so.

With a heavy sigh, he snatched the flak helm off of his matted, sweat-driven hair to run it down with a bare palm, before retaking his sidearm into his grasp. He straitened against the bulkhead he blocked and resumed his act of the statue.

'Undercover' would be the closest of terms for his activity.

However, there was no government or other corporation pulling the strings, because this was him, and ONLY him.

You see, Glen hadn't much, the typical sob story of the average schmuck who got the worst ass-end the galaxy could deal them... 'Pirates killed my parents! An orphanage was where I grew up!'

'My entire family and colony were wiped out in the Nuclear-Incident of 2445!'

'I was the only survivor on a depressurization incident aboard my father's hauler...'

All that garbage...

The Milky Way was dark, and it was dark for a reason, because the worst things in men's hearts weren't from any monster-infested cave in the middle-ages of old, or the haunted asylum where murder occurred daily, or even the burned down shack with the pentagram scorched in the living room wall...

No, the stars may be bright, but between those pillars of light lurked atrocities that would send the most evil humans in history screaming for the arms of their mothers...

'I'm an orphan from the rampant crime of the Under-Colony I was born in...'

'The Fighting-Pit was where I was raised, and I have a right to be angry about it!'

So many horrible things have happened to people.... They all had stories.

But on his family's graves, he could guarantee there wasn't a human, man or woman, old or young, that when asked HIS tale of the smallest violin, that would go stone faced and provide an answer nothing like the usual spun words of sorrow.

'I experienced pain worse than death. Escaped, than found my entire bloodline had been murdered by alien creatures crueler that any human alive.'

He dared anyone to give him the cold-shoulder after a truthful look into it.

Subconsciously, he flexed his right hand to the thought, taking it away from his hip, the internal bionics whined and clicked, and he blinked in confirmation. Never in any of his years of stopping evil, of being a vigilante, had he struggled to remain so unexpressive around the people responsible for the miseries in his entire life.

Glen had been unemotional around Bak'Tarri System slavers as he watched them kidnap, rape and murder innocent people until the exact moment came where he opened the throat of their warlord, destroyed their infantry-transport with a stolen warhead, and released the soon-to-be slaves from their cellblocks all within an hour.

He said and did nothing posing as a bounty hunter in the Ring of Servitude assassin guild in the Mildri System, as initiates were required to kill innocent subjects to 'Train' them for the ruthlessness required to collapse order of government.

Glen had killed every terrorist in the base two days after he witnessed this.

He had saved so many by ending hundreds of lost lives...

Weyland Yutani was next on his list.

And that container was the reason he was here. So he played dumb.

All of those villains that had been destroyed garnered him a stoic attitude, forged beneath being injured, seeing death and worse, emotionally receiving the most horrid of scars, so many times that Glen was a broken, yet unbreakable man, if that made sense.

His life was bleak, full of action and adventure to some, but the colorful children's stories of Captain Star-Sprinter, and Planet Man! were the farthest from the realities of being a vigilante as they could be.

But in the end, no one else knew the true evils of space...

So he checked the safety on the sidearm, unpinned it, and decided again within his debated mind, to keep it that way.

-0-0-0-0-0-

" OBJECT 6 IS IN LOCKDOWN. GAMMA SECTION IS TO REMAIN ABSENT OF ALL PERSONNEL."

"I have a pass from the Doctor, unit."

" DOCTOR BRIGGS HAS BEEN DECOMMISIONED FROM THE OBJECT 6 FRAMEWORK, SIR."

"What did you just say?"

" ALL QUESTIONARRES ARE TO BE SUBMITTED TO EMPLOYEE-RELATIONS OF THE SERVICES DEPARTMENT."

"Doctor Briggs was only recently in this sector-!"

" MOVE ALONG."

"Unit, I'm asking one more time, what do you mean, that Mr. Briggs-"

" MOVE ALONG OR FACE CORPORATE ACTION."

"Of what nature, Styk? Answer me THAT."

" ANY NATURE THAT THE HEAD OF LOCAL FACILITIES FINDS SUITABLE. MOVE. ALONG."

"Fucking Frankenstein yes-man."

" ANY INSULTS OF DEROGAT-"

By this point in time, Glen had had enough of the synthetic's games, and his plan was coming into motion after so long of sulking about the facility under a guise.

Surrounded by steel passageways lined with security cameras, internal vent-pocket hidden auto-turrets, multi-ultra spectrum light fixtures, and windows that lined bulkheads to offices and observation decks, he traversed the needed hall to reach his goal.

Unfortunately, one of the facility's main synthetics, a bulky chap always in garb of a corporate MP armor-plated vest, named Styk, had been stationed in his way.

Whether Doctor Briggs was actually removed from the project was irrelevant, and Glen would figure the mess out in due time. What was on the table at this second though, was how in the hell he would get Styk out of his way.

Throughout his undercover operation here, Styk was the head of security for Gamma Sector of the facility, the maze of passages and chambers assigned the highest priority of local Black-Op classified corporate actions.

He was always curt, to the point, and even by standards of other synthetic security workers here, he was an asshole, bluntly.

And to top it off, he was loyal to, and programmed by, those he hated passionately.

So Glen had no problem eviscerating Styk's head with a point blank blast.

The human flipped his wrist faster than any usual fighter could have ever had the opportunity to process, took the shortened, custom-sawed end of a thick stock from a pouch on his vest.

The weapon clicked, a round chambered, and Styk had just raised a fist, AND went for a combat sidearm with the other palm, before Glen's death dealer barked, gave off a flash of discharged munitions, and coated the bulkhead behind his foe white.

The synthetic gave off a classic static-akin scream that all of his kind made whenever trauma was experienced on their hulls, repugnant cream-colored fluid and gob slithered out of the ragged stump of his desecrated neck, sparks kicked from a tri-wrap of soiled pipes jutting.

Styk's body stepped forwards, his hands still making a grab for Glen's throat, which, Glen knew all too well, that the synthetic had the strength to rip out someone's esophagus with his bare fingers.

He stepped back whilst the mortally damaged robotic man lurched forwards into nothing, the gun he held coughed a second time, and Styk's chest bloomed like a yellowed azalea flower.

The guard leader stumbled back, clattered noisily into the bulkhead, and made a series of mechanical whirs as his limbs continued to twitch and jerk. But obviously, Glen had no time to dilly-dally on a small victory.

His heel cast the sopping mess aside with a clack of impact, he slammed a fist into the OPEN rune on the door's left arch hinge, and waited for the officer on the other end to let him through... Or, at least, to GIVE him the opportunity to get through.

Weyland's inner labs were normally separated from the rest of their respective facility's superstructure by extra plating of Volka-Ceramics, material only acquired from the Company-owned mining rig of Volkaturm.

Volka-Ceramics were nearly impervious to physical damage or breakage when used as a structural internal support, but they also made the walls they were installed in, soundproof.

Glen's killing of the synthetic went unknown because of that material, and the fact that the Company never wired its secret labs with cameras to avoid investigation whenever an operation became 'Terminated' completely covered the action from others' eyes.

Whether the staff was 'Terminated' by Yutani's hand, or claws of another, was always a mystery, seeing as those messes were solved depending on the situation. The fact stood though, THAT, was why Volka-Ceramic was in these walls.

Disgusting. Unadulterated.

Yet it mattered not.

Their precautions would be their undoing.

Glen flicked the head of the sawed-off shotgun forwards, slid two more slugs into their respective chambers, and slapped the thing shut before pumping the release grip under the weapon's belly.

The doors to his mission slid open, and a vest-wearing Company guard stepped forwards with an I.D scanner in his grip.

Of course, he dropped the little cellular device when he saw some of Styk smudged on the doorframe.

He had just held the hilt of his sidearm when his chest opened in a mist of crimson, threads of dark red flew from his tumbling body, and the man made a single gurgle before his rolling corpse came to a still in the hallway floor ahead.

Glen pumped the shotgun, reached down and relieved the poor slob of his I.D. card from his belt, before hunching downwards, covering the span of the passage with hurried footfalls, leaving dull-red bloody boot-imprints to mark his pass.

The gray-painted walls broke into a three-way intersection, two leading to doors of quarters and a bio-chemical laboratory, as indicated by the electronic labels protruding in slots above the archways' tops.

Leaning to a corner, he peaked down both ways, and made for the third, center wise one.

The holo-label here did not hold an icon for the chamber's purpose, nor any words describing its usage for security-body lodging, or observation, nor containment.

It just read 'OBJECT 6'.

So that was where he going to break into.

Lightly, even though it was abundantly clear no other security officer in this section was anywhere near tipped off to something askew, Glen pressed himself to the width of the bulkhead with a whisper of movement, blinked at the key pad on its right hinge, his ear felt chilled against the metal.

Erie silence was all that met his ear-drums, and despite that being poor evidence when it came to listening through several inches of thick metal, it was all he could go in based on. So he checked the shotgun, yanked a globular object from his belt.

Glancing again at the electronic panel that would gain him a way inside, he pressed his thumb, holding a small orange rune that bleeped in confirmation, the explosive primed and hued a deep neon-green that emanated from a plasmite core in its center.

He held his breath, counted to ten, and emitted a grumble from his throat as he clicked the small key-pad on the door's side.

Static emanated from a tiny grill on the object's frontal face.

" PLEASE SCAN I.D."

Glen grinned briefly, relieved his shotgun onto the floor by his heels, and pulled the small piece of plastic he had snatched from the security guard he had killed previously. The card drew down the key-pad, something bleeped, the door slid open, and the vigilante tossed the device he held.

Inside, a soldier trotted towards the opened door, watched as a tiny, green orb bounced across the floor, and settled with a - click- on the toe of his boot.

Two seconds of a scream left him when the plasma grenade detonated.

The room became clogged with flashes of red and fire, as all the machinery, computers and scanning equipment were shredded amid a great burst of subatomic energy condensed into a military-grade Marine urban weapon. A group of men in labcoats vanished in sprays of cast life-fluids and hurled limbs.

The observation deck was cleaned of life and functionality, a guard who rolled on the floor with half of his left arm, went silent when Glen's shotgun barked a fourth time.

Cables swung from the broken and cracked ceiling panels above, supercomputers worth thousands in galactic credits sparked and broke into block-like chunks of debris.

Steam and soot clouded the air of the chamber, but Glen strode through it without so much as a single stoppage.

When a window obscured in black, at its other side, came to view, the human stopped dead, waving his gauntlet about to push aside smoke in his face, his eyes were set on the bullet-proof glass.

His weapon and its final round, raised in readiness, knowing that if that barrier wasn't in integrity, there was no time to reload, and that the men he had killed in this room were of no comparison to the thing behind there.

Unfortunately, as Glen Hannson stepped closer to the goal he had come to destroy, it turned out that glass was indeed, NOT, undamaged.

A broiling wisp of steam parted to reveal the gashing spider-crack the size of a full-grown human in the lower left corner of the pane, one of the jagged ends dissolved from a green acidic fluid that had been left in a parting graze of chitin-like flesh.

Within the broiling darkness beyond the window, the opened, folded up remains of the same cargo container flash-frozen and transported via drone-cart, sprawled in the back of a featureless cell. In front of which, stood a wrecked pair of ceiling-mounted arm-restraints, white-painted, held aloft by thrice chains and cables.

The wrist-holds were snapped open, a loop meant to house the neck was bent and scorched, two pads on the floor used to magnetically encase feet were dented, smashed inwards.

Glen's brow twitched.

A sound that all animals, no matter the planet or ecosystem, nor if or not sentient, had come to fear over hidden generations of time, blared out behind him in the wreckage of the observation deck. It was a gurgling, reptilian noise of encroaching death.

The thing hissed at him.

The floor bucked, Glen's hairs on the back of his neck tingled with the presence of another, he spun clockwise to meet the assailant.

His body flew towards the window, a grip unbreakable by any normal person clenched his left arm and collar, the vest he wore crunched under pressure no bullet could match. In a cry of defiance, he went against every bout of training in his life.

His shotgun raised in the hand that held it, and he squeezed the trigger.

-0-0-0-0-0-

When he was a little boy, he saw many things that children normally didn't see. To the contrary of first impressions of that widely broad fact, these things were good.

He had stood with his father overlooking vast, mysterious alien landscapes, strolled with his mother in fields of plants that had yet to remain documented in humanity's records, at one point, he had a pet Giilo Lizard from the moon of Haradaan-6.

Truthfully, Glen didn't get the 'Normal' childhood, so many other folk received on Earth and her colonies... He was taught and shown extraordinary things, by extraordinary parents who loved him dearly.

He was never spoiled, but was never was held on a choking leash, his family life was wonderful, and the scientific aspect of his existence was amazing.

Glen never really understood science as much as his parents, mainly his father, had. He remembered 'Basics' if you will, but the second large formulas or equations, highly researched facts of specific nature, his brain shut down on it.

There was only so much he took in before... Before the incident that changed his very life and its meaning.

Only twice was little Glen exposed to the real world of poverty and violence, only twice.

Bandits in a smuggled ore hauler had once followed his parent's transport through a whole asteroid belt, and Glen hadn't even realized what was really about to happen until another passenger clicked off his cellular loudly.

The hauler sped off when a law enforcement patrol swept from a nearby formation of the space rocks around them.

That instance was child's play.

The next happening took his parents from him. It took HIM, from him.

His father and mother were killed, quickly albeit, there was no prolonged death you'd see in a horror flick, or some dramatic monster-mag' in the Old Tomes vendors... Yet it was obviously heart-breaking, traumatizing to the little boy.

Glen spent the rest of his childhood alone, and in a fog, wondering why someone would be so... Inhuman, to create those jet-black monsters that had swept his sire's life away with a swipe of a claw... He'd actually seen his father's death in the ordeal.

He heard his mother cry out in the backdrop... He didn't need to SEE it, to know it happened.

In an orphanage on Thalos, a farming colony a sector away from the research base mauled by those alien freaks, the deathplace of his innocence, Glen snuck out periodically due to poor staffing, he trained with farmers and their Proton Hunting Rifles.

By the time Glen was ten, there were only five goals in his daily life.

Eat. Sleep. Maintain hygiene. Self-educate. Learn firearms.

The Proton Rifles became too easy, for Glen had been using them for years on end, he could kill the local Root-Badgers when they scurried above ground, with a single headshot several miles away, if provided a scope.

Carbines and single-shot were only the beginning.

Glen used money built up from hunting and arms-contests on Thalos to illegally purchase the materials needed for a much more powerful weapon.

At one point, the young man made it a personal vendetta to squash crime or wrongdoing whenever he came across it, so he killed his first cutthroat at fifteen, a man who was robbing an elderly farmer behind a market shack in town.

Glen shot the thug between his eyes a half-mile away when he spotted the event through his Proton Rifle scope.

A week later, he killed a group of members from the local 'Neo-6' gang, and within a few days, they found his identity, and marked him for a hit.

Glen obviously ensured their would-be hitmen didn't return the night they set out to beat him to death.

The Neo-6 gang was spooked by the presentation. They thought he was a rival gang member, or maybe someone powerful was his parent, or that maybe, someone ELSE had been pulling the trigger. So like the fools they were, they sent another car full of punks.

It ended poorly at their end again. Glen beheaded one of them with his own machete, and kept the blade as a future weapon.

Two weeks later, and the militia law enforcement were baffled by the lack of Neo-6 activity, and the fact that murders had increased by ten-percent in the city.

Single-handedly, through sheer hatred of how they conducted themselves, Glen wiped out most of the gang's members, he killed their druglords and weapons dealers, found those in charge, and made examples of them by ending them the slowest.

In a short, brutal transition, Glen's simple life became that of someone feared by criminals across space, there were people in the stars, that DREADED his mere mention.

It was power.

Pure, sheer, POWER.

He could have done so much with it.

But he chose to keep it contained, and too take it out on those that would hurt innocent people. Innocent people like those elderly farmers back home when he was a boy.

For so long he hunted other people... People who behaved like animals.

Then, when he had reached the age of true adulthood, Glen took his best armaments, contacted his most powerful friends, and took to the planet of Varka'Sis.

The research base that his parents had been employed in, and killed in.

He had stepped through the dark, abandoned halls with a heavy heart, remembering the screams of dying scientists, barks of panicking soldiers, screeches of alien monsters that butchered the population within here...

He remembered it all because he had heard the source of it again.

Glen was tackled from behind, he barely wrestled away from the creature, his armor had been torn open like aluminum foil, his back was scratched too hell...

But he evaded, turned, and eviscerated the alien's head with an emptied clip from the assault rifle he had brought with him.

Long story short, it took Glen a week to clear the facility of these 'Xenomorphs' ancient alien organisms that had been tempered into perfect killing machines over centuries of pre-antiquity exposure to Earth, and spheres of hives that had spread, and then withered, across the Milky Way.

Weyland Yutani became known to him that first day of hunting.

Glen swore he would burn the Company for what it had done to not only his and his parent's lives, but to the lives of apparently hundreds, maybe thousands of people.

They wanted a living weapon that bad?

So he would give it to them.

And so the cycle began anew, though this time, gangs and crime lords were on the second list. The Company and the onyx demons were first.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Xenomorphs were sleek, intelligent, they blended brute strength in limbs and bodies that were slim enough for perfect acrobatics and unparalleled stealth.

They communicated with each other through a combination of pheromones, vocal hisses and cries, and what some believed to be telepathy.

In truth, anyone who REALLY understood them was either dead or in the tightest, deepest clasps of the Weyland Yutani corporation, so global knowledge on Xenomorphs was varied, rare, and generally unreliable at best.

But Glen was a smart man, he had raided facilities, ships and personal haulers, he had acquired and kept documents, data-slates, ripped computer hard drives from naval mainframes and laptops. Anything that the Company knew, Glen knew.

And he knew that Xenomorphs could be... REASONED, with, if the situation proved to be in the correct circumstances.

"Buggy piece of shit..."

Glen muttered to himself, and kicked off of the floor to view the creature that had tried to kill him.

Around the room, sparks and steam flurried freely as the machinery and computers continued to burn, the sounds of static, broken alarms, and crackling flame were abundant, but amid all of that, he could still hear the alien's labored breaths.

The Xenomorph flexed its two legs at the mere sight of the human standing over it, the elongated head bowed down to its clavicle, a chitin-covered claw curled four spindled fingers over a green wound in its left hip.

A base-thick tail that grew thinner towards the end of its length, tipped with a blade-like appendage, rattled on the floor where the rest of the shotgun's cone had caught its midsection, earning Glen an effective 'Two Birds with One Stone' victory.

The creatures' exoskeletons were known to deflect shrapnel, side arms and ammunition from lesser caliber guns, it made them impervious to blunt force trauma... But when a shotgun with its muzzle pressed to it was fired, even the exoskeleton couldn't armor them from the force.

He huffed, checked himself for possible spatter from the Xenomorph's acidic blood, and grunted in hurry, before tearing, and tossing off the remnants of his armor vest as it sizzled and hissed lowly on the floor with a heavy - CLUNK.

Steam built from the melting ceramics inside, and it would be at least at least an hour before the acidic blood literally boiled itself away completely.

Turning back to the wounded monster, Glen pumped the sawed off, flicked its head down and chambered another pair of rounds.

It was only a matter of time before the Company began to flood the labs with security guards and synthetic soldiers when this zone stopped reporting in. To be honest, he was surprised teams weren't slowly making their way to the chamber right now.

Finding, or, rather WOUNDING the alien, wasn't part of the plan. Glen thought the Xenomorphs being shipped here were in larval state.

Apparently his hunch had been wrong twice over.

There was only ONE Xenomorph, not an entire subject base with which tests were performed.

If there was one thing Yutani was expert at when it came to the containment and procedures with the Xenomorph projects, it was that whatever the facility in question was being used for, the physical build of the place modeled it.

Glen had thought this base was for human experimentation, tampering with Xenomorph reproduction and taming, combat training and trials on living, usually unknowing, subjects.

But instead, he'd come across a base set up for one thing.

Apparently, as he looked about the room, and, by chance, glanced through the swirling haze of the chamber to the alien's curved, shining cranium, this one Xenomorph... Was Object 6.

Burned with either a branding agent or a steel stamp, the number '6' was emblazoned on the Xeno's forehead, at the center of the elongated, cylindrical-like head the monster sported. As he narrowed his eyes to the sight, it hissed at him again, curled away like a wounded animal in the corner.

Not only was the amount of resources pooled on ONE Xeno a rare find, but the behavior of said alien was just... Awkward. He would go so far to say it wasn't 'Normal', at least by Xenomorph standards.

Saying this sort of encounter as 'Rare' was by far as detailed in facts as it sounded at first, because Glen had discovered laboratories similar to this on other worlds, 'Super Xeno' projects, attempts by certain sects in the Company to work with a single weapon, not an army of them.

There were executives in the Company that believed a single alien was the key, not a controlled colony.

Even among the greater evils, the opinions on how to execute the motive varied.

It didn't matter to Glen either way.

Weyland Yutani needed to be destroyed, and so did their projects, and any knowledge that could lead others to understand them.

Sighing, he glanced back at the serpentine shape of pure onyx that curled across the floor before him, snorted with a twitched brow, and raised the barrels of his weapon to level with its fanged face.

He felt a hatred that had boiled inside him half his life well upwards again.

"Nothing personal," He said to no one in particular. "-But you're a Xeno. I don't LIKE Xenos."

"Then shoot already."

The second voice first entered his head that fine, fine solar evening.

And indeed, it was a second voice. One that would sooner by imagined to a complete opposite of appearing creature than this alien.

Stopping dead with what he was about to do, his eyes bugged wildly when the rumors of 'Telepathy' suddenly did not seem so farfetched. Rolling his shoulders, he jabbed the weapon in the Xenomorph's direction, a gesture.

Reclining more, the alien nodded its elongated head, the ragged appendage at its rear, the tail, swept across the tiled floor in seeming impatience with great hisses of exoskeleton against synthetic plastic.

"Who ELSE?" The voice rang again, annoyed, filled with venom, strangely laced with smoothness, feminine. "Shoot."

Glen had never entered one of these situations in his entire guerilla campaign, even though he had actually trained himself for exactly such.

'Communication with a Xenomorph? Sure, I suppose it could happen, might as well include it in the physiological prepping, but what's the likelihood? Zero to one in a million? Whatever.'

-Despite the initial scoff.

Here he was, receiving mental speech from a Xeno.

Keeping the shotgun level, Glen shifted in his stance, kept his arms locked.

"I haven't ever been TOLD by a Xeno to pull the trigger before..." He said. "-They didn't give you a mouth to speak English, eh?"

"Stop sputtering about. Shoot or leave me here."

"You don't seem very worried at my choice."

"Perceptive."

"No 'Will for the Hive'? Hunger to rip apart the prey?"

"I've been raised outside a Hive. Artificial. Prefer it as such. My 'Kind' I have learned, are unimaginative and barbaric. Why not check my captor's video feeds? And... 'Hunger'? 'Prey'? Laughable."

"...An intelligent, civilized, rebellious loner? That's the gist?"

"-And I suppose you're going to ask me 'Give a reason for me not to kill you' Next? Please spare me these unneeded pleasantries, you broke me out of one cage, do me the favor of breaking me out of another."

"-And this other cage, is?"

"My life?" She stated matter-of-factly.

This was some find.

This was the... Weirdest, most awkward, yet... Probably the most valuable, find in his campaign.

Weyland Yutani had done something, a process, a combination of chemical agents, some kind of mind-altering or melding, to create a near perfect example of what their original weapons project had started out to strive for...

That was both glorious for him, as he had found it, and it was at his mercy.

But it was also horrifying to see how close the Company was getting after a short period of time.

"Why are you so willing to die?"

The Xenomorph slithered tighter on the ground, leaned back against a wall, and made a wheezing noise as it clenched a claw tighter over the wound on its side. Glen noticed steam rising where pooled blood dissolved a floor tile.

"Depends," It mentally dismissed. "-Why is a non-captor running around KILLING all the captors? They do something to you too?"

"Indirectly."

"Ah."

"........"

"-Well go on, I'm not exactly in a position to BITE."

"I think I will stick to the stereotype. Why SHOUDN'T I just shoot you, and leave before the security synths show up?"

"I want to hear my end of the bargain first."

"We didn't strike one."

"Hmm. But you did when you kept talking to the 'Wounded Beast' on the floor, yes? Why AM I so willing to die?

For the moment, I don't feel like telling you. It's obvious my own life does not hold value to me, and if you stay here, yours will be lost too."

Down the hall, there was the mingled collection of droning, mechanical voices, the clacking of heavy boots, orders of sweeping motions and unpinned safeties.

Glen's head whipped to the door of the chamber, than back to the Xenomorph, who, shockingly, looked smug from its place on the floor.

"Your choice, soldier. Spark my interest. Maybe death won't seem so... Drawing, as of now."

"I just broke you out of your hole, SHOT you,"

"Mmmm."

"And the lab you were being kept in? The scientists?" Glen swung his palm behind him. "-I blew them up. Violently."

"MMMmmm."

"-And you wanna' CHAT?"

"I think hating the same thing brings the unlikely in union."

"You're a fucking freak."

"-And your best hope for a stab in the Company's heart, I'd bet."

Glen said nothing, stood rigid, his eyes drew between the door, the floor, the Xeno ON the floor, and the barrel of his shotgun. There was a blooming reason that made him decide his next course, and he didn't understand it, and, in fact, he never would understand it.

His bloodstream ran frigid, his mind raced, biting his lip, Glen finalized his consideration.

"Facility specs?"

"Yes."

"Eavesdropped much on the staff?"

"Every night."

"Heard and seen interesting interactions?"

"Lost count."

He snapped off the list one after the other, and it answered, one after the other, in tune, in line, as expected.

Feeling the depth of blaring alarms going off in the deeper portions of the base, Glen felt his hands quake, the shotgun clicked, the barrels drew away from the Xenomorph's head, vanished in the holster by his hip.

He prayed to God, and his parents, he didn't just sign a death warrant.

"Get up."

"Kneel down."

"Get UP."

"KNEEL. DOWN."

Biting his tongue, he snarled, allowed his knees to jerk downwards, he accepted whatever the alien had in mind, at his own mental torture, and lowered himself to the wounded's level.

The alien actually grinned at him, with a full set of its dagger teeth, the claws clenched over its side unraveled four digits, reached upwards.

Glen felt himself shift, gather duress on his back from added weight, he grunted upon the Xenomorph finishing a cat-like curl over his shoulders, and make a hissing conglomerate of strange vocalizations that was akin to a chuckle.

"I'm all packed," It confirmed musingly. "Off then?"

"Don't get comfortable, freak."

"No need for venom..."

"Shut up and stay still."

"Watch the blood-"

"Shit!"

Glen reached down, struggling with the added hundred or-so pounds suddenly draped behind him, snatched up his half-melted Company security vest on the floor, and shoved it beneath her hip, above his shoulder.

Immediately, the makeshift bracket between their physical contact hissed as it was further destroyed by more of the Xeno's spilt life-fluid.

Not only was this a time-bomb from the synths coming to kill him, but if he didn't move, his shoulder would singe off.

His life sucked dramatically some days, honestly.

Cursing again when he saw the gatherings of shapes in the smoldering remains of the lab's entry, Glen supported the alien on his back with a raised set of arms, and sprinted for the opposite exit to the chamber, the one he hadn't cleared with a plasma grenade.

Glen flung himself through a bulkhead, ducked lower when three AP Rifle shots pierced the rim of the frame with thrice flings of sparks.

Immediately, all the undercover time he had spent in the facility mapped themselves out to form a mental representation of the layout in his head. Hallways, service tunnels and chambers became photographed, and he followed.

The gunshots became fainter, they stopped altogether when he rounded enough corners for the synths to lose him and his unexpected cargo.

"The bulkhead, to your left," The silky telepathic communication flooded his mind without his physically hearing it, once more. "-Break it."

"Service duct?" Glen grunted, rearing back, and throwing their combined weight to the thin metals of the vent-like bulkhead.

"Something like that."

CLANG

The thin steel broke easy beneath the chitin-like hide of her clawed feet, his shoulder, and the exoskeletal length of her curled tail. He stumbled through a collection of draping wires, snapping them and feeling raw copper literally electrocute the air adjacent.

Water sloshed about his boots and kicked up in plumages of white, dirty tan, the passageway suddenly had an aura of moist atmosphere, his lungs thickened, there was the small hiss of a brushing stream...

Than his foot became clogged under a height of water up to his knee.

That lasted another few steps, the alien atop his back warned him of something, and the floor beneath his submerged feet ran out. In short, he couldn't breathe when the filtered liquid swallowed both of them, his hearing cut in a muffled splash.

He found himself surrounded by a bubble of hazy tan, the alien, his half-melted vest, vanished somewhere in the pool of water, he reached down, held his breath, and snatched up the rear of his shotgun before it floated away.

Holding his respiratory systems in check, he remained calm, the first point in preventative drowning techniques, clipped his firearm back to its place on his hip, swung his arms in opposite arcs to begin swimming.

His legs paddled, the surface broke around his breaching head, he sputtered, spit, let loose a gasp, let his eyes clear.

"-PFFT! Bah! Holy-Son of a bitch..." He cursed and blubbered, looking about the ceiling of the apparently deeper chamber he had fallen into, lined with pipes and wire-systems.

The wall directly behind him, the direction he had descended from, drew several pipe-vents that vanished beneath the murky pool he swam in, and ended before a floor-grate at the top of the drop he hadn't seen.

Up there, the small, wire-laden entry he had made for his escape stood dark, obscured under the tiny roar of the filtering water around him.

Casting his glance about whilst paddling to support his floating, he did not see the Xenomorph that, albeit foolishly, he had decided to bring with him in the extraction.

It didn't take staying undercover in the facility long too know, despite the fact Glen had for WEEKS, that the alien had lead him to a water canal system in the side-sections of the underground structure, liquid used for heating and temperature machinery.

Stalling in the hissing ambience of the murky pool, Glen shut his eyes momentarily, dropped a colorful variety of vulgarity, and swam towards the opposite end of the dumping chamber, where a small emergency trio of steps lead to a grate platform bolted to the other wall.

Noticing that the Xenomorph had vanished, he swept a palm down his glistening face, spat again, and pulled himself from the water on the steps and their railing.

He stumbled onto the platform a dripping mess, shook himself like a dog, noted a ladder rung that drew upwards the wall the plat was connected too, and took hold of it. He cast a glance above, and saw the climb would lead to emergency hatch.

However, what got him was the fact that the hatch was open, and, feeling a hot sensation on the rung he had grabbed, he flung his hand away, checked his red skin, and then the dried dissolution of metal that ran like a drop of molasses down the first rung.

Frowning, he took said hand down to his hip, held the shotgun in his grasp, and thanked the almighty he had modified the thing so extensively over the years to render it usable after the aquatic dive prior.

He flipped open the chambers, dumped the rounds and debris inside, and put in a set of fresh ones to let the others dry off within his bandolier on his chest.

His legs pushed and arms tugged, the rungs passed by his belly whilst he made his climb to the bulkhead.

The damn Xeno was up there. It had trailed blood on the ladder rungs, it was why half of them were scorching hot and only now drying from partially melted hulk. Steam rose off the top rung in tiny pillars when he neared the hatch.

Waiting briefly for the fresh burning to wear off, he reached up, pressed his palm to the circular hatch, and shoved it out of the way with a creak of steel, threw himself through the hole, and stood with his shotgun aimed.

"You seem like one to not be caught... Off guard, yes?"

Right as the feminine, mental speech wormed into his head, he felt the sharp tip of the exoskeletal structure of the Xenomorph's claw press into the skin of his neck, near the jugular, leaned against his shoulderpad.

He just frowned, because, in turn, the alien did not look exactly pleased with the shotgun's dual barrels pressed into the groove of her collar, past the thicker portions of chitin, into the fleshy layers beneath, they'd kill each other if one acted.

The Xenomorph flashed him a set of razor sharp teeth, smiling, oddly, with its strangely long face.

Glen grit his teeth.

"-Being surprised, left me years ago."

"You are an experienced warrior, then? Correct?"

"I've been fighting longer than I should have."

"Prove it."

"Put your claw down-"

"-You first, human-"

"-You didn't let me finish. Put your claw away AFTER I move my gun."

The Xenomorph grew frustrated at her inability to predict or read him, lost its smile, and gave off a near pout, if an excuse for one, when Glen drew the shotgun from her collar, and she in turn, snapped her palm and fingers backwards.

The human rolled his shoulders, kept the weapon at his hip, and scrutinized her, before realizing the extent at what the Company had... DONE, if with no other description.

The Xenomorph not only TALKED like a human, the thing... LOOKED like one too.

There was a reason the voice in his head had sounded of the opposite sex, as apparently the alien was female.

It was ironic, the grisly nature of the creature's head, the blackened, chitin-made body, the sinewy forearms and ankles, meshed with the obscenely frustrating sculpt of a supple woman, drew a contrast that nearly mitigated the fact it was all on a reptilian bug.

Again, the disturbing reality was no more easy for him LEAST of all the Xenomorph.

The God damn alien had... Modesty.

She made a motion with her head that, if she had physical eyes, would have given the impression to her rolling them, and sighed with the telepathic link.

"-You know, the 'Scientists' if even that, ogled too."

"Wasn't exactly... Expecting THIS, Xeno."

"What's the matter? Homosexual?"

"No. How do you even know what that term means?"

"I'm not stupid."

"You're not HUMAN."

"You could say I'm not a 'Xeno' either, ape."

Glen didn't have a response by this point, his vision threw to the side when the alien stretched her arms behind her back, pressing forwards her clavicle.

She mused at his reaction, loosened her tightness, and cast a glance behind to her tail.

"You still haven't proven anything, 'Warrior'."

"Oh drop this shit."

"That's just it, 'Drop'."

"The hell are you-?"

"Think fast, soldier."

Right as she grinned evilly, Glen flung himself back a few steps when her apparently coiled tail snapped forwards, and unwrapped like a snake depositing a mouse.

His body surged backwards under the weight of a flailing, grunting other.

Tearing away from the unusually strong, whipping arms, Glen's jaw dropped when he was standing face to face with a flustered, quite surprised synth guard.

The expressionless, white-colored face motioned none of these emoticons other than the thing's body flailing around blindly, the synth swung its fist like a rock, narrowly missing the human's own cranium when he ducked back.

It gurgled some kind of static nonsense too him, went to swing again, and stumbled back with a magnificent metallic CLAK when Glen's gun thrust forwards, butt-first.

The back of the shotgun left a dent in the synthetic's forehead, a blow that would have if not killed, than severely injured, a normal human. Glen flipped the weapon clockwise, held the barrel, and reaffirmed his aim in a split second.

The gun barked, the synth's head vanished in a cloud of yellowish white paste.

The body stumbled back, let loose sparks and spewing offal, reached with both arms to him again, before the second spread opened its chest, and sent the destroyed synthetic plastering its back against the metal of the wall behind it.

It crumpled, twitched violently, and grew still, leaking a pool of sickly, vomit-like innards onto the floor.

Cringing at the mess, Glen flicked open the chamber, slid in two new rounds, and jabbed the weapon in the smiling Xenomorph's direction, where, she had observed the whole fight two steps away.

"-WHERE. THE FUCK. DID HE COME FROM?" He barked.

"Found him."

"WHERE?!"

"When I first got up here. Obviously. "

"So you-?!"

"Restrained. My tail muscles can crush several inches of welded titanium. Convenient subject to test your fighting ability. Why kill him?"

"Because he would've done so to both of us!"

"You did it first."

Sweating profusely, Glen huffed, lowered the gun, and glared with an ounce of pure dislike.

"You want to get back at these scientists?"

"The captors?"

"Mmhm."

"That depends on YOUR motive."

"No it doesn't. If I don't mesh with whatever plan you have in mind, you'll enact your own hit with or without my own attempt. Don't say otherwise."

The alien was growing annoyed with his perception, she pouted again, her tail flicked in agitation, with great onyx swings.

"This 'Company' made me for profit."

"Didn't treat you so well, eh?"

The Xenomorph didn't respond.

Glen grinned in irony.

"-Join the fucking party and get in line. I'll ask again, you want to get BACK at these scientists?"

"Yes."

Glen pointed from her tail, to the ruined synth behind him over his shoulder.

"Than don't ACT like them for starters."

"What of you then, ape? Wouldn't you say KILLING your opponents renders YOU to their level?"

"I don't harm the innocent and prey on the weak. I remove the corrupt and put MYSELF in the line of fire instead of others. Take it how you want."

"I have no need to further trouble my conscience with pointless opinions."

"Than we have a similar mindset. I don't know what the Company wanted to DO with you, or what they had planned, but the fact of the matter is, you have acrobatics, stealth, and most of all, probably a SHITLOAD of information on Weyland.

I have firepower, training, MORE information, contacts and mechanized assets. If you REALLY care about destroying these people, you'd put aside whatever anathema you have for humans, and help me."

"You ASK for my aid, now?"

"No. That is your prerogative. I'm just telling you what a hero would do, not some pompous bitch with a anger-management complex."

If there were a moment in this entire debacle that the Xenomorph appeared angry, not just annoyed, or disappointed that her new chat wasn't prone to manipulation, this was it. She looked, for as far as the expressionless, eyeless, head could show, livid.

Glen felt the lightheaded, surreal aura that had been swimming about his head for the last coupling of minutes draining, as, not even an hour later of making contact with this creature, he became used to her appearance.

He shrugged, kept the shotgun at his hip, and glanced around the wire-room they had escaped too, before gesturing to an ajar entryway that lead to even darker corridors.

"I'm getting off this rock, you can watch my back, or you can trail me... As long as you don't screw with my operation. Or you could stay. You decide..."

He spun around, just like that, and started trotting towards the bulkhead, sneering at the messy remains of the synth she had tossed to him.

The Xenomorph released a sound acute to a drawn out hiss a snake would make, she chewed one of the sharp claw protrusions from her palm, and leaned back to compress against a rear wall. Her chitin hide sifted metallically against the steel, she slid downwards a bit.

"You have a title?"

"Glen."

She had already stood and started to follow him.

"I never understood human addresses..."

"It's just a name."

"It would help if I had one. Lack of experience with being termed. No use of vocal recognition with others my whole life."

Glen smirked as they were swallowed beneath the shadowy recluse of the under-passages of the facility, surrounded by nothing more than blank halls, pipes, and drainage sumps that leaked onto the grate floors.

Mesh covers sealed off less-tidy appearing tunnels that most likely dropped into sewage sumps the facility trashed in pits outside the underground environment. The whole section was barely lit with amber flickering fixtures lining the ceilings.

The human stopped in the darkness, reared his foot out, and nudged an old jerry can encrusted in the center of the tunnel, out of his way with a thud of hollow synthetic plastic.

"Why not go by 'Six' or something, huh?"

"NEVER." She abruptly hissed. "-If you expect my help, than NEVER speak such a thing again."

The vigilante held his hand upwards in surrender, reaching to the left shoulderpad of what remained of his armor, and flicked a tiny utility lamp.

"I expect nothing. But hey, if it really pisses you off that much..."

A cone of light bracketed the dark away in front of him, showing the deeper recesses of the tunnels, the matted filth that layered the floor like masses of disgusting growths.

Where he was grimacing at the sight, she was utterly unfazed, she stepped through it, kept her 'Vision' if that, more her head, locked in his direction. His boots, her claws, made squelching sounds through the thicker debris.

Glen grumbled in annoyance.

First a near drowning experience, than being near synth-mauled, now trekking in shit. Beautiful. Just damn beautiful.

"Where are we going?" The Xenomorph piped up.

"I'M finding a ventilation mesh so I can get outside. I guess that means you're coming with me?"

"Shut your mouth, keep walking."

"Ha. You're a barrel of laughs."

"I'm an angry biogenetically engineered organism bred from the stock of already pissed off man-eating machines. Humor wasn't in the equation. Neither was compassion. Nor 'Allies' before."

"First time for everything... Trust me, friends are like bikes, you'll cast the training wheels off snap like that..."

The human terms meant nothing to her, but the general idea made it to recognition.

Whilst these two unlikely paired 'Allies', as they had termed themselves, traveled a waste system beneath the Weyland Yutani base of some desolate moon in the middle of wild space, both had an elaborate scheme to get what the other had.

The Xenomorph wanted his firearms, if they really existed.

The human wanted her known information, again, if that really existed.

By the time they found out their goals were indeed reality, the desire to backstab went away.

Something else came out.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pres,

"You stunk of raw waste for a week."

"Waste high crap does that to people."

"Glen..."

"Yep?"

"Please..."

"There's that word again."

"Please just... Just ask me..."

".... I'm.... Not sure I can..."

"Try."

"Mari-"

"Remember the debacle with my 'Cages'? Glen? Do you...?"

"I.... DID just narrate the whole thing, eh?"

"I've never really felt out of the second cage I told you of, then."

"I don't..."

"-You DO understand. No distraction. Admit it."

"-You don't think I've been alone too?"

"We both have."

"I'm not sure this is the answer."

"Give me a better one."

"I can't."

"Than talk to me more, and help me convince you of mine."

"...About...?"

"Tell me what happened on.. Tan... Tant... I'm not recalling..."

"Tantala-7?"

"Yes."

"The cave?"

"Yes. Tell me."

"First time we opened up..."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pas,

If there was one thing he did not understand in the rocky alcoves of this barren wasteland, it was why here, of all locations in the Outer Surge System, had been chosen for the depot.

A refueling, resupply platform, fully automated, self-functioning without the need for human or synth staff, run by a colony of Artificial Intelligences programmed under the limitations of the Company, as to avoid free behavior.

Nobody else in the Outer Surge knew it existed, not even the Navy was aware of the single sign of civilization on Tantala-7.

And now, after the last few hours, he was confident no one would understand fully, if at all, the happenings of the rocky, dusty moon everyone in the system had come to term as a pointless ball of dirt and woe.

He preferred to keep it that way. For insurance.

The platform was supported by three metal pylons encased in a energy-gel coating designed to ward off the elements brought on by Tantala's wicked sandstorms, and the gel, he'd discovered, was easily cut away under the duress of live ammunition.

Glen Hansson had spent the better half of an hour rendering all of the ammunition in his bandolier expended to useless shell casings, blasting away a breach in the matted, greenish gel that wrapped over the steel like a vat of jelly.

Once it had chipped away enough, he lodged a box-like contraption into the battered gel's epicenter, moved a fair distance away.

The device had been a rough recreation of a type-8 Navy-standard Concussion-Depth, an explosive charge designed to destroy bunkers and heavy fortifications. Against the commercial-grade pylons, even with the gel and undamaged steel, the Depth rendered them innately equipped.

The platform toppled into the sands, destroying a Company hauler that was currently docked, the AI bots in its interior were either destroyed in the initial collapse, or the subsequent storm that invaded the region a night later.

All that mattered was that the job was done, and the Company had been dealt another blow. It was becoming laughable really, the lack of effort able to reach him to attempt to stop him, the targets he hit, and then vanished from...

His initial strikes were proving relatively easy to accomplish with the resources at hand. Weyland was not fully aware of his identity, nor of his extensive contacts, and, by hell, they surely did not understand his troubled past.

At one point though, this veil of success would become harder to achieve, Glen knew. The Company's own assets would catch up to him, and it wasn't necessarily what personnel or mechs Weyland sent after him, it was who they hired to bolster those forces.

The Milky Way was expansive, he'd been caught in so many vicious campaigns, he'd seen, and exchanged gunfire with, the most infamous of weapons contractors, rogue groups for hire carrying around military grade equipment.

It was always a moment of pity whenever he saw mercs driving around in 'Purchased' mainline tanks from the Navy, or APCs. The corruption had laced in with those whose jobs it was to STOP it in the first place...

Disgusting.

Glen needed to give his head a break from all the mess before he strained a freaking lobe.

"That explosion was grand."

Blinking upwards, his vision having been locked on a utility lamp set before him on the dusty ground, Glen watched the blackened onyx shadow leap from her perch on the stony, stalagtite ridden roof, and come to a hunched crouch before him.

The Xenomorph landed gracefully, reclined from the impact, and stretched her legs backwards, like a cat would flex after a long run. Supporting herself on her knuckles, she gave him a toothy smile.

Glen found himself confused with the contrasting appearance that gave off, nodded, and re-glued his eyes to the lamp he sat before.

"Uh-huh."

"You don't sound assuring."

"Sorry."

"Why?"

"Why... What?"

"Why do you not rejoice for killing those who wronged you?"

The human chuckled to her ignorant question.

"Killing people is not something I enjoy doing, Xeno. But I will have to kill many more in order to stop their leadership."

"Killing removes the faulty from the civilized."

"-You told me you WEREN'T like other Xenomorphs."

Her mental flux of speech faltered, mid-sentence, if she were actually using her mouth. Her head cocked sideways, appearing a combination, or somewhere between, intrigued, and insulted.

Snorting, her mind lashed a quick one at him.

"Elaborate."

"What? That line of thinking?"

"The connection between me and my cousins."

Throughout the short time she had traveled with him, she had become sensitive, sometimes violently so, about her status in comparison to her 'Cousins' as she referred to the race she had been bred from.

In all truth, she wasn't far from the facts, because, taking the time to scientifically analyze not only samples of her DNA, but use computer scanning to break down her genetic hierarchy, had proven she WAS a Xenomorph, but was at the same time, far FROM one.

The Company had birthed her in a tank, there was no doubt with that, they had meshed her coding with that of a human, and he figured her gender determined the usage of her body's mammary structure and hip sculpting.

A body for a human woman, put on a Xeno, blended with some increased attributes of the already lightning fast perks of said killing-machine, independent thought, and the ability to rationalize and considered civility.

The latter traits were something normal Xenomorphs did not have the liberty of utilizing. They were controlled by the queen through pheromones, mental links, things that made them utterly loyal to the point of death before separation.

Unfortunately, Xeno queens had proven quite animalistic when protecting, or in the worst of instances, expanding, their nests. Humans were cattle. Collect and use them for more drones, kill them if they resist.

It was simple and disgusting, but effective.

Glen ought to have known as he had fought so many of the freaks. They were like rodents, they infested whatever they retreated into, or hid in, and they were near impossible to dislodge, much less exterminate, without the usage of mass destruction or fire, preferably both.

Besides shooting them, flamethrowers were anathema to their kind, that and napalm... He had a fondness for the munitions for these reasons.

Smiling in drawn out memories, Glen was brought back to the conversation at hand when the Xenomorph before him snorted again, sharply.

She sneered at him, folded her arms.

"I'm waiting."

"The connection?"

"Mmm."

"Xenomorphs are driven by colony standardization... You understand that. If it is compatible with our young, restrain it, put an egg in it, use it to bolster our numbers, if it shoots back, kill it, ravage the corpse."

"Where does this tie in with killing scum?"

"-If one of our numbers is defunct, and stalls the machine, remove the kink through lethal force, discard the body, continue the process of the hive. Unintentionally, you still do have the traits of a drone, they're suppressed, and they'd never gain control over you..." Glen frowned and offered a hand upwards for gesture. "-But they're there."

The Xeno thought for a moment, tasted the consideration longer.

Her lack of facial features made reading her harder than a human, but Glen could get the vibe she was displeased, if not a little pissed off.

In the amber gloom of the cave, she drew a set of her claws down her chin, scratching idly.

"Two weeks, three days, twenty two hours."

"Since?"

"Since I've joined your little war."

"Ah-ha."

"Why have you let me trail this long?"

Glen blinked from the random question.

"-Switching gears that fast, huh, Xeno?"

"Stop referring to me as that."

"Well then what the hell do I refer to you as, eh? MARY? Queen Stuck-up? Throw me a bone."

"Call me Sera."

In the brief second it took the Xenomorph to say that name, Glen's stoic, unfazed features tightened, his teeth drew exposed from a suddenly reclined lip, and his eyes narrowed.

Really, like someone flicked a light switch, he became flooded with negative emotions instantaneously.

He felt his brow jerk, his hands clasped.

He knew that name.

"Where. Did you. Hear. THAT name?"

"I was correct in its significance to you?"

"ANSWER ME."

"I saw it in one of those data-slates you keep."

"That was my mother's maiden name. Last time I heard it was when my father called to her, BEFORE, a bunch of fucking Xenos killed them."

The alien was silent.

"-If you think I'm to refer to you as that name. You are wrong. Another day I might say something more JOKING, but I refuse to abide that. I refuse to acknowledge you even bringing it up. DON'T DO IT AGAIN."

His statement began to evolve into grit-teeth statements the more he drew it out, his voice pitched, the cave echoed it, and he reclined from the lean-forwards from his crouch on the dusty ground. Glen breathed once, he practiced himself in checking his temper.

Yet, with the anger drained, he still stared long and hard across the utility lamp placed between them at her.

The Xenomorph, from his understanding of her, should have been ecstatic that she had finally found a way to push his buttons, a few weeks ago, and she would have laughed venomously. But just as he had remained un-mocking too HER horror stories, she gave him the benefit of the doubt.

She made that strange sighing noise again, and sat on her rear, elevated her tail to make room, her legs strayed out in front of her as she leant her arms back.

"I'm sorry."

"There's a first..."

"Not really. Seven days ago."

"In the hauler?"

"Yes. I told my half."

"How the scientists tried to connect with you vocally-"

"And how they broke it when the physical and mental tests started." She cut him off coldly. "I was injected with solvents, toxins, and chemical solutions. They tested ballistics in glancing hits on my body. They used a stun-ray on my damn cortex."

"-And you got through it all, how?"

"How did you get through YOUR trial?"

"I kept telling myself I would make myself succeed. That the way out held a brighter future."

"Exactly."

"You think I'M brighter? There's a laugh..."

"You may be an asshole sometimes, but you are a good person."

"What makes you think?"

"I'm good at reading humans."

"Too bad I can't say likewise to Xenos."

"But you can."

"Not you."

There was a long silence that preserved the air between them, Glen was rigid, the Xenomorph blankly draped.

The unspoken blanket of uncertainty, yet at the same time, understanding, that clouded the space between the two individuals was a double edged sword, and there wasn't a moment in their days together where it wasn't hanging above them.

They were of different species, they had been partnered by their mere lack of desire to NOT chance refraining from killing each other, they had no real background, they had similar mindsets, but totally different ways of dealing with it.

Glen wanted to cut the snake at the head, find Weyland's people, avoid the innocents, do it quietly.

The Xenomorph would have been content to blaze a trail of destruction to REACH Weyland's people, slay anything in front of them, do it however was physically possible.

It was amazing, putting the aside the already unbelievable 'Ruse' as many would declare, allying between a weaponized hybrid-extraterrestrial, and a fed up vigilante out against evil.

All in all, that cloud hung heavy when Glen said 'Not you.' and if he didn't know any better, he'd say the alien looked insulted.

"That... I don't know what that just did to me."

"What now?"

"Negative emotion. Brought on by neglect of cared for-" The alien stopped herself, rewound speech mid-sentence. "-Neglect of OTHERS' shrewd obliviousness."

"So..." Glen didn't catch onto her interjection of herself, and for many months later, he wished he sort of had. "-You're upset because I find you... Strange? ALIEN? Ironically?"

"I don't want to talk anymore."

She had been halfway through a silent propulsion to the ceiling above his head when she said that, her thin, slender forearms and graceful legs arced around her, jettisoned her in a leap to crawl away like an insect on the cave roof.

She slipped between stalagtites and projections fluently and without trouble, and Glen was left with his little lantern again, but with a heavy mind to add.

Frowning at the metal-encased light fixture, he clenched his teeth, and only about an hour later, did he realize he still hadn't unglued his eyes from the dark stone of the cave roof.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pres,

"I didn't understand then."

"-And I did?"

"No..." She admitted. "-But you were confused like I."

"...Were you really surprised, we were SURPRISED?"

"I don't know."

Glen leaned back into the fabric beneath his body, felt her fiddle with her claws over his lap, she sat back, bulk to bulk with him, her weight compressed lightly, like a feather, over his legs and lower gut.

She made that funny sighing noise again, her fifth appendage swung in blackened arcs behind her.

She grew restless, heated, her jaws crinkled in a mortified frown of sorts.

"Can you... Please... Just ask me?"

"Trying."

"Try harder."

"...How...?"

"Keep doing what you have been," She tried. "-Just... Talk to me. I've never had anyone TALK to me before, Glen..."

"It's been two years, and NOW we're talking, huh?"

"Irrelevant. Here and now."

"Irrelevant? Ouch..."

"I don't care what we wasted, now we know. I want to make up for what I have put off from myself..."

"So... Than what DO we know now?"

She stopped fiddling, her weight shifted, and the palms of her claws compressed softly to either side of his torso, stroking the skin there in arcs of warmth.

Her head lowered to hover above his own, she radiated emotion, like a reactor gave off a bubble of heat.

Doting on him, she responded.

"We know, that you mean very much to me."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pas, On the fifth day, two men dressed in navy slacks inspected the grounds, asked about a missing 'Special Operations' personnel member harboring contraband, and wanted for his guilt of going AWOL. Everyone at the colony said they knew nothing.

Truthfully, or else the agents would have resorted to violence, the people here DID know nothing.

One or two of them occasionally spoke of a rumor, or a story they'd glanced near, but with no face, no defined speaker, or information of any value to give with it.

The Company's spooks were under the guise of naval operatives, and the disguises were so legitimate, that the colony of New Becksworth believed them. The amount of money and power it had required to fool these souls was nothing in the wallet of Yutani.

Simply, the pair of investigators found nothing for the astronomical cost in resources it took their superiors to give them their fake I.Ds, holo-badges, uniforms and replicated side arms only found in the holsters of Earth or Mars born officers.

The money too search for him was not even a dent in the Company's funds, but the agents were thoroughly enraged out of the sight of others, that the vigilante continued to allude capture.

New Becksworth was a young settlement, established a mere ten years ago on the planet of Oorga Pol, there was little besides families, collectives of businessmen, and new industrial workers living in the collection of environ-domes and portable buildings.

Oorga Pol was determined to reach 'Civilized Colonial' status, within a decade of time. In other words, highways, space ports, cities, skyscrapers, most importantly for the villains here, opportunities for the Company, would not develop here for twelve years at least.

Angry, disgruntled, the agents said their leave of the PLANET, but in reality, Glen understood the Yutani agents were staying as long as they thought he was still slinking about the untamed forests and hills of Oorga Pol.

And while they THOUGHT he was here, Glen KNEW of course, that he himself, was quite present, slinking about, like mentioned, in the forests, pine barren, and grasses of Oorga.

New Becksworth was merely a pit stop at first, Glen had arrived under the guise of a traveling mechanic-for-hire looking for supplies, he had restocked his ration pool and spare parts for some of his equipment from the market booth at the colony.

But when Yutani's goons showed, he had slipped away, observed their near week-long search for him in the colony, and their subsequent leave in a Company hauler.

Tracking the ship with a stealthily-placed beacon, Glen had found that the hauler hadn't even landed twenty miles away from New Becksworth, in fact, it ended its brief, deceptive journey over Mount Jiliimgrove, the rock formation overlooking Becksworth.

It vanished at the highest peak, so that was where Glen was going.

"How did the Company know to search here? Should we have no suspicion of being compromised?"

"Becksworth's the only node of civilization for two systems, where else would a lone vigilante go for food and shelter?"

Glen pointed out the obvious amid his grunt of effort, raising his foot in a great heave, he pressed the heel into a rock, and shoved himself upwards to begin scaling the next wall.

Observing him like a cat did a plaything, the Xenomorph supported her head in her claw, feet and other palm dug into the solid rock beneath her belly, she splayed this way sideways, her right flank facing the jagged fall below.

From where Glen came, she had insisted on aiding him in the hike, and so far, she had scaled the rocks faster through her incredible abilities of jumping and slithering up walls like a bug.

He had held onto her the few times she had performed quick bursts up the stone, he now tried to climb a bit more as she rested her own chitinous hide.

"If you were patient, I would bring you the rest of the way.."

"We don't have time."

"You're not getting anywhere."

"Neither are you."

"Give me a minute."

"-We don't HAVE a fucking minute-!"

CRACK!

As Glen snapped, a crag gave under his weight, his foot followed the descent when the stone flew off in a snap of dust and crumbs, his heel hissing in a ragged slide down the rough rock wall of the mountain's flank.

He barely caught himself, using the magna-grips that were interlaced in the rungs of his gloves to stab into the mineral-laced rock, they locked with a energy-charged snap, and he dangled loosely, both boots swinging towards the tumbling view below of New Becksworth.

Catching his breath, Glen huffed, let the adrenaline fade, and began to attempt to find more footing.

"-Thank God for magna-grips... Eh?" Disturbingly, to none but himself, he had been CHATTING with the alien more and more.

The Xeno grinned toothily to his lack of malice, and made a strange chuckling hiss.

"-Thank 'God' for my tail as well, human."

She never understood the concept of a 'God' so whenever she mimicked his human speech, she always emphasized the alien tone to her with the word. Glen would have chuckled at it, had he not looked down to catch the meaning of her suggestion.

Between his legs, her tail's girth curled upwards, forming another balancing point that had aided his prevention of falling to the crags and colony below.

Clenching his teeth in discomfort, he crooked his lipline up to the left, narrowed his eyes at her, and noted her deflate a bit, losing not only her tail from his inner hips, but the smile she held too.

"I'm ready for another leap..." She sighed. "Stop clambering like the ape you are and get on."

Glen rolled his eyes, reached out when the Xenomorph crawled over the rocky surface he was struggling to even stay attached too, with no problem, and bent her right shoulder down too him.

Hooking his suited arm under hers, he wrapped a leg under the base of her tail, felt odd with the strange hiss she made, and had the world jerk away from him, like he was on a rollercoaster on old Earth.

She sprinted up the rock expertly, like no human could.

Tens of feet of crags flew past him in seconds, things that could have potentially taken HOURS to scale safely.

His lower lip had raised, impressed, before she leapt a final time, and the first flat space he had seen on this pile of stone came to view. Grown lightly with ferns, she landed in the grass-laden dirt silently, grunted, and opened her arm for him to slide away.

Glen padded onto the ground, nodded at her for thanks, and looked around them while he reached for a weapon.

Unholstering his sawed-off, he looked through the taller stalagmite-towers of rock, the bushes and ferns around them, and saw a hint of blocky metal.

"There, right THERE..." He mumbled to her, flicking off the custom safety on his gun, he crouched and hurried to a nearby rock pile.

Flattening to his belly behind the stones, the Xenomorph joined him, compressing lithely on the ground to his flank.

"Your 'Infantry Tactics'," She quoted him. "-Are maddeningly annoying..."

"Ssh."

"They can't hear ME remember? Ruckus, much?" She mocked with a grin.

Again, to his own chagrin, he actually SMILED at her humor, and watched the landed Company hauler ahead.

Unceremoniously, and with good basis, the hauler hadn't even been landed in a concealed position up here, because there was no one in Becksworth willing to brave the untamed wilderness of Oorga Pol to scout the land around the colony without an escort drone or two.

The Company agents lounged up here with no problem, sipping tea or something in that damned ship.

"Tea tastes like acid..." She sneered, reading his own internal bickering.

"That's because you downed that mug without anything added to it..." He pointed out. "-The plain stuff tastes like bitter water."

"ACID." She reaffirmed.

"YOU'RE acid..."

"I aim to please."

"Great, than please cut it out, and help me kill these bastards..."

"How rude."

They crept up on the hauler's flank with little difficulty, seeing no form of armed robotic drone, Company bought synthetic, or human, guard, the hauler's engines were still hissing in rest-mode.

They found a ramp bulkhead that lead into the ship's rib section, Glen snuck to its front, listened at the flat metal, chastised himself for watching too many action movies. He couldn't hear anything besides the grumble of the industrial ship's mechanisms.

"Give me a moment..." The Xenomorph said, vanished up the side of the ship with a few tiny clangs of metal, she reached the roof.

Glen was about to ask what she saw when the ramp he crouched under hissed a tiny broil of steam.

His eyes widened, he flung himself from the suddenly descending plate of metal.

Rolling, he saw no ferns, no rocks nearby, just an open plat of grass that ringed the ship almost mockingly too him.

The person coming out was going to see him.

He had to kill them NOW.

Falling to a knee, he jabbed the sawed-off in an aim at the lowering ramp, shut an eye, kept the crosshairs centered on the soon-to-be revealed archway into the innards of the hauler.

The ramp slugged onto the dirt with a dull ring, one of the navy-disguised agents from the past week, fake uniform and all, managed one step outside onto the flat surface of the ramp, holding a ration bar in his grasp.

He tore the wrapper off the top, raised the green, plastic-like material to his mouth with an evident sneer, and froze when he saw the two voids of black in his direction.

His mouth was still hung open, he flung the bar away, reached for his replicated sidearm, and everything on his body between his shoulder blades, his whole collar, upper chest, his entire head, vanished in a backwards cone of shining shrapnel and viscous crimson.

Glen's gun discharged, the round shattered, erased the man's physical form in a flowered rose through the aforementioned zones.

What was left of the torso, his arms, and his legs, stumbled back in a spasm, and crumpled inside the hauler with a slack of metal.

Glen wasn't about to go inside to LOOK for the poor slob's little buddy inside his own ship, he reached down, grabbed a plasma grenade, primed it, and went to throw it into the hauler's ajar ramp.

"GLEN!"

He heard the Xenomorph say his name, besides just testing it, like, ADDRESS him with it, for the first time ever.

He saw a flicker of her on the top of the hauler, and then, something large, bulky, stinking, and obscenely powerful batted him like an annoyed picnic-goer swatted a fly from their face.

Glen's breastplate, the ceramic vest, cracked in ways of a piece of tin being brought under the head of a sledgehammer, he sailed through the air, rolled into the ground a few times, his gun skittered back towards the hauler.

His world stop tumbling, he spat dust from his lips, looked down at his shattered vest, and jerked his head back up to see something that filled him with dread.

Before him was no human, nor Weyland Yutani experiment, not even a synthetic soldier.

It was muscular, layers of melded steel formed exaggerated fibers under a purple-ish gray hide made from leathery scales, black finger-nail appearing spikes formed arrays towards two bulging shoulders, and down the creature's back, beside a boar-like mane flowing from the base of its neck to its tailbone area.

A bare chest appearing a parody of a gorilla's heaved heavily, two legs smaller than a dual set of arms dragging on the ground, angled downwards as the monster reared at him.

Finally, to top the horror, the head of a donkey, with the jaws of a caiman, bore too him a maw filled with jagged arrays of literally thousands of black teeth, curled over by a reptilian tongue dribbling purple saliva.

Now, it was already pretty BAD being cornered by the thing, it WAS a maneater...

But to make matters worse, Glen could clearly discern a head-brace of metal wrapped over the creature's cranium, bolted into both of its temples with plasmite screws, and showing the WY logo of the Company at its top proudly.

Glancing to the hauler, the second agent, still wearing his fake navy uniform, stepped out down the ramp with a tiny data-slate held in one hand, his sidearm, the other.

"This," He called out over the labored breathing of the monster. "-This is the guy? The man trying to bring down our Company?"

Cockily, he shrugged, gesturing with a grin, the slate's nose to the fallen Glen.

"What have we done to tick YOU off, boy?"

"The question is- WHAT HAVEN'T YOU DONE, SCUM?!" Glen barked. "-That's right you pig! Send the HOUND! Hide behind it! You FUCKING COWARD!"

"The mouth on this one..." The man shook his head, pressed a key on the slate.

Glen's eyes bulged, he rolled to his feet, saw the agent raise his sidearm, and fall when a onyx shadow descended from the roof of his ship.

He heard the Yutani spook scream, than he heard the monster give off a ragged growl, its head jerked, and a claw reached up to scratch its cranium raw at the band bolted to its skull.

A howl that sounded a combination of an Earth-wolf mixed with the reverberating tone of a raptor screaming into a fan-blade, if all that was accurate, echoed from its jaws, the animal lunged at him, faster than he could process.

The scary thing was, out of all this other nonsense, Glen KNEW what this thing was.

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pres,

"I'll admit... I was... Afraid."

"I was too."

"Yes..."

"... I was actually... More worried you had been shot..."

"Amid all the claws? The teeth? The steel-skin of the thing?"

"Oops?"

"So when you're done with this one..."

"I think I'll ask you."

"...All I had to do was get you too... Relive your near death?"

"When you put it that way..."

"Stupid-ass."

"Proudly agreeing."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pas,

A Necroravager.

A ten foot tall, carnivorous, alpha-predator that literally ate all of its prey on the planet of Helsreen Octa, and nearly starved its own species to death before packs started hunting each other in brutal turf-wars that raged across the hills and jungles.

Necroravagers were the only fauna Glen had ever heard of, that reveled in death and slaughter as their nature, they were NATURALLY, vicious, tough, hostile, and mentally unstable monsters that lived to eat, reproduce, kill others of its kind for sport, and BE killed for sport.

These things were mother-green's version of demons you read about in old Earth folklore.

-And the fucking Company put a mind-control band on it.

Swell.

Real swell.

Glen's world rushed, he tumbled, spun, rolled, the Necroravager barely clipped his legs when he hurled his body out of the charging path, the animal careened across the ground where it had missed him, he flung to his feet, made for the hauler.

His sawed-off shotgun was on the ground, a few feet from the ramp.

Glen didn't see the body of either his Xenomorph or the Weyland agent, on top of the fact all he could focus on was the gun.

Sprinting for no more than a few seconds, the Necroravager flipped a final time, its legs kicked, and it bound on all fours in place, tearing the soils up in arcs of ripped debris, barreling in his direction again.

Necroravagers, at top speed, could run nearly sixty miles-per hour, only twenty away from an old Earth cheetah, their bulk, massive size, literally impeded nothing when they were sprinting.

Glen managed another step before one of the beast's claws swung from his right, hit him in the chest, and shredded whatever remains of his vest were on him, off into the distance as he flew back to the ground.

Feeling the wind knock from his lungs, he rolled to the side on the dirt, saw the balled knuckle of the ravager's left claw slam into the soil where he vacated, and then felt the claw dig its nails into the vest on his back.

That ceramic cover flew away too.

Glen snatched his only other weapon, a sidearm, his M9 Braxis Colt, brought it into his hands, the Necroravager brought its claw back, fully intending to run him through like a stuck pig with the heads of its black nails.

Purple saliva flew from its ragged maw in every direction, two crimson eyes burned wildly down at him.

The pistol's aiming reticule lined up, and Glen compressed the trigger, three rounds popped out, the Necroravager screamed in its reverberating roar a cry of defiance, staggered back with a palm over its chest.

Glen stood himself to a half crouch, aimed the gun again, looking for the beast's head, he drained the clip with thrice pops repeatedly, sending a barrage of bullets into the twisting and writhing thing's torso and gut.

"DAMN IT!' He cursed, flinging the clip, he stuck in a spare, aimed again.

The Necroravager covered the distance it had reeled from him in a second, reared back its left leg, and, without exaggeration, drop kicked Glen in the chin.

The lack of muscles in comparison to its arms allowed his jaw to maintain intact, despite the bruising, Glen tossed backwards, head over heels like a ragdoll, and ended his sail onto the ramp of the hauler.

CLUNG!

His breath was sucked out again, the ravager was already in his face, hovering over with its claw descending.

The animal was just... Too freaking fast.

He didn't have the equipment to kill it. His Xenomorph, his ally, was tumbling about with the agent from the Company, and the ravager was on top of him again.

He was... Dead.

He failed his parents.

He failed all of the people he had saved in the past.

Lord almighty, Glen failed himself.

This was it, killed by the Company's newest pack dog.

If there were more time for him to react accordingly, Glen probably would have done something he hadn't done since he was child.

He would have cried.

No hysterics, surely...

A tear cascaded down his dirtied cheek.

For almost twenty years he traveled the stars rooting out the corrupt, fighting people who were positively evil, he had saved so many innocent people...

Through all the killing, he had good, for what measure literal removal of the problem could do. Glen had negotiated between people, he'd stopped local civil wars, saved merchant fleets being slaughtered by murderous pirates...

People called him a hero.

Glen never forgave himself for the last words he uttered before the unbelievable.

"I give up."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pres,

"You can't give up."

"I did."

"That's unlike you... I don't understand..."

"I was about to die."

"That's what I DO understand..."

"Yes?"

"I couldn't bear letting you die."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pas,

"GLEN!"

Again, there was his name.

Plain and simple, screamed from the telepathic connection of a weaponized alien lifeform bred in the laboratory of the people who had sent this stupid ravager to kill him.

Glen thought the Xenomorph was a abomination when he had first taken her with him from the facility.

Then that thought evolved into 'She's just a nuisance'. He no longer referred to her as IT.

Then 'She's just annoying sometimes.'

Then...

'She's had it rough, give her room.'

And of course, then...

'I just wish she wasn't hurting like me.'

Followed, by what possibly else...?

'You know, when get past the whole creepy human/Xeno mesh... She's very intelligent. I like her.'

Glen's prior defeated mutter evolved into-

"-I'm going for a fuckin' BUG."

-And that fuckin' bug just sailed over his head and collided with the chest of the Necroravager.

The two creatures tumbled with an array of hisses, growls and screeches, the Xenomorph's tail jabbing inwards, stabbing the hide of the ravager like a scorpion, her claws flayed across its arms and chest, her fest drew lines on its legs.

Glen flung himself to his feet, off the ramp, from the ground, his fight was renewed, and akin to a madman, he flung his sidearm away, in fear of hitting his ally, he drew a combat blade, next to the holster of his Colt.

Glen threw himself into the tussle between two monsters.

It was safe to say he was fired up by that rescue.

Screaming murder, the vigilante leapt onto the ravager's shoulders when the tumbling match faced away from him, his blade became crimson as he drew it down the beast's neck, the joint between that and its shoulders, he jabbed the tip into one of its eyes.

The ravager howled, screamed and groaned, fighting to its last breath like the violence it had been born into.

The Xenomorph's jaws opened, and her inner mouth shot forwards, running through the ravager's throat, Glen saw the bulge of its spinal cord beneath the mane jerk awkwardly, the animal stopped thrashing.

Just like that, it tumbled forwards, face-first into the grassy dirt, he flew off its back, his ally swung gracefully out of the falling perimeter, the Necroravager ended its final careen with a thud onto the ground, arms splayed, legs spread, hide glistened with a hundred cuts and bullet punctures.

Out of all that punishment, the only they'd killed it was because she had done something to its spine. Sheer luck right there.

So much sheer luck, that all he could do was fall on the ground in a heap, too tired to move.

Panting from the fight, the near death, the fatigue and pain that wracked his jaw, head, and chest, Glen closed his eyes to the blank sky above Oorga Pol, and let a long, illustrious breath hiss from his throat.

If the Xenomorph hadn't tiredly stepped over him, and fallen at his side, he would've passed into sleep.

She laid belly flat on the dirt, head turned to face him, arms strewn by her sides, legs extended, her tail draped too him, slithering slightly over his ankles.

"Glen... Are-Are you okay? Are you injured?"

"N-NO... No..." He heaved. "-A-Are you...?"

"No."

For awhile, on the ground, they were quiet. Some, barely at that, of Glen's energy came back, he raised his forearm, and the knife he still held, to his face, and lazily tossed the blade to where he saw his poor sawed-off still sitting, patiently waiting for its owner.

Folding his one arm across his chest, sweat cascading down him, Glen laughed lightly.

"That was... Some save... Xeno..."

"Stop calling... Me that..."

"-Than what?"

"What were... T-the other... The other two names, you said in the... The cave?"

"Q-Queen Stuck-Up...?" He snickered weakly.

"No... The other..."

"-Throw me a bone?" He jerked musingly.

"Glen... Please..."

He hadn't heard her use THAT word with him.

She sounded depressed.

"-M-Mary...?"

"What's... That short for?"

"Mariah."

"I want you to call me... That."

"Mariah... The Xeno...? What the hell..." He laughed, his chest aching him. "-That's-That's just weird."

"I'm being serious, Stupid-Ass."

"Ouch..." He spoke to his physical pain as well.

The Xeno- MARIAH, rolled on the ground to press on his side, forcing herself upwards in a half-crouch with her forearms, she draped herself over his chest, propped her elongated head under the crook of his chin.

Feeling the chitin-like hide on his skin, his joking spirit peacefully left him, he reached up, with shaking hands, and stroked her ridged back with his palms lightly.

Mariah made a cooing sound.

"These stupid human parts on me always jut in my space..." She complained, shifting her modesty. "I don't understand why your kind's women tolerate them..."

Oh, there were so many lewd, funny, ridiculous, to just plain antagonizing responses he could have deduced for THAT statement...

But all he did was force his laughter down, and smile.

"Well... Mariah," He tested the name. "-I was never one to understand how Xeno's get jiggy... But human males can't get enough of those things where I come from..."

"Why?"

"Just the way humans work..."

"Then I want to keep them."

His eye twitched at that.

"You mean a lot to me." She stated suddenly. "-I'm so sorry it took... THIS, for me to admit that."

"I'm... I'm sorry I haven't admitted it at all."

"What? How were YOU possibly aware that I-?"

"I'm saying YOU mean a lot to me, princess." He snapped kiddingly. "Keep your tits on, give me a minute to find my skeleton again, and I'll get us off this planet..."

"Tits..." She laughed. "­Where do you come up with these words, Glen?"

"In my sick, hungry little mind, Mariah... Sick, hungry, little mind..."

-0-0-0-0-0-

Pres,

"-And there was when I first alluded to being one with you, yes?"

"Suppose in an indirect, degenerate-humor sort of way, yep."

"I asked you. Ask me."

"How...?"

"Is that ALL you do is ask questions?"

"Well... Mariah... We're not the same species."

"And?"

"Where exactly... Is... Everything...? On...? ...YOU?"

Reclining from her lean on him, the Xenomorph's tail flicked in interest, her claws trailed up, and in a display to what he had said to her that one time, they brushed over the humanoid attributes adorned on her torso.

Glen's body went rigid, stirred heavily, when the masses shifted over her passing, their weight being brought up, and slouched back down, hanging.

She purred at his reaction, reached downwards, her full, chitin-detailed thighs parted, slightly at first, to reveal a thin outstanding detail against all the jet black. Glen leaned forwards, rising off the pillows he had been indented too.

Mariah had a curious, nervous sort of combination as she stared at his face, watching him, WATCH her.

The reproductive frighteningly was not that off from a human's. Where shades of say tinted tan or pink would be dominant, it was surrounded by the usual jet black, centered with a bright contrasting line of neon green.

"...You certainly haven't showed me THAT yet..."

"I've been, and still am, willing too."

"I'm... I'm going to be honest and say that means so much,"

"How so?"

"You trust me enough..."

"Glen, the universe has nothing for me, NO ONE else has anything for me... I want you to look at it, I want you to... Touch it..."

"-...Now?"

"When else you moron?!"

"Okay! Okay! ...Wow..."

Before he could kid anymore, a clawed palm wrapped its long, finger digits over his wrist. The Xenomorph bowed her long, eyeless head forwards to him, guiding his loose hand towards the connection of her inner thighs.

Glen had become so accustomed to touching the chitin/flesh-feeling hide that made her body, had done so over several solar months since they had opened this part of a relationship's door between two different species...

But this was so different.

Mariah made a crooning hiss when the tips of his fingers made a material softer than the rest of her, his fingers flexed their full length, and she drew his wrist downwards to draw a line across the cleft.

The Xenomorph shivered from being touched by her human companion for the first time.

"-That... That feels... Exotic." She admitted. "-Try it? Please?"

"If that's what you want."

Freeing his wrist lightly, Glen ran his fingers up and down the green line of her entrance, the alien's arms reached out and curled over his shoulders, she pulled him closer to her on the cot, shoving her human assets into his bare chest,

Glen's body quaked from the contact he had been denied his whole life of being a self-made fighter, he huffed, reached upwards with his other hand, and cupped one of the mounds with his palm. Mariah growled playfully to the handling as he rolled the mass a few times, finding the feeling similar to the neon-green entry he caressed opposite handed.

The Xenomorph undulated her hipline on his legs as he stroked her, her tail swayed quickly, like an annoyed cat's would, behind her as he fingered.

"A-Alright... I want to see you..."

"-Y-You wanna' just give me some room, then?" He muttered.

Mariah hurriedly climbed away from him, reclining on the foot of the cot, her legs were still separated, a claw toyed with the entrance he left.

Glen found a surreal blast of emotion hitting him, behind all the euphoria.

He was engaging in RELATIONS, with a Xeno... An alien, something humans thought were animals... And, as far as he was concerned, the other members of her kind were INDEED animals...

But Mariah was different. All the times she had communicated with him, told him her opinions, asked for his... All the times she asked him to talk to her.

He was done holding back from something, albeit strange, but something nonetheless, that would make them both very happy.

Nature always found a way with this sort of stuff...

What the hell was telling them THEY couldn't find a way with their bodies?

Nothing. That was what.

So forget what other humans would find repulsive.

The only friend in the universe he had, human or not, was willing to commit a special act with him, not just for the physical lewdness. Mariah wanted to connect with him, and, he wanted to connect with her. He'd figure this out.

"-Are we worried... About potential-?"

"Incompatibility? Disease transfer? Bodily harm from the other's physical build?" She summed.

"Yeah... Yeah all of that brilliant stuff."

"Incompatible. Obviously, young or egg-production is impossible... Disease transfer? No. I have the immune system of a human, I have no illness within my reproductive system... I cannot transfer anything.

Bodily harm? Besides my claws and teeth, which I will control, there is little risk."

"What about your blood?"

" I won't bleed."

As Mariah explained these points she had come to understand, or, at least, she put if off that she understood, her telepathic connection, the voice quivered.

Her body subtly kept undulating, there was a thrum somewhere in her throat, Glen felt her claws pulling at the soft material that made his pair of sleep pants. He blinked, scrutinized her for a moment, and the Xenomorph read it like a book.

"I never speak without basis, Glen..."

"I know I just... I don't want either of us to get hurt."

"Contrary to how these... Annoying, bodily reactions... Put me off as, I wouldn't initiate this if I thought harm could arise. I've dealt, experienced, too much harm in my life..."

"You've never been wrong about your research into things, I'll give it that."

"Precisely. But as I said, I didn't make the effort into putting it all together for being smug..."

"You really want to try this that bad?"

"GOD yes..."

Glen glanced to the connection between their bodies, he felt a tug on his facial features as he huffed to the encroaching pressure.

This would be awkward at first, there was no avoiding it, but he wanted to figure this out as well.

Perhaps if he just shut the hell up and went with it, the scene might end more happily than if he delved in with a scrutinizing examination of all angles. His father was probably looking down on him with...

You know what- Stalling on the current scene.

-What WOULD his father say to this? What was he saying now? Up there in the stars anyway?

What DID you say to your son screwing with one of the monsters that killed you and your wife?

When he was alive, his father would have been outraged. Glen probably would have been disowned, banished from good old dad's thinking for the sheer gall of the possibility. As, even before he was taken by Xeno claws, Hansson Senior had DESPISED the Company...

Which utterly meant he despised the Xenomorph project and anything related to, or produced by it.

Now switching the gears to his mother... That was a completely different story.

His mother would have been glad for him, as odd as it sounded. She was a believer in life and adaptation of nature, both of which, Glen passionately hoped to achieve from such a union. She would have been overjoyed her son was happy.

-And come to dwell on it, his old man wouldn't have shed a tear on the subject either, now that he was in the 'Better Place' and wherever that was located. Glen felt a lightheaded presence overtake him, it entered as quickly as it then departed.

There was the unspoken knowledge his parents, despite not being around anymore, were still up there rooting for him, the man that had devoted his life to stopping evil, the man that killed other humans in all manner of ways...

Because he was their blood, their child, years and years after they died and left him as a small boy, they still loved him the same as always.

Honestly, there were times Glen felt childish for feeling the nostalgia of his seniors so long later in his age, but he was reminded that much of his ability to LIVE his life was taken at the same time they were. He never made companions, simple acquaintances, company...

So the Xenomorph wanted to change that.

His parents were probably swinging tankards at him to get on with it. Not that.. They'd WATCH or anything... But he understood the point.

"You think too much, know that?"

Glen blinked, and stared into the eyeless features of Mariah as she crooned closer to him.

"I do."

"They'd want you to do what you believed in."

"I know."

"Glen, if it really... Inhibits you that much... I..."

"I'm not inhibited," He chuckled. "-Just distracted. About time I changed that."

His hands traveled from their absence between their hips, Mariah watched them as they vanished briefly behind his waistline, jerked a bit with a slip of soft linen, and came backwards down his legs.

Working to drag the pants across the bedding, and from the wedge underneath his rear, Glen tugged the apparel off of his lower half, and threw it into the darkness of the floor to the left of the cot, standing, or, rather laying beneath, her with nothing but his hide.

The Xenomorph shivered at the sight of his bare skin, and gave an intrigued examination of the asset he owned that was, without question of course, needed, for the activity they had in mind.

"It looks... Well, alien. Ha..." She mused in a husked murmur, reaching down to carefully drag her palm down the rising underside.

Glen's breathing hitched from the touch, his teeth clenched, and he was forced to lean forwards to gain the upper hand in the contact.

"I like it."

"That's good."

"So then we're mutual."

"We've been."

"Being fair, we've been with what we've already SEEN..."

"Then lean back and let me see more."

"I... I like that idea..."

"Mmhmm..."

Glen's fingers took each of her wrists within their enwrapping hold as they came to both of her flanks, he held tightly, but not forcibly, and pushed backwards until she began to fold and drape beneath his weight.

The Xenomorph's spines compressed like some strange hybrid of rubber and chitin to the material of the cot, her tail flicked between her legs to avoid being bent the wrong way, her forearms were brought over her elongated head.

Glen grinned lightly when his waist hung over hers, her bodily systems, heart-rate, brain activity, flow of nerves, all increased to the sight of his organ hanging in a half-rigid state, over the curve between her parted thighs.

Mariah's breathing was in dragged out, low mockeries of gasps, her jaws clenched, and she felt herself salivating.

Heat built in a numbing, euphoric sensation about the 'Feminine' sections of her physical form. The mammal structures on her chest became heavier, her hipline was begging for contact with the human.

All the while, Glen finished splaying her, and bent down to her neckline, initiating a question close enough for her to feel his breath on her hide down there. She crooned as reaction.

"-I know it-... Doesn't apply to other Xenomorphs...?"

"UHHHhhnnn.... Out with it."

"-Your neck sensitive?"

"At the moment. Why would th-HHATT- Ohhh...."

Working open his mouth, Glen bit onto the exoskeletal construction that made her throat, softer than the armored sections around her back and shoulders, his hands, for the first time in knowing the creature, reached upwards to her chest.

He clenched his teeth over as much of the silky material as possible, whilst his palms came to support her modesty beneath its underside, effectively cupping the mass, forcing his digits in rolling motions that drove his partner insane.

Mariah's inner-jaw flexed out from her ajar maw a few times, she made a series of hisses he had never heard from her before. They sounded blended with whimpering, and she kept the array up as her head fell backwards into the cot's sheets.

If her bodily reactions were eliciting euphoria from her before, NOW they were on the verge of sending her into a quivering mess.

Mariah felt hot, simply good overall, but in a descriptive sense, there were waves of musculature-induced weakness, clenching, ripple-motions of pleasurable stimulation, that wracked regions she never paid much attention too.

Her mating organ, something she had believed would never amount to anything other than a mockery in her pained life prior, was making a sopping mess of her thighs and the space around it, the bulges on her chest were like putty that she desperately wanted to be melded with.

This was the best she had ever felt, outside of the emotional sense, in her entire span of existence.

Unable to form coherent telepathic speech, she settled for curling her legs over the back of his waistline, across his buttocks, she clenched her claws into fists, to avoid the nails, and flexed her knuckles into his shoulders.

Oh there was no freaking question now, whether he had the energy or not, she was screwing with him every night from now on, no exceptions.

She'd passed up so much before, THIS, wasn't going to be one of those things.

Laughing at herself mentally, Mariah's head flung back again when he detached from her throat, moved lower, and puckered his lips over her collar and clavicle in several pecks.

She struggled to keep her tail under control as it flicked behind the scene, lashing about, like a vine intent on grappling the nearest object.

Observing his productivity with the actions he now tried, Glen decided that the foreplay was only the entry exam of sorts, they still had a test. So, removing his face from her chest, the human reached up to where her own head was laid back in ecstasy.

"-Mariah-?"

"W-Why... Why the shit did you STOP?"

He almost laughed at her commentary.

"-You want me to..... Start?"

"I... Yes... Yes, j-just please be a bit slow..."

"- I'll do my best. Tell me if you want to stop..."

"Mmmhmm."

Glen reached down to where his groin hung over hers, took hold of the appendage poking against her entrance, and shuddered when the tip moved along the neon-green line.

He huffed at the movement, and Mariah crooned loudly, high pitched.

Reaffirming the direction in which the crown pointed, he pressed it back to the line, again, breathing heavily, and started to work it past the first layer of folded tissue. A sudden sensation of being HUGGED came over him, in a sort of way.

There was the feeling of filling a silky void, he kept pushing ahead until the twin draping orbs that marked his ability to procreate, brushed against her soft hide.

For the Xenomorph, there was no 'Hugging' but a emptiness being filled, in a satisfactory take-up of wanting space.

Her body rippled this connection over the intruder, causing her to lose touch with any form of coherence she had been trying to maintain.

Glen grunted to the new status, he leaned forwards, his face disappearing between the girths on her torso. The Xenomorph's tail let loose whines in the air as the bladed tip slashed back and forth, her legs gripped over his back.

Hissing, higher pitched cries, heavy labored breaths all blasted from her drooping maw when Glen began to work his hips in a pattern.

Mariah's mouth hung open, her inner jaw shot out a few more times, and her waist flexed against him when his organ began to recede, and then jut back in.

The cream-colored mast repeatedly vanished in a spread encirclement of neon-crimson, a trail of moistness descended down from the connection, and broke off into separate passages that followed the crevice of her backside.

So far his hands had been switching from caressing her torso to wrapping behind her back, but as the motions began to peak, Glen reached down, tracing his palms down her back, he clenched the fullness of her rear compressed against the sheets of the cot.

Using the grip to angle her upwards slightly, he supported himself on his toes, and bucked his hips forward with more energy, better velocity, a tiny moistened impact of skin to silky chitin emanated from their connection.

Mariah's mammary additions flowed fluidly from the repeated thrust, she threw her head back and drew out a stuttered cry, Glen himself muffled some sound between aforementioned orbs.

When the finality hit, Mariah's wail ended with a collection of hitched intakes of air, and quick draws of hisses, Glen couldn't even get his throat to work, but the result was the same for both parties.

The need for release was quelled with involuntary jerks of inner muscles in a great voracious motion, Glen delivered a genetic concoction that, as nature wouldn't allow, would have no such creative effect on the hybrid system of the Xenomorph.

Mariah's own end undulated and walloped, in a milking technique that proved its effectiveness when Glen felt the pulsating continue, but little more of his seemingly endless supply of seminal plasma, was expunged for longer.

A breath left him, he felt oxygen reenter his held lungs, the human collapsed forwards onto his partner, who also splayed against the sheets of the cot, unable to move like her other.

The pants and huffs stopped after a collection of minutes in the dark, with Glen flexing his enwrapped arms over her back and hips, the Xenomorph trailing her palms over his shoulders and center back.

Mariah gave off a satisfied, calmed sigh, laced with the raggedy hissing her kind naturally made.

Glen mumbled an unreadable muse, and lifted himself to view between the mounds he had buried himself in for the remainder of the after effects.

The Xenomorph's chest heaved, and she glanced down at him with a smile on her toothy features, their faces only an inch or so apart, one of her palms came away from his back to soothe the hair on the back of his head.

She had always found the 'Fur' an odd addition to him, but for the moment, she did not seem to notice its existence as she doted on him.

The telepathic connection she had established did not give him any of her thoughts, nor read his own to her, and that was simply because Mariah was too tired to really give any expended effort for it. Glen could say that was mutual.

"W-Was that too your expectations...?" He joked lowly.

"-Oh yes... Indeed..." Her fatigued response came. "... I want to do it again... And again..."

"You're gonna' give me a heart attack, Mariah..." He smiled. "-How do you think we should get... The-uh... The fuel for it, eh?"

There was no time for considering what the next action against the Company would be, nor where their next stop for supplies or a hideout ended...

There was no time for worrying about the stress he and she had been worrying about for their entire lives...

When he was a little boy, he saw many things that children normally didn't see. To the contrary of first impressions of that widely broad fact, these things were good.

But now that he was a man, he saw many things that your average HUMAN didn't normally see...

And with this beautiful creature underneath him at the moment, Glen Hansson believed he had found himself not only the key to happiness in his life, but to stopping what they both wished to destroy once and for all.

Mariah was now his lifeline, there was someone else in the mess of life with him, someone who cared. His deceased parents would have been ecstatic for him, forget what the first impressions would be.

And heck, wherever they were, his parents were already ecstatic for him.

So yeah, there was no time for anything but his new partner.

So on the subject of his prior query, the Xenomorph gave off a lewd grin, took her palms to trail a caress down his upper-arms.

Mariah asked only one thing before they could go for round two.

"Same as before?"

"Of course..."

"-How long do you think?"

"I don't know. I don't care. Just talk to me."

-0-0-0-0-0-

FIN