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The plan was for the Arc Ship Nausicaa to travel for hundreds of years to the other side of the galaxy. Once it arrived at the so-called cradle world, the AI would automatically set down the lander and terraform the place into earth-like conditions. Then, once the climate was stable, the vast array of animals and plants that had been carefully cultivated on the ship for hundreds of years would be seeded to create biomes and an unmarred nature reserve. The crew for the mission was only a single woman. She was a multi-disciplined zoologist, botanist, climatologist and a host of other associated sciences. The terraforming was all standard and computerised, but there needed to be a human who could be called upon out of stasis in the event of any of the many problems that could occur in this vast endeavour, especially with how easily animals could fuck up a carefully planned program. Her name was Lily Adana. She was born offworld in a little colony where she had spent all her time growing up learning about the plants and animals of Earth, and longing to see its vast blue skies and green forests for herself. She had been brilliant in school and qualified to become a Weyland-Yutani space going scientist, in the hopes she would one day be able to settle on earth and sit by the beach to listen to birds. That hadn’t happened though, and despite her best efforts to steer her life she ended up on an Arc Ship by herself never to return to civilised space, unless it came to her. She could hear something fading into her consciousness that was seperate from the dreamless deep sleep of stasis. There was a sudden rush of frigid air and Lily gasped, back arching and eyes shooting open. Her arms rushed to surround her torso, the thin singlet and under clothes failing to keep her at all warm. As she panted from being jerked awake, she realised the rush of air was the stasis pod door opening. There was several panels powered on and blinking to get her attention, as well as an incessant beeping she assumed was designed to assist her in shaking the deep sleep.Lily groaned and sat up, her entire body fatigued from the stasis, and she could feel nausea starting to grip her stomach. Cryo-sickness was common for sleeps of 50 years of more, and she knew that if she had arrived she had been asleep for about 1500 years. Pushing though the nausea, she grit her teeth and swung her legs over the side of the pod, smoothly standing, before falling to her hands and knees and dry heaving. She felt tears in her eyes as she convulsed from the pain.
OK, let’s take it slow instead.
In half an hour she had managed to get to the small living area and, bundled in a blanket and having swallowed medicine to help her body wake up, demolished some OK tasting spiced nutrient bars. There was nicer food stocked, but the computer wouldn’t let her have it until it was 24 hours after she had woken. Only then did she begin to peruse the status tablet. The Nausicaa was a true behemoth of human engineering. All kinds of biomes had their own self-contained biosphere designed and computer controlled to raise the plants and animals required to build a planet sized nature reserve representing old Earth in all its glory. Each biosphere was its own shuttle which was designed to detach from The Nausicaa after the terraforming was complete to seed the globe in the correct climates. She navigated through several screens of dry status reports only to find some odd readings from the micro-biosphere. A micro-biosphere was meant to be a model of the larger ones, so when the environment was meant to be moved to the next change the computer would monitor changes in the micro ones before attempting the same with the main one. One container that would house a normal biosphere housed every one of the micro-biospheres. Most of the sensors were shot in the micro-biosphere, and the ones that were still working were only reporting that things were slightly removed from the expected conditions. As she was reading one of the terminals began scrolling text from the computer. Lily looked up to see it was an order from the computer to repair or replace the unresponsive sensors. Lily scowled, her expertise was in Earth, but as the only crew member she had to do things like this, as the computer’s drones weren’t equiped for that kind of job. “Fuck it.” With a huff she buried her head in her arms, wishing she could have a day to wait out the sickness, but the terraforming was finished and the computer wanted to perform the final stages of the orbiting stage, and it couldn’t without access to the micro-biospheres. After an hour of procrastination, she finally started moving to do the computer’s bidding. She moved to the equipment lockers and removed one of the many, many Atmo suits and standard issue underclothes to change into from her sleep wear. The Atmo suit was basically just a rubber bodysuit, with an associated helmet, backpack, gloves, boots and belt, which were each designed to connect snugly to make an airtight seal. After she donned the outfit, she stared at herself in the locker’s mirror and shivered. The suit really wasn’t much better than a rubber sheet at keeper her warm, so she also pulled out several plastic ponchos and draped them over the outfit. They would keep her a bit warmer, at the expense of it being more awkward to pull things from the belt. As an afterthought she grabbed a taser from the armoury. The animals could be drugged into sleep for maintenance, but literally all of Earth’s dangerous animals were living in the various biospheres, including the ones she would need to enter. After a quick look at the suit’s watch to note the time, she set off. The door to the micro biosphere opened and Lily stepped through, letting it close behind her. She started walking down the narrow passageway that fitted between the amazonian jungle biome and the pacific coral reef biome. There was a control station in this section in the centre of the vast circular domed container, from where the individual micro biospheres fanned out like slices on a pizza, giving each one equal space. There were small service walkways like this one that fitted in between the ‘slices’, but very few entrances into the segments, as each entrance represented the requirement for extra sealing and airlocks to make sure the internal environments were kept in constant conditions and seperate from each other. Lily experimentally removed one of the suit gloves and trailed a bare hand across the dividing wall to the amazon biome. It was as cool as the rest of the ship, which at least meant the sealing was working, but she couldn’t help but feel disappointed at how cold the ship was. As she was looking down and fiddling with the straps to put the glove back on, she banged her head into one of the slightly lower pipes that ran across the ceiling and swore violently. “Fucking clunky ass space suit-” She stopped and blindly unclasped the helmet, ripping it off and surveying the damage. Cracks spiderwebbed across the visor, but Lily reckoned the helmet could hold its seal for hours more. The Nausicaa was fully pressurised apart from the computer drone’s maintenance areas, so she was in no danger of suffocating barring some catastrophic failure. Lily scowled and dropped the helmet, it was hard to see out of, and if there was some kind of emergency there’d be a spare in the container’s local control room. As she continued she pulled off the gloves as well, stuffing them awkwardly into a pouch on the suit’s belt. It was about 5 kilometres from the edge of the dome to the control centre, which turned out to be a long way to walk in the dark and shadow filled hallway. She finally arrived at the door into the control room, and despite her improvised jacket and the walking, was feeling quite chilly. She punched a switch and the door slid open. To her surprise she was met with a blast of hot air. “Ohhhhh… warm at last!” Lily dashed in and shut the door. There was a reactor under the control room, which may explain the heat. She wondered over to the consoles and started turning them on. The control room was more a control tower, as it made up the middle of the dome, so there were higher levels of the tower with windows for looking over and monitoring the eight or so sample biomes. It had been quite barren 1500 years ago, but she had made sure there were sofas and other important implements so the tower could be lived in, as she figured that it would be quite a view. Lily had been planning on living in this particular section of the ship and routing all the feeds from the main control room anyway. As the lights came on and she overcame the surprise of being warm, she started to notice a funny smell. Lily shrugged and tapped away at the controls, trying to figure out how she was going to replace all 284 cameras, motion detectors, temperature sensors, sonar, motion trackers and microphones. Lily put in the command to open the crate of sensors, only to be met with a blinking red triangle with the Weyland-Yutani emblem in the centre. Lily frowned and tried again, this time carefully putting in the key. Again she was rejected. Why was she being locked out? She turned to go back to the computer bank when she noticed the same symbol on the doors leading to the access tunnels. She walked to the monitors and brought up an area map to see that the maintenance walkways were listed as ‘VACUUM - EVACUATED’. Lily’s blood ran cold.
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Lily had frantically tried everything she knew to try and get the walk ways re-pressurised to no avail. However, she did catch the edge of a computer log before the computer locked her out of that too, and what she had seen had made her vision blurry: 1453nausciaaTime:printScreen:”TEST_BEGUN”, noteTime/Day/Month/Year:1453/03/09/27821454nausciaaTime:printVariableTestScheduledEnd:TEST_SCHEDULED_END=UNDEFINEDShe was in some fucked up test, and the computer wasn’t programmed with a finish date. Not only were the doors sealed, but the hallways were flat vacuum, and she had broken her helmet.
The helmet!
Wiping the tears from her eyes, Lily surged to her feet and ran to the emergency locker. The flashing symbol was on it too, but she didn’t give up hope just yet. It was thin and shoddy metal, and Lily cast around for something pointy and heavy. She grabbed a mountaineering piton from a locker and started to lay into the emergency locker. There was a quiet thud behind her, unnoticed due to the blood rushing in her ears. There was a slight hissing intake of breath from behind, and she felt the coolness on the back of her neck. Lily froze, pinion forgotten, at the feeling of something incredibly, uncomfortably, close to her, looming over her, but not touching her. Goose bumps covered her as she went into a cold sweat, the moment seeming to last forever. Her breath came in quick pants, and she started to shiver from the sweat running down the inside of the atmo suit. There was an almost silent exhale and a shiver went up her spine at the light touch of cool air against the back of her neck. Her heart pounding in her ears, Lily slowly began to turn her head. There wasn’t anything behind her. Lily sank to her knees, adrenaline like ice coursing through her veins, as she started to shiver from the terror. Her arms came up to cradle her body as her head lowered and she started to sob.
What
was
that?
She sat there for minutes trying to get herself back under control.
I imagined it. There was nothing there. I imagined it. I imagined it…
She rose shakily to her feet, having to steady herself on a nearby bench. Lily made her way over to the computers and sank heavily into the swivel chair.
There was nothing there. I’ll check the cameras, there was nothing there. There was nothing-
Lily stared horrified at the recorded feed, a hand rising to cover her mouth. It showed her hitting the locker as a black shape dropped from the ceiling, from out of the camera’s view. It loomed over her, then lightly disappeared above the camera’s view again, presumably onto the ceiling. Lily’s blood froze in her veins. The only noise she could hear was the low hum of the engines, kilometres away, and the low gurgle of liquids being pumped around the room. Then, a slow, slightly hissing breath in. Tears rolled down Lily’s face as she felt cold fingers slowly grasp her shoulders, and something long and rough wrapped securely around her waist. With a burst of motion Lily scrambled for the taser strapped to her belt, but was caught up in ponchos and couldn’t reach it. Two more of the prehensile tail-like things whipped up and wrapped around her arms and pulled, as she was hoisted bodily from the chair. She kicked her legs and screamed, but was otherwise immobilised. The hands on her shoulders let go as the tails on her arms crept further up to securely grasp her shoulders. Now suspended by only the tails, Lily froze as a low and animalistic growl of displeasure came from just behind her left ear. There was a low slithering as she rotated in the air, the tails shifting to accomodate the new position, and she got a full view of her captor. It was black and glossy, if it had skin it was covered by ridges of perhaps cartilage or even chitin from taloned toe to head. The head had no eyes, and as she watched lips slid back to the gums to reveal needle like teeth bared in an inhuman grin. Three tails curled from its lower back to wrap around her, and they appeared to be almost skeletal. It was about a meter or so taller than her as it straightened, and raised one of its hands to in front of her face. With fright she saw the wicked talons curving at the ends of its fingers, but with a click the blades shifted back, and it ran the back of its finger down her cheek, following a tear track. The clawless fingertip collected the tear and flicked it from her face, to which she could only tremble with fear, any confusion forgotten. Lily felt helpless hanging there, but could only imagine the ease with which it could twist her arms off. It stepped back into the centre of the room, taking her with it, and its arms extended and grasped her firmly by the legs. The tail around her waist uncoiled and was gone. It craned forwards so she was staring up into the front of its glossy back skull. Its mouth opened, and to Lily’s ever mounting horror, a snake-like appendage slithered from where it’s tongue should be to sway in front of her face. The appendage had a smooth head, and was more fleshy than the rest of the creature. A mouth split the appendage and a tongue lolled out, but the scent from within caught Lily full in the face. She reeled back, as the slightly sweet and pleasant smell made her head spin. She vaguely noted that the appendage had retreated back into the thing’s mouth, and that a dull buzz was spreading down her arms and legs, The thing had pulled back again so there was space between them, and the thing’s third tail rose to sway between them like a snake charmed by a melody. Now she was closer, she dazedly noted the skeletal tails were not sharp or rough like sandpaper, just textured and bumpy. A barbed and pointed blade slid from the end of the tale, glinting in the light of the overhead fluorescent. Suddenly brought back to full awareness, Lily realised she was not afraid of the thing anymore. The pleasant buzz was still there though, and she could feel herself tense up.
It drugged me with its breath? What the fuck is this thing!
The blade on the tail facing tipped towards her, and suddenly swept downwards and cut a ragged line through her ponchos, exposing the bodysuit. The surprise shook her again from her daze, and she started to struggle futilely against her bonds. The creature’s mouth opened and the snake-like appendage darted out, before its mouth opened and spat something at her. Something sticky and sweet smelling splashed onto her face, it had the same aroma as its breath, and as Lily shrieked she could feel herself swallowing the viscous fluid. Warmth spread through her body, and suddenly Lily couldn’t help but trust the thing before her. Its tail once again rose before her, the blade retracted, and the tip caressed her cheek. It continued down, lightly touching her neck, and traced a wavy line between her breasts, around her belly button and onto her thigh. It continued to roam, tickling the inside of her thigh before gently tracing a path over to her other thigh. She couldn’t help it and bucked forwards, trying to increase the stimulation. Lily felt like she was in a car which was spinning out of control towards a ledge, and there was nothing she could do. Her body wasn’t responding to her, it was butter in the hands of this inhuman creature. The tail slithered over the crotch of her bodysuit and Lily moaned in frustration against her will. There was a quiet sound like leather on flesh, and then she could feel the rubber between her legs stretch and part for the thing’s sharp tail. Cool air rushed over her sweat soaked underclothes, and Lily realised she was shivering in anticipation. The once again blunt end of the tail pressed against her vagina, and Lily felt a shock of pleasure course through her. It massaged her briefly though her panties, then deftly nudged them out of the way and slithered in. The tip only penetrated half an inch, but it was enough. It swirled around, massaging just inside her pussy, and it was enough to push Lily over the edge. Lily’s back arched and her face contorted in a silent scream as she convulsed, waves of pleasure crashing through her with each contraction over, and over, and over again. Her mind was blank and the roof swum before her eyes for what felt like an eternity as she rode out the mind blowing orgasm. Finally, she hung limp in the thing’s arms, utterly spent. She was vaguely aware of being carried in a much gentler fashion, and then the softness of a bed, and then nothing.