Incomplete, Work-in-Progress
 
 A vague fusion of a Deathworlders-ish humanity meeting a Star Trek-ish alien Federation of fragile fluffballs, all crossed with a Aliens/Zerg/Tyranid-ish threat. Written on a whim after seeing this (https://www.hentai-foundry.com/pictures/user/ImpracticalArt/982654/xeno) particular image and craving some wild xenosexual action. Then got distracted and never went back to it, which is pretty typical for me, heh.
 
 Tags: Non-Sexual (so far), Sci-Fi, Humanity Fuck Yeah!, Xenomorph
 
 
1.
 Captain's Logbook, Patrolship #73409.
 
 503041:564, Entry #1
 
 We recieved news of a distress call at 06:98, shortly after the ship's first day shift began. The rather garbled message was relayed to us by a small Gorelian private yacht, which itself was diverting to respond to the aid request. The signal apparenty originated from the Transit Assistance Station (#540302) orbiting a nearby star (White Dwarf #4302210). As the system itself is otherwise entirely uncolonized (and basically uninhabitable, given that the largest solid object in it is an irregularly orbiting airless asteroid less than 30km in diameter), we're also diverting to render assistance. Hopefully the crew of the station is just having trouble with their superliminal transmitter or some other simple matter. Given that we have one of those recently discovered primitives (species #8574) as a trainee crewmember/cultural ambassador aboard, I'd hate for them to be exposed to some of the nastier things that the galaxy has to offer.. especially on one of the first trips that the species has taken off their home planet.
 
 I've got a bad feeling about this distress call, though. For some reason, it reminds me of the great outbreak of 3014. Founders forbid that we run into another infestation of species 13*.. I still have flashbacks about the last time.
 
 503041:588, Entry #1
 
 We've arrived at the station, and it is dead in space. No lights, no apparent power, and no responses to our varied attempts at communication from the crew aboard the station.. there isn't so much as anyone outside an airlock waving a flashlight around. Given that we even shot a com hardline across to their hull after we matched velocities and still got no response, I think it's fairly safe to say that only bad news awaits our search and rescue section on that station.
 
 Our primitive insists on accompanying the away team, and unfortunately I don't have a sufficient reason to refuse it. It possesses most of the relevant qualifications, at least.. though how much good that will do it if my suspicions are correct, I don't know. At least its species has a rather sturdy constitution (to put it mildly) so there is that, for whatever it might be worth.
 
 The Gorelian yacht arrived before us and docked. Its lights are still on at least, but whoever was on the little pleasure boat isn't responding to hails either, so they must have boarded the station. And they haven't come back out yet. It may all be nothing, just broken com equipment like I told the crew. I hope it's nothing.. but a part of me (and it's a large part, I'm ashamed to admit) wants to simply stand off at a distance and empty our torpedo tubes into the station until it cracks like an egg. Perhaps that makes me a coward, and maybe I am.. but I can almost feel them over there. Species 13*.. Founders, but I hope I'm not about to send my rescue team over to that station to die.. not like that. No one deserves that.
 
 503041:588, Entry #2
 
 The worst has come to pass: it's them, I know it. I can hear the team yelling over the coms.. hear them screaming, probably dying right at this very moment. What do I do? What can I do!? We've already retracted the boarding tube, per protocol. But even if we hadn't, would I dare let anything return back across it? When the safety of the rest of my crew would be put in jeopardy?
 
 I think there's only one reasonable course of action left. Founders forgive me..
 
2.
 Transcript of Cadet (#4043889232049382) Jkift's headcam recording for Search and Rescue boarding operation of in distress T.A. Station #5403 on date 503041:588.
 
 [Transcript Begins]
 
 Lieutenant (#340039820032) St'ort: Right, form up! Let's do this by the book, spacers. Captain's worried about this one, so let's not screw anything up this time. I talking to you, Jkift! Watch those clumsy feet and that cursed trigger finger of yours!
 
 Cadet Jkift: Yes, L.T., I'll be careful! (mumbles to self) I swear, one time.. just one time, and they never let it go.
 
 Lt. St'ort: Actually, you stick by our guest, Jkift. It's the least you can do, after what happened. Watch their back while we're on the station. I want you glued to their side, got it!?
 
 Cadet Jkift: Yes, sir. Consider me glued, sir.
 
 Lt. St'ort: And you, human.. for Founders' sake, stay in the middle of the formation unless I tell you otherwise. I know this is all new to you, but don't wander around and gawk like some backwater yokel, understand? The captain will peel my shell if you get yourself hurt!
 
 Trainee (#238398349834978723) Johnson: Yes, sir. I'll be careful.
 
 Lt. St'ort: Good. Now, let's move, spacers! That station's been incommunicado for too long, and it's our job to find out why! Follow me!
 
 (sounds of marching spacers)
 
 Lt. St'ort: Fkest, the airlock door!
 
 (sounds of airlock being opened manually)
 
 Lt. St'ort: Sometime this week, Fkest!
 
 Cadet (#4043889232049893) Fkest: Sorry sir, mechanism seems gummed up or something. I'll have it in a moment!
 
 (sounds of airlock being opened manually)
 
 Lt. St'ort: Alright, good work. Everyone in!
 
 Lt. St'ort: Fkest, close the outer door!
 
 Cadet Fkest: On it.
 
 (sounds of airlock being closed manually)
 
 Cadet Fkest: Done, sir! The ship is retracting the boarding tube.
 
 Lt. St'ort: Good, now open the inner door. Everyone stack up, I want every angle and corner covered when we go in!
 
 (sounds of airlock being opened manually)
 
 (Hiss and woosh of air entering airlock)
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) Is all this necessary? Isn't the station friendly?
 
 Cadet Jkift: (Whispering) Probably not, but it's procedure for com loss situations. The higher ups have a bug up their asses about it, for some reason. Guess they're still stuck on the last outbreak, but that's been over for decades.
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) Outbreak? Outbreak of what?
 
 Lt. St'ort: Cut the chatter and pay attention, you two! Door's almost open!
 
 (metallic clang as airlock door fully retracts)
 
 Lt. St'ort: Move, let's move spacers. Fan out and check those corners.. check those corners!
 
 Miscelaneous Cadets: Clear! Clear! Clear here! Clear!
 
 Lt. St'ort: Entrance room cleared! Everyone who isn't Fkest, eyes on the doors to the hallway. Fkest, check the wall com!
 
 Cadet Fkest: Power's definitly down, sir. Not even getting a trickle from tertiary backup. No coms with the rest of the station from here.. or probably anywhere else. I think we're gonna have to do a full, manual sweep.
 
 Lt. St'ort: Right, let's get to it then. Stack up on the hallway's doors! Jkift, Johnson, shift to the rear!
 
 Lt. St'ort: Everyone ready? Good. Fkest, the door! Move! Check the corners and the ceiling.
 
 Miscelaneaous Cadets: Clear! Clear! Ceiling Clear!
 
 Lt. St'ort: Hallway cleared. Break up by teams to check the four side rooms. Fkest, your squad is with me on point, watching the door at the end of the hall. Jkift, Johnson, keep an eye on our rear. Go!
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) Man, your guys are really taking this seriously, aren't they? It's kind of exciting!
 
 Cadet Jkift: (Whispering) Yeah, I guess the captain has a "feeling" about this one, whatever that means. I think St'ort is just being a by-the-book hardass because he's trying to impress: he's been wanting another promotion for years now. Like this is a real bug hunt, or something. (muffled laughter)
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) Bug hunt? What's that mean?
 
 Cadet Jkift: (Whispering) You know, those cursed space bugs? The ones that we can never quite stamp out? Species thirt..
 
 Miscelaneous Cadets: Room's clear! This one is clear! Room is clear! Clear!
 
 Lt. St'ort: Good! Form up and stack on the door at the end of the hall!
 
 Cadet Jkift: (Whispering) Oops, we're moving. Let's go.
 
 Lt. St'ort: Fkest, door on my mark!
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) Hey, so I know that I'm not supposed to be "gawking" or whatever.. but what's this stuff?
 
 Cadet Jkift: (Whispering) What stuff?
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) This.. stuff. Whatever it is, it looks like it's oozing out of the air ducts above our.. er, your heads.
 
 Cadet Jkift: (Whispering) What? Show me.
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) See it up here? It looks like some sort of.. I dunno, secreted resin or something.
 
 Cadet Jkift: (Whispering) ..Secreted resin?
 
 (faint sound of something brittle snapping)
 
 Trainee Johnson: (Whispering) Yeah.. but secreted from what? Here, have a piece.
 
 Cadet Jkift: But.. but that looks like.. oh. Oh, shit! L.T.! L.T., wait!
 
 Lt. St'ort: Mark!
 
 Cadet Jkift: No!
 
 (Sounds of a door being kicked open)
 
 (Loud, metallic sounding and animalistic screeching)
 
 Misceleaneaous Cadets: (Screaming)
 
 (Sounds of multiple rapidfire weapon discharges)
 
 Misceleaneaous Cadets: (More screaming)
 
 (A meanacing hiss, a frantic cry, a deep bellow, then garbled static)
 
 [Transcript Ends]
 
3.
 Exerpt from the journal of Trainee (#238398349834978723) Johnson, detailing personal observations of relevent events.
 
 Entry #16 (273 days into our five year mission, bleh)
 
 So, I'm just gonna have to say this: Outer space is pretty boring.
 
 Surprising, no? After all the movies and books and comics and other crap we've made over the years about the subject, you'd think that we'd have gotten it at least partially correct, right? Well, wrong.
 
 Remember that phrase.. "Space, the final frontier"? Yeah, there ain't no frontier out here, buddy. The entire galaxy has already been explored and studied in detail, a dozen times over by hundreds of different alien species. Every nebula, every star, every stellar system, every planet, every comet, every asteroid, and every single little damn chunk of ice, rock, or pebble larger than a baby's fist? They're all mapped out, and each one's orbit carefully logged. Every single detail about the galaxy catalogued, published, and made readily available for navigation needs, scientific studies, or even just casual perusal at home.
 
 Oh, but what about black holes, you ask? Those corpses of dead, super massive stars? The ones that have collapsed down to a point so small that they're dense enough to trap even light itself? Those invisible perils to space navigation that can suck down an unwary space ship in a (relative) instant, dooming all aboard to a slow death of "spaghetiffication"? Or bathe a passing craft and its occupants in some of the nastiest, most energetic radiation around? Yeah, they're all accounted for.. no worries! Your ship's G.P.S. (Galactic Positioning System) comes preprogrammed with default routes well away from any danger (or excitement) that you might accidentally stumble across.
 
 There's nothing left to explore, no mysteries to be found. And for someone who has dreamed and fantasized about breaking free of the bonds of the Earth and travelling into the great beyond their whole life? It. Is. Freaking. Boring.
 
 But what about the aliens, you might ask. Surely, life on other planets is far more interesting than the planets themselves, right? Yeah, no. Wrong again. First off, in comparison to us humans, everything else seems to be made of paper. They are FRAGILE, like wow. So flimsy. And small. Brush up against one of the little things too hard and it'll fall to pieces flimsy. Not all of them, of course.. but most. Some of them (the more sturdy ones) are tough enough that you'd have to actually *try* to push your fingers through their flesh and bones (or whatever equivalent they might have), instead of just doing it accidentally. You could still do it, of course, but it'd take you some effort to accomplish.. a little bit, anyway. Probably.
 
 This leads into the second point: travel. Since they're so very, very fragile, aliens tend to favor modes of transport that accomodate their limitations. Which means, in layperson human caveman speak, that their spaceships are Freaking. Slow. Like, oh my god are we there yet I've gotta pee right now dad slow. They have FTL (faster than light) travel of course, but it only works correctly.. (And don't ask me how it actually works. I think it might literally be beyond human comprehension. Our brains just aren't wired in the right way to understand the funky "math" and "physics" that some alien species thousands or millions(!) of years ago invented to describe the process.) ..it only works correctly when outside of a major gravity well.
 
 Which means that one has to travel the normal way from a planet on the inside of a stellar system out to its very edge. Literally millions and billions of kilometers.. all at a measly 0.1 to 0.2 gee thrust. Now, even a tenth of a standard earth gravity will add up over time to some ferocious speeds.. but it does take TIME. And of course, since you have to turn around and start slowing down again at the half way point, it all winds up taking even l.o.n.g.e.r. to get wherever you're going to. And then, when you do finally arrive in a new location via magical FTL space travel.. you have to make another slow ass trip to get back down to the nearest inhabited planet! Arg! So slow, so boring! So slow that you want to bang your head against the wall in frustration but you can't because you might accidentally put a hole in the side of some flimsy alien's flimsy damned space ship.
 
 But.. but what about colonization, you might ask? Forget the aliens, forget exploration.. let's find a new planet to inhabit! Build a new society, a new civilization.. a whole new World! Shining, shimmering, splendid! One free of the trappings and weight of the old one.. It should be easy, since everything has already been explored, yes? Just find a nice, cozy looking uninhabited planet in the galactic database and settle it, right? No. Wrong. Well, not wrong exactly, but.. hmm, you're gonna have to get in line, I'm afraid. And why do you have to get in line? Well, that brings me to my last point.. the worst one of all.
 
 There's no nice way to put it, either, so I'm just going to have to say it: All the aliens out there in the galaxy? Yeah, they're all a bunch of god damned space bureaucrats. Well, maybe not all of them, but at least all the ones in charge are. Want to do something in outer space, anything at all? Well, don't worry, there's a form for it. Hell, there's probably two dozen forms for it! And you're gonna have to find each of them and fill them all out (perfectly mind you or they'll come back full of metaphorical red ink and you'll have to start over) and submit them to the proper department of the galactic government. (And oh yes of course there is one of those, did you think you could escape such things just by fleeing Earth? Haha foolish optimist) And then you'll have to wait until you hear back from them for approval of your little space project.. and of course, all of this physical mail (required for any forms submitted, records must be kept!) is moving back and forth by (slow ass) courier ship.
 
 Not that the galactic government is in any hurry to get things done, as it's only been around for millenia, after all. Not just millenia, but hundreds of thousands of years or more.. long before our species even fully evolved, it was already chugging along just as slowly then just as it does now. Heck, the galactic government has even known about us for most of our existence, too. Species #8574, that's us! Though for most of that, we were known as #8574* instead, with the asterisk indicating that our sapience was "up for debate". Estimates for a prelimnary first contact with us was put at anywhere from ten thousand to a hundred thousand years from now.. if we survived that long on our own, of course.
 
 Then that estimated timeline was moved rather abruptly up, when a group of young, wealthy alien kids pulled the equivalent of stealing daddy's fancy sports car and crashing it into a pond.. only the car in question was an expensive racing space ship and the pond in question just happened to be the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. And naturally, this went down during the latest American President's inaugration ceremony, with hundreds of thousands of witnesses present and television coverage reaching hundreds of millions across the planet. Things got a little hectic for a bit after that, until we figured out that the kids in question were (much) more afraid of us than we were of them. A fear that proved to be quite valid when El Nuevo Presidente accidentally ripped a fragile alien arm right off when attempting a friendly handshake with one of them. On live T.V., of course. The kid lived (thankfully), but the whole fiasco pretty much set the tone for Humanity's awkward integration into the wider galactic community.
 
 And now here I am, continuing the new and exiting human tradition of trying not to accidentally kill any aliens by bumping into them too hard. I'm on my first extra solar trip, aboard the proud vessel Patrolship #73409 (remember, space bureaucrats.. numbers are apparently much more efficient than actual names). We're a mighty craft, equipped with the latest technological achievements in space flight, space combat, and space rescue operations. In fact, our hull was laid down a mere twelve thousand years ago.. she's practically brand new!
 
 And what exactly are the duties that I and the rest of the ship's crew are responsible for, you might ask? Well, imagine the Triple A (American Automobile Association).. but in space. And that's pretty much it. A vessel has a problem in our patrol area, maybe it runs out of reaction mass or even breaks down completely? Then we're on the way to save the day! Eventually anyway, given how gods damned slow the ship is at getting anywhere. Not that such breakdowns occur very often. Spacetravel has been a routine thing for the wider galaxy since before the first human ancestor fell out of his tree, so it's pretty darn reliable by now, all told.
 
 But.. but what about Space Pirates, you ask! Haha nope, sorry. No Space Pirates around these parts, I'm afraid. Or any parts, really. Simply put, most aliens don't value collecting wealth like humans do. And why would they value such a thing, when the average alien can subsist and even thrive off a bare fraction of the resources that it takes to keep even a small human alive and healthy. Their peaceful, pleasant little worlds simply lacked the evolutionary pressures to form hoarding strategies.. even as those same strategies allowed so many Terran species to survive in the face of stiff competition, frequent natural disasters, and persistant predators.
 
 Hmm.. but what about rogue comets or asteroids? Surely we're responsible for saving planets or ships from those, right? Well, remember the bit about the entire galaxy being mapped down to the smallest detail? Yeah, there can't really be any rogue asteroids if every single one of them are known and accounted for, I'm afraid. Drat, but what about belligerant space empires? Warmongering alien lords bent on conquest and domination? No luck there, either. Well, apparently there were a few in the past.. but it didn't go very well for them, all told.
 
 See, the thing about the galactic government? Sure, it may be slow, and cumbersome, and inefficient.. but more than anything else, its one defining attribute is that it is *big*. Like BIG big. Big as in it occupies millions upon millions of inhabited worlds, let alone the nigh uncountable tide of spaceborn orbitals, stations, and ships that it operates. It is an organization made up of thousands of different sapient species, many of which are so ancient that they still have records of the Founding itself. And something with the size and depth of resources that the galactic government has can generally treat budding space empires in exactly the same way that a human can treat an irritating alien: they nudge the problem, using a bare fraction of their true weight and strength, and it just goes away.
 
 It's hard to go on a conquering spree when the galactic government can casually deposit a million armed and fully operational battleships on your doorstep whenever it pleases. Sure, it may take awhile for those ships to finally get there, but as sure as death and taxes, they WILL arrive. And once they get done dismantalling your little fleet of warships and your pathetic excuse for an empire, they'll leave a parting gift for your homeworld: a grid of thousands of laser cannon/spy stations occupying every possible orbit above the planet. And the job that those stations perform? Well, it's not to protect your newly defenseless world from anyone else, that's for damned sure. They're there to protect everyone else in the galaxy from *you* and your belligerant species. Anything more than bare subsistence farming is basically impossible when a dozen capital grade lasers routinely lance down from the heavens to zap any piece of technology more complicated than a wheelbarrow.
 
 So, there we have it. Space is boring. There's no exploration, there's no danger, there's no adventure, there's no quick way to get around, and there's basically no fun or excitement. At all. And here I am: stuck out here on this damned boat for another four years.. *galactic* years too, not Terran ones. They're much, much longer than ours.
 
 It's just like the Beach Boys said: I wanna go home. Why don't they let me go home? This is the worst trip I've ever been on.
 
 What I wouldn't give for a something exciting to happen.. anything at all!
 
 Entry #17 (274 days into our five year mission)
 
 You know what, I may have spoken too soon. We apparently recieved a jen-you-wine distress call today, how about that! This is literally the first real emergency (even if it is probably only a busted transmitter, like the captain expects) that we've had so far on this trip. I'm actually kind of excited.. who knows just what all could have happened to that transit station? They might actually need help. There could be genuine danger afoot! Or even ayard!
 
 Well, whatever the emergency is, we're officially on the way! The ship was a veritable hive of activity.. for about fifteen minutes before we executed an emergency burn at *gasp* 0.5 gee.. for an entire hour. Gotta be honest, the weight felt good on my bones.. this constant low gee is killing me. I know that I have my personal quarters set at close to normal earth gravity (literally maxed the dial out), but I'm only in there when I'm not on duty. Which is less than half the time. The doc says I don't need any more supplements, but what does he know about it, anyway? Well, whatever. I suppose that it can't be helped. We should arrive at the station (which is two systems away) in good time, which means about three and a half weeks.. sigh.
 
 Entry #18 (299 days into our five year mission)
 
 We've arrived in system and have begun burning for the transit station. Apparently their coms are down completely now, so it probably is just their FTL transmitter. Those things are kinda crap anyway. Seriously, I know FTL coms at all are kind of a miracle, but five bytes per second bandwidth limitations? Ugh, that's brutal. That's morse code level brutal. Apparently their radio coms are offline as well, but maybe they're just not bothering to transmit with them? This system is as dead and empty as they come, so seems reasonable since there literally isn't anyone else to talk to most of the time. We're due to arrive tomorrow, so I guess we'll see!
 
 Entry #19 (301 days into our five year mission)
 
 I take it all back! All of it, except for the bits about the damned space bureaucrats! The station got taken over by real life alien monsters! How cool is that? Not very, actually, because a ton of people died, but still! Interesting and exciting! I even got to kill some of the things, too.. and I got wounded doing it, too! Not badly, because, come on.. aliens are *weak*, even the monster ones apparently. But maybe I'll get a purple heart out of it, or whatever the spacer equivalent is.
 
 I managed to keep the entire away team alive too, though quite a few people are missing limbs and other various bits. Hopefully they'll grow back or whatever, but if not, then I've heard good things about cloned organs and suchlike that can be done by proper doctors back on the more heavily populated planets. That's how the alien kid who lost an arm to the President got a new hand, so I'm sure that our guys will be put back into proper working order. Eventually anyway, even if it's not by our hack of a shipboard sawbones. I swear, the guy is bipolar about my health: first, he completely ignores my complaints about the longterm effects of the ship's low gravity on me, then he absolutely freaks out over some minor chemical burns. Jeez, it's just a little bit of redness, swelling, and lost skin. I've honestly had worse sunburns. I managed to escape while he was distracted dealing with bandaging up what left of poor old Jkift.
 
 Speaking of Jkift, he was the first one to figure out what was going on, even if it was too late by that point. Apparently congealed hardened slime oozing out of the air vents *isn't* normal, even in space. Go figure. By that time though, the L.T. had already kicked over the hive and it was too late to back out. I gotta say, I was a bit impressed by how the guys handled themselves at first. Disciplined fire, good aim, rock steady in the face of a charge.. it's just too bad that they were outnumbered five to one in close quarters.
 
 Things took a turn for the even worse when the monsters started popping out of air vents and dropping down on us from the ceiling. I managed to catch and chuck the one that aimed itself at me, but Jkift wasn't so lucky. He lost about half of his face to one's teeth and claws before I managed to pull it off him, then the unlucky bastard lost the other half when I snapped the fiesty little monster in half and a bunch of its blood splattered down on him. Apparently the nasty things are dangerous even when wounded and dying, because their blood is pretty caustic and tends to spray. I wound up with minor chemical burns anywhere it splashed on my bare skin, but it did much worse to everyone else.. and even to the floor, walls, and our armor. If you can actually call the aluminum foil outfits that they issue to us armor, anyway.
 
 I will say this, though: for aliens, the little buggers were pretty tough. Not Terran tough, but still pretty tough. Tough enough that the standard issue force projectors didn't seem capable of taking them down in less than three or four solid body shots. Not that that's actually saying much, because the standard issued FPs are pretty much crap. Jkift tripped over his own feet once, clumsy bastard that he is (or was, because he's gonna need a new foot or three to be able to trip over anything now), and managed to discharge his FP right into my face. Felt like I'd been popped a good one, but that was about it. L.T. was.. put out, shall we say.. and tore into poor Jkift pretty hard before hauling me off to the doc to get checked out. I was fine, of course, just got a black eye out of the deal. It wasn't even a good one. Doc tried to nanny me on that, too.
 
 So once the line broke, I had to step in. I couldn't get all of them myself and still protect the guys, of course, but I managed to keep the buggers from dragging anyone off and fended off the worst of the assault. It seems that once they got the idea through their weird little heads that they couldn't do much to hurt me, they backed off and retreated into their lair.
 
 Naturally, that's when thigs got even worser. Apparently the Captain started having a meltdown on the bridge, because PTSD is a bitch even in space it seems. He tried to order the ship to back off and blow the station to bits (with our away team still on it!) with every anti-matter torp that they had aboard. Thankfully, the X.O. stepped in and was able to talk the rest of the bridge crew down and relieve him of command. Good job, that.. I think I owe her a drink or two! Us reestablishing coms with the Patrolship helped, in that regard.. because apparently the idea of taking off and blowing up the station from a distance was quite the popular one with a lot of the crew. Aliens *really* don't like whatever these space monsters are, apparently.
 
 And speaking of the space monsters, they're pretty.. well, not impressive but at least average, I'd say! Imagine if someone crossed a grumpy tom cat with a pissed off spider monkey.. and then skinned the resulting abomination before dipping it in hot tar and covering what was left in black chitin.. and *then* stuck a live wire up the poor things ass to *really* make it angry.. and finally set a dozen of the screeching things loose inside of a cramped interior space with screaming, panicking spacers.
 
 They're clever, they're sneaky, they can seemingly stick to any surface at any angle (not all that impressive in micro-gee, to be honest), and they love dropping down onto spacers from above and ripping their eyeballs (or whatever) out. They're also pretty ugly and have a nasty sharp barb on the end of their segmented tail, so I guess add in a bit of scorpion to the abovementioned mix and you should have a pretty good idea of what they look like and what they're capable of in a fight.
 
 Oh, and apparently they reproduce by laying eggs inside of people or something, too.. and then eat whatever's left over afterward when they eventually hatch and burst out. So, all in all.. gross? But not *that* much of a threat, I'd think.. at least if my alien peers weren't treating the whole situation so deadly serious. I mean, they didn't even want to let us back over onto the Patrolship at first, but thankfully we managed on a compromise. They shot a bunch of medical isolation pods across the gap to us, and I tanked up all the injured spacers (which was everyone but me, basically) and then pushed them back over along the com hardline.
 
 That left dealing with the station, but it didn't amount to much fuss in the end. I just had them send over my Earth made kit, most of which merely consists of a *real* space suit with actual armor, zero-gee manuvering thrusters, and all the rest of the bells and whistles. After putting that on (and boy did it feel good to wear something sturdy for a change), I was able to just wade through the hive and make my way down to the engineering section. The little monsters tried to attack me on the way, of course, but there wasn't much that they could do to ceramic plates and ballistic mesh rated to stop micro meteorite impacts.. and possibly dynamic planetary re-entry (Those orbital drop surfers are insane, haha). Eventually (after I killed a few dozen more of them) they learned and backed off again, though I still had a line of them following me around and hissing menacingly everywhere I went.
 
 I managed to get the primary backup power online and the engineering computer booted up, though I knew it wouldn't last for very long if the flashing lights and wailing sirens were any indication. Apparently the little buggers had taken to crapping in the power bays, and their acidic poop had done a number on most of the fusion cells. Thankfully, the whole station was already a write off, so it didn't matter much. I set the station keeping thrusters to max, on a course for the white dwarf star at the center of the system. Then I just locked out and shut down the terminal I was using and got the heck out of there.
 
 Sure, it'll take a few years for the weak station keeping thrusters to slow the station's orbital speed down enough to make it fall into the star, and that's assuming that the power situation remains stable (which it probably won't).. but even if the station winds up missing the star entirely, it'll probably still get close enough to cook everything on board to a crisp. So.. mission accomplished, I guess.
 
 And no one even died to do it, yay! Well, as long as you don't count the crew of the station, or the poor sod who responded to the distress call before we did, or the dozen guys still in critical condition down in sick bay.
 
 Ah well, I guess that you win some, and you lose some.
 
4.
 Transcript of command level officer meeting of Patrolship #73409, concerning the events of the Species 13* infestion of T.A. Station #5403, the station's destruction, and the subsequent inflitration and infection of a crew member of said patrolship. Date 503041:598.
 
 [Transcript Begins]
 
 Executive Officer (#403908320) Bsz`bzng: Before we start this off, how is the Captain doing?
 
 Medical Officer (#320923092903) Hortesh: Resting. Still heavily sedated, but resting comfortably.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Have you informed him of Trainee Johnson's.. condition?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Given that it would only further aggravate his own issues, no.. I thought it unwise and unnecessary.
 
 X.O Bsz`bzng: That's probably for the best. Poor fellow is likely facing a medical retirement as it is.
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Though I have nothing but respect for the captain and his service, I'll be recommending such to the inevitable review board for this whole.. fiasco.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Hmm.. now, to the issue at hand: do we have any idea about how the blasted bug managed to get on this ship? And stay hidden afterward? If I recall correctly, and I do because I'm the one who issued the orders, the ship was swept no less than three seperate times.
 
 Colonel (#3020384028023) Purtrap: How exactly it got on board, we can only speculate.. as to where it hid? That's much easier. In the only place we didn't and probably couldn't search at the time: Trainee Johnson's quarters, which are routinely set to over five times standard gravity. Specifically in the vents above the human's room, which were just inside the radius of the gravitational lensing field.. if only barely. My smallest troops tend to be my most fragile ones, I'm afraid. They couldn't see far enough around the corner to spot the thing's egg during their sweeps without stepping into the field and being crushed.
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Johnson speculated during his time under my care (after his.. incident in the mess) that the bug may have gotten over to the ship in the same way as the injured personell in the medical pods.. namely, by following along the com line that was connecting the two ships.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: But.. but that line was over five hundred meters long.. are you telling me that Species Thirteen can survive a spacwalk through hard vacuum half a kilometer long!?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Apparently so. Even after all this time, our understanding of the capabilities of Species Thirteen is unfortunately limited. Understandably, given the complete research ban the Founders left in place, but still.. limited.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: That ban is in place for a good reason, and you know it!
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Indeed I do, and I completely agree with the reasoning for it. Species Thirteen is uncontainable: it has a one hundred percent escape rate, no matter how impossibly secure their cages initially seem to be. It isn't widely known, but the last outbreak began due to a small group ignoring the restriction and building a secret research facility. It was in deep space, isolated from everything and everyone, and the researchers only studied the creatures by remotely controlled mechanical drones and waldos. There was a ten kilometer vacuum gap between them and their subjects, and it still took Species Thirteen less than five years to break containment.. and a mere five years after that, a hundred billion people were dead and seventy systems had to be permanently quarantined and indefinitely interdicted.
 
 Col. Purtrap: Please, don't remind me. I was just a cadet at the time, but I remember.. I remember what we had to do to end it.. (heavy sigh) Anyway, after Johnson's coughing fit in the mess, I issued a command override and shut down his quarters' gravity field. We searched it and found a spent ovipositor drone beneath his bed. It was long dead, starting to mummify, and a bit on the small side.. but instantly recognizable. To us, anyway. Apparently, Johnson knew of it and thought it was just the galactic version of a dead terran animal, a "space spider" as he so eloquently put it. Did no one ever explain to the humans about Species Thirteen, for Founders' sake?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Apparently not. A completely unjustifiable oversight under normal circumstances, (sigh) though also somewhat understandable given the unexpected, rather rushed, and frankly chaotic introduction that Humanity had to galactic affairs. It's not like Species Thirteen is something that comes up often in polite coversation, now is it?
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: We're getting off topic. Colonel Purtrap, Doctor Hortesh, is my ship clean or not?
 
 Col. Purtrap: Yes, Ma'am. I've had the entire crew scouring the ship down to the smallest nook and cranny for days now. At least five different sets of eyes have been on *everything*, inside and out of the ship. I've also had every crew member in for medical exams, and each has come back clear. As far as I can tell, we're completely clean. I'd bet my life on it.
 
 M.O. Hortesh: (...)
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Hortesh..?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: I'm afraid.. that that's a bet you would lose, Colonel.
 
 Col. Purtrap: ..What?
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: What? Doctor, what are saying..?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: (sigh) As of 08:75 this morning, Trainee Johnson still has the immature member of Species Thirteen, the very one that he hacked up out of his own lungs and spit out into the middle of the crowded mess hall, in his possession.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: What!?
 
 Col. Purtab: But I thought he caught it and crushed it between his hands!
 
 M.O. Hortesh: He caught it, but he did not crush it. Furthermore, he refuses to relinquish the creature for destruction, nor do the deed himself. In his own words: "Aww, but look at the little guy.. he so cute!"
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng, Col. Purtrap: WHAT!?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Yes, that was about my first reaction, too. I think that I've pretty much moved on to resigned horror now, though.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: (Sputtering noises of outrage)
 
 Col. Purtrap: But.. but Johnson coughed that thing up DAYS ago. We all know how fast Species Thirteen grows.. it should be rampaging around the ship by now, with a quarter of us dead, another quarter imprisoned in slime, infected, and about to burst, and the rest of us shitting our collective britches and prepping the self destruct sequence!
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: (More sputtering noises)
 
 M.O. Hortesh: I've managed to convince Trainee Johnson.. after long and great exhortations of the stubborn lout, I might add.. that he needs regular checkups after his infection by Species Thirteen. He brings along the creature with him each time he comes to the medical section. Which means that I've been able make discrete observations of the vicious little thing while he was distracted by complaining about whatever routine medical scans he was undergoing.. even though he should by all rights be dead already! Whatever it is about Johnson's biology that allowed him to survive being infected by Species Thirteen has also seemed to stunt the creature's normally explosive growth. Not only that, but its incubation period inside of him was markedly longer than normal too, and it was well undersized for having had an initial host as large as a human like Johnson. Days after it emerged from him, long after it should have become fully grown, it is still less than fifteen centimeters in length.
 
 Col. Purtrap: How.. how by the Founders did he keep it hidden from us, when the whole ship has been searching high and low for any trace of the things!?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Hide it? Colonel, he's kept it in his front pocket the entire time. He takes the cursed thing around with him while performing his daily work duties! He's been feeding it scraps off of his own plate in the mess hall, for Founders' sake! I'm not sure how your people could possibly have missed it!
 
 Col. Purtrap: (Sputtering noises of outrage)
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: (Heavy breathing) Medical Officer Hortesh, why am I only learning about an ongoing Outbreak on my own ship just now! When you've apparently already known about it for days!?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: The first moment I learned of it, I sent you an urgent memo. The second Johnson left my section with the creature still gripped firmly in hand, I sent you a second urgent memo. I've been sending you more urgent memos about the topic, repeatedly, every other hour for the past four days! I am quite uncertain about how you *couldn't* know about it by now!
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Memos? What memos!? I haven't seen a single Founder cursed thing from your section in the Captain's brief for nearly a week!
 
 M.O. Hortesh: I didn't send them to the Captain's account, as he's under my own care right now. I sent them to *your* account, Executive Officer and *Acting* Captain Bsz`Bzng! Just as I've normally sent *all* of my medical reports to you in the past, as is procedure!
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: ..I haven't checked my X.O. account since the day we boarded the station. I haven't had time! I've been backlogged on the Captain's account for days..
 
 M.O. Hortesh: (...)
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: N-nevermind that! Where is the creature now!?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Likely with Johnson still.. I very much hope, actually. Given that he's the only one on the ship with a hope of controlling the beast.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: (Shouting) Find that cursed human. Get Trainee Johnson here, now! On the Founders fucking double!
 
 [Transcript Pause]
 
5.
 Exerpt from the journal of Trainee (#238398349834978723) Johnson, detailing his species' apparant suicidal insanity in regards to Species 13*.
 
 Entry #25 (305 days into our five year mission, 4 days since I became a proud pet owner)
 
 Ohmygosh, she's growing so fast! (I think it's a she now. I couldn't tell before, because y'know, *alien*.. but I'm pretty sure.) It seems like she's doubling in size almost every day! She's even starting to look a little like me.. and by that I mean vaguely quadruped shaped anyway. Her arms and legs are finally starting to bulk out and gain some strength and her shoulders and hips are getting wider. She looks a lot less like a little fleshy worm now, and her coloration is starting to darken up.
 
 She's definitely getting stronger, too. I can actually feel her teeth a little now, not that her nibbles actually hurt me any. She just loves to play! Doc is still acting squirrelly around her, so I'm keeping her close by my side at all times. Honestly, why would I let him kill such a harmless little thing?
 
 I mean, yeah, they're technically parasites, and parasites are icky by definition.. but by Terran standards, this thing is practically benign, y'know? A few days incubating in one of the smaller brachial tubes of my left lung, which I barely noticed aside from a small cough every now and then.. (I honestly thought that I might have just caught a slight cold or something at the time, it wasn't a big deal at all) ..then a minor coughing fit to expel it when it decided that it wanted out, and bada-boom bada-bing: new and interesting alien lifeform! And aside from some minor bruising in my lung tissues and tiny little lacerations in my throat, no harm, no foul! It was only about half the size of my pinky finger, after all.
 
 I mean.. have you seen some of the shit that parasites get up to on Earth? Eughuck! Blech! I saw a video of a woman who had a bot fly infestation once.. on her chest. Omygod grosss.. so gross! Living maggots, in her boobs! Literally in her boobs, you could see them wriggling around beneath her skin as the doctor pulled them out! Like a dozen of them, too.. in various stages of development and age. Uck yuck mother fucking fuck nature, right? It made me want to pull out my eyes and rinse the sockets with bleach, in a vain and futile attempt to get the sight out of my brain meats. But no, it's there, etched forever more into my psyche like a fucking mental parasite fuck!
 
 This thing though.. I've been reading up on them after our little excursion into the T.A. Station of Doom. Apparently they're called Species 13* (notice the asterisk, means that just like with early/current humans, the galaxy at large isn't certain if they're sapient or not), and they've been around for a long time. Like, a looong long time. Supposedly millions of years, which makes sense, given that their number is 13.. out of however many thousands of intelligent species have been found over the milennia. Also apparently they're considered so deadly that they're to be killed on sight without exception, reported to the nearest authority, and then the ship, station, or entire planet that they were found on will be quarrantined. Possibly permanently, in cases of particularly bad Outbreaks (notice the capital "O" there). You're not even allowed to keep any of them around for research purposes, apparently. They're considered just *that* bad.
 
 Which is.. well, I guess I just don't see it? I mean, I get that the things are dangerous to the average alien.. but *that* dangerous? Really? I waded through a whole angry throng of them while onboard that station. And while I wouldn't say that it was easy, exactly.. I never really felt like I was in any actual serious danger doing it either, you know? Especially in my nice sturdy, human made space suit. Yes, we may have stolen (ahem borrowed, it was all public domain anyway!) some advanced material science from the aliens to armor it up properly, but still.. I feel like a galactic scale threat.. the boogy man of the stars that these things seem to be considered as.. well, they shouldn't be something that could be easily dealt with by a couple of guys wearing basic work PPE and wielding wooden baseball bats. And probably holding a beer in their off hands too, as they drunkenly compete to see who can get the highest score of squashed alien monsters.
 
 I suppose that maybe I've been overestimating our new alien friends. Maybe we all have. I guess that it's pretty easy to forget, in the face of their vast technological superiority, their seemingly endless fleet of incredibly powerful warships, and their ancient, galaxy spanning civilization, that most of them have the approximate speed, grace, and durability of the average jellyfish. And not even a particularly dangerous and venomous one, either, like the Portugese man o'war (Which apparently isn't a jellyfish at all? Who knew!) but more like a Moon jelly. Pretty, weak, and pretty darn weak. (I described a jellyfish once to an alien. Its comment afterward? "A fearsome predator. How fortunate that you were able to escape." That pretty much tells you all that you need to know about how strong most aliens are.)
 
 Oh well, all that still doesn't mean that I'm going to let them kill my new pet. The first interesting thing that comes along on this stupid trip, and they want to take it away from me? Haha, no way no how, bucko! The biggest hurdle is going to be getting the ship's brass to go along with it, then the rest of the little alien minions (ahem I mean my fellow space cadets of course) will have no choice but the fall in line as well. Ahh, the beauty of a strictly enforced bureaucratic chain of command.
 
 As I said earlier, I've been reading up on my new pet.. and the pertinent regulations are clear as daylight: they may not be kept, bred, or used in any way.. living *or* dead.. for research purposes. At all. No keeping them for research purposes. Totally illegal and punishable by being tossed into the sun or whatever (not actually, but the paragraphs on the real punishments were very long and full of rampant alien-isms that I couldn't be bothered to parse through).
 
 All of which means that I can't keep my little alien pet. For research purposes. But who's to say that I can't keep her for other, different and totally not research related purposes instead? Heehee!
 
 Haha! The best weapon against alien bureaucracy..? It's even more bureaucracy, haw haw haw! And loopholes.. ones so big that you could drive (fly? thrust?) a spaceship through them! Haha!
 
6.
 Transcript of command level officer meeting of Patrolship #73409, concerning the events of the Species 13* infestion of T.A. Station #5403, the station's destruction, and the subsequent inflitration and infection of a crew member of said patrolship.
 
 [Transcript Continues]
 
 (Quiet background speech, unintelligible)
 
 Col. Purtrap: He's on his way, Ma'am.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: And he has the.. the immature member of Species Thirteen with him?
 
 Col. Purtrap: Apparently, yes.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Founders.. just in his pocket, really? Did the fight in the station damage his brain, or something?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: If so, I'm not sure that we'd even be able to tell the difference. Humans are.. strange. Not just physically, but mentally as well. It's been speculated that it's due to the incredibly violent environment of their high gravity homeworld. It's both stunted and enhanced their growth in certain areas, often in extreme ways. Take basic mathematical concepts that the vast majority of galactic citizens have no problem understanding, for example.. even the most intelligent members of their species will find such things virtually incomprehensible. But ask them to perform an impossible physical task for you.. like say, boarding an overrun Outbroken station and somehow actually surviving to not only complete the mission but also return basically unharmed? Well, as you've seen for yourself, in such areas they often excel.. and far beyond any reasonable expectation, too.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Is their homeworld really that bad?
 
 Col. Purtrap: From what I understand, it's worse. Too close to its star, too big with too much gravity, somehow both too hot and too cold at the same time.. and that's not even mentioning the constant windstorms, floods, and earthquakes.. any one of which alone would be enough to qualify it as a Class X planet. And the less said about the adaptations of the lifeforms that somehow managed to evolve on that deathtrap, the better. I did a bit of research about it when he first joined the crew, in order to put his abilities to best use.. and I honestly kind of wish I hadn't. The place is a nightmare. Even putting aside the crushing gravity, landing on it would probably kill everyone on this ship aside from Johnson himself in mere minutes.. possibly less.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: So then.. do you think that he might literally not realize the scope of the danger he's putting us all in?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: I would say that it's possible, and maybe even likely. He doesn't seem to have any malice in him, from what I've seen during my interactions with him. Quite the opposite, actually. I asked him what his biggest fear was once, out of sheer curiosity and expecting that it would probably be some type of monstrous Terran predator, and he replied with "I'm afraid that I'm going to kill someone.".
 
 Col. Purtrap: He.. what? Does.. does he have.. did he admit to having urges to do so!?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: No, no.. he was afraid that he was going to *accidentally* kill someone. His species is so large, dense, and strong that it wouldn't take much more than a careless stumble for him to crush one of us beneath his mere body weight.. even the more sturdy members of our crew, such as you Colonel. Have you seen the way that he walks?
 
 Col. Purtrap: Er.. yes, clumping and stomping around like a falling rock slide. I can usually hear him coming from a hundred meters away.
 
 M.O. Hortesh: That may be what it sounds like to us, yes.. but that's actually him being extremely, extremely careful. I've looked over videos of humans in their natural habitat, and if Johnson moved on this ship like humans do back on their homeworld, then his fear would have come true a dozen times over by now. Just their low contact sports for their immature children would count as attempted murder on any civilized planet of the galaxy. I've watched him, and he looks around himself carefully before he does *anything* that involves the slightest amount of movement. When I mentioned this to him, he just laughed and called it "Tip-toeing through the tulips.".
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Tip-toeing through the.. what? What are tulips? And what is tip-toeing, for that matter?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Tulips are a type of Terran plant. One that grows colorful genitalia that humans find attractive, so they sometimes cultivate them around their dwellings.
 
 Col. Purtrap: Humans find plant genitalia.. attractive? Founders, why? Are they a part of their breeding cycle?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: No. Humans apparently just find many seemingly random things on their horrible homeworld attractive. Perhaps it is a survival adaptation of some sort. In any case, the tulips are quite fragile.. by Terran standards, at least. So if a human wishes to pass through the colorful patch of plants around their abode without damaging them, they must tip-toe (in other words, walk very carefully) around each one. And that is what Johnson has been doing on this ship. Constantly tip-toeing around all of us, all while desperately afraid that he's going to have a momentary lapse of control and inadvertantly kill one of his collegues. I think that the stress is weighing on him, and he may be beginning to regret coming on this voyage. His "adopting" the very parasite that should have killed him may be a sign that the pressure is getting to him.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: I don't.. I don't know what to do about that. I haven't had any personal contact with him before, so I hadn't realized just how large.. But never mind. Never mind all that. He can't keep the creature, and that's that. He'll just have to come to terms with that fact.
 
 Col. Purtrap: I agree.
 
 M.O. Hortesh: As do I, if only for the fact that I'd like our ship's inevitable quarrantine to eventually end some day.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: Yes, yes. As do I and I'm sure the rest of the crew.. and on that topic, I feel like we're over looking something. The egg.. the one that was above Johnson's quarters.. it and the drone that it contained are accounted for, but where is the member of Species Thirteen that brought it aboard?
 
 Col. Purtrap: Unknown at this time. As I've said before, we've searched the ship from top to bottom, and found nothing.. though I suppose that we're going to have to search yet again, and extend this one to even personal belongings being worn by crew members. The creature may very well have left the ship and returned to the station after it deposited its egg, though. There are reports of such behavoir in the past.
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Statistically speaking, approximately thirty percent of Outbreaks occur due to a single egg appearing seemingly at random in a hidden location.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: I thought that they were colony creatures, though?
 
 M.O. Hortesh: Given that this is Species Thirteen that we're talking about, I think it is safe to say that there are no hard rules we can expect them to abide by. Lone abberant members of the species flitting from ship to ship, planet to planet, occasionally leaving behind only a single hidden egg, may be a suprisingly successful dispersal strategy for them. They must be able to stay hidden in plain sight *somehow*, given the efforts that we've gone to over the ages to exterminate the cursed things.
 
 X.O. Bsz`bzng: So we might never know, either way? (sigh) Founders, what a mess.
 
 (Quiet background speech, unintelligible)
 
 Col. Purtrap: He's here? Good, thank you ensign.
 
 X.O. Bsz`Bzng: Well, let's get this over with then. Send him in.
 
 (loud footsteps)
 
 Trainee Johnson: You wanted to see me, Ma'am? Oops! No, bad girl! Come back here!
 
 (Loud Screams)
 
 [Transcript Ends]