Shapeshifting Baddie from Space Ch. 02

"Distress beacon," Grant tells me in the tone of a man who knew whoever set it up would have been long dead at this point.

I take a long sip from my vitamin pouch before responding with a shrug, "Gotta check it out anyway, might have something worth salvaging."

I knew this solar system's history. It was a failed resource stripping operation on the 5th planet from this sun. They were tasked with mining and shipping the surprisingly abundant lithium. Unfortunately, after a shipping accident caused a massive explosion that seemed to kill all hands, it was abandoned. Nobody else was thought to be here for at least 30 years.

I was already forming a theory. The company probably did get this distress signal but saw it as a lost cause and buried it. Now that certain materials ships are built with have become more sought after in the proceeding years, they sent us out to finally retrieve them.

With no record of any non-humans and no sustainable food sources, anyone here would have died a year after the incident at most. Of course they were less careful back then, it wouldn't be the strangest thing to find one of my kind in long hibernation. The strain on our food supply would be annoying if that were the case but that would only be a problem if it came up.

"Dibs on the contraband," Grant said after a moment of silence.

Every ship manned with a non robotic crew had contraband. It was an intrinsic fact of space faring.

"Fuck you mean dibs?" I snort at him, "Fucking 'dibs' like we're in the 4th grade."

It would go to first to find it as always. He actually cracked a smile at the half-hearted banter and pulled a radio free from above his head.

"Got a distress signal and coordinates," he said into the radio and then scowled at the silence.

He angrily clicked the button again, "Over."

"Yeah, thank you, hear you loud and clear, send them up and I'll alter course, over," Eddie replied and I smothered a laugh.

After a few seconds of typing Grant once again spoke into the radio, "I just sent them over."

Not a heartbeat later the radio crackled back to life, "Sent them where? Over."

Grant slammed the radio back in its charger and I did nothing to stop my cackle at his expression.

All eight of us had crammed ourselves into the cockpit. Nobody spoke for a long time.

Finally, Martin broke the silence.

"If we can actually get that thing moving again, even with the terrible commission rates, we're all gonna be set for life," he said to nobody in particular without looking away from the massive bulk carrier our ship was preparing to dock with.

I couldn't even find it in me to be contrary and point out that I'd live alot longer than a human lifespan. Ships that big just weren't made anymore. Ships that big were already mostly decommissioned even 30 years ago. This was like winning the lottery.

I had another thought, "And that's even before you consider that it might still be full of lithium."

Eddie looked like he was prying himself away from the glass when he turned to address us.

"Alright, everyone knows what we stand to gain here but let's not get sloppy, we take it slow as always and do this right, there's nobody else coming here for months so we have all the time in the world to get it moving if it can be moved," he paused to seriously look at us all, "And also as always, that means if we fuck up then the only help would be months away too, we do this right."

"You said that twice," Martin points out and his brother jokingly smacks him upside the head.

Otherwise ignoring the interruption he continues, "Lex, once the bridge is secure you go in and test the atmosphere, see if anything has been breached or if the life supports could be brought back online, get the black box so we can find out what happened."

I nod. I was perfectly suited for this. I was the only one who could survive in the vacuum of space with a damaged suit for any length of time while still remaining ambulatory. Not that the insane cold or heat wouldn't still hurt, wouldn't still kill probably a fair portion of my biomass before I managed to get back into our airlock depending on how extreme the temperature was in the area. But that's alot more than any of our poor, fragile, squishy humans could say.

"Once you find out the condition of the life supports and get the black box, come back to report," he finished.

He then turned more broadly to the rest of the group, "Once we know what we're working with either Lex will go back to repair any breaches if necessary or we'll send Grant and Creedy to begin work on the life support."

"Once it's up, the rest of us come over and see if the ship can be piloted," he looked almost hesitant to get his, and the rest of the crew's, hopes any higher.

"We've got about a half hour before the ship is docked and ready for you to go, get suited up."

In the hallway near the airlock I began the process of getting ready for what would essentially be a space walk in the confines of a dead ship. Martin rushed over a moment later to help. Without joint limitations of humans it really wasn't that tricky but I let him feel useful.

"If we don't have to do scrap jobs after this, do you have any idea what you'll do?" he asked as he double checked the distance line and its attachment to my suit.

I could hear the hopeful note in his voice even with him to my back.

"Uh, no," I lied. This could at least wait to be a conversation until after I got back.

"Alright, that's cool, I have some ideas," he tells me, coming to face me with a smile so bright that I just nod.

Eventually they send me off. I wait while trying to contain the multitude of emotions as the computer disengages the emergency lock on the other ship's airlock. Finally it opens to pitch blackness, as expected. I click on a light at the helmet of the suit and venture inside.

The first thing I need to do on a ship this size is to get to the control room where maps of the structure and the black box should be located. I pushed myself through the hallways of the dead ship. No bodies yet. Which didn't tell me all that much.

There were so many things that could have gone wrong here. They could have entered the system at the exact wrong time, the mining station already destroyed and left them with no place to refuel until they lost power and suffocated. They could have managed to escape the accident hastily only to realize that they were without some critical resource. The accident might not have been an accident and this ship might have housed the last victims of some sort of terrorist sabotage. I would be more excited to solve this mystery if it weren't for Martin.

I thought about his excited puppylike expression while I snaked further into the ship. He didn't forget I wasn't human. If anything he was the most conscious of it on the crew. He just... didn't think about the inevitable if he could avoid it. I would outlive him. My species doesn't have a set lifespan, none of us die of old age. There are things that could kill us, like any other lifeform, but it was unlikely. Despite the money, I planned to keep working. Money runs out eventually and when there's no deadline, retiring to do nothing for a few decades doesn't make much sense. I huff a breath of irritation. Since when did I care so much?

My hand came up to the door to what seemed to be the control room. I was almost surprised that I had found it already.

I knew this layout. I hadn't noticed it at first. Unlike humans, my species reproduced asexually. When we wanted to or needed to, for whatever reason, we split off into 2 organisms. The slower and more meticulously it was done the more memory would be retained in both organisms but no matter what there was some degradation each time. 3 or 4 splits ago I had been on a ship just like this one, if not this exact ship.

I racked my brain and did the math 3 splits and 250 years and change. This ship was positively ancient by space travel standards. I did my best to recall the fuzzy memories. Shiny and new when I was last on a ship of this design. Sleek and impressive. I ran my heavily gloved hand across the paint peeling wall. Of course, I was a stowaway back then wasn't I?

Why would a museum piece like this not have been scrapped for a more efficient model and why was it so far from the colonised systems? Curious and curiouser.

I stoped procrastinating and opened the door. Well, there was one body. The captain, presumably, was still strapped into one of the chairs near the center consoles. I ignored them for now and began looking for a map through the drawers. Once I found it, I untangled my line from my loops around the room and got to work on removing the black box. Bit of a misnomer nowadays. They've been bright colors for centuries now but still, it was a catchier name than highlighter box.

Box and map in hand, I followed my line back to our ship. Once the air lock was pressurized and I could make my way back to the ship proper I was bombarded with questions. This was expected, of course, but Eddie silenced them easily. Despite how rowdy they may seem, they were well trained by our captain. His power over them was what attracted me to him in the first place and it was moments like this that I still thought about what it might have been like if I'd managed to seduce him in the first place.

I handed over my findings and gave a rundown of what I knew so far. He nodded simply but couldn't keep a small grin completely from his face. So far so good.

Half the crew was sent to go rest while Eddie, Creedy, Weaver, and Kurt went over the black box and made a more detailed plan of action.

I couldn't put it off any longer, so I followed Martin back to his room. For someone who had to do it often enough, I've never gotten good at breakups.

Martin led me by the hand to sit on the bed with him.

"I want to settle down and start a family," he blurts out.

Relief clashes with disappointment. Never had a mutual breakup felt so much like a mercy and still hurt.

"Oh," I say in response, allowing the real disappointment into my response. No reason to hide that I'd miss him, he wasn't saying this to be cruel afterall. This was a happy note to leave on if nothing else.

Seeing my reaction he quickly grabbed my hand in his, "With you, I mean, obviously."

I blinked at him. It really wasn't all that obvious.

"I don't," I stumbled over what I was trying to say, "I mean, my species is asexual."

He looked at me conspiratorially, which generally I found to be an invitation to jump his bones but refrained from acting on that muscle memory.

"You can completely change your body to copy multiple species and you can copy organs so thoroughly that you can donate them and they work for a human." he said as if that answered anything.

In fact, how did he know that? That was a secret unanimously kept by us from the other species. If our ability to heal other organisms up to and including replicating organs for donation was found out, who knows how coveted we'd become. Perhaps valuable enough that our personhood would be brought into question for the sake of keeping us secure for use.

"Which of those rat fucks told you?" I ask with a snarl.

I was referring to the incident with Weaver a few years ago. She had a bad heart her whole life but something went wrong when we were weeks away from any more help than what the ship medbay and our medic, Grant, could provide.

He grimaced, "Ok, don't freak out but the entire ship kind of knows."

"What?"

He gives me a look, "She was basically good as dead, you disappear for half the day and when you reappear Grant tells everyone that Weaver is going to make a miraculous recovery?"

If I were human I would have blushed in embarrassment. So, maybe I wasn't as slick as I thought.

"But what does that have to do with-"

"I know you said that you didn't make a functioning uterus, which is why you've been letting me hit it raw, but I know you could," he said with smugness that I was just starting to regret teaching him.

I squinted at him, "You know?"

"Are you actually saying you couldn't?"

"I mean, that's-" I pause. As far as I know none of us had ever done something like what he was proposing. Why would we? Most of my kind didn't even sleep around with the other species. I was already something of a rarity to spend so much of my time in one form and purposely bonding with humans.

His logic, while still jumping to some pretty extreme conclusions, was still reasonable in theory.

I settle on the truth, "I don't think it's ever been done before."

"But you could," he was still smiling but a little doubt had crept into his expression, "If you wanted to."

Fuck. I thought he was going to be putting an end-of-job expiration date on our relationship and instead he wants me to let him knock me up. Even that was too passive a way to describe it. He wants me to be the first of my kind to engineer a way for him to knock me up and then stay with him for life. Crazier still, I was thinking about it.

"I have literally never considered... this," I manage.

The shoe was admittedly on the other foot now. I had no clue how to navigate this discussion. I had no parental instincts at all. I was never a child, I had no parent to reference. I haven't even spent much time around kids for decades.

"You don't have to decide right this minute, we don't even know if we can get the ship operational in the first place," he tells me as he wraps his arms around me.

"They're going to have you working like crazy the next few days, you should get some sleep while you can," he tells me and I let myself be maneuvered into as comfortable a sleeping position two people can manage on such a narrow bed.

The tiredness hit me in full force as I tucked my head against him. Sleep really was the great equalizer it seemed. I wondered how I had reacted, however many splits ago, when I found out that humans dreamt too.

I looked out from our porch at the neighbor's wheat field as it was gently blown in the cool evening wind. I heard the screen door creak open behind me as Martin came to join me.

"Think the storm is gonna start soon?" he asked as he wrapped his arms around me.

I glanced down. His wedding ring was so obvious around his finger while he rubbed circles on my protruding belly with his thumb.

I hum noncommittally.

"We should probably go in soon and go to bed, wouldn't want to be putzing around until the power inevitably goes out," I playfully suggest while leaning back into him.

He ducks his head down where his stubble rubs against my neck, "Well, in that case we should do the responsible thing."

Since when did I let him be so much taller than me?

The thought leaves my mind as he lavishes my neck in attention before pulling away. I follow him without another word through our home to our bedroom.

The door barely closes before he's lifting my dress over my head. I respond in kind. I push him so that he's sitting on the bed and run my hands under his shirt against the muscles of his chest before I pull his shirt off to join my clothes on the floor.

He watches me now as I unzip his jeans and free his cock. He lets me guide him back further on the bed before I straddle him. He reaches around to undo my bra.

"You've been sexy the whole time but god damn," he says as he kneads my swollen breasts.

"If you wanted me to have bigger tits, you could have just asked, you didn't need to knock me up for it," I told him without thinking.

He smiled indulgently at my nonsensical statement. What had I even meant by that?

"No panties today?" he asks me, brushing off my previous statement.

I smiled at him, "Not much of a point as of late."

That was the truth, I couldn't keep my hands off him and he was all too happy to encourage it.

He slipped a hand between us to find my clit. I was already so wet for him. I shifted as he continued his ministrations. With the new angle, I reached down to guide his tip to my leaking entrance.

"Fuck, I hope you want a ton of kids because I'm going to keep putting them in you if this is how it makes you act," he tells me as I bring myself down.

I still for a moment, not at his dirty talk but to savor the feeling. Something, our child obviously, pushes out causing a small imprint on my taunt belly. The feeling, something within me that isn't me, is so novel that I bring a hand down over it, entranced. Martin's hand covers mine. I look at him and without another word I start to ride him.

"I love you."

Martin shakes me awake.

"Sorry, you missed the intercom but we've got a group meeting in a half hour, I let you sleep for a bit since it didn't wake you," he tells me as he hands me a cup of the dogshit coffee substitute swill.

I take a sip to hide my expression. What the fuck? I was apparently slow to realize it, but that dream settles it. I'm so cooked.

I set the mug on the bedside table and he gives me a questioning look.

"Rather have a quickie?" I offer as casually as ever.

He replies with a grin and sets his mug down next to mine.