Alternative Stories

                 _ _Private Orion pov_ _

"We have all of this technology! Weapons that can rip through metal like tissue paper, literal synthetic humans that sometimes don't even know themselves that they are machines, spaceships that can travel through the star-filled void." Marcus grumbled as he spread his arms wide, motioning to everything around us. "And yet the food still tastes like absolute dog shit!"

"Oh stop your damn bitching." I chuckled with a roll of my eyes at his antics.

My friend hearing this little statement looked at me with a rather exaggerated and shocked expression. "Since when did you grow a backbone?"

"This coming from you of all people? The guy that shat himself the first time he saw a xeno." I grinned at the memory.

"We agreed never to speak of that again!" He hissed with a somewhat pale face causing me to laugh.

However, before we could continue this little discussion a female voice sounded from behind us. "You two are the same as always I see." The voice had come from a rather beautiful looking woman.

Recognizing her almost immediately we both immediately stood up and saluted her. ""Lieutenant."" The woman in question just rolled her eyes at us.

"How many times have I told you to just call me Ava." She sighed with a roll of her eyes.

Lieutenant Ava was one of the good ones, respected by most of the people she had the pleasure of meeting. She was beautiful to say the least, she had long fiery orange hair, blue eyes that seemed to always have this kind of knowing shine to them and the kind of body that could turn heads without even having to do much of anything. Despite being all of this however she wasn't what most would expect of her, actually she was a rather calm and even a somewhat lazy person at times, not that she couldn't be serious when it actually counted.

Overall she was actually a pretty relaxed and pleasant person to be around, so long as you didn't piss her off that is. Of course there were not many that had the balls to actually attempt such a grand feat of bravery, of course those that usually attempted it were mostly brain dead dumbasses who could only think with what little was in their pants.

"Sorry ma'am." I smiled and moved aside to let her sit down 

"You're one of the only lieutenants without a stick shoved thirty feet up their ass, the very least we can do is show you some respect for that." Marcus hummed with a yawn.

"Really? This coming from the guy who rejected the opportunity to move up the ranks to eventually become a lieutenant around the same time as me." Ava just smiles with a raised eyebrow.

"Fuck that!" I could help but snicker at the disgusted look on his face. "I have enough problems managing myself, so I'd rather not have to help manage a group of idiots on top of that."

(Here they go again.) I couldn't help but sigh inwardly.

"Come on, you'd be great."

"Oh hell no!"

Seeing that the two of them would continue bickering if I didn't do anything about it, I decided to change the subject to something else. "So Ava, is Sargent Connors really leaving."

"Please god let it be true." Marcus said while pretending to pray.

"Sorry but that's classified information." She mused with a slight chuckle.

"Boooo!" Several people who overheard us talking shouted out jokingly.

"Well anyway, have you heard?" 

"You've finally found a lover?!" Marcus showed a shocked and rather flabbergasted expression earning himself a very rude hand gesture.

"Heard what?" I asked with a smile and a slight shake of my head.

"About the disease that's going around."

"Oh yeah." I said with a nod of acknowledgement.

"What the hell are you two talking about?" Marcus asked with a scowl as he looked across the table at us.

"It started with one of the researchers and spread to a few others, apparently it causes things like migraines, rapid mood swings and sometimes even fainting or increased mental fatigue." Ava quickly explained, causing our large friend to look at us with a raised eyebrow.

"What's causing it?"

"No one knows." I shrugged, I wasn't really able to give a more satisfactory answer. "Some people were quarantined after it started spreading, after all you can never be too careful about these things, however they were soon released as it doesn't seem to last all that long."

"Nor does it seem to be life threatening, so that's also a plus." Ava added.

"Is it still spreading around or what?" 

"Well...maybe." I hummed, not really sure. "No one has caught it for a while now and from what I heard it's apparently only infected a few people so it should be fine."

Hearing this he stopped caring all that much about it and returned his focus back to his food. "That's good I guess."

Things went relatively normally after that, we ate while occasionally talking to each other when something came up but it was quiet for the most part. A few assholes did try and send a few racial slurs towards me as they passed by but that didn't end well for them at all. They were quite quickly sent to the medical wing. I may be below average in height for a marine but like hell I'd sit there and take that kind of shit.

"Fucking bastards." Marcus hissed and I couldn't agree more.

"Yeah..." 

Ava was also about to comment as well but stopped herself when the whole station shook. "What the hell was that?!" She asked and before anyone could answer her it happened again.

It continued like that for a while, again and again the station shook violently causing several people in the cafeteria to lose their balance and collapse to the ground in confusion. As it continued people quickly began to catch on to what exactly it was that was happening, either because of the alarms that were now blaring or the fact that the sound of explosions could now be heard faintly off in the distance.

"You two, come with me!" Ava yelled, she was all serious now and neither of us argued back against her.

"What the fuck is happening?!" Marcus asked as the three of us stood up and made our way out through the cafeteria doors. What awaited us was absolute chaos to put it simply.

There were people running up and down while others barked out orders, however everyone was in varying states of panic. There were some individuals that were trying to calm everyone down and quell the chaos that continued to spread but things were still getting out of hand.

"Are we under attack?" Ava growled the question out as she grabbed hold of a young researcher who looked as if he was going to have a panic attack any second now. "Answer me damn it?!"

"N-no, the explosions are coming from inside the station!" The poor guy yelled, apparently scared out of his mind but he continued. "If...if this keeps..."

"What?!"

"If this keeps up the specimens could get loose!" That caused the three of us to go dead silent, the idea of those things getting out was...well, terrifying to say the least.

"Damn it!" Ava gritted her teeth while letting the guy go, unfortunately for everyone things only got worse from there.

I was the first to notice, my eyes drifted over to a nearby window where I saw something that made my stomach churn in horror. "Is...is the station moving?" 

"What do you mean?" Ava asked, sounding as if she didn't want to know the answer.

"Look..." I muttered and gestured for them to come over and see what I was talking about.

The moment they saw what I meant Marcus cursed softly to himself. "Shit..."

The whole station which was orbiting the planet that most were now calling "The Farm" was currently heading for a collision course with said celestial body. The whole damn thing was slowly dropping downwards towards the slowly growing surface of the planet below.

"What now?" I asked, taking a step backwards.

"The hanger bay..." Ava muttered under her breath quietly enough that we couldn't really hear what it was that she had said.

"What?"

"Get to the fucking hanger bay!"