Yeva lay in the dim gray quarantine cell. The company had not isolated her for fear of contagion, though she tried to warn them she might have contracted one from her encounter with an unknown alien life-form. They just wanted to keep her "condition" out of the other soldiers' sight.
Lifting her head from the foam pillow molded into the cot, she looked down at her nude, hairless body. She hardly recognized it anymore. In the five days that have elapsed since she returned to base, her lower abdomen had grown steadily more distended. Her breasts swelled, too, though not as appreciably.
She knew almost nothing about pregnancy. It was rare to begin with, and the company promptly removed pregnant soldiers from their units, never to return them. Even so, she could tell that her condition was not a normal human pregnancy, and not just because she had never mated with a human male. What constituted "normal" for an interspecies pregnancy like hers, though, was well beyond her meager understanding of biology.
Med techs came to check on her several times a day, and it seemed like each session found her belly larger. Far more bothersome than the obvious physical changes, though, was the spike in her libido. Even the clinical touch of the technicians aroused her. She kept her urges tightly controlled while they were around, but once they left...
Yeva cupped one breast in each hand. Even in their present state, they barely filled her palms, which felt almost painfully rough against her nipples. She massaged her breasts slowly, savoring their softness, an exotic contrast for one inured to hard bodies both male and female. Pinching the engorged nipples sent a shock of pleasure straight to her genitals.
Moving her right hand downward, she caressed the mound of her abdomen. Powerful core muscles stretched over the bulge, tight to the point of discomfort. It felt warmer to the touch than the rest of her body, recalling the life-saving heat of the thing that had impregnated her.
The mere thought of the alien pod sent a shudder through her. Her hand crested the hill of her abdomen and descended to her pubis. She dipped a finger into her vulva, finding it slick with lubrication, which she rubs gently onto her clitoris. The bud felt like a raw nerve, and the barest touch on it sent jolts of unbearable sensation through her body. She forces herself to keep the strokes light and teasing.
Her lips parted with an almost inaudible moan, her back arching off of the cot. It was not enough. She dropped her other hand to her crotch and eased one finger into her vagina, then another, curling them up and forward. Before her belly started getting in the way, she could just reach that spot inside, the spot that the pod had shown her, that it used to brutally wring orgasm after orgasm out of her tormented body.
Now her own fumbling hands, unable to reach that same spot, tormented her. Growling with frustration, Yeva jammed the other fingers of her left hand into her slit and ground her thumb down on her clitoris until she orgasmed. She withdrew her fingers from her vulva, savoring the dull pain of their savage intrusion almost as much as the pleasure diffusing through her body.
Though it sated her lust for now, the orgasm was only a pale shadow of what she experienced in the pod's embrace. She rolled onto her side and closed her eyes, absently stroking her round belly with one hand.
Then the thing inside her moved.
Yeva's eyes snapped open and she sucked in a sharp breath, going completely still as if daring it to try again. It did not. Relaxing again, she laid her hand on the bulge and started drifting off to sleep. She dreamt of violence and sex in fitful snatches: of the company doctors at the facility that made her, their leering eyes more telling in retrospect, of lying awake in the dark, aching yet fearing to touch herself, of her power armor coming to life and raping her in the midst of battle...
"Get up, Yeva 2547."
She opened her eyes again and squinted at the three silhouettes in the doorway. The ones on either side with weapons trained on her were big, probably soldiers. The one in the middle, carrying a bundle of some sort, looked like a free-born human.
"Get up," the man in the middle repeated, throwing the object in his hand at her.
Yeva rolled off of the cot and came up into a crouch, easily evading the projectile despite the unfamiliar burden of her new physique. The muzzles of the two weapons followed her. She risked a glance at the cot, where a heap of ash-colored fabric lay where she used to be.
"Put it on," said the man in the middle. Her eyes had adjusted enough now that she could see his sharkskin suit, the company logo tastefully imprinted on the lapels. The armed guards were Mikhails of different ages, the older of them close to retirement.
Yeva dressed in front of them, strangely aware of the company man's eyes, as if his gaze were tangible as it slid over her newfound curves. The robe had no shape and concealed hers admirably. It came with a pair of sole-less cloth slippers that found no purchase on the floor. She would have been better off barefoot. That was probably the point.
They escorted her down the corridor, through two automated security checkpoints, and into the infirmary. Some soldiers wounded in the last battle still floated in regen tanks, senseless to Yeva as shuffled past them. The company man pulled a doctor aside and spoke quietly, the latter nodded every so often as though he were not really listening.
Two med techs arrived to lead Yeva and her guards to a small room equipped with a sanitation booth, a console, a storage locker, an automated surgical assistant, and a modular operating table. She had been in rooms like it before, when she had been injured severely enough to require active intervention. The Mikhails kept stone-faced watch while med techs stripped Yeva and ushered her into the sanitation booth. Somehow, she did not feel naked until they made her put on clothes and then took them away. She yearned to wear armor again.
Soft blue-violet light bathed her from the top and bottom of the cylindrical booth, her cue to close her eyes and hold her breath. She could hear the whirring of the sanitation ring rising from its housing at the bottom of the booth. It rotated, its nozzles spraying her down with warm liquid from every angle from toes to crown, then back down. On its second trip, it blasted her with hot air, then with cold air. Finally, she emerged, disinfected and chilled and more aroused than she expected.
The med techs adjusted the operating table into its standing configuration and secured Yeva to it. Thick straps encircled her forehead, neck, torso, arms, legs, wrists, and ankles. Each of her limbs was bound to a movable segment, though at present they all fit together so that her feet were together and her hands at her sides. One of the techs asked her to test the restraints, which she did without much enthusiasm. She could not move any part of her body more than a centimeter or two, certainly not without great effort and discomfort.
Satisfied with their handiwork, the techs departed, leaving her with the two Mikhails. Yeva suddenly wanted to speak to them, to ask for some reassurance that she would not be retired on the spot. That was nonsense, of course. They would not have bothered bringing her to the infirmary just to retire her. She kept her mouth shut and stared straight forward as though waiting for inspection.
The doctor finally entered, looking much smaller beside the Mikhails than he had next to the company man. He dismissed the guards, locked the door behind them, and casually slotted his tablet into the console. Some images on the console display changed, but Yeva could not see them very well.
"I don't suppose you even understand what it means," the doctor said as he started entering commands on the glossy input panel, "but I have turned off the operatory records. That means we are well and truly alone in here."
He was right. Yeva could not fathom what he was getting at, but her stomach sank all the same. When a company man spoke to a soldier and did not give a direct order, things were probably going to end poorly for the soldier. Come to think of it, things never really ended well for soldiers, regardless.
The doctor continued, stealing sidelong glances at Yeva while he typed. "They tell me your pregnancy is unusual, but I've seen it all before. You're simple creatures, driven by simple urges. We designed you that way, so we should hardly be surprised you cannot follow even a straightforward order like 'keep your pants on.'" He sneered and made a little flourish with his hand before hitting one last key.
The operating table started moving behind Yeva, and the doctor turned around to watch. First it tilted back to a forty-five degree angle, then it spread her arms and legs. The air felt cool on her sex; she was wet. Before she had a chance to contemplate her new position, she saw the surgical assistant move in her peripheral vision. An injector-tipped arm folded out of its alloy body and lined up unerringly with her right arm. She stared at the injector as it pressed against her skin, as if watching the mysterious liquid disappear into her would help her divine its purose.
"That's not anesthesia," the doctor said, smiling a smile Yeva had never seen before. He undressed, handing his lab coat, shoes, shirt, and trousers to the storage locker, before stepping into the sanitation booth. She made a point of not looking directly at him.
