Sequence by Adam Moon

was already walking back into the ship before he realized he was stalling, making himself stand out against the busy workers. He caught up to her in time to grab the next pod already waiting for them. He had no idea how many creatures were in stasis aboard the ship, but he had a feeling this was going to be a long, hard day of work.
    He looked back over his shoulder at the huge piles of pods in the cavernous hangar bay. His own pod was under there somewhere. It was an odd feeling, not knowing exactly where his body was.

The False God
     
    They were all milling around inside the huge room in the octagonal structure now that the last pod had been offloaded.
    The captain called h im and Samda over. “She’ll arrive shortly. I’ve just heard terrible reports that she’s gone insane in the time that we’ve been away on our mission. I always knew she was psychotic, but apparently she’s taken it to the next level lately. If she asks who you are, tell her. At the worst, I’ll be reprimanded for using aliens in our mechs, but when I explain the circumstances she’ll hopefully understand why it was necessary.”
    If Chris didn’t know any better he’d think the captain was panicking. He wondered if the almost-god really warranted such fear.
    Before his mind wandered too far, a general hush came over the hangar. The mechs at the far end of the room bowed their heads one by one and stepped backwards to make way for their slave master.
    She was smaller than they were. In fact, she was probably smaller than a regular Earth woman. She was humanoid in appearance. Chris was pleased to see that. It meant that humanoid creatures were not the lowliest of alien life forms since this god was a humanoid.
    Her skin was mottled and bare. She was a tan color with faint green and red smudges here and there. She had tiny scales that glinted under the false light.
    She had two eyes and a mouth just like a human, but hers were just slightly off. Her eyes were twice as large as his. Her lips were purple and thin. Glaringly different: she had no nose, just a flat stretch of skin in its place, no breasts or nipples, and her navel was absent. Her arms were longer and thinner than a human’s and she only had two fingers on each hand with an opposable thumb on each. He couldn’t see any fingernails.
    Her legs were long and thin too , for her body size, but they moved in an odd, fluid way, like she had multiple knee joints on each. Chris tried to focus and see if she had a vagina, but it was impossible for him to tell since his body was so tall, towering over her.
    What she lacked in size she made up for in confidence. She had an air of arrogance about her that was palpable.
    As she came closer, Chris tensed. There was an ominous quality to her that was out of place given that she was so small compared to everyone else.
    She stopped at Chris and Samda and said, “This wasn’t planned for. Captain, explain why there are alien life forms residing inside my mechanized suits please.”
    The captain stepped forward and bowed his head. “Number Three was lost during an attack by the Grays. We needed to fill the suit so we could fight back. An Earth -man is inside mech number three right now.”
    The small god creature wrinkled her brow in annoyance at the mention of Chris’ race. “I thought humans were only to be scouted. I’ll assume they were advanced enough to be included by the time you arrived at Earth.”
    “That is correct. They ’ve progressed faster than we expected so I took one just in case it was needed. There are other creatures that are of similar undecided status. We thought it prudent to err on the side of caution.”
    “Very good , Captain. What is inside this one then?” She tapped on Samda’s metal thigh.
    “That is another creature that we included just in case. Her race had managed semi-advanced space flight by the time we got there. The Grays wiped out her entire planet. We found this one aboard a ship, the last of her