The Travis Hicks Diaries

by Phrankster

Travis Hicks is the long-lost brother of Dwayne Hicks and just like his brother did, he is about to find himself war against the Xenomorphs. Rated T but has some strong language as well as brief descriptions of violence.

1. Chapter 1

THE TRAVIS HICKS DIARIES

CHAPTER 1

ENTRIES 1 THROUGH 5

CASE FILE # 20-06-78 VBH

PRISONER NAME: HICKS, TRAVIS

AGE: 24

PLACE OF BIRTH: EDWARDS SPACE STATION

FORMER OCCUPATION: JUNIOR SERGEANT IN THE UNITED EARTH ARMED FORCES

CRIMES: COWARDICE IN THE FACE OF BATTLE. TWO CASES OF MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREEE, BOTH COMMITTED AGAINST SUPERIOR OFFICERS.

RECOMMENDED PENALTY: EXECUTION. ALTERNATIVELY THE PRISONER CAN BE, GIVEN HIS STELLAR MILITARY RECORD PRIOR TO HIS CRIMES, BE RECRUITED FOR THE DPW PROJECT. THAT HE MANAGED TO SURVIVE THE FIERCE BATTLES ON LV-089 SHOWS US THAT HE HAS THE NEEDED SKILLS TO BE A USEFUL ADDITION TO IT.

FINAL VERDICT: THE PRISONER IS TO BE TRANSPORTED TO THE UNITED ARMY TRAINING FACILITY IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, WHERE HE WILL BE ADDED TO THE DPW PROJECT. HE WILL THERE UNDERGO FURTHER TRAINING, AS WELL AS BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION THERAPY FOR THE NEXT TWO MONTHS, UNTIL HE IS TO BE SENT OFF TO THE FRONT LINES, WHERE HE WILL SERVE A MINIMUM OF TEN YEARS OF COMBAT DUTY, BEFORE HE IS ELIGIBLE FOR PAROLE. HE IS FOR THAT DURATION OF TIME TO BE CONSIDERED EXPENDABLE AND CAN, IN CASE HE CHOOSES TO ATTEMPT TO FLEE OR REBEL IN OTHER EXTREME WAYS, BE EXECUTED IMMEDIATELY WITHOUT ANY NEED FOR A NEW TRIAL.

November 8, 2193

United Army Training Facility

Buenos Aires, Earth

Entry #1:

DPW. Three little letters that when separated mean nothing, but when they´re put together mean everything to me and the other 11 men and women, I´ve been put here with. Officially it stands for "Directly Placed War-Combatants", but we all know what it should stand for: "Dead Piss-Ants Walking", because that´s all we are to them. Everyone is here because it was this or the death penalty for them and since I´m the only one of us, who can read and write in a fairly intelligible way and is willing to do this, I´ve been chosen by them to tell our story. Who knows, maybe someday someone will read it and realize what a shit-show everything was right now. Then again, with the dick-heads we have in charge, it wouldn´t surprise any of us, if the worst is still to come.

Allow me to introduce myself. Travis Hicks is the name and nowadays, it´s close to being all I have left. Not that I ever had much to begin with, but there was a time when I could hold my head high and my folks back home on the station, where I grew up, could be proud that they´d raised such a fine soldier for the United Earth Army. It´s hard to believe that it´s been 8 years already, since I signed up on my 16th birthday (like most of those I grew up with did as well) and said my goodbyes to them a few days later. I remember telling them that I would return one day with a uniform, that was covered from top to bottom with all of the medals, I was going to earn in the war against the Syndicate. What a stupid kid, I was!

Here on the base, the days are more or less the same. You eat, you train, you eat some more, you train some more, before you´re forced spend the majority of your evening listening to Weyland/Yutani propaganda, or as the army calls it "Behavior Modification Therapy". When you hit 9 o´clock, they send you to bed, so you can wake up and do almost the exact same thing again the day after. They told us on the first day, that we will get 60 days of training, before we´re sent out on our first mission. For nearly all of us, it´s the same as going through basic training again, with a few extra "assignments" thrown in to make us obedient to their system again. If there´s one thing the United Earth Army have always been experts in, it´s making stubborn assholes fall in line, but with this rag-tag group of misfits, they definitely have their work cut out. We all know too well how little of a shit they give about us, so we give as little of a shit about them and their whole rotten system.

They say that after ten years of service, we´ll be free, but we all know that if any of us make it through one year, then it will be close to a miracle. It´s only thanks to them losing so many of their "real" soldiers in the war, that the bastards haven´t executed us already.

November 12th, 2193

United Army Training Facility

Buenos Aires, Earth

Entry #2:

There are two great things about being a collection of what the army see as the scum for the human race. Firstly, we all know that no one will give a rat´s ass if we die or not, except for each other and even though, it isn´t like everyone is acting like we´re one big and happy family, we also know that when we´ll see battle again in the near future, we have to be able to count on one another or all of us will be completely fucked. We might all of us be "Dead Piss-Ants Walking"; but it isn´t like any of us are longing to get a head start on the big dirt nap anytime soon. The second is that none of us feel like they´re above anyone else. Anyone, who does get those kinds of thoughts in their head will be quickly be reminded, why they have no reason to feel like they´re any more special, than the same kind of human version of maggots, the system sees all of the rest of us as.

The youngest of us is Pvt. Glau, who along with being the only one of us, who can almost still call herself a teenager, is also the only one of us, who was born here on earth. Not that it meant, she didn´t have a shitty life like the rest of us, mind you, but at least she got to grow up with relatively fresh air and something resembling clean water as an unlimited resource at her disposal (something that the rest of us, who grew up away from here, can only dream of having had). Like so many other young men and women from the same kinds of places, she comes from, joining the army was her only realistic legal way out of there. From what she told me, this went more or less fine for her, until some asshole, piece of human waste Lieutenant tried to rape her, while they were out on a training mission together. She thanked him by smashing his face into a bloody pulp and biting his dick off, before sticking it in his mouth for good measure, after she´d watched him bleed to death. She may not look like it to most people, but she clearly isn´t one to be fucked with, unless you want to end up as a dickless wonder, like that other guy did. I sometimes feel a little extra sad for her, though. Both because she´s so young and she also seems like she´s finding it the hardest with bonding with the others here.

The only one she talks to most of the time is Pvt. Sanderson and most of us suspect that the two of them are using each other for sexual gratification purposes on a regular basis already. If they are, then I say great for them and I hope that they manage to get in enough of the old in/out to last them a lifetime, while they still have the chance to. He´s the second youngest and the son of a former army general, who defected to the Syndicate. He´s not the brightest however, and that´s probably why, they managed to talk him into being a mole for them. From what he says (and I believe him, by the way), it was only thanks to his family name, that they didn´t execute him on the spot (after torturing him for information, of course) without a trial, like they do to most Syndicate spies. I guess the value of that name wasn´t large enough however, to save him from ending up here with the rest of us.

Then you have one like Pvt. Dixon and Pvt. Hanson, two Canadian guys that have known one another since basic training and are as close as brothers. All they´re guilty of is having a brain and refusing to take part in what was practically a suicide attack, but in this man´s army, thinking for yourself is a crime, they think that you deserve to die for. As for Pvt. Mendoza, a big mouthed Latino guy here, he fell under the three strikes rule, when he decided to go AWOL to see his son be born, right before he was to be sent off to the frontlines. Now the chances that he´ll ever get to see that kid or it´s mother again are as good as gone, unless he by some grace of that God he worships, manages to survive ten years of being sent on one half-way suicidal mission after another.

The oldest member of the squadron is Corporal Biehn. He´s a thirty-something, who up to a few months ago could call himself a Lieutenant, as well as a Commander of one of the army´s finest elite squads. That was until they found out (after he´d mistakenly led his entire unit into a trap, which left all except for a few of them dead) that the pressure of all those dead men and women, he´d had under his command and lost, had led to him filling his head with mind altering drugs to get through the long days, where they didn´t see any combat. He claims not to have been high as kite on that fateful day, but my instincts tell me otherwise. Either way, he´s seems like he isn´t the worst commander, you could end up being forced to fight under and more or less a trustworthy type.

As for myself, that´s a long story that I´ll tell you more about along the way, as we get closer and closer to facing, what will surely be our doom.

November 29th, 2193

United Army Training Facility

Buenos Aires, Earth

Entry #3:

Earth. Such a simple word, yet one that means so much to all of those, who have never seen it and believe the lies they´ve been told, about how it´s some Utopia where everyone gets a fair shake in life. The truth is vastly different, it almost goes without saying. Just like everywhere else, it seems, the facts of life here are simple: If you grow up in a shitty place, then you either live your entire life there or join the army, where they´ll treat you like shit for sure, but if you´ve grown up like that, then you´ve already learned to eat it and like the taste of it. For someone like Glau, who came from the lowest of the low, her only chance of working her way up to any kind of position of power was to either join the army or one of the many gangs, that in reality run things in most of the major cities in the Americas. It was one of those, that evolved into the biggest headache, the system has faced since the wars following the abolishment of democracy over four decades years ago: The Syndicate.

At first, it was merely a small group of organized crime lords, who worked together to divide the US into pieces to be shared between them, so that none of them would "accidentally" step on the feet of one of the other members in their den of thieves and thereby upset the status quo. Within a decade however, it had grown into the second most powerful organization in the world, second only to Weyland/Yutani itself and in some places of the world, they had essentially ousted the company from power. Needless to say, such a thing couldn´t be tolerated by the true rulers of the Universe, as they so blatantly call themselves, and before long, they had the biggest sting operation in history set in place, to take down all of these insurrextionists at the same time. Unfortunately for them, those crime lords as well as the most important parts of their armies, had gotten wind of their plans and were long gone, by the time the plan was set in motion. Just to rub it in, they hacked just about every TV signal in the world and told everyone watching what had happened and how they could join up with them, to fight for a better and fairer world for us all. Not that I believed them for a second, and my experiences with them tells me that neither side is any better than the other, but it´s hard to believe that they can make it a worse world for their fellow man, than it is already.

When it comes down to it, why the hell should I care, who´s in power or not? I´ll be dead soon anyway, and which side gets to finish the job is one thing I can´t get myself to give a damn about, no matter how hard I try. All I hope to do is fight on long enough, that I can look myself in the mirror without feeling shameful for being the biggest piece of crap walking this long God forsaken planet right now. Not that I´ve ever believed in any of that religion bullshit, but on the off chance that God does exist, I can only imagine that he would be utterly disgusted with what we´ve done to his biggest creation. I know, I am.

December 24th, 2193

United Army Training Facility

Buenos Aires, Earth

Entry #4:

Today they made us celebrate Christmas, or as we call it "Celebrating Our Own Coming Demise". Sure, it´s nice of them to finally serve us some food, that can be considered edible for once (imitation turkey with gravy and real potatoes, which made the first and most likely only time, I´ll get to taste those in my lifetime), but nothing could hide that we all ate it with a bad taste of their hipocrisy in our mouthes. This was their way of annually clearing their guilty consciences for sending so many people off to their certain deaths, and no propaganda machine is well made enough, to be able to hide that disgusting fact from us.

Since we were told that we will depolyed to LV-212, or as it´s commonly known: "The Biggest Hell-Hole in the Known Universe", there have been two incidences of prisoners in our squadron trying to escape, both of which ended in the most foreeseeable way possible. First it was Pvt. Renard, a Frenchman, who was convincted of stealing medical supplies and reselling them on the lucrative Black Market to feed his drug habit, that tried to take a guard hostage and get out that way. He didn´t even make it to the gates, before he received a hail of bullets for his troubles and an unmarked spot in the ground six fet under, as an extra present from the system. The next after him was Pvt. Vojvodina, the lone Asian in our squadron, or at least he used to be, who tried to climb from the sixth floor (where we have our sleeping quarters) and down the building to get out. When his broken body was found splattered on the sidewalk the morning after, there was no need for an investigation into what had happened. They won´t tell us the real numbers, of course, but it´s no big secret that many of those in the program die in a last ditch attempt to escape, shortly before they´re deployed, because once you´re on that space-ship, there´s no going back. They will make you fight against the enemy, until you can´t fight no more and that will in all likelyhood be how it ends for you.

In the days since, two new "recruits" have been sent in to fill their places and they seem like a sensible enough pair of guys. For the rest of us though, it´s yet another reminder to all of us that what we will face in the coming weeks, months and perhaps even years, will be the test of our lives, both mentally and physically. Perhaps it would be easier to put a gun to my head during training and end this miserable life of mine, but I can´t hide that I´m starting to feel a kinship with some of the others in our squadron, Glau especially. Although we come from vastly different places, we also share a lot of the same ideas on things and like me, she isn´t kidding herself into thinking (like a few of the others still are) that she will come out of this alive. That old saying "Misery Loves Company" is certainly true, when it comes to her and I.

As for tonight however, I will go to sleep with my belly feeling full (for what could be the last time) and try to imagine that my life isn´t as bad, as it is and think of how it´s sure to become much worse from now on, than I ever thought was imaginable. Only a lunatic would be willing to admit such a thing to themselves in this situation.

December 28th, 2193

United Army Training Facility

Buenos Aires, Earth

Entry # 5:

This is our last day on Earth, before we board the ship (along with four other squadrons going there as well) heading to LV-212. After we board, we will all be put into stasis for the next 2 and a half months, while we travel there. Everyone has been on edge for days and you can´t exactly say that any of us are looking forward to going to a planet, that was once decribed to me by an officer, who had been deployed there for a few years back in his youth, as "A desolate and hostile world, where no man should have ever set foot in the first place". This was coming from a man, who had already by that time seen hundreds of times more worlds, than I ever will, so if he says it´s that bad, then I´ll have to take his word for it.

As a final fuck you to the system, before we head off to the real universe´s version of Mordor from the Tolkien books, I used to read as a kid, Corporal Hicks decided that we should break one of the army´s cardinal rules, telling one another our first names. The reason why they don´t want us to is simple: Once you know someone´s first name, you´re more likely to be "adversely affected" by their deaths, or that´s what all of their many studies into the subject has taught them. Or, as the propaganda they constantly bombard us with tells us: A good soldier doesn´t let anything in his or her head get in the way of their performance on the battlefield.

A few of them laughed, when I told them that my name is Travis, but no one got as many as when Glau admitted to us that her first name is Belinda. I don´t think that any of us could have thought of a more inappropriate name for a wild little bad ass like her, than what sounds like the name of a beauty contest competitor, but she took all of the jokes in stride and gave back, as good as she got and then some. If there´s one of us that I hope will somehow make it through this, it´s her and I´m infinitely closer with her now, than I ever was with my older brother Dwayne, who´s a big-shot Corporal in the Space Marines. She asked me a few days ago, if I wanted to have sex with her, which considering that nearly every male/female combination in the squadron (that doesn´t involve me and her) has been tried at least once, wouldn´t have made anyone raise an eyebrow at us, if I had chosen to do it with her. I couldn´t bring myself to tell her that it was because she´s starting to feel like a younger sister to me, or why it wouldn´t have felt right to do it with her or anyone, for that matter. Sexual gratification is a luxury I have chosen to deprive myself of and to do it with her would have brought me a happiness, I´m no longer deserving of. Maybe if I am one day, I will allow myself to feel that kind of pleasure again, but if I were her, then I wouldn´t get my hopes too far up.

What exactly did I do to feel this horribly about myself, you´re probably asking yourselves. I´ll get into this in my next entry, which will be written on a planet far away from here, that I hoped I´d never to have to set my feet on. A crazy rumor has it, that LV-426 has been lost to some incredibly powerful Alien lifeform, that uses human hosts to grow inside of, before bursting out of their chests and then quickly growing into unstoppable killing machines. It sounds to me, like it has to be something that someone made up, but in this insane universe, that we still know so very little about, I´ve also seen enough mighty strange shit to know that just about anything is possible. Some are even saying that they´ve been found on other planets, LV-212 being one of them, which I think is just to scare us. I mean, what are the odds that in a universe with an almost infinite number of stars and planets, that we would get sent to one of the few, where those sons of bitches are?

THAT´S IT FOR THE FIRST CHAPTER

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