PART 1
GESTATION
1
TRANSPORT SHIP VX-72383
MAY 23, 2381
Another explosion rocked the ship.
Chris Temple glanced over at the corner of his small living quarters, where his two daughters, Jane and Emma, stood with Alicia, who had both arms wrapped around them. Alicia had what seemed like a look of genuine concern in her eyes, but Chris knew that was impossible. She was, after all, an auton—a highly developed synthetic who nonetheless hadn’t been programmed with real human emotion.
Then again, she seemed different lately—ever since those men had broken into their house and damaged her shortly before they’d left it for the final time. The home where his girls had spent their entire lives. The ensuing trip to Gateway Station and then quickly boarding this transport vessel were a blur.
“Dad?” Jane said, her voice breaking on the single syllable. Even though Chris always considered his oldest child shockingly wise for her age, she was still only eleven.
Emma, nearly as tall as Jane even though she was three years younger, stared at her father with a shocked look on her face, almost dazed, as if her brain had shut down—a small miracle, perhaps. Even though this was a new experience for his daughters, Chris had been in similar situations many times, and he’d seen people much older and more experienced than his daughters completely break down during emergencies.
But that was in his previous life. He thought he’d left this kind of thing behind him.
War will always find a man like you, his sergeant had said to him, when Chris finally found the courage to quit the military in the days after the USM Auriga smashed into the Earth. So much had changed since Chris had joined the service as a younger man—and was still changing—but that disaster, and all its secrets that had been hidden from the public, were the final straw for him. He wanted out—out of all of it. He and his daughters needed a fresh start on a new planet.
Chris calmed his nerves. He’d trained for this.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” he responded, walking over and kneeling in front of his daughters, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. “I’m sure it’s just a minor malfunction.”
The lie sounded terrible even to his own ears.
“Alicia,” he said without looking at the family’s android, forcing his voice to remain steady despite his own fear. “Can you hack into the ship and find out what’s going on?”
“My protocols do not allow me to connect with any ship’s mainframe without prior United Systems Military authorization,” she responded in a monotone voice. She got like that when she was quoting the rules.
“I’m giving you that authorization right now,” he said, his voice louder, tone suddenly clipped. His daughters’ eyes widened. They had never heard their father speak like that before—certainly not since the death of their mother. “Sigma epsilon default seven seven two, protocol unlock.”
He hadn’t thought of this specific string of words in a long time,
not since he’d been promoted to colonel, but they reemerged out of the dark recesses of his mind as if they’d been waiting there, anticipating this exact moment, all along.
Alicia’s head twitched slightly as she slipped into the ship’s computer, then glanced briefly down at the girls and back up at Chris, staring him directly in the eyes.
“We should evacuate. Immediately.”
Jane let out a small whimper, but her eyes remained dry. She gently, silently took her younger sister’s hand in her own.
Chris knew that there must have been a reason why Alicia wasn’t giving him any details in front of the girls. The situation was bad.
Very bad.
“Grab any essentials,” he ordered, his voice still hard. “Only what you can carry. You have ten seconds.” Jane nodded, clearly afraid but always a good soldier, and pulled her sister along, off to their tiny, shared bedroom.
Chris hated the way he sounded but knew there wasn’t any other choice. He’d been in life-and-death situations before, and survival often hinged on seconds, not minutes.
He glanced at Alicia, who stared back without blinking, even though she was programmed to do so, and then dashed to his own quarters, reaching under his bed and grabbing his go-bag. Elizabeth used to make fun of his “over-preparedness.”
Elizabeth.
The thought of her sent a wave of pain racing across his body. He had promised on her deathbed that he would always take care of their girls, that nothing bad would ever happen to them. Those words had elicited a smile from her, the last thing she ever did before slipping away. He couldn’t fail.
War will always find a man like you.
“No,” he said out loud, running into the common area, where Alicia still stood in the exact same spot, her head slightly tilted as if she was listening to a particularly interesting radio drama. She turned to look at Chris again and opened her mouth to speak, perhaps to clue him in to what the hell was going on, when his girls came running in, too.
Nine seconds, Chris thought, his chest filling up with pride. But no, there was no time to be proud.
“Follow me,” he ordered. “Stay close and do exactly what I say. That includes you, Alicia.”
“But…” she started to respond, then stopped herself and nodded
The interaction caused Chris to hesitate for the slightest moment. Her programming shouldn’t have allowed for any kind of active disagreement with him in this kind of situation, but she was clearly fighting against it. Was that even possible? Her face reflected a mix of conflicting emotions, but he didn’t have time to investigate her control structures.
Chris moved to the door. He punched in the security code and watched as the two thick metal panels slid open, revealing a hallway full of smoke and strobing lights.
He stepped forward and could hear his girls and Alicia following close behind. A sort of calm washed across his senses, the bizarre but familiar sensation blanketing him for the first time since he’d been an active soldier.
A memory came back to him—his last real battle before the Auriga crash. They’d been sent to deal with a large, violent group of Weyland-Yutani cultists who had carried out a series of terrorist attacks against key USM targets.
The incursion had been brutal and bloody. Chris had been forced to do things that still haunted him.
Weyland-Yutani had been out of business for decades, but an almost religious following had risen up in its place, elevating the company’s two founders—Peter Weyland and Cullen Yutani—to almost godlike stature. Acolytes of this faction had continued to work in secrecy after their beloved corporation’s collapse, allegedly even having moles within the USM, gathering data and stealing equipment for mysterious reasons, an unknown agenda. It was a slow boil of aggression between the two uneven entities, and then the crash of the Auriga—and the resulting secrets that came to light—had thrown this shadow war into open chaos. The world descended even further into confusion and violence. People who had the means to escape, did. Including Chris and his girls.
He continued to move forward, keeping as low as possible, listening as distant screams echoed. He had studied the layout of this transport ship for hours once they’d been assigned to it. You can never be overprepared.
When he turned right at the corridor’s first intersection, towards the transport ship’s escape pods, he glanced back, relieved to see his girls and Alicia were still right behind him, faces stoic and determined. He couldn’t wait to hold them close, tell them how proud he was, if… when they got
out of here.
They continued on. Chris was surprised, and concerned, by the lack of people they came across. Yes, a large percentage of the civilians on board had elected to enter hypersleep chambers almost immediately after takeoff. A few had decided to stay awake for part of the trip, even though they would age at a regular rate during that time. Jane and Emma hadn’t been ready to enter one of those intimidating devices for the first time, and Chris decided to let them choose when the time was right.
All awake civilians on board had been instructed to shelter in place during an emergency but that didn’t explain where all the guards and other non-civilians were—like the scientists he had seen scurrying around during their months-long journey so far.
He’d heard the rumors—and had done his best to ignore them.
Rumors of genetic materials being shipped with them to their new host planet. Rumors of experiments being conducted during the journey itself in anticipation of their eventual arrival. Even rumors of active cloning. And one name—a name that sent literal shivers up and down his spine every time he heard it.
Ripley.
That name meant nothing to the masses, but his rank within the military had allowed him access to information that would have given pause to even the most seasoned of soldiers.
But no, that was insane. It couldn’t be anything more than a ridiculous rumor, spread by people who trucked in conspiracy theories and fantasy. Because if what he’d heard was actually true, if the kind of situation that had doomed the Nostromo and the Auriga and so many others was playing out in any kind of fashion on this ostensibly non-military mission…
A gurgling sound down a hallway to their left interrupted Chris’s thoughts as he and his family continued to hustle forward.
He knew he should keep moving, knew that curiosity was often a death knell in combat situations. But he hesitated, and looked, and then wished he hadn’t.
Down the hallway, through the haze of smoke, he saw a security guard who seemed to be floating. The man’s arms were outstretched as if in religious ecstasy, but there was nothing religious or ecstatic about the look on his face. His eyes and mouth were wide in soundless agony, his body convulsing in time to some rhythm that no one could hear.
Chris focused his eyes, tried to make out what was happening, and that’s when he saw that something was jutting straight through the guard’s midsection—in through the front and out the back, with blood gushing down onto the floor, pooling there and reflecting the red strobe of the emergency lights. At first it looked like some kind of black weapon that had impaled him, but the end of it was swaying gently, like a tree branch in the wind.
Or a tail.
The smoke cleared for a moment and Chris finally saw what the black ‘weapon’ was attached to—something he had read about in military journals, had even seen on grainy, terrifying video footage after his last promotion, but had never actually witnessed in real life. Very few people had.
It was a Xenomorph.
The creature was taller than Chris expected, and its long, ridged tail had skewered the guard while the monster stood staring curiously at the suffering man, as if trying to understand what it had wrought, what it was witnessing.
Its head was a long, glinting slope, coming together at its forefront with a silver jaw of teeth which opened and closed as it observed its prey. Four large ridges extended out of its upper back and its six-fingered claws seemed to be shivering with excitement. Chris had read that the creatures were like animals, that they took no pleasure in slaughter, they were simply acting on pure instinct.
A descriptive term from one of the classified military manuals dedicated to the Xenomorphs suddenly flashed in his mind.
Perfect killing machines.
At that moment, Emma let loose with a scream that almost caused Chris to literally jump. She had clearly caught her first glimpse of the monster. And he couldn’t blame her for yelling.
The creature’s elongated cranium turned towards them, the skewered guard letting out a final, wet gasp before going completely limp.
Chris had taken notice of the guards during the time they’d been traveling on this ship. They definitely weren’t USM officers, retired or otherwise, which wasn’t altogether surprising. The chaos that had erupted on Earth after the crash of the Auriga, and from the general discontent from the
world populace about the heavily polluted, damaged planet, had seen a number of soldiers go AWOL. It wasn’t easy to find experienced officers for a long-term, low-paying mission.
He had briefly thought about volunteering to help guard the transport ship, but Chris had pushed the idea away as quickly as it appeared. His daughters had already been through enough. They didn’t need their father to be gone for hours at a time, even during an ‘uneventful’ trip to their new home.
But the current situation was clear enough: the guards on this ship weren’t prepared to deal with an emergency of this magnitude.
Chris and his girls were on their own.
He barked a single word—“Go!”—and watched as Alicia surged forward, grabbing each of his daughters by the hand. In situations where an enemy is behind you, the most capable soldier always takes rear position.
Backing up as quickly as he could, hearing Jane, Emma, and their cybernetic caretaker sprinting forward behind him, Chris observed as the Xenomorph quickly withdrew its tail from the dead guard, a final burst of blood exploding from the corpse’s stomach before it collapsed on the ground, face first.
The Xenomorph seemed to be staring at Chris, though he couldn’t see the creature’s eyes, and it bared its teeth at him, saliva dripping from its dark jaw. Then the monster took a single step in his direction, its claws slowly closing into what seemed like purposeful fists.
That was all Chris needed to see. He turned and sprinted after Alicia and his girls.
His vision tunneled. He had never been in this particular section of the ship, had never needed to journey down here. He knew the escape pods were off limits to civilians unless orders were given otherwise, but he didn’t care about protocols at this given moment. The commanding officers of this vessel were either dead or very bad at their jobs. No instructions had been given over the loudspeakers, which meant Chris was free to create his own mission parameters, as far as he was concerned. He was getting his daughters off this damn ship.
Alive.
Chris caught up with Alicia and they glanced at each other, the auton smiling slightly, a look of deep compassion in her eyes as she continued to shepherd the girls along to potential safety. He had never seen the family’s android like this. If he hadn’t been in pure protection and survival mode, he would have been deeply perplexed.
“I remain connected to the ship’s central database,” she said. At first, he was surprised that she didn’t sound winded by the run, but then remembered that she didn’t actually have lungs. He wasn’t thinking straight. “Despite multiple systems failures, it is rerouting for the closest inhabited planet, LV-1213. There is a colony there—Mining Outpost Omega Seven Tango. There is a twenty-eight percent chance it will be able to reach its destination intact. However, the escape pods are currently unaffected by the power outages.”
“How close?” he managed to respond.
She narrowed her eyes almost playfully at his question, what he took as confusion, not an emotion she normally expressed.
“Two minutes until we reach the escape pod. Approximately five hundred thousand miles to the outpost,” she said succinctly, answering whichever question he had meant to ask.
“Daddy, I’m scared,” Emma finally cried.
“He’s doing his best!” Jane yelled, her own face finally revealing the terror she felt, unleashing it on her sister since she couldn’t do so on the situation itself. Still running, Chris scooped his younger daughter into his arms, had to stop himself from bursting into tears as she shoved her face into the space between his shoulder and neck, and she started crying instead, her tiny sobs reaching his ears.
“Girls…” he huffed. “We’re almost there. We’re going to be okay.”
A noise suddenly sounded behind them—a skittering that caused goosebumps to run along Chris’s flesh. He knew exactly what it was. He also knew they were out of time. There was no way they could make it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. To no one. To all of them. To Elizabeth.
As he started to turn around, ready to go down fighting, Chris was surprised by a blur of motion in the corner of his vision. The Xenomorph exploded out of the smoke right in front of him, its claws heading straight for his face, but Alicia was faster. She tackled the monster at full speed, slamming it into the wall with a concussive force that he could literally feel, and the two of them rolled along the floor in a flash of coiled black muscle and synthetic human limbs.
They vanished back into the smoke.
“Alicia!” Jane screamed, starting to move back towards the family’s auton.
Chris grabbed her with his free hand, lifting her slightly off the ground, holding Emma with the other, and pushed forward, drawing from reserves he didn’t know he still had.
“No! We have to help her!” his older daughter yelled, fighting him.
“She’ll be fine!” Chris lied, and he immediately felt her resistance lessen, but her exertions were still slowing him down. “Jane. Please.”
She went completely slack in his grip, and he let go, dropping her to the floor as gently as he could while still moving forward, and she continued to run next to him without missing a beat, keeping an impressive pace. Within moments, they reached the escape pods. The area was depressingly empty. No one else had made it here in the short time since the explosions had begun.
Chris ran to the console on the wall and quickly entered command codes that no normal passenger would know. The doors to the multiple escape pods immediately hissed open and he sprinted for the closest one, still holding a shivering Emma, his other arm now wrapped around Jane’s small shoulders and pushing her forward with him.
The pod was smaller than he expected, but he didn’t give a damn. He quickly got each girl situated in one of the four seats—a number that broke his heart for multiple reasons. He thought of Elizabeth, part of him glad that she didn’t have to experience this, a larger part of him still missing her desperately. And he thought of Alicia, most likely being ripped limb from limb by the Xenomorph at this very moment. He shook the images from his mind and focused on saving his daughters.
The girls now buckled in, Chris shimmied to the front of the pod and collapsed into the pilot seat, hitting buttons on the computer console as fast as he could. The transport ship shuddered violently as another explosion sounded in the distance and his girls screamed behind him. They were both openly weeping now.
Jane hadn’t cried since Elizabeth’s funeral, and the gentle sound broke Chris’s heart.
He strapped himself in, set his jaw against the noise, and finished punching in the launch codes, remembering what his superior officers had taught him: Emotions get soldiers killed.
The escape pod door began to shut just as the Xenomorph burst out
of the smoke down the hallway, a bone-chilling screech emanating from its gaping, razor-lined mouth. There was no sign of Alicia.
“Don’t look!” Chris screamed at his girls, looking around for his go-bag, inside of which was the pistol he’d smuggled onto the transport ship. As he quickly surveyed the pod, he realized they had all dropped their bags while fleeing from the monster. They only had the clothes on their backs at this point.
It didn’t matter. Even if they managed to get free of the transport ship, they still needed to somehow make it to LV-1213.
Panicking, Chris looked over his left shoulder. The door was still closing, slowly, while the Xenomorph got closer and closer. Its speed was astonishing.
Just as the door was about to seal shut, the metal came to a screeching halt, leaving a small opening. Even that slight gap was enough to stop them from ejecting. And the opening might just be big enough for the large but clearly dexterous creature to slip in and slaughter them. ...
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