Alien
When he came to it was as if he was rising slowly up from the depths of a cold, dark sea… there were noises, distant hammering, bursts of static, urgent voices demanding over a comms link, but he couldn’t follow what they were saying… there were shapes and colours but nothing made sense… something, someone, was shaking him but he couldn’t respond. He felt disconnected from his body, a puppet with broken strings, collapsed in a heap on the floor… floor? It was shiny. Not floor then… decking? It was cold and hard against his cheek and he was lying on it and for the moment that was as much as he could grasp.
The loudest voice resolved into words, not over the comm channel but close by… “Sarge! Sarge! It’s… fuck it, the new guy! He’s down! He must have got one of them, there’s shit and holes everywhere! Christ!” followed by more shaking… “Are you okay? Dammit, we gotta move!” and he tried to sit up, but he couldn’t lift his head, it seemed stuck to the deck, and just trying made the world swim away again and he sank back into the welcoming darkness.
When he surfaced again he was still on the floor, but now leaning against something. His back was against the wall of a corridor, it seemed. Something heavy lay across his lap, but he had the impression not much time had passed. There was a figure standing opposite him. Dressed in full combat armor, pulse-rifle held in readiness, head twisting backwards and forwards in staccato movements as it — she, he decided — tried to do the impossible and watch the corridor in both directions at the same time. She was talking quietly into her helmet microphone. “Yep. Classic bloody xenomorph… acid blood, metallic body parts… you should have seen the state of the room, there wasn’t much left… absolutely bloody canon… what? No, for fuck’s sake listen to me! It wasn’t staged, I could see the stuff eating through the fucking wall where it splashed! I poked at it and it burnt the end off my rifle! I’m telling you it’s far more impressive than the usual crap! If they’ve got the movement down pat we’re in real shit here!”
She noticed him watching. “Back with us? About time… what was it back there, before you hosed it down? An Alien?”
He could almost hear the (tm) after the word alien. He didn’t trust his voice yet so he nodded.
“Christ… did you see it move? Was it fast? Tell me it wasn’t fast”
“Yes…” he croaked, “Though not quite fast enough, as it turned out”
She looked like she wanted to grin, but had forgotten how… “Thank fuck for that… did it do the teeth thing? They never get the teeth right.”
“It did,” his voice was returning. “And they got the teeth right.”
“Dammit, I hate the teeth” she muttered. “Though it does give you more time to shoot the fuckers.”
Silence fell for a moment and he looked at the weight on his lap. He wasn’t surprised to find it was a pulse rifle. He also wasn’t surprised to find the end was partially melted. “It still works” she said, without appearing to have looked in his direction. “Well, probably… though you might want to use it as a club”
There was a burst of static on the comms link, followed by a world-weary voice he decided must be “sarge”.
“We’ve found the bridge” it said, and sighed. “It’s the Nostromo… right down to the CRT monitors and those nodding toy things… I’ve never seen anyone do it better, which means -”
A different voice cut in doing a passable impression of Hicks, “It’s a bug hunt”
“Cut that out!” overrode Sarge. “Okay, people. We know how this goes… you’ve all researched the films, and we’ve dealt with retro-cloners before… but this is as good a setup as I’ve ever seen… we’ve got to expect some android action, the usual xenomorphs, maybe even a queen. Keep your eyes peeled for-”
“Riply?” interjected not-Hicks, to a chorus of snickers.
“I was going to say Jonesy” continued Sarge. “Whoever shoots that fucking cat gets a medal. Right. I want this to go smooth and by the numbers” There were groans. “The crew of whatever this ship was before these idiots pimped it might still be alive, we have to look…” His voice took on a sombre tone. “And be careful, they’ve taken great pains to get this right. Anyone we find will need to be quarantined, and may well be carrying something nasty.”
