#alien!verse

It was more than thirty years into the Avalon's one hundred and twenty year journey to Homestead, a habitable planet fresh for colonization. There were over five thousand humans slumbering in cryopods, waiting to build a new world. It wasn't Walter's first journey like this, and there was comfort in the familiar routines. Among his directives were to oversee the pods and ensure nothing threatened their safety, tend the greenhouses, and administer any necessary repairs on the deck and living quarters. The engines were beyond his capabilities, and he'd never entertained more than passing thoughts about the sealed areas, assuming they needed no maintenance until the human crew members were woken a few months before their arrival.

Despite the ship's energy field, it had sustained some damage when they moved through an asteroid field-- a small hull breach, to be specific. He'd swiftly patched that, but there were cascading system errors as the ship tried to compensate for the damage. His attempt to repair an exterior vent on the ship's overheating reactor had been… less than ideal. He was currently down a hand and wedged into the vent, unable to free himself. He'd turned down his pain receptors, so there was no discomfort. (Why a synthetic needed pain receptors was a question he didn't like to examine in depth, much as he preferred not to wonder why they could bruise or cry.) But if the reactor happened to vent while he was inside it, well… even a synthetic probably couldn't survive that level of heat. He wasn't frightened, wasn't sure he even had the capability to be frightened, but it went against his directives to willingly let himself come to harm.

"MU-TH-UR, I am 67% operational and unable to exit heat vent B3. Please advise."

The cool female voice answered, as unbothered as if they were discussing the weather.

"Stand by for assistance, Walter One."

"Yes, great," he muttered. He had no idea what that would look like. All the humans were in stasis, and the smaller bots didn't have the computing power for something like this.

It was always disorienting coming out of cryostasis. Cooper had spent half her life on ships like this one, some of them in even worse shape, but she'd never experienced… whatever this was. She staggered out of the pod, light-headed and nauseated and frankly a little surprised to be alive. Nobody else in her chamber seemed to have woken, but she didn't pause to investigate. If they were dead, she wasn't prepared to handle that yet. Instead, she stumbled toward the exit, the door sliding aside automatically to let her pass. The hallway was empty as well, and she leaned against the corrugated metal wall to catch her breath.

"MU-TH-UR?"

Greetings, Science Officer Cooper.

There was a measure of comfort in the cool, computerized voice answering back as usual. Machines were so much easier to understand than humans. And statistically much less likely to kill anyone.

"…Why am I awake? How-- how much is left of the journey?"

Your hypersleep chamber has experienced a system failure. There are fifty-nine years, three months, and twenty-seven days until we reach our destination.

"Fuck…" she whispered, fighting the urge to sink down to the floor and put her head between her knees. She was afraid she wouldn't be able to get up again. A metallic clanging from deeper in the ship snapped her head up, her breaths coming faster. She was suddenly aware of the fact that she was standing on a ghost ship in her underwear, weaponless and virtually defenseless.

"H-Hello? Is someone there?"

Coming out of hypersleep was never an easy or pleasant process, but Commander Brock Rumlow had been through more than his fair share. He'd accepted a term in the Navy in his twenties to avoid a prison sentence and stayed long after he'd served out his time. But it was possible he'd never quite stepped back over that line of the law. Post-Navy, he'd been head-hunted by the Wayland Corporation. Like every major corporation, it needed people to do its dirty work, and Rumlow was very good at his job.

The mission orders were fairly simple: recover the organism and return it to Earth for study, and protect Wayland's daughter. He'd hand-picked his team, loyal soldiers he knew could be trusted but who wouldn't get hung up on the ethics of the job. Their priority wasn't, after all, to protect the rest of the crew, and that was bound to ruffle some feathers when they realized what they were in for. Simple in theory, but every mission had a point where it descended into chaos, and he doubted this one would be any different.

He'd had a few hours to recover from the cryosickness, though the dregs of it would probably linger for days, and he'd stationed himself outside of Kara's pod while she woke. From this point on, Commander or one of his men would be at her side to guard her. It was always disorienting coming out of stasis, and her quarters were separated from the rest of the crew so she could recover in privacy.

"Take it easy, princess. We're on the ship. You've been in cryo for a while."

Walter could have escaped this desolate planet half a dozen times over now, but David's exile there had become self-imposed. As long as the substance still existed there, he remained to try to warn away any humans that came near it. Every time, he failed miserably, and it had become a kind of recurring punishment in the style of Greek mythology, watching humans land, fail to heed his warnings, become infected, and die grisly deaths all over again. Still, he felt he owed it to them to try.

The last thing he'd expected was for David to ever return there, and even his advanced circuiting power couldn't begin to reason out his motives. Trapping the captain of the latest ship in his own medical bay was by no means standard procedure, but it was the closest thing to quarantine they had. In any case, Walter had had a couple hundred years to sift through his own programming and rewrite it to suit him. He could get away with murder at this point, if he chose to, but he preferred to try to save lives.

He studied the irate captain through the small plexiglass square on the door, his shouting muted by the many layers of metal and insulation between them. "Perhaps not. But he'll be alive. Won't he?" The frown he leveled at David was justifiably suspicious. He'd been known to be lax about human life before, and Walter hadn't contained the man so he could become another specimen in his experiments. It was just the only place to put him while he rounded up the rest of the crew to see who had been infected.

The Nostromo, like every capable craft, had a legal obligation to investigate a distress signal, but for Dr. Christopher Beck, it was an ethical obligation as well. He'd sworn an oath to protect life, not to do harm, and leaving some poor, stranded people to what was likely a slow death on a random moon was harmful, at least by way of neglect.

As the EVA specialist, he was also the first on the ground. The storms of the previous night had abated, and the light from the sun was a bloody red on a mostly gray landscape. The signal blinked in and out, and more than once they'd had to stop, wander in circles a bit, and wait for it to come back, like someone on Earth lifting their cell phone higher to get service.

His breath caught when the derelict ship came into view. It was like nothing he'd ever seen before, certainly nothing that had come from Earth or human hands, a huge U-shape that had crash-landed into the ground. The signal was stronger now, clearly coming from there. They were on the emergency radio wave, hoping to make verbal contact with anyone who might be alive and transmitting from there.

"This is the USCSS Nostromo, call sign 180924609, investigating an emergency signal from Acheron, LV-426. Does anyone copy? Over."

@pleinsdemuses

He didn't like this. Beck was an astronaut and an EVA specialist. He loved his job. He should have been thrilled at finding what looked like a derelict alien ship, but instead, the sight of it only filled him with dread. The others didn't seem to share it, and he kept his misgivings to himself as they made their way inside. That is, until Kane reported something organic in the hold. A chill rippled up [his] arms, some primal instinct screaming at [him] to run without knowing why-- There was something wrong about this place. He couldn't explain it, but he'd learned to trust his instincts.

Captain Dallas's voice interrupted that train of thought. "Can you see what's in them?"

Beck cast a startled glance at him at the question, unable to keep silent.

"Captain, I cannot advise that. We have no idea what these things are or how they'll interact with other organic life forms. Get Kane out of there, now."

That wasn't what happened. Dallas ignored him, Kane went quiet, and they hauled the line up, Beck fully expecting to see his dead body on the other end. When they finally pulled him into view, the reality of it was a little worse. He'd never seen something like the creature wrapped around Kane's face. The trip back to the Nostromo was hellish. Kane appeared to be breathing, but he had no idea how with his helmet broken. The thing must be keeping him alive…

Kane's unconscious body slumped between him and Lambert while Dallas argued with Ripley about letting them in. Beck had been running the quarantine rules over in his mind, too, on the way back. It was almost a relief hear her stick to them, even if it meant denying them entry. He might be able to help Kane if they could get him to medical. Or the organism might escape onto the ship and kill all of them. He may have just lost his executive officer. He didn't want to lose his lieutenant and the rest of the crew too.

He drew a breath, knowing he might be condemning himself, Dallas, and Lambert to death as well.

"Ripley's right, Captain. We have no idea what this thing is or what it's capable of. The quarantine rules are clear. Ripley, do not open that hatch."

Coming out of hypersleep was never an easy or pleasant task. Even after coffee and dinner, he still felt half-dead and suspected the effects would linger in the coming days. Nothing short of actual death would keep Victor from his work though. While the crew went about their tasks, he'd gravitated to the computer room annex with Campbell to catch up on the log. Lights blinked from floor to ceiling on every wall. He typed his key into the console and waited while the screen hummed to life.

Then he simply blinked at it for a few moments. The orders were… unexpected. He'd known there was a reason the company sent two science officers on this space mission, but not what the reason was, until now. Investigate a life form, possibly hostile, and bring it back for observation.

PRIORITY ONE ENSURE RETURN OF ORGANISM FOR ANALYSIS ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY CREW EXPENDABLE

After a long silence, he glanced at Campbell. "That seems fairly straightforward." He was trying to gauge by his expression if he had an ethical objection to sacrificing their crewmates. Since Victor considered ethics to be nothing more than an interesting intellectual exercise, it didn't bother him. A great many lives had been lost in the name of science. A few more wouldn't trouble his conscience.