(Author's Note: So this is my first story! I absolutely adore the Alien franchise, my favorite character has always been Bishop, so I started to write this a few months ago. I have about four chapters already written up. Most of the scenes and dialogue are taken from the novelization.)
Disclaimer: I do not own Aliens or any part of the franchise. I only own Apollo Kane.
Three dreamers.
Not so very much difference between them despite the more obvious distinctions. One was of modest size, the other two larger. Two were female, the other male. The mouths of the first two contained a mixture of sharp and flat teeth, a clear indication that they were omnivorous, while the maxillary cutlery of the other was intended solely for slicing and penetrating. Both were the scions of a race of killers. This was a genetic tendency the first two dreamers kind had learned to moderate. The other dreamer remained wholly feral.
More differences were apparent in their dreams than in their appearance. The first two dreamers slept uneasily, memories of unmentionable terrors recently experienced oozing up from the depths of their subconscious to disrupt the normally placid stasis of hypersleep. They would have tossed and turned dangerously if it weren't for the capsule that contained and restrained their movements - that and the fact that in deep sleep, muscular activity is reduced to a minimum. So they tossed and turned mentally. They were not aware of this. During hypersleep one is aware of nothing.
Every so often, though, a dark and vile memory would rise to the fore, like sewage seeping up beneath a city street. Temporarily it would overwhelm their rest. Then they would moan within their capsules. Their heartbeats would increase. The computer watched over them like an electronic angel would note the accelerated activity and respond by lowering their body temperature another degree while increasing the flow of stabilizing drugs to their system. The moaning would stop. The dreamer would quiet and sink back into her cushions. It would take time for the nightmare to return.
Next to one dreamer, the small killer would react to these isolated episodes by twitching as if in response to the larger sleepers distress. Then it, too, would relax again, dreaming of small warm bodies and the flow of hot blood, of the comfort to be found in the company of its own kind, and the assurance that this would come again. Somehow it knew that all dreamers would awaken together or not at all.
The last possibility did not unsettle its rst. It was possessed of more patience than its companions in hypersleep, and a more realistic perception of its position in the cosmos. It was content to sleep and wait, knowing that if and when consciousness returned, it would be ready to stalk and kill again. Meanwhile it rested.
Time passes. Horror does not.
In the infinity that is space, suns are but grains of sand. A white dwarf is barely worthy of notice. A small spacecraft like the lifeboat of the vanished vessel Nostromo is almost too tiny to exist in such emptiness. It drifted through the great nothing like a freed electron broken loose from atomic orbit.
Yet even a freed electron can attract attention, if others equipped with the appropriate detection instruments happen to chance across it. So it was the lifeboats course took it close by a familiar star. Even so, it was a stroke of luck that it was not permanently overlooked. It passed very near another ship; in space, 'very near' being anything less than a light-year. It appeared on the fringe of a range spanners screen.
Some who saw the blip argued for ignoring it. It was too small to be a ship, they insisted. It didn't belong where it was. And ships talked back. This one was as quiet as the dead. More likely it was only an errant asteroid, a renegade chunk of nickel-iron off to see the universe. If it was a ship, at the very least it would have been blaring to anything within hearing range with an emergency beacon.
But the captain of the ranging vessel was a curious fellow. A minor deviation in the course would give them a chance to check out the silent wanderer, and a little clever bookkeeping would be sufficient to justify the detours cost to the owners. Orders were given, and computers worked to adjust trajectory. The captains judgment was confirmed when they drew alongside the stranger; it was a ships lifeboat.
Still no signs of life, no response to polite inquiries. Even the running lights were out. But the ship was not completely dead. Like a body in frigid weather, the craft had withdrawn power from its extremities to protect something vital deep within.
The captain selected three men to board the drifter. Gently as an eagle mating with a lost feather., the larger craft sidled close ot the Narcissus. Metal kissed metal. Grapples were applied. The sounds of the locking procedure echoed through both vessels.
Wearing full pressure suits, the three boarders entered their airlock. They carried portable lights and other equipment. Air being too precious to abandon to vacuum, they waited patiently while oxygen was inhaled by their ship. Then the outer-lock door slid aside.
Their first sight of the lifeboat was disappointing: no internal lights visible through the port in the door, no sign of life within. The door refused to open when external controls were pressed. It had been jammed shut from the inside. After the men made sure there was no air in the lifeboats' cabin, a robot welder was put to work on the door. Twin torches flared brightly in the darkness, slicing into the door from two sides. The flames met at the bottom of the barrier. Two men braced the third, who kicked the metal aside the way was open.
The lifeboats interior was as dark and still as a tomb. A section of portable grappling cable snaked along the floor. It's torn and frayed tip ended near the exterior door. Up close to the cockpit a faint light was visiable. The men moved towards it.
The familiar dome a hypersleep capsule glowed from within. The intruders exchanged a glance before approaching. Two of them leaned over the thick glass of the transparent sarcophagi. Behind them, their companion was studying his instrument and muttered aloud.
"Internal pressure positive. Assuming normal hull and systems integrity. Nothing appears busted; just shut down to conserve energy. Capsule pressure steady. There's power feeding through, though I bet the batteries have just about had it. Look how dim the internal readouts are. Even see a hypersleep capsule like these two?"
"Late twenties." The speaker leaned over the glass and murmured into his suit pickup. "Good lookin' dame."
"Good lookin', my eye." His companion sounded disappointed. "Life function diodes are all green. That means they're alive. There goes our salvage profit, guys."