Hudsons closed eyes flickered, the rapid movement of a nightmare going on beneath the surface. Vivid to the one experiencing it, but the depths of the horror unknown to those on the outside. The marines eyes opened quickly, his breath was heavy, beads of sweat trickled down his forehead and his hair was plastered to his head. A thin sheet covered his body, and for the longest time he didn't know where he was, or why he was even alive too feel that concern.
Then he remembered, the small ship that he had left Acheron on. The Luna Trip shuttle... someone must have picked up the distress beacon. Hudson moved to sit up in the bed and pain rippled down his arm and over his chest. He gasped to the sharpness of it and flopped back down with an overwhelming dizziness that the movement and pain had caused.
"Fucking hell, Man" he cursed, as he looked about the room, various pieces of medical equipment were scattered about the place, machine blinked and beeped and he knew that they were telling his pulse rate and life signs. The door to the room slided open, letting a bright shaft of light in, which was quickly obstructed by something, something large and dark. The pulse rate beeping quickly fired into overdrive as Hudsons panic settled in to stay, the darkness at the door slinked ever closer to the Marine. A slender hand on top to the bed covers, with fingers and nails as black as night. The elongated head pushed forwards and Hudson looked away, a cringe on his face as his heart continued to hammer against his chest. Panic froze him too the bed, his knuckles white as they gripped the sheet underneath him and he opened his mouth to let out a deep chested scream as the Xenomorph opened it's own mouth to plunge the second into the side of his head.
The scream still at the tip of his breath, Hudson sat up quickly as the nightmares faded once again from his mind, the pain still managed to ripple down his arm where the acid burn from the first encounter was still raw and slowly healing. The medical bay aboard the ship that rescued him was primitive, and all the machines around him were either switched off or broken, never to work again. Although the blackness of space outside never hinted anything less, he knew it was night time aboard the transport ship. The ship ran a skeleton crew, and they'd picked up the distressed shuttle several days ago. Hudson hadn't been on board the shuttle for long himself, but for the time he had been there he had been unconscious, and dreaming. He'd woken up, fixed to one of the working machines and non-the-worse for wear physically, although his arm had been a bit of a mess. It was now bandaged in a rough field dressing and soon himself and the crew would be back in hypersleep and on their way back home to Earth. Hudson had kept the crew from doing so thus far, just in the slim hope that the Sulaco returned to the area too look for him, or in case their seventeen day rescue finally came to their aid.
Hudson was sat on the side of the bed in his shorts when the door opened, a young woman came into the room. She was acting as the crews medical officer, although she knew little more than how to dress wounds and hook someone up to one of the dilapidated machines.
"We're leaving in twelve hours" she told him as she knelt down the back of one of the machines. She could hear him starting to protest, in his usualt outspoken manner when she added. "We're running low on supplies, we have no choice. I'm sorry." as she spoke her hollow apology she pulled one of the cables from the machine and threw it onto the floor next to her, then returned for another cable.
Hudson fell into compliance, the unnatural obedience of the Marine within him falling into place, and he nodded, knowing that he was a guest on the hauler, not in command of it. "Alright." he spoke in his Texan accent and ran a hand through his sweat dampened, short cropped hair. He had known for a while that none of his comrades we're still alive on the dead planet they orbited, and if they had gotten away on the Sulaco, then they we're light years away by now, but the fear of going back to Earth alone to deal with it by himself was overwhelming.
"I'll get a pod preped for you." The woman told him picking up the cables from the floor and left the room, to leave Hudson to brood on his own thoughts.
Hudson stood from the bed and picked up his trousers from the floor and pulled them on, slipping some boots onto his feet without tying the laces. He headed to the window and looked down to the blur of the lifeless planet below him and thought about the good people that he was leaving behind, and going to get revenge for.
The hours passed slowly, and many of the hours we're spent reflecting on what had happened on Acheron. Despite all the bragging and the bigging himself up, Hudson had fallen prey to the weakness of mankind, fear. He swallowed hard and made his way through the large ship toward the suspension chambers after an announcement had been made throughout the ship from the Captain telling the crew that it was time to return home.
A couple of the crew members shot him hard looks as they gathered around the sleep pods and he almost bit back at them, forgetting his place. The woman from earlier opened several of the stasis tubes and the crew members climbed inside ready for the long sleep home.
"This way." The woman called to Hudson, leading him to the tube that had been prepared for him earlier, it then dawned on Hudson that she was the synthetic of the crew, and would be monitoring them during their time in hypersleep. Hudson opened the stasis tube himself and once inside pulled the top closed while the woman did her job outside putting the settings for the light-years ahead of them.
