"Kevin!" Sam yells into the headset, feet pounding into the floor as they bolt through the elevator doors back in the direction of the nurses' station. "We're out! So are the xenomorphs. Hurry, we need to go."
"Captain Mills, we're on our way to you," Dean relays as he switches to the external channel.
"Roger," she copies. "I'm standing by over airlock Med-3C."
Behind them, they hear the shrieks of the xenomorphs, vents rattling like they're possessed as the station continues to rock. It pitches hard to one side, then the other, alarms blaring. "Orbital stabilisers compromised. Damage critical. Evacuate."
"Kevin, come on!" Sam shouts as the reach they door, bracing himself on the wall for balance. There's still no response on the comms save for white noise. "Let's go!" He slams the door release without even stopping to wonder why it's unlocked, darts inside, then freezes.
Kevin is still there, positioned as ever in front of the computer. So is a pale, clammy, eight-legged creature wrapped around his face.
"Oh shit…" Dean murmurs, no more than a pace behind him.
Sam lets out a gasp. "Kevin…" He takes an instinctive step forward before Dean's hand closes tight on his shoulder.
"It's too late. We've got to go."
Sam swallows painfully. Dean's right. They run.
How they evade the creatures is a miracle, if it doesn't seem that maybe even the xenomorphs are susceptible to the rapidly failing gravity as the station falls apart. One of them swipes its tail down from the vents, comes worryingly close to wrapping it around Sam, and he's saved only by the entire station suddenly pitching hard left.
The brothers topple and end up practically on the walls, stumbling in their efforts to maintain some approximation of upright. Insect-like, the xenomorphs are far better suited to this.
The airlock's in sight now: Med-3C.
Dean slams the release and they fall through, hearing the clang of a domed skull on metal as the door slides shut between them. "Come on!" he yells at Sam, frantically grabbing for an EVA suit in the containers mounted on the walls. If it weren't for his experience of just hours ago, Dean would think he's never thrown on a spacesuit so fast.
They both manage it in under a minute. "Ready!" Sam affirms, and hits the button to depressurise. They hear the hiss as the air is vacuumed out, fading rapidly to silence. The artificial gravity is supposed to switch off, but it's barely functioning to start with as they feel themselves become weightless.
Dean grasps onto Sam and slams the release for the outer door.
It slides open smoothly, the aperture widening to reveal an inky black sky and a glowing green sun burning in the distance. The metal surfaces of the station glint in its light, and the brothers look to the spacecraft hanging in the air above them, casting a grey shadow over the airlock door. It's a shadow that ought to be bigger.
"Jody, you're too far away," Dean says over the comms. "We don't have jetpacks. We can't make that spacewalk."
No response. White noise crackles in his ear. "Captain Mills, bring her in closer."
Nothing. Dean wonders if they're out of range, or if the shape of the station is blocking the signal, or whatever other fucked-up makes-no-sense thing it could be, and wants to scream.
Sam tugs on his arm. Dean blinks, taking a deep breath as he looks down at his brother, then follows where he's pointing.
"There's a disembarkation platform right under her auxiliary port," Sam says, "We can make it."
Dean's eyes do a rapid scan of the station's exterior, seeing there's a marked out service route leading straight to the EVA platform. "Alright. Go."
He practically shoves Sam out of the door, hauling him up towards the assistance ladder running along the station's tower, then follows close behind. They've made it around fifty meters when Dean glances back, eyes scanning down to the airlock hatch they've just departed, and his heart stops.
Black claws are extending out into the vacuum and closing around the rim of the door.
"Shit, Sam. Move!" He looks back again to his brother a few feet up ahead, and sees Sam staring off to a support rig over on their right.
"Dean, are you seeing this?" His voice is flooded with barely-contained fear.
Dean looks. Over on the aluminum rigging running between the towers, xenomorphs are crawling, their glossy heads glinting greenish-grey in the sun's light. From the gaping hole of the wrecked docking port far below, more of them emerge like a swarm, crawling over the station's skin.
"How is that possible!" Dean shouts, panic building in his chest. "How the fuck is that possible?"
He doesn't have answers. Just knows they need to move.
Frantic, the both of them climb higher, dragging themselves over the perpendicular turn onto the platform and falling breathlessly onto it. There's a brief moment of weightlessness and panicked scrabbling for an anchor, before the platform's gravity assist kicks in just enough to keep them down.
The Torrens hangs overhead, a hulking mass casting the station into a deep shadow. Just as Sam had said, the round hatch door of the auxiliary port waits no more than a couple hundred meters away.
"Captain Mills!" Dean shouts into the headset. Still no response.
Behind them, more of the black shapes begin to emerge over the crest of the disembarkation platform, indifferent to the vacuum that ought to kill any living creature in seconds. They need to go. Now.
Dean eyes up the ship hovering in stationary orbit meters away, further than he'd like, but he knows they can make it. He turns to Sam. "Ready?" he says, hand grasping tight onto his brother's.
Behind the glass visor, Sam nods. "Yeah."
They jump.
Dean is the one to grasp the hatch door first, size granting him a longer reach, and he holds on tight while Sam slams the button to unlock. The airlock opens and the pair of them float through, not looking back before it seals tight behind them.
"Captain Mills!" Dean shouts over the radio as he pulls on the repressurisation lever. Surely they're in range by now.
There's no response.
The pair of them tumble to the floor as the artificial gravity kicks in, and Sam moves to pull off his helmet. A gesture from Dean halts him. "Wait."
The older brother activates the door on the other side of the airlock and the pair of them step through to the main body of the Torrens. The hallways are strangely quiet. Deserted.
"Jody?" Dean tries again.
No answer.
They pause just a moment longer, then Dean gives Sam the tiniest of nods to venture cautiously forward. Their footsteps are loud, heavy boots on metal floors echoing through the narrow hallway. Dean ensures Sam stays behind him, keeping three paces ahead to scope out each step before he lets Sam take it. Twenty paces to the next doorway, Dean counts. Something's wrong.
He reaches out a hand to hover over the door release button, holding his breath as he hesitates. Right now he should be feeling relief. Instead, there's only dread.
May as well get it over with. Dean braces himself and slams his hand down.
There's a hiss as the hydraulics kick in and the door slides open to reveal...nothing. It's just the locker room, seemingly empty, but the tension hasn't eased yet. Dean holds an arm out behind him to stay Sam while he ventures cautiously forward. One step, two…
Nothing's there. Dean heaves a sigh of relief. "Alright, Sam-"
"Dean!" Sam sees it first a moment before Dean hears the shriek: a black figure dropping from the storage fixtures overhead. Dean stumbles back, throwing his arms out as he almost loses his balance and yells at his brother.
"Sam, run!"
They do, back down the way they came, Sam a few paces ahead as he reaches the airlock and slams open the inner door. They're not gonna be able to shut it out. There's no time. By the time Dean's boots clamor over the threshold, it's already on him.
He cries out as he goes down, feeling the weight on his back and knowing he has seconds before its claws breach the fabric of his spacesuit. He shouldn't have run. He should have distracted it, given Sam chance to get out, but hell, where would Sam even go now?
The thought barely has chance to form before a sudden force is tugging at him and the alien both, and Dean feels himself flying through the air as Sam hits the button and the outer airlock door opens.
His world spins. Panic rushes through him as he sees the ship's walls flit past and the vacuum of space waiting for him, and he knows it's over. After everything, this is how it ends.
The xenomorph is pulled out ahead of him, its shrieks fading to silence as the air is sucked out around them, then Dean hurtles through the hatch and there's only space. He'd be screaming if he hadn't forgotten to breathe, blood chilling in a way that has nothing to do with the iciness of the vacuum, then he's abruptly halted as something grasps hold of his arm and holds on.
Dean cranes his neck to look behind him, his field of vision partially cut off by the shape of the helmet. It's Sam. He has an EVA cable wrapped around his ankle, pulled taut as he hangs out of the airlock with his good arm extended towards his brother. He won't let go.
Dean glances back at the xenomorph quickly receding to a black shadow in the distance, then lifts his own arm to grab onto Sam and reel them both back in. He doesn't realise how much he's shaking until they hit close on the airlock again and both crumple to the floor.
Sam wrenches off his helmet, tears staining his face, them Dean pulls off his own and holds his brother close. The stay like that for several minutes, the silence broken only by their ragged breathing.
They survived. Dean can hardly believe it, but they survived,
Sam is first to pull away, sniffling and wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "What now?" he asks shakily. "What if there's more of them?"
The thought has occurred to Dean too, but he knows their only hope of getting out of here is if there isn't and he's clinging to that hope. "We'll check," he says as assuredly as he's able. "We have to be careful, but I think that was the last one."
"How can you know?"
"Call it a gut feeling." That's a lie, but it seems to help Sam. They both stand up, climbing out of their EVA suits and Dean grimaces as he sees the claw marks in the back of his, perilously close to puncturing the inner pressurised layer. He doesn't suppose it matters now.
"Come on, little brother," he says, holding his hand out to Sam. Sam takes it.
Once again they venture deeper into the ship.
The control room's a gorefest. Blood paints every surface, spattered across the screens and console so that Sam and Dean would barely be able to pilot the ship had they even known how. Officer Fitzgerald's body is still in the pilot's seat. A hole gapes in his forehead from the xenomorph's jaws, hands limp at the controls. There are rough holes in the floor where it's melted through, the spray of acidic blood suggesting Captain Mills had at least fought back. Wherever her body is - what remains of it - it isn't here.
Beneath the spatter of crimson, a few of the screens remain live. In the centre, a green cursor blinks at them following a few lines of text:
Destination set: SL5-G03
System: Sol
Planet: Earth
Journey time: 62 days
Engage autopilot? Y/N
The brothers turn to each other. Dean's eyes spark with a hope he almost thought he'd lost. "I think we can get home."
For a moment, relief and hope flickers over Sam's face, then he looks nervous. His voice drops to a whisper, as if afraid to tempt fate. "What if there are more of them on board?"
It's what they'd both been thinking. Dean's expression turns grim. "We'll do one more sweep, and if the ship's clean, we'll get in the cryopods and leave." He doesn't say what they'll do if the ship isn't clean. He has no idea.
Dean's finger extends to hover over the keyboard and presses down on the "Y", followed by "enter". Immediately, they hear the sounds of thrusters engaging, engines roaring out of standby to begin the journey.
Through the blood-smeared screen, the distant shape of Sevastopol hurtling towards the gas giant comes into view. The green orb of the system's star lies somewhere beyond, bathing the bridge in a cold, eerie light. Maybe there's the shadowy blip of the jettisoned alien hurtling towards it, or perhaps that's just Dean's imagination.
He turns away. "Come on," he says to Sam. "Let's go."
Their search of the ship returns nothing until they reach the maintenance levels on the lower decks. The bloody remains of Captain Mills have been dragged and dumped by one of the airlocks, almost completely disembowelled and upper body slashed to pieces. They wrap her and Garth in a tarpaulin from the cargo bay and jettison them from the boarding dock.
Sam cries silently while Dean says a few words. "Captain… Jody. Garth. We never got chance to really know you, but thank you for helping us find out what happened to mom. And for programming the autopilot so we can get home. We're grateful you stayed and waited for us and I'm sorry it cost you so much…" He stops when he fears his voice will break.
Once they're convinced as they'll ever be that the Torrens is free from xenomorphs, facehuggers, or eggs, the brothers shower and pull on fresh clothes from the locker room before returning to the cryo bunks. The room isn't as bloodstained as the bridge, but there are signs of a struggle.
Two of the hypersleep chambers are shattered. One seems to have fallen victim to automatic gunfire. On the second, the glass is punched clean through, cracks spreading outwards from a hole in the signature shape of a xenomorph's second set of jaws.
Blinking red error lights on four of the others tell Dean they won't work without repairs. From the exposed wires visible beneath a clawed-through circuit cover, he isn't optimistic.
One's left intact. It's only meant for one person, but Sam's small: they'll fit.
Dean hits the release button and stands back to allow Sam to climb into the opening chamber first. Sam doesn't move, just a flit of his eyes telling Dean, "You go. It'll be easier for me to go next." Of course. Makes sense.
A groan slips past Dean's teeth as he eases himself in, his aching body protesting as all his bruises and sprains flare up once again. The soft memory foam of the bay is welcoming, moulding gently to his body as it helps ease the pain. He settles part way down, then shuffles as much as possible up against the chamber's right wall to allow Sam to join him.
His brother clambers in, all gangly limbs and human warmth as he takes up the remaining space and curls himself against Dean's side. There's enough room to allow Dean to wrap an arm around him as Sam settles down, his cheek to Dean's chest, hair tickling his brother's chin. He feels alive. A pang shoots through Dean as he realises they're the only two left who are.
With a gentle hiss, the chamber hood slides closed above them and snugly envelops them both. Dean's heart beats steadily beneath Sam's ear. Their breathing mingles, falling into sync as the cryosleep process begins to slow their metabolisms.
It's impossible to tell which of them goes first. From somewhere far away, an almost forgotten voice whispers, "I miss you so much, my angels. I'm so sorry for all the time I missed, and the time we'll never get to spend together. No matter what happens, know that I am so, so proud of you and will always love you."
Entangled in each other's arms, they sleep.
-fin
Concluding A/N: Thank you to all of you who have read to the end, and I hope you've enjoyed the story. While I have included an epilogue, if you prefer the "happier" version of the ending and would like to believe in the best possible outcome, I would recommend that you stop reading here.