XIV

I was astonished by the weapons that Alan held before us. I mean, I know he said experimental, but these things were outright unbelievable. There was a gravity well device, capable of pulling things towards it, and then firing them away with great force. There was a neutron displacement beam emitter, which could reduce vast quantities of matter to little more than dust. And of course, there was an untested super-force chain gun, the effects of which I mentioned previously. Quite why such devastating weapons needed to be on board a seeding ship, I didn't know. Then again, perhaps they were for just such occasions as this. Whether they'd do any good, though, remained to be seen.

"Oh, that's just lovely, isn't it?" Alan sighed, looking down at his now-empty hands. Between myself, Nathan and Ryan, we'd taken all the experimental weapons, leaving nothing for our cowardly commander.

"What do we do now, sir?" Ryan asked, ignoring Alan's previous statement.

"Well, we track them down, don't we?" He replied, taking the energy-burst cannon from his back. "Unless you want to sleep with those things wandering around the ship all night?" We all shook our heads, then listened as Alan dictated the plan to us. Once more, we'd be traveling en masse, in order to keep each others backs, and after brief preparation, we were off.

Just as we had done earlier that afternoon, we searched the ship from top to bottom. The engine bay, the storage rooms, Science and Medical. The bridge, the kitchen, our quarters. But, just as before, we found nothing. No trace of Brad, the Xenomorphs, nothing. The silence of the group did give me time to reflect, though. As we walked, I found my mind drifting back to the female Xenomorph that I had encountered earlier. I wondered where she was right now. Nathan had told me that she was a 'genetic anomaly'. That she may display human characteristics and emotions, but at the end of the day, she was a 'killer by instinct'. I wasn't convinced. She seemed so harmless when I found her. So… different.

Was it just my imagination? Was I anthropomorphising this creature through stress after losing Cara? It didn't make sense. Yet still, Nathan's words buzzed in my mind. 'Killer by instinct'. Those weren't his exact words, but that was the basic gist of what he had said. Nevertheless, I could not bring myself to accept the fact that she was a brainless predator. She had displayed human emotion, I knew she had, and not once did she try to come near me. Then again, I did have a weapon with me at the time, didn't I? But that couldn't have been the reason she had kept her distance. I put the gun down on the floor and I stepped away from it. But did she know that? 'Fuck!' I thought to myself, frustrated. 'It doesn't make sense…'

After another half an hour or so, we had searched every room aboard the ship. And I mean every single one. There was simply no sign of any Xenomorph, pacifist or predator. The time was now almost eight, and I was becoming increasingly fed up of searching for nothing. At last, Alan turned to the group, and addressed us all in an annoyed tone.

"Well, guys," He sighed, shrugging his shoulders. "We've lost them."

"So what do we do now?" Nathan asked, looking around nervously. "We can't sleep with those things on the loose."

"We might have to, Smith." He replied, although he too became nervous at the thought of sleeping under the circumstances.

"We can put our rooms on lockdown like before," I announced, after giving it some thought. "Even the vents, just in case. Archie can redirect the ducts to recycle the air within our quarters. It'll take a lot of power, but at least we'll be safe."

"Ryan?" Alan asked, turning to the technician of the group. "Can you organise that with Archie?"

"I think so, sir." He nodded, before heading off in the direction of Archie's control hub. Still sticking with the group mentality, we all followed him, and before long we had reached the stairwell to the upper floor. Archie's control hub was slap-bang in the centre of the ship, on this floor. From it, Archie controlled absolutely everything that went on onboard.

"Here we are." Ryan announced as we reached the corridor which led to the central hub. But no sooner than he'd taken one step down the corridor, he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.

"What is it, Ryan?" Nathan asked, to which Ryan replied by telling him to shut up. We watched the tense man as he listened out carefully to his surroundings. Just then, he turned around, and pointed a finger towards the ship's bridge, the door to which was right behind us. I stepped slowly towards the door, and peered through the glass panel, which was at head height.

"What can you see?" Nathan asked, in a much more whispered tone this time. As if he needed to ask.

The Xenomorph was crouched behind a desk in the vast, brightly-lit room. Only the end of it's long head was visible over the tabletop. It appeared to be in possession of something, but it wasn't clear what. I watched as it crept between desks, knocking over papers as it went. I felt myself gulp as I looked on in fear. Suddenly, my throat became clogged, and before I knew what was happening, a loud cough erupted from my mouth. My entire body tensed up as I smacked my hand over my mouth. But it was too late. The creatures' head instantly snapped in the direction of the door, and it began to move forwards.

"Shit!" I shouted aloud, turning to the group. They shared the same look of fear as the alien suddenly charged towards us.

Before anyone could question what was going on, the four of us had begun to bolt down the corridor towards Archie's control hub. That was our only chance of survival right now. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could get through those doors on lockdown. The only question was: Could we reach it in time? We'd only gotten halfway down the corridor when the bridge doors behind us burst open. The Xenomorph let out a deafening screech, and I heard the inevitable sound of rapid footsteps.

"Fucking RUN!" I shouted, although we hadn't exactly been standing still up until this point. Ryan had finally reached Archie's control hub. He dived straight through the open door, with me and Nathan right on his tail, and flung the lockdown activation lever upwards. The doors slowly began to close, grinding along the floor to eventually meet each other in the middle. These were the only doors aboard the ship that shut horizontally rather than vertically, which gave Alan precious time to squeeze through the door as it closed. He sprinted through the opening with little more than a foot of space left, but suddenly began to scream in pain as something ragged him back towards the door.

"Jesus Christ, HELP!" He yelled at the top of his lungs. I saw that the Xenomorph had managed to force it's entire head through the door, and Alan's arm was plunged deep into the creatures mouth. He writhed in pain as the alien shook it's head from side to side, attempting to rag the man's arm from it's socket.

"Somebody fucking help me!" He yelled, his face reddening and tears welling in his eyes. Saliva and blood began to stream from the alien's mouth as it continued to pull at Alan's arm. His screams continued as he winced in pain. Nobody knew what to say or do. How could we help? Then suddenly, I realised.

I looked down at the weapon in my hand; the experimental chain gun. A standard chain gun was strong enough to tear through the hull of small shuttlecraft. Who knew what this thing was capable of? But I realised that if Alan wanted to live, we only had one choice. I fired up the enormous weapon, aiming it directly at his upper arm.

"Jones, don't you fucking dare!" He yelled, seeing what I was about to do.

"You want to live or not?!" I shouted back, over the noise of the gun as it 'span up'. I could hardly believe this man. Totally unreasonable, even in the face of death. No, this really was our only choice right now.

Steadying the chain gun as it began to heat up, I stepped back against the wall of the room. Alan's face was now so twisted with fear, I could barely look at him. The Xenomorph continued to pull at the muscles of his arm, blood seeping onto the cold metal floor. Finally, the gun reached full charge. Without any further hesitation, I pulled the trigger, and a chain of metal erupted from the end of the device. The whole thing was flung across the room in a spectacular fashion, before it inevitably made contact with Alan's arm. Somehow, he managed to scream even more loudly than before, and a look of horror covered the faces of everyone in the room as the chain sliced straight through his arm, bone and all, like butter.

No sooner than Alan had been separated from his doomed arm, the Xenomorph pulled back, taking the lost limb with it. The doors slammed shut as he slumped to the floor, crying and shaking all over. Blood still spurted from what remained of his upper arm. Nathan ran over to assist him, but I found myself frozen on the spot. It had suddenly dawned on me just how screwed we really were right now. First Cara, then Brad, and now Alan (well, a bit of Alan). I wondered whether the Xenomorph would have taken his arm off anyway, if I hadn't shot it off. The very idea that we stood little to no chance against this thing was terrifying. But not quite as terrifying as the events which had just unfolded before me.