AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks so much for the reviews! If you have any advice, suggestions, or ideas for plot twists or ways to make the story better, I'm all ears! I also borrowed a couple of descriptions of things/places from the actual movie script. So you'll probably catch those throughout the story as well. Anywho, enough of my gabbing. On to Chapter 2!

Chapter 2: Acheron

JULY 27, 2179

The USS Sulaco took nearly three weeks to arrive at LV-426, which the colonists of Hadley's Hope had renamed Acheron. The troop transport didn't actually land on LV-426. It simply went into orbit around the small planetoid.

The large craft was ugly and battered, but still functional. The rough-and-tough marines didn't seem to care, though. It was like a second home to them.

At the moment, though, the Sulaco seemed lonely and abandoned. Most lights were either off or dimmed and there was no movement anywhere on board. The marines, Bishop, Ripley, and Burke were all in stark white cryotubes in the hypersleep chamber on a lower level of the craft.

Suddenly, some lights flickered and several computers came on. One by one, the lids of the long, white cryotubes opened. It took several minutes for everyone to open their eyes and even longer for them to actually sit up and realize where they were.

The entire hypersleep chamber was blindingly white and many of the troopers had to squint or rub their eyes first before they could focus on anything.

Ellen Ripley sat up in her cryotube and looked to the man on her right, Pvt. Drake. He looked grim and menacing, as he always did. Ripley noted the long scar that ran from the corner of his right eye towards his ear. He ran a hand through his bright blonde hair and looked around. "They ain't payin' us enough for this, man." He grumbled.

A woman, Cpl. Dietrich, the med-tech, was on the other side of Drake. "Not enough to have to wake up to your face, Drake." She said as she stood up.

"What?" he said looking over at her from his cryotube. "Is that a joke?"

"I wish it were." She sighed.

Drake looked over to a man past Ripley, Corporal Hicks. Hicks was sitting up in his cryotube with his legs hanging over the edge. He was rubbing the back of his head. "Hey Hicks, man… you look just like I feel."

Hicks didn't respond but just looked up at the man and continued to rub his head. 'Smartass,' he thought to himself. He and Ripley made eye contact for a moment but she quickly broke it off.

Sergeant Apone sat up in his cryotube and the first thing he did after he sat up was stuff a cigar in his mouth. He got up and walked down the line of tubes in his green boxers. "All right, sweethearts, what are you waitin' for? Breakfast in bed?" he said, holding his cigar in his hand. He watched the others get up. "Another glorious day in the corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I love the corps!"

He stopped at Pvt. Hudson's cryotube. He knew that Hudson was a wisecracking, no-work-all-play kind of guy. He had his panicky moments but Apone knew that Hudson was a damn good com-tech.

"Man, this floor's freezing." Hudson said as he stood up and hopped around a little bit on the cold floor.

Apone looked at him. "What do ya want me to do, fetch your slippers for ya?"

Hudson looked back at him as he grabbed his cold foot. "Gee, would you, sir? I'd like that."

"Just get moving, Hudson." Apone said, annoyed. He turned away from the man and called out to everyone else. "Fall in, people. C'mon. Let's go."

After they ate, all ten of the marines lounged around on crates and boxes in the armory. They were being briefed. Before them stood Sergeant Apone, Lieutenant Gorman, Ellen Ripley, and Carter Burke.

The marines were suspicious of Ripley and skeptical of her story. They didn't believe this 'xenomorph' fairytale. It was too far-fetched and silly to be true. Giant aliens with acid for blood? Right.

Dwayne Hicks, on the other hand, was a different story. He made no underhanded or condescending comments like the others did. He just sat on top of a crate, smoking a cigarette, watching Ripley very carefully.

This strong-willed woman seemed frightened and sad. 'Something must have scared her,' he thought to himself. 'For her to even be here, she must've seen something…'

And once again, he saw the dark-haired Carter Burke, that sniveling little paper-pusher. He was a representative for Weyland-Yutani, so he probably had some kind of 'secret mission,' or some bullshit like that, for the Company. He wore a plaid shirt with a beige vest and dark pants. Hicks noted that even he himself could dress better than Carter and Hicks had no sense of style whatsoever, except, of course, for his military uniform. People seemed to appreciate that.

Hicks snapped out of his daze when Gorman started to talk. He spoke with a learned authority. As if he had heard people speak like this a thousand times but never actually tried it himself until at that moment. "All right, I want this to go smooth and by the numbers. I want DCS and tactical database assimilation by 0830." Several of the marines groaned. "Ordnance loading, weapons strip and drop-ship prep details will have seven hours…" This time everyone groaned.

From what the marines could tell, Hadley's Hope was deserted. It was like a ghost town. Each corridor was lonely and dark with not a single soul around. None of the marines stated it directly, but it frightened and puzzled them.

A battle had raged there, that they knew. They came across a barricade near Operations and each little apartment in the Residential Wing looked like it had seen a world war. There were giant gaps and holes in the walls, ceiling, and floor from what Ripley believed to be acidic blood.

After Lieutenant Gorman labeled the area secure (which Ripley promptly objected to), he, Ripley, Bishop, and Burke entered the complex. The four of them went with one team of the marines. The other team, headed by Sergeant Apone, stayed near Operations.

Ripley was the first to notice the medlab with the stasis tubes.

Ripley's face became grim but curious as she walked towards the room. As she reached the doorway Hicks grabbed her arm and pulled her back. He stepped into the room first. "Lieutenant." Hicks said. No response. Hicks took another step or two into the room. "Gorman!" he said, a little more annoyed.

Gorman stepped into the room. The others followed. The room was dimly lit except for the seven transparent cylinders, which glowed faintly.

Inside the stasis tubes was what terrified Ripley, though. The jars appeared to contain giant, beige spiders. But Ripley knew better. Their long tails had drifted to the bottom and their ghastly thin legs were curled up tightly. They appeared to be dead.

Our beloved Carter Burke was the first to get close to the tubes. "Are these the same…?" He looked back at Ripley. She simply nodded, unable to speak.

Burke stared at one of the tubes intently. He got so close to it he was nearly pressing his nose into the glass. "Careful, Burke…" Ripley called out from behind him.

The creature inside lunged suddenly, slamming its skeletal body against the glass. Burke jumped back. Everyone stared in awe and disgust as a small, ivory-colored tubule sprung out from its underbelly and moved all over the glass.

"Looks like love at first sight to me." The thing continued to swim all over the glass. "Oh, he likes you, Burke." Hicks said as he leaned in and smirked at Burke. Burke tried to play off a small smile but he was a little too twitchy at the moment for that.

Bishop, the synthetic who looked to be in his forties or so, grabbed a small, brown clipboard off of a table nearby and looked at it. "Two are alive, the rest are dead." He flipped through a couple of pages that were attached to the clipboard. He spoke softly as he looked closely at one of the pages. "Surgically removed before embryo implantation. Subject: Marachuk, John J. Died during the procedure." He looked up at everyone. "They killed him getting it off."

Pvt. Drake and Pvt. Frost were in a room connected to the medlab. Frost was holding the motion tracker when it suddenly beeped loudly. "Yo, Hicks!" Frost, a young black man with a rather deep voice, called out. "I think we got somethin' here."

Hicks peered over Frost's shoulder and stared at the motion tracker for a moment, at the two bluish-white dots heading in their direction. "Behind us." He said as he glanced over his shoulder at the corridor they just passed through.

"Any of us?" Ripley said as she stood next to Hicks.

Gorman had a small headset on. He used it to contact Apone. "Apone… where are your people? Anybody in D-Block?"

"Negative." Came Apone's voice over the headset. "We're all in Operations."

That was Drake's cue. He slid past everyone to the front of the group with his giant smart-gun. He squatted a little bit as he positioned the gun in front of him. "Talk to me, Frosty." He said to Frost as he moved along. Frost was directly behind him.

"Keep movin', baby." Frost said as he held the tracker in front of him. It was beeping steadily.

The group continued to move through the rest of the medlab. They stopped when they reached the doorway. Hicks, Frost, and Drake were heading the group.

"It's moving." Hicks said as he glanced at the tracker.

"Which way?" Drake spoke softly as he continued to stared out of the doorway, waiting for something to just pop out and scare the living daylights out of him

"It's comin' straight for us. Straight up." Frost watched the tracker intently.

The group stepped out into the corridor but nothing was there. As they moved farther down the hallway, the beeping of the tracker became more loud and frequent. The little bluish-white dots were coming closer. Twelve meters… eleven meters… ten meters…

Hicks stared into the dim hallway. He could see that the end of the hallway turned to the left and into another corridor. 'Something's not right,' he said to himself. 'Whoever it is is coming right towards us. Are they armed?' He glanced at Drake and Frost and saw the huge guns they possessed. Then he glanced at the gun in his own hands. 'Well, they definitely can't outgun us…'

At that moment, Hicks saw something. Dark forms. Two shadows, to be exact, slowly rising up the wall of the corridor. Whoever it was was coming down the second hallway.

Drake raised his gun, ready to fire.

"Don't shoot!" Hicks barked. The two soldiers next to him stopped in mid-step and looked at him strangely. "Look." Hicks said as he pointed down the hallway.

From around the bend came two people; a small girl and a woman, maybe twenty-five or so. The two stopped at the end of the hallway and stared at the soldiers and the four people behind them. The girl was clinging to the woman's leg fiercely and hiding half her head behind the woman's lower back. This lady, whoever she was, had her arm wrapped protectively around the girl's upper body. They both looked ragged and terrified.

"P-please." The woman began softly as tears streamed down her dirty cheeks. "Please, help us."