CHAPTER 4
June 21st, 2179. Hadley's Hope terraforming colony
The storm has eased during the afternoon and now it was just a soft wind, but the thick clouds still darkened the deep blue sky. Brad Lidecker typed daily reports in the terminals, just routine when the radio crackled and a voice called desperately.
-"Mayday! Mayday! This is Alpha-Kilo-Two-Four-Niner calling Hadley Control. Repeat. This is Alpha-Kilo-Two-Four Niner we need immediate assistance –"
-"This is Lidecker, repeat Alpha-Kilo-Two-Four Niner, what's the emergency?" he called back
-"This is Anne Jorden calling from the Ilium Range, my husband has an emergency and we need medical assistance. Latitude: 23°45'52''N Longitude: 26°52'48''W" Anne's voice sounded desperate, maybe they were in trouble, some kind of medical emergency.
-"I'll notify the colonial marshal, a rescue team will arrive there ASAP Anne" Lidecker responded, then called the Marshal Bureau
Topher Wilson and his deputy were cleaning their service weapons, plus the standard .357 revolver and the 37-12 gauge pump action shotgun. Wilson finished with both his weapons and took them to the weapons locker, when he opened it, he admired the most powerful weapon on his arsenal, an Armat M41A pulse rifle, with armor-piercing case-less ammunition and a grenade launcher under the barrel was the standard weapon of the colonial marines since '71, after the Tientsin campaign. And it is not that he used that weapon to impose order in the quiet colony, he kept it by nostalgia for his days as a marine, along with a small amount of ammunition and used to go out to the field and shoot it from time to time.
-"Wilson, do you copy? Wilson? This is Lidecker from operations, we have a situation, over" Lidecker called.
-"Wilson here, what happen, Lidecker?" The colonial marshal took the radio, leaving the pulse rifle over the desk.
-"The Jorden's found something in the Ilium Range and Russ is hurt, something had attacked" Lidecker informed him "They need immediate assistance. Grab a Seeker and get them here"
-"Something? What do you mean with something?" Wilson asked. Clearly something meant some kind of creature or animal.
The discovery of alien life forms was not something new and very often, the planets contained one or several dangerous forms, from bacteria to wild animals, during their days in the colonial navy Topher Wilson participated in some bug hunts, but Acheron –the local name for LV-426 –was uninhabited until they established the colony.
-"Just get your ass on the Seeker for fuck's sake! Their children are there and I don't want them hurt" Lidecker was impatient.
-"I'll be right away." He said, and then he ordered the deputy "Ramirez, take the emergency kit and come on, now!"
-"We're on our way. Just tell Anne hang on there" Wilson told Lidecker, and then he hurried outside. Ramirez took the trauma kit from the cabinet and ran after the Marshal, halfway the colony's garage.
A few hours later, the Seeker vehicle crawled amongst the rocks in the Ilium Range, its floodlights bathing the eerie landscape, barely visible by thick fog. Somewhere ahead, the white LED lights from the Jorden's tractor illuminated a massive object.
-"¿Qué diablos es eso?" Ramirez exclaimed. Wilson saw it too, a horseshoe dark grey object partially buried in lava, one of the arms was broken and had crashed on the rock bed, partially covered by a basalt flow. When they approached the tractor, Anne Jorden jumped off the aft hatch, beckoning arms outstretched.
-"Over here!" She cried, pointing the back of the tractor "Russ is here!"
-"What happened?" Topher Wilson asked, as he signaled paramedic Sandra Archer and Ramirez with the right hand.
-"A thing… a creature… attacked Russ" Anne told them.
As they arrived at the tractor and climbed the hatch, Wilson saw the inert silhouette of Russ Jorden lying on his back in the tractor's floor. A weird creature wrapped around his face, it was like the impossible cross between a big scorpion and a long fingered hand. He backed away in disgust; the creature had no visible eyes and was firmly clutching the man's head. Wilson had never heard or seen anything like it. He touched it with the tip of the shotgun and upon contact with the metal; the creature tightened its tail, curled around Russ's neck.
-"Careful, Marshal, It did that every time I touch it." Anne warned him.
-"How are your Kids?" Topher asked her.
-"They're fine, just a little frightened" Wilson saw Timmy and Newt huddled in the back seat of the tractor. Newt held back tears while Timmy tried not to look at the creature.
-"We had to take your husband to the infirmary. Ramirez, take the search engine back, me and Sandra will go with the Jorden's in his tractor" he ordered his men and said back to Anne "Meanwhile, tell me everything"
- o –
June 21st, 2179. Derelict spacecraft at Ilium Range, LV-426; few hours earlier
-"Looks like we can enter from there," Russ said to his wife, pointing to three strange apertures in the central part of the alien structure.
-"if they are entrances, as far as we know they could be the ship's exhausts" Anne suggested.
They climbed the rocks towards the almost vaginal tunnels; the curved corridor's floor was covered in ash and sand. It was completely dark and their flashlights only allowed them to see no more than ten meters ahead.
-"Ok honey, release the PUP" Russ said as he pulled off a tablet-like device from his overalls.
-"There it goes" Anne said, as she released the tiny mapping drone, feed from the drone's sensors were sent to Russ' device, and a 3D map of the derelict was forming on the screen.
-"There's a chamber ahead, a large object on the center. It must be the bridge" Russ informed his wife, they walked there.
-"If it's a ship; we don't know what it is" Anne responded.
The chamber was a circular, domed space with a low platform rising on the center. Above, a small circular aperture let the little outside light seep inside, illuminating the space with a ghostly blue light, but the most notorious thing was a huge dead alien life-form sitting in what appeared to be a large chair and a telescope, pointing upside. Half of the camber was flooded by the same lava flow which covered the ship's exterior, obviously poured inside through the cracks in the hull.
-"What the Hell is that?!" Russ exclaimed, he pointed the flashlight towards the creature's head.
-"The pilot… I guess" Anne responded "How old is this place?"
-"I dunno, a thousand years, maybe more" he said, he observed the bony appearance of the creature and a strange wound on its chest. Russ put his hand inside the hole, touching the twisted bones
-"Russ, there's something here." Anne's voice distracted him "Lava poured through this hole. I can't see where it goes, sent the drone there"
The tiny aircraft descended through the lava covered opening, they saw it disappear in the darkness below. Russ consulted the portable device and saw the vertical shaft ended in another, larger chamber below the derelict's "bridge"
-"Looks like some kind of cargo hold" He guessed "Let's see if we can get there from another entrance… There, we can enter through here. Let's go." Russ pointed to a crack on the broken arm, just right where they had left the tractor.
-"I'm behind you" Anne responded.
They walked back outside and descended towards the left. Below the hill the Tractor remained parked, illuminated slightly by the headlights. Anne looked the sky, Zeta2 Reticuli was high but Calpamos soon it would eclipse her, and it would be really dark; she calculated they had an hour or two before night.
-"How will the children be?" Anne asked "I don't see them from here"
"They'll probably be sleeping," Russ replied, raised an arm, waving at the vehicle. He saw no movement inside but had told Timmy to call if something happened. "Relax, they're OK, let's take a last look and get back to the colony"
The dented crack on the ship's hull was full of debris, optic fiber cables dangling from the ceiling, wide, rubber-like tubes with water and another liquid dripping from it, Ash and hardened lava poured inside. Russ and Anne crawled over a section of the corridor where the lava almost covered it.
-"This place is empty" Russ told her "Have you seen any objects? Computers? Cargo boxes? Furniture? These guys are minimalistic to the core."
-"Maybe the stripped the place after the crash… or one of their salvage teams, just as we do" Anne responded.
-"We need something to claim the place" Russ said "Any object from the ship of the crew, you know the rules"
-"Let's see if they left something in the cargo hold" Anne agreed, they went out to another corridor where they could already stand, ahead, a strange blue light shone. They heard a buzz and soon the little drone appeared before them. They were at the right level.
The cargo hold was large, far larger than the derelict's bridge. Its walls had an organic appearance like the rest of the ship. Anne felt as they were inside a large animal, like those representations of Jonah inside the sea creature called the Leviathan. Anne stepped onto something, she looked down and saw a broken vessel, and she picked it up.
It was carved in grey soapstone with strange markings. She'd shown the object to Russ.
-"Look at this, we can take it as claim" Anne said.
-"Yes, but let me see what's over there" The hall was filled with mist, Russ ventured beyond.
Meanwhile Anne saw more of the broken vessels all over the floor. Looked like the ship was carried them and they broke with the crash. But they were all empty, otherwise its contents would be scattered all around the hold. She saw her husband climb down a step and walked towards him, don't wanting to lose him from sight.
-"Look at this, Anne!" Russ exclaimed.
-"What is it?" Anne said, walking towards her husband.
-"I dunno, but they looks like eggs or something"
Russ was excited, standing on one low platform covered in a strange blue mist, part of the curved wall was broken and the lava flow was poured inside, half of the platform buried on it and partially burned, but in the area that was intact, some strange ovoid objects were placed in at regular intervals. Anne could see that the lava flow had burned some of the "eggs" but clearly some of them survived.
-"Are they alive?" Anne asked. As far as she knew, the objects can be some kind of organic cargo crates and not eggs.
-"Looks like they're dead" Russ replied, he was standing next to one of the objects and touched it "Dry dead" He swept his flashlight over the rest of the cargo hold and suddenly he saw something. The "skin" of the egg at the far end became translucent in contact with the flashlight's beam. Something inside twitched.
-"What the Hell?! One's still alive!" He exclaimed and then he approached the object.
-"Careful" Anne warned "We don't know what they are"
-" I just want to see it closer" The upper part of the ovoid opened like a grotesque rose bud, four petals turned outward exposing the inside of the object. Inside, Russ saw a fleshy yellow material covered with a whitish fluid that pulsed like a heart. "There's something inside, it's kind of gross, like –"
He didn't finished the sentence, something exploded inside and the next thing Anne saw was her husband fell backwards grabbing something on his face, she saw the yellowish finger-like legs and a long segmented tail coiled around Russ' neck.
-"Russ!" She cried, but his husband was fighting a losing fight. By the time she reached him, his arms relaxed. The creature had left him unconscious… or worse. Anne tried with all her strength to pull the little monster off his face but was firmly attached, and the creature tightened it's coil around the neck. With no other option, Anne grabbed her husband's arms and dragged him out to the tractor, hoping that by the time the help arrived it wasn't too late.
- o –
On the back of the Daihotai tractor, Colonial Marshal Topher Wilson looked at Russ and the creature as Anne finished her story. The little alien was still clinging tightly to the face of man; the only signs were the pulsations of flattened sacks on the creature's side, almost like the bags of those old gas masks of the First World War in the early 20th century. It would be be a long, long way back to the colony.
- o –
A/N: Hello Readers, I hope you've enjoyed this chapter, an extended version of the deleted scene in Aliens, later reinstated in the extended cut. As I said before I haven't read "River of Pain" but as in the comic "Aliens: Newt's Tale", the colonists investigate the derelict's interior and them got facehuggered too. That was not sense to me as Anne most likely had warned them about the creatures and in "River of Pain" the marines guarded the place. Here, Colonial Marshal attended Anne's call for rescue and the colonist would not venture into the derelict.
In response to Nathan's review (and others), you're right, the colonists didn't have pulse rifles or another military grade equipment, but most likely they had light weapons as shotguns, pistols and hunting rifles as in Alien: Isolation. In Aliens, Apone said there was light arms fire and improvised explosive devices, most likely seismic charges. Also in response at your idea of having different types of aliens, the answer is probably, because the colony has cattle and probably pets.