Mass Effect is the property of Bioware, Alien is owned by 20th Century Fox
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USM Anzio
"-and the other is grey. I see. Thank you, lieutenant. By the way, if you see someone who looks like a cross between a chicken and a dinosaur, let me know. I'd love to know what colour they are. Anzio, out"
Captain Ramirez looked back at the screen that showed three images of bipedal creatures. Once the Anzio had shown that they understood what the aliens were trying to convey, the aliens had broadcast a new set of images, this time at much higher resolution. It had taken some time before those images had been transmitted through the 'blinking' method, as the crew was now calling it, but between the drawings and lieutenant Anderson's report, they now had a fair idea what the aliens looked like.
"Alright, everybody. Next step: repeat the image of a human, same resolution as they are using, but add the word human in letters at the bottom." He turned toward P.O. Nika, who was still inside the virtual reality environment. "Petty officer Nika, you are relieved. You are off-duty for at least eight hours, but keep an open comm-link. It looks like we'll be quite busy for the forseeable future. In the mean time, we'll set up a link with he Calypso's central computer and see what we can learn from it."
P.O. Nika took off her VR helmet and blinked several times as her eyes tried to forcus on the real world around her. She'd been in the VR environment, non-stop, for nearly three hours, more than twice the recommended maximum time. It would take her a while to re-adjust.
"Thank you, sir." She stood up, but had to steady herself on the armrest of her chair as the room seemed to spin around her.
"Just get some rest, petty-officer."
Ramirez turned back to the screens.
"Now, people. I want ideas. We need more bandwith and we need audio contact. Go back to the first-contact protocols and see what you can find. There has to be a way to explain it to these folks."
USCSS Calypso
Anderson forced himself to stop staring at the aliens and looked at Zim.
"Alright, sergeant, with that out of the way; what's the situation?"
The platoon-sergeant seemed to have recovered his usual professionalism.
"Entire crew-area is secure, sir. Well, as secure as we can make it. We have two smart guns covering the central corridor and two-men watches in each room. No sign of hostile activity so far. One dead body in the storage room. Looks like a chestburster, but no sign of the creature. Rutgers and Stavich are working on the computer. They're trying to link it with the Anzio, but they're having some trouble with the connection. Life-support seems functional, but I guess Zhong should bring you up to date on that.
Anderson took another quick look at the three aliens, then turned to corporal Zhong, the squad medic, who had just entered the mess hall.
"What is the situation with life-support, corporal?"
Like Anderson, Zhong seemed unable to look away from the three unknown creatures, but he answered readily enough. "Pretty good, sir. I double checked, both with the ship's computer and our own instruments. Everything seems fine. Atmosphere is normal. No sign of contaminants. Temperature is still a bit low, but rising. As far as I can tell, we can open our helmets. With..., these..., he pointed at the aliens. "with them around, I wouldn't recommend it normally, but they seems all suited up, so even if something about them poses a threat, it shouldn't be a problem."
"Very well." Anderson switched his communicator to the squad-wide circuit.
"Marines, listen up. The atmosphere aboard has been declared breathable. Switch your suits to use outside air to conserve your supply, but keep your helmets on for now. You know, just in case something tries to hug your face."
That drew a few laughs.
"Ms. Vickers, you're cleared to come to the mess hall and set up your show for our new friends. Everybody else, stay sharp, check your motion scanners. I don't want any surprises. You notice anything you don't recognize or don't understand, you check in with sergeant Zim, or myself. "
Anderson turned back to Zhong.
"Corporal, let's see about that corps."
With a final look at the three aliens, they left the mess hall.
The corpse was lying in one of the storage compartments beneath the main deck, guarded by corporal Ishmael and one of his marines. Contrary to Anderson's expectations, it was in remarkably good condition, especially for someone who must have been dead for several decades. It had a hole, big enough to fit a man's fist, in the ribcage.
"No need to ask how he died."
"No, sir," Zhong lowered himself into the storage compartment. "Classic case of death by chestburster."
"Poor bastard," Ishmael said. "What do you think, sir, did they lock him in here when they realized he had been implanted?"
"Possibly." Anderson thought it over for a moment. "No, if they had any sense they would have spaced him the moment they found out. More likely, this guy locked himself in here. Might even have been a stowaway; and the crew never knew he was on board." He looked at Zhong, who was still checking the surprisingly well-preserved body. "This guy has been dead for years. How come the body hasn't decomposed."
The medic shrugged.
"Tough to say. The conditions on board these ships could get pretty weird during FTL travel. Low temperatures, little humidity. Also, these ships used to run heavy decontamination routines during FTL. Wouldn't do to have the crew wake up and the ship is covered in fungus, or overrun by cockroaches. Perhaps that killed the bacteria. Don't worry, though. Now that we're back at room temperature, he'll start smelling soon enough."
"Great!"
Zhong looked up through the hatch. "Lock has been melted by acid. Smart critter. Once it was out, it must have bashed against the hatch to get out. Once the blood started melting things, it knew it was on to a good thing and kept going."
"Nobody said they were stupid. Still, that is only one. There must have been about half a dozen crew, at least, and on a ship like this, they would have been armed. Once they knew it was on board, they could have hunted it down."
"What about the eggs in the cargo hold, sir? We've never figured out how these things communicate. If it found the eggs, it could have gotten itself some reinforcements pretty quickly. If it could grab one or two crew members alive, the odds would be a lot less favourable."
A new voice came over the comm-circuit, interrupting the conversation.
"Lieutenant? Sir, this is Stavich, on the bridge. Sir, we fixed the problem with the main computer. Linking to the Anzio, now."
USM Anzio
"Sir, we have a connection to the Calypso's main computer. It seems like they completely disconnected the memory storage from he outside link, but the marines have improvised a by-pass."
Ramirez walked over to the screen.
"Are the navigation logs up-to-date?"
"Yes sir, scrolling back to last known contact... I have it. Departure from Sanctum. Date matches the information from Weyland-Yutani. Navigational instructions match as well. All systems operational. They plotted the course correctly and activated the tachyon shunt, but they never went into hybernation."
"I think we can guess why."
"Yes, sir. When they reached their destination, the computer alerted the crew, but ..."
"But there was nobody left."
"No sir, so the ship just kept going. Sir, this doesn't make a great deal of sense," the tech remarked. "Wouldn't the computer have dropped the ship out of FTL automatically?"
"No," Ramirez sighed. "It was one of those weird rules governing the use of automation. Unless there was an emergency, every change in the ship's flight had to be done by hand. It was something the labour-unions negotiated to prevent the corporations from moving to fully automated ships. Apparently, the complete absence of a living crew didn't qualify as an emergency. Someone may have messed with the software, that happened a lot on those old ships. Or perhaps the computer was aware of the xenomorphs moving around and counted them as crew members."
"I understand, sir. In any case, the ship just kept going until fuel reached a critical level. That overruled everything. They dropped out of FTL. But by then, they were outside of colonized space. The computer seems to have activated some kind of back-up protocol. That calculated a trajectory for the nearest star system, gave a short burst of thrust, and let the ship coast until it was close enough to a planet to enter orbit. Unfortunately, at sub-light, it took years to get here, but the computer didn't care about that."
USCSS Calypso
Not for the first time, Shiana wished that the unknown aliens had chosen to use open helmets, rather than the face-covering models they apparently preferred. Reading the facial expressions of another species would be difficult at best, but being stared at by faceless masks was becoming quite unnerving. Still, so far things weren't going too badly. There was obviously a lot going on, but after the initial boarding, everything seemed to have calmed down. The aliens were busy all over the ship, searching rooms and activating equipment that they were clearly familiar with. The somewhat more relaxed atmosphere was definitely an improvement. Furthermore, nobody had tried to touch them and the guns were no longer pointing directly at them. All good signs. Now, if they could just try to communicate...
There was some motion at the door and another alien, dressed differently from the rest entered. Shiana heard Liara T'Soni gasp and, from the corner of her eye notice that Mordin Solus was blinking rapidly, the closest his species came to showing astonishment. She could hardly blame either of them. Unlike the others who had been dressed in some kind of drab-coloured body armour, the newcomer wore a brightly coloured environmental suit and, most importantly, a helmet made of some clear material that exposed her entire face. The effect was astonishing.
The feeling seemed to be mutual, for the alien stopped as if frozen the moment her gaze fell on Shiana and, if the widening of her eyes was any indication at all, seemed to have some trouble believing what she was seeing. Shiana could sympathize. The corpse they had found earlier had seemed to resemble an asari, but seeing the face of a living one took it to a whole new level. Unlike any asari, the alien had a white-pink coloured skin and its head seemed to be covered with some kind of bright-yellow fur that was tied away from its face, but other than that the facial structure was, to all intents and purposes, that of an asari. If this being covered the top of its head and painted its face blue, it could walk around on any asari planet without drawing attention to itself.
For several moments they simply stared at one another, then the alien seemed to recover somewhat. It walked over to the central table put down the object it had been carrying, folded it open, and then turned it so that Shiana and her companions could see inside.
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A bit of an exposition chapter, but I wanted to get some of that stuff out of the way before moving on. Communciations are still tough but improving. Next time: how to explain to aliens that having a crab land on your face leads to something bursting out of your chest.
As always, I'm very grateful for all the comments I've recieved.
I will eventually introduce some ME-alien born xenomorphs, but it may take me a while. I'm still trying to work out a set of rules for what those things can/cannot do. It's tough to come up with something self-consistent, without creating creatures that would just curb-stomp everything. An asari-xenomorph combo could be an insanely powerful enemy. We saw in the Citadel DLC that a varren from Thessia could do basic biotic attacks even without a biotic amp. If the xenomorph can do the same... Of course, I could rule that it doesn't have biotics, but then it would just be a copy of a human-xenomorph with a slightly different skull. Besides, I really like the idea. I just need to figure out what the limitations are.
koper: Don't worry I'm not going to use a mind-meld. For one thing, it would feel like cheating after all the effort I put into showing that first contact is difficult. Also, there are a lot of practical problems: How does it even work? Our thoughts are still in our own language, so there is no common frame of reference. At most I would expect emotions to come through (assuming that two races have comparable emotions.) What about the helmets? Under the circumstances there is no need to take them off and good reasons to keep them on. Finally, even if it could work, it is just too big a risk. If Shiana grabs Vicker's head and they both seem to zone out for a while it would spook everybody. Shiana is much too cautious to risk that.