V

The second the thick metal door grinded out of view into the floor beneath us, it became apparent that the craft was in a definitive state of disrepair. A strip light which half-hung from the ceiling flickered on and off, casting eerie shadows across the room. The furniture was either upturned or broken: chairs, tables and lockers, to name a few. Water dripped slowly from a slit in a pipe along the wall, but we could hear that somewhere else it was pouring out at an alarming rate. Nathan, who had so far been the most enthusiastic member of the team, was suddenly hesitant to step out of the airlock and into the ominous room. I didn't blame him. The place put all three of us on edge.

"Right, well… I'll try and establish radio contact," Cara said, pressing a button on the neck of her helmet. "Lieutenant Grike, can you hear us?" The radio buzzed with static for what seemed like minutes, but in truth it was only thirty seconds.

"Holmes, I hear you," came Alan's eventual reply. "What's going on over there?"

"Not much yet, sir." Nathan explained. "Establishing live camera feed now." He nodded to Cara and myself, and the three of us reached up to the cameras mounted on the top of our helmets. Switching them on, we waited for Alan to reply, telling us that he could see all three camera feeds. He did, although he did mention that the video quality wasn't particularly good. We had slightly more pressing matters to attend to though, so we decided to continue searching the ship regardless.

In retrospect, we should have taken the first room as a fair image for the rest of the ship. It was dark, desolate, and dysfunctional. Even so, we were still strangely surprised to find that the next room we entered was more or less equally unpleasant. It was the cockpit, and at first glance it was perfectly ordinary. Only two seats, similar lighting failures to the first room. But as Cara stepped forwards into the room, I saw her face fall.

"Oh, God," She said in a whisper. I stepped forwards to see what it was that had made her say this. She pointed towards one of the seats. A cold shiver went down my spine as I looked over and saw… a body.

A few seconds later, Nathan entered the cockpit behind us. I gestured towards the chair, which he confidently reached out to with one hand, and turned around slowly. Now I could see the body more clearly, I saw that it was that of a seemingly healthy human male. As the light overhead flickered briefly, I saw a deep red liquid covering the floor surrounding the chair. I knew at once that it was blood.

"Oh, fuck…" Nathan began, staring down in horror at the corpse. That was coming from a Science and Medical Officer, too, mind. "What the hell happened to him?" He pointed at the man's chest, which until now I had not taken any notice of. I realised then what had caused Nathan, a renowned doctor and professor of science, to react so strongly towards the body. There was a gaping hole in the man's chest, which went all the way through into his stomach. It seemed that it must have been a small hole at first, but a combination of stomach acid and his own blood had somehow managed to corrode the skin around it, causing the hole to collapse in on itself.

Stepping back in horror, I wondered what could have caused such a serious injury. A weapon? No. The hole would have gone all the way through. Suicide? No. Bleach or disinfectant would have made a much rougher wound. It was almost as if there had been something inside the man's stomach which had forced it's way out. But what?

"Grike, are you seeing this?" I eventually muttered, after being at a loss for words for several moments.

"I see it, Jones." He replied. "Search the rest of the ship. Maybe you can find out what killed him."

"I was afraid you might say that." I sighed, turning the radio back off.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry if I were you, Matt." Nathan assured me. "There's only one more room anyway."

After taking a quick blood sample, Nathan told us he was ready to go to the back of the ship and investigate the cargo bay. But no sooner than we had turned around, Cara saw that a locker against the rear wall of the cockpit was slightly ajar. Hesitantly, she placed a hand against the locker door, before looking over at me for some kind of approval. I nodded, to which she replied by nodding back. Then she gripped firmly onto the metal door and flung it wide open. Once again, my blood ran cold, as a second body spilled out of the locker and onto the floor. Another pool of blood surrounded the locker, but on closer inspection, it seemed this man had not died in the same way as the other. Parts of his skin were torn off, and there were deep teeth marks on his forehead.

"What in God's name happened here?" Cara exclaimed. But even as she said this, I was beginning to understand.

"Maybe something attacked the XH-12," I began. "Maybe these people were trying to escape it, but it got aboard somehow."

"So what are you saying?" Nathan asked, confused. "That it's some kind of alien?" When he put it like that, it sounded pretty stupid. But truthfully… yes. That was exactly what I was saying. Over the low buzzing of my radio, I could hear Goddard's voice. It sounded like he was arguing with Grike about something.

"Ok, Ok, I'll put you on," Grike snapped loudly. "Guys, Goddard here says he knows what might have attacked the XH-12."
"That's right," Ryan announced, in a hushed, almost whispered tone. "Listen, Matt. You too, Nathan and Cara. Back when I was with Weyland-Yutani, they were rumored to be studying an organism known as the Xenomorph XX121. I never actually saw what one looked like; hell, I don't even know if it was true. But word gets around quickly, you know. I heard talk about an eight-foot armored monster, a perfect killing machine. Everything I've seen over your camera feed: the hole in that guy's chest, the teeth marks in that other's forehead…"

"What are you saying, Ryan?" I asked, unsure whether or not to believe this thoroughly untrustworthy gentleman.

"All I'm saying, Matt," He began, with genuine concern in his voice, "Is be careful. Like I said, I never found out if the rumors were true, and to be quite honest with you, I don't want to find out."

"Thanks, Ryan." I replied, slightly touched that he was actually concerned for our safety. Then I assured him that we'd proceed with caution for the rest of the mission. A Xenomorph, though? It did seem like Ryan was simply describing a creature from the realms of fantasy.

Heading back through the landing craft's central room, we reached a door which we knew would lead into the cargo bay. The final room aboard the ship. What we'd find in there, we had no idea of. I pushed a button at the side of the door and a light flashed above it. Some text appeared on a screen above the door. It said 'WARNING: HULL BREACH'. I couldn't help but chuckle at the futility of it all. This door had automatically locked itself to protect the crew from a breach in the hull. Too bad that wasn't the only thing they needed protecting from. Fortunately, I knew how to override the mechanism. A concealed switch beneath the control panel released the auto-lock, and the door flung open. Big mistake.

It wasn't until after a chair smacked into the back of my EVA suit that I realised what I'd just done. A breach in the hull meant that the cargo bay was now a vacuum. This meant that all of the air in the room we were in was now being sucked out, along with all of the furniture. And us. I shouted to the others to grab onto something secure. Nathan clutched onto the doorframe, whilst Cara tightly gripped a bar that ran along the ceiling. I found a vent with a latticed grid over it, which I reached a hand through and held onto as tightly as I could. I gazed back into the cargo bay, and saw the source of the hull breach. A jagged vertical line had been carved into the bay's exterior wall, presumably with some kind of cutting torch, which had then opened up into a long crack, just wide enough for a person to fit through.

"I don't understand," Nathan shouted over his radio. "Why would someone deliberately cut through the hull of a ship?"

"No idea!" I shouted back. If we'd been aboard the actual XH-12 rather than some shitty landing craft with ultra-thin metal walls, maybe there wouldn't have been a breach in the hull. But we weren't. And there was. Soon, though, the last of the air had drained from the room, and the three of us were free to let go of whatever we were holding onto. As we drifted into the vacuum of the cargo bay, I told the others to stay away from the exterior wall. Like I said before, that gap was perfectly sized for any one of us to drift right through it if we weren't careful.

The cargo bay itself was, of course, completely empty, apart from a couple of huge boxes that wouldn't fit through the hole in the wall. If anyone had died in here, they were long gone, out into the depths of space. We were all but ready to leave the room, to leave the craft, and go back aboard the Archimedes. But when we turned to leave, Nathan noticed a hatch on the ceiling. Pulling himself up the wall towards the hatch, he heaved it open, and a few tools came flying out as the air drained from the chamber above. Then, he poked his head up through the hole.

"Hold on, guys." He said over the radio, hoisting himself up into the area above. "There's a mini-deck up here."