A/N: 06/20/2023 Here I am, with yet another story. I had migrated over to AO3 and Wattpad, but it seems that FF has finally fixed its crappy chapter writing system and now I can create, edit, and everything else however much I want. So nice!
- Anyway, just a fair warning that Bishop does not make an appearance until Chapter 4, and he and Ripley do not actually interact until chapter 5.
- I plan on making this as believable and realistic as possible, staying as in-character as I can. So expect a slow-burn but be open for surprises.
Disclaimer: I do not own Alien.
Chapter one: Something In The Water~
Harvey A. Jernigan takes a hearty gulp of his black coffee, tilting his head back from the comfort of his pilot's chair.
Despite having no real concept of time in the black void that was space - bar the alarms and clocks littered around the ship and on everyone's flexis - Jernigan always knew when it was time for coffee. He knows this is mostly due to his biological clock, while the other part is due to his caffeine addiction. Still, he finds it funny that whether one was on earth or out in the good ol' outers of space, coffee was the surefire way for humans to start their day. The one thing that united them all. It's also the one quirk their onboard android has - she doesn't like coffee.
Of course, androids don't really need much of anything aside from the occasional recharge (what was it? Every 400 days or something like that?) and although many had been preprogrammed to eat and drink with the rest of the crew so as to make the homo sapiens more comfortable, they were also randomized with quirks off the assembly line to make them more 'unique'. Nattie's quirk (official name Natalie, Rook model 142-A) was that she neither liked coffee nor pretended to like it, and it became a running gag amongst the crew.
Adjusting his headset with one hand, Jernigan sets his coffee back down on the center console, overlooking the readouts for the morning. All seems clear on the outskirts, with nothing of particular interest. Of course, interest to the crew of The Icarus would be in the way of abandoned ships, freighters, and wayward, empty military carriers. Active signals, ore deposits, and passersby didn't serve much to a salvage crew that lived and breathed other people's junk. What was that age-old saying? One man's trash...
"Jernigan, I'm picking something up on the edges of our radar."
Nattie's smooth, velvet voice is always pleasant on his ears, and Harvey doesn't hesitate to pick it up. "Yeah, anything good?"
He looks intently at his screens, trying to find what he had previously missed. It only takes her a second to respond. "Possibly. Readings say it's an escape pod by the name Narcissus. But the codes it's kicking back...it says it's from a ship that was destroyed almost sixty years ago."
That catches his interest.
"Do we have any claims on it?"
A few seconds of white noise in his earpiece. "...Looks like no other previous claims have been made. Might be worth checking out."
Jernigan punches in some codes, locks in on the Narcissus' position. "Copy that. Get word to Halloway and the others. Prep for boarding in twenty."
"Yessir."
This could be it.
Their big break.
It had been forever since their last pay haul, coming up on six weeks. If they had gone on much longer, things could have gotten messy. They might have even had to dock at a nearby space station and scrounge up some food and fuel money just to go back out and do it all over again. A large red dot pops up on the radar screen, it's usual slow beeping gradually getting faster as they hone in on their target. Jernigan flips on the A-U-T-O-P-I-L-O-T switch and spins out of his seat, grabbing his coffee to finish it off as he heads over to the airlocks.
As he meets up with the others and steps into his suit, he can only think one thing; please be something good.
