I always wanted to engage in my take on the events of the hadley's hope infestation leading up to the events prior to "Aliens", as the implications in the film seemed interesting and I was never satisified with Dark Horse's take on it in the form of "Newt's Tale". So if i find the time I guess I could do that but there are a couple of other options I guess. Which would be the following:
- USCM rescue, a.k.a "17 days later":
Obviously taken from the fact that in "Aliens", it is declared that once the marines
are declared overdue 17 days from the projected time of the mission's completion, a rescue team would be sent. The premise of this would be simple. They are indeed declared overdue, and the rescue team is completely unaware that the colony was vaporized, much earlier than that. (The events in the film are what 2-3 days at most?)
So a relatively small contingent of marines, and a medical officer who is an android, and a weyland yutani, "company man", (albeit, not quite as weaselly as Carter Burke) head out to L.V 426. Since they pick up signals of radioactivity and discover the air is unbreathable. Thinking something must have gone wrong with the atmosphere processor to account for such things, and the possible mia status of the colonial marines first sent in, they land on the planet.
It's not long before they see that not much remains in terms of structure of the former colonial complex, or as it was dubbed, "Hadley's Hope". However, peculiar readings of an anomalous nature lead them tol the remants of the now, ravaged derelict ship, which is now sunk into the dunes and with massive damage to whatever parts still remain visible on the surface of the planet. You guessed it, the marines wearing helmets which let them breathe, but still part of the colonial marine ensemble, descend into the now subterranean ship and find mostly destroyed eggs, twisted metal, corrosion, debris, but find one egg intact. Against the better judgement of the commanding USCM sergeant, the weyland yutani officer insists they bring the egg back with them. Unable to resist, since weyland yutani owns their military contract and thus, their authority supercedes military or civilian etc.(you know the deal) they depart from the planet.
Not carrying the egg by hand, instead they encase it in a futuristic looking glass/metallic cannister. Their initial mission proving null and void, now are part of weyland yutani's plans to use the aliens for their bio-weapons division. (If I remember correctly the events of Alien 3 take place less than 17 days after the events of "Aliens", if I'm wrong about this, this fan fiction may violate the canonical timeline, but meh, its possible fan fiction only.)
So we soon find out that although the colonial marines that make up the rescue team have no idea what to expect, or what the egg is, that weyland yutani certaintly does. But plans to deliver it safely to gateway station, then company labs are thwarted en-route, as passing through an asteroid field, enough of a disturbance occurs in order to cause the egg cannister to break open. (unbeknownst to anyone onboard).
The android sees the shattered cannister with a now open egg in it. The facehugger had crawling away, perhaps instinctively sensing danger. The marines clueless as to what's going on, now are informed that an entity is now loose aboard the ship. The weyland yutani officer reluctanctly gives them just enough information as the situation forces him to give, and sends the marines throughout the ship to find the creature.
So split up, they search the corridors of the relatively large ship(not as big as the Nostromo or Sulaco mind you, but still a durable vehicle) not knowing what danger awaits them. Of course one of them gets facehugged, and the panic begins to affect otherwise seasoned, and combat tested marines. Quarantined to the med lab of the ship, the weyland yutani officer instructs the android(who is also the medical officer) to stay with the victim and to not let anyone else into the lab. Suspicious, confused and scared, everyone else is wondering what the hell is going on and what their company host is hiding. One of the marines manages to get into the lab and aims a pulse-rilfe at the android, warning him to back away from the hugged victim. He takes out a large knife and slides it between the facehugger's tail and the neck of its host and then pulls the knife upward towards him, severing part of the tail. Acid splashes onto the blade and the throat of the host marine. The readout displays his vitals going unstable and then shortly flatlining. The facehugger uncoils its fingerlike tendrils from around the host and leaps onto the face of a new one.
The weyland yutani guy then re-assumes control and stresses why the new victim musn't be distrubed, but must stay quarantined. Eventually the facehugger finishes its embryo laying and crawls off and dies somewhere, possibly not to be found again this time. But before the new host can be frozen and secured into a cryotube, the alien bursts forth.
It is later revealed that the radiation of the processing station's explosion had affected, the otherwise intact egg. The gestation cycle was slightly sped up and it turns out the growth of the xenomorph affected as well. A 7-8 foot creature with no legs but rather two arms and an exoskeletal body converging into a large tail it can balance on and maneuver around, much like some kind of giant cobra is loose aboard their ship.
The weyland yutani officer and the medical officer android(who is programmed to follow high level company orders) insist that it be trapped, captured or neutralized but not killed. Of course the marines. Which would be about 8-9 left at this point object to this idea as ludicrous, although aware of the danger of firing bullets into the hull while in space. Someone does fire at it, albeit with a type of semi-automatic hand-gun type weapon and only manages to hit part of the things massive tail as it evades by propelling itself up into some kind of storage compartment. The acid hits his eyes blinding him and burning his hand too, which causes him to continue firing and hits the hull indeed. He is sucked out into space to meet a grueling demise and air the pressure is sucking everything in that room out into the newly created void. The other marines managed to seal off that compartment of the ship and jetison it into space. The alien however has found time to not be in that part of the ship as you would have guessed by now.
We now find that a great deal of the pulse rifles and other firing weapons were lost in the process. So with only small arms fire, shotguns and flamethrowers the remaining marines attempt to find the see if the alien is still onboard the ship or not. Isolated in groups of two they search claustrophobic corridors and ducts etc. Contact is lost with one of the two man teams but no bodies are found.
The story progresses with head bite deaths, tail impailings, and constricting tail coilings around its victims that immobilize them to be cocooned and egg morphed, as was seen in the director's cut of alien. Soon the survivors are whittled down to a caucasian female marine, caucasian male marine, african american marine, the android and the weyland yutani officer.
The weyland yutani officer tries to program the ship to dock with gateway station, locking many of the doorways and setting a course for the escape ship, hoping that the alien having killed everyone, would be contained nonethless and able to be salvaged as a bio-weapons division asset.(we know the company by now) So he goes missing while the others are left to fend for themselves. We later find out that the weyland yutani guy never makes it to the escape pod but is ambushed by the alien and taken to be egg morphed. The path to the drop ship is blocked to the locked/sealed doors that only the company guy had access to unlock. They must use an alternate route that goes beneath to a lower deck of the ship, beneath the cooling tanks etc. or what have you, and pass through the quasi-hive, cocoon structure present for a sizeable stretch of corridor, which narrows out making them having to crouch to pass through, which opens up into a larger room where they can once again stand. Here they see coccooned marines, half-turned into eggs, others dead before the process could have begun its course(due to the extent of the wounds inflicted while captured by the alien and so on)
It turns out that the company guy is there and pleads for help pathetically. Unexpectedly it is the android who simply grabs the flamethrower and blasts him with it then the others coccooned or egg-morphed as well.
No longer bound by orders from anyone from the company, the android then follows commands from the highest ranking marine there and turns into more of a sympathetic figure rather than a cold, emotionless robot following orders, as seemed the case earlier. After setting the coccooned man ablaze, the androids arm that was holding the flamethrower is soon sliced off by the alien's massive tail segment. The african american marine goes after the flamethrower and manages to aim at the alien in plain view but its tail wraps around the android and quickly spins him around and bears the brunt of the flamethrower blast. The still burning body lands on the ground, its one arm and legs, twitching, and cauterizing the wound from where the other arm once was. One blast is shot at the alien which is now maneuvering above him on the ceiling and wall amongst, somewhat camouflauging coocoon resin structures but it seems to only annoy the alien and wound it slightly as it gives out a piercing shriek. The fuel of the flamethrower sputter out possibly due to some malfunction and soon death is upon him.
So the two surviving marines have begun to make their way towards the drop ship at this point. The marine ship they're on is actually getting relatively close to gateway station, auto-set to dock there upon arrival. Flying the drop ship to the station and then warning them of the creature seems to be the plan at this point.
But upon reaching the drop ship and not having encountered the alien along the way, they find alien slime in the inside of of it and damage that renders the ship unable to be flown without repairs which they don't have time to make before getting to gateway station. Poorly armed at this point with a pulse rifle low on ammo, the other with two automatic hand guns, and one grenade in the pulse rifles grenade launcher compartment, the two marines indeed find the alien again. The hand guns fire away in controlled shots carefully placed and fired with accuracy but they seem to do little to hurt the alien on account of the distance and its exoskeleon. But soon the android reappears, burnt, missing one arm but still alive so to speak. He, holding the flamethrower managed to fix it with what little fuel it had left. He blasts the alien several times as it again cries out with horrifying shrieks. but soon the fuel is indeed out. A whip-like tail darts out aiming to impale him but he with inhuman reflexes catches the tail with his hand, damage from the serated, exoskeletal nature of it, notwithstanding. Struggling to hold it, he tells the other two marines to open the hatch to let the pressure from space once again into the room. They do this and anchor themselves to equipment in the loading area(where the drop ship is standard)
Knowing that the pulse rifle would sever the hold the android has on the creature, or have the acid kill him at that range. He instead offers him the grenade. He frantically struggles to remove it from the pulse rifle while the alien is dragging itself closer to him, and he tries to hold on, as to not be sucked out into space. The androids relflexes and eyesight allow him to catch the grenade, in a relatively short time of letting go of the tail and before he yells for the other two to take cover, he presses the button and explodes along with the alien. The alien, arms and tail segment seperated from its head and main, exoskeletal chest segment fly out into the void amongst shrapnel and other debris. The marines managed to seal the door to the void of space outside and give a sigh of relief, exhausted and hearts still racing.
The head of the android remained on the ship they soon discover and they soon rig it to be able to talk to him(in true alien movie tradition) in order to get the access codes to the escape pod. Not in any further danger or so they thought, an escape pod is always a nice thing to have access to. So by hooking up the androids head to the main computer, the doors are unlocked and access to the escape pod is re-established.
Soon though the ships readings indicate other presences on the ship. At first they wonder if not everyone missing had been cocooned or killed but then it becomes clear that something else is going on. It also becomes clear that the unlocked doors, now opened to pave a path to the escape pod, have sped up the advance of the blips on the ships motion detector readout. It turns out that one egg morph did finish its cycle, and due to the mutation caused by the radiation, multiple embryos were in one host. Albeit smaller chestbursters than normal. These aliens however were not the legless, snakelike, even larger variety, but rather the standard xenomorphs we all know and love. The radiation didin't affect the subsequent egg morphing process any further than causing multiple embryo implantations. Armed now with a pulse rifle wth very few rounds and two hand guns also running our of ammo and not too effective on aliens at a distance, the two marines now struggle to come up with a plan and fast. What if they've already infested the escape pod? What if the ship docks at gateway station with those things all over it? They ponder these possibilites while trying to think of what they can do. It turns out that no ideal solution can be reached and the ship cannot be self-destructed due to the missing compartment that was jetisoned earlier. So the male marine decides to try to hold off the aliens with the rest of the pulse rifle while the female marine takes another path to the escape pod throught the air ducts above, hoping that she can get to the ship while he distracts the aliens. Not happy about the decisions and calling it a suicide mission, the female marine hands him one of the two handguns she has as well before getting well on her way in a direct path leading to right above the escape pod through the air ducts. Knowing time is of the essence he moves forward through the open corridors en-route to the direct path to the escape pod area, not without fear surging through him. The three aliens then go from blips on the readout to visible assailants. One with inhuman movement, bounds off the walls picking up momentum before a short controlled blast of the pulse rifle sends it shrieking and collapsed on the floor still flailing its tail, head an limbs around. Knowing he has to conserve ammo, he cannot waste more in finishing off the dying beast. So he carefully steps over and away from it and proceeds to the next room. However once the next alien appears and slowly stands up from a sort of arachnid like position on the floor and demands a display of awe and wonder as it stands its 8 feet with its tail slowly falling into position behind it, as if poised for the kill. The pulse rifle aimed at the creatue, the marine readies his trigger finger in anticipation of a charge, but then feels something grab his leg. It's the not quite dead alien on the floor, mortally wounded and with little strength, it managed to grab hold of his leg. With the pulse rifle in one hand still aimed at the other alien, a tense moment ensues when he reaches for the hand gun he was given and uses that at close range to blast the dying alien in the head a couple times. Almost simultaneously the other alien charges and hisses and another short burst hits its exoskeletal body. This time though not so luckily, a bit of acid sprays down onto the leg which was held by the alien and burns him. He drops the hand gun due to the gritting pain. He recollects himself mentally and in the aftermath, smoke rising from the carcasses of acid burnt exoskeletal husks and the metal of the ship they interacted with, he sees one blip left on a motion tracker he accesses. Its not heading for him but the other way, towards the ship. It must be heading towards her, he thinks to himself and limps his way towards the escape pod area, still a couple of doors away. He enters the room but doesn't find her anywhere, instead sees more slime on the floor grating and then the last alien reveals itself and drops down from the ceiling right in front of him and blocks his path to the escape pod. Its too close to the pod to fire the pulse rifle and he has very, very little ammo left indeed. Maybe one or two controlled bursts left. It gets closer to him and just when it looks like he'll have no choice but to fire most likely endangering himself from the resulting acid spray at that range. The female marine rises to her feet from behind the escape pod holding a flamethrower, which was aboard the pod along with some other supplies. she tells him to duck and then she blasts the alien with the flamethrower several times. The intense blasting continues enough to set it ablaze but it doesn't fall and die just yet, it still stands, turns around and slowly advances towards them again, tail thrashing and screeching added to the mix. Finally the male marine drags himself to safe distance of firing the alien with the last few bursts of the pulse rifle and its blow in half from the waist down. They then get in the escape pod as there was no danger to gateway station any longer and besides, the wreckage and body of the aliens should provide proof of the story they would tell.
But what would an alien story be without an alien not stowing away onboard? The male marine has first aid applied to his acid burned leg and is put into his cryotube for the journey to earth rather than gateway station as they were getting very close to its orbit by this point. But before she can do likewise, and after the escape pod has snce launched and departed from the main ship, the third alien reveals itself to not be dead, although it has no legs. Crawling along it grabs hold of the male marines cryotube for support and drags itself towards her. Weaponless she wonders what to do, but quickly sees that the alien is right in front of the trajectory of the built in shoot that the cryotubes could be ejected down.(whether from the main ship to the pod or from the pod to another ships equivalent containing space etc. Knowing that earth was close enough to not need her rest in the cryotube, she presses the button and launches the empty crytotube down the path and it smashes into the alien and darts out into space. The hatch is quickly closed and sealed and finally the ordeal is over. But soon she sees the marine ship now detached from the pod but instead of docking safely with gateway station seems to have veered off course and is pulled in by the earth's gravity and enters the earth's atmosphere. It apparently was damaged enough that the coordinates were affected and altered resulting in this mishap. The escape pod was entering space close to that of the earth's orbit and she could see the ship plummeting down. A ship is then seen heading out from gateway station in the distance and presumably heading out to intercept the escape pod before it enters earth's orbit. What would she tell them? Would they believer her story? None of that mattered. As the glimmering stars fade into the distance and the ship approached the escape pod, she watched from one of its ports and was simply glad it was finally over.
