Shhhh! Digital Media Presents... Aliens: Aeolus (Updated July 10, 2026 18:00 EST - More new content and story added)

On The Existing Aliens Sequels

One such sequel is Alien 3 [On Disney+], directed by David Fincher, which in and of itself was a failure of the studio execs to understand their fan base [On Strange Shapes] and who also failed to protect the investment that fans had made in the two characters that got ix-nayed in the beginning of the film. A fact that was not the director's or crew's fault, and you can learn more about that situation by hearing details of what went down from Corporal Hicks performance actor Michael Biehn [On Just Foolin' About - Michael Biehn on Hicks' Death in Alien 3]. In a sense, it was very much as if the studio execs were trying to finish off Burke's plan from Aliens, from beyond the fourth wall. Fincher and crew made the best movie they could with the material the studio had approved, but ut left many fans of the franchise outraged.

The second potential sequel was originally written by Neuromancer [On Penguin Random House] [On Apple TV] writer: William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace. Gibson penned a script that was eventually adapted into a comic book and audio book that preserves the four surviving characters from the end of the movie Aliens but that was ultimately rejected in favour of the Alien 3 movie that we received. You can listen to [On Audible] or read William Gibson's Alien 3 in comic book format [On Dark Horse].

Director Neil Blomkamp had prepared an original sequel for Aliens, that would have retconned both Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection [On Disney+], however, during development, the project was canned when it was indicated  by Ridley Scott that he would be working on a prequel called Alien: Convenant. You can find out more about Blomkamp's proposed Aliens sequel here [On YouTube], or you can catch up with him and his work on his latest projects under Oats Studios [On YouTube].

The fourth potential runner-up sequel? It might be this one, here that is currently a work in progress.

That's coming from a guy whose father, the day after having seen the movie Alien [On Disney+] at the theatres (back in 1976), came home from work and gifted me this graphic novel because I was too young to see the rated-r movie at the theatres at that time. 

Thankfully, reading the graphic novelization didn't turn me into a serial killer, though it might have made me into a cereal killer, because as I recall, I ate an entire box of Shreddies by myself as I read the graphic novel that day.

Brian Joseph Johns

Are you a fan of the absolute bad asses of the United Stellar Colonial Marines?

Play Aliens: Dark Ascent [On Steam] [On Epic]

Looking to try your merit as Ellen Ripley's daughter, Seegson Engineer Amanda as she takes on the legacy of the xenomorph?

Play Alien: Isolation [On Steam] [On Epic] [On GOG]

The Alien Legacy continues...

Watch Alien: Earth and the complete Alien collection [On Disney+]

Looking to keep up with the retro and latest of the ACTION and SCI-FI greats?

Watch [Just foolin' about - Michael Biehn]

Chapters

1. Activation (Finished December 24, 2025 18:00 EST)
2. Alienation (Finished April 3, 2026 12:15 EST)
3. ASPHODEL (Finished April 4, 2026 11:30 EST)
4. Aeolus (Finished July 8, 2026 20:30 EST)
5. Actuation (Finished July 9, 2026 19:00 EST)
6. Accidental Architecture (Started July 10, 2026)

Opening Notes

Shhhh! Digital Media is an independent entity from The Walt Disney Company, and the following work is a tribute to stories and characters held as their creative and intellectual property, originally created by Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Ridley Scott and then further solidified by (fellow Canadian) James Cameron into the titan it has become and is still known until this very day.

By the presentation of this story, neither Shhhh! Digital Media or I, Brian Joseph Johns, its sole author are claiming ownership over these properties, referring to the written story whose content is contained within the text of this online post and this post only. Shhhh! Digital Media and Brian Joseph Johns are presenting an ideal story that preserves the legacy and impacts the concept of the word family and as a whole. This trio of characters played a significant part in my life overall, and the time has come that I've decided that I'm going to bat for them and this is how I'm doing it (until court ordered otherwise, though even then it might take a lot of convincing). However, I would never claim ownership over these original characters and the original stories that brought them to life. They, meaning the characters of the Alien universe as created by Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Ridley Scott and (fellow Canadian) James Cameron are the properties of Disney Corporation, with this creative work essentially being published as fan fiction, or as a diplomatic beacon of my intent to contribute to their works in the hope of the possibility of working together professionally in the future.

These characters, are a symbol of the strength of the emergent family. A group of people ultimately unrelated who under dire circumstances come together and form unintendedly the trio that is the foundation of society: the mother, the father and the child/children.

This is something that I have been planning for a very long time (meaning decades), but have waited until now, having the opportunity to make an impact by the profound statement delivered by the movie whose unauthorized sequel I am now writing.

This is very much intended for the fans of these characters (like myself), and as a testament to the people who created them, and the people who ultimately brought them to life - the performers who are: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn and Michael Biehn. 

I have always held them in the highest regard for the symbol of their work in the movie that precedes this story: Aliens. This story is the sequel that should have been, but never happened.

Brian Joseph Johns

Note: my writing and editing process is somewhat chaotic, and in some situations it can take several edits or rewrites of contextual sections of my work before I approve them. In most cases, it takes me two or three edits before I stick with something, especially after reading and rereading the story several times to ensure the dialog works.

This story is very different from anything I've ever written, and by that I mean getting the right tone and pacing for the characters' dialog is an ongoing challenge, especially given the dynamic of the relationship between Ripley, Newt and Hicks from Aliens and into the beginning of this story. The genius of Ridley Scott and James Cameron's writing and editing, is that every bit of spoken dialog serves a purpose in progressing an aspect of the story, not to mention showcasing an aspect of the characters' inner dynamics and motivations.

I've done my best to avoid the perpetual dialog spew that is often seen from characters like Alicia Westin or Bryce Maxwell in Butterfly Dragon, honing each dialog until it reads and sounds like it could have come from that character. Chances are if character dialog emerging from one of the familiar characters doesn't seem quite right (like any dialogue from Ripley, Newt of Hicks), then chances are I haven't subjected it to the editing process as of yet. Please be patient.

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I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

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Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado! 

In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.


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Aliens: Aeolus - is a dedicated ally of the Disney family.

Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:

Aliens: Aeternity

by Brian Joseph Johns

Episode 1: The Eternal Sleep

Activation

K2-18
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol

Silence was a companion to darkness, and had been since long before humankind's first steps into the dark void between the stars. Darkness had pervaded the night sky since the first of Earth's stellar bound species had peered at the Moon with curiosity, and then beyond, seeing the light of fusion emanating from distant hydrogen fueled bodies as they beckoned us from their distance, light years away.

Silence was as it were, a party to the night sky as much so as it was to dreams.

Dreams. The life essence of humanity eventually became understood as imperative to the sustenance of frontline conscious performance, for the mind was simply a muscle of a different kind, and required exercise all the same as its physical counterparts within the human body. Gravity and resistance was the impetus for musculature, as were dreams for their counterpart of the mind.

Humanity had also discovered that dreams were a phenomenon of proximity. That the extent of their extremity was dependent upon the species' nearness to others of their kind. Proximity in essence was the wind in the sails of the conscious mind, projected into the mind. Fueling though not forming, the creativity of their dreams and the distinction of which they were presented to the mind's eyes.

When humanity had taken its first steps into the stars, it quickly learned that to sustain human consciousness in the depths of its group absence, that it must produce the hidden field that fueled the mind of sleepers. No differently than the artificial gravity field that kept the body in peak physical form through the darkness and silence of the interstellar cosmos.

The same field that had kept the muscles of consciousness well oiled and exercised the mind, had also exercised the same mechanisms of psychosis, both creativity and chaos working in conjunction to destroy the form and stability of the mind. Hence, the Gauthier-Khan field had been devised on the basis of conscious field theory, stabilizing and preserving for the first time, deep temporal human experience over interstellar trajectories. Sanity had become sanitary, both to the physical form as much so to the mind.

And yet, darkness and silence, above all else, still pervaded humanity's future, as it had that of four dreamers contained there within the hull of a USMC vessel that had strayed from its phase space hyper-field lane and into the grasp of an interbody gravity well. Within the stellar system of K2-18 as humanity had come to know the home star system of its ninth local star colony.

Four dreamers lay deep in sleep within the safety of the Gauthier-Khan field, their eyelids barely flickering as they emerged from the local phase space lane and into the physical field of real space. Of the four dreamers, it was the youngest and perhaps most inspired and energetic of them that had first awoken from the depths of hyper-sleep.

The United Stellar Colonial Marine vessel Sulaco had emerged from its automated Earth bound fueling trajectory earlier than had been anticipated by its ancillary AI navigation systems, which had through the course of its travel, guided the vessel prematurely into the K2-18 system, one hundred and nineteen light seconds from the host star.

Within the lightly damaged main cargo bay of the vessel, sirens illuminated as the automated systems of the dormant Marine vessel came to life once again as they had twenty-three years earlier in the LV-426 star system. Its elongated hull appearing like a titanic firearm, as threatening and menacing as its former Marine crew had once been.

The retro-thrusters of the vessel fired to life, slowing the vessel beyond a trajectory anticipated by its AI based navigation system, pushing it via Keplerian motion closer towards the orbit of a dark and hidden moon of K2-18b. The vessel's engines suddenly stopped, having achieved their required kinetic velocity, as the Marine vessel's momentum took it towards this dark and silent natural satellite, drifting as it had initially arrived, on course towards a tiny spec of light emanating from high above that same moon.

Within the interior of the enormous Marine ship, the sirens continued to flare throughout the decks and corridors. Alarms sounded as the pod bay covers of three hyper-sleep pods slowly opened, revealing sleeping occupants there within two of them as the ship's ancillary systems sprung to life.

The first occupant was a woman who appeared to be aged towards her mid-life, which was at that time in her late fifties, perhaps early sixties. Her dark and curly hair was partially contrasted by wisps of white and grey. Now slightly longer than shoulder length, it was slicked back to her head. Her grey underwear clung to her body as she was roused uneasily from her sleep.

The second pod was occupied by a gruff and willful man, approaching his fifties. His eyes twitched uneasily as the automated medical system notified him through a cerebral interface of the medical procedures he'd undergone during his sleep. A haptic virtual interface of a medical design flashed invisibly across his eyes without the need for any special eye wear or headset. 

It was projected directly into his cognition system via the same electromagnetic field that fueled their dream sleep, while an AI generated voice explained the extent to which his treatment had progressed via nano-biotic supplementation. The tissue damage and scars that he'd suffered during his most recent deployment were now but distant history, only slight blemishes marking the left side of his face, and the surface of the skin on the left side of his chest, both of which were currently hidden behind a layer of bandages that had been applied before the trio had entered hyper-sleep.

The occupant of the third pod remained obscured under the fog and hyper-thaw.

These travelers lay in their pods as the alarms and sirens blared, until one of them, Flight Officer Ellen Ripley leaned up suddenly from her slumber, rubbing the center of her chest and her stomach as she did.

"Newt?!" she suddenly said, leaping out of her cryo-pod, her bare feet slapping on the floor as she ran over to the pod next to hers.

The neighbouring pod she inspected had just opened and the fog of hyper-thaw was only just clearing. A Marine geolocation bracelet laid flat upon the soft lining of the pod, absent of its former host.

"No! She's still...! Hicks?!!!" she turned to the cryo-pod on the other side neighbouring hers and saw the scarred and lifeless body of the Marine Corporal as he awoke from his slumber, seemingly struggling.

She watched him for several seconds before she realized that he wasn't breathing.

"No! Dammit!" she slammed her hands down upon his chest several times as she watched his green Marine t-shirt bulging at his midsection. 

"Noooo!" she cried, slamming her hands down again, as the bulge grew and the recognizable form of a tiny chin and mandible jaw took shape through his bloated shirt and skin.

She ran to the controls of his cryo-pod and began hammering override codes into the unfamiliar Marine console, attempting to close it and refreeze him. She turned her head to see that the thing inside of him was ready to emerge in the most perverse form of birth.

Behind her, she heard the sound of hissing and felt the strangely cool breath of a frightful monster. She turned to see the double mandible jaws of her nightmares as the biological hydraulic pressure of its inner jaw reached its critical point and then...

She awoke in her opened cryo-pod, leaning up and checking her body and face for any wounds.

She once again as she had in her dream, leapt out of her pod and over to the neighbouring one, spying the waking body of a young woman just barely emerged from her deep sleep of the hyper-lanes.

"She's alright. I already checked her..." Marine Lance Corporal Dwayne Hicks assured Ripley as she turned to face the younger man.

"Where's Vasquez? Hudson? Gorman?" Ripley asked him, looking to him absent of a significant portion of their time together.

"They're gone. Ripley, you're experiencing post cryo-pyschosis," Hicks said to her, still rubbing the side of his face that had years earlier been scarred by one of the monsters of Ripley's nightmares.

"They're dead? All of them?" she asked him, as tears filled the same ridges of her eye lids that had been so by countless tears and countless times.

He closed his eyes as the pain of lost memories hit him. The times that he'd spent during R&R with Hudson, Dietrich and Wierzbowski had become post cards from a past he'd never relive in their permanent absence.

Hicks nodded affirmatively to Ripley, looking down after the fact.

"Where are we?" Ripley asked him.

"I'm not a navigation specialist, but I can tell you that its Marine protocol for a light assault starship to stop at automated refueling points on a long journey," Hicks explained to her as he fastened the quick-straps of his boots.

"Really?" Ripley looked to him again.

"Yep. We're stopping at a Marine gas station. Will that be leaded or unleaded?" Hicks asked her as he responded, recalling the fossil fuel lore of his great many times removed grandparents.

"If its automated, then why did it wake us?" Ripley asked him, an unending stream of questions lining up in her head.

"Don't ask me. I only work here," Hicks shook his head thoughtfully, trying to force a smile.

"Its standard procedure to wake the skeleton crew during fueling and rearming stops, usually that would be Bishop, and our Corp Medical Officer: Dietrich. Bishop's OOC, and Dietrich's KIA. That means that we're it," Hicks said to her, looking to the cryo-pod of the young blonde haired girl, and then back to her.

"Look Ripley, I know this is a lot for you to take in right now, but you have to believe me," Hicks said to her, both of them looking to the cryo-pod of the still sleeping blonde haired girl as she awoke.

"Ripley!" she yelled, jumping out the cryo-pod and then running over to the de-employed Flight Officer and wrapping her arms around her.

"I'm here, honey," Ripley responded, looking up to Hicks as her memory slowly started to return.

"Your wounds? They're mostly healed. How?" she asked Hicks.

"Cryo-sleep. The Marine Corp uses class 3 medical pods. They're a bit different from commercial and civilian pods. All I know is that if we're wounded when we get in, we're generally not when we wake up, depending upon how bad it is," Hicks rubbed the left side of his face, finding it smooth and mostly free of scars.

"It looks like your little girl has grown up," Hicks said her, looking to Rebecca with a smile on his face.

"My little girl? Our little girl. Are you trying to back out on me?" Ripley asked him.

Hicks smiled at the prospect of being a father, especially as the partner of such a remarkable woman as he'd seen Ripley demonstrate.

"Not quite. I'm just not assuming anything, but its nice to know you'd care enough to ask," he smiled both to her and Rebecca as he flipped a physical switch on the wall.

"Authorization: Lance Corporal Hicks, Dwayne," he spoke aloud to the listening AI security system.

The touch-screen panel controls by the door suddenly came to life, as they did for every door throughout the Sulaco. Each protected by a level of access deemed through the micro-space MILNET System database.

"Hicks! You're better!" Rebecca suddenly recognized one of her liberators as the psychosis of post cryo-sleep sickness faded from her body.

"I'm fine honey. How are you feeling?" he asked her softly, with a firm but concerned smile on his face.

"I'm... bigger...? Taller? Older?" she replied with the body of a woman in her late twenties, and the mind of a woman in her early teens.

"That happens honey, but don't worry, it looks good on you both," Hicks faced Ripley as he spoke.

"At least some men age like fine wine. I don't suppose this technology has any effect on androids?"  Ripley replied, gesturing in the direction of Bishop's still closed cryo-pod.

"No. It doesn't, unfortunately," Hicks responded, looking to Bishop's cryo-pod respectfully.

The door of the cryo-chamber suddenly opened, and the air pressure difference between the spaces balanced as the oxygen levels achieved their nominal state.

"Lets go and see what we're up against," Hicks said, walking over to a panel in the cryo-chamber and pressing it once. The panel slowly opened from the top, folding downward and revealing an arsenal of Marine battle rifles.

Hicks quickly grabbed an M41A pulse rifle and checked the ammunition gauge.

"Bringing a personal friend of yours?" Ripley asked him.

"Three personal friends, but two of them can handle themselves. This one needs a capable pair of hands," Hicks responded, winking at Ripley and Rebecca.

"So we've noticed. Just stay behind us and we'll keep you safe," Ripley returned his smile, grabbing her own pulse rifle from the same arsenal.

"So I've noticed," Hicks winked to Ripley as he advanced into the corridor ahead of them, leading them towards the inner airlock of the Sulaco.

Rebecca closed the arsenal, leaving the weapons of war where they lay and instead followed Ripley and Hicks into the darkened corridors of the Sulaco as the sound of sirens and klaxons sounded around them.

They proceeded together to the deck-level airlock, Newt, now an adolescent in her late twenties standing defensively behind Ripley and Hicks, their M41A Pulse Rifles leveled before them as they made their way through the Sulaco's maze of corridors and to the main crew access airlock.

Alienation

K2-18
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol

The three of them walked together, tightly formed as a cohesive unit, a fact that Hicks found to be quite remarkable despite the lack of Marine training of his counterparts. 

Ripley had taken their right flank (a much older and taller Newt just behind her), and though there was likely little to fear, she was very much on edge. 

On guard, Hicks quickly corrected his observation of her, for in the little time that he'd come to know her, as he'd suspected since their first formal briefing near bay twelve of the Sulaco, twenty-three years earlier, Ripley was in fact an enigma. A woman who'd stood amidst the company afforded comfort of mediocrity, and challenged it the entire way, never letting the illusion of financial security get in the way of her moral compass. She had a job to do and she would do it to the best, and most often, chagrin of her coworkers.

She was a pioneer of sorts as was Lambert, their interstellar navigation specialist. The only two women on board the resource tug Nostromo, in the company run core systems of what had become humankind's first effort to reach out towards the stars.

Men had initially been the most prominent of employees, while a few courageous women in the interest of opening the doors for their sisters had also come forth, seeking fame, fortune and the glory of their company promised shares.

Most women who had dared to break through the male dominated explorative expansion of humanity into the foundational worlds, had become trinkets. Sexual commodities at first, though that pressure was quickly turned on its face when the first director of new worlds in Proxima Centauri B, the first ever established human colony was in fact founded by, and run by a woman.

Sixty years, and over seventy-two sprawling stations and colonies later, humankind had established itself as permanent residents of the cosmos, essentially overcoming the great barrier and dark forest by their ambition and sheer numbers alone, or so the Weyland-Yutani marketing department would have had us believe. Liu Cixin's words had fallen short of the Wey-Yu marketing team's goals.

And yet, his words and warning were heard and taken seriously by a growing number of women in the Wey-Yu employ, including Flight Officer Ellen Ripley, and Mission Navigation Specialist Joan Lambert aboard the fusion resource refinery tug Nostromo.

Joan's mother had taken her hand early. Guiding her daughter's early education life and aspirations, living out her own missed ambitions through her daughter, and by the time she was twenty-one, she had become one of the most skilled navigational specialists, exceeding even the best forecasts of the AI systems that had trained her.

When during a remote job exhibition, her daughter was hired and guaranteed a conditional bonus upon her agreement to enlist as a Navigational Officer for a series of resource extraction flights imperative to the supply of mineral resources necessary to the further expansion of humankind into the local systems, and ultimately beyond as recorded by her employer: the Weyland Corporation, who by the time Joan Lambert had joined the crew of Nostromo had become Weyland-Yutani Incorporated.

Ellen Ripley on the other hand, had a very different introduction to star flight. Her father had been a notable test pilot, flying the very first electrostatic, high velocity surface to orbit craft created by the United Global initiative, who eventually became the United Stellar Conglomerate that had outsourced humanity's ambitions to the big five corporations.

Her father was a ruffian of sorts. A man who to almost a fault, dedicatedly loved her mother and yet he was a drinker, who loved fast cars and thrill rides on echo boats (don't even ask what they are because their appreciation is something only the enthusiasts could enjoy, let alone understand). He was a man who held a deep and resounding fascination of women and their potential in the effort of humanity to push forth into the cosmos. The kind of man with whom Chuck Yeager himself might have enjoyed a drink or two. A true heart seeking to ensure that humanity included as much so, the yin as it did the yang in the spirit of its push forth into humanity's expansion.

It was her father that had discovered Ellen's natural linguistic abilities. Her ability to discern meaning from seeming gibberish. That girl of mine has a real natural gift, she does! She has that thing, that distinct thing, that delineates those of us who hear noise, and those of us who hear information. Claude Shannon himself would have bowed down and kissed her feet if he'd have known my little girl, her father had often boasted. I'd have whooped him too for it, but all the same, I might have admired him for having good taste in smart women like her. My daughter and so he'd finish his words.

Ellen Ripley as it turned out, didn't stay single for long beyond her gradation. She'd met a handsome and intelligent man who'd somehow passed her father's rigid scrutiny of him, and she had become mother to a child she'd never truly have the chance to know. A fact that would pursue her for the rest of her life, in every dream and nightmare from there beyond. When Amanda was ten years old, that was the last time that she saw her mother, Amanda's education somehow ending up in the hands of her own inspiring test pilot father. Amanda's grandfather waited with his (favourite) grand daughter for the return of Lieutenant First Class Ellen Ripley of the Wey-Yu resource space tug Nostromo.

But she never returned.

Until fifty-seven years had passed.

A time when she had been drifting through the core systems until...

Hicks watched Ripley, in the same way a younger man might admire their senior. A female mentor. A woman of confidence and mystery and a quiet and restrained sexuality. Inspiring, and yet no matter how close they might be to one another, there seemed a distance between them beyond measure. What did bind them however, was their deep respect for one another and perhaps even a secret love. Two who in any other circumstances might never have come to know or understand each other, and yet somehow, through the intense pain and loss they'd shared in common, they'd become a couple, and most certainly Newt's surrogate parents.

Hicks had grown up in a very different family dynamic than had Joan Lambert or Ellen Ripley. He had been the hard working younger brother of two sisters on a family farm in Nebraska, who had been inspired by his older Canadian cousin, who had joined the ISMC: the Independent Sovereign Marine Corps of North America.

Having been a farm boy, and one very protective of his sisters, from whom he'd learned to appreciate the quick and often advantageous force of women. His own sisters had on their occasions, discussed their interest in boys, and rather than promote his own interests, he'd encouraged healthy ambition but cautious progress.

"These are my sisters. You're not getting anything from them that they don't want to give you themselves, and if they do, you'd damned well better appreciate them and what they deserve for it," Hicks would often say to the many suitors who'd arrive to claim the hand of his own kin. And as a result of his protectiveness, both of his sisters became the foundation of their own families, while he became a fit, and handsome, and yet unattached suitor.

A year later, and during Ripley's fifty first year of frozen flight aboard the Narcissus, drifting helplessly towards the core systems in the Nostromo's solitary escape module, Hicks, Dwayne D, joined the newly rebranded United Stellar Colonial Marines. 2nd Battalion, TEAM BRAVO. Anytime, anywhere their motto.

"Anytime... anywhere..." Hicks said aloud as he recalled Hudson's quip from the briefing many years ago.

"Was Hudson a close friend?" asked Ripley of Hicks, perhaps in attempt to reconnect them to their fellow humanity, from whom they'd seemingly become isolated.

"Hudson? Oh yeah. He was our unofficial morale officer, go figure. The guy that made us all laugh. Sometimes until we cried," Hicks replied to Ripley.

"I miss them. Hudson. Vasquez. Gorman..." Newt, now a woman in her late twenties, with the experiences of a woman in her teens echoed as they walked.

"Me too honey. Me too," Hicks echoed softly as they approached a shuttered observation station just short of the airlock.

Hicks pressed a button that opened a panel in the wall, revealing a display with a series of controls. He entered a code and then pressed a button labeled OBS MODE.

The sound of internal hyper-draulics coming to life echoed through the corridor as the enormous armoured shutters on the Sulaco first popped out and away from the underlying hull, then sliding along the hull towards the stern of the Marine vessel until they stopped having reached the end of their rollers.

Ripley, Newt and Hicks got their first look at the enormous station, the word ASPHODEL displayed prominently above the airlock as the boarding bridge began extending out towards the Sulaco, the gantry arm of a giant crane gaining hold of the Sulaco and holding it in place.

"Looks like the welcome wagon is here..." Hicks noted as the boarding bridge connected to the airlock of the Sulaco.

"Hicks, don't let them board. We've got to make sure that they maintain the quarantine," Ripley reminded Hicks of the obligation of their responsibility to the people of the station, and to themselves as being the only barriers protecting humanity from what the xenomorph threat represented.

"That's the plan. If they're following standard procedure, the station's computers will talk to Sulaco, which will relay a coded subnet message for MARINE HQ. It will take about a minute before the reply to come, with the quarantine instructions for station emergency personnel. If everything goes according to standard procedure, they'll keep their distance for the duration of the quarantine time, and we'll setup here and remain on guard until that time has fully expired before allowing anyone access to this vessel, at which point, if we're still alive, we can consider ourselves rescued," Hicks explained to Ripley and Newt.

"What about Bishop? What will they do with him?" asked Ripley, the recognizable look of urgency in her eyes.

"He's company property. Wey-Yu will probably perform a full diagnostic and data extraction. Probably won't be much of him left after that," Hicks shook his head at the thought.

Bishop may have been an artificial person, but he would always be one of the team to Hicks. Human or not, he'd saved all of the survivors and proven himself to be more human than the company man who'd betrayed them.

"They'll try to piece everything together between the Sulaco's logs, Ferro's flight recorder data and whatever data Bishop relayed to the Sulaco before he remote piloted the dropship to the surface. We can't let them continue their experiments or follow that trail Hicks. We owe it to every single one of those colonists who died, and to your fellow Marines to make sure that they never follow up on anything to do with the xenomorphs!" Ripley said firmly to Hicks, who began considering all of the ways that they could go about ensuring the trail of data and research on the xenomorph was never found or followed.

"During the quarantine, we could wake Bishop up and have him talk us through performing a full wipe of the Sulaco's mission and media log, if that's even going to be enough," Hicks suggested to Ripley.

"That's a start, but we'll need to ensure that no biological contamination remains. We still don't know for sure that the Alien Queen didn't leave an egg or a drone somewhere on the Sulaco. Maybe something dormant that we missed, like the aliens that camouflaged themselves in the nest in the atmosphere processor back on LV-426," Ripley reasoned, looking to Newt, whose face echoed a similar expression of concern as the one on Ripley's face.

"...I seem to recall talking you through a very thorough internal scan of the Sulaco's interior before we entered cryo-sleep. I mean its been twenty-three years since we went to sleep, and nothing got us Ripley," Hicks tried to calm her enough to feel comfortable with herself and the effort she'd already made to stop the spread of the xenomorphs.

"Hicks. We need to do this. To make that extra effort. For me? So I can sleep at night?" she pleaded with him.

"We'll jettison the second drop ship and detonate it during the quarantine procedure. If even one of those things was somehow still on it, maybe hiding in the landing gear assembly, that will blow it sky high. That's the best we've got Ripley. You've gotta learn to know when you've done enough and when its time to let it go. For your sake. We need you, Ripley. Healthy, and knowing that you're a woman who has done everything she could to protect her fellow humankind," Hicks looked to Newt, who gave him a thumbs up.

"You're right Hicks, but lets get this done and over with before we pass the torch to the next generation. Let's have a talk with the station operations center, and let them know about the quarantine order," Ripley somehow managed a smile.

"They might not be scared of monsters you know..." Newt reasoned with her new surrogate parents.

"I know, Newt. And if they aren't, and they're the bureaucrats we hope they are, they might take a class one violation of standard aerospace procedure very seriously," Ripley shrugged, her knowledge of standard aerospace protocol once again coming to the rescue.

ASPHODEL

K2-18
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol

The auto-door slid open, telescoping vertically into the upper section of the doorway, as a young and pretty Korean woman in her mid-twenties, her perpetual smile somehow igniting the energy of everyone else in the room with her arrival. 

"And how is Eun-bi today, on this fine Monday morning?" asked Garth, a handsome and athletic man in his early twenties as he used an electro-static degausser to clean and neutralize any ionic charge in the operations center's console system.

"I'm raring to go, and you guys here are going to love me for this, 'cause I've got the dailies code for today, hot off the grill," she responded, stepping over to the communications array terminal and pulling forth a keycard from her belt and plugging it into the appropriate slot.

"Mr. Guoa? Eun-bi's here with the dailies code," Garth raised his voice, directing it towards a Chinese man in his mid-thirties.

"You're closer Garth. Why don't you attend to her. I'll give you clearance," Mr. Guoa responded, using a gesture to open a the security interface for the communications array.

Eun-bi turned and looked to Garth invitingly, and he immediately blushed. He then stood after refocusing himself and gained his confidence, sliding his keycard into the slot beside hers. This time it was her that blushed.

Further into the operations center and at the command console, a blue holo-display came to life before the face of a man with thick grey and white hair, in his fifties. He was clean shaven, his deeply blue eyes somehow drawing attention from his bulbous nose as he read the Subnet command log from Earth, checking first their shipping schedule, before he noticed an arrival marked URGENT.

"Lieutenant Allen? Were you aware of any R&R requests for light assault carrier vessels operating in the sector?" the man with blue eyes turned to face his Director of Station Security.

"We're not a resort, Director Elderman. Rest and recuperation for Marine vessels is generally serviced by Gliese 436. They're the closest resort class world, and Marines don't want rest and recuperation at a mining colony, Sir," Lieutenant Allen, a big boned, muscular Bantu woman looked over to the man who had just addressed her, almost annoyed that she had been disturbed from her protocol work over such a trivial matter.

"I realize that its Monday morning, Lucinda, but do you take me for an idiot? This isn't about rest and recuperation. Its about REFUELING and REARMING..." Director Elderman sat up authoritatively as he responded to Lucinda, and she shrunk in stature every so slightly.

"I have no record of any such request for Marine vessels operating in this sector. Sir," she responded, checking her own logs to confirm it wasn't something she'd missed.

"Its from the company. The vessel isn't operating locally. Its returning from a deep space mission and the company is requesting a full resupply of armaments, and for the vessel to remain on station until the arrival of Marine reinforcements..." Director Elderman explained her orders to her.

"Sir, I can't spare any such security supplies, even for a Marine vessel. We're already under supplied as it is. If I do and we're caught short the next time there's labour relations problems, they'll start asking questions that you'll ultimately have to answer for..." Lieutenant Allen explained to Director Elderman, who frowned with her response.

"They'll start asking questions if we don't! Look, I don't care if we have to dig into our emergency security supplies in order to fulfil their request, but this station has no blemishes on its operational record, and that's because I run a tight ship here, Lucinda. If you can't keep up, there's always work for you in the mines if you'd prefer?" Director Elderman reminded her of the grim truth of prospects for officers who disobeyed orders on ASPHODEL station.

Lucinda stared intensely at Director Elderman, and he kept a firm gaze upon her, unblinking.

"The vessel Sulaco has already arrived in this star system, and will be docked in forty minutes. I suggest that you put some of your team on making sure their resupply request is met. You have four hours be completed, at which point you'll provide a security detachment to the airlock to maintain a post resupply quarantine until their reinforcements arrive in six days. Do I make myself clear?!!!" Director Elderman's eyes pierced her senses, giving her shudders as he looked through her.

"Perfectly so, Ronald!..." Lieutenant Allen responded to him by his first name, enraging him further.

"Are you testing me?!!!" Director Elderman kept his gaze firm.

"No," Lucinda responded.

"No what?!!!" Director Elderman confirmed with her.

"No Sir, Director Elderman," Lucinda yielded to him, finally getting up from her desk and making her way to the station cargo and supply area.

Outside of the station, the Sulaco slowly slid into view as it lined itself up for the gantry crane and crew bridge.

Eun-bi, Garth and Fei Guoa all stared in the direction of the Director, not daring to utter a word as Lucinda stormed by them, clearly angered by his dressing down of her only moments ago.

"Come on people! They aren't paying you by the hour! Get your asses in gear!" Lucinda yelled at Eun-bi, Garth and Fei Guoa as she walked by, crushing her palms with her tightly closed fingers.

"Somebody's having a bad Monday..." Garth smiled at Eun-bi, retrieving his keycard from the terminal.

Fei Guoa looked to Director Elderman, who was now focused on the Sulaco as its retro-thrusters slowed its movement to a standstill outside of the gantry crane arm.

Fei turned quietly to Eun-bi and Garth, addressing them both.

"Look, you two had better be careful. Interns are very expendable around here. If you like having a comfy job here in orbit, stay out of their way. Director Elderman and Lieutenant Allen. There's lots of room for interns in the mines. I've already lost one that way, and he's now doing hard labour as an apprentice down there. I'd hate to see either of you end up there," Fei pleaded with Eun-bi and Garth, who nodded affirmatively.

"I'm not an intern anymore! I'm like two weeks in. A full company employee!" Eun-bi responded to Fei with a big smile on her face.

"Eun-bi! Do you have somewhere to be?!!! Its against the law for employees to loiter in operations!" Director Elderman was now focused upon her.

"I was just on my way... Director..." Eun-bi's smile faded slightly, and she backed away and stepped out through the door into the corridors beyond.

"I'm just taking my break. Ten minutes, before ten thirty?" Garth said to Mr. Guo, who nodded affirmatively.

"Ten minutes, Garth," Mr. Guoa asserted himself.

...

"Did you happen to see that girl with the pretty smile?" Garth asked of Eun-bi as he ran to catch up with her.

"Did he follow us?" asked Eun-bi, not daring to look for herself as Garth arrived by her side.

"Director Elderman? Nah. He sat down again at his console and began doing his messages. Probably kissing the ass of someone back at Wey-Yu resource extraction headquarters," Garth explained to her as he snuck a peak at the the face of his crush.

"Lets hope. Maybe get us a resupply detail a lot sooner than they've been coming lately," Eun- bi responded, acknowledging the growing problems of the station quartermaster.

"Eun-bi, do you mind if I ask you something?" Garth moved a little closer to her.

"Sure, go ahead," she smiled at him.

"Have you ever noticed how there's no androids..." Garth began.

"You mean artificial persons..." she corrected him.

"...artificial persons. There's like none on the station, and when I was back home training for my placement  here, we were taught that androids... I mean artificial persons could generally be found in any modern operations center at a ratio of  about one for every six real people..." Garth continued.

"Just because they're artificial, doesn't mean they're not real," Eun-bi once again corrected him.

"You know what I meant. Like us having a real beating heart. So how come we have none here?" Garth asked her.

"Maybe the same reason that we've been running so short on supply shipments lately. You know what I think?" Eun-bi turned it around and began asking him the questions.

"No. What do you think it is?" he asked her.

"I think we're hitting the first ever interstellar recession... but don't tell them a company girl told you that. Its our little secret," she winked at him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

Garth, immediately stopped in the corridor, gently rubbing the cheek where she'd kissed him, as Eun-bi kept going. He examined her as she departed, tracing every curve on her body and the motion of her hips as she walked away.

"I am never going to wash my face ever again," Garth said as he blushed profusely.

...

Most of the docking procedures, especially those involving Marine warships were entirely automated, but on occasion there arose obstacles that prevented even humanity's most advanced AI systems from solving the nature of the menial tasks involved to arrive at a solution, and this particular situation involving the light assault carrier Sulaco was one such instance.

The docking engineer, Jonathan Boorman, pulled his keycard from his belt and plugged it into the industrial control override console. A door slid open on the surface area of his workspace, revealing a pair of joysticks, slider controls, and a proximity sensor trackball.

"Lets give this another try..." he said as the sound of an alarm pierced his ears.

DEUTERIUM FUEL LINE CONNECTION ERROR: UNRESOLVED CONTINUITY

"Oh great. Something's jamming the fuel line again..." Jonathan said as he grabbed the controls of the actuator arm. A periscope descended from the ceiling arriving in front of his eyes and coming to rest on his nose, as he maneuvered the nozzle of the fuel hose into the intake valve. When he was certain that it was lined up, he pressed a flashing button marked: THREAD LOCK, and watched through the camera as the valve flywheel spun, drawing the nozzle of the hose into the fuel tank and sealing mechanism.

From nowhere, another alarm suddenly burst to life, causing him to jump in his seat. As he did, he bumped his head on the assembly of the periscope above him and cursed:

"F#ck. When are they going fix that!!!" Jonathan said as he removed his baseball cap and began rubbing his tender head.

His eye a caught an industrial hazard prevention sign posted by the station's Manager of Mining Operations.

"HELMETS: DON'T GET CAUGHT WITHOUT YOURS. IT COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE."

The sign blinked those words while depicting a cartoon worker that wasn't wearing his helmet being impacted on the head by falling debris.

"F#ck you Andrew!" Jonathan cursed at the sign, bumping his head again when he tried return his eyes to the periscope viewfinder.

This time, he stopped and opened the cabinet beneath the console and found his helmet, donning it carefully before resuming his task at hand.

He looked at the console display, and another error message flashed repeatedly:

NOZZLE ERROR: INTERMITTENT OBSTRUCTION

"So says my wife every time we go to bed..." Jonathan cursed once again, grabbing the nozzle controls once again and backing the flywheel in reverse until the nozzle was once again free if the flywheel assembly and in his control with the actuator arm.

On the top right corner of the camera, he caught a glimpse of something as dark as the night sky on K2-18B, and yet it appeared wet. Shiny. Biological. There was a moment where the thing, whatever it was, stopped and he could clearly see what appeared to be a pair of clenched teeth, complete with razor sharp canines. Interference momentarily blurred the screen with static, and then when by the time the image cleared up again, whatever it might have been, it was gone.

"Good thing it wasn't inside of the fuel tank..." Jonathan remarked, once again resuming his attempt to insert the nozzle into the valve. When he'd lined it up in the pipe, five by five, he hit the THREAD LOCK button once again. This time, the nozzle was pulled into and locked in position by the flywheel mechanism.

FUEL NOZZLE CONNECTED SUCCESSFULLY. FUEL LINE CONTINUITY CONFIRMED.

"Fill her up," Jonathan flicked a few switches, and the periscope rose from view, concealing itself into a compartment in the ceiling. He then hit a green button labeled: BEGIN FUEL INJECTION.

 A digital animation played on the console screen, depicting the movement of liquid DEUTERIUM into the ignition system of the Mark III Zero-Point Fusion Igniter System: the starter-motor that essentially kickstarted the fusion process that maintained the Zero-Point Hyper-Engine system that powered nearly all Marine interstellar capable vessels.

"Phil? You taking a break? Wait up..." Jonathan got up from the console, allowing the rest of the refueling system to run in fully automated mode as he ran to catch up with his coworker.

On the exterior of the Sulaco, something moved, crawling slowly across its surface, its endoskeleton armour camouflaged and nearly invisible against the Sulaco's hull. 

It moved slowly and purposefully in a direction towards, and into one of the heat sync vents, beside the enormous engines of the vessel. Inside, where it found its tiny nest, also perfectly camouflaged with its surroundings on the exterior of the Sulaco.

...

Hicks had just unfolded the legs of one of the UA 571-C Automated Sentry Guns and was now powering it up. He turned to the laptop on the floor beside him, and checked the screen:

SAFETY ENGAGED, the words flashed on the screen.

He used the joystick to navigate the menu and enabled the motion detection system, readying it for calibration.

 "Alright, lets make sure this one's got its eyes," Hicks said as he hit the calibration button on the interface.

A few moments passed, and the sentry gun's automated matter detection system traced a localized map of its surroundings, out to a distance of twenty-five meters, the exact distance that Hicks had selected for the detection system, as it was the length of the crew bridge between the airlocks of the ASPHODEL and the Sulaco.

OBSTACLE MAP CALCULATED. MOTION DETECTOR DIAGNOSTIC STARTING.

As soon as those words had ceased flashing on the display, the speakers of the device emitted a high pitched pinging sound. Hicks examined the display to find the source, confirming it wasn't a false positive.

"Must be hallucinating...? Ripley? You having any luck yet?" he asked her, carefully checking the screen again as a blip momentarily appeared and then disappeared.

"Hicks? That's affirmative. Newt and I ran into an old friend on our way to the market, didn't we Newt?" Ripley confirmed with Newt, who was standing right beside her in the cryo-chamber.

"We certainly did... But he's looking a little rough around the edges," Newt added to Ripley's reply.

Ripley affixed a headset to the artificial person's ears and head, and he spoke for himself.

"Hicks? Looks like I might live a bit longer than it says on my warranty..." Bishop said to Hicks, looking to Ripley and Newt in turn as he spoke.

"How are you feeling there Bishop?" Hicks asked him.

"Not half bad. Pun intended," Bishop replied. 

"Hopefully its the half you still have. Did Ripley bring you up to speed yet?" Hicks asked of Bishop.

"Affirmative, but I'm going to have to go with them to help initiate the systems override to authorize the purging of all recorded data on the Sulaco. An act that is in violation of company policy, I might add," Bishop explained to them.

"I don't think we're in a position to be expecting a pension anyway. How long do you figure you'll need?" Hicks asked Bishop.

"I'll need hands on the command console on the bridge for at least half an hour," Bishop explained to Ripley, Newt and Hicks.

"Can't we just plug you in directly to the ship's data center?" asked Ripley thoughtfully.

"No. The override codes need to be entered manually directly from the command console on the bridge. They're purposefully difficult to enter, hence ensuring they're never accidentally used, and that doesn't even include the fact that I'm going to have to manually write a worm, that will unlock the protected memory of the backup systems, which will take another twenty minutes at least. Thirty with testing," Bishop explained to Ripley.

"Assuming they observe the quarantine law of twenty-four hours, that should give us plenty of time. Hicks, will those sentry guns keep the station techs out?" asked Ripley of Hicks.

"They should. We're not using the standard light armour piercing explosive tipped caseless rounds. We're using riot rounds. Rubber bullets. They're non-lethal. They hurt a lot, and they will leave a mark, but they won't penetrate the station's hull. Anyone trying to get onto the ship through the crew bridge will be in a for an unpleasant surprise to say the least," Hicks assured her as he lined up the first sentry, positioning it in the airlock, aiming down wind along the crew bridge and directly at the station's airlock system.

As he lined it up, there was another ping as the motion detector detected something moving about twenty meters from his position. He checked it once again, and the blip disappeared.

"Everything alright Hicks?" asked Ripley, having heard the sound of the pinging through his headset, the sound sending shivers down her spine.

"Its hallucinating. A lot," Hicks said to Ripley as he checked the connectors to ensure there was no electrical short.

"Hicks, we need to be sure of this," Ripley underlined the importance of what they were doing once again.

"I know. We need to send a drone outside to examine the hull. Its the only way to be sure," Hicks said to Ripley.

"Fine. We're going to see if we can't hook Bishop up to one of Vasquy's smartgun harnesses and power packs. We can fasten him to Newt's back, and she can be his legs, getting him around to do what he needs to do," Ripley told Hicks.

"Don't you think that it might be safer if you take Bishop, rather than putting him on our little girl's back? She's already carrying a lot, honey," Hicks confirmed with Ripley, starting to sound like a worried father and husband to her, opting for a little jest as a form of stress relief.

"That would be alright, but I'm going to be busy keeping watch with a pulse rifle, and running errands for Bishop. Our little girl is all grown up now. She'll be fine. Even with a Bishop on her back," Ripley responded with a bit of a smile on her face.

"I'll try not to be too heavy on her..." Bishop assured them, with a quirky smile on his face.

"Sounds like a plan. Once I've got the sentry guns in place, I'm going to run a full scan of the exterior with a drone. I'll be closer than you know if either of you need me," Hicks assured them.

"Us too, Hicks," Newt smiled as she fastened the belt that contained the power-pack of the M56 Smart Gun. The spare power-packs from Vasquez' and Drake's lockers on board the Sulaco.

As Ripley helped Bishop slide over to the edge of a gurney to which they'd managed to transfer him, lining him up in place to be fastened to Newt's back, Hicks unpacked and unfolded the second sentry gun in the airlock, then turning to the command laptop and navigating the interface and pressing the  DUPLICATE TO ALL NODES button.

Hicks stepped back inside the Sulaco side of the airlock, closing the inner door. He then unlocked and opened the outer airlock door, giving access to the crew bridge from the perspective of both sentry guns. They began peering from left to right and back again as they continuously scanned for any motion emerging from a ninety degree arc afore of their position.

Meanwhile, on the outer hull of the Sulaco, the same exoskeleton armoured monster with the gritted teeth finally settled back into its tiny nest camouflaged on the exterior of the hull.

There within, the biomechanical creature adjusted itself, its spinal arms navigating the wall behind it as it spied an ovoid shape in front of it. Leathery and pocked with bulbous blisters.

It was an egg.

Aeolus

K2-18B
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol

Fifty years earlier, the eighteenth probe sent from Earth to confirm earlier geological findings with regard to the unusual natural satellite of K2-18B. Earlier probes had confirmed many interesting such details, including the fact that it harboured frozen water deep within its crust, making it potentially suitable for operations, and a way station providing fuel resources allowing humanity access to the rest of the Local Group.

The eighteenth probe also confirmed undeniably that the natural satellite also possessed a geodynamo: a magnetic core, though it was frozen in the ice resulting from the unusual orbital dynamics of the satellite. Aeolus as it was eventually named, possessed a highly eccentric elliptical orbit, meaning that K2-18B's lunar cycle took the equivalent of two Earth years.

Aeolus would literally whip by K2-18B during its periapsis, taking only one hundred and eight Earth days. For the remaining six hundred and eight days, Aeolus would be rapidly reduced to a crawl. With such an elliptical orbit, Aeolus had spent much of its life in the shadow of K2-18B, in fact ninety five percent of its time. This kept Aeolus shielded from the heat of its host star, allowing its liquid water surface to rapidly freeze and condense, despite the tidal forces of its orbit. Over the three billion years of its development, the surface water retreated into the satellite's interior, trapping its geodynamo, hence preventing it from developing its own atmosphere.

The eighteenth probe also contained a considerably risky experiment, for the probe landed upon Aeolus and using an automated autonomous drilling drone, it was able to "inject" Aeolus' water core with crystal formation-disrupting and anti-freeze producing Von Neumann Nanites. These tiny molecular robots set about making copies of themselves (into the sum of quintillions), roughly half of them converting the ammonia present on Aeolus's surface into anti-freeze, while the other half produced heat by igniting unsustained fusion reactions using the water's own hydrogen atoms as the fuel.

Over the course of forty years, Aeolus slowly developed a magnetosphere and a thin oxygen atmosphere, just in time for the scheduled arrival of the first settlers. After constructing ASPHODEL orbital the first year, within two years, the atmosphere processor was constructed on Aeolus' surface, and within another five, the air of Aeolus became breathable without the need for artificial respirators.

The colony, much like its counterpart on LV-426 was mostly inhabited by its mining and geological engineering workforce, the remainder of the population being mostly operational, administrative and  amenities support staff for a total population of one hundred and sixty seven.

On this particular day, into the five hundredth morning of their six hundred Earth-day lengthed night, Marcus Dougherty, already wearing his uniform, quietly snuck from the micro-kitchen of their unit, to his double bed, within which a modestly curvacious woman in her forties slept soundly.

He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the forehead and she was roused from her sleep.

"Mmmmm. You smell nice..." she said to him.

"The coffee's on, and there's a plate ready for you in the cooler. Gotta go," Marcus smiled to her.

"Not before I get a real kiss..." she demanded of him, leaning up slightly in bed to meet him halfway.

They locked lips passionately, before he pulled away from her, sporting a seductive smile.

"Very tempting, but I've gotta go. That, and you need to brush your teeth..." Marcus told her, and she laughed at him while covering her mouth.

"Alright, but you owe me a night in tonight. No late night at the office. Understand?" she asserted herself.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world. Bye..." with that Marcus got up and left, the autodoor locking behind him.

Outside of the colony residential building, a bus shaped vehicle waited, its driver honking a horn. Marcus heard the sound and picked up his pace, and when the driver saw him, he rolled down his window and greeted him.

"I thought you were going to be a no show," the driver said to Marcus.

"Not me. Not a missed day in ten years," Marcus reminded the driver.

"Well that's kind of hard, on account of the fact that you've only been here for nine," the driver responded.

"That's my point," Marcus replied, quickly finding his favourite seat on the bus as the vehicle accelerated to its cruising speed.

"How's the wife?" asked the driver of his only passenger.

 "She's all hot and bothered, alone in bed. Don't get me wrong, she's definitely a doer. She expanded our contained living space by herself, with the help of Kenji's automates. She did good actually," Marcus responded.

"Hot and bothered, eh? Wanna drive, and I'll take your place?" the driver responded.

"Not quite, Matt. She's doing what she does, and I'm doing what I do. You know how it is for us here on Aeolus," Marcus responded the driver.

"Aeolus. Its all in the brochure, but not in the planetary approach. I thought I was coming to paradise, but I ended up coming to a paradox. Go figure," the driver responded.

"What's up Max? No life is a bus Zen today? I never had you tagged as the kind of heavy machine operator who'd gripe," Marcus responded as the bus' variable centrifugal gear adjusted for high speed, dust desert travel, the residential center of the colony disappearing behind them.

"Griping? No, I was just making a political commentary. I was all set up to become an administrator on ASPHODEL, but wound up here instead. Go figure," Max replied, as the outrigging extended from the sides of the bus, its wheels spinning so fast they were barely touching the dust of Aeolus' metallic dust particle desert.

"Take pride in your position here. We're where all the real work gets done. Up there? They're just riding our coat-tails. Remember, the money here is in the rare minerals, and the only way they find their way onto the freighters that rotate between here and Proxima Centauri Refinery is through us. We do the work, ASPHODEL signs and stamps it all. Without us, they're out of a job," Marcus reminded Max.

"You know, I wish it really were that way. I really do. I'm getting the feeling that I'm not the only one," Max turned for a moment to look to Marcus, who looked at him as if he were seeing a crazy man.

"Are you hinting at some kind of terrorism or something, Max?" asked Marcus, checking up on his friend more out of concern for his mental health, than as a result of the security risk insinuation he'd just made.

"Terrorism? Is that what they're calling revolutions nowadays? Marcus my friend, I'd just want to make sure you knew who's looking out for you, if there was even such a thing. I mean, who'd be crazy enough to throw away their accumulated company shares and seniority by revolting against the company that hired them? I'm just looking forward to my retirement, Marcus, and I wouldn't want that fine wife of yours to be sleeping in a bed without you," Max disengaged high-velocity mode, checking the video monitors the ensure the outriggers folded up properly into the chassic of the bus.

"You be good now, and keep two seats for my wife and I at your retirement party," Marcus stood as the bus pulled up at the front entry into Section A of the colony administration.

"Alright. I guess the revolution's gonna have to wait for an other day," Max smiled at Marcus as he got off of the bus.

His smile slowly turned to a frown, as Marcus stepped in through the entryway doors.

"I hope you have a change of heart before that day comes," Max said aloud to himself, shaking his head as he watched Marcus disappear into the colony administration center.

...

The door to the command center opened and Marcus stepped in through the door, heading over to his workstation.

"How's Gretchin this morning?" Marcus asked as he passed the workstation of a woman in her late forties.

"Better," Gretchin replied quaintly.

"Better? I only just got here and I'm having an impact on your day," Marcus responded sarcastically, perhaps knowing better himself.

"No. Better, once you sort out the details surrounding the prep and loading of one thousand metric tonnes of Neodymium for shipment into ASPHODEL materials staging area 4..." Gretchin responded to Marcus impatiently.

"It sounds pretty straight forward to me. Assign a crew. Oversee the automates. Load the containers and call for dust off. Its all there in the work order I posted last night," Marcus turned to face Gretchin, who leaned back in her chair and listened to him as he accentuated each step of the task.

"We're still understaffed, and half of Kenji's automates are out of commission from the last geomagnetic dust storm. If I give you a crew for that work order, we'll be behind for the next quota, and you know as well as I do what that will mean," Gretchin leaned forward in her chair as Marcus focused on her.

"Gretchin, that's your job. To make sure that we have enough labour to maintain the quota. If you can't meet that goal, then maybe its time you looked for another position?" Marcus responded to her.

"You know as well as I do that there's nobody else qualified for this job... let alone the stress..." Gretchin responded defensively, though not for herself, but for the labourers she represented.

"Nicole?" Marcus responded.

"Chief Administrator Adams? She's too busy shoring up the other shortcomings to add a labour crisis to her plate!" Gretchin challenged Marcus' suggestion.

"Look Gretchin. I didn't design this place, and I don't make the rules. I just do the best with what I've got. Maybe you should start doing the same?" Marcus responded, throwing himself down into chair and opening a communications line with ASPHODEL.

"I'll contact Director Elderman and let him know we're going to be off quota," Marcus began typing a message.

"That won't be necessary," Gretchin began, her eyes looking away from Marcus as she spoke.

"I'll have a crew ready in an hour, and the Neodymium loaded in three, but this is the last time I help you out, when you surprise me with a last minute work order like that one," Gretchin turned to her screen and began selecting labourers to help the loading operation ready the Neodymium.

"That's better. You know we can't afford another supply shortage down here. If we mess up another quota, Director Elderman is going to take it out of our re-supply," Marcus replied to her harshly, and then quietly realized that Max might have actually given him good advice earlier.

Terrorism or revolution: it didn't matter what it was called as much as whether you were on the winning side or not.

...

The morning clock had just struck the tenth hour, that of the thirty hour day experienced upon Aeolus. 

For most in the mining colony Huxley's Habitat, that meant they were already three hours into their work day, (one if they were lucky enough to work in administration), early into a day that would end after twelve hours on the clock. Most workers by that point, would find their way home to one of the three surrounding residential centers, just beyond the metallic dust desert known as Pyknos.

The administrators and heavy machine operators would often just call it a day, spending their evening with their family and then going to dream assisted sleep for ten hours, only to wake up the following thirty hour day and do the same thing all over again.

Amongst the working population of Aeolus, there was another group. Those who remained unattached, and adventurous, who after their shift, would often spend their evenings and  even fewer, the rest of their night at Huxley's Hole, a bar situated conveniently at the halfway point between mining administration, and the three residential centers.

On this particular morning, as the Light Assault Carrier Sulaco was anchored to one of the docking gantries of Asphodel, far above Aeolus, one of the pilots, who had been awake since the night before drank the last of his drink, as the staff cleaned up around him.

"Taggart. We're closing for cleanup in about five minutes. You know the drill. We'll be down for about two hours, and you can come back then, but I'd suggest that you try to make it home and catch a little real shut-eye," the proprietor of Huxley's Hole walked by Taggart's table, as he cleared the floor for cleaning.

"All right. I'm almost done here..." Taggart's friendly face slumped over onto the table after he finished the last bit of his whiskey and soda.

"Did you even hear me Taggart? I'm not kidding," the proprietor once again urged Taggart, from whom the sound of snoring quickly picked up momentum as he fell into a slumber.

"Nelly, could you...?" the proprietor turned to the one and only bar maid.

"Alright Williams, but this is the last time I do that for him," Nelly, a pretty brunette walked over to the table where Taggart was now fast asleep, and helped him to his feet and over to the front door of Huxley's Hole.

"I've added you to my habitat guest list. Let yourself in and crash on the sofa, at least until your shift starts today, but you've got to get to your own home tonight. Besides, you're going to need a week to clean the place if you want to make it presentable to your sister, the next time she's out this way," Nelly helped him over to the door, by which point he finally was conscious enough to carry his own drunken weight.

"Thanks Nelly. Collette would thank you too if she were here," Taggart managed a smile through his mostly alcohol pickled breath.

"Well she's not, but I'll make due with yours. Remember, not my bed, the sofa! I'll see you in about an hour, and I'll wake you up in another five," Nelly gave him a smile, withholding just enough of her friendly in order to make sure he wasn't simply taking advantage of her.

Taggart stumbled the rest of the way to her habitat, and upon arriving at the front door to the complex, he stepped nearest the colony implant sensor and spoke his name:

"Taggart Ferro. Guest of Nelly Chavez," he said confidently in the direction of the sensor suite.

"TAGGART FERRO. VARIABLE WINGED CLASS 1 PILOT CONFIRMED. PLEASE PROCEED TO UNIT 15. IF YOU STRAY, SECURITY MAY BE NOTIFIED," the automated voice responded through the speakers lining the halls of the habitat.

Taggart didn't bother with a response, but instead began stumbling down the hall to unit 15, where he made his way in and fell onto the sofa. He was already fast asleep before he'd even hit the sofa. A few moments later, he was wading through his memories with the aid of the SOMA dream sleep system.

He was much younger, perhaps in his early twenties. He was dressed in his cadet uniform as he arrived, taking a seat amongst the other cadets eagerly awaiting the results of their pilot's examination.

Collette arrived shortly after, she too in her own cadet uniform and she quickly took the spot next to Taggart, who smiled upon seeing her.

"Saved yer spot," Taggart took his hand off of the empty seat beside him, and she sat next to him.

"This is it. This is the big one," Collette said to him, checking out the line of Commanding Officers seated at the head of the room.

"I'm going for the large haul myself. Space tug. Heavy Industrial Hauler. Piloting for the big cargo is where the money's at. What about you sis?" Taggart explained to her his reasoning, and then he became curious as to where his little sister might fit into her future piloting career.

"SPECOPs all the way. Rapid deployment team. I could never sit behind the console of a tug and just drift. Wanna be where the action is..." Collette exclaimed.

"Careful what you wish for honey, 'cause you might just get it. Me? I'm trying to tone down my profile a bit. Thinking of my future. No more hotshot flying for me," Taggart responded to his little sister.

"You're the whole reason I'm here. What happened to you? Those days you tried to tell me that I have to spread my wings and fly for myself. Follow my dreams, and now you're chickening out on yours?" Collette responded to him, and then from the front of the room, they both heard one of the Commanding Officers call her name:

"Ferro, Collette. Cadet, Air Cavalry Armed Services," his voice pierced the noise in the room and found its way directly to them.

Collette stood, looking to the Commanding Officer, and then turned back to her brother and his seat in the auditorium. He stood from his chair and smiled at her. She saluted him and then leaned in and planted a gentle kiss on his cheek, standing on her toes to reach given their height difference. She then turned and walked quickly to the recruiting desk where she received her new training package and future assignment.

From that moment, the last that he had seen his little sister, she started her flight training with the Corps, then finding herself deployed to the United Stellar Colonial Marines, 2nd Battalion, BRAVO Company.

He recalled receiving her first VIDNET message on the Marine Communications Subnet.

"Hi Taggart. You're never going to guess what I do now. You know the Cheyenne UD-4L dropship? Well I'm flying one now. I'm a pilot for a fast deployment team of Marine specialists. The kind of stuff you used to talk about wanting to do. I cleared this message with COMMS already, so if any words are censored, or redacted, you'll know why. Taggart? I wouldn't have made it here without you. I just wanted you to know that you're an inspiration, big brother. I'll try and catch you next time we're near K2-18. Us Ferros, there's only two of us left. We're family. We have to stick together. Bye for now and see you soon someday," Collette waved at the camera, still in uniform minus her flight officer's hat. She then saluted the camera with a smile, and then winked, before the VIDNET video had ended.

His dream faded into a mess of other memories, as his waking world collided with his dream world, when something from one of those two extremes caught his ears.

He awoke on Nelly's sofa, his mouth and throat dry and parched as a hangover did its best to entrench itself within his dehydrated and pickled body.

He wiped his eyes and then his ears, as he heard the sound of Nelly's NEWSNET Wall-Vision coming from Nelly's bedroom.

He got up from the sofa and peeked into Nelly's bedroom, where she was fast asleep in her bed, the covers pulled over her. On the wall nearest him, the local news feed from Asphodel played on screen, repeating its news broadcast in a loop every fifteen minutes until updated.

"...the United Stellar Colonial Marines will be calling Asphodel home for the next week as the Light Assault Carrier Sulaco remains in quarantine over that time. Of course, they'll enjoy a taste of drone delivered cuisine, as a show of hospitality from the culinary staff of Asphodel Station and a show of support for the Corps and its personnel. Remember, if you are required access to docking boom 2A or its gantries, you'll have to wait seven days until Marine quarantine procedures have run their course. Also, any pilots operating in orbit are reminded that they must remain outside of the one kilometer quarantine zone. Any flight craft operating within these bounds illegally, may be disabled or even destroyed. So update your flight plans and check with Asphodel air traffic control. This news has been brought to you today by Weyland-Yutani Aphodel NEWSNET. Weyland-Yutani: Making Better Worlds," the automated NEWSNET announcer's voice finished its delivery and the screen went blank for a moment, and then resumed its playback of elevator music and the video imagery vista landscapes of  Aeolus' latest drone photography.

"That's my sister's posting. She's aboard that ship..." Taggart said aloud to himself.

Beneath the covers, Nelly stirred and then leaned up in her bed, looking in shock to Taggart.

"You pig!" she threw her pillow at him, keeping herself covered.

"Its not what you think...! Honest!" Taggart replied, his voice as dry and groggy as his throat.

"Then what is it?" Nelly challenged him.

He tried swallowing, but found he couldn't muster up the saliva to do so. Instead, the lump in his throat, much like his tension, only grew.

"There's a Marine vessel in quarantine at Asphodel. Its Collette's ship. Her posting. The Sulaco. She's on that ship! I heard the news in here when I was out there, and came in here to check it out. Not to check on you, in that way, although now that I'm here..." he quickly tried to backtrack the mess that he was making.

"Collette's here? At Asphodel?" confirmed Nelly.

"She's stationed with 2nd Battalion, BRAVO TEAM. That's her ship. The Sulaco," Taggart explained to Nelly, who grabbed her house coat on the other side of the Queen sized bed, and quickly donned it beneath the sheets.

She then slipped into her slippers and stood from the bed and approached him.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked him.

"Me? I'm going up there to see if I can't find a way to get to her," Taggart explained to her.

"They're in quarantine. Isn't quarantine violation a serious crime?" Nelly asked him as she walked past him and out to the kitchen, where she requested the autocook to prepare the breakfast she'd had planned, early.

"No more serious than hijacking a shuttle, which I'll need to do if I'm going to get to see her," Taggart joked, though not entirely certain that it wouldn't be required.

"You're definitely still drunk. Look, you've only been asleep for four hours so far. Have some water, and get some breakfast into your stomach, and then we'll talk about this plan of yours. I mean Collette might be your sister, but she's my best friend. Fair?" Nelly asked him, handing him a cold cup of water she'd poured from the water cooling dispenser.

"Fair. Even better, its a damned great idea. I didn't know my little sister had such smart friends," Taggart replied to her.

"If I was really smart, I'd have let you sleep outside of the front door of the bar. Might have saved you the prison term you'll get for hijacking a shuttle," Nelly smirked at him and then smiled.

Within ten minutes, the two of them were seated at the kitchen table and eating breakfast together.

Actuation

K2-18B
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol

Asphodel Station

Corporal Hicks walked along the Sulaco's main corridor and into the ship's diagnostic bay, just outside of the cargo bay area. He found a wall panel covered by a sliding door, which he opened revealing a keypad. He entered his security clearance and tag number, and proceeded to through the military class user interface for the diagnostics drone.

Using a checklist he'd prepared earlier, he began copying the settings from his notes into the drone's setup menu, preparing a task for the automated diagnostics system. When he was certain he had all of the task described to the drone's command memory, he pressed a flashing button: INITIATE.

He watched on screen as the drone's video, infrared and thermal imaging cameras all came to life, focused somewhere in one of the drone bays. When the drone's elecromagnetic drive motors whirred to life, the drone remained stationary. It struggled three times in succession, each time trying to get loose of its bay, but clearly blocked by something.

"Bishop, do you copy?" Hicks turned to his communicator instead.

"Loud and clear. Just finishing up the media purge, and I should be able to get started with the worm to clear the backup memory. ETA ten minutes. Fifteen at most," Bishop responded.

"That's good news Bishop, but can I distract you for a moment to look into why the diagnostic drone bay is jammed? I programmed one of the drones to do a sweep of  hull and engines, but it seems to be stuck," Hicks explained to Bishop.

"I'll have a look. Give me a minute," Bishop responded to Hicks.

"How are you holding out Newt?" asked Bishop of Newt, who was seated in front of the bridge, and with her back to it, from where Bishop (who was hooked up to a pair of the power packs from the smartgun harnesses), sat typing instructions into the bridge's main console.

"I'm bored. There's nothing interesting happening in this direction," Newt replied to Biship, who smiled and nodded affirmatively.

"Well you do happen to have an expert in the architecture of the bridge and operations decks for Marine Light Assault Carriers. Would you like a run down on how they work?" he responded to her as he attended to Hicks' request.

"Does that mean that I can be the Captain someday?" asked Newt of Bishop.

"You can be whatever you put your mind to, honey," Ripley's voice responded through the communicator.

"How about a brain surgeon? Can I just start being a brain surgeon without having to study or practice first?" Newt replied, more trying to make a joke of it than anything else.

"After a few years of intense training, simulations and examinations, you can be almost anything you want," Ripley corrected herself.

"I want learn how the bridge works. I want to be Captain someday," Newt smiled, taking up Bishop on his offer.

"Bishop, its all in your hands," Ripley responded from the other end of the ship.

"Ripley, could you take power conduits nine through twelve down, and don't turn them back on until I'm done writing the worm," Bishop requested of Ripley.

"They're right beside me. Let me just get the bezel off and I'll let you know when I've taken them down," Ripley responded, using a powered drill to remove the front panel.

"See that trio of holo-screens in front of you Newt?" Bishop asked Newt as he finished checking up on why Hicks' drone was stuck.

"You mean the one with the keyboard and trackball in front of it?" Newt confirmed.

"One and the same. That's the Sulaco's route planning and navigation system. The trackball you referred to is actually a four dimensional control surface, that allows you to manipulate the navigation interface over its four major axis. Three of space, one of time, with an inertial frame scalar reference of one point zero, when in relativistic mode. There's three modes of operation. Relativistic, Hybrid, and Quantum String Field mode. In Relativistic mode, everything thing, including the concept of time and space is relative to a local frame of reference, like the hidden metaphorical statement: no matter where you go, there you are," Bishop used this simple anecdote to clarify the difference between Relativistic and  Quantum String dynamics very effectively to Newt.

"In Quantum String Field mode, the frame of reference scalar is zero point zero, meaning there are no relativistic effects in route planning, only Quantum String Field micro-operators, which essentially have the same end result as their relativistic counterparts," Bishop began laying down standard military theory of stellar navigation to Newt.

"I get it. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, I think. So that's where I plan to make the Sulaco go from one place to another. Either with Relativistic effects, or Quantum String Field effects, right?" Newt confirmed with Bishop.

"You've got it so far. Just give me another minute and we'll continue our lessons," Bishop responded to Newt and then turned his attention toward Hicks through the communicator.

"Hicks? There's something physically blocking the diagnostic drone bay, and the only way to get at it to fix it would require an EVA," Bishop explained to Hicks through the communicator.

"In other words, we can't do an inspection until we get out there and fix whatever is blocking the drone bay," Hicks thought back to the sentry gun's hallucinations.

"Doesn't it seem odd to you that exactly what we need to confirm whether the Sulaco is clear of a contagion, is suddenly not available for us to use?" Ripley replied to Hicks as she got the last of the panels removed.

"Or potentially makes us vulnerable or exposes us to whatever the cause is... That does seem a little too convenient, doesn't it," Hicks thought it over.

"Like the Aliens conveniently setting up their nest nearest the cooling system of the atmospheric processor. Remember?" Ripley added.

"Or their cutting the power right before they began moving in on operations back on LV-426," Newt added.

"We have a serious problem, Ripley!" Hicks, much like Ripley, began piecing everything together, for they realized that when it came to the Alien, that coincidence was seldom the case.

"Bishop. I want you to activate the BIE security protocol, effective immediately. Key it to our personal trackers. Nobody is to remove their personal data tracker for any reason. Got it?" Hicks ordered them.

"What's BIE?" asked Newt.

"Breach in effect. Its a system on the ship that lets us know where friendlies are, and where the opposing force are, in the case we're being overrun,"  Hicks retrieved his pulse rifle from his shoulder and readied it for close encounters as he began moving through the corridor and towards the bridge of the Sulaco.

"Are you close to the bridge?" asked Ripley of Hicks.

"I'm on my way now. Bishop, lock all access to the bridge, including through the air vent system. Use the backup oxygen supply. Close and lock the front door. I'll let you know when I'm there," Hicks picked up his pace as he headed for the bridge.

Ripley by that time had managed to shut down all of the power conduits that Bishop had requested of her. She then got to her feet and began running for the main corridor, and towards the bridge of the Sulaco.

...

Director Elderman sat behind the screen of his workstation, now opening the last message addressed him:

EYES ONLY: Director Ronald S. Elderman

Sender: Weyland-Yutani: Biosciences Division.

Director Elderman, we require you to immediately gain access and complete control of the Sulaco, and have authorized the use of deadly force against those holding the ship to local quarantine laws. We would have you know that these laws violate an unique situational exception we negotiated during the World Order Act of 2140, that states under circumstances involving non-terrestrial biological organisms, the ruling corporate states may override quarantine protocols in the interest of the advancement of science, especially those involved in creating a defense against such non-terrestrial organisms to protect the population. We have recently taken steps legally to procure the right to proceed and are engaging OPERATION NEST EGG as of this writing.

Use of force is authorized against both the civilian and military staff aboard the Sulaco, but in no way are any of the biological specimens thereupon to be harmed. Either directly or indirectly.

All non-terrestrial alien life is to be protected and preserved, at all costs.

Should you help us to achieve these directives, your future with our company will remain secure, including a sizable increase in salary, further company shares, and a redeployment position in the star system of your choosing, along with all relocation expenses incurred.

DO NOT REPLY. CONTACT WHEN UPDATING WITH REGARD TO PROGRESS TOWARDS THIS OPERATION.

We will remain in contact and send further instructions as the situation evolves.

Dr. Specimen

Director of Research

Special Biological Operations

Director Elderman's eyes narrowed as he read the contents of the message.

"Lieutenant Allen? I need to speak with you with regard to an urgent matter. In the meeting room," Director Elderman said to her firmly as he stood from his workstation.

"When?" Lieutenant Allen asked him.

"Now!" Director Elderman responded, walking over to the entrance of the meeting room and finding a seat there within, where he awaited Lieutenant Allen.

...

Garth had closed the panel in a cabinet, engaging the locking mechanism using his biometric data. He then stood and checked the readouts he was receiving from a monitoring screen for the replacement module he'd just installed.

"Lieutenant Mayler? I've just replaced the last of the station's faulty biometric sensor modules, and that pretty much wraps up my job list for the morning. Got anything else for me?" asked Garth of his supervisor.

"Good work Garth. I think the most pressing matters are out of the way. Wait until after lunch break and I'll show you how to upgrade a diagnostic panel, and insert your own custom diag-ware," Lieutenant Mayler responded, as he examined a mineral extraction report from Aeolus' previous month.

"That's not even covered in my course until next year's curriculum. That'll put my career ahead considerably. Thanks Warren!" Garth responded enthusiastically.

Lieutenant Warren Mayler, was a man with a handsome face, though a quarter of it was covered by prosthetics resulting from a cybernetic insert he'd received from the time of his youth.

Warren Mayler had suffered from Tay-Sachs disease, first having been diagnosed when he was six years old. He received his first cybernetic implant two years later, which helped his brain stave off the ill effects of neurodegenesis: the degradation and death of neurons in both the human brain, and potentially the rest of the nervous system.

The cybernetic implant helped Mayler to lead a normal life, preventing degradation of his neuronal structure and revitalizing his brain's development, by producing enzymes that prevented lysomal storage failure in affected neurons. The one and only drawback was that it had to be completely replaced three times up until his fifteenth birthday, at which point nanotechnology had progressed far enough to allow programmable adaption and compensation for altering surgically implanted medical devices through nano-medical engineering.

The device that occupied his head, and part of his face, had been with him since he was fifteen, and had adjusted on its own thanks to a small fleet of nanobots that maintained the device in his head. They lived in his body, and consumed carbohydrates and proteins the same way that any other cell might have, despite their inorganic origins.

As a result of his experiences and his education, he spent his life as a very soft spoken and peaceful person, dedicating his life to science and the pursuit of knowledge, while using his education and skills to improve life for all aboard Asphodel station and the Aeolus mining colony on the surface beneath them.

He was one of the few directors who could face off against Elderman, and somehow come out of it unscathed, and so it was that he often took upon his shoulders, the most pressing of matters of human decency and workers rights, where they crossed over into the realm of the sciences. His softness of soul and heart-felt protective nature left him in a position of trust. That is, he was trusted by everyone, and that was certainly the case when he was called upon to attend a secret meeting.

"Not at all, Garth. I'm glad I could help. Look... I just got a message from COMMS Subnet specialist Fei Guoa. He's calling for a private meeting amongst some of the operations department personnel, it'll be happening in about ten minutes and he specifically mentioned bringing you. Are you interested?" asked Mayler.

"He mentioned me? For sure. I wouldn't miss it. Is Eun-Bi going to be there?" asked Garth.

"Most likely..." Mayler responded.

"Then count me in," Garth replied enthusiastically.

"Meeting room C. The one nearest the back, and furthest from Elderman's sight. Be discrete, and don't tell anyone else about it, alright?"  requested Mayler.

"All cloak and dagger are we now? Got it. See you there," Garth responded as he began making his way towards the lift and back up to the main deck.

...

They were seated around a boardroom table, each of them having arrived incognito into the meeting room, even having disabled the security cameras and audio monitoring devices, as Garth finished disconnecting the last of them at the behest of Mayler.

It was a precaution before they'd start a meeting such as this one. Meetings that generally occurred every three months, or an emergency meeting whenever the need for one arose as it had this time.

"Alright. All the audio recording systems are offline," Garth broke the silence as he addressed Mayler.

"In case any of you were wondering, it was me who made the decision to include Garth in our little group here. As you already know, the political climate here is very precarious, and we've already lost many good scientists and technicians to the surface of Aeolus. Garth should make up for the transfer of our other intern last month. I believe he's trustworthy and will maintain his professional demeanor with regard to these matters we discuss here," Mayler spoke formally for his intern.

"I'll second that," Eun-Bi raised her hand and spoke up for Garth, smiling at him afterward.

"Now that we've got that issue settled, the reason I've called this meeting is that over the last twenty-four hours, I've observed an extreme spike of encrypted data through the communications Subnet. Most of it seems to be drawing upon our sensor data, while a large portion of the bandwidth has been used by record pulls of station sensor data, and recent astronomical observations. This spike in data directly correlates with the arrival of the Marine Light Assault Carrier Sulaco. Data bandwidth recently tripled since it became moored at the docking gantry, and this is in spite of the vessel now being held under quarantine. Twenty-four hours as current law states, but possibly as many as six days, about the same length of time it will take for a Marine team to arrive to address the situation," Fei explained to them around the table, looking to each of them in turn as he spoke.

"Why all the sudden interest? I mean we're a mining colony. Is there a war brewing or something?" Andrew Cuthbert, a hefty man in a pair of blue station coveralls responded to Fei's report.

"Political tensions on Earth are pretty high right now, but that's more likely the result of the Competition Growth Act. A move put forward by the capitalists to prevent the spread of Socio-Capital market reforms. The same old thing from the old days as the red versus the blue, in terms of political sphere and economic model. Here, we've got the best of both worlds. A strong capital market, and a social safety net..." Elizabeth Chandler addressed Cuthbert, her reddish-blonde hair done up in a bun, revealing a pretty and shapely face, crowned by a pair of attentive eyes.

"But that's only because we had to fight for it..." Cuthbert reminded Chandler.

"We have to fight for everything, remember? Director Elderman and Director Allen are this close to having tyrannical control over this entire station, and if that happens, they'll have Aeolus completely in their control a few months later. Union or no union, they'll have consolidated everything to support their agenda, and theirs alone. That's how so many of us have ended up on Aeolus already," Fei reminded them of what was at stake.

"If this Subnet communications data is encrypted, is there a way we can get a peek at it?" asked Cuthbert.

"Almost impossible, and that's based upon cryptographic limits that have been the foundation of communications since the early twentieth century. We'd need their key, meaning their private encryption key, or alternately in a keyless system, their Quantum binding algorithm in a pre-collapsed state," Fei explained to Cuthbert and everyone else in the room.

"Correction, its impossible," Mayler agreed with Fei.

"But if they're already speaking with Earth via the Subnet, then that means all of the ingredients are already here. We just have to find them..." Garth suggested.

"We should focus our limited resources on protecting ourselves. If the company is already peeking into every corner here, that means that Director Elderman is going to take advantage of every situation he can to make himself and Security Director Allen look good to them in order to gain their support in centralizing his power. Making it absolute," Chandler reminded them of the added vulnerability they'd acquired as a result of this new interest in Asphodel.

"We've got to get a message to Aeolus. Let them know about all of this," Cuthbert insisted.

"Can I ask you a question?" asked Garth of them seated around the table.

"Certainly," Mayler responded with a friendly and encouraging smile.

"Why are there no artificial people on Asphodel?" asked Garth, drawing an absolute silence amongst them.

"Should we let him in?" asked Cuthbert of the group.

"I vote yes!" Eun-Bi raised her hand and smiled at Garth once again.

"Same," Mayler nodded in agreement.

Chandler looked to Garth, wondering if she was staring at a sociopath, a psychopath, or a compassionate and empathetic human being. The odds were against him being the last one, but she was a gambling woman by nature.

"I say we let him in," Chandler finally agreed.

"I guess its up to me? You're in Garth. Welcome aboard. I mean truly welcome aboard," Fei finally gave his vote.

"That's great and all, but that still doesn't answer my question? Why are there no androids or Working Joes on Asphodel?" Garth asked them once again, carefully rewording his question.

"There was an incident about six years ago. Director Elderman was being investigated by the previous Security Director, who'd discovered that Elderman was embezzling finances from the pension fund, and quietly paying off company officials to turn a blind eye. That Security Director arranged for a Specialized Constable in the form of an android, which could both conduct surveillance and record court material evidence for his investigation. Unfortunately, one of his own, Lucinda Allen, turned coat on him and informed Director Elderman of the whole situation. Elderman ordered all of the senior staff rounded up. He didn't have the authority to have them fired and replaced. He did however find a loophole in administration that allowed him to eject personnel unfit for duty to lower paying jobs working the mines on the surface. He only required them to fail a test. A class three Turing..." Mayler explained to Garth, and everyone else in the room.

"Turing? That's standard cybernetics history...?" Garth confirmed.

"Robotics. The Turing test is a double blind test that assesses as to whether an android is human enough to fool another human into believing it to be itself human. If an android fails the Turing, that means that it didn't fool anyone into believing it to be human..." Chandler clarified the distinction for Garth.

"Isn't that standard protocol for all androids assigned to be working with groups of people in every day situations?" confirmed Garth.

"Yes, but Director Elderman found loopholes in the law and the wording that allowed him to exercise this requirement against both androids, and humans. In other words, if either fails the Turing, he has authority to demote them to a position on Aeolus. To working the mines, and so he's been using that to cull anyone from upper management and administration who disagrees with his leadership and policies. One by one, our administrators, those of us who were protecting each other's safety here, were whittled away and sent to the surface. A fate that has found all androids, and most humans that oppose him. We're the only ones left," Eun-Bi explained it as she'd been told by Mayler and Chandler.

"And the only reason we're still here is because we formed this group shortly after he cleaned house, and then promoted Lieutenant Allen to the position of Security Director. He's been using her to gun for us ever since, but we've found other ways to fight him without exposing ourselves," Chandler added.

"If we end up ejected to the mines, then there will be no hope for Asphodel or Aeolus. Ever," Fei explained to Garth.

"So the short version is, because androids can covertly collect and record material evidence, while hiding in plain sight. They almost got him once, and he won't ever make that mistake again. He is clever though, because he turned the entire situation around, and used the Turing law to rid himself of his enemies, both android and human alike," Cuthbert laid it all down in his working class sensibility.

"You mean I could be ejected to the surface too?" confirmed Garth.

"Its a risk we all carry, Garth.  So we always watch each each other's back. Even when it appears that we're under threat by each other," Mayler reminded Garth.

"There's a shipment order for Neodymium that's supposed to arrive this afternoon. If we get our requested pilot, we can send him with the message for Aeolus," Cuthbert informed them.

"I move that we meet again in three days, to follow up on this situation. We'll know a lot more about the Sulaco at that point, not to mention we'll have a few more days of data with regard to the communications between here and Earth. We'll be in a much better position to move on any potential threats to our position here," Chandler suggested to them.

"All in favour raise your hand..." Fei counted hands.

"Unanimous. Alright. Lets keep this on our plate, and see what we can't uncover before our next meeting," Fei told them.

"Garth, lay low for the next couple of days. Don't do anything in an attempt to try and impress us either. The best way to prove yourself is to be discrete and remain trusted by everyone," Mayler said to Garth, who nodded in agreement.

"And don't stalk Eun-Bi..." Cuthbert said to Garth as he her checked her out, even flashing his eye brows at her as he admired her figure.

"You dirty old man," she turned to Cuthbert and slapped his shoulder playfully.

"My wife still refers to me that way, and she's only a year younger," Cuthbert laughed and then turned to Garth.

"I think she likes you," Cuthbert patted Garth on the shoulder.

...

Ripley moved carefully and quietly, the bright lights of the Sulaco's interior somehow soothing. Giving her a sense of protected safety. Of invulnerability.

Then she remembered the APC. The beast of machinery that it was. How heavy a piece of hardware it was and how thick its armour. And yet, when faced with the xenomorph threat on LV-426, how quickly it was whittled down to nothing but a giant metal bunker, and then into scrap after the crash of the dropship.

She felt the first bit of perspiration on her forehead, and she was reminded first of her time on the Nostromo. Her trip between the engine room in order to detonate the refinery and then to the Narcissus, the escape pod she'd used to evacuate the Nostromo and its cargo refinery with her cat, Jones.

She was reminded of the insanity in the moments before the detonation of the refinery, and then again of the atmosphere processor on LV-426. Here she was eighty years later, on board the Sulaco, and locked down during a quarantine in a ship that might well be infected with the most deadly contagion in the known universe.

And yet her heart, strong and steady kept her company. Both in her ears, and in the stride of her step, for it had accompanied her the entire way. Since before the detonation of the Nostromo, and all throughout the horrors of LV-426, and finally to this corner of space. In orbit around K-2 18B, docked at Asphodel station. She had lost everything, and now she was struggling once again to make it back to her little family. The only people with whom she could relate, for they were all survivors of the xenomorph.

On the bridge, a computerized voice interrupted Bishop's progress in writing the worm he'd need to unlock protected memory in order to erase the backup media data that company would try to recover once they'd gained access to the Sulaco.

"ATTENTION: HULL SECTION F HAS BEEN ISOLATED. HULL BREACH DETECTED IN ADJACENT CORRIDOR TO SULACO ENGINE COMPARTMENT. HULL DEPRESSURIZATION AVERTED."

"Ripley?" Newt spoke in a panicked voice.

"I'm here honey. What is it?" Ripley responded, still moving slowly and carefully forward into section D.

"I think it might have gotten in... Near the engines..." Newt told Ripley in a panicked voice.

"Systems just reported a hull breach near the engine compartment Ripley. If you're still in D section, you should pick up your pace," Bishop suggested to Ripley in a calm voice.

"Hurry! Hurry!" Newt added, now seriously panicked.

"Don't worry honey. I'm moving..." Ripley picked up her step, suddenly hearing a hissing noise coming from an air vent meters behind her.

She quickly spun and leveled the M-41A's barrel in that direction, but no movement or sound followed. Once again, just the reminder in the voice of her beating heart.

She turned and began jogging, once again merging with the main corridor and quickly advancing into section C, and then B.

She paused when she spotted one of the sentry guns. It was aimed at the door to the airlock, and just outside of the crew tunnel, waiting for any sign of movement to open fire.

"Did Hicks remember to make sure they're programmed not to fire on us?" she asked herself aloud, worried as to whether she should be cautious about crossing their field of fire.

When she arrived at the junction in the corridor, her heart nearly dropped out of her stomach, for there laying on the floor of the corridor was one of the sentry guns. It had been knocked over, and was now laying on its side, a message flashed across the laptop controller screen: CAPSIZED - PLEASE REORIENT TO CORRECT FIRING SOLUTION.

"Hicks?  Did you knock any of the sentry guns over..." and before she had a chance to finish her question, one of the sentry guns opened fire.

She turned to the direction they were firing upon. It was firing at the Duraglass transparent hull section just outside of the airlock. The rubber rounds bounced harmlessly off of the surface as the recognizable shape of a xenomorph wove its way across the glass and back onto the hull and out of sight.

By the time she'd almost turned and fired upon the alien, Hicks had jumped out of nowhere, and prevented her from opening fire.

"Ease down Ripley! You'll breach the hull. Lets get to the bridge before it comes back," Hicks calmed her enough to once again find the advantage in their rationality. It was only when it came down to pure survival, that that giving up that acquired time delay of the rational mind in favour of the immediate action principle, that it made sense.

Hicks covered her while she turned and made her way to the bridge door.

"Bishop, get ready with the door," Ripley ordered Bishop.

"Confirmed. On your mark," Bishop responded.

"Now!" Ripley yelled, and the door to the bridge quickly opened and she stepped inside. 

When hicks heard the door, he immediately turned and sprinted like he was in his twenties once again, giving Ripley enough view to see what was trailing him on the ceiling above him. It was a xenomorph running along the ceiling, clinging to it.

It was smaller, more like the xenomorph that Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo had encountered, than like the xenomorphs of the colony of LV-426. It was big, mind you, but not as big and armoured as those from LV-426, but it was just as deadly.

Hicks dove through the door and just as the xenomorph was about to intercept him, one of the sentry guns had detected it, and immediately turned and blasted it with rubber bullets. The rounds didn't penetrate its armour, but they did knock it off course, pushing it into the neighbour wall, where it fell to the floor on its back, before quickly righting itself onto its arms and legs and trying to leap into the bridge. By that time, Bishop had sealed the door, and the xenomorph slammed into the sealed metal door.

Hicks quickly got to his feet and leveled himself before the door, waiting to see if the xenomorph would attempt to breach the metal door. Instead, they heard nothing.

Hicks checked the motion sensor readout on the wall, and observed that the xenomorph had retreated in the direction of the sentry guns. A moment later they heard a swatch of gunfire and then silence as the xenomorph proceeded outside of their field of view, probably returning to where it had breached the hull near the engine compartment to return to its nesting area, both Ripley and Hicks reasoned.

"I think that confirms it. Are we in agreement?" Ripley asked Hicks, Newt and Bishop.

"Definitely," Hicks responded.

"Way..." Newt gave Ripley a thumbs up.

"Yeah, that pretty much settles it for me," Bishop added.

Ripley came over to Newt and sat beside her.

"I guess my daughter really turned into a remarkably brave woman," Ripley sat beside her surrogate daughter.

"Our daughter," Hicks added with a smile.

" The worm is ready. Would you like me to go ahead with running it?" Bishop asked Ripley and Hicks from Newt's back.

"If that will close the doors on the company being able to mine this ship for data, then do it Bishop," Ripley ordered him.

"Not so artificial after all," Ripley remarked to Bishop, who looked over Newt's shoulder at her and smiled.

"I prefer the term, creative person myself," Bishop responded.

"Once we have the backup data cleared, there's only one more thing left to do," Hicks suddenly realized their dilemma.

"Where?" asked Ripley, for she'd already realized the same thing.

"We'll have to set it up on course for K2-18. Detonate it after the Lagrange point between there and here," Hicks told her.

"What about us?" asked Ripley.

"We either get off, and automate the whole process, or one of us has to fly it manually while the others disappear into their new lives," Hicks spoke solemnly, realizing the stand-off they'd suddenly found themselves in.

"Before they get in. The company, or the xenomorphs," Ripley reminded him, looking to the motion sensor readout on one of the bridge monitors, and noticing a flurry of motion activity near the engines.

Accidental Architecture

K2-18B
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol

Asphodel Station

Fei Guoa had just left the meeting and returned to his station as Eun-Bi followed him, tagging along from far enough behind that she needed to pick up her step to catch up with him.

"Lieutenant Guoa? Has anyone tried contacting the Sulaco?" she asked him as she caught up.

"Of course. Its standard procedure. Asphodel's computers have been in conversation with the Sulaco since before their arrival," Fei reported to her.

"That's not what I meant. I meant person to person. Remember, when people used to do that back in the old days, about two hundred years ago?" Eun-Bi showed a little bit of sarcasm in her response.

"Has it been that long? What were you thinking Eun-Bi?" he asked her.

"Look, my Great-great-great many times removed grand daddy, fought in the Korean war. There's a funny family story that goes when he was with U.S. and Canadian forces during the battle of Seoul, after a particularly devastating shelling of northern Seoul, they'd lost contact with their forward base of operations. They'd been using runners to run messages until they could get the radio equipment infrastructure setup. The runners had stopped due to the shelling, and there came a pause in the exchange between the forces of the north and the south. They were out of communication for a long time, and then one of the Canadian soldiers suggested they tried contacting them, the U.S. commanding officer thinking he was talking about sending another runner. My Harabeoji. My great grand dad realized he was talking about using the U.S. radio, because it had been keyed to communicate directly with Korean hardware. So they tried it, and low and behold, they found out that the attack by the north was over, and that they were clear to move in and reinforce. All just by talking directly to one another," Eun-Bi recalled that family story that had stuck with her since her childhood.

"That's a great story Eun-Bi, but its standard protocol with Marine craft to leave a skeleton crew. Usually one or two Android, who oversee operations while the Marines are kept in their hypersleep chambers. So even if we did try contacting the Sulaco directly, there's a good chance that only their  duty officer Androids would respond," Fei explained to Eun-Bi.

"We're talking about a quarantine situation, Fei. If there is a pathogen involved, then they'd at least revive the medical crew to assess and report before re-entering hypersleep to wait for their Marine recovery team. I mean, its worth a try?" Eun-Bi encouraged him.

"You're right. It wouldn't hurt to try the direct communication line, but we have to do it from another communications workstation. If I do it from here, they'll scrutinize it. If we do it from one of the more mundane comms stations, like the starship licensing check station, they might not notice it," Fei suggested.

"If that's what it takes, we should try," Eun-Bi responded as they both noticed Director Elderman looking in their direction.

"Eun-Bi? Shouldn't you be down in E block, cataloguing the lifter hardware?" Director Elderman raised his voice at them from across the operations bay.

"I was just on my way there now, Sir," she turned to face him, flashing him an uneasy smile before turning and heading for the door in order to avoid arousing any suspicion.

"What are you doing now Lieutenant Guoa?" Director Elderman continued.

"I was just about to prepare an assessment report of our communications subnet bandwidth usage. You should know that we're quickly reaching peak, and that several local management systems will suffer as a result," Fei reported to Director Elderman.

"You're to notify me when we're at ninety percent peak. At that point, I'll decide which services to pull to maintain our comms channel integrity to Earth. Now, back to whatever you were doing, Lieutenant," Director Elderman returned to his own workstation and remained obscure from that point forward.

...

Taggart stood before the bathroom mirror, navigating the menu interface. He checked the bags under his eyes, noting they weren't as bad as they could have been given the circumstances.

"I've got a few more years milage out of my own liver at least," he remarked to his reflection, then using the direction of his gaze to navigate to a different part of the menu.

"How can you help me with dark circles under my eyes? Maybe brighten up my glow?" Taggart asked the mirror.

A preview appeared before him in the mirror's screen. His eye bags appeared much less noticable and his overall skin tone and texture was significantly brightened.

"I'll take a double shot of that one," Taggart responded to the mirror.

A moment later, a nozzle moved forward from beneath the mirror, and sprayed his face, first beneath his eyes with a reflective and nourishing coating that reduced puffiness and the darkness under his eyes. 

The second spray was a combined white foundation, and hydrating formula, which both brightened the skin (hiding wrinkles and blemishes) and providing several nutrients his skin desperately needed.

The mirror's interace flashed momentarily and showed him his own reflection, realtime, and a smaller image of the earlier preview he'd seen for comparison.

"Well I'll be... Its a mirror that can completely hide a hangover. And I always thought that technology would come from the porcelain god himself," he said while admiring himself in the mirror, gesturing to the toilet beside him.

"Here. Drink this," Nelly appeared from the hall and shoved a glass in his face.

"What is it? Gin?" he asked her.

"No. Its an ancient remedy. A highly effective one at that," Nelly responded.

"Ambrosia. Where'd you get this stuff?" he joked with her.

"Its water. Drink it, and one more before we go," Nelly urged him.

"I don't know. Its not so good to have a case of water infusion when you're in the pilot's seat. Its not like the old days, when we wore space suits we could pee our pants in. Nowadays, if you pee your pants while in the pilots seat, you'll be thrown from the craft while the autopilot flies the rest of the way," Taggart replied to her with a sarcastic smile.

"Don't worry Taggart. There's no machine that could ever replace you," Nelly assured him, though he wasn't sure as to whether he should take that as a compliment or an insult.

"Remember what I said. Just throw on my coveralls. Don't say a thing. I'll tell them you're my mandatory copilot, its in my contract, and they should be good to let us go with the shipment. Have you ever flown a Tee-One?" Taggart asked her.

"No, let alone flown in a Tee-One," Nelly responded, backing away from him at the thought of it all.

"You're about to. Fly one, I mean. You won't want to go back to being a bar maid afterwards," Taggart said confidently.

"Good. You keep on using my mirror and you'll take my place nicely at the bar while I do the flying. Lets go, so you don't lose your job, fly boy," Nelly grabbed him by his hand and dragged him to the front door.

The two of them got ready and stepped out of the front door, waiting for the Aeolus Transit Service.

...

Nelly had very much looked the part, even quickly braiding her hair on each side of her head to give her that Nebraska farm girl look that seemed to compliment Taggart's demeanor so well.

The truth was that despite his earlier 'destructive' record of flight mishaps, his operational record was flawless. In fact, so much so that he was numbered amongst the top five pilots (statistically speaking) in the company records. Despite his having lost his edge in his later years, he'd truly mastered the Zen of flight, and knew when and where to use his otherworldly innate skills to push a craft to its limits. Time had taught him the much honoured lesson of modesty, and moderation, and more often than not, moderation in modesty when it was called for.

When he arrived at the registration point for the Neodymium shipment, he presented his pilot's federation identification, and upon their seeing he was from Nebraska, they instantly granted him access to the Tee-One that would be making the large lift haul into Aspodel orbit space.

The man at the registration desk turned to his trainee, a younger woman who was vying for his job and spoke:

"My general rule of thumb is, that if they're from Nebraska, or Alberta, and they've got crop dusting health emulsifier experience over hydro-farming fields, then they're qualified beyond most standards..." he said to her as he gave his biometric approval to Taggart's pilot's federation I.D.

When they arrived via the tarmac shuttle at the Tee-One, Nelly was suprised at how large the beast of a heavy lifter was. She'd seen news clips of the vehicle many times, but they always appeared tiny, almost infintesimally so compared to the cargo and space around them. When she realized the scale of machinery she'd be working with, she suddenly felt her legs begin to shudder beneath her feet. She momentarily felt sick to her stomach, as if some fantasy that had come to life before her, had grown far too large for her ability to accept.

Taggart realized immediately what she was experiencing, for he'd experienced it too when he'd transitioned from light farming load orbital lifters to the industrial variety. 

"This is her second lift, but I wouldn't have any other copilot. She's the right stuff," Taggart saluted, assuring the ground crew who were tending to the craft, most of them nodding affirmatively for they'd remembered their first time seeing industrial scale hardware versus its smaller scale counterparts.

"So this is what Collette does for a living?" asked Nelly of Taggart, who turned to her thoughtfully.

"Collette? Nahhhh. She's flying tiny little lifter craft that haul vehicles and Marine gear from place to place. Like a Marine courier," Taggart was being a little too modests on behalf of his little sister, and Nelly could see through it right away. She knew that Taggart had a great deal of love and respect for her, but that he also harboured some resent with regard to where his career had gone compared to hers.

"I see," Nelly responded, choosing to contain that part of their family difficulty, so they could deal with it at the right time and place, and on their own terms rather than hers.

The wind had started picking up around them, as the predicted geomagnetic storm approached the colony. Taggart had by that time completed his craft inspection, noting that all of the lights and moveable surfaces had passed. The only thing that remained was the systems check from inside of the cockpit.

"We'd better get up there before they put the order to keep us grounded. That storm is closing in and we've got to dust-off in twenty-minutes or we'll be RTS. Recalled to surface," Taggart recalled the last time he'd flown in a geomagnetic storm.

Taggart entered his pilot's code into he panel and the entry ramp descended from the ginormous Tee-One lifter.

Taggart looked up at a sight he'd seen many times over, while Nelly looked upon the ramp and its entry structure in awe, unable to believe that this was a casual day for the man that most of the bar patrons had referred to as the drunken fly boy. The old school pilot, who truly knew the right stuff.

"If you think this is gut spewing fun, you oughtta try boarding one of these babies after drinking during an Arcturian Sun Spot DJ party. Let me tell you, these ramps have a motion all their own when you're recovering from an Arcturian hangover," Taggart urged Nelly further up the ramp, illustrating the variety of experiences he'd had over the course of his life as a freelancer pilot.

Nelly stepped from side to side, desperately trying to hang onto the contents of her stomach, finding the task easier as she approached the top.

Taggart helped her to her copilot's seat, strapping her in to ensure she'd be comfortable with the whole experience, for this wasn't a drill. It was the real thing, all the way.

It took him ten minutes to complete his systems check, and from the moment that he reported to back to the tower, Nelly knew that he was the real thing. He was no longer that guy who showed up in her bar, and often drank himself into card playing oblivion fun. He was a real fly boy. The kind that were seldom born upon the Earth from therein. He was the last of a disappearing breed, and she could see his influence upon his younger sister. The two of them having been the closest of friends all along. She suddenly found herself admiring the man, that he'd chosen to share that with a woman. A woman such as Collette, and though Nelly knew that Collette didn't need the inspiration or courage of a man to achieve her goals, it was apparent to Nelly that Collette had indeed been inspired by her brother's fearless prowess of flight.

That was when the main engines kicked in, and she realized that they were seated atop of a giant hydro-thermite ignited fusion accelerated ticking time bomb.

The G force in the first second, approached twelve, quickly squashing her into her seat and then releasing her, once again igniting her nausea.

"Scrunch your toes in your boots, and and rub the center of your nose, near the bridge line. Do that for a few seconds and you'll feel fine..." Taggart told her as their sum gravity released them, leaving them closer to one point three G as they accelerated into the space just above Aeolus.

"We've got to grab hold of our cargo. Remember, we're talking about close to a one thousand metric tonnes of Neodymium, contained in a charge neutral one hundred metric tonne container. If you think that little burst of lift was unsettling, wait until we're hooked up to our cargo," Taggart reminded her.

"That's alright! I believe you!" Nelly responded, trying desperately to ensure that he didn't try to show off for her.

The last thing she wanted was to be caught between a sibling flight expertise rivalry.

Taggart drifted the Tee-One lifter carefully over a distance of two kilometers, lining his fifth wheel cargo pin up with the container load.

"There. I'm lined up. See that spindle control? The one that looks like a crank?" Taggart pointed to the controls in front of her copilot's station.

"You mean the spinny thing? Yeah...?" Nelly sat up, now having something to focus upon.

"That's keyed to our vector from the fifth wheel pin connector. When we close and lock distance with that pin, you'll feel and hear a loud clanking noise. The ship will shudder a bit, and we'll be snug with our cargo. Its your job to bring us in close, but not too fast that we break the pin. Just ease it on in, like we're trying to sink a hole in golf. Got it?" Taggart explained to her.

 Nelly leaned forward and began spinning the sly wheel, and then suddenly stopped when she felt the craft moving from her application of force to the device.

"Oh my god! It moved!" she exclaimed.

"Yeah. Twenty point nine kilo-joules of force will do that to a craft, so that's why you've got to be delicate. Not like we're hammering a nail. Like we're finessing the eight ball off the cue ball and into the pocket in a game of Snooker. Got it?" Taggart asked her again.

"What's a cue ball?" Nelly asked.

"Its like a golf ball, but played on a much smaller field. We're just delicately sinking it into the hole. No more. No less. I think that's what they meant when they made the word finesse," Taggart explained it to her.

She spun the fly wheel, this time in the opposite direction, and when she felt the entirety of the ship descending towards the pin, she didn't withdraw. This time, she continued, gliding it carefully until the entire ship flowed softly so that its fifth wheel gently connected to the pin, and then as Taggart has stated, there was a loud clank, and the entire ship shuddered a moment and then was still as the forces of life and weight balanced one another.

"I did it! I finessed it!" Nelly clapped her hands together excitedly.

"Perfectly too. You snookered it. So now we have to get into orbit, but we first have to get the container off of the ground. There's a little known force in physics called the grip force. Its when two bodies come to rest against one another due to gravity, but they form a mutual atomic charge that causes them to cling to one another. We have to break the grip force first, and as copilot, that's your job. Once its broken though, I'm going to punch it hard, and take us up, and you will undoubtedly throw up the first time that happens. We all do," Taggart assured her.

"Using the spindles again?" Nelly asked him.

"Yes, but in the opposite direction. We were going towards the load last time. This time, we want to go away from it," Taggart explained to her, dialing his hands in the opposite direction as he'd indicated last time.

Nelly leaned forward and dialed the spindles, and they immediately felt the grip, and tug of the craft against the grip force. She spun them again, this time harder and then all of the sudden, the load was released from the surface and belonged to the Tee-One lifter entirely.

"Cover your mouth and hang on!" Taggart exclaimed to her, and the enormous lift force of the main engines kicked in.

Nelly found herself pressed into her copilot's seat. Once again squashed into a lump against six G's this time, as the Tee-One lifted the initial load with a force against enough to excerpt six times that of Earth's gravity.

The container trailed behind them as the Tee-One did the heavy lifting, excerpting enough force to quickly free them of  Aeolus tiny force of gravity.

"We're in the sweet zone, Nelly. Just hang in there," Taggart encouraged her, but by that time she was already throwing up.

"Blow forward, and when you're clear, inhale... Blow forward and out, and inhale...!" Taggart guided her through the worst of it as he piloted the ship into the upper reaches of the Aeolus atmosphere.

"We're there!" she exclaimed to him, seeing for the first time in her life that they were free of the cloudy atmosphere of Aeolus, and into a star filled sky of immensity and grandeur of the likes she'd never seen.

"In the old days, this is where we'd usually have a cigarette together. Us pilots I mean," he quickly caught the innuendo he'd implied.

"I'd honestly just like to dock, and watch the stars from here? Can we do that?" Nelly leaned back, taking in the immensity of the creation before her.

"Well, we've gotta dock and then take this baby home.  But not before he do what we really came here for," Taggart aggreed with her.

"We're going to get Collette, right?" asked Nelly of Taggart.

"Damned right we are. We've got an appointment with a Marine craft they call Sulaco..." Taggart guided the Neodymium shipment into the receiving bay.

To be continued...

I am Brian Joseph Johns and this is Shhhh! Digital Media at https://www.shhhhdigital.com or https://www.shhhhdigital.ca in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701.

Credits and attribution:

Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.

Artwork: Amy Wong, Wendy Pusey, Ghastly, Birdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3D, Unreal Engine...

Tools: Daz3D, Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, Lightwave 3D, Blender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantID, Sadtalker, Google Colaboratory, Microsoft Copilot (Windows 11), Hitfilm, PhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...

DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.

InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.

Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.

Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.

Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)

Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)

Special thanks to Aitrepreneur, Mickmumpitz, Hugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life

Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts

Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history

Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)

Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art

Tapp Brothers Exercise For Better Motion 

Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility

Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools

Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!

Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof

Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

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