Jump 141: Alien

Jump #141: Alien
>Four of Swords (The need for vigilance in a moment of calm.)
>Location: USCSS Hereward
>Identity: Captain
>Drawbacks: Company Man (+600)
This should be easy as long as no one does anything too stupid, actually.
Wait, this is the Alien 'verse. Fat fucking chance of everyone not being morons.
>Navigation (1400)
Any captain worth their salt should know how to fly the damn ship.
>Radio Operator (1200)
Coordinating crew is part and parcel of the job.
>Leadership (Free, Captain)
Having rank means knowing how to use it properly. Captains don't last long otherwise.
>Intuitive Direction (800)
Well, it's important to know one's own ship. Otherwise you get lost walking down endless beige corridors- wait, that was TNG.
>Fabrication (400)
Hey, everybody needs hobbies.
>Direct Commands (200, Captain)
When I speak, people need to listen. When I make a plan, I need to make sure it's the right one.
>Headset (150)
Hey, a set of headsets is useful, never know when you might need to coordinate a group.
>Computer Passkeys (Free, Captain)
Who needs to hack? I have rank here.
>Portable Computer (0, Captain) (my captain)
Having a direct link to the ship's computer is useful. And I'm pretty sure that, despite not getting the hacking skills of this jump, the myriad hacking abilities I obtained in other jumps should still work so that maps can be updated.

So, I've got to check out a missing ship, which is so far out of the way that it's going to take a better part of the year to reach it. But then, we're probably the closest and fastest ship to it. I suppose we should be prepared for anything, but... you know what? This ship is pretty crappy in several ways, and I'm an engineer who has little tolerance for bad work. And so over the course of a year we get some interior redecorating done. This accomplishes not much, other than ensuring the ship doesn't look like an industrial nightmare. It may not match technical specs, but if it purrs like a kitten afterward, it's worth it.

Power-limiting things are annoying, I would say. I got so used to using my clairvoyance to look for things that my first instinct was to look for the Nostromo when I decided to call it a night on the first day I was there. I woke up three days later in Medical, with the knowledge that Ripley was in an escape pod bound toward the frontier and the Nostromo was in atoms. And that I was starving after not having eaten for three days. That's all well and good, but it meant no using my favorite power to cheat early on, unless I wanted to be knocked out.

Also, screw food restrictions; I have so much stored in the warehouse that it isn't even funny, who needs to actively make it? Bread! Apples! Cake for everyone!

>Where the fuck did you get all that from, captain?
I went out to the corner store, now shut up and eat your damn cake.

Once we arrived... well, system is empty. There's barely any sign of wreckage (but there IS some wreckage in a decaying orbit). Okay, that's all well and good. Let's go investigate the planet- oh hello this is a derelect spacecraft which has been here for a couple thousand years, just sitting. Aaand idiots had to go and poke the fucking eggs. And the facehuggers have acid blood. And now the aliens have left behind a couple of corpses. And now I remember the setting.

WELP. Into the warehouse we go. Out we come with military hardware and a floating flashlight that talks, so there can be a safe patrol of the less-traveled areas of the ship, for we are going to make damn sure these aliens don't get to eat the crew. Sure, specimens are interesting, but specimens are expendable considering there's a source of the damn things on the planet.

In fact, they only got to kill three people and one dog. One was killed when the crew lit it up with assorted weaponry from Halo (and its corpse nearly melted through the hull). The other was flushed out an airlock along with myself. I apparated back onto the ship and nearly passed out from the effort and the regeneration from injuries, but the xeno mostly burned up in what little atmosphere the planet had. Anything that didn't burn up, I guarantee splattered on the planet. Xenos are tough, but they're not survive-reentry tough.

After that... sat down with the crew, weighed options, and managed to get five people to volunteer to go back to the planet. People will do anything for money, after all, and the terms were set down very carefully - live video from all five of them, one of which was to watch the perimeter and the other two to operate in two-man teams. No poking the eggs, document the hell out of everything involving that ship, then come back.

>Where the fuck did you get all that from, captain?
I went out to the corner store, now shut up and hide those damn gold bricks.

So naturally, Alien being the setting that it is, one of them poked an egg. Instead of letting it play out as it did the last time, we just threw that idiot in cold storage and went 'fuck this, we're all getting the hell out of here, and the Company can deal with it themselves'.

Fuck it. Gold and cake for everyone! Now let's go find Ripley's escape pod.

What's that? An explosion on the planet as we left? Perhaps that derelict craft's drives finally went up. It definitely wasn't the ten kilograms of antimatter I snuck on board when we were preparing to dust off.