Jump 434: Alien vs Predator

Jump #434: Alien vs Predator
>Four of Pentacles (Power)
Living in a cloud of suspicion and prejudice.
Boy, if THAT doesn't sum up working for Weyland-Yutani.
>Location: Earth, Sol System, 2178
>Identity: Human, Company Man
Company Human, if you will. They call me the working man, I guess that's what I am.
>Drawbacks: (0) I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
There's a lot to get up to in this jump. It wouldn't do for me to get in an ejection pod after a month and then spend the next 9.9 years in cold storage before the jump ends.
>Tech-Head (Free, Human)
Approximate knowledge of human technology. I can work with that.
>Officer Corps (800, Human)
Now we're talking. Qualified for any and all starship command, that'll look good on my resume.
>Clause 12, Subsection C (Free, Company Man)
Ah, legalese. It always helps to be able to parse it properly.
>Business Is War (600, Company Man)
The better I am at either business or war, the better I am with the opposite? It's quite good that I'm a quite accomplished warmonger at this point, though I rarely monger any wars.
>Building Better Worlds (300, Company Man)
Oh, now HERE we go. Sure, I've got other varied terraforming techs, but knowing how these guys do it with the more clunky eighties-style durable machinery means I can diversify my techbase and make it more redundant. Not to mention the (relatively slow) FTL technology here.
>Frontier Revolver (Free, Human)
I may be a company man, but I know to speak softly and carry a big stick.
>Executive Suite (Free, Company Man)
Hmm. I think I know where to put this.
>Waypoint Station (0, Company Man)
Right here, on a slightly used station in deep space.

As a matter of fact, that slightly run-down station is a great thing for me to drop smack dab in the middle of things. Taking the right path here and giving a few nudges means that while I may be unable to prevent Carter Burke from screwing over the colony on LV-426, I can instead see to it that he doesn't end up going out there and instead I go in his place.

Tragically, Carter got drunk at some point and wandered out an airlock. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

In any event: LV-426 had a much, MUCH better briefing where everyone took everything absolutely seriously. The colony was searched. Ripley got Newt to start telling about what happened, while I ensured every last detail was gotten to the marines clearly instead of downplaying anything. And sure, it was a bug hunt, but the bugs were big and bad. Instead of neutering everyone at the beginning of the operation, everything was planned out in advance and they were equipped appropriately. Including being given a spray to neutralize strong acids.

Essentially, the USCM's role when they got into the terraforming plant was force recon - and when they ran into the aliens, they pulled back exactly as they ought to have done, without casualties on their part (though a couple less pieces of armor and some minor acid burns). The APC was still mostly functional, if not perfectly so. And from there... plans were made. Myself, Ripley, and the marines.

>"I say we dust off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
"Great idea, Ripley, I agree completely. Except we can't do that."
>"Well why the hell not?"
"For starters, Apone... there's more here than just the xenos. We can deal with them - we WILL deal with them. The Company's got combat androids and frankly if we need to we can starve them out. Second... special order 937's there for a reason."
>"Oh you son of a bitch."
"Listen to me, damn you, Ripley. We need to know more about them. You're not cleared to know that a hive of them were found on Earth in the early twenty-first century-"
>"Bullshit."
"-or that the expedition that Peter Weyland died on, he had been trying to find their creators-"
>"Bullshit!"
"-or that there's another alien species out there that has had contact with Earth over the centuries, hunting for sport-"
>"What?!"
"-and that they like to seed worlds with these things' eggs for shits and giggles."
>"...no god damn way."
"Now, I did not tell all of you this and this discussion never happened, because if I did we'd all be committing treason against the government because none of you have the clearance to know that we've had contact with more than one intelligent, hostile life form. That order's not just there because the Company's greedy. We need to be able to study this, at the cost of ANY lives, so we can figure out how to defend against them and keep a foothold situation from arising."
>"This is insane."
"Yes. It absolutely is. But we've had reason to believe that those damn things have exterminated whole worlds. We've got no allies, and we've got more enemies than any of you know."
>"Okay, okay. You've made your point."
"Oh. And three? There's an ancient ship from another spacefaring species on the other side of the ridge there, and I for one would love to see it increase our speeds tenfold. Conservative estimate. I'd guess closer to a hundredfold, in truth. Makng hibernation obsolete would be nice."

I'm not stupid enough to try to use facehuggers to implant embryos, even if Bishop is - sadly, when he began the attempt to do so in accordance to his programming, he suffered an inexplicable malfunction where he fell to the ground twitching. A pity that androids aren't sufficiently shielded to be immune to technopathy... but then, what is? He made the connection between behavior and failure and ceased his attempts; we took the facehuggers, figured out a way to truss them up safely, threw them in cold sleep and got the hell out of Dodge.

Apone and I stayed awake and monitored those pods constantly, because as distasteful as it is, he knows the score. And sure, we were bored for months on end as we returned to civilized space and Waypoint Station, but making sure everything was kept contained was worth the trouble. After that... well, I ended up shuttling back and forth between LV-426 and Waypoint, being moved into a semi-official consultant between the Company and the government. In short: I was being punished for not keeping it within the Company by being turned into a troubleshooter. (Ripley, on the other hand... had a nice calm life as a pilot. Oh, and it turned out her daughter was still alive and she had grandchildren, because Burke was a lying sack of shit. As though that were a surprise.)

My tactical suggestions carried weight, and more than a squad of Colonial Marines came back with me to clear things out. All of one intact xenomorph was captured, and that came at the cost of two marines' lives, but it seemed to be worth it. The rest... well, a protocol to deal with the xenos was rapidly established. Flamethrowers were effective, if messy. Pulse rifles made their carapaces pop from the explosive ammo, but the xenos were fast. Disturbingly fast. And room temperature when they weren't moving, so thermals were useless. Smartguns were the order of the day and even they missed half the time, so you needed multiple overlapping fields of fire.

So, Bug Hunt protocols were standardized, the Company's influence was curbed by executive order, and as more eggs were found on more worlds I was sent around to other places.

When the inevitable day came that I wandered into a Yautja hunt, I cut loose with my technopathy, took away all of their technology, and hunted them as they hunt others. Sure, they all lived, but it was an object lesson imparted upon them - they just ended up stunned once I caught them, and tied up with industrial strength cabling.

They didn't learn from this, of course, and more of them deliberately set out to hunt me, so I just... there was no saving that species from its own culture, so I set the government on them after capturing a ship with some marines' help (including one MSgt. Hicks who performed admirably).

Between studies of that ship and the long-studied alien Juggernaut, with a bit of my own thrown to them for fun... well, let's just say that the Predator war did not go anything remotely like they might have expected. The USCM got to make Shock And Awe From Orbit a notable thing.

Of course, I only got to see it because I slept through most of it. Honestly, I ended up being here for over a century, all told, with running around being a troubleshooter. Kind of scary. I guess I can see how it was intended as a punishment, but then... I didn't want a normal life in the first place.