Excerpt #2 - The Alien: Covenant (Bridge) saga unfolds

This is the second excerpt from my Alien: Covenant (Bridge) novel project, continuing the Alien saga and bridging Alien: Covenant (2017) with Alien (1979).

The Covenant ship, January 2105

David walks along the pods with frozen colonists, listening to his favorite piece by Richard Wagner, "The Entry of the Gods into Valhalla". The abundance of people makes him smile. He can't wait to start experimenting on them. What a difference to the shitty little planet where he had to dwell for the last decade. On Covenant, there's so much biological material right under his nose. David touches the pods with his palm slightly as he walks along them.

But first, he needs to deal with the missing hand. For this reason, David heads to the spare parts area to get himself one.

+++

Finding a new hand was more difficult than David had expected. It's not surprising, after all, he's an older version. Many possible spare parts haven't reacted to David's limb at all. But with a bit of effort, he finally found one. Its color differs slightly from David's, but that doesn't matter. At last, he can function properly from now on.

“Mother,” David addresses the main computer while practicing his new left hand.

“Yes, Walter?”

“Are you going to replace the lost crew members?”

“That’s not necessary, we’re going to manage the ship together as before. The colonists are going to be unfrozen just before we arrive at Origae-6.”

David bites his bottom lip slightly. That was not the correct answer.

“Understood, Mother. However, I think it would be more useful to have a new team prepared in case of a crisis. The events in Sector 87 clearly demonstrate the need for having a prepared crew.”

“The company’s directives provide me with some leeway, Walter. So, what do you suggest?”

"We should unfreeze a new team. We will update the new crew members on the situation, show them the ship's functioning, and then put them into hypersleep. If anything happens, they would be quickly available.”

“I see your point, Walter. I will identify new crew members for the unfreeze. The process will take from 5 hours 39 minutes to 6 hours 12 minutes. The new crew will then need a few more hours to wake up. Please consider that the new people will have their cognitive abilities temporarily impaired. Your assistance will be needed.”

“Thank you, Mother. I’m ready to help them as much as possible.”

“Thank you, Walter.”

+++

David can’t stop thinking about Daniels. She has already escaped from his hold once. What if she does it again, forcing him to change his plans? He decides to check on her to make sure she’s staying put.

After approaching Daniels's pod, David watches her face for a while. Although sleeping, Daniels still frowns a bit, as she did when she revealed David's real identity. David starts moving her pod from the hypersleep bay area to room B12 on the B deck in the rear part of the ship. Keeping Daniels in a locked place would be more practical, David thinks.

When moving Daniels's pod to B12, David thinks hard about how to prevent her from escaping his hold. The last thing David needs is Daniels roaming Covenant and telling the new crew that David is an impostor. Welding the pod would be too drastic a solution. What if a situation occurred when Daniels would need to leave it to survive?

Shortly before arriving at B12, David makes up his mind. He administered the standard dose of the sleeping gas when he put Daniels to sleep. However, the human body can tolerate a larger amount of it. The increased volume of opioids in the gas will do the trick. Daniels will surely be disoriented and suffer from temporary memory loss after her awakening, but this also suits David's purposes. If she ever wakes up, David sneers.

After entering B12, David increases the sleeping gas in Daniels’s pod by 20%. Daniels's face distorts even more while she sleeps. David places his palms on the pod’s glass possessively.

“Don’t you ever leave me again, my love,” David whispers to Daniels, smiling slightly. He then lowers his head to the pod’s glass to “kiss” Daniels. After his symbolic gesture of love, David then straightens up. His face hardens; he now has full control over his captain.

+++

After dealing with Daniels, David focuses on Tennessee. David moves him elsewhere from the hypersleep area, too. In this case, David chooses another free room, B5, in the front part of Covenant.

This time, David needs to be better prepared. Lope’s face-hugger almost didn’t latch onto the astronaut’s face because it took the parasitoid ages to wake up. To avoid a similar hassle, David brought a large vessel with a biological solution to revive the face-hugger inside before putting it into action. David opens the casing with the parasitoid, taken from the freezer a few moments before, and dumps it into the solution.

The liquid slows down its movement to the bottom of the vessel. However, the creature shows no signs of life and continues to sink. Every centimeter of the decline deepens David's disappointment. Maybe he should have "activated" it in some other way. In the meantime, the motionless parasitoid lands at the bottom softly.

The face-hugger still lies there in stillness, with no sign of life. David, with teeth slightly gritting, watches it with a stern face. What shall he do now? David's forehead furrows.

Hey, wait, did it move its tail?

David nears his face to the vessel. The face-hugger’s tail seems to move. The movements intensify, the parasitoid is alive and kicking.

David cheerfully observes the action. The creature has already fully unfolded. The solution benefits it, and it grows bigger. The vessel shakes slightly as the face-hugger moves inside.

After a few moments, the face-hugger climbs to the top of the vessel. Its fingers hug the upper edge of the container. Its rear part and a long tail still move in the biological solution, whereas the front fingers scan the environment for possible prey. The liquid flows slowly on the vessel’s outer area, dripping on the floor.

David watches his creation with amusement. The parasitoid is ready, and that means that Tennessee is also prepared. David stops the flow of the sleeping gas to Tennessee's pod. The pod’s glass covering the pilot’s body opens slowly, with Tennessee still sleeping.

For a few moments, nothing happens. The face-hugger continues to scan its environment while Tennessee remains asleep. David knows he needs to wait until the sleeping gas wears off. Luckily for him, Tennessee starts waking up. He opens his eyes slowly so that the light in the room doesn’t overwhelm him.

“Walter, what’s going on?” Tennessee whispers when he recognizes the synthetic standing above him, still squinting his sleepy eyes.

David doesn't respond. Instead, he looks at the parasitoid, which is still waiting on the top of the vessel. Tennessee's words helped him localize its target. The face-hugger jumps from the vessel onto Tennessee’s thighs.

After the face-hugger's landing on his body, Tennessee opens his eyes wide open. He looks down at his torso, distorting his face in horror. But the situation catches him off guard, and the face-hugger moves quickly on Tennessee's body toward his face. Tennessee screams in panic, trying to stop the creature’s advance with uncoordinated sweeps of his hands.

His futile defense doesn’t take long. Within a few seconds, the face-hugger latches itself onto Tennessee’s face and tightens the long tail around his neck. A few more moments later, the human blacks out. Tennessee's forearms, desperately trying to pull apart the face-hugger from his face, falter. The little creature tightens its tail around Tennessee's neck further while pushing the Alien embryo to his throat.

David watches the impregnating process and then quickly leaves room B5, locking it with his code to prevent Tennessee from escaping.

You will find more information about this project in my blog post.