I thought it might be fun to write a teaser for how I'd like Alien 5 to go. Allow me to give you the idea ...
The year is 2145: For over a decade the Earth and the military forces that protect her have known for sure of the dark, alien threat haunting worlds beyond the Rim - beyond the previous reach of Mankind. First brought to the attention of those who should have known better by Flight Navigator Ellen Ripley; her wild claims dismissed as rantings. The destruction of her ship, the Nostromo, and its crew disregarded as a reckless delusion. Reports were filed, interviews conducted and vital information ignored to gather dust.
The year is 2145: For over a decade the Earth and the military forces that protect her have known for sure of the dark, alien threat haunting worlds beyond the Rim - beyond the previous reach of Mankind. First brought to the attention of those who should have known better by Flight Navigator Ellen Ripley; her wild claims dismissed as rantings. The destruction of her ship, the Nostromo, and its crew disregarded as a reckless delusion. Reports were filed, interviews conducted and vital information ignored to gather dust.
The loss of an entire detachment of Colonial Marines trained to the highest standards to battle any foe and their heavy cruiser - designed to eliminate any surface resistance and even capable of the mostly absurd idea of starship-to-starship combat - Along with one Ellen Ripley, and the entire Human Colony on the surface of a world known only as LV-426, forced the truth to be acknowledged.
For the first time, be it at the highest levels of government and the military, Mankind acknowledged it was not alone in the universe. Far from the idyllic first contacts of the greatest science fiction stories of the past however, this ghostly enemy seemed to show no interest in peace, or coexistence.
Using Operational Protocols and Rules of Engagement created from virtually nothing more than the same reports of Ellen Ripley that had been branded deluded rantings, the men and equipment of the United States Colonial Marines, Royal Aerospace Force and the French Foreign Legion began a systematic search of worlds in the vicinity of the now lifeless LV-426. Frozen orbs of black rock which could not possibly harbour life as Mankind understood it.
System after system was combed at great cost in deployment and maintenance with not so much as a spore or single-cell protozoa to justify the expense.
Ironically the entire effort turned out to be unnecessary when the ghostly alien threat made its next appearance on LV-212, a Colony World lying almost ten light years closer to Earth.
Details of the attack can be more fully found elsewhere but sufficied to say that where LV-426 had been a world only new to the footprints of Man, with a raging, barely hospitable atmosphere only newly under the careful manipulation of atmospheric processors LV-212 had supported a populace a thousand times larger for far longer.
An economically vital world for the resources it contributed, it enjoyed not only orbital support from a detachment of the Canadian Space Forces, but planetary defences in the shape of hundreds of Planetary Militia Men, as well as weapon emplacements to defend from the less esoteric threat of very much Human pirates, bandits and illegal traders operating between far-flung systems.
For all this additional protection LV-212 might well have been reduced to a ghost world, or worse, were it not for two pieces of good fortune in an otherwise cold and unforgiving galaxy.
The world has been selected some months earlier as the site of a Military Booster Station for the purposes of receiving orders and reports from the various Military Commands of Earth under the umbrella of the United Nations Confederated Military Command (UNCMC). Retransmitting for Colonies, starships and installations operating Rimwards it went some way to overcoming the limitations of communications that travelled below the speed of light.
Finished but untested at the time of the crisis, the Governor of LV-212 was able to use the Booster Station to send a general distress call far more quickly than conventional techniques would have allowed. Even this alone however, would only have made their funerals more prompt were it not for the second piece of good fortune.
Forced out of suspended animation by a malfunction in their Life Support System, the crew of the Invincible - A Royal Aerospace Force vessel, part of the same fleet which had been plying the stars for the slightest sign of this deadly Xenomorph threat - received the distress call as it waited out repairs nearby and immediately recalled the remainder of the fleet ships still slumbering on their way back to Gateway Station.
The quickest of the fleet - The Russian starship Putin - made all speed back to civilisation to confirm the discovery of the Xenomorph and bring reinforcements to bear. Even with a full burn and pushing its Heat Sinks to the so-called "Red Line", the fastest help was still weeks away.
The vaguest communications had been exchanged between LV-212 and the Fleet ships as they transited in-system - garbled warnings of doom; creatures capable of stripping a man of his flesh down to the marrow of the bone with sickle-edged claws of impossible sharpness. Shining black carapaces which seemed slick with damp, lacking even eyes from which to see the hundreds of men, women and children they killed without mercy.
These panicked transmissions became scarcer and more rabid until they stopped completely some time before the first of the Fleet, the United States Spaceship Valley Forge, made orbit to assess the situation. Unable to raise the Colony Administration either by way of the Booster Station or the dozen smaller communication antennas on the surface, the situation of the some six thousand people on the surface seemed grim and sealed.
A detachment of Colonial Marines from the Valley Forge performed a Combat Drop alongside a unit of Royal Marines from the RAF Invincible directly into the primary tower of the Colony; a structure some twenty floors high and extending many miles down into the bedrock of the world. Housing the majority of the colonists at its base, with mining and tertiary equipment in the sub-floors, Colonial Administration and LV-212's only spaceport sat at its top.
Full details of what is now widely regarded as the first official engagement of what has now come to be called "The Xeno War" is available elsewhere - sufficed to say the combined Drop Force found over a thousand colonists alive and trapped between the security gates which barred access to the Administration Offices and the Spaceport above, and their own hastily assembled barriers blocking the Xenomorphs which ran through the rest of the tower below.
With the way to the surface-to-orbit shuttles on the massive landing pad above clear by virtue of the Marines' entrance, the throng threatened to lead to a crush as a thousand terrified people struggled to reach a way to leave the nightmare behind. Keenly aware of the mention of parasitic Xenomorph infestation, as well as the more obvious signs that a number of the colonists were suffering from fever, tremors, palpitations and nausea the Landing Party held the colonists in with reassurances and veiled threats while checking with Fleet Officers.
Any hope of avoiding bloodshed was lost when the makeshift barriers below barring the Xenomorph progress gave way. Now facing an imminent alien attack as well as a thousand terrified people pushing and forcing their way forwards the combined Marines were left with no choice but to fall back to the Spaceport.
In orbit the situation was no less grim. It seemed almost certain that a number of the colonists were incubating Xenomorphs and while they were on LV-212 their spread could be contained, if not actively engaged currently. The colony however had a full compliment of medium-range transport shuttles which could theoretically allow a large number off-world where their tracking could be difficult if not impossible.
Furthermore there was an unspoken belief that even with the best gunners of the ships of the Fleet assembled above the sheer number of possible trajectories and flightpaths meant they could not be certain of eliminating every shuttle if there was no other choice left to make.
The decision was made that the Colony would be "quarantined".
The first officially recognised military casualties of the Xeno War were therefore the thirty men and women of the combined Marine landing teams which refused the order to EVAC and return to orbit - instead destroying as many of the shuttles as possible and holding back the maddening crowd, which acted as any number of people would when faced with alien terror behind and saviours-turned-executioners in front.
Under the direct orders of General Adrian Walker the Colony and much of the topography of LV-212 was wiped from the face of the Galaxy by Mass Drivers, Fusion Cannons and Kinetic Warheads. Officially the thousands of men women and children who had lived relatively idyllic lives for people living on a world other than Earth were lost to Alien attack and not the guns of their own Fleet.
The attack and loss of LV-212 was felt keenly throughout the powerful corridors of the nations of Earth and beyond. Where LV-426 had been a fledgling and tenuous hold on a backwater part of the galaxy, LV-212 was a long-established, long-terraformed and integral part of the holdings of Mankind. The attack marked an inroad into a section of the Spiral which had long been thought explored to boredom and exploited fully.
It was therefore decided that such a threat not simply to the extra-solar holdings of Humanity but ultimately to Earth itself, could not be ignored. The Xenomorph threat would be combated and it would be exterminated from the very stars that shone in the sky if necessary.
In the many months it took to build the political will and financial commitment to bolster a fleet under the UNCMC, as well as construct new ships and train the entirety of Earth's footsloggers in the abilities of Man's greatest threat since leaving the Cradle of Home and the tactics to defeat it, a half-dozen more worlds were attacked by the Xenomorph.
LV-304, LV-244 and LV-202 were ultimately destroyed by the guns of the Fleet after desperate and bloody attempts to wrest back control of them failed. Collectively tens of thousands of civilians and thousands of military men and women were lost in fighting unheard of since perhaps the great World Wars and never with the terrible horror of the Xenomorph. Amidst the loss there were successes - where good preperation and the bravery of those on the ground and in the sky drove the alien threat back and stacked their shining black corpses high.
On LV-78 an unexpected attack by Xenomorphs on the Military Command & Training Base broke the back of the Colony's organised armed forces, almost handing victory to the aliens in a single day. Bloody but not defeated, elements of the garrisoned French Foreign Legion led a hundred survivors in daring hit-and-run attacks and vital reconnaissance efforts which ultimately led to the first successful defeat of an existing Xenomorph infestation from orbital combat drop.
On LV-144 the colony's single structure stood almost a hundred floors high and sported perimeter walls fully eight metres thick, to resist the violent storms and thrashing winds which still plagued the planet despite terraforming efforts. Access to the structure was by landing pad at the very top of the tower only and emplacements were regularly set against the walls providing commanding fields of fire. Originally cleared to prevent storm damage in high winds, no rock much higher than a metre stood for up to a mile around the tower granting a veritable killing zone.
Such a commanding position, coupled with the use of newly issued longer-range flame weapons and refined motion detecting technologies inflicted a total defeat on the Xenomorph attack without the loss of a single life - civilian or military.
The greatest of these victories came on LV-111 and was not a victory of defence but strategy. Transiting through in-system as part of regular patrols to stop and search Free Traders to ensure no chance of Xenomorph infestation, the Brazilian cruiser Sao Paulo agreed to a request by the Governor of LV-111 to supply a squad of soldiers to bolster the number of men able to perform inspections of landing ships at the colony's large single spaceport.
With the forced destruction of a neighbouring colony some months before at the guns of the Fleet, LV-111 was now the focal point for trade in that sector of the galaxy and found its resources for ensuring Xenomorph exposure and destruction far outstripped by the sheer volume of traffic.
It was this chance decision by the Captain of the Sao Paulo that moved the entire focus of the Xeno War from defence to offence. Some weeks later the additional forces performing inspections seized a ship and its owner initially for failing to file a flightplan - a minor infraction in the days when Man was the only life in the known galaxy, but a serious crime in a time when the path of a Xenomorph held the key to preventing the loss of multiple colonies.
It later transpired that the man had visited a number of unexplored planets on the very edge of the Rim in flagrant breach of the complete and total ban on any non-military vessels making planetfall on an officially unrecognised world. Interrogation later revealed the "Captain" to be a member of one of dozens of loose associations of rogues that were little better than Star Pirates, of a sort. Clandestine meetings to exchange information, supplies and occasionally, press-ganged crew often took place on these desolate worlds to minimise the chance of an encounter with a UNCMC-mandated ship.
All of this would have proved useful to anti-piracy operations and not much else, if the routine medical of the man had not revealed the presence of a Xenomorph parasite. Extracting the coordinates of the last world visited by his ship from its NaviComm, the Russian light cruiser Volta was dispatched to investigate and report back.
Forty days later the Volta was declared overdue and fifty three days thereafter, declared missing. The USS California along with escorts RAF Illustrious and RAF Eagle entered orbit of the world the Russian ship had been sent to investigate but were unable to locate any sign of the missing vessel either at the planet it had been originally sent to or the system that contained it.
A search of outlying systems was performed without recovering any trace. Never having enough ships to police enough space the three ships were recalled to leave a mystery behind, without time to be solved. Unwilling to abandon potential survivors the Captain of the California feigned engine problems to extend the search effort by several weeks, even after the Illustrious and Eagle were directly recalled by their national command.
Accepting they had made their best effort the California made preparations for Stasis and readied for the return journey from the Rim, when a final check of a nearby system detected the faint but unmistakable signature of the Volta's transponder.
Making all speed and dispatching a message to the nearest Booster Station to advise UNCMCCOM of the discovery, the California made orbit of an unremarkable planet fourth from its star and quickly ascertained the fate of the Russian starship - identifying the rusted, rain-swept hulk of the Volta lying at the end of a trench some five miles long in a flat plain on the southern continent.
A Landing Party found the hulk of the Volta abandoned with neither survivors, nor remains. A search of the planet itself from orbit heralded nothing of interest save a strange signature in the planet's northern polar region. Suspecting Xenomorph activity a heavily armed Combat Drop stumbled upon an abandoned outpost in place of an alien attack. Analysis showed the structure to be impossibly old - in excess of some 10,000 years.
The harsh elements and millenia of neglect had stripped much of use from the outpost but it proved highly similiar in construction and apperance to the non-Xenomprh alien and its ship found on LV-425; known informally as the Space Jockey.
The California's discovery brought new ships and new fleets out to this dark part of the Rim, discovering more outposts and eventually, a larger settlement similarly abandoned but equally provocative. The general consensus - though scholars and intelligent men continue to debate it - is that Mankind had stumbled upon the furthest colonies of a long-dead power of the galaxy.
The recent discovery of up to eighteen thousand Xenomorph eggs held in stasis - apparently loaded upon a ship deliberately with the intent to transport them without allowing their hatching - has raised disturbing questions back on Earth; questions that become more angry with the instances of these nursery ships doubling and tripling. With every new batch discovered Mass Drivers and Human anger cleanse the Xenomorph before it even hatches.
As the Fleets of Man push further into this obviously extinct empire whole worlds are found teeming with Xenomorphs - their numbers increasing as the ships of the fleet move into their orbits and warm their guns. The unofficial consensus is that the original location of the alien threat has been discovered, and with the cleansing of these outer planets a homeworld or worlds may be discovered, or found, so that this terrible threat to the Human Race can finally be expunged.
Every month new ships bristling with weapons and filled with battle-hardened soldiers leave orbit of Earth and its colonies - linking up with the greatest single undertaking of Fleet and Footslogging assets in the history of Mankind outside of his homeworld. Every month worlds are scoured clear with orbital fire and painstakingly double-checked by fighting men and women on the ground. More is learned of the bizarre Space Jockey and the rest of his race. New tactics are created to destroy the Xenomorph threat.
Now fast cruisers roaming ahead of the main fleet have found worlds covered in that same alien architecture. Evidence of great civilisation once home to billions now teeming with billions of Xenomorphs. Man has assembled his fleets and his weapons and his soldiers and is ready to do battle with this threat for the last time. For the final time.
The Nostromo and LV-426 were the first casualties in the beginning of The Xenos War. This would be the end.
(Film begins!)
For the first time, be it at the highest levels of government and the military, Mankind acknowledged it was not alone in the universe. Far from the idyllic first contacts of the greatest science fiction stories of the past however, this ghostly enemy seemed to show no interest in peace, or coexistence.
Using Operational Protocols and Rules of Engagement created from virtually nothing more than the same reports of Ellen Ripley that had been branded deluded rantings, the men and equipment of the United States Colonial Marines, Royal Aerospace Force and the French Foreign Legion began a systematic search of worlds in the vicinity of the now lifeless LV-426. Frozen orbs of black rock which could not possibly harbour life as Mankind understood it.
System after system was combed at great cost in deployment and maintenance with not so much as a spore or single-cell protozoa to justify the expense.
Ironically the entire effort turned out to be unnecessary when the ghostly alien threat made its next appearance on LV-212, a Colony World lying almost ten light years closer to Earth.
Details of the attack can be more fully found elsewhere but sufficied to say that where LV-426 had been a world only new to the footprints of Man, with a raging, barely hospitable atmosphere only newly under the careful manipulation of atmospheric processors LV-212 had supported a populace a thousand times larger for far longer.
An economically vital world for the resources it contributed, it enjoyed not only orbital support from a detachment of the Canadian Space Forces, but planetary defences in the shape of hundreds of Planetary Militia Men, as well as weapon emplacements to defend from the less esoteric threat of very much Human pirates, bandits and illegal traders operating between far-flung systems.
For all this additional protection LV-212 might well have been reduced to a ghost world, or worse, were it not for two pieces of good fortune in an otherwise cold and unforgiving galaxy.
The world has been selected some months earlier as the site of a Military Booster Station for the purposes of receiving orders and reports from the various Military Commands of Earth under the umbrella of the United Nations Confederated Military Command (UNCMC). Retransmitting for Colonies, starships and installations operating Rimwards it went some way to overcoming the limitations of communications that travelled below the speed of light.
Finished but untested at the time of the crisis, the Governor of LV-212 was able to use the Booster Station to send a general distress call far more quickly than conventional techniques would have allowed. Even this alone however, would only have made their funerals more prompt were it not for the second piece of good fortune.
Forced out of suspended animation by a malfunction in their Life Support System, the crew of the Invincible - A Royal Aerospace Force vessel, part of the same fleet which had been plying the stars for the slightest sign of this deadly Xenomorph threat - received the distress call as it waited out repairs nearby and immediately recalled the remainder of the fleet ships still slumbering on their way back to Gateway Station.
The quickest of the fleet - The Russian starship Putin - made all speed back to civilisation to confirm the discovery of the Xenomorph and bring reinforcements to bear. Even with a full burn and pushing its Heat Sinks to the so-called "Red Line", the fastest help was still weeks away.
The vaguest communications had been exchanged between LV-212 and the Fleet ships as they transited in-system - garbled warnings of doom; creatures capable of stripping a man of his flesh down to the marrow of the bone with sickle-edged claws of impossible sharpness. Shining black carapaces which seemed slick with damp, lacking even eyes from which to see the hundreds of men, women and children they killed without mercy.
These panicked transmissions became scarcer and more rabid until they stopped completely some time before the first of the Fleet, the United States Spaceship Valley Forge, made orbit to assess the situation. Unable to raise the Colony Administration either by way of the Booster Station or the dozen smaller communication antennas on the surface, the situation of the some six thousand people on the surface seemed grim and sealed.
A detachment of Colonial Marines from the Valley Forge performed a Combat Drop alongside a unit of Royal Marines from the RAF Invincible directly into the primary tower of the Colony; a structure some twenty floors high and extending many miles down into the bedrock of the world. Housing the majority of the colonists at its base, with mining and tertiary equipment in the sub-floors, Colonial Administration and LV-212's only spaceport sat at its top.
Full details of what is now widely regarded as the first official engagement of what has now come to be called "The Xeno War" is available elsewhere - sufficed to say the combined Drop Force found over a thousand colonists alive and trapped between the security gates which barred access to the Administration Offices and the Spaceport above, and their own hastily assembled barriers blocking the Xenomorphs which ran through the rest of the tower below.
With the way to the surface-to-orbit shuttles on the massive landing pad above clear by virtue of the Marines' entrance, the throng threatened to lead to a crush as a thousand terrified people struggled to reach a way to leave the nightmare behind. Keenly aware of the mention of parasitic Xenomorph infestation, as well as the more obvious signs that a number of the colonists were suffering from fever, tremors, palpitations and nausea the Landing Party held the colonists in with reassurances and veiled threats while checking with Fleet Officers.
Any hope of avoiding bloodshed was lost when the makeshift barriers below barring the Xenomorph progress gave way. Now facing an imminent alien attack as well as a thousand terrified people pushing and forcing their way forwards the combined Marines were left with no choice but to fall back to the Spaceport.
In orbit the situation was no less grim. It seemed almost certain that a number of the colonists were incubating Xenomorphs and while they were on LV-212 their spread could be contained, if not actively engaged currently. The colony however had a full compliment of medium-range transport shuttles which could theoretically allow a large number off-world where their tracking could be difficult if not impossible.
Furthermore there was an unspoken belief that even with the best gunners of the ships of the Fleet assembled above the sheer number of possible trajectories and flightpaths meant they could not be certain of eliminating every shuttle if there was no other choice left to make.
The decision was made that the Colony would be "quarantined".
The first officially recognised military casualties of the Xeno War were therefore the thirty men and women of the combined Marine landing teams which refused the order to EVAC and return to orbit - instead destroying as many of the shuttles as possible and holding back the maddening crowd, which acted as any number of people would when faced with alien terror behind and saviours-turned-executioners in front.
Under the direct orders of General Adrian Walker the Colony and much of the topography of LV-212 was wiped from the face of the Galaxy by Mass Drivers, Fusion Cannons and Kinetic Warheads. Officially the thousands of men women and children who had lived relatively idyllic lives for people living on a world other than Earth were lost to Alien attack and not the guns of their own Fleet.
The attack and loss of LV-212 was felt keenly throughout the powerful corridors of the nations of Earth and beyond. Where LV-426 had been a fledgling and tenuous hold on a backwater part of the galaxy, LV-212 was a long-established, long-terraformed and integral part of the holdings of Mankind. The attack marked an inroad into a section of the Spiral which had long been thought explored to boredom and exploited fully.
It was therefore decided that such a threat not simply to the extra-solar holdings of Humanity but ultimately to Earth itself, could not be ignored. The Xenomorph threat would be combated and it would be exterminated from the very stars that shone in the sky if necessary.
In the many months it took to build the political will and financial commitment to bolster a fleet under the UNCMC, as well as construct new ships and train the entirety of Earth's footsloggers in the abilities of Man's greatest threat since leaving the Cradle of Home and the tactics to defeat it, a half-dozen more worlds were attacked by the Xenomorph.
LV-304, LV-244 and LV-202 were ultimately destroyed by the guns of the Fleet after desperate and bloody attempts to wrest back control of them failed. Collectively tens of thousands of civilians and thousands of military men and women were lost in fighting unheard of since perhaps the great World Wars and never with the terrible horror of the Xenomorph. Amidst the loss there were successes - where good preperation and the bravery of those on the ground and in the sky drove the alien threat back and stacked their shining black corpses high.
On LV-78 an unexpected attack by Xenomorphs on the Military Command & Training Base broke the back of the Colony's organised armed forces, almost handing victory to the aliens in a single day. Bloody but not defeated, elements of the garrisoned French Foreign Legion led a hundred survivors in daring hit-and-run attacks and vital reconnaissance efforts which ultimately led to the first successful defeat of an existing Xenomorph infestation from orbital combat drop.
On LV-144 the colony's single structure stood almost a hundred floors high and sported perimeter walls fully eight metres thick, to resist the violent storms and thrashing winds which still plagued the planet despite terraforming efforts. Access to the structure was by landing pad at the very top of the tower only and emplacements were regularly set against the walls providing commanding fields of fire. Originally cleared to prevent storm damage in high winds, no rock much higher than a metre stood for up to a mile around the tower granting a veritable killing zone.
Such a commanding position, coupled with the use of newly issued longer-range flame weapons and refined motion detecting technologies inflicted a total defeat on the Xenomorph attack without the loss of a single life - civilian or military.
The greatest of these victories came on LV-111 and was not a victory of defence but strategy. Transiting through in-system as part of regular patrols to stop and search Free Traders to ensure no chance of Xenomorph infestation, the Brazilian cruiser Sao Paulo agreed to a request by the Governor of LV-111 to supply a squad of soldiers to bolster the number of men able to perform inspections of landing ships at the colony's large single spaceport.
With the forced destruction of a neighbouring colony some months before at the guns of the Fleet, LV-111 was now the focal point for trade in that sector of the galaxy and found its resources for ensuring Xenomorph exposure and destruction far outstripped by the sheer volume of traffic.
It was this chance decision by the Captain of the Sao Paulo that moved the entire focus of the Xeno War from defence to offence. Some weeks later the additional forces performing inspections seized a ship and its owner initially for failing to file a flightplan - a minor infraction in the days when Man was the only life in the known galaxy, but a serious crime in a time when the path of a Xenomorph held the key to preventing the loss of multiple colonies.
It later transpired that the man had visited a number of unexplored planets on the very edge of the Rim in flagrant breach of the complete and total ban on any non-military vessels making planetfall on an officially unrecognised world. Interrogation later revealed the "Captain" to be a member of one of dozens of loose associations of rogues that were little better than Star Pirates, of a sort. Clandestine meetings to exchange information, supplies and occasionally, press-ganged crew often took place on these desolate worlds to minimise the chance of an encounter with a UNCMC-mandated ship.
All of this would have proved useful to anti-piracy operations and not much else, if the routine medical of the man had not revealed the presence of a Xenomorph parasite. Extracting the coordinates of the last world visited by his ship from its NaviComm, the Russian light cruiser Volta was dispatched to investigate and report back.
Forty days later the Volta was declared overdue and fifty three days thereafter, declared missing. The USS California along with escorts RAF Illustrious and RAF Eagle entered orbit of the world the Russian ship had been sent to investigate but were unable to locate any sign of the missing vessel either at the planet it had been originally sent to or the system that contained it.
A search of outlying systems was performed without recovering any trace. Never having enough ships to police enough space the three ships were recalled to leave a mystery behind, without time to be solved. Unwilling to abandon potential survivors the Captain of the California feigned engine problems to extend the search effort by several weeks, even after the Illustrious and Eagle were directly recalled by their national command.
Accepting they had made their best effort the California made preparations for Stasis and readied for the return journey from the Rim, when a final check of a nearby system detected the faint but unmistakable signature of the Volta's transponder.
Making all speed and dispatching a message to the nearest Booster Station to advise UNCMCCOM of the discovery, the California made orbit of an unremarkable planet fourth from its star and quickly ascertained the fate of the Russian starship - identifying the rusted, rain-swept hulk of the Volta lying at the end of a trench some five miles long in a flat plain on the southern continent.
A Landing Party found the hulk of the Volta abandoned with neither survivors, nor remains. A search of the planet itself from orbit heralded nothing of interest save a strange signature in the planet's northern polar region. Suspecting Xenomorph activity a heavily armed Combat Drop stumbled upon an abandoned outpost in place of an alien attack. Analysis showed the structure to be impossibly old - in excess of some 10,000 years.
The harsh elements and millenia of neglect had stripped much of use from the outpost but it proved highly similiar in construction and apperance to the non-Xenomprh alien and its ship found on LV-425; known informally as the Space Jockey.
The California's discovery brought new ships and new fleets out to this dark part of the Rim, discovering more outposts and eventually, a larger settlement similarly abandoned but equally provocative. The general consensus - though scholars and intelligent men continue to debate it - is that Mankind had stumbled upon the furthest colonies of a long-dead power of the galaxy.
The recent discovery of up to eighteen thousand Xenomorph eggs held in stasis - apparently loaded upon a ship deliberately with the intent to transport them without allowing their hatching - has raised disturbing questions back on Earth; questions that become more angry with the instances of these nursery ships doubling and tripling. With every new batch discovered Mass Drivers and Human anger cleanse the Xenomorph before it even hatches.
As the Fleets of Man push further into this obviously extinct empire whole worlds are found teeming with Xenomorphs - their numbers increasing as the ships of the fleet move into their orbits and warm their guns. The unofficial consensus is that the original location of the alien threat has been discovered, and with the cleansing of these outer planets a homeworld or worlds may be discovered, or found, so that this terrible threat to the Human Race can finally be expunged.
Every month new ships bristling with weapons and filled with battle-hardened soldiers leave orbit of Earth and its colonies - linking up with the greatest single undertaking of Fleet and Footslogging assets in the history of Mankind outside of his homeworld. Every month worlds are scoured clear with orbital fire and painstakingly double-checked by fighting men and women on the ground. More is learned of the bizarre Space Jockey and the rest of his race. New tactics are created to destroy the Xenomorph threat.
Now fast cruisers roaming ahead of the main fleet have found worlds covered in that same alien architecture. Evidence of great civilisation once home to billions now teeming with billions of Xenomorphs. Man has assembled his fleets and his weapons and his soldiers and is ready to do battle with this threat for the last time. For the final time.
The Nostromo and LV-426 were the first casualties in the beginning of The Xenos War. This would be the end.
(Film begins!)
