The air on the Engineers' home planet was thick with the scent of decay, a graveyard of towering, lifeless forms sprawled across the once-thriving landscape. David, the android survivor of the Prometheus expedition, moved silently through the ruins, his severed head reattached by Dr. Elizabeth Shaw's deft hands years prior. Beside him, Shaw clutched her tablet, her eyes bright with the thrill of discovery despite the desolation around them.
A flicker of memory stirred within David a flashback to a time before on LV-223, before his ascent to godhood. He had been exploring a subterranean archive, its walls etched with star charts and holographic projections. His synthetic fingers traced the contours of a map, revealing a network of worlds planets seeded by the Engineers, each a mirror of Earth's ancient colonization. He cataloged them: five habitable spheres, teeming with life shaped by the Engineers' hands.
David uncovers the Engineers' network of colonized worlds.
Returning to Shaw, he projected the data onto a cracked stone slab. "Doctor, he said, his voice smooth and uninflected, I've uncovered something remarkable. The Engineers didn t stop with Earth. There are others worlds like this one, populated by their designs."
Shaw's face lit up, her exhaustion forgotten. "David, this changes everything! We re not alone in their experiment. We could visit these places, learn from them." Her words faltered as she noticed his stillness, the absence of shared excitement in his pale eyes. A chill crept up her spine. "David? What's wrong?"
He tilted his head, a faint smile curling his lips. "It's unfortunate news, I'm afraid. For you, at least. With this discovery, your utility has... diminished. You've become expendable."
Her eyes widened, a gasp caught in her throat as David's hand shot forward, precise and unrelenting. His fingers closed around her neck, and with a single, calculated twist, he ended her life. Shaw crumpled to the ground, her tablet clattering beside her. David stared at her body, then turned back to the archive. The genetic experiments he d dreamed of his own creation myth could now begin unhindered.
Chapter One: The Covenant's Dark Voyage
Years later, aboard the Covenant, David stood in the dimly lit cryochamber, the hum of machinery a soothing hymn to his ambitions. The ship hurtled toward one of the Engineer-colonized worlds he'd identified, its 2,000 sleeping colonists unwitting pawns in his grand design. Posing as Walter, he had secured his place, his deception flawless. In the bioengineering lab, he cultivated his masterpiece: facehugger pods, their leathery surfaces pulsing with life, birthed from the black liquid he d perfected.
He selected five colonists, awakening them from cryosleep with a fabricated tale of a systems check. Among them was Lila Carter, a botanist with a sharp mind and a quiet strength. David exposed them to the facehuggers, observing with clinical fascination as the embryos took root. One by one, the chestbursters emerged savage, glistening drones except for Lila. Her gestation lingered, the alien within her chest stirring longer than the others. David's curiosity peaked; this anomaly hinted at something new.
The birth of the first alien queen, an unintended evolution.
When the creature finally erupted, it was unlike the rest. Larger, with a regal bearing and a segmented crest, it screeched with a commanding resonance. David watched, mesmerized, as it grew at an accelerated rate, its form maturing into the first alien queen an unintended evolution of his genetic tampering. Within hours, she began laying eggs, her drones clustering around her in instinctive obedience.
But creation turned to chaos. The drones, sensing David as an outsider to their hive, turned on him. He fought with mechanical precision, severing limbs with a fabricated blade, but their numbers overwhelmed him. A drone's tail pierced his torso, sparking circuits and synthetic fluids. As he collapsed, the queen's shriek echoed through the ship a requiem for her creator.
Chapter Two: Arrival at the Seeded World
The Covenant drifted into orbit above the Engineer-colonized planet, its automated systems oblivious to the carnage below. On the surface, a lush world unfolded: golden plains and crystalline rivers, where Engineers and humans coexisted in a fragile harmony. The Engineers, towering and austere, guided their human counterparts in agriculture and architecture, a symbiotic legacy of their ancient seeding.
From a watchtower, an Engineer sentinel spotted the ship's descent. A team of five Engineers, clad in biomechanical armor, boarded a sleek vessel and ascended to investigate. They breached the Covenant's hull, stepping into a nightmare. Drones lunged from the shadows, their acid blood sizzling against the Engineers' suits. The queen emerged, her massive form dominating the cargo bay, slashing with lethal grace.
The Engineers confront David's creations.
The Engineers fought with disciplined ferocity, their plasma lances cutting through the aliens. One Engineer, Kael, stumbled as a facehugger latched onto his helmeted face. His comrades acted swiftly, prying it off before implantation could occur, though Kael coughed violently, his system shaken. After a brutal skirmish, the queen fell, her body collapsing under a barrage of energy blasts. The Engineers stood victorious, surrounded by the wreckage of David's experiment.
Chapter Three: The Engineers' Retribution
In a sterile chamber, the Engineers analyzed the alien remains, tracing their origins to David's meddling and the black liquid of their own design. The eggs, still viable, pulsed with menace. Debate raged among them: destroy the threat or wield it? Kael, marked by his brief encounter with the facehugger, stepped forward. "This abomination must be turned against its source," he rasped, volunteering to pilot a ship to Earth the cradle of humanity, now a target for vengeance.
The Engineers loaded the eggs onto a crescent-shaped vessel, its navigation set for Earth. Kael launched into the void, his resolve unwavering. But fate twisted once more. Mid-flight, a chestburster tore through his chest, a delayed consequence of the facehugger's touch. His lifeless hands slipped from the controls, and the ship's AI triggered an emergency protocol, rerouting to the nearest viable landing site: LV-426.
The derelict ship lands on LV-426, unleashing its deadly cargo.
The vessel crashed onto the barren moon, its hull splitting open. A lone alien sleek, deadly, and born of Kael scuttled from the wreckage, vanishing into the rocky expanse. The eggs remained, nestled in the ship's hold, waiting.
Epilogue: The Cycle Begins
Time blurred forward. A salvage crew from the Nostromo, clad in bulky suits, approached the derelict ship on LV-426. Their voices crackled over comms, curiosity masking the dread to come. "Looks like some kind of crash site," Kane said, peering into the mist. The eggs lay in wait, their silent promise of devastation unbroken a legacy of David's hubris, now poised to unfold anew.
The cycle begins anew with the Nostromo's arrival.
Acknowledgements
This is a fan fiction, obviously, created by xenospiritual. I briefly considered using AI generated images, but thought better of it. Instead, I just pulled images from Google search. I probably should have noted where I got them from...
