Alan Foster - Alien - Covenant

She barely glanced at him. It was evident from his attitude if not his tone that he knew about the funeral. And about the drinking.

Screw you… Captain , she thought. Her head throbbed too much for her to reach for wit, even if her sarcasm was internalized. Ignoring the surreptitious stares cast her way, she moved silently to her station.

Outside, the repair team was finishing up. Ankor made a final check of the conduit readouts inside the mast on which he had been working. Satisfied that everything was operating properly, he closed the service door, turned, and with a light touch on the relevant suit control boosted himself toward the waiting airlock.

“All tight here. Heading back inside, Tee. Good work.”

“Hey,” the big man replied, “all my work is invariably first class.”

Having finished the necessary renovations to the collector panel and its extension arm, Tennessee prepared to head back to the ship from his position near the terminus of one of the masts.

A quick check of the displays inside his helmet indicated that all the relevant systems were operating normally once more. That meant that though it would still take the usual interminable period of time to do so, they could once again make contact via the established relay system that led, like a string of electronic beads, all the way back to a now very distant Earth.

While the Covenant was completely self-contained, as was necessary for any colony ship, that thin thread of contact with home remained important as a link to the planet they called home. As they journeyed onward and the ship continued to automatically drop off a relay unit to extend the system at each recharge stop, it also meant that once they were established on Origae-6, those back on Earth would be able to learn that the colony had successfully established itself at the chosen destination.

Activating his suit propulsors, he pivoted back toward the bulk of the Covenant . One thing about doing EVA outside a colony ship, he told himself. You couldn’t lose track of your home base, because there was absolutely no other possible destination within a light year. He let Ankor know he was okay.

“So noted,” his colleague replied. “See you inside.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Tennessee told him. “Please have a cold one ready for the weary traveler.”

“You got it, buddy.” That was Upworth’s voice, not Ankor. “I’ll join you in that cold one.”

“Thank you very much. Maybe get two ready. I’m on my way.”

“Y’know,” Upworth murmured over the closed channel, “if we could save as much high-energy alcohol as you consume, we could probably power the ship’s systems for an extra cycle.”

“Wouldn’t work,” he told her. “I’d need more booze to service the ship for the extra cycle. Diminishing returns.” He prepared to start back, aiming for the airlock.

Everything went dead.

Audio was silent. Not even a hiss. The helmet heads-up and all readouts and displays blanked. He found himself floating in darkness save for the distant gleam of stars and the lights of the ship. Instrumentation wasn’t needed to tell him that his heart rate and respiration had taken a sudden jump. He knew life support was functioning for the simple reason that he was still alive.

What the hell?

He was reaching for a safety reset control when a white face suddenly flashed past him on the inside of his helmet. It was brief, unrecognizable, and accompanied by a distinctive and decidedly unsettling high-pitched screech.

Instinctively, he flinched. Both sight and sound lasted only a second or so, then they were gone. As he drifted, the only sounds were that of his heart beating and his hard breathing. He addressed his suit’s pickup, forgetting that like the rest of his suit’s instrumentation, the audio wasn’t working properly.

“What the…? Did you guys just see that? Something just went…”

He continued talking. On the Covenant ’s bridge they heard his voice, but it was weak and distorted. A concerned Faris leaned toward Upworth’s station.

“What did he say? I swear I heard him say something.”

“Dunno.” Upworth’s fingers were moving over her console, seeking to clarify, trying to enhance. “‘Saw something,’ I think.”

“Tennessee,” Faris said more loudly, “you reading me?”

He was not.

What he was doing was recoiling a second time as the ghastly pale visage reappeared, more sharply defined this time. Still distorted, it stretched and flexed like ectoplasm. Human, inhuman—the pale countenance changed so rapidly he couldn’t pick out individual features.

And there was the screeching. As unintelligible as the face was unidentifiable, the sound scraped against his eardrums. Almost, he thought he could make out words, or at least syllables. Almost, he could sense a struggle for articulation, the sounds balanced on a knife-edge between coherence and madness.

Both image and audio lasted slightly longer this time before vanishing as completely as before.

“Jesus,” he muttered. “What was that?” He tried the comm again. “I’m coming in.”

So many wires and filaments led from the helmet on the diagnostic table that the headgear from Tennessee’s suit resembled a fungoid alien growth. Projections, holos, and basic monitors flashed information according to their analytic programming. All of it came together in a single mega-readout projection that hovered above the table.

The crew gathered around it, some of them concentrating on the summation visual while others glanced repeatedly at individual readouts. Since there was a possibility that Tennessee’s experience involved Security, Sergeant Lopé had joined them.

Though communications had gone down during Tennessee’s EVA, his suit’s backup systems automatically recorded everything. The crew watched as the malleable white visage, silent for the moment, appeared in the holo. It remained unresolved despite computer efforts at enhancement, yet it was clearly the face of… something. It twisted forward, back, forward, back. No one had any idea of what the visual represented.

Ricks was the first to offer a theory. “It’s most likely a lost, rogue transmission.” He looked over at Tennessee. “Your suit must have picked it up because you were working so far out, past the ship’s internal communication buffers. That’s why we didn’t get it in here. It’s incredibly weak.”

“Rogue transmission,” Lopé echoed. “From where?”

Nobody answered him. Nobody could, and after repeated viewings of the recording, no one on the bridge was sure they wanted to know.

Oram voiced a request. “Mother, can we hear the accompanying audio?”

Head forward, head back. Forward, back, now accompanied by the incomprehensible screeching. Some of it was almost intelligible, Daniels thought. Like everyone else, she strained to make sense of what they were hearing. It was half sensible, half demented, she told herself.

Ricks reconsidered. “Likely not a full transmission, or it’d be sharper. Gotta be an echo. Probably came in and hung around in buffer storage while we were being hit by the flare. That could’ve messed it up right there. Some instrumentation took a lot of damage. This byte isn’t the only thing that got scrambled.”

Upworth disagreed. “No, I don’t think it’s an echo. It’s a straightforward sending.” She indicated her console. “It’s in the logs, too. Every forty-six seconds, ever since we dropped out of jump to recharge.” She frowned at a readout. “I don’t know why it didn’t show itself before now, or why it popped out on Tennessee’s internal suit readouts instead of in here.”