Alien: The Gear-Ratio Escape

A Story by Abishai100

The Weyland space-exploration crew may have to use incredible resourcefulness to fend off a potential attack by menacing aliens who've possibly set-up a death-lure on a phantom power-station!

Just one extra 'return-song' for WritersCafe on this very late Saturday night, and this dandy was actually inspired by my lifelong love of Alien/Predator comics and especially the recent film "Alien: Covenant" [2017] starring Billy Crudup and Katherine Waterston.

Thanks so much for reading (signing off),

====

Captain Orem boarded his ambitious Weyland Corporation space-exploration crew on his impressive new spaceship the Covenant. He was given the order to explore a discovered giant power-station on an uncharted planet on the outskirts of the Gorean Galaxy, way beyond the stretches of Earth's Milky Way Galaxy. Orem was excited to find ways to make this mission both rewarding and secure, and his skilled crew included engineers, scientists, and of course armed soldiers. The American soldier Hicks was considered Weyland's best soldier, so Orem recruited him for the journey.

OREM: I'm certain this power-station is a peace beacon.
HICKS: What if there're Xenomorphs on this uncharted planet.
OREM: At this juncture, we've no reason to suspect alien corruption.
HICKS: Well, captain, just to be sure, I've brought some extra toys!

Captain Orem immediately recognized soldier Hicks' intention to ward off any possible violence or Xenomorph-alien threat by bringing what Hicks himself referred to as 'toys' (no doubt a humorous allusion to weaponry and tech). The Covenant spaceship set course for the uncharted planet in the Gorean Galaxy, tentatively named LG-666, from which tech-signals from the power-station mysteriously erected there were emanating and were detected and catalogued by the Weyland Corporation. Peter Weyland himself told Orem that the primary goal of this signal exploration mission would be to determine any terrorist intention.

Orem's brother Daniels was the commander of an earlier Weyland mission to planet LG-426 in which numerous 'Xenomorphs' (large intelligent insect-dragon like aliens!) were engaged, resulting in the terrible death of Daniels. Orem was determined not to allow any future Xenomoprh disaster during a Weyland mission and therefore recruited the taut if somewhat tense American soldier Hicks for his ambitious Covenant crew. Orem told the crew of the Covenant that they'd reach Planet LG-666 in two months thanks to the high-speed drives of the newly-designed $9 billion spaceship the Covenant.

When the Covenant landed on the planet, by a clearing by a small mountain, they found the large erected power-station standing on a field. Half of the crew deboarded the Covenant while half stayed on board for security and communications. Orem and Hicks were members of the exploration team, which Orem called the Explorers. As the Explorers made their way to and up and into the very impressive power-station, they were alarmed to find there was no one present! In fact, the radio-signals tech was simply left on in automatic, which is how perhaps the Weyland Corporation detected the random waves being emanated with certain technological quality.

Hicks was very paranoid and told Orem that he was sure that the predatory intelligent Xenomoprh aliens had erected the 'phantom' power-station as a signals-lure to draw in humans and then create an attack to send Peter Weyland the message that the Xenomoprhs intended to make war with the human species. Orem admitted the 'phantom' power-station seemed a bit odd and eerie, so he told Hicks to secure the station with the 'toys' he brought with him! Sure enough, Hicks set up an array of small laser-cannons connected to a gear-ratio wheel device which could be turned with varying speeds to alternate the rounds and lines of fire.

Hicks' gear-ratio controlled laser-cannon array functioned on the basic principle that small gears connected to larger gears that turned in unison would make single-turn activated alternating laser-fire would surely confuse a pack of Xenomorphs running towards the 'phantom' power-station to shock the human explorers walking around in it! Hicks' set-up was gorgeous, and he assigned four of the soldiers of Orem's Covenant Explorers crew to man the multiple single-turn wheels to create the defensive laser-fire array. Orem told Hicks this little tech-weapon setup would ensure protection from any advancing Xenomorph aliens.

Sure enough, a pack of large black Xenomorphs began charging towards the power-station, so Orem immediately radio-called the parked Covenant spaceship to prepare for organized evasive maneuvers while Hicks readied his men to perform the wheel-turns on the ingenious gear-ratio laser-fire array! The crew on-board the parked Covenant received Captain Orem's command and readied for takeoff and escape. Meanwhile, Hicks and his men performed their gear-ratio laser-array attack on the fastly advancing Xenomorphs, and the confusing scattering and time-spaced laser-fire, created by the staggered gear-ratio turn-tempo, simply disoriented and threw back the menacing Xenomorphs!

Hicks and his men managed to kill 15 of the 25 attacking Xenomorphs before the entire Explorers crew fled back to the Covenant and took off, escaping Planet LG-666 without incurring any casualties. Orem congratulated soldier Hicks for his brilliant staggering laser-turning fire defense against the predatory Xenomorphs, and Hicks asked Captain Orem to report to Weyland that they should cease assembling 'suicide squads' sent as explorers but serving as 'food' for this Xenomorph war. Orem conceded and filed the grudge in his official Weyland report, wondering what the future would hold for humans studying the universe with perhaps insufficient humility!

====

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth" (Matthew 5)