ALIEN: Manticore

Rick

Man, today is NOT my day for seeing clearly. :)
Thank-you for the suggestion, Rick!
Y'know, I've been working in Google Docs all week relating to business interests hubby and I are pursuing and it never once occured to me that I can use it to host my writings!!
Seriously, I was absolutely oblivious to it, and it will make things very easy for folks to access writings!!

LMAO all it takes sometimes is a fresh set of eyes.

The old saying 'Cannot see the forest for the trees' is rattling around my brain, as it's sometimes SO true. :D

Oh an OMG look at the Paws on that Pussy !  I have a Bobcat at home.  He's still a kitten but he is funnier than hell.

Ill post a thread later with some early excerpts !

Rick

I could have gone with a normal housecat, but Rick, I can now add you to the list of folks I know who have Bobcats/Lynx in their homes. :)
Hence why I decided to have a Lynx aboard. :D
And please give your baby Bobcat lots of loves from a crazy cat lady. :) <3

IRaptus

Sounds great!! Looking fwd to it!!

I had this bookmarked so I could come back to it when I had solid time to read it.  I have finally read the sneak :)

This is good, really good.  I am officially sucked in.

I really dig your style.  Keeping this bookmarked for later, thank you so much for sharing!

Nycro

You're quite welcome and Thank-you for saying!! :D I really appreciate that you bookmarked it to make sure you could find it again, that really says a lot to someone on my end of things!!

BWW- With due respect from a non writer, I thought SM was initially expressing constructive criticism but not criticizing the material itself. Just my two cents.

At any rate, I still look forward to the completion of Manticore. I read the initial part but admittedly avoid updates- it is sort of like seeing spoilers before the final work comes out.

 dk

He might have been, but if someone is going to take it on themselves to critique my work, with them knowing that it IS a First-Draft with only partial first-pass editing, then I will ask and expect from that person to conduct their critique in a Fair and Balanced manner, meaning they must state good points along with negative.
BUT, he is known to be something of a troll on this forum, he has a reputation of being such, so that colors things, of course.

I understand the logic of avoiding 'spoilers' but I do select them with people like yourself in mind, so that you can read them, and not have the story spoiled for you. ;) I am VERY careful about the excerpts I post for that reason, which is why there are so relatively few.
Also, editing IS ongoing, so that affords another level of keeping the story unspoiled for you and others.

But TY for the thought of not wanting to have the story spoiled, that sentiment means a great deal to me!!

BWW- Understood. Thanks for the clarification.

SM- You have put out interesting observations on many topics and have challenged me- sometimes giving me pause and I can appreciate that. Honestly, when offering constructive criticism or offering insights as I presume, your candour lacks so much tact that you are perceived as a troll. Is that your intent?

dk

Yw :)

Also, good Inquiry-post of S.M, very well-phrased!

As I don't have any kind of budget, or staff, equipment, skills or such in making a Trailer for ALIEN: Manticore, I'll try it the following way.

For those of you just finding your way here to my Topic, this might help you as a guide.

**NO Spoilers are in this, so it's OK to look, I know some of you are being very careful now about Spoilers in general, and I have taken that into account.**

ALIEN: Manticore is set and runs strictly off Ridley Scott's work in the franchise.
*The timeline is set Post-Nostromo incident and Pre-Hadley's Hope incident.
*Ripley does NOT enter into the story whatsoever.
*Given the restructuring of Canon by FOX, I have taken some conservative liberties with how events in my story will affect future events that are very likely to be removed from Canon.
*One of the characters is non-Human, non-Synthetic and non-Extraterrestrial.
*The ship itself is a privately-owned starship, thus better equipped and better appointed than a corporate workhorse.
*In tone and theme, it's much more akin to PROMETHEUS than ALIEN.
*It DOES actually provide some answers, but probably not as many as you'd like. ;)
*This crew acts like intelligent people who have a keen understanding of how dangerous living and working in space can be. Don't expect any of them to pull a 'Holloway Helmet Maneuver'.
*Not one of them is in any way religious.
*It leads into a follow-up story, which is in development.

A little something in the spirit of ALIEN-Day :D

EXCERPT- ALIEN: Manticore

BEGIN****************************

Declan ignored the landscape, the winds, the thickly misted darkness and the rest of the planetoid’s weather as he kept an eye out to notice any movement that was distinctly non-environmental. He and Selinaehra descended from the ventral main airlock via the personnel elevator-lift that was supported by a magnehydraulic telescoping-frame extending down from the airlock’s exterior doors to the surface below. Located near to the bow landing gear strut and closely outside the main airlock‘s outer doors, the lift was a broad platform, two-and-a-half by three-and-a-half metres squared, meant for moving large and heavy items as well as people and did so smoothly. It stopped as it’s base touched the coldly-solid stone terrain below it, the two spacesuited figures stepped off it, then it began to rise back up towards the ship, it’s six-section support frame telescoping upwards as it went.
He and Selinaehra were dwarfed to an intimidating small scale relative to the immense landing gear struts supporting the ship’s mountainous bulk and mass looming above them. On each immense strut were rotating bright yellow beacon lights, meant to aid in finding one‘s way among them in conditions such as the gloomily-dark tempest roiling about the ship at present. Their suits were equipped with direction-finders that keyed to the airlock beacon and they both carried independent backup units on their equipment belts. Still electronics could fail, local conditions could seriously interfere with radio communications and if such occurred the beacons on the ship’s landing legs would guide them home.
They both wore ruggedized super-duty high-mobility environmental worksuits, with heavy full-coverage workarmor over them. Being personal property, they weren’t generic off-the-rack pieces and had been tailored to fit much better which allowed greater freedom of movement and were somewhat tougher to breach than off-the-rack. The helmets had reflection-free, condensation-free, triple-pane faceplates, a safety feature vs. accidental breaches by small high-velocity debris when salvaging a wreck in open space. The suit gauntlets they wore were more akin to combat gloves than a spacesuit‘s gauntlets. Very expensive, they interfered only minimally in operating controls or a weapon unlike normal worksuit gauntlets.
The weapons they carried low on their hips were H&K MP-7L submachineguns, which were among the best laser weapons made, the laser-based descendant of the venerable MP-7 submachinegun. They were accurate, powerful, extremely well-balanced and could be easily handled with one hand, or one could extend the stock as well as flip the foregrip down for a steadier hold on the weapon. They were fitted with rapid-acquisition combat sights and tactical lights, they were weapons meant to be handled by those skilled in such. The weapons were also as reliable and delicate as a blacksmith’s hammer, a key point when their Captain had decided on purchasing them for the ship’s armory. They’d been expensive, but one got what one paid for and Sin wasn’t the type of man to trust lives to cheap tools or weapons.
“Y’know Sin, all this weirdness we’ve stumbled into, makes you wonder what else is out there in the universe.” Selinaehra commented into her comms.
“Tt does. I’ve been trying not to ponder that too deeply, but the farther humanity pushes out, I have to wonder; ‘How much more of this kind of thing are we going to be dealing with?’. It‘s proven now that we‘re not the first one‘s out here, so the question is: ‘what kind and how many ‘leftovers‘ will Humanity stumble over in the centuries to come?’.” Her husband replied.
“Humanity always wanted proof of extraterrestrial life, well now they’ve got it. How’s things going autopsy-wise?” She asked, stepping around a twisted, black rock as big as herself and keeping pace with Declan.
“Cracked the suit, and no surprises. One human female, approximately twenty-something of age, showing all the physical signs of extreme starvation, dehydration and death from carbon-dioxide poisoning. The scrubbers in her suit were completely worn out, so was the waste-water reclamation unit. She had brought some survival ration bars, and we’re guessing from the wrapper and crumbs we found in her suit that she’d open the wrap, hold her breath, unlock and slide her faceplate up, put it in her mouth and close the faceplate to eat it hands-free. Determined young woman, I have to say.”
“No question.” Declan commented, his tone that of a man impressed by the qualities of another. The report reminding him of the situation and that the woman had been so terrified she’d fled into the wastes of this world as far as she could get from her ship. He also considered that her food bars would have been frozen solid as the average temperature on the planetoid was cold enough to freeze CO2 into crystals, holding them in her mouth would have been like holding onto a piece of dry-ice for a short while until they’d warmed up.
‘Determined’ was an extreme understatement, he felt.
As they walked across the hard, eons-cold basalt, Selinaehra found herself starting to somewhat like the dark, storm-tossed worldlet. She was starting to find a kind of beauty in the hard, dark stone of the terrain and the wind-sculpted, twisted rock formations. She supposed it had something to do with the extremely adaptable nature of the Chimeran mind, but didn’t question it overmuch. While engaging in the idle speculation, her eyes never ceased scanning the terrain, her attention never drifted from staying alert and ready to handle the dangers that could come from another possible survivor. She was a Chimeran Artemis, quite literally a born killer, and if any survivors presented themselves as a threat to herself or Declan they would learn extremely quickly that such was a swiftly fatal course of action.
Arriving at the wildcatter ship, they approached the self-deploying inspection scaffold that had been set up by drones earlier which afforded them ladder-access to the ship’s ventral personnel airlock. After a short climb to the platform atop it, they entered the ship through the open outer and inner doors by way of another shorter ladder.
Inside the airlock’s lightless EVA prep-room vestibule, they surveyed around them with suit lights and drew their weapons, selecting three-shot burst and switched on the gun-mounted tactical lights. It was well within the realms of possibility that another suit-wearing survivor was hidden deep in the ship’s maintenance crawlspaces, coming out to forage supplies or remaining hidden with a large stockpile.
The evidence of weapons-fire and improvised explosives was evident almost everywhere aboard the wildcatter as the drone investigations had shown, so any survivors were to be presumed hostile until they proved otherwise.
“We’re aboard and starting the search. Comms are open, but in towards the core of the ship, I can’t say if you’re going to receive us as the ship’s comms are down and cannot relay our signals. The prep-area we’re in looks like someone set off a bunch of grenades in here, heavy damage is visible everywhere. The suit and equipment lockers are blown all to hell, it‘ll be tough doing a suit-count with this mess. There‘s some serious scorching damage on the floor and walls from what might have been thermite charges, but no contact-melting spots so I don‘t know what to make of it.” Selinaehra informed the rest of their crew as Declan checked out the two passageways leading out into the ship from the vestibule they stood in, the man‘s suit lights and weapon’s tactical light showing nothing but grubby, weapons-fire scarred walls down both directions with more of the same scorching on walls, the floor as well as ceiling as they’d seen in the prep-area.

“Understood. If you’re out of contact for longer than fifteen minutes, we’ll be on our way to find you.” Sin told them in a no-nonsense tone.
“Copy and acknowledged. I shoulda brought the damned relays after all. If there‘s a drone not doing anything, have it set them up.” Selinaehra said, moving up alongside and behind Declan. He’d cover the front, she’d cover the rear.

In the hut-like iso-tent a short distance from the ship, the Captain and Doctor finished scanning the emaciated, semi-mummified corpse of the ill-fated young woman named ‘Rosalie’ from the wildcatter vessel. They worked in full suits, but with high-dexterity gloves instead of the standard suit gauntlets, the interior of the iso-tent was colder than a refrigerator but still above freezing, and filled with a pure nitrogen atmosphere.
Smythe looked at the detailed three-dimensional combiscan-generated model of the corpse on a high-resolution display, and found nothing unusual in the physiognomy. There were no injuries that were unusual, and what was found of injuries were long-healed ones; signs of dental surgery, also to remove her appendix years ago, and evidence of a simple fracture in her right leg he could tell was from early adolescence. The blood and lymph fluid samples showed nothing unusual, and neither had the assorted tissue biopsies that included those of brain and spinal cord tissues.
Smythe straightened up from peering through the eyepieces of a multi-mode miscroscope, started turning assorted pieces of equipment off as they were no longer required. “Captain, I would state professionally that this case is closed. We might never know why she fled the ship, but her death wasn’t caused by anything extraordinary.” He told Sin, continuing to go about shutting down the equipment in the iso-tent.
“At least we know that much, and it‘s a bit of a relief,” Sin said, drawing a sheet over the corpse. “We’ll bury her when Declan and Selina are back, it should be as full a crew service as we can manage.” He concluded with.
Smythe nodded in agreement. Life on the frontier hardened people he knew, but in ways it also made them more respectful of the facts of life, and death.

Selinaehra and Declan traded places as they got deeper towards the core areas of the ship, where it started becoming more maintenance crawlspaces and accessways than normal crew passages. Selina took lead as she was more slender framed, lithe and thus better able to combat any possibly psychotic surprises they might happen across in the confined space. It was darker than interstellar space this far inside the wildcatter with only a few scattered LEDs ro supply light if they hadn’t brought their own powerful illumination. With the lights, if looked and felt like being inside a tomb or a mausoleum, with the earlier corridors and crawlspaces they were in at present feeling more closed-in than they actually were.
Here and there as they made their way deeper inside the ship they began to notice deposits of some strange kind of hardened plastic-like patches, dark green with brownish hues, like some kind of unknown epoxy that seemed to have been spilled or leaked from some unknown and not readily-apparent source. They were both long-acquainted and very experienced with the myriad forms of adhesives, plastics and related chemical materials of human manufacture. This material was unknown, and even the smallest patches had strange surface impressions, as if molded in some dark and disturbingly artistic gesture. As they went deeper they were seeing more of it, often in larger patches and deposits.
They found their way almost into a maintenance chamber, a junction for assorted inter-related systems where critical components and connected subsystems could be worked on with relative ease. They stopped in shocked surprise, their minds working to comprehend what they’d found.
“Manticore, we’re in the core junction maintenance chamber. We’ve found…I don’t know what we’ve found. Are you getting any camera feed?” Selinaehra said into the comms.
“Copy. Negative on camera feeds, but we’re getting good signal on voice even from in there. You in trouble?” Sharie’s concerned voice told them over comms.
Declan and Selinaehra moved cautiously out of the crawlspace and into the small chamber to where they could stand up properly, weapons at the ready as they surveyed the entire chamber with their suit and weapon lights whilst standing back-to-back.
“No trouble yet, but stand-by.” Declan said tersely into the comms.
The same epoxy-like material they’d found in small patches along their way was the dominating feature inside the chamber, even more so than the machinery it encrusted. It was sculpted in oddly disturbing quasi-organic forms that seemed also somehow bizarrely ‘mechanical’, and strongly suggested a nest or a lair. There was worse to be found…
A human body, an asian male, partially mummified from long exposure to the native atmosphere. The luckless man’s chest looked to have erupted violently from within, the rib bones bent and broken outward. The body was partially enveloped in the hard epoxy-plastic substance except for thorax and head, the dead man’s face still showing his last moments of life in a rictus of agony, mouth agape and eyes squeezed tightly closed.
Directly below the corpse, on the floor, something that resembled an emaciated-looking over-sized hand with too many extremely-long fingers and a whip-like tail. It was motionless, laying in a semi-crumpled repose, it’s finger-like legs clutched in towards it’s underside.
Closely beside the long-dead man was a large-ish and distinctly organic-appearing object. It was a coarsely-leathery, dark greyish-green ovoid-shaped container of some kind that stood something approximate to around hip-height on a man. It too was secured in the unknown plastic-like material as well except for it’s top, which was composed of four triangular flaps, open and exposing an empty interior.
Chimeran and Human glanced at each other and turned respectively to where they both recalled seeing something very similar only seconds ago in their initial visual sweep of the chamber.
Another ovoid, this one was the same as the other but still sealed with the four top flaps tightly closed, also securely cocooned except for the top. As they watched, raised bumps started rapidly forming all across the top and partway down the ovoid’s sides. Both felt a sudden chill down their backs when their sharp eyes noticed droplets of watery-viscous liquid running up it‘s sides…and when reaching the peak of the sealed top, they began dripping upward. As that occurred, the body of the ovoid slowly started to become translucent, then quickly became transparent in the span of a few seconds with a quality like pebble-textured glass visible through the thin filmy cocoon of the epoxy-like material that was also encrusting much of the chamber‘s walls, floor and ceiling. Within the ovoidal pod, starting to move with a spasmodic quality, was another hand-shaped creature. The four roughly-triangular flaps at the top of the ovoid opening smoothly despite the intense cold surrounding it....

Lines between Rick and S.M:

'You must be speaking for yourself.  Because 99% of the time you post negative one liners that don't contribute to anything. Kind of like Mr. Inquisitor Fifi' -- by Rick

'Don't pretend you're capable of recognising a positive contribution.' -- by S.M

Wow!

'S.M, Really?  ok...I'm drawing the line here on the never ending right handed insults/left handed compliments and the lack of respect.  This is the only warning I'm giving. Contribute positively or find another forum.' -- by Rick

WOW!

Image added by Blackwinter-witch:

WWWWOOOOOOWWWWW!

That is a monster! :)

Blackwinter-witch, thanks for the excerpt!

Your Alien - Manticore lines would like to jump into a best-seller!

 Ati

Thanks for stopping by and posting! :)

S.M, well, there are worse trolls out there, but he acts like a Critic when he's just being unhelpful and nasty as he only ever hands out negativity, never a positive comment.
I can take criticism, but if folks are going to act like professional Critics, then I insist they perform Critiques as such.

Yeah, Canadian Lynxes, they get pretty big!! In domestic settings they can reach 60 Lbs from better diet and such.
The one in the pic is, as I mentioned, tranquilized for relocation and is unharmed.
I looked up the pic using image search and found the story behind it.
So, Manticore has a Ship's Cat, and one that's quite distinct from Jonesie in ALIEN.
Also, Manticore's cat gets more 'screen time'. :)