| abstract
| - A team of unarmed soldiers, led by a man named Sam Smith, boards the Sulaco as it drifts in space. After discovering Bishop's severed legs, the team find that three of the cryotubes in the hypersleep chamber have been smashed open, and amidst the shredded human remains sit three Xenomorph Eggs. Sam finds a tattered nametag bearing the name "Ripley". Suddenly, they are attacked by a lone Xenomorph hiding in the ceiling. With no weapons to defend themselves, the soldiers are massacred in short order. Sam wakes up at home, the preceding events supposedly a nightmare. However, as he goes about his day, it transpires that the incident was real — Sam was horrifically wounded but somehow survived, and has now been repaired with cybernetics, including a robotic right arm. He has no memory of what caused his injuries; his father John, a General in the US Army, tells him that his wounds were the result of a devastating electrical fire on board his ship two weeks previously. He claims that the fire also killed the rest of Sam's team. Sam and his family, consisting of his father John, his mother Mary, and his younger brother and sister Mark and Karen, live among the farms on the outskirts of North Star, a rural farming town typical of middle America. The town and its surroundings are revealed to be part of a space station, with extensive modern military and research facilities located within the levels beneath. There has been a massive increase in the military presence during the weeks Sam has been unconscious, and the families of the men killed on his team have all mysteriously left the station. Sam and John descend into the lower levels, so that Sam can have additional rubber skin grafted onto his incomplete robotic arm. While underground, Sam discovers that an area labelled "Sector C" is under tight military lockdown. After the operation, Sam is debriefed by his superiors, including a Dr. Rand from the military's scientific research division, although he remembers nothing of the accident that nearly killed him. As they leave the underground facility, Sam sees a bodybag fall from a military truck departing Sector C, and discovers inside an android that has been totally eviscerated. That evening, at a bar in North Star, it becomes clear there is hostility between the locals and the military. Several farmers complain that soldiers have been confiscating their livestock. The following day, Sam returns to the military labs and attempts to view the video his team recorded on their fateful mission, but is quickly rebuffed. On his way back to the surface, Sam bumps into a member of his supposedly dead team, still alive and now working the gas pumps in a large underground garage. He discovers that the man has been lobotomized. Sam returns to the labs and demands at gunpoint to be shown the recordings. The tapes show his team being torn apart by a Xenomorph aboard the Sulaco. Sam confronts his father regarding the deception, but his father claims he only lied to him for his own protection. Undeterred, Sam sneaks aboard a military truck that collects several pigs from a nearby farm that night and rides it into Sector C. He ends up being tipped into a large chamber where he discovers all the confiscated animals are being intentionally impregnated by Facehuggers. After narrowly escaping several Facehuggers and a dog Alien, Sam flees through the ventilation system. He oversees his father being injected with something in one of nearby laboratories, before watching a presentation being given to the military command by Dr. Rand regarding the Xenomorphs. She shows how the Xenomorph's DNA is able to assimilate that of any other creature, and can even absorb and reform metals. She claims to have successfully domesticated the Xenomorphs, proposing to use them as a biological weapon, but as soon as the example subject is released from its restraints it brutally kills her, before turning on the audience. Some of the spectators manage to escape, but many others, including Sam's father, are trapped in the room with the creature when the doors automatically seal. Sam returns at the head of a squad of soldiers and sneaks into the room alone while the others attempt to break through the door. He discovers that his father and a military Sergeant named Chong are still alive, hiding beneath some corpses, but many of the other victims have been spun into cocoons and are apparently transforming. The Xenomorph responsible is dying, apparently of natural causes. Sam rescues both Chong and his father just as the cocoons hatch, revealing adult Xenomorphs. The soldiers burst in, but discover the creatures have already broken through a wall and escaped. The soldiers pursue the Xenomorphs, but many of the military personnel, including Chong, are killed by explosive decompression when acid blood breaches the station's hull. The remaining Xenomorphs flee across the station's outer hull, and re-enter beneath the huge dome that covers North Star on the surface. They immediately assault the local population, starting with the remote farms surrounding the town. After Sam rescues his family from their home, they quickly regroup with the others in town and arm themselves. The Xenomorphs, now numbering in the hundreds, attack. After a protracted battle, the humans emerge victorious, although the victory is a pyrrhic one. In the aftermath, it is decided to load as many women and children as possible onto the station's only shuttle and send them ahead to the incoming rescue ship, while the remaining survivors wait for help to arrive. As they wait, Sam's father, John, begins to look unwell. It is revealed that the injection Sam saw him receiving in the labs contained Xenomorph genetic material. Suddenly, John undergoes a monstrous transformation, tearing the skin from his body and becoming a new form of human/Xenomorph hybrid. Worse still, a mosquito that bit him moments earlier has also transformed, and its now infecting animals all over North Star. The situation deteriorates further when a Xenomorph chicken lands in the town's reservoir, contaminating the water supply. As Sam and his family flee, the town begins to collapse in on itself. Along the way, they are attacked by a huge Xenomorph, consisting of twenty human/Xenomorph hybrids all fused together into one enormous amorphous creature. Sam, Mary, Mark and Karen manage to outrun it before reaching the remaining ship on the station, a small fighter craft, as the entire structure beneath them begins to tear apart and reform. Unfortunately, the ship sits on the far side of a chasm and they cannot reach it. The mutated John reappears and prepares to attack, but Sam pleads with his father's remaining humanity; the creature relents, lifting his family gently onto the shuttle. They take off, and behind them the disintegrating remains of the station fuse with John and the remaining Xenomorphs to become one giant biomechanical creature. Aboard the shuttle, Sam puts his family into hypersleep and records a final distress message for the incoming rescue ship. Suddenly, the shuttle itself comes alive, itself infected by the Xenomorph virus. The creature that was the space station reappears, closing in on them fast, forming into a colossal mouth. Sam and his family don spacesuits, and before ejecting themselves from the transforming fighter craft, Sam fires its nuclear warheads. The resultant explosion kills both Xenomorph creatures. Sam, Mary, Mark and Karen drift in space as the rescue ship arrives.
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