Author's Note: This is the first fan-fiction story or any story for that matter that I have ever submitted, it has been close to 20+ years since I have written anything, so the story may be a bit rough towards the beginning. But I hope that you do enjoy my little take on the alien's universe.

Disclaimer: I do NOT own aliens or any copy written material to do with aliens.

You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you?

A perfect organism.

Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.

I admire its purity. A survivor…..unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusional of morality.

Ash: Science office, USCSS Nostromo.

xxxxx

The massive gas giant, Allterus 7, hung in the cold void of space, a massive maelstrom of reds, greens, and blues that blended and swirled together to create a beautiful if not violent collage of colors in the upper atmosphere. Storms raged across its surface, some for countless centuries, lighting danced and streaks across the surface illuminating massive spots in the storms, some bolts dwarfing small moons and planets.

While Allterus 7 was nothing unique as far as gas giants go, it had been chosen by the Belthor Gas, Mineral and Mining Company or BGMMC as most referred to it as, for their foray into the deeper and uncharted depths of space. The Allterus system had been a vital chance to secure the BGMMC's foothold into the new developing sectors of space as more and more expeditionary ships probed deeper and deeper into the uncharted depths to lift the veil of the unknown.

In the minds of the company execs, it was a golden chance to finally rise from the lower ranks and start to build up to be on par with the more predominate mining companies that held so much sway and power over the newer and poorer mining companies.

Darrius station had been the start to that rising ladder, the first rung, in what was supposed to be a very tall ladder of success and profit. Massive bulk mining ships would be sent out to the asteroid fields to locate the mineral rich rocks and bring them back to the station to be pulped down and the valuable minerals extracted. Equally large gas ships would skim just below the upper atmosphere collecting the raw gas from the giant planet, once the tanks were full the ships would return back to the station transfer the raw gasses to be separated, process and then stored for later use or sale.

All in all, it was, at least in the exec's minds, a very well run machine. The reality was an entirely different matter altogether. Darrius station had been cobbled together on what could amount to less than a shoestring budget, many of the stations primary and secondary subsystems had been bought either second hand or from surplus suppliers and had been either refurbished or retrofitted to fit the needs of the station. To the station managers and crew, it was nothing less than a total and complete nightmare to keep the station together and keep the quota of gas and ore running on time.

The BGMMC had issued payout contracts up to five times the normal rate to fill the workforce as quickly as possible, the demand had been met within record time however the work conditions were appalling as everyone had found out as soon as they had stepped onto the station. Injury and fatalities were almost commonplace from the start.

In less than a year after the station when online, the first slew of accidents and deaths started to plague the station. The worse was when an outer bulkhead failed due to metal fatigue, collapsing and depressurizing a section of the station, venting over three dozen personal into space, the bodies were never recovered.

In the ten years since the station went operational, the injuries and fatalities had skyrocketed to the point that the station reputation was that of a death machine, chewing up workers almost faster than could be replaced. The execs of BGMMC would, of course, downplay the incidents deeming them human error. Everyone on the station realized that sooner or later everything would go south, sadly most of them would never even see it happen when it did.

xxxxx

The station that orbited Allterus 7, as large as it was, did not even come across as a speck compared to the massive size of the gas giant as it slowly hovered around the planet. If anyone had even been able to zoom in on the station, they would not have even seen the three figures desperately making their way across a 3-kilometer long catwalk from one of the ore and gas processing towers to another.

One of the three men, Shawn McNeal was gripping the railing as tight as he could as he and the other two men slowly made their way across the massive space catwalk from ore processing tower two to tower three. Moving as fast as they possibly could. The only thing that he could hear was the sound of his laborious breathing inside the space suit and the low hum of the life support system that was recycling the air and water supply within.

The bulk of the space suits and the zero G made moving quickly more than a daunting task. The point man, a foreman at one of the main ore processing towers, who was given the nickname "slam", more for his after-hours antics and wrestling techniques then his management style had taken the lead and was making it his duty to get them to an escape shuttle as fast as possible.

That morning had started off well enough, it wasn't until a few hours into the first shift that the first warning signs happened. The station had its own personally, anyone that had worked there long enough knew the normal creaks, groans and usual noise that came from working in ore and gas refinery.

A massive rumbling followed by multiple explosions in the distance the first telltale signs that something had gone horribly wrong. No one had known how bad it was until the alarms started to blare and the order to evacuate the area had been given. The evacuation had been orderly for the first few minutes until the massive gas pipes that lined the area started to rupture venting out the deadly gas into the area. From there it degraded into total chaos with personal stampeding trying to get to a safe area.

Slam, Thomas, and Shawn had been working near one of the emergency airlocks performing normal maintenance work when all hell had started to break loose. Slam had a good enough head on his shoulders to keep calm when the gas started to erupt into the area he had rushed the three of them into the airlock and sealed it down and prepared for a very impromptu spacewalk. Neither one had any idea exactly how bad the situation was; though they knew the way the gas was pouring in outside the airlock that it was bad enough.

The coms were flooded with emergency calls and cries for help to the operations center. Opts had only replied that they were doing everything they could to get the crew in the affected areas to safety and that everyone needed to evacuate the area.

Once outside they started their ascent up the refinery tower hoping to get to one of the upper airlocks or one of the catwalks that connected to the towers. It wasn't until a massive explosion happened several dozen levels below them that all three of them realized just how dire it was. The mined and refined gas had caught fire and was spreading throughout the station, and worse of all it was a heavy chemical fire that even the vacuum of space would have a difficult time extinguishing.

As best as they could they were able to make their way to one of the long catwalks that lead from their current tower to one of the neighboring towers. Once on the catwalk Shawn turned to look back down at the tower, he felt a pit form in his stomach. Fire plumes were starting to erupt, spewing the liquid chemical fire out into space. Tower two was burning from the inside out as well as was everyone inside the massive metal structure.

"Shawn!" Slam yelled, "We have to fucking go, right now!"

"They're all burning." Shawn stammered, still not sure if what he was seeing was even real or not. He was hoping that it was all a bad dream that he would soon wake up from.

"And there's nothing we can do to help them." Slam replied, "This tower is going to go up, and we need to get the hell out of here, there are shuttles on tower three that we can use to get away from here. This station is about to go up in a fireball and if we don't move our asses we'll go right along with it. Now will you please fucking move."

Shawn mentally shook himself back reality, trying to get a grip on the situation that they were in. It wasn't a matter of if the tower would go up it was a matter of when, and once that happened, the station would be ripped apart by the massive explosion.

The three of them had made it across two kilometers of the catwalk before a wide area message squawked through the coms units on their suits.

"This is Darrius station to all personal, proceed to evacuate immediately, I repeat evacuate immediately. All hands get to the escape shuttles and pods. Any available ships in the vicinity, this is a general mayday, request immediate rescue and retrieval, I repeat this is a general mayday, we request immediate rescue and retrieval. We have massive fires spreading throughout the station, unable to contain, situation catastrophic, I repeat situation catas…" The voice was cut off only to be replaced with static.

Shawn saw a brilliant flash or red from the right of his view, turning his head to look just as a fire plume erupted from the center part of the station where the operations center had been. A few moments later, the mid and upper portion of tower two blew out sending a massive explosion of multi-colored fire and debris into space, sections of the station tumbled, still on fire, spinning out into the void.

Shawn stared at it for a few moments, his eyes darting back and forth from the burning tower to the debris, the most frightening thing about the whole experience, was the dead silence. The one thing that frightened him out about space was the absolute total and complete silence, no matter how chaotic or destructive something was going on in space, it was always silent.

The station started to buckle and twist from the sudden and violent explosion, the catwalk that the 3 men were on, also started to bend, twist and deform as the towers became misaligned. It looked as if the third tower was starting to list to the left.

"Primary stables offline, engaging auxiliary stabilizers" A monotone computer voice came in over the headsets."

"BRACE FOR SHOCK WAVE!" Slam screamed, wrapping his arms around the handrail, the other men followed suit holding on as tight as they could.

Shawn took in a deep breath not even realizing he was holding it until the shockwave hit. He had experienced what were very minor shockwaves in space; normally they would felt like a rough shove that went through one's whole body. This was more like someone had taken a very large section of bulkhead and hit him with it. He grunted, exhaling as the wave hit and passed through him forcing his body into the railing. It felt like his whole body had been turned into mush for that brief moment. Coughing and tasting blood in the back of his throat, he prayed that there were no internal injuries even as a cold chill took his whole body.

As the catwalk shifted with the wave and he could feel something colliding with it from behind violently jolting it. Looking back behind him, Shawn saw that a large section of the catwalk was gone, ripped away by a section of debris; Thomas's lower half was floating just above the mangled walkway. Glancing up, Shawn saw the rest of Thomas's torso slowly floating away, the man's lifeless face and eyes frozen in a mix of agony and terror.

"Oh fuck." Shawn gasped, turning toward Slam, "Thomas is gone."

Slam turned around, looking at the two halves of his former coworker and friend, slowly drifting off in different directions. Slam just stared for a few seconds before turning around. "We've got less than a kilometer left to go, we need to more right now, do not stop for anything. Once we get to the shuttles we make our way to one of the ore or gas ships for pickup."

Both men had only taken a few hundred steps before another a bright flash illuminated the area below them. Looking down, the stark realization came across them both; the large gas mains that ran between the towers were starting to rupture, igniting and burning, thin jets of fire were appearing all over the heavy set pipes as sections started to melt. It would only be mere moments before the mains went up like a roman candle.

"RUN!" Shawn yelled. Both men started to move as fast as they could, even in the zero-G environment, the bulk of the space suits made it difficult to move very fast. At best they could push off and glide using the catwalk as a safety guide to make sure they didn't go and tumble helplessly into space.

Seconds later all hell was let loose, the mains started to expand, then blowing out, section after section erupting like a massive firecracker string, bright flames, and debris was hurled out as the mains could no longer contain the pressure released its contents in a beautiful but deadly and violent chain reaction.

A large section of the main ripped into the catwalk in front of Shawn just missing him by only a few feet, staggering back a few feet, all he could see was a wall of burning, gray metal as it passed. Slam was nowhere to be seen.

"SLAM, DO YOU COPY!?" Shawn screamed into his headset. "SLAM RESPOND NOW!"

The only thing that he could hear was muffled gasps and groans which were replaced with silence shortly after.

"SLAM!" Shawn watched as the section of pipe tumbled out into space, growing smaller and smaller with each passing second. A cold pit formed in his stomach sending a chill down his spine, the stark realization that he was probably going to die in this god awful place hit him with full force.

At first, it didn't even register as he was violently jolted from the catwalk by a large piece of the exploding main. As he tumbled out into the cold deep, the view rotated at first the burning station, the black of space than the massive gas giant then back to the station which grew smaller and smaller with each rotation.

Please read and review, comments and constructive criticism are welcomed, all I ask is that you keep it polite and respectful.