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Ensign (Midshipman) Decker Sinclair brings a handful of popcorn to her lips as she divides her vision between the two-dee holomovie playing on the screen in the wardroom and the slightly older young woman sitting next to her on the couch. Both of them are clad in tanktops and sweats and sit with their bare feet curled up under them.
Both their group commander and squadron commander had volunteered to stand watch, so that they could share some off time together, since they were close in age and in rank. Occasions that were exceedingly rare, as they were the two senior officers on the ship itself.
The lights are low and the suspense was building ever since the crew of the tug and the refinery had landed and EVA’d to an unknown ship. Both she and Lieutenant Siobhan Lincolnton had kept up the banter about how unrealistic everything was.
Until something had face-hugged one of the crewmembers, the XO, Kane. They had both fallen silent as the build started, at least after Siobhan had suggested that’s what XOs were for.
Especially to her XO.
They had settled down; Kane had come back to consciousness and was eating his weight in food, until he had started to retch.
The bowl of popcorn had flown into the air, accompanied by two sets of screams as the creature had burst from Kane’s chest, showering his crew members with his blood.
Before the xenomorph had scampered down the hall.
Decker realizes that both of them are hugging each other tightly, their breathing labored and rapid. Siobhan, the captain of a Federation warship, is looking through her slitted fingers at the screen.
They break apart, then find their drinks. They are unable to look at one another.
The captain and XO of a Starfleet vessel.
“I knew something was going to happen,” Siobhan says in her pronounced English accent, after a time.
“Oh, bullshit,” Decker says in her finest California dialect.
They return to watching the crew of the Nostromo hunt the xenomorph.
Until it begins to hunt them.
Then the critique of the crew’s performance begins again. The final takeaway for both of them was that everyone should’ve listened to Ripley, the warrant officer.
Chandra and Kaylin look at the two young women lying asleep on the couch, resting against one another. They shake their heads at the disaster that is the wardroom.
They gaze at the two sleeping women. Chandra lifts a blanket and pulls it over them both.
Content to let them be two young women—twenty and twenty-three years old, respectively—instead of skilled officers responsible for over two dozen lives.
At least for another few hours.