author : Pat Cadigan

The Sulaco, on its return journey from LV-426, enters a sector controlled by the “Union of Progressive Peoples,” a nation-state engaged in an ongoing arms race. U.P.P. personnel board the Sulaco and find hypersleep tubes with Ripley, Newt, and an injured Hicks. A Facehugger attacks, and the commandos narrowly escape, taking what remains of Bishop.

The vessel continues to Anchorpoint, a space station and military installation the size of a small moon, where it falls under control of the military’s Weapons Division. Boarding the Sulaco, a team of Colonial Marines and scientists is assaulted by a pair of Xenomorph drones. In the fight Ripley’s cryotube is badly damaged. Hicks and Newt are awakened, and he begins to hear rumors of experimentation taking place on Anchorpoint—the cloning and genetic modification of Xenomorphs. The kind of experimentation that could yield a monstrous hybrid, and perhaps even a Queen.