ALIEN: Isolation

Casting Off

The next morning, (even though it was pretty hard to tell unless you had a watch, considering it's outer space) Ripley made her way to the station's hangar bay. There, she was greeted by Samuels, and two others.

One was a woman, about Ripley's age, maybe a little younger, who introduced herself as Nina Taylor. She was relatively pretty, thin, and very short. She wore rectangular glasses, and her hair was done up in a tight, brown bun. This, Ripley thought, was the perfect image of an uptight business woman, and sure enought, Taylor was a senior executive of Weyland Corp.

The next was a tall, rough seeming, red headed woman who introduced herself as Captain Verlaine, but didn't seem to want to share her first name, with ANY of the Weyland employees on board.

'It's good to have you on the Torrens,' Verlaine had said before promptly walking onto the ship, closely followed by the three passengers.

The torrens was a relatively large vessel, but was still a lot smaller than any of the stations around the solar system. It did, in it's interior design, quite closely resemble the interiors of the Nostromo and Sevastopol space stations. The Torrens was esentially the bridge, dining rooms, bedrooms, facilities and hypersleep chambers of the two large stations neatly made into a little ship.

The group got on through a portable stairway, not unlike those seen at airports, which rose up until it came to the ship's open airlock. The group of four walked in. The airlock was made of shiny metal, but the ship itself looked far more comfortable.

The airlock opened up to a hexagonal corridor. The floor was polished sparkly white, as were the seemingly cushioned walls, tinted with orange, here and there.

Verlaine pointed to the group's left.

'Down that hallway, there are two rooms. The room on the left is the hypersleep chamber, very nicely cushioned, I might add.'  The captain then jotted her finger forward a little, pointing to the right hand door. 'In there are your resting quarters, along with lockers to put possesions, and showers. You will find two doors in the same location on the other side of the ship, the outermost leading to a medical bay, and the innermost also leading to your resting quarters'

Ripley was at the back of the qeue. This all seemed quite procedural to her. Captain Verlaine must have done this enough times before, she thought to herself. But then again, it WAS her ship.

The group turned right, heading down the other end of the pristine hallway. Verlaine pointed to her left, to a mettallic white door, which, like most of the doors seen on spaceships nowadays, automatically open when sensing movement.

'In there,' she said, 'Is the dining room. As the name suggests, it's where everybody has their meals, and takes a chill pill. As such, I find myself in there constantly,' she said, smiling to herself at the chuckles that came from behind her.

Ripley looked in the small, triangular window of the door. The dining room was hexagonal in shape, much like the rest of the Torrens' interior, as well as the table sat in the centre of the room. There were two built in table length chairs seated around the table, curving as it did, with two gaps on either side, so people could walk in and sit down, rather than have to climbe over the chair.

Situated on the walls of dining room were self serve buffet style buckets, with lids on them. Printed labels were taped above the buckets with titles such as 'Porridge Oats' and 'Corn Flakes.' Ripley smiled at the quaintness of it all, before catching up to the group a little further up the hallway.

As the group walked on, the hallway abruptly turned diagonally inwards, so that it faced the outer middle of the dining room.

'And this,' said Captain Verlaine, turning to face her little 'tour group' whilst raising her arms, and walking backwards 'Is where all the magic happens.'

Verlaine spun back around and let the automatic door in front of her slide upwards. The hallway opened up onto a large, pentagonally shaped room. In the center of the room was a platform, on witch a table was situated, along with all manor of computer screens and keyboards. At the tip of the pentagon, which was the frontmost of the ship, was a large glass windscreen, looking out on the rest of the busy hangar.

'This is the bridge,' said Verlaine, though she could tell most of her visitors could probably tell that anyway.

Seated at the front was a man, with scruffy brown hair, and wearing a truckers cap. He was also asleep. Verlaine walked up to the man, without waking him up.

'This concludes our tour,' she said. 'If you require any assistance, feel free to ask me, or Tommy here,' she said, slapping her sleeping co-pilot on the back. 'You may now exit the bridge, through the dining room, she said, pointing to the door at the back of the room.

The group entered the dining room, placing bags down, and sitting down, begginning to unwind. Verlaine stayed at the door while Ripley, Samuels and Taylor did this.

'We leave in twenty minutes' said verlaine, smiling, before walking back to the bridge through the upward-sliding door, leaving the group to their thoughts.

'Well,' said Ripley, hopping up from her chair, and grabbing her duffle bag.

'I'll be in our quarters.'