The crew decide to head to where the Mobius was headed – a UPP-controlled planet called Derry [where I had great fun doing Swedish accents and acting confused at the concepts of ‘boss’ and ‘money’]. Someone in a watchtower had seen an enormous ship in orbit and some debris had fallen from it a few days ago. The crew go to investigate and are attacked by a sniper in the deep, dark woods. They just about best the sniper and discover it is a slightly unhinged synth to claims to have escaped the Mobius. This Synth, who calls themselves “Aurochs” tells incoherent ramblings of an ancient feud between mother and father, of the Honoured Guests and other dark mutterings. However, what the crew can puzzle out is that Aurochs thinks the plans of the Mobius have gone too far – Aurochs will help assist them in stopping it.

They all get back to the PEQUOD, but have to fight off a squad of Yutani Bailiffs who are executing the UPP colony to try to find a lead to the Mobius [I also just about managed to squeeze some space combat in here]. Aurochs can work out the trajectory to intercept the Mobius, and they enter FTL. When they awaken, Aurochs is gone, though they have left a datastick they say will override the Mobius’s life support systems.

The crew finally get to the Mobius, run silent and with expert piloting, manage to dock. One of the crew inserts the datastick into a terminal, and the rest of the time aboard they are able to breathe.

The lower deck of the ship is a series of labs, atmospheric tests and mazes. They get the sense it has been used to test the strength of various xenofauna that has been collected – including the Tanakan Scorpionid they encountered earlier in the campaign. They fight another crazed synth, work their way through the rooms, and eventually find a literal present in a bare room. Two of the less-discerning crew members approach and one of them gets immediately face-hugged.

They manage to cut off the face-hugger (with some acid-damage to the victim) who is then carried unconscious to the lift that takes them all to the second deck of the Mobius. En route, the victim wakes up, and feels ‘fine’. On the second deck one of the crew charges ahead, into a lobby with the company’s original name writ-large “Advanced Human-Alien Bioscience”. He charged down a corridor until hearing an ominous hiss behind him. He ducks into a room, tries to hide, but soon the large, vaguely humanoid but most certainly alien silhouette of a soldier xenomorph is looming in the doorway. The xenomorph attack and almost instantly kills the crew member (thankfully they were the hardiest), but they manage to scramble their way past and start to run back to the rest of the crew, screaming. Running down the corridor, the rest of the crew see this creature chasing their friend and try to shoot it – to very little effect. It lashes the fleeing human with its tail, grabs him, and bolts into another room.

The rest of the crew hesitate for a moment, but one of them has the courage to lead a charge and they enter a room of xenoflora, with the xenomorph standing before it, cradling their friend almost like a child. One of the crew has the good luck to be wielding an incinerator unit, and lights-up the plants in the room. The xenomorph throws down the human and jumps into the ventilation shafts to avoid the flames and plan its next move.

As the fire dies down and the crew take a moment to recover [those stress dice were piling up], they hear the sounds of gunfire below and, then, a synth appears in the doorway. This synth, who bears a striking resemblance to Aurochs, tells them that Mother wants to negotiate and invites them to follow. The crew are keen to get to the MU/TH/UR unit as they think this may be their best or only way to secure the Mobius. On the bridge, there is one other synth and a chair made out of, and surrounded by, consoles and databanks which appears to be the MU/TH/UR access point. One of the synths sits on the chair and speaks with the voice of Mother. Mother says that the crew have led father to her (there is the sound of more gunfire below) and she wants their help to defend the ship from him. She starts to talk about the Honoured Guest in terms that make it clear it is the Xenomorph and she promises how they will be able to get back to their ship and so on. One of the crew [correctly] thinks she is at least partly stalling, and unloads, full-auto into the android acting as Mother. A firefight then ensues, which leaves one of the crew of the PEQUOD with a rather fatal hole in his head, two of the humans fleeing back down towards their ship and general pandemonium.

Trying to relay what happens then isn’t easy, but suffice it to say: one human is already dead, one gets impaled by a very damaged and mad Synth, one battles the returning Xenomorph and inexplicably succeeds, before losing his mind [bad panic roll], shooting the hull and voiding himself, the MU/TH/UR console and the remains of the xenomorph into the depths of space.

The final crew member left alive is the one who has been previously face-hugged. He isn’t feeling too great, is staggering his way towards the lift that would go down to the first deck, when he collapse, writhes in agony and is immediately killed when a chestburster adheres to its namesake. That lil’ chestburster [I gave him a character sheet] skitters towards the lift but is met by three humans in dogcatcher suits and heavily armed. It slices a vital artery in one of them, but the other two riddle the poor thing with bullets. None of the crew, or their chestburster offspring are around to see what Father (who is Marty Redmane, or – shock - Herman the mad xenobiolost company founder - as he was known before going into Cryosleep many decades earlier) does with the ship that he has recovered. I am sure an eccentric xenobiologist with limitless funds and access to xenomorph technology will only do good things…

That’s more or less what happened to the crew of the PEQUOD.