Act II - Boots on Kwan

[SpectralDragon87]

Alvarez leans into Hooper. "This feels like a bomb waiting to go off." She keeps her eyes moving waiting for something to quiet the alarms blaring through her.

<Tag Hooper>

[Pale Rider]

KWAN ORBITAL FUEL DEPOT — MARKET CONCOURSE / SECURITY CHECKPOINT FOUR
RELENTLESS ARRIVAL: T-MINUS 70:51

The security officers moved on, but the checkpoint did not return to normal.

Overhead cameras continued to pivot in short, mechanical increments, lenses tracking faces through the crowd. Every few seconds another traveler stepped beneath the scanner arch and a pale identification frame flashed across the security monitor. Green. Green. Green.

Then red.

A refinery worker carrying a lunch tin stopped dead when two officers intercepted him. Thirty seconds later they released him with the same embarrassed explanation.

Wrong person.

Across the concourse another alarm chirped.

Another false match.

The lead security officer swore under his breath and returned to the terminal.

“Control, this isn’t calibration drift. We’ve got multiple bad positives coming through Four.”

Static answered before a supervisor’s voice came across the speaker.

“Define multiple.”

“Five in nine minutes. Different subjects. Same warrant package.”

The officer glanced toward the pedestrian traffic, lowering his voice without realizing how clearly it carried beneath the station’s ventilation hum.

“That’s not possible unless somebody changes the comparison tolerances.”

There was a pause.

“Hold position. Corporate Security is sending someone down.”

The officer’s expression tightened.

“Corporate? This is station infrastructure.”

“Not anymore.”

The channel went dead.

A moment later the security terminal refreshed.

For less than two seconds, the public-facing display changed before the officer could close it.

BIOMETRIC INTERCEPT PACKAGE — PRIORITY BLACK

Beneath it were several grainy identification photographs.

The first was a heavyset man with close-cropped hair.

The second showed a thinner subject with a beard.

The third appeared almost nothing like either of them.

What connected the photographs was not the faces.

It was the metadata.

SOURCE: W-Y SPECIAL ASSETS DIVISION

Then the screen blanked.

The checkpoint supervisor arrived from the adjoining security office, an older woman wearing station-gray armor rather than corporate black. She leaned over the terminal and began pulling diagnostic logs.

“What did they upload?”

The younger officer shook his head.

“Don’t know. The package came through authenticated. We assumed fugitive warrants.”

“You assumed?”

“It had Colonial Marshal formatting.”

The supervisor stared at him.

“Marshals don’t route warrants through Weyland-Yutani.”

That silenced the group.

She keyed several commands into the terminal.

Another window opened.

This one stayed visible longer.

A scrolling list of timestamps and scanner locations filled the screen. Checkpoints Three, Four, Seven, Twelve. Cargo Ring. Docking Control. Medical Transit. Airlock Access.

The same biometric package had been pushed across nearly the entire depot.

The supervisor scrolled farther.

“Someone isn’t looking for a specific face.”

One of the officers frowned.

“Then what are they looking for?”

“Close matches.”

She enlarged a section of the search parameters.

Height range. Age range. Cranial proportions. Military posture indicators. Gait analysis. Shoulder width.

Not identification.

Filtering.

The supervisor’s face hardened.

“They’re searching for trained personnel.”

A warning tone sounded from the terminal.

REMOTE ADMINISTRATIVE ACCESS DETECTED

The screen froze.

Then every diagnostic window vanished.

The Weyland-Yutani logo replaced them.

The supervisor struck the side of the terminal.

“Control, I just lost local authority.”

No answer.

She tried again.

“Control?”

Only static returned.

Behind the checkpoint, a service door opened.

Two men stepped through wearing dark corporate security jackets. Neither displayed station credentials.

One carried a portable terminal.

The other carried nothing visible at all.

The supervisor straightened.

“This checkpoint is under Kwan Security jurisdiction.”

The man with the terminal barely acknowledged her.

“Not anymore.”

He connected his device to the scanner console.

Across the overhead monitors, the normal passenger routing information disappeared.

New identification frames began appearing around pedestrians throughout the concourse.

Red boxes moved from face to face.

Searching.

The corporate agent watched the data populate his screen.

“Restart the sweep.”

The second man surveyed the crowd.

“Priority?”

The answer came immediately.

“Military profiles first.”

Somewhere deeper inside Kwan Depot, another security alarm began to sound.

<Tag Delta Dawgs>

[Corporal Hicks]

"Shit, shit, fuck," muttered Hooper under his breath. He turned to Alvarez as if speaking to her, but really he was relaying info into his headset. "Cerberus Two and Three, detected an audio alarm, advise."
<Tag command/anyone>

[eyeball]

Paulson and fenrir squad where obviously in a different section as no alarm could currently be heard.

“Is it for you? Or something else?” He checked.

[LT_Chun]

Henniger leaned over and shook his head to clear it.

"Command, Cerberus Actual, what's our current status over?"
<tag command>

[Pale Rider]

*Gaston scanned the systems. His jaw torquing as he found himself standing on the outside looking in. From what he could see there didn't seem to be too much information. But then he continued checking the through things and his eyes alighted on something new.

"This is Command, I think I have figured out the alarm. Its a a warning signal for an in coming vessel. I recommend finding secure locations near..."

He flipped a few buttons. "Pope, see if you can locate the incoming vessels callsign and where she is docking. Cerberus and Fenris Actual hold until further data is acquired."

<Tag Marines>

[eyeball]

“Roger, hold position until further notice.”