The Nostromo was a spaceship in the movie Alien. The events aboard that ship directly impact the plot of Alien: Isolation.
The Creative Assembly have also recreated parts of the Nostromo shooting set and extrapolated other sections of it for the Crew Expendable and Last Survivor items of downloadable content for the game.
Summary[ | ]
The commercial towing vehicle Nostromo bore the registration code 180924609. She was an M-class star freighter owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation capable of towing large payloads between star systems.
During 2122, she was hauling a payload of oil in a mobile refinery from Thedus to Earth when she vanished without trace en route.
Crew[ | ]
At the time of her departure from Thedus in 2122, the crew of the USCSS Nostromo consisted of:
- Dallas, Captain
- Kane, Second Officer
- Ellen Ripley, Third Officer
- Lambert, Navigator
- Ash, Science Officer
- Parker, Chief Engineer
- Brett, Engineer
The crew also kept a cat, Jones, aboard the vessel.
Disappearance[ | ]
Publicly, the Nostromo's disappearance was chalked up to some sort of unforeseen object from space colliding with the craft, as it was never found until 57 years later past its disappearance. Weyland Yutani went through great trouble to cover up the ship's actual cause of disappearance, scrubbing flight recorders and transmissions made by the Nostromo as best they could.
The Distress Signal[ | ]
While en route to the Sol System, the Nostromo's on-board computer, MU-TH-UR, awakened its crew from hypersleep early to investigate a distress signal on the moon LV-426. The crew landed on LV-426, with the landing already being rough by causing a fire in the shuttle's cockpit, knocking out many key systems that while not vital to the ship's operation included the ship's surveillance system. Crew member's Kane, Dallas, and Lambert ventured out in EVA gear to the hostile environment of the moon, coming upon what seemed to be an ancient derelict. Inside the derelict, Executive Officer Kane was attacked by a small, spider-like alien creature, that compromised the integrity of his suit by melting the visor and attaching itself to his face. Violating quarantine procedure, the ship's Science Officer, Ash, allowed the reconnaissance team back on board despite Lieutenant First Class' Ellen Ripley's orders. The ship departed from LV-426, despite the fact several non-critical systems had yet to be repaired.
Alien Parasite[ | ]
Captain Dallas and Ash attempted to remove the creature from an unconscious Kane's face, to no avail as the creature would tighten the grip of its tail on Kane's throat when its fingers were lifted up from his scalp. Trying to cut the creature off, a welding torch was used on one of its fingers, causing its acid blood to spill out and breach the med-bay's floor, going through the floors of the Nostromo until stopping a couple floors down. Later, the creature detached from Kane's face by itself, deceased.
After the creature had detached, Kane was cleared as he showed no external symptoms or signs of it having done anything to him. The crew celebrated Kane's supposed good health with a meal. During that meal, however, Kane's chest exploded and an alien parasite emerged from his chest cavity. Chief Engineer Parker was prevented from stabbing the creature by Ash, as it slithered away into the bowels of the Nostromo.
Surviving Crew takes Extreme Measures[ | ]
One by one each member of the crew was eliminated by the matured creature, who had grown to be taller than the human survivors. Ash then attempted to eliminate Ripley by shoving a rolled up newspaper down her esophagus for discovering "Order 937". Ripley survived and was saved by other surviving members of the crew, Parker and Lambert. After taking down Ash, he was revealed to be a synthetic sleeper agent and his decapitated head revived to interrogate it. Ash elaborated on Order 937, which was to secure a specimen on the Xenomorph, the alien that had eliminated most of the "expendable" crew. After deactivating Ash, the 3 remaining crewmembers of the Nostromo, Lambert, Parker, and Ripley made the decision to overload the ship's reactor by removing its coolant to erase all trace of the creature and take their chances in the ship's shuttle, the Narcissus. While Ripley was prepping the shuttle for its flight, Lambert and Parker were ambushed by the alien while removing the coolant cylinders. Lambert froze in fear and was unable to do anything to combat it with her flamethrower before it killed Parker, and subsequently, her.
Ripley was then left completely alone (with the exception of the ship's cat, Jones). Forcing a self destruct of the Nostromo, she escaped the zone of the explosion just before it occurred. Ripley prepared to go into hypersleep with Jones before the alien revealed itself, having crawled into a hiding spot on the shuttle. Ripley was able to put on her EVA suit, and lured the alien out of its crawlspace before opening the airlock of the ship, jettisoning the alien out of the shuttle. The alien attempted to reenter through the engines, but was promptly burnt and thrown out by Ripley turning them on.
Aftermath[ | ]
Ellen Ripley recorded a final log of what happened, expecting to be picked up by the company in the next few weeks. Afterwards, the ship's disappearance officially listed all members as MIA, though the public consensus was that they were KIA. The Nostromo was the subject of many theories and articles on what exactly had happened to the crew, and, by extension, their ship. For the next 57 years the fate of the Nostromo was left a mystery to the public eye and (most) of the company. Before going into hypersleep on their way to the Sol System, Dallas transmitted the ship's report packet back to Sol, relaying it through Sevastopol Station.
Narcissus[ | ]
The Narcissus was the Nostromo's lifeboat and shuttlecraft. Though capable of interstellar travel, she bore hypersleep capsules for two crew only.
Flight Recorder[ | ]
The Nostromo's flight recorder is the primary plot device of Alien: Isolation. As the Narcissus bore its own flight recorder synced to the Nostromo's, it's presumed that the Nostromo somehow jettisoned its own recorder immediately before the detonation of its engines and payload. This would imply the device is significantly shielded against blast forces and possibly radiation.
It also appears that, given the presence of Ellen Ripley's final report and personal addendum on the Nostromo's recorder, the device included a receiving antenna allowing it to accept additional log data from the Narcissus until the shuttlecraft passed out of transmission range.
The recorder floated in space until the vessel Anesidora happened across it in 2137. After a detour, the Anesidora's captain took his ship to Sevastopol Station, using the recorder as a bargaining chip to convince Marshal Waits to break quarantine procedures and allow the Anesidora crew to board
When Amanda Ripley finds the flight recorder aboard Sevastopol, it is empty, barring a few corrupted files. However, further exploration of the station reveals that Seegson Corporation executive Ransome had gained access to the recorder and was decoding it for his own purposes. Ransome spread the audio logs of the Nostromo's crew across the station in separate secure data units so no one would realize what he was up to.
Marlow himself kept a copy of Ellen Ripley's personal addendum to Amanda aboard the Anesidora, allowing Amanda access to it shortly before Marlow detonated the engines of his own vessel. While the flight recorder's copy was lost in the explosion, there were numerous more aboard the station that Amanda could collect before the station plunged into the surface of LV426.
During the events of the DLC: Corporate Lockdown, Ransome secures a copy of one of the Nostromo's logs for use as a bargaining chip to secure a seat on the Torrens.
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| Locations | |
|---|---|
| Visited | Anesidora * Derelict * Sevastopol * The Torrens |
| Mentioned | KG348 * USCSS Nostromo |