Synopsis/Details
Learning of an imminent rescue mission, Walter, the sole surviving crew member on a remote orbiting space station, embarks on a frantic clean-up operation. Bodies are dumped into space, blood-spattered surfaces are cleaned and surveillance logs erased. All the while, Walter is bickering with a difficult AI (Dave) over responsibility for all the deaths and disappearances, while Ripley, the station cat looks on. When the rescuers arrive, Walter is evasive, saying only that the station personnel left to investigate a strange radio signal emanating from the planet below. But soon the first deaths occur among the rescuers – one crewman has a fatal fall when he trips over the station cat; a second death occurs when an airtight hatch closes unexpectedly. A third crewman is decapitated by a collapsing solar array and a fourth explodes in vacuum when her faceplate shatters.
Suspicion falls on Walter while the rescue ship AI fights with Dave for control of the station; and all the while, Ripley the cat is watching.
Believing the station is under a curse and realising that everyone on board is going to die, the remaining crew attempt to leave in a shuttle, leaving their now-unhinged Commander behind. The shuttle though is damaged trying to make its escape and rather than docking with the distant rescue ship the two vessels collide and are destroyed.
The ship Commander, still on the station, plans to call for another rescue mission but Walter tries to prevent her. He knows that sooner or later everyone on the station dies. And in the end he has to kill her to stop her. He is left once more, with only the AI and the station cat for company, and bodies everywhere. Just as he was in the beginning.
