Arthur Dallas (Earth-9791)

"Ripley, this is an order. Open that hatch right now, do you hear me?"

- - Arthur Dallas to Ellen Ripley

Captain Arthur Koblenz Dallas was the commanding officer of the commercial freighter Nostromo, participating in the vessel's 79 missions. He captained the ship during its final voyage in 2528 following its encounter with a xenomorph on Acheron, which led to the destruction of the ship and the deaths of all crew members, with the exception of Ellen Ripley.

Early life
Arthur Koblenz Dallas was born on February 27th, 2497, on Wolf Point, Bliss. After attending a local high school, he grew up to study engineering at Beilecki University, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2520. He eventually moved to the Lippincott Aeronautics University, where he gained his piloting license. He eventually became the executive officer of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation commercial freighter Nostromo in 2524, and two years later he became its captain.

Final voyage of the Nostromo
"My usual science officer has been replaced – no reason given. The new guy is more than capable, I'm sure, but only getting two days' notice for this kinda thing is shitty."

- - Arthur Dallas Two days before the Nostromo left Thedus, its science officer was replaced with Ash, secretly a synthetic sent undercover by the Office of Naval Intelligence as a part of the ship's crew. While Dallas held no grudges, he considered the changing of a crew member right before a new mission to be highly suspect and unacceptable. Before the Nostromo's crew entered cryosleep and jumped to slipspace to return to Earth, Dallas sent his ship's log to Sevastopol Station.

After Mother, the Nostromo's shipboard artificial intelligence, detected a signal coming from Acheron, in the Zeta Reticuli system, it awoke the crew from their cryosleep and stopped the slipspace transition midway their route, on June 16th, 2528. After Samuel Brett and Dennis Parker proposed they left the signal and continued their route, Dallas pointed out to the Weyland-Yutani regulations to investigate the signal. Despite his willingness to carry through the regulation, he was fearful himself of a signal in such a distant colony, believing it to be a possible pirate trap.

After the Nostromo's Shaw-Fujikawa translight engine became damaged by the dust that the ship generated when entering Acheron's atmosphere, Dallas ordered Parker and Brett to manually fix the engine, while he, Thomas Kane, and Joan Lambert went to check the source of the signal. After one hour of walk, they discovered a derelict that had crash-landed on the surface of the moon, alongside its deceased pilot inside, to which Dallas showed interest in. After Kane was attacked by a Facehugger when he investigated the cargo of the ship, Lambert and Dallas took their fallen crew member and rushed towards Nostromo, where Ellen Ripley refused to open the ship's hatch and let them enter, citing health protocol. Her order was undermined by Ash, who allowed them to enter, and upon Dallas' arrival, he ordered the ship to go back to space once the slipspace had been mostly fixed by Parker and Brett.

Massacre on the Nostromo
"Uh, Lambert, am I clear? I wanna get the hell out of here."

- - Arthur Dallas to Joan Lambert After the Facehugger attached to Kane's face died, Dallas proposed a final meal before the crew entered in cryosleep and performed a slipspace jump again, only for a Chestburster to erupt from Kane's chest during the celebration, killing their crew member and escaping towards the ship. Later, the Alien emerged from its hiding spot and killed Brett, leading Dallas to theorize it had been hiding in the Nostromo's ventilation ducts to move around. Arthur then devised a plan someone, armed with a M7057 flamethrower and a motion tracker, entered the ducts in order to flush the creature into space. While Ripley volunteered to do it herself, Arthur outranked her captain and elect himself to go while the other crew members would monitor his motion tracker to track down the xenomorph. Before he proceeded with the plan, Dallas accessed Mother in order to gain advice to use against the Alien, but was unsuccessful in getting any.

Once he entered the air duct, Dallas ordered Ripley to close all other ducts that lied behind him, which would prevent the Alien from trapping him, but also block both of their escape routes. The motion tracker malfunctioned, which forced him to pause, and he started to become terrified of the tight corridors and the creature. After the motion tracker returned to work, Lambert picked the Alien's signal, as it rapidly approached Dallas. In panic, he he rushed towards the same direction, where he was seemingly killed by the Alien. Dallas' M7057 flamethrower was later recovered by Parker, who found no sign of his body.

Death


"I'll get you out of here! Kill me... please... I don't... I can't take it anymore."

- - Ellen Ripley and Arthur Dallas

Dallas was not killed, but in fact captured by the xenomorph and brought to the Nostromo's cargo hold, where the creature established a small hive and harvested both him and the remains of Brett to form a Proto-Gravemind, which started to mentally torture Dallas in search of information and to become a fully grown Keymind. The two of them were later found by Ripley. Dallas was still resisting the Proto-Keymind's powerful mental torture, which wanted information of worlds to spread its infection. There, Dallas informed Ripley that he could not resist for much longer, and begged her to kill them both. Crying and reluctant, she eventually burned them to death with a M7057 flamethrower, killing the two and the Proto-Keymind in the process.

Personality
"I don't trust anybody."

- - Arthur Dallas to Ellen Ripley Dallas was a laid-back captain, although he deeply cared for his entire crew and saw them as friends more than co-workers. He was receptive and willing to listen to ideas and opinions said by his crew, although he became annoyed whenever Samuel Brett and Dennis Parker brought up they wanted higher payment. He was unable to make important decisions, citing the whole reason he even became a captain had more to do with his politics rather than the leadership aspect, and for reason he believed to be barely in charge of the Nostromo. This was showcased whenever Dallas was forced to make hard decisions, leading to rushed, poorly thought out, and unwise plans and decision-making. His most glaring mistake was the allowance of Thomas Kane inside the Nostromo with the Facehugger on his face, as opposed to following the quarantine procedures of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which eventually allowed the Alien to birth at the ship and kill the entirety of its crew.

Despite his failures, Dallas showed bravery in the face of facing the xenomorph, refusing to let other crew members enter the ship's ducts to kill the creature, something he did out of a hidden guilt over the death of his friends. After being assimilated by the Proto-Gravemind]], Arthur resisted the creature all he could, until the pain was too much, asking Ripley to kill him.

Equipment
Dallas carried a laser pistol while exploring the surface of Acheron in his IRC Mk.50 Compression suit, but never used it. When he decided to take out the Alien in the Nostromo's air ducts, he armed himself with a M7057 flamethrower.