Art by Javier Saltares, Dark Horse Comics A world. Not Earth, but similar. A golden sky. A pretty sunset. A man and woman walk through a wheat field. Talking pleasantly, enjoying their stroll. They run their fingers through the tall grass. Their smiles fade to disturbed curiosity when they come upon a Strange Shape on the ground. A crouching humanoid form. Organic, but somewhat mechanical in appearance. An elongated head. A tail, curving over the front and down the back. The arms open. The tail unfurls. An eyeless faces looks up at them. Lips open to form a terrible grin. Thick saliva begins to flow through bared teeth. Without a word, the couple turn and run. Panting, they turn their heads to see if the thing is following. They see nothing. The man grabs the woman's arm at the sight of another Strange Shape, inexplicably in the direction they had just come from. They turn to find a new path, but other Shapes begin to rise. They're surrounded. ...
What follows is my personal canon for the Space Jockey and the origin of the Xenomorph as seen in Alien, with some influence from Prometheus. Foreseeing their eventual extinction over the next few thousand years, the Space Jockeys send their ships to the furthest reaches of their known galaxy. Each ship is tasked with finding a habitable world to colonize. A prehistoric planet Earth is found by one of these ships. It's determined to be an ideal world for terraforming. There's one problem: the planet is already inhabited by a pre-industrial race of humans. Specimens are collected and taken back to the homeworld for study. There, the Jockeys design their plan. After years of experimentation, the humans' genes are edited into the DNA of a species of parasitic organism, to make the humans a viable host for it. Research ! The union of the two species creates a new one, an Alien xenomorph that will be used as a biological weapon to eliminate the human presence on Earth. D...