Alien

by Tim Lebbon

  Behind her, someone sneezed, uttering a quiet, “Oh!” afterward. Amanda had used to sneeze like that—a gentle sound, followed by an expression almost of surprise.

  * * *

  Amanda is eleven years old. Ripley knows because her daughter wears an oversized badge on her denim shirt, all purple and pink, hearts and flowers. I bought her that, she thinks, and although she can remember accessing the site, ordering the card and badge and the presents she knew Amanda wanted for her birthday—remembers the small smile of satisfaction when she confirmed “place order,” knowing that everything her daughter wanted was on the way—there is also a sense of dislocation, and the knowledge that this never happened.

  Family and friends are there. And Alex, Ripley’s ex husband who left them when Amanda was three years old and never, ever came back. No calls, no contact, no sign at all that he was still alive; Ripley only knew that he was through a friend of a friend. Inexplicably, even Alex is there, smiling at Ripley across a table laden with birthday food and cake, with an “Isn’t it a pity we never made it” smile.

  And Ripley, also inexplicably, smiles back.

  There are other faces, other names, but they are clouded in memory, ambiguous in dreamscape. There’s singing and laughter, and Amanda smiles at her mother, that honest, deep smile of love and adoration that makes Ripley so glad to be alive.

  The birthday girl’s chest explodes open. The “I am eleven” badge flicks from her shirt and goes flying, skimming across the table, striking a glass of orange juice and tipping it over. The denim shirt changes from light to dark. Blood splashes, staining everything, and when it strikes Ripley’s face and blurs her vision she wipes it away, staring at her juddering daughter—no longer beautiful, no longer pristine—and the thing clawing its way from her chest.

  The monster is impossibly large. Larger than the innocent body it bursts from, larger than the people sitting around the table in a frozen tableau, sitting, waiting to be victims to the beast.

  Ripley goes to scream.

  * * *

  It had been an instant, that was all, leaving a sense of dread which also slowly faded. But not entirely.

  The person who sneezed was still drawing the postsneeze breath, and Hoop glanced back past Ripley, not even concerned enough to tell them to keep quiet. Ripley caught his eye and he paused, frowned, seeing something there. But she offered him a tight smile and he went on.

  Ten minutes, maybe more. They stalked forward, Hoop taking the lead with the spray gun that might or might not work against the aliens, the others following close behind. These tunnels were less well formed, and Ripley supposed it was because this was one of the mining tunnels of level 9, not the spine passageway itself. But she was worried. If there had been alien evidence back in the main passageway, wasn’t there a good chance that they’d probed everywhere?

  Even up?

  The deeper they moved, the more signs of mining emerged. The tunnel widened in places, low ceilings shored with metal props as well as being melted hard. Walls showed evidence of mechanized excavation, and scattered along the tunnel were heavy, wheeled, low-profile trolleys that must have been used for disposal of the excavated material. They passed a spherical machine with several protruding arms tipped with blades and scoops.

  Ripley wondered why they hadn’t been using more androids down here, and realized that she hadn’t actually asked. Maybe some of those who’d died in the dropships had been androids.

  Of those survivors, it was only Sneddon who had proved her humanity to Ripley. And only because she had been challenged.

  It didn’t matter. Her issues with Ash—and whatever Ash had become, once his AI had infiltrated the shuttle’s computer—should not jaundice her view of these people. They were all fighting to survive. Even Sneddon, with her obvious fascination for the deadly creatures, only wanted to get away.

  Paranoid, much? Ripley thought. But at the same time, she wasn’t sure that paranoia was a bad thing right now.

  Hoop had moved perhaps ten yards ahead. Suddenly he stopped.

  “Here,” he said.

  “Here?” Ripley asked.

  “Emergency tunnel?” Lachance said from directly behind her.

  She scanned the tunnel ahead, around Hoop and beyond, but though the lighting was adequate, there were still just shadows. Maybe one of them hid the entrance to a side-tunnel, doorway, or opening. But she thought not. All she could see was...

  Something strange.

  “No,” Hoop breathed. “Here. This is what they found. This is where it changed.” He sounded off. Awestruck, scared, almost bewitched. And for a painful, powerful moment, all Ripley wanted to do was to turn and run.

  Back the way they had come, as fast as she could. Back to the staircase, then up, then to the Marion where she could hide herself away in the Narcissus, live the final moments of her life snuggled in the stasis pod with Jonesy and memories of better times.

  But her memory already seemed to be playing tricks on her. She was starting to doubt that there had ever been better times.

  She went forward until she stood next to Hoop, and the others followed.

  “Through there,” he said. “Look. Can’t you feel it? The space, the... potential.”

  Ripley could. She could see where he was pointing—a widened area of tunnel just ahead, and a narrow crevasse at the base of the wall on the left—and although there was only the faint glow of light from within the crack, the sense of some wide, expansive space beyond was dizzying.

  “What is it?” Sneddon asked.

  “It’s what they found,” Hoop said. “A nest. Those things sleeping, perhaps.”

  “Maybe they’re still down there,” Kasyanov said. “We should go, we should—”

  “If they were, they’d have heard us by now,” Lachance said.

  “Then where are they?” Baxter asked. None of them replied. No one had an answer.

  Hoop started forward toward the wall and whatever lay beyond.

  “Hoop!” Ripley said. “Don’t be stupid!” But he was already there, kneeling and looking down into the crack. She could see cables now, leading into it, proof that the miners had gone that way, too. Hoop slid through, flashlight in one hand, spray gun in the other.

  “Oh, my God,” he said. “It’s huge!”

  Then he was gone altogether. There was no sign that he had fallen or been pulled through, but still Ripley was cautious as she approached the hole, crouching low and aiming the charge thumper.

  She saw light moving in there, and then Hoop’s face appeared.

  “Come on,” he said. “You’ve got to see this.”

  “No we don’t!” Kasyanov said. “We don’t have to see anything!”

  But the look on Hoop’s face persuaded Ripley. Gone was the fear she had grown used to so quickly. There was something about him now, some sudden, previously hidden sense of wonder that almost made him a different man. Perhaps the man he was always meant to be.

  So she dropped to her behind and eased herself down into the crack, feeling for footholds and allowing Hoop to guide her down. She dropped the last couple of feet, landed softly, and then moved forward to allow the others access.

  The breath was punched from her. Her brain struggled to keep up with what her senses were relaying—the scale, the scope, the sheer impossible size and staggering reality of what she was seeing.

  The vast cavern extended beyond and below the deepest part of the mine. The miners had done their best to illuminate it, stringing light cables along walls and propping them on tall masts across the open spaces. The ceilings were too high to reach, out of sight in places, like dark, empty skies.

  And they had also climbed over the thing that took up much of the cavern’s floor.

  Ripley found it difficult to judge just how huge the place was. There was no point of reference. The thing inside the cavern was so unknown, so mysterious, that it could have been the size of her shuttle or on the scale of the Marion. At a rough guess she would have
put the cave at two hundred yards across, but it could have been less, and perhaps it was much, much more. She thought the object was some sort of carved feature, hewn from the base rock long, long ago.

  She had the impression that it had once been very sharp, defined, each feature clear and obvious. But over time the structure had softened. Time had eroded it, and it was as if she looked through imperfect eyes at something whose edges had been smoothed over the millennia.

  She heard the others dropping down behind her, sensed them gathering around her and Hoop. They gasped.

  “Oh, no,” Kasyanov said, and Ripley was surprised at the wretchedness her voice contained. Surely they should have been feeling wonder. This was amazing, incredible, and she couldn’t look at the structure without feeling a sense of deep awe.

  Then behind her, Lachance spoke and changed everything.

  “It’s a ship,” he said.

  “What?” Ripley gasped. She hadn’t even considered that possibility. Buried almost a mile beneath the planet’s surface, surely this couldn’t be anything but a building, a temple of some sort, or some other structure whose purpose was more obscure.

  “Down here?” Hoop said. There was silence again as they all looked with different eyes.

  And Ripley knew that Lachance was right.

  She was certain that not all of the object was visible—it quite obviously projected beyond the edges of the cavern in places—but there were features that were beginning to make sense, shapes and lines that might only be of use in a vessel built to fly. The entire left half of the exposed surface might have been a wing, curving down in a graceful parabola, projections here and there seemingly swept back for streamlining. There were cleared areas that might have been entrance gantries or exhaust ducts, and where the object’s higher surfaces rose from the wing, Ripley could see a line of hollows seemingly punched into the curved shell.

  “It’s not like any I’ve ever seen before,” Lachance said quietly, as if afraid his voice might echo out to the ship. “And I’m not sure. But the more I see, the more certain I become.” No wisecracks now. No casual quips. He was as awestruck as the rest of them.

  “The miners went close,” Hoop said. “They strung those lights up and all across it.”

  “But we’re not going to make the same mistake, right?” Baxter said. “They went closer, and look what happened to them!”

  “Amazing,” Sneddon whispered. “I should be...” She took a small camera from her hip pocket and started filming.

  “But how can it be all the way down here?” Kasyanov asked.

  “You’ve seen enough of this planet,” Hoop said. “The storms, the winds, the moving sands. This looks old. Maybe it was buried long ago. Ages... ten thousand years. Sank down into the sand, and storms covered it up. Or perhaps there was some way down here, a long time back. Maybe this is the bottom of a valley that’s long-since been filled in. Whatever... it’s here.”

  “Let’s go,” Baxter said. “Let’s get the hell—”

  “There’s no sign of those aliens,” Hoop said.

  “Not yet, no! But this must be where they came from.”

  “Baxter...” Kasyanov started, but she trailed off. She couldn’t take her eyes off the massive object. Whatever it was, it might have been the most amazing thing any of them had ever seen.

  “Ripley, is this anything like the one your guys found?” Hoop asked.

  “Don’t think so,” she said. “I wasn’t on the ground team that went there, I only saw some of the images their suit cameras transmitted. But no, I don’t think so. That ship was large, but this...” She shook her head. “This looks enormous! It’s on a much different scale.”

  “It’s the find of the century,” Sneddon said. “Really. This planet’s going to become famous. We’ll be famous.”

  “You’re shitting me!” Baxter replied. “We’ll be dead!”

  “There,” Lachance said, pointing across the cavern. “Look, where it rises up into what might be the... fuselage, or the main body of the ship. Toward the back. Do you see?”

  “Yeah,” Ripley said. “Damage. Maybe an explosion.” The area Lachance had pointed toward was more ragged than the rest, smooth flowing lines turned into a tattered mess, tears across the hull, and a hollow filled only with blackness. Even this rough, wrecked area had been smoothed somewhat over time. Dust had settled, sand had drifted against torn material, and everything looked blurred.

  “Seriously, I think we should get back,” Baxter said. “Get ourselves away from here, and when we reach home, report everything. They’ll send an expedition. Colonial Marines, that’s who need to come here. People with big guns.”

  “I agree,” Kasyanov said. “Let’s go. This isn’t for us. We’re not meant to be here.”

  Ripley nodded, still unable to take her eyes from the sight, remembering the horrors of her waking nightmares.

  “They’re right,” she said. She remembered her crew’s voices as they’d approached that strange extraterrestrial ship, their undisguised wonder. It had quickly turned to dread. “We should leave.”

  And then they heard the noise behind them. Back through the tumbled section of cavern wall, from where they’d just dropped down. Back in the tunnels.

  A long, low hiss. Then a screech, like sharp nails across stone.

  A many-legged thing, running.

  “Oh, no,” Kasyanov said. She turned and aimed her plasma torch at the hole they’d climbed down through.

  “No, wait—!” Hoop said, but it was too late. Kasyanov pulled the trigger and a new sun burst around them.

  Ripley fell back, a hand clasping into her collar. The others retreated, too, and the plasma burst forged up through the crack, rocks rebounding, heat shimmering the air all around in flowing waves. Ripley squinted against the blazing light, feeling heat surging around them, stretching her exposed skin, shriveling hair.

  She tripped and fell back, landing on Hoop where he had already fallen. She rolled aside and ended up on her stomach beside him. They stared into each other’s faces. She saw a brief desperation there—wide eyes, and a sad mouth—and then a sudden reaffirming of his determination.

  She stood behind him as Kasyanov backed away from what she had done. The plasma torch emanated heat, its inbuilt coolant system misting spray around the barrel. Before them, the rocks glowed red, dripping, melted, but they were already cooling into new shapes. Heat haze made the cavern’s wall seem still fluid, but Ripley could hear the rocks clicking and cracking as they solidified once more.

  The crack they had crawled through was all but gone, swathes of rock melted down across it and forming a new wall.

  “We can hit it again, melt through!” Baxter said. “Kasyanov and me, we can use both of the plasma torches to—”

  “No,” Sneddon said. “Didn’t you hear what was through there?”

  “She fried it!” Baxter protested.

  “Wait,” Ripley said, holding up a hand and stepping closer.

  The heat radiating from the stone was tremendous, almost taking her breath away. Though she could hear the sounds of it cooling, and the whispered bickering behind her, she also heard something else. The opening back up into the mine was now almost non-existent, just a few cracks, and if she hadn’t known it was there she wouldn’t have been able to find it. But sound traveled well.

  “I still hear them,” she whispered. “Up there.” The sound was terrible—low screeches, the clatter of hard limbs on stone, a soft hissing she didn’t think had anything to do with the heat. She turned and looked at her companions, standing around her with their mining tools, their weapons, raised. “I think there’s more than one.”

  “There must be another way back up into the mine,” Hoop said.

  “Why must there?” Kasyanov challenged.

  “Because if there isn’t, we’re fucked!”

  “If there isn’t, we can make one,” Lachance said. “Just not here.” He turned and looked around the edges of the cavern, gaze con
stantly flickering back to the huge buried structure.

  Ship, Ripley said, reminding herself of the impossible. We’re standing a stone’s throw from an alien ship! She had no doubt that’s what it was. Lachance’s assessment made sense, and so did the idea that the aliens had come from here.

  She had seen all this before.

  “There has to be another way in,” Hoop said, a hint of hope in his voice. “The lights are still lit. The plasma torch fried those cables behind us, so there must be others coming in from elsewhere.”

  “Let’s track around the cavern’s edges,” Sneddon said, pointing. “That way. I reckon that’s in the direction of the second elevator, don’t you?” She looked around, seeking support.

  “Maybe,” Lachance said. “But the mine tunnels twist and turn, there’s no saying—”

  “Let’s just move,” Hoop said. He started walking, and Ripley and the others followed.

  To their right, the mysterious buried object. To their left, the cavern’s uneven edges. Shining their flashlights against the walls did little to banish the shadows. They only crouched deeper down, further back. And it wasn’t long before Ripley started to sense the greatest danger coming from that direction.

  She held her breath as she walked, trying to tread softly so that she could hear any sounds coming from the shadowed areas. But there were six of them, and though they all tried to move as silently as possible, their boots made a noise. Scrapes on rock, the grumble of grit being kicked aside, the rustle of clothing, the occasional bump of metal on stone.

  Hoop froze so suddenly that Ripley walked into him.

  “We’re being stalked,” he said. His choice of word chilled her. She wasn’t sure those things could stalk.

  “Where?” she whispered.

  Hoop turned around, then nodded toward the cracks, fissures, and tumbled rocks that made up the edge of the cavern.

  “Yeah,” Sneddon said. “I get that feeling, too. We should—”

  A soft hiss, like pressurized air escaping a can.

  “Oh shit,” Kasyanov said, “oh shit, now we’re—”

  Baxter scrambled back, his bad ankle failed beneath him, and he must have had his finger on the plasma torch trigger. White-hot light erupted from the weapon, scorching the air and splaying across the low ceiling at the edge of the cavern. Someone shouted. Ripley threw herself against Kasyanov just as a hail of molten rock pattered down around them. Someone else screamed.