There were invaders in her territory, violating the sanctity of her chosen environment with their impurity and their insolence. Compromising my nest with their presence. And for all the humanity in her genes, she couldn’t tolerate that.
The intruders had stopped in front of the engineering panel, their objective either to shut down the Betty’s propulsion system or start a feedback loop that would blow the ship apart. Those were the only two possibilities that made sense.
But Ripley wasn’t about to let either of them take place. With soft, patient steps, she closed the gap between her and the intruders, who gave no indication that they were aware of her presence.
After all, they had seen the door close behind them, so they had to be alone in the enclosure. It was that confidence that allowed them to focus on the engineering panel to the exclusion of almost everything else.
Their first mistake, she thought.
Ripley waited until she was within a few scant meters of the intruders. Then she said, in a voice untainted by the overwhelming hostility she felt, “You’re on my ship.”
Instantly they whirled, their rifles at the ready. But by the time they fired, filling the corridor with crackling bursts of electrical energy, Ripley was nowhere to be seen.
The invaders looked at each other. Clearly, they were puzzled by her disappearance. But then, she knew all the hiding places on the Betty—even the ones in plain sight.
It would have been easy for her to give the bastards a taste of their own electrical medicine and watch their half-burned bodies twitch to death. But Ripley hadn’t hunted in a long time. She had no desire to do this the easy way.
Snaking suddenly across the deck behind them, she grabbed one of the invaders by his ankle—and yanked. As he toppled, crying out in surprise, she swarmed over him and snapped his head back with a blow to the face. Then she rolled to the side to avoid a burner blast from his comrade.
With what must have seemed like deceptive speed, Ripley launched herself at her remaining adversary. To his credit, he got off another energy discharge—though not a good one—before she slammed his skull into the surface behind him.
As he hit the deck, Ripley dropped into a crouch, ready for anyone who might have entered unbeknownst to her in the last few seconds. But there was no one there. She relaxed.
Then, with a last glance at the intruders, Ripley headed aft.
* * *
It wasn’t easy for Call to resist looking up, but somehow she managed. Long enough, she imagined, for Krakke to raise his eyes over the level of the second-level catwalk railing and draw a bead on Call’s captor.
Any second now, she told herself.
Unfortunately, burners weren’t accurate enough to operate effectively at any real distance. From Krakke’s position, it was just as likely that he would burn Call as the intruder.
Which was why Krakke had chosen to arm himself with a different sort of weapon—one of his own making, which fired non-explosive, snub-nosed plastic bullets. If he hit his target, the impact would be more than enough to knock someone senseless; if he missed, the projectile would shatter against a metal surface, leaving the hull wall intact.
Call didn’t know where Krakke had picked up his knack for weapon design, but she was thankful he had. Now if he would only fire the damned thing …
But as the seconds passed, nothing happened. Finally, Call felt she couldn’t wait any longer. Turning her head, she glanced in Krakke’s direction—and got her arm wrenched up higher for her trouble.
“Don’t move,” said a surprisingly youthful-sounding voice behind her—the first she had heard from the intruder.
“I won’t,” she promised.
Her indiscretion had already told her what she needed to know. Krakke’s line of sight to his target was blocked by a web of hanging chains. The only way he could take out the intruder was if that angle changed—and Krakke, who was limited to the confines of the tiny catwalk, couldn’t substantially change it.
So it’s up to me.
Androids were more durable than human beings in many ways, but they were just as vulnerable to electrical shocks. A bolt from a burner, for instance, could scramble Call’s circuits as easily as it could the connections in a human nervous system—even if it was pointed at her head and not at the main processing unit where her consciousness resided.
But she couldn’t just stand there. It wasn’t only her survival that was at stake. It was the fate of her friends as well.
And our mission. That was more important than anything.
Suddenly, she drove her elbow backward into her captor’s ribs. Though her model wasn’t as strong as the previous generation of androids, she was more than strong enough to double the bastard over and send him stumbling backward.
Whirling, Call saw the intruder recover enough to take aim at her. Though he clearly hadn’t wished to harm her, he seemed willing enough to do it now that she was jeopardizing his mission.
Krakke! she pleaded, afraid that it would be the last conscious thought she enjoyed.
But before the invader could fire, something knocked him off his feet. Seeing his weapon hit the deck, Call dove for it and rolled to face her adversary.
But there was no reason for haste, it seemed. The invader lay there as still as a corpse. Looking up at Krakke, Call mouthed the word Nice. Then she stuck the intruder’s weapon in her belt, hid herself behind some cargo containers, and waited.
* * *
Johner had spent the last several minutes biding his time in the quarters he shared with Vriess, sitting on the bottom bunk where Vriess hated him to sit, an unlit cigar clamped between his teeth and a fully charged shock rifle cradled in his arms.
He could hear the intruders nosing through the other quarters down the hall, looking for their occupants. But of course, the dickwads weren’t going to find any.
And if all went well, they wouldn’t find Johner either.
Abruptly, he heard someone curse—and smiled at the sound. Music to my ears, he thought, getting to his feet.
Then he walked out of his room, the door accomodating him by sliding aside, and saw the black-garbed figures retreating in the direction of the cargo bay. They were too busy to pay much attention to him, but that would change soon enough.
Moving at a leisurely pace, Johner followed the pack down the corridor and watched them vanish through the opening at the end of it, the door closing in their wake. Without hesitation, he punched the stud in the wall that would open the door again.
As it slid aside, it revealed a bunch of the intruders— one more than Johner had followed there. The guy was gesturing for the others to follow him as he led them to a stack of containers.
Johner smiled to himself, shifted his cigar to the other side of his mouth, and then fired into the midst of the intruders. Impaled on a bolt of blue-white energy, the rearmost sonuvabitch jerked and collapsed.
It was then that the others noticed him standing there. Two of them dropped to their knees and began firing their burners, filling the doorway with a storm of blue energy.
By that time, Johner had withdrawn and laid his back against the intervening bulkhead. No sense mussing my hair, he thought, as he waited for the other shoe to drop.
Then he heard someone cry out—maybe two or three someones, in fact—and the bolts slicing through the doorway disappeared. He stuck his head into the room and reconnoitered.
As he had expected, the cargo bay was strobing with a crossfire of burner bolts. Call was on one side, shooting from behind a stack of containers. The intruders—the four who were still standing, at least—were on the other side, using what cover they could find.
Lousy odds, Johner thought with a chuckle. Though not half as lousy as they seem.
Taking advantage of the intruders’ preoccupation with Call, he pumped a few bolts at them. Instantly two of them whirled and returned fire, forcing him to swing back out of harm’s way again.
But a moment later he was back, lighting up the
cargo bay with his blasts. And because of that, Call got the chance to fritz an intruder with a blast of her own.
Three to one now, Johner told himself.
But not really. Because as he laid down another barrage, he saw one of the intruders turn and fire at his own comrade. A moment later, the bastard spasmed and collapsed.
Treachery, thought Johner. You gotta love it.
The intruder across the bay seemed to disagree. Forgetting about Call for a moment, he fired at the traitor— which left him ridiculously vulnerable. Johner wasn’t sure whose burst took the slimeball down—his or Call’s—but hell, they could argue about it later.
Lowering his rifle and walking into the room, he surveyed the carnage. Only one intruder was still standing. And as Johner looked on, the guy pulled off his headgear, revealing himself as Krakke.
“That’s a good look for you,” Johner told him.
As usual, Krakke withheld comment.
But Call, who was emerging from her hiding place, said, “We’re not done here, Johner.”
As if to underscore the concept, Ripley came through from the open doorway. She looked flushed, but in a good way.
“How was the hunting?” Johner asked her. “Rip anybody’s head off?”
Ignoring him, Ripley said, “We’re secure. Let’s go.”
And with that, she led the way through the open bay doors into the dimly lit cavity beyond.
* * *
Rama pushed the point of his hypodermic through the fabric of the intruder’s sleeve, injected a quick-acting sleeping concoction into the muscle below, and withdrew the needle. Then, placing it in a plexine bag dangling from his belt, he got up and advanced to the next unconscious figure.
Ripley had assured him that whomever she encountered in the engine room would remain unconscious for a long time. However, Rama wasn’t a risk-taker by nature. He didn’t like leaving loose ends lying about.
Which was why he had signed on with Ripley’s crew in the first place. It nettled him to know there were uncertainties of which he had never been aware, and he itched to eliminate them.
Anal, he thought, I know.
But it was Rama’s attention to detail that made him such an extraordinary engineer, even if he did say so himself. And it was that same meticulousness that had convinced Ripley to put him on her team.
So call me anal. Who gives a shit.
Ripley had a bit of the obsessive about her too. Otherwise, she couldn’t have set such a brilliant trap and turned the tables on the intruders. Had they known her better, they would never have believed they could pry open the Betty’s bay doors without her captain wanting them to.
Kneeling beside his next “patient,” Rama slipped another needle free from his belt, depressed the plunger just hard enough to expel a tiny drop of liquid from the aperture, then inserted it through the intruder’s shirt and into his flesh. He shuddered a little and murmured something.
It sounded like “Warn you.”
Rama smiled to himself. Apparently, Ripley hadn’t been as thorough as she thought. It was a good thing he had backed her up.
He couldn’t go with Ripley on her foray into the intruders’ vessel; that was the province of people like Johner and Krakke, to whom acts of violence came naturally. However, he would be right behind them to clean up whatever messes they left behind.
Like the one waiting for Rama in the cargo bay. Whistling a selection from Beethoven, he left the engine room and headed down the corridor to his next self-imposed assignment.
* * *
Ripley knew there was something wrong as soon as she reached the far end of the enemy’s ship’s airlock and set foot on the metal deck beyond.
It was too quiet in the stark, unmarked enclosure in which she found herself. Too full of echoes.
“What?” whispered Call, who knew Ripley as well as anybody.
Ripley frowned. “There’s no one here. No one alive, anyway.”
Johner made a face. “You sure about that?”
“Yes,” said Ripley.
Advancing to the cockpit door, which was just a few long strides away, she flung it open. Then she saw why the place was so ghostly still. The two figures in the cockpit were masked and clad all in black like their cohorts. But unlike the others they were lifeless, slumped awkwardly in their chairs.
“What the hell is going on?” Johner demanded, a rising note of anger in his voice.
Ripley moved into the cockpit and pulled the mask off one of the men. He had freckles, and red hair cut into a crewcut. Unless she missed her guess, he hadn’t yet turned twenty-two.
She felt his carotid artery and said, “No pulse. But no bleeding either.” She turned to the others. “My guess is they’ve been poisoned.”
“Why?” asked Call. Then she answered her own question. “If things didn’t go according to plan, they didn’t want to leave us anyone we could question.”
“What about those pricks back on the Betty?” asked Johner.
Ripley shook her head. “They’ll be dead too.” Then she followed her line of reasoning to its dark and inescapable conclusion. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Suddenly the dead men began to sink into their seats, the redhead’s skin turning dark and baggy-looking. “What the hell—?” said Johner, his head poked into the cockpit.
Ripley didn’t know how much time they had. Shoving Johner backward, she barked, “Now!”
Johner didn’t have to be told a third time. Neither did Call or Krakke. As the four of them bolted back through the ship for the airlock, Ripley cast a glance back at the dead men, still visible through the open door of the cockpit.
Men willing to die for something—she respected that. She had done it herself centuries earlier.
As she entered the airlock, she wondered how long they had before the intruders’ ship blew itself up. A minute? Two? If the enemy was willing to sacrifice human lives to preserve his secrets, he would surely be willing to sacrifice a vessel.
And if Ripley’s ship was still attached to her when she blew, the Betty would be destroyed as well.
“Call,” she said, once they were through the lock and into the cargo bay, “get those doors closed.” She stopped at the intercom grate on the bulkhead and punched the stud that would activate it. “Bolero, I need you to get us out of here as soon as the doors are shut.”
“We’re still attached to the hostile,” the pilot reported.
“Then do something about it!” Ripley snapped.
Meanwhile, the bay doors had begun closing the gap between them. They would be airtight in a matter of seconds.
“Brace yourselves!” Ripley called out, knowing that whatever Bolero did would be violent.
“I’m braced!” Johner shot back, his free hand wrapped around a mess of hanging chains. “What the hell are we waiting for?”
He was right. The doors were clamped shut.
Ripley punched the intercom button again. “Bolero!”
“Keep your shirt on!” came the impassioned response.
Abruptly the Betty jerked hard to starboard, slamming Ripley to the deck. She slid helplessly across it for a moment, then latched onto Johner’s extended hand.
“That’s just an appetizer!” Bolero announced over the intercom link.
As good as her word, she whipped the ship to port and then to starboard again, sending those in the cargo bay swinging like puppets on thick metal strings. But it felt to Ripley, who had grabbed some chains as well, as if they were still dragging the assault vessel.
Come on! she thought, knowing any moment might be their last.
Not that Ripley was so goddamned desperate to go on living. But with all they had done and seen in the last couple of years, they were too important to die.
“Frickin’ Bolero!” Johner growled.
As if on cue, the ship bucked even more savagely than before, subjecting Ripley and her chain-clutching comrades to a moment of weightlessness. Then the artificial gravity seemed to re
assert itself and Ripley felt her arm half-wrenched out of its socket.
But she hung on. And her instincts told her that they had removed the assault vessel from their hindquarters.
Just in time, too. Because a moment later, she felt a wicked vibration run through the cargo bay—the shockwave from the enemy’s act of self-annihilation.
“Badda-boom,” said Johner.
Ripley relaxed her grip on the chains and looked at her comrades. They all seemed reasonably intact.
“Somebody get hold of Rama,” she told them, “and tell him not to bother. His patients won’t be waking anytime soon.”
She was disappointed. If she had kept the intruders alive, she might have found out more about their organization and their orders. As it was, she and her people had preserved nothing but themselves.
It could have gone worse, Ripley supposed. But it also could have gone a lot better.
10
Simoni was lying on his bed, considering what to include in his latest journal entry, when he realized he wasn’t alone.
Swinging his feet around, he sat up—and saw Ripley standing there just inside the doorway, staring at him.
“When did you come in?” he asked.
“Some time ago,” she told him.
It gave Simoni the creeps that she had been standing there without his knowing it. However, he was too interested in the reason for her visit to worry a lot about anything else.
“To what do I owe the honor?” he asked.
“You’ve been wondering where we’re going,” she said, “and why that ship attacked us. And if there’s a connection between the two.”
“It’s crossed my mind,” he admitted.
“Maybe it’s time people knew what we know. Someone like you can tell them.”
“If that’s what you want,” he said, feeling like a starving man at a banquet table, “I’d be happy to oblige.”
Ripley frowned at him for a moment. Finally, she said, “You know what happened on the Nostromo.”
The Nostromo? he thought, surprised that she would bring that up. That was three hundred years ago.
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