That was what happened to the alien-human hybrid back on the Auriga. Call could still see the desolate, betrayed look on its face as its guts were yanked out into the vacuum.
It was screaming something that sounded a lot like “Mama … ” And Ripley, who had engineered the hybrid’s destruction, could only look on—bearing the guilt of having destroyed something that placed its trust in her.
Hearing the grating retraction of a hatch door, Call looked back over her shoulder to see Johner, Krakke, Rama, and Simoni file into the bay, one after the other.
Vriess, meanwhile, had removed a Wal-Mart 2000 deluxe laser torch from its slot on the side of his chair and was adjusting it to the aperture and level of intensity he desired. He had used the torch strictly for repairs to that point, but it possessed higher settings as well.
The little man urged his chair forward until he got to the slightly convex surface of the dome. Then he ignited the torch, eliciting a seething red beam less than a centimeter in width and as many as twenty in length.
“Here goes,” he said.
The surface of the dome hissed and spit, putting up a fight. It took Vriess almost a minute to burn his way through the reinforced plastic, in the process creating a smelly, black plume of smoke. Then he moved his beam to the left, extending the hole he had made into a cut about a meter long.
“Any way to speed this up?” asked Johner.
“Why?” asked Vriess, wiping away a bead of sweat that had meandered into his eyes. “You got somewhere to go?”
“Yeah,” said Johner. “A hot date with your mom.”
The little man chuckled as he began to cut a line downward. “Check your pockets when you’re done. Mom could see the dumb ones coming a mile away.”
Ripley didn’t say anything. She just stood there watching from the shadows, a hunter waitng for her prey.
Call, on the other hand, was peering past the torch and its smoking incision at the lush green world inside the dome, which was oriented at a ninety-degree angle to her and her comrades. It was an eerie feeling looking straight ahead at something that should be right have been beneath her.
It would be even stranger descending into it. She wondered at what point the ship’s gravity field would yield to that of the dome, and forward would suddenly become down.
Finally, Vriess embarked on his last cut—another vertical one, which would end at his starting point. It seemed to take longer than the others, maybe because it was aiming for a specific target.
Call was tempted to ask what Johner had asked about speeding things up. After all, the more time they spent up there, the more time the alien had to mature.
However, the dome was made of immensely strong material, or it couldn’t have withstood the difference in pressure between its enclosed atmosphere and the vacuum beyond. It was a credit to Vriess’s skill that they were getting through at all.
“All right,” he said, deactivating the torch and replacing it on his chair. “Looks like we’re in.”
Krakke came forward with a suction handle and clamped it onto the dome in the middle of Vriess’s cuts. Then he planted his feet and yanked—and with a squeal of grating plastic, pulled away a meter-wide square of the stuff.
Instantly, Call got a faceful of warm, wet air, redolent with a wild bouquet of perfumes. If she had ever smelled anything like it in her life, she had long ago forgotten.
“The place stinks,” said Johner.
“To you,” said Vriess, “everything stinks.”
While his comrades were exchanging remarks, Krakke carried the section of dome across the bay and deposited it in an unused corner. Obviously, it wasn’t as heavy as it looked. And yet, it had held back the airless night of space for decades.
They don’t make things the way they used to, Call reflected.
By then, Ripley had dragged the end of their extended chain over to the docking port. Drawing it into a coil, she reached back and flung it at the hole Vriess had made.
The chain looped through the air until it got into the dome’s gravitational field. Then it made a right-angle turn and plummeted, as any length of chain would have plummeted if dropped from a significant height, until it disappeared into the thick, green canopy of the jungle and—if they had estimated the distance correctly—pooled on the unseen ground below it.
That left one section of chain running from the heights of the cargo bay almost straight down to the aperture in the dome, and a second section running perpendicular to the first from the aperture to the jungle floor.
Call glanced up at the chain’s bitter end. It seemed to be holding just fine—an important consideration in light of what they were about to attempt next.
Naturally, Ripley went first. She was the strongest of them, the one with the most finely tuned senses, and the one with the most experience when it came to the aliens.
Three good reasons, Call thought.
Truthfully, Ripley could have negotiated the descent without even bothering with the chain. However, she would have crashed through any number of branches on the way down, and she didn’t want to reach the floor of the dome at a disadvantage.
So she took hold of the chain, swung her feet around it, and slid herself through the opening. Once inside the dome she continued to slide, albeit at a different angle to her observers.
Before she had lowered herself halfway to the ground, Johner followed her through the breach. Just beyond it, he looked back at Call and the others and said, “Wild.” Then he resumed his descent.
Call went third. Though Ripley and Johner had made the drop look easy, the android didn’t find it that way, as the chain was hard to grip with either her hands or her feet.
Nonetheless, she reached the treetops without incident. Looking up, she took a moment to regard the Betty—a dark and unlikely blotch against the heavens. It crowded out the sun, casting a dense black shadow on the landscape.
Krakke was coming through the aperture, bringing up the rear. Once Call saw that he was descending without trouble, she lowered herself into the canopy.
It was dark there, unexpectedly so. But then, the branches around her were heavily laden with leaves, and so close they blocked her view of everything beyond them.
Ignoring their intimacy, Call kept going. And after what seemed like too long a time, she emerged from the underside of the canopy. Her comrades were waiting for her on the forest floor, the end of the chain coiled between them.
There was no sign of the alien. But then, the android hadn’t expected there to be. You don’t get a glimpse of them, she thought as she reached the ground, until it’s too late.
“About time you got here,” said Johner. He was glancing this way and that, his rifle ready to swivel at the first sign of trouble.
“Sorry,” said Call. “I stopped to do some sightseeing. I haven’t seen a tree since we left Earth.”
He grunted. “Like I give a shit.”
Ripley didn’t say anything. She didn’t scan the place. She just stood there, her eyes narrowed ever so slightly, her razor-sharp senses on high alert.
The smell of wildflowers and tree blossoms was even stronger down there than above. Call had a chance to sample it as she slipped her weapon from her back and waited for Krakke.
He came into view a few seconds later, as silent as ever, and dropped the last few meters. The moment his heels hit the ground, Ripley gestured and said, “Let’s go.”
Call followed without comment, as watchful as her comrades. But as she searched for signs of the alien, she also did her best to appreciate the aesthetics of the place.
Because for all she knew, the trees around her only existed in that particular dome. And when the Betty pulled away, her mission there completed one way or the other, she would leave a gaping hole through which all the air would escape—taking much of the flora with it and killing the rest.
A pity, Call thought. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
Or so she had heard.
13
Benedict felt a warmth on his face that wasn’t there before. Shading his eyes, he opened them—and saw that the sun had moved beyond the pale of the tree looming over him.
Must have fallen asleep, he told himself.
Little by little, it came back to him. The Staghorn inventory. And of course, the sinjaba.
Benedict wondered how long he had been out of it. An hour? At least that, judging by the pit in his stomach.
Hope I haven’t missed dinner, he thought. Rolling over onto his belly, he pushed himself up on all fours. Then, laboriously, he got to his feet.
That was when he stopped. And turned to his left. And peered into the stand of mahogany trees.
For just a moment, he thought he had glimpsed something among the trees, sliding through the shadows. But now that he looked that way, he was less certain of it. Finally, he chalked it up to his hallucinogen-addled imagination and moved on.
Or at least, he was about to. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it again.
Chuckling to himself, Benedict affixed his flattened hand against his forehead for shade and tried to get a better look at the thing. It was definitely moving—slowly and languidly like a well-fed preying mantis, but moving nonetheless.
He smiled. There weren’t any oversized insects in the Domes—just the few tiny ones they needed to make the ecosystems work. So it can’t be an insect, he told himself. No way.
It had to be a branch moving in the breeze. Branches were all they had there in the Domes—branches full of leaves, branches full of needles, long branches and short ones. Branches in every goddamned place you look.
And the occasional human being. But Benedict was getting better and better at avoiding those. Turning off his comm unit helped. That way, he was never in contact when he didn’t want to be in contact.
Like now, for instance.
As he watched, amused, the thing in the shadows moved again. Or maybe it was a different thing this time. With the leaf-stuff clouding his mind, it was difficult for Benedict to be sure.
Get closer, you idiot, he thought good-naturedly.
Following his own advice, he found he could make it out, despite the shadows. It was dark, almost skeletal looking, and it stood on two stalks instead of one.
Like a man, he mused.
More likely, it was an intersection of two narrow tree trunks, joined by his mind into what seemed like a single structure. But it pleased Benedict to think of it as bipedal.
His smile broadened like a child’s. What can it be? Animal? Vegetable? Mineral? A pure product of his hallucinogen-soaked imagination, constructed out of thin air?
Delighted with the idea of a mystery, he moved closer to it. He just hoped he wasn’t disappointed when the mystery was solved.
* * *
Ripley and her companions had traversed two domes’ worth of terrain by the time they reached the dark octagonal entrance to the colony’s control center, so they were glad to see how easily the door slid open for them.
Moving inside, they found themselves in another dimly lit passage, just like the ones that mediated between one domed environment and the next. Then the door opened at the far end, and they saw an older man with a mane of gray hair.
It was the administrator with whom Ripley had spoken earlier. What was his name? Philipakos.
“Welcome,” he said, his voice more fluid than it had seemed over the comm link.
“Where are the others?” Ripley asked.
Without hesitation, Philipakos jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Back there.”
“Let’s see them,” she said.
After all, it might have been a trap. Hadn’t Philipakos refused to grant Ripley and her people access to the domes until she said she would find a way in on her own? Even botanists could be dangerous creatures if they felt threatened.
“This way,” said Philipakos.
He led them up a short ramp into the center of a round, well-lit facility. Its observation ports afforded Ripley a three hundred and sixty degree view of the immediately surrounding domes.
Beneath nearly every port was a computer workstation. Only one of them was manned at the moment. The other colonists—three women and two men—were standing in a group at the side of the center opposite the ramp.
All five of them regarded Ripley with the same awkward mixture of relief and wariness. Obviously they still didn’t trust her, even after she had shown them she knew what she was talking about.
“I hope you’ve got the safeties on those burners,” said the man at the workstation, a brawny specimen whose brown safety officer’s jacket had his name embroidered on its breast.
Shepherd. It was a fitting name for someone in charge of security. Especially when he was dealing with so helpless a flock.
“They have no safeties,” said Ripley, which was the truth. Krakke had made them that way.
Shepherd looked skeptical. However, he wasn’t the important one in the group. Neither was Philipakos. The colonist Ripley needed to find was the one with the embryo growing in his chest—the one who would soon give birth to a monster.
Sniffing the air, she tried to figure out which of them it was. But she couldn’t discern the scent. That meant the afflicted one was somewhere else.
“The one who had the spidery thing on his face—where is he?” she demanded.
“He’s dead,” said Philipakos.
It was the truth. Ripley could tell.
“How long ago?” she asked.
“About the time you contacted us,” he said.
One of the other men stepped forward. He was thin, balding, with sharp features and a voice to match. “You’re going to hunt it down,” he said, “right?”
Ripley shook her head. “Not a chance.”
The sharp-featured man turned to Philipakos. “I thought they were going to get rid of this thing?”
“You don’t understand,” said Ripley. “The alien is the hunter here. The best thing we can do is try to escape it in one piece. Right now, it’s still early in its maturation process. If we move quickly, we’ll get out of here alive.”
“You mean leave?” said one of the women—a hard-looking individual with close-cropped hair the color of sand. “Just like that? You know how long we’ve lived here?”
Ripley eyed her. “I know how long you’ll live if the alien gets a hold of you. This isn’t a termite infestation. We’re talking about something more deadly than any predator you’ve ever imagined.”
She could recite Ash’s assessment of the species word for word. It was imprinted on her brain like all of her predecessor’s memories.
The alien is a perfect organism—superbly structured, cunning, quintessentially violent.’ With your limited capabilities you have no chance against it.
“And,” Ripley added, “they’ve wiped out colonies a damned sight bigger than this one.”
“Why haven’t I heard of any of these colonies?” asked the woman with the sand-colored hair. “Why weren’t we warned?”
“Because,” Ripley said as reasonably as she ever said anything, “there are people who don’t want you to know. But that discussion will have to wait. First we need to get you out of here.”
“This is our home,” Philipakos explained. “We can’t abandon it without exploring every option open to us.”
“You already have,” said Johner, who had managed to stay quiet to that point. “You just don’t know it.”
“Wait a minute,” said Shepherd, undeterred by Johner’s brawn. “Doctor Philipakos is raising a legitimate question.”
“Doctor Philipakos can kiss my hairy ass,” said Johner. “We didn’t come here to hold your wittle hands. We came to evacuate the place, and that’s what we’re—”
Ripley cut him short with a gesture. “What Johner is saying,” she translated, “is that you’re not in a position to consider alternatives. You have to leave now.”
The safety officer started to protest, but Philipakos held a hand u
p. “It’s all right, Shep. These people know what we’re dealing with better than we do.”
“What if we want to stay?” said the fourth man, a fellow with dark skin and darker hair.
Philipakos turned to him. “I’ve already decided that we’ll go, Cody.”
“You have,” said the dark-skinned man, “but what about the rest of us?” He looked around the room. “This is our home. Maybe it’s worth a little risk.”
“Just what I was thinking,” said the sandy-haired woman.
Ripley felt like telling them to suit themselves. But she couldn’t leave them there. Not when the aliens needed hosts, and humans had proven themselves to be so capable in that regard.
“Listen,” she said, “what happened to your colleague wasn’t an accident. It was meant to happen. And it’s going to happen again, one way or another, if you try to stay.”
She looked from one of them to another. “Some of you must have seen what happened to him. The agony he was in. The way the creature exploded from his chest.”
One of the women flinched. She had dark hair pulled into a ponytail and light-colored eyes.
“We’re getting you out of here,” Ripley said, brooking no arguments. “It’s the only option that makes any sense.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Philipakos. Then he seemed to remember something, and said “Son of a bitch.”
Ripley had a feeling she knew why. But then, she had been down this road before. “Who’s missing?”
“Benedict,” said Philipakos. He looked concerned and exasperated at the same time. “He didn’t respond to my summons, probably because he’s fallen asleep.”
“Asleep?” Johner echoed, a note of derision in his voice.
“He does that,” said the administrator, looking not the least bit happy about it.
“I’ll find him,” said Shepherd, getting up from his chair and starting for the ramp.
As he walked by Ripley, she grabbed his forearm. “Don’t bother. You won’t find him.”
The safety officer pulled his arm back, an expression of resentment on his face. “I hate to tell you,” he said evenly, “but you don’t give the orders around here.”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 14