She didn't move a muscle, afraid to blink, afraid to breathe. She remained motionless, waiting for the Newborn's attention to turn elsewhere, now that it was finished with Gediman's corpse.
The creature looked about the tank, at the milling Aliens, at the rendered corpse of its mother, at the still swaying Gediman. And then the massive head turned slowly and grinned hideously—at Ripley.
Slowly, the Newborn approached, spider-agile, creeping along the waste tank wall, using the resinous fibers for hand and footholds.
Ripley struggled to control her breathing, her fear. The closer the monster drew, the more clearly Ripley could see its features—which was not an advantage. The being's face was spattered with blood and pink brain matter, some of it stuck in its massive teeth. As it breathed into Ripley's face, the woman could clearly smell the fresh blood.
The monster was barely a handbreadth away from her face now. Ripley trembled, fighting to contain her fear, her instinctive urge to panic and bolt.
Part of her couldn't believe it had come to this. All the struggling. All the fighting. Would she have to go through it yet again, in some other incarnation? Would the malign thug of a God who'd ruled her various lives insist she keep getting reincarnated into the same nightmare over and over? Hadn't she earned a second chance in some other lifeform after all this?
The Newborn's mouth opened, and it extended a long, sinuous tongue. Ripley tensed, trying not to think about having her skull ripped off, her brain consumed.
The tongue snaked out, then ever so gently touched Ripley's face, cleaning off some resinous goo that had fallen there. The woman blinked, waiting for the inevitable. The creature licked her again, like some monstrous cat, over and over, cleaning her face, her neck, her shoulders of some of the waste and offal that had been smeared on her. Tenderly, the Newborn cleaned her. It moved slowly, careful not to pull at tender skin, or tug at strands of hair. Even its clawed, terrible hands were gentle where they touched her, as if checking for wounds, or to ensure that she was safe. The gestures were reminiscent of a faithful pet, a dog greeting its master at the end of the day, a cat begging to be petted.
And as the monster cleaned her face, and touched her body, as it denied her the death she had imagined, Ripley looked into eyes that were her shade of brown and saw something there.
That was when the telepathic connection slithered through, touching her mind, whispering to her of genetic bonds she could not deny. And then it was all right there. Her longing for the steaming warmth of the crèche, the strength and safety of her own kind. Just a moment before she had suffered the aloneness of her own individuality. But now she was given the chance, again, to join them, rejoice with them. She was in the crèche. She could reunite with the warriors, and serve as the Queen, nurturer of the Newborn. That was why she had lived.
Because this shell that was human, this Ripley, was the mother of them all. The first womb. The first warrior. And she had lived long enough to know it all, to share the glory with them. Ripley was the keystone of the hive. The nurturer of the crèche. The foundation of the Newborn.
This was the answer to the question she'd been asking. Why? This was why.
She gazed into the liquid brown eyes that could have been her own, and reached out a hand, placing it on the Newborn's skull. Her hand slid over the long, Alien head, patting it as she once had done to Amy's, stroking it as she once had done to Newt. This was her child, just as they were.
The Newborn uttered a soft mewling sound, and gazed at her, and Ripley felt the telepathic connection deepen, grow stronger. It was so different from the others, yet the same. But there was something more in this contact, something undeniably human. It was like being connected to a part of herself, a warped, malevolent part that was bonded to all her fierce self-preservation, all her intense determination.
The perfect organism.
Perfect for—?
And then a voice touched her from her memories, the memories the Aliens themselves had inadvertently given her. And she heard Newt's voice, just as she'd first heard it in the incubator.
My mommy always said there were no monsters—no real ones. But there are.
Ripley shuddered, still bombarded by the intensity of the Newborn's telepathic contact, at the terrible Alienness of the creature wanting her allegiance.
The Newborn parroted Newt's words. I knew you would come.
To hear that loving phrase from this travesty of a living being made her ill.
Then she heard Call's distorted, mechanical voice. "Why do you go on living? How can you stand it? How can you stand. . . yourself?"
"Not much choice, " she'd answered, believing that. She'd never had any real choice, not since she'd awakened from cryosleep on the Nostromo in the wrong part of space.
But she had a choice now. For once, she had a real choice.
She had asked Call, "Why do you care what happens to them?" meaning humans. But now Ripley wondered herself, why did she care? What had they ever done for her to make her care so much for them? Maybe Ripley was the new asshole model....
She searched for the connection to her own kind, trying to find who and what she was, so that she could make the right choice. She searched to find the strength and safety of the crèche, but it was not there. And in its place was nothing but pain, and terrible loss. She felt hollow. Empty. The way she'd felt since her birth.
As she reached out telepathically, she heard deep inside her the voice of children, two girls, human children, calling to her from across the years, Mommy! Mommy!
Ripley stared into the watery, reptilian eyes of the Newborn and moved her hand away. With a groan of loss, she made her choice.
She had her answers. They were locked in her very genetics. In spite of the lure of the Aliens, in spite of their power and strength, their purity of purpose, she knew she would have to endure. To save humanity. That was her purity of purpose, made stronger by the infusion of their genes.
She was Ripley. It was who she'd always been, the only thing she could ever be. Ripley. She would destroy them. She would do it by force.
Taking a deep, steady breath to calm her nerves, Ripley stood cautiously, straightening up. She kept her mind clear, watching the Newborn, thinking kind thoughts toward it and the suddenly leaderless warriors who were trying to figure out what to do, now that their Queen was dead.
The Newborn stepped away from her now that she was erect. Ripley reached up, seizing strands of the webbing that draped everywhere on the walls of the tank. As she gripped some of the stronger, more elastic ropes of webbing, she kept an eye on the Newborn, as the half-Alien creature cocked its misshapen head, trying to understand Ripley's actions.
The woman looked down into the pool of blood and waste below her. She wet her lips, and another memory surfaced—a molten cauldron of white-hot lead. So, okay.... She'd jumped into worse things—but not this time.
Wrapping the webbing around her wrists, Ripley used it like an acrobat, swinging up, clambering against the walls, finding handholds and toeholds, even as her eyes searched the ceiling. All the while, the Newborn watched curiously as Ripley kept her mind calm, and her thoughts neutral.
As Ripley moved higher up the wall of the tank, the Newborn waded out to a spot where it could watch Ripley better. Two warriors approached the Newborn, moving through the liquid like crocodiles, tails undulating, as though they, too, were curious.
Slowly, so as not to startle the Aliens, Ripley clambered higher and higher, searching for a telltale seam of light. She was dripping with sweat as she finally spied it, struggling all the while to keep calm. She began to hum a song she suddenly remembered to keep her mind from betraying her to the Newborn.
"You ... are ... my ... lucky ... star—"
Finally, she saw what she'd been searching for. She climbed, moved forward, touched the ceiling of the waste tank and found the handle that released the trapdoor there. As she shoved the trapdoor open onto an upper floor of the Auriga, Ripley jerked around to fac
e the Newborn.
In her head, she could feel the shocking surprise of her betrayal in the beast's mind. The monster drew itself up as tall as it could, stretched its arms threateningly, and screamed its challenge at its betrayer.
The monster leapt onto the nearest wall and began scrambling after the woman, but Ripley was too far ahead of it. Shoving herself through the trapdoor, Ripley slammed it shut behind her and latched it, praying it would hold the enraged monster.
Even through the closed trap door, Ripley could hear the creature scream in fury, as she scrambled to her feet, turned, and ran.
"We ever gettin' outta this thing?" Johner asked, and Call could hear the edge of panic in his voice.
"We'll make it, son," Vriess said calmly, but Call could hear the edge in his words as well. "Just keep your pants on."
The planet Earth filled the entire view screen. It was still a predominantly blue world with a scattering of clouds across its surface. But almost two-thirds of it was obscured by a giant orbiting latticework of metal, part of the extensive space operations run by corporations and the planetary government in cozy cooperation. The grid was like a partial shell that rotated slightly faster than the planet itself. Call knew how many people lived there—and could access the minute-by-minute update anytime she wanted—but she didn't like to think about those kinds of numbers. About the only people who actually lived on Earth were the disenfranchised and unemployed. Most meaningful work now was in space and on the colonies. It wasn't hard to pick a location on the planet that was completely uninhabited to crash the Auriga. Johner hadn't lied; Earth really was a slum.
She talked to the Betty through the port in her arm, working out the timing of their ejection from the Auriga. She'd already set the big ship up to avoid the grid completely, and hit the surface of the planet in the most remote part of the central Australian outback.
It wouldn't be long now. They'd be leaving soon and all this would be behind them.
Call sighed. She still hadn't accepted leaving Ripley behind as well.
Outside the ship, the Betty's wings rotated up as the ship prepared to separate from her berth.
Call looked over her monitors even as the Betty fed her information through her arm.
Both she and Vriess were monitoring a flood of information on the Betty's current condition. The stabilizer in the cargo hold was doing its job, indicating that the repairs she and Vreiss had done before docking with the Auriga were holding. There was some slight problem with hydraulic pressure in the airlock doors' system that might be caused by a small leak. Must've been something that happened when they shot up Purvis's Alien embryo—either a bullet nicked a line, or a small spray of Alien acid caused a pinhole leak somewhere. In a ship this size, any loss of pressure could affect the systems throughout the vessel. Well, the airlocks were all sealed, so it shouldn't stop them from getting free of the Auriga—
"Call," Johner snapped, his nerves fraying, "is the Betty prepped?" Earth was growing much bigger in the view screen as the planet pulled the Auriga down into her final embrace.
"She's hot," Call said, still calculating. It was going to be close. She found herself wishing Hillard was here. "I'll shut the docking bay airlock." She didn't look at Vriess as she said to him, "Pull the holding clamps on your mark." She was one with the ship, she was Betty. It felt weird, but good, too.
There was a long pause from Vriess, too long, and Call glanced over at him. He was scanning his equipment, looking around nervously. "Right ..." he muttered. "Just need to... find, uh... the vertical thrust lock...."
Distephano leaned over the engineer and asked worriedly, "You guys can fly this thing, right?"
Ripley raced through corridors as fast as she could, finding her way to the Betty's dock almost by instinct. Call's voice—the voice of the Auriga—was repeatedly telling her to evacuate, that impact was so many minutes and seconds away.
In frustration, she yelled back at the voice, "Dammit, I'm moving as fast as I can!"
As she rounded the last corner, she saw the massive airlock doors leading to the Betty's dock begin to shut, as the ship, with Call's voice, told her, "Airlock doors closing. Stand clear."
"NOOOOOOOO!" she bellowed, hurling herself forward with a burst of speed.
The doors were sliding shut before her. Throwing herself full speed at the narrowing space, she slipped through just in time, the sealing doors nearly catching one of her heels. She fell hard against the deck, and gulped air desperately.
Then Ripley heard the resounding clang that indicated the first docking magnet was disengaging.
"NO!" she shouted, as if anyone in the small ship could possibly hear her.
Lunging to her feet, Ripley raced the length of the dock toward the Betty. Another magnet disengaged with a huge clang. Speeding across the platform, Ripley moved faster, faster, until she could see the ship, the last magnet still in place. Five meters away. Three....
A flurry of activity in one of the Betty's video monitors suddenly attracted Call's attention. She glanced over and saw—
"Shit!" she yelled, unplugging herself and bolting out of her seat to lean over Vriess's shoulder. "It's Ripley! She's coming! She's almost here!" She reached past him, took hold of the Betty's airlock controls.
"Call, dammit!" Vriess yelled, confused. "We're almost disengaged! We're out of time. We can't wait!"
"We're not leaving her behind!" Call shouted back, as she slammed her hand against the cargo bay door control mechanism.
Screaming in the rage of its abandonment, the Newborn finally managed to squeeze through the small trapdoor in the waste tank ceiling. The beast fell onto the upper deck of the Auriga in a tumble of limbs, the new, small wounds it had just earned seeping onto the surface, raising smoke from the quickly melting flooring. The acid blood had helped the Newborn widen the hole it had just crawled through, making it large enough for the being's huge body.
The Newborn looked around as its wounds stopped bleeding and started to mend. It saw the Ripley disappearing down the hallway, running fast. But the Newborn could still find her, could still follow the human clone through the link in its mind. Pulling back its lips and grinning with teeth that were part Alien and part human, it loped after its ancestor down the darkening hallways of the doomed ship.
The last magnet was still in place as Ripley raced hard for the ship. The loading platform and all the ramps, however, had already been withdrawn, and the ship sat over the abyss of the docking tube, waiting for her final tether to be released so she could descend out of the bay.
As Ripley worried how she might gain access to the interior, the cargo bay airlock suddenly opened invitingly. Without hesitation, Ripley reached the edge of the platform and jumped, flinging herself off the platform like a diver going for the gold. She sailed through the air, three meters, five, seven—then landed hard on the solid floor of the Betty's cargo bay. The landing knocked the wind out of her and she gasped for air as she waited for the doors to close behind her.
Ripley counted down in her head, but nothing happened. She had a sudden flash of deja vu of waiting somewhere, somewhen, for another set of doors to close and keep her safe, but the memory was too insubstantial to capture.
As she looked back down the Auriga's corridor at the sealed airlock she'd narrowly gotten through, she saw the massive doors suddenly shudder as a huge force slammed against them.
Then again.
And again.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to feel the contact, but knowing it was there all the same. Because they would never let her go, never release their claim on her. Not in this life. Maybe not ever.
Glancing around the cargo bay, she recognized certain pieces of equipment as critical for the ship's functioning. It startled her to realize how familiar it all seemed, all the things associated with operating a spaceship. It had been so long. Another lifetime. A different body. She snapped out of her reverie, dealing with the problem at hand. This place was never meant to be exposed t
o vacuum. They'd never survive descent if they couldn't get those doors shut. Did the crew know? Could they monitor this area? She looked around but couldn't decide if there were small cameras in the hold or not.
Forcing herself to move, to react, she staggered to her feet. The ship rocked in her berth and Ripley nearly lost her tenuous footing as she grasped the manual override controls to the Betty's airlock. Gripping the handholds and using her greater-than-human strength, she tried to force the overrides to close the doors.
Suddenly, with a squeal, the doors began to close slowly. There was so little time left.... Trusting the airlock to do its job, she abandoned the controls, and bolted for the access stairway that led to the cockpit.
The squeaky, descending doors masked the fact that the pounding of the Newborn on the sealed corridor airlock had suddenly stopped.
"We got her!" Vriess told Call as Ripley landed in the cargo bay. "She's in. Now, let's get the hell out of here." He fumbled with the controls that would prepare the Betty to start her descent through the Auriga's long docking bay. As soon as the ship reached the halfway mark, Vriess could open the Auriga's outer airlock. The big military vessel was already in the ionosphere. They were cutting it close. Too close, Vriess thought, really feeling the pressure now. As soon as the cargo bay doors sealed shut, he'd start their descent.
Vriess and Call watched the monitor, seeing Ripley stand up slowly and brush her hair away from her face with a hand. The woman forced the manual override to respond, then left as the doors began to drop.
That was all Vriess needed to see. He switched the monitors from the cameras back to the critical readout screens he'd need to manage their escape from the falling Auriga. Quickly, he glanced over Call's flight plan as it scrolled over the screen. Lookin' good, he thought, and signaled the ship to start her descent.
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