“Have you ever heard of the Nostromo?”
The name sent a shudder through him, though he had no idea why.
“No,” he said truthfully. “Should I have?”
“Not at all, and that’s exactly the point. You should have never heard of the Nostromo because the records on that particular incident were sealed a long time ago.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Does the name Ellen Ripley mean anything to you? Or Amanda Ripley-McLaren?”
“No.”
That half smile again.
“Actually, I wouldn’t have been too surprised if you knew the names. According to the research we’ve done, you are very likely their descendant. The records get a little wobbly, what with the crisis on Earth and the… troubles the company experienced a while back. But the genetics don’t lie.”
Decker shook his head.
“So what the hell does this have to do with anything?” he demanded.
“Well, as a result of our investigations, we’ve determined that you have far more use to Weyland-Yutani than as a simple scapegoat.” She paused to examine another display, and he waited for her to continue. After a few moments he was rewarded. “You see, your ancestor had a long history with us. She worked onboard a freighter called the Nostromo when it ran across a distress signal, and responded.
“The signal’s origin was alien in nature.”
That caught his attention.
“What’s the big deal?” he asked. “We’ve encountered loads of alien races.”
“Ellen Ripley and the rest of the crew discovered something… different. Xenomorph XX121, to be precise.” Rollins reached over and activated a video feed. A moment later he saw a slightly grainy image of himself, unconscious and strapped to a medical bed. His video doppelganger was lying flat and restrained, when abruptly his entire body went rigid.
His eyes opened wide, and he started screaming.
9
WITNESS
Decker’s skin crawled as he watched. At first there was no sound, but his lips were moving, and when the recorded image of him fell back on the bed, Rollins adjusted a setting.
“How can anything be that vicious? N… spiders? Spiders!” Decker tensed instinctively as his voice crackled and slurred, and Rollins fast-forwarded before letting the recording play again. “Blood burns… through the steel… No, not me. Someone else!” His voice broke into sobs, and then he continued.
“You really think? Have you seen one of them, close up?” His words wavered, rose in pitch. And then lowered to a different tone, with the hint of an accent he couldn’t place. “No. None of us have.” And again. Higher, almost feminine. “No, of course not. You’re still alive.”
The ramblings faded until all they could hear was slurred mumbles and the occasional whimper. Decker’s skin crawled as he listened. It was like eavesdropping on a conversation, but with one person playing all the parts. And the words chilled him to the bone, yet he didn’t know why. He clenched his fists to get a grip.
Rollins turned the feed off.
“It goes on for a couple of hours. That was recorded during your second seizure, while you were being treated planetside. The first was in the field, immediately after you were injured.”
“How long was I like that?”
“As I said, a couple of hours. The best doctors we could consult all said the same thing, really. Extreme panic, delusional ramblings, paranoia, and signs of a complete emotional breakdown.” Rollins shook her head. “We could have ruined you right then, Mister Decker, but you gave us reason to keep you around.” She smiled again.
He was learning to hate her smile.
“Some of the phrases, the names you employed, were flagged and filed a long while back. From incidents that took place well over a hundred years ago, actually. Your use of those phrases activated long dormant files that were then downloaded to my computer.”
“What sort of incidents?”
“As I said, your ancestor was assigned to the Nostromo. What I didn’t tell you was that three hundred and eighteen years ago Ellen Ripley destroyed that ship—a mining transport that was fully loaded with ore and on its way back home. She claimed she had done so to eliminate an alien threat.” Rollins paused, and her expression hardened. “That could have been the end of her career, but we were generous. We hired her as a consultant, and sent her back to the planet where the alien life-form had first been encountered.
“You see, she claimed the creature was extremely dangerous. But it was far more than dangerous—it was an asset. An asset Weyland-Yutani should have controlled. Would have controlled, had it not been for her actions.”
Rollins played with the video monitor a second time and the face of an attractive, dark-haired woman appeared.
“This was Ellen Ripley. Your ancestor.” Decker looked at the image and felt his guts roil. Not right. It was a familiar face, but…
She looked too human.
He turned back to Rollins.
“Did she find the aliens?” he asked.
“She found something. All we know for certain is that the colony on LV426 was lost when a terraforming engine was critically damaged, and overloaded.” Decker had worked with terraforming engines. He understood how devastating an explosion could be, coming from one of the gigantic machines. “She escaped aboard a warship named the Sulaco, and sent a final transmission, but it was garbled. What she might or might not have said could never be clearly recovered. We think the reactor went critical, and distorted the signal.
“Ellen Ripley and her daughter both halted attempts to capture and study the Xenomorphs. More importantly, they did so while costing Weyland-Yutani a great deal of money and considerable resources.
“It’s been a very long time since we’ve had even the faintest trace of the alien life-form. We had all but given up hope of ever acquiring one. That is, until you came along.”
“I’m sorry, but again, what has this got to do with me?”
That smile again. Granted, Rollins was an attractive woman, but there was nothing pretty about the expression.
“Your episodes, and what you said as they occurred, give us reason to assume that somehow—and believe me, we’re investigating the possibilities—you seem to have established a connection to these creatures. You’ve described things you cannot have seen—described aspects of physiology that, when assessed by our computers, come close to describing the life-form Ellen Ripley claimed she’d encountered.”
“No… it’s impossible…” But his voice trailed away as he said it. At the mention of spiders, he’d nearly jumped from his skin. And the sensation continued—he felt as if he was choking, unable to catch his breath, and his insides were tied in a knot.
He closed his eyes, tried to force the mental assault back but failed. The stench of burning metal ran through his mind and overwhelmed his senses. He felt bile pulse and try to force its way out of his stomach at the thought of something pushing past his gag reflex, something hot and wet and violent. He could damn near feel spindly limbs wrapping around his head.
Another convulsive shudder ran through him. But why? Spiders had never bothered him before. Why now, all of a sudden?
At the door, Manning crossed his arms and snorted. Decker shot him a sour look.
Rollins regarded him coldly.
“Impossible is no longer a consideration, Mister Decker. Whatever it is you’re experiencing, it’s enough to make my employers want you on this trip. And what they want, they get.”
“Are you going back to the same place again—to LV426?” For some reason, the idea put him on the verge of panic. He resisted an urge to run his fingers through his hair to check for webs.
“Not exactly,” she said, and her attitude really started to bug him. He was running out of patience.
“If you’re trying to build to something dramatic here, don’t bother,” he said. “You’ve already got my attention, and it’s not as if I’m going anywhere you don’t want m
e to go. So what the hell do you want with me?”
“Fair enough,” she said, and she leaned in toward him. “You’re an empath.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’ve run the tests.” Her voice was cool and professional now, all of the fake emotion gone. “Whether or not you’re aware of it, Mister Decker, you have what could be classified as low-level telepathic ability. It’s not that uncommon—we’ve employed others of your kind, in the past—but in your case it’s left you in a very unfortunate situation. If you have, indeed, developed a link to the alien life-forms on New Galveston, then you may be the one person who can lead us to them.”
The sound of her voice faded, disappearing behind a sharp ringing in Decker’s ears at the sound of the planet’s name. His chest locked on him, and he attempted to shrug it off. He shook his head to clear it.
“Then that’s where we’re headed,” he said. “What makes you think your aliens are there?” But then he thought about the Sea of Sorrows, and it began to make sense. The toxicity had to come from somewhere.
“Blood burns…”
“I think you know, Mister Decker.” She wasn’t smiling now. “And if those creatures are as deadly as Ripley indicated, then we’ll need every advantage we can have at our disposal. Someone who is directly linked to them could prove to be invaluable.”
Decker shook his head.
“Not a chance in hell,” he said, even as he pushed back the fear. “Even if you’re right, you can’t make me help you. What you’re doing is—”
“Wrong!” Rollins’s voice cracked through the air like a whip, and even Manning jumped at the bark. She leaned in, and peered directly at him. “We own you. You will go back to New Galveston, and you will help us, because you owe it to the company. There’s a debt to be paid, and if you ever hope to regain something that resembles a life, you have to start following orders.”
But he still wasn’t buying it.
“What’s this ‘debt’ shit?” he said. “I don’t even work for Weyland-Yutani. I don’t owe them a damn thing.” He stood up and scowled down at her, refusing to be intimidated. For all of her smiles and her assertions, she was just a pencil pusher, same as him. “The way I see it, you’re guilty of kidnapping—and that’s still a crime, even for your precious company. Keep it up, I’ll find other charges I can bring around, when this is over.” He stepped closer to her, seeking to gain the upper hand.
Manning tensed, but stayed where he was.
“I’m afraid you’re not catching on here, Mister Decker.” Rollins didn’t budge. There was an edge to her words. “And I don’t appreciate being threatened.”
With that, she lifted a hand and gestured. The next thing Decker knew, Manning had a hand on his shoulder. The fingers clamped down with a stern, silent warning.
Decker chose to ignore it. He swept his arm around, knocking Manning’s grip aside.
“Don’t touch me.”
Manning’s expression barely changed, but the merc shook his head. He stepped in close and shoved his mass against Decker. It might not have worked on a planet, but the gravity on ships was always a little bit lighter than it seemed, and Decker staggered back.
Manning stepped in again, and brought his elbow into Decker’s chest. The impact was solid enough to hurt, but not to incapacitate.
Decker shoved back in retaliation, and then hit the man in the face with a right. The impact carried him forward, and the two of them stumbled across the examination room, careening off one of the tables.
Rollins watched the entire scuffle with what seemed to be mild amusement.
The merc brought his fist around and drove it into Decker’s stomach so fast that there was no chance to stop it. The punch was perfectly placed, driving all of the air from his body and sending him to his hands and knees, retching. He could handle himself in a fight, but Manning was apparently just plain better at it.
Rollins stepped in.
“Now that we know you’re essentially of sound body,” she said, staring down at him coldly, “there’s no need to be gentle with you.”
After a couple of minutes his insides stopped heaving, and he caught his breath. Decker lurched back to his feet and glared at Manning, who just shook his head a little. A thin trail of blood trickled down from the side of the mercenary’s mouth, smearing where he’d tried to wipe it away.
At least he had that. He’d made the man notice him.
“Don’t,” Manning growled. “You really don’t want to.”
Rollins motioned for him to be silent, then turned back to Decker and spoke again.
“Let’s get this clear,” she said. “Ellen Ripley worked for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, and signed contracts. She owed us a very large amount of money, and she never returned—never paid her debt. In addition to wrecking not one, but two ships, and costing the company what currently amounts to billions of dollars of property damage, she also destroyed a refinery. That’s deliberate sabotage.
“So technically, she and her descendants still owe a very large debt to the company. The contracts still exist, and the wording is delightfully precise. Even if you could find a court that would challenge us, believe me, Weyland-Yutani is perfectly willing to spend the time and money needed to rip you into little pieces in front of a judge.”
“But you abducted me!”
“Prove it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Prove it,” Rollins repeated, and the smile returned. “Call the police. Oh, wait—there are no police out here on the rim. Just corporations and the Colonial laws, most of which are enforced by Colonial Marines… plus private security forces like the ones we’ve hired to escort you back to New Galveston.” Her eyes cut to Manning.
“Mister Manning, what is your duty today?”
Manning didn’t even blink as he spoke.
“To safely escort Mister Decker back to New Galveston, and to retrieve the biological samples needed to pay back the debts that he and his family owe to Weyland-Yutani.”
“And who hired you?”
“You did,” he replied. “On behalf of Weyland-Yutani.”
“Did you at any point see anyone force Mister Decker to join us on this journey?”
“No ma’am,” Manning replied flatly. “He came of his own volition.” The mercenary grinned.
“Then why did he come?”
“He said something about proving that he was capable of returning to work.” He shrugged. “I wasn’t really listening. He whines too much.”
Rollins looked back to Decker.
“I have thirty-five people onboard this transport who will gladly verify that story. I have documents with your signature to verify that you signed on for this job, in exchange for substantial compensation and to avoid a lawsuit that was being brought against you for the attempted blackmail of Weyland-Yutani officials.”
“The hell you say.” Decker started to move toward her, but stopped when Manning slid a step in his direction. “You’ve covered all of the angles, haven’t you?”
“Hold that thought,” she replied. “We’re almost done. I have papers signed by three witnesses to your first seizure, who have all stated that the accident was caused by your own negligence. They’ve agreed to make the necessary statements in a court of law, should it come to that.”
She stepped toward him, until her face was just inches from his. He looked at her eyes, and didn’t see even the faintest hint of human emotion.
“And lastly, Mister Decker,” she said, “I have the exact address of your ex-wife and three children. In fact, I can tell you where they are at this very moment.”
“My kids?” he said.
“Bethany. Ella. Joshua.” Rollins’s voice softened, but he knew better than to think that it was genuine. “They’re lovely children. And you know what? We own them the same way that we own you. Piss me off, Mister Decker, and I can make their lives very uncomfortable, for as long as they live. Every debt that Ellen Ripley accrued will be yours, and if you do
n’t cooperate, it will be theirs.
“And on the off chance that you don’t work out as a tool for finding what we’re looking for, we can always see if some of your more interesting traits were passed along genetically.” Gone was the softness. “Do you understand me?”
The room seemed colder. Alan settled back on the examination table, barely aware that he’d done so. He stared at the woman in front of him, and reached out…
Nothing. He wondered exactly what sort of psychotic bitch could so casually threaten his children, without broadcasting the least bit of guilt.
Even Manning had lost all trace of his earlier smugness. He was staring at Rollins, as well, and there was a hint of fear coming off of him.
“Do you understand me, Mister Decker?” She asked the question again while staring hard into his eyes. “Play by the rules, and all of this goes away. You go home and you get on with your life. Cross me, fail me, do anything at all to make this mission fall apart, and I will bring down the wrath of God—or worse—upon you and your family.
“Do you understand me?”
It took him a minute to remember to breathe. To remember to answer her.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yes. I understand you.”
“Excellent.” She smiled. “We’ll get to the debriefing soon. In the meantime, go relax. We’ll be arriving at New Galveston within the next few hours.”
10
BUSINESS AS USUAL
After Decker left the examination room, Rollins stayed and looked over the readouts again, and smiled.
A few moments later she began typing her report.
Long before the ship was in proper orbit around New Galveston, the paperwork had been completed and sent off.
When the response came from her superiors, Rollins read it silently. Then she accessed the ship’s onboard computers and deleted all evidence that the transmissions had ever occurred.
11
DECKER
“That is a properly heartless bitch.”
Sea of Sorrows Page 6