by Tim Lebbon
Things seem to be going to plan.
Anticipating return of survivors to Marion within approximately seven hours.
Alien specimen surviving on Marion still not detected. It is waiting somewhere.
I am hoping that they bring a viable egg back with them.
I am hoping it is time to go home.
* * *
Hoop was unsettled.
Their course of action was now clear—lift a spare fuel cell onto the trolley, set another one to fire up and overheat, get the hell back to the surface, the Samson, the Marion, then into Ripley’s shuttle before the ship hit the atmosphere and came apart, all while watching out for the alien that had escaped into the interior of the Marion.
Simple.
But one thing troubled him, and it was close at hand.
Sneddon. She looked and acted fine, though there was something... quieter about her now, something calm. Unnaturally so. She had one of their infants in her chest. Ever since that face-hugger had fallen from her and died, Hoop had been thinking, It’s okay, it’s fine, we’ll get her to the Marion and into the med-pod, get that thing taken out of her, lock it up somewhere and leave it to burn up with the ship.
But it couldn’t be that easy, and Ripley’s comments were starting to hit home. She was injured, and the shots Kasyanov had given her might have gone to her head, just a little. The muttering, the swaying. But she knew exactly what she was talking about.
She always had.
If they took Sneddon back to the Marion with them, what would happen? What if Ash had somehow infiltrated the ship’s systems? Hoop didn’t think it likely—the Marion was a comparatively new ship, and its computing systems were a hundred times more complex than they’d been when Ripley had gone to sleep. But the chance was always there, and if Ash somehow found out about what Sneddon was carrying...
That was just what the AI wanted. He’d been searching for thirty-seven years, and there was no end to what he might do to protect the object of his quest.
Yet Hoop had no answers. He couldn’t bring himself to leave Sneddon behind, however terrible the risk. And as they commenced working on the spare fuel cells, he watched Ripley, fearing what she had planned for the science officer.
She’d picked up Baxter’s plasma torch, apparently not even noticing the splash of his blood across its power housing.
“Ripley!” he said. She looked up. “Bring me that tool pouch, will you?” She came across to him, carrying a tool kit that had been hanging from a hook on the wall.
I’ll just work, he thought. Face those problems when the time comes. For now... just concentrate.
The spare cells hadn’t been stored in the best of conditions. There were three, each of them the size of a small adult. One wasn’t even propped up off the floor, and a quick inspection revealed signs of decay to some of its metal framework and mountings. One of the other two was being loaded onto the trolley by Lachance and Kasyanov, and Hoop set to work on the last cell.
Sneddon stood off to one side, watching, ostensibly listening for any of those things that might be approaching. Hoop was pretty confident they had some time before the beasts could make their way up through the mine. Both staircases had blast doors at every level that were kept permanently shut, and they wouldn’t know how to use the code keys on the control panels. But it gave Sneddon something to do.
He watched her. They all did, and she knew it. Yet she offered them back a gentle smile, as if she knew something they did not.
Hoop opened the cell’s metallic shell and placed the cover to one side. He set to work disconnecting three cooling loops, then removed the coolant supplies altogether, for good measure. He delved deeper, past wires and conductors to the governing capacitors. These were adjustable, and he turned them all up to full.
A soft hum rose from the core. Barely the size of his fist, still its potential was staggering.
“We’re almost good to go,” he said after a while. More adjustments, several wires snipped, and then he disconnected and rerouted the last safety failsafe, meaning he could initiate the cell without having to input its own unique code.
“How long do you think it will give us?” Ripley asked.
“I’m thinking nine hours until it goes critical,” he replied. “Plenty of time to get off this rock.”
“If those things haven’t made it out to the Samson and trashed it. Or if they’re not just sitting inside, waiting for us to board. Or—”
“Fuck it,” he said, cutting her off. “If they’ve done that, I’ll come and sit beside this thing and wait for it to blow, rather than die of exposure or starvation.”
“Let’s hope then, eh?” Ripley asked.
“Let’s hope. Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah. Flying high from the shots Kasyanov gave me, that’s all.”
Hoop nodded, then called over to where Lachance was fussing over the cell on the trolley.
“We good?” he said.
“Ready,” the pilot replied. He looked down at the cell that lay next to Hoop, its cover removed and half of its mechanical guts hanging out. “You’ve done a real butcher’s job on that.”
“I’m an artist,” Hoop said. “Everyone else good? Sneddon?”
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.
“Right.” Hoop breathed deeply and held two bare wires, ready to touch them together.
What if I’m wrong? What if the overload happens in minutes, not hours? What if...? But they had come too far, survived too much, to pay any more attention to what-ifs.
“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, touching the two wires together.
A spark, a clunk, the sound of something whirring noisily inside the cell. Then a slew of lights flickered into life across its dismantled maintenance panel, some dying out, others remaining lit.
A red warning light began to pulse.
“Okay, it’s working,” he said. “In about nine hours, everything inside of a mile of here will become a cloud of radioactive dust.”
“Then let’s not hang around,” Ripley said.
* * *
The elevator still worked. Kasyanov had removed the remains of Baxter’s body. Even so, with the introduction of the fuel cell, things were cramped. They rose quickly to ground level and exited into the vestibule area, Lachance steering the trolley carrying the replacement fuel cell. They watched for movement, listened for the sound of running things.
Everything was suddenly going too smoothly, but Ripley tried not to question it.
Close to the tunnel entrance at the edge of the dome, they opened the metal storage container and donned their suits once more. They gauged oxygen supplies, then checked each other’s fittings and connections. Ripley felt constrained having to wear the suit again.
The lights were still on in the tunnel that stretched between dome and landing pad. They moved quickly, passing the place where the floor was bubbled from an acid spill, and when they were close to the external pad Hoop called a halt.
“Nearly there,” he said. “Let’s not get hasty. We’ve got plenty of time, it’s been less than an hour since I fired up the cell. Slow and careful from here.”
Ripley knew he was right. The aliens had chased miners this far and further, so they certainly couldn’t lower their guard just yet. But there was a small part of her, filled with dread, that whispered that they should never leave.
She ignored it.
She had to, because Amanda was still in her dreams, and haunting those occasional, shocking waking visions that seemed so real.
Her stomach hurt more and more, but she didn’t want another shot of painkiller. Once they were on board the Samson, launched, flying safely up toward the Marion in low orbit, perhaps then. But for these last moments on this wretched planet’s surface, she wanted all her wits about her.
Sneddon walked with them, carrying something that might kill them all. Didn’t they realize that? Didn’t they see what was happening here? Hoop had described to her the fate of
their shuttle Delilah, and they knew it had been the hatching monsters that did that.
What if Sneddon’s beast hatched on their way up?
Ripley’s finger stroked the torch’s trigger. One slight squeeze and Sneddon would be gone. A moment of shock, another instant of awful pain as the burning plasma melted through her flesh and bone and turned her heart and lungs to cinder...
“Wait,” Ripley said. The word had a weight of finality to it, and when Hoop sighed and turned to look at her, she thought he knew.
Sneddon did not even turn around. She looked down at her feet, shoulders dropping.
“We can’t...” Ripley said. She was crying now, finally unable to hold back the tears that fell for everyone—her old, dead crew; the survivors with her now; Amanda. Most of all, for Sneddon.
“What, Ripley?” Lachance asked. He sounded tired.
Ripley lifted the plasma torch and aimed it at Sneddon’s back.
“We can’t take her,” she breathed.
No one moved. None of them stepped back, away from the area where the flames would spout. But none of them went to help, either. Maybe shock froze them all.
“You know what happened before,” Ripley said. “Same thing might happen to the Samson, when we’re partway there. If she hatches... if the thing bursts from her chest... how do we kill it on the shuttle? Can’t use this.” She lifted the plasma torch slightly, nozzle now aimed at the back of Sneddon’s head. “Can’t use the acid gun Hoop’s carrying, either. We’d fry everyone, burn a hole in the dropship. We’d be an easy target for it. So...” She sniffed hard, blinking to clear her vision.
“So?” Hoop asked.
Ripley didn’t answer. Sneddon still hadn’t turned around.
“Move, say something, damn it!” Ripley shouted. “Fall down! Start to shake, to scream, try to stop me—give me a reason!”
“I feel fine,” Sneddon said. “But Ripley... I know I’m going to die. I’ve known that since I woke, knowing what had happened to me. I’m a science officer, remember.” She turned around. “I know I’m going to die. But not down here. Not like this.”
Ripley’s finger tightened on the trigger. Hoop only watched, his face seemingly impassive. She wished he’d give her some sort of signal—a nod, a shake of the head.
Help me, Hoop!
“I’ll stay in the airlock,” Sneddon said. “The moment I feel something happening, I’ll blast myself out. But please, take me, and I’ll do anything I can to help. There’s still an alien on the Marion, remember? Maybe I can tackle it. Maybe it won’t do anything to me if it knows what’s inside me.”
Ripley blinked and saw Amanda, arms wide, face distorted with agony as a monster burrowed out from her chest.
“Oh, no,” she gasped. She lowered the plasma torch and went to her knees. Hoop came but she waved him away, punching out at his stomach. He hadn’t helped her before, she didn’t want him now. They watched her, and then they turned away when she stood again, wiping at her eyes.
“Okay. Come on,” Hoop said. “Let’s see if the storm’s still blowing.”
* * *
Ripley was last to leave the tunnel. And she was angry at herself. She hadn’t held off from firing because of anything Sneddon had said about traveling in the airlock, or helping them on the Marion. She had relented simply because she couldn’t kill another human being.
Maybe that made her good. But it also made her weak.
Outside, the storm had dissipated to a gentle breeze. Wafts of sand still drifted across the landscape, and there were small mounds piled against the Samson’s landing feet. In the distance, electrical storms played jagged across the horizon, so far away that the thunder never reached them. The system’s star was a vague smudge against the dusty atmosphere in the west, bleeding oranges and yellows in a permanently spectacular sunset.
The Samson remained untouched on the landing pad. Hoop climbed up the superstructure, brushed dust from the windows and checked inside. He couldn’t see anything amiss.
There was a moment of tension as they opened the external door and Hoop entered. Then he opened up the internal door and they boarded safely, taking great care when lifting the replacement fuel cell and securing it to the cabin rack. They relied on it completely, and any damage would doom them all.
Once they were all inside, Sneddon settled inside the small airlock, just as she’d promised. There was a window into that space, but no one looked. Not even Ripley. She closed her eyes as Lachance went through pre-flight checks, and didn’t open them again when they took off.
But she did not sleep. She thought perhaps she might never sleep again.
* * *
This is a real memory, Ripley thinks, but the division between real and imaginary is becoming more and more indistinct. If this is real, then why am I in pain? Why does she hurt from where an alien’s tail slashed across her stomach, a claw opened her shoulder to the bone? If this is real, then everything will be all right.
She is on a roller coaster with Amanda. Her daughter is nine years old and utterly fearless, and as she whoops and laughs, Ripley holds onto the bar across their stomachs so hard that her fingers cramp into claws.
I love it, Mommy! Amanda shouts, her words whipped away by the wind.
Ripley closes her eyes but it changes little. She can still feel the vicious whipping of gravity grasping at her, tugging her this way and that as the car slips down a steep descent, around a tight corner, twisting and ripping back toward a cruel summit. With every twist and turn, the pain shoots through her.
Mommy, look!
There’s an urgency to Amanda’s voice that makes Ripley look. There’s something wrong with their surroundings. Something so wrong, yet the roller coaster is traveling so fast now that she cannot seem to focus on anything outside the car.
People seem to be running across the park around them.
Screaming, dashing, falling...
Dark shapes chasing them, much faster than the people, like animals hunting prey...
Muh—Mommy? Amanda says, and because she sits beside her in the moving car, Ripley can focus on her.
She wishes she could not.
A bloom of blood erupts from her torn chest, a terrible inevitability. Amanda is crying, not screeching in pain but shedding tears of such wretchedness that Ripley starts crying as well.
I’m sorry, Amanda, she says. I should have been home to protect you. She’s hoping that her daughter will say that she understands, and that everything is all right. But she says nothing of the sort.
Yes, you should have, Mommy.
The infant alien bursts outward in a shower of blood that is ripped away by the wind.
As they reach the roller coaster’s summit the car slows to a crawl, and Ripley can see what has happened to the world.
* * *
“You’re crying,” Hoop said. He was squeezing her hand, shaking it until she opened her eyes.
Ripley tried to blink the tears away. This had been the worst episode yet. And with increasing dread, she knew it wouldn’t be the last.
“You in pain? Want another shot?”
Ripley looked across at where Kasyanov watched her expectantly. The doctor had bound her own hand and placed it in a sling. “No,” she says. “No, I just want to stay awake.”
“Your call.”
“How long ’til we get to the Marion?”
“Lachance?” Hoop called. The ship was shaking, buffeted from all sides as it powered up through the unforgiving atmosphere.
“Two, maybe three hours,” the pilot said. “Once we’re in orbit we’ve got to travel a thousand miles to the Marion.”
“Everything good?” Ripley looked at the fuel cell on the rack in front of them, shaking as the Samson vibrated.
“Yeah, everything’s good.”
“Sneddon?”
Hoop nodded. “Everything’s good.”
“For now,” Ripley said. “Only for now. Nothing stays good for long. Not ever.”
Hoop didn’t reply to that, and across the cabin Kasyanov averted her eyes.
“I’ve got to go help Lachance,” Hoop said. “You be okay?”
Ripley nodded. But they all knew that she was lying, and that she would not be okay.
Nothing stays good for long.
PART 3
NOTHING GOOD
20
HOME
This was the first step of Hoop’s journey home. All the way home. He’d decided that down in the mine, and the more time that passed, the more he began to believe it. He had started thinking of his children again. This time, however, their faces and voices no longer inspired feelings of intense guilt, but a sense of hope. The fact that he’d left them behind could never be changed or forgotten—by them, or by him—but perhaps there were ways that damage could be fixed.
He had found his monsters, and now it was time to leave them behind.
“How long until the Marion enters the atmosphere?” he asked.
In the pilot’s seat beside him, Lachance shrugged.
“Difficult to say, especially from here. We might have a couple of days once we dock, it might only be hours. If we approach the ship and it’s already skimming the atmosphere, there’s a good chance we won’t be able to dock, anyway.”
“Don’t say that,” Hoop said.
“Sorry. We’ve always known this was a long shot, haven’t we?”
“Long shot, yeah. But we’ve got to believe.” Hoop thought of those they had lost, Baxter’s terrible death even though he had given the best he could, done everything possible to survive. To run through an alien-infested mine on a broken ankle, only to meet an awful end like that... it was so unfair.
But fairness had no place in the endless dark depths of the universe. Nature was indifferent, and space was inimical to man. Sometimes, Hoop thought they’d made a mistake crawling from the swamp.
“We’re going to do this,” Hoop said. “We’ve got to. Get away from this pit, get back home.”
Lachance looked across in surprise.
“Never thought you had anything to go back to.”
“Things change,” he said. Hopefully. Hopefully things can change.