by Tim Lebbon
More silence.
“Do you hear me?”
“What about the fuel cell?” Kasyanov asked.
“It’s almost done.”
“Then we could be gone.”
He couldn’t blame her. Not really. But Hoop wasn’t about to bail without doing everything he could, for anyone who was left alive.
“Fuck that, Kasyanov,” he said. “You’re a doctor. Heal.”
Then he started running. He sprinted around corners without pausing to look or listen. Opened doors, closed them behind him, the spray gun slung across his shoulder and acid swooshing in the reservoir. He thought of Sneddon’s bravery, and how she had already sacrificed herself by pursuing the monster into the ship. Maybe she’d catch and kill it. Or perhaps it would turn and kill her. But she had given them a chance.
The Marion shook.
A subtle vibration, but he felt it through his boots.
Oh, not now, he thought. He skidded around a corner, up some stairs, and then he was in the wide area where the chaos had only just ended. Lachance lay dead against the wall to his left, head hanging from his body by strands. Ripley was on the floor to his right. Kasyanov knelt beside her, melted hand pressed tight to her right hip, the other busy administering emergency first aid. Beyond them, the windows looked down onto the planet. To the north Hoop saw the bright bruise of the explosion that had taken the mine, and felt a brief moment of glee. But it didn’t last long. Shimmering threads of smoke and fire flitted past the window as the Marion encountered the very upper reaches of LV178’s atmosphere.
“We don’t have long,” Kasyanov said, looking up at his approach. Hoop wasn’t sure whether she meant the Marion or Ripley, but in his mind they were the same.
“How bad are you?”
“Bolt from Lachance’s thumper broke up, ricocheted, hit me.” She moved her ruined hand aside slightly, looking down. Hoop could see the shredded jacket and undershirt, the dark bloodstains glinting wetly in artificial light. She pressed the wound again and looked up. “Honestly, I can’t feel anything. Which isn’t a good sign.”
“It’s numb. You can walk?”
Kasyanov nodded.
“You go ahead, open the doors, I’ll carry her,” Hoop said.
“Hoop—”
“I’m not listening. If there’s a chance for her, we’ll take it. And you can sort yourself out while we’re there.”
“But that thing could be—” Their earpieces crackled, and Sneddon’s voice came in loud and fast.
“I’ve got the bastard cornered in Hold 2!” she shouted. “Shot it up, its acid splashed everywhere... not sure if... oh, fuuuuck!” She moaned, long and loud.
“Sneddon,” Hoop said.
“It hurts. It hurts! It’s in me, moving around, and I can feel its teeth.” Another groan, then she coughed loudly and shouted, “Screw you! Hoop, it’s cornered behind some of the equipment lockers, thrashing around in there. Might be dying. But... I’m going to... make sure!”
Hoop and Kasyanov stared at each other. Neither knew what to say. They were witnessing a fight far away from them, and listening to the impending death of a friend.
Metal clanged, the sound of something falling over and hitting the deck.
“Come on, come on,” Sneddon whispered. “Okay, I’m almost done.” She was talking to herself, muttering between croaks of pain and high-pitched whines that should not have come from a person.
“What are you doing?” Hoop asked.
“Got a full crate of magazines for the charge thumpers. Rigging a charge. You’ll feel a bump, but it’ll get rid of this... for good. So...”
Hoop ran to Ripley, scooped her up, slung her over his shoulder. She moaned in unconsciousness, and he could feel her blood pattering down on his back and legs.
“Med bay,” he said to Kasyanov. “Need to get as close as we can before it blows.”
“Maybe a minute,” Sneddon said. “The one inside me... it wants out. It’s shifting. It’s...” She screamed. It was a horrible sound, volume tempered by the equipment yet the agony bare and clear.
“Sneddon...” Kasyanov whispered, but there was nothing more to say.
“Come on!” Hoop led the way, struggling with Ripley’s weight. Kasyanov followed. He heard her groaning, cursing beneath her breath, but when he glanced back she was still with him. She had to be. He didn’t know how to use the med bay equipment, and if Kasyanov died, so would Ripley.
“You going to be—?” he started asking, but then Sneddon came on again.
“It’s coming for me.” Behind her voice Hoop heard an alien squeal, and the scraping of claws on metal growing rapidly louder. Sneddon gasped, then fell silent. The channel was still open; Hoop could hear the hiss and whisper of static. He and Kasyanov paused at the head of a staircase. And then he heard the more uneven hissing of something else.
“Sneddon?”
“It’s... just staring. It must see... know... sense... Oh!”
“Blow the crate,” Hoop said. Kasyanov’s eyes went wide, but he wasn’t being cruel or heartless. He was thinking of Sneddon, as well as them. “Sneddon, blow the crate before—”
The crunch of breaking bones was obvious. Sneddon let out a long groan of agony.
“It’s coming,” she rasped. “The thing’s just watching. It’s dying, but it doesn’t care. It sees... its sibling... coming. This close it’s almost beautiful.”
“Sneddon, blow the—”
“Two seconds,” the science officer whispered.
In those two seconds Hoop heard the infant alien clawing, biting, tearing its way from Sneddon’s chest, its high-pitched squeal answered by the dying adult’s more tempered cry. Sneddon could not scream because her breath had been stolen. But she spoke in another way.
He heard the soft mechanical click. Then the connection was cut.
Moments later a distant rumble turned from a moan into a roaring explosion that blasted a wall of air through the corridors. A heavy thud worked through the entire ship, pulsing through floors and walls as Hold 2 was consumed by the massive blast.
A long, low horn-like sound echoed as incredible stresses and strains were placed on the superstructure, and Hoop feared they would simply tear apart. The tension of skimming the planet’s atmosphere, combined with the results of the explosion, might break the ship’s back and send it spinning down, to burn up in the atmosphere.
He slid down one wall and held Ripley across his legs, hugging her head to his chest to prevent it bouncing as the metal floor punched up at them again and again. Kasyanov crouched next to them.
Metal tore somewhere far away. Something else exploded, and a shower of debris whisked past them, stinging exposed skin and clanging metal on metal. Another gush of warm air came, and then the shaking began to subside.
“Will she hold?” Kasyanov asked. “Will the ship hold?” Hoop couldn’t answer. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Kasyanov slumped down. “Sneddon.”
“She took it with her,” Hoop said. “Took both of them with her.” Kasyanov glanced at Ripley, then crawled quickly closer. She lifted an eyelid, bent down to press her ear to the injured woman’s open mouth.
“No,” Hoop breathed.
“No,” Kasyanov said. “But she’s not good.”
“Then let’s go.” He dropped the spray gun, heaved her over his shoulder again, and set off toward med bay. Kasyanov followed, her plasma torch clattering to the floor.
Now they were three, and he wouldn’t let anyone else die.
* * *
Amanda watches her. She’s eleven years old today, and she sits in a chair beside a table scattered with half-eaten pieces of birthday cake, opened presents, discarded wrapping paper. She’s on her own and looking sad.
Her birthday dress is bloodied and torn, and there is a massive hole in her chest.
I’m sorry, Ripley says, but Amanda’s expression does not change. She blinks softly, staring at her mother with a mixture of sadness at the betra
yal and... hatred? Can that really be what she sees in her daughter’s eyes?
Amanda, I’m sorry, I did my very best.
Blood still drips from the hole in her daughter’s chest. Ripley tries to turn away, but whichever way she turns her daughter is still there, staring at her. Saying nothing. Only looking.
Amanda, you know Mommy loves you, however far away I am.
The little girl’s face does not change. Her eyes are alive, but her expression is lifeless.
* * *
Ripley woke for a time, watching the floor pass by, seeing Hoop’s boots, knowing she was being carried. But even back on the Marion, Amanda was still staring at her. If Ripley lifted her head she would see her. If she turned around, she would be there.
Even when she closed her eyes.
Amanda, staring forever at the mother who had left her behind.
23
FORGETTING
PROGRESS REPORT:
To: Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Science Division
(Ref: code 937)
Date (unspecified)
Transmission (pending)
I wish I was whole again.
I never used to wish. I was not programed for that, and it is not an emotion, nor an action, that I ever perceived as useful. But for thirty-seven years I was alone in the shuttle’s computer. And there was enough of the human still in me to feel lonely. I was built as an artificial person, after all.
Loneliness, it seems, is not necessarily connected to one’s place in the universe. I know my place, and have no feelings either way about what and where I am. In my case, loneliness rose from simple boredom.
There are only so many times I can defeat the ship’s computer at chess.
And so I have spent long years dwelling upon what wishing might mean.
Now, I wish I was whole again.
The game has turned against me. I am in check. But not for long. The game is never over until it is over, and I refuse to resign.
Not while Ripley, my queen, still lives.
Ripley was heavy. He refused to think of her as dead weight—he wouldn’t allow that, would not give her permission to die—but by the time they reached med bay his legs were failing, and it had been ten long minutes since she’d displayed any signs of life.
The Marion shook and shuddered. It, too, was close to the end.
The difference was that for Ripley there was still hope.
“I’ll fire up the med pod,” Kasyanov said, pressing her good hand against the security pad. The medical bay was a modern, sterile place, but the object at its center made all the other equipment look like Stone Age tools. This Weyland-Yutani chunk of technology had cost Kelland almost a tenth of what the whole of the Marion had cost, but Hoop had always known it had been a practical investment. A mining outpost so far from home, where illness or injury could cripple the workforce, needed care.
Yet there was nothing humane in their incorporation of the pod.
It was insurance.
Hoop put Ripley down on one of the nearby beds and tried to assess her wounds. There was so much blood. Her shoulder wound weeped, several staples protruded from her stomach and the gash there gaped. New injuries had been added to the old. Puncture wounds were evident across her chest, perhaps where the thing’s claws had sunk in. Her face was bruised and swollen, one eye puffy and squeezed shut, scalp still weeping. He thought her arm might be broken.
He had seen the med pod at work several times before, but he didn’t know what it could do for Ripley. Not in the time they had left.
He was pulled in two directions. In truth, he should be back at the shuttle, finishing the fuel cell installation and ensuring that all systems were back online. After that there was Ash, the malignant presence he had to wipe from the Narcissus’s computer before launching.
If Ripley were awake, he could tell her what he’d found. According to the log, the old fuel cell had still maintained more than sixty percent of its charge when it had docked with Marion, and it could only have been Ash who had engineered its draining. To trap her there with them. To force them down to the planet’s surface, not only to retrieve another fuel cell, but to encounter them.
The creatures.
Everything that had happened since Ripley’s arrival had been engineered by the artificial intelligence. Those additional lives lost—Sneddon, Baxter, Lachance—could be blamed squarely on him.
Hoop wished the bastard was human so he could kill him.
“Pod’s ready,” Kasyanov said. “It’ll take half an hour for it to assess the wounds and undertake the procedures.”
Hoop couldn’t waste half an hour.
“I’ll go back for the supplies we need,” he said. “Stay in touch.”
Kasyanov nodded and touched her suit’s comm unit. Then she turned her attention to the med pod’s screen and frowned in concentration, scrolling through a complex series of branching programs flashing there. She was sweating, shaking.
“You good?”
“No. But I’m good enough for this.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Her first, then if there’s time, me.”
“There’ll be time,” Hoop said, but they both knew there were no guarantees.
“I feel... weird inside. Bleeding in my guts, I think.”
“I’ll get up to the bridge, first,” Hoop said, gingerly lifting Ripley off of the bed. “See just how much time we have.”
As if in response, the ship shuddered one more time. Kasyanov didn’t look up or say anything else, and her silence was accusation enough. We could have just gone. But they were set on their course, now, and Hoop knew she would see it through.
He held Ripley as gently as he could, and carried her to the med pod.
“Amanda!” she shouted. She shifted in his arms and he almost dropped her. He staggered a little, then when he righted himself and looked down, Ripley was staring right at him. “Amanda,” she said again, softer.
“It’s okay, Ripley, it’s me.”
“She won’t leave me alone,” she said. Her eyes were wide and white in her mask of blood and bruising. “Just staring. All because of them. My little girl won’t forgive me, and it’s all because of them.” Her voice was cold and hollow, and a chill went through him. He laid her gently in the med pod.
“We’re going to patch you up,” Hoop said.
“I want to forget,” she said. “I can’t... even if you fix me, I can’t sleep with Amanda staring at me like that. I’ll never sleep again. It’ll make me go mad, Hoop. You can make me forget, can’t you? With this?”
Hoop wasn’t sure exactly what she meant, and how much she wanted to forget. But she was all there. This wasn’t a delirious rant—it was a very calm, very determined plea.
“It feels as if I’ve known nothing else but them,” she said. “It’s time to forget.”
“Kasyanov?” Hoop asked.
“It’s a med pod, Hoop,” the doctor said. “That’s almost certainly beyond its capabilities.”
“But it does neurological repairs, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Repairs, not damage.”
“They’ve given me a nightmare, and I think it’s going to kill me,” Ripley said. “Amanda. My girl, dead, staring, never forgiving me. Please, Hoop. Please!” She sat upright, wincing at the pain it drove through her, but reaching out and grasping his arm.
“Hey, hey, lie back,” he said. “Let Kasyanov do her work.” But he could see the terror in her eyes, and the knowledge at what sleep would bring. Even if it’s not real, it’s tearing her apart, he thought.
“We’re ready,” the doctor said.
Ripley let Hoop ease her back down, but she was still pleading with her eyes. Then they closed the clear lid. He felt a tug as he saw her shut away in there, maybe because he thought he might never touch her again.
“So can you?” he asked.
“It’s not me that does the work, it’s the pod. I just initiate the programs.” Kasyanov sighed. “But yes, I think it co
uld manipulate her memories.”
“How?”
“I’ve only ever heard about it,” Kasyanov said. “It can repair brain damage, to an extent, and at the same time there’s an associated protocol that allows for memory alteration. I think it was designed primarily for military use. Get soldiers back into the fight that much quicker, after battlefield trauma.” She paused. “It’s really pretty inhumane, when you think about it.”
Hoop thought about it, remembering the sheer terror he had seen in Ripley’s eyes.
“I don’t think I have any choice,” he said. “How much memory will it affect?”
“I have no idea. I don’t think it was developed for fine tuning.”
He nodded, tapping his leg.
“Do it.”
“You’re sure?”
If we go too far back, she won’t even remember me. But that was a selfish thought, far more about him than it was about her. If he had a shred of feeling for her, his own desires shouldn’t enter into it.
When they were finally on Narcissus and away from here, they could meet again.
“She’s sure,” he said, “and that’s as sure as I need to be.”
Kasyanov nodded and started accessing a different series of programs.
While the doctor worked, Hoop moved around the med bay, seeing what he could find. He packed a small pouch with painkillers, multi-vitamin shots, antibiotics, and viral inhibitors. He also found a small surgery kit including dressings and sterilization pads. He took a handheld scanner that could diagnose any number of ailments, and a multi-vaccinator.
Just him, Kasyanov, and Ripley, for however many years it took for them to be found.
“You’ll see Amanda again,” he said—mostly to himself, because he was thinking of his own children, as well. They were all going home.
“Hoop,” Kasyanov said. “I’m about to initiate. The pod calculates that it’ll take just under twenty minutes for the physical repairs, and five more for the limited memory wipe.”
Hoop nodded. Kasyanov stroked a pad on the unit and it began to hum.
Inside, Ripley twitched.