Axel, who was a total asshole, but had helped her out.
Kuhlman and Waits, who left her to die.
Marlow, who started this whole thing with his spectacular inability to follow quarantine procedure, but who gave her the gift of her mother’s message.
And now Ricardo. The comforting voice in her ear.
She had nobody left. No one else on Sevastopol even knew who she was, and they would probably shoot her on sight.
The hell with it, she thought fiercely. Helping me is a death sentence anyhow. Grabbing a flamethrower from the armory, and more ammo for the shotgun, she dashed off to a transit car that would take her to the towing platform. As she did, she heard the now-familiar skittering sound.
One of the crab things followed her in.
This time she welcomed it. Screaming with rage, she torched it with the flamethrower, letting it fry until a sprinkler system activated and soaked her, putting out the fire.
Wonderful. That’s all I needed.
Taking off again at a sprint, she arrived at the towing platform and found several dead bodies. Some had been ripped to pieces by the creature—or several creatures, she had to consider that possibility now. Others were dead from gunshot wounds.
Just another fun day at Apocalypse Station.
The motion detector and the sound of a slithering tail both told her that a creature was nearby, so she took cover, crouching behind a shipping crate. Her boots squelched from the sprinkler shower, and she hoped it wouldn’t alert the monster to her presence.
Clutching the flamethrower to her dripping chest, she waited until she heard the slithering across the deck, close by. Leaping to her feet, screaming at the top of her lungs, she pulled the flamethrower trigger as hard as she could and sprayed the beast with an unending gout of flame.
The creature’s screeching cry was even louder than hers, and much higher pitched. It soon collapsed to the deck, burnt to a crisp. It smelled horrible, like burning hair.
But she’d killed it.
Go me.
The napalm tank attached to her flamethrower was empty, so she dropped it unceremoniously to the deck. The radio in her headset crackled.
“Ripley, this is Verlaine, can you hear me?”
“Um, yeah,” Amanda said uselessly, since APOLLO was keeping her quiet.
Or not so useless.
“Excellent, it worked.”
“You can hear me?”
“Connor managed to bypass the lockout on your radio. We’re about to move into position for the auto-umbilical sequence. We’ll be dark on comms until we match Sevastopol’s orbit—which, I have to tell you, is kind of a mess right now. Luckily, Connor likes a challenge. Then we’ll just need you to extend the clamps.”
“You got it.”
“Good. Torrens out.”
Amanda worked her way to the towing station. Using the Halfin to gain access to the towing systems, she started maneuvering the docking clamps into place. She just needed a ship to which she could clamp them.
“Ripley, this is Torrens.” The call came right on cue. “We’re in position.”
“Extending the clamps now.” Watching the display, she saw that the clamps were right on target. She made a mental note to buy Connor several drinks at the next opportunity.
“Clamps engaged,” Verlaine said. “Okay, Ripley, next step is to extend the personnel umbilical. You, and whoever you’re bringing with you, can come through there.”
That brought Amanda up short. “There isn’t anyone else. I mean, there are other people on the station, but they’re all pretty hostile. Anyone I might have brought along with me didn’t make it out alive.”
“Um, okay.” After an uncomfortable pause, Verlaine said, “I’m looking forward to hearing what exactly is going on over there.”
“You’re not, trust me.” Amanda took the service elevator up one flight to the upper control room—which had been gutted. “Oh, fuck.”
“What is it?”
“Looks like this place was already packed up for the decommissioning.”
“I thought that wasn’t happening until next year.”
Amanda stabbed at the terminal, and got a display.
PERSONNEL UMBILICAL OFFLINE. PLEASE
SEEK ASSISTANCE FROM A QUALIFIED
SEEGSON ENGINEER.
“Shit! Verlaine, the umbilical’s offline.” She thought for a moment, then added, “I might be able to fix it.”
“We don’t have that kind of time, Ripley, I can’t hold the Torrens here for much longer.”
“All right, let me find an EVA suit and I can come across on the towing clamp.”
“Okay, that will work. Come across on the beta clamp, that one’s closer to an airlock. And the towing clamp’s cable is a lot sturdier than the Sookdar’s, so even if there’s debris, you should be fine.”
“Hope so.”
Amanda turned and ran back to the service elevator. There were EVA suits on the other side of the platform. As soon as the elevator touched down on the lower floor, though, Amanda heard the familiar slither of the creature. Or rather, creatures. The motion detector was picking up two of them.
Shit.
She no longer had a flamethrower, and those two aliens were between her and the EVA suit she needed.
Not when I’m so fucking close!
They skittered into view. Unshouldering the shotgun, she pumped two shots into the closer alien. It stayed on its feet, though, and where the alien bled onto the floor, the viscous substance ate through the deck plates.
It bleeds acid? Seriously?
But she could see through the hole the monster’s blood was making, and there was a maintenance crawlway below. Turning and taking off at a sprint, she must have surprised the creatures. They didn’t follow right away as she looked for a hatch, finally spying one at the far end, near the transit station.
Dropping into it, she slid through the dark crawlway. The only light source was the hole made by the alien’s blood, and she found herself expecting lunar dust on her belly.
I hope you’re okay, Zula, she thought.
I hope I get to see you again.
31
SEVASTOPOL STATION
DECEMBER 2137
Above her, she could hear the creatures moving about. But neither seemed inclined to come down to the crawlway with her.
Almost there.
She found another hatch, pushed upward, and got it open. The EVA locker was only a few yards away. In the distance, she heard voices.
“Who extended the clamps?”
“Hey, there’s a ship out—”
“What the fuck?”
“Holy shit, is that what killed Holcombe and Snowdeal?”
Hating herself, Amanda took advantage of the distraction to put on the EVA suit, stow her weapons, and head for the clamps. Moving through an access hatch, she waited for it to decompress, then climbed out next to the beta clamp.
It wasn’t until she started climbing across that she realized just how difficult a job the Torrens had. Sevastopol wasn’t just in a decaying orbit. It was also tumbling, thanks to the impact from the Anesidora’s explosion. KG348 kept coming in and out of view as she climbed across the cable. It took the better part of four minutes to reach the Torrens’s airlock.
It’s been less than a day since I was last on this ship, yet it feels like a lifetime ago.
Ricardo’s lifetime ago—and Taylor’s, and Samuels’s.
She wondered if, when she got back to the Sol system, she should track Paul down and tell him that Mom was alive. It was, of course, perfectly possible that her stepfather didn’t care one way or the other. Then again, Amanda wasn’t entirely sure that she cared if Paul was alive or dead.
She yanked down on the metal lever that would depressurize the airlock and then open the outer door.
“Don’t come all the way in yet, Ripley,” Verlaine said. “I had Connor put some explosives in the airlock. Since there’s nobody on the other end to retrac
t the clamps, we’re gonna have to blow them off. Since you’re already out there…”
“Right.”
Amanda peered in through the window, and saw two large bricks of military explosives.
“Where the hell did you get this ordnance?” Amanda asked.
“Got a friend in the Colonial Marines,” Verlaine said.
“Me too, but she doesn’t get me explosives.”
The outer door opened. Amanda grabbed one brick with a gloved hand and then used the handholds on the hull to navigate over to the other clamp.
“Place the explosives in the center of the clamp,” Verlaine said, “not on the hull.”
Worked that out on my own, thanks. Amanda refrained from speaking as she thought it was tacky to snark off the person who rescued you. Placing the brick onto the center of the alpha clamp, she felt an odd vibration in the cable.
Turning around, she saw that each cable had an alien skittering across it.
Oh fuck, they can survive in a vacuum, too?
She picked up speed across the Torrens’s hull to the alpha clamp and attached the brick. Seeing her do so, the creatures moved far faster than Amanda had been. Their claw-like appendages had a much firmer grip on the cables, and they had much more freedom of movement. Plus, they had tails for balance.
The explosives in place, she climbed into the airlock. “Verlaine, we’ve got two of these things coming across the cables. The second that door closes, blow the charges.”
“I should wait until you’re clear of the airl—”
“There isn’t time!” She punched the red button that closed the outer door. “Do it now!”
The creature that had been on the beta clamp leapt onto the hull.
“Shit!”
“Charges going off—now!” Verlaine said.
The airlock shook as it was repressurizing, and Amanda had trouble keeping her feet. It took her several seconds to get her bearings and move to the door, so she could see out the window to where the alpha clamp had been. Both creatures were tumbling through space. She couldn’t hear them scream, but she enjoyed watching it.
“It worked, Verlaine,” Amanda said. The airlock repressurized, and Amanda removed the helmet.
There was no reply.
“Verlaine?”
She went out into the familiar corridor of the Torrens, the one that led to the mess hall and medical bay.
“Verlaine, are you there? Connor? Anybody?”
The same dread she’d gotten when Ricardo went silent now filled Amanda again.
“Ver—”
And then her heart beat like a triphammer as she heard an all-too-familiar slithering sound. A creature came out of the medical bay and headed slowly toward her, its claws clacking on the Torrens’s deck.
No, this can’t be happening. I got away from Sevastopol. I blew away those other two, there can’t be another one!
Except, of course, there could. The time she spent crawling under the towing platform was more than enough for a creature to come across to Verlaine’s ship.
She’s probably dead. Or about to be, like Ricardo.
Slowly, she backed away from the creature, which moved just as slowly as she—as if it knew that she was helpless. Her only weapons were in the back of her EVA suit, inaccessible until she took it off—a slow process that the creature was unlikely to grant her the time to accomplish.
The thing’s jaw opened, revealing that awful secondary mouth. Slime dripped from its exoskeleton all over the deck. Without realizing it, Amanda found she had backed into the airlock.
Well, that’s handy.
She reached down to the deck to grab her helmet from the floor.
As soon as the creature crossed the threshold, she slammed her hand on the green button. The inner door closed on the creature’s tail, cutting it off. Acid blood started to sizzle on the deck plates and the bottom of the door.
She had to act before the blood destroyed enough to keep the space from being airtight. Her hand hit the red button and the outer door slid open before the depressurization could even start, blowing both Amanda and the creature out into space.
Somehow, she managed to get her helmet on before she suffocated, even as she tumbled ass over teakettle out into the void.
This wasn’t how I expected it to end.
The creature shot off at about a forty-five-degree angle from the direction Amanda was travelling, so they separated quickly. Even if the thing could survive in a vacuum, there was nothing to sustain it, and it would eventually die. At least, so she hoped.
Of course, so will I.
She tumbled through space, rotating head over heels. She saw Sevastopol in its deteriorating orbit, bits of it burning here and there, the flames being consumed by the vacuum. She saw the debris field that was all that was left of the Anesidora. And she saw the Torrens, just floating there.
Reaching for the controls on the right forearm of her suit, she fired a thruster. Its force counteracted her own momentum, and once the two matched and she was still, she turned it off.
KG348 was now visible out of the corner of her eye, the bright orange-and-red gas giant sitting in the background, waiting to consume everything. She could no longer see the Torrens, as it was behind her.
Activating the suit’s radio, she said, “Torrens, I’m untethered. Orientation zero-niner-zero mark zero-two-zero. Need a lifeboat, do you copy?”
Silence.
“Verlaine, Connor, do you copy?”
Still nothing.
“Shit! Fuck!”
So this is it. I’m going to die.
She discovered that she was surprisingly sanguine about it. Not that she was happy or anything, but at least she’d managed to kill five of the creatures, which was pretty damned impressive. For all that he was a sonofabitch, Marlow was right about one thing. Total extermination was the only approach.
No. Dammit. She was not going to die now, not after all that had happened. For one thing, Weyland-Yutani had gone to all the trouble of buying Sevastopol. No way they’d just let this go uninvestigated.
Keeping the radio on, broadcasting on as wide a frequency as the suit would allow, Amanda spoke.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Amanda Ripley, cargo ship Torrens. I am in orbit, extravehicular, no propulsion, around planet KG348, Zeta Reticuli system. Orbital path is equatorial, synchronous with space station Sevastopol. Be advised Sevastopol Station has been destroyed.”
All that greeted her message was silence.
She had no idea who might hear her. There was likely no one still alive on Sevastopol, and the lack of response from Verlaine led her to believe that the Torrens’s crew were either incapacitated or dead. She hadn’t taken a good enough look at the Torrens’s EVA suits to know just what the range was on their comms.
Amanda kept broadcasting anyhow. It certainly couldn’t hurt, and it kept her awake and alert.
Wish I had a Fremon Bar or two in this suit.
As she drifted in high orbit around KG348, she looked at the various clouds of debris left behind by the Sevastopol’s damage and from the Anesidora. Then she saw it. A pulsing light amidst the wreckage of the Anesidora.
That’s a communications beacon. Probably part of the cargo vessel’s emergency beacon.
Okay, new plan.
She needed to fire thrusters precisely when she was facing the beacon, and she had already drifted too far for that to work. The thrusters on these suits were pretty basic, mostly meant to help straighten someone out—the very use to which she’d put them after her rapid exit from the Torrens.
So she had to wait until she completed another orbit around KG348.
And then she could call for a ride home.
Home.
Amanda Ripley hadn’t had a home since her mother left on the Nostromo. But now, for the first time since she was eleven, she thought of Earth as home again. Because that was where she’d be reunited with her mother.
Now that she knew Ellen Ripley was still
alive, she was filled with a renewed sense of purpose. Until now she’d just been going through the motions, following up on whatever leads she might have found, but not really doing anything.
Not so much living as existing.
But now she had two driving motives. One was the determination to find her mother. It was only a matter of time.
The other was to find and kill as many of those fucking aliens as she could. Those monsters took away Samuels and Ricardo, two people she actually considered friends, and it was because of those aliens that she hadn’t seen her mother in fifteen years. Even without that, they’d wiped out most of the complements of Sevastopol, the Anesidora, and the Torrens. And the Nostromo.
They were a plague on the galaxy that needed to be exterminated.
And she was going to do it.
For her mother.
* * *
When she came back around the gas giant, the beacon was still there in the wreckage. As soon as she was in position, she fired the thrusters. Jostled briefly inside the EVA suit, she flew forward, pushed by the thrust toward the beacon.
Once she was sure she was on course, she killed the thrusters, counting on momentum to bring her the rest of the way. As she moved forward, she saw one of the creatures atop a piece of debris. Panic ran through her, as it seemed to be clinging to the twisted piece of metal.
No, it wasn’t moving. Was it dead? Asleep?
It didn’t matter. As long as it made no move toward her, she was safe. With luck, it was just another bit of flotsam.
Eventually, you’ll be dead, you piece of shit.
She arrived at the beacon, the identification O227 stenciled on its hull, and wrapped her arms around a ladder attached to the outside to stop her forward movement. As she’d hoped, the beacon had a much greater range. She activated an emergency signal.
“This is Amanda Ripley, transmitting on all frequencies. I’m in orbit, Zeta Reticuli system, planet KG348, relay beacon Oscar-two-two-seven. I’m in one piece. I’ll be waiting.”
She put the message on a continuous loop at full power.
Dammit, someone had to hear it eventually. Sooner or later, they’d come to take her home. So she could tell the world about those awful creatures.
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