Aliens

by Alan Dean Foster

  She nudged the accelerator. The APC smashed through the curving wall like an iron ingot shot from a cannon. Fragments of resin and biomechanical mortar went flying. Huge chunks were crushed beneath the armoured wheels. She wrenched on the wheel, and the personnel carrier pivoted neatly. The rear of the powerful machine swung around and brought down another section of alien wall.

  Hicks appeared out of the smoke. He was firing back the way he'd come, holding the big pulse-rifle in one hand while supporting a limping Hudson with the other. Adrenaline muscle, and determination were all that kept the two men going. Ripley looked away from the windshield and back down the APC's central aisle.

  'Burke, they're coming!'

  A faint reply as he hollered back toward the cockpit: 'I'm on my way! Hang on.'

  The Company rep stumbled to the crew access door fumbled with unfamiliar controls until the armoured hatch cycled wide. Following in Hicks's and Hudson's footsteps, the two smartgun operators materialized out of the dense mist They were retreating with precision, side by side, firing and covering the retreat as they fell back on the personnel carrier As Ripley looked on, Drake's gun went empty. Automatically he snapped the release buckles on the smartgun harness. It sloughed away like an old skin. Before it hit the ground, he'd pulled a flamethrower from his back and had brought it into play. The hollow whoosh of napalm mixed with the deep-throated chatter of Vasquez's still operative smartgun.

  Hicks reached the APC, put his weapon aside, and all but threw the injured Hudson through the opening. Then he tossed his pulse-rifle after the comtech and cleared the hatch in two strides. Vasquez was still firing as the corporal got both hands under her arms and heaved, pulling her in after him. At the same time she saw a dark, towering silhouette lunge toward Drake from behind, and she changed her field of fire as Hicks was dumping her onto the APC's deck.

  A flash of contact lit up an inhuman, frozen grin as the smartgun shells tore apart the alien's thorax. Bright yellow body fluid sprayed in all directions. It splashed across Drake's face and chest. Smoke rose from the staggering body of the smartgun operator as the acid chewed rapidly through flesh and bone. His muscles spasmed, and his flamethrower fired as he toppled backward.

  Vasquez and Hicks rolled as a gout of flame slashed through the open crew door, setting portions of the APC's flammable interior ablaze. As Drake fell, Hicks charged the hatch and started to cycle the door. Moving on hands and knees, Vasquez lunged wildly at the opening. The corporal had to leave the controls to grab her. It was a struggle to keep her from plunging outside.

  'Drake!' She was screaming, not calm and controlled anymore. 'He's down!'

  It took all of Hicks's superior size and strength to wrench her around to face him. 'He's gone! Forget it, Vasquez. He's gone.'

  She stared up at him, irrational, her face streaked with soot and grime. 'No. No, he's not! He's . . .'

  Hicks looked back at the APC's other occupants. 'Get her away from here. We've got to get this door closed.' Hudson nodded Together he and Burke dragged the dazed smartgun operator away from the entry hatch. The corporal looked toward the cockpit and raised what was left of his voice. 'Let's go! We're clear back here.'

  'Going!' Ripley jammed on the controls and nailed the accelerator. The armoured personnel carrier roared and shuddered as she sent it racing backward up the ramp.

  A storage rack broke free, burying Hudson beneath a pile of equipment. Cursing and flailing, he threw the stuff aside indifferent to whether it was marked EMERGENCY RATIONS or EXPLOSIVES.

  Hicks turned his attention back to the door, fumbled with the controls. It was nearly shut when two sets of long claws suddenly appeared to slam into the metal flange like a pair of power hammers. From her seat Newt let out a primordial child's scream. The saber-tooth, the giant bear, the boogeyman was at the entrance to the cave, and this time she had no place to hide.

  Vasquez stumbled to her feet and joined Hicks and Burke in leaning on the door. Despite their combined efforts, the metal barrier was slowly being wrenched open from the outside. Locks and seals groaned in protest.

  Hicks managed to find enough wind to yell at the still numbed Gorman. 'Get on the door!'

  The lieutenant heard him and reacted. Reacted by backing away and shaking his head, his eyes wide. Hicks muttered a curse and jammed his shoulder against the latching lever. This freed one hand to pull out the sawed-off twelve-gauge just as a nightmare alien head wedged its way through the opening Outer jaws parted to reveal the piston-like inner throat and penetrating teeth. As slime-covered fangs swung toward him Hicks jammed the muzzle of the shotgun between the gaping demon jaws and pulled the trigger. The explosion of the ancient projectile weapon echoed through the personnel carrier as the shattered skull fell backward, fountaining acid blood. The spray immediately began to eat into the door and deck.

  Hicks and Vasquez fell aside, but some of the droplets struck Hudson on the arm. Smoke rose from skin as hissing flesh dissolved. The comtech operator let out a howl and stumbled into the empty seats.

  Hicks and Burke slammed the hatch shut and locked it.

  Like a runaway comet, the APC rumbled backward up the ramp and slammed into a mass of conduit. Ripley worked on the wheels, spinning the oversize metal rims and ripping free Sparks showered over the vehicle. In the crew quarters behind her, everyone seemed to be yelling simultaneously Extinguishers were unbolted and brought into play on the internal fire. Newt stayed out of the way, sitting silently in her seat as panicky adults ran to and fro around her. She was breathing hard but steadily, eyes alert, watching. None of what was happening was new to her. She'd been through it all before.

  Something made a soft metallic thump as it landed on the roof.

  Gorman had retreated into a corner to the left of the aisle. He was staring blankly at his frantic companions. Consequently he did not see the small gun hatch, against which he was leaning begin to vibrate. But he felt it when the hatch cover was ripped from its seals. He started to turn, not nearly fast enough, and was snatched through the opening.

  There was something at the tip of the alien's tail, something silver-sharp and superfast. It whipped around one leg to bury itself in the lieutenant's shoulder. He screamed. Hicks threw himself into the crew bay fire-control chair and clutched the controls, jabbing contact points and switches with his other hand as the seat motor hummed and swung him around Brightly coloured telltales came to life on the board, adding no cheer to the beleaguered APC's interior but bringing a smile to the corporal's face.

  In response to his actions servomotors whirred and a smal turret came to life on the personnel carrier's roof. It spun in a half circle. The alien holding Gorman two-thirds of the way out of the vehicle turned sharply in the direction of the new sound just as twin guns fired in its direction. The heavy shells blew it right off the top of the machine, the impact knocking it clear before the acid in its body began to spill.

  Burke dragged the unconscious Gorman back inside while Vasquez hunted for something to plug the opening with.

  Trailing fire and smoke, the APC tore up the ramp. Ripley wrestled with the controls as the big vehicle slewed sideways broadsiding a control room outbuilding. Office furniture and splintered sections of wall exploded in all directions, forming a wake of plastic and composite fibre behind the retreating machine.

  Almost clear now, almost out. Another minute or two, and if nothing broke down, they'd be free of the station's confines Free to . . .

  An alien arm arced down right in front of her face to smash the shatterproof windshield. Glistening, slime-coated jaws lunged inside. Ripley threw up both arms to shield her face and leaned away. Once before, she'd been this close to perdition. In the shuttle Narcissus, secure in its pilot's seat luring another alien close so that she could blow it out the airlock. But there was no airlock here, no comforting atmosphere suit enclosing her, no tricks left to pull, and no time to think of any.

  She tried to crush the brakes underfoot. The big wheels locked up at h
igh speed, screeching over the sound of the chaos outside. She felt herself being thrown forward, her head flying toward those gaping jaws. But her seat harness checked her motion and kept her in the chair.

  No such restraints secured the alien. Leaning over the windshield, it was clinging awkwardly to the edge of the roof and not even its inhuman strength could prevent it from being thrown forward. As soon as it landed on the ground she threw the personnel carrier back in gear. It didn't even bump as it trundled over the skeletal body, crushing it beneath its massive weight. Acid squirted over armoured wheels, but the APC's forward movement carried it clear before more than a few inconsequential pits had been eaten in the spinning disks Their movement was not affected.

  Darkness ahead. Clean, welcoming darkness. Not a blank falling over her mind but the darkness of a dimly lit world: the surface of Acheron, framed by the walls of the station. A moment later they were through, rumbling over the connecting causeway toward the landing field.

  A noise like bolts dropped in a food processor was coming from the rear of the APC. Occasionally a louder clunk could be heard. It was a sound beyond the soothing effects of lubrication, beyond repair. She fiddled with controls and tried to adjust the noise out of existence, but like her recurring nightmares, it refused early dismissal.

  Hicks came forward and, gently but firmly, eased her fingers off the accelerator control. Her face was as white as her knuckles. She blinked, glanced back up at him.

  'It's okay,' he assured her, 'we're clear. They're all behind us I don't think fighting out in the open suits them. Ease up We're not going much further in this hunk of junk, anyway.'

  The grinding noise was overpowering as they slowed. She listened intently as she brought the big vehicle to a halt.

  'Don't ask me for an analysis. I'm an operator, not a mechanic.'

  Hicks cocked an ear in the direction of the metallic gargling 'Sounds like a blown transaxle. Maybe two. You're just grinding metal. Actually I'm surprised that the underside of this baby isn't lying back on B-level somewhere. They build these things tough.'

  'Not tough enough.' That was Burke's voice, filtering up to them from somewhere in the passenger compartment.

  'Nobody expected to have to face anything like these creatures. Ever.' Hicks leaned toward the console and rotated an exterior viewer. The APC looked terrible on the outside, a smoking, acid-scarred hulk. It was supposed to be invulnerable. Now it was scrap.

  Ripley spun her seat, glanced at the empty one next to her and then turned to stare down the aisle that led back through the personnel carrier.

  'Newt. Where's Newt?'

  A tug on her pants leg. Not hard, so she didn't jump. Newt was squeezed into the tiny space between the driver's seat and the APC's armoured bulkhead. She was trembling and terrified but alert. No catatonia this time, no withdrawal from reality No reason for an extreme reaction, Ripley knew. Doubtless the girl had been witness to much worse when the aliens had overwhelmed the colony.

  Had she been watching the Operations bay monitors when the soldiers had initially penetrated the alien cocoon chamber? Had she seen the face of the woman who had whispered in agony to Dietrich? What if the woman had been . . .'

  But she couldn't have been. If that had been Newt's mother the girl would be beyond catatonia by now. Gone, withdrawn and unreachable, perhaps forever.

  'You okay?' Sometimes inanities had to be asked. Besides she wanted, needed, to hear the child respond.

  Newt did so with a thumbs-up gesture, still employing selective silence as a defence mechanism. Ripley didn't push her to talk. Keeping quiet while everyone around her was being killed had kept her alive.

  'I have to check on the others,' she told the upturned face 'Will you be all right?'

  A nod this time, accompanied by a shy little smile that made Ripley swallow hard. She tried to conceal what she was feeling inside, because this wasn't the time or place to break down. They could do that when they were safely back aboard the Sulaco.

  'Good. I'll be right back. If you get tired of staying under there, you can come back and join the rest of us, okay?' The smile widened slightly and was followed by a more vigorous nod but the girl stayed put. She still trusted her own instincts more than she trusted any adult. Ripley wasn't offended. She unbuckled herself and headed back down the aisle.

  Hudson was standing off to one side inspecting his arm. The fact that he still had an arm showed that he'd only been lightly misted by the alien acid. He was reliving the last twenty minutes of his life, replaying every second over and over in his mind and not believing what he saw there. She could hear him muttering to himself.

  '—I don't believe it. It didn't happen. It didn't happen, man.'

  Burke tried to have a look at the injured comtech's arm, more curious than sympathetic. Hudson jerked away from the Company rep.

  'I'm all right. Leave it!'

  Burke pursed his lips, wanting to see but not willing to push 'Better let somebody take a look at it. Can't tell what the side effects are. Might be toxic.'

  'Yeah? And if it is, I suppose you're going to check stores and break out an antidote in a couple of minutes, right? Dietrich's the medtech.' He swallowed and his anger faded. 'Was our medtech. Stinking bugs.'

  Hicks was bending over the motionless Gorman, checking for a pulse. Ripley joined him.

  'Anything?' she asked tightly.

  'Heartbeat's slow but steady. He's breathing the same way. It's the same with the rest of his vital signs: slowed down but regular He's alive. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was sleeping, but it ain't sleep. I think he's paralyzed.'

  Vasquez pushed both of them aside and grabbed the unconscious lieutenant by his collar. She was too furious to cry 'He's dead is what he is!' She hauled the upper half o Gorman's body upright with one hand and drew back the other in a fist, screaming in his face.

  'Wake up, pendejo! Wake up. I'm gonna kill you, you useless waste!'

  Hicks inserted his bulk between her and the frozen lieutenant. Same soft voice employed, but with a slight edge to it now. Same hard eyes staring into the smartgun operator's face.

  'Hold it. Hold it. Back off-right now.'

  Their eyes locked. Vasquez continued to hold Gorman half off the deck. Something basic cut its way through her fury Marine—she was a Marine, and Marines live by basics. The basics in this case were simple. Apone was gone and therefore Hicks was in charge.

  'It ain't worth bruising my knuckles,' she finally muttered She released the lieutenant's collar, and his head bounced off the deck as she turned away, still cursing to herself. Ripley didn't doubt for an instant that if Hicks hadn't intervened, the smartgun operator would have beaten the unconscious Gorman to a pulp.

  With Vasquez out of the way Ripley bent over the paralyzed officer and opened his tunic. The bloodless purple puncture wound that marred his shoulder had already sealed itself.

  'Looks like it stung him or something. Interesting. I didn't know they could do that.'

  'Hey!'

  The excited shout made Hicks and her turn toward the Operations bay. Hudson was in there. He'd been staring morosely at the biomonitors and videoscreens, and something had caught his eye. Now he beckoned to his remaining companions.

  'Look. Crowe and Dietrich aren't dead, man.' He gestured at the bio readouts, swallowed uneasily. 'They must be like Gorman. Their signs are real low, but they ain't dead—' His voice trailed off, along with his initial excitement.

  If they weren't dead and they were like Hudson, that meant The comtech started to shake with a mixture of anger and sorrow. He was standing on the thin edge of hysteria They all were. It clung to them like a psychic leech, hanging on the fringes of their sanity, threatening to invade and take over the instant anyone let down his mental guard.

  Ripley knew what those soporific bioreadouts meant. She tried to explain, but she couldn't meet Hudson's eyes as she did so.

  'You can't help them.'

  'Hey, but if they're still alive—'
>
  'Forget it. Right now they're being cocooned, just like those others. Like the colonists you found in the wall when you went in there. You can't do a damn thing for them. Nobody can That's the way it is. Just be glad you're here talking about them instead of down there with them. If Dietrich was here, she'd know she couldn't do anything to help you.'

  The comtech seemed to sag in on himself. 'This ain't happening.'

  Ripley turned away from him. As she did so, her gaze met Vasquez's. It would have been easy for her to say 'I told you so to the smartgunner. It also would have been superfluous. That one look communicated everything the two women needed to say.

  This time it was Vasquez who turned away.

  IX