In the meantime, it scanned itself for information, wanting, needing to know everything.
Ripley said softly, “Call? What’s going on?”
The ship responded immediately. Ripley did not have any access codes, but Call overrode that requirement. She proceeded to tell her everything as fast as she could.
“Breach in sector seven, sector three. Sector nine unstable. Engines operating at eighty-six percent. Ninety-six minutes until earthdock.” There was more, so much more, that the ship spoke faster and faster, trying to get it all out.
Finally, Ripley touched her arm, and the warmth of that human contact jolted the ship, changed it. “Easy, Call. Can you come back now?”
The robot blinked, separating from the intelligence of the ship, and became just Call again, a badly used, slightly damaged Auton. She blinked, and said to Ripley, “We burned too much energy. I can’t make critical mass. I can’t blow it.” She had feelings again, and they were the most desolate she’d ever experienced.
Ripley was still watching her, that level, intent gaze unnerving. “Then crash it,” she said decisively.
* * *
As everyone worked feverishly on unblocking the sealed door—with Vriess offering some semblance of leadership, even though his heart wasn’t in it—Larry Purvis tried not to spend any time thinking about the bizarre circumstances that had brought him to this juncture. If he thought about it, his rage at everyone he was working beside would erupt into something he couldn’t control. It was a terrible irony that his only possible salvation resided in the very hands of the people who had done this to him, but that was the reality of it. And Purvis was a realist.
He worked harder than he ever had in his life, and didn’t let himself think much. Trying to pry up the corner of the door, he jammed a rod into the corner to get some leverage. He grunted, leaning on the thing, waiting for his weight to move the seemingly immovable door.
A sharp, stabbing pain in his upper abdomen made him gasp, and clutch his chest. Everyone else stopped instantly. In spite of his pain, Purvis was all too aware that Johner and Distephano had brought their weapons to bear.
No! No, it can’t end this way, so pointless, so stupid! NO!
He gritted his teeth, waited it out. Then, as quickly as it started, it faded. Purvis took two deep breaths. It was gone. Nerves, maybe. Stress? Yeah, stress.
He grinned feebly at the others, who were staring at him warily. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Really. I feel good.” He nodded vigorously, as if he could convince them with false cheer and too broad a grin. The weapons were lowered, and everyone went back to working on the door.
But Purvis knew they were all watching him from the corners of their eyes.
* * *
Ripley watched as Call zoned out again, her eyes unblinking, the pupils dilating, first one, then the other.
“Ground level recalibrated… New destination seven sixty, four-oh-three. Uninhabited quadrant. Braking systems off-line, acceleration increase. Time until impact now forty-three minutes, eight seconds.”
“Try to clear us a path to the Betty,” Ripley reminded her. “And start her up.”
Call blinked once, as if to acknowledge the taller woman, then went back into her trance.
* * *
The Auriga checked the corridors that were on the path to the unofficial ship. It opened four hatchway doors in succession to give access to the ship. It hooked into the Betty herself, and turned her on. Aboard the Betty, lights went on, screens and indicators lit up, the engine hummed awake, then the pirate vessel began her own self-diagnosis prior to warm up.
Back in the chapel, the ship told Ripley through Call’s body, “Ship in prep, fuel on line… The ship paused. Something. “Tracking movement in Auriga, sublevels six through nine. Video is down. Attempted rerouting nonfunctional, wait, partial visual in waste tank, unauthorized presence…”
Beside the body of Call, Ripley asked, “Unauthorized?”
“Nonhuman,” the ship specified.
Ripley’s voice changed. “How many?”
“Please wait,” Call/Auriga said. “Emergency override in console forty-five vee, level one… Handprint ID…”
Call blinked, turned to Ripley as Call once more. In her own voice, she said, “It’s Wren. He’s almost at the Betty.”
Ripley raised an eyebrow. Imitating Wren’s patronizing voice and manner, she said to Call, “And how do you feel about that?”
* * *
Dr. Mason Wren came to another locked hatchway door. The doors slowed him up, but with his top, top security access codes, they had yet to halt his progress. And at this moment, he was only five doors away from the Betty. Once he was aboard the small pirate vessel, he could use his knowledge of the Auriga and his codes to gain access to the ship’s computer and control the big vessel from the outside. He’d be able to stop the military ship, then put it in safe orbit around the nearest planet. Once it was stable, he could contact the military brass and they’d send everything they needed to repair the ship along with enough troops and supplies to gas the entire ship and knock every Alien out until they could contain them. Then he’d be back on track, with more specimens to work on than he’d ever imagined.
But first things first. And his first priority was to get aboard the Betty and get her underway.
He still regretted losing the Ripley clone in the process, but at least he’d gotten to study it for a while. And now he’d have more specimens of the Aliens than he could ever want, so he certainly wouldn’t need to clone it again. Not that he couldn’t. They had plenty of samples of its current body on ice. It would be simple now to clone hundreds of Ripleys, each with a Queen growing inside it.
Wren stood in front of the locked hatch and tapped in his access. The lights on the keypad flashed for a moment, and then the red “locked” light turned green. With muffled clunks, the locks in the door opened.
Father’s voice announced, “Emergency override validated.”
The huge door began to rise. Wren glanced around himself nervously, still keeping a close eye open for Alien activity. He was so close now—
Only inches above the floor, the heavy door suddenly froze in place. It was way too low for a grown man to squeeze under. Wren frowned, punched in his codes again. But this time Father did not respond.
As he was about to input the codes one more time, every light in the corridor suddenly went out. Now he was standing in near darkness, only the faintest glow coming from the instrument panels and emergency lights.
Wren could actually feel the color draining from his face. He glanced about nervously, swallowing a hard lump in his throat. Wetting his dry lips, he said quietly, “Father, reboot systems on forty-five-vee. Authorization ‘starling.’”
He was met with a thunderous silence. Wren broke out in a heavy sweat, despite the fact that he felt chilled. Could the Aliens have done this? Caused a power breakdown so vast, or a computer failure so complete that…?”
“Father, locate power drain. Report.” More silence. “Father?”
The voice that answered him from the computer’s speakers was young and feminine. “Father’s dead, asshole.”
He recognized it instantly. It was the voice of that little terrorist, Call, the one he’d discovered in Ripley’s cell. He spun around, trying to see her. But the voice was everywhere, just like Father’s always had been.
The door he’d been trying to open suddenly slammed back down, narrowly missing his toes. The locks clicked back into place. The sound was final, irrevocable.
Wren just stood there, staring stupefied at the door, at the entire ship that had just become his sworn enemy.
Behind him, a different door opened. He could see the emergency light pulsing along toward him, like an arrow pointing in his direction. Dammit, that was the wrong door, the totally wrong door. There was no way he could get to the Betty through that door.
Call’s voice echoed throughout the ship. “Intruder on level one. Intruder on level
one. All Aliens please proceed to level one. Dr. Wren is there.”
Wren gasped in panic, then turned away from the door and began running back down the corridor.
* * *
Ripley watched as Call pulled the cord out of the port in her arm. “You’ve got a mean streak,” she said offhandedly. “I like that.”
Call avoided her gaze. “It’s done. That should hold—” Her voice track slipped again, sounding more mechanical. “Dammit!” She dug around in her chest cavity, trying to fix it.
Ripley leaned over, thinking she might help. “Let me see—”
Call flinched away, still not facing her. “Don’t touch me.’
Stung, Ripley sat back, putting space between them. The rejection hurt, and it angered her that it did.
“You must think this is pretty funny,” Call grumbled, her voice still off, sounding strange. She lifted her face, met Ripley’s gaze. Call’s was defiant. Angry.
Ripley sighed, suddenly very tired. “Yes. But I’m finding a lot of things funny lately. And I’m not sure they are.”
Call glared at her, suddenly furious. “Why do you go on living? How can you stand it? How can you stand… yourself?” Her mechanical voice, still slipping, sounded more and more bizarre.
Ripley shrugged. “Not much choice.” She’d never really had choices, not from the moment she’d been roused prematurely from cryosleep on a ship called the Nostromo. Anyway, Call was really only talking about herself, not Ripley at all.
Call turned her attention inward again, fighting with whatever parts of her controlled her vocal mechanisms. “At least there’s a part of you that’s human! I’m just—I’m just… Fuck. Look at me…”
Ripley did then, stared at the hole in her chest, the white oozing mass of torn and sticky fibers. There was something so familiar… She blinked, remembering Bishop, his courage, his humanity.
“I’m disgusting…” Call complained bitterly. Her voice was slowing down, sounding low and eerie like a badly recorded overdub. Ripley knew the problem was mechanical, but to her ears it sounded just like despair.
“Why weren’t you destroyed along with the others?” Ripley asked.
Call faced her squarely. “To kill you, remember?” She paused for a moment, then went back to repairing herself. “Before the ‘recall’—before everything fell apart for us—I accessed the mainframe. The Defense mainframe. Every dirty little covert op the government ever dreamed of was in there. Even this one. The plans, Perez’s involvement, the Aliens, you… Even the plans to hire the Betty crew. And I knew, if they succeeded, it would be the end of them.” Her voice was clear again, the right timbre, the right speed. “The End Of Humanity.”
Ripley felt herself smiling. There was something terribly funny in all this. “Why do you care what happens to them?”
“Because I’m programmed to, okay?” Call snapped.
Ripley started to laugh. “Are you programmed to be such an asshole? Are you the new asshole model they’re putting out?”
Call couldn’t help herself, she started smiling back, then laughed along with Ripley. But then she sobered again, and when she spoke, this time, there was a level of caring that she hadn’t been willing to reveal before.
“I couldn’t let them do it,” she told Ripley. “I couldn’t let them annihilate themselves. Does that make any sense? Do you understand?”
Ripley thought about that. “I did, once.” She looked around the chapel, seeing flashes of faces, names, and events that were more a jumble in her head than coherent memories. “I… I tried to save… people… Didn’t work out. There was a girl. A little blond girl. She had bad dreams. I tried to help her… and… and she died… And I can’t remember her name.”
Call patted her hand, then pulled away again.
Just then Distephano entered. “I guess we’re almost there.”
“Right,” Ripley said.
As the soldier left the chapel, the two women walked toward the door after him.
“Do you dream?” Ripley asked, curious.
Call hedged. “I… we have neural processors that run through…” She stopped, started over again. “Yes.”
“When I sleep,” Ripley said, closing her eyes, “I dream about it. Them. Every night. It’s like they’re all around me. In me.” She remembered the little girl saying, I don’t wanna sleep. I have scary dreams. “I used to be afraid to dream, but I’m not anymore.”
“Why?” Call asked.
Ripley stared at the stained-glass window for a moment. “Because no matter how bad the dreams get… when I wake up, it’s always worse.”
Ripley wondered what kind of supreme being might listen to the prayers of a robot, then she wondered whether it would mind listening to the prayers of a clone as well…
The two of them quietly left the chapel. As they did, the ship’s computer voice—now permanently programmed as Call’s voice—calmly sounded over the intership P.A.
“Ventilation systems stabilized. Oxygen at forty-three percent.”
Call seemed surprised. “Is that my voice?”
Ripley nodded. “Ships are supposed to be female anyway.”
12
They walked hurriedly, if cautiously, through the halls, Johner on point, Distephano and Call carrying Vriess, Purvis behind them, and Ripley taking the rear.
Ahead of her, Ripley heard Distephano tell them, “Not far now.”
Purvis sighed. “God, I’m so tired…”
“Yeah, well,” Johner snapped, nerves frayed, “we’ll sleep when we’re dead.”
That was when Ripley felt something squish under her foot. She stopped, looked down. There was a clear, gel-like goo under her booted toe. The others discovered it, too, when they stepped in it.
She fought the urge, then yielded, bending to touch it with her fingers, making sure. The mucus dripped stickily from her hand. Yes. Them.
Purvis glanced at them. “Uh, this is bad, right?”
Ripley looked back the way they’d come, then ahead again. “We must be near the nest.” Instinctively, she knew the Aliens were gathered there, though she didn’t know why or how she knew.
“Well,” Vriess said impatiently, “then we go another way.”
Distephano nixed that. “There isn’t one. This is it.”
Johner was nearly twitching with fear. “No! Okay, now, fuck you! ’Cause I ain’t goin’ in there!”
“Soldier’s right,” Call said, sounding subdued. “I did a diagnostic on the ship. This has to be the way… Unless we go all the way back.”
“I can live with that,” Vriess announced. “We could go back…”
“We don’t have enough time,” Call said simply, in that same subdued tone. She looked at Ripley.
“We got near ninety minutes!” Johner insisted.
Call paused, then shook her head, “Not anymore.”
“What are you saying?” Distephano asked.
Johner caught the look going back and forth between the two women and nearly exploded. “What did you do, Robot?”
“Forget it!” she ordered Johner.
But Johner was beyond listening to her. He moved forward, threateningly, pointing at Ripley. “Hey, you wanna die here with your little brothers and sisters, that’s fine. But I plan to live past today and if this hunk of plastic is pulling some shit”—he jerked a thumb back at Call—“I’m gonna kill her.”
He rounded on Call next. “Kill you! Does that fucking compute? Or do you want me to…”
Ripley was on him before he could finish, before he could draw another breath. Her hand shot out and grabbed his moving tongue as her other hand anchored his jaw in place. He froze, unable to move, unable to speak. Ripley got nose to nose with his ugly face.
“It would make a hell of a necklace,” she purred, tugging threateningly on his tongue. Then she released it.
Johner shut his mouth with a snap, and was silent.
Ripley turned to Distephano. “How far to the docks?”
�
��Hundred meters,” the soldier estimated.
As one, they all looked down the forbidding corridor. It looked empty, but…
“So, what’s the plan?” Vriess said tiredly.
Everyone glanced at one another. The feeling in the air was clearly, No choice. Again.
Without discussing it, Call and Distephano picked up Vriess, and every one of them burst into action, running down the corridor as fast as they could. It was the only thing left to do.
Ripley brought up the rear. She was running along with the others, watching behind them. Then, all of a sudden, it hit her. Them. Behind her eyes. In her brain. In her soul. Them. Coming for her. She staggered, tried to keep going, but couldn’t. She fell to one knee.
Call must’ve handed Vriess off to Purvis, because suddenly she was standing over her, shaking her. “Ripley? Ripley? What’s wrong?”
The terrible, insectile buzzing in Ripley’s mind nearly made her deaf to Call’s words. She shook her head, clamping her hands around her ears, grimacing in pain.
She tried to gasp out a warning. “Mistake…! Mistake…”
“Ripley!” Call yelled.
“I can hear them,” the clone gasped, nearly weeping. The pain, the horror of it, was overwhelming. She was losing herself, her identity, her very humanity. They were overwhelming her. “The hive… It’s close. We’re right over the hive…”
They were both so focused on Ripley’s problem, neither of them saw the rivet drill itself out of the floor, right by Ripley’s foot.
“I can hear them,” Ripley choked, every word a razor in her throat. “So close… So close.”
“Jesus!” Call said, pulling at her nervously. “Come on!”
But Ripley was glued in place, in too much pain and horror to move. “I can hear them… The Queen!”
A second rivet popped out of the floor, still unnoticed.
“The what…?” Call asked.
Dimly, Ripley realized that Call didn’t know anything at all about the family structure of the Aliens. And she was in no condition to explain details. “She’s in pain…!”
Awareness of her own danger hit Ripley suddenly, as she heard something move beneath her. Glancing down, she saw an Alien hand shoot up through the grillwork, grab the floor panel, and yank down.
Alien Resurrection Page 18
