“Call,” Johner snapped, his nerves fraying, “is the Betty prepped?” Earth was growing much bigger in the view screen as the planet pulled the Auriga down into her final embrace.
“She’s hot,” Call said, still calculating. It was going to be close. She found herself wishing Hillard was here. “I’ll shut the docking bay airlock.” She didn’t look at Vriess as she said to him, “Pull the holding clamps on your mark.” She was one with the ship, she was Betty. It felt weird, but good, too.
There was a long pause from Vriess, too long, and Call glanced over at him. He was scanning his equipment, looking around nervously. “Right…” he muttered. “Just need to… find, uh… the vertical thrust lock…”
Distephano leaned over the engineer and asked worriedly, “You guys can fly this thing, right?”
* * *
Ripley raced through corridors as fast as she could, finding her way to the Betty’s dock almost by instinct. Call’s voice—the voice of the Auriga—was repeatedly telling her to evacuate, that impact was so many minutes and seconds away.
In frustration, she yelled back at the voice, “Dammit, I’m moving as fast as I can!”
As she rounded the last corner, she saw the massive airlock doors leading to the Betty’s dock begin to shut, as the ship, with Call’s voice, told her, “Airlock doors closing. Stand clear.”
“NOOOOOOOO!” she bellowed, hurling herself forward with a burst of speed.
The doors were sliding shut before her. Throwing herself full speed at the narrowing space, she slipped through just in time, the sealing doors nearly catching one of her heels. She fell hard against the deck, and gulped air desperately.
Then Ripley heard the resounding clang that indicated the first docking magnet was disengaging.
“NO!” she shouted, as if anyone in the small ship could possibly hear her.
Lunging to her feet, Ripley raced the length of the dock toward the Betty. Another magnet disengaged with a huge clang. Speeding across the platform, Ripley moved faster, faster, until she could see the ship, the last magnet still in place. Five meters away. Three…
* * *
A flurry of activity in one of the Betty’s video monitors suddenly attracted Call’s attention. She glanced over and saw—
“Shit!” she yelled, unplugging herself and bolting out of her seat to lean over Vriess’s shoulder. “It’s Ripley! She’s coming! She’s almost here!” She reached past him, took hold of the Betty’s airlock controls.
“Call, dammit!” Vriess yelled, confused. “We’re almost disengaged! We’re out of time. We can’t wait!”
“We’re not leaving her behind!” Call shouted back, as she slammed her hand against the cargo bay door control mechanism.
* * *
Screaming in the rage of its abandonment, the Newborn finally managed to squeeze through the small trapdoor in the waste tank ceiling. The beast fell onto the upper deck of the Auriga in a tumble of limbs, the new, small wounds it had just earned seeping onto the surface, raising smoke from the quickly melting flooring. The acid blood had helped the Newborn widen the hole it had just crawled through, making it large enough for the being’s huge body.
The Newborn looked around as its wounds stopped bleeding and started to mend. It saw the Ripley disappearing down the hallway; running fast. But the Newborn could still find her, could still follow the human clone through the link in its mind. Pulling back its lips and grinning with teeth that were part Alien and part human, it loped after its ancestor down the darkening hallways of the doomed ship.
* * *
The last magnet was still in place as Ripley raced hard for the ship. The loading platform and all the ramps, however, had already been withdrawn, and the ship sat over the abyss of the docking tube, waiting for her final tether to be released so she could descend out of the bay.
As Ripley worried how she might gain access to the interior, the cargo bay airlock suddenly opened invitingly. Without hesitation, Ripley reached the edge of the platform and jumped, flinging herself off the platform like a diver going for the gold. She sailed through the air, three meters, five, seven—then landed hard on the solid floor of the Betty’s cargo bay. The landing knocked the wind out of her and she gasped for air as she waited for the doors to close behind her.
Ripley counted down in her head, but nothing happened. She had a sudden flash of déjà vu of waiting somewhere, somewhen, for another set of doors to close and keep her safe, but the memory was too insubstantial to capture.
As she looked back down the Auriga’s corridor at the sealed airlock she’d narrowly gotten through, she saw the massive doors suddenly shudder as a huge force slammed against them.
Then again.
And again.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to feel the contact, but knowing it was there all the same. Because they would never let her go, never release their claim on her. Not in this life. Maybe not ever.
Glancing around the cargo bay, she recognized certain pieces of equipment as critical for the ship’s functioning. It startled her to realize how familiar it all seemed, all the things associated with operating a spaceship. It had been so long. Another lifetime. A different body. She snapped out of her reverie, dealing with the problem at hand. This place was never meant to be exposed to vacuum. They’d never survive descent if they couldn’t get those doors shut. Did the crew know? Could they monitor this area? She looked around but couldn’t decide if there were small cameras in the hold or not.
Forcing herself to move, to react, she staggered to her feet. The ship rocked in her berth and Ripley nearly lost her tenuous footing as she grasped the manual override controls to the Betty’s airlock. Gripping the handholds and using her greater-than-human strength, she tried to force the overrides to close the doors.
Suddenly, with a squeal, the doors began to close slowly. There was so little time left… Trusting the airlock to do its job, she abandoned the controls, and bolted for the access stairway that led to the cockpit.
The squeaky, descending doors masked the fact that the pounding of the Newborn on the sealed corridor airlock had suddenly stopped.
* * *
“We got her!” Vriess told Call as Ripley landed in the cargo bay. “She’s in. Now, let’s get the hell out of here.” He fumbled with the controls that would prepare the Betty to start her descent through the Auriga’s long docking bay. As soon as the ship reached the halfway mark, Vriess could open the Auriga’s outer airlock. The big military vessel was already in the ionosphere. They were cutting it close. Too close, Vriess thought, really feeling the pressure now. As soon as the cargo bay doors sealed shut, he’d start their descent.
Vriess and Call watched the monitor, seeing Ripley stand up slowly and brush her hair away from her face with a hand. The woman forced the manual override to respond, then left as the doors began to drop.
That was all Vriess needed to see. He switched the monitors from the cameras back to the critical readout screens he’d need to manage their escape from the falling Auriga. Quickly, he glanced over Call’s flight plan as it scrolled over the screen. Lookin’ good, he thought, and signaled the ship to start her descent.
That was when the screen turned red and the bottom of the readout flashed a message Vriess really didn’t want to see. He rapidly tried some overrides, but the message never changed.
“Call,” Vriess said quietly, but the concern in his voice was plain. “I can’t get the damned doors to close.”
“You what?” Johner snapped from the seat behind them. “We can’t hit atmo with those doors wide open!”
“Ripley nearly got them closed by using the manual override,” Vriess told them, still reading the bad news on his screen, “but they stopped again halfway down. I can’t get them to budge.”
“Let me try,” Call said quickly, plugging her connection back into the ship. Muttering, she begged the ship, “Talk to me, Betty.”
* * *
In the docking bay, the ship’s e
xhaust caused steam to condense throughout the tube. Some of the steam had followed Ripley into the cargo hold, creeping around the equipment and cargo like the low-lying mist that shrouded graveyards. As the docking bay prepared to allow the Betty to depart, the air currents suddenly changed, and blew the steam away into a different pattern. The clinging strands of gray water vapor that trailed around the cargo bay airlock doors were whisked away in a sudden gust.
All that was left behind was a solitary figure.
As the Newborn pulled itself through the narrow space between the doors that had once stood between itself and the ship, it saw the magnets disengaging. And it saw the Ripley standing inside the ship. Determined to wreak its revenge on the being who betrayed it, betrayed the Queen, betrayed the entire hive, the Newborn growled a vow of vengeance. Waiting until the condensing steam once more enveloped it in camouflaging grayness, the Newborn crept on all fours toward the ship.
The gray death’s head of the Newborn grinned as the creature stealthily approached its newest home. It didn’t know what this place was, only that its mother—who was trying so hard to abandon her orphan child—had led it here.
* * *
The other four people already on board the Betty turned as their newest passenger rushed into the cockpit.
“Ripley!” Call called, turning in her seat. For some reason, she just needed to see her to be sure she was there.
“Hi,” the woman gasped breathlessly.
As she passed Distephano, he grinned at her. “Man, I thought you were dead!”
She nodded distractedly. “I get that a lot.”
“Glad you could make it,” Distephano told her. “I’d say it was good to see you, but Jesus, woman, you look and smell terrible!”
Ripley leaned over Vriess’s shoulder, scanning the monitors. “Why are we still here?” It was obvious from the readouts how little time they had left.
From her seat behind him, Call glanced at Vriess. He was sweating hard, distracted, clearly overwhelmed at the task ahead of him. He stammered, “I’m just… uh…! trying to find… the, uh, manual override… Is that it?” He reached hesitantly for a switch.
Johner leaned forward as if to assist when Ripley shoved the big man out of her way, and slapped Vriess’s hand. “Oh, for chrissakes…!” she muttered disgustedly as she hopped into the second pilot’s chair, the one right beside Vriess.
Elgyn’s chair, Call remembered with a pang.
Johner looked furious. “What do you know about flying these…?”
Ripley cut him off impatiently. “Are you kidding? This piece of shit’s older than I am.” Her hands flew over the controls unerringly, hitting buttons, flipping switches. She wasn’t even looking at half of them. “Just open the Auriga’s goddamn airlock,” she ordered Vriess.
He seemed happy to yield control of the ship to Ripley except for the monitor he couldn’t stop watching. He nodded toward it. “We’ve still got breach! Look! The hatch!”
“I shut it,” Ripley told him calmly.
Johner leaned over her chair, pointing to Vriess’s screen. “The goddamn hatch!”
Her eyes were drawn to a flashing screen that told the same story.
Vriess’s hands were once again moving efficiently over the control board. This was a problem he understood. “It’s this piece of shit again! We’ve lost pressure in the hydraulics. How did that happen?”
Johner was leaning over Vriess’s shoulder now, reading the panel. He stood and turned toward the cargo bay. “Maybe I can wrestle it closed.”
“I tried that already,” Ripley told him. His expression told her he knew he could do no better.
Call stood, rapidly disengaging herself from the communication port. At this point, they really didn’t need her here. “I got it!” She started to climb from her seat, then stopped for the briefest instant as she realized Ripley was watching her.
The intensity of the older woman’s gaze seemed to say, Of course I know who let me in. Ripley’s gratitude was clear in her expression. The robot nodded once.
Ripley barely managed a wan smile as she turned her attention to the monitor in front of Vriess.
The readouts on the screen told them the Betty was slowly pulling out of the dock. Call wouldn’t have much time to shut the doors before the outer lock opened. But she was the only one who might be able to survive back there once it did. Rapidly, she wove her way past the seats toward the back.
* * *
As the cockpit door closed behind her, Call took a second to look over the area. The cargo bay airlock had been sitting open less than a minute, but those things could move incredibly quickly. Could one of them have crept in here while they were all messing with the controls?
The very thought made her feel edgy, made the short hairs on the back of her neck stand straight up. The hoists and chains hanging overhead swayed and jingled as the ship moved, seeming to echo her nervousness.
Cautiously, she approached the emergency override controls. Grasping the lever, she used all her strength to yank the handle down, hoping this would force the closure of the lock in spite of the faulty hydraulics. The telltales flashed red, then green, and with painstaking slowness the doors began to lower, only to jam once more about a half meter from the floor.
“Call?” Vriess’s voice on the intercom startled her so badly she jumped. “Call?”
She started to answer him but before she could, a shadow flickered behind her. She froze instantly, every sense on hyperalert. The shadow moved, flickered again. Sensing a presence, Call turned slowly, ready to face whatever might be there.
* * *
“Call?” Vriess called over the intercom. “Call?”
Ripley handled the ship ably as it passed through the first set of docking bays as it descended toward the Auriga’s massive airlock. But even as she controlled the Betty, her attention was inexorably drawn to the monitor that indicated the cargo bay airlock was still open.
* * *
There’s nothing there, Call thought irritably, wondering if the damage to her body from Wren’s gunshot was affecting her sensory reactions. She peered around the vacant cargo bay and decided it was only the constant jostling of the hoists and chains that lent a sense of activity to the quiet area.
Need a lever, she told herself, forcing herself to focus on getting the lock sealed. Looking around the dimly lit bay, she saw, for the first time, all the complicated shadows cast by the various shapes of equipment and cargo. Suddenly, they all looked like hiding places.
Get the lever! she ordered herself sternly, annoyed at her imagined terrors when the real one they were facing was scary enough. Spying a long iron bar, she reached for it, picked it up, hefting its weight and strength. This’ll do nicely.
There was a sudden creak of equipment as the ship shifted slightly and the sound made her jerk to attention and look around the bay. The chains jangled together harshly, jostling each other in the dimness.
Get on the door! she reminded herself, turning her back on the cargo bay. Slipping the iron bar into the manual override grip, she leaned on the end of the bar to force the jammed handle all the way down.
A sudden sense of Otherness was suddenly so strong, Call could no longer deny it, not even for the airlock. There was a sound like a hissing breath, the sense of heat as if from expelled air, the feeling of something near, something dangerous—
Tensing, she turned, every sense wired, the mechanism she used for a heart accelerating wildly.
This time, it was there, really there, right behind her, and it was huge. And hideous. From the darkest shadows rose the most nightmarish vision Call had ever seen—and she was no stranger to nightmares. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t your garden-variety Alien. This looked like a horrific cross between the typical beast and the Angel of Death. Its skull-like face leered at her, its parody of human teeth grinning. It was bigger than the other Aliens, and the slight hint of humanity about it made it seem that much more grotesque.
Sh
e had never seen anything like it, not in the history books, and not on the Auriga. It was related to the original Aliens, yes, she could recognize that, even in her terror. But the difference—Could this be Wren’s last gift…?
The human traits of the creature are unmistakable. Oh, God… Ripley’s genes…!
She had to get out of here. Had to get away from it.
And then it moved toward her, reaching, reaching with arms impossibly long.
She felt as if she’d grown roots into the deck. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. Everything was on overload in her brain as she stared at the terrifying thing reaching for her.
But its hand moved right past her, grasping, instead, one of the crossbeams on the jammed airlock door. Then, to Call’s dazed surprise, the creature helpfully shoved the door to the floor, sealing it shut.
* * *
“She’s got the doors, man,” Johner told Ripley, as the warning message on the monitor turned green and changed to an all clear. He slid into the chair Call had vacated and switched the monitor there to an outer view of the Betty. “And we’ve got no time left. Open the docking bay doors before we kiss the ground.”
Ripley was aware of him only peripherally as she manipulated the ship’s controls, taking over, she imagined, for the things Call might’ve done much more easily through her port.
“Go full thrust on the downdraft!” Vriess called to her. “We can still get clear.” He glanced at Ripley. “But it’s gonna be close. And it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”
She nodded, surprisingly reluctant to turn her attention away from the monitor. But Call had the doors secure. She was all right. There were more important things for Ripley to do. She worked the controls and, at the same time, managed to strap herself in securely. She could hear Distephano and Johner doing the same. So familiar, she thought tiredly, handling the heavy harness that encircled her waist and shoulders… Just like the controls of the ship. All so strangely familiar.
Alien Resurrection Page 22
