by Tim Lebbon
Yet they had been the survivors. And now three of them were gone, slaughtered in a matter of moments by those bastard creatures.
Ripley gave them their silence, retreating to a control panel and sitting in the upholstered chair. It was a navigational control point. She browsed the system, noting the other planets and their distances, orbits, makeup. The sun at the system’s center was almost half a billion miles away.
No wonder it feels so fucking cold.
“We’ve got to find it,” Sneddon said. “Track it down and kill it.”
“Track it down how?” Kasyanov asked. “It could be hiding away anywhere on the Marion. It’ll take us forever, and we only have days.”
“I saw it,” Sneddon said. At the sound of her voice— so filled with dreadful awe, quavering in fear—everyone grew quiet, still. “It came out like... like a living shadow. Garcia didn’t even know what hit her, I don’t think. She didn’t scream, didn’t have time. Just a grunt. Like she was disagreeing with something. Just that, and then it killed her and ran. Just... brutalized her, for no reason.”
“They don’t reason,” Ripley said. “They kill and feed. And if there’s no time to feed, they just kill.”
“But that’s not natural,” Sneddon said. “Animals kill for a purpose.”
“Some do,” Ripley said. “Humans don’t.”
“What is and isn’t natural out here?” Hoop asked, and he sounded angry. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do.”
“Track it down,” Sneddon said.
“There’s no time!” Kasyanov said.
“That acid ate through the vestibule windows and floor in no time,” Hoop said. “We’re lucky the doors are holding—they’re blast doors, not proper external doors.”
“So how the hell do we get to the Samson now?” Lachance asked.
“That’s another problem.” Hoop was the center of attention. Not only in command, he was the only engineer left alive.
“Suit up,” Lachance said.
“Exactly what I was thinking,” Hoop said.
“Yeah,” Baxter agreed. “The Samson’s environmental systems will recompress, once we’re inside.”
“We’ll need to form another airlock,” Hoop said.
“But we can’t just leave that thing roaming around the ship!” Kasyanov shouted. She was standing, fists clenched at her sides. “It could chew through cables, smash doors. Do god-knows-what sort of damage.”
“We can leave it.” Hoop looked at Ripley, as if seeking her agreement. And suddenly the others were watching her, as well.
Ripley nodded.
“Yeah. It’s either that, or we hunt the thing through the ship and put everyone at risk. At least this way we have a chance.”
“Yeah, a chance,” Kasyanov scoffed. “What are the odds? I’m taking bets. Anyone?”
“I don’t gamble,” Ripley said. “Listen, if three of us keep watch while the other three work, it’ll still take a while to get into the Samson. Then when we return, straight into my shuttle and away.”
“What about supplies?” Baxter asked. “Food, water. Lube for all that lovin’ we’ll be doing.”
“Are there stocks down at the mine?” Ripley asked Hoop.
“Yep.”
“But that’s where they came from!” Sneddon said.
Ripley nodded. No one else spoke. Yeah, we’ve all been thinking about that, too, she thought.
“Right, so I’ll call it,” Hoop said. “I’ve got an idea of how we can get through the decompressed rooms to the Samson. We all go, and follow the plan. And if that thing causes us problems when we come back, we deal with it then.”
“One cataclysm at a time, eh?” Baxter said.
“Something like that.”
“We need more weapons,” Ripley said. “We lost most of them down there when...”
“We can divert to Hold 2 on the way down,” Sneddon said. “Plenty of charge thumpers and plasma torches there.”
“Easy,” Lachance said.
“A walk in the park,” Baxter agreed.
“We’re all going to die,” Kasyanov said. And she meant it. She wasn’t making a joke. Ripley had been impressed when she leaped into action in the docking arm, but now she was the voice of pessimism once again.
“Not today,” Ripley replied. Kasyanov snorted. No one else replied.
They moved, but not too quickly. On the relative safety of the bridge, they each took a few moments to compose their thoughts.
Beyond the doors lay only danger.
8
VACUUM
They made sure that the bridge was properly sealed before they left.
There was brief discussion that Lachance and Baxter might remain behind, but it was quickly dismissed, and they didn’t need much persuading that they should go with the others. Neither liked the idea of being left alone with the creature, especially if something went wrong on the planetary surface. Better that they all remain together. Besides, there was little that they could do aboard the orbiting ship, other than track its doomed trajectory.
Just before they left the bridge level, Hoop watched as Kasyanov approached Ripley, stretched on tiptoes, and planted a kiss on her cheek. She didn’t speak—perhaps words of thanks would have been redundant, or might have lessened the moment—but she and Ripley locked glances for a moment, and then both nodded.
“If you ladies are done smooching, maybe it’s time to get the fuck off this ship,” Baxter said. With the bridge doors locked and their mechanisms disabled, the six survivors moved off toward Hold 2. Sneddon volunteered to go first, asking for Hoop’s charge thumper. He didn’t object. They were all in this together.
They circled back around the accommodations hub, watching each door in the inner wall of the curved corridor. There were almost a hundred separate bunk rooms in the hub, and the alien could be hiding in any of them. Access doors were recessed into the gray metal wall and difficult to see, and subdued lighting gave the shadows added depth. It was a stressful journey. They took it slowly and reached Hold 2 without incident.
It was a huge space—high ceilinged, cavernous and partly filled with spare mining equipment. Two massive ground transport vehicles were chained down to the floor, and several smaller trucks had moved around during and immediately following the Delilah’s crash. Other equipment lay stacked or scattered. There were metal transport crates, tool racks, supply tanks and boxes, and all manner of smaller items. It formed a complex maze of walkways and dead ends, and Hoop suddenly wanted to turn and go back the way they’d come.
But they needed weapons. Not just in case they came across that bastard thing in the Marion’s corridors, but to face whatever they might find down on the planet. The miners had unearthed something dreadful down there, and there was no telling how many of the things might be waiting for them.
The thought almost paralyzed him with a sense of hopelessness. But he had to shake his doubts and hide them away beneath the stark knowledge that they had no other options.
He motioned the others close, and he led the way along the hold’s outer wall. When he reached a heavy green door he entered an access code. The door whispered open, and automatic lighting flickered on inside.
“All in,” he murmured.
They filed past him, Ripley bringing up the rear.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Workshop,” Hoop said. He was the last inside, backing in, watching the hold as he closed the door behind him. Only then did he turn around and relax.
Powell stood by the welding rig over in the far corner, complaining about something Welford had done, or something that grumpy bastard Baxter had said in the rec room, or maybe just finding an aspect of his own appearance to whinge about. Welford sat at the electronics island bench, goggles up on his forehead. He smiled at Powell’s constant, monotonous drone. A massive coffee mug emblazoned with the words “Engineers are always screwing” steamed by his elbow as he waxed lyrical on some subject or another, his voice
a constant background buzz, a counterpoint to Powell’s deep tones.
Hoop blinked. He never thought he’d miss those two, not really. They’d died badly. He couldn’t hold back the memories. He’d spent so long down here with them, working on various repair and maintenance jobs, and although they’d been more friendly with each other than with him—his superior ranking, he thought, or perhaps just that the two of them were more alike—they’d still been a team of three.
“What a dump,” Baxter said.
“Fuck you,” Hoop said.
“Nice place you’ve got here...” Ripley smiled, and she seemed to understand. Maybe she’d seen it in his expression.
Hoop sniffed and pointed.
“There’s some stuff racked in the cupboards back there. Baxter, why don’t you and Lachance check it out? Sneddon, Kasyanov, come with me and Ripley.”
“Where?”
“Through there.” He pointed at a door in the side wall, closed and marked with a Hazardous Materials symbol.
“What’s in there?” Ripley asked.
“I’ll show you,” he said, smiling. “Wondering if we can fight fire with fire.”
Hoop punched in the access code and the door slid open. Lighting flickered on inside, illuminating a small, sterile-looking room, more like a research lab than the workshop that led to it. He’d spent quite a bit of time in here, toying with chemicals and developing various application methods. Jordan had always turned a blind eye to the engineers’ hobbies in research and development, because it relieved boredom and passed the time. But this had really been Welford’s baby. Sometimes he’d spent twelve hours at a time in here, getting Powell to bring him food and drinks down from the galley or rec room. Hoop had never been sure exactly why Welford had become so interested in the spray gun technology. Perhaps it was simply because it was something he excelled in.
“So what’s this?” Ripley asked.
“Welford’s folly,” Sneddon said. “I helped him with some of the designs.”
“You did?” Hoop asked, surprised.
“Sure. Some of the stuff he was using down here was... pretty cutting-edge, actually.”
Hoop hefted one of the units Welford had been working on. It looked like a heavy weapon of some sort, but was actually surprisingly light. He shook it, already knowing that the reservoir would be empty.
“We’re going to fight them with water pistols?” Ripley said.
“Not water,” Sneddon said. “Acid.”
“Fire with fire,” Hoop said, smiling and holding up the gun.
“The miners had been asking us for something like this for quite a while,” Sneddon said. “The trimonite is usually only found in very small deposits, and surrounded by other less dense materials—sands, shales, quartzes, and other crystalline structures. It’s always been a timeintensive process, sorting through it. The idea with this was to melt away all the other stuff with hydrofluoric acid, and keep the trimonite untouched.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Ripley said.
“That’s why it’s still just in the lab,” Hoop said. “We were looking for a way to make the application process safer.”
“And you found it?”
“No,” Hoop said. “But safe’s the last thing on my mind right now.”
“How do we know this will even bother them?” Kasyanov asked, negative as ever. “They have acid in their veins!”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Hoop said. “We have two units. Let’s get them primed, and we can get out of here.”
* * *
Ten minutes later they stood ready at the workshop’s locked doors. Hoop had shrugged a tool bag over his shoulder, packed with all the tools he thought they might need. He and Sneddon carried the spray guns, containment reservoirs fully loaded with hydrofluoric acid. Ripley and Lachance had charge thumpers, the charge containers loaded with six-inch bolts. They wore bolt belts around their waists, heavy with spare ammunition. Baxter and Kasyanov were carrying newly charged plasma torches.
They should have felt safer. Hoop should have felt ready. But he was still filled with dread as he prepared to open the doors.
“You all follow me,” he said. “Sneddon, take the rear. Eyes and ears open. We’ll move slow and steady, back around the hub, down the staircases to the docking deck. Once we get to the corridor outside Bay Three, that’s when I get to work.” He looked around at them all. Ripley was the only one who offered him a smile.
“On three.”
* * *
It took almost half an hour to work their way back around the ship’s accommodation hub and down to the docking deck. On a normal day it might have been half that time, but they were watching the shadows.
Hoop expected to see the surviving alien at any moment, leaping toward them from a recessed doorway, appearing around a closed corner, dropping from above when they passed beneath domed junctions. He kept the spray gun primed and aimed forward—it was much easier to manage than a charge thumper. There was no telling how effective the acid might be, but the thumpers were inaccurate as weapons if the target was more than a few yards away, and the plasma torches were probably more dangerous to them than the creature.
They’d seen that on the Delilah.
Hoop’s finger stroked the trigger. I should be wearing breathing apparatus, he thought. Goggles. A face mask. If any of the hydrofluoric acid splashed back at him, or even misted in the air and drifted across his skin, he’d be burnt to a crisp. His clothes, skin, flesh, bones, would melt away beneath the acid’s ultra-corrosive attack.
Stupid of him. Stupid! To think that they could take on the creature with a form of its own weapon. His mind raced with alternatives.
He should switch back to the thumper.
He should have Baxter take lead with the plasma torch.
They should stop and think things through.
Hoop exhaled hard, tensed his jaw. Just fucking get on with it, he thought. No more dicking around! This is it.
Descending the wide staircase into the docking level, they paused beside a row of three doors marked with bright yellow “Emergency” symbols. Baxter opened the first door and took out three vacuum-packed bags.
“Suits?” Ripley asked.
“Yeah, everything’s in there,” Baxter replied. “Suit, foldable helmet, compressed air tank, tether cable.” He looked around at the rest. “Everyone suit up.”
They took turns opening the bags and pulling themselves into the silver space suits. It was like being wrapped in thin crinkly plastic, with stiff sealing rings where the parts fit together. Fabric belts slipped through loops and kept the material from flapping too loosely. The helmets were similarly flexible, with comm units sewn into the fabric. The suits were designed for emergency use only, placed close to the docking bays in case of a catastrophic decompression. The air tanks would last for maybe an hour, the suits themselves intended purely to enable the user to get to the nearest safe place.
When they were all ready, they moved on.
Reaching the corridor outside Bay Three without incident, Hoop looked around at everyone else. They seemed more pumped up than they had before, more confident. But they couldn’t let confidence get the better of them.
“Baxter, Sneddon, that way.” He pointed past the closed doors and toward Bay Four, where Ripley’s shuttle was docked. “Close the doors in Bay Four, make sure as hell they’re secure, and keep watch. Kasyanov, Lachance, back the way we came. Close the corridor blast doors. Ripley, with me. Let’s hustle.”
When the others moved off he shrugged the tool bag from his shoulder and held the spray gun out to Ripley. “Just hold it for me.”
She took the acid gun from him, one eyebrow raised.
“Too dangerous for me to actually use, eh?”
“Ripley—”
“Show me. I can handle myself.”
Hoop sighed, then smiled.
“Okay, you prime it here, wait until this light is showing red. Aim. Squeeze the trigger. It’ll fire
compressed jets in short pulses.”
“Shouldn’t we be wearing proper safety gear?”
“Definitely.” He turned away, knelt, and opened the tool bag. “I won’t need long,” he said. The space suit made normal movements a little more awkward, but he took a heavy portable drill out of the bag, fitted it with a narrow drill bit, and then propped it against one of the door panels.
Beyond, in the vestibule to Bay Three, lay the vacuum of space.
“You sure that door will hold?” Ripley asked. “Once you get through, and we start decompressing—”
“No!” he snapped. “No, I’m not sure. But what else do you suggest?”
Ripley didn’t answer. But she nodded once.
“Helmets,” he called. “Clip your tether lines close, and to something solid.” Ripley fixed her flexible helmet collar and turned on her air supply, and along the corridor in both directions he heard the others doing the same. When he was sure everyone was ready, he fixed his own helmet with one hand, then started drilling.
It was the loudest noise they’d made since opening up the Samson. The metal drill bit skittered across the door’s surface before wedging against a seam and starting to penetrate. Curls of metal wound out and dropped to the floor like robot hair. Smoke wafted, and Hoop saw heat shimmering the air around the drill’s head as the bit bored slowly into the door.
He leaned into the tool, driving it deeper.
It didn’t take long. The drill casing banged against the door when the bit pushed through, and Hoop turned off the power. A high-pitched whistling began instantly as air was forced through the microscopic gap between bit and metal.
He looked around at Ripley. She’d tethered herself to a door handle across the corridor.
“Everyone get ready,” he said into his helmet’s comm. “Here goes nothing.” He placed his gloved hand over the rapid release button on the drill and pressed. A thud, a shudder through the drill, and the bit was sucked through the door and into the vestibule beyond.
