Then it came to her. The angle of the light was changing. Its color too. After all, they were in orbit around a planet. Eventually the sun had to go down.
Ripley swore to herself. In the dark, the creature would have an even greater advantage. She and Johner had to get a move on while they could still see.
With a last glance at the bay, Ripley followed her companion outside. A moment later the door slid closed again, placing them back in the jungle’s embrace.
They were halfway to the flivver when Ripley noticed something. Not the light this time, but a scent. There was no mistaking it, no confusing it with anything else.
Her heart pounding against her ribs, she whispered her discovery to Johner: “It’s here.”
Her companion stopped dead in his tracks and asked, in the same whispered voice, “Where, goddamnit?”
She didn’t know for certain, but she could tell from the fluttering of the leaves which way the breeze was blowing. If they were downwind of it, it had to be …
“There.” She pointed for Johner’s benefit.
He nodded. “Gotcha.”
They remained where they stood, trying not to move, becoming as much a part of the scenery as possible. And after a minute or so, Ripley caught a glimpse of its profile in the deepening shadows.
The alien was bigger than she had expected, based on the colonists’ estimate of how long it had been maturing outside its host. But they could have misremembered.
After all, they had said the embryo was inside their colleague for days, when it couldn’t possibly have been that long. So clearly, they were more than a little disoriented.
Ripley held her breath as she watched the alien pick its way through the jungle, following a path that would eventually take it past her. She hadn’t seen one of its kind since she left the Auriga, where all those she encountered had carried a bit of her genetic material.
This one was different. It was a stranger, a competitor, a threat in every sense. If it attacked her, it wouldn’t hesitate to sink its teeth into her brain—by way of her face, if necessary.
Not that she intended to let that happen.
Ever so slowly, she brought her burner up to the level of her chest and tucked its stock into the hollow of her shoulder. As far as she could tell, the alien hadn’t noticed.
But it would notice her soon—because contrary to what she had told Philipakos, there were circumstances in which it made sense for them to go on the offensive. This was one of them.
They had the element of surprise. They had the range. And they had the numbers, if only barely. It was as good a shot as they were ever going to get.
Johner had to know it too. When I make my move, Ripley thought, he’ll be ready.
She waited until the alien was almost in front of her before she went into action. Moving as quickly and silently as she could, she slithered through the jungle and placed herself directly in the invader’s path.
It took only a second to catch her scent, its elongated head turning that way, and another to begin loping in her direction. Seeing it come, Ripley clenched her teeth and held her ground.
Another second, she insisted. That way I’ll be sure not to miss.
Then the second was past.
Squeezing the trigger of her burner, she unleashed a burst of high-voltage fury. The alien recoiled from it, but didn’t retreat. After all, it could survive a barrage from a single burner—long enough, at least, to get at the one responsible for it.
Which was exactly what it tried to do, pressing forward step by step against the force of the shock rifle, its arms and tail flailing with the punishment it was absorbing. But before it could reach its tormentor, it was attacked from behind.
Looking past the alien, Ripley saw Johner skewering it with an energy bolt of his own, his teeth pulled back in a rictus of determination. Caught in their crossfire, the thing tried to slip free—but it couldn’t. They kept it pinned between them, twitching in agony, its tail snapping back and forth like a whip.
Go down, Ripley insisted.
For a while, it looked like they might run out of rifle charge first. Then, with a hideously high-pitched scream, it slumped to the dark, root-threaded ground—still writhing, still fighting, but with ever-decreasing intensity.
“Don’t stop,” Ripley snarled.
Because they didn’t want to just incapacitate it. This wasn’t a game like the one scientists played, where they would wrap it up and take it home for study.
And fair play had nothing to do with it. If they killed the alien, they lived. If they gave it a moment’s respite, they died. It was that simple, that basic.
Ripley endured the oven-like heat of her energy bolt’s thermal backlash. Sweat ran into her eyes, stinging them mercilessly, making it difficult to see. But she didn’t dare stop even for a second—not as long as the alien was still jerking about.
And then, all at once, it stopped jerking. And lay there, a solitary plume of greasy black smoke ascending from it. And looked for all the world like a dead thing.
Which it is, Ripley thought.
After all, she had alien genes raging inside her. She could tell when one of them had given up the ghost. Taking her finger off her trigger, she lowered her rifle.
But Johner kept firing, bathing the alien in gouts of blue-white electricity. He didn’t seem able to stop, caught in a combination of anxiety and fury.
“It’s dead,” Ripley told him.
He turned to her, red-faced with anger, sweat dripping from his long, scarred chin. “Don’t you think I know that?”
They stood there for a moment, eyes locked as if they were going to go at each other next. Then Johner cursed to himself, turned his back and moved off.
Unperturbed, Ripley knelt beside the alien’s still-smoking remains. Strange, she thought as she examinined it. “There’s something different about this one.”
Johner looked back over his shoulder. “What do you mean?”
Ripley ran her fingers over a ridge that extended from the corpse’s shoulder to its elbow. It was something the other aliens—the ones she had seen before—didn’t have.
And its proportions were off. Its head was too big compared to the rest of its body.
“That is different,” said Johner. “Wonder why.”
Ripley nodded. “Me too.”
Putting the question aside for a moment, she took out the comm unit in one of her pockets. Then she stabbed in the numbers that made up Call’s code and said, “It’s Ripley.”
“Did you find the backup bay?”
“We did,” said Ripley. “And it’s working. But there’s more.” She savored the words. “We got the alien.”
Silence. Then: “You’re okay, right?”
“Fine. So’s Johner.”
“I didn’t ask about Johner,” Call responded with an antic note in her voice.
Johner’s lip curled. “Love you too, little girl.”
“How did you do it?” asked the android.
Ripley told her.
“Well,” said Call, “that was a stroke of luck. We should see about having some more of those.”
Ripley didn’t believe in luck. “See you back at the control center,” she said, and put the comm unit away.
Johner considered the alien for a moment. “I forgot how creepy these things are.” He glanced at Ripley. “No offense.”
She shrugged. “None taken.”
* * *
Call smiled to herself, thought Good going, Ripley, and returned her comm unit to her pocket. Then she leaned back in her seat.
“Good news?” Shepherd deduced, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his sleeve as he negotiated a path through the jungle.
“The best,” Call confirmed.
She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her brow. Even her surroundings looked different now that she didn’t have to peer into every deepening shadow.
“Ripley and Johner found the alien,” Call elaborated. “
They killed it. We’re off the hook.”
Shepherd stopped the flivver and stared at her disbelievingly. “You’re sure?”
Call understood how he felt. Ripley had told the colonists they didn’t stand a chance of killing the thing. And then, somehow, she had done it anyway.
“Would I lie to you?” she asked. “The sucker’s dead.”
Shepherd regarded her a little longer, then looked away. “So we don’t have to leave the Domes after all.”
“I guess not,” Call said.
“We should tell the others.”
“Ripley will take care of that,” she assured him. “She’s on her way back to the control center right now.”
“That’ll do, I guess.” Shepherd shook his head, looking strangely disoriented. “It’s crazy. I got so keyed up about the alien, I was ready for anything—except this.”
“Finding out there’s nothing more to worry about.”
“That’s right.”
“Not so crazy. I’ve felt that way myself.”
It was one of the reasons she found it difficult to adjust to life on Earth. Every so often, she would tense up in anticipation of an attack that never came.
Johner and Vriess experienced the same thing, so it wasn’t just an android issue. They had beaten all the aliens on the Auriga, destroying every last one of them. But in their minds, they would never stop fighting them.
Ever.
“We still have to find Benedict,” Shepherd noted. “At least, I do.”
“Hey,” said Call, “I’ve come this far. I might as well see this through to the end.”
Shepherd seemed pleased by her decision. Putting the flivver into drive again, he continued along the bank of the river.
After a while, he said, “There’s something else I don’t get. I mean, besides the reason Ripley sent you out here.”
“I’m listening,” said Call.
“At heart, you’re not a cargo hauler. You’re better than that. So what are you doing with Ripley and those others?”
She chuckled. “I’m a lot more like them than you think.”
Shepherd shook his head. “Not from what I see. And I’m usually a good judge of character.”
“Okay,” she said, indulging him—and herself at the same time. “So what am I really like?”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “You’re bright. Educated. Cultured. You can tell Merlot from Pinot Grigio. But you downplay it so you can fit in with your friends.”
Call resisted an impulse to smile. He’s not far off, is he? Except it wasn‘t intelligence, it was programming. And it wasn’t education, it was memory.
“I’ve never had Pinot Grigio in my life,” she said, sidestepping Shepherd’s observation. “And as far as—”
She stopped in mid-sentence, catching a glimpse of something up ahead alongside the stream. Putting a hand on her companion’s arm, she said, “Stop.”
“What is it?” he asked.
Something I can see but you can’t, because I was designed with superior eyesight along with all that intelligence. “Brace yourself.”
Shepherd stopped the flivver and looked around. “Benedict?”
“I think so,” she said, and pointed. “Over there. In those bushes with the yellow blossoms.”
Getting out of the flivver, they approached a tattered wet jumpsuit that had been blue once but was now a darker color. There wasn’t much left inside it, but what there was looked enough like a man to satisfy them it was Benedict.
“Damn,” Shepherd said, his voice thick with emotion.
“I’m sorry,” said Call.
His Adam’s apple climbed his throat. “It’s not going to be easy telling Phil. He and Benedict were friends for a long time.”
“Come on,” she told Shepherd, putting her hand on his shoulder. “I’ll help you get him into the flivver.”
He nodded. “Thanks.”
Fortunately, there was a stack of plastic bags in the back of the vehicle, no doubt intended for dead branches and such. They would serve a different purpose this time.
It was gruesome work stuffing the pieces into the bags, but they got through it. Afterward, when Benedict’s remains were lashed securely in the back of the flivver, Shepherd went to wash his bloody hands in the stream, and Call followed him.
“That was bad,” she said.
“You can say that again.”
She was going to say something comforting, something to distract her companion from his loss. But she never got to it.
Androids weren’t supposed to have instincts—not even the enhanced androids of Call’s generation. But it was something like an instinct that made her turn her head suddenly and scrutinize the swathe of jungle to her left.
At first, she didn’t see anything—just leaves moving in the warm, humid breeze. Then she did see something— only a glimpse, but it was enough. Nothing else looked that way, moved that way.
“Call,” Shepherd whispered, for he had turned his head as well.
“I know,” she said, “I see it too.”
It was the alien. And it was coming for them.
Shit, Ripley. You said you killed it. And she wasn’t one to make careless mistakes.
But there it was, sliding through the undergrowth. So there had to be more than one of them.
How? she wondered. The colonists had mentioned only one ovoid—and only one of them dying as he gave birth. So someone had been wrong, or maybe lied to cover something up.
Later, the android vowed, she would get some answers. But for the moment, she was interested only in survival— hers and Shepherd’s.
Getting up at the same time he did, she headed for the flivver, where the weapons were. Fortunately, they got there before the alien could slink completely out of concealment.
Without taking her eyes off it, she grabbed her shock rifle. Then she said, “Start the flivver.”
Shepherd hefted his own weapon. “Not a chance.”
“Don’t give me that macho bullshit. You’re the one who knows how to drive this thing, you idiot.”
Shepherd didn’t give in—not verbally, at least. But he did get into the flivver and start it up.
The alien chose that moment to emerge from the foliage, its jaws dripping thick strands of saliva. It wasn’t a species inclined toward sneak attacks. When it went into action, it did so boldly and unremittingly.
But as Call took in the sight of the creature in the fading light, she saw there was something different about it. Something she hadn’t seen before.
Its back and limbs were covered by a partial exoskeleton, which was as blue-black as the rest of it. And its head was decidedly larger than Call had expected, with a subtle filigree running from its jaw to its rear extremity.
What the hell … ? she thought.
Not that it mattered what the thing looked like. It was still a stone-cold killer, and at the moment they were the soft, slow prey it meant to kill.
“Get in,” Shepherd breathed.
Call was hampered by the need to keep her burner trained on the alien, but she managed to fall into the back of the flivver alongside what was left of Benedict, her legs hanging out.
“Go!” she rasped.
A moment later, the flivver leaped forward. Unfortunately, as Shepherd had explained on the way there, it wasn’t built for speed—and the alien was.
Seeing them take off, it began loping after them. As soon as it began to catch up, Call depressed her trigger and unleashed a bolt of blue-white energy.
It frazzled the alien, made it scream and stop dead in its tracks. But a moment later it was back on their trail, working even harder to reach the flivver and its contents.
A second time it made a bid to catch them. And a second time Call seared it, eliciting a paroxysm of pain and fury.
It was starting to pursue them again when she noticed the flivver was losing speed. “Why the hell are we stopping?” she demanded, her voice sounding shrill and frantic in her ears.
&n
bsp; “We’re not stopping,” Shepherd called back to her. “We’re coming to the door. It won’t open that fast.”
The door, Call echoed to herself. This’ll be tricky.
They couldn’t let the alien follow them into the next dome. But the portals were set to accommodate whoever approached them, and to stay open as long as there was something in range of their sensors.
With shocking quickness, the alien closed the gap. Clench-ing her teeth, Call speared it with another burst of energy. But this time, the flivver hit a bump in the terrain and spoiled her aim, and the thing was allowed to continue unimpeded.
Crap, she thought.
Before she could take aim again, the alien reached out with a long, black claw and grabbed hold of her ankle. It was as if a metal-alloy vice had closed on it.
Tamping down her fear and revulsion, the android turned her burner on the thing’s dripping, double-rowed maw and unleashed a blast at close range.
The alien shot backward, flipping head over heels, and receded into the distance. But Call had no illusions that she had killed it. It would be back, and with a vengeance.
Darting a glance over her shoulder, she saw that the hatch that gave access to the next dome was looming just a few meters ahead of them. As she watched, its doors began to slide aside.
Shepherd slowed the flivver a little more, trying to time it so they wouldn’t hit the aperture before it was wide enough. As it happened, the flivver grazed the door on the right side as they went by.
Then they were inside the hatchway, and the doors were beginning to slide closed again. But beyond the opening, Call could see the alien plunging toward them, insane with frustration, refusing to stop until it sank its teeth into its prey.
It was a race—and the doors won. Just as the alien reached them, visible only through the narrowest of gaps, the metal slabs closed the rest of the way.
But Call and her companion were far from safe. The slabs would part again as soon as the sensors in the doorframe conveyed the invader’s presence there.
Call frowned, needing to prevent that.
Given enough time, she could have plugged into the system and made the hatch do what she wanted. But there was no time. She had to improvise or wind up like Benedict.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 16
