Finding the node that governed the door controls—an unassuming square box at chest height protruding a few centimeters from the wall—Call leveled her rifle at it and squeezed off a burst. As it hit the node, it started a storm of tiny lightnings.
Enough to blow the circuit. At least, that was her hope.
As the flivver ran the length of the hatchway, the doors up ahead began to make way for them. But the ones behind them were the key. Call glared at them, insisting they remain closed.
And they did.
But not without opposition to the idea. The hatchway filled with a cacophonous pounding, making it sound as if someone were beating on a giant drum, and for a moment Call had to wonder if the centimeters-thick barriers would hold.
As they came to the end of the hatchway, the alien still hadn’t gotten access to it. We’re okay, Call thought, a wave of relief washing over her.
But they wouldn’t be okay forever.
The alien would turn around and make its way back through the domes. And the colonists would have no way of knowing where it was when they set out for the backup bay.
Ripley won’t be happy, Call thought.
“You all right?” Shepherd shot back at her as they left the hatchway behind and cut through a pine forest.
“Just drive,” she said, taking out her comm unit and trying to ignore the lumpy plastic bag beside her.
15
Angie scanned the red-on-black graphic stretched across her computer screen. “Is this it?”
“It is,” said her father with a note of triumph in his voice.
They had spent the last twenty minutes poring through the dozens of programs they had discarded over the years. Some were earlier incarnations of software they still employed. Some had outlived their usefulness. And some had never been useful.
This particular system hadn’t been used for twenty years. But with luck, Angie would resurrect it.
“You’ve got it?” asked Seigo.
Angie looked back over her shoulder at him, enduring the sour milk smell of his breath. “Looks like it.”
“That’s good,” said Cody. “Now we need to see if we can establish contact with the remote sensors.”
That was the trick, all right. And they hadn’t been maintained in a couple of decades. For all Angie knew, not a single one of them would respond.
Her dad had set up the heat-sensing system before she was old enough to know what it was. In those days he was inordinately concerned with fires, since her mother had died in one—albeit in a mining colony a star system away.
Then, experience showing him how unlikely it was that a fire would start in the Domes, Philipakos’s concern waned—and the system fell into disuse. Until now.
Because it was sensitive enough to detect more than combustion. It could track the heat given off by a living creature—in this case, the one that had gestated inside Pandor.
Somewhere, it was lying in wait for them. Knowing where would do a lot to maximize their chances of survival.
Come on, Angie thought, asking the remote sensors to let her know they were still operative.
Suddenly, red dots began to pop up on her screen. And they kept on popping up, each one representing a different sensor in a different dome. She smiled to herself.
“I can’t believe it,” said her father.
Neither could Angie. But the screen doesn’t lie. Every last sensor was reporting in, demonstrating its functionality.
“Now let’s see where the damned thing is,” said her father, referring to the alien.
Angie polled the system’s readings from one end of the Domes to the other, looking for the blue, flame-shaped icon that would indicate a telltale concentration of thermal energy. But as the data came in, she didn’t see what she thought she would see.
Philipakos swore under his breath.
“What is it?” Gogolac asked.
It can’t be right, Angie insisted, her stomach tightening into a hard, painful knot. And yet, the system seemed to be functioning perfectly.
“Well?” Seigo prompted.
It was Angie who answered him. “Ripley said we had to worry about an alien. One. But according to this system, it’s not one. There’s a whole pack of them.”
Seigo pushed past her and looked at the monitor screen, where there were so many blue flames in evidence that they were crowding each other. And only four of them could be chalked up to Shepherd, Call, Ripley and Johner.
“For chrissakes,” Seigo said, looking back over his shoulder at his colleagues, “the bastards are everywhere.”
“In fact,” said Angie, “there’s an even dozen of them, scattered pretty much throughout the Domes.” So no matter where the colonists went, they were likely to encounter one of them.
“Wait a minute,” said Gogolac. She turned to Cody and then Hendricks. “You were there when Pandor died. Why didn’t you tell us there were so many of them?”
Cody frowned. “Hendricks was sick in the bushes. I went to make sure she was all right.” He shrugged. “There could have been more, I guess. I just didn’t see them.”
“Ripley told us she knew them,” said Hendricks, her voice small and threaded with pain. “She said she had run into them before. Why didn’t she tell us there would be more than one?”
Angie shook her head, at a loss for an explanation. “I don’t know. Maybe Ripley doesn’t know them as well as she thinks she does.”
* * *
As Ripley entered the control center with Johner in tow, she saw a heightened fear in the faces of the colonists. But then, she had thrown them a curve, telling them there was only one alien to worry about.
And as it turned out, there was a second one.
Call turned to Ripley, frustration in her synthetic eyes. No doubt, she had been doing her best to calm the rising tide of panic.
Then Ripley saw it wasn’t just frustration in Call. It was something else as well. Something happened while I was gone.
“We’ve got a bigger problem than we thought,” Call told her.
“Damned right we have,” snapped the man with the sharp features. He pointed at Ripley. “You people really haven’t been of much help.”
“They don’t have to help at all,” Philipakos said, before Ripley or any of her people could say it. “So let’s stay calm and figure this out.”
“Figure what out?” Ripley asked.
The woman who looked like a little girl came forward. For the first time, Ripley saw the resemblance between Philipakos and what must have been his daughter.
“Pandor didn’t give birth to one alien, or even two,” the woman said in her childlike voice. “He gave birth to a whole litter.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ve located them with the help of a heat-sensing system—all twelve of them.”
Call nodded. “I checked out the reading. It’s accurate.”
Ripley shook her head, reflexively rejecting the notion. “It doesn’t work that way.”
Then where, she asked herself, did the second one come from? She had been plaguing herself with that question since Call alerted her to the thing’s existence.
The obvious answer was that there had been a second egg and a second host. But there were only a handful of people living in the Domes. It seemed unlikely that someone else could have given birth without the others knowing about it.
“Give me a better explanation,” said Philipakos’s daughter.
Multiple births … ?
It was outside Ripley’s realm of experience. Kane had given life to a single alien. So had Purvis, the nickel miner on the Auriga. So had Ripley herself.
It had never occurred to her that multiple births were possible. But with the help of Wren and the Auriga’s other scientists, Ripley’s “daughter” had delivered a live hybrid, bypassing the need for an egg and the facehugger that came with it.
Who am I to say what’s possible and what’s not?
What’s more, it fit with the anatomy of the alien she had en
countered. A different kind of gestation, a different kind of delivery, a different kind of alien.
“It’s another breed,” Ripley responded—a little lamely, she thought.
But where had it come from? And why hadn’t she ever been made aware of it, in all her dealings with Weyland-Yutani, the military, and the aliens themselves?
Ripley burned to find out. But for now, she had to focus on getting them out of there.
“I won’t lie to you,” she told the colonists. “The number of aliens out there is going to have an impact on our chances of survival. But we’ve established that the backup bay is functioning. If we can get to it, my people will get us out of here.”
“What are you suggesting?” asked the sandy-haired woman. “That we try to make it across the colony with all those monsters out there?”
“Have we got a choice?” asked Shepherd.
“Not as far as I can tell,” said Philipakos.
Ripley nodded. “Let’s go, then.”
“Now?” asked the man with the sharp features.
“Now,” Ripley told him. She glanced at an observation port, which showed her the diminishing sunlight in one of the domes. “Before it gets any darker.”
* * *
This can’t be happening, Simoni thought, his breath coming in weary, ragged gasps. It can’t.
Had he known the developing alien wandering the Domes was advanced enough to attack Rama that way, he would never have followed Ripley down in the first place. He would have stayed where he was like a good boy and waited till she came back.
But even after Simoni saw what happened to Rama, he had still believed he would survive. All he had to do was beat the alien to the control center. And it wouldn’t even start to come after him until it was done picking Rama apart.
For the umpteenth time, the reporter found himself picturing Rama’s death. There was lots of blood, no doubt. And screams, dulled by the surrounding foliage. And the soft, sucking sound of Rama’s insides being dragged out of him.
No, Simoni thought, forcing the image away again. I can’t think about that.
After all, the situation had changed. It was no longer just a matter of reaching the control center ahead of the alien—because a little while earlier, as Simoni approached the place, he saw another alien up ahead of him.
It was dark and slick-looking, just like the one that had sunk its teeth into Rama. And it was as big as the full-grown alien in Morse’s forbidden book.
As Simoni doubled back to avoid it, his heart pounding so hard he could barely breathe, he found himself thinking it wasn’t fair. He wasn’t supposed to be in any danger.
There was only supposed to have been one alien. One, goddamit. And it wasn’t supposed to have been mature enough to pose a threat.
Now, having had some time to absorb the reality of his plight, he found he could deal with it a little better. His heart was still beating too hard and his clothes were rank with sweat, but he had put some distance between himself and the second alien.
For the moment, at least, he was all right. He was alive and—as far as he could tell—alone.
At the moment, Simoni’s biggest problem was that he didn’t know where he was going. In his panic, he had gotten turned around and lost sight of the Betty, and now he didn’t know how to find the dome she was hovering over.
He didn’t know how to get to the control center either, even if there hadn’t been an alien standing in its way. Shit, he thought, suppressing a surge of panic, I don’t know anything.
All he could do was keep moving, and hope he came in sight of the cargo vessel before the aliens came in sight of him. It was his only chance to keep on living.
And it wasn’t a bad chance, Simoni kept telling himself. The domes were only so big, and there were only so many of them. Eventually the Betty had to show herself, and when she did he would be in good shape again.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t likely to get a very good reception on his return to the ship. Vriess and Bolero had been fond of Rama. They wouldn’t be happy to learn he had perished because he’d had to follow the reporter down.
Then they don’t have to know, he thought.
It was the obvious answer. And Simoni had gotten good at lying, honing the skill in his pursuit of Ripley from border station to border station—good enough to talk his way out of anything, in even the crudest company.
He would handle Vriess and Bolero just fine. And when Ripley and the others came back, he would handle them too.
Simoni was still thinking about it when he heard something crack in the jungle behind him. A twig? he wondered, feeling something cold trickle down his spine. What would make a twig snap in a place like this?
Oh my god, he thought, and started pelting through the jungle in the opposite direction. But he could hear something hastening after him, making a hissing sound as it brushed against the leaves, gaining on him with every thunderous beat of his heart.
Suddenly, lying to Vriess was the least of Simoni’s worries.
* * *
Philipakos felt a pang as Shepherd guided their flivver through the dense foliage of the African rainforest, leaving the security of the control center behind.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Cody at the wheel of the other flivver. Cody wasn’t the driver Shepherd was, but he was doing an admirable job of keeping up.
And Ripley? She was ensconced in the seat beside Cody, her hair blowing back, her shock rifle cradled in her arms. It made Philipakos feel good knowing she was there.
Funny, isn’t it? Not so long ago he had suspected the woman’s motives, refused to open his station to her. Now he was willing to place his life in her hands.
He corrected himself: Not just willing. Eager.
Her crew seemed to feel the same way. It was as if she were more than human to them, more than flesh and blood. But that was the persona some people projected.
They took on burdens others wouldn’t, faced problems others couldn’t. And because of that, they commanded respect.
Philipakos wasn’t so different from Ripley in that regard. For decades he had shouldered the responsibility of running the colony, kept his people safe and productive.
But truth be told, he hadn’t fought alien monsters, nor did he have any desire to do so. That sort of responsibility he was only too happy to leave to Ripley.
He just hoped that when it was over, when his people and Ripley’s had escaped the colony, there was a way to rid it of the aliens that had infested it. He wasn’t sure he could convince Earthgov to spend the requisite funds, but he would give it his best shot.
Philipakos had said he wouldn’t sacrifice a person for the hundred thousand square meters of rare plants encapsulated in the domes, and he had been right to say so. But he still loved the aspens and the palmettos and the cinnamon trees, and he wasn’t going to let them go without a fight.
First things first, he reflected. They had to reach the back-up bay before they could start making plans.
Looking up at the curvature of the dome above them, Philipakos estimated they were more than halfway to the hatch and on the most direct route possible. So far, so good. And they hadn’t seen a sign of the aliens.
But then, his daughter’s thermal scan hadn’t shown any of them in this dome or the next one. If the flivvers were going to encounter opposition, it would likely be in Dome Three—or later.
Not that the aliens weren’t capable of moving around. According to Ripley, they could be like lightning when they wished.
As he thought that, Shepherd pulled their flivver hard to the right, whipping his passengers in the opposite direction. Surprised, Philipakos turned to him.
“The hatch is up ahead, Shep.”
“I know,” the safety officer told him. “But this way is better.”
Philipakos was going to object until he saw the way Shepherd had taken them gave them more clearance on either side of the vehicle. The dearth of branches whipping at them translated immediately into
more speed, which was after all what they needed.
“I see what you mean,” the administrator said.
“Thought you would,” Shepherd responded without looking at him.
Philipakos bit his lip. You’re an idiot sometimes, he told himself. Walking the domes was one thing. Patrolling them in a flivver, day in and day out, was quite another.
For what seemed like a long time, they slashed through the jungle, passing tamarinds and cola nuts and oil palms in the gently fading sunlight. Finally, through the redflowered branches of an African tulip tree, Philipakos spied the hatch that led to the next dome.
He nodded. “Good going, Shep.”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Shepherd.
Philipakos was about to contend otherwise when something insanely big and dark lurched across their path. He heard a cry of warning and Shepherd swerved to the right, but it was too late.
The flivver hit the thing and ran up its side, dumping its human cargo. Philipakos braced himself for a potentially lethal impact, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought— not much worse, in fact, than falling out of bed.
Scrambling to his feet, he tried to get his bearings. But he was jostled by first one colleague and then another as they tried to save themselves, and it stole his sense of direction.
The thing that had collided with the flivver was hurt, apparently—but not fatally, because it was in the process of freeing itself from the weight of the vehicle. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Philipakos saw another shadowy giant shambling in their direction along the path behind them.
Frantically, he looked for his daughter, but there was no sign of her. Then he realized with a pang of desperation that she was still in the flivver, trying to get out before it turned over and crushed the life out of her.
“Angie!” Philipakos bellowed.
Only barely did she manage to leap free of the flivver before it rose to its full height and came crashing down on its back. But by then, she and her father had worse things to worry about.
Infinitely worse.
Because the creature into which the vehicle had crashed was slowly but surely crawling over it to get at Angie. Philipakos grabbed her by her arm and pulled her away from the thing.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 17
