by Steve Perry
The alien mother at her back had been silent for almost an hour now; the tantrum had only lasted a few minutes.
Ripley was glad she was still alive. She had ceased to care about much, but there was still something.
The bitch behind me is waiting to die and she is going to take her goddamned children with her when she goes.
Ripley wanted to see that. Had to know that it happened.
Right now, that was enough of a reason for Ripley to live. Whatever she was.
* * *
Wilks groaned as light assaulted him. The chamber door fanned open with a hiss and the warmth of his sleep-womb escaped into the cool air. His entire body ached.
He sat up slowly and remembered a great sadness—
The dreams.
“Everybody stay in here,” he said. His voice was a weak croak. He coughed and cleared his throat. “Nobody leaves until we talk!”
The others pulled themselves awake, expressions dazed and sour. Wilks ignored his body’s aches as he grabbed his coverall and walked to the door. He dressed quickly in the chill air and waited for the others.
Some part of him relaxed when he saw that Ripley was among them. She had dressed quickly as well, and came to where he stood. She started to step past him.
“Hold on, Ripley. The queen was sending messages while we slept. I think we need to—”
“I don’t dream,” she said. “Excuse me.”
He started to reply and thought better of it. He nodded at her as she stepped by.
Brewster tabbed his shirt and turned toward Wilks, scowling. “What the fuck, Wilks?” he said.
The others looked at him expectantly. He searched their faces for any change, but they all just looked tired and irritable, same as he felt.
“Anybody dream of letting the queen loose?” he said.
“Yes,” said Billie.
Ana Moto nodded, as did McQuade and Jones.
Brewster’s face softened. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said. “We can talk about it over breakfast.”
* * *
“The message was quite powerful,” said Moto. “It was like an ongoing advertisement, ‘Look what you win if you open the magic door.’ It’s no wonder you wanted to check with us. You haven’t had to deal with it before.”
Wilks nodded.
Billie swallowed a bit of soypro and looked at Wilks, curious about what he had dreamed.
“Wanted to make sure none of us were going to play, I suppose,” said Brewster.
“Something like that.”
“Welcome to the dreamers’ club,” Moto said.
They sat at one table and ate for the first time in weeks. They would be in range of Gateway in less than twenty hours. Billie’s pulse quickened at the thought of Earth…
Ripley had walked by them on their way into the mess hall as she’d carried a tray back to her own room. Billie wished she would have at least eaten with them; that there were three fewer crew members was bad enough, but Ripley was alive.
“Hey, where’s the boss?” said Brewster. “Why isn’t she eating with us?”
“Yeah,” Tully added. “We need to go over what we’re going to do to get past Gateway.”
Billie glanced over at Wilks. He laid down his fork.
“Ripley is having some personal problems,” Billie said.
“What kind of personal problems?” Falk asked.
Wilks nodded at Billie to continue. She stood.
Everyone stopped eating and looked at her.
“We need to talk about that,” she began. “I’m not sure—Ripley would probably rather not discuss it, but she would want you all to know.” She sounded much calmer than she felt.
“Ripley is an artificial person. An android. She apparently didn’t find out until the medical check she just had, and the news has affected her badly.”
She stopped and looked around the table. The room was uncomfortably silent.
“Ripley has asked if I would take over where she left off,” said Wilks. “But it’s going to have to be a combined effort. I’m not really the leader type, and—”
“How the fuck could she not know?” said McQuade. “Don’t they all know what they are?”
“Not necessarily,” said Jones. “Ripley didn’t.”
“We trusted her,” said Tully quietly.
Billie felt a spark of anger.
“That explains how she managed the queen by herself,” said Falk. He sounded depressed.
“If I had known,” started McQuade, “I wouldn’t—”
“If you had known, shit,” Billie said. She remained standing; the cool dining hall had suddenly gotten very warm. “Ripley didn’t know, do you get that?” She glared at Tully. “She trusted herself! How would you feel? Do you think she did this on purpose?”
She turned to Falk. “The last thing she needs is bigotry from this crew!”
She was losing it. Billie took a deep breath and forced herself to sit down. “Jones is better qualified to answer questions about it—”
“Not really,” said Jones. “All I can tell you is that she’s as close to human as I’ve ever seen. And I think Billie is right. Ripley’s a good leader.” He stopped and looked vaguely embarrassed.
The others absorbed the information.
Moto nodded slowly.
“Okay,” said Wilks. “The more important issue here is that we’re getting closer to the station. I think that there are a few people there who would like to have a little chat with us…”
As Wilks discussed some possibilities, Billie calmed herself. Tully and Falk both looked at her in ways she thought were apologetic, although McQuade still seemed pissed off.
She was surprised at herself, but not as much as she would have thought, even a few months before. The outburst had felt good, and she thought it might even have helped. Ripley hadn’t done anything wrong. It was distressing that any of these people could overlook her strengths.
Billie yearned for the kind of courage that Ripley possessed. She would need it to help Amy… if Amy was still alive.
She refocused on the discussion, heart pounding.
22
Wilks sat in control with McQuade and Tully. In theory, the ship ought to be out of Gateway’s visual and sensor range. Never knew but some technogeek with a telescope might be looking right at them, but that wasn’t likely.
Wilks gripped the back of Tully’s chair tightly and hoped that their shielded call would go through.
“Now we wait,” said Tully as she finished tapping the keys. “If we’re lucky, she’ll catch her messages soon.”
“And if she doesn’t?” said McQuade.
“We wait longer,” Wilks said. A coded direct signal could be channeled accurately if you knew what you were doing. In theory, outsiders wouldn’t be able to collect it unless they were looking very carefully, and even then, they wouldn’t be able to tap into it. There was some risk, but it ought to be minimal, and it was one they had to take.
Time passed.
A burst of static crackled over the ’com, a hum as compressed voxfiles expanded. And there was the time delay, but—
“About goddamn time. I expected you a week ago.”
Tully smiled. “Hey there, Fem Elliot! How’s life in the box?”
Once again the radio waves took their sweet and slow time and they waited for the reply.
“Maria? I should’ve known you’d still be around! Say, you reckon you got enough scramble on this signal? It’s taking a hell of a lot of my comp’s memory. The officials here aren’t that smart, you know. Just how important do you think you are?”
Wilks leaned toward the ’com. “Thought we’d check in and see what you think.”
“Ooh, my heart! Is that the infamous Sergeant Wilks? How’s the action, Sarge?”
“Not bad, Leslie. We got what we were looking for.”
“That’s great, folks! Congratulations. And how is everyone?”
Wilks said, “We’ve had a fe
w losses.”
There was a longer pause than the waves needed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah,” said Wilks.
Tully spoke up. “Our immediate concern is who else has been expecting us. Whatcha got, Les?”
“Well. Y’all raised quite a fuss a few months back. I believe the terms were ‘subversive’ and ‘mentally unstable.’ Oh, and ‘malicious intent.’ To make a long story short, the official trickle-down was that a bunch of nuts stole a ship for no good reason except to fuck with the powers-that-be.”
McQuade chuckled. “Not too far off,” he said.
Wilks frowned. “Is that all?”
“You’re kidding, right? Unofficially, General Peters got a very large boot jammed in his very tight ass for not recognizing the magnitude of your insanity. There are warrants out for all of you. The good news is that they think you’re crackpots so maybe you’ll get stuck in a nice clean hospital room and not a regular cell. And they’re not expecting you for another six weeks, if then.”
“Why’s that?” said Wilks.
“Oh, they turned up a map in your quarters that placed your destination much farther away,” she said.
Billie stepped forward, her pale face tensed and eager. Wilks hadn’t even noticed her come in.
“Leslie, it’s Billie. How are things on Earth?”
“Communication’s been shot for weeks. Atmospheric static, sunspots acting up, something like that. But whatever the bugs are doing down there, it’s gotten worse.”
“What about the satellite uplinks?” said Billie.
She looked close to tears, but her voice was strong.
“The last signals we got are old news—and I have to tell you, it wasn’t good. Anyone left on Earth probably belongs to the aliens now, one way or the other. I’m sorry.”
Wilks put his hand on Billie’s shoulder, but she shook it off. “Listen. Do me a favor and pipe the last few days of transmissions to us. Can you do that?”
“No problem.”
“Thank you,” Billie said. She walked out of the room.
“Listen, I’m glad to hear from you, but let’s go easy with this. Even with the scramble—I’ll let you know if anything important comes up. And take care, okay?”
“You too,” Wilks said.
The ’com went silent. McQuade turned to Wilks. “Doesn’t sound like we’re going to win any votes here,” he said.
Wilks shrugged. “To get to the bombs we’re going to be in their gun sights at some point,” he said. “And we’ve got the queen. I doubt we’ll get any help from them, but maybe we can persuade them to let us have our shot. And even at worst case, they won’t blow us out of space—they want the Kurtz back.”
McQuade nodded, but looked uncertain. Wilks walked back to talk to the rest of the crew. The station wouldn’t spot them for a few more hours, so they still had time to come up with alternate plans.
Wilks knew that he was good in tight situations; he was trained for it But shit like this—
Dammit, why isn’t Ripley doing this? Fuck her humanity, or lack of it—they were better off with her in charge. He knew his limits, and they were not far off.
* * *
Billie sat alone in the medlab at the small computer. The room was cold and gleaming white; it gave her a strange kind of nostalgia for the hospitals she had spent most of her life in. Right now there were more important things on her mind, however…
She tapped in a short description of Amy and waited for a match.
The screen flickered. A fuzzy picture flashed onscreen of a young girl with a bad haircut. She stared at Billie for a few seconds, eyes too serious for a child. How old was she now? Thirteen? Fourteen maybe?
Oh, baby, thought Billie. Her heart tightened, but at the same time she felt a huge relief.
“Is it on?” Amy said. Her voice had deepened slightly, and it looked as if she had made an effort to wipe her face clean.
“Go ahead, honey,” said a voice offscreen.
“Me and Daddy are in a factory that used to make microchips in Northern California. We’re probably going to move soon. Uncle Paul is gone now. He went to look for food almost two weeks ago and I hope that he is just hiding, but we don’t think so.” Her face clouded as she spoke, but her young eyes didn’t waver from the camera.
“It’s getting warmer all the time. We have a new friend named Mordecai, and he says that he thinks the aliens have heated things up somehow with their nesting materials.”
She smirked, a surprisingly adult gesture. “Mordecai also says that the goddamn religious fucks are as bad as the aliens now.” She glanced past the camera sheepishly and then raised her eyebrows, obviously the recipient of a nasty look.
“Well, he said it!”
A sigh offscreen. “I know, honey. Go on.”
“Anyway. We wanted to tell you that the aliens have been acting strange for a few weeks. They have been grouping together and staying quiet for days at a time, and no one knows why.”
The little girl frowned. “I guess that’s all,” she said.
The old man’s voice stated the date and coordinates as usual and the screen blanked.
Billie stared into the empty monitor for another moment and then laughed abruptly. She was still alive! The transmission was over a month old, but the family had survived for so long already that she had to be.
I would know if she was dead, she thought. I would know.
The connection that Billie felt was too intense for it to be otherwise. The coordinates listed were already etched into her mind.
Orona’s bombs were part of an old-style military arsenal located in a remote area of the northwestern United States. Billie had been there once, when she and Wilks had escaped from Earth and ended up at Spears’s planetoid. She and Wilks and Mitch…
She shook the memory. Surely a military bunker would have some kind of transportation…?
It wasn’t impossible. Everything was falling into place; she was meant to save that family. To save Amy.
Billie felt fully awake for the first time since leaving the mother alien’s planet. She had been a follower for a long time, had taken directions most of her life. This was her chance to make a difference. And it wasn’t some distant dream anymore, it was here. Not on the scale of total extermination of the aliens—but it was hers, it was taking a stand that mattered most.
She sat and daydreamed of possible futures. Hang on, Amy. Just a little bit longer.
* * *
“This is Gateway Station calling. Please identify yourself.”
Wilks looked at McQuade and nodded.
“This is Captain McQuade of the Kurtz,” he said. “I would like to speak with your CO.”
The time lag stretched past its limit. Wilks imagined the flurry of activity they had just caused and almost smiled.
“Bet we got some people pissing in their drawers right now,” said McQuade.
“Sir,” said a voice, “please stand by for Major Stone.”
“Here we go,” Wilks said.
“Captain McQuade, this is Major Stone.” The major’s voice rang with authority. “Open your control modem for override.”
“Actually, Major, we just wanted to talk for a minute. We have—”
“Captain, we’ll be glad to talk to you when you get here. You know procedure. Now if you’ll just let us help you arrive safely, I’m sure we can work this out.” Major Stone spoke slowly and carefully, as if he was directing a child. Or a mental case.
“Major Stone, this is Sergeant Wilks. We are not coming to Gateway. We have the queen alien onboard the Kurtz and we’re taking her to Earth. There is no need for Gateway military involvement; this is just to let you know.” He attempted to sound calm and reasonable.
The major did not bite. “Sergeant, we are already sending people to fetch you. Now, you can come in like civilized men or we can drag you in kicking and screaming, but you are coming to this station! Do you copy?”
Wilks silenced the
’com. “Tully?”
“Station dispatched a ship,” she said. “I got the drive signal spewing all over my long-range sensor array.”
“Well, we gave it a shot. Okay, McQuade, get us out of here.” He hit the ’com button and spoke quickly. “Gotta go, Major, nice talking to you.”
“Wilks, you can’t—”
He cut Stone off and switched on the shipwide. “Heads up, people. Looks like Gateway is coming to dinner and we don’t have a lot of time. The shit is about to hit the fan.”
* * *
Wilks’s message echoed through the empty APC bay. Ripley ignored it. They would figure something out; it didn’t matter as long as she still had the queen.
“Wouldn’t want to miss the reunion,” she whispered. “I gotta take you home to die with your babies, monster. Everybody dies.”
Nothing else mattered.
23
Can we outrun it?” said Falk.
“No,” Brewster said. “That ship is more maneuverable and a lot faster.”
“They won’t fire at us, will they?” That from Jones.
“I don’t think so,” said Wilks. “They want us back in one piece. Well, at least they want the ship back in one piece. Same difference, far as we’re concerned.”
The crew stood in the dining hall nervously. They had about an hour before Gateway’s ship would be in range. Billie noticed that for a change it was too warm. She wiped at her face and wondered where Ripley was.
Tully answered Jones: “They could try a gun or laser-shot at our drives to damage us enough so we couldn’t fly straight. But that’s iffy—they might miss and punch a hole in us, accidentally destroy something they can’t fix real easy. Or cheap. I’m with Wilks; I don’t think they’ll risk that.”
“So what can they do?” said Jones. “Fly circles around us until we get dizzy and surrender?”
No one laughed.
Tully said, “They can disable the Kurtz’s control systems with an electromagnetic pulse and tow us in. That’d be the easiest—just get within range and push a button. That’s what I would do.”
“Our electronics aren’t hardened?” said Falk.
“On this rust bucket? Sheeit.”
Billie frowned. “Can’t we do it to them first?”
