River of Pain

by Christopher Golden

  Lt. Paris shot him a look.

  “Why the hell would we—”

  “Private passage to the evac ship is right next to it,” Pettigrew said. “You know that door—”

  “I know it,” Paris interrupted, and then they were moving. The lieutenant took point this time, with Brackett carrying Luisa behind her and Pettigrew and Yousseff guarding their rear. The aliens had followed their trail, and they felt sure there would be more of them.

  Brackett’s legs felt as if they were made of lead and his heart thundered against his chest as he ran, the girl jostling in his arms. Paris swung her weapon in a sweeping arc as they ran past the elevator bay, its doors closed and quiet. They turned a corner, reached the stairwell door that would lead them up a level, to within spitting distance of the med lab, and Brackett turned to see Pettigrew and Yousseff hurrying up behind them.

  “Anything?” Brackett asked.

  Yousseff stayed at the corner, aiming her weapon back the way they’d come.

  “Not a hint,” Pettigrew replied. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t coming.”

  “Agreed,” Yousseff said. “We’re not safe until we dust off.”

  Paris ducked into the stairwell and motioned for them to follow. They raced down the stairs, Brackett flinching at the noise of their boots on each step, thinking of how far up and down the sound would carry. Luisa couldn’t have weighed more than sixty-five pounds but his arms had grown tired. The temptation was strong to try to wake her, to get her to run for herself, but if the girl was very lucky she would sleep until they were well away from Acheron.

  In the silence of space, they could all grieve together.

  Paris left the stairwell at the next landing, sliding out into the corridor and scanning both directions.

  “Clear!” she called, and they followed her out into the hall.

  “Lieutenant, cover right. Yousseff, cover left,” Brackett said. “Pettigrew, check the door.” There was no questioning which door he meant. Set into the wall between the med lab and the research lab they all saw the narrow black door that hung halfway open, the AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign partly in shadow.

  Yousseff slid down the hall first, with Pettigrew behind her. Brackett saw the ruined elevator doors across from the med lab, and directed Yousseff toward them with a lift of his chin. She nodded and padded along the corridor, clicking on the guide-light on top of her pulse rifle and aiming the beam into the darkened elevator shaft.

  Pettigrew pushed the evac passage door open with the barrel of his rifle.

  An alien burst from the shadowed interior, drove him to the ground, and grabbed him by the face. Its extruding jaw punched down through his chest, smashing bone and tearing muscle. As he died, Pettigrew fired half a dozen rounds from the plasma rifle, three or four of which hit the alien and spilled its blood all over him. The acid burned into his flesh, but Pettigrew was already dead.

  “Paris!” Brackett shouted, backing away with Luisa in his arms.

  Yousseff shouted Pettigrew’s name, along with a string of profanities that cut off halfway after “mother.” Brackett spun and looked down the corridor just in time to see Yousseff’s legs flailing as she was dragged through the twisted opening in the elevator doors.

  Lt. Paris saw it, too.

  “This isn’t going to happen,” she said coldly. “We’ve got a way home.”

  “Then let’s go!” Brackett snapped.

  The alien Pettigrew had shot lay on the floor, struggling to rise. Its tail whipped around, the deadly tip trembling, ready to strike. Julisa Paris shot it three times, blew its skull apart, and then they were running again.

  They darted through the narrow evac door, Paris watching the corridor ahead as Brackett kicked the door closed. He threw Luisa over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry and heard her grunt, mumbling as she skirted at the edge of consciousness. Brackett threw both of the locks, bolting the door shut. It wouldn’t stop the aliens for long, but he hoped it would be long enough.

  Then they were running along the corridor, Paris out in front with her gun, praying that no more surprises waited for them ahead.

  29

  ENOUGH DYING

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1410

  Dr. Mori ran, one hand clutching the bullet wound in his shoulder. The scraping behind him was close, but he couldn’t afford to look.

  The smell of his own blood made him want to vomit or faint or both. Tears ran down his face, his mind filled with images of Khati’s hideous demise and of the alien killing Reese. Those memories were burned into his soul, and he knew he would see them every time he closed his eyes for as long as he lived.

  For at least six or seven seconds, he fooled himself into thinking that as long as he lived would include more than just the next minute. But then he looked ahead, and saw that he had a hundred feet or so of corridor in front of him before he reached the door into the evac hangar.

  A door that required a key.

  And the time to use it.

  A sob escaped from Dr. Mori. Regret washed through him—so many things he wished he had done, and so many more he wished he could take back. But he was all out of wishes.

  He fell to his knees, weakened by blood loss and shock. One hand still pressed to his shoulder, where the wound began to sing with pain, he turned to watch the alien rushing toward him. He studied the smooth carapace of its enormous head and the nimble, darting predator’s gait as it rushed after him. It saddened him that he would never have the chance to study it.

  Beautiful, he thought. And it really was.

  “Hey, ugly!” a woman’s voice called.

  The alien turned back toward the voice, its tail scraping the wall. It hissed.

  “Get down, Dr. Mori!” a man shouted.

  The bullets tore into the alien just as Dr. Mori threw himself to the floor. He scrambled away, staying down, as it juddered and then collapsed, twitching as it died. Dr. Mori stared at his shoes, one of which was steaming as several drops of acid burned through it. Shouting in panic he reached down and ripped the shoe off his foot.

  Then he stared at his pitiful foot in its gray sock, the fabric thin at the toes, and he leaned against the wall, shaking.

  Capt. Brackett stepped carefully around the dead alien, carrying a little girl in his arms. Lt. Paris followed behind him, gun still in her hands, ready to fight.

  “Get up, Dr. Mori,” Brackett said. “You’re our ticket out of here.”

  Mori looked up at him, hollow and bereft.

  “You’ll take me with you?”

  Brackett glanced at the little girl in his arms, but his eyes still seemed far away, as if he saw someone else there.

  “I think there’s been enough dying, don’t you?”

  Lt. Paris helped him to rise and he limped toward the door in his one remaining shoe, thankful for the key on the chain around his neck.

  Dr. Mori opened the door to the hangar and cool air rushed around him.

  He felt alive.

  * * *

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1429

  The evac ship shuddered violently as it passed through the debris-filled atmosphere of Acheron. Brackett had laid Luisa down in a hypersleep chamber but the lid remained open. The girl deserved to know what had happened, deserved to be a part of whatever came next for them. She was only a child, but Brackett wasn’t going to hide the horrors from her. He would let her grieve, comfort her if he could, and hope she would be strong enough not to be destroyed by all she had lost.

  He hoped that he was strong enough, too.

  “We’re exiting the envelope,” Lt. Paris called from the cockpit. “Anyone want to have a last look before we leave this rock behind?”

  “I’m good,” Brackett said.

  He glanced over at Dr. Mori. The man looked pale and weak, but he would survive. In a few minutes, when they’d cleared the turbulence and were on course, Brackett would remove the bullet from his shoulder and stitch up the wound. It wo
uld be painful, and there would be something in the medical supplies on the evac ship to dull that pain, but Brackett would not offer it. Mori deserved all that pain he had coming to him.

  “What about you, Doc?” he asked.

  Mori shook his head. “There’s nothing for me back there.”

  Brackett nodded, a tight fist of anguish forming in his stomach. He breathed evenly and forced it away. He would grieve for Newt and Tim, for Anne, and for lost opportunities, but he could not allow himself to be broken. The hollow place inside him where his heart had been felt cold and dark, and perhaps it would remain that way forever. But he had work to do, and he could not let sorrow get in the way.

  Use it, he thought. Turn it into fuel.

  “Lieutenant Paris,” he called, facing the front of the ship, “I assume the ship’s navigational computer has a preset course.”

  “It does. Gateway Station. We’ll be in hypersleep most of the time.”

  Brackett stared at Dr. Mori, thinking about how insidious the science team’s behavior had been. They had known all along that there could be an alien threat on Acheron. Known enough that they had established their own escape plan. When word had come down from Weyland-Yutani to send surveyors out to those specific coordinates, they had known that the Jordens would have been in terrible danger.

  Even when the worst happened, they had been more interested in studying the aliens, fulfilling their mission for the company, than in trying to figure out how to kill them—how to keep the people alive.

  The colonists had been expendable.

  Even the children.

  But that protocol hadn’t begun with Dr. Reese or Dr. Mori. It had come down from on high, from their employers.

  “Turn it off,” he said quietly. “Turn off the nav system.”

  Dr. Mori glanced up, brows knitted with surprise and worry.

  “What’s that, Cap?” Lt. Paris called back.

  Not Lieutenant, he thought. Not anymore.

  “Disable the preset course, Julisa,” he said. “And figure out a way to keep them from tracking us, if you can. We’re not going to Gateway Station.”

  “What are you doing, Captain?” Dr. Mori asked.

  “I kept thinking of your Xenomorphs as demons, Doctor,” Brackett replied, loud enough for Julisa to hear. “But they’re not demons. They’re merciless killers, and they’re as alien as I can imagine any sentient creature ever being… but they’re following their own biological imperatives. They’re not evil.”

  Brackett smiled darkly.

  “Weyland-Yutani, though… if there’s evil in the universe, a scourge that needs to be exposed to the light and then destroyed, it’s the company. From now on, that’s my fight. That’s my war. And if you don’t want to be stranded on the first planet we come to, Dr. Mori, it’s going to be your war, too.”

  In the open sleep chamber, Luisa began to mutter quietly, blinking her eyes as she started to rustle and wake. Brackett took her hand, and her small fingers gripped his larger, scarred ones.

  “Now the real fight begins.”

  * * *

  DATE: 26 JUNE, 2179

  TIME: 1618

  Newt and Tim and the other kids who played Monster Maze had always called it “the clubhouse,” but she knew that the boxy space in which she had taken refuge wasn’t meant to be a house, or even a room.

  The rectangle might have been ten feet long by six feet wide, and while Newt could stand up there, a grown-up would have had to stoop or crouch or kneel. There were things there already—a blanket and various sweatshirts and jackets and books and old snack boxes left behind, as well as a handful of toys. Half a dozen air ducts led away from the clubhouse, while one blower fan pushed air in from above. Sometimes it grew too warm in there, and sometimes too cold, but it was hers and it was safe.

  The aliens could never find her in here, which would be perfect…

  Until she needed something to eat or drink.

  Newt wrapped herself in the blanket and leaned against the metal wall of the box. She clutched her Casey doll to her chest, careful with it because its head had begun to detach from the body.

  “It’ll be all right,” she whispered to Casey, heart pounding. Eyes wide, she glanced around at the ducts, knowing they couldn’t come after her, but still afraid.

  Images flashed across her mind, striking like lightning, but she shook her head and forced them away.

  Her mother.

  Her brother.

  Better not to think about them, or about the blood and the screaming. Better not to think at all. Just survive. That was what her mother would have told her. The Jordens had always been survivors.

  “I’m quick,” she whispered to Casey. It was true. Tim had said she cheated, but Newt had always been best at Monster Maze. If she was careful, and she listened well, she could avoid them when she needed to get food or something to drink.

  “I’ll protect you,” she promised, and kissed the top of Casey’s head.

  Newt fell quiet after that, listening. When the blowers cycled off for a few minutes, she heard echoes making their way through the ducts from distant rooms and other levels within the colony. The sounds were strange and soft and sad, at least to her, but she thought that if she followed them back to their origins, the noises she was hearing might turn out to be screams.

  She stayed where she was, and she tried not to cry.

  Sometimes she succeeded.

  30

  BUILDING BETTER WORLDS

  DATE: 5 JULY, 2179

  On Gateway Station, every day blurred.

  Every day of being no one, doing nothing, having little in her life. Every day of mourning her long-dead daughter—both the little girl she had left behind, and the woman who had grown, matured, loved, lived and died without Ripley ever getting to know her.

  I told her I’d be home for her birthday, she kept thinking, always the last thing at night, and every day when she woke. That guilt was as rich and raw today as it was every day.

  Every day blurred into one, into weeks, into months…

  Sleeping. Waking. Working. Returning to her cabin. Eating, washing, drinking, smoking, watching the body of her cigarette turn to ash and flitter away like the years of her life, unknown and unmissed by anyone. A life without meaning was no life at all.

  Today had been no different to any other day. Just one of many, all the same.

  Until the door buzzer sounded.

  It jarred Ripley out of her sad contemplations, and for a few seconds she couldn’t place what it was. She hardly ever heard the noise. No one came to visit her, she had no friends. She was a woman out of time, and if people did speak to her—at the loading docks, in the mess—she always had the impression that she was seen not as a real person, but as a curiosity. An exhibit from the past.

  She stood and went to the door, wondering who was there. When she opened the door and saw Burke, her heart sank.

  He wasn’t alone.

  “Hi, Ripley,” he said. “This is Lieutenant Gorman of the Colonial Marine Corps—”

  She closed the door again. Burke, through all his efforts to ingratiate himself, had never come across as anything other than a slimeball working his own game. He pretended to care, and sometimes she thought he genuinely did. There were aspects to his personality that made him inscrutable, yet there was a vulnerability, too. Perhaps it should have made Ripley like him more, but he came across as weak.

  As for the guy with him, he just looked like a grunt.

  She turned away from the door, but Burke’s voice came again from outside.

  “Ripley, we have to talk. We’ve lost contact with the colony on LV-426.”

  She froze. Her heart stuttered. The heavy darkness within her seemed to pulse, and she turned slowly to the door. Opened it again.

  On what? she wondered. What am I letting back into my life? She stared at Burke and the marine for a long time. Burke grew uncomfortable. The marine stared back. Then she let them both inside.


  Jonesy grumbled and jumped from the stool. Ripley sat down slowly. She didn’t ask Burke and Gorman to sit.

  “So?” she asked.

  “It’s been a while,” Burke said. “Last contact was pretty standard. A series of colonist messages and a request for equipment on the next resupply ship. Since then there’s been no response to any Company requests or personal messages, no replies to scientific queries. Nada.”

  “Technical fault,” she said, but her skin was cold, her insides colder.

  “Distinct possibility,” Gorman said.

  Damn, Ripley thought, he even talks like a grunt.

  Burke raised an eyebrow.

  “What?” Ripley asked. She had a bad feeling about this. After everything they’d done to her, all that she’d told them and been ostracized for, why would Burke come all the way out here to the scummiest accommodation pod in Gateway?

  With a soldier in tow.

  “We’re mounting a rescue mission,” Burke said. “We want you to go.”

  Ripley’s stomach dropped. A rush of memories flooded in—Kane’s last supper, the Nostromo, the beast, the deaths she’d seen and those she had not. Dallas, her sometime lover.

  She stood quickly from the stool, shoving it back so that it bounced from her cot and tumbled to the floor. Jonesy hissed and scampered away, hiding somewhere out of sight. She so wished she could do the same.

  She went to the kitchen unit and poured coffee for the two men. Not because she wanted them to stay, but because without something to occupy her hands and her mind, she might lose it.

  Did he really just ask me that?

  “I don’t believe this,” she said. “You guys throw me to the wolves, and now you want me to go back out there? Forget it. It’s not my problem.” She handed Burke his coffee. She had to resist the temptation to fling it into the smug bastard’s face.

  “Can I finish?” he asked.

  “No. There’s no way.”

  She handed Gorman his drink, and he seemed to wake up.