Aliens (aliens universe)

by Alan Dean Foster

  Ripley had the stock of the big gun snugged up against her cheek. She was doing her best to keep pace with Hicks's instructions, knowing that they didn't have much time knowing that if she had to use the weapon, she wouldn't be able to ask a second time how something worked. Hicks was as patient with her as possible, considering that he was trying to compress a complete weapons instruction course into a couple of minutes.

  The corporal stood close behind her, positioning her arms as he explained how to use the built-in sight. It required a mutua effort to ignore the intimacy of their stance. There was little enough warmth in the devastated colony, little enough humanity to cling to, and this was the first physical, rather than verbal, contact between them.

  'Just pull it in real tight,' he was telling her. 'Despite the built-in absorbers, it'll still kick some. That's the price you have to pay for using shells that'll penetrate just about anything.' He indicated a readout built into the side of the stock. 'When this counter reads zero, hit this.' He ran a thumb over a button, and the magazine dropped out, clattering on the floor.

  'Usually we're required to recover the used ones: they're expensive. I wouldn't worry about following regs just now.'

  'Don't worry,' she told him.

  'Just leave it where it falls. Get the other one in quick.' He handed her another magazine, and she struggled to balance the heavy weapon with one hand while loading with the other 'Just slap it in hard, it likes abuse.' She did so and was rewarded with a sharp click as the magazine snapped home. 'Now charge it.' She tapped another switch. A red telltale sprang to life on the side of the arming mechanism.

  Hicks stepped back, eyed her firing stance approvingly 'That's all there is to it. You're ready for playtime again. Give it another run-through.'

  Ripley repeated the procedure: release magazine, check reload, arm. The gun was awkward physically, comforting mentally. Her hands were trembling from supporting the weight. She lowered the barrel and indicated the metal tube that ran underneath.

  'What's this for?'

  'That's the grenade launcher. You probably don't want to mess with that. You've got enough to remember already. If you have to use the gun, you want to be able to do it without thinking.'

  She stared back at him. 'Look, you started this. Now show me everything. I can handle myself.'

  'So I've noticed.'

  They ran through sighting procedures again, then grenade loading and firing, a complete course in fifteen minutes. Hicks showed her how to do everything short of breaking down and cleaning the weapon. Satisfied that she'd missed nothing, she left him to ponder the tactical console's readouts as she headed for Medical to check on Newt. Slung from its field straps, her newfound friend bounced comfortingly against her shoulder.

  She slowed when she heard footsteps ahead, then relaxed Despite its greater bulk, an alien would make a lot less noise than the lieutenant. Gorman emerged from the doorway, looking weak but sound. Burke was right behind him. He barely glanced at her. That was fine with Ripley. Every time the Company representative opened his mouth, she had an urge to strangle him, but they needed him. They needed every hand they could get, including those stained with blood. Burke was still one of them, a human being.

  Though just barely, she thought.

  'How do you feel?' she asked Gorman.

  The lieutenant leaned against the wall for support and put one hand to his forehead. 'All right, I guess. A little dizzy. One beauty of a hangover. Look, Ripley, I—'

  'Forget it.' No time to waste on useless apologies. Besides what had happened wasn't entirely Gorman's fault. Blame for the fiasco beneath the atmosphere-processing station needed to be apportioned among whoever had been foolish or incompetent enough to have put him in command of the relief team Gorman's lack of experience aside, no amount of training could have prepared anyone for the actuality of the aliens. How do you organize combat along accepted lines of battle with an enemy that's as dangerous when it's bleeding to death as it is when it's alive? She pushed past him and into the Med lab.

  Gorman followed her with his eyes, then turned to head up the corridor. As he did so he encountered Vasquez approaching from the other direction. She regarded him out of cold, slitted eyes. Sweat stained her colourful bandanna and plastered it to her dark hair and skin.

  'You still want to kill me?' he said quietly.

  Her reply mixed contempt with acceptance. 'It won't be necessary.' She continued past him, striding toward the next checkpoint.

  With Gorman and Burke gone, Medical was deserted. She crossed through to the operating theatre where she'd left Newt. The light was dim, but not so weak that she couldn't make out the empty bed. Fear racing through her like a drug she spun, her eyes frantically scanning the room, until a thought made her bend to look beneath the cot.

  She relaxed, the tension draining back out of her. Sure enough, the girl was curled up against the wall, jammed as far back in as she could get. She was fast asleep, Casey clutched tightly in one small hand.

  The angelic expression further reassured Ripley, innocent and undisturbed despite the demons that had plagued the child through waking as well as through sleeping hours. Bless the children, she thought, who can sleep anyplace through anything.

  Carefully she laid the rifle on the cot. Getting down on hands and knees, she crawled beneath the springs. Without waking the girl she slipped both arms around her. Newt twitched in her sleep, instinctively snuggling her body closer to the adult's comforting warmth. A primal gesture. Ripley turned slightly on her side and sighed.

  Newt's face contorted with the externalization of some private, tormented dreamscape. She cried out inarticulately, a vague dream-distorted plea. Ripley rocked her gently.

  'There, there. Hush. It's all right. It's all right.'

  Several of the high-pressure cooling conduits that encircled the massive atmosphere-processing tower had begun to glow red with excess heat. High-voltage discharges arced around the conical crown and upper latticework, strobing the blighted landscape of Acheron and the silent structures of Hadley town with irregular, intense flashes of light. It would have been obvious to anyone that something was drastically wrong with the station. Damping units fought to contain a reaction that was already out of control. They continued, anyway. They were not programmed for futility.

  Across from the landing platform a tall metal spire poked toward the clouds. Several parabolic antennae clustered around the top, like birds flocking to a tree in wintertime.

  At the base of the tower a solitary figure stood hunched over an open panel, his back facing into the wind.

  Bishop had the test-bay cover locked in the open position and had managed to patch the portable terminal console into the tower's instrumentation. Thus far everything had gone as well as anyone dared hope. It hadn't started out that way. He'd arrived late at the tower, having underestimated the length o time it would take him to crawl through the conduit. As if by way of compensation, the preliminary checkout and testing had come off without a hitch, enabling him to make up some of that lost time. Whether he'd made up enough remained to be seen.

  His jacket lay draped over the keyboard and monitor of the terminal to shield them from blowing sand and dust. The electronics were far more sensitive to the inclement weather than he was. The last several minutes had seen him typing frenetically, his fingers a blur on the input keys. He accomplished in a minute what would have taken a trained human ten.

  Had he been human he might have uttered a small prayer Perhaps he did anyway. Synthetics have their own secrets. He surveyed the keyboard a last time and muttered to himself.

  'Now, if I did it right, and nothing's busted inside. ' He punched a peripheral function key inscribed with the signa word ENABLE.

  Far overhead, the Sulaco drifted patiently and silently in the emptiness of space. No busy figures moved through its empty corridors. No machines hummed efficiently as they worked the huge loading bay. Instruments winked on and off silently maintaining the ship in its geo-
stationary orbit above the colony.

  A klaxon sounded, though there were none to hear it Rotating warning lights came to life within the vast cargo hold though there was no one to witness the interplay of red, blue and green. Hydraulics whined. Immensely powerful lifters rumbled along their tracks as the second dropship was trundled out on its overhead rack. Wheels locked in place, and pulleys and levers took over. The shuttle was lowered into the gaping drop bay.

  As soon as it was locked in drop position, service booms and automatic decouplers extended from walls and floor to plug into the waiting vessel. Predrop fueling and final checkout commenced. These were mundane, routine tasks for which human attention was unnecessary. Actually the ship could do the job better without any people around. They would only get in the way and slow down the operation.

  Engines were brought on-line, shut down, and restarted Locks were cycled open and sealed shut. Internal communications flared to life and exchanged numerical sequences with the Sulaco's main computer. A recorded announcement boomed across the vast, open chamber. Procedure required it even though there was no one present to listen.

  'Attention. Attention. Final fueling operations have begun Please extinguish all smoking materials.'

  Bishop witnessed none of the activity, saw no lights rotating rapidly, heard no warning. He was satisfied nonetheless. The tiny readouts that came alive on the portable guidance console were as eloquent as a Shakespearean sonnet. He knew that the dropship had been prepared and that fueling was taking place because the console told him so. He'd done more than make contact with the Sulaco: he was communicating. He didn't have to be there in person. The portable was his electronic surrogate. It told him everything he needed to know, and what it told him was good.

  XII

  She hadn't intended to go to sleep. All she'd wanted was to share a little space, some warmth, and a few moments of quiet with the girl. But her body knew what she needed better than she did. When she relinquished control and allowed it the chance to minister to its own requirements, it took over immediately.

  Ripley awoke with a start and just missed banging her head against the underside of the cot. She was wide-awake instantly.

  Dim light from the Med lab filtered into the operating room Checking her watch, she was startled to see that more than an hour had passed. Death could have visited and departed in that much time, but nothing seemed to have changed. No one had come in to wake her, which wasn't surprising. Their minds were occupied with more important matters. The fact that she'd been left alone was in itself a good sign. If the final assault had begun, Hicks or someone else surely would have rousted her out of the warm corner beneath the bed by now.

  Gently she disengaged herself from Newt, who slept on oblivious to adult obsessions with time. Ripley made sure the small jacket was pulled up snugly around the girl's chin before turning to crawl out from beneath the cot. As she turned to roll, she caught another glimpse of the rest of the Med lab — and froze.

  The row of stasis cylinders stood just inside the doorway that led toward the rest of Hadley central. Two of them were dark their tops hinged open, the stasis fields quiescent. Both were empty.

  Hardly daring to breathe, she tried to see into every dark corner, under every counter and piece of freestanding equipment. Unable to move, she frantically tried to assess the situation as she nudged the girl sleeping behind her with her left hand.

  'Newt,' she whispered. Could the things sense sound waves? They had no visible ears, no obvious organs of hearing, but who could tell how primitive alien senses interpreted their environment? 'Newt, wake up.'

  'What?' The girl rolled over and rubbed sleepily at her eyes 'Ripley? Where are—'

  'Shssh!' She put a finger to her lips. 'Don't move. We're in trouble.'

  The girl's eyes widened. She responded with a single nod now as wide-awake and alert as her adult protector. Ripley didn't have to tell her a second time to be quiet. During her solitary nightmare sojourn deep within the conduits and service ducts that honeycombed the colony, the first thing Newt had learned was the survival value of silence. Ripley pointed to the sprung stasis tubes. Newt saw and nodded again. She didn't so much as whimper.

  They lay close to each other and listened in the darkness Listened for sounds of movement, watching for lethal lowslung shapes skittering across the polished floor. The compact space heater hummed efficiently nearby.

  Ripley took a deep breath, swallowed, and started to move Reaching up, she grabbed the springs that lined the underside of the cot and began trying to push it away from the wall. The squeal of metal as the legs scraped across the floor was jarringly loud in the stillness.

  When the gap between bed rail and wall was wide enough, she cautiously slid herself up, keeping her back pressed against the wall. With her right hand she reached across the mattress for the pulse-rifle. Her fingers groped among the sheets and blanket.

  The pulse-rifle was gone.

  Her eyes cleared the rim of the bed. Surely she'd left it lying there in the middle of the mattress! A faint hint of movement caught her attention, and her head snapped around to the left As it did so, something that was all legs and vileness jumped at her from its perch on the foot of the bed. She uttered a startled, mewling cry of pure terror and ducked back down Horny talons clutched at her hair as the loathsome shape struck the wall where her head had been a moment earlier. It slid, fighting for a grip while simultaneously searching for the vulnerable face that had shown itself a second ago.

  Rolling like mad and digging her bare fingers into the springs, Ripley slammed the cot backward, pinning the teratoid against the wall only centimetres above her face. Its legs twitched and writhed with maniacal ferocity while the muscular tail banged against springs and wall like a demented python. It emitted a shrill, piercing noise, a cross between a squeal and a hiss.

  Ripley heaved Newt across the floor and, in a frenzied scramble, rolled out after her. Once clear, she put both hands against the side of the cot and shoved harder against the imprisoned facehugger. Timing her move carefully, she flipped the cot and managed to trap it underneath one of the metal rails.

  Clutching Newt close to her, she backed away from the overturned bed. Her eyes were in constant motion, darting from shadow to cupboard, searching out every corner. The whole lab area was fraught with fatal promise. As they retreated, the facehugger, displaying terrifying strength for something so small, shoved the bulk of the bed off its body and scuttled away beneath a bank of cabinets. Its multiple legs were a blur of motion.

  Trying to keep to the centre of the room as much as possible Ripley continued backing toward the doorway. As soon as her back struck the door, she reached up to run a hand over the wall switch. The barrier at her back should have rolled aside. It didn't move. She hit the switch again then started pounding on it, regardless of the noise she was making. Nothing Deactivated, broken, it didn't matter. She tried the light switch Same thing. They were trapped in the darkness.

  Trying to keep her eyes on the floor in front of them, she used one fist to pound on the door. Dull thunks resounded from the acoustically dampened material. Naturally the entrance to the operating theatre would be soundproofed Wouldn't want unexpected screams to unsettle a queasy colonist who happened to be walking past.

  Keeping Newt with her, she edged away from the door and around the wall until they were standing behind the big observation window that fronted on the main corridor. Hardly daring to spare a glance away from the threatening floor, she turned and shouted.

  'Hey — hey!'

  She hammered desperately on the window. No one appeared on the other side of the triple-glazed transparency. A scrabbling noise from the floor made her whirl. Now Newt began to whimper, feeding off the adult's fear. Desperately Ripley stepped out in line with the wall-mounted video surveillance pickup and began waving her arms.

  'Hicks! Hicks!'

  There was no response, not from the pickup, nor from the empty room on the other side of the glass. The
camera didn't pan to focus on her and no curious voice came from its speaker. In frustration Ripley picked up a steel chair and slammed it against the observation window. It bounced off without even scarring the tough material. She kept trying.

  Wasting her strength. The window wasn't going to break and there was no one in the outer lab to witness her frantic efforts. She put the chair aside and struggled to control her breathing as she surveyed the room.

  A nearby counter yielded a small, high-beam examination light. Switching it on, she played the narrow beam over the walls. The circle of light whipped over the stasis tubes, past tal assemblies of surgical and anaesthesiological equipment, over flush-mounted storage bins and cabinets and research instrumentation. She could feel Newt shaking next to her as she clung to the tall woman's leg.

  'Mommy — Mommmyyyy. '

  Perversely it helped to steady Ripley. The child was completely dependent on her, and her own obvious fear was only making the girl panic. She swept the beam across the ceiling, brought it back to something. An idea took hold.

  Removing her lighter from a jacket pocket, she hastily crumpled together a handful of paper gleaned from the same cabinet that had provided the beam. Moving as slowly as she dared, she boosted Newt up onto the surgical table that occupied the centre of the room, then clambered up after her.

  'Mommy — I mean, Ripley — I'm scared.'

  'I know, honey,' she replied absently. 'Me too.'

  Twisting the paper tightly, she touched the lighter's flame to the top of her improvised torch. It caught instantly, blazing toward the ceiling. She raised her hand and held the fire toward the temperature sensor at the bottom of one of the Med lab's fire-control sprinkler heads. Like much of the self-contained safety equipment that was standard issue for frontier worlds, the sprinkler had its own battery-powered backup power supply. It wasn't affected by whatever had killed the door and the lights.