Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

Parker, slaughtered on the floor. Lambert, hanging where the alien had slung her after ripping a hole through her face. All that blood.

“You okay?” Hoop asked.

Ripley nodded. Then she moved through the cramped shuttle and sat in the pilot’s seat. She was aware of Hoop walking, slowly, around the shuttle as she ran her fingers across the keyboard and initiated the computer. Mother was gone, but the Narcissus ’s computers still had a similarly constructed interface, designed so that the user felt as if they were actually talking to a friend. With technologies that could make an android like Ash, it had always seemed strange to Ripley giving a faceless computer a human voice.

She entered her access code. Morning, Narcissus, she typed. The reply appeared onscreen.

Good morning, Warrant Officer Ripley.

Request reason for Narcissus’s change of course.

Information withheld.

“Huh,” Ripley said.

“Everything okay?” Hoop asked. He was examining the stasis pod she’d spent so long in, stroking Jonesy who was slinking back and forth with his back arched, tail stretched. He might well have been the oldest cat in the galaxy.

“Sure,” she replied.

Hoop nodded, glanced toward the computer screen, and then started looking around the rest of the shuttle’s interior.

Request records of incoming signals received over the past one thousand days. Ripley expected a streaming list of information—space was filled with beamed communications, and most ship’s computers logged and discarded them if they were not relevant.

That information also withheld.

Request replay of distress signal received from Deep Space Mining Orbital Marion.

That information also withheld.

“Fuck you very much,” Ripley muttered as she typed, Because of Special Order 937?

That reference does not compute.

Emergency Command Override 100375.

I’m afraid that Override code is no longer valid.

Ripley frowned. Tapped her fingers beside the keyboard. Stared at the words on the screen. Even Mother had never communicated in such a conversational tone. And this was just the shuttle’s computer. Weird.

Request data of timescales and travel distances since Nostromo’s detonation?

That data unavailable.

Unavailable or withheld?

The computer did not reply.

Such evasiveness wasn’t possible from this machine. Not on its own. It was a functional system, not an AI like Mother. And Mother was gone.

The only other person who’d had access to Mother was Dallas. Dallas and…

…and after Dallas had been taken, and she’d quizzed Mother herself, she remembered her shock at that other presence in the computer room.

Screw you, Ash , Ripley typed.

The cursor blinked.

But the computer didn’t respond. Not even a “Does not compute.”

Ripley gasped. She hit the shutdown, and the text on the screen faded to a soft, background glow. Yet still she felt as if she was being watched. The computer’s arrogant silence seemed to ring through the interior of the shuttle, almost mocking.

“What was in your distress signal?” Ripley asked abruptly.

Hoop was rooting around in the rear of the shuttle, examining the space suits still hanging in the locker back there.

“Huh?”

“The distress signal you sent after the crash!” Ripley said. “Did you mention those things? The creatures? Did you say what they were like, what they did?”

“I… Yeah, I think so.”

“You think so?”

“It was more than ten weeks ago, Ripley. I recorded it hours after I’d seen lots of friends die, and witnessed what happened—”

“I need to hear it.”

“What’s wrong?”

She stood and backed away from the interface. It was stupid—there was no camera there—but she felt observed. She took off her jacket and dropped it across the screen.

“The alien on my ship wasn’t an accident,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s an accident that I’ve come here, either. But I need to know. I need to hear the signal.”

Hoop nodded and came toward her.

“I can patch in from here,” he said, nodding down at where her jacket covered the keyboard.

“You can?”

“I’m chief engineer on this jaunt, and that covers all the infotech systems, too.”

Ripley stepped aside and watched as Hoop moved the jacket, sat, and worked at the interface. The words she saw on the screen—the interaction—seemed innocent enough.

Hoop chuckled.

“What is it?”

“These systems. Pretty old. I had more computing power than this to play VR games, when I was a kid.”

“You don’t see anything odd with the computer?”

“Odd?” He didn’t look up, and Ripley didn’t elaborate. “Here we are,” he said. “I’ve patched into Marion ’s computer, and here’s the message. It’s on a loop.” He scanned the control panel, and Ripley leaned forward to switch to loudspeaker.

Hoop’s voice came through. There was an edgy tone to it—the fear was palpable.

“… decaying orbit. Second dropship Samson is docked and isolated, those things in there hopefully contained. They… laid infants or eggs inside the miners, burst from their chests. We are not contaminated, repeat, not contaminated. Estimate ninety days until we hit LV178’s atmosphere. All channels open, please respond. Ends.

“This is DSMO Marion, of the Kelland Company, registration HGY-64678, requesting immediate aid. Crew and mining teams down to eight surviving members. Miners discovered something on the surface of LV178, attacked, dropship Delilah crashed the Marion. Many systems damaged, environment stable but we are now in a decaying orbit. Second dropship Samson is docked and isolated…”

Hoop tapped the keyboard to turn off the replay, then glanced back at Ripley.

“Ash,” she whispered.

“What’s Ash?”

“Android. Weyland-Yutani. He was tasked with finding any alien life forms that might have been of interest to the company. His orders… crew expendable. My crew. Me.” She stared at the computer again until Hoop dropped her jacket back across it. “He’s gone, but he must have transferred part of his AI programing to the Narcissus .

He’s here. He’s in here now, and he brought me to you because of those aliens.”

“I’m not sure it’s possible that an AI could—”

“I should have been home,” Ripley said, thinking of Amanda and her sad, wet eyes when she’d watched her mother leave. She hated herself for that. Even though she should have been home with her daughter for her eleventh birthday, and nothing that had happened was her fault, Ripley hated herself. “I should have never left.”

“Well, maybe some good can come of this,” Hoop said.

“Good?” Ripley said.

“Your shuttle. Sneddon and I think we can get away on it, all of us. And that’ll leave the Marion and those fuckers on the Samson to burn up in the planet’s atmosphere.”

Ripley knew that for any extended voyage the shuttle was only suitable for one, with only a single stasis pod. But she didn’t care. Any way to distance herself from those aliens—any way to deny Ash from fulfilling his Special Order—was good for her.

“Maybe,” she said. “I’ll run a systems check.”

“You’re not alone anymore, Ripley,” Hoop said.

She blinked quickly, and nodded her thanks. Somehow, he seemed to know just what to say.

“You’ll stay here with me for a while?”

Hoop feigned surprise.

“Do you have coffee?”

“No.”