Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

There was a long silence on the bridge. Ripley smoked the last of her cigarette and dropped the butt into her coffee mug. It sizzled out. She was feeling an increasingly urgent need to get back to the Narcissus , alone, find her own space. Talk with Ash. She wasn’t sure it would solve anything, but it might make her sense of betrayal easier to bear.

She’d promised Amanda she’d be home.

Closing her eyes, she willed back the tears. She’d already cried too much. Now it was time to survive.

“If you want to use the Samson, best draw them out before you kill them,” she said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“We’ll work on a plan,” Hoop said. “In the meantime—”

“Good. I’m going back to my shuttle.” Ripley stood, but the science officer blocked her path.

“Now wait,” Sneddon said. She was six inches shorter than Ripley, but she stood her ground. Ripley respected that. “None of us knows you. You come here for whatever reason, start telling us these stories about rogue AIs and aliens with acid for blood. And now you want to go back to your shuttle?”

“Yeah, why?” Powell asked. “Hoop, we can’t just let her wander round.”

“What, you’re afraid I’m going to damage your perfect little ship?” Ripley asked. “God knows, we wouldn’t want to scratch the paint.”

“Let’s just chill,” Hoop said. But Sneddon’s blood was up.

“What are you going back for?” she demanded. “You’ve just come from there with Hoop.”

“You’re welcome to come,” Ripley said. She was staring Sneddon down. She waited until the shorter woman averted her gaze, then smiled. “I’m just going to feed my cat.”

As it turned out, Jonesy wasn’t hungry. Ripley laid out some reconstituted chicken, and though he crept from the stasis pod and sniffed at it, he turned his nose up and slinked away. But he stayed in the shuttle.

Maybe he can smell them out there , Ripley thought. Maybe he knows more than the rest of us.

The acid-for-blood thing troubled her. What she’d witnessed had been just a drop, spilled from the thing hugging Kane’s face when Ash and Dallas tried cutting it off. She didn’t know whether the fully-grown alien carried the same blood, or whether wounding one would result in a similar effect. Really, she knew so little. But though the reality of her experience had been terrifying, the alien had taken on larger, darker connotations in her sleep.

Thirty-seven years of nightmares, she thought. And now that I’m awake, the nightmare has woken with me.

She moved around the cramped space, again wondering just how the hell nine people would survive in here. Even with one in the stasis pod, there’d barely be room for the rest to sit down. There was a small bathroom behind the equipment locker, so at least there’d be privacy for toilet and limited washing. But existing together here for more than a few days hardly bore thinking about.

For months? Years?

She finally found Jonesy again in the suit locker, snuggled down in one of the big EVA boots. He took some coaxing, but eventually he miaowed and climbed out, letting Ripley pick him up and hug him to her. He was her link to the past, and the only solid proof that any of it had actually happened. She didn’t really require such proof— she was confident that she could distinguish reality from nightmare—but the cat was a comfort nonetheless.

“Come on then, you little bastard,” she said. “You gonna help me?” She held the cat up and looked into his eyes. “So why didn’t you spot anything wrong with that bastard Ash? Damn fine ship’s cat you are.”

She sat in the pilot’s seat, Jonesy on her lap, and rested her fingers on the keyboard. She took a deep breath. Ash had tried to kill her, but he was just a machine. An AI, true. Created to think for himself, process data and make his own decisions, act on programed responses and write and install new programs based on experience— essentially learning. But a machine nevertheless. Designed, manufactured, given android life in the labs of Weyland-Yutani.

Suddenly Ripley felt a rush of hatred for the company. They had decided she and her crew were expendable, and four decades later they were still fucking with her life.

It was time for that to stop.

Hello Ash, she typed. The words appeared on the screen before her, flashing green, the cursor passing the time as a response was considered. She didn’t actually expect one, assuming a resounding silence as the AI strived to hide its continued existence. Instead, the reply was almost instant.

Hello Ripley.

She sat back in her seat, stroking the cat. The sensation returned—the feeling of being watched. She didn’t like it.

You brought us here in response to the Marion’s distress signal?

That’s right.

Crew still expendable in accordance with special order 937?

You’re the last of the Nostromo’s crew.

Answer the question, Ash.

Yes. Crew expendable.

“Nice,” she breathed. Jonesy purred in her lap. But I know where you are now, Ash. You can’t control things anymore. You’re without purpose.

I did my best.

Ripley looked at those words and thought about what they meant. The Nostromo’s crew, brutally killed by the thing Ash had allowed on board. Her decades in hypersleep, away from her daughter and home.

Fuck you, Ash, she typed.

The cursor blinked back.

Ripley punched the computer off and then sat back in the chair. Jonesy stretched and allowed himself to be scratched.

The Marion drifted, Lachance computed, and he decided that four days after Ripley’s arrival would be the optimum time to drop back down to the mine. It would entail a thousand-mile, three-hour drop, four hours at the mine retrieving the spare fuel cells, and then an hour’s blast back into orbit. If all went well they’d be away from Marion for around eight hours. If all didn’t go well…

Everyone knew what the results of that would be.

Hoop suggested that they open up the Samson a day before they were due to drop. That would give them time to tackle the creatures inside, clear out the ship, and prep it for travel. If there was damage, they could do their best to repair it.

No one mentioned the possibility that it might be damaged beyond their ability to repair. There were so many things that could go wrong that they didn’t bear discussing, and as such the survivors lived in a miasma of false positivity. The only talk was good talk. Everyone kept bad thoughts to themselves.

Baxter was the only one who was openly pessimistic, but then they were used to that with him. Nothing new.

Hoop was becoming more and more impressed with Ripley. That first day she’d been woozy and uncertain, but she soon found her feet. She came across as strong, resilient, yet damaged—tortured by what she had experienced. She’d once mentioned her daughter, but never again. He could see the pain in her eyes, but also the hope that she would see her child again.

Hope in the face of hopelessness, he supposed, was what kept them all going.

And she was attractive. He couldn’t get away from that. She looked to him first when they had group conversations, and he didn’t think it was because he was ostensibly in command. Maybe it was because, having both lost their children, they had something in common.

Hoop often thought about his two sons, and how he and their mother had watched a marriage dissolve around them. Neither of them had been able to rescue it. His job was the prime cause, she’d told him. It’s dangerous, she said. You’re away for a year at a time. But he’d refused to accept all of the blame.