Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

She glanced aside from him and saw what had become of Welford. He was meat.

“Powell!” she shouted. “Eyes right!”

Powell lifted his head. But instead of looking right at the blazing alien that was staggering toward him, he looked left at his dead friend.

Kasyanov leapt across two rows of seats, braced her legs, and fired her charge thumper at the burning alien. The shot was deafening, pulsing in Ripley’s ears and blowing the flames back from the creature’s sizzling hide.

It screeched louder. But it continued on toward Powell, falling on him, and Ripley didn’t quite close her eyes in time. She saw Powell’s head erupt beneath the impact of the burning thing’s silvery mouth.

“What the fuck?” Hoop shouted.

Kasyanov fired the thumper again, two more times, shattering the alien’s head and spreading its burning parts across the floor and wall on that side of the vestibule. Flames curved across the windows, smoke formed intricate patterns, and an acidic haze rose.

Hissing. Smoking.

“We need to get out!” Ripley said.

“Where’s the other one?” Hoop asked.

“Through the door. But the acid will—”

“Kasyanov, out!” Hoop shouted.

Kasyanov came for them. Ripley saw her disbelief, but also the determination that had smothered her terror. That was good. They’d need that.

One of the aliens trapped in the netting broke free, streaking toward them across the vestibule. It knocked seating aside, jumped over the back of a row of fixed equipment racks, and bore down on Kasyanov.

Hoop raised the plasma torch. But if he fired this close he’d fry the doctor as well.

“No!” Ripley said. “Hoop!” She sidestepped to the left, never taking her eyes off the alien. It paused briefly, and her selfish thought was, Not me, don’t come at me. Fear drove that idea, and moments later—as the alien leapt and Hoop fried it with the plasma torch—she felt a flush of shame.

But Kasyanov was alive because of Ripley’s quick decision. She’d acted on instinct, and her baser thoughts, more taken with self-preservation, had needed a moment to catch up.

The Russian nodded once at her.

Then one of the acid-splashed windows blew out.

The storm was instantaneous. Anything not fixed down was picked up and blasted toward the ruptured window, carried by the atmosphere gushing out into space under massive pressure. Broken chairs, dropped weapons, wall paneling powered across the vestibule and jammed against the window and bulkhead. The noise was incredible, a roar that threatened to suck Ripley’s eardrums from her skull. She tried to breathe, but couldn’t pull air into her lungs. She held onto a floor fixing for a row of chairs with one hand, reaching for Hoop with the other.

Hoop clung onto the door frame, Kasyanov clasping onto his flapping jacket.

Ripley looked over her shoulder. Two tattered bodies—all that remained of Welford and Powell—were pressed hard against the broken window, the two dead, burned aliens almost merged with them. The surviving creature, still tangled in netting, was clasping onto the airlock doorway, but as she watched its grip slipped and it impacted against its dead brethren. Things were drawn through the airlock and whipped around toward the breach—clothing, body parts, other objects she couldn’t identify from inside the Samson.

She saw Powell’s right arm and chest sizzling and flowing from spilled acid.

“We don’t have long!” she tried to shout. She barely even heard herself, but she could see from Kasyanov’s expression that she knew the terrible danger they were in.

For a moment, the storm abated a little. The blown window was clogged with furniture, body parts, and bulkhead paneling. Ripley felt the pressure on her ears and the tugging at her limbs lessening, so she started pulling herself along the floor fixings toward the doorway. With the acid eating away at the detritus, the calmer period wouldn’t last for long.

Hoop hauled himself through, helped by hands from the other side. Kasyanov went with him. Then they both turned back for her.

Jammed against the door frame and held from behind, Hoop reached for Ripley.

As he looked over her shoulders and his eyes widened, she got her feet under her and pushed.

Hoop grabbed her arms and squeezed, so tight that she saw blood pooling around where his fingernails bit into her wrists.

The entire bulkhead surrounding the shattered window gave way.

With a shout Ripley barely heard, Hoop pulled her toward him. The doors were already closing, and she was tugged through the opening moments before the edges met.

There was a loud, long whine, a metallic groaning, and then the growl of racing air fell immediately away. Beyond the door was chaos. But here, for a few seconds, it was almost silent.

Then Ripley’s hearing faded back in. She heard panting and groaning, and Hoop’s muttered curses when he saw Garcia’s mutilated body jammed through a doorway across the corridor. Her chest was a bloodied mess, bones glinting with dripping blood.

“One… one came through,” Ripley said, looking at Sneddon. The science officer nodded and pointed along the corridor.

“Into the ship,” she said. “It moved so fast. And it was huge. Huge !”

“We’ve got to find it,” Ripley said.

“The others?” Sneddon asked.

Hoop shook his head. “Welford. Powell. Gone.”

The chaos beyond the doors ended as quickly as it had begun.

Ripley stood up, shaking, looking around at the others—Hoop, Kasyanov, Sneddon. She tried not to look at Garcia’s damaged, pathetic body, because it reminded her so much of Lambert, hanging there with her arm still swinging, blood still dripping.

“We’ve got to track it down,” Ripley said again.

“Baxter, Lachance!” Hoop said. “One got free on the ship. You hear me?”

No reply.

“The decompression must have screwed the com connection,” Sneddon said.

Ripley reached for her headset, but it was gone. Ripped off in the violence.

“The bridge,” Hoop said. “All of us. We need to stay together, get up there as quickly as possible. Warn them. Then we decide what to do. But only after we’re all together. Agreed?”

Ripley nodded.

“Yeah,” Sneddon said.

Hoop took the last remaining charge thumper from Sneddon, and led the way.

They’d moved so quickly! Even after being trapped in the Samson for seventy days, they’d stormed out of there faster than Ripley could have imagined. She wasn’t really sure what she’d been expecting… To find that it had all been a bad dream, perhaps. To discover that the things in there weren’t really related in any way to the monster that had killed her crew, thirty-seven years before.

But it hadn’t been, and they were. Exactly the same. Giant, insectile, reptilian things, yet with a body that in certain light, from certain angles, could have been humanoid.

That head… those teeth…

Hoop held out his hand, palm up toward them. Ripley stopped and repeated the signal so that Sneddon could see, and behind her Kasyanov.

They were at a junction in the corridor. Across the junction was the door that led into the ruined docking bays, still solid and secure. Around the corner lay the route up into the main body of the Marion.

Hoop stood motionless, the charge thumper held across his body. It was long, unwieldy, and to aim it ahead of him as he stepped around, he’d have to move across the corridor.

The alien could have been anywhere . Any corner. Any shadow in the corridor walls, open doorway, hatch, side room. She’d seen it rush from the vestibule, heard it pause just long enough to kill Garcia, and then it had gone, ignoring Sneddon altogether. Maybe because she carried a weapon. But more likely, Ripley thought, because it sensed the vast ship to which it now had unrestricted access.