Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

“Eighteen,” Ripley said. “Maybe less.”

“Eighteen of them?” Kasyanov asked. “Oh, well, that’s easy , then!”

“We’re better prepared now,” Ripley said. “And besides, what’s the alternative? Really?”

“There is none,” Hoop said. “We make it for the other elevator, up to level 4 for the cell, then back to the surface.”

“But what about—” Kasyanov began, but Hoop cut her off.

“Whatever we find on the way, we handle it,” he said. “Let’s say positive. Let’s stay cool, and calm, and keep our eyes open.”

“And hope the lights are still working,” Lachance said.

As they picked up their weapons, and Kasyanov did her best to splint Baxter’s ankle with supplies from her med kit, Ripley mulled over what Lachance had said. Down here, in the dark. Feeling their way along with the aid of weak flashlights, a billion tons of planet above them.

No, it didn’t bear thinking about.

When she blinked, she saw Amanda in a floral dress thrashing on the sweet, green grass with one of those monsters attached to her face.

“I’ll see you again,” she whispered. Hoop heard, glanced at her, but said nothing. Perhaps they were all finding some way to pray.

As she exited the remains of the elevator—wondering whether they were incredibly lucky to have survived, or incredibly unlucky for it to have happened in the first place—Ripley realized with a jolt that this was the only planet other than Earth on which she had ever set foot. The voyage aboard the Nostromo had been her first, coming soon after she’d been licensed for space flight, and even after landing on LV426 she’d never actually left the ship.

She had always assumed a moment like this would have brought a moment of introspection. A rush of wonder, a glow of joy. A deep grounding of herself and her place in the universe. Sometimes, after having traveled so far, she’d feared that she would have no real stories to tell.

But now she only felt terror. The rock beneath her feet felt just like rock, the air she breathed was gritty with dust, stale and unpleasant. There was no epiphany. The beasts had ruined everything for her—any chance of joy, any scrap of innocent wonder—and quickly the fear was replaced with rage.

Outside the lift was a wide-open area, propped at frequent intervals with metal columns. Along one side stood a line of lockers, most doors hanging open. There were also storage boxes stacked against a wall, marked with symbols she didn’t understand. Most of them were empty, lids leaning against their sides. Trimonite boxes waiting to be filled, perhaps. Ripley found them sad, because they would never be used.

Lighting was supplied by several strings of bare bulbs, all of them still illuminated. The cables were neatly clipped to the rough rock ceiling.

At first, looking around, Ripley caught her breath, because she thought the walls were lined with that strange, organic, extruded compound they’d found in the ship. But when she moved closer she saw that it was rock that had been melted and resolidified, forming a solid barrier against the loose material that might lie behind it. There were still props and buttresses lining the walls and ceiling, but the bulk of the strength lay in the altered rock. They’d used the bigger, tracked plasma torches for that, she supposed. Their heat must have been incredible.

“Everyone good?” Hoop asked, breaking the silence. He was standing close to a set of plastic curtains that led into a tunnel beyond.

No one spoke. Hoop took that as confirmation that, yes, they were all good, and he pushed the curtains aside.

Ripley quickly followed. Out of all of them, Hoop felt the safest. The strongest. She wasn’t even sure why she believed that. But she went with her instincts and decided to stay close to the engineer. If they ended up in a fight, she wanted to fight beside him.

The corridor beyond the elevator compound was narrower and more functional. The lights continued along the ceiling. The walls were slick and held strange, almost organic flow patterns where they’d been plasma-torched. Shallow ditches were cut into the floor at the base of each wall, and water so dark it was black glinted there. It was motionless, stagnant, inky. Ripley wondered what it contained.

Hoop waved them on.

Baxter hobbled with one arm over Kasyanov’s shoulder. He grunted, gasped, and though he couldn’t avoid the pain, Ripley wished he wasn’t making so much noise. Every sound he made was amplified, echoing along the rock-lined tunnels much louder than their careful footfalls.

They’ll know we’re here, she thought. They probably know anyway. If anything’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, and being cautious won’t prevent it.

They reached a junction. Hoop paused only for a moment, then took the left fork. He moved quickly and carefully, holding his flashlight in one hand, the spray gun in the other. The additional light helped illuminate contours and trip hazards on the ground.

It wasn’t far along this tunnel that they came across the first sign of the aliens.

“What the hell is that?” Baxter asked. He sounded tired, and on the verge of panic. Maybe he thought that at some point they’d be forced to leave him behind after all.

“Something from the mine?” Lachance suggested. “Mineral deposit left by water?”

But Ripley already knew that wasn’t the case.

It started gradually. A smear on the wall, a spread of material on the floor. But ten yards from them the alien material lined all surfaces of the tunnel in thick layers, strung like natural arches beneath the ceiling and lying across the floor in complex, swirling patterns.

A gentle mist floated on the air. Or perhaps it was steam. Ripley tugged off a glove and waved her hand before her, feeling the moisture but finding it hard discerning whether it was hot or cold. Another contradiction, perhaps. These strange structures were impressive, and even vaguely beautiful in the same way a spider’s web was beautiful. But the things that had made this were the opposite.

“No,” Sneddon said. “It’s them. We saw something like this on the Samson .”

“Yeah, but…” Lachance said.

“That was a much smaller scale,” Ripley said. “Not like this.” She was breathing fast and shallow because she could smell them here, a faintly citrus stench that clung to the back of her throat and danced on her tongue.

“I don’t like this,” Baxter whispered.

“Me neither,” Lachance said. “I want my mommy. I want to go home.”

The tunnel narrowed ahead of them where the substance bulged out from the walls, up from the floor, down from the ceiling. Here and there it formed stalactites and stalagmites, some of them thin and delicate, others thicker and looking more solid. There were hints of light deep within the alien structure, but only here and there. The ceiling lights still worked, but were mostly covered up.

Hoop stepped a little closer and shone his flashlight inside.

Ripley wanted to grab him and pull him back. But she couldn’t help looking.

The light didn’t penetrate very far. The moisture in the air was revealed more fully by the flashlight beam, skeins of light and dark shifting and waving with a gentle breeze. Whether that breeze was caused by their presence, their breathing, or that of another, Ripley didn’t want to find out.

“I’m not going in there,” Sneddon said.

“Yeah,” Kasyanov said. “I’m with you on that one.”

“I’m not sure we’d get through anyway,” Hoop said. “And even if we could, it’d slow us down.”

“It’s like a nest,” Ripley said. “A giant wasp nest.”