Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

Then they began to encounter objects that must have formed some sort of technology. One narrow corridor opened into a gallery viewing area, looking down over a deep pit. It was ringed with a waist-high barrier. On the gallery stood several identical metallic units. They might have been seats surrounded by control equipment of some kind, the details obscure, arcane. If they were seats, then Ripley couldn’t easily identify the shapes of the beings meant to fill them.

The pit was filled to a few feet below the gallery by a glassy fluid of some kind, its upper surface scattered with grit and dust. The ceilings and walls were smooth, and Ripley could only assume that the dust had blown in from outside over the eons.

“Which way now?” Ripley asked.

The gallery led around three quarters of the pit, and there were at least six openings leading off from it, including the one they had just come through.

Hoop was peering at the opening through which they’d just come. From back that way came the sound of scuttling, hissing things.

“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Baxter said, sweating, trying to hide away his pain. Even standing still he was shaking. Ripley couldn’t imagine the agony he was working through, but knew there was no alternative. She only hoped a time didn’t come when he physically couldn’t go any farther.

What then? she wondered. Leave him behind? Kill him? She turned away, just as Hoop spoke.

“Let’s change this game,” he said. “Kasyanov, Baxter, get ready with the plasma torches.” He nodded at the opening they’d come through. “Bring it down.”

“Wait!” Sneddon said. “We have no idea what effect the plasma torches will have on this stuff. We don’t even know what the ship’s made of! Whether or not it’s flammable.”

Ripley heard more hissing, and back along the tunnel shadows shifted, casting spidery shapes along floors and walls.

“We run or we do it, that’s all!” she said. She braced herself to fire her charge thumper.

“Ripley.” Hoop handed her something from his waist pack, a chunky object about the size of a computer tablet. “Load it through the top. Real charges.”

“We can’t just fire those things at random,” Lachance said.

“Not at random,” Ripley said, plugging the container into the top of the thumper. “At them .” She braced again, took aim, and fired. The charge clattered along the tunnel, its echoes sounding strangely muffled as it ricocheted from the walls.

Ripley frowned.

Hoop grabbed her arm. “Time delayed,” he said as he pulled her to the side.

The explosion thudded through their feet and punched the air out of Ripley’s lungs. Behind the rumbling roar of the mining charge, she was sure she heard the aliens screeching in pain, and a shower of debris burst from the tunnel, pattering from her suit, scratching her face.

Smoke blasted after it, driven in streaming tendrils by the rush of air. Ripley swallowed to try and clear her ears, gasped at the stinging sensation across her face. Even as she stood up, Kasyanov and Baxter were at work with the plasma torches.

The entire gallery was brightly illuminated by the scorching plasma. Looking down, Ripley could see a network of slow ripples playing back and forth across the surface of the pit. The blast must have resounded through the ship. It was so thick, the surface so heavy, that the ripples moved like slow snakes, colliding and interfering, making complex but strangely beautiful patterns.

The stench was terrible, almost like burning flesh. The structure all around the opening slumped down, flowing, echoing the lazy ripples from below.

“Hold off!” Hoop shouted, and Kasyanov and Baxter ceased fire. Flames flickered all across the surfaces, fluttering out here, reigniting there, as the heavy framework dipped down until it met the bubbling floor. It had already started to harden again, effectively closing off the opening. The air shimmered from the incredible temperatures. Ripley’s lungs burned.

“Now we decide which direction to take,” Hoop said.

An alien’s curved head forced through the melted doorway. There was no warning—none of them could see beyond, and the opening itself was all but obscured by the melted structure. The creature’s smoothed dome pushed through the hardening material, its teeth stretching and gnashing. It seemed to struggle for a moment, shoving forward, and at either side its long-clawed hands sliced through.

But then it was held fast, the cooling material steaming where it bit into its mysterious hide.

“Everybody back,” Hoop said, and he aimed his spray gun.

Ripley backed away across the gallery and held her breath, fascinated yet terrified. The alien was still struggling to move forward, and all around it the melted and re-set material stretched, changing color and tone as the tension changed. Perhaps five seconds earlier, and the monster might have burst through, catching them unawares and causing chaos.

But now the creature was held fast.

Hoop fired a burst of hydrofluoric acid directly at the head.

Smoke, steam, sizzling, hissing, screeching. Everything was obscured by clouds of vapor, but Ripley had the definite impression of frantic, thrashing movement.

“Back,” she said. “Hoop, get back !” They all retreated across the gallery, and Ripley felt the waist-high barrier against her back. She edged along it toward the far end. The others were going in the same direction, and Hoop turned and ran toward her.

Behind him, something exploded.

He’ll be splashed with it, the acid, and I’ll have to watch him die , Ripley thought. But though Hoop winced and ducked down as he ran, the spattering remains of the alien’s head splayed across the gallery in the other direction. Part of it bounced across the floor, leaving sizzling patches behind, and dropped down into the pit. What struck the surface floated there for a moment, then sank with a final angry hiss.

Hoop reached them, grinning.

“Well, at least we know they don’t like this acid,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out. Baxter—”

“Don’t even ask,” Baxter said. “The way things are going, I’d beat you in a race. I’m fine.”

He was far from fine, though. He couldn’t touch his left foot to the floor, and if it weren’t for Kasyanov, he’d fall. His face was strained, damp with sweat, and he couldn’t hide his terror.

He’s still afraid we’ll leave him behind. It was a horrible idea, but one they all had to be contemplating.

“Don’t know how long that will keep them back,” Sneddon said, nodding back at the melted opening. It was still smoking. They couldn’t see any remains of the alien, but the place where it had forced through was seared with acid scars.

“Come on. This way,” Hoop said. He headed for an opening at the far end of the gallery, as far from their entry point as they could get. He fixed his flashlight to the spray gun’s strap so that he could aim both in the same direction. They all followed, none of them questioning him.

Entering a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel, Ripley couldn’t escape the idea that they were being swallowed once again.

They entered areas that the miners had not lit. They ran, flashlights held out in front or strapped onto their weapons, shadows dancing and retreating. And not long after leaving the gallery, they found the first bodies.

The tunnel-like corridor opened up into another wide space, and there was something different about it. The smooth curves were the same, the non-regularity of something biological, but the sheets and swathes of material hanging across walls and from the ceiling didn’t belong here. Neither did the things hanging within it, like horrible, rotting fruit.