Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

Hearing a warning chime, he left the cell by the hatch and went to the pilot’s station again.

Pre-flight checks completed. All flight and environmental systems online.

Launch procedure compromised.

Hoop caught his breath. He rested his fingers on the keyboard, almost afraid to type in case Ash’s soundless voice replied.

What’s the problem? he typed, wondering how Ash would respond. No problem for me, maybe, or, We’ll all go together . But the response was straightforward, to the point, and nothing malignant.

Automatic release malfunction. Manual release from Marion’s docking bay required.

“Oh, great,” he said. “That’s just fucking great.” It wasn’t Ash’s voice, but it was a final farewell. Hoop couldn’t launch the shuttle from inside. He’d have to be out there, back in the airlock and on board the Marion, so that he could access manual release.

Ash’s parting gift.

“You bastard,” Hoop said.

But had he really expected it to end so easily? His heart sank. The ship shook. From the viewing windows that looked out across the Marion ’s belly, he could see feathers of flames playing all across the hull. Parts of it were already glowing red.

He went to Ripley’s side to say goodbye. He stared down at her where she slept, aware that they hadn’t gone through the usual pre-hypersleep procedures—she should have eaten and drunk, washed, used the bathroom. But this rushed process was the best he could manage.

He was letting her fly into the future.

His own future was shorter, and far more grim.

“So here we are,” he said. It felt foolish talking to himself, and really there was nothing left to say. He bent down and kissed Ripley softly on the lips. He didn’t think she would mind. In fact, he kind of hoped she’d have liked it. “Fly safe. Sweet dreams.”

Then Hoop closed the stasis pod and watched its controls flash on as the Narcissus ’s computer took control. By the time he was standing by the shuttle’s door, plasma torch slung over one shoulder, Ripley was almost into hypersleep.

Amanda is in her late teens, lithe, tall and athletic, just like her mother. She stands by a stone wall somewhere dark and shadowy, and her chest bursts open, spilling blood to the floor, a screeching creature clawing its way out from the wound.

Ripley turns away because she doesn’t want to see. Behind her, a monster spews hundreds of flexing eggs from its damaged abdomen.

She turns again and sees a blood-spattered metal wall, tattered corpses at its base. More aliens crawl toward her, hissing, heads moving as if they are sniffing her, and she understands their age-old fury in a way that only nightmares can allow. It’s as if they have been looking for her forever, and now is the moment of their revenge.

She turns back to Amanda, and her daughter is maybe fourteen years old. She coughs and presses her hand to her chest. Rubs. Nothing happens. Ripley turns a full circle. More blood, more aliens, but now it’s all more distant, as if she’s viewing things through a reversed telescope.

Those beasts are still coming for her, but they’re a long way off, both in time and memory, and becoming more distant with every moment that passes.

Amanda, she tries to say. But though she knows this is a dream, still she cannot speak .

Three more minutes and she’ll be gone.

Hoop shoved the empty fuel cell out through the airlock, then returned to the Narcissus and closed the hatch behind him, flicking the lever that would initiate its automatic sealing and locking. He heard the heavy clunks and then a steady hiss, and Ripley was lost to him. There wasn’t even a viewing panel in the door. He would never see her again.

The Marion was in her death-throes. The ship’s vibrations were now so violent that Hoop’s heels and ankles hurt each time the deck jerked beneath him. He moved quickly through the airlock, plasma torch held at ready in case that last alien had survived, and in case it was coming for him still.

Two minutes. He just had to live that long, in order to release Ripley’s shuttle. He hoped to survive for longer— and a plan was forming, a crazy idea that probably had a bad ending—but two minutes was the minimum. After that, after Ripley would be safe, things would matter less.

He reached the vestibule and closed the airlock behind him, sealing it and leaning to one side to look at the Narcissus through one of the viewing windows. All he had to do now was to hit the airlock seal confirmation, and the ship’s computer would know it was safe to go.

His hand hovered over the pad. Then he pressed it down.

Almost instantaneously a brief retro burst pushed the Narcissus away from the Marion , and the two parted company. More retro exhalations dropped the shuttle down beneath the ship’s belly. It fell through veils of smoke and sheets of blazing air, buffeted by the planet’s atmosphere, before its rockets ignited and it vanished quickly toward the stern.

And that was it. Ripley and the Narcissus were gone. Hoop was left alone on the Marion , and he knew the ship he’d called home was moments away from dying.

For a while he just leaned there against the wall, feeling each death-rattle transmitted into his body up through the floor and wall. He thought about his plan, and how foolish it was, how almost beyond comprehension. And he thought about the easier way out. He could just sit there for a while, and when the time came and the ship started to come apart, his death would be quick. The heat would be immense, and it would fry him to a crisp. He probably wouldn’t even feel it. And if he did feel it, it would be more sensation than pain.

The end of all his agonies.

But then he saw his children again. Between blinks they were actually there with him in that vestibule, the two boys silent but staring at him accusingly, their eyes saying, You left us once, don’t leave us again! He sobbed. In that instant he could understand why Ripley had asked for that merciful wiping of her memory.

Then his children were gone again, figments of his guilt, aspects of his own bad memories. But they didn’t have to be gone forever. Where there existed even the slightest, most insignificant chance, he had to take it.

The Samson wasn’t very far away.

He paused briefly outside the door that led into the Samson ’s docking arm. It was still vacuum in there, and he wouldn’t have time to find the tools to drill a hole again. This escape would be more basic, more brutal than that.

He wanted to give himself a chance. He needed supplies, even though the probability of surviving was insignificant. It was a dropship, built for surface-to-orbit transfers, not deep space travel. There likely was enough fuel on board for him to escape orbit, but he wasn’t even certain whether the craft’s navigational computer could calculate a journey across the cosmos toward home. He would point them in the right direction, then fire the thrusters. Retain perhaps twenty percent of the fuel, but use the rest to get him up to the greatest speed possible.

And there was no stasis unit in the Samson . He’d likely be traveling for years. He might even grow old and die in there, if the ship held together that long. What a find that would be , he mused, for someone hundreds or thousands of years from now.

Bad enough to consider traveling that long with company, but on his own? The one comfort was that he was again king of his own destiny. If he wanted to persist, then he could. And if the time came when ending it was a much more settling proposition, it was simply a case of opening the airlock door.