Tim Lebbon - Alien - Out of the Shadows

The future was a wide-open place.

“They found us,” she whispered to the cat as he growled softly in his throat. Her arms barely felt like her own, but she could feel fur against her fingertips and palms. Jonesy stretched against her. She wondered if cats could have nightmares.

“We’re safe now…”

She thought of Amanda, her daughter, and how pleased they would be to see each other. Had Ripley missed her eleventh birthday? She sincerely hoped not, because she hated breaking a promise.

Sitting up slowly, the man helping her, she groaned as her nerves came to life. It was the worst case of pins and needles ever, far worse than she’d ever had following any previous hypersleep. Upright, she sat as motionless as possible as the circulation returned, her singing nerve endings finally falling silent.

And then the man spoke.

“Actually… you’re not really that safe, to be honest.”

“What?”

“I mean, we’re not a rescue ship. We thought you were the rescue ship when we first saw you on our scopes. Thought maybe you’d answered our distress signal. But…” He trailed off, and when Ripley looked up she saw two other figures behind him in the shuttle’s confined interior. They stood back against the wall, warily eyeing her and the stasis pod.

“You’re kidding me,” one of them, a woman, said.

“Can it, Sneddon.” The man held out his hand. “My name’s Hoop. Can you stand?”

“Where am I?” Ripley asked.

“Nowhere you want to be, that’s for sure,” the man behind Hoop said. He was very tall, thin, gaunt. “Go back to sleep, Miss. Sweet dreams.”

“And that’s Powell,” Hoop said. “Don’t mind them. Let’s get you to med bay. Garcia can clean you up and check you over. Looks like you need feeding, too.”

Ripley frowned, and her mouth instantly grew dry again. Her stomach rumbled. She felt dizzy. She grabbed the side of the stasis pod, and as she slowly slung her leg over the rim and tried to stand, Hoop held her arm. His hand seems incredibly warm, wonderfully real. But his words hung with her.

Jonesy snuggled back down into the foot of the stasis pod, as if eager to find sleep again. Maybe cats really do know everything , she mused.

“Where…?” Ripley asked again, but then the shuttle began to spin, and as she fainted the shadows closed in once more.

Garcia was a small, attractive woman who had a habit of laughing softly after everything she said. But Ripley didn’t think it was an endemic shyness. The ship’s medic was nervous.

“You’re on the Marion,” she said. “Orbital mining freighter. We work for the Kelland Mining Company. They’re owned by Prospectia, who are a sub-division of San Rei Corporation, who are—like pretty much everything— owned by Weyland-Yutani.” She shrugged, chuckled. “Our ship’s built for harvesting large core deposits, really—the holds are huge and there are four extendable towing decks stacked back beneath the engine room. But we mine trimonite. Hardest substance known to man. It’s fifteen times harder than diamond, and extremely rare. We have little more than three tons of it on board.”

“What’s the problem with the ship?” Ripley asked. She was still tired, and feeling sick, but she had her wits about her again. And she knew something here was very wrong.

Garcia glanced aside, her laughter almost silent.

“Couple of mechanical issues.” She reached for some more sterile gel and started rubbing it along Ripley’s forearm.

“Are we heading home?”

“Home?” Garcia asked.

“The solar system. Earth.”

The medic suddenly looked scared. She shook her head.

“Hoop said to treat you, that’s all.” She started working on Ripley again, chattering away to cover her nervousness, talking inconsequentialities, and Ripley let her. If Garcia could somehow make her stop feeling so shitty, it was a small price to pay.

Time to rest a little, perhaps, before she found out what the hell was going on.

“Saline drip,” Garcia said, picking up a needle. “Old world medicine, but it’ll aid rehydration and have you feeling much more energetic in half an hour. Small scratch.” She slid the needle expertly into a vein on Ripley’s arm and taped it in place. “I’d recommend small amounts of liquid food to begin with—your stomach hasn’t dealt with food for so long, and its lining has become quite sensitive.”

“So long?” Ripley asked.

A pause, a small laugh.

“Soup. Lachance makes a good soup, for such a cynical bastard. He’s in the galley now.” She went to a cupboard and brought back a white bag. “We have some clothes for you. I had to dispose of your underwear, I’m afraid.”

Ripley lifted the sheet covering her and realized she was naked. On purpose? Maybe they didn’t want her just getting up and running around.

“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll dress now.”

“Not yet,” Garcia said, dropping the bag and shoving it beneath the bed with her foot. “More tests. I’m still checking your liver and kidney functions. Your pulse seems fine but your lung capacity appears to be reduced, probably due to holding a sleep pattern for so…” She turned away again to a medicine table. “I have some pills and medicines for you to take.”

“What for?”

“To make you better.”

“I’m not ill.” Ripley looked past Garcia and around the med bay. It was small, only six beds, and some of it looked basic. But there were also several hi-tech pieces of equipment that she didn’t recognize, including one sizeable medical pod in the center of the room bearing a familiar name badge on the side.

A cold hand closed around Ripley’s heart.

I was expendable, she thought. She felt a fierce pride, and an anger, at being the only survivor.

“You didn’t say you were actually a Weyland-Yutani vessel.”

“What?” She followed Ripley’s gaze. “Oh, no, we’re not. Not officially. I told you, our company is Kelland Mining, an offshoot of San Rei. But Weyland-Yutani makes a lot of equipment used in deep space exploration. Difficult to find a ship without something of theirs on it. And to be honest, their med pods are just about the best I’ve ever seen. They can do amazing stuff, we once had a miner with—”

“They’re a big company?”

“The biggest,” Garcia said. “They practically own space. The parent company owns countless others, and San Rei was bought up by them… don’t know, maybe twelve years ago? I was working at Kelland’s Io headquarters then, hadn’t gone out on any flights. It didn’t change much, but it did open our eyes to all the diverse missions that were being launched.” She chattered on as she prepared medicines, counted out pills, and Ripley let her.

“They’re investing in terraforming companies now, you know? They set up massive atmosphere processing plants on suitable planets, do something to the air—clean it, treat it, I don’t know, I’m a medic—and it takes decades. Then there’s materials acquisition, prospecting, mining. I’ve heard they’ve built massive ships, miles long, that catch and tow small asteroids. Loads of research stations, too. Medical, scientific, military. Weyland-Yutani have their fingers in lots of pies.”

Maybe times haven’t changed so much, Ripley thought, and it was the measure of “times” that was bothering her. She sat up and slipped one leg out of bed, pushing Garcia aside.

“I feel fine,” she insisted. The sheet dropped from her and Garcia looked away, embarrassed. Ripley used the advantage and stood, reaching down for the bag of clothes.

“Oh…” A voice said. She looked up. Hoop stood at the entrance to the medical bay, staring at her nakedness for just a few seconds too long before looking away. “Shit, sorry, I thought you were—”