Tim Lebbon: Alien: Out the Shadows

“I’m doing my best,” he replied.

“Creatures?” The ship’s medic Garcia tapped nervously at her chin. “No one’s ever seen creatures down the mine, have they?”

“There’s nothing living on that rock, other than bacteria,” Sneddon said. She was shifting from foot to foot. “Maybe that’s not what they said. Maybe they said fissures, or something.”

“Have we got them on scanner yet?” Jordan asked.

Baxter waved to his left, where three screens were set aslant in the control panel. One was backlit a dull green, and it showed two small points of light moving quickly toward them. Interference from electrical storms in the upper atmosphere sparked across the screen. But the points were firm, their movement defined.

“Which is the Samson ?” Hoop asked.

“Lead ship is Samson,” Lachance said. “The Delilah follows.”

“Maybe ten minutes out,” Jordan said. “Any communication from Delilah ?”

No one answered. Answer enough.

“I’m not sure we can—” Hoop began, then the speakers burst back into life. Let them dock, he was going to say.

“—stuck to their faces!” the voice said. It was still unrecognizable.

Baxter turned some dials, and then a larger screen above his station flickered to life. The Samson’s pilot, Vic Jones, appeared as a blurred image. Hoop tried to see past him to the inner cabin of the dropship, but the vibration of their steep ascent out of LV178’s atmosphere made a mess out of everything.

“How many with you?” Hoop asked.

“Hoop? That you?”

“Yeah.”

“The other shift found something. Something horrible. Few of them… ” He faded out again, his image stuttering and flickering as atmospherics caused more chaos.

“Kasyanov, you and Garcia get to sick bay and fire up the med pods,” Jordan said to the doctor and her medic.

“You can’t be serious,” Hoop said. As Jordan turned on him, Jones’s voice crackled in again.

“—all four, only me and Sticky untouched. They’re okay right now, but… to shiver and spit. Just get… to dock!”

“They might be infected!” Hoop said.

“Which is why we’ll get them straight to sick bay.”

“This is fucking serious.” Hoop nodded at the screen where Jones’s image continued to flicker and dance, his voice cutting in and out. Most of what Jones said made little sense, but they could all hear his terror. “He’s shitting himself!”

Kasyanov and Garcia hustled from the bridge, and Hoop looked to Sneddon for support. But the science officer was leaning over the back of Baxter’s chair, frowning as she tried to make out whatever else Jones was saying.

“Jones, what about the Delilah?” Jordan said into her headset. “Jones?”

“…left the same time… something got on board, and… ”

“What got on board?”

The screen snowed, the comm link fuzzed with static, and those remaining on the bridge stood staring at each other for a loaded, terrible few seconds.

“I’m getting down to the docking level,” Jordan said. “Cornell, with me. Baxter, tell them Bay Three.”

Hoop coughed a disbelieving laugh.

“You’re taking him to back you up?”

“He’s security officer, Hoop.”

“He’s a drunk!” Cornell didn’t even meet Hoop’s stare, let alone respond.

“He has a gun,” Jordan said. “You stay here, supervise the bridge. Lachance, help guide them in. Remote pilot the dropships if you have to.”

“If we can even get a link to them,” Lachance said.

“Assume we can, and do it!” Jordan snapped. She took a few deep breaths, and Hoop could almost hear her thoughts. Never figured it would fuck up this bad, gotta be calm, gotta be in control. He knew she was thinking about those three miners she’d lost, and dreading the idea of losing more. She looked straight at him. He frowned, but she turned and left the bridge before he could object again.

There was no way they should be letting the Samson dock, Hoop knew. Or if it did dock, they had to sever all external operation of the airlock until they knew it was safe. There had been twenty miners taken down to the surface, and twenty more scheduled to return in the dropships. Two shifts of twenty men and women—but right now, the ten people still on the Marion had to be the priority.

He moved to Baxter’s communication panel and checked the radar scanner again. The Samson had been tagged with its name now, and it looked to be performing a textbook approach, arcing up out of the atmosphere and approaching the orbiting Marion from the sunward side.

“Lachance?” Hoop asked, pointing at the screen.

“It’s climbing steeply. Jones is pushing it as hard and as fast as he can.”

“Keen to reach the Marion. ”

“But that’s not right…” Lachance muttered.

“What?” Hoop asked.

“Delilah. She’s changing direction.”

“Baxter,” Hoop said, “plot a course trace on the Delilah .”

Baxter hit some buttons and the screen flickered as it changed. The Delilah grew a tail of blue dots, and its projected course appeared as a hazy fan.

“Who’s piloting Delilah this drop?”

“Gemma Keech,” Welford said. “She’s a good pilot.”

“Not today she isn’t. Baxter, we need to talk to Delilah , or see what’s happening on board.”

“I’m doing what I can.”

“Yeah.” Hoop had a lot of respect for Baxter. He was a strange guy, not really a mixer at all—probably why he spent more of his time behind the bar than in front of it—but he was a whiz when it came to communications tech. If things went wrong, he was their potential lifeline to home, and as such one of the most important people on the Marion.

“We have no idea what they’ve got on board,” Powell said. “Could be anything.”

“Did he say there’s only six of them on the Samson ?” Welford asked. “What about all the others?”

Hoop shrugged. Each ship held twenty people and a pilot. If the Samson was returning less than half full—and they had no idea how many were on Delilah —then what had happened to the rest of them?

He closed his eyes briefly, trying to gather himself.

“I’ve got visual on Delilah!” Baxter said. He clicked a few more keys on his computer keyboard, then switched on one of the blank screens. “No audio, and there’s no response to my hails. Maybe…” But his voice trailed off.

They all saw what was happening inside Delilah.

The pilot, Gemma Keech, was screaming in her seat, terrified and determined, eyes glued to the window before her. It was haunting witnessing such fear in utter silence. Behind her, shadows thrashed and twisted.

“Baxter,” Hoop whispered. “Camera.”

Baxter stroked his keyboard and the view switched to a camera above and behind Keech’s head. It was a widescreen, compressing the image but taking in the entire passenger compartment.

And there was blood.

Three miners were kneeling directly behind the pilot. Two of them held spiked sand-picks, light alloy tools used for breaking through compacted sandstones. They were waving and lashing at something, but their target was just out of sight. The miner in the middle held a plasma torch.

“He can’t use that in there,” Powell said. “If he does he’ll… he’ll… what the fuck ?”

Several miners seemed to have been strapped into their seats. Their heads were tilted back, chests a mess of blood and ripped clothing, protruding ribs and flesh. One of them still writhed and shook, and there was something coming out of her chest. Pulling itself out. A smooth curved surface glimmering with artificial light, it shone with her blood.