Alan Dean Foster - Alien - 3

‘Yes. Your point is quite clear. Even to someone like me.’

Andrews continued to brood uneasily. ‘I don’t want trouble with our employers. I don’t want trouble of any kind. I get paid to see that trouble doesn’t happen. Our presence here is. .

frowned upon by certain social elements back on Earth. Until the accident we hadn’t suffered a death from other than natural causes since the day this group took over caretaking duties from its predecessors. I am aware that it could not have been prevented but it still looks bad in the records. I don’t like looking bad, Mr. Clemens.’ He squinted up at the medic. ‘You take my meaning?’

‘Perfectly, sir.’

Andrews continued. ‘Rescue and resupply will be here soon enough. Meanwhile, you keep an eye on the lieutenant and if you observe anything, ah, potentially disruptive, I know that I can rely on you to notify me of it immediately. Right?’

Clemens nodded briskly. ‘Right.’

Though only partially mollified, the other man could think of nothing more to say. ‘Very well, then. We understand one another. Good night, Mr. Clemens.’

‘Good night, Superintendent.’ He shut the door quietly behind him.

The wind of Fiorina rose and fell, dropping occasionally to querulous zephyrs or rising to tornadic shrieks, but it never stopped. It blew steadily off the bay, carrying the pungent odour of salt water to the outer sections of the installation. Sometimes storms and currents dredged odours more alien from the depths of the sea and sent them spiraling down through the air shafts, slipping through the scrubbers to remind the men that the world they occupied was foreign to the inhabitants of distant Earth, and would kill them if it could.

They went outside but rarely, preferring the familiar surroundings of the immense installation to the oppressive spaciousness of the sullen landscape. There was nothing to look at except the dark waves that broke on the black sand beach, nothing to remind them of the world they had once known. That was fortunate. Such memories were more painful than any degree of toil.

The water was cold and home to tiny, disgusting creatures that bit. Sometimes a few of the men chose to go fishing, but only for physical and not spiritual nourishment. Inside the facility it was warm and dry. The wind was no more than distant, discordant music, to be ignored. Sometimes it was necessary to go outside. These excursions were invariably brief, and attended to with as much haste as possible, moving from one refuge to another as quickly as possible.

In contrast, the figure picking through the sheltered mountain of debris was doing so with deliberation and care.

Ripley paced the surface of the immense pit, her eyes fixed on its irregular surface. The original excavation had been filled in with discarded, broken equipment. She wrestled her way past monumental components, punctured storage tanks, worn-out drill bits the size of small trucks, brightly coloured vines of old wiring and corroded tubes.

Wind whipped around outside and she clutched at the neck of the suit Clemens had found for her. The ruined mechanical landscape had seemed endless and the cold was still penetrating her muscles, slowing her and interfering with her perceptions.

Not to the extent, however, that she failed to see the expensive silvery filaments protruding from a smaller pimple of recently discarded trash. Kneeling, she began tearing at the refuse, heaving ruined equipment and bags of garbage aside to reveal. .

Bishop.

Or, more accurately, what was left of him. The android components were scattered amid the rest of the junk and she had to dig and sort for another hour before she was certain she’d salvaged absolutely everything that might be of use.

She made a preliminary attempt to correctly position the parts. Not only was the result unencouraging, it was downright pitiful. Most of the face and lower jaw was missing, crushed beyond recognition in the EEV or lost somewhere within the mass of trash outside. Portions of the neck, left shoulder, and back had somehow survived intact. In addition there were sensitive related components which had spilled or been torn free from the exterior shell.

Grim-faced and alone, she began carefully packing them into the sack she’d brought with her.

That’s when the arm coiled around her neck and the hands grabbed hard at her shoulders. Another hand appeared, clutching feverishly between her legs, fondling roughly. A man materialized in front of her. He was grinning, but there was no humour in his expression.

With a cry she broke free of the arms restraining her. The startled prisoner just gaped as her fist landed in his face and her foot between his thighs. As he crumpled, prisoner Junior appeared and wrapped his thick arms around her, lifting her off the ground to the encouraging sniggers of his companions, throwing her spread-eagled across a corroded pipe. The other men closed in, their body odour obliterating the smell of salt, their eyes glittering.

‘Knock it off.’

Gregor turned, his gaze narrowing as he isolated a silhouette, close. Dillon.

Gregor forced a grin. ‘Jump in the saddle, man. You wanna go first?’

Dillon’s voice was low, ominous. ‘I said knock it off.’

With his weight resting on the gasping Ripley, Junior snarled back over his shoulder. ‘Hey, what’s it to you, man?’

‘It’s wrong.’

‘Fuck you.’

Dillon moved then, deceptively fast. The two men in back went down hard. Junior whirled and brought a huge fist around like a scythe, only to have his opponent weave, gut-punch him, and snatch up a metal bar. Junior staggered and tried to dodge, but the bar connected with the side of his skull. The second blow was harder, and he dropped like stone.

The other cowered and Dillon whacked them again, just to keep them thinking. Then he turned to Ripley, his expression solemn.

‘You okay?’

She straightened, still breathing hard. ‘Yeah. Nothing hurt but my feelings.’

‘Take off,’ he said to her. He indicated his fellow prisoners.

‘I’ve got to reeducate some of the brothers. We’re gonna discuss some matters of the spirit.’

She nodded, hefted her bag of Bishop, and started back. As she passed the men on the ground Gregor glanced up at her.

She punched him squarely in the mouth. Feeling better, she resumed her course.

There is night, which is dark. There is the obdurate emptiness of dreams, whose lights are only imaginary. Beyond all is the void, illuminated however faintly by a million trillion nuclear furnaces.

True darkness, the utter absence of light, the place where a stray photon is as impotent as an atomic anomaly, lies only deep within the earth. ‘In caverns measureless to man’ as the old stanza rhythmically declaims. Or in those cracks and crevices man creates in order to extract the wealth of planets.

A tiny but in and of itself impressive portion of one corner of Fiorina was honeycombed with such excavations, intersecting and crisscrossing like the components of a vast unseen puzzle, their overall pattern discernible only in the records the miners had left behind.

Boggs held his wax-impregnated torch high, waved it around as Rains lit a candle. To such men the darkness was nothing to be feared. It was merely an absence of light. It was also warm within the tunnels, almost oppressively warm.

Rains placed the long-burning taper on the floor, next to the wall. Behind them a line of identical flames stretched off into the distance, delineating the trail they’d taken and the route back to the occupied portion of the complex.

Golic sat down, resting his back against a door set in the solid rock. There was a sign on the door, battered and worn by machinery and time.