Alan Dean Foster - Alien - 3

In an instant it was upon him, and at that moment he would gratefully have sought comfort in his worst nightmares.

A hundred metres down the tunnel Golic and Boggs listened to their companion’s single echoing shriek. Cold sweat broke out the back of Boggs’s neck and hands. Horribly, the scream did not cut off sharply, but instead faded away slowly and gradually like a high-pitched whistle receding into the distance.

Suddenly panicked, Boggs grabbed up the remaining light and took off running, down the passageway, away from the scream. Golic charged after him.

Boggs wouldn’t have guessed that he could still move so fast.

For a few moments he actually put some distance between them.

Then his lack of wind began to tell and he slowed, the torch he clutched making mad shadows on the walls, ceiling, floor. By the time Golic ran him down he was completely exhausted and equally disoriented. Only by sheer good luck had they avoided stumbling into an open sampler pit or down a connecting shaft.

Staggering slightly, he grabbed the other man’s arm and spun him around.

Golic gaped in dumb terror. ‘Didn’t you hear it? It was Rains!

Oh, God, it was Rains.’

‘Yeah.’ Boggs fought to get his breath. ‘I heard it. He’s hurt himself.’ Prying the torch from the other man’s trembling fingers he played it up and down the deserted passageway.

‘We’ve got to help him.’

‘Help him?’ Golic’s eyes were wide. ‘You help him. I wanna get out of here!’

‘Take it easy. So do I, so do I. First we’ve got to figure out where we are.’

‘Isn’t that a candle?’

Turning, Boggs advanced a few cautious steps. Sure enough, the line of flickering tapers was clearly visible, stretching off into the distance.

‘Damn. We must’ve cut through an accessway. We ran in a circle. We’re back—’

He stopped, steadying the light on the far wall. A figure was leaning there, stiff as anything to be found in cold storage.

Rains.

Staring not back at them but at nothing. His eyes were wide open and immobile as frozen jelly. The expression on his face was not a fit thing for men to look upon. The rest of him was. . the rest of him was. .

Boggs felt a hot alkaline rush in his throat and doubled over, retching violently. The torch fell from his suddenly weakened fingers and Golic knelt to pick it up. As he rose he happened to glance ceilingward.

There was something up there. Something on the ceiling. It was big and black and fast and its face was a vision of pure hell.

As he stared open-mouthed, it leaned down, hanging like a gigantic bat from its clawed hind legs, and enveloped Boggs’s head in a pair of hands with fingers like articulated cables.

Boggs inhaled sharply, gagging on his own vomit.

With an abrupt, convulsive twist the arachnoid horror jerked Boggs’s head right off his shoulders, as cleanly as Golic would have removed a loose bolt from its screw. But not as neatly.

Blood fountained from the headless torso, splattering the creature, Rains’s body, the staring Golic. It broke his paralysis but in the process also snapped something inside his head.

With ghastly indifference the gargoyle tossed Boggs’s decapitated skull to the floor and turned slowly to confront the remaining bipedal life-form. Its teeth gleamed like the platinum ingots which had been torn from Fiorina’s bowels.

Howling as if all the legions of the damned were after him, Golic whirled and tore down the tunnel. He didn’t look where he was going and he didn’t think about what he’d seen, and most of all he didn’t look back. He didn’t dare look back.

If he did, he knew he might see something.

Bishop’s remains had been carefully laid out on the worktable.

Bright overhead lights illuminated each component. Tools rested in their holders, ready to be called upon. The profusion of torn hair-thin fibre-optic cables was staggering.

Some Ripley had simply tied off as best she could. Her experience did not extend to making repairs on the microscopic level. She’d spent a lot of time wiring the parts together as best she could, sealing and taping, making the obvious connections and hoping nothing absolutely critical lay beyond her limited talent for improvisation.

She wiped her eyes and studied her handiwork. It looked promising, but that meant nothing. Theoretically it stood a chance of working, but then theoretically she shouldn’t be in the fix she was in.

No way to know without trying it. She tested the vital connections, then touched a switch. Something sizzled briefly, making her jerk back in the chair. She adjusted a connection, tried the switch again. This time there was no extraneous flash.

Carefully she slipped one bundle of fibre-optic filaments into what she hoped was still a functional self-sorting contact socket.

A red digital readout on the test unit nearby immediately went from zero to between seven and eight. As she threw another switch the numbers wavered but held steady.

The android’s remaining intact eye blinked. Ripley leaned forward. ‘Verbal interaction command. Run self-test sequence.’

Then she wondered why she was whispering.

Within the battered artificial skull something whined. Other telltales on the test unit winked encouragingly. A garbled burbling emerged from the artificial larynx and the collagenic lips parted slightly.

Anxiously she reached into the open throat, her fingers working inside. The burbling resolved itself as the single eye fixed on her face.

‘Ripley.’

She took a deep breath. She had visual, cognition, coordination, and memory. The external ears looked pretty good, but that signified nothing. All that mattered was the condition of the internal circuits.

‘Hello, Bishop.’ She was surprised at the warmth in her tone.

After all, it wasn’t as if she were addressing a human being.

‘Please render a preliminary condition report.’

There was a pause, following which, astonishingly, the single eye performed an eloquent roll in its socket. ‘Lousy. Motor functions are gone, extracranial peripherals nonresponsive, prospects for carrying out programmed functions nil. Minimal sensory facilities barely operative. Not an optimistic self-diagnosis, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she told him honestly. ‘I wish it could be otherwise.’

‘Not as much as I do.’

‘Can you feel anything?’

‘Yes. My legs hurt.’

Her lips tightened. ‘I’m sorry that—’

‘It’s okay. Pain simulation is only data, which from the rest of my present condition I infer is probably inaccurate. Confirm?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘I’m afraid that your legs, like most of the rest of you, has gone the way of all flesh.’

‘Too bad. Hate to see all that quality work lost. Not that it matters in the scheme of things. After all, I’m just a glorified toaster. How are you? I like your new haircut. Reminds me of me before my accessories were installed. Not quite as shiny, though.’

‘I see that your sense of humour’s still intact.’

The eye blinked. ‘Like I said, basic mental functions are still operative. Humour occupies a very small portion of my RAM-interpretive capacity.’

‘I’d disagree.’ Her smile faded. ‘I need your help.’

A gurgle emerged from between the artificial lips. ‘Don’t expect anything extensive.’

‘It doesn’t involve a lot of analysis. More straightforward probing. Where I am right now they don’t have much in the way of intrusive capability. What I need to know is, can you access the data bank on an EEV flight recorder?’

‘No problem. Why?’

‘You’ll find out faster from the recorder than I could explain. Then you can tell me.’