Alien 3 (22 page)

Her fingers worked the keyboard. She paused, played the keys again, then sat staring thoughtfully at the information displayed on the small screen. Rising, she left the readout and turned to the cryotube that had conveyed her to Fiorina.

It was an effort to squeeze back inside, and when she turned to work on the keyboard her hand barely reached.

‘You need some help?’

She stared at Aaron’s sudden appearance.

‘Hey, didn’t mean to scare you. Look, you shouldn’t be wandering around alone.’

‘I’ve heard that one before. Do me a favour. Run the keyboard. I can’t reach over and see what I’m doing.’

He nodded and took the seat as she settled back into the tube. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Very little, I hope. The procedure’s pretty straightforward.

You ready?’ she asked, not turning her head to face him.

He gazed at the screen, willing but baffled by the multiple options and instructions. ‘I guess so. What do I do now?’

‘Ignore the technospeak. There’s an option menu at the bottom.’

His eyes dropped and he found himself nodding. ‘I see it.

What next?’

‘Hit either
B
or
C
. What’s
C
?’

He studied the glowing print. ‘Display biofunctions.’

‘That’s it.’

On his command the screen was replaced by another, no less complicated than its predecessor. ‘Okay, now I’ve got a whole page of new turkeytalk.’

‘Same procedure. Menu at the bottom. There should be a
V

command, for visual display. Hit it.’

He complied, glancing back toward the cylinder.

Within the claustrophobic confines of the tube a small motor began to hum. Ripley shifted uncomfortably on the cushioned pallet, feeling very much like a bug under a microscope. Her surroundings suddenly pressed close around her, the wall and ceiling of the EEV threatening to collapse and pin her forever in place. She concentrated on keeping her heartbeat regular, her breathing steady as she closed her eyes. It helped, a little.

The display monitor in front of Aaron flickered. The incomprehensible

technical

information

vanished,

to

be

replaced by an in-depth medical percep scan of the inside of Ripley’s head.

‘Okay,’ he told her, ‘we’re hot. I’m looking at your brain. The scanner’s also printing a lot of information next to the image, and there’s all sorts of option switches at the bottom of the screen.’

‘They’re to make the scan system-specific,’ she heard herself telling him. ‘You know—nervous system, circulatory. Like that.

Let’s keep it as general as possible. Leave everything alone.’

‘No problem there.’ He stared in fascination at the screen.

‘What am I supposed to be looking for? I don’t know how to read this stuff.’

‘Ignore the printouts and concentrate on the visuals,’ she told him. ‘Where is it now?’

‘Moving down your neck. Am I supposed to see something?’

‘If it’s there, you’ll know it when you see it.’

‘Okay, but it all looks normal to me so far. Of course, I’m not Clemens.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she told him. ‘You won’t have to be.’

She could hear the soft whine of the scanner as it moved down her body, sliding smoothly on its hidden track somewhere deep within the instrument-packed cryotube. Even though there was no actual physical contact between her and the instrument, she found herself twitching slightly at its perceived presence. Whoever said there was no link between imagination and physicality had never spent any time in cryogenic deep sleep.

‘Upper chest now,’ Aaron was saying. ‘I can see the tops of your lungs. Heart coming into view.’

Despite her determination she found herself tensing uncontrollably. The muscles of her right forearm began to twitch spasmodically. The acting superintendent’s voice buzzed in her ears, a lethal drone.

‘Full chest view, at least according to what it says here. Heart and lungs seem to be functioning normally. Moving down.’

The twitching stopped, her breathing eased. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Hey, I don’t see anything. If you’d give me an idea what I’m supposed to be looking for . . . maybe I missed it.’

‘No.’ Her mind was working furiously. ‘No, you didn’t miss it.’

‘How do we get some enhancement?’

‘Try
B
.’

He complied, to no avail. ‘Nothing.’ He tried again, muttering to himself. ‘I gotta get a better angle.’

The instrumentation hummed. Suddenly he paused. ‘Holy shit—’ He broke off, eyes bulging as he leaned toward the screen.

‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know how to tell you this. I think you got one inside you.’

He stared at the screen in disbelief. The embryonic creature was definitely kin to the monster that had destroyed the men

. . . and yet it was also distinctively, subtly different.

It wasn’t fair, she thought. She’d known, she’d more than suspected, for days. Then her chest scan had come through clean, giving her hope. Now this, the ultimate morbid revelation. Still, it wasn’t a shock.

Now that her suspicions were confirmed she felt oddly liberated. The future was no longer in doubt. She could proceed, confident in the knowledge that she was taking the right course. The only course.

‘What’s it look like?’

‘Fucking horrible,’ Aaron told her, at once repelled and fascinated by what he was seeing. ‘Like one of them, only small.

Maybe a little different.’

‘Maybe? Are you sure?’

‘I’m not sure of anything. I didn’t hang around to take pictures of the big one.’

‘Keyboard,’ she told him. ‘Hit the pause button.’

‘Already did. The scanner’s stopped moving.’

‘Now move the screen. I’ve got to take a look.’

The acting superintendent hesitated, looking toward the cryotube and its recumbent occupant. ‘I don’t think you want to.’

‘It’s my choice. Do it.’

His lips tightened. ‘Okay. If you think you’re ready.’

‘I didn’t say I was ready. Just do it.’

He adjusted the viewscreen, waiting while she took a long, unblinking look.

‘Okay. That’s enough.’ Aaron instantly deactivated the scanner.

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured as gently as he could. ‘I don’t know what to say. Anything I can do—’

‘Yeah.’ She started struggling against the confines of the tube. ‘Help me get out of here.’ Her arms were extended upward, reaching toward him.

The assembly hall looked emptier than ever with its reduced population of prisoners. The men muttered and argued among themselves as Dillon’s fist slammed into the transparent window on the wall. Reaching in, he ripped free the loosely secured fire axe within and turned to hold it over his head.

‘Give us strength, O lord, to endure. Until the day. Amen.’

Fists rose into the air. The men were uncertain, but; determined. Dillon surveyed them intently.

‘It’s loose. It’s out there. A rescue team is on the way with the guns and shit. Right now there isn’t anyplace that’s real safe. I say we stay here. No overhead vent shafts. If it comes in, it’s gotta be through the door. We post a guard to let us know if it’s comin’. In any case, lay low. Be ready and stay right, in case your time comes.’

‘Bullshit, man,’ said prisoner David. ‘We’ll all be trapped in here like rats.’

Dillon glared at him. ‘Most of you got blades stashed away.

Get ‘em out.’

‘Right.’ William grunted. ‘You think we’re gonna stab that motherfucker to death?’

‘I don’t think shit,’ Dillon told him. ‘Maybe you can hurt it while you’re checkin’ out. It’s something. You got any better ideas?’

William did not. Nor did anyone else.

‘I’m tellin’ you,’ Dillon continued, ‘until that rescue team gets here, we’re in the shit. Get prepared.’

‘I ain’t stayin’ here.’ William was already backing away. ‘You can bet on it.’

Dillon turned, spat to his left. ‘Suit yourself.’

Aaron tapped out the necessary code, then ran his thumb over the identiprint. The inner door which protected central communications slid aside, telltales coming to life on the board, the screen clearing obediently as the system awaited input.

‘Okay,’ he told the woman hovering nearby, ‘what do you want to send?’

‘You got a line back to the Network?’

His brows furrowed as he checked the readouts. ‘Yeah, it’s up. What do you want to say?’

‘I want to tell them the whole place has gone toxic. I think they’ll buy it. There’s enough refining waste lying around to make it believable.’

He gaped at her. ‘Are you kidding? Tell them that and they won’t come here. Not until they can run and check out the results of a remote inspection, anyway. The rescue team’ll turn back.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What are you talking about? We’re like dead fish in a market waiting here. Our only hope is that they arrive in time to kill this fucker before it gets the rest of us. And maybe they can do something for you. You think of that? You’re so sure this thing can beat anything they’ve got, but you don’t know that for a fact. Maybe they can freeze you, do some kind of operation.

‘You said that they’ve been accumulating information on it.

You think they’d be coming to try and take one back if they didn’t think they could contain it? Hell, we contained it and we weren’t even ready for it. They’ll be all set up to try a capture.

They got the technology.’

She remained adamant. ‘All the Company’s got is greed for brains. I know. I’ve dealt with them and I’ve dealt with the aliens and frankly I’m not so sure that in the long run the Company isn’t the greater threat. I can’t take the chance. All I know for certain is that if one of these things gets off this planet it’ll kill everything. That’s what it’s designed to do: kill and multiply.

‘We can’t let the Company come here. They’ll do everything in their power to take it back with them.’ She made a disgusted noise. ‘For profit.’

‘Fuck you. I’m sorry as hell you got this thing inside you, lady, but I want to get rescued. I guess I’ve got more confidence in the Company than you. As it happens, I don’t think you’re looking at the situation rationally, and I suppose you’ve got plenty of reasons not to. But that doesn’t mean I have to see things the same way, and I don’t.

‘I don’t give a shit about these meatball prisoners. They can kill the thing or avoid it and howl holy hosannas to the heavens until they drop dead, but I got a wife and kid. Married real young so that despite the time distortions we’d still have quality time together when I finished my tour here. I was set to go back on the next rotation. Because of all this I can maybe claim extenuating hazards and go back with the rescue ship. I’ll collect full-term pay and probably a bonus. If that happens you could say that your xenomorph’s done me a favour.’

‘I’m sorry. Look, I know this is hard for you,’ she told him, trying to keep a rein on her temper, ‘but I’ve got to send a message back. There’s a hell of a lot more at stake here than your personal visions of happy suburban retirement. If the alien gets loose on Earth your sappy fantasies won’t be worth crap.’

‘I’ll put my trust in the Company,’ he said firmly.

‘Dammit, Aaron, I need the code!’

He leaned back in the seat. ‘Sorry, mum. It’s classified. Can’t expect me to violate the regs, can you?’

She knew she didn’t have much time and she was starting to lose it. Here she was, dealing with the Company attitude again—that closed, restricted corporate world where ethics and morals were conveniently masked by regulations.

‘Look, shithead, you can screw your precious regulations. It’s got to be done. Give it to me!’

‘No fuckin’ way, lady. You don’t get the code out of me without killing me first.’

She bent toward him, then forced herself to ease off. Once again she found herself tired beyond imagining. Why was she driving herself like this? She didn’t owe anybody anything, least of all the representatives of the Company. If they took the alien on board their ship and it killed all of them, what was that to her?

‘Nothing personal, you understand,’ he was saying even as he was watching her carefully, alert for any sudden moves. He didn’t think she posed him any real danger, but in the short time that he’d seen her operate he’d learned enough to know that it would be dangerous to underestimate her. ‘I think you’re okay.’

‘Thanks.’ Her tone was flat, dulled.

‘So that’s settled. We’re working together again.’ He was inordinately pleased. ‘Got any ideas?’

She turned and he tensed momentarily, but she kept going past him to the service counter and drew herself a glass of water. Her thirst was constant and not due to tension and nerves. Her body was supplying fluids for more than one.

‘The worker-warrior won’t kill me,’ she told him as she halted nearby.