Alien: Out the Shadows

“They were already dead!” Hoop snapped. He sighed, and raised a hand in apology. His heart was racing. Seventeen years in space and he’d never seen anything like this. People died all the time, of course, because space was such an inimical environment. Accidents were common, and it was the larger disasters that gained notoriety. The passenger ship Archimedes, struck by a hail of micro meteors on its way to Alpha Centurai, with the loss of seven hundred passengers and crew. The Colonial Marine base on a large moon in the Outer Rim, its environmental systems sabotaged, resulting in the loss of over a thousand personnel.

Even further back, in the fledgling days of space travel, the research station Nephilim orbiting Ganymede suffered stabilizer malfunction and spun down onto the moon’s surface. That one was still taught to anyone planning a career in space exploration, because every one of the three hundred people on board had continued with their experiments, transmitting data and messages of hope until the very last moment. It had been a symbol of humankind’s determination to edge out past the confines of their own planet, and eventually their own system.

In the scheme of things, this tragedy was small. But Hoop had known every one of those people on board the Delilah. And even though he couldn’t identify the frozen, ruined body stuck against the wrecked docking bay structure, he knew that he had spoken, joked, and laughed with them.

“We’ll have to cut that free,” Welford said, and at first Hoop thought he was talking about the corpse. But the engineer was watching the slowly drifting mass of metal as it moved back toward the shattered docking bays.

“We’ve got to do that and a lot more,” Hoop said. If they were to survive—if they got past this initial chaos, secured the Samson, figured out what the fuck was going on—he, Welford, and Powell needed to pull some miracles out of somewhere. “Gonna earn our pay now, guys.”

“Hoop, the Samson,” Baxter muttered in his ear.

“What is it?” They couldn’t yet see the ship where it was now static on the other side of the starboard docking arm.

“I’ve got it… a picture, up on screen.” His voice sounded hollow, empty.

“And?” Sneddon asked.

“And you don’t want to open it up. Ever. Don’t even go near it.”

Hoop wished he could see, though part of him was glad that he couldn’t.

“What’s happening in there?” Sneddon asked.

“They’ve… they’ve hatched,” Baxter said. “And they’re just… waiting. Those things, just sort of crouched there beside the bodies.”

“What about Jones and Sticky?”

“Sticky’s dead. Jones isn’t.” That flat tone again, so that Hoop didn’t really want to ask any more. But Sneddon did. Maybe it was her science officer’s curiosity.

“What’s happening to Jones?” she asked.

“Nothing. He’s… I can see him, just at the bottom of the picture. He’s just sitting there, seat turned around, back against the control panel. Shaking and crying.”

They haven’t killed him yet, Hoop thought.

“We have to seal this up,” he said. “All the doors are locked down anyway, but we have to disable all of the manual controls.”

“You think those things can open doors?” Welford asked.

“Hoop’s right,” Sneddon said. “We must assume the worst.”

“Can’t we just cut the Samson loose?”

Hoop had already thought of that. But despite the danger, they might still need the dropship. The Marion’s orbit was still decaying. There were escape pods, but their targeting was uncertain. If they used them, they’d end up scattered across the surface of the planet.

The Samson might be their only hope of survival.

“We do that and it might drift with us for days,” Lachance said, his voice coming through a hail of static. “Impact the Marion, cause more damage. We’re in bad enough shape as it is.”

“Baxter, we’re losing you,” Hoop said.

“…damaged,” Baxter said. “Lachance?”

“He’s right,” Lachance responded. “Indicators are flagging up more damage every minute that goes by. Comms, environmental, remote system. We need to start fixing things.”

“Got to fix this first,” Hoop said. “We go through the vestibule, into the docking arm for Bay Three, then into the airlock. Then from there we work back out, disabling manual controls and shutting everything down.”

“We could purge the airlock, too,” Welford said.

“Good idea. If anything does escape from the Samson, it won’t be able to breathe.”

“Who’s to say that they breathe at all?” Sneddon said. “We don’t know what they are, where they come from. Mammal, insectile, reptilian, something else. Don’t know anything!” Her voice was tinged with panic.

“And it’s going to stay that way,” Hoop said. “First chance we get, we kill them. All of them.”

He wanted support from someone, but no one replied. He expected disagreement from Sneddon—as science officer, she’d see past the chaos and death to what these creatures might mean for science. But she said nothing, just stared at him, her eyes bruised, cut nose swelling.