Alien: Out the Shadows

“We have to consider that safe, for now. But the sensors have identified atmosphere leaks in five blast doors, which probably means another five we don’t know about. Decks five and six have vented completely into space, and the damage will need to be isolated and repaired. The chunk of the Delilah that’s caught onto the ruin of the docking bays needs freeing and sending on its way. Otherwise it’ll cause more damage.”

“And the Marion’s positioning?” Hoop asked.

“Decaying. I’m… not sure there’s much we can do about it. The crash has damaged more of the ship than we can see. I suspect there’s some severe structural trauma. And it appears as if both fuel cell coolant systems have been damaged.”

“Oh, great,” Powell said.

“How bad?” Hoop asked.

“That’s something that needs checking manually,” Lachance said. “But there’s more. Heaven has been corrupted.”

“What with?” Hoop asked. His heart sank. Heaven was their bio pod, a small but lush food-growing compound in the Marion’s nose section, where many of the miners and crew went for their green therapy. After years in space—and working down in the sterile, sandblasted hell of LV178—the sight of a carrot head or a wall of green beans did more than any drug cocktail to alleviate depression.

“I’m not sure yet,” Lachance said. “Jordan was the one who…”

Lucy loved her gardening, Hoop thought. They’d made love in Heaven once, down on the damp soil with only the fruit trees and vegetable patches bearing witness.

“We have dried foods,” Hoop said. “Is the water storage undamaged?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Okay, then.” He looked around at the remainder of Marion’s crew. They were all shocked by how quickly and badly everything had gone to shit. But they were also hard, adaptable people, used to living with constant dangers and ready to confront the impossible to survive. “Welford, Powell, get the full damage report from Lachance and prioritize. We’ll need help. All of you can use spanners and push welding kit.”

“But there’s something else to do first,” Baxter said.

“Yep. And that’s down to me. I’ll record the distress signal, then you do everything you can to make sure it’s sent.”

Looking across Baxter’s control panel, Hoop’s gaze rested on the screen that was still showing the Samson’s interior. Jones’s shoulder and head was the only thing moving, shivering in the bottom left corner. Beyond lay the motionless shadows of dead people. Sitting beside them, those small, indistinct aliens.

“And I think you can turn that off,” Hoop said. “For now.”

3 RIPLEY

PROGRESS REPORT:

To: Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Science Division

(Ref: code 937)

Date (unspecified)

Transmission (pending)

Distress signal received. Sufficiently relevant to divert.

Expected travel time to LV178:

Current speed: 4,423 days.

Full speed: 77 days.

Fuel inventory: 92%

Initiating thrust.

She dreams of monsters.

Sharp, black, chitinous, sleek, vicious, hiding in shadows and pouncing, seeding themselves in people she loved—her ex-husband, her sweet daughter—and then bursting forth in showers of far too much blood. They expand too quickly, as if rapidly brought in close from distances she can barely comprehend. And as they are drawn nearer through the voids of deep space they are growing, growing—the size of a ship, a moon, a planet, and then larger still.

They will swallow the universe, and yet they will still leave her alive to witness its consumption.

She dreams of monsters, stalking the corridors of her mind and wiping faces from memory before she can even remember their names.

In between these dreams lies a simple void of shadows. But it offers no respite, because there is always a before to mourn, and an after to dread.

When she starts to wake at last, Ripley’s nightmares scuttle back into the shadows and begin to fade away. But only partly. Even as light dawns across her dreams, the shadows remain.

Waiting.

* * *

“Dallas,” Ripley said.

“What?”

She smacked her lips together, tried to cough past her dry throat, and realized that it couldn’t be. Dallas was dead. The alien had taken him.

The face before her was thin, bearded, and troubled. Unknown.

He stared at her.

“Dallas, as in Texas?” he asked.

“Texas?” Her thoughts were a mess. A stew of random memories, some of which she recognized, some she did not. She struggled to pull them together, desperate for a clue as to who and where she was. She felt disassociated from her body. Floating impressions trying to find a home, her physical self a cold, loose thing over which she had no control.

Behind everything loomed a shadow… huge, insidious.

“Great,” the man said. “Just fucking great.”