Alien: Out the Shadows

“Or there might be a dozen, or more.” Sneddon stood and started pacing. “Think about it. They were hatching from the miners. We saw that. Just… breaking out of them. Implanted by those things attached to their faces, perhaps. I don’t know. But if that is the case, we have to assume that anyone left behind was infected.”

“Sixteen on the Delilah. Six on the Samson.”

Sneddon nodded.

“So eighteen left in the mine,” Hoop said.

“I’d rather go down on the Marion,” Sneddon said, “if it came to that. But now it doesn’t have to.”

“You know something I don’t?”

“No, but maybe I’m thinking about things in a different way.”

Hoop frowned, held out his hands.

“And?”

“Her shuttle. It’s a deep space shuttle! Used for short-distance transfers of personnel, or as a long-term lifeboat.”

“And one stasis pod for nine of us.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sneddon said. “Look.” She slid one of the tablets across to Hoop. At first he didn’t really understand what he was seeing. It was an old, old image of a lifeboat. Lost at sea back on Earth, crammed with survivors, a sail rigged from shirts and broken oars, wretched people hanging over the side, or eating fish, or squeezing drinking water from hastily rigged moisture catchers.

“Today, I’m stupid,” Hoop said. “In charge, yes. But stupid. So just tell me.”

“One stasis pod between the nine of us,” Sneddon said. “But we pack the shuttle with as many supplies as we can. Program a course toward Earth, or at the very least the outer rim. Fire the engines until the fuel’s out and we’re traveling as fast as we can. A good proportion of light speed. Then… take turns in the stasis pod.”

“Take turns?” he said. “She’s been drifting out there for thirty-seven years!”

“Yeah, but something’s very wrong with that. I haven’t checked yet, but the shuttle computer must have malfunctioned.”

“There was no indication of that when I checked its log.”

“You didn’t go deep enough, Hoop. The point is, we can survive like that. Six months at a time, one of us in stasis, eight others… surviving.”

“Six months in a tightly confined space? That shuttle’s designed for five people, max, for short trips. Eight of us? We’ll end up killing each other.” He shook his head. “And how long do you figure it’ll take?”

Sneddon raised an eyebrow.

“Well… years.”

“Years?”

“Maybe three until we reach the outer rim, and then—”

“It’s impossible!” he said.

Sneddon tapped the tablet’s screen again, and Hoop looked. She’d certainly done her homework. Examples manifested and faded on the screen—lifeboats at sea, strandings on damaged orbitals, miraculous survivals dotting the history of space disasters. None of the timescales were quite what Sneddon was describing, but each story testified to the will of desperate people to survive, whatever the situation.

However hopeless.

“We’d need to check the shuttle’s systems,” he said. “Fuel cell, life support.”

“And you’re chief engineer, aren’t you?”

Hoop laughed. “You’re serious about this.”

“Yes.”

He stared at her for a while, trying to deny the shred of hope she’d planted in him. He couldn’t afford to grab hold of it.

“Rescue isn’t coming, Hoop,” she said. “Not in time.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“So you’ll—”

“Hoop!” Kasyanov’s voice cut in over the intercom. “Ripley’s stirring. I could sedate her again, but I really don’t want to pump her full of any more drugs.”

Hoop leapt to the wall and hit the intercom button.

“No, don’t. She’s slept enough. I’ll be right down.” He smiled at Sneddon, and then nodded. “I’ll speak to Ripley, get her access codes.”

As he left the science lab and headed for med bay, the ship’s corridors seemed lighter than they had in a long time.

4 937

Not only was she still light years from home, but she’d docked with a damaged ship in a decaying orbit around a hellhole of a planet, alongside a dropship full of the monsters that haunted her nightmares.

Ripley might have laughed at the irony.

She’d successfully shaken the idea that it was a dream, or a nightmare—it had taken time, and convincing herself hadn’t been easy—but the explanation still eluded her.

How was this all possible?

Perhaps the answers were on her shuttle.

“Really, I’m ready to walk,” she said. Kasyanov—a tall, fit woman who obviously looked after herself—shot her a disapproving look, but Ripley could see that the doctor held a grudging respect for her patient’s stubbornness.

“You’ve barely walked for thirty-seven years,” Kasyanov protested.

“Thanks for reminding me. But as far as my body’s concerned, it was yesterday.” She’d already stood from her bed and dressed while Kasyanov and Garcia were elsewhere, determined to prove herself to them. And she’d been pleased at how good she actually felt. The sedative was still wearing off, but beneath that she was starting to feel her old self again. Whatever Garcia had done for her— the saline drip, the other drugs—was working.

“Patients,” Kasyanov said, rolling her eyes.