Alien: Out the Shadows

Descending the wide staircase into the docking level, they paused beside a row of three doors marked with bright yellow “Emergency” symbols. Baxter opened the first door and took out three vacuum-packed bags.

“Suits?” Ripley asked.

“Yeah, everything’s in there,” Baxter replied. “Suit, foldable helmet, compressed air tank, tether cable.” He looked around at the rest. “Everyone suit up.”

They took turns opening the bags and pulling themselves into the silver space suits. It was like being wrapped in thin crinkly plastic, with stiff sealing rings where the parts fit together. Fabric belts slipped through loops and kept the material from flapping too loosely. The helmets were similarly flexible, with comm units sewn into the fabric. The suits were designed for emergency use only, placed close to the docking bays in case of a catastrophic decompression. The air tanks would last for maybe an hour, the suits themselves intended purely to enable the user to get to the nearest safe place.

When they were all ready, they moved on.

Reaching the corridor outside Bay Three without incident, Hoop looked around at everyone else. They seemed more pumped up than they had before, more confident. But they couldn’t let confidence get the better of them.

“Baxter, Sneddon, that way.” He pointed past the closed doors and toward Bay Four, where Ripley’s shuttle was docked. “Close the doors in Bay Four, make sure as hell they’re secure, and keep watch. Kasyanov, Lachance, back the way we came. Close the corridor blast doors. Ripley, with me. Let’s hustle.”

When the others moved off he shrugged the tool bag from his shoulder and held the spray gun out to Ripley. “Just hold it for me.”

She took the acid gun from him, one eyebrow raised.

“Too dangerous for me to actually use, eh?”

“Ripley—”

“Show me. I can handle myself.”

Hoop sighed, then smiled.

“Okay, you prime it here, wait until this light is showing red. Aim. Squeeze the trigger. It’ll fire compressed jets in short pulses.”

“Shouldn’t we be wearing proper safety gear?”

“Definitely.” He turned away, knelt, and opened the tool bag. “I won’t need long,” he said. The space suit made normal movements a little more awkward, but he took a heavy portable drill out of the bag, fitted it with a narrow drill bit, and then propped it against one of the door panels.

Beyond, in the vestibule to Bay Three, lay the vacuum of space.

“You sure that door will hold?” Ripley asked. “Once you get through, and we start decompressing—”

“No!” he snapped. “No, I’m not sure. But what else do you suggest?”

Ripley didn’t answer. But she nodded once.

“Helmets,” he called. “Clip your tether lines close, and to something solid.” Ripley fixed her flexible helmet collar and turned on her air supply, and along the corridor in both directions he heard the others doing the same. When he was sure everyone was ready, he fixed his own helmet with one hand, then started drilling.

It was the loudest noise they’d made since opening up the Samson. The metal drill bit skittered across the door’s surface before wedging against a seam and starting to penetrate. Curls of metal wound out and dropped to the floor like robot hair. Smoke wafted, and Hoop saw heat shimmering the air around the drill’s head as the bit bored slowly into the door.

He leaned into the tool, driving it deeper.

It didn’t take long. The drill casing banged against the door when the bit pushed through, and Hoop turned off the power. A high-pitched whistling began instantly as air was forced through the microscopic gap between bit and metal.

He looked around at Ripley. She’d tethered herself to a door handle across the corridor.

“Everyone get ready,” he said into his helmet’s comm. “Here goes nothing.” He placed his gloved hand over the rapid release button on the drill and pressed. A thud, a shudder through the drill, and the bit was sucked through the door and into the vestibule beyond.

Hoop backed away, tying himself to the heavy door handle with the shortest lead possible, then kicked the drill aside.

A piercing whistle filled the corridor as air was sucked out through the tiny hole. The door vibrated in its heavy frame, but it remained solid and secure. Dust cast graceful shapes in the air, shimmering skeins wavering as the artificial lighting flickered with a power surge.

Soon the flow of air ceased, and they were standing in vacuum.

“Everyone okay?” Hoop called. Everyone was.

Which meant the time had come to make their way through to the Samson.

They were assuming there was nothing dangerous left inside. Four aliens had emerged. Two had been killed in the vestibule, another blasted into space when the window had failed, and the fourth was somewhere aboard the Marion. They were as certain as they could be that there had only been four, but there was no saying they hadn’t left something behind when they’d fled— eggs, acid sacs, or something else unknown. They knew so little about the beasts.