Alien: Out the Shadows

Each ring came up to their knees, and leaping over each ridge made Hoop cry out. His cries echoed Baxter’s.

“It’s only pain,” Ripley said, and she looked surprised when Hoop coughed a laugh.

“Where to?” Sneddon called from up ahead. She had slowed a little, then turned, spray gun aiming back past them.

Hoop glanced back. He could only see two aliens now, their repulsive forms skipping and leaping across the ground. They should be closer, he thought, they’re much faster than us. But he couldn’t worry about that now.

He looked around for the third creature, but it was nowhere in sight.

“That damaged area,” he said, pointing. “It’s the only way we know for sure we’ll get inside.”

“Do we really want to get inside?” Ripley asked.

“You think we should make a stand here?” Hoop asked. Sneddon snorted at the suggestion, but Hoop had meant it. Ripley knew that, and she frowned, examining their surroundings. There was nowhere to hide—they would be exposed.

“Not here,” she said. “Far too open.”

“Then up there, where the fuselage is damaged,” he said. “And remember, there’s another one somewhere, so keep—”

The third alien appeared. It emerged from shadows to their left, already on the wing, manifesting from behind a slew of low boulders as if it had been waiting for them. It was perhaps twenty yards away, hunched down, hissing and ready to strike.

Ripley fired her charge thumper, and if hatred and repulsion could fuel a projectile, the alien would have been smashed apart just by the energy contained in the shot. But he didn’t even see where the shot went, and if the creatures really were herding them toward the old ship, it likely wouldn’t even react.

Ripley held her stance, looking left and right. Hoop hefted his spray gun. The others pointed their weapons.

The nearest alien crawled sideways, circling them but never coming closer. Hoop’s skin prickled when he watched it move. It reminded him of a giant spider… although not quite. It more resembled a hideous scorpion… yet there were differences. It moved with a fluid, easy motion, gliding across the rough surface of the giant wing as if it had walked that way many times before.

He fired the spray gun. It was a natural reaction to his disgust, a wish to see the thing away. The staggered spats of acid landed in a line between him and the monster, hissing loudly as the acid melted into dust and stone, and whatever might lie beneath. And even though the fluid didn’t reach the alien, the creature flinched back. Only slightly, but enough for him to see.

Breath held against any toxic fumes, Hoop backed quickly away. That pressed the others into motion, as well.

“We could charge it,” Ripley said.

“What?”

“All of us in one go. Run at the thing. If it comes at us we all shoot, if it slips aside we move on.”

“To where?”

“A way out.”

“We don’t know a way out!” Hoop said.

“It’s better than doing what they want, isn’t it?” Ripley asked.

“I’m for going where they aren’t,” Baxter said. “They’re that way, I’m going this way.” He turned and hobbled again toward the ship’s main fuselage, right arm now flung over Kasyanov’s shoulder.

“We have to stay together,” Hoop said as they all followed. But he couldn’t help thinking that Ripley had been right—charge, take the fight to them—and he hoped he wouldn’t have cause to regret his decision later.

The ground rose steeper before leveling again, the curve of the wing still scattered with boulders and those strange, waved lines of mineral deposits. Hoop thought perhaps this whole cavern had once been under water, but there was no way of proving that right now. And such knowledge couldn’t help them.

What could help them was a place to stop. Somewhere easy to defend, a position from which they could make a stand. A route around or through the strange ship, leading back up into the mine.

A fucking miracle.

Maybe he should make a stand, here and now. Just him. Turn and charge the alien, spray gun spitting acid, and who knows, maybe he’d get lucky. The creature was just an animal, after all. Maybe it would turn and run, and he and the others could push home their advantage and charge back the way they’d come. Using the plasma torches, it wouldn’t take much to open up that access again.

One glance back told him everything he needed to know.

The three aliens were stalking them, spiked shadows dancing across the massive wing’s surface, flitting from boulder to crevasse as they sought natural cover. They moved silently and easily, their fluid motions so smooth that their shadows flowed like spilled ink. They were hunters, pure and simple. Having their quarry suddenly turn and charge would not faze them at all.

Fuck that.

He wasn’t about to sacrifice himself for nothing.

“Faster,” he muttered.

“What?” Lachance asked.

“We should move faster. Quick as we can, get there as soon as possible, find somewhere to defend. Perhaps that’ll throw them, a little.”