Alien: Out the Shadows

Crouched beside the eggs were things that at first glance resembled statues. But she knew not to take anything down here at first glance. They were aliens, their spiked limbs dulled, curved heads dipped and pale. Slightly larger than others they had seen, yet so different from the queen they’d so recently killed. It was Lachance who hit it on the head.

“They look like… the ship’s builders.”

And they did. They were a monstrous blend of alien and dog-creature. More limbs than other aliens, each with a chunkier body, thicker legs, and a more prominent head, still they possessed the same chitinous outer shell, and one had slumped to the side with its grotesque mouth extended, the glimmering teeth now dulled. Ripley was glad she hadn’t seen them alive.

“How long have they been here, do you think?” Baxter asked.

“Long time,” Kasyanov said. “That one almost looks like it’s mummified. But these eggs… maybe the damned things can never die.”

One egg was open, and on the ground close by it was the body of one of the miners.

“Nick,” Lachance said quietly. “He owed me fifty dollars.”

Nick’s chest was open, clothing torn, ribs protruding. He looked fresher than the other corpses they’d found, yet Ripley thought he’d probably died around the same time. The atmosphere in this section was cleaner, and perhaps lacking in the bacteria of decay.

“Only one egg has opened,” she said. She blinked softly, trying to take control of the feeling that was slowly enveloping her. It was an urgency driven by disgust, a pressing desire fed by hatred.

“And we just popped the bastard that came from that,” Hoop said. “You think so?”

“Yeah, popped it,” she said. She looked around at the other eggs and the things that had settled to guard them, long ago. If all these eggs were queens—if that’s what the creature they’d just killed had been—then they had the potential to produce many, many more aliens.

Thousands more.

“We have to destroy them all,” she said. She lifted the charge thumper.

“Wait!” Kasyanov said. “We haven’t got time to—”

“We make time,” Ripley said. “What happens if we don’t survive? What happens if a rescue mission eventually arrives, comes down here? What then? There are thousands of potential creatures in this one room. We’ve fought off a few of those things. Imagine an army of them.”

“Okay, Ripley,” Hoop said. He was nodding slowly. “But we need to take care. Lachance, come with me. We’ll check the other opening, make sure that’s really the way out. Then we’ll come back and fry these fuckers.” He looked at Ripley, and held up a hand. “Wait.”

She nodded, but with one glance urged him to hurry. She wouldn’t wait for long. Her finger stroked the trigger, and she imagined the eggs bursting apart, spilling their horrendous cargo to the clear gray floor.

Fuck you, Ash, she thought, and she almost laughed. He’d done everything he could to procure another one of these monsters for his Weyland-Yutani bosses. And she was doing everything she could to destroy them all.

She would win. Of that she had no doubt. The burning question was, would she also survive?

“I will,” she said.

Perhaps thinking she was replying to him, Hoop nodded.

Sneddon was slumped beside the door, creature still clasped across her entire face. Baxter stood resting against the wall, plasma torch cradled in his arms. Kasyanov blinked the pain from her eyes, also holding her plasma torch.

As Hoop and Lachance left, Ripley had a flash-image of Amanda on top of that hill.

I’ll save you, baby. I’ll save you.

16 MAJESTY

“We’re getting out of this. Right, Hoop?”

“What do you expect me to say to that?”

“That we’re getting out of this.”

“Okay, Lachance. We’re getting out of this.”

Lachance exhaled and wiped his brow. “That’s a relief. For a minute there I thought we were fucked.”

“Come on. Let’s see what’s up here.” They crossed the open area at the head of the steep staircase, and Hoop paused to look back down. His light didn’t seem to penetrate quite so far, now, its power starting to wane. He couldn’t quite see the bottom. There could have been anything down there, crouched in the shadows and staring up at him, and he wouldn’t know.

Lachance moved through the opening and started up the shorter staircase. Hoop followed. There were only five tall steps before the walls seemed to close in, forming a blank barrier. But Lachance leaned left and right, looking at varying angles.

“Hidden opening,” he said. “Clever.” He ducked through a fold in the strange wall material.

Hoop glanced back and down. There was no noise down there, no hint that anything had gone wrong in that strange lab with the queen eggs. Yet he still couldn’t shake the idea that they were making a mistake here. That splitting up, even for such a short time, was a stupid thing to do.