Alien: Out the Shadows

Got her scent now, Hoop thought. Sorry, Ripley, but if there’s anyone we have to leave behind…

He wasn’t serious. Not for a moment. But the aliens’ reactions set his own blood chilling. They hissed again, louder than before. They crouched and spread their limbs, adopting stances that suddenly made them look even more deadly.

Hoop started climbing back up the steps. They still had their backs to him, but they only had to turn a quarter circle to see him. They would be on him in two bounds, and even if he had a chance to fire the charge-blaster, the delay on the charge meant he’d be dead before it blew.

He wished he’d brought his spray gun, too.

He made the top of the steps, braced himself, checked that the route behind him was clear. Then he paused at the fold in the wall and aimed the charge thumper up at the ceiling.

Four seconds, maybe five. Did that give him time? Would they be up the steps and through before the charge went? He didn’t think so. But he also didn’t think he had time to worry about it.

They had Ripley’s scent, and Ripley had come this way.

He pulled the trigger, and the last explosive charge thumped up into the ceiling.

From beyond, down in the ship, he heard three high-pitched shrieks, then the skittering of hard claws as the aliens came for him.

Hoop sidestepped up through the opening and onto the ship’s surface.

“Down there!” he said, shoving Ripley ahead of him, sliding down the gentle slope, and Lachance and Kasyanov pushed Sneddon the same way. They slid through the dust, and then from above and behind them came a dull, contained thud. Loud enough, though, to send echoes through the cavern.

Hoop came to a stop and looked back. Dust and smoke rose from the opening, but nothing else. No curved head, no sharp limb. Maybe, just maybe, fate had given them a break.

The blast was still echoing around the cave as they started across the ship’s surface toward the openings they could see in the vast wall. They negotiated their way over piles of tumbled rocks. Ripley found her feet, although she still clasped onto Hoop’s arm. Their combined lights offered just enough illumination to outline shadows and trip hazards, and the closer they came to the nearest opening, the more convinced Hoop became that the ship continued beyond the barrier. It was almost as if the vessel had struck the wall, and penetrated it upon landing.

Or crashing. They’d entered through a damaged portion of the ship’s hull, after all, where blast damage was still obvious after so long.

More rocks, and Hoop noticed for the first time that some of them seemed more regular than he’d realized. Square-edged, smooth. One of them displayed what might have been markings of some sort.

But there was no time to pause and wonder. No time to consider what the markings and the tumbled, regular blocks might mean. A wall? A building? It didn’t matter. A way out mattered, and from what Hoop could see, their best bet was through the nearest crack.

The mine wasn’t far above the cavern’s ceiling. He was sure of it. They were almost there.

“No sign of anything following us,” Lachance said.

“That’s what worries me,” Hoop said. “I think I’d rather see them than wonder where the fuck they are.”

“Yeah. Right.” Then Lachance nodded ahead. “What do you think?”

“I think we’ve got no choice.” They moved across the rubble field toward the opening in the cavern’s looming wall.

17 ANCIENTS

When he was a kid, Hoop’s parents took him to see the Incan ruins in Ecuador. He’d seen footage about them on the NetScreen, and read about them in the old books his parents insisted on keeping. But nothing had prepared him for the emotions and revelations he felt walking among those ancient buildings.

The sense of time, and timelessness, was staggering. He walked where other people had walked a thousand years before, and later he thought back to that moment as the first time mortality truly came knocking. It hadn’t troubled him unduly. But he’d realized that his visit to those ruins was as fleeting as an errant breeze, and would have as much effect as a leaf drifting in from the jungles and then vanishing again. The memory of his being there would float to the floor and rot away with that leaf, and fascinated visitors even a hundred years hence would have never heard of him.

It was humbling, but it was also strangely uplifting. We all have the same, he’d once heard someone say, one life. Even as a teenager more concerned with girls and football, that had struck him as deep and thoughtful. One life… it was up to him how well he lived it.

Looking at those Incan ruins, he’d vowed to live it well.

* * *

Staring at what was left of this strange, ancient place, he wondered what had gone wrong.