Alien: Out the Shadows

Waiting for Hoop to throw the doors open, she tried to analyze her wounds again, assess just how badly hurt she was. But the shots Kasyanov had given her made that quite hard to do. She was slightly removed from herself, a distance that made the pain bearable but which also furred the edges of her perception.

She’d have time for reality later.

I’m awake. I’m me. Stay sharp, Ripley!

Damaged as they were, Hoop had to force the cage doors open manually, and they shone their lights outside. They all waited in silence, playing the lights around the open area they revealed. Hoop edged forward and stepped outside, crouching low, turning his flashlight and spray gun left and right.

“Looks clear,” he whispered. “Wait here.” He crossed to a mess of dials and controls fixed onto a wall, flicked some switches, and with a buzz and a click the lights came on. As elsewhere in the mine, there were strings of bare lights slung tight to the ceiling, and more hung from hooks sunk into the walls. But basic though they were, everyone welcomed the illumination.

“Flashlights off,” Hoop said. “Conserve whatever charge you have left. We might need them again.”

Ripley and the other three survivors left the elevator and fanned out. The area was similar to that on Level 9, a wide space with metal props at regular intervals. There was more mining equipment discarded all around— tools, clothing, some water canisters, and several wheeled trolleys. Lachance checked out the trolleys and found one whose power pack was still half-charged. He stood on the small control deck, accessed the control panel, and rolled forward a few steps.

“How far in are the stores?” Ripley asked.

“Not far,” Hoop said, pointing at one of the tunnels leading off. “Just through there, hundred yards or so. Why?”

“And how many fuel cells are stored down here?”

“Three,” Lachance said. “Two spares for the Marion, and one for the mine’s power plant on the surface. The plant is designed so it runs off ship-grade power cells. We store them all down here, so we don’t lose the ship if they… malfunction.”

“Okay,” Ripley said. She looked around at them all, bloodied and desperate, holding their mining tools that had been turned into weapons. They weren’t soldiers. They weren’t even miners. But they’d survived so far, and if and when they got home, they would have a hell of a story to tell.

“We’ve got to bury the mine,” she said.

“What?” Lachance asked. “Why? We discovered something amazing down there! That ship was incredible enough, but those buildings we found… it can’t have been just one. It was the start of a city, Ripley. Maybe a thousand, even ten thousand years old. It’s…” He shrugged, at a loss for words.

“The most amazing discovery since humankind first came into space,” Ripley said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “That. Precisely.”

“But it’s contaminated,” she said. “Corrupted. Tainted by those things. Whatever deep history we witnessed down there was dictated by them, not by those dog-things who built the ship and the city. They might have been the amazing ones. That ship was remarkable, I can’t deny that. And we saw that they had wonderful architecture, and art, and knowledge and imagination that might put ours to shame. But am I the only one who thinks that ship might have been shot down? Maybe even by their own people?”

The others were watching her, listening silently.

“Everything went wrong. A disease came and destroyed all that they were, and we can’t let that disease escape.” She looked pointedly at Sneddon, who was staring down at her feet. “We can’t.”

“She’s right,” Sneddon said without looking up. “Yeah. She’s right.”

“I can set one of the fuel cells to overheat,” Hoop said.

“And blow us all to hell,” Lachance said. “No thanks, already been there, and now I’m keen to leave. One of those cells goes, it’ll be like setting a nuke off in here.”

“That’s exactly what it’ll be,” Hoop said. “And Ripley’s right. We can’t just escape from here and go on our way. We have to make sure no one else finds this place.”

“And they will!” Ripley said. “Have no doubt of that. Hoop?”

“Ash,” Hoop said.

“Your mad android?” Lachance asked.

“He’ll do his best to complete—”

“Thanks for bringing an insane AI to our ship, by the way,” Lachance said.

“Ash docked the ship!” Ripley said. “I was still in hypersleep. I’ve been used in this more than all of you together. But he’ll be logging whatever he can of this, recording details, constructing a full report for Weyland-Yutani. And damaged though your antenna array may be, he’ll find a way to send it, or take it back to the Company.”

“Unless I wipe him from the systems,” Hoop said. “I already told you I can do that.”

“And I firmly believe that you’ll try,” Ripley said. “But there was something different about Ash. Weyland-Yutani made him… devious. Capable of lying, of harming humans, of trying to kill me. So we can’t take any chances at all.” She held up her hands. “We blow the mine.”