Alien: Out the Shadows

That was just what the AI wanted. He’d been searching for thirty-seven years, and there was no end to what he might do to protect the object of his quest.

Yet Hoop had no answers. He couldn’t bring himself to leave Sneddon behind, however terrible the risk. And as they commenced working on the spare fuel cells, he watched Ripley, fearing what she had planned for the science officer.

She’d picked up Baxter’s plasma torch, apparently not even noticing the splash of his blood across its power housing.

“Ripley!” he said. She looked up. “Bring me that tool pouch, will you?” She came across to him, carrying a tool kit that had been hanging from a hook on the wall.

I’ll just work, he thought. Face those problems when the time comes. For now… just concentrate.

The spare cells hadn’t been stored in the best of conditions. There were three, each of them the size of a small adult. One wasn’t even propped up off the floor, and a quick inspection revealed signs of decay to some of its metal framework and mountings. One of the other two was being loaded onto the trolley by Lachance and Kasyanov, and Hoop set to work on the last cell.

Sneddon stood off to one side, watching, ostensibly listening for any of those things that might be approaching. Hoop was pretty confident they had some time before the beasts could make their way up through the mine. Both staircases had blast doors at every level that were kept permanently shut, and they wouldn’t know how to use the code keys on the control panels. But it gave Sneddon something to do.

He watched her. They all did, and she knew it. Yet she offered them back a gentle smile, as if she knew something they did not.

Hoop opened the cell’s metallic shell and placed the cover to one side. He set to work disconnecting three cooling loops, then removed the coolant supplies altogether, for good measure. He delved deeper, past wires and conductors to the governing capacitors. These were adjustable, and he turned them all up to full.

A soft hum rose from the core. Barely the size of his fist, still its potential was staggering.

“We’re almost good to go,” he said after a while. More adjustments, several wires snipped, and then he disconnected and rerouted the last safety failsafe, meaning he could initiate the cell without having to input its own unique code.

“How long do you think it will give us?” Ripley asked.

“I’m thinking nine hours until it goes critical,” he replied. “Plenty of time to get off this rock.”

“If those things haven’t made it out to the Samson and trashed it. Or if they’re not just sitting inside, waiting for us to board. Or—”

“Fuck it,” he said, cutting her off. “If they’ve done that, I’ll come and sit beside this thing and wait for it to blow, rather than die of exposure or starvation.”

“Let’s hope then, eh?” Ripley asked.

“Let’s hope. Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah. Flying high from the shots Kasyanov gave me, that’s all.”

Hoop nodded, then called over to where Lachance was fussing over the cell on the trolley.

“We good?” he said.

“Ready,” the pilot replied. He looked down at the cell that lay next to Hoop, its cover removed and half of its mechanical guts hanging out. “You’ve done a real butcher’s job on that.”

“I’m an artist,” Hoop said. “Everyone else good? Sneddon?”

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.

“Right.” Hoop breathed deeply and held two bare wires, ready to touch them together.

What if I’m wrong? What if the overload happens in minutes, not hours? What if…? But they had come too far, survived too much, to pay any more attention to what-ifs.

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered, touching the two wires together.

A spark, a clunk, the sound of something whirring noisily inside the cell. Then a slew of lights flickered into life across its dismantled maintenance panel, some dying out, others remaining lit.

A red warning light began to pulse.

“Okay, it’s working,” he said. “In about nine hours, everything inside of a mile of here will become a cloud of radioactive dust.”

“Then let’s not hang around,” Ripley said.

* * *

The elevator still worked. Kasyanov had removed the remains of Baxter’s body. Even so, with the introduction of the fuel cell, things were cramped. They rose quickly to ground level and exited into the vestibule area, Lachance steering the trolley carrying the replacement fuel cell. They watched for movement, listened for the sound of running things.

Everything was suddenly going too smoothly, but Ripley tried not to question it.

Close to the tunnel entrance at the edge of the dome, they opened the metal storage container and donned their suits once more. They gauged oxygen supplies, then checked each other’s fittings and connections. Ripley felt constrained having to wear the suit again.