'Maybe we got 'em demoralized.' Hudson picked up on her confidence. He had some colour back in his face. 'You were right Ripley. The ugly monsters aren't invulnerable.'
Hicks looked up from the console and spoke to Vasquez and the comtech. 'I want you two walking the perimetre. Operations to Medical. That's about all we can cover. I know we're all strung-out, but try to stay frosty and alert. If Ripley's right they'll start testing the walls and conduits. We've got to stop any entries before they get out of hand. Pick them off one at a time as they try to get through.'
The two troopers nodded. Hudson abandoned the console picked up his rifle, and joined Vasquez in heading for the main corridor. Ripley located a half cup of coffee, picked it up, and drained the tepid contents in a single swallow. It tasted lousy but soothed her throat. The corporal watched her, waited unti she'd finished.
'How long since you slept? Twenty-four hours?'
Ripley shrugged indifferently. She wasn't surprised by the question. The constant tension had drained her. If she looked half as tired as she felt, it was no wonder that Hicks had expressed concern. Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm her before the aliens did. When she replied, her voice was distant and detached.
'What difference does it make? We're just marking time.'
'That's not what you've been saying.'
She nodded toward the corridor that had swallowed Hudson and Vasquez. 'That was for their benefit. Maybe a little for myself too. We can sleep but they won't. They won't slow down and they won't back off until they have what they want, and what they want is us. They'll get us too.'
'Maybe. Maybe not.' He smiled slightly.
She tried to smile back but wasn't sure if she accomplished it or not. Right then she'd have traded a year's flight salary for a hot cup of fresh coffee, but there was no one to trade with, and she was too tired to work on the dispenser. She slung the flamethrower over her shoulder.
'Hicks, I'm not going to wind up like those others. Like the colonists and Dietrich and Crowe. You'll take care of it, won't you, if it comes to that?'
'If it comes to that,' he told her softly, 'I'll do us both Although if we're still here when the processing station blows it won't be necessary. That'll take care of everything, us and them. Let's see that it doesn't.'
This time she was sure she managed a grin. 'I can't figure you, Hicks. Soldiers aren't supposed to be optimists.'
'Yeah, I know. You're not the first to point it out. I'm a freakin' anomaly.' Turning, he picked something up from behind the tactical console. 'Here, I'd like to introduce you to a close personal friend of mine.'
With the smoothness and ease of long practice he disengaged the pulse-rifle's magazine and set it aside. Then he handed her the weapon.
'M-41A 10-mm pulse-rifle, over and under with a 30mm pump-action grenade launcher. A real cutie-pie. The Marine's best friend, spouses notwithstanding. Almost jam-proof self-lubricating, works under water or in a vacuum and can blow a hole through steel plate. All she asks is that you keep her clean and don't slam her around too much and she'll keep you alive.'
Ripley hefted the weapon. It was bulky and awkward stuffed with recoil-absorbent fibre to counter the push from the high-powered shells it fired. It was much more impressive than her flamethrower. She raised the muzzle and pointed it experimentally at the far wall.
'What do you think?' Hicks asked her. 'Can you handle one?'
She looked back at him, her voice level. 'What do I do?'
He nodded approvingly and handed her the magazine.
No matter how quiet he tried to be, Bishop still made noise as the portable flight terminal and his sack of equipment scraped along the bottom of the conduit. No human being could have maintained the pace he'd kept up since leaving Operations, but that didn't mean he could keep going indefinitely. There were limits even to a synthetic's abilities.
Enhanced vision enabled him to perceive the walls of the pitch-dark tunnel as it continued receding ahead of him. A human would have been totally blinded in the cylindrical duct At least he didn't have to worry about losing his way. The conduit provided almost a straight shot to the transmitter tower.
An irregular hole appeared in the right-hand wall, admitting a feeble shaft of light. Among the emotions that had been programmed into him was curiosity. He paused to peer through the acid-etched crack. It would be nice to be able to take a bearing in person instead of having to rely exclusively on the computer printout of the service-shaft plans.
Drooling jaws flashed toward his face to slam against the enclosing steel with a vicious scraping sound.
Bishop flattened himself against the far side of the conduit as the echo of the attack rang along the metal. The curve of the wall where the jaws had struck bent slightly inward. Hurriedly he resumed his forward crawl. To his considerable surprise the attack was not repeated, nor could he sense any apparent pursuit.
Maybe the creature had simply sensed motion and had struck blindly. When no reaction had been forthcoming from inside the duct, there was no reason for it to strike again. How did it detect potential hosts? Bishop went through the motions of breathing without actually performing respiration. Nor did he smell of warmth or blood. To a marauding alien an android might seem like just another piece of machinery. So long as one didn't attack or offer resistance, you might be able to walk freely among them. Not that such an excursion appealed to Bishop, since the reactions and motives of the aliens remained unpredictable, but it was a useful bit of information to have acquired. If the hypothesis could be verified, it might offer a means of studying the aliens.
Let someone else study the monsters, he thought. Let someone else seek verification. A bolder model than himself was required. He wanted off Acheron as much for his own sake as for that of the humans he was working with.
He glanced at his chronometre, faintly aglow in the darkness. Still behind schedule. Pale and strained, he tried to move faster.
Ripley had the stock of the big gun snugged up against her cheek. She was doing her best to keep pace with Hicks's instructions, knowing that they didn't have much time knowing that if she had to use the weapon, she wouldn't be able to ask a second time how something worked. Hicks was as patient with her as possible, considering that he was trying to compress a complete weapons instruction course into a couple of minutes.
The corporal stood close behind her, positioning her arms as he explained how to use the built-in sight. It required a mutua effort to ignore the intimacy of their stance. There was little enough warmth in the devastated colony, little enough humanity to cling to, and this was the first physical, rather than verbal, contact between them.
'Just pull it in real tight,' he was telling her. 'Despite the built-in absorbers, it'll still kick some. That's the price you have to pay for using shells that'll penetrate just about anything.' He indicated a readout built into the side of the stock. 'When this counter reads zero, hit this.' He ran a thumb over a button, and the magazine dropped out, clattering on the floor.
'Usually we're required to recover the used ones: they're expensive. I wouldn't worry about following regs just now.'
'Don't worry,' she told him.
'Just leave it where it falls. Get the other one in quick.' He handed her another magazine, and she struggled to balance the heavy weapon with one hand while loading with the other 'Just slap it in hard, it likes abuse.' She did so and was rewarded with a sharp click as the magazine snapped home. 'Now charge it.' She tapped another switch. A red telltale sprang to life on the side of the arming mechanism.
Hicks stepped back, eyed her firing stance approvingly 'That's all there is to it. You're ready for playtime again. Give it another run-through.'
Ripley repeated the procedure: release magazine, check reload, arm. The gun was awkward physically, comforting mentally. Her hands were trembling from supporting the weight. She lowered the barrel and indicated the metal tube that ran underneath.
'What's this for?'
'That's the grenade laun
cher. You probably don't want to mess with that. You've got enough to remember already. If you have to use the gun, you want to be able to do it without thinking.'
She stared back at him. 'Look, you started this. Now show me everything. I can handle myself.'
'So I've noticed.'
They ran through sighting procedures again, then grenade loading and firing, a complete course in fifteen minutes. Hicks showed her how to do everything short of breaking down and cleaning the weapon. Satisfied that she'd missed nothing, she left him to ponder the tactical console's readouts as she headed for Medical to check on Newt. Slung from its field straps, her newfound friend bounced comfortingly against her shoulder.
She slowed when she heard footsteps ahead, then relaxed Despite its greater bulk, an alien would make a lot less noise than the lieutenant. Gorman emerged from the doorway, looking weak but sound. Burke was right behind him. He barely glanced at her. That was fine with Ripley. Every time the Company representative opened his mouth, she had an urge to strangle him, but they needed him. They needed every hand they could get, including those stained with blood. Burke was still one of them, a human being.
Though just barely, she thought.
'How do you feel?' she asked Gorman.
The lieutenant leaned against the wall for support and put one hand to his forehead. 'All right, I guess. A little dizzy. One beauty of a hangover. Look, Ripley, I—'
'Forget it.' No time to waste on useless apologies. Besides what had happened wasn't entirely Gorman's fault. Blame for the fiasco beneath the atmosphere-processing station needed to be apportioned among whoever had been foolish or incompetent enough to have put him in command of the relief team Gorman's lack of experience aside, no amount of training could have prepared anyone for the actuality of the aliens. How do you organize combat along accepted lines of battle with an enemy that's as dangerous when it's bleeding to death as it is when it's alive? She pushed past him and into the Med lab.
Gorman followed her with his eyes, then turned to head up the corridor. As he did so he encountered Vasquez approaching from the other direction. She regarded him out of cold, slitted eyes. Sweat stained her colourful bandanna and plastered it to her dark hair and skin.
'You still want to kill me?' he said quietly.
Her reply mixed contempt with acceptance. 'It won't be necessary.' She continued past him, striding toward the next checkpoint.
With Gorman and Burke gone, Medical was deserted. She crossed through to the operating theatre where she'd left Newt. The light was dim, but not so weak that she couldn't make out the empty bed. Fear racing through her like a drug she spun, her eyes frantically scanning the room, until a thought made her bend to look beneath the cot.
She relaxed, the tension draining back out of her. Sure enough, the girl was curled up against the wall, jammed as far back in as she could get. She was fast asleep, Casey clutched tightly in one small hand.
The angelic expression further reassured Ripley, innocent and undisturbed despite the demons that had plagued the child through waking as well as through sleeping hours. Bless the children, she thought, who can sleep anyplace through anything.
Carefully she laid the rifle on the cot. Getting down on hands and knees, she crawled beneath the springs. Without waking the girl she slipped both arms around her. Newt twitched in her sleep, instinctively snuggling her body closer to the adult's comforting warmth. A primal gesture. Ripley turned slightly on her side and sighed.
Newt's face contorted with the externalization of some private, tormented dreamscape. She cried out inarticulately, a vague dream-distorted plea. Ripley rocked her gently.
'There, there. Hush. It's all right. It's all right.'
Several of the high-pressure cooling conduits that encircled the massive atmosphere-processing tower had begun to glow red with excess heat. High-voltage discharges arced around the conical crown and upper latticework, strobing the blighted landscape of Acheron and the silent structures of Hadley town with irregular, intense flashes of light. It would have been obvious to anyone that something was drastically wrong with the station. Damping units fought to contain a reaction that was already out of control. They continued, anyway. They were not programmed for futility.
Across from the landing platform a tall metal spire poked toward the clouds. Several parabolic antennae clustered around the top, like birds flocking to a tree in wintertime.
At the base of the tower a solitary figure stood hunched over an open panel, his back facing into the wind.
Bishop had the test-bay cover locked in the open position and had managed to patch the portable terminal console into the tower's instrumentation. Thus far everything had gone as well as anyone dared hope. It hadn't started out that way. He'd arrived late at the tower, having underestimated the length o time it would take him to crawl through the conduit. As if by way of compensation, the preliminary checkout and testing had come off without a hitch, enabling him to make up some of that lost time. Whether he'd made up enough remained to be seen.
His jacket lay draped over the keyboard and monitor of the terminal to shield them from blowing sand and dust. The electronics were far more sensitive to the inclement weather than he was. The last several minutes had seen him typing frenetically, his fingers a blur on the input keys. He accomplished in a minute what would have taken a trained human ten.
Had he been human he might have uttered a small prayer Perhaps he did anyway. Synthetics have their own secrets. He surveyed the keyboard a last time and muttered to himself.
'Now, if I did it right, and nothing's busted inside . . .' He punched a peripheral function key inscribed with the signa word ENABLE.
Far overhead, the Sulaco drifted patiently and silently in the emptiness of space. No busy figures moved through its empty corridors. No machines hummed efficiently as they worked the huge loading bay. Instruments winked on and off silently maintaining the ship in its geo-stationary orbit above the colony.
A klaxon sounded, though there were none to hear it Rotating warning lights came to life within the vast cargo hold though there was no one to witness the interplay of red, blue and green. Hydraulics whined. Immensely powerful lifters rumbled along their tracks as the second dropship was trundled out on its overhead rack. Wheels locked in place, and pulleys and levers took over. The shuttle was lowered into the gaping drop bay.
As soon as it was locked in drop position, service booms and automatic decouplers extended from walls and floor to plug into the waiting vessel. Predrop fueling and final checkout commenced. These were mundane, routine tasks for which human attention was unnecessary. Actually the ship could do the job better without any people around. They would only get in the way and slow down the operation.
Engines were brought on-line, shut down, and restarted Locks were cycled open and sealed shut. Internal communications flared to life and exchanged numerical sequences with the Sulaco's main computer. A recorded announcement boomed across the vast, open chamber. Procedure required it even though there was no one present to listen.
'Attention. Attention. Final fueling operations have begun Please extinguish all smoking materials.'
Bishop witnessed none of the activity, saw no lights rotating rapidly, heard no warning. He was satisfied nonetheless. The tiny readouts that came alive on the portable guidance console were as eloquent as a Shakespearean sonnet. He knew that the dropship had been prepared and that fueling was taking place because the console told him so. He'd done more than make contact with the Sulaco: he was communicating. He didn't have to be there in person. The portable was his electronic surrogate. It told him everything he needed to know, and what it told him was good.
XII
She hadn't intended to go to sleep. All she'd wanted was to share a little space, some warmth, and a few moments of quiet with the girl. But her body knew what she needed better than she did. When she relinquished control and allowed it the chance to minister to its own requirements, it took over immediately.
&nbs
p; Ripley awoke with a start and just missed banging her head against the underside of the cot. She was wide-awake instantly.
Dim light from the Med lab filtered into the operating room Checking her watch, she was startled to see that more than an hour had passed. Death could have visited and departed in that much time, but nothing seemed to have changed. No one had come in to wake her, which wasn't surprising. Their minds were occupied with more important matters. The fact that she'd been left alone was in itself a good sign. If the final assault had begun, Hicks or someone else surely would have rousted her out of the warm corner beneath the bed by now.
Gently she disengaged herself from Newt, who slept on oblivious to adult obsessions with time. Ripley made sure the small jacket was pulled up snugly around the girl's chin before turning to crawl out from beneath the cot. As she turned to roll, she caught another glimpse of the rest of the Med lab—and froze.