Aliens

IV

It was an ugly ship. Battered, overused, parts repaired that should have been replaced, too tough and valuable to scrap Easier for its masters to upgrade it and modify it than build a new one. Its lines were awkward and its engines oversize. A mountain of metal and composites and ceramic, a floating scrap heap, weightless monument to war, it shouldered its way brutally through the mysterious region called hyperspace. Like its human cargo, it was purely functional. Its name was Sulaco.

Fourteen dreamers this trip. Eleven engaged in related morphean fantasies, simple and straightforward as the vesse that carried them through the void. Two others more individualistic. A last sleeping under sedation necessary to mute the effects of recurring nightmares. Fourteen dreamers— and one for whom sleep was a superfluous abstraction.

Executive Officer Bishop checked readouts and adjusted controls. The long wait was ended. An alarm sounded throughout the length of the massive military transport. Long dormant machinery, powered down to conserve energy, came back to life. So did long dormant humans as their hypersleep capsules were charged and popped open. Satisfied that his charges had survived their long hibernation, Bishop set about the business of placing Sulaco in a low geo-stationary orbit around the colony world of Acheron.

Ripley was the first of the sleepers to awake. Not because she was any more adaptive than her fellow travelers or more used to the effects of hypersleep, but simply because her capsule was first in line for recharge. Sitting up in the enclosed bed, she rubbed briskly at her arms, then started to work on her legs Burke sat up in the capsule across from her, and the lieutenant — what was his name? — oh, yeah, Gorman, beyond him.

The other capsules contained the Sulaco's military complement: eight men and three women. They were a select group in that they chose to put their lives at risk for the majority of the time they were awake: individuals used to long periods of hypersleep followed by brief, but intense, periods of wakefulness. The kind of people others made room for on a sidewalk or in a bar.

PFC Spunkmeyer was the dropship crew chief, the man responsible along with Pilot-Corporal Ferro for safely conveying his colleagues to the surface of whichever world they happened to be visiting, and then taking them off again in one piece. In a hurry if necessary. He rubbed at his eyes and groaned as he blinked at the hypersleep chamber.

'I'm getting too old for this.' No one paid any attention to this comment, since it was well known (or at least widely rumoured) that Spunkmeyer had enlisted when underage However, nobody joked about his maturity or lack of it when they were plummeting toward the surface of a new world in the PFC-directed dropship.

Private Drake was rolling out of the capsule next to Spunkmeyer's. He was a little older than Spunkmeyer and a lot uglier. In addition to sharing similarities in appearance with the Sulaco, likewise he was built a lot like the old transport Drake was heavy-duty bad company, with arms like a legendary one-eyed sailor, a nose busted beyond repair by the cosmetic surgeons, and a nasty scar that curled one side of his mouth into a permanent sneer. The scar surgery could have fixed, but Drake hung on to it. It was one medal he was allowed to wear all the time. He wore a tight-fitting floppy cap, which no living soul dared refer to as 'cute'.'

Drake was a smartgun operator. He was also skilled in the use of rifles, handguns, grenades, assorted blades, and his teeth.

'They ain't payin' us enough for this,' he mumbled.

'Not enough to have to wake up to your face, Drake.' This from Corporal Dietrich, who was arguably the prettiest of the group except when she opened her mouth.

'Suck vacuum,' Drake told her. He eyed the occupant of another recently opened capsule. 'Hey, Hicks, you look like I feel.'

Hicks was the squad's senior corporal and second in command among the troops after Master Sergeant Apone. He didn't talk much and always seemed to be in the right place at the potentially lethal time, a fact much appreciated by his fellow Marines. He kept his counsel to himself while the others spouted off. When he did speak, what he had to say was usually worth hearing.

Ripley was back on her feet, rubbing the circulation back into her legs and doing standing knee-bends to loosen up stiffened joints. She examined the troopers as they shuffled past her on their way to a bank of lockers. There were no supermen among them, no overly muscled archetypes, but every one of them was lean and hardened. She suspected that the least among them could run all day over the surface of a two-gee world carrying a full equipment pack, fight a running battle while doing so, and then spend the night breaking down and repairing complex computer instrumentation. Brawn and brains aplenty, even if they preferred to talk like common street toughs. The best the contemporary military had to offer. She felt a little safer — but only a little.

Master Sergeant Apone was making his way up the centre aisle chatting briefly with each of his newly revived soldiers in turn. The sergeant looked as though he could take apart a medium-size truck with his bare hands. As he passed Comtech Corporal Hudson's pallet, the latter voiced a complaint.

'This floor's freezing!'

'So were you, ten minutes ago. I never saw such a bunch of old women. Want me to fetch your slippers, Hudson?'

The corporal batted his eyelashes at the sergeant. 'Would you sir? I'd be ever so grateful?' A few rough chuckles acknowledged Hudson's riposte. Apone smiled to himself as he resumed his walk, chiding his people and urging them to speed it up.

Ripley stayed out of their way as they trudged past. They were a tightly knit bunch, a single fighting organism with eleven heads, and she wasn't a part of their group. She stood outside isolated. A couple of them nodded to her as they strode past and there were one or two cursory hellos. That was all she had any right to expect, but it didn't make her feel any more relaxed in their company.

PFC Vasquez just stared as she walked past. Ripley had received warmer inspections from robots. The other smartgun operator didn't blink, didn't smile. Black hair, blacker eyes, thin lips. Attractive if she'd make half an effort.

It required a special talent; a unique combination of strength mental ability, and reflexes, to operate a smartgun. Ripley waited for the woman to say something. She didn't open her mouth as she passed by. Every one of the troopers looked tough Drake and Vasquez looked tough and mean.

Her counterpart called out to her as she came abreast of his locker. 'Hey, Vasquez, you ever been mistaken for a man?'

'No. Have you?'

Drake proffered an open palm. She slapped it, and his fingers immediately clenched right around her smaller fingers. The pressure increased on both sides — a silent, painful greeting Both were glad to be out from under hypersleep and alive again.

Finally she whacked him across the face and their hands parted. They laughed, young Dobermans at play. Drake was the stronger but Vasquez was faster, Ripley decided as she watched them. If they had to go down, she resolved to try to keep them on either side of her. It would be the safest place.

Bishop was moving quietly among the group, helping with massages and a bottle of special postsleep fluid, acting more like a valet than a ship's officer. He appeared older than any of the troopers, including Lieutenant Gorman. As he passed close to Ripley she noticed the alphanumeric code tattooed across the back of his left hand. She stiffened in recognition but said nothing.

'Hey,' Private Frost said to someone out of Ripley's view, 'you take my towel?' Frost was as young as Hudson but better-looking, or so he would insist to anyone who would waste time listening. When it came time for bragging, the two younger troopers usually came out about even. Hudson tended to rely on volume while Frost hunted for the right words.

Spunkmeyer was up near the head of the line and stil complaining. 'I need some slack, man. How come they send us straight back out like this? It ain't fair. We got some slack comin', man.'

Hicks murmured softly. 'You just got three weeks. You want to spend your whole life on slack time?'

'I mean breathing, not this frozen stuff. Three weeks in the freezer ain't real off-time.'

'Yeah, Top, what about it?' Dietrich wanted to know.

'You know it ain't up to me.' Apone raised his voice above the griping. 'Awright, let's knock off the jawing. First assembly's in fifteen. I want everybody looking like human beings by then — most of you will have to fake it. Let's shag it.'

Hypersleep wear was stripped off and tossed into the disposal unit. Easier to cremate the remains and provide fresh new attire for the return journey than to try to recycle shorts and tops that had clung to a body for several weeks. The line of lean, naked bodies moved into the shower. High-pressure water jets blasted away accumulated sweat and grime, set nerve endings tingling beneath scoured skin. Through the swirling steam Hudson, Vasquez, and Ferro watched Ripley dry off.

'Who's the freshmeat again?' Vasquez asked the question as she washed cleanser out of her hair.

'She's supposed to be some kinda consultant. Don't know much about her.' The diminutive Ferro wiped at her belly which was as flat and muscular as a steel plate, and exaggerated her expression and tone. 'She saw an alien once. Or so the skipchat says.'

'Whooah!' Hudson made a face. 'I'm impressed.'

Apone yelled back at them. He was already out in the drying room, toweling off his shoulders. They were as devoid of fat as those of troopers twenty years younger.

'Let's go, let's go. Buncha lazybutts'll run the recyclers dry C'mon, cycle through. You got to get dirty before you can get clean.'

Informal segregation was the order of the day in the mess room. It was automatic. There was no need for whispered words or little nameplates next to the glasses. Apone and his troopers requisitioned the large table while Ripley, Gorman Burke, and Bishop sat at the other. Everyone nursed coffee tea, spritz, or water while they waited for the ship's autochef to deal out eggs and ersatz bacon, toast and hash, condiments and vitamin supplements.

You could identify each trooper by his or her uniform. No two were exactly alike. This was the result not of specialized identification insignia, but of individual taste. The Sulaco was no barracks and Acheron no parade ground. Occasionally Apone would have to chew someone out for a particularly egregious addition, like the time Crowe had showed up with a portrait of his latest girlfriend computer-stenciled across the back of his armour. But for the most part he let the troopers decorate their outfits as they liked.

'Hey, Top,' Hudson chivvied, 'what's the op?'

'Yeah.' Frost blew bubbles in his tea. 'All I know is I get shipping orders and not time to say hello-goodbye to Myrna.'

'Myrna?' Private Wierzbowski raised a bushy eyebrow. 'I thought it was Leina?'

Frost looked momentarily uncertain. 'I think Leina was three months ago. Or six.'

'It's a rescue mission.' Apone sipped his coffee. 'There's some juicy colonists' daughters we gotta rescue.'

Ferro made a show of looking disappointed. 'Hell, that lets me out.'

'Says who?' Hudson leered at her. She threw sugar at him.

Apone just listened and watched. No reason for him to intervene. He could have quieted them down, could have played it by the book. Instead he left it loose and fair, but only because he knew that his people were the best. He'd walk into a fight with any one of them watching his back and not worry about what he couldn't see, knowing that anything trying to sneak up on him would be taken care of as efficiently as if he had eyes in the back of his head. Let 'em play, let 'em curse ECA and the corps and the Company and him too. When the time came, the playing would stop, and every one of them would be all business.

'Dumb colonists.' Spunkmeyer looked to his plate as food began to put in an appearance. After three weeks asleep he was starving, but not so starving that he couldn't offer the obligatory soldier's culinary comment. 'What's this stuf supposed to be?'

'Eggs, dimwit,' said Ferro.

'I know what an egg is, bubblebrain. I mean this soggy flat yellow stuff on the side.'

'Corn bread, I think.' Wierzbowski fingered his portion and added absently, 'Hey, I wouldn't mind getting me some more a that Arcturan poontang. Remember that time?'

Hicks was sitting on his right side. The corporal glanced up briefly, then looked back to his plate. 'Looks like that new lieutenant's too good to eat with us lowly grunts. Kissing up to the Company rep.'

Wierzbowski stared past the corporal, not caring if anyone should happen to notice the direction of his gaze. 'Yeah.'

'Doesn't matter if he knows his job,' said Crowe.

'The magic word.' Frost hacked at his eggs. 'We'll find out.'

Perhaps it was Gorman's youth that bothered them, even though he was older than half the troopers. More likely it was his appearance: hair neat even after weeks in hypersleep, slack creases sharp and straight, boots gleaming like black metal. He looked too good.

As they ate and muttered and stared, Bishop took the empty seat next to Ripley. She rose pointedly and moved to the far side of the table. The ExO looked wounded.

'I'm sorry you feel that way about synthetics, Ripley.'

She ignored him as she glared down at Burke, her tone accusing. 'You never said anything about there being an android on board! Why not? Don't lie to me, either, Carter. I saw his tattoo outside the showers.'

Burke appeared nonplussed. 'Well, it didn't occur to me. I don't know why you're so upset. It's been Company policy for years to have a synthetic on board every transport. They don't need hypersleep, and it's a lot cheaper than hiring a human pilot to oversee the interstellar jumps. They won't go crazy working a longhaul solo. Nothing special about it.'

'I prefer the term "artificial person" myself,' Bishop interjected softly. 'Is there a problem? Perhaps it's something I can help with.'

'I don't think so.' Burke wiped egg from his lips. 'A synthetic malfunctioned on her last trip out. Some deaths were involved.'

'I'm shocked. Was it long ago?'

'Quite a while, in fact.' Burke made the statement without going into specifics, for which Ripley was grateful.

'Must have been an older model, then.'

'Hyperdine Systems 120-A/2.'

Bending over backward to be conciliatory, Bishop turned to Ripley. 'Well, that explains it. The old A/2s were always a bit twitchy. That could never happen now, not with the new implanted behavioral inhibitors. Impossible for me to harm or by omission of action, allow to be harmed a human being. The inhibitors are factory-installed, along with the rest of my cerebral functions. No one can tamper with them. So you see I'm quite harmless.' He offered her a plate piled high with yellow rectangles. 'More corn bread?'

The plate did not shatter when it struck the far wall as Ripley smacked it out of his hand. corn bread crumbled as the plate settled to the floor.

'Just stay away from me, Bishop! You got that straight? You keep away from me.'

Wierzbowski observed this byplay in silence, then shrugged and turned back to his food. 'She don't like the corn bread either.'

Ripley's outburst sparked no more conversation than that as the troopers finished breakfast and retired to the ready room Ranks of exotic weaponry lined the walls behind them. Some clustered their chairs and started an improvised game of dice Tough to pick up a floating crap game after you've been unconscious for three weeks, but they tried nonetheless. They straightened lazily as Gorman and Burke entered, but snapped to when Apone barked at them.

'Tench-hut!' The men and women responded as one, arms vertical at their sides, eyes straight ahead, and focused only on what the sergeant might say to them next.

Gorman's eyes flicked over the line. If possible, the troopers were more motionless standing at attention than they had been when frozen in hypersleep. He held them a moment longer before speaking.

'At ease.' The line flexed as muscles were relaxed. 'I'm sorry we didn't have time to brief you before we left Gateway, but—'

'Sir?' said Hudson.

Annoyed, Gorman glanced toward the speaker. Couldn't let him finish his first sentence before starting with the questions Not that he'd expected anything else. He'd been warned that this bunch might be like that.

'Yes, what is it, Hicks?'

The speaker nodded at the man standing next to him 'Hudson, sir. He's Hicks.'

'What's the question, soldier?'

'Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug-hunt?'

'If you'd wait a moment, you might find some of your questions anticipated, Hudson. I can understand your impatience and curiosity. There's not a great deal to explain All we know is that there's still been no contact with the colony Executive Officer Bishop tried to rise Hadley the instant the Sulaco hove within hailing distance of Acheron. He did not obtain a response. The planetary deepspace satellite relay checks out okay, so that's not the reason for the lack of contact We don't know what it is yet.'

'Any ideas?' Crowe asked.

'There is a possibility, just a possibility at this point, mind that a xenomorph may be involved.'

'A whaat?' said Wierzbowski.

Hicks leaned toward him, whispered softly. 'It's a bug-hunt. Then louder, to the lieutenant, 'So what are these things, if they're there?'

Gorman nodded to Ripley, who stepped forward. Eleven pairs of eyes locked on her like gun sights: alert, intent curious, and speculative. They were sizing her up, still unsure whether to class her with Burke and Gorman or somewhere else. They neither cared for her nor disliked her, because they didn't know her yet.

Fine. Leave it at that. She placed a handful of tiny recorder disks on the table before her.

'I've dictated what I know on these. There are some duplicates. You can read them in your rooms or in your suits.'

'I'm a slow reader.' Apone lightened up enough to smile slightly. 'Tease us a bit.'

'Yeah, let's have some previews.' Spunkmeyer leaned back against enough explosive to blow a small hotel apart, snuggling back among the firing tubes and detonators.

'Okay. First off, it's important to understand the organism's life cycle. It's actually two creatures. The first form hatches from a spore, a sort of large egg, and attaches itself to its victim. Then it injects an embryo, detaches, and dies. It's essentially a walking reproductive organ. Then the—'

'Sounds like you, Hicks.' Hudson grinned over at the older man, who responded with his usual tolerant smile.

Ripley didn't find it funny. She didn't find anything about the alien funny, but then, she'd seen it. The troopers stil weren't convinced she was describing something that existed outside her imagination. She'd have to try to be patient with them. That wasn't going to be easy.

'The embryo, the second form, hosts in the victim's body for several hours. Gestating. Then it'—she had to swallow, fighting a sudden dryness in her throat—'emerges. Moults. Grows rapidly. The adult form advances quickly through a number o intermediate stages until it matures in the form of—'

This time it was Vasquez who interrupted. 'That's all fine but I only need to know one thing.'

'Yes?'

'Where they are.' She pointed her finger at an empty space between Ripley and the door, cocked her thumb, and blew away an imaginary intruder. Hoots and guffaws of approval came from her colleagues.

'Yo Vasquez!' As always, Drake delighted in his counterpart's demure bloodthirstiness. Her nickname was the Gamin Assassin. It was not misplaced.

She nodded brusquely. 'Anytime. Anywhere.'

'Somebody say "alien"?' Hudson leaned back in his seat, idly fingering a weapon with an especially long and narrow barrel 'She thought they said "illegal alien" and signed up.'

'Fuck you.' Vasquez threw the comtech a casual finger. He responded by mimicking her tone and attitude as closely as possible.

'Anytime. Anywhere.'

Ripley's tone was as cold as the skin of the Sulaco. 'Am I disturbing your conversation, Mr. Hudson? I know most of you are looking at this as just another typical police action. I can assure you it's more than that. I've seen this creature. I've seen what it can do. If you run into it, I can guarantee that you won't do so laughingly.'

Hudson subsided, smirking. Ripley shifted her attention to Vasquez. 'I hope it'll be as easy as you make it out to be, Private I really do.' Their eyes locked. Neither woman looked away.

Burke broke it up by stepping between them to address the assembled troops. 'That's enough for a preview. I suggest all o you take the time to study the disks Ripley has been kind enough to prepare for you. They contain additional basic information, as well as some highly detailed speculative graphics put together by an advanced imaging computer. I believe you'll find them interesting. I promise they'll hold your attention.' He relinquished the floor to Gorman. The lieutenant was brisk, sounding like a commander even if he didn't quite look like one.

'Thank you Mr. Burke, Ms. Ripley.' His gaze roved over the indifferent faces of his squad. 'Any questions?' A hand waved casually from the back of the group and he sighed resignedly 'Yes, Hudson?'

The comtech was examining his fingernails. 'How do I get out of this outfit?'

Gorman scowled and forbore from offering the first thought that came to mind. He thanked Ripley again, and gratefully she took a seat.

'All right. I want this operation to go smoothly and by the numbers. I want full DCS and tactical data-base assimilation by oh-eight-thirty.' A few groans rose from the group but nothing in the way of a strong protest. It was no less than what they expected.

'Ordnance loading, weapons strip and checkout, and dropship prep will have seven hours. I want everything and everybody ready to go on time. Let's hit it. You've had three weeks rest.'