“We’re not catching them, Sneddon,” Hoop said. “That door opens and we kill them.”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” Sneddon replied without looking up. “But have you considered just how?”
“Of course. The plasma torches, sand picks, and charge thumpers.”
“Right,” Sneddon said. “So torch them with plasma and their skin, or whatever they have, bursts open. Acid spills. Sand picks hack at them… open them up. Fire projectiles with the charge thumpers… more acid.”
“What else do you suggest?” Ripley asked, an edge to her voice.
“I suggest that we come up with something else,” Sneddon said. “Trap them somehow. Hold them until we can—”
“We need to kill them, or they’ll kill us,” Ripley said. “If they’re anything like the one we had on Nostromo they’ll be eight, nine feet tall, incredibly fast and strong, and utterly vicious. And you want to trap them? How? You got a box we can bait with some cheese?”
Sneddon sat back, looking calm and composed. She glanced at Ripley, then looked squarely at Hoop.
“Is she safe?” she asked.
“Safe as any of us are right now,” Hoop said. He looked at Ripley, frowned, tried to warn her off. But he could see that her outburst was driven by fear, not anger. For a moment it seemed as if she was seeing something very far away, and he wondered yet again at the nightmares she must still suffer. She’d told him about each of her dead crewmates—some of them her friends, the captain her occasional lover.
“Cargo netting,” Sneddon said.
Ripley coughed something between a laugh and a gasp.
“It’s strong enough to pack tons of equipment in the holds,” Sneddon went on. “Twisted steel core. It’ll hold them long enough for us to decide what to do with them.”
“How do you know it will work?” Ripley asked.
“How do you know it won’t?” Sneddon countered. “At least this way we don’t risk burning a hole right through the hull. If what you say about acid is true…”
“It’s true,” Ripley said. “What, you don’t believe me now?”
Sneddon sighed, swinging back in her chair. “I think we just need to be—”
“Who appointed you science officer?” Ripley asked.
“The company. Kelland.”
“Which is owned by Weyland-Yutani.”
“Very distantly, yes,” Sneddon replied. “So?”
“And you worked for Weyland-Yutani before that?”
“I served my apprenticeship with them, on Mars, yes.”
“Ripley?” Hoop asked. She seemed to be losing control, panicking. He didn’t like that. More than anything, it made his own subsumed panic start to simmer again. Without even realizing it, he thought perhaps he’d taken Ripley’s strength to feed his own.
“Don’t wrap me in your conspiracies,” Sneddon said quietly.
“This isn’t about gathering specimens,” Ripley said. “It’s about surviving!”
“I didn’t say I wanted to gather anything.”
“But you find them fascinating—you said so yourself.”
“And you don’t?” Sneddon asked. She slid the tablet across the bench, but Ripley looked away.
“No,” she said. “Horrifying. Repulsive. But not fascinating.”
Knowing what Ripley had told him about Ash, Hoop supposed he should have seen this coming. He wanted to defuse the situation, bring it back onto a calm footing. It had started as a friendly discussion about how the creatures could be tackled, but had descended into a standoff. He took a breath, ready to speak.
But Sneddon’s actions spoke for him.
She slid open an equipment drawer, plucked out a scalpel and nicked the top of her thumb. She squeezed the digit and smeared a droplet of blood across the white bench surface. Then she looked at Ripley.
Ripley sighed. “Sorry,” she said. “Really.”
Sneddon smiled. “Hey, I can’t blame you. Truth is, I’ve never liked androids myself.”
“Really?” Ripley said.
“I’m a science officer, but my basis is in biology.” She picked up a piece of gauze, and held it firmly over the cut. “I find them unnatural.”
“And now we can all be friends,” Hoop said. His own sigh of relief was unfeigned, and both Ripley and Sneddon laughed.
“So, these nets,” Ripley said. “Take me to see them.”
Even before Ripley arrived, they had taken to spending most of their time on the bridge. It was a large enough area to feel comfortable, with the various workstations, well-designed and spread out, but still small enough to talk with each other without having to shout. At least three of the surviving members of the Marion needed to be there at any one time, and each of them preferred being close to one another. Most of the time, at least. On those few occasions when tensions rose and tempers flared, they all had their individual cabins in the accommodations hub.
The rec room became dusty and unused, and on those few occasions when Hoop had cause to visit, the sight of it made him unbearably sad. He had never believed in ghosts, but he felt the echo of every dead friend in that silent room so used to laughter.
Six hours before they were planning on opening the Samson, they stood or sat around the bridge, all eyes focussed on him. He felt the weight of responsibility, even though they were all making the decisions now. He hadn’t forced his notional position of command on them. Since the disaster, he had simply been guiding, advising, and standing there to be shouted and screamed at if the stresses got too great.
Now, the pressure was almost unbearable. He knew that every single one of them felt it, because he could see it in their eyes, their taut expressions. He knew all of them so much more deeply than he had just seventy days before. Trauma had thrown them closer together, and now the time had come to try and make things better.
Hours of planning, scheming, suggestions and disagreements, drawing plans, and sick humor had led to this.
“We’re ready,” Hoop said. “We know that Baxter hasn’t managed to establish any visual connection back to the Samson, so there’s no saying what we’ll be facing when the doors open. Maybe those bastard things will have starved. Maybe they’ll be asleep, or hibernating, and we can just gather them up and blast them into space. Could be they’ll come out fighting. In which case we’ll be ready.” He nodded at the array of mining tools. “So, anything else? Have we missed anything? Any more questions, speak up now.”
None of them spoke. He looked around the bridge, giving them all a chance. His gaze rested on Ripley, and he saw something there that continued to give him hope—resilience, determination…
Anger.
“Okay,” he said. “You all know what to do.”
The vestibule to Bay Three was circular and fifty feet across, lined with ranks of dusty seating interspersed with equipment racks for those awaiting a dropship. Its smoothly curved side walls were partly glazed, and offered views over the destroyed Bays One and Two on the port side. The Narcissus was docked at Bay Four, off to starboard.
Through a heavy door at the far end was the airlock, a space large enough for ten people at a time to be strapped in and decontaminated while it was pressurized or vented. At the other end of it, another door led into the docking arm. This was a space only ten feet long, partly flexible, that fixed directly to the surround around the dropship’s outer hull hatch.
Baxter and Lachance remained on the bridge, Lachance to oversee master controls—airlock operation, environmental, and remote opening of the Samson’s hatch—and Baxter to ensure that communication channels were kept open. Everyone wore a headset and microphone, and they could all hear one another. For the moment, though, they were maintaining strict silence.