“I’ll go first,” he said.
The second thing Ripley noticed was that the tech here was far more recognizable—and more prevalent—than it had been anywhere else in the ship. There were at least six separate movable workstations where the equipment appeared largely identical, ranging from sizeable units to smaller, more intricate devices. There was very little dust, and everything had a sharpness, a clarity, that the rest of the ship was lacking. Time had not paid this place so much attention.
The first thing she noticed was the eggs, and the things that guarded them.
There were sixteen eggs, each one set apart from the others within a waist-high, circular wire enclosure. The enclosures were set around the room’s curved perimeter, leaving the center open for the mobile workstations. The eggs looked similar to the others they had found and destroyed, though there were subtle differences in color, tone, and shape. They were rounder, fatter, and their surfaces seemed to be more thoroughly networked with fine veins. Ripley thought perhaps they were newer, or simply better preserved.
Crouched beside the eggs were things that at first glance resembled statues. But she knew not to take anything down here at first glance. They were aliens, their spiked limbs dulled, curved heads dipped and pale. Slightly larger than others they had seen, yet so different from the queen they’d so recently killed. It was Lachance who hit it on the head.
“They look like… the ship’s builders.”
And they did. They were a monstrous blend of alien and dog-creature. More limbs than other aliens, each with a chunkier body, thicker legs, and a more prominent head, still they possessed the same chitinous outer shell, and one had slumped to the side with its grotesque mouth extended, the glimmering teeth now dulled. Ripley was glad she hadn’t seen them alive.
“How long have they been here, do you think?” Baxter asked.
“Long time,” Kasyanov said. “That one almost looks like it’s mummified. But these eggs… maybe the damned things can never die.”
One egg was open, and on the ground close by it was the body of one of the miners.
“Nick,” Lachance said quietly. “He owed me fifty dollars.”
Nick’s chest was open, clothing torn, ribs protruding. He looked fresher than the other corpses they’d found, yet Ripley thought he’d probably died around the same time. The atmosphere in this section was cleaner, and perhaps lacking in the bacteria of decay.
“Only one egg has opened,” she said. She blinked softly, trying to take control of the feeling that was slowly enveloping her. It was an urgency driven by disgust, a pressing desire fed by hatred.
“And we just popped the bastard that came from that,” Hoop said. “You think so?”
“Yeah, popped it,” she said. She looked around at the other eggs and the things that had settled to guard them, long ago. If all these eggs were queens—if that’s what the creature they’d just killed had been—then they had the potential to produce many, many more aliens.
Thousands more.
“We have to destroy them all,” she said. She lifted the charge thumper.
“Wait!” Kasyanov said. “We haven’t got time to—”
“We make time,” Ripley said. “What happens if we don’t survive? What happens if a rescue mission eventually arrives, comes down here? What then? There are thousands of potential creatures in this one room. We’ve fought off a few of those things. Imagine an army of them.”
“Okay, Ripley,” Hoop said. He was nodding slowly. “But we need to take care. Lachance, come with me. We’ll check the other opening, make sure that’s really the way out. Then we’ll come back and fry these fuckers.” He looked at Ripley, and held up a hand. “Wait.”
She nodded, but with one glance urged him to hurry. She wouldn’t wait for long. Her finger stroked the trigger, and she imagined the eggs bursting apart, spilling their horrendous cargo to the clear gray floor.
Fuck you, Ash, she thought, and she almost laughed. He’d done everything he could to procure another one of these monsters for his Weyland-Yutani bosses. And she was doing everything she could to destroy them all.
She would win. Of that she had no doubt. The burning question was, would she also survive?
“I will,” she said.
Perhaps thinking she was replying to him, Hoop nodded.
Sneddon was slumped beside the door, creature still clasped across her entire face. Baxter stood resting against the wall, plasma torch cradled in his arms. Kasyanov blinked the pain from her eyes, also holding her plasma torch.
As Hoop and Lachance left, Ripley had a flash-image of Amanda on top of that hill.
I’ll save you, baby. I’ll save you.
16
MAJESTY
“We’re getting out of this. Right, Hoop?”
“What do you expect me to say to that?”
“That we’re getting out of this.”
“Okay, Lachance. We’re getting out of this.”
Lachance exhaled and wiped his brow. “That’s a relief. For a minute there I thought we were fucked.”
“Come on. Let’s see what’s up here.” They crossed the open area at the head of the steep staircase, and Hoop paused to look back down. His light didn’t seem to penetrate quite so far, now, its power starting to wane. He couldn’t quite see the bottom. There could have been anything down there, crouched in the shadows and staring up at him, and he wouldn’t know.
Lachance moved through the opening and started up the shorter staircase. Hoop followed. There were only five tall steps before the walls seemed to close in, forming a blank barrier. But Lachance leaned left and right, looking at varying angles.
“Hidden opening,” he said. “Clever.” He ducked through a fold in the strange wall material.
Hoop glanced back and down. There was no noise down there, no hint that anything had gone wrong in that strange lab with the queen eggs. Yet he still couldn’t shake the idea that they were making a mistake here. That splitting up, even for such a short time, was a stupid thing to do.
Ripley was stronger than ever, yet he could sense a ripple of danger emanating from her now. A need for some sort of vengeance, perhaps, that might well put them all in peril. She was a logical woman driven by the instinct for survival, intelligent and determined. But as she was shooting that queen, he’d seen something in her eyes that had no place with logic. Still instinct, perhaps. But the instinct for attack, rather than defense.
When she’d looked at him just now, he’d seen murder in her eyes.
He walked into Lachance, then realized why the Frenchman had stopped.
The hidden route emerged onto the huge ship’s wings close to the cavern wall. The miners’ lights were still strung across the cavern, shedding a weak light over the whole area. Looking back along the wing he could see the damaged area where they’d entered, several hundred yards away and seemingly so long ago.
“Can’t see any of those bastards,” Hoop whispered.
“If they’re up here, they’re hiding,” Lachance said. “But look. What is that?” He was pointing to the right, toward where the ship’s hull seemed to disappear beneath the cavern wall that rose high above them, curving eventually into a high ceiling hidden by shadows.
“That’s our way out,” Hoop said. There was a series of cracks in the wall above the wing, any one of which might have been a route back up into the mine.
“Yeah, but what is it?”
Hoop frowned, looked closer. Then he saw what Lachance meant.
“Holy shit…”
It wasn’t part of the ship. It was made of stone. Much of it had tumbled, but some still stood, a structure that at first glance formed the crevassed, cracked wall of the cavern.