This is it. His friends, bleeding and in pain yet forging on as hard as they could, inspired him. And Ripley, the strange woman who had arrived in their midst, her own story tragic and filled with loss… if she could remain so strong, then so could he.
He climbed up the next step and pulled her up after him, and for some reason she felt lighter.
Outside, the others hunkered down close to where the folded access opened onto the ship’s upper surface. They kept low and quiet, as if being suddenly exposed after their nightmarish trip through the tunnels and corridors scared them even more. Hoop handed Ripley to Lachance, slipping the charge thumper from her shoulder as he did so. Even hazy and balancing on the edge of consciousness, she grabbed for the weapon. He eased her hand aside.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got it.” And she relented.
“What are you doing?” Lachance asked.
“Insurance,” Hoop said. “Giving us the best chance I can.” He held up two fingers—two minutes—then slipped back through the opening.
By his reckoning, there was one charge left in the blaster.
Now that he was facing it alone, the ship’s interior felt even stranger, more alien than ever. They had only left it moments before, but already he felt like an invader all over again. He wondered one more time just how alive that huge ship was, or had once been. But it was ancient, and whatever intelligence might once have driven it was now surely in the deepest of slumbers, if not dead.
He edged down the first high step, then the second, and then he heard something that froze him to a halt. Everything in his world came to a standstill—the past, the future, his breathing, his thoughts. His heart skipped a beat, as if hiding from that sound.
A high-pitched keening, so filled with pain and rage that it prickled his skin, the sound itself an assault. He was chilled and hot at the same time, his soul reacting in much the same way as skin when confronted by intense heat or cold. He might burn or freeze with terror, but for a moment he couldn’t tell which.
What have we done? he thought. He could smell burning flesh, though there was no similarity to any meat he knew. He could hear the roar of the flames they had left behind, consuming what was left of the aliens, the eggs. And dropping down one more step, he could see the three creatures that had come after them.
They were the same as the first ones they had encountered, back on the Marion. No dog-like features, no attributes that might have made them a queen. Warriors, perhaps. Soldier aliens. And they were whining and keening as they stood outside the burning, ruined lab, swaying from side to side, their tails waving, heads dipping to the left and then right. It was a dance of death and mourning, and for the briefest of moments Hoop felt almost sorry for them.
The one in the middle bent to the ground and seemed to take a long, deep sniff of the blood trail there. Ripley’s blood trail. Then it hissed, a purposeful sound very different from the wails of grief, and the other two creatures also bent to the trail.
Got her scent now, Hoop thought. Sorry, Ripley, but if there’s anyone we have to leave behind…
He wasn’t serious. Not for a moment. But the aliens’ reactions set his own blood chilling. They hissed again, louder than before. They crouched and spread their limbs, adopting stances that suddenly made them look even more deadly.
Hoop started climbing back up the steps. They still had their backs to him, but they only had to turn a quarter circle to see him. They would be on him in two bounds, and even if he had a chance to fire the charge-blaster, the delay on the charge meant he’d be dead before it blew.
He wished he’d brought his spray gun, too.
He made the top of the steps, braced himself, checked that the route behind him was clear. Then he paused at the fold in the wall and aimed the charge thumper up at the ceiling.
Four seconds, maybe five. Did that give him time? Would they be up the steps and through before the charge went? He didn’t think so. But he also didn’t think he had time to worry about it.
They had Ripley’s scent, and Ripley had come this way.
He pulled the trigger, and the last explosive charge thumped up into the ceiling.
From beyond, down in the ship, he heard three high-pitched shrieks, then the skittering of hard claws as the aliens came for him.
Hoop sidestepped up through the opening and onto the ship’s surface.
“Down there!” he said, shoving Ripley ahead of him, sliding down the gentle slope, and Lachance and Kasyanov pushed Sneddon the same way. They slid through the dust, and then from above and behind them came a dull, contained thud. Loud enough, though, to send echoes through the cavern.
Hoop came to a stop and looked back. Dust and smoke rose from the opening, but nothing else. No curved head, no sharp limb. Maybe, just maybe, fate had given them a break.
The blast was still echoing around the cave as they started across the ship’s surface toward the openings they could see in the vast wall. They negotiated their way over piles of tumbled rocks. Ripley found her feet, although she still clasped onto Hoop’s arm. Their combined lights offered just enough illumination to outline shadows and trip hazards, and the closer they came to the nearest opening, the more convinced Hoop became that the ship continued beyond the barrier. It was almost as if the vessel had struck the wall, and penetrated it upon landing.
Or crashing. They’d entered through a damaged portion of the ship’s hull, after all, where blast damage was still obvious after so long.
More rocks, and Hoop noticed for the first time that some of them seemed more regular than he’d realized. Square-edged, smooth. One of them displayed what might have been markings of some sort.
But there was no time to pause and wonder. No time to consider what the markings and the tumbled, regular blocks might mean. A wall? A building? It didn’t matter. A way out mattered, and from what Hoop could see, their best bet was through the nearest crack.
The mine wasn’t far above the cavern’s ceiling. He was sure of it. They were almost there.
“No sign of anything following us,” Lachance said.
“That’s what worries me,” Hoop said. “I think I’d rather see them than wonder where the fuck they are.”
“Yeah. Right.” Then Lachance nodded ahead. “What do you think?”
“I think we’ve got no choice.” They moved across the rubble field toward the opening in the cavern’s looming wall.
17
ANCIENTS
When he was a kid, Hoop’s parents took him to see the Incan ruins in Ecuador. He’d seen footage about them on the NetScreen, and read about them in the old books his parents insisted on keeping. But nothing had prepared him for the emotions and revelations he felt walking among those ancient buildings.
The sense of time, and timelessness, was staggering. He walked where other people had walked a thousand years before, and later he thought back to that moment as the first time mortality truly came knocking. It hadn’t troubled him unduly. But he’d realized that his visit to those ruins was as fleeting as an errant breeze, and would have as much effect as a leaf drifting in from the jungles and then vanishing again. The memory of his being there would float to the floor and rot away with that leaf, and fascinated visitors even a hundred years hence would have never heard of him.
It was humbling, but it was also strangely uplifting. We all have the same, he’d once heard someone say, one life. Even as a teenager more concerned with girls and football, that had struck him as deep and thoughtful. One life… it was up to him how well he lived it.