“Record the images,” Sneddon said.
“For later viewing pleasure?” Lachance asked, but no one replied. No time for humor, even if it was tinged with sarcasm.
“We’ll be back in a few minutes,” Hoop said. “Lachance, get the computer to categorize damage. I’ll prioritize when we get there, then we’ll pull together a work schedule. Baxter, has a distress signal gone out?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s the other fun bit,” Baxter said. “Some of the wreckage must have fucked the antenna array. So the computer says the signal is transmitting, but I don’t think it is.”
“Right. Great. Fucking wonderful.” Hoop shook his head. “Any meteors heading toward us? Black holes opening up? Anything else to worry about?”
“The bridge’s coffee carafe was smashed,” Powell said, his voice deep and deadly serious.
Hoop started laughing. By the time he got his hysteria under control, tears smeared the inside of his helmet’s visor.
By the time they reached the bridge, Kasyanov and Garcia had made their way back from the medical bay. The few personnel left aboard the Marion were either dead or sporting minor injuries, so there was little for them to do down there.
“It was creepy, just the two of us,” Garcia said. “So we shut everything down. Figured it would be safer up here, with everyone together.”
Just how safe that might be, Lachance revealed to them all.
“The only blessing is that the Delilah’s fuel core wasn’t compromised during the crash,” he said.
“So where is it?” Hoop asked.
Lachance was still in his pilot’s seat. “Out there somewhere,” he said, “floating around.” He waved his hand, a cigar clutched between two fingers. Hoop and most of the others hated the stink of the things. But with everything that had happened, it seemed almost comical to ask him to put it out.
“We saw plenty of wreckage close to the ship,” Welford said. “Maybe it was compromised and it’s just floating somewhere nearby, overheating and ready to blow.”
“In which case, c’est la vie,” Lachance said. “Unless you want to throw on a suit and take a space walk.” Welford looked away, and Lachance smiled. “And anyway, we have more immediate concerns—things we can do something about.”
“The Samson?” Powell asked.
Hoop looked at the screens. The interior of the dropship was unchanged: shadows. Shadows flickered, Jones shook. They all wanted to turn it off, but Hoop had insisted keeping it on. They needed to know.
Lachance shrugged.
“We have to consider that safe, for now. But the sensors have identified atmosphere leaks in five blast doors, which probably means another five we don’t know about. Decks five and six have vented completely into space, and the damage will need to be isolated and repaired. The chunk of the Delilah that’s caught onto the ruin of the docking bays needs freeing and sending on its way. Otherwise it’ll cause more damage.”
“And the Marion’s positioning?” Hoop asked.
“Decaying. I’m… not sure there’s much we can do about it. The crash has damaged more of the ship than we can see. I suspect there’s some severe structural trauma. And it appears as if both fuel cell coolant systems have been damaged.”
“Oh, great,” Powell said.
“How bad?” Hoop asked.
“That’s something that needs checking manually,” Lachance said. “But there’s more. Heaven has been corrupted.”
“What with?” Hoop asked. His heart sank. Heaven was their bio pod, a small but lush food-growing compound in the Marion’s nose section, where many of the miners and crew went for their green therapy. After years in space—and working down in the sterile, sandblasted hell of LV178—the sight of a carrot head or a wall of green beans did more than any drug cocktail to alleviate depression.
“I’m not sure yet,” Lachance said. “Jordan was the one who…”
Lucy loved her gardening, Hoop thought. They’d made love in Heaven once, down on the damp soil with only the fruit trees and vegetable patches bearing witness.
“We have dried foods,” Hoop said. “Is the water storage undamaged?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“Okay, then.” He looked around at the remainder of Marion’s crew. They were all shocked by how quickly and badly everything had gone to shit. But they were also hard, adaptable people, used to living with constant dangers and ready to confront the impossible to survive. “Welford, Powell, get the full damage report from Lachance and prioritize. We’ll need help. All of you can use spanners and push welding kit.”
“But there’s something else to do first,” Baxter said.
“Yep. And that’s down to me. I’ll record the distress signal, then you do everything you can to make sure it’s sent.”
Looking across Baxter’s control panel, Hoop’s gaze rested on the screen that was still showing the Samson’s interior. Jones’s shoulder and head was the only thing moving, shivering in the bottom left corner. Beyond lay the motionless shadows of dead people. Sitting beside them, those small, indistinct aliens.
“And I think you can turn that off,” Hoop said. “For now.”
3
RIPLEY
PROGRESS REPORT:
To: Weyland-Yutani Corporation, Science Division
(Ref: code 937)
Date (unspecified)
Transmission (pending)
Distress signal received. Sufficiently relevant to divert.
Expected travel time to LV178:
Current speed: 4,423 days.
Full speed: 77 days.
Fuel inventory: 92%
Initiating thrust.
She dreams of monsters.
Sharp, black, chitinous, sleek, vicious, hiding in shadows and pouncing, seeding themselves in people she loved—her ex-husband, her sweet daughter—and then bursting forth in showers of far too much blood. They expand too quickly, as if rapidly brought in close from distances she can barely comprehend. And as they are drawn nearer through the voids of deep space they are growing, growing—the size of a ship, a moon, a planet, and then larger still.
They will swallow the universe, and yet they will still leave her alive to witness its consumption.
She dreams of monsters, stalking the corridors of her mind and wiping faces from memory before she can even remember their names.
In between these dreams lies a simple void of shadows. But it offers no respite, because there is always a before to mourn, and an after to dread.
When she starts to wake at last, Ripley’s nightmares scuttle back into the shadows and begin to fade away. But only partly. Even as light dawns across her dreams, the shadows remain.
Waiting.
“Dallas,” Ripley said.
“What?”
She smacked her lips together, tried to cough past her dry throat, and realized that it couldn’t be. Dallas was dead. The alien had taken him.
The face before her was thin, bearded, and troubled. Unknown.
He stared at her.
“Dallas, as in Texas?” he asked.
“Texas?” Her thoughts were a mess. A stew of random memories, some of which she recognized, some she did not. She struggled to pull them together, desperate for a clue as to who and where she was. She felt disassociated from her body. Floating impressions trying to find a home, her physical self a cold, loose thing over which she had no control.