In response to his actions servomotors whirred and a smal turret came to life on the personnel carrier's roof. It spun in a half circle. The alien holding Gorman two-thirds of the way out of the vehicle turned sharply in the direction of the new sound just as twin guns fired in its direction. The heavy shells blew it right off the top of the machine, the impact knocking it clear before the acid in its body began to spill.
Burke dragged the unconscious Gorman back inside while Vasquez hunted for something to plug the opening with.
Trailing fire and smoke, the APC tore up the ramp. Ripley wrestled with the controls as the big vehicle slewed sideways broadsiding a control room outbuilding. Office furniture and splintered sections of wall exploded in all directions, forming a wake of plastic and composite fibre behind the retreating machine.
Almost clear now, almost out. Another minute or two, and if nothing broke down, they'd be free of the station's confines Free to.
An alien arm arced down right in front of her face to smash the shatterproof windshield. Glistening, slime-coated jaws lunged inside. Ripley threw up both arms to shield her face and leaned away. Once before, she'd been this close to perdition. In the shuttle Narcissus, secure in its pilot's seat luring another alien close so that she could blow it out the airlock. But there was no airlock here, no comforting atmosphere suit enclosing her, no tricks left to pull, and no time to think of any.
She tried to crush the brakes underfoot. The big wheels locked up at high speed, screeching over the sound of the chaos outside. She felt herself being thrown forward, her head flying toward those gaping jaws. But her seat harness checked her motion and kept her in the chair.
No such restraints secured the alien. Leaning over the windshield, it was clinging awkwardly to the edge of the roof and not even its inhuman strength could prevent it from being thrown forward. As soon as it landed on the ground she threw the personnel carrier back in gear. It didn't even bump as it trundled over the skeletal body, crushing it beneath its massive weight. Acid squirted over armoured wheels, but the APC's forward movement carried it clear before more than a few inconsequential pits had been eaten in the spinning disks Their movement was not affected.
Darkness ahead. Clean, welcoming darkness. Not a blank falling over her mind but the darkness of a dimly lit world: the surface of Acheron, framed by the walls of the station. A moment later they were through, rumbling over the connecting causeway toward the landing field.
A noise like bolts dropped in a food processor was coming from the rear of the APC. Occasionally a louder clunk could be heard. It was a sound beyond the soothing effects of lubrication, beyond repair. She fiddled with controls and tried to adjust the noise out of existence, but like her recurring nightmares, it refused early dismissal.
Hicks came forward and, gently but firmly, eased her fingers off the accelerator control. Her face was as white as her knuckles. She blinked, glanced back up at him.
'It's okay,' he assured her, 'we're clear. They're all behind us I don't think fighting out in the open suits them. Ease up We're not going much further in this hunk of junk, anyway.'
The grinding noise was overpowering as they slowed. She listened intently as she brought the big vehicle to a halt.
'Don't ask me for an analysis. I'm an operator, not a mechanic.'
Hicks cocked an ear in the direction of the metallic gargling 'Sounds like a blown transaxle. Maybe two. You're just grinding metal. Actually I'm surprised that the underside of this baby isn't lying back on B-level somewhere. They build these things tough.'
'Not tough enough.' That was Burke's voice, filtering up to them from somewhere in the passenger compartment.
'Nobody expected to have to face anything like these creatures. Ever.' Hicks leaned toward the console and rotated an exterior viewer. The APC looked terrible on the outside, a smoking, acid-scarred hulk. It was supposed to be invulnerable. Now it was scrap.
Ripley spun her seat, glanced at the empty one next to her and then turned to stare down the aisle that led back through the personnel carrier.
'Newt. Where's Newt?'
A tug on her pants leg. Not hard, so she didn't jump. Newt was squeezed into the tiny space between the driver's seat and the APC's armoured bulkhead. She was trembling and terrified but alert. No catatonia this time, no withdrawal from reality No reason for an extreme reaction, Ripley knew. Doubtless the girl had been witness to much worse when the aliens had overwhelmed the colony.
Had she been watching the Operations bay monitors when the soldiers had initially penetrated the alien cocoon chamber? Had she seen the face of the woman who had whispered in agony to Dietrich? What if the woman had been. '
But she couldn't have been. If that had been Newt's mother the girl would be beyond catatonia by now. Gone, withdrawn and unreachable, perhaps forever.
'You okay?' Sometimes inanities had to be asked. Besides she wanted, needed, to hear the child respond.
Newt did so with a thumbs-up gesture, still employing selective silence as a defence mechanism. Ripley didn't push her to talk. Keeping quiet while everyone around her was being killed had kept her alive.
'I have to check on the others,' she told the upturned face 'Will you be all right?'
A nod this time, accompanied by a shy little smile that made Ripley swallow hard. She tried to conceal what she was feeling inside, because this wasn't the time or place to break down. They could do that when they were safely back aboard the Sulaco.
'Good. I'll be right back. If you get tired of staying under there, you can come back and join the rest of us, okay?' The smile widened slightly and was followed by a more vigorous nod but the girl stayed put. She still trusted her own instincts more than she trusted any adult. Ripley wasn't offended. She unbuckled herself and headed back down the aisle.
Hudson was standing off to one side inspecting his arm. The fact that he still had an arm showed that he'd only been lightly misted by the alien acid. He was reliving the last twenty minutes of his life, replaying every second over and over in his mind and not believing what he saw there. She could hear him muttering to himself.
'—I don't believe it. It didn't happen. It didn't happen, man.'
Burke tried to have a look at the injured comtech's arm, more curious than sympathetic. Hudson jerked away from the Company rep.
'I'm all right. Leave it!'
Burke pursed his lips, wanting to see but not willing to push 'Better let somebody take a look at it. Can't tell what the side effects are. Might be toxic.'
'Yeah? And if it is, I suppose you're going to check stores and break out an antidote in a couple of minutes, right? Dietrich's the medtech.' He swallowed and his anger faded. 'Was our medtech. Stinking bugs.'
Hicks was bending over the motionless Gorman, checking for a pulse. Ripley joined him.
'Anything?' she asked tightly.
'Heartbeat's slow but steady. He's breathing the same way. It's the same with the rest of his vital signs: slowed down but regular He's alive. If I didn't know better, I'd say he was sleeping, but it ain't sleep. I think he's paralyzed.'
Vasquez pushed both of them aside and grabbed the unconscious lieutenant by his collar. She was too furious to cry 'He's dead is what he is!' She hauled the upper half o Gorman's body upright with one hand and drew back the other in a fist, screaming in his face.
'Wake up, pendejo! Wake up. I'm gonna kill you, you useless waste!'
Hicks inserted his bulk between her and the frozen lieutenant. Same soft voice employed, but with a slight edge to it now. Same hard eyes staring into the smartgun operator's face.