Alien Read online

  He considered going back. Throwing up in an EVA suit wasn’t a pleasant prospect. The least disgusting likelihood was the harmless but still gross notion of having the puke just sit in your helmet, right by your nose, until you got back to real air. The worst case, of course, was aspirating the vomit and then dying.

  Just a few more steps…

  Reaching out, he touched a blue light shining at the center of the console. All at once, the light died. He glanced at the scanner, and found that it no longer read the beacon. The nausea abated, and the ringing went away.

  “The beacon’s stopped—” he began.

  “Marlow, you’ve got to see this!” Foster said, cutting him off. “It’s amazing!”

  Momentarily distracted by her enthusiasm, Marlow turned and walked carefully back down the catwalk toward the bell-shaped exit. Crossing the floor of the huge flight deck, he arrived back at the winch. It was humming with life, and Meeks was staring down into the chamber below. When he looked up, Marlow could see his grin clearly through the EVA helmet. In the stark shadows cast by the spotlight, the expression was downright macabre.

  “This place just keeps on giving,” Meeks said. “C’mon, strap yourself in.” He handed the winch’s hook over to Marlow, who attached the carabiner to the belt of his EVA suit. Stepping into the hole, he felt the line go taut.

  As Meeks lowered him down slowly into the under-chamber, he found himself covered in a soggy blanket of humidity. The EVA suit was supposed to keep them safe from extreme temperatures. It had done just fine outside and in the rest of the ship—but down here? Even the suit couldn’t keep out the cloying heat.

  “Well, this is gross,” he muttered.

  More than ever the walls were curved down here, and the floor had the same ribbed quality that everything on the damn ship seemed to have. Beneath that he found a trench than ran the length of a large chamber. Even through the foggy gloom he could see row after row of oval shapes.

  When Marlow was a kid, on one of those rare occasions when his parents did something nice for him, they took a trip to a museum in Europe somewhere—he couldn’t remember where, exactly. They had an exhibit of fancy eggs. Jewel-encrusted, painstakingly preserved, they were some of the most beautiful things ten-year-old Henry Marlow had ever seen.

  When I’m rich, I’m gonna own one of those, he’d thought to himself back then.

  Now, looking across a massive chamber that was full of such shapes—albeit much larger—he felt a ripple of anticipation. These were alien artifacts. These were his eggs. He could name his own damn price for these things, and best of all, they were portable! He had no idea how to salvage the alien tech or the turret, cockpit, whatever-the-fuck-it-was, but these things? These he could carry back to the Anesidora.

  Visions of the vineyard dancing in his head, he clambered down to the lower level and joined Meeks and Foster. They were both motionless, peering intently at the objects. Mist surrounded them, and a vague blue light seemed to come from the floor. Or deck, since this was technically part of the ship. Or maybe it was a cavern beneath the ship. At this point, Marlow’s sense of scale had gone out the window.

  Each egg had a sheen on it, and out of the corner of his eye Marlow swore he saw one of them move.

  Could they still be alive?

  The idea seemed ridiculous. The ship had been there for a very long time, as the desiccated pilot proved. Surely the eggs would have hatched a long time ago—or died. Yet if they hadn’t…

  Alien life forms. And live ones, not the dead fossil upstairs.

  As if on cue, the moving egg started to shake.

  The top of it split open, peeling back like a banana.

  Foster leaned in close to take a look. Marlow and Heyst were right behind her. Inside the egg was a gooey mass that Marlow thought looked like an oyster with a pituitary problem.

  “See if you can—” he started to say.

  She reached for it.

  A squelching noise, a screeching howl, and a giant bony thing just burst from the egg and attached itself to Foster’s helmet. It looked like a spider, or a scorpion, and it dripped with a disgusting, viscous slime.

  “Foster!” he cried out as she fell backward to the mist-enshrouded floor. He heard the sound of shattering glass.

  Or maybe that was just his heart.

  The bony thing was about the same size as her helmet. It had broken through—that was the broken-glass sound—and attached itself to his wife’s face. He wasn’t sure if she could even breathe!

  “Foster!” he cried again. “Jesus Christ, Foster!”

  All thoughts of food and grapes and vineyards and great wealth fled his mind, for those things were pointless if he didn’t have Foster to share them with. He grabbed the creature, tugging at it with all the strength he could muster, but it had dug its sharp pincers into her skin and wouldn’t relinquish its grip.

  “Get her back to the ship,” Marlow said, stubbornly refusing to let go.

  “Marlow, the quaran—” Heyst started, but Marlow didn’t want to hear it.

  “Help me get her back to the goddamn ship right fucking now!”

  PART ONE:

  DETERMINATION

  SEEGSON TECHNOLOGIES CLIENT PRESENTATION

  “WORKING JOE” ANDROIDS

  SEVASTOPOL STATION

  MAY 2137

  WELCOME TO THE BUZZING HEART OF THE SEVASTOPOL SYNTHETIC SOLUTION. NEXT UP ON YOUR TOUR WILL BE THE SYSTECH SPIRE AND THE APOLLO CORE ITSELF. BUT FIRST, AN EXAMPLE OF ANDROID SELF-GOVERNANCE.

  WHEN APOLLO’S SYNTHETICS REQUIRE A LITTLE MORE CARE THAN THE REPAIR WARDS CAN PROVIDE, THEY COME HERE. WE BELIEVE THIS IS THE FIRST ROLLOUT OF FULLY-AUTOMATED SYNTHETIC-TO-SYNTHETIC MEDICAL INTERVENTION. NO HUMAN EXPERTISE REQUIRED. NO COSTLY HUMAN SURGICAL TRAINING. ALL DATA IS STREAMED DIRECTLY FROM APOLLO, AND EVERY INCISION IS RECORDED IN ITS LOGS.

  THIS IS THE FUTURE.

  TOMORROW, TOGETHER!

  4

  TRANQUILITY BASE, LUNA

  NOVEMBER 2137

  “Excuse me, Sergeant, have you seen Zula—er, Private Hendricks?”

  The sergeant to whom Amanda Ripley posed the question had the name Messeret stenciled on his green fatigues right over his heart. He was striding past the Marine barracks. Amanda had come there expecting to meet Zula for lunch, but the barracks were empty—which was unusual in and of itself.

  “Last time I saw the private was this morning,” he replied, “right before she boarded a transport vessel.”

  “She went on a mission?” Amanda’s eyes widened. “Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “I would imagine it’s because you’re a civilian, and don’t have any business knowing the comings and goings of military personnel.” Sergeant Messeret stared at her with the disdain people in specialty fields always had for people who weren’t in those fields.

  “I don’t expect to know her comings and goings, Sergeant,” she replied, frowning with irritation. “I just expected her to have the decency to cancel our lunch date. Guess I forgot that Marines aren’t trained in manners.”

  “That supposed to be a joke?” Messeret moved in toward her, his shoulders forward, his muscles tense. He was armed—Amanda could see the M4A3 nine-millimeter service pistol holstered at his side—and could easily overpower her if he decided to go that route.

  Amanda flinched. “Or trained in sarcasm, either.” She straightened, and refused to back down. If Messeret got it into his head to raise a hand to her, or a weapon—well, it wouldn’t be any different if she backed off or stood her ground. And backing off had never gotten her anywhere.

  Then again, neither had standing up for herself.

  If she was going to go down, though, it was going to be fighting. Dammit.

  For a moment Messeret just loomed over her, breathing heavily. She could smell the sugary odor of those shitty pastries the Marine mess always served. She shoved her jaw out and stared at him.

  Finally, he stepped back. “Well, Hendricks is gone. So you don
’t have any business here. Move along.”

  Saluting sloppily, Amanda said, “Yes, sir, Mr. Soldier, sir!” Then she turned on her heel, letting a smile play across her features. One thing she’d learned from her nascent friendship with Private First-Class Zula Hendricks of the Colonial Marines was that the best way to piss off a Marine was to call him a “soldier.”

  That was for the Army.

  As she walked toward the exit her irritation subsided. Truth be told, she was happy for Zula. Amanda had first met the woman in the infirmary here on Tranquility Base, where the private was undergoing rehabilitation for a spinal injury. They’d shared a few meals, and during her rehab Zula had shadowed Amanda on some of her gigs, mostly just to get out of the damn infirmary. She’d been a big help to Amanda when that asshole Brodsky nearly got five people killed.

  But if Zula was mission ready, it meant her rehab was finally over.

  Good for her.

  It was nice to see someone get good news for a change.

  Heading over to the food court, she grabbed some venison lo mein that smelled like old tires, and beet rice that was roughly the consistency of overcooked oatmeal. Whipping out her NohtPad, she found two messages from her stepfather—which she trashed just like she had all the others—and a reminder that the next item up on her maintenance schedule was the repair of the Lagdamen engine.

  This was why she’d wanted to have lunch with Zula. The Lagdamen X34 Land Buggy was a useless piece of shit. It broke down constantly, but Tranquility had a contract with Lagdamen to provide the vehicles they used for travel across the lunar surface. Since coming to Luna, she’d spent more time fixing Lagdamens than doing anything else. She’d wanted to vent to her friend, and since Zula had shadowed her on a Lagdamen repair gig, she knew she could commiserate with the Marine.

  Another alert hit Amanda’s NohtPad as she finished her meal. It was a vid from her boss, Dmitriy Slavashevich. She played it back.

  “When you go to repair the Lagdamen, there’ll be a B-7 from Hsu-Chao that needs an overhaul,” he said. “Please do not touch the B-7. A certified master engineer needs to do those repairs, so Alvarez will get the assignment.”

  Sonofa—

  On the screen he held up a hand. “And before you complain, I remind you that I’m well aware you are capable of overhauling a B-7, and that you likely could overhaul the B-7 faster and more efficiently than Alvarez. However, if the repair is not done by a master engineer, a whole slew of Hsu-Chao lawyers will destroy us for allowing unqualified personnel to operate their machinery. So leave it alone and fix the Lagdamen.”

  Amanda mustered the effort she needed to keep from throwing the NohtPad across the food court. All that stopped her was the fact that she couldn’t afford to replace it.

  Instead she sat there, thinking about what Dmitriy had said. At least he’d had the good grace to sound apologetic. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t been able to afford the proper certifications.

  It wasn’t her fault that—

  She cut off that line of thought. Regrets were for people who could afford them. She couldn’t even afford an edible meal.

  After washing down the gamey lo mein and the mushy rice with a flat seltzer, she headed to the engineering bay. After all, the Lagdamen wasn’t going to fix itself.

  When she arrived at the shop, she looked at the B-7 sitting invitingly across the room. The B-7 was a better machine than the B-6, and leaps and bounds ahead of the disaster area that was the B-5. She would have loved to have gotten her hands on the B-7 and seen what made it purr—but no, Alvarez got to do that.

  He’ll probably fuck it up, she thought, and then they’ll send it back and he’ll have to fix it again. That means Dmitriy can bill them twice. The sneaky bastard.

  Turning away from the B-7, she put on a pot of coffee. While it brewed she started work on the Lagdamen. Kneeling down in front of it, she opened the central hatch, only to discover that the manifold had cracked. Again. It was a simple enough welding job, one she could do in her sleep. She was tempted to forego the coffee and see if she could do it in her sleep, but that thought was fleeting.

  Even if it was shit work that was beneath her ability—if not her pay grade—she would do it well, dammit. Not everyone was as hidebound as Hsu-Chao when it came to certifications, and as long as she kept up her rep for doing good work, she’d stand a chance of working better jobs. Maybe even tune up someone else’s B-7.

  As long as they didn’t hold the past against her.

  Grabbing her Mazursky D-121 welder, she pulled the pack strap over her head, settling it on her shoulders, positioning the welder’s power source on her back. She placed the helmet strap atop her head and yanked the metal mask down to protect her face.

  Let’s get this shit over with.

  * * *

  Just as she was finishing putting the manifold back together, a voice came from the doorway behind her, loud enough to be heard over the Mazursky.

  “Ripley?”

  At first she figured it was Dmitriy, but the accent was wrong. Shutting the welder down, she lifted her helmet and turned.

  The figure in the doorway was too tall to be Dmitriy and too skinny to be Alvarez. He wore a green jumpsuit, but it was clean and pressed, which meant he probably wasn’t one of the regular staff on Tranquility. Or, if he was, he was higher up than the people with whom she usually dealt.

  “I’m Samuels,” he said. “I work for the company.”

  Great, a Weyland-Yutani drone. Wordlessly, she knelt back down, lowered her helmet, and continued her work. She was almost done, and she didn’t want to hear what someone from the company had to say. Certainly whatever this Samuels dink had on his mind wasn’t something that was worth delaying what she was doing.

  “It’s about your mother!”

  She turned off the Mazursky.

  “We think we may have found her, Amanda.”

  * * *

  “Your eleventh birthday. I’ll be back for that, and I’ll buy you the best present ever.”

  “What kind of present?”

  “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?”

  * * *

  Mom hadn’t fulfilled that promise. The Nostromo had been missing for a decade and a half.

  “I’ll be back for that.”

  She removed her helmet. Pushing some greasy parts aside, she put it on a cluttered worktable and stared at Samuels, making it clear that he now had her full attention. Speaking at a normal volume, now that the Mazursky was off, he continued.

  “A commercial vessel, the Anesidora, has recovered what we believe to be the flight recorder unit of the Nostromo.”

  Amanda turned her head and looked away. They hadn’t found Ellen Ripley. They hadn’t even found the Nostromo. It was another tease, another piece of junk that may or may not have belonged to her mother’s ship.

  “Where?” she asked, her enthusiasm dimmed.

  “Zeta Reticuli.”

  At least this was within the reasonable search radius. “What did it tell you?” she asked as she moved toward the coffee maker.

  “We don’t know. The unit was taken to Sevastopol Station.”

  “Another piece of the true cross,” she muttered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  As she poured him a mug of coffee, she said, “Couple years ago, someone told me that in the Middle Ages, people used to sell pieces of wood that they would claim were pieces of the cross that Jesus Christ was supposed to have been crucified on. But if you took all those pieces of the true cross and put them together, they’d make a cross as big as Europe.” She handed Samuels the mug of coffee.

  He took it. “Thank you. Until we actually travel to Sevastopol we won’t know whether it’s legitimate or not. Of course, it’s proprietary material, so the company wants it to be collected as soon as possible. Sevastopol’s a supply depot in the region, it’s a permanent freepo—”

  “I know what it is.” Amanda took a sip of her coffee, and not
iced that Samuels hadn’t actually drunk from his mug. Nor did he seem bothered by her interruption.

  “Transit’s arranged,” he said. “There’s a courier ship called the Torrens heading out that way in two days. We’re going to travel out t—”

  Again Amanda interrupted. “‘We’?”

  “Me, and another executive.”

  Amanda sighed, wondering why he was telling her all this. It wasn’t even a guarantee—just some commercial carrier claiming to have something of interest. She’d serviced tons of salvage vessels over the years, and their captains were notorious for exaggerating, at best. Lying their asses off at worst.

  Then Samuels dropped the other boot. “And you, if you’re willing.”

  She almost dropped her coffee. She set it down.

  He continued. “I’ve been cleared to offer you a place on the Torrens, if you want to come along. Maybe there’ll be some closure for you.”

  Before she could stop herself, Amanda sneered at the company man. “I gave up on closure a long time ago, Mr. Samuels.” She gestured around them. “And I have a job here—one I can’t really afford to give up for however long it’ll take the Torrens to get out to Sevastopol and back.”

  “That’s not an issue,” Samuels said calmly. “You have had a standing job offer from the company since you turned eighteen.”

  Amanda snorted. She’d had enough of Weyland-Yutani charity as a kid. As an adult, she preferred to make her own way, rather than take the easy way out—the way the company wanted.

  Samuels continued. “You’ll be listed as a consultant for the duration of the mission. We will pay you a rate that is twice what you’re getting from Mr. Slavashevich for these menial engineering tasks.” He stepped forward. She flinched at first, but he showed none of the menace that Sergeant Messeret had displayed. “Look, Ripley, when this job came across my desk, I read the case history. I know you’ve been searching for your mother for a long time. I also know that you’ve taken on jobs that are far beneath your skill set.”