Alien - Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson E-Book

Pat Cadigan

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The first-draft Alien screenplay by William Gibson, the founder of cyberpunk, turned into a novel by Pat Cadigan, the Hugo Award-Winning "Queen of Cyberpunk." Winner of the Scribe Award for best adapted novel. The Sulaco—on its return journey from LV-426—enters a sector controlled by the "Union of Progressive Peoples," a nation-state engaged in an ongoing cold war and arms race. U.P.P. personnel board the Sulaco and find hypersleep tubes with Ripley, Newt, and an injured Hicks. A Facehugger attacks the lead commando, and the others narrowly escape, taking what remains of Bishop with them. The Sulaco continues to Anchorpoint, a space station and military installation the size of a small moon, where it falls under control of the military's Weapons Division. Boarding the Sulaco, a team of Colonial Marines and scientists is assaulted by a pair of Xenomorph drones. In the fight Ripley's cryotube is badly damaged. It's taken aboard Anchorpoint, where Ripley is kept comatose. Newt and an injured Corporal Hicks are awakened, and Newt is sent to Gateway Station on the way to Earth. The U.P.P. sends Bishop to Anchorpoint, where Hicks begins to hear rumors of experimentation—the cloning and genetic modification of Xenomorphs. The kind of experimentation that could yield a monstrous hybrid, and perhaps even a Queen. ALIEN 3 TM & © Twentieth Century Films. All rights reserved.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

The Complete Alien Library from Titan Books The Official Movie Novelizations by Alan Dean Foster

Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE COMPLETE ALIEN LIBRARY FROM TITAN BOOKSTHE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS by Alan Dean Foster:

ALIEN

ALIENS™

ALIEN 3

ALIEN: COVENANT

ALIEN: COVENANT ORIGINS

ALIEN: RESURRECTION BY A.C. CRISPIN

ALIEN: OUT OF THE SHADOWS BY TIM LEBBON

ALIEN: SEA OF SORROWS BY JAMES A. MOORE

ALIEN: RIVER OF PAIN BY CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE BY ALEX WHITE

ALIEN: ISOLATION BY KEITH R.A. DECANDIDO

ALIEN: PROTOTYPE BY TIM WAGGONER

ALIEN: INTO CHARYBDIS BY ALEX WHITE

ALIEN 3: THE UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY BY WILLIAM GIBSON AND PAT CADIGAN

THE RAGE WAR BY TIM LEBBON:

PREDATOR™: INCURSION

ALIEN: INVASION

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR™: ARMAGEDDON

ALIENS: BUG HUNT EDITED BY JONATHAN MABERRY

ALIENS: PHALANX BY SCOTT SIGLER

ALIENS: INFILTRATOR BY WESTON OCHSE

AvP: ANNIHILATION BY JOHN SHIRLEY

THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 1

BY STEVE AND STEPHANI PERRY

THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 2

BY DAVID BISCHOFF AND ROBERT SHECKLEY

THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 3

BY SANDY SCHOFIELD AND S.D. PERRY

THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 4

BY YVONNE NAVARRO AND S.D. PERRY

THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS, VOLUME 5

BY MICHAEL JAN FRIEDMAN AND DIANE CAREY

THE COMPLETE ALIENS VS. PREDATOR OMNIBUS, VOLUME 1

BY STEVE PERRY AND S.D. PERRY

ALIEN: 40 YEARS 40 ARTISTS

ALIEN: THE ARCHIVE

ALIEN: THE BLUEPRINTS BY GRAHAM LANGRIDGE

ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY

BY ARCHIE GOODWIN AND WALTER SIMONSON

ALIENS: THE SET PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMON WARD

THE ART OF ALIEN: ISOLATION BY ANDY MCVITTIE

THE ART AND MAKING OF ALIEN: COVENANT BY SIMON WARD

ALIEN COVENANT: THE OFFICIAL COLLECTOR’S EDITION

ALIEN COVENANT: DAVID’S DRAWINGS

BY DANE HALLETT AND MATT HATTON

THE MAKING OF ALIEN BY J.W. RINZLER

ALIENS—ARTBOOK BY PRINTED IN BLOOD

ALIEN NEXT DOOR BY JOEY SPIOTTO

JONESY: NINE LIVES ON THE NOSTROMO BY RORY LUCEY

ALIEN: THE COLORING BOOK

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ALIEN 3™ : THE UNPRODUCEDSCREENPLAY BY WILLIAM GIBSON

Print edition ISBN: 9781789097528

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789097535

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: August 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

© 2021 Twentieth Century Studios.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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This one is for William Gibson, of course,true friend, a brilliant mindAnd the rest of the Mirrorshades crowd(In order of appearance on theMirrorshades Table of Contents):

Bruce Sterling

Tom Maddox

Rudy Rucker

Marc Laidlaw

James Patrick Kelly

Greg Bear

Lewis Shiner

John Shirley

Paul DiFilippo

(Pro-tip: If you’re looking for the only woman’sname, it’s on the title page of this book)

Like everything else I do, this is alsofor the Original Chris FowlerAlways the most interesting person in the room

1

Homo sapiens had been gazing up at the stars for about three hundred millennia before they finally managed to launch themselves off the planet of their origin toward those countless points of light. It was nowhere nearly as long before interstellar space travel became as matter-of-fact as the daily commute on the freeway had been for previous generations.

By that time, humanity had been through many changes but certain things were perennial: humanity’s restless curiosity, competitive spirit, and stubborn territoriality, which had so often caused hostilities among themselves. Then humans made contact with other intelligent species and discovered to their uncomfortable surprise that as a civilization newly capable of space travel, they had an awful lot to learn, mostly about distance.

The standard for planet-dwellers was miles or kilometers. In space, however, the distances were so enormous they were measured in terms of light-speed, ranging from the light-year all the way down to the light-second. Humanity found that the old organizational models that had, in one form or another, guided the development of civilization on Earth didn’t hold up at such a large scale.

One of the biggest adjustments for humankind was in the area of conflict-resolution. For most planet-based societies, it was business as usual—war, then peace, then war, then peace, interspersed with diplomacy or political chicanery, depending.

War in space, however, just wasn’t possible. In the time it took for opposing forces to meet for combat, circumstances on their respective sides had changed and they had no reason to fight. This was due in part to the fact that although space travel had become easier, it still wasn’t cheap. In general, no government could afford, much less condone, the expense of sending out a fleet of warships just to have them destroyed.

Nor did it make sense to fight over territory when there was more than enough to go around. Even in the remote arm of the Milky Way where Earth was located, there was a plethora of unclaimed worlds where humans could plant a flag. Many of the planets needed terraforming but there was no shortage of technology or volunteers for new colonies, either in search of adventure or simply because they wanted a fresh start on a new world.

The colonists on LV-426 were all first-wavers, i.e. terraformers who were in the process of turning a rock into a not-so-hard place. LV-426 was actually a planetoid in stable orbit around an equally stable star. But its wealth of natural resources was the real appeal for its co-financiers. Both the American Extrasolar Colonization Administration and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation agreed that it would be worth every penny of their respective investments. Weyland-Yutani had been so confident, they had requested the colony be named Hadley’s Hope, in honor of their first administrator, Curtis Hadley.

Besides terraformers and environmentalists, the one hundred and fifty residents of Hadley’s Hope also included research scientists, engineers, geologists, and warm bodies for manual labor, along with their families and a full complement of medics, nutritionists, educators, and other support personnel. Working continuously around the clock, they produced a breathable atmosphere in under forty years, breaking the previous record of fifty-nine years. Hadley’s Hope became the prime example of how a partnership between a governmental body and a corporation in the private sector could yield a success that both could be proud of, a brilliant jewel in their two-headed crown.

Or it had been, until that awful woman suddenly popped up out of nowhere after being in cold-sleep for forty-seven years claiming there were monsters on LV-426. Some grotesque creature had supposedly killed all her crewmates on a freighter called the Nostromo where she’d been a warrant officer. With the rest of the crew dead, she’d been forced to abandon ship and blow it up, saving only the ship’s cat.

The crew had been killed but she’d saved the cat? Yeah, that could happen to anyone.

The crazy cat-lady had to be trouble. Right after she showed up, Weyland-Yutani lost all contact with the colonists—as if she’d jinxed them! A rescue party of Marines was sent out, taking the crazy cat-lady with them, and that was the end of the matter. There was no further mention in the general news outlets and the details faded from public awareness. Had anyone given it even a brief thought, it was with the assumption that the Colonial Marines had taken care of everything. They always did.

*   *   *

Four years later, the Union of Progressive Peoples border protection crew received an alert that a spacecraft was heading straight for them. If it continued on its course, it would enter the UPP sector in blatant violation of a treaty the unprincipled capitalists had sworn they would honor unfailingly, above all things.

Breaking promises was typical of capitalists. The UPP governing council were only surprised that it had taken them so long.

*   *   *

The Sulaco had departed for LV-426 with a squad of twelve Colonial Marines and the synthetic assigned to them, plus two civilians: a Weyland-Yutani bureaucrat, and the crazy cat-lady. When it reappeared four years later, there were only four passengers aboard, all in sleep capsules: one Marine, the now-forgotten crazy cat-lady, a nine-year-old girl who was the sole survivor of the Hadley’s Hope colony, and the Marines’ synthetic—or rather, what was left of him.

A human couldn’t have survived such catastrophic injuries; most synthetics wouldn’t have made it, either. But this was a particularly robust model, built for adverse conditions, skilled in the use of many different kinds of equipment, including weapons.

Unfortunately, none of these things had protected him from an enraged queen Xenomorph. But then, all the Marines’ skills, training, and weapons hadn’t done them much good, either.

And to make matters worse, it wasn’t over.

2

The plastic cocoon enveloping Bishop was more translucent than transparent, so even before milky-white condensation had occluded the inside of the sleep capsule, all he’d been able to see were vague shapes, and not even that much after the lights dimmed. He could barely discern the outline of the thing growing out of the ragged hole where his torso ended. But he didn’t have to see it to know what it was. He just didn’t know how it had come about.

This development didn’t line up with anything they had learned about the Xenomorphs. Apparently there was far more to this particular horror than they had ever suspected. The intelligent beings that had engineered this species were highly complex and even more deadly than their creation.

There was no doubt in Bishop’s mind that the Xenomorphs had been engineered. Humans had encountered plenty of aliens and the equally alien environments that had spawned them. On every world, Nature was a merciless and unforgiving force that had produced some pretty startling lifeforms. But Nature was also well-ordered; even the most vicious predator had an ecological raison d’être. This species’ behavior didn’t fit any known system.

The Xenomorphs weren’t territorial—they didn’t seem to possess the concept. For all Bishop knew, they didn’t even understand the idea of location, except in terms of a change in ambient conditions. No matter where they were, they were always in the same place: their killing ground.

Bishop filed that away for later study, although he had no idea if there would be a later for him. The Sulaco was so far off-course that by the time anyone found it, the growth sprouting from his innards might have already consumed the rest of him and adapted itself as necessary. It was the only known lifeform capable of such extreme, not to mention rapid, biological adaptation, all for the sake of its drive to kill.

As far as Bishop could tell, killing was the species’ first and only purpose. The simplicity was deceptive, something humans had rarely—if ever—encountered in any lifeform larger than a virus. Humans tended to equate “simplicity” with “simple,” which had caused them to underestimate the species’ capabilities and overestimate their own chances against it. There was little data on them because few people survived an encounter long enough to make any detailed notes, and those who did escape with their lives had little insight to offer beyond, Take off and nuke them from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

But the aliens weren’t just simple—they were pure.

*   *   *

The sound of the alarm was slightly muffled by the sleep capsule, but it was no less discordant and unpleasant. Something else had gone wrong, but for the moment Bishop didn’t know whether it was a few malfunctioning sensors on the cargo deck, or the hull starting to buckle from damage they hadn’t detected before going into cold-sleep.

Or rather, more damage, he thought. If his unwanted bedfellow was any indication, a great deal had escaped their notice.

Abruptly, the console nearest his row of sleep capsules activated and began to transmit a copy of the message currently scrolling slowly upward on the monitor to the incident log in Bishop’s neural net:

TROOP TRANSPORT SULACO

CMC 846A/BETA

STATUS RED

TREATY VIOLATION

REF # 99A655865

CAUSE: NAVIGATION ERROR

The alarm cut off and Bishop heard the bland, female voice of the ship’s security system addressing the empty air:

“Attention: this is a ship-wide notification. Due to a failure in the navigational system, the Sulaco has entered a sector claimed by the Union of Progressive Peoples. Auxiliary systems are now online and the course has been corrected. In the absence of Diplomatic Override, hardwired protocols prevent—repeat, prevent—arming of nuclear warheads. On the present, corrected course, the Sulaco will exit the UPP sector at 1900 hours, 58 minutes.”

A glitch in the navigational system wasn’t good news but it was preferable to imminent structural failure. Bishop was more concerned about the spoken announcement. With all of them in cold-sleep, there shouldn’t have been one. It could have been another glitch—there was never just one of anything, especially glitches. Or someone was up and moving around. Someone or something.

Bishop knew it couldn’t be any of the three humans. A capsule malfunction would have tripped a different alarm to wake all three of them, who wouldn’t have just left him like this. No, the surprise guest had to be a Xenomorph. Despite their size and eagerness to kill, they were incredibly skilled at concealing themselves.

The queen from LV-426 had stowed away in the dropship’s landing gear without triggering any alarms, then made its presence known by driving its tail through his chest and ripping him in two like a piece of paper. Now, in hindsight, he knew they’d been foolish to assume the queen had been alone, that Ripley’s forcing it out the airlock meant it was all over. But then, they’d all been more concerned about Corporal Hicks. He’d still been in a great deal of pain from acid-blood burns and Ripley had kept him conscious only long enough to brief him.

She’d had a harder time getting Newt into the sleep capsule. When Ripley told her it was safe to dream again, the girl had looked at her with a mix of hope and uncertainty, as if wanting so much for Ripley to be right, but not quite believing it.

Ripley had tried to be as gentle as possible when she had wrapped him in plastic and placed him in the capsule, even as he had assured her she wasn’t hurting him. Pain served the same purpose for a synthetic as for humans—i.e. a warning that something was wrong—but it wasn’t the same kind of physical sensation. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation but it wasn’t debilitating in and of itself; he could damp it down to the equivalent of background noise while he continued to function.

Being torn in half by a furious alien, however, exceeded all parameters of sensation. The pain utility had overloaded and was now completely offline. What resources were left in the ruins of his body were mostly concentrated on maintaining coherent mentation. He was programmed to continue as best he could until he had completed his mission, or his power ran out.

Ripley didn’t seem to understand this, probably because she wasn’t familiar with artificial persons made for hazardous duty. Or maybe she had simply been demonstrating that she had forgiven him for being synthetic.

It was too bad he’d been physically unable to do her the favor of putting her into cold-sleep. As traumatized as she was, she’d needed gentleness a lot more than he did. Then again, if he had been able to put her into the capsule, maybe she’d have something growing out of her midsection. And for all he knew, she did—perhaps all three of them did. There was no way to tell, no way to know if the humans were safe.

The only thing he did know was, there was never just one of anything.

His vision started to dim as his systems put him into standby to conserve his remaining energy. His last observation was that the coating on the inside of the capsule lid was becoming thicker.

3

At Rodina Station, first and only interstellar capital city and home of the Union of Progressive Peoples, four shifts of border-watch crews tracked the approach of the wandering spacecraft while making bets as to whether the pilot would actually have the stones to unlawfully violate UPP territory, or turn aside at the last moment.

If it were the former, would they send an SOS begging for help because life-support was failing and they were almost out of air? Rodina Station would have to take them in, of course—all governments and nations were bound by the Benevolent Civilizations Treaty, which made it mandatory to rescue travelers in distress, or face universal embargo. The UPP preferred to have no contact with decadent capitalists, but an interstellar space station couldn’t survive without trade.

Someone suggested the pilot might be one of those blustery libertarian-anarchist-sovereign persons who deliberately violated borders, refusing to recognize what they called bullshit authority because nations weren’t real, and nobody could own empty space. A rather exciting prospect for sure, but also highly unlikely—there weren’t many blustery libertarian-anarchist-sovereigns around anymore. Most of them were imprisoned by some bullshit authority that didn’t know it wasn’t real.

By contrast, the universe was absolutely infested with capitalists.

When the Sulaco finally entered UPP space, it did so without even a minimal hailing signal, as if no one aboard had any idea they were violating a treaty. It had been a hell of a long time since some entitled, money-worshipping, shopaholic capitalist had been so brazen. Maybe this was how they relieved their capitalist ennui—they went looking for trouble just to rouse themselves from the semi-conscious stupor brought on by compulsive consumerism.

The watch-crew on duty immediately hit the all-hands alert, effectively putting Rodina Station at DefCon 1 before they had any actual information on the errant spacecraft. Then the data came through, and the anticlimax was overwhelming. Worse, nobody won the pool.

Rodina’s intelligence division didn’t share their feelings. As an official Colonial Marines vessel, the Sulaco was a treasure trove of information that had drifted into their reach sheerly by chance. Shit happened, and sometimes it was good shit. Since it would only be accessible for limited period of time, they had to act fast.

*   *   *

The interceptor Rodina sent out to rendezvous with the Sulaco was an older model the manufacturer had replaced years ago, but it was hardly obsolete. The pilot made a perfect in-motion landing atop the Sulaco, directly above an airlock. He and his two-person crew had worked together before, gathering intelligence from sources not easily (or legally) accessible, under difficult circumstances.

This assignment wasn’t especially hazardous but the pressure was on. The ruling council hadn’t actually told them in so many words that they shouldn’t bother coming back without something of unprecedented significance, but they all got the message.

The commando in charge was an old-school warhorse with the old-school name of Boris, who said he was a direct descendant of the Bolsheviks who had overthrown the Russian government in the early twentieth century. A bold claim, but questionable—most of the Progressive Peoples at Rodina were of uncertain parentage. As well, pedigree was for animals, not humans, and thus not progressive. Still, everybody had quirks; his was harmless.

The commando in the number two spot was a young Vietnamese woman who had fetched up at Rodina some years earlier on a transport filled with an assortment of the rootless, the stateless, and the hopeless. Everyone, even the non-English speakers, called her Lucky. Explaining her surname was Luc and her given name was Hai was a lost cause—Occidental name order was standard at Rodina Station like it was almost everywhere else. Nor did she try correcting anyone’s pronunciation; the Progressive Peoples were as tone deaf as the capitalists they scorned.

In any case, she didn’t mind the name—more often than not, she was lucky. Not in the superficial way involving money or material goods, but in the important way: survival. Early in her young life, Luc Hai had learned that the key to good fortune was being observant. Bad things always happened, to the good and the not-so-good, to the innocent and the guilty, the just and the unjust. It was simply how the universe worked. But no matter who you were, where you were, or what happened to you, chance always favored the prepared mind.

The third member of the team was Ashok, and Luc Hai didn’t actually know very much about him beyond his name and his repertoire of skills. This wasn’t really unusual. Most people who came to Rodina Station didn’t share much about themselves. While chance favored the prepared mind, discretion was the better part of everything.

Even from a distance they could see that the vessel had sustained the sort of damage incurred in out-and-out warfare. The logo on its hull was scraped but still readable: Weyland-Yutani. It figured that the fascist military would fall under the aegis of the most corrupt operation in the galaxy.

Once the interceptor was securely attached to the trespassing spacecraft, they suited up and Boris opened the floor hatch to let Luc Hai into the airlock, closing it behind her so she could expel the air before opening the outer door. She attached a couple of decryption units to the Sulaco’s airlock, waiting with one hand pressed to the access so she could feel the vibrations as the units worked.

Nothing happened.

She looked up at Boris watching her through the small window of the inner door, and shook her head. He signaled Ashok, then gestured for her to wait. Fifteen seconds later, the airlock shuddered under her hand as it started to open. She gave Boris a thumbs-up, closed the interceptor’s outer door, and waited for him and Ashok to come through the airlock so they could enter the Sulaco together.

The ship’s gravity kicked in as the lights came up to reveal they were in the cargo hold. Luc Hai was first down the ladder to the deck. After a quick look around, she signaled Boris and Ashok that it was safe to follow. Radios would have made this so much easier, but the commanders-in-chief for field operations had decided no frequency could be made completely secure from eavesdroppers.

Luc Hai would have pointed out that sign language wasn’t completely secure, either, but at her present rank, she wasn’t qualified to offer criticism. All she could do was stay alert and hope she never got into a life-or-death situation with her hands full. At least the air was breathable so they could open their faceplates.

The commandos fanned out, weapons up and ready. With all the passengers in cold-sleep the place hadn’t seen any activity for a long time, but Luc Hai couldn’t shake the idea that something bad had happened here. The battered dropship secured to the deck a few meters away did nothing to allay her uneasiness.

Had there been some kind of armed conflict on LV-426? She couldn’t remember hearing anything, but Boris might. He was looking the ship over with great interest while taking care not to get too close.

Luc Hai took a step toward him, then froze as she felt something strange under her boot. She looked down but what she saw didn’t make sense.

The human legs lying twisted and broken on the deck were attached to a partial lower torso that appeared to have been torn from the rest of the body by sheer brute force. What was so powerful it could rip a person in two like flimsy cloth, and discarded the unwanted part like trash?

More importantly, was it still here?

Slightly less importantly, why was there powdered milk all over the remains? Or was it talcum powder?

No, she realized, it was dried-up robot-blood. There was an old joke about putting it in coffee, but she could never remember it because she didn’t drink coffee, and it wouldn’t be any funnier to her now—

Before her thoughts could pick up momentum, Boris and Ashok came over to see what she was looking at. Boris made a disgusted face and reminded them that time was short, the council was expecting a hell of a lot more than broken robot legs, and they had to find a way out of here to the rest of the Sulaco. She and Ashok dutifully obeyed, Ashok looking as spooked as she felt.

“Attention, please. This is a ship-wide security announcement.”

They all jumped. The female voice had no hint of urgency, nothing except a bland matter-of-factness.

“Breach detected”, it continued. “Security personnel are to proceed immediately, with full backup, to B Deck, Cargo Lock 3 to take appropriate action.”

The three of them stayed completely still, in case security personnel in the form of humans or robots actually showed up. After ten seconds of utter silence, the voice repeated the message. Luc Hai hoped they could figure out how to shut it off before it drove her crazy.

Boris beckoned to her and Ashok from the entrance to a dark passageway. He took a step in and waved one arm around, waking the motion sensors and turning on the light. That had to be a good sign, Luc Hai thought. If the motion sensors were still working, conditions aboard the ship couldn’t be too bad, and it was unlikely they’d come across anything worse than broken robot legs.

*   *   *

The announcement repeated only once more as they moved cautiously along the passageway. Probably triggered by movement, Luc Hai thought, and now that the security system no longer detected anything moving around on the deck, it assumed the situation had been resolved. Capitalist security was such a joke.

The passageway took them to the cold-sleep chamber. As soon as they entered, lights flickered on but only at half-strength. Luc Hai wanted to believe the passengers probably knew the lower setting would be easier on the eyes when they woke up, but she’d never been any good at lying to herself.

Her misgivings intensified as she looked around at all the empty capsules; their open lids gaped like sterile beaks. All, that was, except the first four capsules in the row nearest to where she was standing.

Gesturing for Ashok to have a look around the rest of the chamber, Boris moved slowly to the first occupied capsule. Luc Hai followed him, keeping her weapon up and ready.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the first three capsules: a woman, a little girl, and a Marine. Status lights on each one indicated they were functioning perfectly and the occupants all looked normal, although the Marine had sustained injuries to his face and upper body, burns of some sort. Bandages hid most of the damage, but he’d need treatment when he woke up.

The last capsule, however, was trouble. The condensation on the inside of the lid was the same milky-white as robot-blood, and Luc Hai didn’t think it was a coincidence. If the top half of the robot was in there, something had gone very, very wrong.

Luc Hai stood back as Boris attempted to pry the capsule open by forcing his gloved fingers under the edge of the lid. He wasn’t having much luck, and despite the bulky vacuum suit, his body language clearly indicated he didn’t want any help.

Fine with her, she didn’t want to help him—she wanted to stop him. But she knew better than to try. Boris didn’t react well to a subordinate questioning his actions. On the other hand, he’d react a lot less well if he had to leave his legs behind when they went home.

Letting out a frustrated growl, Boris punched the capsule. Luc Hai’s jaw dropped; Boris was often gruff but he was calm-gruff, not given to displays of temper and not tolerant of those who were. The impact instantly jolted him out of his anger fugue and back to himself.

He turned to her and gave a faint, embarrassed laugh. “That’s called ‘percussive mode.’ Learned it from an engineer.”

Luc Hai barely heard him. She was staring at the capsule, now slightly off-kilter on its base. The red and green status lights on the end flickered for a couple of seconds before they went off. There was a soft clunk as a lock released, and then the whited-out lid slowly lifted away from the bed.

Dense white fog flowed over the edge of the capsule in graceful billows. Luc Hai tried to pull Boris away with her but he shook her off with an emphatic gesture to keep her distance. She took another step back, half-expecting the fog would turn to liquid when it hit the floor, but it only disintegrated. She started to say something to Boris about leaving, then saw that all the fog had cleared away to reveal some kind of egg-shaped thing sitting in the middle of the capsule.

Or, more precisely, growing, its roots indistinguishable from the ragged guts of the robot’s upper torso.

The egg didn’t have a hard shell—it looked rubbery and wet, like something a reptile would produce. Had the capitalists programmed their machines to reproduce like robot-lizards? Was it more economical to have robots grow their own? Unease increasing, Luc Hai moved around behind Boris to move up on his left.

Now she saw a few shreds of plastic under the robot’s head, the remains of a medical catastrophic-injury cocoon. Wasting medical treatment on a machine was yet another example of capitalist stupidity but she couldn’t work up much indignation about it. There were probably two dozen cocoons untouched in their supplies and none of the humans needed them, not even the Marine.

The robot’s head rolled to one side and its eyes opened, staring directly into her own with an expression of suffering on its face.

Luc Hai felt an intense dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach. No machine could actually suffer, whether it was a centrifuge, a spacecraft, or a robot that looked like a human. Her gaze traveled from his face along what was left of his body to the egg growing out of his torso, which was also impossible. Nothing grew out of inanimate objects.

At the top of the egg, flaps suddenly unfolded with a moist, fleshy, smacking sound. Boris took a step back just as something sprang out of it, hitting his face with a splash of ugly, yellowish liquid. Luc Hai jerked back, avoiding a large blob that landed exactly where she had been standing only a moment before. To her horror, it began eating through the metal with a loud hiss, which was quickly drowned out by Boris’s screams.

Luc Hai turned to see Boris was still on his feet even as the thing from the egg sank through his helmet and into his head. The creature looked like a three-way cross between a snake, a jellyfish, and a squid. His screams became muffled, then took on a strangled quality as he staggered backward, clawing at the creature with both hands as he turned and broke into a clumsy run.

Leaving Ashok to fend for himself, Luc Hai closed her faceplate and followed him into the passageway at what she hoped was a safe distance. Her helmet was filled with the sound of her own terrified breathing but she could still hear Boris’s cries of pain as he headed for the cargo deck in an off-balance, stumbling run, sometimes hitting one wall and rebounding off the other.

She kept waiting for him to fall, wondering what she would do when he did, how she could possibly help him. Somehow he made it all the way to the cargo deck, and kept going for almost half a minute before he finally fell face-down three meters from an airlock marked EMERGENCY ONLY.

Luc Hai used the barrel of her rifle to roll Boris onto his back, hoping it was over. The creature’s body was pulsing now as he clung to life, his hands making feeble swipes at the thing. Or maybe those were just spasms—he couldn’t possibly be alive with a monster eating his head.

Slinging her rifle, she drew her sidearm, and then hesitated. Boris was past caring, but after all they’d been through together it felt disrespectful to shoot him in the face, even if he didn’t really have one anymore.

On the other hand, he’d have ordered her to make sure the thing was dead no matter whose face it had landed on.

She moved out of range of blowback and took aim, then closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger.

The mess of bloody tissue, fragments of bone, and helmet were dissolving even more quickly than the metal deck underneath. Other, smaller holes were opening up all around wherever pieces of the creature had landed, and the hissing was so much louder here, practically thunderous. Luc Hai could barely hear her own grunts of effort as she dragged Boris by one leg toward the nearest airlock, desperate to get them there before he fell apart.

Muttering an apology to Boris for the unceremonious treatment, Luc Hai hit the OPEN button beside the hatch, shoved him into the airlock, and punched EMERGENCYEXPEL. A red light overhead started flashing as the inner door snapped shut and a siren went off. Luc Hai closed her eyes, feeling the vibration as the airlock opened and spat Boris’s body into the void.

The siren cut off as the outer hatch closed and the airlock was re-pressurized. Luc Hai remained still, counting her breaths and willing her pounding heart to slow down. Although her commando training wouldn’t let her fall apart until she was back in her quarters, she needed a few seconds to pull her shit together.

It had just been a mission to gather intel—get in, get the data streaming, get out, and get gone, leaving no sign they’d displaced so much as a molecule of air. A simple mission, and about as safe as any espionage mission could be.

Was supposed to be safe. Should have been safe. Would have been safe if they had just set up a data transfer conduit from the cargo deck without investigating anything else on the ship. If they had, they would have been back on the interceptor, monitoring the big fat data stream from the Sulaco. Boris would have been telling them about their mistakes, in between bullshit fairy tales about his glorious Bolshevik ancestor, not flying headless through the void, and she’d have been a little bored, not traumatized. While Ashok—

Her heart began pounding faster again as she realized she was no longer alone. She’d been so stupefied, she hadn’t sensed something creeping up behind her. Hell, she hadn’t even noticed that the hiss of acid eating through metal was nowhere nearly as loud as it had been. Luc Hai swallowed hard as she straightened up and turned around.

The monster standing at the mouth of the passageway had multiple limbs sprouting at weird angles from an irregular bulk atop two legs. As she raised her weapon, the thing stepped forward and turned into Ashok, carrying half a robot in his arms. The right half.

Ashok was so smart, she thought. The robot would contain data that wasn’t in the ship’s computers and they were legally allowed to confiscate it as suspicious tech aboard a trespassing spacecraft. It would give the UPP an even greater advantage than they’d thought.

When they returned to the interceptor, Ashok locked the robot in the quarantine box. They put themselves through decontam three times during the return trip and twice more on arrival, just to be on the safe side. Still, Luc Hai couldn’t scrub the image of the robot’s face from her mind. She told herself not to anthropomorphize, but she couldn’t forget how relieved she’d felt when they’d closed the quarantine box and the robot hadn’t looked like it was suffering anymore.

4

Anchorpoint was one of many refueling and layover stops serving several interstellar shipping lanes. The size of a small moon, it was a hodgepodge of variously sized chunks that might have been stuck together at the shifting whims of a very inventive child using pieces from several different sets of toys. Construction was always in progress here, either to add new areas or to expand and modify existing ones to accommodate the needs of a changing population.

Not that turnover was especially rapid. Anchorpoint was home to a military installation and a small but substantial number of artificial persons assigned to the station’s permanent staff. However, the vast majority of people in residence were employees on long-term contract with one of the many businesses leasing workspace.

Exactly how long any term of employment might be varied from company to company, but as nobody went into cold-sleep for a long weekend in the middle of interstellar nowhere, the scale was measured in years. Depending on the type of job, some people stayed for only three years, although five was the usual minimum. Over half the contractors would re-up for another five or even seven, most often to finish a project and to collect the increased remote-location bonus. Very few people stayed any longer.

Those who worked in the scientific and technological fields seldom renewed their contracts more than once. Places like Anchorpoint were resumé fodder—you paid your dues by taking whatever contract was available in the middle of nowhere so that later, you could get the position you really wanted in the middle of somewhere better.

*   *   *

This had been the grand plan that Tully, Charles A. had been working from when he’d signed a five-year contract as a tech in the Weyland-Yutani tissue laboratory. Now, six months into his second five, he’d realized to his great dismay that he wasn’t looking as far ahead as he had when he’d first taken up residence in one of the many sleeping cubicles that housed the unmarried, the uncommitted, and the unfocused.

Everyone in Tully’s neighborhood was under thirty and most, including Tully, were under twenty-five, which meant they were still young enough to tolerate dorm-style accommodations—i.e. one room, and not a very big room at that, more like a cell. But they all had doors that locked, unlike the Marines, who had to live in barracks without any privacy.

The decor in Tully’s cubicle was what a behavioral psychologist might have called “new adult, immature fledgling”: a chaotic nest of clothing interspersed with shiny bits of high-tech gadget/toys and tools. Shelving barely wide enough for a small water glass took up some of the wall space; Tully had covered the rest with photos of landscapes from worlds he’d probably never visit.

There was a window—the Whole-Person Wellbeing Act required that all space stations provide at least one in each discrete residence. Anchorpoint’s were actually 10.19 square centimeters larger than the legal minimum. Regardless of how big the windows were, however, the scenery left a lot to be desired.

If you were new to life in space, the view was breathtaking… for all of three days. Then you realized you’d seen everything there was to see. The stars didn’t actually do anything—they didn’t move, didn’t change, and out in space, they didn’t even twinkle.

Nor would spaceships sail past your slightly larger-than-the-minimum window in stately silence. Spacecraft came and went from an area on the other side of the station so that any unfortunate incidents like explosions wouldn’t endanger the residents (much). If you wanted to watch vessels come and go there was a viewing terrace, but arrivals and departures weren’t that frequent, and if you’d seen one, you’d seen them all. So much for exciting adventures in outer space.

For Tully, however, the space inside Anchorpoint was the more difficult adjustment. Even in the generously large common areas, he was always conscious of an absolute limit to the dimensions. When you went for a walk on a planet, you might come to a fence with a NO TRESPASSING sign, and either turn away or defy it at your own risk, depending on your mood.

But on a space station, you always came to a bulkhead and that was it, end of the line. You couldn’t go on because there was nothing to go on to.

That feeling of being contained, inside a place with no outside, was always with him, a low but unceasing agitation rippling at the edge of his awareness. Anchorpoint seemed—well, not crowded, exactly, just a bit too small.

This was in spite of the fact that when he had lived on Earth, he’d never cared for long walks or climbing over fences and trespassing; even as a kid he’d opted to stay in and read. Apparently, having the choice to be inside or outside affected him on a level he wasn’t even aware of.

After almost six years he was comfortable enough to function, but Anchorpoint would never feel completely normal to him. Except for his sleep cubicle—it was the one place where he actually felt at home. And like most techs, he was hardly ever there except to sleep.

*   *   *

The comm had been ringing for a while before Tully finally became aware of it. He slept like the dead, always had. Spence had helped him rig the lights to go on whenever he got a call. Otherwise the device would probably burn out before he heard it. Unless his neighbors, driven mad by the noise, broke in to slaughter him first. If they ever did, it would be Mandala Jackson’s fault.

As Chief of Operations, Jackson could override anyone’s voicemail whenever she felt it was necessary. Supposedly this was in compliance with the Whole-Person Wellbeing Act, so that anyone incapacitated by illness or injury while alone wouldn’t spend hours suffering, possibly even dying, just because everyone else was respecting their privacy.

In reality, it meant no one could dodge work calls even when they were off duty.

Tully groaned as he sat up, reluctantly knuckling sleep out of his eyes with one hand and slapping the comm on the table beside the bed with the other. Jackson appeared on the screen, as usual wearing one of her stupid baseball caps with her stupid light-pen clipped to the bill, her stupid jerry-rigged version of “hands-free.” Behind her, however, the activity in Operations looked practically frantic, and that wasn’t usual.

“Morning, Tully,” she said.

“‘Morning’?” He winced. “Jesus, Jackson, I’m still on scheduled downtime. My morning’s not for another day and a half.”

“Cry me a river,” she said. “Later. In Ops, we don’t get luxuries like downtime. Sixteen hours ago, a Marine transport came in on automatic.” Her head bobbed as she aimed the light-pen at the left side of the screen. “Ship’s called the Sulaco. Four years ago it left Gateway with fifteen souls aboard—twelve Colonial Marines, an android, a rep from Weyland-Yutani, and some ex-warrant officer from a merchant vessel that blew up.”

“So?” Tully asked sourly.

“So let me finish,” Jackson said. “The bio scan readout says it now has three people aboard: the ex-warrant officer—” She nodded and the light-pen made a thick line at the bottom of his screen as she ticked them off. “—one—count ’em, one—Marine, a nine-year-old girl who happens to be the only surviving colonist from LV-426, and half an artificial person. The bottom half. Makes you wonder what the hell happened out there, doesn’t it?”

“Ask them,” Tully said. “Not me.”

Jackson’s sudden bright smile was bizarre as well as dismaying. “But that’s the good news,” she said, as if it really were. “Three hours before the Sulaco turned up, we docked a chartered, priority transport out of Gateway. The Mona Lisa had two passengers, both MiliSci.” Her smile became even brighter. “Weapons Division.”

Tully’s heart sank, hard. Anything involving MiliSci’s Weapons Division usually came with a body count. “Isn’t that the bad news?” he asked, too dispirited to be wittier.

Jackson ignored him. “Our new MiliSci friends want us to grab the Sulaco in full biohazard mode by 0800 hours. Senior biotechs have priority for deck crew assignments, and the most senior of ’em all is the one and only you. Tully, Charles A.”

He opened his mouth to protest but the screen went blank.

“Aw, shit,” he said, meaning it with all his heart.