Aliens

The Shape Of Things To Come

M. B. Case

Small Notations: This story takes place directly after the events of Aliens. I've taken liberties with some of the characters backgrounds, forgive me, for the sake of storytelling and just stretching my toes. I hope you enjoy it, all comments are welcome and appreciated. If you happen to catch any of the easter eggs like Heavenly Haven, there's no mystery to them or important story material, merly for my own amusement.

FILE 001-All Things Move Toward Zero

Is he still out?

Still out.

How much longer till we try and wake him?

Let his body adjust.

It looks like he's dreaming.

Probably just a memory.

We can all do without those.

2168 Earth Standard Year/Sleep Time Adjusted/Eastern Time Zone

Hicks glassed the gulley that cut through the rear embankment of the farm. Sweat rolled down his face. He had a ten power EGD scope strapped to a custom refurb M14 on a synthetic stock and cheek comb riser with a five and twenty round magazine of seven-point six-two NATO boat tail hollow points stashed in his pockets.

Silence.

Nothing.

The sound of the wind in the corn.

Through the scope he could make out a dense patch of broken foliage headed into a bright scrimshaw of greenery by a creek bed about eight hundred meters out. Nothing moved. Hicks waited there glassing the broken patch of leaves. Two hours ago one of the watering and plantation drones went offline before giving out one desperate distress beacon back to the farmhouse.

He pulled back from the scope and squinted at the step-off before the creek, the broken tree canopy and tore up tracks.

Drone coulda just lost its footing.

Coulda.

"Woulda, shoulda," Hicks whispered. He got to his feet and shouldered the M14. In another two months this wouldn't be his problem anymore. He'd be on a one way trip to the Colonial Marines. His Mother didn't like that. Almost disowned him for doing it. His Father just gave him an understanding quiet nod and then shooed his Mother away before the fight could escalate.

"Dwayne what if you don't come back?" she asked. "Do you know what that'll do to me? To your Dad? To Jodie?"

"Don't get me involved in this," Jodie said. "Sisters don't matter."

They were all seated around an old table of deeply tanned and carved mahogany. A family heirloom of sorts. Dishes were set out for Sunday along with a thick slab of beef that'd roasted all day. Hicks picked up his fork and bent his head down staring into a mess of potatoes and peas.

"You're not even listening to me," his Mother said.

"Leave him be, Cora," his Father said.

Silence.

Kitchenware clinked.

Somewhere the air conditioner clicked over.

"Gonna get yourself killed," his mother said. She turned from him to the food. "Eat up, Jodie, maybe I got one child left that'll appreciate it."

Hicks weaved his way through the corn careful not to make any noise. Above him the sun beat down through a mesh of hazy chemical clouds. The wireless at night said they were going through record temperature highs and lows this year. Hicks didn't know much about that. Didn't much care. Almost two hundred meters out he laid flat against the hard packed earth again and unslung the M14. He pulled his boot off and adjusted it under the barrel of the weapon. The wind went silent. Somewhere a bird asked: Poo-to-tweet? Hicks glassed the deep cut into the land that led to the creek. He could make out a heat mirage and source coming from somewhere down the slope.

Maybe the machine did lose its grip?

Hicks just sat there for awhile and waited. The sun shifted a few degrees in its arc toward the horizon. He eyed his watch. Bold red digital lines red that it was 17:23. He looked back toward the farmhouse. It stood out like a spec on the horizon almost a good two miles away now. Should have brought a fucking radio. It was quick dumb thinking like that that would get him killed in the Colonial Marines. Before he left he'd made a list and a radio just never sprung up on it. The land crawler couldn't negotiate the land between the corn rows very well and his father needed it to transport a sled of spent batteries to the charging station that afternoon. He could have just snagged a radio from the porch, but then again he wondered if anyone would have been listening. Jodie only mentioned the downed drone and distress beacon in passing. Hicks had been on his way to the Vector-Lev station to meet up with Cadince and Bart but Jodie passed by him in the kitchen.

"Drone 2-1-1 is down," she said. She stuffed a microwave pastry into the corner of her mouth and stared at him. "Might be nice if you look for it since you're going to be gone and all. Just leaving me here I guess."

Hicks got to his feet again. The last hundred meters felt like a marathon for some reason. He approached with the M14 at his hip, finger coiled around the trigger guard. He smelled burnt oil and something like static ozone. The grass came up to his thighs here where they let the land run free. Up ahead the broken patch of leaves and tracks gave way to broken branches and sights of burnt bark. Something big had fallen. Something big and hot. Hicks stood there for a moment just listening.

Silence.

Nothing.

The sound of cicadas somewhere far away.

About to do somethin' dumber'n hell aren't you?

"Yeah, I suppose I am," he said to no one.

Just a downed drone.

"I bet a lotta people told themselves similar pretty lies right before they died."

Wind cut through the field. Hicks grimaced. He looked up at the broken treeline, back at the house, and then squatted in the grass. Something didn't feel right. That little thing in his stomach was doing cartwheels again trying to tell him something was wrong. Hicks listened to whatever that little thing was. It'd saved him before.

"Just a fuckin' drone," he muttered.

You seem kinda jumpy on that one.

"Guess I am," he said.

Covered by the grass he hit the magazine release on the M14 and took the five round mag out. He stuffed it into the front pocket of his plaid checked shirt. From the back pocket of his jeans he took out the twenty round black phosphate magazine. He peered inside. Twenty, seven-six-two by fifty-one millimeter NATO rounds looked back at him. The copper shined in the sunlight. The magazine felt heavy in his hand. Reassuring. He rocked the twenty round clip into the mag well of the M14 and felt it click into place. His stomach started to twitch again. Cold sweat ran across his belly.

Why you so spooked?

"I do not know."

He hunched over and made his way through the grass to a tangled mess of tree limbs and leaves. From there he peered into the creek bed. That feeling in his belly tightened up a bit. A feeling that was better understand on a different planet some years ahead. Through the gaps in branches he could see the drone. Its outer hull dented and smashed. Hicks pulled back a little section of foliage and then froze.

Something in the drone moved.

The tin can body waddled back and forth and then leapt into the air almost a foot. It smashed back down onto the ground. Hicks could hear something squirming and moving inside the drone. It sounded like a raccoon caught in a dumpster. Sweat ran down his back. The sun said something in a foreign language of pulses and rays. In his mind he dialed up a fantasy reel where Jodie, back at the house, was watching the wireless stations for the newest celebrity gossip, planted deep in the beige reclining chair held together by duct tape. Back in reality he raised the M14 and tried not to notice the quiver in his hands that ran down the barrel. The drone went still for a second. Hicks just froze.

Waiting.

Watching.

Finger on the trigger.

The metal seam of the drone began to tear apart. Bolts and crimped metal sheered away. One thin elongated head slathered in black viscous fluid punched its way through the body of the drone. Hicks made a soundless scream. The M14 thundered to life in his hands. One hundred sixty-eight grain boat tail hollow points tore through the creek bed, shredded the drone, and took a chunk out of the creature coming out. The thing turned and-

2179 Standard Earth Year/Sleep Time Adjusted/LV-389 CommSat Time Zone

Rain pissed down from a no color sky.

Ripley stood at the mouth of a concrete tunnel that led down into a substation for a Colonial Marines outpost on LV-389. She peered out over the salvage yard. A mess of the old bones of ships and machinery. A long forgotten salvage droid went about its never ending business of cutting and scrapping, taking what was still good from the rotting cage of steel and plastic. The little droid had OSD-1101 printed in block letters on its dusty side. She watched it for a moment, took a long drag off some kind of smokeless cigarette and then sat down on the steps. The rain pooled around the stairway down to the salvage yard forming a small lake. Small shards of plastic floated to the top of the pool and raced around like frantic motorboats.

"What are you doing here?"

Ripley turned. A slim woman in an olive drab jumpsuit and utility belt stood at the base of the stairs leading to the mouth of the tunnel. PVT CONSTANCE was black stamped above the left breast of her uniform.

Ripley raised the cigarette and then went back to the salvage yard with her eyes.

"Major Mercer thinks we can get your android working in the next few days," the woman said. "Well, talking at least. Haven't been any spare parts for those things around here in awhile."

"So you want me to carry his head around in a bag?" Ripley said. She laughed, found the sound cynical and then stopped.

"Uh-no, Ma'am, sorry...The corporal is a different story."

Ripley said nothing.

She thought about Olympia, about being little and going to the low gravity zone to play against all the rules. It felt so very far away now, like a ghost of herself that never existed. She tried to think about Amanda but smothered it down to the dark depths of wordless regrets.

"Those-uh-acid burns you called them?"

Ripley nodded, stuffed the cigarette into the corner of her mouth and watched the poor little salvage robot go about its business. Overhead the sky clapped thunder and then went silent.

"Doc has him in Lev-Chamber now," Constance said. "The OLA is working."

"OLA?"

"Oxygenated liquid air. Helps with the healing process to directly oxygenate the blood."

"Fancy," Ripley said.

Silence.

The sound of rain.

Thunder peeled back again with no lightening.

"Mercer says you're a tough customer," Constance said.

Ripley looked back at her, tried to guess an age but couldn't, "He says that?"

Constance nodded.

"What do you think?"

"I don't know just yet," the woman, girl maybe, said. "You always seem kinda...far away when people talk to you."

"I was born on Olympia," Ripley said. She crossed her legs indian style, flicked the butt of the cigarette into the rain and then pulled out another. "Have you ever been there?"

"No, Ma'am, nothing inside the red line."

"It's on the moon," Ripley said. "Strange little place. When it first went up they had problems with the gravity drives. The things would just glitch out at any time. Sometimes you'd wake up in the middle of the night floating in your bedroom just before the red alarm cut in and told you you had two minutes before gravity came back."

"I had that happen once on a transport ship when I was little."

"Where were you born?"

"Born or grow up?"

"Both," Ripley said. "Where is home for you?"

"LV-225," Constance took a cigarette of her own out of the center chest pocket of her uniform. "The settlement I was born on was called Heavenly Haven."

"Did you grow up there?"

"No...we left just after I was born for Mars and then Gateway station," Constance said. "I joined up when I turned 17, kinda thought maybe I'd get stationed on Earth."

A slow smile spread across Ripley's face. It felt sad and lonely at the same time, "I've found most promises from institutions to be smoke and mirrors in my time."

"Smoke and mirrors?"

"Fake," Ripley said. She got to her feet, stretched, and then started down the steps of the tunnel. "Don't count too much on them, they inevitably turn out to be false, or at the very least, never what you hoped for. And that's an important thing."

"What?"

"The things you hope for are never really the things you need."

Ripley took the hard plastic chip from her jacket pocket and swiped it at the metal double doors in the tunnel. A large red light bar above the doors turned green accompanied by a bell sound. Ripley pulled one of the doors open and stepped inside. The taste of recirculated air filled her mouth. The odor of meatloaf from weeks ago drifted through the vents and filters. Large halogen bars lined the upper corners of the corridor. Hard resin doors were spaced out along the hallway leading to various parts of the complex. They'd been at 'The Waystation' for almost four weeks now. Hicks still hadn't woke up. Newt had all but retreated from the world. One night Ripley found her sleepwalking, talking to herself, trying to find an air vent to crawl into.

The doctor, a true veteran, gave the little girl a precursory once over and then pushed a wad of spitless tobacco in his mouth before looking up at Ripley, "This is an outpost...I think you get the picture. I can make sure she's physically fine but anything besides that is outta my control. I hate to tell you so but I'm not one of the psychometric boys."

No he was not.

Ripley turned right at the first T-junction. The corridor widened out and smaller doors dotted the hallways. Personnel rooms and storage areas. Two men in fatigues passed by her, nodded, and then whispered something to each other. Ripley sighed and made a mental note of who they were. It wasn't the first time that no one believed her. Sometimes she wondered if it happened long enough, often enough, if she'd just stop believing her own story like everyone else.

The Waystation had an orbital salvage unit that intercepted the comm signal of the Sulaco. It automated a capture and synch algorithm and brought the Colonial ship into orbit. Four hours later a squad of Marines were in the hyspersleep chamber starring down at her and all the empty pods. They woke them one at a time. Ripley first. Then Hicks. Then Newt. Ripley found herself sitting at another plain anonymous white table in a room full of people wearing disguises while she told her story. The only grace she'd found since waking was Major. Mercer. The Major ordered a blackout on the Sulaco being found and the survivors. As far as Weyland-Yutani and the Colonial Administration were aware of they were still MIA. Salvage teams went back up to the Sulaco and ripped out all the transponder hardware and relay link ups for the time being.

As Major Mercer put it: "Until we get an idea of what's going on...I know that's not an answer you want to her but I'd rather figure this out here then have to answer to someone up the chain with my dick in my hand for the whole conversation."

Ripley didn't argue. She didn't think there would have been a point. From what she could tell The Waystation was more of a technical salvage outpost than a combat ready facility. When night came, the automated light system for night, The Waystation had 37 hour days, she would lay there in the darkness staring up at the pre-fabricated ceiling tiles. Two or three hours before the day cycle clicked on she'd start to get that feeling of being on another world trapped in a hellish landscape.

And then the things would come.

Out of the corner of her eye she would see the long sleek obsidian heads of the aliens coming for her. In the darkness of her room it felt all too real. What if the queen had brought an egg back? What if the quarantine crew missed something. What if someone was incubating something right now? What if it was her?

The night always ended with her at the mouth of the tunnel looking out at the rain. It rain constantly at The Waystation. Major Mercer said it had something to do with condensation building up on the CO2 scrubbers suspended in the stratosphere. A new brand of terraforming, terraforming lite.

Ripley turned into Med-Bay. A large arching doorway opened into an expansive room the color of granite. Large clear plexi-tubes served as suspension tanks. Floating in one of them, slowly rotating, was Hicks. Ripley checked her watch and looked around the room. A tech in green scrubs was stowed away in a corner filling out some sort of report. A rectangular shard of black plastic and phosphene light mapped out Hicks' vital signs. Ripley touched the glass. Hicks spun around in the tank. Most of the left side of his face a mess of scarred tissue and twisted burnt flesh.

"His heart is better today," someone said.

Ripley glanced over and saw a slim asian man in a white coat nodding toward the tube.

"What was wrong with his heart?"

"Congestive heart failure," Dr. Akagi said. The little asian man came up and stood beside her. "Sometimes when the body first encounters the OLA it can cause some CHF but he's adjusted well. Most of the superficial tissue is almost healed. The Accelerated Lev-Chamber is good for that...and that's about it."

"When will he wake up?"

"Hard to say," Akagi shrugged. "At this point its really up to him."

The night cycle came and Ripley didn't bother going to her quarters. She looked up from the mouth of the cement tunnel, through the rain, to the stars above. Somewhere, the Sulaco was making its orbit. Ripley thought about that for awhile. The armory just waiting unless the salvage team had stripped it of small arms as well. She doubted that.

The doors to the substation opened. Major Mercer walked out and mounted the steps stopping just shy of the down pouring rain.

"You're not a big sleeper are you?"

Ripley shrugged, "You can't control your dreams."

"Mmmm, yeah, I reckon I know somethin' about that," Mercer said. He was a tall lean man with a number of twisted scars around his neck snaking down into his jacket.

"You've seen some action," Ripley said.

"Enough, I 'spose."

"What'd you do before this?"

Lt. Mercer pulled a battered pack of old Chinese cigarettes from his pocket.

Ripley eyed it, "Those real?"

Mercer passed her one along with an electric lighter that made an intimidating zapping sound like a tazer.

Inhaled.

Breathed deep.

Blew acrid smoke out her nose like a dragon.

They stood in silence. Smoke mingled with the downpour and disappeared into the monsoon. Ripley tapped ash onto concrete ground. Somewhere out there in the darkness and rain she could hear the 1101 robot still working, grinding out a job that no longer matter, among people who no longer cared.

"I was originally in the army. S-R-R-S, special resistance and response sergeant, they'd break us up into six man squads and drop us down onto new planets to see if the indigenous life was...hostile," Mercer said. "Was a hard gig. Nine times out of ten you were getting thrown into the meat grinder. They called us up as a special assets force when their was reasonable suspicion that there would be hard contact."

"No good plan survives first contact," Ripley said. Another sad, old, smile touched her face.

"That's about the gist of it. Got dropped onto some nasty worlds."

"Most of the personnel here look like children," Ripley said. She scrapped the cigarette against the ground popping off the cherry and flicked the charcoal filter into the rain.

"They're non-combatants, mostly," Mercer said. He shrugged, lit another cigarette. "Wouldn't survive much of uh firefight I 'spose."

"Where are you from?"

"West Texas, Ma'am, at least I was a long time ago in another galaxy."

"Texas?"

"Texas."

"Never been," Ripley said.

"I gather you're from Luna from the sounds of it. Born there?"

"Olympia."

"Nice place."

"I'll take your word for it, I haven't seen it in fifty-seven years."

Silence.

The sound of rain pelting concrete.

Smoke.

"There's a Company ship about six days out with a Colonial Marine ship not too far behind it," Mercer said. "I reckon they'll be makin' a pitstop here."

"I think you'd be right. What's a woman around here gotta do to get a gun? Or a ship?"

"Couple more days," Mercer said. "Still feeling you out."

"Feeling me out?"

"You got that wild woman look about you," Mercer smiled, he looked ten years younger. Some of the scars around his mouth even disappeared. "I learnt long ago to be weary of a wild woman."

"That sounds like your Mother talking."

He nodded, "Takes one to know one, I 'spose."

"Can I ask you something?"

"Don't think it'd stop you if I said no."

"Are we being held here?"

Mercer drew in on his cigarette. The cherry flashed. Smoke cupped his face.

"Held is a strong word," he said. "I wouldn't call it that. We're just making friends is all."

"Did you empty out the Sulaco?"

The Major flicked his cigarette out into the salvage yard, "I think this it'd be goodnight, Miss Ripley."

"It's Ellen."

"Raylan."

"Nice to meet you, Raylan."

He tipped his head, swiped a shard of plastic at the door and then stepped inside. Ripley watched him go. He carried himself like a warrior. The curve of his spine, the darting eyes, she wondered just what he'd seen and then thought better of it. There were things no one should have to talk about. Ripley wished very much for that to be true. She looked up at the hazy stars.

"Six days," she muttered. "Just a matter of time now."

Thunder cracked.

The sound of rain.

1101 went silent in the boneyard.

Ripley tried to feel the future, see how much of it there was, which way it went, and how much of it was hers to take.

END OF FILE 001-

TO BE CONTINUED...

Authors Notes: I will try to keep a regular schedule about posting this story. Again I apologize for any liberties I've taken with character back story. That's my fault, not the story's. I hope you enjoyed the first little segment. There are many things to come. Ta ta, for now.