Chapter Eleven
Interlude

BECKETT: She knows she's lying to us and if she runs those diagnostics we'll discover the truth.
CASTLE: And that truth will somehow put the mission at risk.
JANSEN: She's a machine. She can't lie.
CASTLE: You said she's programmed to learn. What if somebody taught her how?
Season 7 episode 18 "The Wrong Stuff"

Kim looked back down the corridor, to the infirmary where she knew Richwood's body lay. Miscellaneous supplies had yielded just enough material to make a crude shroud to wrap around the sterile-looking, black body bag, which Banhov had been required to seal with epoxy and welding compound as there was nothing to sew it closed.

It was crude, but she felt the effort needed to be made if she was to add one more name to the list of the people lost under her command. One more face added to the ones that haunted her conscience. She didn't care that nobody particularly liked him, herself included - with good reason. He'd died on her watch after being sent into danger by her command. His passing and burial would be marked and noted in her log.

Burial in space would not have ordinarily been her first choice, but he had no next of kin and there was nowhere on the Nostromo to keep his body for the trip home except the freezers. The transparent canopy of his freezer compartment would leave his gutted body exposed for all to see immediately upon reawakening and nobody wanted to wake up from hyper-sleep to a dead body. It would make the next trip out that much more difficult for everybody.

Better to lay him to rest out here, quick and clean in the quiet depths of space where his transgressions could be put behind them as well. She could choose to remember the man she'd thought he had been. The man she had respected before she'd learned what he really was, sure in the knowledge that his memory alone could not hurt anyone else.

There was no formality, or real ceremony to what they were doing, other than noting Tom Richwood's passing. Kim knew he did not deserve more than that. There was no honor guard, no rifles, no folded flag. He was due none of those things, really. But this simple act was the one thing they owed him as a human being. They would show respect for his rank, his position on this ship if not for the man.

In the back of her mind, however, she couldn't help but think that the crew was in better hands now that his duties had passed to Kate Beckett.

Back on the bridge, they stood at their stations, Richwood's conspicuous with his absence. The air seem thick as Vaseline as she checked readouts on the arm of her chair.

"Main airlock inner hatch sealed," MIRA stated, her tone unchanged regardless of situation.

Kate nodded. She'd had nothing but contempt for the man, but her time in homicide had taught her that no one deserved the gruesome death he had suffered.

"Main airlock pressurized with unfiltered carbon dioxide," MIRA reported.

Kim looked looked from one face to another on the bridge, none spoke a word or returned her gaze.

"Anybody want to say anything?" she asked.

Naturally, there was nothing to say other than Richwood was dead. He would never be punished for his misdeeds. None of the crew were particularly forthcoming with hollow words of kindness on his behalf.

Olivera was the only one to speak up. "Let's just get this over with."

That wasn't exactly tactful of the ship's navigator as far as Kim was concerned, but she really couldn't blame her. The alien loose aboard ship was not going away, and their oxygen supply was limited. They could spare only just enough gas in the airlock to send Richwood's body on its way.

"We, the assembled crew of the USCSS Nostromo," Kim stated formally, "consign our executive officer, Thomas Richwood to the depths of space. May he find his way without us."

Kim didn't think that was much of an epitaph, but she couldn't think of anything better to say. She nodded to Kate, who made an adjustment on her console as she snapped to full attention.

"Warning: Outer airlock door opening without decompression," MIRA's voice stated.

The outer cover on the lock popped out and slid open, the flash decompression of the airlock propelling Richwood's body out into space with enough force to eject it from the static field around the ship. In that instant, his relatively unprotected body was almost instantly vaporized by both the vacuum of space and the forces of FTL travel - a neater departure from the material plane than he'd had a death.

Kim knew that Richwood's last, tormented scream before the alien burst from his chest would be a sound she would carry with her until the day she died. She doubted anyone else would forget that either, least of all Olivera.

The crew reassembled in the mess. It was easier to discuss things when everyone could see everyone else without straining. Though it felt odd to see the place so clean this soon after what had happened, as if the events of that morning had never occurred.

"I've checked on supplies," Kate reported, nothing if not efficient. Kim was sure that was how she coped with stress, to bury herself in her job. "With stimulants we can keep going for about a week. Maybe a day longer, but no more than that."

"Then what?" Granger responded as he picked at his chin.

"We run short of food and oxygen," Kate replied. "Food we can manage without, oxygen we can't. We need to have enough of the latter when we come out of hyper-sleep so we don't suffocate before we dock."

"All right then," Kim stated, trying to sound confident. "That's where we stand. Less than a week to find this thing and either trap it or kill it outright. That should be plenty of time."

Granger looked at the floor before speaking. "I still say we try exhausting the air. Seems the safest way to kill it to me. Ash gets his sample for the company pukes and it avoids the need to confront it directly. We don't know what additional nastiness this one can dish out."

"We discussed that, remember?" Kate reminded him.

"That presumed we'd spend the airless time in the freezers," Granger replied. "Suppose we sit it out in pressure suits instead? At least if I'm wrong about its oxygen needs, the little fucker can't sneak up on us if we're awake in our suits."

"What a swell idea," Olivera commented sarcastically, not exactly looking forward to spending another long period in her suit. She felt claustrophobic in the damn thing under the best of times. After this recent experience, she was especially not amenable to the idea.

"What's wrong with it?" Granger asked.

"We've got forty-eight hours of air in our pressure suits," Ash explained. "If the creature can go forty-nine without breathable air, we're right back where we started."

"Other than that," Olivera commented icily, "it's a swell idea."

"Maybe if we rigged an extension from the suit tanks," Banhov added, backing up his partner's play, "we can fabricate a valve to supplement from the ship's tanks directly. The connections would be tricky, but doable. The two of us did get the engines back up, without all the proper tools, you know."

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, guys," Kate replied. "But it's not practical."

Ash spoke sympathetically to the two men. "You'll recall that we discussed the definite possibility this creature may be able to survive without air. Provided your plan works, the suits are too bulky to effectively hunt it down to confirm its demise, considering all the places a creature that size might choose to hide."

"And if it takes too long," Castle added, trying not to be condescending, "we'll have used so much air in the suits that none would be left to meet us when we emerge from hyper-sleep. The freezers will open automatically… to vacuum."

"We could program MIRA not to revive us upon reversion to regular space," Granger supplied. "She is perfectly capable of piloting the ship into dock. She could broadcast a message for Sol station to pump us with air before boarding."

Ash looked doubtful.

"Beckett and I may have our personal disagreements," he began, "but I concur with her on one critical point. We can't risk re-entering the freezers until we're sure the creature is either dead or safely contained. We can't track it down to make sure if we spend several days in our suits only to have to run to the freezers."

"I still think it's a good idea," Banhov snorted.

"Perhaps," Kate replied, moderating her tone, "but one of last resort. Let's get to the real problem. How do we find it? We can try a dozen ways of killing it, but only after we know where it is. Between the fire and the other one's acid spill, sensors are out on B and C decks. Even if they were still functioning properly, there's some doubt they would detect the thing, remember?"

"So we flush it out," Kim supplied, surprised how easy the obvious choice was to make. Guess I'm still a Marine after all, she thought to herself.

"Sounds reasonable," admitted Ash. "How do you suggest we proceed?"

"There's only one way we can be sure not to miss it and maximize our air time," she replied, knowing it was something that only she and possibly Kate had been trained extensively for. "We'll have to sweep for it room by room, corridor by corridor."

"Maybe we can rig up some kind of portable freezer," Castle suggested halfheartedly. "Freeze each room and corridor from a dis -" he broke off after an arched eyebrow from Kate and a shake of Kim's head.

"Not that I'm all that scared, you understand," Castle offered with a shrug. "Granger's right about one thing, I think it would be best to avoid a direct confrontation."

"Knock it off, Castle," Kim replied. "I admit that I'm scared of that thing. We all are, but we haven't got time to screw around with something that complicated. We wasted precious time letting the auto-doc try to help him, ignoring the obvious. Besides, I want the pleasure of watching the little monster explode when we blow it out the lock."

No one would have been surprised if she'd shouted Semper Fi Ur Rah! at the end of that little speech of hers and Kim was amazed at how easily it had come to the surface. How easily the fire had returned to her belly. The desire to hunt down this intruder to her ship, engage it and kill it for taking the life of one of her crew. She was once again the motivated MARINE she had once been. They would meet this head on and deal with it.

It was not exactly her most impassioned speech, but it had a galvanizing effect on the crew. They stood straighter, eyes meeting hers instead of the walls or floor. They were one crew and they had a mission now, only needing the tools to do the job.

"Fine," Olivera shot back. "We root it out of wherever it's hiding, then blow it out the lock, but how do we get from point A to point C?"

"Trap it somehow," Kate replied, turning various ideas over in her head, all of them out of the question because of the creature's capacity to both bleed acid and avoid obvious means of detection.

"There might be substances we could use to trap it aside from metal, stuff it couldn't eat through so quickly," Castle thought aloud, his own thoughts not unexpectedly following the same line as Kate's.

"Trylon cord, for example, is resistant to most corrosives," Kate supplied, finishing his thought. "If we had a net made of the stuff, perhaps we could bag it without damaging it."

Granger looked at the married couple. "We could put something together, weld it real quick."

"What are we doing, going butterfly hunting?" Olivera sneered.

"How would we get it into the net?" Kim asked after fixing the navigator with a glare. Adapt, improvise, overcome, she thought proudly to herself.

"Have to use something that wouldn't make it bleed, of course," Banhov replied. "Knives and sharp probes of any kind are out. Same goes for guns. Granger and I could cobble together shock batons from metal and plastic tubing, along with some batteries, should be plenty in storage down in engineering."

"Both the shock tubes and the nets?" Kim asked.

"Sure," Banhov replied. "There's nothing too fancy involved."

"First butterflies, now cattle prods," Olivera sneered again, "do you guys hear yourselves?"

Kim mulled the plan over in her mind, visualizing the outcome. The alien backed into a corner, threatening them, claws and teeth against shock batons. Electrical shocks prod it in the direction they wanted it to go, gradually driving it into the net, then keeping it occupied while they dragged it to the airlock, sealing the hatch and blowing it into space where they could kiss the alien nightmare goodbye as the vacuum of space blew it to pieces.

They could hit the hyper-sleep chambers and be back to their clean, sane little world when they woke up, followed by two weeks in quarantine and at least a month off to spend their hazard pay while the Nostromo sits in dry-dock.

It was a pretty good plan of attack, if all went well. Like all plans, the true test would be first contact with the enemy.

"If you have a better idea, Olivera, now would be the time for it, if not, stow the negative waves," Kim replied strongly, "Snap to it, people, time's wasting. We either get busy living or we get busy dying."

Granger and Banhov wasted no time gathering the materials for the nets and the shock batons, dividing the tasks between them without a word between them. Banhov powered up the same welder he had used to seal the ducts and set about fusing together the sections of the corrosive resistant cable to form their net. Only the fusion welder had a high enough specific heat to melt it, and only with deliberate effort.

Granger set to work on the shock tubes, selecting tubing almost four feet long to enable the user to remain as far from the creature as possible, the hardened electrode at the end giving each shock baton more the appearance of a small spear than the cattle prod Olivera had so sarcastically described.

When that was done, he began performing the delicate electrical wiring between the shielded and grounded hand-grip and the electrode. Slow, delicate work he was much better suited to than the more hot-tempered Banhov. He wanted each shock baton to have a comforting heft to it, in case it needed to be used in a more direct manner. Once he'd come up with a working unit that functioned as desired, he set to work on three more.

Both of them paused in their work periodically, eyes in constant motion, checking each vent and grate in engineering - especially whenever they heard a noise they could not immediately identify - arc welders and other tools that could be turned to lethal purpose never far from easy reach.

Meanwhile on the bridge, Castle, Beckett and Olivera did their best to focus their attention elsewhere. Having long talked the questions of where the creature might be, or what it might be doing to death, they sat in relative silence, torn between sealing the door and leaving it on auto-open in case Charlie came running. The cat had not been seen since the creature had emerged, and Kate was starting to worry about him. Castle did his utmost to keep them all occupied, regaling them with stories about some of their more interesting cases, highlights of Alexis' childhood, even excerpts from some of his books - anything he could think of to keep spirits up.

He knew that the one thing Kate most hated doing was nothing, especially when danger loomed. She would rather be out there hunting for the creature, or barring that, searching for Charlie, who was out there alone with that thing on the loose, an innocent in danger, which he knew called out to her instincts to protect those weaker than herself. He didn't know how much longer she would be content to wait, sharing his seat on the bridge, curled into him, listening to his stories.

Elise Kim was otherwise occupied, as she made the quick walk to the infirmary, her mind filled with suspicions and conspiracy theories. As an officer in a Marine expeditionary unit, she was no stranger to spooks and bureaucratic nonsense, both of which had gotten good Marines killed.

She had kept her suspicions to herself ever since Beckett first pointed out the dark blotch in Richwood's chest scan, a blotch that had not moved with the sensor like she knew it should have had it been a deformity in a scanning lens. Ash's initial diagnosis of the problem had been difficult to challenge, given that the only solution to prove otherwise at the time would have taken the auto-doc offline for several hours, a diagnostic that would not have been finished before Richwood woke up anyway.

Something had felt off about Ash ever since they had landed on LV-426 and she intended to find out what that was. For now she was content to get to the bottom of it in private, give him a chance to come clean with her, if it was what she suspected.

When she arrived, Ash was seated at the infirmary's central readout console. When the door slid open, announcing her presence, he looked up, nodded in greeting then went back to his work. Kim watched him work, her eyes moving back and forth repeatedly between him and the screen. The numbers, words and diagrams on the screen were more comprehensible to her than the man performing them.

"Work or play, Ash?" Kim asked, finally breaking the relative silence.

"No time for play," Ash replied without inflection as he studied a list of molecular chains for a particular hypothetical amino acid as the selected chains slowly rotated in three dimensions.

"I was able to get some samples from the first hole the hand alien's acid ate through the deck," Ash explained, nodding his head toward the tiny crater next to the medical platform where the creature had bled. "If I got a good enough sample to get a grip on its chemical composition, I might be able to break it down and come up with a nullifying agent. If I succeed and we have to shoot it, then it can bleed all it wants and we won't compromise the hull."

"A sound idea," Kim admitted, watching Ash closely. "If anyone aboard can do it, you can."

"That's my job," Ash replied with an indifferent shrug.

Kim remained silent for a few minutes, studying the readouts before she broke the silence again.

"There's a matter we need to discuss, privately," she said.

"I'll let you know the minute I find anything," Ash assured her with a dismissive shrug.

"That's not what I want to talk about," Kim replied.

Ash eyed her curiously, then turned back to the scan data.

"I don't think now is the time, I'm pretty busy right now. I think you would agree that breaking down the structure of this acid is a matter of critical importance. We can sit and chat later. "

Kim paused for a moment, weighing her options, but chose to forge ahead. "I don't think this can wait, Ash."

Ash turned from his work again to level a glare at her.

"It's your neck I'm trying to save, too," Ash stated sarcastically. "But if you think this is more important, by all means, go ahead."

Kim's expression hardened. Kate had informed her of her own run-in with Ash on this topic, but had dismissed her concerns at the time. Now, the man had all but accused her of neglecting crew safety, which she would not abide - from anybody.

"Why did you let the alien survive inside Richwood?"

The science officer scowled. "Nobody let anything survive inside him. It just happened."

"That's bullshit and you know it," Kim shot back icily, her tone becoming dangerous.

"Hardly a rational evaluation of the situation, Captain," Ash replied dryly, not intimidated by her tone.

"You know damned well what I'm talking about," Kim shot back, exasperated. "MIRA was monitoring the auto-doc and you were monitoring MIRA. You're too good at your job not to have had some idea what was going on."

"You saw the black stain on the monitor, same time as I did," Ash replied calmly, knowing a display of temper would not work on the Captain as well as it had on Beckett "It was too ill-defined to recognize."

"You expect me to believe the auto-doc didn't have enough power to penetrate that?" Kim shot back, pushing for a reaction that Ash was clearly not giving her.

"It wasn't a matter of power but wavelength. The alien was likely able to screen out those utilized by the auto-doc's scanners, at least those we could use without killing him. We've all discussed that possibility."

"Assuming I buy that the alien could somehow generate a defensive field that prevented scanning, - and I'm not sure I do - MIRA should have detected other indications of that thing's presence. His weight loss and nutrient deficiencies aside," Kim pointed out, "there was also Richwood's ravenous appetite at the mess hall right before he died. Isn't the reason for that obvious?"

"Is it?" Ash asked

"That thing didn't get that big inside him on its own, it was obviously drawing on Richwood's own supply of protein, nutrients and body fat to build its own body."

"I agree," Ash replied, "that much is obvious."

"That sort of metabolic activity should have generated proportionate readings on the auto-doc's gauges," Kim pointed out, "not just a reduction of his body weight and body mass index, but other things."

"What 'other things' are you referring to?" Ash asked, perplexed.

Kim only partially succeeded in keeping the frustration from her voice. "For starters, even if MIRA could not detect the creature itself, it was right between his lungs. To make a cavity large enough, it would have had to move them aside. That would have shown up on the scans."

Kim stopped for a moment to lock down her emotions, then continued, "It isn't my job to handle these matters, but even I know that MIRA would have detected that change long before you or I could."

"No, it isn't your responsibility," Ash replied evenly, "it's mine."

"I'm not an idiot, Ash," Kim snapped back. "Science may not be my forte, but I know how to parse a damn medical readout. And I can see what's going on."

"What exactly are you trying to say?" Ash replied, his tone dangerously close to insubordination as he kicked his chair back from the console and rose to his full height. He crossed his arms and glared at her, leaning precariously into her personal space.

Anyone else would have been intimidated, even Beckett to some degree, but Kim was used to such behavior from her days in the corps. Son of Kong -as her training element had referred to their DI - had done his job well, kicked her her ass through boot, tore her down them built her back up. The Crucible had sealed the deal. No man alive could ever intimidate her after that, even now.

Who's like us? She thought to herself. Damn few and they're all dead.

"You wanted the alien to stay alive, badly enough to let it kill Richwood, you're one of the few people aboard who could alter MIRA's sensor package to ignore what was going on inside him. I've never seen you do anything without good reason. So I'm damned sure you have one."

"You say I have a reason for this hypothetical insanity you're accusing me of," Ash replied, his voice taking on a dark, dangerous tone. "I'd certainly like to hear it."

"We both answer to the same company," Kim supplied, trying a different tack. "If you're acting under their orders, you can tell me in confidence. I just want to know what's going on so I can protect my people."

Kim knew he wasn't telling her the whole truth, but it was clear that accusing him outright wasn't working, she'd only pushed him into a corner. Her instincts had never lied to her. They had kept her alive in combat, and told her when it was time to get out. Those same instincts were now telling her that something about Ash wasn't ringing true, but she just couldn't put her finger on it and his denials were not filling her with confidence.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Ash replied, not backing down an inch, "and I don't care for the insinuation. I won't deny that - as a scientist - I find the creature fascinating, and would love the opportunity to study it, but not at the expense of human life. Considering the danger it poses to this ship and her crew, I don't want it running around loose any more than you do."

"You sure about that?" Kim replied, giving him one last chance to come clean.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Ash replied. "If you weren't under so much stress, you would be, too. Forget about it. I plan to."

Kim nodded at him, turned and stalked out the door. She knew she was getting nowhere.

Ash was right about one thing, she'd been operating under a lot of pressure. She was personally responsible for the lives of the crew under her command, regardless of how the company human resources manual described her position. Where Ash had made his mistake was trying to use her psych profile against her.

She knew what it said on paper. "Elise Kim, Lt. USCMC (ret.) resigned commission due to lack of confidence in her ability to command under stress". Some took that to mean she'd lost it, but they were wrong. Only a company suit who had never spent a day in uniform and didn't understand what real honor was would ever make that incorrect assessment. She hadn't lost her capacity to make command decisions under stress. She'd done what was right and put the good of the Corps and the people she served with before herself, like any decent Marine would.

Trying to use her psych profile against her was all the confirmation she needed that Ash wasn't to be trusted. She was pissed off and needed to be out doing something, not waiting for the thing loose on her ship to get its bearings and get hungry. She knew from experience that waiting for first contact with the enemy was, in many ways, more stressful to the psyche than the battle itself. The longer it went on, the more time there was for doubt to creep in. Battles had been won or lost in those silences throughout history.

Halfway through her first circuit of "B" deck, she stopped at a comm panel and hit the connection for engineering.

"Engineering," Banhov answered promptly.

"It's Kim," she replied. "How are the nets and shock batons coming?"

"They're coming," Banhov replied.

"Don't jerk me around, goddamn it," Kim exclaimed. "I want specifics!"

"Take it easy, Captain," Banhov replied testily. "We're working as fast as we can. Granger can only solder power connections so quickly. When you corner that thing, you want to hit it with fifty thousand volts or not?"

"Understood," Kim replied, feeling stupid for jumping down his throat. "Do your best."

"Was doing that anyway," Banhov replied, before cutting the line, "engineering out."

What the hell is your major malfunction? Kim admonished herself. Secure that shit and get yourself squared away, LT.

After the thoroughly unproductive conversation with Ash, her temper was fraying and she needed to get it together someplace where nobody could see her do it. The crew was depending on her to lead them through this crisis. If she was going to be the glue to hold them together, she needed to be squared away and on her "A" game.

There was only one place on the Nostromo where Kim knew she could snatch a few moments of complete privacy and feel reasonably secure at the same time. She hoped that Castle and Beckett hadn't beaten her to it, as it did have more comfortable seating for what she was certain they got up to than the science blister. She turned back down "B" corridor, her head on a swivel, eyes peeled for movement in dark corners. She might need a few minutes to vent, but she hadn't forgotten how to clear a room or check her own six.

Within a few paces she reached the section of "B" deck where a section of the corridor bulged slightly outward with a small, sealed hatch at the center. She entered her access code into the keypad and waited while the hatch slid aside along with a matching one on the shuttle, the closest thing Narcissus had to a proper airlock.

She ducked under the low hanging hatchway and stepped inside, sliding her hand over the two hatch switches, choosing to close the inner one and leaving the corridor hatch open. She knew that by opening the corridor hatch a telltale had lit up, not only on her chair, but on Castle's console as well. That alone wouldn't alarm anyone who might not be paying close attention, but closing it again might.

Sealing Narcissus' inner hatch would keep any sound from reaching the corridor should anyone be passing by as her screaming began echoing off the small shuttle's walls, venting the pent-up rage and frustration that had been building inside of her since the long trip back to the Nostromo from that damned alien ship in the only way left open to her.

When she wasn't able to scream anymore, she fell to her knees and cried, unsure whether her tears were for Richwood, or the other twenty-six men and women whom she'd failed to bring home alive - whose memory haunted her dreams to this day. Most of that number from that last devastating accident - a training exercise gone horribly wrong - that had heralded the end of her last Marine command.

She only knew that this pain was crushing, and private... and Ash had had no right to even hint at it. She felt... violated and angry but she knew she needed to get it sorted.

The people she'd lost were dead and there was nothing more she could do for them other than honor their memory. But for now, she needed to put those ghosts back in their box where they belonged and get herself squared away firmly in the here and now. But for Richwood, this crew was still alive, and they needed her to keep them that way.

The living are tended to before the dead.

Charlie crouched in the darkest corner he could find. His finely tuned cat senses and night vision searched the darkness for the thing that had burst from the loud human. He had never like that one. It never petted him or scratched him or offered him even the slightest bit of affection. Not like his mistress did, or the tall long-haired one and her mate with the broad hands, warm lap and endless supply of treats. Even the other female and the two skinny males treated him better than the loud one. His opinion of the almost-human who smelled... off, was mixed.

But the thing that had burst from the loud one's chest was something beyond his understanding. It smelled wrong, looked wrong and moved wrong which terrified him. He knew exactly where it had gone, that it was much bigger than it had been only a short time ago and that his survival depended on knowing precisely where it was and making sure he was elsewhere.

Because the one thing he knew beyond all other things - like the humans - he was now prey.

*Author's Note** No, this was not a cliffhanger, that last bit from Charlie's point of view was forshadowing of what's to come. I borrowed a bit of "cat thought process" from International08's "Fluff"