CHAPTER 14
In command center Johner is rapidly becoming impatient as he paces the floor. Reaching the end of his rope, he grabs one of the stun rifles that had been left behind as well as Ripley.
"Let's go. I'm tired of waiting around for them to return."
As Ripley begins to follow him out, she gives a quick look to Call and Terri.
"Take care of her Call, and don't let that bastard anywhere near her." She says as she indicates towards the doctor.
"You got it Ripley. Just be sure that you both come back."
Ripley and Johner have not been gone more than a few short minutes when Terri becomes very alarmed.
"Call," she suddenly says, her eyes wide in fear, "they're in trouble."
"Who?"
"The General and his men, they're being attacked."
Though her eyes are wide in fear, her voice is cold and distant, almost as if she were in a dream. Call believes that she is feeling the aliens in much the same way that she remembers Ripley doing.
"Then Johner and Ripley are walking right into the middle of it. They've only been gone a couple of minutes, if we hurry we might be able to stop them." Call says as she heads for the door, grabbing Terri by the arm as she goes.
"Wait!" Waters calls out. "You can't take Number Four out there."
"Shut the hell up!" Both women say in unison, and then look at each other in surprise as they head for the door.
"We have to hurry, the aliens- Ellen and Johner, they're almost there," Terri says as they rush out of command center.
Heading north in a hurry, Johner and Ripley remain alert and cautious. Nearing the landing bay they come across a group of stun rifles strewn around and a couple of caps. Realizing that they are too late, they begin to head back. Both notices that the fuel fumes are getting stronger and closer to the command center.
"Johner, we're in trouble. They're coming back. I can feel them, they're getting very close."
"Then what the fuck are we dragging our feet for?" he says as they increase their pace.
Breaking into a run, they are stopped when, after rounding a corner, they meet an alien. As they look each other over, it soon becomes apparent that it intends to make Johner it's target. Realizing that it is after Johner, Ripley attacks the alien before it has a chance to act.
"RUN!" she yells as she attacks.
"No way!" he shouts back as he joins in the attack.
"Don't be an asshole Johner, get away from here!" she yells as she struggles with the alien.
Johner ignores her orders at first but when he's knocked several feet down the corridor he thinks better of it.
"You win Ripley, I'll be back!" he yells as he begins to leave.
Rounding a corner he literally runs into Call and Terri. Without his saying a word the women realize that Ripley must be in trouble and increase their pace. After rounding the corner that Johner had just come around, they see Ripley and the alien in combat.
"Mom," Terri says in a voice that is almost inaudible, but Call hears it. Then, in a louder voice "NO! Leave her alone, you can't have her!" she yells as she charges the alien.
Running at full speed, she tackles the alien, throwing it off balance and onto the floor. With the alien now off Ripley, Call rushes in to help. Johner chooses to stay out of the way.
With this turn of events, the alien rethinks it's position. Deciding that the odds are now against it, it quickly leaves empty handed.
"You three all right?" Johner asks as he nears the women.
"Yeah Johner, we're fine," Call replies. "Why wasn't your sorry ass over here helping us?"
"It looked like a family matter to me."
"And here I thought you liked a good fight," Ripley says as she and Terri go over to him.
"Hey, I like a good fight, but I also like living and keeping my skin intact."
"Which might not be for too much longer. Let's get back to command, before that thing returns and brings along some of it's friends," Ripley suggests as she heads down the corridor.
Returning to command center, everyone but Dr. Waters gathers around the returning people. Guessing from their actions and that they have returned alone, the rest figure out that the search groups have been lost. They are now looking to Ripley, hoping that she might have some ideas.
"It looks as if both scout groups have been lost." Ripley tells them, verifying their suspicions. "Hopefully the General is dead, as well as the others. It's better for them that way."
"What next Ripley?" the Doctor asks from the back of the room. "There's twelve of us left, and only you and Number Four have any kind of a chance of surviving."
From the moment he said number Call is on the move. Reaching the Doctor, she slams him as hard as she can against a wall. No one moves to stop her.
"Her name is Terri asshole! I suggest that you remember it and use it."
Finished, Call releases him and backs away. Finding himself released, he straightens his clothes, brushing himself off.
"Very good…Terri, getting someone else to rough me up for you."
His words and tone of voice bring immediate actions from both Call and Ripley. Before they can touch him, Terri calls them back.
"No one touches him!" Terri shouts. Seeing that they have stopped, she then continues in a normal voice. "Don't you see? He wants us to kill him, like I wanted to be killed. He doesn't want to continue, doesn't want to face his crimes, or the monsters that he created."
She then walks over to him and looks him in the eyes.
"How is it said? The shoe's on the other foot now. It doesn't feel too good, does it? You tried your damnedest to keep me alive, now it's my turn to do the same for you."
The last facade of bravery and courage finally falls from his face as they see his shoulders drop. He now looks like a man who has been beaten both physically and spiritually. From his actions, no one doubts the accuracy of her words.
"Damn it bitch, why are you doing this to me?" he asks with words that are braver than they sound.
"If I'm a bitch then blame yourself. You're the one who made me," she says as she walks away from him.
"We need to get out of here," Ripley begins, speaking to everyone. "This place is filling with fumes and could blow at any moment. I for one don't want to be here when that happens.
"We need to try to purge the other bay and hope that there's a ship left when we're done," Ripley pauses for a moment before continuing.
"The way I see it we really don't have much of a choice. Either we face the aliens and the risk of an explosion or we try to get the hell out of here. I vote for getting the hell out."
It doesn't take them long to agree with her suggestion and agree to follow her commands. With this decision made, they leave the command center and head towards the south bay. Ripley and Johner take the lead with Call and Terri bringing up the rear.
Reaching the bay, Call comes forward and again patches into the system. Once inside the system, she becomes somewhat distant and her voice becomes slightly mechanical sounding.
"Safety precautions over-ridden, exterior bay doors will open in two minutes. Caution, there is insufficient time to completely depressurize the bay," Call reports.
When the doors open, they all feel the base rock. With the opening of the doors, everything that wasn't secured down is blown out into space. It only takes a couple of minutes for the bay to become clear of everything including the fuel fumes. Call then closes the doors and begins to pressurize the bay.
It takes a while to restore the environment. During this wait Call remains plugged into the system, monitoring the aliens as best as she can.
"They are still quiet Ripley, but not too far from here, if I'm reading the system correctly," Call informs her. "But for how much longer?"
"Let's just hope that it's long enough for us to get the hell away from here," Ripley responds. "How much longer before we can get in there?"
"It's ready now," Call informs her as she opens the doors and then unplugs herself from the system.
As the doors open, Ripley cautiously enters. The fuel fumes are gone, but so is almost everything else, including the ships. Feeling frustrated, Ripley walks around the bay while the others do the same. They look for anything that might help them.
After searching for several minutes, Ripley comes across a closed maintenance hangar. Signaling for Call to join her, she waits for her to come and patch herself back into the system and to open the doors. What they find inside gives them hope for there is one ship inside, but it is a small one. The Lieutenant and another soldier go into the ship to check the maintenance logs. When they return, they tell the others what they have learned.
"The good news is all the repairs on this ship are complete," Lieutenant Hunter informs them. "But they have not yet been checked. Also it hasn't been serviced. No fuel, oil, or hydraulics are on board. She's a dry ship. It might as well have been blown into space as well for all the good it will do us."
"We'll just have to keep looking then, until we find what we need," Ripley says. "I'm not ready to give up yet."
"There is one other problem Ripley," Hunter informs her. "This ship is designed to carry only eight people at the most, there's twelve of us."
"Listen, if these fuckers come after us then it won't make much of a difference, will it?"
"I get your point," he says, somewhat abased.
With Call's help all the maintenance hangars are opened and the search continues in earnest. All the drums they find are carefully checked for any fluids. As they begin to find what they need, they service the ship, getting it ready to launch. Unfortunately, at about that time, Ripley and Terri feel the aliens begin to move.
"Move it!" Ripley shouts. "They're coming!"
With everyone moving as fast as they can, they continue servicing the ship. They waste no time, taking Ripley's warning seriously. They know that if the aliens arrive before they are ready to leave then some of them, or maybe even all of them, might not make it out alive.
It is during this flurry of activity that the aliens come crashing down on them. Eight aliens now stand in their midst, then begin attacking anything that moves. The doctor turns to run but finds himself facing an alien. Swiftly it attacks him and carries his body away.
Knowing that they have no choice but to fight with only what is on hand, the men grab tools, fire axes, and whatever else that happens to be easily accessible. The aliens might exceed them in brute strength, but the humans are fighting for their lives.
"Call!" Johner yells over the noise. "Get Ripley, the Kid, and yourself onto that ship and get it hot. I'll join you when I can!"
"Forget it Johner," Ripley yells back. "You and Call get the ship hot. Terri and I will be all right. Just get that crate ready to go!"
As he goes to do as she asks, she turns to Terri.
"Ready Terri?" she asks.
"Let's do it," comes Terri's reply.
With these two women joining the fight, the odds become a bit more even. Their physical strength and human determination helps to balance the odds. The fighting is fierce but when it is done, the aliens have retreated with a couple of them dead and burning through the floor. The problem of too many humans has also been resolved. Now there are only seven left alive. The Doctor, having been one of the first to be taken by the aliens is no longer a problem for them.
Now, those who had fought and survived, Ripley, Terri, Hunter, one other soldier and a medic, board the ship. Ripley and Hunter take the flight controls while Call takes another seat and patches into the computers. The other four take seats in the mid-section of the ship and prepare for departure. Call, through the computers, has the bay depressurized and the launch doors opened.
As the ship is moved into launch position, Ripley feels nervous. Something just doesn't feel right, but she decides not to say anything just yet to the others. She wonders if Terri is feeling the same thing, but the woman is too far off to ask and seems too excited to notice much of anything anyway.
Finally things are ready and the ship launches, and none too soon. When they reach an altitude of approximately seven thousand feet, the force of the base exploding rocks the ship. Looking out through whatever porthole that they can, they watch as the base is destroyed.
"There's another one for us good guys," Johner comments. "I'm going up front, check on Ripley and Call."
On his way forward, he passes Ripley who is heading towards the back. Stopping beside each other, they both look over to Terri. With the medic on one side and the soldier on the other, she looks as if she were still being guarded. Her actions leave one with another impression. She acts like an excited child as she looks out of a porthole and back at the now destroyed base. As Ripley watches her, the feeling that something is wrong again comes over her.
As she watches, there comes a sudden, bloody wave of activity as an alien, the last one, drops down from overhead and onto the trio. Swiftly it attacks those who are under it. With blood flying, Ripley has no time to react, so she watches as the three fall to the deck in a bloody pile.
"NO!" she screams as she sees all three sink to the deck of the ship.
"Shit!" is all Johner manages to get out as he too sees what is happening.
For a moment the alien's attention becomes focused on Ripley, but does not move. Up front, her scream is heard by Hunter and Call, alerting them to the fact that something is wrong. Quickly Call begins to disconnect herself from the computers but is stopped by Hunter.
"You can do us more good by staying hooked into the computers. If we do have one of those bastards on board then you'll know what to do if we can't get rid of it."
With that he heads for the back of the ship.
Reaching the back, Hunter stops beside Johner. The two men watch what looks like a stare down between Ripley and the alien. With Hunter's appearance, the alien is taken a bit by surprise and moves back a couple of steps. Seeing this, Ripley starts moving in, trying to get it to move farther towards the back of the ship and away from the pile of bodies.
As the men look at the mess, they see it move slightly. Hoping to find someone still alive, the men go over to the pile. As they reach it, Johner sees an arm barely move- a woman's arm.
"Shit!" he says as he and Hunter begin to separate her from the corpses, forgetting for the moment about the acid that is in her blood. Pulling her free, he quickly makes sure she is alive.
"She's still alive Ripley!" Johner tells her.
Looking back for a second, Ripley notices what Johner is talking about as well as notices that there seems to be no reaction to the blood that is all about them. Just as quickly, she returns her attention to the alien.
"Take care of her Johner!" she tells him as she continues her advance.
"No problem Ripley. Just get rid of that fucker will you?"
"What the hell do you think I'm trying to do? Dance with it?"
Johner returns his full attention to Terri. Finally he remembers the blood, and starts to look for any reactions, but finds none. With her clear of the mess, he begins wiping the blood from her face, causing her to stir and moan.
"Shit Kid you had me scared," he says with an unusual amount of tenderness in his voice as he sees her eyes begin to open.
Ripley has been concentrating on the alien, trying to force it back farther; ignoring what Johner is doing, knowing that he will take care of Terri. Behind her, Hunter has been watching her actions and tries to figure out what she is up to. It doesn't take him long to realize that she is heading for the rear loading ramp. Thinking that she might be going to try to blow it out of the ship rear hatch, he quickly secures himself near a control panel and yells out a warning.
"Hold on everyone, we're going to blow it out the rear hatch!"
Hearing his warning up front, Call buckles herself into her chair. In the back Johner does his best to secure himself and Terri. He then tosses two securing straps over to Hunter who then tries to get a strap over to Ripley, but she is just outside of his reach and extremely busy.
Once Ripley is sure that the alien is close enough to the hatch, she has Hunter open it. With alarms going off as the hatch opens, unsecured items begin flying towards, and out, the hatch, Ripley does her best to grab hold of something. She manages to get a good hold onto a bulkhead support near the hatch, managing to stop herself just barely inside the doors.
The alien also makes a wild grab for anything as it begins to go out the hatch. It finally grabs a hold of Ripley's legs, just below her knees. It ignores her attempts to dislodge it as it begins to pull itself back into the ship along her legs, holding on tightly as it does so.
Knowing that she has to get it off the ship so that the others can survive, Ripley decides to let go of the support that she is holding onto. Just as she lets go, she finds that someone has grabbed a hold of her wrists and is holding onto her- tightly. Looking up, she sees Johner has grabbed her, preventing her from doing what she was going to do. At the same time she also feels someone against her back. Looking back as best as she can, she sees Terri trying to break the alien's hold. Straps to the bulkhead fasten both her and Johner tightly, allowing them free use of their hands. Terri, knowing that they are fighting time and decompression, finally resorts to a very child-like action. In desperation, she bites the alien in one of the few weak areas that it has- it's wrists. With a scream of pain, it releases it's hold on Ripley and finds itself flying off the ship and into space.
Quickly the hatch is closed and pressure restored to the ship. As the hatch closes, Ripley, Johner and Terri crash to the floor with Ripley on the bottom. Ripley strikes her head against the bulkhead as they all fall.
As they begin to get up, Terri realizes that there is something wrong with Ripley. They see that she is not moving. Terri gathers her up into her arms, and moves the hair from her face. In the process, Terri's hand becomes covered with blood- Ripley's blood. Having no knowledge of first-aid, she's at a loss as to what to do. Holding up her hand for the men to see the blood, she asks for help, telling him why.
"She's hurt, I don't know how to help. They never programmed me with any first-aid."
"We can't touch her Terri," Johner tells her. "It's that fucking acid that's in her blood and yours. You have to find where she's cut and try to stop the bleeding before it eats through the hull of this ship. You can stop the bleeding by pressing your hand firmly onto the wound."
As she begins to look for the wound, Johner says something else, only quieter.
"At least now there's someone who can help her."
Emotionally upset, Terri finds that she cannot sense Ripley's mind. She does manage to find the wound and it is still bleeding. Doing as Johner had told her, she places her hand over the wound. With Ripley's natural healing abilities helping her, she quickly manages to stop the bleeding. She then removes her hand and wipes the blood off on a sleeve of her clothes, which results in them beginning to smoke and dissolve from the acid. Terri never is even slightly aware of it for it has done her no harm and her concern is for Ripley.
"Johner I can't feel her mind, I'm too upset. I don't know if she'll be all right," Terri tells him, her voice on the edge of crying.
"Ripley's tough Kid," he tells her as he touches her cheek trying to comfort her. "She's a fighter. She'll be fine, just wait and see."
"I can't loose her too Johner. She's brought me too far, made me want to continue. She even cared enough to give me a name."
She lowers her head, resting her cheek on the top of Ripley's head and closes her eyes, shutting out everything around her.
"Damn it Ellen Ripley," she says, her voice is just barely above a whisper, Johner can only barely hear what she is saying for it's so quiet, "don't leave me like this. I'm not ready yet to make it on my own." Then in an even softer, slightly shaky voice. "I need you mom."
With her eyes closed, Terri doesn't see Ripley's eyes open as she speaks, nor is she aware of Ripley reaching up to touch her. Feeling a hand on her face, Terri opens her eyes, lifts her head and looks down on a smiling and awake Ripley. The smile that spreads across her face tells Johner and Hunter a lot as they also smile at what they see.
"I need you too Terri. I heard you call me 'mom'. You know I think I could become used to being called that again."
"If this don't fucking beat all," Johner comments. "Now there's two Ripleys to deal with. Maybe these assholes will finally give it all up."
"I don't think so," Hunter says. "Just before you arrived on the base there was a message saying that they had found the original derelict ship on LV-426. It's buried under tons of rock, but they plan to dig it out and try to salvage at least a part of it's cargo. It seems the radiation has lowered enough for people to return there. Though no one is sure just how that ship managed to survive the blast and the rock fall."
With help from Johner and Terri, Ripley comes to her feet and goes over to him.
"You'd better not be fucking with us about this," she tells him.
"After all this? Hell NO! The report is legit, they found it."
"Then I have to go back one more time. Try and stop them before it's too late and starts all over again." There is a great deal of sadness in her voice as she realizes what it all means to her.
"Maybe so Ripley, but you won't be going alone," Johner tells her.
As the four people head towards the flight station, Ripley leans on Johner and Terri and wonders if this is ever going to stop. Feeling thankful for the fact that she now has a family, and for a daughter that she thought she would never have, Ripley smiles inwardly. A family that she thought she would never have again because of what she had been remade into. She also wonders how long it will last before this too will be taken away from her. If this relationship is allowed to last, maybe someday Terri and herself might have a chance to truly get to know one another, once the madness has ended, if it ever does end.
_END_