This was awkward, Hicks thought, having to hold a woman he very much respected at gunpoint. But was it really the real woman, or was it not? He couldn't tell! There were two Ellen Ripley's sitting in front of him, two virtually identical in appearance. The soldier knew that one of them was a fake; a machine composed of liquid metal called a T-1000 who was there to kill them all at the first chance it got. That was why he couldn't risk go near either of the women. A blood-screening would be able to determine the true identity of each of the subjects, but Pops had immediately recommended against it – the T-1000 wanted one of them to come near it as it would easily kill one of the three present subjects it had come to terminate. Hicks, Ripley and little Newt: they were all on the Terminator's hitlist. Not even Pops could risk going near it; if he was taken by surprise by the T-1000, he could become severely damaged and rendered unable to protect the humans, and the enemy machine would be free to kill them all.

Right now, the two Ripley's sat in two separate folding chairs at a safe distance from the crew of the Ghost Rider, apart from each other. Hicks kept his rifle trained to the left one while Pops covered the other to the right with a weapon of his own. Newt stood behind the soldier and the machine, nervously wringing her hands as she was uncomfortable with the situation. As if it wasn't bad enough that they had a killing robot onboard which they were unable to identify, there was a highly potential risk for Ripley's life – she feared losing the adult now when she finally was so close to be with her again. Hicks were well aware of the child's discomfort, and he once again blamed himself for being such a careless fellow. During the confusion when catching sight of another Ripley, Hicks had somehow in his shock managed to lose track on which one of them he had brought onboard! And that made it even more impossible to tell them apart! Not even his 'droid-detector' which he carried on his wrist was of any help. It could only detect the presence of an EM-field, but not where it originated from. And that wasn't their only problem…

Again he threw a glance at an active monitor on the side of the interior bulk, which was showing what was going on outside the ship within the hangar. So far there's was no activity which would give cause for an alarm – the area outside was devoid of both people and activity. The personnel of Sevastopol were all busy in other areas restoring the chaos Hicks' group had caused. But there's was no telling how long it would remain that way.
"We need to come up with a solution to this dilemma, and fast," Hicks needlessly informed Pops. "We cannot stay here! Soon the guards will have rounded up all the prisoners that escaped from the cells and find that we are missing! This is the first place they will come look for us!"

Pops were not surprisingly untroubled. "Any insight you may have to help determine which one of those is the real Ellen Ripley, feel free to share it." Hicks threw a reproachful glare at the other. Was the cyborg attempting to be sarcastic?

"Hicks, you should know me well enough to see that I am the real one!" one of the Ripley's calmly said.

"Don't listen to her!" the other woman countered with a bit more heated voice. "She's the fake!"

"That is not very helping," Pops said neutrally to the two.

"All right," Hicks said. "let's think this through logically! The one I found outside of detention must be the real Ripley!"

"Why?" Pops asked.

"Because I'm a target! Had it been the T-1000 it could easily have killed me and taken my place! Then it would have come here to wait for you!"

"That would be the T-1000's best chance for completing its mission," Pops agreed. "But there's one factor you haven't included."

"Which one?" Hicks asked slightly irritated.

"Me! The T-1000 knew that I had teamed up with you. As a Terminator, I could see through the disguise with my sensors from a distance and it concluded that I might have been able to prevent it to come onboard before the rest of you escaped. It had to get onboard first and have you all gathered before it would make its strike."

"Are you saying that you can see through its disguise? Then why haven't you already done so with all those sophisticated sensors of yours?!"

"I can no longer do so. My power-cell is now depleted to the level that many of my supporting systems has been shut down to conserve my energy – including deep-level scanners. I only got basic sensors now to register with."

"Well, that's mighty convenient!" Hicks grunted. "But I think my theory is sound."

"Well, which one of them did you bring onboard?" Pops asked.

"Her!" both women said in unison, each indicating to the other.

"Well, that settles that!" Pops concluded, strangely with what sounded like an amused tone. "The real Ripley would have no reason to lie. It really was the T-1000 you brought onboard!"

Hicks looked like he was ready to shoot himself. "Fuck…" he said miserably.

"Language, Corporal," the cyborg scolded him. "There are children present." Hicks was about to retort, but then he thought that the other might have raised a good point.

"Look, honey…" he addressed the child. "Maybe you should go further into the back, in case things get ugly…"

"I'm not going anywhere!" the girl said resolutely. "I'm staying where Ripley is!"

"This is a dangerous situation, Caroline Connor," Pops told her. "The T-1000 will attempt to get to you…"

"He will have to go through you first to get to me, won't he?" she pointed out. "I'm staying, and that's that!"

"You're as stubborn as my Sarah, Caroline Connor!"

"What's he talking about?" one of the Ripley's said. "Why's he calling her that?" Hicks noticed that both women looked somewhat indignant, the T-1000 was therefore smart enough to even fake Ripley's feelings for the child. That made him think of something…

"What was the name of your daughter?" he asked them, hoping to catch them off guard.

"Amanda!" they both said at the same time. One continued: "And I would appreciate that you refrain from bringing her up like that!"
"It's still a painful matter that I haven't gotten the time to deal with!" the other finished sourly.

"Darn!" Hicks exclaimed. "They both knew that!"

"The T-1000 wouldn't be much of an infiltrator if it hadn't looked up all of her files," Pops explained. "If the information is recorded, then it knows everything Ellen Ripley knows."

"God dammit!" Hicks cursed, exasperated. He threw another glance at the monitor, saw that the hangar was still empty. "We don't have time for this! The guards might come here any second! There must be a way to determine who's who!"

"There is," Pops said. "I could shoot them in the legs."

"What?!" Hicks couldn't believe what the cyborg was suggesting, and neither could the women who both looked nervous.

"It would quickly expose the T-1000, and Ellen Ripley would live."

"But it would cripple her! I don't think she would ever forgive me for doing something like that!"

"You need to make a decision now, Dwayne Hicks! As you said; we don't have time for this."

Newt remained behind the men, listening to the argument. It pained her tremendously that she had nothing to contribute with that might help solve the problem – like them, she couldn't tell who was who of the two Ripley's. The situation gave her the shivers. She feared for Ripley, just like she feared for all of them and didn't want her to get hurt. The child bit her lip and looked up in an attempt to catch the women's eyes, even though she knew that she shouldn't. One of them looked back and gave her a smile. Could that be the real one? Newt let her gaze sweep over to the other one. That woman made eye-contact with her as well, but the response was different. It was not a jovial look, but besides that the child found it unreadable. The stale expression of a killing machine bidding its time perhaps? Or was it something else…? The other Ripley on the other hand kept smiling at her, like if she was giving the child a look of reassurance. Newt instinctively took a step forward.

"Caroline Connor!" Pops' stale, yet harsh tone halted her. "Stand your ground!"

The Ripley to the left, the one who had smiled at her gave a harsh tone of her own. "Why do you keep calling her that?! That isn't her name! And what gives you the right to command her anyway?"

"My relation to Caroline Connor is of no concern of yours." Pops declared.

"It darn well is!" the other Ripley spat.

"Stop calling her that!" the first one injected at the same time. It was at that moment the child had a brainstorm of her own.

"Ripley… the real one… would call me by my real name."

The smile returned to the woman sitting to the left. "As I always would, Rebecca, honey."

The last syllable had barely left the woman's mouth before Hicks opened fire with his rifle and sprayed her torso with a barrage of armor-piercing high-velocity projectiles. The woman was thrown backwards out of her chair while multiple holes blossomed on her chest – silvery holes! Pops joined in on the shooting as well as he saw that it indeed was the T-1000. Now as the other woman's identity was confirmed to be the genuine article, the child rushed up to the adult, crying out the only word that came to her mind.

"Mommy!"

The girl threw herself into the woman's arms, wrapping her small limbs around the other's neck and the adult was not slow with embracing her, hugging the child tightly to her chest. "At last, sweetie," Ripley whispered into the tiny ear as she rocked the small body. "At last!" She could feel the girl's tears soaking her neck and her own cheeks were getting wet as well. After a whole long year, the child was finally back in her arms where she belonged.

Meanwhile the shooting had ceased and the fraud woman lay motionless on the deck with the chest looking like silver-colored swiss cheese.
"Corporal Hicks," Pops addressed the soldier. "How did you know that wasn't the real one?"

"I figured you Terminators were too systematic to think outside of the box!" Hicks said almost smugly. "The real Ripley would never have called her by her birth-name on file – her real name is Newt, and always has been!"

"I was hoping you would figure that out, that's why I didn't say much," Ripley said from her side, not breaking the embrace. She turned her head and glanced at the motionless form. "Is it dead?"

The answer to Ripley's question became immediately evident, and it was not in their favor. Her fallen duplicate suddenly lost both color and form and became a shapeless silvery mass on the deck. The liquid metal bobbed like a giant bloated balloon.

"Negative," was Pops' flat answer. From the center of the silvery substance a blob suddenly began to rise and it was bringing the rest of the mass with it as it floated higher up. Hicks cursed and fired off another round at his adversary, but this time his bullets only went straight through as the current floating liquid did for the moment not have the same density as it did before. Fortunately though it was enough to degrade the velocity of the bullets so that it did not breach the hull of the ship as the projectiles impacted on the bulk.

"Your weapons will not do you any good against a T-1000, Corporal Hicks!" Pops informed him as they backed away. The liquid was now beginning to take a humanoid shape.

"We can't kill it? Then we'll have to get it out of here! We have to…" But then he saw in the monitor he had viewed before that the option was no longer available to them. "Darn it! The Sevastopol guards just entered the hangar and are headed straight for us! We're out of time!"

"Get into the cockpit!" Pops told the humans. "I'll deal with the T-1000!" The poly-alloy killing machine was now completing its transformation. It had reverted into the image of father Patrick as mimicking Ripley no longer gave it any advantage. It was about to move in for the kill when Pops slammed in to it, pushing it against the wall. "GO!" Pops urged as he held the other in a clinch. "Get into the cockpit and lock the door! Take off!"

"With that thing onboard?" Hicks questioned, but it was Ripley who took charge. Holding the child tightly in a one-arm grip, she rushed through the door into the cockpit and pulled the soldier with her with her other hand. "This is no time to argue, Hicks! Just do what he says!" When the humans were all inside the cramped compartment of the pilots, Ripley slammed a switch and the door rolled shut, sealing them off from the fighting cyborgs. The last they saw of them was how the T-1000 slugged the old T-800 and made him stagger backwards. They made sure to seal the door and Hicks took position to cover it.

"Ripley! Do you think you can fly this crate?" the soldier asked.

"I believe so!" Ripley replied as she put Newt down and took position at the helm. "I was busy doing pre-flight procedures while I was waiting for you! Controls are pretty standard!" Ripley flipped the main switches and the engines roared to life. Throwing a glance out through the windshield, she saw how the approaching guards out in the hangar became startled of the activity. "Well, the guards know we're onboard now," Ripley muttered. "Not to sound ungrateful, Hicks, but coming here to spring me from jail isn't exactly going to help me to prove my innocence to the board for parole!"

"Well, welcome to the club, Ripley!" Hicks retorted. "If you knew how many regulations I've violated to get here…" Just then a loud metallic crash from the back resonated through the ship, which effectively stopped their argument.

"Can that guy stop that thing?" Ripley asked.

"I don't dare answer that," the soldier confessed. "But I do know that the stakes are potentially higher that the T-1000 has the upper hand. But Pops isn't one who'll just give up, so there's a great risk that they'll wreck the ship first before either can claim victory."


The man leading the team of a four-member guard detail into the hangar was Commander Cohoe, the second-in-command of Sevastopol, but now the senior acting top after the death of Major Winters. The major's death was a mystery, even more strange since the sentries were sure that the major had headed for the command center from tower three where the body had been found. The circumstances around the major's death may make no sense, but the cause of it was clear to the commander. He was convinced that the unannounced visitors that had arrived earlier were behind all the troubles that had befallen on the station for the past hours. They were the last to be rounded up, and since they were nowhere else on the station to be found, they must've attempted to retake their ship.

At first glance when the team came into the hangar the black-colored dropship seemed to stand there completely undisturbed, like nobody had come there to claim it. But then they heard the gunshots from within…

"There's somebody onboard, allright!" one of the supporting guards said. "It must be them…!"

"And they're armed!" another stated. Commander Cohoe swore loudly. Naturally they have been able to arm themselves! That ship they had come here with was a military vessel, of course it would be stocked with weapons! The handling of this 'surprise visit' has been a real disaster from the start and he didn't dare to think who would be made to pay for this blunder.

"Well, it's our job to take them back into custody," Cohoe said melancholy as he pulled his sidearm. "We'll storm them and request their unconditional surrendering unless they want to get shot."

"But they're armed!" one of the guards needlessly reminded his commander. "Shouldn't we call in some reinforcements?"

"There's four of us against four of them, and one is a kid!" Cohoe angrily pointed out. "We should be able to take them. Remember, you're trained for riot control!"

"Yeah, but even at those times we're supposed to have back-up…" another began to mutter.

"Enough!" Cohoe told his men sternly. We will go in and we will arrest them. It's our duty!" But as they stepped closer to the ship to board it, something happened that they had not anticipated. The engines roared to life and the ship began to levitate.

"What are they doing?!" one of the men exclaimed. "The space-doors are closed, they can't go anywhere!" The ship began to pivot around above the deck of the hangar, facing them. And suddenly, the modified UD-4L Cheyenne Dropship's missile-racks flipped out. Commander Cohoe saw through the windshield the determined face of Ellen Ripley at the stick looking at him intently, as if to give him a warning. Then the ship continued its 180-degree rotation, facing the hangar-bay doors.

"She… she won't do that, will she?" another asked nervously. "She's not about to fire a missile and blast away the space-doors, exposing us to vacuum while we're in here?"

Cohoe could still see the woman looking at him through the windshield and he realized her actions. "She will! She blew up a civilian colony and an army of marines, why wouldn't she do that to us? She's really going to do it! Everybody out, now!" None were needed to be told twice. They all turned tail and headed back the way they came to escape what was coming.


"What are you waiting for?" Hicks asked Ripley from his position at the door. "Just blast away those doors with a couple of missiles so that we can get out of here. What's the hold-up?"

"I need to make sure that those men get to safety and seal their own barriers," Ripley said resolutely as she watched the fleeing men through the windshield. "They may have convicted me for it, but despite what they are saying, I am not a killer! I won't take a human life!"

"Oh… right, of course," Hicks conceded. He should have thought of that, but ever since LV-426 he had a hard time living up to his usual standards to think before he said anything. The nasty bugs he'd encountered there could really change a man. "Just don't forget to raise the shields on our front – and while you're at it: shut off the echo-mode! That purple lever to your left."

"Echo-mode?" Ripley questioned as the hit the switch to 'off'.

"This is a stealth-ship. Our hull is coated with 'blackball'-paint which resists radar – but I couldn't risk approaching the station without letting them detect us as we were pretending to be in an emergency, they might have considered us enemies and shot us down. The echo-emitter sends the radar-signals back to the source so that they could see us – but we need to be invisible to radar again as we make our escape."

"How did you come by this ship anyway?" Ripley asked, although she suspected that she already knew the answer.

"I'd rather not get into that right now…" the soldier said, confirming the woman's thoughts.

"Okay, the guards are cleared…" Ripley then announced, seeing the doors seal tight out in the hangar. "Hold on, Newt." The girl had stood quietly beside the pilot's chair the whole time, not wanting to part from the adult. She took a firm hold onto the chair, preparing herself.
"Here we go!" Ripley pressed the triggers on the sticks and two rockets were shot from the racks. The missiles impacted on the space-doors and blew them out into the void, allowing the oxygen within the hangar to escape. The Ghost Rider were sucked out together with the air and the sudden momentum hurled them away from Sevastopol II, into space and freedom. They were clear from the station, but they were not out of the woods. There was still a danger onboard with them.

"Sounds like they're beating each other to pieces back there," Hicks commented, listening to the commotion through the door that sealed them from the combatants in the back of the ship.


There seemed to be no way for Pops to win. Each hit he gave to his foe, the T-1000 would just shrug it off and resume fighting. The molecules of the liquid metal the false priest consisted of could be knocked out of position, but the advanced terminator would without trouble just arrange it back by flowing its alloy and come out of it unscathed. Pops did not have that advantage – he had poly-alloy in his body too, but only as a thin layer outside of his old terminator-chasse. Underneath he was still a solid machine and it could become damaged from the powerful blows delivered by the other. His diagnostics were already warning him of the injuries he'd sustained so far. There was no point in going for the weapons stashed within the ship – the T-1000 would only be temporarily slowed down by such, but not stopped. Pops only hope were to keep it busy, hoping (in the sense that a cyborg could feel hope) that he could somehow wear the T-1000 out – but he knew that he himself would be drained of power long before that happened.

Pops sidestepped an attempted punch from his adversary – he took hold of the outstretched arm and used the momentum that the other itself had initiated to hurl his foe face-first into the bulkhead. The T-1000 was not swayed – it didn't even bother to turn around. The fake priest used the alloy to reverse its body, making the back of his head become the face and allow the rest of his body to follow suit – and then he charged again. Pops met him on the way. The older machine raise his arm and slammed it into the face of the approaching menace, punching his fist straight through the head.
Unfortunately, it didn't do any good at all – the T-1000 flowed its mass again, grabbing a tight hold on Pops' arm with the alloy and rearranged himself to retake humanoid shape outside of Pops' limb that formerly had penetrated the mass and now the liquid entity held the other in a tight grip with its arms and was free to kick the rogue unit hard in the abdomen, threatening to break him in half.

The humans in the cockpit couldn't see what was happening through the closed door - but they could hear it, and they even felt the vibrations that was carried through the hull of the ship from the fight.

"Hicks…" Newt addressed the soldier. "Is there nothing we can do?"

The adult could only solemnly shake his head in reply to the child. He couldn't come up with any idea that would help her mechanized friend without endangering them as well. Hicks had no plan… but Ripley did! She had no intention of telling her companions what her thoughts were though as they might not be willing to go along with it – but Ripley knew that there could be no other choice. Right now they were flying over the gas giant of KG348, which comprised largely of molecular hydrogen. The surface of the gas giant illuminated the belly of the modified craft, giving the cockpit an eerie glow. It was in that glow that Ripley found the lever she needed (she had already programmed the computer to override the safety-catch) – there was a moment's hesitation, and then she flipped it, repeating an action she had done twice before when the odds against her were overwhelming.

In the back of the dropship, the combatants suddenly held up in their battle as a new situation appraised itself, something neither had expected: the sudden opening of the crew door in the back! In an instant the air was being sucked out, and the rushing wind carried the two machines with it. Not missing a beat, Pops grabbed hold of some handle-bars to keep himself inside, fighting against the natural force. The T-1000 was doing the same, but this time it was it that was at a disadvantage!
Pops was basically an upgraded T-800: he was a robot skeleton underneath his cover – he therefore had an internal structure that helped support him against the pull – he was anchored to the ship as he held on to the bar. The t-1000 on the other hand was all liquid metal - it had no solid internal structure that could support it! His fingers which were the thinnest and therefore the weakest links broke and he flew backwards towards the gaping maw into space.

There wasn't much air within the Ghost Rider's aft compartment though – the T-1000 rode with the last of the escaping oxygen and it lost the hold of the machine when the rest of it was sucked out. The T-1000 managed just in time to grab hold of the ramp-struts and halt his flight. The cold vacuum of space was already freezing it, so it scrambled to get back onboard through the opening. As it climbed the stairs of the crew door however, the T-1000 suddenly found itself face to face with the rogue unit. In the vacuum of space no sounds could be heard, so Pops spoke to it via radio communication – and his words were as clear as they were final:

"Get out!"

Pops delivered a hard kick to the liquid entity whose density was almost frozen stiff by the coldness of space – that was why the T-1000 was unable to withstand the impact. The fake priest tumbled out into space. No sound could be heard, and yet Pops was sure that he heard a hollow metallic wail escape from expelled body as it fell away from the dropship. Pops followed it for a short moment with his sensors. It wasn't long before the gravity of KG348 grabbed hold of the falling machine. Even if it would survive the re-entry, which Pops highly doubted that it would, it would never be able to escape the surface of the stellar body. Feeling an electronic tingling which could be described as a satisfaction, Pops cycled the ramp to close before he himself would become frozen solid.


From the main viewport of Sevastopol's space control center, Commander Cohoe could only watch helplessly as the ship became a small dot in space until it disappeared completely. Even if they could track them by radar, which they couldn't, they had no means to stop their escape - the station's outer defenses were still un-operational after the sabotage in the server-room. Cohoe supposed he would have to report this back to the Security-department of the Company on Earth. They would not be happy when they hear about this – but Cohoe realized that he actually didn't care about their reaction. Although Corporal Hicks and his little band of transgressors had left behind quite a mess for the people on Sevastopol to clean up, he found that he really wished them good luck.

The incident in the hangar had given him another view of his opinion for the prisoners that had escaped. Ellen Ripley was a fabled mass-murderer, accused for destroying the colony on LV-426 – and yet in the hangar she had spared them. She could easily have blasted the doors and killed them all, but she hadn't. That made him wonder if not there was some kind of framing going on, and if there were, then he wished them the best of luck to clear their names. Woe the one who had done them wrong.


Everything was quiet in the cockpit, and it had been ever since Ripley had pulled the lever. The door sealing them from the aft to the cockpit was airtight, so no oxygen had escaped from their area. Hicks couldn't believe that she really had done that, although her actions meant that she had saved them. But it seemed like a betrayal for having sacrificed Pops like that. Ripley understood his resentment, but she could live with it. It was the fact that Newt looked the most disappointed that hurt the woman the most. She prayed that she could explain it to the girl and make her understand.

By now the air had replenished in the aft and the temperature was back to normal. Hicks opened the door as he was going to investigate the extent of the damage caused by the fighting and then the exposure to vacuum – and he jerked back as he saw who was standing behind the door.

"Pops?!" he exclaimed.

"Pops?!" Newt reacted as well, her face spreading a happy grin. "You're okay!"

"Indeed I am, Newt Connor," Pops confirmed. The girl was pleased that he finally had given up the false name on her.

"How did you…? Where's the T-1000?" Hicks asked.

"Terminated!"

"How can we be certain?" the soldier asked suspiciously. He raised his rifle and pointed it at the cyborg. "How do I know that you're you?" Pops flashed him his patented smile. "All right, I'm convinced!" Hicks said in disgust of the ugly grin Pops displayed and he lowered the weapon.

"Ellen Ripley!" Pops addressed the woman. "How did you know I would survive?"

There was a moment pause before she answered. "I didn't." She turned her head and looked straight at him. "Look, I understand that you're angry… and I'm sorry, but I had to do something! I saw what that thing was capable of, and to be honest, I didn't think you would prevail! That T-1000 would've defeated you and then it would've come for us! I had to do something it wouldn't have expected for us to get rid of it! It wasn't an easy decision to make, but I did! You would have been destroyed anyway if I hadn't!"

"I would have," Pops confirmed. "And that would have failed my mission."

"Which is?"

"To ensure the safety of Newt Connor."

"That is my main concern too!" Ripley said. "I won't let any harm come to her!"

"Then your apology is not necessary. I would've done the same to protect Newt Connor!"

"You keep calling her 'Connor'! Why? Who are you anyway?" The woman hit a switch on the board and got up from the chair and faced everybody. "We're safe now! We're clear of Sevastopol and we're on course back to Earth with the autopilot engaged! So, would somebody finally please tell me: what the fuck is going on?!"

Hicks gave a nod to Pops. "Well, you're the historian: you tell her. I'm going to make some coffee." And with that Hicks left and headed to the back, leaving Pops to tell the history of Sarah Connor, Skynet, and the war against the machines again.