Ending the Threat.
Ripley sighed as she stepped away from Hicks, relieved that the medical robots and computers running the sickbay in case any human medic or doctor was unavailable had managed to ease the worst of Hick's suffering. The colonial marine had taken a massive amount of acid right to the chest, and if it wasn't for the body armour he'd been wearing, there was no doubt in her mind it would have killed him.
Ripley still remembered how, only a few weeks ago from her point of view, the alien 'facehugger' had bled only a splash of acid and it had eaten its way down a few decks through the Nostromo.
"Are they gonna be okay, Ripley?" Newt's quiet voice broke through her thoughts.
Ripley smiled at the little girl. Ripley had helped Newt get changed out of the clothes she'd been wearing during her time surviving the Hadley Hope massacre; she was now wearing a t-shirt that had come out of one of the lockers (she only hoped Vasquez didn't mind) and some clean boxer shorts after a nice long shower. Her long blonde hair was now dry from her wash.
"They will be, so long as we get back to Earth," Ripley's voice was bittersweet. She didn't know and frankly did not care about what kind of reception they got. In her mind Burke had burnt down what few bridges there were between herself and the Company; their collective greed had seen the deaths of hundreds of people, and she'd had enough. The Company had put Ash on the Nostromo, an android so well hidden they hadn't known about his true nature, until she'd interrogated Mother and discovered the Company didn't care about the crew of the ship, so long as they brought back the alien. The Company had punished her for the loss of the ship and crew, but she knew they cared more for the alien. Still determined to get hold of the creatures for the bioweapons division and fuck the consequences, they had set up a colony on the planet, and they'd spent years trying to find the alien ship with the eggs deep inside. Burke and the Company had repetitively contacted Hadley Hope more than once, and then the colony was infested and everyone had died until Newt and the unfortunate girl Hicks, Vasquez, Apone and Hudson and the others had found when they'd gone into the nest were the only survivors.
And Burke had not given up, he'd seen how vicious the aliens were and yet he still wanted them, and he'd been prepared to let the marines die while she and Newt were impregnated.
And she'd had enough of their games. Ripley was not sure what kind of reception they'd get, but she didn't care.
Newt was a very smart girl and she could see the expression on her new mother's face. "You don't wanna go back, do you?"
Ripley smiled, "Not really," she replied as she gently took Newt out of the Medical wing. "The Company were the ones responsible for the outbreak in the first place, Newt. They didn't care whether you or anybody else survived, not unless you were carrying one of those things."
Newt's face became haunted, not an expression a young girl her age should ever have. "My parents and older brother were infested by those things," she said with such quiet solemness that Ripley felt her heart shatter. "My dad had one of those face things on his face when we found the ship."
Ripley closed her eyes. She'd been horrified when she had learnt from the colony records that the Jordans and several other groups had been sent out to explore the planet….but they were meant to discover the alien ship. The colony's leaders had then made the mistake of going back to the alien ship the Nostromo had visited nearly six decades ago, and several more people were impregnated by them. After that, the outbreak was inevitable.
"I know, baby. Anyway, come on," Ripley tugged her in the direction of the flight deck. "I need to take care of a few things."
"What?" Newt asked as she followed.
"I asked Hicks for his authorisation to use the nuclear missiles. The Company set up Hadley's Hope, not to colonise the rock, but because of the aliens. I also want to blow up what's left of the colony, just to be sure we've finished. I have to end it, Newt. Just one of those things slaughtered my crew nearly 60 years ago, and the Company is not going to give up," Ripley said.
On the flight deck, the two of them went to the tactical stations. Ripley fed Hick's ID card into the computer, and she inputted the code he had given her after she'd told him what she had in mind. Hicks had already agreed to blow the colony up days ago when the aliens kicked their asses, as Hudson had so eloquently put it, now he was fulfilling the promise.
Once she had the authorisation code fed in, Ripley quickly programmed in the computer the coordinates for the Hadley Hope colony; the Sulaco had gone around the planet several times in geostationary orbit, and the computers had already mapped out the surface. Once she had the lock on, she then looked for the alien ship, but there was no sign of it anywhere. Fortunately, she had the logs to go on, and after she'd studied the location thanks to the GPS network in orbit, she programmed in the second location.
The colony hadn't had a lot to go with whenever they were contacted from Earth, just grid references in the general area the Nostromo had recorded.
Ripley leaned back from her work. "It's ready," she announced, "firing now-."
As her hand inched towards the firing button, Newt thought of something. "Wait, Ripley," she said, gently taking the older woman's hand.
Ripley glared at her in sudden annoyance, but it quickly fled when she saw the worry on Newt's face. "What's wrong?" She asked at once.
"That thing that came with us, the Queen, do you think it might have left some eggs?" Newt's face was full of sudden fear at the thought.
Ripley's heart felt like it had just been transformed into ice at the thought. "You might be right," she said, "We'll check as soon as we're finished."
The Sulaco, like many of the Colonial Marine Corps fleet, was armed with many types of nuclear weapons. Ripley had quickly selected the Horizon and the Cluster-type platforms, the Horizon was essentially a massive missile containing 30 nukes that it scattered around, while the Cluster was the same, only it contained 50 missiles and more than a few bombs.
"You might want to cover your eyes, Newt," Ripley told Newt, before she took a deep breath and pressed the control.
Dozens of missiles had been launched from the ship. Some might call it overkill, but Ripley and Newt weren't bothered about that, they'd both lost friends and family to the aliens, and it was time for them to pay. LV-426 was a cloudy planet with not a single plant on it, but even through the clouds, they both saw flashes of nuclear explosions.
Ripley studied the screens for a moment, her emotions full of turmoil as she thought of how many lives had been lost because of this world, and the Company's greed. "Come on, Newt, I want to get you to get back to Medical. I want to take care of this myself."
"But you might need an extra pair of eyes," the girl protested.
That was true, but Ripley didn't want anything to harm her after everything that had happened to her.
"No, Newt. I want you to stay with Hicks and Bishop. I've already lost my daughter because I wasn't there for her, I don't want anything to happen to you too," Ripley had to swallow the pain she felt at the thought of Amy, and the lost promises.
Xxxxx
It took her a few more minutes to keep Newt in Medical, but fortunately in the end Ripley was able to talk sense into her. Newt was a girl blessed with common sense, but she had become attached to Ripley, and vice versa. She didn't want anything to happen to her after losing her family.
As she examined the launch bay and the drop ship the Alien Queen had used to smuggle herself on board, the rifle and the flamethrower she was carrying to reassure her even if she didn't have the heart to use them, it wasn't long before she found what she was looking for.
There were two eggs, large fleshy and possessed that distinctive top. They were smaller than the eggs she had seen and destroyed on Hadley's Hope, but they were eggs.
"Underdeveloped?" She muttered to herself as she tried to work out a way of destroying them without damaging the ship before she remembered there was a second loader in the storage bay next to the launch bay. As she slipped into the exoskeleton after she had prepared the drop doors, opening them; she had sealed the outer doors, remembering all the lessons she had learnt at the academy after the Queen was blown out of them for a one-way trip through the vacuum.
As the loader walked with the hum of electronically controlled hydraulics, Ripley gently lifted one of the eggs out and dropped it unceremoniously down the hatch before she went back for the second and she did the same. Once she was finished she went through the entire bay just to be safe; she wasn't expecting to find any more eggs; Newt and Bishop would have told her the moment the Queen was defeated, but the Queen might have sneaked out of her hiding place, dropped off a few eggs and waited for her and the others to venture out before impaling her tail through Bishop.
She was right.
There was another egg; like the others it was undeveloped, but it was there, and it was underneath the deck plating. Once she'd found it, Ripley searched the rest of the bay for any more signs. But it was the only one there. Getting back into the loader, Ripley walked back over and pulled it out.
Once the eggs were secure, Ripley got out of the loader and she shut the upper hatch before she opened the lower ones, and blasted them into space.
It was finally over.
Ripley carried out one last inspection and then she headed out of the launch bay, and she headed for the flight deck on her way to Medical. It was time to go home.