I sighed as Lisconu's poor lifeless body poured blood all over the veiny purple flooring. I did not cry, I'd wept so much already.

Another Ss'sik'chtokiwij martyr for the cause of Christ.

"That's right, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik," Anjonssud drew closer with her weapon. "Just stay where you are and don't move. This will all be over in a second."

She lunged.

Before she could impale me, I reached back quickly, bringing down the nearest available harpoon.

The end of the weapon resembled a fork tip cheese knife, as if the Pale Ones occasionally took a break from brutally killing things to serve hors d'oeuvres.

The harpoon clanged Anjonssud's blade away from my body, and when I brought it around for an offensive attack, I managed to drive my aunt back a yard.

My blade could reach, but Anjonssud had speed and a lighter weapon. I raised the middle portion of my weapon just in time to block an overhead swing.

The harpoon, made of a material similar to the scimitar, withstood the blow.

Being no Errol Flynn, I had no fencing instructor or martial arts training. Just a student of `Trying Not To Get Killed.' Fortunately, Snake Head was of the same rank and school.

We fought each other like a pair of kids beating each other with sticks. I imitated moves I saw in Kung Fu movies, and my aunt just tried to hack my limbs off.

We circled, we clashed, we shoved each other into walls. I chipped her shell, she chipped mine, she scraped her blade down the harpoon, attempting to dislodge my claws.

Anjonssud became enraged, hammering me with blow after blow from her weapon, forcing me into the chamber outside.

I parried, struck, attempted to run her through.

Something cracked. I felt a stab of searing pain.

I glanced back into the weapon room. Now my daughter wore one of the Pale Ones' devices.

Instead of putting it around her arm, my daughter had crawled through the cuff of the weapon, allowing it to puncture her along the body, which gave her access to the firing mechanism somehow. Semi-miraculous that the thing hadn't killed her.

She aimed the muzzle at my head, her body tensing for the kill shot. "Mother, I love you, but I can't let you hurt Anjonssud. Put down your weapon."

She still wore my scarf. With that weapon attached to her body, it seemed more likely than before that she would never remove it, as promised.

I knew nothing of her skill with this weapon, but I could only assume that my close proximity had greatly aided her accuracy in the previous shot. Plus, I wanted to make peace with my daughter. I disarmed myself. "Shauqauzjarruba, Anjonssud wishes me dead."

"No," Anjonssud growled. "Your mother is trying to kill me and steal my prey!"

My daughter faced me. "Leave here. Go back to the human dwelling, and await this New Killer Balm you speak of."

"Shauqauzjarruba. I love you."

She whimpered and nodded. "But I also love Anjonssud. Please do not make me choose between you."

I departed from there, crossing through the basement on the other side of Grandmother's house.

I turned just in time to see a dark figure charging at me with a shiny blade.

I ducked out of the way, grabbing the nearest convenient object, a plastic box of rations. The blade cut through the container like butter, showering my face with white and tan powdery crumbs. "What! I left! What more do you want from me!"

"My prey! Where did you hide it!"

"Go sniff for it! I'm not helping you murder a friend!"

"Then I'll murder you!" She slashed, and I blocked her attack with a silver canister that left she and I sticky with blue sticky gunk.

That's when I found the gun.

Rather large. A Marine must have dropped it.

A lot harder to handle the weapon than I realized. Although I managed to fire it, it had too much kick, so I only maimed Anjonssud's shoulder, the rest of the shot going wild.

I brought the gun down for a second attempt, but something ricocheted above my head. I had to move out of the way.

My daughter had followed me.

She fired a second shot, narrowly missing me. "I thought I told you to leave! I now have no choice but to kill you!"

"How dare you speak that way to your mother!"

"You've done worse. Put down that gun!"

"I can't do that, Shauqauzjarruba. Anjonssud is trying to kill me! I tried to depart, and she tried to kill me just the same!"

"She has hidden my prey!" Anjonssud snarled.

"It's okay, mother. When you die, you'll be back with the man in the baseball suit."

I stared at her. "Shauqauzjarruba, I thought you loved me! I'm your mother!"

"Hissandra is my mother now." She shot me in the leg.

Anjonssud, catching my distraction, brought her blade down on my weapon, and the whole front end fell off.

Hoping I'd have a sawed off machine gun or something, I attempted to fire again, but an important mechanism must have been severed, for nothing happened. I threw the gun aside.

Shauqauzjarruba pointed her weapon at me. "You're still here, and you are trying to kill Anjonssud. I cannot allow you to do that."

I pushed my attacker away so I could get closer to my daughter. "Please, Shauqauzjarruba, you know you love me, as I love you."

Anjonssud hesitated in attacking me so close to Shauqauzjarruba.

"I love you, daughter."

"Anjonssud has been there for me when you weren't. I love her."

"I had to do what I did for a reason. The human has no exoskeleton, or Ss'sik'chtokiwij defenses. She is not as strong as you."

"You love that human more than me. You never followed me around, never watched what I was doing, if I were safe or well fed. It was always her! You tucked her into bed at night, but never me! You just left me out in the cold! I'm only wearing this scarf because Dabmuvum gave her life for it, not because of you. Hissandra is my real mother. At least she was there for me!"

She aimed at my head, preparing to fire.

I ducked at the last second. Anjonssud yelped, but the shot only hit her in the shoulder plates.

Deciding nothing could be done about the situation, I fled my daughter, but as I staggered away, she opened fire again.

Having seen no markings on her body before this incident I could only assume that Shauqauzjarruba had never had target practice, and had only struck me earlier due to being at close range. She confirmed this suspicion when shots bounced off the walls next to me, instead of hitting the target.

I limped around a wall to escape, but Anjonssud popped out and slashed at my head.

My daughter shot me in the back, breaking one of my fins. The impact did not affect any of my spinal nerves.

I picked up a severed android arm, slapping Cobra Shell across the face. In one swipe of her blade, I held nothing but a bicep spraying white coolant.

I blocked another attack with a robot leg, then, when Anjonssud came back around, the head of a Bishop unit, which she chopped in half like a melon.

I backtracked toward the weapon room, slowing Anjonssud down with a carpenter's square, then a long metal flashlight, all the while dodging my daughter's bullets.

I grabbed a piece of rebar, blocking three attacks before the tough piece of metal split in twain.

At long last I reached the discarded harpoon, driving Anjonssud back with broad swinging motions.

Shauqauzjarruba tried to shoot me, but her weapon clicked empty.

I swiped Anjonssud across the head, drawing blood.

When I brought my weapon in for another swing, a small white body dropped on me from the ceiling, clawing and biting my shell with rabid ferocity.

I got so angry that I picked my daughter up, flinging her into a wall.

[0000]

The impact must have activated something, for the moment she hit the organic metal, a machine let out an angry whine, and a jagged sort of conveyor belt popped out of the structure. The conveyor rolled endlessly from the floor to a hole in the ceiling. where something like rock crushing and blenderizing equipment made horrible grinding sounds.

The pointy teeth and hooks on the conveyor indicated possible use in preparing meat.

I turned my attention to Anjonssud, jabbing her in the stomach with the blunt end of the harpoon.

I swung it around, chopping her in the arm, but being that I hadn't struck the arm that wielded the scimitar, I had to quickly pull away before she sliced my own arm off.

Shauqauzjarruba climbed up my back, clawing and biting me once more.

I roared, throwing at her at a wall.

I chopped Anjonssud at the leg, but then a piteous cry tore my attention away from the fight.

"Mother! Help!"

My daughter's scarf had gotten caught on the conveyor belt, the machinery dragging her upwards.

"Help! Mother! I love you!" she wailed. "Please help me! I'm sorry!"

Were these words sincere? Or was this just a desperate plea to escape her impending doom? It didn't matter, my love for her hadn't changed.

I blocked a scimitar attack. "Shauqauzjarruba! Take the scarf off!"

"I can't! It's stuck! Please! Help me! I'm sorry for everything!"

"I forgive you, daughter!" I dropped my weapon, rushing to the conveyor.

My daughter was already above my head, speeding towards the hole in the ceiling.

"Shauqauzjarruba!" Anjonssud shouted.

I climbed the wall, reaching for my daughter. "Cut the scarf! Use your claws!"

"But Dabmuvum!" she protested. "She died for this!"

"And you will too if you don't tear it off!"

"But you made it for me!"

"I can make other things! Cut it off!"

Shauqauzjarruba tried, but her little claws only got stuck in the weave.

I grabbed my daughter, attempting to pull her free, but the scarf had already entered the hole, its fibers caught in the blades of a deadly cluster of shredding machines.

"Please God," I cried, tugging my daughter back from the brink, struggling to free her from ensnarement. "Spare my baby! Don't let Shauqauzjarruba die! Please! Save her, Lord!"

I ripped at the fabric with my claws, but my daughter had knotted it too tight, and the Pale Ones' weapon kept the rest of the fabric firmly attached.

Before I could finish slicing all the way through the material, the razor sharp blades snapped my larva out of my clutches, her little body whipping with lightning speed through the toothy spinning blades.

I will never forget those screams of pain.

Her weapon damaged the machinery, stopping up the works, but not before killing her.

Shauqauzjarruba let out one final agonized shriek as her sizzling blood showered down.

"No..." I turned my head away and wept.

I felt unsurprised that God did not deliver my daughter from being pureed in the Pale Ones' meat processing system. When King David killed Uriah the Hittite and stole the man's wife, David's firstborn died, despite his prayers and protests.

Born from a sinful act of wickedness, I expected this to be Shauqauzjarruba's fate, and initially wanted it to be thus, as God's just and fitting punishment for my act. I just didn't expect it to end this way.

Now that I loved Shauqauzjarruba...Now that I no longer saw her as an unwanted thing, I at last understood the full weight of my sinful act.

If the vision I had seen with mother and the baseball stadium proved to be real, I could only hope I and Shauqauzjarruba would be reunited again, in similar fashion.

My enemy took advantage of my moment of weakness, plunging her blade through my back.

My blood glistened on its curving end as it projected out the side of my stomach.

I could take this abuse no further. I had lost just about everything, and this savage fiend had attacked me in my moment of grief.

Shrieking in rage, I reached behind my back, clamped my claws down on Anjonssud's fist, and in one quick movement, yanked the weapon out of my body.

I descended into a pit of fury so intense that I unthinkingly twisted her arm around, turned the blade toward her head, and shoved it through her skull, pushing sideways until she ceased breathing.

Disgusted with myself, and my fallen foe, I pushed her away from me. I fell to my knees, sobbing uncontrollably as she dropped dead on the floor.

Someone shook me.

I nearly killed Hissandra before realizing who she was.

"Grieve later! Grandmother's in trouble!"

Anjonssud's weapon probably should have killed me, but I guess it had missed my vital organs. Although in a lot of pain, I could still move. I followed my sister to Grandmother's nest.

Along the way, Hissandra told me, "You know, I'm beginning to see the value of human life, beyond mere livestock. What you showed me made me fell sorry for them. And the thoughts of the Jesus man are very beautiful."

"Do you wish to be saved?"

"Yes, but we have no time. Teach me about this later."

We took a tunnel around the back of Grandmother's room, peering into the chamber.

The Ripley woman's small but muscular form cut a striking image as she stood among the socmavaj eggs. Her alabaster skin and dark hair glistened with sweat from warrior activities, her clothing pared down to a tank top and army pants. Her pointy nose wrinkled at the smells.

In one arm, she held heavy artillery pieces, in the other, a child half the woman's weight, a tremendous display of human bodily strength.

No sign of Mr. Hicks. I supposed he hadn't made it.

"You again!" Grandmother growled at the woman. "Do you know how much sleep I've lost because of you? It wasn't fun flying out of that airlock, let me tell you!"

Ellen, not understanding Ss'sik'chtokiwij, just sullenly glared at Grandma, glanced nervously at the eggs that surrounded her.

Rebecca appeared to understand the language, she hadn't seen Grandma before, and the large body with its giant egg sac made her too frightened to speak.

"C'mon, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik," Hissandra urged. "We should be at Grandmother's side, in case she needs any help."

I shook my head. "Grandmother is strong. She has dealt with other like this with relative ease. I think she can handle one human with a gun."

Secretly, though, I had doubts, or maybe hopes, as I didn't want to see anyone die.

I nuzzled against Grandmother's massive exoskeleton. "Greetings, dear mother of my mother."

She nodded. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."

I waved to the gun toting woman, speaking in English. "Hello, Ellen."

That's when a socmavaj egg slowly cracked open.

Ripley pointed a flamethrower at it, casting me an annoyed glare as she spoke through her teeth. "Ernie, I'd get out of here if I were you. This isn't going to be pretty."

"I thought I was coming with you. So you can drop me outside the blast radius."

"Sorry, buddy. No can do." She blasted a cluster of eggs until they lit up like birthday candles.

"My eggs!" Grandmother shrieked.

Ellen torched several more.

"Children! Stop her!"

I backed away from a fire. "Just raise your claws, Grandmother. It's a sign that means `I give up, I surrender.'"

"I'm not doing that."

"Then tell the socmavaj and the other Ss'sik'chtokiwij to leave her alone. Just let her go! That's all she wants!"

"No! This woman has caused me a great deal of difficulty, and I want her to die! Look what she's doing to my eggs!"

I just shook my head.

Hissandra rushed between the flaming eggs, leaping at the woman with claws spread.

With remarkable speed, Ripley whipped her machine gun around, reducing my sister to a bloody spray of exoskeleton pieces.

"No!" I sobbed.

My only remaining sister. Gone. Before she could even be saved.

I covered my mouth, crying at the sight of her smoking remains. How would I teach her about Jesus now?

Ellen chambered a replacement magazine in her gun, cocked the grenade launcher. "Get going, Ernie! If you want to live through this thing, you're going to have to hoof it! You got me?"

I slowly crept away from the big Ss'sik'chtokiwij.

"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik," Grandmother said. "Aren't you going to protect your grandma?"

[0000]

[IF YOU THINK ERNIE SHOULD OBEY RIPLEY AND HURRY TO SAFETY, SKIP TO CHAPTER 102: SPIRITS IN PRISON]

[IF YOU THINK ERNIE SHOULD STAY AND FIGHT FOR PEACE, KEEP READING.]

[0000]

Although I loved Newt too much to fight Ripley, I challenged the woman with passive resistance, stepping between her and Grandmother with arms raised. "Please don't kill her. She's the only family I have left."

Ripley chambered a round. "What about the families of the people who lived here? What about Newt's family? Did any of your relatives show them any mercy?"

I swallowed.

"You got two choices. Either let me blow the fuck out of your grandmother, or stay here and hold her down until the place goes boom."

"I admit that she's a sinner, and I love Newt as much as you do, but you don't need to shoot my Grandma. She's not going anywhere. Just take Newt and go. I'll escort you out."

Without warning, the woman turned and blasted Grandmother's eggs, chambered rounds into that thing on the front of her gun, firing them into Grandmother's egg sac.

The explosives lit up Grandma's interior like a strange light bulb, placental ooze gushing out onto the floor. She screamed in agony.

"Grandmother!" I rushed to her side. "Are you all right?"

"What kind of stupid question is that? She just blew up my fidsvsardissar with a boom boom! Of course I'm not all right!"

The injury didn't look fatal, more like...I suppose you could compare it to castration.

"I'm going to kill that human and her larva!"

I swallowed hard, addressing the woman in English. "You shouldn't have done that. Now Grandma's upset, and understandably so. That was very painful. She intends to kill you. I suggest you run."

"What do you think I was trying to do before you got here? Those eggs started opening up the moment we tried to leave!"

"C'mon, then! I can only pray that she calms down and doesn't decide to chase you!"

The woman hurriedly backed out of Grandmother's nest. Grandma shouted for one of my cousins to help, but Ripley shot her full of bullets, just like Hissandra. I held back my weeping.

Since the woman still had grenade shot on a bandoleer, she hurled it amidst a cluster of burning eggs. A tremendous explosion.

A lot of smoke and fire. Parts of the ceiling fell down. Twice I came close to receiving a nasty concussion.

[IF YOU THINK ERNIE SHOULD HANG BACK WITH GRANDMOTHER, POST A COMMENT TO CONTINUE THAT PLOT]

[OTHERWISE, CONTINUE READING]

I decided it best to stay with Ripley, to protect the child...and my skull.

With Newt clutched tightly in her arms, the woman rushed through boiler room-like tunnels, eyes darting back and forth in search of attackers.

"Ernie," the woman blurted as she hustled down a cramped corridor. "Before we arrived, did you actually try to save other human beings at this base?"

Being out of shape and wounded, my breaths came out short. "Yes, ma'am."

"You suck at your job."

I had no response. What could I say? Thank you?

I dashed up ahead of her, scouting the area for foes. It seemed she had things pretty well covered up there.

Not so much at the rear.

When I ran back to check the tunnel we'd just left, Grandmother jumped out of the shadows and threw me into a wall. "They were right about you. You care more about those prey animals than you do your own family!" Her claws tightened around my neck, cracking plates.

"I love you, Grandmother," I whimpered.

"No," she said. "You never did."

Having given up hope on family, I glanced sideways for a moment, to see where Ripley had gone.

This did not go unnoticed. "Sidjendo was twice the granddaughter you were. And when I'm done killing your precious hoomans, I'll come back here and finish what I should have done from the start!"

She hurled me aside, galloping after her prey.

When I caught up with her, I found her clawing at the closed door of a freight elevator.

"Coward!" she snarled into the grating. "Come out here and fight me!"

Ripley answered Grandmother with a blast of fire to the face.

The elevator rose, and as it did, something rumbled rumble behind me.

An explosion, knocked me off my feet. When I got up, Grandmother disappeared inside an elevator.

I tried to follow her in, but she threw me into a wall, and the cage doors closed with me outside.

I don't know how she figured it out, but Grandma actually used the keypad. The elevator was moving.

Lacking any better means of following either of these bitter enemies, I swallowed my pain and set off up a maintenance ladder.

The whole floor below me exploded in fire as I climbed, prompting me to increase my pace to a desperate speed I couldn't hope to sustain with my bleeding stab wound. It felt like being in a Bruce Willis movie, or one of those video games where the floor disappears.

Ripley's elevator moved slowly, but so did my weakened muscles. When I found an exploitable gap in the structure, I squeezed into the shaft to hitch a ride.

Not the most easiest thing in the world, hanging from the bottom of an elevator car, especially in my injured condition, but I hadn't made it to the roof in time, as unwise and fatal as that would have been.

A floor panel came open, and I found the muzzle of a gun pointing in my face.

Speaking of fatal.

A slender hand pulled the trigger, but the weapon clicked empty. The woman swore in frustration.

"Don't worry! It's just me!"

The woman sighed, gesturing for me to climb in.

It took considerable effort, but I managed to enter the compartment.

"Your presence here is hardly a comfort."

I just groaned and lay on the floor, clutching my stomach.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Long story."

The elevator shook as another floor exploded below us.

"I have bad news, I'm afraid. Grandmother knows how to use an elevator."

"Did you even try to stop her?"

I shrugged. "She's stronger than me. The machine was going up before I could pick myself up off the ground."

Ripley swore under her breath. "Ernie, you're as useless as an asshole on my elbow."

Newt silently agreed.

Weary, the woman didn't talk for a whole minute. "Ernie, did you help those things to kill everyone on the base, or did you just watch it happen?"

"She watched," Newt said.

Our elevator stopped at the rooftop. By then, the whole processing station had transformed into a hellish fiery landscape, machinery breaking off and exploding, lightning bolts shooting upwards between towers like a massive Jacob's Ladder out of control. More things blew up beneath us.

Eying the second elevator with distrust, Ripley glanced upwards, leaned over the safety railing, searching for something. "Dammit, where is he?"

"What are you looking for?"

The woman just sighed. "Guard the elevator, Ernie."

"Yes, ma'am."

I looked through the cracks in the flooring, watching the elevator rise steadily rising to our level.

Not that many ways to stop an elevator, unless you have power tools or explosives, something I and Ripley did not currently possess. Pushing the up or down button would just call the elevator to us. If only we could have gotten inside and pushed all the buttons like a bratty kid, but I couldn't quite do that either, not without getting killed.

Ripley tossed aside her empty guns. "Ernie, is there any way you can climb down in there and melt the cables to that thing? I mean, you were able to get in ours..."

I frowned as I pictured poor Grandmother crashing to the bottom of the elevator shaft...and all those explosions..."Would that kill her?"

"We can only hope."

I shivered. "You're not convincing me to do it."

"Look, Ernie," she sighed. "Elevators have safety stops. I'm sure it'll just lock down on some floor below us, buy us some time."

"And then she'll die in an explosion."

"Do you want Newt to live, or would you rather the both of us die right now?"

Swallowing, I rushed down a ladder, searching for a way into the elevator shaft.

The floor beneath me offered no ingress, and debris from an explosion prevented me from taking another ladder down a floor. When I located a staircase, it broke off at the landing, crashing noisily onto a platform two floors below. I had to resort to my climbing suckers.

Still in a lot of pain, and bleeding, by the way.

I at last found a repairman's hatch, melted the lock, climbed inside.

The whole structure shook with another massive explosion, Flame wreathed Grandmother's elevator car.

Hoping Ripley to be right about the safety catch, I flung a glob of smoking mucus at the busily thrumming cables.

They snapped, whipping around the shaft in such a threatening manner that I thought at one point a loose cable would slice my head off.

The elevator screeched downwards a few feet, but then a set of clamps snapped down, and the elevator stalled in its tracks.

Seconds later, a black fist smashed through the roof of the car.

"Shit!"

Although made of tough metal, the obstacle had not been insurmountable.

In a panic, I scrambled back up to where my human ally continued to wait for...whatever it was.

A staircase collapsed, nearly taking me with it.

"Did you cut the cables?" Ripley asked.

"Yes, ma'am. But—"

She sighed. "How did I know there was going to be a but?"

"I'm sorry. Grandmother is strong, and very irate. I'm afraid the stalled elevator is only slowing her down."

She backed up toward the safety rail. "Let's hope it slows enough to get us safely out of here."

Presuming she only meant her and Newt, I mentally prepared myself for martyrdom.

I looked around for her would be rescuer, but only saw exploding machine towers. The scaffolding under us felt wobbly and uneven, like one wrong move could make it topple at any moment.

Clank. A groaning mechanical sound.

The door to the elevator shaft came grinding open, and a huge glistening shape emerged from the darkness, throwing the safety cage open.

Flame exploded from the shaft behind her, giving her a demon-like appearance. "Enough games, hooman! Time for you to die!"

Grandmother rushed out into the open, casually backhanding me into a post as she launched herself at the woman.

Still hemorrhaging, weak and in pain, I leapt upon Grandma's large chitinous body, but she only picked me up and threw me into the platform, hammering my face into the metal slats.

She raised my head again, poised to smash it open like a cantaloupe.

A whirring, humming noise distracted her from pulverizing my brain.

We both looked up and stared as a gray spaceship thing ascended from somewhere below the platform.

A VTOL type machine, the large rocket engines on its sides suspending it in midair.

A hatch opened on its side, the Bishop android waving Ripley inside.

Grandmother snarled, throwing me aside like a rag doll as she rose to face the newcomers.

When Ripley handed Newt over to the android, Grandmother grabbed the woman, dragging her away from the shuttle.

Grandma distended her distending her jaw for a deadly shot to the woman's skull, but I jumped on the big Ss'sik'chtokiwij's back, forcing her attentions elsewhere.

The woman sprinted to the flying vehicle, jumping aboard.

The ship rose into the air without me, its hatch closing. My fate, it would appear, had been sealed.

Ripley, Newt and Bishop had no visible weapons, and their vehicle did not in any way resemble a battleship. With all my allies were dead, it seemed unwise to hope that a foreign agency, human, alien or an angel from heaven itself, would come to save me.

Grandmother whirled around and snarled at me. "Well, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! What do you think of your precious hoomans now? Looks to me like they're just going to leave you here to die!"

"To live is for Christ," I quoted. "And to die is gain."

Her claws clamped around my neck with a crushing grip. "You won't have long to wait for that!"

I should have died on that platform, Ripley flying away as I distracted Grandmother `on the ground.' The processing station should have went up in a catastrophic explosion as Grandma throttled me to death, my soul departing to be with the Lord forever.

Of course, then, how would I have told this story?

An explosion sent a mountain of debris cascading down on the platform, compromising several sections of the flooring.

A chunk of metal hit Grandmother in the head, causing her to curse profusely.

Another heavy object struck her, and her grip loosened. I squirmed out of her claws, grabbing the largest metal bar I could reasonably heft.

Mind you, I really didn't want to hit my own grandmother with a blunt object. I was merely trying to defend myself.

Crash.

Bang.

More debris thundered down.

A mountain of heavy cylindrical pillars came barreling toward us like a log jam.

Log jam.

Barrel.

I immediately thought of Scooby Doo.

"I'm sorry to have to do this, Grandmother, but I'd prefer not to die from your claws." Mustering as much of my rapidly dwindling strength as my body would allow, I swung the bar like a baseball bat, bashing her in the side of the head.

Mind you, I never wanted to kill her, I just wanted her to stop hurting me.

Not very impressive results, but it did make her stagger backwards just enough to step on one of those metal cylinders.

I stepped out of the way, watching as Grandmother roared and flailed her arms as she attempted to balance on the rolling pillar, just like lumberjacks in all those cartoons.

She fell over backwards on the other rolling cylinders, and her big body took an ungraceful plunge through the hole where the staircase used to be.

A moment later, Bishop's shuttle lowered down beside the safety railing.

The hatch opened, a female figure making frantic gestures to the vehicle's interior. "Ernie! Get your butt in here!"

She didn't have to ask me twice!

As faint as I had become, I have no idea how I made it into the compartment. I leaned, gasping, on a bulkhead.

A blocky, dirty, lived-in sort of space vehicle, cramped throughout, a far cry from the streamlined Japanese-car-looking-things you see in Star Trek. I had to bend over a few times just to reach the cockpit.

I spotted Hicks in one of the seats, half his head covered in bandages. He looked...really out of it, possibly due to painkillers.

I turned to face the woman. "I'm grateful that you saved me, ma'am. I thought I was going to die down there. I can't thank you enough."

"Don't thank me. It was the kid's idea."

Newt gave me a shy little wave.

I suppressed an emotional sneeze. "Newt? You did this for me?"

"She apparently thinks you're the family dog."

Bishop sat at the controls, laser focused on dodging falling debris.

Something exploded, the whole compartment trembling violently as a heavy object thundered against the hull.

"Bishop!" Ripley shouted. "What are you doing? I thought you could steer!"

"I can't get the landing gears to retract." The android pulled back on the steering yoke, and we soared above a flaming tower, speeding through collapsing, burning machines and exploding pieces of equipment.

The shuttle cleared the processing station, zooming upwards through Archeron's soon-to-be-nonexistent artificial clouds.

Through the window, I saw a flash, then a terrible glowing mushroom cloud appeared on the horizon, its shockwaves powerful enough to even shake us, in midair as we flew away from the thing.

"Grandmother!" I whimpered. "No!"

Newt gave me an apologetic look. "She had to be stopped. They all did."

This made me cry more. I remained inconsolable until the shuttle entered space.

The dazzling spectacle of the stars and planets surrounding us, for a moment, took my mind off my troubles. I sniffed, stared out the windows in wonderment. "It's so beautiful! I had no idea!"

Newt smiled a little as she looked out. "It's pretty."

Our ship approached a space station, a big gray-white dog bone looking thing. "Is that where we're going? Are there other humans onboard?"

"Unfortunately not. They all died."

And then I got that look again, like this were all my fault.

"How did you get a spaceship?"

"I summoned the shuttle down via remote," Bishop explained. "The rescue took a bit more finesse."

The station's airlock came open, and we flew into a vast gray warehouse-like vehicle bay.

I stared. "Your station seems a little large for the amount of soldiers you sent down."

"A lot of that is for the engines and life support equipment, as well as missiles that can be fired from orbit."

Our shuttle touched down in the chamber, and the airlock sealed shut.

Ripley frowned at the bandaged soldier, buckled unconscious in his safety restraints.

Bishop put a hand on her shoulder. "He'll be all right. He's just unconscious. We need to give him another shot, take him on a stretcher to Medical."

I and Newt followed them down a ramp into the vehicle bay.

"I'm sorry if I scared you," the android said to the woman. "The platform had become too unstable. I had to circle and make another attempt."

He cast me a sideways glance. "We were fortunate not to crash when we returned for the creature."

Ripley put a hand on his shoulder. "Bishop, you did okay."

I tilted my head as I faced the woman, wondering if I'd possibly receive a little praise as well.

Ripley smirked, putting one hand on her hip. "I don't know what we're going to do with you. We can't exactly take you home with us..."

The android crossed his arms. "Agreed. It will definitely need to stay on the station until we can find a place for it. ICC quarantine rules prohibit—"

He spasmed in apparent simulation of pain. His back arched as his shirt tented up.

Ripley grabbed him, not comprehending the situation until the sharp black point of a tail emerged an open wound.

The android vomited coolant as the tail lifted him into the air.

A large dark body unfolded from within our shuttle's landing gear.

Its claws reached into Bishop's body, and in one deft motion, separated his upper and lower torso in a messy milk white spray.

"Grandmother?" I cried.

She cussed at me in Ss'sik'chtokiwij.

0000]

As of 12/13/23 I am still editing this story. After this chapter, you'll start seeing Big Bird instead of Gretchen Goose, Rick instead of Roger, and Sesame Time instead of Rosedale Square. Will fix this later. Sunny will also be Sweetie after this point.