'You sent them out there, and you didn't even warn them Burke. You sat through the inquest. You heard my story. Even if you didn't believe everything, you must have believed enough of it to want the coordinates checked out. You must have thought there was something to it or you wouldn't have gone to the trouble of having anyone go out there to look around. Out to the alien ship. You might not have believed, but you suspected. You wondered. Fine. Have it checked out. But checked out carefully by a fully equipped team, not some independent prospector. And warn them of what you suspected. Why didn't you warn them, Burke?'
'Warn them about what?' he protested. He'd heard only her words, hadn't sensed the moral outrage in her voice. That in itself explained a great deal. She was coming to understand Carter J. Burke quite well.
'Look, maybe the thing didn't even exist, right? Maybe there wasn't much to it. All we had to go on was your story, which was a bit much to take at face value.'
'Was it? The Narcissus's recorder was tampered with, Burke Remember me telling the board of inquiry about that? You wouldn't happen to know what happened to the recorder would you?'
He ignored the question. 'What do you think would've happened if I'd stuck my neck out and made it into a major security situation?'
'I don't know,' she said tightly. 'Enlighten me.'
'Colonial Administration would've stepped in. That means government officials looking over your shoulder at every turn paperwork coming out your ears, no freedom of movement at all. Inspectors crawling all over the place looking for an excuse to shut you down and take over in the name of the almighty public interest. No exclusive development rights, nothing. The fact that your story turned out to be right is as much a surprise to me as everyone else.' He shrugged, his manner as blasé as ever. 'It was a bad call, that's all.'
Something finally snapped inside Ripley. Surprising both of them, she grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall.
'Bad call? These people are dead, Burke! One hundred and fifty-seven of them less one kid, all dead because of your 'bad call.' That's not counting Apone and the others torn apart or paralyzed over there.' She jerked her head in the direction of the processing station.
'Well, they're going to nail your hide to the shed, and I'll be standing there helping to pass out the nails when they do That's assuming your 'bad call' lets any of us get off this chunk of gravel alive. Think about that for a while.' She stepped away from him, shaking with anger.
At least the aliens' motivations were comprehensible.
Burke straightened his back and his shirt, pity in his voice 'You just can't see the big picture, can you? Your worldview is restricted exclusively to the here and now. You've no interest in what your life could be like tomorrow.'
'Not if it includes you, I don't.'
'I expected more of you, Ripley. I thought you would be smarter than this. I thought I'd be able to count on you when the time came to make the critical decisions.'
'Another bad call on your part, Burke. Sorry to disappoint you.' She spun on her heel and abandoned the observation room, the door closing behind her. Burke followed her with his eyes, his mind a whirl of options.
Breathing hard, she strode toward Operations as the alarm began to sound. It helped to take her mind off the confrontation with Burke. She broke into a run.
XI
Hudson had the portable tactical console set up next to the colony's main computer terminal. Wires trailed from the console to the computer, a rat's nest of connections that enabled whoever sat behind the tactical board to interface with the colony's remaining functional instrumentation. Hicks looked up as Ripley entered Operations and slapped a switch to kill the alarm. Vasquez and Hudson joined her in clustering around the console.
'They're coming,' he informed them quietly. 'Just thought you'd like to know. They're in the tunnel already.'
Ripley licked her lips as she stared at the console readouts 'Are we ready for them?'
The corporal shrugged, adjusted a gain control. 'Ready as we can be. Assuming everything we've set up works Manufacturers' warranties aren't going to be a lot of use to us if something shorts out when it's supposed to be firing, like those sentry guns. They're about all we've got.'
'Don't worry, man, they'll work.' Hudson looked better than at any time since the initial assault on the processing station's lower levels. 'I've set up hundreds of those suckers. Once the ready lights come on, you can leave 'em and forget 'em. I just don't know if they'll be enough.'
'No use worrying about it. We're throwing everything we've got left at them. Either the RSS guns'll stop them or they won't Depends on how many of them there are.' Hicks thumbed a couple of contact switches. Everything read out on-line and operational. He glanced at the readouts for the motion sensors mounted on A and B guns. They were blinking rapidly, the strobe speeding up until both lights shone steadily. At the same time a crash of heavy gunfire made the floor quiver slightly.
'Guns A and B. Tracking and firing on multiple targets.' He looked up at Hudson. 'You give good firepower.'
The comtech ignored Hicks, watching the multiple readouts 'Another dozen guns,' he muttered under his breath. 'That's al it would take. If we had another dozen guns. '
A steady rumble echoed through the complex as the automatic weapons pounded away beneath them. Twin ammo counters on the console shrank inexorably toward single digits.
'Fifty rounds per gun. How are we going to stop them with only fifty rounds per gun?' Hicks murmured.
'They must all be wall-to-wall down there.' Hudson gestured at the readouts. 'Look at those ammo counters go. It's a shooting gallery down there.'
'What about the acid?' Ripley wondered. 'I know those guns are armoured, but you've seen that stuff at work. It'll eat through anything.'
'As long as the guns keep firing, they ought to be okay, Hicks told her. 'Those RSS shells have a lot of impact. If it keeps blowing them backward, that'll keep the acid away. It'll spray all over the walls and floor, but the guns should stay clear.'
That certainly seemed to be what was happening in the service tunnel because the robot sentries kept up their steady barrage. Two minutes went by; three. The counter on B gun reached zero, and the thunder below was reduced by half. Its motion sensor continued to flicker on the tactical readout as the empty weapon tracked targets it could no longer fire upon.
'B gun's dry. Twenty left on A.' Hicks watched the counter his throat dry. 'Ten. Five. That's it.'
A grim silence descended over Operations. It was shattered by a reverberating boom from below. It was repeated at regular intervals like the thunder of a massive gong. Each of them knew what the sound meant.
'They're at the fire door,' Ripley muttered. The booming increased in strength and ferocity. Audible along with the deeper rumble was another new sound: the nerve-racking scrape of claws on steel.
'Think they can break through there?' Ripley thought Hicks looked remarkably calm. Assurance—or resignation'
'One of them ripped a hatch right off the APC when it tried to pull Gorman out, remember?' she reminded him.
Vasquez nodded toward the floor. 'That ain't no hatch down there. It's a Class double-A fire door, three layers of stee alloy with carbon-fibre composite laid between. The door wil hold. It's the welds I'm worried about. We didn't have much time. I'd feel better if I'd had a couple bars of chromite solder and a laser instead of a gas torch to work with.'
'And another hour,' Hudson added. 'Why don't you wish for a couple of Katusha Six antipersonnel rockets while you're at it One of those babies would clean out the whole tunnel.'
The intercom buzzed for attention, startling them. Hicks clicked it on.
'Bishop here. I heard the guns. How are we doing?'
'As well as can be expected. A and B sentries are out of ammo, but they must've done some damage.'
'That's good, because I'm afraid I have some bad news.'
