them.
'Just pull it in real tight,' he was telling her. 'Despite the built-in absorbers, it'll still kick some. That's the price you have to pay for using shells that'll penetrate just about anything.' He indicated a readout built into the side of the stock. 'When this counter reads zero, hit this.' He ran a thumb over a button, and the magazine dropped out, clattering on the floor.
'Usually we're required to recover the used ones: they're expensive. I wouldn't worry about following regs just now.'
'Don't worry,' she told him.
'Just leave it where it falls. Get the other one in quick.' He handed her another magazine, and she struggled to balance the heavy weapon with one hand while loading with the other 'Just slap it in hard, it likes abuse.' She did so and was rewarded with a sharp click as the magazine snapped home. 'Now charge it.' She tapped another switch. A red telltale sprang to life on the side of the arming mechanism.
Hicks stepped back, eyed her firing stance approvingly 'That's all there is to it. You're ready for playtime again. Give it another run-through.'
Ripley repeated the procedure: release magazine, check reload, arm. The gun was awkward physically, comforting mentally. Her hands were trembling from supporting the weight. She lowered the barrel and indicated the metal tube that ran underneath.
'What's this for?'
'That's the grenade launcher. You probably don't want to mess with that. You've got enough to remember already. If you have to use the gun, you want to be able to do it without thinking.'
She stared back at him. 'Look, you started this. Now show me everything. I can handle myself.'
'So I've noticed.'
They ran through sighting procedures again, then grenade loading and firing, a complete course in fifteen minutes. Hicks showed her how to do everything short of breaking down and cleaning the weapon. Satisfied that she'd missed nothing, she left him to ponder the tactical console's readouts as she headed for Medical to check on Newt. Slung from its field straps, her newfound friend bounced comfortingly against her shoulder.
She slowed when she heard footsteps ahead, then relaxed Despite its greater bulk, an alien would make a lot less noise than the lieutenant. Gorman emerged from the doorway, looking weak but sound. Burke was right behind him. He barely glanced at her. That was fine with Ripley. Every time the Company representative opened his mouth, she had an urge to strangle him, but they needed him. They needed every hand they could get, including those stained with blood. Burke was still one of them, a human being.
Though just barely, she thought.
'How do you feel?' she asked Gorman.
The lieutenant leaned against the wall for support and put one hand to his forehead. 'All right, I guess. A little dizzy. One beauty of a hangover. Look, Ripley, I—'
'Forget it.' No time to waste on useless apologies. Besides what had happened wasn't entirely Gorman's fault. Blame for the fiasco beneath the atmosphere-processing station needed to be apportioned among whoever had been foolish or incompetent enough to have put him in command of the relief team Gorman's lack of experience aside, no amount of training could have prepared anyone for the actuality of the aliens. How do you organize combat along accepted lines of battle with an enemy that's as dangerous when it's bleeding to death as it is when it's alive? She pushed past him and into the Med lab.
Gorman followed her with his eyes, then turned to head up the corridor. As he did so he encountered Vasquez approaching from the other direction. She regarded him out of cold, slitted eyes. Sweat stained her colourful bandanna and plastered it to her dark hair and skin.
'You still want to kill me?' he said quietly.
Her reply mixed contempt with acceptance. 'It won't be necessary.' She continued past him, striding toward the next checkpoint.
With Gorman and Burke gone, Medical was deserted. She crossed through to the operating theatre where she'd left Newt. The light was dim, but not so weak that she couldn't make out the empty bed. Fear racing through her like a drug she spun, her eyes frantically scanning the room, until a thought made her bend to look beneath the cot.
She relaxed, the tension draining back out of her. Sure enough, the girl was curled up against the wall, jammed as far back in as she could get. She was fast asleep, Casey clutched tightly in one small hand.
The angelic expression further reassured Ripley, innocent and undisturbed despite the demons that had plagued the child through waking as well as through sleeping hours. Bless the children, she thought, who can sleep anyplace through anything.
Carefully she laid the rifle on the cot. Getting down on hands and knees, she crawled beneath the springs. Without waking the girl she slipped both arms around her. Newt twitched in her sleep, instinctively snuggling her body closer to the adult's comforting warmth. A primal gesture. Ripley turned slightly on her side and sighed.
Newt's face contorted with the externalization of some private, tormented dreamscape. She cried out inarticulately, a vague dream-distorted plea. Ripley rocked her gently.
'There, there. Hush. It's all right. It's all right.'
Several of the high-pressure cooling conduits that encircled the massive atmosphere-processing tower had begun to glow red with excess heat. High-voltage discharges arced around the conical crown and upper latticework, strobing the blighted landscape of Acheron and the silent structures of Hadley town with irregular, intense flashes of light. It would have been obvious to anyone that something was drastically wrong with the station. Damping units fought to contain a reaction that was already out of control. They continued, anyway. They were not programmed for futility.
Across from the landing platform a tall metal spire poked toward the clouds. Several parabolic antennae clustered around the top, like birds flocking to a tree in wintertime.
At the base of the tower a solitary figure stood hunched over an open panel, his back facing into the wind.
Bishop had the test-bay cover locked in the open position and had managed to patch the portable terminal console into the tower's instrumentation. Thus far everything had gone as well as anyone dared hope. It hadn't started out that way. He'd arrived late at the tower, having underestimated the length o time it would take him to crawl through the conduit. As if by way of compensation, the preliminary checkout and testing had come off without a hitch, enabling him to make up some of that lost time. Whether he'd made up enough remained to be seen.
His jacket lay draped over the keyboard and monitor of the terminal to shield them from blowing sand and dust. The electronics were far more sensitive to the inclement weather than he was. The last several minutes had seen him typing frenetically, his fingers a blur on the input keys. He accomplished in a minute what would have taken a trained human ten.
Had he been human he might have uttered a small prayer Perhaps he did anyway. Synthetics have their own secrets. He surveyed the keyboard a last time and muttered to himself.
'Now, if I did it right, and nothing's busted inside. ' He punched a peripheral function key inscribed with the signa word ENABLE.
Far overhead, the Sulaco drifted patiently and silently in the emptiness of space. No busy figures moved through its empty corridors. No machines hummed efficiently as they worked the huge loading bay. Instruments winked on and off silently maintaining the ship in its geo-stationary orbit above the colony.
A klaxon sounded, though there were none to hear it Rotating warning lights came to life within the vast cargo hold though there was no one to witness the interplay of red, blue and green. Hydraulics whined. Immensely powerful lifters rumbled along their tracks as the second dropship was trundled out on its overhead rack. Wheels locked in place, and pulleys and levers took over. The shuttle was lowered into the gaping drop bay.
As soon as it was locked in drop position, service booms and automatic decouplers extended from walls and floor to plug into the waiting vessel. Predrop fueling and final checkout commenced. These were mundane, routine tasks for which human attention was unnecessary. Actually the ship could do the job better without any people around. They would only get in the way and slow down the operation.
Engines were brought on-line, shut down, and restarted Locks were cycled open and sealed shut. Internal communications flared to life and exchanged numerical sequences with the Sulaco's main computer. A recorded
