stomach Hudson turned and broke into a run, reaching the door a moment before Vasquez. Together they pulled it closed and locked the seal-tight.
Once inside, they began sharing out the remnants of their pitifully small armoury. Flamethrowers, grenades, and lastly, a fair distribution of the loaded pulse-rifle magazines. Hudson's tracker continued to beep regularly, rising in a gradua crescendo.
'Movement!' He looked around wildly, saw only the silhouettes of his companions in the shadowed room. 'Signal's clean. Can't be an error.' Picking up the scanner, he panned the business end around the room. 'I've got full range of movement at twenty metres.'
Ripley whispered to Vasquez. 'Seal the door.'
'If I seal the door, how do we get to the dropship?'
'Same way Bishop did. Unless you want to try to walk out.'
'Seventeen metres,' Hudson muttered. Vasquez picked up her handwelder and moved to the door.
Hicks handed one of the flamethrowers to Ripley and began priming the other for himself. 'Let's get these things lit.' A moment later his sprang to life, a small, steady blue flame hissing from the weapon's muzzle like an oversize lighter Ripley's flared brilliantly as she nudged the button marked IGNITE, which was set in the side of the handgrip.
Sparks showered around Vasquez as she began welding the door to the floor, ceiling, and walls. Hudson's tracker was going like mad now, though still not as fast as Ripley's heart.
'They learned,' she said, unable to stand silence. 'Call it instinct or intelligence or group analysis, but they learned They cut the power and they've avoided the guns. They must have found another way into the complex, something we missed.'
'We didn't miss anything,' Hicks growled.
'Fifteen metres.' Hudson took a step away from the door.
'I don't know how they did it. An acid hole in a duct Something under the floors that was supposed to be sealed but wasn't. Something the colonists added or modified and didn't bother to insert into the official schematics. We don't know how up-to-date those plans are or when they were last revised to include all structural additions. I don't know, but there has to be something!' She picked up Vasquez's tracker and aimed it in the same direction as Hudson's.
'Twelve metres,' the comtech informed them. 'Man, this is one big signal. Ten metres.'
'They're right on us.' Ripley stared at the door. 'Vasquez how you coming?'
The smartgun operator didn't reply. Molten droplets singed her skin and landed, smoking, on her suit. She gritted her teeth and tried to hurry the welder along with some choice imprecations.
'Nine metres. Eight.' Hudson announced the last number on a rising inflection and looked around wildly.
'Can't be.' Ripley was insistent, despite the fact that the tracker she was holding offered the same impossible readout 'That's inside the room.'
'It's right, it's right.' He turned his instrument sideways so she could see the tiny screen and its accompanying telltales 'Look!'
Ripley fiddled with her own tracker, rolling the fine-tuning controls as Hicks crossed to Hudson's position in a single stride.
'Well, you're not reading it right.'
'I'm not!' The comtech's voice bordered on hysteria. 'I know these little babies, and they don't lie, man. They're too simple to screw up.' He was staring bug-eyed at the flickering readouts. 'Six metres. Five. What the fu—?'
His eyes met Ripley's, and the same realization hit them simultaneously. Both bent their heads back, and they angled the trackers in the same direction. The beeping from both instruments became a numbing buzz.
Hicks climbed onto a file cabinet. Slinging his rifle over his shoulder and clutching the flamethrower tightly, he raised one of the acoustical ceiling panels and shined his flashlight inside.
It illuminated a vision Dante could not have imagined in his wildest nightmares, nor Poe in the grasp of an uncontrollable delirium.
XIII
The serviceway between the suspended acoustical ceiling and the metal roof was full of aliens. More aliens than he could quickly count. They clung upside down to pipes and beams crawling like bats toward his light, glistening metallically. They covered the serviceway as far back as his light could shine.
He didn't need a motion tracker to sense movement behind him. As he snapped light and body around, the beam picked out an alien less than a metre away. It lunged at his face Ducking wildly, the corporal felt claws capable of rending metal rake across the back of his armour.
As he tumbled back into Operations the army of infiltrating creatures detached en masse from their grips and claw holds The flimsy suspended ceiling exploded, raining debris and nightmare shapes into the room below. Newt screamed Hudson opened fire, and Vasquez gave Hicks a hand up as she let go with her flamethrower. Ripley scooped up Newt and stumbled backward. Gorman was at her side in an instant pumping away with his own rifle. No one had time to notice Burke as the Company rep bolted for the only unblocked corridor, the one that connected Operations to Medical.
Flamethrowers brightened the chaos as they incinerated one attacker after another. Sometimes the burning aliens would stumble into one another, screeching insanely and adding to the confusion and conflagration. They sounded much more like screams of anger than of pain. Acid poured from seared bodies, chewing gaping holes in the floor and adding to the danger.
'Medical!' Ripley was backing up slowly, keeping Newt close to her. 'Get to Medical!' She turned and dashed for the connecting corridor.
The walls blurred around her, but at least the ceiling overhead stayed intact. She was able to concentrate on the corridor ahead. She caught a glimpse of Burke just as the Company rep cleared the heavy door into the lab area and slid it shut behind him. Ripley slammed into it and wrenched at the outside latch, just as it clicked home on the other side.
'Burke! Open the door! Burke, open the door!'
Newt tugged on Ripley's pants as she slipped behind her pointing down the corridor. 'Look!'
An Alien was striding up the passageway toward them. A big alien. A shaking Ripley raised her rifle, trying to recall in an instant everything Hicks had taught her about the powerfu weapon. She aimed the barrel straight at the middle of the glistening, skeletal chest and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
A hiss came from the advancing abomination. The outer jaws parted, slime splattering on the floor. Calm, calm, don't lose it, Ripley told herself. She checked the safety. It was off. A glance revealed a full magazine. Newt clung desperately to her leg and began to wail. Ripley's hands were trembling so violently, she nearly dropped the gun.
It was almost on top of them when she remembered that the first high-powered round had to be injected into the breech manually. She did so, jerked convulsively on the trigger. The rifle went off in the thing's face, hurling it backward. She turned away and covered her face as best she could in what had by now become an instinctive defensive gesture. But the energy of the shell impacting on the alien's body at point-blank range had thrown it back with such force that the spraying acid missed them completely.
The dampened recoil was still strong enough to send her off-balance body stumbling into the locked door. Her sight had been temporarily wiped by the nearness of the explosion, and she blinked furiously, trying to bring her eyes back into focus Her ears rang with the concussion.
In Operations, Hicks looked up just in time to fire at a leaping outline, the force of the pulse shell hurling his assailant backward into a blazing cabinet. By this time the combined efforts of the flamethrowers had activated the fire-contro system, and the overhead sprinkler jets deluged the room Water cascaded around the corporal, drenched the other soldiers. Some of it penetrated the central colony computer ruining it for future use. But at least it didn't pool up around their legs. By now there were enough acid holes to drain it off The fire siren wailed
