Torn Apart by Jude

"So what's in the ship?"

Tanner forced her eyes open and looked at Hicks. It had been a little over two and a half hours since she'd got up, and even that had exhausted her. Both Hudson and Dietrich had had to leave halfway through the session in order to get the bar open.

"What?"

"The ship, the goddamned ship!" Hicks slammed a hand down on the table so hard his palm stung and he heard the conversation in the bar falter. "Your Elite are going to a hell of a lot of trouble to get rid of anyone who might have seen it. According to Ripley's report, the ship's completely derelict—"

"Ripley never went inside, so Ripley wouldn't know, would she?" Tanner sipped at her drink again. Hicks was privately impressed; this was her fifth glass of firewater and she wasn't even slurring her speech. Tanner may not be an alcoholic, but it was clear she was one hell of an experienced drinker.

"So what happened?"

Tanner stared at what was left of her drink, then gulped it down and replaced the glass with a hand that shook ever so slightly.

"Our sun was dying," she said abruptly. "We had other worlds and colonies, but most of them were…well, a lot like Acheron, really; all rocks with no way of growing food. There was no way we could have survived without a mother world, and the few habitable worlds weren't enough to sustain all of us. Our scientists spent centuries trying to develop something that would allow us to colonise a new planet somewhere else." Tanner leaned back, wincing at the pain in her cracked ribs, and was silent for so long that Hicks started to think she'd fallen asleep. Eventually she spoke again.

"They developed something called the Flare Cannon, something that could turn a world into a new sun. I don't know any more about it than that. I do know that they installed the Flare Cannon in a ship called the Vidamer, tested it out on an asteroid and it worked just fine."

Hicks leaned forward slightly, staring at her intently. "So what went wrong?"

Tanner shrugged. "Word got out. The Flare Cannon was supposed to be used to transform uninhabited worlds, but it didn't take people long to realise that it would work just as well on populated ones as well. The Vidamer was boarded, the Flare Cannon was stolen and that was the last anyone heard of it."

Hicks shook his head, massaging his forehead as he leaned back again. "That doesn't make any sense. If you'd managed to get your hands on a weapon like that, wouldn't you want to make sure everyone knew about it?"

The woman gave him a slightly twisted smile. "Yeah, except something else went wrong. The Flare Cannon's command screen was accessible through a six-digit code, and if the wrong one was inputted, the entire system would freeze up. The code was supposedly recorded on a data disk known as the Gamma cartridge, but nobody ever found it. Including the raiders."

Hicks was silent now, trying to slot everything into place and failing.

"So…the ship on Acheron…"

"Yeah. There's no way of knowing exactly what happened, but from what I heard it's not hard to guess. Once they had the Flare Cannon, they made tracks as fast as they could before the authorities arrived. They must have been smuggling alien eggs as well, only they got careless." Tanner started to sip from her glass again, only to find that it was empty and Hicks had – either by accident or design – moved the bottle out of reach. "Their ship continued on until it passed close enough to a planet – in this case Acheron – to be pulled into its gravitational field and crash on the surface. The Flare Cannon's still there. Whether it's still intact, I've no idea – I doubt it – but the Elite could probably extrapolate the technology without too much difficulty."

"How long ago did all this happen?" The dates didn't add up as far as Hicks was concerned; according to Ripley's report, the pilot of the derelict ship had been fossilised. The corporal wasn't exactly an expert in scientific matters, but he was pretty certain that fossilisation took thousands of years.

Tanner tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling, lips moving soundlessly as she worked it out. Eventually she said, "I don't know exactly. I heard the raiders' ship was equipped with some kind of experimental technology to do with wormholes. Time gets pretty screwed up when you go through one of those; as far as the crew of that ship were concerned, it could have taken thousands of years instead of hundreds."

"Hundreds?" Hicks echoed.

"I was in stasis for the journey to Acheron, along with the rest of the crew. That journey took us some five hundred years."

"Five hundred?" The corporal stared at her, unable to come to terms with this. Five years he could have understood, sympathised with. But five hundred?

"So…there's probably nobody left alive back where you come from that even remembers this Flare Cannon thing."

"The fact that it was stolen?" Tanner shrugged. "Probably not. It was only six months ago as far as I'm concerned, but when you factor in time spent in hypersleep…" She let the sentence trail off, spread her hands in a shrug.

Hicks stared at her, for once speechless. Five hundred years? A thousand by the time they'd got back? Jesus Christ.

He rubbed the back of his neck, unaccountably dazed. How would that feel, to spend a thousand years away from a place, knowing when you got back home it would probably be changed beyond all recognition? Was anything worth that?

He was beginning to understand for the first time just what kind of people they were up against.

"For the last damn time—" Gorman folded his arms as best his ruined back would allow and glared at Vasquez— "the answer is no!"

The smartgun operator spun around so fast that the lieutenant took half a step back in spite of himself. "If you think I'm gonna let you waltz off to some fancy dinner and leave me alone in this hellhole—"

Gorman snorted. "Oh, you've changed your tune. From what I gathered before, I was the last person you wanted to share your little cell with!"

"And you still are!" Vasquez' voice rose slightly but she was past caring. "In case you've forgotten, Gorman, if it hadn't been for me agreeing to hide you in this little cell, you'd be writhing around with a bug chewing its way out of your body right about now!"

"Yes," Gorman shot back without missing a beat, "and if it hadn't been for me, then you'd have been bug food for that queen you were crazy enough to go up against, so I suggest we call it even, Vasquez!"

There was a long, deadly silence. The argument between them had been going on for some time and had been extremely vehement and occasionally hazardous to onlookers, Newt having narrowly missed being hit by a flying plate.

"Anyway, when I invited you before, you said you'd rather chew off your own arm than come along," Gorman added in a slightly calmer tone.

Vasquez looked away. This was quite true, although in her current mood she would have kissed a facehugger before admitting it. She wasn't a great one for pretty speech and politics – insincere sincerity, Drake had always called it – but ever since Gorman had mentioned the dinner she'd been thinking about it and found she was starting to like the idea. At least sneaking into the Company dinner to spy on the people who had locked her up would make her feel like she was doing something again.

"I don't care what I said, Gorman. If I spend one more day by myself in this place I'm going to go crazy!"

"You're hardly alone; you've got Newt here and Charmaine just down the corridor."

Vasquez snorted derisively. "Yeah. Like I'm gonna pay a social visit to that human chimney."

Gorman sat down at the table, massaging his forehead. After two and a half hours of going round in circles and arguing the same points over and over, he was more than a little tired and sorely tempted to forget the whole thing.

"Look. If I was going into a fight or something, believe me, you'd be the first person I chose. But I am going to be gatecrashing an exclusive dinner given by the same people who locked you up and tried to kill me, and you'd be no damn use there." When the smartgun operator opened her mouth to argue, Gorman cut across her testily. "Listen, I bow to your expertise when it comes to killing anything that moves, but you've never been to a fancy dinner party in your life."

Vasquez folded her arms. "And I suppose a bored rich kid like you went to one every fucking night of your life."

"I'm damn sure I've been to more than you!" Gorman conveniently forgot to mention the fact that he'd despised each and every one of them as a tedious waste of a good evening and had made a career out of avoiding as many as he could. "You'd stand out like a sore thumb and that would get us both arrested. And what would happen to Newt?"

Vasquez curled her lip. "You think I care?"

"You may not, but I do. I don't care how annoying you find her, Vasquez; she doesn't deserve to die for it and we both know you're the best bodyguard she could have. Even the kid could probably beat me in the shape I'm in now; I'm in no condition for a fight."

In fact, Gorman wasn't certain he was in any condition for sneaking into a fancy dinner either; the agony in his back was so intense it was making him light-headed, and lately it seemed that all he wanted to do was rest, but he kept that particular gem to himself.

"So what happens if they discover you?" Vasquez said.

"They won't." The lieutenant spoke dismissively, barely glancing up from his coffee. "They won't be looking for me there; they'll think I've left Gateway and that I'm well on my way back to my home world right about now. They'll send people to kill me there."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Common sense." The lieutenant took a large gulp of coffee as he spoke, wincing as it burned his mouth. "The first priority of the Company and by default the armed forces isn't reparation; it's containment."

Vasquez curled her lip. "Don't give me that shit. The Company wanted the bugs brought back so it could try and turn them to its own advantage. Even I know that."

Gorman looked at her and said very quietly, "Do you also know that my orders from the Company were to dispose of any surviving colonists on Acheron before obtaining specimens of the alien and then nuking the entire site from orbit to stop anyone else getting their hands on them?"

There was a long, long silence. Then Vasquez said, "What?"

The lieutenant shifted back in his chair. "When I was assigned to the Sulaco, I was told that there was a risk of xenomorph activity. Weyland-Yutani wanted specimens brought back, but they also wanted it hushed up completely. No survivors except us, and knowing what I know now I wouldn't have wagered much on that either."

"And you agreed?"

Gorman gave her a rather twisted smile. "Well, one doesn't say no to the Company. Besides, I was naïve enough to be flattered that they'd picked me to lead the mission when I'd only graduated a few months ago. And I didn't believe in the aliens any more than you did at first; I thought it was a downed transmitter, that there wouldn't be anything to hush up."

"So what happened? You have second thoughts?" Vasquez' voice was heavy with sarcasm.

"When I saw the state of the place, I thought that there weren't any survivors and all we'd have to do would be secure a specimen or two – and the colonists had already done that with those facehuggers – and get the hell out. That was before we found Newt. I'd already made up my mind that I wasn't going to follow the Company orders and that I would order any surviving colonists to be dropped off on another world somewhere, but even if I hadn't..." Gorman let the sentence trail off and then, when Vasquez didn't say anything, added, "Well, I could hardly order the execution of a six year old child, could I?" He frowned suddenly. "Maybe that's why they locked me in that cell instead of you, because they knew I wasn't going to play along with them."

Some of Vasquez' feelings re the likelihood of her own cooperation with the Company must have been obvious on her face, because Gorman nodded.

"Yes, I know. But technically speaking, you hadn't done anything wrong. I'd disobeyed a direct order from Weyland-Yutani and that gave them all the reason they needed to lock me up." He considered this for a few minutes, then added, "Not that they actually needed a valid reason, I suppose; it just cut down on the paperwork." Gorman tested his coffee again, found it had cooled enough to drink and drained the mug in a few swallows.

"You never mentioned this on the Sulaco."

The lieutenant spared her an irritable glance. "Oh come on, Vasquez, give me some credit! Since when do officers share every little detail of their orders with grunts? If I'd said we might have to gun down innocent people, I'd have had a damn mutiny on my hands before we even left the ship! The Company wants us all dead, and if we can find out what they're planning—"

"Right, because I'm sure they're going to give away their most secret plans in the after dinner speeches."

"Well, if you have any other ideas, now's the time!"

Vasquez snorted as she looked at him. "You don't even have anything to wear. That outfit's two sizes too big."

"Yes, I had noticed that," Gorman answered rather tersely. "And for your information, Vasquez, I do have something besides this to wear."

"Then why don't you?" Vasquez shot back in a tone which said she didn't believe a word of it. "Where'd you get this new wardrobe, anyway?"

"You remember when we had that…discussion about Drake?"

Discussion. Well, that was certainly one word for it, Vasquez thought sourly. Aloud she said, "Yeah. You went to hide at Charmaine's."

"Eventually, yes. I went through the airducts and took a little trip outside to the barracks. It was a hell of a long shot, but I thought there might be a record of some of the others."

"And was there?" Vasquez said sarcastically.

"No." Gorman's mind strayed back to the young man he'd seen. Could it have been—no. No, that would just be too much of a coincidence. "But I did manage to get a set of fatigues. I thought it'd be better than this." He fingered one sleeve of the oversized shirt he was wearing with an expression of disdain.

"And what about this?" Vasquez tapped a fingernail on the part of the dinner notice that said Invitation Only.

Gorman shrugged. "I'll find an invitation from somewhere."

In spite of his words, the lieutenant doubted it was going to be as simple as that. Maybe if he'd still been a registered officer...

"So what are you going to do?" Vasquez sneered. "Tell them the invite got lost in the mail and ask them to pretty please let you in regardless?"

Gorman set his coffee mug down on the table with a little more force than was strictly necessary.

"If I have to!"

"Right." The smartgun operator tilted her head slightly to one side. "You're fucking crazy, you know that?"

Gorman surged upright, then regretted it as dizziness assailed him and he had to grab the table for support.

"At least I'm trying to do something about our current situation! What the hell have you been doing except whining?"

Vasquez leapt to her feet, eyes blazing. "Say that again!"

"Sorry, Vasquez. I forgot you have trouble with words of more than one syllable."

The smartgun operator started towards him with open murder in her eyes, but at that moment the door to Newt's room opened and the girl wandered out.

"Vaz, I can't find my yellow crayon. Have you…" Her voice tailed off as she picked up on the charged atmosphere and saw Vasquez and Gorman apparently about to have a free fight. "Uh. Never mind."

Gorman narrowed his eyes as he stared at Vasquez, but Newt's appearance had put a stop to any thoughts of physical combat…which was just as well, really. Like he'd said to Vasquez, he wasn't in any shape for a fight.

"You know what?" he said suddenly. "The hell with you. You want to sit and do nothing but gripe, you can damn well do it on your own."

Pausing in the door, he turned just long enough to deliver a parting shot.

"It's a damn good thing Drake died when he did, Vasquez, because if the acid hadn't killed him, seeing you reduced to some stay-at-home whiner would have."

Vasquez stared at him for a long time but couldn't seem to find any words to answer. Judging from her expression, it was clear she felt Gorman's remark was well below the belt.

Already feeling a little ashamed of his words, the lieutenant spun on his heel and strode out, taking care to slam the door hard behind him.

"So who the hell are you, and where's Hicks?"

Ruin's mind worked frantically. Apone was still standing in her doorway and they were beginning to attract attention.

"If you'd just come inside—"

"Not a chance."

The instinct to get away from the man really was getting quite strong now. Ruin forced a smile onto her lips and said the first thing that came into her head.

"Now's not a good time for me. I'm on my way to meet someone, and it really can't wait."

Without waiting to see Apone's reaction, she slid past him. It was the beginning of commuter time on Gateway and within seconds she'd been swallowed up in the crowd.

Left alone, Apone glanced at Spunkmeyer's still pallid complexion. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

Collapsing onto a chair, Spunkmeyer ran shaking hands over his face. "Yeah? Well, that could be because I think I did. I swung by the barracks to pick up some clothes – oh, don't ask," he added bitterly as Apone opened his mouth. "Turns out I wasn't the only one with that idea. There was this guy there who seemed to have had the same idea."

"Someone you knew?"

Spunkmeyer gave a short laugh. "You could say that. It was lieutenant Gorman, sarge. I'd swear it on my deathbed."

Apone hesitated. He wasn't a superstitious man, but something about the dropship crew chief's expression was unnerving him.

"What're you saying, this guy looked like Gorman?"

"It was Gorman. He wasn't in uniform, but...hell, if it wasn't him, it was his twin. He looked at me and said my name, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and when I opened them he was gone." Spunkmeyer shook his head. "Fuck, he even had the head wound."

The look on Apone's face said quite clearly that he thought Spunkmeyer had suffered the same thing, and the dropship crew chief added, "From when he got knocked out in the APC. It had healed some but it was still there."

Apone didn't answer, mind busy turning this new development over.

Was it possible that the Company had lied? Or to put it more accurately, was it probable? Had the others somehow survived?

"The lieutenant's dead. You know that."

Spunkmeyer shook his head. "No, I don't. He, Ripley and Vasquez got hit with facehuggers. We never saw those...those things come out; when we came out of hypersleep, the three of them were gone. How do we know the Company didn't take out the aliens and leave the hosts alive?"

The sergeant held this idea up briefly, then tossed it on the scrapheap. Even if the Company had managed to take the chestbursters out of Gorman and the other two, as soon as it was done they would have simply shot them without any preamble. Hell, why waste the ammo; Apone was pretty sure that the Company would have just locked them up and left them to die when the alien embryo chewed its way out.

"You're seeing things."

"Maybe." Spunkmeyer didn't look convinced. "But that doesn't explain how this guy knew my name. I've kept a very low profile since getting out of the Corps."

"Have you heard from any of the others?"

The young man shrugged. "No, not really. I get the odd invitation from Hudson to go visit his bar, but I've never taken him up on it. And Hicks, but I haven't heard from him for some time, not since he kept calling me every half hour to solve this problem or that one with his goddamn ship."

"What about your friend?"

"Ruin?" Spunkmeyer glanced around. "Don't ask me, sarge; I'm just the fucking pilot. Out somewhere, I guess. Maybe to sort out an invitation to that dinner the Company's giving; she was talking about that before I left. Why?"

"Good." Apone caught hold of Spunkmeyer's elbow and hauled him to his feet. "Then we should get the hell out before she comes back."

The young man blinked, puzzled. "Sarge?"

"You heard me. That girl's trouble. She works for the goddamn Company."

Spunkmeyer stared at him. "How do you know that?"

"She called me Apone. I changed my name when I moved here and I never saw her before in my life, so just how the hell did she know who I was?"

The dropship crew chief shrugged. "She knows a lot of things, sarge." Damn, he'd have to get out that habit; they weren't in the Marines now. "She knows about the bugs as well."

"She's gonna get you killed."

It wasn't an exaggeration. Apone wasn't given to melodrama; usually he meant things pretty much as he said them.

Spunkmeyer shrugged, pretending a bravado he didn't quite feel. There was no way he was going to risk losing what Ruin had promised him, not now.

"I'll just have to take that chance."

The older man scrutinised him through narrow eyes. He knew Spunkmeyer – they'd flown together on several missions – and he also knew that his calm, level front was just that; a front. There was a lot of anger in that young man; Spunkmeyer was the only Marine from their platoon bar Hicks and Apone himself that Drake and Vasquez had never picked a fight with.

"Follow me. Now."

Something in that tone had to be obeyed, and the dropship crew chief only hesitated the briefest instant before following Apone outside.

The sergeant led him to a small cafe that specialized in old-style Earth foods and ordered them both a cheeseburger, ignoring Spunkmeyer's protests.

"How much is she paying you?" he demanded.

Spunkmeyer's knuckles whitened on his glass, but his voice was perfectly even as he answered, "You're the second person to ask me that."

"Who was the first?"

"A couple of thugs who tried to beat her offer. Then they tried to beat me." The young man drained his Coke and slammed the glass down on the table. "Look, sarge, it's not that I don't appreciate the free meal," he began, in a tone which slandered his every word.

"Then shut up and eat it." Apone took a large bite out of his own burger as he spoke. "What did she offer you?"

Spunkmeyer looked away, eyes suddenly dark. "That's personal. It's nothing illegal, but there's nothing anyone could offer me to make me double-cross her."

"Spunkmeyer—"

"No." The dropship crew chief pushed his plate away and rose to his feet. "I can't go against her. Not now. Not until I've got what she promised me."

He spun on his heel and stalked out, leaving his food untouched on the table.

"What d'you think she said to him?" Hudson asked idly.

Dietrich shrugged. "Who cares? She's on our side."

"That's what I said about Ruin," the comtech couldn't resist pointing out, a little more sharply than usual. He'd spent the past few hours replaying every conversation he and Ruin had ever had in his mind, trying to see if there had been anything there that could have given a hint of her intentions. Had she been ordered to wait for Hicks to turn up, no matter how long it took? Or had she simply been told to keep an eye on Hudson and Dietrich, making Hicks' arrival nothing more than a happy coincidence?

The medtech snorted. "Yeah, but unlike that scheming little bitch, I hardly think Tanner's in a position to change anything around here."

Right on cue, Hicks' battered holdall came bouncing down the stairs, closely followed by Hicks himself.

Startled, Hudson fumbled his drink and barely managed to catch it in time. Emerging from under the bar, he caught hold of Hicks' arm.

"Hey man, what the fuck's going on?"

"I'm leaving."

"Well, yeah, I gathered that, but why? Where're you going?"

"I'm going back to Acheron." Hicks spoke rapidly, as though he wanted to get the words out quickly before he changed his mind.

There was a long pause before Hudson said, "Y'know, Cyn, I think I just slipped sideways into a parallel universe where Dwayne told me he was going back to Acheron."

"I am going back."

Dietrich barely looked up from the table she was clearing as she said, "Tell me, Dwayne; you ever heard the saying you can't go home again?"

The sudden drop in temperature informed the medtech that this wasn't the best thing she could have said and she glanced up to meet Hicks' killing stare.

"Over the line?" Dietrich asked.

"Yeah. Way over it. I'm going back and home—" Hicks all but snarled the word at Dietrich— "has nothing to do with it! They want the Flare Cannon, then we'll bring it back here and negotiate. They're not going to blow up something they came all this way to get."

Hudson, who had stopped Hicks' almost manic pacing by the simple method of tripping the older man up when he got close enough, caught hold of his shoulders and physically sat him down at one of the tables.

"Okay. Real slow now. What. The. Hell?"

Too late, Hicks remembered that Hudson hadn't been present for Tanner's explanation.

"It doesn't matter, okay? What matters is that I have to get back to Acheron and that goddamned ship before they do!"

"It wouldn't make any difference." Tanner's voice came tiredly from the stairs and all three turned to see her leaning against the wall. "The Elite know where that ship is. You don't seriously believe they'll have left it unprotected, do you? And even if they had, the Flare Cannon is the size of a small house; you'd never get it on your ship."

There was a long, long silence.

"Even if that's true," Hicks said at the end of it, "there has to be something there they might trade. At the very least, I'll find out what kind of people we're dealing with."

"Dwayne, you can't—" Hudson began.

"Don't." For a minute, Hicks was in command again, an NCO reprimanding a private soldier. "If I have to sit on my hands for one more minute, I'm gonna go out of my mind, especially since I now know that the one person you thought would be able to help me has orders to blow us all sky-high!"

Turning, he strode across the floor towards the exit, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. "And do me a favour, Will; get out of this bar already! If they are planning to kill us by bombing this place, what do you say we don't make it easy for them?"

The door banged behind him and he was gone.