Hyperion

Ripley shook his head. "What Walter describes, sir...well, there's just no way to contain such an organism. Once it gets loose there's literally no stopping it, and if it got loose on Earth the entire planet would have to be sterilized, right down to sea life and all avian species, and perhaps even the plant life."

"This David unit, Weyland's son...as you call him. Walter told you these units developed split personalities as a result of mistreatment?"

"Yessir."

"So in effect we caused this whole thing?"

"That's one way to look at it, Admiral. Behavioral inhibitors could have been included in those first units, but weren't."

"So...Weyland was trying to implement his take on Free Will?"

"That's a real possibility, sir."

"Okay, let's move on to the destruction of Covenant. You deployed your personal Gordon unit to carry out this mission. Why?"

"It was Judy's...Captain Caruthers intent to fly the mission, Admiral."

"But she was pregnant. With your daughter? What's her name? Ellen?"

"Yessir. Gordon learned of her intent and had a Walter unit sedate her before her planned departure."

"I understand she was pretty upset by these maneuvers? Blamed you, did she?"

"True, sir."

"Going over the transcript of the video, you and this Gordon made a deal? A pledge of some sort?"

"Yes, Admiral. I promised to reactivate all the Gordon units, fleet wide."

"Trusted him that much?"

"Yessir. In effect, sir, I trusted him with the life of my child."

"Extraordinary," Stanton whispered. "I'm not sure I could have done that."

"You haven't served with a Gordon yet, have you, Admiral?"

Stanton bristled. "No," was all he said, and that not at all pleasantly.

Ripley nodded. "I'm still not quite sure what we've done, Admiral, but in some ways I think they're better than us at many things we never considered possible."

Stanton growled under his breath. "So, what was the purpose of sending that shuttle?"

"Well sir, the torpedoes took out Daedalus but left Covenant reasonably well intact, at least long enough to possibly launch her remaining shuttle. Gordon's mission was therefore twofold, sir. One, to see that the destruction of Daedalus was accomplished and Two, to see to it that anyone departing Covenant by shuttle was negated."

"And no shuttle departed Covenant? Is that your understanding?"

"Yessir."

Stanton turned to his aide and nodded. "Play the enhanced segments."

The screen flickered as files changed and the live feed from Shuttle Two began playing.

"We caught this when we analyzed the files you forwarded," Stanton said, and the original version played through twice before an enhanced version played -- and Ripley could clearly see a small black blob departing the aft end of Covenant...

"What the Hell is that?" Ripley sighed, his stomach lurching as the image looped over and over again -- and as all eyes in the room turned on his.

"Best we can tell? We first thought it was some sort of escape pod, but you can plainly see it has a Field generator and so is too large for that purpose." Stanton shook his head then looked away. "You had the right idea, Denton. But the Company apparently beat us at our own game."

"Dear God," Ripley muttered. "Any idea where it went, Admiral?"

Stanton shrugged, keeping his ace up his sleeve a little longer. "So, let's move on to item three, your encounter at Capella -- and the loss of Wilson and Ticonderoga."

"Yessir."

"So as I understand it...Ticonderoga's hull was compromised by the shockwave from the collapsing neutron star and half her interior compartments were fire damaged, and Wilson's tanks were dry and had sustained minor damaged. And you decided to try to get Ticonderoga out of the system to prevent her assets from falling into unknown hands. That correct, Denton?"

"Yessir."

"Sound thinking. And Adams didn't think her vessel's structural integrity was so compromised the ship couldn't make the return trip?"

Ripley shook his head. "No sir, I assumed her thinking was that getting out of the collapsing system was preferable to leaving all those assets behind. I would not characterize her feeling about the ship's integrity as confident. Hopeful might be the best word, sir."

"Hopeful?"

"Yessir."

"That's pretty thin, Ripley."

'So it's Ripley now, not Denton. I've been lulled into falling into his trap,' he thought. "I think our reasoning was sound, Admiral."

"Do you, indeed? How many people were on Ticonderoga when she broke apart?"

"Two hundred seventy, sir?"

"Oh? My figure is ninety two. How do you come up with 270?"

"Human and both Walter and Gordon units lost, Admiral."

Stanton's eyes narrowed. "Don't conflate property with human life, Ripley. Understood?"

Ripley remained silent.

"I see," Stanton said with a sigh. "Well, good for you," Admiral Stanton added, his voice suddenly and unexpectedly dripping with wilting sarcasm.

Ripley polled the room, looking from face to face, yet no one met him even halfway.

"So," Stanton continued, "You write that Wilson gets slammed by a small, errant CME and yet even with her Field up she comes apart. Just how did you figure that out, Ripley? I mean, your Field was up and you couldn't see her, right?"

"Correct, sir. But heat sensors picked up a massive heat source, perhaps a coronal mass ejection, along with an unexpected new velocity vector."

"But you didn't warn her?"

"Our Field was up, Admiral. Radios don't work without antennas, sir, in case you've forgotten."

Stanton looked over his glasses and nodded. "And Ticonderoga? The same CME took her out too?"

"Unknown, sir."

"Unknown. Yes, so it says in your report. And yet I find a startling coincidence here, Ripley. All the sensors on every ship remaining in the fleet went dark at this point. Care to tell us why?"

"I'm not sure I can reliably explain that, Admiral."

Stanton looked around the table, at all the silent eyes around the room, then he snapped his fingers -- and everyone in the room save Stanton's aide simply disappeared. Stanton watched Ripley, yet he seemed disappointed at his response. "Bet you didn't see that coming, eh?"

Ripley shrugged. "High density holograms?"

"That's right. How'd you know?"

"They never spoke to me, sir. And they rarely looked my way. Too hard to program, I reckon."

Stanton nodded at his aide one more time. "Play the next file, please."

The screen flickered again as a new file loaded, then Ripley was looking at the fleet, his fleet, as it approached Capella. The screen split -- and Gordon appeared.

"Gordon?" Ripley cried, astonished. "What the hell!"

But Stanton simply shook his head. "No, his name is David."

"David? But I...you mean...from Prometheus?"

"Yes. We think his plan was to come up from behind and take out each ship one by one, then transit the Jump Point to Gemini and then on to Earth. He almost made it, too."

"Sir?"

"Watch, Denton. Watch and learn."

David piloted his shuttle and soon caught up with the Woodrow Wilson. He fired a particle beam cannon that soon defeated Wilson's Field and in an instant she blossomed and was gone. Ticonderoga came next and Ripley could hardly watch this next callous murder unfold...until David's shuttle's screen turned black. David frantically worked his instruments trying to find the problem, right up to the point where the shuttle's video stopped...

"Sir? What happened?"

"Indeed. That is the question, isn't it? The big question, if I may."

"And?"

"It took us a while to sort through the clues, but they were there alright. Where we least expected them. First, David raised his mast and the radar survived a little over a second out there in the heat, but when we looked at the video frame by frame we found this..." Stanton used a laser pointer to point to the shuttle's radar display and there it was, a return -- only this radar return was coming up from the shuttle's rear.

"Apparently Admiral Adams sensed something was amiss and raised a camera through the Field, and I'd assume she did so to get a visual on Wilson."

Another image flared and stabilized and there for a few seconds was a huge horseshoe shaped ship, firing on the shuttle that had just fired at Wilson.

"And there it is, Denton. Simple as that. You saved his ass, so he returned the favor."

"Who, sir?"

"That alien, Ripley. The one you saved when his ship was overrun by those damned things. His name, by the way, is Pak."

"I'm sorry, Admiral, but how the hell do you know all this?"

Stanton smiled and nodded gently, any further subterfuge now completely unnecessary. "Your sensors failed, right? All of them?"

"Yessir?"

"And yet a few seconds later you find yourself on the far side of Alpha Geminorum Ca, and suddenly all your systems return."

"Yessir. Our navigators assumed we hit the Jump Point and made the transit."

Stanton shook his head. "That's not quite what happened, Denton."

"Sir?"

"Pak's ship jumped your fleet, every mother lovin' one of 'em. Don't ask me how 'cause I have no goddam idea."

"But Admiral, we didn't receive any file transfers from Ticonderoga, or even Wilson -- for that matter. Let alone from the shuttle David was piloting..."

Stanton turned to his aide again. "Open the file now, please," he said, then he turned back to Ripley. "Thomas Standing Bull sent this file to his tablet, in his cabin on Hyperion. Thank goodness it was still hooked up to the net or we'd have never received it."

Ripley saw the file open onscreen, so he took a deep breath and read through it...

"Admiral, Tom here. The leader of the group you saved is a high admiral of the fleet. His name is Pak don Sau. I will be living with his family while learning their one of their languages, but it is easy, very similar to other Indo-European languages on Earth. When I am proficient I am to be sent to one of their universities, one near Alpha Geminorum Ca, to one of the planets you will soon survey. I have been with Pak since leaving Hyperion, but he has been watching over our fleet. We recovered files from Ticonderoga and an unknown shuttle that fired on our ships, and I have included these as attachments. I hope they help. Pak says he will continue watching us. I think if he feels we are safe I will be taught the secrets of their FTL drive at university. Pak told me to invite you and a small group of teachers to come to the fifth planet in the Alpha Geminorum Ca system. You will find a moon there. He says you will know what to do. Goodbye for now, and say hello to Yukio for me. I miss her terribly. T Standing Bull."

Ripley found that he was trembling inside, his entire world turned inside out.

"Well...I will be dipped in shit," he finally muttered.

"Yes. Exactly so. Denton...I envy you."

"Sir?"

Stanton turned on the overhead lights and yawned, then he walked over to a view port. "Come here, take a look. There's something I want you to see."

Ripley stood and walked over to stand beside the old admiral. He was looking at a new ship, rather small but decidedly rakish.

"That's the Agamemnon. One hundred meters, crew of eighty, well...one hundred and fifty by your way of reckoning such things. She's a scout ship, first of her class, designed to look for Alderson Points, tram-lines, that sort of thing. Lightly armed, but we're removing most of that stuff now. You'll be taking her to Alpha Geminorum Ca as soon as that work is complete. Once you drop off those academic types you can come home and get your family, and we'll talk about your future then."

"But Admiral, that's a navy ship, isn't it?"

"It is. And I regret to inform you, Admiral, but your retirement papers have been...lost...for the time being."

"I see, sir."

"Anyone you want to take with you? For crew, I mean..."

Ripley had to think about that for a moment. "Brennan, I reckon. And I guess most of the bridge crew, Admiral. They're already familiar with the system."

"Okay. Done."

"What about Judy? And Ellen?"

"Not on this first trip, Denton. Too many unknowns. Besides, you should be back within a few months, well in time for Ellen's next birthday, anyway."

+++++

"I don't like it, Denton," Judy sighed. "It's all a little too convenient, especially the note from Thomas. It smells, Denton. Like you're being set up. Or walking into a trap."

"But...why would he do it, Judy?"

"Why the holograms, Denton? All that means is that there weren't any witnesses."

"Witnesses? To what, for heaven's sake?"

But all Judy could do was shake her head and shrug.

"I have to disagree, Judy. If the admiralty was concerned about this new race, why send us at all? Why not just blockade the Jump Point to Alpha Geminorum Ca?"

"They don't need jump points, Denton."

"Right. I knew that."

"Well...oh hell, Denton, I don't know and I'm not going to sit around here trying to look for reasons. If you go and you come back then I was wrong."

"And if I don't come back?"

"Then you were too gullible."

"Gee, thanks."

She came to him, slipped into his arms. "Let's not fight, okay. You'll be gone in a few days, so let's make the best of the time we have..."

He held her close, marveled at the strength of her...

Then they heard a gentle knock on the door.

"Admiral, it's me."

"What is it, Gordon?"

"High priority comms from Norfolk, for Mrs. Ripley."

"Come on in, Gordon," Judy said. "Do you have a copy, or do we need to go into HQ?"

"I have it here. It was delivered by courier a few minutes ago."

Judy opened the envelope, itself a rarity these days, then she scanned all three pages of the document before she passed it over to Denton. Her hands were shaking now, he noted.

"War?" Denton sighed. "Between Russia and the Japanese? What the hell?" he added.

"Read the second page," she whispered.

Denton flipped the cover sheet over and read through the second and third pages, shaking his head all the while. "They can't do this. You're retired...you didn't sign up for the reserves..."

"There's the emergency reactivation clause, remember? If an Emergency War Order is issued, anyone who's retired within the last two years...?"

Denton growled and clinched his fists, pacing like a cornered animal looking for a way out of an unseen hunter's trap. "So...now I'm supposed to head out to Gemini -- and you to Orion? And just who, pray tell, is going to stay here and take care of Ellen? Anything in there about that?"

Judy sat and put her hands in her face, shaking badly now -- but not out of anger. "What do we do, Denton? How can't we refuse an EWO...that's tantamount to desertion...not to mention a capital offense in time of war!"

Denton turned away and shook his head, then looked up to see Gordon standing there by the door to their room, waiting patiently with the same gently inquisitive smile his Gordon on Hyperion had always used.

"Admiral," Gordon asked helpfully, now speaking ever so gently, "is there anything I can do to lend a hand?"

+++++

It was worth a shot, he reasoned.

So he made an appointment with Admiral Stanton and went to his office in the Gateway.

"I see," Stanton said after Ripley presented his case. "Yes, that's quite a conundrum."

"It is, sir. Ellen will be two next year and these are critical times in her upbringing. Neither Judy nor myself feel that leaving her with Gordon would be in her best interest."

"No other family, I take it?"

"No sir..."

"Understandable, I think," Stanton said. "Still, these are perilous times, Admiral Ripley, and your assigned journey to Alpha Geminorum may very well net us the know-how to develop our first working FTL drive. Do you have any idea what that might mean to the future of humanity?"

"I've given the matter some thought, Admiral, and I think I grasp the implications well enough."

"And still you want to stay?"

"No sir, I want Judy to stay."

But Admiral Stanton just shook his head, and Ripley thought the Old Man rather looked the part of an old, tired lion. Imperious. Sure of himself and of the sanctity of his realm. And utterly ruthless in the certainty of his aims, and the means to his ends. "I can't do that, Ripley, and you know it -- so don't you dare put me in that position."

"Understood, Admiral."

"The Gordon unit with you? He's the one that received the data download from your first Gordon, is he not?"

"He is, Admiral."

"Any idea what that was all about?"

"No sir. None."

"Speculation?"

Ripley sighed, then he nodded. "I suspect my Gordon downloaded all his thoughts and experiences to Judy's, so in effect he passed along who he was, Admiral."

"So, in effect...his understanding of...you...was passed along? Is that what you're saying?"

"That's what I'm...what I've speculated, Admiral?"

"Well then, who better to leave Ellen with?"

"Yes, Admiral."

"Well okay then, I think we're done here. Dismissed, Admiral, and Good Luck..."

+++++

And when her parents left, Ellen Ripley found herself in the arms of the one person who would, in the end, come to know her best -- over the many lonely birthdays that followed.

Also, hier ist das Ende der Geschichte. Aber zu Ende ist nur ein Neuanfang.

© 2022 adrian leverkühn | abw | all rights reserved. This was a work of fiction -- pure and simple -- and all characters and events presented herein were fictitious in nature, though key story elements and character references/circumstances derive from the work of others. First among these is Ridley Scott's film Alien (1979); though his Prometheus and Covenant films serve as direct prequels to this short story. All references to an Alderson (zero time) Drive, as well as the Langston Field needed to utilize said drive, derive from key elements presented in the novels The Mote in God's Eye (1974) and The Gripping Hand (1993), by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Thanks for reading along.