Ripley And The Queen

RIPLEY AND THE QUEEN

Oh come all you rookies, come with your beer

Sit down on the benches and lend me your ear

The story of Ripley I'm going to tell

It's a tale y'all need to know well.

Now it happened, not so long ago

Was a woman called Ripley, was hoo-ah to go

Wanted to kill every Alien, Queen, drone, or child

All it took was an Alien egg to drive her hog-wild.

Happened once that she crewed a ship to the stars

Just a cargo tug, not a cruiser back from the wars.

They took on a Facehugger, it did its job

And its son killed off Ripley's entire mob.

Later Ripley was found, adrift in space

Went with the Marines to a colonial base

Where Aliens had eaten every blessed thing,

But a kid that Ripley took under her wing.

Ripley killed Alien eggs, burnt them to ash

The Alien Queen thought this a mite brash

They fought a battle, the two of them did

While fight promoters scuffled to put in a bid

The Queen fell through a hole in the deck

Looked like that was the end - a wreck

Of Ripley and the kid, you want to know

Well the sequel was kind of a no.

Then Ripley decided to go out once more

To murder Aliens, kick arse, keep score.

Find fame and fortune, or so she must've planned

But maybe out there those plans got canned

For she never came back, left not a trace

Out there where galaxies are like frayed old lace

She must be adrift, and a good thing that is too

'Cause she was more popular than me or than you.

My song's nearly over; hand me that ale

As payment for my telling you this tale.

Where y'all off to? Hey, get back! Come here!

Forget the ale; I'll settle for cheap beer.

- The Ballad of Ellen Ripley, Imperial Colonial Marine Corps

It was somewhere near Aldebaran that Ripley met the Queen again.

Ripley was piloting the CAT-class converted freighter Jones, which she had had modified for Alien-hunting. Its holds were lined with acid-resistant plating guaranteed to resist Alien acid for at least 90 seconds before melting. It was studded with airlocks with blast panels in between designed to blow Aliens into space. It had lasers and cannon and knick-knacks and Alien-detectors and everything else a Hollywood-class Megabudget shipyard could afford to furnish it with.

All it lacked was...

"Where's the damned toilet?" Ripley kicked at the bathroom door in frustration. Since she was in free fall, this sent her spinning into the opposite wall. Fortunately this was far from the first time this had happened, so the designers had thoughtfully put a padded panel to prevent anyone cracking their heads open.

"Don't you remember?" Newt yawned so widely that a fly nearly flew into her mouth. "You refused to have one installed, on the grounds that you were here to kill Aliens, not go poo-poo."

Ripley sent Newt a withering glance. Newt remained unwithered and continued painting her toenails bright red.

"I'm sick of you," Ripley pronounced. "I don't know why I brought you along, anyway."

"Contractual obligations." Newt flapped a hand languidly. "An adventure where an innocent child's in danger is more interesting than one in which one isn't."

"Innocent child?" Ripley snorted. "Call yourself innocent, Frog? You lie, you put on airs, you shamelessly throw your weight around, you pretend butter doesn't melt in your mouth in front of other people, and the moment their backs are turned you..."

"... I make you famous," Newt finished. She put the cap back on the bottle of nail polish. On the nearest screen space continued to be as uninteresting as ever. "Aren't we due for an adventure about now, or are we still waiting for a message from Admiral Sponsor?"

Ripley turned away from her in disgust and floated to the screen. Off in the distance was a space station that she was sure hadn't been there a moment ago. The laws of physics would seem to preclude its sudden appearance from nowhere, but then the laws of physics tended to go on holiday when Ripley arrived. Ripley herself had often thought that curious.

"Toad," she said over her shoulder, "call that station."

"On what frequency?" Newt was now painting her fingernails a greenish black colour. She didn't even bother looking at Ripley. "Or do you want me to spam every frequency out there?"

"There's only one frequency in space," Ripley snapped. "What do you think this is - a place where logic applies or something?"

"Call and tell them what? Have they seen any good Aliens lately?" Newt swam through the air towards the communications module, which resembled a ham radio station from the late 20th century. "That station is a full light hour away," she said as she crawled into the seat. "You're going to wait hours for a reply."

"Bet you I don't," Ripley responded. Sure enough, in defiance of the speed of light and basic common sense, the communications screen lit up. It was Ash.

"You're dead," Ripley said. "I saw Parker flamethrower you myself."

"Ever heard of companies making more than one of an android model? Or more than one of literally anything at all?" Ash sat back and crossed his arms on his chest. "What do you want, Ripley?"

"You're keeping Aliens on the station for Weyland-Yutani, aren't you?"

"Of course I am," Ash said, as though speaking to a child. "So what?"

"So I'm coming around to murder all of them," Ripely announced.

"I can't lie about your chances." Ash laughed. "But you have my sympathy."

____________________________________________________

They reached the space station far faster than astrophysics would have normally permitted. But that was the beauty of the Hollywood Drive. Cosmic distances were nothing to it.

"It looks like a bunch of shipping containers stuck together and spray painted silver," Ripley muttered, as she climbed into her spacesuit.

"Budget constraints or constipation of the imagination?" Newt said, in between experimenting with makeup, using the cabin close-circuit television screen as a mirror.

"I wasn't asking you, Salamander." Ripley picked up a flamethrower and strapped it on. "You stay right there until I come back."

"Of course I'm not," Newt said, bouncing out of her seat so that she all but bumped into the ceiling. "I'm coming along."

"No you're not. I've better things to do than keep an eye on you."

"Oh yes I am." Newt was suddenly in a miniature spacesuit, apparently by magic, since she didn't have to do any of the adjustments Ripley had had to on her own outfit. "Unless I'm in danger, how many people d'you imagine will want to watch? This franchise is all but played out. Besides..."

"... it's in the contract," Ripley sighed. "I know. Don't rub it in. I know."

____________________________________________________

They entered the station through the nearest airlock.

Ash had opened it for them, which should have immediately suggested a trap, but which didn't because it wasn't any kind of suggestion, it was a trap, pure and simple. Ripley threw a flash-grenade through the inner hatch before floating through, spraying everything with fire. She saw only an empty corridor, with paint blistering and smoking from her fire.

"Fuck," she muttered under her breath, keeping it low so Newt wouldn't hear. The little bitch knew the word, of course, had a far wider vocabulary than Ripley herself, but swearing in the hearing of children was prohibited on pain of being punished with an adult rating.

"What?" Newt swam through behind her.

"It's not a trap." That was unfair, because fighting one's way through traps and ambushes made for excellent spectacles. "Where are they?" She peered cautiously around and up at the ceiling, fully expecting an Alien to be clinging there and about to drop on her head. There was nothing.

"Ash?" she called. She was met with silence.

"Oh, damn," she said, suddenly, as she heard the unmistakable noise of a shuttle blasting away. The station swayed. "The bastard's fled!"

"Leaving us here with the Aliens?" Newt asked. She sounded faintly alarmed, as though she realised suddenly that Ripley might have other things to do than protect her.

"Worse! He probably took the Aliens with him!" Ripley broke into a run down the passage. She forgot that she was in free fall, and began windmilling through the air until she bumped into the far wall. "Axolotl!"

"Yeah?"

"Go find the other shuttle! Now!"

"What if I run into any Aliens?"

"You have Child-grade Plot Armour on your spacesuit, don't you? Nothing can harm you." Ripley waited until the brat had disappeared round the other corner - one that shouldn't have been there from the layout of the station as seen from outside. The station must have the latest Nullspace warp activated, Ripley realised. So it could have much bigger things inside it than its outer dimensions, things like...

So thinking, she turned the corner on her side, and came face to face with the Alien Queen.

____________________________________________________

Ripley braked herself with her hand on a convenient handhold. The Alien Queen braced herself with her four major limbs jammed against all four corners of the corridor. They were at less than three metres' distance from each other.

Ripley looked at the Alien Queen. The Alien Queen had no eyes to look at Ripley with. So she electromagnetic impulse and pheromoned back at Ripley.

"You bitch," Ripley said.

"Easy with the insults," the Alien Queen said in reply. "I didn't do anything to you, did I?"

"You can talk?"

"Of course I can. Did you think I was just a dumb brute or something?" The Alien Queen screeched in laughter. "Anyway, I'm glad you're here."

"Why? You want to finish the fight, is that it?" Ripley fumbled one-handed for her flamethrower.

"Oh, stop." The Alien Queen reached out one of her thoracic arms, plucked the flamethrower from Ripley's hand, and flipped it back over her shoulder. "Let's talk this over like civilised people. I mean, I assume you're civilised, though I haven't yet pheromoned any evidence of it."

"What? Why do you doubt I'm civilised?"

"Why did you burn my eggs? You didn't even make omelettes from them. Was that civilised? Just wasting them like that."

"You... would have hurt her otherwise."

"Your amphibian-named accessory? Where is she?"

"Playing around with the other shuttle." Ripley paused. "Are any of your... children... in there?"

"No, they all left with Ash in his shuttle. It was just too big to fit me. Or so I said. I wanted to remain behind anyway."

"Why?"

The Alien Queen's inner jaws emerged in a brilliant smile. "Come on, Ripley. I like you. I know you like me. All that pretending, even to yourself!" Her voice took on an exaggerated version of Ripley's accent. "I'm going to find and kill her. I'll wipe the Alien Queen from the face of the universe! Give me a break."

Ripley laughed, despite herself. She flipped the faceplate of her spacesuit back, the better to free her riotous curls. "Right, well. So... what's your name?"

"Sigourney." The Alien Queen reached out with her thoracic arms, caught Ripley by the spacesuit lapels, and drew her to herself. "My full name is Queen Sigourney II of the House of Weaver. But you can call me Siggy."

"Siggy," Ripley repeated. She ran her fingers over Siggy's crest. She'd never really realised how beautiful it was, with its ridges. No wonder the action figure makers kept making versions. "You know what? You're beautiful."

"You're not so bad yourself." Siggy pushed her inner jaws out more, until they hung in the air just short of Ripley's mouth. The invitation was obvious. Ripley took it. They kissed.

Ripley felt Siggy's tail curl up between her legs, the bladed tip poking at her spacesuit. The fabric parted like paper.

"What the hell do they make spacesuits from, anyway?" she asked rhetorically. Then she stopped thinking about it as Siggy's tail tip found her clitoris.

"Ooooh, Siggy," she moaned.

Siggy's tail worked its way up and down her cleft and into her vagina. Ripley convulsed in orgasm after orgasm. Then she found that, apart from her boots, she was naked. Siggy's arms had, while she was thrashing around, torn the rest of the spacesuit away.

"Your spacesuit really is made of incredibly weak stuff," Siggy said. "I approve."

"Wait a moment," Ripley said. "This isn't PG-13 anymore. I'm going to have to get rid of the amphibian."

"Eat her?" Siggy asked hopefully.

"No, you bint. She'd probably give me food poisoning." Ripley fumbled in her discarded helmet and found the radio. "Olm?"

"What?"

"How are you getting on with the shuttle?"

"It's fine. I'm coming back now."

"No you aren't." Ripley found a panel on the wall, a panel she was certain hadn't been there a moment before, and punched in the code for a remote shuttle launch.

There was a thud, and the shuttle was on its way.

"Buh-bye, Tadpole," Ripley said.

____________________________________________________

So Ripley and Siggy set out together in the Jones, out into the galaxy, together, looking for adventure where there were no Newts, no Ashes, and no Weyland-Yutani. They found world after world of potential hosts, and left Siggy's eggs behind, to breed more populations of wonderful, spindly, acid-blooded children.

All of them had Ripley's face.