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It takes them three months to get the Betty off of Earth. Three months scraping by, scrounging the parts needed for essential repairs, not to mention little things like food and potable water.
They work together. Surprisingly this includes Johner, who somehow doesn't piss off into the sunset with whatever he can steal from the ship the first chance he gets. The four of them get the work done, and they eventually get the hell off Earth - and there could be no greater motivating factor than that as a reward.
"So long, shithole," Johner says as the little blue and brown planet grows smaller in the distance.
Ripley sits at the co-pilot's station, her hands running slowly over the controls. Call watches her, wondering again about the extent of Ripley's genetic memories. How much she remembers of a time when she navigated the stars in a ship not so unlike this one.
Ripley turns, slinging an arm over the back of her seat. "All right, where to, now?" she says.
The others look at her; look at each other. They've talked about it, on and off, what they would do if they ever managed to escape Earth's heavily polluted atmosphere. Just idle talk. They have no real plan.
"Hell, any place but here," Vriess says.
"But it needs to be somewhere we won't draw attention to ourselves," Call says, thinking about how they're technically fugitives from the military and they should probably remember to act like it.
Johner rolls his eyes. "Hey, whatever, as long as I can get a drink once we get there. Priorities, people!"
*
They spend a while hopping from one shitty backwater colony to another. The crew of the Betty - what remains of it - are old hands at flying under the radar. Elgyn, their recently departed captain, had always carefully skirted the lines of legitimacy. He was the type to always tread carefully, always made nice enough with government types to smooth the way for their other activities.
None of them want to go back down that road after what they experienced on the Auriga. And that's without taking the whole Ripley situation into consideration.
And the Ripley situation is considerable.
They have a near-indestructible half-human, half-alien clone with antisocial tendencies on their hands, one who is technically the property of the United Systems Military, and even approaching the lines of legitimacy is pretty well out of reach for them at this point.
Still, they're a group of competent, if disillusioned, space-farers with a diverse skill set. They manage okay.
*
A USM vessel pings them coming out of the heavy industrial complex on Triton. It's small but unsurprisingly armed to the teeth. The Betty's a standard cargo ship with a few very non-standard mods, but still no match.
"We can't outrun them?" Ripley says.
"Not exactly operating at peak efficiency here," Vriess says. "Can we bribe them?"
"With what?" Call eyes the navscreen with growing concern. The other ship is not breaking off. If they can't outrun them, and can't bribe them to look the other way, it could mean a world of trouble.
It could mean arrest, seizure of the Betty, interrogation, Ripley.
It could mean the only way out of this is a fight. Call has no idea if they can do it. While she's thinking about it, Johner looks at Ripley.
"I'm thinking we throw you at 'em and run like hell," he says.
Call is immediately as pissed at Johner as she's ever been. And weirdly disappointed, like she has actually started to think of the guy as not a complete stain on the face of humanity.
Before she can express any of this, she realises Ripley is smiling.
"I don't know, it doesn't seem all that fair," Ripley says.
"Not to them," Johner agrees easily. "But those are some prime representatives of the esteemed fucking assholes who almost made us all into alien motherfucking chewtoys. I'm not all that inclined to be fair."
"They're hailing us," Vriess interrupts. "We're being instructed to prepare for boarding. Should I respond?"
"Wait," Call says, feeling like the situation is somehow even less under control than before, "you two think we should let them in here and then what, we just kill all of them? We can't just - can we? Even if we can, we shouldn't -"
"It's up to them," Ripley says, her expression hardening. "None of us asked for this."
And Call really has no way of arguing that. In that moment she's not even sure if she wants to. What's fair, and what's right, are not the simple concepts her artificial progenitors might have wanted her to believe.
For the moment, doing what they can to keep Ripley out of the insidious hands of the military, that's a simple choice. Call picks up a gun and makes it.
*
It's not exactly the plan to turn to piracy.
But then they never did come up with any sort of plan at all.
Opportunism is kind of the word of the day and once the situation is under control - meaning everyone but the four of them is either dead of unconscious - Johner quickly proposes they fucking help themselves to whatever property of the US fucking M isn't fucking nailed down.
"Let's strip the damn assholes clean. What, got a problem with that, Miss Morality Chip Up My God Damn Ass?"
"Not necessarily," Call replies with a shrug. "But we could at least be smart about it. Only take whatever can't be traced back here and get us in a load of deep shit."
"It's a military vessel, everything's got a barcode," Ripley says with an ugly twist of her mouth. "I should know."
"Well, barcodes," Vriess says in that thoughtful way of his that indicates he's contemplating crime. "Ways to deal with those things. I mean, they come off, sometimes. If you know what you're doing."
"Good to know," Ripley says.
"Fucking fantastic, what are we waiting for?" Johner says.
"Vriess, can you make us a list so we can prioritise whatever's easiest to unload? But I guess we can start with the fuel cells, since we'll want to use those ourselves. Ration stores, too. Any consumables."
"Sure thing, Call," Vriess says.
Johner throws a mocking salute her way. "Aye-aye, Captain."
Call gives him the finger. "Fuck off."
"Someone should probably be in charge around here," Ripley says off-handedly as she steps over a groaning USM technician, lying prone with his hands bound.
"Well, not me," Call says as the four of them get to work.
"Then who?"
"I can't be in charge. Ripley -"
"You don't want me in charge. I don't want me in charge."
"I'll be in charge," Johner offers. Everyone ignores him.
"The thing is, Call, I'm an ideas man," Vriess says. "And he's the muscle-headed shit for brains -"
Johner spreads his hands. "Hey, I'm a sensitive fucking soul."
"And she... well she's..." Vriess trails off, unsure how to describe Ripley, at least in a diplomatic way.
"She's an unpredictable killing machine," Ripley fills in. "Who has zero interest in telling any of you assholes what to do every day."
"So it's you, Call," Vriess finishes.
Johner mutters something about motherfucking robots, but he doesn't protest. Ripley just smiles.
"What the fuck," Call says.
And so she's the captain.
*
"I wasn't programmed for authority," she says later, back on the Betty, when it's just her and Ripley in the cockpit as they flee the scene of the crime. "So that could be a thing."
"You weren't programmed for authority? Are you sure? Because you seem to really love telling people what to do."
"Well people are idiots. I mean, not all the time, but a lot of the time. I don't expect them to listen, though."
"Not with that attitude."
"You used to be - the other Ripley, I mean. She was an officer on the Nostromo."
Ripley is quiet for a long time. Call waits, worried that she hurt Ripley's feelings. She worries about Ripley's feelings, in general, more than she has ever worried about anyone's. This might be because Ripley's feelings are a lot more difficult to predict than an average human's. Or it might be another reason.
Finally, Ripley says something. "There was an auton on the Nostromo. Ash. He tried to murder me."
"That was in the files I read." Guilt, and the memory of a knife in her hand, make her wish the nearest escape hatch would open up so she could welcome the vacuum of space. "I tried to kill you, too."
"You had your reasons. So did Ash. You both saw me as a threat, you both had a mission to carry out. What's interesting is what happened next."
"Your debriefing report said your crewmates saved you from Ash."
"Ash died. I lived. Then I died, too. It's been a weird few centuries."
Call decides Ripley's feelings are not hurt at all. She's just not sure what they are.
Especially when she fixes a shrewd look on Call. "And what about your mission?"
"Complete. Alien threat eliminated."
"Not exactly."
"You're not a threat."
"Just because you want to believe I'm not, doesn't mean I'm not."
"Well gee, sorry I don't feel like assassinating you since I got to know you a little better. Guess you'll have to find some other murderous auton to do the job."
"Even if I did, it just wouldn't be the same. They'd have some whole new reason to want me dead. You had your reasons, Call. They weren't even bad ones. I mean, you made up your own mind, right? That's the thing about them. They are all the same. All they know is how to kill everyone and everything and it is always for the same reason."
"Which is what?"
"What do you think? It's what they are."
Ripley turns her gaze back to the stars and all Call can think is how glad she is that at least Ripley didn't say we.
*
The Betty isn't exactly big as space vessels go, but it's big enough for four people with room to spare. Call wasn't part of the old crew long enough to really feel the absence of the ones that didn't make it off the Auriga: Elgyn, Hillard, Christie. If Johner and Vriess do, they don't talk about it, much.
The Betty belongs to the four of them, now. They spread out to fill the remaining space, each establishing their own corner of the ship they retreat to when they want a little solitude - which is often.
Call mostly keeps to her tiny, cramped bunk, which she mostly likes just because it's hers and no one else ever goes in there.
Vriess has the maintenance bay where he tinkers for hours whether there's any real work to be done or not.
There's the cargo hold where the crew used to work out, which Johner has taken over completely as his own tribute to vice and depravity.
Ripley hangs out a lot in the cockpit, seated at the controls looking out at the stars. But just as often she's too restless to be contained to one area. She paces along the ship's tight corridors, her steps quiet, measured. Sometimes too quiet for the others; they don't always know she's there until she is.
It's a little disconcerting at first, but they get used to it like everything else about this new life they're figuring out for themselves. Everyone carves out their little routines and habits, and they learn to put up with each other's more annoying ones.
"Ripley's on patrol," Vriess mutters one day without even looking up from the docking clamp hydraulics he and Call are working on upgrading.
Call looks over her shoulder, and then up, to see Ripley stalking along the upper walkway that circles the bay.
"Used to feel like, well you know, like she was looking for something. Hunting. Used to wonder, hunting for what." Vriess shrugs. "But maybe it's more like she's just looking."
Ripley makes her way down to the main floor. She doesn't stop to chat, just heads through the hatch towards the main cargo hold.
"She looks out for all of us, you know," Vriess adds.
Call looks back down at him. "Yeah, I know."
"Guess I'm just glad she's with us. Better than the other way around."
*
Vriess is pretty decent, as Call tends to judge these things. About as decent as she encountered when she joined the crew of the Betty, which probably isn't saying all that much. He's a good guy, unlike Johner, who really isn't. But Johner is a survivor, and for all his common decency, so is Vriess.
Then there's Ripley, who before she died had survived more shit than most humans Call has ever heard of. And now, well, Ripley is so much more. So much Call is still trying to understand. Survivor is only the half of it.
So here Call is, a part of this little group of people willing to cling to life by any means necessary, but she isn't really like them. It isn't always easy for her to do what has to be done to survive. It weighs on her conscience.
She does what she can to mitigate the damage. They don't always have to leave a trail of bodies behind them. And they mostly don't, for all that certain people would prefer it otherwise.
"Dead men tell no fucking tales," Johner says, throwing up his hands, pissy at everything as usual.
And even Vriess rolls his eyes sometimes when she makes him double check life support systems on whatever cargo vessel they've hit to ensure the currently unconscious or incapacitated crew members will be able to keep breathing until someone answers their distress signal.
But he runs the checks. And Johner isn't as trigger-happy as he could be. It's good to be captain, after all.
"Miss Morality Chip Up Her Ass," Ripley teases.
"These people are just doing their job," Call says.
"They could have families waiting back home. Two kids and a dog. Nice little yard to play in."
"You don't know that they don't."
Ripley looks at her. She knows, they both do.
Call throws up her hands. Ripley smirks, and she does exactly what Call wants, anyway.
The truth is Call doesn't really have to worry about Ripley on these jobs. Ripley has an incredible capacity for violence but it isn't mindless. It's careful, calculated, controlled.
Call has seen Ripley lose control, once. Having seen that - the lab, the failed clones, the fire and the mercy - she can't know about it and not trust Ripley. It's kind of like meeting someone over the blade of a knife. Moments that reveal things about a person.
Call is not a killer; Ripley is not a monster. They know these things about each other. They've known them all along, right from the start.
*
They don't spend all their time trawling the commerce lanes between planets, pillaging any ship that crosses their path. They make regular stops to unload various stolen items for trade or credit. Some colonies are better for this than others. They even go back to Earth a couple times; it's not so bad knowing they can leave whenever they want.
Of course being planetside means downtime.
Call has always enjoyed people-watching. A certain preoccupation with the human condition is kind of standard operating procedure even for third gen models like her. She's not obsessive about it or anything. People can be weird or wonderful, or just as easily dull or disgusting. From an outsider's perspective there's enough of a random element to hold her interest whenever she's in public. Like whichever seedy bar or gambling den they inevitably find themselves at if Johner ever has any say in the matter.
Ripley, too, seems to gravitate to these places.
She doesn't fit in, exactly. Ripley, in fact, stands out no matter what she does. But mostly what she does is provoke trouble which isn't all that remarkable among the kind of low-life scum to be found hanging out in a crappy hole in the wall tavern on one of the mining belt spaceports too insignificant to even have its own name.
In this setting Call has better things to do than watch people. She sits at the end of the bar and watches Ripley, instead, as she effortlessly hustles burly labourers and mean-looking mercenaries out of their funds with offers of arm-wrestling or other petty feats of strength.
Ripley, of course, always wins. And not graciously; she likes the taunting and subsequent humiliation as much as she does beating their asses. Call finds it sad how predictable these guys are, always showing up eager to underestimate their opponent just because she's a she.
It almost always ends in a fight.
And then Call has to drag everyone out of there before the shooting starts.
Every damn time. Like she's the fucking babysitter, not the Captain. It's no easy task, either, when Johner is such a surly drunk, and Call is just plain surly. She isn't affected by alcohol of course and only drinks in order to blend in - "although why do I even bother when you morons don't even know the meaning of keeping your heads down like we're not wanted by law enforcement or anything christ, every damn time you guys."
Even Vriess is a pain in the ass, usually too drunk to see let alone steer his chair straight.
And Ripley counts her credits earned and swaggers back to the ship with a lazy smile on her face. She's the only one sober enough to actually listen to Call's ranting, not that it does any good. Call doesn't even know why she bothers.
Ripley slides an arm across Call's shoulders. "Maybe you should try it yourself next time," she says. Her mouth bends closer to Call's ear. "I'm not the only one stronger than she looks."
They're almost back to the docking bay. Call just wants to get back on board the Betty without any further hassle. She's still pretty pissed at them all, not that anyone cares. "Maybe I don't have anything to prove."
"Yeah, that's something I've always noticed about you." Ripley's smirk is as provoking as anything she directed at the assholes back at the bar. She just can't help herself.
Call tries to remember this and not rise to the bait. But Ripley pulls away from her without waiting for an answer, her hand moving solidly across the back of Call's neck, fingers shifting the ends of her hair. Call shivers, gasping slightly, an involuntary response to stimuli - or programmed to feel that way.
Ripley chuckles. She got what she wanted and breaks off completely.
Call glares at her back as Ripley's longs legs outpace her own. It's just as much in Ripley's nature to find a weakness and exploit it as it is Call's to be vulnerable. To care. Call doesn't know how to do anything but care, and in this instance she really hates it. She hates it because if it isn't a real choice then what makes it real at all?
Call watches Ripley stalk away, retracing in her mind the path of cool fingertips along her hairline, and she wants it to be real.
*
Despite all odds, it gets comfortable after a while, life on board the Betty. They're pretty good at what they do, and with a combination of skill and luck they manage to avoid any huge disasters.
They take risks, because it's a risky fucking business, space piracy. But Call tries not to be too stupid about it.
Call once infiltrated a top secret military vessel to assassinate a woman she didn't even know, thinking it was the right thing - the only thing - to do at the time. It didn't feel like a completely ridiculous, irrational thing for her to do, but she thinks differently about it now.
Or maybe she just has more to lose than she used to.
She's not sure she would call this a family, exactly, the four of them living and working and bickering and fighting together. It's something, though. Johner is still an asshole, Vriess is her friend, Ripley is - Ripley is frustrating and amazing and a few dozen other things Call can't even quantify.
Call has her place amongst them and couldn't honestly say what she would change. Maybe nothing at all.
Well, no. Maybe one thing.
*
Eventually there is a disaster they don't manage to avoid. It's not even a really big disaster, all things considered, but it changes things all the same.
It happens in a moment. Call is badly damaged on a job. Ripley loses it a bit.
It involves a cargo transporter with even less standard modifications than the Betty, a security trigger none of them see until it's too late, and a localised explosion that would have easily vaporised human flesh, so it's lucky Call's inhuman facsimile caught the brunt of it.
Some time later, after the smoke has cleared, the threat on board has been downgraded from "fucking shoot everything that moves" to "someone's gonna have a hell of a mess to clean up, lucky it ain't me," but Ripley has not got the message.
She's a wild thing in this moment, a terrifying blur of violence and unrestrained rage as she searches for her next target.
The other two have no hope of containing her and Call isn't exactly in a state to do much but she still has vocal function so she has Vriess hastily patch her into the ship's system and calls to her wherever she is, whoever she's hunting, if there's anyone left alive.
"Ripley get your ass back here I need you."
It's moments before she appears in the damaged hatchway where the trap was set, where Call is still lying broken and smouldering in a pool of biofluids.
Ripley comes and falls to her knees beside her.
"Hey, it's hard to kill one of us, you know," Call says. "You've really gotta put some effort into it. This is nothing." She lifts her working hand and touches Ripley's arm. "I'm okay."
She isn't shaking, there are no tears in her eyes, Ripley is as still and solid as ever - on the outside. What she's feeling reveals itself in her voice. "I'm not."
"Look just fucking kiss her or fuck her or fucking propose holy fucking matrimony to her, just do it fast so we can scrape the little pieces of our broken fucking Captain off the god damn floor and get the fuck out of here sometime this century. Okay?"
Sometimes Johner's entire lack of anything approaching tact is infuriating. Other times it's not unhelpful, and this is one of those times.
Ripley does kiss her. A swift, harsh press of her lips against the nearest part of Call she can reach, somewhere around the side of her head. And then they move.
*
They get the fuck out of there. Head to the empty space where they can regroup. Count their losses. Which could be much worse.
Vriess fixes her up just fine. Always one to be prepared, he has been stockpiling certain components necessary for auton repairs, just in case.
While he works, Ripley hovers. She holds Call's hand while Vriess reattaches the other one.
"So, wedding bells?"
Call rolls her eyes, white conductive fluid frothing at her lips as she tells him sincerely, "Fuck off, Johner."
He laughs and leaves.
"It's not that I wouldn't marry you," Ripley says once the echo of his footsteps on the metal walkway have died away. "But an alien hybrid clone and an auton getting married - sounds like an unholy union if I ever heard one."
Call can't tell if she's joking or not. But at this point things are about as awkward as they could possibly be so she figures she really has nothing to lose. "I'd marry you, anyway," she confesses.
"Of course you would." Ripley's mouth twists wryly, but there's a fondness to it. There usually is when she's talking to Call.
"You're more human than most humans I've ever met," Call says somewhat defensively. "At least you think about these things. You try."
"You look at me and you don't see the monster. I'm not sure how wise that is. I do appreciate it, for what it's worth."
"You look at me and just see me. Even right now. With Vriess working on me with a fucking blowtorch. You can see my insides. Anyone would be repulsed."
"Hey, you're beautiful on the inside and out, kiddo," Vriess says over the sound of the blowtorch.
Ripley leans closer. "He's right, you are."
"Shut up."
Ripley does not retreat. Once she's gained ground, she never does. "I look at you, and I just see what's mine."
"Yours?"
Ripley gets that look, that distinctly alien look, her eyes turning inward. "They don't get married. They don't have families. Or romance. Or friends. But they feel. They even love, in a way. She does. She loves herself, and anything that's hers, she loves that too."
You love me? Call is too afraid to ask. She rolls her eyes instead. "We can't get married. I mean, officially. You don't have ID, not even the fake kind."
"We'll steal it."
"Okay."
God.
How did this day go from an explosion and losing pieces of herself to this bizarrely romantic scene, Call will never be able to tell. That it began with fire and ends with Ripley's hand in hers is likely a pretty good sign, though.
She pushes up off the table awkwardly, on her one functioning elbow, just so she can kiss Ripley with all the strength left in her synthetic bones.
Ripley holds her face in her large hands, smiling with her lips against Call's.
"Well this is real beautiful, but this is kind of delicate freakin' work here," Vriess says, interrupting the moment. He swears and sucks on a burnt finger.
"I can help," Ripley says, and releases Call and grabs the blowtorch.
*
"I didn't kill them all," Ripley says with something like wonder, at some later point when Call is back in one piece and they're alone in the tiny bunk Call used to call hers. "I don't know if you noticed that at the time. I didn't kill them all, I just wanted to."
Call shrugs. "I'd want to kill anyone who hurt you."
"No, you wouldn't."
"I might."
She thinks about it, frowning. She'd kill to protect Ripley, of course. She made that decision long ago. Protection and revenge are different things, though.
Ripley is almost indestructible, but only almost. She could be hurt one day, walk into an explosion of her own, and Call hates the idea with every manufactured fibre of her being. But the only time she's ever seen Ripley really hurting was on the day they met.
"The Auriga. They hurt you, what they did to you. Everything that happened. I'm glad they're all dead."
"Thanks. But it's not quite the same thing. Probably because you're a good person, and I'm... You know what I am."
"I know what you're afraid you are. But it's not true."
"Sure it is. This thing is inside me. It won't ever not be inside me."
"You're not a mindless killing machine. Even if they are a part of you - the thing inside you is a queen. Not like anyone or anything else. And I think you're perfect."
"Then maybe you really should marry me."
She squeezes Ripley's hand in hers, the grip strong and sure. There's no maybe about it. "Okay, I will."