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It's the sound that gets to her first.
It's the whine of the servo-motors as she uses the exoskeleton to fight off the Queen. It's the clang of the feet against the cargo bay floor. It's the grind of the doors as they open so slowly.
It's always the sound.
The Queen in her face, teeth inches from her skin, saliva dripping and ropes as they grapple -- that doesn't get to her. Not immediately.
It's the sound. The unrelenting sound of metal and motors, screaming as they're put to uses the manufacturers never intended. The grinding and clanging and nerve-shattering screeches.
It's all she can focus on as the Queen comes for her again, forcing her to remember the nightmares she'd thought dead and buried when she fled the Nostromo. But the memories always return, ripping through her like razor, sharp and bright, and Ripley has to fight through the fear even as she battles the Queen in a fight she's not sure she can win.
It's always the same.
They fight, over and over, and there is always a point where the memory diverges from reality, and the metal shrieks, bending and buckling in slow motion under the questing claws of the Queen.
And it's always that exact moment, a bare second before teeth and claws find her, that Ripley sits up in the bed with a throat wrenching shriek of her own. Even Hicks' hand on her arm, silent in the darkness, doesn't register immediately.
The nightmare doesn't come every night, but when it does, Ripley spends the hours until dawn staring at the ceiling, ears straining in the dark for the sound she dreads she'll hear again.