Chapter Text
Christopher is good at making connections and this one had been easy to make. Just like he expects it will be easy to recruit Amanda Ripley aboard the Torrens when he enters the ship garage to the deafening sound of welding.
“Ripley?” he calls over the noise. People around were a little surprised seeing an exec going down to the lower levels and seemed even more surprised when he told them who he was looking for.
Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, who had disappeared fifteen years ago aboard the Nostromo.
She stops welding long enough to take off her mask and look at him.
“I’m Samuels,” he says, taking another step in. “I work for the Company.” As they all do.
Amanda doesn’t seem interested. Or intimidated. Unlike the other workers here.
“It’s about your mother,” he tells her over the noise when she lowers her mask and begins welding again. “We think we may have found her, Amanda.”
She stops. He takes that as an authorisation to continue.
“A commercial vessel, the Anesidora, has recovered what we believe to be the flight recorder unit of the Nostromo.”
She stares just an instant longer, as if processing the information, before turning around and walking off. Christopher follows.
“Where?”
“Zeta Reticuli.”
“What did it tell you?”
He expected hurried questions loaded with hope but she’s straight to the point, pragmatic. As if she’s trying not to hold any expectations.
“We don’t know.” He gathers the information from the files he’s read several times and recites: “The unit was taken to Sevastopol Station. It’s proprietorial material, so the Company wants it to be collected as soon as possible.” They walk into a small rest area. “Sevastopol’s a supply depot in the region. It’s a… permanent freeport facility--”
“--I know what it is.”
She moves away from him. Christopher stays where he is, sensing not hostility but carefully crafted disinterest. He observes as she starts pouring a mug of coffee and wonders if the coffee is an excuse to get her mind off what he’s telling her. This has to be the most important news in her life since the disappearance of her mother. Surely, he isn’t mistaken on her reasons for working here.
“Transit’s arranged,” he continues, hoping to make his offer a little clearer. “There’s a courier ship called the Torrens heading out that way in two days. We’re going to travel out--”
“We?”
The look she casts him is neither hostile nor grateful. Just a plain, straightforward question, if a little surprised.
“Me,” he clarifies, “and another exec.” He pauses and, despite himself, lowers his eyes to escape hers, just for an instant. Then says, a tad lower that he intended: “And you—if you’re willing.”
She keeps her eyes on him. Hands him her mug. Unless she’d been making it for him the entire time? The thought makes him a little uneasy, as he’s incapable to tell if she’s read through him already. If she knows what he can’t hide.
He almost shakes the thought off. This isn’t about him. It’s about her.
“Look, Ripley.” He catches himself fidgeting around the mug and curses himself for that. He puts it down instead. “When this job came across my desk, I read the case history.” How does it he put it? Well, considering she seems to like straightforwardness… “I know why you’re working in the region where she went missing. You’re still looking, aren’t you?” he asks, low.
He knows he has no right to treat with kid gloves this grown woman who has survived into adulthood on her own, suffering the loss of her mother and the absence of her father. But the way she refuses to turns around and look at him in the eye, it shakes his heart a little.
“I’ve been cleared to offer you a place on the Torrens. If you want to come along," he says and risks another step forward. He does not allow himself to rest a hand on her shoulder as he says: “Maybe there’ll be some… closure for you.”
Amanda Ripley does not accept his offer. Not yet.
He has to admit he didn’t expect to have to convince her. But he walks out of the garage having left her a USB key with all the information he’s allowed to disclose. That plus the way to his office, should she have questions about anything. He needs an answer by tomorrow night.
The next day goes by, all administrative prep for the trip and as the hours tick by and he’s left without a word from Ripley, he starts to think maybe he’s made a mistake offering her the job. Maybe it wasn’t his business. Maybe, coming from someone like him, it had felt insincere, pressing. Maybe she has no interest in joining the mission.
She proves him wrong and surprises him for the second time in two days when he finds her waiting by his office at the end of the day. He’d just been about to deliver the last papers to his superiors.
“Ripley. I wasn’t expecting you anymore.” He opens the door to his office and signs for her to walk in. “Please—come in.”
She merely nods and walks in. He notices the USB key she fidgets with, but does not let his eyes linger there. She’s not agreed to anything yet.
He motions to the chair at his desk. Once again, she refuses his offer with a shake of her head. He doesn’t sit either. Too formal, intimidating.
She levels that steady, neutral look at him.
“Why did you offer me this job?”
Christopher has a moment of surprise. Straightforward, as usual.
“Well. As I explained, reading through the case history and seeing the connections with your mother, I thought you’d like to know about this mission—and be a part of it.”
“You’ve said that already. But why tell me about this at all?”
His eyes narrow. He doesn’t quite understand her reaction. Was she expecting… a trap?
“If I’m being honest,” she continues “I didn’t think the Company cared about my mother. Or me, for that matter. I thought if there’d be any way for me to find out more about what happened to her, it’d be by less… direct, legal ways.”
“Do you mean that… You believe it’s not in the Company’s best interest to deliver this information to you?”
“I believe I’m having a hard time seeing what good I would be to the Company in this mission.”
Christopher pauses to think. Amanda is clearly dubious. He gives her back this neutral look, trying to convince her there are no ulterior motives to his offer.
“I think you’re wrong. Your record states you’re rather skilled ship engineer. Such skills are always profitable, especially on this type of job.”
“And is my personal interest in the mission profitable to the job, too?” she asks, a bit more defensive. By the time he can think of a satisfying answer, she’s talked again: “Look. What does the Company want from me in exchange for the information about my mother?”
Good Lord. This, he didn’t expect either.
“Amanda--”
“Ripley,” she cuts him.
He curses himself, then says, trying no to let his voice soften: “Ripley. If… If this can ease your doubts, it was my very own, disinterested decision to offer you the job.”
She squints and her eyes on him become a painful burning.
“The Company was happy to give you the seat, in light of your skills in engineering. There is no debt to be repaid.”
He could swear he can hear his fans runs faster, but this time he doesn’t avert his eyes from her.
“Why?” she asks eventually, and he understands what she means.
“So you can have closure. This job it’s… It’s not just that. It seem important to you. Of all the descendants of the other crew members of the Nostromo, you’re the only one still… looking.”
A sharp sadness glows in her eyes.
“I don’t mean that out of pity. I just… I believe human connections should prevail over the profit.”
She snorts and he fears he’s said something completely out of place for… someone like him. Curses himself again for that. If his fans could let him turn red, he’d be crimson right now.
“Then you’re working at wrong goddamn company, Samuels. Good people like you, like my mother… The Company only sees numbers. Profit.”
Good people.
He wants to say something. He’s pretty sure his programming forbids him from even thinking negatively of the Company, yet he understands her point of view. Blue collars like her rarely ever like being in the presence of executives like him. And maybe he’d lied a little—he’s had to insist a little for his superiors to grant her a place aboard the Torrens. He can’t blame her for not trusting him and the kind of people he represents.
“There,” she says and hands him the USB key she’s been fidgeting with. “My application file. Papers are signed.”
He looks down at the key, even more surprised than when she first walked in. When he eventually takes it from her, he feels unusually aware of the contact as the tip of their fingers touch. He clears his throat, feeling maybe a bit of dust has clustered there and that’s why it feels itchy all of a sudden.
“I’ll make sure to bring this to my superiors. Information about our departure will be transferred down to you. Glad to hear you’re joining us, Ripley.”
She nods, silent. Ready to leave, too. She stops before the door and looks at him, just looks. As if trying to read him. It’s a look Christopher gets often, when people try to decipher what he is exactly. But eventually, she says:
“Thank you, Samuels. I mean it.”
The tip of his fingers still burn long after she’s gone.