by Diane Carey
Another lurch, and a long shudder went through the ship then, followed by a sustained background humming. And Larry said. “Yes. He has taken this vessel out of orbit.”
24
The Unbreakable Womb wasn’t headed for Saturn, or Iapetus. Larry the Giff checked with the ship’s computer: the steel egg was headed “down system”—in the general direction of the planet Earth.
“We’re all in deep shit,” Ashley mused, chewing her lower lip.
“Yes we are,” said Larry. Probably the expression in deep shit, Corgan thought, would be all but universal since most organisms would excrete. Where there’s shit—there’s someone in it deep.
The Giff led Ashley and Corgan and the robot to the door where Nate had held off the CANC soldiers. Using the devices attached to his straps, Larry caused it to open, and they followed him past sticky puddles of dried blood, crossing to the bulkhead under the curving ramp. Here, the alien drew another sonic key from his straps and pointed it at the wall—which responded instantly, forming a low, rectangular entrance. It was about a meter high. You’d have to crawl through there, Corgan thought. Inside it were sparkling crystalline wires, fixed to the ceiling, and intricate panels to the right and left, zig-zagged with the Giff signage. Just inside the entrance, at the bottom of the rectangular passage, irregular circles were burned into the flooring: xenomorph acid burn-through.
“One of our people left this open, when we were trying to escape from the vessel,” Larry said. “The xenomorphs used it to get access to this area. Just as the door into the hangar was closing, they came through. They move so quickly—we do not.… it was a fatal mistake, on our part. Those who had planted the xenomorphs on the ship had stimulated the opening of all such passages. I closed it too late. My mate…” He didn’t finish the sentence but only gazed at the entrance. At last he went on, “We can use it to reach this man Reynolds.”
“But—you can go to the bridge,” Corgan pointed out. “Control the ship from there!”
“Your Reynolds is operating from the engine room, which allows him to override the controls on the bridge. He must be stopped, or your planet could become infected. But your chance of success is not great. In all probability—” There was something annoying in the flat declaration. “You will be killed. I will remain at the bridge, to take control when you’ve removed this man from directing the ship…”
“You really don’t have any weapons on this ship, anywhere?”
“We truly do not. They are regarded as vulgar.” Larry stepped closer—bringing with him an odd smell like mingling unwashed dog and gardenias—and handed Corgan a little device shaped like a metal snail’s shell but marked with a miniature version of the lines etched into the hull of the ship. “You see these incised marks? It should react to your digits as well as mine. When you reach the engine room controls, press a… a finger here, trace it along the curve, to the end of the mark… and that will transmit a signal. If you are within an arm’s length of the control station, it will erase all navigational data from it. The ship will then be controllable from the bridge.”
“Captain—!” Ashley was stepping into the shadows under the ramp. She bent, and drew something out. An assault rifle. “At least we’ve got an M-270. They took the bodies but they missed this guy’s rifle. Full clip, and one taped to it.”
“That’s a start,” Corgan said. “Hold onto it. Hey…” He bent, and found two diamond-flyers, side by side in the crawl space, and noticed that they were longer than the ones he was used to, almost surfboard long. “You lie on these?” he guessed.
“That is a truism,” said Larry. “Lie down upon them, send them along the floor of the passage… do not go too rapidly.”
“Is there any way to know if the xenomorphs are in this passage, down at the other end?”
“No—surveillance does not reach into every maintenance tunnel. I did say that your chances of success were small…”
“They were heading toward Reynolds, last we knew,” Ashley said, slipping the rifle strap over her shoulder.
“There must be a reason the xenomorphs haven’t killed Reynolds yet,” Corgan said, pulling one of the long diamond-flyers toward him, activating it.
“Didn’t someone, Hesse I think, hack into Reynolds’s journal?” Ashley asked. “Wasn’t Reynolds hinting he had a way to control or… or to direct those fucking things somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Corgan said. “He was talking about using pheromones or something. He’s got to be doing something like that. I mean—how else is he staying clear of them? He could be drawing them off to other parts of the ship…”
“He may also have discovered the ship’s surveillance system,” Larry said. “That would be an aid, for a time.” Something chimed on his chest. The alien turned to the robot, and touched it with a small rod of crystal; the robot instantly projected a soundless hologram from a triangular scan-node on its spherical upper body; the holo image, undulating slightly but still shown in high-resolution, formed just above the deck: a miniature of the xenomorph queen, the creature bounding along—and then stopping, turning about, moving in the opposite direction.
Odd to see the creature so miniaturized, in the hologram—like a toy, Corgan thought.
“The breeder has changed directions,” Larry said. “Why?” Another chime sounded and a second image projected—the room connected to the airlock at the bottom of the navel. A group of seven men and two women were gathered near the airlock… CANC soldiers and technicians. All were armed. They had come aboard just before the ship had begun moving. Though the image was small, Corgan could see by their gestures, their body language, that they were scared, upset.
Then a third image projected—higher than the first two. The first two remained in place, their figures still moving within them so that three holograms were stacked in the air. The upper image was of the CANC spacecraft, drifting in orbit around Iapetus, alone now that the alien craft had moved on.
Ashley shook her head in puzzlement. “Why aren’t they following us? I’d think they’d be in full acceleration.”
She got her answer a moment later—the hull of the CANC ship buckled near its stern… and exploded outward.
Ashley covered her mouth with her hand, aghast. “Oh my God!”
A second explosion came, partway up the ship—the soundless scene reminding Corgan of a direct hit on a submarine by a depth charge. But these explosions had come from within and they continued, down its length, as it blew apart, fragmenting, spewing burning blue atmosphere into space—which quickly licked out and was gone. The twisted pieces of wreckage spun away; parts of the wreck, accelerated by the explosion, on their way to merge with Saturn, other parts headed for impact with Iapetus. The Glorious Sun was snuffed out along with whoever had remained on it.
“So that’s it,” Ashley said, her voice hoarse with emotion. An emotion Corgan felt, too: neither one of them had any love for the Chinese/Asian-Nation Cooperative— but they didn’t want to think of all that death—and another link to Earth annihilated. “Oh Jesus—” Ashley muttered, “—they must’ve had a xenomorph infection. And just—blew it, trying to fight them.”
“Yes,” Larry said. “That seems a good hypothesis.”
Corgan nodded. He figured the xenomorphs spread to CANC vessel, there was a desperate effort to stop them, the missile launchers were used too close to something volatile. Probably the rocket fuel used for small adjustments in orbit. And there was a chain reaction. A few of the crew got away, just before Reynolds started the steel egg on its way. Left the Glorious Sun soon as they realized the end was coming. Not many of them had made it—some must’ve been trapped on the ship…
“They came here,” Larry said, “just as you did. For much the same reason.”
“Now we’ve got them to worry about too,” Corgan murmured dryly. “But we’ve got to stop Reynolds first…”
“Is it possible we could communicate with this Reynolds?” Larry asked. “Can you not negotiate with him?�
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Corgan shook his head. “I doubt it. I’m not even sure if the boosters reach this far. Or if they’re still intact. But—I guess we’d better try.”
He had his headset from his spacesuit on and he activated its transmitter. “Reynolds? This is Corgan. I’m on board the anomaly. We need to talk.”
No reply.
“Reynolds,” Corgan persisted. “I know where you are. In their engine room, at the stern. I know you’ve moved this vessel from orbit. You’d better talk to me… maybe we can cooperate.”
A crackling hesitation—then he heard Reynolds’s sneering voice. “I’m a one-man show, Captain Corgan—You are captain of nothing, I might add. You are captain of a blot inside the planet Saturn!”
“That’s your doing, Reynolds!” Corgan said, feeling a heat behind his eyes, a tautness in his fists. “You sabotaged us!”
“Nonsense—I just greased the skids a little!” came Reynolds’s chuckling reply. “The xenomorphs were the real cause! Let history declare the truth!”
“History’s going to put you in a category with Benedict Arnold, pal, unless you straighten your ass up and cooperate! You can still come out of this a hero!”
Corgan was flat-out lying about Reynolds coming out of this a hero, no matter what happened. There was no way he was going to let Reynolds survive this without being prosecuted. Corgan hoped for a firing squad—and a place on that firing squad himself.
“I am already a hero!” Reynolds crowed. “And while you are Captain of Nothing, I am now Captain of the Reynolds’s Discovery—the very ship you have invaded! You are invited to get yourself hence, however you may! This is my vessel now!”
Ashley, listening on her headset, shook her head in disgust.
“Reynolds—!” Corgan began. “Listen… There’s someone with me you’ll want to meet!”
“Over and out, Captain! I’m taking off my headset, I have no more use for it! I and this ship are one—I need no such primitive technology!”
The radio emitted a clattering sound, and then there was only static.
Corgan fought the impulse to throw the headset on the deck and stomp on it.
“The Reynolds’s Discovery!” Ashley said, contemptuously. “Christ! What an asshole!”
“Larry,” Corgan said, his voice gravelly, “the guy is not going to cooperate or negotiate.” He shook his head. “That was a damned waste of time. And we don’t have the time to waste.”
“You may be unaware of how little time we do have,” Larry said, tilting the upper half of his head toward Corgan. “This ship is moving at its greatest speed this side of interstellar gravitational warp acceleration. It will be within the orbit of your planet’s moon within one hour and twelve minutes.”
“One hour and twelve minutes!” Corgan burst out. Thinking: Oh, to command a ship like this.
He almost understood Reynolds’s madness, in that moment. He shrugged and hunkered by the tunnel entrance, examining these larger diamond-flyers. “First things first—let’s see if we can get control of this vessel…”
“Corgan—wait!” Larry said. “You may need your spacesuits. You had better get them from the shuttle. And you will show me how to operate one of your radio systems… We will need to stay in communication.”
Corgan frowned, thinking: You may need your spacesuits? That statement and Larry’s destruction of the moon base were a couple of pretty bad omens.
Ashley looked at Corgan, eyebrows raised, and he could tell she was thinking the same thing: We shouldn’t trust him… should we?
But as far as Corgan could see, they had no choice. Larry the alien was the only hope they had.
* * *
Reynolds raised his digital recorder and smugly intoned, “Discovery Journal Entry Thirty-Two: I have succeeded!” Standing on the engine-room control platform, he gazed up through the transparent shield—a bell of glassy material that had spread out from the observation shield to completely enclose him when he’d begun the ship’s acceleration. He looked lovingly at the enormous circular array of translucent spheres glowing with energy, crackling power across the gap to the larger sphere toward the stern. The whole room vibrated with energy; he could feel it making his hair stand on end, feel it crackling in his teeth and joints. The larger sphere was concentrating the energy, creating the Heim field, and accelerating the ship through space. And he, Eli Reynolds, was the master of all that power! “But I must admit…” He paused for a theatrical chortle. “It wasn’t terribly difficult! It’s all quite counterintuitive, is it not? You’d think that that alien craft would be so utterly foreign it would take years to tease out its workings! But only think a bit more! What is the course of technology in our own civilization? It moves from difficult to operate, to ever easier, ever more simple, and ‘user friendly.’ The tendency is for specialization—those who design and build a device generally are not those who will operate it! So it must be built so that it can be easily operated. The same is true of the Eloids! I have discovered a Master Key in the control panel, here and on the bridge. Once you have touched it a certain way, and held your hand over that key for a certain, short length of time—I will not reveal the particulars at this time—the workings of the ship are accessible to you! I then had to find out how navigation was done. One sort I could not penetrate: navigating to a place the ship had never been to. But the coordinates for any destination the vessel had been to was stored in its navigation system. At some point in the past this ship visited Earth. The navigation system showed me an image of Earth—and at last I found the means to tell the ship to move to that destination! We are now on our way there! Once there I will inform the authorities that they must isolate the xenomorphs, and, when that is done, and the xenomorphs are taken alive as examples of my discoveries, I will negotiate with the authorities, and demand—”
He broke off, his attention caught by a motion at the axis tunnel, under the outspreading tubes that became the sphere array…
There were three xenomorphs there, climbing free… coming his way.
He laughed nervously, the sound of his own voice strangely creaky in his ears, and spoke again into the digital recorder.
“I am about to be attacked by xenomorphs. It appears that the pheromones I spread in other parts of the ship, to keep them isolated from me, are no longer effective. As I anticipated, however, I am protected by the engine insulation bell. It does not seem to have been damaged by the previous xenomorphic infestation…”
But then, it occurred to him that there might have been no need for the xenomorphs to attack this position, in the last infestation.
This thought came to him as three of the xenomorphs leapt at the bell of glassy material; clawing, hissing, scratching… trying to get in.
* * *
There was just enough room in the low, rectangular maintenance tunnel for Corgan and Ashley to course along side by side, lying flat on the long diamond-flyers, on their stomachs.
They scudded down the tunnel at about jogging speed—dimly lit by a soft glow from the walls—wearing their spacesuits, their collapsed helmets clipped to their belts in back, Ashley with her rifle pressed to her side. The tunnel seemed to go on and on… and on.
After a while, probably just to break up the monotonous continuum, the strange feeling of unreality the tunnel gave them, Ashley spoke up. “I wonder what Larry’s real name is,” she asked, her voice not much above a whisper.
“I think I know what it is,” Corgan said, trying to sound deadly serious. “Lawrence.”
He glanced at her and was rewarded by her smile. “Smart ass.”
Corgan peered ahead. Was that an end, up there? “He said there was a room we had to go through before the engine room, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. Something about mid-stage samples of…” Her voice trailed off. “There it is!”
They both reached out, touching the walls to slow their progress, as they got to the end of the first section of maintenance tunnel. They stopped entirely, just inside the
entrance, and looked out into the room for movement, any movement. Anything that moved, as far as they knew, was an enemy, whether xenomorph or CANC soldier.
There were many people in the room, but they were definitively immobile: they were dead men on tables. Nothing moved.
“Wait,” he whispered, climbing out. Awkward climbing about in the spacesuit.
“Take the rifle!” she hissed.
He shook his head. He wanted her to be able to protect herself.
He looked around in shock. About thirty meters wide and three high, smaller than most Giff rooms, it was wall to wall with dead men and women, human beings from Earth—from long, long ago.
“Look at this!” he said, once he was sure they were alone, but for the dead.
She climbed out, taking the rifle in her hands, keeping it at ready—and looking in amazement at people in period costume; in Roman attire, in medievel armor, in chain mail…
And all of them perfectly preserved.
25
Lieutenant Xao Lai had not been on the previous expedition— he was only a lieutenant—and he was not far inside the airlock of the first room in the great steel-colored, egg-shaped alien craft, trying to figure out how to operate the flying devices…
Xao Lai, a young, idealistic CANC soldier, felt a profound grief for those he’d had to leave behind, trapped at the aft of the ship. There had been no way to reach them. He grieved but he had not despaired. He knew that the late Chou had requested reinforcements and help—he and the other refugees from the Glorious Sun had only to survive till rescue arrived. True, the ship appeared to be moving. But they had planted a beacon on the hull—that should draw a Cooperative vessel to them. Meanwhile they could claim this ship for the Cooperative. He knew that there were killer organisms inside this ship, but he had a plan for avoiding them. Flying! They could use the devices he had heard about, to stay away from the creatures until help came. They would fly near the ceiling… they would keep constant watch… And there were many diamond-flyers, left here, by some other expedition.