by Steve Perry
A cloaking device!
“Wh—what is it?” Vincent stammered.
“Synthetic,” Briggs said, unable to keep the awe out of his voice as Nirasawa grabbed the giant’s arms, straining to hold him in place. Nirasawa was state, his vat-grown muscles fibered with steel thread, the combination of electrical stim and pumped microhydraulics providing him with exceptional power; Briggs had wanted two of them, but there simply weren’t enough of his model to meet the demand. That the assailant seemed to be holding his own was simply amazing, and with an invisibility device… this was big, he’d have to get a team on it as soon as possible.
“I’ll hold him, Mr. Briggs,” Nirasawa said, barely able to restrain the monster synth. “I would recommend you get to your Sun Jumper—”
The attacker slipped one hand free and slashed at Nirasawa’s face, divots of layered flesh flying. The guard managed to restrain him again, but Briggs realized that he was right; the 949 log wouldn’t do him any good if he were killed in a station explosion or murdered by one of these cloaked soldiers.
Back to the ship, wait for Nirasawa, and then have him fetch Keene and the others, we can conclude our business on the way back to Earth…
“Vincent, take point, I don’t know the layout,” Briggs said, reluctant to tear his gaze from the struggle. Truly astounding. There was a clattering sound coming from the strangely dressed synth, perhaps some malfunction. If Nirasawa could incapacitate it, carry it back to—
“But—Mr. Briggs, isn’t that your ship?”
That got his attention. Briggs’s head whipped around, his gaze following Vincent’s pointing finger. For a second, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, unable to comprehend that Irwin would dare—but the elite Jumper was speeding away from the station, its sleek form unmistakable against the starry sky.
Damn her, when I get back to Earth, I’ll—
When he got back. Of course he would, but suddenly, he wasn’t so sure that he should be worrying about what he would do to Irwin at some future date. There were more immediate concerns—and for the first time since he’d landed on this forsaken hole, for the first time in years, he had no idea what the next step should be.
20
The force of the explosion pushed Jess underneath the shuttle, lucky for him; as it was, Lara had to slap out a patch of burning fabric on his leg before dragging him away from the growing fire.
She wasn’t sure what had happened, she’d heard Ellis shout and then there was the explosion, the shuttle rocking violently. She’d run out and seen Ellis frantically pulling the hose away from the ship, huge sections of the deck covered with burning fuel. She’d seen a flailing shape engulfed in flames only a few meters away, and for one terrible second, she’d been sure that it was Jess. If she hadn’t heard him groaning from beneath the transport…
Ellis joined them behind the shuttle, helping Lara pull Jess to the far railing, but Lara knew that they wouldn’t be safe if the tanks caught fire. Jess started to come out of his daze, looking up into Ellis’s stricken face as he rubbed at his jaw, obviously in pain.
“Ever heard of overkill, kid?” he asked.
Lara laughed weakly. Jess was okay, that was the important thing—but the realization that they weren’t going to be flying anywhere was sinking in, making her feel very, very tired.
God, is this ever going to end?
“What happened?” Lara asked.
“I think I killed us,” Ellis said, so softly that Lara barely heard it. “There was this—thing, it attacked Jess…”
He trailed off miserably, the dancing light of the developing fire on his face making him look incredibly old. Lara put the rest together quickly enough; he’d sprayed the assailant with fuel and somehow, something had caught fire.
“It was invisible,” Jess said, using the rail to drag himself to his feet. “Some kind of electrical device, got shorted out and boom.”
Lara couldn’t find it in herself to be surprised. A personal cloaking mechanism? Sure, why not, it was no stranger than corporate mass murder, no more improbable than being fished out of the abyss on a dead shuttle in the first place.
There was a soft humming overhead and they all looked up to see a small ship go streaking across the dark, close enough for them to see the Weyland/Yutani logo. Lara thought she’d heard other ships earlier…
…and what are the chances that there’s still anyone left willing to give us a lift? Or anyone at all? If there were people around, they sure weren’t interested in putting out the fire that was currently consuming one of their landing decks.
“Briggs?” Jess asked, still watching as the ship shot away from the station.
Lara nodded. “Probably.” She didn’t say what she was thinking, what Jess and Ellis surely already knew. If a high suit like Briggs, who’d wanted them so much that he’d come to Bunda himself was giving it up—
—then things here are bad, really fuckin’ bad.
Maybe the thing that had attacked Jess had been busy with the researchers, before; that might explain the ceaseless alarm, anyway. Or maybe it was just the fact that the station’s platforms had continued their slow tilt, at least fifteen degrees now; if they slanted much farther, there wouldn’t be a stable deck to take off from.
“We gotta get out of here before the shuttle catches,” Jess said, although he didn’t look well enough to do much more than stand upright. And Ellis looked like he was on the verge of some emotional collapse, his entire body trembling, his eyes wide and shining with unshed tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, taking a step away from them, his hands clenched into fists. “This is all my fault.”
“Hey, I might’ve done the same thing,” Lara said, “or Jess. It’s—”
“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice rising, “I’ve done everything wrong since we got here, everything!”
Instinctively, Lara took a step toward him, reaching out—
—and there was a sound so deep, so powerful, that they felt it as much as heard it, WHOOOF, an explosion of brilliant light, a massive wave of pressure that threw all of them against the waist-high railing. The deck beneath them slanted past forty-five degrees, all of them falling, landing and skidding—
“Hang on!” Jess shouted, but there was nothing to hang on to. The deck was lit up like day and Lara rolled over, trying desperately to find a handhold on the slick platform. She saw the shuttle, burning, crashing across the deck and blowing right through the railing, a giant, tearing metal sound as it plunged over the side. She saw Ellis and Jess, scrabbling to hang on, saw both of them slide beneath the high rail, disappearing after the shuttle—
—and she saw the burning envelope, an incredible fireball of ignited gas, the flame eating the pliable shell like acid through paper. It was the last thing she saw as she slipped over the side, falling through the shadow of the crashing station.
* * *
Within moments of her release, the alien queen had exacted her revenge on at least a handful of her captors; nine, to be exact, the only Hunters left on board. Noguchi was too busy flying the Shell to watch all of it, but she saw enough. The queen had somehow known where the yautja were gathered, and made her way unerringly to the dock outside of the pilot’s room. How she’d negotiated the lifts and tunnels, Noguchi didn’t know or care.
The ship hadn’t yet broken through Bunda’s atmosphere when Noguchi heard the queen’s shriek, a furious and somehow gleeful cry, echoing through the hollow dock. It pierced the clattering shouts of the yautja trying to break into the control room, the sounds of metal banging against the door cutting off in a heartbeat. She heard the Hunters cry warnings to one another, heard and felt the queen’s thundering approach, and felt a kind of perverse satisfaction at the thought of what would happen next.
They won’t use burners, not on a queen. Not without Topknot’s leave. And all of them, experienced veterans… Noguchi couldn’t deny the curiosity she felt, wondering how they’d fare against the loosed
queen. She finished with her “programming,” directing the Shell to home in on the signal from Topknot’s craft, and hurried to the hatch’s window. The battle was already in progress, three Hunters down, dying or dead. Six were left, and they’d circled the raging queen with makeshift weapons, mallets, pry bars, a kind of pickax with one sharpened end; two of them were holding lengths of braided rope, and none wore armor of any kind.
Stupid and arrogant. Any sympathy Noguchi might have felt for them was pretty much wiped out by the simple fact that they were still there; instead of leaving, locking the queen inside and waiting for reinforcements to return—or just killing her outright, for that matter—they meant to capture her again, without even bothering to arm themselves properly.
The queen, crouched in their midst, was swinging her head slowly back and forth, tilting it as if to mark their positions. Her tail curled restlessly about her giant, clawed feet, its razor tip leaving long scratches in the deck’s floor, occasionally slapping against one of the dead yautja nearby. He’d been clawed open, his chest a muddled soup of bone and green, and the queen’s tail whipped streamers of his blood across the legs of some of those circling her.
Noguchi saw one of the Hunters behind the watchful bug, Beads, signal to another, one of the rope holders; he was going to attack, and wanted both of the rope holders to move in while the queen was distracted. Noguchi watched as the signal went around the circle, each of the Hunters picking it up—
—and as if she understood that they were distracted by their own foolish planning, the queen lunged forward, her tail coiling up behind her. She snatched at the nearest Hunter with both sets of ebony claws on her right side, her talons sliding into his chest before he could raise his pry bar. At the same time, her tail slashed out, knocking Beads and two others to the deck. The sharp tip cut through tendon and bone, crippling Beads and the Hunter to his left. One of Beads’s feet was completely sliced off, toppling over into the gush of pale liquid that spurted from his ankle.
In a single move, she’d halved the group. With a feral scream, she flung the limp Hunter hanging from her right hands away, his body smashing into one wall hard enough for Noguchi to hear the bones snapping, even through the door.
A Hunter she’d called Inu seized the opportunity, leaping forward with his “pick,” burying the sharp end in the top of the screeching queen’s left thigh. Even as a trickle of her blood started its bubbling erosion of the metal, Inu was lifted off his feet and held up in front of her grinning, drooling face. Her inner jaws shot out, tearing into Inu’s forehead, snapping closed and withdrawing in the blink of an eye. The Hunter’s limbs were still spasming when she threw him aside—
—and the Shell pitched forward suddenly, knocking the two yautja still standing to the floor, causing the queen to stumble. Noguchi grabbed at the door’s handle, managing to keep upright. She turned, saw that the Shell was tunneling through Bunda’s outer atmosphere, flashes of light and dark painting the viewscreen with violent, burning motion.
Another trumpeting howl from the queen. Noguchi turned back to the window just in time to see the bug mother put an end to the ill-planned assault—a step forward, a swift blow delivered, a lash of her tail, and it was over. The deck was awash with green, broken bodies toppled together, unmoving. If the two crippled Hunters were still alive, Noguchi couldn’t tell. And the queen—
Noguchi took a step back from the door as her long, midnight face filled the window, as she seemed to look into the control room. To look directly at her, her black comb sweeping up and out of sight, her grinning blindness tilted to smell or taste or hear the woman inside.
Noguchi studied her, filled with awe, afraid to breathe. She was a glorious, terrible creature, she was Death, the Black Warrior that the Hunters spoke of before battle.
For a frozen moment, they faced each other, a handwidth of clear plastic separating them—and then the monstrous queen turned and moved away, a dark grace in her fluid, powerful movements. Noguchi watched her disappear from the bloody dock, feeling as though she’d been spared, not knowing why.
Behind her, the console gurgled out a few yautja words, telling her that manual assistance was required to set exact coordinates. Noguchi turned and moved back to the controls, surprised to see the night sky of Bunda flashing by on the large viewscreen. It had taken less time than she’d thought…
Still dazed from her closeness to the alien queen, it took her a moment to see the bright spot on the monitor, a yellow-white flower in the dark jumble of the planet’s surface, as big or bigger than the Shell.
What—
An explosion, and a big one. Noguchi checked the monitor for Topknot’s ship signal, and although she couldn’t be sure she was reading it right, it appeared that he wasn’t more than a few klicks from the fireball. In any case, it was obvious where the action on Bunda was centered.
Noguchi tapped at the controls, shifting the ship toward the light, hoping that she wasn’t too late.
* * *
Kevin Vincent woke up hurting and alone, the bright heat from the burning station illuminating the crash of bushes he’d landed in. He tried to move, to sit up, but felt a sharp, stabbing pain across his back, centering on his left shoulder. He was able to turn his head, at least, enough to see the mass of flaming wreckage that had been Bunda survey. It seemed to stretch forever, klicks of smashed deck, klicks of burning, stinking envelope draped across mountains of debris.
“Shit,” he whispered miserably, feeling terrible in every way possible. His station had been attacked, his people murdered for information about some abominable experiment, and those who’d survived had fled, leaving him to die. Briggs was probably dead, no real comfort since he’d be held responsible, he seemed to have broken his shoulder—
—and I’m lying in a goddamn bush and it’s poking through my goddamn shirt and it HURTS, and why doesn’t someone just put me out of my goddamn misery?
If he didn’t move, the pain wasn’t too bad. Vincent closed his eyes for a moment, sweat rolling off of his flushed skin, wondering what could possibly happen next. That he’d survived was a small miracle—not because of the fall; the station had gone down slowly enough for the fall to be survivable—but that the gods hadn’t killed him already, just on general principles.
Because that would’ve been too easy, gotta let me live so I can understand how much they hate me, let me suffer a little more. No fun if I don’t suffer…
The crackle and hiss of the giant, shallow fire was loud enough to occupy his hearing until the crack of a thin branch not two meters away reached him. He instinctively tried to sit up, and was instantly knocked back by the pain.
“Owww, no, no, no, don’t wanna die, please—” Vincent babbled out a stream of denial and wishes, eyes squenched shut, knowing that whatever was coming wasn’t coming to help.
He was right. The thing that stood over him when he opened his eyes was the thing from the station, the synth that had been fighting Briggs’s bodyguard—except it wasn’t wearing its mask, and Vincent realized with a kind of numb horror that it wasn’t a synthetic at all. He was struck speechless, his pleas dying in his throat, barely able to believe what he was seeing.
The creature that stared down at him was the ugliest, most alien-looking thing he’d ever seen—a giant, bony head, speckled and fleshy, four fingerlike pincers on its beady-eyed, pink-mouthed, noseless face, each tipped with a gleaming tusk.
“What are you,” Vincent whispered, and the creature’s pincers opened outward, fully exposing the small, pointed teeth in its strange mouth. The creature reached for something on its arm, holding its clawed hand up as it touched some kind of a bracelet—
—and Vincent heard his own voice spill out, “—no, no, don’t wanna die, please—”
—and the creature flexed its arm, and two extremely sharp and nasty-looking blades sprang out from behind its hand, curved and shining in the firelight, and Vincent closed his eyes, thinking that if it was a bad dream, some hallucin
ation, he wouldn’t—
21
Ellis heard them calling his name and moved away as quietly as he could, deeply thankful that he hadn’t killed them. They hadn’t been hurt by the fall; Lara had a little bit of a limp but she’d told Jess it was nothing, and Jess hadn’t been messed up any worse. After the beating he’d taken—
—because I didn’t help—
—and nearly being immolated, Ellis was grateful that his stupidity hadn’t cost Jess anything more. He wasn’t going to do any more harm, to either of them—and that meant staying away. He was just lucky that he’d landed far enough from them that he’d had time to—
Ellis stumbled over a broken branch and froze, hoping that they hadn’t heard. He was so clumsy, and he’d hit his head when he’d fallen, hard enough that his interface wound had started oozing again. He felt dizzy and strange, but in a way, his mind was clearer than it had been since before DS 949.
Max, if I could only get to Max and protect them, save them again like before…
Before. Stronger, smarter, better, seeing the dangers as glowing green shapes surrounded by lines, calculating distance and finding the optimum kill method in less time than it took to actually think it. The feelings he’d had then, so unimportant, so secondary to the task at hand. Ellis-Max, Max-Ellis, two as one, accomplishing such, such—unity. Perfection.
“Ellis? Can you hear me?” Lara called, far to his right. At least six or seven meters, maybe as much as 7.40…
Ellis finally let himself move again, wondering how he could have let himself be alone for so long when Max was waiting. There was no decision to make. They had all landed close to the burning, dying station, but he’d already led them far enough away that he’d be able to circle back, to get to the shuttle and Max before they could stop him.
The thought that even trying to interface again could kill him didn’t cross his mind. It was the kind of fear that Brian Ellis would have had.