by Steve Perry
The thought became screams but he didn't realize it, too horrified by what he was seeing.
"No no no no-"
It was a giant, pulsing, spidery crab, its thickly corded tail wrapped around the fat man's throat. It was impregnating him, that was what they did, it was how they killed, and knowing what it was doing was enough that something in his mind gave way. He didn't hear himself cry out because too much of his awareness was taken up by the terrible, terrible thing in front of him.
Pratt was still screaming when he saw the other one skittering across the fertile ground, almost too fast to see. Still screaming as it coiled its prehensile tail against the dirt and lunged at him, slick, muscular fingers sliding into his hair, a soft, wet proboscis plugging his still-screaming mouth.
Davis Pratt stopped screaming. Out loud, anyway.
* * *
Chapter 13
Not everyone on Shell was jammed into the sticky-hot training room but it was very close. At least sixty Hunters were gathered around the slightly raised "stage," the musk of their combined aggression so thick that Noguchi could almost taste it as she and Topknot stepped into the room. The large gathering was talking loudly, laughing and pushing at each other until they saw her, at which point their clatter raised to a dull roar. It wasn't hard to inspire bloodlust in a yautja, and she had the feeling that some of them, at least, had been waiting a long time for this.
Shorty was already on the platform, dressed in a loincloth, talking excitedly to a small group of his peers. It seemed that being chosen to fight the ooman had raised his status somewhat, the other novices finally interested in what he had to say about how ugly she was, how he would crush her honor, how this was really no fight at all.
We'll just see about that ...
Shorty fell silent as she and the Leader approached the stage, but she could see the hatred in him as easily as if he'd screamed for her blood. Already his hands were clenched, his tusks opened wide, exposing his small, toothy pink mouth.
Topknot stepped onto the platform and called for one of his Blooded to bring a mask to him,. motioning for Noguchi to wait. As soon as he spoke, the Hunters fell quiet, only shuffling bodies and low trills; she barely heard them over the beating of her heart. She wasn't afraid, but knowing that her fight with Shorty would have everyone's full attention made her distinctly self-conscious.
Don't think about it, don't think about any of it. Trust in yourself, in the skills you've worked so hard to achieve and maintain.
The Blooded Hunter handed the mask to Topknot, who then handed it to her. He didn't speak a single word of encouragement or even look at her, but she was deeply moved by the gesture nonetheless. Compared to a yautja skull, hers was thin as paper.
He knows that I don't deserve this, not with a novice.
She'd been Blooded when she joined them, she'd never had to prove her status in hand-to-hand, and being asked to fight an unBlooded was a serious slight. Hunter politics that she couldn't begin to understand were at play here, perhaps instigated by the young Leader she'd dared to touch.
Topknot spoke and gestured as she donned the mask, his deep, rolling voice filling the heated air. Noguchi only half translated to herself, too intent on her breathing, on psyching herself up for the fight .
...this is Clan and not Clan waging for honor ... standard rules ... when the matter is decided the first transports will leave for Hunt ...
Deep breaths, slow and even. Her ragged braids were already plastered to her skull, her face dripping in the close confines of the mask. She heard Shorty's name and then her own, the name bestowed on her by Broken Tusk, Dahdtoudi.
Small knife, it means small knife because I am small but deadly sharp, and I will win. I will best my opponent because I am faster and sharper, I am a warrior and he is no one. Standard rules, whoever was knocked off the stage or knocked out first lost the fight. Shorty would lose, I am the better fighter, more experienced ...
The crowd roared anew as Topknot stepped off the lightly padded platform and Shorty moved to the corner farthest from her. It was time. Noguchi closed her eyes for a half second, found her center, then boosted herself onto the stage with one hand.
As soon as she was on her feet, Shorty crouched, growling, his arms spread wide. He was small for a Hunter but bigger than she, probably twice her weight if only a half meter taller. If he managed to get his claws on her, the fight would be over.
So don't let it happen.
It was the last full thought she had before she let her instincts take over, crouching herself, ready to defend. The yautja howled for action, the platform trembling as they crushed against it for a better view.
With a wild, guttural scream, Shorty rushed her. He thrust one meaty hand forward to swat at her head, easily enough power to break her neck--and she sidestepped as she reached up and cupped his wrist with both of her hands, swung her upper body into his lunge, down and left. She let him do the work, simply redirecting his charge.
Wham! Shorty went down, landing heavily on one shoulder, his weight pulling him ass over to land flat on his back. The room erupted in excited shouts, fury and disbelief and a desire for more, more battle, blood or death.
The unBlooded yautja crawled to his feet, his mandibles spreading wide as he screamed his anger. He was furious, use it-
A leap toward her and Shorty swept his right arm at her head, still shrieking. Noguchi dropped, bringing her leg out and around, hitting the hot flesh of his ankles with the side of her foot as hard as she could.
Wham!
As soon as he hit the floor she was up, dancing backwards, barely hearing the cacophony of almost feral screams that filled the kehrite.
Shorty lunged up from where he'd fallen, the hatred in his tiny eyes now tainted with something new, pain, uncertainty, she didn't bother to guess. He flew at her, kicking off from the padded floor, his entire body a ram that would crush her--and she kicked her feet up and out, landed on her butt as he reached her, lifted her legs and found his muscled belly with her bare feet. A single motion, Shorty continued his limited flight over her rolling body as she helped him along.
Wham, and there was a grunt of escaping air this time, a sound of pain and shock that only she could hear over the shrill cries of the watchers.
finish this-
She leapt up and took one running jump, Shorty still rising from the stage, side of the knee--and her right foot slammed into his leg, not breaking the cap but surely bruising it badly, definitely pain on his face now as he reflexively grabbed his wound--and Noguchi landed and spun, bringing her foot up again, the full force of her body's momentum behind the roundhouse kick to his jaw. Strings of saliva flew from his mouth and he collapsed, elbows on the floor, his head hanging.
On all fours as he was, there was little chance that she could knock him off of the platform-but rendering him unconscious was a distinct possibility, and definitely the more gratifying of the two. She couldn't let him recover, it would have to be fast, and she stepped back, ready to run, to deliver another well-placed kick--and someone grabbed her foot. Talons closed around her ankle, holding on, pulling her off-balance.
No!
She looked over her shoulder, saw only a sea of screaming faces, but it didn't matter who, she had to get loose before Shorty regained himself.
She dropped as if to do a push-up and kicked back with her free leg. Her foot hit flesh, hard, the smooth feel of tusk against the sole telling her that she'd found her mark. The grip on her ankle fell away and she scrabbled to her feet, struggling to find her center again--and was slammed into, her head rocked back by the rounded dome of Shorty's skull, a head butt that knocked her backwards and made the shouts and faces and heat blur into a single thing, a noise-light that hurt--and before she could fall, Shorty's arms were grabbing at her, one giant fist raised, her head pushed down and she could only see the padded floor--and the pain was tremendous, a ton of hot metal landing across the back of her head. His fist, knocking her flat, the floor blessedly cool against
her bare abdomen. Her limbs suddenly felt far away and she knew that if he hit her again, he would probably kill her. In the space of only a few seconds, the fight had turned, turned and cemented an outcome.
Noguchi saw the clawed foot in front of her, saw it pull back, saw her only chance; with what little coordination she could muster, she raised herself, hands and knees, tightening her gut--and when he kicked her, the top of his foot connecting solid with her tensed muscles, she let it carry her. She flew, screams rising up, enveloping her moving form, hot musk filling her senses--and she hit the floor, skidding, tall bodies moving aside to let her flesh finally stop her. Dazed and in pain, she lay on her back, catching her breath, trying to catalog her injuries as sixty or more Hunters roared their approval. Shorty's voice seemed loudest of all, a wordless shriek of triumph that hurt even worse than her head.
She'd fought honorably, and lost because they hated her, because they couldn't stand to see her succeed. Who would believe her, who would say that they'd witnessed the cheat?
Doesn't matter ...
She closed her eyes behind the stifling mask, making no move to rise, not sure if she was angry or sad or relieved. She was alive, and no one could brand her a coward-but she'd lost her place in the Hunt.
No one reached down to help her to her feet, and that felt like the answer she'd been waiting for. After a year, it was finally over.
* * *
Chapter 14
The sounds that poured out from the jungle as a pale twilight fell over Bunda were soothing, making Ellis feel sleepy in spite of their circumstances. They were Earth sounds, some of them, gently repetitive insect noises that reminded him of a childhood long dead. He'd been sleeping too much, he knew, but his body was still recovering from the interface; he couldn't help feeling tired.
Seven hours thirteen minutes and still aboard the shuttle, no contact at all with the people living on the station despite Lara's repeated efforts. Jess had even tried to engage a couple of the guards, but they weren't interested. Either they really believed that there was a risk of alien infection or they had been ordered not to talk to them.
Ellis sat cross-legged in the back of the shuttle, Max towering over him, hunched and empty. Lara and Jess were still in the cockpit, trying to raise Mr. Vincent from the station. Their voices seemed distant. Ellis figured it was because the hatch was still open; the cooling Bunda air had a life of its own, a rich presence that filled the shuttle and separated the occupants with its thickness ...
...more crazy thinking, maybe, but we don't care, do we?
Max said nothing. Of course, it wasn't alive, had never been alive even when its guts had been human. Ellis only had to close his eyes to see the dead volunteer he'd pulled out of the machine back on DS 949, the insanity written in cruel lines across his pain-wracked face, his emaciated frame wrapped in circuits and lines and tubes. Pop had given Ellis the order to run the full program, up to stage three-massive doses of synthetic adrenaline pumped into the volunteer, creating something even more savage than an alien horde-and it had killed him.
When Ellis had slid into Max, he'd had no idea what would happen. His only concerns at the time were the echoing screams on his headset, from Teape and Jess. Pulaski had already been dead by then, eviscerated and bled out-and when Pop's voice had coolly informed them that they were dead, that he wasn't going to be picking them up ...
...I got in. I got in, and stopped being Brian alone. I became ... us.
Max's huge orange body was pitted and scratched, acid spots randomly spattered across its plated chest, but it still looked as powerful and deadly as when they'd first met. Its left arm was tipped with a revolving liquid-propulsion grenade launcher and pulse rifle, its right a tri-capacity M210 flamethrower; even sitting still, it was a formidable creature. They had worked well together, Ellis's mind computer and Max's physical-awareness, if that was the right word. It was strange, how before they'd interfaced, Max had been MAX, just a machine. Ellis couldn't look at it now and think that; he'd been with Max, shared consciousness with it. It was just a machine the way that a diamond was just a rock.
Ellis gazed up at its soulless face, thinking about the predicament they were in now. Lara had worked up a story about having looped the Trader's log on a locked channel before the explosion; she said that it was their only chance, that they could count on being killed if they didn't stick together ...
...the way Max and I were together ...
Ellis smiled dreamily. He and Max couldn't join again, it would probably kill him, but the idea, the memory was a comfort. Lara and Jess had been so worried about him afterward, thinking that he wouldn't recover, but it wasn't like that. He'd recovered, he just understood more now, about what it meant not to be alone. About how dying wasn't so bad, when you'd been a part of something greater than yourself-
"What are you smiling about, kid?"
Ellis looked up at Jess and shook his head, still smiling. Jess was his friend, he was the man who'd led Max Ellis through the infestation, but he couldn't possibly understand. Lara, either. They'd think he was still ...unwell.
"Nothing, really," he said. "Just how things change, you know?"
Jess smiled back, but Ellis could see that he was hesitant about it. "Yeah, sure. We almost die, survive, almost die, survive again."
Ellis nodded. "And now we wait for the Company to finish the story."
Jess's smile disappeared. Ellis saw the cold spark in his dark eyes, his feelings about Weyland/Yutani and what they'd done to his team an all-consuming rage. Ellis could see it as plainly as he could see that Jess was trying to fight it.
"We keep to our story, they won't do anything," Jess said slowly, as if to reassure Ellis that they would survive.
Ellis nodded again, and Jess walked stiffly away, back to where Lara was continuing her open hail. It was sad, that Jess still carried so much pain ...
Well. That was Jess's battle, not his.
Ellis turned back to gaze at Max, remembering how they'd blasted great, smoking holes through the alien mass, how Max had saved him, how they had saved the others, 3017 rounds/121 M108 canister grenades launched 17.57 liters napthal fuel ignited within the terminal space ...
Max was silent. Ellis sat and remembered, for both of them.
The dizziness and nausea had been the worst, the blow to her head leaving her feeling out of touch with herself and her surroundings, but after a few hours' rest, she'd recovered. The rest of the damage was minor: a twisted ankle, the back of her neck bruised, her abs as sore as if she'd performed a thousand crunches. In another day or two, she'd be good as new.
Lucky me.
Noguchi stood at the door to the nest in the empty lower dock, staring in at the captive queen, not feeling much of anything. A sadness, perhaps. The last of the transports had departed, gone for the Hunt; there were only eleven yautja still on board, shipworkers all, and the giant Shell felt as empty and hollow as she did.
The Hunt would go on into the early-morning hours; she'd already decided to speak to Topknot when he returned, after the Hunters' feast. Considering the nomadic nature of the Hunter culture, she had no doubts that they'd be passing a human outpost within a few weeks. She wouldn't be treated very well in the time she had left with them, but she'd fought competently enough to hold her head up. Besides, she'd gotten used to being treated poorly ...
"But you're not, are you," she said softly, putting her hand on the window, looking at the giant, unmoving darkness strapped to the back wall. It was the first time she'd been down to see the imprisoned queen since her narrow escape from the nest, and she didn't like what she saw. There was a single shaft of puny light shining down over the trapped mother, casting most of her in deep shadow. All of her impossibly strong limbs, shackled. Her tiered, lustrous comb, chained back. And most depressing, the thick cord strung between her outer jaws, gagging her.
The queen was tightly tied, the only real movement that of the eggs sliding through the short, membranous sac that she'd
created only hours after being placed; eggs that were deposited onto a weight-triggered conveyer belt and moved to the side, ready to be loaded into a remote and sent off to some distant world.
In spite of her general dislike of drama, Noguchi found herself trying to draw some analogy between herself and the queen, perhaps because looking at the trapped animal made her feel the same vague sadness she felt for herself. They were both female. Both out of their element. Hindered warriors, maybe. Beaten down by the Hunters, surely ...
...but not anymore, not for me.
She couldn't watch any longer, it was like watching an insect impaled on a pin, dying slowly. Noguchi turned away, walking carefully toward the lift that would carry her back to the main rooms.
Past empty shelves, past an empty hallway, through the gate to the elevator platform. She touched the symbol of the clawed hand on the control panel and the machine hummed to life, rising smoothly, dark walls sliding past.
The thought of seeing, speaking to people again, was a frightening one-but exciting, too. What would she say, to explain where she'd come from? Telling the truth, she ran the risk of being whisked away to some corporate debriefing that could last months, depending on who owned the outpost. Chigusa was probably safe, they were an agribusiness. But Weyland/Yutani, or Biotech ...it was common knowledge that they were always looking for weapon apps and didn't mind exploiting whatever or whoever could bring them new opportunities.
Noguchi grinned as the elevator pulled to a stop, thinking about what a stir it would cause if she handed a burner over to the corporate community. Or a suit of armor, fully loaded-wrist blades, sound loop, filter system, and infra eyes ...
She stepped off the lift, still smiling-and realized that she was smiling. Not about her performance as a fighter, or for shaming a novice, or because she remembered something that had made her laugh from a long time before. She was smiling because she was Machiko Dahdtoudi Noguchi, and she was getting the fuck away from the fucking Hunters, and how hard could having a conversation about work or the weather be, after the year she'd had?