by Tim Lebbon
The ceasefire… is sealed, Kalakta said. Yautja… humans… together.
“Thank you,” she replied. There was little more to say.
Kalakta released her and stood, speaking rapidly to the four warriors behind him. They lowered their weapons and all took three steps back.
“Wow,” McIlveen said. “Er… you dropped this.” He handed her the earpiece she’d cast aside, smiling apologetically.
She put it back into place.
“Palant, have you any idea what you’ve done?” Gerard Marshall bellowed. “A pact with the Yautja? You were here to assert our power over them, not give them a place at our table!”
“I know exactly what I did,” she said, trying to remain calm. “I just saved your life, and the lives of your wife and children, and their children, too.”
“You think you can—” But then Marshall was interrupted, falling immediately silent when a new voice cut in.
“Time for this later.”
It was a voice she knew, but had never expected to hear in person. This was James Barclay.
“Well done, Palant,” he continued. “That was inspired. It’s good to have you on our side. Now, Major Halley will need the translation program developed and expanded so that she can communicate with the Yautja and plan our defense.”
“Of course,” Palant said.
“And thank you, Isa. McIlveen, too. Your actions might have saved a lot of lives.”
Palant did not reply, and soon the sub-space connection was severed with a long, deep sigh.
Akoko Halley approached, warily eyeing the Yautja in the middle of the huge hold.
“I’m not sure what I feel about this,” she said.
“You heard the Excursionist transmission,” Palant said. She remembered how Lieutenant Johnny Mains’s voice had made her shiver, and the knowledge of where the message was coming from—deep space, way beyond the Outer Rim, on a ruined Yautja habitat—would haunt her dreams for a long time.
“Yeah,” McIlveen said. “Worse things coming.”
“At least we might have time to prepare,” Palant said. “And now, maybe, we have access to Yautja knowledge of whatever’s been happening out there.”
“Dark times,” Halley said, then Palant saw her smile for the first time. “Exactly what I’m trained for.”
26
JOHNNY MAINS
Yautja Habitat designated UMF 12, beyond Outer Rim
September 2692 AD
A day after they transmitted their warning, Faulkner died. Lieder and Mains moved his body into a side room away from the flight deck, then sat close together in two of the big seats, staring at a viewing screen that still showed an image across the end of UMF 12.
Beyond, the sun toward which they were slowly spinning appeared at the edge of the screen, blazing across the habitat’s surface, its glorious beams acting like claws to clasp the vessel and never let it go. It was the most beautiful, most terrifying sunrise ever.
They’d tried to take control of the alien ship, but nothing worked. Lieder guessed there were some genetic triggers she could not possibly fire.
The android still pinned to the wall was no help. It moved occasionally, but they’d been unable to get any sense from it. Sometimes its facial muscles ticked and flexed as if it was trying to talk, but it could not form words. Even if they’d had the tech required to try and access its memory banks, Mains suspected they’d find only madness inside.
He called it Patton. Its one good eye seemed to focus slightly the first time he spoke the name aloud, then it hazed again, staring into distances he could not understand.
“Always thought I’d go out fighting,” Lieder said. Mains looked across at her, sunlight piercing the gloom and lighting her face, reflecting from her eyes. Their suits remained on but with lowered power, non-essential systems idling. Her mask was almost clear.
“We have,” he said. “We’ve been fighting ever since we landed here. We can climb back down, if you like. See if there are any more Yautja or Xenomorphs to tangle with.”
She smiled. “I’m quite enjoying this.”
“Enjoying,” he echoed, and he found that he was, too. This quiet after the storm, this intimate moment with the woman who had become his lover. He wasn’t sure if it was love. He was almost certain it wasn’t, because love couldn’t come easily to people like them, who eschewed the normal human existence to explore and travel beyond, the safety of those left behind always at the forefront of their minds. Affection was the most they could wish for, he supposed—but he felt affection for all of his crew.
His dead crew.
With Lieder, it was a little bit more.
“I wonder where they come from,” he said. He glanced back at the android, stuck on the wall by a Yautja spear, torn and tattered. It had hardly moved for hours. Perhaps it had finally died, or whatever it was androids did.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Lieder said. “I mean, that thing’s just… functional. It’s barely human. Maybe centuries ago they made them like that, but I don’t know.”
“And they’ve militarized the Xenomorphs,” Mains said. “The Company has been trying to do that for as long as its known about them. They even had a queen once, so it’s rumored, but that ended badly. Whoever has done this must have been out there for a while. Researching, developing the tech, and… why? For this?”
“Taking out the Yautja,” Lieder said.
“Maybe.”
“I’ve always wondered what goes on in places we don’t know and can’t see. You know, way beyond the Human Sphere. The Sphere’s huge, but just a fraction of the galaxy. Yautja have a deep history about them, Johnny. I mean deep. They might have been out there forever, when we were just crawling from the water and sprouting fingers.”
“Yet whoever did this is human,” he said.
“Has to be. Old Patton there proves that, with his face and his name.”
“And the Yautja ships we saw launched fled inward, toward the Sphere.”
Dawning broke over Lieder’s face, just as the full glare of the sun touched them both.
“We’ve warned them,” she said. “They’ll be ready. If whoever made Patton is going for the Sphere, the Company and the Colonial Marines will be ready.”
“Maybe,” he said. He jumped up and approached the strange control panels. “We’ve figured out the comms, we know we can’t fly this thing, but what else is there?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Deep space scanners. Sub-space monitoring, quantum fold webs. Anything to find a link back to wherever this ship came from. We have to discover whatever we can, for as long as we can, and message it back. Every scrap of information might be priceless.”
Lieder was looking at the blazing sun crossing the viewing screen at unnatural speed, as if counting down the days to their demise faster than ever.
“We might be dead in a day or two.”
“All the more reason not to sit here doing fuck all.”
Lieder jumped up beside him, and she surprised him by kissing him on the cheek. Then holding him tight, pressing her face against his neck.
“Sorry. Sir.”
“You’re forgiven. Private.”
Mains smiled, and the two of them went to work.
* * *
They’ll come up here and kill us, he thought. He was convinced that there were still many Xenomorphs down in the habitat, and perhaps more in the bowels of this strange ship, but he had no inclination to put themselves at risk by exploring further. Soon, they’ll storm the bridge and we won’t be able to fight them off.
Yet the more time that passed without them being attacked, the more he began to wonder. Down in UMF 12, he and his remaining crew had approached the Xenomorphs and woken them from whatever slumber they might take. Their attack had been defensive, perhaps reflexive.
With Patton dead or dying, it could be that their commander had been lost, but still the threat of potential Xenomorph attack hanging over the
m made him and Lieder work quicker.
In truth, there was little Mains could do other than operate some of the tech. He monitored their suits, too, and when his own levels looked dangerously low he went to Faulkner’s body, extracting some of the chemicals and systems that would help while trying not to look at his dead friend’s face. He hadn’t died in pain—the suit had made sure of that—but he had passed away knowing how much more there was left to do.
“Johnny, get back here,” Lieder said urgently. Mains happily turned from Faulkner’s corpse and dashed back onto the bridge. He glanced at Patton as he went, the android motionless and silent.
“What is it?”
“I’ve got some sub-space systems up and running. At least, I think that’s what this is. There’s a sort of grid of contact coordinates, like a network of sub-space transmissions already opened and waiting to be used. It’s pretty radical stuff, and way ahead of anything I’ve seen before.”
“We can analyze it?”
“It’s way beyond me. If we had a full tech crew here, and time to take the ship apart, maybe we could reverse engineer. But it’s not that it’s here that troubles me, it’s what it shows.”
“So don’t keep me in suspense.”
“There are ship traces out there that are familiar.”
Mains frowned, trying to understand. The flat holo screen on the unit before them glowed a gentle blue, and scattered across its surface, and deep down, were at least a dozen pulsing red specs. Each had a list of figures and numerals beside it. He could read them, but none of them made sense to him.
“How do you know them?”
“I don’t. My suit does. It’s uploaded with some of the latest navigational software, and I added some of my own improvements. I’ve got several dips into quantum folds that the Company would probably prefer I didn’t. It’s the least important one that’s flagging up these ship traces.”
“Which one?”
“Historical. Johnny, at least seven of the traces I can find here are Fiennes Ships. They’re all coming back toward the Sphere, heading for drophole locations.”
“They were never meant to come back.”
“Right, and they’re moving at speeds way, way beyond their capabilities when they were sent out. This one, the Susco-Foley, left the Sphere almost five hundred years ago. The Aaron-Percival, fifty years before that. And the others… none of them should be here, Johnny.”
He closed his eyes, because it was all becoming horribly clear.
“Nurseries,” he said.
“Yeah. That’s what I was thinking. Those Xenomorph bastards have to be born somewhere.”
“How many people did those ships carry?”
“Susco-Foley was the smallest of them, and old records suggest almost seven thousand passengers in cryo-sleep.”
“And there’s seven of them.”
“That I can see, yeah.”
“Holy shit.” He shook his head. “Holy shit. Okay, prepare another transmission. We’ve got to warn whoever we can.”
Behind them, the speared android Patton made a noise. It was a strangled, gurgling, sickening sound. Mains went closer, trying to make out any words. But the android was not attempting to speak.
As Mains heard the chilling scratch of countless claws approaching from below the flight deck, Patton began to laugh.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had over thirty novels published to date, as well as hundreds of novellas and short stories. His latest novel is the thriller The Hunt, and other recent releases include The Silence and Alien: Out of the Shadows. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, International Horror Guild, and Shirley Jackson Awards. Future novels include a new thriller from Avon, The Rage War (an Alien/Predator trilogy), and the Relics trilogy from Titan.
A movie of his story Pay the Ghost, starring Nicolas Cage, is due for release in 2015, and several other projects are in development for TV and the big screen.
Find out more about Tim at his website
www.timlebbon.net
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A big thanks to the whole team at Titan. It’s wonderful to work with a gang of such passionate and professional people who are, above all, fans of the genre. Thanks to Fox, especially Josh Izzo and Nicole Spiegel. A big thanks to everyone who let me use their names in the book. Apologies for killing some of you. But what a way to go, in the depths of space fighting some of cinema’s most iconic monsters…
COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS
The Yautja and the human race face a common foe, armed with the deadliest weapons imaginable. Even if they work together, is there any way to stop an army of Xenomorphs?
APRIL 2016
And don’t miss the devastating conclusion:
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