“Thank God,” said Frances. She smiled at Kramm. “We made it.”
“Don’t be too sure,” said Kramm. “Look.”
There, in front of the ship, was what at first looked like a metal statue, slightly taller than a man and three times as broad. It was made of thick steel girders coated with plexene. Its body was constructed as a rectangle, with a large holding chamber constituting most of its body. It was perched atop two sets of treads. It had four sets of appendages, two ending in gun barrels and the other two terminating in flattened-out pincers. A hemisphere made of a black, shiny plexene sat atop its frame. As they watched, this hemisphere lit up.
“What the hell is that?” asked Kramm.
Behind them, Bjorn put Jolena softly on the ground, and drew his gun.
“That’s how they collect their Aliens,” said Frances. “It’s an egg harvester.”
With a jolt it started moving, much quicker and more maneuverable on the treads than Kramm would have guessed. He dived right, Frances too, Bjorn running left and along the wall. Kramm heard the shots, turned to see it pursuing Bjorn, firing, Bjorn keeping just ahead of it. Its movements were just slightly sluggish, he realized, or else Bjorn would already be dead. And suddenly it dawned on him that this wasn’t an artificial intelligence unit but a device run by remote. One of the scientists on the moon must be controlling it, was playing with them as if they were part of a video game.
He swiveled about, began firing at the harvester, the shots mostly glancing off the tempered body but some leaving faint scorch marks. He aimed for the hemisphere on top of it, same effect.
We’re in trouble, he thought.
Frances, a half-dozen meters away, was taking a different tactic, he realized, firing alternately at the harvester’s guns and treads, trying to disable it. The shots that hit the treads seemed to have little effect, and the harvester was moving quickly enough that she hadn’t managed to hit the gun appendages yet. Kramm rushed closer, tried his own luck, missed, missed, missed. He got a little closer, this time hit one of the guns squarely, cracking its casing. The harvester continued to fire off shots, but there was something wrong with the gun now, the charge weaker. Kramm squeezed off a few more shots himself, finally hit the gun again. When the harvester fired next, the gun exploded.
The machine turned quickly toward him, beginning to track him with its remaining gun. Oh, shit, he thought, and began to weave and dodge. Bjorn, he saw over his shoulder, was rushing the machine now. A charge struck the wall a few centimeters in front of Kramm’s face and, not knowing what else to do, he cut left, toward the door they had forced their way through. A blast seared past his arm and he smelled burnt hair. And then he dived, sliding under the bent door and into the tunnel beyond.
Only it wasn’t the salvation he had been hoping it would be, for there, creeping tentatively down toward the door, toward him, through the dimness, was a clot of Aliens.
He fired immediately, into the wall a half meter away, not able to get his arm out from under him quickly enough to aim. The sound and the blaze were enough to scatter several of them, sending them back into the darkness of the hall. The remaining two, however, leaped forward.
He scrambled back and beneath the door again, for one awful moment catching his shirt on the bent corner, then the shirt tore and he was through. The first Alien was already down and fluidly following him. He shot it centimeters from his own face, just as its lips started to pull back and tighten, its second inner mouth opening. He fired and the shot caught just right, spreading the top part of its head in a fan over the door. Kramm worried all the while about what was going on behind him with the harvester, waiting for the shot to come that would kill him. The creature gave a sigh and collapsed, its inner mouth springing out perhaps by reflex as it died, breaking Kramm’s nose.
He was stunned for a moment, and for a moment unable to see, his vision obscured by dark blotches and filmed in blood. He could feel the blood running down his face, could hear the sound of the second creature scrabbling its way past its dead fellow—unless it was the first one and it was still partly alive—and he struggled blindly back himself, shaking his head, trying to get as far away as he could. All the while he was conscious of the thumping of the harvester behind him, the sound of guns firing, Bjorn’s bellows, Frances’s shouts.
His vision started to come back, the peripheral at first, and he could, by looking slightly away from the hole, see the second Alien clawing its way past its fellow’s body, forcing its way through. He fired once at it, still looking awry, and the shot went wide, thunking into the dead alien again. And then the second Alien was through and he fired again, but the pistol, out of plasma, just clicked.
Oh no, he thought, and threw the empty pistol at it.
And then the creature hit him, knocking him flat. There it was, looming over him, straddling him. Somehow he got his arms up and under what passed for its chin, forcing it up so it couldn’t bring its mouths to bear and break a hole through his skull. It tore at his arms, hissing, slowly forcing them down, forcing them to bend, and he saw its lips begin to quiver. He tried to roll it off him but it was too solidly in place, and too strong. There was nothing he could do but die.
But somehow he held on, forced its head up a little again. A part of him couldn’t bring itself to give up—a part he thought he had lost long before somewhere in the dark. The muscles in his arms were shaking now, the tendons ready to snap. One more effort to roll it off, he told himself, teeth gritted, and then die.
He gave a big heave, then heard a shot, close this time. He felt the creature jerk stiff and go slack, falling off to one side. There was Frances, beside him, hurriedly helping him to his feet and hurrying him away to where he could crouch behind a heat baffle.
“Lost your gun?” she asked.
“Out of ammo,” he said.
She looked at her own gun’s display. “I’ve still got a few more,” she said, “but not many. Any more coming?”
“Not yet,” he said. “What about the harvester?”
“Bjorn’s dealing with it,” she said, “but he may need some help.”
Bjorn was clinging to the harvester’s back as it swiveled madly about, trying to reach him with its appendages. He was hammering with his prybar on its plexene dome; dents had started to appear. The barrel of the other gun appendage, Kramm saw, had been bent, was now inoperable.
The harvester suddenly sped quickly backward, smashing Bjorn against the wall. He grunted, and when the harvester backed up for another run at the wall he dropped off, spitting blood. The machine turned and immediately came toward him, trying to take hold of him with its pincers.
Frances aimed and fired, the shot glancing off the harvester’s dome. It half-turned, then continued instead toward Bjorn, who was pulling the pins on both of his remaining grenades. He held one in each hand, and waited.
“Bjorn, no!” cried Frances, and fired again. The dome cracked this time. Bjorn smiled.
The harvester moved closer, its pincers open, then lashed out. It was quick but Bjorn, despite his size, was quicker. In a flash, he had managed to jam a grenade deep into the joint of one pincer and, taking hold of the other pincer, had pulled himself up high enough to jam the second grenade partway into the crack in the dome.
He tried to duck under one appendage as he came back down, but it followed him. He pushed hard against it, but whoever was controlling the harvester seemed to be doing better, was keeping Bjorn pinned in one corner, as it tried to get a grip on him. Straining, Bjorn pushed back hard, rolling the harvester two meters back on its treads as it flailed at him. He let go and dropped flat, the harvester rolling over him.
The grenades went off, two blinding bursts of flame that made the air shudder even where Kramm and Frances were.
When the smoke cleared, the harvester was missing most of its dome. Its appendages were mangled, the casing of its retrieval chamber cracked as well. It was sparking, no longer moving. All they could see of Bjorn were his fee
t and calves, blackened and sticking out from under the treads.
“What a waste,” said Frances.
“It’s all a waste,” said Kramm. “None of this needed to happen. And I was just beginning to like him too.”
They slowly approached the harvester, Kramm prodding Bjorn’s feet with his shoe. The bones in his legs were broken, the flesh burnt black on them. There was no way to tell where his pants stopped and his burnt flesh began.
“And then there were two,” said Frances.
“We’ve got to get out of here soon,” he said, glancing back at the broken door, “before there are none.”
Frances nodded and started to turn away, moved toward the ship, then suddenly stopped. “No,” she said.
“No?”
“We should get him out. We owe him that.”
“Frances, we need to go,” said Kramm. “You’ve got, what, maybe half a dozen shots left? We don’t have time for this.”
“No,” she said stubbornly.
“You’re not being reasonable,” he said.
“Remember how you had to go after Duncan and Kelly, even if only to kill them? This is like that for me.”
He stared at her, incredulous.
“Yes,” said a soft, calm voice, hardly audible. “I would prefer that you take me along.”
9
It took them some time to figure out how to work Bjorn free. They tried at first to roll the treads back, but no, Bjorn whispered, this would crush his head. Kramm and Frances tried to push the harvester over, but it was too heavy, and too well balanced.
In the end, Frances stayed beside Bjorn, talking to him and keeping one eye on the shattered door, on watch for Aliens, while Kramm searched the bay for something they could use. There was nothing immediately useful. Can we bring ourselves to leave Bjorn behind? Kramm asked himself. He had crouched beside the harvester, had seen Bjorn’s broken legs, the burnt flesh on him. His shoulder looked broken too and blood mixed with saliva continued to drip in slow strings out of his mouth.
Can I bring myself to kill Bjorn? he wondered. Can I bring myself to decide who lives and who dies?
To get into the ship, he had to use the emergency hatch. He couldn’t get the ship to recognize him, couldn’t get the main ramp to lower until he was inside and could lower it with the toggle switch found within. We can’t just leave him for them, he was thinking. We’ll have to kill him. But how would they do it? He didn’t have a gun anymore, no clips anyway. Maybe there were clips on board the ship. Would Frances let him kill Bjorn with her gun? Would she try to stop him if she knew what he was doing? Killing him is a mercy, he told himself, considering what they’re likely to do to him.
He began to search the ship’s lockers for ammunition, finding instead pressure suits and deep-space suits, a medical kit, and emergency rations.
Suddenly he realized how hungry he was. Salivating, he tore a packet of the rations open, took a bite, swallowed. He felt his stomach lurch and seize, and then slowly relax. He gathered the medical kit and stuffed his pockets full of rations, went on to the next cabinet.
First he would let Bjorn eat something, he told himself. Then he would inject him full of morphine so he wouldn’t feel anything. Then he would kill him. But how?
When he found the meter’s length of tempered steel rod at the bottom of one of the lockers, he had so convinced himself that he would have to kill Bjorn that the first image that came into his head was of hefting the rod and bringing it down to crush Bjorn’s skull. He had already picked it out to examine it more carefully, pondering whether it would be possible to get a good enough swing with Bjorn still mostly under the harvester, when he realized he could use it as a lever.
He had already started for the ramp when he heard the shots, two in all. He hurried quickly down. Frances sat with her back against the harvester, arms balanced on her knees, pistol held in both hands. Near the broken door thrashed an Alien, slowly dying.
“Save your bullets,” said Kramm. He approached it slowly, metal rod raised. It seemed to quiet as he approached, and it turned toward him. He came a little closer, then a little closer still, then swung the rod down hard.
It connected with the creature’s head with a loud crack, and then the Alien fell still. Yes, Kramm thought. It probably would have worked just fine for killing Bjorn.
“How many shots left?” he asked Frances.
She checked the gun. “Three,” she said, standing up.
“Keep an eye out,” he said. “And try to save them. That’s one for each of us.”
He slid thirty or forty centimeters of the rod into a gap between two of the harvester’s treads, then grabbed the end of it. He squatted deep, took a full breath, and lifted.
At first nothing happened, the rod bowing slightly, and he worried it was too thin or too weak or too short to serve. And then, as he struggled to lift further, the harvester slowly started to tip.
“Pull him out!” he hissed through gritted teeth, gasping for breath.
Frances reached down under the harvester, grabbed Bjorn’s shirt, pulled.
“It’s no use,” she said. “He’s still stuck.”
He grunted and lifted a little further, legs and arms and back protesting against the strain. He stared up at the ceiling, trying to keep his back straight.
She pulled Bjorn again, as hard as she could. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s too heavy.”
Bjorn himself was mumbling something he couldn’t quite hear. His hands were going damp, threatening to slip, and then suddenly Frances was beside him, lifting too. He made a tremendous effort and so did she. The harvester tilted further and it became a little easier. He squatted and got his shoulder under the rod now and together they pushed the harvester up and over.
It came down with a heavy crash, the floor cracking beneath it. There was Bjorn, blinking, below where the harvester had been, legs burnt and broken, arm and shoulder crushed, blood dripping from his mouth, but still alive. Kramm popped open the medical kit, began to do what he could, Frances helping as well.
I’ve saved somebody, Kramm couldn’t help but think with a kind of wonder.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said.
“But this is a land I never left,” protested Bjorn, confused.
“You’ll lose your legs,” said Kramm.
Bjorn smiled. “I will get new ones,” he claimed.
“I hate to break this up,” said Frances, “but I think we’d better go now.”
She gestured toward the broken door. A dark shape had crept through. Kramm saw, spreading along the walls, several others, moving tentatively into the ship bay, a little gun shy perhaps.
“You may drag me,” said Bjorn, happily.
He slowly moved around behind Bjorn, wrapping his good hand and the few remaining fingers of the bad one into Bjorn’s shirt. Straining, he slowly began to drag him toward the flitter.
“Shall I shoot them?” asked Frances in a low voice.
“How many are there?” asked Kramm.
Bjorn’s body was hard to drag, and it was leaving a trail of blood behind it. His boots jounced along, his broken legs going any direction they pleased.
“Eight,” said Frances. “That I can see,” she said.
“You have three bullets,” he said. “Pick up that steel rod,” he said. “Bring it to me.”
“So, I should fire or not?” she asked, reaching down slowly to pick up the rod. She came close, then leaned over, placing it on Bjorn’s chest.
“Not until you have to,” he said.
The creatures had found Jolena’s body. They had clustered briefly around it, but were quickly losing interest.
“I think I will go to sleep now,” said Bjorn.
“All right,” said Kramm, dragging him further. His injured hand began to seep through its dressings.
“Good night,” said Bjorn.
“Is he dying?” asked Frances. “Can you tell if he’s dying?”
“He says
he’s sleeping,” said Kramm. “If he dies, I’ll tell you. I’ll keep you posted.”
He kept an eye on the Aliens, watched their slow, slightly curious movements. We’ve killed the older, more aggressive ones, he thought. These ones are still cutting their teeth. But was that really true? Was that what Aliens really did? He hoped so.
“I found some food,” he said.
“Oh?” said Frances. “Did you? Good. I’m starved.”
“The one on the far right,” said Kramm, “circling around. Keep an eye on that one.”
“I can’t watch them all,” said Frances.
“No,” Kramm agreed. “But watch that one. If it moves any closer, shoot it.”
They were halfway to the ship now, more or less. Probably less, he realized.
“Do you think it’ll help?” asked Frances.
“What?” he said.
“To shoot it,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It might make them scatter or it might make them all come at us. I have no idea.” He dragged Bjorn a little farther, then let go of him for a moment, resting his hands. “If you shoot it, kill it in one shot.”
“I’ll try,” she said.
He smiled at her, even though he didn’t feel like smiling. He reached down, beginning to drag Bjorn along again. “If you don’t think you can do it, then I’ll shoot and you can drag.”
“Here it comes,” she said.
He let go of Bjorn’s shirt, scooping the metal rod off his chest. The creature loped parallel to them, as if to pass around, and then at the last moment darted in, coming at him. He raised the metal rod high, brought it down hard across the creature’s neck, driving it momentarily into the ground. The plasma pistol fired, sizzling past his leg, catching the creature in the head.
He broke open the elongated skull for good measure, then spun a wide arc around him with the rod. The other creatures were still keeping their distance.
“How does it look?” asked Frances.
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 42