by Tim Lebbon
The debate hadn’t lasted for very long.
Palant and McIlveen prepared a transmission, and using their ever-evolving Yautja language program they had sent drophole codes and coordinates to the two Yautja ships.
An hour after dropping through to Gamma 65, the two alien ships followed them through.
Halley wasn’t confident that they would locate a Fiennes ship. She told Palant that if they went looking for trouble, they’d never find it. Thus it was a long nineteen days, with the ship’s crew mourning the loss of Nassise and Gove, and picking up sketchy transmissions about major engagements involving other Colonial Marine forces.
Halley’s own 39th Spaceborne, the DevilDogs, were powering out toward the Outer Rim on a mission to protect two dropholes as yet untouched by the enemy. Halley and her crew wanted to be with their army, not here babysitting Palant and McIlveen. The Pixie was an amazing ship, but they’d have far preferred to be on their battle cruisers and frigates with the rest of their brigade.
That was what they had trained for.
We’re not Excursionists. Palant heard it said several times during those long, troubling nineteen days.
Palant herself was adrift, and one quadrant of space looked like any other. She attempted communication with the Yautja who were shadowing them, but neither ship responded to her signals. She knew they were receiving them—they’d used the drophole coordinates she and McIlveen had sent, after all—but not once did they respond.
As much as she and McIlveen understood the Yautja, more than any other humans in the Sphere, they remained an enigma. Palant had forged peace between the two species at a time when war might have torn them apart, but every time she began to think she knew them, they became more mysterious.
It was on day nineteen when the first transmission came through from one of the Yautja ships. At the same time the other ship streaked past them, a thousand miles away and moving twice as fast as they were.
It took Palant and McIlveen several seconds to feed the transmission into their translation program.
Enemy ship ahead.
Vengeance is ours.
“Confirmation,” Sprenkel said. “It’s a Fiennes ship, but the trace reading is weird.”
“Weird how?” Halley asked.
“The ship’s dead,” Sprenkel said. “Whatever happened here, I think we’ve missed it.”
“I can get it on-screen,” Bestwick said.
“Do it.”
The viewing screen brightened, and in the distance they saw the tiny spot that was the Fiennes ship. Bestwick magnified, and as the image grew, so Palant felt her heart rate increasing. The destruction at LV-1657 was still fresh in her mind. She had seen many men and women killed there, the new war brought brutally home. Now it felt as though they were looking for trouble. As a scientist that was anathema to her—she should have been searching for ways to end the war, not seeking more violence. That was what people like Halley and her troops were for.
But by making peace with Kalakta, she had made herself visible, and also placed herself at the forefront of this conflict.
The ship growing on their screen was like nothing she had seen before. It also appeared to be all but destroyed. A wide debris field surrounded it, and large portions of the vessel had been blasted to dust, leaving gaping wounds in the hull and revealing the ship’s innards. The whole vessel was in a slow spin. From so far away it reminded Palant of a large, dead fish she’d once seen on a beach on Earth, insides exposed to the air. She’d been a little girl then, and the idea that she was looking into a once-living thing—at parts of it that were never meant to be seen—had made her feel like she was party to a great secret.
She felt the same now, but the sense of wonder was replaced by fear.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“We did,” Halley said. “Colonial Marine units are under orders to destroy any unknown ships heading into the Sphere, and that includes the Fiennes ships.”
“But we’re looking for an android,” Palant said. “Wouldn’t everyone else be doing the same?”
“We’re doing that on Gerard Marshall’s orders, and so we’re as good as working for the Thirteen.” Halley smiled bitterly. “It’s the Colonial Marines fighting this war, and as usual Weyland-Yutani are looking to see how they can benefit from it.”
“Catching an android will help win the war,” McIlveen said.
“Sure it will,” Halley said, “but they want more than just to win. They want to profit.”
“But all those people…” Palant said.
“They’re not people anymore,” Halley said. “Huyck, take us in, but leave a good distance between us and that thing. Bestwick, see if you can pick up any record of a recent engagement in this area. Sprenkel, can you plot that debris field?”
“I can, but only down to a certain size. Anything smaller than Huyck’s dick won’t show up on scanners.”
“Wow,” Bestwick said, “that’s small.”
“Eat me,” Huyck said. He flew them in toward the ruined ship, matching attitude, velocity, and spin so that they moved side by side. “We’re seven miles out,” he said. “Near as I want to take us until Sprenkel can get into gear and plot the debris spread.”
“Nearly there,” Sprenkel said. “Billy?”
The ship’s computer checked calculations, and it confirmed the new overlap that appeared on their holo screens.
“We can fly close to the ship on the other side,” Sprenkel said. “Looks like it was a hell of an assault. Explosions were mainly on this side.”
“Any clues as to the ship’s identity?” Halley asked.
“It definitely used to be a Fiennes ship,” Bestwick said. “As there’s no activity, there’s no new trace to search—but Billy’s picked up the remnants of an ion trail, and it might have been a ship called the Cooper-Jordan.”
“Not any more,” Halley said.
On the screen, one of the Yautja craft became visible, approaching the wreck from the other direction, drifting in close and then performing a slow circle around the ship. A few small laser blasts speared out to destroy debris, and then the second vessel joined it, hanging off the derelict’s bow as if standing guard.
“Palant, can you find out what your friends are doing?” Halley asked.
The Yautja were constantly referred to as Palant’s and McIlveen’s friends, and they’d both grown accustomed to that, however untrue it felt.
“We can ask, but they haven’t once responded to any of our transmissions. You know that.”
“Ask anyway,” Halley said.
“Snow Dog scares me,” McIlveen muttered as he accessed their translation program. His words weren’t quiet enough to keep them private, and Palant guessed he hadn’t meant to, but Halley was too busy to pay any attention. Palant was pretty sure that she’d take no offense, regardless.
McIlveen prepared a message, their program translated, and he sent it.
There was no reply.
“What are they doing?” McIlveen whispered, but Palant didn’t know. Sometimes she thought the Yautja were accompanying the Pixie as some sort of escort, while other times she feared the Predators were guarding them, ensuring that they didn’t do anything that ran contrary to Yautja interests. Whatever those interests might be.
“I don’t know,” she replied, “but Elder Kalakta wanted peace as much as we did.”
“You think?”
“It’s worked, hasn’t it?”
“Peace with the Yautja, yeah. But now we have the Rage.”
“You think they’re linked?”
“Maybe.” McIlveen frowned. “It doesn’t feel right, but we really don’t know anything about the Yautja. Maybe they’ve nothing to do with the Rage—whoever or whatever the Rage is—but that doesn’t mean their intentions won’t clash with ours.”
“Maybe they want the Xenomorphs,” Palant said.
“We know the Yautja hunt them,” he agreed. “We know they hunt anything, if they see pot
ential for sport in it.”
“Not sport,” Palant said.
“Okay, then, competition. Still, maybe the Yautja want the ability to control these things as much as we do.”
“We?”
“Weyland-Yutani,” he replied, then added, “Humanity.”
“Are they one and the same?” Palant asked.
“Don’t you think so?” he asked. By his own admission a Company man, McIlveen had surprised her time and again with his dedication to what was right, and not just what was right for the Company. Even so, Palant harbored an element of doubt about him. She thought that was sensible, and trusting people implicitly had never been her strong point. That was why she’d spent a decade alone, submerged in her research.
She liked McIlveen, but the two of them had been thrown together by the Company, and she could never forget that.
“I don’t know,” Palant said. “Weyland-Yutani has a history.”
“Don’t we all,” McIlveen said.
She left it at that.
“Okay, we’re going in,” Halley announced. “The ship looks dead, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing useful on board.”
“What about whoever did that to the ship?” Palant asked. “Wouldn’t they have investigated? Taken anything of value?”
“It depends on how this happened,” Halley said. “Some of that debris field is from another couple of smaller ships.”
“Colonial Marine?”
“Doesn’t appear so, but this thing might have had escorts, and there’s no way for us to know whether any of them survived. Whichever Marine unit had a contact here and took out the Cooper-Jordan, they might still be involved elsewhere.”
“So you really want to go aboard that thing,” Palant said.
“You heard Marshall’s orders,” Halley said, looking across the flight deck at her. She smiled. “Believe me, I’d really rather not.”
“I’m taking two weeks leave,” Bestwick said. “Effective immediately. I’ll just stay here. I’m halfway through a good book.”
“Okay, suit and weapon up,” Halley said. “Huyck, take us in.”
* * *
With nowhere suitable to dock, they were faced with a dangerous space walk from the Pixie and into one of the damaged areas of the Fiennes ship’s hull. None of the ship’s external ports were active, so Billy scanned the ruined structure and pinpointed the most suitable point for them to gain entry. It would take some cutting, but the ship’s computer suggested that they could be across to the hull and inside within an hour.
The two Yautja ships pulled back to a hundred miles distant, and were following the wreck and the Pixie with no overt interest. They would do what they would do. Palant only hoped that Halley and her crew would be ready if their actions became hostile.
She didn’t think that would happen, though.
Halley decided that the full crew should go. Billy would maintain the Pixie’s station, and would be in constant touch with the crew. If they needed to move quickly, it would guide the ship in close, doing its best to fly near enough to the Cooper-Jordan to rescue them.
Palant and McIlveen weren’t happy with performing a space walk in such hazardous circumstances, but they were both eager to get on board the ship. As scientists, their curiosity overrode their natural caution.
For Palant, this was somewhere she had never expected to be. Her life had been turned upside down, and her universe had expanded from her lab and the base where she lived to the whole of space. In a way she’d become a very different person since being rescued from Love Grove Base, forced to consider horizons she had long believed out of sight, and plunged into situations from which she had hidden herself for years.
She didn’t want experience, though, she wanted study. She wanted her own niche from which to research the things that interested her. Instead, she had become someone important. That wasn’t something she’d ever sought.
At least she had McIlveen, though. He was the closest she had to a friend, and in this new, wider, infinitely more deadly universe, she needed that.
Suiting up on the flight deck, she realized they were wearing spare combat suits that might have belonged to Nassise and Gove. None of the DevilDogs commented, and she was grateful to them for that.
At the airlock Halley turned to them both and presented them with weapons.
“No,” Palant said, holding out her hands. “Really.”
“Yes, really,” Halley said. “Have you fired a laser pistol before?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then take it,” McIlveen urged her. He had already taken one of the guns and he nudged Palant again. “Go on… no buts. We can’t expect them to babysit us if we won’t help ourselves.”
Palant took the gun.
She’d fired one a few times, back at Love Grove Base, when out on one of her semi-regular excursions with her friend Rogers. He’d set up an old drinks can on a rock, and then let her fire away, missing the can entirely but blasting the rock to pieces. He’d called her a natural at not being able to hit anything she was aiming for. She’d taken that as a compliment.
“Extra charges in your combat suit belts,” Halley said, handing them over. “There are a few things you should know about these suits. We’ll all be in touch all the time. They’ll protect you from damage, but only superficially. There are a whole slew of commands that mean you can use the suits to your advantage, but there’s no time to teach you them now. Just be ready to react if the suit throws up a warning onto your visor. And keep your eyes and ears open.”
Palant nodded, caught Halley’s eye, and took comfort from the small, cool smile the Major offered her.
Then Billy drifted the Pixie closer to the ruined ship, and it was time to enter the airlock.
Six of them fit inside comfortably, and it was a strange sensation as air and sound bled away. Palant expected her breathing to change, but the suit was providing her air. Apart from an initial fogging across her visor, very little changed.
“Gravity off,” Billy said. Weight left them and Palant started to lift, drifting into McIlveen. Their boots were fitted with electro-magnets, but it didn’t make sense to initiate them until they were on the ship.
The outer door slid open.
Palant’s breathing came shallower and faster. She closed her eyes. She had never been adrift in space before, her trips on ships usually done within the confines of windowless environments, or in cryo-sleep. Faced with the cold, endless magnitude of space for the first time, she felt panic begin to crowd in.
Someone held her hand.
“Hey, it’s all right,” McIlveen said. “It’s really pretty cool once you’re out there.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“A few times.”
“Okay, moving out,” Halley said, paying no attention to Palant’s show of nerves.
Bestwick and Sprenkel went first, little bursts of gas from their combat suits driving them from the airlock and out into open space. Huyck followed. The three marines held their combat rifles at the ready, and even as they were drifting across toward the largest wound in the side of the Cooper-Jordan, they were swiveling their guns left and right.
“I’ll take temporary control of your suits,” Halley said. “It’ll make it easier to guide you across.” Moments later Palant felt herself shoved forward as her own suit’s directional jets fired.
It took her breath away. One second she had the Pixie around her, the next there was infinity. Ahead of her lay the Fiennes ship, but looking up she could see only the endless void, speckled with long-dead stars and filled with dangers that even now sought to kill her. She gasped and took shallow, fast breaths, and her visor fogged again.
“Breathe easier,” Halley said. “Deep breaths.”
Palant tried. She focused ahead on the backs of the marines drifting in front of her, then glanced right at McIlveen. He was moving slightly faster than her, smiling as if this was the most natural thing in the world.
“Fift
een yards,” Bestwick said. “Boss, it’s a mess in here—you’ll have to guide Palant and McIlveen in pretty carefully.”
“I’ve got them,” Halley said from somewhere behind her. Palant didn’t want to turn around to see where the major was. Every movement could throw her off course, and even though the ship filled her whole field of vision, the idea of missing it and drifting off into space was horrific.
As they closed on the wreck they passed through some of the debris. Chunks of metal, melted and burned, were easily nudged aside. A couple of larger portions had already been shoved by Bestwick and Sprenkel, the wreckage spinning away above or below them. Palant wasn’t sure how wreckage separate from the ship was still drifting with it. An explosion had obviously caused this hole, probably the impact of a laser blast from a Colonial Marine warship, and the explosive decompression should have blasted everything out into space.
There were several bodies, too. None of the humans wore space suits. The two Xenomorph corpses glistened, reflected starlight giving them the impression of movement.
Bestwick and Sprenkel reached the ship and grabbed an exposed section of damaged superstructure.
“Ten yards,” Halley said. “Okay you two, I’m going to remotely fire a small retro burst from your suits, you’ll then have to grab onto something as you reach the ship. Might be a bump.”
Small streams of gas puffed from the chest panel of her suit, then Palant was nearing the ship just below where Sprenkel hung on. She hit softly, clung onto a curve of metal, and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Can we do that again?” McIlveen asked, and someone else laughed.
“Okay, can it,” Halley said. “Huyck, Bestwick, start looking. The guts of the ship are exposed here, but there’ll probably be blast doors closed inside. Let’s see if we can find an easy way in.”
“What about decompression?” Palant asked.
“We’re searching for somewhere with blast doors close together,” Halley said. “We’ll make our own airlock. That is if the whole ship hasn’t decompressed. If it has, we’ll move on.”
If it has, all the dangers will have been blasted into space, Palant thought. It was a nice idea, but somehow, everything that had happened didn’t point at such an outcome. They weren’t that lucky.