Alien--Invasion

by Tim Lebbon

  While Palant and McIlveen hung on, the marines worked to secure a way into the Cooper-Jordan. The damage in its side had exposed several decks, but much of the structure had been melted and reset by the staggering temperatures of the laser blasts. It was proving difficult to gain entry.

  Finally arriving at something that resembled calm, Palant looked back the way they had come. The Pixie looked so graceful from this far away. She admired the ship, its flowing shape and pleasing curves. It was strange that a thing of beauty was built for war. It was the opposite of the ugly, functional Fiennes ship—one which had been built for peace and exploration.

  How many people had died in the attack on this craft? She could hardly think about the numbers. Some of the Fiennes vessels had carried tens of thousands, and Halley had been wrong when she’d said they weren’t people anymore. Even if they were impregnated with Xenomorph embryos, they still would have been alive, sleeping with their dreams. Killing them had still been slaughter.

  “Okay, we’re in,” Halley said. “Work your way up here.”

  As she reached the opening, Palant watched Bestwick and Sprenkel venture into a darkened, twisted corridor. There they found a blast door that had escaped any bad damage. Sensors detected atmosphere beyond. They all gathered in the blasted space, their boots’ electro-magnets were activated, and suit lights lit their surroundings. Huyck bypassed the door’s controls, moved everyone aside, then opened them.

  A surge of air burst out, freezing particles catching starlight as they drifted through the hole and away from the ship.

  Palant followed the marines inside and Huyck closed the door behind them. Hanging onto exposed pipework, Huyck moved ten yards along the corridor, counted down from five, and then opened a second set of doors.

  Air roared in, and with it came sound. Bestwick did a quick check, then confirmed that the atmosphere was breathable. Their suit masks retreated across noses and mouths, and Palant took in a deep breath.

  “Holy shit,” Sprenkel said.

  “I’m gonna puke,” Huyck said.

  “Chill it, people,” Halley said. “We’ve all smelled death before.”

  Palant felt her own gorge rise. She had smelled plenty of death, but nothing like this. She had worked with body samples and grown used to the scent of decay in a laboratory environment. After the attack at Love Grove Base, surviving for many days in the storage hangar with the other survivors, the stench of death had been their constant companion.

  This was worse. A heavy aroma, meaty, rich, and hot, she could almost taste it on her tongue, and touch it on the tainted air.

  “I don’t want to see,” she said, and although everyone heard, no one replied. She had spoken for them all.

  They moved along a corridor, cracked and warped from the attack, until they reached a heavy door leading deeper into the ship.

  “Let’s open it up,” Halley said. Huyck bypassed the door’s controls and it slid open, getting stuck halfway where the metal had warped. Motors whined for a few seconds, then died out.

  McIlveen vomited. Bestwick leaned against a wall. Palant pressed her hand against her nose and mouth, trying to hold in the sickness, the disgust. But she failed. Bending next to McIlveen she too puked, eyes closed, preferring the acidic taste to the unbelievable smell that assailed them from beyond the doors. Their vomit splashed against the floor and then spread, globules coalescing and spinning back to impact their suits. It was disgusting, but couldn’t be helped.

  Palant instructed her suit to mask her face and feed her oxygen again, but Halley interrupted.

  “We’ll get used to the stink,” she said. “And there’s no saying when we might need the oxygen.”

  Her face was speckled with sweat, her eyes glassy. “Let’s go. My guys, activate your suits’ movement trackers and life sign monitors.”

  Palant held McIlveen’s shoulder, squeezed, then shoved him gently after Halley. She didn’t want to see what lay beyond the doors, had no wish to know what might cause such an unbearable smell.

  But in reality she already knew.

  Judging from the DevilDogs’ reactions, none of them had ever seen so many dead. Even Halley stepped sideways to lean against a wall. Then she saw what she had almost touched and retreated to the small group. They huddled together around the warped doorway and looked upon a scene from hell.

  The hold was large, but the combined lights from their combat suits proved powerful enough to illuminate most of it. Palant wished they were not. During the attack a firestorm had blasted through the hold, melting and twisting, making grotesque sculptures of the things, and people, it contained. Cryo-pods had exploded in the heat, hardened glass shattered and melting, then hardening again into obscure shapes. The people within the cryo-pods had been scorched, flesh and hair melted away and bones exposed to be blackened and broken beneath the flames. Palant hoped that they were still asleep or already dead when the firestorm came, but she couldn’t be sure.

  The heat had been so intense that it had melted metals and plastics, flesh and glass, and the molten masses had congealed in the zero gravity, flowing together and cooling again in converged, unnatural shapes.

  Some debris floated free, and their entrance had stirred up the air. The things that drifted around the hold looked wet, but the attack had been some time ago. The dead people and body parts were cool and dry now, but for the rot that had set in.

  A head touched the floor ahead of them, bouncing up again in horrific slow motion. It was a woman, most of her hair burned away and eyeballs melted, lips scorched back to give a broken-toothed grin. Palant could see her skull through her stretched scalp.

  The more they saw, the less they wanted to see, but sick fascination kept them there for a while, probing the darkness with their lights.

  “No sign of Xenomorph activity,” Sprenkel whispered. The hold was a mausoleum to the dead, and none of them wanted to make a noise.

  “Movement sensors useless in here,” Bestwick said.

  “Sprenkel, with me,” Halley said. “The rest of you stay by the doors. Huyck, step outside to keep watch behind us.”

  “What are you doing?” Palant asked, but Major Halley did not reply. She and Sprenkel headed into the hold, approaching one mass of melted cryo-pod, human occupant, glass, and plastic. Palant could see a clawed hand sticking up, blackened to the bone, fingers curled like the legs of a dead spider.

  “They’re checking,” McIlveen said, and then Palant understood.

  Halley leaned toward the mess and pushed aside a hardened curve of reset glass. It broke off with a heavy snap and spun slowly across the hold. She tugged a knife from her belt and set to work.

  Palant heard the meaty sound of cutting, then the heavy snap of bone. Halley’s work released a heavier cloud of putrefaction, even worse than before. Sprenkel gagged and turned aside to puke, trying to aim the stream of vomit away from them all. Halley nodded at him to step back.

  She finished the examination, and when she turned her dark skin looked gray, slick with oily sweat as if the decay could be passed on to her.

  “Untouched,” she said.

  “What?” Bestwick asked.

  “No Xenomorph implanted. No facehuggers present, not that I can see. Although I guess they might have been burnt to nothing.”

  “They were just sleeping?” Palant asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Halley said.

  “Doesn’t matter?”

  “No. The ship had to be under the control of the Rage, otherwise it wouldn’t have been returning, and wouldn’t have been attacked.” She stood straight, and looked around. “We’ll move on. It’s a big ship, and there are other holds. Maybe some weren’t destroyed.”

  Palant knew Halley was right, but she was sickened by the idea that the Colonial Marines had killed these people in their sleep. Bestwick seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

  “Maybe we saved them,” she said. “Maybe they were about to be implanted.”

  “Yeah,” Pa
lant replied. “Let’s think that. It’ll make murder feel better.”

  “It’s fucking war, Palant,” Halley said. “Now let’s move on.”

  They backed out of the dead hold, Palant almost slipping on the floor made slick with her own vomit. Huyck closed the door again behind them, sealing off the horrific sights, but nothing could erase them from Palant’s mind.

  How many people? she wondered. How many dead? They were beyond counting, and their fate was cruel and wretched. Even if they had been dead when the firestorm swept through, what a vicious hand fate had dealt them. To be traveling for centuries, and then destroyed by their fellow humans.

  Whether or not any of them had been impregnated, they had deserved better than that.

  They moved deeper into the remains of the Cooper-Jordan, heading toward the bow which from outside had appeared the least damaged by the assault. Halley and her troops held their weapons at the ready, while Palant and McIlveen kept the laser pistols on their belts. They weren’t used to handling weapons, and had no wish to shoot someone accidentally.

  There was damage all around. Piping and ducting was melted and broken, bulkheads were warped from structural stresses and the effects of heat. The floor had given way in several places, and they had to switch off their magnetized boots to leap across the gaps. There was darkness down there into which none of them wished to fall.

  Here and there were signs of death—blood smeared across walls, shreds of flesh caught on ragged, broken metal—but no more bodies. Whoever had crewed this Fiennes ship back into the Human Sphere was still unseen and unknown.

  Palant’s suit was looking after her, but there was so much about it she did not understand. Frequent displays were projected onto her visor, and she guessed that every marine was seeing the same images. Movement sensors, temperature and pressure information, life sign indicators—she recognized these, but there were lists of figures, graphic representations, and other color-coded information that she couldn’t decipher.

  They followed a long, curving corridor that opened eventually into a wider space. It was here that their surroundings began to change.

  She had heard about Xenomorph nests, and read reports from people who had encountered them. There weren’t many who had seen them and lived to tell of the experience. As a scientist she was fascinated with them, although it was the Yautja that caught and still held her attention. Nevertheless, as a human being, the Xenos terrified her.

  Here, now, she had never been so afraid.

  The place smelled acidic and rank, and something heated the air, producing a heavy and humid sensation that even her suit could not quite repel. Their suit lights played across the open lobby and focused on the six openings that headed off. Three of them had sealed blast doors, most likely leading back into where the guts of the ship had been torn out. The other three led toward the bow. Slick, black material surrounded them, appearing as if it had been grown instead of constructed. It was uneven, a surface sheen reflecting light and giving it a damp glow. The openings were heavy with the stuff, and it looked as if the deeper they went, the more clogged they became.

  The more evenly spaced, too. Ridges of this new structure spanned like black bone all around the nearest corridor. Knots of it hung from the ceiling, spiny shapes that repeated again and again.

  “This is a Xeno nest, Major,” Palant said. “You know that, right?”

  “I’ve heard about them,” Halley confirmed. “Billy, what’s your status?”

  “Major, I have a status update,” the Pixie’s computer said. “Both Yautja ships are docking on the ship. They’ve gone around the other side so I can’t see them, and I’m not sure it’s a good idea for me to go off-station.”

  Palant drew in a sharp breath. Yautja, on board this ship! She glanced at McIlveen, and he seemed excited, too.

  “Not good,” Halley said. “Okay, Billy, remain on station. We won’t be long.”

  “We need to go, right?” Sprenkel asked.

  “Not yet,” Halley said. She nodded toward the nearest corridor. “Schematic shows another hold just through there.”

  “Even more reason to get the fuck out of here!” Sprenkel said.

  “Private!” Halley said. “Everything aboard this ship is probably dead. Life signs are messed up, and even if there are a few Xenomorphs still alive, we can handle them. This ship might contain intelligence that will tip the course of this war, and if it does, it’s up to us to find it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, boss,” Sprenkel said. “I just don’t want to die like Gove.”

  Palant glanced around, expecting a heavier reprimand from Halley, but the Major shook her head.

  “You won’t,” she said. “First sign of trouble we use plasma grenades and get the hell out. Huyck, you got those doors we’ve already come through?”

  “Programmed new access codes, my suit’s ready to auto-open them.”

  Halley nodded. “Okay. Slow, careful, and heads up.” She moved off toward the corridor mouth.

  Palant followed close behind, hand on her laser pistol. She hadn’t wanted it, but right now she was glad it had been forced upon her. She remembered how Gove had died. If it came to it, she’d make sure she didn’t go that way.

  Heart hammering, senses alight, Palant followed the marines into the Xenomorph nest.

  17

  JOHNNY MAINS

  Othello, Outer Rim

  November 2692 AD

  Whichever way they looked at it, they were fucked. The truth of that was evident in the silence.

  The HellSparks mourned their dead crew and lost ship, and Sara and the male shipborn were the only survivors of their rebellion. Mains and Lieder realized that their rescue from UMF 12 had been but a brief respite, a last breath before dying. But they were Colonial Marines, and they couldn’t let impending death distract them from what they had to do.

  As the echoes of his ship’s demise played around the storage hold, Durante stared at Mains for a moment before issuing his orders.

  “Okay, Moran and Hari, check this place for ways in and out. Mine them. We need a few minutes to plan.”

  “Sir, we just need to reach the outside hull,” Hari said. “With our combined firepower we can blast a hole through to outside, vent the whole fucking ship.”

  “Not certain enough,” Mains said. No one argued, because they knew he was right. “You said the Othello splits into a dozen vessels, right?” he asked Sara.

  The shipborn nodded.

  “Then a few holes in the hull won’t suffice.”

  “My kingdom for a nuke,” Lieder said.

  “Roger that,” Moran said. He and Hari moved away to secure their position, taking small plasma mines from their equipment belts.

  “Okay,” Durante said. “Main aim as I see it is to fuck this ship. With the Xenomorphs hatching, there’s no point pussying around trying to destroy them.”

  “Right,” Mains said. “The ship’s gotta be toast.”

  “And don’t forget where it’s heading,” Lieder said.

  “Beta 37!” Moran called from across the hold. “Christ, we can’t let it get there.”

  “Is that a drophole?” Sara asked, eyes wide.

  “Yeah,” Durante said, “and it’s close. A day away, maybe a little more.”

  “That’s where General Jones will make his move,” Sara said. “That will be his only aim, now. He’ll do everything to hunt us down, prevent us from doing any damage, but once we attack the drophole, Othello splits and one threat becomes a dozen.”

  “You know the target dropholes after that?” Mains asked.

  “No,” Sara admitted.

  “Have we got any way to broadcast a warning?” Lieder asked.

  “The Navarro was about to, before…” Durante trailed off. They still remembered the screams of terror and pain from the crew, the sounds of combat, the screeches and triumphant Xenomorph hiss.

  “So we need to move fast,” Mains said. “Eddie?”

  “Yeah. A
s I said… find a way to fuck this ship.” He looked at Sara and the shipborn man. “Any ideas?”

  “Maybe,” Sara said. “It’ll mean getting to the drive core.”

  “Blow that and the ship goes?”

  “Only if we haven’t dropped out of warp,” Sara’s companion said. “Once we’re approaching the drophole and are sub-light speed, blowing the core will simply speed up the Othello’s splitting into smaller attack vessels.”

  “And you’d know this how?” Mains asked.

  “I’m a ship’s engineer,” he said.

  “How long before the drophole is the ship programmed to split up?”

  “I don’t know,” the man said.

  “Sara?”

  Sara shrugged.

  “So where’s the drive core from here?”

  “Aft,” the man said. “But…”

  “But?”

  “It’s where the Faze has settled.” He looked terrified. “That’s why we haven’t tried it before. But now, with you, and your weapons, maybe…”

  However much Mains didn’t trust him and Sara, neither could hide their terror at the mention of the Faze.

  “We need to stick together,” Mains said.

  “Yeah,” Durante said, “but I don’t like the idea of getting wiped out without a fall-back plan.”

  Mains shrugged. “Then we don’t get wiped out. We fight, crawl if we have to. Get to the drive core and fuck the ship.”

  “Right,” Durante said, smiling. “So we have a plan.”

  Silence hung heavy. They were discussing their own deaths, but for all of them it was an unstated, silent understanding. To Mains it felt strangely remote, a distant, meaningless event that had very little to do with him. He didn’t believe in any deity, and despite science’s wonders he’d seen nothing to indicate any sort of existence beyond death. It didn’t frighten him. At least this way the way he died would be in his own hands. As a Marine he had often dwelled on going out in an heroic act. Not for the heroism, or to be remembered, but for his own peace of mind in that final, exquisite moment.