“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Safety lines,” Lex replied. “It’s a long way down… don’t want to lose any of you.”
As Miller unpacked his gear, he took off his wool cap and scratched his head.
“Put your hat back on.”
“Huh?”
“Your hat,” Lex said. “Put it back on.”
“It itches.”
Lex paused, lowering her hammer. “I saw a man lose both his ears from frostbite,” she said matter-of-factly. “With the ear canal exposed, you can see a full inch inside your head… all the way to the eardrum.”
Lex smiled sweetly, tucked the hammer into her tool belt, and strolled away. Miller pulled his hat over his ears.
Dodging roughnecks, Lex crossed the lighted area to the lead Hagglunds. She opened the door to find Charles Weyland inside. He was alone, gulping oxygen from a portable tank. He lowered the clear plastic mask when Lex entered the vehicle.
“You’ve caught me a little… indisposed,” he croaked, humbled.
Lex closed the door and sat down by his side.
“How bad is it?”
Weyland looked at her through eyes hollowed by chronic pain. “Bad.”
“There’s no room for sick men on this expedition.”
“My doctors tell me the worst is behind me.”
Lex shook her head. “You’re not a very good liar, Mr. Weyland. Stay on the ship. We’ll update you at the top of every hour.”
Crossing the cabin, Weyland concealed the oxygen bottle in a storage bin. When he faced Lex again, some of the fire had returned to his eyes.
“You know,” he began, “when you get sick you think about your life and how you’re going to be remembered. You know what I realized would happen when I go, which will be very soon? A ten-percent fall in Weyland Industries share prices… maybe twelve, though I may be flattering myself…”
Weyland slumped into a seat. Concern furrowed his broad forehead.
“The dip in stock prices should last about a week, long enough for the board and the Street to realize they can get along perfectly well without me. And then that will be that. Forty years on this earth and nothing to show for it.”
Weyland nodded toward the activity outside.
“This is my chance to leave a legacy. To leave my mark—”
“Even if it kills you?”
The billionaire reached out and squeezed her arm. Lex felt the failing grip of a dying man.
“You won’t let that happen,” he said.
“You can’t go,” Lex replied.
“I need this.”
Lex sighed. “I’ve heard this speech before. My dad broke his leg seven hundred feet from the summit of Mount Rainier. He was like you—he wouldn’t go back or let us stop…”
She paused as the memories returned, and with them the sadness.
“We reached the top and he opened a bottle of champagne. I had my first drink with my dad at fourteen thousand four hundred feet…. On the way down he developed a blood clot in his leg that traveled to his lung. He suffered for four hours before dying twenty minutes from the base camp.” Lex swiped the dew from her cheek.
Weyland touched her shoulder. “Do you think that’s the last thing your dad remembered? The pain? Or drinking champagne with his daughter fourteen thousand feet in the air?”
CHAPTER 12
Aboard the Piper Maru
“…Warning to all ships at sea… weather advisory has been issued… States Navy… storm… dangerous winds… force…”
The rest of the radio broadcast was hopelessly garbled. In disgust, the executive officer tore off his communicator and tossed it aside. Then he crossed the bridge to check the radar screen. In shades of phosphorescent green, the monitor displayed an ominous mass of rapidly moving storm clouds.
An unexpected blast of frigid wind swirled through the bridge. Captain Leighton appeared, snow clinging to his eyelashes, his shoulders. The skipper’s craggy face was bleak as he approached his executive officer.
“It’s a huge storm front, Captain,” the XO began. “Force twenty katabatic, coming straight off those damn mountains.”
Already the wind battered at the windows, and snow came down in a curtain of white.
“How long do we have, Gordon?”
“It’s going to hit us in just over an hour. And it’s going to be a bitch.”
“How’s our communications?”
“With the outside world… spotty,” Gordon replied. “But I can reach the ice pack without too much trouble.”
Leighton frowned, then nodded. “Get me Weyland’s team. We have to warn them.”
Bouvetoya Whaling Station
Quinn popped the door and stuck his head out of the idling Hagglunds.
“Listen up, people. We’ve got a storm incoming. A big one. If you want to keep it, then you tie it down.”
“Christ, boss! You’re kidding.”
“What’s the matter, Reichel?”
“It’s the Beakers,” he replied. “We’ve got a bunch of them down in that hole. What if the tripod’s blown down?”
Quinn chewed his cigar. “Hell. Then I guess the goddamn Beakers are on their own.”
“But Weyland’s down there, too. So is that limey Stafford. Connors went with them.”
Quinn cursed. “Then you better make good and sure nothing happens to that rig. Get a team together and secure the tripod, pronto. Put an apple tent up around the mouth of the tunnel if you have to, that should hold the tripod in place. And hustle, damn it…. If we lose Weyland, we won’t get paid!”
* * *
Rappelling down the icy walls of the shaft, Lex was forced to perform double duty. She supervised the descent, which meant swing-running from her safety line to make sure no ropes got snarled, and making sure every one of the two dozen people making the descent was keeping pace.
Still concerned with Weyland’s physical condition, Lex also checked on him intermittently. From long experience, she knew that no descent was easy—and this one was being made in virtual darkness, in temperatures colder than the inside of a deep freeze. She wasn’t sure Weyland was up to the task, but so far he’d managed to keep pace with the rest of the group.
Using her feet, Lex raced along the sides of the ice tunnel until she reached Weyland’s side. She dangled for a moment, steadying herself. Then she leaned close to the billionaire’s ear. “How’s it going?”
He grinned at her, his face pale in the harsh light of her helmet lamp. Max Stafford deftly rappelled himself to Weyland’s side, along with two burly men with shaved heads and Weyland Industries logos on their ice-blue Polartec outerwear. In Stafford’s hand, an ICOMIC-4 UHF transceiver crackled.
“It’s Quinn. Says there’s a storm headed our way.”
Weyland turned to Lex. “Will it affect us?”
“We’re seven hundred feet under the ice, Mr. Weyland. Quinn could be setting off an atom bomb up there and we’d never notice.”
She slapped Weyland on the back, then descended farther down the shaft to check on Miller’s progress.
“Tough descent?” she asked.
“A cinch for us heroic types.”
“Just keep away from the walls,” she told Miller. “Try to stay in the middle of the shaft. You’re on a winch—let the machine do the work.”
The engineer gave Lex a thumbs-up.
Lex unfastened herself from the winch and attached her harness to one of the safety lines. Then she rappelled down about thirty feet ahead of the expedition, her helmet lamp lighting the way. When the gloom became too intense, she drew her piton gun from its sheath and drove a spike into the ice wall. Then she hung a small battery-powered light there, to help guide the others.
All went uneventfully until they reached a depth of seven hundred feet. Then, as Weyland glanced at his tablet PC, he felt the rope that was lowering him jerk tight. The jolt was so powerful that he was slammed against the ice wall. The wind knocked out of him, Weyland
tried to push himself away from the wall when a second jerk of the rope snapped his safety harness and sent him plunging down the shaft.
Max Stafford reached for his boss and missed, tangling himself in his own safety line. Below him, Sebastian saw Weyland dropping toward him. He reached out to catch the man, but his sudden movement—and Weyland’s PC bouncing off his shoulder—sent him spinning helplessly on the end of his rope.
“Man down… Lex, watch out!” yelled Sebastian.
Lex looked up in time to see Weyland plunging down the opposite side of the tunnel. She kicked off the ice and swung across the void, reaching the other side of the shaft just in time to pin Weyland to the wall with her own body. Before he slipped from her grasp, Lex plunged her axe into the ice and pressed closer. They were locked in an embrace, face-to-face against the cold wall.
“You okay?”
Weyland, trying to catch his breath, nodded weakly.
“Thank you,” said Lex.
Weyland blinked in surprise. “You saved my life… remember?”
“Not for this. For what you said… about my father.”
The scene was interrupted when the beam from Stafford’s helmet lamp sought them out. Max rappelled down to their level and found Lex still hugging the wall like a spider, Weyland shielded in her grip.
The industrialist’s complexion looked wan in the harsh light. Weyland gasped, and his wide mouth gaped like a fish. Lex could feel his pulse racing through two sets of winter gear.
“Having second thoughts? It’s not too late to go back up.”
Weyland shook his head and even managed a smile. “With you taking such good care of me, Ms. Woods? I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Meanwhile, Max Stafford keyed the ICOM transceiver and shouted into it, “What the hell is going on up there, Quinn?”
Topside, shreds of an insulated apple tent—so named because they are round and bright red to be visible on the snow—had become entangled in the winch. Quinn shoved one of the roughnecks aside and examined the pulley mechanism himself. Then he raised the transceiver to his lips.
“It’s the storm, sir,” he said, loud enough to be heard over the wind. “A jam in the winch caused by debris.”
Quinn waited for a response. It didn’t take long.
“Well, see that it doesn’t happen again,” Stafford said in a clipped, angry tone.
Quinn lowered his eyes and stared at his boots. He spit, then put the transceiver to his ear.
“It won’t,” he promised. Then he broke the connection, muttering, “English asshole…”
Aboard the Piper Maru
On the catwalk outside, Captain Leighton scanned the horizon through a pair of heavy-duty Weyland Industries ALM-35 GPS-enhanced night-vision goggles. A savage wind was already battering the icebreaker, and in the distance, the captain could clearly see curtains of snow—tinted green by the NVGs—roaring off Olav Peak toward the whaling station.
Much of Bouvetoya Island was already obscured by the weather, but the Weyland-35 had a built-in geo-positioning system that computed distances. A pipper on the heads-up display highlighted the approximate location of the settlement, which appeared to the naked eye as if it was already buried under an avalanche of snow.
“This is going to be bad.”
The hatch swung open, and Gordon poked his head out. “Captain Leighton? I think you’d better take a look at this.”
Leighton crossed the catwalk and entered the bridge. His executive officer was crouched over the radar screen, waiting for him.
“What is it? The storm?”
“No, sir, something else.” The XO had a troubled look on his face.
“Spit it out, son,” Leighton demanded. The executive officer tapped the radar screen, just as the blip appeared again.
“I just picked this up,” he said. “It’s three hundred miles out and bearing one three zero. Whatever it is, it’s traveling at Mach 7.”
“What?”
“Accelerating to Mach 10, Captain.”
Leighton pushed Gordon aside and gazed at the radar screen. “This is impossible. Nothing travels that fast—nothing! It must be a meteorite.”
“I don’t think so.” Then Gordon blinked. “I-I think it just changed course…. Yes, it has definitely changed course.”
“Give me the new bearing,” Leighton commanded.
Gordon sat down at the radar console and punched in data on the keypad. It seemed to take forever for the navigational computer to spit out an answer. When it did, Gordon looked up at Captain Leighton, anxiety clouding his face.
“The object is less than thirty miles away and closing,” he said. “And it’s headed straight for us.”
Captain Leighton bolted for the hatch, his XO on his heels. Outside, the captain squinted into the twilight sky, trying to pierce the falling snow. Crewmen on deck sensed something was up and followed the skipper’s gaze.
“I don’t see anything,” Leighton shouted over the wind.
“It should be right on top of us—”
“Look!” one of the sailors cried, pointing.
There was something in the sky approaching the Piper Maru. The phenomenon appeared as a highspeed blur, cutting through the low-hanging clouds and leaving a transparent rippling wake in its path. As the crew watched, awestruck, the optical distortion seemed to increase in speed.
Captain Leighton gripped the rail with both hands. “Hang on!” he cried a split second before the unidentified flying object reached their position.
The crew heard a strange, electronic shriek as the thing approached. When it roared over their heads, the object was accompanied by a powerful sonic boom that shattered windows and shook ice and snow loose from the superstructure. Swept up in the powerful wake, the Piper Maru lurched to one side, then bounced back. Collision alarms sounded throughout the ship, and several crew members lost their footing and tumbled over the side.
In the chaos that followed, cries of shock and pain and calls of “Man overboard” echoed across the deck.
“What the hell was that?” shouted a crewman.
Gordon did not reply. Instead, he carefully scanned the sky, trying to pick up any sign of the near-invisible intruder. Finally his sharp eyes spied a swath cut through the low-hanging storm clouds.
“It’s headed for the station,” he called.
Leighton struggled to his feet and stared into the distance.
“Get Quinn on the horn.”
Katabatic winds rolled down the mountain and hit the whaling station with lethal impact. Quinn struggled against the punishing blows of the brutal gusts and the stinging pins of driving snow, barking orders at his men until he was hoarse.
A blast struck a Hagglunds with such tremendous power that it nearly toppled the heavy vehicle onto its side.
Quinn slapped a man’s head. “I told you to get that vehicle tied down!”
He threw rope into the roughneck’s hands and sent him scurrying. Reichel appeared at Quinn’s side and thrust a transceiver into his face.
“Radio for you, sir! I think it’s the Maru—”
“You think?”
“It’s coming through pretty garbled.”
Quinn gave his partner a “What now?” look and seized the transceiver.
“This is Quinn,” he shouted, pressing the communicator to his ear. He heard a voice and it sounded urgent, but the message was broken and unintelligible.
“Repeat!” Quinn cried. “I can’t hear you… I can’t… ah, the hell with it!” Quinn thrust the radio back at Reichel. “Get this kit inside.”
“Should I try and raise the Maru again?”
“Don’t waste your time. Just get everybody under cover. We’ll hunker down and wait this monster out. Should die down in about a week.”
Quinn scanned the snow-blasted area. His men had secured the vehicles and the equipment. The mobile drilling platforms were secure, too, and the tripod over the mouth of the tunnel had a tent thrown over it and was lashed tight.
“To the buildings. Everybody inside!” he bellowed, clapping his gloved hands. “Come on, people! Move it, move it…”
The crew scurried to find shelter in the century-old buildings while Quinn took one last look at the mouth of the pit. For a moment, he wondered how Weyland and Stafford were doing down there.
Then, as Quinn turned his back on the storm to follow his roughnecks into the mess hall, an impossibly large object passed overhead, silently cutting a swath through clouds and pelting snow….
CHAPTER 13
Over Bouvetoya Island
Impervious to the winds that battered it, the near-invisible spacecraft hovered several hundred feet above the whaling station. Saint Elmo’s fire danced along the hull as the cloaking device disengaged.
With a series of dull thumps, five gleaming metal missiles fired from the belly of the Predator craft. Like gigantic bullets, they slammed into the ground, each punching a deep crater into the solid pack ice. A field of energy rippled, then as quickly as the vessel had appeared, it transformed into an optical blur again. Its task complete, the starship silently wheeled into the sky and sped away.
At the bottom of one of the newly formed craters, one of the shimmering steel projectiles began to hum. Although the katabatic winds raged around the missile, it was still possible to hear the loud hiss of escaping gases.
A hairline crack appeared on the smooth surface of the missile where there had been no joint before. More smoky phosphorescent green gas vented into Earth’s atmosphere as the crack widened.
Finally, the projectile opened. Inside, something stirred—something alive.
Suddenly, the air was pierced by the savage howl of a predatory beast. Its cry drowned out even the clamor of the wind and the rush of the driving snow….
CHAPTER 14
AVP: Alien vs. Predator Page 9