The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  “Now it’s a fair fight again,” Choi said. He wiped his hands on his pants and moved into the very center of the corridor, preventing any of them from flanking him.

  “What’s the problem?” Bergren asked, giving a quick glance at his two men on the floor.

  “You sci-tech maggots aren’t fit to lick Boone’s boots,” Choi said, his voice hard and calm. “And now she’s dead and you’re not. That pisses me off.”

  The guy who remained from the first round turned slightly to Bergren. “Larson said the Professor wanted us to give this insubordinate grunt the treatment, but we couldn’t get near him. He fought like a mad dog.”

  “I am mad, you stupid ass.” Choi made a fake lunging move at the men, and all three took a step back.

  “Cowards,” Choi said, shaking his head and laughing. “My Boone died for a scum professor and a bunch of cowards. I just don’t think that’s right, do you?”

  “But she didn’t die in vain,” Bergren said. “Luckily the suit protected her beautiful skin and body from most of the acid so she could be used again.”

  Choi stood slowly from his fighter’s couch, his mind trying to make sense of what Bergren had said. “Used? What—” But before he could say anything more Bergren raised the Taser Web and fired.

  The web, with its numbing, stinging needles, covered Choi before he had a chance to react. He dropped to one knee, the needles working instantly, making the web feel as if it weighed a ton.

  He managed to get his hands under the web, but before he could pull it off his legs gave out and he fell over on his back to the floor.

  His mind shouted that he should struggle, but his muscles betrayed him and he lay there, bound by webs designed to hold and control aliens twenty times stronger.

  Bergren turned to the man Choi left standing and pointed to the two on the floor. “See what you can do for Pavin and Thomas, there, if you can manage to get that right.” Then Bergren motioned for the other man to help him as he leaned over Choi.

  “I’ll kill you,” Choi somehow managed to spit out at Bergren as the room spun and he began to lose consciousness.

  Bergren laughed. “Dream on, dog boy. I’m the least of your problems. When you see what comes next you’ll be begging me to save your stupid hide.”

  And the last thing Choi heard as the blackness overwhelmed him was Bergren’s laughter.

  * * *

  Joyce sat up straight and took a deep breath, doing the best she could to pull oxygen into her lungs. Sweat ran off her forehead and into her eyes and an intense heat seemed to radiate from every pore of her body. She could heat half the base from what was pouring off her.

  “I can die happy now,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper. She let her upper body sag onto Hank’s chest and then she rolled to the right and off of his panting, sweaty body. She lay on the rumpled and damp sheets staring up at the tiled ceiling of Hank’s bedroom, just letting the warmth of the moment flow into her memory for the next time she woke from cold sleep.

  “You all right?” he asked. His hand eased over and touched her arm.

  She laughed. “A lot better than I ever expected to be this far from Earth.” She took a deep shuddering breath and forced herself onto her side, her head propped in one hand.

  Then she looked at him. Really looked at him.

  His face was flushed, which gave him a healthy look seldom seen on the pale deep-space workers. He had a full head of dark brown hair that at the moment was slicked back off his forehead with sweat. His chest was well muscled and it was clear he worked out with weights regularly. She had always liked the feel and the look of his white skin against her black. It was as if there were a line drawn between them that left her feeling just a little safer. A line that wouldn’t allow him, or anyone else, all the way inside her defenses.

  Yet at times like these she was glad he was with her and she didn’t want to exclude him in any way.

  She ran her hand over his mostly hairless chest. “How about you?”

  “Very, very glad you came back.”

  “Thought I was gone for good, huh?” She let her finger trace a line in the sweat on his arm.

  “I figured after that last time you’d stay on Earth, or get runs closer in, and I’d never see you again.”

  “Can’t say as I didn’t think about it. But the money out here for this one last trip will let me finish raising the kids the way they need to be raised.”

  He nodded and took a deep breath. Not looking at her he said, “You just be careful while you’re here.” Suddenly his voice had a sad and very serious edge to it.

  “Why?” she asked. “Are things getting worse?”

  He turned and looked at her for a moment and she could tell that she might have gone too far with that question. His eyes were almost shouting “No!”

  With just a slight hesitation he laughed. “Nope, just about the same as always around here, from what I can tell. Of course, I don’t pay that much attention.” He patted her slick thigh and let his hand drift upward into her damp crotch for a moment. Then smiling, he said, “How about taking a long hot shower with me?”

  She gave his hand a quick squeeze with her legs and beat him off the bed. “Only if we can start the water off cool for a few minutes.”

  “Deal.”

  They made small talk for the few minutes it took them to get into the shower and then after they both were standing naked together under the spray, Hank whispered in her ear, “You’ve got to be really, really careful. The Professor and his goon, Larson, have cameras and bugs everywhere. Not only the ones you can see, but many more you can’t.”

  Joyce recoiled slightly at the thought of Larson and the Professor watching as she and Hank made love. Could he have listened to their every word, their every sound of passion?

  Hank spun her around slowly, grabbed the soap, and started working slowly up and down her back. It felt wonderful, easing the sudden tension the thoughts of the Professor had brought to her shoulders.

  “It’s the truth,” he said softly in her ear. “You have a great ass,” he said more loudly as he ran the soap over her cheeks and then down the backs of her legs.

  On the one hand it felt wonderful, and on the other she couldn’t shake the possibility that someone was watching. Even with the soap and the hot water, the very thought made her feel dirty.

  She turned around and pulled Hank into a hug, as if they were slow-dancing. In a whisper she asked, “What’s been happening around here?”

  Hank soaped her back as he answered. “Two years ago there were over fifteen hundred people—civilians, scientists, and just simple hired hands—on this station, including forty Marines. I bet if we were to do a total now it wouldn’t break fourteen hundred. And there’s only twenty Marines left. People just keep disappearing. Some are accidents. Some without reason or explanation. And the Marines keep getting killed on missions into the hive area.”

  “You’re kidding,” she whispered and he shook his head no. He wasn’t kidding, but she didn’t want to let herself believe what he was saying. That many people disappearing on a closed station like this wasn’t possible.

  “I wish I were kidding,” Hank whispered, turning her slowly around so that her back was under the warm spray. “The Professor has become like an evil god around here and his security force is much more powerful than the Marines, numbering over a hundred men the last time I heard.”

  “A hundred men out of fourteen hundred.” That seemed like overkill to her. Why would the Professor need that many security men on a closed, isolated station in deep space? It simply made no sense.

  “That’s right,” Hank said. “Anyone who stands up against the Professor or Larson, or even Bergren, disappears very shortly. And anyone who even questions what happened does the same.”

  Joyce shook her head. “There’s got to be someone to investigate this, stop it.”

  Hank didn’t say anything for a moment, just letting the water run down her back and shoulders
. Finally he asked, “Did anyone back on Earth or at Z.C.T. headquarters mention the name of the project being worked on here?”

  Joyce again shook her head. “Nothing. I wasn’t even allowed to mention that I was leaving Earth’s system until we were in deep space and ready for cold sleep. I didn’t even know exactly that I was coming back here until we were well away from Earth. I just knew it was a deep-space mission. Then it turned out I was just to bring one man here and wait for his return. Very, very secret.”

  “That’s the problem,” Hank said. “We’re so damn far from Earth that there just isn’t anything we can do about the missing people. What few ships do come and go with supplies are monitored so tightly for security reasons that nothing leaves here without Larson and the Professor knowing.”

  “And Z.C.T. is behind him?” Joyce asked, knowing the answer to her obvious question.

  “Totally.”

  They stood under the water, letting it pound their bodies without breaking into their thoughts. “So how do we stop him?”

  Hank shook his head. “We don’t. We get out of this shower before we turn into prunes, go back to those sweat-stained sheets, and get some sleep. Then in the morning you make love to me or I make love to you, depending on who wakes up first.”

  “And we just let the Professor go on being God?”

  Hank turned off the water and grabbed towels for both of them. “You got it.” He hesitated for a moment, then said in a normal voice, “I think they’re still delivering pizza from the west kitchen. Should I call for one?”

  Joyce nodded and then studied the soft golden towel in her hands for a moment before moving to dry her hair. Hank was right. She had no stake in this. Better to just get back to Earth and then report it.

  * * *

  Larson watched Joyce towel off and move into Hank’s bedroom before he turned and faced the Professor. “You think she’s going to be a problem?”

  Kleist watched on the center monitor as she climbed into bed and huddled next to the flight controller. “I’m sure she is. No telling what Cray told her on the way out here, and since we’re going to keep her passenger for a time, she might find out things on her own.”

  “You want me to take care of her?” Larson asked. “I’d be glad to do it.”

  “I know you would,” the Professor said, then shook his head. “No. We may need her and her ship. Let’s just keep a close watch on her until that time comes.”

  Larson nodded, and with one last glance at the naked couple on one of the many screens that filled the wall, he moved toward the door. It would be his pleasure to watch her closely.

  Very closely indeed.

  4

  Choi slowly fought his way back to consciousness, his first thought of Boone. He had always loved the way she looked, after working out, her face covered in a fine sheen of sweat, her thin, soaked T-shirt stretched almost invisible by her muscles and chest. Her small brown nipples always poked through her shirt like they were calling for attention, and he tried to give them as much as she would let him.

  But most of all he loved the way she smelled after exercising. An earthy, wet-clay sort of smell that turned him on like nothing else ever could. He would run his face across her sweaty arms or back or shoulders burying himself against her, never wanting to let go. Choi had been lucky that Boone liked his love of her smell. They had made love after almost every workout. Boone called it her reward.

  But Choi knew secretly it was much more his reward.

  In his mind he could see her face—her small nose, her bright eyes—as if they were in front of him now. She smiled at him, called to him, and then the alien jaws cut through her face, smashing her smile, cutting off her call. The alien’s jaws drooled her blood, leering at him, laughing at his inability to help her. He fought to go to her, but something held him back.

  The alien’s jaws sliced through her face and her blood was everywhere.

  She was dead.

  Overwhelming sadness caught him like a hard blow to the stomach. Boone was dead. He had watched her die, unable to move fast enough to save her. He wanted to die, too. Join her wherever she was now.

  He moaned and tried to roll over, but something held him like a heavy, wet blanket. He could barely feel his legs and arms and his head felt thick, like he had a bad hangover. He struggled to remember where he was, what he had been doing that would cause this, but the nightmare of her face exploding in front of him kept filling his vision and he couldn’t shake it.

  “End of the line, dog boy,” a voice said from above. Choi’s mind cleared a little and the smell of rotten eggs filled his senses like a hammer pounding his thick skull. Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty! He was in the alien sector. What the hell was going on? He fought to open his eyes to blurry, faint light. Was Boone really dead? Had that all been a bad dream? Had he gotten hurt on the last mission instead?

  “Nice nap?” the voice said and a rough hand pulled Choi into a sitting position with his back to the wall.

  Choi shook his head carefully and took a few deep breaths of the humid, rancid air. He knew that voice. “Bergren?”

  “Nice to have you back with us,” Bergren said. He was standing over Choi with a pistol in one hand. “That was quite a job you did on my men.”

  Choi’s hands quickly fought to pull some of the remaining Taser Webs from his legs and body. He blinked and his gaze finally focused on Bergren, then he glanced around. They were in the alien section all right, just inside the west airlock. Slime formations covered some of the walls and the smell was so thick the air seemed to have texture to it.

  It looked as if they were alone. None of the Professor’s other men were in sight at least.

  “Bergren,” Choi said, pulling off more webs and flexing his legs, “you’re gonna die.”

  Bergren laughed, but his pistol never wavered. “I don’t think so. You Marines have just pushed the Professor a little too far. Someone’s gotta slap you down.”

  “Yeah, and you’re elected, right?” Choi almost had the webs off his legs and was struggling to stand. He would show this two-bit jerk that no one got away with shooting him with a Taser like he was some damn bug.

  Bergren laughed again. “Yeah, lucky me. I get to help you Marines know your place in the Professor’s larger plan. Only, I’m afraid, it’s just a little too late for you to learn much from the lesson.”

  Bergren’s gun moved slightly lower and the sound of a shot echoed through the stone tunnels and caverns.

  For just a moment Choi thought Bergren had missed him. He started to move, but then, as if in slow motion, his own blood splattered his face and the pain from his leg almost blacked him out.

  He twisted around and grabbed his leg, focusing on releasing the pain like he and Boone had learned in basic. Don’t think about the pain. Just react.

  Don’t think about the pain.

  Just react.

  He could almost hear Boone’s voice repeating that with him, over and over.

  Don’t think.

  React.

  “You—you bastard!” Choi pulled his good leg underneath him and pushed off, lunging for Bergren.

  Bergren quickly stepped back a few steps and the lunge fell short, leaving Choi to fall twisting on the hard floor, in even more pain than before as his wounded leg banged the hard surface.

  “You were a dead mother the minute you smeared that damn bug,” Bergren said, standing just out of Choi’s reach. “The Professor doesn’t like his pets being hurt.”

  Choi fought the blackness back. Don’t think about the pain. Just react.

  Don’t think about the pain. Just react.

  Quickly, he dragged himself back over to the stone wall and forced himself to stand. For a moment the dizziness and the pain held him down, but he fought through it and finally gained his feet.

  Bergren was walking quickly toward the airlock to the human quarters.

  “Wait!” Choi shouted, glancing around the damp, smelly corridor. For the first time it daw
ned on him what Bergren was doing. Choi started to jump one-legged for the airlock, but the drugs from the Taser and the shock of his wound made him too weak. He fell face-first on the floor, his right hand searching for the small knife in the boot holster on his injured leg. It was slick, covered in his own blood. He palmed it and again shouted for Bergren to wait.

  Bergren opened the airlock and stood just inside the alien section framed by the light from the corridor beyond.

  Choi got a burst of fresh air, but it was smothered by the stench and humid thickness of the alien caverns and that hated smell of rotten eggs.

  With his hand still on the airlock button, Bergren glanced back at Choi. “I’d love to make this clean for you, but it’s not worth my life. Crossing the Professor is never a wise move, but I suppose you understand that now. Right?”

  Choi pulled himself hand over hand toward the airlock, dragging his useless leg behind him, ignoring the pain and the weakness.

  Just react.

  Just react, he repeated, over and over. Don’t think. Just react.

  Panic blurred his thoughts, but his training won out and he kept moving, pushing to escape.

  Pushing to get closer to that door.

  Bergren watched for a moment, then shrugged like it didn’t make any difference. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Choi, you are one tough mother. Maybe you’ll be lucky.” He started to step through the door. “Maybe you’ll bleed to death before implantation.”

  Without thinking or even aiming Choi swung up into a sitting position and sent the knife in a practiced underhand flick toward Bergren.

  The thick sound of the blade burying itself in Bergren’s chest filled Choi’s ears with pleasure.

  Bergren, one hand on the knife, a look of total shock and dismay on his face, staggered against the door frame.

  Choi crawled toward the open door as fast as he could.