The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  Cray was the only occupant of the lounge as Joyce walked in and glanced around. She had guessed she would find him here. He seemed like the type to love the openness of the stars and she felt glad about being right. It pushed her forward with her plan.

  He stood against the rail in front of the main window, staring off into the blackness.

  “Is this a private moment of moody introspection,” Joyce said as she moved up beside him, “or can anyone join?”

  “By all means,” Cray said. “Be my guest. Introspect all you want.”

  She smiled and glanced around at the empty room. “Seems we’re the only ones who enjoy the view.”

  “That it does,” Cray said without turning from the window. “Sort of reminds me of the old lover’s leaps back home. See how the rocks slope off there.” He pointed to where the edge of the cliff rounded off and disappeared into blackness below. “You have a place like that where you grew up?”

  The memories of her and Danny parked in his old Ford at the top of Thunder Mountain flashed back through her mind. It would always take them an hour to get up there, but it was worth it. They used to sit in the dark, holding hands and staring at the stars. They used to talk night after night about how they would go into space when they got out of school, live in space, bring up a family among the stars.

  On Thunder Mountain, on a blanket under the stars, she had lost her virginity.

  She turned to Cray. “I sure did. How about you?”

  He laughed. “Of course. And call me John.”

  “I’m Joyce.”

  He nodded, then turned back to face the stars. “We called our little hideaway Roman Way. It was a wide spot on the top of a small hill just outside of town. The hill looked out over the Kansas farmlands and was damn near the highest place in twenty miles.”

  “Roman Way? Like in roaming hands?”

  Cray laughed and glanced at her. “Cute, but no. Actually a farmer named Barry Roman owned the land.”

  Joyce grinned. “Ours was called Thunder Mountain, named after a bad storm, I think.”

  He laughed softly and they both went back to watching the stars. After a moment Cray stirred and turned to her. “Tell me,” he said. “What brings you out this far from the main Earth systems? Isn’t that where most pilots ply their trade?”

  Joyce reached into her back pocket and pulled out a small folding wallet. With a gentle flip she opened it and held it up in the faint light for Cray to see. “These are my reasons. Drake and Cass.”

  Cray studied the picture of her two kids, both dark-skinned like their mother. She watched him gaze at the picture, wishing she knew what he was thinking. Finally he said, “Good-looking kids.”

  “You got that right,” she said. “At least as far as I’m concerned. Of course, I’m their mother so I would think that.”

  Cray smiled. “Justified, in this case.”

  Joyce flipped the wallet closed and went back to looking at the stars. After a moment she decided to go on and tell him more, trust him a little more. “Their father was killed during the war and we barely made it. The kids live in Geneva now with my mother. I get fifty times the pay out here than I do in the central systems. That’s why I took this haul one last time. After I’m back I can spend a few years with my kids. I sure do miss them.”

  “Sorry,” Cray said softly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “No problem. It’s just the way things are. You learn to live with it.”

  Joyce glanced around quickly, studying the ceiling and the walls around them. She needed his help, but she wasn’t sure if she could trust him. Damn, this had been a dumb idea.

  “Something wrong?” Cray asked after a moment.

  “You seem like a straightforward-type guy.”

  “Thanks. I guess,” he said, looking intently at her.

  She took a deep breath. “You know, there are just some things in this world I don’t think I can live with?”

  Cray nodded, waiting.

  Joyce flipped open her wallet again and pulled a slip of paper out from behind the picture of her children. She pulled it out just far enough for Cray to see. On it she had written, “Don’t say anything. Please meet me on my ship in one hour.”

  Out loud she said, “This is a picture of my husband. Bugs killed him in the last days of the war. For some reason I have problems living with that, and being this close to an entire hive of the things.”

  She slid the paper back behind the picture and put the wallet away.

  “I can understand that,” Cray said. “Some things really are hard to live with.”

  “Yeah,” she said. I’ll be damn glad when I get headed for home.”

  They both turned to face the cold, black night and the thousand points of light so far away.

  Joyce tried to keep her hands from shaking. She had just put her life into the hands of a total stranger. She didn’t know why, but when it came right down to it she felt she could trust him. Besides, she had no one else to turn to and she needed his help.

  Above her, just past her left shoulder, was Earth and her two children.

  She kept her gaze away from that area of the black sky.

  * * *

  T-shirted Sergeant Green stormed through the main lab, his fists clenched in tight balls, his gray eyed gaze focused intently ahead. His thick muscles rippled with power under the shirt and men and women in white coats scrambled out of his way. Like they would jump away from the path of a moving train. His movements just dared anyone to try to stop him, and no one did.

  No one was stupid enough to even try.

  He reached the Professor’s outer private office on the far side of the lab and yanked the door open, almost pulling it off the hinges in the process.

  Behind a large oak desk across what seemed like ten meters of thick white carpet sat Grace, the Professor’s secretary. She glanced up as he wrenched the door open. She wore a tight maroon skirt and a white blouse open one button too far showing a little too much very real-looking skin.

  The same basic thing she wore every day.

  “Can I help you, Sergeant?” she said calmly, standing and moving into his path as he stormed toward her desk and started around it toward the Professor’s inner office.

  “I want to see Kleist right now!” He didn’t even slow and started to brush right past her.

  With what seemed to be a slight push, with very little force behind it, she knocked him into the oak wall sending an oil painting tumbling behind a couch.

  The sergeant bounced off the wall, twisted off the couch, and instantly went into combat posture, crouched and facing her.

  She stood upright, looking almost bored as she studied one of her nails. “I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. He left strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed.”

  “Outta my way, bitch, or I swear I’ll—”

  “He was most insistent,” she said, smiling at the sergeant “Why don’t I just make you an appointment and you can come back. I’m sure he has some time open tomorrow.”

  The sergeant’s face turned bright red and he growled low in his throat. “I’ll show you and that ass of a boss an appointment.”

  He again started for the door that led into the private back office.

  Grace stepped lightly to the left and directly into his path, stopping him cold with one hand to his chest.

  The sergeant raised his left hand to shove her aside, but she merely added, “Now, Sergeant, you wouldn’t strike a woman, would you?”

  “Yes,” the sergeant said, but he had hesitated just long enough for Grace to get a firm hold on his forearm with her right hand and his T-shirt with her left. With a quick twisting motion she turned and flipped him over her shoulder and away from the Professor’s door, into the middle of the huge white carpet.

  “That’s good, because I’m no woman,” she said, laughing.

  He landed square on his back with a loud thud and the sound of air forced from his chest. He twisted sideways and scrambled to h
is feet. Without a moment’s hesitation he charged back at her like a bull at a red cape.

  She hiked her skirt up slightly with one hand and caught him square across the side of the face with a high side kick.

  This time the sergeant tumbled head over heels along the empty top of her desk and came up rolling, his hands on the desk chair Grace had been using.

  “Really, Sergeant. Why can’t you just make an appointment like everyone else? It would be so much simpler.”

  He again growled like an angry wolf. With a quick motion to the right, he faked her into a defensive stance, then hit her from the left with the chair. She staggered sideways, but didn’t fall. Her fake skin wasn’t even slightly cut where the chair had sliced across her face.

  She ducked to the left to avoid his right hook, then kicked him again squarely in the face, her high heel digging a long, wide gash in his cheek.

  The sergeant tumbled back onto the carpet and before he had time to move Grace kicked him twice more, once in the ribs, once more in the face.

  He rolled hard over to get away from her, but she was inhumanly fast and was on him again with two more kicks to the head. “That’ll teach you to stain the carpet.” She kicked him again. “And that’s for not making an appointment like a good little boy.”

  Through the haze of almost blackness he heard the Professor say, “That’s enough, Grace. I’m sure the sergeant has learned his lesson.”

  Grace grabbed Green by the back of his shirt and like picking up a young child hauled him to his feet, turning him to face the Professor.

  Kleist stepped closer and smiled. “I think I know what he’s upset about.”

  The sergeant spit a mouthful of blood on the white carpet at the Professor’s feet and then looked him directly in the eye. “You murdered one of my men, you bastard.”

  “As you witnessed, Sergeant, Private Choi deliberately destroyed an expensive specimen.”

  Green couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You killed him for that?”

  “See my side of this, Sergeant,” the Professor said. “Choi could easily have subdued the alien with a Taser, and yet chose not to. I call that a conscious act of sabotage.”

  “What? I should take you apart one ugly limb at a time.”

  Grace’s grip on the back of the sergeant’s shirt tightened and she lifted him slightly off the floor, holding one arm in a tight and very painful grip behind his back.

  The Professor nodded to her that it was all right and she let him back down so his feet at least touched the floor. But she didn’t ease the painful grip and he did his best to focus on the Professor and ignore the pain.

  “As director of this facility, I felt obliged to authorize the maximum penalty.”

  “Choi was right,” Green said, spitting another glob of blood on the white carpet. “You are insane.”

  The Professor laughed. “This is a scientific research establishment, not a military outpost. You’re under my jurisdiction and will follow my orders.”

  The sergeant tried to make an unexpected lunge at the Professor but Grace held him firm, one hand on the back of his shirt, the other on his left arm in a lock grip.

  The Professor only shook his head, then turned his back on the sergeant for a moment, seeming to think. When he turned back around he was frowning. “I’m tired of your men’s insubordination and locker-room mentality. As of now Mr. Larson will relieve you of all duties. Grace will arrange for your and your men’s immediate return to Earth. You and your grunts are an irritation I’m no longer prepared to endure.”

  The sergeant relaxed slightly in Grace’s grip, not totally accepting what Kleist had said. He had come here expecting to die trying to kill the Professor, but somehow it had turned into freedom for him and his remaining men. That made no sense.

  The Professor nodded to Grace. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business to attend to.”

  As Kleist’s door closed with a soft click, Grace turned and shoved the sergeant forward through the office door into the lab. He stumbled forward, then fell, blood flowing down his face and the front of his shirt. He lay sprawled on the hard white tile of the main lab, staring up at Grace’s unruffled short skirt, red hair, and slightly open white blouse.

  “Get your men packing. I’ll have a transport ready in two hours.”

  The sergeant struggled to his feet and stood weaving slightly, as if there were a slight breeze blowing him around. His mind was having trouble accepting what had just happened. Finally he nodded and turned to leave as everyone in the main lab silently watched.

  “Oh, and, Sergeant,” Grace said as she moved back into the office and to the desk.

  He stopped and looked back at her. She picked up the desk chair and bent the metal leg back into shape with one hand before placing it on the carpet.

  Then she looked up and smiled. “Next time make an appointment.”

  6

  Captain Joyce Palmer stood behind the pilot’s chair of her ship Caliban and let her hands glide over its cloth back. The familiar feel somehow gave her comfort and slowed her breathing. She loved the slightly stale smell of the ship’s air mixed with the light odor of oil from the control area. She felt in control when she was in here.

  She glanced around, automatically checking the different boards, looking for warning lights like she had done a hundred times in space. Now, here in the hangar, most of the lights were showing systems off or on standby. Nothing looked out of the ordinary at all and that settled her jumping nerves a little more. She always felt better when the machinery worked.

  Would Danny have been mad at her for talking to Cray? Would Jerry? Would they both have said that she should keep to her own business and just leave this place? She knew that was exactly what they both would have said, yet she just couldn’t let Jerry’s death go. And she knew if Danny were still alive, he wouldn’t let it go either.

  She moved around and sat in her chair, letting her hands glide over the silent control panel, letting the feel of the familiar cushions hold her. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t try to stop this madman. There was a plague running wild on this station and it was killing people. It had killed one of her oldest friends. It was a virus of terror and sudden death, one man’s madness killing hundreds.

  Maybe she could stop it, or maybe she would die trying. Either way, she couldn’t go on living without doing something.

  Behind her she heard the sound of someone entering, walking up the long ramp from the deck. She tensed and waited, half expecting the Professor or Larson and some of his goons, but after a moment Cray stuck his head in. She let out a silent breath and motioned for him to come forward and take the chair beside her.

  “I’m not sure this is wise,” he said as he slid into Deegan’s usual seat.

  “Neither am I,” she said. “There’s a problem here and it has become very personal for me. You’re about my only choice to turn to for help.”

  Cray shrugged.

  Here goes, Joyce said to herself. No turning back now. She reached under her seat and pulled out a miniature video disk. She held it up for Cray to see. “This was slipped to me yesterday.”

  Again Cray said nothing, so Joyce went on. “Professor Kleist is Z.C.T. Corporation’s golden boy, right? Intense, but he gets results.”

  She slipped the disk into a small slot in her control panel and pointed to the large monitor. “This is how he does it. I hope you have a strong stomach.”

  The monitor flickered slightly before the picture focused on the tanks that filled the walls in the Professor’s lab. Row after row of bodies floated in liquid, tubes running into panels in front of each. White-coated technicians worked in front of the wall at control panels and computer monitors. It was obvious from how the picture was being taken that it was from a hidden camera, most likely tucked into the pocket of a lab coat with only the lens peeking out.

  Joyce noticed that Cray wasn’t that startled by what he saw, but he did push himself back away fr
om the monitor deeper into his chair.

  The picture focused on one body, zooming in until only the head and chest area were visible. The skull was hairless and the face totally covered by a face-hugger, or what looked to be one. The chest of the body seemed to be moving, pulsing like it had a heart ten times too big that was pounding out of control.

  Cray watched the screen while Joyce watched him.

  The movement inside the chest went on for only a few more seconds, then suddenly the skin ripped in a quick spider pattern, like a rock hitting a large glass window. A small alien exploded from the chest in a spurt of black blood and frantic squirming, swimming off into the liquid and disappearing along the bottom of the tank.

  The force of the eruption sent the body twisting in the tank, yanked back and forth by the lifelines connecting it to the machines.

  Then the monitor flickered and went blank.

  Cray took a deep breath, then slowly turned to Joyce. “All right, what’s the problem? An experimental alien birth from a cloned body. Not pleasant to watch, but not a crime that I know of.”

  Joyce snorted. So that was the Professor’s line. Cloned bodies? No wonder so many people were letting him get away with this. Most of them just didn’t know, or didn’t have enough courage to question his explanation.

  She reached forward and punched a few keys on her board, and the monitor lit up again at the start of the disk. She jumped it quickly to the point where the alien was ripping a hole in the chest of its host, then froze the picture.

  “See that?” She pointed to a small mark on one arm of the body, the arm that had been turned away from the glass wall and the room and only twisted into camera view because of the force of the alien birth.

  Cray leaned forward. “What is it?”

  “Just a second and I’ll show you.”

  Joyce’s fingers flew over the keys in front of her, and the still picture on the monitor zoomed in closer and closer on the mark until it became clear exactly what it was.

  “A tattoo?” Cray said, leaning forward and studying the mark. “A tattoo of a black raven? On a clone? That would make no sense at all.”