The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  “That’s because that body isn’t a clone. I doubt if any of them in that tank are.” Joyce pulled a cigarette out of her vest pocket and lit it, half surprised that her hands weren’t shaking much more than they were. “The Professor has come up with some pretty amazing stuff, but I doubt this level of human cloning is one of them.”

  She lit her cigarette and let the smoke soothe her as Cray stared at the monitor. Finally she said, “The person you see there was named Jerry. My husband Danny and I were with him when he got that tattoo done in Melbourne twelve years ago.”

  Joyce pushed the sleeve of her vest up until it rode over her shoulder and then turned for Cray to see the small black raven there. “We were such close friends we thought it would be great to have the same tattoo. The Black Raven was the name of a bar we used to meet at while in college.”

  Cray glanced at her tattoo, then back at the screen. Then he seemed to sink into the copilot’s chair like a heavy weight was pushing him down.

  Joyce rolled down her sleeve and took a long pull on her cigarette. “Jerry supposedly died last month. Faulty airlock is what they said. Explosive decompression is what the official report and what his death certificate says. I know. I checked.”

  She pointed at the monitor with the frozen close-up of Jerry’s black raven. “They should’ve had to scrape him off the walls of that airlock but, surprise, there he is. Or at least what’s left of him.”

  Joyce dropped back into her pilot’s chair and tapped the control panel. The picture on the monitor disappeared and in another moment the miniature video disk popped out. She took it, glanced at Cray, and then returned the disk to the hiding place under her seat.

  Then she swung around to face him. “Well, there’s not much doubt the Professor has lost it. The question is what are you going to do about it. No, what are we going to do about it?”

  Cray shook his head without turning to face Joyce. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “I know this,” Joyce said. “Kleist’s a psycho who’s killing people for his own gain. He’s got to be stopped. You have to let Z.C.T. know what’s going on out here. Someone back there must have an ounce of sanity left.”

  Cray shook his head slowly from side to side. “It’s not that easy.”

  Joyce grabbed the arm of Cray’s chair and swung it around until he was facing her. She leaned forward and grabbed him by the shirt collar, pulling him toward her sharply. “I want to live to see my kids again, you chicken-shit piece of a man. I’m risking everything even talking to you.”

  “I know,” Cray said softy. “I understand better than you would imagine. But there’s much more that you should know, especially about me.”

  She let go of his collar and he dropped back into the chair. She took a long pull off her cigarette. “I’m listening.”

  Cray took a deep breath and sat up. “You trusted me, I suppose I now need to trust you.”

  Outside the ship the sound of footsteps running up the gangway echoed through the control room. “What the hell?” Joyce shouted and sprang to her feet to meet three of the Professor’s men all carrying Kramers, fully cocked and set on automatic.

  “Nobody move!” Larson shouted. He was the fourth man through the door. “Keep your mouths shut and your hands where I can see them.”

  The three guards swarmed around Joyce and Cray.

  Joyce turned to Cray. “You bastard! I should have known.”

  “You deaf, bitch?” one of the guards said, and hit Joyce across the side of the head with the butt of his rifle. The pain took her legs out from under her and she rolled back against her pilot’s chair. Through pain-watered eyes she saw Cray move.

  Almost without effort he grabbed the guard who had hit her by the neck and twisted. The sound of the guard’s neck snapping filled the small control room like a gunshot.

  A second guard fired a blast from the rifle, but Cray had twisted the body of the now-dead guard in his arms around to take the force of the blow. Blood splattered against the wall as a few stray rounds ricocheted inside the ship.

  Now the smell of charred flesh choked the air as Joyce fought to clear her head.

  Almost effortlessly, Cray tossed the dead body at one guard while taking the other down with a quick kick to the head. With what seemed like a lightning-fast movement to Joyce’s slowed-down senses, he was on his knees scooping up the dead guard’s rifle when Larson said, “Go ahead. Pick it up.”

  Cray froze, the gun just barely touching his fingers, as Larson smiled at him. Larson held a forty-five pistol pointing directly at Cray’s head.

  The remaining two live guards quickly regained their feet and yanked Cray into a standing position, quickly binding his arms behind his back.

  Joyce fought to get to her feet, to help Cray, but as she did one guard kicked her solidly in the side of the head and the pain took her into blackness. Her last thought was a simple one.

  She had been right about Cray after all. Too bad she wasn’t going to get a chance to tell him.

  * * *

  Hank ambled into the main lounge, doing his best to look calm and unhurried as he wound his way through the plants and tables to the bar. Actually, he was in more of a panic than he had been in in years. Joyce had stood him up for dinner last night and hadn’t returned to her room at all. This morning, while looking for her, he had discovered from Jonathan that she had a copy of the video of Jerry’s body in the tank. He was hoping he would have been the one to tell her about Jerry’s death, but now he couldn’t even find her. And as the day wore on he became more and more worried.

  He ambled up to the bar and dropped onto a stool. “Vodka tonic?” Jonathan asked as he slipped a napkin in front of Hank. “Looks like you need it.”

  Hank nodded and Jonathan moved back to the well. The words “looks like you need it” were a code and meant that Jonathan had news he would be passing with the drink. Hank kept himself relaxed and looked wearily at the other people scattered around the lounge until Jonathan returned with the drink.

  The underground movement against the Professor had discovered that the bar was a fairly safe place to pass notes and because of all the constant cleaning the staff did, they had every hidden camera and microphone spotted. They knew the exact dead spots in the room.

  Jonathan sat the drink down on the napkin and Hank immediately picked it up, feeling the piece of paper attached to the wet outside of the glass.

  He swung the stool around so that his back was turned at about a forty-five-degree angle from the bar and toward the main entrance. Then he pretended to drink, reading the note through the clear liquid and the glass.

  “Professor has Joyce and Cray. Both still alive. Meeting at seven at #8 to plan.”

  Hank’s stomach twisted and he glanced at the small note one last time before swinging back more directly to face the bar, keeping the note covered with his hand. His worst fears had been confirmed. Joyce was in the Professor’s hands, and if they didn’t do something quickly her body would soon be floating in that tank. Or worse, she would be put out in the alien section to serve as breeding stock for the Professor’s pets.

  He glanced at where Jonathan stood, casually cleaning the bar. He didn’t look very happy either. He was probably feeling responsible for her capture and he would be there tonight also. Maybe it was finally time to move against the Professor and his men. Maybe they had waited long enough.

  Hank downed the last of the drink and placed the glass on the bar, but he didn’t let go of it. Jonathan saw the movement and moved unhurriedly back to him. “Need another?”

  “Nope, thanks. One’s enough. I’ve got a long night ahead of me.”

  Jonathan nodded and picked up the glass with the note still stuck to it a fraction of a second after Hank had released it. “I hear you there,” he said. In a few seconds the note, along with the ice and lime in the drink, would be ground up in the garbage disposal.

  “See ya,” Hank said and slipped off the stool.

&nb
sp; From the exchange Hank knew that Jonathan was thinking the same thing he was. Maybe it was time they finally quit sulking around and started moving. Maybe if they were all lucky the Professor and Larson would both be dead before the night was out. And Joyce would be back in his arms.

  That would make it a great night.

  But that assumed that Joyce would live. The Professor’s victims didn’t have a habit of living very long at all.

  He forced that thought out of his mind and went in search of his Marine contact, a young private named Choi.

  At that moment Hank had no idea just how late he really was.

  * * *

  Sergeant Green glanced down at his men as they buckled into their flight harnesses in the “cattle” compartment of the transport. It was a bullet-shaped room with two benches on either side. Vertical bar handles were attached to the walls between the seats, and seat belts and shoulder harnesses hung off the walls. Green glanced down the line at his men, all joking and happy.

  Still, what seemed like an enormous number of empty seats near the tail haunted Green. Nineteen men were going home out of his original forty. Those were huge, unacceptable losses, especially on an assignment as stupid as this one. There would be an investigation when they reached Earth of the Professor and his little operation. Sergeant Green would make sure of that.

  “Man, can you believe this?” Private Young said from down the row. “We’re actually going to see the back end of this damn place.”

  “Yeah, imagine that,” Private Richerson said. “What’s the plan, Sarge?”

  Green took a deep breath and tried to shake the feeling that something was wrong. They were going home. What could be wrong with that? “We’re to rendezvous with the battle cruiser Saundakaur, then deep-freeze it from there.”

  Young shivered. “I hate those ice boxes.”

  “Price you pay,” Richerson said, “for working out in the butt end of the universe.”

  Grace’s voice echoed over the intercom system. “Buckle in tight, boys. We’re on our way.”

  Green glanced up at the speaker, startled that she was on board. He’d love another shot at her, only this time on his terms and under his conditions. Then he’d see how well that pile of bolts and tubes in a skirt would do. Maybe before this trip was over he’d get that chance.

  “Wow, the voice of God,” Richerson said.

  “More like his secretary,” Green muttered as the roar of the engines started and the acceleration pushed them all into their harnesses.

  But instead of the steady, six-minute burn needed to clear Charon’s gravity well, the engines quickly throttled back and Green could feel the ship banking in a hard, tight turn.

  “Whoa!” Young said and others cursed the change.

  “What gives, Sarge?” someone shouted.

  “Damned if I know,” Green said, “but I got a bad feeling about this.” He cussed himself for being so stupid. No way was the Professor going to let them go. He couldn’t afford to let him—or anyone else for that matter—make it back to Earth alive. He was going to crash the ship back into the planet and call them dead by accident. Case closed.

  Sergeant Green unsnapped his harness, grabbed his pistol, and started toward the front, shouting orders to the man at the very head of the line, “Lynch, get that door to the cockpit open. The rest of you stay belted in and brace yourselves. This might get bumpy.”

  Lynch had his harness undone and was at the door as Green joined him. “It’s locked!” he shouted over the roar of the thrusters.

  “Override it!” Green shouted back and together they fought to open the door.

  What seemed like hours went by, but Green knew it was only seconds as Lynch worked expertly on the lock, his fingers flying over and around it. Finally, with a hard yank, he shoved the door open and Green was through into the cockpit of the shuttle with his gun cocked and ready.

  Two empty pilot seats greeted him.

  “Shit! We’re on remote.” Green stood braced against the back of the pilot’s seat, watching as the shuttle turned and braked into an old shuttle docking area From the look of the instruments and where they were headed, it seemed Kleist didn’t plan on killing them by crashing the shuttle. That way he could save the ship and maybe reuse it down the road. But if not a crash, what the hell was he doing?

  Sergeant Green scanned the docking area ahead looking for any sign of life. But there was nothing. The place looked as if it had been unused for years.

  “Sir,” Lynch said from where he was braced on the other side of the cockpit. “Isn’t that the…”

  “Shit!” Green said, the sudden realization of where they were heading hitting him. He turned to his men. “Get suited up, full armor. Fast. That son of a bitch is dropping us right into the middle of the alien sector.”

  Eighteen harnesses unsnapped simultaneously and nineteen men and their sergeant went quickly to work, struggling against the forces of the landing shuttle to don full battle armor and get weapons out of storage in the crowded “cattle” area of the small transport.

  By the time the landing thrusters finally cut off thirty seconds later and the shuttle moved automatically toward the airlock door, Sergeant Green and his men were ready.

  Green looked back at his men and made a decision. They were now in a war. It was them against the Professor, with an alien hive in the middle. He had underestimated the Professor before. He wouldn’t do it again. It was now his job to take the son of a bitch down. And take him down hard.

  “Check your ammunition!” Green shouted as everyone shouldered arms.

  “Shit!” Lynch said from beside him. A few other curses came from down the line. “Blanks, sir. Everything’s been switched. Nothing but blanks. We’re screwed.”

  “Hold it down!” Green shouted, and his men immediately quieted. Outside the airlock clanked into place and the opening and sealing process began. That side door was going to open and stay open into the alien sector in just a few seconds. If they were lucky none of the bugs would be waiting outside. But it wouldn’t take them long to arrive.

  “Unload the useless stuff from the guns and shoulder your weapons. Keep your ammunition belts on and full of the blanks. I want a tight formation following me the moment that door cracks open. Stragglers get left behind. Understood?” Everyone nodded and the useless ammunition clattered on the deck of the shuttle like a hailstorm on a tin roof.

  “Full armor. Helmets down and locked, but no talking on the intercom system. Hand signals only, no exceptions. Understood?”

  Again as a unit everyone nodded and helmets clicked into place and were locked. He didn’t have time to explain to them that the Professor was probably watching them at this very moment and that he probably had their helmet intercoms wired. If he could get to all their ammunition, he could easily do that, too. But Green doubted if Kleist had cameras and speakers on all areas of the alien sector. That was a fact Green was going to count on to save his men’s lives.

  “Get ready,” Green said as he moved to the closest spot near the airlock and stood waiting for whatever would be on the other side. “And keep the noise down. We go silent.”

  Nineteen men crowded in behind him, moving almost as a unit.

  The airlock door slid open.

  The smell of rotten eggs hit first, followed by a blast of hot, humid air.

  Nothing moved in the slime-filled shadows.

  Green took a quick look to the left, then ducked out of the ship and in a crouch moved silently but quickly down the corridor to the right away from the ship and the docking area.

  Lake a silent snake, his men followed in close formation.

  Followed him unarmed into the heart of an alien hive.

  * * *

  There was silence in Professor Kleist’s office as the last of Green’s men disappeared off the only monitor near that entrance to the alien sector. Finally the Professor swung around in his chair and addressed Larson, who stood behind him.

  “Any chance we can
see what they’re doing in there?”

  Larson shook his head. “Not until they get near this side of the alien sector, and they’ll never make it that far.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” the Professor said.

  Larson smiled and reached over Heist’s desk and punched up the center screen. On it was a map of the alien sector. Twenty points of light grouped tightly together near the farthest entrance moved slowly down one passageway. “I did manage to put tracers in their com links. We’ll see right where each of them dies.”

  “Good,” the Professor said, his head nodding, his hands steepled in front of him. “Nice work? Now if you could just guarantee that none of them make it back here.”

  Larson nervously glanced at the monitor and then back at the Professor. “I think I can, sir. They’re unarmed, twenty klicks deep in an alien hive. No one, not even the Marines, could live through that.”

  Kleist nodded. “I tend to agree with you, but just to be sure, let’s post double guards on all airlocks between the human and alien sectors. If one or two of them do manage to sneak through, I want them turned back.”

  He laughed. “Besides, we couldn’t let the queen be deprived of such good breeding material, now could we?”

  7

  The nightmare continued.

  The blackness of the moonless night covered the old green Ford like a smothering blanket that nothing could crawl out from under. John Cray had been given the used car by his father for a wedding present just six months earlier. He’d had it repainted and some much-needed body work done first But now, as the starter ground on and on, he wished he’d worked on the engine first. A stalled motor, probably nothing more than a loose switch or wire, had them four short kilometers from the spaceport, sitting in the most dangerous of dark nights.

  Four impossible miles with the aliens swarming closer to this area every hour.

  “Damn it!” He pounded on the wheel. “Start, damn you.” He fought the ignition one more time, but it was clear from the grinding sound that there would be no more distance from this car tonight, or maybe ever. He knew that much about cars.