The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  All of his training was gone. He couldn’t even bring Linda’s face into his memory. All he could do was stare into the huge black throat.

  And those razor-sharp teeth.

  A small voice in the back of his head fought for his control training, fought for the picture of Linda, of her beautiful face. Anything to leave this reality. But this was too much.

  The alien retracted its inner jaws and closed its mouth, the sound of teeth and shell clicking echoing in the room.

  Finally the creature backed away slightly and Clay let out the air he’d been holding very slowly. The pain from the acid that had dropped on his arms and leg and the sweat off his forehead were blurring his vision. In the background Cray could hear the Professor talking, but his words meant little to him.

  “Isn’t he a wonderful creature, Mr. Cray? One of the greatest of all creation, don’t you think?”

  Cray didn’t move as the alien lumbered around him, staring at him, choking him with a thick stench so bad that Cray felt like retching. But he didn’t dare.

  Once the huge tail brushed the edge of the chair, rocking it almost off its track. Again Cray didn’t make the slightest move in the straps that held him. He was nothing more than part of the chair.

  The alien again leaned in close, the jaws coming down within a meter of Cray’s face, then backing away.

  Slowly what was left of the sane part of Cray’s brain began to question.

  Why was he still alive? Maybe his lack of movement was the reason. Was this how his wife had felt? Did she have time to feel this numbing terror?

  “Actually, Mr. Cray,” the Professor went on over the speaker. “He is part your son, you might say, sharing your DNA from a scraping of tissue taken when you first arrived. Remember when Grace shook your hand? She’s very good at getting needed samples like that.”

  Cray held totally still, not even daring to let his eyes follow the creature as it moved around him.

  Kleist went on. “The rest of this wonderful creature’s makeup is a cocktail of alien DNA, concentrated human male hormone, and a rather complex biochemical soup that your employers at the Grant Corporation would have killed to get their hands on.”

  A huge alien hand snaked out and one razor-edged claw touched Cray on his bare chest leaving a red cut from his right nipple to his navel. Then the alien withdrew and studied Cray again.

  Cray had no choice but to look into those evil jaws and not acknowledge the intense pain from the cut and from the acid the alien had left in it like salt in an open wound.

  Over the speaker the Professor laughed. “It seems, Mr. Cray, that your son is interested in getting his hands on you. But I don’t think he will. You see, I think I have succeeded in finally breeding the first tame alien male. Wonderful, isn’t he?”

  Cray didn’t move, didn’t say a word, but in his mind he was shouting: Tame? Tame? This creature looming over him was far from tame. This creature was pure evil. But Cray didn’t even blink and said nothing out loud and the huge alien continued to hover over him.

  After a moment the Professor said, “It seems that this experiment is a total success. Congratulations, Mr. Cray. It seems your son likes you enough to let you live.”

  The Professor laughed just loud enough for it to come over the speaker, then said, “I, on the other hand, am not nearly so beneficent, as you will soon discover.”

  The chair jerked hard, tossing Cray against the straps. Accelerating, it slid backward out of the room, again before the huge alien could react.

  The last sight Cray had of the creature was its first tentative step toward him as the door closed. It looked angry and very hungry, and not at all happy that it had been tricked.

  He prayed to every god he knew as the chair came to a halt that it would be the last time he would ever see that thing.

  * * *

  Sergeant Green had his men spread out in two groups on both sides of the coming explosion. Half were around the corner of the tunnel intersection to the left and half around the corner to the right. The concussion from the explosion in these close quarters was going to be rough. But with a little distance, a little luck, and a few intersections of tunnels to take off the pressure, they would survive.

  Now it was just he and Lynch standing over the plugged hole.

  He checked the jury-rigged bomb one more time. The explosives were rigged and in place with a ten-second delay on the trigger. When he clicked the trigger, he was to go to the right and Lynch to the left. If the explosion collapsed the entire tunnel they were to each take the men they had with them and run in opposite directions, trying again as soon as possible to break out of the alien sector and into the abandoned tunnels below. Each of them carried two more jury-rigged bombs.

  “Ready?” the sergeant asked Lynch. He looked over at the dust-stained and sweating face of his friend and second in command.

  Lynch glanced down the tunnel in the direction he would be running, then back at Green. “As I’ll ever be. Let’s do it.”

  “Let’s hope this works,” Green said as he leaned over the bomb. “Be ready to get your ass back here and plant the new charges if it does.”

  “No sweat,” Lynch said.

  “Go,” Green said. He triggered the ten-second timer, and took off at a full run. He had barely made the corner and tumbled but of the direct line of the blast when the bomb went off.

  It felt as if someone had put his head inside a small metal bucket, then smashed it from all sides at once. His ears rang in a high-pitched wail, and his head instantly ached as the pressure changed.

  A sudden hurricane of dust from every nook and crack filled the air of the intersection, reducing visibility to nothing in an instant. He held his breath, letting some of the dust settle before trying to breathe again.

  The shock wave buzzed against his palms on the stone floor, and then the rumble of falling rocks could be heard from down the tunnel. God he hoped that wasn’t rock from above blocking the entire area. That was one of the risks they were taking, but if it happened he knew they wouldn’t stand a chance in two separate groups.

  Hell, they didn’t stand much of a chance now seeing as they had called every alien in the sector to come down for dinner.

  He rolled to his feet and moved his neck and jaw in an attempt to clear the pressure in his ears. Through the dust he could see a few of his men scrambling to their feet. “Be careful as you move around,” he shouted, his voice sounding hollow in his ringing ears. “I don’t want anyone falling down a damn shaft.”

  He glanced around at the few men he could see. “Let’s move.” He started at a slow run back in the direction he had just come.

  It was like running into a blinding snowstorm. The gray dust filled the air and ate the beam of his light within a foot of his head. The dust instantly coated his face and nose and he had to keep swallowing just to keep his throat clear enough to breathe.

  He felt his way along the wall with one hand on the cold stone, moving as quickly as he could. Behind him he could hear his men doing the same.

  He reached the intersection and suddenly the air seemed slightly clearer. A draft was pulling the dust down through the new hole they had punched where the sealed shaft had been a minute before. The hole was rough, but not so large that they couldn’t plug it with supports that would hold the falling rock from a second explosion.

  Lynch appeared out of the dust on the other side of the intersection, a rope in one hand and a light in the other.

  “Let’s go!” Green shouted. “Set the new charges and make sure that plug is the right size.” Two men instantly went up the stone ladder above the shaft to plant the charges. Two others pulled the equipment they had tied together to make a plug closer to the hole and started some quick measuring. The plug was made up of rifles for support tied with rope and supported with other standard equipment such as shovels and climbing gear from their packs.

  Green grabbed the rope off his belt and dropped it through the hole, swinging it over his
shoulder and under his arm. He spread his legs and braced himself. Lynch quickly followed on the other side of the hole. Then, with Green and Lynch holding the upper ends, the men were quickly through and down to the lower levels, including the two who had set the explosives in the passageway and ceiling above them.

  “All set?” Green asked Lynch, glancing through the dust at where the explosives were placed above.

  “Enough to bring the whole section down,” Lynch said. “One-minute timer rigged out of my watch and secured on the wall.”

  Green took the rope from Lynch’s hand and dropped both through the hole to the men waiting on the level below. Then he quickly stepped over to the trigger dangling from a wire down one stone wall.

  “Plug ready?” They were going to need something blocking the hole that was strong enough to hold the falling rock from above. Otherwise there was a chance that the rock they were going to blast from the ceiling would just go right on down the shaft, leaving it open for the bugs to follow.

  Lynch pulled the mass of tied equipment a few inches closer to the hole. He pulled and twisted at it, then glanced up at Green. “It’ll work,” he said. “Open enough to let the blast through, but strong enough to hold all the first rocks that hit it. I just hate leaving the rifles.” He patted one that was tied into the plug.

  “No choice. Let’s do it before we get unwanted company.”

  He clicked the timer. One minute and counting.

  With two quick steps he was at the hole and on his stomach working his way over the edge of the rough blast crater. Lynch snapped off his light and tucked it in his belt. Green left his light on the edge shining down into the hole. Below them one of the men had left a light shining upward so that they had at least dim light to work in.

  On the opposite side of the hole Lynch was lowering himself over the edge at exactly the same time until his back touched Green’s.

  They paused for a moment, making sure their backs were square, their legs braced against the rough stone, and the pressure as even as they could get it between them. There were handholds in the side of the stone down about ten feet, carved there by the prisoners, but the blast had blown the others above it away. They had to get to the stone ladder, as well as seal the hole as they went. Back to back down the hole was the quickest and safest way and something they had practiced at times over the years.

  Green scraped his knees and hands on the sharp rock as he went, and after a few seconds he could feel blood start to run down his right leg.

  But quickly they had their heads below the top of the hole.

  “Pull it over,” Green said.

  Lynch quickly and smoothly scraped the mass of equipment that would serve as a new plug over the edge and down on top of them. Using one hand each to work the plug down and the other hand and both legs to hold themselves in place, they continued down the hole until the equipment snuggled into place about three feet from the top.

  “Got it,” Lynch said.

  “Make sure,” Green said. Both he and Lynch pulled and tugged on it, almost hanging their total weight on it to make sure it was secure.

  “Twenty-six seconds,” Green said as they finished securing the plug and started down again. He reached the cut handholds on his side and with one arm swung Lynch around so that he too had a firm grasp. Lynch started down, then suddenly paused and sniffed.

  But Green had already caught the familiar odor of rotten eggs that filled the dusty, dry air of the dark tunnels.

  “Aliens,” Green said. “Go! Go! Go!”

  Like two monkeys the men scrambled ten more feet down the wall and then dropped the rest of the way to the stone floor, both barely missing the vertical shaft that disappeared off into the dark below the ladder.

  “Run for it!” Green said as both men turned to the right and headed down the tunnel through the dust at a full run. The tracks of the other men covered the floor. They had been ordered to get three or four intersections away from the blast in the direction of the human sector and then wait. If he and Lynch didn’t make it, the men’s orders were to search for and destroy the Professor at all costs.

  All the men were secure behind solid rock a hundred meters distant.

  A lone flashlight sat in the middle of the corridor ahead, marking the intersection they were trying to reach.

  They’d be lucky to make it to that first corner.

  The sounds of aliens filling the area above the plug filtered after them as a reminder to run even faster.

  Green could feel his heart pumping as he sprinted right behind Lynch toward the promising light.

  And for a moment he thought they might make it.

  Then the concussion from the huge blast sent Green flying forward like a giant hand had caught him squarely in the back and just shoved.

  He tucked in midair and rolled as best he could. The impact against the stone floor jarred him and snapped his head around as he tumbled, letting his forward motion take up as much of the impact as it could.

  After what seemed like a nightmare of pounding noise and spinning rock he finally came to a smashing stop against the wall on the far side of the intersection.

  A shooting pain cut through his head, and as the blackness took him his last thought was a silent hope that the hole was sealed, not only by tons of rock, but by a few bug bodies as well.

  * * *

  Joyce sat on the cold stone of the passageway, the comforting feel of the automatic rifle in her hand beside her. She couldn’t remember being so cold before, but there was no hope of getting warm soon so she was ignoring it as best she could. But seeing her breath crystallize in front of her every time she breathed didn’t help. It also didn’t help that all she wore were cloth slacks, a sweat-stained T-shirt, and a cloth vest. A good ski parka right now was what she really needed. And maybe some mittens and a knit hat.

  Hank and Kent were talking with four other men over plotting the best way to take out the Professor and his goons. Joyce didn’t really care what plan they came up with, as long as it had her pulling the trigger.

  The men stood in a circle, their breath misting in the lamplight between them, giving the scene a surreal quality straight out of a black and white movie.

  She watched Hank, how he moved his hands when he talked, how he brushed his hair off his face. She was really glad to see him again, to see him alive. Somehow it gave her a warm feeling inside. Not enough to cut the cold of the stone tunnels, but at least it was something.

  She heard the name of her ship mentioned a few times and was about to stand and join the discussion when a low rumbling filled the corridor and dust drifted from the walls, giving the lights around them even more of a ghostly look.

  She picked up the rifle and studied the shadows in the tunnels around them.

  “What the hell was that?” Hank asked as everyone stopped and looked around.

  “Maybe,” Joyce said, standing and moving over. To join the group, “there are more than just us fighting the Professor. Could that be possible?”

  “Might be,” Hank said, “but more likely it was one of the Professor’s experiments gone bad. Could we be so lucky as to have it take him out?”

  “I hope not,” Joyce said as she calmly adjusted the strap of the rifle over her shoulder with cold fingers. “I don’t think the man deserves such an easy death. Something like a face-hugger would be more along the lines I’m thinking.”

  All the men stopped and looked at her through the dusty light. It was clear to Joyce that they were all thinking their private thoughts of how they would like to see the Professor leave this world. From the slight nods and the looks on their faces, Joyce doubted if any of them seriously disagreed with her.

  Finally Hank rested a hand on her shoulder and then broke the uneasy silence. “We have to assume the explosion, or whatever it was, doesn’t change a thing.”

  “Agreed,” Kent said and the others, including Joyce, nodded.

  “But what we’re not agreed on,” Hank said, “is what we
do next.”

  Joyce glanced around at the six men, noting that she was by far the best armed of the group. Seven people against Larson and his goons. Larson must have a good hundred men, all armed and ready to die. They didn’t stand a chance.

  She cleared her throat and stepped forward slightly, forcing Hank’s hand to drop off her shoulder. “I’d say the first course of action would be to get more firepower and more help.”

  She glanced around the dim, dust-filtered light at the others. They all seemed to be agreeing, listening intently to her, willing almost to let her lead. So what the hell. She would.

  “I’ve got a copilot somewhere who’s a damn good shot. And the guy Cray, who they caught me with, killed at least two of Larson’s men with his bare hands before they got him. He’d be a good addition to our little force if he’s still alive.”

  “I agree,” Kent said. “And he’s still alive. Or at least he was an hour ago. He’s in what serves almost as a holding pen next to the Professor’s private labs.”

  A tall, thin guy dressed in a white shirt and black, dust-covered pants said, “Your copilot left the bar with a blonde about three hours ago. I’ll bet he’s in his room.”

  “All right,” Joyce said. “Someone give me a shove in the right direction and a rough map of these tunnels and I’ll get those two. Who else can we draft?”

  For the next twenty minutes they outlined whom each of them were going after and where they would meet when they finished. Then one at a time the group broke up, scattering in different directions in the dark tunnels until only Joyce and Hank were left.

  “You sure you want to go this alone?” Hank asked, his hand a faint touch on her arm, his breath ice crystals in the remaining lamplight.

  “Yeah,” she said, giving his hand a quick squeeze. “We need all the help we can get. You’re going after three recruits. I can manage my two.”

  He nodded, but Joyce could tell he didn’t much like the idea of splitting up with her again. She reached up and grabbed his forearm as tight as her cold fingers would allow. “What’d you tell Kent about me before you two came to my rescue?”