The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  Hank looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled.

  “Come on,” she said, smiling back at him. “I can take it.”

  Hank looked down at the ground for a moment, then back into her eyes. “I told him you were a woman who could take care of herself.”

  She smiled at him, holding his gaze. “Then let me do it,” she said.

  He smiled back, then nodded. “Two hours?”

  “Two hours,” she replied. “And you take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” he said.

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  She smiled and without another look turned and headed off down the dark tunnel, her small-beamed light cutting a weak line through the blackness.

  Cray first, if he was still alive, then Deegan. That was her plan. Cray first because he might not live much longer, then Deegan if she could find him.

  It felt good to be doing something.

  Real good.

  She checked her rifle for the tenth time to make sure it was fully loaded, then slung it over her shoulder. Holding the flashlight in her mouth, she started up the ladder cut into the wall.

  Her fingers were numb on the cold rock as she climbed slowly toward the Professor’s labs, but she didn’t notice. She was hoping to find the Professor alone and get off a shot.

  Just one shot. That was all she was asking for.

  One shot for Jerry.

  11

  Sergeant Green awoke to the feeling of a bandage being applied to his right arm. He was leaning against something hard, with sharp edges.

  “He’s coming around,” a voice said. “Back off. Give him some room.”

  Shadows beyond his closed eyes retreated and suddenly he was bathed in bright light. He blinked against the dust caked on his face and the glare of two lamps shining directly at him.

  “Give me a break,” he said, using his good arm to shade his face. His head felt like a jet engine was taking off behind his eyes and there was a high-pitched whine in his right ear. He was afraid to move, unwilling to find out how many bones he had broken.

  “Sorry, Sarge.”

  The lights were quickly shifted out of his eyes enough for him to see the dirt-covered faces around him. Private Young stood over him, looking concerned, while Robinsen, kneeling beside him, finished on his arm. Both of their breaths showed in the lamplight as frozen crystals sparkling like a light Christmas snow. Getting out of the alien section of the base had cooled things down in more ways than one.

  He started to move, but an intense pain shot through his head. He moaned and slouched back against the wall, wishing someone would just kill him and get it over with.

  “You got a good egg there above your right ear,” Robinsen said. “Has to hurt like hell.”

  “Wow,” Green said, using his good hand to slowly touch the lump. It was soft, swollen, and felt hot and sticky to his touch. “What a headache.”

  “You’re lucky that’s all it is,” Robinsen said. “I’ve given you some Black-Ace for the pain. It should be easing in a few seconds. I don’t think you have any broken bones beyond a few cracked ribs and the lump on the head. We’ll have to watch you in case that lump is a bad concussion, but I don’t think it is.”

  Green sighed and leaned back against the wall. No broken bones. That, at least, was good news. The last thing he wanted was his men carrying him. He took some deep breaths, feeling the cracked ribs that Robinsen had mentioned. He could feel the wave of Black-Ace cleaning out the aches like a hot shower after a good workout. That was some good shit. The soothing felt so good he just wanted to sleep. He couldn’t do that, but he wanted to. Maybe just until Robinsen finished working on his arm.

  He closed his eyes to the bright lamps, then immediately opened them again. No sleeping. He could live on these drugs for a while if he needed to. And judging from the pain in his head it looked like he was going to have to. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been hooked on Black-Ace. Damn near every Marine was at one time or another. It was standard issue and they used it, but coming down off the drug was going to be a bitch. He just hoped he lived long enough to worry about it.

  He took another two deep breaths of the cold, dust-filled air to help his head clear, then he sat up slowly and glanced around. Only three men were near him at this intersection of corridors. Robinsen working on his cut arm, Young holding the lamps, and McPhillips standing guard before the right-hand tunnel. But he could hear others talking a short distance off.

  “That’ll do it,” Robinsen said, patting the bandage on Green’s arm and then standing. Robinsen reached out and offered Green a hand up. Green took it and was gratefully helped to his feet.

  He felt dizzy for a moment and leaned against the cold stone wall, but it quickly cleared. The drug was kicking in. Now his head only felt like it had been hit with a bat, not crushed by a truck. It was an improvement. He’d be even better when his ears stopped ringing.

  He glanced around at the intersection, then back the way he had come. “I assume,” he said, “since we’re all just sitting here, that the hole we made is plugged?”

  “Totally,” Young said. “That was one wail of a blast.”

  Green nodded. “It took a few bugs with it, too.” He clapped his hands together to try to warm them. “Looks like it shut off the heat, as well.” Green glanced around, looking at the scattered rock and for the first time really remembering the blast. “Where’s Lynch? How’s his head?”

  The three men around him were silent and none of them looked him directly in the eyes.

  He got the message.

  “What happened?”

  Robinsen pointed at the vertical shaft leading down to the lower levels. “Looks like when the explosion went off you were tossed against the wall and Lynch was unlucky enough to tumble into the shaft. He went down three levels before hanging up on the edge of the hole. His neck was broken, as were about half the bones in his body.”

  “Damn,” was all Green could say. What a stupid thing to happen.

  Robinsen and the other men said nothing.

  Green walked to the edge of the shaft and glanced down the stone handholds cut in the wall. The hole went into the dark as far as he could see, with faint lights showing three levels below.

  He stepped back and took a few deep breaths letting the painkiller work its magic. Everyone in the outfit knew he had been closer to Lynch than any of the other men. He depended on Lynch, had confided in Lynch. Lynch was his second in command.

  “Damn it,” he said softly, staring at the black mouth of the shaft. He knew better than to think they were going to get out of this without losing some more.

  That was the nature of their business.

  That was the nature of war.

  But why Lynch after all this time? After surviving all the stupid missions the Professor had sent them on, why die like this? It was just plain stupid.

  The Professor was going to suffer for this. And for Choi and Boone and all the others.

  He was going to suffer very long and very hard.

  Green glanced back at where Robinsen stood quietly. “You’re now my number two. Young, you’re three. Understood?”

  Both nodded.

  “We’re in a war here and we have a mission,” Green said. “If I go down I need you to carry it out. The mission in plain terms is to take out the Professor and Larson and as many of his goons as we can. And do it in as slow and as painful a way as possible. Is that understood?”

  “On the money,” Robinsen said.

  “With pleasure,” Young said.

  Green nodded, pleased at their responses, but not showing it. “Round up the men and meet three levels down in five minutes.”

  Young nodded and quickly disappeared down the tunnel. Robinsen followed Green to the edge of the shaft and Green let him go down first.

  Professor Kleist was soon going to get a big surprise. He now had nineteen very angry Marines after him. Green knew it wasn’t going to be pretty when th
ey finally caught up with him.

  And that thought helped him through the pain going down the cold stone ladder.

  And through the pain of seeing one of his best men, and his best friend, laid out dead on the cold stone floor three levels below.

  * * *

  Joyce finally had her hands almost warm and was beginning to get some feeling in her feet again when they brought Cray out of the lab across the ten-meter-wide corridor from her. She had been sitting out of sight in a side ventilation shaft, watching the wide, carpeted corridor along the Professor’s private labs, waiting to get any indication of where Cray might be. Now, suddenly, he was being pushed along in front of her.

  He had on the same brown slacks and tan shirt he had worn earlier, but they were now torn and looked to be bloodstained across his chest and down his right leg.

  She watched, staying out of sight behind the ventilation grate in the stone wall as Cray was tossed by Larson and one of his goons into a small room beside one of the Professor’s labs. She could tell Cray wasn’t doing that well, and from the way they were handling him, it didn’t look like he was going to get better much quicker.

  Larson checked to make sure the lock was secure, then left a single guard standing in front of Cray’s cell while he went back into the main lab toward the Professor’s office.

  She wished Larson had been alone. She’d have taken him out without a second thought. And if it had been the Professor she would have, even with a dozen men around him. But right now her first job was to get Cray out of there and to see if he was going to be of any help to her.

  The one guard stood with his back to the door in parade-rest position. His gun hung on a strap over his shoulder and he didn’t seem to be paying a great deal of attention. Joyce studied him, thinking of the best ways to get past him. He looked to be not much older than twenty, with blond hair and very white skin. He had, what might be called under the right circumstances, a nice face. In the bored rest position it seemed almost friendly. And he looked much cleaner than the two she had fought with earlier.

  Joyce studied him for a minute, giving Larson plenty of time to get a distance away. She was going to make some noise and she wanted as few people close as possible. For the last half hour the corridor had gotten very little traffic. And what traffic there was seemed to be techs in white lab coats.

  Silently she took the second rifle off her shoulder, checked to make sure it was ready, and then put it silently back over her shoulder. Her plan was to take out the guard with one shot from hiding, break open the grate, shoot open the lock on the door, and then she and Cray would disappear back into the dark ventilation system before anyone was the wiser. But just in case someone was too close she wanted the extra gun in Cray’s hands when he came out of that door.

  She quickly checked the corridor, to make sure no one was coming, then pushed herself away from the grate, bracing her back against the stone. She checked to make sure the rifle was set on single shot, then carefully aimed at the center of the guard’s chest, not looking at his face as she did so. The shot was going to be damn near deafening in this tight place, but firing in the ventilation system would also be an advantage because it would be hell to pinpoint quickly.

  She just hoped her ears survived.

  She took two slow breaths, and then, keeping the rifle leveled dead center on the guard’s chest, moved the barrel of the gun up and through the grate just enough to prevent the bullet deflecting off the metal.

  Then she squeezed the trigger.

  The concussion bumped her head backward with a sharp knock into the stone. The sound hammered her like her head was in a sleep tank and twenty people were pounding it with steel pipes. The smell made her cough and she did once, hard, before kicking the grate off with her foot. It landed on the carpeted corridor floor with a loud thump that seemed very distant in her ringing ears.

  In a smooth motion she clicked her Kramer to fully automatic and did a quick scan of the hall. The guard, a round hole in his chest and a startled look on his face, was slumped over next to the door. A red smear covered the expensive wood paneling behind him.

  Before the guard’s head hit the floor she was out of the grate and across the corridor. “Cray,” she shouted, “stand away from the door!”

  She gave him only a second and then sent three shots in a downward angle into the lock. With a hard kick, the door crashed inward.

  Cray appeared out of the dark interior like a ghost. He was barefoot and she had been right about the spots on his clothes being blood. He looked to be bleeding from four or five different places, but he seemed to be alert and Joyce was very glad he was moving so quickly. She wouldn’t have taken the time to carry him.

  With a quick shake of the head, “No” to Joyce as she started to swing the second gun off her shoulder, he bent over and yanked the Kramer off the dead guard, grabbing the extra clips of ammunition and the full combat belt with another quick motion.

  Joyce watched for a second, then turned and in four running steps was back at the grate opening.

  She was through it in a fraction of a second, with Cray right behind her.

  Two hundred meters of ventilation shafts and three levels down, she stopped to catch her breath.

  Cray slumped to the floor across the tunnel from her and smiled. “Thanks,” he said, his voice raspy.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” she said, working to catch her breath. Now she was hot and sweating, which felt wonderful compared to freezing. “We’re outnumbered about thirty to one and the fight looks impossible.”

  He laughed, almost a high, insane laugh. “If you’d seen what I have in the last few hours, you’d be glad you even have the chance to fight. So thanks.”

  She looked at him, at the blood splattered over his shirt, at the red and purple areas of his face. He had obviously been through hell. Maybe, like her, he’d want a little payback.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  He smiled and closed his eyes. She’d give him ten minutes of rest and then they had another person to draft.

  * * *

  Kleist glanced away from the window looking over his creation when Grace entered his private lab. He was angrier than he had been in years. He hated incompetence and it seemed to be all around him. Moreover, he hated being wrong and his creature had just proved him very, very wrong.

  He kept his voice as calm as he could and asked, “Have they found him yet?”

  “No, sir,” Grace said. “There would seem to be at least ten and maybe as many as twenty people involved so far, all seemingly heavily armed. Besides Cray’s release, there have been six incidents on the station in the last hour. We have four men dead at this point and two wounded.”

  “Find Cray and Palmer and bring them to me,” the Professor said and turned back to the carnage beyond the reinforced window. He stared at his beautiful creation as it tore a normal-sized alien male apart with a ferocity he found hard to imagine. The body of the adult male smashed against the wall, acid blood splattering everywhere.

  “I’ve been a fool, Grace. A complete fool.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself,” Grace said.

  The Professor gestured at the mess beyond the window. “No, I’m not. In my conceit, I overlooked the obvious. I ignored the primary fundamentals of nature. I imagined they wouldn’t apply to this unique strain. But, as is now clearly obvious, I was wrong. Wrong, Grace. Wrong. Do you understand?”

  She said nothing and they both continued to watch the destruction.

  Of the ten mature adult aliens he had let into the contained area with his new creation, only two remained. And as he and Grace watched, one was picked up like it was a light snack, its head bitten completely through. Then the body was tossed in an acid smear against the window in front of them. Before the last survivor had a chance to even run, the huge alien was on it, tearing its arms off first, then its legs, and finally its head, adding its body to the pile of others.

  The Professor turned h
is back on the window and walked a few steps away. “Don’t you see, Grace? The alien king refrained from attacking Cray not because its natural savagery had been bred out, as I thought, but because Cray was strapped down, incapacitated, not moving.”

  Kleist glanced up into Grace’s beautiful android face. “Don’t you see?” He so wanted someone to understand. “Cray was spared because he wasn’t perceived as a threat.”

  He turned back to the window beyond which the huge alien was smashing the remains of its ten smaller cousins. Cousins who could kill ten men without a problem were now tossed aside like a child’s broken toys.

  He stood there for a moment, staring at the destruction. Then slowly he smiled. “Maybe it’s just a matter of perspective.”

  “Perspective, Professor?” Grace asked, moving to stand beside him in front of the bloody scene.

  “What we have here”—the Professor indicated the huge alien beyond the wall—“is in essence a rogue male. He’s a living engine of destruction, the exact opposite of what I had planned for. He considers all others to be his rivals.”

  “That would seem to be obvious, now,” Grace said as the rogue picked up a large piece of another alien and savagely smashed it against the wall.

  “Don’t you see, Grace?” The Professor was now beaming.

  On the other side of the glass the huge alien rose on its hind legs and opened its mouth like it was screaming in celebration of its victory.

  “Don’t you see? This is the perfect prototype for Z.C.T. Corporation’s bio-weapons arsenal. From the ashes of defeat come success.”

  Grace was about to say something when suddenly she put her hand to the side of her head and looked off into the distance.

  “Is something wrong?” the Professor asked.

  “Professor, I’ve just picked up two transmission signals on the upper EF band. To my knowledge we have no facilities for broadcasting on that frequency.”

  The Professor glanced at the rogue as it stood in the center of its victory, its huge mouth open in a silent scream.

  “Can you trace their source?”

  Grace nodded, her hand still beside her head as if she had a headache. “One is on this level, in the very heart of the alien sector.”