The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  But now she was beginning to regret that decision.

  She reached the seventh level down and stepped aside, waiting for Cray and Deegan to make their way down the shaft and join her. While she waited she flashed her light around the intersection of the vertical shaft and two horizontal shafts. She could go six directions from here into pitch-blackness and for some reason that made her feel safe. At least safe from the Professor’s guards.

  She glanced around at the dust on the floor, noting that a large number of men wearing boots had come this way at one point from the direction of the alien section. She flashed the light in the direction of where they were supposed to meet the others. No tracks at all in the dust. They would be making the first. That was both good and bad.

  She let her light trail along the other tracks as Cray joined her and noticed what she was doing.

  “Looks like a type of combat boot,” Cray said, kneeling down and looking closely at one clear print.

  “Larson’s goons?” Joyce said.

  Cray shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. They almost always wear a sneaker-type shoe that matches their green pants. Remember?”

  Now that he mentioned it, she did. Sometimes they squeaked when they walked. She glanced down at the trail in the gray dust. “Then who?”

  Cray shrugged. “Some of the Marines, maybe?”

  “That can’t be, unless they’re old tracks.”

  “They don’t look that old to me,” Cray said and stood. “Of course, down here it might be hard to tell. They went down there.” He pointed at the continuation of the shaft they had just climbed down. From her rough map it went down at least another four levels, maybe more.

  “But the Marines are all dead,” Joyce said, “Unless…”

  “Dead?” both Deegan and Cray said almost simultaneously. Deegan jumped off the last step in the rock and joined them. “How can an entire platoon of Marines be dead?”

  “I’m afraid it’s very possible,” Joyce said. “From what I heard the Professor promised to send them home, then landed their shuttle on the far side of the alien section.”

  “Maybe they fought their way free,” Deegan said. “Marines are real good at that sort of thing.”

  “That they are,” Joyce said. “When they have ammunition.”

  “And they didn’t?” Deegan asked.

  “That’s right. They didn’t.” Her breath was making a swirling crystal pattern in the lamplight between them. “At least that’s what Hank told me.” She glanced down the dark tunnel in the direction the tracks came from, then down the hole. What should they do? If it was the Marines, they would be a great help against the Professor. But if it wasn’t, she could be walking into some sort of trap. And they were already late getting to the agreed meeting point.

  She turned to Cray and Deegan. “I think we need to get to the meeting, then maybe come back and follow those tracks.”

  Cray nodded. “Sounds logical.”

  “That it does, boss,” Deegan said. “Lead the way.”

  With her rifle cradled in one arm and the light in the other, she headed off through the black tunnel at a quick pace. Her sneakers kicked up a fine spray of dust. This was the right decision. She knew it. But she was in a hurry to get back.

  She tried to keep up a good pace to keep herself warm and she could hear Deegan panting behind her.

  Three intersections later the tunnel made a sharp turn to the left and suddenly widened. A lantern held back some of the dark in the center of the large area and Joyce could see that three other tunnels came in from the left and two from the right like spokes off a lopsided hub. It was like the long room’s walls had been decorated with rock and black holes. A very odd look the way the lantern was sitting in the center.

  Crouched with their backs to the walls and rifles ready were Kent and two others, their guns trained on them.

  “Hold your fire,” Joyce said, quickly raising her hand and pointing her light into her own face so that they could see her. The three guns lowered and ten other men and two women with rifles stepped out of the black holes of nearby tunnels.

  Kent smiled. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Two new recruits,” Joyce said, and then quickly did the introductions for Cray and Deegan.

  The others introduced themselves around the circle and then Kent said, “Not all are back yet, I’m afraid.”

  “Hank? Jonathan?”

  Kent shook his head. “I heard some shots up a few levels from where I was earlier, but I don’t know who it was or what happened.”

  “Let’s give them all some more time,” Joyce said. She swallowed the thought that Hank might have been captured or killed. She wouldn’t think about that. “With Larson’s goons in some of the ventilation shafts, they might have had to circle a long way around to get here.”

  Kent nodded and pointed to three of the men who came out of the tunnels. “Might want to go back on guard duty.”

  They nodded and started to turn when Joyce said, “Hang on just a second. There might be something we need to do and I want everyone involved in the decision.”

  They all stopped, waiting for her, so she went on. “We saw a large number of tracks in the dust back about three hundred meters. It might be some of the Marines who survived being dumped into the alien sector.”

  “Really?” Kent asked, his voice clearly excited.

  Another man said, “Would that be possible? Amazing.”

  Joyce glanced around and could tell they were all excited at the thought. There was no doubt the Marines would be on their side in the upcoming fight.

  “The tracks looked like Marine boots,” Cray said. “No telling how old the footprints are, but it should be pretty easy to track them to find out.”

  “Which,” Joyce said, “if you all agree, is what I propose to do.”

  “God, yes,” Kent said. He glanced around. “Anyone have objections in trying to find the Marines, if there are any of them still alive.”

  Seeing no objections, he turned back to Joyce. “What’s your idea?”

  Joyce pointed to Cray and Deegan. “The three of us head back and follow the tracks for an hour or so. If we have no luck we’ll come back here within two hours.”

  “We’ll wait,” Kent said. He turned and pointed to a large crack in the stone above high on one wall. “If we’re not here, I’ll leave you a note in that crack.”

  “Sounds good,” Joyce said. “You two want to join me?” She turned to Cray and Deegan and both nodded.

  “Anywhere you go, boss, I’m with you.”

  “There’s no need, Captain Palmer.” The voice was deep, solid, and seemed to fill in the room with a sound of command.

  Everyone in the room dropped instantly to their stomachs on the floor in a wide circle, guns ready, pointing outward at the tunnels around them. Joyce could feel the sweat on her hands suddenly as she clicked the rifle to automatic fire and focused on the black hole in the wall. One leg was slightly draped over Cray’s and it felt good there, like he would anchor her.

  “We’ll come to you,” the voice said. “Don’t fire.”

  Out of the shadows of the tunnel directly in front of Joyce stepped Sergeant Green, his hands in the air and a huge smile on his face. He had a bandage on his arm and was so covered with dirt and dust that he seemed gray.

  A moment later, from every tunnel leading into the room, a Marine stepped forward into the light.

  Joyce didn’t know whether to shout for joy or be angry as hell that they had so easily been surrounded.

  So instead she put her forehead down on the cold stone floor and said, under her breath, “Thank you. Thank you.”

  14

  The Professor watched as Grace held her hand against the side of her head and seemed to listen into the distance. She kept shaking her head as if she didn’t understand, but was close to catching whatever she was listening to. The Professor knew exactly what she was hearing. It was his rogue talking with the queen, probably cha
llenging her. He knew the aliens communicated in some fashion, but he hadn’t spent much time working on it. Now the secret had been handed to him, and that alone would make him famous.

  “The signals still going on?” he asked without turning around. His feet were up on a computer console and his chair was tipped back, his hands behind his head. He felt as if the world were his for the taking. After so many failures, success had such a sweet taste.

  “Yes, sir,” Grace said, turning to him without taking her hand away from her ear. The signals seemed to be gaining in intensity and frequency.

  The Professor jumped to his feet and strode up to the window. With a few quick key strokes he brought up the lights in the rogue’s chamber to their highest intensity.

  The room was a total disaster. The dismembered arms and legs, the torn and bitten bodies of the other ten male aliens, littered the room. Alien blood had been sprayed everywhere, and now it ate into the walls and doors, leaving brown, smoking stains. The rogue’s huge tail was thrashing back and forth, scattering body parts like so many leaves on a windy day. The crashes of the impacts sometimes shook the outer lab.

  The Professor turned back to Joyce. “He’s very agitated. Far more than I have ever seen him or any other male.”

  “It’s stopped,” Grace said suddenly. “It was very intense at the end on both sides, almost like two humans screaming at each other.”

  The Professor turned back to the window as the rogue moved suddenly. Now it seemed to have a very clear purpose. It toured the room once, quickly, crushing dead aliens’ bodies and limbs under its feet.

  Then it stopped in front of the window, studying the window and the room beyond for a moment Then with a quick and very calculated move it twisted around hard, smashing its tail against the window. A spiderweb of cracks spread out from the point of impact.

  “Grace! Look at that power, will you? A Marine subsonic cannon at point-blank range couldn’t crack that glass. Amazing.”

  He turned to face her. “I think what you were hearing must have been a challenge from the queen.”

  She looked at him with a blank look and he realized he wasn’t going to be able to share his joy with her. She just wouldn’t understand how important this was. She never could understand because she didn’t have feelings. With a wave of his hand he turned to watch his greatest creation in its finest moment.

  He stood a few meters in front of the glass, applauding, cheering, as the rogue’s tail again hit the window, sending a few splinters scattering around the lab.

  The glass was now a mass of webbed cracks. The rogue tipped its head slightly, looking at it, then charged straight forward at the Professor, its head lowered like a bull.

  Grace was android-quick. She caught the Professor in a full dive and they both tumbled out of the way as the huge alien crashed through what had been an unbreakable shield a few moments before.

  The Professor could feel Grace’s hard, artificial body twist to protect him as he fell, but he still banged his elbow and knee hard on the tile, sending waves of pain through him.

  With nothing more than a quick look at the Professor and Grace as they scrambled to their feet behind a computer monitor, the rogue turned and headed for the alien sector.

  Pausing only for a second, it ripped a hole in the block and stone wall between the lab and the corridor like it was so much tissue.

  It stepped through the dust and rock, smashing blocks to sand under its weight. It stopped, slightly bent over under the lower ceiling of the corridor, then turned to the right and disappeared.

  The Professor knew it was going for the queen.

  Grace scrambled for the communications panel and hit two quick keys. “Red Alert! We have a biohazard breach in—”

  “No!” the Professor yelled. “Cancel that order. Now!”

  “But, Professor…”

  Kleist looked at her directly and with his harshest voice said, “I don’t want him so much as scratched. If he is, I will hold you responsible. Understand?”

  He looked over at the hole in the wall where the rogue had gone. The dust was still settling from the air. His creation was so amazing, so wonderful, no one could harm it. No one would dare.

  He turned back to squarely face Grace. “Now cancel that order and relay what I just said. I know where he’s going and I want him in one piece when he gets there.”

  Then very calmly for a man who had almost been killed, he headed for his office. He knew where the rogue was going. He’d be there, in person, to watch the victory and cheer for his baby.

  15

  For almost two hours Hank had been curled up inside a small side ventilation duct.

  He’d been heading for one of the small chemical labs to talk to his friend named Steve when he heard two of Larson’s goons coming directly at him in the narrow ventilation tunnel. He’d ducked into the small side shaft that opened out through a screen knee high into one of the main corridors outside the labs.

  Larson’s two men had decided that this part of the ventilation system would be a good place to set up an ambush, so one had hidden in a side tunnel ten meters down and across the shaft from where Hank lay. The other had gone past Hank, taking up a hidden spot five meters in the other direction.

  Hank couldn’t come out of the narrow vent he had crawled into fast enough to get a clear shot at the one on the right, and if he even tried coming out of the vent, the one on the left would hear him and have a clear shot at his back. Hank would be lucky to get to his knees before having his body cut in half by a burst from a Kramer. It was a prospect he didn’t relish. So at least until the changing of the guard, he was surrounded and trapped.

  For two hours he had lain on the cold stone of the duct and waited, doing his best to move his arms and legs slowly, to keep them as loose as possible without making enough noise to attract the guards. He ached in more places than he thought possible, but every time he thought about that he reminded himself he was still alive. That thought always made the aches back off a little.

  He had also managed to turn around so that he was facing toward the grate covering the main corridor and over the two hours he had silently managed to take off all but one of the bolts holding the grate in place. If they did spot him he could be through the grate and into the main corridor faster than they could crawl through the small vent. At that point he’d be in the open, but he’d take his chances there rather than a gunfight with two men in a very narrow stone tunnel.

  A huge crash from the direction of the lab across the main corridor surprised Hank and he banged his head against the stone ceiling. He cursed under his breath, but didn’t take his eyes off the lab door. Three of Larson’s guards came running down the corridor to Hank’s right.

  “What the hell was that?” one of the men said from the ventilation shaft behind Hank.

  “It came from the Professor’s private lab,” the other said.

  Hank was straining to see if the two men were coming his direction when right on top of him the world exploded. The entire wall of the lab across the corridor flew outward in a huge cloud of dust and flying rock, instantly crushing the three guards near it.

  Hank covered his head just in time to keep from getting a face full of dust through the grate as one big rock bounced off the wall right above the opening of his vent. A few small pieces of rock dropped on him from the ceiling of the shaft, but luckily nothing big enough to pin him down.

  Then, through the dust beyond the grate, Hank saw a nightmare appear.

  His worst nightmare.

  Any human’s worst nightmare.

  Ducking to fit into the ten-meter-tall corridor, a huge alien emerged from the hole in the wall of the lab and stopped directly in front of Hank’s vent. The skeletal bones of its monstrous tail towered above him and Hank could barely make out through the dust the head and upper arms near the ceiling.

  Aliens couldn’t get that big, it wasn’t possible. He’d read that somewhere.

  Yet he was looking at one
.

  The alien swung its head to the right, then back to the left, as if getting its bearing. Then with steps that shook the stone around Hank, the alien went left.

  Toward the alien section.

  “Red Alert!” Hank heard Grace’s voice over the base speaker systems. “We have a bio-hazard breach in…”

  “Cancel that order!” Hank heard the Professor shout over Grace’s voice. “I don’t want him so much as scratched.”

  The public-address system clicked off.

  “Holy shit!” one of the men in the ventilation system behind Hank said. “Let’s get back.”

  The sound of their steps running off to the right was covered quickly by the distant sounds of the huge alien tearing at walls and doors as it fought its way through a human base built for beings one-tenth its size.

  Down the corridor a few shots rang out and two people screamed.

  “Damn good plan, guys,” Hank said to the retreating guards as he quickly scooted away from the grate and the destruction beyond in the main corridor.

  Even with his muscles stiff from lying on the cold stone for two hours, he started off at a run. At the first cross shaft he went down, taking the stone ladder as quickly as he could. He was very late for the meeting, but he hoped they had waited. This was news they would want to hear.

  He hit the seventh level down and took off at a run toward the agreed meeting spot.

  He didn’t stop running until a Marine twenty meters from his destination stopped him cold in his tracks.

  * * *

  Joyce couldn’t remember a sight making her so happy before. When those nineteen Marines came out of the shadows of the tunnels, she, for the first time since she was captured, let herself think about living through this and maybe getting back to Earth again to see her kids. She knew of Sergeant Green and knew how well trained the Marines were in fighting bugs. And since the Professor was a human bug that needed squashing, who better to do it?