The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume 3

by Sandy Schofield

  In the first few seconds of the fight she and the rest had taken out a good two dozen of the closest and now had cleared every bug out to fifty meters. She’d used six full clips and the Kramer was starting to heat up in her hands.

  Kent and his three men had gone out and left, checking the wall above them first. Then Hank and his three had gone out and gone right along the wall, doing the same. That spread out their firing angles and gave them a larger killing area.

  She was kneeling beside the door on the right, carefully taking aim and killing any bug that even pretended to move. The rest of the group had spread around the door and were doing the same. It was now starting to feel to her like a target practice session as they all knocked legs and heads off of anything out in that open hangar.

  She desperately wanted to get across that killing field of alien bodies and acid blood, but for the moment it felt much safer right where they were, their backs to the wall killing anything that moved in front of them.

  Then, through the almost deafening bursts of gunfire around her, she heard her name being shouted. “Captain Palmer! Captain Palmer!”

  She stood and looked both directions down the line. Hank and a few others had heard the call also and had stopped firing. He indicated the voice had come from the right, closer to the main entrance and above him. She stepped out and looked up at the balcony that ran along there. It was dark and she couldn’t see a thing.

  “Cease fire!” she shouted. “Cease fire, unless one moves right at you!”

  The firing stopped and the last of the roaring sound echoed over the dead aliens and the hangar deck.

  “Captain Palmer?”

  “Right here,” she shouted back.

  “Sergeant Green up here.”

  “Glad to hear your voice, Sergeant,” Joyce shouted back. The relief of having the Marines with them again was almost as much as she had felt when they first showed up in the tunnels.

  “You need to get to your ship as soon as you can,” Green called back.

  To her left a Kramer opened up and across the deck an alien head exploded like a cherry bomb going off. She waited until the echo died off in the huge chamber, then shouted back, “We were headed that way.”

  “I know,” Green said. “But a pitched fight like this will only draw more bugs to this area There’s more of them than you have bullets to kill. Trust me.”

  “What should we do?” Joyce shouted, feeling relieved she had someone else to make the decisions for a moment.

  “Fan out in small groups,” Green shouted, “then fight your way to the ship. We’ll cover you from here.”

  “Will do,” she said.

  “Back to plan A,” she shouted at Kent and Deegan to her left. “Let’s move. Hank, you ready?”

  “Right with you,” he said.

  She motioned for the men around her to follow her, pointing to three of the men near her. “You watch our asses. Don’t let one of those sons of bitches in behind us. Understood?”

  All three nodded.

  She clicked a fresh clip into her Kramer and took a deep breath. Then started off slowly toward her shuttle, across the field of dead bugs and acid blood.

  All around her Kramers screamed and bugs died.

  From the balcony behind her Kramers cut the air, blowing aliens away at incredible distances across the huge hangar. Those Marines were great shots, of that there was little doubt.

  She caught a glimpse of one of the downed aliens in front of her twitching and she blew its head apart like a melon hitting a wall.

  Another bug crawled up on her ship over the hatch they were headed for and she and two others beside her sent it spinning off the other side in an acid spray. Joyce hoped like hell that acid didn’t get into any important mechanisms on the outside of the shuttle. She didn’t think it would, but anything was possible.

  On her left the sounds of firing were continuous. She glanced over and Deegan’s group was in position approaching the nose of the shuttle. They were firing more often than any, keeping the bugs away from the ship and watching their open left side.

  Twenty meters closer to her, Kent and his group paralleled her, mostly helping Deegan’s group keep the left clear.

  Twenty meters to her right Hank and his crew, supported by help from Sergeant Green above and behind them, had very little to do.

  She made the jump and stationed two men at the bottom and two others to watch the top of the ship above her. She scrambled up the ramp and was damn glad to see the door had been sealed. She let out a deep sigh and started the opening cycle. At least inside would be bug free.

  She got the door open and then turned back to check on everybody’s position.

  Deegan and his men were posted around the nose of the shuttle, watching both sides of the ship.

  Hank and his men were doing exactly the same around the tail and thruster section. The rest had taken up positions around the ship, killing any bug that moved anywhere, sometimes two or three men taking it out with long-distance shooting.

  “Sergeant!” Joyce shouted. “Join us. We’ll cover you.”

  “On our way,” Green’s voice echoed over the chamber.

  “Hurry, God damn it,” she said under her breath. “Hurry.”

  She had a sinking feeling that everything was about to go very wrong. She didn’t know why. Everyone was in place and no bug was getting within fifty meters of the ship. But it still felt wrong, like it had been too easy.

  And Green’s words echoed in her head about her not having more ammunition than bugs. She still had two belts left.

  The five Marines were down the stairs from the balcony and spread out in an arrow formation, with Green in the center, jogging across the floor through the dead bugs when things changed.

  And changed quick.

  “Bugs through the storage area!” Kent shouted as the door to the labs smashed inward with a huge crash and a wave of black, ugly aliens swarmed through the brightly lit storage room.

  Kent, and some of the men around him who had the best shots straight into the room, opened fire, cutting some of the bugs down under the bright lights before they could even get to the hangar doors.

  But there were so many more bugs behind them. They just kept coming, climbing right over the bodies of their dead like they weren’t even there.

  “Green! Behind you!” Hank shouted.

  The entrance to the decontamination chamber was suddenly filled with bugs swarming through like a dam had just broken.

  Green and his men, still only halfway to the ship, spread out and took up positions, their guns screaming, filling the entrance and the decontamination chamber with dead aliens.

  But the flow of bugs continued, through both doors and from the overhead balcony where the sergeant and his men had just been a few moments before.

  And from the shadows of the far side of the hangar.

  Clip after clip, she cut down bugs, reloaded, cut down more.

  Reloaded.

  Cut down more.

  And they just kept coming.

  And coming.

  The Kramer felt like a hot pan in her hands, but she held on. She didn’t have time to let it cool. Her ears were ringing. The gray smoke from the guns half blinded her.

  “Grenades!” Green shouted and almost as one five headed for the main entrance. To her right she saw Kent and three of his men do the same at the entrance from the supply area.

  The concussion from the grenades sent alien limbs, heads, and bodies everywhere and shook rocks from the roof of the hangar deck.

  But the bugs just kept coming.

  Climbing over hundreds of their own dead, they poured into the room.

  “Fall back,” Green shouted to his men and they started moving backward, firing as they went.

  “Give them cover!” Joyce shouted and she and her crew did the best they could to keep the bugs back.

  But it was clear Green and his men weren’t going to make it.

  Green had been right. The
re were just too many of them.

  But she kept firing anyway.

  * * *

  The queen bit almost completely through the neck of the rogue and the Professor’s pride, his creation, his lifetime of work, lay on the floor twitching like so much raw meat.

  The queen bent over her victim, grabbed the rogue’s remaining arm, and yanked it off, throwing it against the wall as if disgusted.

  The Professor was livid. Behind him the remains of Grace were splattered along the wall. He bent and picked up her Kramer, then cocked the Sound Cannon.

  “You’re dead, you bitch!”

  With the Kramer in his left hand, he punched the on button for the Sound Cannon and set it to high. So high it could kill any alien within two hundred meters by itself.

  So high she wouldn’t know what hit her.

  The room seemed to shimmer and the alien queen reared up, seeming to scream, her hands at her head.

  “Don’t like that, do you, bitch?” he shouted, firing at her with the Kramer in his left hand, stepping closer and closer.

  Her tail smashed the remains of the rogue behind her and she turned away from the sting of the bullets, still screaming her silent scream.

  He pumped bullets at her and stepped closer.

  As she swung around, away from his painful attack, her razor-sharp tail went up and then down at the Professor.

  Her aim was perfect, and lightning fast.

  He saw it coming, but didn’t have time to move even a fraction of a meter.

  The impact knocked him sideways and sent him spinning across the floor to the left. The pain in his side and arm didn’t seem real, it was so sharp. He could feel his blood pumping into the air.

  His right arm, cut off cleanly at the shoulder with the Sound Cannon still gripped tightly in his right hand, flew through the air and landed near Grace.

  It bounced once, but the impact served to jar the finger even more into the trigger.

  The Professor screamed and tried to stop the blood flowing from the hole in his shoulder.

  The queen screamed and tumbled sideways, her legs and tail smashing what was left of the rogue.

  Beside Grace the Sound Cannon with the Professor’s arm still attached started beeping.

  Slow at first, but then faster and faster.

  Through gritted teeth the Professor laughed.

  “It’s going critical, you bitch. You’re going to die for what you did.”

  Beep! Beep! Beep!

  The queen continued thrashing.

  Beep-beep-beep-beep.

  “Oh, does that hurt, my dear?” the Professor cried. He tried to sit up but couldn’t. “I sure hope so.”

  The beeping of the gun turned into a long, continuous high-pitched wail as the Sound Cannon went critical.

  I’ll see you in hell, bitch!”

  The intense white flash ended his insanity.

  And her pain.

  23

  The sound of over twenty automatic Kramers firing almost continuously filled the hangar deck around Joyce like the roar of a river crashing over a hundred-meter falls. The echoes combined with the actual sound and intensified it, banging at her from all sides. She had sweat running down her hands and the Kramer was so hot she could hardly hold it.

  She stood, her back against the door frame to her shuttle, aiming and firing.

  Then loading, aiming, and firing again.

  And then again and again and again at the mass of black bugs climbing over the bodies of other smashed black bugs.

  But no matter how many bugs they killed, the ugly things just kept coming.

  Within seconds they were going to overwhelm Sergeant Green and his men.

  “Pull back!” she shouted to Hank.

  She turned to Kent “Pull back! Pass the word to Deegan!”

  He nodded that he understood as he inserted another clip into his rifle and emptied it into the moving mass of alien flesh.

  Then suddenly, as if on a string pulled by one evil puppeteer, every live alien within sight seemed to twist, as in pain.

  Then they all froze.

  “What the hell!” Green shouted.

  For a few more seconds the Kramers cut down the frozen bugs where they stood, then the firing slowed and stopped.

  “Looks like a Sound Cannon got them, Sarge!” one of the Marines near Green shouted. Joyce couldn’t tell which one it was and she had no idea what a Sound Cannon was, but if it could stop these bugs, it was a good thing.

  “But we don’t have a damn Sound Cannon.”

  “Well, someone does,” Green shouted. “And they may or may not know how to use it. Everyone in the shuttle. Fast!”

  Joyce was amazed at how fast some of those tired people could move. She was inside first, her Kramer beside her pilot seat, already starting everything up when Deegan drove into the copilot’s seat beside her.

  She glanced around at where Hank was crouched, watching the scene outside the door as the five Marines poured inside.

  Green stepped through the door, a look of panic on his face. “McPhillips! Dillon! Young! Check the ship for any bugs. Double quick.”

  Then he turned to Joyce.

  “They moving out there yet?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Green said, “and if they don’t soon, whatever Sound Cannon that’s doing this is going to go critical and blow every seal in this base right into space. Those things never work for longer than a minute. How fast can you get us out of this dump?”

  “Do it, Deegan!” She didn’t even wait to give Green an answer. The total look of panic on his face was more than enough to let her know they didn’t have enough time as far as he was concerned.

  “Seal the hatch!” she shouted, but both Hank and the sergeant were already working to do just that.

  “Engines coming up!” Deegan shouted. “Everything green. Bay door opening. Counting it down.”

  “Screw the countdown!” she shouted. “Just pray I miss the damn doors on the way out.”

  Her fingers flew over the board in front of her as the rumble under her seat increased.

  Part of that was the ship and the normal vibrations from liftoff. She knew that feeling better than anything. But there was something more happening.

  Something much more. It was as if the entire base was shaking.

  In one quick motion she swung the nose of the shuttle off the ground and around toward the slowly opening bay doors. There might be enough room to get through if she hit it perfectly. What the hell choice did she have?

  The shaking grew more intense around her and between the shuttle and the hangar doors rocks started to fall from the ceiling.

  “Everyone hang on!” she yelled.

  She hit the acceleration hard.

  It shoved her back into her seat and held her there like a hand on her chest. Behind her she could hear a few oaths from those not braced tightly enough. Rocks pounded against the shuttle as the roof of the hangar started to cave in, but she paid no attention. Only those half-open hangar doors were what mattered now.

  With the huge shuttle she took aim.

  And hoped.

  She missed the doors on both sides by meters as the shuttle cleared the hangar and broke into space. With a hard yank she sent the shuttle up in as steep an ascent as she thought the thrusters could handle. She wanted to put some distance between them and that rock.

  Deegan swore beside her as his fingers danced over the board in front of him as he did his best to help where she needed him.

  “Rearview monitors,” she shouted through the incredible noise of the acceleration.

  Somehow Deegan managed to get the screen above them focused on the hangar doors. She would never forget what those doors looked like exploding outward into space.

  Another few seconds and they wouldn’t have made it.

  That was close. Too damn close.

  She eased the acceleration back slightly and turned to Deegan. “Think you can get us into a low parking orbit without my help
.”

  Deegan, his face white, the Kramer still draped across his lap, looked at her. His eyes were wide and sweat was pouring off his forehead.

  He swallowed, glanced around at the board in front of him, and then back at her. Then he let out a deep breath like he had been holding it for the last ten minutes. “Yeah, I can get us there.”

  “No walk in the park?” she asked, half smiling.

  He glanced at her. “Boss, I’ve decided working with you is never a walk in the park.”

  She laughed, also exhaling for what seemed like the first time in hours.

  She turned to where Hank and Sergeant Green were braced against the acceleration on the bulkhead behind her.

  “Now,” she said, “would someone please tell me what the hell just happened?”

  “We got out alive,” Green said.

  Hank glanced at Joyce and then at the monitor over his head “Yeah, but about fourteen hundred didn’t.”

  24

  “This is Captain Palmer of the transport vessel Caliban giving a final, pre-cold-sleep status report.”

  Joyce flicked off the recording and looked around her now silent ship. Sleep chambers, lined up in two rows, head to head, filled the center core of the vessel. It seemed so peaceful and quiet after the past week, with everyone sleeping.

  She ran her hand over Hank’s chamber, looking down at the peaceful expression on his face. Very soon they would start a new life together. Very soon she would see Drake and Cass, see how much they had grown, how much they had matured.

  She did a slow check of the instruments above Hank one last time. All seemed to be in order and all lights were green, so she turned back to her board and flicked on the recording mike again.

  “We have left orbit over Charon Base and I have set course to rendezvous with Moreno Station in eight months. Everyone is in cold sleep and all lights are green.”

  She took a slow, deep breath, shivering slightly in the cold from being so close to so many sleep chambers. She was wearing only a T-shirt and brief bikini bottoms. That was why she was cold. Or maybe it was from the thought of going into cold sleep shortly herself.