by Tim Lebbon
“The battle will begin,” the Yautja said.
“And me?”
“You’re one of them. The first to die.”
Liliya started laughing. It came from deep within, not a calculated reaction but something instinctive, something so very human. She shook in her restraints and tears formed beneath the laughter, pain and wretchedness at the agonies she felt and what had been done to her. The whipping chain, the insects now dead and bloated within her flesh. The torture ball, discarded against the room’s curved wall, its reflected glimmer promising more pain.
The snakelike creature, now curled on the floor as if absorbed in an innocent sleep. There was nothing innocent about its shape, nor its intent. Her throat lacerated from its many prongs, her stomach ruptured, and her complex recovery systems were working overtime to repair damage that should have killed her.
If I were human, she kept thinking. She had spent most of her existence struggling to be just that, and this was another reason why she hated what Hashori had done. Torture, pain, and trauma had revealed just how unhuman Liliya was.
Suddenly a blast rumbled through the ship.
“If you kill me, then they’ll kill the rest of your people,” Liliya said. “You have no idea of their power, or the weapons they will use.”
“I understand well enough,” Hashori said. “The fire dragons are an ancient subject of our hunts.”
“Not like this,” Liliya replied. “How many Yautja are dead already? How many ships, homes, planets have been overrun?”
Hashori tilted her head at the term “Yautja,” perhaps not understanding.
“Numbers of dead don’t concern me,” she said.
“Not even if you’re among them?”
“I will die well.”
“Did your mate die well, Widow?” Liliya knew nothing about their mating habits. She wasn’t even sure this creature was female.
Hashori took a step forward, then paused. She looked aside, as if ashamed of some emotion or thought, but Liliya saw nothing different. The Yautja was an enigma. To survive this, she had to play to that mystery.
“I can help turn the fight around,” she said, “but only if we survive this.”
“You’re scared,” Hashori spat.
“Fuck you,” Liliya said. She wasn’t quite sure whether the expletive translated correctly, but from Hashori’s reaction it seemed close enough. “You’ve seen my blood. You’ve smashed my insides. You know I’m not something that feels fear.”
And yet… Liliya thought, because a very human fear had been at home in her for days, months, even years. The terror that everything she had come from was threatened. That here and now, the idea that her own meaningless death might put the Human Sphere even more at risk. In truth, the fear was almost crippling.
Even so, she was a synthetic, and she was able to hide her thoughts and emotions.
“I’m going to fight,” Hashori said. “Perhaps I’ll survive. If I do, we’ll talk some more.”
“Oh, good,” Liliya said. “Well that makes perfect sense!”
Hashori paused, seeming to consider what she’d said. It appeared as if Yautja weren’t well-versed in sarcasm.
So she left, and she closed the door behind her. For a while—a short while—there was silence.
Then Liliya heard the sounds of battle.
Several massive explosions rocked the ship, sending great groaning creaks through the walls, thudding the floor, making Liliya feel as though she were spinning. Perhaps it was rapid deceleration, or a blast interfering with the artificial gravity. She strained against her bindings for the thousandth time.
After the blasts there was silence for a while. She heard only her own breathing, a sound usually unnoticed. Her heartbeat filled the room. Groans, sighs, and the occasional grunts as she tried to break the straps holding her in position—these were the only noises keeping her company. They almost belonged to someone else.
A little while later the sounds of combat returned nearby. Blasters coughed, and walls transmitted the thuds of multiple impacts. Something roared, a Yautja shout she recognized so well. Then something else screeched, long and loud, and the acidic stench of burning filled the air.
They’re here, she thought. So close, so terrible, and I never thought I would witness something like this.
The door smashed open. Hashori stood there for a while, uncertain, breathing so hard that her breath condensed before her. She stepped back into the hallway and looked left and right, shoulder blaster tracking her movements. It smoked. She carried her pike in her hand, one end of it deformed and slick, like melting ice.
“You killed one,” Liliya said.
“They’re different,” the Yautja replied.
“I can tell you—”
“Don’t speak.” Hashori came forward, touching the control panel on her left forearm as she came.
The bindings that had held Liliya for so many days melted away and she fell, her body barely believing that she was free. She shook her head and pressed her hands to the floor, feeling a constant, strange vibration. It was as if the Zeere Za itself was shivering in terror.
Just as she raised her head, Hashori grabbed her around the neck and lifted her.
Liliya tried to cry out, but her throat was compressed. The Yautja darted to the doorway, holding Liliya beneath her left arm as if she was no weight at all. Her feet did not touch the ground. She grasped at Hashori’s big, clawed hand, but the Yautja’s fingers squeezed in tighter, breaking skin.
Then for the first time in days Liliya was outside the room. To their left a Yautja fought, shooting and hacking at a dark shape that thrashed around the corridor beyond. The Yautja issued an ululating battle cry, then a screech tore at Liliya’s ears, and the Yautja screamed.
As Hashori turned to hurry in the opposite direction, Liliya saw the unmistakable gleam from a Xenomorph’s skull as it bent over its floored enemy and bit into his head.
Beatrix Maloney had sent her full might to capture or kill Liliya, and although she had always known how terrible the Xenomorphs would be in battle, she had never realized how beautiful and graceful they might be, as well.
Hashori moved surely, running along curving corridors, crossing open spaces, her heavy feet barely making a sound as they slapped at the floor. Liliya could hardly breathe, but in truth she didn’t need to. She could survive for hours without a breath. It was just another way to make her seem more human.
They rounded a corner, and ahead of them stood a Xenomorph. Beneath its feet lay the remains of a Yautja, head smashed apart, acrid smoke rising from across its chest where its killer had bled upon it. The beast hissed, long and loud, and Liliya felt her unnatural blood running cold.
She could see the regimental markings on the side of its head. This was surely a beast of Alexander’s army, and the general would be close.
Hashori dropped Liliya and stepped forward to fight.
The Xenomorph powered toward the Yautja, its clawed toes kicking up sparks from the floor. Hashori’s shoulder blaster fired and the beast jigged sideways, the blast impacting the wall thirty yards beyond.
Hashori crouched and fired again, angling the shot upward this time. She missed a second time, but the blast struck the ceiling just behind the charging monster, bringing down a rain of metal and molten parts. One chunk of material struck its tail and it slowed, only a little but enough for Hashori to leap to her right, swinging her pike around in a powerful arc.
The Xenomorph ducked to avoid the blow, but Hashori unleashed another fusillade of blasts from her shoulder cannon, striking the creature’s abdomen and legs. One limb ricocheted back along the corridor. The creature screeched and thrashed, splashing its acidic blood.
Hashori growled and fell back, scrabbling at her mask where it smoked and ran from the acid’s destructive touch. Liliya also saw speckles of bubbling skin across her throat and shoulder, and her body armor was distorted.
The Xenomorph looked directly at her.
&nbs
p; Paused. Tensed.
It knows me!
Then it leapt, wider jaw opening to reveal the deadlier, slicker mouth inside.
Hashori grabbed its tail and, using its own momentum, swung it sideways into the wall. It struck hard and thrashed around, finding its remaining feet again quickly and leaving melting patches across the floor.
As it tensed for another spring forward, Hashori jumped across the corridor and pinned it to the wall with her pike.
The Xenomorph screeched. The pike had pierced its body behind and below its arced head, and already its blood was melting the impeding weapon.
Hashori gestured with her hand, and Liliya pushed herself back along the corridor. The Yautja followed for a few steps, then zeroed its triumvirate of targeting lasers directly onto the beast’s domed head.
“Be careful, when it dies it will—”
The blast came. Liliya closed her eyes and protected her face.
Dead, the Xenomorph burst apart as if destroyed from within. Its parts bounced from walls and ceiling, acidic blood splashing all around, and Liliya stripped off one leg of her already torn trousers when they started to smoke. Her skin beneath was raw and blistered, a new wound almost lost among those Hashori had given her.
The Yautja picked her up again, arm around her waist this time, slinging Liliya beneath her arm and leaping past the dead invader.
“How many are there?” she asked, but Hashori didn’t reply. So Liliya just hung on. The Yautja had saved her once, and hopefully that was a sign that she’d listened to what she had been saying.
A series of small explosions shook the ship, echoing along corridors and blasting air their way. A loud, mechanical screech sounded somewhere, and several booms vibrated the air. Another big explosion and then Hashori slipped and fell forward. Liliya’s stomach rolled, and her senses confused up and down, left and right.
The gravity generator had been hit, and they were weightless.
From behind them came the frantic scratching of claws across metal, and Liliya feared they were being pursued. But it was two Yautja, heavily armed and armored and rushing after Hashori.
The three of them conversed, using a dialect or a level of language that she did not understand. Yet another aspect of the Yautja that was a mystery. They seemed to be arguing, the two of them gesticulating at Liliya still hung beneath Hashori’s left arm.
“I’d like a say in this,” she said, and the other two glared at her as if she was a rock that had spoken.
Hashori said something, and the other two nodded fiercely. They touched each other’s shoulders in a surprisingly intimate gesture, then Hashori turned and pulled herself through a doorway, still carrying her captive. They emerged into a stairwell, and Hashori expertly pulled them down, grabbing stairs to give leverage and aiming them at the next contact point.
From above and behind them came fresh sounds of fighting. Blasters, metal scoring metal, screeching, the gnashing of terrible teeth…
Moments later they passed through a circular opening into a small hangar, where a ship hung ready from two mountings. It was a small ship, perhaps an attack craft, sleek and smooth, and it was here that Hashori pushed Liliya away from her.
The Yautja shoved herself toward the ship, and Liliya arrested her own movement against an upright.
She had a terrible, sinking feeling.
“Hashori,” she said.
The Yautja had reached the ship. As she approached a section of hull turned clear and then disappeared, a doorway forming before her.
“I’ve carried you this far,” Hashori said. “Boarding the ship is your own choice.”
“Just the two of us?”
An explosion somewhere nearby sent fire and debris into the far end of the hangar, the fire strange and beautiful in zero gravity. The mechanical screech rose again.
“Another hull breach,” Hashori said, and she pulled herself into the ship.
Liliya prepared herself, aimed, and then pushed off from the upright. For the few seconds it took her to drift across the hangar, she expected the doorway in the ship’s hull to solidify again, causing her to bounce off and meet her destiny elsewhere, but she grasped onto the doorway’s edge and pulled herself inside.
The ship was small, intimate, and beyond anything that Liliya could understand. Hashori was in a seat that seemed to have congealed from the floor. She was using controls that appeared from the walls and ceiling around her the instant she reached for them.
“Sit,” she said, and a second, smaller seat appeared beside her own.
“What changed your mind about me?” Liliya asked, pulling herself into the seat.
“The news of what is happening to my people.” She whispered something beneath her breath, and liquid metal closed around Liliya and herself, holding them close. “This will hurt,” she said. Then she muttered another phrase, and Liliya’s perception exploded outward in a bright, blinding light.
It felt like forever, but was probably only several seconds later when she opened her eyes. Part of the hull had cleared to offer them a wide view of space. They were pulling quickly away from the Zeere Za, and stationed around the Yautja ship were seven vessels that Liliya recognized so well.
Blooms of fire and escaping atmosphere speckled the Zeere Za’s surface like rapidly growing fungi.
“They’ll follow,” Liliya said.
“We’re cloaked.”
“They know of cloaking technology.”
“Not like this.” Hashori glanced across at Liliya, and there might even have been something resembling a smile in her eyes. “I built it myself.”
* * *
An hour after leaving, Hashori announced that the Zeere Za had been destroyed. She whispered to herself, a prayer or a promise, and Liliya closed her eyes and left the Yautja to her grief.
She waited some time before asking, “What have you heard?”
“Tales of fighting, sacrifice, and glory.”
“And more,” Liliya pressed.
Hashori was silent for a while. It was strange in that small space, uncomfortable, and Liliya wondered how long they would be in here together. The ship hadn’t looked large enough to have many other spaces.
“Destruction,” Hashori said. “Many Yautja killed.” The term she used to name her species wasn’t easily translatable, so Liliya heard it as ‘Yautja’. “Several habitats have been destroyed. A planet I once called home, fallen to the aggressors. The memories… The history… We treasure that more than any physical thing. Every Yautja death is a tragedy, wiping out centuries of experience and history. Every death takes away part of that story. Now, the Yautja story is more denuded than it ever has been before, in all living memory.”
“I’m sorry,” Liliya said.
Hashori was silent for a while, before saying, “You have the means to fight them?”
And you almost destroyed me, Liliya thought, her body still bleeding, wounds merging to form a pulsing background pain. But it would serve no purpose to say that now. She wasn’t even sure the Yautja would recognize or admit to her mistake. The torture had been relentless, but now things had changed, and Hashori was following the direction of that change.
Liliya could only do her best to heal herself, and not to show the weakness and pain she felt. She was damaged, torn, leaking blood, but she could repair. Her systems were already doing their best to mend what was broken and bypass places or circuits that could not be fixed. She would be left with scars—and she was glad.
“Yes,” she replied. “In my veins. A technology being used to control and weaponize those bug-like creatures… we call them Xenomorphs.”
“We call them fire lizards.”
“As good a name as any. Where are you taking me?”
“Where many of my kind in this part of the galaxy are regrouping to fight back. Into the Human Sphere.”
23
AKOKO HALLEY
Love Grove Base, Research Station, LV-1529
September 2692 AD
&n
bsp; While her small DevilDog crew gathered the survivors together and assessed their condition, Major Akoko Halley grabbed Isa Palant’s arm and dragged her back to the Pixie. The Bolt-class ship wasn’t huge, but it was fast, and it looked like it had got them there just in time. Dropping down into action had invigorated the DevilDogs and seen away any remaining anger Halley felt at being sent on this mission.
Now she had the woman she’d come here to save, and it was time to find out just why. Palant was thin and drawn, dirty, scared. She looked hungry and confused, but there was also an excitement about her. A sense of urgency.
They boarded the ship and Halley guided the woman to the small table in the rec room. Sitting her down, she poured some energy drink and dug out a few sachets of power bars. They tasted like shit, but they’d give her an instant boost. It looked like she hadn’t eaten properly in some time.
Halley knew there must be one hell of a story here, but her first task was to prepare a sub-space message for Gerard Marshall. The thought of speaking with the odious man sickened her, but this was her mission, and this was her duty.
“I have to speak to someone in command,” Palant said. She sipped at the drink, then downed it, staring at the opposite wall but seeing into a much farther distance. “It’s urgent. It’s important.”
“I’m composing a transmission to Gerard Marshall, he in command enough?”
“Why did you come here? For me?”
“He told me you’d have some value in the fight against the Yautja.”
“This is happening elsewhere?” There was a desperation to Palant. She was coiled like a power spring, ready to flip and fire—and she’d been bent over the injured Yautja, seemingly talking to the thing using the device she still grasped in her hand. Maybe that’s what Marshall meant when he said how important she might be. Maybe she could communicate with the things.
“There’s an incursion,” Halley confirmed. “No one wants to call it an invasion, because there doesn’t seem to be that many Yautja, but there’s enough of them penetrating the Human Sphere—attacking settlements, and taking and using dropholes—to make it feel more serious than an isolated incident. We’re edging toward war, and that’s why I was sent out here to see if you were still alive. Apparently you might know something that’ll help us beat them.” Halley shrugged.