“Teape!”
From out of the blackness of the offshoot, a drone leapt to Teape’s side and snatched him up, hissing and drooling. Another of the grinning monsters joined it, helping to lift Teape’s limp body.
In only a second they were gone, back into the darkness with their living prize.
20
—Ohmygod—
The face-hugger leapt, its claws pushing into the flesh of her abdomen, the muscular tail hard and strong against her stomach.
Lara jerked up her left arm and blocked her face, her knuckles slamming against the open control panel. The creature hit her forearm, drove it against her nose hard enough to draw blood. The long, jointed fingers curled around, clutched at her cheekbones, the razor talons slicing into her skin and tearing hair as it scrabbled to seat itself.
The face-hugger’s ovipositor shot out, wet and hot, dripping. It probed against one eye, the thick rings of muscle pushing, searching, the oozing alien lubricant stinging like acid. The creature was powerful, fast, pressing her down and off balance with its flexing, muscular tail. Her arm was pinned, the bones about to snap from the incredible pressure—
She raised her other hand, fist clenched around the hand laser. Her thumb found the switch and the soldering tool became a weapon, only chance—!
She brought it down as hard as she could, the narrow two-pronged tip sliding into the face-hugger’s armored back in a sizzling hiss as she drove it home. A horrible squeal and a whiff of ozone. The creature let go suddenly and Lara released the laser, pushed out and away.
The carrier crashed against the table behind it, deadly silent again, the laser embedded in the thick shell of its back.
Lara sat up, snatched blindly for her rifle. In a flash, the creature was running at her, clattering toward her, the laser sliding out of its back and gone. Lara twisted, pushed against the floor, slid away—away from both the skittering, giant tick and the M41, now hopelessly out of reach.
She kicked at the creature and it tried to latch onto her boot. Her back hit a wall, another console, and she was on her feet in one massive push on trembling legs.
She sidled to the left, stumbled, the silent, deadly face-hugger slower now but still coming—
—die, just die already! Her hands groped for a weapon behind her, anything she could grab, left the goddamn handgun on the shuttle!
Her fingers scrabbled uselessly at a tall box, snatched at a handle as the long tail coiled—
Lara ducked and pulled at the same time. The face-hugger leapt, the tail smacking across the top of her head as it flew over her bleeding face. She spun, stood as the tick slammed into the door of the tiny refrigeration unit she had opened by chance.
She grabbed the edge of the door and jammed it closed, arms straining, throwing her entire body into the motion. The creature had turned, whipped its tail behind it for leverage to jump—
—but the door snicked shut, broke one of the hugger’s slender legs against the frame of the cold unit. A trickle of hissing blood slid down the seal; the creature thrashed uselessly inside the unit. She heard glass break and leaned against the door, heart hammering in her chest.
The magnetic lock button was on the handle. Lara thumbed it, heard the tiny click that told her it had engaged. She sagged against the unit, caught her breath, wiped at the trickles of blood on her face with a shaking hand.
“…yeah,” she breathed, dazed and trembling, “…you just cool off for a while…”
She tugged at the handle lightly but the seal held; it would have to do.
Lara staggered back to the main computer and pushed the amplifier slates closed, panting, swallowing hard. The sound of Pop’s voice over her headset was actually beautiful, tense and gruff and crystal clear.
“…to ground leader, do you copy, over?”
“Back on-line, over,” she said, and scooped up her rifle. Still shaking, she walked to the internal monitor block to see if their team was still alive.
* * *
Ellis almost laughed out loud as the voices of Pop and Lara cut in smoothly over his ’set. They’d done it, somehow they had fixed the problem—
His smile faded and he stood with fists clenched in the humid and stinking corridor, listening. The shrieks of attacking drones, the rapid patter of a pulse rifle. “Ground leader, report!” Pop snapped.
“Pulaski’s hurt bad, Pop!” Jess’s voice was winded, grunts of exertion punctuating his words. The sounds of battle were loud and insistent—a trumpeting alien cry, the killing response of a rifle. Jess sounded anything but cool, his voice cracking.
“They just took Teape! He’s gone, they’re taking him to the hive through the third offshoot on four! Jesus, what a mess—”
Pop didn’t let him finish. “Teape! Report!”
A muffled gasping, and Teape’s response was to Ellis, not Pop.
“…Ellis, don’t let me down, kid, you gotta start revvin’ Max—I don’t want to die like this, I can’t die like this—”
Ellis felt the man’s horror, the terrible, gut-wrenching fear and his own anxious pity, so sharp it was like a physical pain. “Hold on, Teape!”
“…they’re taking me into a dock, it’s huge and—” There was a strangled gasp, and when Teape spoke again, there was a thread of cold fury in his shaking voice.
“…oh, fucking shit, do you see it—? Lara, Pop, can you see it?”
Ellis heard Lara, her shocked and empty voice clear above the panicked breathing, the bursts of ammo from Jess, the alien screams.
“Weyland/Yutani Trader… they got in on a Company ship—?”
Teape was gasping with rage. “The Company knew, they had to know! Jesus, no wonder they wanted this quiet—! It’s the nest, the ship is the nest—”
“—and we’re not gonna let it get out, kiddies,” said Pop, his own voice tense and quick. “We salvage that log and destroy the evidence, the orders stand! Ellis, listen up! Lara’s aboard the terminal so you’re on your own, no fuck-ups, copy?”
Ellis stammered an affirmative, stunned, his stomach a knot of confused anger and betrayal.
A Company ship, this whole thing is because of the Company—!
“Flush Max, now! Do it!”
Ellis shook his head numbly, reached for the panel on Max’s bed and flipped it open. Pulaski, down. Jess fighting for his life while Teape was carried off to his worst nightmare…
“Flushing, over,” he said, and pushed the buttons that would rip the Berserker away from his wavering sleep. The reads showed the sudden drop and Max’s heart rate rose quickly, too quickly as his vitals jerked and fluctuated wildly.
—please, Max, please help them—
“Jess, prepare to take cover,” said Pop. “Ellis, adrenaline one!”
Jess shouted in Ellis’s ear, screamed at Pop. “Where the fuck I’m s’posed to go? They’re all over us, Christ—”
Pop’s voice rose and cut him off. “Ellis, do it, copy!”
“Level one,” Ellis whispered and hit the first bank, plunging the chemicals into Max and watching the stats in a cold and desperate sweat.
The Max shuddered and started to life.
* * *
“Fuckin’ Company, Candyman!” Jess shouted, his thoughts racing and wild as another drone lunged, reached for him in screaming glee. The M41 blew a jagged hole in the terrible skull, even as a handful of others leapt to take its place.
“Level two!” Ellis, priming the Max from just outside the corridor.
—take cover, get demon, drop when he comes—!
Jess sprayed the shrieking monsters with armor-piercers, terrified, cold in his heart. They weren’t gonna make it, there were too many of them. Max would kill them all, but Max would probably kill him, too, on its way to Teape inside the hive.
At least Pulaski was already down, out of the fire—Jess shot a look at the man on the floor behind him and then fired at another hissing drone as his brain registered what he’d seen. The Candyman’s eyes were open and
set, glazed and unseeing in the dim red light. Jess felt sick with the knowledge; Pulaski was dead.
“Pulaski’s—they killed Candyman!” Jess felt a horrible relief rise up over the sadness inside, and hated himself for it. The sweet, stupid weight lifter was gone, and he knew he’d mourn for him when he could—but he couldn’t help being glad that he no longer had to protect him.
“Watch your back, Jess!” Lara shouted.
Even as the words reached him, a staggering blow from behind dropped him to his knees. His rifle was knocked away from his hands, the force of the powerful strike like being hit by a moving truck.
Jess fell to the floor, his first instinct to come up fighting, screaming, to vent his rage and pain against the stupidly grinning creatures that surrounded him. It would be suicide, and he didn’t care, didn’t give a shit about any of it as he reached out to push away from the bloody floor—
DON’T MOVE! DON’T YOU FUCKING MOVE!
Jess obeyed the thought instantly, suddenly knew it as his only chance. Instinct. It went against every emotional nerve ending, every impulse in his body, his muscles screaming at him to run, to fight—
—gotta go limp, let them take me—
Jess used every ounce of will he possessed to stay down, to force his tense muscles into submission. The shrieks had become hisses, sliding and evil in the dark red light. Just like that, he was no longer the enemy; he was now useful to the queen, a live host to be carried away and exploited as an incubator for the good of the hive.
Cool claws touched his skin, arms like bones sliding under his legs, his chest. Jess closed his eyes, so afraid that he could hardly breathe.
“They’re taking me to the hive,” he whispered, and the hissing drones lifted him up almost gently and carried him away.
* * *
“Hit him with three, Ellis, and stand well back!”
The hot corridor swam sickeningly around him, Jess’s soft and terrified voice still whispering through Ellis’s mind.
Max was standing now, had raised its massive arms on the second dose and whipped its giant head up, ready…
“Level three,” said Ellis, and hit the final switch.
Max shuddered all over and took a giant, ground-shaking step forward, raised the flamethrower—
—and jolted to a complete stop.
21
Lara stood in the communications room, body frozen, eyes wide. The camera outside the tropidome showed all too clearly what had happened; the Berserker was still and silent, locked into position. Ellis stood behind the mobile transport, his face flushed with anguish and disbelief.
Pop’s voice was a strangled, horrified cry. “No! Hit him again, Ellis, blast it!”
Ellis dropped his gaze to the screen in front of him and shook his head. “It—I can’t,” he breathed, and looked back at the frozen Max, openly stunned, his expression tortured. “His heart rate is too high, another dose will kill him—”
Jess spoke in a quavering whisper, intense and desperate. “You don’t get him going, we’re all dead, do you hear me? You gotta take the risk!”
Ellis stood there, unmoving, and Lara could see the indecision in his boyish face, fear and confusion and a terrible, wrenching guilt.
Teape moaned over her headset, hissed out the tech’s name. “Ellisss!”
Lara saw Jess’s limp form carried past one of the station cameras, surrounded by a horde of capering drones; he’d be with Teape soon.
She swallowed, hard and forced the words to come. “Ellis, you have to do something; I’m sorry, there’s no other way—”
“Ellis, do it, that’s an order!” Pop shouted, and Lara saw the young tech’s face tighten with anger.
Way to read the situation, Lara thought bitterly, the rest of her mind racing ahead, figuring the distance between the command center and the tropidome. It would take too long for her to navigate her way up, even assuming the trip didn’t kill her, Ellis was truly on his own.
He looked down at the monitor again, shook his head. He left the controls and walked to the frozen Max unit, not hurrying but not wasting time, either.
“It’s too late,” he said softly, and Lara heard it in his voice, felt a sinking sensation in her gut that told her what was next.
“He’s—he’s dying, or already dead. I’ve got to get him out,” he said, and reached up to unlock the hatch set into the unit’s broad back. Metal popped against metal and the panel hissed open, the thick plate rising into the air.
For the next few excruciating seconds, nobody spoke. Ellis reached into the massive suit with both hands and eased back out, holding on to the shoulders of the volunteer.
The humanoid figure was encased from head to toe in a sheath of dark green material and wrapped with a million wires. He was skeletal thin, his wasted limbs and body only skin over bones. Thick metal cuffs wrapped around his arms, wrists, legs—bands of circuitry, the wires leading back into the machine. Tubes of different colors were connected to every conceivable orifice, pulling free and spilling out fluids as Ellis gently lifted him away from the giant suit.
The man was so thin that Ellis held him easily with one arm; he pulled away the cloth mask with his free hand.
A hollow-eyed skull was revealed, all traces of humanity wiped clean from the frozen expression of terror and pain. The wide and staring eyes were rimmed with blood, more of it coursing from his nose and mouth.
“Dear God,” whispered Lara, unable to tear her gaze from the horrible sight. It was the face of a man who had been driven insane, locked away inside a metal shell, alone, completely alone. He was supposed to be in his thirties, but the harsh lines and protruding bones of his face and body added decades. She could see the square interface panel set into the back of his hairless skull, saw the numbers tattooed across the wasted brow.
“He’s dead,” said Ellis, and Lara’s mind added cruelly to the sentence without her consent; there was no way around it, not anymore.
—and so are Jess and Teape.
* * *
He had thought there would be no more fear, but he was wrong. Knowing you were going to die was nothing; he’d thought the awareness would be enough, and for a time, it had been. But everything had changed when the drones had carried him into the ship.
“…Company ship,” Teape whispered, and the anger burned in his belly, sour and hateful. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t help the incredible rage that coursed through his veins, his exhausted, trapped body. The loss of Pulaski fed into the terrible stream of bitterness. And if he could feel that, could taste the betrayal like bile in his throat—
—then it lets the fear in, too.
They’d webbed him maybe ten meters from the wide-open door and placed an egg in front of him, and now Max wasn’t coming. And everything had changed again, just like that.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, not like this!
If he had known, he wouldn’t be here. He would’ve fought, struggled, accepted a quick death at the claws of a drone—and now it was too late. Max wasn’t coming, and he was facing his death, the leathery orb a meter in front of him.
There was a flurry of hissing activity near his wall, and he managed to turn his head a few centimeters, afraid that it would be Jess but hoping it would be, too; he didn’t want to be alone here, surrounded by the suspended dead, decaying bodies strung up like terrible ornaments. He felt horribly selfish, wishing for another man to join him in hell, but he couldn’t help it. The only consolation in this nightmare was in the stink of decaying flesh; corpses didn’t plead for mercy.
It wasn’t the ground leader, not yet; the few drones that moved through the vast chamber were simply removing empty shells nearby—clearing a space for Jess, probably. They’d placed another unopened egg a couple of meters to his left. The queen’s chamber was off to his right, he thought; it was the direction from which the drone carrying his egg had come. The ship was apparently big enough for the queen to have her own room, unsullied by host bodies, a d
arker, quieter place for her to squeeze out her terrible children.
He stared at the drying, puckered shell in front of him, the carrier of his fate. A gift of insanity and death…
…two for the price of one, free! With bargains like this, who needs enemies? His thoughts were jumbled, babbling, the exhaustion and anger and fear too great for him to think straight. And maybe that was a good thing, considering.
The nest inside the Trader was brutally clear, more light than he’d ever seen inside a hive. He’d always hated the dark of hell, but this was worse—because the setup of the ship was undeniable in the muted yellow light of the overheads far above. He was in a gigantic cargo hold, designed to carry animals—a zoo, and the stacked rows of giant reinforced cages with shredded steel doors made it obvious what the crew had been carrying.
—but Jesus, why? Why would the Company be transporting drones?
He already had an idea, and it made him sick. The exact reason didn’t even matter; why did the Company do anything? It was about profit, and the crew of the Nemesis had been called in to clean up their deadly mistake, never mind that a couple of cons would probably die in the process—
Teape closed his eyes, opened them a moment later when a pair of drones brought in Jess.
“Fight them,” said Teape, “you still have a chance; fight!”
Even as he said the words, he could see that Jess wasn’t going to do it. As one of the drones placed the ground leader next to him, spit out a dripping mouthful of webby secretions, and roped him to the wall, Teape could see the denial on Jess’s face. Jess looked scared and tired and sad, but he didn’t look as though he believed it was over.
Teape tried to help. “It’s over, Jess! Don’t let it set, you gotta try to get out—”
“It ain’t over till it’s over,” said Jess quietly. He held still, let the hissing creature rope his body to the wall with the sticky goop.
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