—and was suddenly knocked out of the picture, blown out of sight in a controlled burst of ammo from offscreen.
“…copy,” said Ellis.
Lara blew out slowly, the relief too great for words. For a moment, she’d been sure that Ellis had become lost to the suit.
A drone ran toward the screen, toward Jess, and Max riddled its lithe form with bullets, acid splashing to the floor of the ship.
Pop spoke then, his first communication with Ellis since asking if he could find Teape. “You’re doin’ real good, Ellis! Maybe we got you on the wrong job, son.”
The bluff, overly friendly tone made Lara grit her teeth.
What an asshole you are, Eric—
Max pivoted the flamethrower over its shoulder and sent fire at another drone; the bug shrieked and fell into the flames, thrashing.
“Fuck—you, Pop,” said Ellis, and Lara grinned tightly. Pop didn’t answer.
There was a low hiss coming from somewhere, low and then rising into an insane pitch, becoming a shrill, terrible cry of fury.
Jess’s camera turned, and Lara could see the source of the inhuman rage, knew already that it was the queen. Her massive, towering form filled the shadows at one end of the cargo hold. Even twenty meters away, she was gigantic, her multiple arms spread wide, the sweeping black comb of her crown the size of a normal man.
Max stepped forward and opened fire, a patter of grenades launched and the pulse rifle full on. Bullets tore at her thickly plated body, the grenades bursting and cutting her legs out from underneath her monstrous form. Screaming, she crumpled to the deck in a wash of acid blood.
And as simple as that, the queen was no more.
* * *
For a few seconds, nobody spoke and nothing moved. The scent, of frying acid and burned, rotten flesh was thick in the hazy air. Flames hissed, licked softly against webby strands of alien secretion low to the floor.
Jess looked up at Max, not sure of what to say. The display of power had been frightening in its intensity—and Jess didn’t mind admitting that he was a little afraid of that much power, no matter whose side it was on.
“Ellis, are you—can you cut me loose?”
The Max raised one massive limb and took a step closer. Jess stared up at the Berserker, the suit pocked with scrapes and acid-splash, and saw an M41 strapped to one hip.
“You remembered your rifle,” he said, and smiled hesitantly. He’d been through a hell of a lot and he ached, body and soul—but he suddenly felt like it was nothing compared to what Ellis had done. The kid had risked his life to save Jess’s and Teape’s—and had willingly volunteered for a partial lobotomy to do it.
“Didn’t—even need it,” said Ellis, his voice shaky. It was disconcerting to hear his voice on the ’set when he was inside the Max suit, less than a meter away.
Max carefully pushed its huge right arm into the webbing over Jess’s head, crushing and tearing the dried material that held him captive. In a few more gentle pushes, Jess was free.
He walked around behind Max and unbuckled the sling of the pulse rifle, the familiar weight of it good in his trembling hands. He turned to Teape and felt his throat tighten.
The face-hugger was still attached, but a poke from Jess’s rifle and it fell away, dead. One of Teape’s eyes was open, glazed and unseeing—but he still drew breath, long and slow. He’d been seeded, and Jess had a promise to keep.
“Rest now, Teape,” he whispered, and placed the barrel of the M41 against Teape’s forehead. He flicked the selector to single fire and squeezed the trigger.
Teape’s thin and tired body jumped, convulsed once— and it was over for the point man, blood coursing over his face, covering the open eye mercifully with a sheet of red.
“Two dead,” said Jess, and he felt the anger rise up inside, threaten to overwhelm him in its cold and deadly grasp.
“Two good men, Pop! Damn you, you and the fuckin’ Company! Teape and Candyman are dead, you fuck, they’re dead and it’s your goddamn fault!”
Pop’s voice was rigid, tightly controlled. “Plenty of time to cuss out whoever you like when you’ve finished your job, mister. Locate the primary console and begin transfer of the data log to Nemesis.”
There was a pause, and Pop added, “I’d hurry if I were you, ground leader. There are a lot of bugs still on that station. Could be anywhere.”
It almost sounded like a harmless observation, but Jess figured differently. The implications were perfectly clear in the thinly veiled threat, and he shook his head slowly, stunned into silence. Pop was holding all the cards, and Jess would perform whether he liked it or not…
…or Pop won’t let us leave, his mind finished, and the rage he felt was held in check only by the awareness that Pop Izzard was gonna pay for this when they got back to base. Pop and the Company.
“I’m sorry—Teape,” Ellis whispered, and Jess looked up at the Max, imagined that he could feel the young man’s sadness radiating from the giant suit.
“It’s okay, Ellis,” he said gently, “it’s—there’s nothing you could’ve done. Just hold on in there, we’ll get you out as soon as we can.”
Jess stared at Teape’s ruined face for a moment longer, then shouldered his rifle and went to find ops in the devastated ship, Max trailing heavily behind.
24
“Data log primed for transmission, Commander,” said Jess, and his voice dripped spite like Lara had never heard before.
“Affirmative. Proceed, over,” said Pop.
Lara had pulled the Nemesis relay out of the internal console and made a few adjustments while Jess was finding the Trader’s data log. She watched now as the information flashed across the portable’s screen in lines of code. She’d also tapped into Max’s cameras, although she didn’t have the equipment to tie into the suit’s computer…
“Coming through loud and proud, ground leader,” said Pop, and Lara hated him, despised each sound of his stupid, lying voice. Jess was right; Teape and Pulaski wouldn’t be dead now if Pop had put the lives of the team ahead of his loyalty to the Company.
She looked at the block of monitors and saw stealthy movement across the screens. She didn’t know what to expect, what any of them could expect now that the queen was dead. There had to be hundreds of drones left alive on the terminal, and many of them had started toward the Trader—but not in the screaming rampage she’d assumed. The internal system had solid visuals for over half of the station, and the hissing, sliding creatures she saw were scattered throughout, alone or in small groups. They were moving past cameras, slinking down corridors in the shadows, but their actions were slow, unhurried—as if the death of their queen left them without a clear goal.
It didn’t matter. The primary log for the Trader had been transferred to Nemesis; the rest was just backup. They could all leave now, get Ellis out of Max, get on to dealing with their losses—
—and I can start my file for disciplinary action against Pop, she thought, and smiled grimly. She had a hell of a lot to say about both his actions and the Company’s; as soon as they hit base, she was gonna do everything in her power to see Eric Izzard busted for dereliction of duty and sexual harassment. And the Company had violated about fifty laws alone by the very existence of the Trader—
—and just what actually happened to the initial distress signals from 949? She didn’t believe that. there hadn’t been any, not anymore—and she was gonna talk loudly about it and keep talking until somebody listened.
For now, though…
“The rest is automatic, Pop,” she said through clenched jaws. “You don’t need them, you can call it—over.”
“Of course,” said Pop. “It’s called. Well done, people. Rest assured, I’ll certainly be taking your complaints up with the Company…”
He paused, and Lara suddenly wished she could see his face. He sounded—blank, his rough voice colorless, unreadable. Was he sorry for Teape, for Candyman? She doubted that he was worried about Ellis, but the t
eam that he’d led for months, the men he’d joked with, ate with— did he feel guilt, depression, anger—?
He’s like one of the drones, her mind whispered, alien, no way to tell what’s going on with him, not anymore…
She shuddered in the sour, cool air of the communications room and looked back at the screens where the displaced aliens wandered and crept randomly.
“There’s an auxiliary air lock one level below your docking bay, ground leader,” said Pop. “Make for that, I’ll send the shuttle and you can pick up Lara on the way back. Lieutenant, monitor visually until they reach the ship and then prepare to evac; everyone copy?”
“Yo,” said Jess, and Lara saw him through Max in the ruined Trader, checking his rifle, expression tight and angry.
“Copy,” said Lara, and walked to the monitor block, readying herself to do what she could.
She called up the few operating cameras that strung the path to the auxiliary and took a deep breath, tried to psych herself up for their journey. She was tired and feeling pain, but Jess and Ellis would need her clear, in control, watching for ambush—
Lara studied the monitors and the breath caught in her throat. “Jess, Ellis, look sharp—you got multiple hostiles in between you and where you need to be…”
The drones crept and hissed, and Lara wondered suddenly if the terrible breed didn’t have some kind of a plan, after all—she tapped buttons, her dread deepening exponentially with each view.
Every corridor she scanned was lined with dark bodies, as if they knew that their queen’s murderers would have to leave eventually—and it didn’t look like the creatures meant to let them escape.
* * *
“You hear that, Ellis? We’re gettin’ outa here, back to Nemesis… but it ain’t gonna be easy. Do you understand?”
Ellis heard and Max looked at Jess, a human surrounded by angles and lines of equipment in the room where they had stopped. The vessel’s operations room, data transferred—
—completed 274.7seconds
“Understand?”
It was getting harder to speak, vocal communication a strain on the body that the program resisted as unnecessary. The correct words weren’t there, either—Ellis had to struggle against his own mind to find the meanings and then against Max to convey those meanings.
“Yes, Jess—how,” he managed, frustrated that it was the best he could do. In the time it had taken to speak, Max’s sensors had measured the distance between seven light emitters on one of the panels in the room and calculated every possible combination of chronological patterning.
Jess seemed to understand. “We just wanna get out, okay? So don’t strain yourself blowin’ up shit that don’t matter—and you lead, I guess. I don’t wanna get in your way if it’s bad, right?”
Ellis realized that he couldn’t feel his lips moving.
“…not hurt you, Jess.”
The sounds that the man made in response were soothing and soft in his mind, with a strong pleasure association for Ellis—but the exact meaning was lost to Max. Ellis understood that Jess was happy with him and that it was time to go; it would have to be enough.
Max shifted and turned, the program adjusting movement and providing weapons’ breakdown and capacity as Ellis’s legs flexed and relaxed. The sensors tracked smoke and shifts of erosion in the lifeless nest—lifeless but far from still; Max picked up all kinds of movement that Ellis and Jess wouldn’t have seen, categorizing it as nonthreatening while they moved toward the ship’s entry.
As they approached the opening, the sensors marked six life-forms outside the vessel, etched green lines of alien bodies across Ellis’s vision. The Max raided its arms as Ellis relaxed into the movements, aware that Jess was safely 1.61 meters behind.
“Ellis, Jess—I got drones on the stairwell at one o’clock, maybe thirty, and it’s the fastest way to the auxiliary—”
Lara, thought Ellis, and just had time to feel comforted by her voice before Max opened up, his mind too full of numbers and configurations to feel anything else.
* * *
Jess raised the M41, his focus narrowing to the task at hand.
—get outa here alive, get the kid out—
The Max could certainly take care of itself, but Jess wasn’t so sure about Ellis. The young tech didn’t sound so good, like the suit was eating him up. As a leader, he may have failed Teape and the Candyman—it was something he was gonna be thinking about for a long time, assuming they got out of this in one piece. But his responsibility now was to get Ellis to that shuttle, and he meant to do it or die trying.
There were a half-dozen drones outside the ship, and Jess targeted the closest—
—and watched it blown into a hundred shrieking pieces before he could squeeze the trigger.
Max swept its left arm smoothly, took out the others in a rapid patter of rounds that devastated the bug bodies. Limbs and skulls split and shattered, the dark monsters taken down in a precision that defied Jess’s perception of movement—like the bugs stood still, even though he had seen them running only seconds before.
The Max stepped forward and paused, then raised the grenade launcher again, this time at the entry Jess had been carried through to get to the nest.
Jess looked but saw nothing as Max lobbed four grenades at the open door, the caps white—incendiaries, M60 phosphorous rounds.
They exploded in quick succession, and Jess heard screeches of pain and saw flumes of movement amidst the sudden blinding curtain of fire and white smoke.
Mother a God, kid sees through walls now—
“…where,” whispered Ellis, and Jess found the stairs that Lara had called and pointed, still stunned by the awesome force of the suit in action.
“Keep, back,” said Ellis, and the Max strode toward the closed door. The right arm pivoted sideways and unleashed a fresh jet of flame at the burning entry across the bay—the fire met a trio of drones that had leapt through the smoke, frying them just as they landed. All were cooked in an instant, not even enough time to scream before they died.
I’m gonna take him to the shuttle? Who the fuck I’m kiddin’?
Jess jogged after Max in the smoky haze of the wasted bay, rifle ready but nothing to shoot. He stopped as Max reached the door, sidled to the left, and trained the M41 to give cover—
—and felt his eyes widen as Max walked straight into the door, through the thick metal as though it wasn’t there. Shrill, trumpeting cries filled the bay as Max was suddenly surrounded by teeming blackness.
Drones tore past the Berserker, scrabbled through the torn frame, and ran at Jess in a furious dark joy, their terrible skulls grinning and sleek.
Jess opened up, afraid and screaming himself, a wordless cry of rage that came from deep inside. And then there was just the heat, black and moving and consuming like midnight fire.
25
Lara saw ten, twenty, too many black bodies to count rush at Max on the tight landing. Teeth snatched and dripped, the shrieks deafening, hellish.
The Max stepped into them, pulse rifle roaring. The armored limb swung back and forth, razing the wall of springing creatures in a furious blaze.
Jess was screaming in a fury all his own, blasting at the ones that had made it past before Max had blocked their way. Drones screeched and fell, clattered to the smoking deck in spraying mists of hissing blood.
The Berserker moved forward, still firing. Lara saw brittle dead limbs snap beneath its enormous feet, crushed into smoking powder against the steps.
A bug scampered toward Jess from his blind side, arms reaching—
“Jess!” Lara cried.
He spun, weapon still firing, but there wasn’t enough time. The drone latched one claw into his arm, pushed its grinning skull in for the kill—
—and was brought down in a pulse of weapon fire from Max, left arm turned back toward Jess as the flamethrower unleashed searing flames against the bugs in the stairwell. Acid spattered against Jess’s suit, missing his wide-ey
ed face by scant millimeters. The drone’s talon was still embedded in his arm, the rest of its body splashed across the bay floor. Jess knocked the claw away with a cry of disgust.
Jesus, that was close! Lara gripped the edges of the console in front of her, hardly breathing.
Max took another thundering step forward, low fire sputtering uselessly against its armored legs. The flamethrower had dropped a dozen of the monsters; Lara could hear the sizzle of boiling fluids beneath their exoskeletal plates as the rifles paused, the threat temporarily halted.
Jess followed, choking in the billows of smoke that rose up from the blasted steps. He jumped and danced through the guttering fire, avoiding the worst of it as he tried to keep up with the Berserker.
They reached the bottom of the first flight, and Lara realized that the next surveillance cam wasn’t working. She looked back at the options she had, swallowing heavily. Max’s suit, front and back; Jess’s helmet. The next operational view she had was at the corridor outside the stairwell, where hissing shapes capered through the thick red shadows.
“No visuals rest of the way down, go—right at the bottom hatch,” she said. “Hostiles incoming.”
“Copy,” Jess coughed out. Ellis didn’t answer.
The Max’s front screen showed more dark bodies piling into the stairwell. Ellis raised the arms of the suit and started to fire again.
* * *
Jess’s eyes burned from the noxious smoke that billowed through the passage, his lungs straining for air as Ellis opened up on the next wave of attackers. The howling screams of the creatures echoed against the exploding rounds of Max’s rifle, creating a deafening clamor in the murky haze.
Blood dribbled down his arm from where the bug had grabbed him, but it wasn’t bad, not as bad as the dizzying waves of smoke and intense, radiating heat. Jess stayed on the landing as Max moved down, and the bugs screeched and fell before the power of the Max’s deadly grasp.
Jess kept his rifle trained on the climbing bugs but didn’t need to fire; Max took them out easily, sprayed the rising tide with a rapid patter of bullets more effectively than Jess could ever manage. Drones fell and bled, hissed and died—
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