Aliens

by Jonathan Maberry

  Inside the main doors, everything appeared normal. Bestwick closed the doors behind them and the air movement settled. Silence fell.

  “Forward, slow,” Halley whispered. They all heard through their combat suits.

  The corridor was wide and low and scattered with litter, walls scraped and battered, all signs of it being a well-used thoroughfare. No traces of combat. No movement.

  “Nassise,” Halley said. Nassise held his motion detector ahead of him and moved slightly ahead of the group. His instrument’s readings played across their visors, showing a rough schematic of the structure up to thirty meters ahead. Nothing moved.

  “Boss, I can patch into facility communications here,” Eddols said. She busied herself at a comm point on the wall, while the rest of the marines spread out in a protective pattern.

  Durand tried to make sense of the place. The major had given no indication as to what research they were looking for, and perhaps she hadn’t even been told. It was hard to discern from present surroundings just what this base’s prime purpose might be. It was likely that over the years its use had changed, and now…

  Now, something had gone wrong.

  “Nothing,” Eddols said. “I’ve scanned all channels. There’s no chatter, and the comms haven’t been accessed for over nineteen days.”

  “Whatever happened here was a while ago,” Sprenkel said.

  “Stay alert,” Halley said, unnecessarily. The whole squad were on tiptoes. They knew very well that some of the worst dangers could stay dormant for some time.

  They moved on, heading along the eastern arm’s central corridor and approaching the first doors leading off into side rooms.

  “Misra and Durand on the left, Bestwick and Sprenkel right,” Halley said. “Take it in turns.”

  They worked methodically, scanning the rooms behind closed doors with a variety of instruments before entering––motion detectors, heat monitors, gas spectrum analyzers. They found offices, sleeping quarters, and storage rooms, but nothing alive.

  No sign of whatever had gone wrong.

  After fifty minutes they reached the base’s circular hub. This was a much larger structure, several storeys high, and it would take a lot longer to search.

  “Two squads?” Misra asked, but the major shook her head.

  “I don’t like this. It’ll take longer, but I want us to stay together. We do this floor first, then work our way upwards. I want to see if––”

  “Major, movement!” Nassise said.

  Durand moved to the left and crouched, Misra right beside her. They aimed their com-rifles along the gently curving corridor, and Durand checked out the motion readings.

  “Next floor up,” she said. “Seems confused, like…”

  “Like a swarm,” Misra said.

  “Nice choice of word,” Durand said. “Thanks for that.”

  “Let’s move,” Halley snapped, and they followed her towards a nearby open staircase.

  Senses heightened by the first signs of something active, they moved smoothly and quickly up the stairs, cautious on the half-landings, suits scanning ahead and relaying information to their visors and ear implants. Every marine was trained to keep one eye on reality at all times––suits could malfunction, data and displays could be misread.

  It was Durand who saw the first movement before any suit system spotted it.

  “Head of the stairs!” she said, aiming at the shifting shape. She didn’t fire––it could have been one of the facility’s staff, confused or injured, or afraid of what was happening. But her finger stroked the trigger, and she stared at the place where she’d seen the object.

  “What was that?” Misra asked.

  “Dunno.” The two of them had taken point. By the time Halley crouched behind them, everything was motionless once more.

  “Maybe a shadow,” Halley said, and Durand grunted, because she knew better than to mistake a shadow for something it wasn’t, and they all knew that.

  “What’s that stink?” Eddols asked.

  Durand took in a slow, deep breath. “Burning,” she said. “That’s burning flesh.”

  “No,” Bestwick said. “Burnt flesh. There’s no heat left to it.”

  At the top of the staircase the corridor headed in one direction, and at its end, past heavy doors warped and broken from their hinges, they found the first of the large control rooms.

  “Holy shit,” Durand whispered. She tried to settle and calm her breathing, but she allowed in the shock, just for a moment. Denying it was not possible.

  Everything was burnt. Everyone was burnt. The whole area was scorched black, swathes of soot coating walls, floor and ceilings, computer terminals ruined, furniture slumped down into strange sculptures. The dead were twisted into crisp statues, a few on their own, many more stacked against two emergency exit doors that had failed to open. These piles were grotesque, sprouting thin limbs and melted heads, with flesh burnt away to expose blackened bones, cracked and crumbled beneath the terrible heat. Metal structures had melted, and a platform halfway around the room had collapsed.

  “Move in, but slowly,” Halley said. “Sprenkel, Bestwick, count the dead.”

  “Seriously?” Bestwick asked.

  “Best guess,” Halley said. “There were ninety-eight personnel stationed here. We’ll start keeping count. Eddols, locate the nearest staircase.”

  A couple of minutes later they moved on. Bestwick estimated forty dead in that one large room, and when they climbed to the next level they found many more. These were piled in three rooms, barricaded doors melted from their mounts, bodies contorted into terrible, agonized poses. Many corpses had become one. Durand was only glad there were few facial features to recognize, although she saw several smaller, wretched shapes which could only have been children.

  “What the hell could do this?” she asked.

  “Plasma weapons?” Misra asked, but they all heard the doubt in his voice.

  “No weaponry we know,” Halley said. “Structures are largely sound, superficial damage, not even flamethrowers would be this precise. Whatever did this was just after the people.”

  “I think we can say this is a done deal,” Bestwick said.

  “I concur,” Sprenkel said. “No sign of movement or activity. No survivors.”

  “We should sweep the rest of the base,” Misra said.

  “We will,” Halley said. She glanced at Durand, then looked away.

  What the fuck is this? Durand wondered. Were the Company experimenting with something that malfunctioned? Some new weapon?

  “We’ll finish this wing,” Halley said. “North wing next, then––”

  “More movement!” Sprenkel said. “All around, and incoming!”

  “That swarm again,” Durand said, and she glanced at Misra.

  “Got your back,” he said.

  “Positions!” Halley said, and there was no need for her to elaborate. They knew how to set up a defensive structure. Three of them faced one way along the corridor, four the other, and they could only wait as the motion detectors showed the swarm closing in.

  They all saw them at the same time.

  “What the fuck––” Bestwick said, her voice swallowed in the explosion of gunfire.

  Durand opened up with short, controlled laser bursts. Her suit darkened its visor to the glare of exploding and flashing ordnance, but she still saw the flitting, streaking things, flying along the corridor towards them and erupting in flames as they were taken down.

  They were slightly larger than her fist, airborne and moving quickly towards them. Her suit marked targets and she continued firing, switching rapidly from laser to nano-munitions when targets became too numerous. The creatures dodged and twitched, some of them escaping the marines’ onslaught, many more not. They blew apart, crashed against the walls and ceiling, splashing across the floor as wet smears, and each one seemed to explode as if filled with compressed gas. The atmosphere here was not oxygen rich, so Durand assumed that these beasts h
ad some sort of internal combustion source.

  That made sense.

  Those people had been burned to death.

  As Durand switched her aim from creature to creature, terrible confirmation came from the other direction.

  “Nassise, watch out!”

  “Boss, duck, don’t let them––”

  “Eddols, out of the fucking way!”

  “Oh, no…”

  “Eddols!”

  The scream was loud and sustained, and Durand risked a quick glance behind her.

  Eddols had taken one single, deadly step towards the attacking throng, and now the things surrounded her, seeming to hover or drift close to her while she burned.

  Fire erupted from their mouths. It streamed out like liquid flame, twisting in the air, pouring and floating in defiance of gravity, impacting against Eddols and melting through her protective suit as if it was hardly there.

  Nassise tried to go to her aid, but Halley held him back.

  Eddols screamed. Her voice was high and agonized. She thrashed, dropped her weapon, and then started running away from her companions.

  “Eddols,” Durand breathed, knowing that she was watching her friend die.

  The beasts swarmed, still exhaling that strange, lava-like fire onto their vulnerable victim. As she ran through their midst, more and more were attracted to her conflagration. Black, oily smoke belched from her ruptured suit, and the stink of cooking meat filled the air.

  “Grenade,” Eddols croaked, her voice wet and hot.

  Durand and the others realized her intention, all of them crouching mere seconds before the explosion. It ripped along the corridor, destroying a score of the fire-beasts and sweeping a blast wall ahead of it, knocking more of them from the air to bounce and skitter across the floor.

  Durand jumped up, braced her legs, brought her com-rifle up into a firing position, and unleashed a stream of nano-munitions against the creatures still rolling and struggling on the floor. The resultant haze of small explosions killed them all. She shifted her gaze. Eyes wide. Breath light and fast.

  Eddols was spread all over the corridor.

  Durand had seen plenty of people die, a few of them friends. But she’d never seen someone she cared about go out like this. There was not even comfort in hoping it had been quick, because it hadn’t. After the screaming, and the burning, the detonation had merely been the end point of a tortured demise.

  “Motherfucker!” Durand shouted, and she fired several short laser blasts past the blood and flesh-spattered area where Eddols had died. The shots illuminated the corridor briefly, casting shadows of several creatures flitting rapidly away from the chaos.

  Someone else took them down with several careful shots. Durand didn’t even see who had fired. She turned aside and stared at the wall, then down at one of the dead creatures at her feet.

  “Durand!” Halley said.

  “Yeah.”

  The major grabbed her arm, tight, and turned her so they were face to face.

  “I’m okay, boss,” Durand said. Halley’s stern face communicated strength, safety, and cohesiveness, and Durand looked past the major at the rest of the squad. She loved every one of them.

  “We move on,” Halley said. “A quick, thorough sweep, and now we know what we’re up against.”

  “Do we?” Sprenkel asked. He kicked at a creature’s corpse and it rolled from his boot, striking the wall and slicking down in a dark, wet mess.

  “Misra?” Halley asked. Misra was one of the DevilDogs’ extraterrestrial experts, well versed in most of the species encountered during humankind’s expansion into deep space. He’d told Durand that he’d once seen a Xenomorph, but it was from a distance, and he’d been glad it didn’t come any closer.

  “Never seen anything like this,” Misra said. “Never heard of anything, either. I’ve accessed all the quantum folds I can think of, and there’s no record of this sort of thing anywhere.”

  “Mean, spiteful bastards,” Bestwick said.

  “Fire spite,” Sprenkel said. “Good name, yeah?”

  Durand looked down at one of the dead creatures again, keeping one eye on her suit readings in case they returned. The thing was a little smaller than her head, pear shaped, with a scaly hide and four thin, membranous wings. It appeared eyeless, its mouth a circular pit ringed with stubs of what might have been blackened bone or exterior teeth. It was one of the most peculiar, grotesque things she’d ever seen.

  She kicked hard and it landed a few meters away with a wet, heavy thud.

  “You’re sure?” Halley asked Misra.

  “Seriously, boss?” Misra said. “A fire-breathing lizard-bird?”

  “More movement ahead,” Sprenkel said.

  Durand looked at the major, expecting her to issue immediate orders, but she seemed distracted. She was staring at the mess that had been Eddols, frowning.

  “Major, we should take off and sterilize the facility,” Durand said. “There’s nothing for us to save here.”

  “But we’ve only just finished one wing and the central hub,” Misra said.

  Halley nodded at Durand. “Yeah, nothing’s worth this. There’s no sign of survivors, everyone’s dead, and as for anything else… screw that. Okay guys, back to the ship. We’ll sheek-gas the whole fucking place.”

  “I’d say neutron bomb it to hell,” Bestwick said, “but that’s just me.”

  “I’ll decide once we’re airborne and safe,” Halley said. “Move out.”

  “We can’t go,” Misra said. “Our mission’s not complete.”

  “It’s complete when I say it is, Private,” Halley said.

  “No,” Misra said, shaking his head. Just as Durand saw the subtle movement of Misra’s com-rifle, and caught a strange expression on his face, the fire spites attacked again. Without warning, without any sensors picking them up, they powered along the corridor from both directions, emerging from shadows and service ducts, melting through doors as if they weren’t there at all. They converged on the marines with fire swirling before them.

  Durand fired past Misra and took out a creature aiming for his back. It burst apart and spewed flame against the wall. Halley crouched with them and they all opened fire, while Nassise, Bestwick and Sprenkel confronted the enemies attacking from the other direction.

  The corridor once more became a scene of chaos and destruction. Laser flashes seared the air and scored walls and ceilings, nano-munitions exploded in spreading flares, and an occasional plasma pulse was also unleashed, warping and melting the structure and frying a dozen creatures at a time. Durand’s suit quickly registered an immediate spike in temperatures, both from the fire spites’ assault and the Colonial Marines’ high-powered weaponry. Her suit protected her, but she still felt the temperature rise.

  “Where the hell are they coming from?” Bestwick shouted.

  “Ease back this way!” Durand said. “We’ll reach the blast doors back into the east wing, seal them up with a plasma burst, then run like fuck for the ship!”

  “Good plan,” Halley said. “Move out.”

  “We’ve got your back,” Sprenkel said.

  Durand, Misra and Halley began edging forward, stepping over sizzling, spitting fire spites, shooting more down. Molten metal dripped from the ceiling in places, and Durand felt her suit hardening when one drip landed on her shoulder. Designed to offer some limited protection against a Xenomorph’s acidic blood, the suit worked well. Even so, her shoulder was now stiffer, its range of movement lessened.

  The ceiling ahead of them collapsed. A surge of fire spites poured down through the flexing, dripping metal, the fire, the hazy gas, and Durand thought, This is it, we’re dead!

  She, Halley and Misra unleashed plasma shots at the same time. Her visor darkened and the combined blasts threw her back, suit hardening to protect her against debris and the wave of plasma-fire sweeping along the corridor. Systems glitched, and for a long few seconds her readouts faded to nothing. Even her own vital signs indicato
rs zeroed, before receptors and transmitters flicked on again, recovering from the energy surge and bringing her and her weapons back online.

  A hand grabbed her arm and pulled her upright. Halley. The attack seemed to be over, creatures fled or dead. But something was wrong.

  Behind Halley, standing before the blazing ruin of the corridor and the burning fire spites, Misra was pointing his gun at them all.

  “This mission is not finished,” he said. “We haven’t done a full sweep. Someone might still be alive.”

  “What the hell…” Sprenkel said.

  “Misra?” Durand shook her head, dizzied by the firefight and plasma blast.

  Halley took a step forward and the marine switched his aim to her.

  “Sorry, boss,” he said. “Sorry, but we have to––”

  “Everyone’s dead,” Bestwick said. “You know that. We’ve seen the bodies.”

  “This isn’t about the living or the dead,” Halley said. “It’s something else.”

  “What else is there?” Durand asked.

  “I smell the Company on him,” Halley said.

  Misra’s eyes went wide, then narrowed as he shifted his aim up to Halley’s chest. One squeeze of the trigger and she’d be spread all over the walls.

  But he’d also die. Durand could see that Misra knew that.

  “There’s research,” Misra said at last. “We find it, retrieve it, we’ll all be rich. All of us.”

  “This is such bullshit,” Bestwick said.

  “An operative from ArmoTech approached me,” Misra said. “Said if we got here and things were gone to shit, he could promise me a big payday if I retrieved the research being done here. There’s a lab, deep down beneath north wing. They’ve got something down there.”

  “Got what?” Durand asked.

  “A Xenomorph,” Halley said.

  “You knew?” Misra asked, shocked. His aim shifted.

  “Of course I knew,” Halley said. “It was part of my mission. Seems they got to you as a bit of added insurance.” She shook her head. “The fucking Company.”

  “We can still do this!” Misra said. His gun did not waver.