V.O. (CONT.)
However, it seems likely that some… outside force, perhaps a spacefaring species, interacted with the aliens.
THE SUITED FIGURE
returns to the ship, an alien egg inside a clear specimen bottle. From the size of the egg compared to the Collector, it is apparent that the Collector is much larger than a man, perhaps three times so.
CUT TO:
INT COLLECTOR’S SPACESHIP
The Collector approaches the alien egg. Leans over it. The egg’s portal flaps splay open. The Collector peers into the egg’s interior.
V.O.
A small mistake in dealing with such predatory creatures would, of course, prove to be dangerous in the extreme. Probably fatal.
CUT TO:
EXT. COLLECTOR’S SPACESHIP
The ship lies crashed upon some world, fog swirling about it. PUSH IN AND THROUGH TO:
INT. COLLECTOR’S SHIP
The skeleton of the Collector, its chest burst open from within, sits in the control seat of the ship. In the b.g. are THREE HUMANS IN SPACESUITS. Light beams play over the dead giant as the humans examine it.
V.O.
Humans rely on technology to the point where they believe it has made them invincible. When dealing with creatures who have adapted to extremely hostile environments, such a belief can also prove dangerous.
EXT. CORPORATION LANDER
The lander lifts from the planet’s surface.
CLOSER—ON THE LANDER
Clutching a strut on the lander’s underside is AN ALIEN.
V.O. (CONT.)
Because an unsuited human cannot survive in the vacuum of space does not mean that some other complex life form cannot.
INT. CORPORATION STAR SHIP—CARGO BAY—HIGH ANGLE
Across the bay walk TWO MEN.
PULL BACK TO OTS (OVER-THE-SHOULDER)—ALIEN
It watches the men. Drool drips from its lethal jaws.
ALIEN’S POV—THE MEN
It moves in. They react in horror as it attacks. BLOOD SPLASHES, blanking the VP.
CUT TO:
INT. AIRLOCK
The hatch opens and the Alien is ejected by the outward blast of atmosphere. TRACK WITH IT as it flies into space, turning slowly.
V.O.
Ultimately, our limited contact with these creatures indicate that they have simple imperatives that control their lives. They kill, they breed, and they survive.
THE ALIEN
floats in the vacuum. It should be dead by human standards, but it slowly curls itself into a fetal ball, tail wrapped around the massive claw-hammer head and spiky body.
V.O.
Properly utilized, such aliens would make excellent warriors. Research into their composition could yield advances in armor, chemical and biological weapons, and perhaps even new ways to induce suspended animation for stellar travel.
PULL BACK—THE ALIEN
Dwindles into a tiny dot, then vanishes altogether in the cold blackness.
End of script/AV extract. Readers/viewers are once again warned that unauthorized use of this material may result in severe penalties, per MILCOM stat. reg. 342544-A, Revision II.
6
Billie sleeps, but it is not rest. In her dreams she is back on Rim. She sees her parents, sees the inside of the colony that plans to terraform the planet and turn it into paradise. Sees and is happy.
Things blur. Then she sees monsters.
Her life becomes a jumble of hiding, of fear, of waiting for them to find and kill her. She joins the rats under the floor, her mind and actions turn feral. Survival is all, and it is nothing, likely to stop at any moment.
She sees Wilks and the others, guns spraying. She hears the noise, feels the terror.
She feels Wilks’s arms around her, feels the vibrations of his weapon as it fires. Watches the monsters shatter and fall, but knows there are too many of them.
There comes the worst moment, when the hard claws of a monster dig into her, lift her, and it carries her away to die. Then it falls, chopped off at the knees. Its blood eats smoking, stinking holes in the floor and it releases her. She doesn’t wait, she scrabbles away before it can catch her again. The air is full of acrid fumes, the sound of Wilks’s yelling, his gun shooting over and over until it is a continuous roar. The wounded monster’s claws click on the floor as it drags itself toward Billie.
She screams. The only name that matters now.
“Wilks!”
The only one who can save her.
7
In the canned-air depths of MILCOM HQ, in the long hall with invisible doors two men walked: Qrona and Stephens.
“He’s as nuts as an orchard full of filbert trees,” Stephens said. “If we hadn’t needed to keep him on a leash, we’d have psych-DCed him years ago.”
“True,” Orona said. “But he’s what we’ve got and GENstaff wants him along. You know how politics works.”
“Yeah, GENstaff thinks he’s some kind of monster killer, but I think he’s a goddamn crew killer.”
“You wanted a field command. I got you one.”
“Right, carrying Jonah the Jinx into a potentially lethal force combatsit.”
“Let me put it to you like this, Bill,” Orona said. “GENstaff will have an experienced person onboard this project. The only other marine we know about who has met these things face-to-face and survived the initial encounter disappeared. The woman and kid he saved also vanished and we don’t know where they are. The girl Wilks saved is in the bughouse, doped to the gills. There was also a badly damaged android, but we don’t have a clue as to what happened to it. We’re full of mystery here. That leaves Wilks.”
“I don’t like it. He’s unstable.”
“I’m not asking you to like it, or like him. I am telling you that GENstaff says this is how it’s going to be. If you’re tired of being a marine, then you call up GENstaff and tell them you don’t like it.”
Stephens shook his head.
“He’s been bumped to sergeant and put in charge of loading supplies,” Orona continued. “How much damage can he do there?”
Colonel Stephens stood in the loading dock of the carrier watching the robots haul gear into the ship. He stopped a private heading for the hydraulic walkers. “What’s in those crates, marine?”
The man snapped to attention. “Sir, plasma rifles and chargers.”
Stephens stared at the hard black plastic boxes.
“Who in the hell authorized plasma weapons?”
“Sir, I don’t know, sir. Sergeant Wilks ordered us to load them, sir. That’s all I know, sir.”
“As you were.”
Stephens took the lift to CARG-OP. He saw Wilks directing a trio of cargo bots. “Wilks!”
“Sir.”
“Where did you get authorization to requisition plasma weapons?”
“I was ordered to supply the ground troops with appropriate weaponry, sir.”
“And you thought blasters were appropriate? We aren’t going to war here, Sergeant. We are supposed to collect specimens, not pieces.”
“My experience—” Wilks began.
“—has distorted your mind,” Stephens finished. “You’ve taken it upon yourself to provide grossly destructive weaponry when standard-issue carbines will do. That’s what you used, wasn’t it? And according to your own testimony a 10mm AP would stop one of these things just fine.”
Rage flared in Wilks. “First time you face off with these “things’ you’ll wish you had something better. Sir.”
“GENstaff wants you along, Wilks, so you’re along. But I won’t jeopardize my mission by splattering potential specimens all over the countryside with weaponry designed to stop tanks. Have those blasters removed from the ship, mister. Is that clear?”
Wilks’s voice was ice and steel. “Perfectly clear, Colonel.”
The two electroball players darted back and forth inside the hexagonal, walled court, smashing the ball with charged paddles. The fist-sized or
b rocketed into multicushioned patterns—three walls were the minimum allowed for a valid point—and came back at the players at over 120 kilometers an hour.
The player on the left executed a perfect six-wall attack. The player on the right was a half second slow in his response and the electroball smashed into his chest hard enough to knock him from his feet.
“Gotcha!”
The hit player came to his feet. “Your point.”
“Ready?”
“Go ahead. Serve.”
The player on the right smiled. “In a moment. Any news of the merger proposal with Climate Systems?”
Lefty shrugged. “I thought I told you. Our op Massey convinced them to go for it.”
The player on the right laughed. “Made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, eh?”
“Well. You don’t know Massey, but yeah, something like that. Serve.”
The two men sat hunched over a holographic table, fingers on the glove pad controls of the electroball game. Inside a clear hexagonal field the miniature players sweated as they darted back and forth, while their operators wore custom and expensive silk business suits and looked considerably fresher. They were well groomed, with ninety-credit hairstyles and precious gem collar studs. They looked very much like corporation vice presidents, which they were.
The tiny ball rocketed off four walls and went past the receiving player.
“Good shot,” the man in the vivid green silks said. He wore a ruby the size of his thumb tip at his throat, the red contrasting nicely with the green.
“Yep, almost gave me a decent match,” the one in the red silks said. His ornamental throat stud was of diamond, twice the size of his companion’s ruby, and it glittered against the red. He was the senior VP of the two.
The hologram shimmered and vanished.
Green Silks said, “Listen, we need to talk about the biowarfare project.”
Red nodded. “Anything from the government?”
The two of them stood and moved away from the table. Green said, “Nah, you know how these guys get when they want to keep things secret.”
“We need to be in on this,” Red said. “We are talking about major credits here. We’ve had offers from every milsupply corporation in the system if we can come up with the right product. We can’t let the military get the jump on us here.”
Green smiled. “Don’t worry. I’m going to put Massey on it.”
They reached a door. It thwiped open to admit them into an office the size of a small home. One wall was airglas, giving a view of the megapolis. On a clear day like today, the view was spectacular from eighty stories high. Rank certainly had its privileges.
“Okay, I’ve been hearing about this guy Massey, but I don’t know him. Tell me.”
Red moved to a desk big enough to seat five people without crowding.
Green went to a dispenser set into the wall across from the desk. “Devil dust,” he said to the dispenser. “Haifa gram. You want anything.”
“Yeah, get me an orgy-inhaler.”
Green added Red’s order to his own. After a second a small tray extruded itself from the machine. On the tray were a small mound of pink powder inside a hemispherical cup set next to a one-shot nasal tube. Green tossed the tube to Red and picked up the cup. He pressed the dust against his left eye as Red fired the compressed gas charge of the inhaler into his right nostril. Both men grinned as the chemicals took hold.
“You were saying about Massey?”
“Oh. Yeah. Him. Well, this guy is something else. MBA from New Harvard, doctorate in corp law from Cornell, post-doc work at Mitsubishi U. Could have had his pick of any company in the system but he enlisted in the Colonial Marines. Got a Silver Star in the Oil Wars, four Purple Hearts. Commanded a recon unit in the Tansu Rebellion on Wakahashi’s World, picked up a few decorations there.”
“Real patriot, huh?” Red said. He squirmed in his chair as another chemically powered orgasm rippled through him.
“Nah. He liked killing. Probably would have gone pretty high up but they court-martialed him. Tried to kill his CO.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. Thought the CO was a coward when he wouldn’t order an attack on a bunch of civilians Massey thought might be hiding enemy sympathizers. Might be. Knocked the officer senseless and led the attack himself. Killed eighty-five men, women, and children. Word is more than half of them got dispatched by Massey personally.”
“Man loved his job, hey?”
“Oh, yeah. We bought the tribunal off and put him to work for us. Good help is so hard to find, you know?”
Green laughed. Red joined him.
Massey sat at the table in his kitchen, his six-year-old son on his lap. Behind him, Maria punched the controls on the coffee maker.
“Be ready in a sec, hon,” Maria said. She moved up behind Massey and kissed his neck.
Massey smiled. “Thanks, babe.” lb his son he said, “So, what’s my boy up to today?”
“We’re gonna go on a field trip to the zoo,” the boy said. “See a Denebian slime spider and maybe the Bardett snakes, if they’ll come out.”
“Sounds great,” Massey said. He lifted the boy, put him on the floor. “But Daddy’s got to go to work now. Say hello to the slime spider for me.”
“Oh, Daddy, slime spiders can’t talk!”
Massey grinned. “No? What about your uncle Chad?”
Maria swatted at him with one hand. “My brother is not a slime spider!” she said. But she laughed.
“No, that’s true,” her husband said. “He’s only got four limbs, not eight.”
“Go, you’ll be late for work. Here’s your coffee.”
Still smiling, Massey left. Yes. Work.
Nothing was more important than work.
Nothing.
Her teeth glittered like stars. They were so beautiful.
Closer she came, magnificent in her huge glory, black and deadly and purposeful. Her exoskeleton gleamed darkly as she leaned down toward Billie. Her mouth opened, and the smaller set of teeth on the inner lips also opened. She was the queen.
I love you, her thoughts came unspoken to Billie. I need you.
Yes, Billie thought.
She was the queen, and she reached for Billie, her clawed hands glistening.
Come and… join with me, the queen said.
Yes, Billie thought. Yes, I will.
Closer the queen came.
Easley and Bueller squatted behind the remains of the shattered building, a waist-level row of bricks and twisted rebar the only protection against the bunker’s R-O-M gun. It couldn’t see them but the stupecomp running the gun could probably pick up some heat leakage from their combat suits, and every now and then it would pop off a couple dozen 30mm AP rounds in their direction.
“Shit,” Bueller said. “Fucker’s got us pinned down!”
“Maybe not,” Easley offered. “The thing’s got service portals aft. I can launch a grenade in the right spot, it’ll blow the power. Then we got his ass.”
Three rounds of 30mm clipped a couple of centimeters of brick off the top of the wall over Bueller’s head. He squatted lower. “Damn!”
“Okay, look,” Easley said, “here’s the play. You scoot down about twenty meters, put your weapon over the wall, and spray that sucker. I’ll circle around behind it and blow it off line while it’s potting at you.”
Under the kleersteel faceplate of his helmet cover, Bueller frowned. The expression wrinkled the skintite that reached to his eyes, and the skull of the elite Colonial Marine whack-team embossed on the tite.
“Unless you got a better idea?” Easley said.
Bueller shook his head. “What the hell. Let’s do it. Gimme a signal when you’re ready to dance.”
“Copy,” Easley said. His voice was crisp in the helmet’s bonephones. The com was standard military tightbeam and scrambled, so the geezer in the bunker couldn’t hear them, or even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to understand what they were sa
ying.
Bueller moved off, keeping low. Every so often the range-of-motion gun would cap off a few more shots.
Easley lit a low-heat flare and dropped it. With any luck, the gun would think it was a suit leak and zero in on it. While it was doing that, he would blow that sucker. He moved off. He was good, one of the Corps’ best, and damned if he was gonna get drilled by some geezer in a lock box.
When he got into position, Easley said, “Do it!”
Thirty meters away, crouched behind a big chunk of rubble that was probably once a house, Bueller whipped his carbine over the top and triggered it full auto. He waved it back and forth, so the motion sensors would get it. The sonics would have found it pretty quick anyhow, but he didn’t want to take any chances.
Softsteel slugs spanged off the wall, chopping it away. It knew he was here, all right. Bueller pulled his weapon back so it wouldn’t get hit.
Five seconds later, two things happened: a grenade went off and the robotic gun stopped shooting.
Bueller grinned. “Yeah! Way to go, buddy!” Easley must have rammed one right up the thing’s drainpipe. Hell of an enema.
Ten seconds went past. “Easley?”
“You’re buying the beer tonight, pal,” came the reply.
Bueller stood. Oh, man, was this sweet! That old fart thought he could play with the best—
A round splashed against Bueller’s chest.
“Oh, shit!”
He looked down, saw the spatter of phosphorescent green over his heart. If it had been armor-piercing, he’d be history. “Shit, shit, shit!”
“You got that right,” Wilks said. “How do you do, Mr. Shit.” He walked toward Bueller, a training sniper rifle dangling in one hand. Behind Wilks, Easley stood, helmet cover already off, a similar splash of green running down the formerly clear faceplate.
[Aliens 01] - Earth Hive Page 4