[Aliens 01] - Earth Hive

by Steve Perry - (ebook by Undead)

  Billie bit at her lip. She didn’t want to hear this.

  She wanted to hear it more than anything.

  “I’m not like you,” he continued. “I didn’t have a mother and father, never grew as a child, never had a life before I was created for the Colonial Marines. But I grow, after a fashion. I learn. I became more than I was. And I experienced love. I don’t know if it is the same as you feel. For me, it’s a hollowness that only being around you fills, an ache when you are away, a fever that only you can cool. I feel lust for you, tenderness, I want to touch you, hold you. Even now, when I’m only half alive.”

  He stopped. Sobbed.

  Oh, God. Don’t let him cry, she thought. She couldn’t bear that.

  “And I deceived you,” he said. “But when that thing grabbed me, when it tore me in two, that wasn’t as painful as what I felt when I saw you look at me. Saw you look at me and hate me—” he stopped. Turned his face away.

  And Billie realized that what she had felt was real, whatever Mitch was. That she had loved him as he had loved her, for what he described was what she had felt.

  What she still felt.

  “Mitch…”

  “Go, Billie. Turn off the machines. Let me die.”

  Now she did reach out and touch him. His bare shoulder was warm, the skin alive, the muscles solid. He loved her, she was convinced of that. Whatever else he might be, that counted for a lot. Nobody had loved her since her parents.

  “Mitch,” she said.

  He turned to look up at her.

  She bent. Kissed him softly on the lips. Felt his pain, and felt it ebb as he realized what she was doing. His arms came up, encircled her.

  “Oh, God, Billie!”

  “Shhh. It’s all right. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.”

  And it didn’t matter. Not at all.

  It was war, and men were losing.

  Orona marveled at this, that it should come to be this way. Man had the superior technology, it was man’s world, man had the advantages. Except—

  Except that the aliens had a stronger drive to live. They would sacrifice all for that, for the survival of the species. Only a few rare men were willing to do that. A mother would die to protect her children; a saint would walk into the fire for his fellow men or his god, but the instinct of self-preservation was too strong in most humans. The aliens didn’t care. If a hundred drones had to die to save one egg, then they would. And did.

  The things sprang up everywhere, in places where a rat would have trouble living, in spots where no one would have guessed they could spawn. Buried in the arctic ice floes, in deserts, in the tamed jungles, on barges, anywhere there was room for a nest. Nobody knew how many of the things there were, there were only guesses. The estimates ranged from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. Private ships left Earth in droves, so many the military couldn’t stop or even inspect them all. Most only fled as far as Luna or the Belt, some could reach the far planets of the system. A few wealthy souls banded together and bought private starships before the government clamped down and made such ownership illegal. Thousands ran, because on Earth, there were few places left to hide.

  Orona was in one of those places, a heavily guarded military complex in Mexico. The perimeter was ringed with force fences, the ground mined, every car or air carrier that entered or left scanned, every passenger fluoroviewed for parasites. It was as safe as anywhere left.

  In the end, Orona finally realized that the aliens were like a disease, not like an enemy army. The only way to save the patient was to cut off the cancerous parts and sterilize the wounds. And it was too late for that, it had metastasized and the knife and radiation and drugs would not be enough. It had all happened so fast, a wildfire that started with a match and only moments later was a conflagration. Nobody could have predicted it would erupt so quickly! A year and a half ago, men were supreme on their homeworld, top of the food chain, the king predator. But now…

  The military minds were not brilliant, they never were, but those in charge were smart enough to know they were losing. All remaining starships were confiscated. Hastily laid plans began to be implemented. There would be a regrouping of key military personnel to the outer colonies, there to develop new plans for combating the aliens.

  Sitting in his information center, a cool and clean place of technological miracles of communication, Orona laughed. The Earth was being abandoned. He wouldn’t be leaving with them. Oh, he could have gone, but what would be the point? He would survive, but he would have lost the most important battle of his life. There was an ancient custom that sailors had once observed: if a ship sank, the captain went down with it. The aliens had been his project. His work. Someone had spilled a retort of crucial fluid, and the lab had been contaminated. It was his responsibility. He should have foreseen it. Even if everyone else forgot, he never would.

  He was going to stay here, win or lose.

  The hypersleep chambers stood ready.

  “See you in nine months,” Wilks said to the others.

  The computer locked the ship into its return home. They would be going back faster than they had come, a few months. Wilks hoped things had been kept clean with the alien specimen they had on Earth. They’d be careful, he hoped. And it was only one of them, one couldn’t cause too much trouble.

  The chambers closed on their patients, lulled them into a rest nearly to the borders of death itself, then held them there in a perfectly balanced stasis.

  By the time the first subspace messages of the horrors on Earth finally arrived in the flux of the ship’s voyage through the Einsteinian Warp, the remaining few passengers of the Benedict were all hard asleep. The ship’s computer recorded the cries from Earth, but the computer did not care.

  28

  Orona stared straight ahead, his face drawn, his expression more tired than anything else. “So, that’s the way it is here on Earth,” he said. “The military has pulled most of its highest-ranking officers and best remaining troops out, and they are offworld and well into hyperspace by now. A few more installations remain left to evacuate.

  “The situation here has deteriorated steadily. Land communications are mostly down, satellite bounce is still working in areas where enough power remains to access it.

  “Things are in chaos. In the past months, the aliens have increased their numbers at a rate that seems impossible.

  “There are only a few enclaves where security is holding them off. Perhaps a billion people have died in the last year and a half.”

  Something pounded on the door behind Orona “Even this place, which should have been able to hold out forever, is compromised. Amazing.”

  The pounding increased.

  “I don’t know if anybody will see this transmission,” he said. “Or that it matters if you do. Such a comedy of errors this whole thing has been. Were I a god, I would be laughing myself silly at man’s stupidity.”

  Thick plastic began to shatter under the force of the hammering.

  Orona managed a half smile. He reached into a drawer, came out with a stubby pistol. He looked to his left. Shards of black plastic flew past him, from the unseen fury off the screen. Orona chambered a round in the pistol. Put the muzzle into his mouth. Pulled the trigger.

  The back of his head sprayed red and white and he fell forward just as a clawed hand grabbed at him. The talons missed. The alien corrected, then jerked the dead man from the chair like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Shook him.

  Another shape moved into view, blocked the camera.

  After a moment, Orona was taken away. The room was now empty. The camera ran on, giving a view of the blood and brains and skull spattered onto the wall.

  * * * * *

  “Oh, fuck,” Billie said, staring at the screen.

  Next to her, Wilks nodded, his face grim. “It was all for nothing,” he said. “We blew their fucking planet up but it was too late. They were already on Earth. The stupid bastards brought them home and they got loose.�
��

  Blake and the crewman stood there, also watching, Bueller lay on a gurney behind Billie.

  “What are we going to do, Sarge?”

  “Do? What can we do? We’re in orbit. We’re going down.”

  Nobody had any better ideas.

  Then, the crewman—Parks, his name was—said, “Wilks, we’ve got company.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Check the Doppler screen.”

  Wilks glanced at it. He swore softly.

  It was the elephant-alien’s ship, hanging in space only a couple of hundred kilometers away.

  Impossible as it was supposed to be in the Einsteinian subspace, the thing had followed them.

  How?

  Why?

  “You are cleared for touchdown at these coordinates, Benedict. Your computer should do fine, but keep a hand on manual just in case. You veer too much and you land in enemy territory and if you do, you’re dinner.”

  “Thanks a lot, Control,” Wilks said into the com. If the computer failed, they were dead; nobody on the ship could pilot a star hopper accurately in atmosphere, certainly not to a pinpoint landing.

  “We’d rather you get down in one piece. We need the hardware. Outside of preprogrammed troop carriers, we don’t have a lot of birds that can even make orbit.”

  “Copy, Control. We’re on the glide.”

  Wilks leaned back. Things sounded even worse than the recordings they had seen and heard. Orona’s supposedly safe installation had been overrun weeks ago. There didn’t seem to be much left to come back for, but Wilks had to see it for himself. His victory on the aliens’ homeworld was meaningless now.

  When the ship landed, there were dozens of soldiers waiting, guns leveled at them. An officer, a colonel or a general, Billie guessed, strode up and nodded at Wilks.

  “We’re glad you brought the ship back, Sergeant. We need it. This is the last secure compound remaining. We’re bailing out.”

  “What’s going to happen to Earth?”

  The man shrugged. “I can’t say. I’m supposed to take the rest of my men to the outpost we’ve established; High Command will sort it out from there.”

  “You’re just going to leave? What about the people here?”

  The man shook his head. “What I think is, the aliens will overrun everything. Then someday we’ll come back and try again. Develop some way to kill “em from orbit without damaging the land or sea too bad, some kind of biological or chemical thing. We’ll start with a clean slate.”

  Wilks looked as if he were going to punch the man. “There are billions of human beings here!”

  “Were billions, Sergeant. The aliens have taken a lot of them, a lot have been friendly-fired, a lot died in experiments designed to stop the creatures. There are maybe five, six hundred million left, and going fast. We can’t save them. If we’re lucky, we’ll get clear before this place goes up—”

  As if on cue, a junior officer leaned over to the commander. “Sir, pickets report a surge from the southeast. Several thousand bugs attacking. They are through the minefield and approaching the fences.”

  “Check out the Benedict," the officer ordered. “And send C Company to help the pickets.”

  The armed soldiers swarmed into the ship.

  The officer said, “When you think about it, maybe it’s not all bad. Earth was on the edge of destruction for a long time. If it hadn’t been this, it would have probably been something else that set it off. This way, we can maybe get it right next time.”

  “What about us?” the crewman asked. Parks, his name was Parks.

  “I’m sorry,” the officer said, “but there is only so much room. I have my orders.”

  “Wait,” Wilks said. “There’s another factor. We had help on the aliens’ homeworld. Another space-faring species. He—it saved us.”

  “So?”

  “It followed us here. In its own ship.”

  “Look, Sergeant, this is all very interesting, but what difference does that make? You think this thing can wipe out all the bugs on the planet?”

  “I don’t know, but it might help—”

  The officer glanced at his chronometer. “If we had the time, yes. But if our intelligence is right, we have got a day, maybe only a few hours before we are overrun. We’ve set nukes to take out the complex after we’ve gone. We’ve lost this war, Sergeant. It’s time to retreat.”

  “Dammit!”

  The officer drew his sidearm. “Don’t do anything stupid. You can die right now if you do.”

  Wilks held his hands wide.

  Blake, standing between Billie and Bueller on the gurney, moved over a hair. The officer swung his gun to cover her. “I can’t let you shoot anybody, General,” Blake said.

  “Listen, marine, I’ve been shooting people for months. A few more won’t matter.”

  Blake smiled, and moved toward him.

  “Blake, don’t!” Wilks said.

  But she kept going.

  The general fired, his bullet taking Blake square in the chest. Blake hardly paused. The man cursed, fired again—

  Wilks jumped. Slammed the heel of his hand into the general’s temple just as he swung his pistol around and fired a third round. The bullet spanged into the side of the Benedict.

  Wilks followed the hand strike with his elbow, and a kick as the general fell. He twisted the gun from the man’s hand, spun to face the hatch to the ship.

  A soldier stepped out. Wilks shot him in the head.

  Blake went down. Parks ran off, screaming.

  Billie went to the downed android. The downed woman.

  “Blake “Couldn’t let him… shoot you,” she said. She smiled. “Be… sure I… get my medals, okay, Sarge?”

  Wilks glanced at her. “Yeah, kid. No sweat.”

  Blake’s eyes dilated suddenly as Billie watched.

  Wilks shook his head. “Damn. Hit her in the main pump. One chance in ten thousand, it’s supposed to be caged and almost bulletproof. Must have ricocheted.”

  Billie said, “Blake!”

  “She’s gone, Billie,” Wilks said. “And we’ll be gone too if we don’t move our asses, fast! I just killed a general. Go!”

  He pulled her up, but she twisted away and grabbed Mitch from his gurney. She slung him onto her back.

  “Billie, goddammit!”

  “I’ll keep up,” she said.

  Mitch said, “Billie, don’t do this—”

  “Shut up, Mitch. Otherwise I’ll stay here with you and they’ll kill me. If you don’t want me to do that, then you have to hang on and go with me.”

  Wilks sprinted away, Billie and her passenger right behind him.

  29

  When they stopped for breath, Billie said, “Why are we running? There’s no place to go. They’re going to blow this place up when they leave. Even if there weren’t any aliens outside the defenses, we can’t get far enough away on foot to escape the blast.”

  “I don’t plan for us to be on foot,” he said.

  “If what they said is true, nowhere on Earth is any better,” Bueller put in.

  The three of them were leaning against the inside of a stanchion, a support post that ran from the ground up through the level they were on. Wilks guessed they were on the third level, probably fifty meters above the surface.

  “I don’t plan for us to be on Earth, either,” Wilks said.

  “What are you talking about?” That from Billie.

  “Remember what the controller said when we left orbit? There are programmed troop carriers here. When they leave, we’ll be on one of them.”

  “How?”

  Wilks hefted the general’s pistol. “By doing whatever it takes.”

  Bueller looked uncomfortable. “I’m not supposed to allow that,” he said.

  Wilks laughed. “How you gonna stop it, gimpy? Besides, I see a basic flaw in your programming here. If they are gonna kill us, me and Billie, and we are gonna kill them, who do you worry about the most?�
��

  Bueller chewed on that for a second. “Billie,” he said.

  “Ah. So some folks are more important than others, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “They didn’t teach you that in the vats.”

  “No.”

  Wilks laughed again. “You just stopped being an android, pal. Welcome to the human race.”

  Billie allowed Wilks to take Mitch; they could move faster that way, Wilks said. And even as they ran, she marveled over what Mitch had said. He had outgrown his programming. His body might not have been born of a woman, but as far as she was concerned, he was a man.

  Wilks led them into a storage area that had a computer terminal. He began punching questions into the system.

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t look up at Billie. “Finding out which of the drone ships are carrying crew and which are only lugging cargo. Some will have troops; some will be hauling supplies. We can find a supply ship; we can dump some of “em and replace the weight with us.”

  “We don’t even know where they are going,” Billie said.

  “Who cares? Can’t be any worse than being fried by atomics or eaten by the monsters.”

  “Wilks—”

  “I know what you are gonna say,” he said. “I thought my job was over when I blasted the aliens’ homeworld, that I could come back, get stuck away in some nice quiet prison or brainwiped and that would be it. I was looking forward to it. But now, no. I can’t quit until every one of these alien bastards is dead.”

  “Is it worth it?”

  “It is to me. A man’s got to have a reason to get up in the mornings. I spent years trying to decide if I should just shut my own lights off. Something always kept me from doing it. I never knew what, exactly, but I’m glad it did. I might die, kid, but I am going to go down swinging.”

  He was as happy as she’d ever seen him. He had a purpose, and that was more than a lot of people had.

  “Ah, here we go. A cargo drone, number three-oh-two, nicknamed The American. Bay sixteen, level five. Here’s the overlay map…."