He looked at the hut and the sunlight painting the black sands the color of dried blood. Decker and the mercenaries were gone from sight. That helped a little.
Rand could have pushed harder, asked for the company to take it easy on him. But that might have compromised his career opportunities. On the other hand—and there was always an other hand, when you looked hard enough—Rollins had assured Rand that his friend could take care of himself. They’d asked him a lot of weird questions about Decker and he’d answered them.
They thought Decker was psychic or something. Okay, let them believe whatever they wanted. Alan was back and maybe he would be all right.
Rand looked at the hut for another minute and then headed back to the barracks. The mines gave him the creeps. The ship they’d found gave him nightmares. He’d never been one to hope for an encounter with other lifeforms. As far as Lucas Rand was concerned, the human species was screwed up enough, and didn’t need any help when it came to making the cosmos more toxic.
Somewhere in the offices there was a shot of vodka with his name on it.
* * *
When Decker was a kid, his father had told him that there was nothing that couldn’t be solved with words. He’d said that a lot, especially when Decker’s empathic abilities flared and the kids around him seemed more like potential enemies than friends. It happened less and less as he adjusted to the emotional tides and came to understand that not every sensation he felt pertained to him. Sometimes people were just pissed off because they were having a bad day—not because of anything he had done.
When he was a teenager his old man had changed the words a bit. He said there was nothing that couldn’t be solved with a handshake and an honest negotiation.
And when he was grown and his father spoke his words of wisdom, they changed for the last time. That was when his dad told him there was nothing in the world that couldn’t be solved with a shot of whiskey and a few kind words.
That last part proved true enough with Adams.
A few drinks with the mercenaries had let him clear the air. Garth would never likely be his close friend, but at least they left the rec room with an understanding between them. Same with Piotrowicz. The latter even bought him a beer to show there were no hard feelings.
Adams had a much nicer way of expressing herself. She was as enthusiastic in bed as she was about almost everything else. For a little while he forgot about the background noise in his head and focused on the lean, muscular woman in his arms. After too long on his own it was nice to share heat with someone else, especially someone with a voracious appetite and a surprising imagination.
When he woke in the morning she was gone. He’d have been surprised to find her still there.
14
BREAKFAST
As the sun rose, the air had a cold edge to it that Decker found invigorating. The small army of mercenaries were gathered around a table and dressed for business, and he joined them. Adams was sitting with Piotrowicz and a small cluster of the others, and they made room for him.
“Manning’s already made the rounds,” Piotrowicz said, his voice low. “We’re going down to the site where they found the ship. That’s where we’re likeliest to find what we’re looking for, so that’s the best starting point.” Then he went back to inhaling the food on his plate. The eggs were fried, not scrambled—an unheard-of luxury on a site like this. Decker couldn’t begin to imagine how Weyland-Yutani had pulled it off.
Adams spoke up.
“You’ll have to forgive Piotrowicz. Sometimes he thinks stating the obvious will make him look smarter.” At that, the merc paused for a moment, in between mouthfuls, to let his middle finger speak for him.
“Still ain’t working there, slick. You may want to sound smart, but the truth’s plain to see.” The speaker was a hulking man with a shaved head, where he had a tattoo of a military insignia. It was badly done, and the letters were largely illegible.
Piotrowicz looked at the man—easily a hundred pounds larger than he was—and shook his head.
“I keep forgetting they trained you to speak, Connors,” he said. “What’s that supposed to be on your skull again? I think it’s the Girl Scouts, isn’t it?”
Decker settled back and chowed down quickly, eating even faster when Manning announced that they’d be leaving in fifteen minutes. If he hurried, he’d have time for another cup of coffee.
After breakfast he dumped his cutlery and tray and got that second cup. While he was adding lethal doses of cream and sugar, Adams moved over and started pouring herself another cup.
“So, last night was fun.”
Decker looked at her from the corner of his eye.
“Wasn’t sure if I was supposed to say anything.”
“I appreciate the discretion.”
“But yeah,” he added. “It was definitely fun.”
“Good. Maybe we can try it again tonight.” She walked away before he could respond. His day seemed a little brighter, despite the feeling that was starting to crawl through his stomach.
There was no escaping it. The longer he thought about going underground, the more his guts tried to twist themselves into a knot. It wasn’t just the tunnels, though—it was the entire planet that freaked him out. It wasn’t rational, but it was extremely potent.
He caught up with Adams, and held up the reaper.
“So, where do I get a clip for this thing?”
She smiled. “Oh yeah. Forgot that part.” She took him over to deal with a salt-and-pepper haired man named Dmitri, who gave him four long clips with fifteen rounds each. After a brief discussion, the man also handed him a second weapon.
“Plasma rifle. Be smart, keep warm and locked. And don’t fire near anything you want to keep in one piece.” Dmitri’s accent was so thick it took a few seconds to fully translate what he’d said, but Decker nodded and smiled just the same.
When they’d moved a little further away, Adams took the plasma rifle from him, and gave him a refresher. He was glad—that wasn’t the kind of weapon that allowed for mistakes. Not if you wanted to keep all of your limbs.
“Short barrel, so you can maneuver,” she said. “There are three cells, all of them are charged…” She flipped the weapon around to show him the indicators. “Fires incredibly small and incredibly hot rounds of plasma. The barrel is trimonite. Anything less and it would melt by the fourth round fired. Seriously, don’t fuck around with this one. You have an automatic setting and a selective setting. Automatic, you pull the trigger and the rounds come out fast and hot until your first cell is dead. Pull the trigger again and you get the same thing until the second cell is dead.
“I’ve never, ever, seen anyone pull the trigger a third time. Mostly whatever you’re aiming at is long gone before the second time the trigger gets pulled.”
She flipped it back over with ease and great familiarity. Decker saw several stickers that had faded almost completely away. One was a pink pony. Another had Adams’ name scrawled on it. She was trusting him with one of her weapons. He felt a quick flash of gratitude but quelled it. She wasn’t the sort who’d want to be thanked—especially not in front of the others.
He’d have to think of something appropriate for later.
“Right here is the safety,” she continued. “Leave it on.” She pointed to a second button, this one protected by a small flip-case. “This is the selective fire switch. You’re set for single shots. Seriously, keep it that way—you’ll have maybe a hundred and eighty rounds. You go full-auto, and you’re going to level everything you aim at, but it won’t last long.
“Got it?”
Damn if she didn’t look sexy with that serious expression on her face and an assault rifle in her hands.
“Got it.”
“Good. Let’s go hunt bugs.”
“Bugs?” The word called up images that ran through his mind and sent ice skimming down the length of his spine.
“Bugs,” she repeated, looking at him with a strange expression
. “Did you read the information? Bugs. Those fuckers are seriously creepy. Besides, what else are you going to call aliens? You ever see a cute, furry alien?”
“You’ve done this sort of thing before?”
Adams shook her head and smiled.
“Not me, unless you count a few indigenous rodents,” she replied. “There’s a first time for everything, though. I’ll hunt anything, as long as there’s money in it.” She looked at the pulse rifle, and handed it back to him. “The most this little number has done is blow away a few critters the size of my hand.”
“Yeah?”
“Screamed like a monkey when I was shooting them, too.”
“Who did, you or the critters?”
“Probably a little of both.”
She strode toward the exit and he followed, not quite certain if she was serious.
* * *
Most of the freelancers looked more like Colonials when they were suited up and ready for business. The biggest difference that Decker could see was that the mercs seemed to take their jobs a bit more seriously than a few of the Marines he’d met in his time. Then again, he’d normally run across the Marines when they were off duty, and ready to have a drink or two.
They walked across the hard-packed sand en masse, and the stuff gave way under his feet as they made their way toward the distant shaft. He didn’t like the feeling, and for a moment he thought he felt a pain in his leg.
The Quonset hut was the only structure of any size, and there was little around it except for the evidence of construction—mounds of sand that had been pushed into a full-sized hill and then slowly washed back down. A few pieces of heavy equipment that looked like dying, metallic dinosaurs in the middle of a vast nothing. Areas that had been laid out and partially paved, but never finished. Everything was happening too fast and, as he had seen on any number of sites, there was a lot of activity with no cohesive result.
They waited for several moments outside the hut before the doors were opened to them. Willis was waiting inside, along with three others dressed in clothes meant to endure a rough environment. The interior of the place was lit by stark white lights that nearly shamed the sun—a slight case of overkill, to be sure, but there was a lot of equipment casting shadows, towering all around them and making Decker feel distinctly claustrophobic.
Willis and Manning talked softly while everyone filed in. Thirty-six extra bodies took away most of the free space in the area and left Decker feeling vaguely claustrophobic. Once they were inside Manning called roll one more time, and they headed for the shaft itself.
It was hard to miss. What hadn’t been done outside was offset by what had been accomplished on the inside of the place. The lift platform was huge—large enough to accommodate all of them, and a lot more besides. It had to be, because it was how the company moved equipment into the shaft and would, in time, take out the trimonite. And like all of the heavy-duty equipment he’d seen in his life, the damned thing looked ancient. Sometimes Decker wondered if lifts were built pre-scarred and rusted.
He looked around the interior of the hut, using curiosity to push back the anxiety that was trying to overrun him. But the paranoia was making a comeback, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. There were things around him. He’d felt them before, and he was feeling them now. His stomach rolled at the thought. His pulse was too fast, and he could feel sweat forming on his brow.
“Come on,” he said to himself under his breath. “You can do this.” No one else was close enough to hear. He steeled himself, and moved with the rest.
The lift floor felt more solid than the sand outside. That was oddly comforting—at least until the first lurching motion, and the slow descent began.
Where the hut was very bright, the tunnel was not. In very short order the only light came from above them, and that dwindled the lower they went. The lift itself was dimly lit. When the darkness was almost complete, the waves of emotion returned with a vengeance. Decker bit his lip to stop from making a noise.
Then, to his surprise, they began to fade again. It was almost as if he’d passed them by, so that they remained above as the mercenary group moved lower and lower.
Willis spoke up, talking to no one in particular.
“Anyone ever been in a mine shaft before?” He was answered by one of the freelancers Decker hadn’t met.
“Hell, no,” the man said. “I was born and raised on Earth. Anything worth mining there was stripped away a long time ago.” He said it like it was a joke.
“You’re not far off, actually,” Willis responded. “That’s one of the reasons Weyland-Yutani got into mining colonies. Thanks to automation, it doesn’t take too much effort for a decent payoff.”
“Well, you sure as hell couldn’t get me to work in a place like this—not for long.” It was Connors, the hulk with the shaved head. Big as he was, he looked nervous.
The area opened up as they moved past the first open level of the mine. There wasn’t much to see, except for the machinery used to run the mines, and the generators used to run the machinery. New equipment stood next to old machines, many of which were so old that they were unrecognizable in their decay. Rods of pitted metal stuck out at odd angles, like the bones of long-dead creatures.
All too soon the darkness ate them again.
“How far does this thing go down?” Piotrowicz’s voice cut past the low mechanical hum of the lift.
Willis looked around the artificial twilight, and then up at the walls of the shaft.
“Just over seven thousand feet.” One of the mercenaries let out a low whistle. Their guide nodded, and Decker looked along with everyone else. The metal here was darker, decidedly in worse shape, corroded by time and moisture. “Most of this shaft was already here from the previous operation. Nine levels of mining. We’ve got the first three up and running, and have partially cleared a total of six. It’s down at the bottom where we found the ship. The lift was severely damaged there, but we cleared it and restored it easily enough.”
The mercenaries stared at the walls with all the fascination of kids going to their first museum. There was a sense of age here, of antiquity. Decker felt it, too, now that the sense of dread had faded down to a whisper.
When the lift finally hit bottom with a lurch that sent them all staggering, the walls opened into a cavernous area that was crudely but solidly built. The walls were solid stone now, hollowed out and reinforced at regular intervals. There were a few lights, which hardly pierced the gloom at all, so they couldn’t really tell how large the chamber was. They might as well have been on a different planet. Thick layers of a darker material ran through the brown and tan earth. If he had to guess, that would be the trimonite, but it was only a guess. What he knew about mining wouldn’t even make for decent bar conversation.
“Where’s this ship you found?” Manning’s voice carried easily, and echoed, causing him to duck his head.
“Just down this way,” Willis answered, pointing into the shadows. “Have any of you ever been on an alien vessel?”
No one had—not even Manning.
Willis nodded, as if it was the answer he’d expected.
“Well then, this is going to blow your minds, guaranteed.” He walked over to a truck, old and functional and with a broad flatbed in the back, large enough to carry several containers of ore. While he climbed into the driver’s seat, Manning settled into the passenger side, and the rest clambered onto the flatbed. It was a tight fit and the truck rocked as they climbed aboard.
The engine started up with a surprising growl, and the vehicle lurched into motion, causing them all to grab onto any handhold they could find—including one another. In the glow of the yellow headlights, they could see a well-worn pathway with hard-packed dirt.
* * *
About five minutes later, they were staring at proof of alien life.
15
THE SHIP
Before they even saw the vessel, they moved past the seemingly endless construct
ion materials. There were pallets upon pallets of scaffolding supplies, mezzanine flooring, and industrial metal posts for assembling the platforms they’d need to examine their find. The materials were stacked to around seven feet in height in some places, and blocked off much of the path to the excavation site.
In the distance they heard the hum of generators, and the sound grew stronger as they moved forward.
The ship itself was massive. Parts of it had been melted by blasts of extreme heat, or perhaps by volcanic activity. It didn’t sit level on the ground, but was canted slightly as if it still sought to take off. The structure was split along one side, the hull shattered and torn and long since filled with dirt.
The ship’s surface looked almost papery in places—not as if it was made of paper, but as if it had been crumpled up and then smoothed again. If there had ever been markings on the exterior, they were hidden by dirt or stripped away by the years.
There were holes everywhere. The hide was ruptured, torn, and burnt. There were places where several different levels were visible through the same gaping wound. It must surely have been designed to carry hundreds, if not thousands—assuming the inhabitants were anywhere close to human in size.
Around the ship, the initial excavations had leveled the ground out. The tracks from heavy treads showed evidence of what had happened before, but the actual vehicles were gone, either taken back to the surface or moved to another part of the cavern.
Decker stared at the thing. The sheer size alone was staggering, yet somehow the designs were… wrong—not at all what he would have expected. Some of its facets deviated so much from the mechanics of Earth that he couldn’t even begin to grasp how they might have worked.
The greatest anomaly of all, however, was the fact that it simply didn’t belong. It was meant for the sky, the space between the stars. Had he found a whale in the desert, it wouldn’t have seemed any more out place.
“Shit on a shingle. It almost looks… organic.” Piotrowicz turned his head sideways as he stared.
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