His fingers caught hold of the ship’s hull and he pulled himself a little higher. Back on Earth he’d have been working up a hard sweat. Here the lower gravity was making it more like a light workout.
The pulse rifle was strapped to his back, and he had his pistol within easy reach. Fifty caliber shells would take care of any serious issues that might come along.
As old as the ship was, the tunnel moving away from it was much, much newer. The surface looked almost wet, even under the layer of dirt, and there was a hole in the side—that was their goal. He made sure to aim his camera at it, and take in as much as he could. Even if they couldn’t pick up the image back at the temporary hub, the camera would still be recording.
He wanted to make a copy to send back to his sister—the one who’d been smart enough to finish college and was working for Weyland-Yutani as a forensic xenobiologist. She made disgustingly good money. Still, he got laid a lot more often.
It was all a matter of perspective.
“You seeing this?” The voice came from his left, where Rodriguez was climbing.
“The fuck is that?” Joyce’s voice was almost lost in the cavernous area. He was a soft-spoken man.
The entrance of the tunnel seemed to move. Something dark and wet looking shifted twenty feet above them. It sent a shiver down his spine.
“Looks like a loose piece,” DiTillio said. “Something’s making it shift. Might be the thing isn’t as solid as it looks.” He tried to sound more certain than he felt.
“No, it’s not loose,” Rodriguez said, his voice a little higher. “It’s moving. I mean, I think something’s actually coming toward us.” He held up his reaper, and stared hard at the shadows above them.
“Calm down, Billy,” DiTillio said. “I don’t think we need to worry about being attacked by a wall.”
“Fair enough,” Rodriguez said. “But I think we need to—oh, shit!”
The loose piece moved faster, dropping toward them, clinging to the side of the ship. It had that same wet look, new and clean, and even had the same sort of patterns along its hide, but this thing had arms and legs and a tail and…
Fuck, those are teeth!
Rodriguez didn’t wait to consider whether or not it was friendly. He opened fire. The first round from the reaper struck the broken hull and ricocheted away, the report echoing as the thing dropped toward them.
He never had a second chance.
The thing landed on him, arms and legs and tail and other things all in motion—and before Rodriguez could do anything, say anything, he and the dark mass were both falling, bouncing back down the side of the ship and slamming into a rock formation. Rodriguez broke on impact.
The thing got up and looked like it was ready to spring. Its hide was black, so it was hard to tell.
Broken didn’t mean down, though. Rodriguez raised his weapon and took aim even as the dark shape attacked, claws ripping at flesh. He let out a feeble scream and tried to fight as the thing tore at him.
“What the fuck! What the fuck is that thing?” Joyce was panicking, which wasn’t exactly helping matters. DiTillio tried to aim at the shape that was dragging Rodriguez closer to the side of the ship’s hull. He was having a damned hard time getting a good shot without risking hitting his downed teammate.
And there was the fact that the thing was, well, a thing. Joyce had already said it. This was an alien life-form, and they’d never encountered one before. None of them had. It had certain human characteristics—the same basic shape, but beyond the number of arms and legs there wasn’t much more to go on. He saw enough to know that this was a Xenomorph, and that the footage in the files hadn’t done the monster justice.
“Calm down, Joyce,” he gritted, and his voice shook. “You’re not helping.”
“There are more of them, man,” Joyce screeched. “There’s more than one!”
DiTillio looked up in time to see the truth of Joyce’s words. More shapes spilled from the hole above them, and dropped onto the ruined hull of the ship. They moved fast, scrambling and managing to hold onto the vessel even as they descended.
Joyce let out a throaty cry, but it was cut off almost immediately as one of the glistening black shapes grabbed him from above.
DiTillio had exactly long enough to wish he’d followed procedure and called for backup. Then two more of the dark shapes were on him. They were vaguely humanoid, but they had sharp claws and they had teeth.
So damned many teeth.
17
NECROPOLIS
Sometimes the little things, the ones most easily overlooked, hid all of the best secrets.
They’d broken through a small section of tunnel where air was moving softly. Then they’d returned to their encampment and waited in the mess tent until the probes did their due diligence, and gave the all clear.
So Doctor Nigel Silas stepped outside of the mess tent and strode to the opening they’d blown into the stone wall. Then he stared at the discovery spread out before him, with a smile that couldn’t go any wider.
A metropolis, really. It looked to be centuries old.
The city was vast, built on hills and spreading down into areas where, once, there had been valleys, most likely cut by rivers. It was stunning, even with everything in ruin. Scarred and pitted surfaces, buildings that had collapsed nearly to the ground, yet still they were wonders.
The probes were still working diligently, recording every minute detail. He could see them flitting about in the distance. Their lights flickered in and out of sight, lighting the tops of buildings that appeared to have been amazing structures once upon a time, and still held echoes of that long gone magnificence.
Like the ship, the buildings had not been built. They had been grown, formed in a process he couldn’t begin to understand, but desperately wished he could study for the next hundred years.
No matter what they did here, none of the team he was working with would live long enough to finish what they had started. They didn’t even consider it. All that mattered for now was beginning the excavation.
They had found the remains of a couple of the creatures that had lived here, almost unrecognizable in their antiquity. They were bipedal, with some vaguely canine attributes, and larger than the average human being. How many had populated the city? Judging from the number of buildings they had found thus far, perhaps more than a million.
They hadn’t yet delved deep enough to uncover any of the technologies that had run the place. Once they did, who knew how much they would discover? And for each item they found, who knew how long it would take to figure out how it worked? This one city could keep an army of scientists occupied for decades.
The find of a lifetime. He smiled as he thought about that. Colleen came from the tent behind him and sputtered out a small laugh.
“You’re like a big kid,” she said. “You know that?”
“How else could I be? Look at this place, Colleen. It’s amazing.”
She smiled and put one of her arms around his waist.
“I know.” She paused a bit and enjoyed the view with him, standing in silence, and then said, “Where are we looking today?”
Silas pointed to the road leading down to the closest valley.
“The survey information from the probes is showing what looks like a military complex in that direction,” he said. “Well, military or at least industrial. We should look there first. It’s likely to offer up a lot of technologies on every level.”
She nodded her head. “So let’s get this show on the road.”
18
UPPING THE ANTE
Decker stayed off to the side, watching and waiting.
They’d been about to enter the wreck when Willis got a call over his comm-link. Whatever the report had been, everything had ground to a halt, and he and Manning were off to one side, conferring. The rest of the mercs were waiting for instructions, and Adams sat nearby. She was knocking back a bottle of water, relishing it like it was the best beer she’d ev
er tasted.
That seemed to be her approach to everything. Somehow, he found it difficult to be so upbeat.
“Why do you think readouts and probes aren’t working, but comm-links still do?” Decker asked.
“Comm-links are a lot simpler, I guess—maybe that has something to do with it.” She shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I’m just a grunt.”
Manning and Willis moved closer to the group, still deep in conversation, and both of them seemed excited about something. Then Manning split off and called the group together.
“Mister Willis here got a call from Doctor Silas. He’s the brain leading the team that’s examining the other side of this thing.” He gestured at the alien ship. “According to him, it looks like there might be a lot more where this came from.” That got everyone’s attention. A few of the mercs started to speak, but Manning cut them off with a single gesture. “They’ve been digging behind this ship, and think they’ve found what looks like the remains of a city.”
Everyone started to talk at once, and Manning let it go. He knew what this meant for them—the possibility of rewards beyond imagining. After a moment, Bridges raised his voice above the rest. Bridges was as close to old school military as they had, with short hair, a thin mustache and well-polished boots.
“A city?” he said. “Are there any signs of life? Maybe the bugs we’re looking for?” He was grinning. Like as not the man was already calculating how he would spend his bonus.
It was Willis who answered.
“Understand that they haven’t gotten very far yet,” he said. “There’s no sign of life, but judging from the configuration of what they have found, it looks likely that the ship was taking off—not landing. That means a spaceport, and we may be looking at a trove of discoveries the likes of which no one has ever encountered.”
He was damned near jumping up and down with excitement, and no wonder. A ship was one thing, but an entire people capable of star travel? An entire race who grew their ships? Anyone who had a piece of the salvage was going to be unbelievably wealthy.
The buzz started up again. After a few minutes, Manning reached the limits of his patience.
“Listen up!” he bellowed. “Whatever they’ve found, we need to focus on the mission. We’ve got to make certain this dig is secure, and we’ve got to try and find any living thing that might be crawling through these tunnels. Mister Willis has called for reinforcements, but they won’t arrive for a couple of weeks.
“So we’re going to be working out a rotating schedule, and covering as much ground as we can. Nothing and no one leaves this site without my knowledge and approval. Do I make myself clear?”
“Got it, boss,” Piotrowicz said. “No one comes in, no one leaves. But what about the miners?”
“As far as they know, nothing’s changed—it’s business as usual down here,” Manning said. “They’ll be following exactly the same protocols as we will. No one comes in. No one leaves.”
“Are you sure the people up there can be trusted?” Piotrowicz asked.
“Their jobs are as much on the line as ours,” Willis said. “They’ll accept all of the security measures we put into place—those are the rules, no exceptions.” His words were met with murmurs of approval all around.
Out of the corner of his eye, Decker saw one of the three techs stand up and move toward Manning. Though they’d all been listening, they’d stayed at their posts. The tech said something that couldn’t be heard over the chatter, and the two of them moved back toward the monitor.
Suddenly Manning—or maybe it was both of them—gave off a spike of emotion. Manning said something into his comm-link, then shook his head.
The spike became more intense. Decker frowned.
“Hell, no,” Adams said nearby. “I’m buying a mansion and settling myself on Monaco. I like the idea of a planet with nothing but beachfront property.”
“You’ll burn to a crisp!” the skinny kid said. Garth. “You’re so white, your skin scorches when you walk under a strong light.”
“Look who’s talking,” Adams replied. “Besides, I’ll hire me a few studs to lotionize me every morning, and twice at night.”
Decker shook off the random conversations. Weyland-Yutani owned his ass to the tune of more money than anyone would see from this little expedition. But there was something else that was bugging him—if he could just think through the drugs Piotrowicz had stuck in his arm…
Ah.
Yes.
“If there’s a city, what happened to all the people?” He directed the question to Willis.
“What’s that?” The man was still smiling, ear-to-ear.
“The aliens who built it,” Decker said. “What happened to them?”
Willis frowned and tried to look like he had a clue.
“Well, we don’t know that yet.”
“I mean, if the ship here was trying to leave, and it went down, shouldn’t we be finding some sort of remains?” He waved his hand to take in the immediate area. “For that matter, why did they just leave it here, stuck in the ground? Shouldn’t they have taken it, I don’t know, someplace else?”
Willis lost his smile.
And at the same time, Manning called out to his team.
“Listen up,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice. “We have a situation. Rodriguez, Joyce, and DiTillio aren’t responding to the comm.” He moved back to the group, and his already rough face looked as if it was carved from the rocks around them. “We have three MIAs on our hands.”
All of the chatter came to a halt, and immediately the mercenaries started prepping their equipment. This took Decker by surprise. These were the same people who had beaten and kidnapped him back on Earth. Yet when three of their own went missing, everything else took a back seat. Begrudgingly, he admired that.
The simple fact was that they had to depend on each other in bad situations. Just as he’d depended on Luke and his own team when he was pinned under the core sampler.
He stood up quickly, and immediately his head started spinning. Damn, but he needed to recover from whatever drug was in him. He looked around for Piotrowicz, but couldn’t find him—there was too much controlled chaos.
As he searched, that sensation hit him again—the certainty of being watched. He scanned the group, and none of them was paying him the least bit of attention. So he focused as best he could.
It seemed to come from several places at once. Something out there was watching him, stalking him. There was no doubt, and panic started nibbling at the edges of his mind again, sending streamers of ice through his stomach to drift and tickle and make him miserably uncomfortable.
“Decker!” Manning’s voice cut through the fog. “You picking up something, daydreaming, or maybe just hoping no one will notice you doing nothing?”
“Sorry,” he replied. “Whatever Piotrowicz gave me, it’s messing with me.”
“Well, shake it off and get your ass in gear.”
Decker grabbed his pack, which held the two weapons he’d been loaned, and moved to join the rest.
“I don’t know how your mojo works,” Manning said, “and I don’t care. What I need is results. If DiTillio’s team ran into trouble, I need to know where they are, and whether or not your alien friends are with them.”
Decker closed his eyes again, and concentrated. Though there were impressions coming in from all around, the strongest feeling came from above the ship, where he had felt something before.
Where DiTillio, Joyce, and Rodriguez had gone, on his say-so.
Shit.
“Same spot,” he said, pointing as he had earlier.
“Good enough for me.” Manning started walking. “Four teams. Cho, you and tech stay here, monitor everything you can. Piotrowicz, flank to the left and keep an eye on the tunnels. Hartsfield, right flank. Warm ’em up, but don’t be stupid.” With the exception of the techs, the whole group moved splitting apart with comfortable familiarity. It was obvious they’d worked wit
h the different people he chose, and they filed after the leaders. Decker fell into step behind Manning, keeping pace with Adams, even though every fiber of his being screamed not to head toward that sensation.
But he needed to live up to his end of the bargain if he wanted to get out of this. Besides, he was surrounded by heavily armed mercenaries.
What could go wrong? He regretted the thought immediately.
Willis trotted over, and Manning stopped.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Manning stared at him for a moment.
“It’s what I just said,” he replied. “Three of our men are missing. We’re going to find them.”
“All of you?” Willis shook his head. “No. At least a few of you need to be here for when the survey team gets back. In the meantime, we can’t just leave this area unguarded.”
“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job, Mister Willis?” Manning’s voice lowered into an unpleasant rumble.
“I’m trying to remind you that the rules have changed.” He stopped, and shifted gears. “Listen, I understand that you’re missing a few people, but you don’t need your entire team for a search-and-rescue. And you’ll be ignoring the mission at hand.”
“This is the mission at hand. I just broke the team into three separate—”
“The thing we’re paying you for,” Willis added firmly.
Manning just stared, without emotion. The closest mercs edged closer, waiting to see if their boss would take a swing at their resident bureaucrat.
“Right,” Manning said, and he spun around. “Piotrowicz, you, Anderson, Lutz, Estrada, and Vogel are going to stay here with Willis. Your job is to secure the area—especially the lift. Nothing comes down, and nothing goes up without you clearing it through me.” Piotrowicz smiled and stepped to the side, as the rest broke off to join him. “Give Adams here the medical supplies. Apparently you’re not capable of administering a reasonable dose of jack shit, anyhow.”
Sea of Sorrows Page 11