The woman imprisoned in the wall began to convulse Somewhere she summoned up the energy to scream, a steady sawing shriek of mindless agony. Ripley took a step toward the nearest mike, wanting to warn the troopers of what was coming but unable to make her throat work.
It wasn't necessary. They'd studied the research disks she'd prepared for them.
'Flamethrower!' Apone snapped. 'Move!'
Frost handed his incinerator to the sergeant, stepped aside As Apone took possession, the woman's chest erupted in a spray of blood. From the cavity thus formed, a small fanged skull emerged, hissing viciously.
Apone's finger jerked the trigger of the flamethrower. The two other soldiers who carried similar devices imitated his action. Heat and light filled the chamber, searing the wall and obliterating the screaming horror it contained. Cocoons and their contents melted and ran like translucent taffy. A deafening screeching echoed in their ears as they worked the fire over the entire end of the room. What wasn't carbonized by the intense heat melted. The wall puddled and ran, pooling around their boots like molten plastic. But it didn't smell like plastic. It gave off a thick, organic stench.
Everyone in the chamber was intent on the wall and the flamethrowers. No one saw a section of another wall twitch.
VIII
The alien had been lying dormant, prone in a pocket that blended in perfectly with the rest of the room. Slowly it emerged from its resting niche. Smoke from burning cocoons and other organic matter billowed roofward, reducing visibility in the chamber to near zero.
Something made Hudson glance briefly at his tracker. His pupils expanded, and he whirled to shout a warning 'Movement! I've got movement.'
'Position?' inquired Apone sharply.
'Can't lock up. It's too tight in here, and there's too many other bodies.'
An edge crept into the master sergeant's voice. 'Don't tell me that. Talk to me, Hudson. Where is it?'
The comtech struggled to refine the tracker's information That was the trouble with these field units: They were tough but imprecise.
'Uh, seems to be in front and behind.'
In the Operations bay of the APC, Gorman frantically adjusted gain and sharpness controls on individual monitors 'We can't see anything back here, Apone. What's going on?'
Ripley knew what was going on. Knew what was coming. She could sense it, even if they couldn't see it, like a wave rushing a black sand beach at night. She found her voice and the mike simultaneously.
'Pull your team out, Gorman. Get them out of there now.'
The lieutenant spared her an irritated glare. 'Don't give me orders, lady. I know what I'm doing.'
'Maybe, but you don't know what's being done.'
Down on C-level the walls and ceiling of the alien chamber were coming to life. Biomechanical fingers extended talons that could tear metal. Slime-lubricated jaws began to flex pistoning silently as their owners awoke. Uncertain movements were glimpsed dimly through smoke and steam by the nervous human intruders.
Apone found himself starting to back up. 'Go to infrared Look sharp, people!' Visors were snapped into place. On their smooth, transparent insides images began to materialize nightmare silhouettes moving in ghostly silence through the drifting mist.
'Multiple signals,' Hudson declared, 'all around. Closing from all directions.'
Dietrich's nerves snapped, and she whirled to retreat. As she turned, something tall and immensely powerful loomed above the smoke to wrap long arms around her. Limbs like metal bars locked across her chest and contracted. The medtech screamed, and her finger tensed reflexively on the trigger of her flamethrower. A jet of flame engulfed Frost, turning him into a blindly stumbling bipedal torch. His shriek echoed through everyone's headset.
Apone pivoted, unable to see anything in the dense atmosphere and poor light but able to hear entirely too much The heat from the cooling exchangers on the level above distorted the imaging ability of the troopers' infrared visors.
In the APC, Gorman could only stare as Frost's monitor went to black. At the same time his bioreadouts flattened, hills and valleys signifying life being replaced by grim, straight lines. On the remaining monitor screens, images and outlines bobbed and panned confusedly. Blasts of glowing napalm from the remaining operative flamethrowers combined to overload the light-sensing ability of suit cameras, flaring what images they did provide.
In the midst of chaos and confusion Vasquez and Drake found each other. High-tech harpy nodded knowingly to new wave Neanderthal as she slammed her sequestered magazine back in place.
'Let's rock,' she said curtly.
Standing back to back, they opened up simultaneously with their smartguns, laying down two arcs of fire like welders sealing the skin of a spaceship. In the confined chamber the din from the two heavy weapons was overpowering. To the operators of the smartguns the thunder was a Bach fugue and Grimoire stanthisizer all rolled into one.
Gorman's voice echoed in their ears, barely audible over the roar of battle. 'Who's firing? I ordered a hold on heavy fire!'
Vasquez reached up just long enough to rip away her headset, her eyes and attention riveted on the smartgun's targeting screen. Feet, hands, eyes, and body became extensions of the weapon, all dancing and spinning in unison Thunder, lightning, smoke, and screams filled the chamber, a little slice of Armageddon on C-level. A great calmness flowed through her.
Surely Heaven couldn't be any better than this.
Ripley flinched as another scream reverberated through the Operations bay speakers. Wierzbowski's suit camera crumbled followed by the immediate flattening of his biomonitors. Her fingers clenched, the nails digging into the palms. She'd liked Wierzbowski.
What was she doing here, anyway? Why wasn't she back home, poor and unlicensed, but safe in her little apartment surrounded by Jones and ordinary people and common sense? Why had she voluntarily sought the company of nightmares? Out of altruism? Because she'd suspected all along what had been responsible for the break in communications between Acheron and Earth? Or because she wanted a lousy flight certificate back?
Down in the depths of the processing station, frantic panicky voices ran into one another on the single persona communications frequency. Headset components sorted sense from the babble. She recognized Hudson's above everyone else's. The comtech's unsophisticated pragmatism shone through the breakdown in tactics.
'Let's get out of here!'
She heard Hicks yelling at someone else. The corporal sounded more frustrated than anything else. 'Not that tunnel the other one!'
'You sure?' Crowe's picture swung crazily as he ducked something unseen, the view provided by his suit camera a wild blur full of smoke, haze, and biomechanical silhouettes. 'Watch it—behind you. Move, will you!'
Gorman's hands slowed. Something besides button pushing was required now, and Ripley could see from the ashen expression that had come over the lieutenant's face that he didn't have it.
'Get them out of there!' she screamed at him. 'Do it now!'
'Shut up.' He was gulping air like a grouper, studying his readouts. Everything was unraveling, his careful plan of advance coming apart on the remaining monitors too fast for him to think it through. Too fast. 'Just shut up!'
The groan of metal being ripped apart sounded over Crowe's headset pickup as his telemetry went black. Gorman stuttered something incomprehensible, trying to keep control of himself even as he was losing control of the situation.
'Uh, Apone, I want you to lay down a suppressing fire with the incinerators and fall back by squads to the APC. Over.'
The sergeant's distant reply was distorted by static, the roar of the flamethrowers, and the rapid fire stutter of the smartguns.
'Say again? All after incinerators?'
'I said . . .' Gorman repeated his instructions. It didn't matter if anyone heard them. The men and women trapped in the cocoon chamber had time only to react, not to listen.
Only Apone fiddled with his headset, trying to make sense of the ga
rbled orders. Gorman's voice was distorted beyond recognition. The headsets were designed to operate and deliver a clear signal under any conditions, including under water, but there was something happening here that hadn't been anticipated by the communications equipment designers something that couldn't have been foreseen by anyone because it hadn't been encountered before.
Someone screamed behind the sergeant. Forget Gorman. He switched the headset over to straight intersuit frequency 'Dietrich? Crowe? Sound off! Wierzbowski, where are you?'
Movement to his left. He whirled and came within a millimetre of blowing Hudson's head off. The comtech's eyes were wild. He was teetering on the edge of sanity and barely recognized the sergeant. No bold assertions now; all false bravado fled. He was terrified out of his skin and made no effort to conceal the fact.
'We're getting juked! We're gonna die in here!'
Apone passed him a rifle magazine. The comtech slapped it home, trying to look every which way at once. 'Feel better? Apone asked him.
'Yeah, right. Right!' Gratefully the comtech chambered a pulse-rifle round. 'Forget the heat exchanger.' He sensed movement, turned, and fired. The slight recoil imparted by the weapon travelled up his arm to restore a little of his lost confidence.
Off to their right, Vasquez was laying down an uninterrupted field of fire, destroying everything not human that came within a metre of her—be it dead, alive, or part of the processing plant's machinery. She looked out of control Apone knew better. If she was out of control, they'd all be dead by now.
Hicks ran toward her. Pivoting smoothly, she let loose a long burst from the heavy weapon. The corporal ducked as the smartgun's barrel swung toward his face, stumbling clear as the nightmarish figure stalking him was catapulted backward by Vasquez's blast. Biomechanical fingers had been centimetres from his neck.
Within the APC, Apone's monitor suddenly spun crazily and went dark. Gorman stared at it, as though by doing so, he could will it back to life, along with the man it represented.
'I told them to fall back.' His tone was distant, disbelieving 'They must not have heard the order.'
Ripley shoved her face into his, saw the dazed, baffled expression. 'They're cut off in there! Do something!'
He looked up at her slowly. His lips worked, but the mumble they produced was unintelligible. He was shaking his head slightly.
No help from that quarter. The lieutenant was out of it. Burke had backed up against the opposite wall, as though by putting distance between himself and the images on the remaining active monitors he could somehow remove himself from the battle that was raging in the bowels of the processing station.
There was only one thing that would do the surviving soldiers any good now, and that was some kind of immediate help Gorman wasn't going to do anything about it, and Burke couldn't. So that left Jones's favourite human.
If the cat had been present and capable of taking action on Ripley's behalf, she knew what he would have done: turned the armoured personnel carrier around and driven that sucker at top speed for the landing field. Piled into the dropship, lifted back to the Sulaco, slipped into hypersleep, and gone home. Not likely anyone in colonial administration would dispute her report this time. Not with a shell-shocked Gorman and halfcomatose Burke to back her up. Not with the recordings automatically stored by the APC's computer taken directly from the soldier's suit cameras to flash in the faces of those smug content Company representatives.
Get out, go home, get away, the voice inside her skull screamed at her. You've got the proof you came for. The colony's kaput, one survivor, the others dead or worse than dead. Go back to Earth and come back with an army next time not a platoon. Atmosphere fliers for air cover. Heavy weapons Level the place if they have to, but let 'em do it without you.
There was only one problem with that comforting line of reasoning. Leaving now would mean abandoning Vasquez and Hudson and Hicks and everyone else still alive down in C-level to the tender ministrations of the aliens. If they were lucky they would die. If they were not, they'd end up cemented into a cocoon wall as replacement for the still-living host colonists they'd mercifully carbonized.
She couldn't do that and live with it. She'd see their faces and hear their screams every time she rested her head on a pillow If she fled, she'd be swapping the immediate nightmare for hundreds later on. A bad trade. One more time the numbers were against her.
She was terrified of what she had to do, but the anger that had been building inside her at Gorman's ineffectiveness and at the Company for sending her out here with an inexperienced field officer and less than a dozen troops (to save money, no doubt) helped drive her past the paralyzed lieutenant toward the APC's cockpit.
The sole survivor of Hadley Colony awaited her with a solemn stare.
'Newt, get in the back and put your seat belt on.'
'You're going after the others, aren't you?'
She paused as she was strapping herself into the driver's chair. 'I have to. There are still people alive down there, and they need help. You understand that, don't you?'
The girl nodded. She understood completely. As Ripley clicked home the latches on the driver's harness, the girl raced back down the aisle.
The warm glow of instruments set in the hold mode greeted Ripley as she turned to the controls. Gorman and Burke might be incapable of reaction, but no such psychological restraints inhibited the APC's movements. She started slapping switches and buttons, grateful now for the time spent during the past year operating all sorts of heavy loading and transport equipment out in Portside. The oversize turbocharged engine raced reassuringly, and the personnel carrier shook, eager to move out.
The vibration from the engine was enough to shock Gorman back to the real world. He leaned back in his chair and shouted forward. 'Ripley, what are you doing?'
Easy to ignore him, more important to concentrate on the controls. She slammed the massive vehicle into gear. Drive wheels spun on damp ground as the APC lurched toward the gaping entrance to the station.
Smoke was pouring out of the complex. The big armoured wheels skidded slightly on the damp pavement as she wrenched the machine sideways and sent it hurtling down the wide, descending rampway. The ramp accommodated the APC with room to spare. It had been designed to admit big earthmovers and service vehicles. Colonial construction was typically overbuilt. Even so, the roadway was depressed by the weight of the APC's armour, but no cracks appeared in its wake as Ripley sent it racing downward. Her hands hammered the controls of the independently powered wheels as she took out some of her anger on the uncomplaining plastic.
Mist and haze obscured the view provided by the externa monitors. She switched to automatic navigation, and the APC kept itself from crashing into the enclosing walls, ranging lasers reading the distance between wheels and obstacles twenty times a second and reporting back to the vehicle's central computer. She maintained speed, knowing that the machine wouldn't let her crash.
Gorman stopped staring at the dimly seen walls rushing by on the Operations bay screens, released his suit harness, and stumbled forward, bouncing off the walls as Ripley sent the APC careening wildly around tight corners.
'What are you doing?'
'What's it look like I'm doing?' She didn't turn to face him absorbed in controlling the carrier.
He put a hand on her shoulder. 'Turn around! That's an order!'
'You can't give me orders, Gorman. I'm a civilian remember?'
'This is a military expedition under military control. As commanding officer, I am ordering you to turn this vehicle around!'
She gritted her teeth, attention focused on the forward viewscreens. 'Go sit on a grenade, Gorman. I'm busy.'
He reached down and tried to pull her out of the chair Burke got both arms around him and pulled him off. She would have thanked the Company rep, but she didn't have the time.
They reached C-level and the big wheels screamed as she sent the APC into a mad turn, simultaneously switching off the automatic na
vigation system and the ranging lasers. The engine revved as they rumbled forward, tearing away pipes and conduits, equipment modules, and chunks of alien encrustation. She glanced at the control console until she located the external instrumentation she wanted: strobe beacon, siren, running lights. She wiped the entire panel with the palm of her right hand.
The exterior of the APC came alive with sodium-arc lights infrared homing beacons, spinning locater flashers, and the piercing whine of the battle siren. The individual suit monitors were all back in the Operations bay, but she didn't need to see them, zeroing in on the flash of weapons fire just ahead. The lights and roar came from beyond a thick wall of translucent alien resin, the material eerily distributing the light from the guns throughout its substance, giving the cocoon chamber the appearance of a dome pulsing from within.
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