by Steve Perry
"Hang on!" Jess shouted, but there was nothing to hang on to. The deck was lit up like day and Lara rolled over, trying desperately to find a handhold on the slick platform. She saw the shuttle, burning, crashing across the deck and blowing right through the railing, a giant, tearing metal sound as it plunged over the side. She saw Ellis and Jess, scrabbling to hang on, saw both of them slide beneath the high rail, disappearing after the shuttle-and she saw the burning envelope, an incredible fireball of ignited gas, the flame eating the pliable shell like acid through paper. It was the last thing she saw as-she slipped over the side, falling through the shadow of the crashing station.
Within moments of her release, the alien queen had exacted her revenge on at least a handful of her captors; nine, to be exact, the only Hunters left on board. Noguchi was too busy flying the Shell to watch all of it, but she saw enough. The queen had somehow known where the yautja were gathered, and made her way unerringly to the dock outside of the pilot's room. How she'd negotiated the lifts and tunnels, Noguchi didn't know or care.
The ship hadn't yet broken through Bunda's atmosphere when Noguchi heard the queen's shriek, a furious and somehow gleeful cry, echoing through the hollow dock. It pierced the clattering shouts of the yautja trying to break into the control room, the sounds of metal banging against the door cutting off in a heartbeat. She heard the Hunters cry warnings to one another, heard and felt the queen's thundering approach, and felt a kind of perverse satisfaction at the thought of what would happen next.
They won't use burners, not on a queen. Not without Topknot's leave. And all of them, experienced veterans ... Noguchi couldn't deny the curiosity she felt, wondering how they'd fare against the loosed queen. She finished with her "programming," directing the Shell to home in on the signal from Topknot's craft, and hurried to the hatch's window. The battle was already in progress, three Hunters down, dying or dead. Six were left, and they'd circled the raging queen with makeshift weapons, mallets, pry bars, a kind of pickax with one sharpened end; two of them were holding lengths of braided rope, and none wore armor of any kind.
Stupid and arrogant. Any sympathy Noguchi might have felt for them was pretty much wiped out by the simple fact that they were still there; instead of leaving, locking the queen inside and waiting for reinforcements to return-or just killing her outright, for that matter-they meant to capture her again, without even bothering to arm themselves properly.
The queen, crouched in their midst, was swinging her head slowly back and forth, tilting it as if to mark their positions. Her tail curled restlessly about her giant, clawed feet, its razor tip leaving long scratches in the deck's floor, occasionally slapping against one of the dead yautja nearby. He'd been clawed open, his chest a muddled soup of bone and green, and the queen's tail whipped streamers of his blood across the legs of some of those circling her.
Noguchi saw one of the Hunters behind the watchful bug, Beads, signal to another, one of the rope holders; he was going to attack, and wanted both of the rope holders to move in while the queen was distracted. Noguchi watched as the signal went around the circle, each of the Hunters picking it up-and as if she understood that they were distracted by their own foolish planning, the queen lunged forward, her tail coiling up behind her. She snatched at the nearest Hunter with both sets of ebony claws on her right side, her talons sliding into his chest before he could raise his pry bar. At the same time, her tail slashed out, knocking Beads and two others to the deck. The sharp tip cut through tendon and bone, crippling Beads and the Hunter to his left. One of Beads's feet was completely sliced off, toppling over into the gush of pale liquid that spurted from his ankle.
In a single move, she'd halved the group. With a feral scream, she flung the limp Hunter hanging from her right hands away, his body smashing into one wall hard enough for Noguchi to hear the bones snapping, even through the door.
A Hunter she'd called Inn seized the opportunity, leaping forward with his "pick," burying the sharp end in the top of the screeching queen's left thigh. Even as a trickle of her blood started its bubbling erosion of the metal, Inu was lifted off his feet and held up in front of her grinning, drooling face. Her inner jaws shot out, tearing into Inu's forehead, snapping closed and withdrawing in the blink of an eye. The Hunter's limbs were still spasming when she threw him aside-and the Shell pitched forward suddenly, knocking the two yautja still standing to the floor, causing the queen to stumble. Noguchi grabbed at the door's handle, managing to keep upright. She turned, saw that the Shell was tunneling through Bunda's outer atmosphere, flashes of light and dark painting the viewscreen with violent, burning motion.
Another trumpeting howl from the queen. Noguchi turned back to the window Just in time to see the bug mother put an end to the ill-planned assault-a step forward, a swift blow delivered, a lash of her tail, and it was over. The deck was awash with green, broken bodies toppled together, unmoving. If the two crippled Hunters were still alive, Noguchi couldn't tell. And the queen...
Noguchi took a step back from the door as her long, midnight face filled the window, as she seemed to look into the control room. To look directly at her, her black comb sweeping up and out of sight, her grinning blindness tilted to smell or taste or hear the woman inside.
Noguchi studied her, filled with awe, afraid to breathe. She was a glorious, terrible creature, she was Death, the Black Warrior that the Hunters spoke of before battle.
For a frozen moment, they faced each other, a handwidth of clear plastic separating them-and then the monstrous queen turned and moved away, a dark grace in her fluid, powerful movements. Noguchi watched her disappear from the bloody dock, feeling as 'though she'd been spared, not knowing why.
Behind her, the console gurgled out a few yautja words, telling her that manual assistance was required to set exact coordinates. Noguchi turned and moved back to the controls, surprised to see the night sky of Bunda flashing by on the large viewscreen. It had taken less time than she'd thought ...
Still dazed from her closeness to the alien queen, it took her a moment to see the bright spot on the monitor, a yellow-white flower in the dark jumble of the planet's surface, as big or bigger than the Shell.
What
An explosion, and a big one. Noguchi checked the monitor for Topknot's ship signal, and although she couldn't be sure she was reading it right, it appeared that he wasn't more than a few klicks from the fireball. In any case, it was obvious where the action on Bunda was centered.
Noguchi tapped at the controls, shifting the ship toward the light, hoping that she wasn't too late.
Kevin Vincent woke up hurting and alone, the bright heat from the burning station illuminating the crash of bushes he'd landed in. He tried to move, to sit up, but felt a sharp, stabbing pain across his back, centering on his left shoulder. He was able to turn his head, at least, enough to see the mass of flaming wreckage that had been Bunda survey. It seemed to stretch forever, klicks of smashed deck, klicks of burning, stinking envelope draped across mountains of debris.
"Shit," he whispered miserably, feeling terrible in every way possible. His station had been attacked, his people murdered for information about some abominable experiment, and those who'd survived had fled, leaving him to die. Briggs was probably dead, no real comfort since he'd be held responsible, he seemed to have broken his shoulder-and I'm lying in a goddamn bush and it's poking through my goddamn shirt and it HURTS, and why doesn't someone just put me out of my goddamn misery?
If he didn't move, the pain wasn't too bad. Vincent closed his eyes for a moment, sweat rolling off of his flushed skin, wondering what could possibly happen next. That he'd survived was a small miracle-not because of the fall; the station had gone down slowly enough for the fall to be survivable-but that the gods hadn't killed him already, just on general principles.
Because that would've been too easy, gotta let me live so I can understand how much they hate me, let me suffer a little more. No fun if I don't suffer ...
The crackle an
d hiss of the giant, shallow fire was loud enough to occupy his hearing until the crack of a thin branch not two meters away reached him. He instinctively tried to sit up, and was instantly knocked back by the pain.
"Owww, no, no, no, don't wanna die, please-" Vincent babbled out a stream of denial and wishes, eyes squenched shut, knowing that whatever was coming wasn't coming to help.
He was right. The thing that stood over him when he opened his eyes was the thing from the station, the synth that had been fighting Briggs's bodyguard-except it wasn't wearing its mask, and Vincent realized with a kind of numb horror that it wasn't a synthetic at all. He was struck speechless, his pleas dying in his throat, barely able to believe what he was seeing.
The creature that stared down at him was the ugliest, most alien-looking thing he'd ever seen-a giant, bony head, speckled and fleshy, four fingerlike pincers on its beady-eyed, pink-mouthed, noseless face, each tipped with a gleaming tusk.
"What are you," Vincent whispered, and the creature's pincers opened outward, fully exposing the small, pointed teeth in its strange mouth. The creature reached for something on its arm, holding its clawed hand up as it touched some kind of a bracelet-and Vincent heard his own voice spill out, "-no, no, don't wanna die, please-and the creature flexed its arm, and two extremely sharp and nasty-looking blades sprang out from behind its hand, curved and shining in the firelight, and Vincent closed his eyes, thinking that if it was a bad dream, some hallucination, he wouldn't...
* * *
Chapter 21
Ellis heard them calling his name and moved away as quietly as he could, deeply thankful that he hadn't killed them. They hadn't been hurt by the fall; Lara had a little bit of a limp but she'd told Jess it was nothing, and Jess hadn't been messed up any worse. After the beating he'd taken-because I didn't help-and nearly being immolated, Ellis was grateful that his stupidity hadn't cost Jess anything more. He wasn't going to do any more harm, to either of them, and that meant staying away. He was just lucky that he'd landed far enough from them that he'd had time to...
Ellis stumbled over a broken branch and froze, hoping that they hadn't heard. He was so clumsy, and he'd hit his head when he'd fallen, hard enough that his interface wound had started oozing again. He felt dizzy and strange, but in a way, his mind was clearer than it had been since before DS 949.
Max, if I could only get to Max and protect them, save them again like before ...
Before. Stronger, smarter, better, seeing the dangers as glowing green shapes surrounded by lines, calculating distance and finding the optimum kill method in less time than it took to actually think it. The feelings he'd had then, so unimportant, so secondary to the task at hand. Ellis-Max, Max-Ellis, two as one, accomplishing such, such-unity. Perfection.
"Ellis? Can you hear me?" Lara called, far to his right. At least six or seven meters, maybe as much as 7.40 ...
Ellis finally let himself move again, wondering how he could have let himself be alone for so long when Max was waiting. There was no decision to make. They had all landed close to the burning, dying station, but he'd already led them far enough away that he'd be able to circle back, to get to the shuttle and Max before they could stop him.
The thought that even trying to interface again could kill him didn't cross his mind. It was the kind of fear that Brian Ellis would have had.
For a time, there was darkness, interrupted by brief bursts of sensation. Movement, and a hissing sound. Something shiny and slender and hard against his chest. A jungle smell, and wetness seeping through his suit, a clammy gel against his skin.
It was the wetness that finally woke Briggs up, the cool feel of the syrupy liquid dragging his mind out of the dark. For a brief moment, he had absolutely no idea where he was or how he'd come to be there-too brief, because as his memory came flooding back, the realization of where he'd ended up came with it. Neither one was particularly pleasant.
Some Company competitor had blown the survey station apart, and he'd apparently been knocked unconscious when he'd fallen from the platform-and then taken, and now he was-well, surely he wouldn't actually be injured in any way, Nirasawa or Keene would come before anything could happen ...
Briggs shifted uncomfortably, his back against a tree, a thick band of resin-like substance binding his arms to his sides and holding him up. In front of him was an egg. An alien egg.
Biotech, has to be. Their program isn't that far behind ours, they could have transported some individual drones to Bunda, waited. until one transformed, started a new nest .
Yes, that was it. Biotech had sabotaged the survey station because-because it was Company, that was all they cared about, just some random selection of a rival's site for their own experiments. That it happened to be on Bunda, and that the survivors of DS 949 had landed here-coincidence. They'd sent in their new synthetic breed to obtain the 949 data, because they knew the planet had been infected; it made perfect sense now that he thought about it. They wouldn't want to risk lives when they had such marvelous new toys, invisible soldiers that could be tested against their XT nest ...
Quite a coincidence, I'll have to get Nirasawa to calculate the odds on that when he...
Briggs heard a hissing from somewhere behind him and tensed, turning his head as far as he could to look for the source. No good. All he could see was the bark of the tree he'd been secured to, a pasty gray blur. Really, it was too dark to see much of anything. He couldn't be far from the station, he could smell the searing stench of burning plastics, but there wasn't any firelight. The only illumination came from the stars, a soft, pale light that gave his surroundings a dreamy, ethereal quality.
He looked at the egg again, smooth and unbroken, and felt the first sliver of real fear slip into his mind. What if ...
"Ridiculous," he muttered, shifting uncomfortably. He was Lucas Briggs, upper six figures plus full WY perks, a palatial home in New Japan, only a fraction of a millimeter away from a spot on the Board. A spot that was as good as his, once he filed his report.
Positive thinking. Like what I'll do to that pilot, once we're off Bunda. Like the look on Julia Russ's face when she hears about my promotion.
Keene was probably still guarding the trio of prisoners, so it would be Nirasawa who found him; it was better that way. Keene was good but the synth would be able to handle a few drones with his bare hands. Much more efficient, much faster.
Briggs stared at the egg for a long moment, then cleared his throat, thinking that perhaps it would help things along if he made his position known.
"Nirasawa! I'm here!"
As if waiting for the sound of his voice, the top of the egg opened. Four thick, mucousy petals folded back, something moving in the shadowy center. Something pulsing, glistening in the faint bluish light cast down from above.
"Nirasawa!"
More hisses rose up around him, shadows moving out from the trees, but he couldn't look away from the egg. This was laughable, he was Lucas Briggs, this couldn't possibly be happening, think positive, think positive
"NIRASAWA, KEENE, GET OVER HERE NOW!"
Like a spider, like some slick and impossible insect, the facehugger leapt from its cold, unsealed womb. It was so fast that Briggs didn't have any more time to consider how very unlikely this outcome was, how things like this simply didn't happen to executives of his rank.
By the time Noguchi saw them, it was too late. The Shell had already touched the tops of the trees, roughly grinding through them, snapping them like twigs. Even strapped in, the ride was rough; she could hear the bodies in the dock being thrown against the walls, the ship alarms clattering and trilling that it was not a cleared landing zone, telling her that the Shell was suffering irreparable damage. As if she didn't know.
The ship continued its reckless half crash into the trees, the night broken by the reflected light of the giant, dying fire close by-and Noguchi saw the two humans in the viewscreen as the Shell actually touched the ground, a tremendous, dragging crunch of wood being forced
into the soil, of plants and trees being chopped down by the nose of the still-moving ship.
No!
Noguchi saw the two figures running, pumping hell-bent to get out of the way-and then the ship plowed upward, the jerking image of the fleeing people gone from the screen. She saw shadowed green, moving, she saw a flash of dark sky, then green again-and then it was over, the Shell coming to rest.
The second she felt that the ship had settled, she popped the seat harness and grabbed her mask, desperate to get out, to see if she'd done the unthinkable. What a cruel irony it would be, to be responsible for killing people she'd come to save from the Hunters, a Clan ship the instrument of their deaths.
She doubted that the queen had survived the landing, but she hesitated at the hatch back into the shuttle dock all the same, listening. She'd already half slipped into battle mode, all of her senses tuning up for whatever came next. There was nothing but the clattering, hissing alarm, no sound, no feel of movement. Noguchi moved quickly across the dock, popping the air-lock door on the east side.
The rush of air seemed cold compared to the Shell's heated atmosphere, and she welcomed it, breathing deeply as she looked down, assessing her climb. The ship was easily twenty-five meters high, but there were trees pressed against the side, less than a four-meter drop to the closest branch; Noguchi donned her mask and quickly lowered herself over the lock's edge, able to slide part of the way down the Shell's curving slope.
Prom the trees to the ground it was an easy climb, mostly dropping from branch to branch, steadying herself with one hand against the hull. Her ankle was still sore from her fight with Shorty, but the rest of her injuries seemed to have melted away. As soon as her feet touched, she took off her mask, hurrying around to the front of the ship.
