The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume One (Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum, the Female War)

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The Complete Aliens Omnibus, Volume One (Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum, the Female War) Page 34

by Steve Perry


  “How interesting,” Wilks told the young shrink. Maybe he would try to fuck her, if for no other reason than to shut her up.

  Before he could speak, however, she continued, obviously in love with the sound of her own voice. “From what our medico-historical researchers can determine, the primary reason Holliday won his duels was because he did not care if he did.”

  That brought a frown to Wilks’s face. “What does that mean?” He was immediately sorry he had asked.

  “M. Holliday was going to die soon, or so he thought. Actually he lived well beyond his predicted termination, the diagnosis having been somewhat erroneous. But because he thought his days were numbered and that this number was very small, he believed he had nothing to lose. Whenever he faced somebody in a duel—they called them shootdowns or showdowns or some such testosteronic euphemistic nonsense—he had no fear of dying. He was, in his own mind, already dead. Further, he regularly imbibed large amounts of alcoholic beverages and was thus further anesthetized. While this doubtless impaired his physical responses vis-à-vis his reaction time and weapons’ prowess, these things in fact gave him a psychological edge. Most of the people he faced in such duels did not wish to die and thus their fear often caused them to hesitate or behave in a panicky manner. Against an opponent who sincerely did not care if he lived or died but whose only goal was to shoot them and be damned, such fears can be fatal. And apparently these encounters were fatal more often than not against M. Holliday, D.D.S.”

  Wilks shook his head. He wondered if she talked like that when she came. “Wonderful. You want to take off your clothes and screw a war hero before they come to get me?”

  The young woman smiled, unfazed by his crude invitation. “I think not, Corporal Wilks. It would hardly be professional…”

  Running down a corridor with alien monsters searching for him, Wilks grinned, the scar on his face doubtless making the expression hideous to see. I know just how you felt, Doc. When you live on borrowed time and don’t give a dog’s dick if you die, it makes things nice and simple.

  * * *

  Billie saw a man holding a carbine squatting behind a bulkhead extrusion, trying to hide. When he saw her spot him, he started to point his weapon at them.

  “Wilks!” she yelled. She brought her own carbine around to cover the trooper.

  “Don’t do it, marine!” Powell called out.

  But the trooper was rising, still swinging his piece toward them. “The general is back! You’re all dead meat!”

  Billie and Wilks fired at about the same time. The trooper did a twisting jig as he fell, his chest blown open, his blood splattering the wall.

  Billie felt sick. Killing people never got any easier. But she kept moving. Self-preservation ruled.

  * * *

  Somebody had killed the lights and life support in the corridor but Spears was prepared for that. His troops were suited, in full combat gear. “Go to spookeyes, marines,” he ordered. He clicked his own faceplate filters into Amplite mode, saw the corridor light up a ghostly green. Another control flicked on his lamps and the glow that would look a dim and almost invisible violet to unaided eyes splashed the walls with brilliant green, almost as bright as the normal overheads. “Stay sharp, troops! Overlapping fields of fire!”

  Somebody stumbled into view twenty meters ahead. Spears saw the man waving his arms, heard him call out: “General! Is that you? Don’t shoot, I’m on your side!” He couldn’t see much, Spears could tell that, he wore station coveralls, didn’t have a weapon or vision augmenters.

  “Fire,” Spears commanded.

  The two marines running point opened up. The sounds were muted but audible. The man ahead fell as if his legs had disappeared. Many inside the station would be his allies but Spears couldn’t take time now to worry about loyalties. One enemy with a grenade could cause a lot of damage. Better to clear the halls first and sort things out later.

  Abruptly the gravity shut off. There was no warning, merely a sudden cessation. The running marines bounded high into the air, slammed into the walls or ceiling, or tumbled along the floor, out of control. Switching from nearly a full gee to a tenth or less between steps was not something a man could realistically train for.

  “Switch on your boots!” Spears yelled.

  There were magnetic strips under the floors, put there for just such a failure, and the combat boots would allow walking, albeit a much slower pace than in normal gravity.

  When the confusion settled down, along with the troopers, only one man had been injured too badly to continue. The platoon medic said he’d broken his neck and would need full rehab.

  “Can he move?”

  “No, sir. He’s paralyzed.”

  “Leave him, then. Somebody will come for him later.”

  Some thing, actually, Spears figured. The man was useless as a soldier now, save as fodder for the new troops. Might as well let them have him.

  “Sir!” the wounded man cried out. “Please. Don’t leave me here for those things!”

  “They also serve who lie and wait,” Spears said. “It’s war, son. You fucked up, you pay for it. Let’s move, troops.”

  They shuffled along, boots clumping on the deck. The cries of the injured man stopped when Spears had his unit switch radio freaks to opchan three.

  * * *

  Powell listened to the com he carried, shook his head. He and Billie and Wilks were in the approach corridor leading to the starship hangars. They still had lights and power, though much of the station had apparently been shut down. Panicky reports came over the com, voices blending into a continuous and frightened walla:

  “Life support shut down in D-2—!”

  “It got Maury, it just took him—!”

  “Air doors are down, air doors down—!”

  “—are under fire, somebody is shooting here!—”

  “Monsters, monsters—ahh, get away—!”

  The sound of explosions, gunfire, metal on metal, and other sounds of death and confusion came, too.

  For a moment Wilks felt himself grow heavier, as if somebody had suddenly put a weight on his back. Then the feeling vanished.

  “Wilks?”

  “Somebody is fiddling with the gravity,” he said. “Bueller, trying to slow Spears down, or throw the aliens off stride, probably.”

  Powell was on the edge of full-blown panic himself, Wilks could see that. His face was pale, sweaty, and he clutched at the com as if it were some kind of lifeline. “The base is overrun,” he said. “We’re fucked. I should have known better than to try Spears. He’s a killer. He’s a madman. We’re all doomed.”

  “Listen,” Wilks said, as if talking to a buzzhead recruit or a small child. “Listen, we can get away. We’ll take one of the starships.”

  Powell shook his head. “Can’t. It takes too long to program a launch. They’ll get us. They’ll get us.”

  “We’ll run an old program,” Wilks said. “Take one of the ships back to where it came from.”

  “Not a good idea. They came from Earth. All of them.”

  “We’ll fix the goddamned program along the way! Move, Powell!”

  Powell stared at him. Nodded. “Okay. You’re in charge now, okay?”

  Poor sucker. He should have gone into another line of work. Powell should be drinking high tea at some university, talking with other professors about modern art or ancient history. Only thing was, without killers like Spears and, yeah, like me, there weren’t ever gonna be such places again. Maybe not anyhow.

  Ahead of them, a pair of aliens stepped out of the shadows and hissed.

  Wilks felt himself grinning. Fuck you, he thought. Don’t you know me? You’re messing with Doc Holliday, you stupid bastards.

  He slid over next to Billie, who saw the aliens. They stood shoulder to shoulder and raised their carbines.

  It got noisy in the corridor.

  “Let’s go, Powell. Stay with us.”

  The trio moved toward the hangar entrance.


  20

  The hangar was still patent, at least no aliens had managed to get in. After the two in the hallway, Powell’s command override had admitted the trio through the lock without any other problems.

  The vast space of the hangar was quiet, it seemed empty. If there had been work crews inside when the alert sounded, they were not around now.

  “Which ship is the easiest to access?” Wilks asked. “Which one most likely to be fueled and spaceworthy?”

  “Over there,” Powell said. He pointed.

  There might be other vessels elsewhere, but this particular hangar held four star hoppers, including the robot ship in which Wilks, Billie, and Bueller had arrived. Wilks was glad that the one Powell had indicated was not The American; he would prefer something with a little more human comfort designed into it. Then again, any port in a storm was a pretty good philosophy, and between Spears and the aliens, this place wasn’t just a storm, it was a hurricane.

  “All aboard,” Wilks said. He waved his carbine at the ship.

  * * *

  The base was a wreck. Spears and his unit moved through the chaos, shooting whatever got in their way. Mostly, the targets were people; they did chop down a couple of the drones who were too slow on the uptake. What the hell, he thought, he was improving the gene pool. Attacking him was a nonsurvival characteristic, for certain.

  There were few things to be salvaged here. He was going to have to cut his losses. True, he was going to win the battle and the war, pitiful and short as it was, but it would mean the base itself was a loss. Well. A good commander knew when to dig in or when to dump his tanks and leave the party. Third Base had served its purpose. He would have liked a little more time, but then, that was nearly always the case with commanders, wasn’t it? You tried for perfect but you accepted what you had to and moved on. When the battle was joined, you had to deal with what was, not what you wished it was. In a perfect galaxy, you’d always have the troops and matériel you needed to wage the best battle plan. In this galaxy, it seldom happened.

  The unit had lost a couple more troopers, one to gunfire, another to a booby trap, but it was moving well. The vault where Spears had his best drones stored, the cream of the crop so far, would be impervious to anything short of a nuke and only he had the key that would open the vault. Those being safe, the only other thing of value on this rock was the way off it. And he had that covered, too. It would be a poor general indeed who didn’t keep his line of retreat open. Spears was not a poor general.

  He led his troops toward the starship hangars.

  * * *

  Billie was beyond fear by now, her adrenaline surge no more than a trickle, just enough to keep her alert. It was odd to think that you could get used to something like this, but it seemed to be happening. Or maybe she was finally losing her mind. She was too tired to care which it was.

  Next to her, Wilks said, “Well?”

  He was talking to Powell, who frowned at the control unit he held. Powell tapped in a series of numbers on the small device, then looked at the ship the three of them stood in front of.

  “The hatch isn’t opening,” Powell said.

  “I can see that. Why not?”

  Powell shook his head. “I don’t know. This is the Command Override, it’s supposed to open every lock in the base, right down to the beer coolers in the kitchen. It’s the one Spears carries when he’s here, it stays with whoever is the CO in the station. It has worked so far. It should work here.”

  “Are you sure you entered the correct code?” Billie said.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  Wilks sighed. “Spears. He’s fucked us again. We should have guessed it. As paranoid as he is, he wouldn’t trust anybody with the ships if he wasn’t around. We’ll have to run a bypass.”

  “That’ll take time,” Powell said. “The access panel is armored.”

  “I don’t see we have much of a choice,” Wilks said.

  * * *

  Spears and his troops reached the outer hangar via the emergency escape tunnel he’d had built. The two transports in the huge room stood silent. He had half his platoon fan out and take up guard positions, but there was no need. They were alone. He almost felt sorry for the enemy. So outclassed. Powell never really had a chance.

  “Okay, the rest of you with me to the inner hangar.”

  They moved down the interlink.

  * * *

  “I think that’s got it,” Wilks said.

  The access panel for the hatch control had to be burned open, but once that was done, the circuits were fairly easy to reroute. Wilks bypassed the electronics entirely, shut off the power to the hatch, and used the manual crank to begin winding the hatch up. He had a fifteen-centimeter gap opened at the bottom when he heard the voice:

  “Freeze frame it!”

  Wilks turned to look, saw half a dozen marines in climate suits and full battle gear pointing their weapons at them. He spared a quick glance for Billie, and understanding passed between them. Better to go down shooting than to be fed to the aliens. “Good-bye, Billie,” Wilks whispered. “Sorry.”

  He leapt for his carbine where it leaned against the ship, saw Billie swing her weapon up to firing position. Wilks waited for the impacts of the bullets that would kill him, knowing there was no way he could get to his own piece before the marines cut him to pieces but going to go out trying. Fuck it—!

  A blinding white light smashed into Wilks and took him away. Odd, he hadn’t expected it to be like that…

  * * *

  When Wilks came to, he was lying on his back next to Powell, Billie sprawled on the other side of the major. Wilks blinked, not understanding.

  “Nice try, Sergeant,” Spears said.

  Wilks rolled onto his side, found himself facing Spears. Half a dozen troops backed him, each of them holding stockstiks, essentially riot batons wired to stun a victim into unconsciousness at a touch.

  “Concussion charges,” Spears said, answering Wilks’s unspoken question. “Mounted in the locks of all the ships. You’d gotten that hatch up another five or six centimeters, they’d have gone off without me having to use this.” He waved a small electronic device.

  Wilks looked at Spears, his mind still fuzzy. There was something he was going to do. What—?

  “No point in doing anything heroic, Sergeant,” the general continued. “I’ll just have you stunned. You don’t get to die, yet.”

  Spears looked at Powell, who had yet to awaken. “I might have known dickless there wouldn’t have the balls to try something like this on his own. Was that you in the crawler shooting at my decoy?”

  Wilks managed a nod.

  Spears returned the gesture. “Thought so. You get credit for trying, but you picked the wrong side. Too bad. I admire a man with guts, even if he’s an enemy.”

  Billie moaned in her sleep.

  “Win some, lose some,” Spears said. He turned away. “All right, men. You know the drill. Get the cargo loaded, collect your gear. Sort out the prisoners and free the loyalists, I’ll give you a list.”

  “What are you going to do?” Wilks said. His head hurt and he felt as if he were going to vomit, but he maintained, taking slow and deep breaths.

  “Well, it doesn’t really concern you anymore, now does it? But because you gave me a decent fight, I’ll tell you. I’m going home, to Earth. I’ll be taking a small corps of the aliens and we’ll have ourselves a little sortie. Once I demonstrate how effective my troops are, we’ll get support to build a full-scale army of trained aliens. We’re going to kick ass, son, and when I show the recordings of how we did it to the powers-that-be, we’ll get what we need to win this war.”

  Jesus. He really believed it. The guy was a few kilograms short of fission mass, crazy as a stepped-on roach.

  “What about us?” That from Powell, who had managed to sit up.

  “You and your allies are up for court-martial, Major. I don’t have time to fool with such piddly shit now, so you’ll stay here unti
l I can send the appropriate legal teams back to handle it.”

  “You can’t leave us here! There are aliens loose in the base! We’ll be slaughtered, eaten!”

  “You should have thought about that before you played at sedition, Major.” He turned away and moved off.

  Wilks made as if to stand, but two of the troopers stepped toward him, stun wands held ready. Wilks settled back. Jumping them would only get him another headache when he woke up in half an hour. If he woke up at all. Right now, it seemed a lot more important to stay awake. Whatever happened to them, he wanted to see it coming.

  21

  Mitch was on top of Billie, moving slowly and with great power, thrusting, filling her. Sweat beaded on his face and he held himself up with his arms, muscles corded in his triceps, connected to her only at the groin, the juncture of their sexes.

  Naked, connected, they danced.

  Billie had never felt so fulfilled, so complete, as a woman, as a human being. This was what she had always hoped for but never expected to have, someone who loved her, someone she could love in return, giving and receiving totally, becoming not less, but more than two—

  Becoming one.

  He moved faster, nearing his peak, and she moved with him. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes!

  He screamed.

  Billie stared at his open mouth, saw the claw tear past his lips. But it did not reach for her, the taloned hand, it extended in a half circle on an arm too thick and long to have possibly come from Mitch’s mouth, extended to his belly and tore into the skin and muscle, ripping him in two and hurling his top half away, leaving his hips and legs on her. White fluid spurted from the torn body, android blood the color of milk splashed over her in an obscene bath, hot, salty, even as he began to throb within her…

  “No!”

  * * *

  Billie felt the pressure on her legs; she struggled to move from under the weight—

 

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