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

by Steve Perry

  “That’s possible. That’s another reason for us to stay here and wait. Nothing happens for the next hour or so, we’ll work our way forward. Carefully.”

  Billie nodded. “You’re in charge.”

  Wilks nodded back at her. Yeah. He wished he felt as good about it as he tried to sound.

  * * *

  Spears finished his preparations. He had to assume that the sergeant—what was his name? Watts? Jenks? something—was a good enough soldier to do a basic recon before embarking on anything precipitous. If he were him, he’d assume he’d been spotted on arrival and suspect that his enemy was prepared for him. Which was true. In the sergeant’s boots, Spears would dig in, find a defensible position, and wait for his opportunity to take the opposition out. A single well-placed shot would do it. The sergeant must be hoping Spears would make a foolish misstep and give him the chance.

  Sorry, marine, not this time.

  Too bad he was no longer interested in leading human troops. This sergeant would make a good officer, he was brave, smart, willing to take chances. In another lifetime, Spears would have bumped him up in rank and been glad to have him in his service. And he was certain, even though he had not seen him, that one of the two hiding down in the aft cargo area was… Wilks, that was his name. Wilks.

  Spears offered the unseen enemy a sketchy salute. Better luck next incarnation, son.

  He moved to the attack.

  * * *

  Billie hunched down across from Wilks, trying to hide behind a modular cargo container, empty, it seemed, and to get comfortable in the spacesuit. She didn’t think she managed to do either very well. The suit hadn’t been designed for such contortions and the joints didn’t bend easily.

  They were in a place where they could watch the hatch leading into the bay from the rest of the ship. The only other ways in or out were through external hatches, and while he didn’t think Spears would try that, Wilks had fixed those portals so they couldn’t be opened from either side anymore. Nobody was going to sneak up behind them, he’d said. And nobody was going to be leaving that way, either. Not without a lot of work first.

  Waiting for something to happen was driving Billie closer to the edge every minute. She hated this.

  Suddenly it got dark. And when she jerked around to look for Wilks, Billie floated up into the air. Shit—!

  * * *

  “Billie, close your faceplate! Now!”

  Wilks reached up and slapped his own plate shut, then reached for his oxy feed. He heard the door to the corridor slide open on its track, and he tried to bring his carbine to bear that way. It was hard to do in zero gee. Spears had cut the lights and gravity, probably the air, too, and Wilks guessed he would either shove a gun through the door—bet your ass he was braced when the faux grav shut down—and hose the room, or maybe toss a grenade inside. It wouldn’t be anything big, nothing that might hole the ship.

  Concussion bomb, maybe a little fragger.

  The suits wouldn’t even slow down the shards of a fragger, much less a 10mm caseless. Damn, damn, damn!

  * * *

  When the timer shut off the power and air and faux grav on the Jackson, Spears was in position. Even if they were braced for an assault the cessation of weight ought to throw them for a moment. Long enough to lob a concussion grenade into the hold. Once they were out, it would be the work of a moment to finish them.

  The door slid open. Spears, braced and holding himself down, tossed the grenade through, then pulled himself out of the doorway and flat against the wall. Some of the blast would enfilade back through the opening, of course, but he wouldn’t be in its path. Without gravity to slow it, the grenade would sail a long ways before it hit a wall and bounced back, it was possible it could come straight back out the door, he supposed, but that wasn’t going to happen, because the grenade’s fuse was a short timer and in about a second…

  The gravity came back on. Spears was prepared for it. The thumps inside the hold told him his enemy had not been. He grinned—

  * * *

  The emergency lighting had been suppressed, of course, but the tiny red and green power diodes mounted next to the door’s control panel were battery-powered. They didn’t put out much light, but there was enough of a glow for Wilks to see something moving fast in the doorway.

  He was still half a meter above the floor and twisting and to shoot the carbine would produce enough recoil to move him like a small rocket would; still, he had to do something.

  Wilks shoved the carbine toward the door. He squeezed the grip and thus lit the laser sight. The tiny red dot danced crazily across the doorway. When it disappeared, he figured he was as lined up as he was going to get. He fired.

  The recoil spun him through the air, like a wobbly planet on its axis—

  * * *

  Billie saw the muzzle flash from Wilks’s gun, a spearhead shape of red and orange. The light from the blast showed her where he was, but he vanished in the dark immediately after the flash died. Her helmet muted the sound somewhat. She heard the bullet spang against something past the door. She thought. It was so dark—

  A brilliant light splashed her, strobing the hold, then something heavy thumped against her, knocking her backward. She flew like a bird with an injured wing, tumbling.

  The gravity came back and she fell to the deck, slid a little, stopped—

  Jesus—!

  * * *

  Spears knew carbine fire when he heard it, and the bullet punched through the wall behind him and to his left as he shifted his regained weight to a careful stance. The shot and the grenade’s blast came almost together. He’d wait a second and see what happened—

  * * *

  Wilks hit the deck hard, landed on one shoulder. He rolled to a prone firing position, thrust the carbine out, and found the laser’s dot against the far wall next to the door. On the chance that Spears might be flattened against the wall there, Wilks opened up and drew a dotted line from the wall across the doorway to the opposite flanking wall. He fired on semi-auto, for control. He hoped Billie had enough sense to stay down, wherever she was—

  * * *

  A round burst through the wall between Spears’s body and his arm. A few centimeters either way and it would have hit him. Damn! The grenade had missed them!

  The bullets chewed fist-sized holes, moving away from Spears, spraying insulation and bits of wall plastic as they mushroomed and tumbled.

  Time to regroup, he thought. His initial attack had been thwarted. He knew when to cut his losses.

  Spears slapped the door control. The door slid shut. He moved away quickly, toward the blast door a few meters up the corridor. Once on the other side of that, he stopped. He lowered the door. This hatch had been designed as a pressure safety device. It was airtight, constructed of duralloy, and capable of stopping something as puny as assault rifle fire.

  From his belt, Spears pulled a spot welder. He lit the arc and braze-feed, and ran a bead along the base of the door. To be sure, he added a half meter on each side. Then he opened the control box and slagged the electronics. Finally, he lifted the manual safety hatch and welded the crank handle to the steel safety cage. This door wasn’t going to be opened from the other side unless somebody had a cutting torch and he didn’t think Wilks was that prepared. But just in case, he set two fragmentation grenades on stik blobs to the wall at eye level and ran a trip wire. If by some miracle they managed to raise the door, a careless step would get them. And he rigged the trip so it was three meters away from the doorway itself. They’d maybe look for a wire on the way through, but probably not so far away.

  Not, he thought, that they would ever get through in the first place.

  He couldn’t micromanage the gravity on a ship this size, but he could keep them cold and in the dark, without air. Even if they had their own air supply, they couldn’t last more than a day or two.

  Ah, well. Better shut down the recorders. This hadn’t come off quite as neatly as he had hoped. No problem. A w
in was a win. It might not be pretty, but they were bottled up back there and that was the end of it. He gave them credit for trying, but close wasn’t good enough for a cigar.

  Spears laughed softly at his own joke and went forward.

  * * *

  Wilks and Billie had the suit lamps lit, so they could see each other okay. It was dark and it seemed to Wilks already getting cold and stuffy.

  “Might as well breathe his air for as long as we can,” he said. “When whatever is already in here is gone, that’ll be it. We’re back to the tanks. Shit.”

  “Wilks? Are we screwed?”

  “Yeah. He’s dropped the pressure door down the hall. Fucked the controls up. He must have known we were coming all along. We’re lucky the concussion bomb didn’t get us, but yeah, we’re screwed. We ain’t going anywhere now.”

  “Can’t we get outside the ship?”

  “Maybe. I could probably manage to unseal the hatch we came in if I tried hard enough, but the minute we step outside he’ll shake us off like fleas from a steel dog. We’d never find another way in in time.”

  “Can we blow the ship up?”

  He looked at her. He understood the thought. If they were gonna die anyhow, might as well take the bastard with them.

  “I don’t think so. This is a military-grade vessel. I could set off what grenades we have but it wouldn’t do much more than ruin the aft section, if that. These ships are built in segments, airtight compartments. We could take out some inner walls, but segments are armored like the hull. The drives are amidships and out of reach. Even if we did cripple it we’d die as a result, and he could probably just transfer to the Macarthur at this point.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “Well, we might get to the oxy stores buried in the walls here and bypass his control. We might get enough air to last a couple more days.”

  “But not to get to Earth.”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Damn.”

  “Sorry, kid. We tried. We lost. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

  “Nothing we can do?”

  “Not unless we can convince Spears to turn over the keys to the escape pod.”

  “Maybe if we said ‘please’?”

  Wilks thought about that for a second. “Hmm. I got a better idea. Maybe if we said ‘or else’.”

  * * *

  “Hello, General Spears,” said the voice from the com. It was on the suit radio opchan, right where he thought it would be. Spears leaned back in his form-chair and nodded at the com. “I was expecting you to call, son. Nice try but you lose.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Billie and I, we were hoping you could see your way through to cutting us loose.”

  “What would be the point, marine? It’s a long walk home. You’d never make it.”

  “We could if we had one of the two escape pods.”

  Spears grinned. “That you might. But I’d have to give you one and I don’t really see that as a possibility. Nothing for me to gain.”

  “We’ll trade you for it.”

  “Son, you don’t have anything to trade.”

  “How about nine linked M-40 grenades, all set to go off at once?”

  “So you blow out the ass of the vessel and kill yourselves, it won’t even dent the armor amidships. Nice try, but you ought to know better.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean I had the grenades here, General.”

  Spears leaned forward. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, Billie and I, we figured you were pretty good when we flew up here. Given our experiences so far, we had to bet there was a good chance you’d take us out.”

  “Good bet.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re a general and I’m a sergeant. But we figured, what the hell, if we died, we could have the last laugh.”

  “Keep talking.” He had a feeling he knew where this was going and it sent a chill through him.

  “So before we left, I rigged a little explosive in the Macarthur. Kind of a going away gift, you know? With a timer. We gave ourselves plenty of time to get here and beat you, plenty of time. Got an hour or so left.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “I can see how you might think so. But we aren’t. And can you take the chance? If we did wire the ship, your tame monsters get an E-ticket ride to nowhere in about fifty-eight minutes. Your command, General, adios forever.”

  Spears stared at the com. Wilks was bluffing, he was pretty sure. But if he wasn’t…

  Damn. Could he take the chance?

  “Now if you want to trade, here’s the deal. You cut one of the pods loose, within the next two minutes. That way you don’t have time to go and play with it. Billie and I, we leave the ship, rendezvous with the pod, and radio you the location of the bombs. You can get to the ship and deactivate them in the other pod easy enough, with twenty minutes to spare.”

  “Assuming I believe you and do this,” Spears said. “What’s to stop me from blasting you and the pod into atomic dust with my ship’s guns the second you radio me the location?”

  “Your word that you won’t.”

  Spears grinned wider. “My word?”

  “You’re a man of honor, aren’t you, General?”

  “Of course, son.”

  Spears chewed at his thumbnail. He couldn’t take the chance that Wilks was telling the truth. Not with his army at risk. Besides, once they were outside the ship and in the pod, he could pot them easy enough. As long as they were in the aft cargo bay, they might figure out some way to get out and into the rest of the ship. Damned fucker was resourceful.

  “All right, marine. You have a deal.”

  * * *

  Billie grinned at Wilks. “He bought it!”

  “We ain’t home free yet,” he said, but he grinned back at her. “He’ll probably plan on taking us out with the ship’s guns as soon as we’re in the pod.”

  “What about his ‘honor’?”

  “Are you kidding? He’s a sociopath, he’s got as much honor as a spider.”

  “So how do we stop him from shooting us?”

  “I have an idea. If we’re fast and lucky, it’ll work. If not, we’re no worse off than we were before.”

  “I’m with you all the way,” she said. “It’s not like I’ve got another engagement or anything.”

  * * *

  Once they were inside the escape pod, a small ship capable of a couple of weeks of cramped flight, it wasn’t twenty seconds until the com lit with the incoming call.

  “All right. Where are the bombs?”

  Wilks was busy putting the drive system online. He powered up the small engines, activated life support. “Strap in,” he ordered Billie.

  She obeyed. “Where are we going? There’s nowhere to hide out here.”

  “Yes, there is. Watch.”

  He tapped a control and the little ship moved forward.

  “Wilks, I want the location of the bombs now or I will cancel our agreement and blast you.”

  “Too late,” Wilks said as the pod moved almost back to where it had been launched from the ship.

  “What good does this—?”

  “His guns are on top, the sides, and under the nose,” Wilks said. “His field of fire covers a full sphere, but there aren’t any guns directly under the pod launch bay and he can’t elevate or depress any of them enough so he can accidentally shoot himself. Or, in this case, us.”

  The tiny ship rode a few meters away from the larger vessel.

  “Can we stay here?”

  “Not for long, he’ll start playing with the drives and we’ll lose contact. But he can’t wait, the clock is running. Hold on.”

  Wilks touched the com. “General, you want to go to the power control box for the aliens’ tanks, the main cable from the generator to the control cabin where it leaves the forward circuit breaker and the gee drive housing next to the gyroswitch complex.”

  “Damn, I thought you were bluffing.”

  “No, but I lie
d. You’ve got about ten minutes to pull the charges, not twenty. If you dick around trying to shake us so you can chew us up with the Jackson’s guns, you might not have time to save the Macarthur.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  Then, “You would have made a good line officer, son. You got more guts than a slaughterhouse.”

  “Thank you, General.”

  “All right. You can tell your grandchildren you went up against me and survived. That’ll mean something someday.”

  To Billie, Wilks said, “Hang on.”

  With that, he turned the pod so it faced the ship two klicks behind them and hit the thrusters full power. The little ship shot out from under the Jackson’s belly like a minnow darting from under a shark.

  The gee force was strong enough to press them back into their seats. “I don’t think he’ll shoot in this direction,” Wilks managed to say through stretched lips. “He won’t want to hit the Macarthur. I hope.”

  “I… hope… you’re… right,” Billie said.

  This time, Wilks was.

  The escape pod shot past the following ship so fast it was only a blur on their scopes.

  29

  Spears shook his head as he raised from his squat next to the drive housing. There weren’t any bombs connected to the gyro-switch complex. Nor had there been any in the other locations. The son of a bitch had bluffed him. He felt a moment of irritation, an urge to wrap his hands around the man’s throat and throttle him, but it passed. It didn’t matter. So one marine and one civilian had saved their skins by lying to him. So what? After he demonstrated how he would liberate Earth, who would believe such a story, assuming that tricky bastard sergeant and his woman were foolish enough to try to spread it around? The guy was career marine, he knew what pissing off a general was worth in the long run. No, chances were they’d dig in somewhere and pretend to be invisible. If they kept quiet, there was a chance he wouldn’t find them later; if they shot their mouths off, they’d leave a trail. No. It wasn’t going to happen.

  Of course there might be bombs hidden somewhere here on the Macarthur but Spears didn’t believe it for a second. No, he’d been foxed. Once more, he offered a two-fingered salute to Wilks. Good marine, that one.