by Steve Perry
Ripley looked at the small console and nodded.
“Go try it,” she said. “We don’t want to count on theory.”
“Right. I’ll type in a command and send it. If the word shows on the screen, we have a clean signal.”
“Go.”
Tully grabbed a light and disappeared into the dark corridor.
Ripley stared at the jumble of wires and sighed. She didn’t want to think about it, no time, but—
She had fired on the people who had run toward the gate. Meaning she wasn’t First Lawed, a mandatory feature in synthetics. It was almost enough to make her believe that somehow it wasn’t true, that Jones had misread the tests. Except she had never taken any kind of electronics course in her life and she knew exactly what went where; the knowledge was just there, like how to walk or speak. She wondered what else she knew…
“Ripley?” It was Tully, her voice barely audible.
“Do it,” she said into the set. She turned toward the portable and watched. A series of numbers ran across the screen and disappeared. A second passed, and the word “boom” appeared in the upper left corner in glowing green letters.
Ripley nodded. “It works.”
Static intertwined with Tully’s laughter, making Ripley suddenly feel very far away from everything. From humanity.
She got back to work.
* * *
Only a few minutes until landing. Billie watched the computer screen nervously and checked the action on her carbine for the hundredth time.
The ship began a gradual descent through the outskirts of an industrial town. She had flown over several small cities, had watched for signs of life all along the way; she’d seen plenty. Hundreds, thousands of aliens had run beneath her, headed north; there had been no people.
Billie hoped that the others were doing well. She also hoped that she wasn’t about to crash. She rested her hands on the steering and pulled left a hair; the ship pulled left. She pushed forward and the ship nosed downward a bit.
Okay, got it—
The monitor blinked that the desired coordinates had been reached. If Amy’s father had given out the wrong numbers in that last transmission, she was screwed. The flier’s landing engines kicked on and it began to lower straight down. Billie maneuvered the ship over a strip of road. Rubble flew in the wake of the ship as it settled onto the pavement.
Billie unbuckled her safety straps and switched the engines off, amazed that it had been so easy. There was no movement outside the flier.
She patted the extra magazines and set of flaresticks in her hip pouch as she walked to the hatch and tried to ignore the fear. That the flying had been so simple somehow made it worse, like she had used up her luck.
Amy is the thing, she told herself firmly, Amy and her father and Mordecai, and whoever else has become the girl’s family.
She stepped out of the flier, weapon raised, and immediately recoiled from the smell. The stench of burnt plastic and rot was overwhelming; maybe it was like that in all of the cities now. But the debris wasn’t too bad, at least. Apparently there were still a few places that hadn’t been destroyed completely by riots or infestation.
She walked around the ship. There was no sound, no motion; it was as if she were the only living being in an empty world. The buildings around her were all a uniform beige, and silent.
Where to start? She walked toward the structure to her right and read the lettering set above the smashed door frame, ENDOTECH MICRO. That sure sounded like a microchip company, and that’s what the transmission had said, right? This had to be the place.
Unfortunately, the same lettering was on the building across the street. It was an entire complex, not one factory. Damn.
The silence was unnerving. Billie stepped through the door frame. Her boots crunched on bits of shattered plexi material as she looked up and down the entryway; halls led off into blackness in either direction.
Maybe she could find a control room of some kind with a working intercom system, or a speaker she could hook up to the flier…
Brilliant. Except what the fuck do you know about wiring something like that up?
If she could fly a ship, she could figure it out. She sure as hell didn’t have time to search each building—
Billie pulled a flarestick from her pocket and snapped it. The tip sizzled red—a dim light at best, but it’d have to do; if there had been a portable light onboard the flier, she hadn’t seen it. She kicked herself for not thinking of it back at the compound as she stared into the pitch hallway, but there was nothing to be done about it now.
She started down the corridor to her left. Her footsteps echoed loudly and hollowly in the cool, dead air—if anyone was in the building, she wasn’t going to be a surprise to them.
Within seconds, the light from the outside had disappeared completely. The glow from the flare only illuminated the space a meter or two ahead. She walked close to one wall, held the light up to make out the words on the doors she passed—mostly names of employees, it seemed.
The hallway seemed to go on forever. She struggled to damp down a feeling of dread that threatened to rise up and bloom into panic. The stale air was clammy against her skin; she didn’t know where she was headed; anything could be waiting for her, watching her—and it was dark. That was the worst; it was blacker than space—
She stopped. This was completely stupid. She would go back outside and reevaluate the situation, she was going to lose it in here—
Suddenly she heard a noise directly behind her. Snick.
She froze. Just a little sound, could be anything, a shift of weight or—
The sound of a door opening.
Billie threw the flarestick to the ground and stepped on it. It dimmed, but didn’t go out entirely. The flickering glow made the shadows dance wildly. She gritted her teeth against a scream, her eyes wide and useless in the dark. She turned slowly, as quietly as she could, her brain yammering a thousand things at once.
Human, not a drone, fanatic maybe, do I talk or wait? Are they armed? Oh, shit, oh Amy—
She pointed the carbine ahead of her and tried to think clearly—
—until a pair of rough hands brushed against her face—
28
The sound came up so gradually it took Wilks a while to realize he was hearing it and what it was.
He had taken over Falk’s position outside the armory and watched as the shadows lengthened across the compound. Moto went back to work with the others after Jones assured them Falk was okay. Wilks couldn’t seem to focus on much of anything except Billie; McQuade was still monitoring the sensor readings and Ripley had as much help as she needed, so Wilks leaned against the gate arid waited for Billie to get back.
And wondered if she ever would.
McQuade picked up a ship to the east, too big to be the landhopper that Billie had taken. It had set down not far from where they had dropped the mother queen. Apparently there were pilots in the fanatic crowd, and none too smart. The bugs weren’t going to be separating the followers from the baby food for long once they started arriving in big numbers.
Now he focused on the sound. Kind of a high, keening wail, a faint whine.
“Hurry, Ripley,” he said into the ’com. “They’re coming.”
* * *
Billie screamed and jerked the trigger. The blackness broke and re-formed around the bursts of gunfire, the sound deafening in the corridor as the bullets hit the wall. She fell to the floor and scrabbled backward on her elbows after catching a glimpse of tattered clothing—
“Oh, God, don’t shoot! Stop!” A man’s voice. “Please, I’m sane, I’m sane!”
He sounded as terrified as she felt. Billie held still so that he wouldn’t have a target and trained her carbine at the voice. She held her fire as the man babbled on.
“Please, I have to find her, don’t kill me—”
Her. The word sank in and footsteps suddenly crashed through the hallway as he ran away from Billie, back
toward the entry.
“Wait!” she shouted. “Amy!”
The footsteps stopped. He spoke again, pathetically eager. “You’ve seen her? Please, where is she? Who are you?”
Billie stood up. “Walk toward the exit,” she said. “I’ve got my gun on you, so don’t make any sudden moves.”
As she followed his footsteps down the corridor, the full impact of his words sank in. He knew Amy.
An old, white-haired man with a ragged beard stepped into the light filtering in through the broken door. Deep lines of fear and worry creased his brow. Billie moved up to meet him.
“It’s you,” she said, “—your transmissions—where is Amy?”
His eyes widened. “You saw them? We had hoped that someone—” He broke off. Then: “They took her, two days ago. Mordecai was killed trying to stop them, the lunatics—she’s gone. I don’t even know if she’s alive—” Tears welled in his eyes.
Billie felt sick. Two days! “Where did they take her?”
“There are underground tunnels throughout the complex,” he said. “They have Amy with the others, part of their food or breeding stock, there’s a nest at the east end—” He spoke quickly, tried to say everything at once. “I’ve been trying to get in but I can’t, there were drone guards and today they started running away, north, and I heard ships, I heard your ship—”
“Take me there,” said Billie. If Amy was still alive, maybe she’d be in the nest, waiting to be implanted… maybe most of the guards would be on their way to the queen. True, there’d probably be a few left behind to guard the eggs that were still unhatched, but maybe it wasn’t over yet.
* * *
Ripley had fucked up.
They pulled the control board from the wall and she worked over the dismantled pieces and stripped wires for hours. It had to go sequentially, A to B to C and so on, or the hidden bombs, some of them kilometers away, wouldn’t all detonate; rewire the wrong way and the first explosion could knock the system apart. That wouldn’t do at all.
It had been going fine. Tully and Moto had both finished their jobs and she was almost finished—when she suddenly discovered that something was missing. She was halfway through the seventh switch before she realized that she had run out of board to work on and she needed more.
“No,” she said. She checked and rechecked; the third panel had been misdirected to the fifth. She would have to pull it loose and rewire it. It would take another two hours.
How long before the first group of drones reached the compound? Maybe long after dark. Or maybe five minutes from now…
She pulled the switch loose and started over. If she had to stay on Earth to finish it, she would. It didn’t matter if she died—as long as the alien bitch and her children were destroyed along with her.
* * *
Billie and the old man crept down the stairwell together, the walls lined thickly with alien secretions. The main nest was in the basement of a structure only two blocks from the ship.
They had run in the dwindling light together through the empty streets, had stopped for him to tie a rag-torch before stepping into the silent building.
He held the torch high as they edged down the steps. The flame reflected off the dark, shiny substance and created a flickering illusion that the stairs themselves were alive. With each footfall the structure moved and shifted; it seemed as if they were stepping on alien bodies about to rise up—
It got hotter as they moved toward the nest; they rounded the landing and started the next flight down. A half-open door webbed with cobby spittle stood at the bottom.
A low moan, human, drifted up to greet them, followed by a chittering sigh. They stopped a few steps from the bottom. Sweat ran down Billie’s spine.
“I never got this far,” whispered the old man.
Billie kept her carbine trained on the door and willed her legs to move forward. The nest wouldn’t be completely deserted, of course someone had to watch the eggs—but Ripley had figured that into the time delay—
The door flung open and a drone leaped for them—
Billie fired. The thing screamed, its teeth gnashing as its chest shattered. Acid hissed and bubbled, ate into the plastecrete.
A second howling creature catapulted over the first.
Billie’s shots ripped open the long skull; its jaw dropped open and kept dropping as it fell onto the stairs. More alien blood spattered.
The old man cried out and there was a third—
It loomed in the doorway and hissed, kicked at the fallen sibling in front of it to get to them—
Billie depressed the trigger. One of the bullets hit at an angle and sparked, a tiny fire in the gloom.
The creature fell back and Billie stumbled over the dead drone at her feet to get to the door, the old man behind her.
“Don’t step in the blood!” she said.
Billie lunged into the basement and fired; alien cries blended with the explosions of the carbine. The noise pounded her ears.
Dark figures darted toward her as she shot again and again—
Her left calf was on fire, the pain deep and intense—
The old man’s light flickered on behind her, just in time for her to see a grinning drone clap a talon on her shoulder. Its inner set of teeth shot out of the gaping mouth and she screamed, jammed her carbine into its gut. The shots blew its abdomen out behind it. The thing’s claw ripped at her flesh, tore her coverall and some of her skin, but released her and fell away…
Billie panted, whipped her carbine left to right.
Nothing else came at her, nothing moved. Her skin was blistered from the blast of close gunfire; her ears rang. Acid had touched her leg and she felt her blood run from the chemical burn, but she was still standing.
The guards were all dead.
They were in a small room. The torch chased shadows in the slimy den, a dozen or so eggs in the center, most peeled open. Dim figures were strung to the walls in various stages of decay; a few looked alive, unconscious. Spidery dead larvae littered the floor and the place reeked of rotten flesh.
“Amy—” said the old man. He stepped past Billie. She felt a scream rise up when she saw what he moved toward.
A small figure roped to the wall, head down, short reddish hair—
What had been a person moaned, lifted its face to the light…
An emaciated young man, his skin cracked, one eye swollen closed. Drool ran down his bearded chin.
He grinned at the old man, his puffy tongue hanging out. “I’m pregnant,” he croaked, words slurred. Caked blood nestled in the corners of his mouth.
“Where are they?” said Billie, her voice shrill. “Where’s Amy?”
The man’s head lolled forward. Amy’s father grabbed his hair and jerked his head back, held the torch close to the dying man’s face.
“Presents,” he said. A bubble of pus in one nostril popped open; the liquid ran over his scabbed lips. “The Chosen—breeders flew away—serve the Mother”—the word came out muder—“flew to oneness… revelation. She waits—”
“No,” Billie said. The ships that the old man had heard—
He turned to her, awful realization on his tired face.
“…the holy land…” rasped the fanatic.
“She’s lost,” said the old man. His voice hitched.
“Stand back,” said Billie. She rammed a new magazine into her rifle and tossed the empty to the floor. “I know where they went.”
And they would go there: Orona’s mountain, the holy land—
But first things first.
Billie pointed the carbine and pulled the trigger.
* * *
The howls of the closing army were nearer, more distinct now. He knew it took thousands of the bugs to make that kind of noise; Wilks scanned the skies as the minutes stretched by, the compound bathed in reddish twilight. If Billie didn’t return soon—
The Kurtz could circle and wait for a while, but they only had so much fuel. And they co
uldn’t stay put with that many aliens on their way.
Thinking about it, Wilks realized they had made a mistake. They should have wired the bombs first, parked the ship with the queen somewhere else to draw the brood, then dropped her off after things were ready. They hadn’t thought it out right, hadn’t expected the damned things to come so fast, for there to be so many of them from that direction—
Shit, shit, shit—
“Done!” Ripley said.
Wilks took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He knew Ripley would wait until the last possible second to pull out, but that second seemed much closer suddenly—and it was almost dark.
“Wilks! Company, due west, now!” McQuade shouted.
Wilks pointed his rifle at the trees and yelled through the gate. “Ripley, Moto, let’s move!”
An unseen alien screamed from nearby as Moto and then Ripley stumbled through the hole in the door. They dropped the tool cases and unslung their carbines.
As a unit, the three of them moved toward the ship.
The woods crashed and crunched with the sounds of movement, but there was still nothing to see—
The first drone broke from the trees and ran into the compound, its long body hunched, arms extended. It was going to see the queen, but they were between it and her.
All three of them fired at once. The thing shrieked and hit the ground, nearly cut in two by the armor-piercing bullets.
The forest suddenly erupted, spewed forth a handful of the drones at once. They loped for the threesome, howled as the rain of bullets found them.
“Come on!” someone shouted behind them.
It was Falk. He stood in the hatchway of the Kurtz, bandaged arm limp, rifle extended with his good arm.
“Go,” Ripley said. She stood her ground, continued to fire as more of the drones ran into view.
Wilks and Moto ran the few meters to the ship as Ripley and Falk covered.
Wilks spun in the open hatch and fired. Dozens more of the bugs came out of the trees, their insane bodies moving at great speed—
“Ripley!” he yelled.
She backed to the Kurtz without looking and nearly tripped on the deck. Wilks took out three more of the creatures as she turned and stumbled inside.
