Blake and the crewman and Bueller were only fifty meters away from the ship. Wilks ordered the outer hatch open.
“Triple time, marine,” he said to Blake. “There’s a shitload of company behind you coming up fast and I want to shut the door real soon now!”
They were close enough so Wilks could see their expressions now. The crewman turned and looked over his shoulder, and apparently didn’t like what he saw. He was the limiting factor, Blake could run probably twice his best, even carrying Bueller. The crewman speeded up, and Blake matched him.
For no reason he could think of, Wilks was reminded of an old joke, one that he’d heard as a kid, about sheep herders. Come on guys. What say, let’s get the flock out of here.…
Billie was numb, all the way to her soul. Wilks had slapped her, but she couldn’t feel anything but a little heat where his palm had struck.
Lies. It was all lies. Everything. How could Mitch have done it? Why hadn’t he told her the truth?
Bootsteps clattered up the entry ramp. They were here.
Blake entered the cabin. She squatted and carefully eased Mitch onto the deck. There was an aid kit on the wall, but Blake passed it and pulled a plastic box from a cabinet instead. Of course. A human aid kit wouldn’t help.
The crewman said, “Go, man, get us the hell out of here!”
Wilks was in the pilot’s seat. “Strap in,” he ordered.
Only the crewman hustled to obey. Billie stood over Mitch. His eyes were closed. He ended at the waist and what spilled from his torso was ugly to look upon.
“Sit down, Billie!”
She still didn’t move.
Mitch opened his eyes. For a moment they were unfocused, but then she saw him recognize her. “I—I’m s-s-sorry, B-Billie,” he said. His voice bubbled, as if he were talking underwater. “I—I w-was going to t-t-tell you.” He gasped, trying to get more air to work his voice.
Blake had the box open. She pulled several small electronic devices out and slapped them against Mitch’s shoulder and chest. Another one on his neck, yet another to his temple. She ran a tube from a plastic bag of clear fluid into the device on his neck. The liquid began to flow through the tubing. Blake pulled a plastic can out and sprayed a bluish foam all over the torn waist. The foam crackled and bubbled and quickly settled into a thick film that changed from blue to a bright green, coating all the exposed nodules and tubing.
“Is he going to die?” Billie asked.
“I don’t know,” Blake said. “His system valves have shut down all the torn circulators and the self-repair programs are running. It’s a lot of damage, but we’re designed to withstand a lot.”
“Sit the fuck down!” Wilks roared. “We’ve got to lift, now!”
Billie moved to a seat, still watching Blake work on Mitch. Blake hooked one hand under a stanchion, the other she put against Mitch’s chest. “I’m anchored,” she said. “And I’ve got him held stable. Go.”
Wilks cycled the hatch closed and initiated the lift program. The ship’s repellors cycled up, whining as they came on line. “Sequencing for lift off,” he said. “Stand by—”
Something slammed into the APC, hard enough to jolt the vessel, to make it ring with the impact.
“Shit!” the crewman said.
More impacts. Three. Five. Ten of them.
“They are all over us!” the crewman yelled.
“Fuck “em,” Wilks said. “We’re gone.” He punched a control.
Nothing happened.
“What the hell?” the crewman began.
“One of them is blocking a thrust skirt tube,” Wilks said. “The computer won’t fire it. I’ll have to go to manual—”
There came a screech as metal tore.
“They’re digging through the hull,” Billie said.
“That’s impossible!” the crewman said.
Another grinch! of metal being clawed by something harder than it was.
Wilks tapped controls. The APC shook, but lifted, wobbled a little, but rose slowly. Went up a couple hundred meters, Billie could see through the forward screens.
“All right!” the crewman yelled.
“We’re too heavy,” Wilks said. “We’ll have to shake the fuckers off—”
The ship lurched, dropped, twisting to port as though a heavy weight had landed on that side. A siren began screaming from the control panel. Wilks worked frantically, hands dancing rapidly back and forth. The APC began to level but it continued to settle. “That’s the left repellor,” Wilks said. “Emergency brake-lock. Something is inside the housing. I can’t override.”
“But—but the housing is armored!” the crewman said.
“The intake is protected by a finger-thick wire mesh,” Wilks said. “But something went through it. The computer knows the danger. The carbon-boron blades are supercooled, they’re brittle. They hit something bigger than a few grams, they’ll shatter and blow us to pieces. I can’t compensate enough with the other repellors to get us into orbit. We’ll have to land and clear the housing.”
“You mean go outside?”
Wilks stared at the crewman. “Unless you got a better idea.”
“Oh, man!”
Thumping continued on the hull, more squeals as the metal bent or gave up the fight.
Billie stared at Mitch. He looked at her, his eyes clear. She didn’t know what to say. She’d lain naked with this man—no, not a man, an android—had shared her body with him, had told him her secrets. Had given him her truth, for whatever it was worth. And he had responded as a man, but he had also kept from her the biggest truth of all.
As she watched him lay there, possibly dying, she felt outraged, felt sick, felt that if she never saw him again it would be too soon. And yet.
And yet, another feeling stirred deep inside her mind, at the threshold of her perceptions. It was a feeling she could not deny, despite what he had done. She didn’t want to look at the thing looming there, didn’t want to know about it, didn’t want to acknowledge it. She tried to close the door between her and that stirring, to make it go away, but looking at him, she couldn’t.
Well. It didn’t matter. They were all going to die here. It wouldn’t be long before the aliens clawed their way in. Billie looked at the weapons Blake still carried. Wilks wouldn’t let the things take them alive. It would be quick, if it came to that. So it didn’t matter what she was feeling about Mitch. No. Nothing mattered. Her short and mostly unhappy time was about to come to its end. Except for the few hours when she’d thought Mitch was other than he turned out to be, it hadn’t been much of a life. Maybe she should tell him that, since they were going to die.
Or maybe not. What difference did it make?
The APC reached the ground, settled unevenly.
“Maybe we crushed a couple of them underneath,” Wilks said.
Billie stared at him. That didn’t matter either.
They were all going to die. The way she felt at the moment, it would be a relief.
25
The thumps against the hull increased. The external pickups were mostly blocked by the alien forms as they mindlessly beat against the ship, as if it were alive and they were trying to kill it.
Wilks looked at the others. Billie was sunk into a stunned silence. The crewman was so frightened he had wet himself. Bueller drifted in and out of consciousness. Blake was the only one he could depend on for help; she was the one to guard his back while he went outside to clear the grid.
Wilks smiled wryly. Right. Opening the hatch would be fun. They didn’t have enough firepower in the APC to keep the things off him long enough to do what had to be done. He’d been too rattled to think earlier. The reasonable thing was to get the ship into the air again, move it ten or fifteen klicks away from the nest, and deal with the few aliens that hung on to them once they landed.
Except that they didn’t have much fuel to play around with here, and a miscalculation would leave them shy of what they needed to reach the ship in orbit. He ha
d locked the Benedict’s comp into the nuclear scenario; it wasn’t going to be altered from the APC, couldn’t be. He’d wanted to be sure, in case something happened to them.
Well, looked like worst had come to worst.
“Sarge?”
He looked at Blake. “No, going outside isn’t real swift. I’m going to take it up again, do a roll, and move us far enough away so we can put down without company.”
Blake nodded. “Makes sense.”
“If we’re light on fuel after that, we’ll gut this sucker and toss out everything that adds unnecessary weight.”
Wilks worked the controls. The ship trembled, but didn’t go anywhere.
“Oh, shit!” he said.
“Sarge?”
“Either too many of “em on us or they’ve jammed up the other grids. Looks like we’re back to plan A.”
Metal screeched.
“Damn.”
“I wouldn’t want to bet on us pulling this off, Sarge.”
“Yeah, me neither. I don’t see as how we have any choice. Listen, Blake, if they get me alive, you punch my lights out, you copy?”
“I can’t, Sarge, you know that.”
“Oh, yeah, right. Never mind. I got Massey’s grenade here. I’ll pull my own plug, it comes to that.”
“Billie.”
She looked at him, her eyes dull. “What?”
“Take this pistol. If we don’t come back…”
She nodded, understanding.
The ship rocked. Raised up on the starboard side, fell back.
“Uh-oh,” Wilks said. “They’re working together. Enough of them will tip us over. Get to the hatch, Blake.”
She nodded. Unslung her plasma rifle and switched off the safety.
The ship rocked again. Slammed back into place.
“Billie. Look, I’m sorry for getting you into this.”
“It’s okay, Wilks. I didn’t have anything better to do.”
For a second their gazes locked and they smiled at each other. The borrowed time they’d both been living on was about to expire.
Fuck it, Wilks thought. He took a deep breath. “Let’s do it—”
The ship thrummed, a sound unlike anything Wilks had ever heard washed over them, vibrating every surface in the APC, battering at his ears like padded pugil sticks. He dropped to his knees and clapped his hands over his ears. He felt the vibration to his core; it made the marrow in his bones hum.
“Chreesto!” the crewman screamed.
Abruptly the sound died.
Wilks stood, shaken. What the hell had that been?
“Listen,” Blake said.
“I don’t hear anything,” the crewman said.
Wilks nodded. “That’s right. The aliens have stopped attacking us.”
It was as quiet as an isolation chamber.
They all looked at Wilks.
“Let’s take a look, Blake.”
Wilks took a couple of deep breaths, then moved to the hatch. He held the carbine ready, Blake with her rifle right behind him. The hatch went up.
“Oh, man,” Blake said.
Wilks was speechless. At least fifty of the aliens lay sprawled on the ground around the ship. They looked… melted, as if all their edges had run together. Dead, Wilks didn’t doubt it for a second. That was pretty incredible. But what he saw standing a dozen meters away was even more incredible.
“What the hell is that?” Blake said.
Wilks just stared.
Some kind of suited figure stood there. It was easily seven or eight meters tall, bipedal, with a clear helmet on the E-suit it wore. Wilks could see the thing’s face behind the bubble covering, and it looked like nothing so much as an elephant might appear, were it to evolve to a two-legged animal. It had pinkish-gray skin, a ridged nose or maybe a trunk that vanished in a long chamber down the front of the suit, with what seemed to be a pair of small tentacles, one to either side of the larger trunk. It had a short extension of the suit behind it, and Wilks guessed that it had a tail in the tube, shaped like a skinny pyramid. A closer look and Wilks realized the thing wasn’t exactly standing.
The heavy boots it wore had a central split, as if the thing had hooves, and they didn’t quite touch the ground. It was actually floating a couple of centimeters above the surface.
It was close enough so he could see its eyes. The pupils were shaped like crosses, wider than they were high. They looked dead, those eyes.
The thing held a device in its gauntleted hands and Wilks would bet ten years pay against a toenail clipping it was some kind of weapon.
The air was thin and Wilks had to take big gulps of it to get enough oxygen. He glanced over and saw that Blake was slowly bringing her rifle around to bear on the thing.
“Negative on that,” he said softly. “I think this thing just flattened all the local bad guys with whatever that gear is it’s holding. I don’t want it to think we mean it any harm. If it can knock down that many of those suckers all at once, we’re way outgunned here.”
Blake let her rifle droop, to point at the ground.
The thing—another alien, and sure as shit not from around here, Wilks knew—pointed its own weapon downward.
“Hello, spacer,” Blake said softly. “You must be new in town.”
Behind them, Billie screamed in terror.
Billie was back on Rim.
She was a child, sitting in the front of her father’s scout hopper, watching the near featureless gray pass by the observation port. So far the ride had been dull, but her father had said there was something out there they had to go look at and he brought her and her brother Vick along. Her father’s assistant, Mr. Zendail, was also there. Her father called him Gene, but she wasn’t supposed to call him that. And her mother was there, too.
“Holy Sister of the Stars,” her father said.
“Russ? What is it?” her mother said.
“Our detectors just went off the scale. There’s something huge down there, in the Valley of the Iron Fingers.”
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know. But we’re talking about megatonnage, a mixed signal. Got to be man-made. Gene?”
“I got it, Russ. Lord, Lord. I can’t get a configuration ID on it. Look at the specs.”
It didn’t mean anything to Billie, all the numbers and stuff, but she knew it must be important because her parents and Gene—Mr. Zendail—were all excited.
“It’s shaped like a giant horseshoe.”
Billie didn’t know what that meant, she’d never seen a horse except in edcom and that one hadn’t been wearing any shoes she could see.
“Gene, Sarah, I think we’ve got an alien ship here.”
They landed, and even through the swirling murk Billie could see what had her parents so excited. It was like a big U, the ends pointing up at an angle. It was real big, you could put a lot of scout hoppers in it and have room left over.
“No match to anything on record,” Gene said. He laughed.
“How could colony tracking have missed it?” her mother said.
“Magnetic interference from the iron, maybe,” her father said. “And the weathersats probably don’t footprint this spot. Who cares? We found it, we’ve got salvage rights on it. This might be our ticket back to Earth. It could be worth a fortune!”
They landed the hopper. Her father and mother and Gene put on E-suits. “You stay here and watch us on the monitor,” her father said. “Don’t let Vick touch any of the controls. We’re going to go look at the ship. If you get hungry, there are ration packs in the storebox. One each, no more, okay?”
Billie nodded. “Okay.”
So then she watched. All three of them had cams on their suits and she knew how to switch around so she could see from one or the other or all three at once, if she wanted to.
At first it was dark, outside was stormy like usual, but pretty soon they got into the big ship and it got better. They had floodlights and turned them on.
The inside
was spooky, weird, it didn’t look like anything Billie had ever seen. It took her parents and Gene a long time to get to the control room—she knew that was where they wanted to go because she could hear them talking on their suit corns.
And when they finally got there—Billie had gone to the toilet twice and already eaten her meal pack and half of Vick’s because he didn’t like the green paste and she did—there was a dead thing sitting in the control seat.
It was real big, and it looked strange. Kind of like the edcom of a big terran animal called an elephant.
It had a big, funny nose and overall its whole body was as long as four men, but it was dead, lying on its back. There was a hole in its stomach or its chest or something, with bones sticking up from the hole. Yuk.
Her parents went around the thing a few times, talking to each other and to Gene. And then they went down the hall. To a big room. And on the floor of the big room were these things.
Billie screamed, and Wilks was there, holding her by the shoulders, shaking her gently.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right. We’re okay.”
The memories bubbled in her, and she fought them. But there was a pressure in her brain, a kind of malevolent presence.
“Billie?”
“It’s that thing out there,” she said. “I can read its thoughts. More like its feelings. It’s inside my head.”
Wilks glanced at Blake.
“I’m not crazy,” Billie said. “It just killed all the aliens outside our ship, right? Because it hates them. It—its kind—have been here before. Collecting specimens. I, oh, God!”
“Billie!”
She shook her head, as if that would clear the intrusion by the stranger. “It somehow can feel my thoughts, too,” she said. “It knows.”
“Knows what?”
“I—on Rim—my parents “What about them?”
“Oh, God, Wilks! My parents found a ship there.
An alien ship. The pilot was some kind of scientist, maybe. It had been to this world. It had taken specimens of these things. Eggs. It must have been infected, implanted. They killed it. The ship crashed on Rim. The things survived inside it, I don’t know for how long. My—my parents found it. They went into the ship…."
[Aliens 01] - Earth Hive Page 17
