“How far down does it go?” Weyland asked.
“Can’t really see,” said Stafford. He was on his knees, face pressed against the grate. “Maybe a hundred feet. Looks like another room.”
Weyland upped the intensity of his flashlight and played it along the walls. The beam illuminated more stacks of human bones. Many of the skeletons were still intact.
Weyland caught his breath. “There must be hundreds of them.”
“At least,” Max replied.
As Weyland moved away from the main group, Adele Rousseau remained at his side, one hand on the pistol in her belt. Like the others, she gazed in horrified fascination at the mountain of bleached bones.
Rousseau examined the rib cage on one of the intact skeletons. Like the mummies on the slab, there was a hole punched through the ribs.
“What happened here?” she asked, tucking a finger into the cavity.
Thomas moved to her side. “It was common in ritual sacrifice to take the heart of the victim.”
But the woman shook her head. “That’s not where your heart is. Besides, it looks like the bones were bent straight out. Something broke out of this body.”
Thomas found something in the stack of human remains. He stood up and displayed his grisly discovery.
“Incredible,” said Miller. “The entire skull and spinal column removed in one piece.”
With Miller’s help, Thomas turned the skeleton in his hand so they all could see the severed rib bones.
“The cleanness of the cut… remarkable,” Miller said, scratching his head through his wool cap. “Straight through the bone. No abrasions. You’d be hard-pressed to do this with modern knives, maybe even lasers—”
Miller’s speculations were interrupted by a long, echoing howl, like an animal in torment. The sound continued for another moment before fading.
“Did you hear that?” asked Lex, sure now that what she’d heard earlier had not been her imagination.
“Air?” said Miller. “Moving through the tunnels.”
“I don’t know,” Sebastian said, looking around. “Maybe…”
Searching for the origin of the sound, Sebastian spied a low corridor hidden between two ornate wall columns. Shining his light into the gloom, he still couldn’t make out any details beyond the entrance. Stepping around a skeleton, he cautiously edged his way toward what he thought was the source of the sound.
“Do you see anything?” Miller whispered.
Sebastian did see something—or so he thought. He was forced to crouch low because the ceiling at the rear of the antechamber sloped downward dramatically. Futilely, he tried to shine the flashlight rays into the darkest reaches of the tiny, claustrophobic chamber.
Suddenly something dropped on Sebastian’s back. He stumbled backwards and fell on his spine. With a dry clatter, the thing—heavy and pale white, with multiple crablike legs—landed on the tiles next to his head. He felt a cold, clammy tail lash against his face.
With a yell, Sebastian rolled away from the object just as Lex caught it in her flashlight.
“What is that thing!” Sebastian cried, his calm demeanor shattered.
The creature was approximately the size of a bowling ball and looked like a crab without front claws, though it did have a long, snakelike tail. It was milky white and nearly two feet long stretched out on its back. Miller stooped low, prodding the creature with his flashlight.
“Be careful,” Stafford warned.
“Whatever it is, it’s been dead a while,” said Miller. “The bones have calcified.”
Lex looked at Sebastian, still not quite recovered from his scare. “You must have dislodged it from a crack in the ceiling.”
“No idea how long it’s been there, but the temperature has kept it preserved,” said Sebastian. “Looks like a kind of scorpion.”
“No. This climate’s too hostile for a scorpion,” said Lex.
“Ever seen anything like it?”
Lex shook her head.
“Maybe it’s a species that’s never been discovered.”
“Maybe,” Lex replied, but her tone was doubtful.
From the belly of the creature dangled a hard, petrified tentacle that looked to Lex, more than anything else, like a shriveled umbilical cord.
CHAPTER 17
Bouvetoya Whaling Station
Quinn was making his rounds, checking on the comfort and safety of his crew. His men were scattered throughout a rambling, drafty structure that had housed whalers a century before. A few of the roughnecks were clustered around a blaze sputtering in the stone hearth, and as Quinn went by, he tossed more splintered pieces of antiquated furniture into the fire.
Outside, the storm still raged off the mountain, bringing with it an impenetrable curtain of snow. So violent were the katabatic winds that gusts of frigid air penetrated through the joints of the century-and-a-half-year-old structure, and mounds of drifting snow accumulated around doors and under windows.
There was little for the roughnecks to do other than keep warm and ignore the continual howl of the wind’s angry blasts. Since they hadn’t had much sleep in the past twenty hours, most chose to bundle up tight in their sleeping bags and try to catch some shut-eye.
Which was why Quinn was surprised to come upon five of Weyland’s “security detail” busily unpacking long wooden crates and suiting up for battle. Quinn noted that the big one, called Sven, had a tattoo on his bicep—the eagle and fouled anchor emblem of the Navy SEALs.
“What the hell is going on here?” Quinn demanded.
“Just doing our job,” said Sven. “I suggest you stick to yours, Quinn.”
Next to him, the bull-necked man named Klaus locked eyes with Quinn as he tested the bolt action on a Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine gun. On his hip Klaus wore a Desert Eagle pistol in a Velcro holster, and he had a survival knife strapped to his boot.
Two others were swapping weapons and ammunition as they drew them out of the packing crates. They spoke Russian to one another and ignored the newcomer.
Quinn stepped forward. “Nobody told me we were going to war.”
One of the Russians—tagged Boris—looked up and said something to his friend, Mikkel. Both chuckled. Then Boris slapped a magazine into his machine gun and looked up at Quinn. He wore a cruel half-smile that didn’t reach much beyond his thin lips. His eyes were watery blue and as cold as the ice outside.
“Perhaps you should’ve asked, comrade,” said Boris, with no trace of a Russian accent.
Quinn took in the machine guns, the pistols, the Kevlar vests.
“You fellows ought to know that it’s against The Antarctic Treaty of 1961 for any nation to bring this kind of military shit up here. Nobody cares about a few handguns—even rifles—but this heat you’re packing is a violation of international law.”
“Well, Weyland Industries is no nation,” said Sven as he strapped his tight, well-muscled physique into a bulletproof vest. “And I don’t remember signing any treaty.”
Inside the Pyramid
Before they moved deeper into the pyramid, Lex faced her party.
“The ambient temperature in here is a lot warmer than ground level,” she said. “You can take off your jackets.”
Happy to shed their bulky gear, Sebastian and his partner Thomas, along with Miller, Weyland, Max Stafford, Connors, and Adele Rousseau, dumped their stuff in a huge pile.
Lex shed her coat until she was clad only in a bright red, cold-weather pantsuit. Donning her backpack, Lex activated a strobe light and dropped it on the stone floor nearby. Its constant flashing would act as a beacon to lead them back to their gear.
She looked up to find Sebastian watching her.
“Why don’t you leave crumbs of bread for us to follow, like in the fairy tale,” he teased.
Lex smiled. “The birds would eat them and we’d be lost forever.”
“I don’t think you’ll find many birds down here, and I doubt bats are fond of bread.”
As the
others repacked and rearranged their belongings, Lex moved a few feet into the next corridor, Sebastian at her side.
“Leaving the bones behind?”
“Thomas will take care of that end of things,” Sebastian replied. “He’s the type of archaeologist who’s half coroner. Anyway, Weyland ordered him to remain in the sacrificial chamber and catalog everything.”
“Weyland’s good at giving orders.”
“Thomas won’t mind. That blond Amazon, Adele, is staying behind with him. They could get acquainted.”
“And in such a romantic place.”
They walked along in silence for a moment, their flashlights stabbing the darkness in front of them.
“What about you?” Lex asked. “What kind of archaeologist are you, Dr. De Rosa?”
Sebastian fingered the Pepsi cap hanging from his neck. “I love old things. There’s a special kind of beauty to an object made a long time ago—something timeless, immortal.”
“Speaking of beautiful… look at the way they catch the light.” Lex gestured to the ceiling of the wide hallway, where the stone was encrusted with a forest of shimmering, blue-tinged stalactites.
As she moved the flashlight beam across the frozen surface, the icicles seemed to change color, from cool blue to azure to purple. Weyland hobbled down the corridor and stood at Lex’s side, leaning on his ice pole and looking up.
“Must be some kind of mineral impurities in the water,” Sebastian deduced.
“That’s what I thought at first,” said Miller. “But it’s not.”
“Not an impurity?”
“Not water.”
Sebastian was surprised. Miller held up his spectrometer. “I ran a quick test on another patch of this stuff, back there.”
He consulted the liquid plasma screen. “We’ve got your tricresyl phosphate, zinc alkyl, dithiophosphate, diethylene gluycol, polypropylene ether… and some trace elements.”
“Which makes it what exactly?” Lex asked.
It was Sebastian who answered. “Hydraulic fluid,” he said. “Or near enough.”
Everyone stared at the archaeologist, surprised.
“I own a ’57 Chevy. It’s my hobby.” He shrugged and gave Lex a little smile. “Like I said, pretty much anything old.”
Weyland turned to Miller. “So what do you make of it?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t imagine that the ancients used hydraulic fluid.”
“Coincidence?”
Miller opened his mouth to reply, but Sebastian spoke first. “I doubt it, Mr. Weyland. If five thousand years of human history have taught us anything, it’s that coincidence is for the birds.”
Bouvetoya Whaling Station
Once his men were settled, Quinn took a break and slept for three hours. When the alarm in his watch went off—too soon—Quinn climbed out of his sleeping bag and went outside to check the pit.
He was relieved to find that the rigid, cherry-red “apple” tent over the hole was still intact, and the pulley seemed in working order, with no trace of ice on the gears. Quinn checked the readout on the depth meter. The pulley had spooled out over 2,011 feet worth of steel cable, which meant that the underground team had reached the bottom of the tunnel hours ago, some time after the storm had begun.
He sat down, yanked off his gloves and cranked the radiophone, which was hardwired to the team underground. But they didn’t bother to answer.
Quinn wasn’t surprised. Charles Weyland had become obsessed with security since they’d discovered the hole in the ice. He’d ordered a complete communications blackout with the outside world, not that they were hearing much with this storm, anyway. Then that ex-Navy SEAL and his four buddies from who-knows-where had dropped their disguise as “security” and started throwing guns around like a special forces platoon arming for a mission.
He concluded that this whole job was beginning to stink worse than roadkill on a hot Texas highway.
After determining that everything inside the apple tent was secure, Quinn stepped outside. The wind hit him like a baseball bat, with snow pelting his parka so hard that the individual flakes stung like shrapnel. He tied his hood and pulled his hat down to cover his face. Quinn estimated the katabatic gusts in excess of seventy miles per hour, which was very, very bad.
As he walked through town, Quinn could barely make out the black shape of the mess hall against the white curtain of snow.
“Hold it right there. Identify yourself,” a voice demanded, the cry muffled by the falling snow.
“It’s Quinn. Quinn, goddamn it!”
He lowered his hood and stepped forward, to find himself staring down the barrel of the largest handgun in the world. Quinn angrily tore off his hat so the man could recognize him.
Klaus holstered the Desert Eagle.
“What the hell are you doing?” Quinn barked. “I don’t like guns shoved in my face.”
“Orders,” said Klaus with a defiant shrug. He pulled Quinn into the relative shelter of the doorway and leaned close so he could be heard. “Weyland wants this area secured.”
“Secured? From what?”
“Claim jumpers,” the man replied. “The Russians, the Chinese… another corporation. There could be anybody out there.”
Quinn looked out at the storm. “Trust me. There’s nobody out there.”
As he turned to leave, Klaus stopped him. “Where are you going?”
“Well, seeing as you boys have got the mess hall covered, I’m going to check on the Hagglunds. Now let me go. I have a job to do.”
Klaus released Quinn’s arm and stepped back into the shadows. He watched as the roughneck struggled through the snow until it swallowed him up. Then Klaus opened the stout wooden door to the mess hall.
Sven looked up when he felt the cold blast of air enter with Klaus. His eyes narrowed. “You’re supposed to be on guard.”
“Just wanted some hot tea,” Klaus replied.
Sven looked at Boris the Russian sitting in the corner, singing to himself in his native language as he boiled water on a camp stove.
“It ain’t ready yet.”
Klaus cursed and shut the door behind him as he went back outside.
“When are you going to get that heater started, Mikkel?”
Mikkel looked over his shoulder at the Swede, then punched the stubborn machine. “It’s coming, it’s coming…”
Back outside, Klaus spied another figure moving through the whiteness. He drew the Eagle and aimed.
“Hold it!”
The shape continued to approach, shimmering in the storm.
“Quinn?”
Still, it came closer.
“Identify yourself!”
The figure paused, and Klaus squinted against the snow for a better look. He blinked, and his fingers tensed on the trigger.
There were two shapes now—dark holes in the storm.
“I said, identify yourself!”
A third appeared, next to the others. Together they silently advanced on him.
If they were friendly, then Klaus figured they would have answered him by now. So he leveled the crosshairs, targeting the featureless shape in the middle, and squeezed the trigger….
CHAPTER 18
Bouvetoya Whaling Station
The mercenaries reacted as soon as they heard the shot. Before the echo even faded, an MP-5 replaced the screwdriver in Mikkel’s hand. At the samovar, the incessant Russian singing ceased as Boris traded his tin cup for a machine gun.
With the second shot, Sven was on his feet. He threw the iron bolt on the stout wooden door and backed away in case someone shot through it.
“Mikkel,” he hissed, shouldering a Heckler & Koch. “Get on the radio. Now.”
After an eternity of silence, the door blew open with a deafening crash. Fierce wind and billowing snow saturated the room. Sven aimed his weapon at the doorway, but all he could see was a blur of shimmering white powder.
He turned. “Boris! Secure that door.”
&n
bsp; The Russians moved to the threshold and peered into the storm. Through the torrential downfall, Sven saw Boris glance his way and shrug. Nothing.
Mikkel, meanwhile, was speaking into the ICOM transceiver.
“Base camp to Piper Maru… We have a situation. Repeat. Base camp to Piper Maru…”
When he received no reply, the Russian cursed and rekeyed the mike.
Snow and wind continued to surge into the mess hall. Finally, Boris struggled against the storm to push the door closed.
Mikkel felt Sven’s grip on his shoulder. “Come on, man… I need you to raise the ship.”
“I’m trying, but the storm—”
Sven felt Mikkel shudder under his grip—then the man was forcibly ripped from his hand.
He whirled to see the Russian hoisted in the air by an invisible force, the transceiver falling from his limp fingers. Still alive, still aware, Mikkel’s face mirrored agony and bewilderment. He knew he was going to die, but he did not understand what was killing him. His eyes locked with Sven’s. His mouth gaped, but only to emit a wet gurgle. Then, dead at last, Mikkel hung from a now-visible spear like a piece of meat dangling on the end of a fork.
At the door, Boris reeled as invisible blades lopped off his right arm, then the left. Finally his throat exploded in a red mist before his sundered limbs plopped to the floor. The fist clutching the MP-5 convulsed once, sending a burst into the far wall.
What Sven first saw as a blur was now framed by cordite smoke—the silhouette of an impossibly large, humanoid creature. The ex-Navy SEAL took a step backwards and aimed the MP-5. But before he could pull the trigger, a blow sent him spinning to the floor.
Nose smashed and gushing blood, Sven fumbled for the gun that had been knocked from his hand. Instead he burned his fingers on the pot of boiling water still simmering on the camp stove. With both hands he hurled it, dousing the specter with scalding water.
The aluminum pot bounced harmlessly away, but the water elicited an angry roar as electric charges silhouetted the humanoid shape. Then, in a shower of rapid blue sparks, the Predator’s cloaking device shorted out for an instant—long enough for Sven to see his own terrified reflection in the mirrored eyes of the creature’s armored face plate.
[AVP] - Aliens vs. Predator Page 11
