Aliens: Genocide

by David Bischoff

  Without further explanation, Grant cycled open the door and led them through. The lights were more muted here; it had almost a submarine quality. Aquas and red and shadows. As her eyes adjusted, Kozlowski immediately noticed the equipment.

  Banks of it, spread along the ways. Tubing and bulking computers and flanges. Cables and glass and blinking lights. A number of men were clustered at the far end in front of a window that looked like something out of an aquarium. Grant's scientists, doing their geeky scientist thing, mystery wrapped in machinery and mundanity.

  It smelled in here. Acidic. Oil, electricity, coffee ... and something more.

  Something that made Kozlowski's hackles rise.

  She recognized it. Faint, but there.

  Bugs.

  No, she told herself. That can't be right. What would bugs be doing down here?

  "Isn't this supposed to be a storage chamber?" she said lamely, trying to get Grant to talk, trying to get the creepy feeling out of the pit of her stomach.

  "Oh, yes," said Grant, leading them down some stairs. "And in a way, it still is. But the cargo! That's what's a little unusual."

  The steps clanged and echoed.

  "So, Grant," said Henrikson. "Why all the secrecy? Why just us?"

  Nice of him to echo her own thoughts.

  They were walking forward, and through the murky light in the glassed tank she was able to pick out a few details.

  Cables, dangling equipment.

  Something bulky and organic in the very middle.

  And by it ...

  An egg sack.

  And the discarded shell of a face hugger.

  She walked up to the window in a haze, astonished, looking in upon the gruesome scene enclosed in metal and glass.

  "Well, Corporal, I know most marines have come to really hate the aliens," said Grant. "I'm afraid that what we've got down here would really hinder the morale necessary for the operation."

  A thickset man with a boyish face and a cowlick in his mass of blondish hair scuttled up to Grant, lab coat swaying about his ankles. In whispers they conferred together in the corner. The man produced a clipboarded chart that Grant nodded at and then pushed away. He took the scientist gently by the arm and pulled him over to meet his guests.

  "This is Dr. Murray Friel. He's in charge of this project down here—the science part, anyway."

  "Yes—I've met the commander, but not the corporal," said the doctor.

  Kozlowski remembered now. There had been introductions and handshakes on Earth, and then the batch of docs, including Friel here, had been swallowed up on these decks. Brief glimpses in other parts of the ship—that was all. She'd met a lot of men like Friel. Plump red-cheeked guys, smart, but with no real experience. They all seemed to have the same arrogance as Friel here had. He was in his own little world—and owned every corner of it.

  But it wasn't Dr. Friel that preoccupied her now.

  She was looking at something else.

  It looked like a misshapen excuse for a body, but with limbs and head cut off and lengths of esophagus and intestine connecting it with organic machines nearby.

  Liquids pulsed through these, feeding it.

  "What is that thing?" said Kozlowski, recovering her aplomb, overcoming her initial horror.

  "Friel ... care to do the honors?" suggested Grant.

  "Certainly. It certainly isn't very attractive ... but then, neither would your interior bits, awkwardly displayed. You must excuse me, but I feel rather proprietary toward it. You see, in a way, it's a part of me." He stepped forward, a pudgy palm placed up against the glass. He gazed at it with an odd kind of pride. "You see, it's a donor clone, DNA clamped so that it would grow simply the torso, no brain, limited nervous system. A machine regulates it. These things are usually produced for the purpose of organ and tissue donation." His fingers drummed on the glass thoughtfully and then he turned back to look at her. "I'll admit, it isn't the most attractive creature, but it's proved useful." He tapped his arm. "I'm proud to say its cells of origination were retrieved from my wrist."

  The odd, smirky fellow who had been introduced before to her as Dr. Amos Begalli sidled up. "We had a little coin toss. We all wanted to be the one ... Dr. Friel won. He's like a proud father now, waiting for a son to be born."

  Friel shrugged. "It's an interesting experience, I must say."

  Kozlowski shook her head. She was finally allowing herself to assimilate the evidence presented here to her. She turned to Grant. "I've seen this before," she said through clenched teeth. "You're breeding one of those damn things!"

  "Take it easy, kiddo!" said Grant. "First, everything is quite secure here. The torso is in special suspended animation. It can't blow until the right switches are hit. There are reinforced windows. Special alloy cages. Alarms and an automatic laser lattice should something unforeseen happen."

  "But that thing in there ... it's living ..."

  "Only on the crudest terms," said Dr. Friel. "It doesn't feel any pain. It doesn't think. It's just basically a mass of tissue that serves a purpose."

  "But if a xeno gets loose on this ship ..."

  "Colonel, Colonel—the dangers are well known and plenty of precautionary measures have been built into the fail-safe system, I promise you!" said Grant. "Believe me, at Neo-Pharm we've been doing this kind of thing for years ... And that woman Ripley did it years ago successfully. Our technology is far superior now. We know how to deal with it."

  "But why are you bringing along something like this when we're going to a planet full of them?"

  "An experiment," said Dr. Friel. "Naturally, we'd like to come back with necessary alien DNA and queen mother royal jelly to create our own colony for purposes I've been told you are acquainted with. Also perhaps even captured eggs. But we want to work with the product of our own DNA manipulation. To create our own kind of queen, utilizing the necessary royal jelly from what you good soldiers are going to retrieve for us. We'd like to work with some different material than we've had on Earth."

  Dr. Begalli beamed. "Yes! You see we've got everything thoroughly regulated here ... Metabolic control. We've got it set up so that baby won't pop until we've got the jelly we need available for her queening."

  "Lovely," said Kozlowski. "Just lovely."

  "In addition, of course, on these decks we've got the necessary tanks and holding pens for the jelly and captured eggs, refrigerated alien DNA ... Oh, all manner of good stuff, Colonel. But you can see why your troops might be a little upset."

  Friel shook his head. "It's understandable why people are so afraid of these things. However, with the proper applied measures of science, Neo-Pharm is proving that what has up till now appeared to be a threat to humanity—can in fact be a great help. We've just begun our work in the area of drugs and medicine ... Heaven alone knows how our understanding of the alien DNA will help us in the future." He sighed happily. "And to think ... I'm to be like a father to a whole aspect of what may be the most significant advance in human evolution. Its chemical interaction with xenobiology! Who knows what wonderful new vistas await us!"

  "Try horrible pain. Try death. Try species extinction!" said Kozlowski.

  Dr. Friel flinched with the intensity of Kozlowski's response. "I don't think, Colonel, you appreciate the beauties and intricacies of the alien genetic gifts."

  "I don't think, Doctor, you appreciate the threat these things are—" She paused, calmed herself down, took a gulp of air.

  Grant seemed taken aback. "Colonel ... Alex. You were there at the initial meeting. I saw you there ... you heard everything. You're aware of our ultimate goal. You know what you're here for."

  She swung on him, outthrust finger just short of his nose. "Make no mistake, Grant. I may be here to head up this mission to facilitate your personal and professional goals. That's secondary to my duty to the armed forces I serve—and my own purpose. Which is, quite simply, to do everything I can to make sure these bugs are either rendered into a threat equivalent to cosmic
cockroaches—or thoroughly exterminated." She lowered the finger. "Any bugs crushed underfoot along the way are all the better."

  With that, she turned and stalked the hell away from this charnel house in the belly of a starship.

  14

  Everyone knew that service chow sucked.

  You didn't join the Colonial Marines for gourmet food, that was for certain.

  Still, as Kozlowski accepted the food dumped unceremoniously on her plate at the cafeteria line, her stomach cringed at the lumps of colorless, reconstituted whatsits her meal comprised. She well knew that all the food groups were represented, that this was vitamin and nutrient rich stuff. There just wasn't much taste or appeal to it, that was all.

  Still, the gig was two days away.

  Gotta carb up!

  She stepped over to push a button that would put a dollop of what the machine claimed was mashed potatoes on her plate. She positioned the plate under the nozzle, still not quite there ... She'd been a bit preoccupied ever since she'd seen that cloned torso down on Grant's deck. The merging of alien and human to her had always been the height of obscenity. Eradicating that threat had been what her life had been about now for over twenty years. Her use of Fire she'd rationalized as an exercise of dominance over the aliens ... Now, though, she wasn't so sure. Unfortunately, she suspected she was hooked on the stuff. She'd been okay this morning, no bad champagne headache, just a chemical pall of gloom riding her. A quarter pill wouldn't banish it. A half pill didn't give her the buzz she realized she wanted to get through the day. She'd taken what amounted to an entire pill, something that she'd only done before in battle exercises and war itself.

  And the stuff had unwound in her, like the talons of a bug, zapping her neurons ...

  She shuddered, tried to forget about it. When this mission was over, she was going to throw her pills in the garbage. Clean up her act. live clean and healthy. But she knew that she needed the Xeno-Zip to deal with what was coming up in her life—and it pissed her off. Especially with her conflicted feelings about Daniel Grant. Especially after what she'd seen down there.

  She tried to tune out the chatter in her head, to focus on getting some of this food down, despite her lack of appetite. She took her tray and sat down, alone, at the side of an unoccupied table.

  In another corner of the room, Jastrow was noodling on his saxophone. The man didn't play well, but he didn't play badly either. At least, if it wasn't exactly melodious, it wasn't that grating either. However, his buddy, who was sitting beside him as usual, didn't seem to appreciate it.

  "Could you give it a rest, Jastrow?"

  "What's wrong, Ellis? I thought you liked music."

  "I like music fine. But not blaring in my ear while I'm eating."

  Kozlowski listened to them bicker. Better than concentrating on this crap that she was stuffing into her face. Jastrow stopped playing and they talked. They talked about Henrikson, who had just come in, walked through the cafeteria, taken his food, and was walking out again.

  "Hey. Check it out," said Jastrow. "Henrikson's doing it again. He's taking his food to the room. Oh, man, the bet's still on here ... I say he's a synthetic!"

  "Gimme a break," said Ellis. "They make models that eat, you know."

  "It's not just that. He won't shower with us. I've never seen him shave ... And from the way he talks in briefings, I'd guess he's never seen combat."

  "Yeah. That is odd."

  "I say he's a company plant. And I don't like it. Bad things happen to Marine ships with synthetics on board!"

  The next thing Kozlowski knew, Henrikson was by the table.

  "Jastrow. Why don't you just say what you've got on your mind—to my face."

  He lifted the private off the chair. The sax banged onto the floor.

  Kozlowski shot up to put a stop to this.

  "Shit, man! Let me go!"

  "Sure." The big corporal threw the private across the room.

  "Henrikson!" screamed Kozlowski.

  Henrikson froze. He turned around and looked at his commander, his face impassive. "Sorry."

  Ellis was leaning over, attending to his buddy, who seemed okay, just dazed.

  "We're all under pressure here, Henrikson," snarled Kozlowski. "Take it out on the bugs." She swiveled on the privates. "And that means you two. We're all working together on this. No divisiveness."

  "You know, Corporal," a voice said behind her. "I admire a man who doesn't take any crap. I honestly do." Grant's voice. He came up to them, and his easy-going arrogance seemed to cut through the tension. "But the truth is I need every last one of these troops for this operation." He looked over to the fallen Jastrow, who was just getting up. "You don't have to kiss and make up, but please don't mash his skull, okay? Thanks."

  Henrikson nodded. Kozlowski dismissed him. He took his food and went off again toward his quarters.

  Kozlowski turned to the others. "All right. Back to the chow. I don't want any energy-deficient troops when we get down to work." As an example, she went back to her own plate, which had gone cold. Nonetheless, she began to stuff it in her face.

  Grant came over to her.

  "Colonel," he said in a low voice. "Can we talk a moment, please. Alone?"

  "Pull up some vittles, Dan. If I've got to work my way through this stuff, so do you."

  He didn't even try to argue. He went off, got a minimum order of gruelish reconstituted stew, and spooned it down, trying to look cheerful as they made chitchat. The sucker looked much better now. Probably had himself a cocktail and a nap and a good hot bath. He even smelled good. Oddly, Kozlowski enjoyed the small talk. She was still annoyed at her attraction to the asshole, but she didn't have to let him know about it—and she could enjoy the warped sex appeal he presented on her own terms. He probably sprayed on pheromones, the conscienceless bastard.

  Finally, when she was satisfied the last morsel was gone from his plate, she agreed to go with him to somewhere they couldn't be overheard—but a meeting room, not his room.

  "Look," he said. "I didn't know you'd react the way you did down there. Corporal Henrikson took it well. He's even volunteering to double-check security. I just want to make sure I'm still getting the best out of you on our mission, Colonel."

  "There was never any doubt of that, chum. You asked for the best, you got the best—but I want to tell you, I'm not real crazy about your methods."

  "What I'm doing is for the benefit of mankind!"

  She laughed in his face. "You don't have to try and pull that one on me. You're doing this for the money."

  "Ultimately, it will save lives."

  "What are you talking about? You're risking good Marine lives for this damned jelly and what-all ... For profit, pure and simple. You're a ruthless bastard. At least my superiors honestly believe they're doing what's right."

  "I'm risking my own life here, too, remember."

  "Only because you're too scared to face up to a souped-up loan shark back home."

  He cringed. "Ah. I told you that, eh?"

  "You bet. I'd pretty much guessed something along those lines anyway."

  "Nonetheless. We figure a source for this—a safe controlled source—we can finance a full erasure of the aliens on the planet Earth. Studying them, we'll be able to know how to deal with them when we encounter them on other worlds."

  "All sounds good. Doesn't change anything about what I think about you though."

  "You'll honor my concerns about the others, though ... Not letting them know."

  "You think I want to undermine their morale by letting them know that a xeno's going to be prowling in some cage below them while they're helpless in hypersleep? They're my people, and I'll take care of them ... You watch out for your own crew. Understand?"

  "I'm glad we're clear on this, Colonel. I really don't quite understand your hostility, though ... I think it's best for both our sakes if we got along much better."

  "Don't push it, Grant. And most of all—don't push me."


  She got up, and she got away from him.

  If she hung around the handsome goon much longer she didn't know what she'd do—kiss him or kill him.

  She wasn't sure which she'd enjoy more.

  * * *

  In the dim lights of the Cargo Bay Nine, shadows moved.

  Padding past open doors, feet paced over to controls. Fingers pushed, pulled, tapped. Status quo alarms were turned off. Serums were released and rheostats adjusted.

  Inside the ghost-lit tank, the hanging torso jerked.

  Satisfied that the necessary measures had been taken, the figure hurried back out of the room, door shushing closed behind it.

  In the tank, the hanging torso jerked again.

  In the hanging torso, the alien embryo, already formed and at full term, but previously kept dormant by electronic and biochemical means, shivered into full life over a matter of mere minutes.

  It shook. It gasped. Sparked by the energies that had been shot through it, and the instincts that had been ignited, it flailed in its seating.

  Membranes tore, muscles were yanked from their mooring.

  Still it was not yet free.

  Instinct activated.

  With a preternatural power, it pushed up against the diaphragm, up through the tangle of lungs and heart and arteries.

  Up against the rib cage.

  Then, with its hard equipment prepared for just this moment, and every bit of its energy, it plunged through the bones, through the skin into the freedom of gaseous atmosphere.

  The torso exploded.

  Blood spattered. Bronchial tissue splattered up like the eruption of a volcano. Bits of broken bone spanged against metal and glass.

  Like a worm with a head of all teeth, the alien chest-burster reared up above the carcass of its birth, weaving in a sensory dance. Sensing no danger, it began to scuttle for the darkness of a corner.

  The hands that had nudged the obscene delivery forward had not removed the precautions against just such an event.

  Delicate motion detectors reacted to the scuttling, heat-seeking alien. Spectrographic readings determined its nature, double-checked, and then implemented the next step. Should the thing be born in unsupervised circumstances, there was no other alternatives.