by Weston Ochse
“You are finished,” Tacker said.
Howard appeared next to him and gently but firmly removed the vid display from his hands.
Fairbanks turned.
Everyone was staring at him.
His face burned red.
“What is it you want?”
“You’re accused of the murder of Comms Specialist Brennan. You will come with us.”
“Come with you?” he asked, his voice rising several octaves. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fairbanks, we’ve been to your room. We found the table you replaced. We’ve scanned the blood you failed to clean up. You killed Brennan, and now you need to be held accountable.”
In that moment, everything he’d ever dreamed of accomplishing died, and he let out an awful groan.
Tacker sighed. “Howard. If you will?”
Howard reached for his elbow.
Fairbanks panicked. He punched her in the face—to no effect except to hurt his hand. He backed into the workstation in front of the containment area. He looked down and saw several buttons.
“Don’t touch anything,” one of the scientists warned.
One button said ABORT.
The other said RELEASE.
He glanced up, and everyone seemed to be moving in slow motion.
“Don’t do it,” Hoenikker cried.
Fairbanks punched the RELEASE button and dove.
The door sprung open but nothing seemed to happen.
No one moved for a good ten seconds.
Then Ching went to close it, and as he reached for it, his arm disappeared.
A creature came into existence—large, four legs, the front two as striking claws. Tentacle-like protrusions from its mouth chewed at Ching’s arm, then spit it to the side. It blinked at everyone as if seeing them for the first time, then leaned back and let out an awful roar.
Then it disappeared.
“It’s Leon-895,” someone shouted. “The idiot let it out.”
Mansfield backed toward the door. “I’ll seal the room,” he shouted.
Howard tried to pull her weapon, but was decapitated before she could complete the move. Her head rolled to Fairbanks’ feet and he screamed like a child, even as the woman’s blood fountained into the air.
Two of the scientists were hurled to the floor.
The “Leon” materialized above one of them, the fat one, ripping at the scientist’s chest with its claws. He fell to his knees, grabbing his chest.
Another of the scientists, Hoenikker, ran toward the exit. The creature could barely be discerned chasing after him, knocking things and people down as it loped.
Mansfield tried to escape through the door. He hit the button and the creature was on him, ripping great gouts of meat and muscle from his small boney frame. Blood flew and covered part of the beast, and even as it chameleoned to the colors of the laboratory behind it, the red swath marked it as a killer.
The door opened and Hoenikker ran through it.
The creature followed.
Fairbanks saw his opportunity. He bolted from the room and took off the other way.
18
Hoenikker paused to catch his breath. Had that really happened? Had that dumb shit really opened one of the containment rooms? The one that contained Leon-895?
A scream sounded from behind him.
Hoenikker spun and watched in terrible fascination as a specialist had his throat ripped out by the Leon. The only parts of the creature he could discern were those covered in blood.
For one brief dreadful instant, the creature materialized. No longer did it blend into the background. Now it was merely the horrific creature Cruz had helped create. Almost the size of a human, with four legs, the center one propelling it forward while the outside legs helped it to maintain balance. It began to move toward Hoenikker with a slow, steady gate.
“Shoo,” he said. “Shoo!” He batted the air with his hands as he backed away. Why was it following him? What had he done to deserve its attention?
“Out of the way!” A security guard ran up and pushed him aside.
The woman held up a pistol.
She fired but missed.
The Leon winked out of sight.
Hoenikker could track it because of the blood, but the security guard didn’t know what had happened. She straightened and looked around.
“Where did it go?”
She flew against one wall.
Then the other.
Then the ceiling.
Then the floor.
Her face condensed upon itself as a great muscular weight was applied and the head was crushed into a parody of itself.
The smell of her death hit Hoenikker in the face, the distilled essence of blood and offal and brains. His back arched as he retched. Just the sight of her face being crushed was enough to change him. But he had to get away. Hoenikker turned to run, and crashed into a group of people.
“Hey, now.”
“Watch where you’re going.”
He picked himself up off the floor and tried to push past, but they held him firm.
“Looks like he’s running from the devil,” one said, laughing.
“Let me go,” Hoenikker begged. “It’s coming.”
All eyes turned to stare down the corridor.
“There’s nothing th—” The speaker was snatched forward, then slammed into the wall.
Suddenly the alarm sounded.
“I don’t see it,” someone said. Then he too was thrown back.
Hoenikker managed to push past, then was knocked into the side of the corridor as the others turned and fled, jostling him with their urgent need to survive. He fell to one knee, but hurriedly struggled to his feet. He had his own urgent need to survive.
Another security specialist appeared. This one was a man carrying a pulse rifle. As deadly as the weapon seemed, Hoenikker knew it wouldn’t be enough.
“Run,” he said, voice cracking.
“I got this,” the man said, suicidally obtuse.
But there was nothing to get.
No target.
Only a corridor with dead people.
Still, Hoenikker backed away.
The Leon materialized above the security specialist.
Hoenikker was about to shout for the man to look up, but it was too late. The Leon grabbed the man by the neck, lifted him up, and snapped a bite out of the top of his skull, the brain bleeding like it was the top of a man-size ice cream cone.
The smell hit Hoenikker again. He was so used to the disinfectant aroma of a lab. Even outside of the work area, the station had a clean metallic smell, despite the rats and the close proximity of humans. It was the air scrubbers and the filters that did the job. But here, next to a hunter, the smell of the dying combined with the new scents of internal organs and sweetbreads made him want to vent everything that was inside of him.
Another alarm sounded, this one higher pitched. This one was matched by the sound of running feet.
Five guards turned the corner, only they looked different. Their faces, all identical, were devoid of emotion. Their bodies were the color of the walls and floor—their own form of chameleonism, he supposed. Each held a pistol in his right hand. Their movements were too fluid. Too neat.
Synths.
One grabbed him and put its arms around him. Like a hug, but one he couldn’t escape. Hoenikker wasn’t sure if the gesture was meant to protect him or detain him. He struggled briefly, but found it almost impossible to even move. The synth spun and pinned him against the wall, shielding him with its back. Hoenikker craned his head to watch.
The remaining four synths fanned out in the corridor, looking back and forth, trying to find a target.
“Switch to infrared,” he shouted. “It’s invisible to the naked eye.”
All heads swiveled to him, then each other, then to a spot near the corner of wall and the ceiling. Hoenikker saw the swatch of red just as the synths opened fire.
The Leo
n materialized like static, as each round found a home. It backed away and they chased after it, around a corner in the corridor. Now was the time Hoenikker should have been trying to run, but he wanted to know what was happening. The science part of his brain fought with his need to survive.
Two synths crashed back into sight, against the wall, as if thrown. The synth that was holding him let go and rushed around the corner, immediately opening fire with its pistol.
Hoenikker heard a dozen shots as he crept forward.
He was about ready to turn the corner when a great invisible beast rushed past him, knocking him to the ground. It held him there, its terrible maw and gnashing teeth mere feet from his face. All the creature had to do was lean down and take a bite, and Hoenikker’s life would be ended.
Three synths turned the corner, raised their pistols, and fired.
Leon-895 took off.
They ran after it, chasing it down the corridor and around the corner.
Hoenikker lay on his back, trying to gather enough sense to stand. He’d been inches from death. He didn’t know why he’d survived. Was the creature interested in him? Was there a sentience inside Leon-895 of which they’d never become aware?
Kash appeared above him.
“Hoenikker? Tim?” she said breathlessly. “Are you alright?”
He felt himself. Somehow, he’d gone unscathed. The creature had seemed to fixate on him. Why was that? Why had it followed him, or had Hoenikker just been unlucky enough to have been in the way of its retreat? Had it been pure coincidence? Would it have followed him had he turned left instead of right?
“Tim,” she said, kneeling and gently shaking him by the shoulders. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” he said, softly. Then with a little more strength he repeated, “Yeah. I think I am.”
He sat up.
“What about the others?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Dead. So many. Dead.”
19
The number of dead was unimaginable. All from a single Leon-895, something no one on the station knew existed until now. To think that a simple creature captured from the jungles of LV-895 could have wrought so much havoc.
Rawlings made his usual rounds, exchanging coffee for gossip, and could detect fear circling the edges of every conversation.
It was only going to get worse.
He also had it on good authority that the next day would bring not only wholesale changes to the way Pala Station was being run, but more of the Xenomorphs on which the scientists had experimented before. He’d only ever seen one of the adults, but that had sent chills through him as he watched it chase down a sample of local fauna, its jaws extending from its body to rip the creature in half.
Which was why he’d called the meeting. He hadn’t anticipated needing one so soon. When he’d first divined the idea of creating a group of common concern among the station’s veterans, he’d thought they might benefit from a group of close comrades, to vent about various issues that only they could understand. As a group they were all older than their peers, and age brought with it a certain worldliness and weariness.
Now it was more than that. His gut told him that they might need the group to survive.
They met in the mess hall, gathering between breakfast and lunch. A few workers were refilling some of the drinking containers, but other than that, they were alone. Buggy from Comms sat across the table from him, sipping soda loudly through a straw. Flores and Dudt sat beside Buggy, both from Security, and both new to Weyland-Yutani corporate, so basically fresh off the boat.
McGann from Engineering sat beside Rawlings, with Chase from Logistics. They were only waiting on Dr. Cruz to arrive to establish their quorum.
“Any news on Fairbanks?” Chase asked the two security specialists. Flores shook her head and glanced first at Dudt before answering.
“It’s like he disappeared. There’s no pings from his PDT. Nothing.”
“I bet he ripped it out,” Dudt said. He had red hair and skin so white you imagined he’d never been in the sun. “That’s what he did to Brennan.”
“There are ways to hide the signal,” Buggy said. “In special services, we had devices that adhered to the outside of the skin where the implant was. That blocked the signal, and it scrambled it so even if something leaked, nothing could read it.”
“What are they saying in Log about Fairbanks?” Rawlings asked Chase.
“We’re all pretty stunned,” he replied. “Fairbanks was a standup guy. We never knew he was into espionage. I mean, why would you even do something like that—and then to kill Brennan? I heard Fairbanks did a number on his face.”
“It wasn’t pretty,” Rawlings said.
Chase’s eyes brightened. “You were there?” Then he nodded to himself. “Of course you were. You go everywhere.”
“I just try to pay attention.” Rawlings sipped from his cup of coffee. “What about you, McGann? Heard anything?”
A thirty-something, acne-faced woman with a dark ponytail, she shrugged. “We’re always hearing things. Seems the rat problem is finally under control. We haven’t had to pull any extra duty.” She knocked on the table for luck. “But there’s some talk about the incoming Xeno specimens. Between us and Fabrications, we’re concerned about containment.”
“Yeah,” Chase said. “Don’t those scientists have any security protocols? I mean, that Leon should have never gotten out. The lab should have been locked down immediately.”
“Security has an answer for that,” Flores said. “They’re putting two synths in the lab, so if there’s another problem, they can take care of it before it gets out of hand. Word has it that there will be no more breaches. Before that happens, the station commander will order all the specimens killed.”
“Not that we’ve heard from the station commander at all,” Chase said.
Rawlings took a sip of his coffee. “He’s on the outs. It’s the incoming commander who said that. We get to meet him tomorrow. Get ready for an ass reaming.”
“We’ve already been warned down in Security,” Dudt said. “The ass reaming has begun by remote control.”
“Do you think that’s going to be enough?” McGann asked, her eyes as hard as flint. They were surrounded by laugh lines that seemed seldom used.
“It’s going to have to be,” Cruz said, entering the room. He grabbed some iced tea and a straw and pulled up a chair to sit at the head of the table. Rawlings nodded to him.
Rawlings had been the highest ranking when they were in the Colonial Marines, rising to the rank of warrant officer. But here on Pala Station, the scientists were the big men on campus. The station staff were all about supporting them. So, Cruz was de facto in charge of their little group, even though it was Rawlings who’d created it.
“How are you guys recovering?” Rawlings asked. He’d helped process the bodies, so he knew of the decimation the scientific staff had experienced.
“Not good,” Cruz said. “I feel like shit that I wasn’t there to help.”
“I heard Mansfield relieved you,” Rawlings said carefully. Cruz glanced at him for a sharp-eyed second, then shrugged.
“Difference of opinion. You know the deal. Fucking civilians.”
The others all nodded. Each had experienced their own run-ins. Each one knew what it was like to be in the shit. They might all be fucking civilians now, but their muscle memory was still as marines. For a moment everyone had a faraway look, as if remembering another time and another place, when things were different.
“Mansfield isn’t going to be relieving anyone soon,” Rawlings said.
“We also lost Prior and Matthews. Matthews was a thumb-sucker,” Cruz said. “Don’t know how he got the job, but Prior was a solid scientist. He knew his shit.”
“I heard Matthews wasn’t touched,” Chase said.
“He wasn’t. Heart attack. Mind you, I might have had one too, had I seen Leon in action,” Cruz admitted.
“And they still haven’t
found it,” Dudt said. “It’s still somewhere on the station.”
“What about the synths?” Rawlings asked. “I heard they were doing patrols.”
“Even with their advancements, they can’t seem to find it,” Flores said.
“I fucking hate that it killed people,” Cruz said. “I know there are those who blame me, because I was the one who experimented on it. But can you imagine if we can harvest the chameleon ability of the beast onto power armor?” He smiled and leaned forward. “Imagine going into combat being invisible.”
“All in the name of science,” Chase said, rolling his eyes.
Cruz gave him a hard look. “Yes. In the name of science. Listen, people die. Shit happens. We’re not here at the edge of the known universe to fuck around. We’re here to develop technology that will save marines.”
Rawlings held up a finger. “That, and something else, my friend. We’re here to develop technology sold by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, for a handsome profit.”
“The man’s got to get paid,” Cruz said. “That’s for sure.” He leaned back. “Enough of the small talk. Why did you bring us together? I mean, I’m all up for a group of ‘common concern,’ but I wasn’t planning on having weekly meetings. I have a laundry list of things to do, not to mention seeing if we can fix the damage done by Leon-895.”
Rawlings looked around the table. Everyone was staring at him, waiting for a response.
“Here’s the deal,” he began. “We all know there’s been two containment problems with the lab. We also know that the containment fronts aren’t what they should be. Log, and Fab, and Engineering are working on it, but there’s only so much they can do—and now we’re about to bring down the second round of specimens from the orbital mining facility Katanga. It’s been in space for more than twenty years, and has been the station’s source of Xenomorph specimens. These are the real deal. As bad as Leon-895 was, these are far worse. Do you remember that feeling you got in your guts before a mission, when you knew for certain you were going to be shot?”
Everyone nodded their head.
“I have that feeling now,” Rawlings said. “I can’t quantify it, I can’t science it, I can’t prove it, but I know some serious shit is about to go down, and I want to make sure we at least have a chance at surviving it.”
