by Weston Ochse
“They can still tell that we are human, or at least not of their species,” Kash said.
“If we look human but smell Xeno, wouldn’t that give them pause?” Étienne asked. “Come on, Erin. This is all scientific method. This is a hypothesis. At least give me a chance to prove it before you dash it on the rocks of common sense.”
“Do you really think you have the ability to break down the scent of a Xenomorph?” Hoenikker asked. Étienne stared at him for a long moment, then placed his hand on Hoenikker’s shoulder.
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“Then let’s do it,” Hoenikker said. “But first, we have to clear it through Cruz.”
Étienne’s face fell. He threw up his hands.
“Then this will never happen.”
He got up and walked away.
But Hoenikker had another idea. He felt that Cruz would go for it. It was all in how he sold it. Even the worst pill could be swallowed if given with something sweet.
* * *
An hour later, they were preparing Containment Rooms One and Two. Like the other rooms, these had accesses in the rear and were joined by a common door. No Xenomorph would need to be removed. Instead, they would just open the door between them.
“How’d you get Cruz to go for it?” Kash asked as they prepared for the experiment.
“I made him think it was his idea. I also pointed out that if it worked—and if Weyland-Yutani could monetize it—every Colonial Marine, and miner, and settler in the known systems would want a spray bottle of Xenomorph Defender.”
“Did you come up with the name?” Kash asked, her smile wide and appreciating.
“I did,” Hoenikker said. “Think it’s too much?”
She laughed. “No. I think it’s perfect.”
None of them were sure what was going to happen when they raised the door between the containment rooms. Would the Xenos attack each other? Would they see each other as allies? Given their source, the scientists believed that the Ovomorphs came from the same queen, so the adult Xenomorphs were essentially siblings. They should be able to interact without killing each other.
In fact, Étienne was sure of it, but the moment the door slid open and the two creatures turned to face each other, the lab was filled with tension. No one said a word. It wasn’t until they rushed at each other, then circled like dogs might have, sniffing each other, that Étienne pounded a victorious fist into his palm.
“Yes!” he said.
The creatures moved together for a moment, then switched rooms, each Xenomorph investigating the newly opened space. Their movements were sudden, much like a display on a vid that jerked due to an irregular signal—stuck one moment, and then having already moved the next.
Having inspected their new surroundings they met again, touching each other, tails whipping, jaws drooling. The scientists watched while they continued in this way for an hour, then when each Xenomorph found itself in its original containment room, they shut the door between them.
What came next was unexpected. Each containment room boasted a suite of utility arms that could detach from the walls, floor, and ceiling. Whenever they tried to release one, the Xenomorph would attack it. The hypothesis was that once they became aggressive, the pheromones would change.
So it was with a deft hand that Cruz operated the workstation. He pumped in music that might be present in the mess hall or waiting in a med suite. Whether it was to calm the creatures or himself, he never said. Then he fired an arm from the ceiling of the room that wiped the torpedo skull of the Xenomorph with a length of cotton. The creature whipped around, some of its drool striking the wall, ceiling, and cloth. Then Cruz snapped the utility arm back into the ceiling.
He sat back and grinned.
“Okay, Étienne. It’s time to get your science on.”
Étienne looked surprised.
“Don’t pretend this wasn’t you,” Cruz said. “I know Hoenikker, and he’d never think of pheromone sprays. Trust in a Frenchman to want to make a cologne.”
“Oui.” Étienne grinned. “Oui. Time for science.”
32
Things were humming.
Kash was continuing her painstaking observations.
Étienne was working on his pet project that might actually be something.
And Cruz was doing what he wanted—supervising the team, and he had his own project with the Leon. All the Xeno eggs had hatched, including the last three they’d saved for the Leon-895 stem cells. Mixed with varying amounts of pathogen, each egg was injected with a serum in an attempt to see if they could replicate the chameleonic abilities in a Xenomorph.
The most difficult gestation to watch had been Test Subject #11. For a few days he had begun to exhibit a hope that had never been there. He’d been fed and kept comfortable for so long that he came to believe they might actually have commuted his sentence. But when they’d finally removed the bottom of the cryo case, he’d run to the glass and banged against it until his fists left streaks of blood.
When the face-hugger finally did emerge, he ran, then fought the creature, actually managing to grab the tail as it whipped around his arm. He began to beat the arm against the wall, hard enough to break it. Bone could be seen protruding from the injury. He tried to pry free the face-hugger, but the creature was having none of it.
Then the Test Subject did something completely unexpected. He placed the tip of the bone against the side of his neck and rammed himself into the wall. Once. Twice. Three times. Then on the fourth he managed to puncture his jugular. He went down, blood pumping furiously.
Cruz could have sworn that the man smiled, dying as he did, having outfoxed the face-hugger, who wouldn’t be able to implant a chestburster inside a dead man. The face-hugger tried to attach itself to the dead man’s face, but its own biological imperative wouldn’t allow it. It needed something living, and there was nothing in the room to which it could attach itself.
It scrambled around, seemingly frantic, bouncing against one wall then another, plastering itself onto the glass that fronted the enclosure, until it slid miserably to the floor.
Cruz turned away. Unless they had a spare prisoner, Containment Room Eleven was a wasted opportunity. While part of him had rooted for the man to survive, and part of him had saluted the man for giving the big middle finger to Weyland-Yutani, the waste of an Ovomorph wasn’t going to play well with the boss.
* * *
Bellows had handed him his ass, or at least tried to. Drill sergeants and commanders had handed Cruz his ass on various platters, so he took what Bellows gave and pretended he had enough hurt feelings to mollify the station commander.
Shit way to run an operation, he thought angrily. Someone should show them how it ought to be done.
Someone like him.
Hoenikker, meanwhile, was busy helping where he could. While Cruz hadn’t really liked the man—probably because he was so entirely different from a Colonial Marine—he’d come to appreciate his work ethic. Even Étienne had backbone. Kash had backbone. Hoenikker… Cruz just wasn’t sure.
Even now, the archaeologist carried samples back and forth for Kash, acting more like a third-year lab assistant than a fully credentialed scientist. What was a theoretical archeologist, anyway? Didn’t really sound very scientific.
Étienne approached. “Remarkable. Do you know how complex these beings are?”
Cruz nodded. “However they came to be, they have some remarkable tendencies. What have you learned?”
“I examined not only the sweat you gathered from the carapace, but also the salivation we managed to capture. I think there’s a sympathetic symbiosis between the two, as many of the cells I found were exactly the same.”
Cruz grinned. “Can they be replicated?”
“I think so.”
“Then what’s the next step? Are you going to lather up and walk into one of the containment areas?” Cruz asked.
Étienne gave him a look. “That isn’t funny,” he replied. “We’ll
figure it out once we are able to replicate. Until then, I’m not even going to worry about it.”
Cruz shook his head. “You can’t go through your life being an inflight spaceship repairman.”
Now it was Étienne’s turn to grin. “Of course I can. It’s worked for me so far.” And then he was off, back to his microscopes. Cruz enjoyed the man’s energy and his confidence. If only every scientist had the same.
He approached the Xenomorph in Containment Room Seven, observing the smooth, elongated head and reticulated jaws that continually snapped at the air. The human-shaped body was also intriguing. They’d been able to conduct scans and noted a biology that seemed to share components of both humans and Xenomorphs. With no eyes and no nose, it had to somehow detect the presence of others and note its surroundings through its mouth, using echolocation, or perhaps tasting the air.
Maybe Étienne was onto something. Perhaps pheromones were the missing link to understanding these complex aliens.
The longer Cruz stared at the creature, the more he wondered at its genetic origins. A static at the back of his brain started to rise, as if he’d tuned in to some new broadcast. The adult Xenomorph drones on either side of Seven began to spit acid at the glass. Their jaws launching forward, their tongues following like alien stilettos. Cruz felt a need to do something. He wanted to do something, but he didn’t know what it was.
Cruz blinked and shook his head. The feeling remained, but it lessened a bit. Was he feeling contact from Seven? Had it told Six and Eight to attack the glass, and was he able to listen in to part of it? Or was he imagining it?
Hoenikker paused to stare at the glass of Containment Room Six.
“Should they be doing that?” Captain Obvious asked.
Cruz heard but didn’t say anything. Instead, he listened and attended to the feeling. Was Seven communicating somehow with the others? Was the feeling inside his own head a broadcast of some sort, or was it literally inside his head?
Hoenikker approached him.
“Dr. Cruz, I don’t think that—”
“Shut up and listen. Do you feel it? Do you sense it? Use your brain and embrace the science instead of the fear, Dr. Hoenikker. Seven is trying to communicate.” Cruz looked past Hoenikker’s hurt feelings and saw Kash working diligently in the front of the lab. “Erin. Do we have anything to measure frequencies?”
She paused and stared thoughtfully at one of the supply closets. “We don’t, but I bet Comms does.”
“Can you get us something, please?” he asked. She stared for a moment, then nodded.
Kash understood the need.
She wasn’t scared like Hoenikker.
Then she left the lab.
Cruz’s head buzzed with some sort of purpose he couldn’t quite work out. He felt the energy. He felt a directive, but he lacked the translation to understand what it meant. He turned to Six and watched it spit acid repeatedly at the same spot. Over and over. Acid. On the glass. Then he turned to Eight and watched it doing the same thing. Directed. Focused.
Then Cruz understood.
Seven was smart.
Seven was the brain.
Seven wanted to escape.
It didn’t have the capacity itself, but it did have a way to influence.
Cruz stepped over to Containment Room Seven’s workstation. He sat and stared for a moment at the gray-skinned Xenomorph, so different to the others. Was it really a byproduct of irradiated pathogen—an accident of nature? Or was it designed to be this way? Had they unlocked something?
Kash had wanted to introduce this drone to the others, to see how they’d react. Her hypothesis was that this could be a super-drone, capable of leading the others. Cruz believed she might be right.
He watched as the other Xenomorphs attacked the glass for a few more moments, then he pressed a button. Fire rained down on Seven, causing it to flinch and fall back. And the other two Xenomorphs?
They stopped their attacks on the glass, instead investigating their demesne as they had been—in menacing whirls and jerks, tails whipping, no longer concerned at what they’d just been poised to do.
Cruz nodded.
Kash had definitely been right. Whether by design or accident, Seven was a creature to be watched.
33
Life in the lab continued anxiously, four scientists doing what eight should do.
Hoenikker was beginning to like this life a lot more since the chestbursters had turned into adult Xenomorphs. Even as he thought it, he felt bad for the thinking of it. For the adults to be present meant that humans had to have died, but he’d been working on coming to terms with it. He’d forced himself to accept it. He hadn’t been in charge, and had no control over the process. Because of this, he’d been able to detach himself from the morphological step that required the incubation of humans.
Even the idea that Monica had now become an inglorious Xenomorph was an acceptable fact in the face of the idea that he finally had a race of alien entities for which he could create an archaeological model.
He pored over the data they had about the lifecycle of the Xenomorphs, curious about the relationship between the drones and the warriors and the queen. It was too easy for him to make comparisons to a beehive or an anthill because of the use of the term “queen.” He needed to realize that the imperfect word was meant as a description for an unknown to adhere to a known, and wasn’t truly identifiable. “Queen” was nothing more than a placeholder until a better scientific term could be found.
By using the term, he locked himself into a certain train of thought. The use of “queen” meant there was a sort of worship and respect. That all other beings of the same genetic model would intervene on her behalf, and do her bidding. But the term “mother” could also be used for that.
Or another term, not yet determined.
One of the issues with archaeological modeling was that unless he used the exact terms in the target species’ language, he was doomed to be wrong. Bringing human terms to a model of Xenomorph anthropology was akin to bringing a knife to a gunfight. Sure, he might succeed, but there was so much he had to overcome to do so.
Not that they had a queen to study, which Hoenikker found himself wishing they had. He’d love to study the female Xenomorph, and its ability to control the males of the species. In that, the Xenomorphs were interesting because they didn’t parallel carbon-based mammals as much as they mirrored an insectile sociological structure. Which brought him back to the bees.
With a female being at the center of all activities, and perhaps even directing them, how would the eleven Xenomorphs they held in their containment areas create their own sociological interactions, unless there was some sort of genetic marker that identified one as being superior to the other?
While examining Seven, Hoenikker couldn’t help wondering if the Xenomorph might not have been genetically triggered because of the absence of a queen. Could nature be predisposed to fill a vacuum? He had been fascinated by Seven’s apparent ability to silently manipulate or direct the other Xenomorphs. But now, after three more days of having to flame Seven because the others were spitting acid on their glass containment fronts, the humanlike Xeno was becoming a pain in the ass.
Cruz wanted to get rid of it, but Bellows wouldn’t allow it. They’d already lost Eleven, and Bellows didn’t want to have to explain to Weyland-Yutani why they kept losing hyper-expensive corporate resources. So, Cruz was left with continually trying to stop Seven from influencing the others.
Meanwhile, the creature’s reach had grown, and it became able to influence Four, Five, Six, Nine, and Ten, all of which would randomly begin attacking their glass barriers. Every time they started, one of the scientists would have to move to Seven’s workstation and actuate the flame system.
Worse, there was no way to measure damage to the glass. Fabrications came to take a look, and their idea of help was to stand around with blank looks in their eyes, gaping at the Xenos, scratching their heads and saying, “I don’t know.”<
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When faced with this new problem, Bellows’ solution was to have the two synths already assigned to the lab flame each of the Xenos whenever they started spitting acid at the glass. As logical as it sounded, the synths were suddenly in everyone’s way, racing from one workstation to another as they tried to stop all the creatures.
What upset Cruz the most was that Seven seemed to be influencing the new Leon-895 he’d been able to create using the stem cells he’d mined from the original creature. At the same time as the Xenomorphs began to spit acid, the Leon would begin cycling through the colors of the spectrum in a dizzying display of camouflage. This ate into Cruz’s experimentation time. His frustration was evident in the way he would take it out on the others. He’d begun to talk to Hoenikker as if he were a lab assistant.
“Give me a hand, will you?” Étienne said, jolting Hoenikker out of his reverie.
“What do you need?” Hoenikker asked, eager to do something. Étienne held up a beaker that had several ounces of clear liquid.
“Smell this.”
Hoenikker hesitated, then leaned forward.
“There isn’t any scent.”
“No. Nothing that we can smell. However, watch this.”
With an eyedropper, Étienne took a sample. Two cages rested on the table, a rat in each cage. He pulled the rat on the left free of its cage and placed two drops on its back. The rat squirmed for thirty seconds and almost got free, but went still. Étienne put it back into its cage. The rat circled a few times, then stopped.
“What am I supposed to see?” Hoenikker asked.
“Nothing yet. Wait for it.”
Étienne then pushed both cages together. The other rat immediately ran to the side of the cage farthest from the first rat, and began to tremble visibly.
“We can’t smell the liquid, but these rats can.”
“Why didn’t the first rat react?”
