by Weston Ochse
“During the chaos, he poured a beaker of pheromone over his head and lathered himself up,” Hoenikker said.
“And did it work?”
“Yes,” Kash said. “We watched as a Xenomorph approached him, and then moved on.”
“Fascinating.” Cruz scratched the side of his head. “If only we’d had more time to study.”
“The containment rooms weren’t solid enough to hold them—” Hoenikker began, but a sharp shake of Cruz’s head stopped him from continuing.
“There’s never going to be a containment room that will keep them, as long as there’s something like Seven. Each of the Xenomorphs is its own boss, determining how or when to fight. They don’t coordinate with each other. They don’t plan. There’s no strategy. Unless they have someone to lead them. In the absence of a queen, it has to be a mutation.”
“Do you think that’s what they’re doing now?” Kash asked. “Organizing?”
Cruz looked critically at both Kash and Hoenikker. “There are things you aren’t aware of. For instance, there are a lot more eggs that we have in cryo travel cases.”
“More eggs?” Hoenikker asked, eyes widening. “How many?”
“Dozens. Maybe as many as a hundred,” Cruz said. “And each egg begets a face-hugger, which begets a chestburster, which begets a full-blown adult Xenomorph killing machine.”
“We haven’t heard any screams in a while,” Hoenikker said. “Do you think…” His eyes widened.
“Go ahead and finish the sentence,” Cruz said.
“I was going to say, do you think that they might be collecting people to create Xenomorphs? Do you think Seven is that smart?”
Cruz stared at the floor as he smiled grimly. “Either that, or all the Xenomorphs are dead, and I just can’t believe that.”
“We have to do something.” Kash looked at Cruz in horror. “We can’t just let them all—”
“What is it you would have us do?” He grabbed a pistol and tried to shove it into her hand. She wouldn’t grab it at first, so he closed her hand around it and let go. “Do you want to go face down a Xenomorph, or a dozen or two dozen, to save the lives of the few remaining humans on the station? Then go ahead. Be my guest.” He leaned back in the chair and stared at her down his nose. “But I’ll tell you this. You’ll die. You’ll die horribly, or you’ll be an incubator for a Xenomorph.”
She stared at him for long grim moment, then carefully laid the pistol on top of the bureau.
“So, your plan is to run? To get to the shuttle then call for help from space?”
“Damn skippy,” he said.
“I remember you telling me about the last time you ran. You have the names of your team members tattooed on you, is that right?”
“Careful where you are going.”
“Let me just say this,” she said. “I don’t have enough skin on my body to tattoo the names of everyone we’re going to leave behind. So, when we do, can I borrow some of yours?”
Hoenikker stared at Kash, and Cruz for the longest. He didn’t know what Kash was talking about, but it hit home. Cruz had gone from red to pale, his frown deepening. For a second he thought the man might strike her.
“What you’re saying,” Cruz began slowly, “is that our team is bigger than us four. You’re saying that all the humans on Pala Station form a team. Is that what you’re saying?”
She nodded slowly.
“You’re right,” he said. “I can’t run again. My conscience couldn’t survive that. We’ll see if we can save them first. We’ll do what we can. But if we find out there’s nothing we can do—that we’d die trying—then we go back to the original plan. Is that good for you?”
“Damn skippy,” she said, reaching for the gun.
Hoenikker wasn’t sure what just happened, but it felt like things just went from bad to worse.
“First, we need to go back to the lab, to get our work,” she said.
Cruz grinned slightly. “Got it right here,” he said, patting his side pocket.
“Then all we need to do is grab a gun and head out. We’re certainly not going to save anyone dicking around here,” she said. “Hand me that pulse rifle.” When he just looked at her, she added, “What? You get the flamethrower and the rifle? I don’t think so.”
“Can you handle one of these?”
“I dated a Colonial Marine once. His idea for a first date was to go out shooting.”
“Sounds like a Colonial Marine.” He handed it to her.
“What about me? Hoenikker asked.
Cruz raised an eyebrow. “You date a Colonial Marine, too?”
Hoenikker snarfed. “No. I mean, what does that have to do with anything?”
Cruz handed him a pistol. “Point and shoot. Just keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. Understand?”
Hoenikker accepted the pistol, and the first thing he did was examine it by looking down the barrel.
“Tim. Stop,” Kash said. “That’s where the bullet comes from.”
He looked at her and cocked his head. “Oh. Of course.” Then he looked back at the gun and hurriedly turned it away. He should have known better.
Before this week, Hoenikker had never fired a gun. He’d never even held a gun, but he’d seen the popular movies and knew the basics. Hold, aim, point, shoot. It couldn’t be brain science. After all, if Colonial Marines could do it, so could he. He practiced aiming down the barrel at his bureau, which he figured was about as wide as a Xenomorph.
“You don’t need to squint,” Cruz said, standing. He took two quick steps and took the gun away from Hoenikker. “Try it this way.” He held the gun with two hands, chest high, arms thrust out in front of him. “If you hold it like this, you will shoot whatever you’re facing.”
Hoenikker studied the man’s grip, then nodded.
Cruz gave him back the pistol.
As best he could, Hoenikker imitated the way Cruz had held the gun. His fingers fought to find a place to rest, but eventually he realized that one hand’s fingers fit neatly into the spaces between the other hand’s fingers. Yet as he imagined actually using it, butterflies began to crash into the sides of his stomach, bouncing to and fro. He felt sick and light at the same time. He was going to have to shoot something.
Shoot or be dead.
Even if he did manage to shoot a Xenomorph or, God forbid, that monster Fairbanks had become, he might still be killed. After all, his handgun couldn’t possibly have the stopping capacity of a rifle or that flamethrower.
“Is everybody ready?” Cruz asked as he began putting his armor back on.
“Does Weyland-Yutani fuck people over?”
Cruz gave Kash a raised eyebrow.
“I used to date a VP at Weyland-Yutani,” she muttered. Then looking up, she said, “What? You never dated anyone?”
“Whoa there.” He held up his hand. “Not judging.” He finished putting on the armor, including the gloves, then used the table to support the backpack tank and bent down and slid into the straps. When he stood, he let out an oof before adjusting the straps and the placement of the tank on his back.
He noticed Hoenikker staring at him.
“What? Never seen a man in combat armor before?”
“No. It’s just that I feel so underdressed.” Hoenikker grinned.
Cruz laughed and patted him on the back. “Funny, Timmy. Very funny.”
40
Rawlings wanted nothing more than to drink himself into oblivion. Some nice whiskey to soothe his shattered soul. Maybe just a little bit of go juice to make his jitters dance away. Perhaps a few shots to soothe the savage beast inside of him, screaming to come out.
The bottle on the table in front of him had a devil doing a jig on its artsy label, the artwork reminiscent of a French advertisement. The more he stared at it, the more he could have sworn the devil was staring back at him.
The memory of his right hand being burned away by acid thrashed once again through his head. The pain had
been so intense he’d fallen to the ground and rolled to try and get away from it. Then it was gone as the acid seared the nerve endings, the absence of pain a black hole to his soul in the shape of a hand that had loved and hated and created. A bright image of the hand cradling his mother’s cheek right before she died.
He reached for the bottle.
The door opened. McGann and Buggy slid inside.
McGann’s black hair was tousled like she’d just gotten out of bed. She held a pulse rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Buggy’s bald pate was slick with sweat. He had a pistol jammed into a holster, one he’d clearly stolen from the Colonial Marines when he’d been in the service. But then, hadn’t they all. Rawlings had weapons he’d made sure to procure before he left the service. He was about to say something to Buggy, but the guy went straight to Rawlings’ bottle and grabbed it by the neck.
“Got no time for this shit,” he said, shoving it into the trash compacter and pressing the button.
Rawlings’ eyes went wide. The finality of the trash mechanism struck him in the gut, and he sat back in his chair. He wanted to bitch. He wanted to complain. But he knew Buggy had done the right thing.
Damn him.
“Come on,” Buggy said. “Get your ass up. We need to plan.”
“There’s too fucking many,” Rawlings said. “Did you see what they did to the mess hall?”
“They’re organized as fuck,” McGann said, pacing back and forth in the small space of the room, talking mostly to herself. “I thought these were like drones. The way they lined up those men and women, and fed them one by one to the face-huggers, it was too much.” She stopped and stared. “Who knew they could do that?”
Rawlings had found a place to hide and watch as it happened. The scientists had called the Xenomorph leader Seven. Standing in the middle of the mess hall, Seven had commanded the others to do things he was pretty sure they shouldn’t have been able to do. Rawlings had watched at first in fascination and later in terror as the other Xenomorphs first moved the tables and chairs against the wall, then brought out egg after egg. All the while a gaggle of humans was herded into a far corner and guarded. Then, after a time, a Xenomorph would grab a human one by one and force its head to face into the egg until a face-hugger wrapped its tail around the neck and found a home.
The victims were then stacked like cordwood on the other side of the mess hall, which was what eventually sent him to his room for a last and final date with his bottle of Scotch.
“I don’t think this is normal,” Buggy said.
“We need to get out of here before the juveniles hatch,” McGann said, pacing.
“They’re already hatching,” Rawlings said. “Not in the mess hall, but from somewhere else. I saw them.”
“We need to do something,” Buggy said.
“What?” Rawlings asked. “What is there to do?”
Buggy smacked Rawlings across the face. “Get the fuck up. You were the one who brought us all together. You were the one who warned us bad shit was coming. Well, bad shit paid us a visit, and it isn’t leaving anytime soon. You need to decide whether you want to sit here and feel sorry for yourself, or join us and see if we can’t ride this out.”
Rawlings snapped his head around and stared at Buggy, then at McGann. The comms tech was right. He needed to get up. He needed to do something. He got to his feet.
“What’s the plan?”
“Right now, Security is spread thin,” Buggy said. “They have a cluster of security techs around Bellows, and another group of external security techs in the landing bay, pretty much keeping everyone from taking the shuttle and getting the hell off the rock.”
“So, we can’t escape even if we wanted to,” McGann said.
“I have to admit, the shuttle looked like the best choice,” Rawlings said. “Without it we really don’t have much choice… unless…”
McGann stopped pacing. “Unless what?”
Rawlings wiped the side of his face where he’d been smacked. If Buggy was going to say he was sorry, the moment had passed. Anyway, they were marines. It didn’t matter.
“Well, there’s one possibility, and for the life of me, I don’t know why Bellows didn’t take it.”
“If you have an idea, then share,” Buggy said.
“What about Thompson’s hunting lodge?” Rawlings asked.
“Hunting lodge?” Buggy asked.
McGann wrinkled her eyebrows. “Yeah, what lodge?”
Rawlings nodded. “I thought you’d know, Buggy. After all, they had major comms set up in there—or at least, that’s what I read on the installment order.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Well, unless it’s a lie—I’ve never actually seen the place— Thompson wanted a place to stay outside of station so he could spend more time hunting. He had a lodge built. One of the reasons we were so short on tungsten. I’m not sure where, but in addition to the communications array, I’d imagine it has everything we’d need to survive. So all we’d have to do is find it, get there, and lock the fucking door until help comes.”
Buggy shrugged. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
McGann nodded. “Who do we ask where it’s at?”
Rawlings shook his head. “We don’t ask. If we start spreading the word that there might be a safe place outside of the station, we’ll be lucky if there isn’t a riot. We don’t know about the food and water stores in the lodge. I’m assuming it’ll have enough for the three of us. Four, if we can find Cruz, but that’s it. No more.”
“Then how do we find out where it is?” Buggy asked.
“That’s a good question,” Rawlings said.
McGann scratched her head. “If it’s getting power, then Engineering would have electrical schematics, showing where it attaches to the main power grid.”
Rawlings nodded. “That’s a great start.” He grabbed his own pulse rifle from where it leaned against the wall. “Then all we have to do is make our hundred-meter dash to freedom.” He held his rifle at the ready. “Who’s first?”
“It was my idea.” McGann headed toward the door. “I’ll go first.”
“Then lead the way,” Rawlings said, almost happy he hadn’t drunk his courage, like he’d planned.
He, McGann, and Buggy posted at the door in that order. They’d done this a thousand times, although never with each other, but that didn’t matter. Every Colonial Marine did it the same way. There was only one technique to conduct CQB, and they’d all learned it in the same bloody crucible.
Each of them held a pulse rifle at the ready, trigger fingers disciplined to stay off the trigger until needed, lest they shoot each other in the back. McGann palmed the door open and they moved like a three-coiled snake through the corridor, hugging the right side. Dead body to the left. Pieces of a dead body to the right. Rawlings’ universe was sixty degrees of nothing.
Until there was something.
The Xenomorph couldn’t have been five feet tall—a juvenile by all accounts. It snapped at him and twitched its tail as it exited a room, almost oblivious to their presence. Rawlings opened fire, giving it seventeen free automatic bullets, more than half of them finding a home in its chest, a spray of blood and acid in their wake.
It died and they continued to move, three becoming one, muscle memory taking them over. Rawlings felt the fear of the unknown, the fear that they might all die, but he also felt the comfort he’d known only as a Colonial Marine. They’d had the same training, the same experiences, the same shit-cloaking tear-shedding training, each of them emerging better than when they’d begun. Their civilian skins forever shed, to be replaced by the pride and capacity of a Colonial Marine.
McGann cornered into a corridor and opened fire.
Buggy fired from behind.
For now, Rawlings didn’t need to fire. He had no targets. His sector was clear.
41
Cruz liked the hug of the armor against his skin. It made
him feel invincible, even though he knew he wasn’t. He held the pulse rifle ready. Hoenikker and Kash huddled behind him, hiding behind his size.
They’d come to a place in the corridor where they couldn’t go any farther. Furniture had been piled in the middle from floor to ceiling to block all traffic, whether alien or human. A few rifle barrels sprouted out of the available openings, hints of movements behind them.
“Let us pass,” he said to no one in particular.
“Where’d you get the armor?” a voice responded.
“Stay where you are,” another voice said.
“The armor is mine,” Cruz said. “What the hell is going on here? We need to talk to Station Commander Bellows.”
“He’s not talking,” the second voice said.
“Who am I talking to?” Cruz asked, deepening his voice like a Colonial Marine non-commissioned officer would to a misbehaving private.
A pause. “Security Tech Francis. Security Tech Hardon is with me.”
“Francis. What’s the deal with the station commander? Why won’t he speak with us?”
There was another pause, the sound of whispering.
“He’s locked up in his suite with most of the external security personnel.”
“Jesus. What’s he doing there? Hiding beneath his bed? I have information I need to give him.”
“He won’t listen,” Francis said. “He’s not listening to anyone.”
“How much you take for your armor?” Hardon asked.
“Not for sale,” Cruz said flatly. Then he added, “Try and take it, and I’ll make you wish you were facing a roomful of bugs.”
“Easy, big fella,” Francis said. “It was just a simple question.”
“Where’s the rest of Security?” Cruz asked. “Why aren’t they clearing the corridors?”
“That’s beyond my paygrade,” Francis said. “I was just told to guard this point.”
Fucking paygrades. Being an enlisted soldier, or a security technician, was just like being a mushroom. You were kept in the dark and fed shit. Cruz didn’t respond to Mr. Paygrade. Instead, he backed away and around the corner, keeping Hoenikker and Kash protected. When they were safe, he found a supply room and ushered them inside. Once the door was closed, he removed his helmet and placed it on a shelf near some floor cleaner.
