Waiting in limbo was not a wonderful sensation. Mae Prime wanted to move but also understood the weight of her responsibility to these Jackals. Perhaps, under these circumstances, staying put was better after all.
Caught in that push and pull, Mae didn’t know how to feel when Green Team chimed in on open comms. “We have control of station communications. Red and Blue Teams are a go.”
Sergeant Fesolai slapped his chest. “Time to get hot, Jackals.” He strode down the line, checking the EVA suits, running an eye over the helmet seals, and making sure no fault lights were on.
“Unit ready for EVA insertion,” he said and turned to her. “Lieutenant Hendricks.”
I was made for this, Mae reminded herself. She stepped forward, mimicking her mother’s stance and tone of voice. “I want this mission silent and controlled. We need to take the laboratory with the least amount of fuss. I picked you because I trust you, so I know you’ve got this locked down.”
The Jackals, faces magnified by the glass of their suits, appeared calm and ready. EVA missions were not the norm for Jackals, but they were all trained for it. She hadn’t lied about trusting them.
“You heard the lieutenant. Let’s get in there,” Fesolai barked. The three squads—two human, one synthetic—moved in tight formation to the airlock. It hissed open, and they filed in, keeping in place with their fireteams. EWA closed the airlock behind them, and then there was only one door between them and the void.
Rook glanced at Mae. Good words. Like your mother. He used the suit-to-suit comms, a personal message meant to encourage her.
I don’t need your interjections here, Rook, Mae replied evenly. These are my Jackals.
She liked him well enough, but he was outside the Jackal chain of command.
He didn’t reply.
The outer airlock doors hissed open. The Jackals stepped out onto the Fury’s hull, their boots’ magnetic locks snapping into place, and looked across to Minos. It wasn’t a great distance, but the vacuum of space made it look farther.
The Jackals’ space suits were made of a material that blocked most scans and the black color helped hide them from curious onlookers. Still, they didn’t want to be out here long.
Mae clicked the order on her wrist-pd, and the synthetic fireteam led the way. They undocked from the Fury and fired their small thrusters. Short bursts were the best way to maintain stealth. They had an open communications channel secured, but there were other ways for her Jackals to be discovered. The human squads followed in their wake. Once they reached the station’s tethers, Mae scanned for any maintenance workers on Minos’s hull. It’d be unlikely, but that didn’t mean it was impossible.
She indicated they were clear with a gesture. The Jackals maneuvered towards the upper levels and the airlock on level eleven. They hurried up the steep sides of Minos’s hull.
This was different to last time around; now, they were going in hot. With the laboratory isolated from the rest of the station and its security, this should be a simple mission, by Mae’s calculation.
Never say anything is simple.
Her father’s voice caught her completely by surprise, right as they reached the entry point. He’d been silent for so long, and here he was, reappearing on her very first command mission. She wasn’t sure if it pleased her or not.
Father, are you back? She waited as Corporal Bui ran a bypass on the airlock. No answer came, and she didn’t feel his presence. Could it have been some kind of echo of the subroutine?
She looked to Rook, who made no acknowledgement of it.
Hooking up with the synthetic network. He said over suit-to-suit. After a moment, another message from him flashed onto Mae’s wrist-pd. They’ve changed the passkey.
It didn’t mean they’d been spotted, since security protocols on the networks were often automatically updated.
Mae gestured to two synth units. Crack it.
With this level sealed off from any other part of the station, their need for stealth was not as great as their need for haste. They did not try to hide their arrival at the laboratory. Now they were on a real ticking clock.
The synths applied a code cycler to the door lock. It glowed yellow for an instant, as it ran through passkey options. This was not the first Wey-Yu door they’d cranked open. The door reluctantly gave way.
The Jackals crammed into the airlock and cycled the inner door behind them. It slid open and the synthetic squad spread out, taking covering positions. Mae and the other two squads secured the rest of the storage room on the other side.
It was empty of people like before, but the sealed containers labeled industrial waste remained. Who knew what biological contaminants were in there.
Keeping well clear of them, the Jackal squads pressed on through the doorway into the laboratory itself. They passed an industrial waste chute with surgical scrubs half stuffed into it. This spoke of some kind of haste. Mae frowned.
Using the intel from Mae and Rook’s first visit, they quickly reached the first clean room.
Again it was empty, but as they checked its corners, red lights flickered to life on the ceiling, and the Minos security system intermittently warbled from a speaker above the door: “Breach, breach, breach.”
It wasn’t us. Rook’s words reached her through suit-to-suit. Now the synthetics on this level are not responding.
At the same instant, Green Mae flashed her warning along the open radio comms, giving up any chance of stealth.
“Erynis and the Fury are compromised. Erynis’s hack failed, and the station AI countered. Kaspar has shut down the ship.”
The station was aware of what they were doing. Trusting her other self would handle it, Mae kept her team on target. The Jackals, even if detected, were more than capable of defeating any station security. Still, they didn’t need to worry about stealth anymore—speed was now of the essence.
Mae smashed the nearest speaker, bringing its warning to a squealing end. Then, she signaled them on, deeper into the laboratory than they’d ventured before. There were no more speakers, but a line of red strobe lights spun ahead of them.
At every turn, even on dark rotation, with minimal staff, Mae expected to run into someone. But the Jackals didn’t encounter any employees, only a few assistant synthetics. These trundled out of their way, thanks to Rook’s intervention, blind to their intrusion.
Finally, Mae detected the hurried footfalls ahead at the same time as the synthetic squad and Rook. They headed away from the Jackals, and it must be scientists fleeing the incursion. That worked to their advantage.
The Jackals pursued the scientists, clearing each room as they passed. With the alarm sounded, the danger only grew, and it wouldn’t do to find one scientist with a weapon waiting to make a name for himself with the company.
At the end of a long corridor, Mae glimpsed two fleeing human figures in flapping lab coats. Then a bulky, airtight inner door slid shut behind them. These company employees were attempting to slow their progress. But Jackals were used to being unwelcome guests.
“Breach unit, you’re up.” Mae gestured to one of the two specialized synthetic combat units. Slung on his back was an ion welding gun. The device had undergone significant improvements compared to the one the Colonial Marines were equipped with. It could seal or cut through steel and steel composites in a matter of minutes. Unlike the door to the outside, they didn’t need to worry about getting sucked into space.
The synthetic brought the welding gun about and set to the task without need of googles. Sharp blue-white light flared at the tip of the needle he pressed against the seal. The genetic human Jackals flipped down their ionized helmet masks to protect their eyes. Mae followed suit to maintain her human illusion.
The light slid through the steel as if it were made of cake. Mae, proud of the analogy, wished she could share it, but her creativity wouldn’t impress the human Jackals at this moment. She filed it away for later.
“Get hot,” Sergeant Fesolai snarled. “Could be some jackass fool scientists on the other side.”
The ion flame did the rest of its work. The specialized synth kicked the large, loosened steel square with his foot and stepped away quickly. It hit the floor with a clang. The edges glowed red hot, but the Jackal synthetic unit pushed through first.
They met no resistance. Another bank of clean laboratories branched off the corridor, but these were not empty. Scientists cowered in the first one. Mae conducted a quick head count. Six in the first, and two more in the second.
Still in their EVA suits, the Jackals gave Mae cover as she opened the third door. All occupants wore clean white coveralls. They kept the hoods pulled up over their heads and wore protective glasses.
“Who’s in charge here?” Mae demanded.
A broad-shouldered man stood up. “I am. Doctor Eli Sommes. This is a Weyland-Yutani facility, protected by international treaty.” His voice came out strong, as if standing up gave him a touch of bravery.
Mae nodded and glanced at Rook. He was already at the computer terminal, working through the confidential records that weren’t available on any other network. Suspicious partitioning was a sign that the experiments conducted on this level were immoral, and also illegal.
“Then consider this an audit.” Mae examined the rows of equipment. It was all consistent with gene splicing. “If we find records of you working with anything apart from animal DNA, then you’re in breach of galactic law.”
“Who are you people?” Sommes’s eyes darted between the Jackals, checking the room.
Mae jerked her rifle up. “You’re a black site. Well, we’re the ones who make sure that whatever you’re doing won’t wipe out all of humanity.”
He flushed red under his goggles. “This isn’t a black site. We’re a corporate laboratory doing experimental development. We keep ourselves and our work quiet because of corporate espionage. That is all.”
“Is it really?” Rook turned away from the computer. His once-kind eyes were now hard and piercing. “I think we need to break into their cryo unit, Lieutenant.”
Sommes surged forward. “Those files are delta black encrypted! How did you get in?”
Mae pushed him back. “That is not the question you should be asking. How about: how long will I spend on a prison planet for this?”
Several of the scientists sheltering in the corner whispered amongst themselves.
“You.” Mae gestured, and Private Younis pulled out the youngest looking one: a woman, with strands of dirty blonde hair loose from her hood.
“Vogel, don’t you—”
Ware cut off Sommes before he could say more by shoving him to the ground.
“Corporate bullshit is on hold,” the corporal ground out. “New management, pal.”
Mae examined the young woman standing before her. She appeared frightened, but not only by the Jackals. The small tug of muscles around her mouth suggested this was not a new feeling for her.
Guiding her into the farthest corner of the lab, Mae used her own body to block any view of the others. The quest for knowledge burned too brightly in some people for them to take heed of ethics and morality. Others, though, maintained some small part of the person they’d once been. She wanted to draw that bit out of Vogel.
The young woman pushed the hood off her white suit, revealing a mess of blonde, curling hair cut short, and a small tattoo of an owl on her neck. Mae ran through the possible meanings of the tattoo. The symbol of an ancient goddess of wisdom seemed the most likely.
“I’m Mae.” She offered something of herself to reassure the young scientist.
She looked up, her eyes still wide with shock. “Elise Vogel. Doctor, I guess.” Then she stared down at her hands. “I knew this would happen. Thought it would be the Colonial Marines that found us.”
“We’re not them.” Mae flicked up the ionized cover on her helmet, letting Elise see her face. “But it’s clear you know what is going on here isn’t right.”
The woman’s eyes darted to her coworkers, but Mae’s body prevented her from making eye contact with any of them.
She leaned closer to the scientist but was careful not to be threatening. Hopefully, she perceived Mae as calming. “You help us right now, and we will take you with us when we go. We’ll drop you at whatever station or planet you want, no questions.”
“Don’t you fucking show them anything, Vogel!” Sommes’s voiced cracked as he scrambled to his feet. He let out a pained grunt as Ware forced him back down.
The young woman swallowed hard. Mae took hold of her shoulder. “You didn’t want to do this, I can tell. This right here is your chance to help make it right. You won’t get another one.”
Vogel took a deep breath before she spoke. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing when they shipped me off to Minos. They only told a few of those in charge about what was going on. All I knew was it was enough money to get my family out of indenture.” She shook her head. “Then, once I got here, there was no way of leaving, and the company would make sure my family suffered if I even tried to stop.” Now the doctor looked Mae directly in the eye. “None of that matters now, though, does it?”
“No. No, it doesn’t.”
Vogel’s breathing increased in speed. “Then I guess you should follow me.”
Mae gestured for the two synthetic squads, and one human to come with them. Wordlessly, Rook slipped into formation with the other synths as the red strobe lights continued to dance across the walls.
The Jackals took up defensive positions as Mae, Rook, and Corporal Ware followed the scientist into a room packed with banks of computers and a table viewing screen. It was dimmer in this space, only occasionally lit by the still spinning emergency lighting in the hallway. This was the kind of room where scientists would drink coffee and eat donuts around the viewing screen, examining their results, and feeling clever. Now Mae’s unit filled the space, all faces ready to find out what horrors were created here.
Vogel’s voice wavered a little as the soldiers pressed her back towards the stack of files. “The trouble with XX121 has always been the ability to control it. It was a great bioweapon, sure, but there were downsides.”
The clinical way she uttered a familiar company line bothered Mae, but again she remained quiet even as she took a step closer to the scientist. The downsides Vogel complained about were the deaths of actual people.
“Once XX121 was on a planet, then that was a dead place. Any resources down there were lost forever. The company couldn’t just move in and take them because the organism is remarkably resilient to removal.”
“Yeah, we know that,” Mae muttered.
Rook, however, leaned on the viewing table, his face flickering with curiosity. “Any way of getting resources from an infected planet was always too expensive after they introduced the Xenomorphs.”
“Yes. Everything is about the bottom dollar.” Vogel leaned to her left, opened a drawer, and withdrew a handful of data drives. “Our experiments were to create a version of XX121 that could be dropped on a planet, to clear out competitors, and then be called back. Then the company could move in and take whatever it wanted.”
“They would have loved to do that on Shānmén with all its Eitr.” Mae scanned the files. “This seems to be some kind of fungus.”
Now Vogel was in her element. “It is. Sort of. It acts similarly to an Earth mycelium, but Kuebiko is completely alien. The company found it on Hotoke, a planet in the Outer Rim. Nothing much else of value there, but Kuebiko is over the entire planet. It has amazing communication powers. Colonies of it react as a sort of hive mind.”
“Like the Xenomorph.” Rook appeared entranced.
“That’s what triggered this whole idea.” Vogel inserted the data drive into the side of the viewing table and brought up schematics of the Kuebiko. “The one actual difference is why the company put so much money into this project. The Wey-Yu scientists already figured out how to manipulate Kuebiko. By providing certain scents and electrical stimuli to the Mother Colony, we can control the actions of the satellite colonies.”
Mae eyed the data. “But the Xenomorphs have remarkable biological defenses, so how does this connect to the Xenomorphs?”
Vogel’s head drooped for a moment. “All mechanical methods of controlling XX121 have failed. The company trialed efforts to use Kuebiko instead.”
Ware, who remained silent for all this, let out a long, “Fuck no.”
Mae kept calm as best she could. They needed to find out what they were dealing with. She feared what her mother and the other Jackals would find down on the planet.
“But as my lieutenant here has said, the Xenomorph physiology would prevent that,” Rook interjected.
“True. We tried for a year to inject Kuebiko into XX121 at various stages of its lifecycle, but its acid blood got in the way. It just wouldn’t take. Eventually, we cracked the problem.”
Mae needed proof of their guilt. “Give me those data drives, and then you show us.”
Vogel looked up at her. “Please don’t make me. I—”
Rage built inside Mae’s core, the same explosive anger her mother experienced over the years. It took all she had to stop from smashing the scientist’s head into the desk. She leaned forward, hoping her disgust and horror were visible in her expression as she snatched the files from the scientist’s grasp.
“Show. Me.”
Behind her, Corporal Ware racked her pulse rifle.
Vogel flinched away, her whole body trembling. “Alright,” she said in a small voice.
By the scientist’s expression alone, Mae understood terror lay ahead.