Vogel dragged herself away from the computer and led Blue Team deeper into the laboratory complex. They passed additional labs with medical androids still working. Several of these rooms contained sedated humans. All of them wore company overalls and lay motionless on gurneys.
“Infected,” Vogel whispered, as if voicing her own complicity might get her shot.
Mae turned on her. “And can the infection with Kuebiko be reversed?”
“No.” The scientist swallowed hard. “It becomes entangled with the DNA of the subject within a day. Once that happens, there’s no going back. The Mother Colony has them.”
Humanity’s ability to do so many terrible things to each other overwhelmed Mae. While capable of so much kindness, the genetic human was capable of great depravity, too.
“And where is that?” she ground out as outrage grew.
“Planet-side. There’s a training facility and the colony.”
She nudged the young woman ahead of her. “Show me more.”
Leaving these subjects to their unwanted slumber, to be dealt with however Zula decided later, they proceeded farther into the complex. The central core contained elevators, but as of yet they were silent. Mae strode over and placed a cyber lock on the outside door. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it’d give them time. Blue Team would not have to deal with any security forces, except any that lingered on this level.
Everything went silent under the flashing red light. Eventually, Vogel brought them to another airlock.
The synthetics and Jackals raised their weapons as Vogel opened it, revealing another, much larger cargo bay. This one contained more rows of those sealed boxes on one side. The other side of the room grabbed Mae’s attention. Racks of humans lay on open shelves, ready for transport.
Mae counted twenty in all. Keeping a tight grip on Vogel, she dragged the scientist over to examine them. Laid out flat, these humans remained alive but unconscious, kept that way by a web of intravenous drips. All were young and healthy-looking adults in company overalls.
Vogel would not look at them as Rook and Mae checked the pads hung neatly at the end of each rack.
“You infected these people?” She shoved the scientist closer to the horror.
Vogel’s eyes were glassy when she looked up. “We needed to get the fungus into XX121. If we pre-infected the host, then we found it traveled along the lifecycle into the adult Xenomorphs. My boss called it the ultimate trojan horse.”
Corporal Ware let out an angry grunt. “Lieutenant, can we just waste her now?”
Mae raised her hand but remained silent, processing the horror. Rook, perhaps having seen more of this, pressed Vogel. “Where are these humans going?”
“To the surface,” she choked out. “At first the company conducted on-planet experiments with infected Xenos, making sure they could be controlled. But lately they’ve been building up supplies of Mother Colony individuals to use for demonstrations. Our clients won’t pay out for something they can’t see firsthand.”
Rook stared at Mae. “Remind me which is the more dangerous species, again.”
They both knew the answer to that one.
“What kind of experiments?” Mae asked, while examining the nearest subject. The handsome young man was surely only a teenager. He seemed perfect, breathing, and with no signs of infection.
Vogel swallowed hard before answering. “Some are for hosting—to grow the colony. Others are… well, they are prey to show how well the infected XX121 can hunt.”
Mae wondered at her calm. She possessed her father’s control, but the question remained: what would Red Team find down there?
She reminded herself that her mother had fought Xenomorphs plenty of other times. She’d even gone to the planet’s surface expecting them. Mae and her team needed to remain on-task. Weyland-Yutani must not have time to destroy the proof of these atrocities. Jackals weren’t frightened by Xenomorphs or corporations.
Spinning on her heel, she pushed Vogel ahead of her. She didn’t know what she’d have done in the young scientist’s place, but a rage kindled inside her. She tamped down any inclination to take it out on Vogel. She’d make this woman download all the evidence onto the Jackals’ wrist-pds.
They neared the door as a voice snarled from previously silent speakers in the cargo bay.
It was Station Chief Rolstad, and he sounded pleased with himself. “Intruders on level eleven, you have thirty seconds to surrender yourself. Drop all your weapons and get on the ground. If you do not comply, we will send in our troopers to eliminate you.”
Rook arched an eyebrow. “I suspect some bluffing is taking place here.”
Vogel let out a choked gasp. “You’ve got to do it. Please, you don’t understand. They’re already here.”
Mae knew enough about the Jackals, their tactics, armaments, and successes to be confident station security wasn’t a problem. “We tried to be subtle, but that’s gone. It doesn’t matter, though. We can still secure the station and get the proof we need.”
It was when the scientist’s gaze shifted to the containers on the far side of the bay that the snapping open of locks triggered remotely brought Mae around. This storage area wasn’t only full of infected humans, but also something else. Something familiar and terrible.
The doors flung open with a resounding echo of thuds. The boxes released their infected cargo in a flood. Xenomorphs uncurled and scrambled free of their enclosures, already primed to kill. The lines of blue bioluminescence that traced their joints gave them a terrifying beauty. They must have specially coated the boxes to repel detection. Their experiments were farther along than Vogel suggested. Now they were in deep shit. The Xenos moved faster than even a synthetic could, leaping over each other to reach them. Their snarling and hissing filled the large cargo bay.
Blue Team brought their pulse rifles up, but fired the grenade launchers underneath rather than live rounds. The specialized poly grenades hit the lead Xeno and bright orange strands wrapped around it. The rest of the squad followed suit, unleashing a blast of sticky chemical strands that adhered to the advancing monsters.
Those that normally cocooned were now the ones cocooned. They screamed in outrage, becoming more and more encased as they struggled. The closest Xenos became trapped in place, adhered to the floor and walls and thrashing. However, many more boxes disgorged their contents.
Sooner or later, the Jackals would need to fire live rounds. A few Sunspot Good Boys would have been useful to contain them, but none of their intel suggested any Xenomorphs were on board—least of all in containers.
“I suggest we withdraw and blow them out of the airlock.” Rook already held the hatch open.
He might not be one of the Jackals, but his instincts were good. It would save them from fatally damaging Minos.
“Jackals, fall back, secure the door. We’re going to blow them out into space.” She yelled to be heard over the grenade launchers and screaming monsters.
Private Han muttered, “Fuck yeah.” Other Jackals repeated those words.
Vogel bolted through the door. The two human squads pulled back first. The combat synths unloaded the last of their poly grenades and followed in short order. They stepped through and cycled the hatch behind them closed. Mae checked the lock herself, to be sure, even though the hatch was sealed and the light was red.
Staring through the view port, she watched dozens more monsters emerge from their opened crates. Their sinuous, dark forms unfurled, a blue light outlining their joints. Their teeth dripped ichor over those long, sharp fangs. They stood over the infected, sleeping humans. Mae wanted to turn away, but like all synthetics, she needed data.
Before she punched the button, she took the chance to observe the Xenomorphs.
Apart from the blue light, the rest of the monsters were still infinitely black, with the same lashing jaws and tails. Yet there was something else different about them: how they moved. Deliberately, close together but not too close. Once out of the confinement of the containers, the monsters spread out in staggered linear fashion—and she’d seen that before.
These Xenomorphs worked like the Jackals, calm and precise. This must be why the company used humans rather than apes in their experiments: intelligence and unity. That was what was required of these monster soldiers.
The one at the front stared straight through the view port back at Mae. It did not smash its head against the impenetrable glass or lash out. The synthetic and the Xenomorph examined each other with tilted heads and cold purpose.
A cluster of monsters stood over the sleeping humans but did not rip them apart. Instead, they turned their heads towards the door. Though they possessed no visible eyes, these Xenomorphs were undoubtedly making eye contact with Mae. It was as if they dared her to vent these humans along with the monsters by opening the outer door.
Mae didn’t move as one monster delicately touched the skin of the sleeping boy on the nearest rack. She recalled what Vogel had already told her.
“Fesolai, get Squad Two back to that first lab. We’ve leaving the way we came in.” Mae shoved Vogel towards the sergeant. “We’ll take this piece of shit with us.”
With one synthetic squad and one human around her, she punched the button to open the outer airlock door.
She didn’t turn away, needing to watch her choice unfold.
Nothing happened. Flooded with confusion, she pressed the button a couple more times. Rolstad must have locked down this airlock. He didn’t want his terrifying experiments to be lost in the void. If he was in charge, then Mae feared for the other two teams. Yet if she opened direct comms to Red Team, she’d only endanger her mother and Shipp even more.
The only thing to do was to take care of what she could right now. One thing was certain: overriding the airlock would take time, which they didn’t have.
Instead, Mae took out a node spike and drove it into the control panel. She didn’t need the station chief letting the Xenos loose, either. If he wanted them out, he’d have to send someone down here using EVA to make that happen. That’d be the genuine test of his control over his human employees. She was 89.83 percent sure no sane human would take that assignment.
One last time, she stared through the window in the inner airlock door. The same Xeno stood there, not moving or attacking as its mindless forebears would have. Accessing Davis’s files, Mae recalled the repetitive thumps of the monsters trying to muscle their way through doors in the past. This one seemed to understand the strength of this door. It waited patiently for something to happen. The possibility of Rolstad using the Mother Colony to control the Xenos was a haunting one.
Then it raised its twisted, black-veined hand and dragged six claws across the glass. From her side, Mae couldn’t hear the sound, but her database filled in the gaps. It was an odd gesture, meant to frighten her or make a statement. Was that a message from Rolstad, or from deep inside the Xenomorph itself? Either way, it was unsettling. Only further investigation would reveal what effects the Kuebiko had on the Xenos’ morphology.
Those were inquiries for another day.
“You stay right there,” she leaned in to whisper. “They let you out to hunt us, but we’re the ones who’ve trapped you.” It was an illogical thing to do, but it seemed right.
The Xeno’s lips pulled back in a snarl, showing the inner mouth, even as its clear drool fell from those pointed teeth. She wondered what exactly it saw with whatever senses it possessed. Did it see past her close sensor array that protected the illusion of her humanity? Did it see the real Mae?
“Let’s go.”
The Jackals began their withdrawal, by the books, not running, but also keeping a steady pace. When they reached the spiked elevators, Mae decided to open a channel like Green Mae did. They had nothing left to lose.
She needed to know the status of the other teams. It was no longer a certainty that her mother had made it planet-side. She hoped they would be able to secure the Kuebiko Mother Colony in the training facility.
Barely had Mae opened a broad band comms to Green Team than a stream of new information flooded through her core. A tsunami of unexpected data poured over her, leaving her programming struggling to remain intact. She caught only a nanosecond of respite in which she realized it was the returning splinter of Green Mae. It became too much. As it pierced her through, it overwhelmed all her processes and brought her to her knees. Basic functions were suddenly disabled, and an emergency reboot was the only way to remain herself. Blackness took her over.