—Ohmygod—
The face-hugger leapt, its claws pushing into the flesh of her abdomen, the muscular tail hard and strong against her stomach.
Lara jerked up her left arm and blocked her face, her knuckles slamming against the open control panel. The creature hit her forearm, drove it against her nose hard enough to draw blood. The long, jointed fingers curled around, clutched at her cheekbones, the razor talons slicing into her skin and tearing hair as it scrabbled to seat itself.
The face-hugger’s ovipositor shot out, wet and hot, dripping. It probed against one eye, the thick rings of muscle pushing, searching, the oozing alien lubricant stinging like acid. The creature was powerful, fast, pressing her down and off balance with its flexing, muscular tail. Her arm was pinned, the bones about to snap from the incredible pressure—
She raised her other hand, fist clenched around the hand laser. Her thumb found the switch and the soldering tool became a weapon, only chance—!
She brought it down as hard as she could, the narrow two-pronged tip sliding into the face-hugger’s armored back in a sizzling hiss as she drove it home. A horrible squeal and a whiff of ozone. The creature let go suddenly and Lara released the laser, pushed out and away.
The carrier crashed against the table behind it, deadly silent again, the laser embedded in the thick shell of its back.
Lara sat up, snatched blindly for her rifle. In a flash, the creature was running at her, clattering toward her, the laser sliding out of its back and gone. Lara twisted, pushed against the floor, slid away—away from both the skittering, giant tick and the M41, now hopelessly out of reach.
She kicked at the creature and it tried to latch onto her boot. Her back hit a wall, another console, and she was on her feet in one massive push on trembling legs.
She sidled to the left, stumbled, the silent, deadly face-hugger slower now but still coming—
—die, just die already! Her hands groped for a weapon behind her, anything she could grab, left the goddamn handgun on the shuttle!
Her fingers scrabbled uselessly at a tall box, snatched at a handle as the long tail coiled—
Lara ducked and pulled at the same time. The face-hugger leapt, the tail smacking across the top of her head as it flew over her bleeding face. She spun, stood as the tick slammed into the door of the tiny refrigeration unit she had opened by chance.
She grabbed the edge of the door and jammed it closed, arms straining, throwing her entire body into the motion. The creature had turned, whipped its tail behind it for leverage to jump—
—but the door snicked shut, broke one of the hugger’s slender legs against the frame of the cold unit. A trickle of hissing blood slid down the seal; the creature thrashed uselessly inside the unit. She heard glass break and leaned against the door, heart hammering in her chest.
The magnetic lock button was on the handle. Lara thumbed it, heard the tiny click that told her it had engaged. She sagged against the unit, caught her breath, wiped at the trickles of blood on her face with a shaking hand.
“…yeah,” she breathed, dazed and trembling, “…you just cool off for a while…”
She tugged at the handle lightly but the seal held; it would have to do.
Lara staggered back to the main computer and pushed the amplifier slates closed, panting, swallowing hard. The sound of Pop’s voice over her headset was actually beautiful, tense and gruff and crystal clear.
“…to ground leader, do you copy, over?”
“Back on-line, over,” she said, and scooped up her rifle. Still shaking, she walked to the internal monitor block to see if their team was still alive.
* * *
Ellis almost laughed out loud as the voices of Pop and Lara cut in smoothly over his ’set. They’d done it, somehow they had fixed the problem—
His smile faded and he stood with fists clenched in the humid and stinking corridor, listening. The shrieks of attacking drones, the rapid patter of a pulse rifle. “Ground leader, report!” Pop snapped.
“Pulaski’s hurt bad, Pop!” Jess’s voice was winded, grunts of exertion punctuating his words. The sounds of battle were loud and insistent—a trumpeting alien cry, the killing response of a rifle. Jess sounded anything but cool, his voice cracking.
“They just took Teape! He’s gone, they’re taking him to the hive through the third offshoot on four! Jesus, what a mess—”
Pop didn’t let him finish. “Teape! Report!”
A muffled gasping, and Teape’s response was to Ellis, not Pop.
“…Ellis, don’t let me down, kid, you gotta start revvin’ Max—I don’t want to die like this, I can’t die like this—”
Ellis felt the man’s horror, the terrible, gut-wrenching fear and his own anxious pity, so sharp it was like a physical pain. “Hold on, Teape!”
“…they’re taking me into a dock, it’s huge and—” There was a strangled gasp, and when Teape spoke again, there was a thread of cold fury in his shaking voice.
“…oh, fucking shit, do you see it—? Lara, Pop, can you see it?”
Ellis heard Lara, her shocked and empty voice clear above the panicked breathing, the bursts of ammo from Jess, the alien screams.
“Weyland/Yutani Trader… they got in on a Company ship—?”
Teape was gasping with rage. “The Company knew, they had to know! Jesus, no wonder they wanted this quiet—! It’s the nest, the ship is the nest—”
“—and we’re not gonna let it get out, kiddies,” said Pop, his own voice tense and quick. “We salvage that log and destroy the evidence, the orders stand! Ellis, listen up! Lara’s aboard the terminal so you’re on your own, no fuck-ups, copy?”
Ellis stammered an affirmative, stunned, his stomach a knot of confused anger and betrayal.
A Company ship, this whole thing is because of the Company—!
“Flush Max, now! Do it!”
Ellis shook his head numbly, reached for the panel on Max’s bed and flipped it open. Pulaski, down. Jess fighting for his life while Teape was carried off to his worst nightmare…
“Flushing, over,” he said, and pushed the buttons that would rip the Berserker away from his wavering sleep. The reads showed the sudden drop and Max’s heart rate rose quickly, too quickly as his vitals jerked and fluctuated wildly.
—please, Max, please help them—
“Jess, prepare to take cover,” said Pop. “Ellis, adrenaline one!”
Jess shouted in Ellis’s ear, screamed at Pop. “Where the fuck I’m s’posed to go? They’re all over us, Christ—”
Pop’s voice rose and cut him off. “Ellis, do it, copy!”
“Level one,” Ellis whispered and hit the first bank, plunging the chemicals into Max and watching the stats in a cold and desperate sweat.
The Max shuddered and started to life.
“Fuckin’ Company, Candyman!” Jess shouted, his thoughts racing and wild as another drone lunged, reached for him in screaming glee. The M41 blew a jagged hole in the terrible skull, even as a handful of others leapt to take its place.
“Level two!” Ellis, priming the Max from just outside the corridor.
—take cover, get demon, drop when he comes—!
Jess sprayed the shrieking monsters with armor-piercers, terrified, cold in his heart. They weren’t gonna make it, there were too many of them. Max would kill them all, but Max would probably kill him, too, on its way to Teape inside the hive.
At least Pulaski was already down, out of the fire—Jess shot a look at the man on the floor behind him and then fired at another hissing drone as his brain registered what he’d seen. The Candyman’s eyes were open and set, glazed and unseeing in the dim red light. Jess felt sick with the knowledge; Pulaski was dead.
“Pulaski’s—they killed Candyman!” Jess felt a horrible relief rise up over the sadness inside, and hated himself for it. The sweet, stupid weight lifter was gone, and he knew he’d mourn for him when he could—but he couldn’t help being glad that he no longer had to protect him.
“Watch your back, Jess!” Lara shouted.
Even as the words reached him, a staggering blow from behind dropped him to his knees. His rifle was knocked away from his hands, the force of the powerful strike like being hit by a moving truck.
Jess fell to the floor, his first instinct to come up fighting, screaming, to vent his rage and pain against the stupidly grinning creatures that surrounded him. It would be suicide, and he didn’t care, didn’t give a shit about any of it as he reached out to push away from the bloody floor—
DON’T MOVE! DON’T YOU FUCKING MOVE!
Jess obeyed the thought instantly, suddenly knew it as his only chance. Instinct. It went against every emotional nerve ending, every impulse in his body, his muscles screaming at him to run, to fight—
—gotta go limp, let them take me—
Jess used every ounce of will he possessed to stay down, to force his tense muscles into submission. The shrieks had become hisses, sliding and evil in the dark red light. Just like that, he was no longer the enemy; he was now useful to the queen, a live host to be carried away and exploited as an incubator for the good of the hive.
Cool claws touched his skin, arms like bones sliding under his legs, his chest. Jess closed his eyes, so afraid that he could hardly breathe.
“They’re taking me to the hive,” he whispered, and the hissing drones lifted him up almost gently and carried him away.
* * *
“Hit him with three, Ellis, and stand well back!”
The hot corridor swam sickeningly around him, Jess’s soft and terrified voice still whispering through Ellis’s mind.
Max was standing now, had raised its massive arms on the second dose and whipped its giant head up, ready…
“Level three,” said Ellis, and hit the final switch.
Max shuddered all over and took a giant, ground-shaking step forward, raised the flamethrower—
—and jolted to a complete stop.