Pop opened the refrigerator and a piece of broken bottle washed to the floor in a gush of sticky liquid.
He turned his puzzled gaze to the open unit and Lara stepped in, arm raised—
—and delivered a sharp, chopping blow to the side of his neck, forcing his head toward the refrigerator. She heard the creature scrabble at the frame and used her hip to knock him closer, her weight to drive his upper body down—
—and Pop screamed as the spidery face-hugger crashed into him, the wet legs groping to meet at the back of his skull.
He convulsed backward. Lara was thrown clear as he dropped the pistol and clutched at the powerful legs of the creature.
Pop strained, his face red and eyes terrified as he danced madly to free himself from the tenacious embryo carrier. Blood dribbled beneath the skittering claws, the long tail spinning up to curl around his throat.
“Help me—” he gasped, and Lara stepped in, took a deep breath—
—and hit him in the gut as hard as she could.
Eric collapsed to his knees, both of his hands loosening against the muscular digits of the face-hugger—and Lara heard his last, choking swallow before he fell over, one hand flailing wildly at her as he went down.
The creature settled itself, tail coiling tightly around Eric Izzard’s throat, legs adjusting as it adhered itself to its dark purpose. His arm dropped, the fingers twitching once.
So long, Pop…
Lara hit the headset control as she scooped up the nine-millimeter, checking it automatically. Twelve rounds, full clip—
—and the explosive sounds of bullets and fire over the ’set were the sweetest things she’d ever heard; Max was still on-line.
“Jess, Ellis, this is Lara! Face-hugger got Pop, do you read?!”
Amidst the alien screams and the roar of battle, she heard Jess coughing, his voice thick with smoke.
“Hurry—”
“I’m on my way!”
Lara ran, not even pausing to see how much time was left on the fail-safe—or sparing another thought for the dying man who lay motionless on the deck behind her.
It was going to be very fucking close.
* * *
Ellis heard Lara’s words amidst the high, keening flutters of digital energy that coursed through his system—but he didn’t fully understand them as the Max decimated the screaming drones, humming with the strange power that surged through his program—
—clear the nest—
—and he didn’t even know what he’d disabled, and didn’t care. The exhaustion was gone, replaced by a need that sent him to new heights of frenzied action in the thick, explosive smoke of the screeching darkness.
M108 canister grenades sent high-velocity sprays of alloyed buckshot to one side of them as the flamethrower spewed ignited fuel across the drones on the other side. He used the pulse rifle to clear the straggling survivors of the explosions, the dull thunder of the bullets tearing their bodies to acid-spouting chunks.
Ellis was Max again, but in a way that he could feel— and what he felt was hot and pounding, a crude mixture of passionate hatred for the teeming dark creatures and fear for Jess, of wonder at the killing strength he commanded and the throbbing pain inside his mind. And above it all, the rapid electrical pushes of the system’s boosted power, urging him to destroy—
The broken, smoking walls of the passage to his right were starting to burn, the buildup of oily fuel igniting. Jess or Lara shouted something from far away and Ellis-Max pivoted, smoothly swiveling his giant limbs as he turned, sent the weapons blasting down opposite paths. He was both of them now, the man and the machine, and Ellis had forced the program to his amplified will and created something greater than the sum of its components.
Kill them all, destroy the hive—protect Jess.
He gloried in the eradication of every single bug that threatened them, himself and the man who stood beneath him, coughing and screaming strange words. Modification of energy with purpose alteration, he had the power to do it; Jess was what he protected from the infestation.
Ellis-Max rode with the surges of malice and intent, the computer serving them both—and the enemy fell and burned within the Berserker’s bottomless fury.
* * *
The walls and deck trembled around them and Jess backed to the control panel for the bay doors, fighting to breathe and losing the battle.
“I’m coming in!” Lara shouted, and Jess tried to get through to Ellis again, choking in the black-stained air, the smoke overpowering, deadly—
“Ellis, she’s here! Do you copy?”
The Max continued to fire, Ellis lost inside of the destructive frenzy that it had become. Through the billows of fire and blackness, Jess could no longer hear the screams of the attackers—
—but he heard Lara and reached for the entry panel before she finished shouting.
“Lock’s closed, I’m in, clear clear clear—!”
Jess slammed the button and smoke sucked past him, into the cold red shadows of the thundering bay. The flames in the burning corridor suddenly erupted to new life in the silent pump of pressurized air beneath the roar of the shuttle engines.
“Come on, we’re not safe yet!” Lara screamed, and the hysteria in her voice told him what he didn’t want to know, the nuke—
“Ellis, now! Come, heel, listen, we have to go NOW—”
Jess backed into the bay, eyes tearing from frustration and shouting, from the sting of roiling smoke—
—and Max lowered its arms and stepped in after him.
Yeah, follow me, that’s it!
Jess turned and ran for the shuttle as it rattled deafeningly against the deck, as the back hatch folded into a ramp, as Lara yelled for them to hurry—
—and reached the ship’s loading door with Max right behind, the giant steps vibrating over the clatter of the ship.
Jess spun on the ramp and backed in to the shuttle quickly. Max bent its mammoth shoulders forward to clear the ceiling and stepped in after him.
“We’re in, close the hatch, go!”
The last thing Jess saw before the loading door shut was the smoke in the dark bay, the reflected glow of fire—and the long black skull of a running drone, the jaws snatching as it howled without sound against the shuttle’s powering flush.
The shuttle lifted unsteadily as Jess grabbed a support, gasping—
—and they shot out of the bay and into the freedom of space.