“Thank you for flying Air Davis, we apologize for the rough landing and the damage to our craft that has apparently trapped us on a Xenomorph-infested planet in the middle of a raging storm. The time on LV-187 is 6 PM GMT and local conditions are murderous with approaching slaughter.”
“Still not fucking funny,” Chad said, picking himself up off the cockpit floor. “Starboard engine sitrep?”
“Not irreparable.” The dog stared for a while at the mainframe display. “Fuel burn wasn’t critical, but we’re not leaving any time soon.”
Chad helped Cher up to her feet. “You OK?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, then winced. “Ow. Think I bruised my ass, but still alive.”
Chad looked out of the cockpit at the colony buildings, grey against the black sky. They were all dark apart from a slim needle on the east side, not far from the landing pad. Probably the comms tower, where there were lights blazing in the top stories. “Best guess, that’s where they’re holed up,” he said. “I wonder if it’s started yet?”
“Hey,” Cher said. “There’s another ship over there.”
“The Victory,” Davis responded. “The New Albion trade ship that put down here and claimed LV-187. At least there’s a way off here if things really deteriorate.”
“So, what do we do now?” Cher said. “We go in there and get a good look at these things? Confirm what happened here?”
She’s still treating this like some kind of safari, Chad thought. Nobody could understand the Xenomorphs until they saw them for themselves. Not really—and most people who did see them, didn’t survive to tell the tale. That couldn’t happen with Cher Hunt. She had to do what Chad couldn’t—tell everyone else about them, and Weyland-Yutani’s complicity in their existence.
So what they wouldn’t be doing was heading off all gung-ho into the colony and offer themselves up as a Xenomorph buffet.
“Nope, we wait,” Chad said. “Until someone from inside comes out to get us. Then we’ll know it’s safe—or at least that there’s a safe harbor somewhere inside.”
“In that case, what are we going to do in the meantime?” Cher said, sounding exasperated.
“Gather round the campfire and tell tall tales,” Davis declared.
Chad frowned. Davis was getting increasingly… erratic, maybe. Ever since he’d decided he needed a sense of humor, it was as if he’d devoted too much processing power to the task. That AI has been a dog for far too long, he thought. He’s never going to achieve this Holy Grail of humanity he craves while he’s padding around on all fours.
“Well, if we’re doing story-time,” Cher said, settling into the cockpit seat and spinning it around to face Chad. “Let’s have the one about how you won a spaceship and a robot dog in a game of cards.”
* * *
Previously…
* * *
Some thought that the LV designation given to colony worlds meant “Life Viable,” but to the conglomeration of businesses, entrepreneurs, and organized crime families who set up LV-222 out on the fringes it was a revenue stream. Pretty soon after they’d established the first freeport—not under the authority of the United Americas, the Three World Empire, the Union of Progressive Peoples, the Independent Core Systems Colonies or, in fact, anyone—everybody started calling the place “Las Vegas.”
Chad McLaren found himself there on the trail of the crew of a trading ship that—so rumor on gossip on hearsay had it—possessed the corpse of a Xenomorph. They were offering it for sale, along with the Weyland-Yutani go-between who had been very keen to take it off their hands.
By the time he got there the trail was cold, or it had been a red herring all along. He was carrying Davis around in little more than a portable hard drive, which was entirely frustrating for the AI.
“Chad,” Davis would whisper into his earphones, “can you imagine being stuck in a dark, black, infinite box? I was made as a combat synthetic. I could touch, and see, and smell, and hear. This is torture. Please, get me a body. Somehow, get me a body.”
The fact was, carrying Davis around in his pocket made it a damned sight easier for him to get around. Weyland-Yutani had placed a price on his head, and he’d had more than one narrow escape them that would have been an awful lot more difficult had he been teamed up with a humanoid synthetic.
Still, he sympathized with Davis. They’d been through a lot together, and were united not just in their war on Xenomorphs and Weyland-Yutani, but also in loss. Chad had lost Amanda, and Davis had lost Zula Hendricks. Or at least, they were parted, and no one knew where Zula was, so it was the same thing.
On Las Vegas, while he didn’t find a pirate crew with a Xenomorph corpse to sell, Weyland-Yutani found him. Las Vegas was policed by crooks and populated by cheats, liars, and thieves, so he wasn’t hugely surprised when he returned to the port on the day he wanted to leave to find that his ship had been impounded. He didn’t wait around long enough to find out who or why, but he knew Weyland-Yutani would be behind it. So he ducked into the nearest casino and considered his next move.
His next move was, it turned out, finding out to his surprise that he was very, very good at poker. It was a matter of assessing all of the variables and determining the best way to proceed.
Either that, or he was very, very lucky.
Over the course of six hours he’d built up enough of a pot to force the brash young scion of a crime family that ran three colony worlds in the sector to put his neat little cruiser up as collateral for a hand the kid was sure was unbeatable.
It wasn’t.
Chad was just about to walk away with the keys when the casino fell into a hush and a stately old woman with a high beehive hairdo and a grand cocktail dress was pushed in on a wheelchair by a brace of tuxedo-wearing gorillas, a cute brown dog by her side.
“My grandson wants his toy back,” the woman drawled in a dry, Southern American accent. “You know boys and their toys.”
“I won it, fair and square,” Chad protested. His way off Las Vegas about to be taken away from him, probably with a few punches to the gut for good measure.
“That you did,” the grand old dame agreed. “And I intend to win it back from you, fair and square.” She was wheeled to the table and said, “What would you have me stake against the Elvik?”
“Chad,” Davis whispered in his ear. “The dog… it’s a synthetic. Very good work. Black market wet job. Never seen anything like it.”
Dorothea Whittaker had with her three goons packing weapons beneath their suit jackets, and a thin, bespectacled man with a sheen of sweat on his forehead and bloodless lips he was constantly licking. He noticed Chad inspecting the dog.
“You are admiring my handiwork.”
Chad disliked the man immediately.
Dorothea tutted benignly. “Mr. Higgs here takes every opportunity to boast about his craft. He is one of the finest synthetic technicians in this sector.” She glanced at him mildly. “He could have been the finest in any sector, save for certain unsavory proclivities. Fortunately, my… operation is a very broad-minded one.”
“Separate the art from the artist, Chad,” Davis cautioned.
“This is an exact replica of my beloved Jasper,” Dorothea continued, looking with love at the dog. It fulfilled its programming by returning her gaze with adoring, big eyes. “He died three years ago. I was quite distraught. Mr. Higgs here gave Jasper back to me.”
Synthetic production and deployment was carefully controlled by the authorities, but the fact remained that any legitimate technology would, sooner or later, be co-opted by the underground. The sex industry led the charge, of course—and no doubt Mr. Higgs had experience with that—but a surprisingly popular by-product of that was facsimile pets created for the very, very wealthy.
“I’ll stake the Elvik against your dog,” Chad said.
The old woman bristled. Higgs seemed unaccountably delighted that his work was the focus of such fierce competition.
“I can make you another one if you lose,” he said through his thin, wet lips.
Dorothea narrowed her eyes. “I won’t lose.”
One hand of cards later, Chad walked out of the casino with the keys to the Elvik in one hand and a leash in the other, on the end of which trotted Davis’s brand-new synthetic body. Neither of them hung around Las Vegas long enough to find out what would happen if the Georgia Mafia decided to up the stakes and demand a rematch.
* * *
“That was a lot funnier than I was expecting,” Cher said. “You didn’t strike me as the sort of guy who tells shaggy dog stories.”
“Life can’t all be running around trying to not get killed,” Chad said, and he shrugged. “Were you hoping for something more appropriate to a dark and stormy night?” As if on cue, a strong wind buffeted the Elvik.
Cher looked out of the window. “Some storm, all right. What do you think they’re doing in there?”
“Probably wondering what we’re doing in here,” Chad said. “Davis, any chatter on the comms?”
“Nothing,” the synthetic replied, accessing the system through the tech that allowed him to speak. “The storm’s knocked everything out. Even short-range.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Cher said, squinting through the rain lashing the windscreen. “I think things are about to get up close and personal.”
* * *
“What the fuck are they doing out there?” Moran said, shielding his eyes from his own reflection against the observation window in the comms tower.
“Maybe they didn’t survive the landing,” Bromley suggested. “They came down pretty heavily.”
“Maybe good for them if they didn’t,” Merrilyn said.
Moran ignored her. “And where the fuck is Boffin? He’s been in the ship forever.” He made a decision. “Right. I’m going out there to see what’s going on with him, and I’ll bring whoever’s in that ship back up here.”
Proceeding to the hanger, he dragged on one of the waterproof coats and let himself out onto the landing platform. Moran immediately threw himself back into the building, unprepared for the ferocity of the winds and the driving rain. Christ, it was like a bloody hurricane. And he’d thought the weather on New Albion was crap. He pitied the poor sods who had to come and live here permanently when all this was over.
Bracing himself against the howling wind, he tried again, leaning in toward the gale and pushing forward through the almost horizontal rain. The Victory was dark, aside from the faint glow of the instrument panel in the cockpit. Had Boffin decided to take a nap, in the middle of all this? A faint part of him hoped that was the case.
There was absolutely no chance anyone was taking off in this weather, so Moran wanted everyone inside where he could see them. First he’d find out who was in this new ship, then he’d get Boffin. Wiping the rain from his face, he peered toward the Elvik. Two figures in the cockpit window, as far as he could tell. He waved his pulse rifle at them, so they knew he’d seen them, but also so they knew he was armed.
Moran moved around to the side of the ship and watched the hatch slide open. The two figures emerged to the lip of the entrance. It was a man, tall and stocky, and a woman, with dark hair and olive skin.
“I told you not to land,” Moran shouted.
The man replied, but the wind whipped his words away.
“What?”
“How many dead?” the man shouted.
“What?” Moran called back. “The entire fucking colony is dead.”
“How many…” the man began, but the storm swallowed his last word.
“How many what?”
“Xenomorphs. Aliens.”
“What?”
“Monsters!” the man shouted.
Moran wiped the rain from his face. “I think you’d better come down.”
* * *
Chad gave Cher a padded coat then unlocked a cabinet on the flight deck and handed her a pistol. “Can you hide this anywhere? This guy’s going to try to take them off us, I’m sure, but I’m not going on there without weapons.”
Cher slid it into the back of her trousers and watched as Chad did the same. Rather than the ramp, they extended the disembarkation ladders and carefully descended into the howling storm, Chad with Davis in his arms.
“You brought a fucking dog?” the man said, waiting for them on the rainswept landing platform. He held out his hand. “Tom Moran, of the New Albion trade ship Victory.”
“We saw you on TV,” Cher said, taking the hand. “I’m Cher Hunt, this is Chad McLaren, and the dog is Davis.”
“What was that word you said before?” Moran said to Chad, loudly enough to be heard clearly. “That thing you called the… them?”
“Xenomorphs,” Chad shouted. “Have you got a secure area inside? We should get in.”
Moran nodded and pointed to the other ship. “I just need to get my crew member. He was prepping the Victory for take-off, but nobody’s going anywhere in this storm.” Moran pushed against the wind to the ship, and was just about to hit the panel on the outside to open the door and bring down the steps when Chad put a hand on his arm.
“Wait,” he said. “Look.”
Cher followed Chad’s outstretched arm and peered at the cockpit window. There was indeed something strange about it. Half of the windshield darker than the rest. The closer she looked, the more it looked like…
“Blood,” she said. Moran was pulling away from Chad’s grip and going for the control panel again. “Blood!” Cher shouted. “Don’t open it!”
“Boffin’s in there!” Moran said. He began to yell. “Boffin! Boffin! Jerry! You OK in there?”
Something else appeared at the window.
“Holy fuck,” Cher whispered to the storm.
She had seen the photographs. She had made notes—endless, relentless notes, recording every single detail as described by Chad and Davis. She knew the life cycle inside out and back to front, knew the heights to which they grew, and the radius of their mouths and the potency of their acid blood. Like all journalists, Cher had become an instant expert in her subject through immersion and obsession. She had pushed less important things out of her head and filled those spaces with Xenomorph facts and figures and lore.
When her story was written, the details would be discarded, room made for the next topic, but for now, she knew everything she needed to know about them.
Or so she had thought.
No amount of research, of questioning, of interviewing, of assimilation of the facts, could have prepared her for what appeared at the window of the Victory. She’d had an idea it was some kind of animal. An alien, unknown, deadly animal, but a creature born of some kind of logic and evolution.
That wasn’t what she was looking at.
This was a nightmare.
A haunting, a thing carved from night and drenched in death. It had been dragged from Hell and clothed in armor, its sinews taut like the strings of a musical instrument on which only overtures of pain could be played. It was a demon, a djinn, a spirit, a fury. It was horror, from the tip of its segmented tail to the drool-dripping point of its sharpest tooth.
It was a Xenomorph.
“I had no fucking idea.”
Chad was dragging Moran away from the ship. “Leave it,” he shouted. “Leave it! If your friend was in there, he’s dead. We need to get inside or we’re going to end up the same way.”
Moran looked from Chad to Cher and back again. “Who are you people?” he said.
“Your best chance of getting off this rock alive,” Chad said, and the four of them hurried against the raging storm toward the dark colony buildings.