Cher sat silently in the corner of the comms deck and watched the others going around every inch of the walls and floors, duct-taping over vents and service hatches. They’d found a set of welding tools and bolt-guns in a cabinet, and were securing pieces of metal stripped from around the comms console to anything that might allow even the slightest ingress to the circular room.
She was beginning to feel claustrophobic, desirous not just of air but the specific sweet-smelling, honey-golden, late fall air of an Oregon dusk, where the land seemed to roll on forever into the encroaching darkness and the sun blinked below the horizon with the promise that it would be back in the morning.
Thinking of that made her think of Old Man Nesbitt’s grain silo, and Shy dangling fifteen meters up, and the sick feeling in the pit of Cher’s stomach and the tingling in the soles of her feet as she knew with a sinking heart that she couldn’t go up to help her sister.
“You are not the story,” one of her journalism tutors, Professor Schmidt, had said to them time and time again. “You are not the story.” Cher had made a mantra of it, too, and always reported the news from a respectful distance, letting events unfold at their own pace and giving other people their voices. She never went up the grain silo, any grain silo. It wasn’t her place to do so. All she wanted to know was how the people were feeling who were hanging by the tips of their fingers, fifteen meters up.
“You are not the story.” And yet, here she was. The story.
How are you feeling? she asked herself. That was what she’d asked a thousand times in her career, of people who were bereaved or dispossessed or injured or lost. How are you feeling? It was a stupid question because it was obvious to anyone watching how this person or that person was feeling in the midst of tragedy and horror. And yet, unless the question was asked, very often the answer wasn’t forthcoming. People didn’t usually say, without prompting, how they were feeling. So you had to ask the stupid question to get the right answer.
Cher pulled her knees up and hugged them, and asked herself again.
How are you feeling?
Scared, she told herself. Numb. Like it all wasn’t really happening, and she was watching it with a detached air on some entertainment channel. Then scared again. Terrified, and, in a little corner of herself, somewhat elated. Excited. With that shiver of hairs on the back of her neck that always signaled being at the heart of a really big story.
Like I’m the fucking story. Suck on that, Professor Schmidt.
“Are you all right?” a voice said in her ear. It was Davis, sitting upright, head tilted to one side.
“Mama! Mama!” the little French girl said. Therese, who had stopped what she was doing piling up a pyramid of duct tape rolls, to stare at Davis. “The doggo talked!”
“Hush, Little Flower,” Merrilyn said, crouched down by an air vent and shooting big bolts into the corners of a square of aluminum. Cher wished she was being as useful as the colonist. “Doggos don’t talk.”
“This one does,” Cher said, smiling as best she could. She liked this Merrilyn. She was tough and no-nonsense, yet tender and loving, too. She wanted to be her. “He’s a synthetic carrying a rather special AI called Davis.”
Merrilyn stared at her, and stood up, frowning. She beckoned Therese over.
“Do not bother the lady and the… dog, Little Flower,” the woman said to her daughter, pretty coldly, in Cher’s opinion. “Stay by me.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like synthetics,” Cher murmured to Davis.
“Many people don’t,” Davis said quietly back. “Sometimes we went wrong, in the early days. People are still a little scared of what they don’t fully understand, because what they don’t really understand they can’t properly trust.”
“Perhaps that’s why humans are always fighting goddamn wars,” Cher said. “Nobody seems to understand anybody else, ever.”
“This will cheer you up,” Davis said.
“Have you learned a new joke?”
“No, I just calculated our chances of survival.”
Cher pulled a face. “Maybe not, huh? I’d rather this not be a numbers game.”
“Fair enough.”
Davis trotted over to the big observation window and jumped up, putting his front paws on the sill so he could look out at the relentless storm. Cher climbed to her feet and joined him, looking at their reflections in the dark glass.
“I wish Zula were here,” Davis said.
“Kick-ass broad, right?” Cher said.
“Definitely. I’ve never seen a braver woman. A braver human. She has done things that a synthetic’s programming would rail against, because of the apparent stupidity of it. But she did it for others.”
“Fearless,” Cher said, half to herself. “I wish I was like that.”
She saw Davis’s reflection look up at her. “Fearless? No. Only an idiot has no fear,” he said. “It’s how you conquer it that makes you brave.”
* * *
“Mama, why can’t I play with the talking doggo?” Therese whined.
“Hush, Little Flower, just stay by me,” Merrilyn said.
“Is it because he’s not a real doggo?”
Merrilyn hesitated. This wasn’t a conversation she really wanted to have. “Why don’t you go and get mama a big roll of duct tape so we can wrap it around this vent?” she said.
Therese toddled off and Merrilyn became aware of someone else standing behind her. It was the journalist, Cher. She gave her a tight smile. Cher crouched down beside her.
“Your daughter is beautiful.”
“Thank you,” Merrilyn said.
“Unusual for a girl of… what is she? Five? Six?”
Merrilyn shot her a look. “She is six. Why do you say unusual?”
Cher waved a hand vaguely in the air. “All this. All this stuff. She’s taking it in her stride so much. At that age I’d have been a quivering wreck, hiding behind my daddy.”
Merrilyn relaxed a little. The woman was just being friendly. “Kids are resilient though, aren’t they?” she said. “I bet you’d have been stronger than you think you would have been.” She paused, and added, “Could you hold this plate into place while I bolt the corners?”
Cher smiled quickly, seemingly keen to be of use. She held the metal with the flats of her hands and said, “Davis is no danger to your daughter, or anyone else. He’s a very unusual AI. As far as I can gather, he’s got free will.”
Merrilyn looked at her, frowning. “How is that possible?”
Cher shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s an anomaly.” She lowered her voice. “He’s in love. With a human woman. How crazy is that?”
“And does she love him back? This synthetic dog?”
“I think so.” Cher moved her hands away as Merrilyn finished bolting the panel. “I’m not quite sure where she is. I don’t think anyone knows. But Davis wasn’t always a dog. That’s a fairly recent turn of events. He started off as a combat droid, in humanoid form. Then he was kind of… a floating bunch of AI. Or something.”
“You’re not a scientist, are you?” Merrilyn smiled..
“No.” Cher laughed. “I’m not. Are you?”
“Petroleum geologist. That’s why I’m here on LV-187. It was meant to be a three-year posting.” She looked at Cher. “I’ll be asking for one fuck of a bonus when we get back to Earth.”
Therese brought over a roll of tape and Merrilyn used it to secure the edges of the hatch. That was all the vents done, now. She stood up stiffly and surveyed the room, where the others were finishing off their jobs.
“No children yourself, I presume?”
“No,” Cher said. “Too busy with work, and never met anyone I liked enough to have children with.”
They watched as Therese, glancing at her mother, sidled off toward where Davis was still looking out of the window. Merrilyn raised an eyebrow at her, but gave her the slightest of nods.
“Neither did I,” Merrilyn said, “but I knew I wanted children. I used a donor.” She gazed at Therese across the room. “In a way, I wish I’d chosen more wisely.” She felt Cher’s curious stare on her, and shook her head. “Ignore me. Come on, let’s find out what is supposed to happen next.”
* * *
The Chosen walked with impunity along the corridors of death. That was how he thought of himself now. Not Frank Priestley, but the Chosen. It was as if he could barely remember Priestley, could hardly understand his life before. That had been empty and meaningless and without purpose or structure. Now he had a mission, a holy crusade for his Queen.
Emerging from the bowels of the hive he assumed an air of his old mortality, but it was merely a flag of convenience, a cloak of deceit. He knew what he was now, as did his Queen. As did this drone, crouched in the corridor in front of him, hissing and smelling the air as he approached.
The Chosen felt a pang of jealousy when he saw the creature. It was a perfect living machine, not an ounce of its being wasted, every beautiful glistening inch of it devoted to its reasons for being: to kill its enemies and protect its Queen and propagate its kind.
He pushed the thought away. Jealousy was an emotion for lesser men, lesser beings than he. This drone might have been blessed with the appearance of their dark mistress, but it was just a soldier when all was said and done. He was the Chosen. He walked carefully toward it, hands outstretched.
“You know me,” he murmured. “You know who I am.”
The drone crouched lower, as though getting ready to attack. The Chosen showed no fear. He continued to walk as it put its head first this way, then that, its tail whipping behind it. When he was just a meter away, he bowed his head. The drone bared its teeth and let loose a long, sibilant exhalation. It took a step forward on its skeletal legs, crouched low. A silent agreement passed between them, and the Chosen could sense the heartbeats inside him.
He raised his head again.
“I have work to do,” he murmured.
* * *
“Anything?” Chad McLaren said.
“Nothing,” Moran responded, turning off the comms desk. “The storm’s getting worse, and more importantly, we’re on back-up systems here. Every time we try to make contact, we’re using juice that isn’t being replenished.” He looked at the others, busying themselves with pointless but diverting tasks. He dropped his voice to a low whisper. “You want us to be seeing the night with absolutely no power? No lights? Imagine if one of those things got in here.”
“Fair enough,” Chad conceded.
Moran leaned in. “You’ve fought these things… what? How many times?”
“More than I care to remember or count.”
“But you always survived, is my point.”
“I did. A lot of people didn’t.”
“But these things aren’t unstoppable. They’re not unkillable. They’re just very, very tough, right?”
“I suppose,” Chad said doubtfully, “but you shouldn’t underestimate them.”
“I’m not,” Moran said. “I’m just determined to get off this rock alive. It’s all about perspective, innit, McLaren? All depends on where you see yourself in the pecking order. You and me, we’re the same. We’re main characters. Protagonists. That’s why you always come out on top, and so do I.” He looked over to the others. “These guys, they’re supporting cast. You get what I’m saying?”
Chad looked at him and shook his head slowly. “That sort of thinking is a very quick shortcut to getting yourself killed when dealing with Xenomorphs, Moran. There are no heroes in these situations. Just survivors. It’s the best you can hope for.”
Moran shrugged. “That’s not how winners think, McLaren, but, hey. It’s your funeral. I’ll say a prayer for you when I’m back on New Albion. Say what you like, out of the seven of us left in this shithole, I think I’m best placed to be your survivor-type—”
A sudden hammering on the doors to the comms deck made everyone jump.
“Mama, it’s a monster,” Therese said, leaping into her mother’s embrace. The hammering continued, followed by an indistinct, but very human, shouting. Moran flipped on the monitor that showed the security camera feed outside the room and stepped back, swearing.
“Fuck! It’s Priestley. He’s alive!”
Chad joined him at the screen where a man with a mangled, bloody face was hammering at the door, screaming into the camera. Chad hit the unmute key and the man’s voice filled the room.
“—in! Let me in! The fucking thing is going to kill me!”
“Impossible!” Merrilyn said, holding Therese close. “I saw the Xenomorph kill him.”
“Obviously fucking not,” Moran said through gritted teeth. He reached for the door control but Chad stopped him with a hand on his arm. “What are you doing?” Moran asked.
“Look,” Chad said, and he pointed. Behind Priestley, there was a figure moving in the dull strip-lighting, a thin, hunched, almost ape-like creature that eventually moved into focus behind the man’s bobbing, screaming head.
“Xenomorph,” Chad said.
“Well get your guns and let me open the fucking door!” Moran shouted. “On my count of five. One…”
Bromley, Chad, Merrilyn, and Cher grabbed their weapons and assembled in front of the door.
“Two…”
“Please!” Priestley’s voice came over the monitor. “It’s coming!”
“Hit the deck when the doors open, Frank,” Moran said into a microphone. “Three…”
“Cut to the fucking chase, guv!” Priestley screamed.
“Fuck,” Moran said. “Five. Go!” He hit the doors and they slid open, and Priestley dove forward on to the deck, the Xenomorph growling and hissing two meters behind him. Moran grabbed a gun, leapt forward, and started firing. “Don’t just stare at it, kill it!” he yelled as the others opened fire.
The Xenomorph jerked and twitched in the hail of pulse blasts, thrown back to the floor. As it tried to get to its feet it took a shot straight in the face, screamed, and fell in a smoking heap. Its acid blood started to bubble and smoke and burn its way down through the floor and to the story below.
“Close the doors!” Chad shouted as Moran ran forward and dragged Priestley’s prone body into the comms room.
“Thank you, thank you,” Priestley gasped as Moran turned him over in his arms. “I thought I was a goner there, guv.”