They’d wrapped Priestley in a blanket and Bromley, who had some medical training, tried to do something with the razored tatters of his face. “You’re not going to be winning Olympic Gold at archery, mate,” she said tenderly. “You’ve lost the left eye.”
Pumping him full of painkillers she wrapped half of his head in bandages after cleaning the raw wound as best she could.
“We’ll get you fixed up properly when we get back to New Albion. You’re going to need skin grafts.” She took a step back to appraise her handiwork, and added, “Neither will you be getting first prize in any beauty contests. That said, you always were an ugly bugger.”
Priestley seemed to be processing the words she was saying and responding a beat or two too late, forcing a laugh. Chad frowned. The guy had been through a lot, and could be excused for not being in top form, but there was still something strange. He had a deep mistrust of anyone who came up close to Xenomorphs, and didn’t die without killing them.
“So, it just… left you?” Chad said again.
“Jesus Christ, mate, can you lay off him?” Moran said. “You can see what he’s been through. What are you getting at?”
“It’s OK, guv,” Priestley said. “When that thing dragged me up into the crawlspace in the roof I thought I was dead meat. I was in shock. I couldn’t move. I don’t know what happened. It just scarpered. I suppose something might have scared it off, maybe?”
“Xenomorphs don’t scare easily,” Chad said. “Priestley, you’re sure you didn’t lose consciousness? While you were with the alien? What about eggs? Did you see any eggs?” He held up his hand. “About this tall. Did you see any of those? Might you have blacked out for a while?”
Priestley shook his head, gratefully accepting a mug of tea from Merrilyn.
“Thanks, love.” He turned to Chad, and even that movement seemed painful. “I knew if I lost consciousness, I was dead. I waited until the thing had gone, then I dropped back down to the corridor. It took forever, but I crawled to the canteen and found this little nest of blankets in a storeroom. Shot myself full of morphine from my belt and zoned out, but I never blacked out anywhere near those things, and never saw any eggs.
“When I came to, I made my way back here, and came across another one of those monsters. If I hadn’t been so close to the comms room, I’d have been dead for sure.” Priestley looked around the room. “Boffin still at the ship? And where’s Amina? She shouldn’t be out there on her own. Not with those things.”
“Both dead,” Moran said quietly. “Like we thought you were.”
Priestley rubbed a hand over his good eye. “Fuck. Fuck. We getting off this place, guv?”
“Soon as the storm clears. Look, we’ve made you a bed of blankets in the corner. Why don’t you get some rest? We’re going to try to cobble together a meal in a couple of hours.”
Chad watched Moran and Bromley help their colleague over to the pile of blankets. They might be glad to see their crew member back with them, but for some reason, he wasn’t quite as convinced as he’d like to be.
* * *
“I don’t like that man, Mama,” Therese said.
“Hush, Little Flower, Merrilyn said, glancing over to where Priestley was sleeping at the far end of the comms room. The big observation window was rattling in the wind, as though it was coming loose in its fittings. She had never known a storm like it.
She had to agree with Therese, remembered the way Priestley looked at her when he had confronted them in the corridor. There was something mean and… hungry about him. She had to admit she had felt a little dismayed when he had turned up alive, and she hated herself for the uncharitable thought.
Cher came, squatted down by them, and picked up a can of beef stew, peeling the top off it and adding it to the pot with the others. Merrilyn had rigged up a makeshift electric ring on which to heat the food, the pot a repurposed casing unscrewed from one of the comms banks.
“We’ll eat well tonight,” Merrilyn said, “but we’re going to have to get more supplies from the canteen tomorrow.”
“I don’t relish going out there,” Cher said, stirring the stew with a broken length of antenna. “Not after what happened to him.” They both looked over to Priestley.
“Can I go and talk to the doggo, Mama?”
“I suppose,” Merrilyn said, still a bit uncertainly.
When Therese had gone, Cher said, “Can I ask why you don’t like Davis? Have you had a bad experience with synthetics?”
Merrilyn shook her head. She was starting to like this American woman, but how could she tell her the truth? It could put Therese in danger, and she would never countenance anything happening to her. She had already told her daughter that it was her mama’s job to kill monsters. That went for human monsters, too, and she knew that people were capable of as much evil as Xenomorphs. Given the right push.
“Just an overprotective mama, I suppose,” Merrilyn said, with a tight smile. “It’s nothing. Davis seems nice.” By way of changing the subject, she added in a low voice, “Chad seems to be disquieted by Priestley’s return.” Cher nodded, opening some sachets of salt and emptying them into the bubbling stew.
“He does, and I don’t really know why. It’s like he doesn’t believe the guy, but how do you lie about something like that? One of those things grabs you, you’re either dead or you get away. Surely there’s no in-between. You should know. You’ve seen them in action.”
Merrilyn blinked and she saw the Xenomorph in the garage again, holding Therese in its claws like a rag doll, about to deliver the killer blow.
“How is it nobody knows about these things?” she asked. “Why aren’t we all warned about them? Why aren’t we at war with them, instead of each other?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Cher said. “Chad and Davis contacted me to try to get the word out. There has been a war against the Xenomorphs, but it’s been fought in the shadows. Chad wants it out in the open.” Cher sighed and rolled her eyes. “Stupid old me demanded to see the evidence with my own eyes, though. Wish I’d just taken their word for it, now.”
Suddenly, and without warning even to herself, Merrilyn leaned over and gave Cher a hug. “Well, I for one am glad that you came, if you won’t take that the wrong way. I fear that without your arrival, Therese and myself would not be alive right now.”
Cher hugged her back. It was good. Nice. She felt safe, for the first time in more than a week. Somewhere deep inside of her a spark lit up the darkness she had carried around for so long. She began to think—to hope—that things might just turn out all right.
* * *
The Chosen lay with his eye closed, but he did not sleep.
He communed.
His Queen’s tendrils reached out, up from the hive, snaking through the dim corridors, tapping and feeling around the doors and taped-up vents until they could worm their way inside and plunge, almost making him gasp with orgasmic delight, into his mind.
He felt her in all her black, dark glory, her own mind a pure, focused whirlpool of forged rage. She was a chok-chok-chok of slicing blades, a crunch of bone between steel teeth, a rippling of vertebrae, a pungent perfume of acid musk that drove him almost insane with the need to abase himself in front of her, to beg to be made her slave, to serve her unto death and beyond.
The Chosen lay still and imperceptibly shivered as she plunged her mind into his again and again, like a violent paramour whose hatred was as sweet as her love.
I’m here, my Queen, he thought as she stabbed his soul with her own. I am yours. I have done your bidding. Love me. Hate me. Nourish me. Hurt me.
On the periphery of his beautifully violated being he sensed a gathering. His Queen was drawing her forces together, marshalling her troops, gathering her storm. She was making him shine like a beacon, his agony radiating through the colony, attracting the skittering, crouching, crawling beasts under her command like moths to the flame of his exquisite pain.
Come to me, the Chosen sang in his head, the song reverberating around the darkened colony. Come to me. Come to me.
From the tunnels and storerooms and maintenance shafts and air ducts and from all the secret, hidden places where they had been lurking and waiting, they started to move as one.
* * *
“You’re getting on well with the kid,” Chad said as Therese toddled off toward her mother. “You need to be careful, Davis. You’re going to end up more dog than…”
“Than what, Chad?”
Chad shrugged. “I was going to say human.”
“I’m flattered,” Davis said, “but I’m not human—not yet. There’s something eluding me and I don’t yet know what it is.” He paused to lick his paw, then said, “Cher thought it might be sacrifice that makes one human.”
“You’ve sacrificed yourself a dozen times,” Chad said, looking out of the window. He was worried about that glass and the punishment it was taking.
“Always for Zula,” Davis mused. “Cher thought… maybe a more selfless sacrifice is what is needed. The willingness to sacrifice one’s self not just for those we love, but for those we’ve never even met.”
“In that case, I don’t know many humans.”
Chad looked beyond Moran and Bromley, deep in quiet conversation, and to where Priestley was lying stock still in his makeshift bed of blankets.
“You don’t trust him, do you?” David murmured.
“I don’t trust any of the New Albion contingent,” Chad said quietly. “We only have their word that they weren’t involved in planting the Ovomorphs on LV-187. Someone took those eggs from the Clara and brought them here. It seems awfully convenient that the Victory was passing just at the right time.”
“The infestation had occurred long before they were in LV-187 airspace, Chad.”
Chad looked down at Davis. “Yeah, but they got the distress call on the way back to New Albion, didn’t they? How long before had they passed this way on the outward leg of their trade mission? A week, maybe? Perhaps we should ask them.”
“Maybe later,” Davis said, getting to his feet and sniffing the air. “I think the food’s ready.”
Chad smiled crookedly at him. “You really are becoming more dog, Davis, you know that?”
* * *
Moran had Bromley rouse Priestley and they all gathered around the comms hub for dishes of stew. The control desk wasn’t much use for anything other than a dining table at the moment.
The power was dropping in the colony, and Moran was worried. There was meant to be a goddamn baby fusion reactor, somewhere in the bowels of the place. The connections to it must have been goosed, either by the storm or by the infestation. Either way, they weren’t getting the power they should be. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if the lights went out before whatever dawn the storm allowed to break on this place.
“Feeling any better?” he said as Bromley helped Priestley to the table.
“My face is sore, guv, but I think that’s the painkillers wearing off. Other than that, I’m feeling pretty chipper.” He looked up at Bromley as she helped him sit. “Thank you, Teesha. You’re a good friend.”
Bromley cast a look at Moran, raising an eyebrow. He shared her vague disquiet. Where were all the off-color jokes and casual sexism they were used to? Could a near-death experience have that much of an effect on a man? Moran decided he didn’t want to find out for himself. He was happy being who he was, and didn’t want to change—especially not if it meant going through what Priestley had endured.
Moran clapped his hands. “OK. Let’s eat, and for the next half hour or so, we talk about anything other than you-know-what. Let’s give ourselves a bit of a break, people, all right?”
“Given that the majority of the group is British, now, I guess that means we have to talk about the weather?” Chad said. As if on cue, there was a sudden flash of lightning right outside the window, followed by a rumble of thunder that lasted ten seconds. Everyone gasped, and then laughed with a sudden and welcome release of the tension that had been building since they’d arrived.
The stew was gloopy and thick and not particularly hot, but Moran thought it might have been the best meal he’d ever had. The group fell into easy conversation in their twos and threes, and he half-listened to Bromley giving him her considered opinion on West Ham’s chances in the forthcoming season. The other half of his attention was on Priestley, wrapped in a blanket and pushing his food around his plate without really eating any.
“You OK, mate?” he said as Priestley suddenly started to bang his fist against his chest. “Bit of heartburn? Want some water?”
Priestley gave him a tight smile.
“Not heartburn. It’s time.”
“Time for what?” Moran frowned. “You want some more sleep?”
“Time for the nativity,” Priestley said. “Time for me to fulfil my glorious purpose for my dark monarch, who walks in beauty like the night.” Then he lurched forward, his head slamming hard on the control desk.
One of the women screamed.
Moran leapt up, yelling, “Priestley? Jesus Christ! What the fuck?”
Priestley threw his head backward and arched his spine, as though he was a puppet possessed by an invisible demon.
“Oh, no,” Moran heard McLaren say. “No, no, no…”
“His stomach!” Bromley shouted. “The fuck?”
Priestley’s stomach was rippling and distending, as though something inside him was trying to punch its way out. Then he screamed, and bent almost backward, his arms flailing around, knocking the plates and drinks over as he twisted in his seat.
Moran was dimly aware of McLaren scrabbling for a handgun beside him as Priestley’s wide, rabid eyes met his. His crewman smiled at him, a horrible, grotesque, rictus grin.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, Tom. I am the Chosen.”
Then Priestley’s chest exploded outward in a shower of flesh, bone, blood… and something that should not have been there.