They scattered as the dropship put its nose down and moved forward, hovering and rocking in the driving winds before settling on the landing pad with a whine of protesting engines.
The forward hatch opened and spewed five Colonial Marines in their distinctive body armor and helmets, two pairs of them each carrying a squat cannon which they swiftly set up on tripod stands. In the bright lights cast by the ship, the fifth marine gave a signal and the soldiers began to fire indiscriminately at the confused, milling Xenomorphs on the platform.
Not pulse bursts or bullets, Chad noted. The cannons fired tight parcels with hydraulic whump sounds which unfolded in the air into Kevlar netting weighted with metal balls. As the first two Xenomorphs became entangled in the nets and fell, writhing, he realized that the marines weren’t here to kill the aliens.
They were here to capture them.
Another two Xenomorphs were hit by the Kevlar netting, and one of the soldiers punched a hand-held box about the size of a radio, which activated a sparking, snaking lightshow of electrical pulses that sputtered over the captured creatures, causing them to screech and howl.
When a third pair of Xenomorphs fell, the rest of them began to back off. They would kill what threatened them, but they also would retreat if the battle was going badly, would regroup and find another way to continue the assault. The black shapes turned and ran—crouching, tails whipping—into the driving rain and back toward the comms tower.
The marine who had directed the quick operation pulled off his helmet, revealing a craggy, battle-worn face under a blond buzz-cut.
“Six piggies,” he drawled in a Mid-West American accent. “Tag ’em, bag ’em, and let’s roll out.” As the marines started to drag the unconscious Xenomorphs into the dropship, Therese stepped forward from behind Merrilyn.
“Mr. Lollipop!”
The marine wiped rain from his face and glanced down at her. “Oh, hi, kid. You’re still alive. Well done.”
Chad looked at Merrilyn. “You know these guys?”
“They were here a week or so ago,” Merrilyn said frostily, glaring at the soldier. “Except they said they were a trade mission.”
“Yeah, sorry about that, ma’am.” The marine smiled crookedly. “Means to an end.”
“Where are you taking those Xenomorphs?” Chad demanded. “You can’t just transport them off-world. You need to kill the rest of them. You can’t leave.”
The marine sighed. “Corporal Barrington B. Jones III of the United States Colonial Marine Corps,” he said, “and I’m very much afraid I can do what I like.”
“Actually, you can’t, mate.” Moran stepped forward. “This planet is under the jurisdiction of New Albion. You can’t just waltz in here and…” He looked back to the darkened comms tower. “…and nick our bloody monsters.”
Jones grinned. “Your pissant little colony with no military to speak of has already got the Three World Empire and the ICSC on its ass. But, sure, go ahead, declare war on the United Americas too, why don’t you.” He turned to his marines, standing by the lowered hatch. “OK, let’s get off this rock.”
Chad grabbed his arm. “You have to take us with you,” he said, and the marine gave him a long, menacing look. “And you have to tell me where you’re taking those Xenomorphs.”
“Those bio-samples are the property of Weyland-Yutani,” Jones said. Then he frowned. “Hey. Wait. I know you.” Jones took out his pistol and pointed it straight at Chad’s head. “Chad McLaren. I’m placing you under corporate arrest for crimes against Weyland-Yutani. Get in the ship.”
“Whoa, Barry the Bastard.” Moran interjected himself between them. “You’re taking all of us.”
“No, Limey, I’m not.”
“For God’s sake, man,” Moran said. “Therese… the girl, she’s a child… If you leave them here with those things, it’s murder.”
“No,” Jones said, turning the pistol on Moran. “This is murder.”
Then he shot him in the face.
* * *
Cher watched helplessly as the Cheyenne dropship rose up, engines screaming, and then turned, buffeting them with hot exhaust air. It headed out into the storm-lashed darkness. She looked back at Bromley and Merrilyn crouched by the corpse of Moran, blood pooling out from the wound in the back of his head where the marine had blown his brains out.
“I thought they were here to save us,” she said numbly. “They killed Moran. They took Chad.”
Bromley looked up at her, tears in her eyes mingling with the rain washing her face.
“Nobody’s here to save us. Nobody’s coming for us. We’re on our own.” She stood up, surveying the darkened colony buildings. “We need to get off here before those munters come back.” Cher wasn’t sure if she was talking about the Xenomorphs or the Colonial Marines. Bromley looked at Merrilyn. “You know this place, right?”
Merrilyn nodded. Bromley pointed to the doors at the far end of the platform. “Then let’s get inside, and hope to fuck those things aren’t waiting for us.”
Merrilyn held tight onto Therese’s right hand, and Cher took the child’s left as they ran to the doors. Davis caught up to them, shaking off his limp.
“Hey, does it feel like the storm’s slackening off a bit?” she said.
“Dawn’s breaking, behind the clouds.” Merrilyn looked up. “If the weather improves, it might mean communications are back up.”
Bromley, holding up her rifle, peered through the open doors. There were dim striplights glowing weakly in the foyer that led to the corridors.
“All clear,” she said. “We’re getting a bit of juice back, as well.”
“If we can get to a safe place, we might be able to patch into the colony mainframe,” Davis said, shaking the rain off his fur as he padded through the doors. “We might not have to risk getting into the comms tower again to send out a signal.” They all paused at the next set of doors.
“I’m sorry about Moran,” Cher said.
Bromley shrugged. “He was a dick, at times.” She looked at Cher. “He wanted to leave, you know. When Therese was trapped up the rope. Just him and me.”
“But he didn’t,” Cher said. “That’s got to count for something.”
“Yeah,” Bromley said, hefting up her pulse rifle and hitting the door control. “Even the slightest act of goodness means a lot in Hell.”
* * *
“You’re making a big mistake,” Chad said, sitting in a chair on the Cheyenne’s cramped troop deck, sipping a bottle of water one of the Colonial Marines had handed to him once they’d hustled him on board. “You can’t deliver those things to Weyland-Yutani.”
“That’s precisely what we’re going to do,” Jones said, biting the end off a cigar and lighting it with a Zippo. “So I’d say we’re making the exact opposite of a mistake.”
“So you’re not here on United Americas business?”
“Basically, the USCMC is a private military contractor these days, you know that. We follow the money, and Weyland-Yutani has lots of sweet, sweet money when it comes to Xenomorphs.” The Cheyenne was buffeted and rocked by the winds, and the pilot kept it low over the mountainous terrain.
Chad looked out of the window. “You’ve got a cruiser in orbit? We’re not going to dock?”
“Not until the storm’s blown itself out,” Jones said, taking a seat across from him and resting a pistol lightly on his knee. “We’ll never make escape velocity, but we’ve got plenty of time. Unlike your friends.”
“You’ve given them a death sentence,” Chad said quietly. “There’s a child with them.”
“I know. Met her when we were here last. Cute little thing.”
Chad shook his head. “You’re one cold bastard.”
The pilot put the Cheyenne, rocking and rolling in the wind, down in what looked like a narrow valley between two high, jagged peaks.
“This’ll do to sit out the storm,” Jones said, puffing on his cigar and regarding Chad coolly. “I reckon we’ll be on our way in a couple of hours. The Company’s going to be awfully pleased to see you. Should be a nice, fat bonus in it for us. Good thing I keep up to date with all the briefing notes, right?”
“Lucky me,” Chad said. He stroked his chin. “It was you, wasn’t it? You planted the Ovomorphs on LV-187. You boarded the Clara and took them, crashed the ship on New Albion, and brought them here.”
“All part of the service.” Jones took his cigar out of his mouth and did a little theatrical bow.
“You sentenced an entire colony to death,” Chad said, trying to keep his voice calm and level. “Why?”
“Just following orders.”
“Where have I heard that one before?”
“We’re soldiers, McLaren.” Jones sneered at him. “We do as we’re told. End of sentence. Weyland-Yutani wanted LV-187 to be their little petri dish, right? Dump a load of eggs here, infect the colonists, and then we take the Xenomorphs back for them to do all their little experiments on, see what kind of DNA shenanigans are going on inside those ugly bastards.”
“You’re putting yourself out of a job—you know that, don’t you, Jones? Weyland-Yutani wants to make itself an army of these things. The sort of army that doesn’t demand payment and bonuses.” He leaned forward. “You know a lot about the Xenomorphs, Corporal. That’s dangerous knowledge to have. Weyland-Yutani isn’t going to want you running around with it. That’s how they work. Your days are numbered.”
Was there a moment of doubt in Jones’s eyes? If there was, the marine blinked it away, and gave Chad a humorous look.
“If I was you, McLaren, I’d worry more about myself.” He nodded to the closed doors of the cargo bay. “Who knows what Weyland-Yutani’s scientists are planning for this bunch? Maybe you’ll be part of their experiments, too. Nice future for you as a hybrid soldier, maybe?”
As the dropship’s engines powered down, one of the marines lifted his head from the comms unit. “Sir, still no contact with the Cronulla. We’ll have to wait until the storm clears a little more.”
Jones shrugged. “In that case, put Mr. McLaren in the hold with our other guests. About time he got acquainted with his future. I’m going to grab myself a nap.”
* * *
They moved slowly along the dim corridor, Bromley taking the lead with her rifle, Merrilyn and Therese following behind, and Cher, armed with a pistol, walking backward at the rear, scanning behind them for any sign of the Xenomorphs. Ahead, Davis padded along, sniffing at the still air.
“Where are we going?” Cher asked in a hissed whisper.
“The canteen,” Merrilyn said quietly. “There’s still some food and water there, and it’s relatively secure.”
“Maybe not against those things,” Bromley said, sweeping her rifle from side to side, peering into the gloom. “Once we get supplies, I think we should get back to that garage where I found you two, and follow your original plan to get off the base.”
“There’s also Chad to think about,” Davis called from the front. “Shouldn’t we be trying to effect some kind of rescue?”
Bromley barked a laugh. “From a squadron of Colonial Marines, armed to the teeth and with zero compunction about killing? Forget McLaren, Davis. We’re on our own.”
Davis looked as if he was about to say something else when he stopped, sniffed, and bent down, growling. Bromley held up her hand for the others to stop.
“What is it?”
Cher turned to look, peering over Bromley’s shoulder. There was a dark shape huddled in the corridor ahead, right in the center of the floor. Bromley lifted her rifle.
Suddenly, the lights above fizzed and sparked and shone a little brighter, revealing the shape to be a rotting, twisted Xenomorph corpse. Then they dimmed again.
“From the fighting when they first emerged,” Merrilyn said. “We weren’t completely helpless. We managed to defeat two of them, I think, but they overwhelmed us.”
The group edged around the dead monster, Merrilyn directing them where to go in the warren of corridors. They passed a set of heavy-duty double steel doors marked with yellow and black radiation warning triangles.
“What’s down there?” Cher said
“It leads down to the fusion reactor that powers the colony,” Merrilyn said.
“Great,” Bromley said. “So this place could go nuclear, as well?”
“Doubtful. Unless it has manual safety codes punched in every day, it goes into a standby mode. That’s why we’re on minimal power in the main colony buildings,” Merrilyn said, then she gestured. “Take a left here.”
A few minutes later Merrilyn signaled for them to stop. They had arrived at the canteen. Bromley led them in and swept through it, rifle up. Then she breathed a ragged sigh.
“It’s clean. Let’s get everything we can carry, and move out.”
“Therese is exhausted,” Merrilyn protested. “As am I. As are we all. Can we not rest for a while? It will be fully daylight soon and the storm is abating. The creatures seem to be less active in the day, and it will be easier to negotiate the landscape in a truck if we can see what we’re actually doing.”
Bromley made to say no, then shrugged. “We all had quite a night of it. Yeah, makes sense. Let’s take a few hours, but we’ll have to do shifts on watch.”
“I’ll take the first hour,” Cher said. She didn’t feel sleepy at all. She was jittery, in fact, as if she’d been mainlining coffee, or something stronger.
Bromley handed her the rifle. “Anything moves that isn’t one of us, blow its arse off.” Then Merrilyn led the others to the storerooms where she and Therese had been hiding out for a week, and where there were blankets and pillows.
Cher spent the first twenty minutes patrolling the canteen and kitchen, peering under units, cautiously flicking open cabinets with the rifle barrel. Then she got some water and a couple of protein bars, and began to relax a bit. There was a monitor on the canteen wall, and she fiddled with the controls, seeing if it could pick something up.
An image formed on the screen, and to Cher’s surprise it was Therese. The date stamp placed it nine days ago. Security camera footage, she guessed. She sat back to watch, munching on the protein bar, smiling at Therese’s rendition of an old song.
Then something came into focus that chilled her blood. An Ovomorph. The alien egg. She sat forward on her seat as Therese approached it, murmuring to it in French.
“Oh, no,” Cher whispered. “Don’t do it.”
The egg seemed to pulsate and quiver as Therese leaned over it. Then it opened up like a flower, and Cher squinted, but was unable to tear her eyes away. This is what Chad and Davis had told her about. She gasped as the spidery, bony creature—the face-hugger—leapt out.
She watched for a while longer, not sure what she was exactly seeing, and then skipped back the video and watched it again from the beginning.