“What are we seeing here?” Cher said. She stood with Merrilyn, Therese, Bromley, and Davis at the observation window, watching the bright light’s stately progress through the sky.
“I think,” Davis said slowly, “that is a spaceship. Or rather, was.”
Merrilyn let loose a strangled sob. “A rescue ship? But what’s happened to it? Why is it burning? An accident?”
“It may be the ship the Colonial Marines came down from,” Bromley said. “In which case, the bastards are trapped here as much as we are.”
“Unless they managed to take off when the storm cleared,” Davis said quietly. “In which case they are on it. As is Chad.” He paused, and looked down at the floor. “Or rather, they were.”
“That dropship wouldn’t have had the power to achieve escape velocity even at the tail end of the storm,” Bromley said. “Especially with a full crew and a hold full of Xenomorphs.”
“I hope you’re right,” Davis said. “For Chad’s sake.”
Cher took a step back and looked covertly at Therese and Merrilyn. She hadn’t mentioned to anyone what she’d seen on that security footage. She wasn’t quite sure what she should say, or even if she understood what she had seen. She needed to get Merrilyn on her own to talk about it, but now wasn’t the time.
“OK,” Bromley said. “We need to move out.”
“We’re still getting off the colony base?” Merrilyn said.
“It’s the wisest course of action. Somebody is going to come eventually, and our best chance of survival is out there, not here with the Xenomorphs.”
“How far is the garage?” Cher said. She didn’t really relish the idea of going into the corridors again. She wasn’t sure how secure the canteen was, but they’d all managed to grab a couple of hours sleep, and she felt reasonably safe here.
“Maybe ten minutes if we move quickly, fifteen at the most,” Merrilyn said. She squatted down and looked at Therese. “We’re going to go for a ride in the trucks, Little Flower. Won’t that be fun?”
“Will there be monsters like last time?” Therese said doubtfully. “I didn’t like the monsters. Or the dead lady.”
Cher’s heart broke for her a little. She had seen so much this past week or so. How were you supposed to answer a question like the one she’d just asked? Not for the first time, Cher marveled at the resilience of parents in general, and Merrilyn in particular. It was bad enough fearing for your own life, but to have to worry about your child, as well.
That is, if—
“I’m not going to lie to you, Baba,” Merrilyn said softly. “There may be monsters, but that is why we are leaving the base. So we are far away from them. We just need to get to the trucks safely and quickly, which means you have to do exactly what Mama and the other grown-ups tell you to at all times, OK?”
Therese nodded and held her soft toy—her Pinky Ponk—tightly. Cher looked out of the window again, at the rapidly clearing clouds and the violet sky they revealed.
“That ship, whatever it is, is disappearing over the horizon.”
“Good,” Davis said. “If it is a warship, it’ll probably be fitted with nuclear warheads. The last thing we would want would be for it to come down anywhere near here.”
Bromley laughed, but without humor. “That’s exactly what this place needs, to be honest. Nuking out of existence. When we get off here, we need to tell people. About the Xenomorphs. Make sure nobody ever comes back.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Cher said quietly. “To tell people about this.” She smiled, just as humorlessly as Bromley had laughed. “You know, before I came here, I didn’t actually believe.”
“You should always believe in monsters,” Therese said to her with a serious face. “How can you fight them if you don’t?”
They spent the next hour packing as much food and water as they could carry and stripping the canteen and kitchens of anything that might be used as a makeshift weapon. As Bromley stuck knives into her belt, she turned to Cher.
“So you’re a journalist, right? Still think the pen is mightier than the sword, when it comes to these things?”
“Eventually, I hope so,” Cher said, weighing up a meat tenderizing hammer. “Once I get back to Earth, I can tell everyone about the Xenomorphs. Blow this thing wide open, so this never has to happen again.” She looked at Bromley. “What about you? Will you go back to Earth? Or New Albion?”
Bromley sighed and sat down on a stool.
“You know, when my mum and dad first brought me and my sister out to New Albion ten years ago, I hated it. I was sixteen, and I’d left behind my friends and everybody on Earth. New Albion felt so small and insignificant and a trillion light years from anyone and anything.” She paused and munched on a protein bar. “Then I started to think it wasn’t so bad. It was nice to get away from all the politics on Earth, all the crap. After I finished school and started work, it felt like a new start, which was just what my mum and dad wanted.” She looked at Cher.
“But the older I got, the more I realized it’s just the same shit, different planet. I mean, fuck’s sake, Cher, it’s the twenty-second century, and I still feel like having black skin and a uterus puts me further down the pecking order than anybody else. Wasn’t this shit supposed to be all over by now? Only fucking true equality I’ve seen is from the goddamn Xenomorphs. They hate everybody equally.”
Cher took a swig of water and Bromley chewed thoughtfully on her protein bar, then smiled wryly. “At least I survived, huh? Last of the Victory. I suppose that counts for something.”
“You know,” Cher said, “when I find Chad, you could maybe come with us.” Davis padded into the kitchen and sat down beside them. “We could probably use someone as handy with a pulse rifle as you.”
“Travelling the universe, fighting monsters,” Bromley mused. “Yeah, I suppose that could be fun.” She slid off the stool and hefted the big pack she’d been filling with water and food onto her back. “Get this show on the road, then?”
They gathered by the doors, Bromley holding her rifle, Cher and Merrilyn armed with handguns. Merrilyn had given Therese a big carving knife to hold. “Don’t touch the blade, Little Flower, but you know what to do with it if you need to.”
Therese nodded solemnly.
“OK, everyone stand back a bit,” Bromley said. “I’m going to check out the corridor.” She opened the door a crack and peered through, then pulled it a little wider, so she could just get her head through it to look up and down the hallway outside. She pulled back in and closed the door. “Clear, far as I can tell. Which way, Merrilyn?”
“To the right out of here, then straight to a cross-junction. Right again, and then second left. The garage is straight on through a set of double doors.”
Bromley nodded. “Everyone got that, just in case we get split up for some reason? Merrilyn, say it again.”
When they’d all repeated it back to Bromley’s satisfaction, she opened the door a crack again, repeated her surveillance, then opened it wide. For the first time, Cher thought they might actually get out of this alive, if they could just get through the next ten or fifteen minutes. Bromley stepped out and surveyed the corridor left to right, and back again. She turned to the others.
“OK, follow me. Same formation as last time. Davis up front, then me, then Merrilyn and Therese, and Cher holding the back.”
“Eww,” Therese said. “Gloop.”
Cher saw it at the same time, a string of thick, ropy, clear liquid falling from above on to Bromley’s shoulder.
“Oh, no,” she breathed.
The black shape fell like a spider, arms and legs seizing Bromley and wrestling her to the floor with a screeching howl. Bromley didn’t even have time to scream as it enfolded her in its limbs—almost tenderly, thought Cher crazily, like a lover—and then clamped its jaws around her head.
“Shut the fucking door!” Merrilyn screamed, hauling herself forward and throwing her weight against the door. But the Xenomorph savaging Bromley was half in the doorway, and it hissed as the door it hit.
“We should help her,” Cher breathed.
“It’s too late for her!” Merrilyn screamed. “Help me!”
One second later Cher forced herself into action, slamming her shoulder against the door as the Xenomorph, its jaws and teeth slick with Bromley’s blood and flesh, interposed its head between the door and frame, chittering at them, its clawed hand trying to get purchase.
“It’s too strong,” Cher said through gritted teeth, feeling her feet sliding on the tiled door as the creature pushed against them, its head moving further into the room.
“I don’t wish to be the bearer of unwelcome news, but there’s another one behind it,” Davis said, peering through the gap between the creature’s legs. “No, two more.”
The clawed hand reached further around the door, swiping at Cher’s arm. She fumbled for her gun with her free hand, but it fell from her grasp and skittered across the floor.
“Merrilyn!” she gasped, skidding back another inch. “Pass me your pistol…”
But Merrilyn moaned and from the corner of her eye Cher saw what she’d seen; Therese calmly walking to the door, standing behind Davis. The Xenomorph redoubled its efforts, the sight of the child seemingly ramping its bloodlust off the scale.
“Little Flower…” Cher said desperately, then she saw what Therese was holding.
“Leave my mama and my friend alone!” Therese said with a trembling voice, then she pointed Cher’s gun at the Xenomorph’s head with both tiny hands, pumping the trigger.
Her shots were wild and the recoil knocked Therese off her feet, but it was enough. The Xenomorph screeched and though not dead, was injured enough to drop back, allowing Merrilyn and Cher to slam the door closed and slide the bolts. Cher sank to the floor, breathless and exhausted, as Merrilyn ran to hug Therese, carefully taking the gun from her.
“Excellent shot, Little Flower! You saved Mama and Cher!”
“Can I have a gun now?” Therese said, pouting. “I’m really good at killing monsters.”
I hope so, Cher thought, without voicing her terror. Because there are at least three of them out there, maybe more. And we’re trapped here now.
* * *
“I can’t believe Bromley’s dead,” Cher said numbly, sitting at one of the canteen tables.
“Everybody dies, where these things are concerned,” Merrilyn spat. “Haven’t you realized that yet?”
“Mama…” Therese said.
“I’m sorry, Little Flower,” Merrilyn said, giving her a hug. “Mama is just a little… stressed.”
“Is there no other way out of here?” Davis said, sitting upright on one of the plastic chairs.
Merrilyn shook her head. “No. We’re trapped here.”
“We need that pulse rifle,” Cher said suddenly. She looked at her handgun. “These things run off charges, right? I’ve got no idea how many shots are left in it, have you?”
“Show me the butt,” Davis said. She did and he peered at a little LED readout, and said, “Not many.”
“Then we definitely need that rifle.”
* * *
Cher crouched on the floor near the door, Merrilyn standing above and behind her, the pistol trained on the crack between door and frame. They’d already slid the bolts back and Therese was poised, her hand on the handle, waiting for the signal.
“I wish I could do something useful,” Davis said.
“Just bark or something,” Cher said.
Merrilyn counted down from five then said, “Now!”
Therese pulled the door open and Merrilyn pointed the gun as Cher’s hand snaked out, gripping the barrel of the rifle under Bromley’s bloodied, savaged corpse. Above her head, Cher felt Merrilyn let loose a stream of pulse bursts, and she glanced up to see four Xenomorphs bearing down on her from the left. She screamed and dragged the gun inside, as Merrilyn put her shoulder against the door and slammed it shut, just as one of the creatures slammed into it with a thud.
“Fuck!” Cher said, hefting up the rifle. “Did you get any of them?”
“I hit one, but I don’t know if it went down,” Merrilyn said. She turned to her daughter. “Good work, Therese.”
“Are we still going back to the trucks?” Therese said.
“Mama’s just thinking about it,” Merrilyn said, glancing at Cher. “The grown-ups are going to decide what to do.”
“I think I should decide what to do, as well,” Therese said. “I can shoot monsters, Mama, remember.”
Yes you can, Cher thought, remembering again what she’d seen on the security camera footage. But was the bravery of a child—even a child as remarkable as Therese—going to be enough? Cher couldn’t shake the image of Bromley’s ravaged body outside in the corridor. Of all the deaths in the past forty-eight hours, that seemed to have affected her more than anything. It was almost as though because Bromley had opened up to her, given a little of herself, it had marked her down to die in this place.
“Teesha,” she said quietly. “Your name was Teesha, and you wanted a better life. That’s all.” She looked at Merrilyn, and Therese, and Davis. Then at her own faint reflection in the observation window. Who was going to be next? And when?
She didn’t register it at first, until she noticed Merrilyn frowning and looking up, and Davis emitting a low growl. Then she heard it again: a scratchy scrabbling coming from above her. Her eyes were drawn up to the ceiling, suspended polystyrene tiles, she assumed, a space filled with ducting and electronics. And something else. The tiles bowed just above them, and before Cher could reach for her gun, they exploded down.