“Somebody killed Barrington!” Segura boomed, the big Cuban marine appearing at the hatch of the dropship.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Corporal Barrington Jones III paused from shielding his eyes to watch the high passage of the burning Cronulla, and peered at him incredulously.
“My pet rat! Somebody ripped him apart!”
“Jesus H. Christ, we ain’t got time for this, you lunkhead,” Marquez muttered. “Don’t you know what’s going on?”
What was going on, as far as Chad could surmise, was that the USC Cronulla, which had brought Jones and his team here and had been waiting in high orbit for them to return with their captured Xenomorphs was, abruptly, no more. Which presented a problem for the Colonial Marines.
“We’re not getting off here,” Jones said dourly. “Even if we make escape velocity, the Cheyenne’s not built for deep space travel.” He glanced back across the ridge toward the colony base. “Fuck. We’re going to have to go back and access that comms tower, get a mayday out.”
There were four marines on the Cheyenne aside from Jones. Did they have enough firepower to fight their way into the tower? Colonial Marines were tough and headstrong, yet they seldom came off well against Xenomorphs. Chad didn’t relish going back into that tower after it had taken them so long to escape. He wondered how the others were doing. He hoped to God they’d made it to the canteen, and were safe.
“Question is, who blew up your ship?” Chad said. “And are they on their way down here to finish the job with you?”
Jones narrowed his eyes. “McLaren’s got a point. I think we need to get the message sent ASAP.” He turned to talk to Marquez, and Chad began to quietly sidle away from them. He wasn’t going back in that hold with those Xenomorphs. As the other two marines emerged from the Cheyenne and Jones started barking orders at them, Chad seized his chance. He figured he was no good dead to them, so they’d probably not start shooting. Eyeing a narrow natural path that afforded a decent chance at climbing the ravine over some patches of loose shale, he put his head down and set off at a run.
* * *
“Sir,” Marquez said. Jones turned to see McLaren disappearing behind a rocky outcrop.
“The fucker.” He glanced at the dropship and made a decision. “OK, you go to the landing pad. Try to secure the comms tower, but do not get anyone killed. We can’t afford to lose the men. I’ll get McLaren and radio you when I’ve secured him. You can come and pick us up.”
Marquez twirled his finger in the air to get everyone else back on the Cheyenne, and Jones pulled out his pistol and went in pursuit of McLaren.
* * *
Within five minutes Segura had the Cheyenne lifting out of the ravine, and he turned the nose of the dropship back toward the colony buildings. Be good to go toe-to-toe with some of those buggy bastards. Interesting to see how they died. What sort of noise they made when they went. He liked killing stuff. That was why he’d joined the Colonial Marines. His ma wanted him to be a veterinarian when he was at school in Miami. Until that day she caught him dissecting the neighbor’s cat. While it was still alive.
He did love most animals, though. He’d only sliced that cat up because he wanted to see how it worked. That’s why he was so pissed that somebody had killed Barrington. He’d put the little rat in a small cage from the stores and given it some dried rations. Then he’d found it, on its back, its belly all mangled. Maybe another rat had gotten to it. Maybe there were rodents on this planet. But, more likely, Marquez had stuck his knife in Barrington when Segura wasn’t looking.
That little rat never did anybody any harm.
It was just a few minutes to the landing pad. He hoped Marquez had everyone suiting up and ready for some serious shooting. The cockpit door opened and Marquez leaned in.
“Where you putting us down?”
“On the landing platform, duh,” Segura said. “I know you killed my rat.”
“I never touched your fucking rat, you imbecile,” Marquez said. He paused and leaned forward. “What the hell is this?”
Segura turned in his seat to look at what Marquez was gingerly holding between his fingers. It was pale and translucent, like a snakeskin that had been shed. Marquez opened it out, like one of those paper dolls little girls used to cut out.
“Hey,” he said, turning back to guide the Cheyenne toward the colony. “That looks like a little version of a bug.”
Marquez dropped it like it was on fire. “Oh, Segura, you shit-head,” he spat. “Your fucking rat. It was infected. The goddamn thing is loose on here.”
“Well, if it came out of Barrington, it’s only gonna be a tiny little thi—”
Marquez yelled as something barreled out of nowhere like a sleek black rocket, no bigger than a cat. It fastened on to his face and Marquez screamed and fell.
Segura shouted, “What the fuck, what the fuck…”
He had to put down, get his gun, finish the little Xenomorph off. But it was as tricky as the rat it had hatched from, and had disappeared, leaving Marquez a twitching, moaning, bloodied mess on the floor of the cockpit. Where the hell were the other two? Segura hollered for them, the colony landing pad coming up, when suddenly he felt something thud against the back of his head. A pain like a dagger pierced his skull and exploded behind his eyes.
* * *
As Jones watched the Cheyenne lurch and twist and spiral out of control, slamming into the comms tower with a distant rending of metal and a splintering of glass and a bright, fuel-blackened explosion, he realized the objective had changed. They were no longer a retrieval mission—the Xenomorph cargo had just gone up with his squad and his dropship. The Cronulla was destroyed.
Chad McLaren could do whatever the fuck he liked.
Jones was on his own now, and all that mattered was getting off the planet in one piece.
He abandoned his stalking of McLaren on the rocky hillside and turned, heading back to the colony buildings. There was one more way off LV-187, and he was sure as shit going to be the one to take it.
* * *
Chad watched the Cheyenne pile into the comms tower. Saw the tower ripple and bend and, with a whine of ruptured infrastructure, begin to topple, the comms deck aflame with the blazing wreck of the dropship embedded in it. He saw Jones emerge from behind a rocky outcrop, only a couple of hundred meters behind him, to turn tail and run for the colony buildings. Maybe he was going to try to save his men, but Chad doubted it.
He set off at a run behind the Colonial Marine.
The territory was bare and rocky, loose shale making the going slow. It was wet, too, from the storm, and slippery, with pools of dirty rainwater in the uneven terrain. He hadn’t seen much beyond the empty landscape, no seas or forests or anything. Some of the area had been quarried out to provide stone for the construction of the colony, maybe, and there were a few flattened paths from heavy vehicles that meant he could move more quickly in Jones’s wake, ducking behind rocks and outcrops whenever the Brit turned to see if he was being followed.
Jones circled around the ridge and picked his way along a cliff’s edge, making his way to where he could pull himself up on to the landing platform. Chad realized what he was going to do and followed his route, dragging himself up onto the landing pad just to see Jones running for the New Albion ship, the Victory.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Jones,” he called at the top of his lungs.
Jones turned and fired off a couple of wild shots from his handgun. “You should have stayed hidden, McLaren. You’re going to die on this planet, so there’s no reason I can’t just kill you myself.”
He continued on, reached the Victory, and hit the door controls. Chad skidded to a halt and turned on a dime, starting to run full pelt for the colony building doors to the right of the toppled comms tower. He glanced over his shoulder to see Jones staring at him.
Then the Xenomorph that had been trapped on the ship since it had killed Jerry Bough leapt from the recesses of the Victory, claws outstretched and jaws gnashing as it let loose a hunter’s howl.
Chad didn’t look back again as he heard Jones utter a blood-chilling scream that was abruptly cut off with a gurgling, liquid choke.
* * *
It was a big one, muscular and taut and more than two meters tall when it came crashing down from the ceiling space, scattering their table and chairs and sending them all scrabbling backward away from it.
Merrilyn was the first to react, grabbing for the rifle and letting fly a flurry of pulse bursts, half of which hit the Xenomorph and sent it sprawling backward against the wall.
She was aware of Cher grabbing Therese and dragging her away, for which she was thankful. If she could pump enough fire into the Xenomorph before it could react…
The rifle clicked in her hands.
She looked at it in dismay, and pointed it again.
Nothing.
“Out of charge!” Davis cried.
Cher appeared alongside her, handgun outstretched, haphazardly letting off shots at the monster.
“Therese?” Merrilyn said.
“Back there, safe,” Cher said, pushing another pistol into Merrilyn’s hands. Safe was a very relative concept, all of a sudden.
The Xenomorph took hits and spewed acid blood from its wounds, but it seemed to be unstoppable, shrugging off the worst of the damage and crouching, getting ready to leap at them. Then Davis barreled toward it, a brown, furry missile growling and barking that slammed into the Xenomorph’s torso, knocking it off its feet before it clawed at him and tossed him away like a toy.
“Doggo!” Therese cried behind her.
The sound of her daughter’s voice seemed to give Merrilyn extra strength. The upturned canteen table was between them and the monster.
“The table!” she called out. “Grab it!”
Cher frowned but did as Merrilyn bid, the pair of them picking up the table by its top, legs toward the Xenomorph. She nodded to Cher and they both pushed forward with a simultaneous yell, Merrilyn angling the table so one of the metal legs hit the surprised alien in the chest, forcing it back against the wall and piercing its dark flesh.
It wasn’t enough to kill it. Cher and Merrilyn ducked behind the tabletop as the Xenomorph reached for them. It was trapped and out of range, and weakened by its wound, but only for as long as they had the strength to hold it there. Merrilyn risked lifting her pistol, but the creature clawed at it and knocked it out of her hand.
Then the canteen doors crashed inward.
* * *
“How many, Davis?” Cher said through gritted teeth, not daring to take her eyes off the Xenomorph pinned to the wall by the table.
“Two,” Davis said. “No, three.”
“Shit,” Cher said. “Shit shit shit.” This was it then. This was how it ended. She knew why her sister had died, but she would never get the word out. She would just join the mystery of her death, another victim of the conspiracy.
“Wait,” Davis said.
“Fuck,” moaned Cher. “More?”
Then she heard what Davis had heard. Gunfire. Lots of it, and the howling, screeching death rattles of monsters, out there in the corridor.
She sagged momentarily, then redoubled her efforts, pushing the table against the monster as it screamed and howled at them. Were they saved? Was it in time? And what was that…? Under the screams and the gunfire, a man’s voice, almost drowned but distinct and strong. And saying… a prayer?
Augustus Trent strode along the corridor, flanked by his Green Berets in their camouflage fatigues and Kevlar as they emptied their projectile rifles into the demons that infested the colony buildings of LV-187. He had never seen the like of these black, skeletal beasts with their rows of needle-sharp teeth and vicious claws, but they were merely another enemy. And the Royal Marines treated each enemy as the same: inferior and to be defeated.
He could see the fear in the eyes of some of the men and women under his command and he needed them to be strong in the face of the cadre of filth that hell had seen fit to unleash against them.
“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” Trent called over the sound of gunfire and the death screeches of the monsters, “I will fear no evil.” He put his foot on the neck of an injured creature and fired his revolver into its head until it stopped twitching. “For thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff comfort me.”
They had killed five of the things, by his reckoning, and there was some commotion ahead in a double doorway where he could see at least two of the beasts crouching. A sign above the door proclaimed it to be the “Cantine.” Trent signaled for his troops to head toward it.
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of thine enemies, thou annointest my head with oil…”
Three Green Berets fell to their knees and killed the two creatures by the doorway with bullets, avoiding the corpses which bled acid that smoked and boiled where it landed. Trent nodded his appreciation.
“My cup runneth over,” he intoned.
There was more noise from the canteen… human noise. Shouts and screams and… a dog? Trent stepped carefully over the bodies of the creatures and surveyed the scene. Two women had one of the monsters trapped against the wall with a table, but they were under extreme pressure. There was indeed a dog, which seemed to be guarding a small child in the corner. Trent checked his revolver.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” he called loudly as he strode toward them. It was the first time he had taken a proper look at one of the creatures, its bulbous head, its gaping jaws. Truly dragged from the mouth of Hell. He held up his gun as he approached.
“And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” The stricken creature turned its face to him and hissed, opening its jaws. Trent emptied his gun into its head, and it slammed back against the wall, the explosive shells blowing its brains out. The surface bubbled as the acid began to eat through.
As the two women holding the table slumped to the floor, Trent looked around as his team signaled that the immediate area was clear and secure.
“Amen,” Augustus Trent said. He holstered his gun. “Now, is someone going to tell me what the fuck is going on here?”
“Sir!” one of the marines called, and Trent turned to see a man in the doorway. His troops’ guns were trained on the newcomer. He was tall and broad, and looked exhausted.
“Chad!” the dog shouted. Trent raised an eyebrow.
Curiouser and curiouser.
The man held up his hands. “Thank God you’re here.”
“Correct,” Trent said. “You can indeed thank God that we’re here.”