As soon as Chad had cautiously entered the colony buildings, the ruined comms tower burning above him, he heard the gunfire.
Abandoning caution, he ran down the corridors as fast as he could, quickly coming across the corpses of the Xenomorphs that had been massing to attack the canteen. There he found what he recognized as a troop of Royal Marines and their commander, who introduced himself as Captain Augustus Trent of the HMS God’s Hammer.
Chad told the captain everything he needed to know about the Xenomorphs, expecting the usual barrage of questions and disbelief, but Trent just kept absent-mindedly stroking the scar that ran down his face.
“I wondered why the Cronulla was here,” Trent said.
“That was the ship that the Colonial Marines came from?” Chad said. “What happened to it?”
“We did.” Trent smiled thinly. “You’ve met with the landing party? What’s their location?”
“Dead,” Chad said. “Most of them in the dropship that destroyed the comms tower. Their officer was killed on the landing platform.”
“What happened to him?” Trent said.
“Xenomorphs did.”
“You have a ship, yes?” Merrilyn stepped forward, Therese hiding shyly behind her.
“I do, ma’am,” Trent said, touching the front of his beret. “The finest ship in the service of New Albion.”
“New Albion?” Chad said. “But the Royal Marines had to be here for the Three World Empire.”
“The galaxy is changing, Mr. McLaren,” Trent said, “and we must change with it. I, along with my crew, have decided that we are better placed serving the needs of this emergent new force than being the… what was it the commander of the Cronulla called us before he died? Ah, yes. A toothless bulldog. Better than being a toothless bulldog in the service of the Three World Empire.”
Trent stood. “We have three dropships here. I must go and get patched through to New Albion to apprise them of the situation. That all the trade party who so bravely held this colony for them have lost their lives in service to the new empire.”
“But you’re going to take us with you, right?” Cher said. “You can get us up to your ship and back to New Albion?”
“Members of my team will remain here for your protection,” Trent said. “Please don’t worry, ma’am. I do not intend to leave anyone on LV-187.” He turned and marched away with two of his marines.
Yes, well, Chad thought, that’s not the same thing as taking us with you, is it?
* * *
“I’m so glad to see you,” Cher said, giving Chad a long hug that she was too exhausted to break off. “I thought you were dead. Everybody else is.”
“Do we have any idea how many of these things have been killed?” Merrilyn asked.
Chad shrugged. “I saw five corpses in the corridors, plus the two in the doorway, and the one here. There were six in the hold of the dropship that crashed into the comms tower. How many did they kill last night? How many did we?” He rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s a moot point. If there’s a hive, and a queen, and more eggs… it depends how many of the colonists they kept alive.”
“So the place could still be crawling with them,” Cher said. “Where the hell is Trent going? We need him to get us the hell out of here, and nuke the fucking place.”
“Agreed,” Chad said, “and the God’s Hammer should be more than equipped to do that.” He looked up. “Here comes Trent now.”
“You get through to your bosses on New Albion?” Cher said as Trent walked up to them and pulled up a chair, sitting astride it with his arms over the back. He ignored her and pointed to Chad.
“Mr. McLaren. Tell me again about the reproductive cycle of these Xenomorphs.”
When Chad had gone through it all again, he noticed three of the Royal Marines edging closer, their rifles in their hands. He frowned.
“Trent? What’s going on?”
“You are all being detained, temporarily, for your own safety.”
“On what grounds?” Cher said, standing up and bristling. “I’m a citizen of the United Americas.” She glared at him. “You’re making a very big mistake.”
“You are, along with Mr. McLaren and the synthetic dog, wanted for questioning on New Albion in connection with a serious breach of a no-fly order.” He turned to Merrilyn. “Ms. Hambleton and her daughter are citizens of a foreign power which is at war with New Albion. You will all be held here until our operations are complete.”
“Can’t you at least detain us on your ship, rather than here where those creatures might still attack?” Merrilyn said, looking around.
“What operations, Trent?” Chad said. “What exactly are your orders?”
“Mr. McLaren,” Trent said mildly. “You mentioned the existence of a hive. Now, where exactly would we find that?”
* * *
An hour later the marines had set up, in the center of the canteen, a field comms unit on which were displayed the various schematic overlays of the colony base.
“Can we get lifeforms readings on here?” Trent asked.
“Just patching into the colony mainframe, sir,” the marine at the controls said. “Any second now…” A fleet of yellow dots appeared on the map. “This concentration is us, here,” the marine continued, pointing to a cluster. “Here and here we have gold and red teams.”
“And these?” Trent pointed to a small grouping on the far side of the colony, and then several individual dots scattered around.
“Xenomorphs,” Chad said at his shoulder. “I count at least… twenty?”
Trent looked at him. “And where do we find this queen? We find her, we find the hive, right?”
Chad studied the schematic. He called Merrilyn over and pointed to one of the stationary dots.
“Where is this?”
She peered at it. “That’s the fusion reactor hub.”
Chad straightened up. “Then that’s your hive.” He looked at Trent. “I still say it makes more sense just to nuke the facility from orbit. You could lose a lot of men mopping up twenty Xenomorphs, and the queen… you don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”
Trent frowned. “We are not destroying a viable colony operation, along with all the oil and ore that’s stored in those tanks. Do you monitor the news, Mr. McLaren? Do you know how scarce a resource oil is, especially out here in the colonies?”
“Profit wins again,” Chad said. “Fine, Trent. You want to do it the old-fashioned way, I’ll help you. But people are going to die, you get that? And I don’t want my friends to be among them. Will you guarantee their safety?”
“I’d be a fool to make that promise,” Trent replied. “But you have one of the finest bodies of military personnel in the Weyland Isles boiling for a fight here, so I rather fancy our chances against an uncoordinated mob of blood-crazed animals.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Chad said quietly. “It never ends well.”
Trent smiled. “This time you have God on your side, Mr. McLaren.”
* * *
Trent, Chad, and six Royal Marines were outfitted in armored apesuits, favored by both Colonial Marines and Weyland-Yutani operatives. At Chad’s insistence, the soldiers had Weyland-Yutani ID23 underslung incinerator units fitted to their NSG23 assault rifles. He told Trent it was the only way to make certain the eggs were fully destroyed. Trent himself was armed with his Norcomm semi-automatic; when Chad asked for a weapon, he was given a basic pulse sidearm.
“You won’t need it,” Trent said confidently. “My team will handle this. You won’t even get your hands dirty.”
“Why only six?” Chad said. “We should be taking three times that number of personnel.”
“Because we’re professionals.”
Chad turned to the others, Therese hiding from the mask of his suit behind Merrilyn. He flipped the face visor and smiled at her.
“We’ll be away from here soon. We’re leaving all this behind.”
Davis trotted over and Chad squatted to talk to him. “Be careful,” Davis said. “You promise me?”
Chad ruffled his fur. “We’ve got a lot to do, Davis. Neither of us are dying here.”
“Mr. McLaren,” Trent said, pulling down his visor. “Time for us to roll out.”
“Be safe,” Cher said.
“For all our sakes,” Merrilyn added.
A team of four additional marines escorted the fire team down the corridors until they came to the double doors marked with the nuclear warning stickers. They were locked and one marine fixed a low-level magnetic charge, blowing the locks with a precise, muted whump.
Inside was a small, steel-lined foyer with an elevator and a flight of metal stairs. Trent indicated for the fire team to start descending the steps, and turned to the four marines. “Two on the doors, the other pair back to the canteen.” He looked at Chad. “Shall we do this?”
Chad could think of nothing he wanted to do less. He’d seen Xenomorph hives. He’d seen queens. He was normally running away from them, not walking into them.
Hitting the night vision switch on his visor, he fell in behind the marines slowly descending the stairs. Trent stayed behind him.
* * *
In the canteen, one of the marines got the big water boiler working and proceeded to make mugs of tea for everyone. How very English, Merrilyn thought, sitting by the observation window, watching the clouds scudding across the sky while Therese petted Davis. Rain pattered lightly against the window, but it wasn’t another storm as bad as last night. Still, she didn’t feel as good about this as she should. Why could they not have airlifted them off LV-187 in a dropship, back to their vessel in orbit, and then played their stupid little soldier games? Why did they have to wait here for this to be played out?
Cher was helping distribute the tea among the marines lounging in the canteen, and she brought two steaming mugs over to Merrilyn. “Milky and sugary, only way it comes, apparently,” she said. Merrilyn gratefully accepted the mug and sipped at it. She could sense that Cher was wanting to say something.
“What is it?”
Cher bit her lip, hesitated, then said, “While everyone was resting… I saw the security camera footage. From when Therese found the Ovomorph.”
Merrilyn put her cup on the table. “Ah.”
“That was the first contact the colony had with the Xenomorphs?”
Merrilyn nodded warily, pondering what she was going to say. They had been through a lot together, more than most people had to bind them, but still she was not ready for all of this.
“How?” Cher said helplessly.
Merrilyn shrugged. “Luck? Divine intervention? She’s stronger than she knows? I ask myself the question every day, and I never get an answer. I just give thanks for it.”
Cher nodded. “From what Chad told me, once a face-hugger attached itself, no force on Earth would get it off. Not without killing the host.”
“As I said, luck,” Merrilyn said, shrugging again. “She reacts very quickly. As soon as it hits her face she pulls it off, throws it to the floor, and stamps on it. You’ve watched the footage. I didn’t really know what it was or what it did until Chad explained it properly, but I think she just managed to get it off quickly before it could… before it could do what it does.”
“I’m so glad she did,” Cher said, looking over at Therese. “She’s one special kid, Merrilyn.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” she said, following Cher’s gaze.
* * *
The stairs went down and down, deeper than the colony base, into the very rock on which it was built. The reactor had been drilled in deep in case of accidents, but even so, if it went into meltdown it would still take out most of the place.
Eventually they bottomed out in another foyer, with another set of double doors. Except these were open—clawed open, the metal twisted. Chad turned to Trent and held up his hand.
“Halt,” Trent said on the short-wave radios connecting the fire team.
“OK,” Chad said. “If that is a hive in there, you’re going to see some very weird shit. There may be drones—smaller aliens. There will definitely be a queen, and she’s going to be big. And there will be eggs. I suggest half the team starts torching the eggs and the rest of us take the queen. If we can.”
“We don’t work in ifs, we work in whens,” Trent said. “We’re the Royal Marines. OK, team, you heard the man. Let’s go, and let’s tread carefully. And let’s kick some Xenomorph arse.”
* * *
The Royal Marine operating the ad hoc scanner and comms desk was called Winwick, and she was patiently explaining to Therese what she was seeing on the schematic.
“So this is us, here, in the canteen, see? And over here we have Captain Trent and Mr. McLaren and the fire team.”
“Why are their dots smaller?” Therese said.
“Because they’re on a different level to us. They must be going pretty deep underground.” Winwick swiped the map away and it was replaced by one showing mainly a large circular chamber. “See? The dots are full size now. We’re looking at their level only.”
“What is this dot?” Therese asked.
“That’s, uh, I guess that’s…” Winwick glanced at Merrilyn.
“It’s OK. She’s seen plenty this last week.”
“That’s a Xenomorph, Therese. Maybe the queen they’re going to kill.”
Therese nodded as Winwick swiped their floor back to the top level of the schematic. “And what are these dots here?”
Winwick frowned. “Those are… Shit.” She looked around, shouting at the nearest marine. “Incoming! We got incoming!”
The marines leapt up, grabbing their weapons, and training them on the doors. The soldiers on guard duty in the corridor looked in and shook their heads. “Nothing here!”
“They’re right here!” Winwick protested. “They’re right”—she looked up—“on top of us.”
“The last one came through the ceiling!” Cher yelled, and the marines started to fire upward, punching holes in the ceiling panels and bringing down a shower of dust and plaster. Merrilyn covered Therese’s ears against the cacophony.
After thirty seconds they paused, looking at each other. Nothing came down. No tell-tale drips of acidic blood. Merrilyn walked over to Winwick and looked at her map. There were still five dots moving about, seemingly right in the room with them.
Then there was an eruption of fragmented tile and wood and a Xenomorph burst through the floor by the window. It scooped up the little girl in its claws.
“Therese!” Merrilyn screamed.