Chad was introduced to the fire team before they went down, Trent calling them to attention and pointing them out as, “Pugh, Pugh, McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub.” He turned to Chad. “Pugh and Pugh are twins.” They’d all saluted, but Chad was sure he’d forget their names, and was glad they were stenciled on their apesuits.
It didn’t matter. Despite Trent’s bravado, they wouldn’t all be getting out of here alive.
* * *
“It’s hot,” one of the Pughs said as they paused outside the twisted doors.
“We’re right on top of a fusion reactor,” Chad said.
“That’s not too great, is it, sir?” Grub said, looking at Trent.
“According to Merrilyn, there’s a meter of lead between us and the reactor below,” Chad said. “Our guns shouldn’t pierce that, and the radiation should be minimal so long as we don’t hang around.”
McGrew and Cuthbert took up position and lit their incinerator unit pilot flames, while the two Pughs flanked them with their rifles. Grub and Dibble took up the rear.
“Move out,” Trent said.
The mangled doors led into a cavernous, circular room. In the dark, it was difficult to estimate its size. The marines peered around, trying to make sense of what they could see in the light from their shoulder-mounted arclights.
“What’s on the walls?” McGrew said, reaching out to touch the uneven surface with her gloved hand. Something moved within the fibrous, resinous mass that covered the surface in crisscross fashion, and she drew back sharply. “Ah!”
“This is how the hive works,” Chad said. “They don’t kill everyone; they bring some survivors here and implant them. Keep them alive until the chestburster comes through.”
“Holy Lord.” Trent’s eyes widened behind his visor. “There’s a person behind all that gunk. Cuthbert, help them down.”
“Wait,” Chad said. There was indeed a human form behind the weblike resin, and a brief movement, a head of indeterminate age and sex, shifting slightly. Then there was a dry, whispered mumble.
“What?” Cuthbert said, leaning closer.
“Don’t,” Chad said.
“Kill… me…” the colonist said.
Then the figure convulsed, gasped, and the gunk trapping them to the wall twisted and bulged. It exploded outward, a screaming, gnashing infant Xenomorph launching itself from the colonist’s shuddering corpse. Right at Cuthbert
Before it reached the marine, McGrew and Dibble opened fire, and one of the Pughs lit up his incinerator. He toasted the creature until it was a blackened spot on the lead floor.
From deeper inside the room, there was a sensation of movement and a low, ominous growl.
“Now we have to be ready,” Chad said.
They assumed the formation again and moved forward until their arclights picked out something in front of them.
“What is that?” Grub said from behind. She stood on her tiptoes to shine her light better. In front of them, as far into the darkness as their lights could pierce, there was a sea of eggs. Chad had never seen so many in one place. Too many to count, but he estimated maybe… a hundred? Just that they could see?
“Destroy them,” he said to the marines.
* * *
“Hold your fire!” one of the marines shouted, a woman with red hair tied in a ponytail. The soldiers remained stock-still, their rifles trained on the creature at the center of the room, where it had clawed its way up from the maintenance ducts beneath the tiled floor.
The Xenomorph that held Therese tightly in its grip.
Merrilyn felt all strength and sense desert her simultaneously. She wanted to rush at the creature, grab her daughter back from it, but at the same time she felt her legs buckle and she sank to the floor, the periphery of her vision darkening as though she was going to black out.
No, she told herself sternly. No. You do neither of those things. You cannot help Therese by fainting, or by getting yourself killed. Pull it together, Merrilyn.
Could the things be reasoned with? Or were they really just the mindless engines of destruction and death they appeared to be? Surely, underneath it all, they were living things, too. Surely, deep within that ungodly frame built purely for killing, there was some spark of… something? She had to try. There was nothing else she could do.
The Xenomorph held Therese with both hands under her arms, the child as limp as a rag doll. Merrilyn could see she was conscious though, looking at the monster with an almost supernatural calmness. God knows what the experience was doing to her. God knows how it was affecting her, and how long-lasting the trauma would be.
Somewhere deep inside Merrilyn, she chided herself for these thoughts. Doubt crept in again, something she had pushed away long ago, trained herself not to feel.
Stop it, she told herself. That’s your daughter up there.
The Xenomorph appeared to be sizing Therese up, its head on one side as if it didn’t quite know what to make of her. It seemed to be… sniffing her, as a dog would. Then it opened its mouth and its terrible secondary set of jaws emerged, extending so close to Therese’s face it looked as if it might kiss her.
Merrilyn became aware of the marines slowly taking up position around her, rifles on the creature, waiting to see what it would do.
“Please,” she said loudly. “Please. That’s my daughter. If you understand anything…”
The Xenomorph screeched deafeningly, spittle peppering Therese’s face, and it drew her closer to its widening jaws.
* * *
“Wait,” Trent said.
Chad looked at him. “What? Wait? We’re here to destroy these things. What are we waiting for?”
“We should take out this Queen first, yes?”
“Look at them, Trent.” Chad grabbed the arm of the man’s apesuit. He pointed to the eggs, like a terrible harvest laid out before them. “Look at them. They’re shuddering and ready to let loose the face-huggers. We need to destroy them. Now. You want your team to be destroyed?” He paused, suddenly frowning. “You are going to destroy them, aren’t you?”
“We should perhaps destroy that first,” Trent said, pointing beyond the eggs.
Out of the darkness at the edge of the light cast by their flashlights, a shape was moving, coalescing out of the shadows, blackly reflecting the light. It was huge, bigger than any Chad had ever seen before. Almost ten meters tall, its broad head protected by chitinous plates, its jaws extended and massive, like a great white shark’s. It was almost apelike, its sinewy arms hanging low, its claws as sharp as butcher’s knives. A monstrous segmented tail whipped lazily behind it as it stepped forward on its muscular legs, crouching and looking at them over the sea of its progeny.
“The Queen,” Trent breathed. “Good Lord. I had no idea.”
No shit, Chad thought. He wanted to turn tail and run. She was too big. They had no chance. They were all going to die.
“Sir?” one of the Pughs said, turning to Trent.
Trent rallied, and nodded, and seemed to pull himself out of the hypnotic state into which the sight of the Queen had plunged him.
“Yes, Pugh,” he said. “All of you. Let’s take this bitch down.”
The six marines opened fire on the Queen.
She threw her head back and screeched, a noise ripped from the guts of a million damned souls.
* * *
The Xenomorph paused, looked up and beyond the marines. Then it looked down, at the hole in the floor from which it had emerged. It hissed, and abruptly cast Therese away from it. Merrilyn screamed as her daughter hit the floor and skidded away.
“Hit it!” one of the marines shouted, and there was an explosion of gunfire aimed at the creature, which howled and dove into the ruined floor, immediately lost from sight in the warren of ducts and vents beneath their feet. Winwick ran to the comms desk and leaned over the screen.
“It’s moving. Quick. All the dots are.” She looked up. “They’re converging on the reactor.”
“Chad and the fire team must have found the Queen,” Davis said. “They’re going to protect her. Can we contact Trent?”
Merrilyn didn’t care about Chad and the fire team. She ran to Therese and gathered the child in her arms.
“Little Flower, Little Flower,” she whispered.
“I’m all right, Mama,” Therese said.
Merrilyn felt Cher at her shoulder. “Does she need medical treatment?”
“I don’t think so. Are you hurt, Baba?”
“It didn’t hurt me,” Therese said. “It just scared me.”
One of the marines with a red cross on an armband came over. “I’ll check her over just in case, ma’am.”
“No!” Merrilyn said fiercely. “No. Thank you, but you heard her. She’s fine.”
The medic frowned, then shrugged, and left. Cher squatted by Merrilyn. “I know my knowledge of these things is limited but… I’ve never seen that before. Chad never described anything like it. I thought these things killed without mercy. No hesitation.”
“Then thank God this one didn’t,” Merrilyn said, hugging Therese tight.
“But why?” Cher pressed. “Why didn’t it hurt her? What stopped it?”
Merrilyn rounded on her angrily. “You sound as though you wanted it to kill her! What is wrong with you? Would that make a better story for you? You vulture!”
“Merrilyn, you know I didn’t—” Cher put a hand on her arm but Merrilyn shrugged her off.
“Leave me and my daughter alone,” she snapped. “Stop asking questions.” Cher shrugged and backed off, and Merrilyn watched her go to the comms desk where Winwick was trying to contact Trent, with little success.
“The walls around the reactor must be too thick,” the marine said, throwing her headset down in frustration. “I think we should get a back-up team down to them.”
“We were told to stay in position here,” another marine doubtfully said.
Winwick looked at him. “There are six Xenomorphs heading their way, and that’s on top of whatever they have to contend with down there.”
* * *
The Queen was more heavily armored than the standard Xenomorphs, and the bullets from the marines’ guns pinged off her carapace with sparking ricochets. The Pughs stepped forward and let loose their incinerators, yellow flames gouting out in hissing streams. The Queen put up her thick arms to ward them off and screeched.
“It’s no good,” Chad yelled, uselessly emptying his handgun at the monstrous form. “Don’t we have anything else?”
Trent reached inside his apesuit and pulled out a small metal sphere. “I brought a few grenades, just in case.” He pressed a button on the ball and took a run up, launching it at his target. She batted it away with one of her huge hands and it disappeared into the darkness behind her, exploding in a violent burst against the back wall of the curved chamber, illuminating the Queen in all her terrible glory.
“How many of those things did you bring?” Chad said.
“Six,” Trent muttered. “Enough for an over.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Chad said through gritted teeth, “but this isn’t a game.” The Queen began to advance, striding over the crop of eggs that lay between them. “I knew one fire team wasn’t going to be enough. We need to get out of here. She won’t follow us—won’t leave her eggs unprotected.”
“No,” Trent said. “We have a job to do and we’re going to do it. The Royal Marines never bail on a mission.” He turned to Dibble. “Have we a link with the canteen? Can we get reinforcements?”
“No, sir. The walls are too thick.”
Trent pulled out another grenade and launched it at the Queen. This one bounced downward and exploded, taking with it a dozen or more eggs at her feet. She threw back her head and let loose a deafening roar.
“Now she’s really pissed off,” Chad said. “Trent, isn’t it obvious? We should just get out of here and off-world. You can nuke the entire colony. Job done.”
“I told you, McLaren. It’s not an option. We have orders, and they do not involve destroying this facility.” He turned to Dibble. “Go. Up a level or two. Get word to the others. We need everyone down here.”
Dibble nodded and backed off toward the doors.
“You’re just sentencing more of your people to death,” Chad said.
Trent lifted his rifle and fired, pumping projectiles into the advancing Queen. “Aim high!” he shouted to the others. “For the head! Try not to hit the eggs.”
What? Chad stared at him.
“No,” he said. “Trent, tell me it isn’t true.”
“I’m a little busy trying to kill a thirty-foot alien monster, McLaren.”
Chad grabbed his arm. “You’re not going to destroy the eggs, are you? Those are your orders, aren’t they? Not to destroy them, but to take them.”
“We’re standing in the middle of the most important cache of bioweapons in known space,” Trent said, glaring at him. “Of course we’re not going to destroy them.”
“No.” Chad shook his head. “You can’t take the eggs off-world. Trent, you’ve seen what happens. You want these things loose on your ship? Or New Albion?”
“No,” Trent said, redoubling his assault, “but imagine them loose on the ships and worlds of our enemies.”
Chad groaned. There it was again. Weaponization. Every time humans came into contact with the Xenomorphs, someone hatched a plan to use them. And every time, it didn’t work. The aliens weren’t bombs or guns. They weren’t soldiers. They were an unbridled force of nature. You might as well try to tame a hurricane.
Suddenly there was a yell and a burst of gunfire from behind them. Chad wheeled around to see Dibble, who had reached the doors, suddenly fall under a mass of black shadows.
“Shit,” Trent said, turning and training his light on the scene. Dibble was on the ground, and crouched on him was a Xenomorph. Behind it, in the doorway more shapes crept forward. Chad counted six in all.
The Queen threw back her armored head and screamed in what sounded for all the world like triumph.