The last time Chad saw Amanda, they sat on a deserted beach on a remote Thai island that sprouted out of the azure sea like something from an alien world, but it was right there on Earth. There was wonder and beauty right there on Earth. You didn’t have to travel the universe to experience amazement at what the natural world could offer.
Yes, out there you could find purple skies and boiling seas and horizons where three moons rose at dusk, and yes, they were all wonderful and humbling to behold. But in the race to colonize space, people had forgotten that the place that had spawned them all was as beautiful a place as anywhere in the galaxy.
“I’m sorry,” he said as they shared a bottle of wine, watching the red sun dip into the blazing sea. “I failed you.”
She was weak and tired and thin, but in this place of beauty, in this universe of beauty, she was still the most beautiful thing in a trillion light years in any direction. She smiled at him.
“Yes, Chad McLaren, you have failed to find a cure for cancer. Damn you. And here I thought you loved me.”
He took the glass from her hand and kissed her, and then they lay down on the blanket as night fell and a canopy of stars unfurled above them, and made slow, quiet love. Then they lay in each other’s arms, Amanda sleeping lightly and Chad looking up at the scattered points of light, thinking about the beauty up there, both claimed by mankind and yet to be discovered.
He thought about the horror as well—the horror they had both faced, the horror that had brought them together.
In the end it was the horror that had parted them, but not the horror of gnashing teeth and clawed hands and sinuously terrible jet-black bodies of segmented chitin and bone. No, it was the horror of the frailty of the human body. Because no matter how arrogant mankind became, no matter how sure of its place in the universe it was, there was always something there to remind them that it wasn’t true, be it death at the hands of an impossible alien killing machine, or the death that crept through the shadows of their cells and preyed upon the incurable vulnerability of the human condition.
Chad had slept fitfully, and at dawn they loaded their things into the flyer and took off to a secret location where Chad laid Amanda in a cryosleep chamber and froze her fragile beauty in that moment, as her body slouched toward ultimate death. She was there now, hovering on the precipice, one foot in light, the other in darkness, waiting for him to fulfil his promise.
To find a cure.
* * *
“I’m not dying here,” Chad spat through gritted teeth. “I’m not dying today.” How many times had he repeated this mantra to himself, in a dozen hopeless situations, and every time he had survived—and it wasn’t just self-preservation. It was because he still had work to do. He had to save Amanda.
By saving Amanda, he could save himself.
Dibble was dead, but McGrew and Cuthbert were carpeting the Xenomorphs at the door with fire, and it was proving effective. Two had already fallen and four more were backing away, acid blood spraying from their wounds.
The two Pughs kept the Queen at bay with their incinerators, but they had limited fuel cells. Another strategy would have to be found, sooner rather than later.
Grub sidled along the curved wall to the right, crouched low, the dark and her camouflage hiding her against the resinous hardened goo on the walls. Trent was directing his fire at the Queen’s head, distracting her, Chad realized, enabling Grub to edge closer to her. Trent pushed his rifle into Chad’s hands and told him to keep firing. Then he reached in his suit and tossed a grenade at Grub, which she expertly caught and activated, then hurled it at the Queen’s head with precise accuracy.
By accident or design, she ducked at the last moment, but the grenade still connected and exploded. Although she was protected by her armored head plates, she threw her head back and screeched.
“Excellent work, Grub!” Trent said, but the celebration was short lived as the Queen ducked to her left and raked her huge claws toward Grub, catching the marine full in the face and tossing her like a toy back toward them.
Chad handed the rifle back to Trent and ran to her, but blood was pooling beneath her lifeless body. Then his attention was drawn to the doorway, where there was worse news. Cuthbert had fallen under two attackers, McGrew clicking her empty rifle and then disgustedly throwing it away and whipping out her handgun.
The Queen thrashed, shaking her head, and Chad guessed the explosion had affected her senses, the way she clawed at her head. He looked back to the door. There were four dead Xenomorphs now, an exhausted McGrew facing off against one more. Hadn’t there been six? “Pugh!” he shouted. One of the twins turned, and aimed a blast at the Xenomorph, which screamed as it combusted.
“Sir!” the other Pugh yelled as his incinerator died in his hands. “Out of fuel!”
Trent yelled at him to move, but the Queen was on him, her jaws clamping around his head and tearing it off, blood spraying from what remained.
McGrew screamed as the final Xenomorph peeled itself from the shadows and fell on her. Moments later, it leapt up from her corpse and Pugh incinerated it with his final charge, but its momentum carried it into him and they both fell, screaming in fire, and then were silenced.
Now it was just Chad, Trent, and the Queen.
* * *
Cher watched Merrilyn and Therese from a distance, trying to organize to the thoughts swirling around her head. Journalism was about making connections, putting together seemingly unconnected facts and incidents, to form a bigger narrative, paint a bigger picture. It was about connecting the dots with lines that didn’t necessarily link A to B, but found a route that nobody had been expecting.
The A and B she was trying to connect in her head were the footage she had seen on the security camera monitor, and what had just happened in front of her. Therese had been attacked by a face-hugger. Everything she had been told indicated that it was an impossible thing to fight off, and yet this little girl had, apparently, pulled the thing off and stomped on it.
The Xenomorph in the canteen had seemed… troubled by her. Confused. As though it wanted to kill her, but didn’t think it should.
Connections started to form in Cher’s brain. What if Therese hadn’t pulled the face-hugger off in time? What if it was… Cher didn’t know, maybe some kind of really fast-acting face-hugger? What if it had in fact implanted an embryo? That might explain why the Xenomorph didn’t kill her. Did it sense that she was carrying one of them?
From what she knew, however, the gestation period was something like hours, not days. If Therese had been infected, why hadn’t the thing emerged?
And if it was, in fact, true—or as near to the truth as Cher’s limited experience could manage—did they all really want to get off this planet and be cooped up in a spaceship with someone carrying a Xenomorph inside them? Even if it was someone as cute and brave as Therese Hambleton?
* * *
It was unbearably hot in the reactor room, and Trent tore off his visor. The Queen was standing unsteadily, perhaps even more injured by the grenade blast than Chad had expected. Between them lay the sea of eggs, and the nearest ones were pulsing, their petaled tops puckering.
“They can sense us,” Chad said. “You should put your visor back down.”
“I don’t care,” Trent said, gasping for air. “I am taking this devil down. My face will be the last thing it sees.”
They were both exhausted, but Trent refused to flee. Chad considered just going himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to abandon the marine. As insane as he was starting to sound.
Without warning, Trent set off at a run, hopping over clusters of the puckering eggs and sprinting toward the Queen. She turned, whipping her massive tail at him, and connected, flinging him away from her, into the darkness behind.
“Great,” Chad muttered. He started firing at the Queen again, then his gun clicked dully in his hand. Disgusted, he threw it at her with all his might and ran to where Trent had landed, vaulting over the eggs and keeping to what he hoped was the Queen’s blind side. He switched off his vest light and dove into the darkness.
It took a few moments.
“I’d have thought you’d have fled,” Trent murmured as Chad slid down to the ground beside him. The marine’s breathing was heavy, and in the dim light of the chamber he could see Trent holding his stomach, and a dark slick on his hands.
“The Royal Marines don’t have a monopoly on stupidity,” Chad said quietly. The Queen was to one side, shaking her head like a dog with a flea in its ear. Her senses appeared to be scrambled, which might buy them a bit of time, but she was still a force to be reckoned with. “How badly are you injured?”
“I’ve had worse, and survived,” Trent said, his breathing coming harsh and ragged. Chad thought he was lying. “Of course, they were battles that didn’t involve a demon from Hell.”
“They’re not from Hell, you know,” Chad said. “They’re God’s creatures just like you, if you believe that sort of thing, which you certainly seem to.” He settled down a little in the darkness. “If we’re going on a philosophical tip, what kind of God would create such things? Their only purpose is to kill.”
“I know you mock me, McLaren. It’s fine. I am used to it. You think in your scientific, technological world that there is no place for God. You’re wrong. As we spread among the stars, we need Him more than ever.”
“Well,” Chad said, “where is he now? If you’ve got a hotline to the Big Guy, then it would be a very good time to call in the payment for a lifetime of devotion.”
“God—”
Chad held up his hands. “If you’re going to say God moves in mysterious ways, Trent, then don’t. We don’t need mysterious ways right now. We need a fucking miracle.”
As if to prove that no such divine intervention was coming, the Queen turned to face them, her addled senses perhaps clearing, or maybe she was getting used to them. Either way, she crouched low and started to hiss, moving toward them like an angular, bony insect.
“No guns…” Trent breathed. He was starting to lose consciousness. That would be a mercy for him, Chad thought. This was no way to die. He felt a sudden stab in his heart at the thought of Amanda lying in her hypersleep, blissfully unaware that Chad would not be coming back.
The Queen approached, cautiously, her head on one side. Chad closed his eyes, waiting for her to strike. He put himself back on that island in Thailand, felt the warm sunshine on his skin, the sound of the birds wheeling high in the sky. That would be a good memory to inhabit forever. He constructed it around him, so that when the Queen struck it would be his final thought, and where he would stay when the darkness claimed him.
He felt the taste of the wine on his lips, and the hot smell of Amanda’s sun-kissed skin as he bent forward to kiss her arm.
Trent mumbled something, but Chad ignored him. He opened one eye and saw the Queen’s huge head looming over them, the ravaged left side of her face twisted and burned by the grenade. It was ruining the fantasy.
“…na…e…” Trent was shivering too, his body shutting down, going into trauma mode.
Chad didn’t want to know. He closed his eyes again, felt the Queen’s hot breath on them. She would be opening her maw wide, extending her inner jaw.
He was on the blanket with Amanda, making love for the last time. Sensual and loving, looking into each other’s eyes. No urgency, no fireworks.
“g…a…de” Trent said, grabbing his arm.
No explosions.
Explosions. Chad opened his eyes. The Queen’s face was inches from them, about to strike, like a huge, dark cobra.
“Grenades!” Chad yelled, sticking his hand into Trent’s apesuit, his fingers closing around one of the metal spheres. He pulled it out, his thumb on the indentation that armed it. The Queen hissed and lunged. Chad depressed the button and rammed it into her inner jaws, whipped out his arm, and threw himself on top of Trent.
She pulled back, then made to strike again.
Two things happened.
First, the entire chamber was lit by beams of light and a chatter of weapons as a team of Royal Marines burst in through the doors, peppering the Queen with fire. The second was that, as she turned and opened her mouth to screech her fury at them, the grenade blew the back of her head out from the inside.
She reared up to her full height, visible in the dancing beams of the flashlights held by the marines, and then toppled backward, crashing to the floor with a reverberating thud and a death scream that made Chad almost believe that Trent was right, that she had come from Hell.
And now she’d been sent straight back.
“…ood… work… Laren…” Trent gasped.
Chad patted him on his arm and waved at the marines. “Medic,” he croaked. “We need a medic.” Then he collapsed on top of Trent, and everything went black.