Chad awoke in the canteen, lying on two tables pushed together to form a makeshift cot. He was covered with blankets. Merrilyn, Therese, and Cher stood above him, concern clouding their faces. When he opened his eyes, Therese gave a little cheer.
“Yay! He’s alive!”
“I don’t feel it,” he said, his mouth dry. With Cher’s help, he struggled to sit up, took the bottle of water that Merrilyn handed him and drained it. Around him, the canteen was a controlled riot of activity, the Royal Marines packing up their equipment and preparing to ship out. Davis was by the window, and he looked around.
“Glad to have you in the land of the living. You might want to see this.”
He joined Davis at the window and looked over to the landing platform, on which the three Royal Marine dropships were lined up. The clouds had thickened and the rain was coming down again, though not anything like with the ferocity of the storm. There were three processions of marines in hazmat suits passing along large boxes, each a meter tall. Chad guessed they were portable cryo-chambers, and with a sinking heart he knew what was in them.
“I suppose Trent made it, then?”
“That he did,” a voice behind him said. It was the man himself, a large bandage around his middle, his arm in a sling. “Mr. McLaren, you saved my life in there. I cannot thank you enough.”
“Sir,” Winwick said from the portable comms desk. “The mainframe here is losing power very quickly, but I’ve done a final sweep. I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but I’m not picking up any readings apart from who’s supposed to be here.” She smiled. “I think LV-187 might be Xenomorph free.”
“Well, it will be soon.” Chad turned to Trent. “I assume those are the Ovomorphs you’re loading into your dropships?”
“You know they are, Mr. McLaren. I told you that what our orders were. This is a game-changing resource. The colonies are about to get very chaotic indeed. This is New Albion’s way of ensuring that we have the upper hand in what is to come.”
“What are you going to do? Try to breed Xenomorphs? Because there’s only one way that will end,” Chad said. “You’ve seen what happened here, Trent. If that’s what your superiors are planning, you should put your ship a very long way from them.”
“These things can’t be controlled, I know that,” Trent said. “But just one egg, on one enemy colony… and we have more than a hundred and fifty of them.”
“That is how this started!” Merrilyn said angrily. “Those Colonial Marines working for Weyland-Yutani put those things down here, and everybody died! How can you put other people through that? It’s evil.”
“It’s warfare,” Trent said with a shrug. “It is what it is.”
“For a man of God, you seem happy to be unleashing hell on the universe,” Merrilyn spat, and she turned back to Therese.
Chad watched the marines loading the final boxes into the dropships. When he turned, the comms desk had been packed up, and all the marines had left the canteen, except for two armed men with rifles who flanked Trent.
“Just following orders,” Chad said, shaking his head. “I thought you were a better man than this, Trent.”
“So where are you taking us?” Cher demanded. “Back to New Albion? Are we under arrest? Because I’m sure as hell not coming quietly.”
“Perhaps, Mr. McLaren, I am a better man than you think I am. I do my duty.” Trent rested his hand on his holstered pistol. “Follow orders. That is my job. I’m a soldier.”
Trent unclipped his pistol and drew it. He pointed it directly at Chad. “Removing the Ovomorphs was only part of my brief. I was told to leave no survivors. Not one.” He looked to Cher, Merrilyn, Davis, and Therese in turn. “Not a single one of you.”
Merrilyn held Therese close to her. “You are a monster!”
Trent looked at her for a long time, and then slid his gun back into its holster.
“No, I don’t think I am,” he said quietly. “I have seen monsters. I have killed them. I do not think I am one.” He turned to Chad. “You saved my life. I said I cannot thank you enough. I think perhaps I can. I am not going to take you with me, but I am not going to kill you. I think you deserve that. You all deserve that.”
“You’re going to abandon us here?” Cher said.
“There is the New Albion trade ship, the Victory,” Trent said. “I’ve had it looked at. It is flightworthy. We’ve taken the liberty of removing the corpse from inside. Oh, and I’ve had a timed lockdown placed on the controls. You won’t be able to leave until two hours after we depart.” He grinned. and it was lopsided. “Don’t want you doing anything rash, Chad. As you said, the Royal Marines don’t have a monopoly on stupidity.”
Trent turned to leave the canteen, the two marines falling in behind him. He paused at the doors. “It’s been an honor to fight alongside you. All of you. I hope that if we meet again, it will be on the same side.” Then he saluted, and marched out of the room.
* * *
Thirty minutes later, the five of them stood at the observation window and watched the three dropships take off vertically, turn in the air, and fly in formation up into the thick clouds, where they were lost from sight.
Chad punched the window. “Damn! Damn them! All those eggs, all that death…” He put his head against the window. “It’s going to be an apocalypse.”
“Hey,” Cher said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. “We survived, didn’t we? We made it. All of us, and in a couple of hours we can get off this place. Get ourselves to Earth, and I can tell my story.”
“Yes,” Chad said. “I just hope there’s somebody left to tell it to.”
* * *
In the wide, empty circular chamber above the reactor, the Queen twitched. Not quite dead, but she was dying. Her blood fizzed and bubbled around her, a dark pool that ate steadily through the floor, causing her to sag and sink into the liquefying lead.
She had known, dimly, that her eggs were removed, one by one. Had they tried to destroy her young, she would have summoned the energy to kill them, to wipe them out. But they had not tried to destroy the eggs. They took them.
It was a wrench for any mother when her progeny were taken from her, but it was also the way of things for all living creatures. It was a mother’s job to nurture and protect them until they were ready to make their own way in the universe.
Satisfied, she hissed, and died.
Her blood continued to seep out, eating into and weakening the floor beneath her. Until it finally buckled and gave, and she fell, fell, fell into the heat of the miniature sun that burned below her.
* * *
“Will you go to Earth, too?” Cher said to Merrilyn. She still seemed a little frosty after their earlier exchange, and to be honest, Cher was feeling a little jumpy, as well. But she wanted Merrilyn onside before she said what she had to say.
“I suppose,” Merrilyn replied. “Where else is there to go?” She looked up and out of the window. “Is anywhere safe, with those eggs out there? Who knows where they might end up?”
“I’m sorry to have to say this,” Chad said, standing next to where they sat, “but I’m not sure Earth is going to be safe for us. And I don’t mean from Xenomorphs.”
“What do you mean, then?” Cher said.
“I mean, we are all in danger now.” He sat down, started to count off on his fingers. “Weyland-Yutani will know we were here. They don’t take kindly to survivors of Xenomorph infestations shooting off their mouths. New Albion will know soon enough that Trent didn’t kill us, which means they’ll be after us, too. We were witnesses to the destruction of the Cronulla, which means the Colonial Marines will be very interested in talking to us. This is, or was, an ICSC world before the New Albion secession. So they’ll want to know what the hell happened here, and there’s one thing I can guarantee—no matter who you talk to, once you mention Xenomorphs, things get very complicated indeed.” He looked at them both. “It’s at least two weeks in hypersleep to Earth. That’s a hell of a long time for a hell of a lot of things to happen, and who knows what will be waiting for us when we arrive.”
“What are you suggesting?” Merrilyn stared at him. “That we are somehow now all… fugitives?”
“He’s more than suggesting it,” Davis said, padding up to them and sitting down. “Welcome to our world.”
“I have a child.” Merrilyn looked over to where Therese was playing with her soft toy by the window. “I cannot be… be on the run.”
“Merrilyn. About Therese.” Cher took a deep breath. Now was as good a time as any. She said, as gently as she could, “I really think we should talk. All of us.”
“What do you have to say about my daughter now?” Merrilyn glared at her angrily.
“Do you think… Do you think it’s possible she’s infected?” Cher said softly. “With an embryo?”
Merrilyn stared at her and shook her head. “Why would you say that?”
“I saw the footage of when she found the first Ovomorph,” Cher said to the others. “She was hit by a face-hugger.”
“What?” Chad’s eyes widened. “But this was… what? Nine, ten days ago?”
“She ripped it off before it could put that tube down her throat,” Merrilyn said, her eyes full of tears. “You saw it, Cher. We can watch it again if you like.”
“Then the Xenomorph that attacked her… it left her alone,” Cher pressed. “It didn’t kill her when it had ample opportunity to. Why was that? It almost seemed as if it could… sense something about her.”
“Stop this.” Merrilyn began to cry, balling her fists and slamming them into her thighs. “Please. Stop this.”
“And,” Cher said remorselessly, “when the Royal Marine medic wanted to look her over, you refused. Flat-out refused.”
“Because she was fine!” Merrilyn shouted.
Therese looked over from where she was playing. “Mama?”
“It’s all right, Little Flower,” Merrilyn said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “You play.” She turned back to Cher and hissed, “There is nothing wrong with my daughter. She is not infected with a Xenomorph.”
“Well, maybe we should find out for sure,” Cher said. “I mean, I’m sorry to be harsh here Merrilyn, but we’re all about to get into a very small spaceship and be stuck together for a couple of weeks and—”
“Merrilyn,” Chad said. “Maybe Cher’s right. If there’s a medical bay here and we can get the X-ray machine working, perhaps we could just find out. To be sure? I mean, I’ve never heard of a gestation period that long, but we’re learning new stuff about these things all the time. Just to be sure.”
“And what if you find out what you so desperately want to find out?” Merrilyn yelled. “What then? You leave us both here? Or worse?”
There was a long silence, punctuated only by Therese tunelessly singing “Joe Le Taxi.” Merrilyn began to cry again. Davis cleared his throat.
“Chad… Cher,” he said slowly. “Therese isn’t carrying an embryo.”
Chad looked at him. “How can you be sure? Have you conducted some kind of scan?”
“No,” Davis said, “but I am sure. For the same reason that Merrilyn is so certain that she isn’t.”
Merrilyn stared. “You know?”
Cher frowned. “Know what? Look, isn’t it time everybody came clean about whatever this—”
She was cut off by the strip lights above abruptly changing from pale white to a garish, flashing red, accompanied by a blaring monotone alarm which sounded throughout the colony facility.
“What in God’s name now?” Chad said.
“Oh mon Dieu…” Merrilyn said, her face going pale.
“What is it?” Cher shouted above the alarm.
“It’s the fusion reactor,” Merrilyn looked at her, her voice trembling. “That alarm means it’s going critical.”