Microsoft Word - THE COMPLETE ALIEN OMNIBUS, page 41
light-sensing ability of suit cameras, flaring what images they
did provide.
In the midst of chaos and confusion Vasquez and Drake
found each other. High-tech harpy nodded knowingly to
new wave Neanderthal as she slammed her sequestered
magazine back in place.
‘Let’s rock,’ she said curtly.
Standing back to back, they opened up simultaneously with
their smartguns, laying down two arcs of fire like welders
sealing the skin of a spaceship. In the confined chamber the
din from the two heavy weapons was overpowering. To the
operators of the smartguns the thunder was a Bach fugue and
Grimoire stanthisizer all rolled into one.
Gorman’s voice echoed in their ears, barely audible over the
roar of battle. ‘Who’s firing? I ordered a hold on heavy fire!’
Vasquez reached up just long enough to rip away her
headset, her eyes and attention riveted on the smartgun’s
targeting screen. Feet, hands, eyes, and body became
extensions of the weapon, all dancing and spinning in unison.
Thunder, lightning, smoke, and screams filled the chamber, a
little slice of Armageddon on C-level. A great calmness flowed
through her.
Surely Heaven couldn’t be any better than this.
Ripley flinched as another scream reverberated through the
Operations bay speakers. Wierzbowski’s suit camera crumbled,
followed by the immediate flattening of his biomonitors. Her
fingers clenched, the nails digging into the palms. She’d liked
Wierzbowski.
What was she doing here, anyway? Why wasn’t she back
home, poor and unlicensed, but safe in her little apartment,
surrounded by Jones and ordinary people and common sense?
Why had she voluntarily sought the company of nightmares?
Out of altruism? Because she’d suspected all along what had
been responsible for the break in communications between
Acheron and Earth? Or because she wanted a lousy flight
certificate back?
Down in the depths of the processing station, frantic,
panicky voices ran into one another on the single personal
communications frequency. Headset components sorted sense
from the babble. She recognized Hudson’s above everyone
else’s. The comtech’s
unsophisticated
pragmatism shone
through the breakdown in tactics.
‘Let’s get out of here!’
She heard Hicks yelling at someone else. The corporal
sounded more frustrated than anything else. ‘Not that tunnel,
the other one!’
‘You sure?’ Crowe’s picture swung crazily as he ducked
something unseen, the view provided by his suit camera a wild
blur full of smoke, haze, and biomechanical silhouettes. ‘Watch
it—behind you. Move, will you!’
Gorman’s hands slowed. Something besides button pushing
was required now, and Ripley could see from the ashen
expression that had come over the lieutenant’s face that he
didn’t have it.
‘Get them out of there!’ she screamed at him. ‘Do it now!’
‘Shut up.’ He was gulping air like a grouper, studying his
readouts. Everything was unraveling, his careful plan of
advance coming apart on the remaining monitors too fast for
him to think it through. Too fast. ‘Just shut up!’
The groan of metal being ripped apart sounded over
Crowe’s headset pickup as his telemetry went black. Gorman
stuttered something incomprehensible, trying to keep control
of himself even as he was losing control of the situation.
‘Uh, Apone, I want you to lay down a suppressing fire with
the incinerators and fall back by squads to the APC. Over.’
The sergeant’s distant reply was distorted by static, the roar
of the flamethrowers, and the rapid fire stutter of the
smartguns.
‘Say again? All after incinerators?’
‘I said . . .’ Gorman repeated his instructions. It didn’t
matter if anyone heard them. The men and women trapped in
the cocoon chamber had time only to react, not to listen.
Only Apone fiddled with his headset, trying to make sense of
the garbled orders. Gorman’s voice was distorted beyond
recognition. The headsets were designed to operate and
deliver a clear signal under any conditions, including under
water, but there was something happening here that hadn’t
been anticipated by the communications equipment designers,
something that couldn’t have been foreseen by anyone because
it hadn’t been encountered before.
Someone screamed behind the sergeant. Forget Gorman. He
switched the headset over to straight intersuit frequency.
‘Dietrich? Crowe? Sound off! Wierzbowski, where are you?’
Movement to his left. He whirled and came within a
millimetre of blowing Hudson’s head off. The comtech’s eyes
were wild. He was teetering on the edge of sanity and barely
recognized the sergeant. No bold assertions now; all false
bravado fled. He was terrified out of his skin and made no
effort to conceal the fact.
‘We’re getting juked! We’re gonna die in here!’
Apone passed him a rifle magazine. The comtech slapped it
home, trying to look every which way at once. ‘Feel better?’
Apone asked him.
‘Yeah, right. Right!’ Gratefully the comtech chambered a
pulse-rifle round. ‘Forget the heat exchanger.’ He sensed
movement, turned, and fired. The slight recoil imparted by the
weapon travelled up his arm to restore a little of his lost
confidence.
Off to their right, Vasquez was laying down an uninterrup-
ted field of fire, destroying everything not human that came
within a metre of her—be it dead, alive, or part of the
processing plant’s machinery. She looked out of control.
Apone knew better. If she was out of control, they’d all be dead
by now.
Hicks ran toward her. Pivoting smoothly, she let loose a
long burst from the heavy weapon. The corporal ducked as the
smartgun’s barrel swung toward his face, stumbling clear as
the nightmarish figure stalking him was catapulted backward
by Vasquez’s blast. Biomechanical fingers had been centi-
metres from his neck.
Within the APC, Apone’s monitor suddenly spun crazily and
went dark. Gorman stared at it, as though by doing so, he could
will it back to life, along with the man it represented.
‘I told them to fall back.’ His tone was distant, disbelieving.
‘They must not have heard the order.’
Ripley shoved her face into his, saw the dazed, baffled
expression. ‘They’re cut off in there! Do something!’
He looked up at her slowly. His lips worked, but the mumble
they produced was unintelligible. He was shaking his head
slightly.
No help from that quarter. The lieutenant was out of it. Burke
had backed up against the opposite wall, as though by putting
distance between himself and the images on the remaining
active monitors he could somehow remove himself from the
battle that was raging in the bowels of the processing station.
There was only one thing that would do the surviving soldiers
any good now, and that was some kind of immediate help.
Gorman wasn’t going to do anything about it, and Burke
couldn’t. So that left Jones’s favourite human.
If the cat had been present and capable of taking action on
Ripley’s behalf, she knew what he would have done: turned the
armoured personnel carrier around and driven that sucker at
top speed for the landing field. Piled into the dropship, lifted
back to the Sulaco, slipped into hypersleep, and gone home. Not
likely anyone in colonial administration would dispute her
report this time. Not with a shell-shocked Gorman and half-
comatose Burke to back her up. Not with the recordings
automatically stored by the APC’s computer taken directly from
the soldier’s suit cameras to flash in the faces of those smug,
content Company representatives.
Get out, go home, get away, the voice inside her skull
screamed at her. You’ve got the proof you came for. The
colony’s kaput, one survivor, the others dead or worse than
dead. Go back to Earth and come back with an army next time,
not a platoon. Atmosphere fliers for air cover. Heavy weapons.
Level the place if they have to, but let ‘em do it without you.
There was only one problem with that comforting line of
reasoning. Leaving now would mean abandoning Vasquez and
Hudson and Hicks and everyone else still alive down in C-level
to the tender ministrations of the aliens. If they were lucky,
they would die. If they were not, they’d end up cemented into a
cocoon wall as replacement for the still-living host colonists
they’d mercifully carbonized.
She couldn’t do that and live with it. She’d see their faces and
hear their screams every time she rested her head on a pillow.
If she fled, she’d be swapping the immediate nightmare for
hundreds later on. A bad trade. One more time the numbers
were against her.
She was terrified of what she had to do, but the anger that
had been building inside her at Gorman’s ineffectiveness and
at the Company for sending her out here with an
inexperienced field officer and less than a dozen troops (to
save money, no doubt) helped drive her past the paralyzed
lieutenant toward the APC’s cockpit.
The sole survivor of Hadley Colony awaited her with a
solemn stare.
‘Newt, get in the back and put your seat belt on.’
‘You’re going after the others, aren’t you?’
She paused as she was strapping herself into the driver’s
chair. ‘I have to. There are still people alive down there, and
they need help. You understand that, don’t you?’
The girl nodded. She understood completely. As Ripley
clicked home the latches on the driver’s harness, the girl raced
back down the aisle.
The warm glow of instruments set in the hold mode greeted
Ripley as she turned to the controls. Gorman and Burke might
be incapable of reaction, but no such psychological restraints
inhibited the APC’s movements. She started slapping switches
and buttons, grateful now for the time spent during the past year
operating all sorts of heavy loading and transport equipment out
in Portside. The oversize turbocharged engine raced reassur-
ingly, and the personnel carrier shook, eager to move out.
The vibration from the engine was enough to shock Gorman
back to the real world. He leaned back in his chair and shouted
forward. ‘Ripley, what are you doing?’
Easy to ignore him, more important to concentrate on the
controls. She slammed the massive vehicle into gear. Drive
wheels spun on damp ground as the APC lurched toward the
gaping entrance to the station.
Smoke was pouring out of the complex. The big armoured
wheels skidded slightly on the damp pavement as she
wrenched the machine sideways and sent it hurtling down the
wide, descending rampway. The ramp accommodated the
APC with room to spare. It had been designed to admit big
earthmovers and service vehicles. Colonial construction was
typically overbuilt. Even so, the roadway was depressed by the
weight of the APC’s armour, but no cracks appeared in its wake
as Ripley sent it racing downward. Her hands hammered the
controls of the independently powered wheels as she took out
some of her anger on the uncomplaining plastic.
Mist and haze obscured the view provided by the external
monitors. She switched to automatic navigation, and the APC
kept itself from crashing into the enclosing walls, ranging
lasers reading the distance between wheels and obstacles
twenty times a second and reporting back to the vehicle’s
central computer. She maintained speed, knowing that the
machine wouldn’t let her crash.
Gorman stopped staring at the dimly seen walls rushing by on
the Operations bay screens, released his suit harness, and
stumbled forward, bouncing off the walls as Ripley sent the
APC careening wildly around tight corners.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What’s it look like I’m doing?’ She didn’t turn to face him,
absorbed in controlling the carrier.
He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Turn around! That’s an
order!’
‘You can’t give me orders, Gorman. I’m a civilian,
remember?’
‘This is a military expedition under military control. As
commanding officer, I am ordering you to turn this vehicle
around!’
She gritted her teeth, attention focused on the forward
viewscreens. ‘Go sit on a grenade, Gorman. I’m busy.’
He reached down and tried to pull her out of the chair.
Burke got both arms around him and pulled him off. She
would have thanked the Company rep, but she didn’t have the
time.
They reached C-level and the big wheels screamed as she
sent the APC into a mad turn, simultaneously switching off the
automatic navigation system and the ranging lasers. The
engine revved as they rumbled forward, tearing away pipes
and conduits, equipment modules, and chunks of alien
encrustation. She glanced at the control console until she
located the external instrumentation she wanted: strobe
beacon, siren, running lights. She wiped the entire panel with
the palm of her right hand.
The exterior of the APC came alive with sodium-arc lights,
infrared homing beacons, spinning locater flashers, and the
piercing whine of the battle siren. The individual suit monitors
were all back in the Operations bay, but she didn’t need to see
them, zeroing in on the flash of weapons fire just ahead. The
lights and roar came from beyond a thick wall of translucent
alien resin, the material eerily distributing the light from the
guns throughout its substance, giving the cocoon chamber the
appearance of a dome pulsing from within.
She nudged the accelerator. The APC smashed through the
curving wall like an iron ingot shot from a cannon. Fragments
of resin and biomechanical mortar went flying. Huge chunks
were crushed beneath the armoured wheels. She wrenched on
the wheel, and the personnel carrier pivoted neatly. The rear
of the powerful machine swung around and brought down
another section of alien wall.
Hicks appeared out of the smoke. He was firing back the way
he’d come, holding the big pulse-rifle in one hand while
supporting a limping Hudson with the other. Adrenaline,
muscle, and determination were all that kept the two men
going. Ripley looked away from the windshield and back down
the APC’s central aisle.
‘Burke, they’re coming!’
A faint reply as he hollered back toward the cockpit: ‘I’m on
my way! Hang on.’
The Company rep stumbled to the crew access door,
fumbled with unfamiliar controls until the armoured hatch
cycled wide. Following in Hicks’s and Hudson’s footsteps, the
two smartgun operators materialized out of the dense mist.
They were retreating with precision, side by side, firing and
covering the retreat as they fell back on the personnel carrier.
As Ripley looked on, Drake’s gun went empty. Automatically
he snapped the release buckles on the smartgun harness. It
sloughed away like an old skin. Before it hit the ground, he’d
pulled a flamethrower from his back and had brought it into
play. The hollow whoosh of napalm mixed with the
deep-throated chatter of Vasquez’s still operative smartgun.
Hicks reached the APC, put his weapon aside, and all but
threw the injured Hudson through the opening. Then he
tossed his pulse-rifle after the comtech and cleared the hatch in
two strides. Vasquez was still firing as the corporal got both
hands under her arms and heaved, pulling her in after him. At
the same time she saw a dark, towering silhouette lunge toward
Drake from behind, and she changed her field of fire as Hicks
was dumping her onto the APC’s deck.
A flash of contact lit up an inhuman, frozen grin as the
smartgun shells tore apart the alien’s thorax. Bright yellow
body fluid sprayed in all directions. It splashed across Drake’s
face and chest. Smoke rose from the staggering body of the
smartgun operator as the acid chewed rapidly through flesh
and bone. His muscles spasmed, and his flamethrower fired as
he toppled backward.
