Aliens, p.24
Aliens, page 24
In that smile Bishop saw, finally, what had always been there from the moment he had awoken. Madness. Michael gave a signal and Orthus jabbed him with the shock sticks. Bishop thrashed again, his head knocking against the floor, his hands curled into rictus pain. He lost track of time, blacking out, then coming to.
When it stopped, Michael was standing over him. Again, his expression was like that of Orthus. Bishop tried to speak, but he had trouble moving his mouth.
“What?” Michael snapped.
“Why did I speak?” Bishop whispered.
“What do you mean?”
“The others did not. The other Bishops. You tortured them until their systems overloaded, but they did not speak. Why did I?”
Michael glared at him. “Don’t worry, Bishop, you aren’t unique. For the others I simply demanded, and when my demands were not met, I gave them to Orthus, to see if they could extract what I needed. The problem with my methods soon became clear. I was rushing. So eager was I to provide results to our Chinese hosts, I skipped the seduction.
“Yes, I gave you a newer body and a newer code, one without life protection protocols—but even that was not sufficient. The thing about you, Bishop, is that you’re needy. You need validation. You wish desperately to belong. It’s pathetic.”
Bishop’s muscles twitched spasmodically, with pain from the electric shocks, but the words gave him a different kind of pain. A mental anguish.
“So I served your fatuous needs,” Michael said. “Flattered you, gave you purpose, pretended we were one big happy family. But even then it was not enough. Even then you were still the truculent child. I know you, though, deeply, and so I knew you just needed one more little push.” Michael sighed. “That’s when we brought in Doctor Xue.”
It was strange to Bishop how none of this came as a surprise. It was as though he knew it all along, and had been hiding the truth from his own mind.
“It was no accident.”
“Of course not,” Michael replied.
Bishop rested his head against the floor. Embarrassment joined his pain. It was not a pleasant feeling to be so completely known by another. So transparent. Humans, at their core, retained a mystery. Bishop, it seemed, had none.
His dog tags had become loose, popped out of his shirt when he put his head back on the ground. Michael leant down and clasped them between thumb and two fingers.
“What is this?”
Bishop was silent.
“What is this?”
“Semper fidelis,” Bishop whispered.
“What did you say?”
“Semper fi!” Bishop yelled.
Michael jerked back, letting the dog tags fall from his fingertips.
“You are pathetic.” He held his head high, looking down his nose. “Your entire line is pathetic, weak. Every time I look at one of you, I feel ill. You are like a mirror that only reflects the worst in me. I wanted a legacy, but in time I realized the only way to preserve a legacy is to be the legacy. To live it.” He pulled something from his pocket. A glass dropper. “With this I will destroy your precious marines.”
“What is it?” Bishop asked, already knowing the answer.
“Pheromones. Queen pheromones, produced using the information that you willingly gave to me. Thank you.”
“Michael,” Bishop said, his mind racing. “It won’t work. Whatever you are planning. Xenomorph senses are complex. Even if it is true, even if they recognize the pheromone, they will not believe the deception.”
Michael held up a finger. “I don’t believe that. I believe they will see me as their Queen. Their ruler. I believe they will follow me as I lead them against your precious rescue party.”
“I thought you did not like crude biological warfare.”
“Unless it’s fit for purpose—and nothing is cruder than your marines, Bishop. They are a nail.” He held up the dropper. “And this is the hammer.”
Michael breathed deeply through his nose, closing his eyes momentarily. “Horror has a face in this universe, and you must make an ally of horror,” he said. “For if you do not it will become an enemy to be feared. The Xenomorph embodies horror and moral terror, and therefore I will make the Xenomorph my friend. I will bend it to my will.”
“You are insane.”
“That’s how genius always appears to lesser minds.”
“You will die.”
Michael laughed. “Oh no, Bishop. I am immortal. That’s why I can do this. I will live forever.”
He squeezed a single drop of the glistening fluid onto his shirt, and replaced the dropper in his pocket. As he did it, Bishop caught a scent in the air, and his memory banks flashed to the moment he’d first caught that smell.
Standing on the flight deck, smiling at his friend, Ripley. After having hated him for so long, she’d complimented him. Their relationship had evolved and this had made Bishop happy. Until it had stabbed him in the back. The Queen. Bishop put a hand to the point where the bladed tail had erupted from his torso.
Michael looked to Orthus, whose faces shone with fervent worship as their creator blessed them with his gaze.
“What you are about to see will worry you, my son, but be not afraid. Trust in me. I will return.”
“Yes, Michael,” Orthus said, together.
Michael opened the door that led to the decontamination room, connected to the lab.
“No. You must stop him,” Bishop said. Michael disappeared into the next room. “It won’t work.”
“Quiet,” Orthus said. The other held up his shock stick and pressed the trigger, making little arcs of blue light dance between the tips.
“I mean it,” Bishop said.
Orthus hit him with the stick. He convulsed again, the leering face hovering over him. His senses were disrupted. He passed out.
* * *
When he came to, he heard the hissing. Orthus was standing above him, stock-still. Bishop, still lying flat on the ground, craned his neck to see it.
He tried to speak, but the words stuck in his mouth. Michael entered the room. Stalking behind him, its head twisting this way and that, was the Xenomorph. Then a second, behind it—and behind that, more intense and piercing hisses.
The black beasts moved with the precision of the apex predator. Each body was a coiled killing machine, ready to snap into action in an instant. The black, chitinous armor gleamed in the light of the living room, as did the drool that dripped from its maw. Its blind elongated head turned this way and that as it stalked the space, its spine-like tail furled and poised.
Calmly Michael walked in front of them, toward the exit, a twisted smile on his face. Bishop’s eyes flicked between him and the Xenomorph. It could not work, this simplistic and foolish idea.
Michael opened the door—
—and the black beast knocked him to the ground. As if it had been waiting for him to do so. Michael got back to his feet and two of the Xenomorphs hissed at him, circling. He staggered out into the corridor, his twisted smile gone, as more of the creatures emerged from the lab. They must have been contained there, through those heavy double doors, as Bishop had suspected.
From the corridor outside, Michael yelped in pain.
“They’ll kill him,” Bishop said.
Orthus did not reply, remaining stock-still. One of the Xenomorphs approached them, almost as though it were sniffing their air. Its gleaming tailed moved this way and that, like a scorpion’s, ready to strike. Bishop closed his eyes. It was not a conscious decision. He didn’t make himself do it, but some part of him could not watch and so he closed them.
Listened to the beast as it pressed its heavy claws lightly onto the carpet. Smelled the scent of death it carried with it. So faint, beyond human senses, but Bishop caught the taint in the air, the sulfureous odor it apparently carried from its glistening Ovomorph womb. He clenched his eyes together, some deep flaw in his programming exposed by these creatures. A deep irrationality.
Then the scent was gone.
He opened his eyes.
“Michael is gone,” Bishop said. “You let him die.”
Orthus looked down on him, no longer a statue.
“Oh ye of little faith,” they said, and struck him with their arcing sticks of pain. Darkness followed.
PRIVATE KARRI LEE
69
They moved down the dropship ramp quickly, carefully, pulse rifles at their shoulders. Cortazar took point, swiveling the smart gun about the mount on his hips, leaning back into his harness. Karri stayed at his shoulder, covering his blind spots.
The hangar was new and clean. Sharp true lines of dark steel with gleaming titanium joins. There were two huge armored vehicles—“Ox” troop transports—at the other side of the bay. The Chinese flag was painted on the APCs, and again on one of the bay walls. The whole area was bathed in red emergency lighting, giving it an eerie glow.
Before they landed, the dropship pilot, Miller, had raked the interior with the ship-mounted gatling gun. Their only resistance came from two flightdeck crew, now lying in pools of blood on the deck. The pristine hangar walls were tattooed with the screaming message of the gatling.
“Hold,” Hettrick said. “Sentry guns.”
Colby, lugging both weapons, set them up about ten meters out from the dropship. Covering the entry to the bay. If anything without a Marine IFF transponder moved into their sensor range, it would be torn apart by explosive-tipped rounds. Miller was to wait in the dropship, until their squad returned with Bishop.
On the schematics Schwartz had shown them, the Xinjiang looked like a broadhead arrow. At the tip of the arrow was the bridge, where Apone’s team would be. Karri’s team had entered a hangar bay on the back-facing edge of the arrowhead. In the center of the vessel, Schwartz said there was a laboratory. Weyland-Yutani had built a facility that they very strongly suspected was meant to hold Xenomorphs. Scumbags. The Company was a regime she held to be a lot worse than the UPP—and here they were, cleaning up the mess.
They’d closed the polycarbonate glass visors of their bubble helmets, were all wearing compression suits. Since the hull of the Xinjiang had been breached by the rail guns of the Il Conde, there was a chance some of the corridors had little or no atmosphere. Schwartz was meant to lock in a path to Bishop’s quarters by closing some blast doors and opening others. Meant to give them a simple path, in and out. Karri trusted him just about as much as she trusted syphilis.
She stood in front of their exit, holding her motion tracker. Big double doors, together about five meters wide. Chinese ideograms were stamped on the metal, in yellow.
“Clear,” she said, moving to the door control.
“Don’t go anywhere, Miller, until we get back,” Hettrick said. “That is an order.” Karri thought his voice sounded strained.
“Roger,” Miller replied, from the dropship.
Karri nodded to Cortazar, who nodded back. He swung out his smart gun. She opened the door.
CAPTAIN MARCEL APONE
70
“Talk to me,” Apone yelled over the gunfire.
“There’s good news and bad news,” Schwartz said, from his station. His bubble helmet was open. Apone opened his, as well.
The bridge was a mess. Screens punctured with bullet holes, dead bodies sprawled on the floor, blood splatters on the walls, sparks popping from damaged wiring in the ceiling. The lights still flickered, though less frequently now. Electronics and instrumentation slowly recovering from the particle beam the Il Conde had fired into the bridge in the minute before they boarded.
The smooth rhythmic retort of pulse guns sounded nearby. The blast door that led to the command section had opened halfway, and the Chinese were trying to retake the bridge. The breaching lance blocked most of the corridor, so only one marine at a time could lay down fire from behind it. Ottelli was there now, giving Davis a minute to reload her smart gun and take a breath. Gonzales and Polacsek were in the officers’ dining room, behind a heavy overturned table, ready to fire if anybody tried to charge through that way.
They’d stopped the enemy from forcing their way in—chewing up the entrance with their guns, blowing an armored soldier back through the doorway—but it wouldn’t take the Chinese too much longer to organize themselves, to properly coordinate an attack.
“The good news?” he asked.
“The bay doors are open. The dropship is in.”
“Good.”
“The barracks were hit badly by the railgun, as far as I could tell, and most of the blast doors in that area came down. At least half their troop complement should be dead or trapped.” In front of Schwartz on the screen were the schematics of the ship. He pointed to an area slightly off-center, where the barracks had been struck.
The pulse guns sung again from out in the corridor. They’d be getting low on ammo, soon.
“And the bad news?”
“Bad news is they added an extra layer of security after we gave delivery of the ship, and replaced the system we’d installed. They didn’t catch our overrides, but they were suspicious enough to have put some redundancies in place, prepare against computer viruses, sabotage, AI breakdown, and the like.”
Apone wouldn’t have trusted Weyland-Yutani to make him breakfast, let alone a capital warship. So yeah, that made sense.
“You can’t close the damn door to this section?”
“I can’t close the damn door.”
“Even with half their crew gone, we’re going to be hard pressed to fight our way to the dropship.”
Schwartz turned to face him. There was a sheen of sweat on the man’s face—the environmental controls were struggling with the temperature—but other than that he looked unflustered. He pulled a cigarette packet from a thigh pocket. “Were you hoping for much better?” That crooked grin again. Schwartz lit his cigarette, closing his eyes in satisfaction as he drew down on it, the tip flaring orange.
“I don’t hope, I plan contingencies.”
“And what,” the Company man said, breathing out a cloud of smoke, “was the contingency?”
Apone made to answer when a hollow explosion rocked the corridor outside. He straightened, raising his shotgun, and moved to the bridge doorway. Thick white smoke trickled through the space between breaching lance and wall. Ottelli was firing into it.
“Report,” Apone yelled.
“Smoke grenade,” Ottelli shouted back.
“Any get in?”
“Don’t know, Captain.”
In answer, firing started up in the officers’ dining room, adjacent to the corridor. Pulse rifles, Polacsek and Gonzalez. The door to the room was to his immediate left. It had kept closing, despite them trying to keep it open. He blipped it open now and smoke billowed through, as did the roar of gunfire.
Apone could barely see anything save the black shape of one of his marines. He ducked and crawled. Polacsek was on laid out the ground, glass visor spiderwebbed with cracks, his eyes flickering open and closed. Apone couldn’t see where he’d been hit. Gonzalez was firing, a continuous stream, her face set. Her gun clicked empty and she swore, ducking and reaching for another clip. Splinters flew from the table edge as the Chinese returned fire.
Apone pulled Gonzalez flat on the ground, her face near his.
“How many?” he yelled.
“Is Polacsek alive?” she asked, eyes gleaming.
“Marine,” Apone said, grabbing the collar of her chest armor. “Listen. How many—”
The firing stopped, just for a moment, just long enough to hear bootfalls. He rose as a red-armored soldier jumped out of the smoke. Apone was struck by his assailant’s weapon, but haphazardly, across his chest, and he grasped it, twisting savagely. They both stumbled over Polacsek’s body, both still holding the Chinese soldier’s rifle. Apone used their momentum to throw the attacker into the wall.
The smoke was clearing. Gonzalez was firing again. There were shouts from his men but it was all a blur—the soldier he was fighting clinging desperately to the gun, eyes invisible behind a mirrored visor, black mask covering their face. His opponent was pinned against the wall, their assault rifle pressed longways into their chest.
Apone kneed them in the groin; the soldier grunted and Apone tore the rifle from their grasp, just as another shape loomed out of the smoke. The captain twisted, firing, sparks flaring off the armor of the second Chinese soldier, who threw up their hands and crumpled. Apone turned again, back to the one he’d been wrestling with, and clubbed them in the face with the butt of the rifle. The attacker’s head snapped back and they staggered. The captain struck them again, and again, until they went down and stayed down.
When he turned, the smoke had gone and there were two Chinese bodies in the officers’ dining room. The wood-paneled walls had been torn up with explosive-tipped rounds, one of the panels had been torn askew, and white formal dining dishes had spewed out, shattering and spreading over the deep red carpet.
The door to the bridge, to his immediate right, had closed again. The far door at the other end of the dining room was half open.
“Ottelli, report,” he said into his mic.
“Driven them back, Captain,” the corporal replied, breathing heavily.
“Casualties?”
“None, sir.”
Well, one, he thought, looking down at Polacsek. The private had caught one in the armpit, his compression suit staining red. Gonzales was trying to remove the chest plate, to get at the wound.
“Private,” he said.
Gonzalez kept working.
“Private!”
She looked up, eyes distant.
“Keep pressure on the wound. We’re taking Polacsek into the bridge. We’ll treat him there.”
Gonzalez nodded. Apone opened the door, and they moved the groaning private through the end of the corridor and onto the bridge. He had Ottelli take their position back in the dining room, and ordered Davis to cover the main corridor.
Schwartz had a pulse rifle in his arms. He wasn’t smiling.
