Aliens, p.26
Aliens, page 26
Gonzales started shooting. Apone wasn’t sure how, her legs missing, hands scarred, but she had a pulse rifle across her lap and was firing down the corridor, face set. He reached for her.
“Leave me,” she hissed, not even looking at him. “Leave me.”
White noise rose in Apone’s mind, a hiss that smothered his thinking. His soldiers were dying all around him. He crawled back to the bridge, elbows and knees, while Davis fired overhead. Schwartz helped him to his feet. Sweat coated the other man’s face, fear stung his eyes. He was not grinning.
“The officers’ mess?” Apone asked.
“Clear, but there’s only one Chinese soldier left. The others?”
Apone shook his head. There was a hiss, next to his foot, and a section of the floor started to dissolve. The size of a quarter, expanding. Schwartz and Apone both looked up at the same time. A hole in the ceiling, widening.
“That was Ottelli,” Apone said.
Schwartz palmed a button at the back of his head, where armor plating stood up like a high collar. His visor bubble snapped closed.
“Any other contingencies, Captain?” Schwartz asked through the comm. Apone looked around. Davis, Schwartz, and the Chinese soldier remained. So did Gonzales, but not for long. He had one idea. A bad one.
“Where’s that explosive?”
Schwartz half-turned and indicated a gray-colored brick sitting on a nearby console. “C-4 with a quinitricetyline core. Ready to go.” Red and yellow wires stuck out of it, and a digital readout was pressed into the top. Apone picked it up. He set the timer to ten seconds.
“I am going to take this to the end of the corridor, drop it at the entry to the command quarters, where there’s already a breach. The blast will blow a hole in the hull. A big one. We’ll exit there.”
Schwartz shook his head. “All your planning seems explosion-based.”
“Well. I am a marine.”
Schwartz shrugged in agreement.
“Cover me,” Apone said.
Schwartz clacked the bolt of his pulse rifle.
They were turning when Davis yelled, “I’m out.”
Everything happened at once. Schwartz moved to the gap and began firing. Shots rang out in the next room. They were inside, with the Chinese soldier. Davis yanked the quick-release on her smart-gun rig, letting it drop to the floor. The primal screams of the Xenomorph rose in intensity.
Apone set the timer to twenty seconds and pressed the red switch. It started to count down. He’d throw it as far as he could. As he moved to Schwartz, the man ducked and a black shadow flashed overhead. Davis was lifting her pulse rifle as it hit her, knocking her back against the hard metal of a bridge station. She fired into the floor, arms pinned against her.
“Ahhhhhhhhh.”
Apone fired his pistol into the creature’s back, between the point where two lines of black pipes extruded.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh.”
The Xenomorph opened its glistening maw and a second, smaller mouth shot out like a piston. It caved Davis’s bulletproof glass inward with its first strike.
“Ahhhhh—”
Her screaming cut off with the second strike, which shattered her face. She slumped backward against the desk and the Xenomorph turned to face the captain. His pistol clicked empty in his hand. Distantly, he heard the bleep bleep bleep of the explosive timer, counting down.
The black beast’s tail rose up as it faced Apone with its sightless, smooth skull. A calm settled over him. He held his head high. It was over.
A pulse gun blew it back over the console. A long, sustained burst. When Apone turned Schwartz was there, crooked grin back on his face.
Bleep bleep bleep.
Still grinning, the Company man opened his mouth to say something to Apone. The words did not make it past his lips. Black claws appeared on his shoulders. In a blink, he was gone, back into the red smoking desolate gloom of the passageway.
Bleep bleep bleep.
Apone glanced down. In digital red, the timer counted down:
5… 4… 3…
He threw the brick through the gap between breaching lance and wall. The same gap through which Schwartz had just been pulled. The captain turned, aiming to take three steps and leap over the forward station on the bridge, and shield himself behind it.
He didn’t make it.
BISHOP
74
Sufficient electric shocks could kill a synthetic. The fuel cell might overload. The processors that constituted his brain could burn out. Perhaps this is what happened to his brothers. Or were they his previous selves? They had his memories and experiences. Had he died four times? Yet how could he have died—given he had no memories of their days, here, on the Xinjiang?
He could not find a way through this problem.
While those other Bishops had subjective experiences, they were also the same person. Was he less of an individual because he was so easily copied? This could never happen to a human. They had but one life. Perhaps that is why it burned with such intensity, why every human he had known had this light shining in them.
Whereas his lights could be divided over and over again. His experiences replicated exactly. On one level, his mind was straining to reboot and re-establish his systems, but it needn’t be so. It was an automated process, happening without conscious thought—yet he had the power to switch it off. Unlike a human, he had no primal instinct. He could simply make a logical choice.
Bishop was an expendable asset. His creator had declared him thus. Then Michael had repudiated his whole line. Why fight, when he had nothing to fight for? Why struggle for an equality that was an illusion?
Bishop’s mind turned these problems over and over while in the distance, his senses struggled to function. He was lying prone. This he knew. He could feel the soft-textured thick carpet under his back, but everything in the room beyond touch seemed so far away. As if he was looking through a telescope, blurred. There were figures moving, near him, over him. They wore familiar garb. Who were they?
Fingertips touched his chest. Warm. Calloused, but gentle. The cool smooth metal of his dog tags slid up and out of his shirt.
“Look,” someone said. A woman, perhaps, from a distance, muffled. Like she was underwater.
“It’s him?” another asked. Male.
“It’s him,” the first said.
“Alive?” he asked.
Alive, thought Bishop. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Her hand rested on his chest and he liked the feeling of it there. The warmth of another’s body. The feeling of her pulse through the tips of her fingers. Who was looking for him? Everything had drifted so far, but he had to come back, and think. And focus.
Who was looking for him?
Somewhere, in the distance, the woman cried out and her hand was gone. Bishop felt sad. He pushed himself closer to the room, ran toward it, but his legs were so tired and sluggish. Orthus was there. Even from so far away he could tell them easily, these twins, the way they moved, their malign intent.
Who was looking for him?
The new people were falling. There were four of them, and Orthus was knocking them down. Their garb—the rhythmic sound of their weapons. Marines. Marines. He could see it now, he was getting closer and his legs were moving fast, so fast it was like he was falling, falling back to the ground to the ship to his body.
Bishop jerked upward.
Orthus Two stood over a male. Neat red hair, mid-thirties, hands up in surrender, pleading. Two more men were down, bleeding on the floor. Only one marine still stood. A woman. Young, bronze-skinned. Backing away, hands raised in defensive posture, fierceness in her gaze despite everything.
Orthus waved his crackling shock stick at her.
There was a heavy wooden side table quite near Bishop, alongside the sofa. Rising to his feet, he threw it.
It missed.
His senses were back, but not fully, and the table splintered against the wall behind Orthus. He and the woman turned.
“Bishop,” the woman said, breathless.
“Bishop,” Orthus said, from a mouth that never breathed. He ignored the woman. “Want to dance, synthetic?”
“Yes,” Bishop replied, quietly.
He moved toward Orthus. At the other end of the room, his twin zapped the red-haired marine, who collapsed, convulsing. The second moved toward Bishop, also.
They shouldn’t have ignored the woman. Suddenly there was a knife in her hand and she shoved it into Orthus One. He turned too late, blade catching his side, but he did not cry out, or hesitate. He simply clubbed her with the fist holding the shock stick, on the head. With a cry she slammed against the wall, slumping to the ground.
Bishop charged, shouldering Orthus One, knocking him aside as Orthus Two ran at him. Bishop wasn’t focused on him. Rather, he was focused on that gleaming object of beauty resting in its cradle on the wall.
A sword. A katana. An heirloom given to Michael Bishop by Chiyo Yutani. A martial work of art. Bishop had time to grab it, but not to draw it. He was fast and strong but his body, so abused, was still catching up with his wants. His urgent vital needs.
The sword still in its scabbard, he blocked a thrust from the long dagger wielded by Orthus Two, ducked back from the crackling shock stick, blocked again, weaved, circled. Orthus Two was a blur, coming at him. With desperate speed, the blade sliced Bishop’s cheek, cut the fabric on his sleeve, rang out as it was turned aside by the scabbard. Backing and circling, backing and circling, Orthus One rising in the background, calmly moving alongside their brother.
They paused, and so did Bishop. Had they been human they would be gasping for breath, and perhaps, despite the adrenalin, Bishop might feel the sting of the wound on his face. But their android chests did not heave, their hearts did not thunder. They faced off against each other, beings grown in a vat, raised by the force of will of a madman.
“For so long,” Orthus said, “we have waited.”
“For this moment, straining, yearning.”
Bishop drew the sword. It gleamed under the red emergency lights, and for a micro-second he caught sight of himself in the side of the blade. His eyes. Something burned in them.
“Of course you have,” Bishop said. “As with any rabid dog, on its leash.”
The two moved toward him, weapon in each hand. Their hair was still precise, despite the combat. Their pale blue eyes still dead to emotion.
“Always thinking you are better than us, Bishop,” Orthus said.
“No,” he replied. “Just thinking. That’s the difference.”
Orthus set their faces.
Bishop should have been speaking politely, he thought. Giving himself time to get everything back online, optimal, his physicality controlled and precise. Yet he couldn’t help himself—he didn’t like them.
The four marines were all still down. One was lying on his back, bleeding, the red-haired one unconscious, the big smart-gunner the same. The woman—the name tag on her compression suit said “Lee”—was slumped against the wall, blood on her temple. They needed more time, too.
The twins weren’t going to give it to him. He could see it in their posture, in the tension in their shoulders, the way they parted, slowly, so they could come at him from different angles.
Bishop held the scabbard in his left hand, the katana in his right. He set his feet side on, L-stance, katana raised high behind him, scabbard in front ready to parry. There was no hum beneath his toes. The ship was dead in space. In the distance, sirens wailed, and beyond that, ever so faintly, small arms fire.
Here in the room the lighting was red, giving the faces of Orthus a demonic cast. The woman, Lee, moaned softly. The twins parted, further, and soon one would be able to flank him, strike at his unprotected side. Bishop had to move.
He moved.
Lunging, slashing low, Orthus Two dodged easily and Bishop circled right, trying to keep one of the twins between him and the other. But they moved so well, coordinated so perfectly, that soon he was on the defensive. Blocking and sliding and bumping into the sofa, Orthus beginning to smile. Bishop moved back against the heavy dining table, rolled across it, shock sticks snapping the air behind him.
Orthus Two leaped over, easily. Standing jump, clear across, and Bishop slashed desperately, catching the hip of his attacker with the tip of the sword.
Only just. Parted the shirt, just above the belt.
Even at that Orthus looked surprised, momentarily. Oh such little moments that a human would not have been able to track them, the fight a blur of bodies, a ringing of steel, a crackling of electricity. Orthus One lunged with his long dagger, catching Bishop’s arm, and Two did the same, nicking the side of his sword hand.
Bishop stumbled back into the kitchen.
“Soon,” Orthus Two said. He had a shallow cut on his hip, so shallow it barely leaked white.
“You will fall,” Orthus One said. His wound—delivered by the woman—was more serious. His shirt stained at his side, and sufficient circulatory fluid had leaked to darken the top of his heavy cotton pants. Yet the wound did not seem to have slowed him at all. Bishop had wounds on his arms and hands, though none quite deep enough to matter.
It was only a matter of time.
Bishop was still sluggish. Still a split second off his optimal, and therefore a split second too slow. No counterplay, no plan. He was losing.
“And then we will talk to these marines,” Orthus said. “Our blades will serve as our tongues.”
“And their wounds our words.”
Bishop stilled, glancing at the four marines, all alive but still down. More blood on his hands. Acheron, all over again. When he was not enough to fulfill his duty. Where Bishop had been insufficient to preserve the lives of his friends. History, cycling. Awakening, failure, reboot, failure, reboot. Over and over. The eternal return to this moment.
“No!” Bishop yelled, his voice hoarse. He lunged, desperately, and Orthus Two, surprised, caught the katana through the forearm. Bishop kicked out at Orthus One, knocking the shock stick from his hand. He received a brief zap where his shin hit it, but kept moving—had to keep moving. Foot wobbling as he came down, he launched himself into Orthus One, knocking him down and turning, scabbard jarred from his hand, and Orthus Two was already there, snarling, stabbing.
Their blades rang out, Bishop feeling his body now, feeling its strength and speed, its purpose. Five thrusts from Orthus Two, all blocked, and he turned the fifth away and slashed downward, double handed. Bishop’s blade sheared off Two’s arm at the elbow, clean through. White fluid spurted from the wound. He swung again, and this time the head came clean off.
Orthus One cried out, clutching at his own throat even though it was still intact. Bishop stepped in and shoved the katana into his body, up to the hilt. Orthus didn’t even flinch. He simply moved his hands from his own throat to Bishop’s neck, and clenched. Eyeball to eyeball, the fingernails digging into his throat, the sides of his neck, trying to tear it out. Bishop tried to pry the hands free, but they were like iron.
This Bishop could bend iron. He pulled the hands away. Slowly. Centimeter by centimeter. He was winning—right up until Orthus Two grabbed him with his one remaining arm. Headless, one arm missing, it didn’t matter. They were of the same mind. Orthus Two grabbed Bishop by the hair and yanked back. In that moment of surprise, the hands of Orthus were back on his throat, the nails digging in. They split his skin.
Bishop hammer-fisted Orthus One in the face, short jabs, but his opponent’s mind was set. The automated processes locked in. Live or die, Orthus One would do so with his hands around Bishop’s throat.
He died.
A pulse rifle sounded, and at that moment it was like music. A redemption aria. Orthus One’s head came apart, spraying Bishop in white android blood.
Both bodies of his enemy fell to the ground.
Chest heaving, the marine woman—Lee—stood not six feet away. Her mouth was set, and her eyes burned like incendiaries.
“Thank you,” Bishop said. “For saving my life.”
She looked from the bodies to him. “Likewise.”
There was a primal screech far in the distance, loud enough that even Lee heard it. She turned her head at the sound, then looked back at Bishop.
“But I haven’t saved shit yet, mate. Let’s get out of here.”
75
“Gotta say,” Lee said to Bishop, “for a bunch of pacifists, your mob do an awful lot of killing.”
The big man, a smart-gunner with a bent nose, was called Cortazar. He grunted agreement. He’d recovered from the shock stick, as had the red-haired sergeant, Hettrick. They were watching Bishop work. He’d removed the fourth marine’s armor—Colby—and was treating his wound. It was at the base of his neck, just above the rim of his armor. Deep. Colby winced in pain.
“I am not a combat model,” Bishop said. “The circumstances were unique.”
“Not a combat model,” Lee said to Cortazar. “Wielded his sword like a samurai.”
Bishop sprayed the wound with a medical sealant, from the kit the marines had brought.
“And Orthus,” Bishop said, feeling the need to explain. “I do not blame them. Their nature came from the sick mind of their creator.”
“And your creator,” Cortazar said.
Bishop finished treating the wound, helped Colby back into his armor. He rocked back on his knees. They did not trust him.
“Yes,” Bishop said to Cortazar. “I fear I carry his taint within me.”
The big man and Lee glanced at each other.
“We got to worry about you, mate?” the woman asked.
“No.”
“No?”
“No,” Bishop said. “Whatever else happens today. I am with you. To the end. I am a marine, by choice. It is the only place I ever found meaning. It was the only place I was ever treated as an equal. I will stand with you to the last.”
The woman raised an eyebrow at that. The big gunner grunted, and Bishop could not tell whether they believed him or not.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sergeant Hettrick said. “Those things will be here soon.” His voice was thin, pleading. Bishop found it strange that he was asking the two marines, rather than telling. He was their senior.
