Alien, p.25
Alien, page 25
Thanks to the milder winds, Ronny was able to lower her safely. Once her boots touched the ground she undid her safety harness with her free hand, then waved to let Ronny and the others know she was all right. The steel cable retracted into the skimmer’s belly, taking the harness with it. When it was gone, Ronny piloted the craft to the far end of the Junkyard where the abandoned earth movers were parked.
Zula quickly unwrapped the wire holding her rifle to her arm, as well as the wires holding the ballast tanks to her legs. She let the tanks fall and then hurried toward the ground hauler, moving as fast as her EVA suit would allow. She wanted to conceal herself before the Necromorph arrived. Reaching the hauler, she opened the door to the cab, climbed in, and closed the door softly behind her in order to make as little noise as possible.
Then she waited.
It was all up to Davis now.
* * *
The Necromorph pursued the human across the rocky surface. It had no idea why it was in the air instead of on the ground, as humans usually were, but it didn’t care. All that mattered was getting at its prey—which remained maddeningly out of reach—and tearing the fragile creature to shreds.
It lost track of the flying human, and its head swept from side to side. This place was filled with objects that weren’t natural, which meant it was a human place. Perhaps the flying prey had landed here, perhaps this was its home. If so, there might be other humans to kill, to infect, to impregnate. The Necromorph lashed its tail in the air, excited, anticipating the slaughter to come.
It detected a sudden flash of movement from its right, and as it was turning in that direction something large leaped through the air and slammed into its side. The impact knocked the Necromorph to the ground, but it rolled and swiftly came up on its feet, ready to confront its attacker. The thing standing before the Necromorph resembled a living creature—a huge insect with long back legs—but there was nothing organic about it. This was not a living thing, and yet it moved, had attacked like a living thing.
Therefore, it was a threat and had to be destroyed.
The Necromorph hissed, raised its claws, and raced forward, but before it reached the metal creature a piercing sound cut through the air. Vibrations ran through its body, and it turned just as another assailant dove out of the sky, coming straight for it. The sounds hurt. They were able to get past the Necromorph’s protective exoskeleton in a way other assaults could not. It was as if its internal organs were being shaken apart from the inside out.
The Necromorph crouched low to the ground, and as the flying assailant drew close it leaped into the air. It lashed out with its tail and the impact altered the attacker’s course, sending it toward the ground. The Necromorph landed a split second before the attacker crashed, breaking apart in a shower of sparks. A short distance away a mound of objects collapsed from the impact, sending debris tumbling and scattering across the ground.
The first enemy made another go at the Necromorph, but this time it was ready. It ducked to the side, grabbed hold of one rear leg, and yanked. The leg tore free from the body, and the enemy swerved toward the ground. It hit hard and skidded before coming to a stop against a pile of rubble. The thing lay on its side, its remaining legs waggling ineffectually for a moment before finally becoming motionless.
The ground began to tremble, and before the Necromorph could leap to the side a new attacker burst upward in a shower of rock and soil. Knocked off its feet, the Necromorph struggled to stand. As it did so yet another assailant crashed into it. The two remaining foes caught the Necromorph between them.
Abruptly, the Necromorph found itself bound by a sticky substance that also engulfed its two opponents. A new non-living assailant engulfed all three of the combatants until they were thoroughly bound by the stuff. The Necromorph struggled, but it could not break free.
Then the humans appeared, advanced, and began firing their weapons.
* * *
From her vantage point inside the hauler’s cab, Zula watched the bots attack the Necromorph. Davis had connected to their systems and was controlling them, orchestrating the assault on the creature.
At first it didn’t go so well. The Necromorph easily took out the Screamer and the Jumper. She wished they’d been able to use the Hider, but it was too badly damaged after the morning’s training session, and was just another piece of junk. But then the Digger and the Sprinter hit the Necromorph in concert, giving the Crawler a chance to move in and begin using its webbing. She’d feared the artificial binding wouldn’t prove strong enough to imprison the Necromorph, but she needn’t have worried.
The webbing stuck fast and held tight.
“Go!” Zula ordered over her comm.
Leaping down from the cab, she joined the remaining trainees as they advanced on the Necromorph, pulse rifles blazing. There were enough gaps in the webbing to allow their rounds to get through. The Necromorph screeched in fury as it fought to free itself, and Zula smiled grimly as she fell in line with the trainees and continued advancing toward the bound and struggling monster.
We got you, you bastard, she thought.
Davis spoke in her ear.
“The lesions covering the Necromorph’s exoskeleton have made it more resistant to rifle fire than is normal for its species. I’m afraid you’re not doing any significant damage.”
“Sounds like it’s grenade time,” Zula said, then to the rest, “Launch grenades on my mark. One, two…”
The Necromorph hunched over, crossing its arms in front of it as best it could given the webbing that constrained it. The motion made Zula think of the way a bodybuilder might flex her back muscles. At instant later the webbing covering the Necromorph’s back disintegrated, eaten away by the caustic black goo emitted by the creature’s broken pustules.
“…three!” Zula shouted.
The grenades launched, but with a single herculean movement the Necromorph tore free from the remainder of the webbing and darted away. The explosives struck the Digger, Sprinter, and Crawler and reduced them to shrapnel in a series of explosions. A wave of heated air rolled over the cadets and black smoke began curling upward from the shattered remains of the machines.
So much for the bots.
It had been a decent plan, one that had almost worked—but almost could be the difference between life and death for a soldier. They’d failed to kill the Necromorph, and the damn thing was free again. She saw no sign of the creature.
“Where is it?” she said. “Anyone have eyes on it?”
“Nothing, Boss,” Masako said. The other trainees responded similarly.
“Davis? Do you have it on the tracking scanner?”
“Unfortunately not. The tracking device Tamar placed on the Necromorph is no longer transmitting. My guess is that the Crawler’s webbing stuck to it, and the device was pulled off as the Necromorph escaped. Most likely it was destroyed by the grenade barrage.”
“Fantastic,” Zula said. It could be hiding anywhere now. Or it could’ve fled the Junkyard entirely, having decided to locate prey that was easier to kill. Somehow, though, she didn’t think they’d be that fortunate.
“Now what, Boss?” Ronny asked. He sounded nervous, but he was doing a good job controlling it.
“The way I see it, we have two options,” she replied. “Go looking for it, or wait for it to come looking for us.”
“I say we take the fight to the fucker,” Angela said. “I’m getting tired of this goddamned monster always—”
Thirty feet away, the Necromorph emerged from the pile of nusteel blocks. It jumped on top of one of them, and launched itself at Angela. The creature landed on her, hands on her shoulders, feet on her stomach, its weight forcing her to the ground.
The thing’s claws penetrated her EVA suit to pierce the flesh beneath, and before any of them could bring a pulse rifle to bear its secondary mouth emerged, broke through her helmet’s faceplate, and buried itself in her brain.
Donnell stepped forward, raising his pulse rifle to fire at the Necromorph, but he got too close. The monster’s tail whipped out and struck his left leg. Even with the wind, there was a loud snapping of bones. Donnell cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground, dropping his rifle in the process. To make matters worse, he had a tear in his suit and began losing O2… fast.
The rest of the trainees didn’t wait for the command to fire. They unloaded on the Necromorph, blasting it with round after round of ammunition. The projectiles carved small divots into the creature’s exoskeleton, but that was all. It seemed as if Davis had been right about the Necromorph’s durability. Even so, the barrage drove the creature back a yard, then two. It hissed at them, its outer and inner mouths still wet with Angela’s blood.
Zula chambered a grenade, intending to ram it down the Necromorph’s throat, even if she had to do so by hand. She fired, but the creature ducked and the grenade soared toward the nusteel blocks. An instant later the grenade detonated, the explosion sending chunks of nusteel flying. The Necromorph used the distraction to slip away once more.
“Watch for it,” Zula said. “It’ll be back.” She hurried to check on Angela and Donnell. Angela was dead, and Donnell sat on the ground grimacing in pain, hand pressed against the tear in his suit to slow the leakage.
“Are you cut?” Zula asked.
What she meant was, are you infected?
“I think I’m okay,” Donnell said through gritted teeth. “I’m not going to be dancing anytime soon, though.”
“Ray, Genevieve, slap an emergency seal on this tear then get him to safety,” Zula ordered. The two came forward while Ronny and Masako kept their weapons up, watching for the enemy.
“You want us to take him to the skimmer?” Ray asked.
“No,” Zula said. “I’ve got other plans for it.”
26
Zula stood alone in the middle of the Junkyard.
“Remember that comment I made about you having a secret death wish?” Davis said. “I don’t think it’s so secret anymore.”
“Funny,” Zula said.
Ray and Genevieve had gotten Donnell to one of the earth movers and put him inside the cab. They were standing guard over him. Ray had been unhappy that Zula had ordered them to remain there, but Genevieve had seemed relieved. Zula didn’t judge the woman too harshly. She’d seen a lot of death this day, more than enough to shake a seasoned warrior, let alone a rookie.
Zula had sent Ronny and Masako out in search of the Necromorph. The plan was for them to get its attention and lure it to her. If it attacked her on its own, without their help, so much the better. She’d already lost five trainees today—half their number—and she didn’t want to lose any more.
Death was an inevitable outcome of war, whether it was yours, your foe’s, or any innocents caught in the middle. You did what you could to minimize the risks while maximizing the chances of victory. But when the shooting started, one way or another, blood would be shed. This was a reality with which every soldier had to make peace somehow. Zula hadn’t fully understood this when she’d joined the Corps. She’d thought she’d come to understand it during her battles with Xenomorphs, but she realized now that she hadn’t known jack.
It was one thing to risk your own life fighting a Xenomorph infestation on a relatively deserted ship or station, but to do so in a populated area like the Lodge, while leading a group of people who trusted you to command them… that was a different story. She, too, had seen more than enough death this day, and she was going to make sure it ended, here and now.
Even at the cost of her own life.
She heard shooting, and knew Ronny and Masako had found the Necromorph. Or it had found them. Either way, the end was near.
A moment later she saw them running toward her, the Necromorph in fast pursuit. There was less dust in the air now, so visibility was better. Masako was having a hard time running, likely because she’d reinjured the ankle she’d twisted during the training session, and Ronny was helping her. He had an arm wrapped around her waist, and she had one of hers draped across his shoulders. Together, they managed a kind of running-hopping gait, but it forced them to move far more slowly than they would’ve otherwise. Zula feared the Necromorph would catch up to them any second and bring them both down.
She started running toward them. Far too quickly, she judged the Necromorph was within striking distance of the pair.
“Get down!” she shouted. She stopped running, aimed her pulse rifle, and fired just as Ronny and Masako threw themselves to the ground.
Bullets struck the Necromorph’s chest. There weren’t as many pustules there as on its back, but there were enough. Black goo shot outward, but somehow none of it struck Ronny or Masako.
Zula kept firing.
Come on, she thought. Come ON!
The Necromorph slowed, and for a horrible second Zula thought it was going to kill Ronny and Masako. She waved her arms in the air to get the creature’s attention.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Over here, you ugly bastard!”
There was no way the Necromorph could hear her, sealed up as she was in her EVA suit, and yet the creature picked up speed once more. It jumped over Ronny and Masako without hesitation and raced toward Zula. Now it was her turn to run.
She spun around and headed toward the south end of the Junkyard, past the pair of earth movers and the broken exosuit cargo hauler. Past the headless Hider, the bot now little more than a silvery statue.
“You got the engines on?”
“Fired up and ready.”
“Open the side door.”
“Doing it now.”
Running in an EVA suit wasn’t easy. It had to be a mostly straight-legged gait and push off with each foot as if trying to jump. It had felt very strange the first time she’d tried it, but the technique worked—especially on worlds like Jericho 3 where the gravity was less than on Earth. Zula covered the ground at a good clip, and while she knew the Necromorph was right on her tail, she thought there was a better than even chance she’d reach the skimmer before the creature could kill her.
She’d better. Her entire plan depended on not dying too soon.
Ronny had parked the skimmer to the southeast of the earth movers, and she veered to her left as she reached the big machines, then kept going. The wind and thunder—both less intense than they’d been back at the proto-colony—were still loud enough that she didn’t hear the skimmer’s engines until she was almost on top of the craft.
As Davis had promised, the side door was open, and Zula headed straight for it. She reached the door and was about to enter when she felt something—the Necromorph’s tail?—strike her back. The impact sent her stumbling forward and into the skimmer, where she lost her balance and went down. She rolled over as the creature rushed in after her, mouth open wide, clear viscous fluid dripping from its teeth. Zula gave the creature a face full of bullets, and it backed away, swiping at its face with its claws, like a dog trying to scratch an itchy, irritated muzzle.
“Get us in the air!” Zula ordered.
She thought Davis would argue with her. In the original plan, she’d been supposed to escape through the emergency exit before lift-off, but the longer she screwed around with the Necromorph, the more it would realize it had been baited into a trap. If that happened, it would get off the skimmer before any harm could come to it.
She wasn’t about to let that happen.
Thankfully her synthetic friend didn’t hesitate. He closed the hull door and engaged the skimmer’s controls. The craft rose quickly into the sky and was immediately battered by the wind, lightning flashes visible through the windscreen.
An alert icon appeared in her helmet’s display screen. Her suit was in danger of a catastrophic breach. Had the Necromorph’s tail cut through it when it struck her?
Then she saw the problem.
Once they were both aboard the skimmer, she’d fired on it at close range. That meant more of its pustules had been broken open, ejecting the acidic black goo its body produced. She quickly examined the inside of her helmet and saw—in the upper left of the faceplate—a tiny black dot. It wasn’t much, but it was beginning to eat into the surface of the viewing pane. Once it finished burning all the way through there’d be a tiny hole. She’d start losing O2, and be exposed to the cellular necrosis virus. The leak would be a slow one, but a leak was a leak.
There wasn’t time to worry about it now. She was trapped on a rapidly ascending skimmer with a bloodthirsty alien monster. She’d worry about the hole later—if there was a later for her.
“Davis, start overloading the engines.”
“Roger that.”
An instant later the engines began to emit a high-pitched whine, and Zula could feel the deck beneath her feet begin to vibrate.
The bullets that had driven back the creature hadn’t caused any significant damage, but it stood about fifteen feet away in the rear of the hold, head swiveling back and forth as if confused. It had never been in a flying craft before, Zula thought, and was having trouble adjusting to the different sensations—the engine thrum, the jostling as Davis battled the wind, the stomach-dropping feeling of rapid ascent. These were all foreign stimuli to the Necromorph, and it would be unable to tell if any of the sensations—or all of them—indicated a threat. Thus, it hesitated.
Zula took advantage of her enemy’s confusion. She moved to the emergency exit—the one she’d gone through when hanging from the ship to lure the creature to the Junkyard in the first place. The round door in the deck led to a small storage area where emergency supplies and equipment were stored, and in that area was a second door, this one opening to the outside.
