Alien, page 17
“Lost a brother in that,” Gavin said. “I’ll never forget. Worst death I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sorry, man. That place was hell,” Elkins said somberly. He added with a subtle glance at Fowler, “Wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone.”
Gavin paused a moment, seeming to consider if he should go on, and decided to do so. “Was a Colonial Marine who saved my life. Got me out of there. Won’t ever forget that, either.” He glanced at Sam, and an unspoken agreement passed between them. “You boys want to go to LV-846, then we go to LV-846.”
“Now wait a minute,” Fowler protested, rising from his seat behind them on the bridge. He had taken up sitting in one of the empty seats near the holographic maps table, ostensibly to keep an eye on things. “You can’t do this. It’s a violation of your contract with Weyland-Yutani.”
“Don’t care,” Gavin said.
“They’re the ones paying you!”
“Got paid already,” Sam added.
“Well, if you think those credits can’t be revoked, you’re wrong,” Fowler said, moving into the cockpit space between them. He glared out into the void beyond the windshield as if it was outer space’s fault. “I’ll make sure of it! I’ll see to it that—”
His words were cut off by a blow to the jaw which sent him reeling. He looked up, both surprised and alarmed, at the person who had hit him.
Siobhan shook her hand out, then massaged her knuckles. She leveled an even gaze at him, but inside, her heart was pounding. She’d never punched a person in her life, but something had finally snapped. All the stress, physically and mentally, of the moon dying out from under her, the inexplicable loss of Camilla, and the creatures Fowler had unleashed—stalking and hunting the closest thing she’d had to family in the last decade—all found their way to her fist.
It felt good to finally shut Fowler up.
Really good.
Gavin chuckled softly, then turned back to the console in front of him.
“Nice right hook ya got there, Dr. McCormick.”
“Thank you,” Siobhan said, then she walked away. If Fowler had anything to say about her, he waited until she was out of earshot. What she did hear was Sam.
“Dr. Fowler, it’s best if you just sit tight ’til we get to LV-846. I ain’t taking a punch in the jaw like that for you or anybody else.”
* * *
LV-846 was a good four or five days away, and Martin Fowler was worried.
It wasn’t the ship itself or its ability to provide that kept him awake as he lay on the bed pod in one of the evac ship’s private cabins. Resources on the Astraeus were stocked for thirty people at least, and on a trip of that length, hypersleep wouldn’t be a necessity. Air and food and the creature comforts of travel wouldn’t be a problem.
The trip wasn’t quite short enough, however, to be able to avoid extended contact with the others. For a week he would be stuck with the mutinied crew and the crazy Seegson woman and her marines.
Even that didn’t really worry him, though. He hadn’t gotten to the position he’d earned within the Weyland-Yutani corporation by being liked, and the fact that Dr. McCormick, her lovesick marine, and his lackeys didn’t like him didn’t bother him in the slightest. The bitch had given him a hell of a black eye—when he touched it gently with his fingertips, it hurt—but she’d sucker-punched him. Now that he was aware of her crazy temper, he’d be better prepared if she tried it again.
He’d handle her—and the rest of them, if need be. Even if the opportunity didn’t arise on the journey, the Company would never let such actions by McCormick and her team go unaddressed.
That thought Martin savored.
There was the serum to consider. He’d managed, of course, to get all of his data off the moon through transmissions to the main Weyland-Yutani headquarters in San Francisco, and had even managed to pocket a well-packaged sample in a refrigerated travel case that was small enough to tuck away in a pocket. It was nothing short of a miracle that the sample hadn’t broken given all he’d been through.
Martin’s worry was about more than just the safe delivery of the serum, though. He knew he’d have no problem with replicating the formula with relative ease, in whatever new lab the corporation assigned him to. What he was really concerned about was a sample of a different kind. Its delivery, or failure thereof, would affect him deeply.
Four or five days was cutting it close, really close, to the three-week mark. He’d have to get the corporation to send a ship with a fully stocked medbay and trained professionals directly to LV-846, or they were likely to lose their sample and their top scientist.
He had volunteered, against the small nagging voice that in others might have been considered better judgment, because he’d had a lot to prove, a lot at stake. The embryonic sample could be extracted—he’d made sure to develop that procedure very early in the process—and the serum would work. He’d promised that.
In fact, he’d literally staked his life on it.
Four or five days more would put him right around the limit to which the last of the volunteers had survived. After that, Martin Fowler would become a ticking time bomb, carrying something far, far worse than an explosive.
He rubbed his abdomen, could feel it stirring around in there, a queasy sensation like gas or extreme hunger, but there was no pain. Not yet. Not quite yet… and that was good. Should the pain come, the alien would follow very quickly behind.
He wondered if it mattered that the sample inside him was a Queen—as far as he knew, this might be the first one gestated in captivity, in a lab. Would that have an effect on the results? Would she grow at the same accelerated rate, due to the serum? Would her levels of hostility and resilience be increased, as they had been with the drones? Would the corporation be able to contain her properly?
Martin thought he could keep the secret from the others a while longer, but time was certainly of the essence. Extraction and early containment would be crucial. He reviewed the protocols and procedures in his head, over and over. It kept him from thinking about the killing machine inside him.
It kept him from being afraid.
If anyone had told him at ten years old that someday he’d not only see an alien with his own eyes, but come to understand its biology and behavior on such an intimate level, he’d have never believed it. So many times he had told himself that what he had done, what he had developed, was in the name of human progress. He had found a way to maximize weapon efficiency. Shorter wars meant fewer lives lost—at least, fewer lives on the side of those who had paid for the technology.
After all, what was progress in the hands of those who couldn’t pay to implement it? It was a waste, that was what. Martin hadn’t put in all those years of research, at the cost of his marriage, his friends, his free time, into building something that would languish in a lab vault—or worse, be destroyed by some well-meaning but clueless do-gooder looking to save a handful of expendables from “monsters,” just because they couldn’t see the big picture.
Money was nice. Knowledge was nice… but power—that was what kept the galaxies spinning. Power was a relevant currency no matter what planet he was on, and Martin had sacrificed throughout his whole life to bank it for himself.
He would have to find a way to reach his Weyland-Yutani superiors without the others knowing. It shouldn’t be too hard to get their current coordinates and call another company ship to intercept them. He had something the corporation wanted, and it was in their best interest to save his life in order to acquire it.
Of course, they would go after the Queen whether he survived to see its birth or not, so he had to impress upon them that he was more useful alive than dead. Historically, a single drone could take out multiple fully armed human beings, including those who had been trained to kill them. A single Queen conceivably could—no, would, and there was no doubt about it—cause extensive casualties, unless of course he was there to make certain she was caught.
Even after he died, they would remember his name as the man who had developed this serum and gestated a Queen. But not yet, not if he could help it. He wanted to enjoy and exercise the power now, in life, that his accomplishments would afford him. He thought he’d earned that.
Martin turned over on his side. He’d rest a bit, just until he’d heard the others go to bed. He thought he could outmaneuver whichever idiot Brand put on duty—Rutiani or Elkins—and make his way to a communication terminal. He’d get the Company to come.
And then the others on the Astraeus would see true power at work.
* * *
The first morning on the Astraeus, the smell of strong coffee and bacon woke Siobhan from her first real sleep in weeks. She showered, dressed, and made her way to the kitchen area, where Sam Urban was scrambling eggs for Alec, Kira, and Roots. They were seated at a round metal table, and Elkins was reading a Newscore printout and sipping coffee on a chair nearby.
A pile of bacon sat in a bowl at the center of the table.
“Oh wow. I haven’t had bacon in… probably fifteen years,” she said, sitting in the empty chair next to Alec.
“Help yourself,” he replied, then took a sip of coffee.
“Sam here’s not a bad cook,” Roots added, then popped a strip of bacon into his mouth. Sam glanced over his shoulder at them and winked. Alec poured her a cup of coffee and slid it over to her.
“Sleep okay?”
“Pretty well, all things considered.” Siobhan smiled. “You?”
Alec tried to smile back, but it faltered.
“Sure.”
She turned to Kira and asked, “How about you, honey? Did you sleep?”
Kira, who was pushing scrambled eggs around her plate with a fork, nodded but didn’t answer. She didn’t look up.
Siobhan’s smile slipped away. She was worried about the girl. When they got to LV-846, Siobhan would have to begin the process of making sure she got some counseling, got into a good school, made friends… So many children got lost in the shuffle between worlds. Some disappeared. Others got hurt… and worse. There were no laws governing children who traveled alone, at least none that applied across worlds, and so anything could happen.
Kira deserved better than that. After all she’d been through, she deserved so much better. Siobhan reached out and touched the little hand on the table, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“It’s going to be okay. We’ll make everything okay.”
Kira looked up at her. There were shadows under her eyes. She tried to smile but failed worse than Alec had. A moment later, she pulled her hand away.
Sam appeared over Siobhan’s shoulder and put a plate of eggs in front of her, along with a fork.
“This looks great,” Siobhan said. She was grateful to change the subject. “Thanks, Sam.”
“No problem.”
As they ate, Dr. Fowler charged into the kitchen and went straight to Sam.
“Your colleague is ignoring incoming messages from Weyland-Yutani.” He turned to Siobhan. “I know your little team here decided to hijack this ship, and you’ve managed to convince the flight crew here to be complicit in your crime, but—”
“Dr. Fowler—” Siobhan broke in.
He ignored her.
“—your continued refusal to ignore the corporation is just going to draw their attention all the more. They don’t like losing valuable assets, and this ship is worth a lot. More than any single one of you will ever see in a lifetime.”
Alec pushed his chair back and stood. Fowler backed off.
“You can tell them that they can have their ship back when we get to LV-846,” Alec said, stepping away from the table. “Until then, I don’t want to hear another word about it from you—or them.”
Fowler didn’t respond, but Siobhan suspected it wasn’t the end of the conversation. He was the kind of guy who was used to people listening to him, and doing what he told them. That he was being summarily ignored, even shot down, had to be getting under his skin.
* * *
Over the next couple of days, each time she passed through the bridge, Siobhan noticed there were a number of incoming transmissions that Gavin had continued to ignore. Weyland-Yutani’s contact man, a voice who identified himself as Stan Bloom, could be heard through the dashboard comms.
At first, he sounded confused as he asked about the whereabouts of the ship and the new route reported by their tracking systems. When Gavin brushed him off with some excuse about static interference, he seemed dissatisfied but accepted the answer… until a few hours later. That next time, he sounded firm but slightly uneasy when he asked to speak to someone in charge.
“I am in charge,” Gavin said tonelessly, and he gestured at Sam, who hit the disconnect on the communications system. Between the two of them, they managed to put off Bloom a few times more, until Sam was caught off guard and accidentally answered one of Bloom’s incoming calls. Bloom sounded clearly frustrated in his attempt to get the pilot or his navigator to explain where they were taking the ship.
When another attempt came, the entire group was present on the bridge.
Dr. Fowler jumped on the intercom before Sam could stop him. “LV-846! They’re taking the ship there! You need to stop—” Sam slammed the button that cut off the communication and glared up at the doctor.
“Don’t touch that,” he said. His tone left no room for argument.
“This is kidnapping,” Fowler countered. He leaned down and pointed a finger in Sam’s face. “They’ll see that all of you are thrown in prison. Or worse! You really want to fuck with the Company? They’ll hunt you down and make you pay for this. You’ll never see any planet’s daylight, ever again!”
Gavin snickered, and Fowler turned on him.
“You think this is funny?” He practically growled at the man.
Gavin shrugged.
“You think the corporation cares about you?” he said. “Enough to come get you?”
“Hell yes, I do! They certainly care about what I’m carrying!”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
Dr. Fowler paused and glanced at the others, who were all looking at him expectantly.
After a moment, he said, “My research, of course. My life’s work. I have very specific knowledge about a very specific area. I’ve created a serum with numerous applications across multiple fields. Weyland-Yutani paid me a lot of money to develop the serum and… deliver the information.”
“Didn’t you already transmit the research data from your lab to headquarters?” Siobhan said. “That should give them what they want, unless you’ve stuffed a bunch of file folders in your pockets. So, if they have what they need from you, what makes you think they’ll care about saving a person whose continued existence now constitutes an expense?”
“Come now, Dr. McCormick,” he replied. “It wouldn’t benefit me to turn over all my research, without any assurance of my security. What I sent them is incomplete. Further, I have samples of my serum which could facilitate production. Without the samples, and my overseeing the production process, the results would be set back by years. As a fellow scientist,” he continued with a hint of scorn, “I’m sure you understand that one of the most invaluable resources we can offer is time.”
“Well, good for you,” Siobhan said. “They can pick up you, your samples, and all your invaluable research on LV-846.” She walked up to Dr. Fowler and leaned in until her face was close to his. “But if you get in the crew’s way again,” she said, smiling sweetly, “I’ll make it my personal mission to bury you so deep in this ship’s hull that even its builders will never find you.”
Dr. Fowler regarded her with abject hatred.
Then he walked away.
19
On the third night, some fifty-six hours out from LV-846, the comms fell silent.
Siobhan stared out the window of her cabin into the deep of space. The godlike immensity of it never ceased to amaze her, no matter how many times she was transferred from planet to planet, moon to moon. People thought of space as an endless, empty expanse of darkness, but it wasn’t, despite the interminable blackness between worlds. There were countless celestial bodies, meteors, asteroids, black holes, forces producing life and death, spreading decay, stars being born and dying and becoming something else…
It was the closest thing to a religious experience she had ever felt.
In fact, Siobhan had once found strange comfort in the vastness of space, as if the cosmic scope was proof of something greater than humanity, that the spirit endured and life went on in some form or another.
Now, as she looked out on the sprinkling of stars through the brilliant mist of strange nebulae in the distance, she wondered how many of the worlds revolving around them had Xenomorphs, or creatures just as bad. How many worlds had evolved life that existed simply to cause death? And as the corporations pushed people farther and farther out into the universe, how many of those creatures would wipe out segment after segment of the human race?
Wherever people went in pursuit of creation, corporations like Weyland-Yutani and maybe even Seegson seemed to follow with their monsters in tow, using those innocents as fodder for experiments in destruction.
Siobhan looked back at her years at the Seegson lab on BG-791, at nights she’d spent restlessly tossing and turning in bed, worried about the pathogen bombs hitting colonies all over the galaxy. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it, and blame had been assigned to multiple groups, always with no real proof. Small colonies were hit as often as big ones, both civilian and military, scientific as well as exploratory. And there was no “one side”—the United Americas, Three World Empire, Union of Progressive Peoples, even Independent Core System Colonies were struck at one time or another.
