Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon, page 18
“How long to the Hagen?” Marshall asked. He wasn’t used to such exertion.
“Next dock,” Rodriguez said. She was fit and fast, pulling Marshall and Lucianne along with her. She grabbed a wall handle and drifted to a halt beside an airlock. Then she gasped.
Marshall followed her gaze. The window beside the airlock looked out onto the Hagen, the small frigate that would take them away from this place. Beyond that lay deep space.
Stars bloomed and faded in the distance. It was impossible to tell how far away the battle was—the explosions were pinpricks, quickly appearing and disappearing back into darkness. That they were close enough to see with the naked eye meant they were far too close for comfort.
“We don’t have long,” Rodriguez said. “Into the ship, and I’ll be taking off as quickly as possible. You’ll have to make sure you’re strapped in safe and sound before we go. My record’s twenty-six seconds from taking the pilot’s seat.”
“Looks like you’re about to get your wish,” Lucianne said.
“And what’s that?” Marshall asked.
“Getting the fuck off this station.”
Rodriguez laughed, the sound complemented by the harsh hiss of the airlock doors opening. As they waited for pressures to equalize, she spoke with traffic control and confirmed their permission to leave.
On their visors, they all watched the distant space battle drawing closer.
“They’ll want to take the station,” Lucianne said. “They’d have been launching against us from a million miles distant if that wasn’t the case.”
Marshall found no comfort in this. He knew what they’d use to take the station, and he thought about everyone they were leaving behind. He’d made no real friends up here—he was a Company man, and being one of the Thirteen put a distance between him and everyone else. It was a gap he’d never been able, or even eager, to bridge. Bassett was as close to a friend as he had this far from home.
Yet he hoped more than anything that they could all escape the dreadful fate that was coming for them.
The doors opened and they were on the frigate Hagen, rushing through to the bridge, pulling themselves into seats, strapping in. Rodriguez muttered as she went, counting in an attempt to break her own record.
Twenty seconds after taking their seats, doors locked and secured, engines fired up, system checks carried out by the ship’s computer, and docking arm withdrawn, she fired the retro flares and edged them away from the space station.
“Six second record!” Rodriguez said. “Wait ’til I tell—”
An explosion illuminated the bridge, flashing in from outside and only fading when the computer reacted and clouded the windows. Something rattled against the hull. The whole ship shook.
“Holo screen,” Lucianne said. The ship reacted instantly, forming a screen and projecting a view of Charon Station taken from a drone three miles out.
The results of the explosion were evident. A haulage vessel had launched and been taken out by some of the defensive nano-filament net, projecting miles out from the station in every direction. Whoever had launched the ship had done so without flight control approval, and they’d met an unfortunate end.
The station’s seven main structural elements were intact, including the General’s control hub. His Sleek-class destroyer had launched and was holding station, and Marshall knew that several other destroyers orbited Charon at various distances.
“Their own stupid fault,” Rodriguez said. “Sixteen seconds through the filament field, then we’ll hit it.”
In the distance, the space battle had ended. All indications were that the two Rage ships had triumphed, although one of them seemed to be damaged, leaving a trail of atmosphere venting into the vacuum as it hurtled toward Charon Station.
The first ship, larger than any destroyer, arrived three seconds later.
“Holy fuck, it’s huge,” Lucianne said. “And ugly.” Her description was apt.
The destroyers attacked, pincering in from three directions and unleashing a barrage of munitions. The Rage ship rolled and shifted, dodging some, absorbing other explosions with what appeared to be little or no damage. Returning fire blasted out from the enemy, pulsing glows of laser fire heavier than any Marshall had ever seen. The destroyers launched countermeasures and darted away, complex flight movements dictated by computers so much faster than human reactions.
Boosters and retros fired in harmony, throwing the ships into staggered movements across the battlefield that dodged the bulk of incoming fire. A few blasts found home, flaring across one ship’s left flank. Flames erupted outward, fueled by explosive decompression. Debris powered out through the dying flames. Some of the debris had limbs.
The second Rage ship arrived, damaged and dragging a long tail of wreckage and escaping atmosphere. It didn’t appear to be in any way disabled. It launched into the fray, unleashing an assault on the damaged Marine destroyer while ignoring the fire directed at it.
The destroyer’s boosters blasted it away from the battle, but too late.
It erupted in flames, coming apart as its fuel drive failed and ignited, spreading wreckage far and wide.
“We’ll be out of the filament field in seven seconds,” Rodriguez said. “The explosions are shifting its placement, computer’s recalculating every millisecond.”
“The station can’t fall, can it?” Lucianne asked. “I mean, Charon Station.”
“They’ll put up a good fight,” Rodriguez said. That was no real answer at all.
Marshall knew the truth. He’d seen it in General Bassett’s eyes.
The Hagen shook as it moved away from the station, countless course changes shifting it safely through the filament field. It would only take one spray of filaments to wrap around the ship and explode. That would cripple them, and then they’d be a sitting target for the Rage ships.
For now, the two attacking craft were being kept busy with the station’s outlying defenses. Destroyers piled fire at them, the smaller ships darting miles across space in the blink of an eye, firing, then moving again. More cannon rounds came from the station itself, gun towers unleashing a withering storm of plasma and laser fire at the attackers.
Shields pulsed a faint red as impact after impact drove home, and suddenly the damaged Rage ship seemed to be floundering. An explosion ripped apart one of its protruding elements, sending the ship into a spin toward the station. It struck the filament field and countless more explosions rippled across its surface.
“Got the bastard!” Rodriguez said. “One down, and no damage yet to the station! Bring it on, fuckers.”
Marshall wasn’t so quick to celebrate.
“How soon until we’re away?” he asked.
“Seconds,” Rodriguez snapped. He could tell she still thought of this as running away, and Marshall’s eagerness only seemed to make it worse.
The Rage ship was coming apart. It rolled lazily within the filament field, a constant series of explosions decorating its hull with yellow, red, and orange, while the defending ships concentrated their fire on the doomed vessel.
“Enlarge,” Marshall said. The holo screen view closed in.
“We’re away,” Rodriguez said.
“Hit it,” Marshall said, but the pilot paused for a moment when she saw the image on the screen.
“I don’t understand,” Lucianne said. “Is it falling apart? Is it… melting?”
“Not falling apart,” Marshall said. “It’s launching its final attack.”
Thousands of dark specks flowed from the blazing inferno of the dying ship. Many of them were caught in the filament field and blasted from existence, but so many more drifted on toward the nearest unit of Charon Station.
“Xenomorphs,” Marshall said.
It was a surreal sight, a shocking moment, and he felt removed from himself and these events. As director of ArmoTech, he’d been searching for these creatures for so long, finding samples and then losing them again, seeking the beasts that were quite simply the most efficient living killing machines humanity had ever encountered. To have possession of these things, to be able to weaponize them, had been one of Weyland-Yutani’s overriding goals for the past couple of centuries.
They had failed on numerous occasions.
Sometimes spectacularly.
Now those who had succeeded were using these deadly weapons against them. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
Laser fire streaked out from the space station and pulverized the drifting clouds, but there were too many of them. For every Xenomorph taken out, five more drifted through the expanding detritus of their dead cousins.
“How can they breathe?” Lucianne asked.
The first of them reached the hull of Charon’s main storage hub.
“They should freeze to death,” Rodriguez said.
They skittered across the surface, seeking viewing portals and airlocks.
“Get us out of here,” Marshall said.
“But—”
“Get us the fuck out of here, now! The second ship’s arrived.”
Rodriguez plotted a course and punched the boosters. Their view of Charon Station, the attacking ships, and the chaos of battle shrank quickly on the screen.
Lucianne tapped into the feed from one of the many orbiting drones. Accelerating away from the Colonial Marines’ besieged base, still they were offered a first-hand view of what came next.
18
GENERAL PAUL BASSETT
Charon Station
December 2692 AD
In the height of battle, General Bassett took time to confirm that Gerard Marshall had made it away safely.
Three other ships had left Charon Station as the Rage aggressors closed in. One was a private haulage craft whose personnel had murdered two Marine deck crew in their hurry to escape, and whose flaming fate Bassett did not dwell upon. Another was a passenger ship carrying seventeen civilians who had chosen not to remain on the station, preferring their chances in deep space. The crew had made the same choice, and so Bassett had little power to hold them back. They appeared to have escaped whole, and were now heading in-system.
The third was the Sleek-class destroyer Keene, formerly moored alongside the control pod where he spent most of his life. It was now in battle with the Rage ships.
As he received data confirming that the Hagen had made it away, Bassett breathed a sigh of relief. He’d never liked Marshall, the Company man. Not really. But a degree of trust had grown between them, and even a grudging respect that he hoped went both ways. When Marshall had arrived, the General had seen him as a complaining, spoiled bore, a man always used to getting his way, whatever that way might be. By the time he left the station, perhaps he had become almost heroic.
I pray to God he doesn’t have to do what he’s gone to do, Bassett thought, but he couldn’t stop to dwell on only one person. No sooner had Marshall’s ship made it away than a whole new flood of data assailed him.
Standing on the platform at the center of the base’s control sphere, the General was the focal point of all incoming information. His combat suit received it, transcribed it through a complex sequence of triage programs he had written and continually refined himself, sorted and categorized it, and then fed him the salient headline points. At the switch of a synapse he could retrieve any more in-depth portions of data or information. It was as if his brain had been enlarged, streamlined and refined, and he stood at the center of the battle. Every shot fired, every impact made, every blast missed, every ship movement and return fire from the Rage ships, he knew about it.
“The first Rage ship is breaking up!” someone shouted. “Just over two miles out, it’s coming apart. Station gunners are taking out the smaller wreckage. Anticipate some secondary damage, but slight.”
“Concentrate fire on the second ship,” Bassett said. The order was unnecessary—the Marine Spaceborne units were already attacking, along with the Keene, and the gun towers across Charon Station were pumping plasma and laser fire toward the second ship as it stalked beyond the filament web. He allowed himself a brief flare of hope, then shut it down again.
He could not afford that.
Since the Rage assault on the Sphere had begun, hope had become so alien.
“Sir, something’s happening…”
Bassett glanced around at various holo screens. Data speckled the air in front of him, changing tone and color to maximize readability. The destroyed ship was breaking up, internal explosions accelerating its demise, jagged chunks of hull flipping away only to be blasted to fragments by the Marines’ continuing assault. Among the debris, there was something else. Black points spewed across space.
They looked like fleas escaping a burning dog.
“Xenomorphs,” he said. “Don’t let them drift close to the station!”
An even more furious fusillade began, blasting the hundreds, thousands of Xenomorphs pouring from the stricken vessel and drifting rapidly toward Charon’s large storage unit. Many of them impacted the filament field and died. Others clung together in groups, the outer creatures subjected to the withering fire, those inside each huddle drawing closer and closer to the station.
Bassett knew that if they reached the storage section and made their way inside, their route through the station was assured.
His large control hub could be isolated by blowing all of the footways and bridges, a fact he had taken pleasure in telling the nervous Marshall on many of his visits. All other separate units of Charon Station were permanently linked—diamond bridges, elevators, heavier structures incorporating docking arms. Blast doors could be lowered. Corridors could be vented. But none of these measures would be a solid defense against a sustained Xenomorph assault.
Even with the first ship destroyed, still its threat remained extant.
“Filament field down to thirty-seven percent effectiveness.”
“Draw it in,” Bassett said. With many of the nano-filaments expended, drawing them in would concentrate those that remained primed. It might also destroy many more of the drifting Xenomorphs before they reached any part of the main structure.
The second ship rolled and started firing a heavy plasma cannon, vast flaming stars streaming toward the station’s heart. Countermeasures commenced taking them out. Laser shots diverted then destroyed them, and those they missed were intercepted by unmanned drones. More than a hundred drones were circling the station, and a hundred more had streaked away to a dozen miles distant, orbiting and probing the Rage ship for weak spots. Most of them were wiped out by wave fields or automatic defenses, but a few made it through. They detonated against the ship’s shield and faded away to nothing.
“The first Xenomorph has reached the station.”
Bassett saw it. The creature landed on the storage pod and started crawling across its surface, and a probe flew by and took it out with a laser blast. But that wasn’t the end of the creature’s story. Its body erupted across the exterior hull, and its molecular acid started working at the many-layered skin.
Bassett accessed hull integrity. It stood at ninety-seven percent, but he put a marker on it for continuous updates.
More Xenomorphs reached the quarter mile long storage pod, and a gun tower on the adjoining welfare unit started targeting them, using short, defined shots to knock them from the hull without damaging the structure itself. Some of the impacts worked well, blasting them back into space. Others merely wounded the creatures, which then self-destructed across the surface.
Hull integrity, ninety-one percent.
The second ship started circling Charon Station, picking up speed and unleashing fire the entire time. The Keene pursued it, as did smaller drones and two other destroyers. Its assault was being successfully diverted, but its velocity became unmatchable, and the destroyers fell back and began matching their gunfire to every revolution. Its orbit was little more than three miles in diameter, yet it was circling the station once every four seconds.
“We’re running out of drones. Filament field down to seventeen percent.”
Bassett knew all that. He also knew that many more Xenomorphs had made it to the storage hub. Some were working at airlocks and portal openings, others were being picked off by defensive fire, their remains melting, working at the hull, eating inexorably inward.
Hull integrity, eighty-two percent.
“How many people remain on the storage hub?” he asked. It wasn’t information that was available to him, his suit’s on-board computer having relegated it to a delete function.
“Seventy-eight,” someone replied. “Over two hundred evacuated to the central hub.”
Seventy-eight, he thought. He had a great many deaths on his conscience. Seventy-eight more would only deepen the curse on his soul.
“Target access bridges and support arms for the storage hub,” he said.
“Sir?”
“You heard me.” He didn’t need to explain himself. The Colonial Marines were trained for such eventualities. It was called “acceptable losses.”
Moments later the Keene swung around and unleashed a salvo of fire which took out two of the storage hub’s three main support structures. The third stressed, bent and then cracked apart, and the unit started drifting inward toward the rest of the station.
Fire control took over and directed an organized stream of plasma fire against the huge unit. The explosions only scarred the surface, but succeeded in sending the storage section in an uncontrolled spin away from the base. It tangled in some of the unspent filament field and, under their detonations, it started to come apart.
Bassett closed his eyes, but only briefly. He couldn’t afford to think of those still alive on that structure, smarting with betrayal, then dying.
“Sir, something else.”
The rapidly orbiting second ship had ceased firing. It still circled Charon Station, but instead of energy blasts it was now firing Xenomorphs in long continuous streams, like seeds carried in an autumn breeze.
