Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon, page 21
Androids don’t feel real fear, Palant thought, although she was beginning to see Liliya as something different. Not quite human, because that was impossible. But more than an android. Something unprecedented, perhaps even unique. It might not be her incredible age that set her apart.
“You’re sure about this?” Halley asked quietly from her side.
Palant nodded. “We have to make sure it works.” She touched Liliya’s arm and smiled.
“Don’t worry,” Liliya said. “I’m growing used to it.” She hauled off her jacket and exposed the wound in her chest. Peeling off the cover, she revealed the wet hole in her chest plate, skin pinned aside, skeletal structure wedged apart.
“Jiango, Yvette, you should help me,” Palant said. “I know my way around a Yautja’s physiology, but…” She trailed off, feeling the weight of the two alien stares. The datapad was still translating. “Sorry,” she whispered. She didn’t dare glance at them.
Perhaps some of the samples she’d worked on over the years had been their relations.
They showed no emotion. Just stared.
Liliya sat back and opened herself to examination once again. The Tanns had already revealed how much work they’d done on her, and while Palant and Yaquita prepared to probe at her heart, Yvette fetched the samples they’d already taken from her. One such sample was the purified nanotech, the fluid she had stolen from the Rage and injected into her own veins.
Held in a glass container, it looked innocuous.
They went to work. While Palant and Yaquita used her datapad to recall information from their interrogation of the ruined android, Oscar, the Tanns readied the nanotech. Soon, Liliya was paired with the datapad and a program was downloading directly into her heart. They asked her to relay any changes she felt, and especially anything dangerous that her systems might flag. But for a while she simply lay back and accepted the attention.
The Tanns synthesized a small speck of nanotech and imbued it with elements of the same program.
Palant had no idea if this was how it worked. But it was as close as she could be, and Yaquita said or did nothing to suggest that what they were doing might fail. She had shown herself to be a talented scientist, more adaptable than Palant in many ways. Her confidence in what they were doing filled Palant with hope.
Once Liliya confirmed that her programs had accepted the new code, and the nanotech had been programmed, there was just the matter of injecting it into General Alexander.
“Once he’s awake, he’ll do anything he can to destroy me,” Liliya said.
“Can’t you neutralize his on-board systems?” Ware asked. “You know… fuck up his brain?”
“The android we worked on was initializing its self-destruct even when we’d removed its heart from its body,” Palant said. “I don’t think we can assume any level of control once he’s awake.”
“Then we don’t wake him,” Hashori said.
“You’d think the humans would have thought of that,” Yaquita replied.
Palant pressed her lips together in a tight smile. “We eject the cryo-pod,” she said.
“Can we lift the lid and inject him without waking him?” Halley asked.
“It will only take seconds.” Palant looked at Yaquita and raised an eyebrow. Yaquita returned the gesture, silent, and Palant found herself worried about what it meant in their language. Maybe it was a come-on.
“The system is automated,” Yaquita said. “Once opened, the pod commences the waking procedure, but when closed, the procedure will reverse once again.”
“Then he won’t wake enough to respond,” Palant said. “Get the pod in the airlock, open it, inject him, close it, blast it into space…”
“Ker-boom,” Hoot said. Palant eyed him up and down. This group reminded her of the indies back on Love Grove Base. They’d been good people, strong, with normal concerns. She wondered how many loved ones this crew had lost in the ongoing war.
“So let’s shake it up,” Halley said.
“Yeah,” Robo said, flexing her robotic arm. “I wanna see fireworks.”
* * *
… Mistress, Mistress Maloney, I haven’t failed you I’ll never fail you, I’m still chasing Liliya and I… trapped, I’m trapped here, down here alone, but that doesn’t mean I’ve failed.
I remember. I was close, so close, and then they came. The Yautja, fighting with the humans. They took me down and still hold me here…
A distance has been traveled. A great distance, and I’m not sure where.
So long as she’s still close. I can sense her. I can smell her, and as soon as I’m able…
* * *
Palant stood ready with the injector, and as soon as Hashori passed her hand over the control and opened the lid, she leaned in toward the sleeping android.
Up close, and without a layer of wet glass between them, he was even more monstrous.
She ignored the damaged face, pallid skin, and the Xenomorph parts grafted to where his own had been ripped off or burned away. She went for his throat. The injector pressed against his skin and she initiated, pulling away again three seconds later. The glass phial was empty. His throat was still depressed where she’d pressed the point, no longer possessing any elasticity.
The cryo-pod lid couldn’t have been open for more than seventeen seconds.
His eyes were moving.
“Close the lid!” she said. “Put him down again, quickly!”
The lid hissed closed, and the Marine and indie crews worked together to shove the big suspension pod into the airlock.
Yaquita touched the controls, and a three-second countdown began.
* * *
They’ve done something, Mistress. I’m still asleep, but something has changed. It’s like I’ve been nudged, my dreams invaded and touched, and whatever I do I can’t… pull myself… back up. I’m trying. Believe me, Mistress, I’m trying my hardest and—
But what’s this? Something’s moving.
Something’s scraping.
* * *
The pod blasted into space, and driven by the rush of air from the airlock it quickly moved away from the two conjoined ships. Hashori confirmed that the other five Yautja ships were out of any danger zone.
Palant turned to Liliya.
“It’s all down to you, now.”
“Maybe we should go to the bridge, so we can see,” Jiango Tann suggested. Everyone agreed, and all of them—human and Yautja alike—crowded onto the Pixie’s bridge. Billy formed a holo screen, and in the distance they saw the suspension pod moving rapidly away. It had developed a gentle spin, and it grew and faded from sight, grew and faded, as it reflected ancient starlight.
“I wonder if he’s half-awake?” Halley said.
“I hope so,” Liliya said.
Palant frowned. Was that a hint of brutality?
“Here we go,” Liliya said, and she closed her eyes. In her opened chest, her compact heart made a strange, low sound.
* * *
I’m free of their ship, adrift, on my own. They’ve cast me out. They must think they have rid of me at last, but they’ll see. I’m not beaten that easily. I’ll wait for as long as it takes.
I’ll come back.
But—
That’s strange.
My heart.
Growing hot.
Almost as if…
* * *
The explosion was a bright flare a hundred miles away, a nuclear bloom that for a brief instant was the brightest object in the sky. Then its fires spread and cooled in the harsh vacuum of space.
General Alexander was gone.
“It worked,” Palant breathed. “You did it.” She grabbed Liliya’s hand and squeezed, and around the bridge there were smiles and pats on the back. A couple of the indies and marines whooped. Even the two Yautja seemed impressed.
“So now to find the Macbeth, sneak on board, find how to connect to all the Rage generals, and blast them all to hell,” Liliya said.
“Sounds easy,” Halley said.
“Yeah,” Captain Ware agreed. “And I’m at a loose end. So, which way are we going?”
21
MAJOR SERGEI BUDANOV
Weaver’s World
December 2692 AD
Major Budanov had time to cry out once when he saw his gunner fall beneath a Xenomorph, then his fight continued.
Over the past six days, they’d developed a bond. Being shot down, surviving the crash, forging their way into Boston Three and seeing the slaughter perpetrated by the Rage and their beasts, had all contributed to a burgeoning friendship that went beyond private and major. They had seen things together, done things together, that bit deep and drew them close.
Now she was gone, and Budanov lived to fight on. For how long, he didn’t know.
He blasted the Xenomorph that had stalked and taken her down, slicing its head in half with a laser burst. She was already dead, but he put a shot into her as well, just to make sure. The dead beast blew apart and slumped down onto her corpse. There’d be nothing left of either of them to scoop into a body bag.
This was the central hub of Boston Three, and he fought alongside a small contingent of about twenty marines. The city had become one of the main battlegrounds on Weaver’s World, much of it already reduced to smoking ruins by the continuing aerial bombardment from the surviving Rage dropships. Since the Yautja had arrived and entered into the fray, their ships had performed random fly-bys, firing on the enemy vessels and moving on.
Three Rage ships remained circling the city, firing down into the flames, and then flying away again, hiding for several hours somewhere out of sight before coming in for another run. Sometimes the Yautja ships were there waiting for them, sometimes not. It was a game of hunted and hunter played out in the skies above a dying city.
Budanov was still in touch with his forces across the planet. Several of their communications satellites had been taken out, but many more remained. Although contact with some locations was spotty, most of Weaver’s World was still within reach.
News was dire.
The dead numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Horrific stories reached him of Xenomorphs being dropped into outlying communes, places unprotected by Marines where the only means of defense were a few basic projectile weapons. The result was always the same. Sometimes he received reports intercepted from inhabitants still on the run. More often, the news came from Marine units on seek-and-destroy missions.
Above, the battle in orbit had taken a rapid turn the previous day. The 7th Spaceborne had continued their attacks on descending dropships, as well as the big Rage vessel Aaron-Percival in high orbit above the equator. But three of their main destroyers had been boarded by Xenomorphs and taken out within the space of seven hours. The result was that only a handful of frigates and twenty manned fighters remained of their force, and they were implementing a policy of attack-and-flee.
Sometimes the attacks worked, more often they inflicted minimal damage. The 7th Spaceborne were more of an annoyance for the Rage than a real threat.
The battle had changed from repelling an assault to a game of survival.
Budanov would have been the first to admit that without the Yautja’s intervention, the battle would have been lost days earlier. As it was, the two old enemies—now allied in the face of a far greater threat—were fighting side by side. In some cases they were holding the Rage at bay.
Much of Boston Three was a burning ruin, but none of those left alive were willing to go down without a fight.
An estimated several thousand civilians had taken shelter in the subway stations and subterranean vehicle parks beneath the city’s central hub. The tunnels and underground routes were heavily defended by Marines and civilians who’d taken up arms, along with a contingent of the Yautja.
The real fight, however, was taking place above ground.
“Incoming, three o’clock.”
“Large movement at seven o’clock, contact in two minutes.”
“Dropship approaching from the east, it’ll be over the city in seventy seconds.”
“Hold plasma cannon fire until it’s over us!” Budanov ordered. “Then blast it when its belly doors are open.”
The center of the city was unrecognizable. The large hexagonal plaza itself was a chaos of rubble, craters, dead bodies, huddled defenders, two crashed aircraft, blasted land vehicles, several fountains long-since run dry, countless melted patches where Xenomorphs had been taken out, and three buildings reduced to smoking holes in the ground. Hundreds of Marines and civilian defenders still held out, hiding behind ruins and taking on the endless assaults by Xenomorphs rushing in from other areas of the city.
“Here it comes!” someone shouted.
The dropship rolled in, zigzagging to avoid any ground-to-air fire, micro-laser bursts showering from it as countermeasures in case any Yautja ships were waiting to pounce. This time, there were not.
“Steady…” Budanov said. His voice carried to every Marine combat suit in the city. There weren’t that many left. Their forces were reduced to less than a third of their previous numbers.
“It’s slowing.”
“Steady…” he muttered, readying his own com-rifle.
“Doors opening.”
“Two seconds…”
The Xenomorphs, hanging there like giant spiders ready to pounce, emerged from the darkness, illuminated by the blazing fires from below. It was as if daylight would no longer touch them.
“One second…”
The doors were fully open, and the first batch of Xenomorphs dropped away from the Rage ship.
“Fire! Everything you’ve got!”
From all across the plaza, a barrage of laser, plasma, and nano-shot poured upward, converging on the Rage ship as it drifted rapidly from east to west, disgorging its terrible cargo. The sound was deafening—the pulsing thump of plasma cannons, the sharp crackle of lasers, the hiss and then multiple explosions of nano-shot. The first wave of Xenomorphs were caught in the fire and burst apart, a score of them falling in wet, melting pieces. More were winged, falling away injured, landing, self-destructing or charging, soon to be brought down in the crossfire.
“The ship!” Budanov shouted. “Keep firing on the ship! We’ll get those bastards on the ground, it’s the ship we want!”
His own com-rifle thumped at his shoulder as he unleashed plasma shots at the dark, open belly of the Rage craft. He pivoted as it swung past almost directly above them. His suit made him aware of the shapes dropping past the gunfire, hunched black things that they had all come to recognize over the past few terrible days. But he ignored them, maintaining fire. Seeing his plasma pulses swallowed by the vessel. Seeing other gunfire impacting and lighting up its insides.
As the ship swung away, a silver streak appeared in the north, closing rapidly.
“Yautja!” someone shouted. Budanov’s suit confirmed it.
The Rage ship turned in a wide circle above the city, smoking, losing altitude.
The Yautja vessel unleashed a sustained laser blast, hovering a mile out and maintaining its fire until the Rage ship exploded, showering fire and blazing debris down across the city.
No one cheered. The dead ship’s monstrous offspring were launching their attack. Xenomorphs darted left and right, leaping at Marines and civilians. Some of them were taken down by gunfire. Others made it through, pinning their victims down, hacking with taloned fingers and clawed feet, slashing through clothing, flesh, and bone with their wicked tails, caving in skulls with powerful jaws.
Then they’d move on, leaping and slouching, jumping ten yards through the air and slinking deep down in the ruins.
Blood and acid flowed, and the septic stink intensified in the air.
“Regroup!” Budanov said to the marines. Battle-wearied and wounded, many of them had been scorched by acid splashes where their suits had begun to fail. None of them complained. Over the days he’d been there, they had acquitted themselves well.
As the men and women drew together, Budanov spared a glance at his dead gunner.
A Xenomorph dashed at them from behind the burnt-out wreck of a land skimmer. A nano-shot blast enveloped it and it exploded, misting the air with acid and shreds of its hard carapace. Budanov turned so that the splashes speckled his back. His suit’s ability to repel the acid was down to seventeen percent. One or two more impacts, and he’d feel the first agonizing burns against his skin.
Part of him would welcome it. It would feed his hate.
“Sir, look, three o’clock!”
From a wide street leading far out through the dying city, a mass of Xenomorphs were advancing against them.
“Where the hell did they come from?” he shouted. His suit’s motion detector hadn’t spotted them, and he began to wonder at its efficacy in other aspects.
“Crashed ship?” a woman asked. “Doesn’t matter. I count fifty at least.”
“We’re fucked,” someone said.
“Then get unfucked!” Budanov said. He climbed a shallow slope of fallen masonry, secured his footing, then unleashed a hail of nano-shot at the advancing enemy.
Others joined him. From closer to the swarm, several civilians emerged from hiding places, shooting at the beasts then fleeing. Too many of them were run down and killed.
“Bastards,” Budanov hissed. He fired a plasma burst, but his com-rifle was overheating. He had to ease back. More nano-shot, effective but not as deadly as plasma, too reliant on accurate shooting and a motionless target.
The Xenomorphs swarmed across the ruins, trampling bodies, never slowing or relenting in their attack.
Not even the sudden flickers of heat-haze movement gave them pause.
Budanov recognized the signs, though. He’d seen them enough over the past few days, and although they rarely fought with the Marines, they were ever-present, their help a major factor in continuing the fight.
Cloaked, the Yautja cut through the advancing creatures as effectively as cannon blasts from a destroyer. A dozen enemy fell in the first wave, slashed apart. Moments later a secondary assault began, the distinctive triple targeting lasers splashing across the Xenomorph troops before blasters opened up, blowing many of the monsters apart. Another wave charged from behind, skittering through their dead and dying brethren, to be met with a fusillade of fire from the defending marines.
