Alien vs. Predator: Armageddon, page 25
None of them had complained.
In fact, Ware and her indies, as well as the Tanns, had protested at being left out of the initial assault. But there had to be backup, Halley had insisted. They’d split the precious, refined nanotech the Tanns had managed to procure from Liliya, giving them two chances at finding and sabotaging the Rage control hub.
Everything relied on the hub being aboard the Macbeth.
Liliya’s memory was scarred with worrying blanks, and the more they’d tried to develop a strategy, the more she’d had to admit that she knew less about the Rage’s battle plans than she’d believed.
Kept in the quiet and fed bullshit, Ware had said, and Liliya had seemed hurt by the idea. Hurt, as well, that Beatrix Maloney hadn’t seen it appropriate to share everything with her.
“Come on, come on,” Palant whispered. The Xenomorphs were still out there, spread around the hangar, crouched and motionless. Not asleep, though. Ready.
“They’re guarding the Pixie,” Sprenkel said. “If they were going to leave, they’d have left by now.”
“How many are there?” Palant asked through her datapad.
“Twenty-three,” Yaquita replied.
“We can take them,” Bestwick said.
“And lose any element of surprise.”
“We’ll lose that the moment Yaquita decloaks so we can leave the ship,” Bestwick argued. “We can’t just sit here playing with ourselves.”
“Maybe you can play with me,” Sprenkel said.
“Oh, gross. I’d rather jerk off a Xenomorph.”
“I don’t spurt acid.”
“Shut it, you two,” Halley said. “We can’t sit here. That much is true. Palant, ask Yaquita to decloak on our signal.”
Yaquita spoke. “My ship’s minor laser will take out some of them.”
“Good,” Halley said. “I hope she’s a good shot.”
They readied themselves in the area around the external door. Suited up, heavily armed, ready for their final fight, Halley and her Colonial Marines—Huyck, Sprenkel, and Bestwick—filled Palant with a surprising sense of confidence. They’d already been through so much together that the very idea of failing here seemed so unfair.
But the universe wasn’t fair or unfair. It was indifferent.
Palant caught Yaquita watching them, and nodded. The Yautja nodded back, then spoke into her control panel. Nearby in space, several Yautja ships would be decloaking and launching a sustained attack on the Macbeth. Sustained, yet not quite heavy enough to destroy the Rage ship.
The distraction had begun.
“Here we go,” Palant said, and the door before them melted away. The ship decloaked, and as Halley and the others stepped out onto the deck, the Xenomorphs saw the newly revealed intruder.
They charged.
A volley of laser fire from the Yautja ship took down the first wave of attackers, spilling hissing body parts across the deck. Halley and the marines opened up, carefully picking their targets, moving quickly away from the ship with Palant in their midst. She had refused a weapon, carrying the precious vial of nanotech in one hand, the datapad in the other. It was their only communication to Yaquita, and thus the outside.
They passed close to the Pixie as they raced toward a set of doors. A shape appeared in the Marine ship’s doorway.
“Bestwick!” Palant shouted, and the soldier turned and fired. Direct hit. The Xenomorph came apart and disappeared back inside the Pixie, acidic blood instantly eating into the hull.
The laser fire from Yaquita’s ship ceased, and the marines picked off the last of several charging Xenomorphs. The fight had been fast and furious, and alarms would be sounding all across the Macbeth. They didn’t have much time.
“Keep this channel open,” Palant said, and she heard Yaquita’s reply. If things went bad, the Yautja was ready to detonate her own ship in order to destroy the Macbeth. Even if she did, that would be a useless act if the generals were left alive.
They dashed from the hangar and into a network of hallways and passages, strange places that appeared more biological than constructed. Palant guessed that she was looking at the Faze’s handiwork. She could have spent a year, simply examining one small part of this ship, but her purpose now wasn’t scientific endeavor and examination, but destruction. Somehow she had changed from a scientist to a warrior, and she wasn’t even sure when that had happened.
“Watch the corners,” Halley said. “Mark your targets.”
They followed a basic schematic projected onto their visors, a rough map provided by Liliya. She knew that the Macbeth had broken down into a dozen parts, and she’d suspected that this main vessel still retained some of the layout she remembered. But there was also the possibility that things had changed—levels flipping, hallways and passages turning. They had to trust what she’d told them, but they also had to follow their instincts.
The passage ahead jigged left, and as they approached shadows were dancing there. Motion detectors came alive. Xenomorphs rounded the corner, and the marines opened up. Plasma bursts smashed the creatures apart and set the walls and ceiling aflame, suits darkening and hardening against the assault.
Palant hunkered down, trying to regulate her breathing and control her fear. Since helping to formulate their plan she’d had little time to consider her likely death. Now that it was much closer—perhaps only seconds away—it loomed large.
Yet she was strangely calm. Dying didn’t trouble her, but the possibility that they might not achieve their aim did.
Moving on, they stepped carefully through an area still burning and sizzling from plasma charge and dead Xenomorphs. Suddenly the Macbeth shuddered as Yautja ships attacked from outside, and she thought of the Tanns and the indies on one of those ships, standing away from the action because they were the backup.
Palant hoped they were never needed.
Reaching a vertical shaft, they dropped down using scrambling wires from their suit belts. The route on their visors suddenly turned red as the ship’s layout no longer allied with Liliya’s memory of it.
“We’re almost there,” Palant said into her datapad. It was only a small lie, and she hoped it would give Liliya some small comfort. One way or another, that oldest of androids was soon going to meet her doom.
Palant remembered her face as they’d parted. Liliya had looked scared, nervous, and uncertain. She had looked human.
“Movement on all sides,” Sprenkel announced.
“I see it,” Halley said. “Palant, get in the middle, with us all around you. This is going to be a fight.”
Converging on them from four directions, darkened hallways suddenly became darker with rushing shadows. Xenomorphs, monstrous attackers with no thought for their own safety or survival. Laser and nano-shot took them apart, plasma bursts smashed and melted the structure around them, and dozens of the creatures died screaming. But there were always more, and as the Marines’ ammunition began to suffer and their com-rifles grew hot with overuse, the beasts pushed closer.
Palant plucked a sidearm from Halley’s hip, and started firing.
Nothing happened.
Safety!
She almost laughed, wondered what “safe” meant, then started shooting. She picked her target, squeezed, then moved on without waiting to see the result. Turning a quarter circle every time, she shot down each of the four passageways, adding her effort to every direction. The noise was deafening. The stink was foul, even through the suit masks—burning, acidic, hot metal and air cooked from electrical discharges.
“If we die here, the others might not even know,” Palant said. Once uttered, it was a very real possibility. Ware and the Tanns had been told to hold off at a distance, and only attempt landing on the Macbeth if Palant, Halley, and the Marines failed in their task. They’d agreed on a code word, but holding off on broadcasting that word might mean wasting the opportunity entirely.
It was a long shot anyway, even if they did reach their destination. No one knew if the plan would work. It felt cobbled together, too rushed to be effective, too obscure to have any chance of success.
From one second to the next, Palant might be slashed, bitten, gutted, killed by one of these monsters. That would spell the end.
“Call them in,” Halley said.
“You’re sure?”
“Two groups trying to get there stand a better chance than one,” the Major said. “Call them in.”
Palant didn’t hesitate. She spoke into her datapad, “Wave two. Wave two.” Then she started shooting again.
“Everyone, plasma on three,” Halley said.
“We’ll be cooked alive!” Sprenkel shouted.
“Better that than—”
A Xenomorph broke through the hail of fire, darted closer, lashed out with its tail as Palant pumped three shots into it, and Sprenkel’s decapitated head bounced from the ceiling, body slumping forward spurting blood from his tattered neck. Alive one moment, dead the next. Snuffed out.
“Plasma!” Halley screamed, and Palant had never heard the Major sound so out of control.
The air around them lit up, and her suit couldn’t handle the sudden burst of heat or glare of fire.
Screaming herself, Palant fell beside Sprenkel’s body.
She fully expected to die.
27
LILIYA
Macbeth, Sol System
December 2692 AD
Just one word, Liliya thought. That’s all I’m waiting for. Just one word.
She wore a receiving speck in her ear, minute and undetectable, and tuned into the Colonial Marine and indie suits. All she needed to hear from Palant—or from the Tanns if Palant was killed—was the word, “Ready!” Then she’d know that the control hub for all Rage generals would be available to her, linked through that strange alien tech she carried in her blood.
Hopefully.
They would have used the purified nanotech to allow her access. It had worked with Alexander, her order sent for his self-destruct. There was no reason it would not work for all of them. With a signal boosted by the Pixie’s computer, and powered by a sudden draining of the Pixie’s warp drive, her message would be carried instantaneously to every single general across the sphere.
She remembered the feeling in her own heart when she had destroyed Alexander… the heat, the pain… and she anticipated worse this time. Much worse. If she wasn’t killed when the Pixie’s warp drive melted down, her own imploding heart would do the job.
She was at peace with the idea of her own demise. Yet she did not view it like an android. She was going to die, not cease to function. All her memories, good and bad, would bleed away to nothing as soon as her mind failed. Unstored. Unsaved. She was facing her own extinction as a human being, and in these loaded final moments, that made her glad.
Then she realized where they were taking her, and fear seeded inside her once again.
The main hold was heavily reinforced, and she had walked this route a thousand times before, always aware of what was inside yet never inclined to see it. She’d looked once, many years ago when the queen was still settling in. Since then, just knowing what they carried was enough to give her the jitters.
Now they were leading her there, and her end was too close. If they killed her quickly—if Maloney didn’t take the time to gloat, as Liliya had hoped would happen—then nothing that Palant and the Tanns did would matter.
The ship shuddered.
“They’ll destroy you in the end,” Liliya said. “That’s the Yautja out there, at least five ships, with more on the way.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Maloney said.
“Really?”
The Rage leader was ahead of Liliya, being pushed by her slave Dana, the poor shipborn who regarded herself as a helper. Now, Maloney commanded her to stop.
“We’ll snuff them out,” Maloney said. “You know some of what this ship is capable of, Liliya, but not all. Now, let’s go and see the old girl, shall we?”
Liliya thought about fighting. She could probably take down two of the shipborn who were standing guard, but there were two more following further behind, and behind them were a dozen Xenomorphs, hissing and growling softly as they awaited orders from their Mistress. Getting herself killed would be disastrous. So many people were risking their lives, and Liliya had a duty to keep herself alive for as long as possible.
Whatever tortures came, whatever pains, she had to remain alive.
“You think your friends on board will rescue you?” Maloney asked. “The Yautja craft that sneaked into the hangar with your ship has already been put out of action. There was a Yautja bitch on board, an old cripple. I allowed the Xenomorphs to take her. They stormed the ship and took her apart inside. She put up quite a fight, by all accounts. As for your friends, they didn’t get far from the hangar. Even now they’re…” She tilted her head, listening. “Ah, good. They are as good as dead.”
Liliya tried to keep her face neutral. If Palant and the marines really were killed, the Tanns and indies would attempt to board the ship. It was becoming more and more hopeless.
“You’re only a shadow of your old self,” she said. “You could have been so great.”
“I am great!” Maloney said. “And soon I will be greater! Haven’t you seen what we’ve already accomplished? What you could have been a part of?”
“Murder? Slaughter?” Liliya looked at Dana. “You must be so proud.”
“Open,” Maloney said. The wide doors opened onto an airlock, a barrier between the ship’s atmosphere and the danker, damper air inside the hold. A gun pushed harshly against Liliya’s back and she was sent a few steps closer to her doom.
“This is a first for both of us,” Maloney said. “No human has been in the queen’s presence for many years, except as food.”
“Isn’t that why I’m being brought in?”
Maloney shrugged.
“She’ll probably choke on me,” Liliya said, and she started laughing. Humor was one of the facets of humanity that troubled her still, but she fully understood irony, and she realized the irony in this situation. Lived as an android, died as a human, fodder for a beast.
If she kept Maloney talking, it might not need to be her epitaph. She preferred something simpler.
Lived as an android, died as a human.
“I shouldn’t be down here,” Maloney said. “I should be on the bridge overseeing the final battles—but the Rage know what to do. The generals are progressing the war. I’m almost in the way, now.”
“Your time will come,” Liliya said.
Maloney turned on her platform and looked at her. The gel surrounding her body seemed to pulse, strange currents surging like hidden emotions.
“My time is already here,” Maloney said. “Yours has long gone. Open.”
The inner doors opened. Dana gasped, as did the shipborn guards. Maloney only smiled and floated forward, urging Liliya to follow.
The android knew that she had no choice. She waited for the word—Ready! Ready!—but in waiting she had to do what Maloney wished. Resistance might bring about a quicker end. Allowing Maloney’s ego its room might just be enough to destroy her.
Liliya followed her into the lair of the Xenomorph queen. The doors closed behind them all, and everything changed. The guards followed at a distance, moving almost silently across the grotesque landscape.
The entire hold had been transformed, a more striking change than any the Faze had made. There were few straight edges in sight, and no original deck or bulkheads visible. The Xenomorphs had made this place a home for their queen, coating all surfaces with their strange extrusions, protecting the eggs in several distinct nursery areas, and guarding their domain.
It wasn’t only the physical changes that struck Liliya.
The air was heavier, more dense, humid and warm, and it smelled of something acidic and rank. The hold was silent but for the queen’s constant, heavy breathing, and the fluid sounds of her birthing sac as it pulsed with new eggs. Staring across the wide area, Liliya saw the queen deposit another one with a delicate, moist kiss from her opaque abdomen. What affected Liliya the most, though, was the feel of the place. It was as if they were no longer on board the Macbeth, or anywhere human. This place was totally other, never meant to be seen by men, or understood by them. Here the Xenomorphs ruled.
“She’s quite beautiful,” Maloney said.
Liliya could not disagree. The queen was huge, dark, all sharp edges and teeth, both beautiful and terrifying.
“So feed me to her and get it over with,” Liliya said.
“I’ve never been so close,” Maloney said, her ancient voice filled with wonder.
“I wonder what she sees when she looks at you?” Liliya mused. “A mad old woman kept alive too far beyond her years.”
“My years are far from over. I have a future, Liliya, and you could have been part of it.”
“I wouldn’t want to.”
“You stole from me. Sought to betray me. And I wonder…” Maloney turned her platform, putting her back to the Xenomorph queen so she could focus on her prisoner. “I wonder why you came back.”
“To stop you. To defeat you.”
“Whatever you think you can do, it’ll fail. The Rage are too strong.”
Liliya looked past Maloney at the monstrous queen, tethered and chained for so many years, still laying eggs, still surviving. She wondered whether the beast craved freedom, or had forgotten what it was like to be truly free.
“I’m the general of my ship, you know,” Maloney said. “One thought from me and every Xenomorph in here will be driven to tear you apart.”
That surprised Liliya. There had been serious doubts whether or not humans could use the alien tech at all. A decision must have been made. Either it had come after she fled, or it had been kept from her all along.
