Predator - Incursion (35 page)

Someone shouted. Lieder, calling instructions.

A scream. Snowdon.

Mains had just reached the opening in the wall and he turned, weapon up and ready.

Snowdon had tripped and was squirming beneath two Xenomorphs, their tails lashing out at Lieder and Faulkner where they stood beyond.

Mains took a step forward and a tail caught him across the legs, taking them from under him, slamming him on the ground. The suit took most of the impact but he gasped a breath, briefly winded.

“L-T!” Snowdon screamed, and then he saw one Xenomorph holding her head still between its massive, spidery hands, while the other bent close.

He brought up his laser pistol. Too late.

The creature’s inner jaw slammed down, ripping through Snowdon’s suit mask and caving in her face.

“No,” Mains breathed.

“L-T, roll!” Faulkner shouted, and he obeyed. He rolled three times and was presented with a flickering view of the two aliens—along with Snowdon’s body—consumed in a blast of plasma fire. From within the conflagration came two wet explosions as the dead beasts burst apart.

Lieder grabbed his arm and pulled him upright, rifle held out in her other hand. Snowdon was gone. There one moment, nothing the next, wiped from existence, every experience and memory and personality quirk halted in a moment too brief to measure.

Losing one of his crew felt like losing a sister, or a child.

Lieder held onto his arm and dragged him after her into the opening in the tunnel wall. “Faulkner!” she shouted, and he appeared behind them. He’d lost his com-rifle and held onto a laser pistol. His right arm was a mashed mess, slashed from shoulder to elbow and swinging from a few shreds of flesh and a shattered bone.

“Jesus,” Mains said, but Faulkner shook his head.

“Suit’s doped me up. Just don’t ask me to look at it.”

“Between us,” Mains said, shrugging off Lieder’s hand and pulling Faulkner between them. “Lieder, take lead. I’ll back up behind us. This crack’s too narrow for more than one of them to—”

The opening back into the blazing tunnel grew dark, and he lit it up, spraying laser blasts and cringing as the thing there came apart, acid raising smoke from the walls and floor.

“Lieder, let’s go!” he shouted. “Follow the schematic, up and out.”

Lieder moved quickly. Mains kept one eye on his own schematic display, never dropping his attention from the opening that was receding rapidly behind them. More Xenos came in, and they fell beneath his concentrated fire.

He checked ammo. Not looking good, and Faulkner was badly wounded, only the drugs the suit had administered keeping him going. Shock would drop him soon.

“L-T, got to climb a bit here, then we’re out,” Lieder said.

“Let’s do it.”

Faulkner groaned, but said nothing. Lieder went first, Faulkner next. Mains waited until Lieder was at the top of the low wall, checked his suit scanner for movement, then slung his rifle over his shoulder and climbed.

“Atmos shield,” Lieder said, and as they moved toward the milky opening onto the outside of the habitat, Mains never thought he’d been so pleased to step out into vacuum. Leaving the claustrophobic interior and tunnels behind, he stared up at the ship docked against the end of the Yautja habitat.

Where had it come from? Who or what crewed it, and why had the Xenomorphs come with it? All important questions, but they were questions for later.

Right now, survival was their prime concern.

“Status?” he asked.

“Ammo low,” Lieder said. “I’ve got one more plasma charge, some micro dot. Laser pod’s pretty decent, but my suit’s power’s not looking good.”

“You’ve got more than me,” Mains said. He looked at Faulkner, swaying slightly where he stood, looking into infinity as if readying himself to go there.

“Faulkner!” Mains said.

“L-T…” the injured man said, blinking slowly, swaying some more. “I’m good. Suit’s sealed up at my shoulder and pressurized. Keeping me pain free. I’m good.”

“What the hell’s going on here, Johnny?” Lieder asked.

“Beats me.”

“That ship…”

“Yeah. Never seen anything like it.”

“Xenos don’t have tech, do they?”

“Not that we know.”

“And they seem to have some sort of auto-destruct when they’re killed.”

“So someone brought them here?”

“They’re marked,” Faulkner said.

“Huh?” Lieder grabbed his arm.

“Not now!” Mains said. He was eyeing the atmosphere shield they’d just penetrated. Even though their suits were pressurized and feeding them oxygen, he wasn’t sure whether those creatures might not break through anyway. Charging into the line of fire didn’t seem to bother them, so why should pursuing the enemy into a vacuum?

“It’s our last hope,” he said, and neither of the others replied. They had known for quite some time.

An instant after they started walking toward the ship, Mains’s suit chimed a warning. He turned and saw several Xenomorphs crossing the habitat surface toward them. Ice was forming on their shining black carapaces, their limbs moved sluggishly, and one of them slipped and fell, clasping at the ground as if to dig its way back inside.

Mains pulled his antique pump-action shotgun and put the others out of their misery. Their blood froze as it fell, shattering across the ground. He didn’t believe that they hadn’t known the results of pursuing their prey out onto the surface, and he wondered what might have driven the creatures to suicide.

Mains’s shoulder drone had been lost during the recent battle, so he instructed Lieder to send hers ahead and set it to transmit on open frequency. All three of them needed to see what was coming.

“Never seen a ship like it,” Lieder said softly. There was an edge of fear in her voice, and a level of respect.

“Not sure anyone has,” Mains said. It was an amazing vessel, with no clearly definable bow or stern, no certain shape. It was as if it had grown from the habitat rather than docked here. There were three docking arms connecting it with UMF 12. One of them was blackened and open, apparently damaged during an exchange of fire. The other two were whole.

“We don’t have a chance,” Faulkner said. His voice was monotone, soft. His energy was fading, and soon even his suit wouldn’t be able to hold back the shock of his shattered arm.

“It’s our
only
chance,” Lieder said. “We’ve got to report what we’ve seen here.” The certainty that they could never escape this place remained unspoken by any of them, but heavy in the air. Excursionists weren’t trained in suicide missions. They would fight to the last soldier, the last drop of blood and gasp of air, but they weren’t so stupid that they could not see the truth.

“That first docking arm looks clear,” Mains said. “No sign of movement.”

“It’ll be defended,” Faulkner said. “By
them
.”

Mains did not reply. There was nothing left to say.

They moved across the habitat’s surface, expecting to be fired upon at any moment from the ship, or attacked by Xenomorphs from hidden atmos shields. Then there were the Yautja that might still be alive, and hungry for revenge against whoever or whatever had launched this assault.

Mains was troubled that the ship was still there. If the assault had been successful, why would the attackers remain docked on the habitat? There was no sign of activity. The Xenomorphs they’d fought hadn’t seemed to be performing any task other than keeping still, silent, watchful, until they had a target.

He wasn’t even sure they could pilot it, but the ship might have communication technology they could use, and that became Mains’s prime concern.

All seemed quiet. As they neared the docking arm, he expected his suit to chime warnings of movement. Still there was nothing.

“L-T, we’ll have to go back below the surface to access the docking arm,” Lieder said. “It’s been blasted through the habitat’s surface and sealed.”

“Not too keen on going back down there,” Faulkner said.

“No choice,” Mains said. “How’s your ammo?”

“Low.”

“Me too,” Lieder replied.

“Okay, we’ll move quickly. Concentrate on your footing and moving forward, let your suit watch out for danger. We’ll know if something’s coming for us.”

Lieder and Faulkner nodded. Faulkner looked pale, wide-eyed, like a man trapped in a vehicle’s headlights. He was waiting for the pain and shock to bite in.

Mains took point. They found a nearby atmos shield and passed back through the milky field and found themselves in a wide space, their suits allowing for the additional oxygen levels. The air here was warmer than elsewhere, a heavy heat that seemed to pulse from the strange structures covering the walls, floor, and ceiling.

“Okay, now what the
fuck
is
that
?” Lieder said.

“Hold,” Mains said. He interrogated his suit, requesting an analysis of this strange place. They’d seen nothing like it on the habitat before.

“Xenomorph nest,” Faulkner said. “I knew a guy in the DevilDogs who’d seen this shit before.”

“Nest,” Lieder responded. “Fan-fucking-tastic.” They kept moving.

“Check motion detectors and life sensors. We’re almost below the docking arm.” Mains consulted his suit’s schematic, a confused image that seemed to blur and flicker, as if the true dimensions of their surroundings were difficult to discern. “Ten yards.”

He ran, and the others followed. They jumped over ridged protrusions in the floor, ducked beneath structures drooping from the ceiling, and just as they reached a wide opening above them, their suits screamed warnings.

The Xenomorphs came from the walls. Black, glinting shapes flashed before them, confusing sensors, dashing through shadows, casting ghostly images on their infrared visors.

Faulkner fired a nano-burst point blank above them, blasting two Xenomorphs apart and showering them with body parts and acid. Even the blasted parts seemed to melt down to nothing. Faulkner groaned. Mains saw his damaged arm steaming and bubbling, and as the three of them ran, Faulkner reached across and ripped the remnants of the arm from his shoulder.

His suit must have been pumping him with dangerous doses of phrail, because he never even broke step.

They advanced, fired, regrouped, forming a defensive triangle that no creature breached. Below the intrusive docking arm at last, Mains instructed Lieder to start climbing. The tunnel above them was wide, criss-crossed with thick structures similar to the open space below.

Lieder reached back and helped Faulkner. Mains waited until they had a good start, turned quick circles—taking out one more Xenomorph with his shotgun—and then it fell silent.

He kicked at the remains of a smooth, curved head steaming at his feet.

They’re marked
, Faulkner had said, and now Mains saw that he was right. A stamped image was partly hidden by a splash of acidic brain matter. Mains scraped it aside with his boot, crouched down, and took in a deep breath.

Patton
, it said.

“What the fuck?”

“Johnny, we’re close to the ship,” Lieder said from above him.

“On my way.” He started climbing, querying his suit computer as he pulled himself up through the honeycomb structure inside the docking arm.

General Patton—a 20th-century American military leader.

“Guys, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve just seen,” Mains said.

“You and me both,” Lieder whispered.

Mains climbed faster, one eye on his suit readout. No movement, other than Lieder and Faulkner above him. No life signs. It was as if the Xenomorphs were ghosts, sweeping in to haunt them, then fading away again to nothing.

Patton
.

They climbed into a wide space, walls smooth and uneven, the whole vessel’s structure seemingly grown rather than built. There, they found the dead.

A battle had been fought. It had been a while ago, probably when the ship first arrived and the Yautja started to leave. Those left behind had come here to fight, and the destruction was immense.

Scores of blasted Xenomorph bodies lay strewn across the whole area. Lit by their suit lights, the scattered, strange limbs cast shivering shadows across curved walls. Acid blood had spilled and burned. Structure had melted and set again, around and across the Yautja bodies that also lay here and there. Some of them had been torn apart. Others were whole apart from holes smashed through their helmets and into their skulls by the Xenomorphs’ powerful jaws.

Every Yautja corpse was minus its left arm, torn off to prevent any of them from suiciding.

“Some fight,” Lieder said.

“Yeah.” Mains walked among the dead, and here and there, where enough of the Xenomorphs’ heads had survived the weird self-destruct, he saw the same markings.

“Seen it?” Faulkner asked.

“Seen it, but having trouble processing.”

“Someone’s using them as weapons,” Faulkner said. “Someone naming himself after an old general.”

“Weirder and fucking weirder,” Lieder said.

“And more reason than ever to get to a communications unit,” Mains said.

“At least it means we’ll probably be able to use it,” Lieder said. “Johnny… whoever’s done this is
human
!”

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. “Either way, let’s see what we can find.”

They moved deeper into the ship. Away from the scene of the big battle, they encountered nothing, and no one. There was an atmosphere here, but their suits still had to filter it and supplement them with extra oxygen.

Faulkner struggled on. Mains was amazed at his resilience. He knew the big man would grind to a halt soon, and that his suit’s ministrations could not continue indefinitely, but Faulkner’s doom was simply a more visible manifestation of their own. None of them would survive this.

Lieder took point and probed ahead, and ten minutes after entering the strange ship and forging onward and upward, she held up a hand.

“Johnny. Bridge.”

“And?”

“Another battle.” She disappeared through an opening, and Faulkner and Mains followed.

* * *

The android was pinned to the wall at the far end of the bridge, several yards from the floor. A wide, heavy blade had pierced its chest and held him there, its handle heavy with hardened drips of his pale gray blood. His head hung low, chin touching his chest.