She wanted it to stay that way.
She had told no one here about her experiences; where she had been in her life, what she had been—or what she had done.
But this man, Police Chief Warrick Tarleton, apparently knew.
Because he had come here. To her. With his fantastic tale.
“Did you hear me?” Tarleton asked quietly. “If not, hear this!”
He stretched his hand, forcing her to see the screen on his communicator. She tried not to look. There wasn’t much to see, she thought. Darkness, and shadows, and then… a splatter of crimson on the lens, something flying… limbs.
And the screams. The screams of the dying that didn’t end until the crimson flooded the lens, and the dying were the dead.
She turned to stare at him, feeling as ravaged as the flesh of the victims in the caves.
“Yes, Captain Hall. They opened a new silver mine. There were opening ceremonies, a picnic, bands… and then screams. Four dead were discovered in the newly opened shaft; two children are missing.”
“I’m not Captain Hall anymore! So, some other company idiot thought he could create a weapon and smuggled eggs onto this planet. When will we ever become a race without assholes as dangerous as the beasts?” Her voice was a monotone. “You need to call in the soldiers; you need the military authorities to handle this. If it can be handled. I can’t help you; no one knows who I am!”
No one knew! Not being a marine was part of her beautiful new world!
“I’ve called the soldiers; they’re coming,” Tarleton said, staring at her so intently that she wanted to scream. “The thing is… the recruits out here are raw. They’ve never had to face any… anything like what… what we saw on the surveillance tapes.”
“There are no experts who know how to handle this.”
“What you have to understand is that… there are two children down there.”
“I—I can’t help you,” Angela whispered.
And I am probably telling the truth. I will never forget Planet 8 in Star Magnolia in the Milky Way galaxy. That was where we’d come across the Xenomorphs, the ones who had used the condor dragon reptilians for their gestation, the creatures that ripped my company to shreds, consumed them alive one by one. I was powerless, caught in the rocks, watching, while they’d taken Daniel, torn into him…
Just seeing the surveillance tapes, brought back the fear—paralyzing fear!
“Okay. You’re under arrest,” Tarleton said.
“What?”
“You don’t want to volunteer your services; you can just come with me anyway. You’re under arrest.”
“For what?”
“Failure to cooperate in a criminal investigation.”
“That’s not even a legitimate charge!”
“It is now,” Tarleton assured her grimly. “You’re it—you’re all that I’ve got. You survived the condra-morth attack on your platoon. You’re the only survivor. You killed a queen.”
Because I’d been desperate; I hadn’t thought, I’d run, and I’d hidden myself, and somehow… yes, I’d survived. When no one else had been left even recognizable as a human being.
He lifted an arm, indicating his hover-car. She looked up at the beautiful sky once again. Man created such wonders; technology had taken a barren piece of rock like Oleta and turned it into a haven.
Man was also capable of gross stupidity. Someone had somehow brought alien eggs, Xenomorph eggs, to the planet. Someone somehow determined that they would create a work force or a weapon, something magnificent, where others had failed.
They just never got it.
And maybe, she was destined to never get away from the beasts.
“All I could see on your comm was shadows,” she said, after taking a seat in the passenger’s side of the bubble-shaped vehicle. “I realize that silver is the main substance being mined for here, but, I understand they’re also mining for precious gems and rock salt. I—I haven’t been involved in any of the mining operations. Which mine?”
“Silver mine,” Tarleton said briefly. He glanced over at her. “Does it matter?”
“Everything matters,” she said.
“I need to see the footage again,” she said.
He passed her the communicator. She studied it briefly, then hit in the proper place to roll the footage again. She forced herself to stare at the screen.
“What are the indigenous life forms in the mine? Are there any? The planet was a barren rock, by my understanding, when they started the terra-farming and oxygenation.”
Tarleton looked over at her. She’d met him a few times before; she liked him. He didn’t talk too much. He was a big man, tall and muscular, with dark red hair and steady blue eyes. While the military controlled the mines, Tarleton was head of the civilian police.
“You’re quite right. There are no indigenous creatures in the mine.”
Wincing, Angela played the footage again. She watched the shadows. Whatever had cast them on the walls of the cave seemed to have a multitude of arms.
“There was some life form in the cave,” she said. “At best, someone managed to smuggle in eggs, but that’s only the first stage for these beings. There had to be a host—we know that the host can be human, or just about any kind of creature found on any planet. But, the creatures must have a host.” She looked at him, frowning. “Why have you come for me? This happened at the mine.”
“Yes.”
“That’s military jurisdiction from the get-go,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Then—”
“They’re assholes,” Tarleton said flatly.
“But, they’re—”
“Headed by Lieutenant Colonel Simon Nicholson. Nicholson came from a posh military school. Never saw any action in the field whatsoever. He was assigned here because his family has an interest in the mines. He’s claiming that the personnel down there went crazy because some kind of gas slipped into the oxygen system. He says we’re just seeing them tear each other apart.”
Angela looked at him incredulously.
“So Simon Nicholson is in charge here—with dozens of colonial marines at his beck and call. They’ll go in; they’ll find out what really happened.”
“You know what really happened.”
They’d reached the mine.
Tarleton parked and jumped out of the hover-car. Angela followed.
The remnants of a band shell remained, along with barbecue pits, picnic blankets, and more. But, the revelers were gone; men and women in their military apparel hurried about, gathering weapons, lining up.
There was a command station set up between two large military trucks. Tarleton was heading that way.
Angela hurried after him.
The first man she saw was young, perhaps in his mid-twenties. He had a wide-eyed look of panic about him, but he was doing his best to provide a blustering authority. “Alpha Company, stairs to the second level down; Betas will take the elevators. These are, we believe, our own people under the influence of a mind-altering substance; take care, preserve life at all costs—that includes your own lives!”
“Yes, sir!” The company captains—one a young woman of about twenty, the other a man who might have been just a few years older—acknowledged the order, adjusting gas masks over their faces.
“What are you doing?” Tarleton asked.
“My job!” Nicholson said.
“Our people are dead, Nicholson—what are you, an idiot? There is no gas—there are creatures down there!”
Nicholson appeared as if he was about to explode. “How dare you, Tarleton! Arrest him!” He told one of his men.
“Like hell—I’m Chief of Police.”
“Civilian police.”
“This isn’t a military operation,” Tarleton began.
“It is now,” Nicholson said, quickly cutting him off. “I’m declaring martial law—times of need.”
“Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson!” Angela said quickly. She’d been mili
tary long enough to know that rich boys who went to academies and came out officers would die—or let just about anyone else die—before they’d let their college-earned titles be ignored.
She even managed a smile.
“Sir, I’m Angela Hall, retired military. And I—”
“Yes, I know about you, Miss Hall. Everybody knows who you are! Ex-fighter! Thank you for coming by, but you’re no longer in the military and this isn’t a Xenomorph situation.”
He was studying a map of the mine. He barely looked up.
“I beg to differ, sir, if you’ll look at the footage you have—”
“I can place you under military arrest as well,” Nicholson said curtly.
Then it started again. The screaming. Commanders calling out to one another. Screaming, screaming, screaming… Blood splaying over a lens until the viewers were blinded again… blinded by a sea of crimson blood.
“Next units!” Nicholson shouted. “Be alert!”
Marines scrambled and hurried over to the opening to the cave—all adjusting their gas masks.
“Asses!” Tarleton exclaimed, hurrying over to join the marines.
“Stop that idiot!” Nicholson said, snapping out the order to those soldiers. They rushed after Tarleton; too late. The man had pushed his way past the marines, and into the caves.
“Let him rush in ahead and get himself killed,” Nicholson muttered. He shook his head. “Where are the air guys? The scientists are supposed to be here—if they just get the contamination under control!”
“Sir!” One of the men standing by him seemed uneasy. “Sir! They whisper in town about these caves. About the noises they’ve heard from around here. People do believe that there’s some kind of creature down there.”
“Joe, stop! Just because you’re my cousin, you have no right to test my authority!”
“But, Simon—”
“Shut up. Hey! Who’s a marine! Hoorah! Hoorah!” Nicholson said.
Men and women with their masks obeyed; it didn’t seem to Angela that they moved as quickly as they had before.
“Lieutenant Colonel—” Angela began.
“There is no Xenomorph!” Nicholson snapped. “You need hosts. This was a barren rock.”
At his side, Joe cleared his throat.
Angela stared at him, frowning. Cousin Joe looked terrified.
“Watch those people die,” Angela said quietly. “There is some kind of Xenomorph down in the caves.”
Nicholson looked up at her impatiently. “I’m trying to pay you respect for past service, Miss Hall. You were a marine; you survived a lot. But, you need to clear out and let me handle this situation. The government assured us that the last of the Xenomorphs were destroyed more than a year ago; they can’t be on this planet. Terra-farming was just begun in the last century. There’s no way that a Xenomorph could be on this planet!”
“There are children down there!” Angela said. She inhaled and caught her breath. Tarleton had run into the caves.
He was probably as dead as the others.
Except Tarleton knows that they had a Xenomorpha situation!
Nicholson was telling her to leave.
I can run! I don’t have to be here. I don’t have to face this nightmare again…
There were children in the caves.
And there was no running. Depending on the Xenomorphs, they could kill every single marine on the planet—and then finish off the civilians.
“Simon,” Joe said hesitantly.
“Lieutenant Colonel!” Simon Nicholson reminded him angrily.
“Sir…”
“What? What the hell is it?” Nicholson said.
Joe lowered his voice. “I heard your dad talking.” He glanced at Angela nervously. “He believes that it was too easy to get into the mines. As if the tunnels had been… gouged out by something that was… non-mechanical and non… human. He thinks that the company arranged for giant Blue Moon centipedes to be brought here… just as the planet was oxygenated.”
Angela felt as if a cold wave washed over her.
She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe that anyone, even the most gung-ho and ambitious company man or woman out there, would arrange for giant Blue Moon centipedes and Xenomorph eggs to be brought to the same place.
“Blue Moon centipedes. As Xenomorph hosts. Oh, God, help us, for we will need divine intervention!” Angela said.
“No, no, they wouldn’t have brought giant centipedes here,” Nicholson said, but he didn’t appear to believe his own words. Yes, Blue Moon centipedes might have been brought here; they were incredible tunnel makers—better than any digging equipment known.
Nicholson spun around suddenly to accost someone. Angela saw a man she hadn’t seen before that day—and yet had seen dozens of times before.
Because he wasn’t a man, of course. He was an android, one called Tommy II. The newest model—they’d had one as their science officer when she’d last encountered Xenomorphs.
“Did the company bring eggs here? Centipedes?” Nicholson asked.
“No. Not that I know about. I am not… my programming, after events in the past, is now set to prevent me from lying,” the android said.
“Centipedes. I can only imagine…” Angela said.
Screams sounded again; Nicholson’s third round of marines. Angela couldn’t help but stare at the screen.
Body parts—flew.
She saw the shadows of what looked like… great alien arms. A hundred of them—from a genetic splash between a centipede and an alien.
There was a sudden flare of luminescence; someone’s flashlight shooting a huge arch.
That was when she saw the child. The little girl, hunched beneath an overhang of rock. She was just standing there, staring, in shock… screaming.
Chief of Police Tarleton suddenly appeared, making a beeline for the girl. He caught her and flew down behind one of the ragged boulders that lay to either side of the dug-out silver mine tunnel.
The light went out; she couldn’t tell if the little girl and Tarleton had made it or not.
Angela winced… and looked back at Nicholson.
“Listen to me, Nicholson, and brighten up. I don’t care what you say. You have Xenomorphs, hybrids that gestated in giant Blue Moon centipedes. You can take them out with a nuclear weapon. Probably destroy this planet, but if you don’t kill them now, this planet will be destroyed anyway. There will be no one left alive on it. You can tell your men to quit with the gas masks—you don’t need them. You do need greater firepower—flamethrowers. And don’t send in small units one by one. We need a whole row of marines going in at once, firing at once with automatic weapons and the flamethrowers. The children, bless them, have survived somehow. You can see the little girl, hiding behind one of the rocks.”
Nicholson just stood there, staring at her.
Angela let out an oath of impatience.
“What happened to ‘hoorah’?” she demanded.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nicholson said.
He is either incredibly stupid, or in shock. They obviously hadn’t taught real-world blood and guts at his fancy school, she thought.
She let out an oath of impatience. He wasn’t going to listen to her. She spun around and headed for one of the trucks. Luckily, weaponry hadn’t changed much since she’d left the corp.
She found what had been branded as the “wooly mammoth,” a flamethrower with a power and distance that was formidable.
Enough to take down giant centipede Xenomorphs? I don’t know. But maybe I could at least get the child and get out and…
She wasn’t alone; the android, Tommy II, had followed her. She looked at him suspiciously.
“I can’t lie, and I can’t kill,” he assured her.
“Then you’re a hell of a lot different from some of your predecessors!” she said.
“I’m different,” he swore.
She didn’t know whether to believe him or not. But then, s
he didn’t know if she’d come out of the caves or not. She’d seen the little girl; there was no running. Except for into the cave; bearing her weapon, she turned, and she ran, heading in—the android behind her.
At the mouth of the cave, she stopped. The android was next to her and, as she paused, looking at the entrance and the stairs that had been cut into the earth and the elevator shaft, she saw that she had been joined by three marines, as well.
Almost the size unit of the company she had lost so recently…
She nodded briefly to them and spoke softly. “They can be very different, these Xenomorphs, as we know, depending on the host—giant centipedes, in this case—and whatever genetic interference might have taken place at the facehugger stage. One thing to remember—what they bleed is usually acidic. And they’ll have an inner mouth—and it’s the inner mouth that will be the most dangerous. Imagine the worst of what you’ve learned in a creature with a hundred or so legs… watch out. And you’ll probably have the mouth, and the forcibles—what really ‘bites’ in a centipede…”
They saluted her, one short-haired, heavily muscled young woman, and the two men at her side.
“No elevator; we stand together.”
“Yes, ma’am!” one of the marines said.
Creating a flank, they headed down the stairs.
Angela saw the first movement of a “foot.” She froze for a moment.
It was worse than she had imagined; the legs were long. The creatures were long. She saw three of them. They had the huge, elongated head, and mouth, the mouth… the mouth on each already opening to allow that second mouth of razor-sharp teeth to protrude as they came toward them, hundreds of long feet waving, and, beneath the double mouths, the “forcibles” clicking away, ready to claw and tear…
“Fire!” Angela commanded.
And they did, as a team. They aimed for the giant heads with the mammoth flamethrowers.
Yes, yes, fire is good! Fire decreased the acid dropping from the things; it burnt up in the flames, it enhanced them.
“Cover me!” she shouted.
She had come to the bottom of the stairs; huge tunnels existed, but castoff rocks and ledges surrounded them. She made a dive behind the rock where she’d seen the little girl. The child had ceased to scream; she had ceased to do anything but shake and stare in horror.