“Have we lost them?”
Cole checked the readouts on the console, shook his head. “Everything here says the channel is still live.”
“They’re debating whether to proceed—and if so, how.” Daniels did her best to radiate confidence. “I know Tee. He’s not going to agree to any plan of action without conferring with the others first. No matter how desperate the need, he’ll go over all the angles before committing.”
Sure enough, the pilot’s voice came through clearly a moment later.
“Stand by, ground team.” They could hear him, faintly, as he queried the others. Ricks and Upworth would be there with him on the bridge, Daniels knew. Would he act without their accord? She doubted it.
“Can we get the heavy cargo lift retooled?” he said, addressing the others aboard the Covenant. “Boost the engine output? Reduce the weight by removing any and every non-essential? Whatever it takes. In seven hours?”
Straining, Daniels could hear Upworth’s reply.
“Yes.”
Tennessee’s voice strengthened once more as he addressed them directly. “We’ll be there, ground team.”
Cole let out a long whooo of relief, while Lopé just smiled tightly. Daniels smiled too, even though getting through the next seven hours or so was going to see a rise in everyone’s blood pressure. It wasn’t likely to subside until they were actually back on the ship.
“That’s great news,” she said toward the pickup. “Thanks, Tee. If we have to move from our present position, it won’t be far, and we’ll shoot you new landing coordinates. Meanwhile, look for my beacon. We’ll put out everything we’ve got to make sure you’ve got a straight vector in.”
“They can land on my head for all I care.” Cole looked around, scanning the expansive rooftop that remained deserted, except for him and his friends. “Anything they have to do to get us out of this place, it’s okay by me.”
The comm beeped, indicating that Tennessee wasn’t through.
“The storm’s still pretty bad so we’re going to shift back to a higher orbit while we prepare the cargo lift. But we’ll aim to drop at first light, your time. Coming through at six bells.”
“Aye aye,” Daniels acknowledged. “Six bells, understood. We’ll be packed and waiting.”
“Shouldn’t take long to haul y’all out of there,” Tennessee assured her. “Hey, is Faris around there? I’d like to say a quick hello to my lady.”
Walter and Daniels exchanged a glance. In Oram’s absence, informing Tennessee was her responsibility, and hers alone. She nodded at Walter, who turned and walked away. Lopé and Cole took this as a cue for them to do likewise.
As soon as she had been given some space, she once again addressed the comm.
“Hey, Tennessee,” she said, careful to keep her voice level, “can you switch to a private channel? Suit to suitset?”
* * *
On the Covenant’s bridge, neither Ricks nor Upworth could hear the ensuing conversation. They did not have to. Its import was writ clear in the succession of shifting expressions on Tennessee’s face.
The pilot didn’t look in their direction, and offered no details when he finally nodded to indicate that Ricks could terminate the exchange. He stood in silence for a long moment.
Then he ripped off his headset, flung it aside heedless of where it might land, and turned to exit the bridge. On his way out he slammed a fist into a bulkhead.
Married themselves, Upworth and Ricks had seen enough to understand.
* * *
It was very quiet in the subterranean chamber. Nothing moved save rising wisps of ammonia-laden mist.
Certainly David did not move. He was too busy watching the captain. Enough time had passed, so he was a bit concerned that nothing had happened. Then Oram’s rib cage arched in a slow, balletic spasm before increased respiration and heartbeat resumed.
Rising from where he had been sitting, the synthetic walked over to stand beside the man’s body. Nearby lay the facehugger. Having fulfilled its brief but frenzied mission in life, it was now a crumpled, harmless knot of bony appendages and limp, fleshy ovipositor. David ignored it, intent on the prone form of the captain.
Kneeling, he opened the man’s shirt and peered at his chest. The rib cage rippled slightly beneath sweaty, glistening skin. Everything was proceeding normally. Or rather, abnormally, he told himself. The normal abnormal. There was amusement to be found in the human language, if not in its racial precepts.
Another slow spasm caused Oram’s spine to arch unnaturally before settling down once again. It was then that he opened his eyes. Groggy from inactivity and lingering unconsciousness, he blinked at his surroundings before focusing, however imperfectly, on the figure of the synthetic looming over him.
“Easy now, Captain,” David murmured solicitously. “How do you feel?”
Oram tried to swallow only to find that he could not. There was an odd dryness in his throat. Even though he was breathing, he felt cut off from his lungs.
“I was dreaming,” he answered. “In the dream I met the Lord, our Creator. And he was so kind and forgiving, like when I was a kid.”
David pursed his lips and looked thoughtful.
“You don’t believe that anymore?”
Oram made an effort to shrug. One shoulder barely moved.
“I guess we all grow up.”
His eyes widened and his chest jerked violently. David took care to straighten and step back as the captain’s torso heaved. He was trying to say something, but no words came out. Instead, he ejected spittle and some blood.
A widening caldera appeared in the center of his chest, sending blood, bone, and viscera erupting into the ammonia-laden air. Given the human’s small size in relation to that of an Engineer, the birth was more explosive than David had expected. Blood splattered his clothing, his hands, his face. Save for wrinkling his nose curiously at the smell, he ignored all of it.
“I guess we do,” he murmured, more to himself than to the captain, who could no longer hear—or see, or sense anything.
The worm-like alien that emerged from the fresh, ripped corpse was likewise covered in gore. It was already beginning to change, to mature, even before it had fully emerged. An advanced model possessed of a wildly accelerated rate of growth, it rose slowly. An enthralled David looked on as it continued to straighten, unfolding itself to send out rapidly elongating arms, legs, and hammerhead-like skull as bits of the captain dripped or tumbled from its biomechanoid flanks.
As the chin came up, teeth like steel razors flashed in the dim light. Upright now, it contemplated the only other dynamic being in the chamber. The great smooth, eyeless head regarded the equally intent David, studying, smelling, sensing, taking the measure of that which like itself stood upright on two legs.
The head tilted to one side, the entire aspect of the hideous apparition suggesting unsuspected intelligence and contemplation.
Slowly, David spread his arms wide, trying to convey a mixture of supplication and friendship. Anyone else might have, should have, run. From the moment the captain had been infected, however, David had never had any intention of running.
By perceptual means the synthetic still could not divine, the alien watched him. Then, slowly, it copied his gesture, extending and raising both arms. David raised first one hand, then the other. Once again the alien copied the synthetic’s movements. Observing this, David grew emotional—or at least he mimicked growing emotional. It might have been honest sentiment. Or it might have been an effort to indicate, if only to himself, that he possessed depth.
A slight shudder passed through the creature whose emergence the synthetic continued to monitor. It grew visibly before David’s eyes. The exoskeleton grew longer and the tough epidermis stretched to accommodate the growth. It was developing right in front of the enthralled synthetic. He remained motionless, utterly rapt.
For a while he looked on in silence as it continued to increase in size. Then he deliberately moved in clos
e. Craning forward, the now adolescent alien once again imitated the synthetic’s movement. Putting his lips together David whistled a few soft, carefully modulated notes. Head cocked to one side, the alien watched and listened. Then it exhaled softly, trying to duplicate the sounds. Since it possessed a very different respiratory mechanism, it failed in the attempt.
That did not matter to David. What was important and what prompted him to tears was the fact that the creature tried. The being that Oram had given birth to. The creature to which he, David, had been midwife. It responded. To him, and to him alone.
* * *
Holding his rifle at the ready, Cole worked his way down the deserted corridor, one of several that branched off from the great central chamber. He advanced carefully, ready to fire at anything that moved. Focusing on the task at hand kept his mind busy, kept him from feeling that the great stone heads in the main chamber were following his every move, judging him, and finding him and his companions wanting.
A distant sound caught his attention and he turned, keeping the beam of his laser sight at waist-level as he continued to move forward. When something large and irregular on the floor interrupted the beam he halted immediately and almost fired. Approaching cautiously, he saw that there was no need to shoot.
In the dim light he recognized the creature that had attacked the landing party. A mass of dead white flesh and splattered blood, it was no threat now. Not to himself or anything else. Despite his conviction he approached the corpse warily, all too conscious of the speed with which it previously had moved.
Holding tight to his weapon, he kicked at one motionless white leg. It rebounded slightly from the contact, and clattered softly against the pavement. Otherwise, there was no reaction. It was dead for certain, he told himself. Which begged an interesting question.
Who, or what, had killed it?
Though it displayed all the signs of having been shot up by a standard-issue carbine, given the surprises this world held, the private wasn’t ready to take anything for granted.
As he pondered multiple possibilities, he heard a new sound, and continued on. Definitely a voice, he told himself. A human voice, but slightly distorted. Moments later he found himself in a new chamber, one with a skylighted ceiling that stretched all the way to the top of the building. Tracking the voice, he quickly located a comm unit. It lay on the floor, drenched by but immune to the steady drip of water from above.
The voice was coming from it, distorted by the dripping liquid.
“Rosenthal, come in.” That was Lopé, calling urgently. The sergeant continued to plead via the comm. “Where are you, Rosie? Rosie, please report.”
Snapping on a light, Cole added its warm beam to the thin lance of his rifle’s laser sight, and played both around the spacious chamber. The bright beam bounced off droplets and trickles of water tumbling from above. Slender cascades shone silver in the light. Beam and laser illuminated strange plants and bloated fruit and…
Something he wished he didn’t recognize.
Walking over to where Rosenthal’s broken body lay crumpled against a far wall, he winced as he examined it. It took him a minute to gather his emotions before he finally felt able to address his own comm.
“Sarge… I found her.”
Turning, he played light and laser over the surrounding room, checking every corner, every shadow, every possible place of concealment. There was nothing to be seen except flourishing plants and falling water. That, and the remains of what had once been Rosenthal.
* * *
The fact that dawn was looming only lent greater urgency to the expedition team’s efforts. What was left of them, at least. It wasn’t necessary for them to pack up all their gear. Nobody was going to dock their pay for leaving replaceable equipment behind. At this point no one cared about pay, anyway.
All that mattered anymore was getting off the cursed globe on which they found themselves, and doing so alive and with as many functioning limbs and organs as possible.
The four of them gathered up the easier-to-pack items anyway. In giving them something to do, it took their minds at least temporarily away from the devastated jumble of blood and bone that had been Private Rosenthal.
As perhaps the most competent and professional of Lopé’s team, her ugly demise only served to magnify in their minds the threat they all faced. True, one of the two neomorphs that had attacked them in the high grass was dead, but that left at least one other alive, and who knew what other dangers lurked to disrupt their planned departure.
Cole almost hoped the other creature would put in an appearance, so they could blow it away.
Almost.
Off, Daniels told herself as she secured the last of her gear. She wanted off this hideous planet. She wanted to get as far away from it as hyperspace travel would allow. Never before in her career had she longed more fervently for the cold but sterile emptiness of deep space.
A look of utter frustration on his face, an impatient Lopé was scanning the corners of the huge chamber.
“Where the hell is Oram?”
Walter stepped forward. “He wanted to think. Or to grieve further. Perhaps both. He went off by himself. Daniels and I thought it discreet to allow him his privacy.”
Daniels looked over at the sergeant.
“I saw him leave,” she admitted. “I didn’t think he should go, but I was too tired to argue with him. He’s been gone a long time. Too long, I think.”
“Why isn’t he answering his comm?” There was a touch of fresh panic in Cole’s voice.
Daniels tamped it down. “Take it easy. I was exhausted and fell asleep. He was just as tired, if not more so. He probably sat down somewhere and did the same. Dozed off somewhere, just like I did.” When Cole didn’t respond to her attempt to reassure him, she tried another tack.
“Listen to me. I’ll contact the ship, see if we can get them to move up the drop. Even if the weather hasn’t cleared completely, maybe they can push it a little if they’re done with prepping the cargo lift.” She regarded the two soldiers.
“Go find the captain,” she said. “Be careful. Keep your comms open and stay in touch, even if it’s just to let us know how you’re doing.”
“I’ll go find David.” Walter smiled encouragingly. “Perhaps he has some knowledge of the captain’s whereabouts. If so, I will report back immediately.”
“Good.” She nodded curtly. “We all meet back here in fifteen. No matter where Oram is, no matter what his state or condition. Anyone not back here in fifteen risks getting left behind. Got that? Fifteen, and we’re gone.”
It took several minutes after Lopé and Cole had disappeared via one portal and Walter through another, for it to strike her that she was completely alone.
XIX
Having retreated to an altitude high above the storm, the Covenant rode easily in orbit, once again unaffected by the ionospheric turmoil.
As for the storm itself, its intensity had eased considerably. Fewer and fewer of the prominent electrical discharges now pierced the clouds. The atmosphere itself was less agitated. In places, the planetary surface was starting to show through the hitherto impenetrable cloud cover.
According to Mother, it was no longer raining at the landing site. That in itself, Tennessee knew, should make the recovery operation a good deal simpler. Nothing would be more maddening than getting the landing team survivors onto the rig’s platform, only to have someone slip off and break their neck.
The cargo lift was an unlovely piece of equipment. Essentially an open metal deck buttressed by four maneuverable thrusters placed at the corners, it featured a simple control cab located forward and two powerful engines at the stern. Supplementary equipment storage modules were located aft of the control cab.
To reduce weight and increase maneuverability, all but one of these had been removed. Ricks and Upworth would have removed the stern-mounted cargo crane and its heavy-duty grasping claw as well, but for reasons of integrity the lift’s main piece of equ
ipment couldn’t be safely disassembled from the vehicle—not without time they did not have.
As Daniels had pointed out, the cargo lift had been designed and built to transport the heaviest terraforming machinery on the Covenant, taking it from ship to ground. Its elementary controls were exceptionally forgiving, and it could take some serious abuse.
It’ll have to, Tennessee reflected as he climbed into the control cabin and strapped himself into the operator’s chair. He only hoped that the craft’s stabilizers were up to the task ahead.
Assuming those were functioning properly, the lift probably could have made the descent even at the height of the storm, he told himself as he brought controls and readouts to life. He could only hope they hadn’t delayed the rescue effort too long.
He struggled with some of the controls. Not because he was unfamiliar with them—they had been designed to be intuitively manipulated even by someone with little to no knowledge of the instrument layout itself. It was because the operator’s cab was small and cramped, a far cry from the comparatively spacious bridge of the lander.
The controls had been kept as straightforward and deliberately unsophisticated as possible. A few were even non-haptic, and required manual operation. This seemingly crude design element was actually intentional. In a difficult and unfamiliar environment, manual controls could often be jury-rigged and repaired on the spot, whereas electronics required more sophisticated intervention that wasn’t always readily available.
He continued to prep the vehicle for departure as Upworth toiled beside him, removing anything unnecessary from the control cab in order to make as much room as possible in the already confined space. As they hurried, Ricks’ voice sounded over the cab’s comm. He was still on the bridge, infusing the drop preparations with the necessary final programming.
“I’m giving you full plasma intermix on both engines and all four thrusters. Gonna give you one fuckload of thrust—if you don’t blow up on the way down.”
“That’s the point, son.” Tennessee spoke while receiving and authorizing drop programming via the cab’s console. “Anybody and anything can fly a cargo lift—as long as it’s straight down. Gotta be able to punch through the atmos on the way back up. Go a hundred percent on the mix. Override safety margins if you have to. I don’t want to get down there, load passengers, and have to get out and push in the middle of a storm.”