The nest.
“Tighten it up back there. We’re getting a little thin,” said Jennings.
The heat was unbearable. The smell was worse. Sweat combined with the thick, cloying humidity, saturating him. Invading his every pore. It also cut visibility down to barely a couple of metres, and every shape and shadow seemed to move just outside the corner of his eye. He gripped his pulse rifle tight as the blip of his tracker assured him there was no movement. It was asleep. For now.
“Talk to me, Jenny,” whispered Molina.
“Just keep coming. I think it opens up just ahead.”
Sure enough, after a few more tens of metres they emerged into a large chamber, and the choking mist thinned out. He felt the bottom fall out of his stomach. People. Dozens. Hundreds of them. All cocooned. All dead. Faces contorted in fear and agony. Faces he knew. He saw Lieutenant Gutierrez, and Ms Nguyen, and Connelly, and dozens of others he knew by name. Marines and civilians. Some he had called his friends, and dozens more he knew on sight but could not put names to. All with their chests ripped open…
“Holy shit…” muttered Lowry, his voice cracking.
- Think. What would the Sarge do?
You’ll never be him.
“Keep it together, Marines,” he ordered. “We’ve got survivors to locate. Spread out, but stay frosty. Smartgunners? Watch our backs.”
He pushed deeper, past the bodies. Their eyes seeming to follow him, and resin-bound arms seeming to reach for him. Pleading for mercy. Or pulling him in…
A whimper off to one side cut through the darkness. Barely audible above the thrum of the reactor above them.
“Hello?” he said quietly.
The whimper came again, and this time accompanied by a single word. “Please.”
He approached cautiously. He had seen the yautja play back recorded human voices. Could the xenomorphs do the same? The beam of his shoulder lamp passed over mutilated corpses until it landed on a figure, cocooned like the others, but this one was looking right at him. Skin pale and eyes wide and alert. A woman. A civilian.
“Don’t panic. We’re getting you out,” said Jennings as he knelt next to her and pulled out his combat knife. His heart leaping into his throat as she unexpectedly grabbed him by his armour.
“Please. Kill me,” she muttered weakly. Her half-crazed eyes burning into his.
“No one is killing anyone. You’re going to be alright,” he assured as he started cutting.
“Henry, please,” she pleaded, and he paused.
“How do you know my name?” he asked.
The woman jolted, and screamed as her chest exploded in a shower of bright red. Collapsing limply as a screeching larval xenomorph emerged, snapping and snarling at him. e plunged his knife into its carapace, killing it. Acid hissed, dissolving the blade in seconds.
A hiss from somewhere caught his attention. Not close, but not far either. Low, and deliberate. Then another. His tracker burst to life with a piercing, high-pitched beeping.
“Movement!” said Lowry.
“Bearing?” demanded Molina.
“Multiple. They’re closing in,” Lowry’s voice cracked with barely contained panic.
He checked his own tracker. The screen lit up with hundreds of signals approaching from all sides.
“We’re fucking surrounded, man!” cried Lowry.
“Stay calm,” Jennings ordered. “Form up.”
The squad fell into a defensive formation in the centre of the chamber as the trackers continued to sound the alarm. Flashlights and carbine muzzles swept back and forth, searching for any sign. In the gloom the bodies seemed to move, as if trying to peel themselves free.
“I can’t see shit,” swore Molina.
“They’re right on us,” cried Lowry, dropping his tracker.
Too late, Jennings saw the impossibly long bladed tail descend from the ceiling. He didn’t even have time to call out to Lowry before the stinger punched through the young man’s torso, effortlessly pulling him into the unseen darkness.
“Let’s rock!” yelled one of the smartgunners. Their weapon roaring to life as it laid down a sweeping arc of death. Hundreds of chitinous black carapaces illuminated by the strobe of the muzzle flash. A marine screamed as they were pulled into the floor, desperately clutching at slick wet tendrils before vanishing. The other smartgunner shredded an alien, but it was too close. The screeching creature exploded in a shower of chitin and acid, completely soaking him. He didn’t even scream as armour and flesh sloughed from bone, the whole bubbling mess melting into the floor.
A crab-like creature leapt from the shadows, slamming itself into Molina’s face. Its tail wrapping around his throat. He struggled momentarily, then went still, and the remaining smartgunner was set upon by a dozen xenomorphs, screaming as they were lost under the black biomechanical mass. Jennings fired frantically, rational thought gone. A continuous stream of fire, never stopping, never reloading. But they just kept coming. Taloned hands reaching out to tear him apart, or worse.
He was running. He must have tossed his empty weapon. Charging blindly down a random corridor. He had no idea where it led. The walls grew narrower and narrower. The entombed bodies pressing in. Pale arms reaching out to him as he struggled to squeeze past. Dead hands clutching at him, grasping as kept pushing forward.
Jennings. The corpses seemed to whisper his name in unison. You let me die. You’ll never be him. Help me, please! Who put you in charge? Oh my God, please no! Sergeant? What a joke. The voices a cacophony of pleas and admonition. The cold, dead faces and empty eye sockets staring down at him in judgement. He burst into another, larger chamber, and the voices instantly fell silent.
Eggs. Thousands of them. Impossibly many. Each about thigh high and leathery, and seeming to go on forever. In front of him, unbothered by the eggs, stood the yautja. All seven and a half feet of it. A towering vision of hell itself. Bristling with violence. In its right hand it held the severed head of Colonel Sanchez. The flesh and skin still intact, and a ragged portion of the spine dangled from the stump of the neck. It casually tossed the head at his feet, lifeless eyes and limp mouth screaming up at him, before dialling a command on its left wrist gauntlet. From behind the mask came a sound. A recording of a human voice. The voice of the colonel.
“You’ll never have what it takes,” said the voice, thick with disdain.
He fell to his knees, staring at the head, then the yautja. The mask stared back, unreadable. Whatever alien expression it had concealed behind metal. His stomach ached and his chest burned. Burned so badly he clutched at it with his free hand. The pain intensified, becoming unbearable. Oh God. No. No it wasn’t possible. The colonel’s head watched with indifference as he felt the newborn tearing its way out of him, before erupting free in a shower of blood.
*
“Jennings!”
Jennings bolted upright, panting, Molina’s hand on his shoulder. Sweat clung to his brow. His heart was pounding. Instinctively, his hand went to his chest. But there was no gaping wound. No shattered ribs. Just skin, and damp fabric. Nothing more.
“You were talking in your sleep again,” said Molina without reproach.
He took a moment to compose himself, willing himself to slow his breathing, and Molina stepped back as he swung his legs over the edge of the bunk. Lowry sat watching silently from the opposite cot, pretending to be cleaning his sidearm.
“I’m fine,” he said between ragged breaths. His voice raspy. Man, he didn’t even convince himself. “Have you seen the Colonel?”
“The old man was making his rounds a couple of hours ago, but I haven’t seen him since,” said Molina.
He stood, holding on to the edge of the top bunk for balance while the last vestiges of the nightmare faded.
“Bad dreams?” asked Lowry.
He nodded. His throat was dry. Too dry to speak properly.
“Yeah, me too,” said Lowry. “Since the Sarge, you know?”
He did, and placed a reassuring hand on the young private’s shoulder. Four more days. They only had to hold out four more days.
Without another word he made his way to the restrooms. What he wouldn’t give for a shower and a clean set of fatigues. The shower and laundry facilities were outside the perimeter. A necessary sacrifice, but right now he would have been willing to risk it. Over a week without a shower or change of clothes, and all of the sweat, blood and grime had left everyone smelling more than a little ripe. He was glad to find the men’s room empty. It was gloomy. Most of the overheads were still out, and the ones that worked flickered incessantly, casting the tiles in a dank blue-grey. Lingering damage from the xenomorph assault. Fixing the bathroom lights had been pretty low down the list of priorities.
He splashed cold water on his face, allowing the shock to chase away the lingering fog. He looked old, he thought, catching a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Older than twenty-three, anyway. Unconsciously, one hand came to rest on his chest again, as if checking one last time. What would it be like to have one of those things growing inside of you? Knowing what would happen? He resolved to never find out. If it came to that, he would not be taken alive.
*
He sat on the cold floor, back against the wall, as he rolled the yellow vial between the fingertips of one hand. The other drifted across the fabric of his coveralls, tracing the raised line of his scar beneath. He could hear the quiet rummaging somewhere behind the forest of cargo crates. A rare moment of separation, that left him alone with his thoughts. He didn’t like it. It reminded him too much of the past three years. Sitting, back to the wall, with nothing to do but mark time. He read the label again, as if it would say something different from the last time, confirming how many doses the vial contained. He hated taking it. His dependence on it. The need. At least this time, he told himself, it wasn’t by choice.
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He didn’t feel cold. He couldn’t exactly say when he had stopped feeling cold, but he knew that he should. He stared at the vial as he continued to twirl it. Perhaps it was never meant to be used for this long. How long had it been? Ten days? Two vials worth. He had been stretching out the time between doses, making each go as far as possible, but it was becoming less effective. He could feel the embryo in his chest stirring, as if rising from a drunken stupor. He would have to be stricter from now on. Six hours, no more.
Ten days. It had felt like ten years. It certainly felt longer than the three years he had spent in that underground cell. Thankfully, they had managed to avoid any close calls since running into that thing in Delta. Three or four days ago they had heard what to him sounded like an all-out war. It hadn’t been particularly close, but they had thought it best to move to the far end of the base. Putting just a little more distance between them and the chaos.
“Nothing,” said Van Der Beek as he emerged from behind the crates, slumping against the adjacent wall.
Louie didn’t acknowledge him as he continued to roll the vial back and forth.
“That’s the last one?” asked Van Der Beek.
Louie nodded. Over the past few days, the big man had allowed him to hold on to the vials. He wasn’t sure if the merc trusted him, or if he just could not be bothered anymore.
“How long?”
“Ninety-six hours,” said Louie flatly. He did not look up, but he could feel the merc staring at him. “Is that offer still good?”
“It won’t come to that, Timex. I’ll think of something,” said Van Der Beek.
“Yeah, I think you better,” he said wistfully. “Four days, and you won’t have me around to watch your back.”
“I said I’ll think of something,” the merc snapped.
He was about to say something, but thought better of it. It was not as if arguing would make his supply go any further, and the man was still almost a foot taller than he was.
“We’ve got other problems,” said Van Der Beek. “Those ration packs were the last ones. We’re out of food.”
Louie shrugged. “We can survive without for a few days. I’d rather not risk running into one of those things for the sake of a ration pack.”
“We’re out of water, too, smartass. How long do you think you can go without that?” he scolded.
“Keep your damn voice down,” Louie hissed.
“Fuck you,” growled the merc.
“Va te faire foutre aussi!” he swore under his breath. He sighed. Cursing himself for not holding his tongue. He looked up as the shadow of the towering merc leaned over him.
“Seventy-two hours without water,” said Van Der Beek softly. “And you’ll be begging me for that bullet.”
Louie looked away. It chaffed to admit the merc was right, but they couldn’t stay here.
“So, what’s the plan?” he asked.
“It’ll be daylight soon. There’s a cafeteria in a building not far from here. We’ll head there, so get your shit together.”
He stood, breaking the seal on the last vial, and threw back two of the pills, swallowing hard. He decanted two more doses without thinking, depositing them in the breast pocket of his coveralls, before replacing the lid and shoving the vial into his hip pouch. He stiffened slightly as he caught the merc observing the unconscious ritual out of the corner of his eye.
“Old habit,” he said, downplaying it with a shrug. He was grateful when the big man didn’t press him for details.
Ninety-six hours.
“Let’s go.”
*
Jennings stood anxiously across the table from Doctor McTaggart. The last time he’d been here, it hadn’t gone well. This time, there were no bodies of dead Marines lying on the table, but that didn’t completely set him at ease. The good doctor hadn’t called him for nothing.
“When is the last time you got any sleep, Doc?” he asked, trying to break the silence while they waited for Colonel Sanchez. He guessed she was about the same age as the commander, but she looked like a walking corpse. Her face was gaunt, eyes sunken with black bags under them, and her silver-grey hair, pulled back tight, looked thinner than before.
“I don’t sleep anymore,” she said.
“Why not get Doctor Yau to take a shift? I don’t like him any more than you do, but he is a surgeon. Let him pull his weight for once,” he suggested.
The doctor gave a thin smile. “I appreciate your concern, Sergeant Jennings. But I’ll be damned if I let that monster anywhere near my patients.”
Before he could speak again, Colonel Sanchez entered. He looked even more ragged than the doctor.
“You asked to see me, Doctor?” Sanchez asked.
“Yes, gentlemen. Thank you both for coming,” said McTaggart, her voice flat. “I’ll get straight to the point: we’re running out of medical supplies.”
“I thought you said we had enough?” asked Sanchez.
“I did, and we did. But that was before the xenomorph attack. With this many wounded, we’re burning through the remaining stock,” explained the doctor. “At this rate, I’ll be out of essential medications in twenty-four hours. Thirty-six at most. I have nine patients that will not survive without them.”
“Nine?” asked Jennings. “I thought we had eleven critical cases?”
“Two passed during the night.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” she continued. “But the East Medical Wing is still well stocked. I need your Marines to bring back what I need. I can give you a list. I would go myself but I cannot leave my patients unattended.”
Okay. Simple enough, Jennings thought. A kilometre there. Grab the supplies. A kilometre back.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” said Sanchez. “But I cannot authorise that action.”
“Sir?” Jennings raised an incredulous eyebrow.
“We’re running low on manpower, and we cannot leave the perimeter undefended. I will not jeopardise four hundred lives to save nine.”
“There has to be another way,” he protested.
“We’re in a combat situation, Sergeant. If we have to start battlefield triage…” he trailed off, taking a breath. “I am sorry, but you’ll have to make do with what you’ve got.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Leave the dying to die, is that it, sir?” he spat.
“You secure that attitude, Sergeant. Right now!” Sanchez bellowed.
“Yes, sir!” Jennings snapped to attention as the colonel glared at him.
“Doctor,” Sanchez nodded, before turning on his heel and marching out without another word.
Jennings exchanged a quick, concerned glance with the doctor before he silently mouthed, “Wait here,” then went after the colonel, jogging to catch up to the commander.
“Sir, may I speak with you privately?” he asked, making an effort to maintain a formal tone. Sanchez nodded, and gestured to his office. Jennings followed, careful to close the door behind him as the colonel settled into his chair behind the desk.
“Well, let’s hear it,” said Sanchez, sounding impatient.
“Colonel, I—” he began.
“Stand before me at attention!” barked Sanchez.
Jennings took a step forward and snapped to attention, stamping his foot down as his heart pounded. The colonel had a way of making himself sound angrier than he really was when chewing out a subordinate. Jennings had always found it amusing. But this wasn’t that. This was the real deal, and for the first time, he was genuinely afraid.
“Sir,” he gulped, eyes locked on the shutter above the colonel’s head. “As Acting NCOIC it is my duty to offer you an alternative course of action.”
The colonel raised an expectant eyebrow.
“Send me, sir,” said Jennings. “I’ll go alone. If I don’t come back, you can scratch one jarhead.”
“If you don’t come back, McTaggart’s patients are no better off, and I’ve lost another NCOIC. Morale is hanging by a thread as it is. I need my Marines sharp,” countered Sanchez.
“It’s worth the risk, sir,” he said.
“And I disagree. We are in a war here, Sergeant. In case you haven’t noticed, they’re winning,” said Sanchez. “I’ve made my decision.”
“Jesus, sir, what’s happening to you?” he muttered before he could stop himself.
“Come again?” snapped Sanchez.
Oh shit. Now he had really done it. He struggled to keep his expression a mask of military professionalism, his insides turning to water as the colonel’s razor-sharp stare cut through him.
“I will not wager hundreds of lives against less than a dozen,” said Sanchez, his voice icy cold. “And I have to live with that. Not you. Dismissed.”
Is this what command meant? Cold, hard logic. Raw numbers. Sacrifice ten to save a hundred? It had to be more than that, he decided. But it gave him an idea.
“What about the next time, sir?” he ventured.
“I said you’re dismissed, Sergeant,” Sanchez barked.
“Sir, just, hear me out,” he pressed. “Today, it’s nine. If there is another perimeter breach, it could be dozens. Hundreds. We won’t have the meds to treat them, and even fewer Marines to protect them. We should go now, while there is still time.”
He half-expected the older man to shoot him on the spot, but he had come too far to back down now. Instead, the colonel seemed to ponder what he had said. Resting his chin on one hand and rapping his fingers on the arm of his chair, staring into the distance as he considered the options.
“You’re on thin ice here, son,” he said, his voice low. “Alright, what do you suggest?”.
Yes!
“The sun will be up in twenty minutes. Those things seem to stick to the dark so we’ll stick to daylight as much as possible. Me, and one other Marine. We take an APC; we can spare one. We go in, get what we need, we get out. Couple of hours, max. Nice and easy,” said Jennings.
“Overconfidence gets people killed, Marine,” said Sanchez.
Jennings flinched, but he was right. Things were never that straightforward. But still, he had to try.
“If we’re doing this, we do it right,” said Sanchez. “I’m not sending two men. When you move, you move with force. Take a full platoon. Two APCs. I want everyone armed with as much as they can carry. That leaves us with a skeleton crew, but you’re right about the daylight. I’ve never heard of a xenomorph to prance around in the open. Nightfall will be just over ten hours. You must be back by then. Supplies, or no supplies. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir!” said Jennings with a firm salute.
“Remember,” said the colonel quietly. “Just because it’s daylight, doesn’t mean it’s safe. They’re out there. He is out there.”
*
Louie shielded his eyes as the overheads flickered to life. Rows of long tables stretched across the massive, empty hall. He reckoned it could sit five hundred, maybe more, and it was quiet as the grave. The odd overturned chair or tray of an abandoned, half-eaten meal were the only signs it had ever been inhabited. It reminded him of some cheesy, post-apocalypse holo. Like he was walking through the ruins of civilisation, with him and Van Der Beek the last two people on Earth. The kitchen was at the far end, and much the same story. Rotting food and burned ingredients, abandoned mid-prep.
“Check the freezer,” said Van Der Beek, who proceeded to check the larders of dry food.
He found it easily enough. A massive, steel sliding door clearly marked “Freezer”. It was hard to miss. He heaved the handle with both hands. The door groaned and slid open. A blast of icy air hit his face. He took that to be a good sign. If there was food, it hadn’t spoiled.
Steak, he thought to himself, as he stepped inside. He was going to find steak. A huge, premium T-bone, and not that reconstituted crap either. The real deal, and a thousand-dollar bottle of wine to go with it. Instead, he found only disappointment as his eyes drifted over shelves of non-descript packaging with bland, generic labels, until they came to rest on a massive twenty-five litre container.
“Score.”
“You find something?” hollered Van Der Beek.
“Hell yeah,” announced Louie, awkwardly lugging the oversized plastic tub into the kitchen and dumping it on the counter “Ice cream.”
“Is it strawberry?” asked the merc.
He glanced at the label. “Yeah.”
“Tastes like shit.”
“More for me then,” Louie shrugged, and started looking for a spoon. Screw it. Three years in an underground cell, he had earned this, and right now he felt like he could work his way through the whole carton.
“Knock yourself out,” said Van Der Beek, shaking his head as he opened the next storeroom door. Neither had time to react as the screaming figure lunged at the big man. Eyes wild, carving knife flashing as it slashed at his arm. The merc wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge the blade, but he was still fast. One massive fist crashing into the side of his assailant’s head, sending them sprawling.
“Argh, you fokken bilksem!” he swore as he clutched his blood-soaked sleeve.
“What the hell happened?” demanded Louie as he vaulted over.
“Crazy bastard attacked me,” said Van Der Beek through gritted teeth as blood ran down his hand.
“Let me see,” said Louie, prying the big man’s hand away from the wound. He was lucky. A half inch to the right, he would have severed a nerve. “Looks worse than it is,” he explained. “But it’s still going to need stitches.”
“Motherfucker,” Van Der Beek growled, his face red.
Louie knelt beside the one on the floor. It was a young man. Gaunt and emaciated. He was wearing a dark navy blue Weyland-Yutani jacket, but beneath that, he wore semi-translucent thin white coveralls. Just like him.
Another Delta test subject.
Louie pressed two fingers to the man’s neck.
“He’s dead,” he said flatly, looking up at the merc. For the briefest moment, he saw the flicker of something behind those cold eyes, and then it was gone.
“Christ, you didn’t have to kill him,” admonished Louie.
“It’s not like I planned it, brah. He attacked me,” said Van Der Beek.
It occurred to Louie that he didn’t know his name. Had he heard his voice, he may have recognised it, but faces? He very rarely actually saw other test subjects, and he had never seen this one.
“Don’t suppose you know his name?” he asked.
“No.”
No name. No tags. Nothing. Just a generic Wey-Yu jacket. Not him. He wasn’t going out like that. Although, if he was a Delta test subject…
He sighed, rummaging through the jacket pockets.
“Not your first time looting a corpse, eh?” said Van Der Beek.
“He might have some gestacyn, connard,” he snapped.
The big merc snorted in disgust.
“Empty.” Louie stood, dusting himself off. “It doesn’t matter. I need to clean and stitch that arm or it’s going to get infected.”
The merc gave him a cold, hard look, as if he was about to argue.
“There’s a medical building northeast of here. It’s not far.”