Private Jones glanced at the clock glowing in bright green digital letters in the upper left corner of his faceplate. The heads-up display, thrown onto the leaded plastiglass faceplate of the helmet, showed the time.
02:39:26.
"Subject acquired, time, 02:39:26," he whispered breathlessly. His sergeant on the other end of the communication line answered.
"Roger, locking comm line open, keep me posted." His sergeant returned to humming softly to himself.
Private Jones held his breath and stared down the barrel of his gun at the subject. Emergency lights, part of the integral security system of the building, flashed red and orange. The creature crouched in front of him wasn't moving, but was paused in mid-creep, low to the ground, as if drawing energy from the floor beneath it. It's matte black color seemed to suck in all the light, except for a few snatches of the red and orange emergency light highlighting it's horrible features.
"I am staring down my gun at a demon," thought Jones. "I'm staring down my gun at the literal embodiment of the nightmares of mankind, and I have to shoot it, or it will kill me. Maybe it'll just go away. I could wait here, and not move, and it won't notice me, and it will go away." His sergeant hummed softly. "How can I shoot this thing? How do you shoot a demon in the back? What if you miss?" Where had he heard that?
He stared at the slowly turning, grossly elongated head, and a voice floated up from his sub-conscious, put there by hypnotic training over the past few months. It was a pleasant, calm baritone, incongruous right now, wrapped as Jones was by steel on steel, darkness and shadow broken only by the flames of hellfire leaping from the emergency lighting to show the flat back menace in front of him. "The head of the Xenomorph does not, as in most Terran species, house the control mechanisms for the body. Rather, the organ which makes telepathic communication with the Queen and other Xenomorphs is stored, like a radio antenna, in the elongated cranium. Replacing sight, this telepathic connection gives Xenomorphs a literal sixth sense; although they have very little in the way of vision, they can 'smell' or 'see' a person by their brain waves . . ."
Private Jones' head was wrapped in layers of electromagnetic shielding, control circuitry, and a solid outer layer of lead making up the rest of his helmet. How do you block thought waves? No one really knew. But tests had shown that however it worked, the helmets did it. At least partially. In research studies Xenomorphs had sprinted right by Marines sporting the newest generation of armor, not noticing them or slowing at all.
"It can't see, it can smell my thoughts, it can't see me, it can't see me, it can only smell my thoughts, and my thoughts can't make it out of my head, it can't see, it can't sense me, I'll be fine, I just have to disable it, and then I can move on, I can make it through this, I can make it through this. It only senses thoughts. If it only senses thoughts, then why am I thinking so much!" Jones' hands began to sweat and he felt as if his gun would slip from his grasp, even though layers of fabric, plastic, and metal separated his palms from his weapon. He willed himself to relax, the meditative mantra that he'd practiced all throughout training flooding into his head, attempting to drown out any other thought, to neutralize his brain activity. It could not. He thought about how he was going to try and debilitate the creature in front of him, this coiled spring, this sixth-sensed snake, waiting to strike, to rip him apart, to sink its poison deep into him.
"The claws of the Xenomorph should, naturally, be avoided," the pleasant baritone stated. "These are the main weapon of the Xenomorph. Two opposable thumbs, and two coupled sets of two fingers mean that the Xenomorph can inflict maximum damage and reap the greatest cutting power from its sharp claws. A Xenomorph can easily rip through a human limb. Rhinos have been felled by a single swipe from this creature. However, also be wary of the tail. It has the strength and length to incapacitate a human at close range, and is long enough that it can 'flank' a soldier who is otherwise focused on the claws. If airborne, there is a good likelihood that the back claws will be brought to bear. Therefore care should be taken to stay out from under the Xenomorph . . ."
Like he really needed that particular piece of advice. He'd known that before taking this damn job. Stay out from under the thing that wants to kill you. Anything that didn't already know that had been weeded out of the gene pool a few million years earlier. Darwinism. Which is all that was happening here. Macroevolution, being played out on a microevolutionary scale, with Private Jones vs. the Big Scary Monster, and Private Jones, symbolic of the whole human race, was going to lose, because his fear-addled brain couldn't dredge up from its murky depths the single piece of information useful to him that would let him incapacitate this monster that had crawled out from under the bed of his childhood. Where should I shoot? Where!
". . . because the cranium is filled with the tissue that allows the Xenomorph to send and receive telepathic signals, the brain is, naturally, housed elsewhere. Please direct your attention to the tail. If you follow the tail up from the joint with the hips, you'll notice spikes rising out of the spine, growing gradually larger as they ascend towards the head. These dorsal spikes culminate in these four spikes here, at the back. These spikes grew as a way to house the extra neural circuitry of the Xenomorph. They are an extension of the spinal cord, and with it, comprise the entire central nervous system of the Xenomorph. This spine here intercepts and interprets information coming in over the telepathic wavelengths. This spine, here, controls the motor functions of the Xenomorph . . ." Got it.
The heads-up display finally caught up with Jones' mind. The Xenomorph was surrounded by a thin green box on the heads-up display, and red crosshairs appeared over the proper spine. The exoskeletal growths were outlined in the red of the emergency lights against the black blast doors behind as the creature turned slowly, finally picking up the faint traces of Jones' thoughts that escaped the imperfect shielding of the armor. Jones squeezed the trigger.
The rifle fired. The Xenomorph leapt at the sound, diving towards the area where it had just heard brainwaves, but was already dead. The proper spine erupted in a spray of blood that settled and sizzled. The Xenomorph, dead instantly, fell with a thud to the floor at Jones' feet. He nudged its head with his boot.
"Subject neutralized, Sarge. Continuing sweep."
"Ten seconds? Good work, Jonesy." The sergeant hummed softly to himself.
Jones glanced at the clock glowing green on his heads up display.
02:39:36