Chapter 15 – Something Stirs
Gateway Station
(Legolas's POV)
I ran hard, following the tracks of the tram. The four weapons I had taken from the dead were strapped to my shoulders. The crossbow I carried in my right hand. Behind me I could hear the footfalls of Aragorn and Gimli. They were trying to keep up.
As long as I remained on these tracks, I would eventually find the Arboretum, knowing that it was on the opposite end of Lab B. I kept my mind open, waiting for images projected to me from the creatures or the queen. None so far revealed Ariedel's state. If any harm came to her…I could not even think it. I should never have left her alone. The guilt suddenly washed over me. She had not wanted me to leave her. She had suggested Bishop go in search of Aragorn and Gimli. I should have listened to her. But would I have been able to protect her in such tight quarters as the room she had been in? Even Bishop had been overwhelmed by the numbers that came through the ceiling. The creatures had obviously left through the ceiling as well since the door had still been locked when I arrived.
After nearly fifteen minutes of continuous running, up ahead were several of the tram cars, blocking the passage. They were scattered around and piled on top of each other as if the tram had crashed.
I jumped up to one of the cars and then reached for another, pulling myself up. At the top of the pile of cars, I could see the other side. Three creatures waited for me at the bottom and many more beyond that.
The Arboretum was through the doorway on the left. They had known I was coming and the queen had more than likely dispatched the drones to confront me at the entrance.
I raised one of the blasters and pulled the trigger. The red flashes struck the three creatures at the bottom and they screeched in agony. At that moment, Aragorn and Gimli had scrambled up to stand beside me. I unstrapped two of the weapons and handed one to each of them.
Aragorn stared at his weapon in confusion, then held it as I did. He pulled the trigger and shot at the quickly approaching creatures. Gimli followed suit. The three of us slaughtered the creatures as they poured out of the Arboretum.
"Keep them at bay. I must get inside," I told Aragorn and Gimli.
Aragorn nodded. "We will cover your back, my friend. Go."
I strapped the two remaining weapons further on my shoulder and jumped from the tall pile of tram cars to the floor below. I landed in a crouch next to a stack of dead creatures. Luckily I had landed far enough away to avoid the blood that pooled around them. Then I stood up and ran for the doorway.
The sounds of more blasts came from behind me. Aragorn and Gimli were dealing with those trying to pursue me. But I knew not what to expect when I entered, hoping that their numbers had dwindled when the people of the station fought against them. I could not image two thousand creatures fitting inside the Arboretum.
Gateway Station
Ariedel regained consciousness and found herself encased in alien resin. Just as most victims experienced, a sense of panic came over her, followed by the feeling of being trapped, unable to move. She glanced around the darkened chamber of the Arboretum.
The place seemed like some foreign land. What had happened to the trees? Most of them were covered in resin and the dead and decaying bodies of those that had suffered impregnation were still there. Over two thousand people dead. But she knew that not all of them had been used as hosts, so luckily there weren't as many aliens as she had originally thought.
Her mouth opened to scream for help, but no sound came out. She was more terrified than she had ever been in her life. Never in the years that she had been working at Lifesource, going on alien missions to kill the beasts, did she ever get caught by them.
Then another thought came to her. Had she already suffered a facehugger? Had she been implanted with an alien embryo? If so, then she was already dead. The surgeons on the station were all dead. No one would be able to perform the surgery to remove the alien.
Aliens scrambled around in all directions, completely ignoring her attempts to free herself from the cement-like resin. Something was happening because they all seemed pretty agitated and rushing in the same direction.
Then something else drew her attention. An egg opened several feet away from her. Long spindly legs emerged from the top.
Ariedel couldn't take her eyes away from the crab-like facehugger that crawled out. It paused at the top of the egg briefly, as if it was determining where the fresh hosts were. Then it dropped from the egg and moved rapidly in Ariedel's direction. Her eyes widened and she let out an involuntary scream.
Just as the facehugger leapt into the air to attach to Ariedel's face, something struck it and it flew sideways away from her. In mid-scream, Ariedel turned to see the thing lodged into the resin wall beside her, an arrow imbedded into it. It continued to twitch wildly and then died.
An arrow, she thought. There was only one person she knew who had arrows. "Legolas!" Her eyes frantically searched left and right for him. But she didn't see him.
Legolas lowered the crossbow only briefly as he scanned around from where he was perched high up in the ceiling frame. He wanted to make sure there were no other facehuggers threatening Ariedel. The fact that one had tried to attach itself to her told Legolas that she was not already impregnated with one of the creatures. That was a good sign. But it also meant that he would need to be extra vigilant because any eggs that opened would immediately try to attack her.
Outside of the Arboretum, Aragorn and Gimli continued to scorch the aliens that came at them from every direction. The blasters were effective in killing them from a safe distance, more successful than swords or arrows.
"Take that, you foul-faced retch!" yelled Gimli as the Dwarf dispatched another one trying to climb up the pile of tram cars.
Aragorn aimed at some crawling on the ceiling, high above them. He shot them down and had to dodge out of the way as one nearly fell on top of him. The ranger wanted nothing more than to follow Legolas into the chamber on the left. But the aliens continued to pour out of the entrance. Hundreds and hundreds. Legolas had earlier climbed the wall of the structure and had disappeared inside through an opening. Aragorn and Gimli had successfully kept the aliens from pursuing him, but they lost track of him the moment he was no longer in their sight.
Legolas continued to scan the Arboretum, waiting for the large wave of aliens to exit. He had effectively dispatched any aliens that had caught sight of him and pursued him up the resin-covered trees and up into the steel ceiling rafters. He jumped from one rafter to another to avoid the aliens and then turned to fire both blaster and crossbow.
There were two goals he sought. One was to free Ariedel and the other was to kill the queen.
But the queen was nowhere in sight.
Legolas's keen eyes picked up movement near Ariedel. Another facehugger scrambling toward her. He aimed his crossbow and fired an arrow. The facehugger was stopped dead in its tracks.
Ariedel saw the arrow flying down and catching the facehugger in mid-stride, lodging it into the floor. She couldn't move her head far enough to see where the arrows were coming from. She just knew that he was on high ground. "Legolas!" she called out again.
Legolas heard Ariedel calling out to him. After determining that the path was clear, he began to descend from the ceiling rafters, dropping down into one of the taller trees.
Three aliens were immediately charging him from different directions. Legolas raised his crossbow. Two arrows flew to the right and then he whirled and shot another coming from behind. The screams of the dying aliens echoed through the Arboretum.
"Legolas!"
Legolas continued descending the tree and then finally dropped the fifteen feet down to the floor. He ran along the path in the direction he knew Ariedel was. His eyes glanced left and right, at the dead people encased in resin, their chests blown open, their faces frozen in twisted agony. It brought back memories of the cavern on Middle Earth, where he had received severe injuries while battling these creatures. He was not going to let that happen again. Not to him and not to Ariedel…or Aragorn or Gimli.
Ariedel barely heard the approach of someone. She immediately recognized Legolas's light footfalls and then saw him rounding a corner up ahead and running toward her. Her eyes immediately filled with tears at seeing him unharmed. When he reached her, he pulled an arrow from his quiver and quickly began to use the tip to hack at the resin holding her firmly.
Her eyes darted around behind him, waiting for aliens to come charging at any given moment. Legolas pulled a large chunk of resin from in front of her and she was able to get her arms free. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a desperate hug. Then movement caught her eyes. "Legolas, behind you!"
But Legolas was already whirling around with his crossbow, having heard the alien approach before Ariedel had even spotted it. He fired two arrows at the approaching alien and it flew backwards with a screech from the impact of the arrows to its face. Another alien came from higher up and he shot an arrow into its throat.
Ariedel pulled the strap of the blaster from Legolas's shoulder and fired at another approaching alien. "Legolas, please get me the hell out of here. I'll take care of anything coming."
While Legolas continued to hack at the resin with the tip of the arrow and pulling away the chunks, Ariedel shot at any approaching aliens from over his shoulder. Finally he had enough of it off for him to lift Ariedel out. The minute her feet touched the floor, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along behind him. He shot arrows at the aliens coming at them ahead while Ariedel shot the blaster at those coming at them from behind.
And then Legolas came to a grinding halt, Ariedel plowing into his back at his sudden stop. "Uh oh," said Legolas.
"What?"
"Well, this really blows." Another phrase Legolas picked up from Ariedel. "The queen is blocking the exit." Both Legolas and Ariedel peered around the corner of a resin covered tree.
The fifteen foot alien queen was pacing back and forth in front of the Arboretum exit. Her jagged teeth were bared and her breath came out in heavy gusts of fury. The small black pointed ears were prominent near her jaws, on the sides of her massive face.
The horde numbers were dwindling fast. She hadn't anticipated that the one who had been a host to her would have the ability to kill off so many of her drones. Her horde had been able to kill the beings on the station that were considered a threat, while all others were taken as hosts for more of the drones. Why was it that they could not kill four more of these humans?
There had been three drones on the station in the beginning and the two that had escaped their chamber constantly fought each other to be alpha. Both had been too distracted and ended up perishing in a blast in one of the chambers. Luckily she had previously allowed both drones to service her and her horde had grown regardless of the absence of an alpha.
The queen raised her crest in anticipation. He was close. She could feel his presence just as she knew he could feel hers. The breed's intelligence was limited. They ran on instinct alone. But she had a spark of smarts and actually had enough sense to pity the fact that his mind could not be manipulated like the rest of her horde. She could have used him to lure more prey to the station and then perhaps used him to move the horde off the structure to a place where there would be an endless supply of hosts. But he refused to bend to her will and now she would have to kill him.
Legolas turned to face Ariedel. "I will distract her away from the doorway. When she moves away, I want you to run out. Aragorn and Gimli await on the other side."
But Ariedel wasn't listening to him. Her eyes were focused on something to the right. It was a Hover, only much smaller than the ones that were used on the outside of the station. This one was built for one person, but still had the prehensile arms at the nose of the craft.
Legolas followed her gaze and his eyes landed on the Hover as well.
Ariedel bit her lower lip. "It's going to take a lot of arrows and a lot of blaster shots to take her down. Not to mention that any alien still alive will be charging back in here to protect her."
"Ariedel, you have that look in your eye."
"What look?"
"The one that tells me you are thinking to do something irrational."
"Talk about irrational. You wrote the book, Legolas Greenleaf. Now I'm going to get in that Hover and I'm going to be the one distracting her. Then you can do whatever your little Elf heart desires to do to kill her."
Legolas frowned at her. She continued to put herself at risk when all he wanted was to protect her from any harm. But he saw the reasoning behind her plan. He could not very well fly the Hover. There had not been any time for lessons on how to maneuver the craft.
Ariedel waited for him to acknowledge her plan and when he didn't say anything, she turned and headed for the Hover. She didn't see the facehugger leap at her until an arrow speared it in midair. She turned back to Legolas, who gave her his 'be more careful next time' look. Ariedel pulled open the door of the Hover, climbed into the single seat and slammed the door closed around her.
Legolas stepped out from behind the tree and took several more steps forward. He regarded the size of the queen in comparison to the height of the one he had confronted back in Middle Earth. This one was much smaller in height and sleeker. The addition of the pointed ears made her look less threatening. But Legolas knew she was just as deadly as any other, if not more so.
There was nothing good about these creatures. They had no feelings, no pity, no remorse. She turned her head to regard him. Her mouth opened to reveal her six-inch jagged teeth, transparent like icicles hanging from a rooftop. The thin membranes stretched around her jaws as she hissed. Even though the temperature in the Arboretum was warm, thick vapors came from her mouth with every ragged breath she took.
The queen had no eyes to see the Elf standing before her. But her mind projected the images through a complex sensory organ inside her skull. This was also used to communicate with her horde. Her head tilted left and right, regarding the Elf with genuine curiosity. So small and so delicate. Humans broke easily when she wrapped her claws around their puny fragile frame. But she knew this one was different. She could still sense fear in him. He feared her, yet she sensed he had much more courage than most others. He also held weapons that killed her kind and she knew he was skilled with them.
Legolas raised the crossbow. Somewhere behind him he could hear the sound of the Hover. He fired three arrows at her face. The queen took the blows, but didn't falter. Then the Hover appeared, flying at the queen with incredible speed.
Ariedel grinned as she brought the Hover head on with the queen. The queen lowered her head and flared her crest. Ariedel spun the Hover around at the last second and took the impact on the side of the small craft. She quickly maneuvered the prehensile arms and the pinchers at the ends grasped the queen's crest.
The queen shook her head from side to side in an attempt to dislodge the flying craft that had attacked her. She swung her tail at it, making contact over and over.
Ariedel cringed everytime the tail slammed into the side of the Hover. It echoed with a loud clang. Then something behind her sparked. It was the cooling unit. Without it functioning, it was going to quickly get extremely hot in the tight space. Ariedel released the queen's crest and one final swipe of its tail nearly sent the Hover spinning out of control.
Legolas ran to the left side, firing arrow after arrow into the queen's limbs. But the creature would not move away from the doorway. It obviously knew they sought to go through and escape. She was too large to fit through the doorway, so she wouldn't be able to pursue them once they got out, unless she took out a chunk of the wall to widen the doorway.
Meanwhile Aragorn and Gimli had run out of targets to shoot at. They carefully clambered down the stacked tram cars, avoiding the dead carcasses of the aliens, with oozing acid blood spilling and melting everything in its path except for the station's titanium structure.
Once they reached the floor, Aragorn and Gimli raced for the doorway of the chamber Legolas had disappeared into. Their path was blocked by the bulky body of the queen. This was a creature neither of them had ever seen and they stared in awe at the enormous being.
Aragorn saw Legolas on the other side, avoiding the queen's tail and lashing arms. The ranger ran forward through the doorway, nearly getting himself stepped on by the queen's large clawed feet.
Gimli waited for an opening and decided the best path was between her legs. He dashed forward as fast as his feet could carry him. Then he felt something grab him and pitched forward on his face.
Legolas ran forward and fired multiple arrows at the queen's chest as she tried to pick Gimli up by his legs. The Dwarf dropped his blaster in an attempt to free himself.
Aragorn ran forward as well, firing his blaster into the queen's face. The shots didn't seem to have any affect on her skeletal armor. He was forced to duck at the last second as her tail came lashing out at him.
Ariedel flew the Hover at the queen again, distracting her from her hold on Gimli. Gimli was released and forgotten as the queen confronted the larger threat.
Aragorn ran over to drag the fallen Dwarf away before the queen could step on him. Without a weapon, Gimli remained out of harm's way while Aragorn rushed forward again to shoot his blaster. Again, his shots left no mark on the queen. But it was enough to annoy her into turning and lashing at him with her tail again.
Ariedel maneuvered one of the Hover's arms to grab one of the queen's pointed ears. The queen whirled back around in rage and with incredible force struck the side of the Hover with her arm.
Legolas watched in horror as the Hover flew sideways into the wall and deflected it to slide into a mountain of resin. The resin gave out from the force and the heavy pieces cascaded down to completely bury the Hover.
Mirkwood
Gandalf stood in the spot where Aragorn and Gimli had been before they vanished. Behind him, Thranduil stood beside Elrond and Arwen. The white wizard closed his eyes and tried to imagine what could have befallen the king of Gondor and the Dwarf.
Arwen spoke up. "The handmaiden had placed a strange metal object that belonged to Ariedel near the statue and I recall seeing Aragorn picking it up to inspect it."
Gandalf opened his eyes and turned to Arwen. "A strange metal object, you say?" he asked curiously.
"I do not know anything else about it. The handmaiden was also unaware of its function. She said that they found it in Ariedel's possession when she had fallen from her horse many months ago."
"Aye, I recall Alexor mentioning Ariedel's fall. I had given her a black horse, hoping that it would bring her out of her recluse. She took the horse out for a run and fell from it unexpectedly." Gandalf had an idea that the device might also have been the cause of Ariedel's fall. Such a mystery shrouded the young girl. Unfortunately all the answers to his questions were gone when she went in search of Legolas and they were killed in the explosion of the mountain. He wished he had had more time to talk to her about all of those mysteries.
"What of this metal object, Gandalf?" asked Thranduil.
Gandalf glanced around the secluded glade and his eyes fell upon the statue of Legolas. He sensed a flicker of something…he was unsure what it was, except that the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Something was about to happen. "Something stirs in the air. Do you feel it?"
The three Elves turned to each other. Elrond and Thranduil were older and wiser, but the younger Arwen could sense much more than the other two Elves. Her eyes widened in wonder. The air around her was indeed changing…it was a foreboding of something to come.
"I will call for the guards," stated Thranduil.
Gandalf held a hand up before the Elf king could move. "I do not think we will need them, Thranduil."
"Then what do you propose we do, Gandalf?" asked Thranduil.
Gandalf gave him a brief smile. "We wait."
One more chapter to go in the first installment of the Alien vs Elf series.