Time to reveal the full depths of my evil… this chapter was actually ready the same evening as Chapter 5. I've been holding it back, tormenting you… Enjoy…
"Spiketail!" Holly leapt back several feet, and crashed into a computer console.
The drone stretched out luxuriantly, and dropped to the floor. With a flick too quick for the eye to follow, the retrovirus canister flew towards the wall and smashed. Holly made to rush for it.
>Don't bother. It's already dying. A retrovirus can only survive inside one of those canisters, or if it's been injected.>
Holly turned towards the Alien, pure loathing spread across her face. "What the hell are you playing at?" she yelled.
>I could ask you the same question,> Spiketail replied. The 'voice' was calm, but had a faint edge that suggested that fury was an option.
"This is MY choice! If I want to use that virus, that's up to me!"
>You made it up to us when you chose to become a Queen. Don't even think about lying to me, I've read the theories about xenomorph life cycles. Hell, I wrote some of them. Egg, stage 1 facehugger, stage 2 chestburster, stage 3 drone or Praetorian, stage 4 Queen.>
Holly seemed to deflate.
>Tell you what,> said Spiketail in a nicer tone. There was a faint blur, and the drone was sitting next to her. >How about you tell me your story. No-one just has a look at a retrovirus and gets that obsessed about it.>
Holly sighed. "All right. But if I tell you…"
>No promises. If I don't like your little tale, I'll rip this little facility apart beyond any hope of reproducing that little virus. And don't try lying to me either.>
"All right. Four years ago…"
"Sound off!" roared the drill sergeant.
Private First Class Holly Chance quickly checked her pulse rifle, and called out "Sir!" when it came to her turn. Around her stood a full company of marines, three hundred strong, all ready for their first combat mission.
"Squads one through three! Briefing room one! Four through…"
Holly ignored the rest – a useful skill in the military. Only listen to what applies to you; if you listen to everything, you might miss something.
Inside 'Briefing room one' (in fact a large transport vehicle on the 'front line'), she moved to a seat with the rest of the squads, and turned to salute the colonel.
"At ease, soldiers," said the colonel. She didn't know his name – the army was full of identikit officers. "As you know, under normal circumstances, you'd have some easy missions to begin with. Nothing too strenuous – dealing with pirates, maybe the odd insurrectionist. But with the bugs infesting this planet, I think you'll agree that these aren't 'normal circumstances'."
A few people chuckled.
"So, boys and girls, as you may guess, you're going against them. Again, normally, if you were sent into a situation like this, you'd have a few vets with you. But with the military coup taking over government, and the fact that we're stretched thin, you'll be going in just by yourselves. All of you will be taking the same hive – a nice little one about ten blocks west of here. Simple mission: kill everything. You find anyone still alive in the walls, toast 'em. We can't take any chances of infected.
"You'll probably have already seen enough about the bugs – some of the luckier ones here might have seen 'em in the flesh," he continued with a mirthless grin. "Few basic rules for dealing with them when in the field. Rule number one: You see a bug, don't bother with asking for permission to fire. Kill it, then warn everyone else.
"Rule two: You get hit by acid on your armour, strip it. That stuff'll go through it like a hot knife through butter, and it ain't like the chemistry set stuff. If it hits flesh, it'll keep on burning 'til its either burned itself out or there's no flesh left, got that?
"Rule three: if you have a flamethrower, torch the walls regularly in the hive. They're completely still, and don't show up on IR, so quite often they'll leap at you out of nowhere.
"Rule four: Stick together. You get split up, you're liable to get picked off one by one, and even if you aren't, you'll be so jittery that you'll shoot anything that moves.
"And last but not least… rule five: If you get surrounded, kick some ass before you go down. Good luck, soldiers. Dismissed!"
The three ten-man squads moved slowly through the derelict zones of the city. Phoenix had been reduced in population by three-quarters due to a mixture of evacuation and the predations of the Aliens. It was a well-known fact that there were four hives spread over the western sectors. What few civilians remained were huddled up in the east.
The troopers were the usual mixture of psychos, roughnecks and patriots, with the odd do-gooder interspliced. Holly liked to put herself in the last category – she had only joined the Marines when the Alien infestation had become common knowledge.
There was a mixture of basic troopers, smartgunners and 'pyros'. Between them, each squad could theoretically take on an entire pre-twentieth century army and win.
The faint 'flick' of motion detectors echoed through the empty streets. Apart from the occasional 'clunk' as a soldier kicked a discarded object, and the steady soft tramping of their feet, the city was silent.
And then they were there.
The strange Alien resin coated the entrance to a huge building that looked like a theatre of some sort. The black, plasticky material branched away from the ornamental pillars, creating strangely beautiful arches. The lobby of the building was too dark to see anything of it.
"All right, men," said Sergeant Garrows, the only veteran in the unit. "Lock and load, and lets give those sons of bitches a one-way ticket to hell!"
The marines gave a roar of approval.
"Squad one, we'll take point. Two, you've got the rear. Three, you take the middle. And remember: if there's trouble, bunch up. You heard the colonel, if they split us up we've got a rat's chance in a vacuum."
Holly moved to the back with the rest of squad two, and chambered the pulse rifle's first round.
"Hellfire, it's dark!" said someone as they moved into the lobby.
"Switch on your torch, ya wimp!" returned Garrows. "Let's have a look around!"
"Oh my…"
The torches illuminated a scene from the darkest depths of the most tortured artist's mind. The broken bodies of hosts littered the walls, in various states of decomposition. The rest of the resinous walls somehow managed to be just as horrific, the strange shapes calling to mind all sorts of dark images that are best left in the depths of the imagination.
"Get used to it, men," commented the Sergeant as one or two retched. "You'll see worse before you're much older. Seeing your first emergence, now that's something that'll haunt your dreams for a long time. For now, stay focused! We can take these barstards!"
The quiet 'flick'ing of the motion trackers turned into the familiar rising 'beep' of a contact.
"You know, I think they make those things make a noise that'll scare the bejeesus out of you," joked someone.
"Location!"
"I'm getting readings from all around, sir! But on the edge of range. Not a problem yet."
Garrows swore. "I was hoping that we'd get the jump on 'em. We'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Into the breach!"
The column moved into a huge hole that had been torn out of the wall that led to some sort of backstage area.
Holly looked around. The Aliens had managed the impressive feat of covering almost every surface with their resin.
One particular formation attracted her attention. It seemed to have stuck out more than most, and had a roughly oval shape. If you looked at it in a certain way, it looked like one of the bugs…
There was another. And another. Two on the ceiling. And all of them looked strangely similar. Everywhere else, all the shapes were unique. Here…
One of the shapes stirred.
She swore and ran for her squad. "They're in the walls! The WALLS!"
As though it were a signal, not one, not two, not five, but fifteen drones leapt from the walls. Screams echoed as their claws found flesh.
"Cover!" roared Garrows. "Shoot with everything you've got!"
The rapid kreeeo of pulse rifle fire sounded, and the drones shrieked as they were cut down by the AP shells. Someone screamed, and the horrific stench of melting flesh filled the backstage.
"Sound off!"
It wasn't good. The surprise attack had taken twenty of them.
"All right. We can still make it out of this as heroes. Bunch up, and make sure nothing gets past you!"
"Sergeant! Motion, all around us! Closest is two metres!"
The ceiling collapsed, and more drones swarmed out of it. A quick-thinking 'pyro' raised the flamethrower and torched three of them before the last ripped his face off.
The hisses, shrieks, screams and sounds of weapons fire got to Holly. Nothing mattered except getting out…
Drones leapt at her from the shadows, but somehow she avoided them.
And abruptly, it was over. Silence.
Senses slowly returned to her, and she saw her surroundings.
She was in the central stage. Seats, plastered with resin, rose up to the rafters.
She saw a few broken host bodies, cocooned into the seats, as though the Aliens had a twisted sense of humour. Giving them one last show…
She looked at the pulse rifle. '99' read the ammo counter.
She hadn't fired a shot.
There was a crash, and a drone moved out of a hole in the wall, dragging a limp body. It looked towards her and hissed, but continued with its task.
Wait – its lips were sealed again, but it was still hissing…
As though on a turntable, she turned to centrestage.
The Aliens had been giving the hosts in the seats a final show. It was a show of the most powerful being in the city.
The Queen's main head extended from the cranial shield, and turned to look at her.
It hissed again.
Another drone entered stage left, dragging another body. It joined the first, and began sealing its victim into the wall next to the huge egg sac.
It was abruptly torn apart by a spray of pulse rifle fire. Sergeant Garrows strode up next to Holly, somehow unharmed from that little slice of Armageddon.
"Sir?" she asked hesitantly.
"It's me, all right, Private. Let's blow that bitch to hell and get out of here."
Time slowed.
Holly turned to face the Queen. The creature was so… alien. As she stared at it, she saw the strange, alluring beauty of it. She saw the helplessness of being in front of their weapons, and without any of Her soldiers to defend herself.
Garrows was raising his rifle, about to fire the grenade launcher.
Holly raised her weapon, and fired one shot.
Garrows turned slowly to her, and stared. Blood welled from his mouth, and he managed one word. "Why?"
Holly was sobbing, out of fear, remorse, anger, she didn't know what. A black shape dropped from the higher levels, and with a swift snap of its inner jaws, killed him.
The Alien raised its muzzle, blood and brain tissue dripping. It hissed softly, but made no move to attack.
The Queen leaned forwards, and snarled. The drone backed off, and then vanished into the shadows.
Holly looked at the Queen. She was ready, for what she didn't know. Anything. Anything for the Queen. Anything for such… perfection.
Aliens cannot make expressions, but she could sense mocking amusement from the creature. Anger tried to well up – she had killed for Her, and now she was being tossed aside like useless rubbish.
But it couldn't. She couldn't hate something like that.
The Queen smirked at her again. Thank you for the aid, it seemed to say. Here is your reward: you may leave the hive with your life.
"But I did it for you!" she shrieked. Whether or not the creature could understand her didn't matter. "Sending me away is punishment, not reward!"
But the drones were back. They didn't attack, but they were threatening. They encircled her, and herded her away.
The next thing she knew she was standing outside. Alone. More alone than ever before.
"So now you know the sordid history behind my obsession," said Holly bitterly. "I was sort of on autopilot after that. Returned to the army, made my report, then resigned. I didn't tell them that I killed Garrows, of course. Just said that everyone died in that backstage, and that I got out by some miracle. I wandered for a while. Almost hoped that some Alien would pick me up and implant me. Then I could… in some small way… join them. I eventually got over it. Managed to become someone vaguely normal. I convinced myself that I'd left that behind."
>And then we turned up,> said Spiketail.
"Exactly. I heard the story about the retrovirus, and the obsession reared its ugly head again. I knew that the chip… all the information… everyone who had ever worked on it was gone. Hukken was no help at all; I asked casually once or twice. Turns out he didn't have anything to do with the coding of the virus itself. Useless."
>But then Vathris turns up with his little box of tricks down here.>
"I've no idea how I ended up telling him," she grumbled. "He can be a real smooth-talker when he wants. You're the second person I've ever told that full story. He showed a bit of sympathy, and asked if he could get a hold of some of that retrovirus of yours, would I want it?" She mimed a puppy-dog with its tongue hanging out. "That wasn't my exact response, it was bloody close. He just winked at me at the time, and I dismissed it as a throwaway comment. A week later, and he brings me down here."
>And the thing was only just ready?>
"It's been ready for a while. A few scientists that Vathris got on the job have been working on 'refining' it. They managed to make the change fine art, to hear him tell it. They haven't tested the thing, but apparently it's got '99 effectiveness'. And that missing one per cent is that I lose my mind in the process. They spat science at me – said something about the mind surviving the conversion relying on a specific section of the brain remaining the same, and making sure the transformation took place in a specific order. It was only just now that the captain suggested that I try it. He said that with this Spineback of yours in charge of the hive, things might get out of control, and suggested that I become a Queen and try to take it over. I leapt at the chance, and here we are." Holly turned to look at Spiketail. "You're right. This whole thing is stupid. I should just forget that this place even exists, and get on with my life. Do what you want to that terminal." She got up to leave.
>It wouldn't work, doing that.>
Holly stopped. "Doing what?"
>You change straight into a Queen, Spineback will slaughter you. One step at a time.> The drone grinned mentally. >If I were Shadow, I'd be having screaming fits. But I can sympathise with your feelings. I sort of ended up with them in reverse, after I changed. You want to change, I won't stop you. But if you do…>
"Yes?"
>…then we do it my way. Which means starting you off as a drone. Well?>
Holly stared at the drone, and then started to laugh. " I was always terrified of you, you know. Shadow painted this picture of an out-of-control killing machine, and I never got it out of my head. Now I see that you do have depth of character."
>I'll take that as a compliment,> Spiketail replied dryly. >I'm curious: how did you get DNA for the Alien sequence? You couldn't just assemble it from scratch. I should know; we tried it several times before Gorson gave us samples.>
"You Aliens shed so many skins," Holly replied with a smirk. "Such a shame to waste them…"
>Enough fooling. We've got a retrovirus to complete…>
ADDITIONAL DATA COMPILED SUBJECT HOLLY CHANCE ASPHODEL 89 PREVIOUSLY CHARON 17
DATA CATALOGUED
RECALCULATING VALUE OF SUBJECT ASPHODEL 89
NO SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN VALUE OR THREAT LEVEL
CALCULATION ENDS
Bloody hellfire… almost 2800 words,
and all in just two scenes. Hope you like...