The sun had just disappeared over the horizon, and the graveyard in front of the mausoleum had been transformed into a base for war. An Initiative Humvee was parked outside the mausoleum, packed with electronic equipment and serving as Professor Walsh's command post for this operation. The eight commandoes of the primary strike team were assembled around it, stretching, jogging in place, cleaning weapons, checking gear, reminding Traeten in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if he screwed anything up, and exchanging the quiet, tense talk of people about to go into battle. Black-clad Initiative security forces roamed the perimeter, making sure there were no witnesses-human or otherwise- to the operation. Amongst all this coiled military might, the four Scoobies shuffled about awkwardly, feeling greatly out of place.
It wasn't as though they were less equipped than the soldiers, Buffy reflected. Well, maybe Willow. The redhead was armed only with a bag of herbs and a number of small glass globes the size of golf balls in her purse. Buffy had gotten a look at the globes earlier; each of them was lit fierily from within by a tiny, fierce spark burning ferociously in their centres.
"Dragonflame," Willow had informed her. "They actually have nothing to do with dragons, but the shopkeeper tells me sales tend to be better when they give stuff cool names. All I know is that when they break, they burn. Really nifty."
"Does this have anything to do with that big patch of burned grass outside our building and the sirens I heard around lunch?" Buffy had asked. Willow had only blushed.
Willow was the only one who hadn't had Giles help pick out the gear. He had studied in detail which weapons would be most effective against the Xenomorphs, and had concluded that whatever they used, it would have to be powerful enough to defeat the alien armour while having a relatively long reach to prevent acid-related mishaps. To that end, Giles himself had opted for a large, vicious-looking crossbow firing heavy metal darts. Not only was he an expert shot with it, but the weapon was also equipped with a nasty steel spike at its end for close combat.
Xander had initially been thinking of something along the pike line, but the fact that they were going into narrow tunnels had ruled that out. Fortunately, Giles had found him a long-handled cudgel with a heavy steel knob at the end. In the Middle Ages the weapon had been meant to crush armour, and the man underneath. Giles hoped it would serve the same purpose against the aliens- doing fatal damage without piercing the exoskeleton and releasing acid. Xander thought the cudgel suited him just fine; about the size of a baseball bat, it had a satisfying weight when he swung it. "Hitting 'em on the head," he'd said, "Now that I can do."
Buffy was the most heavily loaded. She was carrying a large, powerful, two-handed sword, with an identical one strapped across her back. Although good for slashing, the sword was of a type made especially for stabbing- through armour, specifically. However, she wouldn't have many hits with it before acid reduced it to butter-knife usefulness, hence the backup. And of course, there was the obligatory stake in her pocket. All in all, she thought they hadn't been this well-armed since graduation.
"So what's the idea?" asked Xander. "How do we get out of this backup-squad gig and into the alien-killing gig?"
"It may be best to stick to the Initiative's plan, Xander." Giles said. "According to what Riley explained, their course of action seems surprisingly sound, and I see no reason to modify it. We don't know much about these soldiers, and we certainly won't find out anything more by unnecessarily aggravating them."
"I hate to say it, but he's right Xander." Buffy mentally squashed the Slayer within her, who was loudly demanding battle, as she said this. "I still want to wipe these things out but..."
"Not if it means getting Riley's folks mad at you?" Willow teased.
"Not if the best way to do it is to hang back and play as a team," Buffy countered. "Our job here is to get rid of the aliens, and to do that we have to work together. Any issues we have with the secret-army guys can wait until afterwards."
There was a flurry of activity nearby. The commandoes were getting into formation- Riley in the lead, the two-heavy weapons troopers immediately behind him, Forrest in the middle, and Traeten in the rear, closely surrounded by the other four soldiers of the squad. Lights shone in the night as the flashlights attached to their weapons were activated, projecting cones of illumination towards the mausoleum. The shadows cast made it look even more ominous than usual. There was a soft fwoosh as a small blue flame appeared at the tip of Flagg's flamethrower.
Giles took a breath. "It's starting."
Riley shot a smile towards Buffy, and then the nine men filed into the mausoleum. There was a grinding noise as the gate to the sewers was opened, and then silence. The operation had begun.
"We're inside," Professor Walsh heard as she listened attentively in the Humvee. She heard the snap of a flare being ignited, and Riley spoke again. "First breadcrumb laid. Will contact you again once we've proceeded down to the next level. Out." The plan called for the team to leave a trail of flares behind them as they descended, so they could find their way back out if they needed to leave in a hurry. Walsh was leaving nothing to chance here, both out of common sense and respect for the capabilities of the Xenomorphs, and out of a desire to avenge her organization's previous failings with this creature, and also partly to impress the Slayer with the power of the Initiative. So far, it looked like it was paying off. Everything was going according to plan.
Her hand stayed on the switch for the backup squad's radio channel anyway.
The tunnels were dark, dusty, tight, and smelled faintly of things best left unimagined. The floor sloped downwards as Jacob Traeten allowed himself to be herded by the soldiers surrounding him. The closeness of their bodies was somewhat comforting, but Traeten was under no illusions that they were there for his protection. He made no effort to hide the fear on his face; the soldiers would be less likely to suspect him of anything if they thought he was terrified. Which he was.
Right now his biggest worry, besides painful death at the claws of the creatures who had haunted his nightmares since Mongolia, was that Agent Finn would decide they didn't need him as a guide and send him back. The maps the Initiative was using seemed to be serving them fine, and Riley had only had to ask Traeten for confirmation of their direction twice.
They stopped for a moment to lay another 'breadcrumb', then continued on, always heading down and deeper. Traeten felt the air grow clammier around him and shivered slightly. They were getting closer. It wouldn't be long now.
Riley shined his flashlight on the map for the fifth time in as many minutes. A wrong turn down here would be disastrous. So far, the map was working well, but they might still need Traeten, and it would be too much of a hassle to send him back now.
In a tiny alcove to the right was a dusty stairwell. Riley pointed at it wordlessly and the squad moved in on it. Riley went first, taking one stair at a time, crouching to make sure there was nothing waiting for him at the bottom. Something squished under his boot. Riley looked down at it and called Traeten.
"Do you recognize this?" he asked. The thing he'd stepped on was a smear of some clear, sticky, stringy substance stuck all over the staircase. Traeten nodded.
"It's the resin we've seen the Xenomorphs building with," he said. "Why's there a patch of it here? The main Hive is still a level away."
"Maybe they're marking territory," Forrest said.
Traeten shook his head. "They wouldn't advertise their presence that way. I think this is the first stage of an expansion of the Hive."
"Getting ambitious." Riley hefted his taser blaster and motioned the squad back into formation. "Their mistake." He contacted Walsh.
"Acknowledged. Lay the breadcrumb and proceed to the final checkpoint. Out." Walsh spoke as though she didn't know that the civilians were clustered outside the Humvee, listening in. There was no immediate harm being done, and the more the Slayer saw of a successful operation, the more likely she'd be to come aboard. There was only one more descent to make before the team was on the same level as the sunken cathedral...
Underground, the soldiers were about to begin that descent. The ladder was rusty, dusty, and old, and stuck starkly out of a small hole showing nothing but darkness underneath. But when Riley shone his light at it, he saw that it led down to the floor of the next tunnel. He knew the target was now only a few dozen metres away.
Dropping to his stomach on the filthy floor, Riley lowered his torso over the edge of the hole and dangled upside down. Ignoring the blood rushing to his head, he swept the area with his weapon, making sure nothing awaited whoever descended the ladder. Seeing nothing but concrete walls and the occasional patch of alien slime, he motioned for Forrest to lead the way down, and kept him covered as the second-in-command scrambled down the ladder and hit the ground with his taser ready. Riley joined him an instant later, and the two kept the ladder secured, Forrest facing backwards, Riley facing towards the cathedral, as the rest of the team came down. Another flare was laid, and they fell back into formation. The entire manoeuvre had taken less than a minute, and they were now practically on the aliens' doorstep. Riley spared a moment to wonder why they hadn't met any opposition yet, then called the Humvee again. "Commencing attack," Riley said. "Will remain in continuous contact from now on. Over."
"Understood. Good luck," came the reply. "Remember: no survivors. Over."
Riley put the radio back in his belt, leaving it switched on, and led the team forward. He noticed that it was getting warmer, more humid. Everything ahead of them that was not lit by a flashlight was completely black and invisible. There was total and utter silence, not a sound emerging from the oppressive darkness ahead of them. They're waiting for us, thought Riley.
As the team advanced, the lights began to show the tunnel ahead narrowing into a passageway... that seemed to be sculpted of black bone. The smooth, shiny, hard substance was formed into a bizarre array of disgustingly organic patterns reminiscent of ribs, spines, muscle and viscera. Riley turned to Traeten. "This is what they've been building?"
Traeten nodded, pale. "This is the Hive."
Riley nodded. "Okay. We don't need you any more. Just go back to the ladder, stay there and wait for us, no matter what happens." Traeten promptly dropped out of the formation, looking grateful. But, as the squad moved on into the passageway, he followed behind them quietly, unseen.
The air became even warmer as they entered the tunnel, and then halted. Beyond the end of the passageway was the sunken cathedral which had been the prison of the Master and was now the foothold of the Xenomorphs on Earth, yet all they could see of it was more yawning blackness, although more of the alien structural formations could be glimpsed at the edge of the beams of their flashlights. Still no sounds, not one. "Jesus Christ," muttered the medic, Sasaki, as he gazed at a piece of wall disturbingly similar to an intestine.
"Keep it together people," Riley said. "We're the best, we've got a job to do, and we aren't gonna get psyched by the bad guys' interior decor. Give me a flare, and get ready."
The flare sparked, hissed, and sailed into the blackness, casting red light in an all-too-small circle within the darkness of the Hive, revealing nothing but shadows and more walls plastered with resin-formed nightmares. But now, a sound could be heard. A soft snarl came from directly opposite where the squad was standing. Faintly lit by the flare, at the far edge of the chamber, the massive silhouette of Hostile 100 could be dimly seen. The commandoes didn't know it, but in a cosmic coincidence the creature had established itself in the exact same place The Master had once used to harangue his followers from. The alien appeared to be placed higher than the rest of the cathedral, and some sort of large structure was around it, but no details could be discerned in the gloom.
"Okay, stick to the plan," Riley said. "Move out. Randall, get that minigun ready. Let's do this." Shifting into the semicircle prescribed by the plan, they advanced cautiously into the Hive.
For a long time- a very long time- it had tumbled through the cold, infinite, absolute void of space, waiting to be born. From the moment it emerged from its egg and began seeking a host, its driving purpose had been to survive, to kill, to reproduce and populate this world with its kind. Despite all its enemies, despite all the forces arrayed against it, the creature known to humanity as Hostile 100 had succeeded at all these things. It had beaten and eluded those hunting it, and established a home, an outpost of its kind on this world, and filled it with its children. And during the process of birth, growth, hunting, fighting, escaping and building, it had learned. Naturally gifted like all its kind with an unusual amount of cunning, its mental powers were now at their peak, and it had used them to prepare an extraordinary and merciless reception for anything that wandered into its lair. And now, as clumsy, soft fragile creatures who advertised their approach from far away through smell and vibration came to invade its home, the Queen silently ordered its children to fulfill their purpose in life.
Kill.
Riley's first and only warning came as he, Randall, Flagg, and Forrest emerged from the tunnel. Behind him there was a sudden gasp, and a pair of soft wet squelching sounds. Turning, he saw that with what he'd thought was a rocky overhang above the tunnel was actually two Xenomorph eggs, shifting, expanding, and opening. Behind them, he glimpsed Sasaki sliding lifelessly and silently to the ground, impaled by a Xenomorph tail which seemed to have grown right out of the tunnel ceiling. Screams and snarls exploded all around him as he raised his weapon and began to shout a warning- too late. The egg nearest to him seemed to simply explode, expelling a yellow slimy mass of horror onto his face. Riley didn't even have time to cry out before he felt the disgusting moistness plaster itself to his features like a mask as he fell backwards. His head struck the ground, rendering him mercifully unconscious for what followed.
Walsh heard a flurry of screams, curses, screeches, and weapons fire erupt over the radio. "Agent Finn? What's going on?" she demanded. No answer. "Riley?" She'd expected a tough fight, but what she was hearing sounded like chaos. "Riley!" Suddenly a few voices broke through the cacophony.
"What the f-"
"Finn's down! Finn's down!"
"OH GOD! Get it off! Get it offa meeee-"
"To the right! Enemy on the right! FIRE!"
"They're coming out the walls! THEY'RE COMING OUT THE GODDAMN WALLS!"
"Riley! Forrest! ANYONE! Report!" Walsh was on the verge of hysteria even before the radio went dead. Moving swiftly into crisis-management mode, she immediately contacted the backup squad. "The mission is in serious jeopardy. Situation is unknown. Get in there now!" she ordered. "Get in there and get our people out of there!" She then turned to the civilians…
Who were already gone.
As Riley went down, Jacob Traeten made his move. Summoning what little remained of his nerve, he dashed into the tunnel and past the surprised commandoes, who had other things on their minds. The Hive was a war zone. Taser blasts arced across the room, illuminating charging aliens scurrying along the floor, walls, and ceiling as the soldiers scrambled for their lives. Traeten did his best to ignore the battle as he moved to the right side of the chamber, hugging the wall of the Hive as tightly as possible, disregarding the loathsome feel of the dried resin. He tried to stay at the edge of the chaos as, alone and unarmed, he inched deeper into the alien nest.
The angry whir of the minigun sounded to his left, and he turned his head to see a Xenomorph blow apart from the shoulders up. Traeten caught only a glimpse of the rest of the fight, a fleeting impression of desperate, terrified, screaming men clustered around the tunnel entrance with multiple aliens falling upon them, but then something crushed the flare and the Hive was plunged back into terrifying blackness, except for the flashlights of the few soldiers still standing. Deprived of light and direction, all Traeten could do was cling to the foul wall and try to maintain bladder control.
Suddenly, in the centre of the room a bright tongue of flame jetted out from the darkness, and Traeten saw a flaming, writhing alien fall to the ground, courtesy of whoever was using the flamethrower. In the momentary illumination, he could see a man-shaped shadow broke away from the melee, another shadow which could not possibly be human in hot pursuit. With horror Traeten realized that the soldier was leading the alien right to him. He ran for it, hearing futile gunshots behind him. Echoing throughout the Hive he heard screams of pain, a hiss, a hideous crunching noise, and then silence.
Dead silence.
Oh God. They're all dead. Traeten stopped running, crouched against the wall, and tried to not even breathe. It wasn't supposed to be like this… the soldiers weren't supposed to die this quickly! Traeten realized that he was all alone, in the dark, surrounded by some of the most horrific creatures ever imagined, and that in spite of all his deception, in spite of all his scheming, in spite of all his clever planning, things had gone horribly wrong, and he was about to die.
"Professor Walsh? This is Harmel. The tunnel leading to the objective is completely blocked, looks like a cave-in from recent tremors. We can't proceed any farther this way..."
"Then find another way!" Walsh hissed at the leader of the backup squad. In her gut, she knew that they wouldn't get there fast enough. Which meant that it was all up to the civilians now...
Buffy dashed through the tunnels as fast as she could, ignoring her friends' protests and their panting as they tried to keep up with Slayer speed. Only one thing kept running through her mind: "Finn's down! Finn's down!"
Riley.