IX

The bridge aboard The Vengeance was buzzing with activity, each of the fifteen monitoring and control stations manned by well-trained men and women who were focused intently on their jobs, none of them distracted by the conversation happening on the raised circular dais where the commander of the ship resided in his seat of power.

Commander Thorn had served for almost twenty-five years in the Marines, the last seven of which he'd been in command of The Vengeance. He prided himself on being a Marine loved the corps to the core, and was never seen in anything other than a pristine dress uniform and sporting a ceremonial sword that had been presented to him during his graduation from flight school: a course he'd passed top of his class in, with honours.

Christ knows how this asshole made it this far.

He glared at the lieutenant before him, Cray, and fought back the snarl that almost crossed his lips. The weasel had been negligent in his duties for so long now, which was why he'd been put on The Eden:after all, how much trouble could the lieutenant get in to aboard a long-haul colony settled if he failed to read a report, or didn't have his second in charge by his side to hold his hand? Well, apparently, he'd managed to do just that. And the answer was a shit-load of trouble.

"Personnel are missing from the ship, including the Captain and several Marines," Thorn said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. "There's wild animals running around, and so far two people have been killed by these things? That we know of, at least."

Cray squirmed uncomfortably, his eyes locked with those of Thorn and a bead of sweat trickling down his brow.

"And you're telling me now, after how many hours?"

"Sir, yessir," Cray muttered uncomfortably. It looked as if the ass-kisser was going to be sick, his complexion as pale and grey as the metal plating of the deck around him.

"Why not when the first update came through from your ship? Why didn't you keep in touch with your men?"

"With all due respect, sir, they only sent reports, they didn't try to speak to me until it was too late. It was Steven's fault…"

"With all due respect, Lieutenant, Stevens is the only one who's been on top of things since the start of this thing, he's running things by the book as best as can be expected without a commanding officer present. Confining people to their quarters, pairs patrolling the ship, issuing the weapons like he did. Maybe he should be in charge of you, Cray. Communication is a two-way street, you should be keeping in touch with them."

A fire burned in his eyes as Cray glared at the commander, the scathing remarking not just a scornful comment, but nothing short of a slap in the face. Questioning his command was one thing, saying that Stevens, a man he obviously loathed, was better than him was quite something else, and something that tore him up inside. Seething, Cray bit his tongue as Thorn cycled through the different reports on the data pad. He stopped after watching the birthing of the snake creature from Naki's chest, paused the footage on the picture of the man's hollowed chest cavity and the bloody trail leading away from the corpse.

"We've got to nip this in the bud as soon as we can," Thorn finally said, looking up from the small screen. Cray cocked an eyebrow; though he was receiving the help he'd requested, he hadn't expected it to come so quickly, or without any begging or twisting. "Much as I'd like to see a whiny little fuck like you left hanging out to dry, if you screw this up, the entire damn fleet looks like a joke, and I in turn look like shit because of a weak link in the chain of command. I can only think this is something we've picked up on Gamma Outpost, something that's lain dormant until now."

Cray nodded dumbly, his mind still reeling from the speed at which Thorn had buckled.

"Go, get in your ship. I'll see that two contingents of Marines leave with you. I'm going to send Gunnery Sergeant Green with you. He'll be in charge of the two squads. You'll also report to him, who in turn will update me regularly. And I'll make damn sure I check my update regularly while you try to flush out the infestation. Any more deaths will be on your head, Cray, and if you fuck up now, I'll make sure your ass is nailed to the wall for this."

While Thorn let Cray mull on this, one of the monitoring stations lit up, and the operator spun around, a stunned expression on his face as he pressed his headset closer to his ear. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have dreamed of approaching the Commander in his nest, especially when he was in the middle of a meeting. However, there were always exceptions to the rules.

"Status update from The Eden, sir!"

"Put it on the main screen," Thorn announced, waving towards the largest video screen hanging above the expansive and thick view port that made one entire wall of the bridge. In the brief second it took for the screen to come to life, Thorn looked at the other nine ships in the fleet, at the Marine entourage and colony construction ships, then the three hydroponics ships at the forefront of the fleet, their lengthy bodies dotted in bulbous domes filled with artificial environments, livestock and vegetation. This was Thorn's fleet. The commanders of the other Behemoth cruisers probably thought the same, but that didn't make Thorn any less defensive of his ships. As he thought this, the screen flickered to life, showing the face of a Marine in full battle dress, his helmet pulled down over his brow and shading his ice-blue eyes. His angular jaw, sporting a spray of stubble, tightened as he played a cigarette back and forth over his lip. A pair of playing cards could be seen on the top of his helmet, a king of hearts and a joker, and Thorn guessed by the sneer that appeared on Cray's face that this was the notorious Stevens he claimed made his life hell.

"Forgive me for being blunt, Cray, but we don't have time for our normal pleasantries. The shit's hit the fan here: whatever the fuck these things are, they're fucking killers. We've lost … how many? Fifteen Marines dead already, another seven injured or incapacitated: soft slugs don't have any affect on them. We're in the barracks for now; we've set the alarms off and tried to get everyone locked down in safe rooms across the ship. We don't know if they got the vents shut down, we've lost contact with most areas outside."

"Christ, Stevens, can't you do anything right?"

"Stevens," Thorn said, ignoring Cray's outburst. "We're sending two squads of Marines over in a dropship. Are the landing bays secure? Can you clear a path?"

"We can try, Commander," Stevens nodded, recognising the officer. "Cameras are down: a lot of systems are, we can't tell if they're all linked or not."

"What are we dealing with, exactly?"

"Fuck knows," Stevens looked uncertain, not only of his report, but also the situation: he kept casting glances over his shoulder, as if he were looking for something. "We've got some footage from a camera… Dawes, can you patch that through to them?"

The footage played, a trimmed down version that took up from the moment the alien creature was first seen, while Stevens continued to speak over the scene of carnage. Everyone on the bridge slowly stopped what they were doing, turned to watch the footage of the creature and its killer brethren. "It's not human, and it's not something I can think we'd be carrying in the domes. Maybe a parasite picked up at Gamma, we can't tell. Whatever they are, they're vicious, violent, and their blood's highly corrosive: I've got one Marine who lost his hand in a carotid spray."

"You've done well," Thorn nodded his head thoughtfully as he digested the footage, "Kept your cool, despite the shit that's going on around you. And the less-than-perfect guidance you've been given by your commanding officer. Clear a path to the shuttle bay, meet up with my men there. You can liaise with my Gunnery Sergeant there; together the two of you can work out the best course of action to take the ship back, get rid of whatever these things are. Cray will stay here."

Stevens grinned slightly, was about to say something else, when a loud sound came from off camera, like a sheet of metal tearing apart, and Stevens stepped back, swinging his weapon about and firing a canister round at an unseen target. A staccato of gunfire blared through the speakers, followed by a shrill cry, a piercing cry: an inhuman scream of pain and rage. The screen showed Stevens retreating backwards, his weapon sounding again and again as he worked the oversized slide, the explosive blast of his weapon a harsh contrast to the rapid chatter of automatic fire that resonated through the transmission. The screen blurred and shifted, a dark and animal shape streaked across the screen, then a gunshot sounded, different to the shotgun or pulse rifles, and the screen blinked off.

"Transmission's been terminated from The Eden's end, sir," one of the coms operators announced, almost unnecessarily.

"Get some men armed and ready in the shuttle bay, ASAFP," Thorn snapped over his shoulder, and two operators leapt to their duties, their fingers feverishly tapping keys and relaying verbal commands to men around the ship.

"You're not going with them, Cray," Thorn continued. "We need some decent men over there with combat skills, not some fuckwit dipshit who had their stripes bought with their family millions. Experience counting credits isn't going to be worth shit when it comes to the crunch. I can find some task to keep you out of trouble here."

Cray looked both annoyed and relieved at the same time from the bittersweet comment: angry at the fact he'd been thoroughly dressed down in front of the bridge, but inwardly overjoyed that he'd avoided going into the lethal combat zone.

"Patch me through to the closest Yutani rep," Thorn commanded, nodding towards the coms officer. "Anyone will do."

"Patching us through to Gamma Outpost, now," the officer announced, hammering at the console before him. 'Busy signal, sir. Leave a message?"

"Override, priority one. I need to speak to him, immediately. Patch it through direct to my chair, private and secured line."

"You know something," Cray said under his breath. "More than you're letting on."

"Are you still here?" Thorn asked, distractedly, then waved him away. "Get off my bridge, Cray, before I have you detained in the brig. Do we have a signal? Do we have a feed?"

A small screen blinked to life by the arm of his Thorn's chair as Cray wearily trudged from the bridge, his shoulders slouched, and he caught the glimpse of the company executive that appeared on the screen. Golden blonde hair swept to one side with a clean-shaven jaw, the man looked to be in his late twenties, though all executives were notoriously vain and paid hundreds of thousands of credits a year on surgery and rejuvenation treatments. Davis Stonelaw was in his late fifties and the company executive running things on Gamma Outpost: this far out in the middle of nowhere, he was the closest thing to God as far as the Weyland-Yutani funded fleet was concerned. Thorn had taken the opportunity to spend some time with Davis during their re-supply and leave on the station, knowing fine well that sometimes it paid to know people in high places.

"Thorn," Davis recognised the officer, offering a lazy salute before glaring bleary-eyed at the chronometer strapped to his wrist. "I hope this isn't social call at an unsociable hour. I'm in the middle of a meeting here." He looked like he was naked, he certainly wasn't wearing any top, and in the background of the feed he could hear female voices and see vaguely shifting shapes in the shadows of the room.

Thorn didn't return the salute: he hated it when civilians thought saluting a Marine of any ranking was the right thing to do, but in this case it was a grey area: the Company were in charge of the fleet, and they certainly contributed a large amount of funding to the armed forces in general, mostly so they could use a little more muscle when required in the form of personal favours. Thorn wasn't sure if that meant he reported to Davis, if it were the other way around.

"The fleet's in trouble," Thorn said bluntly. He didn't see the point in mincing his words, nor pandering the egotistical executive as they normally expected. He spoke in a low voice so the rest of the bridge couldn't hear him, and the small speakers in the headrest of his seat were angled just so, so that no one else could hear the other side of the conversation. "The Eden seems to have some exotic organisms on board, hostiles that have claimed fifteen military and at least two civilian casualties."

There was a delay in transmission, a couple of seconds that would have been longer the further away from the outpost they got. Thankfully, it was still possible to have a conversation over a live feed, if only a little extended. After another week of travel, it could have taken hours to get his response: Earth itself was almost three weeks away, communication wise. Davis seemed to perk up a little once the words reached him: "Casualties?" he repeated

"Confirmed kills," Thorn nodded his head solemnly and rapped his fingers against he small keypad on the arm of his chair, compressing the footage from the combat helmet and Stevens' reports before hitching the file the communication signal. "I'm sending an encoded data file now: I suggest you don't watch it in front of your 'business associates' before vetting it. We don't know where they came from: it's possible they're something that we picked up from Gamma, our last port: have you experienced anything…"

"You didn't pick up shit from Gamma," Davis shook his head, his eyes flicking down from the screen as he attempted to cut Thorn off and load up the video that he'd received. "Gamma was fine before you came, we were fine after you went. The last thing we need is to have you badmouthing us… Jesus fucking Christ, what is that thing? What the fuck is it?"

"I take it Gamma has nothing like that running around," Thorn said. Davis was shaking his head as he spoke, not in response to his question but the footage of the killings. "I'm sending two squads over to secure the landing decks, then we can start to evacuate the craft. With all the civvies out, we can really hunt those creatures out, I think."

Thorn waited for his words to get through, then watched as Davis shook his head while reading the updates and watching all the video footage, muttering quietly to himself before speaking loud enough for the microphone to pick up.

"Don't pull anyone off there, and don't put anyone in. These things, these exotics, they're a parasite and a killer, some fucking biohazard: whatever burst out the chest of that guy must be linked, like some kind of contagious disease or an airborne spore before it hatches. You start shifting people around from ship to ship; the entire fleet's going to be infected. Remember the colonies that were lost to Red Lung ten years ago on the outer rim? Someone forgot to follow protocol, pushed few people around, wiped out seven colonies in a week. I don't want the fleet lost, and I don't want to risk Marines going in to an infected zone. Lock down the ship, emergency quarantine, make sure nothing can get off there."

"It's not a disease, it's an animal, and they're going to tear their way through the crew if we don't pull them out of there."

"How many people are aboard The Eden?" Davis asked, shaking his head as he spoke. "A couple of thousand, plus the cattle and whatever the fuck else they've got in those domes, monkeys, sharks, shit like that. Too many to spread around the rest of the fleet, that's for certain. Lock it down in quarantine, see if you can get it turned around and escort it back to Gamma: we can get it locked down there."

"Stonelaw," Thorn murmured, making his voice lower, almost a whisper. "I think I may know something about this. I need you to access some files on the company network for me. High security files, out here you're the only person who can get what I need.'

"So you're some kind of exotic specialist now?" Davis sneered. "Didn't know that the Marines did a crash course in shit like that."

"See if you can access directives under Black Cancer," Thorn said, watching as Davis' fingers worked at the keypad in front of him. A scowl crossed his face that turned into a puzzled frown as the seemingly random search criteria he'd been given pulled up a series of coded and encrypted files.

"Son of a bitch," Davis growled. "This stuff's over twenty years old…"

"Twenty three," Thorn corrected him, almost puffing out his chest. "I wasn't always in charge of a Behemoth-class Marine Starship, I started off my military career as a ground-pounder, just like most others. I was in a special squad, dealing with mostly black-op stuff, under the radar bullshit most other grunts would balk at. We were briefed – hastily, at best – during one of our raid and rescue missions. Closing down some rat-shit prison and rounding up whatever bugfuck prisoners were still kicking around in there, while at the same time dealing with a… an exotic. We went in, hazmat seals in place and locked down, with some high-strung exec leading us like a fucking general leading the cavalry."

"But you were too late. For the exotic, at least. Dumped in a vat of molten lead…"

"The report's there, I take it," Thorn nodded his head. "I never thought about this until I seen that video, the birth of one of them. It brought all the memories back, reminded me of that covert mission all those years ago. I think these things might be linked to it, somehow. I don't know how they got here, but that's them, I swear."

"We definitely can't let these spread into the rest of the fleet," Davis shook his head. "Do as I said: lock it down, turn it around, escort it back. Don't let anything off it. Get them back here to the outpost, I'll get everything prepared for your arrival."

"It'll take a couple of weeks," Thorn nodded. "Maybe longer, turning around could take some time with these things."

"We'll be ready," Davis assured him before terminating the communication. Thorn settled back into his chair before keying in his personal code that would link him with the bridge of The Eden. The screen on his chair crackled to life, awash with a faint sheen of static, before clearing up into the vision of the bridge of vessel, eerily quiet and strangely devoid of anyone. He fed the screen through to the main screen, motioning towards it and talking to no one in particular. "Shouldn't there be skeleton crew in there, controlling the damn thing? Whose names are on the duty rota?"

"Naki and Tomly, sir," one of the operators voiced up without looking up from his screen.

"Naki's dead," Thorn mused, "and Tomly's with Stevens… There's no one piloting the ship?"

Thorn sighed. After the revelation of the alien life forms that were apparently rampant aboard The Eden and the memories they'd stirred, he'd had second thoughts about sending a contingent of men aboard the craft. However, now it seemed he needed to send them, along with a skeleton crew to pilot the craft and get it turned around. There was no hurry at the moment; there was nothing close to the fleet for a few thousand kilometres, so there was no chance of a collision with anything. However, the longer it took to slow down the ship, get it turned around and headed back towards Gamma, the longer it would put on the journey: another hour added to the task could add another two or three days to their travel.

Why can't I live in the future, have something like a faster than light drive? He wondered silently to himself, before adding a trio of skilled pilots to the squadron boarding the craft.