The lights flickered, and then went out.
Jake Lee cursed, and moved to the window of the derelict house. Sure enough, the entire district seemed to have lost power. Whether or not it would be restored was another question.
"Another power station gone?" came a voice from behind him. He turned, surprised. Holly Chance was one of the quietest people he knew; throughout their flight from the hives, she had obeyed instructions in complete, exhausted silence. Briefly he wondered what had made the conscript so emotionally drained. Probing the matter only produced such a desolate look that you felt obliged to leave the issue. Was she starting to recover?
"What else could it be?" That, at least, was not a surprise. If Holly was the quietest in the motley group of refugees, the huddled figure of Edward Hukken was the gloomiest. "The damned military don't care about people losing light and heat, they just care about saving their own hides." He took off his spectacles and fiddled with them nervously, the classic image of a scientist.
"Hush," said Jake. Now was not the time for another of Hukken's tirades about military priorities. "You don't want to wake them," he added with a gesture at the sleeping Gearing family.
Family. There was a sick humour to giving them that title. In a proper family, under normal circumstances, the twin sisters Artemis and Anigel, and their little brother Thomas, wouldn't even have been let out alone yet. Sleeping peacefully in the corner of the room, it was hard to believe that they had come stumbling into the district a few weeks ago, covered in blood and telling wild tales of the slaughter of their town.
Jake moved a chair to the window to give himself a view of the city, and collapsed into it. Such activities were necessary for survival. The bugs always attacked the dark places first. Well, usually. A few minutes warning could make all the difference.
Constant threat has a way of keeping the human body going for far longer than normal, but the advancing Alien swarm had maintained that threat for longer than even that. Jake was tired – more than that, he was shattered. They say that stress ages you, and the painfully slow movement away from the infected regions had proved that for him. His family was long dead – taken by drones in the night. His life, such as it was, had been destroyed. If there hadn't been people who needed guidance, who needed a leader to get them to the spaceport to escape from Earth, he might have stayed and waited for the end. A part of him still wanted to.
He checked his watch. The display flashed 04:48 at him. Another hour until it was time to move. With any luck, they'd reach the last perimeter by midday.
A flicker of movement out of the window, and his gaze snapped to it. A few hundred metres down the road, a black shape was crouched by a burnt-out car.
It moved again, and Jake relaxed. A dog. Nothing to be worried about, even if it did have a furtive, hungry look to its actions.
The dog stiffened, and turned to run. It got only a few metres before another black shape leapt from the rooftops in pursuit.
The dog howled pitifully, and then the second creature overtook. Blood sprayed as the unfortunate mutt was ripped apart.
The drone looked up, scanning the area. Jake froze instinctively, wondering whether it would do any good. The bugs didn't seem to have eyes, but that didn't mean anything.
It leaned down and picked up the gory carcase, before loping away towards the outskirts of the city. If it had sensed the six refugees, it hadn't considered them worth dealing with.
Jake slowly unfroze, and cast a look at the others. All were still, dozing gently. Away in the only true refuge from the Aliens, so long as you didn't dream.
The first rays of light peeked out over the horizon.
As the sun slowly rose, little black specks became visible swarming through the ruins of the city. It was a sight that might once have been terrifying, but had become commonplace. Fear can age and weaken like anything else.
***
INCOMING VESSEL DETECTED
VESSEL IDENTIFIED: CRUISER MEI'SHA'DTE KCH-T'SHA'RE
ACTIVATING INTERDICTION FREQUENCY
INTERDICTION FREQUENCY FAILURE
INCREASING ALERT LEVEL
***
"Jake."
"Mmmph…"
"Jake, wake up!"
Jake's eyes snapped open and focused on Artemis. "How long was I asleep?" he demanded urgently.
She looked at him with worried eyes. "I don't know. You were out for the count when I woke up."
He stood, and blinked in the blinding glare of the sun. He checked his watch. 08:19, it flashed cheerfully.
"We need to get moving," he said. "Wake the others up." She moved off, leaving him to his thoughts. If he'd gone to sleep in the middle of the night… if an Alien had come…
Best not to think about such things.
"Come on!" he called. "We need to get to that spaceport today, or we'll get overtaken by the hives."
Hukken was grumbling faintly, but the others silently stood looking at Jake. Tired and expectant.
He wondered if he should say something, bolster the flagging spirits. But then he realised that no words would be enough. Only the feeling of being at the spaceport and embarking to leave the hellhole that Earth had become would restore any form of happiness. If that wasn't too strong a word.
So instead, he turned and led the way out into the decimated streets. Violent gangs had ripped a lot of cities apart in panic and a strange power lust, perhaps hoping subconsciously to scare off the Aliens. They'd died down pretty quickly as human settlements vanished one by one under the black tide, with nothing to show for the futile attempts at defence.
He remembered one terrifying night a week ago, out in the country. Lack of prey made the hives move faster, and the little group had barely made it to a military checkpoint ahead of a ravening pack of drones. The Aliens had been gunned down, but there had been no joy in the face of the commanding sergeant. "Plenty more where those came from," had been his only comment before shooing the civilians away from the front line.
The man was probably dead now.
And there were always plenty more drones.
For a moment, Jake thought back to when the infestation had first been made public. The mere existence of such a vicious lifeform, kept secret prior to then, had been a shock, but there had been such confidence that they would be wiped out in short order. Hell, the entire marine training corps was here, not to mention the private armies of mercenaries at the disposal of the great corporations.
How had everyone been so blind? Had those high up known how hopeless the battle would be?
Rumours flitted around that the Aliens had been brought to Earth intentionally in the hope that they could be controlled. Things had gone wrong and they'd been released. There were also wilder rumours that this hadn't been an accident, that someone had allowed the spread of the hives so that there were plenty of the Aliens for some unknown purpose.
There were a lot of rumours. Rumours were humanity's way of coping with the horrible possibility that they had finally met something that they couldn't beat.
A faint noise yanked Jake back to reality. The noise came again, metal faintly scraping across metal. A rattle.
The noises came from ahead. Jake kept moving, scanning the area for the source. Movement was better than stillness against the bugs. You could be stood stock still in the dark, absolutely silent in the middle of a thunderstorm and they'd still find you.
And you wouldn't see them until too late. Even then, all you would see is the teeth, shining like little stars.
That was how his wife had died. Drones had got upstairs and killed his two sons, then come down looking for the rest of the family. They had run for cover, submerging themselves in a dark alleyway full of rubbish bins.
The Russian Roulette of fate had spun and picked her. The single drone that had followed them attacked her, and he'd been able to run.
Survivor's guilt was a hard thing to live with.
He sensed something behind and spun. Crouched, shining like wet pearls in the early morning sunlight, two drones watched them.
Their eyeless stare bore into him like an industrial laser cutter. They were so still that they could have been statues, but something about them dispelled any possibility of that.
Then they were falling, the rattle of carbine fire accompanying the spraying of acidic blood. Jake turned to see a small group of men in military uniform at the entrance to the alleyway where the noises had come from.
"Don't just stand there!" the leader, a wiry corporal, barked. "Recon says there are more inbound!"
Jake hurried over, and the others followed. He opened his mouth to thank the man, but he waved it aside. "No time. You're lucky we found you," the corporal continued as they began a swift jog towards the inner city. "We're abandoning the outer patrols. We lose too many, and those that don't get killed by the bugs miss them entirely."
"Movement behind us, sir," interrupted one of the grunts. "Looks like a third one. Down that alley."
The corporal stopped. "We'd better pop it, otherwise it'll dog our tracks all the way back to perimeter. Watch yourselves. It's mine."
He stalked off towards the alley indicated. The two buildings that made it up were in a bad state, the walls broken in. At the end, a black shape was just visible.
The corporal stopped ten metres from the motionless drone, and raised the carbine.
With a soft hiss, the other drone crawled over the ruined wall right next to him. He slowly glanced up and whispered something.
Then there was a blur of violence, a scream, and drones began pouring into the road.
The soldiers didn't bother with shocked responses, they just raised their weapons and fired. Jake turned and ran. The sheer number of the Xenomorphs promised certain death to any who stood against them.
The horrible screeches of the dying drones chased them along the street, to the tune of the rapid hammering of the carbines, soon replaced by cut-off screams.
Then there was nothing but the need to escape, the all-consuming instinct for survival that eradicated all other considerations.
Fatigue finally overwhelmed adrenalin, and Jake slowed. There was no sound of pursuit. The Aliens had decided to let them live.
This time.
"Halt! Who goes there?"
Jake looked up, and a wave of relief swept over him.
The perimeter. Terror had provided the burst needed to make it to safety.
The soldiers looked at him suspiciously. "Well?" the leader demanded.
"I'm Jake Lee. These are Holly Chance, Edward Hukken and Anigel, Artemis and Thomas Gearing."
The soldier shrugged. "I'd ask what your purpose at the spaceport is, but we both know the answer. How far have you come?"
Jake grimaced. "About fifty miles. We barely kept ahead of the hives."
The other winced sympathetically. "You've been lucky so far. I hate to say it, but that luck just ran out."
Jake just stared, praying that the soldier didn't mean what he thought he did.
"The few remaining ships are all military. Evacuation of key personnel only. Everything and everyone else is already gone."
"Everything?" asked Hukken.
"Unless you want a ride with hell's ferryman," put in one of the other soldiers with a nasty laugh. "If you really are desperate – and hell, who wouldn't be – try docking bay 13."
The leader nodded, unsmiling. "That ship is the only one that might even consider taking more people. But you might wish that you'd stayed here." He waved them through, his expression indicating that they were already forgotten.
Jake led the way through the defences, both the vicious looking sentry turrets and scarred men ignoring them. The dim lights of the spaceport loomed.
The ugly, metallic corridors were silent, only the occasional distant voice or clang of metal suggesting that it was still inhabited.
"What did he mean, 'hell's ferryman'?" asked Thomas quietly.
Holly smiled faintly, a rare display of any kind of emotion, and pointed at the flickering sign ahead of them.
Docking Bay 13. Current occupant: civilian vessel Charon.
"Charon," she said. "He carried the dead across the river Styx into the underworld in Greek mythology." She paused. "I hope that's not a bad omen."
Beneath the sign, a tall set of double doors were wedged open. Through them, an ugly lump of metal sat on stubby legs, while a lean figure paced in front of the long loading ramp.
The man started as he noticed them hovering in the entrance. "Captain Caraeus Hector, at your service," he said doubtfully. "You sure you're in the right place?"
Jake nodded, puzzled. "The officials said to come here. No other civilian ships."
Hector gave him a twisted smile. "They probably thought that would be a good joke. The Charon's not spaceworthy enough for passengers." He sighed. "This crate was going to be a colony ship. The project that would make our sponsors a fortune. Just planning the expedition nearly bankrupted them, so they made Charon out of second-hand parts. Then the Xenomorphs turned up, ship part prices went through the roof, and the company really did go bankrupt."
"It won't fly at all?" asked Jake in horror.
The Captain shrugged. "She can fly, it's just a question of whether or not she'll disintegrate in mid-flight. All the essentials are here, it's just that the computer, E-space drive and a lot of other stuff are held together with spit and duct tape. Other components that anyone sane wouldn't fly without are missing entirely. I wouldn't trust Charon to go anywhere with a cargo."
Holly leaned forward and gripped Hector by the collar. "This is the only ship," she said, biting off each word and staring daggers at him.
Hector winced. "Listen, miss, if I were you I'd take my chances here. Other ships are coming to pick up the last survivors. Just a few more days…"
"We don't have a few more days!" she snarled.
He paused, and then nodded slowly. "All right. I'll need time to do some rewiring so we've got enough hypersleep capsules, plus we haven't finished loading."
Hukken raised an eyebrow. "Loading? I thought you said the Charon wasn't fit for cargo."
"No choice," said Hector regretfully. "It'll play merry hell with the E-space drive, but it was the condition for getting the parts needed to be able to get her off the ground at all: taking some cargo to our destination. Here it is now," he added.
The cargo lift opened, and five massive crates were dumped onto the hangar floor. Each was the size of a dropship and covered with military labels and instructions.
A short figure peered out from the Charon's ramp, and Hector spun around to face him. "Monty! Get the cargo stowed, and tell the 'droid to start rewiring the control circuits, we need another six hypersleep capsules!"
'Monty' scowled. "Our high an' mighty friends in the military certainly decided to give us a small load, didn't they?" He vanished again.
With an ominous groaning, the bottom of the ship opened out. Articulated arms extended down and out towards the crates, and torturously began pulling them inside the huge vessel's cargo hold.
"Well?" demanded Hector. "You coming or not? We've got a hellhole to escape."
Jake took one last look around the hangar, and then walked up the ramp.
There was a thump as the first crate landed in the Charon's cargo bay.
***
CRUISER MEI'SHA'DTE KCH-T'SHA'RE HAS LANDED IN SECTOR 204019
THREAT LEVEL CALCULATING
CALCULATION… COMPLETE
THREAT LEVEL DELTA ASSIGNED
ACTIVATING SENTRIES
AWAITING FURTHER DATA
***
"Charon Charlie X-ray Nevada Three Zero Niner, you are almost clear for launch. Please hold - we appear to have some trouble on the outer perimeter."
"Flight Control, this is Charon. Surely we should launch if there's trouble? I presume we're talking about toothy trouble?"
"Charon, shut your trap. You'll be cleared when we ascertain the problem."
There was tense silence on the bridge of the Charon. Jake stood in the background, the various crew of the ship attending to their tasks.
A dull boom penetrated the starship's hull, and Hector looked up, startled. A faint glow was visible in the distance. Dark specks, barely visible against the sky, dived towards the ground, tracer fire spitting.
The fighters pulled up again, and another boom resounded.
"Bombs," said Holly quietly to Jake. "Those attack flyers only have two each. There must be a lot of bugs."
There was deep rumble from nearby, and a large shape appeared over the walls of the docking bay. One of the military ships had launched.
"Flight Control, this is Charon –"
"Can it!" Flight Control interrupted. "Priority vessels are being given permission to leave, the last thing we want is a mid-air collision!"
More shapes were lifting off, and it was just possible to hear the crack of infantry weapons.
Time was running out.
There was a sudden scream over the comms channel. An assault rifle chattered, but the sound was obliterated by the hideous screech by an Alien.
"Flight Control?" demanded Hector. "Flight Control, respond!"
There was no response.
The Captain flicked several switches, and the Charon shook. With a nasty grinding sound, the ship lifted, straining against gravity.
Jake looked out of the porthole. Black shapes could be seen swarming over the perimeter and control buildings.
Nothing followed them as the Charon pulled away from the surface. The odd thought that they were the last people on Earth struck Jake.
Had been the last people on Earth.
"That's it," Hector announced. "Autopilot locked in. We'd better get to the hypersleep capsules, we'll be entering E-space soon. Trust me, you do not want to be awake for that. Does weird things to your brain."
Jake left the bridge. All would be forgotten on this new planet.
Nothing could be worse than being trapped on Earth.
***
Waking from hypersleep is never a pleasant experience, but years of experience had made Hector used to it. He blinked, clearing his bleary eyes, and looked over the control panel installed above his capsule.
He frowned, and tapped out a request.
The sounds of waking from his passengers and crew made him look up, but only briefly.
The information that could not possibly be correct blinked at him from the cracked display.
"That's impossible…" he breathed.
"What?" asked Jake, leaning on his capsule and wondering whether to be sick.
Hector shook his head. "I'll check the bridge. With this circuitry, who knows what mistakes it's making?"
A scream echoed through the ship, and the sleepy crew froze.
Anigel ran into the chamber. Her left hand was stained with blood, and her expression was a picture of absolute terror.
Artemis ran to her sister, a confused, hard look in her eyes, daring the universe to hurt either of them. Jake followed more slowly. The last time he had seen any of the Gearing family like this was… when they'd first appeared.
He felt his stomach clench as a dreadful certainty that someone was dead filled him. He glanced around the room, and realised that Thomas was missing.
Hector was apparently smart enough to come to the same conclusion. All he said was "Where?"
Anigel forced out what might have been the words 'cargo bay' through the sobs.
Hector silently pulled his belt on, checked the pistol on it, and left for the cargo bay. Jake followed. He already knew what he would see there, but he followed nevertheless.
The limp body on the floor of the bay only confirmed his fears. Ragged, bloody holes were torn in Thomas' chest and neck, and a pool of blood to one side suggested that he had been rolled over. From the back, it must have looked like he was just asleep.
Hector leaned over the corpse and drew the pistol. "Now we have two mysteries," he said grimly.
"What's the other?" asked Jake. He kept his distance from the body; he'd seen plenty of death in the past few weeks, but there was no point in tempting his queasy stomach further.
Hector looked up. "The fact that we're fifty light-years from our destination in the middle of nowhere."
Jake stared at him.
"You're kidding," said Hukken from behind him. "You have got to be kidding."
"Unless the damn circuitry's fried – which I admit is possible – then no, I'm not," said Hector testily. "I don't know how, but the entire course is wrong. There is no way that the computer could have screwed up that badly of its own accord, the number of tests we ran on it prior to launch. In fact, out of the whole ship, the navigation circuits are probably the most stable components. We've been sabotaged."
"How?" said Hukken. "And more to the point, why?"
"How should I know?" the Captain barked. "We're not carrying anything useful except these crates, and what would be the point in sabotaging the drives if they wanted us to take equipment somewhere?"
"You're assuming it's the military?" asked Jake.
Hector gave him a look. "Who else would it be? They were the only others left on the bloody planet. There are probably pockets of poor sods who got left behind, but anyone with sense that was near the spaceport had already left."
"The other question is what killed Thomas," said a new voice.
Holly walked forward to look at the body. "Could be a bug," she continued, "but there's very little damage apart from the obvious. An Alien would have torn him to bits and eaten him, or taken him alive."
"Gunshots?" suggested Jake.
"Possible," said Hector thoughtfully. "A low calibre shot at point blank range might do this damage. It's not any ammunition pattern I've ever seen, though."
"Or maybe whatever was in the crates," said Hukken from behind one of them.
"What do you… oh," said Jake.
The casing on the side of the container had retracted to reveal a massive internal space. The walls were extraordinarily thick, over a metre, but the cavernous space within could still comfortably hold a military dropship.
The walls were faintly luminescent, but apart from that, it was completely empty.
"A stasis container," said Hukken grimly. "I've seen them before. Used to transport volatile material or living organisms. Impossible to break from within, and plays with the time flow to prevent anything from happening. The walls are that thick to store the batteries and stasis field generators. The control panel says that the batteries have been used recently. Something was inside this container, and someone released it. Or them."
"So let me get this straight," said Hector. "Our course has been sabotaged so that we're in the middle of nowhere. A member of the crew has been killed by unknown means. One of the crates that the military wanted us to transport was a stasis container. And whatever was in the crate has been released. Anyone care to put that kettle of fish together?"
There was silence.
"Then let's get to the bridge. There might be some answers there." Hector sighed. "I guess if there is some murderous thing on the loose here, it'll mean a quick death rather than a slow one."
Jake's mind assembled the statement and its implications. "What's wrong with the ship?" he demanded.
The Captain didn't say anything for a while. "I might be wrong," he admitted finally, "but the power plant simply won't hold out to get us to civilisation. It was one of the last components, something we bought simply to get us to our destination with a little to spare. It'll break down long before it gets us to safety. Then we'll be stuck in the middle of deep space, freezing to death and sucking carbon dioxide."
"Should we get everyone back into the hypersleep capsules then?" asked Jake. Desperation was gnawing at his self-control. No, not here. Not after all this. Can't die here!
"Those things only save time for the occupant," Hector replied. "The overall power drain would be about the same for if we were up and awake. They were invented to make long-distance FTL jumps more bearable." They had reached the bridge, and he sat down at the helm controls.
Hukken leaned forward. "What are you doing?"
"Pulling up the logs. I want to see if the computer really was sabotaged."
The screen bleeped plaintively, and produced the results.
Hector sat back in the chair and whistled quietly. "That's two questions answered. The computer did screw up on the headings, but it screwed up on someone else's headings. Wherever we were meant to go, we didn't arrive correctly. And the other thing is that the hypersleep countdowns were fiddled with. Thomas' capsule was set to open some time before ours, which explains how he managed to get to the cargo bay so quickly. He didn't."
"The question is why?" Hukken mused.
The short crewman only referred to as 'Monty' poked his head onto the bridge. "The crates'll only open to one of the crew," he remarked. "They needed a fingerprint authorisation. Captain, we've got two hours of FTL time if we start now."
"Which won't get us anywhere," Hector replied. He sounded crushed. For all his apparent resignation to the Charon's poor state, he must have held a small hope that he had been wrong.
Monty left.
"Where's Holly?" asked Jake suddenly.
"Here," she said, walking around the corner onto the bridge. There was an oddly animated feel to her actions, as though she had received good news.
"A xenomorph killed Thomas," she said.
Or perhaps the threat of certain death provided a boost after months of possible death.
"How do you know?" asked Hukken. The scientist was suddenly breathing hard.
"I looked carefully at the wounds," Holly replied. "The chest was a blunt force, but the neck… there were little incisions at the top and bottom of the hole that suggest teeth. Very small teeth."
"Inner jaws," said Hukken, realising where she was going.
"Exactly. What weapons do we have?"
Hector barked a laugh. "Weapons? Charon was bound for a peaceful mining colony. Beyond a few hunting rifles and mining lasers, we've got nothing. Certainly nothing that can take on a xenomorph."
"Then… look, the bugs are thick, right? They chase anything that looks like food. If we can lure them into the cargo airlock, then blow them out…"
[An interesting plan, Miss Chance.]
The words cut straight into their minds with a sound like knives scraping metal, bypassing the ears entirely. The sheer inhumanity of the 'sound' made Jake flinch.
With a graceful slowness, a huge black shape unfolded from the tall ceiling and dropped to the ground a few metres away. Jake glanced up and saw the twisted remnants of the air vent panelling above.
It was only a glance, though. The sight of the epitome of all their fears standing in the middle of the embodiment of their hopes was like a huge weight crushing him.
[It wouldn't work, though.] The drone advanced, and a strange, impossible idea entered Jake's mind... that it was the Alien speaking...
Hector's hand strayed towards the pistol on his belt, and there was a blur of motion as the Alien leapt forward and flicked out its tail stinger to rest against his throat. Hector froze, and slowly removed the hand.
[Good. You learn fast.] The drone retracted its tail. [The question is, how fast?]
"Aliens can't talk..." whispered Holly.
[I... we... are different. You must trust me when I say that your lives are on a knife-edge. It is solely because of me that you continue to live. The rest of the hive has no such wishes for your continued good health.] The black domed forehead rotated to look towards the figure of Hukken – the only figure, Jake realised, that was completely calm. [We may be tough, but we still need the power from the ship's core. Some have suggested that you should be eradicated to save power. I have no wish for this to occur. Ask him,] the drone said, flicking a clawed finger towards the scientist.
There was a collective rotation to look at Hukken, who nodded slowly. "That I believe. I thought there was something left of the real you when we met in that office." He laughed mirthlessly. "I always knew that I'd see your lot again. Sins of the past return to haunt me."
The drone did not respond to the comment. [The Queen will not ignore me, but if I cannot guarantee your passivity, I cannot guarantee your safety.] He cocked his head to one side, bird-like, and then backed off. [Ask your friend whether you should trust me. You might hear an interesting tale. I have been called to... quell... some of your compatriots.] With a blur of black, coiled power, the drone was gone.
Hector turned to look at the scientist, who was still smiling in a glazed way. "Well?" he asked quietly.
Hukken sat down heavily.
"Well, Doctor?" demanded Hector harshly. "Do you have something to say? Do you know something about that... aberration?"
The scientist looked up and met the Captain's eyes. "I suppose I have no choice. God knows I'm not proud of it... but yes, I know of these Xenomorphs." He paused. "I helped to create them."
There was shocked silence.
"Nine months ago," Hukken said musingly. "That's when it all started. I was a biologist trying to fit in with a hospital dealing with the casualties of the war against the xenomorphs. A transfer order came through, military authorisation and all from a General G. Gorson, and I was moved to a set of laboratories that I'd never heard of before. All I was told was that I had been given the rank of second-in-command of 'Project Blackstar', under a scientist named Haines. Things picked up quickly from there..."