to twitch spasmodically. The acting superintendent’s voice buzzed in her ears, a lethal drone.
‘Full chest view, at least according to what it says here. Heart and lungs seem to be functioning normally. Moving down.’
The twitching stopped, her breathing eased. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Hey, I don’t see anything. If you’d give me an idea what I’m supposed to be looking for. . maybe I missed it.’
‘No.’ Her mind was working furiously. ‘No, you didn’t miss it.’
‘How do we get some enhancement?’
‘Try B.’
He complied, to no avail. ‘Nothing.’ He tried again, muttering to himself. ‘I gotta get a better angle.’
The instrumentation hummed. Suddenly he paused. ‘Holy shit—’ He broke off, eyes bulging as he leaned toward the screen.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know how to tell you this. I think you got one inside you.’
He stared at the screen in disbelief. The embryonic creature was definitely kin to the monster that had destroyed the men. . and yet it was also distinctively, subtly different.
It wasn’t fair, she thought. She’d known, she’d more than suspected, for days. Then her chest scan had come through clean, giving her hope. Now this, the ultimate morbid revelation. Still, it wasn’t a shock.
Now that her suspicions were confirmed she felt oddly liberated. The future was no longer in doubt. She could proceed, confident in the knowledge that she was taking the right course. The only course.
‘What’s it look like?’
‘Fucking horrible,’ Aaron told her, at once repelled and fascinated by what he was seeing. ‘Like one of them, only small.
Maybe a little different.’
‘Maybe? Are you sure?’
‘I’m not sure of anything. I didn’t hang around to take pictures of the big one.’
‘Keyboard,’ she told him. ‘Hit the pause button.’
‘Already did. The scanner’s stopped moving.’
‘Now move the screen. I’ve got to take a look.’
The acting superintendent hesitated, looking toward the cryotube and its recumbent occupant. ‘I don’t think you want to.’
‘It’s my choice. Do it.’
His lips tightened. ‘Okay. If you think you’re ready.’
‘I didn’t say I was ready. Just do it.’
He adjusted the viewscreen, waiting while she took a long, unblinking look.
‘Okay. That’s enough.’ Aaron instantly deactivated the scanner.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured as gently as he could. ‘I don’t know what to say. Anything I can do—’
‘Yeah.’ She started struggling against the confines of the tube. ‘Help me get out of here.’ Her arms were extended upward, reaching toward him.
XIII
The assembly hall looked emptier than ever with its reduced population of prisoners. The men muttered and argued among themselves as Dillon’s fist slammed into the transparent window on the wall. Reaching in, he ripped free the loosely secured fire axe within and turned to hold it over his head.
‘Give us strength, O lord, to endure. Until the day. Amen.’
Fists rose into the air. The men were uncertain, but; determined. Dillon surveyed them intently.
‘It’s loose. It’s out there. A rescue team is on the way with the guns and shit. Right now there isn’t anyplace that’s real safe. I say we stay here. No overhead vent shafts. If it comes in, it’s gotta be through the door. We post a guard to let us know if it’s comin’. In any case, lay low. Be ready and stay right, in case your time comes.’
‘Bullshit, man,’ said prisoner David. ‘We’ll all be trapped in here like rats.’
Dillon glared at him. ‘Most of you got blades stashed away.
Get ‘em out.’
‘Right.’ William grunted. ‘You think we’re gonna stab that motherfucker to death?’
‘I don’t think shit,’ Dillon told him. ‘Maybe you can hurt it while you’re checkin’ out. It’s something. You got any better ideas?’
William did not. Nor did anyone else.
‘I’m tellin’ you,’ Dillon continued, ‘until that rescue team gets here, we’re in the shit. Get prepared.’
‘I ain’t stayin’ here.’ William was already backing away. ‘You can bet on it.’
Dillon turned, spat to his left. ‘Suit yourself.’
Aaron tapped out the necessary code, then ran his thumb over the identiprint. The inner door which protected central communications slid aside, telltales coming to life on the board, the screen clearing obediently as the system awaited input.
‘Okay,’ he told the woman hovering nearby, ‘what do you want to send?’
‘You got a line back to the Network?’
His brows furrowed as he checked the readouts. ‘Yeah, it’s up. What do you want to say?’
‘I want to tell them the whole place has gone toxic. I think they’ll buy it. There’s enough refining waste lying around to make it believable.’
He gaped at her. ‘Are you kidding? Tell them that and they won’t come here. Not until they can run and check out the results of a remote inspection, anyway. The rescue team’ll turn back.’
‘Exactly.’
‘What are you talking about? We’re like dead fish in a market waiting here. Our only hope is that they arrive in time to kill this fucker before it gets the rest of us. And maybe they can do something for you. You think of that? You’re so sure this thing can beat anything they’ve got, but you don’t know that for a fact. Maybe they can freeze you, do some kind of operation.
‘You said that they’ve been accumulating information on it.
You think they’d be coming to try and take one back if they didn’t think they could contain it? Hell, we contained it and we weren’t even ready for it. They’ll be all set up to try a capture.
They got the technology.’
She remained adamant. ‘All the Company’s got is greed for brains. I know. I’ve dealt with them and I’ve dealt with the aliens and frankly I’m not so sure that in the long run the Company isn’t the greater threat. I can’t take the chance. All I know for certain is that if one of these things gets off this planet it’ll kill everything. That’s what it’s designed to do: kill and multiply.
‘We can’t let the Company come here. They’ll do everything in their power to take it back with them.’ She made a disgusted noise. ‘For profit.’
‘Fuck you. I’m sorry as hell you got this thing inside you, lady, but I want to get rescued. I guess I’ve got more confidence in the Company than you. As it happens, I don’t think you’re looking at the situation rationally, and I suppose you’ve got plenty of reasons not to. But that doesn’t mean I have to see things the same way, and I don’t.
‘I don’t give a shit about these meatball prisoners. They can kill the thing or avoid it and howl holy hosannas to the heavens until they drop dead, but I got a wife and kid. Married real young so that despite the time distortions we’d still have quality time together when I finished my tour here. I was set to go back on the next rotation. Because of all this I can maybe claim extenuating hazards and go back with the rescue ship. I’ll collect full-term pay and probably a bonus. If that happens you could say that your xenomorph’s done me a favour.’
‘I’m sorry. Look, I know this is hard for you,’ she told him, trying to keep a rein on her temper, ‘but I’ve got to send a message back. There’s a hell of a lot more at stake here than your personal visions of happy suburban retirement. If the alien gets loose on Earth your sappy fantasies won’t be worth crap.’
