Something made Hudson glance briefly at his tracker. His pupils expanded, and he whirled to shout a warning 'Movement! I've got movement.'
'Position?' inquired Apone sharply.
'Can't lock up. It's too tight in here, and there's too many other bodies.'
An edge crept into the master sergeant's voice. 'Don't tell me that. Talk to me, Hudson. Where is it?'
The comtech struggled to refine the tracker's information That was the trouble with these field units: They were tough but imprecise.
'Uh, seems to be in front and behind.'
In the Operations bay of the APC, Gorman frantically adjusted gain and sharpness controls on individual monitors 'We can't see anything back here, Apone. What's going on?'
Ripley knew what was going on. Knew what was coming. She could sense it, even if they couldn't see it, like a wave rushing a black sand beach at night. She found her voice and the mike simultaneously.
'Pull your team out, Gorman. Get them out of there now.'
The lieutenant spared her an irritated glare. 'Don't give me orders, lady. I know what I'm doing.'
'Maybe, but you don't know what's being done.'
Down on C-level the walls and ceiling of the alien chamber were coming to life. Biomechanical fingers extended talons that could tear metal. Slime-lubricated jaws began to flex pistoning silently as their owners awoke. Uncertain movements were glimpsed dimly through smoke and steam by the nervous human intruders.
Apone found himself starting to back up. 'Go to infrared Look sharp, people!' Visors were snapped into place. On their smooth, transparent insides images began to materialize nightmare silhouettes moving in ghostly silence through the drifting mist.
'Multiple signals,' Hudson declared, 'all around. Closing from all directions.'
Dietrich's nerves snapped, and she whirled to retreat. As she turned, something tall and immensely powerful loomed above the smoke to wrap long arms around her. Limbs like metal bars locked across her chest and contracted. The medtech screamed, and her finger tensed reflexively on the trigger of her flamethrower. A jet of flame engulfed Frost, turning him into a blindly stumbling bipedal torch. His shriek echoed through everyone's headset.
Apone pivoted, unable to see anything in the dense atmosphere and poor light but able to hear entirely too much The heat from the cooling exchangers on the level above distorted the imaging ability of the troopers' infrared visors.
In the APC, Gorman could only stare as Frost's monitor went to black. At the same time his bioreadouts flattened, hills and valleys signifying life being replaced by grim, straight lines. On the remaining monitor screens, images and outlines bobbed and panned confusedly. Blasts of glowing napalm from the remaining operative flamethrowers combined to overload the light-sensing ability of suit cameras, flaring what images they did provide.
In the midst of chaos and confusion Vasquez and Drake found each other. High-tech harpy nodded knowingly to new wave Neanderthal as she slammed her sequestered magazine back in place.
'Let's rock,' she said curtly.
Standing back to back, they opened up simultaneously with their smartguns, laying down two arcs of fire like welders sealing the skin of a spaceship. In the confined chamber the din from the two heavy weapons was overpowering. To the operators of the smartguns the thunder was a Bach fugue and Grimoire stanthisizer all rolled into one.
Gorman's voice echoed in their ears, barely audible over the roar of battle. 'Who's firing? I ordered a hold on heavy fire!'
Vasquez reached up just long enough to rip away her headset, her eyes and attention riveted on the smartgun's targeting screen. Feet, hands, eyes, and body became extensions of the weapon, all dancing and spinning in unison Thunder, lightning, smoke, and screams filled the chamber, a little slice of Armageddon on C- level. A great calmness flowed through her.
Surely Heaven couldn't be any better than this.
Ripley flinched as another scream reverberated through the Operations bay speakers. Wierzbowski's suit camera crumbled followed by the immediate flattening of his biomonitors. Her fingers clenched, the nails digging into the palms. She'd liked Wierzbowski.
What was she doing here, anyway? Why wasn't she back home, poor and unlicensed, but safe in her little apartment surrounded by Jones and ordinary people and common sense? Why had she voluntarily sought the company of nightmares? Out of altruism? Because she'd suspected all along what had been responsible for the break in communications between Acheron and Earth? Or because she wanted a lousy flight certificate back?
Down in the depths of the processing station, frantic panicky voices ran into one another on the single persona communications frequency. Headset components sorted sense from the babble. She recognized Hudson's above everyone else's. The comtech's unsophisticated pragmatism shone through the breakdown in tactics.
'Let's get out of here!'
She heard Hicks yelling at someone else. The corporal sounded more frustrated than anything else. 'Not that tunnel the other one!'
'You sure?' Crowe's picture swung crazily as he ducked something unseen, the view provided by his suit camera a wild blur full of smoke, haze, and biomechanical silhouettes. 'Watch it—behind you. Move, will you!'
Gorman's hands slowed. Something besides button pushing was required now, and Ripley could see from the ashen expression that had come over the lieutenant's face that he didn't have it.
'Get them out of there!' she screamed at him. 'Do it now!'
'Shut up.' He was gulping air like a grouper, studying his readouts. Everything was unraveling, his careful plan of advance coming apart on the remaining monitors too fast for him to think it through. Too fast. 'Just shut up!'
The groan of metal being ripped apart sounded over Crowe's headset pickup as his telemetry went black. Gorman stuttered something incomprehensible, trying to keep control of himself even as he was losing control of the situation.
'Uh, Apone, I want you to lay down a suppressing fire with the incinerators and fall back by squads to the APC. Over.'
The sergeant's distant reply was distorted by static, the roar of the flamethrowers, and the rapid fire stutter of the smartguns.
'Say again? All after incinerators?'
'I said. ' Gorman repeated his instructions. It didn't matter if anyone heard them. The men and women trapped in the cocoon chamber had time only to react, not to listen.
Only Apone fiddled with his headset, trying to make sense of the garbled orders. Gorman's voice was distorted beyond recognition. The headsets were designed to operate and deliver a clear signal under any conditions, including under water, but there was something happening here that hadn't been anticipated by the communications equipment designers something that couldn't have been foreseen by anyone because it hadn't been encountered before.
Someone screamed behind the sergeant. Forget Gorman. He switched the headset over to straight intersuit frequency 'Dietrich? Crowe? Sound off! Wierzbowski, where are you?'
Movement to his left. He whirled and came within a millimetre of blowing Hudson's head off. The comtech's eyes were wild. He was teetering on the edge of sanity and barely recognized the sergeant. No bold assertions now; all false bravado fled. He was terrified out of his skin and made no effort to conceal the fact.
'We're getting juked! We're gonna die in here!'
Apone passed him a rifle magazine. The comtech slapped it home, trying to look every which way at once. 'Feel better? Apone asked him.
'Yeah, right. Right!' Gratefully the comtech chambered a pulse-rifle round. 'Forget the heat exchanger.' He sensed movement, turned, and fired. The slight recoil imparted by the weapon travelled up his arm to restore a little of his lost confidence.
Off to their right, Vasquez was laying down an uninterrupted field of fire, destroying everything not human
