There it was, the truth of it. Noguchi rolled over on one side, pulling her knees up, feeling an ache deep in her gut. After a lifetime of carefully building up defenses and learning how hurtful people could be, she’d rejected her own kind in favor of a race she knew nothing about. In her steady climb up the Chigusa cor-.porate ladder, she’d been called an ice queen, frigid, a robot—and on some level, the mean-spirited tags had been accurate. She didn’t really like people—
—and so I gave them up. For this.
She couldn’t discount the powerfully addictive thrill of the Hunt—but she also couldn’t keep telling herself that things were going to get better. She was tolerated, no more; no one had even tried to teach her
anything beyond the most basic of yautja language, and she felt even more alone than when she’d been the sole human being on Ryushi. At least then, she’d had her dreams.
Impulsively, she reached out to the wave scanner next to the bed and tapped it on. The obsolete hunk of machinery was set to a search pattern, and started lisping out static as she lay back down, reaching out into the universe for a channel in use. For months upon months, she hadn’t touched the scanner, not even sure why she’d dragged it along; it couldn’t transmit far enough to bother with, and didn’t receive much better. But in the last few weeks, she’d been turning it on more and more. Sometimes, not often, she’d catch a word or two in English or Japanese—and that contact, insignificant as it was, soothed her.
With the soft hiss of blankness washing through the tiny room, Noguchi closed her eyes, finally allowing herself to think about what had happened and what it meant. She’d been berated for saving the mission the first time, in the nest, and ignored for her efforts to help trap the queen once aboard. If one of the Hunters had escaped the queen’s clutches, he would have commanded a new respect; had it been a novice, he might even have been Blooded.
Not an ooman, though. Not some tiny, pale, alien female. Doesn’t matter that I carry Dachande’s mark, or the name he gave me, doesn’t matter that 1 joined the Hunters with a trophy that most Leaders don’t even hope for—
“. . . quest emergency . . . om any . . . receiving . . .”
A young man’s voice, barely audible through the blank spots and hissing static, whispered into the small room. Noguchi tensed, straining to make out the message.
“. . . peat . . . land/Yutani . . . mesis . . .”
Weyland/Yutani, a name she hadn’t thought of in years. The Company.
She caught the word, “Repeat,” clear as day, and
then there was a sharp, crackling pop—and the soft voice was gone. There was no way to know how long the message had been out there before her scanner had picked it up; maybe hours, maybe days. Maybe the sender had succumbed to his emergency and was already dead.
Like me, she thought, and finally, the tears came. Noguchi curled into herself and let them fall, wondering where there was left for her to go.
Six hours after Ellis made contact with the outpost, a D-Ship tractored them in and passed over enough fuel and air to last them to the surface. The fuel wasn’t a problem, but D-Ships weren’t designed to lend air to anything as small as an ETTC shuttle. Lucky for them, the ship’s pilot was clever enough to have adapted one of their locks with an aperture compression tunnel; five minutes after the hookup, the shuttle’s filters were clean, the weaves revitalized, the air changing from stale and dead to amazingly sweet.
Company air. In a just universe, it would smell like shit.
Lara was piloting, Ellis was asleep again, and Jess was trying to come to terms with who they were following. He sat stiffly next to Lara, hands in his lap, the smoldering anger in his gut making it impossible to rest. A Weyland/Yutani D-Ship for a Company survey outpost. Didn’t it just fucking figure.
At least they’d had those six hours to feel good, to feel grateful to whatever God had seen fit to spare them yet again; it wasn’t until the D-Ship made contact that they found out. The channel jockey, a man named Windy, had neglected to mention Bunda’s affiliation. In fact, the obviously nervous Mr. Windy hadn’t given them much at all, besides coordinates and ETAs, and that worried Jess as much as anything. It was a Company planet, only a survey station, researchers and such, but still part of the same system that had so thoroughly screwed them.
Before his well deserved death, Pop had made it
clear that Grigson—the exec in charge of volunteer Max teams—had sent them in to 949 to get a log from one of the docked ships, the Company Trader. And that once the data was retrieved, it was up to Pop to get rid of everyone who knew that the Trader had been the source of the alien outbreak.
Grigson sent the orders, but there was no chance in hell he was acting on his own. No chance.
“They probably figure we’re dead anyway,” Lara said quietly.
Jess smiled, just a little. After so much time stuck together, they seemed to be on the same wavelength.
“Yeah,” he said. “Except we’re not, and I figure they probably sent a heads up to every post in this half of the big black, just in case. You heard how Windy was.”
Lara nodded slowly, keeping her tired gaze fixed on the nav screen. They were trail hooked to the D-Ship, nothing for her to do, but she was as by-the-book as they came; if even one number read was off, she’d be all over it.
“Right,” she sighed. “So, any ideas?”
Jess shrugged. “See how it looks once we set down, I guess. I mean, we worked for ’em, and didn’t know how fucked they were; maybe it’s the same for this group. If we tell them what happened, they might help us.”
“Assuming we can get them to believe us,” Lara said.
He nodded. “And assuming they haven’t already sent word back to the suits …”
Of course they had, but he didn’t need to tell her that. The security on Bunda probably already had orders to kill them . . .
. . . except why bother saving our asses out here, if they just mean to off us on landing?
The Max, maybe; it was an expensive piece of equipment—except it would be just as easy to salvage that after their air ran out. Funny, how complicated
things got when one found out that they weren’t going to die after all …
“Jess, you think there was something on that log? Besides proof that it was the Company’s fuckup?”
He snorted. “Isn’t that enough? Killing four hundred of their own is plenty, you ask me.”
Lara finally looked away from the screen, frowning. “Grigson wanted that download and he wanted us dead, right? So if Bunda already told the Company that they found us, why wouldn’t they just leave us out here to die, unless—”
“—unless they think maybe we hid the download,” Jess finished.
They sat in silence for a moment, the quiet hum of the shuttle’s systems interrupted only by Ellis’s occasional snore from the back. They could knock themselves out trying to guess what the Company did or didn’t want, what information had been exchanged about the remnants of their team, whether or not they were slated for torture, death, or a vacation; what it came down to was that they wouldn’t know until they knew.
“We wait,” Jess said finally, scruffing at the stubble on his chin. “Wait and see what’s what. We thank Whoever’s calling the shots for pulling us in, get Ellis to a med program, hit the showers, and just—just wait and see.”
Not the most comforting of answers, but it was the best he could do. Lara was together enough to handle herself, whatever came up; Ellis, on the other hand . . . physically, he was a lot better, but Jess wasn’t sure how he was doing otherwise. There was a vague look in his eyes now that wasn’t there before his sacrificial ride in the Max. And he sometimes talked about the suit like—well, like it was more than a suit.
Gonna have to watch out for him. . . . The kid had saved his life, and tried to save Teape and Pulaski; Jess wasn’t about to let anything happen to him.
“Looking at—ETA five hours, twenty minutes,” Lara said. “About 1100 on Bunda.”
In just before lunch. Jess tried to think of some clever comment to go with the news, but he was too wasted. He really should try to get a little more sleep— except they were going to land in the middle of Company in just a few hours, and that thought cinched the knot of rage in his belly. No way he could sleep.