Foster, Alan Dean – Aliens Vs Predator – War

That they were basically unarmed, exhausted, and outnumbered didn’t make a difference. If the biotechs on Bunda didn’t know how fucked the Company was, he was going to make sure they fully understood the situation. And if they did know, if they embraced the avarice and treachery of Weyland/Yutani with open arms . . .

. . . then they’re gonna be sorry they ever picked up our call. Real sorry.

Jess sighed inwardly, wondering when he’d be­come such an optimist. Whatever happened next, it wasn’t going to be up to him.

According to the files that Nirasawa had pulled, the head paper pusher on Bunda wasn’t used to dealing with execs; Kevin Vincent was a botanist who’d been moved into admin by pure hap­penstance, a chart watcher for the thirty-plus techs on the small planet. Considering Vincent had made the monumental error of letting one of his people answer the Nemesis shuttle’s CDS, Briggs couldn’t be more pleased with the circumstances; in his experience, sci­entists were a mostly spineless bunch, and Vincent wouldn’t know that the mistake was a minor one—or that Briggs had been aware of the situation since well before the contact had been made. With as long as the shuttle had been drifting, there was no chance of infec­tion, but Briggs didn’t want anyone to meet with the survivors before he did.

He grinned, looking forward to meeting Vincent and exercising his persuasive skills. The man would be under his thumb in less than a minute.

Nirasawa silently brought him a drink while Keene put in the call, the beverage as much for effect as any-

thing. A suit holding a cocktail would scare the shit out of a botanist stationed someplace like Bunda.

“Mr. Briggs?” The granite-faced Keene had stepped into the cabin, his massive frame tucked into a tailor-made suit, a brown so dark it was almost black. The equally bulky Nirasawa was dressed the same; Briggs liked the look of a matched set.

Briggs nodded, tapping the connect key on the contoured wall unit, leaning back in his chair and tak­ing a sip of his drink. A thin-faced man, 40 TS or so with straggly blond hair, peered into the cabin.

“Mr. Briggs?” Vincent was already scared; Briggs could see the sweat on his upper lip, the high-res screen showing him each beaded droplet in perfect clarity. “I’m Kevin Vincent, ASM377, Bunda survey—”

“I know who you are,” Briggs said. “And I under­stand you contacted a shuttle from Nemesis before you alerted the home office …”

He leaned forward, setting the drink down and staring coldly at the nervous Vincent. “. . . and that you’ve already sent assistance to this shuttle. Is this ac­curate information?”

Vincent nodded rapidly, talking to match it. “Yes, sir, the AI didn’t say anything about not talking to any­one in distress and my crew put in a call immediately to—”

“Yes, I understand all that,” Briggs said. “What you don’t understand is how extremely delicate this matter is, and how continued . . . mismanagement of this situ­ation might result in some rather severe conse­quences.”

Vincent looked miserable, and said nothing.

Time for the push . . .

Briggs lifted his glass again, relaxing his tone. “Earthside wants me to handle this personally, but I’m still twelve hours away, give or take.” The shuttle would set down in just under three. “Tell me . . . can I trust that the Company will have your full coopera­tion?”

Vincent couldn’t answer quickly enough. “Yes, sir. Everyone—whatever you need, our entire operation is at your disposal.”

Briggs nodded. “Fine, that’s fine. I want the shuttle quarantined, no one in or out, and no interaction be­tween your staff and the people on board, physical or verbal.”

Vincent nodded, swallowing heavily before speak­ing. “Uh . . . there may be someone in need of medi­cal attention, Mr. Briggs.”

Briggs knew that already, knew everything that had passed between the shuttle and Bunda. Three peo­ple were on board—a communications tech on con­tract, a volunteer ground-squad leader, and a MAX Doc. The MAX tech, a Brian K. Ellis, had been injured somehow.

“No interaction,” he repeated, in a voice that promised death and destruction to anyone stupid enough to disobey. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Briggs smiled coldly. “Then we have nothing more to discuss.”

Vincent nodded, finally wiping the sweat from his face with the back of one hand. “Yes, sir. I’ll have our LZ coordinates sent to—”

Briggs tapped the disconnect before he could finish, satisfied that his instructions would be followed to the letter. With nonexec types, fear was usually the best motivator, especially with scientists. All Vincent wanted now was to get Briggs the hell away from Bunda as quickly as possible, so that he might return to his quiet little study habits.

He glanced around the plush cabin and saw that Keene had disappeared, probably gone back up to flirt with Irwin. The pilot struck Briggs as distinctly uninter­ested in male company, but Keene’s intellect didn’t ex­actly parallel his size. As long as he didn’t interfere with her flying . . .

“Nirasawa, call up the psych profiles on our three

survivors and run persuasion thresholds … I want direct and indirect stim, relationship differentials, and method probabilities.”

The guard had been standing patiently next to the cabin entrance, waiting for direction. “Right away, Mr. Briggs. Shall I report orally, or would you prefer an in­terjection in the files—”

Holy hell.

“Just write it up, let me know when you’re fin­ished,” Briggs snapped, unable to sustain his irritation for more than a second. He was quite content with the smooth progression thus far and feeling positive about the outcome.

The Marine, she’ll be the one. If it was volunteers only, I might run into trouble—but barring the deceased “Pop” Iz-zard, she’s the most likely to have dealt with the material, and still be Company loyal . . .

Really, he’d already won. Everyone had their price, gain or loss; once he found hers, or the tech’s or the volunteer’s, it was just a matter of convincing them that he would live up to his half long enough to un­cover the data.

If they were obtuse enough to believe him, they deserved what they would get.

The yautja didn’t keep time the way humans did, but Noguchi knew they were close to the Hunt when the first ship docked to Shell. Just a few came aboard, all Blooded, but it was only the first; within hours, four more transports had paused long enough to discharge anywhere from two to seven Hunters, veterans all. It seemed that only Topknot’s trainees would be first Hunting; the rest had come for pleasure, which rein­forced what she’d already suspected—this was easily the biggest Hunt she’d seen, and she had to wonder if there was more than one queen populating whatever planet they’d be fighting on. For so many Hunters, the grounds would have to be seeded with hundreds.

After crying herself to sleep, Noguchi woke up un-

accountably refreshed and at ease. Soon, she knew that she’d have to make some hard decisions; she chose to enjoy the mood rather than question it. She’d dressed in one of her three onboard “outfits,” skimpy clothing she’d be embarrassed to wear anyplace but in the overhot Hunter environment—the bodysuit was Nylex, but still frayed after so much wear—and spent a few hours running through forms in the ship’s kehrite, training room. Yautja days were about thirty hours long, and they slept for just over a third of that period. The two or three quiet hours that she could claim for herself—excepting the handful of night workers, of course—were often the best of her day.

A quick rinse in cold basin water, a breakfast of s’pke, a kind of fruit stew, and the rest of the ship was awake. Topknot didn’t call for training, another clue that the Hunt was near; he and the other Blooded were cleaning and readying weapons, testing audio loops— they wouldn’t need blending camo, what Noguchi had come to think of as the invisibility factor, since bugs didn’t have eyes—and marking out territories on a screen map.

Left to their own devices, the novices riled them­selves into a masculine lather, bragging, shoving, gen­erally acting like young males of any species. Noguchi spent most of the morning avoiding them; she hung around the ship’s docking connector in a corner of shadows, watching the visiting Hunters come aboard.

Tress and another unBlooded she hadn’t thought of a name for yet had been assigned to greet the visitors, directing them to wherever they wanted to go—the mess hall, the armory, “guest” quarters. Another series of metallic thumps at the lock told her that a fifth (or was it sixth?) ship had docked. Noguchi had just about decided to call the unnamed yautja “Sakana,” the Jap­anese word for “fish,” when Topknot suddenly ap­peared at the mouth of the tunnel back to the main part of the ship. Half a dozen novices trailed behind him, their speckled chests heaving with excitement.

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