. . . the way Max and I were together . . .
Ellis smiled dreamily. He and Max couldn’t join again, it would probably kill him, but the idea, the memory was a comfort. Lara and Jess had been so worried about him afterward, thinking that he wouldn’t recover, but it wasn’t like that. He’d recovered, he just understood more now, about what it meant not to be alone. About how dying wasn’t so bad, when you’d been a part of something greater than yourself—
“What are you smiling about, kid?”
Ellis looked up at Jess and shook his head, still smiling. Jess was his friend, he was the man who’d led Max Ellis through the infestation, but he couldn’t possibly understand. Lara, either. They’d think he was still . . . unwell.
“Nothing, really,” he said. “Just how things change, you know?”
Jess smiled back, but Ellis could see that he was hesitant about it. “Yeah, sure. We almost die, survive, almost die, survive again.”
Ellis nodded. “And now we wait for the Company to finish the story.”
Jess’s smile disappeared. Ellis saw the cold spark in his dark eyes, his feelings about Weyland/Yutani and what they’d done to his team an all-consuming rage. Ellis could see it as plainly as he could see that Jess was trying to fight it.
“We keep to our story, they won’t do anything,” Jess said slowly, as if to reassure Ellis that they would survive.
Ellis nodded again, and Jess walked stiffly away, back to where Lara was continuing her open hail. It was sad, that Jess still carried so much pain . . .
Well. That was Jess’s battle, not his.
Ellis turned back to gaze at Max, remembering how they’d blasted great, smoking holes through the alien mass, how Max had saved him, how they had saved the others, 3017 rounds/121 Ml08 canister grenades launched 17.57 liters napthal fuel ignited within the terminal space . . .
Max was silent. Ellis sat and remembered, for both of them.
The dizziness and nausea had been the worst, the blow to her head leaving her feeling out of touch with herself and her surroundings, but after a few hours’ rest, she’d recovered. The rest of the damage was minor: a twisted ankle, the back of her neck bruised, her abs as sore as if she’d performed a thousand crunches. In another day or two, she’d be good as new.
Lucky me.
Noguchi stood at the door to the nest in the empty lower dock, staring in at the captive queen, not feeling much of anything. A sadness, perhaps. The last of the transports had departed, gone for the Hunt; there were only eleven yautja still on board, shipworkers all, and the giant Shell felt as empty and hollow as she did.
The Hunt would go on into the early-morning hours; she’d already decided to speak to Topknot when he returned, after the Hunters’ feast. Considering the nomadic nature of the Hunter culture, she had no doubts that they’d be passing a human outpost within a few weeks. She wouldn’t be treated very well in the time she had left with them, but she’d fought competently enough to hold her head up. Besides, she’d gotten used to being treated poorly . . .
“But you’re not, are you,” she said softly, putting her hand on the window, looking at the giant, unmoving darkness strapped to the back wall. It was the first time she’d been down to see the imprisoned queen since her narrow escape from the nest, and she didn’t like what she saw. There was a single shaft of puny light shining down over the trapped mother, casting
most of her in deep shadow. All of her impossibly strong limbs, shackled. Her tiered, lustrous comb, chained back. And most depressing, the thick cord strung between her outer jaws, gagging her.
The queen was tightly tied, the only real movement that of the eggs sliding through the short, membranous sac that she’d created only hours after being placed; eggs that were deposited onto a weight-triggered conveyer belt and moved to the side, ready to be loaded into a remote and sent off to some distant world.
In spite of her general dislike of drama, Noguchi found herself trying to draw some analogy between herself and the queen, perhaps because looking at the trapped animal made her feel the same vague sadness she felt for herself. They were both female. Both out of their element. Hindered warriors, maybe. Beaten down by the Hunters, surely . . .
. . . but not anymore, not for me.
She couldn’t watch any longer, it was like watching an insect impaled on a pin, dying slowly. Noguchi turned away, walking carefully toward the lift that would carry her back to the main rooms.
Past empty shelves, past an empty hallway, through the gate to the elevator platform. She touched the symbol of the clawed hand on the control panel and the machine hummed to life, rising smoothly, dark walls sliding past.
The thought of seeing, speaking to people again, was a frightening one—but exciting, too. What would she say, to explain where she’d come from? Telling the truth, she ran the risk of being whisked away to some corporate debriefing that could last months, depending on who owned the outpost. Chigusa was probably safe, they were an agribusiness. But Weyland/Yutani, or Biotech … it was common knowledge that they were always looking for weapon apps and didn’t mind exploiting whatever or whoever could bring them new opportunities.
Noguchi grinned as the elevator pulled to a stop, thinking about what a stir it would cause if she handed a burner over to the corporate community. Or a suit of armor, fully loaded—wrist blades, sound loop, filter system, and infra eyes . . .
She stepped off the lift, still smiling—and realized that she was smiling. Not about her performance as a fighter, or for shaming a novice, or because she remembered something that had made her laugh from a long time before. She was smiling because she was Machiko Dahdtoudi Noguchi, and she was getting the fuck away from the fucking Hunters, and how hard could having a conversation about work or the weather be, after the year she’d had?
The burst of giddy good humor lasted as long as it took her to limp two steps away from the elevator. The Shell was not her home, but Earth hadn’t been her home, either. Her entire life prior to her meeting with Broken Tusk had been a pallid one. Socially, living with the Clan had been terrible—but the Hunt itself . . .
Nothing matched the thrill of risking everything against success. On Earth, people paid small fortunes to experience even a taste of the hyperawareness and adrenaline high that came from putting one’s life on the line, and that was only a taste. It was simulation, a fake; there was always an out, a panic button, no matter what the experience, the liability laws firmly established.
Suddenly, she felt a deep longing for what was happening on the planet below the cloaked Shell, the screams of triumph, the hot reek of pouring acid-splash, the dance with the blade. The Hunt, that she’d never know again, and not because she’d chosen to turn away. She’d been cheated, systematically worn down and forced out, it wasn’t fair and she hated them for taking her very life from her.
Noguchi limped slowly to her quarters, wanting nothing more than to sleep for a while.
15
Kelly Irwin was pleasantly surprised to hear a familiar voice coming up from Bunda, particularly after taking orders from Dickhead Briggs for the last couple of weeks—not to mention fending off his man Keene, the walking steroid. It was enough to make a girl want to get shit-faced drunk, and her only hope for Bunda was that the science boys had a stash of something or other put aside for emergencies.
She’d sent a standard comp alert to the station and had already dropped the lux Sun Jumper into the upper reaches, the planet a dark blur beneath them, before she made vocal contact. The necessary info had been shot back and forth and triple-checked via the Herriman-Weston PC, but Irwin liked the personal Touch, always had. Sun Jumpers were so state that she was bored, the auto self-rnonitoring and IFTDS making it about as complicated to fly as a paper plane.
Stifling a yawn, Irwin put in the call, watching the fly-by-light with only half an eye.
“Bunda survey, this is WY-1117 requesting confirmation of landing clearance, come back.” The planet
looked pretty in the early starlight, at least, lots of greenery. She was a city girl herself, but nature made a nice backdrop.
“WY-1117, you’re cleared for Three . . . Irwin, is that you?”
She grinned, suddenly awake. She recognized Matt Windy’s soft tones, the clipped way he said her name. He’d been training in communications and pattern control at the same WY program she’d gotten her license from, Earthside. Buddha, how long’s it been? Six, seven years?