“Ever heard of overkill, kid?” he asked.
Lara laughed weakly. Jess was okay, that was the important thing—but the realization that they weren’t
going to be flying anywhere was sinking in, making her feel very, very tired.
God, is this ever going to end?
“What happened?” Lara asked.
“I think I killed us,” Ellis said, so softly that Lara barely heard it. “There was this—thing, it attacked Jess . . .”
He trailed off miserably, the dancing light of the developing fire on his face making him look incredibly old. Lara put the rest together quickly enough; he’d sprayed the assailant with fuel and somehow, something had caught fire.
“It was invisible,” Jess said, using the rail to drag himself to his feet. “Some kind of electrical device, got shorted out and boom.”
Lara couldn’t find it in herself to be surprised. A personal cloaking mechanism? Sure, why not, it was no stranger than corporate mass murder, no more improbable than being fished out of the abyss on a dead shuttle in the first place.
There was a soft humming overhead and they all looked up to see a small ship go streaking across the dark, close enough for them to see the Weyland/Yutani logo. Lara thought she’d heard other ships earlier . . . . . . and what are the chances that there’s still anyone left willing to give us a lift? Or anyone at all? If there were people around, they sure weren’t interested in putting out the fire that was currently consuming one of their landing decks.
“Briggs?” Jess asked, still watching as the ship shot away from the station.
Lara nodded. “Probably.” She didn’t say what she was thinking, what Jess and Ellis surely already knew. If a high suit like Briggs, who’d wanted them so much that he’d come to Bunda himself was giving it up—
—then things here are bad, really fuckin’ bad.
Maybe the thing that had attacked Jess had been busy with the researchers, before; that might explain the ceaseless alarm, anyway. Or maybe it was just the
fact that the station’s platforms had continued their slow tilt, at least fifteen degrees now; if they slanted much farther, there wouldn’t be a stable deck to take off from.
“We gotta get out of here before the shuttle catches,” Jess said, although he didn’t look well enough to do much more than stand upright. And Ellis looked like he was on the verge of some emotional collapse, his entire body trembling, his eyes wide and shining with unshed tears.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, taking a step away from them, his hands clenched into fists. “This is all my fault.”
“Hey, I might’ve done the same thing,” Lara said, “or Jess. It’s—”
“You don’t understand,” he said, his voice rising, “I’ve done everything wrong since we got here, every-thingl”
Instinctively, Lara took a step toward him, reaching out—
—and there was a sound so deep, so powerful, that they felt it as much as heard it, WHOOOF, an explosion of brilliant light, a massive wave of pressure that threw all of them against the waist-high railing. The deck beneath them slanted past forty-five degrees, all of them falling, landing and skidding—
“Hang on!” Jess shouted, but there was nothing to hang on to. The deck was lit up like day and Lara rolled over, trying desperately to find a handhold on the slick platform. She saw the shuttle, burning, crashing across the deck and blowing right through the railing, a giant, tearing metal sound as it plunged over the side. She saw Ellis and Jess, scrabbling to hang on, saw both of them slide beneath the high rail, disappearing after the shuttle—
—and she saw the burning envelope, an incredible fireball of ignited gas, the flame eating the pliable shell like acid through paper. It was the last thing she saw as
she slipped over the side, falling through the shadow of the crashing station.
Within moments of her release, the alien queen had exacted her revenge on at least a handful of her captors; nine, to be exact, the only Hunters left on board. Noguchi was too busy flying the Shell to watch all of it, but she saw enough. The queen had somehow known where the yautja were gathered, and made her way unerringly to the dock outside of the pilot’s room. How she’d negotiated the lifts and tunnels, Noguchi didn’t know or care.
The ship hadn’t yet broken through Bunda’s atmosphere when Noguchi heard the queen’s shriek, a furious and somehow gleeful cry, echoing through the hollow dock. It pierced the clattering shouts of the yautja trying to break into the control room, the sounds of metal banging against the door cutting off in a heartbeat. She heard the Hunters cry warnings to one another, heard and felt the queen’s thundering approach, and felt a kind of perverse satisfaction at the thought of what would happen next.
They won’t use burners, not on a queen. Not without Topknot’s leave. And all of them, experienced veterans . . . Noguchi couldn’t deny the curiosity she felt, wondering how they’d fare against the loosed queen. She finished with her “programming,” directing the Shell to home in on the signal from Topknot’s craft, and hurried to the hatch’s window. The battle was already in progress, three Hunters down, dying or dead. Six were left, and they’d circled the raging queen with makeshift weapons, mallets, pry bars, a kind of pickax with one sharpened end; two of them were holding lengths of braided rope, and none wore armor of any kind.
Stupid and arrogant. Any sympathy Noguchi might have felt for them was pretty much wiped out by the simple fact that they were still there; instead of leaving, locking the queen inside and waiting for reinforcements to return—or just killing her outright, for that
matter—they meant to capture her again, without even bothering to arm themselves properly.
The queen, crouched in their midst, was swinging her head slowly back and forth, tilting it as if to mark their positions. Her tail curled restlessly about her giant, clawed feet, its razor tip leaving long scratches in the deck’s floor, occasionally slapping against one of the dead yautja nearby. He’d been clawed open, his chest a muddled soup of bone and green, and the queen’s tail whipped streamers of his blood across the legs of some of those circling her.
Noguchi saw one of the Hunters behind the watchful bug, Beads, signal to another, one of the rope holders; he was going to attack, and wanted both of the rope holders to move in while the queen was distracted. Noguchi watched as the signal went around the circle, each of the Hunters picking it up—
—and as if she understood that they were distracted by their own foolish planning, the queen lunged forward, her tail coiling up behind her. She snatched at the nearest Hunter with both sets of ebony claws on her right side, her talons sliding into his chest before he could raise his pry bar. At the same time, her tail slashed out, knocking Beads and two others to the deck. The sharp tip cut through tendon and bone, crippling Beads and the Hunter to his left. One of Beads’s feet was completely sliced off, toppling over into the gush of pale liquid that spurted from his ankle.
In a single move, she’d halved the group. With a feral scream, she flung the limp Hunter hanging from her right hands away, his body smashing into one wall hard enough for Noguchi to hear the bones snapping, even through the door.
A Hunter she’d called Inu seized the opportunity, leaping forward with his “pick,” burying the sharp end in the top of the screeching queen’s left thigh. Even as a trickle of her blood started its bubbling erosion of the metal, Inu was lifted off his feet and held up in front of her grinning, drooling face. Her inner jaws shot out,
tearing into Inu’s forehead, snapping closed and withdrawing in the blink of an eye. The Hunter’s limbs were still spasming when she threw him aside—
—and the Shell pitched forward suddenly, knocking the two yautja still standing to the floor, causing the queen to stumble. Noguchi grabbed at the door’s handle, managing to keep upright. She turned, saw that the Shell was tunneling through Bunda’s outer atmosphere, flashes of light and dark painting the viewscreen with violent, burning motion.
Another trumpeting howl from the queen. Noguchi turned back to the window just in time to see the bug mother put an end to the ill-planned assault—a step forward, a swift blow delivered, a lash of her tail, and it was over. The deck was awash with green, broken bodies toppled together, unmoving. If the two crippled Hunters were still alive, Noguchi couldn’t tell. And the queen—
Noguchi took a step back from the door as her long, midnight face filled the window, as she seemed to look into the control room. To look directly at her, her black comb sweeping up and out of sight, her grinning blindness tilted to smell or taste or hear the woman inside.