Noguchi studied her, filled with awe, afraid to breathe. She was a glorious, terrible creature, she was Death, the Black Warrior that the Hunters spoke of before battle.
For a frozen moment, they faced each other, a bandwidth of clear plastic separating them—and then the monstrous queen turned and moved away, a dark grace in her fluid, powerful movements. Noguchi watched her disappear from the bloody dock, feeling as though she’d been spared, not knowing why.
Behind her, the console gurgled out a few yautja words, telling her that manual assistance was required to set exact coordinates. Noguchi turned and moved back to the controls, surprised to see the night sky of Bunda flashing by on the large viewscreen. It had taken less time than she’d thought . . .
Still dazed from her closeness to the alien queen, it took her a moment to see the bright spot on the monitor, a yellow-white flower in the dark jumble of the planet’s surface, as big or bigger than the Shell.
What—
An explosion, and a big one. Noguchi checked the monitor for Topknot’s ship signal, and although she couldn’t be sure she was reading it right, it appeared that he wasn’t more than a few klicks from the fireball. In any case, it was obvious where the action on Bunda was centered.
Noguchi tapped at the controls, shifting the ship toward the light, hoping that she wasn’t too late.
Kevin Vincent woke up hurting and alone, the bright heat from the burning station illuminating the crash of bushes he’d landed in. He tried to move, to sit up, but felt a sharp, stabbing pain across his back, centering on his left shoulder. He was able to turn his head, at least, enough to see the mass of flaming wreckage that had been Bunda survey. It seemed to stretch forever, klicks of smashed deck, klicks of burning, stinking envelope draped across mountains of debris.
“Shit,” he whispered miserably, feeling terrible in every way possible. His station had been attacked, his people murdered for information about some abominable experiment, and those who’d survived had fled, leaving him to die. Briggs was probably dead, no real comfort since he’d be held responsible, he seemed to have broken his shoulder—
. —and I’m lying in a goddamn bush and it’s poking through my goddamn shirt and it HURTS, and why doesn’t someone just put me out of my goddamn misery?
If he didn’t move, the pain wasn’t too bad. Vincent closed his eyes for a moment, sweat rolling off of his flushed skin, wondering what could possibly happen next. That he’d survived was a small miracle—not because of the fall; the station had gone down slowly
enough for the fall to be survivable—but that the gods hadn’t killed him already, just on general principles.
Because that would’ve been too easy, gotta let me live so I can understand how much they hate me, let me suffer a little more. No fun if I don’t suffer . . .
The crackle and hiss of the giant, shallow fire was loud enough to occupy his hearing until the crack of a thin branch not two meters away reached him. He instinctively tried to sit up, and was instantly knocked back by the pain.
“Owww, no, no, no, don’t wanna die, please—” Vincent babbled out a stream of denial and wishes, eyes squenched shut, knowing that whatever was coming wasn’t coming to help.
He was right. The thing that stood over him when he opened his eyes was the thing from the station, the synth that had been fighting Briggs’s bodyguard—except it wasn’t wearing its mask, and Vincent realized with a kind of numb horror that it wasn’t a synthetic at all. He was struck speechless, his pleas dying in his throat, barely able to believe what he was seeing.
The creature that stared down at him was the ugliest, most alien-looking thing he’d ever seen—a giant, bony head, speckled and fleshy, four fingerlike pincers on its beady-eyed, pink-mouthed, noseless face, each tipped with a gleaming tusk.
“What are you,” Vincent whispered, and the creature’s pincers opened outward, fully exposing the small, pointed teeth in its strange mouth. The creature reached for something on its arm, holding its clawed hand up as it touched some kind of a bracelet—
—and Vincent heard his own voice spill out, “—no, no, don’t wanna die, please—”
—and the creature flexed its arm, and two extremely sharp and nasty-looking blades sprang out from behind its hand, curved and shining in the firelight, and Vincent closed his eyes, thinking that if it was a bad dream, some hallucination, he wouldn’t—
21
Ellis heard them calling his name and moved away as quietly as he could, deeply thankful that he hadn’t killed them. They hadn’t been hurt by the fall; Lara had a little bit of a limp but she’d told Jess it was nothing, and Jess hadn’t been messed up any worse. After the beating he’d taken—
—because I didn’t help—
—and nearly being immolated, Ellis was grateful that his stupidity hadn’t cost Jess anything more. He wasn’t going to do any more harm, to either of them— and that meant staying away. He was just lucky that he’d landed far enough from them that he’d had time to—
. Ellis stumbled over a broken branch and froze, hoping that they hadn’t heard. He was so clumsy, and he’d hit his head when he’d fallen, hard enough that his interface wound had started oozing again. He felt dizzy and strange, but in a way, his mind was clearer than it had been since before DS 949.
Max, if I could only get to Max and protect them, save them again like before . . .
Before. Stronger, smarter, better, seeing the dangers as glowing green shapes surrounded by lines, calculating distance and finding the optimum kill method in less time than it took to actually think it. The feelings he’d had then, so unimportant, so secondary to the task at hand. Ellis-Max, Max-Ellis, two as one, accomplishing such, such—unity. Perfection.
“Ellis? Can you hear me?” Lara called, far to his right. At least six or seven meters, maybe as much as 7.40 . . .
Ellis finally let himself move again, wondering how he could have let himself be alone for so long when Max was waiting. There was no decision to make. They had all landed close to the burning, dying station, but he’d already led them far enough away that he’d be able to circle back, to get to the shuttle and Max before they could stop him.
The thought that even trying to interface again could kill him didn’t cross his mind. It was the kind of fear that Brian Ellis would have had.
For a time, there was darkness, interrupted by brief bursts of sensation. Movement, and a hissing sound. Something shiny and slender and hard against his chest. A jungle smell, and wetness seeping through his suit, a clammy gel against his skin.
It was the wetness that finally woke Briggs up, the cool feel of the syrupy liquid dragging his mind out of the dark. For a brief moment, he had absolutely no idea where he was or how he’d come to be there—too brief, because as his memory came flooding back, the realization of where he’d ended up came with it. Neither one was particularly pleasant.
Some Company competitor had blown the survey station apart, and he’d apparently been knocked unconscious when he’d fallen from the platform—and then taken, and now he was—well, surely he wouldn’t actually be injured in any way, Nirasawa or Keene would come before anything could happen . . .
Briggs shifted uncomfortably, his back against a tree, a thick band of resinlike substance binding his arms to his sides and holding him up. In front of him was an egg. An alien egg.
Biotech, has to be. Their program isn’t that far behind ours, they could have transported some individual drones to Bunda, waited until one transformed, started a new nest . . .
Yes, that was it. Biotech had sabotaged the survey station because—because it was Company, that was all they cared about, just some random selection of a rival’s site for their own experiments. That it happened to be on Bunda, and that the survivors of DS 949 had landed here—coincidence. They’d sent in their new synthetic breed to obtain the 949 data, because they knew the planet had been infected; it made perfect sense now that he thought about it. They wouldn’t want to risk lives when they had such marvelous new toys, invisible soldiers that could be tested against their XT nest . . .
Quite a coincidence, I’ll have to get Nirasawa to calculate the odds on that when he—
Briggs heard a hissing from somewhere behind him and tensed, turning his head as far as he could to look for the source. No good. All he could see was the bark of the tree he’d been secured to, a pasty gray blur. Really, it was too dark to see much of anything. He couldn’t be far from the station, he could smell the searing stench of burning plastics, but there wasn’t any firelight. The only illumination came from the stars, a soft, pale light that gave his surroundings a dreamy, ethereal quality.