Foster, Alan Dean – Aliens Vs Predator – War

He smiled pleasantly, perfectly aware that having to report to him was torture for her; the loathing was entirely mutual, and Russ hadn’t been informed about the 949 situation until late in the game.

Whereas I was there at the beginning, dear heart. Choke on it.

“Lucas. I see you’re getting settled in,” she said blandly, her pale blue gaze taking in the silken robe and mussed hair. “If this is an inconvenient time . . .”

“How nice of you to ask,” he said, deliberately keeping his tone casual. If there was anything she hated, it was being taken lightly. “No, not at all. How are you, I haven’t seen you since the last Earthside con. Keeping busy?”

Julia matched his smile, her eyes like chips of ice. “I’m well, thank you. I just received the numbers on our scan—”

“Don’t tell me you’ve finished already,” he inter­rupted. My, isn’t that adorable, you did your whole job just as quick as a tick!

She gritted her teeth at him and continued. “—and the ST signal wasn’t picked up, which suggests that the exo suit was taken from the site prior to the explosion. The spread pattern is such that my people aren’t able to trace passage, but we should now assume that at least one member of the team managed to escape, taking the MAX with them.”

The short range ST beacon couldn’t be disabled, which meant that the MAX had been taken; someone had survived. It was what he’d hoped to hear, but he wasn’t going to let her see it. “Yes, we expected as much,” he said, stifling a deliberate yawn. “Any pick­ups on the Nemesis?”

“No. My field man believes it was destroyed; it’s al­ways possible that they disabled the tracking boards, but it’s unlikely. We’ll keep looking, of course, but I think all we can do now is wait to see where they set down. If they set down.”

Briggs nodded. The joy of goading her was fizzling.

his thoughts already turning to where their runner might be headed. If the Nemesis had been lost, the suit must have been taken out on a shuttle or hopper— something small, or Julia’s team would have spotted the trail. Disheartening news, considering how easy it was to disappear out in the DS sectors.

But an emergency craft isn’t likely to get very far, ei­ther . . .

Zen’s Respite was close to where 949 had been, less than three days on his Sun Jumper, and he’d come on the very slight possibility that someone on the Nemesis team might have made it out. Someone who’d had ac­cess to the Trader’s log.

Someone who, if / can find them, if they have the infor­mation, and if 7 can make the deal, would absolutely assure my position with the Board.

“Worried about something, Lucas?” Julia asked sweetly.

Briggs frowned, tilting his head to one side. “Actu­ally, yes. You’ve been to Zen’s Respite recently … is Chin still cooking in the restaurant here? I heard rumor that he moved when the Company remodeled his kitchen.”

If looks could maim. Julia’s composure slipped for only a second, but the pure hatred that flickered across her features was truly a sight to behold. She reached forward and the screen went blank. Briggs grinned; not even a good-bye.

The pleasure was short-lived, quickly giving way to frustration. For a moment he sat and stared at the dead screen, searching for a way to hurry things along. He’d put Irwin and the guards on standby and double-check that the channels were all straight-lined to him . . .

. . . and wait. I can wait, and hope that they turn up somewhere Company or Company friendly, that the manager bothered to read the alert, and that whatever C4 channel jockey picks them up has the sense to report it.

A lot of ifs, a lot of hoping. Briggs sighed and stood up, already feeling like he needed another massage. He

knew there was no point in worrying about it; they’d either turn up or they wouldn’t, and he hadn’t made it into the upper brackets of Weyland/Yutani by agoniz­ing over things he couldn’t control. And it wasn’t as though Zen’s Respite was such a bad place to wait. The Company’s complex had four excellent restaurants, a full holovid rec room, and was within easy distance of a half dozen highly ranked organic gardens.

And there’s the suite-level staff, of course. Selee’ was able enough, but the brochure also listed several em­ployees with skills and attributes that he wouldn’t mind tasting. For 47 TS, he was in excellent shape, still perfectly capable of enjoying the satiation of his appe­tites. In fact, there was a particularly flexible young woman he’d heard about who could supposedly do things he’d only read about . . .

Briggs stretched his arms over his head and headed for the bathroom, deciding that he would relax; he al­ways negotiated best when he was rested, and if—when the 949 fugitive turned up, he’d want to be fully pre­pared. Grigson had fumbled the ball and he’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime. If he pulled it off, he could write his own ticket. And if he fucked it up …

“Lucas Briggs does not fuck up,” he said, his voice strong and even as he stepped into the elegant bath­room and tapped the shower to life. He didn’t and wouldn’t. Positive thinking, that was the key. And if his negotiation skills weren’t enough to convince their wayward traveler, he’d resort to whatever method seemed appropriate.

Humming to himself, Briggs stripped and stepped into the steaming shower. And after a moment, he put a call in to the service staff and asked for that flexible young woman to join him.

As it turned out, she was able to make him forget all about DS 949, at least for a little while.

6

Noguchi led the Hunters “back to the ship, assigned to the advance guard position; it was another slap, although not as bad as it could have been. Considering how angry Topknot had been, she supposed she should be grateful that he hadn’t sent her ahead to open the dock; Shorty suffered that particular dishonor, and the look he gave her as he shoved past reminded Noguchi that she’d need to watch her back for a while.

The swarm of bugs moved out of the queen’s path, falling back in ripples of hissing black. Noguchi walked slowly forward, determined to stay in position no mat­ter what happened behind her—which, from the screams of the bound queen and the grunts of yautja exertion, was a heated struggle. It wasn’t all that hard to ignore; the sight of hundreds, thousands of the chit­tering, trumpeting animals stepping aside to let them pass was an experience unlike any other. They parted like a living sea, smoothly sidling back, their heavy clawed feet tearing tracks in the muddy ground, the tracks filling with water and reflecting deadly darkness.

As they got closer to the ship, Noguchi started to breathe deeper, preparing herself for the probable con­flict. The queen was smart enough to understand that boarding the ship wasn’t what she wanted to be doing; Topknot had informed them that eight of ten queens taken as Hunt seeders tried to break away at the ramp, as soon as they realized that there wouldn’t be another chance. Once the door was shut behind them, the dan­ger was just as great; the queen might try to tear loose in a suicide run through the ship, forcing the yautja to take her out if she didn’t fall for the “open” nest. The Hunters believed that, like themselves, a bug queen preferred death to captivity; having had her own expe­rience with a rampaging queen, Noguchi agreed—al­though she also thought that the creature simply wanted to slaughter as many of her enemies as possi­ble, whatever the consequences.

Which all means that we’re not in the clear until she’s nested and tied. The thought made her feel a little better about having been assigned to safer, less honorable po­sitions for this Hunt. If the queen went into a frenzy once aboard, every Hunter shared responsibility for getting her back under control. Clan rules for Hunting were sacred, but they didn’t apply to the ship—and that meant she had as much right as anyone to exhibit her skills.

Shorty had lowered the dock, the wide ramp set­tled in the marshy ground, a jutting mouth in the ship’s swollen belly. Noguchi couldn’t make the sounds that were the ship’s name, and its twisting, bulbous shape defied simple description, but she thought it looked something like a Seashell, sometimes thinking of it as Shell.

They were less than a dozen meters from the ramp, the ocean of sibilant drones hunched and watching blindly, their grins dripping strings of drool to the swampy ground. Noguchi was tensed, ready to spin around the instant she set foot on the ramp and there was no longer need for her position. When the queen

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