made her move, she wasn’t going to be caught off guard—
—and all at once the sea erupted, a thousand bugs throwing their heads back and screaming, the piercing cacophony shockingly painful—and as one, they leapt toward the band of Hunters, called to fight by some unseen signal from their dark mother.
Shit! The queen had chosen to risk the lives of her unborn against the lives of her own children—and had put the Hunters in a world of hurt.
She couldn’t hear Topknot but was close enough to the ramp; one leap forward and her boot touched the ridged metal. She whipped around, firing into the oncoming horde, multiple blasts from the burner taking out three lunging drones in a single sweep.
From the edge of her vision, she saw only black darting bodies where the capture team had been—but the queen’s comb was visible, tossing back and forth above the screaming onslaught. They still had her.
Everything happened too fast and too slow, fragments of action and the pulse of her heart twisting everything into flashes, didn’t expect this—
Noguchi saw one, two of the young Hunters reach the platform, turning to fire, felt and saw the ship’s covering blast, a lightning streak from above slamming a smoking hole through the brutal charge. The bass rumble was swallowed up by the shrill screams of the bugs, by the pounding of their running limbs against the wet ground.
She fired again and again as the battle raged, as the drones sacrificed themselves against the ragged wall of melting burner heat. Acid-splash hit the ramp and bubbled uselessly against the treated material—but not so ineffective against one of the young Hunters when his mask slipped or was torn away. Noguchi only saw the flailing arms and the blinded face, oozing green as the novice collapsed near her feet.
For some indeterminate time there was only the fight, the stink of burning muck and the strobe of the
ship’s weapons. Noguchi fired and backed up the ramp, fired, a step at a time, knowing that the mission objective still stood above all else. If the capture team could get the queen into the ship, Topknot would bring the ramp up. Anyone not aboard would be fucked, and honor or no, Noguchi didn’t mean to die such a pointless death.
She was almost at the ship’s wide-open dock, the heat and the strobe of the burner blasts from inside washing across the ramp, when she heard Topknot, his shrill, mechanically amplified whistle commanding the Hunters to look for him. The capture team had managed to get the bug queen to the bottom of the ramp and the Leader’s raised, jerking fist meant it was time to board.
Still firing, Noguchi hustled backwards, saw the struggling team hauling their prize up to the ship—and saw that at least three of the novice Hunters weren’t going to make it. They were too far away; unless they turned tail and sprinted for the ship, they were bug food. Even if the yautja culture allowed such cowardice, the young Hunters would be torn apart the second they stopped firing.
Honorable, they die with honor at least . . . The only consolation there was, that they would be remembered.
Halfway up the ramp, Topknot gave the command to close the dock. With Shell still firing into the horde, the wide slab of light metal pulled smoothly up into the ship, lifting the queen and her captors, Noguchi watching as the obedient drones continued to throw themselves into certain death. As the ramp closed, she caught a last glimpse of the doomed trio, still blasting away at the trumpeting assault.
The queen’s furious cry seemed like a whisper after the screams of so many, but the desperate rage carried—
—and Noguchi saw that what was left of the team wouldn’t be able to hold her. Two of the rope holders
were gone, a third badly wounded, barely able to stand. The attack was a surprise, the queen’s decision to use her children to save herself unprecedented, at least as far as Noguchi knew—and the Hunters hadn’t been prepared. In all, six of the thirteen queen Hunters had been lost.
Topknot was clattering at the remnants of his group, calling for the nest hatch to be opened, calling for the untrained yautja to get out of the way as he snatched at one of the loose ropes, dropping his burner.
Noguchi sidled backwards toward the nesting room, watching the queen pull and strain at her bonds as the Hunters brought her under control. The “nest,” a massive, heavily reinforced chamber designed to hold the bug mother, wasn’t far from the dock opening, thirty meters of bare floor between the two doors. The Hunters had designed the lowest levels of their seeding ships with bug behavior in mind; with her exit back to the planet’s surface blocked, she should willingly go into the nest, the only direction left for her. Once trapped inside, she would be lured to the back of the chamber and temporarily restrained by hanging ropes, until the yautja could bind her more permanently— she’d be strapped to a wall, gagged and shackled, as helpless to the Hunters as she was to her own biological drives. An egg-layer, bearing seeds for the Hunt for as long as the yautja wanted her.
Most of the observation windows were small and filtered, the queen seeming to prefer darkness for nesting, but the main hatch had a wide oblong, clear as glass. A spot next to the door would also mean that the captured queen would be passing close enough for Noguchi to touch—
—except they couldn’t keep her. Noguchi was only a few meters from the open hatch when she glanced back and saw that Scar had lost his grip. She saw it and then saw the wounded Hunter, a novice she called Slats, drop his own rope and crumple to the deck.
Next to her, a surprised hiss, an untrained yautja diving away from the hatch controls—
—and the freed queen screamed, ripping the last ropes away from the team, fixing her sightless, slavering face toward the opening not ten meters in front of her. The nest, where they wanted her to go.
Where Noguchi stood, blocking her path.
She automatically raised the burner as the queen lunged forward. A few well-placed bursts and—
—can’t—
Noguchi threw the burner, the queen close enough for her to see the bubbles in her dripping string of saliva, see the stainless teeth of her inner jaws snap—
—and crunch on the weapon’s thickness. Noguchi spun and ran into the chamber, the close sounds of rending metal lending her speed. Her racing thoughts, her plans, were shadowed by a burst of self-disgust as she tore through the humid, echoing dark of the nest.
Run run circle left goddamn honor—
Killing the queen would have been easy—and it would have made the deaths of the other Hunters a waste, and she couldn’t even blame their strange culture for her decision. This was her own honor at stake.
Noguchi sprinted, arms pumping, fully aware that the queen was faster. All she heard was the thunder of the animal’s pursuit, all she felt was the knot of ice in her belly, the inner flinch of each heartbeat that told her she would be jerked into the air and hurled into blackness before she even felt the pain—
—now now NOW!
She could feel the air sliced behind and above and she threw herself left, tucking smoothly into a shoulder roll and coming up running, not looking back.
The queen shrieked, a terrible sound but one that filled Noguchi’s every fiber with a kind of restrained relief. The enormous bug mother was fast but heavy, unable to change direction easily; the frustrated cry came from near the back of the giant chamber and Noguchi
was already halfway back to the door, only twenty meters—
—almost, almost there and she’s trapped—
—and when she saw Topknot step into the opening, a flush of pride added length to her strides, her heart pounding with more than just adrenaline. She’d done the right thing, acted as bravely as any Blooded Hunter—
—and so sure was she that her prowess would finally be acknowledged by the Leader, she mistook his signal for one of celebration, a twist of talon that meant “victory.” It wasn’t until she actually saw the silhouette of the Leader disappearing, saw the ring of faces appear at the window and heard the massive, resounding whoom of the hatch slamming down that she realized what had happened.
Topknot had signaled victory, but not to Noguchi. And behind her, the queen signaled her own triumph, a scream of bloodlust that pounded at Noguchi even as her ringing, shuddering footfalls pounded at the floor.
7
This message. Repeat: this is the shuttle from the Weyland/Yutani ship Nemesis, requesting emergency assistance from any ship or outpost receiving this message …”