Chapter 12 - Alien: Colony War

Merrilyn held Therese tightly to her in the cab of the truck and slumped down as far as she could in the seats, below the windshield. The woman with the gun walked noisily between the rows of vehicles, shouting out the name of the man who they had seen so gruesomely taken by the creature.

She wouldn’t find him in one piece, and if she kept shouting like that, she was going to suffer the same fate. Merrilyn bit her lip, torn between the desire to warn the woman, and protection for herself and her daughter from the murderous newcomers.

Therese whimpered.

“Sssshhh, Little Flower,” Merrilyn said, pushing the little girl further down into the footwell. She chanced a look through the windscreen. She had lost sight of the woman, and lifted herself a little higher to scan the garage.

Wham!

She screamed as something slammed against the glass. It was the woman, blood pumping from her mouth, eyes glassy, a gaping mess of bone, muscle, and flesh where her stomach should have been, spreadeagled on the windshield like a Daliesque crucifixion canvas.

“Mama…” Therese said tremulously.

Merrilyn turned to tell her to be quiet and then her blood turned to ice in her veins. Behind the girl, framed in the side window, was the monster, its face frozen in an almost rictus-grin, drool dripping from its teeth, its bulbous black head dully reflecting the dim strip-lights far above in the ceiling. It lifted a skeletal hand and tapped on the glass with one vicious black claw.

Little pig, little pig, let me in, or I’ll blow your house down, Merrilyn thought crazily. Then the beast shrieked like a tormented soul from the depths of hell, leaned back, and slammed its head against the side window.

The toughened glass warped but held. The creature repeated the move as Merrilyn hauled Therese out of the footwell and backed up against the other door. A third time, and a hairline fracture appeared in the glass.

“Mama…”

“Hush, Little Flower.”

The monster head-butted the window once more and a spider-web of cracks rippled out. It would only take one more blow. Merrilyn wrapped her arm around Therese.

“When I say so, Little Flower, push backward, OK?”

The creature slammed into the glass and it shattered inward, the beast howling a cry of triumph. It held onto the window with both clawed hands, pushed itself back with its feet, then launched forward, jaws wide open, screeching.

Merrilyn’s fingers closed around the door handle and she pulled, pushing herself back.

“Now!”

The door flung open and they tumbled backward as the monster folded itself into the cab, occupying the space they had just vacated. Merrilyn leapt to her feet and slammed the door closed, then grabbed Therese’s arm and pulled her down onto the floor, rolling them both under the adjacent truck and then out the other side, repeating the maneuver until there were two rows of vehicles between them and the creature.

She heard the monster howling and put a finger to her lips. Therese nodded solemnly. What was best? Try to make it back to the main colony buildings, or make a run for the retractable door to the outside? The creature howled again, louder this time. It was out of the vehicle. She beckoned for Therese to follow and crawled on her hands and knees to the end of the row of trucks, where there was a stack of fuel drums. Could she perhaps trap the monster under them? Cause them to explode? With what?

Then she saw something by the drums. The rifle that the woman had carried. It was maybe six meters away, across open ground. Could she make it in time? She looked at Therese, put her finger to her lips again, and patted the concrete floor, indicating that the girl should stay put. Therese hugged Pinky Ponk and nodded, but Merrilyn could see the terror in her eyes.

She kissed the top of her daughter’s head and then crouched by the wheel of the truck, eyes on the gun. Run or crawl? She decided speed was more important than stealth, took a deep breath and launched herself forward.

Merrilyn had just closed her hand around the gun when Therese screamed. Merrilyn’s strength deserted her as she turned to see the creature crouched over her daughter, one of its claws wrapped around her throat. She felt as though she couldn’t move, that she could almost sleep. Her mind was shutting down. Her body was deserting her.

No, thought Merrilyn. No. Not today. Letting loose a howl to match the creature’s own, one torn from a deeper, more damned circle of Hades, she raised the gun and set off at a run toward it as it looked up at her. Letting her momentum carry her forward, she slid down to her ass and alongside her daughter, ramming the barrel of the gun into the secondary dripping mouth that was emerging from the monster’s gaping jaws.

“Fuck you, you piece of shit,” Merrilyn said through gritted teeth, and she pulled the trigger. The pulse blast momentarily illuminated the black and red interior of the creature’s mouth before it blew off the back of its helmet-like head. It issued a gargling shriek, then toppled backward in a pool of sizzling ichor that started to bubble and smoke and eat through the concrete of the garage floor.

“Mama,” Therese said. “Mama, you killed the monster for me.”

Merrilyn finally allowed herself to breathe and hugged her daughter tight. The tears finally came, ripped out of her by the horror and relief and realization of what she had just done.

“That’s all right, Little Flower,” Merrilyn sobbed into Therese’s hair. “That’s exactly what mamas are for.”

* * *

Ten minutes later, having transferred their bags to another truck, Merrilyn drove the vehicle up to the big retractable doorway that opened on to the outside. She headed toward where the huge storage tanks for the oil and ore were located, half a kilometer out from the main colony buildings. She didn’t know what her plans were, other than to get out of here and buy herself time to think.

They had maybe enough food for three or four days. Perhaps in that time proper help might come. All she had to do was stay put out there on the edge of the terraformed sector, and hope to God those monsters didn’t decide to go walkabout outside the colony buildings.

“Don’t leave me, Mama,” Therese said as Merrilyn put the vehicle in neutral and opened the door.

“It’s OK,” she said. “I’m just opening the doors to let us out. Then we’re going on an adventure, all right, Little Flower?”

Therese nodded doubtfully, and Merrilyn let herself down on to the concrete, scanning around for any more creatures, the gun in her hand. She ran over to the wall and slapped the big button that worked the door. As it started to trundle up, letting in a blast of cold air and rain from the outside, Merrilyn started to head back to the truck, only to see Therese in the window, waving frantically at her.

Her heart pounding, Merrilyn spun around, her gun up, as the door rolled up to reveal a figure standing framed in the dim late afternoon light. It was a woman, tall, with long dreadlocks falling over the shoulders of her jacket. She had a pulse rifle trained on Merrilyn.

“OK, sister, drop the gun,” the woman said. “You’re coming with me.”

* * *

“Monsters,” Tom Moran said doubtfully.

“I fucking saw it,” Bromley said. “It ripped Amina to pieces.” She nodded toward the French woman, huddled with her daughter in the corner of the comms tower. “She blew its fucking brains out.”

“We need to get off this planet,” the woman—Merrilyn something?—said in perfect English. “These things are all over the colony.”

“And that’s what killed all the colonists?” Moran said. “And Frank?”

“Your friend, the man? Yes,” Merrilyn said. “Your ship is working, yes? We can leave?”

He thought about it for a bit. “We have orders to stay. LV-187 has been claimed for New Albion. We’re just waiting for relief.”

“That’s what your friend said,” Merrilyn replied sourly. “Just before he died.”

“If we’re going to go, then we should think about it soon.” Boffin was standing by the big observation window, watching the dusk fall. Rain was battering against the glass. “There’s a storm coming in. A big one. It’ll be impossible to fly soon.”

“It’ll take the comms out, too,” Merrilyn said. “We get big storms here. Bad ones. So we go now, yes?”

“Guv,” Bromley said, seeing his hesitation. “It was a fucking monster. It killed Amina. And Priestley.”

“Maybe not the same one,” Merrilyn said.

Moran looked at her. “How many of these things are there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a dozen? Maybe more. They were difficult to count when they were slaughtering us all.”

“Yet you survived,” Moran said. “And you killed one. So maybe they’re not that big a deal after all?”

“I’m a fucking scientist,” the woman spat. “Do not underestimate me.”

Boffin chuckled behind Moran. “Maybe I should call this in,” he said.

“We won’t get an answer back before the storm hits,” Boffin said. “Look, guv, if what they’re saying is true… we’re no good to New Albion as dead heroes, are we? Should I go and at least prep the Victory for take-off?”

“OK,” Moran decided that couldn’t do any harm. “I’ll call it in anyway. The military needs to know about this shit.”

“Thank God,” the woman said, holding her small child close. “And thank you.”

* * *

Walking through the hanger that led to the landing platform, Boffin found a rack of waterproof coats and wrapped himself in one before stepping out into the failing daylight. The sky was roiling with black clouds, marbled with snakes of lightning. The temperature had dropped a good eight or nine degrees since he was last outside.

The Victory sat squatly on the landing platform, the access steps down as he’d left them. He should have closed them up when he came up last time. The inside would be soaked. The wind almost took him off his feet as he ran across the slick platform toward the ship.

Careful, now, he thought. Don’t want to end up like that dead Frenchie we shot when we first arrived. It’s a long way down off the platform.

Monsters, though. He was burning to see that corpse in the garage for himself. Maybe they could grab a quick look before taking off. He’d heard the stories, of course, about the border bombings, this black goo raining down on the distant, remote colonies. One guy had told him that if this black goo hit you, it turned you inside out. And if you were downwind of it… then it changed you. Mutated you. Made you into something else. Monsters, maybe. Is that what had happened here?

Boffin hauled himself up the steps and closed the access hatch behind him. Water pooled on the floor of the deck. He’d have to mop that up, but later. He’d better get the Victory prepped for take-off. He was with Bromley on this—they’d done their bit. Flying flags was one thing, fighting monsters was something entirely different.

Boffin settled himself in the cockpit and began the preliminary checks. Rain battered the windshield; the storm was coming in a lot faster than the computers had predicted. They were really going to have to get off this rock very quickly. He opened a comms channel to the colony but got only static. He wondered if Moran had managed to get a message off-world.

Everything looked in order, which was no surprise because the Victory was a good little ship. They could be ready for take-off in minutes. He tried the comms link again but there was still nothing—in fact the static hiss was worse. He’d have to go out and brave the storm again to get the rest of them down here.

Boffin flipped off the comms link. There was still a faint hissing sound. He frowned. It wasn’t coming from the comms deck.

It was coming from behind him.

Boffin slowly turned his head, and screamed.

* * *

“Anything?” That was Bromley, the woman who’d captured them at the garage.

“Nothing,” her boss Moran replied in disgust. “Storm’s totally knocked out the comms.”

“It always happens,” Merrilyn said. “Storm might last all night, maybe even all of tomorrow.” It was one of the many pleasures of living on LV-187, one of the reasons they were pretty much forgotten by everyone else until it was time to send a nice big shipment of oil off for use on the other ICSC colony worlds.

Moran turned to her. “You think we’re going to be able to take off?”

She looked out through the window. Visibility was practically zero now. Under normal circumstances she’d say no, it wasn’t safe at all, but they had this very small, rapidly narrowing window of opportunity to get the hell off LV-187, and she wasn’t sure she could bear to pass it up.

Moran was already on the comms again.

“Boffin? Come in, Boffin. We prepped for take-off yet?” He swore as he got nothing but a static hiss. “OK, maybe we should just go.”

“Guv,” Bromley said. “Incoming.”

He joined her at the window, and Merrilyn went over to look, as well. Just emerging from the black clouds was a bank of lights. It was a ship.

“Your New Albion military?” she said.

Moran squinted into the growing darkness. “It looks a bit small for an army vehicle… Teesha, try hailing them.”

Bromley stood at the comms hub and after a couple of minutes shouted, “Nothing, guv.”

As it got closer, the ship revealed itself to be a small personal cruiser, swinging and buffeting in the high winds as it entered a landing program, swooping and ducking as it tried to align itself with the platform. With a sinking heart, Merrilyn knew that the weather was too bad to even attempt a take-off. She didn’t even know if this ship, whoever was in it, was going to be able to land.

“Ah, bollocks,” Moran said. “You know who it is? Those idiots who requested landing permission earlier. What was the ship called? The Elvik?”

“That’s a skilled pilot,” Bromley said admiringly as the ship rolled, then straightened, then swung in the wind and rain, positioning itself over the landing platform. The Elvik hovered just ten meters above the platform, and started its reverse thrusters, slowly descending. Moran had been right, Merrilyn thought. They were idiots for coming here. Now they were going to be trapped until the storm cleared as well. More people to die.

Just three meters from touching down, the Elvik was suddenly slammed by a gale-force burst of wind that twisted it, flinging it to one side, bringing it crashing down the final two meters. Its starboard flank and engine smashed hard into the landing platform with a shriek of rending metal and an explosion of fuel.