Chapter 22 - Alien: Colony War

Chad McLaren just wanted to help people.

That was why he had spent seven years in college on Earth, then entered the field of biomedical research. That was why he took a position with Weyland-Yutani. That was why he had been thrilled to be given the chance to work with some of their most brilliant researchers.

That was why, after he’d seen what he’d seen on the Weyland-Yutani research station, he turned whistleblower, and put his own life at risk to try to blow the activities of his former employer wide open.

From a purely scientific point of view, the Xenomorph—just the existence of it—was something akin to the Holy Grail. Such a complex species, such a triumph of evolution, such a fascinating, terrible creature. And, yes, Davis had been right. Taking a pragmatic view of them, the monsters were magnificent. They were the apex predator, the top of the evolutionary tree, the very definition of survival of the fittest. If they had been able to think beyond their base instincts to survive, to propagate, to kill, then they could have ruled the universe.

Chad didn’t hate the Xenomorphs, not really.

Not in the way people hated something they didn’t understand, or feared without reason, just because it was different from them and what they knew. However, Chad hated what they had become—pawns in the very human quest for profit, control, and triumph over others. The more he had dealings with them, the less he thought of them as living things, and more as weapons. Weapons that were too dangerous for humanity to wield. Weapons that could not, must not, remain secret, hidden in the shadows, for any longer.

Those who would control the Xenomorphs, Weyland-Yutani chief among them, were playing God—that most unscientific of games. Were they playing the right sort of God, then perhaps Chad might have been more uneasily complicit in their dabbling. The Xenomorphs had so much to offer science—with their DNA appropriation methods, they could help human beings evolve to be more adaptable and durable. They could hold the secrets to curing illnesses, diseases, cancers… but Weyland-Yutani weren’t playing the benign gods of medicine and goodwill.

They were playing at being the gods of war.

So Chad had run from them, and fought them, and made it his personal crusade to wipe out the Xenomorphs, to prevent them becoming the soldiers of the apocalypse, the agents of Armageddon, the army of Ragnarök, bringing to an end humanity’s mastery among the stars. And yes, he’d become inured to the reality of them, immune to the primal terror they dragged from the depths of the human subconscious, numb to the sheer impossible horror of them.

Chad McLaren had forgotten just how frightening Xenomorphs were.

Until now.

Curled up like a fetus, he kept his eyes tightly closed and muttered to himself, hands over his ears, piss warming and spreading around his crotch. He wasn’t sure what he was saying. Prayers, perhaps, or scientific formulae, something to ward off the terror.

The six Xenomorphs rendered unconscious by the Colonial Marines had been chained to the walls of the Cheyenne’s cargo hold and, over the course of the last three hours they had slowly wakened, rattling their bonds with fury, spitting and drooling and reaching out with their claws, opening and closing their sets of jaws, hissing and screeching and howling.

Chad lay in the middle of them, rediscovering his fear over and over again every time one of the creatures strained at its chains and edged a centimeter closer. He should not have forgotten. Should have remembered how magnificent and terrible and impossible and deadly the Xenomorphs were. There, in the darkness, trapped with them, the weight of the last few days pressing heavily on him, he had been reminded starkly and quickly just what the Xenomorphs really were.

Fear incarnate.

Chad McLaren had just wanted to help people.

But who was going to help him?

* * *

Chad finally managed to sleep, fitfully and haunted by terrors; for how long he didn’t know. When he woke, he was still in the near semidarkness with the six bound Xenomorphs rattling their chains like ancient ghosts, hissing and chattering and regarding him with unbridled hatred. They sat in judgement on him.

A parliament of monsters.

A jury of death.

Chad pushed himself to a sitting position, crossed his legs, and watched them watching him. “You could help me, you know,” he said. “If I could unlock your secrets. How you adopt the characteristics of your hosts. How you appropriate their DNA. How you effect changes on a cellular level. You could help me. Help me to help… her.”

He thought of Amanda, his wife, his partner in the never-ending war on Weyland-Yutani. Thought of her lying, on the very edge of the abyss, on the brink of death, the cancer ravaging her body but not quite claiming her. Amanda, frozen in hypersleep, neither dead nor alive, one foot over the threshold of whatever—if anything—lay beyond mortal existence.

“Help me,” he said fiercely. The Xenomorphs rattled their chains and howled and spat. Chad shook his head. “You don’t want to help me. You don’t even know what that means. You can’t help me.”

He swiveled around to look at the ones behind him, showing him their teeth, their jaws dripping drool that pooled on the metal floor. One of them moved behind him, and his head snapped around, his eyes narrowed. Deep inside him, he knew something wasn’t right, but he pushed the thought away. He felt on the brink of an epiphany. Connections were sparking and pinging in his brain.

He was on the verge of… understanding.

“You can’t help yourselves,” he said slowly. “You are not evil. You don’t have the self-awareness for that. You are just doing what you do.” He turned around again, to face the ones on the other wall. “And we are just doing what we do, as well. It’s not hatred or malice that drives us. It’s merely survival.”

Unsteadily Chad got to his feet. The Xenomorphs lunged toward him, their bonds going taut, but holding. Their outstretched arms clawed at thin air. Chad held his arms wide, and slowly pivoted on his feet, his head thrown back, showing himself to each of the Xenomorphs in turn.

“Survival. That’s all it is. Had we encountered each other thousands or millions of years ago, this might have gone differently. You might have wiped us out as we fought you with sticks and rocks, just as we wiped out the Neanderthals.”

He stopped turning, addressing the largest, meanest of the creatures.

“But we didn’t meet then. We meet now, when we have more than sticks to fight you with. We have science.” Chad lowered his arms and looked down. “We are incompatible. We are toxic. We are oil and water. We can never mix, so one of us must die and, for all its faults, I believe in humanity. I believe that we can be a force for good, as we spread out among the stars. We can offer art and beauty and love and knowledge.

“You can only offer death.”

His head whipped toward the door which had been locked behind him, beyond which sat the Colonial Marines. “We just have to be better, that’s all. Better than we are, and we can only do that with you gone. It’s you or us.”

* * *

“Anything?” Corporal Barrington Jones leaned over the marine sitting at the comms unit, tapping cigar ash onto the floor beside him.

“I’m recording it, sir, but it’s, well…” The grunt shook his head and pulled off the headphones. “It’s just a bunch of bullshit.”

Jones grunted and consulted his notes. “He mention anything about an Amanda—Ripley? or McLaren? A Zula Hendricks? What about a synthetic or AI, goes by the name Davis?”

“Sorry, sir,” The marine shook his head. You can listen to the recording if you want.”

“We give him too much shit in his water, or not enough?”

“Usual dose, sir.”

Jones went to look out of the window. The rain had stopped. The clouds were clearing, revealing a hazy, purple sky. There was actually a threat of some sunshine out there.

“Looks like the storm’s over,” Jones said. “Get on to the Cronulla. Tell them to expect us soon.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll initiate departure at 0800. Gives us an hour.”

Jones dropped the hatch and stepped down into the rocky ravine in which they’d seen out the storm. Hoping to up the bonus from having snared McLaren, he’d had one of the boys stick a dose of a psychotropic nerve agent in his water. Standard stuff. Usually had prisoners babbling all kinds of bullshit. Stripped of their filters, people often threw up the interesting stuff they wanted to stay hidden. The three he’d named were all on Weyland-Yutani’s “most wanted” list. If McLaren could offer some clues to their whereabouts, well, that was information he could bank.

Intellectuals. Damn ’em all to hell. Jones unzipped his fatigues and took a piss against the rock face of the ravine. McLaren was spouting nonsense, though. Maybe he’d be more forthcoming under a little old-fashioned torture.

He remembered what that Limey had called him before he’d put a pulse blast in his face. “Barry the Bastard.” Jones grinned. He liked that. He might adopt it on a more formal basis. Zipping up, he turned back to the dropship, glad to get off this ass-nugget of a planet.

Beyond the ravine, he could see the comms tower of the colony, just two klicks distant. He wondered if the rest of them had become Xenomorph chow. Three women, a kid, and a fucking dog! Who brought a mutt to a place like this? They wouldn’t survive long with those critters on the prowl.

Had the Company asked for more samples, or told him to mop up the mess, he’d have happily done so. He liked a good bug hunt, but orders were orders. Six aliens, and screw the rest of them. Once the dropship was back on the Cronulla it wouldn’t matter anyway. They had orders to nuke the colony from orbit, leave no trace of what had happened there. So it was six of one and half a dozen of the other.

The mess got cleaned up one way or another.

Jones squinted into the dropship, at a small, hunched shape just on the lip of the ramp.

“Hey, Segura!” he hollered, and the big Cuban popped his head around the hatch. Jones pointed downward and Segura looked, then frowned, then—nimble as a cat—he dove on it and stood up, holding the squirming white rodent by its neck.

“Sir! I got me an alien rat! Can I keep it as a pet?”

Jones strode up the ramp and inspected Segura’s catch. “It’s a goddam ordinary lab rat,” he said. “Must have escaped from the colony and snuck on board while we were on the landing pad. Get rid of it.”

“Aw, sir, can’t I keep it? It’s cute!”

Jones shook his head in disgust. “It’s a good job I’ve seen you kill thirty men, Segura, or I’d begin to think you were a goddam wimp. Yeah, keep the fucking thing if you want. Find it a cage. I don’t want it running around the ship.”

“I’m gonna call it Barrington, after you, sir!”

“Flattered to fuck, Segura. Flattered to fuck.” He ducked into the dropship and headed to the flight deck, where he found Marquez at the comms desk. “Any further instructions from the Cronulla?”

“Weird thing, sir.” Marquez pulled off his headset and turned around, frowning. “Can’t establish contact. I can’t see why. The storm’s cleared. There shouldn’t be anything stopping us getting through.”

“Weather knock our comms out? We didn’t take a lightning hit, did we?”

“Comms seem fine.” Marquez shook his head. “It’s just… the Cronulla isn’t responding.”

“Keep trying,” Jones said. He walked to the back of the ship, to the cargo hold. Maybe it was time to get McLaren out of there. They’d need to try another approach. Jones unlocked the door and pulled it open. The Xenomorphs rattled their chains and howled at him.

“Shut the fuck up, bugs,” he said. “McLaren? You want to come out for a spell?” No answer. Jones put his head around the door. “McLaren?” He drew back and wrinkled his nose. “Phew-ee. You pissed yourself, McLaren.” The Xenomorphs screeched and chattered.

Then he saw him, sitting cross-legged between them, hands loosely on his knees, head bowed, as though he was meditating. For a moment Jones thought he was dead. Fuck, that would take some explaining. He was just seeing his bonus flushing down the pan when McLaren raised his head.

“What did you give me?”

“Bit of nerve agent. Mild hallucinogen. Make your experience with the bugs a little more interesting.”

“You’re a dead man, you know that?” McLaren stood up and walked toward him, moving a little unsteadily.

“We’re all dead men, eventually,” Jones said, biting the end off another cigar. “Or is that more of a personal threat? Because you don’t look to be in a position to making one, if you don’t mind me saying.”

McLaren glances back at the Xenomorphs.

“It’s a war, Jones, and unless you’re against them, you’re with them. And if you’re with them, you’re going to die. Nobody dines with the devil and lives to tell the tale.”

“You’re still high as a fucking kite,” Jones said. “Get out of there and go get cleaned up.”

“Fucking hell!” There was a sudden shout from Marquez, and Jones turned to see him throwing off his headset and putting his hands to his ears.

“Soldier?” Jones said.

“I made contact with the Cronulla, sir. Briefly. It sounded like… chaos. And then…”

“And then?”

Marquez shook his head. “Like…” He glanced out of the window. “Oh, shit.”

Jones followed his gaze, then ran outside to get a better look. Marquez and McLaren followed him, shielding their hands against the dim light, watching what he was watching high in the violet sky of LV-187. A fireball, burning through the atmosphere, brighter than the sun, and falling, slowly and inexorably, toward the planet’s surface.

A fireball that Barrington Jones was pretty sure was all that was left of the USC Cronulla.