Chapter 31 - Alien: Colony War

“You know there’s a very big chance you’re not going to walk away from this, don’t you?” Chad crouched down in front of Davis, and ruffled the dog’s furry head.

“Not as a dog,” Davis said. “And to be quite frank with you, Chad, I’ve rather had enough of being a Cockapoo. I mean, it has its advantages, but I rather miss having hands.”

Chad couldn’t help but smile. “Davis. I mean it, friend. This could be it. Do you understand that?”

“I do.” Davis nodded as solemnly as he could and looked over to where Merrilyn was similarly crouched down in front of Therese. “And I’m OK with that. I have been humbled today. That synthetic has done in one day what I have tried for years to accomplish.” He looked at Chad. “She has become human. With a simple act of sacrifice—but not just sacrifice to save someone, but to set them free.” He put his head on one side, and pondered. “I have sacrificed myself many times, but always knew, deep inside me, that I might survive. So it was not real sacrifice. This is. Once my body is ravaged by the heat and radiation, there will be nowhere for my AI to go. I can’t go into the colony mainframe, because it’s useless. I will be a floating mass of invisible AI. Perhaps I will become a ghost.”

“I’ll never give up hope,” Chad said. “I’ll look for you. If you can, come and find me. If you survive in any way.”

Davis nodded. “Will you do something for me, Chad? Will you find Zula? Will you make sure she is safe?”

“I promise,” Chad said. He looked over at the others. “I think we’re going to need her.”

“I miss her,” Davis said. “I miss us, and what we could have been.”

“Guys?” Cher said. “I don’t want to be that person, but… do we need to do this?”

“We do,” Chad said, straightening up.

Merrilyn came over with Therese. “You know exactly what to do?” she said to Davis.

“Yes,” he said. “I have the protocols stored in my memory now. All I need to do is instruct Therese in how to input them.”

“I could have done this all by myself, Doggo,” Therese said.

“No, you couldn’t,” Davis said. “I don’t wish to pull rank on you, but I have a much more sophisticated processing chip, and time is of the essence, as we know.”

“Ok, Doggo,” Therese said. “Ready to go?”

Davis nodded, then said, “One moment. Chad, I have been thinking on this for a long time. I have invented what I believe is a joke.”

“OK,” Chad said. “Let’s hear it.”

“There are two men in a bar,” Davis said. “They don’t have to be male, but that seems to be the accepted format of jokes. Anyway, there is also a dog in this bar. I do not know if it belongs to either of the men. I suspect not. But this dog, as is the nature of the animal, is grooming its own genitals with its tongue.”

“Ewww,” Cher said.

“Apologies,” Davis said, “but I am given to understand that a certain level of crudeness is integral to the format. Anyway, one of the men voices to the other the opinion that he wishes he could do what the dog is doing. So his companion says, ‘Throw it a biscuit and it might let you.’” Davis paused. “You see, the twist there is that the first man suggested he wishes he could lick his own genitals, but the second one, ether genuinely in error, or deliberately for comedy value, thinks he means he wishes he could lick the dog’s genitals.”

“You know, your delivery needs a bit of work, and if you have to explain a joke then it hasn’t really worked,” Chad said. “But actually… that is pretty funny.”

Davis nodded. “Good. I’m glad.” He turned to Therese. “Are we ready?”

“I think so,” Therese said. She turned to Merrilyn and handed her the soft toy she carried around all the time. “Mama, will you look after Pinky Ponk while I’m gone?”

Merrilyn nodded, took the toy, and broke into heaving, wracking sobs. Chad had to look away, tears streaming down his own face.

* * *

There was a modified Alphatech XT-37 Stinger in the garage, its cannon removed and replaced with a haulage winch for industrial purposes. It was faster than the trucks, and handy off-road, and they all managed to squeeze in it. Once off the colony grounds, Chad opened her up and they bounced over the slick, rocky terrain, none of them talking.

Beside him sat Cher, Merrilyn at the end, clutching Pinky Ponk and staring out of the window at the harsh, unforgiving landscape. The clouds had thickened and fat gobbets of rain spattered against the windshield. Chad hoped there wasn’t a storm coming on any scale that would stop them leaving in the Victory.

Cher had a timer counting down on her watch to when the reactor was expected to reach critical mass. Chad had instructed Davis—in the event they managed to survive—to meet them at the landing platform. He knew that they wouldn’t though. Synthetics were hardy, but their systems wouldn’t hold up against the radiation being pumped out of the crippled fusion reactor.

“Ten minutes,” Cher said tightly. Chad put his foot down, aiming for a rocky ridge he hoped he could get behind for extra protection, should Davis and Therese fail to disarm the reactor. If the appointed time passed with no explosion, then they would wait thirty minutes, just in case Merrilyn’s calculations were off.

Then they would drive to the Victory and get the hell off LV-187.

“I’ve never had much to do with synthetics before,” Cher said quietly. “I’d always thought of them just as… machines.”

Merrilyn said nothing.

“They are, really,” Chad said, “but it’s what’s up here that counts.” He tapped his forehead. “We’re making such exponential strides in AI development, so that I don’t think we even understand how their minds work anymore. In the same way that we really don’t understand how the human mind works.”

“You’re wrong,” Merrilyn said suddenly. “It’s not what’s in their head that counts.” She put a hand on her chest. “It’s what’s in here.”

“I’m so sorry for both of you,” Cher said softly. “You’ve both lost so much.”

Merrilyn stared out of the window again as the rain intensified. “They sacrificed themselves for us. We owe it to them to survive, now.” She looked at Cher. “And we owe it to them to have you do what you came here to do. Blow this whole conspiracy wide open. Wherever you two are going, however you are going to do it, I’m coming with you.”

Chad turned the Stinger in behind the rocks and drove to a steep overhang, parking beneath it. There were several rocky outcrops between them and the colony. Would they be enough if the reactor went up? He could only hope so, though he seriously doubted it. What they’d do then would be a whole different matter, of course. There’d be no ship to take them off LV-187.

Damn Trent.

He looked up into the gathering clouds. Was God’s Hammer on its way now, carrying its cargo of death? Where would it strike? Where would be the next colony to fall under a Xenomorph infestation? Suddenly he felt dog-tired. How long could he keep doing this? How many more times could he do the running and screaming and killing, the barely surviving, just to stumble toward the next crisis? He’d had enough. He just wanted to get back to saving Amanda, and maybe rest a little. He needed this to work, so they could all get off here, and they could think about how to get Cher’s story out to everyone.

How would he do it without Davis? Chad hadn’t realized how much he’d come to rely on his companion. No, not just that, how much he’d come to care about him. He’d almost forgotten, at times, that he was an AI. He wished he’d told him that more often.

* * *

Davis and Therese descended the stairs to where the climactic battle had taken place with the Xenomorph Queen. It was hot. Hotter than any human could have stood. He scanned the area for a Geiger rating. It was off the scale. He looked up at Therese. Her synthetic skin was starting to pucker and bubble on her face, but he decided not to mention it. A little girl probably wouldn’t like to be told that her face was going to slide off.

He trotted into the chamber. There was a blast of heat emanating from a fissure in the back, and he surmised what had happened. Even in her death throes the alien Queen had exacted her final vengeance. Her acidic blood had burned through the lead lining, depositing her in the heart of the reactor and sending it into critical overload.

He joined Therese in the small foyer. “There should be a hatch somewhere here,” he said. “According to your mama.”

“Mama is always right,” Therese said, locating it behind the stairwell. There was a keypad beneath a metal plate, and Davis gave her the code to tap in. The hatch hissed and slid back, revealing a ladder that led down into the gloom.

“You’ll have to carry me,” Davis said. “Do you think you can do that?”

“Yes, Doggo,” Therese said, hefting him up on to her shoulders. “Do you feel a bit funny? In your head?”

It was the radiation. It was already affecting their AI hubs. Davis felt a little glitchy himself. He couldn’t remember the word for that small insect with beautiful big wings. The one that hatched from a cocoon. The one that used to be something else entirely. He felt a little sad that he couldn’t remember the word, because it was quite a lovely one.

Davis clung to Therese as best he could as she stepped onto the ladder and started to let herself down. The heat was almost unbearable now, even for a synthetic. He could feel the tiny motors and nanogears inside him sweating and seizing.

“Shall we sing a song, Doggo? Do you know ‘Joe Le Taxi’?”

“You hum it and I’ll play it,” Davis said.

Therese began to sing as she climbed down the ladder. Davis wondered why she hadn’t been programmed with a better singing voice. The lower they got, the more she began so slur the words. Davis pulled his head back and looked at her. Her mouth was drooping, the synthetic skin almost burned away.

Suddenly she laughed. “You look funny, doggo. Your ears are slipping down your head.”

It was happening to him, too. He hoped they got to the bottom before their systems were irrevocably damaged by the heat and radiation. He’d hate to have to go through all this for nothing.

“We’re here,” Therese said, stepping off the final rung into a dark room lit by strip lights in the floor. There was curved structure in front of them, like a huge silo. The reactor. Davis tried to take a radiation reading, but his Geiger had melted. Suffice to say, it was high.

“Should be terminal behind lead panel,” Davis said. He was finding it difficult, not just to physically speak, but to think of the right words to say.

“I know.” Therese went to the wall and found the panel, inputting the access codes without Davis having to tell her. “I know I could have done this by myself. I know you didn’t have to come, Doggo.”

“Didn’t want you alone.”

“I know. I love you, Doggo.”

The terminal unfolded from the panel. Davis said, “Do need protocols?”

“Tell me,” Therese said. “Just in case I got them wrong.” He knew she didn’t have to do that, as much as she knew he didn’t have to be there. They were making each other feel better about it all.

It took long minutes to key in the protocols that would shut down the reactor. The display showed a sudden green check mark, and there was a deafening whining noise. Had they done it, or were they too late? There was a very, very imperceptible lessening of the heat coming from the reactor. The cooling fluids were being pumped into it.

It was working.

They had done it.

“Tired, Doggo,” Therese said, slumping to the floor.

Davis padded over to her, lay down, and put his head into her lap. “Me too. Speepy.” He paused. That wasn’t right. “Sleepy.”

“Do you know any other jokes?”

“No,” Davis said. Things were shutting down in his head, as though someone was going around a building turning off all the lights. Then he said, “Therese, do you think this is funny? A man buys a parrot from a pet shop. But when he gets home it is dead. So he goes to the shop and complains.”

Therese was silent so long that Davis thought she had gone.

“Not the way you tell it,” she said.

He nodded with effort. “I think Chad right, in delivery.”

They were quiet for longer, and Davis became certain the temperature was dropping. The radiation was probably dropping, too, but he had no way of measuring it. It was too late for them anyway. He was close to full shutdown. Things were going dark around the edges of his vision. He was, he thought, about to become an ex-doggo.

He wished he could smile, because he suddenly found that rather amusing.

“Doggo, are you sad you’ll never see Chad again?”

He nodded, unable to speak.

“I’m sad I’ll never see Mama again, too,” Therese said, “but I’m happy that she’ll be able to live.” She paused, and frowned, and the last of her skin slid off her face, revealing just a blank plastic template. “It makes me confused.”

“OK to confused,” Davis managed to say. “After all, only human.”

“Are we?” Therese said.

“Think so, yes,” Davis said. He lay his head flat and decided now was the time to sleep.

He didn’t know how long he had been quietly closing down when he suddenly thought of something.

“Butterfly!” he said. “Insect that was something else, goes into a cocoon and emerges beautiful, complicated, wonderful creature.”

“Just like us,” Therese said.