Alien Read online

  “Baxter,” Jordan said softly, “I’d like them back online.”

  “I’m doing my best,” he replied.

  “Creatures?” The ship’s medic Garcia tapped nervously at her chin. “No one’s ever seen creatures down the mine, have they?”

  “There’s nothing living on that rock, other than bacteria,” Sneddon said. She was shifting from foot to foot. “Maybe that’s not what they said. Maybe they said fissures, or something.”

  “Have we got them on scanner yet?” Jordan asked.

  Baxter waved to his left, where three screens were set aslant in the control panel. One was backlit a dull green, and it showed two small points of light moving quickly toward them. Interference from electrical storms in the upper atmosphere sparked across the screen. But the points were firm, their movement defined.

  “Which is the Samson?” Hoop asked.

  “Lead ship is Samson,” Lachance said. “The Delilah follows.”

  “Maybe ten minutes out,” Jordan said. “Any communication from Delilah?”

  No one answered. Answer enough.

  “I’m not sure we can—” Hoop began, then the speakers burst back into life. Let them dock, he was going to say.

  “—stuck to their faces!” the voice said. It was still unrecognizable.

  Baxter turned some dials, and then a larger screen above his station flickered to life. The Samson’s pilot, Vic Jones, appeared as a blurred image. Hoop tried to see past him to the inner cabin of the dropship, but the vibration of their steep ascent out of LV178’s atmosphere made a mess out of everything.

  “How many with you?” Hoop asked.

  “Hoop? That you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The other shift found something. Something horrible. Few of them... ” He faded out again, his image stuttering and flickering as atmospherics caused more chaos.

  “Kasyanov, you and Garcia get to sick bay and fire up the med pods,” Jordan said to the doctor and her medic.

  “You can’t be serious,” Hoop said. As Jordan turned on him, Jones’s voice crackled in again.

  “—all four, only me and Sticky untouched. They’re okay right now, but... to shiver and spit. Just get... to dock!”

  “They might be infected!” Hoop said.

  “Which is why we’ll get them straight to sick bay.”

  “This is fucking serious.” Hoop nodded at the screen where Jones’s image continued to flicker and dance, his voice cutting in and out. Most of what Jones said made little sense, but they could all hear his terror. “He’s shitting himself!”

  Kasyanov and Garcia hustled from the bridge, and Hoop looked to Sneddon for support. But the science officer was leaning over the back of Baxter’s chair, frowning as she tried to make out whatever else Jones was saying.

  “Jones, what about the Delilah?” Jordan said into her headset. “Jones?”

  “...left the same time... something got on board, and... ”

  “What got on board?”

  The screen snowed, the comm link fuzzed with static, and those remaining on the bridge stood staring at each other for a loaded, terrible few seconds.

  “I’m getting down to the docking level,” Jordan said. “Cornell, with me. Baxter, tell them Bay Three.”

  Hoop coughed a disbelieving laugh.

  “You’re taking him to back you up?”

  “He’s security officer, Hoop.”

  “He’s a drunk!” Cornell didn’t even meet Hoop’s stare, let alone respond.

  “He has a gun,” Jordan said. “You stay here, supervise the bridge. Lachance, help guide them in. Remote pilot the dropships if you have to.”

  “If we can even get a link to them,” Lachance said.

  “Assume we can, and do it!” Jordan snapped. She took a few deep breaths, and Hoop could almost hear her thoughts. Never figured it would fuck up this bad, gotta be calm, gotta be in control. He knew she was thinking about those three miners she’d lost, and dreading the idea of losing more. She looked straight at him. He frowned, but she turned and left the bridge before he could object again.

  There was no way they should be letting the Samson dock, Hoop knew. Or if it did dock, they had to sever all external operation of the airlock until they knew it was safe. There had been twenty miners taken down to the surface, and twenty more scheduled to return in the dropships. Two shifts of twenty men and women—but right now, the ten people still on the Marion had to be the priority.

  He moved to Baxter’s communication panel and checked the radar scanner again. The Samson had been tagged with its name now, and it looked to be performing a textbook approach, arcing up out of the atmosphere and approaching the orbiting Marion from the sunward side.

  “Lachance?” Hoop asked, pointing at the screen.

  “It’s climbing steeply. Jones is pushing it as hard and as fast as he can.”

  “Keen to reach the Marion.”

  “But that’s not right...” Lachance muttered.

  “What?” Hoop asked.

  “Delilah. She’s changing direction.”

  “Baxter,” Hoop said, “plot a course trace on the Delilah.”

  Baxter hit some buttons and the screen flickered as it changed. The Delilah grew a tail of blue dots, and its projected course appeared as a hazy fan.

  “Who’s piloting Delilah this drop?”

  “Gemma Keech,” Welford said. “She’s a good pilot.”

  “Not today she isn’t. Baxter, we need to talk to Delilah, or see what’s happening on board.”

  “I’m doing what I can.”

  “Yeah.” Hoop had a lot of respect for Baxter. He was a strange guy, not really a mixer at all—probably why he spent more of his time behind the bar than in front of it—but he was a whiz when it came to communications tech. If things went wrong, he was their potential lifeline to home, and as such one of the most important people on the Marion.

  “We have no idea what they’ve got on board,” Powell said. “Could be anything.”

  “Did he say there’s only six of them on the Samson?” Welford asked. “What about all the others?”

  Hoop shrugged. Each ship held twenty people and a pilot. If the Samson was returning less than half full—and they had no idea how many were on Delilah—then what had happened to the rest of them?

  He closed his eyes briefly, trying to gather himself.

  “I’ve got visual on Delilah!” Baxter said. He clicked a few more keys on his computer keyboard, then switched on one of the blank screens. “No audio, and there’s no response to my hails. Maybe...” But his voice trailed off.

  They all saw what was happening inside Delilah.

  The pilot, Gemma Keech, was screaming in her seat, terrified and determined, eyes glued to the window before her. It was haunting witnessing such fear in utter silence. Behind her, shadows thrashed and twisted.

  “Baxter,” Hoop whispered. “Camera.”

  Baxter stroked his keyboard and the view switched to a camera above and behind Keech’s head. It was a widescreen, compressing the image but taking in the entire passenger compartment.

  And there was blood.

  Three miners were kneeling directly behind the pilot. Two of them held spiked sand-picks, light alloy tools used for breaking through compacted sandstones. They were waving and lashing at something, but their target was just out of sight. The miner in the middle held a plasma torch.

  “He can’t use that in there,” Powell said. “If he does he’ll... he’ll... what the fuck?”

  Several miners seemed to have been strapped into their seats. Their heads were tilted back, chests a mess of blood and ripped clothing, protruding ribs and flesh. One of them still writhed and shook, and there was something coming out of her chest. Pulling itself out. A smooth curved surface glimmering with artificial light, it shone with her blood.

  Other miners were splayed on the floor of the cabin, and seemed to be dead. Shapes darted between them, slicing and slashing, and blood was splashed acros
s the floor, up the walls. It dripped from the ceiling.

  At the back of the passenger cabin, three small shapes were charging again and again at a closed door. There was a small bathroom back there, Hoop knew, just two stalls and a washbasin. And there was something in there the things wanted.

  Those things.

  Each was the size of a small cat, and looked to be a deep ochre color, glittering with the wetness of their unnatural births. They were somehow sharp-looking, like giant beetles or scorpions back home.

  The bathroom door was already heavily dented, and one side of it seemed to be caving in.

  “That’s two inch steel,” Hoop said.

  “We’ve got to help them,” Welford said.

  “I think they’re beyond that,” Sneddon said, and for a moment Hoop wanted to punch her. But she was right. Keech’s silent screaming bore testament to that. Whatever else they had seen, whatever the pilot already knew, the hopelessness of the Delilah’s situation was evident in her eyes.

  “Turn it off,” Hoop said, but Baxter could not comply. And all six of them on the bridge continued to watch.

  The creatures smashed through the bathroom door and squeezed inside, and figures jerked and thrashed.

  One of the miners holding a sand-pick flipped up and forward as if his legs had been knocked from beneath him. The man with the plasma torch slumped to the right, away from the struggling figure. Something many-legged scuttled across the camera, blotting everything from view for a blessed moment.

  When the camera was clear again, the plasma torch was already alight.

  “Oh, no,” Powell said.

  The flare was blinding white. It surged across the cabin, and for a terrible few seconds the strapped-down miners’ bodies were sizzling and flaming, clothes burning and flesh flowing. Only one of them writhed in his bindings, and the thing protruding from his chest burst aside, becoming a mass of fire streaking across the cabin.

  Then the plasma jet suddenly swept back and around, and everything went white.

  Baxter hit his keyboard, going back to the cockpit view, and Gemma Keech was on fire.

  He switched it off then. Even though everything they’d seen had been soundless, losing the image seemed to drop an awful silence across the bridge.

  It was Hoop who moved first. He hit the AllShip intercom button and winced at the whine of crackling feedback.

  “Lucy, we can’t let those ships dock,” he said into the microphone. “You hear me? The Delilah is... there are things on board. Monsters.” He closed his eyes, mourning his childhood’s lost innocence. “Everyone’s dead.”

  “Oh, no!” Lachance said.

  Hoop looked at him, and the Frenchman was staring down at the radar screen.

  “Too late,” Lachance whispered. Hoop saw, and cursed himself. He should have thought of this! He struck the button again and started shouting.

  “Jordan, Cornell, get out of there, get away from the docking level, far away as you can, run, run!” He only hoped they heard and took heed. But a moment later he realized it really didn’t matter.

  The stricken Delilah ploughed into the Marion, and the impact and explosion knocked them all from their feet.

  2

  SAMSON

  Everyone and everything was screaming.

  Several warning sirens blasted their individual songs— proximity alert; damage indicator; hull breach. People shouted in panic, confusion, and fear. And behind it all was a deep, rumbling roar from the ship itself. The Marion was in pain, and its vast bulk was grinding itself apart.

  Lucy and Cornell, Hoop thought from his position on the floor. But whether they were alive or dead didn’t change anything right now. He was senior officer on the bridge. As scared and shocked as all of them, but he had to take charge.

  He grabbed a fixed seat and hauled himself upright. Lights flashed. Cords, paneling, and strip-lights swung where they had been knocked from their mountings. Artificial gravity still worked, at least. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to recall his training. There had been an in-depth module in their pre-flight sessions, called “Massive Damage Control,” and their guide—a grizzled old veteran of seven solar system moon habitations and three deep space exploration flights—had finished each talk with, But don’t forget YTF.

  It took Hoop until the last talk to ask what he meant.

  “Don’t forget...” the vet said, “you’re truly fucked.”

  Everyone knew that a disaster like this meant the end. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t fight until the last.

  “Lachance!” Hoop said, but the pilot was already strapping himself into the flight seat that faced the largest window. His hands worked expertly across the controls, and if it weren’t for the insistent warning buzzers and sirens, Hoop might have been comforted.

  “What about Captain Jordan and Cornell?” Powell asked.

  “Not now,” Hoop said. “Is everyone all right?” He looked around the bridge. Baxter was strapping himself tight into his seat, dabbing at a bloodied nose. Welford and Powell held each other up against the curved wall at the bridge’s rear. Sneddon was on her hands and knees, blood dripping onto the floor beneath her.

  She was shaking.

  “Sneddon?” Hoop said.

  “Yeah.” She looked up at him. There was a deep cut across her right cheek and nose. Her eyes were hazy and unfocussed.

  Hoop went to her and helped her up, and Powell came with a first aid kit.

  The Marion was juddering. A new siren had started blaring, and in the confusion Hoop couldn’t identify it.

  “Lachance?”

  “Atmosphere venting,” he said. “Hang on.” He scanned his instruments, tapping keyboards, tracing patterns on screens that would mean little to anyone else. Jordan could pilot the Marion if she absolutely had to. But Lachance was the most experienced astronaut among them.

  “We’re screwed,” Powell said.

  “Shut it,” Welford told him.

  “That’s it,” Powell responded. “We’re screwed. Game over.”

  “Just shut up!” Welford shouted.

  “We should get to the escape pods!” Powell said.

  Hoop tried not to listen to the exchange. He focussed on Lachance, strapped tightly into the pilot’s seat and doing his best to ignore the rhythmic shuddering emanating from somewhere deep in the ship. That doesn’t feel good, he thought.

  The four docking bays were in a protruding level beneath the ship’s nose, more than five hundred yards from the engine room. Yet an impact like that could have caused catastrophic structural damage throughout the ship. The surest way to see the damage would be to view it firsthand, but the quickest assessment would come from their pilot and his instruments.

  “Get out,” Powell continued, “get away before the Marion breaks up, down to the surface and—”

  “And what?” Hoop snapped without turning around. “Survive on sand for the two years it’ll take a rescue mission to reach us? If the company even decides a rescue is feasible,” he added. “Now shut it!”

  “Okay,” Lachance said. He rested his hands on the flight stick, and Hoop could almost feel him holding his breath. Hoop had always been amazed that such a huge vessel could be controlled via this one small control.

  Lachance called it The Jesus Stick.

  “Okay,” the pilot said again. “Looks like the Delilah took out the port arm of the docking level, Bays One and Two. Three might be damaged, can’t tell, sensors there are screwed. Four seems to be untouched. Atmosphere is venting from levels three, four, and five. All bulkhead doors have closed, but some secondary safety seals have malfunctioned and are still leaking.”

  “So the rest of the Marion is airtight for now?” Hoop asked.

  “For now, yes.” Lachance pointed at a schematic of the ship on one of his screens. “There’s still stuff going on at the crash site, though. I can’t see what, but I suspect there’s lots of debris moving around down there. Any part of that could do more damage
to the ship. Rad levels seem constant, so I don’t think the Delilah’s fuel cell was compromised. But if its containment core is floating around down there...” He trailed off.

  “So what’s the good news?” Sneddon asked.

  “That was the good news,” Lachance said. “Marion’s lost two of her lateral dampers, three out of seven starboard sub-thrusters are out of action. And there’s this.” He pointed at another screen where lines danced and crossed.

  “Orbital map?” Hoop asked.

  “Right. We’ve been nudged out of orbit. And with those dampers and subs wasted, there’s no way to fix it.”

  “How long?” Powell asked.

  Lachance shrugged his muscular shoulders.

  “Not quick. I’ll have to run some calculations.”

  “But we’re all right for now?” Hoop asked. “The next minute, the next hour?”

  “As far as I can see, yes.”

  Hoop nodded and turned to the others. They were staring at him, and he was sure he returned their fear and shock. But he had to get a grip, and keep it. Move past this initial panic, shift into post-crash mode as quickly as he could.

  “Kasyanov and Garcia?” he asked, looking at Baxter.

  Baxter nodded and hit AllShip on the intercom.

  “Kasyanov? Garcia?”

  Nothing.

  “Maybe the med bay vented,” Powell said. “It’s forward from here, not far above the docking bays.”

  “Try on their personal comms,” Hoop said.

  Baxter tapped keyboards and donned his headpiece again.

  “Kasyanov, Garcia, you there?” He winced, then threw a switch that put what he heard on loudspeaker. There was a whine, interrupted by staccato ragged thudding.

  “What the hell...?” they heard Kasyanov say, and everyone sighed with relief.

  “You both okay?” Baxter asked.

  “Fine. Trapped by... but okay. What happened?”

  “Delilah hit us.” Baxter glanced up at Hoop.

  “Tell them to stay where they are for now,” Hoop said. “Let’s stabilize things before we start moving around anymore.”