Alien - Invasion E-Book

Tim Lebbon

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Rage War
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 402

Beschreibung

The second original novel in an Alien vs Predator "Rage War" series, continuing from Predator: Incursion as Colonial Marines units are being wiped out - and not by the Predators. This is an attack by organized armies of Aliens.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

What has Gone Before…

  1. Johnny Mains

  2. Rommel

  3. Victims

  4. Isa Palant

  5. Gerard Marshall

  6. Beatrix Maloney

  7. Jiango Tann

  8. Liliya

  9. Akoko Halley

10. Johnny Mains

11. Liliya

12. Beatrix Maloney

13. Gerard Marshall

14. Johnny Mains

15. Jiango Tann

16. Isa Palant

17. Johnny Mains

18. Isa Palant

19. Liliya

20. Isa Palant

21. Johnny Mains

22. Gerard Marshall

23. Beatrix Maloney

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

DON’T MISS A SINGLE INSTALLMENT OF THE RAGE WAR BY TIMLEBBON:

PREDATOR: INCURSION

ALIEN: INVASION

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR:

ARMAGEDDON (SEPTEMBER 2016)

READ ALL OF THE EXCITING ALIEN™ NOVELS FROM TITAN BOOKS

ALIEN™: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

ALIEN: SEA OF SORROWS

ALIEN: RIVER OF PAIN

THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATIONS:

ALIEN

ALIENS™

ALIEN3

ALIEN: RESURRECTION

THE COMPLETE ALIENS OMNIBUS COLLECTION:

VOLUME 1

VOLUME 2(JUNE 2016)

VOLUME 3(DECEMBER 2016)

VOLUME 4(JUNE 2017)

VOLUME 5(DECEMBER 2017)

VOLUME 6(JUNE 2018)

VOLUME 7(DECEMBER 2018)

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN COMICS

ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY

ALIEN™: INVASION

Print edition ISBN: 9781783296095E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296101

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: April 201610 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

™ & © 2016 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the USA.

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For Lemmy.Born to lose, lived to win.

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE…

THE RAGE WAR: BOOK 1

PREDATOR: INCURSION

When Yautja attacks across the Human Sphere of space grow in frequency, Colonial Marine units are put on high alert. Soon, an invasion is feared.

Meanwhile Liliya—an android—escapes from the Rage. Originally known as the Founders, the Rage are humans who have fled beyond the Human Sphere over the course of centuries. Now led by Beatrix Maloney, they are on their way back, bearing alien-inspired technology and weapons far exceeding those possessed by the Colonial Marines or Weyland-Yutani. Maloney’s aim is the subjugation and control of the Human Sphere.

When Liliya flees, she carries with her a sample of their technology that might help humanity fight back. Maloney sends Alexander, one of her best generals, in pursuit.

Isa Palant is a research scientist fascinated with the Yautja. Slowly learning their language, she is almost killed in a terrorist attack on the base where she is stationed. It’s one of many such attacks instigated by the Rage across the Human Sphere in preparation for their return.

Johnny Mains is leader of an Excursionist unit, a Colonial Marine outfit created to keep watch on a Yautja habitat beyond the Sphere. When someone—or something—attacks the habitat, Mains and his crew crash-land there. What they discover is beyond belief.

The Yautja aren’t invading the Human Sphere. They are fleeing an assault by weaponized Xenomorphs.

This is the army of the Rage.

At the end of Book One:

Isa Palant and Major Akoko Halley, the Colonial Marine sent to rescue her, confront the Yautja elder Kalakta and broker an unsteady peace between humans and Yautja.

Liliya, taken into custody on a Yautja ship and tortured at the hands of the warrior called Hashori, escapes with her captor when the Rage general Alexander closes in and attacks.

Lieutenant Johnny Mains and his surviving crew member, Lieder, are trapped on the Yautja habitat UMF 12. They have witnessed and fought the weaponized Xenomorphs, and a Rage general, Patton, is also aboard, seriously injured. Mains and Lieder have witnessed evidence of ancient human colony ships, returning from the dark depths of unexplored space. They theorize that these could be used as birthing grounds for tens of thousands more Xenomorph soldiers.

The Rage are coming…

1

JOHNNY MAINS

Yautja Habitat designated UMF 12, beyond Outer RimSeptember 2692 AD

General Patton was laughing, and Lieutenant Johnny Mains, leader of what was left of the 5th Excursionists, the VoidLarks, knew that he was going to die.

He refused to go without a fight.

The scratching, scampering sounds of the approaching Xenomorphs grew louder. They were nearing the bridge of this strange ship, perhaps called by their android master, or attacking of their own volition. Either way, it would mean the end. Mains and his one surviving Excursionist, Lieder, were low on ammunition. Their combat suits were depleted. They had fought well and lost many good friends along the way, but this was their last stand.

“We stay together,” Mains said. “Concentrated fire. Keep them at the doors—once they’re onto the bridge they’ll spread out and take us down. Ammo?”

“Com-rifle has some nano, low laser charge, one plasma shot. Sidearm. You?”

“Shotgun. Couple of grenades.”

“We might as well spit at them.”

“We’ll take a few. Last grenade’s for us.”

Lieder glanced at him as she drew closer. No objection there, and he was glad. They’d watched too many people die beneath a Xenomorph’s attack to have any intention of going that way. At least hugging a grenade between them would ensure they’d die together.

The android Patton chuckled again, a wet, mechanical sound that grated on Mains’s nerves.

“Can’t I shoot him?” Lieder asked. She knew the answer. It would be a waste of ammunition.

Patton remained pinned to the rear wall of the ship’s bridge by a Yautja spear. Splayed at his feet were the bodies of a single Yautja and innumerable dead Xenomorphs, their slick carapaces burst apart from when they’d self-destructed at the moment of death. Countless acid burns splashed and scarred the walls and floor, and the acrid stench still hung on the air.

Mains had never heard of a Xenomorph doing that before. Suicide is a Yautja trick, he mused. Just another mystery.

“They’re close,” Lieder said.

Mains didn’t need telling. His suit’s systems were low on charge and glitching, after all he’d been through, but they still projected a motion image onto his visor. The trace was large, and close.

Patton made a strange, new sound. Straining, groaning, electrical clicks and ticks rattling behind his inhuman voice. Mains had the nagging urge to communicate with the android, get some answers. That he commanded the Xenomorphs was clear—his name was stamped on a patch of exoskeleton at the back of each of their heads. How did he do it? What did he want? Where had he originated, and why had he attacked this huge Yautja habitat?

Mains hated the idea of dying without knowing.

“Been an honor, Johnny,” Lieder said, squeezing his hand.

“Fuck sentimentality, Private,” Mains said, but he squeezed back.

“Here they come.”

The first Xenomorph darted through the doorway and onto the bridge. Lieder sliced it neck to crotch with a laser blast, and it thrashed across the floor and against the wall, body bursting and acid blood spraying as it self-destructed.

Two more followed. Mains fired his antique shotgun three times at the first. It dropped from view behind a control panel, then leapt again, leaking corrosive blood and coming right for him. Another shot put it down.

Lieder killed the third creature with a nano burst, the specks flowering in a thousand explosions across the entrance to the bridge. It caught another couple of Xenomorphs down in the approach corridor, and when the first detonated it must have killed the second, their death throes thudding through the ship.

Patton was becoming more agitated, writhing on the wall, grasping at the heavy Yautja spear that pinned him there, attempting to tug it away. He would not succeed. Sparks danced at the spear’s entry point in his chest, miniature lightning storms arcing between android and weapon and back again. He scratched at the shaft, and then tried to force his fingers inside the wound.

“Plasma!” Lieder shouted.

Three more Xenomorphs were coming through the entrance to the bridge, two on the level and one crawling across the ceiling like a monstrous spider. Mains’s visor darkened automatically as Lieder unloaded her last remaining plasma charge in their direction. The blast struck the one on the ceiling, and it disintegrated in a sun-hot eruption, melted flesh and sinew blazing as it showered across its brethren below. They screeched in agony, scampered further onto the bridge, slumped down and burst apart.

The air filled with a haze of superheated gas. Their combat suits filtered much of it from view, but it still seemed to Mains that his visor was misting up.

Patton wailed, a horrible, high sound that descended into something like laughter. It was a strange android, features bland and only superficially human, with no apparent attempt to convey a personality or make it in any way distinctive. That served to render its very human sounds of distress and frustration even more haunting.

Maybe I should have put a shotgun blast in its head, Mains thought.

The plasma burst had set a white-hot fire around the entrance, and for a few seconds the attacking Xenomorphs held back.

“They won’t wait long,” Mains said.

“Don’t want them to,” Lieder said. “I’m all fired up. What the hell is he doing?” She nodded at Patton. Both of his hands were now pressing into the wound in his chest, fingers-deep in his fleshy outer layers, silvery charged arcs dancing from knuckle to knuckle.

“Doesn’t matter,” Mains said. “Our Yautja friends have already taken care of him.”

The Yautja were not their friends. Far from it. For more than a year Mains’s unit—the 5th Excursionists, nicknamed the VoidLarks—had been shadowing the massive Yautja habitat designated UMF 12, keeping a careful eye on the strange aliens and ensuring that they launched no ships toward the Outer Rim. Just recently there had been a spate of Yautja attacks across the Rim, incursions that resulted in hunts and deaths. The VoidLarks had been involved in one of these, called to Southgate Station 12 while on a rare resupply run. They’d lost two of their crew of eight taking on the Yautja there, and that had seemed like a huge loss.

Upon returning to station a million miles from UMF 12, they’d soon become involved in more fighting as Yautja ships launched back toward the Human Sphere. Damaged in a deep space contact, they’d crash-landed their Arrow ship the Ochse on the huge habitat, then survived for a month with only occasional contacts. Running, hiding, it had been the sighting of this large, mysterious ship that had steered events toward a bloody end. Neither recognizably human nor Yautja, the ship had become their objective, and it would be their resting place.

That end was now close. With only two of them left out of the original eight, the VoidLarks were fighting their last.

Patton chuckled again as he noticed them watching him. It was a haunting sound, filled with humor yet coming from an expressionless face. His eyes were deep and dark, giving away nothing. His blood was too white, skin too pasty and pale.

“L-T!” Lieder shouted.

Mains crouched and fired as more Xenomorphs surged through the plasma flames and the remains of their kin. There were six of them, then eight, and he primed and heaved one of his two grenades toward the bridge’s lower level.

He and Lieder ducked, the explosion tore through control panels and Xenomorph skin, and as they stood and started shooting again three more aliens were spitting and melting on the floor.

“Back up,” Mains said, his voice raised over the hideous sounds. “Toward the end wall, both of us together.”

“I’m not retreating anymore,” Lieder said. Through the explosions, shrieking, and chaos, her voice was transmitted directly into his ear through his combat suit’s headset. Her determination and fury made him proud.

“It’s not a retreat,” he said, and when she looked he showed her his last grenade. “We press this between us and the wall and it might just vent the ship to space.”

The alien ship was secured to one of the long mooring towers protruding from the end of the Yautja habitat. Its atmosphere was thin but breathable, and the habitat maintained an artificial gravity that meant they could move from one place to another without having to float.

But one hole punched through the ship’s hull, and everything would be sucked out into the void. The remains of their bodies, twisted together in death, mingling with the corpses of Yautja and the shreds of Xenomorphs scattered across the bridge—and anything else left alive.

“What a way to go,” Lieder said.

“Spin!” Mains shouted.

Lieder reacted instantly, finger closing on her trigger as she crouched and spun. She had her laser set on widest spread, and she took down two Xenomorphs with one burst. Another barreled into her, knocking her from her feet, crushing her down to the floor, its arms slapping her weapon aside as its head dipped down.

Mains saw her eyes go wide, and she turned to look at him.

He stepped forward and fired his last shotgun shell into the side of the Xenomorph’s head. Its acid blood sprayed, spattering across his hand and forearm and dropping onto Lieder’s chest. Their suits hardened against it, repelling the acid, but their charges were dangerously low, and he soon started to feel the burn as the toxic fluid ate into the weakened material.

He threw the shotgun aside, sorry to lose it. An antique, and hardly standard issue, it had saved his life on more than one occasion. Now it had saved Lieder’s, just in time for both of them to die.

She scrambled to her feet and they locked arms, backing quickly across the bridge. Much of the equipment was mysterious, but there was enough here to recognize. This ship looked to have been built and sent by humans, its purpose to attack a huge Yautja habitat with weaponized Xenomorphs, their leader a mad android. Once again Mains was struck by regret, that they’d die without uncovering what this all meant.

More Xenomorphs appeared and stalked them. Moving slowly now, seeing their prey defenseless, perhaps even now they were somehow listening to Patton’s command.

The android twisted and tensed on the wall, still trying to delve into his own ruined chest. Reaching for something. Trying to fix something that was broken, perhaps.

Mains held the grenade behind his back and pressed it to the wall. Behind him, less than a hand’s width away, was cold dark space. He would meet it soon.

Lieder stepped in front of him, face to face, and pressed herself to him. More of the grenade’s blast would be forced against the wall that way. It also meant that they could kiss. The clear suit masks meant that it was not real, but the thin material flexed, and Mains imagined he could taste her breath and feel the heat of her against him.

“Private, you’re crossing a line,” he muttered.

Lieder smiled.

His thumb stroked the grenade’s priming button. One more press and they’d have five seconds.

He pressed.

She knew.

Five…

His comms unit crackled and whistled. “Johnny Mains, you bastard, hold onto something!”

Four…

“What the hell was that?” she muttered.

Three…

Mains knew that voice.

The Xenomorphs, perhaps sensing that something had changed, surged toward them. There were six of them leaping the control panels, limbs skittering and scratching.

Two…

“Hold onto me as tightly as you can!” Mains shouted. He lobbed the grenade across the room and fell sideways, kicking his way beneath a control panel and dragging Lieder with him.

One…

“Grapple and harness!” For a split-second he thought his combat suit was out of charge, and couldn’t obey his command. Then he heard the faint hiss of his waist pack firing the small grappling hook. It bounced against the heavy panel behind his back, then burrowed inside, barbed hooks splaying and holding it tight.

The grenade exploded. A Xenomorph shrieked. Mains and Lieder held each other. The blast whistled in his ears.

“Don’t you fucking dare let go of me,” he said.

“Johnny, what the hell’s happening?”

An alien blocked out the light. Its shadow was sharp and vicious, teeth dripping, limbs reaching for them as it hissed in victory.

“Durante is happening,” he said.

The second explosion was much larger than the first. The floor bucked beneath them, light bloomed and flashed, and then the whole world was screaming. Mains kept his eyes open, though his suit had shaded its visor to protect his eyes from the glare. Something tugged at him and Lieder and he squeezed her tight, locking his limbs around her, determined that if she went, he would go too.

It’ll tear us apart, he thought, pull off our limbs, open us up and—

It wasn’t the Xenomorph pulling them.

Atmosphere was venting. A hole had been blown in the ship’s hull, somewhere out of sight, and air was being expelled into the vacuum, screaming across the bridge and carrying with it anything that wasn’t screwed down. That included the dead aliens and Yautja, tumbling and colliding as they went, as well as the living Xenomorphs that had been coming at them across the wide space.

His suit’s wire and grapple strained tight, but held fast.

He only hoped it would last.

As Mains’s visor cleared he adjusted position, turning onto his side so that he and Lieder could see beneath the control panel and across the room. The hole was small, the size of a normal door, but constantly expanded as heavy objects smashed through. Two Xenomorphs flew straight out, then a third grabbed hold of the hole’s edge, spidery fingers digging into the damaged superstructure. Detritus struck it several times. It held on, pulling, actually hauling itself against the flow.

A human corpse crashed into the alien and they both disappeared into the void. Faulkner had been Mains’s friend. He’d died bravely, and now he was out there forever, tumbling into infinity.

The flow of venting air lessened. Somewhere in the strange ship blast doors must have been closing. Sound retreated, and a few seconds later they found themselves subsumed within a haunting, threatening silence.

Lieder stood first, helping Mains to his feet. They now carried only a sidearm each, and Mains knew that his laser pistol’s charge was down to just one or two swift shots.

The android, Patton, was dead at last. Whatever he had been attempting had failed, when the blast had driven a fist-sized chunk of metal into his face. His head was a bloody mess of flesh, titanium skull, and ruined insides, his unimaginably complex computing power destroyed in an instant. Artificial he might have been, but in reality the android was as frail as any human.

“Johnny!” Lieder said. She slapped his shoulder, reaching for her sidearm with her other hand. He spun and peered in the direction she was facing.

There was movement at the ragged hole in the ship’s hull. As he saw what it was, he thought for a moment he might be dreaming.

Maybe he was already dead.

“Wait,” he said, holding her arm.

“Holy shit,” Lieder said.

Two shapes entered through the hole, safety lines extending behind them and out into space. They were heavily armed.

“Oxygen levels critical,” his suit said. He might have ten minutes of air remaining.

“What the hell sort of trouble have you been kicking up?” a voice asked.

“Durante,” Mains said. “Eddie… really?”

The man who stepped forward must have been almost seven feet tall, broad and powerful, his combat suit straining at the seams even though it would have been specially made for him.

“Always said you’d need rescuing one day,” the huge figure replied. He grinned at Lieder. “And who are you?”

“Hitting on her already?” Mains asked.

Durante shrugged.

Mains laughed. “She’d have your balls for dinner.”

Durante looked around the smashed ship’s bridge as another shape dropped through the hole behind him from above.

“Seen some action, Johnny.”

“It’s been a tough few weeks.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What does that mean?” Mains asked.

Durante looked at him strangely.

“We’ve been cut off here. No communications in or out, other than a signal we sent a few minutes ago.”

“So you don’t know anything that’s been happening?”

“No. Why?”

“I’ll tell you on board the Navarro. You all that’s left?”

“Yeah. How did you know about us?”

“Picked up a distress signal from the Ochse. Where is it?”

The Ochse had exploded minutes after crash-landing them safely on the habitat, following a tough contact with some Yautja ships departing UMF 12. Frodo, the ship’s computer, must have broadcast a distress signal seconds before being blasted into memory.

“It’s toast,” Mains said. He’d grown close to Frodo. The ship’s computer had developed a personality, and they’d all thought of it as another member of the crew.

Durante grunted, then gestured for them to follow.

“Unless you’ve grown to like this place…”

“Get us the fuck out of here,” Lieder said, “and have your ship prep a channel to Tyszka Star.”

“Sounds like we’ve both got plenty of news to share,” Durante said as they prepared to leave.

Mains and Lieder held onto each other as they crossed the bridge under the watchful gaze of Eddie Durante and his fellow members of the HellSparks.

Mains hadn’t seen the big man in over six years. A fellow Excursionist, he’d been in command of one of the other Arrow-class ships tasked with patrolling beyond the Outer Rim. They’d done some training together at Tyszka Star, and years before that they’d shared time in the same Colonial Marine regiment. They hadn’t been close friends back then, but when they’d both been selected for Excursionist training, they’d grown to like each other. Still, Mains had never expected to see Durante again. Such was the life of an Excursionist.

“Thanks for coming by,” he said as they approached the smoking hole in the hull.

“Wasn’t busy,” Durante said. He and Mains stared out over the huge, curved surface of the Yautja habitat, and into the impersonal void of space surrounding them.

Mains did not believe in God, but as he and Lieder were helped over to the Navarro, he gave thanks to Eddie Durante.

* * *

Like all Arrow-class ships, the Navarro had been customized on the inside by its HellSpark crew. It maintained a similar layout to the Ochse, but it still felt like a strange ship.

As they passed through the airlock and their combat suits cycled down, Mains and Lieder pulled themselves into flight seats while Durante’s medic gave them the once-over.

A small, elfish woman, Radcliffe accessed their suits’ CSUs to assess current physical condition and medical needs.

“Hell, what have you guys been doing down there?” she asked. Checking the readouts on a floating holo frame, she glanced at Lieder with what might have been awe.

“Relaxing,” Lieder said. “Few drinks in the evening, game of backgammon, nice slow screw before bed.”

“Right,” Radcliffe said. “Well, I’ll concoct a stew of shit to pump into you both, might make you feel a bit better.”

“Worse wouldn’t be possible,” Mains said. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem.” Radcliffe called over a medical unit and connected it to the holo frame, stroking controls and watching as a selection of medicines were selected. While she worked, Durante slouched down in a seat across from them.

“We’re getting outta here,” he said. “Sensors indicate that weird ship’s still got nasties roaming beyond the blast doors.”

“They’ll break through and come at the ship, if they can,” Mains said.

“Into vacuum?” Durante asked.

“They were controlled,” Lieder said. “The android you saw, dead now, but he called himself Patton—and somehow he was giving them orders.”

“Weaponized Xenomorphs?” Durante’s eyes widened.

Mains nodded. His head swam, and he felt sickness rising. He swallowed it down. Now was not the time.

“Patton… Patton…” Durante said, frowning.

“Twentieth-century general,” Lieder said.

“Just what the hell?” Durante said. “How can this have anything to do with the Yautja incursion?”

“The what?”

Durante told them. About the contacts across the Outer Rim, battles, and Yautja incursions deeper into the Human Sphere, as well as the various instances of sabotage against Weyland-Yutani and Colonial Marine bases. Death tolls were huge. Excursionists were being called back in from beyond the Rim to patrol the borders, and even though some sort of ceasefire had apparently been established, they were still on a war footing.

“Yautja don’t invade,” Lieder said.

“That’s what makes it so worrying,” Durante said.

“It’s not that.” Mains shook his head. The sickness rose again, and this time he had to lean to the side and bring it all up. Feeling dreadful, he heaved several times, spattering the floor and the seat’s legs. He was only thankful that the Navarro’s artificial gravity had been engaged. He wished he could expunge every awful memory of the past few weeks, of all his friends he had seen die.

“You puked on my ship,” Durante said.

“Yeah.” Mains wiped his mouth. “Sorry ’bout that. But Eddie, I need to send a message back to Tyszka Star. It’s not where the Yautja are going we’ve got to worry about. It’s what they’re running from.”

* * *

Mains knew it would take General Wendy Hetfield, the leader of the Excursionists, some time to receive his broadcast and send a response. He also knew that Durante was getting edgy, eager to leave UMF 12 behind and continue his journey back to the Outer Rim.

Nevertheless, he persuaded his friend to maintain a steady orbit around the habitat while he sent the brief signal. It was important, he said. It might be the most important message he’d ever send. When Durante asked him what it was about, Mains invited him to sit in and listen.

In fact, he invited all the crew. They came and watched, all eight HellSparks, him, and Lieder cramped onto a bridge designed for eight. Durante took up enough space for two of them.

Mains and Lieder were feeling better, systems awash with a cocktail of drugs courtesy of Radcliffe. Their various injuries would be treated, and soon, but the effects of several weeks of constant combat, dehydration, and borderline starvation would take longer to recover from. The drugs could only act as a buffer.

He sat silently for a moment as he composed the message. As he did so, he had the feeling he might be defining all of their futures. Then he began.

“This is Lieutenant Johnny Mains of the 5th Excursionists, VoidLarks. After thirty days aboard the Yautja habitat designated UMF 12, we’ve been picked up by Lieutenant Eddie Durante and his 19th Excursionists. Six of my eight crew are dead, myself and Private Lieder the only survivors. Our ship the Ochse is gone. During our time on UMF 12 we’ve discovered some troubling information.

“Initially we were fighting the Yautja. As usual with their species, more often than not they attacked individually, and we made several attempts to board Yautja vessels with the intention of stealing one to escape, but we couldn’t fly any of them. Then we discovered a strange ship docked at one end of the habitat. We started finding Yautja corpses that looked as though they’d been ripped apart. We suspected some sort of internal feud, but we were proved wrong.

“Xenomorphs were present on the habitat. They had arrived on the strange ship, which although largely mysterious to us was almost certainly of human origin. There was an android on board calling itself Patton, named after a twentieth-century general, and it seems that Patton was in control of the Xenomorphs. Someone, somewhere, has weaponized the species.

“When mortally wounded the Xenomorphs self-destruct, sometimes exploding, sometimes melting down. Parts of their exoskeletons can survive, and in several instances we found Patton’s name stamped on them, on the carapace at the back of the head. It was a mark of ownership.”

Mains looked around at the Navarro’s crew. Some seemed shocked, while a couple looked at him as though he were mad. He could understand their skepticism. Thin, weak, battered, he’d obviously been through a lot. Perhaps they suspected him of space sickness.

Yet Lieder sat beside him, silently supportive, and no two people could suffer the same delusions.

“There’s more,” he said. “We reached the ship’s bridge, and moments before the Xenomorphs launched a final attack, and Lieutenant Durante and his HellSparks came to our rescue, Private Lieder detected some strange signals registering on one of the ship’s deep space scanners. I’d do best to let Lieder tell you what she saw.”

Mains nodded at Lieder. She leaned forward and spoke into the holo frame, her image and words being stored ready to be sent across light years of space. Mains knew that they would have great effect.

He still found it difficult to believe them himself.

“I detected traces of ships approaching the Outer Rim, way beyond even where UMF 12 is drifting. My combat suit has… modifications. I’ve got access to certain forbidden quantum folds that the Company might not… anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that at least seven of these traces indicated that they were human. Fiennes ships.”

A murmur passed through the crew. Durante raised his eyebrow at Mains. Mains nodded.

“They were traveling at incredibly high speeds,” Lieder said. “Certainly faster than any Fiennes ships were ever designed to travel, and perhaps even faster than Arrow ships. My suit CSU identified two of these ships as the Susco-Foley and the Aaron-Percival, both of which left the Sol System centuries ago. None of these ships were ever meant to return, and each of them carried tens of thousands of colonists in cryo-suspension. With Xenomorphs involved, our fears are…” She trailed off.

“Nurseries,” Mains said, leaning in again. “We’re afraid that whoever the android is working with, or for, has weaponized the Xenomorphs, and is about to launch an assault on the Human Sphere using old Fiennes ships as nurseries for their new weapons.”

The bridge fell silent. Mains knew that this was pure speculation, and that he and Lieder had gone beyond fact and into the arena of supposition, but the facts spoke for themselves.

“Awaiting orders,” he said, then he nodded at Durante’s comms officer, who turned off the holo frame.

“Fuck,” someone said.

“You good to send?” Mains asked. The comms officer nodded, then looked to Durante for confirmation.

“Let it fly,” Durante said. “Then we’ll fill in our friends here on what’s been happening while they’ve been on vacation with the Yautja. Seems to me our lives are about to get interesting.”

2

ROMMEL

Drophole Gamma 123, Outer RimOctober 2692 AD

Mistress Maloney:

They have designated it drophole Gamma 123. For the honor of the Rage, once it is taken I will pronounce it as Drophole One. We’re closing in, mere hours away from our target, and now our war truly begins.

All my troops are ready. More than two thousand are hatched, with ten times that many in reserve. They’re vicious and fearless, deadly and expendable, and that’s why we are unbeatable and unstoppable. No one has ever had an army like this.

Today we make history.

Tomorrow we begin to rewrite it.

Your General,

Rommel

Another one completed.

Captain Nathan McBrain was a record breaker. At seventy-seven years old, he was at an age when most people might consider easing back on their work and taking on other ventures. Some might choose exploring.

One such group was called the one-wayers, elderly space travelers who cashed in all their credits and sold any possessions to purchase a ship of their own and blast off into the void. A class of ship had been manufactured especially for these people. They were cheap and flimsy, not necessarily built to last, but liable to outlast their new owners. Much of the cheapness came from their drives, solid-fuel boosters lacking any real control systems.

Choose a target area in the sky, aim, burn the fuel until it failed—which usually took less than a standard day—and then cruise at that speed forever. Many saw it as a form of suicide, but for those one-wayers who chose this life, it was the bravest form of space exploration, because there was no way back. A true voyage of discovery.

Others settled somewhere out in the Sphere, buying an apartment on a commercial station or settlement, often spending time writing of their adventures or staring at the stars and dreaming of new ones. It was a way of slowing their pace, almost shutting down, settling at last and letting death catch up with them.

A few might decide to return to the place of their birth, but McBrain hadn’t been back to Earth in over sixty years, and he had no intention of returning there now. If anything, and if the Company sanctioned it, he’d be keen to travel another five years beyond the Rim to build, commission, and activate drophole Gamma 124.

As captain of the Titan ship Gagarin, he was responsible for Gamma 113 to 123, eleven dropholes constructed across a forty-year career. Dedication to his mission meant that he’d never married or had children, though there had been relationships with members of the crews who came and went. He’d spent his whole life working to expand the Outer Rim and further the human desire to explore. He hadn’t done it for fame or fortune. McBrain was simply a man who liked to explore, and a captain who loved his job and was proud of what he had achieved.

“Final checks should be complete in two days,” Clintock said. He was systems manager, a small, intense man who often surprised with his cutting humor. “But it’s looking good. All systems green. Containment fields at max, fuel pods secure, dark matter stable.”

“Good, good,” McBrain said. Clintock carried on talking, running through a series of checks and reports that McBrain had heard a thousand times before, so he let his attention drift. He allowed himself that, from time to time, and now more than ever he thought he deserved it. He’d built up a superb team around him over the past decade—this was the third drophole they’d completed together—and even though he knew that all of the checks were essential, he also knew that if there was something amiss, they’d have all been made aware of it by now.

Hell, they might have been dead by now.

Relaxing back in his chair, he enjoyed looking through the Gagarin’s vast bridge window at what he and his crews had achieved. Around him, the murmur of conversations was muted, the lighting low. Each of the fourteen-member bridge crew was lit from his or her screen.

When pulled together for interstellar travel, the Gagarin was a huge vessel composed of unique parts that combined to make the whole. But when they were stationary, working in a single location as they had been for the past four months, those disparate sections were spread over twenty spherical miles of space. They ranged from the main Gagarin control center—incorporating the bridge, repair port, and the main quarters for most of the scientists and construction staff—to the four small craft that orbited the newly completed drophole structure itself. There were storage vessels, tugs, a hospital ship, welfare centers for the crews, a green dome for growing their food, two recreation blocks, and a score of smaller craft involved in the maneuver and construction processes.

Right now the larger ships were all on station between Gagarin and the drophole, smaller ships flitting back and forth carrying crew and supplies to various places. With the drophole successfully commissioned and days away from first drop, it would soon be time to draw the main craft together again. More than forty docking procedures would be overseen by the Gagarin’s AI computer Yuri, and then the ship would be whole once more.

McBrain felt the calm satisfaction of a job well done, but also the curious fluttering in his stomach at the prospect of another couple of years’ travel to the next proposed location.

Further away, orbiting the site at various points and distances, were the Colonial Marines’ ships. There were always two ships on station with a Titan as standard, providing escorts and protection for the vast drophole-building ships. McBrain had been reminded on countless occasions of the value of his charge, running into billions of credits, and he had always felt comfortable with the military presence.

It was rare that Marines and Titan crews ever crossed paths.

There were isolated cases over the past few decades of Titan ships being attacked by pirates, Yautja, or elements of Red Four when the anti-Weyland-Yutani terrorist group had an active presence across the Rim, but the Gagarin herself had never been subject to an attack or problem requiring military assistance. Any internal problems were dealt with by McBrain and his supporting officers.

He knew that his career had been blessed. He’d heard of other Titan ships being destroyed when their dropholes went into meltdown at initiation, suffering cataclysmic damage from asteroid impacts, becoming infested with exotic vermin, or even being selected as a staging ground for Yautja hunts.

There had been the case of one ship, the Peake, being chased along the Rim by a determined band of pirates, their stolen vessels proving a match for the Colonial Marine escorts. The Titan ship itself was broken down and the constituent parts were used as weapons against the aggressors.

McBrain had read the Peake’s captain’s famous account, A Year of Hell, and although he admired what she and her crew had eventually achieved, he sought no such adventures. The Peake had lost half of its eight-hundred-person crew during that year, and many of those left alive were permanently damaged by the events. They were scientists and spacefarers, not soldiers.

So six Colonial Marine ships patrolled around the Gagarin and Gamma 123. Over the past couple of months there had been reports of Yautja attacks across this sector of the Outer Rim, and the Marines were constantly on a war footing. There had also been a series of attacks within the Human Sphere—sabotage assaults that had resulted in some horrific disasters and loss of life. He was troubled by this, but comforted by the additional security sent their way. The ships cruised anywhere up to ten thousand miles around Gamma 123, and any aggressors entering the region would be dealt with long before they reached the Gagarin.

Beyond the spread of ships and service vessels, the drophole itself presented a vast, awesome spectacle.

McBrain never tired of viewing the end product of their mammoth efforts.

The drophole was a complete circular unit, more than two miles in diameter and comprising fifty thousand tons of diamond-filament compound. The factory that manufactured the compound was one of the Gagarin’s largest units, and he could see the blocky vessel now, seven miles to starboard and buzzing with activity as the decommissioning process was finalized. At its maximum production speed, its output was phenomenal—a thousand tons of the super-hard material spewing from its egress ports each day. The compound was gathered by catcher-ships, then transported to the drophole frame and molded into place.

The drophole glimmered in starlight. Diamond-filament was used because, apart from trimonite, it was the hardest compound known to man. A pleasing side effect of its use was its reflective properties, catching starlight and casting it out again. On rare occasions, and if caught at just the right angle, the entire circular surface of a drophole glowed like a rainbow.

At five locations around the drophole frame were the bulkier containment blocks. These were the real guts of the device. They housed the heavy containment fields behind which science and mystery collided. McBrain had never pretended to truly understand how the dropholes worked. Indeed, he’d heard it said that only a dozen people in the Human Sphere even came close to understanding. What he did know was that the containment fields were the most important aspect of the whole drophole’s construction.

If they failed, the anti-matter they contained would interact with matter, and cause a cataclysmic explosion.

Since the early days of this arcane technology, more than a thousand dropholes had been built and commissioned. Around a hundred had failed to initiate, for reasons that were never quite clear. Scores had ended in tragedy. With the accelerated expansion and ever-growing reach of the Human Sphere, a dozen Titan ships had been lost in the last century alone when the dropholes they were building suffered failure.

It was a risky career.

McBrain comforted himself with the idea that if a containment field ever did fail, on a project he was overseeing, he wouldn’t know anything about it. He and his entire crew would be vaporized before knowing anything was wrong.

“Boss?”

“Eh?”

“Sorry, boss,” Clintock said, “I didn’t realize it was time for your afternoon nap.”

“Smartass.”

Clintock smiled. “I said, we’re ready for the first drop.” He peered out through the viewport. “Another one bites the dust, eh, Nathan?”

“Yeah. We live to build another day.”

They stared at the circular structure in the distance. At present it held nothing within its circumference, and through it they could see stars. But when initiated it would turn dark—black as infinity—and to drop through would be to travel light years.

“Have they told us which will be the first ship to use it?” McBrain asked.

“Not yet,” Clintock said. “Probably a Colonial Marine ship, as usual.”

“And why not,” McBrain said. “They’re here to take the risks.”

“They’re paid a shitload more than us, too.”

“Still saving your credits?”

“Of course. I don’t want to be out here at the ass end of nowhere when I’m your age, boss.” He grinned wryly. “No offense.”

“None taken.” McBrain stood, groaning as his stiff knees clicked, and then the whole bridge was lit up with the soft blue glow of warning lights.

Other crew members sat up, took crossed feet off of their units, put down mugs of drink, and peered intently at their monitors and screens.

A holo screen unfolded from the ceiling and dropped down in front of McBrain’s control suite, and the wide viewing windows around the bridge grew dark.

“What is it?” McBrain asked.

“We’ve got a ship just dropped out of warp nearby,” Ellis said. She was their communications officer, a large, gruff woman who was a priceless part of the team.

McBrain leaned on the back of his seat. Clintock turned off the warning chimes, and the whole bridge went silent. In the holo screen before him, a schematic of their area of space appeared. At first the Gagarin, the drophole, and its attendant ships filled the screen, then they rapidly shrank as the surrounding space was plotted. Gagarin remained at the center, becoming little more than a green dot, gently glowing.

Blue specks circled farther out, indicating the locations of the six Colonial Marine ships. Two of them were already accelerating across the screen toward the upper right corner, and as they went a red dot appeared.

“Ellis?” McBrain asked.

“Hang on, boss,” she said. “I’m getting some info now but it’s… er…”

“Spit it out,” he said, but he already knew the answer. The other crew around the bridge gave her their full attention, anxious to hear what she had to say. McBrain knew what they were thinking.

Yautja? Here?

The marines guarding Gamma 123 had informed him of the ceasefire agreement that had been reached some weeks ago, but that didn’t guarantee that the attacks wouldn’t continue. He knew little of the Yautja, other than what was found in the materials provided by the Company. And that wasn’t much. As a species they were unpredictable, violent, and still mysterious after all this time.

“Right,” Ellis said, breaking the silence. “Well, it’s a big ship, dropped out of warp just over one million miles away. Computer has recognized the ship’s drive trail but… it doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t?” he asked, frustration giving his voice an edge.

“Boss, it’s a vessel called the Susco-Foley.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I doubt anyone here has. It’s a Fiennes ship, launched from Sol orbit in 2216.”

“A Fiennes ship?” Clintock echoed. “What the hell’s it doing here?”

“Those ships never had warp drives,” someone else said.

“It’s got to be a mistake,” McBrain said. “Yuri, can you confirm?”

The ship’s computer coughed as if to clear its throat, an affectation that McBrain usually found endearing, but which now was annoying.

“Yes, Nathan,” Yuri responded. “Everything indicates the ship is indeed the Susco-Foley, though it appears larger than that original craft, and there are embellishments.”

“Embellishments?”

“The warp wave it threw ahead of its arrival seems to suggest it was traveling at warp-30.”

A gasp went around the bridge.

“Well that is a mistake, then,” McBrain said. “No human ship can travel that fast, much less one that was built four and a half centuries ago.” Even the Arrow-class Excursionist vessels could only hit warp-15.

He watched the big holo screen before him, as the same image was thrown on other screens around the bridge. Four of the six Colonial Marine vessels were heading on an intercept course, closing on the pulsing red dot that moved closer to the Gagarin with every breath.

“Any comms between them and the Marine ships?” he asked.

“Only going one way,” Ellis said. “The Marines are hailing, but there’s no response.”

The four military ships edged closer to the Gagarin, forming a protective shield. They would be ready to lay down staggering firepower if the need arose.

“What the hell is this?” McBrain muttered.

“It’s not Yautja,” Clintock said. “They’ve never been seen in a ship that big.”

“Don’t they steal and modify tech as well as building their own?” Ellis asked.

“I don’t know,” McBrain said. “But it’s nothing to worry about. The Marines have got this.” Watching the blue specks converging ahead of the mysterious new arrival, he only hoped it was true.

A transmission crackled over their loudspeakers.

“Gagarin, this is Blue One. You there, McBrain?”

“I read you, Vicar.” Blue One was the Marines’ command ship, a destroyer captained by a woman he had never met. Upon arrival, Lieutenant Vicar had told him that he and his crew were safe with her, and there had been very little contact since. That was more than four months ago.

“You’ll have seen our new arrival,” the voice continued. “We’re closing, and attempting to make contact.”

“Roger that,” he said. “You know that ship’s nearly five hundred years old, don’t you?”

Vicar didn’t reply for a few seconds.

“That has to be a glitch in our computers.”

“All of them?”

More silence, filled with the white noise of space.

“Stand by,” Vicar said. “Make sure—”

Without warning her voice was cut off. At the same time, one of the blue specks on his holo screen winked out of existence.

“What was that?” McBrain asked, raising his voice without meaning to. “What happened?” His heart was beating faster, not from fear but with uncertainty. He liked to know what was happening. He liked his ducks in a row. “Hello? Lieutenant Vicar?”

“Connection’s failed,” Ellis said. Then she pointed. “Look.”

The second blue dot swerved away from the newly arrived ship. McBrain and everyone else on the bridge saw a dozen smaller red specks separate from the intruder, and give chase.

“More ships?” he asked.

“Think so,” Clintock said. “Nathan, what’s happening?”